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Gornell Wuiversity Library
Sthaca, New York

  

  

   

 

LIBRARY OF

LEWIS BINGLEY WYNNE

A.B.,A.M., COLUMBIAN COLLEGE.‘71.°73
WASHINGTON, D.C.

 

THE GIFT OF
MRS. MARY A. WYNNE
AND.
JOHN H. WYNNE
CORNELL '98

1922
5 NE” | Unive

ti i | ni if
NEW MISCELLANIES.
NEW MISCELLANIES.

BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY,

RECTOR OF EVERSLEY ;
CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN.

BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.

M DCCC LX.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS.

“A, MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS ”
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES . _

ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE

THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON

MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, AND THE PLATE

THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS . .
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON

SPEECH IN BEHALF OF THE LADIES’ SANITARY ASSOCI-

ATION, 1859 7 5 a .

GREAT CITIES, AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND

EVIL . . . . .

ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY .

THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT .
JOHN TAULER . . . . .

HENRY BROOKE, AND THE FOOL OF QUALITY -

PILGRIM’S PROGRESS ILLUSTRATED

24
72
106
126
149
203

241

250
277
297
319
334
365
KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.”

[Fraser's Magazine, No. CCCXXXVII.]

Te cholera, as was to be expected, has reappeared
in England again; and England, as was to be ex-
pected, has taken no sufficient steps towards meeting
it; so that if, as seems but too probable, the plague
should spread. next summer, we may count, with tol-
erable certainty, upon a loss of some ten thousand
lives. :

That ten thousand, or one thousand, innocent peo-
ple should die, of whom. most, if not all, might be
saved alive, would seem at first sight a matter seri-
ous enough for the attention of “ philanthropists.”
Those who abhor the practice of hanging one man
would, one fancies, abhor equally that of poisoning
many; and would protest as earnestly ‘against the
painful capital punishment of diarrhea as against
the painless one of hempen rope. Those who demand
mercy for the Sepoy, and immunity for the Coolie
women of Delhi, unsexed by their own brutal and
shameless cruelty, would, one fancies, - demand mercy
also for the. British workman, and immunity for his
wife and family. One is therefore somewhat startled
at finding that the British nation reserves to itself,
though it forbids to its armies, the right of putting
2 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

to death unarmed and unoffending men, women, and
children.

After further consideration, however, one finds that
there are, as usual, two sides to the question. One
is bound, indeed, to believe, even before proof, that
there are two sides. It cannot be without good and
sufficient reason that the British public remains all
but indifferent to sanitary reform ; that though the
science of epidemics, as a science, has been before
the world for more than twenty years, nobody believes
in it enough to act upon it, save some few dozen of
fanatics, some of whom have (it cannot be denied)
a direct pecuniary interest in disturbing what they
choose to term the poison-manufactories of free and
independent Britons.

Yes; we should surely respect the expressed will
and conviction of the most practical of nations, ar-
rived at after the experience of three choleras, stretch-
ing over a whole generation. Public opinion has
declared against the necessity of sanitary reform ;
and is not public opinion known to be, in these last
days, the IJthuriel’s spear which is to unmask and
destroy all the follies, superstitions, and cruelties of
the universe? The immense majority of the British
nation will neither cleanse themselves nor let others
cleanse them; and are we not governed by majori-
ties? Are not majorities, confessedly, always in the
right, even when smallest, and a show of hands a
surer test of truth than any amount of wisdom,
learning, or virtue? How much more, then, when a
whole free people is arrayed, in the calm magnifi-
cence of self-confident conservatism, against a few
innovating and perhaps skeptical philosophasters ?
Then surely, if ever, vox populi is vox celi.

And, in fact, when. we come to examine the first
and commonest objection against sanitary reformers,
we find it perfectly correct. They are said to be
theorists, dreamers of the study, who are ignorant of
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 3

human nature; and who in their materialist opti-
mism, have forgotten the existence of moral evil till
they almost fancy at times that they can set the
world right, simply by righting its lowest material
arrangements. The complaint is perfectly true.
‘They have been ignorant of human nature; they
have forgotten the existence of moral evil; and if
any religious periodical should complain of their de-
nying original sin, they can only answer that they
did in past years fall into that folly, but that subse-
quent experience has utterly convinced them of the
truth of the doctrine.

For, misled by this ignorance of human nature,
they expected help, from time to time, from various
classes of the community, from whom no help (as
they ought to have known at first) is to be gotten.
Some, as a fact, expected the assistance of the clergy,
and especially of the preachers of those denomina-
tions who believe that every human being, by the
mere fact of his birth into this world, is.destined to
endless torture after death, unless the preacher can
find an opportunity to deliver him therefrom before
he dies. They supposed that to. such preachers the
-mortal lives of men would be inexpressibly pre-
cious; that any science, which held out a prospect
.of retarding death in the case of “lost millions,”
would. be hailed as a heavenly boon, and would be
-carried out with the fervor of men who felt that for
the soul’s sake no exertion was too great in behalf
of the body.

A little more reflection would have quashed their
vain hope. They would have recollected that each
of: these preachers was already connected with a con-
gregation ; that he had already a hold on them, and
they on him; that he was bound to provide for their
spiritual wants before going forth to seek for fresh
.objects of his ministry. They would have recollected
that on the old principle (and a very sound one) of
4 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush, the
minister of a congregation would feel it his duty, as
well as his interest, not to defraud his flock of his
labors by spending valuable time on a secular subject
like. sanitary reform, in the hope of possibly: preserv-
ing a few human beings, whose souls he might here-
after (and that again would be merely a possibility)
benefit.

They would have recollected, again, that these
congregations are almost exclusively composed of
those classes. who -have little or nothing to fear from
epidemics, and (what is even more important) who
would have to bear the expenses of sanitary im-
provements. But so sanguine, so reckless of human
conditions had their theories made them, that they
actually expected that parish rectors, already bur-
dened with overwork and vestry quarrels, — nay,
even that preachers who got their bread by pew-
rents, and whose life-long struggle was, therefore, to
keep those pews filled, and those renters in good
humor,— should astound the respectable house-
owners and rate-payers who sat beneath them. by
the appalling words, “ You, and not the visitation of
‘God, are the cause of epidemics; and of you, now
that you are once fairly warned of your responsi-
bility, will your brothers’ blood. be required.” ~Con-
ceive Sanitary Reformers expecting this of “ minis-
ters,” let their denomination be what. it- might, —
many of the poor men, too, with a wife and seven
children! Truly has it been said, that nothing is so
cruel as the unreasonableness of a fanatic.

They forgot, too, that sanitary science, like geology,
must be at. first sight “suspect” in the eyes of the
priests of all denominations, at least till they shall
have arrived at a much higher degree of culture than
they now possess.

Like geology, it interferes with that Deus e ma-
china theory of human affairs which has been in. all
*A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 5

ages the stronghold of priestcraft. That the Deity
is normally absent, and not.present; that He works
on the world by interference, and not. by continuous
laws; that it is the privilege of the priesthood to
assign causes for these “judgments” and “ visita-.
tions” of the Almighty, and to tell mankind why He
is angry with them, and has broken the laws of
nature to punish them ;— this, in every age, has
seemed to the majority of priests a doctrine to be
defended at all hazards ; for without it, so they hold,
their occupation were gone at once.* No wonder,
then, if they view with jealousy a set of laymen
attributing these “judgments” to purely chemical
laws, and to misdoings and ignorance which have
as yet no place in the ecclesiastical catalogue of
sins. ‘True, it may be that the Sanitary Reformers
are right; but they had rather not think so. And it
is very easy not to think so. They only have to ig-
nore, to avoid examining the facts. Their canon of
utility is a peculiar one; and with facts which do
not come under that canon they have no concern.
It may be true, for instance, that the eighteenth
century, which to the clergy is a period of skepticism,
darkness, and spiritual death, is the very century
which saw more done for science, for civilization,
for agriculture, for manufacture, for the prolongation
and support of human life, than any preceding one
for a thousand years and more. What matter? That
is a “secular” question, of which they need know
nothing. And sanitary reform (if true) is just such
another; a matter (as slavery has been seen to be
by the preachers.of the United States) for the legis-
lator, and not for those whose kingdom is “ not of
this world.” ;

Others again expected, with equal wisdom, the

* A most honorable exception to this rule is a sermon by the Rev. C.
Richson, of Manchester, on the Sanitary Laws of the Old Testament, with
notes by Dr. Sutherland.
6 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

assistance of the political economist. The fact is
undeniable, but at the same time inexplicable.
What they could have found in the doctrines of
most modern political economists which should lead
them to suppose that human life would be precious
in their eyes, is unknown to the writer of these
pages. Those whose bugbear has been over-popula-
tion, whose motto has been an euphuistic version of

The more the merrier; but the fewer the better fare, |

cannot be expected to lend their aid in increasing the
population by saving the lives of two thirds of the
children who now die prematurely in our great cities ;
and so still further overcrowding this unhappy land
with those helpless and expensive sources of national
poverty— rational human beings, in strength and
health.

Moreover— and this point is worthy of serious at-
tention — that school of political economy, which
has now reached its full development, has taken all
along a view of man’s relation to nature diametri-
cally opposite to that taken by the Sanitary Reform-
er, or indeed by any other men of science. The
Sanitary Reformer holds, in common with the chem-
ist or the engineer, that Nature is to be obeyed only
in order to conquer her; that man is to discover the
laws of her existing phenomena, in order that he
may employ them to create new phenomena him-
self; to turn the laws which he discovers to his own
use; if need be, to counteract one by another. In
this power, it has seemed to them, lay his dignity as
a rational being. It was this, the power of inven-
tion, which made him a progressive animal, not
bound as the bird and the bee are, to build exactly
as his forefathers built five thousand years ago.

By political economy alone has this faculty been
denied to man. In it alone he is not to conquer na-
ture, but simply to obey her. Let her starve him,
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 7

make him a slave, a bankrupt, or what not, he must
submit, as the savage does to the hail and the light-
ning. “ Laissez-faire,” says the “Science du néant,”
the “ Science de la misére,” as it has truly and bit-
terly been called; “ Laissez-faire.’ Analyze econom-
ic questions, if you will; but, beyond analysis you
shall not step. Any attempt to raise the political
economy to its synthetic stage is to break the laws
of nature, to fight against facts —as if facts were
not made to be fought against and conquered, and
put out of the way, whensoever they interfere in the
least with the welfare of any human being. The
drowning man is not to strike out for his life, lest by
keeping his head above water he interfere with the
laws of gravitation. Not that the political econo-
mist, or any man, can be true to his own fallacy.
He must needs try his hand at the synthetic method,
though he forbids it to the rest of the world; but
the only deductive hint which he has as yet given to
mankind is, quaintly enough, the most unnatural
“ eidolon specis ” which ever entered the head of a
dehumanized pedant— namely, that once famous
“ Preventive Check,” which, if a nation did ever
apply it— as it never will— could issue, as every
doctor knows, in nothing less than the question-
able habits of abortion, child-murder, and unnat-
ural crime.

The only explanation of such conduct (though
one which the men themselves will hardly accept) is
this — that they secretly share somewhat in the doubt
which many educated men have of the correctness
of their inductions; that these same laws of political
economy (where they leave the plain and safe sub-
ject-matter of trade) have been arrived at somewhat
too hastily ; that they are, in plain English, not quite
sound enough yet to build upon; and that we must
wait for a few more facts before we begin any theories.
Be it so. At least these men, in their present tem-
8 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

per of mind, are not likely to be very useful to the
Sanitary Reformer.

Would that these men, or the clergy, had been the
only bruised reed in which the Sanitary Reformers
put their trust. They found another reed, however,
and that was public opinion: but they forgot that
(whatever the stump-orators may say about this be-
ing the age of electric thought, when truth flashes
triumphant from pole to pole, &c.) we have no proof
whatsoever that the proportion of fools is less in this
generation than in those before it, or that truth, when
unpalatable, (as it almost always is,) travels any faster
than it did five hundred years ago. They forgot that
every social improvement, and most mechanical ones,
have had to make their way against laziness, igno-
rance, envy, vested wrongs, vested superstitions, and
the whole vis inertiz: of the world, the flesh, and the
devil. They were guilty indeed, in this case, not
merely of ignorance of human nature, but of forget-
fulness of fact. Did they not know that the excel-
lent New Poor-law was greeted with the curses of
those very farmers and squires who now not only
carry it out lovingly and willingly to the very letter,
but are often too ready to resist any improvement or
relaxation in it which may be proposed by that very
Poor-law Board from which it emanated? Did they
not know that agricultural science, though of sixty
years’ steady growth, has not yet penetrated into a
third of the farms. of England; and that hundreds
of farmers still dawdle on after the fashion of their
forefathers, when, ‘by looking over the next hedge
into their neighbor’s field they might double their
produce and their profits? Did they not know that
the adaptation of steam to machinery would have
progressed just as slowly, had it not been a fact
patent to babies that an engine is stronger than a
horse; and that if cotton, like wheat and beef, had
taken twelve months to manufacture, instead of five
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 9

minutes, Manchester foresight would probably haye
been as short and as purblind as that of the British
farmer? ‘What right had they to expect a better
reception for the facts. of sanitary science ?— facts
which ought to, and ultimately will, disturb the
vested interests of thousands, will put them to in-
convenience, possibly at first to great expense; and
yet facts which you can neither see nor handle,
but must accept and pay hundreds of thousands of
pounds for, on the mere word of a doctor or inspec-
tor who gets his living thereby. Poor John Bull!
To expect that you would accept such a gospel
cheerfully was indeed to expect too much!

But yet, though the public opinion of the mass
could not be depended on, there was a body left,
distinct from the mass, and priding itself so much on
that distinctness that it was ready to say at times, —
of course in more courteous — at least in what it
considered more Scriptural language, — “ This people
which knoweth not the law is accursed.” To it
therefore —to the religious world — some over-san-
guine Sanitary Reformers turned their eyes. They
saw in it ready organized (so it professed), for all
good works, a body such as the world had never
seen before. Where the religious public of Byzan-
tium, Alexandria, or Rome numbered hundreds, that
of England numbered its thousands. It was divided,
indeed, on minor points, but it was surely united by
the one aim of saving every man his own soul, and
of professing the deepest reverence for that Divine
Book which tells men that the way to attain that
aim is, to be good and to do good; and which con-
tains among other commandments this one, —“ Thou
shalt not kill.” Its wealth was enormous. It pos-
sessed so much political power, that it would have
been able to command elections, to compel minis-
tries, to encourage the weak hearts of willing but
fearful clergymen by fair hopes of deaneries and

1*
10 _ KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES:

bishoprics. Its members were no clique of unprac-
tical fanatics, no men less. Though it might num-
ber among them a few maitinet.ex-post-captains, and
noblemen of questionable sanity, capable of no more
practical study than that of unfulfilled prophecy, the
vast. majority of them were land-owners, merchants,
bankers, commercial men of all ranks, full of worldly
experience and of the science of organization, skilled
all their lives in finding and in employing men and
money. What might not be hoped. from such a
body, to whom that commercial imperium in imperio
of the French Protestants which the edict of Nantés
destroyed was poor and weak? Add to this. that
these men’s charities were boundless; that they ‘were
spending yearly, and on the whole spending: wisely
and well, ten times as much as ever was spent be-
fore in the world, on educational schemes, mission-
ary schemes, church building, reformatories, ragged
schools, needlewomen’s charities, — what not. No
object of distress, it seemed, could be discovered, no
fresh means of doing good devised, but these men’s
money poured bountifully and at once into that: fresh
channel, and an organization sprang up for the em-
ployment of that money, as thrifty and as handy as
was to be expected from the money-holding classes
of the great commercial nation. .

What could not these men do? What were they
not bound by their own principles to do? No won-
der that some weak men’s hearts beat high at the
thought. “What if the religious world should take
up the cause of Sanitary: Reform? What if they
should hail with joy a cause in which all, whatever
their theological differences, might join in one sacred
crusade against dirt, degradation, disease, and death ?.
What if they should rise at: the hustings to inquire.
of every candidate, “ Will you, or will you not,
pledge yourself to carry out Sanitary Reform in the
place for which you are elected, and let the health
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 11

and the lives of the local poor be that ‘local interest’
which you are bound by your election to defend?”
Do you confess your ignorance of the subject? Then
know, Sir, that you are unfit, at this point of the
nineteenth century, to be.a member of the Brit-
ish Senate. You go thither to make laws “ for the
preservation of life and property.” You confess
yourself ignorant of those physical laws, stronger
and wider than any which you can make, upon
which all human life depends, by infringing. which
the whole property of a district is depreciated.
Again, what might not the “religious world,” and
the public opinion of “ professing Christians,” have
done in the last twenty — ay, in the last three years?

What it has done, is too patent to need comment
here. :

The reasons of so strange an anomaly are to be
approached with caution. It is a serious thing to
impute motives to a vast body of men, of whom the
majority are really respectable, kind-hearted, and use-
ful; and if, in giving one’s deliberate opinion, one
seems to blame them, let it be recollected that the
blame lies not so much on them as on their teachers ;
on those who, for some reasons best known to them-
selves, have truckled to, and even justified, the self-
satisfied ignorance of a comfortable moneyed class.

But let it be said, and said boldly, that these men’s
conduct in the matter of sanitary reform seems at
least to show that they value virtue, not for itself,
but for its future rewards. To the great majority
of these men, (with some heroic exceptions, whose
names may be written in no subéscription-list, but
are surely written in the book of life,) the great truth
has: never been revealed, that good is the one thing
to be done, at all risks, for its own sake; that good
is absolutely and infinitely better than evil, whether
it pay or not, to all eternity.. Ask one of them,
“Is it better to do right and go to hell, or do wrong
12 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

and go to heaven?”—they will look at you puz
zled, half angry, suspecting you of some secret blas-
phemy, and, if hard pressed, put off the new and start-
ling question by saying, that it is absurd to talk of
an impossible hypothesis. The human portion of
their virtue is not mercenary, for they are mostly
worthy men; the religious part thereof, that which
they keep for Sundays and for charitable institu-
tions, is too often mercenary, though they know it
not. Their religion is too often one of “loss and
gain,” as much as Father Newman’s own; and their
actions, whether they shall call them “ good works ”
or “ fruits of faith,” are so much spiritual capital, to
be repaid with interest at the last day.

Therefore, like all ‘religionists, they are most anx-
ious for those schemes of good which seem most
profitable to themselves and to the denomination to
which they belong; and the best of all such works
is, of course, as with all religionists, the making of
proselytes. They really care for the bodies, but still
they care more for the souls, of those whom they
assist, — and not wrongly, either, were it not that to
care for a man’s soul usually means, in the religious
world, to make him think with you; at least to lay
him under such obligations as to give you spiritual
power over him. Therefore it is that all religious
charities in England are more and more conducted,
just as much as those of Jesuits and Oratorians,
with an ulterior view of proselytism; therefore it is
that the religious world, though it has invented, per-
haps, no new method of doing good; though it has
been indebted for educational movements, prison
visitations, infant schools, ragged schools, and so
forth, to Quakers, cobblers, even in some cases to
men whom they call infidels, have gladly adopted
each and every one of them, as fresh means of en-
larging the influence or the. numbers of their own
denominations, and of baiting for the body in order
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 13

to catch the soul. A fair sample of too much of
their labor may be seen anywhere, in those tracts in
which the prettiest stories, with the prettiest binding
and pictures, on the most.secular — even, sometimes,
scientific — of subjects, end by a few words of pious
exhortation, inserted by a different. hand from that
which indites the carnal mass of the book. They
did not invent the science, or the art of story-telling,
or the wood-cutting, or the plan of getting books up
prettily — or, indeed, the notion of instructing the
masses at all; but finding these things in the hands
of “the world,” they have “spoiled the Egyptians,”
and fancy themselves beating Satan with his own
weapons.

If, indeed, these men claimed boldly all print-
ing, all wood-cutting, all story-telling, all human arts
and sciences, as gifts from God himself; and said,
as the book which they quote so often says, “The
Spirit of God gives man understanding, these, too,
are His gifts, sacred, miraculous, to be accounted for
to Him;” then they would be consistent; and. then,
too, they would have learned, perhaps, to claim sani-
tary science for a gift divine as any other; but noth-
ing, alas! is as yet farther from their creed. And
therefore it is that sanitary reform finds so little
favor in their eyes. You have so little in it to show
for your work. You may think you have saved the
lives of hundreds; but you cannot put your finger
on one of them; and they know you not; know not
even their own danger, much less your beneficence.
Therefore you have no lien on them, not even that
uf gratitude ; you cannot say to a man, “I have
prevented you having typhus, therefore you must
attend my chapel.” No! sanitary reform makes no
proselytes. It cannot be used as a religious engine.
It is too simply human, too little a respecter of per-
sons, too like to the works of Him who causes His
sun to shine on the evil and the good, and His rain
14 *KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

to fall on the just and: on the unjust, and is good to
the unthankful and to the evil, to find much favor in
the eyes of a generation which will compass sea and
land to make one proselyte.

Yes; too like the works of our Father in heaven,
as indeed all truly natural and human science needs
must be. ‘True, to those who believed that there is
a Father in heaven, this would, one supposes, be the
highest recommendation. But how many of this
generation believe that? Is not their doctrine, the
doctrine to testify for which the religious world ex-
ists, the doctrine which if you deny, you are met
with one universal frown and snarl —.that man has
no Father in heaven; but that if he becomes a mem-
ber of the religious world, by processes varying with
each denomination, he may — strange paradox —
create a Father for himself? ae

But so it is. The religious world has lost the
belief which even the elder Greeks and Romans had,
of a “ Zeus, Father of gods and men.” Even that
it has lost. Therefore have man, and the simple
human needs’ of man, no sacredness in their eyes;
therefore is nature to them no longer “the will of
God expressed in facts,” and to break a law of na-
ture no longer to sin against him who “looked on
all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.”
And yet they read their Bibles, and believe that they
believe in Him who stood by the lake-side in Gali-
lee, and told men that not.a sparrow fell to the
ground without their Father’s knowledge —and that
they were. of more value than many sparrows. Do
those words now seem to some so self-evident as to
be needless? They will never seem so to the Sani-
tary Reformer, who has called on the “ British Public”
to exert themselves in saving the lives of thousands
yearly; and has received practical answers which
will furnish many a bitter jest for the Voltaire of
the next so-called “age of unbelief,” or fill a sad, but
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 15

an instructive chapter in sore future enlarged edi-
tion of Adelung’s “ History of Human Folly.”

All but despairing, Sanitary Reformers have turned
again and again to her Majesty’s Government. Alas
for them! The Government was ready and willing
enough to help. The wicked world said “ Of course.
It will create a new department. It will give them
more places to bestow ;” but the real reason of the
willingness of Government seems to be that those
who compose it are thoroughly awake to the impor-
tance of the subject.

But what can a poor Government do, whose
strength consists (as that of all English Govern-
ments must) in not seeming too strong; which is
allowed to do anything, only on condition of doing
the minimum? Of course, a government is morally
‘bound.to keep itself in existence ; for is it not bound
to believe that it can govern the country better than
any other knot of men? But its only chance of
self-preservation is to know, with Hesiod’s wise man,
“ how much better the half is than the whole,” and
to. throw over many.a measure which it would like
to carry, for the sake of saving the few which it can
carry.

‘An English. Government, nowadays, is simply at
the mercy of the forty. or fifty members of the House
ef.Commons who are crotchety enough or dishonest
enough. to put it unexpectedly in a minority; and
they, with the vast. majority of the House, are be-
coming more.and more the delegates of that very
class which is most. opposed to sanitary. reform. The
‘honorable member goes to parliament not to express
his opinions, (for he has stated most distinctly at the
last election that he has no opinions whatsoever,)
but to protect the local interests of his constituents.
And the great majority of those constituents are
small house-owners, — the poorer portion of the mid-
dle class. Were he to support Government in any-
16 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

thing like a sweeping measure of sanitary reform,
woe to his seat at the next election; and he knows
it; and therefore, even if he allow the Government
to have its Central Board of Health, he will: take
good care, for his own sake, that the said Board shall
not do too much, and that it shall not compel his
constituents to do anything at all. :

No wonder, that while the attitude of the House
of Commons is such toward a matter which involves
the lives of thousands yearly, some educated men
should be crying that representative institutions are
on their trial, and should sigh for a strong despotism.
There is an answer, nevertheless, to such sentimen-
talists, and one hopes that people will see the answer
for themselves, and. that the infection of Imperialism,
which seems spreading somewhat rapidly, will be
stopped by common sense and honest observation
of facts.

A despotism doubtless could carry out sanitary
reform ; but doubtless, also, it would not.

A despot in the nineteenth century knows well
how insecure his tenure is. His motto must be,
“ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;” and,
therefore, the first objects of his rule will be, private
luxury and a standing army; while, if he engage in
public works, for the sake of keeping the populace
quiet, they will be certain not to be such as will em-
broil him with the middle classes, while they will
win him no additional favor with the masses, utterly
unaware of their necessity. ‘Would the masses of
Paris have thanked Louis Napoleon the more, if,
instead of completing the Tuileries, he had sewered
the St. Antoine? All arguments to the contrary are
utterly fallacious, which are drawn from ancient des-
potisms, Roman, Eastern, Peruvian, or other; and
for this simple reason, that they had no middle class.
If they did work well, (which is a question,) it was
just because they had no middle class — that class
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 17

which, in a free State, is the very life of a nation, and
yet which, in a despotism, is sure to be the root of
its rottenness. For a despot who finds, as Louis
Napoleon has done, a strong middle class already
existing, must treat it as he does; he must truckle
to it, pander to its basest propensities, seem to make
himself its tool, in order that he may make it his.
For the sake of his own life, he must do it; and
were a despot to govern England to-morrow, we
should see that.the man who was shrewd enough to
have climbed to that bad eminence, would be shrewd
enough to know that he could scarcely commit a
more suicidal act than, by some despotic measure of
sanitary reform to excite the ill-will of all the most
covetous, the most stupid, and the most stubborn
men in every town of England.

There is another answer, too, to “ Imperialists”
who talk of representative institutions being on their
trial, and let it be made boldly just now.

It will be time to talk of representative institu-
tions being gdod or bad, when the people of England
are properly represented.

In the first place, it does seem only fair that the
class who suffer most from epidemics should have
some little. share in the appointment of the men on
whose votes extermination of epidemics now mainly
depends. But that is too large a question to argue
here. Let the Government see to it in the coming
session.

Yet how much soever, or how little soever, the
suffrage be extended in the direction of the working
man, let it be extended, at least in some equal de-
gree, in the direction of the educated man. Few
bodies in England now express the opinions of edu-
cated men less than does the present House of Com-
mons. It is not chosen by educated men, any more
than it is by proletaires. It is not, on an average,
composed of educated men; and the many educated
18 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

men who are in it have, for the most part, to keep
their knowledge very much to themselves, for fear of
hurting the feelings of “ten-pound Jack,” or of the
local attorney who looks after Jack’s vote. And
therefore the House of Commons does not represent
public opinion.

For, to enounce with fitting clearness a great but
much forgotten truth, To have an opinion, you must
have an opinion.

Strange; but true, and pregnant too. For, from
it may be deduced this corollary, that nine tenths of
what is called public opinion is no opinion at all ;
for on the matters which come under the cognizance
of the House of Commons, (save where superstition,
as in the case of the Sabbath, or the Jew Bill, sets
folks thinking — generally on the wrong side,) nine
people out of ten have no opinion at all; know
nothing about the matier, and care less; wherefore,
having no opinions to be represented, it is not im-
portant whether that nothing be represented or not.

The true public opinion of England is composed
of the opinions of the shrewd, honest, practical men
in her, whether educated or not; and of such, thank
God, there are millions; but it consists also of the
opinions of the educated men in her; men who have
had leisure and opportunity for study; who have
some chance of knowing the future, ‘because they
have examined the past; who can compare England
with other nations, English creeds, laws, customs,
with those of the rest of mankind; who know some-
what of humanity, human progress, human exist-
ence; who have been practised in the processes of
thought ; and who, from study, have formed definite
opinions, differing doubtless in infinite variety, but
still, all founded upon facts, by something like fair
and scientific induction.

Till we have this class of men fairly represented
in the House of Commons, there is little hope for
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” 19

sanitary reform ; when it is so represented, we shall
have no reason to talk of representative institutions
being on their trial.

And it is one of the few hopeful features of the
present time, that an attempt is at last being made
to secure for educated. men of all professions a fair
territorial representation. A memorial to the Gov-
ernment has been presented, appended to which, in
very great numbers, are the names of men of note,
of all ranks, all shades in politics and religion, all

~ professions, legal, clerical, military, medical, and lit-
erary. A list of names representing so much in-
tellect, so much learning, so much acknowledged
moderation, so much good work already done and
acknowledged by the country, las never, perhaps,
been collected for any political purpose; and if their
scheme (the details of which are not yet:made pub-
lic) should in anywise succeed, it will do more for
the prospects of sanitary reform than any forward
movement of the last quarter of a century.

For if sanitary reform, or perhaps any really pro-
gressive measure, is to be carried out henceforth, we
must go back to something like the old principle of
the English constitution, by which intellect, as such,
had its proper share in the public councils. During
those middle ages when all the intellect and learning
was practically possessed by the clergy, they consti-
tuted a separate estate of the realm. This was the
old plan —the best which could be then devised.
After learning became common to the laity, the edu-

cated classes were represented more and more only....

by such clever young men as could be thrust into
‘parliament by the private patronage of the aristoc-
racy. Since the last Reform Bill, even that supply
of talent has been cut off; and the consequence has
been the steady deterioration of our House of Com-
mons toward such a level of mediocrity as shall sat-
isfy the ignorance of the practically electing major-
20 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ity, namely, the tail of the middle class; men who
are apt to possess all the failings with few of the
virtues of those above them and below them; who
have no. more intellectual training than the simple
working man, and far less than the average shop-
man, and who yet lose, under the influence of a
small competence, that practical training which gives
to the working man, made strong by wholesome
necessity, chivalry, endurance, courage, and self-
restraint ; whose business morality is made up of
the lowest and narrowest maxims of the commercial
world, unbalanced by that public spirit, that political
knowledge, that practical energy, that respect for the
good opinion of his fellows, which elevate the large
employer. On the hustings, of course, this descrip-
tion of the average free and independent elector
would. be called a calumny; and yet, where is the
member of parliament who will not, in his study,
assent to its truth, and confess, that of all men whom
he meets, those who least command his respect are
those among his constituents to secure whom he
takes most trouble; unless, indeed, it be the petti-
foggers who manage his election for him?

‘Whether this is the class to whose public opinion
the health and lives of the masses are to be intrusted,
is a question which should be settled as soon as pos-
sible.

Meanwhile let every man who would awake to the
importance of sanitary questions, do his best to
teach and preach, in season and out of season, and
to instruct, as far as he can, that public opinion which:
is as yet but public ignorance. Let him throw, for
instance; what weight he has into the “ National As-
sociation for the Advancement of Social Science.”
In it he will learn, as well as teach, not only on san-
itary reforms, but upon those cognate questions
which must be.considered with it, if it is ever to be
carried out.
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” a1

Indeed, this new “ National Assoéiation” seems
the most hopeful and practical move yet made by
the sanitarists. It may be laughed at somewhat at
first, as the British Association was; but the world
will find after a while that, like the British Associ-
ation, it can do great things towards moulding pub-
lic opinion, and compel men to consider certain sub-
jects, simply ‘by accustoming people to hear them
mentioned. The Association will not have existed
in vain, if it only removes that dull fear and suspi-
cion with which Englishmen are apt to regard a new
subject, simply because it is new. But the Associ-
ation will do far more than that. It has wisely not
confined itself to any one branch of social science,
but taken the subject in all its complexity. To do
otherwise, would have been to cripple itself. lt
would have shut out many subjects —— Law Reform,
for instance — which are necessary adjuncts to any
sanitary scheme; while it would have shut out that
very large class of benevolent people who have as
yet been devoting their energies to prisons, work-
houses, and schools. Such will now have an oppor-
tunity of learning. that they have been treating the
symptoms of social disease rather than the disease
itself. They. will see that vice is rather the effect
than the cause of physical misery, and that the sur-
est mode of attacking it, is to improve the physical
conditions of the lawer classes; to abolish foul air,
fouled water, foul lodging, and overcrowded dwell-
ings, in which. morality is difficult, and common de-
cency impossible.. They-will not. give up — Heaven
forbid that they should give up — their special good
works! but. they will surely throw the weight of their
names, their talents, their earnestness, into the great
central object of preserving human life, as soon as
they shall have recognized that prevention is better
than cure ; and that the simple and one method of
prevention is, to give the working man his rights.
22 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Water, air, light. A right to these three at least he
has. In demanding them, he demands no more than
God gives freely to the wild beast of the forest.
Till society has given him them, it does him an in-
‘justice in demanding of him that.he shouldbe a
useful member of society. If he is expected.to be
a man, let him at least be. put ona level with the
brutes. "When the benevolent of the land (and they
may be numbered by tens of thousands) shall once
have learned this plain and yet awful truth, a vast
upward step will have been gained. Because this
new Association will teach it them, during the next
ten or twenty years, may God’s blessing be on it, and
on the noble old man who presides over it. Often
already has he deserved well of his country; but
never better than now, when he has lent his great
name and great genius to the object of preserving
‘human life from wholesale destruction by unneces-
sary poison.

And meanwhile let the sanitary reformer work and
wait. “Go not after the world,” said a wise man,
“for if thou stand still long enough, the world will
come round to thee.” And to sanitary reform the
world will come round at last. Grumbling, scofling,
cursing its benefactors; boasting at last, as usual,
that it discovered for itself the very truths which it
tried to silence, it will come; and will be glad at
last to accept the one sibylline leaf, at the same price
at which it might have had the whole. The sanitary
reformer must make up his mind to see no fruit of
his labors, much less thanks or reward. He must
die in faith, as St. Paul says all true men die, “ not
having received the promises ;” worn out, perhaps,
by ill-paid and unappreciated labor, as that truest-
hearted and most unselfish of men, Charles Robert
Walsh, died but two years ago. But his works will
follow him — not, as the. preachers tell him, to heay-
-en — for of what use would they be there, to him or
‘““A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 23

to mankind ?— but here on earth, where he set them,
that they might go on in his path, after his example, _
and prosper and triumph long years after he is dead, ~
when his memory shall be blessed by generations not
merely “yet unborn,” but who never would have
been born at all, had he not inculcated into their un-
willing fathers the simplest laws of physical health,
decency, life —laws which the wild-cat of the wood,
burying its own excrement apart from its lair, has
learned by the light of nature; but which neither
nature nor God himself can as yet teach to a selfish,
perverse, and hypocritical generation.
24 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

CHALK-STREAM STUDIES.

[Fraser's Magazine, September, 1858.}

. Fisuine is generally associated in men’s minds
with wild mountain scenery). if not with the alps
and cataracts of Norway, still with the moors and
lochs of Scotland, or at least with the rocky rivers,
the wooded crags, the crumbling abbeys of Yorkshire,
Derbyshire, Hereford, or the Lowlands. And it can-
not be denied that much of the charm which an-
gling exercises over cultivated minds, is due to the
beauty and novelty of the landscapes which surround
him; to the sense of freedom, the exhilarating upland
air. Who would prefer the certainty of taking trout
out of some sluggish preserve,'to the chance of a
brace out of Edno or Llyn Dulyn? The pleasure
lies not in the prize itself, but in the pains which it
has cost; in the upward climbs through the dark
plantations, beside the rock-walled stream ; the tramp
over the upland pastures, one gay flower-bed of blue
and purple butterwort; the steady breathless climb
up the crags, which looked but one mile from you
when you started, so clear against the sky stood out
every knoll and slab; the first. stars of the white
saxifrage, golden-eyed, blood-bedropped, as if a fairy
had pricked her finger in the cup, which shine upon
some green cushion of wet moss, in a dripping crack
of the cliff; the first gray tufts of the Alpine club-
moss, the first shrub. of crowberry, or sea-green rose-
root, with its strange fleshy stems and leaves, which
mark the two-thousand-feet-line, and the beginning
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 25

of the Alpine world; the scramble over the arid
waves of the porphyry sea aloft, as you beat round
and round like a weary pointer dog in search of the
hidden lake; the last despairing crawl to the summit
of the sienite pyramid on Moel Meirch; the hasty
gaze around, far away into the green vale of Ffes-
tiniog, and over wooded flats, and long silver river-
reaches, and yellow sands, and blue sea flecked
with flying clouds, and isles and capes, and wilder-
nesses of mountain peaks, east, west, south, and
north; one glance at the purple gulf out of which
Snowdon rises, thence only seen in full majesty from
base to peak; and then the joyful run, springing over
bank and boulder, to the fathomless tarn beneath
your feet; the pull at the whisky-flask, as you toss
yourself, bathed in perspiration, on the turf; the
almost awed pause, as you recollect that you are
alone on the mountain-tops, by the side of the deso-
late voleano crater, out of all hope of speech or help
of man; and, if you break your leg among those
rocks, may lie there till the ravens pick your bones;
the anxious glance round the lake to see if the fish
are moving; the still more anxious glance through
your book to guess what they will choose to take ;
what extravagant bundle of red, blue, and yellow
feathers, like no insect save perhaps some jewelled
monster from Amboyna or New Guinea — may
“tempt those sulkiest and most capricious of trout
to cease for once their life-long business of picking
leeches from among those sienite cubes which will
twist your ankles and break your shins for the next
three hours. What matter (to a minute philosopher,
at least) if, after two hours of such enjoyment as
that, he goes down again into the world of man
with empty creel, or with a dozen pounders and
two-pounders, shorter, gamer, and_ redder-fleshed
than ever came out of Thames or Kennet? What
matter? If he has not caught them, he might
2
26 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

have caught them; he has been catching them in
imagination all the way up; and if he be a minute
philosopher, he holds ‘that there is no falser_pro-
verb than that devil’s beatitude, “Blessed is he
who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disap-
pointed.”

Say, rather, Blessed is he who expecteth every-
thing, for he enjoys everything once at least; and if
it falls out true, twice also.

Yes. Pleasant enough is mountain-fishing. But
there is one objection against it, that it is hard work
to get to it; and that the angler, often enough half-
tired before he arrives at his stream or lake, has left
for his day’s work only the lees of his nervous en-
ergy.
Another objection, more important perhaps to a
minute philosopher than to the multitude, is, that
there is in mountain-fishing an element of excite-
ment, — an element which is wholesome enough at
times for every one ; most wholesome at all times for
the man pent up in London air and London work ;
but which takes away from the angler’s most deli-
cate enjoyment, that dreamy contemplative repose,
broken by just enough amusement to keep his body
active, while his mind is quietly taking in every sight
and sound of nature. Let the Londoner have his
six weeks every year among crag and heather, and
return with lungs expanded and muscles braced to
his nine months’ prison. The countryman, who
needs no such change of air and scene, will prefer
more homelike, though more homely pleasures.
Dearer to him than wild cataracts or Alpine glens,
are the still, hidden streams which Bewick. has im-
mortalized in his vignettes, and Creswick in his pic-
tures; the long glassy shallow, paved with yellow
gravel, where he wades up between low walls of
fern-fringed rock, beneath nut and oak and alder, to
the low bar over which the stream comes swirling
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 27

and dimpling, as the water-ousel flits piping before
him, and the murmur of the ringdove comes soft and
sleepy through the wood. There, as he wades, he
sees a hundred sights and hears a hundred tones,
which are hidden from the traveller on the. dusty
highway above. The traveller fancies that he has
seen the country. So he has; the outside of it, at
least; but the angler only sees the inside. The an-
gler only is brought close face to face with the
flower, and bird, and insect life of the rich river
banks, the only part of the landscape where the
hand of man has never interfered, and the only part
in general which never feels the drought of summer,
“ the trees planted by the water-side, whose leaf shall
not wither.”

Pleasant are those hidden water-ways; but yet are
they the more pleasant because the hand of man has
not interfered with them?

It is a question, and one which the older one grows,
the less one is inclined to answer in the affirmative.
The older one grows, the more there grows on one
the sense of waste and incompleteness in all scenery
where man has not fulfilled the commission of Eden,
“to dress it and to keep it;” and with that, a sense
of loneliness which makes one long for home, and
cultivation, and the speech of fellow-men.

Surely the influence of mountain scenery is exag-
gerated nowadays. In spite of the reverend name
of Wordsworth, (whose poetry, be it remembered,
wants exactly that element of hardihood and manli-
ness which is supposed to be the birthright of moun-
taineers,) one cannot help, as a lowlander, hoping
that there is a little truth in the threnodes of a cer-
tain peevish friend who literally hates a mountain,
and justifies his hatred in this fashion : —

“J do hate mountains. I would not live among
them for ten thousand a year. If they look like par-
adise for three months in the summer, they are a
28 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

veritable inferno for the other nine; and I should
like to condemn my mountain-worshipping friends
to pass a whole year under the shadow of Snowdon,
with that great black head of his shutting out the
sunlight, staring down into their garden, overlooking
all they do in the most impertinent way, sneezing
and spitting at them with rain, hail, snow, and bit-
ter, freezing blasts, even in the hottest sunshine. A
mountain? He is a great stupid giant, with a per-
petual cold in his head, whose highest ambition is
to give you one also. As for his beauty, no natural
object has so little of its own; he owes it to the
earthquakes that reared him up, to the rains and
storms which have furrowed him, to every gleam
and cloud which pass over him. In himself, he is
a mere helpless stone-heap. Our old Scandinavian
forefathers were right when they held the mountain
Yotuns to be helpless pudding-headed giants, the
sport of gods and men; and their Cambridge de-
scendant, in spite of all his second-hand sentiment,
holds the same opinion at his heart; for his first in-
stinct, jolly honest fellow that he is, on seeing a snow
alp, is to scramble up it and smoke his cigar upon
the top. And this great stupid braggart, pretending
to be a personage and an entity, which, like Pope’s
monument on Fish-Street Hill,

Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies,

I am called upon nowadays to worship, as my bet-
ter, my teacher. Shall I, the son of Odin and Thor,
worship Hrymir the frost giant, and his cows the
waterfalls? Shall I bow down to the stock of a
stone? My better? I have done an honest thing
or two in my life, but I never saw a mountain do
one yet. As for his superiority to me, in what does
it consist? His strength? If he be stronger than
I, let him cut stones out of my ribs, as I can out of
his. His size? Am I to respect a mountain the
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 29

more for being 10,000 feet high? As well ask me
to respect Daniel Lambert for weighing five-and-
twenty stone. His cunning construction? There
is not a child which plays at his foot, not an insect
which basks on his crags, which is not more fearfully
and wonderfully made ; while as for his grandeur of
form, any college youth who scrambles up him, peel
him out of his shooting jacket and trousers, is a
hundred times more beautiful, and more grand, too,
by all laws of art. But so it is. In our prurient
prudery, we have got to despise the human, and
therefore the truly divine, element in art, and look
for inspiration, not to living men and women, but
to leaves and straws, stocks and stones. It is an
idolatry baser than that of the old Canaanites; for
they had the courage to go up to the mountain-tops,
and thence worship the host of heaven; but we are
to stay at the bottom, and worship the mountains
themselves. Byron hegan the folly with his misan-
thropic ‘ Childe Harold’ and Mr. Ruskin is perfect-
ing it with his ‘Stones of Venice.” Sermons in
stones? I don’t believe in them. I have seen a
better sermon in an old peasant woman’s face than
in all the Alps and Apennines of Europe. Did you
ever see any one who was the better for mountains?
Have the Alps made *** a whit honester, or *** a
whit more good-natured, or Lady *** a whit clev-
erer? Do they alter one hair’s breadth for the better
the characters of the ten thousand male and female
noodles who travel forth to stare at them every year?
Do mountains make them lofty-minded and gener-
ous-hearted? No. Celum, non animum mutant,
qui trans mare currunt. Don’t talk to me of. the
moral and physical superiority of mountain races,
for I tell you it isa dream. Civilization, art, poetry,
belong to the lowlands. Are the English mountain-
eers, pray, or the French, or the Germans? Were
the Egyptians mountaineers, or the Romans, or the
30 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Assyrians, as soon as they became a people? The
Greeks lived among mountains, but they took care
to inhabit the plains; and it was the sea and not the
hills which made them the people which they are.
Does Scotland owe her life to the highlander, or to the
lowlander? If you want an experimentum crucis,
there is one. As for poetry, will you mention to me
one mountain race which has written great poetry?
You will quote the Hebrews. I answer that the life
of Palestine always kept to the comparatively low
lands to the west of Jordan, while the barbarous
mountaineers of the eastern range never did any-
thing, — had but one Elijah to show among them.
Shakspeare. never saw a hill higher than Malvern bea-
con; and yet I suppose you.will call him a poet?
As for mountain morality —look at the Swiss. If
you wish to know the morals of the men, ask any
English traveller who has just paid his bill; if those
of the women, ask any German student returned
from his vacation ramble. Mountaineers look well
enough at a distance; seen close at hand you find
their chief distinctions to be starvation and ignor-
ance, fleas and goitre, with an utter unconscious-
ness — unless travellers put it into their heads — of
the ‘soul-elevating glories’ by which they have been
surrounded all their lives.”
,. He was gently reminded of the existence of the
Tyrolese.

“You may just as wisely remind me of the Cir-
cassians. What can prove my theory more com-
pletely than the fact that in them you have the two
finest races of the world, utterly unable to do any-
thing for humanity, utterly unable to develop them-
selves, because, to their eternal misfortune, they have
got caged among those abominable stone-heaps, and
have not yet been able to escape ?”

It was suggested that if mountain races were
generally inferior ones, it was because they were the
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 31

remnants of conquered tribes driven up into the
highlands by invaders.

“ And what does that prove but that the stronger
and cunninger races instinctively seize the lowlands,
because they half know (and Providence knows alto-
gether) that there alone they can become nations,
and fulfil the primeval mission,—to replenish the
earth and subdue it? No, no, my good sir. Moun-
tains are very well when they are doing their only
duty, — that of making rain and soil for the low-
lands; but as for this newfangled admiration of
them, it is a proof that our senses are dulled by lux-
ury and- books, and that we require to excite our
palled organ of marvellousness by signs and won-
ders, esthetic brandy and cayenne. No. I have
remarked often that the most unimaginative people,
who can see no beauty in a cultivated English field,
or in the features of a new-born babe, are the loud-
est ravers about glorious sunsets and Alpine pano-
ramas ; just as the man with no music in his soul, to
whom a fugue of Sebastian Bach, or one of Men- |
delssohn’s Songs without Words, means nothing,
and is nothing, thinks a monster concert of drums
and trumpets uncommonly fine.”

This is certainly a sufficiently one-sided diatribe.
Still it is one-sided; and we have heard so much of
the other side of late, that it may be worth while to
give this side also a fair and patient hearing.

At least he who writes wishes that it may have a
fair hearing. He has a sort of sympathy with Lord
Macaulay’s traveller of a hundred and fifty years
since, who, amid the “horrible desolation” of the
Scotch highlands, sighs for “the true mountain sce-
nery of Richmond-hill.”” The most beautiful land-
scape he has ever seen, or cares to see, is the vale
of Thames from Taplow or from Cliefden, looking
down towards Windsor, and up toward Reading;
to him Bramshill, looking out far and wide over the
32 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

rich lowland from its eyrie of dark pines, or Little-
cote nestling between deer-spotted upland and rich
water-meadow, is a finer sight than any robber castle
of the Rhine. He would not complain, of course,
were either of the views backed, like those glorious
ones of Turin or Venice, by the white saw-edge of
the distant Alps; but chiefly because the perpetual
sight of that Alp-wall would increase the sense of
home, of guarded security, which not the mountain,
but the sea, or the very thought of the sea, gives to
all true Englishmen. :

Let others, therefore, (to come back to angling,) tell
of moor and loch. But let it be always remembered
that the men who have told of them best have not
been mountaineers, but lowlanders who carried up
to the mountain the taste and knowledge which they
had gained below. Let them remember that the
great Sutherlandshire sportsman and sporting writer,
the late Mr. St. John, was once a fine gentleman
about town; that Christopher North was an Edin-
burgh Professor, a man of city learning and city cul-
tivation; and, as one more plea for our cockney
chalk streams of the south, that Mr. Scrope (who
passed many pleasant years respected and beloved by
Kennet side, with Purdy at his heels) enjoyed, they
say, the killing of a Littlecote trout as heartily as he
did that of a Tweed salmon. . .

_ Come, then, you who want pleasant fishing days
without the waste of time and trouble and expense
involved in two hundred miles of railway journey,
and perhaps fifty more of highland road, and try
what you can see and do among the fish not sixty
miles from town. Come to pleasant country inns,
where you can always get a good dinner; or, better
still, to pleasant country houses, where you can al-
ways get good society ; to rivers which will always
fish, brimful in the longest droughts of summer, in-
stead of being, as those mountain ones are, very like
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 33

a turnpike-road for three weeks, and then like bottled
porter for three days; to streams on which you have
strong southwest breezes for a week together on a
clear fishing water, instead of having, as on those
mountain ones, foul rain spate as long as the wind
is southwest, and clearing water when the wind
chops up to the north, and the chill blast of “ Clarus
Aquilo” sends all the fish shivering to the bottom;
streams, in a word, where you may kill fish (and
large ones) four days out of five from April to Octo-
ber, instead of having, as you will most probably in
the mountain, just one day’s sport in the whole of
your month’s holiday. Deluded friend, who suffered
in Scotland last year a month of Tantalus his tor-
ments, furnished by art and nature with rods, flies,
whisky, scenery, keepers, salmon innumerable, and
all that man can want, except water to fish in; and
who returned, having hooked accidentally by the tail
one salmon — which broke all and went to sea —
why did you not stay at home and take your two-
pounders and three-pounders out of the quiet chalk
brook which never sank an inch through all that
drought, so deep in the caverns of the hills are hid-
den its mysterious wells? Truly, wise men bide at
home, with George Riddler, while “a fool’s eyes are
in the ends of the earth.”

Repent, then ; and come with me, at least in fancy,
at six o’clock upon some breezy morning in June,
not by roaring railway nor by smoking steamer, but
in the cosey four-wheel, along brown heather moors,
down into green clay woodlands, over white chalk
downs, past Roman camps and scattered blocks’ of
Sarsden stone, till we descend into the long green
vale where, among groves of poplar and abele, winds
silver Whit. Come and breakfast at the neat white
inn, of yore a posting house of fame. The stables
are now turned into cottages; and instead of a
dozen spruce hostlers and helpers, the last of the post-

2%
34 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

boys totters sadly about the yard and looks ap ea-
gerly at the rare sight of a horse to feed. But the
house keeps up enough of its ancient viztue to give
us a breakfast worthy of Pantagruel’s self; and after
it, while we are looking out our flies, you can go
and chat with the old postboy, and hear his tales,
told with a sort of chivalrous pride, of the noble
lords and fair ladies before whom he has ridden in the
good old times gone by, —even so he darkly hints,
before “ His Royal Highness the Prince” himself.
Poor old fellow, he recollects not, and he need not
recollect, that these great posting houses were centres
of corruption, from whence the newest vices of the
metropolis were poured into the too-willing ears of
village lads and lasses; and that not even the New
Poor-Law itself has done more for the morality of
the South of England than the substitution of the
rail for coaches.

Now we will walk down through the meadows
some half mile,

While all the land in flowery squares,

Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind

Smells of the coming summer,
to a scene which, as we may find its antitype any-
where for miles round, we may boldly invent for our-
selves.

A red brick mill (not new red brick, of course)
shall hum forever below giant poplar-spires, which
bend and shiver in the steady breeze. On its lawn
laburnums shall feather down like dropping wells of
gold, and from under them the stream shall hurry
leaping and laughing into the light, and spread at
our feet into a broad bright shallow, in which the
kine are standing knee-deep already, a hint, alas!
that the day means heat. And there, to the initiated
eye, is another and a darker hint of glaring skies, per-
spiring limbs, and empty creels. Small fish are dim-
pling in the central eddies; but here, in- six inches of
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 35

water, on the very edge of the ford road, great tails
and back-fins are showing above the surface, and
swirling suddenly among the tufts of grass, sure
sign that the large fish are picking up a minnow-
breakfast at the same time that they warm their
backs, and do not mean to look at a fly for many an
hour to come. :

Yet courage; for on the rail of yonder wooden
bridge sits, chatting with a sun-browned nymph, her
bonnet pushed over her face, her hay-rake in her
hand, a river-god in coat of velveteen, elbow on knee
and pipe in mouth, and rising when he sees us, lifts
his wide-awake, and halloas back a roar of comfort
to our mystic adjuration, —

“Keeper! Is the fly up?”

“ Mortial strong last night, gentlemen.”

‘Wherewith he shall lounge up to us, landing-net
in hand, and we will wander up stream and away.

We will wander — for though the sun be bright,
here are good fish to be picked out of sharps and
stap-holes— into the water-tables, ridged up centuries
since into furrows forty feet broad and five feet high,
over which the crystal water sparkles among the
roots of the rich grass, and hurries down innumera-
ble drains to find its parent stream between tufts of
great blue geranium, and spires of purple loosestrife,
and the delicate white and pink comfrey-bells, and
the avens,— fairest and most modest of all the water-
side nymphs, who hangs her head all day long in
pretty shame, with a soft blush upon her tawny
cheek. But at the mouth of each of those drains, if
we can get our flies in, and keep ourselves unseen,
we will have one cast at least. -For at each of them,
in some sharp-rippling spot, lies a great trout or two,
waiting for beetle, caterpillar, and whatsoever else
may be washed from among the long grass above.
There, and from brimming feeders, which slip along,
weed-choked, under white hawthorn hedges, and be-
36 —(Ci«; KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

neath the great roots of oak and elm, shall we pick
out full many a goodly trout. There, in yon stop-
hole underneath that ‘tree, not ten feet broad or
twenty long, where just enough water trickles
through the hatches to make a ripple, are a brace of
noble fish, no doubt; and one of them you may be
sure of, if you will go the proper way to work, and
fish scientifically with the brace of flies I have put on
for you,—a governor and a black alder. In the first
place, you must throw up into the little pool, not
down. If you throw down, they will see you in an
instant; and besides, you will never get your fly close
under the shade of the brickwork, where alone you
have a chance. What use throwing into the still shal-
low tail, shining like oil in the full glare of the sun ?

“But I cannot get below the pool without is

Without crawling through that stiff stubbed hedge,
well set with trees, and leaping that. ten-foot feeder
afterwards. Very well. It is this sort of thing
which makes the stay-at-home cultivated chalk-fish-
ing as much harder work than mountain angling, as
a gallop over a stiffly inclosed country is harder than
one over an open moor. You can do it or not, as
you like; but if you wish to catch large trout on a
bright day, I should advise you to employ the only
method yet discovered.

There,— you are through; and the keeper shall
hand you your rod. You have torn your trousers,
and got a couple of thorns in your shins. The one
can be mended, the other pulled out. Now, jump
the feeder. There is no run to it, so,— you have
jumped in. Never mind; but keep the point of
your rod up. You-are at least saved the lingering
torture of getting wet inch by inch; and as for cold
water hurting any one — Credat Judeus.

Now make a circuit through the meadow forty
yards away. Stoop down when you are on the ridge
of each table. A trout may be basking at the lower

 
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 37

end of the pool, who will see you, rush up, and tell
all his neighbors. ‘Take off that absurd black chim-
ney-pot, which you are wearing, I suppose, for the
same reason as Homer’s heroes wore their koruthous
and phalerous, to make yourself look taller and more
terrible to your foes. Crawl up on three legs; and
when you are in position, kneel down. So.

Shorten your line all you can, — you cannot fish
with too short a line up-stream ; and throw, not into
the oil-basin near you, but right up into the dark-
est corner. Make your fly strike the brickwork and
dropin. So? Norise? Then don’t work or draw
it, or your deceit is discovered instantly. Lift it out,
and repeat the throw.

What? You have hooked your fly in the hatches?
Very good. Pull at it till the casting-line breaks ;
put on a fresh one, and to work again. There! you
have him. Don’t rise! fight him kneeling; hold
him hard, and give him no line, but shorten up any-
how. ‘Tear and haul him down to you before he
can make to his home, while the keeper rans round

with the net...... There, he is on shore. Two
pounds, good weight. Creep back more cautiously
than ever, and try again... .... There. A second

fish, over a pound weight. Now we will go and
recover the flies off the hatches; and you will agree
that there is more cunning, more science, and there-
fore more pleasant excitement, in “foxing” a great
fish out of a stop-hole, than in whipping far and
wide over an open stream, where a half-pounder is
a wonder and a triumph. As for physical exertion,
you will be able to compute for yourself how much
your back, knees, and fore-arm will ache by nine
o'clock to-night, after some ten hours of this scram-
bling, splashing, leaping, and kneeling upon a hot
June day. This item in the day’s work will of
course be put to the side of loss or of gain, accord-
ing to your temperament; but it will cure you of an
38 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

inclination to laugh at us Wessex chalk-fishers as
Cockneys. :

So we will wander up the streams, taking a fish
here and a fish there, till Really it is very hot.
We have the whole day before us; the fly will not
be up till five o’clock at least; and then the real
fishing will begin. Why tire ourselves beforehand 2
The squire will send us luncheon in the afternoon,
and after that expect us to fish as long as we can
see, and come up to the hall to sleep, regardless of
the ceremony of dressing. For is not the green
drake on? And while he reigns, all hours, meals,
decencies, and respectabilities must yield to his
caprice. See, here he sits, or rather tens of thou-
sands of him, one on each stalk of grass, — green
drake, yellow drake, brown drake, white drake, each
with his gauzy wings folded over his back, waiting
for some unknown change of temperature, or some-
thing else, in the afternoon, to wake him from his
sleep, and send him fluttering over the stream; while
overhead the. black drake, who has changed his skin
and reproduced his species, dances in the sunshine,
empty, hard, and happy, like Festus Bailey’s Great
Black Crow, (the only humorous thing he ever
wrote,) who all his life sings “ Ho, ho, ho.”

 

For no one will eat him, he well doth know.

However, as we have insides, and he has actually
none, and what is more strange, not even a mouth
wherewith to fill the said insides, we had better copy
his brothers and sisters below, whose insides are still
left, and settle with them upon the grass awhile be-
neath yon goodly elm.

Comfort yourself with a glass of sherry and a
biscuit, and give the keeper one, and likewise a
cigar. He will value it at five times its worth, not
merely for the pleasure of it, but because it raises
him in the social scale. “ Any cad,” so he holds,
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 39

“smokes pipes; but a good cigar is the note of the
quality,” and of them who “keep company with
the quality,” as keepers do. He puts it in his hat-
crown, to smoke this evening in presence of his com-
peers at the public-house, retires modestly ten yards,
lies down on his back in a dry feeder, under the
shade of the long grass, and instantly falls fast
asleep. Poor fellow! he was up all last night in
the covers, and will be again to-night. Let him
sleep while he may, and we will chat over chalk-
fishing.

The first thing, probably, on which you will be
inclined to ask questions, is the size of the fish in
these streams. We have killed this morning four
fish averaging a pound weight each. All below that
weight we throw in, as is our rule here; but you
may have remarked that none of them exceeded half
a pound; that they were almost all about herring
size. The smaller ones I believe to be year-old fish,
hatched last spring twelvemonth; the pound fish
two-year olds. At what rate these last would have
increased depends very much, I suspect, on their
chance of food. The limit of life and growth in
cold-blooded animals seems to depend very much on
their amount of foed. The boa, alligator, shark,
pike, and I suppose the trout also, will live to a
great age, and attain an enormous size, give them
but range enough; and the only cause why there
are trout of ten pounds and more in the Thames
lashers, while one of four pounds is rare here, is
simply that the Thames fish has more to eat. Here,
were the fish not sufficiently thinned out every year
by anglers, they would soon become large-headed,
brown, and flabby, and cease to grow. Many a
good stream has been spoiled in this way, when a
squire has unwisely preferred quantity to quality of
fish. ove

And if it be not the quantity of feed, I know no
40 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

clear reason why chalk and limestone trout should
be so much larger and better flavored than any oth-
ers. The cause is not the greater swiftness of the
streams; for (paradoxical as it may seem to many),
a trout likes swift water no more than a pike does,
except when spawning or cleaning afterwards. At
those times his blood seems to require a very rapid
oxygenation, and he goes to the “sharps” to obtain
it; but when he is feeding and fattening, the water
cannot be too still for him. Streams which are rapid
throughout never produce large fish; and a hand-
Jong trout transferred from his native torrent to a
still pond, will increase in size at a ten times faster
rate. In chalk streams the largest fish are found
oftener in the mill-heads than in the mill-tails. It is
a mistake, though a common one, to fancy that the
giant trout of the Thames lashers lie in swift water.
On the contrary, they lie in the very stillest spot of
the whole pool, which is just under the hatches.
There the rush of the water shoots over their heads,
and they look up through it for every eatable which
may be swept down. At night they run down to the

_ fan of the pool, to hunt minnow round the shallows;
but their home by day is the still deep; and their
preference of the lasher pool to the quiet water
above is due merely to the greater abundance of
food. Chalk trout, then, are large not merely be-
cause the water is swift.

Whether trout have not a specific fondness for
lime; whether water of some dozen degrees of hard-
ness is not necessary for their development? are
questions which may be fairly asked. ‘Yet, is not
the true reason this: that the soil on the banks of a
chalk or limestone stream is almost always rich, —
red loam, carrying an abundant vegetation, and there-
fore an abundant crop of animal life, both in and out
of the water? The countless insects which haunt a
rich hay meadow, all know who have eyes to see;
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 41

and if they will look into the stream, they will find
that the water-world is even richer than the air-world.

Every still spot in a chalk stream becomes so
choked with weed as to require mowing at least
thrice a year, to supply the mills with water. Grass,
milfoil, water-crowfoot, hornwort, starwort, horsetail,
and a dozen other delicate plants, form one tangled
forest, denser than those of the Amazon, and more
densely peopled likewise.

To this list will soon be added our Transatlantic
curse, Babingtonia diabolica, alias Anacharis alsinas-
trum. It has already ascended the Thames as high
as Reading; and a few years more, owing to the
present aqua-vivarium mania, will see it filling every
mill-head in England, to the torment of all millers,
Young ladies are assured that the only plant for
their vivariums is a sprig of Anacharis, for which
they pay sixpence, — the market value being that of
a wasp, flea, or other scourge of the human race;
and when the vivarium fails, its. contents, Anacharis
and all, are tossed into the nearest ditch; for which
the said young lady ought to be fined five pounds;
and would be, if Governments governed. What an
waft”

But come; for the sun burns bright, and fishing
is impossible; lie down upon the bank above this
stop. There is a camp-shutting, (a boarding in Eng-
lish,) on which you can put yourelbows. Lie down
on your face, and look down through two or three
feet of water, clear as air, into the water-forest where
the great trout feed.

Here; look into this opening in the milfoil and
crowfoot bed. Do you see a gray film around that
sprig? Examine it through the pocket lens. It is
a forest of glass bells, on branching stalks. ‘They
are Vorticelle ; and every one of those bells, by the
ciliary current on its rim, is scavenging the water, —
till a tadpole comes by and scavenges it. How
42 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

many millions of living. creatures are there on that
one sprig? Look here!—a brown polype,. with
long waving arms,—a gigantic monster, actually a
full half inch long. He is Hydra fusca, most famous,
and earliest described (I think by Trembley). Ere
we go home I may show you, perhaps, Hydra viridis,
with long pea-green arms, and rosea, most beautiful
in form and color of all the strange family. You
see that lump, just where his stalk joins his bell-
head? That is a budding baby. Ignorant of the
joys and cares of wedlock, he increases by gemma-
tion. See! here is another, with a full-sized young
one growing on his back. You may tear it off if
you will,—he cares not. You may cut him intoa
dozen pieces, they say, and each one will grow, as a
potato does. I suppose, however, that he also sends
out of his mouth little free ova, — medusoids, — call
them what you will, swimming by ciliz#, which after-
wards, unless the water-beetles stop them on the way,
will settle down as stalked polypes, and in their turn
practise some mystery of Owenian, parthenogene-
sis, or Steenstruppian alternation of generations, in
which all traditional distinctions of plant and animal,
male and female, are laughed to scorn by the mag-
nificent fecundity of the Divine imaginations.

That dusty cloud which shakes off in the water as
you move the weed, under the microscope, would be
one mass of exquisite forms, — Desmidie and Dia-
tomacee, and what not? Instead of running over
long names, take home a little in a bottle, put it
under your microscope, and if you think good, verify
the species from Hassall, Ehrenberg, or other wise
book; but without doing that, one glance through
the lens will show you why the chalk trout grow fat.

Do they, then, eat these infusoria ?

That is not clear. But minnows and small fry eat
them by millions; and so do tadpoles, and perhaps
caddis baits and water crickets.
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 48

What are they?

Look on the soft muddy bottom. You see num-
berless bits of stick. Watch awhile, and those sticks
are alive, crawling and tumbling over each other.
The weed, too, is full of smaller ones. Those live
sticks are the larva-cases of the Caperers,— Phry-
ganew, — of which one family nearly two hundred
species have been already found in Great Britain.
Fish up one, and you find, amid sticks and pebbles,
a comfortable silk case, tenanted by a goodly grub.
Six legs he has, like all insects, and tufts of white
horns on each ring of his abdomen, which are his
gills. A goodly pair of jaws he has, too, and does
good service with them; for he is the great water-
scavenger. Decaying vegetable matter is his food,
and with those jaws he will bark a dead stick as
neatly as you will with a penknife. But he does
not refuse animal matter. A dead brother (his, not
yours) makes a savory meal for him; and a party
of those Vorticella would stand a poor chance if
he came across them. You may count these cad-
dis baits by hundreds of thousands; whether the
trout eat them, case and all, is a question in these
streams. In some rivers the trout do so; and what
is curious, during the spring, have a regular gizzard,
a temporary thickening of the coats of the stomach,
to enable them to grind the pebbly cases of the
caddises. See! here is one whose house is closed
at both ends, — “ grillé,” as Pictet calls it, in his un-
rivalled monograph of the Genevese Phryganez, on
which he spent four years of untiring labor. The
grub has stopped the mouth of his case by an open
network of silk, defended by small pebbles, through
which the water may pass freely, while he changes
into his nymph state. Open the case; you find
within not a grub, but a strange, bird-beaked crea-
ture, with long legs and horns laid flat by its sides,
and miniature wings on its back. Observe that the
44 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

sides of the tail, and one pair of legs, are fringed
with dark hairs. ‘After a fortnight’s rest in this
prison, this “nymph” will gnaw her way out and
swim through the water on her back, by means of
that fringed tail and paddles, till she reaches the bank
and the upper air. There, under the genial light
of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged fly
emerge, to buzz over the water as a fawn-colored
Caperer, — deadliest of trout-flies ; if she be not snap-
ped up beforehand under water by some spotted
monarch in search of supper.

But look again among this tangled mass of weed.
Here are more larvee of water-flies. Some have the
sides fringed with what look like paddles, but which
are gills. Of these; one part have whisks at the tail,
and swim freely. They will change into ephemere,
cock-winged “ duns,” with long whisked tails. The
larve of the famous green drake (Ephemera vulgata)
are like these, but we shall not find them. They are
all changed, by now, into the perfect fly; and if not,
they burrow about the banks, and haunt the cray-
fish-holes, and are not easily found.

Some, again, have the gills on their sides larger
and broader, and no whisks at the tail. These are
the larvee of Sialis, the black alder, Lord Stowell’s
fly, shorm fly, hunchback of the Welsh, with which
we have caught our best fish to-day.

And here is one of a delicate yellow-green, whose
tail is furnished with three broad paddle-blades.
These, I believe, are gills again. The larva, I be-
lieve, is that of the Yellow Sally, — Chrysoperla
viridis, —a famous fly on hot days in May and
June. Among the pebbles there, below the fall, we
should have found, a month since, a similar but much
larger grub, with two paddles at his tail. He is the
“creeper” of the northern streams, and changes to
the great crawling stone-fly, (May-fly of Tweed,)
Perla bicaudata, an ugly creature, which runs on
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 45

stones and posts, and kills right well on stormy days,
when he is beaten into the stream.

There. Now we have the larve of the four great
trout-fly families, Phryganew, Ephemere, Sialide,
Perlide ; so you have no excuse for telling —as not
only Cockneys, but really good sportsmen who write
on fishing, have done —such fibs as, that the green
drake comes out of a caddis-bait, or give such vague
generalities as, “this fly comes from a water-larva.”

These are, surely, in their imperfect and perfect
states, food enough to fatten many a good trout;
but they are not all. See these transparent brown
snails, Limfheses and Succine, climbing about the
posts; and these other pretty ones, coil laid within
coil as flat as a shilling, Planorbis. Many a million
of these do the trout pick off the weed day by day;
and no food, not even the leech, which swarms here,
is more fattening. The finest trout of the high
Snowdon lakes feed almost entirely on leech and
snail, — baits they have none,— and fatten till they
cut as red as a salmon.

Look here, too, once more. You see a gray mov-
ing cloud about that pebbled bed, and underneath
that bank. It is a countless swarm of “sug,” or
water-shrimp; a bad food, but devoured greedily by
the great trout in certain overstocked preserves.

Add to these plenty of minnow, stone-loach, and
miller’s thumbs, a second course of young crayfish,
and for one gormandizing week of bliss, thousands
of the great green-drake fly; and you have food
enough for a stock of trout which surprise, by their
size and number, an angler fresh from the mountain
districts of the north and west. To such a fisher-
man, the tale of Mr. ***, of Ramsbury, who is said
to have killed, in one day in his own streams on
Kennet, seventy-six trout, all above a pound, sounds
like a traveller’s imagination; yet the fact is, I be-
lieve, accurately true.
46 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

This, however, is an extraordinary case upon an
extraordinary stream. In general, if a man shall
bring home (beside small fish) a couple of brace of
from one to three pounds apiece, he may consider
himself as a happy man, and that the heavens have
not shone, but frowned, upon him very propitiously.

And now comes another and an important ques-
tion. For which of all these dainty eatables, if for
any, do the trout take our flies? and from that arises
another. Why are the flies, with which we have
been fishing this morning, so large,—of the size
which is usually employed on a Scotch lake? You
are a North-country fisher, and are wont, upon your
clear streams, to fish with nothing but the smallest
gnats. And yet, our streams are as clear as yours, —
what can be clearer?

Whether fish really mistake our artificial flies for
different species of natural ones, as Englishmen hoJd;
or merely for something good to eat, the color whereof
strikes their fancy, as Scotchmen think; a theory
which has been stated in detail, and with great sem-
blance of truth, in Mr. Stewari’s admirable Practical
Angler, is a matter about which much good sense
has been written on both sides.

Whosoever will, may find the great controversy.
fully discussed in the pages of Ephemera. Perhaps
(as in most cases) the truth lies between the two ex-
tremes; at least, in a chalk stream.

Ephemera’s list of flies may be very excellent, but
it is about ten times as long as would be required
for any of our southern streams. Six or seven sorts
of flies ought to suffice for any fisherman; if they
will not kill, the thing which will kill is yet to seek.

To name them : —

1. The caperer.

2. The March-brown.

3. The governor.

4. The black alder.
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 47

And two or three large palmers, red, grizzled, and
coch-a-bonddhu, each with a tuft of red floss silk
at the tail. These are enough to show sport from
March to October; and also like enough to certain
natural flies to satisfy the somewhat dull memory of
a trout.

But beyond this list there is little use in roaming,
as far as my experience goes. A yellow dun kills
sometimes marvellously on chalk streams, and always
upon rocky ones, A Turkey-brown ephemera, the
wing made of the bright brown tail of the cock par-
tridge, will, even just after the May-fly is off, show
good sport in the forenoon, when he is on the water ;
and so will in the evening the claret spinner, to which
he turns. Excellent patterns of these flies may be
found in Ronalds; but, after all, they are uncertain
flies; and, as Harry Verney used to say, “they casu-
alty flies be all havers,” which sentence the reader,
if he understands good Wessex, can doubtless trans-
late for himself.

And there are evenings on which the fish take
greedily small transparent ephemere. But, did you
ever see large fish rise at these ephemere? and even
if you did, can you imitate the natural fly? And if
you did, would it not be waste of time? For the
experience of many good fishers is, that trout rise
at these delicate duns, black gnats, and other micro-
scopic trash, simply faute de mieux. They are hun-
gry, as trout are six days in the week, just at sun-
set. A supper they must have, and they take what
comes; but if you can give them anything better
than the minute fairy, compact of equal parts of
glass and wind, which naturalists call an Ephemera
or Batis, it will be most thankfully received, if there
be ripple enough on the water (which there seldom
is on a fine evening) to hide the line; but even though
the water be still, take boldly your caperer or your
white moth, (either of them ten times as large as
48 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

what the trout are rising at,) hurl it boldly into a
likely place, and let it lie quiet and sink, not at-
tempting to draw or work it; and if you do not
catch anything by that means, comfort yourself with
the thought that there are others who can.

And now to go through our list, beginning with —

1. The caperer.

This perhaps is the best of all flies ; it is certainly
the one which will kill earliest and latest in the year;
and though I would hardly go as far as a friend of
mine, who boasts of never fishing with anything else,
I believe it will, from March to October, take more
trout, and possibly more grayling, than any other
fly. Its basis is the woodcock wing; red hackle
legs, which should be long and pale; and a thin
mohair body, of different shades of red-brown, from
a dark claret to a pale sandy. It may thus, tied
of different sizes, do duty for half a dozen of the
commonest flies; for the early claret, (red-brown of
Ronalds; a Nemoura, according to him,) which is
the first spring-fly; for the red spinner, or perfect
form of the March-brown ephemera; for the soldier,
the soft-winged reddish beetle which haunts the um-
belliferous flowers, and being as soft in spirit as in
flesh, perpetually falls into the water, and comes to
grief therein; and last but not least, for the true
caperers, or whole tribe of phryganide, of which a
sketch was given just now. As a copy of them, the
body should be of a pale red-brown, all but sandy,
(but never snuff-colored, as shop-girls often tie it,)
and its best hour is always in the evening. It kills
well when fish are gorged with their morning meal of
green drakes; and after the green drake is off, it is
almost the only fly at which large trout care to look;
a fact not to be wondered at when one considers
that nearly two hundred species of English phryga-
nide# have been already described, and that at least
half of them are of the fawn-tint of the caperer.
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 49

Under the title of flame-brown, cinnamon, or red
hackle and rail’s wing, a similar fly kills well in Ire-
land, and in Scotland also; and is sometimes the
best sea-trout fly which can be laid on the water.
Let this suffice for the caperer.

2. Of the March-brown ephemera there is litile
to be said, save to notice Ronalds’ and Ephemera’s
excellent description, and Ephemera’s: good hint of
fishing with more than one March-brown at once,
viz: with a sandy-bodied male, and a greenish-bodied
female. The fly is a worthy fly, and being easily
imitated, gives great sport, in number rather than in
size; for when the March-brown is out, the two or
three-pound fish are seldom on the move, preferring
leeches, tom-toddies, and caddis-bait in the nether
deeps, to lanky ephemere at the top; and if you
should (as you may) get hold of a big fish on the
fly, “ yow’d best hit him in again,” as we say in

essex; for he will be, like the Ancient Mari-
ner—

Long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.

3. The “ governor.” —In most sandy banks, and
dry poor lawns, will be found numberless burrows
of ground bees who have a great trick of tumbling
into the water. Perhaps, like the honey bee, they
are thirsty souls, and must needs go down to the
river and drink; perhaps, like the honey bee, they
rise into the air with some difficulty, and so in cross-
ing a stream are apt to strike the farther bank, and
fall in. Be that as it may, an imitation of these
little ground bees is a deadly fly the whole year
round; and if worked within six inches of the shore,
will sometimes fill a basket when there is not a fly
on the water or a fish rising. ‘There are those who
never put up a cast of flies without one; and those,
too, who have killed large salmon on him in the

north of Scotland, when the streams are low.
3
50 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

His tie is simple enough. A pale partridge or,
woodcock wing, short red-hackle legs, a peacock-
herl body, and a tail— on which too much artistic
skill-can hardly be expended — of yellow floss silk,
and gold twist or tinsel. The orange-tailed gover-
nors “of ye shops,” as the old drug-books would say,
are all “ havers;” for the proper color is a honey yel-
low. The mystery of this all-conquering tail seems
to be, that it represents the yellow pollen, or “ bee
bread ” in the thighs or abdomen of the bee ; where-
of the bright color, and perhaps the strong musky
flavor, makes him an attractive and savory morsel.
Be that as it may, there is no better rule for a chalk
stream than this,— when you don’t know what to
fish with, try the governor.

4, The black alder (Sialis nigra, or Lutaria).

What shall be said, or not be said of this queen
of flies? And what of Ephemera, who never men-
tions her? His alder fly is,—I know not what;
certainly not that black alder, shorm fly, Lord Stow-
ell’s fly, or hunchback, which kills the monsters of
the deep, surpassed only by the green drake for one
fortnight ; but surpassing him in this, that she will
kill on till September, from that happy dav on which

You find her out on every stalk
Whene’er you take a river walk,
When swifts at eve begin to hawk —

O thou beloved member of the brute creation!
Songs have been written in praise of thee; statues
would ere now have been erected to thee, had that
hunchback and flabby wings of thine been “suscep-
tible of artistic treatment.” But ugly thou art in
the eyes of the uninitiated vulgar; a little stumpy
old maid, toddling about the world in a black bon-
net and a brown cloak, laughed at by naughty boys,
but doing good wherever thou comest, and leaving
sweet memories behind thee; so sweet that the trout
will rise at the ghost or sham of thee, for pure love of
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 51

thy past kindnesses to them, months after thou hast
departed from this sublunary sphere. What hours
of bliss do I not owe to thee! How have I seen, in
the rich meads of Wey, after picking out wretched
quarter-pounders all the morning on March-brown
and red-hackle, the great trout rush from every hover
to welcome thy first appearance among the sedges
and buttercups! How often, late in August, on
Thames, on Test, on Loddon-heads, have J seen the
three and four-pound fish prefer thy dead image to
any live reality. Have I not seen poor old Si.
‘Wilder, king of Thames fishermen (now gone home
to his rest), shaking his huge sides with delight over
thy mighty deeds, as his fourteen-inch whiskers flut-
tered in the breeze like the horse-tail standard of
some great Bashaw, while crystal Thames mur-
mured over the white flints on Monkey Island shal-
low, and the soft breeze sighed in the colossal poplar
spires, and the great trout rose and rose, and would
not cease, at thee, my alder-fly? Have I not seen,
after a day in which the earth below was iron, and
the heavens above as brass, as the three-pounders
would have thee, and thee alone, in the purple
August dusk, old Moody’s red face grow redder with
excitement, half proud at having advised me to “ put
on” thee, half fearful lest we should catch all my
lady’s pet trout in one evening? Beloved alder-fly!
would that I could give thee a soul (if indeed thou
hast not one already, thou, and all things which
live), and make thee happy in all eons to come;
but as it is, such immortality as I can I bestow on
thee here, in small return for all the pleasant days
thou hast bestowed on me.

Bah! I am becoming poetical; let us think how
to tie an alder-fly.

The common tie is good enough. A brown mal-
lard, or dark hen-pheasant tail for wing, a black
hackle for legs, and the necessary peacock-herl body.
52 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

A better still is that of Jones Jones Beddgelert, the
famous fishing clerk of Snowdonia, who makes the
wing of dappled peacock-hen, and puts the black
hackle on before the wings, in order to give the pe-
culiar hunchbacked shape of the natural fly. Many
a good fish has this tie killed. But the best pattern
of all is tied from the mottled wing-feather of an In-
dian bustard; generally used, when it can be ob-
tained, only for salmon flies. The brown and fawn
check pattern of this feather seems to be peculiarly
tempting to trout, especially to the large trout of
Thames; though in every river where I have tried
the alder, I have found the bustard wing facile prin-
ceps among all patterns of the fly.

Of palmers (the hairy caterpillars) are many sorts.
Ephemera gives by far the best list yet published.
Ronalds has also three good ones, but whether they
are really taken by trout instead of the particular
natural insects which he mentions, is not very certain.
The little coch-a-bonddhu palmer, so killing upon
moor streams, may probably be taken for young
larvee of the fox and oak-egger moths, abundant on
all moors, upon trefoils, and other common plants;
but the lowland caterpillars are so abundant and so
various in color that trout must be good entomolo-
gists to distinguish them. Some distinction they
certainly make; for one palmer will kill where an-
other does not; but this depends a good deal on the
color of the water: the red palmer being easily seen,
will kill almost anywhere and any when, simply be-
cause it is easily seen; and both the grizzle and
brown palmer may be made to kill by adding to the
tail a tuft of red floss silk; for red, it would seem,
has the same exciting effect on fish which it has upon
many quadrupeds, possibly because it is the color of
flesh. The mackerel will often run greedily at a
strip of scarlet cloth; and the most killing pike-fly
I ever used had a body made of remnants of the
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 53

huntsman’s new “ pink.” Still, there are local palm-
ers. On Thames, for instance, I have seldom
failed with the grizzled palmer, while the brown has
seldom succeeded, and the usually infallible red
never. There is one more palmer worth trying,
which Scotsmen, I believe, call the Royal Charlie ;
a coch-a-bonddhu or furnace hackle, over a body of
gold-colored floss silk, ribbed with broad gold tinsel.
Both in Devonshire and in Hampshire this will kill
great quantities of fish, wherever furzy or otherwise
wild banks or oak-woods afford food for the oak-egger
and fox moths, which children call “ Devil’s Gold
Rings,” and Scotsmen “ Hairy Oubits.”

Two hints more about palmers. They must not be
worked on the top of the water, but used as stretch-
ers; and allowed to sink as living caterpillars do; and
next, they can hardly be too large or rough, provided
that you have skill enough to get them into the
water without a splash. I have killed well on
Thames with one full three inches long, armed of
course with two small hooks. With palmers—and
perhaps with all baits—the rule is, the bigger the
bait the bigger the fish. A large fish does not care
to move except for a good mouthful. The best pike-
fisher I know prefers a half-pound chub when he
goes after one of his fifteen-pound jack; and the
largest pike I ever ran,—and lost, alas! who
seemed of any weight above twenty pounds, was
hooked on a live white fish of full three-quarters of
a pound. Still, no good angler will despise the mi-
nute North-country flies. In Yorkshire they are said
to kill the large chalk trout of Driffield as well as the
small limestone and grit fish of Craven; if so, the
gentlemen of the Driffield Club; who are said to
think nothing of killing three-pound fish on midge
flies and cobweb tackle, must be (as canny York-
shiremen are likely enough to be) the best anglers in
England.
54 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

In one spot only in Yorkshire, as far as I know,
do our large chalk flies kill: namely, in the lofty
limestone tarn of Malham. There palmers, caper-
ers, and rough black flies, of the largest Thames and
Kennet sizes, seem the only attractive baits; and for
this reason, that they are the flies of the place. The
cinnamon phryganea comes up abundantly from
among the stones; and the large peat moss to the
west of the tarn abounds, as usual, in house-flies
and bluebottles, and in the caterpillars of the fox
and oak-egger moths; another proof that the most
attractive flies are imitations of the real insects. On
the other hand, there are said to be times when
midges, and nothing else, will rise fish on some
chalk streams. The delicate black hackle which Mr.
Stewart praises so highly (and which should always
be tied on a square sneck-bend hook), will kill in
June and July; and on the Itchen, at Winchester,
hardly any flies but small ones are used after the
green drake is off. But there is one sad objection
against these said midges— what becomes of your
fish when hooked on one ina stream full of weeds
(as all chalk streams are after June,) save

*~ One struggle more, and I am free
From pangs which rend my heart in twain?

‘Winchester fishers have confessed to me that they
lose three good fish out of every four in such cases ;
and as it seems pretty clear that chalk fish approve
of no medium between very large flies and very
small ones, I advise the young angler, whose temper
is not yet schooled into perfect resignation, to spare
his own feelings by fishing with a single large fly, —
say the governor in the forenoon, the caperer in the
evening, regardless of the clearness of the water. I
have seen flies large enough for April, raise fish ex-
cellently in-Test and other clear streams in July and
August; and what is more, drag them up out of the
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 55

weeds and into the landing-net, where midges would
have lost them in the first scuffle.

So much for our leading chalk flies; all copies
of live insects. Of the entomology of mountain
streams little as yet is known; but a few scattered
hints may suffice to show that in them, as well as
in the chalk rivers, a little natural science might
help the angler.

The well-known fact that smaller flies are required
on the moors than in the lowlands, is easily explained
by the fact that poorer soils and swifter streams pro-
duce smaller insects. The large Phryganee, or true
caperers, whose caddis-baits love still pools and stag-
nant ditches, are there rare; and the office of water-
scavenger is fulfilled by the Rhyacophiles (torrent-
lovers) and Hydropsyches, whose tiny pebble-houses
are fixed to the stones to resist the violence of the
summer floods. In and out of them the tiny larva
runs to find food, making in addition, in some spe-
cies, galleries of earth along the surface of the stones,
in which he takes his walks abroad in full security.
In any of the brown rivulets of Windsor forest, tow-
ard the middle of summer, the pebble-houses of these
little creatures may be seen in millions, studding
every stone. To the Hydropsyches (species mon-
tana? or variegata? of Pictet) belongs that curious
little Welsh fly, known in Snowdon by the name
of the Gwynnant, whose tesselated wing is best
imitated by brown mallard feather, and who so
swarms in the lower lakes of Snowdon, that it is
often necessary to use three of them on the line at
once, all other flies being useless. It is perhaps the
abundance of these tesselated Hydropsyches which
makes the mallard wing the most useful in mountain
districts, as the abundance of the fawn and gray
Phryganide.in the south of England makes the
woodcock wing justly the favorite. The Rhyacoph-
iles, on the other hand, are mostly of a shining soot-
56 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

gray, or almost black. These may be seen buzzing
in hundreds over the pools on a wet evening, and with
them the sooty Mystacides, called silver-horns in
Scotland, from their antenne, which are of prepos-
terous length, and ringed prettily enough with black
and white. These delicate fairies make movable
cases, or rather pipes, of the finest sand, generally
curved, and resembling in shape the Dentalium shell.
Guarded by these they hang in myriads on the
smooth ledges of rock, where the water. runs gently
a few inches deep. These are abundant everywhere ;
but I never saw so many of them as in the exquisite
Cother brook, near Middleham, in Yorkshire. In
that delicious glen, while wading up beneath the ash-
‘fringed crags of limestone, out of which the great
ring ousel (too wild, it seemed, to be afraid of man)
hopped down fearlessly to feed upon the strand, or
past flower-banks where the golden globe-flower, and
the great blue geranium, and the giant campanula,
bloomed beneath the white tassels of the bird-cherry,
I could not tread upon the limestone slabs without
crushing at every step hundreds of the delicate Mys-
tacide tubes, which literally paved the shallow edge
of the stream, and which would have been metamor-
phosed in due time into small sooty moth-like fairies,
best represented, I should say, by the soft black-
hackle which Mr. Stewart recommends as the most
deadly of North-country flies. Not to these, how-
ever, but to the Phryganee (who, when sticks and
pebbles fail, often make their tubes of sand, e. g.
P. flava), should I refer the red-cow fly, which is al-
most the only autumn killer in the Dartmoor streams.
A red cow-hair body and a woodcock wing is his
type, and let those who want West-country trout
remember him. :
Another fly, common on some rocky streams, but
more scarce in the chalk, is the “ Yellow Sally,”
which entomologists, with truer appreciation of ‘its
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 57

color, call Chrysoperla viridis. It may be bought at
the shops; at least a yellow something of that name,
but bearing no more resemblance to the delicate yel-
low-green natural fly, with its warm gray wings,
than a. Pre-Raphaelite portrait to the human being
for whom it is meant. Copied, like most trout flies,
from some traditional copy by the hands of cockney
maidens, who never saw a fly in their lives, the mis-
take of a mistake, a sham raised to its tenth power,
it stands a signal proof that anglers will never get
good flies till they learn a little entomology them-
selves, and then teach it tothe tackle-makers. But
if it cannot be bought, it can at least be made; and
I should advise every one who fishes: rocky streams
in May and June, to dye for himself some hackles
of a brilliant greenish-yellow, and in the most burn-
ing sunshine, when fish seem inclined to rise at no
fly whatsoever, examine the boulders for the Chry-
soperla, who runs over them, her wings laid flat on
her back, her yellow legs moving as rapidly as a
forest-fly’s ; try to imitate her, and use her on the
stream, or on the nearest lake. Certain it is, that in
Snowdon this fly and the Gwynnant Hydropsyche
will fill a creel in the most burning northeaster, when
all other flies are useless; a sufficient disproof of
the Scotch theory,—that fish do not prefer the fly
which is on the water.*

Another disproof may be found in the “ fern web,”
«bracken clock,” of Scotland; the tiny cockchafer,
with brown wing-cases and dark-green thorax, which
abounds in some years in the hay-meadows, on the
fern, or on the heads of umbelliferous flowers. The
famous Loch-Awe fly, deseribed as an alder-fly with
a rail’s wing, seems to be nothing but this fat little
worthy; but the best plan is to make the wings,

%* The Ripon list of natural flies contains several other species of small
Wemourides ualenown to me, save one brown one, which is seen here,
though rarely, in June.
58 _ KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

either buzz or hackle, of the bright neck-feather of
the cock pheasant, thus gaining the metallic lustre
of the beetle tribe. Tied thus, either in Devonshire
or Snowdon, few flies surpass him when he is out.
His fatness proves an attraction which the largest
fish cannot resist. ;

The Ephemere, too, are far more important in
rapid and rocky streams, than in the deeper, stiller
waters of the south. It is worth while for a good
fish to rise at them there; the more luxurious chalk
trout will seldom waste himself upon them, unless
he be lying in shallow water, and has but to move a
few inches upward.

But these Ephemere, like all other naiads, want
working out. ‘The species which Mr. Ronalds gives,
are, most of them, by his own confession, very un-
certain. Of the Phryganide, he seems to know
little or nothing, mentioning but two species out of
the two hundred which are said to inhabit Britain ;
and his land flies and beetles are, in several cases,
quite wrongly named. However, the professed en-
tomologists know but little of the mountain flies;
and the angler who would help to work them out
would confer a benefit on science, as well as on the
“gentle craft.” As yet, the only approach to such a
-- good work, which I know of, is a little book on the
trout flies of Ripon, with excellent engravings of the
natural fly. The author’s name is not given; but
the book may be got at Ripon, and most valuable it
must be to any North-country fisherman.

But come, we must not waste our time in talk,
for here is a cloud over the sun, and plenty more
coming up behind, before a ruffling southwest breeze,
as Shelley has it, —

Calling white clouds like flocks to feed in air.

Let us up and onward to that long still reach,
which is now curling up fast before the breeze ; there
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 59

are large fish to be taken, one or two at least, even
before the fly comes on. You need not change your
flies; the cast which you have on,— governor, and
black, alder, — will take, if anything will. Only do
not waste your time and muscle, as you are begin-
ning to do, by hurling your flies wildly into the mid-
dle of the stream, on the chance of a fish being
there. Fish are there, no doubt, but not feeding
ones. They are sailing about and enjoying the
warmth; but nothing more. If you want to find
the hungry fish, and to kill them, you must stand
well back from the bank, — or kneel down, if you are
really in earnest about sport; and throw within a
foot of the shore, above you or below, (but if pos-
sible above,) with a line short enough to manage
easily; by which I mean, short enough to enable
you to lift your flies out of the water at each throw,
without hooking them in the docks and comfrey
which grow along the brink. You must learn to raise
your hand at the end of each throw, and lift the flies
clean over the land-weeds, or you will lose time, and
frighten all the fish, by crawling to the bank to un-
hook them. Believe me, one of the commonest
mistakes into which young anglers fall, is that of
fishing, in “skip-jack broad;” in plain English, in
mid-stream where few fish, and those little ones, are
to be caught. Those who wish for large fish, work
close under the banks, and seldom take a mid-stream
cast, unless they see a fish rise there.

The reason of this, is simple. Walking up the
Strand in search of a dinner, a reasonable man will
keep to the trottoir, and look in at the windows close
to him, instead of parading up the mid-street. And
even so, do all wise and ancient trout. The banks
are their shops; and thither they go for their din-
ners, driving their poor little children tyrannously out
into the mid-river, to fare as hap may hap. Over
these children the tyro wastes his time, flogging the
60 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

stream across and across for weary hours, while the
big papas and mammas are comfortably under the
bank, close at his feet, grabbing about the sides for
water crickets, and not refusing, at times, a leech or
a young crayfish, but perfectly ready to take.a fly,
if you offer one large and tempting enough. They
do but act on experience. All the largest surface-
food, — beetles, bees, and palmers, — comes off the
shore; and all the caperers and alders, after emerg-
ing from their pupa-cases, swim to the shore in order
to change into the perfect insect in the open air.
The perfect insects haunt sunny sedges: and tree-
stems, — whence the one is often called the sedge,
the other the alder-fly,— and from thence drop into
the trouts’ mouths; and within six inches of the
bank will the good angler work, all the more sedu-
lously, and even hopefully, if he sees no fish rising.
I have known good men say that they had rather
not see fish on the rise, if the day be good; that
they can get surer sport, and are less troubled with
small fish, by making them rise; and certain it is,
that a day when the fish are rising all over the
stream, is generally one of disappointment. They
are then picking at Ephemere, or small gnats, which
rise up from their pupa state pretty equally all over
the stream, and which, as I have said before,: no
man can imitate,— at least, well enough to kill in
anything but a strong stream or ripple. And even
then, it is a question whether the fish, which cover
the surface with those fleeting rings of glass which
Creswick alone knows how to paint, are really the
large fish; and whether it is not wiser, instead of
searching one’s book through for some gnat which
they will take perchance, to keep to the large stand-
ard flies and to the bank; save, of course, in those
few glorious hours when the green drake is up, and
every man may do what is right in the sight of his
own eyes.
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 61

Another advantage of bank fishing is, that the fish
sees the fly only for a° moment. He has no long
gaze at it, as it comes to him across the water. It
either drops exactly over his nose, or sweeps down
the stream straight upon him. He expects it to
escape on shore the next moment, and chops at it
fiercely and hastily, instead of following and exam-
ining. Add to this the fact, that when he is under
the bank there is far less chance of his seeing you;
and duly considering these things, you will throw
away no more-time in drawing, at least, in chalk
streams, flies over the watery wastes, to be snapped
at, now and then, by herring-sized pinkeens. In
rocky streams, where the quantity of bank food is
far smaller, this rule will perhaps not hold good;
though who knows not that his best fish are gen- |
erally taken under some tree from which the little
caterpillars (having determined on slow and deliber-
ate suicide) are letting themselves down gently by a
silken thread into the mouth of the spotted monarch,
who has but to sail about and about, and pick them
up one by one as they touch the stream ?— A sight
which makes one think, (as does a herd of swine
crunching acorns, each one of which might have
become a “ builder oak,”) how Nature is never more
magnificent than in her waste.

The next mistake, natural enough to the laziness
of fallen man, is that of fishing down stream, and
not up. What Mr. Stewart says, on this point,
should be read by every tyro. By fishing up stream,
even against the wind, he will, on an average, kilk
twice as many trout as when fishing down. If trout
are out, and feeding on the shallows, up or down
will simply make the difference of fish or no fish;
and even in deeps, where the difference in the chance
of not being seen is not so great, many more fish
will be hooked by the man who fishes up stream,
simply because when he strikes he pulls the hook
62 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

into the trout’s mouth, instead of out of it. But he
who would obey Mr. Stewart.in fishing up stream,
must obey him, also, in discarding his light London
rod, which is, in three cases out of four, as weak
and “floppy” in the middle as a wagon whip, and
get to himself a stiff and powerful rod, strong enough
-to spin a minnow; whereby he will obtain, after some
weeks of aching muscles, two good things, — a fore-
arm fit for a sculptor’s model, and trout hooked and
killed, instead of pricked and lost, a

Killed, as well as hooked; for how large trout
are to be killed in a weedy chalk stream without
a stiff rod which will take them down, is a ques-
tion yet unsolved. Even the merest cockney will
know, if he thinks, that weeds float with their points
down stream, and that, therefore, if a fish is- to be
brought through them without entangling, he must
be “combed” through thern in the same direction.
But how is this to be done, if a fish be hooked be-
low you on a weak rod? With a strong rod indeed
you can, at the chance of tearing out the hook, keep
him by main force on the top of the water, till you
have run past him and below him, shortening your
line anyhow in loops, — there is no time to wind it
up with the reel,—and then do what you might
have done comfortably at first, had you been fishing
up, — viz: bring him down stream, and let the water
run through his gills, and drown him. But with a
weak rod, Alas for the tyro! He catches one
glimpse of a silver-side plunging into the depths;
he ‘finds his rod double in his hand; he finds fish
and flies stop suddenly somewhere; he rushes down
to the spot, sees weeds waving around his line, and
guesses, from what he feels and sees, that the fish is
grubbing up stream through them, five feet under
water. He tugs downwards and backwards, but
too late; the drop fly is fast wrapt in horsetail and
water-grass, callitriche and potamogeton, and half

 
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 63

a dozen more horrid things with long names and
longer stems; and what remains but the fate of

Campbell’s Lord Ullin ?—

The waters wild went.o’er his child,
And he was left lamenting.

Unless, in fact, large fish can be got rapidly down

stream, the chance of killing them is very small; and”
therefore the man who fishes a willow-fringed brook

downward, is worthy of no crown but Ophelia’s, be-

sides being likely enough, if he attempt to get down

to his fish, to share her fate. The best fishermen,

however, will come to shame in streams bordered by

pollard willows, and among queer nooks, which can

be only fished down stream. I saw, but the other

day, a fish hooked cleverly enough, by throwing, to

an inch, where he ought to have been, and indeed

was, and from the only point whence the throw could’
be made. Out of the water he came, head and tail,

the moment he felt the hook, and showed a fair side

over two pounds’ weight .... and then? Instead

of running away, he ran right at the fisherman, for

reasons which were but too patent. Between man

and fish were ten yards of shallow, then a deep

weedy bank, and then the hole which was his house.

And for that weedy bank the spotted monarch made,

knowing that there he could drag himself clear of

the fly, as perhaps he had done more than once be-

fore. .

What was to be done? Take him down stream
through the weed? Alas, on the man’s left hand
an old pollard leant into the water, barring all
downward movement. Jump in and run round?
He had rather to run back from the bank, from fear
of a loose line; the fish was coming at him so fast
that there was no time to wind up. Safe into the
weeds hurls the fish; the man, as soon as he finds
the fish stop, jumps in midleg deep, and staggers
up to him, in hopes of clearing; finds the dropper
64 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

fast in the weeds, and the stretcher, which had been
in the fish’s mouth, wantoning somewhere in the
depths, — Quid: plura? Let us draw a veil over
that man’s return to shore.

No mortal skill could have killed that fish. Mor-
tal luck (which is sometimes, as most statesmen
know, very great) might have done it, if the fish
had been irretrievably fast hooked; as, per contra,
I once saw a fish of nearly four pounds hooked just
above an alder bush, on-the same bank as the an-
gler. The stream was swift; there was a great
weed-bed above; the man had but about ten feet
square of swift water to kill the trout in. Not a foot
down stream could he take him; in fact, he had
to pull him hard up stream to keep him out of his
hover in the alder roots. Three times that fish leapt
into the air nearly a yard high; and, yet, so mer-
ciful is luck, and so firmly was he hooked, in five
breathless minutes he was in the landing-net; and
when he was there and safe ashore, just of the
shape and color of a silver spoon, his captor lay
down panting upon the bank, and with Sir Hugh
Evans, manifested “a great dispositions to cry.”
But it was a beautiful sight. A sharper round be-
tween man and fish never saw I fought upon this
side of Merry England.

I saw once, however, a cleverer, though not a
more dashing feat. A handy little fellow (I won-
der where he is now’) hooked a trout of nearly |
three pounds with his dropper, and at the same
moment a post with his stretcher. What was to
be done! To keep the fish pulling on him, and
not on the post. And that, being favored by stand-
ing on a four-foot bank, he did so well that he tired
out the fish in some six feet square of water, stopping
him and turning him beautifully whenever he tried to
run, till I could get in to him with the landing-net.
That was twenty years since. If the little man has
' CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 65

progressed in his fishing as he ought, he should be
now one of the finest anglers in England.
* * * * * *

So. Thanks to bank fishing, we have, you see
landed three or four more good fish in the last two
hours— And! What is here? An ugly two-pound
chub, Chevin, “ Echevin,” or Alderman, as the
French call him. How is this, keeper? I thought
you allowed no such vermin in this water?

The keeper answers with a grunt, that “they
allow themselves. That there always were chub
hereabouts, and always will be; for the more he
takes out with the net, the more come next day.”

Probably. No nets will exterminate these spawn-
eating, fry-eating, all-eating pests, who devour the
little trout, and starve the large ones, and at the first
sign of the net, fly to hover among the most tan-
gled roots. There they lie, as close as rats in a
bank, and work themselves the farther in the more
they are splashed and poked by the poles of the
beaters. But the fly, well used, will—if not ex-
terminate them — still thin them down greatly; and
very good sport they give, in my opinion, in spite of
the contempt in which they are commonly held, as
chicken-hearted fish, who show no fight. ‘True; but
their very cowardice makes them the more difficult
to catch; for no fish must you keep more out of
sight, and farther off. The very shadow of the line,
(not to mention that of the rod,) sends them flying
to hover; and they rise so cautiously and quietly,
that they give excellent lessons in patience and”
nerve to a beginner. If the fly is dragged along
the surface, or jerked suddenly from them, they flee
from it in terror; and when they do, after due de-
liberation, take it in, their rise is so quiet, that you
can seldom tell whether your fish weighs half a
pound or four pounds and a half, — unless you, like
most beginners, attempt to show your quickness by
66 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

that most useless exertion, a violent strike. Then,
the snapping of your footlink, or (just as likely) of
the top of your rod, makes you fully aware, if not
of the pluck, at least of the brute strength, of the
burly alderman of the waters. No fish, therefore,
will better teach the beginner the good old lesson,
“not to frighten a fish before you have tired him.”

For flies, —chub will rise greedily at any large
palmers, the larger and rougher the better. A red
and a grizzled hackle will always take them; but
the best fly of all is an imitation of the black beetle,
—the “undertaker” of the London shops. He, too,
can hardly be too large, and should be made of a fat
body of black wool, with the metallic black feather
of a cock’s tail wrapped loosely over it. A still bet-
ter wing is one of the neck feathers of any metallic-
plumed bird, e. g., Phlogophorus Impeyanus, the Me-
naul Pheasant, laid flat and whole on the back, to
imitate the wing-shells of the beetle, the legs being
represented by any-loose black feathers, — (not -hac-
kles, which are too fine). Tied thus, it will kill, not
only every chub in a pool, (if you give the survivors
a quarter of an hour wherein to recover from their
horror at their last friend’s fate,) but, also, here and
there, very large trout. :

Another slur upon the noble sport of chub fish-
ing is the fact of his not being worth eating,—a
fact which, in the true sportsman’s eyes, will go for
nothing. But though the man who can buy fresh
soles and salmon may despise chub, there are those
‘who do not. True, you may make a most accurate
imitation of him by taking one of Palmer’s patent
candles, wick and all, stuffing it with needles and
split bristles, and then stewing the same in ditch-
water. Nevertheless, strange to say, the agricul-
tural stomach digests chub; and if, after having
filled your creel, or three creels (as you may too
often) with them, you will distribute them on your
“CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 67

way home to all the old women you meet, you will
make many poor souls happy, after having saved the
lives of many trout.

But here we come to a strip of thick cover, part
of our Squire’s home preserves, which it is impos-
sible to fish, so closely do the boughs cover the
water. We will walk on through it towards the
hall, and there get— what we begin sorely to need,
—something to eat. It will be of little use fish-
ing for some time to come; for these hot hours of
the afternoon, from three till six, are generally the
“deadest time” of the whole day.

And now, when we have struggled in imagination
through the last bit of copse, and tumbled over the
palings into the lawn, we shall see a scene quite as
lovely, if you will believe it, as any Alp on earth.

What shall we see as we look across the broad,
still, clear river, where the great dark trout sail to
and fro lazily in the sun? For having free-warren
of our ‘fancy and our paper, we -may see what we
choose.

White chalk fields above, quivering bazy in the
heat. A park full of merry haymakers; gay red
and blue wagons, stalwart horses, switching off the
flies; dark avenues of tall elms; groups of abele,
“tossing their whispering silver to the sun;” and
amid them the house,-—— what manner of house shall
it be? 'Tudor or Elizabethan, with oriels, mullioned
windows, gables, and turrets of strange shape?
No; that is commonplace. Everybody builds Tu-
dor houses now. Our house shall smack of Inigo”
Jones or Christopher Wren; a great square red-brick
mass, made light and cheerful though, by- coins and
windows of white sarsden stone; with high-peaked
French roofs, broken by louvers and dormers, haunted
by a thousand swallows and starlings. Old walled
gardens, gay with flowers, shall stretch right and left.
Clipped yew alleys shall wander away into mysteri-
68 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ous glooms; and out of their black arches shall come
tripping children, like white fairies, to laugh and talk
with the girl who lies dreaming and reading in the
hammock there, beneath the black velvet canopy of
the great cedar-tree, like some fair Tropic flower
hanging from its boughs. Then they shall wander
down across the smooth-shorn lawn, where the pur-
ple rhododendrons hang double, bush and image,
over the water’s edge, and call to us across the
stream, “ What sport?” and the old Squire shall
beckon the keeper over the long stone bridge, and
return with him bringing luncheon and good ale;
and we will sit down, and eat and drink among the
burdock leaves, and then watch the quiet house, and
lawn, and flowers, and fair human creatures, and
shining water, all sleeping breathless in the glorious
light beneath the glorious blue, till we doze off, lulled
by the murmur of a thousand insects, and the rich
ely of nightingale and blackcap, thrush and
ove.

Peaceful, graceful, complete English country life
and country houses, — everywhere finish and polish,
Nature perfected by.the wealth and art of peaceful
centuries! Why should I exchange you, even for
the sight of all the Alps, for bad roads, bad carriages,
bad inns, bad food, bad washing, bad beds, and fleas,
fleas, fleas ?

Let that last thought be enough. There may be
follies, there may be sorrows, there may be sins
(though I know there are no very heavy ones), in
that fine old house opposite; but thanks to the
genius of my native land, there are, at least, no fleas.

Think of that, wandering friend; and of this, also,
that you will find your warm bath ready when you
go to bed to-night, and. your cold one when you rise
to-morrow morning; and in content and thankful-
ness, stay in England and be clean.

* * * * * #*
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 69

Here, then, let us lounge a full two hours, too
comfortable and too tired to care for fishing, till the
hall-bell rings for that dinner which we, as good
anglers, will despise. ‘Then we will make our way
to the broad reaches above the house. The evening
breeze should be ruffling it gallantly; and see, the
fly is getting up. The countless thousands are ris-
ing off the grass and flickering to and fro above the
stream. Stand still a moment, and you will hear.
the air full of the soft rustle of innumerable wings.
Hundreds more, even more delicate and gauzy, are
rising through the water and floating helplessly
along the surface, as Aphrodite may have done
when she rose in the AZgean, half frightened at the
sight of the new upper world. And, see, the great
trout are moving everywhere. Fish, too large and
well fed to care for the fly at any other season, who
have been lounging among the weeds all day and
snapping at passing minnows, have come to the
surface; and are feeding steadily, splashing five or
six times in succession, and then going down awhile
to bolt their mouthful of victims; while here and
there a heavy silent swirl tells of a fly taken before
it has reached the surface, untimely slain before it
has seen the day.

Now, — put your green drake on; and throw, re-
gardless of bank fishing or any other rule, wherever
you see a fish rise. Do not work your flies in the
least, but let them float down over the fish, or sink,
if they will; he is more likely to take them under
water than on the top. And mind this rule: be pa-
tient with your fish; and do not fancy that because
he does not rise to you the first or the tenth time,
therefore he will not rise at all. He may have filled
his mouth and gone down to gorge; and when he
comes up again, if your fly be the first which he
meets, he will probably seize it greedily, and all the
more so if it be under water, so seeming drowned
70 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

and helpless. Besides, a fish seldom rises twice
exactly in the same place, unless he be lying be-
tween two weeds, or in the corner of an eddy: His
small wits, when he is feeding in the open, seem to
hint to him that after having found a fly in one
place, he must move a foot or two on to find another;
and, therefore, it may be some time before your turn
comes, and your fly passes just over his nose ; which,
if it do not do, he certainly will not, amid such an
abundance, go out of his way for it. In the mean-
while, your footlink will very probably have hit him
over the back, or run foul of his nose, in which case
you will not catch him at all. A painful fact for
you; but if you could catch every fish you saw,
where would be the trout for next season ?

Put on a dropper of some kind, say a caperer, as
a second chance. I almost prefer the dark claret-
spinner, with which I have killed very large fish
alternately with the green drake, even when it was
quite dark; and for your stretcher, of course, a green
drake.

For a blustering evening like this, your drake can
hardly be too large or too rough; in brighter, and.
stiller weather, the fish often prefer a fly half the size
of the natural one. Only bear in mind, that the
most tempting form among these millions of drakes
is that one whose wings are very little colored at all,
of a pale greenish yellow; whose body is straw-
colored, and his head, thorax, and legs, spotted with
dark brown,— best represented by a pheasaht or
coch-a-bonddhu hackle.

The best imitation of this, or of any drake, which
Ihave ever seen, is one by Mr. Macgowan, whilome
of Ballyshannon, now of No. 7, Bruton Street, Berke-
ley Square, whose drakes, known by a waxy body of
some mysterious material, do surpass those of all
other men, and should be known and honored, far and
wide. But failing them, you may do well with.a
CHALK-STREAM STUDIES. 71

drake which is ribbed through the whole length with
red hackle over a straw-colored body. A North-
countryman would laugh at it, and ask us how we-
fancy that fish will mistake for that delicate waxy
fly a heavy rough palmer, made heavier and rougher
by two thick tufts of yellow mallard wing; but if
he will fish therewith, he will catch trout; and mighty
ones they will be. I have found, again and again,
this drake, in which the hackle is ribbed all down
the body, beat a bare-bodied one in the ratio of three
fish to one. The reason is difficult to guess. Per-
haps the shining, transparent hackle gives the fly
more of the waxy look of the natural insect; or, per-
‘haps, the “buzzy” look of the fly causes the fish to
mistake it for one half-emerged from its pupa case,
fluttering, entangled, and helpless. But whatever be
the cause, I am sure of the fact. Now,—silence
and sport for the next three hours.
* * * * * *

There! All things must end. It is so dark that
I have been fishing for the last five minutes without
any end fly; and we have lost our last two fish
simply by not being able to guide them into the net.
But what an evening’s sport we have had! Beside
several over a pound, which I have thrown in, (I
trust you have been generous, and done likewise,)
there are six fish averaging two pounds apiece; and
what is the weight of that monster with whom I
saw you wrestling dimly through the dusk, your legs
stuck knee-deep in a mud-bank, your head embow-
ered in nettles, while the keeper waltzed round
you, roaring mere incoherencies ?—four pounds, full.
Now, is there any sherry left in the flask? No.
Then we will give the keeper five shillings; he is
well worth his pay; and then drag our weary limbs
toward the hall to bath and bed, while you confess,
I trust, that you may get noble sport, hard exercise,
and lovely scenery, without going sixty miles from
London town.
72 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE.
[Fraser’s Magazine, October, 1853.]

On reading this little book,* and considering all
the exaggerated praise and exaggerated blame which
have been lavished on it, we could not help falling
into many thoughts about the history of English
poetry for the last forty years, and about its future
destiny. Great poets, even true poets, are becoming
more and more rare among us. There are those,
even, who say that we have none; an assertion
which, as long as Mr. Tennyson lives, we shall take
the liberty of denying. But were he, which Heaven
forbid, taken from us, whom have we to succeed
him? And he, too, is rather a poet of the sunset,

_ than of the dawn,—of the autumn, than of the

spring. His gorgeousness is that of the solemn and
fading year; not of its youth, full of hope, fresh-
ness, gay and unconscious life. Like some stately
hollyhock or dahlia of this month’s gardens, he en-.
dures while all other flowers are dying; but all
around is winter,—a mild one, perhaps, wherein a
few annuals or pretty field weeds still linger on;
but, like all mild winters, especially prolific in fungi,
which, too, are not without their gaudiness, even
their beauty, although bred only from the decay of
higher organisms, the plagiarists of the vegetable
world. Such is poetry in England; while in America,
the case is not much better. What more enormous

* Poems,” by ALEXANDER SmrrH. London: Bogue. 1853.
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 73

scope for new poetic thought than that which the
New World gives? Yet the American poets, even
the best of them, look lingeringly and longingly
back to Europe and her legends; to her models, and
not to the best of them,— to her criticism, and not
to the best of that,—-and bestow but a very small
portion of such genius as they have on America and
her new forms of life. If they be nearer to the
spring than we, they are still deep enough in the
winter. A few early flowers may be budding among
them, but the autumn crop is still in somewhat
_Shabby and rain-bedrabbled bloom. And for us,
where are our spring flowers? What sign of a new
poetic school? Still more, what sign of the healthy
resuscitation of any old one?

“ What matter, after all?” one says to one’s self, in
despair reéchoing Mr. Carlyle. “Man was not sent
into the world to write poetry. What we want is
truth. Of the former, we have enough in all con-
science, just now. Let the latter need be provided
for by honest and righteous history, and as for poets,
let the dead bury their dead.”.... And yet, after
all, man will write poetry, in spite of Mr. Carlyle;
nay, beings who are not men, but mere forked rad-
ishes, will write it. Man is a poetry-writin animal. |
Perhaps he was meant to be one. At all events, he
can no more be kept from it, than from eating. It
is better, with Mr. Carlyle’s leave, to believe that
the existence of poetry indicates some universal
human hunger, whether after “the beautiful,” or
after “fame,” or after the means of paying butchers’
bills; and accepting it as a necessary evil which
must be committed, to see that it be committed as
well, or at least as little ill, as possible. In excuse
of which, we may quote Mr. Carlyle against him-
self, reminding him of a saying of Goethe once be-
praised by him in print,—“ We must take care of
the beautiful, for the useful will take care of itself,”

4
74 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

And never, certainly; since Pope wrote his Dun-
ciad, did the beautiful require more taking care of,
or evince less capacity for taking care of itself; and
never, we must add, was less capacity for taking
care of it evinced by its accredited guardians of the
press, than at this present time, if the reception given
to Mr. Smith’s poems is to be taken as a fair expres-
sion of “the public taste.”

Now, let it be fairly understood, Mr. Alexander
Smith is not the object of our reproaches; but Mr.
Alexander Smith’s models and flatterers. Against
him we have nothing whatsoever to say; for him,
very much indeed.

Very young, as is said, self-educated, drudging for
his daily bread in some dreary Glasgow prison-house
of brick and mortar, he has seen the sky, the sun
and moon,— and, moreover, the sea, report says, for
one day in his whole life; and this is nearly, the
whole of his experience in natural objects. And he
has felt, too painfully for his peace of mind, the con-
trast between his environment and that of others, —
his means of ‘culture, and that of others, — and, still
more painfully, the contrast between his environ-
ment and culture, and that sense of beauty and
power of melody which he does not deny that he
has found in himself, and which no one can deny
who reads his poems fairly; who reads even merely
the opening page and key-note of the whole: —

For as a torrid sunset burns with gold
Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul
A passion burns from basement unto cope.
Poesy, poesy, I'd give to thee
As passionately my rich laden years.
My bubble pleasures, and my awful joys,
As Hero gave her trembling sighs to find °

—| Delicious death on wet Leander’s lip.
Bare, bold, and tawdry, as a fingered moth
Is my poor life; but with one smile thou canst
Clothe me with kingdoms. Wilt thou smile on me?
Wilt bid me die for thee? Oh, fair and cold!
As well may some wild maiden waste her love
Upon the calm front of # marble Jove.
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 75

Now, this scrap is by no means a fair average
specimen of Mr. Smith’s verse. But is not the self-
educated man, who could teach himself, amid Glas-
gow smoke and noise, to write such a distich as that
exquisite one which we have given in italics, to be
judged lovingly and hopefully ? 54s

~What if he has often copied? What if, in this
very scrap, chosen almost at random, there should
be a touch from Tennyson’s “ Two Voices?” And
what if imitations, nay, caricatures, be found in
almost every page? Is not the explanation simple
enough, and rather creditable, than discreditable, to
Mr. Smith? He takes as his models Shelley, Keats,
and their followers. Who isto blame for that? The.
Glasgow ‘youth, or the public taste, which has been
exalting these authors more and more for the last
twenty years as the great poets of the nineteenth
century? If they are the proper ideals of the day,
who will blame him for following them as closely as
possible, — for saturating his memory so thoroughly
with their words and thoughts that he reproduces
them unconsciously to himself? Who will blame
him for even consciously copying their images, if
they have said better than he the thing which he
wants to say, in the only poetical dialect which he
knows? He does no more than all schools have
done, copy their own masters; as the Greek epicists
and Virgil copied Homer; as all succeeding Latin
epicists copied Virgil; as Italians copied Ariosto
and Tasso; as every one who can copies Shak-
speare; as the French school copied, or thought
they copied, “'The Classics,” and, as a matter of
duty, used to justify any bold image in their notes,
not by its originality, but by its being already in
Claudian, or Lucan, or Virgil, or Ovid; as every
poetaster, and a great many who were more than .
poetasters, twenty years ago, used to copy Scott and °
Byron, and as all poetasters now are copying the very
76 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

same models as Mr. Smith, and failing while he

succeeds.

‘We by no means agree in the modern outcry for
“originality.” Is it absolutely demanded that no
poet shall say anything whatsoever, that any other
poet has said? If so, Mr. Smith may well submit
to a blame, which he will bear in common with
Shakspeare, Chaucer, Pope, and many another great
name; and especially with Raphael himself, who
made no scruple of adopting not merely points of
style, but single motives and incidents, from con-
temporaries and predecessors. Who can look at any
of his earlier pictures, the Crucifixion, for instance,
at present in Lord Ward’s gallery at the Egyptian

. Hall, without seeing that*he has not merely felt the
‘influence of Perugino, but copied him; tried deliber-

ately to be as like his master as he could? Was
this plagiarism? If so, all education, it would seem,
must be a mere training in plagiarism. For how is
the student to learn, except by copying his master’s

‘models? Is the young painter or sculptor a plagia-
‘ist because he spends the first, often the best, years

of his life in copying Greek statues; or the school-
boy, for toiling at the reproduction of Latin metres
and images, in what are honestly and fittingly called
“copies” of verses? And what if the young artist
shall choose, as Mr. Smith has done, to put a few
drawings into the exhibition, or to carve and sell a
few statuettes? "What if the school-boy, grown into
a gownsman, shall contribute his share to a set of
“ Arundines Cami” or “ Prolusiones Etonienses ?”
‘Will any one who really knows. what art or educa-
tion mean, complain of them for having imitated
their models, however servilely? Will he not rather
hail such an imitation as a fair proof, first of the
student’s reverence for authority, —a more important
element of “genius” than most young folks fancy, —
and next, of his possessing any artistic power what-
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 77

soever? For, surely, if the greater contains the less,
the power of creating must contain that of imitating.
A. young author’s power of accurate imitation is,
after all, the primary and indispensable test of his
having even the capability of becoming a poet. He
who cannot write in a style which he does know,
will certainly not be able to invent a new style for
himself. ‘The first and simplest form in which any
metrical ear, or fancy, or imagination, can show
itself, must needs be in imitating existing models.
Innate good taste,—that is, true poetic genius, —
will, of course, choose the best models, in the long
run. But not necessarily at first. What shall be
the student’s earliest ideal, must needs be determined
for him by circumstance, by the books to which he
has access, by the public opinion which he hears ex-
pressed. Enough if he chooses, as Raphael did, the
best models which he knows, and tries to exhaust
them, and learn all he can from them, ready to quit
them, hereafter, when he comes across better ones,
yet without throwing away what he has learned.
“ Be faithful in a few things, and thou shalt become
ruler over many things,” is one of those eternal
moral laws which, like many others, holds as true
of art as it does of virtue.

And on the whole, judging Mr. Alexander Smith
by this rule, he has been faithful over a few things,
and therefore we have fair hope of him for the
future. For Mr. Smith does succeed, not in copy-
ing one poet, but in copying all, and very often in
improving on his models. Of the many conceits
which he has borrowed from Mr. Bailey, there is
hardly one which he has not made more true, more
pointed, and more sweet; nay, in one or two places,
he has dared to mend John Keats himself. But his
whole merit is by no means confined to the faculty
of imitation. ‘Though the “ Life Drama” itself is
the merest cento of reflections and images, without
78 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

coherence or organization, dramatic or logical, yet
single scenes, like that with the peasant and that
with the fallen outcast, have firm self-consistency
and clearness of conception; and these, as a natural
consequence, are comparatively free from those taw-
dry spangles which deface the greater part of the
poem. And, moreover, in the episode of “'The In-
dian and the Lady,” there is throughout a “keeping
in the tone,” as painters say, sultry and languid, yet
rich and full of life, like a gorgeous Venetian pic-
ture which augurs even better for Mr. Smith’s future
success than the two scenes just mentioned; for
consistency of thought may come with time and
training; but clearness of inward vision, the faculty
of imagination, can be no more learnt than it can
be dispensed with. In this, and this only, it is true
that poeta nascitur non fit; just as no musical learn-
ing or practice can make a composer, unless he first
possess an innate ear for harmony and melody. And
it must be said that it is just in the passages where
Mr. Smith is not copying, where he forgets for awhile
Shelley, Keats, and the rest, and is content to be
simply himself, that he is best; terse, vivid, sound,
manly, simple. May he turn round, some day, and
deliberately pulling out all borrowed feathers, look
at himself honestly and boldly in the glass, and we
will warrant him, on the strength of the least gaudy,
and as yet unpraised passages in his poems, that he
will find himself, after all, more eagle than daw, and
quite well plumed enough by nature to fly at a higher,
because for him a more natural, pitch than he has
yet done.

' True, he has written a great deal of nonsense;
nonsense in ‘matter, as well as in manner. But
therein, too, he has only followed the reigning school.
. - - As for manner, he does, sometimes, in imitating
his models, out-Herod Herod. But why not? If
Herod be a worthy king, let him be by all means out-
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 79

Heroded, if any man can do it. One cannot havé too
much of a good thing. If it be right’ to bedizen
verses with metaphors and similes which have no
reference, either in tone or in subject, to the matter
in hand, let there be as many of them as possible.
If a saddle is a proper place for jewels, then let the
seat be paved with diamonds and emeralds, and
Runjeet Singh’s harness-maker be considered as a
lofty artist, for whose barbaric splendor Mr. Peat
and his Melton customers are to forswear pigskin
and severe simplicity, — not to say utility and com-
fort. If poetic diction be different in species from
plain English, then let us have it as poetical as pos-
sible, and as unlike English; as ungrammatical, ab-
rapt, involved, transposed, as the clumsiness, care-
lessness, or caprice of man can make it. If it be
correct to express human thought. by writing whole
pages of vague and bald abstract metaphysic, and
then trying to explain them by concrete concetti,
which bear an entirely accidental and mystical like-
ness to the notion which they are to illustrate, then
let the metaphysic be as abstract as possible, the
concetti as fanciful and far-fetched as possible. If
Marino and Cowley be greater poets than Ariosto
and Milton, let young poets imitate the former with
might and main, and avoid spoiling their style by
any perusal of the too intelligible common sense of
the latter. If Byron’s moral (which used to be
thought execrable) be really his great excellence, and
his style (which used to be thought almost perfect)
unworthy of this age of progress, then let us have
his moral without his style, his matter without his
form ; or,—that we may be sure of never falling for
a moment into his besetting sin of terseness, grace,
and completeness,— without any form at all, If
poetry,'in order to be worthy of the nineteenth cen-
tury, ought to be as unlike as possible to Homer or
Sophocles, Virgil or Horace, Shakspeare or Spenser,
80 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Dante or Tasso, let those too idolized names be rased
henceforth from the Calendar; let the Ars Poetica
be consigned to flames by Mr. Calcraft, and Mar-
tinus Scriblerus’s Art of Sinking placed forthwith on
the list of the Committee of Council for Education,
that not a working-man in England may be ignorant
that, whatsoever superstitions about art may have
haunted the benighted heathens who built the Par-
thenon, nous avons changé tout cela. In one word,
if it be best and most fitting to write poetry in the
style in which almost every one has been trying to
write it since Pope and plain sense went out, and
Shelley and the seventh heaven came in, let it be so
written; and let him who most ‘perfectly so “sets
the age to music,” be presented by the assembled
guild of critics, not with the obsolete and too classic
laurel, but with an electro-plated brass medal, bear-
ing the due inscription, “ Ars est nescire artem.”
And when, in twelvemonths’ time, he finds himself
forgotten, perhaps decried, for the sake of the next
aspirant, let him reconsider himself, try whether, after
all, the common sense of the many will not prove a
juster and a firmer standing-ground than the senti-
mentality and bad taste of the few, and read Alex-
ander Pope.

In Pope’s writings, whatsoever he may not find, he
will find the very excellences after which our young
poets strive in vain, produced by their seeming oppo-
sites, which are now despised and discarded ; natu-
ralness produced by studious art; sublimity by strict
self-restraint ; depth by clear simplicity; pathos by
easy grace; and a morality infinitely more merciful,
as well as more righteous, than the one now in vogue
among the poetasters, by honest faith in God. If he
be shocked by certain peculiarities of diction, and by
the fondness for perpetual antitheses, let him remem-
ber, that what seems strange to our day was natural

~and habitual in his; and that, in the eyes of our
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 81

grandchildren, Keats’s and Shelley’s peculiarities will
seem as monstrous as Pope’s or Johnson’s do in ours,
But if, misled by the popular contempt for Pope, he
should be inclined to answer this advice with a shrug
and a smile, we entreat him, and all young poets,
to consider, line by line, word by word, sound by
sound, only those once well-known lines, which many
a brave and wise man of fifty years ‘ago would have
been unable to read without honorable tears : —

In the worst inn’s worst room, with mat half-hung,

The floor of plaister, and the walls of dung,

On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,

With tape-tyed curtains, never meant to draw,

The “ George and Garter,” dangling from that bed,

Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,

Great Villiers lies. Alas! how seen from him, -

That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim?

Gallant and gay, in Clieveden’s proud alcove,

The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;

Or just as gay, at Council, in a rmg

Of mimic statesmen, and their merry king.

No wit to flatter, left of all his store!

No fool to Jaugh at, which he valued more.

There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.

Yes; Pope knew, as well as Wordsworth and our
“ Naturalisti,” that no physical fact was so mean or
coarse as to be below the dignity of poetry,— when
in its right place. He could draw a pathos and
sublimity out of the dirty inn chamber, such as
‘Wordsworth never elicited from tubs and daffodils,
—because he could use them according to the rules
of art, which are the rules of sound reason and of |
time taste.

The answer to all this is ready nowadays. We
are told that Pope could easily be great in what
he attempted, because he never attempted any but
small matters; easily self-restraining, because his
paces were naturally so slow; above all, easily clear,
because he is always shallow; easily full of faith in
what he did believe, because he believed so very
little. On the two former counts we may have

4%
82 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

something to say hereafter. On the two latter, we
will say at once, that if it be argued, as it often is,
that the reason of our modern poetical obscurity and
vagueness lies in the greater depth of the questions
which are now agitating thoughtful minds, we do
utterly deny it. Human nature, human temptations,
human problems, are radically the same in every age,
by whatsoever outward difference of words they may
seem distinguished. Where is deeper philosophic
thought, true or false, expressed in verse, than in
Dante, or in Spenser’s two cantos of “ Mutabil-
ities?” Yet, if they are difficult to understand,
their darkness is that of the deep blue sea. Vague
they never are, obscure they never are; because they
see clearly what they want to say, and how to say it.
There is always a sound and coherent meaning in
them, to be found if it be searched for.

The real cause of this modern vagueness is rather
to be found in shallow and unsound culture, and in
that inability, or carelessness about seeing any object
clearly, which besets our poets just now; as the
cause of antique clearness lies in the nobler and
healthier manhood, in the severer and more methodie
habits of thought, the sounder philosophic and crit+
ical training, which enabled Spenser and Milton to
draw up a state paper, or to discourse deep meta-
physics, with the same manful possession of their
subject which gives grace and completeness to the
“ Penseroso” or the “Epithalamion.” And if our
poets have their doubts, they should remember, that
those to whom doubt and inquiry are real and stern,
are not inclined to sing about them till they can sing
poems of triumph over them. There has no tempta-
tion taken our modern poets, save that which is com-
mon to man,— the temptation of wishing to make
the laws of the universe and of art fit them, as they
do not feel inclined to make themselves fit the laws,
or care to find them out.
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 83

What? Do you wish, asks some one, a little
contemptuously, to measure the great growing
nineteenth century by the thumb-rule of Alexander
Pope? No. But to measure the men who write
in the nineteenth century by a man who wrote in
the eighteenth ; to compare their advantages with
his, their circumstances with his; and then, if possi-
ble, to make them ashamed of their unmanliness.
Have you young poets of this day, your struggles,
your chagrins? Do you think the humpbacked
dwarf, every moment conscious at once of-his de-
formity and his genius, — conscious, probably, of far
worse physical shame than any deformity can bring,
“sewed up in buckram every morning, and requiring
a nurse like a child,” — caricatured, lampooned, slan-
dered, utterly without fault of his own,— insulted
and rejected by the fine lady whom he had dared to
court in reality, after being allowed and allured to
flirt with her in rhyme,— do you suppose that this
man had nothing to madden him ? — to convert him
into a sneering, snarling misanthrope? Yet was
there one noble soul who met him who did not love
him, or whom he did not love? Have you your
doubts? Do you find it difficult to make your own
speculations, even your own honest convictions,
square with the popular superstitions? What were
your doubts, your inward contradictions, to those of
a man who, bred a Papist, and yet burning with the
most intense scorn and hatred of lies and shams,
bigotries, and priestcrafts, could write that “ Essay
on Man?” Read that,.young gentlemen of the
Job’s-wife school, who fancy it a fine thing to tell
your readers to curse God and die, or, at least, to
show the world in print how you could curse God by
divine right of genius, if you chose, and be ashamed
of your cowardly wailings.

Alexander Pope went through doubt, contradic-
tion, confusion, to which yours are simple and light;
84 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

and conquered. He was a man of like passions
with yourselves ; infected with the peculiar vices of

‘his day; narrow, for his age was narrow; shallow,

for his age was shallow; a bon-vivant, for his age

“was a gluttonous and drunken one; bitter, furious,

and personal, for men round him were such; foul-
mouthed often, and indecent, as the rest were. Nay,
his very power, when he abuses it for his own ends
of selfish spite and injured vanity, makes him, as all
great men can be (in words at least, for in life he
was far better than the men around him), worse
than his age. He can outrival Dennis in ferocity,
and Congreve in filth. So much the worse for him

‘in that account which he has long ago rendered up.

But in all times and places, as far as we can judge,
the man was heart-whole, more and not less right-
eous than his fellows. With his whole soul he hates
what is evil, as far as he can recognize it. With his
whole soul he loves what is good, as far as he can
recognize that. With his soul believes that there is
a righteous and good God, whose order no human
folly or crime can destroy ; and he will say so; and

does say it, clearly, simply, valiantly, reverently, in

that “ Essay on Man.” His theodicy is narrow; shal-
low, as was the philosophy of his age. But as far as

_it goes, it is sound, — faithful to God, and to what

he sees and knows. Man is made in God’s image.
Man’s justice is God’s justice; man’s mercy is God’s
mercy; man’s science, man’s critic taste, are insights
into the laws of God himself. He does not pretend
to solve the great problem. But he believes that it
is solved from all eternity; that God knows, God:
loves, and God rules; that the righteous and faithful:
man may know enough of the solution to know
his duty, to see his way, to justify God; and as
much as he knows he tells. There were in that dis-

. eased, sensitive cripple no vain repinings, no moon-

struck howls, no impious cries against God. “ Why
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 85

hast thou made me thus?” To him God is a

righteous God, a God.of order. Science, philoso--

phy, politics, criticism, poetry, are parts of His order,
— they are parts of the appointed onward path for
mankind ; there are eternal laws.for them. ‘There is
a beautiful and fit order in poetry, which is part of
God’s order, which men have learned ages ago, for
they, too, had their teaching from above; to offend
against which is absolutely wrong, an offence to be
put down mildly in those who offend ignorantly ; but
those who offend from dulness, from the incapacity
to see the beautiful, or from carelessness about it,
when praise or gain tempt them the other way, have
some moral defect in them; they are what Solomon
calls fools; they are the enemies of man; and he
will “ hate them right sore, even as though they were
his own enemies,” — which indeed they were. He
knows by painful experience that they deserve no
quarter ; that there is no use: giving them any; to
spare them is to make them insolent; to fondle the
reptile is to be bitten by it. True poetry, as the
messenger of heavenly beauty, is decaying; true re-
finement, true loftiness of thought, even true mo-
rality,are at stake. And so he writes his “ Dunciad.”
.. .- And would that he were here, to write it over
again, and write it better!

For write it again he surely would. And write it
better he would also. With the greater cleanliness
of our time, with all the additional experience of
history, with the greater classical, esthetic, and theo-
logieal knowledge of our day, the sins’of our poets
are as much less excusable than those of Eusden,
Blackmore, Cibber, and the rest, as Pope’s “ Dun-
ciad” on them would be more righteously severe.
What, for instance, would the author of the “ Essay
on Man” say to any one who now wrote p. 137 (for
it really is not to be quoted) of the “ Life Drama”
as the thougltts of his hero, without any after atone-
86 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ment for the wanton insult it conveys toward him
whom he dares in the same breath to call “ Father,”
simply because he wants to be something very fine
and famous and self-glorifying, and Providence keeps
him waiting awhile? . . . . Has Pope not said it
already? ....

Persist, by all divine in man unawed,
But learn, ye dunces, not to scorn your God!

And yet no; the gentle goddess would now lay
no such restriction on her children, for in Pope’s day
no man had discovered the new poetic plan for mak-
ing the divine in man an excuse for scorning God,
and finding in the dignity of “heaven-born genius”
free license to upbraid, on the very slightest, grounds,
the Being from whom he said genius pretends to de-
rive his dignity. In one of his immortal saws he has
cautioned us against “making God in man’s image.”
But it never entered into his simple head that man
would complain of God for being made in a lower
image than even his own. Atheism he could con-
ceive of; the deeper absurdity of Authotheism was
left for our more enlightened times and more spir-
itual muses.

It will be answered that all this blasphemy is not,
to be attributed to the author, but to the man whose
spiritual development he intends to sketch. To
which we reply, that no man has a right to bring his
‘hero through such a state without showing how he
came out of the slough as carefully as he came into
it, especially when the said hero is set forth as a
marvellously clever person; and the last scene,
though full of beautiful womanly touches, and of a
.. higher morality than the rest of the book, contains
.. no amende honorable, not even an explanation of
the abominable stuff which the hero has been talk-
ing a few pages back. He leaps from the abyss to
the seventh heaven; but, unfortunatelyefor the spec-
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 87

tators, he leaps behind the scenes, and they are none
the wiser. And next; people have no more right,
even for dramatic purposes, to put such language
into print for any purpose whatsoever, than thev
have to print the grossest indecencies, or the mosr
disgusting details of torture and cruelty. No one
can accuse this magazine of any fondness for sancti-
monious cant or lip-reverence; but if there be a
“ Father in Heaven,” as Mr. Smith confesses that
there is, or even merely a personal Deity at all,
some sort of common decency in speaking of Him
should surely be preserved. No one would print
pages of silly calumny and vulgar insult against his
earthly father, or even against a person for whom he
had no special dislike, and then excuse it by, “ Of
course, I don’t think so; but if any one did think
so, this would be a very smart way of saying what
he thought.” Old Aristotle would call such an act
“ banauson;” in plain English, blackguard; and we
da not see how it can be called anything else, unless
in the case of some utter brute in human form, to
whom “there is no coonum, and therefore no obsce-
num; no fanum, and therefore no profanum.” The
common sense of mankind in all ages has con-
demned this sort of shamelessness, even more than
it has insults to parental and social ties, and to all
which raises man above the brute. Let Mr. Smith
take note of this, and let him if he loves himself, '
mend speedily ; for of all styles wherein to become -
stereotyped the one which he has chosen is the:
worst, because in it the greatest amount of insincer-
ity is possible. There is a Tartarus in front of him
as well as an Olympus; a hideous possibility very
near him of insincere impiety merely for the purpose
of startling ; of lawless fancy merely for the purpose
of glittering; and a still more hideous possibility of
a revulsion to insincere cant, combined with the
same lawless fancy, for the purpose of keeping well
88 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

with the public, in which to all appearances one of
our most popular novelists, not to mention the poet
whose writings are most analogous to Mr. Smith’s,
now lies wallowing.

Whether he shall hereafter obey his evil angel,
and follow Mr. Bailey, or his good angel, and be-
come a great poet, depends upon himself; and above
all, upon his having courage to be himself, and to
forget himself, two virtues which, paradoxical as .it
may seem, are correlatives. For the “subjective”
poet —in plain words, the egotist — is always com-
paring himself with every man he meets, and there-
fore momentarily tempted to steal bits of their finery
wherewith to patch his own rents; while the man
who is content to be simply what God has made
him, goes on from strength to strength, developing
almost unconsciously under a divine education, by
which his real personality and the salient points by
which he is distinguished from his fellows, become
apparent with more and more distinctness of form,
and brilliance of light and -shadow, as those well
know who have watched human character attain its
clearest and grandest as well as its loveliest outlines,
not among hankerers after fame and power, but on
lonely sick-beds, and during long unknown martyt-
‘doms of humble self-sacrifice and loving drudgery.

But whether or not Mr. Smith shall purify him-
self, — and he can do so, if he will, right nobly, — the
world must be purified of his style of poetry, if men
are ever, as he hopes, to “set this age to music;”
much more if they are once more to stir the hearts
of the many by Tyrtean strains, such as may be
needed before our hairs are gray. The “poetry of.
doubt,” however pretty, would stand us in little
‘stead, if we were threatened with a second Armada.
Tt will conduce little to the valor, “ virtus,” manhood
of any Englishman to be informed by any poet,
even in the most melodious verse, illustrated by the
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 89

most startling and pancosmic metaphors, “ See what
a-highly-organized and peculiar stomach-ache I have
had! Does it not prove, indisputably, that I am not
as other men are?” What gospel there can be in
such a message to any honest man who has either
to till the earth, plan a railroad, colonize Australia,
or fight his country’s enemies, is hard to discover.
Hard, indeed, to discover how this most practical,
and therefore most poetical, of ages, is to be “set to
music,” when all those who talk about so doing per-
sist obstinately in poring, with introverted eyes, over
the state of their own digestion, — or creed.

‘What man wants, what art wants, perhaps what
the Maker of them both wants, is a poet who shall
begin by confessing that he is as other men are, and
sing about things which concern all men, in language
which all men can understand. This is the only
road to that gift of prophecy which most young
poets are nowadays in such a hurry to arrogate to :
themselves. We can only tell what man will be by
fair induction, by knowing what he is, what he has
been. ¢

And it is most noteworthy, that in this age, ‘in
which there is more knowledge than there ever was
of what man has been, and more knowledge, through
innumerable novelists, and those most subtle and
finished ones, of what man is, that poetry should so
carefully avoid drawing from this fresh stock of
information in her so-confident horoscopes of what
man will be.

There is, just now, as wide a divorce between
poetry and the common-sense of all time, as there
is' between poetry and modern knowledge. Our
poets are not merely vague and confused, they are
altogether fragmentary, — disjecta membra poetarum ;
they need some uniting idea. And what idea?

Our answer will probably be greeted with a laugh.
Nevertheless, we answer simply, What our poets
want is faith.
90 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

There is little or no faith nowadays. And with-
out faith there can be no real art, for artis the out
ward expression of firm, coherent belief. And a
poetry of doubt, even a skeptical poetry, in its true
sense, can ‘never possess clear and sound form, even
organic form at all. How can you put into form that
thought which is, by its very nature, formless? How
can you group words round a central idea, when
you do not possess a central idea? Shakspeare, in
his one skeptic tragedy, has to desert the pure tragic
form, and Hamlet remains the beau ideal of “the

‘poetry of doubt.” But what’ would a tragedy be in
‘which the actors were all Hamlets, or rather scraps
of Hamlets? A drama of Hamlet is only possible
because the one skeptic is surrounded ‘by characters
who have some positive faith, who do their work for
good or evil undoubtingly, while he is speculating
about his. And both Ophelia, and Laertes, Fortin-
bras, the king, yea, the very grave-digger, know well
enough what they want, whether Hamlet does or
not. The whole play is, in fact, Shakspeare’s subtle
reductio ad adsurdum of that very diseased type of
mind which has been, for the last forty ‘years, identi-
fied with “genius,’— with one difference, namely,
that Shakspeare, with his usual clearness of concep-
tion, exhibits the said intellectual. type pure and
simple, while modern poets degrade and confuse it,
and all the questions dependent on it, by mixing it
up, unnecessarily, with all manner of moral weak-
nesses, and very often moral crimes.

But the poet is to have a faith nowadays of course,
—a “faith in nature.” This article of Wordsworth’s
poetical creed is to be assumed as the only necessary
one, and we are to ignore altogether the somewhat
important fact, that he had faithin a great deal be-
sides nature, and to make that faith in nature ‘his
sole differentia and source of inspiration. Now, we
beg leave to express not merely our want of faith in
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 91

this same “faith in nature,’ but even our ignorance
of what it means. Nature is certain phenomena,
appearances. Faith in them is simply to believe
that a red thing is red, and a square thing square; a
sine qua non doubtless in poetry, as in carpentry,
but which will produce no poetry, but only Dutch
painting and gardeners’ catalogues,—in a word,
that lowest form of art, the merely descriptive; and
into:this very'style the modern naturalist poets, from
the times of Southey and Wordsworth, have been
continually falling, and falling therefore into bald-
ness and vulgarity. For mere description cannot
represent even the outlines of a whole scene at once,
as the daguerreotype does; they must describe it
piecemeal. Much less can it represent that whole
scene at once in all its glories of color, glow, fra-
grance, life, motion. In short, it cannot -give life
and spirit. All merely descriptive poetry can do, is
to give a dead catalogue, —to kill the butterfly, and
then write a monograph on it. And, therefore, there
comes a natural revulsion from the baldness and
puerility into which Wordsworth too often fell by
indulging his false theories'on these matters.

But a revulsion to what? To the laws, of course,
which underlie the phenomena. _ But again,—to
which laws? Not merely to the physical ones, else
Turner’s “ Chemistry,” and Watson’s “ Practice of
Medicine,” are great poems.

‘True, we have heard Professor Forbes’s book on
Glaciers called an epic poem, and not without rea-
son; but what gives that noble book its epic charac-
ter is neither the glaciers nor the laws of them, but
the discovery of those laws; the methodic, truthful,
valiant, patient battle between man and nature, his
final victory, his wresting from her the secret which
had been locked for ages in the ice-caves of the
Alps, guarded by cold and fatigue, danger, and su-
perstitious dread. For nature will be permanently
92 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

interesting to the poet, and appear to him in a truly
poetic aspect, only in as far as she is connected by
him with spiritual and personal beings, and becomes
in his eyes either a person herself, or the dwelling
and organ of persons. The shortest scrap of word-
painting, as Thomson’s “ Seasons” will sufficiently
prove, is wearisome and_ dead, unless there be a liv-
ing figure in the landscape, or unless, failing a living
figure, the scene is deliberately described with refer-
ence to the poet or the reader, not as something in
itself, but as something seen by him, and grouped
and subordinated exactly as it would strike his eye
and mind. But even this is insufficient. The. heart
of man demands more, and so arises a craving after
the old nature-mythology of Greece, the old -fairy
legends of the Middle Age. The great poets of the
Renaissance, both in England and in Italy, had a
similar craving. But the aspect under which these
ancient dreams are regarded by them is most signifi-
cantly different. With Spenser and Ariosto, fairies
and elves, gods and demons, are regarded in their
fancied connection with man. Even in the age of
Pope, when the gods and the Rosicrucian Sylphs
have become alike “ poetical machinery,” this is their
work. But among the moderns it is as connected
with nature, and giving a soul and a personality to
her, that they are most valued. The most pure
utterance of this feeling is, perhaps, Schiller’s “ Gods
of Greece,” where the loss of the Olympians is dis-
tinctly deplored, because it has unpeopled, not heaven,
but earth. But the same tone runs through Goethe’s
classical “ Walpurgis Night,” where the old human
“twelve gods,” the antitypes and the friends of men,
in whom our forefathers delighted, have vanished
utterly, and given place to semi-physical Nereides,
Tritons, Telchines, Psylli, and Seismos himself.
Keats, in his wonderful “ Endymion,” contrived to
unite the two aspects of Greek mythology as they.
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 93

never had been united before, except by Spenser in
his “Garden of Adonis.” But the Pantheistic no-
tion, as he himself says in “ Lamia,” was the one
which lay nearest his heart ; and in his “ Hyperion”
he begins to deal wholly with the Nature gods, and
after magnificent success, leaves the poem unfinished,
most probably because he had become, as his read-
ers must, weary of its utter want of human interest.
For that, after all, is what is wanted in a poetical
view of nature; and that is what the poet, in pro-
portion to his want of dramatic faculty, must draw
from himself. He must—he does in these days—
color Nature with the records of his own mind, and
bestow a factitious life and interest on her by mak-
ing her reflect his own joy or sorrow. If he be out
of humor, she must frown; if he sigh, she must
roar; if he be —— what he very seldom is —tolerably
comfortable, the birds have liberty to sing, and the
sun to shine. But by the time that he has arrived
at this stage of his development, or degradation, the-
poet is hardly to be called a strong man. He who
is so much the slave of his own moods that he must
needs see no object save through them, is not very
likely to be able to resist the awe which Nature’s
grandeur and inscrutability brings with it, and to say
firmly, and yet reverently, —

Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinz.

He feels, in spite of his conceit, that Nature is not
going his way, or looking his looks, but going what
he calls her own way, what we call God’s way. At
all events, he feels that he is lying, when he repre-
sents the great universe as tuned to his small set of
Pan’s pipes, and all the more because he feels that,
conceal it as he will, those same Pan’s pipes are out
of tune with each other. And so arises the habit
of. impersonating Nature, not after the manner of
94 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Spenser, (whose purity of metaphor and philosophic
method, when he' deals with Nature, is generally
even more marvellous than the richness of his fancy,)
as an organic whole, but in her single and accidental
phenomena ; and of ascribing not merely animal pas-
sions or animal enjoyment, but human discursive in-
tellect and moral sense, to inanimate objects, and talk-
ing as if a stick or a stone were more of a man than
the poet is, —as indeed they very often may be. »
These, like everything else, are perfectly right: in
their own place, — where they express passion, either
pleasurable or painful, passion, that is, not so intense
as to sink into exhaustion, or to be compelled to
self-control by the fear of madness. In these two
eases, as great dramatists know well enough, the
very violence of the emotion produces perfect sim-
plicity, as the hurricane blows the sea smooth; but
where fanciful language is employed to express the
extreme of passion, it is felt to be absurd, and is
accordingly called rant and bombast; and where it
is not used to express passion at all, but merely the
quiet and normal state of the poet’s mind, or of his
characters, with regard to external nature; when it
is considered, as it is by most of our modern poets,
the staple of- poetry, indeed poetic diction itself, so
that the more numerous and the stranger conceits an
author can cram into his verses, the finer poet he is;
then; also, it is called rant and bombast, but of the
most artificial, insincere, and (in every sense of the
word) monstrous kind; the offspring of an effeminate
Nature-worship, without self-respect, without true
manhood, because it exhibits the poet as the puppet
of his own momentary sensations, and not as a
man superior to nature, claiming his likeness to the
Author of nature, by confessing and expressing the
permanent laws of nature, undisturbed by fleeting ap-
pearances without, or fleeting tempers within. Hence
it is, that, as in all insincere and effete times, the
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 95

poetry of the day deals more and more with con-
ceits, and less and less with true metaphors. In
fact, hine ille lachryme. This is, after all, the pri-
mary symptom of disease in the public taste, which
has set us on writing this review, — that critics all
round are crying, “ An ill-constructed whole, no
doubt; but full of beautiful passages,” —the word
“passages” turning out to mean, in plain English,
conceits. The simplest distinction, perhaps, be-
tween an image and a conceit, is this: —that while
both are analogies, the image is founded on an anal-
ogy between the essential properties of two things,
—the conceit on an analogy between its accidents.
Images, therefore, whether metaphors or similes, deal
with laws; conceits with private judgments. Im-
ages belong to the imagination, the power which
sees things according to their real essence and in-
ward life, and conceits to the fancy or fantasy, |
which only sees things as they appear.

‘To give an example or two from the “Life Dra-
ma: —

His heart holds a dead hope,
As holds the wretched west the sunset’s corse —
Spit on, insulted by the brutal rains.
The passion-panting sea
Watches the utiveiled beauty of the stars
Like a great, hungry soul.
Great spirits,
Who left upon the mountain-tops of Death
A light that made them lovely.:

The moon,
Arising from dark waves which plucked at her.

 

_And hundreds, nay, thousands more in this book,
whereof it must be said, that beautiful or not, in the
eyes of the present generation, — and many of them
are put into very beautiful language, and refer to very
beautiful natural objects,—they are not beautiful
really, and in themselves, because they are mere con-
ceits; the analogies in them are fortuitous, depénding
not on the nature of the things themselves, but on
96 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

the private fancy of the writer, having no more real
and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun;
in plain English, untrue ; only allowable to Juliets or
Othellos, while their self-possession, almost their rea-
son, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of
joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite fit-
ness of Juliet’s “ Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds,”
&c., for one of her character, in her circumstances ;
every one, we trust, and Mr. Smith among the num-
ber, will some day feel the exquisite unfitness of
‘using such conceits as we have just quoted, or any
other, page after page, for all characters and chances.
For the West is not wretched ; the rains never were
brutal yet, and do not insult the sun’s corpse, being
some millions of miles nearer us than the sun, but
only have happened once to seem to do so in the
poet’s eyes. The sea does not pant with passion,
does not hunger after the beauty of the stars; Death
has no mountain-tops, or any property. which can be
compared thereto; and “the dark waves” —in that
most beautiful conceit which follows, and which Mr.
Smith has borrowed from Mr. Bailey, improving it
marvellously nevertheless—do not “pluck at the
moon,” but only seem to do so. And what consti-
tutes the beauty of this very conceit——far the best
of those we have chosen — but that it looks so very
like an image, so very like a law, from being so very
common and customary an ocular deception to one
standing on a low shore at night?
Or, again, in a passage which has been already
often quoted as exquisite, and in its way is so: —
The bridegroom sea

Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride;

And in the fulness of his marriage joy

He decorates her tawny brow with shells,

Retires a pace, to see how fair she looks,

Then proud, runs up to kiss her.

Exquisite? Yes; but only exquisitely pretty. It

is untrue —a false explanation of the rush and recoil
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 97

of the waves. We learn nothing by these lines; we
gain no fresh analogy between the physical and the
spiritual world, not even between two different parts
of the physical world. If the poetry of this age has
a peculiar mission, it is to declare that such an anal-
ogy exists throughout the two worlds; then let poetry
declare it. Let it set forth a real intercommunion
between man and nature, grounded on a communion
between man and God, who made nature. Let it
accept nature’s laws as the laws of God. Truth,
scientific truth, is the only real beauty. “ Let God
be true, and every man a liar.” :

Now, be it remembered that by far the greater
proportion of this book consists of such thoughts as
these ; and that these are what are called its beau-
ties ; these are what young poets try more and more
daily to invent — conceits, false analogies. Be it re-
membered, that the affectation of such conceits has
always marked the decay and approaching death of
a reigning school of poetry; that when, for instance,
the primeval forest of the Elizabethan poets dwin-
died down into a barren scrub of Vaughans, and
Cowleys, and Herberts, and Crashawes, this was the
very form in which the deadly blight appeared. In
vain did the poetasters, frightened now and then at
their own nonsense, try to keep up the decaying dig-
nity of poetry by drawing their conceits, as poetasters
do now, from suns and galaxies, earthquakes, eclipses,
and the portentous and huge and gaudy in nature ;
the lawlessness and irreverence for nature, involved in
the very worship of conceits, went on degrading the
tone of the conceits themselves, till the very sense of
true beauty and fitness seemed lost ; and a pious and
refined gentleman like George Herbert could actually
dare to indite solemn conundrums to the Supreme
Being, and believe that he was writing devout poe-
try, and “looking through nature up to nature’s God,”

when he delivered himself thus in one of his least
5
98 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

offensive poems, (for the most sacred and most offen-
sive of them we dare not quote, lest we incur the
same blame which we have bestowed on Mr. Smith,)
and sing of Church festivals as —
Marrow of time, eternity in brief,
Compendiums epitomized, the chief
Contents, the indices, the title-pages
Of all past, present, and succeeding ages,
Sublimate graces, antedated glories;
The cream of holiness,
The inventories
Of future blessedness,
The florilegia of celestial stories,
Spirit of Joys, the felishes and closes
Of angels’ music, pearls dissolved, roses
ine Perfumed, sugar’d honeycombs. . . .

That manner, happily for art, was silenced by the
stern, truth-loving common sense of the Puritans.
Whatsoever else, in their crusade against shams, they
were too hasty in sweeping away, they were right, at
least, in sweeping awdy such a sham as that. And
now, when a school has betaken itself to use the very
same method in the cause of blasphemy, instead of on
that of cant, the Pope himself, with his Index Prohib-
itus, might be a welcome guest, if he would but stop
the noise, and compel our doting Muses to sit awhile

: in silence, and reconsider themselves.

In the meanwhile, poets write about poets, and
poetry, and guiding the age, and curbing the world,
and waking it, and thrilling it, and making it start,
and weep, and tremble, and self-conceit only knows
what else ; and yet the age is not guided, or the world
curbed, or thrilled, or waked, or anything else, by
them. "Why should it be? Curb and thrill the
world? The world is just now a most practical
world; and these men are utterly unpractical. The
age is given up to physical science; these men disre-
gard and outrage it in every page by their false anal-
ogies. If they intend, as they say, to link heaven
and earth by preaching the analogy of matter and
spirit, let them, in the name of common prudence,
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE, 99

observe the laws of matter, about which the world
does know something, and show their coincidence
with the laws of spirit, —if indeed they know any-
thing about the ‘said laws. Loose conceits, fancies
of the private judgment, were excusable enough in the
Elizabethan poets. In their day, nature was still un-
conquered by science; medieval superstitions still
lingered in the minds of men; and the magical no-
tions of nature which they had inherited from the
Middle Age received a corroboration from those Neo-
Platonist dreamers, whom they confounded with the
true Greek philosophers. But, now that Bacon has
spoken, and that Europe has obeyed him, surely,
among the most practical, common-sense, and scien-
tific nation of the earth, severely scientific imagery,
imagery drawn from the inner laws of nature, is
necessary to touch the hearts of men. They know
that the universe is not such as poets paint it; they
know that these pretty thoughts are only pretty
thoughts, springing from the caprice, the vanity, very
often from the indigestion of the gentlemen who take
the trouble to sing to them; and they listen, as they
would to a band of street musicians, and give them
sixpence for their tune, and go on with their work.
The tune outside has nothing to do with the work
inside. It will not help them to be wiser, abler, more
valiant — certainly not more cheerful and hopeful
men, and therefore they care no more for it than they
do for an opera or a pantomime, if as much. Where-
upon the poets get disgusted with this same hard-
hearted, prosaic world, — which is trying to get its
living like an industrious animal as it is, — and de-
mand homage,—-for what? For making a noise,
pleasant or otherwise? For not being as other men
are? For pleading “the eccentricities of genius”
as an excuse for sitting like naughty children in the
middle of the school-room floor, in everybody’s way,
shouting and playing on penny trumpets, and when
100 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

begged to be quiet, that other people may learn their
lessons, considering themselves insulted, and plead-
ing “genius?” Genius !— hapless by-word, which,
like charity, covers nowadays the multitude of sins,
all the seven deadly ones included! Is there any
form of human folly which one has not heard ex-
cused by “he is a genius, you know, — one must not
judge him by common rules.” Poor genius, — to
have come to this! To be when confessed, not a

-reason for being more of a man than others, but an

excuse for being less of a man, less amenable than
the herd to the common laws of humanity, and there-
fore less able than they to comprehend its common
duties, common temptations, common sins, common
virtues, common destinies. Of old the wise singer
did, by virtue of feeling with all, and obeying with
all, learn to see for all; to see eternal laws, eternal
analogies, eternal consequences, and so became a
seer, vates, prophet; but now he is become a genius,.
a poetical pharisee, a reviler of common laws and
duties, the slave of his own private judgment, who
prophesies out of his own heart, and hath seen noth-
ing but only the appearances of things distorted and
colored by “ genius.’ Heaven send the word, with
many more, a speedy burial!

And what becomes of artistic form in the hands
of such a school? Just what was to be expected.
It is impossible to give outward form to that which
is in its very nature formless, like doubt and discon-
tent. For on such subjects thought itself is not
defined ; it has no limit, no self-eoherence, not even
method or organic law. And in a poem, as in all
else, the body must be formed according to the law
of the inner life; the utterance must be the expres-
sioh, the outward and visible autotype, of the spirit
which animates it. But where the thought is de-
fined by no limits, it cannot express itself in form,
for form is that which has limits. Where it has no
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 101

inward unity it cannot have any outward one. If
the spirit by impatient of all moral rule, its utterance
will be equally impatient of all artistic rule; and
thus, as we are now beginning to discover from -ex-
perience, the poetry of doubt will find itself unable
to use those forms of verse which have been always
held to be the highest: tragedy, epic, the ballad, and
lastly, even the subjective lyrical ode. For they, too,
to judge by every great lyric which remains to us,
require a groundwork of consistent, self-coherent be-
lief; and they require also an appreciation of melody
even more delicate, and a verbal polish even more
complete than any other form of poetic utterance.
But where there is no melody within, there will be
no melody without. It is in vain to attempt the set-
ting of spiritual discords to physical music. The
mere practical patience and self-restraint requisite to
work out rhythm when fixed on, will be wanting;
nay, the fitting rhythm will never be found, the sub-
ject itself being arhythmic ; and thus we shall have,
or, rather, alas! do have, a wider and wider divorce
of sound and sense, a greater and greater careless-
ness for polish, and for the charm of musical utter-
ance, and watch the clear and spirit-stirring melodies
of the older poets swept away by a deluge of half-
metrical prose-run-mad, diffuse, unfinished, unmusi-
cal, to which any other metre than that in which
it happens to have been written would have been
equally appropriate, because all are equally inappro- °
priate ; and where men have nothing to sing, it is not
of the slightest consequence how ‘they sing it.

While poets persist in thinking and writing thus,
it is in vain for them to talk loud about the poet’s
divine mission, as the prophet of mankind, the
swayer of the universe, and so forth. Not that we
believe the poet simply by virtue of being a singer
to have any such power. While young gentlemen
are talking about governing heaven and earth ‘by
102 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

verse, Wellingtons and Peels, Arkwrights and Ste-
phensons, Frys and Chisholms, are doing it by
plain, practical prose; and even of those who have
-moved and led the hearts of men by’ verse, every
one, as far as we know, has produced his magical
effects by poetry of the very opposite form to that,
which is now in fashion. "What poet ever had more
influence than Homer? ‘What poet is more utterly
antipodal to our modern schools? There are certain
Hebrew psalms, too, which will be confessed, even
by those who differ most from them, to have exer-
cised some slight influence on human thought and
action, and to be likely to exercise the same for some
time to come. Are they any more like our modern
poetic forms than they are like our modern poetic
matter? Ay, even in our own time, what has been
‘the form, what the temper, of all poetry, from Kor-
ner and Heine, which has made the German heart
‘leap up, but simplicity, manhood, clearness, finished
_melody, the very opposite, in a word, of our new
‘school? And to look at home, what is the modern
poetry which lives on the lips and in the hearts of
Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen? It is not only
simple in form and language, but much of it fitted,
by a severe exercise of artistic patience, to tunes
already existing. Who does not remember how the
“ Marseillaise” was born, or how Burns’s “ Scots
wha ha’ wi’ Wallace bled,” or the story of Moore’s
taking the dld “ Red Fox March” and giving ita
new immortality as “Let Erin remember the days
of old,” while poor Emmett sprang up and cried,
“ Oh, that I had twenty thousand Irishmen march-
ing to that tune!” So itis, even to this day, and
let those who hanker after poetic fame take note of
it; not a poem which is now really living but has
gained its immortality by virtue of simplicity and
. positive faith. =
Let the poets of the new school consider carefully
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE 1038

Wolfe’s “Sir John Moore,” Campbell’s “ Hohenlin-
den,” “ Mariners of England,” and“ Rule Britannia,”
Hood’s “ Song of the Shirt” and “ Bridge of Sighs,”
and then,ask themselves, as men who would be
poets, were it not better to have written any one of
thase glorious lyrics than all which John Keats has
left behind him; and let them be sure that howsoever
they may answer the question to themselves, the
sound heart of the English people has already made
its choice; and that when that beautiful “ Hero and
Leander,’ in which Hood has outrivalled the con-
ceit-mongers at their own weapons, by virtue of that
very terseness, clearness, and manliness which they
neglect, has been gathered to the limbo of the Cra-
shawes and Marinos, his “ Song of the Shirt” and
his “ Bridge of Sighs” will be esteemed by great
new English nations far beyond the seas, for what
they are,—two of the most noble lyric poems ever
written by an English pen. If our poetasters talk
with Wordsworth of the dignity and pathos of the
commonest human things, they will find them there
in perfection ; if they talk about the cravings of the
new time, they will find them there. If they want
the truly sublime and the awful, they will find them
there also. But they will find none of their own
favorite concetti; -hardly even a metaphor; no taint.
of this new poetic diction into which we have now
fallen, after all our abuse of the far more manly and
sincere “ poetic diction” of the eighteenth century :
they will find no loitering by the way to argue and
moralize, and grumble at Providence, and show oft
the author’s own genius and sensibility ; they will
find, in short, two real works of art, earnest, melodi-
ous, self-forgétful, knowing clearly what they want
to say, and saying it in the shortest, the simplest,
the calmest, the most finished words. Saying it, —
rather taught to say it. ‘ For if that “ divine inspira-
tion of poets,” of which the poetasters make such
104 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

rash and irreverent boastings, have indeed, as all ages
have held, any reality corresponding to it, it will
rather be bestowed on such works as these, appeals
from unrighteous man to a righteous Gad, than on
men whose only claim to celestial help'seems to be

. that mere passionate sensibility, which our modern

Draco once described, when speaking of poor John
Keats, as “an infinite hunger after all manner of
pleasant things, crying to the ‘universe, ‘Oh, that
thou wert one great. lump of sugar, that I might
suck thee!’”

Our task is ended. We have given, as plainly as
We can, our reasons for the opinion which this Maga-
zine has expressed several times already, that with
the exception of Mr. Allingham, our young poets
are a very hopeless generation, and will so continue
unless they utterly repent and amend. If they do
not choose to awaken themselves from within, all
that is left for us is to hope that they may be awak-
ened from without, or by some radical revulsion
in public taste be shown their own ‘eal value and
durability, and compelled to be true and manly un-
der.pain of being laughed at and forgotten. A gen-
eral war might, amid all its inevitable horrors, sweep
away at once the dyspeptic unbelief, the insincere
bigotry, the effeminate frivolity which now paralyzes
our poetry as much as it does our action, and sirike
from England’s heart a lightning flash of noble
deeds, a thunder peal of noble song. Such a case
is neither an impossible nor a far-fetched one; let us
not doubt that, by some other means if ‘not by that,
the immense volume of thought and power which is
still among us will soon find its utterance, and justify
itself to after ages by showing in ‘harmonious and
self-restrained poetry its kinship to the heroic and
the beautiful of every age and clime. And till then,

‘till the sunshine and the thaw shall come, and the

spring flowers burst into bud and bloom, heralding a
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. 105

new golden year in the world’s life, let us even be
content with our pea-green and orange fungi; nay,
even admire them, as not without their own tawdry
beauty, their clumsy fitness; for after all they are
products of nature, though only of her dyspepsia ;
and grow and breed —as indeed cutaneous disorders
do — by an organic law of their own; fulfilling their
little destiny, and then making, according to Profes-
sor Way, by no means bad manure. And so we
take our leave of Mr. Alexander Smith, entreating
him, if these pages meet his eye, to consider three
things, namely: that in as far as he has written poe-
try, he is on the road to ruin by reason of following
the worst possible models; that in as far as the
prevailing taste has put these models before him, he
is neither to take much blame to himself, nor to be
in anywise disheartened for the future; that in as
far as he shall utterly reverse his whole poetic
method, whether in morals or in esthetics, leave
undone all that he has done, and do all that he has
not done, he will become what he evidently, by grace
of God, can become if he will, namely, a lasting and
a good poet.

5*
106 KINGSLEY’S ‘NEW MISCELLANIES. -

THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON.
8 [Frazer's Magazine, November, 1853.)

Tue poets, who forty years ago proclaimed their
intention of working a revolution ‘in English lit-
erature, and who have succeeded in their purpose,
recommended especially a more simple and truthful
view of nature. The established canons of poetry
‘were to be discarded as artificial; as to the matter,
the ‘poet was to represent mere nature as he saw-her ;
as to fotm, he was to be his own law. Freedom and
nature were to*be ‘his watchwords.

No theory could be mote in harmony with the
spirit of the age, and the impulse which had been
given to it by the burning words of Jean Jacques
Rousseau. The school which arose expressed fairly
the unrest and unruliness of the time, its weariness
of artificial restraint and unmeaning laws, its craving
after a nobler and a more earnest life, its sense of a
glory and mystery in the physical universe, hidden
from the poets of the two preceding centuries, and
now revealed by science. So far all was hopeful.
But it soon became apparent, that each poet’s prac-
tical success in carrying out the theory was, paradox-
ically enough, in inverse proportion to his belief in
it; that those who, like Wordswerth, Southey, and
Keats, talked most about naturalness and freedom,
and most openly reprobated the school of Pope,
were, after all, least natural and least free; that the
balance of those excellences inclined much more
to those who, like Campbell, Rogers, Crabbe, and
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY, ‘AND. BYRON. 107

Moore, troubled their heads with no theories, but fol-
lowed the best old models which- they knew; and
that the rightful sovereign of the new Parnassus,
Lord Byron, protested against the new movement, :
while he followed it, upheld to the last the models
which it was the fashion to decry, confegsed to the
last, in poetry as in morals, “ Video meliera pro-
boque, deteriora sequor,” and uttered again and
again prophecies of the downfall of English poetry
and English taste, which seem to be on the eve of
realization.

Now no one will, we presume, be silly enough to
say that humanity has gained nothing by all the very
beautiful poetry which has been poured out on it
during the last thirty years in England. Neverthe-
less, when we see poetry dying down among us year
by year, although the age is becoming year by year
more marvellous and inspiring, we have a right to
look for some false principle in a school which has
had so little enduring vitality, which seems now to
be able to perpetuate nothing of itself but its vices.

The answer, so easy twenty years ago, that the
new poetry was spoiled by an influx of German bad
taste, will hardly hold good now, except with a very
few very ignorant people. It is now known, of
course, that whatsoever quarrel Lessing, Schiller,
and Goethe may have had with Pope, it was not on
account of his being ‘too severe an artist, but too
loose a one; not for being too classical, but not clas-
sical enough; that English poets borrowed from
them nothing but their most boyish and immature
‘types of thought, and that these were reproduced,
and laughed at here, while the men themselves were
-writing works of a purity, and loftiness, and com-
pleteness, unknown to the world—except in the
writings of Milton — for nearly two centuries. This
feature, however, of the new German poetry, was
-exactly the one which no English poet deigned to
108 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES. -..

A

imitate, save Byron alone; on whom, accordingly,
Goethe always looked with admiration and affec-
tion. But the rest went their way unheeding; and
if they have defects, those defects are their own; for
when they did copy the German taste, they, for the
most part, deliberately chose the evil, and refused the
good; and have their reward in a fame which we
believe will prove itself a very short-lived one.

But we cannot deny that, in spite of all faults,
these men had a strength. They have exercised an
influence. And they have done so by virtue of see-
ing a fact which more complete, and in some cases
more manly poets, did not see. Strangely enough,
Shelley, the man who was the greatest sinner of them
all against the canons of good taste, was the man
who saw that new fact, if not most clearly, still most
intensely, and who proclaimed it most boldly. His
influence, therefore, is outliving that of his compeers,
and growing and spreading, for good and for evil;
and will grow and spread for years to come, as long
as the present great unrest goes on smouldering in
men’s hearts, till the hollow settlement of 1815 is
burst asunder anew, and men feel that they are no
longer in the beginning of the end, but_in the end
itself, and that this long thirty years’ prologue to the
reconstruction of rotten Europe is played out at last,
and the drama itself begun.

Such is the way of Providence ; tlie race is not to
the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor the pro-
phecy to the wise. The Spirit bloweth where He
listeth, and sends on His errands — those who deny
Him, rebel against Him — profligates, madmen; and
hysterical Rousseaus, hysterical Shelleys, uttering
words like the east wind. He uses strange tools in
His cosmogony; but He does not use them in vain.
By bad men if not by good, by fools if not by wise,
His work is done, and done right well.

There was, then, a strength and a truth in all these
‘THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. 109

men; and it was this,— that more or less clearly,
they all felt that they were standing between two
worlds’ amid the ruins of an older age; upon the
threshold of a new one. To Byron’s mind, the de-
cay and rottenness of the old was, perhaps, the most
palpable ; to Shelley’s, the possible glory of the new.
‘Wordsworth declared — a little too noisily, we think,
as if he had been the first to discover the truth — the
dignity and divineness of the most simple human
facts and relationships. Coleridge declares that the
new can only assume living form, by growing organ- |
ically out of the old institutions. Keats gives a sad,
and yet a whglesome answer to them both, as, young
and Ppassionate, he goes down with Faust “to the
Mothers,”
To the rich, warm youth of the nations,
Childlike in virtue and faith, though childlike in passion and pleasure,

Childlike still, still near to the gods, while the sunset of Eden
Lingered in rose-red rays on the peaks of Ionian mountains.

And there, amid the old classic forms, he cries, —
“These things, too, are eternal:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

These, or things even fairer than they, must have
their place in the new world, if it is to be really a
home for the human race.” So he sings, as best he
can, the half-educated and consumptive stable-keep-
er’s son, from his prison-house of Londen brick, and
in one mighty yearn after that beauty from which he
is debarred, breaks his young heart, and dies, leaving
a name not “ writ in water,” as he dreamed, but on
all fair things, all lovers’ hearts, for evermore.

Here then, to return, is the reason why the hearts
of the present generation have been influenced so
mightily by these men, rather than by those of whom
Byron wrote, with perfect sincerity, —

Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try
>Gainst you the question with posterity.
110 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

These lines, written in 1818, were meant to ap-
ply only to Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey.
‘Whether ‘they be altogether just or unjust, is not
now the question; yet it must seem somewhat
strange to our young poets, that Shelley’s name is
-not among those who are to try the question of im-
‘mortality against the Lake ‘School; and yet many
of his most beautiful poerns had been already writ-
ten. Were, then, “ The Revolt of Islam” and “ Alas-
‘tor,” it seems, not destined, in Byron’s opinion, to
live as long as the “ Lady of the Lake,” and the
“ Mariners of England?” Perhaps not. At least
‘the omission of Shelley’s name is noteworthy. But
still more noteworthy are these words of his to Mr.
Murray, dated January 23, 1819 : —

“ Read Pope, — most of you don’t, —butdo....
and the inevitable consequence would be, that you
would burn all that I have ever written, and all your
other wretched ‘Claudians of the day (except Scott
and Crabbe) into the bargain.” ....

‘And here arises a new question, — Is Shelley, then,
among the Claudians? Itis a hard saying. The pres-
ent generation will receive it with shouts of laughter.*
‘Some future one, which studies and imitates Shaks-
peare instead of anatomizing him,and which grad-

. ually awakens to the now forgotten fact, that a
certain man named Edmund Spenser once wrote a
poem, the like of which the earth never saw before,
and perhaps may never see again, may be inclined
to acquiesce in the verdict, and ‘believe that Byron
had a discrimination in this matter, as in a hundred
more, far more acute than any of his compeers, and

_had not eaten-in vain, poor fellow, of the tree of the

, knowledge of good and evil. In the mean while, we
may perceive in the poetry of the two men deep and
radical differences, indicating a spiritual difference
between them even more deep, which may explain
the little notice which Byron takes of Shelley’s
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. Ill

‘poetry, and the fact that the two men had no deep
sympathy for each other, agd could not in anywise
“pull together ” during their sojourn in Italy. Doubt-
less, there were plain outward faults of temper and
character on both sides; neither -was in a state of
mind which could trust itself, or be trusted by those
who loved them best. Friendship can only consist
with the calm and self-restraint and self-respect of
moral and intellectual health; and both were dis-
eased, fevered, ready to take .offence, ready, unwit-
tingly, to give it. But the diseases of the ‘two were
different, as their natures were; and Shelley’s fever
was not Byron’s.

Now it is worth remarking, ‘that it is Shelley’s
form of fever, rather than Byron’s, which has been
of late years the prevailing epidemic. Since Shel-
ley’s poems have become known in England, and a
timid public, after approaching in fear and trembling
the fountain which was understood to be poisoned,
has begun first to sip, and then, finding the magic
water at all events sweet enough, to quench its thirst
with unlimited draughts, Byron’s ‘fiercer wine has
lost favor. Well,— at least the taste of the age is
more refined, if that be matter of congratulation.
And there is an excuse for preferring champagne to
water-side porter, heady with grains of paradise and
quassia, salt and cocculum indicum. Nevertheless,
worse ingredients than cenanthic acid may lurk in the
delicate draught, and the Devil’s Elixir may be made
fragrant, and sweet, and transparent enough, ‘as
French moralists:‘well know, for the most fastidious
palate. The private sipping of eau de Cologne, say
the London physicians, has increased mightily of
late: and so has the reading of Shelley. It is not
surprising. Byron’s Corsairs and Laras have been,
on the whole, impossible during the thirty years’
peace; and piracy and profligacy are at all times,
and especially nowadays, expensive amusements,
112 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

and often require a good private fortune, — rare
among poets. They have, therefore, been wisely
abandoned as ideals, except among a few young
persons, who used to wear turn-down collars and
are now attempting mustachios and Mazzini hats.
But even among them, and among their betters, —
rather their more-respectables,— nine tenths of the
bad influence which is laid at Byron’s door, really is
owing to Shelley. Among the many good going
gentlemen and ladies, Byron is generally spoken of
with horror,—he is “so wicked,” forsooth ; while
poor Shelley, “poor dear Shelley,” is “ very wrong,
of course,” but “so refined,” “so beautiful,” “so
tender,” —a fallen angel, while Byron is a satyr and
a devil. We boldly deny the verdict. Neither of
the two are devils; as for angels, when we have
seen one, we shall be better able to give an opinion;
at present, Shelley is, in our eyes, far less like one
of those old Hebrew and Miltonic angels, fallen or
unfallen, than Byron is. And as for the satyr: the
less that is said for Shelley, on that point, the bet-
ter. If Byron sinned more desperately and _fla-
grantly than he, it was done under the temptations
of rank, wealth, disappointed love, and under the
impulses of an animal nature, to which Shelley’s
passions were

As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.

And, at all events, Byron never set to work to
consecrate his own sin into a religion, and proclaim
the worship of uncleanness as the last and highest
ethical development of “ pure” humanity. No; By-
ron may be brutal, but he never cants. If at mo-
ments he finds himself in. hell, he never turns round
to the world, and melodiously informs them that it
is heaven, if they could but see it in its true light.

The truth is, that what has put Byron out of
favor with the public of late, is not his faults, but
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. 113

his excellencies. His artistic good taste, his clas-'
sical polish, his sound shrewd sense, his hatred of
cant, his insight into humbug, above all, his shallow,
pitiable habit of being always intelligible : these are
the sins which condemn him in the eyes of a mes-
merizing, table-turning, spirit-rapping, Spiritualizing,
Romanizing generation, who read Shelley in secret,
and delight in his bad taste, mysticism, extravagance,
and vague and pompous sentimentalism. The age
is an effeminate one; and it can well afford to par-
don the lewdness of the gentle and sensitive vegeta-

Tian, while it has no mercy for that of the sturdy
peer, proud of his bull-neck and ‘his boxing, who
kept bears and bull-dogs, drilled Greek rufians at
Missolonghi, and “had no objection to a pot of
beer;” and who might, if he had reformed, have
made a gallant English gentleman; while Shelley,
if once his intense self-opinion had deserted him,
would have probably ended in Rome, as an Orato-
rian or a Passionist.

We would that it were only for this count that
Byron has had-to make way for Shelley. There is,
as we said before, a deeper moral difference between
the men, which makes the weaker, rather than the
stronger, find favor in young men’s eyes. For By-
ron has the most intense and awful sense of moral
law, — of law external to himself. Shelley has little
or none; less, perhaps, than any known writer who
has ever meddled with moral questions. Byron’s
cry is, I am miserable, because law exists; and I
have broken it, broken it so habitually that now I
cannot help breaking it. I have tried to eradicate
the sense of it by speculation, by action; but I can-
not, —

The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

There is a moral law, independent of us, and yet
the very marrow of our life, which punishes and re-
114 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

wards us by no arbitrary external penalties, but by
our own conscience of being what we are.

The mind which is immortal, makes itself

Requital for its good or evil thoughts;

Is its own origin of ill, and end, —

And its own place and time, — its innate sense

When stript of this mortality, derives

No color from the fleeting things about,

But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy,

Born from the knowledge of its own desert. >

This idea, confused, intermitted, obscured by all
forms of evil,— for it was not discovered, but only
in the process of discovery,—is the one which comes
out with greater and greater strength, through all
Corsairs, Laras, and Parasinas, till it reaches its
completion in Cain and in Manfred, of both of
which we do boldly say, that if any skeptical poetry
at all be right, which we often question, ‘they are
right and not wrong; that in Cain, as in Manfred,
the awful problem which, perhaps, had better not
have been put at all, is nevertheless fairly put, and
the solution, as far as it is seen, fairly confessed;
namely, that there is an absolute and eternal law in
the heart of man, which sophistries of his own, or
of other beings, may make him forget, deny, blas-
pheme; but which exists externally, and will assert
itself. If this be not the meaning of Manfred, es-
pecially of that great scene in the chamois hunter’s
cottage, what is?— If this be not the meaning of
Cain, and his awful awakening after the murder, not
to any mere dread of external punishment, but to
an overwhelming, instinctive, inarticulate sense of
having done wrong, what is?

Yes; that law exists, let it never be forgotten, is
the real meaning of Byron, down to that last terrible
Don Juan, in which he sits himself down, in artificial
calm, to trace the gradual rotting and degradation of
a man without law, the slave of his own pleasures ;
a picture happily never finished, because he who
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. 115

painted it was taken away before he had learned,
perhaps when he was beginning to turn back from, —
the lower depth within the lowest deep.

Now to this whole form of consciousness, poor
Shelley’s mind is altogether antipodal. His whole
life through was & denial of external law, and a sub-
stitution in its place of internal sentiment. Byron’s
ery is, There is a law, and therefore I am miserable.
Why cannot I keep the law? Shelley’s is, There is
a law, and therefore I am miserable. Why should
not the law be abolished ?— Away with it, for it in-
terferes with my sentiments, — Away with marriage,
“eustom and faith, the foulest birth of time.’ We
do not wish to follow him down into the fearful sins
which he defended with the small powers of reason-
ing— and they were peculiarly small— which he
possessed. Let any one who wishes to satisfy him-
self of the real difference between Byron’s mind and
Shelley’s, compare the writings in which each of
them treats the same subject, — namely, that frightful
question about the relation of the sexes, which forms,
evidently, Manfred’s crime; and see if the result is
not simply this, that Shelley glorifies what Byron
damns. “ Lawless love” is Shelley’s expressed ideal
of the relation of the sexes; and his justice, his be-
nevolence, his pity, are all equally lawless. “Follow.
your instincts,” is his one moral rule, confounding
. the very lowest animal instincts with those lofty ideas
of right which it was the will of Heaven that he
should retain, ay, and Jove, to the very last, and so
reducing them all to the level of sentiments. “ Fol-
low your instincts,’ — But what if our instincts lead
us to eat animal food? “Then you must follow the
‘instincts of me, Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1 think it
horrible, cruel; it offends my taste.” What if our
instincts lead us to tyrannize over our fellow-men ?
“ Then you must repress those instincts. I, Shelley,
think that, too, horrible and cruel.” Whether it be
116 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

vegetarianism or liberty, the rule is practically the
same, — sentiment ; which, in his case, as in the case
of all sentimentalists, turns out to mean at last, not
the sentiments of mankind in general, but the pri-
vate sentiments of the writer. This is Shelley: a
sentimentalist pure and simple; incapable of any-
thing like inductive reasoning; unable to take cogni-
zance of any facts but those which please his taste,
or to draw any conclusion from them but such as
also pleases his taste ; as, for example, in that eighth
stanza of ‘the Ode to Liberty, which, had it been
written ‘by any other man but Shelley, possessing the
same knowledge as he, one would have called a
wicked and deliberate lie, —— but in his case, is to be
simply passed over with a sigh, like a young lady’s
proofs of table-turning and rapping spirits. She
wished to see it so, — and therefore so she saw it.
For Shelley’s nature is utterly womanish. Not
merely his weak :points, but his strong ones, are those
of a woman. Tender and pitiful as a woman; and
yet, when angry, shrieking, railing, hysterical as a
woman. The physical distaste for meat and fer-
mented liquors, coupled with the hankering after
physical horrors, are especially feminine. The na-
ture of a woman looks out of that wild, beautiful,
girlish face, — the nature, but not the spirit; not

The reason firm, the temperate -will,
Endurance, foresight, strength,.and skill.

The lawlessness of the man, with the sensibility of
the woman. ... Alasforhim! He, too, might have
discovered what Byron did; for were not his errors
avenged upon him within, more terribly even than
without? His cries are like the wails of a child, in-
articulate, peevish, irrational; and yet his pain fills
his whole being, blackens the very face of nature to
him; but he will not confess himself in the wrong.
Once only, if we recollect :rightly, the truth flashes
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. 117

across him for a moment, amid the clouds of selfish
sorrow, —

Alas, I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within, nor calm around;
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned.

“ Nor” alas for the spiritual bathos which fol-
lows that short gleam of healthy feeling and coming
to himself — :

 

— fame nor power, nor love, nor leisure,
Others I see whom these surround,
Smiling they live and call life pleasure,
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure!

Poor Shelley! As if the peace within, and the
ealm around, and the content surpassing wealth,
were things which were to be put in the same cate-
gory with fame, and power, and love, and leisure.
As if they were things which could be “dealt” to
any man; instead of depending (as Byron, who,
amid all his fearful sins, was a man, knew well
enough) upon a man’s self, a man’s own will, and
that will exerted to do a will exterior to itself, to
know and to obey a law. But no, the cloud of sen-
timent must close over again, and

Yet now despair itself is mild
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away this life of care,
Which I have borne, and still must bear,
Till death like sleep might seize on me,
And I might feel in the warm air,
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony! . .

Too beautiful to laugh at, however empty and sen-
timental. True; but why beautiful? Because there
is a certain sincerity in it, which breeds coherence
and melody, which, in short, makes it poetry. But
what if such a tone of mind be consciously encour-
aged, even insincerely affected as the ideal state for
a poet’s mind, as his followers have done?
118 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

The mischief which such a man would do is con-
ceivable enough. He stands out, both by his excel-
lencies and his defects, as the spokesman and ideal
of all the unrest and unhealth of sensitive young
men for many a year after. His unfulfilled prophe-’
cies only help to increase that unrest. Who shall
blame either him for uttering those prophecies, or
them for longing for their fulfilment? Must we not
thank the man who gives us fresh hope that this earth
will not be always as it is now? His notion of what
it will be may be, as Shelley’s was, vague, even in
some things wrong and undesirable. Still, we "must
accept his hope and faith in the spirit, not in the
letter. So have thousands of young men felt, who
have shrunk with disgust from some of poor Shel-
ley’s details of the “ good time coming.” And shame
on him who should wish to rob them of such a hope,
even if it interfered with his favorite “scheme of un-
fulfilled prophecy.” So men have felt Shelley’s spell
a wondrous one, — perhaps, they think, a life-giving,
regenerative one. And yet what dream at once more
shallow, and more impossible? Get rid of kings and
priests; marriage may stay, pending discussions on
the rights of women. Let the poet speak, — what
he is to say being, of course, a matter of utterly sec-
ondary import, provided only that he be a poet; and
then the millennium will appear of itself, and the
devil be exorcised with a kiss from all hearts —ex-
cept, of course, those of “ pale priests,” and “tyrants,
with their sneer of cold command,” (who, it seems,
have not been got rid of after all,) and the Cossacks
and Croats whom they may choose to call to their res-
CUE) a> ex And on the appearance of the said Cos-
sacks and Croats, the poet’s vision stops short, and
all is blank beyond. — A recipe for the production of
millenniums which has this one advantage, that it is
small enough to be comprehended by the very small-
est minds, and reproduced thereby, with a difference,
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. 119

in such spasmodic melodies as seem to those small
minds to be imitations of Shelley’s nightingale notes.

For nightingale notes they truly are. In spite
of all his faults, —and there are few poetic faults
in which he does not indulge, to their very high-:
est power,—in spite of his “ interfluous” and “in-
numerous,” and the rest of his bad English, — in
spite of bombast, horrors, maundering, sheer stuff
and nonsense of all kinds, there is a plaintive nat-
fral melody about this man, such as no other
English poet has ever uttered, except Shakspeare,
in some few immortal songs. Who that has read
Shelley does not recollect scraps worthy to stand by
Ariel’s song, — chaste, simple, unutterably musical ?
Yes, when he will be himself, — Shelley the scholar
and the gentleman and the singer, and leave phi-
losophy and politics, which he does not understand,
and shriekings and cursings, which are unfit for any
civilized and self-respecting man, he is perfect. Like
the American mocking-bird, he is harsh only when
aping other men’s tunes, — his true power lies in his .
own “ native wood-notes wild.”

But it is not this faculty of his which has been
imitated by his scholars; for it is not this faculty
which made him their ideal, however it may have
atiracted them. All which sensible men deplore in
him, is that which poetasters have exalted in him.
His morbidity and his doubt have become in their '
eyes his differential energy, because, too often, it was —
all in him with which they had wit to sympathize.
They found it easy to curse and complain, instead
of helping to mend. So had he. They found it
pleasant to confound institutions with the abuses
which defaced them. So had he. They found it
pleasant to give way to their spleen. So had he.
They found it pleasant to believe that the poet was
to regenerate the world, without having settled
with what he was to regenerate it. So had he.
120 KINGSLEY’S NEW. MISCELLANIES. °

They found it more pleasant to -obey sentiment
than inductive laws. So had he. They found it
more pleasant to hurl about enormous words and
startling figures, than to examine reverently the
awful depths of beauty which lie in the simplest
words and the severest figures. So had he.

And thus arose a spasmodic, vague, extravagant,
effeminate, school of poetry, which has been too
often hastily and unfairly fathered upon Byron.
Doubtless Byron has helped to its formation; but
only in as far as his poems possess, or rather seem
to possess, elements in common with Shelley’s. i For
that conscious struggle against law, by which law
is discovered, may easily enough be confounded
with the utter repudiation of it. Both forms of
mind will discuss the same questions; both will
discuss them freely, with a certain plainness and
daring, which may range through all grades, from
the bluntness of Socrates down to reckless im-
modesty and profaneness. The world will hardly
distinguish between the two; it did not in Soc-
rates’s case, mistook his reverent irreverence for Athe-
ism, and martyred him accordingly, as it has since
martyred Luther’s memory. Probably, too, if a liv-
ing struggle is going on in the writer’s mind, he will
not have distinguished the two elements in himself;
he will be profane when he fancies himself only
arguing for truth; he will be only arguing for truth,
where he seems to the respectable undoubting to be
profane. And in the mean while, whether ‘the re-
spectable understand him or not, the young and the
inquiring, much more the distempered, who would
be glad to throw off moral law, will sympathize
with him, often more than he sympathizes with
himself. Words thrown off in the heat of passion ;
shameful. self-revealings which he has written with
his very heart’s blood; ay, even fallacies which he
has put into the mouths of dramatic characters for
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. 121

the very purpose of refuting them, or at least of call-
ing on all who read to help him to refute them, and
to deliver him from the ugly dream, all these will,
by the lazy, the frivolous, the feverous, the discon-
tented, be taken for integral parts and noble traits
of the man to whom they are attracted, by finding
that he, too, has the same doubts and struggles as
themselves, that he has a voice and art to be their
spokesman. And hence arises confusion on con-
fusion, misconception on misconception. The man
is honored for his dishonor. Chronic disease is
taken for a new type of health; and Byron is ad-
mired and imitated for that which Byron is trying
to tear out of his own heart, and trample under foot
as his curse and bane, something which is not By-
ron’s self, but Byron’s house-fiend, and tyrant, and
shame. And in the mean while that which calls
itself respectability and orthodoxy, and is— unless
Augustine lied — neither of them, stands by; and in-
stead of echoing the voice of him who said, “ Come
to me ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will
give you rest,” mumbles proudly to itself, with the
Pharasees of old, “ This people, which knoweth not
the law, is accursed.”

We do not seek to excuse Byron any more than
we do Shelley. They both sinned. They both paid
bitter penalty for their sin. How far they were
guilty, or which of them was the more guilty, we
know not. We-can judge no man. It is as poets
and teachers, not as men and responsible spirits;
not in their inward beings, known only to Him who
miade them, not even to themselves, but in their
outward utterance, that we have a right to compare
them. Both have done harm. Neither have, we
firmly believe, harmed any human being who had
not already the harm within himself. It is not by
introducing evil, but by calling into consciousness

and more active life evil which was already lurking
6
142 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIEDS.

in the heart, that any writer makes men worse.
Thousands doubtless have read Byron and Shelley,
and worse books, and have risen from them as pure
as when they sat down. In evil as well as in good,
the eye only sees that which it brings with it the
power of seeing, — say rather, the wish to see. But
it is because, in spite of all our self-glorifying peans,
our taste has become worse and not better, that
Shelley, the man who conceitedly despises and de-
nies law, is taking the place of Byron, the man who
only struggles against it, and who shows his honesty
and his greatness most by confessing that his strug-
gles are ineffectual; that, Titan as he may look to
the world, his strength is misdirected, a mere furious
weakness, which proclaims him a slave in fetters,
while prurient young gentlemen are fancying him
heaping hills on hills, and scaling Olympus itself.
They are tired of that notion, however, now. They
have begun to suspect that Byron did not scale
Olympus after all. How much more pleasant a
leader, then, must Shelley be, who unquestionably
did scale his little Olympus, — having made it him-
self first to fit. his own stature. The man who has
built the hayrick will doubtless climb it again, if
need be, as often as desired, and whistle.on the top,
after the fashion of the rick-building guild, trium-
phantly enough. For after all Shelley’s range of vis-
ion is very narrow, his subjects few, his reflections
still fewer, when compared, not only with such a
poet as Spenser, but with his own contemporaries ;
above all with Byron. He has a deep heart, but
not a wide one; an intense eye, but not a catholic
one. And, therefore, he never wrote a real drama;
for in spite of all that has been said to the contrary,
Beatrice Cenci is really none other than Percy Bys- -
she Shelley himself in petticoats. e

But we will let them both be. Perhaps they know
better now. err
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. 123

One very ugly superstition, nevertheless, we must
mention, of which these two men have been, in Eng-
land, at least, the great hierophants ; that, namely, on
which we touched in our last, —the right of “ genius”
to be “eccentric.” Doubtless there are excuses for
such a notion; but it is one against which every wise
man must set his face like a flint, and at the risk of
being called a “ Philister” and a “flunkey,” take part
boldly with respectability and this wicked world, and
declare them to be, for once, utterly in the right. Still,
there are excuses for it. A poet, especially one who
wishes to be not merely a describer of pretty things,
but a “ Vates” and seer of new truth, must often
say things which other people do not like to say,
and do things which others do not like to do. And,
moreover, he will be generally gifted, for the very
purpose of enabling him to say and do these strange
things, with a sensibility more delicate than com-
mon, often painful enough to himself. How easy
for such a man to think that he has a right not to be
as other men are; to despise little conventionalities,
courtesies, even decencies ; to offend boldly and care-
lessly, conscious that he has something right and
valuable within himself, which not only atones for
such defects, but allows him to indulge in them, as
badges of his own superiority! .

This has been the notion of artistic genius which
has spread among us of late years, just in propor-
tion as the real amount of artistic genius has dimin-
ished ; till we see men, on the mere ground of being
literary men, too refined to keep accounts, or pay
their butchers’ bills; affecting the pettiest absurdi-
ties in dress, in manner, in food; giving themselves
credit for being unable to bear a noise, keep their
’ temper, educate their own children, associate with
their fellow-men; and a thousand other paltry
weaknesses, morosenesses, self-indulgences, fastidi-
ousnesses, vulgarities, — for all this is essentially.
iz4 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCHLLANLEDS.

vulgar, and demands, not honor and sympathy, but
a chapter in Mr. Thackeray’s Book of Snobs. Non
sic itur ad astra. Self-indulgence and exclusiveness
can only be a proof of weakness. It may accom-
pany talent, but it proves that talent to be partial
and defective. The brain may be large, but the
manhood, the “virtus,” is small, where such things
are allowed, much more where they are gloried in.
A poet such a man may be, but a world-poet never.
He is sectarian,a poetical Quaker, a Puritan, who,
forgetting that the truth which he possesses is equally
the right and inheritance of every man he meets,
takes up a peculiar dress or phraseology, as symbols
of his fancied difference from his human brothers.
All great poets, till Shelley and Byron, as far as we
can discern, have been men especially free from ec-
centricities; careful not merely of the chivalries and
the respectabilities, but also of the courtesies and
the petty conventionalities, of the age in which they
lived ; altogether well-bred men of the world. The
answer, that they learned the ways of courts, does not
avail; for if they had had no innate good-breeding,
reticence, respect for forms and customs, they would
never have come near courts at all. It is not a ques-
tion of rank and fashion, but of good feeling, com-
mon sense, unselfishness. Goethe, Milton, Spenser,
Shakspeare, Rabelais, Ariosto, were none of them
high-born men; several of them low-born ; and only
rose to the society of high-born men because they
were themselves innately high-bred, polished, com-
plete, without exaggerations, affectations, deformi-
ties, weaknesses of mind and taste, whatever may
have been their weaknesses on certain points of
morals. The man of all men most bepraised by the
present generation of poets, is perhaps Wolfgang von
Goethe. Why is it, then, that of all men he is the
one whom they strive to be most unlike?

And if this be good counsel for the man who
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. ~ 125

merely wishes—and no blame to him —to sing
about beautiful things in a beautiful way, it applies
with tenfold force to the poet who desires honestly
to. proclaim great truths. If he has to offend the
prejudices of the world in important things, that is
all the more reason for his bowing to those preju-
dices in little things, and being content to be like his
neighbors in outward matters in order that he may
make them like himself in inward ones. Shall such
a man dare to hinder his own message, to drive away
the very hearers to whotn he believes himself to be
sent, for the sake of his own nerves, laziness, antip-
athies, much more of his own vanity and pride? If
he does so, he is unfaithful to that very genius on
which he prides himself. He denies its divinity, by
treating it as his own possession, to be displayed or
hidden. as he chooses, for his own enjoyment, his
own self-glovification. Well for such a man if a
day comes to him in which he will look back with
shame and self-reproach, not merely on every scandal
which he may have caused by breaking the moral
and social laws of humanity, by neglecting to re-
strain his appetites, pay his bills, and keep his engage-
ments; but also on every conceited word and look,
every gaucherie and rudeness, every self-indulgent
moroseness and fastidiousness, as sins against the
sacred charge which has been committed to him; and
determines with that Jew of old, who, to judge from
his letter to Philemon, was one of the most perfect
gentlemen of God’s making who ever walked this
earth, to become “all things to all men, if by any
means he may save some,”
MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, AND THE PLATE.
[Fraser's Magazine, November, 1856.]

Tue “over-population” theory, so popular at the
beginning of this century, has been fast falling into
disrepute. That startling dogma of the science du
néant, which used of old so majesterially to inform
the human race that it was on the whole a failure,
because “the number of human beings had always
a tendency to increase faster than the means of sub-
sistence,’”’ is now becoming, not merely questiona-
ble, but ludicrous. Started, so wicked wags affirm,
by a few old bachelors, who, having no children
themselves, bore a grudge against their “recklessly-
multiplying ” neighbors for having any, —it was sus-
pected from the first on moral grounds; and may be
now considered as fairly abolished on scientific ones.
The moral philosopher answered to it, that it was
impossible that the universe could be one grand
mistake; human nature a disease; and the Crea-
tor of mankind one who but reverence forbids
us to say what we should have a right to say of
Him, were that theory a true one. The student of
humanity asked, “Is it possible that the family life,
which is the appointed method of educating the
highest and holiest feelings of man, should be at
the same time the normal cause of his final poverty

Paraguay, Brazil, and the Plate. Letters written in 1852-3. By C. B.
MANSFIELD, Esq., M. A., of Clare Hall, Cambridge ; with a Sketch of the

get Life, by the Rev. C. Kinastey. Cambridge: Macmillan and
0. 6. *

 
MANSFIELD'S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 127

and starvation? Leave such inhuman dreams to
monks and faquirs.” The scientific agriculturist
doubted the truth of the dogma more and more
as his science revealed to him that the limit of
productiveness, even upon old soils, had been no-
where reached. The sanitary reformer put in as,a
demurrer the important fact, that under proper ar-
rangements that limit could never be reached; for
as each human being (so he asserted) returned to.
the soil the whole elements of the food which he
consumed, saving those which already existed in
boundless abundance jn the atmosphere, the pro-
ductiveness of the soil ought to increase in exact
ratio to the number of human beings concentrated
on it. From these broad facts, the advocates of
the science du néant took refuge in arguments
about the cost of production. More skilful farm-
ing, more complete sewage, might certainly enable
the land to support greater numbers; but not to
do so profitably. The increased expense of the
processes would interfere with the general rapid
production of wealth. Here perhaps they had, on
the whole, the best of the argument; and if it
were any pleasure to them to prove thé impotency
of humanity, they must have enjoyed that lofty
gratification awhile. One would have thought,
certainly, that the business of the philosopher who
desired the good of his fellow-creatures, was rather
to show them what they could do, than what they
could not; to preach progress, rather than the
‘stationary state, and hope, rather than despair; to
bend his mind, like a practical man, to the ascer-
taining by experiment what could be done towards
increasing the sustenance of the peoples, instead
of sending forth from his remote study, idola specis,
abstract maxims which only strengthened the dog-
ged laziness which refused to till the land, and
the dogged ignorance which refused either to use
128 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

or let others use the refuse of the towns, though it
was poisoning hundreds yearly by epidemics. But
the science du néant took little account of such
plain matters; after all, why help to support more
human beings, when it had settled long ago that
there were too many already? Why even stop
epidemics, which might be only nature’s whole-
some method of ridding herself of that plethora of
rational beings —“ Children of God,”—as some
still called them, — with which she was periodically
embarrassed. So the agriculturist and the sanitary
reformer had to fight on, and on the whole, con-
quer, with little or no help from that seience which
arrogated to itself the knowledge of the laws of
wealth.

Meanwhile stood by, laughing bitterly enough,
the really practical men, — such men as the author
of the book now before us: the travellers, the geog-
raphers, the experimental men of science, who
took the trouble, before deciding on what could be,
to find out what was; and, as it were, “took stock”
of the earth and her capabilities, before dogmatiz-
ing on the future fate of her inhabitants. And,
“ What?” they asked in blank astonishment, “ what,
in the name of maps and common sense, means
this loud squabble? What right has any one to
dogmatize on the future of humanity, while the far
greater part of the globe is yet unredeemed from
the wild beast and the wild hunter? If scientific
agriculture be too costly,is there not room enough
on the earth for as much unscientific and cheap
tillage as would support many times over her
present population? What matters it, save as a
question of temporary makeshift, whether Eng-
land can be made to give thirty-three bushels of
wheat per acre instead of thirty-one, by some ques-
tionably remunerative outlay of capital, while the
Texan squatter, without any capital save his own
MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 129

two hands, is growing eighty bushels an acre?
Your disquisitions about the ‘margin of produc-
tiveness’ are interesting, curious, probably correct;
valuable in old countries; but nowhere else. For
is the question, whether men shall live, or even
be born at all, to be settled by them, forsooth, while
the valley of the Ottawa can grow corn enough
to supply all England ; the valley of the Mississippi
for all Europe; while Australia is a forest, instead
of being, as it will be one day, the vineyard of the
world ; while New Zealand and the Falklands are
still waste; and Polynesia, which may become the
“Greece of the New World, is worse than waste;
while the Nebraska alone is capable of support-
ing a population equal to France and Spain to-
gether; while, in the Old World, Asia Minor, once
the garden of old Rome, lies a desert in the foul
and lazy hands of the Ottoman; while the Trop-
ics produce almost spontaneously a hundred valu-
able articles of food, all but overlooked as yet in
the exclusive cultivation of cotton and sugar;—
and finally (asks Mr. Mansfield in his book), while
South America alone contains a territory of some
eight hundred miles square, at least equalling Egypt
in climate, and surpassing England in fertility;
easy of access; provided, by means of its great
rivers, with unrivalled natural means of communi-
cation, ‘with water-power enough to turn all the
mills in the world ;’ and needing nothing but men
to make it one of the gardens of the world?”

With his mind full of such a hope for the future
of. humanity, and full, too, of scientific knowledge
which gave him especial fitness for estimating the
capabilities of a foreign country, Mr. Mansfield
went out upon a tour, the only fruit of which is
the present book.

He did not live either to form the book into shape,
or to carry out the plans at which he hints therein.

6*
130 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

A premature and most tragic death overtook him in
the midst of his scientific labors, and the mass of pa-
pers which he left behind passed into the hands of his
friends, who are now digesting and arranging them,
with a view to publication. These letters, carefully-
edited, and illustrated by notes and appendices, by
an intimate friend of his, have been chosen as the
first fruits of his genius, as being at once the most
popular work which he has left, and the one, perhaps,
which most illustrates the variety, fulness, and en-
ergy of his intellect. A short sketch of his life,
by me, has been appended by our mutual friend, the
editor, to his preface; but the best evidence of what -
manner of man he was, is to be found in the letters
themselves.’

They are nothing more than letters, though wor-
thy of a man of single heart and open eye; and so
complete and full in themselves that the editor must
have found little difficulty in forming them into an
organic whole. With a reverence for the dead,
which will .be at once understood and honored, he
has refrained, perhaps here and there too scrupu-
lously, from altering a single word of the documents
as he found them, respecting even certain scraps of
Cambridge and Winchester slang, which may possi-
bly offend that class of readers who fancy that the
sign of magnanimity is to take everything au grand
sérieux, and that the world’s work must needs be
done upon stilts; but which will be, perhaps, to the
more thoughtful reader only additional notes of
power, of that true “ English Lebensglickseligkeit,”
as the German calls it, which makes a jest of dan-
ger, and an amusement of toil. Jean Paul makes
somewhere the startling assertion, that no man
really believes his religious creed unless he can
afford to jest about it. Without going so far as
that, I will say boldly, that no man feels. himself
master of his work, unless he can afford to jest
MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 131

about it; and that a frolicsome habit of mind is.
rather a token of deep, genial, and superabundant vi-
tality, than of a shallow and narrow nature, which
can only be earnest and attentive by conscious and
serious efforts.

However, the best apology for the form in which
ve appears is to be found in the editor’s own
words.

Let none forget that this work is a posthumous one ; put together
out of letters written with all the careless familiarity of one who is
addressing his nearest kindred, and his most intimate friends, —
“ Materials homespun for home use,” to quote some happy words
respecting them. Had the writer lived to shape out these materi-
als, who knows how much he might have suppressed,* how much
added, how much rewritten? Those only who have had in hand
his graver works (such as that on the “ Constitution of Salts,” now
in the press) can tell with what scrupulous, almost painful, care he
was wont to elaborate the finished expression of his thoughts.

And the task of editing a posthumous work, unchosen moreover
by the dead, differs greatly from that of the chosen editor of a work
by a living writer. The latter stands on the author’s own footing,
and may well deem himself bound to alter or omit whatever might
be excepted to. The former should rather seek to preserve all that
is capable of being defended; all that the writer might really have
wished outspoken. What might have been his last word we know
not. We only know that this was his first; and most especially is
one called on fo be diffident in altering the writings of one like
Charles Mansfield, in whom so many rare and lovable gifts were
so strangely blended, that though one may meet his equal, none
who knew him will ever expect to meet in this world his like.

This is sound argument, and (save in the case
which I have mentioned in a note) I fully concur
in it; and take gladly (since it is impossible now to
have more) this fragmentary relic of the observa-
tions of a true genius, upon countries too rarely vis-
ited by men of science or insight.

* This should especially apply to a hasty jest or two about an author
to whom both history and geological science, as far as South America is
concerned, are most deeply indebted. Had either Mr. Mansfield or his

ifted editor ever become acquainted with that personage, and come un-
der the influence of his geniality, courtesy, and learning, they would have
long ago erased expressions which, though uttered merely in joke, should
never have been. uttered af, all.
1382 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

From Mr. Mansfield’s first landing in the Tropics,
(one might say from his first sight of Lisbon,) the
fact which seems to have weighed upon his mind
was that of waste; palpable, inexcusable, boundless
waste; waste springing from idleness and ignorance,
and punished by poverty and disease. Can one
wonder if the cholera should sweep away thousands
in Lisbon, while “dead dogs” are lying about the
narrow streets; or if the population there should
increase faster than the means of subsistence, while
live “dogs are asleep in the middle of the streets
anywhere, —a striking symptom of the inactivity
and lifelessness of the town?”

So, too, at Pernambuco. Can one wonder at
the recurrence of yellow fever, while “there is not
a drain of any sort, and all imaginable filth lies in
the streets;” or that the resources of the country
should be altogether undeveloped, while the roads
(of one of which Mr. Mansfield gives a sketch) are
deep ditches, “from which a rider can just see, per-
haps, over the top of the road,” worked out by the
feet of the packhorses into transverse ridges and
furrows of stiff clay, or mud and water, in which
many a horse has been abandoned as inextricable?
While roads are left in this state, with a boundless
supply of timber close at hand (supposing that stone
be too far off) to make a sound “ metal,” who can
tell anything of the real resources of the country ?
Who can tell how much its population might or
tight not be profitably increased? Mr. Mansfield’s
opinion seems to be that its capabilities are bound-
less. “ What a Paradise is, or at least might be,
this country, if it were possessed by the English!
I do not feel at all sure that I am not dead, and
have not recommenced another life. I should be
pretty certain that I was not in the earth world,
but in some other planet, if I had had a sound sleep
lately to cut the thread of consciousness.” And
MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 183

again: “ What a contrast here!” (compared with
St. Vincent’s in the Cape Verd Islands.) “ This
place is, even in the hands of these wretched unde-
veloped people, an Eden of beauty. What a Para-
dise it would be made by Englishmen of this cen-
tury! What a heaven it will be made by the
brother-men of the age that is to come! I need
not pour out my rapturous admiration of the works
of the Great Poet-Father, as you have seen such
and have worshipped in similar scenes. The beau-
ty is almost bewildering. The glorious cocoa-nut
trees, bananas, palms, breadfruit, and the magnifi-
cent green oranges...... lam too giddy to write
soberly about anything. I feel inclined to cut capers
under the trees, till I am tired, then sigh like a hip-
popotamus for some one to pour it all out upon, and
then lie down and dream. As for studying the bot-
any of the country, it is impossible. Nothing is
possible but to photographize everybody and every-
thing; cameras cannot get giddy with wonder.”

-There is a practical element underlying these rap-
tures, merely esthetic as they may seem at first
sight; and Mr. Mansfield notes a most practical
want when he says (as all do who know much of
the Tropics) : —

I suppose there is scarcely any one here who values the glorious
imagery of the Mighty Poet who made all this. Negroes, Mulat-
toes, Portuguese, Brazilians, have all pigs’ eyes, by virtue, I sup-
pose, of Adam’s fall; and the English, for the same reason, are all
absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, and so cannot enjoy.

Most practically does this carelessness about the
glory which surrounds them affect Tropic civiliza-
tion, — we had almost said, render it impossible.
For without the appreciation of beauty, there can
be no art; without art, there can be none of that
highest civilization among the rich, which will gradu-
ally draw up to its own level, humanizing and edu-
cating the classes below. “Tropic art” is a thing
134 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

which the world has yet to see; but when the inspi-
ration shall come, how poor and cold will be all
our northern conceptions by the side of the Raphaels
and Turners of the New World! That a “ 'Fropie
Art” will be developed some day, seems to us a
promise written in the book of destiny; for surely,
sooner or later, men’s minds will be awakened, and
more are intended by heaven to be awakened, to see
(and as a necessary consequence to reproduce) the
beautiful, in those regions of the world in which the
beautiful is to be found in utterly unparalleled luxu-
riance.

In the Tropics, if anywhere, must the old saw
about “ingenuas didicisse artes” stand true; for
there, more than anywhere else, the uneducated
mind, in the long intervals of repose which the fer-
tility of the soil allows, is tempted to expend itself
in those fierce and sensual indulgences, which have
plunged the Spanish colonies first into profligacy
and then into bloodshed. Nowhere, so much as in
the Tropics, do men require, in order to any self-
development, even to any social order and safety of
life and property, to be raised above the slavery of
their animal appetites; and a free white nation
which should have learned this truth; which should
be really educated to understand and enjoy the great
glory of God around them, might rise to a ciyiliza-
tion such as the world has never yet seen, for grace-
fulness and comfort, scientific appliances and the
means of intellectual repose alternating with whole-
some but not, excessive toil; a civilization beside
which that of old Sybaris or Agrigentum would be
coarse and poor, and which, meanwhile, need never,
under moderately just laws, exhibit any of those
fearful contrasts of wealth and poverty which are
the blot on our European States; because (as now
with the free West Indian negro) every physical com-
fort, almost every physical luxury, would be within
MANSFIELD'S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 185

the reach of any one who was willing to labor daily
just long enough to keep his body in health. The
ideal of what a tropical white nation might be, when
properly acclimatized, (and acclimatization is now
perfectly easy to the decently sober and prudent
man,) is, if we will but let our imagination soberly
work out the details, too dazzling to be dwelt on
long without pain, beside the fearful contrast which
the social state of Kurope presents to it at this mo-
ment, and is likely to present for many a year to
come. We will pass on to Mr. Mansfield’s experi-
ences of Buenos Ayres, and the country about the
River Plate, learning always the same sad lesson of
boundless waste, neglect, and incapacity : —

I need not tell you that all the land almost, between the Andes
and the Paran4-Paraguay, is one vast plain; all the southern part
of which, almost, is now sacrificed to that lowest and most de-
graded form of occupation, that sham of industry, the feeding and
butchering of cattle, — a vile occupation, delighted in by master
capitalists, because it yields them a return on their money with
the employment of the smallest possible number of workmen, —
delighted in by workmen, because their employment is a lazy one,
which excites none of their faculties, except those necessary to
enable them to sit on horseback, and to rip the hides of half
killed oxen. I should like some of your lovers of flesh to see the
reeking horrors of the saladeros of the River Plate.

I have no sympathy with the author’s vegetarian
predilections ; but putting them aside, the facts which
he gives prove a waste of animal food, and of an-
imal matter valuable in other ways, frightful to con-
template : —

Dead horses and oxen everywhere ... the immense quantity
of bones is quite wonderful; they are, I am told, used as fuel by
the poorer people for cooking and heating ovens. The road is
repaired by filling up the holes with them, and in some places you
see hedges made of them. I have seen one or two corrals (cattle-
pounds) surrounded by fences made entirely of the bones which
form the cores of the horns of oxen. . . . Besides the waste of
land, (which might grow corn,) the ernelty, and the disgusting
scenes which all this implies, I am annoyed by the consideration
136 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

of the enormous waste of animal matter, which putrefies in the
open air, and which might all make ammonia or saltpetre.

Large quantities of these bones, it should be said,
are now imported into Europe as manure; but what
a double “ Laputism ” is involved in the facts! An
industrial system so out of gear, that we find it ac-
tually cheaper, or at least easier, (and this in spite
of our unrivalled mechanical appliances,) to trans-
port bone manure across the Atlantic, than far more
valuable town manure a couple of miles! Tens of
thousands here, glad enough of sheep’s trotters or
tripe once a week; good beef in tons putrefying
there. It is sad and Indicrous enough; the one
comfort is, that the laws of supply and demand are
not asleep, though man may be; and that little is
wanting on our part, save increased information, to
tell the masses who demand in vain, where the sup-
ply is; and increased education, to give them the
courage and self-help whereby they may avail them-
selves of nature’s infinite bounty. Let us teach on,
and have patience. Ifthe meat cannot go to Europe,
then Europe will go to the meat; and where the car- °
cass is, nobler animals than eagles be gathered to-
gether.

Already Mr. Mansfield saw the promise, here and
there, of a better state of things. Here and there
an Englishman or a Frenchman tries agriculture, and
succeeds at once. What else could be expected?

Fancy (says Mr. Mansfield) the capabilities of these lands,
where they plant woods of peach-trees for firewood and to feed
their pigs, — not because the fruit is not first-rate, but because
there are not men enough to eat it. Olives, too, grow in great
perfection at Buenos Ayres, and the vine luxuriates in the upper
provinces, Mendoza and Tucuman. Here is a land of corn, oil,
and wine; and as for the honey, as if it was not enough that there
should be a score of sorts of bees to make it, the very wasps brew
delicious honey. The Banda Oriental and Entre Rios have the
same capabilities as the plain of the West, with such other advan-
tages as are given by a more undulating and broken ground, with
a great deal of mineral wealth. Farther north, in Corrientes and
MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 137

Paraguay, you have the semi-tropical and tropical climates, where
the richest oranges, sugar, coffee, tea, yerba maté (“ Paraguay
tea”), silk, and all the glories of a sun-blessed vegetation, are to be
had for the asking. Then as for intercommunication. In those

rts where the country is hilly, there is the best water-carriage
in the world; and over the plains, what a country for railways!
The whole Pampas ought to be furrowed with tram-roads, (not to
speak of steam locomotives, which they do not want yet;) here is
an employment for the thousands of horses which are to be had
and fed for nothing. The glorious timber of Paraguay (there is
in Appendix D a list of some thirty species of useful timber, by
W. G, Ousely, Esq.) will do for the trams. Iron is not needed.

Paraguay itself is, he thinks, to be one of the great
timber-markets of the world.

The obstacle to exporting timber from Brazil is the difficulty
of getting it to the coast; here, however, is the Paraguay-Parand
ready to tloat down the timber from the interior.

This suggestion Mr. Mansfield follows up by a very
bold and original one, which, we hear, is about to
be adopted in practice. Why should not the timber
be floated bodily across the Atlantic in rafts, as it is
down the German rivers, only towed by steam? Of
course, to do it safely, and to make it pay, it must
be done on a large scale; the trans-oceanic raft must
be a great island of timber, which will defy the
storms by its very size.

I have no doubt (continues Mr. Mansfield, with one of those

flashes of scientific imagination with which this book abounds)
that the next generation, instead of loading ships with Wenham
Lake ice-blocks, will tow icebergs from the Pole to the Equa-
tor....
_ These rivers do not want steam to navigate them. Glorious
water-gods, they are of’ extra size, on purpose to do all the work
themselves. I wonder why rivers have never been made to do
their own tug-work.

And then he proceeds to sketch plans for station-
ary water-wheels which shall tow craft up the stream,
and for floating factories to which those on the Rhine
below Mannheim shall be “ baby-toys.”

The power available on this Parané is positively unlimited ;
human hands need do no labor within hundreds of miles of its
138 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

banks. Oh, what an enormous reservoir of force utterly wasted !
Verily, the exuberant bounty of God is awful, and the idleness of
man is ghastly.

‘Whether each and every one of what Mr. Mans-
field calls his “dynamical dreams about this huge
deluge in harness” be mechanically possible, is little
concern of ours. Probably they are; for he was a
scientific mechanician of no common order. But
let the details go for what they are worth; the idea,
the spirit which underlies them, is still invaluable.
Surely this is the truly practical, the truly philosophic
method of looking at man and nature, to look at
them in hope and in faith; not to call upon human-
ity to fold its hands in the stationary state, in the
very years in which it is discovering means of prog-
ress unparalleled in any age, and to abnegate its
own powers just as it becomes conscious of them.

By a series of small good fortunes, Mr. Mansfield
found himself, in November, 1852, in Paraguay it-
self; almost the first Englishman who had entered it
for many years. The sight of fresh, vast capabili-
ties, not merely in the soil and climate, but in the
people themselves, excited in him lofty hopes, which,
alas! were brought to a sudden end by his untimely
death; and the colonization of Paraguay, his darling
scheme, must now be the work of another brain
than his. That this colonization must take place,
sooner or later, it is hard to doubt; and indeed the
recent movement of sending thither French emi-
grants is the first step of a great movement to which
we can wish no better fortune than that it may be
guided, or at least assisted, by such a mind as has
left in this book fragmentary tokens of its own
power, earnestness, and chivalrous self-devotion to
the public weal. The district which most excited
Mr. Mansfield’s hopes, however, was not Paraguay
itself, but the “ Gran Chaco,” that vast tract which
lies to the north of the river Paraguay, in length
MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 139

from Santa Fé ten degrees of latitude northward,
and six degrees of longitude in breadth, —a ‘splendid
country possessed by wild Indians alone, in which
the simple and indolent Paraguayans (though it is
separated from them only by the river) literally dare
not set foot, for fear (forsooth) of Indians whom the
Jesuit missionaries, though they did not convert
them, visited safely from end to end of the land.

Tt is just known that the rivers are or may easily be made nav-
igable, and the rich verdure of the country is visible from the top
of this house; and that is all that is known about it.... The
country still’is open. The only positive right which the neigh-
boring republics claim with respect to it, is that which they have
doubtless in common with the rest of the world, that each may
extend its frontier so far as it can into the Chaco, by encroach-
ment of actual occupation. But not being able to do this, they
add the negative dog-manger claim of refusing to other people the
right to do “the same.

However, two years after this letter was written, a
nucleus of civilization, it seems, began to be formed
in this neglected place; a Bordeaux company hay-
ing obtained a grant of land opposite Asuncion,
“which they are to colonize with a thousand families,
—TIrish, French, and Spanish, (the latter two, Mr.
Mansfield supposes, will be Basques).

This latter supposition springs from the fact, that
so great has been the Basque emigration to Monte
Video of late, that some years ago there were whole
villages in which nothing but Basque was spoken.
Meanwhile the omnipresent Irishman has found his
way thither also, and is mingling with the Iberian
races; so that, curiously enough, (as the Editor re-
marks ina note,) we may witness the formation in
the New World oF a second people of “ Celt-Iberi.”
May they prosper! and with them, any and every
eolony who will go forth, to replenish the earth and
subdue it.

-A portion of our Italian legion has also, I under-
~stand, gone out as colonists to Paraguay. I have
140 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

unfortunately not been able to obtain any details on
the subject; but the plan seems one which must,
with common prudence, be crowned with success ;
aud this band. of disciplined and enterprising men, if
well supported by European influence, should surely
form a nucleus of strength, which may be hereafter
of boundless importance in the fast-coming era of
general European emigration.

I should gladly enter at greater length into the
question of the probable future of this magnificent
country, did I not fear that by so doing I might give
a somewhat wrong impression of Mr. Mansfield’s
book as a whole, and make many readers fancy it
fitted rather for the merchant and the projector, than
the general reader. But, in fact, it. is throughout an
amusing book, consisting not merely of scientific or
industrial hints, but of the impressions of the mo-
ment about every conceivable matter, dashed off -
with a careless, but a graceful pen., Mr. Mansfield’s
extraordinary variety of information made him as
good a traveller on paper, as his bodily activity, tem-
perance, and unfailing energy and good-humor, made
him one in body; and the book throughout is full
of nervous sketches, picturesque and humorous, even
when he is talking of birds and flowers. He has,
especially, that accurate and truly poetic eye, which
never fails to supply him with the exact simile or
epithet for each object. One can hardly open a
page, without finding a bit of description instinct
with originality and life. The sea, in those lati-
tudes, is so calm that

A petrel, flying three or four hundred yards from the ship,
was quite plainly seen reflected in the water. . . A day in a trop-
ical calm is a wonderful dreamy bit of life; and at the end of it,
the sun drops hard and bright behind the clean sharp horizon, as
if it were eclipsed by the edge of a knife; the fringe of clouds
seeming to rise like solid rocks out of the water... . Every one
has heard of the “ Thresher,” who beats the sperm-whale to death
with his tail; but we never had any notion what his redoubtable
MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 141

weapon was like, till we read of it as “a huge ivory paper-knife,
sabre-shaped, ten feet long, perfectly white, which was occasion-
ally protruded perpendicularly out of the water, and then brought
down with a tremendous thrash.”... The ants walk up the
trees and cut off the leaves; other ants, remaining below, receive
them, cut them into small pieces, shoulder them, and carry them
to their nest. There was along line of these fellows walking at
double-quick pace, each with a great piece of green leaf tower-
ing over their heads, just like Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane.
. . + The frogs, some work on an anvil, like blacksmiths, others
whistle like a man calling a dog, others bark like a dog.

His sketches of tropical scenery are admirable;
better than those in Mr. Gosse’s “ Jamaica,” (excel-
lent as they are,) and only requiring that polish
which eannot be expected in familiar letters, to make
them equal to Michael Scott’s as yet unrivalled pic-
tures, so well known in “ 'T’om Cringle and the Cruise
of the Midge.” Take, again, a sketch of a hum-
ming-bird

Covered with iridescent green. ... You sometimes see one,
as you think, sitting on a twig; when you get a little nearer, you
see that there is no twig; he is sitting on the air quite stationary,
while his wings are vibrating like microscopic steam-engines ;
his beak is probing some flower on a bunch. Then he gives a
little jerk with his tail, and his position is shifted half an inch to
the next flower.

... He sees, at Buenos Ayres, a curious leafless
tree, called Umbu, which looks “just like the roots
of some big tree, pulled bodily out of the earth and
stuck up on end,* the trunk looking like an old stub-
bed oak, but soft as cork or cabbage; you might cut
down one a yard thick with a penknife.” He sees a
sandy cliff on the Paran4 full of bird-burrows, which
prove to be those of parrots, — “long-tailed creatures,
green and gray, with a flight like a cuckoo, and a
scream like a jackdaw.” A swarm of locusts overs

*I must express my regret that to so many of the natural objects
which Mr. Mansfield describes, the scientific names (by which alone they
can be identified) have not been appended.
142 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

head “ did not darken the sun the least; but as their
wings glittered in the light, they looked like flakes
of snow passing over the blue sky.” The flowers
which cover the leafless Lapacho trees “look, at
some distance, like immense roses stuck on a bed
of moss.” A kind of wild pineapple in flower has,
in the centre of the crown of green leaves, an inner
horizontal coronet of bright scarlet, “forming a cup
of fire, in the midst of which sits the flower-clump
of little white blossoms, stuffed in a cushion. It
ought to be called the phcenix-plant; it is just like
the portraits you see of that bird grilling.”

But perhaps the best sketch in the book is that of
his first sight of the great “ Mycteria Americana,” —
p. 280 :—

As I was riding this evening across the Pantanos (marshes), a
district on the south side of the town, where the soil is clay, and
the surface covered with little shallow pools of water, with pretty.
water-plants and quantities of. wading birds, I saw the most mag-
nificent bird I ever beheld; he must be the king that was sent
down from Heaven to meet the demands of the frogs, —a perfect
emperor of cranes. I had just been watching a big heron, when
I caught sight of this fellow. At first I thought he was a cow, and
then that he was a man; at last I perceived that his gait was far
too stately for any biped but a bird; and he let me come as close
to him as about the length of an ordinary room; and he was all
snow-white, except his beak and his head and his neck, which were
black, and a broad collar round the lower part of his neck, be-
tween the black and white, which was deep red; and his beak was

onderous, like unto a pelican’s, and full a foot long, with a heavy
fence jaw. He must have stood five feet high without his boots;
and he let me look at him ever so long, and he stalked about quite

romiscuous ; and there was close to him a big white heron, that
ooked quite small; and as I stood and wondered, he spread his
wings, all snow-white, and sailed straight away down south for miles
and miles, till the speck of white in the sky was too small to see.

Very interesting also, especially at the present time,
are Mr. Mansfield’s scattered hints as to the qualities
of the Paraguayans themselves. He looks on them
as a race who have done what work they could do};
and who, having had 4 chance of organizing and col-
MANSFIELD'S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 143

onizing a magnificent country, and having failed
from indolence, are destined to be absorbed by the
Anglo-Norman race, whether English or American.
And this expectation of his receives, to our notions,
a sad corroboration from the “extreme laxity, or
rather almost total absence, of morality among the
women,” — sure sign of a decaying race. Neverthe-
less, it is worth while to note the many fine capabil-
ities of a race which may hereafter mingle itself with
Anglo-Norman blood. Their parentage is curious
enough. The early Spanish conquistadores, who
settled Paraguay in the middle of the sixteenth cen-
tury, all took Guarani (Indian wives); and thus
sprang up a mixed race, speaking the Guarani lan-
guage, whom an old Spanish writer in 1612 describes
as

Commonly good soldiers, and of great valor; inclined to war,
skilful in the management of all sorts of arms; excellent riders, so
that there is none among them who’cannot break in a colt; above
all, very loyal apd obedient servants to his Majesty. The women
are generally of noble and honorable sentiments, virtuous, and
beautiful, endowed with discretion, industrious, and well skilled in
all kinds of needle-work, in which they are continually engaged.

In 1852, Mr. Mansfield found the upper classes, —
who look down upon their native Guarani, and affect
the official Spanish and the estilo de abayo, — the
style of below, i. e., the quasi-European fashions of
the colonies at the mouth of the river,— wearing a
somewhat used-up look; as is tobe expected in a
nation which has lived for now three hundred years
utterly isolated from the rest of the world; but of a
‘charming simplicity, quietly enjoying life in poverty
and ignorance; the ladies barely able to read and
write, and asking whether people went by. land or by
water to the United States; but the peasantry, who
still speak Guarani, very noble, and with so little
appearance of Indian or negro blood, that he sees in
poor cottages in the country numerous children whom
144 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

he would have supposed the offspring of some high-
bred English family, with delicately-cut features,
rather long than broad, and hair as fine as any Sax-
on ; among many of them, reddish hair, quite Scotch.
This fact, and the general “ English complexion” of
the people, drives him to the conclusion that among
the Spanish conquistadores there was a singular ab-
sence of Moorish blood, and that the country was
settled by pure northern Vandals. Be that as it
mnay, such a people, stately and yet energetic, good-
tempered and high-minded, docile and imitative as
he describes them, need only to be freed from the
stupid tyranny which has for the last few years
ground them down, and to be thrown into the great
common current of human progress, to develop,
though not perhaps independent and alone, into
something more worthy of that terrestrial Paradise
in which Mr. Mansfield found them idling, — the
western “ Land of Prester John,” as he calls it, in a
playful and fanciful poem (full, meanwhile, of deep
and noble feeling) inserted in this volume, — another
proof of the powers of that many-sided mind, of
which English science has been (for some inscruta-
ble yet, we doubt not, merciful purpose) so untimely
bereft.

Meanwhile, there is something sad in the child-
like ignorance and frivolity of the dwellers in the.
Arcadia of the West. ‘Take, for instance, their way
of celebrating Christmas-day, — p. 390 :—

In several of the houses of the better class of the poorer sort,
they rig up what they call a pesebre, which is, being interpreted, a
manger. No doubt it was originally meant as a representation of
the birth of our Lord; but it would seem that this meaning of it
is quite lost... . Under a bower of calico and lace . . . are seated
every kind of little figure that can be collected; the centre of the
background is occupied by a doll which represents the Virgin, and
all around are the stupid little figures, which look as if they were
gleaned from the ‘toyshop of some remote country village in Eng-
land. There were grotesque little images of Oliver Cromwell and
MANSFIELD’S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 145

Robin Hood, with an apostle or two, and little dogs mounted on
squeaking bellows, with little patches of live grass dotted about
among them, and candles to illuminate. The visitors’ room is
crowded with spectators . . . who sit and gaze in admiration'on the
motionless spectacle, and every now and then break out into a mel-
ancholy chant, which I suppose is meant for some act of reverence.
If this was seen in a seis paiscavared country, I suppose it would
be set down as the worshipping of their idols.

What else it can be set down as now, is difficult
to define. Certainly, setting this and similar facts
by the side of miraculous images and winking pic-
tures, and cures by relics, we know no facts recorded
of any ancient idolatry more grossly sensuous than
those, of the modern Romish and Greek churches.
All attempts to draw any distinctions between the
heathen and the quasi-Christian creed on these points
have, it is to be feared, failed utterly; and every ex-
cuse or explanation now offered by modern priests
for the abomination, has been offered long ago by
those of Greece, Egypt, and Rome, and by their
Neo-platonist partisans.

The spectators (continues Mr. Mansfield) consist chiefly of Chi-
nds, or women of the lower order; but the ladies of the higher
families go about to see them as an amusement; and not, I fancy,
without much gratification.

Couple this with the frightful fact that, at the ex-
pulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay, the Indians of
their boasted Reductions relapsed at once into barba-
rism and heathendom, proving thus the utter absence
of any self-supporting vitality, any real “ regener-
ation unto life”’—-in the Jesuit system; and all we
can say of Popery, which daily boasts of its fresh
conquests and approaching triumphs, is, that in the
very country in which its power has been most un-
limited, and least disturbed by external enemies,
“that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to
vanish away.”

+ Paraguay is, as might be supposed, the paradise
of smokers. Every one smokes,—even at a lady’s

7
146 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

funeral, (where a mulatto-man chants through his
nose the whole Latin service, in nothing but a shirt
and drawers, with a green-baize poncho, and much
spitting on the pavement; Mr. Mansfield “never
saw such a scoundrelly-looking set of fellows as the
priests who officiated,”) and the chief mourner pre-
pares for the procession by sticking a cigar in. his
mouth. “ Even the young ladies ‘of the upper doz-
en, who refrain in public, smoke vigorously when
alone, at all hours and places; and the’ tobacco is
scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of Havannah.”
Picturesque, lazy, cheerful people they seem, —
content enough with “the stationary state” in a
country where the necessaries of life may be had for
the asking, and quite unaware (and small blame to
them) that to remain in the stationary state, in the
midst of such a country, while all the nations round
them are struggling for the means of existence, is a
national sin, because a national selfishness, —a bury-
ing in the earth the talent allotted to them. For
surely a moral duty lies on any nation, who can pro-
duce far more than sufficient for its own wants, to
supply the wants of others from its own surplus.
No one, of course, is Quixotic enough to expect a
people to condemn itself to unnecessary labor for
mere generosity’s sake, and to give away what they
might sell; but the human species has a right to de-
mand (what the Maker thereof demands also, and
enforces the demand by very fearful methods) that
each people should either develop the capabilities of
their own country, or make room for those who will
develop them. If they accept that duty, they have
their reward in the renovation of blood, which com-
merce, and its companion, colonization, are certain
to bring; and in increased knowledge, which in-
volves increased comfort, and increased means of
supporting population. If they refuse it, they pun-
ish themselves by their own act. ‘They discover (or
MANSFIELD'S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, ETC. 147

rather the wayld discovers by their example) that
national isolation is only national degradation; that
the stationary state exists only on paper, and is, in
practice and fact, a state of steady deterioration,
physical and moral; that to refuse to take their
place in the commonweal of humanity, and their
share of the burdens of humanity, is to cut them-
selves off from all that humanity has learned and
gained, by hard struggles and bitter lessons; to leave
the national intellect fallow, and thereby give more
and more scope to the merely animal passions; till,
frivolous and sensual, the race sinks into the dotage
of second childhoed; but not self-contented or at
peace. To a race in this state, most fearfully is ful-
filled the world-wide law, — “ He that saveth his life
shall lose it.” Nowhere will life and property be so
insecure, as among those peoples who care for noth-
ing but life and property, and who say, with folded
hands, —-“ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die.” For over the lazy brute-Arcadia sweep surely
terrible storms ; their weakness makes them a prey
(as the Paraguayans have been) to tyrant after ty-
rant. Nay, even tyranny itself may be a benefit to
them; and the capricious and half-insane dictator-
ship of a Francia may be the necessary means (as
it was in Paraguay from 1820 to 1840) of develop-
ing the agriculture and the manufactures of a lazy
and debauched race, and thereby giving increased
means of subsistence to thousands who must other-
wise either have starved, or have gradually sunk into
the condition of savage and godless squatters in the
fertile wilderness.

The terrible lesson, that no price was too high to
pay for industry and order, even of the roughest
kind, which Francia taught the Paraguayans, seems
not to have been lost upon them; and their conduct
since his death in 1840, has formed an honorable
contrast to that of the other South American repub-
lic. The general features of this improvement may
148 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES. .

be read in Mr. Mansfield’s volume, pp. 458-463 ;
and the new policy of the republic, which admit-
ted strangers, whom Francia had so jealously ex-
‘cluded, was practically inaugurated in 1853, by the
opening of the river Paraguay (which the jealousy
of Rosas had long kept closed) to British ships as
far as Asuncion. A treaty between Brazil and
Paraguay has just made Asuncion the thorough-
fare for the enormous mineral wealth of the western
Brazil; but nothing, it seems, can permanently pro-
tect Paraguay from those miseries which have deso-
lated every State of South America for the last
forty years, save the introduction of a sturdy race of
European and American colonists, protected, by the
strong arms of their civilized mother-countries, from
the intrigue, caprice, ignorance, and brutality of the
surrounding military despots for the time being.
Let us trust that the alliance formed between Para-
guay and England, France, the United States, and
Sardinia, will not remain waste paper; but that if
“intervention” be needed, intervention will be boldly
employed, to protect both the Paraguayans and the
new colonists against the machinations of those sur-
rounding States, whose political career has been
marked by nothing but blood, as the many have
been butchered periodically for the sake of the am-
bition and cupidity of the few, and their hired myr-
midons. Let the European nations, or the United
States, once become fully alive to the enormous
capabilities of Paraguay, and self-interest will make
them interfere with a strong hand to put down
that suicidal anarchy, which they now only regard
with contempt; but which they will then begin to
fear and hate, as a curse and a hindrance to the prog-
ress of the human commonweal. And, meanwhile,
may the kindly Paraguayans enjoy themselves, as
best they can, in their simple, picturesque way, till
the fast-approaching day shall come, when play shall
be at an end, and work begin.
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 149

THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS.
. [The North British Review, No. XXVILJ

“ Tuers is a certaifi immorality,” said Mr. Carlyle
of the Corn-Laws seven years ago, “a certain im-
morality, where there is not a necessity, in speak-
ing about things finished; in chopping into small
pieces the already slashed and slain. When the
brains are out, why does not a solecism die?” But,
alas! the Corn-Law solecism does not die. Even
though buried, and got safely out of sight, as we
hope, forever, it still keeps muttering out of its
grave, in querulous confused ejaculations, Cassan-
dra-prophecies of vengeance and ruin, and entrea-
ties to be allowed to rise again, if but for a few
weeks, to set forth certain important arguments
which it unfortunately forgot to urge during its
lifetime. The press teems still with Protectionist
pamphlets, demonstrations that Mr. Caird is mad,
Mr. Huxtable is mad, Liebig is mad, political
economists are mad, all England mad; exhortations
to idleness and despair, sermons on the patriotic
duty of proving that free-trade cannot work, by
refusing to work it, and doing nothing out of a

1. The Present Prices. By the Rev. A. HuxraBie. London, 1849.
2. Mr. Huxtable and his Pigs. By Porctus. Ediuburgh, 1850. 3. High
Farming the best Substitute for Protection. By J. Carrp, of Baldoon. kd-
inburgh, 1849. 4. Caird’s High Farming Harrowed. Edinburgh, 1850.
5. An Appeal to the Common Sense ‘of’ the Country. By Professor Low.
Edinburgh, 1850. 6. Analysis of Evidence before Health of’ Towns’ Com-
mission. London, 1847. 7. Flax versus Cotton. No.1. By Mr. Wannes,
of Trimmingham. London, 1849. 8. Silk Culture. By Mrs. Wurrey,
of Lymington. London, 1849. 9. 4A Word to Farmers on Maize, &c. By
J. Keznn. London, 1849.
150 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

conscientious spite. To the majority of these pro-
ductions, Mr. Carlyle’s rule will well apply. It
would be foreign to the purpose, and indeed to the
dignity of this Review, to meddle with them. But
when a man like Professor Low of Edinburgh, of
known intellect, learning, and character, as well as
high official station, comes forward as the cham-
pion of this gospel of agricultural despair, and in
a pamphlet of more than a hundred closely printed
pages, propounds at length a proof of the insanity
of three fourths of her Majésty’s subjects, he re-
quires a patient and respectful hearing, and, if pos-
sible, a careful and earnest refutation. His pam-
phlet, going forth with professorial authority from
Edinburgh, the capital city of that part of Great
Britain which has been always foremost in agri-
culture, will be taken by hundreds of farmers and
land-owners as a scientific justification of their own
terror, wilful laziness, and idle threats (for the thing
has reached that pass) of rebellion. In short, it
is calculated to do infinite harm, whereof if we
can counteract a part, we shall consider this Journal
as not having existed in vain for the cause of
justice and civilization.

But we do not wish merely to answer Professor
Low’s negative by a counter negative, merely to
reaffirm that free-trade is not wrong, in answer to
his assertion that it is not right. There is dis-
tress among the farmers; there is a perplexity as
to the future methods of British farming; and we
are bound, if we take upon ourselves to reform
those who wish to write “impossible” on all
future agriculture, to show the grounds of our hope,
and some, at least, of the methods in which that
hope may be realized.

Most of the pamphlets on both sides of this con-
troversy are, as we have before said, of a kind
with which neither this Review, nor its readers,
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 151

nor free-trade, have much to do, being merely spe-
cial pleadings pro and con, with this advantage on
the side of the free-trade pamphlets, that they aim
at a positive, their opponents at a merely negative
result. It is something to prove that pigs can be
fatted, or corn grown, under Free-trade, though only
in one particular case, as Mr. Huxtable and Mr.
Caird profess to do; while it is nothing to refute
their particular assertions, or to prove that in any
one individual case despair and impotence are the
only outlook, You may prove a law by proving
one example; you cannot disprove it by disproving
one. Mr. Caird of Baldoon may have (in our
opinion he has) quoted an exceptional case; every
farm has not, like the one he instances, an unlim-
ited command of sea-weed; potato culture on a
large scale is not a desirable thing, even if the
potatoes are sound (which indeed they pertina-
ciously refuse to be). Mr. Caird’s statistics may
be, as his opponents say, utterly ideal, and their
own also; but what of that? Ginger shall be hot
in the mouth still. There are other hopeful far-
mers besides Mr. Caird, other crops besides potatoes,
other manures besides sea-weed. Or “ thinkest
thou” that because Mr. Huxtable’s pig-bill shows
a deficit, “there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
Britain is not come to that pass, surely, that her
only salvation is to be fat bacon, much less her
destruction the want thereof, or rather not want
thereof, pigs being as greedy and fatable under
Free-trade, strange to say, as they were under Pro-
tection, but want of “ Farmers’ profits ” thereon.

“ But the facts,—the facts!” cry the Protection-
ists; “look at our ledgers, our statistical proofs
of loss and ruin.” ‘Well, one man’s figures are as
good as another’s, or indeed better, in this case;
seeing that from certain causes which will be here-
after noticed, farmers have been in the perennial
152 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES

habit of parading their losses rather than their
gains. But really, without undervaluing statis-
tics, we care very little for these ‘half-page-of-figure
arguments. “There is no romance,” it has been
well said, “like the romance of statistics,” — the
art of “ combler les numéros,” of “ cooking returns,”
by which the most utterly contradictory proposi-
tions can be proved with equal certainty, and Bian-
chi and Neri can go on refuting each other unre-
futed to all eternity, by a simple process, namely,
that the Bianchi shall use all the facts which look
white, and the Neri all those which look black.
The truth is, in statistics, as in every other physical
science, a little learning is a dangerous thing. An
enormous number of facts must be collated before
anything like a safe general law can be deduced
from them. The man of genius may, indeed, hit
off instinctively a world-wide law from a single:
phenomenon; but he will keep it to himself for
years, rack and torture it by every possible mode of
verification, before he gives it to the world. With
quacks and sciolists, who, from half a dozen phe-
nomena jump at a conclusion, or rather tack on to
them the conclusion which they had already deter-
mined to find, — with them theories are as plentiful
as blackberries, and each man’s small ledger of
facts proves —all he wanted to prove, at least. In
proportion to a man’s real inductive genius, whether
in chemistry, anatomy, or any other inductive sci-
ence, will be his cautious and reverent abstinence
from hasty generalization ; and statistics, the science
of deducing social and commercial laws from nu-
merical returns, is as deep and broad a science as
any other, requiring, like them, continual self-dis-
trust, continual watchfulness -lest effects be attrib-
uted to wrong causes, continual suspicion of unper-
ceived influences at work; the energies of a whole
mind, and the labor of a whole life. Some such
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 158

statisticians we have; and it is at least noteworthy
that they —our Seniors, Porters, Mills, Chadwicks,
and Peels—have one and all decided for Free-
trade. Under the wing of their authority, no man
need be driven to his wit’s end by an anonymous
half-page of figures, by Porcius, or Cato the ‘Censor,
or any other antique Roman. We do not doubt
these latter gentlemen’s honesty, — or that of their
opponents either; but it would require far more
knowledge of their facts than they have given, or
indeed can give, to the public, before we can tell
whether they have not omitted some particulars, not
perhaps of expense, but of causes of expense, which
make their pounds-shillings-and-pence experience just
as partial and exceptional as they would prove their
adversaries’ to be.

It is quite refreshing, after these petty tornadoes of
statistical dust-cloud, wherein tbe facts are the dust,
and the wind which moves them some prejudice or
opinion which, right or wrong, is utterly indepen-
dent of them, to turn to Professor Low’s “ Appeal
to the Common Sense of the Country,” and there
find the whole question argued as it ought to be, on
the broad ground of reason.

We say, of reason, because we presume that Pro-
fessor Low attaches this meaning to the term “ Com-
mon Sense.” It has too often a lower meaning. It
is often loosely applied to the vulgar prejudices and
mere animal- experiences of the many; but these
Professor Low must feel, as long as hunger is a fact,
and dinner a necessity of the animal man, to be 4
priori absolutely in favor of free-trade, or any other
means whereby the maximum of dinners can be at-
tained. But if by common sense be meant the uni-
versal practical Reason, which is given alike to every
man, in proportion as he is a man and not a brute,
which is the same for all times, circumstances, and
places, —then that 2 the very ground on which we

7
154 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

most joyfully meet him, as we think the only ground
worthy of so great a question; and leaving the ledg-
er-dust behind us, we will ask, with Professor Low, —
Is Free-trade Rational or Absurd, Right or Wrong?

We had thought, certainly, that the “common
sense” of Britain had already been appealed to on
that point; and had given its verdict thereon in
some such form as this: —

“ Necessaries are dearer or cheaper in proportion
as there is less or more of them. You want protec-
tion, because it makes corn dearer, by keeping out
foreign corn; in a word, by allowing less corn to be
in England. Is not that it?

“ Well, then, if there is less corn in England than
there might be, less bread will be eaten. Then either .
every one must eat less, or some must go without
and be hungry. Now, as a fact, the working classes
live on bread; and those who can afford it buy all
they need at any price for themselves. They cannot
stint themselves as long as they have a penny left;
and so those who cannot afford bread enough to
live on, starve. These men really exist. If you go
into any of our great cities, and a large proportion
of agricultural parishes, you may see them; not a
fiction of free-traders, but live people, who have not
bread enough to eat, and who could have enough, or
som€thing nearer enough, if bread was cheaper. Is
not that common sense? Now we cannot. have
these people starving. Common sense tells us that
is wrong. Fact tells us, too, that the more they
starve, down to the very edge of famine, the faster
they breed. And common sense tells us, that the
faster they breed the more they will starve; and
tells us also, that a time will come, when between
numbers and starvation they will begin (as indeed
they seem more and more inclined to do daily) to
eat, in default of bread, us and you. Is not that
common sense?”
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 155

“ But,” answered the Protectionists, “ cheap bread
will make low wages, and so the poor will be as ill
off as ever.”

“ Not so,” quoth British common sense, “for wages
both fall and rise more slowly than the price of bread.
They depend first on the numbers competing for
work, and next on the price of other necessaries as
well as bread,—on rent, candles, soap, clothing ;
matters which cheap bread will cheapen. . But even
if their price remained the same, the minimum which
a laborer will accept as wages depends not on bread
alone, but on the combined prices of all his neces-
saries, and on his competing numbers. And there-
fore, just as when bread rises, the farmers never raise
wages in the same ratio, so when bread falls they:
will not be able,—-no employer will be able —to
lower wages in the same ratio, but in a less one;
competition will settle that; if he does his men will
not work for him. And, therefore, even if wages
fall, the poor will be better off.”

“But,” answered the Protectionists, “laborers
will be thrown out of employ, and get no wages
at all.”

“Tf you mean,” answered British common sense,
“that you will throw your own laborers out of .em-
ploy, take care that Britain does not throw you out
of employ in return. If -you cannot cultivate the
land profitably, it does not follow that no one else
can. There is capital, science, and physical strength
in England in plenty, and land too, for that matter,
we had thought. Under our present commercial
system we make money too fast for our own profit.
It will be no more unprofitable, perhaps far more
profitable, for us to get rid of our surplus capital
by sinking it in uncertain agricultural speculations,
which at all events will produce more food, than it
is to sink it as we do now, in profitless railroads and
repudiated loans. But.even if we be wrong in our
156 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

hope, it is better that the inferior soils go unculti-
vated, than that the,masses go hungry. We have
plenty of occupation, plenty of capital, to employ
the discharged laborers.”

“ But you will make England dependent .on for-
eign countries; and what if they went to war with
us?” 2

The more we depend on them for corn, the more
their capitalists, that is, their real rulers just now,
will depend on us for. profit; and, therefore, the. less
likely they will be to go to war. Besides, Britain is
the queen of the seas; and even in the sharpest
blockades of the late war, she found no. difficulty in
importing as much corn as you allowed her. How
much more now, when our fleets are stronger, our
commerce vaster, our colonies in every part of the
globe rapidly becoming producers, as well as con-
sumers ?

“ Besides,” quoth British common-sense, “ Free-
trade cannot injure us. What is right cannot go
wrong, as long as God, and not the devil, rules
the world. And Free-trade is right; Protection is
wrong; every law or system which upholds one class
to the injury of another, the few to the injury of the
many, which actually, as in Great Britain now,
diminishes the laborers’ meals, and causes human
beings to go hungry, is unjust and suicidal. Arti-
ficially insufficient food is an evil to the laborer,
and therefore also to the farmer, and to every other
class; for we are all brothers, members of one body,
with one common interest, and not, as demagogues
and protectionists alike assert, contradictory class- -
interests ; if one member suffers, all the others suffer
with it; especially if the suffering members be as
now the motive limbs. For on the welfare of the
working classes, physical and spiritual, depends the
commonweal of the whole. From them the higher
ranks are continually recruited: on their vigor of
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 157

body, intellect, and spirit, depend ultimately the
productive power of the nation, without which capi-
tal, however enormous, must be idle and dead, or
run to waste, as it has done so often in eastern des-
potisms; and anything which, like dear food, de-
presses them, the foundation-tier of the social pyra-
mid, depresses in exactly the same proportion every
tier above it. Thus, just as in the extreme case,
the existence of a slave population works the cer-
tain degradation and ruin, even the physical extinc-
tion of the free class which employs them, so does
the existence of a needy, reckless, debauched, dis-
contented and beggarly peasantry, such as disgraced
France before the Revolution of 1793, and disgraces,
alas! too many British counties now, avenge itself
by increasing the very evils which have produced it,
by making the farmer still more penurious, ignorant,
and tyrannical,— the landlord more neglectful, fas-
tidious, profligate. God’s laws are. just, and avenge
themselves.”

Some such thoughts as these, dim‘and dumb per-
haps, for we British are more given to do than to talk
the wise thing, have already passed through the public
mind, and found their practical utterance in the re-
peal of the Corn-Laws. Professor Low is as hasty
in his facts, as he is uncharitable in his imputations,
when he represents the Anti-Corn-Law agitation as
a mere selfish trick of the commercial classes, an
out-growth of the “ peddler-spirit ” against which he
declaims so fiercely. If there had been no more
than that in the hearts (there was certainly in the
words) of such men as Bright and Cobden, we be-
lieve their movement would have had a very different
fate. ‘These men may have confused the righteous-
ness of their object with its profitableness; they
may have often appealed to lower motives, and to
arguments which we should reprobate; but what
gave them their strength was not that, but the con-
158 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

sciousness, both in them and in their hearers, that
they were doing a right thing,—that they were, in
the very deepest sense, making an “appeal to the
common sense of the country.” Therefore they
arrayed on their side (a fact which Professor Low
utterly ignores) not merely the commercial classes,
but tithe-holding clergymen, who knew that free-
trade must ultimately reduce their incomes; barris-
ters and littérateurs, who cared nothing for political
economy, and still less for trade; and the artisans
of the great cities, who would have fought on barri-
cades in the cause of free-trade at the very moment
that they were sneering and growling at Mr. Cobden’s
harangues —“ Cheap bread! curse him, he means
cheap wages!”

Professor Low, then, is not, as he fancies, appeal-
ing from a lower to a higher court, but demanding,
rather contrary to rule, a fresh trial in the same court
with the same jury. However, if a judgment be
wrong, we cannot be too ready to revoke it; or too
hasty, if half of Professor Low’s fears be correct; at
all events, we are bound to give a fair hearing, and if
possible, a fair answer, when a grave and well-read
man deliberately utters, in a large and laborious
pamphlet, Cassandra-prophecies of the approaching
ruin and bankruptcy of the richest and almost the
best-manned nation of the globe.

The pamphlet opens, of course, with an attack on
Sir Robert Peel; which, as it was written before his
death, we shall pass over. The British people have
already pronounced a different verdict on that distin-
guished statesman.

The next forty pages of this “Appeal” to our
common sense are taken up with vituperative at-
tacks on political economists, and their theory of
rents, as first propounded by Dr. J. Anderson, and
since recognized, with modifications and improve-
ments, by all writers of note on that subject. Noth-
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 159

ing in Professor Low’s pages appears to us to in-
validate the received theory, much to corroborate
it; as an appeal to common sense it must be useless,
as it deals with abstruse propositions of commercial
science in a way less comprehensible to the multi-
tude than the profound writings of Chalmers or
Mill; the thread of argument is most desultory, and
often impalpable; the spirit full of animosity, sneers,
reckless imputations of motives, things which are
usually considered to interfere with the exercise of
common sense, by creating prejudices of every kind,
first against the objects of the attack, and then
against the writer who approaches open questions
in so fierce and unfair a spirit. The large space
devoted to the attempt to upset the received theory
of rents, leaves on the reader’s mind the old un-
avoidable conclusion to which “common sense” had
probably brought him long ago, that the Protection
in whose behalf all these rent-arguments are un-
dertaken, is mainly a device for keeping those
rents up. .

Professor Low does not, indeed, deny this. He
considers the height of rents as the index of agri-
cultural prosperity ; he therefore seems, as far as we
can discover his meaning, to think that the way to
secure prosperity is to keep rents up,-——very much
like securing a fine day by nailing up the hand of
the weather-glass. But we will let the subject pass.
Professor Low’s whole attack is aimed against Adam
Smith, Ricardo, and the earlier schools. He seems
to ignore the existence of such men as Senior,
Porter, Mill, and Chalmers, and the improved and
enlarged views which they have grounded on the dis-
coveries of their predecessors. This may be a safe
and easy method, but it simply reduces his whole
argument to a paralogism; he puts himself in the
position of a man who should deny the discoveries
of Herschel and Faraday, and assert the absurdity
160 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

of all inductive science, because he had found hasty
and incorrect applications of the primary laws of in-
duction in Bacon’s “ Novum Organum ” or Boyle’s
“ Origines.”

We shall therefore proceed to consider a little that
small proportion of Professor Low’s pamphlet which
really does bear on the comparative effects of Free-
trade and Protection on agriculture and the indus-
trious classes; among which latter, by the bye, he
seems to include, somewhat strangely, landlords,
simply in their quality of rent-receivers. And now,
in answer to all these invectives against every class
except those directly dependent on the land, by the
epithets of dreamers, theorists, impostors, dema-
gogues, &c. &c., and outcries against the peddler-spirit
which is ruining us; we beg to remind him, that
besides “ idola spectis et theatri,” the fallacies of the
study and of the Anti-Corn-Law oration, there exist,
also, just as abundant, and just.as pestiferous, “ idola
tribiis,” class-fallacies, and “idola fori,” fallacies of
the market-place; and that it is well worth his seri-
ous thought, whether British agriculture under the
protective system has not been as much corrupted
and nightmare-ridden by these latter, as any of the’
objects of his disdain. We boldly assert, that there
is hardly a questionable opinion or practice for which
the earlier political economists and the manufacturers
are commonly blamed, which has not openly mani-
fested itself in practice among the landlords and
farmers of the last five-and-forty years, — with this
difference, that the former classes, where they erred,
often considered themselves to be doing right, to be
acting in accordance with certain fixed and irrever-
sible laws of society ; while the farmers fell into the
very same error, against their own conscience, and
their own loud talk about “the welfare of the la-
borer,” and the “national bulwarks.” Have political
economists made an “eleventh commandment” of
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 161

the rule “buy cheap, and sell dear?” Professor Low
himself acknowledges it as a dictate of common
sense. Have they asserted “ cash payment to be the
only nexus between man and man?” Go through
nineteen twentieths of the agricultural districts of
Great Britain, and see whether there is any other
nexus, whether they can state the fact in words or
not. Have they advocated “ laissez-faire?” Why,
they have now repudiated it, and left it to the
farmers, who let the poor multiply and grow up any
how, uneducated, ill-housed, without any other law to
regulate their wages than that very competition, of
which it is the fashion to talk, as if political econo-
mists, by giving a name, had, forsooth, created it!
Why, the only practical interference with the laissez-
faire system, which has disgraced for the last fifty
years the agricultural districts of England, proceeds
from the working of that very new Poor-law which
Professor Low vituperates as the offspring of Whig
political economists. Have they, again, preached
against over-population? Whether right or wrong,
farmers and landlords have been acting on their
theory for many a year,—they have prevented the
population of their parishes from increasing; they
have pulled down cottages, replaced men by sheep
over large districts of Scotland (a plan which, if we
recollect right, Professor Low himself has advocated
in one of his works); they have driven away not
only their surplus hands, but even those they already
possessed, to increase the crowded filth and misery
of the great cities, and, as in the case of the Dorset-
shire laborers, to walk out from the towns four or
five miles daily to their work,—a process, in our eyes,
far less humane than the Malthusian advice not to
call the surplus population into existence at all.
Above all, if the political economists have, as some
say, made an idol of profits, and set them up as the
object of production, instead of asserting the maxi-
162 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

mum of production to be in itself an absolute good,
—who have fallen into that error more deeply than
the agriculturists? What was Protection itself, but
an attempt to keep up prices, utterly independent of,
even, as we shall attempt to show, at the expense of,
production? Why, what is the key-note of Professor
Low’s own pamphlet, but prices, prices, — Prices, the
great fetish of the agriculturist? Because they have
fallen, England is to be ruined; because they have
fallen, even though every poor man in England
is benefited by their fall, Professor Low refuses to
be comforted, and summons all British farmers
around him, to drink of the luxury of despair. If
this is not the peddler-spirit, what is, in the name of
common sense? Truly those who live in glass houses
should throw no stones.

But Professor Low denies that the poor are bene-
fited. The decay of certain small manufacturers in
certain small towns, affords him an argument to
the contrary, quite sufficient to countervail.the fact,
that for one band thrown out of employment by
such decay, — which be it remembered, began before
free-trade existed, — a hundred new hands have been
finding employment in other branches of manufac-
ture. He then goes on to assert, after the fashion of
Protectionists, that the laboring classes have thriven
under Protection and are suffering under Free-trade.
How far this latter assertion is true we shall see
shortly; as to the former, we do not deny that a
large proportion of the peasantry of Scotland and
Northumbria have been lately in a thriving state,
though whether their condition is on the whole bet-
ter than it was sixty years ago is a questionable
point. But if they are thriving they do not owe it
to Protection. They owe it to the neighborhood of
manufactories; to the superior energy and good
sense both of themselves and of their employers, to
the remnant of those social bonds between master
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. _ 163

and man, long hirings and permanent interest in the
farm, often accompanied by indirect association to
part of the profits, which have disappeared through-
out the greater part of Britain, under the influence
of that very “ peddler-spirit” which Professor Low
supposes is confined to the manufacturers. It is in
the south and centre of England,— in, it is to be
feared, the larger portion of it, — that the normal ef-
fect of the Protective system on the laboring class
must be studied; in England, where a Poor-law has
allowed the farmer to realize “cash payment, the
only nexus between man and man,” by giving him
compulsory rates to fall back upon as a remedy, —a
poisonous remedy, — for the ruinous effects of his
own short-sighted greed.

We entreat, therefore, our readers to give no heed
to the appeal ad misericordiam on behalf of the la- |
borer in which Professor Low indulges. The facts
are against him, so astoundingly, indeed, that we
cannot conceive how he can have had the courage
to quote them. He vents himself in a violent tirade
against the new Poor-law as the creation of Free-
traders. He represents the workhouses of England
as overflowing with able-bodied paupers, — “ pris-
oners,” as he calls them, though, in fact, no able-
bodied pauper can be kept in the workhouse a day
after he demands his liberation ; and then complains
bitterly of the Free-traders for insulting the farmers,
because they “avail themselves of the good which
political economy promised them,” by which expres-
sion is signified their having, in their panic at Free-
trade, driven the laborers into the workhouse instead
of employing them; and then ends with the astound-
ing assertion, that up to the period of Free-trade the
laboring classes have been “till now quiet, contented,
and in full employment.” Rick-burning, indeed, he
has heard of; for he has informed us that it was re-
commenced in consequence of the repeal of the Corn-
164 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

laws, the cause, as he asserts, of the whole of the la-
borers’ present misery, —“ Commenced,” he should
have said, to make his assertion worth anything for
his argument. But that unlucky “re” opens a vista
back into the times of Protection, which he seems
strangely to have ignored. It is true the rick-burn-
ing recommenced last autumn in Berkshire and
some southern counties; it is true, also, that it re-
commenced professedly and notoriously in revenge
for the farmers’ arbitrary dismissal of their laborers
in that very cowardly Protectionist panic which Pro-
fessor Low wishes to perpetuate ; and it is true, also,
that it has now utterly ceased in consequence of the
content and comfort which has been brought about
by Professor Low’s bugbear of bread at tenpenge
the gallon. Why, rick-burning is the very first-be-
gotten of Protection; it arises, professedly, from the
laborers taking the farmers at their word, when they
say that high prices, and not the maximum of prod-
uce, are their true interest. The laborer has been
taught by Protection that he has no share in the
corn he reaps, that its plenty can be no blessing to
him, that its scarcity, strange paradox, may be a
blessing. He regards it not as something which is
sent to feed him, but to minister to the wealth of a
class which he hates and’ fears, —and therefore he
burns it; therefore he has in many counties fallen
into a perennial madness of burning it, ever since
the Corn-laws of 1815. Of all fearful pests in this
bewildered time, rick-burning is the very one about
which Protection will be wise in saying little.

It is true, too, that the number of able-bodied pau-
pers was increased during the free-trade panic. But
it is true, also, that those “ prisoners” have been since
released, under the pressure of two facts, one politico-
economical, and the other physical, which Professor
Low has overlooked; the first is, that the farmers
have found it impossible to depress wages perma-

a
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 165

nently below their real value, as determined by the
competition of the labor-market ; the second is, that
farmers’ horses, like those of the Egyptians of old,
“are flesh and not spirit,” and having no inclination
to plough and harrow of their own accord, have re-
quired their usual complement of men to perform
those offices; and the farms throughout England
having been in the vast majority of cases consider-
ably under-manned under the late protective system,
the dismissed laborers have been taken on again un-
der penalty of leaving the land uncultivated; and
finally, the fact is, that the able-bodied paupers alone
throughout England, instead of increasing, have
diminished this very year by upwards of 50,000;
whereof, as the “ Times” significantly enough points
out, some of those agricultural counties which were
the strongholds of Protection have contributed more
than their fair proportion ; while the laborers through-
out the south of England, are one and all, strange to
relate, blessing the effects of Free-trade with all their
hearts and souls.

And it is true, also, however Professor Low may
overlook the fact, that theré were able-bodied pau-
pers by thousands in the English workhouses, long
before free-trade, or the sliding-scale either, were in
existence; and that the farmers, in spite of the com-
forts. of protection, had for the most part no com-
punction whatsoever in carrying out the severity of
the new Poor-law. Is Professor Low aware that
nine tenths of the agricultural Poor-law guardians
throughout England have been from the first, not
“ peddler-minded” manufacturers, but protectionist
farmers? Why, was it not under Protection that
the necessity for the new Poor-law grew up? We
are no admirers of any Poor-law whatsoever ; but if
any such system were to exist, surely anything was
better than that dung-heap of anomalous abomina-
tions, which Dr. Chalmers was the first to expose.
166 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

‘Was it under free-trade, or under protection, that the
parish poor-houses became nests of bagtardy, pau-
perism, profligacy, and brutality, which vied with the
worst wynds of Glasgow and St. Giles? Was it
under free-trade that a woman became a maich and
a fortune in proportion to her number of bastard
children? ‘Was it under free-trade that thousands
of Englishmen sat day after day uselessly : stone-
breaking by the roadside, earning at that unproduc-
tive parish employment, if they had but the full
complement of half-starved and uneducated children,
more money than they could have done by honest
farm-labor? Was it under free-trade that the num-
ber and burden of paupers increased to so enormous
an extent, that some parishes actually began to. be
thrown out of cultivation, — the rates swallowing up
the whole profits of the land? ‘Was it under free-
trade that the reckless multiplication of the laborers
was not only not checked, but even encouraged ?
‘Was it under free-trade that there grew up, in almost
every parish in England, a corps de réserve of house-
less, masterless savages, supported’ partly by parish
rates, partly by hopeless’ wanderings after employ-
ment in other districts, and partly (for this is the real
reason why their existence is encouraged) to supply
the farmers’ need of extra hands in harvest time, and
then be thrown off again to wander, pilfer, and starve ?
Was it under free-trade that the old custom of hiring
laborers by the year, of lodging them in the farm-
house, and treating them as members of the family,
died out through nine tenths of England? “Was it
under free-trade, or under the influence of the unnat-
urally high prices of protected_corn, that the farmer
discountenanced every attempt to introduce a whole-
somer and cheaper food for the masses than the white
bread, destitute of phosphates, to which the English
laborer clings with such pertinacious folly? that he
was careless of attempting the cultivation of any-
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 167

thing but wheat, and careless generally of cultivating
that properly ?— that he was tempted to take two or
three farms, with no more capital, and often with no
more labor, than he had formerly invested in one ?—
that every ignoramus, retired shopkeeper, or whatnot,
began to think himself capable of turning farmer,
and investing (often enough. to his own ruin) his lit-
tle savings in the easy business of growing deficient
crops of weedy wheat—at protectionist prices?
Was it under free-trade that the Eastern Counties
saw the rise of the abominable gang-system, where,
amid oaths, ribaldry, and pollution, strings of boys
and girls, hired from their degraded and half-fed par-
ents, are driven to work under the smart of the task-
master’s stick? Was it under free-trade, in a word,
that all England and Wales, and a great part of
Scotland, witnessed the almost entire extermination
of yeomen and peasant proprietors? Was it under
free-trade that there arose in England the practice
of general alms-giving, — of making up for deficient
wages in every parish by clothes clubs, shoe clubs,
gifts of this and of that from charitable gentry;
till the squire’s and the parson’s gifts, like the spor-
tula of old Rome, are expected as a right by a peas-
antry which has lost all sense of ‘independence?
Was it under free-trade, or under the forty-five years
of corn-law monopoly, that there arose the present
deep, sulien discontent* of that class whom Profes-
sor Low calls quiet and contented? Quiet and con-
tented? Look in their faces, sullen, averted, sus-
picious, spiritless, whose
hungry eyes
Glare dumb reproach, and old perplexity
Too stale for words,

—and judge for yourself. Look at their homes,
which the last forty-five years have handed over to

* Ten years of free-trade have, thank Heaven, altered this very much
‘in those parts of England which I know.
168 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES. 3
the farmers’ possession, and see whether they ought
to be contented ; worse housed than the horses they -
dress, the pigs they feed. You hear no complaints,”
—no. Englishmen are no babblers; they are a
dumb, dogged people, to whom misery has become
a thing inevitable, elementary, like the rain and hail;
but you see now and then, in Fen-riots, Dorsetshire
riots, Essex rick-burnings, South Devon communism,
Kentish Thom-fanaticism, their usually unspoken
opinion of the present system, boiling up to the sur-
face in shapes which make wise men tremble. We
do not say Protection has been the cause of all this;
Protection is but the brother, and not the father, of
many of these evils. They spring all of them from
that very peddler-spirit, the greedy worship of money,
which some men as uncharitably as untruly fancy
confined to political economists and manufacturers.
But if Protection be only their brother, it has been a
fostering and encouraging elder brother; and the vice
which it has not created, it has legalized and pro-
tected, by stamping the idolatry of prices with the
sanction of legislation, and teaching the farmer that
his rulers, as well as himself, believed the object of
his existence to be profits, and not production.

So much for the labor question. Let us pass on
to agriculture itself.

Professor Low makes, of course, the old stock
assertion, that British agriculture has flourished
through the agency of Protection; and he enters
into an historical summary of the last sixty years,
which, we suppose, is designed to prove this point,
as he cannot intend it to be entirely irrelevant to it,
still less to disprove it, — which nevertheless it unin-
tentionally does. But first, we would ask him, —
if he defines agriculture to mean the cultivation of
the land, and not the profits of the farmer, — in what
single point has Protection improved the former ?
Did Protection introduce root crops from the Conti-
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 169

nent, or teach the sowing of clover and artificial
grasses? Did Protection inspire Mr. Bakewell or
Mr. Ellwood with courage to make the costly and
uncertain experiments by which they improved our
live-stock? Did Protection create a Parkinson, an
Arthur Young, an Elkington? Professor Low must
surely be aware that the real rise of British hus-
bandry dates from a period anterior to those very
Corn-Laws, their dependence on which he would
insinuate. But Scotch agriculture has flourished
under Protection. Why, then, has not English flour-
ished in like proportion? A like cause should pro-
duce like effects. Why, then, are vast sheets of
country all over England, in Devonshire especially,
equal in soil, and superior in climate, to some of the
best-tilled districts of North Britain, lying still un-
der the primeval curse of thorns and thistles, sav-
agery and waste? Professor Low is unjust to the
genius of his own nation. North British agriculture
owes its existence not merely to the neighborhood
of manufactories causing a peculiar demand for field-
produce, but to the superior shift and thrift of its
semi-Norse population; to their persevering energy,
their prudence, their capability of adapting them-
selves to circumstances; and, above all, to their in-
telligent readiness to seize and apply every fresh
discovery of that very science which Professor Low
derides and insults. We have a faith in the North-
ern farmer which Professor Low seems not to have.
We believe that he will prove himself equal to this
emergency, as he has to former ones; that he will
apply the discoveries of Boussingault and Liebig
as promptly and gallantly as he has those of
Tull, Bakewell, and Smith of Deanston; that he
will lead the van of the agriculture of the future,
as he has led that of the agriculture of the past,
and show that the energy which has conquered India,
and filled the world with the Norse race, is not the
8
170 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

weakly suckling of an artificial system, which needs
for its own support the hunger of the masses.

In considering Professor Low’s sketch of the his-
tory of prices since 1795, we must bring to bear
upon his facts a rule of logic which he himself uses
in another part of his pamphlet, confessing it to be
“as trite a reflection as ever writer was compelled
to make,” viz: “that an event or phenomenon may
correspond entirely or nearly with the changes of
another event or phenomenon, and yet not be the
cause of that phenomenon;” in one word, that post
hoc ergo propter hoc is no argument; and hence is
no more an argument in the case of war prices than
(as he employs it most illogically) in the case of
mine rents. It is curious, in the first place, that ev-
ery fact which he states (in pages 52 to 54) to prove
that Protection has been the cause of agricultural
prosperity, attributes, on the very face of it, that
prosperity to quite other causes. The common
farmer’s expression of “war prices” is a key to all
Professor Low’s fallacies on the subject. How he
can have avoided seeing this from his own facts we
can hardly understand; for he himself asserts, that
the prices of 1795 to 1814 were “created by events
which we cannot expect to occur again.” The case
is plainly exceptional. “ During the war itself, six
years of unusually deficient produce had occurred,
namely, those which succeeded the crops of 1798,
1799, 1800, 1804, 1808, and 1809;” and, after the
year 1804, “unusual difficulties were imposed on
our intercourse with those countries from which we
drew our chief supplies of grain;” in a word,.the
supply of food was inadequate ; while, on the other
hand (we still quote Professor Low), “ from the year
1801 to the year 1811 inclusive, above a million and
a half of souls were added to our population; the
wages of labor during all this time were great, and
the demand was constant and increasing. We had
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 171

prisoners of war to maintain in numbers equal to 4
great army, and numerous troops to support in dis-
tant stations; and more persons in proportion to our
population — as militia-men, volunteers, and other-
wise — bore arms among us, than in the most war-
like of the states opposed to us, for the maintenance
of whom greater expense of food was required than
would have been, had each depended entirely on his
own labor for support; and a great sum was contin-
ually expended on the purchase of stores of all kinds,
the produce of the mother country.” In short, there
was an extraordinary and abnormal demand for food,
with a comparatively inadequate supply; in conse-
quence of which, of course, prices ranged extraordi-
narily high, and farmers became rapidly rich, —
altogether a peculiar diseased state of things, to be
abhorred rather than desired, though at the time its
intrinsic rottenness was concealed by the fact, that
the agricultural laborer did not suffer from the high
prices of corn, because the militia, our foreign ar-
mies and navies, and the immense demand for labor
in the manufacturing districts, which were just devel-
oping themselves into their present greatness, so
thinned their ranks year by year, that their labor de-
manded a factitious price in a temporarily under-
stocked labor-market. Now, we simply ask, what
has this abnormal state of affairs to do with perma-
nent agricultural protection in times of peace? And
what does it prove with regard to legislative protec-
tion, except its utter incompetence to keep farmers’
profits permanently at that height which they de-
mand? For mark the sequel : —

On the conclusion of the war on the eventful field of Waterloo,
or soon afterwards, these causes of enhanced prices ceased to act,
and the exchangeable value of raw produce fell to rates which had
not for a number of years before been known. Very quickly dis-
tress manifested itself among the tenant farmers. Although almost
to the close of the war the agriculturists had been in a state of
172 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES. *

pepe they could not, even many of those amongst them who
ad capital to spare, bear up against so great and sudden a change
in the price of their commodities; while the cost of labor, and
other charges to which they were subject, remained for a time as
before. Great suffering was accordingly endured, and a heavy
loss sustained of the earnings of previous years. Many industri
ous men were altogether ruined, and years elapsed before even
the more prosperous recovered from the effects of the losses which
they had suffered. — p. 53.

‘We appeal to the common sense of our readers
whether the confession contained in this paragraph
is not frightful; whether it does not justify utterly
and at first sight our strong expressions about the
diseased and rotten state of agricultural economics
during the late war? One had been taught in child-
hood, — one had read in the. Bible, aye, read in hea-
then books even, that war was a curse and not a
blessing. One had been accustomed to think that
peace was the harbinger of plenty and prosperity ;
that it was a time to be desired and not to be
dreaded, when men should “ beat their swords into
ploughshares and their spears into reaping-hooks.”
One had heard mystic words uttered long ago, which
connected “ abundance of peace as long as the moon
endureth,” with “heaps of corn high on the moun-
tain tops,” and “the deliverance of the poor, and
him that hath no helper;” and one had dreamt—
but it must have been a child’s fancy — that those
words were inspired, eternal, to fulfil themselves
again and again in every age, according as men
obeyed more and more the laws of God, and shaped
society more and more after that ideal which His
book of books reveals . . . . But we were mistaken.
Peace, we find, is the bringer of “great suffering,
and heavy loss of the earnings of previous years,” —
a ruiner of “industrious men to such an extent that
years had to elapse before even the more prosperous
recovered from the effects of the losses they had suf-
fered,” — by the cessation of the yearly slaughter of
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 173

tens of thousands of their countrymen; of villanous
commissariat gambling; of wheat thrown into the
Thames to keep up prices; of large fortunes made
rapidly to be squandered by a just and awful Neme-
sis in soulless profligacy, leaving the beggared de-
scendants, as may be seen throughout the eastern
counties of England at this moment, monuments of
the righteous judgments of Him who visiteth the
sins of the fathers on the children; and of all the
rest of that ideal farmers’ Paradise, so often suc-
cinctly and honestly toasted in those palmy days as
“ A bloody war and a wet harvest.”

But, alas! all fair things must fade; and when
that ideal faded, then came out the intrinsic rotten-
ness of the whole system, the intrinsic inability of
legislative protection to enable the farmer to live on
the minimum of produce at the maximum of price,
without the further help of two other guardian an-
gels, — scarcity and slaughter. Though those be-
nignant angels had fled, yet still “high protective
duties were in existence, not on corn only, but on
every foreign commodity which could interfere with
the products of native labor. No foreign corn was
permitted at this time to be brought into the coun-
try until the price of wheat was 63s. a quarter, and
that of other grain in the same proportion. This
was not considered sufficient to protect the farmer
under the new and anomalous” —(so war is to be
the normal, peace the anomalous condition of agri-
culture! What a confession, in one word, of the
whole of our argument!) —“ condition in which he
was placed; and the Legislature, after a long in-
quiry, increased the duties of import by a new law
passed in 1815.” Of the results of that system we
have spoken already.

If any additional proofs were wanting of the way
in-which Protectionist superstitions tend to paralyze
the energies of the farmer, and retard the march of
174 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

scientific agriculture, we need seek no further than
Professor Low’s own observations on the various
remedies which have been proposed for the present
distress of the farmer. The advice to have recourse
only to superior soils, he rejects, as we do, though
from different reasons. What right, however, he
has to blame political economists for giving that ad-
vice, we really cannot see. All they have said is, —
“ Tf, as you confess, profits are your sole object, all
you have to do is what in practice you have been al-
ways doing, to scrambie for the fat farms and leave
the lean ones to those who are unlucky enough to
get no better.” Then follows a tirade against agri-
cultural chemistry, which he apparently considers a
phantom invented by the Whigs to delude farmers
with insane hopes, through the agency of “ parsons”
and “barons ;” Liebig and Huxtable being insulted
——really there is no other word for it—as imprac-
ticable dreamers, and the existence of any other sci-
entific agriculturists utterly ignored. Liebig’s chem-
istry is proved to be all nonsense, by the fact that
dinners were just as well cooked before he investigat-
ed the laws of nutrition; and farmers are finally ex-
horted, in a passage whose effect on English conceit
and ignorance will be anything but salutary, to “be
comforted, for they are very good chemists, if they
would but think so; and perform every day, in their
fields, better chemical operations by far than all the
agricultural chemists can perform for them.”

Doubtless they do; or rather, we should say, He
who, in His mercy, causes His sun to shine on the
evil and the good, performs them for them ; the chief
chemical operations which, in England at least,
farmers perform for themselves, are the exhaustion
of soils, and the evaporation of ammonia.

But they are “practical men,” and therefore “ in-
sulted” by free-traders. That depends very much
on the meaning of the word “practical.” Are not
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 175

the many unmentioned, — perhaps because unmen-
tionable for Professor Low’s arguments, — practi-
cal men? Are not Johnstone, Smith of Deanston,
Lawes of Rothampstead, Grey of Dilston, Paine of
Farnham,* — are not these practical men? Was
not even Liebig, “ Baron” though he be, a practical
man when he invented that patent manure, over the
failure of which Professor Low is so jubilant, with-
out telling us why it failed? Not because it was
not what it professed ; not because it did not really
contain all the elements of fertility; but simply be-
cause its market price proved to be too high for
profitable use in England. And was not Liebig a
still more practical man when he warned England
that she had far more truly patent manure, bound-
less means of fertility, running to waste from every
sewer of her crowded cities? We see now what
a “practical man” means; indeed, ten minutes’
conversation with the general type of south and
mid-English farmers will show any one. It means
a man who can practice, not production, but profits ;
who, whether he has or not the knack of growing
eorn, has the knack of turning pennies; the test
of his practicality is— luckily for his reputation,
throughout two thirds of Great Britain—not in
the field, but in the market room. But, once more,
was not Mr. Huxtable, tried even by this test, a
somewhat “ practical” man, when he grew two
years running five-and-twenty ton of Swedes per
acre on the brow of a bare and utterly soilless chalk
down, by applying chemical salts which were the
exact equivalents of the crop he required, and that
at a less expense than was required by the farmers
round to grow a smaller crop on the best of soil? If
that be not “practical” what is? No subsequent
failures in the profit of other experiments can coun-
tervail that fact.

* Now, alas, lost to science and his country.
176 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

.. We might say much more upon Professor Low’s
statements. We might justly complain of him for
confessing, in a passage (p. 83) which stands out in
honorable relief from the rest of his pamphlet, that
science may render great help to agriculture, and
then, in the very next page, laughing to scorn every
attempt of science to fulfil that very expectation.
We might justify, too, our suspicions of his inade-
quate knowledge of the very chemistry which he
derides, in his observations on nitrate of soda, and
especially in his informing farmers that “ saltpetre,”
of all things in the world, is the type of the alkalies.
But his most important error is the way in which
he both misstates and undervalues the distinction
between the empiric and the scientific stages of an
art. In the first, or empiric stage, he says, “ Results
only are regarded, and common experience depended
on.” He should have said private and particular
experience ; the experiences of single individuals, of
hereditary occupiers, of peculiar localities; and this is
the reason why, though, as he truly says, every val-
uable branch of rural labor has been practised sep-
arately in some past age or country, the general
agriculture of the world, and even of civilized Brit-
ain, remains no better than it is, simply because
agriculture has been empiric, and not scientific.
We see throughout Britain, in the same parish, on
the same soils, the most absurd differences in agri-
cultural productiveness, coupled with a slavish ad-
herence to the empiric maxims of the immediate
neighborhood. We see one farmer looking on idly
at his neighbor’s increased crops, and excusing him-
self by saying, “It does very well on his land, no
doubt, but how can I tell that it would do on
mine?” How can he tell? Science only can in-
form him. Or again, we see a man attempting
unsuccessfully to apply to an inferior or unsuitable
soil a peculiar local mode of cultivation, simply be-
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 177

cause it is the custom of the neighborhood. Or
again, we find some farmer of a more daring and
more speculative turn catching at a new improve-
ment, and fancying it, as empirics do their quack
medicines, a cure for every evil in all soils, because
it has cured one evil in one particular soil. We
speak of matters of common daily occurrence, such
as must occur as long as_any art remains in its
empiric stage. Look at the broad facts of the
case. The Chinese have known for centuries the
value of sewage manure, and we have long known
that they knew it; but the sewage of our great
towns still runs wasted to the sea, even as it did of
old. Or to come nearer home, the extraordinary
fertility of the sewage-irrigated lands below Edin-
burgh and Milan has long been notorious; but has
there been a general application of the results of
those striking facts? In like manner the advantages
of deep tillage and row culture have been known
since the time of Augustus; yet the majority of
crops, in England at least, are sown broadcast to
this day, and the land ploughed on an average not
five inches deep. Why is this? Because empiri-
cism can furnish only particular facts, not reasons;
local maxims, but not general laws. It is impossi-
ble at this stage of any art to’ execute works on a
great scale. The force of despotism may, as in the
case of the pyramids, of the royal roads of Peru, or
of the canals of Semiramis, compel their execution
at an enormous waste of capital, labor, and even
human life; but in a free country, where improve-
ments are to be made singly by many individuals,
each in his own sphere, each working from his own
will and convictions, science is absolutely required,
to give to the reason of the many, common and uni-
versal laws. This is her true office, and not, as
Professor Low says, merely to “investigate princi-
ples, and to explain results, and to make the re-
8 *
178 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

sources of one branch of knowledge contribute to
the advancement of another.” That science will do,
indeed, but she will do more. Even if she did not
discover a single new fact, she will still, by combin- ,
ing the already existing facts of experience, draw
from them inductively rules which each man may ap-
ply intelligently and as it were prophetically for him-
self, calculating on the results of his labor with a
moral certainty independent of local or hereditary
tradition, of the prejudices of neighbors, and of the
panaceas of charlatans. And therefore, even though
we were to assent, for the sake of argument, to Pro-
fessor Low’s somewhat rash and startling expecta-
tion, that agriculture has probably left less for sci-
ence to add to truths already known than almost
any other of the useful arts, science would be not
the less indispensable to agriculture. Many nations,
to instance a parallel.case, had brought the art of
weaving to the highest empiric perfection before the
introduction of the steam-engine and the spinning-
jenny. The East sent to Rome 2,000 years ago
its “byssine garments,” and its “woven wind;”
Hindostan produced its long-unrivalled muslins,
Belgium its lace; the quality was perfect, but the
supply small and local,— when science came, and
taking the old materials, applied to them her new
methods, she inundated the world with the products
of.the loom, as she may hereafter with the products
of the farm. .

Moreover, just in proportion as in any part of
Britain agricultural science has improved, in the
same proportion has practical agriculture. It is at
least a curious coincidence that Scotland, which
justly boasts of the best practical farmers and gar-
deners, also boasts of the best agricultural chemists ;
we may add, too, the best political economists; but
Professor Low will be less inclined than we are to
allow any connection between the incidents.
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 179

If there is any one point on which the discoveries
of science had ever opened a vista of hope, immedi-
ate and practical, it is on that of sewage manure.
Professor Low cannot be ignorant of what has been
proved on that subject; he cannot be ignorant that
the greatest “ practical” farmers, and at their head
the late Mr. Smith of Deanston, have definitely pro-
nounced their opinion on this subject, and exerted
themselves to get the sewage of the towns applied
to the land. But as all we hear of this question in
the pages before us is a passing allusion to “the
refuse of towns,” we shall proceed to quote some-
what from a pamphlet, one among many which
have been published on the subject, containing
“An Analysis of Evidence laid before the Health
of Towns’ Commission, and the Select Committee
of the House of Commons, on Metropolitan Sew-
age, and the value and advantage of its Applica-
tion in a liquid form to Agricultural Purposes.”

It may be said that we knew the value of town
sewage before conceited “ science ” intruded her in-
formation on the point. True; but did we know
the facts established by Liebig, Boussingault, Spren-
gel, and numerous other writers, who give us not
merely empiric suspicions, but scientific certainty on
the point? - We did not know, till chemical ‘analy-
sis proved it, that sewer water contains not only
some but all of the elements necessary to fertility.
We did not know, till chemical analysis proved it,
that each human being returns to the soil, in the
form of manure, the exact equivalent of the food
which he consumes, in a state fit for immediate ab-
sorption by the roots of plants. We did not know,
till truly scientific experiments informed us, the fol-
lowing properties, to which our readers, we hope,
will be inclined to attach more importance than
Professor Low has deigned to do.

1. The very substances which, if allowed to col-
1350 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

lect and decompose in our great towns (and we may
add, in our small villages), give rise to fevers and
other destructive diseases, may be made the source
of great fertility to the surrounding country. (South-
wood Smith. Sanitary Report of 1842. Daubeny,
Liebig, Sprengel.)

Thus the sewage-manure-question becomes the
correlative of sanitary reform, and in the proper
employment of this manure lies one great means
of improving the fetid and pestilential dwellings of
the lower classes.

2. These same substances, diluted with water,

may be conveyed into the country and applied to
the land with perfect safety, and less offensively
than the manure now in use. (Smith of Deanston.
Brande. J. Knight.) If any reader wish for nasal
proof, let him, on his next visit to London, inspect
the works of those gallant speculators, the Metro-
politan Sewage Manure Company, among the mar-
ket gardens of Fulham.
_ 38. The state of dilution in which the refuse of
towns exists in the sewer water, is highly favorable
to the growth of plants, and the increase of fertility.
(E. Chadwick. J. Knight. Smith of Deanston.)

4. The sewer water, which it is thus proposed to
apply; is proved by chemical analysis to.contain all
the elements of fertility. (Professors Miller, Brande,
Cooper, &c.) ;

5. Sewer water has a high money-value. The
value of that now running into the Thames through
the sewers of London alone, is, according to Pro-
fessor Miller, upwards of 400,0007. per annum.

In Flanders, says Dr. Playfair, the annual value
is estimated at 1/. 17s. per head of the population.
Mr. Smith of Deanston considers 1. per head the
average.

From every town of a thousand inhabitants, says
Professor Johnstone, is carried annually into the sea
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 181

manure equal to 270 tons of guano, worth at the
present price of guano 2,7001, and capable of raising
an increased produce of not less than 1,000 quarters
of grain.

Really, after this, the sending some thousand
miles to Peru and Ichaboe for what is lying at our
own doors, breeding pestilence because we will not
use it, is Laputism of the most frantic sort.

6. From very accurate experiments, it is found
that an equal produce may be raised by liquid
manure at a cheaper rate than by any other, either
domestic or foreign. Smith of Deanston gives the
following comparison :—

Cost of manuring one acre with sewage. . .£
* Do. with guano, 24 cwt. at 8s. . oR
Do. farm-yard manure, 15 tons at 4s. . . ,

Ore
oon
oow

So that sewer water is cheaper than guano by 7s. 3d.,
and than farm-yard manure by 2. 7s. 3d.

7. Striking instances of produce from sewage
manure are notorious.

8. There is every reason to believe, that the sewer
water will be in large and constant demand at every
season of the year. (Mr. Norris, market-gardener at
Isleworth; Smith of Deanston, passim; Mr. Mac-
quay.) It is proved by the experience of the Ful-
ham gardeners, that the sewer water has a high
value, not only as manure, but simply as rain. The
mere power of preventing drought at will, without
the enormous expense of hand-watering, is in itself
a vast conquest over the brute powers of nature.
And we must add to this, and the previously stated
facts, the efficacy of sewer water in destroying in-
sects (Sprengel), and in applying the fertilizing mat-
ter to the land in a form certain to be instantly
absorbed by the roots of plants, instead of being

‘ aoe price of good guano has risen, since this was written, fully one
ird. 5
182 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

wasted, as solid manure is now, by sun, wind,
drought, and tardy decomposition.

But again, it is admitted on all hands, that the
value of the sewer water is such as amply to repay
the expense of its conveyance.

“We can deliver a ton of water at eleven miles’
distance, covering all our expenses, and leaving a
handsome profit, for twopence a ton.” So says one
of the highest authorities in Great Britain, on agri-
cultural questions, —James Smith of Deanston. Mr.
Hawksley, the well-known engineer, offers to send
water five miles, and raise it two hundred feet, after
paying all possible expenses and interest on capital,
for 2id. a ton; the expense of cartage to the same
distance and height being about 4s.

Mr. Dean gives the expenses of distributing equal
fertilizing values of solid and liquid manure, at three
pounds for the solid, and six shillings for the liquid..

The practicability of this plan of conveying and
distributing liquid manure by subterranean pipes,
with cocks at intervals, from which a jet-pipe throws
it over the land, is amply proved by the experiments
of Mr. Harvey, near Glasgow, Mr. Thompson of
Clitheroe, and the Metropolitan Sewage Manure
Company, &c.

Surely, if these well-authenticated facts are ad-
mitted, it is impossible to overrate their practical im-
portance. They seem at first sight to make neces-
sary some reconsideration of the relation between
population and production. They suggest, at least,
a reason for suspecting that political economists,
when they laid down the law that population in-
creases faster than production, may have been falling
into the error of representing the tendencies of fallen
man as the normal and ideal laws of the human spe-
cies. Production ought to increase as fast as popu-
lation, because any given population would return to
the soil the whole elements of last year’s food; and,
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 183

in a food-importing country like Britain, faster than
population, while, as at present, the yearly importa-
tion of food bears a higher proportion to the home
produce, than the annual addition to population does
to the census of the previous year.

With respect to agriculture, again, these facts put
the consuming population in a new light. They now
appear as the producers of the raw material of food,
the very manure on the abundance of which all agri-
cultural production and profit ultimately depends, and
for which the good farmer seeks by the most costly
and laborious processes. If, as so many now assert,
those processes, and cattle-fatting among the most
important, are becoming unprofitable, the sewage of
the towns offers a supply many times greater than
what is now in use, namely, the whole of the crop
which has been taken off the soil, besides the im-
ported food, as raw material for the next crop, at a
price far below that of the manure already used, and
without those expenses and onerous details which
are requiring, year by year, larger investments of far-
mers’ capital, not only in the live-stock themselves,
but in housing and feeding them; surely, even at
free-trade prices, the farmer could exist, if his non-
necessary live-stock expenses were all but annihilated,
and the whole materials of his last year’s crop re-
turned to him in the form of sewage at 12s. 9d. per
acre’s manure; while if, as Mr. Huxtable and others
assert, the live-stock can still be fatted at a profit, the
whole sewage of the consuming population is to be
taken as a clear gain, and lucro apponendum.

Now, we cannot resist the temptation of asking, en
passant, why Professor Low has ignored the exist-
ence of this subject? The facts he cannot doubt.
The authority of Smith of Deanston, a man who
combined, as perfectly perhaps as any one in Britain,
sound science and practical experience, is a definitive
authority from which there is no appeal. The con-
134 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

clusions which we have taken the liberty of drawing
from these facts are mere results of “ common sense.”
Certainly, they involve Professor Low in a dilemma.
Either science discovered the value of sewage ma-
nure, or the farmers did so for themselves. If the
former be true, what becomes of Professor Low’s
assertion that science has discovered nothing profit-
able to the agriculturist? If the farmers discovered
it for themselves, why have they not employed it?
As_a fact, there is not one farm in a hundred, even
within a few miles of a town, throughout Great Brit-
ain, which employs town sewage; not one farmer in
a hundred who has shown the slightest desire to ob-
tain that boundless productive wealth which is now
running to waste from every sewer, or stagnating in
wynds and alleys, breathing forth typhus, cholera, and
consumption. Why isthis? Why isa man of such
standing and influence as Professor Low still engaged
in the evil work of setting class against class, of in-
forming the farmers that the influential members
of the city populations are impostors, pedants, and
dreamers, making every conceivable complaint against
them, except the true one,—- that they are carelessly
throwing away the farmer’s raw material? If he
wants to accuse London, Manchester, and Glasgow,
let him accuse them of this;—let him say,—“ We
farmers are ready enough to grow corn for you, if you
will give us the corn to grow. By the Jaws of the
soil, we cannot, after a certain point, which the best
of us had already reached under protection, and
which free-trade has accelerated for all, extract an
increased produce from the soil without a dispropor-
tionate increase of expense. We must return to the
soil what we take from it, or we and our soil must
be exhausted. If we give to you the manufactured
article, you must return to us the raw material to
work up again.” If Professor Low wishes to help
the agriculturist, let him address the commercial
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 185

classes in that tone. He will find “common sense”
and justice enough in them to appreciate his argu-
ment, and to respond readily to it by the investment
of capital in sewage works. If he wishes the farmers
to combine, let him organize among them a com-
bination to obtain their just and reasonable right,
namely, the return of their crops in the form of town
manure. If he wants protection for them, let him
agitate for the true protection; let him labor to ob-
tain sanitary laws, which shall protect the farmer,
not from the blessings of plenty, but from the curse
of waste ; from the barbarism which sends the mate-
rials of his wealth floating into every sea of these
Islands; and in protecting the farmer, protect the
poor of the cities from involuntary filth, and its ac-
companiments, pestilence, degradation, and drunk-
enness.

And why have not Professor Low and the protec-
tionist farmers done this already? The subject is
not one of yesterday. The pamphlet from which we
have principally quoted was published three years
ago. Much of the evidence in it is as old as 1840. It
was in 1842 that the General Report on the Sanitary
Condition of the Laboring Population stated fully
and definitively the general facts of this question.
Why, then, has so little been done by the farmers to
gain their right? Why is the demand for sewage
manure so small, that when a town is properly
drained the river is found as of old, the best and
cheapest receptacle for its “refuse?”

“ Because,” answer the farmers, “it has not been
as yet worth our while,— we could make manure
enough at home, with the addition of a little guano,
to get on with.”

Exactly so, gentlemen. In plain English, you
have been receiving so high a price for your corn, that
you could cultivate at a profit without employing
more than a very small proportion of the manure of
186 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

the country, and therefore without evoking more
than a very small proportion of the real productive-
ness of your soil. Protection has enabled you to
look on complacently at this frightful waste of na-
tional wealth. Protection, in a word, has in this
case, as in every other, been a premium on neglect
of science, under-production, barbarism, and waste.

Now Free-trade, by compelling the farmer to de-
pend on the maximum of production, will compel
him to demand the cessation of this waste, which
under protected prices was immaterial to him ; just
as it will also compel him to demand from his land-
lord tanks, and other means of saving the farm-yard
drainings, the most valuable part of his manure,
which, on forty-nine farms out of fifty throughout
England and Wales, is now suffered to escape into
the nearest stream,—not having been wanted under
Protection prices.

The great advantages of draining, again, though
confessed on all hands, have been as yet but partially
felt in practice, just because science has not, till very.
lately, been brought to bear on the subject, and to:
discover its universal and certain laws; and also,
because a large proportion of farmers, thanks to pro-
tected prices, have been able as yet to “rub on”
without drainage, even while they made no scruple
of confessing the greatly increased produce to be ob-
tained by it.

“ But,” it will be answered, “ how can you ask the
farmers at this crisis of depression, when they hardly
know where to turn to meet present demands, to in-
vest fresh capital in subsoiling and drainage?” The
facts just stated with regard to sewage manure an-
swer this question. Were once that article in general
use, the immense saving to the agriculturist would
give him fresh means of employing his capital in
these now neglected channels, while they would be-
come, far more than before, necessary to his profit.
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 187

It might not be a profitable speculation—#in the case
of naturally poor land it could not be—to double or
treble the depth of available soil by draining and
trenching, if the supply of manure to that soil was
not proportionally increased. This is one of the
causes which produce the well-known law, that after
a certain point, further expenditure per acre becomes
unprofitable. Where the upper soil is exhausted
by long bad farming, and the subsoil, being of the
same original staple, remains unexhausted, there this
law will manifest itself but slowly, if at all. But
where, as in a large proportion of the soil of Britain,
the subsoil is of an inferior quality, and requires to
be “made” even more than the upper soil,—mere
trenching and draining are often hardly profitable,
except under very high prices. They are, in some
very porous and “hungry” soils, actually injurious,
giving greater facility for the salts of the manure to
escape beyond the reach of the roots. But where
the whole increased depth of soil can be saturated
(as it might be by sewage manure) with the food of
plants, there the crop might fairly be expected to
increase almost in the same ratio as the depth of
soil; and the farmer who has a hundred acres tilled
twelve inches deep, should be able to. grow three
times as much produce as the man whose hundred
acres, a common case in England, are tilled only
four inches deep. Ultimately, as every gardener
knows, man can only take out of the earth what he
puts into it. The supply of the elements of food
naturally existing, or now remaining in most British
soils, bears but a very small proportion to the prod-
uce; and the only one which sewage manure will
not give, is the very one which draining and tillage
will in every case eliminate in exact proportion to
their increased depth, namely, the silicates required
for the straw, which again, once produced, can be
returned to the soil again without the slightest
188 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

waste. “ Muck,” says the old Scotch proverb, “is
the mither o’ the meal-kist;” without it the deep
tillage of the garden would be all but unprofit-
able; by it the Belgians have made it worth their
while to trench their barren sands, and to convert
them, as Mr. Rhaw describes, into “a rich com-
post eighteen inches deep.” The eighteen inches
would be of little gain, if they had remained eigh-
teen inches of sand; and the soils of Great Britain
will never be drained and tilled to the depth of
which they are really capable with profit, unless
some great movement, like that of the Sewage
Manure Agitators, can throw into them a propor-
etely increased supply of the raw materials of
ood.

“ But,” it may be said by a protectionist, “ this in-
creased abundance will only be suicidal after all. It
will only make wheat cheaper and cheaper, more
and more unprofitable”? ‘Then why should not
other and more profitable crops thant wheat be tried ?
It is by no means the ideal of a national agriculture
that it should absolutely depend for its profit on the
necessary food of the nation ; nor does it in the best
cultivated countries. The exclusive cultivation of
wheat has all along been a temptation to the British
farmer. It has led to protection, to corn-jobbing, to
truck-payments, and a hundred other methods by
which one class makes money out of the needs of all.
Why should wheat be the crop on which the farmers’
main profit depends? Lombardy has its silk, Ger-
many its tobacco, Carolina its cotton, Belgium its
flax,—why not England also? Professor Low an-
swers, in a passage as unfair (to use the mildest
term) as any we have for some time met with, that
certainly —

Speculative persons have been lately amusing themselves, and

deceiving others, with calculations of enormous profits, not Jess, it
is believed, than 201. or 25/. the acre, to be got by producing flax;
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 189

that labored attempts have lately been made to show that lint can
be grown in this country. Why, every old woman who can re-
member that every farmer used to grow his own lint, knows this;
but every practical farmer likewise knows, that lint is not a crop
so well suited as some others to maintain or increase the produc-
tiveness of a farm.

We beg leave to answer,— That if Professor Low
knows anything, as he must know, about the methods
of cultivating flax, he must know also that Mr.
‘Warnes of Trimmingham,* a “ practical farmer,” the
great advocate of flax culture, under whose directions
most of the experiments in that direction are now
being made, promises no such enormous profits. As
much as 205/, per acre, and even more, has been
made, and is often made, in the North of Ireland:
Mr. Warnes asserts his flax profits, on a Norfolk
farm, to have averaged, for the last ten years, nine
pounds an acre; and he not only proves the truth
of this statement by full details of his expenses, in
a pamphlet which we earnestly recommend to the
notice of our readers, but offers his farm accounts for
public inspection. It may be true, also, that every
old woman knows that lint used to be grown, and
that if farmers had found flax more profitable than
wheat (i. e., protected wheat), they would have grown
it long ago. But Professor Low must know that
the reason why flax did not pay these gentlemen,
and does pay Mr. Warnes, is, that they only secured
the fibre, and did not allow the linseed to mature ;
or if they did, did not return it to the soil of their
own farm, as Mr. Warnes does. Professor Low
must be aware, also, that in these early attempts to
grow flax under bounties on which he grounds his
argument, the manure which Mr. Warnes has made
carefully under cover so as to preserve its whole
strength, used to be tossed out into the farm-yard
to sun and rain, with not even a tank to catch the

* Since deceased.
190 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

drainings; till the soluble salts and ammonia were
all washed out, and it was reduced into that species
of rotten thatch, miscalled manure by three fourths
of the English farmers.’ If Professor Low had
brought an instance in which a scientific Scotch
farmer, possessing good byres, and an ample yard-
tank, had attempted to grow both flax and linseed,
on Mr. Warnes’s plan, and failed year after year, his
sneers might have been worth something; as it is,
they involve the same fallacy as his invectives against
political economists. They are arguments against
the civilization of the present, drawn from the bar-
barism of the past.

- And it must not be supposed that the general cul-
tivation of flax would, by diminishing the growth of
wheat, increase the danger of that protectionist bug-
bear, our dependence on foreign countries. On the
contrary, Mr. Warnes distinctly asserts, that since
flax has been introduced into his rotation, he grows
more, and not less, wheat on his farm, although that
crop recurs now once in five years only, instead of,
as formerly, once in four. But Professor Low does
not deny the productiveness of flax, or the richness
of linseed; he only says that it is not as well suited
to maintain or inerease productiveness as some oth-
ers. Which others? Certainly none of the usual
grain, root, or green crops; for by adding flax to
these, Mr. Warnes, it appears, has increased the pro-
ductiveness of his farm, in the article of wheat.
Such a result, by the bye, might have been prophe-
sied & priori by one of those agricultural chemists
whom Professor Low despises. For flax, like other
oil-bearing plants, has an extraordinary power of ab-
sorbing nitrogen from the air, as well as from the
soil, for the production of its linseed, while it takes
up from the soil hardly any of those salts so neces-
sary for the wheat plant. Thus Mr. Warnes’s wheat
crops will have been enriched, from year to year, by
%
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. . 191

all the nitrogen which the flax has absorbed from the
atmosphere, as well as by the increased amount of
salts which have been liberated from the soil by the
deeper tilth required for the flax-roots.

“ But,” says Professor Low, “it must be pretty
evident, that if a profit of 20/. or 254 an acre could
be made by raising flax in England,” (which, as we
have seen, nobody asserts,) “ the Baltic farmers, who
can raise it as well as we can, would not long leave
us in possession of so profitable a monopoly. The
Dutch will undertake to supply us with any quantity
we choose to consume.” We answer —really under
correction, for Professor Low may have better infor-
mation on the point than ourselves — that, in the
first place, it is a great question whether Baltic far-
mers can grow flax as well as we can. For it can-
not be grown like wheat, by barbaric and careless
tillage, made profitable by the innate powers of a
virgin soil. It requires deep tilth, care, experience,
and, above all, a large supply of nitrogeneous manure,
which the Baltic farmers do not possess, and cannot
acquire without an enormous increase of their live-
stock at a proportionately enormous expense; while
we have close at hand, in our sewage manure, an
inexhaustible supply of the materials of flax and
linseed, as well as of wheat. As for the Dutch, we
question whether they can “supply us with any
quantity we want.” Neither they nor the Baltie
farmers have, at least, yet contrived to supplant the
Irish flax-grower in the linen mills of Belfast ; why
should they in Manchester or Glasgow? Their coun-
try is already so highly cultivated as to allow of no
considerable increase of produce; the flax they now
grow goes somewhere; if they withdraw it from its
present market to throw it into ours, it will only
leave an opening for our cotton, perhaps for our flax,
= unless, indeed, their former customers shall resolve
to go naked for the sake of Professor Low’s reputa-
LYZ KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

tion; and thus the matter becomes “ very nearly as
broad as it is long.” Perhaps the true reason of —
Professor Low’s contempt for flax culture is the very
one which may possibly recommend it to some of

our readers, — that free-traders and political econo-

mists are approving of it; that Mr. Cobden has

recommended a careful examination of the whole

question as pregnant with important and beneficial
consequences to home manufacturers; that that gen- .
tleman’s brother, as well as the Messrs. Marshall of

Leeds, and other large capitalists, are briskly pro-

moting both the growth and manufacture of flax.

We should gladly, did space allow, comment at
length on the advantages which the laborer as well
as the farmer derives from flax, as asserted by Mr.
Warnes. In Trimmingham, during the last ten
years, poor-rates have become almost nominal; want
of employment for all sexes and ages almost un-
known ; the morals of the poor, and the condition
of their dwellings and habits of life, have improved
together, under the influence of a species of detailed
and skilled labor, which Professor. Low and his
school of agriculturists have been in the habit of
slighting, as “unsuited to the economy of labor _
proper on a well-ordered farm.”

The same observations were applied also to the
culture of silk. There is not the slightest doubt,
from the experiments of the late Mrs Whitby of
Lymington, and of her disciples, that silk, com-
manding a higher price in the market than any for-
eign samples whatever, can be profitably grown along
the southern coasts of England and Ireland, by
employing, instead of the old white mulberry, the
hardier and more prolific “ morus multicaulis” of Asia,
which is now, we believe, superseding the white mul-
berry on the Continent. Even among the poor grav-
elly soils, and the severe spring frosts of the north
of Hampshire, the experiment has succeeded. If.
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 193

not as profitable an investment to the tenant farmers
as to some others, silk culture might at least form a
large addition to the income of the peasant; and
there is no reason whatever why the glens of Devon
and of Kerry, now so often mere uncultivated nests
of pauperism and savagery, should not be hereafter
clothed with gardens of mulberry, affording both
wealth and civilizing, because skilled, employment
to the now wretched laborers.

Once more, it is by no means yet proved, that
maize and lentils may not be cultivated safely and
profitably in England. Mr. Keene’s pamphlet, whose
title stands among others at the head of this article,
announces a new sort of maize, which he asserts
will ripen on the Pyrenees, in a climate at least as
severe as that of England. Large quantities of it
were actually ripened safely last year, and the only
specimens of it which we have seen this year, show
every sign of ultimate success. We earnestly hope
that such may be the case, and that these inestima-
ble grains may hereafter contribute a large propor-
tién of the food of our peasantry in the south. of
England and in Ireland. One question, en passant,
as a reductio ad absurdum of the whole theory of
Protection, and we will dismiss the subject. If the
southern counties of England should really take up
the culture of maize, must not the less favored north-
ern counties be protected against them? ‘Will Pro-
fessor Low and his party, in that case, agitate for a
cordon de douane along the line of the Great West-
ern, and impose heavy duties on every sack of maize
which shall dare to intrude its destructive cheapness
to the north of the Thames? If one country is to
be protected against another by tariffs, one parish
against another by laws of settlement, why not one
county against another by octrois against maize, or
any other production which shall introduce the ruin-
ous elements of cheapness and abundance ?

9
194 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

We have in the preceding pages attempted, more
concisely than we should have wished, to point out
some of the capabilities of British agriculture, and
we look to North Britain, which has been always
foremost in science and daring, still to lead the van
towards these and far greater improvements. We
are well aware that it may seem insulting to call
upon men to exert themselves especially, in a mo-
ment like this, when they are especially crippled, but
the pain of a remedy does not prove its inefficacy,
nor is present distress the slightest argument against
future prosperity. It is at the expulsion of a cor-
rupt system, as during the cure of a disease, that the
disorganization which it has produced is most pal-
pable. It is when deprived of stimulants that the
drunkard discovers his weakness, and has to endure
many a miserable day before he can replace his arti-
ficial and temporary vigor by real and solid health.
Even so will it fare with agriculture. Farmers may
fail in abundance. Landlords may be ruined. But
which of them? The men of capital, science, en-
ergy? No. The idler, the dolt; the man who is farm-
ing one hundred acres of land on little more than a
hundred pounds of capital; the landlord who. has
mortgaged his estate, and squandered his rents on
harlots; they will fail and vanish, and laborer, land,
and country will be well rid of them. But the men
who are really fit to farm land,— men such as are as
common in North Britain as they are rare in the
South, will rise after the storm; the wiser, doubt-
less, by many a wholesome lesson, ready to adapt
themselves to the circumstances of the future as
manfully as they have to those of the past. The
very fact of their having larger capitals than usual
embarked in the land, while it may make them feel
the first burst of the storm more severely than those
who have less to lose, will at the same time give
them greater power of recovering themselves. _.- If
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 195

they are really wronged ; if any existing enactments
can be shown to tax or hamper their occupation,
they have a right to demand, and they will as surely
obtain, the repeal of them; provided’ only that they
do not by angry declamation, illogical arguments,
provoking threats, and equally provoking appeals on
behalf of laborers who do not require their sympa-
thy, disgust and exasperate the mass of the British
nation.

But if, in spite of the rebukes and exhortations
of the vast majority of educated Britons, in spite of
the increasing needs of the uneducated masses, the
Majority of the agriculturists shall still remain in
their present mind ;—if they shall still glory in re-
jecting the proved laws of political economy, and
ridiculing the discoveries of science;—if they shall
still refuse to help themselves, or to listen to any one
who offers to help them ;— if they shall still set up
the interest of their class against that of the mass
of the nation ;—if they shall still glory in confess-
ing their own impotence, and give us useless lamen-
tations, instead of productive labors ;—if they shall
still pretend, by insincere and idle agitation and
‘still more insincere and idle threats, to compass a
-protectionist reaction which they know to be impos-
sible ;—if they shall still refuse to meet like men,
each by new endeavors on his own land, the exigen-
cies of a new time, and prefer to remain — we quote
in saddest earnest —“ children sitting in the market-
place,” refusing, like that perverse generation in old
Judea, to sympathize either with the deeds. and sor-
rows, or with the hopes and comforts of their fellow-
men ;—then they must not be surprised if the British
nation shall take them at their word, and addressing
them in a novel and more peremptory tone, say, —

“ Well, gentlemen; we have heard your com-
plaints of inability to farm'the land. We grant the
truth of your statements, and when granted, what
196 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

do they prove? Not that the land cannot be farmed
henceforth, but merely that you cannot farm it.
You assert that henceforth the tenant farmer cannot
exist. Why should he? Is there any absolute and-
necessary law, human or divine, which makes it im-
possible to cultivate the land by any other agency
than the single one of landlord, farmer, day-laborer ?
Doubtless you believe in the existence of such a
law; for it is the habit of poor short-sighted hu-
manity in every age to assume that the thing which
is, always has been, and shall be forever; and to
erect the temporary accidents of its own narrow
experience into divine and eternal necessities, with-
out which the very sun would be blotted from the
sky. — And behold a century passes, and the eleventh
commandment of two generations back has given
place to a fresh superstition, and is regarded as the
solecism of barbarians. Are you aware, for in-
stance, that it is only within the last century that
any large proportion of the British soil has been cul-
tivated by tenant farmers on the present system ?
Are you aware that only an exceedingly small pro-
portion of the earth’s surface has in any age or coun-
try been cultivated on that system? Learn that
yeomen proprietors, métayers, cottier tenantries, and
numberless other forms of agricultural class-econ-
omy, have existed, and do exist still; and that fresh
methods of productive distribution, fresh classes of
agriculturists, may arise hereafter, and most proba-
bly will; the experience, invention, and economic
knowledge of mankind being by no means yet ex-
hausted, but rather in its infancy. No doubt the
British system, which combines landlord, farmer,
and laborer, is the best yet practised in an old and
thickly peopled country; but it is not perfect. It
has not tended to make the landlords as useful as
possible; for it has encouraged them in idleness,
neglect, and absenteeism. It has not tended to the
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 197%

maximum welfare of the laborer; for it has nowhere
retarded, and in the Eastern and Southern Counties:
of England it has accelerated, his downward prog-
ress into si AveXy and brutality; it has made him,
fearful paradox! a nomad and a glebe adscriptus, a
prisoner and a homeless man. It has put him, his
house, his family, into the absolute power of your
elass, the class who are to this day doggedly resist-
ing every attenipt to educate, to civilize, or even give
him the means of cleanliness and common decency.
The only argument for the present system has been,
that it hitherto was the best means of applying to
the land the capital, energy, and skill of the middle
classes without destroying the rights of property ;
and that last argument you have now cut from un-
der your own feet. It is you, and not the free-trader,
who assert that the middle class can no longer profit-
ably apply either themselves or their money: to the
soil. It is you, and not the free-trader, who assert
that the tenant-farmer system is in itself so intrin-
sically rotten and fallacious that, even in a densely
peopled country like England, it cannot yield the
fair profits of trade without the hothouse protection
of monopoly prices and insufficient supply of the
necessaries of life to the whole working class. We
do not assert this. It is you, we repeat, — you far-
mers yourselves, who are now trumpeting forth over
all the kingdom the cessation of the last remaining
argument for your existence as a class. But do not
faney that the soil of Great Britain will lie fallow
because you are unable or unwilling to cultivate it.
What we demand now is, the maximum of produc-
tion from the British soil. If you can furnish that,
you may and will remain. If not, neither we, nor
the laws of political economy, which are older,
stronger, than either you or we, will tolerate you.
You must and will give place to those who can do
that for which you assert your own incapacity.
198 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

‘Who they will be, or how they will do it, we care
comparatively little. "We have faith in God, faith
in the soil, His priceless gift; faith in science, ‘which
is His revelation ; faith in the consequences of the
just and. righteous act of free-trade; and though
you may deride us as unpractical enthusiasts, we
will not shrink from believing where we do not see,
and from expecting that the future of agriculture
will be profitable to the consumer, profitable to the
producer, profitable to the working masses, and that
hereafter, as heretofore, the everlasting law will be
fulfilled, ‘He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied
with bread: but he that followeth after vain persons
shall have poverty enough.’ ”

But, indeed, the horoscope of the agricultural
classes is by no means so difficult to cast. In the
first place, if the poorer land shall, as Professor Low
expects, “go out of cultivation,” i. e., out of tenant-
farmers’ hands, their place may be at once supplied,
with no diminution of rent, and a considerably in-
creased produce, by peasant- proprietors, or by what
would perhaps be better in the present state of the
agricultural classes, cottier tenants on long leases,
binding them to methods of high cultivation. The
prejudices of political economists against “la petite
culture” have been modified of late by the facts in
its favor proved by Mr. Laing’s book on Norway,
Mr. Blacker’s and the Hon. J. Hewitt’s success in
Treland, the late Mrs. Davies Gilbert’s experiments in
Sussex and elsewhere, and a mass of other evidence,
which has so far convinced Mr. Mill, the best politi-
cal economist of the day, as to cause him to give in
his adhesion to the party who advocate “la petite
culture.” No doubt on this system a greater amount
of produce is attained, combined with habits of thrift,
self-restraint, and independence in the cultivators, to
which our laboring classes are now, alas! rapidly. be-
coming strangers; but it has its drawbacks, never-
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 199.

theless; it is an isolating, and therefore a stationary,
if not a barbarizing system of society ; it affords but
very small opportunities for employing the strength
of combination, for investing large capitals in public
works and widely spread improvements; it cannot
be the ideal goal of a nation which, like Great Brit-
ain, has proved by experiment the enormous powers
of union and codperation. In peculiar localities,
such as barren moorlands or rocky glens unfit for the
plough, it may be profitably employed; but the ma-
jority of British soils must and will continue to be
cultivated by “la grande culture,” or some method
which shall unite its advantages with that of garden
farming. And there is no risk but that the large
farm system will still be carried on, whether “ profit-
ably” or not. If, as Professor Low sneeringly inti-
mates, there will soon be plenty of opportunities for
gentlemen amateurs to farm their own estates, all
that can be said is, that it is “a consummation de-
voutly to be wished.” Even if they lose money, as
they very likely will, by attempting to imitate Mr.
Huxtable, the land will be permanently improved,
the produce increased, the laborers’ wages, dwellings,
civilization, bettered. Whether or not Mr. Fowler’s
magnificent improvements on Dartmoor pay him or
not, the thing is done, —it is a «riya é dei, —a present
to his country of so much skill, labor, cultivation ;
and the mind must be sadly warped which can find,
as some do, in such an action a reason for contempt.
But further, why may not the joint-stock company
principle be applied to farms as well as to railroads?
‘Why may not a board of directors, by means of their
skilled servants, cultivate vast sheets of country with
a skill, an energy, a largeness of design as-yet un-
known? “ What will Cockney directors know about
farming?” Why, what did they know about rail-
roads? Are railroad directors engineers and survey-
ors? No, they are simply men of capital and men
ZUU KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIKS.

of business, who have the happy power, as yet un-
known to most farmers, of recognizing the men of
really practical science, and ‘setting them to work, —
as they did Stephenson and Brunel,—as they will
hereafter some of the very men whom Professor Low
holds up to the ridicule of ignorant and conceited
boors. A war, or some other cause, may check for-
eign investments ; profits, according to their law of
tendency towards a minimum, may and will tempo-
rarily sink so low as to make the chance of profit by
land-investments worth consideration ; and we may
see, perhaps, in the course of a very few years, large
joint-stock capitals poured out upon the half-tilled
lands of Britain, to the immense improvement both of
culture and cultivators. Doubtless, there will be hasty
speculations, failures, losses; but the money will be
there, — so much surplus capital locked up, — surely
in a better place than if it were with the last sur-
plusses, in repudiated loans and trainless railroads.
But even thus the ideal object of scientific agricul-
ture, the maximum of production, would not be as
certainly reached as by “la petite culture” of Bel-
gium and Lombardy. Why, then, may not the ex-
periment be made to combine the two, by means of
associate labor, in which every individual employed
on a farm, from the mere paid worker to the capital-
ist, should receive his proportion of the profits, the
muscle of the laborer and the skill of the scientific
man being credited fo them, as they easily may be,
as so much capital
Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his chapters on the prob-
able futurity of the laboring classes, which we would
gladly notice more at length did space allow, points
to some such arrangement as the certain goal of
modern industrial society.* It is at least a question
* The value of this “organization of industry,” (he remarks, in sum-
roing up his important discussions on this subject,) “ for healing the widen-

ing and embittering feud between the class of laborers and the class of
capitalists, must, I think, impress itself by degrees on all who habitually

“ey
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. 20r

deserving careful consideration, whether the benefits
of a plan which has been found already successful in
the Cornish mines and fisheries, and in various hand-
icrafts both in London and Paris, may not also be
extended to agriculture. Why should not, hereafter,
a whole parish, for example, be cultivated by one
large associate corporation, in which all the civilizing
appliances of the model lodging-houses might be
combined, without the least intrusion on family inde-
pendence, with the economy of a common kitchen,
wash-houses, stores, school, and library, — why not a
common place of worship also? The government
of such a corporation, even if every member pos-
sessed votes in proportion to his‘ capital, would al-
ways remain in the hands of the most wealthy and
skilful; while the very poorest would acquire self-
respect, independence, self-restraint, chivalrous and
self-sacrificing diligence, under the ennobling con-
sciousness of corporate life and permanent interest,
and under the wholesome pressure of the public
opinion of the community. The division of labor
might be carried out to an extent as yet unknown in
agriculture, and yet combined with a civilizing vari-
ety of occupation. The sales and purchases of the
establishment might be conducted by a single sales-
man, who could visit markets now inaccessible to
most farmers, with an enormous saving of that time,
trouble, and horse expenses which are now wasted in
market journeys by isolated farmers. At the same
time, it is by no means necessary that the whole pop-
ulation of such an establishment should be devoted
to agriculture. On the contrary, the maximum of

reflect on the condition and tendencies of modern society. . . . Although,
therefore, arrangements of this sort are now in their infancy, their muilti-
plication and growth, when once they enter into the general domain of
popular discussion, are among the things which may most confidently be
expected.””

Miss Martineau, also, in a letter to the “‘ Leader” newspaper, advocates
experiments of the kind to which we refer, and which are so important in
the adjustment of the labor question.

9* 1°
202 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

sewage manure being the condition of fertility, it
‘would be advantageous to admit a proportion of
artisans, who might send their goods up to the me-
tropolis, as the watchmakers of Penzance do now,
and while sharing in the blessings of country life, be
themselves a benefit to the soil. If the materials of
manufacture, such as tobacco, silk, or flax, were
grown on the farm, the amount of capital com-
bined would allow of machinery being erected to
work them up. The machinery need never be idle;
whether steam or water-power, there would be always
employment for it in grinding corn, in scutching flax,
or in pumping sewage manure; and thus the enor-
mous water-power of our moors might be made the
very agent of their cultivation, manufacture and agri-
culture might be combined in the same community,
and the civilization of Manchester spread the energy
which it possesses, and receive the health it wants,
amid the wasted solitudes of the Yorkshire hills.

This is but an ideal; imperfect, distant, perhaps
impossible; yet the increasing number of authorita-
tive names which sanction such experiments, affords
at least a fair ground of hope to any wise and be-
nevolent capitalists who may be inclined cautiously
to attempt, step by step, the realization of these or
analogous agricultural reforms.

And if this be not the ideal future agriculture of.
the world, still an ideal there is, to be revealed and
realized in God’s good time. Man stands upon the
earth to replenish and subdue it; to conquer the
brute phenomena of nature by obedience to her
laws; and the same God who has given him that
mission, has promised him, in a hundred passages
of Holy Writ, that he shall be enabled to fulfil it.
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 208

THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON.
[The North British Review, No. XXIX.]

Tue law of Laissez-faire, held by some of the
earlier political economists to be absolute and invi-
olable, is gradually receiving its due limitations,
without losing its ground as a law founded on the
right, or rather on the duty, of every man, to be self-
energizing and self-developed. “ Laissez-faire,” in
its extreme meaning of “no human government
whatsoever,” is in fact the ideal state of mankind,
the realization in society of Augustin’s “ Ama, et
fae quicquid vis;” and in proportion as men are
men, and their humanity on all points whatever is
developed and perfected, they may be safely left to
the suggestions of their own hearts and reason.

But “ Ama, et fac quicquid vis,” is by no means
identical with “ Ama teipsum, et fac quicquid vis ;”
and a state of society in which self-interest is the
tuling motive of action, is not to be treated as one
in which a one divine inspiration, a one reason, a
one purpose, rule all alike. And how far we are

1. The Principles of Political Economy, By J. §. Mitt. Second Edi-
tion. London, 1850. 2. Memorial to Lord John Russell and Sir George Grey
from the Metropolitan Sanitary Association. London, 1851. 38. Generat

eport of the. Sanitary State of the Laborers Great Britain. London,
1842. 4, Report of the, General Board if Health on the Supply of Water
to the Metropolis. App. I. Returns to the Queries addressed to the Water
Companies. II. sngecaany Reports and Evidence. III. Medical, Chemi-
eal, and Geological Evidence. London, 1850. 6. Report of Do. on the Ep-
idemic Cholera of 1848-9. Appendix (.B) to Do. Report by Mr. GRAINGER.
London, 1850. 6. A Microscopic Examination the Water supplied to
the Inhabitants of London. With Colored Plates. By Dr. ARTHUR Has-
BALL, London, 1850.
204 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

from this latter ideal state, how near to that former.
bestial one, we all know but too well. We are in
an abnormal, in what Scripture—in words which
will after all prove to be the most terse, deep, and
scientific—calls a “fallen” state; we have deflected
from our ideal; we have been untrue in every age
and clime to the laws and constitution of our spe-
cies. Overlooking this fact, the earlier. political
economists were too apt to look at the present ac-
cidents of human society as if they were its consti-
tutional and ideal phenomena. They often mistook
the tendencies of fallen man for eternal laws, and
commanded that he should be left to live an ideal
life of free self-government, while he was, de facto, a
slave to his own lusts and passions, and a tyrant to
those weaker than himself; and among the vulgar,
there have been always selfish, lazy, or lawless hearts,
ready to raise in response a cuckoo-cry of “ Leave
us to ourselves, — it is the law of the universe ;”
ignoring the fact, that to leave them to themselves,
means to leave those weaker than them to be their
rey.

the truth is, that in proportion as any man, or
nation, or class, are fallen; in proportion as they are
beasts, savages, or children ; thus unconditionally to
apply laissez-faire to them is as gross cruelty, in the
form of justice, as it would be to leave a kennel of
mad dogs to bite.each other; a tribe of savages to
be decimated by smallpox, ‘because there was no
demand for vaccination among them; a child to
run naked in the woods to shift for itself, and, if
not poisoned by wild berries or eaten by wolves, ‘de-
velop its individuality freely into a “ Peter the wild
boy.”

‘At “ the other pole of the antinomy,” as the Ger-
mans would say, stand the advocates of paternal
government. ‘These, too, have a ‘truth upon their
side; but these, like those advocates of laissez-faire
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 205 -

already referred to, have turned their truth into a
falsehood and a tyranny, simply by urging it unre-
servedly. It is true that all government should be pa-
ternal ; but then the word paternal must be defined,
—-and defined in accordance with the duties of a
father. It should, doubtless, help and guide all those
who are unable to help and guide themselves. It
should coerce those who are blind to the interests of
their neighbors and the commonweal. In short, if
any class be beasts, they must have tamers; if sav-
ages, they must have tutors; if children, they must
have parents. But for what purpose? To keep
them what they are? Surely not; but to raise them
to that which they are not,—to make the beasts
men; the savages civilized; the children adult and
self-dependent sons,—in short, to restore them to
that very ideal from whence they have fallen. “ Pa-
ternal governments,” so called, have ignored this;
they have ignored the fact of there being a possible
ideal of man,—a redemption ready for fallen man,
a kingdom of God on earth, — and therefore it hap-
pens, significantly enough, that those governments .
which have been the most doggedly quasi-paternal,
have been either utterly godless, or else Romish, —
that is, belonging to the religion which denies indi-
vidual responsibility, the right to individual devel-
opment, and a really human, not a merely ascetic
and saintly, ideal of man. The most complete pa-
ternal government of our own times, that of Austria,
has an explicit combination of both these elements,
—a mixture of sheer Atheism and sheer superstition,
both in governors and governed.

The office of all government, paternal or other, is,
as the Bible sets forth, self-sacrifice, and not,selfish
advantage; and the perfect method of fulfilling that
self-sacrifice, is gradually to render its own office un-
necessary ; to teach its subjects, not merely to obey
it, but to do without it; to be, in short, truly pater-
206 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

nal, by educating its children into sons, who may go
forth and labor freely for themselves, and on their
own responsibility, according to the laws which have
been taught them, and with that sense of a common
brotherhood, a common family interest, which they
have acquired under their father’s teaching. :

The advocates of either method, then, properly
limited and explained, seem to have a truth on their
side. There is surely some one mesothetic truth,
deeper and wider than either, which underlies and
explains both, and to act on which is to act on both
at once without violating either. The discovery —
or resuscitation — of such a truth seems to be the
chief problem of social government; and to be es-
pecially needed, and therefore perhaps especially -
easy to discover, in this present age.

But, in the mean time, there are practical canons
enough already laid down to guide us safely in our
mode of dealing with particular cases. One such is
given in the following passage from the second vol-
ume of Mr. John Stuart Mill’s “ Political Economy”
(page 521) :—

‘ +

§ 7. We have observed that, as a general rule, the business of
life is better performed when those who have an immediate inter-
est in it are left. to take their own course, uncontrolled either by
the mandate. of the law or the meddling of any public functionary.
The persons, or some of the persons, who do the work, are likely
to be better judges than the government of the means of attain-
ing the particular end at which they aim. Were we to suppose,
what is not very probable, that the government has possessed itself
of the best knowledge which had been acquired up to a given time
by the persons most skilled in the occupation, even then the individ-
ual agent has so much stronger and more direct an interest in the
result, that the means are far more likely to be improved and per-
fected if left to his uncontrolled choice. But if the workman is
generally the best selector of means, can it be affirmed, with the
same universality, that the consumer, or person served, is the most
competent judge of the end? Is the buyer always qualified to
judge of the commodity? If not, the presumption in favor of the
competition of the market does not apply to the case; and if the
commodity be one in the quality of which society has much at

€
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 207

stake, the balance of advantages may be in favor of some mode
or degree of intervention, by the authorized representatives of the
collective interest of the State.

§ 8. Now, the proposition that the consumer is a’ competent
judge of the commodity, can be admitted only with numerous
abatements and exceptions. He is generally the best judge
(though even this is not true ariversall ) of the material objects
produced for his use. These are Rested to supply some physical
want, or gratify some taste or inclination, respecting which wants
or inclinations there is no appeal from the person who feels them;
or they are the means and appliances of some occupation for the
use of the persons engaged in it, who may be presumed to be
prtees of the things required in their own habitual employment.

ut there are other things of the worth of which the demand of

the market is by’no means a test ; things of which the utility does
not consist in ministering to inclinations, nor in serving the daily
uses of life, and the want of which is least felt where the need is
_ greatest. This is peculiarly true of’ those things which are chiefly
used as tending to raise the character of human beings. The un-
cultivated cannot be competent judges of cultivation. Those who
most need to be made wiser and better usually desire it least, and
if they desired it, would be incapable of finding the way to it by
their own lights. It will continually happen, on the voluntary
system, that the end not being desired, the means will not be pro-
vided at all, or that the persons requiring improvement having an
imperfect or altogether erroneous concéption of what they want,
the supply called forth by the demand of the market will be any-
“thing but what is really required.

Now these observations, like those which precede
them, apply directly to the Water Supply of large
towns. Here the end proposed is pure and whole-
some water. That the consumer is not the best
judge of this, is sufficiently proved by the facts, —
that people are often content for years to drink,
under the name of water, fluids which physicians
know well, and indeed often warn them in vain, to
be mere diluted poison, — that the substances which
make water unwholesome are generally impalpable
except to microscopic examination or chemical tests,
that the diseases produced or aggravated by them,
such as calculous disorders, dyspepsia, cholera, &c.,
are not suspected by the mass of water consumers
208 . KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

to have the slightest connection with the liquid
which they drink,— and that, therefore, to use Mr.
Mill’s words, the presumption in favor of the compe-
tition of the market does not apply without limita-
tion to water supplies.

Moreover, to continue our comment on the para-
graph which we have just quoted, cleanliness may
surely be classed among those things “the want of
which is least felt where the need is greatest.’ If
the uncultivated are no competent judges of cultiva-
tion, surely the dirty are equally incompetent judges
of cleanliness. If~ Mr. Mill’s remarks refer, as he
well says, to those things which have a peculiar
tendency to “raise the character of human beings,”
surely cleanliness, which stands in first rank among
such things, is within its scope. It is surely, as the
old proverb says, next to godliness; without it edu-
cation is half powerless, for self-respect is all but im-
possible. We do not speak of the stains contracted
by honest labor, which the butcher or the nightman
washes off after his daily work, and returns at once
to decency and comfort; but of the habitual in-
grained personal dirt, where washing is either impos-
sible or not cared for; the dirt which extends itself
from the body to the clothes, the house, the lan-.
guage, the thoughts; the dirt of thousands and ten
thousands in our great cities, who literally never
dream of washing, simply because it has been to
them frem childhood a luxury as impossible as turtle
or champagne. ‘Among these the demand for water,
like that for education, is exactly in inverse propor-
tion to the need. Are these creatures, at once ani-
mals, savages, and children, to be left for pure water
to the laws of market demand? They do not even
require it for drinking. Gin and beer are their bev-
erages. We shall see hereafter what strong excuses
they have for resorting to these even when water is
at hand; much more, then, when for washing their
_THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONSON. 209

rags it has to be begged or stolen, and that only
three times a week. But there is surely another case
in which the law of laissez-faire admits of modifica-
tion, namely, when the commodity is one which is
necessary to the consumer, but of very small profit
to the producer. There are things which would be
incalculable blessings, we may boldly say, which are
absolute necessaries, to the poor, with which private
speculators have but a very small interest in provid-
ing them, on account of the small price which they
are able to give in return; and water is one of
these. Too many town Isndletds are well aware
what very little direct interest they have in seeing
that the wretched houses from which they draw their
rents are properly watered and sewered. Their ten-
ants are careless about cleanliness. They do not
refuse to take a house because it is unprovided with
the commonest decencies of life. Or again, they
must live near their work, and take any hovel which
they can find. Or again, the increasing demand for
houses treads so close upon the heéls of the increas-
ing supply, that the landlord can obtain an exor-
bitant rent, let the state of the house be what it
will, and let it again the very day the house is unoc-
cupied. All these influences are more or less at
work in the crowded districts of our great cities, and
are especially strong in vast tracts of the metropolis;
and wheresoever this is the case, any attention to
water or sewage on the part of the landlord is a
mere alms, a waste of capital in a commercial point
of view. It is true, his tenants are decimated by
rickets and consumption, fever and cholera: but he
lives in a very different quarter. His own house is
comparatively well watered and sewered..

Let the galled jade wince,
His withers are unwrung.

And, in the mean time, his tenants are too ignorant,
too careless, above all too poor, to make the neces-
210 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

sary improvements for themselves; and being, at
most, tenants by the quarter or the half-year, they
cannot be expected to invest their earnings and
create a demand for permanent improvements in
houses which they may leave in a few months.
This is, we assert, the normal state of all the poorer
districts of London, of too many provincial towns,
and of the greater part of the agricultural districts.
Is it one which is to be left to right itself? It has
been given up hitherto to laissez-faire and individual
self-interest ; and as for the fruits of it, if our own
eyes and noses will not demonstrate them to us in a
walk through any of the poorer streets in London,
one single statistical fact should be enough to carry
conviction to the most obstinate supporter of no-
government. When the cholera of 1832-3 ravaged
London, one person out of every 255 died. That
this epidemic was, if not entirely caused, yet in-
finitely aggravated, by the defective quality and
quantity of the London water and sewage, which
latter item very much depends upon the quantity of
the water supply, was notoriously and indisputably
proved by medical and scientific evidence of every
kind. We need only instance the invaluable “ Re-
port on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring
Population,” by Mr. Chadwick. That Report was
published in 1842. The cholera returned in 1849.
Had the sanitary condition of London improved one
whit in the interval? So far from it, the deaths
from the same cause in the second attack amounted
to ONE in every ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE, OF
four sevenths more than in the first one. This fact
we think needs no comment.

While such a patent practical refutation stares
us in the face, we cannot help wondering at the
assertions of a certain portion of the press, that
Government had much better leave the Londoners
alone; that they know. their own interests, and
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 211

can manage their own water supplies perfectly for
themselves.

No doubt they can; but can they manage the
water supply of the poor? If they can, why have
they not managed it? They may understand their
own interests; but do they understand the in-
terests of the poor? And will they prefer their
own interest, or that of the poor, when the two
happen to clash, as they do in this case? If they
do, why are things as they are? Surely, if the
existing water companies, the parochial and district
boards of the metropolis, and the general demand
of the London public, be so competent to induce
a proper water supply for the future, that compe-
tence ought to be shown by the proper state of the
water supply at present. Similar causes should pro-
duce similar effects. We can judge of what the
metropolis will do for itself, only by what it has
done. Let us see what it has done, on the method
of private speculation by quasi-competing, but real-
ly monopolist companies.

Nine years ago, Mr. J. Liddle, one of the medical
officers of the Whitechapel Union, stated that, in
his district —

There was not, in the poorer districts, such a thing as a house
with the water laid on, or furnished with a sink for getting rid of
the waste; that they had only a very scanty supply from stand-
pipes, kept in tubs in the rooms in which they lived (and therefore
saturated with the gaséous and organic matters given off in the
breath, . . . . perhaps with worse); .... that their washing
consisted of merely passing very dirty linen through very dirty
water (the hardness of the water preventing the soap from lather-
ing properly), causing a smell most offensive and injurious to their

health ; that the filth of their dwellings was excessive, and that of
their persons likewise.

We omit the sickening accounts of the utter
want of sewage, as foreign to our present subject ;
though it must never be forgotten, that, without a
plentiful and constant supply of water, the most
212 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

scientific and complete sewage system is a nullity.
Now, every clergyman and medical man is aware,
that this is no exceptional case; that there were,
nine years ago, thousands of houses all over Lon-
don in the same state as these Whitechapel ones,
and worse; and that all public authorities, water
companies, and landlords, must have been aware
of their existence; for Mr. Liddle’s evidence, with
much more to the same purpose, appeared in the
Report of 1842, to which we have just alluded,
—a work which, attacking, as it did, vested interests
innumerable, was sure not to have escaped the no-
tice of the parties interested, —to have opened their
eyes, if not their hearts, to the deadly consequences
of their neglect, — and to have aroused them, if any-
thing would, to examine into the state of the poorer
districts which they professed to supply, and remedy
evils patent to every sense, — of those not interested
in insensibility. They cannot, therefore, for the last
nine years at least, plead ignorance of their own
laches. Let us see, now, what improvement they
have effected during that period.

Letter From JoHn Lippe, Esq.

4 Alie-place, Jan. 5, 1850.

Dear Srr,— There are several: courts in the Whitechapel
Union which are without a supply of water. In all there is a de-
ficient supply. The poor inhabitants are for the most part sup-
plied with water from a stand-tap, the water from which flows
daily for a short time (from one hour to three hours). Some of
the houses where the poor reside are three stories hig ; and as the
water only flows for a limited time in the court, the lodgers in the
attics of these high houses must either go without water entirely,
or obtain a limited supply with a great deal of labor and loss of
time. :

In Johnson’s charge, where more cases of illness have occurred
than in any other locality in. Whitechapel, the only supply of water
for the inhabitants is a pump, the water from which is said to be
unfit to drink, and the poor people are obliged to obtain their sup-
ply from a neighboring court, and they have great difficulty in
procuring it, the inhabitants objecting to let them have any.
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 213

In Cartwright-street, the inhabitants are supplied from a well,
the water from which is pumped into a'tank, and pipes are con-
nected with it, from which the butts in the houses in the neighbor-
hood are supplied. But the machinery is sometimes out of repair,
and the inhabitants have then to obtain water elsewhere. In some
instances the water-butt is adjacent to the privy.

In Hebrew-place and Love-court, Middlesex-street, the tenants
of one of the landlords are without any supply of water except that
which they may obtain from a pump. Here these poor people say
that the water from the pump is so bad that they cannot use it,
and they are obliged to beg it from their neighbors. In this case
the landlord had a dispute with the Water Company, in conse-

uence of their giving him notice to raise the water-rate during
the rebuilding of some of the houses; alleging, as the reason, that
the quantity of water which was required for the mortar of the
houses was much more than was needful for the occupants. The
landlord resisted their demand, and the water was cut off.

In the month of August last, a complaint was made by a party
residing in the eastern extremity of Whitechapel, to the trustees,
of the bad state of the water which was delivered into their prem-
ises. A sample of the water was shown to the trustees; it was
most foul and fetid. A committee of the trustees was appointed
to make inquiries into the case, and found it as described. The
Water Company was written to, and new pipes were laid down.
Whether the Company made any deduction from their annual
charge, I do not know.

The water which is delivered into my own house is unfit to
drink, unless previously filtered. It is usually turbid. All com-
plaints are of course useless. The only reply would be to a com-
plaint, “If you don’t like it, we will cut it off.”

Very truly yours,
* Joun LIDDLE.

P. S. — The trustees recently passed a resolution complaining
- of the bad quality, deficient quantity, and extravagant charge for
watering the parish.

ALEX. Barn, Esq.

Assistant-Secretary, General Board of Health.

Poor Mr. Liddle! And this is his latest news!
Surely “wisdom crieth in the streets, and no man
regardeth her.”

And let no one suppose this to be an exceptional
case. We distinctly deny it to be such. We assert
that there is hardly a group of houses of the poorer
class in London, in which the supply of water is not
214 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

scanty in quantity, deficient in quality, and supplied
by a method which defiles and wastes it as much as
possible, while the sewage, till the late Government
improvements were commenced, was bestially in-
efficient.

“In the city of London,” says that energetic
apostle of baths and wash-houses, Mr. Bowie, “the
water is in general very scanty, and sometimes alto-
gether wanting; often thick, muddy, putrid, unfit for
use.” He enumerates, “among a host of others,”
thirteen courts and alleys where the inhabitants
state that “there was no water laid on.” “ They
got it where they could, by begging, borrowing, and
from the neighboring pumps.” “They have been
without water for eight years, and often more in
need of it than victuals.” “ Water dipped with pails,
and very dirty;” ... “often looks quite yellow;”

. “only fit to rinse a pail or cleanse the privy ;”

. “tastes as if putrefied, and often contains
worms an inch long.” “A gully-hole in connection
with the pump.” “ There is also,’ say Mr. Bowie
and many other witnesses, “ an evil of considerable
magnitude likely to arise from the practice of hav-
ing public pumps, or stand-cocks. It is that, as
women and children have to go and wait their turn,
they may come in contact with persons of the very
worst character, hear very bad language, and at last
become regardless of decency.” And this, be it
never forgotten, is the state of things in the only
part of London which has a local government.

The same disgusting evidence is given by Dr.
Hector Gavin as to a considerable part of Shore-
ditch, one half of Hackney, and nearly the whole
of Bethnal Green, in themselves rather great towns
than districts. Perhaps, too, some of our readers
may have heard of Jacob’s Island, Bermondsey,
where — until private persons totally unconnected
with the locality interfered —a respectable popula-
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 245

_tion of dock-workers had literally no other water to
drink than that of the same stagnant open sewer into
which the whole filth of their houses was thrown.

All these instances, with the exception of Jacob’s
Island, are north of the Thames; but when we add
to these the still worse state of the poorer dwellings
on the south bank, throughout the vast and crowded
‘tracts of Lambeth, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, South-
wark, and Newington, (the chief seats of cholera,) the
whole presents a: picture more like some foul and
fantastic nightmare than an account of the metropo-
lis of the greatest nation in Europe.

And at what cost,.does the reader fancy, could a
supply of excellent water be provided for every house,
at high pressure (thus diminishing by one half the
dangers to life and property by fire)? . For less than
threepence a week per house.

The blame of all this must be divided between
the house-owners, the Water Companies, and the
Local Boards. Of the inefficiency of these latter
in the whole matter, the state of things gives full
practical proof. Not that they are composed of
worse men than other local boards, but that the
constitution of London is different from that of any
other large city in these islands. In almost every
other city or town there is one central and corporate
authority, composed of men of all ranks, and con-
taining a good propoytion of bankers, manufacturers,
merchants, and other men of a class above igno-
rance, hasty and reckless greed, and private jobbery.
In any water scheme, these men will have the most
important, if not the sole voice. If the corporation
are the suppliers of water, the central authority has
full play, and Government interference, except in
the form of inspection, as in the case of railroads, is
unnecessary. Even if the town be supplied by one
or more water companies, the corporation will be
able, as in the case of Nottingham, to make their
216 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

own terms with them, with a due regard to the pub-
lic benefit, not only as a matter of benevolence, but
also of poor-rates. In most cases the most wealthy,
best educated, and public-spirited members of the
corporation will be among the capitalists of the
water scheme; and thus, as in the case of most
Scotch and North-country towns, the general con-
solidation of different interests will work well and
wholesomely, especially if the area of the town be
small enough for a single scheme to be projected
and earried out by one or two public-spirited men,
who command the respect and attention of their
fellow-townsmen. Yet even in these cases, we. find
complaints of competition between different com-
panies, and longings for more complete union and
centralization. Mr. Hawksley, the celebrated engi-
neer, in his evidence on the New Nottingham Water
Supply, which has become famous from its extraor-
dinary success in all but annihilating the causes
of cholera between 1833 and 1849, speaks strongly
against the disadvantages, even there, of want of
united management. It is needless to quote further
evidence on this point; a summary of the whole
question seems to us to be contained in the follow-
ing opinion of Professor Clark, of Aberdeen, the jus-
tice of which, we think, will be at once evident to
all our readers.

Living in a town (Aberdeen) with a population of nearly 70,000
inhabitants, where the water is supplied, not by a joint-stock com-
pany, but by the Commissioners of Police, who are elected by the
rate-payers, it has often occurred to me to question the policy of
allowing water to be supplied to a town by a jointstock company,
in any case whatsoever. The extensive pipes laid throughout all
the streets, and branching to all the houses, cannot conveniently,
nor without a great sacrifice of expense, be laid in a second set,
much less a third; therefore competition, such as occurs in the
supply of bread and meat, or of like articles of demand, is out of
the question in regard to the supply of water on a large scale.
The establishing of a.joint-stock company for the supply of a town
with. water, is-the establishing a monopoly of trading ‘persons, hay-
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 217

ing the power, without responsibility, of taxing the inhabitants for
their own benefit. The practical check on any crying excess in
their charge, and on their heedlessness about supplying water of
a proper quality, lies mainly in the apprehension of’ a second com-
pany being established; but since no new works can be under
taken without an Act of Parliament, and without risk of competi-
tion with the old company, such as almost always proves ruinous
to both; and since, in order to establish the new company, an
agitation in the community has to take place, the check is not of a
desirable kind; neither is it effectual in the generality of cases.

Now, Dr. Clark, it will be seen, goes even further
than we do; for we have pointed out cases in which
a joint-stock company might exist harmlessly, by
being all but identified with the corporation itself.
But it must be remembered, that in the metropolis
this possibility does not exist. There is there abso-
lntely no central or corporate authority. With the
exception of the city itself, with “its very badly con-
stituted, and very badly administered local govern-
ment,” (to quote Mr. J. 8. Mill’s words,) it is in
reality a mere congeries of huge overgrown parishes,
each a large town in itself, but in general with no
authorities but parochial ones, and the innumerable,
confused, and complicated boards of surveyors, trus-
tees, &c. &c., which have grown up, they hardly know
how themselves, according to special exigencies.
Hence no-unity in road-making, no unity in sewerage,
no unity in water supply. All London drives through
a great street in one parish, yet that parish alone often
thas to pay for the whole wear and tear. Or perhaps
parish A will not go to the expense of improving the -
upper end of Blank Street, because parish B persist
in leaving the lower end of ita slough. Parish A can-
not, or rather, till the happy revolution of sewerage
governments, two years ago, could not, drain itself,
because parish B, lying lower, refused to lower its
sewers. Or-parish A and B, having each their own
private interests, and, alas for poor human nature!
their own private pets, and relations, and jobs, ran

10
218 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

each of them their own huge useless sewer to the
river, along a high and therefore comparatively use-
less level; when if they had combined, they might
have run one along a lower level, saving half the
expense, and doing the work effectually. And as
for water supply, parish A, B, and all the rest of the
letters feel it most honestly a matter beyond them, —
so vast and important, that like all vast and impor-
tant things, the only power capable of coping with it
is — blind chance. :

Moreover, the local governments of London are
especially in the hands of the shopkeepers and the
owners of small tenements. The proportion of manu-
facturers and large capitalists, except in the city, is
‘by no means great. The noblemen who own London
land have generally let it pass out of their own con-
trol on long building leases, and confined their real
care to their county estates. Few or no gentlemen
have a strong interest in London parochial govern-
ment; and thus the vast majority of London parishes,
perhaps the whole of those which require water and
sewerage, are in the hands of shopkeepers, middle-
men, and persons bound up with them by various
ties, often more potent than disinterested. Thus in
any sanitary case, the same body of men are too
often both criminal and judge, and the well-known
abomination of a bench of game-preserving squires
sitting in judgment on a poacher is enacted “en
grand ” at every vestry, by some hundreds of shop-
keepers, with this slight difference, that the lives of
human beings, and not of hares, are in question.
Doubtless, the London middle classes have many
good qualities, —all classes have, for that matter, —
but that they are not the people among whom one
would look especially for either chivalrous self-sacri-
fice or scientific enlightenment, let their conduct in
the matter of the Smithfield nuisance witness. That
something or other steels them to evils patent to every
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 219

medical man, the present state of London proves ;
and even the best of them, in the hurry of business
and the unceasing struggle of competition, now be-
coming daily more and more demoralized by puffery
and adulteration, are too apt to thrust out of their
sight and mind any investments of capital but those
which promise the most immediate returns. The
whole modern habits of the middle classes.in great
cities tend to make them live from hand to mouth; to
forget foresight for present gain; to be yearly more
and more swayed by individual or trade-interests,
less and less alive to corporate ones, least of all to
the interests of those classes below them, whose
welfare, however surely, yet still only indirectly and
invisibly affects their own. And these evils are daily
-increasing. While we write, puffery spreads, adul-
teration, as in the case of substituting chiccory for
coffee, openly triumphs, and insults men like Mr.
Baring, who attempt to prevent it; slop-selling
thrives, and master sweaters become public officials
and lawgivers to the metropolis..... Conceive
-intrusting the water and sewerage of their work-
men’s dwellings to the tender mercies of Nebuchad-
nezzar & Co.! —

There appear to us to be only two methods of
making anything like organized or harmonious sani-
tary reform in the metropolis possible. One is, to
‘incorporate all parishes either north or south of the
Thames, within the bills of mortality, into that to
which they really belong, the City of London; and
to make their constitution as democratic as possible,
giving, if it can be done, a vote in vestry not merely
to householders, but to every lodger, male or female,
above the age of twenty-one; in order that the
poor creatures, who now suffer most from public

_neglect, may have some voice at least in its re-
~ moval.
But this, if not altogether Utopian, is certainly a
220 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

difficult and far distant change; and, in the mean
time, there appears to be ‘one alternative, the inter-
ference of Government authority. Whatever just
and time-honored jealousy of such, interference there
may be in the minds of many, ought to be outbal-
anced by the recollection that the British dislike of
Government interference arose from exactly the op-
posite cause from that which is now pleaded against
it. Government interference was repulsed in old
times, in order that the free efforts of the many
might not be overridden by the few, by a clique, or
by a despot; to repulse it in this case, is to leave the
many,—the whole, in fact,—of the working classes
of the metropolis at the mercy of the few, for the
supply of a vital necessary. The many and the
few have changed places. Her Majesty’s Govern-
ment, if it brought forward a bill for supplying
London with water, and compelling its extension to
every dwelling, would surely be representing the
feelings and interests of the great mass of London-
ers far better than either the local boards or the water
companies as yet have done.

With some such views as these, we conceive, a
society, calling themselves * The Metropolitan Sani-
tary Association,” have memorialized ‘the Government
in a temperate and weighty address, to which they
append a letter from Mr. John Stuart Mill, in answer
to queries of theirs on the subject. In Mr. Mill’s eyes,
the question of Government interference with the
‘Water Supply “is a question of general policy,
rather than of political economy ;” a wholesome re-
‘buke, whether intentional or not, to that party which
make a few economic canons, discovered by wiser
men than themselves, the absolute measures of all
things in earth, and in heaven also, when they
trouble themselves with that distant and unimpor-
tant locality.

The whole letter is, as was to be expected, full of
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 221

broad and weighty truths. Mr. Mill acknowledges
the impossibility. of any real competition in water
supply; the necessity of monopoly, and therefore,
when that monopoly is exercised by private indi-
viduals, of slavery; the defective administration of
joint-stock company directors (on which point he
has already spoken in his Political Economy) ; the
preference to be given to municipal authority ; the
non-existence of any such authority in London; the
probability of the Government being best able to
originate, if not to carry out, a-scheme of this kind;
and, after giving due weight to the proper jealousy
ef Government coercion and meddling, which he
justly praises as a sentiment to which this country
owes the chief points of superiority which its Gov-
ernment possesses over those of the Continent, he
eoncludes by proposing that, when a properly con-
stituted local body shall exist in London, the water
supply shall, under proper securities, be delivered up.
to its charge; and that, in the mean time, the work
will be most fittingly intrusted to a Commissioner
appointed by the Government, and responsible to
Parliament, like the Commissioners of Poor-Laws.

It is in vain to quote the late great improvement
in the North British water supplies, and thence to
argue for the non-necessity of Government inter-
ference. That such an improvement has taken
place without compulsion, is an honor to Scotland
and the rest of the North, but it is no test of the
power of laissez-faire in. other parts of Great Britain.
London is not. Glasgow, nor Reading Paisley, nor
Oxford Aberdeen,—nor any twelve towns in the.
South of England at all analogous to the twelve in
the North which Mr. Stirratt, bleacher, of Paisley,
honorably mentions; nor (it-is a Southron who pens
these words) is the slow and short-sighted Southron
the canny, shifty, far-seeing Scot, with that mingled
daring and caution of his which enables him to:
222 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

take the newest hint of science, without involving
himself in the building of card castles and the rid-
ing of hobbies. In looking through these Govern-
ment Reports,a Scot may well feel proud of the
testimony they bear to the civilization, and public
spirit, and scientific excellence of his countrymen.
But all Scotch savans must not expect to get the
same hearing for their wisdom on the south side
of the Humber which they do on the north. In
their case the saying, that “a prophet has no honour
in his own country” is strangely reversed. Playfair
and Smith of Deanston are listened to in the Lothi-
ans; Clark and Angus Smith in Aberdeen and Glas-
glow. But South-Saxon soil still remains half tilled,
and South-Saxon towns unsewered and unwaitered.
The same fault to which old chroniclers attribute the
ruinous weakness of England before the Norman
Conquest still besets all her doings; the isolating,
individualizing selfishness, which makes every man
“run to his own house,” and leaves the common-
weal to shift for itself; the stubborn slowness,
which is as dogged in the support of prescriptive
wrongs as it is in that of prescriptive rights, — these
make the Londoner shut his ears to facts, and sub-
mit to evils which make his whole existence one of
the strangest jumbles of artificial civilization and
primeval barbarism which the world has ever beheld.

What, for instance, is the quality of water which
the London Water Companies, in the face of scien-
tific warnings and public remonstrances, now find it
consistent with their interest and the full market de-
mand to supply?

In the first place, without exception, their sup-
plies swarm with living animalcules, the presence of
which, putting aside its disgustingness, as a mere
matter of feeling, must be considered as indicative
of unwholesomeness. These creatures are nature’s
scavengers,—their food is decomposing organic

+
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 223

matter, animal and vegetable; they attend on putre-
faction, as surely as the vultures on the fallen car-
cass. In this light they may be considered as
warnings against disease rather- than causes of it;
but many of them are capable of living and multi-
plying within the human body,— many more of
producing irritation in the intestinal canal, by the
silicious shells and spines, finer than the points of
the finest needle, which envelop them; many minute
fungi, also, can propagate disease in a healthy or-
ganic tissue which has been inoculated with them.
If any reader wish to instil into his imagination a
wholesome terror and disgust of these wondrous
atomies, we must refer him to the works and the
evidence of Dr. Arthur Hassall, who has devoted
many years to the investigation of this branch of
microscopic science. Now, with these creatures the
whole of the water companies’ supply teems; and
not only with living animal and vegetable produc-
tions, but, worse still, with dead and decaying or-
ganic matter. The worst in this respect are those
which supply the Surrey side of the metropolis,
where, accordingly, the ravages of cholera have been
principally felt. Several of these actually distribute
to their wretched customers unfiltered Thames wa-
ter —in a word, their own diluted sewage, swarm-
ing with the same animalcules which haunt the
sewer mouths; and, in addition to these, Dr. Hassall
has actually detected, on various occasions, matters
connected with sewage, such as black carbonaceous
matter, portions of the husk and down hairs of wheal,
cells of potato, granules of starch, fragments of
muscular fibre, tinged with bile. —We presume that
the water supply of ancient Jerusalem must have
been somewhat different to that of modern London.
We do not require the horrors of a blockade to
bring on us the threat of Rabshakeh to “the men
who sit on the wall.”
224 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

The water of the companies north of the Thames
gives a less disgusting “ fauna,” the water being by
several companies filtered more or less, —though we
should say, less rather than more, to judge by the
list of “ Actinophrydes, Desmidiz, Diatomaces, En-
tomostrace, Annellida,” and other filth-bred monsters,
which, with occasional Thames Paramecia from the
sewer mouths, make up the list of their fertility. In
one case, the water which professed to be brought
from pure country regions, is adulterated, if not with
Thames water, still with water from the lea, and
furnishing, as Dr. Hassall says, a mixture of ditch,
spring, river, and well water, swarming with or-
ganic life. Another, while it professes to derive all
its water from a canal above the influence of the
tide, has a communication with the sea within the
influence of the tide and Blackwall Creek; and the
other supplies are drawn, either from the Thames
or from ponds and rivers which are exposed to all
the evil influences of stagnation, farm-yard ditches,
abundant vegetation, and a public which disre-
gards old Hesiod’s warning about the sacredness of
springs; and their supplies exhibit accordingly the
animals and vegetables bred under such circum-
stances.

Such — for the whole evidence is too disgusting
for us to enter into details —is the result of several
hundred examinations of water, obtained from the
service pipes of the different companies, and there-
fore in the state in which it is consumed by the
public. And when it is remembered, that on the
present cistern system, every house-cistern in. the
great majority of houses is an alembic for further
putrefaction, further multiplication of these wrig-
gling monsters, for the absorption of lead from the
cistern itself, of sulphuretted hydrogen from the
neighboring closets, even if none is already present
(as is often the case in the South London water)
THE WATER. SUPPLY OF LONDON. 225

from the Thames itself; that wherever this water is
‘procured from stand-pipes, it has to remain in the
dwelling rooms of the consumers, to give out its air,
and absorb the vapors of their breath—we will
neither finish our sentence, nor make any comment
thereon.

It appears, moreover, that this water, even when
filtered, is of a high degree of hardness, ranging, by
Dr. Clark’s soap-test, from 12 to 16: degrees, and
thereby entailing on the inhabitants a heavy tax, by
the increased consumption of soap and tea, &c. &c.,
required by hard water, probably of more than dou-
ble on the whole soap, and one half on the whole
tea, consumed. When we add to this, that in order
to abridge this undue use of soap, soda is largely
used by all London washer-women, to the speedy
destruction, as all housewives know, of the fabric
washed; that from the experiments of M. Soyer, the
hardness of the water interferes with all culinary
processes; that, as is well known to every groom, it
is highly injurious to. horses, and, indeed, is naturally
refused by all cattle which can obtain soft; without
mentioning the chapped skin, and fruitless scrubbing,
which attend every attempt to wash in unboiled
water in most parts of London; when we sum up
all this, we have such a count against the present
system as certainly justifies Dr. Sutherland’s dry and
cautious remark, that it is, “something like a posi-
tive injustice to give the poor no alternative between
want and cleanliness, and the labor and expense in-
volved in washing with water of from 11 to 16 de-
grees of hardness, when a softer supply might be
attainable.”

There seems to be great reason to suspect, also,
that the use of hard water increases dyspeptic com-
plaints, and makes epidemics more severe and more
fatal. Such certainly seems to be the conclusion
from the following fact.

10*
226. KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Since the epidemic in 1832, the population in Glasgow south of
the Clyde may be considered to have remained in the same state,
with the exception of the introduction of the soft-water supply.
In one district, the parish of Gorbals, the attack of 1832 was fear-
ful, while, in the attack of 1849, it furnished comparatively a small .
number of cases, the epidemic in the other parts of Glasgow being,
as in the former cholera attack, very severe. The unanimous
opinion of the Medical Society was, that this comparative immu-
nity was owing to the soft-water supply.

Similar evidence is given from Paisley; but
whether we attribute this particular improvement
to the quantity, or, with the local medical men, to
the quality of the new supply, there cannot be a
doubt that the substitution of soft for hard water has
a tendency to exterminate another class of diseases,
one of the most frightful and agonizing which can
beset humanity. In Paisley, it appears, calculous
disorders, formerly very numerous, have during the
last ten years all but utterly disappeared, except in
parts not accessible to the soft-water supply, or in
cases from the chalk counties of England,—i. e.,
from the strata which now supply hard water to
London, and from which almost all the proposed
plans wish still to supply it.

One more count remains of our general indict-
ment against the present private monopolies of Lon-
don water, and that a most important one. It is the
extraordinary fact, that “under existing management
the first and chief necessity to be provided for by
water companies is waste of the supply, while the
domestic consumption has occupied in reality only
a secondary position.”

The actual proportion of waste to domestic con-
sumption, even under a system of constant supply
by stand-pipes, seems, from the general carelessness
with which matters are managed, to be very difficult
to ascertain; in many parts of London it is at least
as three to one. No fact can speak more strongly to
the utter wrongness of the whole system, its ineffi-
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 227

ciency and its expensiveness: its inefficiency, in that
the greater part of the supply is lost in the process
of distribution, and the consumers have, of course,
to pay for what they do not use; and its expensive-
ness, in that a far larger amount of capital is in-
vested in the business than is actually required, not
merely to supply the present quantity to the con-
sumers, but to supply a quantity equal to their real
needs.* It seems at first sight most puzzling to un-
derstand how such enormous waste can be consistent
with any remunerative profits. But so itis; for the
companies exist, and stoutly desire and struggle to
continue in existence, leaving us to suppose that
their profits must be, if not exorbitant, still far larger
than, under a proper economic system, they need be ;
and these companies are now erying out for “full
compensation ” for their waste as well as their supply.

But, on the whole, we do not complain of these
companies. They have but followed the maxims
which all English society follows in these days, — to
get as much for their money as the public will allow
them. The Grand Junction Company, the state of
whose water supply is far superior to the rest, hardly
forms an exception; for there being, as they them-
selves state, few or no groups of poor houses in their
district, their customers, being of the better class,
have, of course, kept up a demand for a better arti-
cle ; while those whieh supply the masses have been
able freely to distribute an inferior article, at a price
as high as they dared; and if men do not dare some-
what, when in possession of a monopoly, they must
be more than men.

After all, these companies have but gone the way
of the world. Beginning with a selfish competition,
they have ended in monopoly. Even as two large
trouts rush out, each from his separate nook, first to
clear the pool of small fry, and then to settle com-
228 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

petitively the exact extent of their respective beats,
till after many battles, consuming strength and time
in fighting instead of feeding, the stronger-establishes
himself at the head, and the weaker at the tail of
the pool, and there is peace, and monopoly for each
over all wretched smaller creatures, — even so have
they. Nine long years was one London company
engaged. in competition against three others, and se-
cured its ground at last: at, of course, a waste of
capital and labor —a “disastrous struggle,” as they
themselves call it—so painful to their memory “that
they feel it unnecessary to enter on it.” ... Poor
things! But they, and fairly enough, too, intimate
that they were not the only offenders. “ The blame
of what was wrong must at least be shared by the
Legislature, which had sanctioned and encouraged
the competition.” “ The public, too, must also share
the blame; the instances were numerous during the
competition, where the company was requested by
memorial to drive mains in some particular locality,
the memorialists agreeing to take a supply on cer-
tain terms. This agreement was commonly forgot-
ten when the mains were laid, and the rival compa-
nies were left to bid against each other for tenants
to the point of ruin.”

Of course they were. The selfishness of the me-
morialists led them to tar on the rival selfishnesses of
the water companies; and then the same selfishness
led them to desert the poor exhausted combatants,
when they became by fighting too exhausted to do
their work well and cheaply. Oh purblind John
Bull! who will go on doing evil, and making others
do it, that good may come; and cannot see that
unrestrained selfish competition, when completely
triumphant, may appear in the shape of your old
bugbear, monopoly! In your selfish short-sighted
cunning, you thought you could get your water a
little cheaper by trusting it to the self-interest of a
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 229

few capitalists, and letting them beat each other
down ; and, behold, you are literally filled with the
fruit of your own devices; with rats and mice and
such small deer; paramecia, and entomostraca, and
kicking things with horrid names, which you see in
microscopes at the Polytechnic, and rush home and
call for brandy — without the water; with stone, and
gravel, and dyspepsia, and fragments of your own
muscular tissue tinged with your own bile. And all
because you have not, and are afraid to have, an
authority which will compel you to go to the ex-
pense of threepence a week on each of your houses.

. Oh John! John! The love of money is the
root of all evil! And even as it is now with your
water supply, so may it be soon with your clothes
supply, when you have petted. and egged on a few
large slop-sellers to eat up all the small ones, and
then to combine in triumphant monopoly, to clothe
you with devils’ dust instead of cloth, and starch
instead of linen... . Oh John! John!

Leaving now this water-company question, as one
worth no more argumentation, we go on to notice
the various schemes for a better supply of water to
London which are now on foot.

One source which has been proposed is from Arte-
sian wells, sunk through the London and Plastic
Clays to the sand strata beneath, which furnish a
soft water, considered by one or two geritlemen, on
account of the quantity of carbonate of soda which it
contains, to possess the quality of economizing soap, .
(not, we fear, of economizing the fabrics washed in
the said soap,) and of enabling us to obtain in all
cases (Soyer’s experiments only assert in some few) a
better extract from all matters exposed to its action,
either hot or cold; and ta be “ the beau idéal of what
a water ought to be for the supply of a city or town.”

Now, granting that thirteen grains of sulphate of
potash per gallon will not make the water nasty ;
230 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

that eight grains of Glauber’s salts will not make it
purgative; that twenty grains of common salt will
quench and not increase thirst; and that the eigh-
teen grains of carbonate of soda is nothing but be-
neficent to the shirts and towels which will have
to endure it; letting pass the small quantities of
carbonate of magnesia, and phosphates, and crenic,
and apocrenic, and silicic acids; granting that a
North Briton, fresh from the “amber torrents”
of Scotland, would not pronounce the Trafalgar-
Square water, the analysis of which we have just
sketched, to be “an unco fine liquid for purposes
o’ agricultural irrigation:” but.in point of drinking
excellence, as like the beau idéal of water as the
dumb-waiters and soda-water bottles from which it
issues are like the beau idéal of sculpture, — grant-
ing all this, and as much more as is required, there
is one fatal objection against these Artesian wells,
—that the supply from them, even with the small
demand as yet made on them, has been steadily de-
creasing for the last twenty years and more; that
every fresh well draws away the water from the sur-
rounding ones, and necessitates the deepening of
them; and that this fact is not merely owing to the
opening the springs at a lower level, for, to quote
Mr. Braithwaite’s evidence, “there has been one uni-
versal depression in all the wells to the sand spring,
varying only in degree according to the depth.”
This fact, we apprehend, needs no comment.
The-same phenomenon gives rise to a fatal objec-
tion against all propositions for supplying London
from deep wells sunk into the vast water-loaded fis-
sures which undoubtedly exist in the chalk. Even
now, the great brewers who are supplied by chalk
wells are compelled to pump on separate days, to
avoid exhausting the supply; and the springs at
Watford, twenty miles from London, are higher
every Monday than during the rest of the week,
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 231

owing to the pumping being discontinued on Sun-
day. Besides, these waters are of a degree of hard-
ness, varying on an average up to nineteen degrees,
which renders them utterly unfit either for washing
or drinking.

The most obvious sources of supply are of course
the Thames and its tributaries, and many projects
have been started for diverting to London a stream
which would certainly be inexhaustible, from some
higher, and therefore purer, point on the Thames.
Of these the most simple, feasible, and economic,
seems certainly to be Mr. Hawksley’s scheme for
establishing reservoirs and filters on the Thames
bank a little below Maidenhead, and thence convey-
ing the water to Hampstead, from which point it
would be distributed at high pressure over the whole
of London; or that of Mr. Quick, an eminent engi-
neer, who proposes that the supply should be taken
from Twickenham,* about ten miles nearer the heart
ef London in @ direct line, considering that there
would be no advantage corresponding to the in-
creased outlay obtained by taking it from a point
higher up the river. The estimated cost of Mr.
Hawksley’s project is 746,7902., of Mr. Quick’s 300,-
0007. But the objection against both these, and all
other similar ones, is the same as against the last
mentioned. The water is too hard, varying from
twelve to sixteen degrees, according to Dr. Clark’s
soap-test ; and even granting that a perfect method
‘of filtration could eliminate all the organic, as well
as the mechanical impurities, neither of which are
inconsiderable, and that the water could, by aeration
during filtration, be redeemed from its present flat
and nauseous taste, still there would be on an
average twelve grains of carbonate, and two of sul-
phate of lime to be got rid of.

%* A South London Company has, since this was written, obtained a
large supply of Thames water from this point.
232 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

It has been recently proposed to do this by apply-
ing the admirable process invented by Professor
Clark, of Aberdeen, which is destined, doubtless,
hereafter, to come into- extensive use. Professor
Clark, in 1841, took out a patent for this invention,
which Gonsists in a very simple application of lime-
water to water already containing bicarbonate of
lime, compelling it thereby to deposit the lime which
it holds in solution. The whole of this learned gen-
tleman’s evidence as to the evil effects of hard water,
and the complete and instantaneous improvement
effected by his process, is exceedingly valuable, but
all that we have space to notice is the treatment of
his discovery by the various London water compa-
nies. In the delusive hope that they were as en-
lightened as himself, he sends round to them copies
of his pamphlet, inviting them to inspect his process.
Two of them return no answer; another cannot try
it themselves, but recommend him to go round to
their large customers, and see if they would make
the trial, — and of course take the expense. Another
promises polite attention,—and so vanishes back
into its native dirt. Another company informs him
that, having reached perfection, the sending his
pamphlet to them was quite needless. Another in-
spects the process, two years ago, and is not heard
of again. Another expresses their opinion that the
process could be worked much more economically —
(to them ?)—by consumers. And the worst of all,
with its Thames paramecia and infusoria, and nine-
teen degrees of hardness, informed the astonished
philosopher that their water had been “ bright, pure,
and salubrious for the last two years!”

But, in the mean time, a method of water supply
has been gradually extending itself throughout Scot-
land and the North of England, which bids fair to
outvie all others, from the peculiar simplicity of the
process which is, in fact, a mere organized copy of
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 233

nature’s own process of produeing springs and riv-
ulets, and from the great purity of the water which
is obtained by it. It consists in collecting, over cer-
tain elevated gathering grounds, the whole rain-fall
of the district, whether from natural springs or from
the artificial drainage of the soil, and conducting
them down to reservoirs of a sufficient height to
supply water at constant high pressure. The water
thus obtained, off the granite, greenstone, trap, and
millstone-grit rocks of the north, varies from one
and a half to five degrees of hardness, and, as many
of our North British readers must be well aware, is as
perfect in quality as can be desired. By this method
the majority of cities and large towns of Scotland,
and many in Lancashire, are enjoying those advan-
tages of soft and well aerated water to which we
have had already occasion to allude; for the pure
rain of heaven, from which ultimately the greater
part of all supplies must be derived, is thus intercept-
ed in its passage downwards, and turned to use,
before it has had time to become adulterated with
any of the numberless elements, organic and _inor-
ganic, which it must meet with in its passage down-
wards to the sea, or into the bowels of the earth,
The superiority of this method of supply has been,
as it seems to us, so clearly demonstrated by the
evidence laid before the Health of Towns’ Commis-
sion, that it is not to be wondered at if those inter-
ested in the fate of the London supply cast about
for some plan of applying it to the case before them.
The first point was to ascertain whether the neigh-
borhood of London offered a gathering ground for pure
water of a sufficient size; and such a one presented
itself at once in the range of sterile moors known
to geologists by the name of the Bagshot Sands,
The upper portions of this district spread out in vast
flats, clothed with a scanty brown heather, and fast
increasing forests of Scotch fir, utterly uncultivable
234 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

from their barrenness. ‘These hills were within the
last fifty years the haunts of red-deer ; and the black-
cock still lingers on the sunny brows, the snipe and
wild duck around the desolate pools; while the val-
leys which intersect the waste form a striking con-
trast to the dreary solitude above, by their noble
timber-trees, their crops of scanty, but peculiarly
excellent wheat which clothe the slopes, and their
boggy meadows, which furnish a coarse herbage for
summer cattle. Travellers by the Southampton
Railway must often have been surprised at finding
themselves, within an hour’s run of the greatest
metropolis in the world, whirling through miles of
desert; and even though they may have acquiesced
in the popular notion that it is impossible to culti-
vate these wastes, they may yet have been inclined
to suspect that so peculiar a district, in so peculiar a
situation, may have still its use, and its part to play
in the forward movements of civilization, perhaps in
relation to the very city on which it borders so nearly.
We profess our honest belief that the Bagshot Sands,
like everything else in the world, were not created in
vain; that rabbits and plovers’ eggs, unsalable fir-
poles and the worst of turf, were not intended to
be their final produce; and that even those upper
gravel layers, which are absolutely beyond the hope
of cultivation, at least till science has progressed for
centuries more, possess, by virtue of their very bar-
renness and utter flintiness, a wealth of their own,
in the form of a pure, well aerated, and naturally
filtered water, which no science can imitate or im-
prove.

It appears, on the whole, that the existing springs
of this district are sufficient to afford a daily supply
of 40,000,000 of gallons, sufficient to give to 520,000
houses (double the number now in London) 75 gal-
lons per house. The estimated expense of intercept-
ing these waters at their sources, storing them in a
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 235.

reservoir on Wimbledon Common, and connecting:
them with the present street pipage, together with
compensation to mill-owners, &c., is 646,000/., which,
if paid off in twenty-one years, at 6 per cent., would
amount, at the average of 280,000 houses, to little
more than three shillings a house; while the present
rate to the water companies on the same number of
houses is about 11. 12s.

We may be perhaps allowed to enter somewhat
into detail in our description of these proposed gath-
ering grounds, likely now to become a subject of
public interest and notoriety.

No district, perhaps, of South Britain, shows
more distinctly the connection between the outer
clothing and the inner substance of mother earth,
the strict coincidence between geologic fact and the
features of landscape. The upper flats are com-
posed prtncipally of a pure brown sand with a cap
of diluvial gravel, the relics of primeval chalk, green-
sand, and wealden hills, from which, by some
mysterious agency, every atom of carbonate of lime
has disappeared, leaving nothing behind but their
skeleton of sharp flint and sand. The imagination
reels at the thought of the stupendous masses of
chalk which must have been destroyed, to furnish
from their scantiest ingredient, miles on miles of
gravel hills. However, the destruction has taken
place; and there the gravel beds lie, a natural filter,
along the steep base of which innumerable crystal
springs well out in a clearly defined horizontal line,
and flow down over the more retentive loams and
foliated clays of the middle Bagshot beds, which
form the cultivated slopes of the valleys. Much of
the rain which falls on the table-lands, unable to es-
cape at this level, descends to a greater depth, to re-
appear in the lower meadows in the form of chalyb-
eate springs, the presence of which, coloring all the
rivers of the district, has engendered fears in various
236 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

quarters of the general purity of the water. But as
a fact, the springs of the upper level, from whence
alone the supply need be drawn, are as free from iron
as they are from every other contaminating element,
organic or inorganic. In the course of ages, what-
ever hydrated oxide of iron has been diffused in a
soluble state through the upper strata, has been
washed down by the rains to the retentive beds be-
low, and carried out by them into the valleys, to
form an alluvium abounding with every conceiv-
able salt of iron. To a similar process of filtration,
Mr.“ Prestwich, the geologist most intimately ac-
quainted with the district, refers the entire absence
of all carbonate of lime in the form of fossil shells
throughout the upper sands; the hydrated protoxide
of iron, in its progress downwards, having rendered
whatever carbonate of lime it met soluble in water.
Should this theory be correct, as we have no reason
to doubt, it would seem that nature has not only
provided the Londoners with a ready-made filter, but
has been kindly busy for ages preparing it for them.
Moreover, these Bagshot Sands have advantages
which few even of the Scotch gathering grounds
possess. There is no real peat on their surface, but
only a few inches of black peaty soil, nine tenths of
it sharp sand; they require no drainage, the present
volume of the springs being enough to supply a city
far more populous than London is now; the mere
act of clearing them out would considerably increase
their volume; and the soil above them being uncul-
tivated, there is no risk of contamination from the
filtering downwards of manures.

The alternative lies evidently between this scheme
and that of Mr. Hawksley or Mr. Quick. The Gov-
ernment will, we hope, be shortly called on to decide
whether of the two can be carried out at least. cost.
The Bagshot plan promises at present to be dearer
than the Twickenham and cheaper than the Maid-
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 237

enhead one; but it must be remembered, that to
the estimated expense of these latter must be added
the yet uncertain cost of Dr. Clark’s softening pro-
cess; and we must consider the labor of the manu-
facture, the risk of mistakes in applying it to so
vast an amount of water daily, and the fact that
it will not bring the Thames water down to with-
in one and a half or two degrees of the natural
average of Bagshot and Farnham water. No con-
clusion to which the Government can come can
affect the engineering reputations of Mr. Hawks-
ley and Mr. Quick, or throw discredit on Dr. Clark’s
invaluable discovery. There are towns and villages
by the hundred to which his process of purification
will be an invaluable boon. The time may come
when landlords and corporations shall be compelled,
in default of a natural supply of soft water, to
produce an artificial one by this or analogous means.
The time may come, too, when the edile, with
powers to inspect and compel the improvement
of the houses, water, and sewerage — and perhaps
the agricultural drainage —of every district, shall
be as integral a member of English as he was of
Roman civilization. But, in the mean time, it is
evident that a bold step must be taken in the direc-
tion which we have been pointing out; and it is
to be hoped that Her Majesty’s Government will
not be deterred by any cuckoo-cry of the press, still
less by any jealousy of the energy and talents of its
servants, from taking into its own hands the work
which a selfish, divided, and careless public disdains
to perform for itself, — or rather, for its poorer mem-
bers.* These are days in which everything, even
freedom and “ our glorious constitution ” themselves,
must submit to be tried by the one test of practice.
“ Will it work?” asks the world of every man and

* All Government schemes have as yet fallen through ; and the me-
tropolis is still left to the tender mercies of the water companies.
258 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

matter; “If not,—it must go.” And surely that
free government incurs a heavy responsibility, which,
brings a slur by any tardiness of its own on those
principles of liberty which are committed to its
charge.. We know that despotisms have been able
to supply the masses fully and freely with neces-
saries, like water, unattainable by their, own efforts.
If freedom is to hold its place in the respect of the
masses, it must show an equal, if not a superior
power for the common good. The inhabitants of an-
cient Jerusalem were plentifully supplied with water,
both “from reservoirs and pipes. Those of Rome
had a gratuitous supply several times as_ great,
in proportion to the population, as that which is
considered necessary for London. The Peruvian
Incas constructed aqueducts of 120 and 150 leagues
in length. In Spain, both the Moors and Ro-
mans have left traces of their power, in the form: of

enormous aqueducts and reservoirs, to supply cities
insignificant in comparison to London. The canals
of Semiramis, and those of Egypt, are world-famous.
Assyria and Mesopotamia are intersectéd by the
ruins of vast watercourses; and through great part
of the East, even at this day, the inhabitants are sup-
plied with fresh and pure water by the beneficent
will of their despots. Surely a free country ought to
be able to do more, not less. It remains for Eng-
land to show that her boasted civilization and lib-
erty has a practical power of self-development,
which can meet and satisfy the wants of an in-
creasing population, and cleanse from her fair face

such plague-spots as we have been — not describing,

for too many of them are past description, but —

hinting at, as delicately as the nature of the subject

will allow. Unless some practical proof is given to

the suffering masses who inhabit our courts and

alleys—one single savage and heathen tribe of

them, the coster-mongers, numbering, according to
THE WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON. 239

Mr. -Mayhew, thirty thousand souls —that a con-
stitutional government can secure more palpable
benefits to ‘the many than a tyranny; unless an-
archy ceases’ to be considered identical with free-
dom, and human beings to be sacrificed to a propo-
sition in a yet-infant and tentative science ;— we
miust expect ‘to see, in the course of events, a revul-
sion in favor of despotism, such as seized France
when she raised, Napoleon to the Empire; a revul-
sion. which is more possible even in Britain, to judge
by certain ugly signs on both extremes of the politi-
cal horizon, than the pedants of “constitutionalism ”
are inclined to suppose.

And though these permitted evils should not
avenge themselves by any political retribution, yet
avenge themselves, if unredressed, they surely will.
They affect masses too large, interests too serious, not
to make themselves bitterly felt some day or other.
“This is no question,” as Mr. Mill well says, “ of
political economy, but of general policy;” we
should go farther and say — of common right and
justice. Therefore it is that we make no apology
‘for any foul details through which we have led our
readers. We only wish that we could show them
the realities amid which thousands of their fellow-
subjects are born and die. It is right that “one
half of the world should know how the other half
live.” Neither do we apologize for having made use
of severe expressions of condemnation. Such ques-
tions as these, involving not merely profits, but health,
sobriety, decency, life, are to be judged of not by
the code or in the language of the market, but of the
Bible. Acts concerning them are not merely expe-
dient or inexpedient, fortunate or unfortunate, but
right or wrong; the wrong may be excused by igno-
rance; but a wrong, and therefore a self-avenging
act, it remains till amended. Even the hard and
soft water controversy is not a mere matter of soap
z24a4u KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

and tea expenditure, but of humanity and morality.
As Hood said of the slop-sellers, so we say of the
hard-water-and-animalcule-sellers, —

It’s not trousers and shirts you're wearing out;
It’s human creatures’ lives.

We may choose to look at the masses in the
gross, as subjects for statistics — and of course,
where possible, for profits. There is One above
who knows every thirst, and ache, and sorrow, and
temptation of each slattern, and gin-drinker, and
street-boy. The day will come when He will require
an account of these neglects of ours— not in the

gross.
THE LADIES’ SANITARY ASSOCIATION. 241

SPEECH IN BEHALF OF THE LADIES’ SANITARY
ASSOCIATION, 1859.

Ler me begin by asking the ladies who are inter-
esting themselves in this good work, whether they
have really considered what they are about to do in
carrying out their own plans? Are they aware that
if their Society really succeeds, they will produce a
very serious, some would think a very dangerous,
change in the state of this nation? Are they aware
that they would probably save the lives of some
thirty or forty per cent. of the children who are born
in England, and that therefore they would cause the
subjects of Queen Victoria to increase at a very far
more rapid rate than they do now? And are they
aware that some very wise men inform us that Eng-
land is already over-peopled, and that it is an ex-
ceedingly puzzling question where we shall soon be
able to find work or food for our masses, so rapidly
do they increase already, in spite of the thirty or
forty per cent. which kind Nature carries off yearly
before they are five years old? Have they con-
sidered what they are to do with all those children
whom they are going to save alive? That has to
be thought of; and if they really do believe, with
some political economists, that over-population is a
possibility to a country which has the greatest colo-
nial empire that the world has ever seen, then I
think they. had better stop in their course ; and let

; 1
242 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

the children die, as they have, been in the habit of
dying.

But if, on the other hand, it seems to them, as I
confess it does to me, that the most precious thing
in the world is a human being; that the lowest, and
poorest, and the most degraded of human beings is
better than all the dumb animals in the world; that
there is an infinite, priceless capability in that crea-
ture, fallen as it may be; a capability of virtue, and
of social and industrial use, which, if it.is taken in
time, may be developed up to a pitch, of which at
first sight the child gives no hint whatsoever ; if they
believe again, that of all races upon earth now, the
English race is probably the finest, and that it gives
not the slightest sign whatever of exhaustion; that
it seems to be on the whole a young race, and to have
very great capabilities in it which have not yet been
developed, and above all, the most marvellous capa-
bility of adapting itself to every sort of climate and
every form of life, which any race, except the old
Roman, ever has had in the world; if they consider
with me that it is worth the while of political econo-
mists and social philosophers to look at the map,
and see that about four fifths of the globe cannot be
said as yet to be in anywise inhabited or cultivated,
or in the state into which men could put it by a fair
supply of population, and industry, and human in-
tellect; then, perhaps, they may think with me that
it is a duty, one of the noblest of duties, to help the
increase of the English race as much as_ possible,
and to see that every child that is born into this
great nation of England be developed to the highest
pitch to which we can develop him in physical
strength and in beauty, as well as in inteilect and
in virtue. And then, in that light, it does seem to
‘me, that this Institution —small now, but I do
‘hope some day to become great, and to become
-the mother institution of many and valuable chil-
THE LADIES' SANITARY ASSOCIATION. 248

dren—is one of the noblest, most right-minded,
straightforward, and practical conceptions that I
have come across for some years.

We all know the difficulties’ of sanitary legisla-
tion. One looks at them at times almost with de-
spair. I have my own reasons, with which I will
not trouble this meeting, for looking on them with
more despair than ever: not on account of the
‘government of the time, or any possible government
that could come to England, but on account of the
peculiar class of persons in whom the ownership of
the small houses has become more and more vested,
and who are becoming more and more, I had almost
‘said, the arbiters of the popular opinion, and of every
election of Parliament. However, that is no busi-
ness of ours here; that must be settled somewhere
else; and a fearfully long time, it seems to me, it
will be before it is settled. But, in the mean time,
. what legislation cannot do, I believe private help,
and, above all, woman’s help, can do even better.
Jt can do this: it can improve the condition of the
working man; and not only of him: I must speak
also of the middle classes, of the men who own the
house in which the working man lives. I must
speak, too, of the wealthy tradesman; I must speak
— itis asad thing to have to say it—of our own
class as well as of others. Sanitary reform, as it is
called, or, in plain English, the art of health, is so
very recent a discovery, as all true physical science
is, that we ourselves and our own class know very
little about it, and practise it very little. And this
Society, I do, hope, will bear in mind that it is not
simply to seek the working man, not only to go into
the foul alley; but it is to go to the door of the
farmer, to the door of the shopkeeper, aye, to the
door of ladies and gentlemen of the same rank as
ourselves. Women can do in that work what men
cannot do. The private correspondence, private con-
244 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

versation, private example, of ladies, above all of
married women, of mothers of families, may do
what no legislation can do. Iam struck more and
more with the amount of disease and death I see
around me in all classes, which no sanitary legisla-
tion whatsoever could touch, unless you had a com-
plete house-to-house visitation by some Govern-
ment officer, with powers to enter every dwelling, to
drain it, and ventilate it; and not only that, but to
regulate the clothes and the diet of every inhabitant,
and that among all ranks. I can conceive of noth-
ing short of that, which would be absurd and im-
possible, and would also be most harmful morally,
which would stop the present amount of disease
and death which I see around me, without some
such private exertion on the part of women, above
all of mothers, as I do hope will spring from this
institution more and more.

I see this, that three persons out of every four are
utterly unaware of the general causes of their own
ill health, and of the ill health of their children.
They talk of their “ afflictions,’ and their “ mis-
fortunes ;” and, if they be pious people, they talk of
“the will of God,” and of “the visitation of God.”
I do not like to trench upon those matters here ; but
when I read in my book and in your book “that it
is not the will of our Father in Heaven that one of
these little ones should perish,” it has come to my
mind sometimes with very great strength that that
may have a physical application as well as a spirit-
ual one; and that the Father in Heaven, who does
not wish the child’s soul to die, may possibly have
created that child’s body for the purpose of its not
dying except in a good old age. For not only in
the lower class, but in the middle and upper classes,
when one sees an unhealthy family, then in three
cases out of four, if one will take time, trouble, and
care enough, one can, with the help of the doctor
THE LADIES’ SANITARY ASSOCIATION. 245

who has been attending them, run the evil home to
a very different cause than the will of God; and
that is, to stupid neglect, stupid ignorance, or what
is just as bad, stupid indulgence.

‘Now, I do believe that if those tracts which you
are publishing, which I have read, and of which I
cannot speak too highly, are spread over the length
and breadth of the land, and if women,—clergy-
men’s wives, the wives of manufacturers and of
great employers, district- visitors and schoolmis-
tresses, have these books put into their hands, and
are persuaded to spread them, and to enforce them,
by their own example and by their own counsel, —
that then, in the course of a few years, this system
being thoroughly carried out, you would see a sen-
‘sible and large increase in the rate of population.
When you have saved your children alive, then you
must settle what to do with them. But a living dog
is better than a dead lion; I would rather have the
living child, and let it take its chance, than let it re-
turn to God—wasted. O! it isa distressing thing to’
see children die! God gives the most beautiful and
precious thing that earth can have, and we just take
it and cast it away ; we toss our pearls upon the dung-
hill, and\leave them. A dying child is to me one of
the most dreadful sights in the world. A dying man,
a man dying on the field of battle 7? That is a small
sight; he has taken his chance; he is doing his duty;
he has had his excitement; he has had his glory, if
that will be any consolation to him; if he is a wise
man, he has the feeling that he is dying for his
country and his queen: and that is, and ought to
be, enough for him. I am not horrified or shocked
at the sight of the man who dies on the field of
battle ; let him die so. It does not horrify or shock
me, again, to see a man dying in a good old age,
even though the last struggle be painful, as it too
often is. But it does shock me, it does make me
246 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

feel that the world is indeed out of joint, to see a child
die. I believe it to be a priceless boon to the child to
have lived for a week, or a day; but oh, what has
God given to this thankless earth, and what has the
earth thrown away; and in nine cases out of ten,
from its own neglect and carelessness! What that
boy might have been, what he might have done as
an Englishman, if he could have lived and grown
up healthy and strong! And I entreat you to bear
this in mind, that it is not as if our lower or our
middle classes were not worth saving; bear in mind
that the physical beauty, strength, intellectual power
of the middle classes,—the shopkeeping class, the
farming class, down to the lowest working class,—
whenever you give them a,.fair chance, whenever
you give them fair food and air, and physical
education of any kind, prove them to be the finest
race in Europe. Not merely the aristocracy, splendid
race as they are, but down and down and down to
the lowest laboring man, to the navigator ;— why
there is not such a body of men in Europe as our
navigators ; and no body of men perhaps have had
a worse chance of growing to be what they are; and
yet see what they have done! See the magnificent
men they become, in spite of all that is against them,
dragging them down, tending to give them rickets
and consumption, and all the miserable diseases
‘which children contract; see what men they are,
and then conceive what they might be! It has been
said, again and again, that there are no more beau-
tiful race of women in Europe than the wives and
daughters of our London shopkeepers; and yet there
are few races of people who lead a life more in op-
position to all rules of hygiene. But, in spite of all
that, so wonderful is the vitality of the English race,
they are what they are; and therefore we have the
finest material to work upon that people ever had.
And therefore, again, we have the less excuse if we
THE LADIES’ SANITARY ASSOCIATION. 247

do allow English people to grow up puny, stunted,
and diseased.

Let me refer again to that word that I used : death,
—the amount of death. I really believe there are
hundreds of good and kind people who would take
up this subject with their whole heart and soul, if
they were aware of the magnitude of the evil. Lord
Shaftesbury told you just now that there were one
hundred thousand preventable deaths in England
every year. So itis. We talk of the loss of human
life in war. We are the fools of smoke and noise;
because there are cannon-balls, forsooth, and swords
and red coats; and because it costs a great deal of
money, and makes a great deal of talk in the papers,
we think,— What so terrible as war? I will tell you
what is ten times, and ten thousand times, more ter-
rible than war, and that is—outraged Nature. War,
we are discovering now, is the clumsiest and most
expensive of all games; we are finding that if you
wish to commit an act of cruelty and folly, the most
costly one that you can commit is to contrive to
shoot your fellow-men in war. So it is; and thank
God that so it is; but Nature, insidious, inexpensive,
silent, sends no roar of cannon, no glitter of arms
to do her work; she gives no warning note of prep-
aration; she has no protocols, nor any diplomatic
advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is *
coming. Silently, I say, and insidiously she goes
forth; no! she does not even go forth; she does not
step out of her path; but quietly, by the very same
means by which she makes alive, she puts to death ;
and so avenges herself of those who have rebelled
against her. By the very same laws by which every
blade of grass grows, and every insect springs to life
in tle sunbeam, she kills and kills and kills, and is
never tired of killing; till she has taught man the
terrible lesson he is so slow to learn, that Nature is
only conquered by obeying her.
248 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his
courtesies of war, and his chivalries of war: he does
not strike the unarmed man; he spares the woman
and the child. But Nature is as fierce when she is
offended, as she is bounteous and kind when she is
obeyed. She spares neither woman nor child. She
has no pity ; for some awful, but most good reason,
she is not allowed to have any pity. Silently she
strikes the sleeping babe, with as little remorse as
she would strike the strong man, with the spade or
the musket in his hand. Ah! would to God that
some man had the pictorial eloquence to put before
the mothers of England the mass of preventable
suffering, the mass of preventable agony of mind
and body, which exists in England year after year!
and would that some man had the logical eloquence
to make them understand that it is in their power,
in the power of the mothers and wives of the higher
class, I will not say to stop it all— God only knows
that,— but to stop, as I believe, three fourths of it.

It is in the power, I believe, of any woman in this
room to save three or four lives—human lives—
during the next six months. It is in your power,
ladies; and it is soeasy. You might save several
lives apiece, if you chose, without, I believe, inter-
fering with your daily business, or with your daily
pleasure; or, if you choose, with your daily frivoli-
ties, in any way whatsoever. Let me ask, then,
those who are here, and who have not yet laid these
things to heart: Will you let this meeting to-day be
a mere passing matter of two or three hours’ interest,
which you may go away and forget for the next book
or the next amusement? Or will you be in earnest ?
Will you learn—I say it openly—from the noble
chairman, how easy it is to be in earnest in ‘life;
how every one of you, amid all the artificial com-
plications of English society in the nineteenth cen-
tury, can find a work to do, a noble work to do, a
THE LADIES' SANITARY ASSOCIATION. 249

chivalrous work to do,—just as chivalrous as if you
lived in any old magic land, such as Spenser talked
of in his Faery Queene; how you can be as true a
knight-errant or lady-errant in the present century, as
if you had lived far away in the dark ages of. violence
and rapine? Will you, I ask, learn this? ‘Will you
learn to be in earnest; and to use the position, and
the station,-and the talent that God has given you
to save alive those who should live? And will you
remember that it is not the will of your Father that.
is in Heaven that one litile one that plays in the
pe outside should perish, either in body or in
soul ?
250 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

GREAT CITIES, AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD
AND EVIL*

Tue pleasure, gentlemen and ladies, of addressing
you here is mixed in my mind with very solemn feel-
ings; the honor which you have done me is tempered
by humiliating thoughts.

For it was in this very city of Bristol, twenty-seven
years ago, that I received my first lesson in what is
now called Social Science; and yet, alas! more than
ten years elapsed ere I could even spell out that les-
son, though it had been written for me (as well as
for all England) in letters of flame, from the one end
of heaven to the other.

I was a school-boy in Clifton up above. I had
been hearing of political disturbances, even of riots,
of which I understood nothing, and for which I cared.
nothing. But on one memorable Sunday afternoon
I saw an object which was distinctly not political.
Otherwise I should have no right to speak of it here.

It was an afternoon of sullen autumn rain. The
fog hung thick over the docks and lowlands. Glar-
ing through that fog I saw a bright mass of flame, —
almost like a half-risen sun.

That, I was told, was the gate of the new jail on
fire. That the prisoners in it had been set free;
that But why speak of what too many here
recollect but too well? The fog rolled slowly up-
ward. Dark figures, even at that great distance, were
flitting to and fro across what seemed the mouth of

* Lecture delivered at Bristol, October 5, 1857.

 
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 251

the pit. The flame increased, — multiplied, — at one
point after another; till by ten o’clock that night I-
seemed to be looking down upon Dante’s Inferno,
and to hear the multitudinous moan and wail of
the lost spirits surging to and fro amid that sea of
fire.

Right behind Brandon Hill— how can J ever for-
get it? —rose the great central mass of fire; till the
little mound seemed converted into a volcano, from
the peak of which the flame streamed up, not red
alone, but delicately green and blue, pale rose and
pearly white, while crimson sparks leaped and fell
again in the midst of that rainbow, not of hope, but
of despair; and dull explosions down below mingled
with the roar of the mob, and the infernal hiss and
crackle of the flame. ‘

Higher and higher the fog was scorched and shriv-
elled upward by the fierce heat below, glowing
through and through with red reflected glare, till it
arched itself into one vast dome of red-hot iron, fit
roof for all the madness down below, — and beneath
_it, miles away, I could see the lonely tower of Dundie
‘shining red;— the symbol of the old faith, looking
down in stately wonder and sorrow upon the fearful
birth-throes of a new age. Yes.— Why did I say
just now, despair? Iwas wrong. Birth-throes, and
not death-pangs, those horrors were. Else they would
have no place in my discourse ; no place, indeed, in
my mind. Why talk over the signs of disease, decay,
death? Let the dead bury their dead: and let us
follow Him who dieth not; by whose command

The old order changeth, giving place to the new,
And God fulfils himself’ in many ways.

If we will believe this,—-if we will look on each
convulsion of society, however terrible for the time
being, as a token, not of decrepitude, but of youth;
not as the expiring convulsions of sinking humanity,
252 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

but as upward struggles, upward toward fuller light,
freer air, a juster, simpler, and more active life ;—
then we shall be able to look calmly, however sadly,
on the most appalling tragedies of humanity, — even
on these late Indian ones,—and take our share,
faithful and hopeful, in supplying the new and deeper
wants of a new and nobler time.

But to return. It was on the Tuesday or Wednes-
day after, if I recollect right, that I saw another, and
a still more awful sight, Along the north side of
Queen-square, in front of ruins which had been three
days before noble buildings, lay a ghastly row, not
of corpses, but of corpse-fragments. I have no more
wish than you to dilate upon that sight. But there
was one charred fragment, — with a scrap of old red
petticoat adhering to it, which I never forgot, — which
I trust in God that I never shall forget. It is good
for a man to be brought, once at least in his life, face
to face with fact, ultimate fact, however horrible it
may be; and have to confess to hitnself, shuddering,
what. things are possible upon God’s earth, when
man has forgotten that his only welfare lies in living
after the likeness of God.

Not that I learned the lesson then. "When the first.
excitement of horror and wonder were past, what I
had seen made me for years the veriest aristocrat, full
of hatred and contempt of these dangerous classes,
whose existence I had for the first time discovered.
It required many years, — years, too, of personal in-
tercourse with the poor, to explain to me the true
meaning of what I saw here in October twenty-seven
years ago; and to learn a part of that lesson which
God taught to others thereby. And one part at least
of that lesson was this, — That the social state of a
city depends directly on its moral state, and — I fear
dissenting voices, but 1 must say what I believe to

how far I know not, but frightfully, to an extent as
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 253

yet uncalculated, and perhaps incalculable — on the
physical state of that city; on the food, water, air,
and lodging of its inhabitants.

But that lesson, and others connected with it, was
learned, and learned well, by hundreds. From the
sad catastrophe I date the rise of that interest in
Social Science; that desire for some nobler, more
methodic, more permanent benevolence than that
which stops at mere alms-giving and charity-schools.
The dangerous classes began to be recognized as an
awful fact which must be faced ; and faced, not by
repression, but by improvement. ‘The “ Perils of
the Nation” began to occupy the attention not
merely of politicians, but of philosophers, physi-
cians, priests; and the admirable book which as-
sumed that title did but reécho the feeling of thou-
sands of earnest hearts.

Ever since that time, scheme on scheme of im-
provement has been not only proposed, but carried
out. A general interest of the upper classes in the
lower, a general desire to do good, and to learn how
good can be done, has been awakened throughout
England, such as, I boldly say, never before existed
in any country upon earth; and England, her eyes
opened to her neglect. of these classes without whose
strong arms her wealth and genius would be useless,
has put herself into a permanent state of confession
of sin, repentance, and amendment, which I verily
trust will be accepted by Almighty God; and will,
in spite of our present shame and sorrow,” in spite
of shame and sorrow which may be yet in store for
us, save alive both the soul and se body of this an-
cient people.

Let us then, that we may learn how to bear our
part in this great work of Social. Reform, consider
awhile great cities, their good and evil; and let us
start from the facts about your own city of which I

* This was said during the Indian rebellion.
MIE KINGSLEL’S NEW MIDSULLUANILG.

have just put you in remembrance. The universal
law will be best understood from the particular in-
stance ; and best of all, from the instance with which
you are most intimately acquainted. And do not, I
entreat you, fear that I shall be rude enough to say
anything which may give pain to you, my generous
hosts; or presumptuous enough to impute blame to
any one for events which happened long ago, and of
the exciting causes of which I know little or noth-
ing. Bristol was then merely in the same state
in which other cities of England were, and in which
every city on the Continent is now; and the local
exciting causes of that outbreak, the personal con-
duct of A or B in it, is just what we ought most
carefully to forget, if we wish to look at the real
root of the matter. If consumption, latent in the
constitution, have broken out in active mischief, the
wise physician will trouble his head little with the
particular accident which woke up the sleeping dis-
ease. The disease was there, and if one thing had
not awakened it, some other would. And so, if the
population of a great city have got into a socially
diseased state, it matters little what shock may have
caused it to explode. Politics may, in one case,
fanaticism in another, national hatred in a third,
hunger in a fourth, — perhaps even, as in Byzantium
of old, no more important matter than a jealousy
between the blue and the green charioteers in the
theatre, may inflame a whole population to madness
and civil war. Our business is not with the nature
of the igniting spark, but of the powder which is
ignited.

I will not, then, to begin, go as far as some who
say that “A great city is a great evil’? We can-
not say that Bristol was, in 1830, or is now, a great
evil. It represents so much realized wealth; and
that, again, so much employment for thousands. It
represents so much commerce; so much knowledge
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 255

of foreign lands; so much distribution of their prod-
ucts; so much science, employed about that distri-
bution.

* And it is undeniable, that as yet we have had
no means of rapid and cheap distribution of goods,
whether imports or manufactures, save by this crowd-
ing of human beings into great cities, for the more
easy despatch of business. Whether we shall de-
vise other means hereafter is a question of which I
shall speak presently. Meanwhile, no man is to be
blamed for the existence, hardly even for the evils, of
great cities. The process of their growth has been
very simple. They have gathered themselves round
abbeys and castles, for the sake of protection; round
courts, for the sake of law; round ports, for the
sake of commerce; round ecoal-mines, for the sake
of manufacture. Before the existence of railroads,
penny-posts, electric telegraphs, men were compelled
to be as close as possible to each other, in order to
work together.

‘When the population was small, and commerce
feeble, the cities grew to no very great size, and the
bad effects of this crowding were not felt. The. cities
of England in the Middle Age were too small to
keep their inhabitants, week after week, month after
month, in one deadly vapor-bath of foul gas; and
though the mortality among infants was probably
excessive, yet we should have seen among the adult
survivors few or none of those stunted and etiolated
figures so common now in England, as well as on
the Continent. The green fields were close outside
the walls, where lads and lasses went a-Maying, and
children gathered flowers, and sober burghers with
their wives took the evening walk; there were the
butts, too, close outside, where stalwart prentice lads
tan and wrestled, and pitched the bar, and played
backsword, and practised with the longbow; and
sometimes, in stormy times, turned out for a few
Za6 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

months as ready trained soldiers, and, like Ulysses
of old,
Drank delight of battle with their peers,

and then returned again to the workshop and the
loom. The very mayor and aldermen went forth,
at five o’clock on the summer’s morning, with hawk
and leaping pole, after duck and heron; or hunted
the hare in state, probably in the full glory of furred
gown and gold chain; and then returned to break-
fast, and doubtless transacted their day’s business
all the better for their morning’s gallop on the breezy
downs.

But there was another side to this genial and
healthy picture. A hint that this was a state of
society which had its conditions, its limit; and if
those were infringed, woe.alike to burgher and to-
prentice.. Every now and then epidemic disease
entered the jolly city, and then down went strong
and weak, rich and poor, before the invisible and
seemingly supernatural arrows. of that angel of
death whom they had been pampering unwittingly
in every bedroom.

They fasted, they prayed; but in vain. They
called the pestilence a judgment of God: and they
called it by a true name. But they knew not (and
who are we to blame them for not knowing ?) what
it was that God was judging thereby, — foul air,
foul water, unclean backyards, stifling attics, houses
hanging over the narrow street, till light and air
were alike shut out. That there lay the sin; and
that to’ amend that was the repentance which God
demanded.

Yet we cannot blame them. They showed that
the crowded city life can bring out human nobleness
as well as human baseness; that to be crushed into
contact with their fellow-men, forced at least the
loftier and tender souls to know their fellow-men,
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 257

and therefore to care- for them, to love them, to die for
them. Yes,— from one temptation the city life is
free, to which the country life is sadly exposed, —
that isolation which, self-contented and self-helping,
forgets in its surly independence that man is his
brother’s keeper. In cities, on the contrary, we find
that the stories of these old pestilences, when the
first panic terror has passed, become, however trag-
ical, still beautiful and heroic ; and we read of noble-
hearted men and women palliating ruin which they
could not cure, braving dangers which seemed to
them miraculous, from which they were utterly de-
fenceless, spending money, time, and after all, life
itself, upon sufferers from whom they might without
shame have fled.

They are very cheering, the stories of the old city
pestilences;' and the nobleness which they brought
out in the heart of many a townsman who had
seemed absorbed in the lust of gain, — who perhaps
had been really absorbed in it, — till that fearful hour
awakened in him his better self, and taught him, not
self-agerandizement, but self-sacrifice; beégetting in
him, out of the very depth of darkness, new and
divine light. ‘That nobleness, doubt it not, exists as
ever in the hearts of citizens; may God grant us to
see the day when it shall awaken to exert itself, not
for the palliation, not even for the cure, but for the
prevention, yea, the utter extermination, of pesti-
lence.

About the middle of the sixteenth century, as far
as I can ascertain, another and even more painful
phenomenon appears in our great cities, — a danger-
ous class. How it arose is not yet clear. That the
Reformation had’ something to do with the matter,
we can hardly doubt. At the dissolution of the
monasteries, the more idle, ignorant, and profligate
members of the mendicant orders, unable to live any
Jonger on the alms of the public, sink, probably, into
Zod KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

vicious penury. The frightful misgovernment of
this country during the minority of Edward the
Sixth, especially the conversion of tilled lands into
pasture, had probably the effect of driving the sur-
plus agricultural population into the great towns.
But the social history of this whole period is as yet
obscure, and I have no right to give an opinion on it.
Another element, and a more potent one, is to be
found in the discharged soldiers who came .home
from foreign war, and the sailors who returned from
our voyages of discovery, and from our raids against
the Spaniards, too often crippled by scurvy, or by
Tropic fevers, with perhaps a little prize money,
which was as-hastily spent as it had been hastily
gained. The later years of Elizabeth, and the whole
of James the First’s reign, disclose to us an ugly
state of society in the low. streets of all our sea-
port towns; and Bristol, as one of the great start-
ing-points of West Indian adventure, was probably,
during the seventeenth century, as bad as any city
in England. According to Ben Jonson, and the
playwriters of these days, the beggars became a
regular fourth-estate, with their own laws, and even
their own language,—of which we may remark,
that the thieves’ Latin of those days is full of
German words, indicating that its inventors had
been employed in the Continental wars of the time.
How that class sprung up, we may see, I suppose,
pretty plainly, from Shakspeare’s “Henry the Fifth.”
Whether Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph, Doll and Mrs.
Quickly, existed in the reign of Henry the Fifth, they
certainly existed in the reign of Elizabeth. They
are probably sketches from life of people whom
Shakspeare had seen in Alsatia and the Mint.

To these merely rascal elements, male and female,
we must add, I fear, those whom mere penury, from
sickness, failure, want of employment, drove into
dwellings of the lowest order. Such people, though
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 259

not criminal themselves, are but too likely to become
the parents of criminals. J am not blaming them,
poor souls, God forbid. Iam merely stating a fact.
‘When we examine into the ultimate cause of a dan-
gerous class; into the one property common to all
its members, whether thieves, beggars, profligates, or
the merely pauperized, — we find it to be this loss of
self-respect. As long as that remains, poor souls may
struggle on heroically, pure amid penury, filth, degra-
dation unspeakable. But when self-respect is lost,
they are lost with it. And whatever may be the fate
of virtuous parents, children brought up in dens of
physical and moral filth cannot retrieve self-respect.
They sink, they must sink, into a life on a level with
the sights, sounds, aye, the very smells, which sur-
round them. It is not merely that the child’s mind
is contaminated, by seeing and hearing, in over-
crowded houses, what he should not hear and see;
but the whole physical circumstances of his life are
destructive of self-respect. He has no means for
washing himself properly: but he has enough of the
innate sense of beauty and fitness to feel that he
ought not to be dirty;.he thinks that others despise
+him for being dirty, and he half despises himself for
being so. In all ragged schools and reformatories,
so they tell me, the first step toward restoring self-
respect is to make the poor fellows clean. From
that moment they begin to look on themselves as
new men,— with a new start, new hopes, new duties.
For not without the deepest physical as well as moral
meaning, was baptism chosen by the old Easterns,
and adopted by our Lord Jesus Christ, as the sign
‘of a new life; and outward purity made the’ token
and symbol of that inward purity which is the par-
ent of self-respect, and manliness, and a clear con-
science’ of the free forehead, and the eye which
meets boldly and honestly the eye of its fellow-man.

But would that mere physical dirt were all that
260 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

the lad has to contend with. There is the desire of
enjoyment. Moral and intellectual enjoyment he has
none, and can have none: but not to enjoy something
is: to be dead in life; and to the lowest physical
pleasures he will betake himself, and all the more
fiercely because his opportunities of enjoyment are
so limited. It is a hideous subject; I will pass it by
very shortly ; only asking of you, as I have to ask-
daily of myself, — this solemn question :— We, who
have so many comforts, so many pleasures of body,
soul, and spirit, from the lowest appetite to the high-
est aspiration, that we can gratify each in turn with
due and wholesome moderation, innocently and in-
nocuously,— who are we that we should judge the
poor untaught and over-tempted inhabitant of Tem-
ple-street and Lewis’s-mead, if, having but one or
two pleasures possible to him, he snatches greedily,
even foully, at the little which he has ?

And this brings me to another, and a most fearful
evil of great cities; namely, drunkenness. I am one
of those who cannot, on scientific grounds, consider
drunkenness as a cause of evil, but as an effect. Of
course it is a cause,— a cause .of endless crime and
misery; but Iam convinced that to cure; you must.
inquire, not what it causes, but what causes it?
And for that we shall not have to seek far.

The main exciting cause of drunkenness is, I be-
lieve, firmly, bad air and bad lodging.

A man shall spend his days between a foul alley
where he breathes sulphuretted hydrogen, a close
workshop where he breathes carbonic acid, and a
close and foul bedroom where he breathes both. In
neither of the three places, meanwhile, has he his
fair share of that mysterious chemical agent without
which health is impossible, the want of which be-
trays itself at once in the dull eye, the sallow cheek,
—namely, light. Believe me, it is no mere poetic

metaphor which connects in Scripture, Light with
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 261

Life It is the expression of a deep law, one which
holds as true in the physical as in the spiritual world;
a case in which (as perhaps in all cases) the laws of
the visible world are the counterparts of those of the
invisible world, and Earth is the symbol of Heaven.

Deprive, then, the man of his fair share of fresh air
and pure light, and what follows? His blood is not
properly oxygenated ; his nervous energy is depressed,
his digestion impaired, especially if his occupation be
sedentary, or requires much stooping, and the cavity
of the chest thereby becomes contracted; and for
that miserable feeling of languor and craving he
knows but one remedy, — the passing stimulus of al-
cohol ; — a passing stimulus; leaving fresh depression
behind it, and requiring fresh doses of stimulant, till
it becomes a habit, a slavery, a madness. Again,
there is an intellectual side to the question. The
depressed nervous energy, the impaired digestion, de-
press the spirits. The man feels lowin mind as well
as in body. Whence shall he seek exhilaration?
Not in that stifling home which has eaused the de-
pression itself. He knows none other than the tav-
ern, and the company which the tavern brings; God
help him!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is easy to say, God
help him; but it is not difficult for man to help him:
also. Drunkenness is a very curable malady. The
last fifty years have seen it all but die out among the
upper classes of this country. And what has caused
the improvement ?

Certainly, in the first place, the spread of educa-
tion. Every man has now a hundred means of ra-
tional occupation and amusement which were closed
to his grandfather; and among the deadliest enemies
of drunkenness we may class the printing press, the
railroad, and the importation of foreign art and for-
eign science, which we owe to the late forty years’
peace. We can find plenty of amusement now, be-
262 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

side the old one of sitting round the table and talking
over wine. Why should not the poor man share in
our gain? But over and above, there are causes
simply physical. Our houses are better ventilated.
The stifling old four-post bed has given place to the
airy, curtainless one; and what is more than all, —
we wash. That morning cold bath which foreigners
consider as Young England’s strangest superstition,
has done as much, believe me, to abolish drunken-
ness, as any other cause whatsoever. ‘With a clean
skin in healthy action, and nerves and muscles braced
by a sudden shock, men do not crave for artificial
stimulants. I have found that, ceteris paribus, a
man’s sobriety is in direct proportion to his cleanli-
ness. I believe it would be so in all classes, had
they the means.

And they ought to have the means. Whatever
other rights a man has, or ought to have, this at least
he has, if society demands of him that he should earn
his own livelihood, and not be a torment and a burden
to his neighbors. He has a right to water, to air, to
light. In demanding that, he demands no more than
nature has given to the wild beast of the forest. He
is better than they. Treat him, then, as well as God
has treated them. If we-require of him to be a man,
we must at least-put him on a level with the brutes.

We have, then, first of all, to face the existence of
a dangerous class of this kind, into which the weaker
as well as the worse members of society have a con-
tinual tendency to sink. A class which, not respect-
ing itself, does not respect others ; which has nothing
to lose and all to gain by anarchy ; in which the low-
est passions, seldom gratified, are ready to burst out
and avenge ‘themselves by frightful methods.

For the reformation of that class, thousands of
good men are now working, hundreds of benevolent
plans are being set on foot. Honor to them all;
whether they succeed or fail, each of them does some
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 263

good; each of them rescues at least a few fellow-
men, dear to God as you and J are, out of the nether
pit. Honor to them all, I say; but I should not be
honest with you this night, if I did not assert most
‘solemnly my conviction, that reformatories,. ragged
schools, even hospitals and asylums, treat only the
symptoms, not the actual causes, of the disease; and
that the causes are only to be touched by improving
the simple physical conditions of the class; by abol-
ishing foul air, foul water, foul lodging, over-crowded
dwellings, in which morality is difficult and common
decency impossible. You may breed a pig in a sty,
ladies and gentlemen, and make a learned pig of him
-after all; but you cannot breed a man in a sty, and
make a learned man of him; or indeed, in the true
sense of that great word, a man at all.

And remember, that these physical influences of
‘great cities, physically depressing and morally de-
‘grading, influence, though to a less extent, the classes
:above the lowest stratum.

The honest and skilled workman feels their effects.
_Compelled too often to live where he can, in order to

be near his work, he finds himself perpetually in con-
tact with a class utterly inferior to himself, and his
children exposed to contaminating influences from
which he would gladly remove them; but how can
he? Next door to him, even in the same house with
him, may be enacted scenes of brutality or villany
which I will not speak of here. He may shut his
own eyes and ears to them; but he cannot shut his
children’s. He may vex his righteous soul daily, like
Lot of old, with the foul conversation of the wicked ;
but, like Lot of old, he cannot keep his children from
mixing with the inhabitants of the wicked city, learn-
‘ing their works, and at last being involved in their
-doom. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, if there be one
class for whom above all others I will plead, in sea-
son and out of season; if there be one social evil
ZO4 KUINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANLES,

which I will din into the ears of my countrymen
whenever God gives me a chance, it is this, — The
honest and the virtuous workman, and his unnatural
contact with the dishonest and the foul. I know well
the nobleness which exists in the average of that
class, in men and in wives,— their stern, uncomplain-
ing, valorous self-denial; and nothing more stirs my
pity than to see them struggling to bring up a family
in a moral and physical atmosphere where right edu-
cation is impossible. We lavish sympathy enough
upon the criminal; for God’s sake, let us keep a little
of it for the honest man. We spend thousands in
carrying ott the separation of classes in prison; for
God’s sake, let us try to separate them a little before
they go to prison. We are afraid of the dangerous
classes ; for God’s sake, let us bestir ourselves to stop
that reckless confusion and neglect which reign in the
alleys and courts of our great towns,.and which re-
cruit those very dangerous classes from the class
which ought to be, and is still, in spite of our folly,
England’s strength and England’s glory. Let us no
longer stand by idle, and see moral purity, in street
after street, pent in the same noisome den with moral
corruption, to be involved in one common doom, as
the Latin tyrant of old used to bind together the
dead corpse and the living victim. But let the man
who would deserve well of his city, well of his coun-
try, set his heart and brain to the great purpose of
giving the workman dwellings fit for a virtuous and
a civilized being, and, like the priest of old, stand
between the living and the dead, that the plague
may be stayed, .

Hardly less is the present physical state of our
great cities felt by that numerous class which is,
next to the employer, the most important in a city.
I mean the shopmen, clerks, and all the men, princi-
pally young ones, who are employed exclusively in
the work of distribution. I have a great respect, I
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 265

may say affection, for this class. In Bristol I know
nothing of them; save that, from what I hear, the
clerks ought in general to have a better status here
than in most cities. I am told that it is the prac-
tice here for merchants to take into their houses very
young boys, and train them to their business; that
this connection between employer and employed is
hereditary, and that clerkships pass from father to
son in the same family. I rejoice to hear it. It is
pleasant to find anywhere a relic of the old patri-
archal bond, the permanent nexus between master
and man, which formed so important and so health-
ful an element of the ancient mercantile system.
One would gladly overlook a little favoritism and
nepotism, a little sticking square men into round
holes and of round men into square holes, for the
sake of having a class of young clerks and employés
who felt that their master’s business was their busi-
ness, his honor theirs, his prosperity theirs.

But over and above this, whenever I have come in
contact with this clerk and shopman class, they have
impressed me with considerable respect, not merely
as to what they may be hereafter, but what they
are now.

‘They are the class from which the ranks of our
commercial men, our emigrants, are continually re-
cruited ; therefore their right education is a matter
of national importance.

The lad who stands behind a Bristol counter may
be, five-and-twenty years hence, a large employer, —
an owner of houses and Jand in far countries across
the seas, a. member of some colonial parliament, —
the founder of a wealthy family. How necessary
for the honor of Britain, for the welfare of genera-
tions yet unborn, that that young man should have,
in body, soul, and spirit, the loftiest, and yet the
most practical of educations.

His education, too, such as it is, is one which

ta
266 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

makes me respect him as a class. Of course, he is
sometimes one of those “ gents” whom “ Punch” so
ruthlessly holds up to just ridicule. He is some-
tithes a vulgar fop, sometimes fond of low profligacy,:
of betting-houses and casinos. Well.—I know
no class in any age or country among which a fool
may not be found here and there. But that the
“gent” is the average type of this class, I should
utterly deny, from such experience as I have had.
The peculiar note and mark of the average clerk and
shopman, is, I think, in these days, intellectual activ-
ity, a keen desire for self-improvement, and for inde-
pendence, honorable, because self-acquired. But as
he is distinctly a creature of the city; as all city in-
fluences bear at once on him more than on any other
class, so we see in him, I think, more than in any
class the best and the worst effects of modern city
life. The worst, of course, is low profligacy; but of
that Ido not speak here. I mean that in the same
man the good and evil of a city life meet. And in
this way.

In a country man like me, coming up out of wild
and silent moorlands into a great city, the first effect
of the change is increased intellectual activity. The
perpetual stream of human faces, the innumerable
objects of interest in every shop-window, are enough
to excite the mind to action, which is increased by
the simple fact of speaking to fifty different human
beings in the day instead of five. Now in the city-
bred youth this excited state of mind is chronic, per-
manent. It is denoted plainly enough by the differ-
ence between the countryman’s face and that of the
townsman. The former in its best type (and it is
often very noble) composed, silent, self-contained,
often stately, often listless ; the latter mobile, eager,
observant, often brilliant, often self-conscious.

Now if you keep this rapid and tense mind ina
powerful and healthy body, it would de right good
GREA® CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 267

work. Right good work it does, indeed, as it is;
but still it might do better. aa

For what are the faults of this class? What do
the obscurantists (now, thank God, fewer every day)
allege as the objection to allowing young men to ed-
ucate themselves out of working-hours ?

They become, it is said, disgontented, conceited,
dogmatical. They take up hasty notions, they con-
demn fiercely what they have no means of under-
standing; they are too fond of fine words, of the ex-
citement of spouting themselves, and hearing others
spout.

Well. Isuppose there must be a little truth in
the accusation, or it would not have been invented:
There is no smoke without fire; and these certainly
are the faults of which the cleverest middle-class
young men whom I know are most in danger.

But one fair look at these men’s faces ought
to tell common sense that the cause is rather physi-
cal than moral. Confined to sedentary occupations,
stooping over desks and counters in close rooms, un-
able to obtain that fair share of bodily exercise which
nature demands, and in continual mental effort, their
nerves and brain have been excited at the expense
of their lungs, their digestion, and their whole nutri-
tive system. Their complexions show a general ill
health. Their mouths, too often, hint at latent dis-
ease. What wonder if there be an irritability of
brain and nerve? I blame them no more for it than
I blame a man for being somewhat touchy while he
is writhing in the gout. Indeed less; for gout is
very often a man’s own fault; but these men’s ill
health is not. And therefore, everything which can
restore to them health of body, will preserve in them
health of mind. Everything which ministers to the
corpus sanum, will minister also to the mentem
sanam; and a walk on Durdham Downs, a game of
cricket, a steamer excursion to Chepstow, shall send

 
268 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

them home again happier and wiser men, than por-
ing over many wise volumes or hearing many wise
lectures. How often is a worthy fellow spending
his leisure honorably in hard reading, when he had
much better have been scrambling over hedge and
ditch, without a thought in his head save what was
put there by the grass and the butterflies, and the
green trees and the blue sky? And therefore I do
press earnestly, both on employers and employed, the
incalculable value of athletic sports and country walks
for those whose business compels them to pass the
day in the heart of the city; I press on you, with my
whole soul, the excellency of the early closing move-
ment; not so much because it enables young men to
attend mechanics’ institutes, as because it enables
them, if they choose, to get a good game of leap-frog.
You may smile; but try the experiment, and see how,
as the chest expands, the muscles harden, and the
cheek grows ruddy and the lips firm, and sound sleep
refreshes the lad for his next day’s work, the temper
will become more patient, the spirits more genial;
there will be less tendency to brood angrily over the
inequalities of fortune, and to accuse society for evils
which as yet she knows not how to cure. :

There is a class, again, above all these, which is
‘doubtless the most important -of all; and yet of
which I can say little here—the capitalist, small
and great, from the shopkeeper to the merchant
prince.

Heaven forbid that I should speak of them with
aught but respect. There are few figures, indeed, in
the world on which I look with higher satisfaction
than on the British merchant; the man whose ships
are on a hundred seas; who sends comfort and
prosperity to tribes whom he never saw, and honotr-
ably enriches himself by enriching others. There
is something to me chivalrous, even kingly, in the
merchant life; and there were men in Bristol of old,
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 269

-— as I doubt not there are now — who nobly fulfilled
that ideal. I cannot forget that Bristol was the
nurse of America; that more than two hundred
years ago, the daring and genius of Bristol con-
verted yonder narrow stream into a mighty artery,
down which flowed the young lifeblood of that
great Transatlantic nation destined to be hereafter,
I believe, the greatest which the world ever saw.
Yes, — were I asked to sum up in one sentence the
good of great cities, I would point first to Bristol,
and then to the United States, and say, That is
what great cities can do. By concentrating in one
place, and upon one object, men, genius, informa-
tion, and wealth, they can conquer new-found lands
by arts instead of arms ; they can beget new nations;
and replenish and subdue the earth from pole to
pole. a ‘
Meanwhile, there is one fact about employers, in
all cities which I know, which may seem common-
place to you, but which to me is very significant.
Whatsoever business they may do in the city, they
take good care, if possible, not to live in it. As
soon as a man gets wealthy nowadays, his first
act is to take to himself a villa in the country. Do
Iblame him? Certainly not. It is an act of com-
mon sense. He finds that the harder he works, the
more he needs of fresh air, free country life, inno-
cent recreation; and he takes it, and does his city
business all the better.for it, lives all the longer
for it, is the cheerfuller, more genial man for it.
One great social blessing, I think, which railroads
have brought, is the throwing open country life
to men of business. I say blessing: both to the
men themselves and to the country where they set-
tle. The citizen takes an honest pride in rivalling
the old country gentleman, in beating him in his
own sphere, as gardener, agriculturist, sportsman,
head of the village; and by his superior business
270 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

habits and his command of ready money, he very
often does so. For fifty miles round London,
wherever I see progress, — improved farms, model
cottages, new churches, new schools,—I find, in
three cases out of four, that the author is some
citizen who fifty years ago would have known noth-
ing but the narrow city life, and have had probably
no higher pleasures than those of the table; whose
dreams would have been, not as now, of model
farms and schools, but of turtle and port wine.

My only regret when I see so pleasant a sight
is, — Oh, that the good man could have taken his
workmen with him!

Taken his workmen with him ?

T assure you that, after years of thought, I see no
other remedy for the worst evils of city life. “If,”
says the old proverb, “the mountain will not come
to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the
mountain.” And if you cannot bring the coun-
try into the city, the city must go into the coun-
try.

Ds not faricy me a dreamer dealing with impos-
sible ideals. I know well what cannot be done:
fair and grand as it would be, if it were done, a
model. city is impossible in England. We have
here no Eastern despotism (and it is well we have
not) to destroy an old Babylon, as that mighty
genius Nebuchodonosor did, and build a few miles
off a new Babylon, one half the area of which was
park and garden, fountain and watercourse, — a
diviner work of art, to my mind, than the finest
picture or statue which the world ever saw. We
have not either (and it is well for us that we have
not) a model republic occupying a new uncleared
land. We cannot, as they do in America, plan
out avast city on some delicious and healthy site
amid the virgin forest, with streets one hundred
feet in breadth, squares and boulevards already
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 271

planted by God’s hand with majestic trees; and
then leave the great design to be hewn out of the
wilderness, street after street, square after square, by
generations yet unborn. That too is a magnificent
ideal; but it cannot be ours. And it is well for
us, I believe, that it cannot. The great value of
land, the enormous amount of vested interests, the
necessity of keeping to ancient sites around which
labor, as in Manchester, or commerce, as in Bristol,
has clustered itself on account of natural advan-
tages, all these things make any attempt to rebuild
in cities impossible. But they will cause us at last,
I believe, to build better things than cities. They
will issue in a complete interpenetration of city
and of country, a complete fusion of their different
modes of life, and a combination of the advantages
of both, such as, no country in the world has ever
seen. We shall have, I believe and trust, ere another
generation has passed, model lodging-houses spring-
ing up, not in the heart of the town, but on the hills
around it; and those will be—economy, as well
as science and good government, will compel them
to be — not ill-built rows of undrained cottages,
each rented for a while, and then left to run into
squalidity and disrepair, but huge blocks of build-
ing, each with its common eating-house, bar, baths,
wash-houses, reading-room, common conveniences
of every kind, where, in free and pure couniry air,
the workman will enjoy comforts which our own
grandfathers could not command, and at a lower
price than that which he now pays for such accom-
modation as I should be ashamed to give to my
-own horses; while from these great blocks of build-
ing branch lines will convey the men to or from
their work by railroad, without loss of time, labor,
or health.
Then the city will become what it ought to be:
the workshop, and not the dwelling-house, of a
272 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

mighty and healthy people. The old foul alleys, as
they become gradually depopulated, will be replaced
by fresh warehouses, fresh public buildings; and the
city, in spite of all its smoke and dirt, will become
a place on which the workman will look down
with pride and joy, because it will be to him no
longer a prison and a poison-trap, but merely a place
for honest labor.*

This, gentlemen and ladies, is my ideal; and I
cannot but hope and believe that I shall live to see
it realized here and there, gradually and cautiously
(as is our good and safe English habit), but still ear-
nestly and well. Did I see but the movement com-
menced in earnest, I should be inclined to cry a
“Nune Domine dimittis,’”—I have lived long
enough to see a noble work begun, which can-
not bat go on and prosper, so beneficial would it be
found. I tell you, that but this afternoon, as the
Bath train dashed through the last cutting, and your
noble vale and’ noble city opened before me, I look-
ed round upon the overhanging crags, the wooded
glens, and said to myself, — There, upon the rock in
the free air and sunlight, and not here, beneath yon
pall of smoke by the lazy pools and festering tidal
muds, ought the Bristol workman to live. Oh that
I may see the time when on the blessed Sabbath
eve these hills shall swarm as thick with living men
as bean-fields with the summer bees; when the glens
shall ring with the laughter of ten thousand chil-
dren, with limbs as steady, and cheeks as ruddy, as
those of my own lads and lasses at home; and
the artisan shall find his Sabbath a day of rest in-
deed, in which not only soul but body may gather
health and nerve for the week’s work, under the
soothing and purifying influences of those common
natural sights and sounds which God has given as
a heritage even to the gypsy on the moor; and of
which no man can be deprived without making his
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 273

life a burden to himself, perhaps a burden to those
around him.

But it will be asked, Will such improvements
pay? I respect that question. Ido not sneer at it,
and regard it, as some are too apt to do, as a sign
of the mercenary and money-loving spirit of the
present age. I look on it as a healthy sign of the
English mind; a sign that we believe, as the old
Jews did, that political and social righteousness is
inseparably connected with wealth and prosperity.
The old Psalms and prophets have taught us that
lesson; and God forbid that we should forget it.
The world is right well made; and the laws of trade
and of social economy, just as much as the laws of
nature, are divine facts; and only by obeying them
can we thrive. And I had far sooner hear a people
asking of every scheme of good, Will it pay? than
throwing themselves headlong into that merely sen-
timental charity to which superstitious nations have
always been prone,— charity which effects no per-
manent good, which, whether in Hindostan or in
Italy, debases, instead of raising, the suffering classes,
because it breaks the laws of social economy.

No, let us still believe that if a thing is right, it
will sooner or later pay; and in social questions,
make the profitableness of any scheme a test of its
rightness. Jt is a rough test; not an infallible one
at all; but it is a fair enough to work by.

And as for the improvements at which I have
hinted, I will boldly answer, that they will pay.

They will pay directly and at once, in the saving
of poor-rates. They will pay by exterminating epi-
demics, and numberless chronic forms of disease
which now render thousands burdens on the public
purse; consumers, instead of producers of wealth.
They will pay by gradually absorbing the dangerous
classes; and removing from temptation and degra-
dation a generation yet unborn. They will pay in

12 *
274 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

the increased content, cheerfulness, which comes
with health; in increased good-will of employed
towards employers. They will pay by putting the
masses into a state fit for education. They will pay,
too, in such fearful times as these, by the increased
physical strength and hardihood of the town popula-
tions. For it is from the city, rather than from the
country, that our armies must mainly be recruited.
Not only is the townsman more ready to enlist than
the countryman, because in the town the labor
market is most likely to be overstocked; but the
townsman actually makes a better soldier than the
countryman. He is a shrewder, more active, more
self-helping man; give him but the chances of main-
taining the same physical strength and health as the
countryman, and he will support the honor of the
British arms as gallantly as the Highlander or the
Connaughtman, and restore the days when the in-
vincible prentice-boys of London carried terror into
the heart of foreign lands. In all ages, in all times,
whether for war or for peace, it will pay- The true
wealth of a nation is the health of her masses.

It may seem to some here that I have dealt too
much throughout this lecture with merely material
questions; that J ought to have spoken more of in-
tellectual progress; perhaps, as a clergyman, more
also of spiritual and moral regeneration.

I can only answer, that if this. be a fault on my
part, it is a deliberate one. I have spoken, whether
rightly or wrongly, concerning what I know,— con-
cerning matters which are to me articles of faith
altogether indubitable, irreversible, Divine.

. Be it that these are merely questions of physical
improvement. I see no reason in that why they
should be left to laymen, or urged only on worldly
grounds and self-interest. I do not find that when
urged on those grounds, the advice is listened to.
I believe that it will not be listened to, until the con-
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 275

sciences of men, as well as their brains, are engaged
in these questions; until they are put on moral
grounds, shown to have connection with moral laws;
and so made questions not merely of interest, but of
duty, honor, chivalry.

I cannot but see, moreover, how many phenomena
which are supposed to be spiritual, are simply phys-
ical; how many cases which are referred to my pro-
fession, are properly.the object of the medical man.
I cannot but see, that unless there be healthy bodies,
it is impossible in the long run to have a generation
of healthy souls; I cannot but see that mankind are
as prone now as ever to. deny the sacredness and
perfection of God’s physical universe, as an excuse
for their own ignorance and neglect thereof; to
search the highest heaven for causes which lie patent
at their feet, and like the heathen of old time, to
impute to some capricious anger of the gods calami-
ties which spring trom their own greed, haste, and
ignorance.

And therefore, because Iam a priest, and glory in
the name of a priest, I have tried to fulfil somewhat
of that which seems to me the true office of a priest,
—namely, to proclaim to man the Divine element
which exists in all, even the smallest thing, because
each thing is a thought of God himself; to make
men understand that God is indeed about their path
and about their bed, spying out all their ways; that
they are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made, and
that God’s hand lies forever on them, in the.form of
physical laws, sacred, irreversible, universal, reach-
ing from one end of the universe to the other; that
whosoever persists in breaking those laws, reaps his
sure punishment of weakness and sickness, sadness
and self-reproach; that whosoever causes them to be
broken by others, reaps his sure punishment in find-
ing that he has transformed his fellow-men into
burdens and curses, instead of helpmates and bless-
276 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ings. To say this, is a priest’s duty; and then to
preach the good news that the remedy is patent,
easy, close at hand; that many of the worst evils
which afflict humanity may be exterminated by sim-
ple common sense, and the justice and mercy which
does to others as it would be done by; to awaken
men to the importance of the visible world; that they
may judge from thence the higher importance .of
that invisible world whereof this is but the garment
and the type; and in all times and places, instead
of keeping the key of knowledge to pamper one’s
own power or pride, to lay that key frankly and
trustfully in the hand of every human being who
hungers after truth, and to say, — Child of God, this
key is thine as well as mine. Enter boldly into thy
Father’s house,-and behold the wonder, the wisdom,
the beauty of its laws and its organisms, from the
mightiest planet over thy head, to the tiniest insect
beneath thy feet. Look at it, trustfully, joyfully,
earnestly ; for it is thy heritage. Behold its perfect
fitness for thy life here; and judge from thence its
fitness for thy nobler life hereafter.
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 277

ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.*

Lapies AND GENTLEMEN, —I speak to you to-
night as to persons assembled, somewhat, no doubt,
for amusement, but still more for instruction. In-
stitutions such as this were originally founded for
the purpose of instruction ; to supply to those who
wish to educate themselves some of the advantages
of a regular course of scholastic or scientific training,
by means of classes and of lectures.

I myself prize classes far higher than I do lectures.
From my own experience, a lecture is often a very
dangerous method of teaching; it is apt to engender
in the mind of men ungrounded conceit and scio-
lism, or the bad habit of knowing about subjects
without really knowing the subject itself. A young
man hears an interesting lecture, and carries away
from it doubiless a great many new facts and re-
sults; but he really. must not go home fancying
himself a much wiser man; and why? Because
he has only heard the lecturer’s side of the story.
He has been forced to take the facts and the results
on trust.. He has not examined the facts for him-
self. He has had no share in the process by which
the results were arrived at. In short, he has not
gone into the real seientia, that is, the “ knowing”
of the matter. He has gained a certain quantity of
second-hand information ; but he has gained noth-
ing in mental training, nothing in the great “art of
learning,” the art of finding out things for himself,

* Lecture delivered at Reading, 1848.
278 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

and of discerning truth from falsehood. Of course,
where the lecture is a scientific one, illustrated by
diagrams, this defect is not so extreme; but still
the lecturer who shows you experiments, is forced
to choose those which shall be startling and amus-
ing, rather than important; he is seldom or never
able, unless he is a man of at once the deepest
science and the most. extraordinary powers of amus-
ing, to give you those experiments in the proper
order which will unfold the subject to you step by
step; and after all, an experiment is worth very little
to you, unless you perform it yourself, ask questions
about it, or vary it a little to solve difficulties which
arise in your own mind.

Now mind,—JI do not say all this to make you
give up attending lectures. Heaven forbid. They
amuse, that is, they turn the mind off from business;
they relax it, and as it were bathe and refresh it
with new thoughts, after the day’s drudgery, or the
day’s commonplaces ; they fill it-with pleasant and
healthful images for after-thought. Above all, they
make one feel what a fair, wide, wonderful world
one lives in; how much there is to be known, and
how little one knows; and to the earnest man sug-
gests future subjects of study. I only ask you not
to expect from lectures what they can never give;
but as to what they can give, I consider, I assure
you, the lecturer’s vocation a most honorable one in
the present day, even if we look on him as a mere
advertiser of nature’s wonders. As such, I appear
here to-night ; not to teach you natural history ; for
that you can only teach yourselves; but to set be-
fore you the subject and its value, and if possible,
allure some of you to the study of it.

I have said that lectures do not supply mental
training; that only personal study can do that. The
next question is, what study? And that is a ques-
tion which I do not answer in a hurry, when I say,
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 279

the study of natural history. It is not, certainly, a
study which a young man, entering on the business
of self-education, would be likely to take up. To
him, naturally, man is the most important subject.
His first wish is to know the human world; to know
what men are, what they have thought, what they
have done. And therefore, you find that poetry,
history,’ politics, and philosophy, are the matters
which most attract the self-guided student. I do
not blame him; but he seems to me to be beginning
at the middle, rather than at the beginning. I fell
into the same fault myself more than once, when
I was younger, and meddled in matters too high for
me, instead of refraining my soul, and keeping it
low; so I can sympathize with others who do so.
But I can assure them that they will find such lofty
studies do them good, only in proportion as they
have first learned the art of learning. Unless they
have learned to face facts manfully, to discriminate
between them skilfully, to draw conclusions from
them rigidly ; unless they have learned in all things
to look, not for what they would like to be true, but
for what is true, because God has done it and it
cannot be undone, —- then they will be in danger of
taking up only the books which suit their own preju-
dices, — and every one has his prejudices, — and
using them, not to correct their own notions, but to
corroborate. and pamper them; to confirm them-
selves in their first narrow guesses, instead of en-
larging those guesses into certainty. The lad of a
Tory turn will read Tory books, the lad of a Radical
turn Radical books; and the green spectacles of
party and prejudice will be deepened in hue as he
reads on, instead of being thrown away for the clear
white glass of truth, which will show him reason in
all honest sides, and good in all honest men.

But, says the young man, I wish to be wide-
minded and wide-hearted,—I study for that very
280 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

purpose. I will be fair, I will be patient, I will hear
all sides ere I judge. And I doubt not that he
speaks honestly. But (I quote with all reverence)
though the spirit be willing, the flesh is weak. Stud-
ies which have to do with man’s history, man’s
thoughts, man’s feelings, are too exciting, too per-
sonal, often, alas, too tragical, to allow us to read
them calmly at first. The men and women of whom
we read are so like ourselves (for the human heart is
the same in every age), that we unconsciously begin
to love or hate them in the first five minutes, and
read history as we do a novel, hurrying on to see
when the supposed hero and heroine get safely mar-
ried, and the supposed villains safely hanged, at the
end of the chapter, having forgotten all the while in
our haste to ascertain which is the hero, and which
is the villain. Mary Queen of Scots was “ beautiful
and unfortunate,” — what heart would not bleed for
a beautiful woman in trouble? Why stop to ask
whether she brought it on herself? She was seven-
teen years in prison. Why stop to ascertain what
sort of a prison it was? And as for her guilt, the
famous casket letters were of course a vile forgery.
Impossible that they could be true. Hoot down the
cold-hearted, and disagreeable, and troublesome man
of facts, who will persist in his stupid attempt to dis-
enchant you, and repeat,— But the casket letters
were not a forgery, and we can prove it, if you will
but listen to the facts. Her prison, as we will show
you (if you will be patient and listen to facts), con-
sisted in greater pomp and luxury than that of most
noblemen, with horses, hounds, books, music, liberty
to hunt and amuse herself in every way, even in in-
triguing with every court of Europe, as we can show
you again, if you will be patient and listen to facts.
And she herself was a very wicked and false woman,
an adulteress and a murderess (though fearfully ill-
trained in early youth), who sowed the wind, poor
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 281

wretch, from girlhood to old age, and therefore reaped
the whirlwind, receiving the just reward of her deeds.
Catharine of Russia, meanwhile, instead of being
beautiful and unfortunate, was only handsome and
succegsful. Brand her as a disgrace to human na-
ture. The morals and ways of the two were pretty
much on a par, with these exceptions in Catharine’s
favor, — that she had strong passions, Mary none;
that she lived in outer darkness and practical hea-
thendom, while Mary had the light shining all round
her, and refused it deliberately again and again.
What matter to the sentimentalist? Hiss the stupid
hard-hearted man of facts, by all means. What if
he be right? He has no business to be right; we
will consider him wrong accordingly, of our own
sovereign will and pleasure. For after all, if we had
the facts put before us (says the conscience of many
a hearer), we could not judge of them; we read to
be amused and instructed, not to study cases like so
many barristers. So is history read. And so, alas,
is history written, too often, for want of a steady
and severe training which would enable people to
judge dispassionately of facts. In politics the case
is the same. In poetry, which appeals more directly
to the feelings, it: must needs be still worse; as has
been shown sadly enough of late. by the success of
several poems, in which every possible form of bad
taste has only met with unbounded admiration from
the many who have not had their senses exercised to
discern between good and evil.

Now what seems to me to be wanted for young
minds, is a study in which no personal likes or dis-
likes shall tempt them out of the path of mental
honesty ; a study in which they shall be free to look
at facts exactly as they are, and draw their conclu-
sions patiently and dispassionately. And such a
study I have found in that of natural history.

Do not fancy it, I beg you, an easy thing to judge

‘
282 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

fairly of facts; even to discover the facts at all, when
they are staring you in the face; and to see what it
is that you do see. Any lawyer will tell you, that if
you ask three honest men to bear testimony concern-
ing an event which happened but yesterday, none of
them, if he be at all an interested party, will give you
exactly the same account of it; not that he wishes
to say what is untrue; but that different parts of the
whole matter having struck each man with different
‘ force, a different picture has been left on each man’s
memory. I have been utterly astounded of late, in
investigating these strange stories of table-turning
and spirit-rapping, to find how even clear-headed and
well-instructed persons (as one had fancied them)
become unable to examine fairly into a thing, the
moment the desire to believe has entered the heart;
and how no amount of mere cultivation, if the sci-
entific habit of mind be wanting, can prevent people
from finding (as in table-turning) miracles in the
most simple mechanical accidents; or from becom-
ing (as in spirit-rapping) the dupes of the most
clumsy, palpable, and degrading impostures, even
after they have been exposed over and over again in
print. Humiliating, indeed, it is, in this so sélf-con-
fident and boastful nineteenth century, amid steam-
engines, railroads, electric telegraphs, and all the
wonders of our inductive science, to find exploded
superstitions leaping back into life, even more mon-
strous and irrational than in past ages, and to see
our modern Pharisees and Sadducees, like those in
Judea of old, seeking after a sign of an unseen
world; and being unable to find one either in the
heaven above or in the earth beneath, discovering
it at last (I am almost ashamed to speak the words)
under the parlor-table.
Against such extravagances, and against the loose,
sentimental tone of mind which begets them, hardly
anything would be a better safeguard, than the habit-
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 283

ual study of nature. The chemist, the geologist, the
botanist, the zodlogist, has to deal with facts which
will make him master of them, and of himself, only
in proportion as he obeys them. Many of you
doubtless know Lord Bacon’s famous apothegm,
Nature is only conquered by obeying her; and will
understand me when I say, that you cannot under-
stand, much less use for scientific purposes, the
meanest pebble, unless you first obey that pebble.
Paradoxical, but true. See this pebble which I
hold in my hand, picked up out of the street as I
came along; it shall be my only object to-night.
There the thing is; and is as it is, and in no other
way; and such it will be, and so it will behave
and act, in spite of me, and all my fancies about it,
and notions of what it ought to have been like, and
what it ought to have done. It is a thought of
God’s; and strong by the eternal laws of matter,
which are the will of God. It has the whole universe,
sun, and stars, and all, backing it by God’s appoint-
ment, to keep it where it is and what it is; and till
{as Lord Bacon has it) I have discovered and obeyed
the will of God revealed in that pebble, it is to me a
riddle more insoluble than the Sphinx’s, a fortress
more impregnable than Sebastopol. I may crush it;
but epee is not conquering; but I cannot even
mend the road with it prudently, until I have discov-
ered whether Almighty God has made it fit to mend
roads with. I may have the genius of a Plato or of
a Shakspeare, but all my genius will not avail to
penetrate that pebble, or see anything in it but a
little round dirty stone, until I have treated the
pebble with reverence, as a thing independent of
my likes and dislikes, fancies, and aspirations ; and
have asked it humbly to tell me its story, taking
counsel meanwhile of hundreds of kindred pebbles,
each as silent and reserved as this one; and watched
and listened patiently, through many mistakes and
ZOE KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIKS.

misreadings, to what it has to say for itself, and what
God has made it to be. And then at last that little
black rounded pebble, from the street outside, may,
and will surely, if I be patient and honest enough,
tell me a tale wilder and grander than any which I
could have dreamed for myself; will shame the
meanness of my imagination, by the awful magnifi-
cence of God’s facts, and say to me, —

“ Ages and AMons since, thousands on thousands
of years before there was a man to till the ground,
I, the little pebble, was a living sponge, in the milky
depths of the great chalk ocean; and hundreds of
living atomies, each more fantastic than a ghost-
painter’s dreams, swam round me, and grew on me,
and multiplied, till I became a tiny hive of wonders,
each one of which would take you a life to under-
stand. And then, I cannot yet tell you how, and
till I tell you you will never know, the delicate flint-
needles in my skin gathered other particles of flint
to them, and I and all my inhabitants became a
stone; and the chalk mud settled round us, I know
not how, and covered us in; and for ages on ages I
lay buried in the nether dark, and felt the glow of
the nether fires, and was cracked and tossed by a
hundred earthquakes. Again and again I have been
part of an island, and then again sunk beneath the
sea, to be upheaved again after long centuries, till I
saw the light once more, and dropped from the face of
some chalk cliff far away among high hills which
have long since been swept off the face of the earth,
and was tossed by currents till I became a pebble on
the beach, while Reading was a sand-bank in a shal-
low sea. There I lay and rolled till I was rounded,
for many a century-more; till flood after flood passed
over me, and a new earth was made; and I was
mixed up with fresh flints from wasting chalk hills,
and with freestones from the Gloucestershire wolds,
and with quartz-boulders from the mountains of
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 285

‘Wales, while over me swept the carcasses of drowned
elephants, and bisons, and many a monstrous beast ;
and above me floated uprooted palms, and tropic
fruits and seeds, and the wrecks of a dying world.
And then there came another age,

‘ And it grew wondrous cold;

And ice mast-high came floating by,

As green as emerald;’
and as the icebergs melted in the sun, the stones and
the silt fell out of them, and covered me up; and I
was in darkness once more, vexed by many an earth-
quake, till I became part of this brave English land.
And now Iam a pebble here in Reading-street, to
be ground beneath the wheels of busy men; and yet
you cannot kill me, or hinder my fulfilling the law
which cannot be broken. This year I am a pebble
in the street; and next year I shall be dust upon the
fields above ; and the year after that I shall be alive
again, and rise from the ground as fair green wheat-
stems, bearing up food for the use of man. And
even after that you cannot kill me. The trampled
and sodden straw will rot only to enter into a new
life ; and I shall pass through a fresh cycle of strange
adventures, age after age, till time shall be no more;
doing my work in my generation, and fulfilling to
the last. the will of God, as faithfully as when I was
.the water-breathing sponge in the abysses of the old
chalk sea.” .

All this, and more, gentlemen and ladies, the pebble
could tell to you, and will; but he is old and vener-
able, and like old men, he wishes to be approached
with respect, and does not like to be questioned too
much or too rapidly; so that you must not be of-
fended if you meet with: more than one rebuff from
him; or if he keeps stubborn silence, till he has
seen that you are a modest and attentive person, to
whom it is worth while to open a little of his forty
or fifty thousand years’ experience. .
286 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Second only to the good effect of this study on the
logical faculty, seems to me to be its effect on the
imagination. Not merely in such objects as the
pebble, whose history I have so hastily, but I must
add faithfully, sketched ; but in the tiniest piece of
mould on a decayed fruit, the tiniest animalcule from
the stagnant pool, will imagination find inexhaustible
wonders, and fancy a fairy-land. And I beg my
elder hearers not to look on this as light praise.
Imagination is a valuable thing; and even if it were
not, it is a thing, a real thing, a faculty which every
one has, and with which you must do something.
You cannot ignore it; it will assert its own existence.
You will be wise not to neglect it in young children ;
for if you do not provide wholesome food. for it, it
will find unwholesome food for itself. I know that
many, especially men of business, are inclined to
sneer at it, and ask what is the use of it? The
simple answer is,'God has made it; and He has
made nothing in vain. But you will find that in
practice, in action, in business, imagination is a
most useful faculty, and is so much mental capital,
whensoever it is properly trained. Consider but this
one thing, that without imagination no man can pos-
sibly invent even the pettiest object; that it is one of
the faculties which essentially raises man above the
brutes, by enabling him to create for himself; that
the first savage who ever made a hatchet must have
imagined that hatchet to himself ere he began it;
that every new article of commerce, every new open-
ing for trade, must be arrived at by acts of imagina-
tion; by the very same faculty which the poet or the
painter employs, only on a different class of objects;
remember that this faculty is present in some strength
in every mind of any power, in every mind which
can do more than follow helplessly in the beaten
track and do nothing but what it has seen others do
already ; and then see whether it be not worth while
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 287

to give the young a study which above all others is
fitted to keep this important and universal faculty in
health, Now, from fifty to five-and-twenty years ago,
under the influence of the Franklin and Edgeworth
school of education, imagination was at a discount.
That school was a good school enough; but here
was one of its faults. It taught people to look on
imagination as quite a useless, dangerous, unprac-
tical, bad thing, a sort of mental disease. And now,
as is usual after an unfair depreciation of anything,
has come a revolution; and an equally unfair glori-
fying of the imagination; the present generation
have found out suddenly that the despised faculty is
worth something, and therefore are ready to believe
it worth everything; so that nowadays, to judge
from the praise heaped on some poets, the mere pos-
session of imagination, however ill-regulated, will
atone for every error of false taste, bad English,
carelessness for truth; and even for coarseness, blas-
phemy, and want of common morality ; and it is no
longer charity, but fancy, which is to cover the mul-
titude of sins.

The fact is, that youth will always be the period of
imagination ; and the business of a good education
will always be to prevent that imagination from
being thrown inward, and producing a mental fever,
diseasing itself and the whole character by feeding
on its own fancies, its own daydreams, its own
morbid feelings, its likes and dislikes; even if it do
not take at last to viler food, to French novels, and
lawless thoughts, which are but too common, alas!
though we will not speak of them here.

To turn the imagination not inwards, but out-
wards; to give it a class of objects which may excite
wonder, reverence, the love of novelty and of discov-
ering, without heating the brain or exciting the pas-
sions, this is one of the great problems of educa-
tion; and I believe from experience that the study of
288 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

natural history supplies in great part what we want.
The earnest naturalist is pretty sure to have obtained
that great need of all men, to get rid of self. He
who, after the hours of business, finds himself with
a mind relaxed and wearied, will not be tempted to
sit at home dreaming over impossible scenes of pleas-
ure, or to go for amusement to haunts of coarse ex-
citement, if he have in every hedge-bank, and wood-
land, and running stream, in every bird among the
boughs, and every cloud above his head, stores of in-
terest which will enable him to forget awhile himself,
and man, and all the cares, even all the hopes of life,
and to be alone with the inexhaustible beauty and
glory of Nature, and of God who made her. An
hour or two every day spent after business-hours in
botany, geology, entomology, at the telescope or the
microscope, is so much refreshment gained for the
mind for to-morrow’s labor, so much rest for irritated
or anxious feelings, often so much saved from frivol-
ity or sin. And how easy this pursuit. How abun-
dant the subjects of it! Look round you here.
Within the reach of every one of you are wonders
beyond all poets’ dreams. Nota hedge-bank but has
its hundred species of plants, each different and each
beautiful; and when you tire of them,—if you ever
can tire, —a trip into the meadows by the Thames,
with the rich vegetation of their dikes, floating
flower-beds of every hue, will bring you as it were
into a new world, new forms, new colors, new de-
light. You ask why this is? And you find your-
self at once involved in questions of soil and climate,
which lead you onward, step by step, into the deepest
problems of geology and chemistry. In entomology,
too, if you have any taste for the beauties of form
and color, any fondness for mechanical and dynami-
cal science, the insects, even to the smallest, will
supply endless food for such likings; while their
instincts and their transformations, as well as the
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 289

equally wondrous chemical transformation of salts
and gases into living plants, which agricultural chem-
istry teaches you, will tempt you to echo every day
Mephistopheles’s magic song, when he draws wine
out of the table in Auersbach’s cellar: —

Wine is grapes, and grapes are wood, —

The wooden board yields wine as good:

It is but a deeper glance

Into Nature’s countenance.

All is plain to him who seeth;

Lift the veil and look beneath,

And behold, the wise man saith,

Miracles, if you have faith. :

Believe me, you need not go so far to find more
than you will ever understand. An hour’s summer
walk, in the company of some one who knows what
to look for and how to look for it, by the side of one
of those stagnant dikes in the meadows below, would
furnish you with subjects for a month’s investigation,
in the form of plants, shells, and animalcules, on
each of which a whole volume might be written.
And even at this seemingly dead season of the year,
fancy not that nature is dead,— not even that she
sleeps awhile. Every leaf which drops from the
bough, to return again into its gases and its dust, is
working out chemical problems which have puzzled
a Boyle and a Lavoisier, and about which a Liebig
and a Faraday will now tell you that they have but
some dim guess, and that they stand upon the thresh-
old of knowledge like (as Newton said of himself)
children gathering a few pebbles, upon the shore of’
an illimitable sea. In every woodland, too, innumera-
ble fungi are at work, raising from the lower soil rich
substances, which, strewed on the surface by quick
decay, will form food for plants higher than them-
selves; while they, by their variety and beauty, both
of form and color, might well form studies for any
painter, and, by the obscure laws of their reproduc-
tion, studies for any philosopher. Why, there is not
a heap of dead leaves among which, by picking it
18
290 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

through carefully, you might not find some twenty
species of delicate and elegant land-shells ; hardly a
tree-foot at which, among the moss and mould, you
might not find the chrysalides of beautiful moths,
where caterpillars have crawled down the trunk in
autumn, to lie there self-buried and die to live again
next spring in a new and fairer shape. And if you
cannot reach even there, go to the water-butt in the
nearest yard, and there, in one pinch of green scum,
in one spoonful of water, behold a whole “ Divina
Commedia” of living forms, more fantastic a thou-
sand times than those with which Dante peopled his
unseen world; and then feel, as you should feel,
abashed at the ignorance and weakness of mortal
man; abashed still more at that rash conceit of his,
which makes him fancy himself the measure of all
things; and say with me, “Oh Lord, thy works are
manifold; thy ways are very deep. In wisdom hast
thou made them all, the earth is full of thy riches.
Thou openest thine hand, and fillest all things living
with plenteousness ; they continue this day according
to thine ordinance, for all things serve thee. Thou
hast made them fast for ever and ever; thou hast
given them a law which shall not be broken. Let
them praise the name of the Lord; for he spake the
word and they were made, he commanded, and they
were created.”

This I shall say, but little more than this, on the
religious effect of the study of natural history. Ido
not wish to preach a sermon to you. I can trust
God’s world to bear better witness than I can of the
Loving Father who made it. I thank Him from my
own experience for the testimony of His Creation,
only next to the testimony of His Bible. I have
watched scientific discoveries which were supposed
in my boyhood to be contrary to revelation, found
out one by one to confirm and explain revelation, as
crude and hasty theories were corrected by more
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 291

abundant facts, and men saw more clearly what both
the Bible and Nature really did say; and I can trust
that the same process will go on forever, and that
God’s earth and God’s word will never contradict
each other. J have found the average of scientific
men not less, but more, godly and righteous men
than the average of their neighbors ; and I can trust
that this will be more and more the case as science
deepens and widens. And therefore I can trust that
every patient, truthful, and healthful mind will, the
more it contemplates the works of God, reécho St.
Paul’s great declaration that the Invisible things
of God are clearly seen from the foundation of the
world, being understood by the things which are
made, even his eternal power and Godhead. And
so trusting, I pass on to a lower view of the subject,
and yet not an unnecessary one.

In an industrial country like this, the practical
utility of any study must needs be always thrown
into the scale; and natural history seems at first
‘sight somewhat unpractical. What money will it
earn for a man in after-life? —is a question which
will be asked; and which it is folly to despise. For
if the only answer be “ None at all,” a man has a
right to rejoin, “ Then let me take up some pursuit
which will train and refresh my mind as much as
this one, and yet be of pecuniary benefit to me some
day.” If you can find such a study, by all means
follow it; but I say that this study, too, may be
of great practical benefit in after-life. How much
tmoney have I, young as I am, seen wasted for want
of a little knowledge of botany, geology, or chem-
istry. How many a clever man becomes the dupe
of empirics for want of a little science. How many
a mine is‘sought for where no mine could be; or
crop attempted to be grown, where no such crop
could grow. How many a hidden treasure, on the
other hand, do men walk over unheeding. How
292 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

many a new material, how many an improved pro-
cess in manufacture is possible, yet is passed over, for
want of a little science. And for the man who emi-
grates, and comes in contact with rude nature teem-
ing with unsuspected wealth, of what incalculable
advantage to have if it be but the rudiments of those
sciences, which will tell him the properties, and there-
fore the value, of the plants, the animals, the min-
erals, the climates with which he meets? True, —
home-learned natural history will not altogether teach
him about these things, because most of them must
needs be new; but it will teach him to compare and
classify them as he finds them, and so by analogy
with things already known to him, to discover their
intrinsic worth.

For natural history stands to man’s power over
Nature, that is, to his power of being useful to him-
self and to mankind, in the same relation as do
geography, grammar, arithmetic, geometry, political
economy; none of them, perhaps, bearing directly on
his future business in life; but all training his mind
for his business, all giving him the rudiments of laws
which he will hereafter work out and apply to his
profession. And even at home, be sure that such
studies will bear fruit in after-life. The productive
wealth of England is not exhausted, doubt it not;
our grandchildren may find treasures in this our noble
island, of which we never dreamed, even as we have
found things of which our forefathers dreamed not.
Recollect always that a great market-town like this
is not merely a commercial centre; not perhaps
even a commercial centre at all; but that she is an
agricultural centre, and one of the most important
in England; that the increase of science here, will
be sure more or less to extend itself to the neigh-
borhood; and then lay to heart this one fact. A
friend of mine, and one whom I am proud to call.
my friend, succeeding to an estate, thought good to
ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 293

cultivate it himself. And being a man of common
sense, he thought good to know something of what
he was doing. And he said to himself, The soil,
and the rain, and the air, are my raw materials. I
ought surely then to find out what soil, and rain,
and air are; so I must become a geologist and a
meteorologist. Vegetable substances are what I
am to make. And I ought surely to know what
it is that I am making; so I must become a bot-
anist. The raw material does somehow or other be-
come manufactured into the produce; the soil into
the vegetable. I ought surely to know a little about
the processes of my own manufacture; so I must
learn chemistry. Chance and blind custom are not
enough for me. At best they can but leave me
where they found me, at their mercy. Science I
need; and science, I will acquire. What was the
result? After many a mistake and disappointment,
he succeeded in discovering on his own estate a mine
of unsuspected wealth, — not of gold indeed, but of
gold’s worth,—-the elements of human food. He
discovered why some parts of his estate were fertile,
while others were barren ; and by applying the knowl-
edge thus gained, he converted some of his most
barren fields into his most fertile ones; he preserved
again and again his crops from blight, while those
of others perished all around him; he won for him-
self wealth, and the respect and honor of men of sci-
ence ; while those around him, slowly opening their
eyes ‘to his improvements, followed his lessons at
second-hand, till the whole agriculture of an impor-
tant district has become gradually but permanently
improved, under the auspices of one patient and
brave man, who knew that knowledge was power,
and that only by obeying nature can man conquer
her.

Bear in mind both these last great proverbs; and
combine them in your mind. Remember that while
294 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

England is, and ever will be, behindhand in meta
physical and scholastic science, she is the nation
which above all others has conquered nature by obey-
ing her; that as it pleased God that the author of
that proverb, the father of inductive science, Bacon
Lord Verulam, should have been an Englishman, so
it has pleased Him that we, Lord Bacon’s country-
men, should improve that precious heirloom of sci-
ence, inventing, producing, exporting, importing, till
it seems as if the whole human race, and every land
from the equator to the pole must henceforth bear
the indelible impress and sign-manual of English
science.

And bear in mind, as I said just now, that this
study of natural history is the grammar of that very
physical science which has enabled England thus to
replenish the earth and subdue it. Do you not see,
then, that by following these studies you are walking
in the very path to which England owes her wealth ;
that you are training in yourself that. habit of mind
which God has approved as the one which He has
ordained for Englishmen, and are doing what in you
lies toward carrying out, in after-life, the glorious
work which God seems to have laid on the English
race, to replenish the earth and subdue it ?

One word more, and I have done. Unless you
are already tired of hearing me, I would suggest a
few practical hints before we part. The best way of
learning these matters is by classes, in which men
may combine and interchange their thoughts and ob-
servations. The greatest savans find this; and have
their Microscopic Society, Linnean, Royal, Geologi-
cal Societies, British Associations, and what not, in
which all may know what each has done, and each
share in the learning of all; for as iron sharpeneth
iron, so a man sharpens the face of his friend. I
have nothing to say against debating societies; per-
haps it was my own fault that whenever I belonged
ON THE STUDY or NATURAL HISTORY. 295

to one as a young man, I found them inclined to
make me conceited, dictatorial, hasty in my judg-
ments, trying to state a case before I had investi-
gated it, to teach others before I had taught myself,
to make a fine speech, not to find out the truth; till
in, I think, a wise moment for me, I vowed at twenty
never to set foot in one again, and kept my vow. Be
that as it may, I wish that side by side with the
debating society, I could see young men joining in
natural history societies; going out in company on
pleasant evenings to search together after the hidden
treasures of God’s world, and read the great green
book which lies open alike to peasant and to peer;
and then meeting, say once a week, to debate, not of
opinions, but of facts; to show each what they had
found, to classify and explain, to learn and to won-
der together. In such a class many appliances would
be possible. A microscope, for instance, or chemical
apparatus, might belong to the society, which each
individual by himself would not be able to afford;
while as for books, — books on these subjects are now
published at a marvellous cheapness, which puts
them within the reach of every one, and of an ex-
cellence which twenty years ago was impossible.
Any working man in this town might now, espe-
cially in a class, consult scientific books, for which I,
as a lad, twenty years ago, was sighing in vain; nay,
many of which, twenty years ago, the richest noble-
man could not have purchased ; for the simple reason,
that, dear or cheap, they did not exist. Such classes,
too, would be the easiest, cheapest, and pleasantest
way of establishing what ought to exist, I think, in
connection with every institution like this, namely, a
museum. If the young men were really ready and
willing to collect objects of -interest, 1 doubt not
that public-spirited men would be found, who would
undertake the expense of mounting them in a mu-
seum. And you cannot imagine, 1 assure you, how
Z27g0 KINGSLEL'DS NEW MIDULLLANILDS.

large and how interesting a museum might be formed
of the natural curiosities of a neighborhood like this,
I may say, indeed, of any neighborhood or of any
parish ; but your museum need not be confined to
the neighborhood. Societies now exist in every part
of England, who will be happy to exchange their
duplicates for yours. As your collection increased
in importance, old members abroad would gladly
contribute foreign curiosities to your stock. Neigh-
boring gentlemen would send you valuable objects
which had been lumbering their houses, uncared for,
because they stood alone, and formed no part of a
collection; and J, for one, would be happy to add
something from the fauna and flora of those moor-
lands, where I have so long enjoyed the wonders of
nature; never, I can honestly say, alone; because
when man was not with me, I had companions in
every bee, and flower, and pebble; and never idle,
because I could not pass a swamp, or a tuft of
heather, without finding in it a fairy tale of which I
could but decipher here and there a line or two, and
yet found them more interesting than all the books,
save one, which were ever written upon earth.
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 297

THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT.*

Lavies anp GENTLEMEN, — We may of course,
think of anything which we choose in a gravel-pit,
as we may anywhere else. Thought is free; at
least, so we fancy.

But the most right sort of thought, after all, is
thought about what lies nearest us; not always, but
surely once in a way, that we may understand some-
thing of every-day objects. And therefore it may
be well worth our while to go once into a gravel-
pit, and think about it, till one has learned what a
gravel-pit is.

Learned what a gravel-pit is? Everybody knows.

If it be so, everybody knows more than I know.
‘We all know a gravel-pit when we see one; but we
do not all know what we see. I do not know. I
know a little; a few scraps of fact about these pits
round here, though about no others. Were I to go
into a pit a hundred miles, even fifty miles off, I
could tell you nothing certain about it; perhaps
might make a dozen mistakes. But what I know,
with tolerable certainty, about the pits round here, I
wish to tell you to-night.

But why? You do not need, one in ten of you,
to know anything about gravel, unless you be high-
way surveyor, or have a garden walk to make; and
then some one will easily tell you where the best
gravel is to be got, at so much a load.

Very true; but you come here to-night to instruct

* A Lecture delivered at the Mechanics’ Institute, Odiham, 1857.
13 *
298 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

yourselves; that is, to learn, if you can, something
more about-the world you live in; something more
about God who made the world.

And you come here to educate yourselves; to
educe and bring out your own powers of perceiving,
judging, reasoning; to improve yourselves in the
art of all arts, which is, the art of learning. That
is mental education. ;

Now if a gravel-pit will teach you a little about
these things; you will surely call it a rich gravel-pit.
If it helps you to wisdom, which is worth more
than gold; which‘is the only way to get gold wisely,
and spend it wisely; then we will call our pit no
more a gravel-pit, but a wisdom-pit, a mine of wis-
dom.

Let us go out, then, in fancy (for it is too cold to
go out in person) to Hook Common, scramble down
into the first gravel-pit we come to, and see what we
can see.

The first thing we see is a quantity of stones,
more or less rounded, lying in gravel and poor clay.

Well, — what do those stones tell us ?

These stones, as I told you when IJ addressed you
last, are ancient and venerable worthies. They have
seen a great deal in their time. They have hada
great deal of knocking about, and have stood it
manfully. They have stood the knocking about of
three worlds already; and have done their duty
therein ; and they are ready (if you choose to mend
the road with them) to stand the knocking about of
this fourth world, and being most excellent gravel,
to do their duty in this world likewise; which is
more, I fear, than either you or I can say for our-
selves.

Three worlds ?

Yes. Standing there in the gravel-pit, I see three
old worlds, in each of which these stones played
their part; and this world of man, for the fourth,
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 299

and the best of all,—for man, if not for the stones.
I speak sober truth. Let me explain it step by
step.

You know the chalk hills to the south; and the
sands of Crooksbury and the Hind Head beyond
them. There is one world.

You know the clays and sands of Hook and
Newnham, Dogmersfield and Shapley Heath, and all
the country to the north as far as Reading. There
is a second world.

You know the gravel-pit itself; and all the upper
soils and. gravels, which are spread over the length
and breadth of the country to the north. ‘There is a
third world.

Let us take them one by one.

First, the chalk.

The chalk hills rise much higher than the sur-
rounding country; but you must not therefore sup-
pose that they were made after it, and laid on the
top of it. That guess would be true, if you went
southeast from here toward the Hind Head. The
chalk lies on the top of the sands of Crooksbury
Hill, and the clays of Holt Forest; but it dips un-
derneath the sands of Shapley Heath, and the clays
of Dogmersfield, and reappears from underneath
them again at Reading.

Thus you at Odiham stand on the edge of a
chalk basin; of what was once a sea, or estuary,
with shores of chalk, which begins at the foot of the
High Clere Hills, and runs eastwatd, widening as it
goes, past London, into the Eastern Sea. Every-
where under this great basin is the floor of chalk,
covered with clays and sands, which, for certain rea-
sons, are called by geologists Tertiary strata.

Bot what has this to do with the gravel-pit ?

This first. That all the flints in this pit have
come out of the chalk. They are colored, most of
them, with iron, which has turned them brown; but
300 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

they are exactly the same flints as those gray ones’
in the chalk pit on the other side of the town.

How do I know that? 3

I think our own eyes will prove it: they are the
same shapes, and of the same substance; but as a
still surer proof, we find exactly the same fossils in
them: sponges, choanites, (which were something
like our modern sea-anemones,) corals, and “ shep-
herds’ crowns,” as the boys call the fossil sea-urchins.
The species of all these, and of other fossils, in the
chalk-pit and in the gravel-pit, are absolutely iden-
tical. The natural conclusion is, then, that the gravel
has been formed from the washings of the chalk.
The white lime of the chalk has been carried away
in water by some flood or floods; the heavier flints
have been left behind.

Stop now one moment, and think. You all know
how very few flints there are in the chalk-pit, in pro-
portion to the mass of chalk. You all know what
vast gravel beds cover the country to the north, and
often to the thickness of many feet. Try and con-
ceive, then, what a much more vast mass of chalk
must have been washed away, to leave that vast
mass of gravel behind it.— Conceive? It is past
conception. I will but give you two hints as to its
probable size. '

The chalk to the eastward, between here and
Farnham, is a far narrower and shallower band than
anywhere else in England. Its narrowest point is,
I believe, beneath’ the bishop’s palace at Farnham,
where it may be a hundred feet thick, instead of
several hundred, as it usually is in other parts of
England. The cause of this is, that the whole of
the upper chalk has been washed away, to form the
gravel beds to the north and east of us. :

Again. Some of you may have been on the
Hind Head or on Leith Hill, and have looked south-
ward over the glorious prospect of the rich Weald,
THOUGHTS IN A~GRAVEL-PIT. 301

spread out five hundred feet below,—a sight to
make an Englishman proud of his native land.
Now, the mass of chalk which has been carried
away began behind you, at the Hogsback, and the
line of chalk hills which runs to Boxhill, and stretch-
ed hundreds of feet above your head as you stand on
Hind Head or Leith Hill, right over the old Weald
of Sussex to the chalk of the South Downs. And
out of the scourings of that vast mass of chalk was
our gravel-pit made.

Of that, and also of the Hind Head sands below
it.
For you will find a great deal of sharp sand in
our gravel-pits, which has not, I believe, come from
the grinding of chalk flints; for if it had been
ground, it would not be the sharp sand it is; the
particles would be rounded off at the edges. This
is probably sand from the Hind Head; from what
geologists term the green-sands, below the chalk..
‘ And I have a better proof of this, — at least ]
should have in every gravel-pit at Eversley,— ina
few pieces of a stone which is not chalk flint at all;
flattish and oblong, not more than two or three
inches in diameter; of a grayish color, and a porous,
worm-eaten surface, which no chalk flint ever has.
They are chert, which abound in the green-sand for-
mation; and insignificant as they look, are a great
token of a most important fact; that the currents
which formed our sands and gravels set from the
south during a long series of ages, first till they had
washed away all the chalk off the Weald, and next
till they had washed away a great part of the sands
which then became exposed, the remains whereof
form great commons over a wide tract of Surrey.

Now let me pause, and ask you to observe one
thing. How, in inductive science, we arrive, by
patient and simple observation of the things around
us, at the most grand and surprising results. Of
802 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

course Iam not giving you the whole of the facts
which have made this argument certain. I am only
giving you enough to make it probable to you. Its
certainty has been proved by many different men,
laboring in many ‘different parts of England, and of
the Continent also, and then comparing their discov-
eries together; often, of course, making mistakes ;
but each working on patiently, and correcting their
early mistakes by fresh facts, till they have at last
got hold of the true key to the mystery, and are as
certain of the existence of the great island of the
Weald, and its gradual destruction by the waves
and currents of an ancient sea, as if they had seen
it with their bodily eyes. You must take all this,
of course, as truth from me to-night; but you may
go and examine for yourselves; and see how far
your own common sense and observations agree
with those of learned geologists.

The history of this great Wealden island to the
southeast of us is obscure enough; but a few gen-
eral facts, which bear upon our gravel-pit, I can
give you.

I must begin, however, ages before the Wealden
island existed; when the chalk of which its mass
was composed was at the bottom of a deep ocean.

We know now what chalk is, and how it was.
made. We know that it was deposited as white
lime mud, at a vast sea-depth, seemingly undisturbed
by winds or currents. We know that not only the
flint, but the chalk itself, is made up of shells; the
shell of little microscopic animalcules smaller than
a needle’s point, in millions of millions, some whole,
some broken, some in powder, which lived, and died,
and decayed for ages in the great chalk sea.

‘We know this, I say. We had suspected it long
ago, and become more and more certain of it as the
years went on. But now we seem to have a proof
of it which is past gainsaying.
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 3803

In the late survey of the bottom of the Atlantic
Ocean, with a view to laying down the electric tele-
graph between England and America, by Lieuten-
ant Maury of the American navy, a great discovery
was made. It was found that the floor of the At-
lantic Ocean, after you have left the land a few
hundred miles, is one vast plain of mud, of some
thirteen hundred miles in breadth. But here is the
wonder: it was found that at a depth averaging
1,600 fathoms, — 9,600 feet, in utter darkness, the
sea floor is covered with countless millions of ani-
malcule-shells, of the same families, though not of the
same species, as those which compose the chalk.

At the bottom of a still ocean, then, the chalk was
deposited. But it took many an age to raise it to
where Odiham chalk-pit now stands.

But how was it raised?

By the upheaving force of earthquakes. Or, rather,
by the upheaving force which causes earthquakes
‘when it acts in a single shock, cracking the earth’s
crust by an explosion; but which acts, too, slowly
and quietly, uplifting day by day, and year by
year, some portions of the earth’s surface, and let-
ting others sink down; as in the case of the valley
of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, which is now 1,300
feet below the level of the Mediterranean.

That these upheaving forces were much more vio-
lent than now, in the earlier epochs of our planet,
we have some reason to believe; but the subject is
too long a one to enter on now; and all I can say
is, that you must conceive for yourself the chalk
gradually brought up to the surface, worn away
along a shifting shore line by the waves of the sea,
and covered in shallow water by the clays and sands
on which Odiham stands; and which compose the
earliest part of our second world.

A second world; a new world. We can use no
weaker expression. When we compare the chalk
504 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

with the strata which lie upon it, we can only call
them a complete new creation.

For not only were they deposited in shallow
water; a great deal of them, probably, near river-
mouths, and by the force of violent currents, as the
irregularity of their lower beds proves; but there is
hardly a plant or animal found in the chalk itself,
which is found in the gravels, sands, or clays above
it. The shells are all new species; unseen before
in this planet. The vegetables, as far as we know
them, are all different from anything found in the
chalk, or in the beds below it. God Almighty, for
his own good pleasure, has made all things new. It
is a very awful fact; but it is a very certain one.
Several times, in the history of our planet, has the
Lord God fulfilled the words of the Psalmist —

“ Thou takest away their breath, they die, and re-
turn again to their dust.

“ Thou sendest forth thy breath, they are made:
and thou renewest the face of the earth.”

But in no instance, perhaps, is the gulf so vast; is
the leap from one world to another so sheer, as that
between the chalk and the London clay above it.

But how do I know that there was a shore line
here? And how do I know that the chalk was cov-
ered with sand-beds ?

I know that there was a shore line here, from this
fact. If you will look at the surface of the chalk,
where the sands and clay lie on it, you will find
that it is not smooth; that the beds do not rest con-
formably on each other, as if they had been laid
down quietly by successive tides, while the chalk
below was still soft mud. So far from it, the chalk
must have become hard rock, and have been exposed
to the action of the sea waves, for centuries, perhaps,
before the sands began to cover it. For you find
the surface of the chalk furrowed, worn into deep
pits, which are often filled with sand, and gravel,
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 805

and rounded lumps of chalk. You may see this for
yourselves, in the topmost layer of any chalk-pit
round here. You may see, even, in some places,
the holes which boring shells, such as work now
close to the tide-level, have made in it; all the signs,
in fact, of the chalk having been a rocky seabeach
for ages.

The first bed which you will generally find upon
the water-worn surface of the chalk is a layer of
green sand and green-coated flints. Among these
are met with, in many places, beds of a great oyster,
now unknown in life. I cannot say whether there
are any here; but at Reading, to the east of Farn-
ham, at Croydon, and under London, they are
abundant. There must have been miles and miles
of oyster-bed at the bottom of that Eocene sea;
among the oyster-beds, beds of a peculiar pebble,
which we shall see in our gravel-pit.

They are flinis; but very small, dark, often almost
black, and quite round and polished. Compare them
with the average flints of the pit, and you see that
while the average flints are fresh from the chalk,
these have plainly been rolled and rounded for years.
They are (except in their dark color) exactly such
shingle as forms the south-coast beach about Hast-
ings and Brighton. They are the shingle beaches
of the Eocene sea, part of which are preserved under
the London clay. To the north a vast bed of them
remains in its original place, on Blackheath near
London; while part, in the district to the south,
which the London clay has not covered, have been
washed away, and carried into our gravel-pit, to
mingle with other flints fresh from the chalk.

I said just now that I had proof that a great track
of the chalk hills which are now bare, was once
covered with sand and gravel. Here, in the presence
of these dark pebbles, is a proof. But I have an-
other, and a yet more curious one.
306 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

For our gravel-pit, if it be, will possibly yield us
another, and a more curious object. You most of
you have seen, I dare say, large stones, several feet
long, taken out of these pits. In the gravels and
sands at Pirbright they are so plentiful that they
are quarried for building-stone. And good building-
stone they make; being exceedingly hard, so that
no weather will wear them away. They are what
is called saccharine (that is, sugary) sandstone. If
you chip off a bit, you find it exactly like fine whity-
brown sugar, only intensely hard. Now these stones
have become very famous; for two reasons. First,
the old Druids used them to build their temples.
Second, it is a most puzzling question where they
came from.

First. They were used to build Druid temples.

If you go to the further lodge of Dogmersfield
Park, which opens close to the Barley-mow Inn,
you will see there several of them, about five feet
high each, set up on end. They run in a line
through the plantation past the lodge, along the
park palings; one or two are in an adjoining field.
They are the remains of a double line; an avenue
of stones, which has formed part of an ancient Brit-
ish temple.

I know no more than that; of that I am certain.

But if you go to the Chalk Downs of Wiltshire,
you see these temples in their true grandeur. You
have all heard of Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain.
Some of you may have heard of the great Druid
temple at Abury in Wilts, which, were it not all but
destroyed, would be even grander than Stonehenge.
‘These are made of this same sugar-sandstone.

But where did the sandstone come from? You
may say, it “grew” of itself in our sands and grav-
els; but it certainly did not “ grow” on the top of a
bare chalk down. The Druids must have brought
the stones thither, then, from neighboring gravel-pits.
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 307

They brought them, no doubt; but not from gravel-
pits. The stones are found ‘loose on the downs
on the top of the bare chalk, in places where they
plainly have not been put by man.

For instance, near Marlborough is a long valley in
the chalk, which, for perhaps half a mile, is full of
huge blocks of this sandstone, lying about on the
turf. The “gray wethers” the shepherds call them.
One look at them would show you that no man’s
hand had put them there. They look like a river
of stone, if I may so speak; as if some mighty flood
had rolled them along down the valley, and there
left them behind as it sunk.

Now, whence did they come?

Many answers have been given to that question.
It was supposed by many learned men that they
had been brought from the sandstone mountains of
Wales, like the rolled pebbles of which I spoke just
now. But the answer to that was: that these great
stones are not rolled; they are all squarish, more or
less; their edges are often sharp and fresh, instead
of being polished almost into balls, as they would
have been in rolling two hundred miles along a sea-
bottom, before such a tremendous current as would
have been needed to carry them.

Then rose a very clever guess. They must have
been carried by icebergs, as much silt and stones
(we know) has been carried; and have dropped like
them to the bottom, when the icebergs melted.

There is great reason in that; but we have
cause now to be certain that they did not come
from Wales. That they are not pieces of a rock
older than the chalk, but much younger; that they
were very probably formed close to where they now
lie.

Now, — how do we know that?

If you are not tired with all this close reasoning,
I will tell you. — If you are, say so; but as I said at
808 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

first, I want to show you what steady and sharp
head-work this same geology requires, even in the
nearest gravel-pit. :

Well, then. Ido not think our gravel-pit will tell
us what we want; but I know one which will.

You have all heard of Lady Grenville’s lovely
place, Dropmore, beyond Maidenhead; where the
taste of that good and great man, the late Lord
Grenville, converted into a paradise of landscape-
gardening art a barren common, full of clay and
gravel-pits. Lord Grenville wanted stones for rock-
work; in those pits he found some blocks, of the
same substance as those of Stonehenge or Pirbright..
And they contain the answer. The upper surface
of most of them is the usual clear sugar-sandstone ;
but the under surface of many has round pebbles
imbedded in it, looking just like plums in a pud-
ding; the smaller above and the larger below, as if
they had sunk slowly through the fluid sand, before
the whole mass froze, as it were, suddenly together.
And these pebbles are nothing else than rolled chalk
flints.

That settles the matter. The pebbles could not
come from Wales; there are no flints there. They
could not have been made before the chalk; for out
of the chalk they came; and the only explanation
which is left us, I believe, is, that over the tops of the
chalk downs, over our heads where we stand now,
there once stretched layers of sand and gravel, “ Ter-
tiary strata,” as I have been calling them to you; and
among them layers of this same hard sandstone.

‘When the floods came, they must have -swept
away all these soft sands and gravels, (possibly to
make the Bagshot sands, of which I shall speak pres-
ently,) and left the chalk downs bare; but while they
had strength to move the finer particles, they had not
generally strength to move these sandstone blocks,
but let them drop through, and remain upon the
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 309

freshly-bared floor of chalk, as the only relics of a ter-
tiary land long since swept away; while some were
‘carried off, possibly by icebergs, as far as Pirbright,
and dropped, as the icebergs melted, both there, at
Dogmersfield, and also, though few and small, in
Eversley and the neighborhood.

But how came these tertiary sandstones to be so
very hard, while the strata round them are so soft?

Ladies and gentlemen, I know no more than you.
Experience seems to say, that stone will not harden
into that sugary crystalline state, save under the in-
fluence of great heat; but I do not know how the
heat should have got to that layer in particular.
Possibly there may have been eruptions of steam, of
boiling water holding silex (flint) in solution, — a very
rare occurrence ; but something similar is still going
on in the famous Geysers or boiling springs of Ice-
land. However, I have no proof that this was the
cause. I suppose we shall find out some day how it
happened ; for we must never despair of finding out
anything which depends on facts.

Part of the town of Odiham, and of North Warn-
borough, stands, I believe, upon these lower beds,
which are called by geologists the Woolwich and
Reading beds, and the Plastic clays, from the good
brick earth which is so often found among them.
But as soon as you get to Hook Common, and to
Dogmersfield Park, you enter on a fresh deposit: the
great bed of the London clay.

I give you a rough section, from a deep well at
Dogmersfield House; from which you may see how
steeply the chalk dips down here under the clay, so
that Odiham stands, as it were, on the chalk beach
of the clay sea.

In boring that well there were pierced, —

Forty feet of the upper sands, (the Bagshot sands,)
of which I shall speak presently.

Three hundred and thirty feet of London clay.
310 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Then about forty feet of mottled clays and sands.

Whether the chalk was then reached, I do not
know. It must have been close below. But these
mottled clays and sands abound in water, (being in-
deed the layer which supplies the great breweries in
London, and those soda-water bottles on dumb-wait-
ers which squirt in Trafalgar-square ;) and (I sup-
pose) the water being reached, the boring ceased.

Now, this great bed of London clay, even more
than the sands below it, deserves the title of a new
creation.

As a proof, — some of you may recollect, when the
Southwestern Railway was in making, seeing shells.
—some of them large and handsome ones, — Nau-
tili, taken out of the London clay cutting near
‘Winchfield.

Nautili similar to them (but not the same) are now
only found in the hottest parts of the Indian seas ;
and what is more, not one of those shells is the same
as the shells you find in the chalk. Throughout this
great bed of London clay, the shells, the remains of
plants and animals, are altogether a new creation.
If you look carefully at the London clay shells, you
will be struck with their general likeness to fresh
East Indian shells; and rightly so. They do ap-
proach out modern live shells in form, far more than
any which preceded them; and indeed, a few of the
London clay shells exist still in foreign seas; in the
beds, again, above the clay, you will meet with still
more species which are yet alive ; while in the chalk,
and below the chalk, you never meet, I believe, with
asingle recent shell. It is for this reason that the
London clay is said to be Eocene, that is, the dawn
of the new creation.

The chalk, I told you, seems to have been depos-
ited at the bottom of a still and deep ocean. But
the London clay, we shall find, was deposited in a
comparatively shallow sea, least in depth toward
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT.

High Clere on the west, and deepening toward I
don and the mouth of the Thames.

For not only is the clay deeper as you travel e
ward, but — and this is a matter to which geolog
attach great importarice — the character of the sh
differs in different parts of the clay.

You must know that certain sorts of shells liv
deep water, and certain in shallow. You may pt
this to yourselves, on a small scale, whenever you
to the seaside. You will find that the shells wl
crawl on the rocks about high-water mark are di
ent from those which you find at low-tide mark ;
those again different from the shells which are bro
up by the oyster-dredgers from the sea outside. N
the lower part of the clay near here contains shall
water shells; but if you went forty miles to the e
-ward, you would find, in the corresponding lo
beds of the clay, deep-water shells, and, far ak
them, shallow-water shells such as you find here
fact which shows plainly that this end of the «
sea was shallowest, and therefore first filled up.

But again, —and this is a very curious fact,—
tween the time of the Plastic clays and sands, v
their oyster-beds and black pebbles, and that of
London clay, great changes had taken place. |
Plastic clays and sands were deposited during a
riod of earthquake, of upheaval and subsidence
ancient lands; and therefore of violent currents
flood waves, seemingly rushing down from, or ro
the shores of, that Wealden island to the south o!
on the shore of which island Odiham once st
We know this from the great irregularity of the be
while the absence of that irregularity proves tc
that the London clay was deposited in a quiet se

But more. A great change in the climate of
country had taken place meanwhile; slowly perh
but still it had taken place.

In the lowest clay above the chalk, are founc
812 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Reading many leaves, and buds, and seeds of trees,
showing that there was dry land near; and these
trees, as far as the best botanists can guess, were
trees like those we have in England now. Not of
the same species, of course; but still trees belonging
to a temperate climate, which had its regular warm
summer and cold winter.

But before the London clay had been all deposited,
this temperate climate had changed to a tropical one;
and the plants and animals of the upper part of the
London clay had begun to resemble rather those of
the mouths of the African slave-rivers.

Extraordinary as this is, it is certainly true.

We know that the country near the mouth of the
Thames, and probably the land round us here, was
low rich soil, some half under water, some over-
flowed by rivers; some by fresh or brackish pools.
We know all this; for we find the shells which be-
long to a shallow sea, mixed with freshwater ones.
We know, too, that the climate of this rich low-
land was a tropical one. We know that the neigh-
borhood of the Isle of Sheppey, at the mouth of the
Thames, was covered with rich tropic vegetation ;
with screw pines and acacias, canes and gourds,
tenanted by opossums, bats, and vultures; that huge
snakes twined themselves along the ground, tortoises
divided in the pools, and crocodiles basked on the
muds, while the neighboring seas swarmed with
sharks as huge and terrible as those of a West
Indian shore. .

It is all very wonderful, ladies and gentlemen ; but
so it is; and all we can say is, with the Mussulman,
—“ God is great.”

And then, — when, none knows but God, — there
came a time in which some convulsion of nature
changed the course of the sea-currents, and probably
destroyed a vast tract of land between England and
France, and probably also, that sunken island of
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 818

Atlantis of which old Plato dreamed,—the vast
tract which connected for ages Ireland, Cornwall,
Brittany, and Portugal. That convulsion covered
up the rich clays with those barren sands and grav-
els, which now rise in flat and dreary steppes, on
the Beacon Hill, Aldershott Moors, Hartford Bridge
Flat, Frimley Ridges, and Windsor Forest. That
rich old world was all swept away, and instead of
it desolation and barrenness, piling up slowly on its
ruins a desert of sand and shingle, rising inch by
inch out of a lifeless sea. There is something very
awful to me in the barrenness of those Bagshot
sands, after the rich tropic life of the London clay.
Not a fossil is to be found in them for miles. Save
a few shells, I believe, near Pirbright, there is not a
hint that a living being inhabited that doleful sea.

But do not suppose, gentlemen and ladies, that
we have yet got our gravel-pit made, or that the
way-worn pebbles of which it is composed are near
the end of their weary journey. Poor old stones!
Driven out of their native chalk, rolled for ages on a
sea-beach, they have tried to get a few centuries’
sleep in the Eocene sands on the top of the chalk
hills behind us, while the London clay was being
deposited peacefully in the tropic sea below; and
behold, they are swept out, once more, and hurled
pellmell upon the clay, two hundred feet over our
heads.

Over our heads, remember. "We have come now
to a time when Hartford Bridge Flats stretched
away to the Beacon Hill, and many a mile to the
southeastward,— even down into Kent, and stretched
also over Winchfield and Dogmersfield hither.

What broke them up? What furrowed out their
steep side-valleys? What formed the magnificent
escarpment of the Beacon Hill, or the lesser one of
Finechamstead Ridges? What swept away all but
a thin cap of them on the upper part of Dogmers-

14
314 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

field Park, another under Winchfield House ; another
at Bearwood, and so forth ? sect

The convulsions of a third world; more fertile in
animal life than those which preceded it; but also
more terrible and rapid, if possible, in its changes.

Of this third world, the one which (so to speak)
immediately preceded our own, we know little yet.
Its changes are so complicated that geologists have
as yet hardly arranged them. But what we can see,
I will sketch for you shortly.

A great continent to the south, — England, prob-

ably an island at the beginning of the period, united
to the continent by new beds,— the Mammoth rang-
ing up to where we now stand.
_ Then a period of upheaval. The German Ocean
becomes dry land. The Thames, a far larger river
than now, runs far eastward to join the Seine, and
the Rhine, and other rivers, which altogether flow
northward, in one enormous stream toward the open
sea between Scotland and Norway.

And with this, a new creation of enormous quad-
rupeds, as yet unknown. Countless herds of ele-
phants pastured by the side of that mighty river,
where now the Norfolk fisherman dredges their teeth
and bones far out in open sea. The hippopotamus
floundered in the Severn, the rhinoceros ranged over
the southwestern counties; enormous elks and oxen,
of species now extinct, inhabited the vast fir and
larch forests which stretched from Norfolk to the
farthest part of Wales; hyenas and bears, double
the size of our modern ones, and here and there the
sabre-toothed tiger, now extinct, prowled out of the
caverns in the limestone hills, to seek their bulky
prey.

We see, too, a period, whether the same as this,
or after it, I know not yet; in which the mountains
of Wales and Cumberland rose to the limits of
eternal frost, and Snowdon was indeed Snowdon, an
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 815

*

alp down whose valleys vast glaciers spread far and
wide; while the reindeer of Lapland, the marmot
of the Alps, and the musk-ox of Hudson’s Bay, fed
upon alpine plants, a few of whose descendants still
survive, as tokens of the long past age of ice. And
at every successive upheaval of the western moun-
tains the displaced waters of the ocean swept over
the lower lands, filling the valley of the Thames and
of the Wey with vast beds of drift gravel, contain-
ing among its chalk flints, fragments of stone from
every rock between here and Wales, teeth of ele--
phants, skulls of ox and musk-ox; while icebergs,
breaking away from the glaciers of the Welsh Alps,
sailed down over the spot where we now are, drop-
ping their imbedded stones and silt, to confuse more
utterly than before the records of a world rocking
and throbbing above the shocks of the nether fire.

At last the convulsions get weak. The German
Ocean becomes sea once more; the northwestern
Alps sink again to a level far lower even than their
present one; only to rise again, but not so high as
before ; sea-beaches and sea-shells fill many of our
lower valleys; whales by hundreds are stranded (as
in the Farnham vale) where is now dry land. Grad-
ually the sunken land begins to rise again, and falls
perhaps again, and rises again after that, more and
more gently each time, till.as it were the panting
earth, worn out with the fierce passions of her fiery
youth, has sobbed herself to sleep once more, and
this new world of man is made. And among it, I
know not when, or by what diluvial wave out of
hundreds which swept the Pleistocene earth, was
deposited our little gravel-pit, from which we started
on our journey through three worlds.

When?

Enough for us that He knows when, in whose
hand are the times and the seasons,—~-God the
Father of the spirits of all flesh.
316 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES. \

And now, ladies and gentlemen, take from hence
alesson. I have brought you a long and a strange
road. Starting from this seemingly uninteresting pit,
we have come upon the records of three older worlds,
and on hints of worlds far older yet. We have come
to them by no theories, no dreams of the fancy, but
by plain, honest reasoning, from plain, honest facts. .
That wonderful things had happened, we could see ;
but why they had happened we saw not. When we
began to ask the reason of this thing or of that, re-
member how we had to stop, and laying our hands
upon our mouths, only say with the Mussulman,
“God is great.” We pick our steps, by lantern
light indeed, and slowly, but still surely and safely,
along a dark and difficult road; but just as we are
beginning to pride ourselves on having found our
way so cleverly, we come to an edge of darkness ;
and see before our feet a bottomless abyss, down
which our feeble lantern will not throw its light a

ard.

Such is true science. Is it a study to make men
conceited and self-sufficient? Believe it not. Ifa
scientific man, or one who calls himself so, be con-
ceited, the conceit was there before the science; part
of his natural defects ; and if it stays there long, after
he has really given himself to the patient study of
nature, then is he one of those of whom Solomon
has said, “ Though you pound a fool in a mortar
among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his folly de-
part from him.”

For what more fit to knock the conceit out of a
student, than being pounded by these same hard facts,
— which tell him just enough to let him know —how
little he knows? What more fit to make a man pa-
tient, humble, reverent, than being stopped short, as
every man of science is, after each half-dozen steps,
by some tremendous riddle which he cannot explain,
— which he may have to wait years to get explained,
THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. 317

—which as far as he can see will never be explained
at all?

The poet says, “ An undevout astronomer is mad,”
and he says truth. It is only those who know a little
of nature, who fancy that they know much. I have
heard a young man say, after hearing a few popular
chemical lectures, and seeing a few bottle and squirt
experiments, Oh water,—- water is only oxygen and
hydrogen,—as if he knew all about it. While the
true chemist would smile sadly enough at the youth’s
hasty conceit, and say in his heart, —“ Well, he is a
lucky fellow. If he knows all about it, it is more
than Ido. I don’t know what oxygen is, or hydro-
gen either. I don’t even know whether there are any
such things at all. I see certain effects in my ex-
periments which I must attribute to some cause, and
I call that cause oxygen, because I must call it some-
thing ; and other effects which I must attribute to
another cause, and I call that hydrogen. But as for
oxygen, I don’t know whether it really exists. , I think
it very: possible that it is only an effect of something
else, — another form of a something, which seems ta
make phosphorus, iodine, bromine, and certain other
substances ; and as for hydrogen, — I know as little
about it. I don’t know but what all the metals, gold,
silver, iron, tin, sodium, potassium, and so forth, are
not different forms of hydrogen, or of something else
which is the parent of hydrogen. In fact, I know
but very little about the matter; except this, that I
do know very little; and that the more I experiment,
and the more I analyze, the more unexpected puzzles
and wonders I find, and the more I expect to find till
my dying day. True, I know a vast number of facts
and laws, thank God; and some very useful ones
among them ; but as to the ultimate and first causes
of those facts and laws, I know no more than the
shepherd-boy outside ; and can say no more than he
does, when he reads in the Psalms at school, —* I,
818 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

and all around me, are fearfully and wonderfully
made; marvellous are thy works, and that my soul
knoweth right well.’ ”

And so, my friends, though I have seemed to talk
to you of great matters this night; of the making
and the destruction of world after world: yet what
does all I have said come to? I have not got one
step beyond what the old Psalmist learned amid the
earthquakes and volcanoes of the pastures and the
forests of Palestine, three thousand years ago. I
have not added to his words; I have only given you
new facts to prove that he had exhausted the moral
lesson of the subject, when he said: —

These all wait upon thee, that thou mayest give
them their meat in due season.

Thou givest, and they gather: thou openest thy
hand, and they are filled with good.

Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; thou
takest away their ‘breath; they die and return to
their dust.

Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created ;
and thou renewest the face of the earth.

But — The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever.
The Lord shall rejoice in his works. Amen.
JOHN TAULER. 319

JOHN TAULER.

Ir is with great diffidence that I have undertaken
to farnish a Preface to these Sermons.* It must al-
ways be an invidious task to stand toward a far wiser
and better man than one’s self in a relation which is
likely, at every moment, to be mistaken either for that
of a critic or that of a commentator.

The critic of Tauler, no man has a right to become,
who has not first ascertained that he is a better man
than Tauler.

The commentator of Tauler, no man has a right
to become, who has a strong belief (as I have) that
Tauler’s Sermons need no comment whatsoever;
but that all which is good and eternal in them will
recommend itself at once to those hearts, let their
form of doctrine be what it may, who have hold of,
or are seeking after, Eternal Goodness.

The historical and biographical information which
may be necessary for a right understanding of the
man and his times, will be found in the Life and the
Introductory Notice which are appended to the Ser-
mons; while any notions of mine as to the genesis
of Tauler’s views, as to how much of them he owed
to divines, how much to his own vital experiences,
are likely to be equally unsafe and uninteresting.
The English churchman of the present day, enjoying
a form of doctrine far more correct than that of any
other communion, and resting on the sound dogma

* The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler, of Stras-
bourg ; with twenty-five of his Sermons, (Temp. 1840.)
820 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

that nothing is to be believed as necessary to salva-
tion but what can be proved by Scripture, has
(whether rightly or wrongly, I do not here ask) be-
come so satisfied with the good fruit, as to think
little of the tree which bore it. The Church contro-
versies, and the metaphysical inquiries, by which,
after many mistakes, and long struggles, that form
of doctrine was elicited from Scripture, are to him
shadows of the past, and “ Schoolmen’s questions.”
The element in the ancient worthies of the Church
which is most interesting to him is their human sor-
rows, temptations, triumphs, with which, as having
happened in men of like passions with themselves,
they still can sympathize. They cannot, however,
now understand how strong and generally just an
influence those private and personal experiences had,
in forming the opinions of the old worthies upon
Scriptural doctrines, which we have been taught
from childhood to find in Scripture, and are there-
fore astonished, if not indignant, that every one in
every age did not find them there at first sight.

Thus, standing upon the accumulated labors of
ages, we are apt to be ungrateful to those who built
up, with weary labor, and often working through
dark and dreary nights, the platform which now
supports us. We complain impatiently of the blind-
ness of many a man, without whom we should not
have seen; and of the incompleteness of many a
man’s doctrine, who was only incomplete because he’
was still engaged in searching for some truth, which,
when found, he handed on as a precious heirloom to
us who know him not.

For the many, therefore, it will be altogether un-
interesting for me to enter into any speculation as to
the spiritual pedigree of Tauler’s views. How far
Philo-Judzeus and the Brahmins may have influenced
the Pseudo-Dionysius ; how far the Pseudo-Diony-
sius may have influenced John Erigena; how far
JOHN TAULER. 321

that wondrous Irishman may have influenced Master
Eckart ; how far that vast and subtle thinker, claimed
by some as the founder of German philosophy, may
have influenced Tauler himself, are questions for
which the many will care little; which would require
to be discussed in a large volume, ere the question
could not merely be exhausted, but made intelligible.
Such matters may well be left for learned and large-
minded men, to whom the development of Christian
doctrine (both in the true and the false sense of that
word) is a scientific study.

But let me express a hope, that such men will
turn their attention more and more, not merely to
the works of Tauler, but to those of his companions,
and to that whole movement of the fourteenth cen-
tury, of which Tauler is the most popular and easily
accessible type, as to a most interesting and instruc-
tive page in the book of Christian, and indeed, of
human, thought. I say human; for it will be im-
possible for them to examine the works of such men
as Erigena, Tauler, Eckart, and Ruysbroch, any
more than those of the later mystics, whether Rom-
ish or Protestant, without finding that their specula-
tions, whether right or wrong in any given detail,
go down to the very deepest and most universal
grounds of theology and of metaphysics; and how-
soever distinctly Christian they may be, are con-
nected with thoughts, which have exercised men of
every race which has left behind it more than mere
mounds of earth. They will find in the Greek, the
Persian, and the Hindoo; in the Buddhist and in
Mohammedan Sufi, the same craving after the
Absolute and the Eternal, the same attempt to ex-
press in words that union between man and God,
which transcends all words. On making that dis-
covery, if they have.not already made it, two courses
will be open to them. They can either reject the

whole of such thoughts as worthless, assuming that
14
322 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

anything which Christianity has in common with
heathendom must be an adulteration and an inter-
polation ; or, when they see such thoughts bubbling
up, as it were spontaneously, among men divided
utterly from each other by race, age, and creed, they
can conclude that those thoughts must be a normal
product of the human spirit, and that they indicate a
healthy craving after some real object; they can rise
to a tender and deeper sympathy with the aspira-
tions and mistakes of men who sought in great
darkness for a ray of light, and did not seek in vain;
and can give fresh glory to the doctrines of the
Catholic Church when they see them fulfilling those
aspirations, and correcting those mistakes; and in
this case, as in others, satisfying the desire of all
nations, by proclaiming Him by whom all things
were made, and in whom all things consist, who is
The Light and The Life of men, shining forever in
the darkness, uncomprehended, yet unquenched.
There is another class of readers worthy of all
respect, who may be dissatisfied, if not startled, by
many passages in these sermons. Men well skilled
in the terminology of the popular religion, and, from
long experience, well acquainted with its value, are
apt to be jealous when they find a preacher hand-
ling the highest matters, and yet omitting to use con-
cerning them the formule in which they are now.
commonly expressed. Such men I would entreat to
have patience with, and charity for, a man whose
character they must so heartily admire. Let them
remember that many of our own formule are not
to be found verbatim in Holy Writ, but have been
gradually extracted from it by processes of induction
or of deduction; and let them allow to Tauler, as
far as is consistent with orthodoxy, Christian liberty
to find likewise what he can in that Scripture, which
he reveres as deeply as they do. Let them consider
also, that most of those expressions of his which are
JOHN TAULER. 323

most strange to our modern pulpits, are strictly
Scriptural, and to be found in the Sacred Text; and
that no man can be blamed at first sight, for under-
standing such expressions literally, and for shrinking
from reducing them to metaphors. God has or-
dained that the Pauline aspect of Christianity, and
the Pauline nomenclature, should, for the last three
hundred years at least, mould almost exclusively the
thoughts of His church; but we must not forget,
that St. John’s thoughts, and St. John’s words, ate
equally inspired with those of St. Paul; and that
not we, but Tauler, are the fit judges as to whether
St. Paul’s language, or St. John’s, was most fit to
touch the German heart in thé dark and hideous
times of the Fourteenth Century. The important
question is,— Did Tauler, under whatsoever lan-
guage, really hold in spirit and in truth the vital
doctrines of the Gospel? That can only be ascer-
tained by a fair and charitable induction, and of the
result of such an induction I have little fear.

Some, again, whose opinions will be entitled to
the very highest respect, will be pained at the fan-
tastic and arbitrary method (if method it can be
called) in which Tauler uses Scripture to illustrate
his opinions. Let them remember, that this was
not a peculiarity of the man, but of his age; that for
various reasons, a simple, literal, and historic method
of interpretation (which doubtless is at the same
time the most spiritual) was then in its infancy;
that it is by no means perfect yet; and that it is
quite possible that our great-grandchildren may be
as much surprised at our use of many a text, as we
are at Tauler’s.

But there are those,— and thanks to Almighty
God they are to be numbered by tens of thousands,
—who will not perplex themselves with any such
questionings ; simple and genial hearts, who try to
do what good they can in the world, and meddle
524 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

not with matters too high for them; persons whose
religion is not abstruse, but deep; not noisy, but
intense; not aggressive, but laboriously useful; peo-
ple who have the same habit of mind as the early
Christians seem: to have worn, ere yet Catholic
truth had been defined in formule ; when the Apos-
tles’ creed was symbol enough for the Church, and
men were orthodox in heart,.rather than exact in
head. For such it is enough if a fellow-creature
loves Him whom they love, and serves -Him whom
they serve. Personal affection and loyalty to the
same unseen Being is to them a communion of
saints both real and actual, in the genial warmth of
which all minor differences of opinion vanish, and a
truly divine liberality enables them to believe with
St. John, that “ Thereby know ye the spirit of God:
every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come
in the flesh is born of God.”

To such these sermons should be, and I doubt
not will be, welcome. If they find words in them
which they do not understand, even words from
which at first sight they differ, they will let these
pass them by for a while, in charity and patience.
Seeing (as they will see at the first glance) that
John Tauler was one of themselves, they will judge
of what they do not understand by what they do,
and give him credit for sense and righteousness,
where their own intellects fail to follow him.

Especially, too, if they be distracted and disheart-
ened (as such are wont to be) by the sin and con-
fusion of the world; by the amount of God’s work
which still remains undone, and by their own seem-
ing incapacity to do it, they will take heart from the
history of John Tauler and his fellows, who, in far
darker and more confused time than the present,
found a work to do, and strength to do it; who, the
more they retired into the recesses of their own inner
life, found there that fully to know themselves was
JOHN TAULER. 325

to know all men, and to have a message for all men;
and who, by their unceasing labors of love, proved
that the highest spiritual attainments, instead of
shutting a man up in lazy and Pharisaic self-con-
templation, drive him forth to work as his Master
worked before him, among the poor, the suffering,
and the fallen.

Let such take heart, and toil on in faith at the
duty which lies nearest to them. Five hundred
years have passed since Tauler and his fellows did
their simple work, and looked for no fruit from it,
but the saving of one here and there from the nether
pit. That was enough for which to labor; but with-
out knowing it, they did more than that. Their
work lives, and will live forever, though in forms
from which they would have perhaps shrunk had
they foreseen them. Let all such, therefore, take
heart. They may know their own weakness; but
they know not the power of God in them. They
may think sadly that they are only palliating the
outward symptoms of social and moral disease ; but
God may be striking, by some unconscious chance
blow of theirs, at a root of evil which they never
suspected. They may mourn over the failure of
some seemingly useful plan of their own; but God
may be, by their influence, sowing the seed of some
plan of His own, of which they little dream. For
every good dged comes from God. His is the idea,
His the inspiration, and His‘its fulfilment in time ;
and therefore no good deed but lives and grows with
the everlasting life of God Himself. And as the
acorn, because God has given it “a forming form,”
and life after its kind, bears within it, not only the
builder oak, but shade for many a herd, food for
countless animals, and at last, the gallant ship itself,
and the materials of every use to which nature or art
can put it and its descendants after it throughout all
time ; so does every good deed contain within itself
326 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

endless and unexpected possibilities of other good,
which may and will grow and multiply forever, in
the genial Light of Him whose eternal Mind con-
ceived it, and whose eternal Spirit will ever quicken
it, with that Life of which He is the Giver and the
Lord.

There is another class of readers, to whom I ex-
pect these sermons to be at once very attractive and
very valuable; a class of whom I speak with ex-
treme diffidence, having never had their experiences ;
and of whom I should not have spoken at all, were
they not just now as much depreciated, as they
were in past centuries rated too highly: I mean
those who are commonly called “ Mystics.” Doubt-
less, they are paying a penalty for that extravagant
adoration which was bestowed of old upon the
“ Saint.” Mankind has discovered that much of
what once, in such persons, seemed most divine, was
most painfully human; that much of what seemed
most supernatural, was but too degradingly natural,
the consequences of diseased brain, deranged ner-
yous system, or weakness brought on by voluntary
asceticism ; and so mankind, angry with its idols for
having a flaw anywhere, has dashed them peevishly
to the ground. Would it not have been better to
give up making idols of such persons, and to have
examined patiently, charitably, and philosophically
what they really were, and what they were not?
By so doing, I believe, men would have found that
in these mystics and saints, after all bodily illusions,
all nervous fantasies, all pardonable “ confusions be-
tween the object and the subject,” had been elimi-
nated, there still remained, in each and every one of
them, and not to be explained away by any theory
of diseased body or mind, one of the very loveliest
and noblest human characters; and on that discov-
ery the question must have followed,— Was that,
too, the product of disease? And to that there can
JOHN TAULER. 827

be, I trust, but one answer from the many. If here
and there a man shall be found daring enough to as-
sert that the most exquisite developments of human-
ity are grounded on a lie; that its seemingly loveliest
flowers are but fungi bred of corruption; then the
general heart of mankind will give their cynicism the
lie, and answer, * Not so! this is too beautiful and
too righteous to have been born of aught but God.”

And when they found these persons, whatsoever
might be their “denomination,” all inclined to claim
some illumination, intuition, or direct vision of Eter-
nal truth, Eternal good, Eternal beauty, even of that
Eternal Father in whom all live and move and have
their being; yet making that claim in deepest hu-
mility, amid confessions of their own weakness, sin-
fulness, nothingness, which to the self-satisfied may
seem exaggerated and all but insincere; they would
have been, perhaps, more philosophical, as well as
more charitable; more in accordance with Baconian
induction, as well as with St. Paul’s direct assertions
in his Epistles to the Corinthians, if they had said:
“ The testimony of so many isolated persons to this
fact is on the whole a fair probability for its truth;
and we are inclined to believe it, though it tran-
scends our experience, on the same ground that we
believe the united testimony of travellers, to a hun-
dred natural wonders, which differ as utterly from
anything which we ever saw, as do these spirit-
ual wonders from anything which we have ever
felt.”
' And if men are willing (as they may be hereafter)
patiently to examine the facts still further, they may
possibly find, in the very circumstances which now
make them scornfully incredulous of “mystic rap-
tures,” a moral justification of their reality.

It will be found that these “ Mystics” are, in al-
most every case, persons who are suffering; perhaps
disappointed, perhaps lonely, perhaps unhealthy, per-
328 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

haps all three at once, bereaved of all social comfort,
and tortured with disease.

It is easy enough to say that such persons are
especially liable to melancholic delusions, liable to
mistake the action of their diseased nerves for exter-
nal apparitions and voices; liable, from weakness of
brain, and the too intense self-introspection which
disease often brings with it, to invest trifling acci-
dents with an undue importance, and to regard them
as supernatural monitions. “Be it so. Mystics in all
ages have not been unaware of their own dangers,
their own liability to mistakes; and have tried to
distinguish, by such canons as their age afforded
them, the false from the true, the fleshly from the
spiritual. But meanwhile, has this hypothesis no
moral justice, and therefore moral probability (which
must always depend on the amount of moral justice
involved in any given hypothesis),— namely, the
hypothesis that to these lonely sufferers more was
granted than to the many, because they needed
more? That some direct and inward “beatific vis-
ion ” of God was allowed to them, because they had
no opportunity of gaining any indirect and outward
one from a smiling world, seen in the light of a joy-
ful heart? ‘There are those who have health and
strength, health and beauty, wife and child; a past
which it is pleasant to remember, and a future which
it is pleasant to work out. Such find no difficulty
in saying that God is Love; that God cares for
them, and His mercy is over all His works. But if
they had lain, and lain perhaps from childhood, in
the lowest deep, in the place of darkness, and of
storm, while lover and friend were hid away from
them, and they sat upon the parching rock, like Riz-
pah, the daughter of Aiah, beside the corpses of their
dead sons, dead hopes, dead health, dead love, as on
a ghastly battle-field, stripped among the dead, like
those who are wounded, and cut away from God’s

,
JOHN TAULER. 329

hand ; if they had struggled in the horrible mire of
perplexity, and felt all God’s billows and waves go
over them, till they were weary of crying, and their
throats were dry, and their sight failed them with
watching so long for their God, and all the faith and
prayer which was left them was: “Thou wilt not
leave my soul in hell, neither suffer Thy holy one to
see corruption,’— If all this, — or less had come upon
them ; then they might have felt it not altogether so
easy to say that God is Love. They, too, might
have longed for some inward proof, some token
which transcends all argument, that though they go
down to hell, God is there; that in their most utter
doubt, and darkness, and desolation, all is well; for
they dwell in God, and God in them. They might
have longed for it; and God might have been just
and merciful in giving it to them; as He may have
been in giving it already to thousands, who by no
other means could have been able to face the fearful
storm of circumstances, which seemed to proclaim
the Devil, and not God, the master of the world.
Why not let the Mystics tell their own story? It
is more philosophical after all, perhaps, as well as
more Scriptural, to believe that “wisdom is justified
of all her children.”

As for the impossibility of such a direct assurance,
it is an assertion too silly to be seriously answered in
the nineteenth century, which is revealing weekly
wonders in the natural world, which would have
seemed impossible to our fathers. Shall the natural
world, at every great step, transcend our boldest
dreams; and shall the spiritual world be limited by
us to the merest commonplaces of every-day experi-
ence, especially when those very commonplaces are
yet utterly unexplained and miraculous? When will
men open their eyes to the plain axiom, that nothing
is impossible with God, save that He should trans-
gress His own nature by being unjust and unloving ?
830 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

But whether or not the popular religion shall jus-
tify and satisfy the aspirations of the Mystic, Tauler’s
sermons will do so. They will find there the same
spiritual food which they have found already in St.
Bernard, A’Kempis, and Madame Guyon; and find
there also, perhaps more clearly than in any Mys-
tic writer, a safeguard against the dangers which es-
pecially beset them ; against the danger of mistaking
their passing emotions for real and abiding love of
good; against exalting any peculiar intuition, which
they may think they have attained, into a source of
self-glorification, and fancying that they become
something, by the act of confessing themselves noth-
ing. For with Tauler, whether he be right or wrong
in any given detail, practical righteousness, of the
divinest and loftiest kind, is at once the object, and
the means, and the test, of all upward steps. God is
the supreme Good which man is intended to behold ;
but only by being inspired by Him, owing all to Him,
and copying Him, can he behold Him, and in that
sight find his highest reward, and heaven itself.

But there are those oppressed by doubts, and fears,
and sorrows, very different from those of which I
have just spoken, who may find in Tauler’s genial
and sunny pages a light which will stand them in
good stead in many an hour of darkness. There are
those, heaped beyond desert with every earthly bliss,
who have had to ask themselves, in awful earnest,
the question which all would so gladly. put away:
Were I stripped to-morrow of all these things, to
stand alone and helpless, as I see thousands stand,
what should I then have left? They may have been
tempted to answer, with Medea in the tragedy, —

ACh xesta? «a sa a ier”

But they have shrunk from that desperate self-as-
sertion, as they felt that, in the very act, they should
become, not a philosopher, but, as Medea did, a fiend.
JOHN TAULER. 331

Tremblingly they have turned to religion for comfort,
under the glaring eye of that dark spectre of bereave-
ment, but have felt above all commonplaces, however
true, as Job felt of old: “ Miserable comforters are ye
all!... . Oh, that I knew where I might find Him. I
would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth
with arguments. I should know the words which
He would answer me, and understand what He
would say to me!”

To such, Tauler can tell something; though but a
little, of that still waste, where a man, losing all
things else, shall find himself face to face with God,
and hear from Him that which no man can utter
again in words, even to the wife of his bosom. A
little, too, though but a little, can Tauler tell him how
he may die to those whom ‘he loves best on earth,
that he may live to them, and love them better still,
in the ever-present heavens; of how he may lose his
life, and all persons and things which make his life
worth having, that he may find again all of them
which God had indeed created, in that God to whom
all live eternally. ‘

There are those, too, who have endured a struggle
darker still; more rare, perhaps, but-just as real as
the last; men on whom the “nothingness” of all
created things had flashed, not as a mere sentimental
and exaggerative metaphor, but as a stern, inevitable,
logical fact; who have felt, if but for a moment, that
perhaps they, and all they see and know,—

“ Are but such stuff
As dreams are made of ——”’
who have hung, if but for one moment, self-poised
over the abyss of boundless doubt; who have shud-
dered as they saw, if but for a moment, sun, and hills,
and trees, and the faces which they loved, and the
seeming-solid earth beneath their feet,— yea, their
own body, flesh and blood, —reel, melt, and vanish,
till nothing was left of the whole universe but soli-
332 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

tary self, with its eternal malady of thought; who
have cried out of the lowest deep: “ What is all
which I love,—all which I hate? I gaze on it: but
I see not it, but a picture on my own eyeball. I
clutch it in despair: but I feel not it, but the nerves
of my own finger-tip; if, indeed, eyeball and finger-
tip be not, like the rest, phantoms of a homeless
mind, and the only certain existence in the universe
is I, — and that I at war with myself, self-discontent-
ed, self-despising, and self-damned.”

That problem Tauler will solve for no man; for
he will say that each man must solve it for himself,
face to face with God alone; but he can tell how
he solved it for himself; how he came to find an
eternal light shining in forever in that utter darkness,
which the darkness could not comprehend; an eter-
nal ground in the midst of that abyss, which belonged
not to the abyss, nor to the outward world which had
vanished for the moment, nor to space, nor time, nor
any category of human thought, or mortal existence ;
and that its substance was the Everlasting Personal
Good, whose Love is Righteousness. Tauler can
point out the path by which he and others came to
see that Light, to find that Rock of Ages;—the
simple path of honest self-knowledge, self-renuncia-
tion, self-restraint, in which every upward step tow-
ards right exposes some fresh depth of inward sin-
fulness, till the once proud man, crushed down, like
Job and Paul, by the sense of his own infinite mean-
ness, becomes, like them, a little child once more, and
casts himself simply upon the generosity of Him who
made him : —

“ An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.”
And then, so Tauler will tell him, there may come to
him the vision, dim, perhaps, and fitting ill into
clumsy words, but clearer, surer, nearer to him than
JOHN TAULER. 333

. the ground on which he treads, or the foot which
treads it,— the vision of an Everlasting Spiritual
Substance, Most Human and yet Most Divine, who
can endure; and who, standing beneath all things,
can make their spiritual substance endure likewise,
though all worlds and eons, birth, and growth, and
death, matter, and space, and time, should melt in
very deed, —

ou And, like the baseless fabric of 2 vision,
Leave not a rack behind.”

If there be any to whom these sentences shall seem
merely an enigmatic verbiage, darkening counsel by
words without knowledge, I can only beg them not
to look at Tauler’s wisdom through my folly; his
SIccUM LUMEN through my glare and smoke. As I
said at first, he needs no Preface. There are those
who will comprehend him without comment. There
are those, also, who will rise up and follow him and
his Master.
334 KINGSLEY'’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

HENRY BROOKE, AND THE FOOL OF QUALITY.

Ir is not easy to draw a trustworthy picture of
Henry Brooke. The materials for it which remain
are very scanty. Only four years after his death, in
1783,— so had the memory of a once famous per-
sonage faded from men’s minds, — it was very diffi-
cult to get details of his early life. He had lived
too long, — too long, if not for the education which
great joys and great sorrows give, at least for happi-
ness and for fame. The pupil of Swift and Pope;
the friend of Lyttleton and Chatham; the darling of
the Prince of Wales; beau, swordsman, wit, poet,
courtier; the minion once of fortune, yet unspoiled by
all her caresses, had long been known to Irishmen
only as the saintly recluse of Longfield; and latterly
as an impoverished old man, fading away by the
quiet euthanasia of a second childhood, with one
sweet daughter, —the only surviving child of twenty-
two, —clinging to him, and yet supporting him, as ivy
the mouldering wall. She was the child of his old
age, “remembering nothing of her father,” says a
biographer, “previous to his retirement from the
world ; and knowing little of him, save that he bore
the infirmities and misfortunes of his declining years
with the heroism of true Christianity, and that he
was possessed of virtues and feelings which shone
forth to the last moment of his life, unimpaired by
the distractions of pain, and unshaken amid the
ruins of genius.”
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 335

So says the biographer of 1787, in the ambitious
style of those days; but doubtless with perfect truth.
Yet neither he, nor any other biographer with whom
T am acquainted, gives any details of the real charac-
ter, the inner life, of the man. One longs, but longs
almost in vain, for any scrap of diary, private medi-
tation, even familiar letter, from one who had seen,
read, and above all suffered, so much and _ so vari-
ously. But with the exception of half-a-dozen let-
ters, nothing of the kind seems to exist. His inner
life can only be guessed at; and all that is known
of his outer life has been compressed into one short
article in the Dublin University Magazine for Febru-
ary, 1852, full of good writing and of good feeling.
Tis author is a descendant of Henry Brooke; and to
him I am bound to offer my thanks for the assistance
which he has given me towards this preface.

One would be glad, too, (if physiognomy be, as
some hold, a key to character,) of some trustworthy
description or portrait of his outward man; to have
known even the color of his eyes and hair; but this,
too, is not to be had. Some Irish friend describes
him in terms general enough; as, when young, “ fresh
looking, slenderly formed, and exceedingly graceful.
He had an oval face, ruddy complexion, and large
soft eyes, full of fire. He was of great personal
courage, but never known to offend any man. He
was an excellent swordsman, and could dance with
much grace.” ‘There are certainly notes here of that
heroical temperament, softened withal by delicate
sensibility, which shows forth in every line of his
writings. And. there is another sketch of him, in
1775, which gives the same notion, —“ He was drest
in a long blue cloak, with a wig that fell down his
shoulders; a little man, as neat as waxwork, with
an oval face, ruddy complexion, large eyes, full of
fire. In short,.he is like a picture mellowed by
time.” There is a drawing of him prefixed to this
556 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

edition, which seems to be the same as that prefixed
to his poems. If this, and the still finer head on the
title-page of “ Brookiana,” be trustworthy, the face
must have been one of a very delicate and regular
beauty. The large-soft eye, the globular under-eye-
lid, the finely arched eyebrow, (all notes of a sweet
and rich, yet over-sensitive nature,) are very remark-
able. There is a certain grace and alertness, too,
about the figure, which agrees with the story of his
having been a good dancer and swordsman. But
on the type of brain, and even of the masque, it is
very difficult to pronounce. Portraits of the eigh-
teenth century, not very trustworthy in any detail,
are especially careless in these. There seems no
reason to suppose that English faces were more
sensual or more same a hundred years ago than
they are now; yet who, in looking round a family
portrait-gallery, has not remarked the difference be-
tween the heads of the seventeenth and those of the
eighteenth century? The former are of the same
type as our own, and with the same strong and
varied personality; the latter painfully like, both to
each other and to an oil-flask; the jaw round, weak,
and sensual; the forehead narrow and retreating.
Had the race really degenerated for a while, or was
the lower type adopted intentionally, out of compli-
ment to some great personage? Be that as it may,
Henry Brooke’s portrait is too like dozens of that
day, to be much trusted. Even if we accept the
lower part of the face, round and weak (though not
coarse), as the mark of that want of perseverance
which was in worldly matters his worse defect, yet
we cannot accept the length between the nose and
mouth (which does not appear in the head in “ Brook-
iana”); nor, again, the narrowing forehead, however
lofty, as the mark of an intellect so fanciful and so
subtle ; occupied, too, with the ideal more exclu-
sively than any man of his time. Less breadth
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 337

across the eyebrows, with much greater breadth
across the upper part of the forehead, is the normal
form of such brain now, as it was in the Elizabethan
age; and we must believe it to have been the same
a hundred years ago.

Another source from which one might have ex-
pected to learn something of Henry Brooke, and
from which one will learn little or nothing, are two
volumes of “ Brookiana,” published in London, 1804,
One knew that our Irish cousins, among their many
charming qualities, did not always (whether by vir-
tue of some strain of Milesian blood, or of the mere
influence of that exciting atmosphere which made
the Normans of the Pale Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores)
possess the faculty of historic method and accuracy ;
but such a mere incoherence as these Brookiana one
did not expect. The editor (surely an Irishman)
seems to have inquired of all likely Irishmen and
women for anecdotes of Henry Brooke, and to have
received in almost every case the equivalent of the
well-known Irish answer: “ No; I don’t speak Ger-
man; but I have a brother who plays on the German
flute ;” which answer the editor has joyfully accepted
as the best he could get, and filled his volumes with
anecdotes of every one except Brooke, and with
notes thereon; notes on the ancient Irish; notes on
the town of Kilkenny, its marble houses and free
school, rendered necessary by the fact that Mr.
Brooke once praised a Mrs. Grierson who was born
at Kilkenny ; poetry on all subjects, by twenty differ-
ent people, who had or had not spoken to Henry
Brooke at some time or other; Dr. Brett’s dedication
to Lady Caroline Russell of his sermon on Wedded
Love, wherein the Doctor discourseth learnedly on
the three species of kisses: literal translations of
Irish poems sent to Mr. Brooke by a person whose
name is now forgotten, one of which begins, —
“ Bring the high-toned harp of the many sounding

15
338 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

strings, ere the sun ascends the blue-topped moun-
tains of the wide extended sky;” of which, if Mr.
Brooke read more, it is a fresh proof of his exceed-
ing graciousness; and even a long translation of an
Icelandic pastoral “ by a young man who was en-
abled, by the friendship of Mr. Brooke, to study that
language.” — A mere congeries of irrelevant gossip,
not free from the sin of perpetually dragging in
great folks’ names from the farthest end of the earth,
seemingly. for the. mere pleasure of putting them
down in print. However, the able editor, whoever
he was, must be long since gone to his account; and
we may leave him in peace, and try to spell out for
ourselves, from the few hints he has vouchsafed us,
something of the character and fortunes of this great
Irish genius.

He was born in 1708, in the house of Rantavan,
county Cavan. His father was a wealthy and wor-
thy parson ;-his mother a Digby, a woman of sense
and of good family; of whom Swift (stopping at
Rantavan, on his way to Sheridan, at Quilca) was
said to stand more in awe than of most country
ladies.

The boy was sent to school to one Felix Somer-
ford, for whose poetry and love-making (unfortunate)
vide “ Brookiana;” who was of opinion that “ Nature
intended that the child should act some great part
on the theatre of human life,” so sweet-natured, so
greedy of learning was he. And no doubt Henry
Brooke was a precocious child. At eight years old
a fellow-scholar brought him an ode to the moon,
which broke off with the line, —

“Ah, why doth Phoebe love to shine by night?’

Under which Henry wrote at once, —

“ Because the sex looks best by candlelight.”

Smart enough, considering his years, and the fashion
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 839.

of the time; and afterwards, when he was sent to

Dr. Sheridan’s school in Dublin, he gave fresh proofs

of this rhyming power. There are three of them in

pene with a theme or two, full of grace and
re,

While he was at college, Swift prophesied won-
ders of hiin,— only “regretting that his talent point-
ed towards poetry, which of all pursuits was most
unprofitable.” The Dean, says “ Brookiana,” when
he saw how thoroughly modest and unpretending he
was, “never asked his opinion of any matter which
was beyond his power, or which might embarrass
him.” ‘The artless vivacity and sweetness of the lad
seems to have softened even that cruel heart. It ut-
terly captivated, in the next few years, men of equal
talent and of more humanity. When he went to
study law, in London, in 1724, he became at once
the pet of Pope and Lyttleton; and one of the few
really important things in “ Brookiana ” are a few let-
ters selected from a correspondence between Brooke
and Pope, which lasted for many years. Where are
these letters now? Would that the editor had given
them all, even though, to make room for them, he had
consigned to obscurity a dozen-of Irish worthies.
Brooke, in one of them written in 1739, is very
solicitous about Pope’s religious tenets, having heard
it insinuated that he “had too much wit to be a man
of religion, and too much refinement to be that tri-
fling thing called a Christian ;” which Pope answers
satisfactorily enough, sending him a “ vindication of
the ‘Essay on Man’ from the aspersions and mis-
takes of Mr. Crousaz;” and saying, for himself, that
he “sincerely worships God, believes in his revela-
tions, resigns to his dispensations, loves all his crea-
tures, is in charity with all denominations of Chris-
tians, however violently they treat each other, and
detests none so much as that profligate race who
would loosen the bands of morality, either under the
340 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

pretence of religion or free thinking. I hate no man
as a man, but I hate vice in any man; I hate no
sect, but I hate uncharitableness in any sect. This
much I say, merely in compliance with your desire
that I should say something. of myself,”— a confes-
sion of faith which will not surprise the few who
still consider (with Henry Brooke) the “ Essay on
Man” to be one of the noblest didactic poems in the
English language.

Ié is worth while to remark, in these letters, first,
the high terms in which Pope speaks of young
Brooke ; of his “ modesty unspoilt by applause,” his
“ good qualities of the heart as well as of the head,”
his “always honorable ends;” and next, the abso-
lute worship with which Brooke regards Pope, —
apologizing to him, in one place, for having con-
fessed that “ Virgil gave me equal pleasure, Homer
equal warmth, Shakspeare greater rapture, Milton
more astonishment; so ungrateful was I to refuse
you your due praise, when it was not unknown to
me that I got friends and reputation by your saying
of me things which no one*would have thought I
merited, had not you said them. But I spoke with-
out book at the time. I had not been entered into
the spirit of your works, and I believe there are few
who have. .... Any one of your original writ-
ings is indisputably a more finished piece than has
been wrote by any other man. There is one con-
sistent genius through the whole of your works, but
that genius seems the smaller by being divided. . .

Each distinct performance is the performance
of a separate author, no one being large enough to
contain you in your full dimensions —” and much
more, at which we may smile now; and possibly, if
we be men of the world, hint that the young author
did not worship the great literary star for nothing.
Perhaps, nevertheless, “the whirligig of time may
‘bring round its revenges,” and Alexander Pope be
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 841

rated, if not as high as young Brooke sets him, yet
still far more highly than now. And meanwhile, is
it not the nature of all noble young souls to worship
a great man when they can find him? And ought
it not to be in their nature? Is there any feeling
more ennobling (there are few more delightful) than
that of looking up in admiration (even though it
be exaggerated) to a being nobler than one’s self?
Alas! for the man who has not felt that only through
respect for others can true self-respect be gained;
that he who worships nothing, will never be wor-
shipful himself. Reverent, confiding loyalty has
been as yet the parent of all true freedom, and will
be so to the end of time, to judge from the success
of the Transatlantic attempt at liberty without loy-
alty. It is easy to- boast of freedom and independ-
ence; but there are those who would question (as
Henry Brooke would have done) whether there was
not as much manly independence in the heart of the
Englishman who kneels and trembles, he knows not
why, before a certain lady in St. James’s Palace, as
in the heart of the Yankee lad who boasts that he is
“as good as the President.” So, at least, thought
Henry Brooke. He had an intense capacity for
worship. All his life he delighted to look up to
beings better than himself, and, through them, to
God, as the sum and substance of all their good-
ness; and notin spite of that, but because of that,
he was, in the very best sense of the word, a Lib-
eral. Against all tyranny, cruelty, and wrong;
against the chicaneries of the law and the chican-
eries: of politicians, his voice was always loud and
earnest. He held political opinions which are now
held, —or, at least, acted on —by every rational
Englishman, whether Whig or Tory, but which were
then considered dangerous, destructive, immoral ;
and he suffered for his opinions, in fame and pocket,
and held them still. Never man lived a more origi-
4
342 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

nal, self-determined, independent life; but he knew
how to give honor, where honor was due.

In London he studied law, and enjoyed snch
society as Pope, Lyttleton, and Swift. could yive
him. But these studies, however, and this society
were quaintly enough interrupted. He was recalled
to Ireland by a dying aunt, to become guardian of,
her child, a beautiful little girl of twelve, — Catherine
Meares, of Meares Court, of a good old Westmeath
house. He put her, wisely enough, to a boarding-
school in Dublin; and within two years, not quite so
wisely, married her secretly. Yet, neither the heav-
ens nor his family seem to have been very wroth
with the folly. The marriage was as happy a one
as this earth ever saw; the parents — Irish people
not holding the tenets of Malthus —could not find
it in their hearts to scold so pretty a pair of turtles,
and simply remarried them, and left them to reap
the awful fruits of their own folly in the form of a
child per year. On which matter, doubtless, much
unwisdom has been, and will be, talked in common-
places which every one can supply for himself. But
it is worth while to clear one’s mind of cant, if it be
only to judge Henry Brooke fairly for five minutes,
and to disentangle from each other some of the
many unsound objections which, as usual, are sup-
posed to make one sound one. It is wrong to marry
secretly. True. But which is worse? to marry
secretly, or to be vicious secretly, with the vast ma-
jority of young men? If Brooke is to be judged
for doing what his parents disapproved, then he is
less, and not more guilty, than three young men out
of four,—unless parents would really prefer ten
years of vice for their sons, to the evils of an early
marriage. - And the truth is, that parents, — the av-
erage religious parents, as well as others, — do prefer
the vice to the marriage; silence their consciences
meanwhile (with an hypocrisy sad as ludicrous) by
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 343

asking no questions, lest they should discover —
what they perfectly well know of already ; and so
lose, for the ten most important years of the youth’s
life, all moral influence, all mutual confidence, if not
all mutual respect. :

“ But early marriages are so imprudent.” Which
would have been most imprudent for Henry Brooke,
-~ To run the chance, as three out of four run, of
destroying both body and soul in hell, and bringing
to a late marriage the dregs alike of his constitution
and his heart, or of beginning life on a somewhat
smaller yearly income? Of course, if a man’s life
consists in- the abundance of the things which he
possesses, Brooke was the more imprudent of the
two; but one strong authority, at least, may be
quoted against that universally received canon.
Henry Brooke’s life consisted in his lofty moral
standard, altogether heroical and godlike; in his
delicate sensibility (quite different from sensitive-
ness, child of vanity and ill-temper) ; in his chival-
rous respect for woman; in his strong trust in
mankind; in his pitiful yearning, as of a saving
angel, over all sin and sorrow; in his fresh and full
manhood, most genial and yet most pure; in those
very virtues, to tell the ugly truth, which are most
crushed and blunted in young men. Surely one has
a right to look for somewhat of the cause of such,
in the broad fact that those ten years which of all
others are apt to be the most brutalizing, Brooke ©
passed in pure and happy wedlock. What if the
imprudence of his early marriage did cause the
child-wife to have a few more children? One may
boldly answer, firstly, “ What matter?” and sec-
ondly, “I do not believe the fact, any more than I
do certain Malthusian statements anent such mat-
ters, which require a complete reéxamination, and
that by men who know at least a little both of
physiology and of human nature.” Be that as it
344 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

may, the beautiful little child-wife brought him three
children before she was eighteen, and Brooke, in
search of some more royal road to a competent in-
come than the study of the law offered, went a
second time to London and his great friends.
There he wrote and published, under the eye of
Pope, his poem of “ Universal Beauty,” a sort of
“ Bridgewater Treatise in rhyme,” as it has been
happily called. What sort of theodicy is to be ex-
pected from a young man of twenty-two, may be
easily guessed. It is, as perhaps it should be, am-
bitious, dogmatic, troubling the reader much with
anacolutha, and forced constructions, which darken
the sense: a fault easily pardoned when one per-
ceives that it is caused not by haste or vagueness,
but by too earnest attempts to compress more into
words than words will carry, and to increase the
specific gravity at the expense of transparency.
Noticeable throughout is that Platonic and realist
method of thought in which he persisted throughout
life, almost alone in his generation, and which now
and then leads him, young as he is, to very noble
glimpses into the secrets of nature, as in these lines;
a fair specimen both of his style and his philoso-
phy: —
“Emergent from the deep view nature’s face,
And o'er the surface deepest wisdom trace;
The verdurous beauties charm our cherished eyes —
But who’ll unfold the root from whence they rise ?
Infinity within the sprouting bower!
Next to enigma in Almighty Power;
Who only could infinitude confine,
And dwell immense within the minim shrine;
The eternal species-in an instant mould,
And endless worlds in seeming atoms hold.
Plant within plant, and seed infolding seed,
For ever — to end never— still proceed;
In forms complete, essentially retain
The future semen, alimental grain;
And these again, the tree, the trunk, the root,
The plant, the leaf, the blossom, and the fruit;
Again the fruit and flower the seed inclose, }

Again the seed perpetuated grows,
And beauty to perennial ages flows.”
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 345

Whatever opinion a public accustomed to a very
different style of verse may form of these, yet they
will find many noble passages both of poetry and of
theology in this poem; passages which justify the
high expectations which Pope had formed of his
pupil, and the honor which he is said to have done
to Brooke, in retouching and even inserting many
lines. Indeed, Pope’s influence is plain throughout,
and the pupil has been imitating the manly terseness,
though he has failed of the calm stateliness of his
great, though now half-forgotten, master.

Shortly after the publication of this poem, he
seems to have returned to Ireland; and eight years,
of which no record seems to remain, he spent in
Dublin as a chamber counsel, not without success ;
and to have worked for eight years at so uncon-
genial a business, in the very heyday, too, of his
youth and ambition, will redeem him somewhat
from that imputation of want of perseverance which
is often urged against him. Let him have the credit
of having given the law a fair trial. His reasons for
throwing up his profession are easily guessed. The
delays and chicaneries of courts in the eighteenth
century are well known. Henry Brooke’s judgment
of them may be read at large in the “ Fool of Qual-
ity.” The Irish Bar, too, was not in his days dis-
tinguished for morality ; and one may well conceive
that Brooke, especially as a professed Liberal, found
it difficult enough to earn his bread, and yet remain
an honest man. a

No wonder, then, that we find him in 1736 back
again in London. He was welcomed there by Pope
and Lord Lyttleton. ‘ Pitt (Lord Chatham) intro-
duced him to the Prince of Wales, who “ caressed
him,” say the biographers, “with great familiarity,
and presented him with many elegant and valuable
tokens of friendship, — china, books, paintings, etc.”

What more could man need, in days when nothing
16 *
346, KINGSLEY’S sNEW MISCELLANIES.
*- :

was to be gained without a patron? Unfortunately
for Brooke’s final success in the world, his patron,
the Prince, was in opposition, and, as Brooke con-
ceived, in his headlong chivalrous Irish way, an_ op-
pressed hero, the martyr of his own virtues; and he
therefore “must needs, if he has a chance, openly
espouse his patron’s quarrel; and.thunder forth his
wrongs to the world.” Notso insane a purpose as it
looks at first sight ; for while the Ministry practically
consisted of Walpole, the Court, and the two New-
castles, the Opposition numbered in the House, Pitt,
Chesterfield, Carteret, Wyndham, Pultney, Argyle,
and, in a word, the strongest men in England; and
outside the House, as skirmishers of the pen, Pope,
Fielding, Johnson, and Glover. So that, even from
a worldly point of view, it was no unwise step in
young Brooke to bring out at Drury Lane his
tragedy of “Gustavus Vasa,” full of patriotisms, he-
roisms, death to tyrants, indefeasible rights of free-
men, and other commonplaces, at which we can
afford to sneer now superciliously, it being not only
the propensity, but the right of humanity, to kick
down the stool by which it has climbed.

The play itself is good enough; its style that of
the time ; its characters not so much human beings
as vehicles for virtuous or vicious sentiments. If
Trollio, the courtier Archbishop of. Upsal, be really
meant for Walpole, he will stand equally well for
any ancient rascal. The only touch of what we
now call human nature (in plain words, of casuistry)
is to be found in the once famous seene in which
the tyrant tries to treat Gustavus’s resolve by the
threat of murdering his mother and sister. In it
there is real dramatic power, superior, I should say,
to that of any English tragedian of the eighteenth
century, and sufficient to redeem the play from utter
dreariness, in the eyes of a generation which has
learnt that old Swedes did not think, talk, and act
&

THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 347

half like “Frenchmen, half like antique Romans.
But the real worth of the play lay, and lies still, in
the loftiness ‘of its sentiments. 'Those were times
in which men were coarser and more ignorant, but
yet heartier and healthier than now. Those “ intri-
cacies of the human heart,” which (as unravelled
either by profligate Frenchmen or pious English-
women) are now in such high and all but sole
demand, were then looked on chiefly as indigestions
of the human stomach, or other physical organs;
and the public wanted, over and above the perennial
subject of love, some talk at least about valor, pa-
triotism, loyalty, chivalry, generosity, the protection
of the oppressed, the vindication of the innocent,
and other like matters, which are now banished alike
from pulpit and from stage, and only call forth ap-
plause (so I am informed) from the sluts and roughs
in the gallery of the Victoria Theatre. In that thea-
tre, but nowhere else in London, “ Gustavus Vasa”
(so do times change) might still be a taking play.

It took in Brooke’s time, but in a fashion very
different from that which he expected. After being
accepted at Drury Lane, rehearsed for five weeks,
and carried safely. through all the troubles of the
greenroom, it was prohibited by the Lord Chamber-
lain, on account of its political tendency.

Such silly tyranny bore such fruit as we have seen
it bear in our own days. If the world might not
see, at least the world could read. Brooke published
the play in self-defence, and sold four thousand at
five shillings each. The Prince sent him a hundred
guineas. Chesterfield took forty copies, Dr. John-
son published (what IJ am ashamed to say I have
not seen) an ironic “Complete Vindication of the
Licensers of the Stage, from the malicious aspersions
of Mr. Brooke, author of ‘Gustavus Vasa;’” and
Brooke gained a complete triumph, and a thousand
guineas into the bargain; took a villa at Twicken-
348 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ham, close to Pope’s, sent to Ireland for his family
and his wife, who (so the Prince proposed) was to
be foster-mother to the yet unborn George IIL, and
set up in life, at the age of thirty-three, as a distin-
guished literary character, with all that he needed
both of “ praise and pudding.” 3

If the charming and successful Irishman had but
prospered thenceforth, as most men prosper in the
world, then we should have had another great liter-
ary personage, possibly another great parliamentary
orator; but we should not have had “ The Fool of
Quality,” and Ireland probably would not have had
the man Henry Brooke. A course of chastening
sorrow was appointed for this man, all the more
long and bitter, perhaps, because he was so dear to
Heaven. “ Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,”
was the law ages since, and will be, perhaps, until
the end. At least, it was so with Henry Brooke.
Far from poets and courtiers, and all that was
beginning to intoxicate (as it must have intoxicated)
his noble heart, he must sit through long years of
ever-growing poverty and loneliness, watching the
corpses of his dead children, dead joys, dead hopes,
till he has learnt the golden secret, and literary fame,
and all fame which men can give lies far behind
him and below him, for the glittering, poisonous
earth-fog which it is, and his purified spirit rises into
those pure heights which he only saw afar off, when
he wrote his “ Universal Beauty,” as a lad of twenty-
two. He shall return to his first love; but he shall
return by a strait gate and a narrow way.

In 1740, in the very heyday of his success, he is
taken alarmingly ill. He must try his pure native air
of Rantavan; and he tries it, and recovers. Once
well again, he will, of course, return to London; all
his great friends expect him. To their astonishment
he sells off his furniture at Twickenham, rids him-
self of his villa, and stays at home. .
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 349

“ His wife,” say the biographers, “was afraid lest

his zeal for the Prince should get him into trouble.”
That may have been the argument which she used
in words; but what good woman has not dumb in-
stincts and forecastings deeper and wider than her
arguments? There may have been many reasons
(and yet none of them dishonorable to Brooke) for
withdrawing the most charming of husbands from a
frivolous and profligate city, especially when that
husband’s purse had a perennial tendency to empty
as fast as it filled. Atleast Henry Brooke was true
lover and wise man enough to obey; to give up
London, fame, and fashion; and in the society of a
woman whom he had loved from childhood, and at
whose death, at last, he pined away, henceforth to
“ drink water out of his own spring;” and a. nobler
act of self-renunciation one seldom meets with. It
stamps the man at once as what he was: pure, wise,
and good.
- His great friends, and the Prince among them,
wrote to him in his retirement, letters which are said
to have perished in some fire. He published, too,
from time to time, a paraphrase of “The Man of
Law’s Tale,” for Ogle’s Chaucer, which we shall not
prefer to the original. The “ Earl of Westmoreland,”
a tragedy, was performed at Dublin, as good as other
tragedies of the day. For several years, indeed, his
hankering for the stage continued, to the scandal of
some of his biographers; one of whom, Mr. Richard
Ryan, a Romish compiler of “ Lives of Irish Wor-
thies,” thus vents his (or his Methodist informer’s)
respectability on the matter.

“During the greater part of his life his religious
opinions approached to what are called Methodisti-
cal, yet he uniformly supported the stage; neverthe-
less, it is certain he lived more consistently than he
wrote. No day passed in which he did not collect
his family to prayer, and read and expounded the
350 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

Scripturés to them with a clearness and fervency edi-
fying and interesting.” A strange phenomenon must
Henry Brooke have been, throughout his life, to big-
ots and precisians of all denominations. Ihave not
had the pleasure of reading Mr. Richard Ryan’s bi-
ography, a misfortune which is much softened to me
by the perusal of this quotation from it. Doubtless
Brooke’s Methodist friends, had they, and not high
heaven, had the making of Henry Brooke, would
have treated him after the same Procrustean method
as John Wesley treated the “ Fool of Quality,” which
he purged of such passages as were not to his mind,
and then republished during the author’s lifetime, as
the “ History of Harry, Earl of Moreland,” a plan
which was so completely successful, that country
Wesleyans still believe their great prophet to have
been himself the author of the book.

In 1745, Chesterfield came to Ireland as Viceroy ;
and though Brooke (who was of an independence
of spirit too rare in Ireland then) “was among the
last to pay his respects to him,” he was appointed
barrack-master of Mullingar, with a salary worth a
clear 4002. a year. A rational Irishman of those
days would have pocketed his money, and held his
tongue; but Brooke must needs, with that foolish
honesty which always hampered him, thoroughly
work out the history of these and other Irish bar-
racks, their jobbery, peculation, and what not, and
throw the whole into a satirical pamphlet, “'The Se-
cret History and Memoirs of the Barracks of Ire-
land ;” thereby putting a sufficiently wet blanket upon
any chance of future government preferment. That
year saw the publication of his “ Farmer’s Letters,”
written in the expectation of a revolt of the Irish
Roman Catholics. They excited much attention at
the time, but were denounced by some for their sup-
posed severity. Brooke’s vindication of them, con-
taining an anecdote honorable to the Irish for his ill-
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 351

founded expectation of a rebellion, may be found in
“‘ Brookiana,” vol. i. p. 85 —a model of that English
prose of which he was a perfect master, and a model,
too, of good sense and humanity. In nothing, I
may say here, does Brooke show more in advance of
his generation, than in his opinions as to the right
method of governing the Irish Catholics, opinions
which have been since, when all but too late, uni-
versally accepted and acted on.

In 1747, he wrote four poems for Moore’s “ Fables
for the Female Sex,” one at least of which, “ The
Sparrow and the Dove,” is a beautiful reflection of
his own pure wedded life; but, indeed, Henry Brooke
is never more noble, not even when he talks theology,
than when he speaks of woman.

Two years after, we find him “ solicited by a large
body of the independent electors of Dublin to stand
for that city,” and declining—as one would have
expected him -—~ because there was another candidate
in the field, who was not only (what he was not) an
“ excelling trader,” but had “an acknowledged supe-
riority in every other merit.”

Garrick, about this time, “ offered him a shilling a
line for everything he would write for the stage, pro-
vided he wrote for him alone.” Brooke refused, as a
man who did not choose to sell his brains to any
master; and a coolness ensued between them. Gar-
rick was not the only man, it seems, whom he
offended by that independence of spirit ; which, how-
ever softened by his natural sweetness, must have
been galling to all greedy, vain, or supercilious men.
Johnson, though he tried to be fair to him, and vin-
dicated his “ Gustavus Vasa” in public, could not con-
ceal his dislike of a man who was certainly his supe-
rior in intellect, who had no inclination to bow down
and worship, when worship was rudely demanded ;
whose grace and courtesy must have seemed to the
great bear mere foppishness ; and whose liberal opin-
352 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ions (persisted in throughout life) must have been
shocking to the Toryism of Johnson’s later years.
His silly parody on a fine line in “ Gustavus,” —

“ Who rules o’er freemen should himself be free,”

is well enough known:
“ Who drives fat oxen should himself bé fat,”

answered Johnson, laughing (he only knew why) at
the sentiment. That there was a quarrel between
them, there seems to be no doubt; and to it is attrib-
uted Johnson’s omission of his name from the lives
of the English poets. His descendant says (“ Dublin
University Magazine”) that the traditionary story in
their family as tothe cause of quarrel bears so heavily
on Johnson’s manner, and is so flattering to the cour-
tesy of the poet, that he would prefer not to write it
down. Whyso? One would be glad of any fresh
anecdote, either of Brooke or Johnson; but, be the
story true or false, there was most probably a natu-
ral antagonism between the two worthies; in char-
acter, as between a delicate and a coarse nature, and
in intellect, as between nominalist and realist, — those
two world-wide types of human brain which have
quarrelled since the creation, and will quarrel till the
day of judgment.

Meanwhile all went smoothly at Rantavan. Henry’s
brother, Robert, who was as fond of painting as he
of poets, lived with him; both of them in easy cir-
cumstances, and both with children (as is fit in the
prolific air of Erin) innumerable. Strange to say,
the two families did not quarrel. “The house,”
writes some.one, “is a little Paradise, the abode of
peace and love.”

After a while, however, the storms began to burst.
Henry’s children began to die one after the other,
and with death came (we are not told how) poverty.
The family estate had to be mortgaged and sold.
Henry, having paid his debts, hired Daisy Park, in
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 353

County Kildare ; his brother took a house near him.
‘There the one lived by his paintings, the other by his
barrack-master’s place, and by Whig political tracts,
which, though they sold, seem to have satisfied nei-
ther party. The Catholics could not like an adorer
of the “great and good King William ;” the Protes-
tants, one who preached common mercy and justice
to the Catholics, and exposed the suicidal folly of
preventing them, by penal laws, from improving their
own lands, or developing the resources of their coun-
try. Of his “ Trial of the Roman Catholics,” all I
can say is, that the extracts from it in “ Brookiana”
are full of sound wisdom, both moral and political;
and, as far as it goes, advocates nothing but the very
policy which all are now agreed to pursue towards
the Celtic race.

About this time some of Brooke’s relations were
making large fortunes in India; and one of them,
Colonel Robert Brooke, who seems to have been a
noble character, and a good soldier, sent home to his
father and uncle 13,0002. especially to redeem the
mortgage on the Cavan property. Brooke did so,
and built a lodge thereon, calling it Longfield, or Cor-
foddy. Here he gave himself up to agricultural spec-
ulations ; drained a lake, and got a bog instead; ex-
perimented on water-power and drainage, and sank
a great deal of money; as many another honest gen-
tleman has done, who has dared to tamper with that
stubborn dame, Mother Earth, without being bred to
the manner.

However, if he wasted much money, he wasted it
honorably and usefully. “ Vast sums of money must
have passed through his hands,” says one reporter in
“ Brookiana.” But they passed at least into the pock-
ets of the starving Irish, in the form not only of alms,
which he gave but too lavishly and carelessly, but of
employment, of new cottages, new gardens, and a
general increase of civilization, physical and moral.
354 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

No doubt, his dreams were wider than his success.
“ Would you believe,” asks one, “that Henry Brooke
would quit the sweet vales of Daisy Park, to pass
the evening of his life at the foot of a barren moun-
tain in Corfoddy, or Longfield, as he calls it, in the
wildest part of the country? Yet he is as philo-
sophical, as poetical, and as cheerful as ever. He was
born in a desert, and to a desert he has returned.
And yet, in his imagination, he has already ploughed
the one half of the land; sprinkled the country all
round with snug cottages ; already he thinks he hears
the clack of the busy mill, and the sound of the
anvil. To do him justice, however, he has already
built a house of lime and stone, two stories high, with
glass windows, too, which never fail to attract the
gaze and admiration of the solitary passenger.”

The secret charm of Longfield was, perhaps, that
it was his own; but there is many a man in Ireland
and elsewhere who would have rested in the mere
sense of possession, without considering himself
bound to live on his own estate. But perhaps
Brooke was too’ conscientious, as well as too kind-
hearted a man, to leave the wild Irish of Corfoddy
to shift for themselves, and so (though the place could
not but be a sad and humbling one to him, for only
half a mile off was the old “House of Rantavan,”
where he was born, now passed into other hands) he
would go and live and die among his own people,
and see what could be done for them; and not alto-
gether in vain, to judge from another report written
some ten years later : —

“When I came within six or seven miles of Mr.
Brooke’s, I was afraid I should mistake the way in
such a wild part of the county, so that I asked
almost every one I met,— man, woman, and child,
‘Is this the way to Corfoddy?’ Every one knew
Mr. Brooke, every one praised him, and wished he
might live forever.
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 355

“ As I knew that the author of ‘Gustavus Vasa’
had written a great deal in praise of agriculture, I
expected, of course, as I approached his house; that
it would be bosomed high in tufted trees” (a most
Irish expectation, seeing that the said house had only
been built a dozen years). ... “But I was never
so disappointed in my life, —not 9 tree on the whole
road, not a hedge to be seen, and the way so bad,
that Iam sure it must be impassable in the winter.
His house stands on a barren spot, and the only im-
provement I could see, a little garden in the front,
shaded with a few half starved elms, that seem
rather to have been planted by chance than design.”

This hardly agrees with the account of the “Dublin
University Magazine,” that the roofless ruins of his
laborers’ cottages still stand, and that his hydraulic
works were at one time so extensive, as to frighten
the millers on the Blackwater into a deputation to
Lord Headfort, entreating that Mr. Brooke might
not turn the course of the whole river; to which
Lord Headfort answered, “ That they had nothing to
fear from Mr. Brooke. That he should be sorry to
meddle with that gentleman.” The disappointed
tourist, however, finds hospitality and an excellent
library, and at last Mr. and Mrs. Brooke. His sketch
of the old man has been already given; the child-
wife, alas! worn out by bearing and losing children,
is quite emaciated, and so feeble she can hardly walk
across the room. “I never saw so affectionate a hus-
band, and so tender a father. Our conversation at din-
ner turned on the manners and customs of the inhab-
itants of the neighborhood. You would really think
that Mr. Brooke was talking of his own children,
they were all so dear to him. He prayed for them,
and blessed them over and over again, with tears in
his eyes.” (He was so tender-hearted, they say, that
Mrs. Brooke was always afraid to tell him of the death
of a neighboring cottager.) “'That evening we walked
356 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

into the garden. His favorite flowers were those
that were planted by the hands of his wife and
daughter. I was astonished at his skill in botany.
He dwelt on the virtues of the meanest weeds, and
then launched out into such a panegyric on vegeta-
ble diet, that he almost made me a Pythagorean. .. .
‘We came to a little gurgling stream. Mr. Brooke
(who was from youth a fine Italian scholar) gazed
on it for some moments, and then repeated these
lines out of “ Metastasio:” —

‘Copre in van le basse arene
Picciol rio con velo ondoso,
Che rivela in fondo algoso
La chiarezza dell’ umor ’”?
* * *

“ And Noah was a just man, and perfect in his
generations; and Noah walked with God.” Even
such was Henry Brooke, though, like Noah, he saw
cause to be deeply dissatisfied with the state of the
world around him, and gave much excellent advice in
his time, for which he was only laughed at. Surely
the thousands (probably exaggerated by the ardent
imagination of the Milesian) which are said to have
passed through his hands, were not altogether ill-
spent (of squandering there is no proof), if: they had
bought that which is above all price, the love and
prayers of every human being round; if they had gone
to soften and develop the humanity of those poor
savage oppressed Celts. Had the money. been in-
vested in business, and lost (as men of business now-
adays are wont to lose), in the normal and respect-
able way of bankruptcy, no one would have thought
the worse of him. And surely Henry Brooke, like
every man in a free country, had a right to spend his
money as seemed best to him. When he owed he
paid, though it cost him great sacrifices; he had to
the last enough whereon to live honored, and to die
happy; and what does man want more? There
always have been, and there always will be, those
4PHE FOOL OF QUALITY. 857

who, having food and raiment, fitted at least for
their station, are therewith content, because they pre-
fer the making of human characters, their own and
others, to the making of money; and find that one
human brain cannot attend to both occupations at
once. Of such was Henry Brooke.

Of his later publications I shall say but little: a
clever political opera of his, “ Jack the Giant-queller,”
was acted in Dublin as early as 1748, full, if not of
humor, still of fluent Irish wit,.thrown into comic
songs, of his usual lofty morality. The censor of
the Dublin stage, to do him justice, must have been
far more liberal than the English Lord Chamberlain,
or the Giant-queller would have been a co-martyr
with Gustavus Vasa. There are several more trag-
edies and comedies from his pen, seemingly first
printed in 1778, when he had ceased to write, and a
novel, “ Juliet Grenville, or the History of the Human
Heart,” published in 1774, in which his biographers
only see “ the ruins of genius.”

Of his last years, which were spent in Dublin with
his only surviving daughter, no record remains. Mrs.
Brooke died in 1772, and a very dear daughter just .
before her. His only surviving son, Arthur, was
serving in the army in Canada, and he was left alone
with Charlotte, now the only girl, an accomplished
woman of genius, and author of the earliest transla-
tions of Irish poetry. From the time of his wife’s
death he shut himself up from the world, and was
thought by many to be dead. He went after a while
to Dublin, where (so Charlotte Brooke told Maria
Edgeworth) he used, instead of walking up and
down his room composing, to sit for hours gazing
into vacancy; and died peacefully in 1783, aged sev-
enty-seven years, —as he lived, a philosopher, a gen-
tleman, and a Christian.

But of all his works the “Fool of Quality” was
his best, the most characteristic, and possibly the
3858 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

most precious in his eyes. He spent several years
over it. The first volumes were published in 1766,
when he was sixty years old; the fifth not till 1770.
In it we have the whole man; the education of an.
ideal nobleman by an ideal merchant-prince, has
given him room for all his speculations on theology,
political economy, the relations of sex and family,
and the training, moral and physical, of a Christian
gentleman ;- and to them plot and probability are
too. often sacrificed. Its pathos is, perhaps, of too
healthy and simple a kind to be considered very
touching by a public whose taste has been palled by
the “esthetic brandy and cayenne” of French nov-
els; John Wesley’s opinion of it was, that it was
“one of the most beautiful pictures that ever was
drawn in the world; the strokes are so delicately
fine, the touches so easy, natural, and affecting, that
I know not who can survey it with tearless eyes, un-
less he has a heart of stone.” :
Nevertheless, overmuch striving for pathos is the
defect of the book. The characters in it, in propor-
tion as they are meant to be good, are gifted with a
passionate and tearful sensibility, which is rather
French or Trish than English, and which will irritate,
if not disgust, many whose Teutonic temperament
leads them to pride themselves rather on the repres-
sion than the expression of emotion, and to believe
(and not untruly) that feelings are silent in propor-
tion to their depth. But it should be recollected that
this extreme sensibility was a part of: Brooke’s own
character; that each man’s ideal must be, more or
less, the transfiguration of that which he finds in
himself; and that he was honest and rational in be-
lieving “that his sensibility, just as much as any other
property of his humanity, when purified from selfish-
ness (which was in his ethics the only method of
perfection), could be made as noble, fair, and useful,
as any other faculty which God had given. 7%
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 859

The fifth volume, seemingly published in 1770, is
certainly inferior to the rest, and without seeing in it,
as some have done, only “the magnificent ruins of
genius,” one may judge from it that his noble intel-
lect was failing rapidly, even before that loss of his
wife which gave the death-blow alike to heart and
brain. Nevertheless, even in it are deep and beauti-
ful thoughts, on theology and political economy ; and
in his decadence, Henry Brooke is still in advance of +
his age, preaching truths which are now accepted by
most educated Englishmen, and other truths which
will be’ accepted by them ere long.

Nevertheless, that “ Good wine needs no bush,” is
an old proverb; one so true, that the fact of this
book needing a preface, will possibly create a preju-
dice in the eyes of many.

The book, it will be said, is not yet a hundred
years old; if therefore it had been of real value, it
would not have so soon lost its popularity. Surely,
some intrinsic defect in it has caused it to be not
undeservedly forgotten. And if an average reader
deigned to open the book, he would probably find in
the ‘first hundred pages quite enough to justify to
himself his prejudice, The cause. of its failure, he
would say, is patent. The plot is extravagant as
well as ill-woven, and broken, besides, by episodes
as extravagant as itself. The morality is Quixotic,
and practically impossible. The sermonizing, whether
theological or social, is equally clumsy and obtrusive.
Without artistic method, without knowledge of hu-
man nature and the real world, the book can never
have touched many hearts, and can touch none
now. .

To all which it may be answered, that if the form
of fiction now popular is the only right form ;— if
artistic method consists merely in dramatic unity of
interest, in weaving a plot which shall keep the
reader expectant and amused, without demanding
360 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

of him even a moment’s reflection; —if knowledge
of human nature is to signify merely its every-day
and pettiest passions, failings, motives;—if, in a
word, the canons which are necessary for a success-
ful stage-play are also to limit fiction of every kind;
— then this book, as a fiction, is a very bad one, and its
editors must succumb to the too probable verdict of
an age which seems determined that art shall confine
itself more and more exclusively to the trivial, the
temporary, and the vulgar; which has made up its
mind to have its novels written by young ladies, and
its pictures painted by pre-Raphaelites; and in which
ideal art, whether in fiction or in painting, seems
steadily dying out,— perhaps for want of that very
realistie tone of thought which is to be found in
Henry Brooke.

If again, theology, properly so called, is to be
henceforth an extinct science;—if nothing can be
known of God’s character, even from the person of
Jesus Christ, save that He will doom to endless tor-
ture the vast majority of the human race, while He
has made, for the purpose of delivering a very small
minority, a certain highly artificial arrangement, to
be explained by no human notions of justice or of
love;—if the divine morality be utterly different
from the ideal of human morality ;— if generosity,
magnanimity, chivalry,—all which seems most di-
vine in man,—is to have no likeness in God, no
place in the service of God;—if the motives of
religion are to be confined henceforth to the most
selfish of human hopes, and the basest of human
fears ;— if, in a word, Spurgeonism, whether Protes-
tant or Catholic, is the only fit creed for mankind ; —
then, indeed, all the seemingly noble teaching of this
book, however much it may seem to reflect the life
of Christ or the teaching.of St. Paul, is superfluous,
and its diatribes may be passed over as impertinent
interferences of the dramatic unity of the plot.
THE FOOL OF QUALITY., 361

But if an ideal does exist of the human soul, as
of the human body ; —if it be good to recollect that
ideal now and then, and to compare what man is
with what man might be;— if the heroic literature
of every nation, and above all these, the New Testa-
ment itself, are witnesses for that spiritual ideal,
just as Greek statuary and the paintings of the
great Italian masters are witnesses for the physical
ideal; —if that ideal, though impossible with man,
be possible with God, and therefore the goal tow-
ards which every man should tend, even though he
come short of it;— then it may be allowable for
some, at least, among the writers of fiction, to set
forth ‘that ideal, and the author of the “Fool of
Quality ” may be just as truly a novelist in his own
way, as the authoress of “ Queechy” and the “ Wide
Wide World.” There are those, indeed, still left on
earth who believe the contemplation of the actual
(easy and amusing as it is) to be pernicious to most
men without a continual remembrance of the ideal;
who would not put into young hands even that
Shakspeare who tells them what men are, without
giving them, as a corrective, the Spenser and the
Milton who tell them what men might be; who
would even (theological questions apart) recommend
to the philosophical student of mere human nature
the four Gospels rather than Balzac. But such are,
doubtless, as Henry Brooke was, dreamers and ideal-
ists.

And if, again, a theology be possible, and an
anthropology not contradictory to, but founded on,
that theology ;—if the old Catholic dogma, that the
Son of Man was the likeness of his Father’s glory,
and the express image of his person, may be believed
still (as it is by a lingering few among Christians),
in any honest and literal practical sense ;—if that
be true which Mr. J. Stuart Mill says, in his late
grand Essay upon Liberty, that “our popular relig-

16
362 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ious ethics, by holding out the hope of heaven and
the threat of hell, as the appointed and ‘appropriate
motives to a virtuousdife, fall far, below the bést of
the ancients, and do what they canto give to human
morality an essentially selfish character ;” —if by (as
Mr. Mill says) “discarding those so-called secular
standards, derived from Greek and Roman writers,
which heretofore coexisted with and supplemented
ethics” (which should be called not Christian, but
monastic, and the “secular” correctives of which
still remain, thank God, in the teaching of our pub-
lic schools, and of our two great universities), “xre-
ceiving some of its spirit, and infusing into it some
of theirs, there is even now resulting a low, abject,
servile type of character, which, submit itself as it
may to what it deems the Supreme will, is incapable
of rising to, or sympathizing in the conception of
Supreme goodness:”— if this, or half of this be
true, then it may be worth while for earnest men -to
consider well if these seemingly impertinent sermon-
izings of Henry Brooke be not needed nowadays:
even though he dares to tell his reader, and indeed
to take as his text throughout the book, that “all
virtues, even justice itself, are merely different forms
of benevolence,” and that “benevolence produces
and constitutes the heaven or beatitude of God him-
self. He is'no other than an infinite and eternal
Goop-Witu. Benevolence must, therefore, consti-
tute the beatitude or heaven of ail dependent be-
ings.”

It may be well, too, to see how, in his eyes, it was
not only right and useful, but possible likewise for a
British nobleman of the seventeenth century te eopy
God who made him; how, in enforcing that dream
of his, he did not disdain to use those apologues and
maxims of wise old heathens, which will live, we
may hope, as long as an English school and an Eng-
lish scholar exist on earth; how his conception of
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 3863
ENS ogee

the ideal of humanity, because it is founded on the
belief that that.idea] is the very image of God, is
neither “ low, abjéct, nor servile,’ but altogether chiv-
alrous and heroic; and lastly, how, in his eyes, the
humblest resignation and the loftiest aspiration are
so far from being contradictory virtues, that it is
only (sq. he holds) by rising to the “conception of
the Supreme goodness” that man can attain “sub-
mission to the Supreme will.” And when the reader
has considered this, and more which he may find in
this book, he will irritate himself no more about de-
fects of outward method, but will be content to let
the author teach his own lesson in his own way,
trusting (and he will not trust in vain) that each
seeming interruption is but a step forward in the
moral process at which the author aims; and that
there is full and conscious consistency in Mr. Brooke’s
method, whether or not there be dramatic unity in
his plot. By that time, also, one may hope the ear-
nest reader will have begun to guess at the causes
which have made this book forgotten for a while;
and perhaps to find them not in its defects, but in
its excellencies; in its deep and grand ethics, in
its broad and genial humanity, in the divine value
which it attaches to the relations of husband and
wife, father and child; and to the utter absence both
of that sentimentalism and that superstition which
have been alternately.debauching, of late years, the
minds of the young. And if he shall have arrived
at this discovery, he will be able possibly to regard,
at least with patience, those who are rash enough to
affirm that they have learnt from this book more
which is pure, sacred, and eternal, than from any
which has been published since Spenser’s “ Faery
Queen.”

So go forth, once more, brave book, as God shall
speed thee; and wherever thou meetest, whether in
364 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

peasant or in peer, with a royal heart, tender and
true, magnanimous and chivalrous, enter in and dwell
there ; and help its owner to become (as thou canst
help him) a man, a Christian, and a gentleman, as
Henry Brooke was before him.
PILGRIM'S PROGRESS ILLUSTRATED. 365

PILGRIM’S PROGRESS ILLUSTRATED.*

A sentes of illustrations worthy of the great Puri-
tan mystery has been as yet a desideratum. The
eighteenth century could not be expected to produce
one. The nineteenth has not produced one as yet,
in spite of the great advance in the art of rendering
thought into form, which is due to the influence of
German designers. The reasons of this want are
simple enough. The Puritan bodies, to whom John
Bunyan belongs, have not sufficiently lost their dis-
like of the fine arts, to produce from their own ranks
artists capable of so great a work. The religious
artists of the Church of England have employed
their pencils rather on Scriptural and Medieval sub-
jects. Whether the author of these designs, by try-
ing to imagine for himself Bunyan’s thoughts, rather
from a simply human, than from a sectarian point
of view, has done aught to supply the want, the
Public must judge. If he has in some things failed,
sensible persons at least will find excuses for him in
the great difficulty of the undertaking.

To be a faithful illustrator of any book is no light
task. For no illustration can be considered true,
which does not project on the paper the very image
which was projected upon the author’s brain. Every
poet (and Bunyan was a poet) thinks in pictures; to
guess what each picture was, and set it down, is the
whole of the illustrator’s duty. But this requires a

* “Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress,” with Illustrations by Cuanuus H.
BENNETT.
366 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

dramatic faculty, a power of standing in another
man’s place, and seeing with his eyes, which falls to
the lot of few; and which in the case of Bunyan,
whose strength lies in his knowledge of human char-
acter, to the lot of very few indeed. His men and
women are living persons, no two of them alike; not
mere abstractions of a vice or a virtue, but -English
men and women of his own time, whose natural
peculiarities of countenance, language, gesture, have
been moulded in the course of years, by obedience
to some overruling defect or virtue. I say of one;
for of those complexities and contradictions of the
human heart, which we are now so fond of trying to
unravel, Bunyan takes little note. The distinction
between children of light and those. of darkness was
too strongly marked, both in his religious system, and
(as he believed) in the two English parties of the day,
for him to conceive those double characters which
Shakspeare, from a wider and clearer point of view,
saw round him, and drew so well. Was the man
regenerate or unregenerate? a child of God or of
the Devil? a good man and true, or a bad man and
false? is his only criterion. In his regenerate char-
acters, indeed, such as Christian and Hopeful, he
introduces this self-contradiction, the image of that
inward conflict between “the spirit and the flesh,”
which he had felt in himself; but in the unregenerate
ones he allows of no such conflict. They are self-
contentedly “ dead in trespasses and sins,” the slaves
of some one bad habit, which has moulded gradu-
ally their whole personality. In this. conception, nar-
row as it seems at first sight, he is not altogether
wrong. It is a patent fact, that in proportion as any
man is shut up in self, and insensible of the higher
aims of life, his character narrows to one overruling
idea, and becomes absorbed by one overruling pas-
sion, till, like the madman, he becomes unconscious
of the whole universe, save at the one fixed point
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS ILLUSTRATED. 367

at which it seems to touch his own selfish nature.
Shakspeare, when he draws (as he very seldom does)
thoroughly bad men, finds it necessary to narrow
their sphere of thought and feeling, till they would
become (under less skilful hands than his) mere im-
personations of special vice. Edmund, Shylock, and
Tago have that horrible consistency of aim, that con-
centration of mind and heart upon one paltry pur-
pose, which Bunyan has extended to the whole
“unregenerate” world. The vast middle mass (as
yet unclassified in any system) which lies between
“saints” and “sinners,” and in which our modern
poet, dramatist, novelist, work as their proper sphere
of subject-matter, he simply could not see. That
there were even among saints self-contradictory char-
acters in plenty, like By-ends and Demas, his know]l-
edge of fact taught him; but his system commanded
him to pronounce them, too, “ unregenerate” and
“false brethren,” not to be numbered among the
elect.

Fettered by so narrow and partial a conception of
humanity, Bunyan’s genius must indeed. have been
great to enable him to represent each personage in
his book as a separate individual, differing, even in
the minutie of manner and language, each from the
other; and yet having those very minutie tinged by
the ruling passion; and all the more difficult must
be the task of the illustrator, who undertakes to
reproduce the very human faces which Bunyan saw
in his vision,—-which he had seen, perhaps, in the
church and in the market-place, and studied by such
instincts or rules of physiognomy as he had, before
he transferred them to his story.

For that Bunyan drew mostly from life there can
be little doubt. He may have been now and then,
like all true poets, an idealizer, out of several per-
sonages compounding one. But the very narrow-
ness of his characters, when considered together with
3868 KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

their strong individuality, makes it more probable
that he accepted certain persons, whom he actually
knew in life, as fair types of the fault he was expos-
ing.

‘On this method, therefore, Mr. Bennett has con-
structed the great majority of his ideal portraits.
Believing the ideal is best seen in the actual, the
universal in the particular, he has boldly drawn, as
far as he could, from life. I say boldly ; for to do this
is to do no less than to run his knowledge of human
nature against Bunyan’s. But by no other method,
surely, was success attainable; and if he has fallen
short, he has fallen short on the right road. For
Bunyan’s men are not merely life-portraits, but Eng-
lish portraits; men of the solid, practical, unimpas-
sioned midland race. In no other country in Europe
did Puritanism develop itself in a form of which
“ The Pilgrim’s Progress” would have been the true
exponent. The mystic element, always so strong in
Germany, is altogether wanting; and the calmness
of its tone, conceived as it was amid war and perse-
cution, conirasts—and most favorably — with the
virulence and ferocity which stained both Scotch and
French Puritanism. Midland English John Bunyan
is wholly; and seeing that the character of midland
men seems to have changed, since his time, as_little
as their surnames, the truest types of his creations
are still to be looked for in the country where he
wrote. ,

All attempts to ennoble the subject by introducing”
a Classic or Scriptural type of feature or figure, as
some have done, is absurd. The book represents the
life-thoughts not of Greeks, nor of Jews, but of
English yeomen and tradesmen; and as such should
its personages be drawn. Half-naked figures in vio-
lent postures were not in John Bunyan’s brain as he
wrote; but quiet folk going about Bedford town in
slop-breeches, bands, arid steeple hats; and even the
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS ILLUSTRATED. 369

“three shining ones” who met Christian at the foot
of the cross, are, perhaps, none other than the three
poor women who sat at a door in the sun in Bedford
town, and talked with him of heavenly things ere
yet he learned the “way to heaven.” To him it
would have been blasphemy to suppose that even
the old Jews were nearer the spiritual world than
Bedford tradesmen; or that the sacredness of his
figures could be increased by putting them into the
flowing garments of another country and age. To
him, as to all true Puritans, God was here, living,
working, present, even more mightily (unless “ Gos-
pel privileges were below those of the Law”) than
in the days of patriarchs and prophets; and the
same intense sense of the divine presence which
made, in his eyes, all forms and ceremonies, all
beauty of art and poetry, as worthless as the picture
is beside the living reality, would have made him
content to clothe his figures as he saw folks clothed
around him; even (could he have sympathized with
Catholics) to understand why the old painters repre-
sented Bible personages in the dress of medieval.
Italy, and introduced portraits: of men still living
into pictures of Bible stories. Heaven and hell had
again drawn near to earth, and mingled themselves
with the common works and ways of. men, even’as
in the time of Luther or of Dante. And in their
light, celestial-infernal, the modern and the common-
place became awful and sacred. While all souls
were naked before the judgment-seat of God, what
matter for the clothes their bodies wore ?

It is thus that in every age, intense and true faith
expresses itself in the most every-day and the most
modern forms; while in ages of half-belief and of
dying creeds, the artist and the public alike try to
keep up in their own minds the traditions of a sa-
credness which they feel is vanishing away, by thrust-:
ing their conceptions back into the grand mist of

16
870 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

past ages, and dressing up the ghosts of their heroes
in the guise of medieval saints or eastern Jews. It
is “reverent,” it is “ ecclesiastical ;” or it is “ sacred”
and “ scriptural;” but to the observant eye it means
this, — that men see a gulf between their own hearts
and those of the men of old time, which requires
a proper difference in their speech, gesture, dress,
when they are to be depicted ; a gulf of which Bun-
yan was not aware; for to him By-ends and Talka-
tive, his neighbour, were in intimate relation to the
same devil as were Hymeneus and Philetus; and
he himself, as Christian, was as surely guided by
the Eternal God as Abraham when he left his
father’s house. .

To render Bunyan, then, honestly, the dress, the
very fashion of his day, ought to be carefully: fol-
lowed; and all representations of the undraped hu-
man figure, even of those attitudes which display
it theatrically, should be carefully avoided. The
undraped pictures and. statues which were (wrongly
or rightly, no matter here), the fashion in Chazles’s
court, would have been to him the “ abominations
of the heathen,” “vanities from which he must pray
that his eyes might, be turned away;” and even in
his description of Vanity Fair, or of Madam Bub-
ble, where most poetical imaginations would have
thought it but part of their duty to hint, at least, at
luxurious imagery, Bunyan is silent on the point:
not from prudery,—for he uses very plain old Eng-
lish words, — but simply because such images never
occurred to him.

For the same reasons, it seems to me, Mr. Ben-
nett has been right in choosing for his manner one
formed on the study of Durer and Holbein, and other
Teutonic draughtsmen, who had little or no acquaint-
ance with Greek and Italian art. A certain home-
liness and hardihood (I had almost said coarseness)
of outline, will best express the features which Bun-
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS ILLUSTRATED. 371

yan’s imagination or memory pictured to him. For
the very history of painting proves that, till it has
been saturated with Greek art, and, as it were,
learnt to see through Greek eyes, the Teutonic
mind is at least unconscious of that element of
physical beauty, which seems to consist in a secret
but perpetual tendency toward mathematical curve
and proportion in outlines. As the standard of
beauty is the same in both races, we must believe
that the Teuton is influenced by this element as
much as the Greek was. But the Greek alone
analyzed and consciously reproduced it; and there-
fore it is to be employed in illustrating English
books, only in proportion to the degree in which
the author has been brought under the influence of
Greek art. An illustrator of Spenser, for example,
would be well repaid by a thorough study of the
great Italian draughtsmen, from 1500 to 1590,—
even more so, perhaps, than by studying Greek
statuary, for it was with Italian eyes that Spenser
learned to see; while for the actual work of the
burin, Mare Antonio, not Albert Durer, should be
his master. But for “The Pilgrim’s Progress”
Mare Antonio would teach nothing, and Albert
Durer be the best master; to the exclusion, of
course, of all conventional archaisms and unneces-
sary uglinesses, — things always in all men detesta-
ble and dishonest.

In like manner, all ambitious attempts at land-
scape drawing would be utterly out of place with
regard to “ The Pilgrim’s Progress.” In one illus-
trated edition which I have seen, fantastic moun-
tain and forest scenery, and grotesque and _horri-
ble combinations of it with demons and monsters,
form a large part of the drawings. But such are no
illustrations of Bunyan. They may be very pretty
in themselves; but there is no evidence from the
book -that such pictures ever presented themselves
372 KINGSLEY'S NEW MISCELLANIES.

to-him. The poverty of his descriptive powers, the
absence of everything like our modern “ word-paint-
ing,” is characteristic of the man. Born and bred in
the monotonous midland, he has no natural images
beyond the pastures and brooks, the towns and coun-
try houses, which he saw about him. He is as
thoroughly “naturalist” in them as in his charac-
ters; but when he requires images of a grander kind,
“he goes to Scripture for them; and his Delectable
Mountains, “ beautified with woods, vineyards, fruits
of all kinds, flowers also,” are merely formed from
that common repertory of the Puritans, without in-
dividuality of any kind. Why should they be?
Bunyan had probably never seen a mountain in
his life; and was much too honest a man to indulge
his fancy without warrant of fact. The Bible sup-
plied him with ideal imagery enough to suit him;
to the Bible he went for it, and even to that mod-
estly and sparingly enough, as may be seen by com-
paring his quasi idyllic account of the Shepherds
and their country with Solomon’s Song. His Val-
ley of the Shadow of Death in like wise he describes,
not objectively, for the sake of the grand and terri-
ble, but subjectively, for the sake of the man who
passes through it, naming merely, and that without:
an epithet, all its satyrs and hobgoblins, snares, gins,
and pitfalls. oo

There is, in fact, in Bunyan, the same insensibility .
to the beautiful and the awful in nature, which is
noticeable in the early Christians, the medieval.
monks, and perhaps in all persons under strong relig-
ious excitement. Where the unseen world is all in
all, the visible world is only important in as far as it
bears on the. soul within; while to point out that
bearing, the most conventional forms are sufficient.

To have heaped up, in the background of these
illustrations, detailed natural scenes, would have been
to mistake the difference between it and Spenser’s
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS ILLUSTRATED. 873

“ Faery Queen.” In that, the great allegory of the
anti-Puritan party, man is considered as striving to
do noble work in this world, not merely, as in “The
Pilgrim’s Progress,” to pass through it on his journey
to some better world;:in the former, therefore, the
proper background is the world itself, in all its forms,
whether natural or artificial; in the latter, the world
is renounced, and the only background is the heaven
toward which man is journeying.

This difference, of course, makes “' The Pilgrim’s
Progress” a far narrower field for-the artist than
“The Faery Queen,’— a book which, perhaps, offers
more noble and more varied subjects for the pencil
than any other book in the world; one would, for
Bunyan’s sake, that this were the only point of con-
trast. =~

But it must be confessed, that Bunyan is inferior
to Spenser in ethic, as well as in artistic beauty.
As was to. be expected from his idea of man’s life,
as an escape from: hell, the virtues on which he
insists are chiefly, if not altogether, those which have
been named “the selfish virtues,” — prudence, sound
self-interest, and enduring determination; all good,
but not exclusively “ Christian graces.” These, with
a truly English honesty and plainness of speech, and
a hearty, simple gratitude to his Divine Deliverer,
constitute Bunyan’s “ Christian;” but of those more
godlike elements of character on -which Spenser
chiefly dwells, the elements which are called out by
man’s actual work in the world on behalf of. others,
not merely on‘behalf of- himself, — of. these Bunyan
says but little. Of justice and faithfulness between
man and man; of- generosity, pity, chivalry, self-sac-
rifice, and that fire of divine: love which drives forth
alike strong men and weak women to dare and
suffer all things for their fellow-men, we read litile
or nought in his pages. His “saints” are not St.
Elizabeths or St. Vincent Pauls, Howards or Night-
374 - KINGSLEY’S NEW MISCELLANIES.

ingales. True, certain of them delight, kindly enough,
in showing hospitality : but.it is to “ pilgrims,” — in
plain words, to those who agree with their. opinions.
The likeness’of our Father in heaven, the perfect
virtue which causes its sun to shine on the evil and
on the good, and its rain to fall on the just and on
the unjust, and is perfect in this, that it is good to
the unthankful and the evil, John Bunyan, if he had
seen, does not describe. His eyes are ‘clearly fixed
on a heaven beyond the grave: but on this side of

the grave, and among mortal flesh and blood, there is
a loftier heaven than he has told of in his book.

And for that very reason, his story offers the artist
none of those passages of humanity which are most
noble or most pathetic; and confines him, on the
whole, to the delineation of one, and that an insular,
type of humanity; his ideal must be the shrewd,

plain-spoken Englishman of the middle class, with
his power (the power which has colonized the world)

of fixing his eye steadily upon one object, and of

compassing that object by inflexible determination

and courage. All the vices of which he speaks,

again, must be considered as deflections from this

idea; as different types of weakness; whether they

take the form of sensuality, or of inconsistency, or of

self-deception, they are alike in the inability to see

what is to be done, and do it and nothing else. In
his power of drawing these characters lies Bunyan’s
strength; by these his book will live as long as the
English language lives. His Interpreters, his dam-
sels who arm the pilgrim, and all the rest which he
has borrowed, whether from Spenser, or some Eng-
lish translation of the old medieval “ Pélerinage de
YHomme,” — all these are the merest shadows by the
side of Spenset’s detailed and intense ideal portrai-°
tures; but his men and women are living flesh and
blood, interesting to all Englishmen forever. His
scheme of human life, narrow and exceptional at
PILGRIMS PROGRESS ILLUSTRATED.’ 375

first, is utterly untrue now, when the Puritan, instead ,
of renouncing the unbelieving world, and fleeing...
- from the City of Destruction, in éxpectation of an
immediate day of judgment, is born and bred in his
own prosperous sect, among all the means-of grace;
and finds, as he grows up, “ Religion walking in her
silver slippers,” profession the surest road to prosper-
ity, himself in high esteem and political power in the
streets of Vanity Fair, and the maxims of the great
mart (in those commercial matters in which alone he
comes in contact with it) coinciding exactly with
his own; but Obstinate and Pliable, By-ends and
Legality, still live, and will live forever, and; let us
trust, Faithful and Hopeful with them; and the man
who translates them out of the pages of Bunyan
into human forms and countenances, will have done
good service by increasing our knowledge of types
of humanity which are permanent, however partial.

THE END.
 

         

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