Library Notes Part 9

overflowed with benevolence and learning, and was noted for his absence of mind. He had been chaplain of a regiment during Marlborough's wars; and "meditating one evening upon the glories of nature, and the goodness of Providence, he walked straight into the camp of the enemy; nor was he aroused from his reverie till the hostile sentinel shouted, 'Who goes there?' The commanding officer, finding that he had come among them in simplicity and not in guile, allowed him to return, and lose himself, if he pleased, in meditations on his danger and deliverance.") It is said that certain roguish young ladies, Dyer's cousins, lacking due reverence for learning and poetry, were wont to heap all sorts of meats upon the worthy gentleman's plate at dinner, he being lost in conversation until near the close of the repast, when he would suddenly recollect himself and fall to till he had finished the whole. Talfourd, speaking of Lamb and Dyer, says, "No contrast could be more vivid than that presented by the relations of each to the literature they both loved,--one divining its inmost essences, plucking out the heart of its mysteries, shedding light on its dimmest recesses; the other devoted with equal a.s.siduity to its externals. Books, to Dyer, 'were a real world, both pure and good;'

among them he pa.s.sed, unconscious of time, from youth to extreme old age, vegetating on their dates and forms, and 'trivial fond records,' in the learned air of great libraries, or the dusty confusion of his own, with the least possible apprehension of any human interest vital in their pages, or of any spirit of wit or fancy glancing across them. His life was an academic pastoral. Methinks I see his gaunt, awkward form, set off by trousers too short, like those outgrown by a gawky lad, and a rusty coat as much too large for the wearer, hanging about him like those garments which the aristocratic Milesian peasantry prefer to the most comfortable rustic dress; his long head silvered over with short yet straggling hair, and his dark gray eyes glistening with faith and wonder, as Lamb satisfies the curiosity which has gently disturbed his studies as to the authorship of the Waverley Novels, by telling him, in the strictest confidence, that they are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna. Off he runs, with animated stride and shambling enthusiasm, nor stops till he reaches Maida Hill, and breathes his news into the startled ear of Leigh Hunt, who, 'as a public writer,' ought to be possessed of the great fact with which George is laden! Or shall I endeavor to revive the bewildered look with which just after he had been announced as one of Lord Stanhope's executors and residuary legatees, he received Lamb's grave inquiry whether it was true, as commonly reported, that he was to be made a lord? 'Oh dear, no, Mr. Lamb,' responded he with earnest seriousness, but not without a moment's quivering vanity. 'I could not think of such a thing; it is not true, I a.s.sure you.' 'I thought not,' said Lamb, 'and I contradict it wherever I go. But the government will not ask your consent; they may raise you to the peerage without your ever knowing it.' 'I hope not, Mr. Lamb; indeed--indeed, I hope not. It would not suit me at all,' responded Dyer, and went his way musing on the possibility of a strange honor descending on his reluctant brow. Or shall I recall the visible presentment of his bland unconsciousness of evil when his sportive friend taxed it to the utmost by suddenly asking what he thought of the murderer Williams, who, after destroying two families in Ratcliffe Highway, had broken prison by suicide, and whose body had just before been conveyed in shocking procession to its cross-road grave? The desperate attempt to compel the gentle optimist to speak ill of a mortal creature produced no happier success than the answer, 'Why, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been rather an eccentric character.'" Honest, simple soul! My Uncle Toby over again, for all the world.

What a contrast with all these ailing souls was the magnificent Christopher North! You remember the scene of his triumph on the occasion of his first lecture to the moral philosophy cla.s.s in the University of Edinburgh. It deserves to be thought of along with the "trial scenes" we have been reviewing. The contest for the professorship had been bitterly fought over a period of four months, with Sir William Hamilton for compet.i.tor,--Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Malthus being only possible candidates. Austerity and prejudice--essential and saintly elements in all good Scotsmen--instinctively combined against him, and inveterately pursued him. "When it was found useless to gainsay his mental qualifications for the office, or to excite odium on the ground of his literary offenses, the attack was directed against his moral character, and it was broadly insinuated that this candidate for the chair of ethics was himself a man of more than doubtful morality; that he was, in fact, not merely a 'reveler,' and a 'blasphemer,' but a bad husband, a bad father, a person not fit to be trusted as a teacher of youth." A "bad husband" to the good woman he thus memorably characterized in a letter to one of his friends: "I was this morning married to Jane Penney, and doubt not of receiving your blessing, which, from your brotherly heart, will delight me, and doubtless not be unheard by the Almighty. She is gentleness, innocence, sense, and feeling, surpa.s.sed by no woman, and has remained pure, as from her Maker's hands;" the mother of all those children he loved so,--the death of whom, in his ripe manhood and in the bloom of his fame, nearly broke his heart! Sir Walter and other powerful friends repelled the slanders. Wilson triumphed.

Still he was pursued; his enemies determined he should be put down, humiliated, even in his own cla.s.s-room. An eye-witness thus describes the scene on the occasion of the delivery of the professor's first lecture: "There was a furious bitterness of feeling against him among the cla.s.ses of which probably most of his pupils would consist, and although I had no prospect of being among them, I went to his first lecture, prepared to join in a cabal, which I understood was formed to put him down. The lecture-room was crowded to the ceiling. Such a collection of hard-browed, scowling Scotsmen, muttering over their k.n.o.bsticks, I never saw. The professor entered with a bold step, amid profound silence. Every one expected some deprecatory or propitiatory introduction of himself and his subject, upon which the ma.s.s was to decide against him, reason or no reason; but he began in a voice of thunder right into the matter of his lecture, kept up unflinchingly and unhesitatingly, without a pause, a flow of rhetoric such as Dugald Stewart or Thomas Brown, his predecessors, never delivered in the same place. Not a word, not a murmur escaped his captivated, I ought to say his conquered audience, and at the end they gave him a downright unanimous burst of applause. Those who came to scoff remained to praise." The ruling cla.s.ses in educational matters could not conceive of the fitness of a man like Wilson for the moral philosophy chair in a university. The giant he was physically, with appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions to match, he was a reproach to the feeble, a terror to the timid, and a horror to the "unco guid, or the rigidly righteous." The truth of him was such an exaggeration of the average man that the scholars and pedagogues and parsons could only look upon him as a monster, with a character as monstrous as his nature. He is described as "long-maned and mighty, whose eyes were 'as the lightnings of fiery flame,' and his voice like an organ ba.s.s; who laid about him, when the fit was on, like a t.i.tan, breaking small men's bones; who was loose and careless in his apparel, even as in all things he seemed too strong and primitive to heed much the niceties of custom." In his youth, he "ran three miles for a wager against a chaise," and came out ahead. Somewhat later he "gained a bet by walking, toe and heel, six miles in two minutes within the hour." When he was twenty-one, height five feet eleven inches, weight eleven stone, he leaped, with a run, twenty-three feet "on a slightly inclined plane, perhaps an inch to a yard," and "was admitted to be (Ireland excepted) the best far leaper of his day in England." He could jump twelve yards in three jumps, with a great stone in each hand. "With him the angler's silent trade was a ruling pa.s.sion. He did not exaggerate to the Shepherd in the Noctes, when he said that he had taken 'a hundred and thirty in one day out of Loch Aire,' as we see by his letters that even larger numbers were taken by him." Of his pugilistic skill, it is said by De Quincey that "there was no man who had any talents, real or fancied, for thumping or being thumped, but he had experienced some preening of his merits from Mr. Wilson." "Meeting one day with a rough and unruly wayfarer, who showed inclination to pick a quarrel concerning right of pa.s.sage across a certain bridge, the fellow obstructed the way, and making himself decidedly obnoxious, Wilson lost all patience, and offered to fight him. The man made no objection to the proposal, but replied that he had better not fight with him, as he was so and so, mentioning the name of a (then not unknown) pugilist. This statement had, as may be supposed, no effect in dampening the belligerent intentions of the Oxonian; he knew his own strength, and his skill too. In one moment off went his coat, and he set to upon his antagonist in splendid style. The astonished and punished rival, on recovering from his blows and surprise, accosted him thus: 'You can only be one of the two: you are either Jack Wilson or the devil.'" His pedestrian feats were marvelous. "On one occasion," writes an old cla.s.smate of Wilson's at Oxford, "having been absent a day or two, we asked him, on his return to the common room, where he had been. He said, In London. When did you return? This morning. How did you come? On foot.

As we all expressed surprise, he said, 'Why, the fact is, I dined yesterday with a friend in Grosvenor (I think it was) Square, and as I quitted the house, a fellow who was pa.s.sing was impertinent and insulted me, upon which I knocked him down; and as I did not choose to have myself called in question for a street row, I at once started, as I was, in my dinner dress, and never stopped until I got to the college gate this morning, as it was being opened.' Now this was a walk of fifty-eight miles at least, which he must have got over in eight or nine hours at most, supposing him to have left the dinner-party at nine in the evening." Some years later, he walked--his wife accompanying him--"three hundred and fifty miles in the Highlands, between the 5th of July and the 26th of August, sojourning in divers glens from Sabbath unto Sabbath, fishing, eating, and staring." Mrs. Wilson returned from this wonderful tour "bonnier than ever," and Wilson himself, to use his own phrase, "strong as an eagle." One of their resting-places was at the school-master's house in Glenorchy. While there "his time was much occupied by fishing, and distance was not considered an obstacle. He started one morning at an early hour to fish in a loch which at that time abounded in trout, in the Braes of Glenorchy, called Loch Toila.

Its nearest point was thirteen miles distant from his lodgings at the school-house. On reaching it, and uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the b.u.t.t-end of his fishing-rod to get the top, he found he had it not. Nothing daunted, he walked back, breakfasted, got his fishing-rod, made all complete, and off again to Loch Toila. He could not resist fishing on the river when a pool looked inviting, but he went always onward, reaching the loch a second time, fished round it, and found that the long summer day had come to an end. He set off for his home again with his fishing-basket full, and confessing somewhat to weariness. Pa.s.sing near a farm-house whose inmates he knew (for he had formed acquaintance with all), he went to get some food. They were in bed, for it was eleven o'clock at night, and after rousing them, the hostess hastened to supply him; but he requested her to get him some whisky and milk. She came with a bottle full, and a can of milk, with a tumbler. Instead of a tumbler, he requested a bowl, and poured the half of the whisky in, along with half the milk. He drank the mixture at a draught, and while his kind hostess was looking on with amazement, he poured the remainder of the whisky and milk into the bowl, and drank that also. He then proceeded homeward, performing a journey of not less than seventy miles." Prodigious! It beat the achievement of Phidippides, who, according to tradition, ran from Athens to Sparta, one hundred and twenty miles, in two days. But here is a street scene, related to his daughter by a lady who saw it, which ill.u.s.trates the tremendous professor of moral philosophy still further. "One summer afternoon, as she was about to sit down to dinner, her servant requested her to look out of the window, to see a man cruelly beating his horse. The sight not being a very gratifying one, she declined, and proceeded to take her seat at table. It was quite evident that the servant had discovered something more than the ill-usage of the horse to divert his attention, for he kept his eyes fixed on the window, again suggesting to his mistress that she ought to look out. Her interest was at length excited, and she rose to see what was going on. In front of her house (Moray Place) stood a cart of coals, which the poor victim of the carter was unable to drag along. He had been beating the beast most unmercifully, when at that moment Professor Wilson, walking past, had seen the outrage and immediately interfered.

The lady said that from the expression of his face, and vehemence of his manner, the man was evidently 'getting it,' though she was unable to hear what was said. The carter, exasperated at this interference, took up his whip in a threatening way, as if with the intent to strike the professor. In an instant that well-nerved hand twisted it from the coa.r.s.e fist of the man as if it had been a straw, and walking quietly up to the cart he unfastened its trams, and hurled the whole weight of coals into the street. The rapidity with which this was done left the driver of the cart speechless. Meanwhile, poor Rosinante, freed from his burden, crept slowly away, and the professor, still clutching the whip in one hand, and leading the horse in the other, proceeded through Moray Place to deposit the wretched animal in better keeping than that of his driver." Another of his "interferences" occurred during vacation time, in the south of Scotland, when the professor had exchanged the gown for the old "sporting jacket." "On his return to Edinburgh, he was obliged to pa.s.s through Hawick, where, on his arrival, finding it to be fair-day, he readily availed himself of the opportunity to witness the amus.e.m.e.nts going on. These happened to include a 'little mill' between two members of the local 'fancy.' His interest in pugilism attracted him to the spot, where he soon discovered something very wrong, and a degree of injustice being perpetrated which he could not stand. It was the work of a moment to espouse the weaker side, a proceeding which naturally drew down upon him the hostility of the opposite party. This result was to him, however, of little consequence. There was nothing for it but to beat or be beaten. He was soon 'in position;' and, before his unknown adversary well knew what was coming, the skilled fist of the professor had planted such a 'facer' as did not require repet.i.tion. Another 'round' was not called for; and leaving the discomfited champion to recover at his leisure, the professor walked coolly away to take his seat in the stage-coach, about to start for Edinburgh." Is it any wonder that such a gigantic specimen of human nature was thought by the steady-going and saintly Edinburghers, who tried men by mathematics and the catechism, to be preposterously unfit for the chair of ethics in their hallowed university? They did not know then that the monster they hunted was capable of producing a description of a fairy's funeral--one of the most exquisite bits of prose composition in literature, which is said to have so impressed Lord Jeffrey's mind that he never was tired of repeating it. Read it, and say you if anybody but Christopher North could have written it: "There it was, on a little river island, that once, whether sleeping or waking we know not, we saw celebrated a fairy's funeral. First we heard small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to the night winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly instrument was the scarce audible dirge! It seemed to float over the stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the fairy anthem came floating over our couch, and then alighting without footsteps among the heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if living creatures were arranging themselves in order, and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn.

The harmony was like the melting of musical dew-drops, and sang, without words, of sorrow and death. We opened our eyes, or rather sight came to them when closed, and dream was vision. Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among the rocks; and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers unknown to the Highland hills; and on the bier a fairy lying with uncovered face, pale as a lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter and fainter, and then died quite away; when two of the creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one at the head, the other at the foot of the bier.

They sang alternate measures, not louder than the twitter of the awakened woodlark before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The flower-bier stirred; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever, the very dews glittering above the buried fairy. A cloud pa.s.sed over the moon; and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then the disenthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before, through all her streams and falls; and at the sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of the moon, we awoke."

XI.

TYPES.

"It never rains but it pours," is the pat proverb of all the world to express its belief in the inevitableness and omnipotence of extremes.

Carlyle has enlarged upon it significantly, in that famous pa.s.sage in which he likens men collectively to sheep. Like sheep, he says, are we seen ever running in torrents and mobs, if we ever run at all. "Neither know we, except by blind habit, where the good pastures lie: solely when the sweet gra.s.s is between our teeth, we know it, and chew it; also when the gra.s.s is bitter and scant, we know it,--and bleat and b.u.t.t: these last two facts we know of a truth, and in very deed. Thus do men and sheep play their parts on this nether earth; wandering restlessly in large ma.s.ses, they know not whither; for most part, each following his neighbor, and his own nose. Nevertheless, not always; look better, you shall find certain that do, in some small degree, know whither. Sheep have their bell-wether, some ram of the folds, endued with more valor, with clearer vision than other sheep; he leads them through the wolds, by height and hollow, to the woods and water-courses, for covert or for pleasant provender; courageously marching, and if need be leaping, and with hoof and horn doing battle, in the van: him they courageously, and with a.s.sured heart, follow. Touching it is, as every herdsman will inform you, with what chivalrous devotedness these woolly hosts adhere to their wether; and rush after him, through good report and through bad report, were it into safe shelters and green thymy nooks, or into asphaltic lakes and the jaws of devouring lions. Even also must we recall that fact which we owe Jean Paul's quick eye: 'If you hold a stick before the wether, so that he, by necessity, leaps in pa.s.sing you, and then withdraw your stick, the flock will nevertheless all leap as he did; and the thousandth sheep shall be found impetuously vaulting over air, as the first did over an otherwise impa.s.sable barrier.'"

Society is always swaying backward and forward--vibrating, like the pendulum, from one extreme to another; for a moment only, now and then, is it upright, and governed by reason. Moderation is hateful to it.

There is a pretty pa.s.sage in one of Lucian's dialogues, where Jupiter complains to Cupid that, though he has had so many intrigues, he was never sincerely beloved. In order to be loved, says Cupid, you must lay aside your aegis and your thunder-bolts, and you must curl and perfume your hair, and place a garland on your head, and walk with a soft step, and a.s.sume a winning, obsequious deportment. But, replied Jupiter, I am not willing to resign so much of my dignity. Then, replied Cupid, leave off desiring to be loved. He wanted to be Jupiter and Adonis at the same time. "It is natural," says Brackenridge, in Modern Chivalry, "to distrust him who proposes to stop short of what seems a complete reform.

We are right, say the people. You are right, says the man of prudence.

We were wrong, say the people. You were wrong, says the same man." The majority rules. In the grove of Gotama lived a Brahman, who, having bought a sheep in another village, and carrying it home on his shoulder to sacrifice, was seen by three rogues, who resolved to take the animal from him by the following stratagem: Having separated, they agreed to encounter the Brahman on his road as if coming from different parts. One of them cried out, "O Brahman! why dost thou carry that dog on thy shoulder?" "It is not a dog," replied the Brahman; "it is a sheep for sacrifice." As he went on, the second knave met him, and put the same question; whereupon the Brahman, throwing the sheep on the ground, looked at it again and again. Having replaced it on his shoulder, the good man went with mind wavering like a string. But when the third rogue met him and said, "Father, where art thou taking that dog?" the Brahman, believing his eyes bewitched, threw down the sheep and hurried home, leaving the thieves to feast on that which he had provided for the G.o.ds.

The world grows tired of admiring, and delights to limit its admiration.

"Garrick," said Hazlitt, "kept up the fever of public admiration as long as anybody, but when he returned to the stage after a short absence no one went to see him." "The old Earl of Norwich, who," said Sir William Temple, "was esteemed the greatest wit in Charles the First's reign, when Charles the Second came to the throne was thought nothing of."

Happy if the world's favorite to-day be not its victim to-morrow.

Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon was greeted with such enthusiasm that Bourrienne said to him, "It must be delightful to be greeted with such demonstrations of enthusiastic admiration." "Bah!" replied Napoleon, "this same unthinking crowd, under a slight change of circ.u.mstances, would follow me just as eagerly to the scaffold." "I have," said an eminent American general to Baron de Hubner, "the greatest horror of popular demonstrations. These very men who deafen you with their cheers to-day are capable of throwing stones and mud at you to-morrow." Mirabeau, on a famous occasion, amid the threatening clamors of an angry crowd, said, "A few days ago I too was to be carried in triumph, and now they are bawling through the streets, 'the great treason of the Count of Mirabeau.' This lesson was not necessary to remind me that the distance is short between the Capitol and the Tarpeian Rock." "What throngs! what acclamations," exclaimed the flatterers of Cromwell, when he was proclaimed Protector of the Commonwealth of England. Cromwell replied, "There would be still more, if they were going to hang me." The mult.i.tudes that went before and that followed Christ into Jerusalem, crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest," "cried out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? and they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him." Madame Roland wrote from her prison-cell to Robespierre, "It is not, Robespierre, to excite your compa.s.sion, that I present you with a picture less melancholy than the truth. I am above asking your pity; and were it offered, I should perhaps deem it an insult. I write for your instruction. Fortune is fickle; and popular power is liable to change." "Society," said Macaulay, writing of Byron, "capricious in its indignation, as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage with its froward and petted darling. He had been worshiped with an irrational idolatry. He was persecuted with an irrational fury." Junius, in the celebrated letter, warns the king that "while he plumes himself upon the security of his t.i.tle to the crown, he should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another." The Jews, said Luther, have a story of a king of Bashan, whom they call Og; they say he had lifted a great rock to throw at his enemies, but G.o.d made a hole in the middle, so that it slipped down upon the giant's neck, and he could never rid himself of it.

Causes of good or evil seem to acc.u.mulate, when a very slight thing is the beginning of a succession of blessings or curses. All things conspire, till the recipients of blessings are smothered, or the victims of curses are crushed. Till the cup is full, overflowing; till the burden is unbearable, merciless; till good becomes satiety, or evil cruelty, all the world seems to delight in contributing or robbing, deifying or anathematizing.

"Never stoops the soaring vulture On his quarry in the desert, On the sick or wounded bison, But another vulture, watching From his high aerial lookout, Sees the downward plunge and follows; And a third pursues the second, Coming from the invisible ether, First a speck, and then a vulture, Till the air is dark with pinions.

So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise Round their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish."

"What a noise out-of-doors!" exclaimed Souvestre's Philosopher from his attic in Paris. "What is the meaning of all these shouts and cries? Ah!

I recollect: this is the last day of the carnival, and the maskers are pa.s.sing. Christianity has not been able to abolish the noisy baccha.n.a.lian festivals of the pagan times, but it has changed the names.

That which it has given to these 'days of liberty' announces the ending of the feasts, and the month of fasting which should follow; 'carn-a-val' means literally 'down with flesh meat!' It is a forty days'

farewell to the 'blessed pullets and fat hams,' so celebrated by Pantagruel's minstrel. Man prepares for privation by satiety, and finishes his sins thoroughly before he begins to repent. Why, in all ages and among every people, do we meet with some one of these mad festivals? Must we believe that it requires such an effort for men to be reasonable, that the weaker ones have need of rest at intervals. The monks of La Trappe, who are condemned to silence by their rule, are allowed to speak once in a month, and on this day, they all talk at once from the rising to the setting of the sun."

It is reported of Scaramouche, the first famous Italian comedian, that being in Paris, and in great want, he bethought himself of constantly plying near the door of a noted perfumer in that city, and when any one came out who had been buying snuff, never failed to desire a taste of them: when he had by this means got together a quant.i.ty made up of several different sorts, he sold it again at a lower rate to the same perfumer, who, finding out the trick, called it "snuff of a thousand flowers." The story further tells us that by this means he got a very comfortable subsistence, until, making too great haste to grow rich, he one day took such an unreasonable pinch out of the box of a Swiss officer as engaged him in a quarrel, and obliged him to quit this ingenious way of life.

"I remember," says c.u.mberland, in his Memoirs, "the predicament of an ingenious mechanic and artist, who, when Rich the harlequin was the great dramatic author of his time, and wrote successfully for the stage, contrived and executed a most delicious serpent for one of those inimitable productions, in which Mr. Rich, justly disdaining the weak aid of language, had selected the cla.s.sical fable, if I rightly recollect, of Orpheus and Eurydice, and, having conceived a very capital part for the serpent, was justly anxious to provide himself with a performer who could support a character of that consequence with credit to himself and his author. The event answered his most ardent hopes: nothing could be more perfect than his entrances and exits; nothing ever crawled across the stage with more accomplished sinuosity than this enchanting serpent; every one was charmed with its performance; it twirled and twisted, and wriggled itself about in so divine a manner, that the whole world was ravished by the lovely snake; n.o.bles and non-n.o.bles, rich and poor, old and young, reps and demi-reps, flocked to see it and admire it. The artist, who had been the master of the movement, was intoxicated with his success; he turned his hand and head to nothing else but serpents; he made them of all sizes; they crawled about his shop as if he had been chief snake-catcher to the furies; the public curiosity was satisfied with one serpent, and he had nests of them yet unsold; his stock lay dead upon his hands, his trade was lost, and the man was ruined, bankrupt, and undone."

Lecky observes that when, after long years of obstinate disbelief, the reality of the great discovery of Harvey dawned upon the medical world, the first result was a school of medicine which regarded man simply as an hydraulic machine, and found the principle of every malady in imperfections of circulation.

In the Arctic region, says Dr. Kane, the frost is so intense as to burn.

Sudden putrefaction of meat takes place at a temperature of thirty-five degrees below zero. The Greenlanders consider extreme cold as favorable to putrefaction. The Esquimaux withdraw the viscera immediately after death, and fill the cavity with stones. Dr. Kane was told that the musk ox is sometimes tainted after five minutes exposure to great cold. In Italy, south of the great alluvial plain of Lombardy, and away from the immediate sea-coast, the lakes occupy the craters of extinguished volcanoes. In Arabia, travelers declare, the silence of the desert is so profound that it soon ceases to be soothing or solemn, and becomes absolutely painful, if not appalling. In Java, that magnificent and fearful clime, the most lovely flowers are found to conceal hidden reptiles; the most tempting fruits are tinctured with subtle poisons; there grow those splendid trees whose shadow is death; there the vampire, an enormous bat, sucks the blood of the victims whose sleep he prolongs, by wafting over them an air full of freshness and perfume.

Darwin, in his Voyage, speaks of the strange mixture of sound and silence which pervades the shady parts of the wood on the sh.o.r.e of Brazil. The noise from the insects is so loud that it may be heard even in a vessel anch.o.r.ed several hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e; yet within the recesses of the forest a universal silence appears to reign. At Syracuse, an English gentleman was taken to a dirty cistern; seventy women were washing, with their clothes tucked up, and themselves standing in a pool,--a disgusting scene. "What do you bring me here for?" said he to the guide. "Why, sir, this is the Fountain of Arethusa." In the Fourth Circle of Dante's h.e.l.l are the souls of the Prodigal and the Avaricious: they are forever rolling great weights, and forever smiting each other. "To all eternity," says the poet, "they shall continue b.u.t.ting one another." A dung-hill at a distance, said Coleridge, sometimes smells like musk, and a dead dog like elder-flowers. Scargill declared that an Englishman is never happy but when he is miserable; a Scotchman is never at home but when he is abroad; an Irishman is at peace only when he is fighting. The melancholy, says Horace, hate the merry, the jocose the melancholy; the volatile dislike the sedate, the indolent the stirring and vivacious; the modest man generally carries the look of a churl. Meyer, in conversation with Goethe, said he saw a shoemaker in Italy who hammered his leather upon the antique marble head of a Roman emperor. The lark, that sings out of the sky, purifies himself, like the pious Mussulman, in the dust of the ground. The nightingale, they say, sings with his breast against a thorn. The fragrant white pond lily springs from the same black mud out of which the yellow lily sucks its obscene life and noisome odor. An elephant, that no quadruped has the temerity to attack, is said to be the favorite victim of a worm that bores into his foot and slowly tortures him to death. A gnat, according to a tradition of the Arabs, overcame the mighty Nimrod. Enraged at the destruction of his G.o.ds by the prophet Abraham, he sought to slay him, and waged war against him. But the prophet prayed to G.o.d, and said, "Deliver me, O G.o.d, from this man, who worships stones, and boasts himself to be the lord of all beings;" and G.o.d said to him, "How shall I punish him?" And the prophet answered, "To Thee armies are as nothing, and the strength and power of men likewise. Before the smallest of thy creatures will they perish." And G.o.d was pleased at the faith of the prophet, and he sent a gnat, which vexed Nimrod night and day, so that he built a room of gla.s.s in his palace, that he might dwell therein, and shut out the insect. But the gnat entered also, and pa.s.sed by his ear into his brain, upon which it fed, and increased in size day by day, so that the servants of Nimrod beat his head with a hammer continually, that he might have some ease from his pain; but he died, after suffering these torments for four hundred years.

"The grandiose statues of Michel Angelo," said a traveler, descanting upon the art and architecture of old Rome, "appear to the greatest advantage under the bold arches of Bramante. There--between those broad lines, under those prodigious curves--placed in one of those courts, or near one of the great temples where the perspective is incomplete--the statues of Michel Angelo display their tragic att.i.tudes, their gigantic members, which seem animated by a ray from the divinity, and struggling to mount from earth to heaven. Bramante and Michel Angelo detested but completed each other. Thus it is often in human nature. Those two men knew not that they were laborers in the same work. And history is silent upon such points till death has pa.s.sed over her heroes. Armies have fought until they have been almost annihilated on the field of battle; men have hated and injured one another by their calumnies; the learned and powerful persecute and seek to blot their fellows from the earth, as if there was not air and s.p.a.ce for all; they know not, blinded by their pa.s.sions, and warped by the prejudices of envy, that the future will blend them in the same glory, that to posterity they will represent but one sentiment. Bramante and Michel Angelo, enemies during life, are reconciled in immortality."

See how the extremes in morals and legislation met during the few years of English history covering the Protectorate and the Restoration.

Puritanism and liberty of conscience, whose exponents were Cromwell and Milton, met licentiousness and corrupted loyalty, with Charles II. and Wycherley for representatives. Cromwell was "Puritanism armed and in power;" Milton was its apostle and poet. Charles II. was kingcraft besotted; Wycherley its jester and pimp. Cromwell--farmer, preacher, soldier, party leader, prince--radical, stern, hopeful; Charles--debauchee, persecuting skeptic, faithless ruler; Milton--lofty in his Paradise; Wycherley--nasty in his Love in a Wood, and Country Wife. "A larger soul never dwelt in a house of clay," said one who had been much about Cromwell, after his death, when flattery was mute. "Old Goat" was the name given to Charles by one who knew him best. Cromwell, "after all his battles and storms, and all the plots of a.s.sa.s.sins against his life, died of grief at the loss of his favorite daughter, and of watching at her side." Charles went out of life in a fit, the result of his horrible excesses, if not of poison,--as said and believed by many, administered by one of his own numerous mistresses.

First, "the Puritans," says Macaulay, "interdicted, under heavy penalties, the use of the Book of Common Prayer, not only in churches, but in private houses. It was a crime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent one of those beautiful collects which had soothed the griefs of forty generations of Christians. Severe punishments were denounced against such as should presume to blame the Calvinistic mode of worship. Clergymen of respectable character were not only ejected from their benefices by thousands, but were frequently exposed to the outrages of a fanatical rabble. Churches and sepulchres, fine works of art and curious remains of antiquity, were brutally defaced. The Parliament resolved that all pictures in the royal collection which contained representations of Jesus or of the Virgin Mother should be burned. Sculpture fared as ill as painting. Nymphs and graces, the work of Ionian chisels, were delivered over to Puritan stone-masons to be made decent. Against the lighter vices the ruling faction waged war with a zeal little tempered by humanity or by common-sense. Public amus.e.m.e.nts, from the masks which were exhibited at the mansions of the great down to the wrestling matches and grinning matches on village greens, were vigorously attacked. One ordinance directed that all the May-poles in England should forthwith be hewn down. One of the first resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament was that no person should be admitted into the public service till the house should be satisfied with his real G.o.dliness."

Suddenly the wheel turned. "The same people who, by a solemn objurgation, had excluded even the posterity of their lawful sovereign, exhausted themselves in festivals and rejoicings for his return."

Restored royalty "made it a crime to attend a dissenting place of worship. A single justice of the peace might convict without a jury, and might, for a third offense, pa.s.s sentence of transportation beyond the sea, or for seven years. The whole soul of the restored church was in the work of crushing the Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by the party which preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulence and honor by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee-deep in blood for her cathedrals and palaces, for every line of her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the debauched cavalier haunted brothels and gambling-houses, he at least avoided conventicles. If he ever spoke without uttering ribaldry and blasphemy, he made some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe to jail for preaching and praying. The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and under the special sanction of the head of the church, publicly recited by female lips in female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's Progress languished in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel to the poor. Then came those days never to be recalled without a blush--the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave.

The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the manners of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of G.o.d and man, was a second time driven forth to wander on the face of the earth, and be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations."

The morality of the court was exhibited in the character of the sovereign, according to whose ethics "every person was to be bought; but some people haggled more about their price than others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very skillful, it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which clever men kept up the price of their abilities was called integrity. The chief trick by which handsome women kept up the price of their beauty was called modesty. The love of G.o.d, the love of country, the love of family, the love of friends, were phrases of the same sort, delicate and convenient synonyms for the love of self."

A great licentiousness, says Emerson, treads on the heels of a reformation. How many times in the history of the world has the Luther of the day had to lament the decay of piety in his own household!

"Doctor," said his wife to Martin Luther, one day, "how is it that, whilst subject to papacy, we prayed so often and with such fervor, whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom?" "The courtiers of Charles II. were very dissolute because the Puritans were too strict; Addison and Steele were respectable because Congreve and Wycherley were licentious; Wesley was zealous because the church had become indifferent; the revolution of 1789 was a reaction against the manners of the last century, and the revolution in running its course set up a reaction against itself." "The drawing a certain positive line in morals," says Hazlitt, "beyond which a single false step is irretrievable, makes virtue formal, and vice desperate." "Puritanism,"

says Taine, "had brought on an orgie, and fanatics had talked down the virtues."

"To what a place you come in search of knowledge!" exclaimed a bitter republican to Castelar, in the streets of Rome, during the reign of the pope, not long before Victor Emanuel. "Here everybody is interested about lottery tickets; no one for an idea of the human brain. The commemoration of the anniversary of Shakespeare has been prohibited in this city of the arts. Her censorship is so wise that when a certain writer wished to publish a book on the discoveries of Volta, she let loose on him the thunders of the Index, thinking it treated of Voltairianism--a philosophy which leaves neither repose nor digestion to our cardinals. On the other hand, a cabalistic and astrological book, professing to divine the caprices of the lottery, has been printed and published under the pontifical seal, as containing nothing contrary to religion, morals, or sovereign authority. Rabelais knew this city--Rabelais. On arriving, in place of writing a dissertation on dogmas, he penned one on lettuces, the only good and fresh articles in this cursed dungeon. And priest though he was, a priest of the sixteenth century, more religious than our generation, he had a long correspondence with the pious Bishop of Maillezais on the children of the pope; for the reverend prelate had especially charged him to ascertain whether the Cavaliere Pietro Luis Farnese was the lawful or illegitimate son of his holiness. Believe me, Rabelais knew Rome."

An old letter-writer, inditing from Paris, said, "Nakedness is so innocent here! In a refined city, one gets back to the first chapter of Genesis; the extremes meet, and Paradise and Paris get together."

What opposite characters were the leaders in the Reformation. The monks said the egg was laid by Erasmus, hatched by Luther. "On the other hand," says Motley, "he was reviled for not taking side manfully with the reformer. The moderate man received much denunciation from zealots on either side. He soon clears himself, however, from all suspicions of Lutheranism. He is appalled by the fierce conflict which rages far and wide. He becomes querulous as the mighty besom sweeps away sacred dust and consecrated cobwebs. 'Men should not attempt everything at once,' he writes, 'but rather step by step. That which men cannot approve they must look at through the fingers. If the G.o.dlessness of mankind requires such fierce physicians as Luther, if man cannot be healed with soothing ointments and cooling drinks, let us hope that G.o.d will comfort, as repentant, those whom he has punished as rebellious. If the dove of Christ--not the owl of Minerva--would only fly to us, some measure might be put to the madness of mankind.' Meantime, the man whose talk is not of doves and owls, the fierce physician, who deals not with ointments and cooling draughts, strides past the crowd of gentle quacks to smite the foul disease. Devils, thicker than tiles on house-tops, scare him not from his work. Bans and bulls, excommunications and decrees, are rained upon his head. The paternal emperor sends down dire edicts, thicker than hail upon the earth. The Holy Father blasts and raves from Rome. Louvain doctors denounce, Louvain hangmen burn, the bitter, blasphemous books. The immoderate man stands firm in the storm, demanding argument instead of illogical thunder; shows the hangmen and the people, too, outside the Elster gate at Wittenberg, that papal bulls will blaze as merrily as heretic scrolls."

Erasmus was a philosophical thinker; Luther a bold actor. The former would reform by the slow processes of education; the latter by revolution. "Without Erasmus," says Froude, "Luther would have been impossible; and Erasmus really succeeded--so much of him as deserved to succeed--in Luther's victory." Erasmus said, "There is no hope for any good. It is all over with quiet learning, thought, piety, and progress; violence is on one side and folly on the other; and they accuse me of having caused it all. If I joined Luther I could only perish with him, and I do not mean to run my neck into the halter. Popes and emperors must decide matters. I will accept what is good, and do as I can with the rest. Peace on any terms is better than the justest war." Luther said, "I take Erasmus to be the worst enemy that Christ has had for a thousand years. Intellect does not understand religion, and when it comes to the things of G.o.d it laughs at them." "Whenever I pray," he said, "I pray for a curse upon Erasmus."

Melancthon was as different from Luther as Erasmus. He was the theologian of the three,--so much so that the scholars were all jealous of him. Sir Thomas More wrote to Erasmus that Tyndale had seen Melancthon in Paris; that Tyndale was afraid "if France should receive the word of G.o.d by him, it would be confirmed in the faith of the Eucharist contrary to the sect of the Wickliffites." "I have been born,"

said Luther, "to war and fight with factions and devils, therefore my books are stormy and warlike. I must root out the stumps and stocks, cut away the thorns and hedges, fill up the ditches, and am the rough forester, to break a path and make things ready. But master Philip walks gently and silently, tills and plants, sows and waters with pleasure, as G.o.d has gifted him richly." When Melancthon arose to preach on one occasion, he took this for a text: "I am the good shepherd." In looking round upon his numerous and respectable audience, his natural timidity entirely overcame him, and he could only repeat the text over and over again. Luther, who was in the pulpit with him, at length impatiently exclaimed, "You are a very good sheep!" and telling him to sit down, took the same text, and preached an excellent discourse from it.

Coming down to later times, and to characters more purely literary, what could more beautifully ill.u.s.trate the harmony of opposites, so often observable in literature and life, than the intimacy which existed between Professor Wilson and Dr. Blair? The course and habit of Dr.

Blair's life "were like the smooth, deep water; serene, undisturbed to outer eye; and the very repose that was about him had a charm for the restless, active energy of his friend, who turned to this gentle and meek nature for mental rest. I have often seen them sitting together,"

says Mrs. Gordon, "in the quiet retirement of the study, perfectly absorbed in each other's presence, like school-boys in the abandonment of their love for each other, occupying one seat between them, my father, with his arm lovingly embracing 'the dear doctor's' shoulders, playfully pulling the somewhat silvered locks to draw his attention to something in the tome spread out on their knees, from which they were both reading. Such discussions as they had together hour upon hour!

Shakespeare, Milton--always the loftiest themes--never weary in doing honor to the great souls from whom they had learnt so much. Their voices were different, too: Dr. Blair's soft and sweet as that of a woman; the professor's sonorous, sad, with a nervous tremor: each revealing the peculiar character of the man."

G.o.dwin and Rough (to whom some of Lamb's most amusing letters were written) met at a dinner-party for the first time. The very next day, it is stated, G.o.dwin called on a friend (a fellow-guest) to say how much he liked Rough, adding: "By the way, do you think he would lend me fifty pounds just now, as I am in want of a little money?" He had not left his friend an hour before Rough came with a like question. He wanted a bill discounted, and asked whether his friend thought G.o.dwin would do it for him. The habit of both was so well known that some persons were afraid to invite them, lest it should lead to an application for a loan from some acquaintance who chanced to be present.

Northcote mentioned to Hazlitt an instance of some young country people who had to sleep on the floor in the same room, and they parted the men from the women by some sacks of corn, which served for a line of demarcation and an inviolable part.i.tion between them. Hazlitt spoke of a countrywoman, who, coming to an inn in the west of England, wanted a bed; and being told they had none to spare, still persisted, till the landlady said in a joke, "I tell you, good woman, I have none, unless you can prevail with the ostler to give you half of his." "Well," said she, "if he is a sober, prudent man, I shall not mind." The Princess Borghese (Bonaparte's sister), who was no saint, sat to Canova for a model, and being asked, "If she did not feel a little uncomfortable,"

answered, "No, there was a fire in the room."

In the same character opposite faculties and qualities are sometimes so blended as to give very mysterious results. Every reader knows how difficult it often is to separate the irony and seriousness of Swift and De Foe, so very nicely they run together. Pure imagination is so realistic as to appear indubitable truth. The History of the Plague is an example; and Robinson Crusoe: what boy ever doubted the truth of the narrative? or, while he was reading them, the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, incredible as they are? There is a story of a peasant and The Vicar of Wakefield. The dull rustic was a slow reader, and could get through but a few pages in a long evening; yet he was absorbed by the story, and read it as if it were a veritable history. A wag in the family, discerning the situation, thought to amuse himself by putting back the book-mark each morning nearly to the point the man had read from the previous evening, so that it turned out he was all winter getting through the little volume. When he had finished it, the wag asked him his opinion of it. He answered that it was good,--that he had no doubt every word of it was true,--but it did seem to him there was some repet.i.tion in it!

A clergyman's widow of eighty, the mother of the first Sir David Dundas--at one time commander-in-chief of the British army--is thus described by c.o.c.kburn: "We used to go to her house in Bunker's Hill, [Edinburgh] when boys, on Sundays, between the morning and afternoon sermons, where we were cherished with Scotch broth and cakes, and many a joke from the old lady. Age had made her incapable of walking, even across the room; so, clad in a plain black-silk gown, and a pure muslin cap, she sat half-encircled by a high-backed, black leather chair, reading, with silver spectacles stuck on her thin nose, and interspersing her studies and her days with much laughter, and not a little sarcasm. What a spirit! There was more fun and sense round that chair than in the theatre or the church. I remember one of her grand-daughters stumbling, in the course of reading the newspapers to her, on a paragraph which stated that a lady's reputation had suffered from some indiscreet talk on the part of the Prince of Wales. Up she of fourscore sat, and said with an indignant shake of her shriveled fist and a keen voice,--'The dawmed villain! does he kiss and tell!'"

In the Barberini palace is the celebrated portrait of Beatrice Cenci, by Guido. The melancholy and strange history of this beautiful girl has been told in a variety of ways, and is probably familiar to every reader. Guido saw her on her way to execution, and has painted her as she was dressed, in the gray habit and head-dress, made by her own hands, and finished but an hour before she put it on. "There are engravings and copies of the picture all over the world, but none that I have seen," said Willis, "give any idea of the excessive gentleness, and serenity of the countenance. The eyes retain traces of weeping, the child-like mouth, the soft, girlish lines of features that look as if they had never worn more than the one expression of youthfulness and affection, are all in repose, and the head is turned over the shoulder with as simple a sweetness as if she had but looked back to say a good-night before going to her chamber to sleep. She little looks like what she was--one of the firmest and boldest spirits whose history is recorded. After murdering her father for his fiendish attempts upon her virtue, she endured every torture rather than disgrace her family by confession, and was only moved from her constancy, at last, by the agonies of her younger brother on the rack. Who would read capabilities like these, in those heavenly and child-like features?"

There is related an incident of the American civil war which ill.u.s.trates how ignorance and superst.i.tion sometimes give birth to eloquence. An army officer had been speaking of the ideas of power entertained by the poor negro slaves. He said they had an idea of G.o.d, as the Almighty, and they had realized in their former condition the power of their masters. Up to the time of the arrival among them of the Union forces, they had no knowledge of any other power. Their masters fled upon the approach of the federal soldiers, and this gave the negroes a conception of a power greater than that exercised by them. This power they called "Ma.s.sa Link.u.m." Their place of worship was a large building which they called "the praise house;" and the leader of the meeting, a venerable black man, was known as "the praise man." On a certain day, when there was quite a large gathering of the people, considerable confusion was created by different persons attempting to tell who and what "Ma.s.sa Link.u.m" was. In the midst of the excitement the white-headed leader commanded silence. "Brederin," said he, "you don't know nosein' what you're talkin' 'bout. Now, you just listen to me. Ma.s.sa Link.u.m, he eberywhar. He know eberyting." Then, solemnly looking up, he added, "He walk de earf like de Lord!"

Curran, who was so merry and charming in conversation, was also very melancholy. He said he never went to bed in Ireland without wishing not to rise again. It seems to be a law of our nature that "as high as we have mounted in delight, in our dejection do we sink as low." Burns expresses it, "Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, thrill the deepest notes of woe;" and Hood, "There's not a string attuned to mirth, but has its chord in melancholy;" and Burton, "Naught so sweet as melancholy,"

naught "so d.a.m.ned as melancholy;" and King Solomon, "I said of laughter, It is mad."