Page images
PDF
EPUB

Types under the Christian Dispensation.

417

them of gift and taste to suit them for the different employments to be allotted to them; but still, we may discern in them all a family likeness, for they are all begotten of God. In this perfect system of types the whole has a representative in every part, and every part is a symbol of the whole. Each living stone in this temple is carved after the similitude of the whole temple. Each leaf, each branch of this tree of life is an image of the whole tree. The Church is his body, and every member in particular is after the pattern of the whole body.

When objects become far removed from us, we must be on our guard against taking clouds for realities, but we think we see some real truths-lying we grant-on the very horizon of our vision. All animal bodies, as we have seen, point to man as the top of the earthly hierarchy. Professor Owen tells us that "all the parts and organs of man had been sketched out in anticipation, so to speak, in the inferior animals ;" and that "the recognition of an ideal exemplar in the vertebrated animals proves that the knowledge of such a being as man must have existed before man appeared. For the Divine mind which planned the archetype, also foreknew all its modifications. The archetypal idea was manifested in the flesh long prior to the existence of those animal species that actually exemplify it. To what natural laws or secondary causes the orderly succession and progression of such organic phenomena may have been committed, we as yet are ignorant. But if, without derogation of the Divine power, we may conceive the existence of such ministers, and personify them by the term 'Nature,' we learn from the past history of our globe, that she has advanced with slow and stately steps, guided by the archetypal light amidst the wreck of worlds, from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea under its old ichthyic vestment, until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form."

But may not this highest form on earth point to a still higher form? Man's body on earth may be but a prefiguration of his body in heaven. "But some will say, how are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" The Apostle does not give a direct answer to this question, but he points to certain analogies which shew that though the body will preserve its identity, it will be changed to a nobler form, as the seed is changed when it becomes grain. "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body; for there is a natural body and a spiritual body, and we read of bodies terrestrial and of bodies celestial." In heaven then our bodies are to be after a higher model, "spiritual" and "celestial." It doth not, indeed, appear what we shall be, but when He appears we shall be like Him, and our bodies fashioned after his spiritual body, which we may

believe to be the most sublimated form of matter-and modern science, while it cannot efface the distinction between mind and matter, is every day enlarging our conceptions of the capacities of matter. Thus the simplest organism, points by its structure upwards to man, and man's earthly frame points to his heavenly frame, and his heavenly frame points to Christ's glorious body, and we see that all animated things on earth point onward to His glorified humanity as the Grand Archetype of all that

has life.

Professor Owen has another idea. He supposes that in other worlds, as there are the same laws of light and gravitation as on our earth, there may be also a similar organic structure. "And the inference as to the possibility of the vertebrate type being the basis of the organization of some of the inhabitants of other planets, will not appear so hazardous, when it is remembered that the orbits or protective cavities of the eyes of the vertebrata of this planet are constructed of modified vertebræ. Our thoughts are free to soar as far as any legitimate analogy may seem to guide them rightly in the boundless ocean of unknown truth. But if censure be merited for here indulging, even for a moment, in pure speculation, it may, perhaps, be disarmed by the reflection that the discovery of the vertebrate archetype could not fail to suggest to the anatomist many possible modifications of it beyond those that we know to have been realized in this little orb of ours."

If there be any truth in this idea, then the animated matter of other worlds may point to the same Archetype as the animated matter of this world. And on this supposition what a significancy would be given to the humanity of Christ. When the Word became flesh, the Divinity was in a sense humbled; and when the Incarnate Word ascended into heaven, flesh or matter was exalted and made to serve the highest purposes. We thus obtain a glimpse of a way in which matter throughout all its domains may be exalted by its association with the Son of God taking our likeness; and of a way, too, in which other worlds or all worlds, and other creatures, even principalities and powers in heavenly places, may be instructed by this "manifold wisdom," and by which God may "by him reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven."

But as we stand gazing on our ascending Lord, a cloud wraps him from our view, and we hear as it were a voice, saying, “Why stand ye here gazing?" and bidding us return to the observation of objects on the earth clearly within the range of our vision.

Recent Works of Fiction.

419

ART. V.-1. Mary Barton: a Tale of Manchester Life. 2 vols. London, 1849.

2. Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland of Sunnyside. Written by Herself. 3 vols. London, 1850.

3. Merkland. By the Author of "Mrs Margaret Maitland." 3 vols. London, 1851.

4. The Initials: a Story of Modern Life. 3 vols. London, 1850. 5. The Ogilvies: a Novel. 3 vols. London, 1849.

6. Olive: a Novel. By the Author of "The Ogilvies." 3 vols. London, 1850.

7. The Ladder of Gold: an English Story. By ROBERT BELL. 3 vols. London, 1851.

8. Caleb Field: a Tale of the Puritans. By the Author of "Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland." London, 1851.

9. Rose Douglas; or, Sketches of a Country Parish: being the Autobiography of a Scotch Minister's Daughter. By G. R. W. 2 vols. London, 1851.

SENTIMENTAL is a word continually on the lips of those-and they are a not very small class in the reading world-who object to works of Fiction altogether, and consider time given to their perusal absolutely wasted. But the word is sufficiently vague and indefinite in popular use. Granted, that there is a something faulty, which we seek to denote by the term, it may be worth while to endeavour to define the accusation, before considering whether the works in question are bound to plead guilty to it, or not. Sentimentality is not simply an excess of passionate feeling, for its chief characteristic is feebleness rather than strength of any kind. It is not hypocrisy; nobody would dream of confounding the two, a vice and a foible. Nor is it that more mitigated form of deceit which we call affectation, for the habit of mind intended is not of necessity one consciously assumed; more generally it exists as a sort of reality, however weak and colourless, in the character: a really sentimental person and one that only wishes to be thought so, are not the same. On the whole, difficult as it is to seize the precise meaning of winged words," it would perhaps be tolerably near the mark to say, that sentimentality is not merely an exaggeration of feeling, unregulated by reason, and ludicrously incommensurate with the triviality of its object; but, further and this is an essential part of it-that it is an indulgence of feeling for feeling's sake; that it lives in the atmosphere of fancy, and collapses instantaneously, if brought into contact with the actual; in a word,

[ocr errors]

VOL. XV. NO. XXX.

2 E

that it is a caricature of really strong deep feeling. For example, the jealousy of Othello, founded though it be on trifles, is not sentimental; for the emotion penetrates his whole nature, it absorbs him-it necessitates action. On the other hand, for an instance of what is really sentimental, no one can be at a loss who has ever read a page of Sterne.

Now, it is scarcely fair, we think, nor reasonable, to connect this fault with novels in general. It is true that there have been many, and still are some, sentimental novels in the literature of Great Britain. Is this cause for tabooing those that are not? It will not be denied by any one conversant with the subject, that there has been a great improvement of late in this respect. Novels, as is natural, have kept pace with the poetry of the day. Sometimes, however, the objection takes a wider aim. Everything, it has been urged-among others by an able living writer*everything that excites the feelings, without affording them the natural relief of action, tends to chill and harden them into callousness. This objection, in consistency, would exclude all fiction-poetry as well as novels; it would banish all appeals to highly wrought feeling, except such as address themselves to some result in hand; it would involve some such proscription of all not-scientific literature as Plato is accused of having contemplated. But the principle may be accepted in its full force, without disparagement to poetry in any shape, even in that of three volume novels. For it is in the power of every reader to apply the remedy, or rather the preventives for himself. The book has done its part if it has suggested the train of thought and emotion it remains only to carry this impulse into the living sphere of action; opportunities cannot fail to present themselves for giving it free play. The circumstances in the fiction may have been ever so dissimilar to those that shall occur; but the impulse has been given; and the real identity, which lies at the bottom of human life, and human nature, will reconcile the disparity. It is only an undue quantity of novel reading that will cry "Wolf" so often as to blunt the natural tendency to energize. When it has been conceded that works of fiction are too apt by their fascination to encroach on graver hours, and to leave a distaste for graver studies, we have allowed all that can justly be alleged against clever truthful novels, which help to unriddle the mystery of life.

:

The novel may be regarded as a species of poem, at least in one aspect. But perhaps it would be more accurate to regard it as what Coleridge would call the synthesis of history and poetry; if we comprehend under the former head not "history proper" only, but the history of individuals, commonly called

*Rev. J. H. Newman.

*

Undue Depreciation of Novels.

421

biography. The novel is an idealized form of history. And, if the eye be indeed that of a philosopher, and the hand gifted with the painter's skill, it is scarcely a paradox to say that the novelist is not without his advantages in the great art of teaching by examples. If truth is at times more strange than fiction, fiction is at times more true than truth. As history, real living history, gives a more faithful representation than the most elaborately minute annals; as the daguerreotype is less true than a portrait by Richmond; as a landscape by Claude or in Tennyson is instinctively felt to be true, though it may be not literally accurate; as correct perspective always implies a violation of details; or, to pass from imitation to realities-as the expression of the human face far rather than its component features makes it identity; as the spirit of a law is above its letter in importance; so a really first-rate novel is no unworthy rival of the dignity of history. We do not mean merely that historic novels like Ivanhoe or Quentin Durward, (Scott by the way is proverbially inexact in antiquarian details,) or like a very recent History of England-Mr. Macaulay must pardon our classification-are ancillary in no slight degree to the less interesting fac-similes of times gone by, more easily apprehended, less easily forgotten; nay, that they are more true in proportion, grouping, tone; but, beyond and besides all this, that, in the peculiar province of the novel, the study of character, the creations of a truthful imagination will convey a longer, fuller, more complete truth, than any fragmentary specimens of humanity can, however carefully extracted from the world of fact.

Very rare, however, it must be confessed, are those who may safely venture thus to idealize: novelists of sufficient calibre, we might almost be told, are themselves ideal. Certainly it would not be easy to cite a large number. Consider only how many fitnesses ought to meet in the novelist. History is allowed to be one of the most comprehensive and many-sided studies. Novelwriting is even more emphatically so. Poetry and ethics are its very life blood; (physics, metaphysics, politics, and polemics, we beg to demur against;) manners, scenery, costume, physiognomy, are some of its materials; the beautiful in every art, in every aspect of nature, it must be capable of recognising; like the greatest poet of Ancient Greece, it is half epic, half dramatic;

*“I mean to say, that the face of any one, to whom we are strongly and tenderly attached that face which is enshrined in our heart of hearts, and which comes to us in dreams, long after it has mouldered in the grave-that face is not the exact mechanical countenance of the person beloved, nor the countenance that we ever actually beheld, but its abstract, its idealization, or rather its realization; the spirit of the countenance, its essence and its life. And the finer the character, and the more varied the intellectual powers, the more must this true ideo differ from the most faithful likeness that a painter or a sculptor can produce."-Southey.

« PreviousContinue »