The Westminster Review. October. (Triihner.)—This number, if it con- tains
nothing of remarkable value, is anyhow varied in interest. A writer gifted with strong sympathy for his subject, gives in a succinct form the story of the "Pilgrim Fathers," and errs only in being carried, after the manner of biographers, beyond himself by enthusiasm for his heroes. "Not a man, woman, or child of that Poquod tribe was left be- hind," ho says, speaking of the vengeance which the settlers thought fit to take on certain Indians ; "as the Israelites slew the Amalokites, so did the Pilgrims slay the Pequods." But what fierce denunciations should we not have heard if the writer's subject had boon, not Pilgrims slaying Pequods, but this same incident which he uses for an illustra- tion, Israelities slaying Amalokites 1 The reviewer who tells us about the "Baptists," if scarcely sympathetic, is not unjust. He gives us much information about the community, and sketches not unfairly, but with something, perhaps, of an " Americanized " tone, its loading men. Perhaps the best articles in the number are that on " Greek Democracy," a review of Dr. Curtius's third volume, in which the writer has apprehended, as it seems to us, with remarkable felicity the true bearihge of Athenian history ; and the essay on "Chaucer," an excellent essay on the personality and genius of tho groat pout. The writer of tho " Authorship of Junius " admits the Franciscan theory, but does not make, as far as we can see, any additions of great value to the controversy. What are we to understand by the strange rhapsody which bears the title of "Bearing of Modern Science on Art ?" That art is to become obsolete through what the author oalls the " mechanioalization " of all the processes with which it is concerned ? Such at least we understand to be the meaning of such a sentence as, 4I The polarizing mirror will spoil us for the noble child's-play of Titian's yellows and Tamer's starlets ; the crystal, with its pellucid severities of form, will train us to see hesitating crooks in all linos drawn or sculptured by the Angers;" or of this (if indeed it has any moaning at all ?)—" Taste must become a fable in the presence of a universal ful- filment of all the instincts of the senses, and before an absolute embodi- ment of every intellectual presentiment in real examples." So, instead of hanging our walls with pictures, we are to have them painted with prismatic colours. " The fingers " (fingers of Phial" Raphael, &c.), "suffer an incurable rusticity." " The camera, the prism, the polaris- cope, the crystal tube, the electric wire are sublimer implements in themselves than the pencil and the chisel." And this is the gospel with which the materialists propose to satisfy the resthotio wants of man !
Previous page
