The Catholic World Volume I Part 120

{826} But this is a grim and statistical ungracious view, not all suited to this Dublin May morning.

It is known, then, on this gay Dublin May morning, that the young prince, who in this island has always been looked to with an affectionate interest, has been in the city since over-night, and out at the pretty lodge, which lies out in the "Phaynix." Hence the flags and the streamers. Hence, too, in front of the palace, the balconies fringed with scarlet, and the softened and melodious buzz of distant military music, with the staff officers flying north and south, and the regiments tramping by. But the flags grow thicker, and the balconies gayer, and the music more distinct, as I find myself at the corner of the great _place_, or square dedicated to St. Stephen, which is a good mile's walking all round, and near which I see the great building, with the heavy porches and pillars, round which, and over which, run delicately, the light entrance of a Moorish-looking gla.s.s temple--a silver howdah on the back of a gray elephant. Such is the rather novel design for this last comer in the long series of exhibitions.

After all the miles of gla.s.s greenhouse, and the long protracted repet.i.tions of gorgeous decorated pillars and girders, I cannot but think what a happy combination this is of solidity and lightness; and acknowledge that in these days, when Paxton Palace succeeds Paxton Palace with some monotony, there is something original in striking out the idea of fitting the gla.s.s-house to a great solid building, with huge halls, and long, cool pa.s.sages, and s.p.a.cious rooms, and surrounding the whole with a garden, and greenery, and cascades.

There has been the usual crush and pressure, the tremendous toiling against time, to get all done; the straining of every nerve, the sitting up all night, the hammering and sawing, the st.i.tching of a hundred workmen and workwomen, changing the utter disorder and the naked deal boards and the rude planks of five o'clock last evening to perfect order--to the regularity of a drawing-room and acres of scarlet cloth. And in a crowd of light May morning dresses we drift into the huge concert hall, which is to hold thousands, and to echo to bra.s.s throats, and where there are the great organ, and the orchestra which holds the musical army a thousand strong: on the floor of which have grown up beds upon beds of human lilies that flutter and flutter again, whose flowers are white parasols and gossamer shawls. This hall, as a feature, is not so remarkable, for there are many great halls; but at its far end it is open and crossed half way by a gallery: and through this opening we see far on into a Winter Garden and Crystal Palace, where are the light airy galleries, with the old familiar rimson labels, and the French trophies, and the bright objects, and the great apse like a gla.s.s cathedral, and Mr. Doyle's pale coloring, the faint lines of delicate green, chosen with rare good taste, which in itself is a novelty.

Looking out through the open end of the concert hall, and facing the organ, I see a grand marone velvet eastern canopy and dais, under which the Pasha of Egypt is to sit a few months hereafter and receive his tribes; and on this dais are the n.o.bles and gentlemen gathering, in the fine rich theatrical suits which give a coloring to a festival, and of which we have not half enough. Judges in scarlet and ermine, privy councillors with coats that seem "clotted" with gold, the never-failing lords-lieutenant and deputy-lieutenants, knights of St.

Patrick, deans, doctors in scarlet, soldiers in scarlet, a lord chancellor all black and gold, eastern dervishes (it may be, from the pillow-case look of their caps), a lord mayor of York, a lord provost of Edinburgh; in short, all shapes of particolored finery. Turning round for a second, I see that the black musical army has debouched and taken ground, and that {827} the great orchestra has spread like a large dark fan from floor to ceiling. I can see "Ulster" in a gorgeous tabard, flitting to and fro, marshalling grandees, as none so well know how to marshal them, each according to his or her degree. That marvellous tabard is so stiff and gorgeous, that when it is laid by, it surely cannot be hung up or folded or put to sleep on its back like other robes, but, I fancy, must stand up straight in a wardrobe on its end, like a steel cuira.s.s.

We seem to riot in mayors. The eye can be feasted on mayors; they can become as the air we breathe if we so choose it. They have flowed in from every town in the three kingdoms. And it does strike one, with having such a munic.i.p.al gathering brought together, that there is a sort of corporate expression, a kind of munic.i.p.al smirk or perk, a kind of smiling burgess air of complacency which makes the whole of this world akin. Every one, too, seems to be invested with the collar of the Golden Fleece.

Here, also, are many known faces, who wear no scarlet nor gold nor collars. Faces like that of the famous dog and animal painter whose four-footed friends look down at him from the walls: faces like that of the Sir David who invented the most popular toy in the world: faces from the science and art: from South Kensington, which, as we all know, is science and art: faces from France, from Canada, Rome, India, and a hundred other places.

Now, I hear the hum of distant martial music, and the yet fainter but more inspiriting sound of distant cheering. Then the scarlet and ermine, the privy council clotted gold, the May morning bonnets, glitter and rustle with excitement. The hum and chatter of voices full of expectation travel on softly down the gla.s.s aisles and into the great hall. There has been a grand plunging of military troopers outside, a violent arrest of fiery horses pulled up suddenly, and the prince and a royal duke and the vice-king and all their attendants have descended. From the outside, the shouting creeps in gradually, until at last it comes to its fullest pitch; when the crimson and gold crowd parts a little, we see this prince standing modestly under the Egyptian pasha's canopy, with thirty thousand eyes upon him. At this moment a speck half way up the dark orchestra, but which is a very skilful and most musical speck, gives a signal with what seems a white pin, and the musical army advances with the fine Old Hundredth. The grand Old Hundredth travels out in rising waves through the open end of the hall into the gla.s.s cathedral, then loses itself up and down in the aisles. For two verses the voices do the battle by themselves; but, at the third, the trumpets and the grand bra.s.s and the rolling of monster drums burst out, and every syllable is emphasized with a stirring crash. It is like the deluge after a drought.

Then the sun gets up, and the gold and colored figures cross, and crowd, and flit past, as some business is being transacted under that Egyptian pasha's canopy; for there are addresses to be read and spoken, and there is much advancing and backing to be done. Now, the party under the pasha's canopy breaks up for a time, and the stiff gold and scarlet and privy council strait-waistcoats, and the corporate dressing-gowns, having formed themselves into a procession, take the prince round to look at the place.

And there is a great deal to see. There are many charming pictures, and among the choicest those of which the queen of Spain has stripped her palaces, and sent here. Is there not a hint of many a Velasquez most exquisite, and of Mr. Stirling, which are worth a journey to the Escurial to worship? Here is many a rare Reynolds which Mr. Tom Taylor might find worth making a note of, and here are walls covered with n.o.ble cartoons of the severe Munich school. These, with the photographs and water-colors, and mediaeval objects, are common to many {828} an exhibition held before; but there is one feature unique--a n.o.ble sculpture gallery, artistic, charmingly lighted, sufficient to delight Mr. Gibson, and drive the Royal Academy to despair. A sculpture-hall, on which you can look down from a bal.u.s.trade in a room overhead, as if into a Pompeiian court. A sculpture-hall, in which you can look up to an arching gla.s.s roof, and, half way down again, to the bal.u.s.trade just mentioned, which is dotted with small statutes. A sculpture-hall, where I can walk round and think myself in a Roman palace, to which these fine objects belong, and not in a temporary shed where some scattered objects that have been lent are shown. For here I see that the Roman studios have been emptied of their treasures; that Miss Hosmer has sent her Faun, in toned yellow marble: a marvellous--if the speech be not impolite-- work for a woman. With Story's wonderful Judith, and a Baby Girl by Mogni--a pendant for the now famous Reading Girl. But it is easy to prophesy that this Baby Girl will be photographed, and stereoscoped, and binocularized in a hundred ways, and watched over by policemen specially, and visited by a steady crowd. This hall and its contents--the like of which it is no boast to say has not been yet seen in these kingdoms--is the feature of this exhibition.

Then, having seen all that is most curious and beautiful--in the fashion in which such things _must_ be seen where there is only a quarter of an hour to see them--the stiff' gold and crimson strands, which we call the procession, came back to the pasha's dais. And then, with a crash and a smash, and a thundering of monster drums, and the rattle and rolling of little drums, and the sharp bra.s.sy bark of trumpets, the true English national Old Hundredth, in which musical and unmusical--people with ears, and people without, even people with voices, and people without--can join, then G.o.d save the Queen is sung.

Sung! Rather fired off! Discharged! Salvoed!

And then the glittering ma.s.s begins to dissolve and fade away. The stage, which has been laid out under the pasha's canopy, gradually clears. At the door there is a struggle, and the scatter of new gravel, with the frantic leaping up behind carriages of many footmen, and the closing in of mounted soldiers. And then the pageant melts away, and the work of the day is done.

As I walk and wander from the light gla.s.s arcades to the darker courts, and from the courts to the open terraces, and hear the hum of Saxons' voices, and from at least every third mouth the sharp "burr"

of some Saxon dialect, and when I meet burly shoulders and ma.s.sive chests which are not of the country, some out-of-place speculations come into my mind, and I am tempted to make suppositions. First, I speculate--of course shrinking away from the dry bones of politics--whether there might not have been some mistake in the old and constant treatment of a people who seem cheerful and grateful for a kind word or a kinder act, and who are "willing" and even clever in their way--and think whether the "want of progress" and want of "capital" and of "self-reliance," and the want of a hundred other things which puzzle and dispirit the political physician, may not in some degree be laid to the account of old mistakes, old laws, old errors, old harsh treatment, old jealousies and restraints, the folly of which is now seen and admitted, but the fruits of which remain to this day?

Just as the fruits of a bad education linger in a grown man, and the marks of early hardship are stamped upon the face and const.i.tution, it will take many years yet, in the life of a nation, before old faults are worked out of its const.i.tution. And I think--still in the walks of the Winter Garden--that if my friendly Briton tell me that his experience of the lower orders of Irish is that "you can't depend upon a word they say," I cannot but recollect that half a century ago they were civilly slaves, without rights; {829} and that a century ago they were a proscribed caste, against whom one-half the laws of the land were directed. If we have found them indolent, and disinclined to perseverance and the making of money, have we not dim recollections of seeing acts of parliament pa.s.sed again and again to cripple their trade? A people must grow up, as a child must grow up; and it is hard to expect that a child whose body has suffered by an unkind or an injudicious nurse, should become at once strong under better treatment. Then I speculate on the mysterious relation of Irishmen to Irish land, through which the "bit" of land is as necessary as the "bit" of bread; where a tenant holds his tiny sc.r.a.p, on which he pays his thirty-shilling rent; and during the whole year is struggling desperately to work out of this great estate a few potatoes, and fewer clothes for himself and family, beside the miserable thirty-shilling margin for the landlord. I think how some estates have two, four, six, eight thousand tenants of this valuable cla.s.s--and think beside, in answer to a natural objection, how this miserable system was created for political ends, to multiply voters "to support government," If the Palace and Winter Garden were twice as long and twice as broad, I should not have half time or s.p.a.ce enough for the speculations that come crowding on me with reference to this perplexing country.

And having made these speculations, and having gone quite round the garden, I begin--in addition to my speculations--to make some rather wild suppositions. As, suppose that, for a mere experiment, there were a greater spirit of charity of speech introduced into our dealings with this country. Suppose that we gave the people time and reasonable allowance--looked on with encouragement where there was any good attempt made, and with indulgence where there was failure. Suppose that some of our journals gave over writing "slashing" articles, and some men desisted from speeches and bitter epigrams on the "mere Irish," which, being copied in every cheap print, and brought to every cabin door, do incalculable mischief, fatally widening the breach, and causing England and Englishmen to be sometimes almost hated. Suppose that there were _some_ little restraint on the traditional stock ridicule of Irish matters. Suppose that the Englishmen who visited the country carried themselves with a little less of William the Conqueror and Strongbow air, and suppose that--

But here are the umbrellas, and the sticks, and the gate.

From Chambers's Journal.

SPEECH.

Be choice and frugal of thy speech alway: The arrow from the engine of the thoughts Once shot, is past recall; for scorn is barbed, And will not out, but rankles in the wound; And calumny doth leave a darkening spot On wounded fame, which, as it would infect, Marks its sad victim in the eyes of men, Till no one dare approach and know the truth.

{830}

From The Lamp.

A VISIT TO THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE.

Our pilgrimage to La Grande Chartreuse was an event in our lives worth remembering. At about half-past five on the morning of the 22d of June we left Lyons. Nothing could have been more auspicious than the brilliant sun and balmy air of that early morning. The birds sang cheerily as we walked from St. Irenee down to the railway station, where our kind friends took leave of us. The country in the neighborhood of Lyons was exceedingly pretty; but as we drew nearer to Gren.o.ble, it became more and more attractive. The railway pa.s.ses through two ranges of mountains, whose snow-capped summits stood out in beautiful contrast to the azure sky. Our only fellow-traveller was a priest, who for a long time had been intent on his breviary. Amused perhaps at our exclamations of delight, he entered into conversation with us; and we were soon very good friends. He expressed particular interest in the condition of the Catholic Church in England, having heard that there were many conversions in consequence of the hard work doing in our missions. He spoke very highly in favor of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse. He kindly promised always to pray for us, and the conversion of those we had left behind, and to remember us in the ma.s.s he was about to offer. We reached Gren.o.ble at about twenty minutes to ten. It will not do to stop to describe the magnificent situation of this old city, completely surrounded as it is with mountains, between the rivers Isere and Drac. Until recently it was a frontier town; a very strong one too, judging from the appearance of the citadel, piled fortress after fortress up the steep mountain side. The cathedral is interesting, as having belonged to St. Hugo, the friend of the great founder of the Grande Chartreuse.

We made an agreement with the driver of a carriage to take us to the Grande Chartreuse; and he promised to take us there in about five hours, and put us down at the door of the convent; so, at least, we understood him. We returned to the hotel, got some refreshment, and started in an open carriage at about twelve o'clock. The road for several miles runs through a richly cultivated valley, with wooded mountains on either side. Everywhere the vine was trained in graceful festoons, and stately walnut and chestnut trees grew along the roadside, shading us from the mid-day sun with their rich foliage.

Every now and then we caught beautiful glimpses of the distant Alps, abruptly rising from the green level of the valley, beyond the hills clad with the dark verdure of the pine forests, piled curiously one over another, which run the whole length of the plain, forming the first steps, as it were, of those mighty Alpine mountains which rear their magnificent heights, shrouded in eternal glaciers, behind these graduated ranges. Just before reaching St. Laurent du Pont, what was our astonishment to hear our driver proclaim we should shortly reach our destination! We could not conceive how that could be, for we were evidently approaching a small town. How different it looked from all we had read and heard of La Grande Chartreuse! Our amazement increased when the carriage was driven up in front of a small inn; the driver, getting down, opened the door, and said, with evident satisfaction, _"Nous voila."_ We demanded an explanation, and his reply was that this was St. Laurent du Pont, and as far as he could take us. Here we {831} could either procure another carriage or mules to carry us up the mountain to the monastery, which we might reach in about two hours.

It was difficult to suppress all the indignation one felt at being so completely taken in; and we threatened the unfortunate driver with all kinds of complaints on our return to Gren.o.ble. There was nothing to be done, so we agreed we had better make the best of it. It was five o'clock, and we could not afford to waste our time in words; so we ordered another carriage, and in a few minutes a most rickety, uninviting conveyance was brought to the door. St. Laurent du Pont is situated at the opening of the narrow gorge leading to the wild solitude where the monastery is built. The scenery was grand and beautiful as we gradually began the ascent about a mile from St.

Laurent du Pont, where the mountains closed upon our road, and the rocky stream of the Guiers Mort brawling beneath us. Tall pines and stately trees overshadowed us, rising from the almost naked rocks themselves. One of the great peculiarities of the Chartreuse mountain is the extreme luxuriance of the vegetation, mingled as it is with the huge blocks of limestone, which sometimes formed walls on either side of our way. We had a miserable horse, which stoutly refused to go beyond a sleepy walk, the driver and the horse being of the same dreamy nature. We lost all patience, and got out. No language can adequately describe the enjoyment of that walk. The scenery, so sublimely wild; the sound of the rushing torrent, now far below our road, filled us with awe. The pines, rising like weird giants by the mountain side, mile after mile; the scene changing and becoming more majestic with every curve of the road. Every now and then we crossed a handsomely built stone bridge, erected by the good monks, across the torrent, and pa.s.sed under several tunnels cut through the rock. The sun was declining, and nothing could exceed the beauty of the evening; we had walked for nearly two hours in almost uninterrupted silence, for there was that in the solemnity of the scene, as we penetrated further into the heart of the desert, which filled one's mind with thoughts and one's soul with feelings which could not be uttered. At length, on a sudden turn in the road, the breeze wafted toward us the sound of the chapel-bell, ringing, we supposed, for vespers. This was truly a most grateful sound to our ears, for we were weary with our walk and the excitement of the scene, and longed for our journey's end. A few steps further, and the vast monastery lay before us. How solemn and silent it looked! The tones of the bell, how sweetly musical they were! To listen to them, to gaze on that gray pile, and, high above it, on the lofty snow-capped peaks of the mountains, was an indescribable rest. How wonderfully grand was that mountain top! and far beyond the forests of pine rose still more distant mountain peaks, ascending until they reached the very skies, now gilded with all the glories of a setting sun. It filled one with peace the thought of all the centuries that that vast pile had lasted; of the long ages the voices of the monks had mingled with the varied voices of nature in one hymn of praise to the almighty Creator of all. We waited until the arrival of our carriage interrupted our musings. It could go no further; so, followed by the driver carrying our baggage, we walked up to the door of the convent of the Soeurs de la Providence, where we were most hospitably received. A friendly sister took us to our cells, and said supper would shortly be ready. The blazing logs of pine in a huge fireplace in the refectory were most cheering, for the evening air was quite cold in these high regions even at the close of a hot June day. A maigre supper was served at half-past seven. We were amused to hear that it had all been cooked by the monks, and sent to us from the monastery, {832} where nothing but maigre is ever allowed.

From eight to nine we walked round the monastery, following a path close to the dark pine forest, which forms the background to the building. We could look down from this height upon the cells, church, and little gardens of the monks. Returning toward the hospice, we met the reverend mother and a sister; they took us into the little chapel where we were to hear ma.s.s the following morning. It was very plain and small; there was a grille in front of the altar, on which the blessed sacrament was not reserved. What a trial this must be to the good sisters!

At half-past nine, rev. mother advised our retiring to our cells, as we were to be up early the next morning, and _en route_ for St.

Bruno's chapel by half-past four. A very intelligent young guide was provided us; he told us he had spent his life with the fathers, and hoped to live there to the end. He was extremely communicative and willing to answer all our questions.

There are about forty monks in this monastery, beside several lay brothers. The monks live each in his cell, which has a little garden attached to it. They maintain silence, excepting on Sundays and great festivals, and during their Monday walk together through the desert for four hours. They eat alone in their cells, excepting on Sundays; each one's maigre meal is pa.s.sed by a lay brother from the cloister through a little turn into his cell. On Sundays they go to the choir at all the hours except complin; on other days they only go to sing matins and lauds at midnight; for high ma.s.s and vespers; the other hours are recited in their cells. Women are not only excluded their enclosure, but even their church, under pain of excommunication. It was very tantalizing to hear of their solemn midnight office, sung as it is in darkness; each monk takes with him into choir a dark lantern, and for each antiphon he does not know opens a slide which throws the light on it. It must have a wonderful effect these sudden flashes of light, lighting up the Chartreux, clothed in their white woollen habits, with their patriarchal beards and hooded heads. Beside the divine office, they say the office of our Blessed Lady, and, almost every day, the office of the dead. Their library was plundered by the revolutionists, and now forms the public library at Gren.o.ble, one of the finest small collections of books in France. Nearly all this we learnt from our guide while walking up to the chapel of St. Bruno.

Before we reached it, far into the midst of a dark forest, we came to the chapel called De Casalibus, erected upon the very spot where the first convent stood, which was destroyed by an avalanche. The chapel of St. Bruno is built over the same rock under which he dwelt, beside a gushing spring, his only beverage, which supplies the monastery to this day.

The chapel is about an hour's walk above the present monastery. It is very plain, but adorned with frescoes, representing some of the early fathers of the order. A most beautiful altar stands at one end of it, of exquisitely carved Italian marbles, on which has been placed the same altar-stone on which St. Bruno celebrated the holy mysteries; behind this is a ba.s.so-relievo of St. Bruno, with our Blessed Lady appearing to him, beautifully executed. We lingered here awhile, loth to leave so holy a spot. The guide told us that there are frequently as many as sixty ma.s.ses said in the Chartreuse church in one morning.

Many hundred priests make their annual retreat here. What place, indeed, could they find more fitting for the repose their souls thirst for! Here truly they might die to the world and all its allurements, and meditate in peace on the deep mysteries of G.o.d and eternity. We descended the mountain to a.s.sist at the offering of the holy sacrifice at seven o'clock in the little chapel we had {833} visited on the previous evening, It was a great joy to make our communion in this vast mountain solitude, where all combined to elevate the soul to G.o.d.

We had hoped a Carthusian would say ma.s.s, but in this were disappointed, for a secular priest had been requested to do so by the ladies of his party.

At the _h.o.m.o factus est_ of the Credo, the fathers prostrate themselves on the ground, and the mode of celebrating ma.s.s is strange, and differs in many points from the ordinary ma.s.s of seculars. As the blessed sacrament was not reserved in the chapel, we preferred finishing our thanksgiving beneath the blue sky on the skirts of the forest of pines. After breakfast we tasted the celebrated liqueur made by the monks from the wild mountain flowers. It was very good; there was a certain charm in taking it on the spot where it was made. We had a talk with the reverend mother, and left with her a long list of intentions to be given to the fathers, asking especially their prayers for the conversion of England. This, we were thankful to hear, was frequently an object of their devotions. Before leaving, our curiosity to see some of the fathers was gratified; for two came out to give instructions to some workmen. We began to descend the mountain at about half-past eight, arrived at St. Laurent du Pont about ten, and as soon as our carriage of the previous day was ready started for Gren.o.ble. Once the horse came to a dead stop, and we fancied the driver wished to prolong our journey as long as he could, that we might have no time for making the threatened complaints on reaching Gren.o.ble. As it was, we arrived there five minutes before the time fixed for our departure at half past-one. There was hardly a minute to get anything to eat beyond some fruit and bread which we took with us.

So the driver escaped his punishment, after all.

From The Reader.

DEATH BY LIGHTNING.

People in general imagine, if they think at all about the matter, that an impression upon the nerves--a blow, for example, or the p.r.i.c.k of a pin--is felt the moment it is inflicted. But this is not the case. The nerves are not the repositories of sensation; they are but the conductors of the motion which produces sensation. The seat of sensation is the brain, and to it the intelligence of any injury done to the nerves has to be transmitted, before that injury becomes manifest in consciousness. The transmission, moreover, requires _time_, and the consequence is, that a wound inflicted at a portion of the body distant from the brain is more tardily appreciated than one inflicted adjacent to the brain. By an extremely ingenious experimental arrangement, Helmholtz has determined the velocity of nervous transmission both in warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. In a frog, he found the velocity to be about eighty feet a second, or less than one-thirteenth of the velocity of sound in air. If this holds good, which it probably does, in the case of a whale, then a creature of this cla.s.s, eighty feet long, if wounded in the tail, would not, as Helmholtz has remarked, be conscious of the injury till a second after the wound had been inflicted. But this is not the only ingredient in the delay that occurs between the impression on {834} the nerves and the consciousness of the impression. There can scarcely be a doubt that to every act of consciousness belongs a determinate molecular arrangement of the brain--that every thought or feeling has its physical correlative in that organ; and nothing can be more certain than that every physical change, whether molecular or mechanical, requires time for its accomplishment. So that, even after the intelligence of an impression, made upon a distant portion of the body, has reached the brain, a still further time is necessary for the brain itself to put its house in order--for its molecules to take up the position necessary to the completion of consciousness. Helmholtz considers one-tenth of a second necessary for this purpose. Thus, in the case of the whale above supposed, we have first one second consumed in the transmission of intelligence through the sensor nerves from the tail to the head; one-tenth of a second is required by the brain to become conscious of the intelligence it has received; and, if the velocity of transmission through the motor be the same as that through the sensor nerves, a second would be consumed in sending a command to the tail to defend itself. Thus more than two seconds would elapse before an impression made upon its caudal nerves could be responded to by a whale eighty feet long.

Now, it is quite conceivable that an injury might be inflicted which would render the nerves unfit to be the conductors of the motion which results in sensation; and if such a thing occurred, no matter how severe the injury might be, we should not be conscious of it. Or it may be, that long before the time required for the brain itself to complete the arrangement necessary for the act of consciousness, its power of arrangement might be wholly suspended. In such case also, though the injury might be of such a nature as to cause death, this would occur not only without pain, but absolutely without feeling of any kind.

Death, in this case, would be simply the sudden negation of life, accomplished without any intervention of consciousness. Doubtless, there are many kinds of death of this character. The pa.s.sage of a musket bullet through the brain is a case in point; and the placid aspect of a man thus killed is in perfect accordance with the conclusion which might be drawn _a priori_ from the experiments of Helmholtz. Cases of insensibility, moreover, are not uncommon, which do not result in death, and after which the person affected has been able to testify that no pain was felt prior to the loss of consciousness.

The time required for a rifle-bullet to pa.s.s clean through a man's head may be roughly estimated at one-thousandth of a second. Here, therefore, we should have no room for sensation, and death would be painless. But there are other actions which far transcend in rapidity that of the rifle-bullet. A flash of lightning cleaves a cloud, appearing and disappearing in less than one-hundred-thousandth of a second, and the velocity of electricity is such as would carry it over a distance equal to that which separates the earth and moon in a single second. It is well known that a luminous impression once made upon the retina endures for about one-sixth of a second, and that this is the reason why we see a ribbon of light when a glowing coal is caused to pa.s.s rapidly through the air. A body illuminated by an instantaneous flash continues to be seen for the sixth of a second after the flash has become extinct; and if the body thus illuminated be in motion, it appears at rest at the place which it occupied when the flash fell upon it. The color-top is familiar to most of us. By this instrument a disk with differently colored sectors is caused to rotate rapidly; the colors blend together, and if they are chosen in the proportions necessary to form white light, the disk appears white when the motion is sufficiently rapid. Such a top, rotating {835} in a dark room, and illuminated by an electric spark, appears motionless, each distinct color being clearly seen. Professor Dove has found that a flash of lightning produces the same effect. During a thunder-storm he put a color-top in exceedingly rapid motion, and found that every flash revealed the top as a motionless object with colors distinct. If illuminated solely by a flash of lightning, the motion of all bodies on the earth's surface would, as Dove has remarked, appear suspended.

A cannon-ball, for example, would have its flight apparently arrested, and would seem to hang motionless in s.p.a.ce as long as the luminous impression which revealed the ball remained upon the eye.

If, then, a rifle-bullet move with sufficient rapidity to destroy life without the interposition of sensation, much more is a flash of lightning competent to produce this effect. Accordingly, we have well authenticated cases of people being struck senseless by lightning who, on recovery, had no memory of pain. The following circ.u.mstantial case is described by Hemmer: On the 30th of June, 1788, a soldier in the neighborhood of Manheim, being overtaken by rain, placed himself under a tree, beneath which a woman had previously taken shelter. He looked upward to see whether the branches were thick enough to afford the required protection, and, in doing so, was struck by lightning, and fell senseless to the earth. The woman at his side experienced the shock in her foot, but was not struck down. Some hours afterward the man revived, but knew nothing about what had occurred, save the fact of his looking up at the branches. This was his last act of consciousness, and he pa.s.sed from the conscious to the unconscious condition without pain. The visible marks of a lightning stroke are usually insignificant: the hair is sometimes burnt; slight wounds are observed; while, in some instances, a red streak marks the track of the discharge over the skin.

The effects of a shock of artificial lightning on a gentleman of our acquaintance, who is very sensitive to the electric discharge, may be here described. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances the discharge from a small Leyden jar is exceedingly unpleasant to him. Some time ago he happened to stand in the presence of a numerous audience, with a battery of fifteen large Leyden jars charged beside him. Through some awkwardness on his part, he touched a wire which he had no right to touch, and the discharge of the battery went through his body. Here life was absolutely blotted out for a very sensible interval, without a trace of pain. In a second or two consciousness returned; the recipient of the shock saw himself in the presence of his audience and apparatus, and by the help of these external facts immediately concluded that he had received the battery discharge. His _intellectual_ consciousness of his position was restored with exceeding rapidity, but not so his _optical_ consciousness. To prevent the audience from being alarmed, he observed that it had often been his desire to receive accidentally such a shock, and that his wish had at length been fulfilled. But while making this remark, the appearance which his body presented to him was that of a number of separate pieces. The arms, for example, were detached from the trunk, and seemed suspended in the air. In fact, memory, and the power of reasoning, appeared to be complete long before the optic nerve was restored to healthy action. But what we wish chiefly to dwell upon here is, the absolute painlessness of the shock; and there cannot be a doubt, to a person struck dead by lightning, the pa.s.sage from life to death occurs without consciousness being in the least degree implicated. It is an abrupt stoppage of sensation, unaccompanied by a pang.

{836}

From The Dublin University Magazine