The New Academy. the Princess and Her Dowry. Comparative Morality. the Purse and the Cashbox Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 Excerpt: ... be weighed. Accordingly he pampers his victim into morbid and unnatural fatness; and when it is in such a state that it would be sent away in disgust from any table, he offers it to the judges. The object of the poetical candidate, in like manner, is to produce, not a good poem, but a poem of that exact degree of frigidity or bombast which may appear to his censors to be correct or sublime."m This is amusing enough, but after all, it is satire and not exact truth. Macaulay himself in mature life, was no doubt, the first to condemn it. It is valuable however, as an outspoken exposition of the individualism of the liberal party at the time. Half a century has brought about a great change: we have learnt that in most departments of life cooperation has a high value; and that in many cases it is only by the aid of government that cooperation can be secured. Few critics would now venture to describe our annual exhibitions of paintings, as acres of spoiled canvass: most thinkers agree that it is the pressing duty of government to promote the fine arts by direct instruction, and by putting before the eyes of all, examples of great masters. As regards the French Academy, it is strange that a youth of high culture, should have ventured to speak of it disrespectfully. That Academy had existed for two centuries: it had numbered among its members some of the greatest writers of Europe: if it had fallen into abeyance during the Revolution, its restoration a few years later, was a striking proof that the want of it was felt, and that it had a real and permanent value; and the establishment of other academies by its side showed that the French philosophers and men of science recognized the services which academies could render. In England indeed, we have no such aca...