ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

latter, as they are in Australia. Although the shrubs and sedges indigenous to New Zealand furnish good pasture for cattle, yet they are not the food for fine woolled sheep. Hence the sheep farmer has to incur the heavy outlay of clearing the land and sowing European grasses, and this cannot be done without great expense. For home consumption, and to a limited extent, a profit may be realized; but when the grazier has to boil down his increase, as in Australia, for the sake of the tallow, wool, hides, and horns, the returns look very small in proportion to the outlay.

In this Article we refrain from offering any further opinion upon the schemes of colonization which are in operation in Otago and Canterbury. A discussion of the principles on which these plans are founded may supply enough of material for another Article. In the meantime we cordially wish them all possible success. We have employed this opportunity specially for presenting facts and judgments concerning the physical capabilities of certain parts of New Zealand, which, we believe, are not yet commonplace to many of our readers. Our purpose is served if they tend, by spreading truth, to promote caution and wisdom, in the future history of the great modern movement of colonization, which is still in its infancy, but in which our warmest sympathies are embarked. It is one thing to discuss those principles of Social Science by which colonization should be regulated, and to apply them to the circumstances of this age. It is another task to describe accurately the resources of spots which have been, or are likely to be, selected by emigrants, and thus to diffuse information concerning them among the various orders of the community. Both these investigations are of the greatest importance in the present circumstances of cur country. In this paper we have confined ourselves to the latter, and we shall be glad if what we have said suggests the desirableness of more systematic means for collecting and spreading true facts and judgments, gathered by disinterested parties, with regard to the geology, botany, physiology, and other resources of our favourite resorts of emigration.

Carlyle's Life of Sterling.

359

ART. III.—The Life of John Sterling. By THOMAS CARLYLE. London, 1851.

LITERATURE and CHRISTIANITY present in their relations hitherto a somewhat singular and perplexing study. They have but seldom gone hand in hand. Their mutual bearing has been often one rather of repulsion and hostility than of attraction and sympathy. There has been a strong jealousy on both sides which has often manifested itself in downright animosity. To what extent this is to be traced to their original position of antagonism it would now perhaps be difficult to say. Christianity grew up under the hostile frown of Pagan Literature. The spirit of the one revolted from that of the other; and while it is true that almost all the literary culture which survived gradually passed over into the Church, we yet find throughout the early centuries, till it culminated in the notable case of Gregory in the sixth, a prevailing feeling of indifference, and even of opposition to heathen learning among Christians.* With the revival of letters the old antagonism reappeared. The ideals, which kindled the young enthusiasm of Europe in the fifteenth century, and reawakened the long slumbering literary spirit, were those of Greece and Rome. It was from the old fountains of Pagan culture, dilapidated by long neglect, and overgrown with the weeds of centuries, that the stream of genius burst forth afresh.

The spirit of Modern Literature necessarily partook of the character of its origin. It was impossible that it could be otherwise. Accustomed to find the standard, not merely of taste, but of character and feeling in the productions of Grecian and Roman learning, modern genius could not fail to bear the stamp of the models which it thus worshipped. A certain Paganized influence accordingly diffused itself through the latter—an influence which, in some of its noblest representatives, may be said to have been almost entirely overcome, but which is not the less characteristic of its general productions.

We scarcely think that any would be disposed to question this decided effect of the ancient upon the modern classical Literature. In turning from the one to the other, we frequently meet with but little change of tone. The same class of sentimentthe same cast of character, claim our sympathy or provoke our dislike. Or where there is no such identity, there is yet, save in some comparatively rare instances of high significance, no reno

* Julian, we know, made it one of his main reproaches against the Christians, that they ascribed the works of heathen genius to Satan or his agents-an accusation exaggerated it may be supposed, but undoubtedly indicating in the Church a prevailing sentiment of hostility to heathen learning. 2A

VOL. XVI. NO. XXXII.

vation of thought and feeling. There is no baptisin of divine fire renewing and transfiguring the page of Literature. Christianity might nearly as well not have been, for aught of its spirit that breathes in many of these works of modern genius which have most interested and delighted the human mind. It is of our own literature we would be understood chiefly to speak; but the truth of our remark will perhaps be most readily admitted when applied to Modern Literature in general.

It may seem a harsh and Puritanical judgment which we thus pronounce. But the real question that concerns us is, not whether the judgment be harsh, but whether it be true. No good can come from mere evasion on such a subject. The truth is not the less true that we do not acknowledge it, and force ourselves to contemplate it. We remember the strong revulsion of feeling with which we first read John Foster's very minute and candid treatment of this subject, in his famous essay, "On the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion." It was hard to have one's idols so struck down, and their true character so unsparingly exposed. Even now, on reverting to the essay, we have been unable to read it, in some parts, without a kind of pain which must have led many, we fancy, indignantly to toss it aside. He brings forth, with such a clear yet mild prominence, the peculiarities of Christianity, and confronts them so clearly, yet boldly, with the characteristics of our polite Literature, as to leave no escape from conclusions which we would still fain repudiate. He presses the point of contrast in a manner at once so measured and forcible that it is impossible to resist the essential truth of his argument. We may regret it from our love of Literature, or despise it from our scorn of Christianity, but we will find it hard to repel it.

We do not, indeed, in some respects, coincide with Foster. We think that here, as often, the gloom of his temperament tinges the picture that he draws. He shuts out too much the lights which would relieve, and the pleasant colours which would soften it. Nay, we believe that the severity and exclusiveness of his own religion have led him to do some special injustice to the venerated names of Addison and Johnson. Still, with every abatement we may make of his representations, their substantial truth remains. There is the fact, which we cannot get rid of with the most tolerant latitudinarianism, that so much of our Literature is not characteristically Christian, but the reverse. Its genius is not only not consonant with that of the gospel, but often, though without any polemical purpose, quite hostile to it, so that every truly Christian mind must feel that the fascinations of Literature are not without their danger.

Not for one moment, indeed, would we be supposed to be

Relations of Christianity and Literature.

361 ignorant of the beautiful uses of all true Literature. There is a morally exalting power, we believe, in all its genuine manifestations, apart from their relations to Christianity. It is the wondrous gift of genius to serve often as a moral teacher, even in its fall and degradation. The pure heart will gather at once delight and discipline from productions which may yet by no means mainly minister to elevated and Christian feelings. There is an inextinguishable element of truth and beauty in all genius, which, from amid whatever corruption, will rise upon the untainted soul, imparting a moral joy and strength of the most precious kind. Foster, we think, has discerned this too feebly and inadequately. He has made too little allowance for the good we may always extract from whatever the hand of genius, has touched with its magic or arrayed in its glory. Even admitting that there is so much alien to the spirit of the gospel in our past Literature, we are not inclined to view so gloomily as he does the consequences of this. That living familiarity with our best writers, both of poetry and prose, which alone can impart a true literary taste, may, we think, be cultivated with less danger to Christian habitudes of thought and feeling than he seems to believe. Still the fact is, in the main, as he has represented it. Whatever view we may take of its bearing, it is not, we feel, capable of being disputed. The significant truth remains, claiming our serious attention, that so great a part of our past Literature is un-allied with Christianity.

We scarcely think it can be necessary, at this day, and in the pages of this Review, to offer any explanation of the anxiety with which we are inclined to regard this fact. There are but few of our readers, we suppose, who do not recognise that Christianity ought to be associated with Literature. It is only possible, indeed, on the ground of infidelity, on the one hand, or of fanaticism, on the other, to maintain that they can be severed without mutual injury. Here, as in other respects, these extremes are found to meet. From opposite reasons, but to the same purpose, they hold that Literature has nothing to do with religionthe former scorning religion as an unreality, the latter treating Literature as a folly. Supposing we take our stand at either of these extreme points, we may consistently look with indifference on the separation of Literature and Christianity, or even advocate the propriety of the separation. But from no other point can we contemplate this subject indifferently. If we at once believe in Christianity, and in Literature, we cannot logically remain satisfied with their disjunction. It will not stand for a moment, on such a footing, to say, as we have sometimes virtually heard it said, that we have recourse to Literature, not to have our piety quickened, but our taste gratified; that we do not expect,

and do not desire, the devotion of a David in Dryden or Pope, or the spirit of the Gospels in Hume or Gibbon. Every one in his own place. We are content to take Pope and Dryden as they are. Nay, we think that any special infusion of religion into their pages would only have tended to disgust, as has been exemplified in the case of some other writers who have attempted an incongruous mixture of piety and poetry. This is a style of argument which, if now but little heard, and certainly scarce needing refutation here, does yet, we apprehend, silently influence many minds in contemplating the relations of Literature and Christianity. It is long after the neck of a fallacy is broken till it altogether expires. It drags out a lingering existence in a lower class of minds after it has long ceased to live in a higher. And a fallacy such as the one in question, which Johnson, in his day, took under his protection, in his well-known and often refuted remarks on sacred poetry, may be imagined to have some special vitality in it. It is one, however, which could only exist in an atmosphere of gross misconception as to the nature of Christianity. No sooner is it recognised, what indeed was so little recognised during the last century, that Christianity is by no means merely a system of notions, with its set phraseology, but a Life animating and pervading the whole mental and active being, infusing a totally new spirit wherever it penetrateschanging from its inmost centre the complexion of individual and social character-than it is seen that it must identify itself with literature wherever it really lives. Casting, as it does, a new glory on nature and humanity, transfiguring both in a more radiant and significant light, how can it fail, where it is really present, to interfuse and blend itself with every phase and aspect of Literature?

It has been often lamentably forgotten that man, however complex and diverse in his nature, with the most varied susceptibilities, each going forth in its own way and seeking nurture after its kind, is not and cannot be, in any of the essential relations of his being, contradictory. What heaps of errors on all questions have accumulated under the practical forgetfulness of this truth! How have we seen the functions of man's intellectual, moral, and religious nature isolated, and even opposed to each other, as if, instead of being a harmonious growth of powers, centering in a mysterious unity of consciousness, he were a mere ill-assorted congeries of accidents-a "mere bundle of dry sticks," as John Sterling somewhere says-with no interior principle of coherence! In our country we have perhaps especially suffered from this absurd mode of contemplating human nature under arbitrary divisions. Religion, Morals, Literature have, with us, been separated and marked off in the most rigorous and detailed

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »