men. From the Saturday Review. PHILOSOPHERS AND NEGROES. And tice, is not a thing without its uses. though a Jamaica negro's life may be a sham from the point of view of the ImmenIt is not a mere accident which has made sities, still it is a sort of reality to the creathe two chief leaders of opinion in the ture himself. But then, of course, Mr. rising generation take exactly opposite Carlyle is a great humourist, and on the sides about the conduct of the late Gov- humouristic side there is a good deal to be ernor of Jamaica. Mr. Mill and Mr. Car- got out of the noise and fuss that has been lyle take opposite sides in most matters, made about a few "two-forked radishes," from niggers down to metaphysics. They black radishes, strung up in the air. If only agree in being thoroughly in earnest one is given up to listening to the Heavenabout everything that they take up, and this ly Sphere-Music, why the shrieks and yells signal merit of sincerity has been the of a score of niggers, under the lashes of a secret of the impression which each of scourge made of pianoforte wire, naturally them has made upon the minds of young fall on deaf, inattentive ears. If you are For young men commonly care a busy worshipping Sorrow in the abstract, great deal more for sincerity than for the plainly you cannot be troubled with the direction in which it is shown, though they vulgar concrete sorrows of a wretch who like it all the better if, as is the case with has just had her husband hung up and her both these writers, it diverges as much as own back well scored with a cat-o'-ninepossible from the orthodox and approved tails. Besides, Mr. Carlyle has propounded track. Mr. Mill is thoroughly sincere in a universal poser which makes very short hating the good despot, and Mr. Carlyle is work of any tearful claim for sympathy on equally thoroughgoing in his detestation the part alike of negroes and white folk. for negroes. In the American war, the for- Rights! he exclaims somewhere, Why what mer felt that the whole question of free right had'st thou even to be? And this is government all over the world was at stake very pertinent under certain circumstances; in the contest, while the latter vowed that only as people do find themselves here, perthe simple difference between North and haps they are wise in trying to make themSouth was that the South preferred hiring selves as comfortable as may be, and in their servants for life, while the North took requesting their neighbours at least to leave theirs by the quarter. In the Jamaica con- them to conduct this process in peace, protroversy, the one declares that the Governor vided they do no harm to other people. A deserves hanging, while the other is lost in man may have no right to be, but one is no admiration at the truly heroic energy with better off than another as to this original which the Governor had his vile niggers title to existence; and as all stand equal so whipped, hung, bayoneted, chopped up, far, the right to prevent another from being burnt out of house and home, and other-turns on considerations of what is best to wise suitably admonished that there is no room for such black_rascals in the great Everlasting Yea. Here is a murderer, says the representative of Westminster. Here is your true king, your könig, your can-ning man, your hero, cries the representative of the Eternities and the Sorrowful Silent Spheres. Mr. Eyre has been legally guilty of murder, says the one. Away with your horsehair and your wiggeries, says the other; he has saved the island, and proved himself a real captain of men; no phantasm captain, no Islington gigman, no heeder of doggeries. The pub- At the last meeting of the Committee of lic meanwhile has not much sympathy with the Eyre Defence and Aid Fund, Mr. Careither of the extreme champions. People lyle found an ally in Mr. Ruskin. As the do not want Mr. Eyre to be tried, and still two writers who exercise most influence less do they desire, with Mr. Kingsley, that over young men have views about Jamaica, he should be raised to the House of Lords. it is not surprising that they should be joined It is very right to detest formulas and shams, but, after all, the formula which prevents the true Hero, the Man who Can, from hanging you up at five minutes' no be done now that we are all here. And the experience of mankind goes to show, first, that laws forbidding the random taking of life are good things; and second, that obedience to the laws is also a good thing. Mr. Mill says that Mr. Eyre has broken English law and violated its spirit, and therefore that he ought to be punished. But of course Mr. Carlyle will have nothing to do with conclusions that come of logic-chopping and reasoning, and vile Benthamite talk of expediency and greatest possible happiness. by the favourite writer of young ladies. The worst of it is that, while there is always something at the bottom of what Mr. Carlyle says in his most fantastic moods, there is never anything at all at the bottom of what Mr. Ruskin has been saying for the last five years. He has been producing volume after volume of windy purple declamation, without a single specific hint as to how he would set about the task of making the world better-except, by the way, the truly fertile and profound suggestion that good little boys and girls should be formed into orders of chivalry. This is the one grain of precious wheat out of big bushels of Sesame and Lilies, and crowns of Wild Olive, and Ethics of the Dust, and all sorts of other farragos. One knew very well, not which side he would take up, for that would be impossible to predict, but the kind of stuff which he would be sure to talk, on whichever side he talked it. There was pretty certain, one felt, to be something bout the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway. Mr. Ruskin's anger against the disfigurements inflicted on London and the suburbs by railways is very hot indeed. The connection between the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway and negroes was not easy for a plain man to see, but Mr. Ruskin is not to be baffled by any difficulties of this sort. So it appears that he began by saying that he hated all cruelty and injustice, by whomsoever inflicted or suffered, and from this he advances straight into the Metropolitan Extensions. "He would sternly reprobate," he said, "the crime which dragged a black family from their home to dig your fields; and more sternly the crime which turned a white family out of their home, that you might drive by a shorter road over their hearth." That is to say, metropolitan extension is positively a worse crime than slavery. The promoter whose line obliges a working-man to go and live somewhere else is actually more guilty than if he were a slave-trader. The horrors of the Middle Passage were less worthy of reprobation than the horrors of having to move from here to the street round the corner, or, in extreme cases, from a filthy room in a crowded purlieu to a clean room in an airy suburb. Mr. Ruskin reprobates more sternly a shareholder in a metropolitan railway than a slaveholder. This was pretty well for a beginning. too well in fact. Nothing could beat such a doctrine as this in the way of absurdity. Still Mr. Ruskin did his best now and again to get up to the same mark. The removal of Mr Eyre was an act of national imbecility which had not hitherto its parallel in history." More than this, "it was the act as this threat of prosecution was the cry of a nation blinded by its avarice to all true valour The and virtue, and haunted therefore by phantoms of both; it was a suicidal act of a people which, for the sake of filling its pockets, would pour mortal venom into all its air and all its streams; would shorten the lives of its labourers by thirty years a life, that it might get its needle-packets 2d. each cheaper; would communicate its liberty to foreign nations by forcing them to buy poison at the cannon's mouth; and prove its chivalry by shrinking in panic from the side of a people being slaughtered, though a people who had given them their daughter for their future Queen; and then would howl in the frantic collapse of their decayed consciences that they might be permitted righteously to reward with ruin the man who had dared to strike down one seditious leader and rescue the lives of a population." Poor Mr. Carlyle, as he sat listening to this torrent of atrocious nonsense, must have felt the full force of his favourite doctrine, that Silence is indeed golden, though Speech may be brazen. But the funniest point was to come. orator, after letting his angry passions rise in this fearful way. and vehemently declaring that the anti-Eyre feeling was natural in a nation thus diabolically sordid, wicked, vile, hellish, &c. &c., coolly says in the next sentence -"Whether this cry and the feeling which it represented were indeed the voice and the thought of the English people, it was now to be asked." But, in the name of justice and common sense, ought not the question to have been asked first, and the vituperation to have come after? You are a pack of sordid, avaricious, bloodthirsty, cowardly, mean hounds, says Mr. Ruskin to his fellow-countrymen, in a transport of patriotism; and your feeling about Mr. Eyre is all of a piece with the rest of your villany; and now, by the way, I come to the question, quite subsidiary from a rhetorical point of view, whether in truth this is your feeling? for my part I don't much think that it is. For Mr. Ruskin, with unsurpassed effrontery, after talking about Mr. Eyre's suspension as the act of a whole nation sunk in baseness, as we have seen, and after saying in the next breath that it was a question whether it was the act of the nation, concluded by expressing his belief that "it was not the voice of the whole Erglish people, and that there was another opinion of theirs yet to be taken in the matter." "If not," he wound up by saying, "if this proved to be indeed the English mind, the condemnation or acquittal of Mr. Eyre were matters of very small moment; for the time would then assuredly have come for the bringing of the English people themselves to a trial in which judgment would not require to be petitioned for." Would then have come! What, then, was the force of that terrific indictment against the nation which insisted on having its needle-packets cheapened by twopence each, and pouring mortal venom, and forcing people to buy poison at the cannon's mouth, and all the rest of it? There was no contingent "if" here. Judgment was actually pronounced. The act was distinctly and categorically called "the suicidal act of a people" of cowards and ruffians. And yet it appears still to be an open question, first, whether it was the act of a people at all, with the admitted probability that it was not; and secondly, whether we are such cowards and ruffians after all. Surely Mr. Ruskin's reason must have caught fire a little prematurely, as • Governor Eyre's effigy had done at Clerkenwell. It was quite a comfort to find that the English nation, who had been first of all tried, convicted, sentenced, and hung by the neck till they were dead, were perfectly lively and reputable again by the end of the oration. The folly of Clerkenwell was bad enough, but it was not half so bad as the folly of which two at least of the literary class, Mr. Kingsley and Mr. Ruskin, have been guilty on the same subject. But there are two sorts of nonsense. There is genial after-dinner nonsense, which makes people laugh in spite of their anger, and this was the effect of what Mr. Kingsley said at Southampton. Mr. Ruskin's is of that acrid offensive kind which fills the listener with disgusted pity. Mr. Eyre is unfortunate in his champions, and his only consolation must be that he is less so in his assailants. From the Saturday Review. THE USES OF FICTION. MR. MILL has said, in one of his Dissertations, that the only two modes in which an individual mind could hope to exercise much direct influence upon the minds of contemporaries were as a member of Parliament or as the editor of a London newspaper. This limitation may have been correct enough when Mr. Mill made it some thirty years ago, but we think there can be little doubt that in these days a third influence ought to be added to the list—namely, that of the popular novelist. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to say that we refer exclusively to novelists who, by profound reflection or a quick natural insight into character and life, have arrived at something like consistent and manageable theories of the social conditions which surround them; and not to novelists whose chief claim to popularity is the skill with which they can keep the reader, for so many hundred pages, in suspense as to whether the charming heroine has really murdered her first husband, or what may be her exact relationship to the mysterious orphan. Novels which depend for their success upon ingenuity of this kind may be classed with clever conjuring tricks, fearful ascents up spiral staircases, tremendous headers into unseen feather-beds, or any other feats whose sole object is to excite and amuse. They enable any one in want of occupation to get through so many hours without being bored; and hence the large demand which nowadays exists for them among the constantly increasing class, popularly typified by young ladies and guardsmen, who take to light literature, as rich men take to politics, or any other profession, merely as a means of killing time. Even But a novelist who has clear and definite views upon the social or other problems of contemporary life may, it appears to us, exercise in these days a scarcely less direct, though obviously a less immediate, influence upon his age than either of the two classes formerly singled out by Mr. Mill. Indeed, he owes his influence, in some measure, to the very cause which apparently induced Mr. Mill to make this limitation- namely, to the fact that, from the countless multitude of books yearly issuing from the press, it is generally considered necessary to have a superficial acquaintance with so many authors that it becomes impossible thoroughly to master the doctrines of any one. the best books are, as a rule, "bolted". rarely, after Bacon's advice, "chewed"; and there is, accordingly, no process of intellectual digestion sufficient to leave a permanent effect upon the mind. The effect is scarcely more durable than that made by one forcible article in a daily newspaper, or one telling speech in Parliament; and, inasmuch as articles and speeches innumerable may be given in succession to the public in the time that it takes to mature and produce one thoughtful book, the author has no chance whatever against the journalist or the politican. This complaint of Mr. Mill's may be applicable to books written solely for instruction, especially if they rise beyond the level of the ordinary popular point of ter, not in the direct formation of this or view. Books of this class may as well be that special opinion-that the influence of left unread altogether as bolted, for any per- a novelist of high order is most powerfully manent salutary effect they can produce exercised upon his age. It is astonishing upon the mind. Indeed, they are better left how little Englishmen, as a rule, appreciate unread, since a too hasty perusal will not the tendency of the novel to develop imagimerely leave the reader as ignorant as it nation, or rather, how little importance they found him, which would involve nothing attach to the cultivation of this faculty. worse than loss of time, but will expose him Nine fathers out of ten, for instance, would to what Plato pronounced the most danger- far rather see their children absorbed in ous of all forms of ignorance the igno- scientific experiments with the microscope, rance of one's ignorance. But Mr. Mill's or puzzling their brains over tough botanitheory does not appear to us to be applicable cal names, than poring over one of Scott's to the novel, since, unlike a didactic work, novels. In some families the last amusement it may be bolted, and yet leave upon the is strictly interdicted, and in nearly all it is mind a perfectly clear and lasting impres- rather tolerated than encouraged, as an insion of the doctrine it is intended to convey. evitable concession to the great truth that The reasons of this are obvious. The doc- boys will be boys. Even this amiable contrine is not clothed in abstract conceptions cession is confined to the well-to-do classes; which, to be fully and clearly comprehend- and works of fiction are regarded, like ined, require thoughtful reflection, but in con- digestible sweetmeats and heavy puddings, crete instances which come home at once to as unwholesome luxuries only to be adventhe feeblest comprehension. It may, more- tured upon by the rich. Few teachers over, be spread over a long and varied would have courage enough to countenance series of incidents, each more or less remote- the startling heresy that the child of a poor ly illustrative of it, and this with a diffuse- man is not grievously wasting his time if he ness and amplification which would be devotes to works of imagination hours that utterly inadmissable in a philosophical trea- might be occupied in acquiring a knowledge tise. To borrow Archbishop Whately's of chemistry or mechanics. It may be simile, just as food must have bulk as well sound enough, as an educational theory, as nutriment, the stomach requiring a "cer- that the development of the imaginative tain degree of distention" to enable it to faculty should precede that of the faculties act properly, so do the generality of minds which natural science is best adapted to assimilate knowledge far more readily and train. But then this theory assumes that perfectly if it is spread for them over a tol- imagination has uses which make its deerably large surface, than if it is concen- velopment worth aiming at; and the orditrated, no matter how clearly and forcibly, nary notion of the so-called practical mind, in small compass. And although, as we the commonest type of the English mind, is have already observed, the novelist must that imagination may be all very well for exercise a less immediate influence than the those who want to be poets or artists or journalist or the politician, he has, on the novelists, but that it is a gift rather dangerother hand, this advantage over them, if he ous than otherwise to those who would be a popular writer of the first class, that qualify themselves for more lucrative or he addresses a far larger audience among more substantial professions. It may be a that educated portion of the community question, it is said, how far even the son of who do most to create public opinion on im- the rich man, who has his way in the world portant questions of the day. A really smoothed before him, ought deliberately to first-rate novel is read, sooner or later, by be encouraged in the cultivation of a faculalmost every one with any pretensions to ty so likely to give him a romantic and uneducation, while there are thousands of business-like turn of mind; but there can educated people who only occasionally in- be no question that it is absurd to encourage terest themselves in a newspaper article or the indulgence of such vagaries in the poor. a political speech. The great majority of The practical people who hold this view women, while they make it a point of hon- strangely enough overlook the strictly praeour to read the first, rarely trouble them- tical effects of imagination upon character selves about the two last, and the share and the conduct of life. We mean more which women contribute to the formation especially that kind of imagination which of public opinion on all really fundamental it is the direct and immediate tendency of questions is far greater than it appears. fiction to educe and strengthen, and which But it is indirectly-in subtle and per- we may call the dramatic imagination— manent impressions upon the whole charac-"the power by which one human being en want of imagination that an historian of Mr. Kaye's ability attributes the fatal policy that led to the Indian mutiny. In his Life of Lord George Bentinck, Mr. Disraeli declares this same defect to have been the weak point in the political genius of Sir Robert Peel; and Mr. Mill finds the defect vitiating the whole philosophical system of so great a thinker as Bentham. The use of fiction in developing what we have called dramatic imagination has a scarcely less important bearing upon the moral, than we have seen it to have upon the intellectual, side of character. Deficiency in the two great social virtues, justice and benevolence, is less often due to conscious dishonesty or heartlessness than to inability to "enter into the mind and circumstances" of the suffering or the injured ters into the mind and circumstances of for Ivanhoe. Yet it is to Lord Dalhousie's another," or which "enables us, by a voluntary effort, to conceive the absent as if it were present, the imaginary as if it were real, and to clothe it in the feelings which, if it were indeed real, it would bring along with it." This is the power which fiction does most to foster, which can be cultivated to its proper perfection only when the mind still retains the plasticity and impressibility of youth, and the strictly practical consequences of which are altogether overlooked when it is treated as if it were of no marketable value to any one but the intellectual artist. Fanciful as to some may appear the connection between the want of this dramatic faculty and the prevalence of crime among the poorer classes, there can be no doubt that a large proportion of crimes are directly traceable to the criminal's inability to realize, with sufficient vividness to serve as a deterrent, the ultimate consequences of his act. At least this is the opinion of a really practical man like Lord Stanley, who has devoted much time and labour to statistics bearing upon the condition of the poorer population, and who rarely delivers an opinion which he has not matured. He holds that the sudden, and sometimes almost unintelligible, acts of brutal violence for which the very poor are comparatively so notorious, are for the most part due to the fact that the criminal, like a mere animal, cannot "conceive the absent as if it were present" -cannot bring before his mind, with lifelike distinctness, the fatal results that must follow from his crime. The temptation is visibly present before him; his punishment lies in the unseen future. Upon this incapacity is based the only philosophical defence of public executions. They impress vividly upon the popular mind consequences which it has not imagination enough to picture for itself. We have instanced the poorer classes simply because their case exhibits most forcibly the practical value of imagination, and an extreme case does as well as any other for the purpose of illustration. But of course the same principle applies, in greater or less degree, to all classes and professions. Imagination is often most wanted in those pursuits from which the "practical mind would be most anxious to exclude it. It is. for instance, about the last quality which would be considered desirable for a statesman by Englishmen of the class who despise novels as conveying unpractical, unmarketable knowledge, and who would think a taste for mechanics a far more promising symptom in the youthful mind than a taste to look at the matter not exclusively from your own, but also from his, point of view. People cry over fictitious suffering in a novel who hear almost unmoved of the far worse miseries actually inflicted by our work-house system upon the poor. A superficial observer may pronounce such people guilty of sham sentiment, and assert that they sympathize so readily with fictitious woe merely because it threatens no demand upon the pocket. But a more charitable, and certainly not less philosophical, explanation of their inconsistency is that the imagination of the novelist brings far more vividly before them the suffering which is fictitious than their own imagination can bring the suffering which has the advantage of being real. It is certainly odd that good and pious people should wage such strenuous war against a class of writings which contribute perhaps more than any other towards the foundation of all true goodness and piety, the power of enlarged and ready sympathy. How far such writings conduce to what should be their other great function, that of elevating the character by setting before the reader great aims and ennobling conceptions of life, must depend very much upon whether the author is prepared to make a certain sacrifice of popularity. It is perhaps impossible for a writer of fiction to work on a level much above the ordinary national character, the average aspirations and pursuits of the day, and yet remain generally popular. And, since popularity means money - and novels, like most other things, are, as a rule, made to sell-there is an almost insuperable temptation to endeavour to keep on a level with, and reflect, the national sentiment, rather than to endeavour to raise and |