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Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I.

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Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I.


        
Release date: August 17, 2010 [eBook #33452]
                Most recently updated: June 16, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, NO. V, OCTOBER, 1850, VOLUME I. ***





                                 Harper’s

                           New Monthly Magazine

                      No. V.—October, 1850.—Vol. I.





CONTENTS


Wordsworth—His Character And Genius.
Sidney Smith. By George Gilfillan.
Thomas Carlyle. By George Gilfillan.
The Gentleman Beggar. An Attorney’s Story. (From Dickens’s Household
Words.)
Singular Proceedings Of The Sand Wasp. (From Howitt’s Country Year-Book.)
What Horses Think Of Men. From The Raven In The Happy Family. (From
Dickens’s Household Words.)
The Quakers During The American War. (From Howitt’s Country Year-Book.)
A Shilling’s Worth Of Science. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)
A Tuscan Vintage.
How To Make Home Unhealthy. By Harriet Martineau.
Sorrows And Joys. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)
Maurice Tiernay, The Soldier Of Fortune. (From the Dublin University
Magazine)
The Enchanted Rock. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)
The Force Of Fear. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)
Lady Alice Daventry; Or, The Night Of Crime. (From the Dublin University
Magazine.)
Mirabeau. An Anecdote Of His Private Life. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh
Journal.)
Terrestrial Magnetism. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)
Early History Of The Use Of Coal. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)
Jenny Lind. By Fredrika Bremer.
My Novel; Or, Varieties In English Life. By Pisistratus Caxton. (From
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.)
The Two Guides Of The Child. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)
The Laboratory In The Chest. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)
The Steel Pen. An Illustration Of Cheapness. (From Dickens’s Household
Words.)
Snakes And Serpent Charmers. (From Bentley’s Miscellany.)
The Magic Maze. (From Colburn’s Monthly Magazine.)
The Sun. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)
The Household Jewels. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)
The Tea-Plant. (From Hogg’s Instructor.)
Anecdotes Of Dr. Chalmers.
The Pleasures Of Illness. (From the People’s Journal.)
Obstructions To The Use Of The Telescope.
Monthly Record Of Current Events.
Literary Notices.
Autumn Fashions.
Footnotes






WORDSWORTH—HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS.


                       [Illustration: Wordsworth.]

In a late article on Southey, we alluded to the solitary position of
Wordsworth in that lake country where he once shone the brightest star in
a large galaxy. Since then, the star of Jove, so beautiful and large, has
gone out in darkness—the greatest laureate of England has expired—the
intensest, most unique, and most pure-minded of our poets, with the single
exceptions of Milton and Cowper, is departed. And it were lesemajesty
against his mighty shade not to pay it our tribute while yet his memory,
and the grass of his grave, are green.

It is singular, that only a few months have elapsed since the great
antagonist of his literary fame—Lord Jeffrey (who, we understand,
persisted to the last in his ungenerous and unjust estimate), left the
bench of human, to appear at the bar of Divine justice. Seldom has the
death of a celebrated man produced a more powerful impression in his own
city and circle, and a less powerful impression on the wide horizon of the
world. In truth, he had outlived himself. It had been very different had
he passed away thirty years ago, when the “Edinburgh Review” was in the
plenitude of its influence. As it was, he disappeared like a star at
midnight, whose descent is almost unnoticed while the whole heavens are
white with glory, not like a sun going down, that night may come over the
earth. One of the acutest, most accomplished, most warm-hearted, and
generous of men, Jeffrey wanted that stamp of universality, that highest
order of genius, that depth of insight, and that simple directness of
purpose, not to speak of that moral and religious consecration, which
“give the world assurance of a man.” He was the idol of Edinburgh, and the
pride of Scotland, because he condensed in himself those qualities which
the modern Athens has long been accustomed to covet and admire—taste and
talent rather than genius—subtlety of appreciation rather than power of
origination—the logical understanding rather than the inventive
insight—and because his name _had_ sounded out to the ends of the earth.
But nature and man, not Edinburgh Castle, or the Grampian Hills merely,
might be summoned to mourn in Wordsworth’s departure the loss of one of
their truest high-priests, who had gazed into some of the deepest secrets
of the one, and echoed some of the loftiest aspirations of the other.

To soften such grief, however, there comes in the reflection, that the
task of this great poet had been nobly discharged. He _had_ given the
world assurance, full, and heaped, and running over, of what he meant, and
of what was meant by him. While the premature departure of a Schiller, a
Byron, or a Keats, gives us emotions similar to those wherewith we would
behold the crescent moon, snatched away as by some “insatiate archer,” up
into the Infinite, ere it grew into its full glory—Wordsworth, like Scott,
Goethe, and Southey, was permitted to fill his full and broad sphere.

What Wordsworth’s mission was, may be, perhaps, understood through some
previous remarks upon his great mistress—Nature, as a poetical personage.

There are three methods of contemplating nature. These are the material,
the shadowy, and the mediatorial. The materialist looks upon it as the
great and only reality. It is a vast solid fact, for ever burning and
rolling around, below and above him. The idealist, on the contrary,
regards it as a shadow—a mode of mind—the infinite projection of his own
thought. The man who stands _between_ the two extremes, looks on nature as
a great, but not ultimate or everlasting scheme of mediation, or
compromise, between pure and absolute spirit and humanity—adumbrating God
to man, and bringing man near to God. To the materialist, there is an
altar, star-lighted heaven-high, but no God. To the idealist, there is a
God, but no altar. He who holds the theory of mediation, has the Great
Spirit as his God, and the universe as the altar on which he presents the
gift of his poetical (we do not speak at present so much of his
theological) adoration.

It must be obvious, at once, which of those three views of nature is the
most poetical. It is surely that which keeps the two principles of spirit
and matter distinct and unconfounded—preserves in their proper
relations—the soul and the body of things—God within, and without the
garment by which, in Goethe’s grand thought, “we see him by.” While one
party deify, and another destroy matter, the third impregnate, without
identifying it with the Divine presence.

The notions suggested by this view, which is that of Scripture, are
exceedingly comprehensive and magnificent. Nature becomes to the poet’s
eye “_a great sheet let down from God out of heaven_,” and in which there
is no object “common or unclean.” The purpose and the Being above cast
such a grandeur over the pettiest or barest objects, as did the fiery
pillar upon the sand, or the shrubs of the howling desert of its march.
Every thing becomes valuable when looked upon as a communication from God,
imperfect only from the nature of the material used. What otherwise might
have been concluded discords, now appear only stammerings or whisperings
in the Divine voice; thorns and thistles spring above the primeval curse,
the “meanest flower that blows” gives


    “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”


The creation is neither unduly exalted nor contemptuously trampled
under-foot, but maintains its dignified position, as an embassador from
the Divine King. The glory of something far beyond association—that of a
divine and perpetual presence—is shed over the landscape, and its
golden-drops are spilled upon the stars. Objects the most diverse—the
cradle of the child, the wet hole of the centipede, the bed of the corpse,
and the lair of the earthquake, the nest of the lark, and the crag on
which sits, half asleep, the dark vulture, digesting blood—are all clothed
in a light the same in kind, though varying in degree—


    “A light which never was on sea or shore.”


In the poetry of the Hebrews, accordingly, the locusts are God’s “great
army;”—the winds are his messengers, the thunder his voice, the lightning
a “fiery stream going before him,” the moon his witness in the heavens,
the sun a strong man rejoicing to run his race—all creation is roused and
startled into life through him—its every beautiful, or dire, or strange
shape in the earth or the sky, is God’s movable tent; the place where, for
a season, his honor, his beauty, his strength, and his justice dwell—the
tenant not degraded, and inconceivable dignity being added to the abode.

His mere “tent,” however—for while the great and the infinite are thus
connected with the little and the finite, the subordination of the latter
to the former is always maintained. The most magnificent objects in nature
are but the mirrors to God’s face—the scaffolding to his future purposes;
and, like mirrors, are to wax dim; and, like scaffolding, to be removed.
The great sheet is to be _received up_ again into heaven. The heavens and
the earth are to pass away, and to be succeeded, if not by a purely mental
economy, yet by one of a more spiritual materialism, compared to which the
former shall no more be remembered, neither come into mind. Those
frightful and fantastic forms of animated life, through which God’s glory
seems to shine with a struggle, and but faintly, shall disappear—nay, the
worlds which bore, and sheltered them in their rugged dens and eaves,
shall flee from the face of the regenerator. “A milder day” is to dawn on
the universe—the refinement of matter is to keep pace with the elevation
of mind. Evil and sin are to be eternally banished to some Siberia of
space. The word of the poet is to be fulfilled,


    “And one eternal spring encircles all!”


The mediatorial purpose of creation, fully subserved, is to be abandoned,
that we may see “eye to eye,” and that God may be “all in all.”

That such views of matter—its present ministry—the source of its beauty
and glory—and its future destiny, transferred from the pages of both
Testaments to those of our great moral and religious poets, have deepened
some of their profoundest, and swelled some of their highest strains, is
unquestionable. Such prospects as were in Milton’s eye, when he sung,


            “Thy Saviour and thy Lord
    Last in the clouds from heaven to be revealed,
    In glory of the Father to dissolve
    Satan with his perverted world; then raise
    From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined,
    New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date,”


may be found in Thomson, in his closing Hymn to the Seasons, in
Coleridge’s “Religious Musings,” (in Shelley’s “Prometheus” even, but
perverted and disguised), in Bailey’s “Festus” (cumbered and entangled
with his religious theory); and more rootedly, although less
theologically, than in all the rest, in the poetry of Wordsworth.

The secret of Wordsworth’s profound and peculiar love for Nature, even in
her meaner and minuter forms, may lie, perhaps, here. De Quincey seeks for
it in a peculiar conformation of the eye, as if he actually did see more
in the object than other men—in the rose a richer red, in the sky a deeper
azure, in the broom a yellower gold, in the sun a more dazzling ray, in
the sea a finer foam, and in the star a more sparkling splendor, than even
Nature’s own “sweet and cunning” hand put on; but the critic has not
sought to explain the rationale of this peculiarity. Mere acuteness of
vision it can not have been, else the eagle might have _felt_, though not
written, “The Excursion”—else the fact is not accountable why many of weak
sight, such as Burke, have been rapturous admirers of Nature; and so, till
we learn that Mr. De Quincey has looked through Wordsworth’s eyes, we must
call this a mere fancy. Hazlitt again, and others since, have accounted
for the phenomenon by association—but this fails, we suspect, fully to
explain the deep, native, and brooding passion in question—a passion
which, instead of being swelled by the associations of after life, rose to
lull stature in youth, as “Tintern Abbey” testifies. One word of his own,
perhaps, better solves the mystery—it is the one word “consecration”—


    “The _consecration_ and the poet’s dream.”


His eye had been anointed with eye-salve, and he saw, as his
poet-predecessors had done, the temple in which he was standing, heard in
every breeze and ocean billow the sound of a temple-service, and felt that
the grandeur of the ritual, and of its recipient, threw the shadow of
their greatness upon every stone in the corners of the edifice, and upon
every eft crawling along its floors. Reversing the miracle, he saw “trees
as men walking”—heard the speechless sins, and, in the beautiful thought
of “the Roman,” caught on his ear the fragments of a “divine soliloquy,”
filling up the pauses in a universal anthem. Hence the tumultuous, yet
awful joy of his youthful feelings to Nature. Hence his estimation of its
lowliest features; for does not every bush and tree appear to him a
“pillar in the temple of his God?” The leaping fish pleases him, because
its “cheer” in the lonely tarn is of praise. The dropping of the earth on
the coffin lid, is a slow and solemn psalm, mingling in austere sympathy
with the raven’s croak, and in his “Power of sound” he proceeds
elaborately to condense all those varied voices, high or low, soft or
harsh, united or discordant, into one crushing chorus, like the choruses
of Haydn, or of heaven. Nature undergoes no outward change to his _eye_,
but undergoes a far deeper transfiguration to his spirit—as she stands up
in the white robes, and with the sounding psalmodies of her mediatorial
office, between him and the Infinite I AM.

Never must this feeling be confounded with Pantheism. All does not seem to
him to be God, nor even (strictly speaking) divine; but all seems to be
immediately _from_ God—rushing out from him in being, to rush instantly
back to him in service and praise. Again the natal dew of the first
morning is seen lying on bud and blade, and the low voice of the first
evening’s song becomes audible again. Although Coleridge in his youth was
a Spinozist, Wordsworth seems at once, and forever, to have recoiled from
even his friend’s eloquent version of that creedless creed, that baseless
foundation, that system, through the _phenomenon_ of which look not the
bright eyes of Supreme Intelligence, but the blind face of irresponsible
and infinite necessity. Shelley himself—with all the power his critics
attribute to him of painting night, animating Atheism, and giving strange
loveliness to annihilation—has failed in redeeming Spinoza’s theory from
the reproach of being as hateful as it is false; and there is no axiom we
hold more strongly than this—that the theory which can not be rendered
poetical, can not be true. “Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty,” said
poor Keats, to whom time, however, was not granted to come down from the
first glowing generalization of his heart, to the particular creeds which
his ripened intellect would have, according to _it_, rejected or received.

Nor, although Wordsworth is a devoted lover of Nature, down to what many
consider the very blots—or, at least, dashes and commas in her page, is he
blind to the fact of her transient character. The power he worships has
his “dwelling in the light of setting suns,” but that dwelling is not his
everlasting abode. For earth, and the universe, a “_milder day_” (words
certifying their truth by their simple beauty) is in store when “the
monuments” of human weakness, folly, and evil, shall “all be over-grown.”
He sees afar off the great spectacle of Nature retiring before God; the
embassador giving place to the King; the bright toys of this nursery—sun,
moon, earth, and stars—put away, like childish things; the symbols of the
Infinite lost in the Infinite itself; and though he could, on the Saturday
evening, bow before the midnight mountains, and midnight heavens, he could
also, on the Sabbath morn, in Rydal church, bow as profoundly before the
apostolic word, “All these things shall be dissolved.”

With Wordsworth, as with all great poets, his poetical creed passes into
his religious. It is the same tune with variations. But we confess that,
in his case, we do not think the variations equal. The mediation of Nature
he understands, and has beautifully represented in his poetry; but that
higher mediation of the Divine Man between man and the Father, does not
lie fully or conspicuously on his page. A believer in the mystery of
godliness he unquestionably was; but he seldom preached it. Christopher
North, many years ago, in “Blackwood,” doubted if there were so much as a
Bible in poor Margaret’s cottage (Excursion). We doubt so, too, and have
not found much of the “true cross” among all his trees. The theologians
divide prayer into four parts—adoration, thanksgiving, confession, and
petition. Wordsworth stops at the second. No where do we find more solemn,
sustained, habitual, and worthy adoration, than in his writings. The tone,
too, of all his poems, is a calm thanksgiving, like that of a long blue,
cloudless sky, coloring, at evening, into the hues of more fiery praise.
But he does not weep like a penitent, nor supplicate like a child. Such
feelings seem suppressed and folded up as far-off storms, and the traces
of past tempests are succinctly inclosed in the algebra of the silent
evening air. And hence, like Milton’s, his poetry has rather tended to
foster the glow of devotion in the loftier spirits of the race—previously
taught to adore—than like that of Cowper and Montgomery, to send prodigals
back to their forsaken homes; Davids, to cry, “Against thee only have I
sinned;” and Peters, to shriek in agony, “Lord, save us, we perish.”

To pass from the essential poetic element in a writer of genius, to his
artistic skill, is a felt, yet necessary descent—like the painter
compelled, after sketching the man’s countenance, to draw his dress. And
yet, as of some men and women, the very dress, by its simplicity,
elegance, and unity, seems fitted rather to garb the soul than the
body—seems the soul made visible—so is it with the style and manner of
many great poets. Their speech and music without are as inevitable as
their genius, or as the song forever sounding within their souls. And why?
The whole ever tends to beget a whole—the large substance to cast its
deep, yet delicate shadow—the divine to be like itself in the human, on
which its seal is set. So it is with Wordsworth. That profound
simplicity—that clear obscurity—that night-like noon—that noon-like
night—that one atmosphere of overhanging Deity, seen weighing upon ocean
and pool, mountain and mole-hill, forest and flower—that pellucid
depth—that entireness of purpose and fullness of power, connected with
fragmentary, willful, or even weak execution—that humble, yet proud,
precipitation of himself, Antæus-like, upon the bosom of simple scenes and
simple sentiments, to regain primeval vigor—that obscure, yet lofty
isolation, like a tarn, little in size, but elevated in site, with few
visitors, but with many stars—that Tory-Radicalism, Popish-Protestantism,
philosophical Christianity, which have rendered him a glorious riddle, and
made Shelley, in despair of finding it out, exclaim,


    “No Deist, and no Christian he,
    No Whig, no Tory.
    He got so subtle, that to be
    _Nothing_ was all his glory,”—


all such apparent contradictions, but real unities, in his poetical and
moral creed and character, are fully expressed in his lowly but aspiring
language, and the simple, elaborate architecture of his verse—every stone
of which is lifted up by the strain of strong logic, and yet laid to
music; and, above all, in the choice of his subjects, which range, with a
free and easy motion, up from a garden spade and a village drum, to the
“celestial visages” which darkened at the tidings of man’s fall, and to
the “organ of eternity,” which sung pæans over his recovery.

We sum up what we have further to say of Wordsworth, under the items of
his works, his life and character, his death; and shall close by
inquiring, Who is worthy to be his successor?

His works, covering a large space, and abounding in every variety of
excellence and style, assume, after all, a fragmentary aspect. They are
true, simple, scattered, and strong, as blocks torn from the crags of
Helvellyn, and lying there “low, but mighty still.” Few even of his
ballads are wholes. They leave too much untold. They are far too
suggestive to satisfy. From each poem, however rounded, there streams off
a long train of thought: like the tail of a comet, which, while testifying
its power, mars its aspect of oneness. The “Excursion,” avowedly a
fragment, seems the splinter of a larger splinter; like a piece of Pallas,
itself a piece of some split planet. Of all his poems, perhaps, his
sonnets, his “Laodamia,” his “Intimations of Immortality,” and his verses
on the “Eclipse in Italy,” are the most complete in execution, as
certainly they are the most classical in design. Dramatic power he has
none, nor does he regret the want. “I hate,” he was wont to say to
Hazlitt, “those interlocutions between Caius and Lucius.” He sees, as
“from a tower, the end of all.” The waving lights and shadows, the varied
loopholes of view, the shiftings and fluctuations of feeling, the growing,
broadening interest of the drama, have no charm for him. His mind, from
its gigantic size, contracts a gigantic stiffness. It “moveth altogether,
if it move at all.” Hence, some of his smaller poems remind you of the
dancing of an elephant, or of the “hills leaping like lambs.” Many of the
little poems which he wrote upon a system, are exceedingly tame and
feeble. Yet often, even in his narrow bleak vales, we find one “meek
streamlet—only one”—beautifying the desolation; and feel how painful it is
for him to become poor, and that, when he sinks, it is with “compulsion
and laborious flight.” But, having subtracted such faults, how much
remains—of truth—of tenderness—of sober, eve-like grandeur—of purged
beauties, white and clean as the lilies of Eden—of calm, deep reflection,
contained in lines and sentences which have become proverbs—of mild
enthusiasm—of minute knowledge of nature—of strong, yet unostentatious
sympathy with man—and of devout and breathless communion with the Great
Author of all! Apart altogether from their intellectual pretensions
Wordsworth’s poems possess a moral clearness, beauty, transparency, and
harmony, which connect them immediately with those of Milton: and beside
the more popular poetry of the past age—such as Byron’s, and Moore’s—they
remind us of that unplanted garden, where the shadow of God united all
trees of fruitfulness, and all flowers of beauty, into one; where the
“large river,” which watered the whole, “ran south,” toward the sun of
heaven—when compared with the gardens of the Hesperides, where a dragon
was the presiding deity, or with those of Vauxhall or White Conduit-house,
where Comus and his rabble rout celebrate their undisguised orgies of
miscalled and miserable pleasure.

                             [Illustration.]

                    Wordsworth’s Home at Rydal Mount.


To write a great poem demands years—to write a great undying example,
demands a lifetime. Such a life, too, becomes a poem—higher far than pen
can inscribe, or metre make musical. Such a life it was granted to
Wordsworth to live in severe harmony with his verse—as it lowly, and as it
aspiring, to live, too, amid opposition, obloquy, and abuse—to live, too,
amid the glare of that watchful observation, which has become to public
men far more keen and far more capacious in its powers and opportunities,
than in Milton’s days. It was not, unquestionably, a perfect life, even as
a man’s, far less as a poet’s. He did feel and resent, more than beseemed
a great man, the pursuit and persecution of the hounds, whether “gray” and
swift-footed, or whether curs of low degree, who dogged his steps. His
voice from his woods sounded at times rather like the moan of wounded
weakness, than the bellow of masculine wrath. He should, simply, in reply
to his opponents, have written on at his poems, and let his prefaces
alone. “If they receive your first book ill,” wrote Thomas Carlyle to a
new author, “write the second better—so much better as to shame them.”
When will authors learn that to answer an unjust attack, is, merely to
give it a keener edge, and that all injustice carries the seed of oblivion
and exposure in itself? To use the language of the masculine spirit just
quoted, “it is really a truth, one never knows whether praise be really
good for one—or whether it be not, in very fact, the worst poison that
could be administered. Blame, or even vituperation, I have always found a
safer article. In the long run, a man _has_, and _is_, just what he _is_
and _has_—the world’s notion of him has not altered him at all, except,
indeed, if it have poisoned him with self-conceit, and made a _caput
mortuum_ of him.”

The sensitiveness of authors—were it not such a _sore_ subject—might admit
of some curious reflections. One would sometimes fancy that Apollo, in an
angry hour, had done to his sons, what fable records him to have done to
Marsyas—_flayed_ them alive. Nothing has brought more contempt upon
authors than this—implying, as it does, a lack of common courage and
manhood. The true son of genius ought to rush before the public as the
warrior into battle, resolved to hack and hew his way to eminence and
power, not to whimper like a schoolboy at every scratch—to acknowledge
only home thrusts—large, life-letting-out blows—determined either to
conquer or to die, and, feeling that battles should be lost in the same
spirit in which they are won. If Wordsworth did not fully answer this
ideal, others have sunk far more disgracefully and habitually below it.

In private, Wordsworth, we understand, was pure, mild, simple, and
majestic—perhaps somewhat austere in his judgments of the erring, and,
perhaps, somewhat narrow in his own economics. In accordance, we suppose,
with that part of his poetic system, which magnified mole-heaps to
mountains, _pennies_ assumed the importance of _pounds_. It is ludicrous,
yet characteristic, to think of the great author of the “Recluse,”
squabbling with a porter about the price of a parcel, or bidding down an
old book at a stall. He was one of the few poets who were ever guilty of
the crime of worldly prudence—that ever could have fulfilled the old
parodox, “A poet has built a house.” In his young days, according to
Hazlitt, he said little in society—sat generally lost in thought—threw out
a bold or an indifferent remark occasionally—and relapsed into reverie
again. In latter years, he became more talkative and oracular. His health
and habits were always regular, his temperament happy, and his heart sound
and pure.

We have said that his life, _as a poet_, was far from perfect. Our meaning
is, that he did not sufficiently, owing to temperament, or position, or
habits, sympathize with the on-goings of society, the fullness of modern
life, and the varied passions, unbeliefs, sins, and miseries of modern
human nature. His soul dwelt apart. He came, like the Baptist, “neither
eating nor drinking,” and men said, “he hath a demon.” He saw at morning,
from London bridge, “all its mighty heart” lying still; but he did not at
noon plunge artistically into the thick of its throbbing life; far less
sound the depths of its wild midnight heavings of revel and wretchedness,
of hopes and fears, of stifled fury and eloquent despair. Nor, although he
sung the “mighty stream of tendency” of this wondrous age, did he ever
launch his poetic craft upon it, nor seem to see the _witherward_ of its
swift and awful stress. He has, on the whole, stood aside from his
time—not on a peak of the past—not on an anticipated Alp of the future,
but on his own Cumberland highlands—hearing the tumult and remaining
still, lifting up his life as a far-seen beacon-fire, studying the manners
of the humble dwellers in the vales below—“piping a simple song to
thinking hearts,” and striving to waft to brother spirits, the fine
infection of his own enthusiasm, faith, hope, and devotion. Perhaps, had
he been less strict and consistent in creed and in character, he might
have attained greater breadth, blood-warmth, and wide-spread power, have
presented on his page a fuller reflection of our present state, and drawn
from his poetry a yet stronger moral, and become the Shakspeare, instead
of the Milton, of the age. For himself, he did undoubtedly choose the
“better part;” nor do we mean to insinuate that any man ought to
contaminate himself for the sake of his art, but that the poet of a period
will necessarily come so near to its peculiar sins, sufferings, follies,
and mistakes, as to understand them, and even to feel the force of their
temptations, and though he should never yield to, yet must have a
“fellow-feeling” of its prevailing infirmities.

The death of this eminent man took few by surprise. Many anxious eyes have
for a while been turned toward Rydal mount, where this hermit stream was
nearly sinking into the ocean of the Infinite. And now, to use his own
grand word, used at the death of Scott, a “trouble” hangs upon Helvellyn’s
brow, and over the waters of Windermere. The last of the Lakers has
departed. That glorious country has become a tomb for its more glorious
children. No more is Southey’s tall form seen at his library window,
confronting Skiddaw—with a port as stately as its own. No more does
Coleridge’s dim eye look down into the dim tarn, heavy laden, too, under
the advancing thunder-storm. And no more is Wordsworth’s pale and lofty
front shaded into divine twilight, as he plunges at noon-day amidst the
quiet woods. A stiller, sterner power than poetry has folded into its
strict, yet tender and yearning embrace, those


    “Serene creators of immortal things.”


Alas! for the pride and the glory even of the purest products of this
strange world! Sin and science, pleasure and poetry, the lowest vices, and
the highest aspirations, are equally unable to rescue their votaries from
the swift ruin which is in chase of us all.


    “Golden lads and girls all must
    Like chimney-sweepers come to dust.”


But Wordsworth has left for himself an epitaph almost superfluously
rich—in the memory of his private virtues—of the impulse he gave to our
declining poetry—of the sympathies he discovered in all his strains with
the poor, the neglected, and the despised—of the version he furnished of
Nature, true and beautiful as if it were Nature _describing herself_—of
his lofty and enacted ideal of his art and the artist—of the “thoughts,
too deep for tears,” he has given to meditative and lonely hearts—and,
above all, of the support he has lent to the cause of the “primal duties”
and eldest instincts of man—to his hope of immortality, and his fear of
God. And now we bid him farewell, in his own words—


    “Blessings be with him, and eternal praise,
    The _poet_, who on earth has made us heirs
    Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays.”


Although, as already remarked, not the poet of the age—it has, in our
view, been, on the whole, fortunate for poetry and society, that for seven
years William Wordsworth has been poet-laureate. We live in a transition
state in respect to both. The march and the music are both changing—nor
are they yet fully attuned to each other—and, meanwhile, it was desirable
that a poet should preside, whose strains formed a fine “musical
confusion,” like that of old in the “wood of Crete”—of the old and the
new—of the Conservative and the Democratic—of the golden age, supposed by
many to have existed in the past, and of the millennium, expected by more
in the future—a compromise of the two poetical styles besides—the one,
which clung to the hoary tradition of the elders, and the other, which
accepted innovation because it was new, and boldness because it was
daring, and mysticism because it was dark—not truth, _though_ new; beauty,
_though_ bold; and insight, _though_ shadowy and shy. Nay, we heartily
wish, had it been for nothing else than this, that his reign had lasted
for many years longer, till, perchance, the discordant elements in our
creeds and literature, had been somewhat harmonized. As it is, there must
now be great difficulty in choosing his successor to the laureateship; nor
is there, we think, a single name in our poetry whose elevation to the
office would give universal, or even general, satisfaction.

Milman is a fine poet, but not a great one. Croly is, or ought to have
been, a great poet; but is not sufficiently known, nor _en rapport_ with
the spirit of the time. Bowles is dead—Moore dying. Lockhart and Macaulay
have written clever ballads; but no shapely, continuous, and masterly
poem. John Wilson, _alias_ Christopher North, has more poetry in his eye,
brow, head, hair, figure, voice, talk, and the prose of his “Noetes,” than
any man living; but his verse, on the whole, is mawkish—and his being a
Scotchman will be a stumbling-block to many, though not to us; for, had
Campbell been alive, we should have said at once, let him be laureate—if
manly grace, classic power, and genuine popularity, form qualifications
for the office. Tennyson, considering all he has done, has received his
full meed already. Let him and Leigh Hunt repose under the shadow of their
pensions. Our gifted friends, Bailey, of “Festus,” and Yendys, of the
“Roman,” are yet in blossom—though it is a glorious blossom. Henry Taylor
is rather in the sere and yellow leaf—nor was his leaf ever, in our
judgment, very fresh or ample: a masterly builder he is, certainly, but
the materials he brings are not highly poetical. When Dickens is promoted
to Scott’s wizard throne, let Browning succeed Wordsworth on the forked
Helvellyn! Landor is a vast monumental name; but, while he has overawed
the higher intellects of the time, he has never touched the general heart,
nor _told_ the world much, except his great opinion of himself, the low
opinion he has of almost every body else, and the very learned reasons and
sufficient grounds he has for supporting those twin opinions. Never was
such power so wasted and thrown away. The proposition of a lady laureate
is simply absurd, without being witty. Why not as soon have proposed the
Infant Sappho? In short, if we ask again, _Where_ is the poet worthy to
wear the crown which has dropped from the solemn brow of “old Pan,” “sole
king of rocky Cumberland?”—Echo, from Glaramara, or the Langdale Pikes,
might well answer, “Where?”

We have, however, a notion of our own, which we mean, as a close to the
article, to indicate. The laureateship was too long a sop for parasites,
whose politics and poetry were equally tame. It seems now to have become
the late reward of veteran merit—the Popedom of poetry. Why not, rather,
hang it up as a crown, to be won by our rising bards—either as the reward
of some special poem on an appointed subject, or of general merit? Why not
delay for a season the bestowal of the laurel, and give thus a national
importance to its decision?





SIDNEY SMITH. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.


                             [Illustration.]

                              Sidney Smith.


It is melancholy to observe how speedily, successively, nay, almost
simultaneously, our literary luminaries are disappearing from the sky.
Every year another and another member of the bright clusters which arose
about the close of the last, or at the beginning of this century, is
fading from our view. Within nineteen years, what havoc, by the “insatiate
archer,” among the ruling spirits of the time! Since 1831, Robert Hall,
Andrew Thomson, Goethe, Cuvier, Mackintosh, Crabbe, Foster, Coleridge,
Edward Irving, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Southey, Thomas Campbell,
&c., have entered on the “silent land;” and latterly has dropped down one
of the wittiest and shrewdest of them all—the projector of the “Edinburgh
Review”—the author of “Peter Plymley’s Letters”—the preacher—the
politician—the brilliant converser—the “mad-wag”—Sidney Smith.

It was the praise of Dryden that he was the best reasoner in verse who
ever wrote; let it be the encomium of our departed Sidney that, he was one
of the best reasoners in wit of whom our country can boast. His
intellect—strong, sharp, clear, and decided—wrought and moved in a rich
medium of humor. Each thought, as it came forth from his brain, issued as
“in dance,” and amid a flood of inextinguishable laughter. The march of
his mind through his subject resembled the procession of Bacchus from the
conquest of India—joyous, splendid, straggling—to the sound of flutes and
hautboys—rather a victory than a march—rather a revel than a contest. His
logic seemed always hurrying into the arms of his wit. Some men argue in
mathematical formulæ; others, like Burke, in the figures and flights of
poetry; others in the fire and fury of passion; Sidney Smith in exuberant
and riotous fun. And yet the matter of his reasoning was solid, and its
inner spirit earnest and true. But though his steel was strong and sharp,
his hand steady, and his aim clear, the management of the motions of his
weapon was always fantastic. He piled, indeed, like a Titan, his Pelion on
Ossa, but at the oddest of angles; he lifted and carried his load bravely,
and like a man, but laughed as he did so; and so carried it that beholders
forgot the strength of the arm in the strangeness of the attitude. He thus
sometimes disarmed anger; for his adversaries could scarcely believe that
they had received a deadly wound while their foe was roaring in their
face. He thus did far greater execution; for the flourishes of his weapon
might distract his opponents, but never himself, from the direct and
terrible line of the blow. His laughter sometimes stunned, like the
cachination of the Cyclops, shaking the sides of his cave. In this
mood—and it was his common one—what scorn was he wont to pour upon the
opponents of Catholic emancipation—upon the enemies of all change in
legislation—upon any individual or party who sought to obstruct measures
which, in his judgment, were likely to benefit the country. Under such, he
could at any moment spring a mine of laughter; and what neither the fierce
invective of Brougham, nor the light and subtle raillery of Jeffrey could
do, his contemptuous explosion effected, and, himself crying with mirth,
saw them hoisted toward heaven in ten thousand comical splinters.
Comparing him with other humorists of a similar class, we might say, that
while Swift’s ridicule resembles something between a sneer and a spasm
(half a sneer of mirth, half a spasm of misery)—while Cobbett’s is a
grin—Fonblanque’s a light but deep and most significant smile—Jeffrey’s a
sneer, just perceptible on his fastidious lip—Wilson’s a strong, healthy,
hearty laugh—Carlyle’s a wild unearthly sound, like the neighing of a
homeless steed—Sidney Smith’s is a genuine guffaw, given forth with his
whole heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. Apart from his matchless
humor, strong, rough, instinctive, and knotty sense was the leading
feature of his mind. Every thing like mystification, sophistry, and
humbug, fled before the first glance of his piercing eye; every thing in
the shape of affectation excited in him a disgust “as implacable” as even
a Cowper could feel. If possible, with still deeper aversion did his manly
nature regard cant in its various forms and disguises; and his motto in
reference to it was, “spare no arrows.” But the mean, the low, the paltry,
the dishonorable, in nations or in individuals, moved all the fountains of
his bile, and awakened all the energy of his invective. Always lively,
generally witty, he is never eloquent, except when emptying out his vials
of indignation upon baseness in all its shapes. His is the ire of a
genuine “English gentleman, all of the olden time.” It was in this spirit
that he recently explained, in his own way, the old distinctions of Meum
and Tuum to Brother Jonathan, when the latter was lamentably inclined to
forget them. It was the same sting of generous indignation which, in the
midst of his character of Mackintosh, prompted the memorable picture of
that extraordinary being who, by his transcendent talents and his tortuous
movements—his head of gold, and his feet of miry clay—has become the
glory, the riddle, and the regret of his country, his age, and his
species.

As a writer, Smith is little more than a very clever, witty, and ingenious
pamphleteer. He has effected no permanent _chef d’oeuvre_; he has founded
no school; he has left little behind him that the “world will not
willingly let die;” he has never drawn a tear from a human eye, nor
excited a thrill of grandeur in a human bosom. His reviews are not
preserved by the salt of original genius, nor are they pregnant with
profound and comprehensive principle; they have no resemblance to the
sibylline leaves which Burke tore out from the vast volume of his mind,
and scattered with imperial indifference among the nations; they are not
the illuminated indices of universal history, like the papers of Macaulay;
they are not specimens of pure and perfect English, set with modest but
magnificent ornaments, like the criticism of Jeffrey or of Hall; nor are
they the excerpts, rugged and rent away by violence, from the dark and
iron tablet of an obscure and original mind, like the reviews of Foster;
but they are exquisite _jeux d’esprit_, admirable occasional pamphlets,
which, though now they look to us like spent arrows, yet assuredly have
done execution, and have not been spent in vain. And as, after the lapse
of a century and more, we can still read with pleasure Addison’s “Old Whig
and Freeholder,” for the sake of the exquisite humor and inimitable style
in which forgotten feuds and dead logomachies are embalmed, so may it be,
a century still, with the articles on Bentham’s Fallacies and on the Game
Laws, and with the letters of the witty and ingenious Peter Plymley. There
is much at least in those singular productions—in their clear and manly
sense—in their broad native fun—in their rapid, careless, energetic
style—and in their bold, honest, liberal, and thoroughly English spirit—to
interest several succeeding generations, if not to secure the “rare and
regal” palm of immortality.

Sidney Smith was a writer of sermons as well as of political squibs. Is
not their memory eternized in one of John Foster’s most ponderous pieces
of sarcasm? In an evil hour the dexterous and witty critic came forth from
behind the fastnesses of the Edinburgh Review, whence, in perfect security
he had shot his quick glancing shafts at Methodists and Missions, at
Christian Observers and Eclectic Reviews, at Owens and Styles, and (what
the more wary Jeffrey, in the day of his power, always avoided) became
himself an author, and, _mirabile dictu_, an author of sermons. It was as
if he wished to give his opponents their revenge, and no sooner did his
head peep forth from beneath the protection of its shell than the
elephantine foot of Foster was prepared to crush it in the dust. It was
the precise position of Saladin with the Knight of the Leopard, in their
memorable contest near the Diamond of the Desert. In the skirmish Smith
had it all his own way; but when it came to close quarters, and when the
heavy and mailed hand of the sturdy Baptist had confirmed its grasp on his
opponent, the disparity was prodigious, and the discomfiture of the light
horseman complete. But why recall the memory of an obsolete quarrel and a
forgotten field? The sermons—the _causa belli_—clever but dry, destitute
of earnestness and unction—are long since dead and buried; and their
review remains their only monument.

Even when, within his own stronghold, our author intermeddled with
theological topics, it was seldom with felicity or credit to himself. His
onset on missions was a sad mistake; and in attacking the Methodists, and
poor, pompous John Styles, he becomes as filthy and foul-mouthed as Swift
himself. His wit forsakes him, and a rabid invective ill supplies its
place; instead of laughing, he raves and foams at the mouth. Indeed,
although an eloquent and popular preacher, and in many respects an
ornament to his cloth, there was one radical evil about Smith; _he had
mistaken his profession_. He was intended for a barrister, or a literary
man, or a member of parliament, or some occupation into which he could
have flung his whole soul and strength. As it was, but half his heart was
in a profession which, of all others, would require the whole. He became
consequently a rather awkward medley of buffoon, politician, preacher,
literateur, divine, and diner-out. Let us grant, however, that the ordeal
was severe, and that, if a very few have weathered it better, many more
have ignominiously broken down. No one coincides more fully than we do
with Coleridge in thinking that every literary man should have a
profession; but in the name of common sense let it be one fitted for him,
and for which he is fitted—one suited to his tastes as well as to his
talents—to his habits as well as to his powers—to his heart as well as to
his head.

As a conversationist, Sidney Smith stood high among the highest—a Saul
among a tribe of Titans. His jokes were not rare and refined, like those
of Rogers and Jekyll; they wanted the slyness of Theodore Hook’s
inimitable equivoque; they were not poured forth with the prodigal
profusion of Hood’s breathless and bickering puns; they were rich, fat,
unctuous, always bordering on farce, but always avoiding it by a
hair’s-breadth. No finer cream, certes, ever mantled at the feasts of
Holland House than his fertile brain supplied; and, to quote himself, it
would require a “forty-parson power” of lungs and language to do justice
to his convivial merits. An acquaintance of ours sometimes met him in the
company of Jeffrey and Macaulay—a fine concord of first-rate performers,
content, generally, to keep each within his own part, except when, now and
then, the author of the “Lays” burst out irresistibly, and changed the
concert into a fine solo.

Altogether “we could have better spared a better man.” Did not his death
“eclipse the gayety of nations?” Did not a Fourth Estate of Fun expire
from the midst of us? Did not even Brother Jonathan drop a tear when he
thought that the scourge that so mercilessly lashed him was broken? And
shall not now all his admirers unite with us in inscribing upon his
grave—“Alas! poor Yorick!”





THOMAS CARLYLE. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.


                             [Illustration.]

                             Thomas Carlyle.


Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, Annandale. His parents were “good
farmer people,” his father an elder in the Secession church there, and a
man of strong native sense, whose words were said to “nail a subject to
the wall.” His excellent mother still lives, and we had the pleasure of
meeting her lately in the company of her illustrious son; and beautiful it
was to see his profound and tender regard, and her motherly and yearning
reverence—to hear her fine old covenanting accents, concerting with his
transcendental tones. He studied in Edinburgh. Previous to this, he had
become intimate with Edward Irving, an intimacy which continued unimpaired
to the close of the latter’s eccentric career. Like most Scottish
students, he had many struggles to encounter in the course of his
education; and had, we believe, to support himself by private tuition,
translations for the booksellers, &c. The day star of German literature
arose early in his soul, and has been his guide and genius ever since. He
entered into a correspondence with Goethe, which lasted, at intervals,
till the latter’s death. Yet he has never, we understand, visited Germany.
He was, originally, destined for the church. At one period he taught an
academy in Dysart, at the same time that Irving was teaching in Kirkaldy.
After his marriage, he resided partly at Comely Bank, Edinburgh; and, for
a year or two in Craigenputtock, a wild and solitary farm-house in the
upper part of Dumfriesshire. Here, however, far from society, save that,
of the “great dumb monsters of mountains,” he wearied out his very heart.
A ludicrous story is told of Lord Jeffrey visiting him in this
out-of-the-way region, when they were unapprized of his coming—had nothing
in the house fit for the palate of the critic, and had, in dire haste and
pother, to send off for the wherewithal to a market town about fifteen
miles off. Here, too, as we may see hereafter, Emerson, on his way home
from Italy, dropped in like a spirit, spent precisely twenty-four hours,
and then “forth uprose that lone, wayfaring man,” to return to his native
woods. He has, for several years of late, resided in Chelsea, London,
where he lives in a plain, simple fashion; occasionally, but seldom,
appearing at the splendid soirées of Lady Blessington, but listened to,
when he goes, as an oracle; receiving, at his tea-table, visitors from
every part of the world; forming an amicable centre for men of the most
opposite opinions and professions, Poets and Preachers, Pantheists and
Puritans, Tennysons and Scotts, Cavanaighs and Erskines, Sterlings and
Robertsons, smoking his perpetual pipe, and pouring out, in copious
stream, his rich and quaint philosophy. His appearance is fine, without
being ostentatiously singular—his hair dark—his brow marked, though
neither very broad nor very lofty—his cheek tinged with a healthy red—his
eye, the truest index of his genius, flashing out, at times, a wild and
mystic fire from its dark and quiet surface. He is above the middle size,
stoops slightly, dresses carefully, but without any approach to foppery.
His address, somewhat high and distant at first, softens into simplicity
and cordial kindness. His conversation is abundant, inartificial, flowing
on, and warbling as it flows, more practical than you would expect from
the cast of his writings—picturesque and graphic in a high measure—full of
the results of extensive and minute observation—often terribly direct and
strong, garnished with French and German phrase, rendered racy by the
accompaniment of the purest Annandale accent, and coming to its climaxes,
ever and anon, in long, deep, chest-shaking bursts of laughter.

Altogether, in an age of singularities, Thomas Carlyle stands peculiarly
alone. Generally known, and warmly appreciated, he has of late
become—popular, in the strict sense, he is not, and may never be. His
works may never climb the family library, nor his name become a household
word; but while the Thomsons and the Campbells shed their gentle genius,
like light, into the hall and the hovel—the shop of the artisan and the
sheiling of the shepherd, Carlyle, like the Landors and Lambs of this age,
and the Brownes and Burtons of a past, will exert a more limited but
profounder power—cast a dimmer but more gorgeous radiance—attract fewer
but more devoted admirers, and obtain an equal, and perhaps more enviable
immortality.

To the foregoing sketch of CARLYLE, which is from the eloquent critical
description of Gilfillan, we append the following, which is from a letter
recently published in the Dumfries and Galloway Courier. The writer, after
remarking at some length upon the “Latter Day Pamphlets,” which are
Carlyle’s latest productions, proceeds to give this graphic and
interesting sketch of his personal appearance and conversation:

“Passing from the political phase of these productions (the ‘Latter Day
Pamphlets’), which is not my vocation to discuss, I found for myself one
very peculiar charm in the perusal of them—they seemed such perfect
transcripts of the conversation of Thomas Carlyle. With something more of
set continuity—of composition—but essentially the same thing, the Latter
Day Pamphlets’ are in their own way a ‘Boswell’s Life’ of Carlyle. As I
read and read, I was gradually transported from my club-room, with its
newspaper-clad tables, and my dozing fellow-loungers, only kept half awake
by periodical titillations of snuff, and carried in spirit to the grave
and quiet sanctum in Chelsea, where Carlyle dispenses wisdom and
hospitality with equally unstinted hand. The long, tall, spare figure is
before me—wiry, though, and elastic, and quite capable of taking a long,
tough spell through the moors of Ecclefechan, or elsewhere—stretched at
careless, homely ease in his elbow-chair, yet ever with strong natural
motions and starts, as the inward spirit stirs. The face, too, is before
me—long and thin, with a certain tinge of paleness, but no sickness or
attenuation, form muscular and vigorously marked, and not wanting some
glow of former rustic color—pensive, almost solemn, yet open, and cordial,
and tender, very tender. The eye, as generally happens, is the chief
outward index of the soul—an eye is not easy to describe, but _felt_ ever
after one has looked thereon and therein. It is dark and full, shadowed
over by a compact, prominent forehead. But the depth, the expression, the
far inner play of it—who could transfer that even to the eloquent canvas,
far less to this very _in_-eloquent paper? It is not brightness, it is not
flash, it is not power even—something beyond all these. The expression is,
so to speak, heavy laden—as if be-tokening untold burdens of thought, and
long, long fiery struggles, resolutely endured—endured until they had been
in some practical manner overcome; to adopt his own fond epithet, and it
comes nearest to the thing, his is the heroic eye, but of a hero who has
done hard battle against Paynim hosts. This is no dream of mine—I have
often heard this peculiarity remarked. The whole form and expression of
the face remind me of Dante—it wants the classic element, and the mature
and matchless harmony which distinguish the countenance of the great
Florentine; but something in the cast and in the look, especially the
heavy laden, but dauntless eye, is very much alike. But he speaks to me.
The tongue has the _sough_ of Annandale—an echo of the Solway, with its
compliments to old Father Thames. A keen, sharp, ringing voice, in the
genuine Border key, but tranquil and sedate withal—neighborly and frank,
and always in unison with what is uttered. Thus does the presence of
Thomas Carlyle rise before me—a ‘true man’ in all his bearings and in all
his sayings. And in this same guise do I seem to hear from him all those
‘Latter Day Pamphlets.’ Even such in his conversation—he sees the very
thing he speaks of; it breathes and moves palpable to him, and hence his
words form a picture. When you come from him, the impression is like
having seen a great brilliant panorama; every thing had been made visible
and naked to your sight. But more and better far than that; you bear home
with you an indelible feeling of love for the man—deep at the heart, long
as life. No man has ever inspired more of this personal affection. Not to
love Carlyle when you know him is something unnatural, as if one should
say they did not love the breeze that fans their cheek, or the vine-tree
which has refreshed them both with its leafy shade and its exuberant
juices. He abounds, himself, in love and in good works. His life, not only
as a ‘writer of books,’ but as a man among his fellows, has been a
continued shower of benefits. The young men, more especially, to whom he
has been the good Samaritan, pouring oil upon their wounds, and binding up
their bruised limbs, and putting them on the way of recovery of health and
useful energy—the number of such can scarcely be told, and will never be
known till the great day of accounts. One of these, who in his orisons
will ever remember him, has just read to me, with tears of grateful
attachment in his eyes, portions of a letter of counsel and encouragement
which he received from him in the hour of darkness, and which was but the
prelude to a thousand acts of substantial kindness and of graceful
attention. As the letter contains no secret, and may fall as a fructifying
seed into some youthful bosom that may be entering upon its trials and
struggles, a quotation from it will form an appropriate _finale_ at this
time. He thus writes: ‘It will be good news, in all times coming, to learn
that such a life as yours unfolds itself according to its promise, and
_becomes_ in some tolerable degree what it is capable of being. The
problem is your own, to make or to mar—a great problem for you, as the
like is for every man born into this world. You have my entire sympathy in
your denunciation of the “explosive” character. It is frequent in these
times, and deplorable wherever met with. Explosions are ever wasteful,
woeful; central fire should not explode itself, but lie silent, far down
at the centre; and make all good fruits _grow_! We can not too often
repeat to ourselves, “Strength is seen, not in spasms, but in stout
bearing of burdens.” You can take comfort in the meanwhile, if you need
it, by the experience of all wise men, that a right heavy burden is
precisely the thing wanted for a young strong man. Grievous to be borne;
but bear it well, you will find it one day to have been verily blessed. “I
would not, for any money,” says the brave Jean Paul, in his quaint way. “I
would not, for any money, have had money in my youth!” He speaks a truth
there, singular as it may seem to many. These young obscure years ought to
be incessantly employed in gaining knowledge of things worth knowing,
especially of heroic human souls worth knowing. And you may believe me,
the obscurer such years are, it is apt to be the better. Books are
needful; but yet not many books; a few well read. An open, true, patient,
and valiant soul is needed; that is the one thing needful.’ ”





THE GENTLEMAN BEGGAR. AN ATTORNEY’S STORY. (FROM DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD
WORDS.)


One morning, about five years ago, I called by appointment on Mr. John
Balance, the fashionable pawnbroker, to accompany him to Liverpool, in
pursuit for a Levanting customer—for Balance, in addition to pawning, does
a little business in the sixty per cent. line. It rained in torrents when
the cab stopped at the passage which leads past the pawning boxes to his
private door. The cabman rang twice, and at length Balance appeared,
looming through the mist and rain in the entry, illuminated by his
perpetual cigar. As I eyed him rather impatiently, remembering that trains
wait for no man, something like a hairy dog, or a bundle of rags, rose up
at his feet, and barred his passage for a moment. Then Balance cried out
with an exclamation, in answer apparently to a something I could not hear,
“What, man alive!—slept in the passage!—there, take that, and get some
breakfast, for Heaven’s sake!” So saying, he jumped into the “Hansom,” and
we bowled away at ten miles an hour, just catching the Express as the
doors of the station were closing. My curiosity was full set—for although
Balance can be free with his money, it is not exactly to beggars that his
generosity is usually displayed; so when comfortably ensconced in a
_coupé_, I finished with—

“You are liberal with your money this morning: pray, how often do you give
silver to street cadgers?—because I shall know now what walk to take when
flats and sharps leave off buying law.”

Balance, who would have made an excellent parson if he had not been bred
to a case-hardening trade, and has still a soft bit left in his heart that
is always fighting with his hard head, did not smile at all, but looked as
grim as if squeezing a lemon into his Saturday night’s punch. He answered
slowly, “A cadger—yes; a beggar—a miserable wretch, he is now; but let me
tell you, Master David, that that miserable bundle of rags was born and
bred a gentleman; the son of a nobleman, the husband of an heiress, and
has sat and dined at tables where you and I, Master David, are only
allowed to view the plate by favor of the butler. I have lent him
thousands, and been well paid. The last thing I had from him was his court
suit; and I hold now his bill for one hundred pounds that will be paid, I
expect, when he dies.”

“Why, what nonsense you are talking! you must be dreaming this morning.
However, we are alone, I’ll light a weed, in defiance of Railway law, you
shall spin that yarn; for, true or untrue, it will fill up the time to
Liverpool.”

“As for yarn,” replied Balance, “the whole story is short enough; and as
for truth, that you may easily find out if you like to take the trouble. I
thought the poor wretch was dead, and I own it put me out meeting him this
morning, for I had a curious dream last night.”

“Oh, hang your dreams! Tell us about this gentleman beggar that bleeds you
of half-crowns—that melts the heart even of a pawnbroker!”

“Well, then, that beggar is the illegitimate son of the late Marquis of
Hoopborough by a Spanish lady of rank. He received a first-rate education,
and was brought up in his father’s house. At a very early age he obtained
an appointment in a public office, was presented by the marquis at court,
and received into the first society, where his handsome person and
agreeable manners made him a great favorite. Soon after coming of age, he
married the daughter of Sir E. Bumper, who brought him a very handsome
fortune, which was strictly settled on herself. They lived in splendid
style, kept several carriages, a house in town, and a place in the
country. For some reason or other, idleness, or to please his lady’s
pride, he resigned his appointment. His father died and left him nothing;
indeed, he seemed at that time very handsomely provided for.

“Very soon Mr. and Mrs. Molinos Fitz-Roy began to disagree. She was cold,
correct—he was hot and random. He was quite dependent on her, and she made
him feel it. When he began to get into debt, he came to me. At length some
shocking quarrel occurred; some case of jealousy on the wife’s side, not
without reason, I believe; and the end of it was, Mr. Fitz-Roy was turned
out of doors. The house was his wife’s, the furniture was his wife’s, and
the fortune was his wife’s—he was, in fact, her pensioner. He left with a
few hundred pounds ready money, and some personal jewelry, and went to an
hotel. On these and credit he lived. Being illegitimate, he had no
relations; being a fool, when he spent his money he lost his friends. The
world took his wife’s part, when they found she had the fortune, and the
only parties who interfered were her relatives, who did their best to make
the quarrel incurable. To crown all, one night he was run over by a cab,
was carried to a hospital, and lay there for months, and was during
several weeks of the time unconscious. A message to the wife, by the hands
of one of his debauched companions, sent by a humane surgeon, obtained an
intimation that ‘if he died, Mr. Croak, the undertaker to the family, had
orders to see to the funeral,’ and that Mrs. Molinos was on the point of
starting for the Continent, not to return for some years. When Fitz-Roy
was discharged, he came to me limping on two sticks, to pawn his court
suit, and told me his story. I was really sorry for the fellow, such a
handsome, thoroughbred-looking man. He was going then into the west
somewhere, to try to hunt out a friend. ‘What to do, Balance,’ he said, ‘I
don’t know. I can’t dig, and unless somebody will make me their
gamekeeper, I must starve, or beg, as my Jezebel bade me when we parted!’

“I lost sight of Molinos for a long time, and when I next came upon him it
was in the Rookery of Westminster, in a low lodging-house, where I was
searching with an officer for stolen goods. He was pointed out to me as
the ‘gentleman cadger,’ because he was so free with his money when ‘in
luck.’ He recognized me, but turned away then. I have since seen him, and
relieved him more than once, although he never asks for any thing. How he
lives, Heaven knows. Without money, without friends, without useful
education of any kind, he tramps the country, as you saw him, perhaps
doing a little hop-picking or hay-making, in season, only happy when he
obtains the means to get drunk. I have heard through the kitchen whispers,
that you know come to me, that he is entitled to some property; and I
expect if he were to die his wife would pay the hundred pound bill I hold;
at any rate, what I have told you I know to be true, and the bundle of
rags I relieved just now is known in every thieves’ lodging in England as
the ‘gentleman cadger.’ ”

This story produced an impression on me—I am fond of speculation, and like
the excitement of a legal hunt as much as some do a fox-chase: A gentleman
a beggar, a wife rolling in wealth, rumors of unknown property due to the
husband: it seemed as if there were pickings for me amidst this carrion of
pauperism.

Before returning from Liverpool, I had purchased the gentleman beggar’s
acceptance from Balance. I then inserted in the “Times” the following
advertisement: “_Horatio Molinos Fitz-Roy_.—If this gentleman will apply
to David Discount, Esq., Solicitor, St. James’s, he will hear of something
to his advantage. Any person furnishing Mr. F.’s correct address, shall
receive 1£. 1_s._ reward. He was last seen,” &c. Within twenty-four hours
I had ample proof of the wide circulation of the “Times.” My office was
besieged with beggars of every degree, men and women, lame and blind,
Irish, Scotch, and English, some on crutches, some in bowls, some in
go-carts. They all knew him as the “gentleman,” and I must do the regular
fraternity of tramps the justice to say, that not one would answer a
question until he made certain that I meant the “gentleman” no harm.

One evening, about three weeks after the appearance of the advertisement,
my clerk announced “another beggar.” There came in an old man leaning upon
a staff, clad in a soldier’s great coat all patched and torn, with a
battered hat, from under which a mass of tangled hair fell over his
shoulders and half concealed his face. The beggar, in a weak, wheezy,
hesitating tone, said, “You have advertised for Molinos Fitz-Roy. I hope
you don’t mean him any harm; he is sunk, I think, too low for enmity now;
and surely no one would sport with such misery as his.” These last words
were uttered in a sort of piteous whisper.

I answered quickly, “Heaven forbid I should sport with misery: I mean and
hope to do him good, as well as myself.”

“Then, sir, I am Molinos Fitz-Roy!”

While we were conversing candles had been brought in. I have not very
tender nerves—my head would not agree with them—but I own I started and
shuddered when I saw and knew that the wretched creature before me was
under thirty years of age and once a gentleman. Sharp, aquiline features,
reduced to literal skin and bone, were begrimed and covered with dry fair
hair; the white teeth of the half-open mouth shattered with eagerness, and
made more hideous the foul pallor of the rest of the countenance. As he
stood leaning on a staff half bent, his long, yellow bony fingers clasped
over the crutch-head of his stick, he was indeed a picture of misery,
famine, squalor, and premature age, too horrible to dwell upon. I made him
sit down, and sent for some refreshment which he devoured like a ghoul,
and set to work to unravel his story. It was difficult to keep him to the
point; but with pains I learned what convinced me that he was entitled to
some property, whether great or small there was no evidence. On parting, I
said, “Now, Mr. F., you must stay in town while I make proper inquiries.
What allowance will be enough to keep you comfortably?”

He answered humbly, after much pressing, “Would you think ten shillings
too much?”

I don’t like, if I do those things at all, to do them shabbily, so I said,
“Come every Saturday and you shall have a pound.” He was profuse in
thanks, of course, as all such men are as long as distress lasts.

I had previously learned that my ragged client’s wife was in England,
living in a splendid house in Hyde Park Gardens, under her maiden name. On
the following day the Earl of Owing called upon me, wanting five thousand
pounds by five o’clock the same evening. It was a case of life or death
with him, so I made my terms, and took advantage of his pressure to
execute a _coup de main_. I proposed that he should drive me home to
receive the money, calling at Mrs. Molinos in Hyde Park Gardens, on our
way. I knew that the coronet and liveries of his father, the marquis,
would insure me an audience with Mrs. Molinos Fitz-Roy.

My scheme answered. I was introduced into the lady’s presence. She was,
and probably is, a very stately, handsome woman, with a pale complexion,
high solid forehead, regular features, thin, pinched, self-satisfied
mouth. My interview was very short, I plunged into the middle of the
affair, but had scarcely mentioned the word husband, when she interrupted
me with, “I presume you have lent this profligate person money, and want
me to pay you.” She paused, and then said, “He shall not have a farthing.”
As she spoke, her white face became scarlet.

“But, madam, the man is starving. I have strong reasons for believing he
is entitled to property, and if you refuse any assistance, I must take
other measures.” She rang the bell, wrote something rapidly on a card;
and, as the footman appeared, pushed it toward me across the table, with
the air of touching a toad, saying, “There, sir, is the address of my
solicitors; apply to them if you think you have any claim. Robert, show
the person out, and take care he is not admitted again.”

So far I had effected nothing; and, to tell the truth, felt rather
crest-fallen under the influence of that grand manner peculiar to certain
great ladies and to all great actresses.

My next visit was to the attorneys, Messrs. Leasem and Fashun, of
Lincoln’s Inn Square, and there I was at home. I had had dealings with the
firm before. They are agents for half the aristocracy, who always run in
crowds like sheep after the same wine-merchants, the same architects, the
same horse-dealers, and the same law-agents. It may be doubted whether the
quality of law and land management they get on this principle is quite
equal to their wine and horses. At any rate, my friends of Lincoln’s Inn,
like others of the same class, are distinguished by their courteous
manners, deliberate proceedings, innocence of legal technicalities, long
credit, and heavy charges. Leasem, the elder partner, wears powder and a
huge bunch of seals, lives in Queen-square, drives a brougham, gives the
dinners and does the cordial department. He is so strict in performing the
latter duty, that he once addressed a poacher who had shot a duke’s
keeper, as “my dear creature,” although he afterward hung him.

Fashun has chambers in St. James-street, drives a cab, wears a tip, and
does the grand haha style.

My business lay with Leasem. The interviews and letters passing were
numerous. However, it came at last to the following dialogue:

“Well, my dear Mr. Discount,” began Mr. Leasem, who hates me like poison.
“I’m really very sorry for that poor dear Molinos—knew his father well; a
great man, a perfect gentleman; but you know what women are, eh, Mr.
Discount? My client won’t advance a shilling; she knows it would only be
wasted in low dissipation. Now, don’t you think (this was said very
insinuatingly)—don’t you think he had better be sent to the workhouse;
very comfortable accommodations there, I can assure you—meat twice a week,
and excellent soup; and then, Mr. D., we might consider about allowing you
something for that bill.”

“Mr. Leasem, can you reconcile it to your conscience to make such an
arrangement? Here’s a wife rolling in luxury, and a husband starving!”

“No, Mr. Discount, not starving; there is the workhouse, as I observed
before; besides, allow me to suggest that these appeals to feeling are
quite unprofessional—quite unprofessional.”

“But, Mr. Leasem, touching this property which the poor man is entitled
to.”

“Why, there again, Mr. D., you must excuse me; you really must. I don’t
say he is; I don’t say he is not. If you know he is entitled to property,
I am sure you know how to proceed; the law is open to you, Mr.
Discount—the law is open; and a man of your talent will know how to use
it.”

“Then, Mr. Leasem, you mean that I must, in order to right this starving
man, file a bill of discovery, to extract from you the particulars of his
rights. You have the marriage settlement, and all the information, and you
decline to allow a pension, or afford any information; the man is to
starve, or go to the workhouse.”

“Why, Mr. D., you are so quick and violent, it really is not professional;
but you see (here a subdued smile of triumph), it has been decided that a
solicitor is not bound to afford such information as you ask, to the
injury of his client.”

“Then you mean that this poor Molinos may rot and starve, while you keep
secret from him, at his wife’s request, his title to an income, and that
the Court of Chancery will back you in this iniquity?”

I kept repeating the word “starve,” because I saw it made my respectable
opponent wince.

“Well, then, just listen to me. I know that in the happy state of your
equity law, chancery can’t help my client; but I have another plan: I
shall go hence to my office, issue a writ, and take your client’s husband
in execution—as soon as he is lodged in jail, I shall file his schedule in
the Insolvent Court, and when he comes up for his discharge, I shall put
you in the witness-box, and examine you on oath, ‘touching any property of
which you know the insolvent to be possessed,’ and where will be your
privileged communications then?”

The respectable Leasem’s face lengthened in a twinkling, his comfortable
confident air vanished, he ceased twiddling his gold chain, and, at
length, he muttered,

“Suppose we pay the debt?”

“Why, then, I’ll arrest him the day after for another.”

“But, my dear Mr. Discount, surely such conduct would not be quite
respectable.”

“That’s my business; my client has been wronged, I am determined to right
him, and when the aristocratic firm, of Leasem and Fashun takes refuge
according to the custom of respectable repudiators, in the cool arbors of
the Court of Chancery, why, a mere bill-discounting attorney like David
Discount need not hesitate about cutting a bludgeon out of the Insolvent
Court.”

“Well, well, Mr. D., you are so warm—so fiery; we must deliberate—we must
consult. You will give me until the day after to-morrow, and then we’ll
write you our final determination; in the meantime, send us a copy of your
authority to act for Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy.”

Of course, I lost no time in getting the gentleman beggar to sign a proper
letter.

On the appointed day came a communication with the L. and F. seal, which I
opened, not without unprofessional eagerness. It was as follows:

“_In re Molinos Fitz-Roy and Another._

“Sir—In answer to your application on behalf of Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy, we
beg to inform you that under the administration of a paternal aunt who
died intestate, your client is entitled to two thousand five hundred
pounds eight shillings and sixpence, Three per Cents.; one thousand five
hundred pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, Three per Cents. Reduced;
one thousand pounds, Long Annuities; five hundred pounds, Bank Stock;
three thousand five hundred pounds, India Stock; besides other securities,
making up about ten thousand pounds, which we are prepared to transfer
over to Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy’s direction forthwith.”

Here was a windfall! It quite took away my breath.

At dusk came my gentleman beggar, and what puzzled me was, how to break
the news to him. Being very much overwhelmed with business that day, I had
not much time for consideration. He came in rather better dressed than
when I first saw him, with only a week’s beard on his chin; but, as usual,
not quite sober. Six weeks had elapsed since our first interview. He was
still the humble, trembling, low-voiced creature, I first knew him.

After a prelude, I said, “I find, Mr. F., you are entitled to something;
pray, what do you mean to give me in addition to my bill, for obtaining
it?” He answered rapidly, “Oh, take half; if there is one hundred pounds,
take half; if there is five hundred pounds, take half.”

“No, no; Mr. F., I don’t do business in that way, I shall be satisfied
with ten per cent.”

It was so settled. I then led him out into the street, impelled to tell
him the news, yet dreading the effect; not daring to make the revelation
in my office, for fear of a scene.

I began hesitatingly, “Mr. Fitz-Roy, I am happy to say, that I find you
are entitled to .....ten thousand pounds!”

“Ten thousand pounds!” he echoed. “Ten thousand pounds!” he shrieked. “Ten
thousand pounds!” he yelled, seizing my arm violently. “You are a brick.
Here, cab! cab!” Several drove up—the shout might have been heard a mile
off. He jumped in the first.

“Where to?” said the driver.

“To a tailor’s, you rascal!”

“Ten thousand pounds! ha, ha, ha!” he repeated hysterically, when in the
cab; and every moment grasping my arm. Presently he subsided, looked me
straight in the face, and muttered with agonizing fervor,

“What a jolly brick you are!”

The tailor, the hosier, the bootmaker, the hair-dresser, were in turn
visited by this poor pagan of externals. As, by degrees, under their
hands, he emerged from the beggar to the gentleman, his spirits rose; his
eyes brightened; he walked erect, but always nervously grasping my arm;
fearing, apparently, to lose sight of me for a moment, lest his fortune
should vanish with me. The impatient pride with which he gave his orders
to the astonished tradesmen for the finest and best of every thing, and
the amazed air of the fashionable hairdresser when he presented his matted
locks and stubble chin, to be “cut and shaved,” may be _acted_—it can not
be described.

By the time the external transformation was complete, and I sat down in a
_Café_ in the Haymarket, opposite a haggard but handsome,
thoroughbred-looking man, whose air, with the exception of the wild eyes
and deeply browned face, did not differ from the stereotyped men about
town sitting around us, Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy had already almost forgotten
the past; he bullied the waiter, and criticised the wine, as if he had
done nothing else but dine and drink and scold there all the days of his
life.

Once he wished to drink my health, and would have proclaimed his whole
story to the coffee-room assembly, in a raving style. When I left he
almost wept in terror at the idea of losing sight of me. But, allowing for
these ebullitions—the natural result of such a whirl of events—he was
wonderfully calm and self-possessed.

The next day, his first care was to distribute fifty pounds among his
friends the cadgers, at a house of call in Westminster, and formally to
dissolve his connection with them; those present undertaking for the
“fraternity,” that, for the future, he should never be noticed by them in
public or private.

I can not follow his career much further. Adversity had taught him
nothing. He was soon again surrounded by the well-bred vampires who had
forgotten him when penniless; but they amused him, and that was enough.
The ten thousand pounds were rapidly melting when he invited me to a grand
dinner at Richmond, which included a dozen of the most agreeable,
good-looking, well-dressed dandies of London, interspersed with a display
of pretty butterfly bonnets. We dined deliciously, and drank as men do of
iced wines in the dog-days—looking down from Richmond Hill.

One of the pink bonnets crowned Fitz-Roy with a wreath of flowers; he
looked—less the intellect—as handsome as Alcibiades. Intensely excited and
flushed, he rose with a champagne glass in his hand to propose my health.

The oratorical powers of his father had not descended on him. Jerking out
sentences by spasms, at length he said, “I was a beggar—I am a
gentleman—thanks to this—”

Here he leaned on my shoulder heavily a moment, and then fell back. We
raised him, loosened his neckcloth—

“Fainted!” said the ladies.

“Drunk!” said the gentlemen.

He was _dead!_





SINGULAR PROCEEDINGS OF THE SAND WASP. (FROM HOWITT’S COUNTRY YEAR-BOOK.)


In all my observations of the habits of living things, I have never seen
any thing more curious than the doings of one species of these
ammophilæ—lovers of sand. I have watched them day after day, and hour
after hour, in my garden, and also on the sandy banks on the wastes about
Esher, in Surrey, and always with unabated wonder. They are about an inch
long, with orange-colored bodies, and black heads and wings. They are
slender and most active. You see them on the warm borders of your garden,
or on warm, dry banks, in summer, when the sun shines hotly. They are
incessantly and most actively hunting about. They are in pursuit of a
particular gray spider with a large abdomen. For these they pursue their
chase with a fiery quickness and avidity. The spiders are on the watch to
seize flies; but here we have the tables turned, and these are flies on
the watch to discover and kill the spiders. These singular insects seem
all velocity and fire. They come flying at a most rapid rate, light down
on the dry soil, and commence an active search. The spiders lie under the
leaves of plants, and in little dens under the dry little clods. Into all
these places the sand-wasp pops his head. He bustles along here and there,
flirting his wings, and his whole body all life and fire. And now he moves
off to a distance, hunts about there, then back to his first place, beats
the old ground carefully over, as a pointer beats a field. He searches
carefully round every little knob of earth, and pops his head into every
crevice. Ever and anon, he crouches close among the little clods as a
tiger would crouch for his prey. He seems to be listening, or smelling
down into the earth, as if to discover his prey by every sense which he
possesses, He goes round every stalk, and descends into every hollow about
them. When he finds the spider, he dispatches him in a moment, and seizing
him by the centre of his chest, commences dragging him off backward.

He conveys his prey to a place of safety. Frequently he carries it up some
inches into a plant, and lodges it among the green leaves. Seeing him do
this, I poked his spider down with a stick after he had left it; but he
speedily returned, and finding it fallen down, he immediately carried it
up again to the same place.

Having thus secured his spider, he selects a particular spot of earth, the
most sunny and warm, and begins to dig a pit. He works with all his might,
digging up the earth with his formidable mandibles, and throwing it out
with his feet, as a dog throws out the earth when scratching after a
rabbit. Every few seconds he ascends, tail first, out of his hole, clears
away the earth about its mouth with his legs, and spreads it to a distance
on the surface. When he has dug the hole, perhaps two inches deep, he
comes forth eagerly, goes off for his spider, drags it down from its
lodgment, and brings it to the mouth of his hole. He now lets himself down
the hole, tail first, and then, putting forth his head, takes the spider,
and turns it into the most suitable position for dragging it in.

It must be observed that this hole is made carefully of only about the
width of his body, and therefore the spider can not be got into it except
lengthwise, and then by stout pulling. Well, he turns it lengthwise, and
seizing it, commences dragging it in. At first, you would imagine this
impossible; but the sand-wasp is strong, and the body of the spider is
pliable. You soon see it disappear. Down into the cylindrical hole it
goes, and anon you perceive the sand-wasp pushing up its black head beside
it; and having made his way out he again sets to work, and pushes the
spider with all his force to the bottom of the den.

And what is all this for? Is the spider laid up in his larder for himself?
No; it is food for his children? It is their birth-place, and their supply
of provision while they are in the larva state.

We have been all along calling this creature he, for it has a most
masculine look; but it is in reality a she; it is the female sand-wasp,
and all this preparation is for the purpose of laying her eggs. For this
she has sought and killed the spider, and buried it here. She has done it
all wittingly. She has chosen one particular spider, and that only, for
that is the one peculiarly adapted to nourish her young.

So here it is safely stored away in her den; and she now descends, tail
first, and piercing the pulpy abdomen of the spider, she deposits her egg
or eggs. That being done, she carefully begins filling in the hole with
earth. She rakes it up with her legs and mandibles, and fills in the hole,
every now and then turning round and going backward into the hole to stamp
down the earth with her feet, and to ram it down with her body as a
rammer. When the hole is filled, it is curious to observe with what care
she levels the surface, and removes the surrounding lumps of earth, laying
some first over the tomb of the spider, and others about, so as to make
that place look as much as possible like the surface all round. And before
she has done with it—and she works often for ten minutes at this leveling
and disguising before she is perfectly satisfied—she makes the place so
exactly like all the rest of the surface, that it will require good eyes
and close observation to recognize it.

She has now done her part, and Nature must do the rest. She has deposited
her eggs in the body of the spider, and laid that body in the earth in the
most sunny spot she can find. She has laid it so near the surface that the
sun will act on it powerfully, yet deep enough to conceal it from view.
She has, with great art and anxiety, destroyed all traces of the hole, and
the effect will soon commence. The heat of the sun will hatch the egg. The
larva, or young grub of the sand-wasp, will become alive, and begin to
feed on the pulpy body of the spider in which it is enveloped. This food
will suffice it till it is ready to emerge to daylight, and pass through
the different stages of its existence. Like the ostrich, the sand-wasp
thus leaves her egg in the sand till the sun hatches it, and having once
buried it, most probably never knows herself where it is deposited. It is
left to Nature and Providence





WHAT HORSES THINK OF MEN. FROM THE RAVEN IN THE HAPPY FAMILY. (FROM
DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD WORDS.)


I suppose you thought I was dead? No such thing. Don’t flatter yourselves
that I haven’t got my eye upon you. I am wide awake, and you give me
plenty to look at.

I have begun my great work about you, I have been collecting materials
from the Horse, to begin with. You are glad to hear it, ain’t you? Very
likely. Oh, he gives you a nice character! He makes you out a charming set
of fellows.

He informs me by-the-by, that he is a distant relation of the pony that
was taken up in a balloon a few weeks ago; and that the pony’s account of
your going to see him at Vauxhall Gardens, is an amazing thing. The pony
says that when he looked round on the assembled crowd, come to see the
realization of the wood-cut in the bill, he found it impossible to
discover which was the real Mister Green—there were so many Mister
Greens—and they were all so very green!

But that’s the way with you. You know it is. Don’t tell me! You’d go to
see any thing that other people went to see. And don’t flatter yourselves
that I am referring to “the vulgar curiosity,” as you choose to call it,
when you mean some curiosity in which you don’t participate yourselves.
The polite curiosity in this country is as vulgar as any curiosity in the
world.

Of course you’ll tell me, no it isn’t; but I say, yes it is. What have you
got to say for yourselves about the Nepaulese princes, I should like to
know? Why, there has been more crowding, and pressing, and pushing, and
jostling, and struggling, and striving, in genteel houses this last
season, on account of those Nepaulese princes, than would have taken place
in vulgar Cremorne Gardens and Greenwich Park, at Easter time and
Whitsuntide! And what for? Do you know any thing about ’em? Have you any
idea why they came here? Can you put your finger on their country in the
map? Have you ever asked yourselves a dozen common questions about its
climate, natural history, government, productions, customs, religion,
manners? Not you! Here are a couple of swarthy princes very much out of
their element, walking about in wide muslin trowsers, and sprinkled all
over with gems (like the clockwork figure on the old round platform in the
street, grown-up), and they’re fashionable outlandish monsters, and it’s a
new excitement for you to get a stare at ’em. As to asking ’em to dinner,
and seeing ’em sit at table without eating in your company (unclean
animals as you are!), you fall into raptures at that. Quite delicious,
isn’t it? Ugh, you dunder-headed boobies!

I wonder what there is, new and strange, that you _wouldn’t_ lionize, as
you call it. Can you suggest any thing! It’s not a hippopotamus, I
suppose. I hear from my brother-in-law in the Zoological Gardens, that you
are always pelting away into the Regent’s Park, by thousands, to see the
hippopotamus. Oh, you’re very fond of hippopotami, ain’t you? You study
one attentively, when you _do_ see one, don’t you? You come away so much
wiser than when you went, reflecting so profoundly on the wonders of the
creation—eh?

Bah! You follow one another like wild geese; but you are not so good to
eat!

These, however, are not the observations of my friend the Horse. _He_
takes you, in another point of view. Would you like to read his
contribution to my Natural History of you? No? You shall then.

He is a cab-horse now. He wasn’t always, but he is now, and his usual
stand is close to our proprietor’s usual stand. That’s the way we have
come into communication, we “dumb animals.” Ha, ha! Dumb, too! Oh, the
conceit of you men, because you can bother the community out of their five
wits, by making speeches!

Well. I mentioned to this Horse that I should be glad to have his opinions
and experiences of you. Here they are:

“At the request of my honorable friend the Raven, I proceed to offer a few
remarks in reference to the animal called Man. I have had varied
experience of this strange creature for fifteen years, and am now driven
by a Man, in the hackney cabriolet, number twelve thousand four hundred
and fifty-two.

“The sense Man entertains of his own inferiority to the nobler animals—and
I am now more particularly referring to the Horse—has impressed me
forcibly, in the course of my career. If a man knows a horse well, he is
prouder of it than of any knowledge of himself, within the range of his
limited capacity. He regards it as the sum of all human acquisition. If he
is learned in a horse, he has nothing else to learn. And the same remark
applies, with some little abatement, to his acquaintance with dogs. I have
seen a good deal of man in my time, but I think I have never met a man who
didn’t feel it necessary to his reputation to pretend, on occasion, that
he knew something of horses and dogs, though he really knew nothing. As to
making us a subject of conversation, my opinion is that we are more talked
about than history, philosophy, literature, art, and science, all put
together. I have encountered innumerable gentlemen in the country, who
were totally incapable of interest in any thing but horses and dogs—except
cattle. And I have always been given to understand that they were the
flower of the civilized world.

“It is very doubtful to me, whether there is, upon the whole, any thing
man is so ambitious to imitate as an ostler, jockey, a stage coachman, a
horse-dealer, or dog-fancier. There may be some other character which I do
not immediately remember, that fires him with emulation; but if there be,
I am sure it is connected with horses or dogs, or both. This is an
unconscious compliment, on the part of the tyrant, to the nobler animals,
which I consider to be very remarkable. I have known lords and baronets,
and members of parliament, out of number, who have deserted every other
calling to become but indifferent stablemen or kennelmen, and be cheated
on all hands, by the real aristocracy of those pursuits who were regularly
born to the business.

“All this, I say, is a tribute to our superiority, which I consider to be
very remarkable. Yet, still I can’t quite understand it. Man can hardly
devote himself to us, in admiration of our virtues, because he never
imitates them. We horses are as honest, though I say it, as animals can
be. If, under the pressure of circumstances, we submit to act at a circus,
for instance, we always show that we are acting. We never deceive any
body. We would scorn to do it. If we are called upon to do any thing in
earnest, we do our best. If we are required to run a race falsely, and to
lose when we could win, we are not to be relied upon to commit a fraud;
man must come in at that point, and force us to it. And the extraordinary
circumstance to me is, that man (whom I take to be a powerful species of
monkey) is always making us nobler animals the instruments of his meanness
and cupidity. The very name of our kind has become a byword for all sorts
of trickery and cheating. We are as innocent as counters at a game—and yet
this creature WILL play falsely with us!

“Man’s opinion, good or bad, is not worth much, as any rational horse
knows. But justice is justice; and what I complain of is, that mankind
talks of us as if we had something to do with all this. They say that such
a man was ‘ruined by horses.’ Ruined by horses! They can’t be open, even
in that, and say he was ruined by men; but they lay it at _our_
stable-door! As if we ever ruined any body, or were ever doing any thing
but being ruined ourselves, in our generous desire to fulfill the useful
purposes of our existence!

“In the same way, we get a bad name, as if we were profligate company. ‘So
and so got among horses, and it was all up with him.’ Why, _we_ would have
reclaimed him—_we_ would have made him temperate, industrious, punctual,
steady, sensible—what harm would he ever have got from _us_, I should wish
to ask?

“Upon the whole, speaking of him as I have found him, I should describe
man as an unmeaning and conceited creature, very seldom to be trusted, and
not likely to make advances toward the honesty of the nobler animals. I
should say that his power of warping the nobler animals to bad purposes,
and damaging their reputation by his companionship, is, next to the art of
growing oats, hay, carrots, and clover, one of his principal attributes.
He is very unintelligible in his caprices; seldom expressing with
distinctness what he wants of us; and relying greatly on our better
judgment to find out. He is cruel, and fond of blood—particularly at a
steeple-chase—and is very ungrateful.

“And yet, so far as I can understand, he worships us, too. He sets up
images of us (not particularly like, but meant to be) in the streets and
calls upon his fellows to admire them, and believe in them. As well as I
can make out, it is not of the least importance what images of men are put
astride upon these images of horses, for I don’t find any famous personage
among them—except one, and _his_ image seems to have been contracted for
by the gross. The jockeys who ride our statues are very queer jockeys, it
appears to me, but it is something to find man even posthumously sensible
of what he owes to us. I believe that when he has done any great wrong to
any very distinguished horse, deceased, he gets up a subscription to have
an awkward likeness of him made, and erects it in a public place, to be
generally venerated. I can find no other reason for the statues of us that
abound.

“It must be regarded as a part of the inconsistency of man, that he erects
no statues to the donkeys—who, though far inferior animals to ourselves,
have great claims upon him. I should think a donkey opposite the horse at
Hyde Park, another in Trafalgar-square, and a group of donkeys, in brass,
outside the Guild-hall of the city of London (for I believe the
common-council chamber is inside that building) would be pleasant and
appropriate memorials.

“I am not aware that I can suggest any thing more to my honorable friend
the Raven, which will not already have occurred to his fine intellect.
Like myself, he is the victim of brute force, and must bear it until the
present state of things is changed—as it possibly may be in the good time
which I understand is coming, if I wait a little longer.”

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

There! How do you like that? That’s the Horse! You shall have another
animal’s sentiments, soon. I have communicated with plenty of ’em, and
they are all down upon you. It’s not I alone who have found you out. You
are generally detected, I am happy to say, and shall be covered with
confusion.

Talking about the horse, are you going to set up any more horses? Eh?
Think a bit. Come! You haven’t got horses enough yet, surely? Couldn’t you
put somebody else on horseback, and stick him up, at the cost of a few
thousands? You have already statues to most of the “benefactors of
mankind” (SEE ADVERTISEMENT) in your principal cities. You walk through
groves of great inventors, instructors, discoverers, assuagers of pain,
preventers of disease, suggesters of purifying thoughts, doers of noble
deeds. Finish the list. Come!

Whom will you hoist into the saddle? Let’s have a cardinal virtue! Shall
it be Faith? Hope? Charity? Ay, Charity’s the virtue to ride on horseback!
Let’s have Charity!

How shall we represent it? Eh? What do you think? Royal? Certainly. Duke?
Of course. Charity always was typified in that way, from the time of a
certain widow downward. And there’s nothing less left to put up; all the
commoners who were “benefactors of mankind” having had their statues in
the public places, long ago.

How shall we dress it? Rags? Low. Drapery? Commonplace. Field-Marshal’s
uniform? The very thing! Charity in a Field-Marshal’s uniform (none the
worse for wear) with thirty thousand pounds a year, public money, in its
pocket, and fifteen thousand more, public money, up behind, will be a
piece of plain, uncompromising truth in the highways, and an honor to the
country and the time.

Ha, ha, ha! You can’t leave the memory of an unassuming, honest,
good-natured, amiable old duke alone, without bespattering it with your
flunkeyism, can’t you? That’s right—and like you! Here are three brass
buttons in my crop. I’ll subscribe ’em all. One, to the statue of Charity;
one, to a statue of Hope; one, to a statue of Faith. For Faith, we’ll have
the Nepaulese Embassador on horseback—being a prince. And for Hope, we’ll
put the Hippopotamus on horseback, and so make a group.

Let’s have a meeting about it!





THE QUAKERS DURING THE AMERICAN WAR. (FROM HOWITT’S COUNTRY YEAR-BOOK.)


George Dilwyn was an American, a remarkable preacher among the Quakers.
About fifty years ago he came over to this country, on what we have
already said is termed a “Religious Visit,” and being in Cornwall, when I
was there, and at George Fox’s, in Falmouth—our aged relative still
narrates—soon became an object of great attraction, not only from his
powerful preaching, but from his extraordinary gift in conversation, which
he made singularly interesting from the introduction of curious passages
in his own life and experience.

His company was so much sought after, that a general invitation was given,
by his hospitable and wealthy entertainer, to all the Friends of the town
and neighborhood to come, and hear, and see him; and evening by evening,
their rooms were crowded by visitors, who sat on seats, side by side, as
in a public lecture-room.

Among other things, he related, that during the time of the revolutionary
war, one of the armies passing through a district in which a great number
of Friends resided, food was demanded from the inhabitants, which was
given to them. The following day the adverse army came up in pursuit, and
stripped them of every kind of provision that remained; and so great was
the strait to which they were reduced, that absolute famine was before
them. Their sufferings were extreme, as day after day went on, and no
prospect of relief was afforded them. Death seemed to stare them in the
face, and many a one was ready to despair. The forests around them were in
possession of the soldiers, and the game, which otherwise might have
yielded them subsistence, was killed or driven away.

After several days of great distress, they retired at night, still without
hope or prospect of succor. How great, then, was their surprise and cause
of thankfulness when, on the following morning, immense herds of wild deer
were seen standing around their inclosures, as if driven there for their
benefit! From whence they came none could tell, nor the cause of their
coming, but they suffered themselves to be taken without resistance; and
thus the whole people were saved, and had great store of provisions laid
up for many weeks.

Again, a similar circumstance occurred near the sea-shore, when the flying
and pursuing armies had stripped the inhabitants, and when, apparently to
add to their distress, the wind set in with such unusual violence, and the
sea drove the tide so far inland, that the people near the shore were
obliged to abandon their houses, and those in the town retreat to their
upper rooms. This also being during the night, greatly added to their
distress; and, like the others, they were ready to despair. Next morning,
however, they found that God had not been unmindful of them; for the tide
had brought up with it a most extraordinary shoal of mackerel, so that
every place was filled with them, where they remained ready taken, without
net or skill of man—a bountiful provision for the wants of the people,
till other relief could be obtained.

Another incident he related, which occurred in one of the back
settlements, when the Indians had been employed to burn the dwellings of
the settlers, and cruelly to murder the people. One of these solitary
habitations was in the possession of a Friend’s family. They lived in such
secure simplicity, that they had hitherto had no apprehension of danger,
and used neither bar nor bolt to their door, having no other means of
securing their dwelling from intrusion than by drawing in the leathern
thong by which the wooden latch inside was lifted from without.

The Indians had committed frightful ravages all around, burning and
murdering without mercy. Every evening brought forth tidings of horror,
and every night the unhappy settlers surrounded themselves with such
defenses as they could muster—even then, for dread, scarcely being able to
sleep. The Friend and his family, who had hitherto put no trust in the arm
of flesh, but had left all in the keeping of God, believing that man often
ran in his own strength to his own injury, had used so little precaution,
that they slept without even withdrawing the string, and were as yet
uninjured. Alarmed, however, at length, by the fears of others, and by the
dreadful rumors that surrounded them, they yielded to their fears on one
particular night, and, before retiring to rest, drew in the string, and
thus secured themselves as well as they were able.

In the dead of the night, the Friend, who had not been able to sleep,
asked his wife if she slept; and she replied that she could not, for her
mind was uneasy. Upon this, he confessed that the same was his case, and
that he believed it would be the safest for him to rise and put out the
string of the latch as usual. On her approving of this, it was done, and
the two lay down again, commending themselves to the keeping of God.

This had not occurred above ten minutes, when the dismal sound of the
war-whoop echoed through the forest, filling every heart with dread, and
almost immediately afterward, they counted the footsteps of seven men pass
the window of their chamber, which was on the ground-floor, and the next
moment the door-string was pulled, the latch lifted, and the door opened.
A debate of a few minutes took place, the purport of which, as it was
spoken in the Indian language, was unintelligible to the inhabitants; but
that it was favorable to them was proved by the door being again closed,
and the Indians retiring without having crossed the threshold.

The next morning they saw the smoke rising from burning habitations all
around them; parents were weeping for their children who were carried off,
and children lamenting over their parents who had been cruelly slain.

Some years afterward, when peace was restored, and the colonists had
occasion to hold conferences with the Indians, this Friend was appointed
as one for that purpose, and speaking in favor of the Indians, he related
the above incident; in reply to which, an Indian observed, that, by the
simple circumstance of putting out the latch-string, which proved
confidence rather than fear, their lives and their property had been
saved; for that he himself was one of that marauding party, and that, on
finding the door open, it was said—“These people shall live; they will do
us no harm, for they put their trust in the GREAT SPIRIT.”

During the whole American revolution, indeed, the Indians, though incited
by the whites to kill and scalp the enemy, never molested the Friends, as
the people of Father Onas, or William Penn, and as the avowed opponents of
all violence. Through the whole war, there were but two instances to the
contrary, and they were occasioned by the two Friends themselves. The one
was a young man, a tanner, who went to his tan-yard and back daily
unmolested, while devastation spread on all sides; but at length,
thoughtlessly carrying a gun to shoot some birds, the Indians, in ambush,
believed that he had deserted his principles, and shot him. The other was
a woman, who, when the dwellings of her neighbors were nightly fired, and
the people themselves murdered, was importuned by the officers of a
neighboring fort to take refuge there till the danger was over. For some
time she refused, and remained unharmed amid general destruction; but, at
length, letting in fear, she went for one night to the fort, but was so
uneasy, that the next morning she quitted it to return to her home. The
Indians, however, believed that she too had abandoned her principles, and
joined the fighting part of the community, and before she reached home she
was shot by them.





A SHILLING’S WORTH OF SCIENCE. (FROM DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD WORDS.)


Dr. Paris has already shown, in a charming little book treating
scientifically of children’s toys, how easy even “philosophy in sport can
be made science in earnest.” An earlier genius cut out the whole alphabet
into the figures of uncouth animals, and inclosed them in a toy-box
representing Noah’s Ark, for the purpose of teaching children their
letters. Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, have been decimated; “yea, the
great globe itself,” has been parceled into little wooden sections, that
their readjustment into a continuous map might teach the infant conqueror
of the world the relative positions of distant countries. Archimedes might
have discovered the principle of the lever and the fundamental principles
of gravity upon a rocking-horse. In like manner he might have ascertained
the laws of hydrostatics, by observing the impetus of many natural and
artificial fountains, which must occasionally have come beneath his eye.
So also the principles of acoustics might even now be taught by the aid of
a penny whistle, and there is no knowing how much children’s nursery games
may yet be rendered subservient to the advancement of science. The famous
Dr. Cornelius Scriblerus had excellent notions on these subjects. He
determined that his son Martinus should be the most learned and
universally well-informed man of his age, and had recourse to all sorts of
devices in order to inspire him even unthinkingly with knowledge. He
determined that every thing should contribute to the improvement of his
mind—even his very dress. He therefore, his biographer informs us,
invented for him a geographical suit of clothes, which might give him some
hints of that science, and also of the commerce of different nations. His
son’s disposition to mathematics—for he was a remarkable child—was
discovered very early by his drawing parallel lines on his bread and
butter, and intersecting them at equal angles, so as to form the whole
superficies into squares. His father also wisely resolved that he should
acquire the learned languages, especially Greek—and remarking, curiously
enough, that young Martinus Scriblerus was remarkably fond of gingerbread,
the happy idea came into his parental head that his pieces of gingerbread
should be stamped with the letters of the Greek alphabet; and such was the
child’s avidity for knowledge, that the very first day he eat down to
_iota_.

When Sir Isaac Newton changed his residence and went to live in
Leicester-place, his next door neighbor was a widow lady, who was much
puzzled by the little she observed of the habits of the philosopher. One
of the Fellows of the Royal Society called upon her one day, when, among
other domestic news, she mentioned that some one had come to reside in the
adjoining house, who she felt certain was a poor mad gentleman. “And why
so?” asked her friend. “Because,” said she, “he diverts himself in the
oddest way imaginable. Every morning when the sun shines so brightly that
we are obliged to draw down the window-blinds, he takes his seat on a
little stool before a tub of soap-suds, and occupies himself for hours
blowing soap-bubbles through a common clay-pipe, which he intently watches
floating about until they burst. He is doubtless,” she added, “now at his
favorite diversion, for it is a fine day; do come and look at him.” The
gentleman smiled; and they went up-stairs, when after looking through the
stair-case window into the adjoining court-yard, he turned round and said,
“My dear lady, the person whom you suppose to be a poor lunatic, is no
other than the great Sir Isaac Newton studying the refraction of light
upon thin plates, a phenomenon which is beautifully exhibited upon the
surface of a common soap-bubble.”

The principle, illustrated by the examples we have given, has been
efficiently followed by the Directors of the Royal Polytechnic Institution
in Regent-street, London. Even the simplest models and objects they
exhibit in their extensive halls and galleries, expound—like Sir Isaac
Newton’s soap-bubble—some important principle of Science or Art.

On entering the Hall of Manufactures (as we did the other day) it was
impossible not to be impressed with the conviction that we are in an
utilitarian age in which the science of Mechanics advances with marvelous
rapidity. Here we observed steam-engines, hand-looms, and machines in
active operation, surrounding us with that peculiar din which makes the
air


    “Murmur, as with the sound of summer-flies.”


Passing into the “Gallery in the Great Hall,” we did not fail to derive a
momentary amusement, from observing the very different objects which
seemed most to excite the attention, and interest of the different
sight-seers. Here, stood obviously a country farmer examining the model of
a steam-plow; there, a Manchester or Birmingham manufacturer looking into
a curious and complicated weaving machine; here, we noticed a group of
ladies admiring specimens of elaborate carving in ivory, and personal
ornaments esteemed highly fashionable at the antipodes; and there, the
smiling faces of youth watching with eager eyes the little boats and
steamers paddling along the Water Reservoir in the central counter. But we
had scarcely looked around us, when a bell rang to announce a lecture on
Voltaic Electricity by Dr. Bachhoffner; and moving with a stream of people
up a short stair-case, we soon found ourselves in a very commodious and
well-arranged theatre. There are many universities and public institutions
that have not better lecture rooms than this theatre in the Royal
Polytechnic Institution. The lecture was elementary and exceedingly
instructive, pointing out and showing by experiments, the identity between
Magnetism and Electricity—light and heat; but notwithstanding the extreme
perspicuity of the Professor, it was our fate to sit next two old ladies
who seemed to be very incredulous about the whole business.

“If heat and light are the same thing,” asked one, “why don’t a flame come
out at the spout of a boiling tea-kettle?”

“The steam,” answered the other, “may account for that.”

“Hush!” cried somebody behind them; and the ladies were silent: but it was
plain they thought Voltaic Electricity had something to do with conjuring,
and that the lecturer might be a professor of Magic. The lecture over, we
returned to the Gallery, where we found the Diving Bell just about to be
put in operation. It is made of cast iron, and weighs three tons; the
interior being provided with seats, and lighted by openings in the crown,
upon which a plate of thick glass is secured. The weighty instrument
suspended by a massive chain to a large swing crane, was soon in motion,
when we observed our skeptical lady-friends join a party and enter, in
order, we presume, to make themselves more sure of the truth of the
diving-bell than they could do of the identity between light and heat. The
bell was soon swung round and lowered into a tank, which holds nearly ten
thousand gallons of water; but we confess our fears for the safety of its
inmates were greatly appeased, when we learned that the whole of this
reservoir of water could be emptied in less than one minute. Slowly and
steadily was the bell drawn up again, and we had the satisfaction of
seeing the enterprising ladies and their companions alight on _terra
firma_, nothing injured excepting that they were greatly flushed in the
face. A man, clad in a water-tight dress and surmounted with a
diving-helmet, next performed a variety of sub-aqueous feats, much to the
amusement and astonishment of the younger part of the audience, one of
whom shouted as he came up above the surface of the water, “Oh! ma’a!
Don’t he look like an Ogre!” and certainly the shining brass helmet and
staring large plate-glass eyes fairly warranted such a suggestion. The
principles of the diving-bell and of the diving-helmet are too well known
to require explanation: but the practical utility of these machines is
daily proved. Even while we now write, it has been ascertained that the
foundations of Blackfriars Bridge are giving way. The bed of the river,
owing to the constant ebb and flow of its waters, has sunk some six or
seven feet below its level since the bridge was built, thus undermining
its foundation; and this effect, it is presumed, has been greatly
augmented by the removal of the old London Bridge, the works surrounding
which operated as a dam in checking the force of the current. These
machines, also, are constantly used in repairing the bottom of docks,
landing-piers, and in the construction of breakwater works, such as those
which are at present being raised at Dover Harbor.

Among other remarkable objects in the museum of natural history we
recognized, swimming upon his shingly bed under a glass case, our old
friend the Gymnotus Electricus, or Electrical Eel. Truly, he is a
marvelous fish. The power which animals of every description possess in
adapting themselves to external and adventitious circumstances, is here
marvelously illustrated, for, notwithstanding this creature is surrounded
by the greatest possible amount of artificial circumstances, inasmuch as
instead of sporting in his own pellucid and sparkling waters of the river
Amazon, he is here confined in a glass prison, in water artificially
heated; instead of his natural food, he is here supplied with fish not
indigenous to his native country, and denied access to fresh air, with
sunlight sparkling upon the surface of the waves—he is here surrounded by
an impure and obscure atmosphere, with crowds of people constantly moving
to and fro and gazing upon him; yet, notwithstanding all these
disadvantageous circumstances, he has continued to thrive; nay, since we
saw him ten years ago, he has increased in size and is apparently very
healthy, notwithstanding that he is obviously quite blind.

This specimen of the Gymnotus Electricus was caught in the river Amazon,
and was brought over to this country by Mr. Potter, where it arrived on
the 12th of August, 1838, when he displayed it to the proprietors of the
Adelaide Gallery. In the first instance, there was some difficulty in
keeping him alive, for, whether from sickness, or sulkiness, he refused
food of every description, and is said to have eaten nothing from the day
he was taken, in March, 1838, to the 19th of the following October. He was
confided upon his arrival to the care of Mr. Bradley, who placed him in an
apartment the temperature of which could be maintained at about
seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, and acting upon the suggestions of Baron
Humboldt, he endeavored to feed him with bits of boiled meat, worms,
frogs, fish, and bread, which were all tried in succession. But the animal
would not touch these. The plan adopted by the London fishmongers for
fattening the common eel was then had recourse to; a quantity of bullock’s
blood was put into the water, care being taken that it should be changed
daily, and this was attended with some beneficial effects, as the animal
gradually improved in health. In the month of October it occurred to Mr.
Bradley to tempt him with some small fish, and the first gudgeon thrown
into the water he darted at and swallowed with avidity. From that period
the same diet has been continued, and he is now fed three times a day, and
upon each occasion is given two or three carp, or perch, or gudgeon, each
weighing from two to three ounces. In watching his movements we observed,
that in swimming about he seems to delight in rubbing himself against the
gravel which forms the bed above which he floats, and the water
immediately becomes clouded with the mucus from which he thus relieves the
surface of his body.

When this species of fish was first discovered, marvelous accounts
respecting them were transmitted to the Royal Society: it was even said
that in the river Surinam, in the western province of Guiana, some existed
twenty feet long. The present specimen is forty inches in length; and
measures eighteen inches round the body; and his physiognomy justifies the
description given by one of the early narrators, who remarked, that the
Gymnotus “resembles one of our common eels, except that its head is flat,
and its mouth wide, like that of a cat-fish, without teeth.” It is
certainly ugly enough. On its first arrival in England, the proprietors
offered Professor Faraday (to whom this country may possibly discover,
within the next five hundred years, that it owes something) the privilege
of experimenting upon him for scientific purposes, and the result of a
great number of experiments, ingeniously devised, and executed with great
nicety, clearly proved the identity between the electricity of the fish
and the common electricity. The shock, the circuit, the spark, were
distinctly obtained: the galvanometer was sensibly affected; chemical
decompositions were obtained; an annealed steel needle became magnetic,
and the direction of its polarity indicated a current from the anterior to
the posterior parts of the fish, through the conductors used. The force
with which the electric discharge is made is also very considerable, for
this philosopher tells us we may conclude that a single medium discharge
of the fish is at least equal to the electricity of a Leyden Battery of
fifteen jars, containing three thousand five hundred square inches of
glass, coated upon both sides, charged to its highest degree. But great as
is the force of a single discharge, the Gymnotus will sometimes give a
double, and even a triple shock, with scarcely any interval. Nor is this
all. The instinctive action it has recourse to in order to augment the
force of the shock, is very remarkable.

The professor one day dropped a live fish, five inches long, into the tub;
upon which the Gymnotus turned round in such a manner as to form a coil
inclosing the fish, the latter representing a diameter across it, and the
fish was struck motionless, as if lightning had passed through the water.
The Gymnotus then made a turn to look for his prey, which having found, he
bolted it, and then went about seeking for more. A second smaller fish was
then given him, which being hurt, showed little signs of life; and this he
swallowed apparently without “shocking it.” We are informed by Dr.
Williamson, in a paper he communicated some years ago to the Royal
Society, that a fish already struck motionless gave signs of returning
animation, which the Gymnotus observing, he instantly discharged another
shock, which killed it. Another curious circumstance was observed by
Professor Faraday—the Gymnotus appeared conscious of the difference of
giving a shock to an animate and an inanimate body, and would not be
provoked to discharge its powers upon the latter. When tormented by a
glass rod, the creature in the first instance threw out a shock, but as if
he perceived his mistake, he could not be stimulated afterward to repeat
it, although the moment the professor touched him with his hands, he
discharged shock after shock. He refused, in like manner, to gratify the
curiosity of the philosophers, when they touched him with metallic
conductors, which he permitted them to do with indifference. It is worthy
of observation, that this is the only specimen of the Gymnotus Electricus
ever brought over alive into this country. The great secret of preserving
his life would appear to consist in keeping the water at an even
temperature—summer and winter—of seventy-five degrees of Fahrenheit. After
having been subjected to a great variety of experiments, the creature is
now permitted to enjoy the remainder of its days in honorable peace, and
the only occasion upon which he is now disturbed, is when it is found
necessary to take him out of his shallow reservoir to have it cleaned,
when he discharges angrily enough shock after shock, which the attendants
describe to be very smart, even though he be held in several thick and
well wetted cloths, for they do not at all relish the job.

The Gymnotus Electricus is not the only animal endowed with this very
singular power; there are other fish, especially the Torpedo and Silurus,
which are equally remarkable, and equally well known. The peculiar
structure which enters into the formation of their electrical organs, was
first examined by the eminent anatomist John Hunter, in the Torpedo; and,
very recently, Rudolphi has described their structure with great exactness
in the Gymnotus Electricus.

Without entering into minute details, the peculiarity of the organic
apparatus of the Electrical Eel seems to consist in this, that it is
composed of numerous _laminæ_ or thin tendinous partitions, between which
exists an infinite number of small cells filled with a thickish gelatinous
fluid. These strata and cells are supplied with nerves of unusual size,
and the intensity of the electrical power is presumed to depend on the
amount of nervous energy accumulated in these cells, whence it can be
voluntarily discharged, just as a muscle may be voluntarily contracted.
Furthermore, there are, it would appear, good reasons to believe that
nervous power (in whatever it may consist) and electricity are identical.
The progress of science has already shown the identity between heat,
electricity, and magnetism; that heat may be concentrated into
electricity, and this electricity reconverted into heat; that electric
force may be converted into magnetic force, and Professor Faraday himself
discovered how, by reacting back again, the magnetic force can be
reconverted into the electric force, and _vice versâ_; and should the
identity between electricity and nervous power be as clearly established,
one of the most important and interesting problems in physiology will be
solved.

Every new discovery in science, and all improvements in industrial art,
the principles of which are capable of being rendered in the least degree
interesting, are in this Exhibition forthwith popularized, and become, as
it were, public property. Every individual of the great public can at the
very small cost of one shilling, claim his or her share in the property
thus attractively collected, and a small amount of previous knowledge or
natural intelligence will put the visitor in actual possession of
treasures which previously “he wot not of,” in so amusing a manner that
they will be beguiled rather than bored into his mind.





A TUSCAN VINTAGE.


All Tuscany had been busy with the vintage. The vintage! Is there a word
more rich to the untraveled Englishman in picturesque significance and
poetical associations? All that the bright south has of glowing coloring,
harmonious forms, teeming abundance, and Saturnian facility, mixed up in
the imagination with certain vague visions of bright black eyes and
bewitching ankles—all this, and more, goes to the making up of the
Englishman’s notion of the vintage. Alas! that it should be needful to
dissipate such charming illusions. And yet it is well to warn those who
cherish these _couleur-de-rose_ imaginings, and who would fain shun a
disagreeable _désenchantement_, that they will do wisely in continuing to
receive their impressions of Italian ruralities from the presentations of
our theatres, and the description of Mrs. Radcliffe. To those inquirers,
however, of sterner mould, who would find truth, be it ever so
disagreeable when found, it must be told that a Devonshire harvesting is
twice as pretty, and a Kentish hop-picking thrice as pretty a scene as any
“vindemia” that the vineyards of Italy can show. The vine, indeed, as
grown in Italy—especially when the fruit is ripe, and the leaves begin to
be tinted with crimson and yellow—is an exceedingly pretty object, rich in
coloring, and elegant in its forms. Nothing but the most obsolete and
backward agriculture, however, preserves these beauties. If good wine and
not pretty crops be the object in view, the vine should be grown as in
France—a low dwarf plant closely pruned, and raised only two or three feet
from the ground; and than such a vineyard nothing can be more ugly.
Classic Italy, however, still cultivates her vines as she did when the
Georgics were written; “marries” them most becomingly and picturesquely to
elms or mulberries, &c, and makes of them lovely festoons and very acrid
wine. Again, it must be admitted that a yoke of huge dove-colored oxen,
with their heavy unwieldy tumbril, is a more picturesque object than an
English wagon and a team of horses. Occasionally, too, may be seen bearing
not ungracefully a blushing burden of huge bunches, a figure, male or
female, who might have sat for a model to Leopold Robert. But despite all
this, the process of gathering the vintage is any thing but a pleasing
sight. In one of the heavy tumbrils I have mentioned, are placed some
twelve or fifteen large pails, some three feet deep, and a foot or so in
diameter. Into these are thrown pell-mell the bunches of fruit, ripe and
unripe, clean and dirty, stalks and all, white and red indiscriminately.
The cart thus laden, the fifteen pails of unsightly, dirty-looking slush,
are driven to the “fattoria,” there to be emptied into vats, which appear,
both to nose and eye, never to have been cleansed since they were made. In
performing this operation much is of course spilt over the men employed,
over the cart, over the ground; and nothing can look less agreeable than
the effect thus produced. Sometimes one large tub occupies the whole
tumbril, the contents of which, on reaching the “fattoria,” have to be
ladled out with buckets. Often the contents of the vat, trodden in one
place—a most unsightly process—have to be transported in huge barrels,
like water-carts, to another place to undergo fermentation. And then the
thick muddy stream, laden with filth and impurities of all sorts, which is
seen when these barrels discharge their cargo, is as little calculated to
give one a pleasing idea of the “ruby wine” which is to be the result of
all this filthy squash, as can well be imagined. Add to this an
exceedingly unpleasant smell in and about all the buildings in which any
part of the wine-making process takes place, and the constant recurrence
of rotting heaps of the refuse matter of the pressed grape under every
wall and hedge in the neighborhood of each “fattoria”—and the notions
connected with the so be-poetized vintage, will be easily understood to be
none of the pleasantest in the minds of those acquainted with its sights
and smells.—_Trollope’s Impressions of a Wanderer._





HOW TO MAKE HOME UNHEALTHY. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.


Emperor Yao (very many years B.C.) established a certain custom, which was
followed, we are told, by his successors on the throne of China. The
custom was this. Outside the hall-door of his palace, he suspended a
tablet and a gong; and if one among his subjects felt himself able to
suggest a good idea to his ruler, or wished to admonish him of any error
in his ways, the critic paid a visit to the palace, wrote what he had to
say upon the tablet, battered at the gong, and ran away. The Emperor came
out; and then, unless it happened that some scapegrace of a schoolboy had
annoyed him by superadding a fly-away knock to a contemptuous
hieroglyphic, he gravely profited by any hint the tablets might convey.
Not unlike honest, patriarchal Yao is our British Public. It is summoned
out to read inscriptions at its door, left there by all who have advice to
give or faults to deprecate. The successors of Yao, finding upon their
score so many conflicting tales, soon substituted for the gong five
instruments of music. It was required, then, that the monitor should
distinguish, by the instrument upon which he performed his summons, what
particular department of imperial duties it might be to which he desired
to call attention. Now not five but fifty voices summon _our_ royal
public. One man courts attention with a dulcet strain, one brays, one
harps upon a string, another drums. And among those who have of late been
busiest in pointing errors out, and drumming at the public’s door to have
them rectified, are they who profess concern about the Public Health.

For the writer who now proposes to address to you, O excellent Public,
through these pages, a Series of Practical Hints as to How to make Home
Unhealthy, we would not have you think that he means to be in any respect
so troublesome as those Sanitary Instructors. The lion on your knocker
gives him confidence; he will leave no disconcerting messages; he will
seek to come into your parlor as a friend. A friend he is; for, with a
polite sincerity, he will maintain in all his arguments that what you do
is what ought always to be done. He knows well that you are not foolish,
and perceives, therefore, what end you have in view. He sees that you are
impressed deeply with a conviction of the vanity of life; that you desire,
accordingly, to prove your wisdom by exhibiting contempt for that which
philosopher after philosopher forbids a thoughtful man to cherish. You
would be proud to have Unhealthy Homes. Lusty carcases, they are for
coarse folk and for the heathen; civilization forbids us to promote animal
development. How can a man look spiritual, if he be not sickly? How can a
woman—Is not Paris the mode? Go, weigh an elegant Parisienne against a
peasant girl from Normandy. It is here proposed, therefore, to honor your
discretion by demonstrating publicly how right you are. Some of the many
methods by which one may succeed in making Home Unhealthy will be here
detailed to you, in order that, as we go on, you may congratulate yourself
on feeling how extremely clever you already are in your arrangements. Here
is a plain purpose. If any citizen, listening to such lessons, think
himself wise, and yet is one who, like good M. Jourdain in the comedy,
_n’applaudit qu’à contresens_—to such a citizen it is enough to say. May
much good come of his perversity!




I. Hints To Hang Up In The Nursery.


In laying a foundation of ill health, it is a great point to be able to
begin at the beginning. You have the future man at excellent advantage
when he is between your fingers as a baby. One of Hoffman’s heroines, a
clever housewife, discarded and abhorred her lover from the moment of his
cutting a yeast dumpling. There are some little enormities of that kind
which really can not be forgiven, and one such is, to miss the opportunity
of physicking a baby. Now I will tell you how to treat the future
pale-face at his first entrance into life.

A little while before the birth of any child, have a little something
ready in a spoon; and, after birth, be ready at the first opportunity, to
thrust this down his throat. Let his first gift from his fellow-creatures
be a dose of physic—honey and calomel, or something of that kind: but you
had better ask the nurse for a prescription. Have ready also, before
birth, an abundant stock of pins; for it is a great point, in putting the
first dress upon the little naked body, to contrive that it shall contain
as many pins as possible. The prick of a sly pin is excellent for making
children cry; and since it may lead nurses, mothers, now and then even
doctors, to administer physic for the cure of imaginary gripings in the
bowels, it may be twice blessed. Sanitary enthusiasts are apt to say that
strings, not pins, are the right fastening for infants’ clothes. Be not
misled. Is not the pincushion an ancient institution? What is to say,
“Welcome, little stranger,” if pins cease to do so? Resist this
innovation. It is the small end of the wedge. The next thing that a child
would do, if let alone, would be to sleep. I would not suffer that. The
poor thing must want feeding; therefore waken it and make it eat a sop,
for that will be a pleasant joke at the expense of nature. It will be like
wakening a gentleman after midnight to put into his mouth some pickled
herring; only the baby can not thank you for your kindness as the
gentleman might do.

This is a golden rule concerning babies: to procure sickly growth, let the
child always suckle. Attempt no regularity in nursing. It is true that if
an infant be fed at the breast every four hours, it will fall into the
habit of desiring food only so often, and will sleep very tranquilly
during the interval. This may save trouble, but it is a device for rearing
healthy children: we discard it. Our infants shall be nursed in no
new-fangled way. As for the child’s crying, quiet costs eighteen-pence a
bottle; so that argument is very soon disposed of.

Never be without a flask of Godfrey’s Cordial, or Daffy, in the nursery;
but the fact is, that you ought to keep a medicine-chest. A good deal of
curious information may be obtained by watching the effects of various
medicines upon your children.

Never be guided by the child’s teeth in weaning it. Wean it before the
first teeth are cut, or after they have learned to bite. Wean all at once,
with bitter aloes or some similar devices; and change the diet suddenly.
It is a foolish thing to ask a medical attendant how to regulate the food
of children; he is sure to be over-run with bookish prejudices; but nurses
are practical women, who understand thoroughly matters of this kind.

Do not use a cot for infants, or presume beyond the time-honored
institution of the cradle. Active rocking sends a child to sleep by
causing giddiness. Giddiness is a disturbance of the blood’s usual way of
circulation; obviously, therefore, it is a thing to aim at in our
nurseries. For elder children, swinging is an excellent amusement, if they
become giddy on the swing.

In your nursery, a maid and two or three children may conveniently be
quartered for the night, by all means carefully secured from draughts.
Never omit to use at night a chimney board. The nursery window ought not
to be much opened; and the door should be kept always shut, in order that
the clamor of the children may not annoy others in your house.

When the children walk out for an airing, of course they are to be little
ladies and gentlemen. They are not to scamper to and fro; a little gentle
amble with a hoop ought to be their severest exercise. In sending them to
walk abroad, it is a good thing to let their legs be bare. The gentleman
papa, probably, would find bare legs rather cold walking in the streets of
London; but the gentleman son, of course, has quite another constitution.
Besides, how can a boy, not predisposed that way, hope to grow up
consumptive, if some pains are not taken with him in his childhood?

It is said that of old time children in the Balearic Islands were not
allowed to eat their dinner, until, by adroitness in the shooting of
stones out of a sling, they had dislodged it from a rafter in the house.
Children in the British Islands should be better treated. Let them not
only have their meals unfailingly, but let them be at all other times
tempted and bribed to eat. Cakes and sweetmeats of alluring shape and
color, fruits, and palatable messes, should, without any regularity, be
added to the diet of a child. The stomach, we know, requires three or four
hours to digest a meal, expects a moderate routine of tasks, and between
each task looks for a little period of rest. Now, as we hope to create a
weak digestion, what is more obvious than that we must use artifice to
circumvent the stomach? In one hour we must come upon it unexpectedly with
a dose of fruit and sugar; then, if the regular dinner have been taken,
astonish the digestion, while at work upon it, with the appearance of an
extra lump of cake, and presently some gooseberries. In this way we soon
triumph over Nature, who, to speak truth, does not permit to us an easy
victory, and does try to accommodate her working to our whims. We triumph,
and obtain our reward in children pale and polite, children with appetites
already formed, that will become our good allies against their health in
after life.

_Principiis obsta._ Let us subdue mere nature at her first start, and make
her civilized in her beginnings. Let us wipe the rose-tint out of the
child’s cheek, in good hope that the man will not be able to recover it.
White, yellow, and purple—let us make them to be his future tricolor.




II. The Londoner’s Garden.


Brick walls do not secrete air. It comes in through your doors and
windows, from the streets and alleys in your neighborhood; it comes in
without scraping its feet, and goes down your throat, unwashed, with small
respect for your gentility. You must look abroad, therefore, for some
elements of an unwholesome home: and when, sitting at home, you do so, it
is a good thing if you can see a burial-ground—one of “God’s gardens,”
which our city cherishes.

Now, do not look up with a dolorous face, saying, “Alas! these gardens are
to be taken from us!” Let agitators write and let Commissioners report,
let Government nod its good-will, and although all the world may think
that our London burial-grounds are about to be incontinently jacketed in
asphalte, and that we ourselves, when dead, are to be steamed off to
Erith—we are content: at present this is only gossip.(1) On one of the
lowest terraces of hell, says Dante, he found a Cordelier, who had been
dragged thither by a logical demon, in defiance of the expostulations of
St. Francis. The sin of that monk was a sentence of advice for which
absolution had been received before he gave it: “Promise much, and perform
little.” In the hair of any Minister’s head, and of every Commissioner’s
head, we know not what “black cherubim” may have entwined their claws.
There is hope, while there is life, for the old cause. But if those who
have authority to do so really have determined to abolish intramural
burial, let us call upon them solemnly to reconsider their verdict. Let
them ponder what follows.

Two or three years ago, a book, promulgating notions upon spiritual life,
was published in London by the Chancellor of a certain place across the
Channel. It was a clever book; and, among other matter, broached a theory.
“_Our souls,_” the Rev. Chancellor informed us, “_consist of the essence,
extract, or gas contained in the human body_;” and, that he might not be
vague, he made special application to a chemist, who “added some important
observations of his own respecting the corpse after death.” But we must
decorate a great speculation with the ornamental words of its propounder.

“The gases into which the animal body is resolved by putrefaction are
ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, cyanogen, and sulphureted,
phosphureted, and carbureted hydrogen. The first, and the two last-named
gases, are most abundant.” We omit here some details as to the time a body
takes in rotting. “From which it appears, that these noble elements and
rich essences of humanity are too subtle and volatile to continue long
with the corpse; but soon disengage themselves, and escape from it. After
which nothing remains but the foul refuse in the vat; the mere _caput
mortuum_ in the crucible; the vile dust and ashes of the tomb. Nor does
inhumation, however deep in the ground, nor drowning in the lowest depths
and darkest caverns of the fathomless abyss, prevent those subtle
essences, rare attenuate spirits, or gases, from escaping; or chain down
to dust those better, nobler elements of the human body. No bars can
imprison them; no vessels detain them from their kindred element, confine
them from their native home.”

We are all of us familiar with the more noticeable of these “essences,” by
smell, if not by name. Metaphysicians tell us that perceptions and ideas
_will_ follow in a train: perhaps that may account for the sudden
recollection of an old-fashioned story—may the moderns pardon it. A young
Cambridge student, airing his wisdom at a dinner-party, was ingenious upon
the Theory of Winds. He was most eloquent concerning heat and cold;
radiation, rarefaction; polar and equatorial currents; he had brought his
peroration to a close, when he turned round upon a grave Professor of his
College, saying, “And what, sir, do you believe to be the cause of wind?”
The learned man replied, “Pea-soup—pea-soup!” In the group of friends
around a social soup-tureen, must we in future recognize


    “The feast of reason, and—the flow of soul!”


How gladly shall we fight the fight of life, hoping that, after death, we
shall meet in a world of sulphureted hydrogen and other gases! And where
do the Sanitary Reformers suppose that, after death, _their_ gases will
go—they who, in life, with asphalte and paving-stones, would have
restrained the souls of their own fathers from ascending into upper air?

Against us let there be no such reproach. Freely let us breathe into our
bosoms some portion of the spirit of the dead. If we live near no
church-yard, let us visit one—Mesmerically, if you please. Now we are on
the way. We see narrow streets and many people; most of the faces that we
meet are pale. Here is a walking funeral; we follow with it to the
church-yard. A corner is turned, and there is another funeral to be
perceived at no great distance in advance. Our walkers trot. The other
party, finding itself almost overtaken, sets off with a decent run. Our
party runs. There is a race for prior attention when they reach the
ground. We become interested. We perceive that one undertaker wears
gaiters, and the other straps. We trot behind them, betting with each
other, you on Gaiters, I on Straps. I win; a _Deus ex machinâ_ saves me,
or I should have lost. An over-goaded ox rushes bewildered round a corner,
charges and overthrows the foremost coffin; it is broken, and the body is
exposed—its white shroud flaps upon the mud. This has occurred once, I
know; and how much oftener, I know not. So Gaiters pioneers his party to
the nearest undertaker for repairs, and we follow the triumphant
procession to the church-yard. The minister there meets it, holding his
white handkerchief most closely to his nose: the mourners imitate him,
sick and sorrowful. Your toe sticks in a bit of carrion, as we pass near
the grave and seek the sexton. He is a pimpled man, who moralizes much;
but his morality is maudlin. He is drunk. He is accustomed to antagonize
the “spirits” of the dead with spirits from the “Pig and Whistle.” Here
let the _séance_ end.

At home again, let us remark upon a striking fact. Those poor creatures
whom we saw in sorrow by the grave, believed that they were sowing flesh
to immortality—and so they were. They did not know that they were also
sowing coffee. By a trustworthy informant, I am taught that of the old
coffin-wood dug up out of the crowded church-yards, a large quantity that
is not burned, is dried and ground; and that ground coffee is therewith
adulterated in a wholesale manner. It communicates to cheap coffee a good
color; and puts Body into it, there can be no doubt of that. It will be a
severe blow to the trade in British coffees if intramural interment be
forbidden. We shall be driven to depend upon distant planters for what now
can be produced in any quantity at home.

Remember the largeness of the interests involved. Within the last thirty
years, a million and a half of corpses have been hidden under ground, in
patches, here and there, among the streets of London. This pasturage we
have enjoyed from our youth up, and it is threatened now to put us off our
feed.

I say no more, for better arguments than these can not be urged on behalf
of the maintenance of City grave-yards. Possibly these may not prevail.
Yet never droop. Nevertheless, without despairing, take a house in the
vicinity of such a garden of the dead. If our lawgivers should fear the
becoming neighborly with Dante’s Cordelier, and therefore absolutely
interdict more burials in London, still you are safe. They shall not
trample on the graves that are. We can agitate, and we will agitate
successfully against their asphalte. Let the City be mindful of its old
renown; let Vestries rally round Sir Peter Laurie, and there may be yet
secured to you, for seven years to come, an atmosphere which shall assist
in making Home Unhealthy.




III. Spending A Very Pleasant Evening.


By the consent of antiquity, it is determined that Pain shall be
doorkeeper to the house of Pleasure. In Europe Purgatory led to Paradise;
and, had St. Symeon lived among us now, he would have earned heaven, if
the police permitted, by praying for it, during thirty years, upon the
summit of a lamp-post. In India the Fakir was beatified by standing on his
head, under a hot sun, beset with roasting bonfires. In Greenland the soul
expected to reach bliss by sliding for five days down a rugged rock,
wounding itself, and shivering with cold. The American Indians sought
happiness through castigation, and considered vomits the most expeditious
mode of enforcing self-denial on the stomach. Some tribes of Africans
believe, that on the way to heaven every man’s head is knocked against a
wall. By consent of mankind, therefore, it is granted that we must pass
Pain on the way to Pleasure.

What Pleasure is, when reached, none but the dogmatical can venture to
determine. To Greenlanders, a spacious fish-kettle, forever simmering, in
which boiled seals forever swim, is the delight of heaven. And remember
that, in the opinion of M. Bailly, Adam and Eve gardened in Nova Zembla.

You will not be surprised, therefore, if I call upon you to prepare for
your domestic pleasures with a little suffering; nor, when I tell you what
such pleasures are, must you exclaim against them as absurd. Having the
sanction of our forefathers, they are what is fashionable now, and
consequently they are what is fit.

I propose, then, that you should give, for the entertainment of your
friends, an Evening Party; and as this is a scene in which young ladies
prominently figure, I will, if you please, on this occasion, pay
particular attention to your daughter.

O mystery of preparation!—Pardon, sir. You err if you suppose me to
insinuate that ladies are more careful over personal adornment than the
gentlemen. When men made a display of manhood, wearing beards, it is
recorded that they packed them, when they went to bed, in pasteboard
cases, lest they might be tumbled in the night. Man at his grimmest is as
vain as woman, even when he stalks about bearded and battle-axed. This is
the mystery of preparation in your daughter’s case: How does she breathe?
You have prepared her from childhood for the part she is to play to-night,
by training her form into the only shape which can be looked at with
complacency in any ball-room. A machine, called stays, introduced long
since into England by the Normans, has had her in its grip from early
girlhood. She has become pale, and—only the least bit—liable to be blue
about the nose and fingers.

Stays are an excellent contrivance; they give a material support to the
old cause, Unhealthiness at Home. This is the secret of their excellence.
A woman’s ribs are narrow at the top, and as they approach the waist they
widen, to allow room for the lungs to play within them. If you can prevent
the ribs from widening, you can prevent the lungs from playing, which they
have no right to do, and make them work. This you accomplish by the agency
of stays. It fortunately happens that these lungs have work to do—the
putting of the breath of life into the blood—which they are unable to do
properly when cramped for space; it becomes about as difficult to them as
it would be to you to play the trombone in a china closet. By this
compression of the chest, ladies are made nervous, and become unfit for
much exertion; they do not, however, allow us to suppose that they have
lost flesh. There is a fiction of attire which would induce, in a
speculative critic, the belief that some internal flame had caused their
waists to gutter, and that the ribs had all run down into a lump which
protrudes behind under the waistband. This appearance is, I think, a
fiction; and for my opinion I have newspaper authority. In the papers it
was written, one day last year, that the hump alluded to was tested with a
pin, upon the person of a lady, coming from the Isle of Man, and it was
found not to be sensitive. Brandy exuded from the wound; for in that case
the projection was a bladder, in which the prudent housewife was smuggling
comfort in a quiet way. The touch of a pin changed all into discomfort,
when she found that she was converted into a peripatetic
watering-can—brandying-can, I should have said.

Your daughter comes down stairs dressed, with a bouquet, at a time when
the dull seeker of Health and Strength would have her to go up stairs with
a bed-candlestick. Your guests arrive. Young ladies, thinly clad and
packed in carriages, emerge, half-stifled; put a cold foot, protected by a
filmy shoe, upon the pavement, and run, shivering, into your house. Well,
sir, we’ll warm them presently. But suffer me to leave you now, while you
receive your guests.

I know a Phyllis, fresh from the country, who gets up at six and goes to
bed at ten; who knows no perfume but a flower-garden, and has worn no
bandage to her waist except a sash. She is now in London, and desires to
do as others do. She is invited to your party, but is not yet come; it may
be well for me to call upon her. Why, in the name of Newgate, what is
going on? She is shrieking “Murder!” on the second floor. Up to the
rescue! A judicious maid directs me to the drawing-room: “It’s only miss
a-trying on her stays.”

Here we are, sir; Phyllis and I. You find the room oppressive—’tis with
perfume, Phyllis. With foul air? ah, your nice country nose detects it;
yes, there is foul air: not nasty, of course, my dear, mixed, as it here
is, with eau-de-Cologne and patchouli. Pills are not nasty, sugared. A
grain or two of arsenic in each might be not quite exactly neutralized by
sugar, but there is nothing like faith in a good digestion. Why do the
gentlemen cuddle the ladies, and spin about the room with them, like
tee-totums? Oh, Phyllis! Phyllis! let me waltz with you. There, do you not
see how it is? Faint, are you—giddy—will you fall? An ice will refresh
you. Spasms next! Phyllis, let me take you home.

Now then, sir, Phyllis has been put to bed; allow me to dance a polka with
your daughter. Frail, elegant creature that she is! A glass of wine—a
macaroon: good. Sontag, yes; and that dear novel. That was a delightful
dance; now let us promenade. The room is close; a glass of wine, an ice,
and let us get to the delicious draught in the conservatory, or by that
door. Is it not beautiful? The next quadrille—I look slily at my watch,
and Auber’s grim chorus rumbles within me, “_Voici minuit! voici minuit_!”
Another dance. How fond she seems to be of macaroons! Supper. My dear sir,
I will take good care of your daughter. One sandwich. Champagne.
Blanc-mange. Tipsey-cake. Brandy cherries. Glass of wine. A macaroon.
Trifle. Jelly. Champagne. Custard. Macaroon. The ladies are being taken
care of—Yes, now in their absence we will drink their health, and wink at
each other: their and our Bad Healths. This is the happiest moment of our
lives; at two in the morning, with a dose of indigestion in the stomach,
and three hours more to come before we get to bed. You, my dear sir, hope
that on many occasions like the present you may see your friends around
you, looking as glassy-eyed as you have made them to look now. We will
rejoin the ladies.

Nothing but Champagne could have enabled us to keep up the evening so
well. We were getting weary before supper—but we have had some wine, have
dug the spur into our sides, and on we go again. At length, even the
bottle stimulates our worn-out company no more; and then we separate.
Good-night, dear sir; we have spent a Very Pleasant Evening under your
roof.

To-morrow, when you depart from a late breakfast, having seen your
daughter’s face, and her boiled-mackerel eye, knowing that your wife is
bilious, and that your son has just gone out for soda-water, you will feel
yourself to be a Briton who has done his duty, a man who has paid
something on account of his great debt to civilized society.




IV. The Light Nuisance.


Tieck tells us, in his “History of the Schildbürger,” that the town
council of that spirited community was very wise. It had been noticed that
many worthy aldermen and common-councilors were in the habit of looking
out of window when they ought to be attending to their duties. A vote was
therefore, on one occasion, passed by a large majority, to this effect,
namely—Whereas the windows of the Town-hall are a great impediment to the
dispatch of public business, it is ordered that before the next day of
meeting they be all bricked up. When the next day of meeting came, the
worthy representatives of Schildbürg were surprised to find themselves
assembling in the dark. Presently, accepting the unlooked-for fact, they
settled down into an edifying discussion of the question, whether darkness
was not more convenient for their purposes than daylight. Had you and I
been there, my friend, our votes in the division would have been, like the
vote in our own House of Commons a few days ago, for keeping out the Light
Nuisance as much as possible. Darkness is better than daylight, certainly.

Now this admits of proof. For, let me ask, where do you find the best part
of a lettuce?—not in the outside leaves. Which are the choice parts of
celery?—of course, the white shoots in the middle. Why, sir? Because light
has never come to them. They become white and luxurious by tying up, by
earthing up, by any contrivance which has kept the sun at bay. It is the
same with man: while we obstruct the light by putting brick and board
where glass suggests itself, and mock the light by picturing impracticable
windows on our outside walls—so that our houses stare about like blind men
with glass eyes—while this is done, we sit at home and blanch, we become
in our dim apartments pale and delicate, we grow to look refined, as
gentlemen and ladies ought to look. Let the sanitary doctor, at whose head
we have thrown lettuces, go to the botanist and ask him, How, is this? Let
him come back and tell us, Oh, gentlemen, in these vegetables the natural
juices are not formed when you exclude the light. The natural juices in
the lettuce or in celery are flavored much more strongly than our tastes
would relish, and therefore we induce in these plants an imperfect
development, in order to make them eatable. Very well. The natural juices
in a man are stronger than good taste can tolerate. Man requires
horticulture to be fit to come to table. To rear the finer sorts of human
kind, one great operation necessary is to banish light as much as
possible.

Ladies know that. To keep their faces pale, they pull the blinds down in
their drawing-rooms, they put a vail between their countenances and the
sun when they go out, and carry, like good soldiers, a great shield on
high, by name a Parasol, to ward his darts off. They know better than to
let the old god kiss them into color, as he does the peaches. They choose
to remain green fruit: and we all know that to be a delicacy.

Yet there are men among us daring to propose that there shall no longer be
protection against light; men who would tax a house by its capaciousness,
and let the sun shine into it unhindered. The so-called sanitary people
really seem to look upon their fellow-creatures as so many cucumbers. But
we have not yet fallen so far back in our development. Disease is a
privilege. Those only who know the tender touch of a wife’s hand, the
quiet kiss, the soothing whisper, can appreciate its worth. All who are
not dead to the tenderest emotions will lament the day when light is
turned on without limit in our houses. We have no wish to be blazed upon.
Frequently pestilence itself avoids the sunny side of any street, and
prefers walking in the shade. Nay, even in one building, as in the case of
a great barrack at St. Petersburg, there will be three calls made by
disease upon the shady side of the establishment for every one visit that
it pays to the side brightened by the sun; and this is known to happen
uniformly, for a series of years. Let us be warned, then. There must be no
increase of windows in our houses; let us curtain those we have, and keep
our blinds well down. Let morning sun or afternoon sun fire no volleys in
upon us. Faded curtains, faded carpets, all ye blinds forbid! But faded
faces are desirable. It is a cheering spectacle on summer afternoons to
see the bright rays beating on a row of windows, all the way down a
street, and failing to find entrance any where. Who wants more windows? Is
it not obvious that, when daylight really comes, every window we possess
is counted one too many? If we could send up a large balloon into the sky,
with Mr. Braidwood and a fire-engine, to get the flames of the sun under,
just a little bit, that would be something rational. More light, indeed!
More water next, no doubt! As if it were not perfectly notorious that in
the articles of light, water, and air, Nature outran the constable. We
have to keep out light with blinds and vails, and various machinery, as we
would keep out cockroaches with wafers; we keep out air with pads and
curtains; and still there are impertinent reformers clamoring to increase
our difficulty, by giving us more windows to protect against the inroads
of those household nuisances.

I call upon consistent Englishmen to make a stand against these
innovators. There is need of all our vigor. In 1848, the repeal of the
window-tax was scouted from the Commons by a sensible majority of
ninety-four. In 1850, the good cause has triumphed only by a precarious
majority of three. The exertions of right-thinking men will not be
wanting, when the value and importance of a little energetic labor is once
clearly perceived.

What is it that the sanitary agitators want? To tan and freckle all their
countrywomen, and to make Britons apple-faced? The Persian hero, Rustum,
when a baby, exhausted seven nurses, and was weaned upon seven sheep a
day, when he was of age for spoon-meat. Are English babies to be Rustums?
When Rustum’s mother, Roubadah, from a high tower first saw and admired
her future husband Zal, she let her ringlets fall, and they were long, and
reached unto the ground; and Zal climbed up by them, and knelt down at her
feet, and asked to marry her. Are British ladies to be strengthened into
Roubadahs, with hair like a ship’s cable, up which husbands may clamber?
In the present state of the mania for public health, it is quite time that
every patriotic man should put these questions seriously to his
conscience.

One topic more. Let it clearly be understood, that against artificial
light we can make no objection. Between sun and candle there are more
contrasts than the mere difference in brilliancy. The light which comes
down from the sky not only eats no air out of our mouths, but it comes
charged with mysterious and subtle principles which have a purifying,
vivifying power. It is a powerful ally of health, and we make war against
it. But artificial light contains no sanitary marvels. When the gas
streams through half a dozen jets into your room, and burns there and
gives light; when candles become shorter and shorter, until they are
“burnt out” and seen no more; you know what happens. Nothing in Nature
ceases to exist. Your camphine has left the lamp, but it has not vanished
out of being. Nor has it been converted into light. Light is a visible
action; and candles are no more converted into light when they are
burning, than breath is converted into speech when you are talking. The
breath, having produced speech, mixes with the atmosphere; gas, camphine,
candles, having produced light, do the same. If you saw fifty wax-lights
shrink to their sockets last week in an unventilated ball-room, yet,
though invisible, they had not left you; for their elements were in the
room, and you were breathing them. Their light had been a sign that they
were combining chemically with the air; in so combining they were changed,
but they became a poison. Every artificial light is, of necessity, a
little workshop for the conversion of gas, oil, spirit, or candle into
respirable poison. Let no sanitary tongue persuade you that the more we
have of such a process, the more need we have of ventilation. Ventilation
is a catchword for the use of agitators, in which it does not become any
person of refinement to exhibit interest.

The following hint will be received thankfully by gentlemen who would be
glad to merit spectacles. To make your eyes weak, use a fluctuating light;
nothing can be better adapted for your purpose than what are called
“mould” candles. The joke of them consists in this, they begin with giving
you sufficient light; but, as the wick grows, the radiance lessens, and
your eye gradually accommodates itself to the decrease: suddenly they are
snuffed, and your eye leaps back to its original adjustment, there begins
another slide, and then leaps back again. Much practice of this kind
serves very well as a familiar introduction to the use of glasses.




V. Passing The Bottle.


A brass button from the coat of Saint Peter, was at one time shown to
visitors among the treasures of a certain church in Nassau; possibly some
traveler of more experience may have met with a false collar from the
wardrobe of Saint Paul. The intellect displayed of old by holy saints and
martyrs, we may reasonably believe to have surpassed the measure of a
bishop’s understanding in the present day; for we have the authority of
eyesight and tradition in asserting that the meanest of those ancient
worthies possessed not less than three skulls, and that a great saint must
have had so very many heads, that it would have built the fortune of a man
to be his hatter. Perhaps some of these relics are fictitious;
nevertheless, they are the boast of their possessors; they are exhibited
as genuine, and thoroughly believed to be so. Sir, did your stomach never
suggest to you that doctored elder-berry of a recent brew had been
uncorked with veneration at some dinner-table as a bottle of old port?
Have you experience of any festive friend, who can commit himself to doubt
about the age and genuineness of his wine? The cellar is the social
relic-chamber; every bin rejoices in a most veracious legend; and, whether
it be over wine or over relics that we wonder, equal difficulties start up
to obstruct our faith.

Our prejudices, for example, run so much in favor of one-headed men, that
we can scarcely entertain the notion of a saint who had six night-caps to
put on when he went to bed, and when he got up in the morning had six
beards to shave. Knowing that the Russians, by themselves, drink more
Champagne than France exports, and that it must rain grapes at Hockheim
before that place can yield all the wine we English label Hock, and
haunted as we are by the same difficulty when we look to other kinds of
foreign wine, we feel a justified suspicion that the same glass of
“genuine old port” can not be indulged in simultaneously by ten people. If
only one man of the number drinks it, what is that eidolon which delights
the other nine?

When George the Fourth was Regent, he possessed a small store of the
choicest wine, and never called for it. There were some gentlemen in his
establishment acquainted with its merits; these took upon themselves to
rescue it from undeserved neglect. Then the prince talked about his
treasure—when little remained thereof except the bottles; and it was to be
produced at a forthcoming dinner-party. The gentlemen, who knew its
flavor, visited the vaults of an extensive wine-merchant, and there they
vainly sought to look upon its like again. “In those dim solitudes and
awful cells” they, groaning in spirit, made a confessor of the merchant,
who, for a fee, engaged to save them from the wrath to come. As an artist
in wine, having obtained a sample of the stuff required, this dealer
undertook to furnish a successful imitation. So he did; for, having filled
those bottles with a wondrous compound, he sent them to the palace just
before the fateful dinner-hour, exhorting the conspirators to take heed
how they suffered any to be left. The compound would become a tell-tale
after twelve hours’ keeping. The prince that evening enjoyed his wine.

The ordinary manufacture of choice wine for people who are not princes,
requires the following ingredients: for the original fluid, cider, or
Common cape, raisin, grape, parsnip, or elder wine; a wine made of rhubarb
(for Champagne); to these may be added water. A fit stock having been
chosen, strength, color, and flavor may be grafted on it. Use is made of
these materials: for color-burnt sugar, logwood, cochineal, red sanders
wood, or elder-berries. Plain spirit or brandy for strength. For nutty
flavor, bitter almonds. For fruitiness, Dantzic spruce. For fullness or
smoothness, honey. For port-wine flavor, tincture of the seeds of raisins.
For bouquet, orris root or ambergris. For roughness or dryness, alum, oak
sawdust, rhatany or kino. It is not necessary that an imitation should
contain one drop of the wine whose name it bears; but a skillful
combination of the true and false is desirable, if price permit. Every
pint of the pure wine thus added to a mixture is, of course, so much
abstracted from the stock of unadulterated juice.

You will perceive, therefore, that a free use of wine, not highly priced,
is likely to assist us very much in our endeavors to establish an
unhealthy home. Fill your cellar with bargains; be a genuine John Bull;
invite your friends, and pass the bottle.

There is hope for us also in the recollection, that if chance force upon
us a small stock of wine that has not been, in England, under the doctor’s
hands, we know not what may have been done to it abroad. The botanist,
Robert Fortune, was in China when the Americans deluged the Chinese market
with their orders for Young Hyson tea. The Chinese very promptly met the
whole demand; and Fortune in his “Wanderings” has told us how. He found
his way to a Young Hyson manufactory, where coarse old Congou leaves were
being chopped, and carefully manipulated by those ingenious merchants the
Chinese. But it is in human nature for other folks than the Chinese to be
ingenious in such matters. We may, therefore, make up our minds that,
since the demand for wine from certain celebrated vineyards, largely
exceeds all possibility of genuine supply, since, also, every man who asks
is satisfied, it is inevitable that the great majority of wine-drinkers
are satisfied with a factitious article. The chances are against our very
often meeting with a glass of port that has not taken physic. So, let us
never drink dear wine, nor ask a chemist what is in our bottles. Enough
that they contain for us delightful poison.

That name for wine, “delightful poison,” is not new. It is as old as the
foundation of Persepolis. Jemsheed was fond of grapes, Ferdusi tells, and
once, when grapes went out of season, stored up for himself some jars of
grape-juice. After a while he went to seek for a refreshing draught; then
fermentation was in progress; and he found his juice abominably nasty. A
severe stomach-ache induced him to believe that the liquor had acquired,
in some way, dangerous qualities, and, therefore, to avoid accidents, he
labeled each jar, “Poison.” More time elapsed, and then one of his wives,
in trouble of soul, weary of life, resolved to put an end to her
existence. Poison was handy: but a draught transformed her trouble into
joy; more of it stupefied, but did not kill her. That woman kept a secret:
she alone exhausted all the jars. Jemsheed then found them to be empty.
Explanations followed. The experiment was tried once more, and wine, being
so discovered, was thereafter entitled “the delightful poison.” What
Jemsheed would have said to a bottle of port out of our friend Hoggin’s
cellar—but I tread on sacred ground.

Of good wine health requires none, though it will tolerate a little. Our
prospect, therefore, when the bottle passes briskly, is encouraging. Is
the wine good, we may expect some indigestion; is it bad, who can tell
what disorders we may not expect? Hoggins, I know, drinks more than a
quart without disordering his stomach. He has long been a supporter of the
cause we are now advocating, and therein finds one of his rewards. It is
not safe to pinch a tiger’s tail; yet, when the animal is sick, perhaps he
will not bite although you tread upon it heavily. Healthy men and healthy
stomachs tolerate no oppression.

London is full now; elsewhere country folks come out of doors, invited by
fine weather. Walk where you will, in country or in town, and look at all
the faces that you meet. Traverse the Strand, and Regent-street, and
Holborn, and Cheapside; get into a boat at London bridge, steam to
Gravesend, and look at your fellow-passengers: examine where you will, the
stamp of our civilization, sickliness, is upon nine people in any ten.
There are good reasons why this should be so, and so let it continue. We
have excluded sanitary calculations from our social life; we have had
hitherto unhealthy homes, and we will keep them. Bede tells of a Mercian
noble on his death-bed, to whom a ghost exhibited a scrap of paper, upon
which were written his good deeds; then the door opened, and an
interminable file of ghosts brought in a mile or two of scroll, whereon
his misdeeds were all registered, and made him read them. Our wars against
brute health are glorious, and we rejoice to feel that of such sins we
have no scanty catalogue; we are content with our few items of mere
sanitary virtue. As for sanitary reformers, they are a company of Danaids;
they may get some of us into their sieve, but we shall soon slip out
again. When a traveler proposed, at Ghadames in the Sahara, to put up a
lantern here and there of nights among the pitch-dark streets, the people
said his notion might be good, but that, as such things never had been
tried before, it would be presumptuous to make the trial of them now. The
traveler, a Briton, must have felt quite at home when he heard that
objection. Amen, then; with the Ghadamese, we say, Let us have no New
Lights.




VI. Art Against Appetite.


The object of food is, to support the body in its natural development that
it may reach a reasonable age without becoming too robust. Civilization
can instruct us so to manage, that a gentle dissolution tread upon the
heels of growth, that, as Metastasio hath it,


                    —“dalle fasce,
    Si comincia a morir quando si nasce.”(2)


An infant’s appetite is all for milk; but art suggests a few additions to
that lamentably simple diet. A lady not long since complacently informed
her medical attendant that, for the use of a baby, then about eight months
old she had spent nine pounds in “Infant’s Preservative.” Of this, or of
some like preparation, the advertisements tells us that it compels Nature
to be orderly, and that all infants take it with greediness. So we have
even justice to the child. Pet drinks Preservative; papa drinks Port.

Then there is “farinaceous food.” Here, for a purpose, we must interpolate
a bit of science. There is a division of food into two great classes,
nourishment and fuel. Nourishment is said to exist chiefly in animal flesh
and blood, and in vegetable compounds which exactly correspond thereto,
called vegetable fibrine, albumen, and caseine. Fuel exists in whatever
contains much carbon: fat and starchy vegetables, potatoes, gum, sugar,
alcoholic liquors. If a person take more nourishment than he wants, it is
said to be wasted; if he take more fuel than he wants, part of it is
wasted, and part of it the body stacks away as fat. These men of science
furthermore assert, that the correct diet of a healthy man must contain
eight parts of fuel food to one of nourishment. This preserves
equilibrium, they say—suits, therefore, an adult; the child which has to
become bigger as it lives has use for an excess of nourishment. And so one
of the doctors, Dr. R.D. Thomson, gives this table; it has been often
copied. The proportion of nourishment to fuel is in

Milk (food for a       1 to 2.
growing animal)
Beans                  1 to
                       2-1/2.
Oatmeal                1 to 5.
Barley                 1 to 7.
Wheat flour (food      1 to 8.
for an animal at
rest)
Potatoes               1 to 9.
Rice                   1 to 10.
Turnips                1 to 11.
Arrow-root, tapioca,   1 to 26.
sago
Starch                 1 to 40.

Very well, gentlemen, we take your facts. As ægritudinary men, we know
what use to make of them. We will give infants farinaceous food;
arrow-root, tapioca, and the like; quite ready to be taught by you that so
we give one particle of nourishment in twenty-six. Tell us, this diet is
like putting leeches on a child. We are content. Leeches give a delicate
whiteness that we are thankful to be able to obtain with out the biting or
the bloodshed.

Sanitary people will allow a child, up to its seventh year, nothing beyond
bread, milk, water, sugar, light meat broth, without fat, and fresh meat
for its dinner—when it is old enough to bite it—with a little well-cooked
vegetable. They confine a child, poor creature, to this miserable fare;
permitting, in due season, only a pittance of the ripest fruit.

They would give children, while they are growing, oatmeal and milk for
breakfast, made into a porridge. They would deny them beer. You know how
strengthening that is, and yet these people say that there is not an ounce
of meat in a whole bucketful. They would deny them comfits, cakes, wine,
pastry, and grudge them nuts; but our boys shall rebel against all this.
We will teach them to regard cake as bliss, and wine as glory; we will
educate them to a love of tarts. Once let our art secure over the stomach
its ascendency, and the civilized organ acquires new desires. Vitiated
cravings, let the sanitary doctors call them; let them say that children
will eat garbage, as young women will eat chalk and coals, not because it
is their nature so to do, but because it is a symptom of disordered
function. We know nothing about function. Art against Appetite has won the
day, and the pale face of civilization is established.

Plain sugar, it is a good thing to forbid our children; there is something
healthy in their love of it. Suppose we tell them that it spoils the
teeth. They know no better; we do. We know that the negroes, who in a
great measure live upon sugar, are quite famous for their sound white
teeth; and Mr. Richardson tells us of tribes among the Arabs of Sahara,
whose beautiful teeth he lauds, that they are in the habit of keeping
about them a stick of sugar in a leathern case, which they bring out from
time to time for a suck, as we bring out the snuff-box for a pinch. But we
will tell our children that plain sugar spoils the teeth; sugar mixed with
chalk or verdigris, or any other mess—that is to say, civilized sugar—they
are welcome to.

And for ourselves, we will eat any thing. The more our cooks, with spice,
with druggery and pastry, raise our wonder up, the more we will approve
their handicraft. We will excite the stomach with a peppered soup; we will
make fish indigestible with melted butter, and correct the butter with
cayenne. We will take sauces, we will drink wine, we will drink beer, we
will eat pie-crust, we will eat indescribable productions—we will take
celery, and cheese, and ale—we will take liqueur—we will take wine and
olives and more wine, and oranges and almonds, and any thing else that may
present itself, and we will call all that our dinner, and for such the
stomach shall accept it. We will eat more than we need, but will compel an
appetite. Art against Appetite forever.

Sanitary people bear ill-will to pie-crust; they teach that butter, after
being baked therein, becomes a compound hateful to the stomach. We will
eat pies, we will eat pastry, we will eat—we would eat M. Soyer himself in
a tart, if it were possible.

We will uphold London milk. Mr. Rugg says that it is apt to contain chalk,
the brains of sheep, oxen, and cows, flour, starch, treacle, whiting,
sugar of lead, arnotto, size, etc. Who cares for Mr. Rugg? London milk is
better than country milk, for London cows are town cows. They live in a
city, in close sheds, in our own dear alleys—are consumptive—they are
delightful cows; only their milk is too strong, it requires watering and
doctoring, and then it is delicious milk.

Tea we are not quite sure about. Some people say that because tea took so
sudden a hold upon the human appetite, because it spread so widely in so
short a time, that therefore it supplies a want: its use is natural.
Liebig suggests that it supplies a constituent of bile. I think rather
that its use has become general because it causes innocent intoxication.
Few men are not glad to be made cheerful harmlessly. For this reason I
think it is that the use of tea and coffee has become popular; and since
whatever sustains cheerfulness advances health—the body working with good
will under a pleasant master—tea does our service little good. In excess,
no doubt, it can be rendered hurtful (so can bread and butter); but the
best way of pressing it into employment, as an ægritudinary aid, is by the
practice of taking it extremely hot. A few observations upon the
temperature at which food is refused by all the lower animals, will soon
convince you that in man—not as regards tea only, but in a great many
respects—Art has established her own rule, and that the Appetite of Nature
has been conquered.

We have a great respect for alcoholic liquors. It has been seen that the
excess of these makes fat; they, therefore, who have least need of fat,
according to our rules, are those who have most need of wine and beer.

Of ordinary meats there is not much to say, We have read of Dr. Beaumont’s
servant, who had an open musket-hole leading into his stomach, through
which the doctor made experiments. Many experiments were made, and tables
drawn of no great value on the digestibility of divers kinds of meat.
Climate and habit are, on such points, paramount. Pig is pollution to the
children of the Sun, the Jew, and Mussulman; but children of winter, the
Scandinavians, could not imagine Paradise complete without it. Schrimner,
the sacred hog, cut up daily and eaten by the tenants of Walhalla,
collected his fragments in the night, and was in his sty again ready for
slaughter the next morning. These things concern us little, for it is not
with plain meat that we have here to do, but with the noble art of
Cookery. That art, which once obeyed and now commands our appetite, which
is become the teacher where it was the taught, we duly reverence. When
ægritudinary science shall obtain its college, and when each Unhealthy
Course shall have its eminent professor to teach Theory and Practice—then
we shall have a Court of Aldermen for Patrons, a Gravedigger for
Principal, and a Cook shall be Dean of Faculty.




VII. The Water Party.


Water rains from heaven, and leaps out of the earth; it rolls about the
land in rivers, it accumulates in lakes; three-fourths of the whole
surface of the globe is water; yet there are men unable to be clean. “God
loveth the clean,” said Mahomet. He was a sanitary reformer; he was a
notorious impostor; and it is our duty to resist any insidious attempt to
introduce his doctrines.

There are in London districts of filth which speak to us—through the
nose—in an emphatic manner. Their foul air is an atmosphere of charity;
for we pass through it pitying the poor. Burke said of a certain miser to
whom an estate was left, “that now, it was to be hoped, he would set up a
pocket-handkerchief.” We hope, of the miserable, that when they come into
their property they may be able to afford themselves a little lavender and
musk. We might be willing to subscribe for the correction now and then,
with aromatic cachou, of the town’s bad breath; but water is a vulgar sort
of thing, and of vulgarity the less we have the better.

In truth, we have not much of it. We are told that in a great city Water
is maid of all work; has to assist our manufactures, to supply daily our
saucepans and our tea-kettles; has to cleanse our clothes, our persons,
and our houses; to provide baths, to wash our streets, and to flood away
the daily refuse of the people, with their slaughter-houses, markets,
hospitals, &c. Our dozen reservoirs in London yield a supply daily
averaging thirty gallons to each head—which goes partly to make swamps,
partly to waste, partly to rot, as it is used in tubs or cisterns. Rome in
her pride used once to supply water at the rate of more than three hundred
gallons daily to each citizen. That was excess. In London half a million
of people get no water at all into their houses; but as those people live
in the back settlements, and keep out of our sight, their dirt is no great
matter of concern. We, for our own parts, have enough to cook with, have
whereof to drink, wherewith to wash our feet sometimes, to wet our fingers
and the corner of a towel—we inquire no further. Drainage and all such
topics involve details positively nasty, and we blush for any of our
fellow-citizens who take delight in chattering about them.

We are told to regard the habits of an infant world. London, the brain of
a vast empire, is advised now to forget her civilization, and to go back
some thousand years. We are to look at Persian aqueducts, attributed to
Noah’s great-grandson—at Carthaginians, Etruscans, Mexicans—at what Rome
did. It frets us when we are thus driven to an obvious reply. Man in an
unripe and half-civilized condition, has not found out the vulgarity of
water; for his brutish instinct is not overcome. All savages believe that
water is essential to their life and desire it in unlimited abundance.
Cultivation teaches us another life, in which our animal existence neither
gets nor merits much attention. As for the Romans, so perpetually quoted,
it was a freak of theirs to do things massively. While they were yet
almost barbarians, they built that Cloaca through which afterward Agrippa
sailed down to the Tiber in a boat. Who wishes to see His Worship the Lord
Mayor of London emerging in his state barge from a London sewer?

Now here is inconsistency. Thirty million gallons of corruption are added
daily by our London sewers to the Thames: that is one object of complaint,
good in itself, because we drink Thames water. But in the next breath it
is complained that a good many million gallons more should be poured out;
that there are three hundred thousand cesspools more to be washed up; that
as much filth as would make a lake six feet in depth, a mile long, and a
thousand feet across, lies under London stagnant; and they would wish this
also to be swept into the river. I heard lately of a gentleman who is
tormented with the constant fancy that he has a scorpion down his back. He
asks every neighbor to put in his hand and fetch it out, but no amount of
fetching out ever relieves him. That is a national delusion. Our
enlightened public is much troubled with such scorpions. Sanitary writers
are infested with them.

They also say, That in one-half of London people drink Thames water; and
in the other half, get water from the Chadwell spring and River Lea. That
the River Lea, for twenty miles, flows through a densely-peopled district.
and is, in its passage, drenched with refuse matter from the population on
its banks. That there is added to Thames water the waste of two hundred
and twenty cities, towns, and villages; and that between Richmond and
Waterloo-bridge more than two hundred sewers discharge into it their fetid
matter. That the washing to and fro of tide secures the arrival of a large
portion of filth from below Westminster, at Hammersmith; effects a perfect
mixture, which is still farther facilitated by the splashing of the
steamboats. Mr. Hassal has published engravings of the microscopic aspect
of water taken from companies which suck the river up at widely-separated
stages of its course through town—so tested, one drop differs little from
another in the degree of its impurity. They tell us that two companies—the
Lambeth and West Middlesex—supply Thames Mixture to subscribers as it
comes to them; but that others filter more or less. They say that
filtering can expurge nothing but mechanical impurities, while the
dissolved pollution which no filter can extract is that part which
communicates disease. We know this; well, and what then? There are
absurdities so lifted above ridicule, that Momus himself would spoil part
of the fun if he attempted to trangress beyond a naked statement of them.
What do the members of this Water Party want? I’ll tell you what I verily
believe they are insane enough to look for.

They would, if possible, forsake Thames water, calling it dirty, saying it
is hard. So hard they say it is, that it requires three spoonfuls of tea
instead of two in every man’s pot, two pounds of soap for one in every
man’s kitchen. So they would fetch soft water from a Gathering Ground in
Surrey, adopting an example set in Lancashire; from rain-fall on the
heaths between Bagshot and Farnham, and from tributaries of the River Wey,
they would collect water in covered reservoirs, and bring it by A COVERED
AQUEDUCT to London. In London, they would totally abolish cisterns, and
all intermittence of supply. Water in London they would have to be, as at
Nottingham, accessible in all rooms at all times. They would have water,
at high pressure, climbing about every house in every court and alley.
They would place water, so to speak, at the finger’s end, limiting no
household as to quantity. They would enable every man to bathe. They would
revolutionize the sewer-system, and have the town washed daily, like a
good Mahometan, clean to the finger-nails. They hint that all this might
not even be expensive; that the cost of disease and degradation is so much
greater than the cost of health and self-respect, as to pay back,
possibly, our outlay, and then yield a profit to the nation. They say
that, even if it were a money loss, it would be moral gain; and they ask
whether we have not spent millions, ere now, upon less harmless
commodities than water?

An ingenious fellow had a fiddle—all, he said, made out of his own head;
and wood enough was left to make another. He must have been a sanitary
man; his fiddle was a crotchet. Still farther to illustrate their own
capacity of fiddle-making, these good but misguided people have been
rooting up some horrible statistics of the filth and wretchedness which
our back-windows overlook, with strange facts anent fever, pestilence, and
the communication of disease. All this I purposely suppress; it is
peculiarly disagreeable. Delicate health we like, and will learn gladly
how to obtain it; but results we are content with, and can spare the
details, when those details bring us into contact, even upon paper, with
the squalid classes.

If these outcries of the Water Party move the public to a thirst for
change, it would be prudent for us ægritudinary men not rashly to swim
against the current. Let us adopt a middle course, a patronizing tone. It
is in our favor that a large number of the facts which these our foes have
to produce, are, by a great deal too startling to get easy credit. A
single Pooh! has in it more semblance of reason than a page of facts, when
revelations of neglected hygiene are on the carpet. If the case of the
Sanitary Reformers had been only half as well made out, it would be twice
as well supported.




VIII. Filling The Grave.


M. Boutigny has published an account of some experiments which go to prove
that we may dip our fingers into liquid metal with impunity. Professor
Plücker, of Bonn, has amply confirmed Boutigny’s results, and in his
report hints a conclusion that henceforth “certain minor operations in
surgery may be performed with least pain by placing the foot in a bath of
red-hot iron.” Would you not like to see Professor Plücker, with his
trowsers duly tucked up, washing his feet in a pailful of this very
soothing fluid? And would it not be a fit martyrdom for sanitary doctors,
if we could compel them also to sacrifice their legs in a cause, kin to
their own, of theory and innovation? As Alderman Lawrence shrewdly
remarked the other day, from his place in the Guildhall, the sanitary
reform cry is “got up.” That is the reason why, in his case, it does not
go down. He, for his own part, did not disapprove the flavor of a
church-yard, and appeared to see no reason why it should be cheated of its
due. The sanitary partisans, he said, were paid for making certain
statements. It would be well if we could cut off their supply of
halfpence, and so silence them. Liwang, an ancient Emperor of China,
fearing insurrection, forbade all conversation, even whispering, in his
dominions. It would be well for us if Liwang lived now as our Secretary
for the Home Department. There is too much talking—is there not, Mr.
Carlyle? We want Liwang among us. However, as matters stand, it is bad
enough for the sanitary reformers. “They drop their arms and tremble when
they hear,” they are despised by Alderman Lawrence.(3)

Let us uphold our city grave-yards; on that point we have already spoken
out. Let us not cheat them of their pasturage; if any man fall sick, when,
so to speak, his grave is dug, let us not lift him out of it by
misdirected care. That topic now engages our attention.

There is a report among the hear-say stories of Herodotus, touching some
tribe of Scythians, that when one of them gets out of health, or passes
forty years of age, his friends proceed to slaughter him, lest he become
diseased, tough, or unfit for table. These people took their ancestors
into their stomachs, we take ours into our lungs—and herein we adopt the
better plan, because it is the more unwholesome. We are content, also, now
and then to let our friends grow old, although we may repress the tendency
to age as much as possible. We do not absolutely kill our neighbors when
they sicken; yet by judicious nursing we may frequently keep down a too
great buoyancy of health, and check recovery. How to produce this last
effect I will now tell you. Gentle mourners, do not chide me as
irreverent—


    “Auch ich war in Arkadien geboren,”


bear with me, then, and let me give my hints concerning ægritudinary
sick-room discipline.

Of the professional nurse I will say nothing. You, of course, have put
down Mrs. Gamp’s address.

A sick-room should, in the first place, be made dark. Light, I have said
before, is, in most cases, curative. It is a direct swindling of the
doctor when we allow blinds to be pulled up, and so admit into the
patient’s room medicine for which nobody (except the tax-gatherer) is
paid.

A sick-room should, in the next place, be made sad, obtrusively sad. A
smile upon the landing must become a sigh when it has passed the patient’s
door. Our hope is to depress, to dispirit invalids. Cheerful words and
gentle laughter, more especially where there is admitted sunshine also,
are a moral food much too nutritious for the sick.

The sick-room, in its furniture as well, must have an ominous appearance.
The drawers, or a table should be decked with physic bottles. Some have a
way of thrusting all the medicine into a cupboard, out of sight, leaving a
glass of gayly-colored flowers for the wearied eyes to rest upon: this has
arisen obviously from a sanitary crotchet, and is, on no account, to be
adopted.

Then we must have the sick-room to be hot, and keep it close. A scentless
air, at summer temperature, sanitary people want; a hot, close atmosphere
is better suited to our view. Slops and all messes are to be left standing
in the room—only put out of sight—and cleared away occasionally; they are
not to be removed at once. The chamber also is to be made tidy once a day,
and once a week well cleaned: it is not to be kept in order by incessant
care, by hourly tidiness, permitting no dirt to collect.

There is an absurd sanitary dictum, which I will but name. It is, that a
patient ought to have, if possible, two beds, one for the day, and one for
night use; or else two sets of sheets, that, each set being used one day
and aired the next, the bed may be kept fresh and wholesome. Suppose our
friend were to catch cold in consequence of all this freshness!

No, we do better to avoid fresh air; nor should we vex our patient with
much washing. We will not learn to feed the sick, but send their food away
when they are unable to understand our clumsiness.

Yet, while we follow our own humor in this code of chamber practice, we
will pay tithes of mint and cummin to the men of science. We will ask
Monsieur Purgon how many grains of salt go to an egg; and if our patient
require twelve turns up and down the room, we will inquire with Argan,
whether they are to be measured by its length or breadth.

When we have added to our course some doses of religious horror, we shall
have done as much as conscience can demand of us toward filling the grave.

I may append here the remark, that if ever we do resolve to eat our
ancestors, there is the plan of a distinguished horticulturist apt for our
purpose. Mr. Loudon, I believe it was, who proposed, some years ago, the
conversion of the dead into rotation crops—that our grandfathers and
grandmothers should be converted into corn and mangel-wurzel. His
suggestion was to combine burial with farming operations. A field was to
be, during forty years, a place of interment: then the field adjacent was
to be taken for that purpose; and so on with others in rotation. A due
time having been allowed for the manure in each field to rot, the dead
were to be well worked up and gradually disinterred in the form of wheat,
or carrots, or potatoes.

Nothing appears odd to which we are accustomed. We look abroad and wonder,
but we look at home and are content. The Esquimaux believe that men dying
in windy weather are unfortunate, because their souls, as they escape,
risk being blown away. Some Negroes do not bury in the rainy season, for
they believe that then the gods, being all busy up above, can not attend
to any ceremonies. Dr. Hooker writes home from the Himalaya mountains,
that about Lake Yarou the Lamas’ bodies are exposed, and kites are
summoned to devour them by the sound of a gong and of a trumpet made out
of a human thigh-bone. Such notions from abroad arrest our notice, but we
see nothing when we look at home. We might see how we fill our sick-rooms
with a fatal gloom, and keep our dead five or six days within our houses,
to bury them, side by side and one over another, thousands together, in
the middle of our cities. However, when we do succeed in getting at a view
of our own life _ab extra_, it is a pleasant thing to find that sanitary
heresies at any rate have not struck deep root in the British soil. In an
old book of emblems there is a picture of Cupid whipping a tortoise, to
the motto that Love hates delay. If lovers of reform in sanitary matters
hate delay, it is a pity; for our good old tortoise has a famous shell,
and is not stimulated easily.




IX. The Fire And The Dressing-Room.


Against the weather all men are Protectionists—all men account it matter
of offense. What say the people of the north? A Highland preacher, one
December Sunday, in the fourth hour of his sermon—For be it known to
Englishmen who nod at church, that in the Highlands, after four good hours
of prayer and psalm, there follow four good hours of sermon. And, _nota
bene_, may it not be that the shade of our King Henry I. does penance
among Highland chapels now, for having, in his lifetime, made one Roger a
bishop because he was expert in scrambling through the services?—A
Highland pastor saw his congregation shivering. “Ah!” he shouted, “maybe
ye think this a cauld place; but, let me tell ye, hell’s far caulder!” An
English hearer afterward reproached this minister for his perversion of
the current faith. “Hout, man,” said he, “ye dinna ken the Hielanders. If
I were to tell them hell was a hot place, they’d all be laboring to go
there.” And that was true philosophy. Mytholog

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