ted. To the duty of laboring for this end, the pleasure of praising must always be postponed; and, as has been said more than once already, that duty was never more incumbent on the critic than at the present day. Eccentricities, false estimates, and every sort of extravagance in style are rife among us. The common limitation of the word "art" to painting exclusively, is itself a sign, if any sign were needed, of how utterly inartistic our literature is. In such a state of matters unjust censure is as nothing; real merit will struggle through; but the critic who praises carelessly, recklessly, is guilty of a grievous offence against the true interests of literature. Of our eccentricities Mr. Arnold gives some examples, showing how they strike the minds of French critics. The examples he selects are the Jashar of the late Mr. Donaldson, and Mr. Forster's Life of Mahomet. It may be that both Mr. Donaldson and Mr. Forster have been guilty of extravagance, yet it would have been well had Mr. Arnold selected more eminent offenders. In literary, as in political rebellions, the great leaders should be first left for punishment. Nor are there wanting men of mark who have sinned grievously against literary law. Mr. Carlyle, during the latter portion of his career, has impaired his reputation, and diminished his influence, by plunging into every sort of eccentricity both of thought and style. And a man, even more prominently before the public than Mr. Carlyle, has wandered into extravagancies yet wilder, and that on one of Mr. Arnold's favorite subjects. It seems to us very unaccountable that, in his lectures on Homer, Mr. Arnold should have passed without notice the uncontrolled eccentricities of Mr. Gladstone, and the amazing meanings which he tortured from the poet. And this is not only unaccountable, but much to be regretted. The reception given to Mr. Gladstone's bulky volumes might be cited as one of the strongest instances of the insufficiency of English criticism. Every newspaper and periodical in the country, except, if our memory serve us right, the Times and the Scotsman, joined in the chorus of unreasoning and exaggerated praise. Especially no depths of prostration could be too deep for the Saturday Review. Now Mr. Gladstone violated every law which Mr. Arnold regards. His book showed neither moderation nor sanity, nor even good tasteas in the famous comparison of Minerva to the electric telegraph. It is against such a parrot-cry as this that Mr. Arnold's testimony would be of especial value. Such a critic as he is renders his fitting service not in holding up small men to ridicule, but in exposing the errors of great men. But though we can not quite forgive him for not having shown Mr. Gladstone's Homer in its true light, he yet deserves some praise for having in this preface at least indicated, for the first time, so far as we know, the truth as regards Lord Derby's Homer: "I admire its freshness, its manliness, its simplicity; although, perhaps, if one looks for the charm of Homer, for his play of a divine light, Professor Pepper must go on, I can not." In the work of resisting false estimates, criticism will find plenty of occupation in Scotland. Partly from our noisy nationality, partly from the want of general cultivation, and the consequent absence of good taste, this fault is very prevalent among us. Indeed, Scotland at the present day, fallen from her high literary estate, is in many respects, in her narrowness, in her inaccessibility to great ideas, in her vehement selfassertion, a very Philistia. But at all times Scotchmen have been given to over-estimate and over-praise Scotchmen in a manner which works much evil. In the lowest point of view, this does no lasting good to the praised themselves, for other tribunals are less partial, nay, may be led into excess of severity by this excess of praise; while, in any other point of view, it does direct harm, hindering real advancement, obscuring both from ourselves and from others the knowledge of the truth. Thus we find the late Francis Horner, a sedate man of a well-balanced mind, placing Dugald Stewart on a level with "the first of those who know," and predicting that his "writings will live as long as those of Cicero and Plato, and will go down to distant times with their works." Here we have a "note of provincialism" which jars upon us rudely. Thus to class Cicero with Plato in the same rank as philosophers shows a culpable this vice, as of the former, is the want, carelessness almost amounting to indif- so general and unhappily so increasing, ference to truth; but to set Dugald of a familiarity with the best models, esStewart there also, is to treat the critical spirit as altogether a thing of naught, and, though this is a less matter, to run the risk of depriving him of the reputation which is justly his. Again, Lord Jeffrey-for it is better in such a matter as this to take examples from the past was beyond doubt an accomplished man, and a brilliant writer. But if we compare him with such a critic as M. SainteBeuve, or if we read Mr. Arnold's comparison of him with Joubert, we can hardly fail to see that it would be more becoming if the terms in which his merits are often extolled among us were to suffer some abatement. pecially of those which antiquity has left us. And this leads us to an objection occasionally urged against Mr. Arnold's critical point of view. He is sometimes spoken of as an upholder of the classical as opposed to the Romantic style, and in a sense he is so. Thus he can not yield to the dogma frequently announced nowa-days, that "the poet who would really fix the public attention must leave the exhausted past, and draw his subjects from matters of present import, and therefore both of interest and novelty." He believes, on the contrary, that the best materials for poetry are to be found not in situations and incidents in themThe third tendency which it is the ap- selves mean and disagreeable, however pointed duty of criticism to resist, name- they may be elevated by the power of ly, fine writing, is also a peculiarly nor- the imagination, but rather in events and thern vice. It is a tendency at present ideas in themselves grand and beautiful, extending itself, like some pestilent weed, possessing an immediate dignity and inover all English literature: a writer on terest, irrespective of the force of associthis subject in the Cornhill* could select ation; and, so far, he holds with the his "samples of fine English" not only classicists. He believes, further, that from Tupper and Reynolds' Miscellany, distance from ourselves, either in time but also from the Times, the Literary Ga- or idea, tends to bestow this immediate zette, and the Edinburgh and Quarterly dignity and interest, while nearness to Reviews! But in Scotland the vice is ourselves tends to take it away. Poetry, almost universal. It is to be found in according to his idea, should approach, our books and our newspapers, it is ram- as with the most classic of the great pant in our pulpit, it intrudes, when poets it did approach, to sculpture, at opportunity offers, even upon the dig- once in natural beauty of subject, and in nity of our bench. Were the writer in perfection of form. Yet he is far from the Cornhill to set about collecting a few confining poetry to classical themes in "samples" of fine Scotch, he might pro- the strict sense of the word. He does duce an amusing and most astonishing not so limit his own choice. Most of paper. This may be partly ascribed to his largest poems come from very differthe popularity of writers like the late ent sources-from Northern mythology, Professor Wilson, a man of undoubted from Eastern legend, from the cycle of genius, but of a wild and unregulated Arthurian romance. His view, in short, genius, and in whose writings the influ- is, that all noble subjects are fitting for ence of severe cultivation is hardly ever poetry, only that the more distant the to be traced-an unfortunate popularity, subject the more likely it is to possess in that it has led weaker men to imitate this element of nobility, not having been what is not susceptible, nor, indeed, de- exposed to the vulgarizing influences of serving of imitation. These admiring familiarity. In this point of view Macmimics have caught the faults only of beth becomes as classical as Agamemnon the original-in the well-known words-the Weird Sisters, " withered and wild of Johnson, they have "the nodosities in their attire," as classical as the awful of the oak, without its strength; the Eumenides-Una, with her lion, as clascontortions of the Sybyl without her sical as Antigone or Electra. We beinspiration." But the main so * Vol. iii. p. 205. ove Mr. Arnold to be right in his theoDespite such successes as those of sworth or of Tennyson, we suspect that what is so glibly called "the poetry ble, within this range, to rate too highly of every-day life," will generally prove the importance of a knowledge of the a very sorry affair. The poet is indeed, classics as a regulating and corrective inas is often said, the interpreter of his fluence. Here we can cite in our favor age, but he is so indirectly, by allusion, a witness whose testimony, can never be by general tone, by his point of view, otherwise than acceptable, and who cernot directly by depicting the common tainly had no love for Latin and Greek life of people round about him. No in excess, Sydney Smith: "Whatever, great poet has done this-not even therefore, our conjectures may be, we can Shakspeare, the most universal of all. not be so sure that the best modern writNot in this way have the highest peaks ers can afford us as good models as the anof Helicon been scaled. Aspects of life cients: the moderns have been well taught so different from those familiar to us as by their masters; but the time is hardly to seem of another world-or, it may yet come when the necessity for such inbe, other worlds altogether, creations of struction no longer exists." It is a thing imagination or of faith; such are the fit of some moment just at present, that the and chosen materials of the highest poe- value of the ancient writers should have try. Seeing that the "poetry of every- found so powerful an advocate as Mr. day life theory" has found a supporter so Arnold-a man eminently qualified to acute as the late Mr. Brimley in his essay form an opinion on the matter, and not on Tennyson, we are glad to find it op- less capable of upholding it. posed by Mr. Arnold. But while it would be incorrect to call Mr. Arnold a disciple of the classic style, as the expression is employed by Schlegel, no man can have a truer appreciation of classical literature, or value a familiarity with it more highly. Men, he says, who often enjoy commerce with the ancients, seem to him "like persons who have had a very weighty and impressive experience, they are more truly than others, under the empire of facts, and more independent of the language current among those with whom they live." Now, no one can reproach Mr. Arnold with admiring the ancient beyond due measure, because of ignorance of modern literature. He but adds another to the many instances which show that it is the most accomplished and most cultivated men who most value the cultivation of antiquity. It is the want of this cultivation more than any other cause, which fosters, especially among us Scotch, those sins of eccentricity, and over-estimates, and fine writing, on which we have already remarked. Criticism can do much to restrain these things, but the discipline which the study of the classics gives can do far more; nay, without such discipline we may not hope for any such criticism. It is very idle to quote Shakspeare with his "little Latin and less Greek;" we are speaking now of ordinary mortals, of men who write from intelligence and understanding, not of the divine sons of genius. It is impossiNEW SERIES-VOL. II., No. 2. This subject naturally leads the mind to Oxford, on which nothing has ever been written more beautiful than the following passage-in itself no unfavorable example of the grace of Mr. Arnold's style: "No; we are all seekers still: seekers often make mistakes, and I wish mine to redound to my own discredit only, and not to touch Oxford. Beautifu! city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene! "There are our young barbarians, all at play.' And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her garments to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us near to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection,-to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side?— nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tubingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unWhat example could ever so inspire us to keep popular names, and impossible loyalties! down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could ever so save us from that bondage to which we are all prone, that bondage which Goethe, in those incomparable lines on the death of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise (and nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to have left miles out of sight behind him; the bondage of was uns alle bändigt, DAS GEMEINE? She will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly drawn upon her a shot or 6 two aimed at her unworthy son; for she is generous, and the cause in which I fight is, after all, hers. Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against the Philistines compared with the warfare which this Queen of Romance has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after we are gone ?" Readers who have accompanied us thus far do not need to be told that, in our judgment, Mr. Arnold's little volume is a work at once of sterling merit and of great value. That he may be, as indeed we believe him to be, wrong in many of his practical results-such as his admiration for academies, and his choice of English hexameters as a vehicle for rendering Homer is a thing of no real moment. The virtue of his teaching consists in the excellence of the standard he sets up, and in the soundness of the principles he applies. The more widely he is read, the greater the influence he obtains, the brighter the prospects of our literature. And it is because of this high estimate of Mr. Arnold's labors that we have dwelt more fully on those points where we differ from him' than on those where we agree with or yield to him; and, would that we were not forced to add, that it is also because of this estimate that we regret deeply the foppery, the arrogance, the affectation which marred the beauty of the lectures on Homer, which, in the preface to these essays, moves a sorrowful laughter, and which appears rarely inindeed, yet too often, disfiguring the essays themselves, lingering like a subtle poison. With these weaknesses Mr. Arnold has done, and yet will do, much; but, without them, how much more! Admiring him as we do, we can forgive him; but how can he forgive himself? Bentley's Miscellany. MODERN LIFE ON THE BOSPHORUS. OUR European diplomacy, whenever it moves on home ground, likes nothing so much as soothing and wiping matters up. It would like to settle everything kindly and lovingly, and roughly assails every one who, after the fashion of the day, rides on an extreme. In Turkish affairs, however, it falls into the very error with which it charges others. It seizes this matter to-day with a steel gauntlet, to morrow with kid gloves; one time it is full of disgust at the ineradicable Turkish barbarism, and another full of admiration at the incessant progress of Turkey; it now employs a language which sounds as if roared from the trumpets of the last judgment, and then lisps as softly as if it had at its lips the flageolet of an Arcadian shepherd. At the present moment it neither allows its thunder to roll along the Bosphorus, or its sun to shine on it. The burning questions being settled, diplomacy pauses, or mixes the cards for a fresh game. We, however, will take advantage of this pause to take another glance at the Turkish capital, and point out the changes which have originated there under French influence. The splendid landscape, in which the great and small world of the Turkish capital moves and has its being, has remained unaltered. Just as it did one hundred years ago, the Bosphorus winds between exquisite shores, adorned with gardens and kiosks; and on entering port the traveler still sees a picture, which, bordered on one hand by the Seraï, on the other by Scutari, has a glorious background in the Prince's Islands and Olympus. But Constantinople is no longer the idle city, with mysterious harems, savage Osmanlis, slave markets, and caravanserais. The waters of the Straits no longer open in the silent hours of the night to receive sacks, whence moans and sobs issue. The turban of the janissary hangs in second-hand clothes' shops, the yataghan and long gun of the Arnaut are temptingly displayed in windows, in order to induce English tourists to purchase them. Birmingham and Sohlingen are driving Damascus into the background in the bazaars. On the Bosphorus float merchant vessels under every flag, brigs, schooners, and three-masters; steamers send their smoke over the kiosks on shore; telegraph poles, with outspread wires, run in all directions. The hundreds of boats crossing each other in port convey all the discoveries of science, all the novelties of art, all the vanities of fashion, the latest novel, the newest libretto, the most modern fabrics; and all these European strangers are welcomed with equal joy in the Turkish harem and the Levantine salon. Some changes, however, have taken place in the panorama unfolded before the visitor. Pera, the city of diplomacy, and Galata, the seat of Frank commerce, have acquired quite an European look, through new buildings. Stone houses of several stories, broad gas-lit streets, elegant coffee-houses, glass-covered arcades, rich shops, booksellers' establishments, photographic ateliers brilliant fronts full of silks and jewellery, an Italian and French theatre, a Château des Fleurs, palaces of the embassies casinos and clubs, combine to form a whole which has nothing Oriental about it. On the other side of the haven, Stamboul-where the Muhammadan city is joined by the Armenian, Greek, and Israelite quarters, Yeni Kapu, Psamatia, Fauar, Jubali, and Balata has retained its appearance; but even there stone is beginning to be substituted for wood, and ere long street lighting will enable the Mussulman to go out after sunset without the indispensable paper lantern, which the slightest puff of wind extinguished, and its bearer was then left to defend himself as best he could against mud-holes, masterless dogs, and night watchmen. Then, too, the Turks will be able fearlessly to cross the bridge to Pera and Galata, and more frequently take part in the fêtes and soirées, so constantly given in the two Frank quarters, where many Muhammadans and Oriental Christians are already residing. Only twelve years ago the streets of Pera and Galata were narrow, winding, and dirty. Any one who ventured into them at night carried in one hand a lantern, in the other a pistol, or a loaded stick. Most foreigners remained at home at night, and felt securer when they heard the massive gates, which separated one quarter from another, but have now disappeared, banged to. It was rarely that an ambassadorial ball brought together the foreign colony and the Levantines. The latter, as Europeans who had become Easterns, formed a separate group; and three other groups were composed of the Christian subjects of Turkey, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greeks. National and religious hatred created even greater hostility among these groups than did trade jealousy. The Europeans, too, lived in colonies, and grew so accustomed to this existence that they avoided alleon tact with strangers, regarded every new face suspiciously, and were always on their guard. To the fires which widened the streets, to the gas that lights them, to the stone now substituted for wood in the new buildings, is owing a change in the habits of society which may be regarded as an important progress in Oriental life. The various nationalities visit each other, even though their hatred endures. Since steam navigation has increased, European elements have been brought in larger doses to Constantinople. Everybody takes his share of them, and thus an inevitable approximation is produced. The same ideas, the same wants, are drawn from the same sources. Mental life is being developed, and with it the desire for expansion. The new society requires newspapers, books, theatres, and as all use the same papers, books, and theatres, a union has sprung up, which extends to the noble Turkish women. Not a few of them learn French, and maintain a permanent, almost intimate, intercourse with the Christian ladies in Pera. Those fires, which made a breach for progress, imposed, it has been calculated, a yearly tax of 400,000l. No house stood longer than twenty years, and in that period Constantinople became a new city. In ten minutes a house was burned to the ground, in a few hours an entire quarter became a prey of the flames. Every week, every day, and not unfrequently twice or thrice a day, Constantinople was alarmed by the fire signal. Then thundered the alarm-guns, posted on a hill upon the Asiatic side, and commanding the whole neighborhood; the cannon in the towers of Galata and the Seraskierat replied, the public criers dashed their ironshod sticks on the ground, and repeated from street to street the cry of "Yangin var!" Half-naked firemen ran with wild yells through the city, and knocked down every one who did not get out of their way in time. In one respect the transformation of the city is to be regretted. The old wooden houses were light, elegant, and characteristic. Painted of different colors, and protected by widely-projecting roofs, they made Constantinople, seen from the roads, the most splendid and peen'ar priorima in the world. The |