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 i%mi CiioiiaiEd; 
 
 fiWJfor 
 
 WMim^ 
 
 ANDEiMPANY, 
 
2S/./^ 
 
 SALAD FOR THE SOLITARY 
 
 AND THE SOCIAL: 
 
 BY AN EPICUEE. 
 
 EEDRESSED AND COMPOUNDED WITH SUNDRY ADDITIONAL 
 ESCULENTS, SUCCULENTS, AND CONDIMENTS. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 Mrt^ Jiftg-lfafl (inginal Resigns bg Eminent gimeritan ^rtists. 
 
 ENGRAVED BY 
 
 BOBBBTT AND MATTHEWS. N"^, No/ /^ ^ C _ /■ 7 
 
 
 "Oh, herbaceous treat! 
 'Twonld tempt the dying anchorite to eat; 
 Back to the world he'd turn his weary soul. 
 And plunge his fingers in the Salad-bowl I" — SYDNEY SMITH. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 DE WITT C. LENT AND COMPANY. 
 
 J. .<.ju»f»pi^'>i* M.DCCC.LXXIL 
 
 iyUSL^ 
 
 ^ 
 
J872. 
 
 Bn^red according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
 
 DEWITT C. LENT & COMPANY, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "VVashington. 
 
 Stereotyped at tlie 
 
 •WOMEN'S PRINTING HOUSE, 
 
 Corner Avenue A and Eightli Street, 
 
 New York. 
 
 ,B-' 
 
^^ 
 
 That these ^^ Salads^^ have proved seasonable to the popu- 
 lar taste and fancy, has been to a flattering extent demon- 
 ^^ strated by a circulation in this country and in England of 
 
 over thirty thousand copies. 
 
 Now that they have been re-dressed, combined, and gar- 
 nished afresh — to such an extent, indeed, as almost to con- 
 stitute them a new decoction — it is confidently believed they 
 will be found to be much improved, even in that pungency 
 and flavor that originally gained for them such a general 
 and enthusiastic welcome. 
 
 THE PUBLISHERS. 
 
^i 
 
 'jpf- 
 
 m 
 
THE INGREDIENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preliminary Chat - .... 9 
 
 Dietetics 13 
 
 The Talkative and the Taciturn 37 
 
 Citations from the Cemeteries 55 
 
 A Monologue on Matrimony 79 
 
 Curious and Costly Books 105 
 
 Something about Nothing 125 
 
 Sports and Pastimes 135 
 
 Book Craft ....... ^ ... 151 
 
 Last Words of the Illustrious 189 
 
 The Mysteries op Medicine - - - 199 
 
 Talk about Trees 237 
 
 The Modern Moloch 249 
 
 Infelicities op Authorcraft - 275 
 
 The Toilette and its Devotees 291 
 
 The Selfish and the Social 325 
 
 The Cycle op the Seasons 343 
 
 Pastimes of the Pen 369 
 
 Pulpit Peculiarities 385 
 
 The Shrines op Genius * . . 407 
 
 The Humors op Law - 423 
 
 Pacts and Fancies about Flowers 441 
 
 Larcenies of Literature 461 
 
 The Mute Creation 479 
 
 Sleep and its Mysteries - ---*... 501 
 
 A Puff at Parting - - 519 
 
THE PLATES 
 
 The Salad 
 
 The Bards 
 
 A Baronial Banquet 
 
 The Glorious SiRLom 
 
 The Talkative and Taciturn.. 
 
 The Last Word 
 
 Stoke-Pogeis Church 
 
 The Epitaph 
 
 Hymen's Procession 
 
 The Pleasures of ]\Iatrimony. . 
 
 Missals and Books 
 
 The Monk in his Cell 
 
 The Disappointed Gourmand. . . 
 
 Menerva Crowning Genius 
 
 Falconry in the Olden Time.. 
 
 Chivalry 
 
 Guttenberg's First Proof 
 
 The Early Printer 
 
 Psyche 
 
 The Dying Hero 
 
 A Case for the Doctors 
 
 The Alchemist 
 
 The Giant Tree op California 
 The Charter Oak, Runnymede. 
 
 The Misers 
 
 The Secret Treasure -Vault . . 
 
 ARTIST. PAGE 
 
 Fredericks (Frontispiece.) 
 
 " (Vignette.) 
 
 13 
 
 White 
 Waud 
 Fredericlcs 
 
 Nasi 
 
 36 
 
 37 
 
 54 
 
 55 
 
 78 
 
 79 
 
 104 
 
 105 
 
 124 
 
 125 
 
 134 
 
 Fredericks 135 
 
 Waud, 150 
 
 Fredericks 151 
 
 188 
 
 Waud 189 
 
 198 
 
 " 199 
 
 Fredendc6 236 
 
 Bixm 237 
 
 248 
 
 Waud 249 
 
 Fredericks 274 
 
VIU THE PLATES. 
 
 ARTIST, PAGE 
 
 Johnson Reading the "Vicar " Waud 275 
 
 The Death op Chatterton Fredericks 290 
 
 The Belle of the Season " 291 
 
 Study op the Beautiful " 324 
 
 The Selfish and the Social. . . Eytynge 325 
 
 The Club " 342 
 
 The "Rolling Year " Fredericks 343 
 
 The Four Seasons " 368 
 
 Humors OP THE Pen " 369 
 
 The Pen and the Sword " 384 
 
 Dean Swift IN HIS Pulpit " 385 
 
 Caught Napping " 406 
 
 Shakespeare's Birthplace Dixon 407 
 
 iRvmG's Cottage, Sunntside ... " 422 
 
 The Web and its Victims Nast 423 
 
 Grief and Sorrow " 440 
 
 aATHERENG Wild-Flowers White 441 
 
 Young Buds and Blossoms Eytynge 460 
 
 The Modern Author Waud 461 
 
 The Death OP Chatterton " 478 
 
 The Deputation Stevens 479 
 
 Dogs of Mount St. Bernard. . . Fredericks 500 
 
 The Somnambulist " 501 
 
 Sleeping Innocence Matthews 518 
 
 The Smoking Club Fredericks 519 
 
 A Puff at Parting " 526 
 
PRELIMINARY CHAT. 
 
 " Excellent Salads," as Peter said to Parson Adams, " are to be 
 found in almost every field ; " and these we have garnered from the fer- 
 tile " fields of literature." Salad has this superiority over every other 
 product of culinary art, to wit, — it is suitable to all seasons, as well 
 as all sorts of persons — being a delectable conglomerate of good 
 things — ^meats, vegetables, acids and sweets, oils, sauces, and a vari- 
 ety of savory condiments too numerous to detail. Nor are we de- 
 terred from attempting its subtle mixture, by the Spanish proverb 
 which insists that four persons are indispensable to the production of 
 a good salad : " A spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a counsel- 
 lor for salt, and a madman to stir it all up " ! 
 
 Owr salad — a consarcination of many choice things for the literary 
 palate — 
 
 "Vaxions, that the mind 
 Of desultory man, studious of change 
 And pleased with novelty, may be indulged," 
 
 will, it is hoped, felicitate the fancy, flatter the taste, and prove an 
 antidote to ennui, or any tendency to senescent foreboding, should 
 ever such mental malady chance to haunt the seclusion of the reader. 
 
 Its contents are not only various in kind; variety may also be 
 said to characterize its treatment, which has been attempted some- 
 what philosophically, poetically, ethically, satirically, critically, 
 hypothetically, aesthetically, hyperbolically, psychologically, metaphysi- 
 cally, humorously — and, since brevity is the soul of wit — sententiously. 
 
 Said Sterne, " I would go fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of 
 that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagin- 
 
10 PRELIMINARY CHAT. 
 
 ation into his author's hands — be pleased, he knows not why, and 
 cares not wherefore." 
 
 Southey remarks that there are some persons who are willing to be 
 pleased, and thankful for being pleased, without thinking it necessary 
 that they should be able to parse their pleasure, like a lesson, or give 
 a rule or reason why they are pleased. It is the aim and design of 
 the following pages to put the reader in this precise condition ; believ- 
 ing, with Sydney Smith, " that all mankind are happier for having 
 been happy ; so that, if you make them happy now, you make them 
 happy twenty years hence by the memory of it." These desultory 
 chapters are the fruitage of many pleasant, recreative hours spent in 
 the highways and by-ways of literature. Whenever a tempting 
 thought-blossom decoyed us by its alluring beauty, the prize was cap- 
 tured to enrich and grace our collection. Such gleanings may by 
 some be deemed trifles, but 
 
 " Though high philosophy despise such things, 
 They often give to weightier truths their wings ; 
 Convey a moral, or correct bad taste, 
 Though aptly caUed Hglit leamiag, still not waste. 
 A spark of nature's fire wiU not despise, 
 A word sometimes makes brighter, loveUer eyes; 
 A flash of wit disarms old care of wrath, 
 A happy line throws beauty in our path ; 
 Though Sages say Hght learning wisdom stifles, 
 There is delight in stringing useful trifles." 
 
 If trifles are facts, they cease to be trivial ; and, in these stirring 
 times, when our allotted leisure is becoming so infinitesimally small, 
 the terse and the epigrammatic are to be preferred to the diffuse and 
 discursive, in our reading. In grouping together the ingredients of 
 this salad, it has been the aim of the purveyor to mix well the savory 
 with the crisp, the spicy with the solid, and thus both tempt the ap- 
 petite, and appease it. It would be great temerity to appropriate to 
 our humble essay the witty analysis of a celebrated author, and pre- 
 tend that " it has profundity without obscurity, perspicuity without 
 
PRELBIINARY CHAT. 11 
 
 prolixity, ornament without glare, terseness without barrenness, pene- 
 tration without subtlety, comprehensiveness without digression, and 
 a great number of other things, without a great number of other 
 things." Odd in its plan and arrangement, it consists of many odd 
 sayings and selections, from odd and out-of-the-way authors ; and is 
 fitted for odd half-hours : so thab it may be reckoned an odd affair alto- 
 gether ; yet oddities provoke sometimes our risibilities, and promote 
 our amusement. Let us hope this literary oddity may accomplish a 
 like result. In fine, our design is to combine entertainment with 
 instruction, mingling — 
 
 " Sayings fetched from Sages old. 
 Laws which Holy Writ unfold, 
 Worthy to be graved in gold ; 
 Lighter fancies not excluding, 
 Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, 
 Sometimes mildly interluding." 
 
 For we hold with a French dramatist, that " the funds of wit and 
 merriment are not yet exhausted ; that the wings of fancy are not 
 yet clipped, and that our ancestors have not said and sung all our 
 good things." 
 
 " Salads," according to a modern authority, " refresh without ex- 
 citing, and make people younger." The Salad we offer ought to 
 have this effect, now that it is re-dressed and compounded anew with 
 sundry additional esculents, succulents, and savory condiments ; and 
 we hope everybody will bring to it — a good appetite. Salads are not 
 generally suited for weak digestions, or sickly folk ; yet we have it 
 certified on professional authority that this salad is adapted for the 
 especial cure and comfort of any who may have such malady as that 
 complained of by the author of Elia, who thus piteously portrays 
 his sufferings to Bernard Barton: " Do you know what it is to suc- 
 cumb under an insurmountable day-mare — an indisposition to do any- 
 thing, or to be anything — a total deadness and distaste — a suspension 
 of vitality — an indifference to locality, a numb, soporific good-for- 
 nothingness — an ossification all over, an oyster-like indifference to 
 
12 PEELIMINARY CHAT. 
 
 passing events — a mind-stupor — a brawny defiance to the needles of 
 a thrashing-in conscience — with a total irresolution to submit to 
 water-gruel processes ? " 
 
 After sundry erasures, blottings, corrections, insertions, enlarg- 
 ings, and diminishings, with interlineations, we have at length com- 
 pleted the work, which, whatever may be alleged against it, 
 shall be innocent of all heresy of necromancy, geomancy, alchymy, 
 exorcism, phantasmagoria, witchcraft, metoposcopy, sorcery, or thau- 
 maturgy. It is to be hoped that it will prove savory to the palate 
 of a goodly number of good-natured guests ; since even frugal fare is 
 rendered relishable by the presence of smiling faces and happy hearts, 
 while the most costly viands often lose their zest where these are not. 
 Foremost among the pleasures of the table are, what an elegant novel- 
 ist has termed " those felicitous moods in which our animal spirits 
 search, and carry up, as it were, to the surface, our intellectual gifts 
 and acquisitions." The invitation to this repast is, therefore, respect- 
 fully tendered to all genial spirits who will bear company with the 
 host; and being unknown to the great world, "I will tell you, 
 sirs, by way of private, and under seal, I am a gentleman, and live 
 here obscure, and to myself." 
 
 FREDEEICK SAUNDERS. 
 
DIETETICS. 
 
 May it please you to dine with us ? ^" — Shakuptufe. 
 
 There can be no doubt of it, sirs ; the art 
 of eating and drinking took its rise amid the 
 mists of the remotest antiquity ; its history is coeval witli that 
 of the race. Unimpaired with the lapse of ages, this art is 
 not likely ever to be superseded, or become obsolete. It is, 
 moreover, a proclivity not peculiar to the human family, for 
 it is alike shared by the subordinate orders of creation — ani- 
 
14 DIETETICS. 
 
 mals, birds, insects, and the finny tribes. Some creatures, in- 
 deed, are even omnivorous, but 
 
 " Man is a carnivorous production, 
 And must have meals at least once in a day ; 
 He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction. 
 But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey !" 
 
 It is not, indeed, with our physical, as with our mental appe- 
 tite ; for the former is, at least, an intuition, while the latter 
 may be, and not unfrequently is, neglected with impunity. 
 Again, the mind may be fed upon fancy ; but the matter-of- 
 fact stomach imperiously demands something more substan- 
 tial, and will not be put off with dreamy idealizations. 
 
 A hungry stomach is an inexorable creditor, and may not 
 be trifled with ; its demands are not to be evaded or ignored. 
 It is not strange, therefore, that this habit of eating and drink- 
 ing should become chronic, and cling to us with a tenacity 
 that only ceases with life itself. According to an old saw 
 some persons are said "to live to eat," while others "eat to 
 live." In either case, then, eating and living go together; 
 and they seem to co-exist very harmoniously. To any one 
 whose mind, or rather body, is in a receptive mood, what sound 
 falls upon the ear more musically, or more gratefully, than 
 that of the dinner-bell ? 
 
 " Of aU appeals— although 
 
 I grant the power of pathos and of gold, — 
 Of beauty, flattery, threats — a shilling — no 
 
 Method 's more sure at moments to take hold 
 Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow 
 
 More tender, as we every day behold — 
 Than that aU-softening, overpowering knell — • 
 The tocsin of the soul — the dinner-bell ! " * 
 
 * Byron. 
 
DIETETICS. 15 
 
 The author of Gentle Life — a good English authority — 
 thus portrays John Bull's jpenchant for the good things of the 
 table : " Business may trouble us, politics worry us, and money 
 matters drive us mad ; but we all eat, and eat heartily. If we 
 meet to hear music at the Crystal Palace, it ends in a feast. 
 If we run out of town, we must finish by eating. Do we wel- 
 come a hero ? we give him a dinner ! Do we commence a 
 charity ? a feast inaugurates it ; and the golden crumbs that 
 drop, in the shape of subscription guineas, from the table of 
 Dives, feed Lazarus and his family for many a long day." 
 And, to adopt the remark of a worthy legal and literary author- 
 ity,* whose undoubted Attic, as well as gustatory taste, seem 
 to add emphasis to his words — we might say : " To be of 
 good cheer, partake of good cheer. A great destiny demands 
 a generous diet. The English are the greatest people upon 
 earth — because they are the greatest beef-eaters ! The lazza- 
 roni of l^aples are the most degraded of men, because their 
 food is the poorest. What can be expected of a people that 
 live on macaroni ? " So much for John Bull ; if Brother 
 Jonathan is not his equal in culinary skill, or in epicurean taste, 
 he is by no means insensible to the fascinations of the well- 
 spread table ; if he has any fault, it is that of not making the 
 most of his opportunity. 
 
 Our worthy friends over seas, indeed, seem to be inspired with 
 the conviction that nothing of importance can be insured suc- 
 cess, without the accessory of a good dinner. No wonder, 
 therefore, that it should become one of the permanent institu- 
 tions of their country; and where, may we not ask, is the 
 gustatory art better illustrated ? 
 
 When Coleridge, who loved not only a good dinner, but 
 also a good listener, was on one occasion dining out, he noticed 
 
 * C. N. Bovee. 
 
16 DIETETICS. 
 
 among the company a person, whose silent nods and continued 
 reticence passed for appreciative wisdom, until a trifle dis- 
 turbed the flattering delusion. The servant placed a dish of 
 apple-dumplings on the table, and then his silent friend burst 
 out with the remark — " them's the jockies for me ! " Coleridge 
 said, aside, " I wish Spurzheim could have examined the fel- 
 low's head." 
 
 The practice of indulging the pleasures of the table accom- 
 plishes a great deal of good in our social life, beside satiat- 
 ing hunger and thirst. It also promotes the courtesies and 
 amenities of home-life ; for a person is on much better terms 
 with himself, and his neighbor, after he has partaken of a 
 generous repast, than before. Diners home, and diners out, 
 are of divers kinds ; some regard a table richly garnished with 
 savory viands with an epicurean relish, others, like the omniv- 
 orous gormandizer, devour their food with the rapacity and 
 impetuosity of beasts of prey. If a dish be delectable to the 
 palate, why not prolong its enjoyment, and make the most of 
 it ? If the libation be nectar, why not lingeringly inhale the 
 aromatic odor? Yet comparatively how few amongst us re- 
 gard the subject in a scientific light, or possess the refinement 
 of fancy, or educated taste, essential to the luxurious indul- 
 gence of the palate of classic times ; we moderns preferring to 
 appease simply the cravings of appetite, by devoting the more 
 solid and substantial viands to the digestive process, rather 
 than gratify our organs of taste with the ingenious combina- 
 tions of which food is susceptible by culinary art. 
 
 Some horrible monsters have achieved an unenviable notori- 
 ety by their gluttonous habits ; but we have nothing to do with 
 such voracious persons ; they are utter strangers to good taste 
 as well as decency. There is, however, a droll story told of one 
 inordinate eater — which we are tempted to repeat, though not 
 to indorse. When Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden, was 
 
DIETETICS. 17 
 
 besieging Prague, a boor of a most extraordinary visage de- 
 sired admittance to his tent ; and being allowed to enter, he 
 offered by way of amusement to devour a large hog in his 
 presence. The old general Koenigsmark, who stood by the 
 king's side, hinted to his royal master that the peasant ouglit 
 to be burnt as a sorcerer. " Sir," said the fellow, irritated at 
 the remark, " if your majesty will but make that old gentleman 
 take off his sword and spurs, I will eat him before I begin the 
 pig." General Koenigsmark, who, at the head of a body of 
 Swedes, performed wonders against the Austrians, could not 
 stand this proposal, especially as it was accompanied by a most 
 hideous expansion of the jaws and mouth. Without uttering a 
 word, the veteran turned pale, and impetuously rushed out of 
 the tent, making with all speed for his quarters. 
 
 Peter the Great was a gourmand of the first magnitude. 
 While in England, on his return from a visit to Portsmouth, 
 the Czar and his party, twenty-one in number, stopped at 
 Godalming, where they ate — at breakfast, half a sheep, a 
 quarter of lamb, ten pullets, twelve chickens, seven dozen of 
 eggs, and salad in proportion, and drank three quarts of brandy 
 and six quarts of mulled wine : at dinner, five ribs of beef, 
 weight three stone ; one sheep, fifty-six pounds ; three quarters 
 of lamb ; a shoulder and loin of veal boiled ; eight pullets, 
 eight rabbits ; two dozen and a half of sack, and one dozen of 
 claret. This bill of fare is preserved in Ballard's Collection, 
 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. 
 
 Theodore Hook, in his GUbert Gurney, describes an odd 
 dinner of which he partook, in the "West of England. The 
 soup was a nice sort of veal broth ; at the bottom of the table 
 was a roast loin of "veal ; at the top, half a calfs head ; there 
 were four entrees — veal patties, "oeal collops, calfs brains, and 
 calfh tongue. One of the guests, who hated veal, apparently 
 waited for the second course, when the fair hostess apolo- 
 
 i 
 
18 DIETETICS. 
 
 gized : " We have no second course ; the fact is, we killed a 
 calf the day before yesterday, and we are such prudent mana- 
 gers, that we make a point of eating it up while it is good, and 
 nice and fresh, before we begin upon anything else." 
 
 Smollett's house was often the scene of literary festive gath- 
 erings, his coteries comprising most of the distinguished men 
 of letters of his day ; epicures were they, in a double sense. 
 Dr. Johnson, who was no doubtful authority on the subject, 
 styled a tavern the throne of human felicity ; but it must be 
 remembered, he was accustomed to meet congenial spirits at 
 his clubs, as well as his favorite dishes. 
 
 The clubs of London had their prototypes in the symposia 
 of the Greeks, and the convivia of the Romans. These associa- 
 tions were revived in the reign of Queen Anne, and were in 
 the zenith of their glory in the days of Johnson, Addison, 
 Steele, and Garrick. The Mermaid was the earliest on record 
 in London. Raleigh, previously to his unfortunate engage- 
 ment with Cobham, had instituted a meeting of the heaux 
 esjprits at the Mermaid, in Friday street. This club combined 
 more talent and genius, perhaps, than ever met together before, 
 or since — Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, 
 Carew, and many other literary notabilities. Here, in the full 
 flow and confidence of friendship, the lively and interesting 
 " wit combats " took place between Shakspeare and Jonson, 
 which Beaumont thus refers to : 
 
 " What tMngs have we seen 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble and so full of subtle flame, 
 As if that every one from whom they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit into a jest. " 
 
 The Kit-Kat Club, one of the most renowned of the clubs, 
 was originated in the year ITOO, and was the rendezvous of the 
 
DIETETICS. 19 
 
 nobility as well as the dilettanti and cognoscenti. Walpole 
 remarks that its members included not only the wits of the 
 time but the patriots that saved Britain. Although in respect 
 of the rank of its members it surpassed all similar institutions, 
 it was very humble in its origin. But we must not be tempted 
 to dilate, as we could wish, upon club-life among the learned of 
 old times ; and the reader possibly may be familiar with its 
 history. 
 
 Although the transition is somewhat startling, yet for the 
 sake of the contrast let ns turn from the dainties of the Eng- 
 lish nobility to some of the uncivilized feeding habits of bar- 
 barous nations. 
 
 The Tartars pull a man by the ear to press him to drink, 
 and they continue this flattering torment till he opens his 
 mouth, when they clap their hands and dance before him 
 with great glee. No custom is, perhaps, more amusingly 
 absurd than that resorted to by the Kamtchatkan when he 
 wishes to make a man his friend. He first invites him to 
 eat ; the host and his guest then strip themselves, in a cabin, 
 whichj is heated to an uncommon degree. While the visitor 
 is devouring his food, the other busily occupies himself with 
 stirring the fire to produce an increased intensity of heat. The 
 poor guest is doomed to undergo this scorching ordeal, till nature 
 absolutely revolts, and endurance can no longer abide the test, 
 when they compound ! In some instances, it is said, the poor 
 victim of this ardent test of friendship positively becomes a 
 martyr to the ordeal. If he survive, the stranger has, however, 
 the right of retaliation allowed him ; and he usually requites 
 the kindness of his host with an ardor and zeal, if possible, 
 increased in its intensity, by ,his own recent involuntary suf- 
 ferings. 
 
 The Maldivian islanders eat alone ; a habit which probably 
 arises from the primitive and uncivilized custom of barbarous 
 
 
20 DIETETICS. 
 
 tribes, who fear lest others who may suffer from as keen an 
 appetite as themselves, and who have more sti-ength of consti- 
 tution, should come and ravish the whole meal ! 
 
 The Laplanders live upon the reindeer and bear, their ordi- 
 nary libation being whale-oil, or water in which juniper berries 
 have been infused. It is a well-known climatic peculiarity of 
 countries which lie within or near the arctic circle, that the in- 
 habitants require four or five times as much food as those of 
 temperate climates. At Nova Zembla, from the greater activ- 
 ity and vigor of the digestive organs, Europeans are obliged 
 to follow the example of the natives, by drinking the blood of 
 the reindeer, and eating raw flesh ; the intense cold removing 
 that disgust which such doses would naturally inspire among 
 other people. To inhabitants of warm countries, temperance, 
 or even occasional abstinence, is therefore no very difficult 
 virtue ; while northern nations, on the contrary, are necessarily 
 voracious to keep up the requisite quantum of caloric. 
 
 An account of a Chinese entertainment is thus given by 
 Captain Laplace, who attended one of their feasts : " The first 
 course was laid out in a great number of saucers, and consisted 
 of various relishes in a cold state, among which were salted 
 earth-worms, prepared and dried, but so cut up that I for- 
 tunately did not know what they were until I had swallowed 
 them; smoked fish and ham, both of them cut up into ex- 
 tremely small slices." John Chinaman, since his advent to our 
 Pacific coast, has, doubtless, improved his taste somewhat, and 
 instead of cats, rats, and dogs being deemed, as heretofore, his 
 daintiest rarities, he is educating his palate for pork and beans, 
 and such like Western varieties. The CafPres, the Bushmen, 
 the cannibals, and other detestable creatm^es, are all too dis- 
 agreeable to talk about. Our neighbors of Mexico are said to 
 be, like the French, very partial to frogs; the banana, however, 
 forms a principal article of food with them, also the cassava, 
 
DIETETICS. 21 
 
 which is extremely nutritive ; but the flesh of monke3^s is with 
 the Mexicans, as well as the inhabitants of some of tlie West 
 India islands, often used, since they have a good supply of that 
 genus in their forests. This jpe7icha7it seems but one remove 
 from absolute cannibalism, since, when this animal is divested 
 of his skin, the flesh precisely resembles that of a human being. 
 
 We have not yet finished our catalogue of these rarer deli- 
 cacies of mankind. There are the geophagists, or earth-eaters, 
 and such as subsist on the bark of trees. Incredible as it may 
 seem, the digestive functions of man, in his rudest state, are 
 even capable of deriving a species of nutriment from the soil. 
 In New Guinea, and even in some of our own Southern States, 
 these earth-eaters are to be found. We learn from Humboldt 
 that the Ottomaques, on the banks of the Meta and the Orinoco, 
 feed on a fat, unctuous earth, tinged with a little oxide of iron. 
 They collect this clay very carefully, distinguishing it by the 
 taste ; they knead it into balls of four or five inches in diam- 
 eter, which they bake slightly before a slow Ore. These balls 
 are soaked in water when about to be used, and each individual 
 eats about a pound of the material every day. 
 
 When an English traveller expressed his surprise and disgust 
 at some Arabs eating insects, the men retorted, that it was poor 
 affectation in a person who would swallow raw oysters. 
 
 Recent experiments in Germany have pi-oved that the wood 
 of various trees may be converted into a nutritious substance. 
 The fibres of the birch, fir, lime, and elm, when dried, ground, 
 and sifted, so as to form a powder, like coarse fiour, are not only 
 capable of affording wholesome nourishment, but with a little 
 culinary skill constitute very palatable articles of food. Cold 
 water beiug poured on this wood flour, inclosed in a fine linen 
 bag, it becomes quite milky. 
 
 Soyer* remarks to the effect that a serious interest is 
 * Pantropheon. 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
22 DIETETICS. 
 
 imparted to the diet of a people, if it be true (as he affirms 
 it is), that the manners, idiosyncrasies, and proclivities of 
 a people are modified to a certain extent by the nature of 
 their diet. This view is likewise adopted by Buolde. If 
 this could be proved, character might be determined by con- 
 sulting the cook. So that he who has a prevailing preference 
 for mutton, would of course, in time, partake of a sheepish ex- 
 pression ; while another, with a persistent predilection for pork, 
 would become hoggish in his manners : but it would not be 
 safe, perhaps, to pursue the analogy any farther. Speaking of 
 mutton, suggests the remark that a sheep when dead becomes 
 mutton — all except the head — for who ever inquired for a 
 mutton-head; while the accepted phrase, shoulder of mutton, 
 is intelligible to all. There is a droll incident related of a 
 French preacher, who having but partially acqtiired a knowl- 
 edge of the English tongue, on one occasion, in the course of 
 his sermon, addressed \m flock by the endearing epithet — " My 
 dear mutton ! " The reader will pardon the recital of another 
 triviality : A person once asked his guest if he should cut the 
 loin of mutton saddle-wise f " No," replied the latter, " by 
 all means cut it hridle-wise, for then I may chance to get a hit 
 in my mouth." The mention of mutton at once suggests its 
 affinity, la'inb, and its accessory, mint sauce / and this, again, 
 the following little pleasantr}^, given in a recent literary jour- 
 nal.^' When Lord Minto was in the Ministry, a lady of rank, 
 who was always very inquisitive after political news, inquired 
 after the news of the day. The answer was that " the Hon. 
 Mr. Laml) meets Lord Minto very often at dinner, and some- 
 thing must be concocting " ! 
 
 Leaving mutton, however, for the present, at any rate, 
 we might just name some of the other varieties, for exam- 
 
 * " Notes and Queiies." 
 
DIETETICS. 23 
 
 pie, the flesh of the calf, which we designate vealj' that of 
 the hog, hacon and ham^ and the sports of the chase, game. 
 Speaking of ham, recalls an old conundrum : Do you ask 
 why no man should starve, even on the deserts of Arabia ? 
 Because of the sand which is there. And do you further in- 
 quii-e how came the sand which is there ? Know that the tribe 
 of Ham ^vas there hred and mustered! Passing from solid 
 meats to dessert, we might just refer to a favorite fruit which 
 changes its name still oftener than the above-named meats. 
 When plucked from the vine, we call the fruit grapes, when 
 dried, raisins, when in a pudding, ^^i^ms, while the juice we 
 extract from them becomes wine. 
 
 The E-omans regarded their supper as their chief meal, as 
 we do the dinner ; it was styled triclinium, ivom. three couches 
 on which the guests reclined. The guests commonly were ac- 
 customed to recline upon the couch, leaning upon the left 
 elbow. Their banquets were remarkable for their profusion 
 and costliness. 
 
 Having exhausted their invention in the confection of stim- 
 ulants for the palate, they called in another sense to their aid ; 
 and by the delicate application of odors and richly-distilled 
 perfumes, these refined voluptuaries aroused the fainting appe- 
 tite, and added a more exquisite and ethereal enjoyment to the 
 grosser pleasures of the board. 
 
 Among the Romans, flowers formed a very essential article 
 in their festal preparations ; and it is the opinion of Bacchius, 
 that at their desserts the number of flowers far exceeded 
 that of fruits. AVhen Nero, whose memory is so inodorous, 
 supped in his golden house, a mingled shower of flowers and 
 odorous essences fell upon him. Nor was it entirely as an 
 object of luxury that the ancients made use of flowers; they 
 were considered to possess sanative and medicinal qualities. 
 
 In point of profusion, nothing was equal to that which 
 
24 DIETETICS. 
 
 reigned at the banquet of Ahasuerus, who " regaled, during six 
 months, all the princes and governors of his state, and kept 
 open house for seven entire days, for all the people of the 
 great town of Suza." 
 
 The luxuries of the table commenced about the period of 
 the battle of Actium, and continued to the reign of Galba. 
 Their delicacies consisted of peacocks, cranes, nightingales, veni- 
 son, wild and tame fowls ; they were also fond of fish. The 
 reigning taste was for a profusion of provisions ; whole wild 
 boars were served up, filled with various small animals and 
 birds of different kinds. The dish was called the Trojan 
 horse, in allusion to the horse filled with soldiers. Fowls and 
 game of all sorts were served up in pyramids, piled up in 
 dishes as broad as modern tables. Lucullus had a particular 
 name for each apartment, with its appropriate table, and a cer- 
 tain scale of expense attached to each. 
 
 He was equally sumptuous in his wardrobe. 
 
 A Roman praetor, who was to give games to the public, re- 
 quested to borrow one hundred purple robes for the actors. 
 Lucullus replied that he could lend him two hundred if he 
 wanted them. 
 
 Salads were among the table-delicacies of the ancients as 
 well as the moderns — the lactuca, or lettuce, being one of the 
 most common of vegetables. Athenseus refers to its use for 
 salad, and its accompanying condiments. 
 
 Soyer remarks that from time immemorial the lettuce has 
 occupied a most distinguished place in the kitchen-garden. 
 The Hebrews ate it without preparation, with the Paschal lamb. 
 The opulent Greeks were very fond of the lettuces of Smyrna, 
 which appeared on their tables at the end of a repast: the 
 Eomans, who at first imitated them, decided under Domitian 
 that this favorite dish should be served in the first course with 
 eggs, to excite their appetites. The lettuce possesses a narcotic 
 
DIETETICS. 25 
 
 virtue, not unnoticed by the ancient physicians. Galen, in his 
 old age, mentions that he had not found a better remedy 
 against the wakefulness he was troubled with. 
 
 The author of Sjparrowgrass Papers tells a good story 
 about a salad once concocted, as a test of skill, by an artiste in 
 Philadelphia. Some gentlemen of taste were assembled to 
 regale their palates on the occasion, and ostensibly all seemed 
 to pass off with success. The next morning the host, whose 
 suspicions were excited, inquired of his domestic what had be- 
 come of a bottle of castor oil which he gave her to put away. 
 " Sure,. you said it was castor oil," she replied, " and, ov coorse, 
 I put it in the castor." " I thought so," added our host. 
 
 " Salad," said Jack Cade (in Shaksjpeare), " was born to do 
 me good." Who will dispute such an authority ? For instance, 
 for a fit of indigestion, or dyspepsia, what better specific could 
 be devised than the salad offered herewith ? Or for a fit of 
 mental abstraction, what remedy more readily wouM restore 
 the party to himself ? Not merely is it possessed of medicinal 
 virtues, it is also appetizing, invigorating, and healthful, well- 
 seasoned, and equally suited to the solitary as the social. 
 
 In Saxon and mediaeval times the feudal barons of "Merrie 
 England " were as renowned for the splendor of their lavish 
 hospitality as for their military prowess and chivalry. Many 
 a proud castle-home, or grand ancestral hall, resounded with 
 the voice of revelry and music — when the clash of arms and 
 the fierce tumult of mortal strife had, for a time, become 
 hushed. Such a scene of festive banqueting, presided over 
 by some lordly chieftain, with his chivalric retainers, must 
 have been an inspiring spectacle : 
 
 ' ' For in the lofty arclied haU 
 Was spread the gorgeous festival," 
 
 while stately dames of dazzling beauty mingled with groups 
 
2b DIETETICS. 
 
 of mailed knights and squires, and liveried warriors and vas- 
 sals, combined to present a couj^ d^oeil of baronial magnificence 
 and splendor rarely surpassed. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth and her maids-in-vraiting exhibited much 
 bravery in the service of the breakfast and dinner. Beef 
 and beer were the staple of the table then,, and both have 
 maintained their preferred claims with John Bull even down 
 to the present time, though not at the same meal. James 
 I I., who fulminated so fiercely against Tobacco, was rather 
 ' prodigal in his gastronomic indulgences, for his household ex- 
 penditure is estimated at £100,000, double the amount required 
 for the purpose by his predecessor, Elizabeth. There was 
 more temperance observed during the reign of Charles I., and 
 Cromwell's table was remarkable for its simplicity. 
 
 The magnificent fete given by the Prince JRegent, at Carl- 
 ton House, in 1811, was the only experiment ever made at any 
 com't of Europe to give a supper to 2000 of the nobility and 
 gentry. The largest entertainment at the most brilliant period 
 of the French monarchy, was that given by the Prince of 
 Conde to the King of Sweden, at Chantilly, when the covers 
 only amounted to 400 ; while, at the fete given by the Prince 
 Regent, covers were laid for 400 in the palace, and for 1600 
 more in pavilions, in the garden. There was exhibited lavish 
 expenditure on this occasion ; and also the puerile taste of a 
 stream, with gold and silver fish, flowing down the centre of the 
 table. Simplicity of taste distinguishes the royal table at Wind- 
 sor Castle, except on state occasions, when a banquet is given ; 
 then it is a scene of sumptuous splendor.* 
 
 * The royal plate at Windsor is kept in one tolerably sized room and an ad- 
 joining closet, and valued at 1,750,000?. sterling ! There is one gold service, 
 formed by George IV. , to dine 130 guests ; some pieces were taken from the 
 Spanish Armada, some brought from India, Burmah, China, &c. One vessel 
 belonged to Charles XII. , of Sweden, and another to the King of Ava ; a pea- 
 
DIETETICS. 27 
 
 Kotable personages have been, like the uncelebrated, remark- 
 able for their fondness for particular articles of diet. Let us 
 name a few instances : Luther, " the solitary monk that shook 
 the world," laid a good foundation for the rough pioneer-work 
 he had to do, by a most substantial supply of fibrous meats, 
 which he lubricated with Ehine wine and Forgan beer, the 
 lager-Mer of his day — of which he did not stint himself. But 
 then, it must be remembered that he had a redoubtable physique 
 to sustain, and a wonderful amount of work to achieve. Charles 
 XII., of Sweden, was as remarkable for his abstemiousness ; he 
 was content with, indeed, it is said he preferred, above all the 
 attractions of the banquet, plain bread and butter. Napoleon, 
 also, was no gourmand, but, like Yoltaire, was excessively fond 
 of coffee, as Boswell informs us the great lexicographer was 
 of Mrs. Thrall's cups of tea. . The Emperor Frederick oi Ger- 
 many, and Maximilian II., were alike so inordinately fond of 
 melons, that they both became ultimately victims to the pas- 
 sion. Henry lY. of France, like not a few sovereigns of this 
 western world, indulged largely in oysters. The wits and wor- 
 thies of ShaJcsjpeare^s Merrie England made themselves glo- 
 rious over their spiced sack, and other fragrant potations, to 
 which some of the Elizabethan poets ascribed many of their 
 most inspired utterances. 
 
 Franklin at one time contemplated practising abstinence 
 from animal food. " I hesitated some time," says he, " be- 
 tween principle and inclination, till at last recollecting that, 
 
 cock of precious stones, valued at 30,000^. ; and a tiger's head (Tippoo's foot- 
 stool), witli a solid ingot of gold for his tongue, and crystal teeth ; numerous 
 and splendidly ornamented gold shields, one made from snuff-boxes, value 
 8000 guineas ; and thirty dozen of plates, which cost 26 guineas each plate. 
 The magnificent silver wine-cooler, made by RundeU and Bridge for George 
 IV. , is enclosed with plate-glass : its superb chasing and other ornamental 
 work occupied two years, and two full-grown persons may sit in it without 
 inconvenience. 
 
28 DIETETICS. 
 
 when a cod had been opened, some small fish were found in it, 
 I said to myself, if you eat one another, I see no reason why 
 we may not eat you. I accordingly dined on the cod with no 
 small degree of pleasure, and have since continued to eat like 
 the rest of mankind, returning only occasionally to my vege- 
 table plan. How convenient does it prove to be a rational 
 animal, that knows how to find or invent a plausible pretext 
 for whatever it has an inclination to do ! " 
 
 When Sir Isaac Newton was writing his Principiay he 
 lived on a scanty allowance of bread and water, and vegetable 
 diet. 
 
 In a letter to a friend, Dr. Parr confesses his love of " hot 
 boiled lobsters, with a profusion of shrimp-sauce." Pope, who 
 was an epicure, would lie in bed for days at Lord Eoling- 
 broke's unless he were told that there were stewed lampreys 
 for dinner, when he arose instantly and came down to table. 
 A gentleman treated Dr. Johnson to new honey and clouted 
 cream, of which he ate so largely that his entertainer became 
 alarmed. All his lifetime Dr. Johnson had a voracious attach- 
 ment for a leg of mutton. Dryden, writing to a lady, declining 
 her invitation to a handsome s-upper, says : " If beggars might 
 be choosers, a chine of honest bacon would please my appetite 
 more than all the marrow- puddings, for I like them better 
 plain, having a very vulgar stomach." Poets do not, you see, 
 always feed upon fancy. 
 
 Dr. Fordyce contended that as one meal a day was enough 
 for a lion, it ought to suffice for a man. Accordingly, for 
 more than twenty years, the Doctor used to eat only a dinner 
 in the whole course of the day. This solitary meal he took 
 regularly at four o'clock, at Dolly's Chop House. A pound and 
 a half of rump steak, half a broiled chicken, a plate of fish, a 
 bottle of port, a quarter of a pint of brandy, a]id a tankard of 
 strong ale, satisfied the doctor's moderate wants till four o'clock 
 
DIETETICS. 29 
 
 next day, and regularly engaged one hour and a lialf of his 
 time. Dinner over, he returned to his home in Essex street, 
 Strand, to deliver his six o'clock lecture on anatomy and chem- 
 istry. 
 
 Shelley, who had an ineffable contempt for all the sensuali- 
 ties of the table, and, like Newton, used sometimes to inquire 
 if he had dined, was of opinion that abstinence from animal 
 food subtilizes and clears the intellectual faculties. To coun- 
 teract a tendency to corpulency, Lord Byron, at one period, 
 dined four days in the week on fish and vegetables, and even 
 stinted himself to a pint of claret. If t.emperate in eating, it 
 does not appear that he was equally conscientious with respect 
 to his libations — especially in that beverage styled gin-and- 
 water, to the inspiration of which some of his lucubrations owe 
 their origin. ^ Burns — the glowing but erratic Burns — was, as 
 is too well known, a wretched instance of the baneful effects 
 of intemperance. 
 
 '^Scott used to say, that " greatness of any kind has no greater 
 foe than a habit of drinking." This striking and just remark 
 is, however, only an abridgment of one by Swift, who pro- 
 nounces temperance to be " a necessary virtue for great men ; 
 since it is the parent of that ease and liberty which are neces- 
 sary for the improvement of the mind, and which philosophy 
 allows to be one of the greatest felicities of life." " If you 
 wish to keep mind clear and body healthy, abstain from fer- 
 mented liquors," is the sage counsel of Sydney Smith. 
 
 Charles Lamb delighted in roast pig and a draught of porter 
 out of the pewter pot, and he would press his friends, even 
 great men and bashful ladies, to taste the genuine article, fresh 
 drawn at the bar of his favorite little inn at Edmonton. Cole- 
 ridge observes, that "some men are like musical glasses — to 
 produce their finest tones, you must keep them wet." Addi- 
 son's recourse to the bottle as a cure for his taciturnity, finally 
 
30 DIETETICS. 
 
 induced those intemperate habits which elicited Dr. Johnson's 
 memorable remarks — " In the bottle, discontent seeks for com- 
 fort, cowardice for courage, and bashf ulness for confidence." 
 It is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by 
 the manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity 
 of his sober hours. 
 
 From Chaucer, with his pipe of wine, to the time of Ben 
 Jonson onward, with a few noble exceptions, the laureates seem 
 to have loved the juice of the grape, as well as the Heliconian 
 fount. " Hare Ben " had such a fancy for a particular wine, 
 that it procured for him the sobriquet of the " canary-bird." 
 But the passion for " libations deep " has not been the infirmity 
 of the poets only ; persons of all classes and all times have been 
 its victims. 
 
 Literary men have proverbially weak digestion, superinduced 
 in most instances, it is true, by their sedentary habits and de- 
 votion to study. The pleasures of the table, indeed, if indulged 
 to excess, entail the penalty of dyspepsia upon all who trans- 
 gress physical law. According to Dr. Doran, more than 
 seventeen hundred works on this prevalent evil of indigestion 
 have been published ; out of this formidable array of curators, 
 perhaps " moderation " is the best and surest specific. Dr. 
 Johnson is said to have observed the good old habit of saying 
 " grace before meat ; " but he often grumbled with his cook, not 
 content with his food. It has been well remarked, that " he is 
 an ungracious knave who sits down to a repast without at 
 least a silent acknowledgment to Him without whom there 
 could have been no spreading of the banquet." Such a de- 
 faulter deserves dyspepsia, or no dinner at all. 
 
 Having thus taken a brief survey of the edibles of various 
 nations, presenting an amusing assemblage of dishes — enough 
 to flatter the most capricious palate of the veriest epicure, we 
 shall leave their more minute discussion to the taste of the 
 
DIETETICS. 31 
 
 reader ; nothing doubting that John Bull will indulge his pre- 
 dilection for roast beef, plum pudding, and old port, or beer 
 — Monsieur his love for soujp maigre. fricassee^ and vin ordi- 
 naire — and Brother Jonathan his preference for everything 
 that is nice, not excepting his down-east dish — pumpkin pie. 
 
 Samuel Lover's joke of the Irishman in France may be 
 familiar to the reader ; the Hibernian, upon being presented 
 with the soup aforesaid, eagerly surveyed its contents, and be- 
 ing about to throw off his coat, was asked what he was at ; he 
 replied, " Faith, I'm going to swim for that bit of mate." He 
 was evidently rather for solids than solutions. An Irishman is 
 almost synonymous with his " pratee ; " it is his mate, as whis- 
 key is his drink. At Manchester there was once convened a 
 society of verdant bipeds, who rejoiced in the title of vegetari- 
 ans, from their custom of eating nothing but vegetables. Their 
 members frequently met for the laudable purpose of masticat- 
 ing mashed potatoes and munching cabbage leaves. At one 
 of these convocations, over two hundred sat down to a table 
 garnished with all varieties of garden stuff — such as sage 
 and onions, beet-root, mushrooms, and parsley, and such like 
 luxuries. 
 
 A recent English writer thus daintily describes the dessert : 
 "The French epicurean writers say that the dessert should be 
 the girandole or crowning tableau of the dinner. It should 
 surprise, astonish, dazzle, enchant. If the dinner have fully 
 satisfied the sense of taste and the well-balanced appetite, the 
 dessert should address itself to the soul through the eyes. It 
 should rouse sensations of surprise and admiration, and crown 
 the enjoyments that commenced with the removal of the cover 
 of the soup tureen — that Pandora's casket of a bad dinner — 
 that joy and triumph of a successful and tasteful repast." 
 
 The same sprightly pen continues : " The dessert is meant 
 for the eyes more than the stomach. Yet what bright and pleas- 
 
1 
 
 32 DIETETICS. 
 
 ant things have been said ' over the walnuts and the wine;' 
 what pretty and gallant compliments paid as filberts have been 
 cracked ! How agreeable it is on a winter evening to see a 
 broadside of honest chestnuts bounce and bang from the lower 
 bar of the grate ; what time the miserable and tepid formality 
 of smuggling them in, wrapped in a napkin, has been forgotten 
 for the quiet comfort and enjoyment of a really friendly party ! 
 The dinner is over, its toils, its glories, are past ; we are now 
 in a flowering prairie of idleness, with nothing to do but to try 
 fruits, and to sip at all preserves that are not at discord with 
 our wine." 
 
 " Take it altogether (conventional as it is), no one would wish 
 the custom of dessert abolished. It is a pleasant little fruit 
 harvest ; but the ladies must no longer be sufl'ered to leave us, 
 now the three-bottle days are gone forever. And if English 
 families would only get into the quiet, enjoyable German way 
 of part-singing, and would teach their young people to sing, 
 dessert would be the best time for a little agreeable, unostenta- 
 tious, cosey, natural music." 
 
 When Dean Swift was invited to dinner by his friend Lord 
 Bolingbroke, and, as an inducement to accept, was shown the 
 dinner bill, he replied, " A ^g for your bill of fare — show me 
 your bill of company." Those who are perfectly versant in 
 forming good dinners are not always equally au fait in their 
 selection of quests ; such companies being often more incon- 
 gruous and less likely to assimilate than the various viands, 
 sauces, and dainties of which the entertainment consists. 
 
 There must be a sort of adaptation or homogeneousness 
 among the guests assembled — so that the old may not be con- 
 founded with the young, the high with the homely, the rough 
 with the refined. ISTay, there often occur individuals, who, like 
 an acid and an alkali, though separately pungent, are totally 
 neutralized by a junction. 
 
DIETETICS. 33 
 
 This is seen in the ill-assorted dinner-parties occasionally to 
 be met with. " At one table you behold a judge, brimful of 
 law, brought into contact with a captain of the sea, who abso- 
 lutely spouts salt water. At another, a spinster of the most 
 perpendicular propriety is subjected to the explosions of a bois- 
 terous miss. At a third, a fair one is placed side by side with 
 her quondam faithless adorer. At a fom-th, two party oppo- 
 nents glare, like meteors, against each other, from their adverse 
 orbits." 
 
 At the grand entertainments of the nobility and gentry of 
 England, it is the well-known custom for the servant to an- 
 nounce the names of the guests as they arrive. A greenhorn 
 of a lackey persisted, on several such occasions, in giving to his 
 mistress a title which she did not claim, announcing her and her 
 daughter as the Right Honorable Lady A. and the Honorable 
 Miss A. He was told in future to announce them as — simple 
 Lady A. and plain Miss A. Their astonishment may be im- 
 agined when they found the instructions carried out to the let- 
 ter, while Devonshire House was electrified by the intelligence, 
 that simple Lady A. andjplain Miss -4. were coming up ! 
 
 A word or two touching libations. The faculty insist that 
 every departure from water in its natural state is an injury to 
 the animal economy. We confess, however, with Parr, John- 
 son, Robert Hall, and other erudite pundits, a decided predi- 
 lection for a good cup of tea. Leigh Hunt discourses in 
 rapturous strain on this topic, where he asks — 
 
 " Did you ever return home from a journey, cold, wet, and 
 weary, and unexpected, after tea was over, and the tea leaves 
 ejected from the silver? Bright eyes glistened with delight at 
 the sight of you ; perhaps more than one pair, and a silvery 
 voice names the magic word ' tea.' Out of some dozen of 
 these instances, did it ever happen to you — when the tea had 
 been made for you alone — to partake of a cup whose delicious 
 3 
 
34 DIETETICS. 
 
 fragrance had dwelt ever after on your palate, like a vision of 
 paradise, and of which you have sometimes a difficulty in per- 
 suading yourself that it was not all a dream? Such an 
 instance once occurred to me, not after a journey, but at a 
 dining-out. I left the animals at their accustomed wine, and 
 followed on the track of the girls, some of whom were so full 
 of charms that, had Hebe fallen sick, they might have supplied 
 her place at the board of Jove, without the fair nectar-bearer 
 being missed. It was winter time ; the fire burned brightly, 
 and the rug was so soft and rich that I would not have ex- 
 changed it for the golden fleece which set so many men raving 
 of old. The ottoman on which I reclined might have made 
 an old Roman spurn his supper couch, and the girls gathering 
 around me might have made old Mohammed sulky in his 
 paradise, and all his houris jealous. By all the immortal gods ! 
 that moment might have served as a memorable era in a cen- 
 tury of lives; but it was nothing to what followed. The 
 clustering beauties called for a tale of the wilderness, of 
 
 * antres vast, and deserts wild,' and one presses more than the 
 others. I see her now, her Greek face, her glossy hair, her 
 speaking eyes, straight, pencilled, defined, dark brows, long 
 eyelashes, and parted lips, ' discoursing eloquent music' 
 
 " ' A bargain ! ' I said, as she sat on the ottoman by my side. 
 
 * A cup of tea made after mine own fashion, and I will talk 
 till sunrise I ' 
 
 " ' Agreed I ' she replied, and the preparations were made. 
 A hermetically sealed canister was brought, containing a single 
 pound ; not a leaden canister, but one of tin ; not block tin, 
 either, but the pure metal, thin, white, glittering, and crack- 
 ling. Talk of the charms of an uncut novel, indeed ! Give 
 me the opening of such a virgin case, pure as it left China. 
 It was not green tea, it was not black tea ; neither too young 
 nor too old ; not unpleasing with astringence, on the one hand, 
 
DIETETICS. 35 
 
 nor with the vapid, half-earthly taste of decayed vegetable 
 matter on the other ; it was tea in its most perfect state, full 
 charged with aroma, which, when it was opened, diffused its 
 fragrance through the whole apartment, putting all other 
 perfumes to shame. About an ounce was then rubbed to 
 powder by my fair Hebe, and deposited in its broad, shallow, 
 silver receiver, with just cold water enough to saturate it. 
 After standing twenty minutes, hot water off the hoil, as it is 
 technically called, that is, free from ebullition, was poured on 
 it, amounting in quantity to three-quarters of a pint, and the 
 lid was closely shut down on it, while the cylindrical-shaped 
 tea-cup was placed on the spout to catch the aroma thence 
 issuing. At the expiration of a minute, it was poured out 
 (what a beautiful hand it was !), and the rich globules of essen- 
 tial oil might be seen floating on the surface, a perfect treasure 
 of delight. A small portion of Alderney cream was instantly 
 added, to prevent the escape of the essential oil, and just suffi- 
 cient of the brilliant large-crystallized sugar to neutralize the 
 slight bitter. Oh, heavens ! to sip that most exquisite cup of 
 delight, was bliss almost too great for earth ; a thousand years 
 of rapture all concentrated into the space of a minute, as if the 
 joys of all the world had been skimmed for my peculiar drink- 
 ing — I should rather say imbibing, for to have swallowed that 
 liquid like an ordinary beverage, without tasting every drop, 
 would have been sacrilege." 
 
 The first English tea dealer was also a tobacconist; his 
 name was Garway, and his locale Exchange alley. These 
 " weeds of novelty " were costly luxuries at first. Tea was used 
 medicinally, and it was not until the end of the seventeenth 
 century that it was indulged in as a beverage. The first brew- 
 ers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the preparation of 
 the new mystery ; after boiling the tea, " they sat down to eat 
 the leaves, with butter and salt;" since then, however, the tea 
 
36 
 
 DIETETICS. 
 
 leaves are thrown away, and the beverage, which cheers but 
 not inebriates, has been imbibed instead. The Dutch were 
 the first to discover the utility and value of the herb, and 
 when, in 1666, it was first introduced into England, it sold at 
 about three guineas per pound. 
 
 Here, then, we close our desultory discussion of table deli- 
 cacies, so as to allow a respite for digesture; since without 
 the assimilating process, even the daintiest dishes — though 
 they flatter the palate — may yet superinduce that dire tor- 
 mentor — dyspepsia! All ought, of course, to secure the one 
 and escape the other; and to the despondent valetudinarian 
 our counsel is, "throw physic to the dogs," and address thyself 
 devotedly to the fibrous virtues of the "glorious sirloin." 
 
 I 
 
rm 
 
 THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITUEK 
 
 "Words must bo fitted to a man's mouth — ^"twas well said of the fellow that was to make a 
 epecch for my Lord Mayor, when he desired to take measure of his Lordship's mouth." — Seidell. 
 
 This gift of speech is the electric chain that links mankind 
 together in the social compact ; it is the living medium through 
 which the resources of the realm of thought become an intel- 
 lectual currency. What, indeed, should we be without the en- 
 dowment of this heaven-descended faculty ? If it were not an 
 Hibemianism, we would say let the dumb reply. Taciturnity 
 
38 THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 
 
 sometimes shelters itself under the specious pretext, that a 
 still tongue indicates a wise head ; but the truth is, there are 
 too many important things to talk about, in the present day, to 
 admit of habitual reticence being ranked among the social 
 virtues. 
 
 The human voice is the most marvellous, as well as melodi- 
 ous, of all the music of nature. Sweet are the songs of birds, 
 the rich melody of the harp, the vial, and other instruments of 
 sound; but what are these to the soft, sweet cadences of 
 woman's voice ? Who does not confess to the witchery of her 
 persuasive speech, and who is proof against its potency ? Eye- 
 language is hers, also, and it is full of magic and mystery ; but 
 her voice is irresistible. How deep an interest do we possess 
 in the faculty of speech. The eye is said never to be tired of 
 seeing, nor the ear with hearing, and both organs have enough 
 in this beautiful world of sights and sounds for their delecta- 
 tion ; it is not surprising, therefore, that both should con- 
 stantly crave indulgence, l^or is the gift of speech a less 
 essential endowment of our being. " Talking is the best of all 
 recreations, and a master of the art possesses the most useful 
 and enjoyable of accomplishments. Conversation is designed 
 to be the one long-lasting, never-failing amusement of man- 
 kind. It is the pleasure that sets in earliest, outlives all vicissi- 
 tudes, and continues ours when we can enjoy nothing else." 
 What potency has, sometimes, accompanied a few magic words ! 
 Who can estimate their beneficent influence upon hearts 
 sorrow-laden ? With what a potent spell do they often dissi- 
 pate the gloom of the sick-chamber, and light up the sad face 
 of suffering humanity ! The cheerful converse of a friend 
 will often tend, more than anything else, to soothe, exhilarate, 
 and expand the heart, and impart an elasticity to the spirit, and 
 a vigor to the vital current, beyond all the skill of the phy- 
 sician. 
 
THE TALKATn^E A^D THE TACITURN. 39 
 
 e gentle words, tor who can tell the blessings they impart ? 
 ow oft they fall (,as manna fell), on some nigh-fainting heart. 
 In lonely wilds, by light- winged birds, rare seeds have oft been so^vn ; 
 And hope has sprung from gentle words, where only griefs had gro^\^^." 
 
 ^'iSTever is the deep, strong voice of man, or the low, sweet voice 
 of woman, finer than in the earnest but mellowed tones of 
 familiar speech, richer than the richest music, which are a de- 
 light while they ai*e heai-d, which linger still upon the ear in 
 softened echoes, and which, when they have ceased, come long 
 after back to memory, like the murmui-s of a distant hynm. 
 Oh ! it is very pleasant to listen to such voices, accordant with 
 lofty conceptions and sweet humanities — the soul-breathings 
 that now swell witli daring imaginations, and then sink into the 
 gentleness of sadness or of pity. I have heard such voices, voices 
 that were music from the soul and to it — the very melody of 
 thought, and of thought that was the very soul of goodness. 
 Beautiful conceptions sang along the syllables, beautiful feel- 
 ings came trickling from the heart in liquid tones. Yery 
 pleasant are such voices, pleasant on the fragrant air of a sum- 
 mer's evening, pleasant by the fire on a winter's night, pleasant 
 in the palace, pleasant in the shanty, pleasant while they last, 
 pleasant to remember, even with sorrow, when tliey are silent 
 — when their melody shall never, never again attune and 
 sweeten the common air of earth." '^ 
 
 By popular consent — at least with one sex — the daughters 
 of Eve ai*e supposed to excel in the use of the vocal organs. 
 What must have been the severity of the penalty which was self- 
 imposed upon the nuns of that monastery, which in the fifteenth 
 century stood on the site now occupied by Sion House, on the 
 banks of the Thames, neai* London. Their terrible vow of per- 
 petual silence was, it is said, kept inviolate by means of man- 
 ual and bodily signs ; a manuscript copy of their code of signals, 
 
 * Henrj' Giles. 
 
40 THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 
 
 we have been told, is yet in existence. And yet it is affirm^ by 
 one of our popular writers that conversation is fast dying out 
 with us — that it will soon become one of the " lost arts ; " that 
 modern men and women are reading themselves into a com- 
 paratively silent race. " Eeading is the great delusion of the 
 present time ; it has become a sort of lay piety, according to 
 which the perusal of volumes reckons as good works ; it is, in 
 a word, the superstition of the nineteenth century."* The 
 case is, however, we think, far from hopeless yet ; for so long 
 as our " mother-tongue " remains under the especial patronage 
 of the fair sex, we have little cause to fear. 
 
 Hazlitt, strangely enough, considering his cultivated taste and 
 acuteness, confesses that he was " very much of the opinion of 
 that old Scotch gentleman, who owned that he preferred the 
 dullest book he had ever read to the most brilliant conversation 
 it had ever been his lot to hear." Few, indeed, we think, will 
 subscribe to this opinion, even among the lovers of books ; 
 for who does not prefer the freshness and fragrance of the liv- 
 ing flower to the distilled essence of its crushed leaves ? 
 
 A book, even when it contains the " life-blood of an immor- 
 tal spirit," still is not itself an immortal spirit ; for the builder 
 of a house is greater than the house. Yet, while many men, 
 eminent in learning, have glorified the glorious gift of speech, 
 many also have glorified books, by making them the vehicles 
 of their recorded conversations. What a wealth of learning 
 have we derived from the dialogues of Homer, Socrates, and 
 Cicero, among the ancients ; and those of Johnson, Coleridge, 
 Eogers, Southey, Burke, Mackintosh, Sydney Smith, and a host 
 of others, among the moderns ! Dialogue has also been recog- 
 nized in the Bible as well as in Bunyan's allegory. Talking 
 and conversing are not convertible terms. Coleridge was a 
 magnificent talker, and, therefore, by general consent, his 
 
 * Harper's Magazine. 
 
THE TALKATIVE AKD THE TACITURN. 41 
 
 friends allowed him to have it all to himself. On one occa- 
 sion, he asked Southey if he had ever heard him preach ; to 
 which he replied, " I have never heard you do anything else." 
 But very few, even among illustrious men, could talk like 
 Coleridge. Johnson was another authoritative talker, who 
 monopolized the privilege to the exclusion of his listeners, 
 among whom was often poor Goldsmith, who, like Boswell, 
 regarded the great lexicographer with a species of awe, and 
 his utterances as oracular. 
 
 The Johnsonian model would not, however, be popular in our 
 day, the rule of our modern social intercourse being not for the 
 sake of mere gladiatorial display, to achieve a conquest in de- 
 bate, but for mutual entertainment and profit. Johnson and 
 Coleridge were great in monologue, but that is not colloquy ; 
 and great talkers, merely, have been designated " great culprits " 
 in the conversational code of good manners. If good talkers 
 transgress, what shall be charged against another class who 
 talk a great deal, while in effect they say nothing? There 
 are maxims manifold for teaching men to speak, which are 
 comparatively little required, since nature prompts us to utter- 
 ance ; but few suggest the superior wisdom of maintaining a 
 judicious silence, which requires the restraint of reason and 
 prudence. " It is with narrow-souled persons as with narrow- 
 necked bottles — the less they have in them the more noise 
 they make in pouring it out." We have intuitively the art of 
 saying much on sl little, whereas few possess the wit to say 
 much in a little. In the art of speaking, as in chemical science, 
 condensation is strength; and in both cases the result is at- 
 tained by a process of experimental analysis. 
 
 Presidential addresses and Parliamentary or Congressional 
 harangues are celebrated specimens of the verbose, as well as the 
 rhetorical ; and the three memorable words of a classic hero — 
 " Veni, Yidi, Vici^^ — furnish a splendid specimen of the 
 
 i 
 
42 THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 
 
 multum injparvo^ and an example especially worthy the imita- 
 tion of modern times. William, Prince of Orange, who made 
 such a formidable stand against Spain, and founded the com- 
 monwealth of the United Provinces, was a noble instance of a 
 sagaciously silent man ; hence he is styled "William the Silent." 
 
 Let us glance at a few of the less venial sins of the talka- 
 tive — for they are manifold, and to classify them all would re- 
 quire the nice discrimination of an ethical Linnaeus. We begin 
 with the babbler, who is commonly an unhappy personage him- 
 self, for he has meddled too industriously with the affairs of 
 others to enjoy any personal repose or satisfaction. Having 
 made it the great business of his life to betray some hurtful 
 secret, or aspersion on the fair fame and name of his neighbor, 
 no one thinks it worth while to speak well of him. These are 
 the miserable creatures who batten upon the noxious weeds 
 of social life — thrive most upon pestilential rumors and the 
 infectious breath of scandal ; all wholesome truth becomes 
 insipid to their vitiated and depraved appetites ; and like the 
 fabled Upas-tree, they diffuse the breath of poison and disease 
 around them. 
 
 Dr. Kitto exhibits scandal in its true deformity, where he 
 describes it as " a compound of malignity and simulation ; 
 never urging an opinion with the bold consciousness of truth, 
 but dealing in a monotonous jargon of half -sentences, convey- 
 ing its ambiguities by emphasis ; thus confirming the evil they 
 affect to deplore." Those persons who indulge this ignoble 
 habit, he characterises as " the hyenas of society, perpetually 
 prowling over reputation, which is their prey ; lamenting, and 
 at the same time enjoying, the ruin they create." 
 
 The small-talkers may be subdivided into two varieties ; the 
 latter class being accustomed to deal homceopathically in the 
 diluted gossip of the day. These exhibit exemplary persever- 
 ance in the picking up and purveying of the smallest particles 
 
THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 43 
 
 of chit-chat ; and as they are usually provident of their stores, 
 they make a very little go a great v^ay. These are among 
 insufferable social nuisances — they are both parvenu and ple- 
 beian, and are fit subjects for the "school for adults." 
 
 The third class of objective talkers are such as find "flaws in 
 diamond wit of the fii'st waters — motes in the brightest rays of 
 the mind — and beams in the eyes of Truth." Be your opinions 
 what they may, however undeniable, correct, settled, or well- 
 digested, they are sure to object to them. Let your opinions to- 
 day be to the letter what theirs were yesterday, they instantly 
 challenge their accuracy ; and if they are foiled in their argu- 
 ments, they then turn their objections to the mode in which 
 you have presented them. You speak unaffectedly, and they 
 censure you for mediocrity, plainness, and want of spirit ; talk 
 in ornate phrase, and your style is stilted and artificial ; if 
 your utterance is slow and deliberate, you are a drawling pro- 
 ser ; if quick and fluent, your impetuosity is unendurable, and 
 an equal offeiice to their immaculate taste. You modestly 
 betray that you are well read in the classics, and they accuse 
 you of pedantry ; you conceal your bibliographical knowledge, 
 and you are at once suspected of gross ignorance, both of men 
 and books. You bring them old opinions, and they doubt 
 whether you have any of your own ; you deal in new ones, and 
 they object to them as unsound. 
 
 Others are constantly indulging in interrogatives ; all they 
 have to propose is in the catechetical form. These, we need 
 scarcely remark, are of a natui'ally inquisitive turn of mind ; 
 they are most indefatigable searchers after truth : they are the 
 most diligent in the pursuit of knowledge, and no difficulties im- 
 pede their attainments. Curiosity is said to be a national char- 
 acteristic, at least with the eastern portion of our country ; but 
 it is, perhaps, a universal attribute of the female sex. Women, 
 by the way, are a strange enigma ; for they are most skilful in 
 
44: THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 
 
 extracting secrets ; yet who discover so little tact in retaining 
 them ? They are less ingenuous than the Hibernian, who ex- 
 cused himself for revealing a confidential matter committed to 
 him, by frankly avowing that, as he found he could not keep 
 the secret himself, he transferred it to his friend to retain it 
 for him. Exclusive talkers are the bores of society ; they gen- 
 erally have it all to themselves, and all their own way, for no- 
 body is allowed to " divide the honors " with them. Though 
 you know already everything he is saying, you cannot, by any 
 chance, add to his marvellous stock of information. He is a per- 
 fect cyclopsedia of general knowledge ; and, of course, is abun- 
 dantly competent to instruct the unenlightened wherever he 
 goes. If you essay to relate an anecdote or incident, he 
 snatches it out of yom* mouth, and tells it for you, with the 
 accompanying embellishments of his own extempore wit ; and 
 should you urge, after its recital, that his was a different ver- 
 sion of the story, and seek to rehearse it in your own way, he 
 knows the other version as well as you do, and insists upon his 
 own repetition. With such an incorrigible talker, it is a seri- 
 ous mistake to venture any suggestion of the kind, since one 
 anecdote leads by concatenation to a score of others, and thus 
 you unwittingly subject yourself to further annoyance. 
 
 Another variety of the talkative is the exaggerator, — one who 
 despises the common run of phrases, and deals in grandiloquent 
 terms and high-flown metaphors. He is an extravaganza in the 
 social circle ; everything he utters is invested with hyperbole 
 and glowing imagery ; he scorns all colloquial phrases, and re- 
 gards everything below his exalted standard mean and inex- 
 pressive. Whatever he has to say must be tinted up couleur 
 de rose ; yet, while his habitual indulgence in superlatives and 
 expletives gives spirit and force to his descriptions, it is ex- 
 ceedingly dangerous to admit his statements too literally. 
 Even the witty cannot always appreciate his humor, and mat- 
 
 -V 
 
THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 45 
 
 ter-of-fact people are at once utterly nonplussed at his extrava- 
 gance. A talker of this class is, however, amusing in com- 
 pany, for people must relax sometimes, or the consequences 
 would prove fatal to their nervous system. That delicate 
 machinery, by the way, has a severe ordeal to pass through in 
 the wear and tear of life. Lord Brougham once said, no man 
 has any right to a nervous system, who does not possess two 
 thousand a year ; and we believe he was not far from just in 
 his discrimination ; for while we pay especial regard to the 
 well-being of the stomach, we sadly neglect our more sensitive 
 nerves. A little nonsense, therefore, occasionally, may not be 
 inadmissible, when it can be thus harmlessly indulged. Non- 
 sense is to sense as shade to light — it heightens effect. 
 
 This art of vividly magnifying minor objects into exagger- 
 ated importance, by exhibiting them through a kind of mental 
 microscope, has a charm for the fireside. It presents things in 
 grotesque and monstrous distortion, which cannot fail of ex- 
 citing our risible faculties. Dean Swift was, perhaps, the 
 greatest specimen of this style of talking. This habit, of exag- 
 gerating a statement beyond its exact limits, is one of the most 
 common of colloquial misdemeanors. Some souls seem too 
 big for their bodies — every thing must be in extenso ; hence 
 they transcend the restrictive limits of reality, and bound off 
 into the regions of the ideal. Sticklers for matter-of-fact are, 
 perhaps, equally tenacious of the opposite extreme ; and they 
 are no less obnoxious to good taste : they are as rigidly literal 
 as the former are poetical. They evince a false zeal for truth, 
 for they again leap beyond its limits, in their eager pursuit of 
 details. With all their professed antipathy to exaggeration, 
 they become culpable in the very thing they repudiate. The 
 man who would measure a hair or weigh a feather, is as guilty 
 of an hyperbole as he who would transcend the just propor- 
 tions of truth. 
 
46 THE TALKATWE AKD THE TACITURN. 
 
 Among minor varieties might be classed the slow-talker, 
 whose drawling accents make even the very atmosphere 
 drowsy, and whose provoking prolixity is tantalizing to the 
 most patient of listeners. Then there is the loud talker, whose 
 lack of sense and modesty he vainly thinks to disguise in 
 " sound and fury signifying nothing." 
 
 There is yet another class, who are in the habit of violating 
 good taste and decorum by the ever-recurring use of oxitre and 
 unintelligible terms — flowers of speech — exotics from all the 
 living languages, as well as the dead. These scorn the usual 
 phrases of our vernacular, however inapt their adoption may 
 be of foreign terms. 
 
 The injudicious and excessive use of foreign phrases evinces 
 a very questionable taste, and is characteristic of pedantry and 
 a love of display, which those who value their reputation for 
 scholarship ought scrupulously to avoid. We confess ourselves 
 too charitably inclined to exhibit the foibles incident to another 
 unfortunate class, who are prone to a fatal habit of telling 
 what they have to say inopportunely, or who are frequently 
 liable to perpetrate bad puns, and worse jokes, at which no 
 one can even force a spasmodic laugh, for we all know Dr. 
 Johnson's depreciative estimate of their character. They have 
 but one exclusive privilege, of which most evince a ready pro- 
 clivity to avail themselves — that of laughing at their own point- 
 less puns. Yet Charles Lamb defends this right in the fol- 
 lowing wise : " That a man must not laugh at his own jest is 
 surely the severest exaction ever invented upon the self-denial 
 of poor human nature. This is to expect a gentleman to give 
 a treat without partaking of it, to sit esurient at his own 
 table, and commend the flavor of his own venison upon the 
 absurd strength of never touching it himself. On the contrary, 
 we love to see a wag taste his own joke to his party." 
 
 Having disposed of our garrulous friends, what shall we say 
 
THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 47 
 
 of the incommunicative? — those inane beings who so admirably 
 supply the lack of statuary in the boudoir or library. Among 
 this class are the men of elongated and lugubrious visage, who 
 frown out of existence even the scintillation of a smile, and 
 " shut up " every facetious mouth, however highly charged it 
 may be with intellectual electricity. Eef erring to the taci- 
 turjiity of the British, Sydney Smith remarks, " There is noth- 
 ing which an Englishman more enjoys than the pleasure of 
 sulkiness — of not being forced to hear a word from anybody 
 which may occasion him the necessity of replying. It is not so 
 much that Mr. Bull disdains to talk, as that Mr. Bull has noth- 
 ing to say. His forefathers have been out of spirits for six or 
 seven hundred years ; and, seeing nothing but fog and vapor, 
 he is out of spirits, too ; and when there is no selling or buying, 
 or no business to settle, he prefers being alone and looking at 
 the fire." The taciturn, whatever be their minor idiosyncra- 
 sies, are social dampers; they repress the utterances of the 
 heart wherever their influence extends. If a man be endued 
 with a tongue and brains, it is fair to infer they were designed 
 for use ; an incorrigible mute, therefore, sins against himself, 
 as well as society. Some persons very modestly shelter them- 
 selves under the plea that their silence is caused by their 
 laborious habit of thinking ; we regard this apology as apocry- 
 phal at the best ; for any man who has, however little, of the 
 Promethean fire in him, must throw off sparks sometimes. 
 Some of these wordless men vainly seek to atone for their 
 provoking silence by assuming an interminable and senseless 
 smile ; others, again, sit in stolid indifference, looking as vapid 
 and unimpressible as they probably are in reality. 
 
 There is another variety who absurdly obtrude themselves 
 and their private affairs on the attention of a mixed company, 
 than which nothing can be more injudicious or indelicate. 
 Others lie in wait for every opportunity to proclaim their own 
 
48 THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 
 
 adroitness and wit, and are ever on the alert to elicit commen- 
 dation and compliments. Some boast their gift of prescience ; 
 they challenge us to remember they always foretold what 
 would happen in such a case, but none would believe them ; 
 they advised such a person from the beginning, and told him 
 the consequences would be j ust as they happened, but he would 
 have his own way. Others, again, have a singular weakness or 
 vanity of telling their own frailties and faults : " they are the 
 strangest of all strange people — they cannot dissemble ; they 
 own it is a folly — they have lost advantages by it — but if you 
 would give them the world, they cannot help it." 
 
 To preserve a judicious silence is a very essential requisite in 
 refined and polite society ; this silence is not, of course, sullen 
 or supercilious, but graceful and eloquent. 
 
 Having taken our exceptions to offenders against good man- 
 ners in the matter of conversation, we will now venture to offer 
 a few hints for the uninitiated. Conversation is one of the 
 polite arts of life, its end and aim being the cultivation of 
 the graces and attractions of social life ; he that possesses con- 
 versational powers in the highest degree, therefore, becomes a 
 most efficient agent in imparting pleasure, and in contributing 
 to the improvement of society. Yery much of our colloquial 
 intercourse, however, consists of mere gossip, and gossip of the 
 most trivial kind — such as the state of the weather, the prevail- 
 ing on dits of the newspapers, and the costumes and domestic 
 affairs of our neighbors, etc. Unless our conversational topics 
 rise to a higher level, with a flavor of the intellectual, sea- 
 soned with a little Attic salt, it will be in vain to hope for im- 
 provement. The fixed conventionalities and phrases of fash- 
 ionable life do little more than add a superficial polish to the 
 inanities and platitudes which form the common staple of ordi- 
 nary social intercourse. Fashionable conversation is, indeed, a 
 sacrifice to etiquette, as that of low-life is to vulgarity ; it is in 
 
 iiiiittMiiiittiiuiiilWiiltfkaiiiiift 
 
THE TALKATR^ AND THE TACITURN. 49 
 
 the "golden mean" of cultivated society that the best conversers 
 are to be found. Women are invested with privileges in the 
 social circle above those of the opposite sex, for they challenge 
 both your logic and your gallantry. If you confront their 
 opinions with the first, you are silenced by the second ; it is 
 therefore safer to surrender the contest at discretion. 
 
 Two things seem essential to the possession of good conversa- 
 tional powers — a competent knowledge of men and books, and 
 a felicitous habit of expression ; the former is to be acquired by 
 observation and study ; while the latter is more commonly an 
 intuitive gift. Topics upon which to descant are manifold and 
 various ; the whole realm of nature and art, the boundless re- 
 sources of knowledge, and the numberless incidents, phases, and 
 accidents of human life, as well as the myriad forms of imagery 
 that people the regions of thought and fancy — all supply themes 
 of interesting discussion. What, for example, could afford 
 subjects more pleasing or fertile for a quiet and sociable tete-d- 
 tete than the variegated treasures of Flora, the ever-changing 
 and exquisite beauties of natural scenery, the investigations of 
 pure science, and the accumulated wealth of human lore ? If 
 anecdote and humor are the pearls of polite conversation, the 
 above-named constitute the pure gold for their setting, reflect- 
 ing a tenfold splendor. Those, therefore, who are aufait at 
 repartee, or who fill up the pauses which occur in graver dis- 
 cussions by brilliant flashes of extempore wit, or a piquant 
 story, good-natured sarcasm, or playful satire, achieve no in- 
 considerable service in the social gathering. The circumstan- 
 ces of time, place, and the character of the company, ouglit, of 
 course, ever to govern the choice of topics, and the manner and 
 method of their presentation. It would be absurd to expound 
 a problem of Euclid to an elderly lady whose sphere of attain- 
 ments never stretched beyond the details of the dormitory or 
 the duties of her domicil ; and it would be equally inconsist- 
 4 
 
50 
 
 THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITUEN. 
 
 ent to attempt a grave dissertation on the treasures hidden in 
 the heart of the earth, to a fair nymph in love, v^hose interests 
 lie all concentrated and clustered in the devoted heart of her 
 lover. " Talk not to a physician of music, nor of medicine to 
 a fiddler, unless the fiddler should be sick, and the physician 
 at a concert. He that speaks only of such subjects as are fa- 
 miliar to himself, treats the company as tlie stork did the fox, 
 presenting an entertainment to him in a deep pitcher, out of 
 which no creature could feed but a long-billed fowl." * 
 
 Fulsome flattery, and all kinds of extravagant compliment, 
 are as obnoxious to good taste as the baneful practice of in- 
 dulging hadinage, or personal invective. To a well-balanced 
 and educated man, the cultivated society of the opposite sex 
 offers the highest possible attractions ; for, in addition to the 
 advantages to be derived from the interchange of elevated 
 thought and sentiment, the most fascinating arts and graces are 
 exhibited, which exert a reciprocal and powerful influence, im- 
 parting a brilliancy and charm to everything that is spoken. 
 If to excel in the art of pleasing be the secret of success in 
 that of conversation, commend us not infrequently to the re- 
 fining elegance and challenging graces of educated women : 
 in such a school of the art, the pupil who should fail of 
 academic honors, would assuredly prove himself unworthy to 
 share them. Among the most delightful of mental recreatives 
 may be classed the exhilarating pleasures of intellectual inter- 
 course ; they constitute the very life-fluid of our social being. 
 
 Authors, as a general rule, do not shine with special bril- 
 liancy in the social firmament ; no dazzling coruscations of their 
 wit and wisdom burst upon us like meteoric showers, illumining 
 the darkness. The biographies of men of letters in a great 
 measure confirm this, and confirm also the suggestion of Haz- 
 litt, where he says : " Authors ought to be read, and not 
 
 * Jones of Nayland. 
 
 J 
 
THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 51 
 
 heard." Yet there have been some notable exceptions; for 
 instance, Johnson, Mackintosh, Sheridan, Steele, Swift, Ma- 
 caulay, Eobert Hall, and Dickens, not forgetting the " golden- 
 mouthed " Coleridge. These were an order of illustrious talkers ; 
 they were as eloquent with their tongue, as with their pen. 
 
 Madame de Stael was as brilliant as she was ambitious in 
 conversation. On a certain occasion a person was introduced 
 to her, upon whom she w^as anxious to make an impression. 
 Madame asked a thousand questions, and kept up such an un- 
 ceasing flow of talk that she forgot to wait for any response 
 from her visitor ; w^hen the interview was over, she w^as asked 
 how she liked her new acquaintance. " Oh, a most delightful 
 personage ; what wit and learning ! " was the reply, (the visi- 
 tor was both deaf and dumb ! ) 
 
 On the other hand, most of the eminent writers who have 
 made such a noise in the world, in past and modern times, 
 have been mere mutes in the social circle. Such were, among 
 others. Goldsmith, Jeffrey, Dante, Alfieri, Marmontel, Rous- 
 seau, Descartes, Lafontaine, Corueille, Addison, and Butler. 
 Wit on paper seems to be something widely different from that 
 play of w^ords in conversation which, while it sparkles, dies. 
 Charles II. was so charmed with Hudihras that he sought an 
 introduction, incognito, to Butler, its author ; he found him so 
 dull and incommunicative that he said, at the close of the in- 
 terview, he did not believe so stupid a fellow could have writ- 
 ten so clever a book. Foster, the essayist, speaking of Robert 
 Hall and Coleridge, said : " Hall used language as an emperor. 
 He said to his words, go, and come, imperially, and they 
 obeyed his bidding. Coleridge used his words as a necro- 
 mancer, so aerial and unearthly were their embodiments and 
 subjects." 
 
 Sir William Temple has well said: "The first ingredient in 
 conversation is truth, the next, good sense, the third, good 
 
 4.A J^ i^^ ^imm^h:: 
 
5'2 THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 
 
 liumor, and the fourth, wit." In the same spirit, Steele re- 
 marks : " Beauty is never so lovely as when adorned with the 
 smile; so conversation never sits easier upon us than when 
 we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laugh- 
 ter, which may not improperly be called the chorus of conver- 
 sation." But one of the best rules in conversation is, never to 
 say a thing which any of the company could reasonably wish 
 had not been said. It is much better to reflect before we 
 speak, than to speak before we reflect. The tongue is a little 
 member, but of prodigious importance to us ; and although it 
 is the willing instrument of love or hate, of peace or war — yet 
 how many are derelict in the duty of its proper government. 
 The tongue is also an index of character ; like the face, it dis- 
 covers the condition — healthy or diseased — of the mind as well 
 as the body; its curative treatment, therefore, should be both 
 physical and metaphysical. Cato said : " I think it the first vir- 
 tue to restrain the tongue." Sometimes a bridle is as needful 
 for the human tongue as a bit for the horse's mouth, since 
 both occasionally require a " check-rein." 
 
 There is another way of looking at some reticent people — 
 such unimpeachable persons, for instance, as Hawthorne, Ir- 
 ving, Prescott, Tennyson, and others ; taciturnity is pardonable 
 — nay, profitable — with them, for it means wisdom. It has been 
 said, " There is no sociability like the free companionship of 
 silent men ; " which means that they speak only when they have 
 something to say. These are they who talk the least, and do 
 the most. Among the reticent, there are also shades of differ- 
 ence ; for another variety might be named, of which Thackeray 
 and Theodore Hook, Charles Lamb and Hood, are illustrations. 
 Although they were unrivalled at repartee and humor at the 
 club, yet at a more public assemblage they rarely ventured 
 speechifying. Dickens seems to have been a rare exception to 
 this peculiarity, among the literati, since he was as prompt to 
 
THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITURN. 53 
 
 improvise a dinner-speech as to furnisli manuscript for the 
 printer. Chaucer was more facetious in his tales than in his 
 talk ; and the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him by say- 
 ing, that his silence was more agreeable to her than his conver- 
 sation. Dryden has confessed that he was dull and saturnine 
 in society ; and even Milton, with his " arabesque mind," was 
 unsocial and occasionally irritable. It seems like a psycho- 
 logical problem, that those who have been so amply endowed 
 with intellectual gifts should be apparently so incapable of 
 imparting the benefit of their acquisition to others. Irving, 
 however, gives a high testimony to the social character of 
 Scott, a tribute, indeed, that might with equal propriety be ap- 
 plied to himself. On his visit to Abbotsf ord, he says of Scott : 
 " His conversation was frank, hearty, picturesque, and dra- 
 matic. He never talked for effect or display, but from the 
 flow of his spirits, the stores of his imagination. He was as 
 good a listener as a talker ; appreciated everything that others 
 said, however humble might be their rank and pretensions, and 
 was quick to testify his perception of any point in their dis- 
 course. No one's concerns, no one's thoughts and opinions, no 
 one's tastes and pleasures, seemed beneath him. He made 
 himself so thoroughly the companion of those with whom he 
 happened to be, that they forgot, for a time, his vast superi- 
 ority, and only recollected and wondered, when all was over, 
 that it was Scott with whom they had boen on such familiar 
 terms, in whose society they had felt so perfectly at ease." 
 
 Lastly, we may just briefly refer to a modern heresy in our 
 social intercourse caused by the rules of etiquette, which make 
 such hypocritical pretences, that our so- called fashionable life 
 becomes a mere masquerade. Scarcely any one, in that 
 charmed circle, but acts his part in a theatrical disguise ; and 
 these disguises begin even with the nursery, and continue 
 throughout each successive stage down to the grave. We are 
 
64 
 
 THE TALKATIVE AND THE TACITUEN. 
 
 therefore not what we seem ; and this is in consequence of our 
 artificial, conventional usages, and our surveillance to a false 
 code of morals. Are not these delusions and deceptions — 
 practical moral frauds, and is not our standard of, so called, 
 polite life chargeable with this systematic deceit? "Why 
 should we tolerate, much less approve, deception in speech, 
 any more than in heart and life ^ 
 
CITATIONS FEOM THE 
 CEMETERIES. 
 
 " Where the end of earthly things 
 Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings I 
 Where, stiff the hand, and still the tongue 
 Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung I " 
 
 ScotL 
 
 Cemeteries Lave been poetically styled the " holy suburbs of 
 the Celestial City, — the border land of that better country that 
 lies beyond the river of death ! " The name, Oemeter?/, is de- 
 rived from the Greek, and means a sleeping place. As opposed 
 to the Pagan civilizations, the Jews styled their burial-places, — 
 £et/i hahaim, — the house of the living : and the same idea of 
 repose or sleeping is indicated by the numerous inscriptions of 
 the catacombs. With most of the nations of Christendom our 
 places of sepulture are indicated by the symbolic Cross, point- 
 ing to a life to come. The Germans designate their bm'ial 
 
66 CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 grounds — Gottes-acher^ and Longfellow has beautifully em- 
 balmed the name in melodious verse. 
 
 " God's acre ! yes, that blessed name imparts 
 
 Comfort to those, •who in the grave have sown 
 The seed that they had garnered in their hearts, 
 Their bread of life, alas ! no more their own ! " 
 
 These hallowed places have also been styled '^ Silent Cities!'^ 
 Silent, indeed, are they, although peopled with multitudes of 
 forms once beautiful and surprised with life and vocal with the 
 music of human speech. Even the sweet prattle of infancy, 
 and the tender responses of a mother's enduring love are now 
 no longer heard. Alas ! all voices are hushed in the unbroken 
 stillness of death ! Yet there is a mystic voice from the tomb 
 that comes to the heart sweeter than song. " There is a fond 
 remembrance of the dead, to which we turn, even from the 
 charms of the living." It is this hallowed bond that links the 
 living with the dead, in perpetual memory ; we pay our accus- 
 tomed visits to the sleeping forms of our departed ones, as we 
 do to those who still lend the light of their smiles, and the mu 
 sic of their kindly speech to bless our earthly life. We love to 
 make pilgrimages to these shrines of our affection. 
 
 There is scarcely any subject of more touching interest, or 
 one that awakens a deeper sympathy in the human heart. If 
 we may not hold intercourse with the venerated dead, the mind 
 is instinctively beguiled into a reverie so irresistibly bewitching, 
 that we seem to share a silent colloquy with our loved and lost 
 ones. We chant with Campbell, 
 
 " That's hallowed ground where, mourned and missed, 
 The lips repose our love has kissed ; 
 Bat Where's their memory's mansion ? Is't 
 
 Yon churchyard bowers ? 
 No ! in ourselves their souls exist, 
 A part of ours." 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 57 
 
 Our thoughts are evermore tending to the grave and its mys- 
 teries ; and, like our past hours, troop onward, often unbidden, 
 to the day when we, too, shall attain to the realm of the un- 
 known. Some of our greatest poems, indeed, are monodies 
 and elegiac refrains : yet with the cheering Christian philoso- 
 phy of Wordsworth, we need not hang our harps upon the wil- 
 lows; for 
 
 " Sin-bliglited though we are, we, too, the reasoning sons of men. 
 From our oblivious winter called, shall rise and breathe again ; 
 And, in eternal summer, lose our three-score years and ten ! " 
 
 The academic groves of Greece were made, in part, the 
 resting-places of their honored dead. Amid these leafy shades, 
 sacred to learning and philosophy, they buried their heroes and 
 poets. In these hallowed precincts Plato and his pupils were 
 accustomed to convene. The first place of worship in the 
 Acropolis of Athens was the sepulchre of Cecrops. It may be 
 fairly inferred, that the tombs of the Athenians were the origin 
 of their temples. 
 
 The Romans frequently buried their dead on either side of 
 the Appian Way, and over their tombs they were accustomed 
 to place the monumental urn. Decking the graves of the 
 deceased with flowers, was a custom observed among the 
 Greeks and Romans. 
 
 " In olden time no blossoms were planted where the dead 
 were sleeping, and no grounds were laid out with mounds, 
 ravines, and running streams. The place was only a ' grave- 
 yard,' surrounded with a rough stone-wall, within which bushes 
 and brambles grew in rank luxuriance. But to-day, the army 
 of flowers, with its bright and beautiful banners, has charged 
 upon the thorny hosts of bramble, bush, and briar, and driving 
 them from ' God's acre,' has set a guard of statuary at the gates 
 of the cemetery." ^ 
 
 * J. n. Smith. 
 
58 CITATIONS PROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 The fragrant flowers, symbolic of undying affection, and of 
 a resurrection — life, make an eloquent and persuasive appeal 
 to bereaved and sorrowins; hearts. 
 
 It is a custom fraught with the most delightful associations ; 
 and induces an elevation of sentiment and a poetry of feeling, 
 equally calculated to mollify our grief, and to invest the sep- 
 ulchre with the kindling emotions of hope and immortality. 
 
 " We adorn our graves," says Evelyn, " with flowers and re- 
 dolent plants, just emblems of the life of man, which has been 
 compared in the Holy Scriptures to those fading beauties, 
 whose roots, being buried in dishonor, rise again in glory." 
 
 " Those token flowers that tell 
 What words could never speak so well," 
 
 in earlier times were rendered peculiarly expressive of the cir- 
 cumstances of the deceased ; for example, at the funeral of a 
 young girl, the chaplet- wreath of white roses was borne by one 
 of her own sex and age before the corpse, the token of virgin 
 purity and innocence, and afterwards hung over her accus- 
 tomed seat at the church. The rose was also sometimes 
 blended with the lily, as the emblem of frail mortality ; the 
 red rose for such as had been remarkable for benevolence; 
 and when it was intended to betoken the hapless loves or sor- 
 rows of the departed, the yew and cypress were used. These 
 simple floral rites seem to belong to the past rather than the 
 present ; and yet instinctively the heart fondly clings to them, 
 and interprets their sentiment. The stately tomb or sculptured 
 mausoleum may impress the eye of the beholder by their artis- 
 tic splendor and magnificence ; but those token flowers, so fra- 
 grant and so fair, make their modest yet eloquent appeal to the 
 heart of our common humanity with a power and pathos that 
 is irresistible. How daintily does our great dramatist detail 
 their uses : 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 69 
 
 "With fairest flowers, 
 Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
 m sweeten thy sad grave ; thou shalt not lack 
 The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
 The azured harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
 The leaf of eglantine ; whom not to slander, 
 Outsweetened not thy breath. " 
 
 Where is the heart, in its gushings of sorrow, that would not 
 as the unbidden tear bedews the sainted grave, yield to such 
 spontaneous offerings of affection, and bind an osier round the 
 sod ? Who would not say, with Miss Landon, " It may be a 
 weakness, though growing out of all that is most redeeming in 
 our nature — the desire that is in us, to make the city of the de- 
 parted beautiful, as well as sacred. The green yew that flings 
 down its shadow, the wild flowers that spring up in the long 
 grass, take away from the desolation ; they are the type and 
 sign of a world beyond themselves. Even as spring brings 
 back the leaf to the bough, the blossom to the grass, so will a 
 more glorious spring return to that which is now but a little 
 human dust." 
 
 It is good to be sometimes reminded of death, and the 
 grave. A memento mori is not necessarily sad and forbid- 
 ding, nor is the dirge-note always a fearful sound ; for to the 
 mind rightly trained and constituted, they speak of a blissful 
 hereafter, and a glorified existence, for which this is but a 
 state of preparation. Knowing d^n^ feeling this, we may stand 
 in the church-yard without awe or dread, and looking through 
 death's open portals into the regions of everlasting happiness 
 beyond, exclaim : 
 
 ' ' The first tabernacle to Hope we will build. 
 And look for the sleepers around us to rise ; 
 The second to Faith, which ensures it fulfilled ; 
 And the third to the Lamb of the great Sacrifice, 
 AYho bequeathed us them both when He rose to the skies." 
 
60 CITATIONS FROM THE CEIVIETERIES. 
 
 The Christian faith is variously symbolized by the sacred 
 Palm, as emblematic of victory, — the Immortelle, of eternal 
 life, — the Anchor, of hope, — the Psyche, or winged insect rising 
 from the chrysalis, as typical of the resurrection ; and the 
 Cross, as the perpetual emblem of the Christian's earthly con- 
 flict and ultimate triumph. 
 
 But a truce to the homily ; let us now look at a few of the 
 memorial records, which have been collected from various dis- 
 tant districts of the dead. It was first said, by the great N"apo- 
 leon, — and it has been often repeated, — " it is but a step from 
 the sublime to the ridiculous" — and this has been not unfi'e 
 quently verified by the writers of epitaphs. As we con over 
 the absurd conceits, poor puns, and fulsome eulogies that so 
 often disfigure the resting-places of the departed, we almost 
 wonder that the very stones do not cry out against the folly. 
 What think you, good reader, of the groupings here subjoined? 
 From Childwald church-yard, England, this is copied : 
 
 " Here lies me and my three daughters, 
 Brought here by using Seidlitz waters ; 
 If we had stuck to Epsom salts, 
 We wouldn't have been in these here vaults." 
 
 In Norwich cathedral, is the following laconic intimation : 
 
 " Here lies the body of honest Tom Page, 
 Who died ia the thirty-third year of his age." 
 
 In Islington church-yard, near London, may be seen this dog- 
 gerel triplet : 
 
 " Pray for the soul of Gabriel John, 
 Who died ia the year 1601 : — 
 Or if you don't, it is all one." 
 
 The following absurd lines are said to be copied from a 
 gravestone at Nettlebed church-yard, Oxfordshire : 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 61 
 
 " Here lies father, and motlier, and sister, and I, 
 We all died within the space of one short year ; 
 They be all buried at Wimble, except I, 
 And I be buried here." 
 
 From a gravestone at Northallerton, England, comes the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 " nicjacet Walter Gun, 
 Sometime landlord of the Sun ; 
 Sic transit gloria mundi ! 
 He drank hard upon Friday, 
 That being a high day — 
 Then, took to his bed, and died upon Sunday." 
 
 Here is another desperate specimen of punning upon a 
 name; it is upon the tomb of William More, at Stepney, near 
 London : 
 
 " Here lies one More, and no more than he ; 
 One More, and no more, how can that be ? 
 Why one More, and no more, may lie here alone. 
 But here lies one more, and that's more than one." 
 
 On the organist of St. Mary Winton College, Oxford : 
 
 " Here lies one blown out of breath, 
 Who lived a merry life, and died a Merideth .'" 
 
 In Biddeford church-yard, Devonshire, is, or was, the follow- 
 ing elegantly printed inscription, upon a certain luckless swain, 
 whose name is not given : 
 
 " The wedding-day appointed was, 
 
 And wedding-clothes provided, 
 
 But ere that day did come, alas ! 
 
 He sickened, and he die did ! " 
 
 A still swifter summons seems to have been sent by the 
 "King of Terrors" to another, whose record in the chureh-yard 
 of Seven Oaks, Kent, reads as follows : 
 
 
62 CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 " Grim Death took me without any warning', 
 I was well at night, and dead at nine in the morning ! " 
 
 From the same county, the following has been copied : 
 
 ' ' Here lies the body of Sarah Sexton, 
 Who was a good wife, and never vexed one : 
 I can't say that for her, at the next stone ! " 
 
 This equivocal compliment referred to his first wife ! The 
 next epitaph has an infusion of common sense in it ; it is cop- 
 ied from Guildford church-yard : 
 
 " Reader, pass on, ne'er waste your time 
 On bad biography, and silly rhyme ; 
 For what I am, this cumbrous clay ensures, 
 And what I was, is no a£Eair of yours." 
 
 At Bury St. Edmund's, Suffolk, there was an old tombstone 
 with this unceremonious inscription : 
 
 " Here lies Jane Kitchen, 
 
 Who when her glass was spent, 
 She Mck't up her heels 
 And away she went." 
 
 In Walford church-yard, Warwickshire, is the following on 
 John Kandall : 
 
 "Here old John RandaU lies, who counting by his sale. 
 Lived three score years and ten, such virtue was in ale ; 
 Ale was his meat, ale was his drink, ale did his heart revive. 
 And could he still have drunk his ale, he still had been alive. " 
 
 In St. Margaret's, Westminster, is the following inscription 
 to the memory of Thomas Churchyard, Laureate to Henry 
 YIL: 
 
 •' Come, Alecto, and lend me thy torch, 
 To find a church-yard in a church porch ; 
 Povertie and poetrie this tomb doth enclose, — 
 Therefore, gentlemen, be merrie in prose." 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. G3 
 
 This expressive epitaph is taken from the old church-yard at 
 Belturbet, Ireland : 
 
 " Here lies John Higley, whose father and mother were 
 drowned in their passage from America, 
 Had they both lived^ they would have been buried here ! " 
 
 In St. Michael's church-yard, Crooked lane, London, is the 
 following laconic record : 
 
 " Here lieth, wrapped in clay, 
 The body of WiUiam Wray ;— 
 I have no more to say ! " 
 
 The following admonitory voice from a tomb in Thetford 
 church-yard, Norfolk, will at least be perused with interest by 
 the advocates of temperance : 
 
 ' ' My grandfather lies buried here, 
 My cousin Jane, and two uncles dear ; 
 My father perished with an inflammation in his eyes. 
 My sister dropt down dead in the Minories ; 
 
 But the reason why I'm here interred, according to my thinking, 
 Is owing to my good living and hard drinking ! 
 Therefore, good people, if you wish to live long, 
 Don't drink too much wine, brandy, gin, or anything strong." 
 
 In the church-yard of Chigwell, Essex, England, is the fol- 
 lowing inscription : 
 
 *' This disease you ne'er heard tell on, 
 I died by eating too much melon ; 
 Be careful, then, all you that feed, — I 
 Suffered because I was too greedy." 
 
 Here is an epitaph upon a desperate toper, in a church-yard, 
 at Durham, England : 
 
64 CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 " Beneath these stones repose the bones 
 Of Theodosius Grimm, 
 He took his beer from year to year, 
 And then his bier took him." 
 
 Over the grave where Shakspeare's dust reposes, is inscribed 
 the following well-known quaint adjuration: 
 
 " Good friend, for Jesvs' sake forbeare, 
 To digge the dvst encloased heare ; 
 Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones, 
 And cvrst be he yt moves my bones." 
 
 From Handon church-yard, England, comes the following : 
 
 " Beneath this stone, Tom Crossfield Ues, 
 "Who cares not now who laughs or cries ; 
 He laughed when sober, and when mellow, 
 Was a harum-scarum harmless fellow ; 
 He gave to none designed offence, 
 So — ' Honisoitqui malypense! ' " 
 
 The subjoined is copied from an old church-yard at Llan- 
 flantwthyl, Wales : 
 
 *' Under this stone lies Meredith Morgan, 
 Who blew the bellows of our church organ ; 
 Tobacco he hated, to smoke most unwilling, 
 Yet never so pleased as when pipes he was filling ; 
 No reflection on him for rude speech could be cast, 
 Though he made our old organ give many a blast. 
 No puffer was he, though a capital blower, 
 He could fill double G, and now lies a note lower." 
 
 The following is certainly calculated to repress inquisitive- 
 ness : 
 
 " Here lies Pat. Steele, — ttat's very thrue ; 
 Who was he ? What was he ? What's that to you ? " 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 05 
 
 Byron, it is said, wrote the following lines on John Adams, 
 carrier, of Southwell : 
 
 ' ' John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell, 
 A carrier, who carried the can to his mouth well ; 
 He carried so much, and he carried so fast, 
 He could carry no more, so was carried at last ; 
 For the liquor he drank being too much for one, 
 He coidd not carry off, so he's now carri-on ! " 
 
 In St. Michael's church-yard, Aberystwith, is the following 
 professional tribute to David Davies, blacksmith : 
 
 " My sledge and hammer lay reclined, 
 % My belloics, too, have lost their wind, 
 
 My fires extinct, mj forge decayed, 
 And in the dust, my vice is laid ; 
 My coal is spent, my iron gone, 
 My nails are drove, — my work is done." 
 
 In Selby church-yard, Yorkshire, is the following memorial 
 
 to one Miles : 
 
 ' ' This tombstone is a milestone, ah ! how so ? 
 Because, beneath lies MUes^ who's miles below !" 
 
 At Cray ford church-yard, Kent, may be seen the following, 
 en the tomb of Peter Snell, for thirty-five years Parish Clerk : 
 
 " The life of this clerk was just three-score and ten. 
 Nearly half of which time he had sang out, amen ! 
 In his youth he married, like other young men ; 
 But his wife died one day — so he chaunted — amen ! 
 A second he took, — she departed ; — what then ? 
 He married, and buried a third, with — amen ! 
 Thus his joys and his sorrows were treble, but then — 
 His voice was deep bass as he sang out — amen. 
 On the horn he could blow, as well as most men. 
 So ' his horn was exalted,' in blowing — amen ! 
 He lost all his wind, after three-score and ten. 
 And here, with three wives, he waits, tiU agaia 
 The trumpet shall rouse him, to sing out amen ! " 
 5 
 
66 CITATIONS FHOM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 At Gateshead church-yard, Newcastle, is the following : 
 
 " Here lies Robert Trollop, 
 Who made yon stones roll up, 
 When Death took his soul up 
 His body filled this hole up." 
 
 In the grounds of Winchester cathedral, is the following 
 epitaph to the memory of Thomas Fletcher : 
 
 " Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire grenadier, 
 Who caught his death by drinking cold small beer ; 
 Soldiers, be wise, from his untimely fall, 
 And, when you're hot, drink strong or not at aU.'* 
 
 In Doncaster church-yard — (1816) ! — 
 
 ' ' Here lies 2 brothers, by misf ortin serounded. 
 One died of his wounds, and the other was drownded." 
 
 At St. Giles', Cripplegate, London, is the following poor 
 attempt at punning : 
 
 " Under this marble fair 
 Lies the body entombed of Gervaise Aire : 
 He dyed not of an ague fit. 
 Nor surfeited by too much wit. 
 Methinks this was a wondrous death, 
 That Aire should die for want of breath." 
 
 In Gloucester church-yard, it is said, may be seen the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 ' ' Two lovelier babes ye ne'er did see 
 Than God Almighty gave to we ; 
 But they were taken with ague fits, 
 And there they lies as dead as nits." 
 
 As a relief to the ludicrous specimens, just offered, we now 
 turn to that splendid epitaph written, not as it had long been 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 67 
 
 N 
 
 believed, by Ben Jonson, but by Brosvne, author of ^'' Britan- 
 nia) s PastoralsP We refer to the inscription on the tomb of 
 the Countess of Pembroke : 
 
 " Underneath this sable hearse 
 
 Lies the subject of all verse, 
 Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother; 
 Death, ere thou hast slain another 
 Fair and learned, and good as she, 
 Time shaU throw a dart at thee." 
 
 Ben Jonson wrote, however, this remarkable epitaph on 
 Elizabeth L. II. : 
 
 " Wouldst thou hear what man can say 
 In a little ? Reader, stay. 
 Underneath this stone doth lie 
 As much beauty as could die ; 
 "Which in life did harbour give 
 To more virtue than doth live ; 
 If, at aU, she had a fault. 
 Leave it buried in this vault. 
 One name was Ehzabeth, 
 Th' other, let it sleep with death ; 
 Fitter, where it died, to teU, 
 Than that it lived at all,— farewell." 
 
 One of the finest epitaphs in our language is Collins' : 
 
 " How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, 
 By all their country's wishes blest ! 
 When spring, with dewy lingers cold, 
 Returns to deck their hallowed mould ; 
 She there shaU dress a sweeter sod, 
 Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. 
 By fairy hands their kneU is rung ; 
 By forms unseen their dirge is sung ; 
 There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray. 
 To bless the turf that wraps their clay ; 
 
08 CITATIONS FEOM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 And Freedom shall awhile repair, 
 To dweU a weeping hermit there ! " 
 
 In an epitaph on a marine at Chichester, the writer has made 
 an adroit turn from mortal to spiritual warfare : 
 
 " Here lies a true soldier, whom aH must applaud, 
 Much hardship he suffered at home and abroad ; 
 But the hardest engagement he ever was in, 
 "Was the battle of self iu the conquest of sin ! " 
 
 Every one knows (or ought to know) Mason's fine epitaph 
 on his young wife, in Bristol Cathedral : 
 
 " Take, holy earth, aU that my soul holds dear ! 
 
 Take that best gift, which Heaven so lately gave I 
 To Bristol's fount I bore with trembhng care 
 Her faded form : she bowed to taste the wave — 
 And died ! " 
 
 One of the finest homilies on riches ever given was the 
 epitaph written in Latin, in 1579, on John of Doncaster ; we 
 give the translation : 
 
 " What I spent, I had, 
 What I gave, I have, 
 What I saved, I lost." 
 
 This epitaph was inscribed on the tombstone of Joe Miller — 
 the individual who is made responsible for such multitudes of 
 poor jokes — who died in 1738, and was buried in the church- 
 yard of St. Clement Danes : 
 
 " If humor, wit, and honesty could save 
 The humorous, \vitty, honest, from the grave, 
 The grave had not so soon this tenant found. 
 Whom honesty, and wit, and humor crowned. 
 Or could esteem and love preserve our breath, 
 And guard us longer from the stroke of death, — 
 The stroke of death on him had later fell, 
 Whom all mankind esteemed and loved so well. " 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 69 
 
 Charles Lamb, when young, was walking in a church-yard 
 with his sister, and noting the eulogistic character of the 
 epitaphs, said, " Mary, where do the naughty people lie ? " 
 That question has not, we believe, been answered. 
 
 Garrick's epitaph on Quin, in the Abbey Church, at Bath, 
 has not often been exceeded : 
 
 " The tongue wMeli set the table in a roar, 
 And charmed the public ear, is heard no more ! 
 Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit, 
 Which spake before the tongue what Shakspeare writ. 
 Cold is that hand, which ever was stretched forth, 
 At friendship's call, to succor modest worth. 
 Here lies James Quin ! — Deign, reader, to be taught, 
 Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought ; 
 In Nature's happiest mould, however cast, 
 To this complexion thou must come at last ! " 
 
 Brief monumental inscriptions are, after all, the most elo- 
 quent. What can exceed that of Sir Christopher Wren, in St. 
 Paul's Cathedral, of which he was the well-known architect : 
 
 " Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice ! " 
 
 and we might add that to the memory of Sir Isaac ISTewton : 
 
 " Isaacum Newton quem immortalem Testantur tempus, natura, coelum, 
 mortalem hoc marmor Fatetur ! " 
 
 In the church-yard of St. Anne, Soho, London, is the follow- 
 ing curious epitaph on Theodore, King of Corsica, one of the 
 " Monarchs retired from business ; " it is from the pen of Hor- 
 ace Walpole : " Near this place is interred Theodore, King of 
 Corsica, who died in this parish, December 11, 1756 ; im- 
 mediately after leaving the King's Bench prison, by the bene- 
 fits of the act of Insolvency ; in consequence he registered his 
 kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors. 
 
70 CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 '' The Grave, great teacher, to a level brings 
 Heroes and beggars, gaUey-slaves and kings ; 
 But Theodore this moral learned, ere dead ; 
 Fate poured its lessons on his living head, 
 Bestowed a kingdom, and denied him bread. " 
 
 From Cun wallow church-yard, Cornwall, is taken the fol- 
 lowing inscription, which may be read in four different ways, 
 up or down, backwards or forwards : 
 
 " ShaU we aU die ? 
 We shaU die aU ! 
 AH die shall we, 
 Die all we shall." 
 
 The pithy epitaph on Dr. Walker^ author of a work on 
 " English Particles," reads thus : 
 
 " Here lie Walker's particles" 1 
 
 and that on Fuller^ author of " English Worthies," and other 
 
 works, is : 
 
 " Here lies Fuller's earth " 1 
 
 Garrick's celebrated epitaph on Hogarth, in Chiswick 
 church-yard, is as follows : 
 
 " FareweU, great painter of mankind. 
 
 Who reached the noblest point of art I 
 Whose pictured morals charm the mind, 
 
 And through the eye correct the heart I 
 If genius fire thee, reader, stay — 
 
 If Nature touch thee, drop a tear ! 
 If neither move thee, turn away, 
 
 For Hogarth's honored dust lies here I " 
 
 As a specimen of the terse and suggestive, we offer the 
 epitaph found in Torrington church-yard, Devon : 
 
 " She was — but words are wanting to say what : 
 Think what a woman should be — she was that.'* 
 
 i>iiiiftrf<tSfi^fr"fiii^iS^ii 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 71 
 
 In Llangowen cliurcli-yard, Wales, is this quaint, admonitory 
 inscription : 
 
 ' ' Our life is but a summer's day — 
 Some only breakfast, and away. 
 Others to dinner stay, and are full fed ; 
 The oldest man but sups and goes to bed. 
 Large his account, who lingers out the day ; 
 Who goes the soonest, has the least to pay ! " 
 
 In the church-yard of Evesham, in Oxfordshire, is the fol- 
 lowing tribute, '' To ye memory of her dear husband, Mr. 
 John Green, gent. 1652 ": 
 
 " Stay, reader, drop upon this stone 
 One pitying tear, and then begone ! 
 A handsome pile of flesh and blood 
 Is here sunk down to its first mud ; 
 Which thus in Western rubbish lies, 
 Untn the Eastern Star shall rise." 
 
 At Trenton, New Jersey, there may be seen the following 
 beautifully expressive lines, inscribed over the tomb of Mrs. 
 Mary Dunbar, who died in 1808 : 
 
 " The meed of merit ne'er shall die. 
 Nor modest worth neglected lie. 
 The fame that pious virtue gives, 
 The Memphian monuments outlives. 
 Reader, wouldst thou secure such praise, 
 Go, learn Religion's pleasant ways." 
 
 Franklin's famous epitaph, so often printed, was probably 
 suggested to his mind, after his recovery from the severe 
 attack of pleurisy, in 1729. The following is a correct copy : 
 " The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer, (like the cover of 
 an old book, its contents torn out, and stript of its lettering 
 and gilding,) lies here food for worms ! Yet the work itself 
 
72 CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 shall not be lost, for it will, as lie believed, appear once more, 
 in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended 
 by The Author.'^ This ingenious inscription has frequently 
 been imitated. 
 
 Perhaps the most witty and satirical of all epitaphs is that 
 one in Bath cathedral, which must be almost sufficient to 
 frighten some nervous invalids from the city : 
 
 "These waUs, adorned with monumental bust, 
 Show how Bath waters serve to lay the dust." 
 
 Willis thus poetically pictures to us the burial place of 
 Shelley and Keats : " With a cloudless sky, and the most 
 delicious air ever breathed, we sat down upon the marble slab 
 laid over the ashes of poor Shelley, and read his own lament 
 over Keats, who sleeps just below, at the foot of the hill. The 
 cemetery is rudely formed into three terraces, with walks 
 between ; and Shelley's grave, and one without a name, occupy 
 a small nook above, made by the projection of a mouldering 
 wall-tower, and crowded with ivy and shrubs, and a peculiarly 
 fragrant yellow flower, which perfumes the air around for 
 several feet. The avenue by which you ascend from the gate 
 is lined with high bushes of the marsh-rose, in the most 
 luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery the grass is thickly 
 mingled with flowers of every hue." In his preface to his 
 lament over Keats, Shelley says : " He was buried in the 
 romantic and lovely Cemetery of the Protestants ; under the 
 pyramid which is the tomb of Astius, and the massy walls and 
 towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit 
 of ancient Pome. It is an open space among the ruins, cov- 
 ered in winter with violets and daisies. It might maJce one in 
 love with death to think that one should he hurled in so sweet 
 ajylacer If Shelley had chosen his own grave at the time, he 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 78 
 
 would have selected the very spot where he has since been 
 laid — the most sequestered and flowery nook of the place he 
 describes so feelingly. In the last verses of the elegy, he 
 speaks of it again with the same feeling of its beauty : 
 
 " Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise, 
 The grave, the city, and the wUdemess ; 
 And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 
 And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress 
 The bones of Desolation's nakedness, 
 Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead 
 
 Thy footsteps to a slope of green access. 
 Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead 
 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread." 
 
 The cemej:ery at Stoke J^ewington acquires peculiar interest 
 from the circumstance of its having been formed in Abney 
 Park, where Dr. Watts so frequently strolled during his long 
 residence at the hospitable mansion of Sir Thomas Abney. 
 The west of London, and Westminster Cemetery, differ from all 
 the modern burial places around the metropolis. The grounds 
 are very beautifully laid out in the Italian style : its chapel, 
 monuments, and other buildings, are very imposing. The en- 
 closure, in the neighborhood of Highgate, is the North Lon- 
 don Cemetery. Its leading feature is a small chapel, with an 
 octangular and ornamental dome. A beautiful window of 
 painted glass, representing the ascension of our Saviour, adorns 
 its extremity. Column, pyramid, sarcophagus, tomb, vase, and 
 sculptured stone, arrest the eye, while a gigantic mound is seen 
 canopied with a goodly cedar ; and the beautiful Gothic church 
 crowning the brow of the hill, with its heaven-directed spire, 
 peers above the upper verge of this sainted place of graves. 
 Beauty and death appear, in this lovely spot, to have entered 
 into a compact together. 
 
 Bunhill-fields burial ground, London, has been called the 
 
74 CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 " Campo Santo " of the dissenters ; since the ashes of the great 
 ]^on-conf ormist clergy and friends of civil liberty repose there. 
 Among memorable names recorded there are those of Bunyan, 
 De Foe, General Fleetwood J Owen, Goodwin, and "Watts, the 
 hyninist, with an innumerable company of others of cherished 
 memory. Kensall Green is one of the most beautiful ceme- 
 teries of the British metropolis. 
 
 The great cemetery of Pere la Chaise was consecrated as a 
 public place of sepulture in 1804 : it derived its present name 
 from the favorite confessor to Louis XI Y. and Madame de 
 Maintenon. Within its boundaries formerly stood an establish- 
 ment belonging to the Jesuits, called the " Maison de Mont 
 Louis?'' Subsequently, 1763, on the suppression of the order, 
 the estate was sold, and passing into the hands of the public au- 
 thorities, it became applied to its present purpose. 
 
 How much better is it to place the remains of our loved 
 ones beneath the green sod and the blue canopy of heaven 
 than in crowded crypts and corners of an antique abbey — the 
 open temple of nature than the contracted one of art. In the 
 beautiful open cemetery, festooned with richest foliage, and 
 glorihed with sunshine, sweet flowers, and the songs of birds, — 
 all that can neutralize the gloom of death is accomplished, 
 while the faith of immortality is thereby beautifully symbo- 
 lized. 
 
 To the lovers of rural beauty, the sequestered shades of 
 Greenwood have an indescribable fascination. Standing at the 
 eastern verge of this Necropolis, on Ocean Hill, where the re- 
 mains of the missionary Abeel sleep under a column, we look 
 off through Sycamore Grove, and Grassy Dell, and beyond 
 Highland Avenue, to the elevation, where death won so many, 
 long ago, in the battle of Long Island, and where now sleep, 
 with their brothers of the Bevolutionary strife, the heroes who 
 fell in Mexico — all their conflicts ended now, and they in the 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 75 
 
 rest, which would be eternal, but for that last trumpet, which 
 shall startle all the armies to the grand and ultimate review. 
 A more pleasing emotion is awakened as we pause, in that 
 vicinity, by the temple in which art has sought to tell the 
 mournful history of the sudden death of beauty's idol. Miss 
 Canda ; or, near Sylvan Bluff, by the monument which Catlin 
 has reared over the relics of his heroic wife, who for seven 
 years accompanied him on his wild and hazardous journeys 
 amono^ the Ked men of the wilderness. There are all condi- 
 tions, all varieties, in death, as in life, and the wanderer in 
 Greenwood turns from the graves we have mentioned to that 
 of the beautiful Indian, Do-hum-me, who came to see the white 
 man's palaces, and to die. It is down by the margin of Sylvan 
 Lake, and close by it is the modest column erected to " poor 
 MacDonald Clarke," in whose numbers, if there was " more of 
 madness, and more of melancholy," there was also more Prome- 
 thean fire than glows in some of the works of greater fame. 
 
 Like our magnificent Greenwood, Mount Auburn is also 
 a beautiful garden of graves : where variegated splendors of 
 nature and art combined arrest the delighted eye on every side. 
 Upland, lawn, and vale, fountain, lake, and sylvan stream, inter- 
 mingled with shaft, stately mausoleum, and sculptured tomb, are 
 everywhere embowered amid the over-arching foliage, while 
 the sod is garnished with floral, fragrant gems of dazzling 
 beauty. 
 
 Here repose the ashes of many a sainted name ; and here, 
 too, may be found many a touching record of departed worth ; 
 Spurzheim's monument is the first that greets the eye of the 
 visitor as he enters the enclosure. Laurel Hill Cemetery is to 
 Philadelphia what Mount Auburn is to Boston in its natural 
 and artificial beauties. 
 
 Both Wordsworth and Rogers much admired the stanzas on 
 life, by Mrs. Barbauld, — the last, it is believed, that she wrote. 
 
 
 k'^<,^.Uki.4... .:^'. 
 
To CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 The thought of life looking in upon yon with a glad greeting, 
 is both Christian and cheerful ; for life's glorious resurrection is 
 its second morning. 
 
 " Life ! we've been long- together, 
 Througli pleasant and througli cloudy weather ; 
 'Tis hard to part, when friends are dear, — 
 Perhaps,^twill cost a sigh, a tear : 
 
 " Then steal away, give Uttle warning, 
 Choose thine own time, 
 
 Say not ' Good night ! ' but in some brighter cUme, 
 Bid me—' Good morning' ! " 
 
 Having conned over a number of mortuary memorials, and 
 epitaphs, sentimental and absurd, serious and trifling, we come 
 to the conclusion, with Pope, that, 
 
 " Praises on tombs are trifles vainly spent, 
 A man's good name is his best monument. " 
 
 The early Christians inscribed on the tombs of their departed 
 friends the expressive words, " Morsjanua VitcB I " (Death is 
 the gate of Life ! ) And Addison has sung to us of the immor- 
 tality of the soul in a strain worthy of the theme : 
 
 ' ' The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
 , Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years ; 
 But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, 
 Unhurt, amidst the wars of elements. 
 The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds ! " 
 
 We close our chapter on these mementos of mortality with 
 the following impressive passage from the London Eclectic : 
 
 " How beautiful is the memory of the dead ! What a holy 
 thing it is in the human heart, and what a chastening influence 
 it sheds upon human life ! How it subdues all the harshness 
 that grows up within us in our daily intercourse with the world ! 
 How it melts our unkindness, softens our pride, kindling our 
 
CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 77 
 
 deepest love, and waking our highest aspirations ! Is there one 
 who has not some loved friend gone into the eternal world, with 
 whom he delights to live again in memory? Does he not love 
 to sit down in the hushed and tranquil hours of existence, and 
 call around him the face, the form, so familiar and cherished 
 — to look into the eye that mirrored not more clearly his own 
 face than the soul which he loves — to listen to the tones which 
 he loves to listen to, the tones which were once melody in his 
 ear, and have echoed softly in his ear since they were hushed 
 to his senses ? Is there a spirit to which heaven is not brought 
 nearer by holding some kindred soul ? How friend follows 
 friend into the happy dwelling-place of the dead, till we find at 
 length that they who loved us on the heavenly shore are more 
 than they who dwell among us ! Every year witnesses the de- 
 parture of some one whom we knew and loved ; and when we 
 recall the names of all who have been near to us in life, how 
 many of them we see passed into that city which is imperish- 
 able! 
 
 '' The blessed dead ! how free from stain is our love for 
 them ! The earthly taint of our affections is buried with that 
 which was corruptible, and the divine flame, in its purity, illu- 
 mines our breast. We have now no fear of losing them. They 
 are fixed for us eternally in the mansions prepared for our re- 
 union. We shall find them waiting for us, in their garments of 
 beauty. The glorious dead ! how reverently we speak their 
 names ! Our hearts are sanctified by their words, which we re- 
 member. How wise they have now grown in the limitless fields 
 of truth ! How joyous they have become, by the undying 
 fountains of pleasure ! The immortal dead ! how unchanging 
 is their love for us ! How tenderly they look down upon us, 
 and how closely they surround our being ! How earnestly they 
 rebuke the evil of our lives. 
 
 " Let men talk pleasantly of the dead, as those who no longer 
 
78 
 
 CITATIONS FROM THE CEMETERIES. 
 
 suffer and are tried — as those who pursue no longer the fleet- 
 ing, but have grasped and secured the real. With them the 
 fear and the longing, the hope, and the terror, and the pain are 
 past : the fruition of life has begun. How unkind, that when 
 we put away their bodies, we should cease the utterance of their 
 names. The tender-hearted dead who struggle so in parting 
 from us ! why should we speak of them in awe, and remember 
 them only with sighing ? Very dear were they when hand 
 clasped hand, and heart responded to heart. Why are they less 
 dear, when they have grown worthy a higher love than ours ? 
 By their hearth-side, and by their grave-side, in solitude, and 
 amid the multitude, think cheerfully and speak lovingly of the 
 dead." 
 
 " We die and disappear ! 
 
 Of myriads passed witMn. tlie veil, but one 
 Has e'er returned the mystery to clear ! 
 
 He — God's incarnate Son ! 
 Then was the dark obscure made light, 
 
 O'er Death and Grave the victory was won, 
 And life immortal brought to light ! " 
 
 4 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 Oh 1 magic of love 1 unembellished by you, 
 
 Has the garden ablush, or the herbage a hue ? 
 
 Or blooms there a prospect in nature, or art, 
 
 Like the vista that shines through the eye to the heart ? " — Moore. 
 
 Although Cupid cannot be said to be young, yet lie seems 
 to enjoy perpetual youth, for lie is not in tlie least the worse 
 for wear, — his locks are still golden, his cheeks glowing, and 
 the bright kindling glance of his eye is as radiant as ever ; 
 while his votaries are even more numerous than they have been 
 in any previous age of the world : we therefore venture to hope 
 that our theme may not prove " weary, stale, flat, and unprofit- 
 able," at least to our fair friends. First let us premise that 
 we do not intend to inflict on the reader a grave homily on this 
 delicate subject, but rather a gossiping sketch of the felicities 
 
80 
 
 A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 and infelicities of the estate matrimonial, and its counterpart — 
 celibacy, with an accompaniment of illustrative facts and anec- 
 dotes. Marriage has been designated an episode in the life of 
 man, — an epoch in that of woman ; it is certainly a most im- 
 portant crisis in the history of both, for it generally causes a 
 strange metamorphosis in habit and character. 
 
 " The happy minglement of hearts 
 
 Where, changed as chemic compounds are, 
 Each with his own existence parts, 
 To find a new one happier far. " 
 
 The ancients exalted domestic affection into a household god, 
 and one of the most beautiful antiques now preserved is a gem 
 representing the draped figure of a woman worshipping this 
 deity, as it kneels upon a pedestal. Croly wrote the following 
 sweet lines upon it : 
 
 " Oh ! love of loves ! to thy white hand is given 
 
 Of earthly happiness the golden key ! 
 Thine are the joyous hours of winter's even, 
 
 When the babes cling around their father's knee ; 
 And thiue the voice that on the midnight sea 
 
 Melts the rude mariner with thoughts of home, 
 Peopling the gloom with all he wants to see. 
 
 Spirit ! I've built a shrine ; and thou hast come. 
 And on its altar closed — forever closed, thy plume ! " 
 
 It has been said that while Adam was created without Para- 
 dise, Eve was created within the sacred enclosure, and that 
 consequently the former always retains something of the origi- 
 nal earthiness of his origin ; while woman, " the precious porce- 
 lain of human clay," exhibits more of the refining process, both 
 as to her physical and moral nature. 
 
 " If man is the head, woman is the crown. Slie was formed of 
 a rib out of the side of Adam, to be equal with him, — under 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON ]\IATRIMONY. 81 
 
 the arm to be protected, and near liis heart to be beloved." ^' 
 The world has, in the main, indorsed the sentiment of this 
 worthy divine. 
 
 Southey says, " Take away love, and not physical nature only, 
 but the heart of the moral world, would be palsied 
 
 " This is the salt unto humanity, 
 That keeps it sweet." 
 
 Its influence is sedative, sanative, and preservative — a drop of 
 the true elixir, no mithridate so effectual against the infection 
 of vice. Love, it has been said, invented the art of tracing 
 likenesses, and thereby led the way to portrait painting; the 
 cherished idol of our affection being ever imaged on the 
 mental retina, or enshrined within the sacred recesses of the 
 heart, as an idealization. Love, indeed, lends a precious seeing 
 to the eye, and hearing to the ear : all sights and sounds are 
 glorified by the light of its presence. 
 
 Home, the domain of the affections and the graces, is also 
 the conservator of virtue. The amenities that adorn and 
 beautify our earthly life spring up and flourish within that 
 Eden enclosure — Home. 
 
 " Here woman reigns — the mother, daughter, wife, 
 Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life ; 
 In the clear heaven of her delighted eye 
 An angel guard of loves and graces lie ; 
 Around her knees domestic duties meet, 
 And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet.'' f 
 
 From the marriage relation spring those gentle charities and 
 kindly offices of domestic affection which temper the austerities 
 and selfish maxims of the world ; while they serve also to help 
 our faith in a f utm-e blissful estate of being, of which they are 
 the type and harbinger. It is the sanctity of the domestic circle, 
 
 * Matthew Henry. f Cowper. 
 
82 A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 which links heart to heart in a hallowed compact, whence well 
 up those genial affections of our better nature that fertilize the 
 barren wastes of humanity and bless the world. If there be a 
 spot on earth over which angels may be supposed fondly to 
 linger, and scatter the sweet incense of heavenly blessing, it 
 must be the sanctuary of a consecrated home. The surest 
 safeguard against interruptions to domestic concord is the 
 habit of wearing a smiling face ; it will prove the panacea for 
 every ill — the antidote for every sorrow ; and who that has felt 
 the luxury of thus conferring happiness, and chasing from the 
 brow a shadow and the heart a grief, would grudge the effort, 
 for so rich a boon ? There is a magnetic power in a spirit of 
 cheerfulness and good temper. Its influence is as salutary and 
 inspiring in the sphere of home, as sunbeams are to the flowers 
 of the field. Among the most insidious foes to domestic happi- 
 ness and moral health are the tyrannies of fashion, inconsider- 
 ate or unkind words, and the cruelties of scandal : all these are 
 usually found to accompany weak heads, and perverted or pet- 
 rified hearts. "What spectacle can be imagined more touchingly 
 beautiful or impressive than that which the marriage ceremo- 
 nial presents ? To witness the voluntary consecration of two 
 intelligent beings, on the altar of mutual faith and affection, — 
 the union of their lives and fortunes in a solemn covenant, 
 which naught but death may dissolve, is indeed a scene of sur- 
 passing interest. That many instances of an infelicitous kind 
 have occurred, cannot be denied, but it is no less true, that in 
 the great majority of cases the marriage union has been pro- 
 ductive of the happiest results; and were its claims always 
 properly appreciated, such beneficent effects would ever follow 
 in its train. True it is, as society is constituted, marriage 
 becomes somewhat of a lottery — for its votaries are either the 
 victims of Cupid or cupidity; in either case, they are under the 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 83 
 
 blinding influence of passion, and consequently but little sub- 
 ject to the control of reason. 
 
 An instance in which marriage was literally a lottery, w^as 
 exemplified in a freak, said to have been enacted by a certain 
 youthful swain in France, who, relying upon his personal at- 
 tractions mainly, actually put himself up as the prize in a lot- 
 tery of ten thousand tickets, of the value of two dollars each. 
 This novel matrimonial expedient created a wondrous sensation 
 among the belles of the French capital ; and the result w^as, 
 that all sorts of speculation went on among the fair, who 
 eagerly bought up the tickets. A fair young damsel, who 
 speculated merely for the frolic of the thing, became the 
 holder of the prize ticket; the lucky youth tendered her the 
 pecuniary proceeds of the lottery — $20,000; they became a 
 case of " love at first sight," and within the brief limits of the 
 day, Hymen settled their destiny. 
 
 The happy marriage, says Steele, is where two persons meet 
 and voluntarily make choice of each other, without principally 
 regarding or neglecting the circumstances of fortune or beauty. 
 
 " Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers, 
 We, who improve his golden hours, 
 
 By sweet experience know 
 That marriage, rightly understood, 
 Gives to the tender and the good 
 
 A paradise below." 
 
 Singular spectacles — rather we should say, pairs of specta- 
 cles — are occasionally to be seen in our popular promenades — 
 ladies of towering altitude, allied to dwarfish bipeds, who 
 seem as tliough they were designed rather for the effect of con- 
 trast than equality ; while again similar lofty specimens of the 
 masculine are to be met with, peering into the upper air, drag- 
 ging by their side like abbreviated instances of the feminine ; 
 seemingly to indicate that in resigning themselves to the stem 
 
84: A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 alternative of espousing that (falsely so called) necessary evil, — 
 a wife, they had sagaciously selected the least. Hood's inimit- 
 able pen portrays a calamitous case of the opposite kind, which 
 the reader will possibly remember ; yet we are tempted to in- 
 troduce it here : 
 
 ' ' Of wedded bliss bards siag amiss, 
 I cannot make a song- of it ; 
 For I am small, my wife is fcaU, 
 And that 's the short and long of it. 
 
 ' ' When we debate, it is my fate 
 
 To always have the wrong of it ; 
 For I am small, and she is tall, 
 
 And that 's the short and long of it. 
 
 " She gives to me the weakest tea. 
 
 And takes the whole souchong of it, — 
 For I am small and she is tall, 
 And that 's the short and long of it. 
 
 " Against my life she'll take a knife. 
 Or fork, and dart the prong of it ! 
 For she is tall, and I am small. 
 And that 's the short and long of it." 
 
 N'ecessarily there is no occasion for such marked dissimilarity 
 of size in marriage ; but there is no accounting for the eccen- 
 tricities which sometimes control connubial destiny. Neither 
 is there inferiority or superiority between the sexes ; each forms 
 the complement of the other. Man has strength, woman, 
 beauty ; man is great in action, woman in suffering ; man's 
 dominion is in the world, woman's at home ; man represents 
 judgment, woman, mercy. 
 
 Arthur Helps justly remarks, " Women are in many things 
 our superiors, in many things our inferiors — our equals, never. 
 I hold with Coleridge, that there are souls masculine, and souls 
 feminine. If they had been made exactly amenable to our 
 
A MONOLOaUE ON MATRIMONY. 85 
 
 Trays of reasoning, they would have too little hold upon us. 
 Whereas, now, being really resolved to rule, as all we men are, 
 at least in serious matters, we are obliged to guide and govern 
 them — when we do guide and govern them, through their 
 affections, so that we are obliged perpetually to pay court to 
 them, which is a very beautiful arrangement." 
 
 So, after all, it is a very pleasant vassalage that is imposed 
 upon us by matrimonial bonds. " Never be critical upon the 
 ladies," was the maxim of an Irish peer, remarkable for his 
 homage to the sex. " The only way that a gentleman should 
 look at the faults of a pretty woman is — with his eyes shut 1 " 
 
 Instances, not a few, of disastrous marriages might be quoted, 
 but as their rehearsal would not excite any pleasurable sensa- 
 tions, we shall refrain from the unwelcome task : we may, 
 however, refer to the case of an adroit spinster, who was cute 
 enough to prevent such an apparent catastrophe. A young 
 Scotchman having wooed a pretty buxom damsel, persuaded 
 her to accompany him to a justice of the peace, for the purpose 
 of having the nuptials celebrated. They stood very meekly 
 under the operation, until the magistrate came to that clause 
 which imposes the necessity of subjecting the lady to the rule 
 of her husband. " Say no more about that, sir," interrupted 
 the half -married claimant ; " if this hand remains upon this 
 body, I'll make her obey me." " Are we married yet ? " eag- 
 erly ejaculated the exasperated maiden to the ratilier of cove- 
 nants between man and woman. "N^o," responded the wonder- 
 ing justice. "Ah, very well; we will finish the rest another 
 time," she continued, and in a moment more vanished, leaving 
 the astonished swain to console himself for the escape of the 
 bird he thought he had so securely caught and caged. 
 
 As a counterpart to the foregoing, we might cite the instance 
 of a certain couple of rustics, who presented themselves to the 
 priest as candidates for the holy estate of matrimony. On the 
 
8(j A MONOLOGUE ON MATEIMONY. 
 
 conclusion of the ceremony, the redoubtable husband, who 
 began to have sundry misgivings at what he had done, said, 
 " Your reverence has tied the knot tightly, I fancy ; but, under 
 favor, may I ask, if so be you could untie it again ? " " Why, 
 no," replied the dominie ; " we never do that on this part of the 
 consecrated ground." "Where then?" eagerly inquired the 
 disconsolate victim. " On that,^^ was the response, pointing to 
 the church-yard. 
 
 A curious legend is related of Eginhard, a secretary of 
 Charlemagne, and a daughter of the emperor. The secretary 
 fell desperately in love with the princess, who allowed his ad- 
 vances. One winter's night his visit was prolonged to a late 
 hour, and in the meantime a deep fall of snow occurred. If he 
 left, his foot-marks would betray him, and yet to remain longer 
 would expose him, no less, to danger. At length the princess 
 resolved to carry him on her back to a neighboring house, 
 which, it is said, she did. It happened, that from the window 
 of his chamber the emperor witnessed this novel proceeding ; 
 and in the assembly of the lords on the following day, when 
 Eginhard and his daughter were present, he asked what ought 
 to be done to a man who should compel a king's daughter to 
 carry him on her shoulders through frost and snow, on a win- 
 ter's night 1 They answered that he was worthy of death. 
 The lovers became alarmed, but the emperor, addressing Egin- 
 hard, said, " Hadst thou loved my daughter, thou shouldst have 
 come to me ; thou art worthy of death — ^but I give thee two 
 lives ; take thy fair porter in marriage, fear God, and love one 
 another." 
 
 Balzac, the French novelist, exhibits another example of ec- 
 centricity in matrimonial affairs. When Balzac was at the 
 zei^iith of his fame, he was travelling in Switzerland, and had 
 arrived at an inn, just at the very moment the Prince and 
 Princess Hanski were leaving it. Balzac was ushered into the 
 
A MONOLOaUE ON MATRIMONY. 87 
 
 room the J had just vacated, and was leaning from the window 
 to observe their departure, when his attention was arrested by 
 a soft voice at his elbow, asking for a book which had been left 
 behind upon the window seat. The lady was certainly fair, but 
 appeared doubly so in the eyes of the poor author, when she 
 intimated that the book she was in quest of was a pocket 
 edition of his own works. She drew the volume from beneath 
 his elbow, and flew downstairs, obedient to the screaming sum- 
 mons of her husband, who was already seated in the carriage, 
 railing in a loud voice against dilatory habits of women in 
 general, and his own spouse in particular ; and the emblazoned 
 vehicle drove off, leaving the novelist in a state of self-compla- 
 cency the most enviable to be conceived. This was the only 
 occasion upon which Balzac and the Princess Hanski had met, 
 till his subsequent visit to Germany, when he presented himself 
 — as her accepted husband. During these long intervening 
 fifteen years, however, a literary correspondence was steadily 
 kept up between the parties, till at length, instead of a letter 
 containing literary strictures upon his writings, a missive of 
 another kind, having a still more directly personal tendency, 
 reached him from the fair hand of the princess. It contained 
 the announcement of the demise of her husband — ^the prince, 
 that he had bequeathed to her his domains, and his great wealth 
 ^ — and consequently, that she felt bound to requite him in some 
 measure for his liberality, and had determined upon giving him 
 a successor — in the person of Balzac. It is needless to state 
 that the delighted author waited not a second summons; they 
 were forthwith united in wedlock, at her chateau on the Eliine, 
 and a succession of splendid fetes celebrated the auspicious 
 event. 
 
 The following romantic incident of real life has been also 
 traced to Switzerland. Several years since an ill-assorted mar- 
 riage held for a season in unwilling captivity a husband and 
 
88 A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 wife, whose mutual distastes at length became so confirmed, 
 that they resolved upon a separation, and made an appoint- 
 ment with an attorney to meet and sign a deed to that effect. 
 On their way thither, they had to cross a lake, and as it hap- 
 pened they both embarked on the same boat. On their pass- 
 age a storm arose, and the boat was upset. The husband, 
 being a good swimmer, soon reached the shore in safety. On 
 looking round to see the fate of his fellow-passengers, he dis- 
 tinguished his wife, still struggling for her life, and in immi- 
 nent danger. A feeling of his early affection returned to him, 
 and plunging again into the water, he swam to her, and suc- 
 ceeded in rescuing her. When she recovered her senses, and 
 learned to whom she owed her life, she threw herself into his 
 arms, and he embraced her with equal cordiality ; they then 
 vowed to bury their differences in oblivion, and their after mar- 
 ried life was no more darkened by the storm-clouds of strife, 
 but brightened and glorified with the sunshine of love. 
 
 Those who wish to become acquainted with " the loves of the 
 poets," we refer to Mrs. Jameson's pleasant book on that deli- 
 cate subject. We may, however, glance ^t the eccentric con- 
 duct of Swift in his love matters. His first flame, whom he 
 fantastically christened Yarina, he deserted, after a seven years' 
 courtship : the next he styled Stella, who, although beautiful in 
 person, and accomplished, after a protracted intimacy, he se- 
 cretly married in a garden, although he never resided under 
 the same roof with her, and never acknowledged the union till 
 the da}^ of his death. The third became a similar victim to his 
 selfish hard-heartedness, which, it is said, caused her death. 
 W.Hh all his wit and genius, such wanton brutality must ever 
 reflect the deepest disgrace upon his character. The following 
 case looks somewhat squally, and indeed possesses so much of 
 the marvellous as to challenge belief. It is that of a gentleman 
 who confesses he first saw his wife in a storm, took her to a 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON ]MATRIMONY. 
 
 89 
 
 ball in a storm, courted her in a storm, then married under the 
 same boisterous circumstances, and lived with her during a like 
 condition, but buried her in pleasant weather. The union of 
 hearts and hands in holy wedlock has given birth to many lu- 
 minous poetic effusions. The briefest exposition we remember 
 to have seen, is the following, which was doubtless intended 
 merely as a love,-missive between two ardent souls, whose elec- 
 tive affinities — if spirits may commingle — resolved themselves 
 into a perfect spiritual amalgam. Says our love-sick swain : 
 
 ' ' My heart to you is given : oh, do give yours to me ; 
 We'll lock them up together, and throw away the key." 
 
 We remember to have read somewhere an account of a 
 most exemplary instance of conjugal fidelity and devotion, 
 which, if true, is certainly without a parallel. A young noble- 
 man of Genoa, named Marimi, who held large estates in Cor- 
 sica, whither he used to repair every few years to regulate his 
 affairs, had married a beautiful creature, named Monimia, an 
 Italian. They lived for some years in undiminished felicity, 
 till — alas for the mutations of time ! — the devoted husband was 
 compelled no longer to defer a visit to the land of his posses- 
 sions. During his absence, the island being at the time in a 
 state of insurrection, a report reached the ears of the anxious 
 spouse that he had fallen a victim to the popular fury and 
 revolt. About the same time, as he was passing along the har- 
 bor, he overheard some sailors, who had just arrived, talking of 
 the death of a Genoese nobleman's wdfe, then absent from the 
 republic. The name of his beloved wife was at length men- 
 tioned, when all suspicion yielding to the painful conviction 
 that it was, indeed, she of whom they spoke, he became so over- 
 powered with grief that he swooned away. On his recovery he 
 determined to lose no time in repairing to his home, in order to 
 ascertain the certainty of the report. Strange as it may appear, 
 
90 A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 simultaneously with tins, the equally distressed wife resolved 
 upon a similar procedure. They both took ship — one for Cor- 
 sica, the other for Genoa ; a violent storm overtook both vessels, 
 and eacli was shipwrecked upon a desolate island in the Medi- 
 terranean. Marimi's ship first made land, and the disconsolate 
 widower, wishing to indulge his grief, wandered into the em- 
 bowered recesses of a neighboring wood. Soon afterwards the 
 Grenoese ship landed Monimia, with one of her maids ; actu- 
 ated by similar emotions, she bent her sorrowing steps to the 
 same retreat. They each heard the other complaining of their 
 bitter fate ; when, moved by a mutual curiosity to see their 
 companion in grief,— judge of their amazement and rapturous 
 surprise, when they instantly recognized in each other the ob- 
 ject of their ardent solicitude and affection. One long, strain- 
 ing, and passionate embrace, and they immediately expired ! 
 
 Wordsworth) s beautiful lines describe the highest style of 
 womanhood, with the subtle analysis of the critic, and the Pro- 
 methean fire of the poet : 
 
 ' ' She was a queen of noble nature's crowning ; 
 
 A smile of hers was like an act of grace ! 
 She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, 
 
 Like gaudy beauties of the vulgar race : 
 But if she smiled, a light was on her face, — 
 
 A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam 
 Of peaceful radiance, silvering in the stream 
 
 Of human thoughts of unabiding glory, — 
 Not quite awaking truth — not quite a dream, — 
 
 A visitation bright and transitory." 
 
 LowelVs epitome of woman's worth is given in a single 
 stanza : 
 
 ' ' Blessing she is— God made her so ; 
 And deeds of week-day holiness 
 Fall from her, noiseless as the snow ; 
 Nor hath she ever chanced to know 
 That aught were easier than to bless." 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 91 
 
 And Leigh Hunfs epitome is : 
 
 " A creature, not too bright or good 
 For human nature's daily food ; — 
 For transient sorrows, simple wiles. 
 
 Praise, blame, love-kisses, tears, and smiles." 
 
 Matrimony has, as we have seen, sometimes its squally 
 weather as well as its sunshine. 
 
 " A something light as air, — a look, 
 A word unkind or wrongly taken,— 
 O love ! that tempests never shook, 
 A breath, a touch like this, hath shaken. 
 And ruder words will soon rush in 
 To spread the breach that words begin ♦, 
 And eyes forget the gentle ray 
 They wore in courtship's smiling day ; 
 And voices lose the tone that shed 
 A tenderness o'er all was said." * 
 
 Job Caudle, when he died, left a small packet of papers in- 
 scribed, " Curtain Lectures delivered in the course of thirty 
 years^ hy Mrs. Margaret Caudle, and Suffered hy Joh her hus- 
 handP His case needs no comment, rather condolence. 
 
 Like a suit at chancery, marriage is likely to last a lifetime ; 
 each is much easier to get into, than get out of, again. A 
 writer in Punch had the audacity thus to estimate matri- 
 mony : 
 
 " Which is of greater value, — pr'ythee say, — ■ 
 The bridegroom, or the bride ? must the truth be told ? 
 Alas, it must ; the bride is given away, — 
 The bridegroom, often, regularly sold! " 
 
 That is indeed- a frail bond of affection which would seek to 
 unite hearts and hands together, by the blandishments of beauty 
 merely, without the deep faith of the heart. 
 
 * Moore. 
 
V^ A MONOLOGUE ON MATEBIONY. 
 
 " 'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud ; 
 'Tis virtue, that doth make them most admired ; 
 'Tis modesty, that makes them seem divine." 
 
 This last-named grace seems to have given place to the mod- 
 ern infallible specific — money ; money, in the world's estimate, 
 like charit}^, covers a multitude of sins. 
 
 Some rhymester thus sums up the case in the court of Cupid : 
 
 " Fair woman was mad3 tD bewitc'-i : 
 A pleasure, a pain, a disturber, a nurse, 
 A slave or a tyrant, a blessing or curse, — 
 Fair woman was made to be — which ? " 
 
 " A French woman will love her husband," it has been said, 
 "if he is either vsritty or chivalrous ; a German woman, if he 
 is constant and faithful ; a Dutch woman, if he does not dis- 
 turb her ease and comfort too much ; a Spanish woman, if 
 he wreaks terrible vengeance upon those who are under her 
 displeasure ; an Italian woman, if he is dreamy and poetical ; 
 a Hussian woman, if he despises all westerners as miserable 
 barbarians ; an English woman, if he succeeds in ingratiating 
 himself with the court and nobility ; and an American woman, 
 if he has — plenty of money ! " 
 
 ' ' Matches are made for many reasons, — 
 
 For love, convenience, money, fun, and spite. 
 How many against common sense are treasons ! 
 
 And few the happy pairs who match aright ! 
 In the fair breast of some be-^-itching dame, 
 
 How many a youth will strive fond love to waken : 
 And when at length successful in his aim, 
 
 Be first mis-led and afterwards — mis-taken ! " 
 
 In Southern Italy, love-makiug is, sometimes, carried on by a 
 system of pantomimics, from opposing balconies. A code of 
 significant attitudinizing signals is adopted between the parties ; 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON MATRBIONY. 93 
 
 and altboiigli the method is mute, yet, as actions speak louder 
 than words, this silent system seems to answer the purpose well 
 enouirh for that meridian. 
 
 That brief episode of romance, courtship, is the spring-tide 
 of life — tlie May of human existence: fond memory clings to 
 it with cherislied and lingering devotion ; for, if at no other 
 period, the heart then reveals its generous sympathies, and the 
 habitual selfishness of our nature is forgotten. If the month 
 posterior to the nuptial ceremony — the honeymoon — is so richly 
 freighted with happiness, it is more than the great dramatist 
 affirms of the period anterior to that event, when he insists, 
 " the course of true love never did run smooth." 
 
 Emerson has some poetic and forcible words upon this sub- 
 j ect of love ; he says, " Be our experience in particular what 
 it may, no man ever forgets the visitations of that power upon 
 his heart and brain, which created all things new ; which was 
 the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art, — which made the 
 face of nature radiant with purple light, the morning and night 
 of varied enchantments, — when a single tone could thrill the 
 heart, and the most trivial circumstance associated with one 
 form is put in the amber of memory, — when we become all eye 
 when one is present — all memory, when one is gone." 
 
 Thackeray insists that '^ it is a good thing for a man to be in 
 love, — it softens his asperities of character and quickens his 
 sensibilities. It is like inoculation, a kind of disease, with a 
 sanative effect resulting from it." 
 
 The true antidote or specific for love-sickness is, unremitting 
 industry ; since it is when unoccupied that the poor victim is 
 especially vulnerable. It is then that the arch cunning of 
 Cupid usually takes effect, by bringing up the vision of the 
 inamorata in all her bewitching splendor. Yes, it is the lus- 
 trous eye, the smiling lip, or the relievo bust, that does all the 
 mischief. Potential as it is, yet is beauty — " the eye's idol " — 
 
94 A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 often the most evanescent and frail of Heaven's endowments. 
 Notwithstanding its frailty, however, the poet lavishes all his 
 wealth of imagery and pomp of diction, in the celebration of 
 its praises. 
 
 Mark Antony lost a world for a woman, — bartering empire 
 for the smile of the rare Egyptian qneen ! and the Trojan war 
 was traceable to Helen's eyes. \Yho has not proved, as Byron 
 beautifully expresses it, — 
 
 '' How feebly words essay- 
 To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray ? 
 Who doth not feel, until his failing sight 
 Faints into dimness, with its own delight, — 
 His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess, 
 The might, the majesty of loveliness ! " 
 
 Love has been compared to debt : both keep their captives 
 awake at night, and in a perpetual state of unrest during the 
 day. This heart-disease has been playfully styled the " tender 
 passion," possibly, either from its softening effects on the brain, 
 or from its prevailing susceptibility with the " softer sex." 
 
 Like justice, love is supposed to be blind ; the poet says : 
 
 " Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, 
 And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." 
 
 And although his votaries are also, for the most part, the vic- 
 tims of ophthalmic weakness, yet by a law of compensation, 
 love is endowed with a spiritual perception. " Falling in love," 
 as the phrase is, is a serio-comic affair ; Cupid is a cunning 
 manoeuvrer and casuist. 
 
 " He blurs the print of the scholar's book, 
 And intrudes on the maiden's prayer, 
 
 And profanes the cell of the holy man, 
 In the shape of a lady fair. 
 
 Love beckons in the painter's dream, 
 Makes music in the poet's metre, 
 
A MONOLOGUE OX MATRBIONY. 95 
 
 O'er youth find ago ho reigns supreme ; 
 
 Can any other sway be sweeter ? 
 ^\nd still the songs of all the world 
 
 Shall celebrate love's endless blisses. 
 WTiile on a neck a tress is curled, 
 
 And while a red lip pouts for kisses." * 
 
 Yes, this loving is a great science. Cicero styles it " the 
 philosophy of the heart," and a later authority calls it " the 
 finest of the fine arts." "In one respect it is the business of 
 life," writes another, " to conjugate the verb to love." In the 
 " battle of life," courtship is the siege or engagement ; the pro- 
 posal, the assault, and marriage, the victory. 
 
 Once, at Holland House, the conversation turned upon " first 
 love." Tom Moore compared it to a potato, "because it 
 shoots from the eyes." " Or rather," exclaimed Byron, " because 
 it becomes all the less hy j^aring.'''' It was so in his case. 
 
 The Hibernian was in earnest, if not in haste, in his love suit 
 for a beauty, when he told her he " could get no sleep o' nights 
 for dhramin' ov her." One of the most concise courtships we 
 ha\e heard of, was the following : An eminent geologist, who 
 was travelling several years ago in a stage-coach, happened to 
 take a scat opposite to a lady. Of course glances were ex- 
 changed, for how could they help so doing ? A code of eye- 
 signals was next adopted, and soon afterwards eye-language 
 was exchanged for verbal conversation. After a few inter- 
 changes about fossils and petrifactions, they began to talk about 
 living objects and subjects, from generalities they descended 
 to specialties and personalities. Said the gentleman, " I am 
 still unmarried;" quoth tlie lady, "So am I." No. 1 then 
 replied, " I have sometimes thought of mjirrying ; " " So have 
 I," responded No. 2. Then a pause ensued. " Suppose we were 
 to marry one another," was then proposed by the man of fossils : 
 
 * 11. S. Clarke. 
 
96 A MONOLOGUE ON IVIATEIMONY. 
 
 " I would love and cherish ; " " and I," said the fair one, " would 
 honor and obey." Two days after, it is said, they did the deed. 
 
 Punch thus portrays the symptoms of a case of heart-disease 
 or absent-mindedness superinduced thereby, the interlocutor 
 being in evidence : 
 
 ' ' Tell me, Edward, dost remember how at breakfast, often we 
 Put our bacon in the teapot while we took and fried our tea ? 
 How we went to evening parties on gigantic brewers' drays. 
 How you wore your coats as trousers in those happy, happy days ? 
 How we used to pocket ices when a modest lunch we bought, 
 QuafE the foaming Abemethy, masticate the crusty port ? 
 How we cleaned our boots with sherry, while we drank the blacking dry ? 
 And how we quite forgot to pay for articles we used to buy ? " 
 
 Yes, falling in love is a queer business ; for instance, a stu- 
 dent leaves college, covered with academic honors, and not a 
 stir in his affections, excepting for his " kith and kin ; " but a 
 fair maiden passes him on his way, and straightway he loses 
 his heart — the victim of a glance from a sunny face. A 
 learned metaphysician, apparently lost to all external things by 
 his abstract studies, walks out from his library, and his eye is 
 suddenly arrested by the vision of a little satin shoe tripping 
 most daintily along ; and this grave epitome of severe learning 
 becomes a ready captive to Cupid's snare ! Take another 
 instance : a redoubtable son of Mars, full panoplied for the 
 fight, and panting for victorious fame, enters a gay saloon in a 
 foreign clime, where he meets a Spanish brunette, in her blaze 
 of beauty ; with a twirl of her fan she takes him captive. Who 
 shall give to us a mathematical demonstration of the mystery ? 
 
 Notwithstanding all that women have charged against us, 
 men, under the counts of " woman's rights," and " woman's 
 wrongs," are they not indispensable to our social happiness? 
 Are they not the "queens of society," whose empire is the 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 97 
 
 lieart, and whose sceptre is love ? Of all the tributes ever paid 
 to woman's worth by pen of poet, and they have been neither 
 few nor small, a single line of Scotia's bard is the most com- 
 prehensive : 
 
 "What signifies the life o' man, 
 An* 'twere not for the lasses, o ? " 
 
 One of the old dramatists thus touches upon the seductive 
 subject : " Sing of the nature of woman, and the song shall be 
 surely full of variety, — old crotchets and most sweet closes, — it 
 shall be humorous, grave, fantastic, amorous, melancholy, 
 sprightly — one in all, and all in one ! " "^ 
 
 But leaving woman as Adam found her, the predestined 
 mistress of the affections, we will refer the reader to the old 
 poet Gower's chivalric devotion to the maiden of his muse : 
 
 "What thing she bid me do, I do ; 
 And where she bid me go, I go ; 
 And when she likes to call, I come ; 
 I serve, I bow, I looke, I loute, 
 Mine eye it foUoweth her about." 
 
 The human family is divided into two classes, the married 
 and the single ; the former have been often deemed legitimate 
 objects for the raillery and jest, by the advocates of celibacy ; 
 and it is but fair that the opposite party should be permitted a 
 share of the like j)leasantry. As a specimen of the former, 
 take the following lines of a most inveterate woman-hater — one 
 of the early printers who flourished during the first half of the 
 sixteenth century. The extraordinary production in which this 
 curious satire occurs is entitled " The scole-howse, wherein 
 every man may rede a goodlie jprayer of the condycyons of 
 &c. This erudite scribe thus apostrophizes the 
 
 sex 
 
 * Beaumont. 
 
98 A MONOLOGUE ON jMATRIMONY. 
 
 " Trewly some men there be 
 That lyve always in great horroure, 
 And sayth it goth by destynie, — 
 To hang, or wed, — both hath one houre ; 
 And whether it be ! I am well sure 
 Hanging is better of the twaine, — 
 Sooner done and shorter payne ! " 
 
 It is admitted, on all hands, to be both a delicate and perilous 
 thing, to pry into a woman's age ; and the embarrassment 
 becomes increased in the exact ratio of its advance, especially 
 in the case of an unmarried lady. The precise epoch at which 
 the epithet old may be admissible, is no less involved in mys- 
 tery. It is, therefore, highly expedient to avoid inquisitiveness 
 upon the subject. Possibly the solution of the mystery of 
 woman's age may be found in the fact, that beauty does not 
 always bloom ; and when her dimpled smiles and ruddy hues 
 pass away, it is a vain endeavor to supply their lack by the aid 
 of costly cosmetics and hijouterie. 
 
 Unmarried maidens ought, of course, to be styled the match- 
 less among the fair, for in more senses than one, the definition 
 is applicable to them. Are they not usually the ministering 
 angels of the social circle ; and are they not the sine qua non 
 in the chamber of sickness? Some of the sweet sisterhood 
 remain unintentionally among the unmarried, and these claim 
 our respectful sympathy ; others there are, known by the epithet 
 coquette^ possessing more charms of person than graces of 
 character ; these often fail of matrimonial alliance, from pre- 
 sumption. When too late, these nymphs resort to everj^ expe- 
 dient to avert the unwelcome issue, but in vain ; " love's sweet 
 vocabulary " has been exhausted, and the charms, divinations, 
 and necromancy of Yenus herself have been called into requisi- 
 tion, but potent as they usually are, without the desired effect 
 in their behalf. We have been accustomed to associate Cupid 
 with simply his bow and quiver full of arrows ; but the queen 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON IMATRIMONY. 99 
 
 of love, it seems, can invoke to her aid much more varied and 
 irresistible artillery for capturing the citadel of the heart. To 
 enumerate in full detail these appliances of woman's art, would 
 startle the credulity of the unsuspecting reader. Neither tlie 
 " gentle moon," nor good old St. Valentine, the tutelar divini- 
 ties of the tender passion, have, in their case, done their office ; 
 who, therefore, can wonder, after such an expenditure of effort 
 and exemplary enduring patience on their part, that our for- 
 lorn fair ones should become the victims of ennui, — or that 
 their once jubilant and joyous features should become tinged 
 with an expression of melancholy. We hear much of the 
 merry old bachelor, that he is devoid of care, that he is every- 
 where the centre of a charmed circle, and that he is, in a word, 
 a being envied by all, pitied by none. Even Lord Bacon, 
 among others of the literary and learned, insists that mankind 
 is indebted to the unmarried and the childless for its highest 
 benefactions, in the world of science and song. " They are," 
 he adds, " the best of friends, the best masters, and the best 
 servants." The verdict of society has, however, changed since 
 the days of that sage philosopher. 
 
 Old bachelors have been styled " unproductive consumers ; 
 scissors with but one blade ; bows vdthout fiddles ; irregular 
 noun-substantives, always in the singular number and objective 
 case ; unruly scholars, who, when told to conjugate, always de- 
 cline." 
 
 Some wag thus apostrophizes the old bachelor : " What a 
 pitiful thing an old bachelor is, with his cheerless house and 
 his rueful phiz, on a bitter cold night, when the fierce winds 
 blow, and when the earth is covered with snow. When his fire 
 is out, and in shivering dread, he slips 'neath the sheets of his 
 lonely bed. How he draws up his toes, all encased in yarn hose, 
 and he buries his nose 'neath the chilly bedclothes ; lest his 
 nose, and his toes, still encased in yarn hose, should chance to 
 
 tetfriJiititltrti'r -V" - .v.^«^.,^fiiisi. 
 
100 A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 get froze. Then he puffs and he blows, and says that he knows 
 no mortal on earth ever suffered such woes ; and with ahs ! 
 and with ohs ! with his limbs to dispose, so that neither liis 
 toes, nor his nose^ may be froze — to his slumbers in silence, 
 the bachelor goes ! " 
 
 Dichens thus piquantly portrays the old bachelor, where he 
 says: "He is cross, cadaverous, odd and ill-natured, — never 
 happy but when he is miserable ; and always miserable when 
 he had the best reason to be happy. The only real comfort of 
 his existence seemed to be, to make everybody about him 
 wretched. If he hated one thing more than another, it was a 
 child ; his antipathies included old women, and doors that would 
 not shut ! " Old bachelors are like those strange wandering 
 fires that seem to have no fixed spheres ; serve no known law in 
 the moral universe, — ^the purposes of whose existence being a 
 mystery alike to themselves and all about them. Callous to the 
 appeals of nature, insensible to the sweet oratory of woman's 
 eyes and lips, and the rarer attractions of her moral worth; 
 these despisers of the sex deserve their frowns, rather than their 
 approving smiles, and to be placed under the ban of society as 
 its alien, if not its foe. These singular specimens of humanity 
 are in an anomalous condition ; for they are not only isolated 
 in their selfishness, but they have also outlawed themselves 
 from the rights and privileges of domestic life. 
 
 Apart from its endearing associations and immunities, the 
 marriage relation is constituted the great conservator of human 
 existence ; without it the world would soon become a waste, 
 and the beneficent purposes of its great Author be frustrated. 
 This sentiment we accordingly find to have obtained, as by in- 
 stinct, in all ages. Fines were first levied on unmarried men 
 in Rome, about the middle of the fourth century ; and when 
 pecuniary forfeitures failed to insure obedience to connubial 
 edicts, celibacy was visited by penal punishments. 
 
A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMONY. 101 
 
 Having indulged our laugh against the bachelor tribe, and 
 the matchless spinster sisterhood, we have a few words to say 
 about bewitching widows — perhaps the most difficult to define 
 of all human enigmas. Widows, generally speaking, are es- 
 pecially dangerous to the peace of bachelors : having graduated 
 in the school of domestic life, they have become proficients in 
 " the art which conceals art," they have exchanged simplicity for 
 sophistry and seductive contrivance. They do not often say — 
 " no," to an " offer ; " and if the party is timidly backward in 
 coming forward, they have an enchanting habit of meeting 
 him half way. 
 
 Old Weller in the Pichwich Papers, warns his impressible 
 son, Sam, against their wdles, and affirms, that " one vidder is 
 equal to twenty-five single vomen ! " Here is a life-like sketch 
 of a first-class widow : 
 
 *' She is modest, but not bashful, free and easy, but not bold — 
 Like an apple, ripe and mellow, not too young, and not too old ; 
 Half inviting-, half repulsive ; now inviting, now too shy : 
 There is mischief in her dimple, there is danger in her eye ! 
 She can tell the very moment when to sigh and when to smile ; 
 Oh ! a maid is sometimes charming, but a widow all the while. 
 Are you sad ? how very serious will her handsome face become : 
 Are you angry ? she is wretched, lonely, friendless, tearful, dumb : 
 Are you mirthful ? how her laughter, silver- sounding, vsdll ring out : 
 She can lure, and catch, and play you, as the angler does the trout ! " 
 
 So long as fascinating women, be they widows or maidens, 
 still remain amongst us, to light up life's pathway, and to glad- 
 den our eyes, there is hope for bachelors, old or young. So 
 that if even any crusty, rusty old blades, long "laid on the shelf," 
 and deemed beyond all redemption, should thus become oioned 
 and polished, their dulness removed, their temper improved — 
 and a new edge being put upon them, they may hereafter cut 
 a better figure in the world, with more comfort to themselves 
 and advantage to their neighbors. The most effectual way to 
 
102 A MONOLOGUE ON MATRIMOl!^'. 
 
 curb a wild youngster, is to hridal liirn ; and the best way to 
 keep a man in countenance, who is tired of inspecting his own 
 disconsolate visage in the mirrors, is, to turn his gaze towards 
 some smiling vision of beauty, and then, if he may, secure it, 
 as real estate or personal property. 
 
 Tom Moore once committed an act of petty larceny, by clip- 
 ping a stray ringlet from the head of a young lady, who, on 
 demanding restitution, received from the poet this witty re- 
 
 ' ' On one sole condition, love, I might be led, 
 With this beautiful ringlet to part, — 
 I would gladly relinquish the lock of your head, 
 Could I gain but the key to your heart ! " 
 
 Few topics have been made so fruitful a theme of badinage 
 and sarcasm by the wits, as that of marriage. If the old bache- 
 lor is said to become bearish in his isolation, a man of the op- 
 posite class, during courtship, is thought to exhibit a strong 
 resemblance to a goose ; and when this incipient stage is ex- 
 changed for the estate matrimonial, he is honored with the epi- 
 thet sheejpisk. Some have indulged their vein of irony in 
 verse, a curious specimen of which we subjoin ; it evinces as 
 much ingenuity as wit, for it admits of being read two ways, 
 to convey a directly opposite sentiment. "We transcribe it ac- 
 cording to what we consider its true meaning ; but in order to 
 make it tell the reverse, it will be necessary to alternate the 
 lines, reading the first and third, then the second and fourth : 
 
 " That man must lead a happy life 
 Who is directed by a wife ; 
 Who's freed from matrimonial claims, 
 Is sure to suffer for his pains. 
 
 ' ' Adam could find no solid peace 
 Till he beheld a woman's face ; 
 When Eve was given for a mate 
 Adam was in a happy state. 
 
A MONOLOGUE OX MATRIMONY. 103 
 
 " In all the female race appears 
 Truth, darling of a heart sincere : 
 Hypocrisy, deceit, and pride 
 In woman never did reside. 
 
 *' What tongue is able to unfold 
 The worth in woman we behold ? 
 The failings that in woman dwell 
 Are almost imperceptible. 
 
 ' ' Confusion take the men, I say, 
 Who no regard to women pay, 
 Who make the women their delight 
 Keep always reason in their sight." 
 
 One of the most eminent of her sex, Mrs. Jameson, referring 
 to the missic)n of woman, has said ; " It is hers to keep alive 
 all those pnrer, gentler, and more genial sympathies — those 
 refinements in morals, in sentiments, in manners, without which 
 men exposed to the rougher influences of everj-daj life and in 
 the struggle with this selfish world, might degenerate (do de- 
 generate, for the case is not hypothetical) into mere brutes." 
 Such is the beautiful theory of woman's life-mission — preached 
 to her by moralists, sung to her by poets — till it has become 
 the world's creed, and her own faith. 
 
 The marriage bond has been compared to the " Gordian knot," 
 because it is an inextricable one, which none are supposed to 
 be competent to unloose. In these modern days, however, too 
 many, disregarding the sanctity of this union, wait not for death 
 to dissolve it, but, like Alexander the Great, ruthlessly sunder 
 at will the mystic cord. 
 
 The wedding-ring, symbolical of the perpetuity of the con- 
 jugal relation, has ever been the accepted accompaniment of 
 marriage. Its being put on the fourth finger of the left hand, 
 has been continued, from long-established usage, because of 
 the fanciful conceit that from this finger a nerve went direct 
 to the heart. 
 
 ■liirilfiiW 
 
104: 
 
 A MONOLO&UE OX MATRIMONY. 
 
 "Little simple, valued thing-, made for little fing-er fair, 
 How much sorrow you may bring, when for lucre you ensnare ! 
 Yet, if heart and hand unite, and if soul to soul be given, — 
 Then the solemn nuptial rite is a sweet foretaste of heaven ! " 
 
 Evil portents sometimes scare the liappy pair, even after tlic 
 Gordian knot has been tied. We are not, say you, fair maiden, 
 superstitions on that subject : well, then, that being the case, 
 we will tell you on which day to do the deed : if it has been 
 already enacted : we subjoin a little advice gratis : 
 
 1^0 w list the oracle : " On Monday, for wealth ; Tuesday, 
 for health ; Wednesday, the best day of all ; Thursday for 
 crosses ; Friday, for losses, — Saturday, no luck at all ! " 
 
CURIOUS AXD COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 " Books are the immortal sons deiiymg their sires."— 7*to?o. 
 
 "With what rapt enthusiasm will the confirmed bibliomaniac 
 pounce upon, and pore over the scarce legible pages of some 
 antique mouldering manuscript ; or clutch, with miser grasp, 
 a black-letter tome of the olden time. This feeling, though 
 peculiar in its intensity to the class referred to, is yet possessed 
 in degree by most who prefer any claims to a literary taste. 
 An attachment or veneration for books — for books that are 
 books — if not a conclusive test of all mental refinement, is at 
 least its rarely absent concomitant. In the companionship of 
 
 BiiiaAiia^^A'jiliirAi'-MV- v - ■■/',' t 
 
 . ■...*^. 
 
106 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 books, how many immunities do we enjoy, which are denied to us 
 in our intercourse with men : — with unobtrusive modesty, they 
 trespass not upon ns, unbidden guests, nor do they ever out- 
 stay their welcome. When it is remembered, that books pre- 
 sent ns with the quintessence of the most cultivated minds, 
 freed, to a great extent, from the alloy of human passion and 
 weakness, and that they are the media of our acquiring the 
 closest proximity and communion with the spirits of the great 
 and good of all ages, it cannot surprise us that books should 
 become such universal favorites. With the historian, for in- 
 stance, we lose sight of our own common-place existence, as 
 we become fired with the enthusiasm of the apparently more 
 noble and illustrious achievements of the mighty dead; or 
 traverse with the poet the glowing fields of his own ideal 
 world, peopled with the bright creations of fancy ; while, if in 
 more sober mood, we may gather from the grave teacher of 
 ethics the collective wisdom and experience of the past. 
 " Talk of the necromancer of old, with his wand, his charms, 
 and his incantations; what is he to an author? His charm is, 
 that we lift the cover of his book ; his incantation is its pref- 
 ace — his wand, the pen ; but what can equal their power ? 
 The spell is upon us ; the actual world around us is gone." * 
 Honor, then, to those gifted ones who can thus delight and in- 
 struct us ; no praise or reward can be overpaid to them while 
 they are amongst us, nor any homage too great when they have 
 passed away. " The works of an author are his embalmed 
 mind ; and grateful to the student's eye are the well-under- 
 stood hieroglyphics on this mental mummy-case, that tell of the 
 worthy preserved therein. What was the extolled art of the 
 Egyptians to this ? Mind and matter — the poet and the mon- 
 arch — Homer and King Cheops ! " 
 
 * Clianniiig. 
 
CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 107 
 
 " There they reign 
 (In loftier pomp than working life had known,) 
 The kings of thought ! — not crowned until the grave. 
 When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb, 
 The beggar Homer mounts the monarch's throne I 
 
 Who of us can teU 
 
 What he had been, had Cadmus never taught 
 
 To man the magic that embalms the thought, — 
 
 Had Plato never spoken from his cell. 
 
 Or his high harp blind Homer never strung ? — 
 
 Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspeare sung ? " * 
 
 At that magic word, — Boohs — what vivid retrospections of 
 bygone years — what summer days of unalloyed happiness, 
 when life was new, — rush on the memory. Who, in recalling 
 the past, does not delight to refer to the pleasures he has ex- 
 perienced in the perusal of some favorite author ? Such inci- 
 dents occur to most, and they constitute bright episodes in the 
 drama of life. Who, in early youth, has not been lost to all 
 external things in the rapt enjoyment of those delectable 
 emanations of genius — The Arabian Nights, Rohinson Crusoe, 
 and the Pilgrim) s Progress, — books of such singular interest 
 as to render them universal favorites. 
 
 " Books are a guide in youth and an entertainment for age," 
 says an old writer ; '^ they support us under solitude, and keep 
 us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to for- 
 get the crossness of men and things, and 'compose our cares 
 and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep." Books 
 are the fruits and flowers which intellectual husbandry culls 
 from the fields of imagination and reflection ; well-springs from 
 the fountains of truth ; or the pearls and precious metals that 
 are produced from the mental crucible. Deprived of these 
 treasuries of knowledge and wisdom, we should pine for that 
 literary aliment, which is as essential to our mental economy, 
 
 * Bulwer Lytton. 
 
108 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 as is animal food to our physical well-being. They constitute 
 the electric chain, that connects and circulates the mental mag- 
 netism of our social life. They are the links that unite the 
 past with the present, and spread out before us the collective 
 intelligence of all time. In the words of an old poet — 
 
 " Books are a part of man's prerogative, 
 
 In formal ink, they form and voices hold, 
 That we to them our solitude may give. 
 And make time present travel that of old." 
 
 Good books, moreover, beguile the sad and sorrowing of 
 their griefs, and especially the Book of books, that binds both 
 worlds, and conducts the pilgrim, as did the pillar of cloud 
 and fire the Israelites of old, to the promised land. 
 
 "Our religion itself is founded in books," says Bartholin, 
 " and without them God is silent, justice dormant, physic at a 
 stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved 
 in Cimmerian darkness." 
 
 " I confess myself an idolater of this literary religion, and 
 am grateful for the blessed ministry of books. It is a kind of 
 heathenism which needs no missionary funds, no Bible even, to 
 abolish it ; for the Bible itself caps the peak of this new Olym- 
 pus, and crowns it with sublimity and glory. Amongst the 
 many things we have to be thankful for, as the result of mod- 
 ern discoveries, surely this of printed books is the highest of 
 all ; and I for one am so sensible of its merits, that I never 
 think of the name of Guttenberg without feelings of venera- 
 tion and homage." * 
 
 The literary history of books, although in itself fraught 
 with peculiar interest, as exhibiting the progress of the human 
 mind and science, is yet rather collateral to our subject than 
 directly in its line ; since we propose merely to notice some of 
 
 * Searle's Essay. 
 
CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 109 
 
 the more notable specimens of ancient and modern bibliogra- 
 
 In his curious chapter on early manuscripts, D'Israeli gives 
 the following ludicrous anecdote, illustrative of the pious hor- 
 ror in which the classics were held by the monks. To read a 
 profane author was deemed by the communities not only a very 
 idle recreation, but even regarded by some as a grave offence. 
 To distinguish them, therefore, they invented a disgraceful 
 sign: when a monk inquired for any pagan author, after mak- 
 ing the general sign they used in their manual and silent lan- 
 guage, when they wanted a book, he added a particular one, 
 which consisted in scratching under his ear, as a dog is accus- 
 tomed to do with his paw, " because," said they, '^ an unbeliev- 
 er is compared to a dog" ! In this manner they expressed an 
 itching for those dogs — Virgil and Horace, l^otwithstand- 
 ing the odium with which the writings of these despised 
 heathens were treated by some, there were others of a later 
 date, to be found willing to become their possessors even at 
 enormous cost. The transfer of an estate was sometimes not 
 withheld to secure the boon; while the disposal of a manu- 
 script was considered an event of such importance as to require 
 a public record. Louis XI., in 1471, was compelled to pledge 
 a hundred golden crowns in order to obtain the loan even of 
 the MSS. of an Arabian scribe, named Basis. 
 
 Numerous other instances might be cited of a similar class, 
 during the middle ages. For example. Stow informs us that, 
 in 1274, a Bible in nine volumes, finely written, " sold for fifty 
 markes," something like thirty pounds sterling of that time, 
 when ordinary laboring wages were a penny a day. This 
 Bible was afterwards bought by the Earl of Salisbury, after 
 having been taken from the King of France, at the battle of 
 Poictiers. The Countess of Anjou is also said to have paid for 
 
110 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 a copy of the Homilies of Bishop Huiman two hundred sheep, 
 and other articles of barter. 
 
 Parnarme, writing to the King of Naples, says, " You lately 
 wrote me from Florence that the works of Titus Livius are 
 there to be sold, in very handsome books, and that the price of 
 each is one hundred and twenty crowns of gold. Therefore I 
 entreat your majesty that you cause the same to be bought ; 
 and one thing I want to know of your prudence, whether I or 
 Poggius have done best, — he, that he might buy a country 
 house near Florence, sold Livy, which he had writ in a very 
 line hand ; or I, that I might purchase the books, have exposed 
 a piece of land for sale ? " 
 
 In Spain, books were formerly so exceedingly scarce, that 
 one and the same Bible often served for the use of several 
 monasteries. And even the library at Paris down to the four- 
 teenth century possessed only four of the classic authors, — 
 Cicero, Lucan, Ovid, and Boethius. 
 
 Previous to the invention of type printing, raised words 
 were cut on a block of wood, impressions from which were 
 taken ; and in this way was produced the Biblia Pauperum 
 of the fourteenth century. It consisted of about forty leaves 
 of texts bound together, and was intended, probably, either as 
 a help to the preacher, or the catechumen. 
 
 A Saxon king once gave away an estate of eight hundred 
 acres of land for a single volume, entitled " Cosmography ; or, 
 The History of the World : " such was the scarcity and value 
 of books in those times. A book was often entailed with as 
 much solemnity as the most valuable estate : thus, at the com- 
 mencement of a breviary of the Bible, there is a memorial, by 
 the donor, the Bishop of Lincoln, of its bestowment to the 
 " library built in the church," etc. 
 
 Books were deemed of such value in those times, that they 
 were often pledged to learned societies, upon which a deposit 
 
CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. Ill 
 
 was required. Oxford had a chest for books thus pledged, 
 which, if not redeemed by a given day, became the property of 
 the University. In the year 1174, one Walter Prior pur- 
 chased of the monks at Winchester, Beds' s Homilies and St. 
 Austin's Psalter, for twelve measures of barley and a pall, on 
 which was embroidered in silver, the history of Birinas con- 
 verting a Saxon king. About the year 1255, Boger de Insula, 
 Dean of York, gave several Latin Bibles to the University of 
 Oxford, on condition that the student who perused them should 
 deposit a cautionary pledge. 
 
 The scarcity of parchment was one of the principal causes 
 of the destruction of ancient manuscripts ; since it led to the 
 erasure of the more ancient, in order to make the vellum again 
 available. These were known as palimpsests. This barbar- 
 ous practice prevailed most during the three or four centuries 
 which preceded the revival of learning, 'in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. Cardinal Mai is believed to have discovered a process 
 for recovering these obliterated MSS. 
 
 The earliest of illuminated manuscripts are probably the 
 Virgil and Terence in the Library of the Vatican ; and the 
 Homer in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. There exists only 
 one manuscript of Tacitus, it is believed, which was discovei-ed 
 in a monastery in Westphalia. In the Imperial Library at 
 Paris, is the papyrus of Assa, supposed to date about two thou- 
 sand years b.c. 
 
 The literary treasures of antiquity suffered much from the 
 barbaric hordes, which overran Europe in the fifth and sixth 
 centuries. 
 
 A learned antiquary observes : " Of the history of Polybius, 
 which once contained forty books, we have now only five. Of 
 the historical library of Diodorus Siculus, fifteen books only 
 remain out of forty, and half of the Koman antiquities of 
 Dionysius Halicarnassus have perished. Of the eighty books 
 
 IWiiteiyiMk^rfn'y-ti^iffiV ^ ^ri r.t ii^i- 
 
112 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 of the history of Dion Cassius, twenty-five only remain. Livy's 
 history consisted of one hundred and forty books, and we 
 only possess thirty-five of that historian." 
 
 During the early epochs of the Christian era, literature under- 
 went the most devastating vicissitudes; religious intolerance 
 and fanaticism destroyed some of the most precious annals of 
 the past. Jew, Christian, and Pagan alike vented their malice 
 on the productions of genius. 
 
 Said Omar, " Either these books are in conformity with the 
 Koran^ or they are not : if they are, they are useless ; and if 
 not, they are evil : in either event, therefore, let them be de- 
 stroyed." Such was the logic that devoted to destruction seven 
 hundred thousand manuscript volumes of the Alexandrian 
 library ! 
 
 The earliest public library of which we have any record 
 was that of Osymandyas, who reigned in Egypt six hundred 
 years after the deluge. That of Pisistratus, in Athens, dates 
 five hundred and fifty years b.c. The next was the great Alex- 
 andrian collection ; then followed, in the order of time, the 
 several great libraries of Europe. 
 
 Among the earliest illuminated MSS., we may mention the 
 renowned Codex Arganteus^ so named from its being written 
 in liquid silver, upon violet-colored vellum. It is a magnifi- 
 cent specimen of its kind, and is further remarkable as being 
 the only extended specimen of the Moeso-Gothic known to exist. 
 It exhibits a very close resemblance to printing, although exe- 
 cuted nearly a thousand years prior to the discovery of the art. 
 This choice literary relic was first discovered in the Benedic- 
 tine Abbey of Worden, in Westphalia, about the year 1587 ; it 
 subsequently passed into the possession of Queen Christine, of 
 Sweden, then into that of Yossius, and was finally purchased 
 by a northern Count, Gabriel de la Gardie, for £250, and by 
 him presented to the University of Upsala. 
 
CUmOtJS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 113 
 
 Within a few years, an ancient MS. copy of a portion of 
 the IS'ew Testament, written in the Francic language, has been 
 discovered at Rheims Cathedral. Its date is the eleventh cen- 
 tury ; and is supposed to have been used in administering the 
 coronation oath to the kings of France. Bede speaks of a 
 magnificent copy of the Gospels in letters of the purest gold, 
 upon leaves of purple parchment. So costly a mode of pro- 
 ducing manuscripts could not have become general in any age ; 
 accordingly we find these magnificent specimens were expressly 
 executed for the nobles and princes of their times, or the 
 higher dignitaries of the Church. An instance of this is to be 
 seen in the superb Prayer Boole, of a like description with 
 the foregoing, with the addition of its binding, which was of 
 pure ivory, studded with gems, and, we believe, is yet extant 
 in the celebrated Colbertine library. 
 
 We next meet with the magnificent Bible, presented by his 
 favorite preceptor, Alcuin, librarian to the Archbishop of 
 York, to the great Charlemagne, after he had learned to read 
 and write / (for, although among the wisest men of his age, he 
 even commenced his educational course at the tender as^e of 
 forty-five.) This remarkable copy of the Bible was in folio 
 size, richly bound in velvet; its embellishments were of the 
 most superb description, its frontispiece being brilliantly orna- 
 mented with gold and colors, and its text relieved by emblem- 
 atic devices, pictures, initial letters, etc. This curious relic 
 produced at auction, in 1836, the sum of fifteen hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 In our bibliographical researches, we notice many striking 
 illustrations of the indefatigable perseverance and ingenuity 
 of the middle ages. One of the most conspicuous instances of 
 the kind upon record is that of Guido de Jars, who devoted 
 upwards of half a century to the production of a manuscript 
 copy of the sacred Scriptures, beautifully written and illumi- 
 8 
 
114 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 iiated. He began it in his fortieth year, and did not finish it 
 until his ninetieth (1294). Few who have inspected such rare 
 specimens of monkish taste and toil fail to be struck with their 
 exceeding beauty. 
 
 One of the most celebrated books in the annals of biblio- 
 graphy is the richly illuminated Missal, executed for the Duke 
 of Bedford, Eegent of France in 1430. This rare volume is 
 eleven inches long, seven and a half wide ; it contains fifty- 
 nine large illuminations and above one thousand of smaller 
 size, displayed in brilliant borders of golden foliage, with varie- 
 gated flowers, richly colored and illuminated letters, etc. This 
 relic, after passing through various hands, descended to the 
 Duchess of Portland, whose valuable collection was sold by 
 auction in 1786, when George III. ordered his librarian to bid 
 up to two hundred guineas for it ; but a celebrated collector, 
 Mr. Edwards, purchased the coveted relic, by adding three 
 pounds more. It was subsequently sold, by auction, at Edwards' 
 sale in 1815, and purchased by the Duke of Marlborough, for 
 the enormous sum of £637 15^. sterling ! 
 
 Amongst the numerous, rare, and costly relics contained in 
 the library of the Vatican, is the magnificent Latin Bible, of 
 the Duke of Urbino ; it consists of two large folios, embellished 
 by numerous figures and landscapes, in the ancient arabesque, 
 and is considered a wonderful monument of art. There are 
 also some autograph MS. of Petrarch's "i?^m^," which evince 
 to what an extent he elaborated his versification. The muti- 
 lated parchment scroll, thirty-two feet in length, literally 
 covered w^ith beautiful miniatures, representing the history 
 of Joshua, ornamenting a Greek MS. bearing date about the 
 seventh century, is, perhaps, the greatest literary curiosity of 
 the Vatican. The Menologus, or Greek Calendar, illustrated 
 by four hundred brilliant miniatures, representing the martyr- 
 dom of the saints of the Greek Church, with views of the 
 
CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 115 
 
 churches, monasteries, etc., is also curious, as presenting speci- 
 mens of the Byzantium school. 
 
 Olfric, the Saxon monk, deserves especial mention as having 
 achieved the good work of rendering portions of the Old Tes- 
 tament into his vernacular tongue. "Whosoever," says he, 
 " shall write out this boke, let him write it according to the 
 Coptic, and for God's love, correct it, that it be not faultie, lest 
 he thereby be discredited and I shent." This worthy died 
 A.D. 1006, at St. Albans; his bones were, in the reign of 
 Canute, removed to Canterbury. Lanfranc was another labo- 
 rious and erudite scribe, to whose industrious toils the Chris- 
 tian world owes much ; and which the perils from prejudices 
 and pious frauds, during eight centuries of superstition and 
 darkness, failed to destroy. He ultimately became primate of 
 England, and patron of its learning. Another eminent guar- 
 dian of the Bible was the worthy Bishop Anselm. It was a 
 noble design on the part of the first printers to rescue from 
 threatened annihilation the great classic works of antiquity. 
 Many of these, as already said, are irretrievably lost ; and those 
 we now possess narrowly escaped a similar fate. The preser- 
 vation of the Holy Scriptures, however, may undoubtedly be 
 regarded as having been effected through the special interven- 
 tion of Divine Providence. It is on this account that the 
 integrity of the sacred text is regarded as unimpeachable, and 
 its canonical records complete. Distributed in fragments, 
 which were hidden in obscure recesses of monasteries and 
 cloisters, it may well provoke our wonder, that, notwithstand- 
 ing the fierce and continued violence of its professed opponents, 
 this inestimable treasure should yet have descended to us thus 
 complete and perfect. 
 
 There were upwards of six thousand early copies of the 
 Bible or portions of the Sacred Scriptures, in various languages, 
 in the library of the late Duke of Sussex. 
 
 |i|i||g||lfi||ir|if«^^ 
 
116 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 Besides sixteen vellum copies of the Yulgate, there were two 
 manuscript Bibles, profusely embellished with about one hun- 
 dred exquisite miniatures, in gold and colors. In another copy 
 there were nearly fifty illustrative drawings, of a very curious 
 description, one of which represented Adam delving and his 
 spouse spinning ! There is no " note " to indicate the name of 
 the maker of the spinning-wheel. The Duke's rich collection 
 comprised some French, Italian, and Spanish Bibles ; and also an 
 Italian manuscript, entitled " Historia de V"ecchio Testamento," 
 which is decorated with about five hundred and twenty minia- 
 tures. It contained in addition a choice copy of the Bible once 
 Queen Elizabeth's, which she herself embroidered with silver ; 
 and another in Arabic, which once belonged to Tippoo Saib. 
 
 Horace Walpole's collection, at Strawberry Hill, deserves a 
 passing allusion. The proceeds of the auction sale of this costly 
 library produced nearly thirty-eight thousand pounds. Among 
 its numerous objects of virtu was a magnificent missal, per- 
 fectly unique, and superbly illuminated, being enriched with 
 splendid miniatures by Raffaelle, set in pure gold and enamel- 
 led, and richly adorned with turquoises, rubies, etc. The sides 
 are formed of two matchless cornelians, with an intaglio of the 
 crucifixion, and another Scripture subject ; the clasp is set with 
 a large garnet. This precious relic was executed expressly for 
 Claude, Queen of France ; it was bought by the Earl Walde- 
 grave for one hundred and fifteen guineas. Another curious 
 and costly specimen of bibliography was a sumptuous volume, 
 pronounced by the cognoscenti one of the most wonderful 
 works of art extant, containing the Psalms of David written on 
 vellum, embellished by twenty-one inimitable illuminations sur- 
 rounded by exquisite scroll borders of the purest arabesque, of 
 unrivalled brilliancy. Its binding is of corresponding splendor. 
 Its date is about 1537. This little gem produced the sum of 
 four hundred and twenty guineas. 
 
CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 117 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, it appears fromDibdin, was a bibliomaniac 
 of transcendent fame ; her " Oone Gospell Booke, garnished 
 on th' onside with the crucifix," etc., is a precious object to the 
 virtuoso. It was the composition of Queen Catherine Parr, 
 and was enclosed in solid gold ; it hung by a gold chain at her 
 side, and was the frequent companion of the " Yirgin Queen." 
 In her own handwriting at the beginning of the volume, the 
 following quaint lines appear ; " I walke many times into the 
 pleasaunt fieldes of the Holie Scriptures, where I plucke up the 
 goodliesome herbes of sentences by pruning ; eate them by 
 readinge ; chawe them by musing; and laye them up at length 
 in ye state of memorie by gathering them togetlier ; that so, 
 having tasted their sweeteness, I may the lesse perceave the bit- 
 ternesse of this miserable life." This was penned by the 
 Queen, probably while she was in captivity at Woodstock, as the 
 spirit it breathes affords a singular contrast to the towering 
 haughtiness of her ordinary deportment. • A melancholy inter- 
 est attaches to everything connected with the career of the hap- 
 less Mary of Scots ; accordingly, we find great value is placed 
 on the missal presented to the Queen by Pius Y., and which 
 accompanied her to the scaffold. The illuminations are said to 
 be of extreme beauty. We read of a magnificent missal, nearly 
 three feet in height, still extant in the library at Rouen, which 
 occupied the labor of a monkish devotee upwards of thirty years. 
 D'Israeli also refers to a huge copy of the Koran — probably 
 without a parallel, as to its size, in the annals of letters. The 
 characters are described as three inches long ; the book itself a 
 foot in thickness, and its other dimensions five feet by three. 
 
 The celebrated Yaldarfer's (first) edition of Boccaccio^ s 
 Decameron, — only one complete copy of which is believed to 
 exist, — owes its preservation to the ingenuity of its first posses- 
 sor ; who, during the crusade against classic literature, had it 
 lettered, — " Concilium Tridentinum " / This copy became, 
 
118 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 in 1812 at an auction sale, the object of an animated contest 
 between the Duke of Marlborough and Earl Spencer, when it 
 became the property of the former. Some years after, Lord 
 Spencer bought it, at the sale of the Marlborough library, for 
 the sum of £875 ! Among the rare literary treasures in the 
 Spencerian library, may be named the ^ve splendid folios of 
 Shakspeare's historical plays, profusely illustrated by the 
 band of the Countess of Lucan, who devoted sixteen years of 
 pleasure-toil to the completion of this magnificent work. The 
 richly colored illuminations are from the best authorities, and 
 consist of historic scenes and portraits. Dibdin speaks of this 
 matchless production as " ablaze with gold and brilliant colors, 
 from beginning to end " ! 
 
 Antoine Zarot, an eminent printer at Milan, about 1470, was 
 the first on record who printed the missal. Among other 
 works his execution in colors of the celebrated Missale Roma- 
 num in folio, afforded a beautiful specimen of the art. The 
 manuscript copy seems to have been of a most dazzling descrip- 
 tion ; every leaf is appropriately ornamented with miniatures, 
 surrounded with exquisitely elaborated borders. Its almost in- 
 numerable initials, which are richly illuminated in gold and 
 colors, render it unsurpassed by any known production of its 
 class. It has been estimated at 250 guineas. The Comjolu- 
 tensian Polyglott, otherwise known as Cardinal Ximenes', 
 deserves a passing notice among the renowned books of by- 
 gone times. This prodigious work was commenced under the 
 auspices of the above-named prelate in 1502, and for fifteen 
 years the labor was continued without intermission ; its entire 
 cost amounted to 50,000 golden crowns ! Of the four large 
 vellum copies, one is in the Vatican, another in the Escurial, 
 and a third was bought at the sale of the McCarthy library, for 
 600 guineas. 
 
 About 1572 we meet with another splendid production — 
 
CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 119 
 
 the Spanish Pohjglott^ printed by Christopher Plantin. A most 
 magnificent copy upon vellum, in the original binding, was sold 
 in London some thirty years since, for one thousand guineas ! 
 and enormous as was this price, the copy was imperfect, want- 
 ing three out of the ten volumes. 
 
 Bowyer, the well-known publislier, devoted the leisure hours 
 of nearly a lifetime, in illustrating a copy of Macldin's 
 folio Bible, which on his death was put up at lottery among 
 four thousand subscribers at a guinea each. It contained seven 
 thousand engravings ; bound in forty-five folio volumes ! 
 
 Another indefatigable collector, Mr. Bell, of Manchester, 
 has even surpassed Bowyer, in the same department. This 
 copy was illustrated with nearly ten thousand engravings, and 
 about eleven hundred original drawings and photographs, to- 
 gether with 360 specimen leaves of old and rare editions of the 
 Holy Scriptures. This sumptuous work cornprises sixty-three 
 large folio volumes ! 
 
 A copy of Clarendon^ s '■'History of the Rebelliori!'' was 
 copiously illustrated by Mr. Sutherland, of London, at an ex- 
 pense of nearly ten thousand pounds ! This work, together 
 with Burnet'' s " Reformation^'' containing nineteen thou- 
 sand engravings and drawings, — both, the result of forty years' 
 labor, — are now among the rarities of tlie Bodleian Library, 
 Oxford. These superb works form sixty-seven uniform vol- 
 umes. Another bibliophile, Mr. G. H. Freeling, illustrated a 
 copy of the " Bihliographical Decameron^'* extending it from 
 three to eleven volumes, which Dibdin considered the most stu- 
 pendous triumph of book-ardor with which he was acquainted. 
 
 The well-known names of John Nicholls and John Boydell, 
 publishers of London, take prominent rank among the pro- 
 ducers of splendid books ; — they have the credit of having ex- 
 pended the princely sum of £350,000 in fostering and improv- 
 ing the sister arts of painting and engraving. Their magnificent 
 
120 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 " Shahspeare Gallery " is even to this day a noble raonnment 
 of their enterprise and skill. The gigantic speculation unfor- 
 tunately failed, superinducing a loss to its projectors of over 
 £100,000. Every one has probably heard of Dugdale's '-'Ifon- 
 asticon AngliGanum^'' in eight huge folios, illustrated. 
 
 Murphy's " Arabian Antiquities of Sjpain^'^ a beautiful 
 specimen of art, cost ten thousand guineas in its execution. 
 Its exquisite line engravings discover wonderful Unish. The 
 splendid ceremonial of the coronation of George lY., under 
 the superintendence of the late Sir George Naylor, of the 
 Herald's College, furnishes another illustrious instance of costly 
 bibliography. JSTotwithstanding the grant of the government 
 of £5,000 towards the expenses, the undertaking also was a 
 great pecuniary failure. It contained a series of magnificent 
 paintings of the royal procession, banquet, etc., comprehending 
 faithful portraits of the leading personages. The subscription 
 price of a copy of the work was fifty guineas. 
 
 Some years ago, a typographical wonder was exhibited in 
 London, being a sumptuous edition of the New Testament, 
 printed in gold, on porcelain paper of the most immaculate 
 beauty, and, for the first time, on both sides. Two years were 
 occupied in perfecting the work. Only one hundred copies 
 were taken off. 
 
 The . far-famed Greeh Testament of Erasmus, printed at 
 Basle, 1519, but one copy of which is now known to exist, is 
 in the cathedral of York. That renowned collector, Sir Mark 
 Sykes, was refused the purchase of this rarity at the prodigious 
 offer of one thousand guineas. 
 
 The most costly undertaking ever attempted by a single in- 
 dividual, of a literary character, which unquestionably the 
 world has yet seen, is the magnificent work on " Mexico^'' by 
 Lord Kingsborough. This stupendous work is said to have 
 been produced at an enormous cost to the author. It is com- 
 
CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 121 
 
 prised in seven immense folio volumes, embellished by about 
 one thousand colored illustrations. An item of sad interest is 
 connected with the publication of this remarkable work. After 
 devoting the princely sum of £60,000 to its production, such 
 was his enthusiasm in the work, that he became involved in 
 debt on its account, and ultimately died in debt. 
 
 Perhaps, the greatest bibliographic monument ever erected 
 to any author is Halliwell's superb edition of Shakspeare, in 
 seventeen splendid folio volumes. 
 
 Audubon's great work on the " Birds of America " is the 
 grandest monument of art, of its class, ever produced. These 
 plates, representing the birds, — from the eagle to the humming- 
 bird, — are all life-size, and carefully colored. The engravings 
 were executed in London, at a cost of twenty thousand pounds. 
 The original drawings have been deposited with the New 
 York Historical Society. There are so many great works of 
 art, and archaeological research, that we can but name them 
 briefly. DanieVs Oriental Scenery, with one hundred and 
 fifty large folio colored drawings, of the ruins of Delhi, Ele- 
 phanta, and Lucknow ; Champollion^ s Egypt, four folio vol- 
 umes ; Na2)oleorC s great work on Egyptian Antiquities, ten 
 folio volumes, a monument of unrivalled magnificence, until 
 Lejpsiui superb work on the same subject made its appear- 
 ance, in twelve atlas folios. PiranesVs sumptuous works on 
 Roman Antiquities, in twenty-one folio volumes, published at 
 Venice, 1778, is an exhaustless treasury of classic art. Perefs 
 Catacombs of Pome, in five folios, is another superb produc- 
 tion — unrivalled in its department. Another great pictorial 
 wonder is, Sylvestre^s Paleographie Universelle, in four folio 
 volumes, enriched with three hundred brilliant illuminations, 
 fac-similes of the most sumptuous of mediaeval manuscripts. 
 Yet other works of this class are Owen Jones's Illuminated 
 Books of the Middle Ages, folio ; and Count Bastard's work 
 
122 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 on the same subject, still more lavishly enriched with gold, 
 silver, and brilliantly colored illustrations. Many other great 
 Governmental works have been published, such as that by the 
 Emperor of Kussia, entitled " Lea Pewples de la Russie^'^ and 
 ZahrCs Pomjpeii, in three elephant folios, an instance of lavish 
 devotion to art. But it is impossible to enumerate more, within 
 these prescribed limits. 
 
 Then there are those great galleries of engravings, from the 
 Louvre and elsewhere, — the spoils of the Napoleonic campaigns 
 — the Musee Frangais^ and Musee Eoyal, making six folio 
 volumes. The splendid work of Pistolesi, II Vaticano, in 
 seven royal folios, containing seven hundred pictures, is worthy 
 of note ; and Count LittcDs Noble Families of Italy, printed in 
 princely style at the count's palace, forming five large folio 
 volumes. This superb work is enriched with numerous illum- 
 inations and colored portraits, like ivory miniatures. Splendid 
 as are these costly productions, they are surpassed by some 
 others; such as RaphaeVs Loggie, three folios, — comprising 
 fac-similes of the magnificent frescos of the Vatican, by this 
 prince of painters. 
 
 Some old books, like old wines, acquire an increased value in 
 proportion to their age. The best copy extant of Caxton's edition 
 of Gower's "Z>6 Confessione Amantis " — one of the rarest of 
 early printed books, was purchased by a Dublin bookseller, in 
 1832, with some unimportant volumes, for a mere trifle ; and 
 was sold afterwards for upwards of three hundred pounds ! 
 It is now in the celebrated collection of Lord Spencer, at Al- 
 thorp. The mania for old books still exists in full force, both 
 in the old world and the new. Among celebrated collectors of 
 early and later times, might be named Richard de Bury, au- 
 thor of " Philobiblion," who is supposed to have had the largest 
 library in all England ; Archhishojp Usher / Sir Thomas Bod- 
 ley, the first founder of a public library ; Francis Douce / John 
 
CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 123 
 
 Evelyn^ in whose library was found the Prayer-hooh which 
 Charles I. used as he was led to the scaffold at Whitehall ; 
 Montaigne, the essaj- ist ; Olclys, the antiquary ; Dr. Parr / 
 Heher ; Dr. Kloss, of Frankfort ; the Duke of Sussex, 
 whose collections were so rich in Biblical rarities ; the costly 
 library of Earl Spencer, which Dihdin has so ably chronicled ; 
 and lastly that of Southey, the voluminous penman and poet. 
 
 The richest hindings belong to the age of Charlemagne, 
 and a century or two later. The decorations partook of the 
 barbaric splendor of those days. One such volume presented 
 by that sovereign to the cathedral at Treves, is enriched with 
 Roman ivories and decorative gems. Our American literary 
 collectors have been not a few, but to mention two or three will 
 suffice : James Lenox, who has projected a magnificent library 
 — possibly to compete ultimately with the renowned Astor 
 Library. Mr. Lenox's collection includes many rarities, and the 
 only copy in America of the* Mazarine Bible — so called from 
 its having been discovered in the cardinal's library. It is the 
 first book printed with metal types, and cost $2,500. The 
 Astor Library comprises about one hundred and fifty thousand 
 volumes ; a large proportion of which consists of the most 
 valuable national productions of the various countries of Eu- 
 rope — works not to be found elsewhere in America. Several 
 other gentlemen have or had rich private libraries : Sparks / 
 Ticknor, of Boston ; Broum, of Providence ; Peter Force, of 
 Washington, and Barlow, of New York. 
 
 Here, then, we terminate our rambles among the literary 
 spoils of past ages, garnered in our great libraries, all over the 
 world. We have not, however, noted a tithe, nay, a hundredth 
 part, of these art-treasures ; and what we have glanced at, in- 
 deed, seem but just enough to cause us, with " Oliver Twist," to 
 " call for more." Let us, then, with CJianning thank God for 
 books. " They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and 
 
124 
 
 CURIOUS AND COSTLY BOOKS. 
 
 make us heirs of the sph-itual life of past ages. Books are the 
 true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, 
 the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of 
 our race. No matter how poor I am ; no matter how obscure 
 my dwelling, if the sacred writers will enter and take up their 
 abode under my roof. If Milton will sing to me of Paradise, 
 and Shakspeare open to me the worlds of imagination and the 
 workings of the human heart, and Franklin enrich me with his 
 practical wisdom, I shall not pine for intellectual companion- 
 ship." 
 
SOMETHIlSrG ABOUT NOTHIKG. 
 
 Scholar, — nothing is not something, or anj^thing; and, 
 although it sounds like a self-evident proposition, yet we are 
 bold to affirm, that nothing is nothing. Wherever something 
 is not, there is nothing ; yet so far from its being a mere non- 
 entity, nothing is often the result of much laborious scholastic 
 and literary effort. It might be deemed, perchance, an im- 
 pertinence, or an infraction of modesty, to lay claim to such a 
 triumphant issue for this our humble essay ; but we are con- 
 soled by the reflection, that Fame's favorites are but few, and 
 her boasted chaplet of glory is really next to — nothing. 
 
 Some misguided mortals waste their whole time in the 
 
126 SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 fruitless pursuit of nothing ; and they are successful in the 
 accomplishment of their purpose. Charles Lamh, who was 
 a lover of elegant leisure, once lazily remarked that " the 
 best thing a man can have to do is nothing / and next to that, 
 perhaps, good works ! " " Masterly inactivity " is the distin- 
 guishing characteristic of some persons, who think it the best 
 way of getting through life : yet we are told that laboriously 
 doing nothing actually resulted in the death of the renowned 
 Marshal Turenne. 
 
 This invisible nothing is said to fill an exhausted receiver ; 
 and that it is all the same whether it be an empty tumbler, an 
 empty purse, or an empty head. 
 
 The antiquity of nothing is something considerable, far 
 exceeding that of everything else; for it is evident that if 
 nothing did not go before, something could not follow. 
 
 Even the eleemosynary tendencies of some individuals result 
 in nothing ; as the case of a certain party, of whom some dona- 
 tion was solicited, clearly attests. " Charity's a private con- 
 cern," said he ; " other gentlemen puts down what they thinks 
 proper, and so do I ; and what I gives, is — nothing to nobody " ! 
 
 Like the aforesaid, then, we offer nothing, and we trust we 
 shall not be deemed penurious or illiberal, since, if nothing 
 is bestowed, no obligation will be incurred ; and no apology 
 demanded. Everything is of some supposable value and 
 interest to somebody ; but nothing concerns nobody, and is of 
 no value ; yet out of nothing what marvels have sprung into 
 being. Of this remarkable negative noun^ — this cipher in 
 figures, this ghostly representative of vacuity, — so long min- 
 gling with our social existence, and yet so mythical, what 
 further can be affirmed that has not been already stated ? 
 Marvellous and mystical as it is, — ideal as it seems to be, — 
 nothing is yet real ; and, at any rate, it occupies our attention 
 
SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING. 127 
 
 at this present writing, or reading, and consequently we must 
 be, each of us, so far interested in discussing — nothing. 
 
 But to resume. Although most persons prefer something as 
 the theme of their discourse, by way of variety, and for the 
 sake of steering out of the beaten track, we still insist on 
 nothing. That the origin of this shadowless subject, like much 
 of our legendary lore, is enveloped in the mists of remote an- 
 tiquity, as well as shrouded in the obscurity of modern meta- 
 physics, will not be disputed. It will be further admitted that 
 nothing is a slender peg to hang any ideas upon ; it is pre- 
 mised, therefore, that the expectations of the reader, in this 
 respect, should be restrained within moderate limits, as other- 
 wise it is possible, from paucity of wit on our part, the present 
 attempt at its illustration may prove less than nothing. 
 
 Nothing, or no thing, is applied either as a noun or adjective 
 — stands for non-existence — non-entity or nihility (from the 
 Latin root nihil). Its antagonistic term is something ^ and, 
 although it is like comparing shadow with substance, yet, how- 
 ever invidious the comparison may pi^ve, we are of necessity 
 compelled to adopt the alternative. Talk of the mysteries of 
 metaphysics — what are they as contrasted with the inextricable 
 mazes of this strange, indescribable phantasm ? What, indeed, 
 can be affirmed of a thing that has no physical existence ? All 
 we can say of it is, that it is not extant, or in legal phrase — non 
 est inventus. In this dilemma, our only escape is to treat it nega- 
 tively ; this indeed seems perfectly consistent with the nature 
 and attributes of our ghostly subject. Again, nothing '^s noth- 
 ing ; not any-thing, but no-thing ; its history consequently is a 
 series of negations — ^no beginning — no existence — no end ; and 
 yet, paradoxical as it may sound, nothing is associated with 
 almost everything. It enters into all the sinuosities and diver- 
 sified circumstances of our social economy, as well as links itself 
 with the sublime story of the stellar firmament. In this view, 
 
128 SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 our intangible topic begins to assume a seemingly opaque form. 
 For example, the great globe we inhabit is suspended upon 
 nothing ; and as to its original substance, for aught we know to 
 the contrary, it was evoked into being by the Hat of its Divine 
 Author — out of nothing. And as it seems to have puzzled 
 astronomers to determine both the origin and destiny of the 
 moon, conjecture may not go widely astray, if a like mysteri- 
 ous paternity be assigned to that luminous orb the poets and 
 lovers so delight to celebrate. 
 
 ' ' The ancients have work'd upon each thing in nature, 
 Describ'd its variety, genius, and feature ; 
 They having exhausted all fancy could bring. 
 As nothing is left, why of nothing we sing. — 
 From nothing we came, and whatever our station, 
 To nothing we owe an immense obligation. 
 
 « " Thinking of nothing is some folk's enjoyment. 
 
 Doing of nothing is many's employment ; 
 The love of this nothing have some folks so strong 
 They say nothing — do nothing all the day long ; 
 Some pass their time nothing beginning, 
 By nothing losing, and by nothing winning ; 
 Nothing they buy, and nothing they sell. 
 Nothing they know, and nothing they tell. 
 
 ' ' Thus much in conclusion, we prove pretty plain : 
 Take nothing from nothing, there'U nothing remain ; 
 Thus with this nothing the time out we're spinning. 
 Nothing win sometimes set many folks grinning." 
 
 A certain English bishop, on a certain occasion, found, to his 
 surprise, placed on his pulpit, in lieu of his usual written ser- 
 mon, merely some sheets of blank paper — to wit, nothing. 
 His presence of mind, however, furnished him ample Tnaterial 
 — for he is said to have preached one of the best discourses he 
 ever delivered. He commenced by saying, " Here, my breth- 
 ren, is nothing ; and out of nothing God created the world " ! 
 
SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING. 129 
 
 Many a sermon lias ended in nothing, but this is the only in- 
 stance we remember in which nothing furnished its commence- 
 ment, its substance, and its close. Again, nothing is the very 
 life and soul of many spasmodic jokes. 
 
 Many things are poetically said to " end in smoke," more 
 may be truthfully said to result in nothing. How many bright 
 and cherished schemes of the devotees of mammon resolve 
 themselves into nothing ! The same may be predicated of the 
 plotting manoeuvres of designing dowagers in the game of 
 husband-hunting, of the hapless adventurer in pursuit of mat- 
 rimony "under difficulties," and of the golden visions of 
 deluded diggers at the auriferous sands of the Pacific. 
 
 Nothing seems to pervade almost every department of our 
 social existence. Many a man of opulence will boastingly as- 
 sure you, he began the world with nothing, and found it first- 
 rate capital ; another less favored of blind fate or fortune, 
 failing in the like experiment, deplores its delusive cheat, yet 
 still clinging to the deception, keeps next to nothing all his 
 life. 
 
 Every one, doubtless, remembers the story of the economic 
 individual, whose inventive wit brought his" horse to live upon 
 nothing — and, at the same time, to a finish of his existence. 
 If the famishing for the food animal complain of their im- 
 poverished condition, ought not our sympathies to be extended 
 towards those who, though luxuriously cared for in all other 
 respects, pine with intellectual starvation, — whose heads, in- 
 stead of being luminous with undying thoughts, present noth- 
 ing. The remark is no less applicable to the human heart — 
 the fabled shrine of the affections. What a pleasing and uni- 
 versal fiction is it to suppose that anything of the kind really 
 exists in that sentimental locality — at least, in many instances ! 
 Some, in their vain search for the mysterious organ, wishing to 
 take the most indulgent view of the matter, apologetically sug- 
 
130 SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 gest, in behalf of the " heartless," " that his heart cannot be 
 in the right place " — the stern truth being, that nothing is 
 there in its stead. 
 
 Have you ever known any expectant patiently linger and 
 long for the demise of some remarkable instance of longevity, 
 vainly hoping to share some pecuniary immunity ; yet all his 
 patience ending in — nothing ? There is, again, a class of bold 
 individuals who are astonished at nothing — they make noth- 
 ing of a trip across the Atlantic — the grand tour of Europe — 
 a voyage to the Celestials — or an expedition to the El Dorado 
 of the West. Such imperturbable spirits there are, who make 
 nothing of wearing a shabby coat and worse continuations — 
 nothing of breaking their word of honor — or of intruding with- 
 out permission into their neighbor's house, and under the 
 strange hallucination that orheum and tuum are convertible 
 terms, display their fancy in the selection and appropriation 
 of whatever they can most conveniently secure. Again, there 
 are frigid subjects who make nothing of the scorching rays of a 
 meridian summer sun ; others who place the like estimate upon 
 the withering blasts of a northern winter. Some, also, who act 
 as though the profession and acting out of a religious life were 
 nothing — and that time and eternity shared the like estimate. 
 But we shall weary the reader with rambling repetitions ; and 
 truth to say, we do not yet see " the beginning of the end " of our 
 topic. If we may take breath, and venture an anticipatory 
 conclusion, we should say that nothing is ecumenic — and that 
 it is not only antithetical with, but twin-brother of, something ; 
 for nothing negatively, is something — but positively — nothing ; 
 it is yet always in close proximity, or juxtaposition, with — 
 something. Nothing seems to possess advantages over meta- 
 physics, if not indeed over everything else — for the former ad- 
 dresses our reason merely, the latter our senses ; for we can sei 
 nothing. Who, hunting a ghost in a haunted room, or an\ 
 
SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING. 131 
 
 other wild-goose chase, has not returned answer, that lie 8aw 
 nothing ? Nothing may be heard, but only when everybody 
 and everything else is silent ; it may also be tasted — for who has 
 not heard the expressively laconic complaint from a dissatisfied 
 palate, that it tastes like nothing. The same may be predi- 
 cated of the senses of smelling and feeling. Some, as we be- 
 fore intimated, are impervious to feeling under any calamity ; 
 yet they feel nothing. Such is the immobility of others, that 
 the loss of property, character, friends, or relations, are all 
 nothing to them. 
 
 Some, again, love nothing; others, more amiable, hate it ; and 
 others, more bold, are said' to fear nothing. Some erudite 
 authors fill their ponderous pages in reality with — nothing. 
 "What, indeed, could afford more demonstrable evidence of its 
 verity than this present writing — nothing commenced it, noth- 
 ing continued it, and — nothing must close it ; and as this brings 
 us to the dilemma of its endless duration, we at once take ref- 
 uge in the following clever " summing up " of a sonnet by an 
 anonymous writer : 
 
 "Mysterious nothing ! how shall I define 
 
 Thy shapeless, baseless, placeless emptiness ; 
 Nor form, nor color, sound, nor size are thine, 
 
 Nor words, nor fingers, can thy voice express ; 
 But though we cannot thee to aught compare, 
 
 A thousand things to thee may likened he, 
 And though thou art with nobody nowhere, 
 
 Yet half mankind devote themselves to thee. 
 How many books thy history contain, 
 
 How many heads thy mighty plans pursue, 
 What lab'ring hands thy portion only gain, 
 
 What busybodies thy doiags only do ! 
 To thee the great, the proud, the giddy bend, 
 
 And, like my sonnet — all in nothing end." 
 
 We might here, perhaps, have effected a safe retreat from the 
 entanglement of our knotty topic, were we not desirous of aton- 
 
132 SOMETHma ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 ing for our trifliDg by an attempt to educe a moral from it. 
 Lest some should think we have proved the obverse of what we 
 proposed, and actually made nothing out of nothing, we are 
 frank to confess this is not what we designed, in the treat- 
 ment of this untenable and intractable topic. But to our moral. 
 
 Some unfortunate persons, there may be, who are accustomed 
 erroneously to construe the term we have so often played upon, 
 as synonymous with others of a very different signification. 
 
 For instance, those who are addicted to libations deep would 
 have you believe that intoxication is nothing, — so would the 
 purloin er, theft ; the profane, swearing : the indolent, industry ; 
 and the man of violence, murder. 
 
 " 'Tis nothing, says tlie fool; but, says his friend, 
 'Tis nothing, sir, will bring you to your end ! " 
 
 And this sagacious couplet ought to bring us to ours, — in the 
 words of a well-remembered classic author, which may be con- 
 strued according to the taste of the reader, without impugning 
 the modesty of the writer : 
 
 " Nihil tetigit non omavit ! " 
 
 Should the reader still be curious to see — nothing^ he has 
 only to close his eyes ; and if, in conclusion, he requires any 
 further description of the aforesaid, we sum all the testimony 
 by stating, that it is that which, 
 
 " The contented man desires; 
 The poor man has ; the rich requires ; 
 The miser gives ; the spendthrift saves ; 
 And all must carry to their graves." 
 
 In our analysis of nothing^ we ought not to forget its first 
 syllable no — the second syllable — thing^ may speak for itself. 
 Anything is not no-thing ; but a thing is a thing ; this is a 
 self-evident proposition. A contemporary * has so ably discussed 
 
 * Merchants' Ledger. 
 
 mm 
 
S03IETHING ABOUT NOTHING. 133 
 
 the little negation, that we take the liberty of presenting his 
 strictures to the reader : 
 
 " A very little word is Ifo. It is composed of but two let- 
 ters and only forms a syllable. In meaning it is so definite as 
 to defy misunderstanding. Young lips find its articulation 
 easy. Diminutive in size, evident in import, easy of utterance, 
 frequent in use, and necessary in ordinary speech, it seems one 
 of the simplest and most harmless of all words. Yet there are 
 those to whom it is almost a terror. Its sound makes them 
 afraid. They would expurgate it from their vocabulary if they 
 could. The little monosyllable sticks in their throat. Their 
 pliable and easy temper inclines them to conformity, and fre- 
 quently works their bane. Assailed by the solicitations of 
 pleasure they are sure to yield, for at once and resolutely they 
 will not repeat — JN'o. Plied with the intoxicating cup they sel- 
 dom overcome, for their facile nature refuses to express itself 
 in — iVb. Encountering temptation in the hard and duteous 
 path they are likely to falter and fall, for they have not bold- 
 ness to speak out the decided negative — Ifo. Amid the mists 
 of time, and involved in the labyrinthine mazes of error, they 
 are liable to forget eternal verities and join the ribald jest, for 
 they have not been accustomed to utter an emphatic — iVb. 
 
 " All the noble souls and heroes of history have held them- 
 selves ready, whenever it was demanded, to say — Wo. The 
 poet said — Nb^ to the sloth and indolence which consumed his 
 precious hours, and wove for himself in heavenly song a gar- 
 land of immortality. The martyred hosts said — Wo, to the 
 pagan powers that demanded a recantation of their faith, and 
 swift fi-om the fire and the torture their souls uprose to the 
 rewards and beatitude of heaven." 
 
 Wo-hody, seems by a natural afi&nity to belong to no-thing, 
 so something ought to be said about it. 
 
 N^obody is a most mischievous and meddlesome personage ; 
 
134: 
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 for he is often engaged in the perpetration of some marvellous 
 deeds. He is often guilty of arson, murder, and other grand 
 misdemeanors ; he stirs up strife, and severs firm friends. It is 
 also true that there are some " bright lights " in his character, 
 and occasionally he is nobly implicated in some noble acts of 
 beneficence. 
 
 Possibly, the foregoing talk about nothing may be deemed 
 very nonsensical ; and yet, a little nonsense is, sometimes, ad- 
 missible. Confectionery, at any rate, finds favor with the fair, 
 the sterner despise the dainty trifles. 
 
SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 • Mirth is the medicine of life, — 
 It cures its ills, it calms its strife ; 
 It softly smooths the brow of care, 
 And writes a thousand graces there. 
 
 It has been justly said tliat recreation, exactly considered, is 
 an advantage which few, if any, are willing altogether to forego, 
 and which the most severe philosophy does not deny. It is, in- 
 deed, in one form or other, the object of universal pursuit — 
 for without its participation to some extent, life would lose its 
 principal attraction, and mankind would degenerate into the 
 settled gloom of moody melancholy. Pelaxation from the 
 severer toils of life is as necessary to hnman existence, as light 
 is to the physical universe ; without its appropriate indulgence, 
 
136 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 all the pleasant things which impart their thousand charms to 
 our social economy, would at once become eclipsed in the dark- 
 ness of desolation and despair. If it be true that man is the only 
 animal that laughs, is it not fair to infer that, by an occasional 
 indulgence of his risible faculty, he is but fulfilling a part of 
 his destiny ? Yery much might be urged in favor of a hearty 
 laugh — it is not only highly exhilarating, but also very infec- 
 tious ; and the doctors tell us, it is an excellent help to digestion 
 and health. Bishop Hall remarks, " Recreation is intended to 
 the mind, as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of 
 it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt. He, therefore, 
 that spends his whole time in recreation is ever whetting, never 
 mowing ; as contrarily, he that always toils, and never recre- 
 ates, is ever mowing, never whetting — ^laboring much to little 
 purpose ; as good no scythe, as no edge. I would so inter- 
 change, that I neither be dull with work, nor idle and wanton 
 Avith recreation." 
 
 Every nation, civilized and savage, has its dance, of one kind 
 or another ; its universality proves that it is a natural recrea- 
 tion. It is an excellent muscular exercise, and on this account 
 highly recommended by physicians. It has the advantage, too, 
 that it tends to promote social intercourse between the sexes ; 
 refine and soften the manners of the one, and to give confi- 
 aence to the other. Yet, uniting these advantages, dancing by 
 some is highly condemned, as a misapplication of time, and as 
 calculated to divert the attention from objects of higher im- 
 portance. True, we ought not to let any pleasure occupy too 
 much of our time ; but that youth needs some amusements, no 
 person of age, when he calls to remembrance his own days of 
 joyance, will deny. Still, we admit that, as frequently in- 
 dulged in, by our modern fashionable society, dancing is made 
 the occasion of inducing laxity in both morals and manners. 
 This is its bane. Dancing is the most universal, as well as one 
 
 — -^—--^-^ 
 
SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 137 
 
 of the most ancient of all pastimes. During the earlier ages, 
 it was invested with the sanctity of a religious rite — the Leviti- 
 cal law. of the Jews requiring it to be exhibited at the celebra- 
 tion of their solemn feasts; the Psalms of David make fre- 
 quent allusions to the practice ; and, indeed, in the temple at 
 Jerusalem, a stage was erected for these exercises, called the 
 choir — a term still retained in our churches, and now appropri- 
 ated to tlie singers. 
 
 The Greeks and Komans adopted dancing at their festivals, 
 after their ancestors, and the practice lias continued uninter- 
 ruptedly down to our own times. The Spartans were most 
 studious in the cultivation of the celebrated Pyrrhic dance. 
 The most celebrated games of the Greeks were the Olympic, 
 the Pythian, the Nemean and the Isthmian. These differed 
 little from each other ; their designations indicating the places 
 where they were held. These games were celebrated with great 
 pomp and magnificence. The most distinguished authors of 
 Greece also obtained prizes at Olympia, for excelling in con- 
 tests, not of physical, but of mental power. Even the red men 
 of the forest have their various dances, devoted to the seasons, 
 hunting and war. ]N"o less popular was the well-known Morris 
 dance of Shakspeare's days ; the origin of which is ascribed 
 to the Moors. The Morris dance was not absolutely limited to 
 any period of the year, though it seems to have been con- 
 sidered as most appropriate to Whitsuntide and May-day. 
 
 Amusements and recreations are an index to character, not 
 only individual, but national ; for in our times of relaxation, 
 we are most apt to throw off life's disguises. 
 
 " Almost everything else may be lost to a nation's history, 
 but its sports and pastimes ; the diversions of a people being 
 commonly interwoven with some immutable element of the 
 general feeling, or perpetuated by circumstances of climate or 
 locality — ^these will frequently survive, when every other 
 
138 
 
 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 national peculiarity has worn itself out, and fallen into obliv- 
 ion." * As the minds of children, modified by the forms of 
 society, are pretty much the same in all countries, there will 
 Lo found but little variation in their ordinary pastimes — a 
 remark no less applicable to those nations, which, from their 
 non-advancement in civilization, may be said to have still 
 retained their childhood. 
 
 Few, if any of our popular pastimes and sports, may be said 
 to be new ; they will be found to be either of Pagan, Jewish, 
 Popish, or Christian origin, modified often by the genius of the 
 times. Some bearing the impress of the chivalric age of the 
 Crusades, or the romantic enthusiasm of the mediaeval times ; 
 and others retaining the characteristics either of the Puritan 
 austerity of England's Commonwealth, or the laxity of the 
 age that followed. 
 
 The Jews, according to the Mosaic law, were accustomed to 
 observe, in addition to their weekly Sabbaths, thirty holy days. 
 They had other festivals also, not enjoined by their law, such 
 as those of Purim and the Dedication, the last named continu- 
 ing eight days. 
 
 We do not intend to dilate at length upon these, but simply 
 to take a glance at the more prominent diversions and frolics 
 with which society in former times beguiled itself of its sor- 
 rows, and the severer duties of life. We refrain from tracing 
 our subject back to its earliest origin — the pastimes of a rude 
 age^because they would naturally be expected to partake, in 
 no small degree, of the manners and habits of which they 
 were the reflex. We may infer from our own Indians, that 
 athletic exercises and the chase, were among the primitive di- 
 versions of mankind. We must not, however, be tempted to 
 inquire too curiously concerning these primitive pastimes, if we 
 would judge them by the refinement and taste which character- 
 
 * Horace Smith, 
 
SPORTS AND .PASTIMES. 139 
 
 ize our modern modes of diversion, such as music, tlie fine arts, 
 the drama, and literary entertainments. 
 
 Field sports still exist, under certain modifications, as they 
 did under the " Mosaic dispensation : " where we read of Nim- 
 rod, '' a mighty hunter," and the progenitor of his class. The 
 chase has supplied a theme for some of the classic writers. 
 Xenophon repudiated hunting, as well as Solon. By the Ho- 
 man law, game was never deemed an exclusive privilege, ex- 
 cept when extending over private lauds, when permission was 
 to be obtained of the proprietor. When Eome became over- 
 run by the Goths and Yandals, they perverted the natural rights 
 to a royal one ; a feature still retained in some European States ; 
 the prescriptive right to hunt over certain grounds being vested 
 in the sovereign, or those to whom the crown may delegate 
 it. 
 
 Edward III. was such a devotee to sports of this kind that 
 even during his hostile engagements with France, he could not 
 refrain from their indulgence. While in the French dominions 
 he had with him, according to Froissart, sixty couple of stag- 
 hounds and as many hare-hounds, every day amusing himself 
 at intervals, with hunting or hawking. He is said to have kept 
 a princely stud of horses and six hundred dogs for this pur- 
 pose. 
 
 This passion extended itself during the middle ages to the 
 clergy : for Chaucer satirizes the monks, for their predilection 
 for the hunter's horn, over cloistered seclusion ; and even 
 in later times in England, sporting bishops and vicars have 
 not been wanting to provoke the just indignation of society. 
 Queen Elizabeth used to patronize these sports, with a retinue 
 of her courtly dames and lordly knights, even as late as her 
 seventy-seventh year, — at which time it is recorded, " that her 
 majesty was excellently disposed to hunting, for every second 
 
140 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 day she was to be seen on horseback, continuing the sport for a 
 long time." 
 
 Falconry appears to have been carried to great perfection, 
 and to have been extensively pursued, in the different countries 
 of Europe, about the twelfth century, when it was the favorite 
 amusement, not only of kings and nobles, but of ladies of dis- 
 tinction, aijd the clergy, who attached themselves to it no less 
 zealously than they had done to hunting, although it was equally 
 included in the prohibitory canons of the church, ^o person 
 of rank was represented without the hawk upon his hand, as an 
 indisputable criterion of station and dignity : the bird of prey 
 (no inappropriate emblem of nobility in the feudal ages) was 
 never suffered to be long absent from the wrist. In travelling, 
 visiting, or the transaction of affairs of business, the hawk still 
 remained perched upon the hand, which it stamped with dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 The grand falconer, in full costume, with his falcon perched 
 upon his wrist, was a most picturesque-looking individual : and 
 his attendants, bearing the perches for the hooded birds, made 
 up a busy, animated and excited group. But the sport of hawk- 
 ing, like that of archery, gave way to other pursuits ; and the 
 fowling-piece superseded the hooded hawk which, since the days 
 of Alfred, had b^en held in such high esteem by the gentle- 
 born and chivalrous spirits of Old England. 
 
 Edward the Confessor, it is believed, wrote a book on the pas- 
 time which is still extant. In the East, the Persians are skil- 
 ful in training falcons, — birds of prey, a superior kind of hawk, 
 — to hunt all manner of birds, and even gazelles : and in civi- 
 lized Europe generally, a knowledge of the management of 
 hawks was deemed a mark of polite education, and a hawk on 
 the hand marked social position. Hawking had its technology, 
 also, like heraldry. The office of grand falconer of England 
 is still an hereditary service of the crown. The " King's Mews," 
 
SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 141 
 
 at Charing, derives its name from the building in which the 
 King's hawks were kept, while they mewed or moulted. 
 
 With respect to archery, it is sufficient to remark that the 
 bow was the most ancient and common of all weapons ; Ish- 
 mael, the wanderer, was an archer — so were the heroes of 
 Homer, and tlie warriors of most nations. During the Hept- 
 archy, Off rid, son of Edwin, King of Northumberland, was 
 slain by an arrow ; other historic celebrities might be mentioned 
 who shared a similar fate. The Saxons claim the introduc- 
 tion of both the long and cross-bow into Britain ; their succes- 
 sors, the Danes, were also great archers. 
 
 The well-known story of Alfred the Great in the peasant's 
 cottage, suffering her cakes to burn, was owing to his being en- 
 gaged in preparing his bow and arrows. Of the great power 
 and precision with which arrows may be discharged, we have 
 sufficient evidence, without that afforded by the apocryphal 
 exploits of Robin Hood, or WiUiam Tell. Our Indians may 
 be cited as specimens of the wonderful exactness of aim, of 
 which the instrument is susceptible. 
 
 William Kufus, it will be remembered, was indebted to one 
 of these swift-winged messengers of death, for his dismission 
 from the field of strife : and the famous battles of Cressy and 
 of Agincourt bore testimony to their fatal use. The practice 
 of archery possesses undoubted advantages, in point of health 
 and exercise, over most of the athletic diversions, or field sports, 
 without their objectionable features. Archery is attended with 
 no cruelty : it sheds no innocent blood, nor does it torture 
 harmless animals; charges which lie heavy against some 
 other amusements. 
 
 The practice of baiting animals, so naturally revolting to our 
 modern taste, seems, in former times, to have been invested with 
 something of the chivalrous and romantic. These cruel enter- 
 tainments, Julius Caesar introduced among the Eomans ; from 
 
142 SPORTS AKD PASTIMES. 
 
 thera it was adopted by the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the 
 English. The Spaniards have been the most conspicuous for 
 their refined cruelties, in connection with this brutal sport; 
 they have also invested its ceremonies with the greatest splendor 
 and pageantry. 
 
 In the Greek bull-fights, the devoted animals were turned 
 out with an equal number of horsemen, each combatant select- 
 ing his victim. From the following account of a bull-fight in 
 the Coliseum at Rome, 1332, from Muratori, some idea may be 
 formed of the ceremonies and dangers attending those extra- 
 ordinary exhibitions : 
 
 " A general proclamation, as far as Rimini and Ravenna, in- 
 vited the nobles to exercise their skill and courage in this peri- 
 lous adventure. The Roman ladies were marshalled in three 
 squadrons, and seated in three balconies, which were lined with 
 scarlet cloth. The lots of the champions were drawn by an 
 old and respectable citizen, and they descended into the arena 
 to encounter the wild animals on foot, with a single spear. 
 Amid the crowd were the names, colors, and devices of twenty 
 of the most conspicuous knights of Rome. The ~ combats of 
 the amphitheatre were dangerous and bloody. Every cham- 
 pion successively encountered a wild bull, and the victory may 
 be ascribed to the quadrupeds, since no more than eleven were 
 left on the field with the loss of nine wounded, and eighteen 
 killed on the side of their adversaries. Some of the noblest 
 families might mourn, but the pomp of the funerals in the 
 churches of St. John Lateran, and St. Maria Maggiore, afforded 
 a second holiday to the people, which was, of course, a thing of 
 superior moment. Doubtless it was not in such conflicts that 
 the blood of the Romans should have been shed ; yet in blam- 
 ing their rashness, we are compelled to applaud their gallantry," 
 continues our author, " and the noble volunteers, who display 
 their munificence and risk their lives under the balconies of the 
 
SPORTS AND PASTEVIES. 143 
 
 fair, excite a more generous sympathy than the thousands of 
 captives and malefactors, who were reluctantly dragged to the 
 scene of slaughter." 
 
 The ceremonies in Spain, commence by a kind of procession 
 in which the combatants, on horse and on foot, appear, after 
 which two alguazils, dressed in perukes and black robes, ad- 
 vance, with great affected gravity, on horseback, and ask the 
 president for the signal for the commencement of the entertain- 
 ment. As the bull rushes in, he is received with loud shouts 
 which rend the air, and tend to excite to frenzy the infuriated 
 beast ; when the picadores or equestrian combatants, dressed in 
 a quaint old Castilian costume, and armed with a long lance, 
 wait to meet and repel their antagonist. These encounters re- 
 quire, of course, extraordinary courage and dexterity ; and for- 
 merly they were regarded as marks of honorable ambition and 
 distinction, having sometimes been enlisted in by those of noble 
 blood. Even at the present time hidalgos are said to solicit the 
 honor of fighting the bull on horseback, and they are then pre- 
 viously presented to the audience under the auspices of a patron 
 connected with the court. Shonld the animal becon.o terror- 
 strnck, and seek to avoid his persecutors, if nothing else can 
 awaken his courage and fury, the cry Perros ! jperros ! brings 
 forth new enemies, and hnge dogs are let loose upon him. He 
 then tosses the dogs into the air, and although they usually fall 
 down stunned and mangled, they generally renew their attack 
 till their adversary falls. Sometimes the bull, irritated by the 
 pointed steel, gores the horse and overturns his rider, who, 
 when dismounted and disarmed, would be exposed to imminent 
 danger, did not attendant combatants divert the animal's atten- 
 tion by holding before him pieces of cloth of various colors. 
 This act is attended, however, with great peril, the only rescue 
 being by jumping over the barrier, which throw-s the spectators 
 
I 
 
 144 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 into a chaos of conf asion from fear of the rabid animal's mak- 
 ing a direct descent upon themselves. 
 
 It is to be admitted, however, that the sin of baiting animals 
 does not rest alone with the Spaniards or the ancient Romans, 
 — although the gladiatorial exploits of the cruel monsters, l^ero 
 and Commodus, surpass all for their savage brutality. James 
 I., amongst other sapient performances, perpetrated a " Boke 
 of Sports," for the regulation of popular pastimes and amuse- 
 ments, intimating by it what particular "kinds of recreation 
 were to be allowed on Sundays and festivals of the church — 
 such as running, vaulting, morris-dancing, etc., and prohibit- 
 ing, upon those days, bowling, bear and bull-baitings. 
 
 Bishop Burnet, in his " History of his own Times," speaking 
 of this noted monarch, complains that his court fell into much 
 extravagance in masquerading — "both king and court going 
 about masked, going into houses unknown, and dancing there 
 with a great deal of wild frolic." 
 
 As early as the ninth century, hunting formed an item of 
 education, and was patronized by the nobility. Alfred the Great 
 was an expert hunter at twelve years of age ; and Edward the 
 Confessor, according to the ancient chronicles, " took the great- 
 est delight to follow a pack of swift hounds in pursuit of game, 
 and to cheer them on with his voice." William the Norman, 
 and several of his crowned successors, down to James I., seem 
 to have been alike addicted to the pastime. The last-named 
 individual is said to have divided his time equally betwixt his 
 standish, his bottle and his hunting ; the last had his fair 
 weather, the two former his dull and cloudy. 
 
 Contemplative men seem to have been fond of amusements 
 accordant with their pursuits and habits. The tranquil recrea- 
 tion of angling has won a preference with many, over more 
 boisterous pursuits, from the fascinations imparted to it, by 
 the quaint and delightful work of Izaak Walton. Sir Henry 
 
SPORTS AND PASTBIES. 145 
 
 Wotton styles angling, " Idle time not idly spent:" to a medi- 
 tative mind, possibly, it may be so, but we think many a de- 
 votee of " fly fishing " will be found to have been much more 
 lavish in his expenditure of time than is warranted by its re- 
 sults. Paley, it may be remembered, was accustomed to in- 
 dulge in this pursuit ; he had a portrait painted with a rod and 
 line in his hand. 
 
 Let us not forget that this art of angling was discoursed of, 
 in one of the earliest books printed in England ; and what is 
 not less remarkable is, that the work was written by a lady. 
 She was Dame Juliana Berners, Prioress of the Nunnery of 
 Sopewell, — the same who wrote on hawking ; but gives prefer- 
 ence to angling, because, she says, " if the angler take fishe, 
 surely, thenne, is there no man merrier than he in hys spyrit." 
 
 Angling has not only been glorified by Izaak Walton, it may 
 also claim the sanction of Holy Writ, — some of the Apostles 
 having been of the craft. 
 
 " In this pleasant and harmless Art of Angling^ a man hath 
 none to quarrel with but himself," says Izaak Walton, " and he 
 may employ his thoughts in the noblest studies, almost as 
 freely as in his closet. The minds of anglers are usually more 
 calm and composed than others ; and suppose he take nothing, 
 yet he enjoyeth a delightful walk, by pleasant views, in sweet 
 pastures, among odoriferous flowers, which gratify his senses 
 and delight his mind ; " and he adds, " I know no sort of men 
 less subject to melancholy than the anglers; many have cast 
 off other recreations and embraced it, but I never knew an 
 angler wholly cast off his affection to his beloved recreation." 
 
 In the reign of Charles II., ladies used to practise angling, 
 in the canal of St. James' Park, London ; according to Izaak 
 Walton, "their tackle was very beautiful and costly, which 
 they were fond of displaying." The piscatory art being still 
 one of our most popular of pastimes, it is needless to dilate 
 10 
 
14:6 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 upon its fascinating attractions. Some inveterate anglers 
 must, however, have a curious history to give of their experi- 
 ence ; for many of them have been " odd fish " themselves — 
 flat fish, we may say, in some instances, since they will sit on a 
 damp, muddy bank the live-long day, contented if they are but 
 regaled with even the symptoms of a " nibble." 
 
 We pass now to notice briefly the well-known and popular 
 sport — horse-racing, and its kindred associations. It has been 
 conjectured that these amusements of the turf were in vogue 
 with the Saxons, from the fact that Hugh, the founder of the 
 House of the Capets of France, among other royal gifts, " pre- 
 sented several running horses, with their saddles and bridles," 
 etc. The sedate John Locke writes as follows : 
 
 " The sports of England, which perhaps a curious stranger 
 would be glad to see, are horse-racing, hawking and hunting, 
 bowling ; at Marebone and Putney, he may see several persons 
 of quality bowling two or three times a week all the summer 
 wrestling in Lincoln's Inn Fields, every evening all summer 
 bear and bull-baiting, and sometimes prizes at the Bear-Garden 
 shooting in the long bow, and stob-ball in Tothill Fields 
 cudgel-playing at several places in the country ; and hurling 
 in Cornwall." 
 
 Of wrestling and pugilistic games we forbear to speak; 
 modern gymnastics and calisthenics are a meet substitute for 
 the former, since they include all their advantages, in the de- 
 velopment of physical strength, without any of their objection- 
 able features. As a winter sport, skating naturally suggests 
 itself — a diversion mentioned by a monkish writer as far back 
 as 1170. A fast skater, on good ice, will nearly equal the race- 
 horse for a short distance. The London belles may be seen 
 thus sportively employed on a fine winter's day on the Serpen- 
 tine, Hyde Park, and hundreds more on the lakes of our 
 " Central " and '' Prospect " Parks, and elsewhere. Like buffalo 
 
SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 147 
 
 hunting — the most exciting, because hazardous of all sports — 
 however, skating is attended with the occasional risk of a fall 
 on the ice, and sometimes under it, affording the courageous 
 skater the benefit of a cold bath, with the chance of an entailed 
 rheumatism, if not, indeed, loss of life itself. From the sug- 
 gestion of a ducking under the ice, one is naturally reminded 
 of swimming or voluntary bathing, than which few expedients 
 are more conducive to health and longevity. The world 
 is now awake to this, and even the faculty are found frank 
 enough to confess the fact, and to recommend frequent ablu- 
 tions. 
 
 The important utility, in cases of accident, of being able to 
 swim, every one knows, but every one does not acquire the art 
 notwithstanding ; yet it is easy of attainment, and also adds 
 much to the pleasure of bathing. Cramps, crabs, and the 
 chance of becoming food for fishes, are among the doubtful 
 attractions of old Neptune, — healthfulness and vigor to the 
 young, and rejuvenescence to the aged, as well as a delicious 
 physical enjoyment, while in his rough embraces, — are among 
 the positive pleasures. 
 
 Tennis was a favorite game among the Romans : it is less in 
 vogue in modern times, cricket having to some extent usurped 
 its place. All classes play at it in England. Some years past 
 there was a strong contest between eleven Greenwich pension- 
 ers, with only one leg a-piece, against an equal number 
 of their brethren, who were minus an arm, but the one- 
 legged boys won. As with many other English sports, ladies 
 sometimes join the band of cricketers ; some time ago 
 there was a match played between an equal number of 
 married and unmarried women ; in which the matrons came 
 off victors. 
 
 There are numerous domestic games and pastimes which 
 might be mentioned, both of past times and the present; it 
 
I 
 
 148 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 may suffice simply to name the following — chess and cards. 
 An instance of chess upon a large scale is recorded of Don 
 John of Austria, who had a room in his palace which had a 
 pavement of checkered white and black marble; upon this 
 living men, in varied costumes, moved under his directions, 
 according to the laws of chess. It is also related of a Duke 
 of Weimar, that he had squares of black and white marble on 
 which he played at chess with real soldiers. A game of chess 
 involves sometimes a severe test of temper; it is said the 
 Swedish maidens used formerly to try the mettle of their hus- 
 bands elect at the chess table, and that this ordeal decided 
 their fate in the affair of matrimony. According to Mr. 
 Basterot, a late French authority, this game was invented 
 during the sixth century by an Indian Brahmin, called Sisla, 
 who presented his invention to the reigning monarch, Sirham, 
 requesting as a reward, one grain of wheat for the first square, 
 two grains for the second, and four for the third, and so on, 
 in geometrical progression, up to the sixty-fourth ; to reach 
 the amount of this humble request, the author informs us, 
 would require the entire wheat crop of France during one 
 hundred and forty years. Of billiards, dice, and other games 
 usually associated with the practice of gambling, as well as 
 of theatricals in general, it is not necessary to speak, they being 
 already familiar to the reader. 
 
 Billiards, chess, whist, faro, croquet, draughts and other like 
 games are too well known to require farther mention. D'Israeli 
 has an amusing chapter devoted to the amusements of the 
 learned, from which we shall cite a few facts : Among the 
 Jesuits it was a standing rule of order, that after an application 
 to study of two hours, the mind should be bent by some relaxa- 
 tion, however trifling. When Petavius was engaged upon his 
 " Dogmata Theologica," a work of the most profound erudition. 
 
SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 149 
 
 the choice recreation of the learned father was, at the end of 
 every second hour, to twirl his chair for five minutes. Tycho 
 Brahe amused himself with polishing glasses for spectacles and 
 making mathematical instruments. Descartes beguiled him- 
 self of his literary labors, like John Evelyn, Pope, Cowper, and 
 many others, in the cultm-e of flowers. 
 
 All nations have proved the fallacy of seeking to impose 
 restraints against the necessary recreations of life ; the stern 
 necessities of our mental and physical constitution, have long 
 since determined the fact with the authority of law. 
 
 " It were unjust and ungrateful to conceive that the amuse- 
 ments of life are altogether forbidden by its beneficent Author. 
 They are ' the wells of the desert ; ' the kind resting-place in 
 which toil may relax, in which the weary spirit may recover its 
 tone, and where the desponding mind may reassume its strength 
 and its hopes. 
 
 "Even in the scenes of relaxation, therefore, they have a 
 tendency to preserve the dignity of human character, and to 
 fill up tlie vacant and unguarded hours of life with occupa- 
 tions, innocent, at least, if not virtuous. But their principal 
 effect, perhaps, is upon the social character of man. When, 
 men assemble, accordingly, for the purpose of general happi- 
 ness or joy, they exhibit to the thoughtful eye one of the most 
 pleasing appearances of their original character. They leave 
 behind them, for a time, the faults of their station and the 
 asperities of their temper ; they forget the secret views and the 
 selfish purposes of their ordinary life, and mingle with the 
 crowd around them with no other view than to receive and 
 communic^ate happiness. It is not, therefore, the use of the 
 innocent amusements of life which is dangerous, but the abuse 
 of them ; it is not when they are occasionally, but when they 
 are constantly pursued ; when the love of amusement degene- 
 

 150 
 
 SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 
 
 rates into a passion ; and when, from being an occasional in- 
 dulgence, it becomes a habitual desire." * 
 
 Thus the serious side of life is qualified by its mirthful. 
 " The most grave and studious," said Plutarch^ " use feasts 
 and jests and toys, as we do sauce to our meats." 
 
 * Alison. 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 "Mightiest of the mighty means, 
 
 Ou which the arm of Progress leans — 
 Man's noblest mission to advance, 
 His woes assuage, his weal enhance, 
 His rights enforce, his wrongs redress — 
 Mightiest of the mighty is the Press. ''" — BowiHng. 
 
 The invention of tlie " art preservative of arts " — Printing, 
 like the faculty of speech, seems to have come to ns " like a 
 divine revelation in the history of man ! " "We ask — 
 
 " Whence did the wondrous mystic art arise, 
 Of painting speech, and speaking to the eyes ? " 
 
 Yet no oracle is responsive to the inquiry ; and all we 
 know is, that the Decalogue was written upon stone tablets. 
 
152 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 and that picture-writing or hieroglyphs were in use among the 
 earliest races of mankind. This fact is abundantly indicated 
 by the inscriptions and sculptured stones which everywhere 
 abound amid the ruins, recently exhumed, of Babylon, Phoeni- 
 cia, Chaldea, Egypt, Arabia, and India. Much learned discus- 
 sion has been devoted to the subject of alphabetical writing, 
 also ; there can be little doubt, however, of its being of Divine 
 origin. 
 
 Seven cities of classic Greece, it will be remembered, con- 
 tended for the honor of being the birth-place of Homer ; and 
 the contest for the honor of giving birth to a discovery, the 
 greatest in the history of the arts of life, is also stoutly con- 
 tended for, by three of the cities of Continental Europe — 
 Haarlem, Mentz, and Frankfort. These rival cities stand like 
 armed champions, challenging each for the prize. Haarlem 
 has erected a statue to Koster ; Mentz has thus immortalized 
 Guttenberg ; while Frankfort has a magnificent monument 
 erected to the memory of the three claimants jointly — Gutten- 
 berg, Faust and Schsefter. It seems that these three were as- 
 sociated together in the earliest inception and development of 
 the art of Pnnting ; Faust, or Fust, had no share in the inven- 
 tion of the art, he only advanced funds to enable Guttenberg to 
 establish the printing business at Mentz : this was, it is be- 
 lieved, in 1450. Two years later they had a disagreement, and a 
 lawsuit ensued ; and Guttenberg then took into partnership his 
 son-in-law, Schseffer, who had been in their employment, and 
 who had perfected the process of making movable metallic 
 type by the invention of the punch. For several years they 
 kept the printing process a secret, and produced many works, 
 among which was the first printed edition of a classic author — 
 the De Offioiis — of Cicero — a copy of which is in the Astor 
 Library. In 1462, Mentz was sacked, and Faust's establish- 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 153 
 
 ment was broken up. His workmen were scattered, and liis 
 secret was divulged by them in other countries. 
 
 In the old library at Strasburg is, or was before the late war, 
 this literary relic — a small folio-volume, comprising the depo- 
 sitions in the famous lawsuit between Faust and Guttenberg, 
 written, it is said, by a contemporary hand. 
 
 According to recent researches it appears that Haarlem is 
 entitled to the preeminence first claimed for it by Ulric Tell, 
 an eminent printer of Cologne, wlio is quoted in the Cologne 
 ChTonide of 1499. He ascribes the first discovery of the art 
 to Lawrence Janssen, or Koster, warden of the Cathedral 
 Church at Haarlem, who, one day walking in the woods, 
 amused liimself by cutting letters in the bark of a tree, and 
 taking impressions from them for his children ; and thus his 
 idea of printing was first suggested. He pursued tlie idea, 
 invented a thicker ink, and soon produced hloch-hoohs. The 
 same authority supposes Faust and Guttenberg were first en- 
 gaged as assistants to Koster. Of the truth of the story of 
 Faust's robbery of Roster's printing-office we shall leave our 
 readers to decide. There can be no doubt that the use of cut 
 metal types was achieved at Mentz, where the art received its 
 chief improvements, and mainly by Guttenberg, Faust, and 
 Schgeffer. They concealed their new improvements by ad- 
 ministering an oath of secrecy to all their servants and work- 
 men, till the sacking of the city of Mentz. The prevailing 
 opinion of critics then upon the disputed claims of these con- 
 testants seems to be, that to tlie German triumvirate belongs 
 the honor of having been the first to employ movable metallic 
 types, matrices, and punches, in printing ; and if so, they are 
 entitled to wear their proud laurels. 
 
 To the invaluable invention of the Press are books, indeed, 
 indebted for their limitless multiplication ; and among the 
 many immunities of our advanced civilization the least is not 
 
154 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 the Printing-press. It is fitting that the advent of the " divine 
 art" should be first sanctified by religion. The first book 
 ever printed with metal types was the Bible, in Latin, consist- 
 ing of 1,282 pages folio. Though a first attempt, it is beauti- 
 fully printed on very fine paper, and with superior ink. At 
 least eighteen copies of" this famous edition are known to be in 
 existence in the several great libraries of Europe, at the pres- 
 ent time. It is known as the Mazarine Bible; from having 
 been first found in the library of Cardinal Mazarine. 
 
 A copy cost the purchaser, Mr. Lenox, of New York, some 
 years since, $2,500, but it would bring nearly double that sum 
 now. The number of Bibles printed between 1450 and 1500 
 was much larger than is generally supposed ; and among them 
 were several in German. The Pentateuch, and the history of 
 Job, are the most ancient books in the world ; and in profane 
 literature, the works of Homer, Hesiod, and Herodotus. 
 
 To form an approximate estimate of the value of the Print- 
 ing-press, we have only to contrast our own times with those 
 which preceded its discovery. The dawn of printing was like 
 the outburst of a new revelation ; and, like the dawn of light, 
 it led to the discovery of other great facts and results which 
 otherwise might have never blessed the world. The era of 
 printing introduced the general revival of learning, and the 
 Reformation in Germany. 
 
 We should tell nothing new to the reader at all conversant 
 with the pleasant and curious antiquities of bibliography, were 
 we to refer to the early materials and fabric of books — the 
 Egyptian papyrus plant, or the Herculaneum manuscripts ; * or 
 the waxen tablets of the Greeks and Pomans, written with the 
 stylus, which has afforded to our vernacular its two widely 
 
 *Tlie Greek MSS. in Herculaneum consist of papyrus, rolled, charred, 
 and matted together by the fire, and are about nine inches long, and one, 
 two, or three inches in diameter, each being a volume or separate treatise. 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 155 
 
 different terms — style and stiletto; or of the metals wliicli 
 were sometimes used for inscribing ; or of the skins first pre- 
 pared at Pergamus, (parchment,) which the Komans, in their 
 luxurious days, used to manufacture in yellow and purple, to 
 receive the characters in liquid gold and silver — a mode con- 
 tinued by the monks in later days, and of which specimens 
 yet exist. 
 
 The Bark of Trees has been much used for writing upon in 
 every quarter of the globe, and still serves for this purpose in 
 some parts of Asia. In the Sloanian library, London, there 
 are several specimens ; one of writing on bark, folded up in 
 leaves so as to represent a book ; there is also a Nabob's letter 
 on a piece of bark two yards long, richly ornamented in 
 
 Leaves have also been used for writing upon in most nations. 
 Pliny speaks particularly of the Egyptians writing at first upon 
 leaves. The " sybils' leaves " referred to by Yirgil, prove that 
 the use of leaves for writing upon was familiar to the Ro- 
 mans. Diodorus Siculus relates that the judges of Syracuse 
 were accustomed to write the names of those whom they sent 
 into banishment upon the leaves of olive trees. The practice 
 of writing upon the leaves of palm-trees is still prevalent in 
 some parts of the East. Specimens are to be seen in the Brit- 
 ish Museum. 
 
 In the time of Alexander the Great, the practice of writing 
 on Pa^pyrus was found so convenient that Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus caused his books to be transcribed on the plant. 
 
 A book has been curiousl}^ defined, " brain preserved in' ink," 
 and when there is plenty of the fruit, it is a conserve to tempt 
 the most capricious palate. From the fact that books were 
 written on the bark of trees, came the Latin word liber, from 
 which we derive our English term " library." " Book " is from 
 the Saxon, " Jcc?," a beech-tree. 
 
156 BOOK CEAFT. 
 
 Hesiod's works were first written on tables of lead — Solon's 
 laws on wooden planks. The wood was sometimes covered 
 with wax, so that the writing could be easily effaced. The 
 Chinese manufacture paper of linen, the fibres of the young 
 bamboo — of the mulberry, the envelope of the silk-worm — 
 of a native tree called chu or ko-chu — but especially of cotton. 
 They were in possession of the art long before it was known in 
 Europe ; and, as Mecca was a sort of depot for the fabrics of 
 China, it is by some very reasonably supposed, that the paper 
 was first brought from that country. Whatever might have 
 been its origin, the art was undoubtedly employed and im- 
 proved by the Arabs, who, in their career of conquest, carried 
 it into Spain, about the beginning of the tenth century. 
 Other accounts ascribe the invention of cotton paper to 
 Greece ; indeed, not only its origin, but the various improve- 
 ments in its manufacture, and the different substitutions of new 
 materials have long been the subject of controversy. 
 
 Cotton and silk paper were in use at an early period, but 
 linen rags were not used till a.d. 1200. This invention has 
 been placed earlier by some good authorities, but it would 
 appear that they have confounded the cotton with the linen 
 paper. The first paper-mill in England was built by a Ger- 
 man, in 1588, at Dartford, in Kent. Nevertheless, it was not 
 until 1713, that Thomas Watkins, a stationer, brought paper- 
 making to anything like perfection. 
 
 Between the years 1467 and 1475, printing-ofiices were opened 
 at Cologne, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Lubec. Monks, called 
 " Brothers of Common Life," founded printing establishments 
 at Brussels and Louvain, in Belgium. In the year 1467, a 
 press was transported to Eome ; some years afterwards, to 
 Venice, Milan, and Naples. The printing art reached Paris 
 in 1469. It met with obstacles on the part of copyists, who 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 157 
 
 feared to lose their means of subsistence ; but the king, Louis 
 XI., protected the printers. 
 
 The art was conveyed from Haarlem to England in 1468, and 
 by Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. This prelate sent a 
 merchant named William Caxton, to learn the art. Caxton pre- 
 vailed with Corseilles to go over to Oxford, and there set up 
 a press. Before Caxton left the continent, he translated from 
 the French, and in the year 1471 published at Cologne, the 
 first hook ever printed in the English language ; entitled, The 
 Becuyell of the Hystoryes of Troye. "An imperfect copy of 
 tins work," says Duppa, " was put up to sale in 1812, when there 
 was a competition amongst men eminent for learning, rank, and 
 fortune ; and, according to their estimation of its value, it was 
 sold for the sum of £1,060 10s." In the year 1474 (having in 
 the meantime returned to England), he published the first hooJc 
 ever printed in England. It was entitled, " The Game and 
 Playe of the Chesse : Translated out of the Frenche, and em- 
 prynted by me William Caxton. Fynysshid the last day of 
 Marche, the yer of our Lord God a thousand four hondred. 
 
 Caxton, who died at the age of 81, in 1491, and who, in ad- 
 dition to having had the honor of introducing into England the 
 " divine art," was an eminent instance of the successful culti- 
 vation of letters, combined with mechanical pursuits. Amidst 
 the onerous charge of an extensive printing office in one of the 
 chapels of Westminster Abbey, containing twenty-four presses, 
 with about a hundred workmen, this indefatigable man actu- 
 ally gave to the world, no fewer than ^-^q thousand closely 
 printed folio pages from his own pen, consisting chiefly of 
 translations from the French, or of the stock of his own vernacu- 
 lar literature. About sixty of his books still exist. His just 
 estimate of Chaucer, whose works he first printed, evinces his 
 uncommon critical acumen. On more accounts than one, there- 
 
158 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 fore, may Caxton be fitly styled the father of the English press. 
 The well-known names of Pynson, who died 1529 ; Wynkyn de 
 Worde, in 1534, and Wyer, in 1542, although justly celebrated 
 for the improvements they effected in the typographic art, — the 
 former having first constructed and introduced into use the Ro- 
 man letters, — claim a passing mention. 
 
 Printing hitherto had been for the most part in Latin ; but 
 the Italians in 1480 began to print with Greek and Hebrew 
 types, and they were the first to use these. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, according to Dr. Gregory, there 
 appeared various editions of books in Syriac, Arabic, Persian, 
 Armenian, Coptic or Egyptian, characters. 
 
 Anthony Koburger, of Nuremberg, was a person eminent 
 for his learning as well as for his elegance in printing. He 
 was styled the Prince of printers, and was likewise a very ex- 
 tensive bookseller. Besides a spacious warehouse at Lyons, he 
 had agents in every important city in Christendom, and kept 
 sixteen open shops, with a vast number of warehouses. He 
 printed thirteen editions of the Bible in folio, which are es- 
 teemed as extremely beautiful specimens of the art ; but his 
 chef-d'muvre was the German Bible, printed in 1483, folio, the 
 most splendid of all the ancient German Bibles, being embel- 
 lished with many curious wood- cuts. 
 
 About the year 1547, we find honorable mention made of the 
 name of Eobert Copland, formerly engaged in Caxton's ofiice ; 
 he was a stationer, printer, author, and translator. The " Rose 
 Garland," in Fleet street, was his well-known residence. An- 
 thony Scoloker was another, who translated several works which 
 he printed, one of which, affording no unequivocal proof, how- 
 ever, of his prophetic skill, was intituled, " A Juste Reck- 
 enyage, or Accompte of the Whole Number of the Yeares, 
 from the Beginnynge of the Worlde unto the present Yeare of 
 1547 ; a Certayne and Sure Declaracion that the Worlde is at 
 
LOOK CRAFT. 150 
 
 an Elide." Robert Stephens, the renowned Parisian printer and 
 scholar, was his contemporaiy ; liis erudition as a critic and 
 etymologist, is sufficiently evinced by his great work, " Diction- 
 ariumseu Latinae Linguae Thesaurus." De Thou, the historian, 
 passed the following merited eulogium upon this distinguislied 
 scholar: "IS'ot only France, but the whole Christian world, 
 owes more to him than to the greatest warrior that ever ex- 
 tended the possessions of his country ; and greater glory has 
 redounded to Francis I. by the industry alone of Robert Ste- 
 phens, than from all the illustrious, warlike, and pacific under- 
 takings in which he was engaged." We next come, in the order 
 of time, to the name of John Day, the equally prolific printer 
 and parent — having introduced into the world two hundred and 
 forty-five books, and twenty-seven children ! He lived in the 
 neio:hborhood of Holborn conduit. 
 
 Richard Grafton, of London, was distinguished alike for his 
 erudition, as well as being an eminent printer. He was a lin- 
 guist, and also the friend of Cranmer and Lord Cromwell. 
 Grafton lived in the house of the Grey Friars, since known as 
 Christ's Hospital. 
 
 His first work was the English Bible, printed abroad in 
 1535. 
 
 In 1545, he printed King Henry. YIII.'s Primer, both in La- 
 tin and English, with red and black ink, for which he had a 
 patent, that is inserted at the end. 
 
 In the first year of Edward YL, Grafton was favored with a 
 special patent, granted to him for the sole printing of all the 
 Statute Books. This is the first patent that is noticed by that 
 diligent and accurate antiquarian, Sir William Dugdale. 
 
 An eminent printer was Christopher Plan tin, of Antwerp, 
 who lived in the latter part of the sixteenth century. His 
 offices at Antwerp, Germany, and France seem to have been 
 established upon the most magnificent scale, and, like one of his 
 
ICO BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 great predecessors, Stephens, he indulged himself in the Inxnrj 
 of silver types. At one time, he is reported to have paid to 
 his proof-readers and compositors, no less than one hundred 
 golden crowns ^67" diern, no equivocal evidence of the extent of 
 his operations. He also retained, not only in his friendship, 
 but in his employ, a host of the literary men of his day, among 
 the number the renowned De Thou. His chef-d^o^uvre — which 
 has been styled the eighth wonder of the world — was his Bihlia 
 Polyglotta, in eight folio volumes. 
 
 Then we have the no less illustrious names of Raphelengius, 
 the celebrated scholar, and printer to the University of Ley- 
 den ; and Louis Elzevir, of the same place, (temp. 1595-1616,) 
 the founder of the most learned family of printers that ever 
 adorned the republic of letters. Elzevir is said to have been 
 the first who observed the distinction between the use of the 
 consonant v, and the vowel u, (which had been recommended 
 by Ramus and other writers long before, but never regarded,) 
 as also the vowel i from the consonant y. Their name is well- 
 known to scholars, by their exquisite series of minutely printed 
 classics, comprising about one hundred volumes. Aldus Manu- 
 tius, with whom terminated a family of printers scarcely less 
 distinguished in the literary history of their times, extending 
 to upwards of a century, was grandson to the celebrated Aldus. 
 His extraordinary precocity was displayed by the successful 
 publication, of a production from his own pen, in his eleventh 
 year ; and his great work, De Vetericui Notarum JExplana- 
 tione has not only immortalized his name, but has been long 
 since acknowledged as a standard for reference, by the learned. 
 In the reign of Charles II. we find the name of John Ogilby, 
 geographical printer to the Court, and noted as having written 
 some books. He published a magnificent Bible, with illustra- 
 tions, for which he was remunerated by the British Parliament. 
 Towards the close of the seventeenth century, Palliot, the his- 
 
BOOK CRAFT. IGl 
 
 toriographer, printer, and bookseller to the King of France, 
 was also highly distinguished as a genealogist. As a proof of 
 his untiring perseverance and industry, it is recorded that he 
 left, at his decease, thirteen volumes of manuscripts, in addi- 
 tion to the five folios, wJiich he liad already published, the 
 plates of which were likewise executed by his own hands. Con- 
 temporary with him, lived Rothscholtz, the bookseller, of Nu- 
 remberg, whose name is distinguished in the world of letters by 
 his great work, in two volumes quarto, entitled, A Short Essay 
 toioards an Ancient and Modern Ilistorij of Booksellers, 
 
 In early times, bookselling and printing were not only often 
 combined, but, in some instances, it appeal's, authorship also 
 was united with these several branches of handicraft. 
 
 Numerous instances attest the fact, that an aftin'ity subsists 
 between printing and knowledge, and that printers have them- 
 selves contributed, by their genius, to adorn the annals of tbeir 
 age. Bayle speaks of one who composed and p-inted a, work 
 simultaneously, setting up the types with his hands, as fast as 
 his brain concocted his sentences, without the intervention of 
 manuscript corrections. 
 
 Lackington, the well-known bookseller, remarks, " Among all 
 the schools where a knowledge of mankind may be acquired, I 
 know of none equal to that of a bookseller's shop, whojx?^ if 
 any one have any taste for literature, he may be said to feed 
 his mind, as cooks' and butchers* wives get fat by the smell of 
 meat." 
 
 It cannot be denied, however, that there ai-e numerous ex- 
 ceptions to this supposed rule ; for the instances of eminent 
 printers and booksellers we have presented, are fivm the many 
 whose commerce with literature seemed to have awakened little 
 or no sympathy with its pleasures, its pains, or its pursuit. 
 
 The remark is not less applicable to our own times. 
 
 In the olden time, prior to the era of printing, the manu- 
 11 
 
162 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 scripts of authors were obliged to be subjected to the ordeal of 
 critical censorship, previous to their being allowed public per- 
 usal; their works being required to be read over before the 
 Universities, for three successive days, or by appointed judges; 
 when, if approved, copies were allowed to be executed by the 
 monks, scribes, and illuminators. 
 
 Even in the classical days of Greece and Home, we find a 
 trade carried on in books ; those works most in demand being 
 multiplied by the scribes and copyists. An exclusive traffic in 
 the manuscripts of those days seems to have been carried on 
 along the shores of the Mediterranean, and the Greek colonies 
 of the Euxine. 
 
 During the middle ages, the booksellers were styled Statio- 
 narii at the Universities of Paris and Bologna ; they used to 
 sell and loan manuscripts. This was the commencement of the 
 bookselling business. A species of literary censorship, it ap- 
 pears, was first established at Paris, in 1342, when a license 
 from the University was requisite previously to engaging in 
 such business. The booksellers were, in fact, regularly matri- 
 culated by entry on its roll, and considered as its officers ; the 
 prices of all books were also fixed according to a tariff of four 
 sworn booksellers, by the institution ; a fine was imposed for 
 selling an imperfect copy of a work, and a catalogue, with the 
 prices annexed, was further required to be always kept in the 
 shops. This censorship was afterwards invested in the person 
 of Berthold, Archbishop of Mentz, in 1486, and again renewed 
 with greater vigor, with respect to books, by the Council of 
 Trent, in 1546, being subsequently enforced by the Popes, 
 down to 1563, by whom several Indices Librorum Prohibi- 
 torum were issued. In France the censorship was vested in 
 the Chancellor; in England it was exercised by the well-known 
 Star-Chamber ; and after the abolition of that court, by Parlia- 
 ment itself ; it was abolished in England about 1694, although 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 163 
 
 it still continues in force, we believe, in several of the Conti- 
 nental States. 
 
 The first bookseller, so called, on record, was Faustiis. He 
 is said to have carried his books for sale, to the monasteries in 
 France and elsewhere ; and the first bookseller who purchased 
 manuscripts for publication, without possessing a press of his 
 own, w^as John Otto, of I^iiremberg. 
 
 Among eminent bibliopoles, the next name we find in the 
 order of date is that of John Dunton, who lived from 1659- 
 1733. Of his literary performances, his Life and Errors is 
 the best known. His critical acumen, or good fortune, were 
 certainly not much at fault ; for it is recorded, that of the 600 
 works which lie published, only seven proved unsuccessful. 
 
 Chiswell, styled for pre-eminence the metropolitan bookseller 
 of England, and whose shrewdness and wit stood the test so 
 admirably, that he is reported never to have issued a bad book, 
 was also, at about the same period, an author of some consider- 
 ation. Contemporary with him, we find the name of the 
 learned linguist and bibliopolist Samuel Smith, the appointed 
 bookseller to the Royal Society. Thomas G-uy, — the founder 
 of "Guy's Hospital" — (whose munificence and philanthropy 
 have immortalized his name, and often invoked the blessing of 
 suffering humanity,) was originally, it will be remembered, a 
 bookseller. 
 
 John Bagford, an industrious antiquarian bookseller, who 
 lived to the early part of the eighteenth century, was the au- 
 thor of the Collectanea^ bearing his name, contained in the 
 Harleian MSS. of the British Museum. 
 
 The Tonsons were a race of booksellers who did honor to 
 their profession for integrity, and by their encouragement of 
 learning. Malone published several letters from Dryden to 
 Tonson, and Tonson to Dryden. Tonson displays the trades- 
 man, however, acknowledging the receipt of the Translations 
 
164 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 of Ovid, which he had received, with whicli he was pleased, 
 but not with the price, having only one thousand four hundred 
 and forty-six lines for fifty guineas. Most of the other letters 
 relate to Dry den's translations of Yirgil ; and contain re- 
 peated acknowledgments of Tonson's kind attentions. "I 
 thank you heartily," he says, " for the sherry ; it is the best of 
 the kind I ever drank." The current coin was at that period 
 wretchedly debased. In one letter Dryden says, " I expect 
 forty pounds in good silver, not such as I had formerly. I am 
 not obliged to take gold, neither will I, nor stay for it above 
 four and twenty hours after it is due." In 1698, when Dryden 
 published his Fables, Tonson agreed to give him two hundred 
 and sixty-eight pounds for ten thousand verses ; and to com- 
 plete the full number of lines stipulated, he gave the bookseller 
 the Epistle to his Cousin, and the celebrated Ode. 
 
 Lintot, Pope's publisher, was also an author ; not to speak 
 of Miller, Evans, Griersson, Motte, and Euddiman, the last- 
 named a man of profound attainments as a grammarian and 
 critic. The name of Eichardson, author of ^' Sir Charles 
 Grandison," and other popular works, which have procured for 
 him the title of the English Rousseau, is well known. Alex- 
 ander Cruden, the compiler of the " Concordance to the Sacred 
 Scriptures," whose stupendous labors turned him mad, was an- 
 other of our category. 
 
 John Buckley, who lived to about 1746, was a learned lin- 
 guist; and Paterson, his contemporary, was also author of 
 many works, as well as a book-auctioneer ; he was indeed one 
 of the most prominent bibliopoles of his age. 
 
 About the same date, we meet with the name of Harris, the 
 author of Lexicon Technicum. Dr. Pees' CyclojpCBdia, which 
 extended to forty volumes, quarto, was styled " the pride of 
 booksellers, and the honor of the English nation." His remains 
 were interred within the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 1G5 
 
 llutton, of Birmingham, who has been not inaptly styled the 
 English Franklin, from the very depths of obscurity and 
 poverty fought his way single-handed to wealth and literary 
 eminence. His " History of Birmingham " was followed by 
 other productions, including his interesting autobiograpliy. 
 His literary labors were concluded in 1811. In his last book, 
 he says : " I drove the quill thirty years, during which time I 
 wrote and published fourteen books." 
 
 We might refer to the names of E-ushton, of Liverpool, 
 M'Creery, Debrett, Allan Ramsay the poet, Hansard, Bulmer, 
 Boydell, Griffiths, Harrison, and many others we stay not to 
 enumerate. Worrall, of Bell Yard, w^ho died 1771, was a 
 well-known author-bookseller, as well as the eccentric Andrew 
 Brice, of Exeter, and Sir James Hodges, who lived at the sign 
 of the Looking-Glass, on London Bridge. The names should 
 not be omitted of Faulkner, Gent, Goadby, and also Smellie, 
 the first edition of whose work on philosophy yielded him 
 one thousand guineas, and a revenue of fame. Thomas Os- 
 borne, of Gray's Inn, was also a very eminent bookseller, 
 although, if we are to decide with Dr. Dibdin, not eminent in 
 philological attainments. Boswell relates an amusing circum- 
 stance connected with the professional career of this worthy 
 bibliopole, who, it is said, was inclined to assume an authorita- 
 tive air in his business intercourse. One day, Johnson happen- 
 ing to encounter a similar exhibition of temper, the Doctor 
 became so exasperated, that he actually knocked Osborne down 
 in his shop w^ith a folio, and put his foot upon his neck ; and 
 when remonstrated with on such summary proceeding, he 
 coolly replied, " Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat 
 him." 
 
 Paternoster Row, the great literary emporium of the world, 
 did not assume any importance till the reign of Queen Anne, 
 when the booksellers began to forsake their former principal 
 
166 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 mart, Little Britain,* which had become the resort of all the 
 bibliopoles about the time of the renowned John Day, termi- 
 nating with the equally celebrated Ballard. In earlier times 
 Paternoster Row seems to have been more noted for mercers, 
 lacemen, and haberdashers, for a newspaper periodical of 1707, 
 adds to the list, " the semjpstresses of Paternoster Pow." We 
 find, however, the record of a solitary member of the craft, 
 one Denham, who lived then and there, at the sign of the 
 Star, as early as 1564, and whose significant motto ran as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " Os liOTnini sublime dedit." 
 
 There also dwelt turners of beads, and they were called Pater- 
 noster makers, from which, of course, this noted place origin- 
 ally derived its name. It is also worthy of notice, that the 
 parish of St. Bride has been, from the days of Pynson, in 1500, 
 down to the days of Strahan, the location of the " King's 
 Printer ; " while the number of those carrying on the profes- 
 sion in this vicinity is singularly numerous, and far beyond 
 the average of any other parish in England, or perhaps the 
 world; the site seems to have become, from its first intro- 
 duction, the Alma Mater of the printers. Alex. Hogg was 
 moreover reputed a man of considerable learning. He pub- 
 lished numerous standard works in the serial form, and 
 was the first to introduce that convenient, and, for the spread 
 of literature, important mode of publication. He seems 
 to have exhausted the vocabularies of superlatives, to ex- 
 press the beauty, elegance, and magnificence of his editions. 
 
 * Formerly Breton, street, from the mansion of the Duke of Bretagne on 
 that spot, in more modem times became the "Paternoster Row" of the 
 bookseller ; and a newspaper of 1664 states them to have published here with- 
 in four years, 464 pamphlets. Here lived BawHnson (" Tom Folio" of The 
 Tatler, No, 158), who stuffed four chambers in Gray's Inn so full, that his 
 bed was removed into the passage. 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 167 
 
 He also was reputed to possess singular tact in revivifying a 
 dull book by recliristening it, and otherwise metamorphosing 
 its contents, when its sale, under its original condition, had 
 ceased ; hence he has been called, the " prince of puffers." 
 
 Among our notices of eminent bibliopolists we must not 
 omit the name of Andrew Millar, or the laconic missives that 
 passed between him and Dr. Johnson — although the incident 
 may be already familiar to the reader. 
 
 The great lexicographer having wearied the expectation of 
 the trade for his long-promised work, and no less the patience 
 of his publisher, who had already advanced him, in various 
 sums, the amount of £1,500, he was induced, on receipt of the 
 concluding sheet of his Dictionary, to send to the doctor the 
 following : " A. Millar sends his compliments to Mr. Samuel 
 Johnson, with money for the last sheet of copy of Dictionary, 
 and thanks God he has done with him." To which our author 
 replied, " Samuel Johnson returns compliments to Mr. Andrew 
 Millar, and is very glad to find (as he does by his note), that 
 Mr. A. M. has the grace to thank God for anything." 
 
 Honorable mention also should be made of a name which 
 has never, perhaps, been eclipsed in the annals of book craft. 
 We refer to that of l^icholls, whose " Literary Anecdotes," as 
 well as his numerous other works, will link his memory to 
 many a distant year, and whose otherwise iramense industry 
 and labors, as printer, compiler, and publisher, would sjcarce 
 require the aid of " Sylvanus Urban " to immortalize his 
 name. The mantle of the sire has descended upon the son, 
 who has published several historical works, and among others, 
 an " Account of the Guildhall, London," historical notices of 
 " Fonthill Abbey," etc. Sotheby, the celebrated book- 
 auctioneer of London, whose establishment, originally founded 
 in 1744, was one of the earliest of its class in London. He 
 was a man of extensive learning and literary acquirements, 
 
168 BOOK CBAFT. 
 
 and had been many years occupied in collecting materials for 
 an elaborate work on the " Early History of Printing." 
 
 Davy, of Devonshire, once a bookseller of eminence, was 
 afterwards distinguished for his attainments in biblical litera- 
 ture. John Gough, of Dublin, bookseller, was also author of 
 " A Tour in Ireland," " History of Quakers," and other w^orks. 
 William Harrod was a worthy, but eccentric bookseller, whose 
 pen produced several topographical works. Samuel Kosseau, 
 who, w^hen an apprentice to Nicholls, used to collect old epitaphs, 
 it is said actually taught himself in the intervals of business, 
 Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, as well as 
 two or three of the modern languages. Besides this, he edited, 
 in after life, several useful and popular works on elementary 
 education. To name Dodsley, would prove almost his suffi- 
 cient eulogy ; his valuable series of "Annual Eegisters," and 
 collected edition of " Old Plays," being literary performances 
 sufficient to form a monument to his memory. Mcholson, of 
 Worcester, is another member of the bookselling fraternity, 
 who has added to the stores of literature. Constable, the cele- 
 brated publisher of Edinburgh, whose literary taste and great 
 bibliographical knowledge, independently of his having been 
 the originator of the Edinburgh Review sufficiently entitles 
 him to notice. Ballantyne, the publisher and confidant of Sir 
 Walter Scott, who was the sprightly author of the " Widow's 
 Lodgings," and other works in the department of elegant lite- 
 rature, in addition to his vast fund of anecdote, is equally enti- 
 tled to distinction ; as well as Blackwood, for many years the 
 editor of the inimitable periodical that still retains his name. 
 James Lackington — the well-known London bookseller — may 
 be said to have established his claim to our notice from the 
 publication of his " Autobiography." From the shades of ob- 
 scurity, he was indebted to thriftiness and parsimony, no less 
 than to his untiring zeal and exertions, for his ultimate distinc- 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 169 
 
 tion. If we may not assign to his character any literary 
 eminence, and we do not, his career, at least, was marked by 
 singular eccentricity ; his spacious establishment in Finsbury 
 Square, around which it is said that he actually drove a coach- 
 and-four, contained an immense collection of books. Among 
 his many expedients to excite notoriety, was the publication of 
 an advertisement, stating that his coach-house in Old street had 
 been robbed of 10,000 volumes, consisting chiefly of Dr. Watts' 
 " Psalms and Hymns," a manoeuvre that answered the two- 
 fold purpose of letting the world know that he kept a coach, 
 and that even so large a quantity of books could scarce be 
 missed from liis collection. lie also had the vanity to hoist a 
 flag at the top of his house as a signal, whenever he arrived 
 from his country seat at Merton. 
 
 His vanity was certainly very amusing, and excusable when 
 we consider the disadvantages of his humble origin. At ten 
 years old he commenced crying apple-pies in the streets, so 
 that, as he himself intimates, he soon began to make a noise in 
 the world. His success in this, his first essay, induced speedily 
 the exchange of tarts for books ; thus he commenced his busi- 
 ness as a bookseller, which one year yielded him a profit of 
 £5,000. Here we might mention the name of John Trusler, 
 who was distinguished as a doctor, parson, printer, and author; 
 having fabricated many useful books, and amongst others, an 
 " Essay on the Kights of Literary Property " — a subject, even 
 at the present day, we regret to find, so very imperfectly un- 
 derstood among the mass of those to whose enjoyment it is 
 made to yield so large a contribution. Davies, in 1817, com- 
 piled and published several amusing bibliographic works, one 
 entitled, ^^^ Olio of Bibliographical and Literary Anecdote, 
 and A Life of Garriclc, which went through several editions. 
 Pichard Beatniffe, bookseller, of Norwich, wrote a Tour 
 through Nor folic, and other works. Parkhurst (Johnson's 
 
170 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 friend) was of distinguished repute, and occupied many years 
 in preparing a Talmudic Lexicon ! Upliam, of Exeter, also 
 translated sacred books of the Buddhists. Dr. William Rus- 
 sell, who died at the close of the last century, the well-known 
 author of the History of Modern Euroj^e^ was originally ap- 
 prenticed to a bookseller ; a few years after which, he was 
 engaged as a corrector of the press, and subsequently was 
 enabled to devote himself to authorship. His historical works 
 were the product of his maturer years. Whiston, the transla- 
 tor of Josejphus^ was also in his early days a bookseller. The 
 same might be remarked of the renowned naturalist, Smellie, 
 equally celebrated as having produced the best edition of 
 Terence. He was, moreover, the antagonist of Hume, the 
 refutation of wliose atheistical opinions became the theme of 
 his pen. Walwyn was a bard-bookseller of eminence, " a worthy 
 associate of Dryden." Watton, who kept a shop near St. Dun- 
 stan's many years, published and compiled several excellent 
 works — among them the earliest history we possess of Baronets, 
 occupying 'Slyq. octavo volumes. Glinthus Gregory also was 
 once a bookseller, at Cambridge, and a teacher of mathematics 
 at the same time, as well as an author. 
 
 John Lander, brother of the African traveller, was originally 
 a bookseller. Devoting his leisure to literary pursuits, and his 
 mind being inspired with a love of enterprise, he not only ren- 
 dered important services to physical science, by the discovery 
 of a problem which had long baffled the literati of Europe, and 
 which has placed his name among the proudest in the annals 
 of science, but he bequeathed to the world one of the most 
 interesting narratives of travel in the English language. Sir 
 Bichard Phillips, of whose elementary writings it is enough 
 commendation to remark, that they were sufficiently productive 
 to become the adequate support of his declining years, was not 
 only the first publisher to introduce a redaction in the price of 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 171 
 
 books, but the originator of a fund for oppressed debtors — 
 both things speak well for him. In the same category was 
 Booth, of London, whose knowledge of books, critical, not 
 titulary, rendered him eminently distinguished ; his collection 
 was exceedingly rare and extensive. His literary capabilities 
 were so far respected by Malone, the commentator of Sbak- 
 speare, that he consigned to him the onerous task of editing 
 and arranging the annotations and remarks for his edition of 
 the great dramatist. He also edited and compiled several doc- 
 uments for his Account of the Battle of Waterloo^ two 
 volumes quarto, which passed through nine editions in less 
 than two years. 
 
 The race of author-booksellers, far from being extinct, is 
 yet flourishing at the present day ; not a few of those who are 
 emulous of the classic honors of their sires, add a new lustre 
 to the bibliographic history of the nineteenth century. Wil- 
 liam Longman has distinguished himself in the science of en- 
 tomology, a subject that has already successfully engaged his 
 pen. Wood, the natural history bookseller, is undoubtedly 
 deserving a place among the scientific writers of the day, 
 which his esteemed work, Zoogrwphy, or the Beauties of 
 Nature Disjplojyed^ in three large volumes, sufficiently attests. 
 
 Moxon, in early life, published Christmas, a poem, and a 
 volume of Sonnets, which were so favorably noticed by Rogers, 
 the poet, that a friendship ensued, which since ripened with its 
 growth, and contributed very materially to the success of this 
 enterprising and accomplished publisher for the poets. To the 
 classical reader we need only mention the name of Yalpy, 
 whose edition of the Variorum Classics extended to 161 
 vols.,. 8vo., to prove his cultivated taste and liberality of enter- 
 prise. M'Cray has translated and published some beautiful 
 Lyrics from the German ; William Clarke, originally a book- 
 seller, gave to the antiquary an exceedingly curious and 
 
172 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 interesting account of libraries, under the name of Eejper- 
 torium Bibliograjphicum ; and Eodd was the translator 
 of several volumes from the Spanish. One of the best 
 bibliographers was Evans, the auctioneer and bookseller of 
 Pall-Mali ; Dolby, bookseller, gave to the public a work of 
 ingenuity and labor. The ShaJcspearian Dictionary y' and 
 Christie, the auctioneer, has also produced four abstruse works, 
 on the taste and literature of the ancient Greeks, which he 
 compiled during the intervals of his business occupation ; 
 Griffith, the bookseller, compiled a catalogue of ancient and 
 modern poetry, entitled BiUiograjjhia Anglo- Poetica ; and 
 Dr. Roller and Mr. Bach were both translators and German 
 critics, as well as booksellers. Another conspicuous member 
 of the class was Cochrane, who was for some time an eminent 
 bookseller, and the able arid discriminating editor of the 
 'Foreign Quarterly Review^ for seven years. He was also 
 selected by the trustees to draw up the catalogue of Sir Walter 
 Scott's choice and valuable library at Abbotsford — a most 
 delightful labor of love ; and on the formation of the London 
 Library, was, among a host of competitors, unanimously elected 
 to the offices of librarian and secretary. 
 
 We might also mention Stewart, the eminent linguist, and 
 known as the skilful compiler of the celebrated catalogue of 
 Miss Currer's library, which he embellished by drawings from 
 his own pencil. 
 
 If any one is sceptical enough, after what has been adduced 
 to the contrary, to assert that the book-selling and printing- 
 business has been wanting in literary distinction, we pity his 
 want of candor, while we further refer him to such names a^ 
 the following : Arrowsmith, the celebrated map-publisher, and 
 author of Ancient and Modern Geography, as well as several 
 elementary works in geography, some of which, with the 
 former, were used as text-books at Oxford, Cambridge, and 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 173 
 
 Eton ; Atkinson, of Glasgow, possessed, perhaps, as great an 
 acquaintance with Medical Bihliograjphy as any person of his 
 times, as his curious and unique work on that subject proves. 
 One of the leading medical journals of Europe characterized it 
 as '* one of the most remarkable books ever seen — unitins: the 
 German research of a Ploquet with the ravings of a Rabelais, 
 the humor of Sterne with the satire of Democritus, the learning 
 of Burton with the wit of Pindar." It is to be regretted 
 the ingenious author did not live to complete the whole de- 
 sign. 
 
 Ainsworth, the popular historical novelist, was originally a 
 bookseller. Godwin, author of Caleb Williams, St. Leon, 
 etc., was once a bookseller ; Rodd, who kept an extensive 
 establishment for the sale of old books, translated the Sjpan- 
 ish Ballads. His shop was the resort of confirmed biblio- 
 maniacs. 
 
 l^or should the name of John Murray — ^the friend and pub- 
 lisher of Byron, be omitted in this place. It is not our prov- 
 ince to remark on the distinguished eminence of this gentle- 
 man as a publisher, although in this respect he may unques- 
 tionably be entitled to take the highest rank ; but his well- 
 known literary abilities, and critical taste, equally render him 
 conspicuous, as evinced ia the immense collection of valuable 
 works which have issued from his establishment. The excel- 
 lent series of Hand- Boohs, are in part, productions of his son, 
 the present publisher of that name. 
 
 The name of Talboys, of Oxford, will be remembered by 
 his admirable translation of Adelung's Historical Sketch of 
 Sanscrit Literature, to which he appended copious biblio- 
 graphical notices. He was, moreover, the translator of the 
 very erudite volumes of Professor Heeren, of which he is also 
 the publisher ; his Bihliotheca Classica and Theologica, like- 
 
174 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 wise deserve honorable mention for their completeness and 
 excellent scientific arrangement. 
 
 Hansard, the printer, who wrote TyjpograjpMay and another 
 similar work, and who has been also a contributor to the Eri- 
 cydojpedia Britannica, also was of the fraternity ; as well as 
 West, the author of Fifty Years'^ Becollections of a Book- 
 seller ; Goodhugh, author of the Library Manual; Haas, who 
 translated Dr. Krummacher's Elisha, and Zschokke's History 
 of Switzerland, 
 
 John Eussell Smith has rendered himself distinguished by his 
 industry, as well as literary taste. His work, Bibliotheca Can- 
 tiana^ as well as his Bihliograjphical List of all Works illus- 
 trating the Dialects of England^ evince both his untiring 
 antiquarian research and literary zeal. We come next to a name 
 that has become almost a synonym with antiquarian anecdote — 
 William Hone, the author of Every Day BooTc, and Year 
 Booh. He was originally a bookseller — his collected works 
 would probably fill ten or twelve octavos. His political satires 
 had a prodigious sale. His infidel publications he lived to re- 
 pudiate and publicly to recant, in a work entitled his Early 
 Life and Conversion. Henry G. Bohn deserves to be classed 
 among our author-booksellers ; his catalogue, containing a criti- 
 cal description of 300,000 volumes, in all the languages dear to 
 literature, may be ranked among the most laborious productions 
 of the press of any nation. The Charubers of Edinburgh, 
 editors of the able and valuable works that bear their name, 
 present another noble instance of genius rising superior to 
 all opposing circumstances. They were originally of humble 
 origin — now they are, perhaps, the largest publishers of the 
 age. Their essays are among the choicest of our periodical lit- 
 erature. There is still another name we cannot, in justice, 
 omit to notice : we allude to that of Timperley, whose Ency- 
 
 " 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 175 
 
 clo^cedia of Literary Anecdote discovers curious labor and re- 
 search: and to which we acknowledge our indebtedness for 
 many curious facts. 
 
 Charles Knight, the well-known editor of the Pictorial 
 Shakesjpeare^ of London Illustrated, and other excellent works ; 
 Thomas Miller, once the basket-maker, since poet, novelist, 
 and essayist ; and William Ilowitt, whose voluminous writings 
 are too well known to require recital — form a triple coronal in 
 bibliography ; and the lustre they shed upon the brotherhood 
 of booksellers to which they originally belonged, may well 
 atone for the obliquities, discrepancies, and obtuseness, with 
 which the tongue of scandal has sought to darken the fair 
 escutcheon of its fame. 
 
 Here, then, we ought to pause in our enumeration of literary 
 booksellers and printers ; although the catalogue might be 
 extended to a much greater length. There are three other 
 names, however, we must not omit, in conclusion. 
 
 In earlier times, Francis de Bure, a bookseller of Paris, 
 wrote, among others, a work of great research and skill, A 
 Treatise on Scarce and Curious BooJcs, in seven large vol- 
 umes. The originator of the great work, Encyclojpedie Metho- 
 dique, which has extended to above 150 volumes, was M. 
 Panckoucke, a Parisian bookseller. Peter Yander, of Leyden," 
 who died 1730, was another eminent instance of an author- 
 bookseller, as his singular work, Galerie du Monde, in 'o'o 
 folios, suiSciently attests ; and Lascaile, of Holland, was 
 poet and publisher ; and even his daughter so largely inher- 
 ited her father's genius, that she was styled the Dutch Sappho, 
 or tenth muse. 
 
 The renowned publisher, Tauchnitz, of Leipsic, achieves a 
 great work for the diffusion of literature over continental 
 Europe. His popular series of British Classics alone includes 
 
176 BOOK CEAFT. 
 
 1,000 volumes. His publishing establishment is now the largest 
 on the continent of Europe. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, Trithemius died in Germany, after 
 having, from time to time, assembled the literary world to 
 behold the wonder of that age — a library of two thousand 
 volumes. 
 
 The first book ever printed in the New World was in the city 
 of Mexico. It was printed in the Spanish language, in the 
 year 1544, and was entitled Doctrina Christiana joer eo los 
 Indes. The first publications made in English, in America, 
 were the Freemar^s Oath, an Almanac for 1639. In 1640 was 
 published the first book, entitled the Bay Psalm Booh. It was 
 reprinted in England, where it passed through no less than 
 eighteen editions ; the last being issued in 1754. It was no 
 less popular in Scotland, twenty-two editions of it having been 
 published there. 
 
 "We might mention, among the craft, and with no slight 
 honor, the name of John Foster, a man of great literary attain- 
 ments, a graduate at Harvard Univei^ity, and himself an au- 
 thor. At a later date Matthew Carey, and his son and succes- 
 sor, Henry Carey, both of whom have recorded their names in 
 the literary annals of their country, not to omit the name of an 
 'author-bookseller, Peter Parley (Goodrich), whose works are 
 alike appreciated in both hemispheres. 
 
 Isaiah Thomas has written and published a History of Print- 
 ing^ a work of considerable reputation ; Drake, the antiquarian 
 bookseller of Boston, besides being a member of several learned 
 societies, was author of the Booh of the Indians and History 
 of Boston. 
 
 The first printing press set up in America, was " worked " 
 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1639. 
 
 The Rev. Jesse Glover procured this press, by " contributions 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 177 
 
 of friends of learning and religion," in Amsterdam and in Eng- 
 land, but died on his passage to the New World. 
 
 Stephen Day was the first printer. In honor of his pioneer 
 services Government gave him a grant of three hundred acres 
 of land. Among his other publications were the New Testa- 
 ment and Baxter^ s Call, translated into the Indian language, 
 by Elliot, the pioneer Missionary, and printed at great cost. 
 The title might be recommended, on account of its obscurity 
 and high-sounding character, to some of our transcendental 
 writers. It was W^cs7c^c- WuttestJiementuin Yul-Lordumun 
 Jesus Christ Ntcp^oqhwussucoeiienmun.^ 
 
 The whole Bible was printed in this language in 1663. The 
 nation once speaking it, is now extinct. 
 
 Pennsylvania was the second State to encourage printing. 
 William Bradford went to Pennsylvania, with William Penn, in 
 1682, and in 1686 established a printing-press in Philadelphia. 
 
 In 1692, Bradford was induced to establish a printing-press 
 in New York. He received £40 per annum, and " the privi- 
 lege of printing on his own account." Previous to this time 
 there had been no printing done in the Province of New York. 
 His first issue in New York was a proclamation, bearing date 
 of 1692. 
 
 Pope satirized some of his publishers and defamed others. 
 
 * One long word suggests another — tlie title of a pamphlet (in the possession 
 of the writer), published years ago in London. The title reads : " Chronon- 
 hotontliologos^ the most tragical tragedy that ever was tragedized by any com- 
 pany of tragedians." The two first lines of this effusion read — 
 
 '"Alcleborontiphoscophosnio ! 
 ^Vllere left you Chrononhotonthologos ? " 
 
 We might name another singular title of a work published in 1661, by Ro- 
 bert LoveU, entitled, '-'■ Panzoologicomineralogia ; a complete history of animals 
 and minerals, contain? the summe of all authors, Galenical and Chymicall, 
 with the anatomic of man, &c." 
 13 
 
178 BOOK CKAFT. 
 
 Johnson knocked one down with a folio. In more i ecent times 
 Campbell, when called upon for a toast at a literary dinner, 
 gave the health of Napoleon because he had shot a bookseller. 
 One of the wittiest stanzas in Coleridge's DeviVs Walk is that 
 in which the Devil claims kin with a publisher : 
 
 ' ' For I myself sat like a cormorant once 
 Upon tlie tree of knowledge." 
 
 And it was a modern author who made the parable of the 
 Good Samaritan run, " A certain man went down to Paternos- 
 ter Kow, and fell among thieves." 
 
 ]^ext to the desire to know something about the personnel of 
 an author, is the interest with which the public regard that in- 
 termediate personage between him and themselves, yclept the 
 publisher. In a subordinate sense, he may justly be considered 
 a member of the literary profession, for he enacts the part of 
 agent for the author and his readers ; and if not an indispen- 
 sable, he is at least a most important auxiliary in these relations. 
 Publishers have, however, not unfrequently been characterized 
 as selfish in their pursuits, and alike injurious to the interest of 
 the author, and the commonwealth of literature. This asper- 
 sion upon their fair fame is at length fast passing away, if in- 
 deed it has not already disappeared. Their position in society, 
 as the purveyors of its literary aliment, is at length appreci- 
 ated. The bookselling fraternity are a set of men, whose 
 movements are for the most part regulated by the question of 
 profit and loss. They deal in books very much as do the pur- 
 veyors of meat and bread, — estimating their mercantile value 
 by the size, if not the weight avoirdupois. The history of 
 " book craft," which yet remains to be written, would form a 
 book of " Chronicles," if less important, scarcely less interest^ 
 ing.than those of Froissart; it would abound with strange an- 
 omalies, and curious portraitures. In early times, the monks 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 179 
 
 — the custodes of the learning of their day — combined within 
 themselves both author and publisher ; if indeed the latter 
 term may be allowed in this case. They were styled the Co7n- 
 mercium Libroriim^ their office comprehending that of the 
 scribe, as well as the dealer in manuscripts. Between the years 
 1474 and 1600, it has been estimated about 350 printers flour- 
 ished in England and Scotland alone, and that the products of 
 their several presses amounted in the aggregate to 10,000 dis- 
 tinct productions. * 
 
 To attempt any computation of their numbers, subsequently, 
 would defy our arithmetical powers. 
 
 But for booksellers, intellect would die of famine. London 
 is the great Sanhedrim of the author-craft of the world. Lon- 
 don is the very brain of Britain, the centre of its literature, 
 the seat of its intelligence. There is the great emporium of 
 booksellers, that time-honored, and worthy order. Paternos- 
 ter Row has an aroma of paper and print. There is no spot on 
 the globe like it. The London book-trade is divided into the 
 following branches — the general retail bookseller, the dealer in 
 black letter, or second-hand books, the wholesale merchant, who 
 executes country and foreign orders, and the publishing, or 
 manufacturing bookseller. The second class formerly did 
 chiefly congregate in Little Britain — now they are scattered 
 about Holborn, Covent Garden, and the Strand. These are 
 depositories of those choice relics of the olden time, that often 
 tempt such premiums from the bibliomaniac. 
 
 While on this point, we cannot refrain from a recollection or 
 
 * D'Israeli, in his CuriosiUes of Literature^ states, that the four ages of 
 typography have produced no less than 3,641,960 works ! Taking- each work 
 at three volumes, and reckoning each impression to consist of only 300 coisies 
 (a very moderate supposition), the actual amount of volumes which have 
 issued from the presses of Europe, down to the year 181G, appears to be 
 3,377,640,000 ! 
 
180 BOOK CEAFT. 
 
 two of tlie brotherhood. One was named Nunn ; he kept an 
 old book establishment in Great Queen street, and although a 
 singularly large and corpulent personage, was scarcely less re- 
 markable for his activity in early life, than for his austerity and 
 moroseness in its later stages. By his parsimony and patient 
 application to business, he became ultimately possessed of con- 
 siderable wealth ; and although this was no secret, yet his two 
 daughters, who were (if one may hazard gallantry for truth) 
 remarkably ugly, lived in single blessedness to the very autumn 
 of life; but, strange to add, immediately after the demise of 
 their venerable parent at the advanced age of eighty, they each 
 entered into matrimonial alliances. Old N^unn possessed many 
 peculiarities, and although not particularly remarkable for in- 
 dulging any " sudorous brain-toils " of his own, he yet never 
 appeared so contented, as when immured among his musty 
 tomes. We well remember, his curious custom of cramming 
 his capacious coat-pockets, which, on one occasion, actually 
 yielded f our-and-twenty octavo volumes. D'Arcy, also a dealer 
 in second-hand and black-letter books, in Holborn, rendered 
 himself conspicuous, among other eccentricities, for the whim 
 of having women in his establishment, some of whom were de- 
 cidedly pretty ; and what is not less singular, it is said, he regu- 
 lated their remuneration according to the ratio of their personal 
 attractions. He died wealthy, like his eccentric contemporary 
 just alluded to. 
 
 The wholesale trade has always resided in and near Pater- 
 noster How ; but the chief house of this class was for many 
 years on London Bridge. Osborne lived nnder the gateway 
 of Gray's Inn. Tonson opposite the Strand Bridge. Millar, 
 facing St. Clement's Church. Dodsley, on the site of the 
 Shakspeare Gallery, in Pall Mall. 
 
 Publishers are said to keep the keys of the Temple of Fame. 
 They minister at the altar of learning, and furnish the intel- 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 181 
 
 lectiial wealth of the world. Dr. Johnson considered booksel- 
 lers the patrons of literature, liberal, generous-minded men. 
 Another quaintly asks, " Can a bookseller live, move, and have 
 his being, in an atmosphere of intellect, and not absorb the 
 very soul and spirit of his books through his pores?" An 
 experienced bookseller is often better qualified to judge of a 
 book than all the critics that ever praised or blamed since the 
 days of Diogenes. Comparatively few, however, of the pub- 
 lishing fraternity pretend to critical censorship ; they usually 
 defer to the critical judgment of some literary friend, in deter- 
 mining the claims of any work for publication. 
 
 In the United States the Press is represented by the illus- 
 trious Franklin, the Bacon of the Xew World — a triajuncta 
 in imo, printer, author, and philosopher; and who has been 
 thus technically described by one of the fraternity : " The * of 
 his profession, the type of honesty, the ! of all ; and although 
 the ^^ of death has put a . to his existence, every § of his 
 life is without a || ." 
 
 Types have been likened to 
 
 ' ' A thousand lamps at one lone altar Hghted, 
 Turning- the night of error into day." 
 
 Type-setting in early times was not remarkable for its exact- 
 ness and accuracy. In the year 1561, a book was printed, 
 called the Anatomy of the Mass. It had only 172 pages in it ; 
 but the author — a pious monk — was obliged to add fifteen 
 pages to correct the blunders! These he attributes to the 
 special instigation of the devil, to defeat the work ; and hence 
 may have come the use of the phrase. Printer's Devil. 
 
 A printer's wife in Germany came to grief, by feloniously 
 meddling with the types. She went into the office by night, 
 and took out the word "lord," in Genesis iii. 16, where Eve is 
 made subject to her husband, and made the verse read, '' he 
 
(I 
 
 182 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 shall be thy fool," instead of " he shall be thy lord." Tradition 
 adds that she was put to death for her wickedness. Some 
 printers of early editions of the Scriptures were so heavily 
 fined as to be utterly ruined, for leaving out the word " not " 
 from one of the Ten Commandments. There is an edition of 
 the Bible, called the '"' Yinegar Bible," from the parable of the 
 " Vineyard " being printed " vinegar." 
 
 Among the literary curiosities in a library at Southampton, 
 England, is an old Bible, known as the " Bug Bible," printed 
 by John Daye, 1551, with prologue by Tyndall. It derives its 
 name fi^om the peculiar rendering of the fifth verse in Psalm 
 91, which reads thus : " So that thou shalt not need to be afraid 
 for any bugs by night." 
 
 Bookbinding is an art of great antiquity. It is two thou- 
 sand 3^ears and more, since Phillatius, a Greek, divided the 
 rolled volume into sheets, and glued these together in the foim 
 which is familiar to us. The rolls had been preserved from 
 dust and injury by being kept in cylindrical cases ; and a pro- 
 tection for the book, in its new shape, was soon found to be 
 more necessary than before. This was supplied by securing 
 the leaves between stiff covers, probably of wood at first, and 
 thus began the modern art of bookbinding. 
 
 Soon the board was covered with leather, making in exter- 
 nal appearance a still nearer apjDroach to the workmanship of 
 our day ; but it was not until the close of the fifteenth century, 
 that the mill-board, which unites lightness with sufiicient 
 strength, was used as the foundation of the book-cover. 
 
 When the sheet of paper of which a book is made is folded 
 in two leaves, the bool^ is called a folio ; when into four leaves, 
 it is called quarto ; when folded into eight leaves, it is called 
 octavo ; when into twelve leaves, duodecimo, etc. 
 
 The ancient Romans ornamented the covers of their books 
 very elaborately. Those of wood were carved ; and upon some 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 183 
 
 of these scenes from plays, and events of public interest were 
 represented. About the commencement of the Christian era 
 leather of brilliant hues, decorated with gold and silver, had 
 come into use. In the Middle Ages the monks exhausted 
 their ingenuity, and frequently, it would seem, their purses, in 
 adorning the covers of those manuscripts, upon which they 
 spent their lives in writing and illuminating. Single figures and 
 groups, wrought in solid gold, silver, with enamel, precious 
 stones and pearls, made the outsidaof the volume correspond 
 to the splendor within. Less expensive works were often 
 bound in oaken boards very richly carved. 
 
 Kings and wealthy nobles expended much money upon 
 the binding of their libraries. Carved ivory covers, protected 
 by golden corners, and secured by jewelled clasps, were not 
 uncommon, as well as those of velvet, silk brocade, vel- 
 lum, and morocco, elaborately ornamented, after designs 
 made by great artists, and protected with bosses, corners, 
 and clasps of solid gold. The precious stones and metals 
 upon these book-covers cost us the loss of many a more 
 precious volume, for they frequently formed no inconsider- 
 able part of the plunder of a wealthy mansion, in a cap- 
 tured city. Dibdin tells us of one library of thirty thousand 
 volumes — that of Corvinus, King of Hungary^which was de- 
 stroyed on this account by the Turkish soldiers, when Buda 
 was taken, in 1526. 
 
 Quite an era in the history of bookbinding in England was 
 formed by the publication of the Great Bible, by Grafton, in 
 1539. In the reign of Henry YIII. the use of gold tooling 
 was introduced, and the designs for some of the rolls are at- 
 tributed to Holbein. Queen Elizabeth herself embroidered 
 velvet and silk book-covers. The art liad been carried to a 
 high degree of excellence and finish in France. Many have 
 acquired great renown there, in this department of handicraft. 
 
184 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 A word toucliing titles: "The titles of books," writes the 
 author of the Tin Trumpet^ "are decoys to catch pur- 
 chasers." There can be no doubt that a happy name to a book 
 is like an agreeable appearance to a man ; but if, in either 
 case, the Unal do not answer to the first impression, will not 
 our disappointment add to the severity of our judgment? 
 •' Let me succeed with my first impression," the bibliopolist will 
 cry, "and I ask no more." The public are welcome to end 
 with condemning, if they will only begin with buying. Most 
 readers, like the tuft-hunters at college, are caught by titles. 
 How inconsistent are our notions of morality ! I^o man of 
 honor would open a letter that was not addressed to him, 
 though he will not scruple to open a book under the same cir- 
 cumstances. Colton's Lacon has gone through many editions, 
 and yet it is addressed " To those who think." Had the author 
 substituted for these words, " Those who think they are think- 
 ing," it might not have had so extensive a sale, although it 
 would have been directed to a much larger class. Pie has 
 shown address in his address. 
 
 Scott is known to have profited much by Constable's biblio- 
 graphical knowledge, which was very extensive. The latter 
 christened Kenilworth, which Scott named Gumnor Hall. 
 John Ballantyne objected to the former title, and told Con- 
 stable the result would be " something worthy of the kennel ;" 
 but the result proved the reverse. Mr. Cadell relates that 
 Constable's vanity boiled over so much at this time, on having 
 his suggestions adopted, that, in his high moods, he used to 
 stalk up and down his room, and exclaim, " By Jove, I am all 
 but the author of the Waverley Novels ! " 
 
 In Butler's Remains it is remarked, that " there is a kind of 
 physiognomy in the titles of books, no less than in the faces of 
 men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what to 
 expect from the one as the other." 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 185 
 
 Generally speaking, this is correct. But the optician who 
 should happen to purchase a book entitled, A JVew Invention, 
 or a Paire of Oristall Sj)eGtacles, hy helpe whereof may he 
 read so small a jprint, that what twenty sheets of paper will 
 hardly contain shall he discovered in one (1644), would find, to 
 his surprise, that it has nothing to do with his business, but 
 relates to the civil war. So also might mistakes very readily 
 occur with regard to Tooke's Diversions of Purley, which a 
 village book-club is said to have ordered at the time of its 
 publication, under the impression that it was a book of amus- 
 ing games. 
 
 Some titles are agreeably short, and others wonderfully 
 long. A. few years since, a work was issued with the laconic 
 title of It ; and for days previous to its publication, the walls 
 of London were placarded with the words, " Order /^," " Buy 
 /25," "Bead It.'''' The naturalist Lovell published a book at 
 Oxford, in 1661, entitled Panzoologicomineralogia, which is 
 nearly as long a word as Babelais' proposed title for a book, 
 namely, " Antijpericatametajparhengedamphicrihrationes ! ! " 
 
 According to Stowe^s Chronicle, the title of Domesday 
 Booh arose from the circumstance of the original having been 
 carefully preserved in a sacred place at Westminster cloisters, 
 called Domus Dei, or House of God. 
 
 Authors of the olden time used to puff their own works by 
 affixing " taking titles " to them ; such as A right merrie and 
 wittie enterlude, verie jpleasante to reade, etc. A marvellous 
 wittie treatise, etc. A delectable, pithie, and, righte profitable 
 worJce, etc. Addison's Spectator proved so successful, that it 
 provoked Johnson to adopt The Idler and Pamhler. A very 
 amusing blunder was committed by a certain French critic, 
 who, notwithstanding the conventional use of the term, ren- 
 dered it Le Ohevalier Errant, and who, afterwards, on meet- 
 ing with the " Colossus of English literature," addressed him 
 
186 ROOK CRAFT. 
 
 with the astounding and complimentary epithet of Mr. Vaga- 
 hond ! 
 
 A pamphlet, published in 1703, had the following strange 
 title : " The Deformitie of Sin Cured, a sermon preached at 
 St. Michael's, Croohed Lane, before the Prince of Orange, by 
 the Rev. J. CrooJcshanhs. Sold by Matthew Denton, at the 
 Croohed Billet, near Crij^jplegate^ and by all booksellers." The 
 words of the text are, "Every croohed path shall be made 
 straight." The prince, before whom it was delivered, was de- 
 formed in person ! 
 
 Many adopted allegorical, fantastic, and absurd titles — such 
 as '^ArH asleepe, Husband? a boulster lecture, stored with 
 all variety of witty jests, merry tales, and other pleasant 
 passages." 1640 ; ^^ Najps icpon Parnassus : a sleepy muse nipt 
 and pincht, though not awakened, etc., by some of the wits 
 of the Universities ; " ''A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant In- 
 ventions ; garnished and decked with divers dayntie devisis," 
 etc., by T. Proctor. 1578 ; " Coryafs Crudities, hastily 
 gobled up in five moneths' travells in France, Savoy, Italie," 
 etc. 1611; '^Afan to drive away flies'^'' a treatise on purga- 
 tory ; ^^The sJiop of the spiritual apothecary^'' " Matches lighted 
 hy divine fir e^'' " The gun of 'penitence, etc." One of famous 
 Puritan memory. Sir Humphrey Lind, published a book, 
 which a Jesuit answered by another, entitled, "^ pair of 
 spectacles for Sir Humphrey Lind ^"^^ the doughty knight 
 retorted by, "^ case for Sir Humphrey Lind)s spectacles^ 
 
 In 1686 a pamphlet was published in London, entitled " A 
 Most Delectable Sweet Perfumed ]N"osegay for God's Saints to 
 Smell at." About the year 1649 there was published a work 
 entitled " A pair of Bellows to blow off the Dust Cast upon 
 John Fry," and " Crumbs of Comfort for the Children of the 
 Covenant." A Quaker, whose outward man the authorities 
 thought proper to imprison, published " A Sigh of Sorrow for 
 
BOOK CRAFT. 187 
 
 the Sinners of Zion, Breathed out of a Hole in the Wall of 
 an Earthly Vessel/' known among men by the name of Samuel 
 Fish. Abont tlie same time there was also published " The 
 Spiritual Mustard-pot to make the Soul Sneeze with Devotion ; " 
 " Salvation's Yantage-ground, or a Louping-stand for Heavy 
 Believers." Another, " A Siiot Aimed at the Devil's Head- 
 quarters through the Tube of the Cannon of the Covenant." 
 Another, " A Keaping-hook Well Tempered for the Stubborn 
 Ears of the Coming Crop ; or, Biscuits Baked in the Oven of 
 Charity, Carefully Conserved for the Chickens of the Church, 
 the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the Sweet Swallows of Salva- 
 tion." In another we have the following copious description 
 of its contents, — " Seven Sobs of a Sorrowful Soul for Sin ; 
 or. The Seven Penitential Psalms of the Princely Prophet 
 David," whereunto are also added William Humino's " Hand- 
 ful of Honeysuckles, and divers Godly and pithy Ditties now 
 newly augmented." 
 
 It is fortunate for these laborious scribes that they lived in 
 times when they found readers courageous enough to venture 
 beyond their titles. 
 
 D'Israeli has collected from the dust of departed days, among 
 other curious matters, many amusing particulars respecting the 
 subjects authors have chosen to dilate upon ; shall we glance at 
 a few ? In classic times we have Apuleius and Agrippa, suc- 
 ceeded by many moderns, who, to evince their irony and w^it, 
 selected that fabled emblem of wisdom — the ass. 
 
 One Joshua Barnes wrote a poem with the design of proving 
 the authorship of the Iliad, traceable to King Solomon; and 
 another French critic, Daurat, w^ho lived in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, pretended, according to Scaliger, to find all the Bible in 
 Homer. Du Guere wrote an eulogium on Wigs. Erasmus 
 amused himself by discussing The Praise of Folly., in his work 
 entitled Morim Encomitim^ which, for the sake of the pun, he 
 
188 
 
 BOOK CRAFT. 
 
 dedicated to Sir Thomas More. Pierrius' Treatise on Beards^ 
 Homer's war between The Frogs and Mice, and Lucian's dis- 
 sertation on A Fly, present a curious triumvirate of classic taste ; 
 and Gray's Ode on The Death of a Cat, Pope's verses on A 
 Lock of Hair, and Swift's Meditation on a Broomstick, may 
 serve as their companions in modern times. Goldsmith also 
 sung his Elegy on a mad dog, and Cowper attuned his lute to 
 a dead cat. 
 
 Having reached such a climax, we conclude our chapter 
 upon Book Craft — a theme of exhaustless interest to all who 
 have any affinity of taste for books, and the intellectual sweets 
 they contain, — since our too lavish indulgence in such refined 
 epicurism might challenge our mental digestion too severely. 
 
LAST WOEDS OF THE ILLUSTKIOITS. 
 
 The last utterances of illustrious personages possess for tlie 
 living, an enduring and peculiar interest, derived raainly from 
 the controlling influence they once exerted in social, religious, 
 literary, artistic, or political life. Yet, as Pliny justly remarks, 
 the sayings and actions of the most celebrated have not always 
 been the most worthy of admiration. How many among the 
 unostentatiously great have passed away without the loud 
 clarion of fame to glorify their virtues ; and how many more, 
 scarc,ely less worthy pass away, under eclipse, from the obscur- 
 ing or distorting influence of envy, bigotry, or detraction ! 
 And yet again, what a goodly number of those who have 
 sought to obtain, not the laurel crown of earthly fame, but that 
 crown "that fadeth not away — the crown of life!" Their 
 record is that of the "patience of hope," and the victory of 
 faith. 
 
190 LAST WOEDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 
 
 ' ' The chamber where the good man meets his fate 
 Is privileged beyond the common walks 
 Of virtuous life — quite on the verge of Heaven." 
 
 The final utterances of such persons are eminently worthy 
 of oar regard, as being illustrative of character, in its highest 
 moral development. In grouping together these mortuary 
 memoranda, we shall not attempt any order of classification, but 
 simply let each citation speak for itself ; for there is a sacred- 
 ness about the last words and last acts of the dying, which it 
 would be sacrilegious, otherwise, to touch. Their words, too, 
 if ever, must be then, earnest and sincere, since as our great 
 dramatist has said — 
 
 " Where words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain, 
 For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain ! " 
 
 The momentous crisis of life's last hour, is one of intensest 
 interest and solemnity. With what profound sympathy do we 
 watch over those dear to us by indescribable ties, as their spirits 
 are about to leave the frail body and pass away,.impalpably, to 
 the spirit- world. They seem to be environed with the mystery of 
 the supernatural ; everything concerning their anticipated exit 
 from the body, seems to be shrouded from us by impenetrable 
 and awful mystery — the mj^stery of the unknown eternity! 
 How intense is the anguish with which we watch the wasting 
 form, the changing of the familiar expression of the face, into 
 an unearthly one ! How eagerly, as we bend over the couch of 
 the dying, do we watch for the last look, and listen for the last 
 syllable ! How we treasure up those last looks, and last words, 
 as the cherished liviug mementos of the departed ! 
 
 Though silent while living, some Christians have become 
 vocal at the closing hour ; while others, who have been demon- 
 strative and eloquent, by lip and life, like Whitefield, die and 
 make no sign. We must not, however, attach undue value to 
 
LAST WORDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 191 
 
 death-bed utterances, ag indicative of real character ; sentiments 
 expressed under such circumstances, may be possibly prompted 
 by impulse rather than principle. Nor are we always to rely 
 upon confessions and opinions uttered in life's great emergency, 
 as of final authority ; since such testimonies have occasionally 
 been as confidently expressed against, as in favor of Chris- 
 tianity. Stolid and stoical insensibility may assume the guise 
 of complacency or indifference, as to the future state ; but that 
 is as diverse from the calm confidence of the true Christian, as 
 the counterfeit is to the true coin. Andrew Fuller, whose 
 robust intellect was not likely to be seduced by specious 
 appearances, exclaimed when dying, — " My hope is sucli that I 
 am not afraid to plunge into eternity!" Could the effect of 
 the most triumphant end be stronger ? 
 
 Some there are who, in their last moments only, become 
 convinced of the insufficiency of the world to sustain them in 
 the last conflict of dissolvinoj nature. Such are amons^ the 
 votaries of fashion, who seem to have no conception that the 
 gift of life involved any responsibility for its right use : among 
 this class might be named Selwyn, Walpole, Chesterfield, Maz 
 arine, Madame de Pompadour, and a host more. 
 
 '' When spirits ebb, wlien life's enchanting- scenes 
 Fade in the view, and vanish from the sight, 
 "Will toys amuse ? No ! thrones will then be toys, 
 And eai-th and skies seem dust upon the scale." 
 
 There is another class of character, whose final utterances 
 have been avowedly on the side of infidelity; let us just glance 
 at two of the more prominent of these. Perhaps no one has 
 had more literary homage conferred upon him than Yoltaire ; 
 yet it would be difficult to discover an individual so richly 
 endowed with intellectual power, yet so utterly despicable in his 
 moral nature. His profanity and blasphemy are too well 
 known, but it may not be so well knoAvn that, in his last 
 
192 LAST WORDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 
 
 moments he commanded his philosophical friends to retire. 
 ^' Begone ! " he exclaimed, " it is you who have brought me to 
 my present state." His physician relates that the Marquis of 
 Richelieu, one of Yoltaire's associates, fled from his bed-side, 
 saying that " the furies of Orestes could give but a faint idea 
 of those of Yoltaire ! " 
 
 The notorious author of " The Age of Eeason," when dying, 
 his medical attendant. Dr. Manley, relates that he screamed at 
 being left alone, repeatedly exclaiming, — " O Lord, help me ! 
 O Christ, help me!" During his sickness, a neighbor having 
 denounced his book, telling him that she had burned it, Paine 
 said, that he wished all who had ever read that book, had been 
 as wise as she ; adding, — " If ever the devil had an agent on 
 earth, I have been one." Pleasant relief it is, to tui-n from 
 these scenes of hopeless death-beds to the calm serenity of that 
 of the celebrated Matthew Henry, who, when dying said, — " A 
 life spent in the service of God, and communion with Him, is 
 the most comfortable and pleasant life that anyone can live in 
 this present world." And his counsel has been indorsed by 
 multitudes of the wisest and noblest of the race, as well as by 
 yet greater multitudes wlio knew not the wisdom of this world, 
 but who yet were " wise unto salvation." 
 
 " Is tliat his death -bed where the Christian lies ? 
 No ! 'tis not his : 'tis death itself there dies ! " 
 
 Those ever-memorable words — '' Lord Jesus I receive my 
 spirit ! " — with which was committed to the fruitful earth, the 
 life-blood of the protomartyr, Stephen, — so faithful an echo of 
 the cry of Him, who died that a dying world might live, — have 
 been themselves re-echoed with the expiring breath of count- 
 less multitudes of souls. 
 
 Columbus closed his wonderful career with the same devout 
 sentiment, — " In mamis tuas, Domine, commendo sjoiritum 
 
LAST WORDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 193 
 
 TThewnP Tasso expired, while uttering the same devout senti- 
 ment in the Italian ; and the saintly George Herbert's last ut- 
 terance was again, almost verbally the same wish ; and lastly a 
 later servant of the sanctuary, the gifted Edward Irving, after 
 repeating the twenty-third Psalm in Hebrew, closed his elo- 
 quent lips and life on earth, with these words, " If I die, I die 
 unto the Lord." 
 
 We weep, instinctively, over the cold lifeless forms of those 
 we have loved and lost; and our sadness and sorrow are often- 
 times assuaged or mitigated by the sweet relief of tears. 
 
 " We miss them when the board is spread, 
 We miss them when the prayer is said ; 
 But the sadness of this aching love 
 Dims not our ' Father's house ' above," 
 
 Beyond the charmed circle of the domestic affections, how- 
 ever, there ought to be no inconsolable grief for the departure of 
 the great and good, — no tears but those of gratitude should be- 
 dew their graves ; for though, like the lark, they have soared 
 heavenward, singing as they soar, — they have also enriched us 
 by the legacy they have left of their instructive and beautiful 
 life record. The living and those whom we call dead, are all 
 of one great family ; and those who have passed away from 
 among us have yet bequeathed the wealth of their wisdom to 
 us, as an imperishable possession. 
 
 John Wesley's last words were, — " The best of all is, God is 
 with us ! " Halyburton's death-scene is described as one of the 
 most rapturous in the history of the church ; such was also the 
 closing hour of the French pastor, Rivet ; such also that of 
 worthy Doctor Donne, who exclaimed " I were miserable, if I 
 might not die ! " Among the memorable utterances of this 
 saintly man, just before his departure, was this : " I repent of 
 my life except that part of it which I spent in communion with 
 13 
 
194 
 
 LAST WORDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 
 
 God, and in doing good ! " Sir Walter Scott's last words were 
 a benediction to his sorrowing home-circle, " God bless you all." 
 Sir James Mackintosh, just as he was expiring, expressed much 
 in little, for it was but a word, yet how significant a one — 
 " Hajypy ! " Our own revered Washington's last utterance was in 
 a single short sentence, no less expressive — " It is well ! " Tliese 
 are a few of the echoes from Christian death-chambers ; how 
 many, in the heroic ages of the church, have made their exit 
 from us, in a sheet of flame, like that dauntless confessor, 
 Bishop Ferrar, in 1555, who, while being chained to the stake, 
 exclaimed, " If I stir, through the pains of my burning, believe 
 not the doctrine I have taught ! " 
 
 These taught us how to live ; and oh, too high 
 A price for knowledge, taught us how to die ! " 
 
 " The ruling passion, strong in death," has been often illus- 
 trated ; Lord l^elson's last words were : " Tell Collingwood to 
 bring the fleet to an anchor." The demise of Waj[)oleon, at St. 
 Helena, which was accompanied by a terrific storm, that tore up 
 by the roots most of the trees at Longwood, was another nota- 
 ble instance. At six o'clock, in the evening of the 5th of May, 
 1820, having just uttered the significant words, '''Tete cParmee! " 
 the great soldier passed forever from the dreams of battle. 
 Cardinal Wolsey^s closing hours were characterized by a consis- 
 tent hostility to the Protestant faith, for he said : " Master 
 Kingston, the King should know that if he tolerates heresy, 
 God will take away his Kingdom ! " Erasmus, when dying, 
 exclaimed, — " Domine ! Domine ! fac finem, fac finem ! " Lord 
 Chesterfield, the idol of fashion — as he lay dying, seeing a friend 
 enter his chamber, with his accustomed etiquette, said : " Give 
 Dayroles a chair." Charles I., as he ascended the scaffold at 
 Whitehall, said : " I fear not death, death is not terrible to me ! " 
 
LAST WORDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 195 
 
 Lord Koscoramon, when about to expire; uttered with the en- 
 ergy of devotion, these two lines of liis version of Dies Iroe : 
 
 " My God, my Father, and my friend. 
 Do not forsake me in my end ! " 
 
 The great Sir Isaac Newton died suddenly and voiceless — 
 in the act of winding up his watch ; and Haller, feeling his 
 own pulse, exclaimed, " The artery ceases to beat," and instantly 
 expired. Goldsmith, when his physician, unable to pronounce a 
 diagnosis of his disease, inquired if his mind was at ease, re- 
 plied, — " Wo, it is not ! " These were the last sad words of one 
 who had so largely ministered to the intellectual pleasure of the 
 civilized world. Just before Poj>e expired, as he sat in his 
 chair, a friend called to inquire how he was ; " I am dying, 
 sir, of a hundred good symptoms," said the wit. When a friend 
 called upon Dr. Johnson, during his last sickness, and inquired 
 how he was, he replied in a melancholy tone, " Jam Mori- 
 turiosP The dread monster death — on the last day of his ex- 
 istence, came to his mental apprehension envisaged with all the 
 horrors that had so haunted him through life. Many bishops 
 and prominent ministers of religion visited him ; but failed to 
 " minister to a mind diseased ; " and it was reserved for an ob- 
 scure clergyman he had formerly known, to suggest that spiri- 
 tual consolation his condition demanded. KlojpstocJc closed a 
 beautiful life in the act of reciting his own charming verses, 
 descriptive of the death of Mary, the sister of Martha and Laza- 
 rus. This song was chanted at the public funeral of the poet. 
 Goethe, after more than the usually allotted term of human ex- 
 istence, when met by the summons, was still busy with his pen 
 — the implement, at once, of his pleasure and his power ; and he 
 sank as a child, with the glow of the day's activity yet on his 
 cheek, exclaiming, " More light ! more light ! " Haydn's genius 
 like Southey's and others, was under eclipse before his 
 
190 LAST WORDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 
 
 earthly life ceased. In his latter years, when visited by stran- 
 gers, they found him in a room, sitting before a desk, with the 
 melanclioly aspect of one who seemed conscious of his lost 
 power. When the war broke out between Austria and France, 
 in 1809, the intelligence roused Haydn, and exhausted the 
 shattered remnant of his remaining strength. The French 
 army advanced with gigantic strides, and at length reached 
 close upon his house ; yet he was carried to his piano, when 
 he sang thrice, as loud as he was able, — " God preserve the Em- 
 peror ! " It was the song of the swan ; while at the piano he 
 fell into a kind of stupor, and expired. There is something 
 strikingly beautiful and touching in the circumstances of the 
 death of his brother-composer Mozart — his sweetest song was 
 the last he sang, '^ the RequiemP He had been employed upon 
 this exquisite piece for several weeks. After giving it its 
 last touch, and breathing into it that undying spirit of song, 
 which was to consecrate it through all time as his " cygnean 
 strain," he fell into a gentle and quiet slumber. At length, the 
 light footsteps of his daughter Emilie awoke him. "Come 
 hither," said he, " my Emilie — my task is done-^the Requiem 
 — my Requiem is finished." " Say not so, dear father," said 
 the gentle girl, interrupting him, as tears stood in her eyes ; 
 " you must be better — you look better, for even now your cheek 
 has a glow upon it. I am sure we will nurse you well again 
 — ^let me bring you something refreshing." " Do not deceive 
 yourself, my love," said the dying father ; " this wasted form 
 can never be restored by human aid. From Heaven's mercy 
 alone do I look for aid, in this my dying hour. You spoke of 
 refreshment, my Emilie — ^take these, my last notes — sit down 
 by my piano here — sing them with the hymn of thy sainted 
 mother — ^let me once more hear those tones which have been so 
 long my solacement and delight." Emilie obeyed ; and with 
 
LAST WORDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 197 
 
 a voice enriched with tenderest emotion, sang the following 
 stanzas : 
 
 " Spirit ! thy labor is o'er ! 
 
 Thy term of probation is run ; 
 Thy steps are now bound for the untrodden shore ; 
 And the race of immortals begun ! 
 
 " Spirit ! look not on the strife, 
 
 Or the pleasures of earth, with regret, — 
 Pause not on the threshold of limitless life I 
 To mourn for the day that is set. 
 
 " Spirit ! no fetters can bind, 
 
 No wicked have power to molest ; 
 There, the weary— like thee, the wretched shall find 
 A haven, — a mansion of rest, 
 
 " Spirit ! how bright is the road, 
 
 For which thou art now on the wing ! 
 Thy home, it will be with thy Saviour and God, 
 There loud hallelujahs to sing ! " 
 
 As she concluded, she dwelt for a moment npon the low, 
 melancholy notes of the piece, and then turning from the in- 
 strument, looked in silence for the approving smile of her father. 
 It was the still, passionless smile which the rapt and joyous 
 spirit had 'left, with the seal of death upon those features. 
 
 The demise of Beethoven was peculiarly impressive. He 
 had been visibly declining, when suddenly he revived — a bright 
 smile illumed his features, as he softly murmured, "I shall hear 
 in heaven," (he was then deaf,) and then sung in a low, but dis- 
 tinct voice one of his own beautiful German hymns. 
 
 What a moral grandeur gathers around the death-scene of the 
 great and good of earth, when sanctified by a religious faith ; 
 and how fearful the contrast when the departing spirit leaves 
 the world all unprepared, unannealed, unblessed, with all the 
 terrible premonitions of a coming judgment. 
 
198 
 
 LAST WOEDS OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS. 
 
 It is refreshing to find some evidences of deep consciousness 
 of the vast solemnity befitting a dying hour, among men en- 
 dowed beyond the average of their race with intellectual 
 strength ; as in the case of Grotius, who, on being asked for 
 his dying admonition, exclaimed, '''Be serious!''^ All his vast 
 learning did not allow him to think lightly of the paramount 
 claims of those things which make for our eternal peace. Sir 
 William Jones, one of the most brilliant geniuses that ever 
 lived, affords similar evidence of the right estimate of human 
 learning, compared with the more important concerns of the 
 future world. "It matters not," says Johnson, "how a man 
 dies, but how he lives." And even sceptical Rousseau observes : 
 " The great error is, placing such an estimate on this life, as 
 if our being depended on it, and we were nothing after death." 
 To attach ourselves but slightly to human affairs, is the best 
 method of learning to die. When Garrick showed Dr. John- 
 son his fine house and gardens, at Hampton Court, instead of 
 his replying in the language of fiattery, he exclaimed, " Ah ! 
 David, David, these are the things which make a death-bed 
 terrible." 
 
THE MYSTEKIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 " Man is a dupable animal. Quacks in medicines, quacks in religion, and quacks in politics 
 know this, and act upon that knowledge. There is scarcely any one who may not, like a trout^ be 
 taken by tickling." — Southey. 
 
 Sm Thomas Beowne has nobly sought to dignify the medical 
 profession ; and it would be undignified in us to attempt to 
 impeach his excellent judgment. There are, however, sundry 
 phases of the Faculty that present points of humor and eccen- 
 tricity so amusing, that to indulge a little merriment over 
 them, cannot but prove an innocent pastime. There is fun 
 enougli in " love, law, and physic," if we seek it out. Any one 
 
\ 
 
 200 THE MYSTEKIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 with an eye for the ludicrous, will not need any specifications 
 in point. Much that is farcical in physic is, by the law of 
 electric affinities, transferred to the physician himself. 
 
 Judging by the latitudinarianism of some practitioners, and 
 the absurd nostrums of empirics and quacks, in all ages, it has 
 been gravely asked, whether doctors are really not the final 
 cause of disease. It is not, of course, to be disputed, that they 
 have been, to no inconsiderable extent, accessory both to the 
 reduction of disease and — of life itself. But for the inherent 
 tendency of mankind to blind credulity and superstition, it 
 may be doubted, whether the profession of medicine would 
 ever have been made the vehicle of such gross absurdities and 
 cunning impostures, as its past, and especially its earlier history 
 reveals. We are not about, however, to cast any imputation 
 upon the science of therapeutics ; our purpose being to glance 
 at some of the wild and monstrous follies, that have so long 
 disputed its claims to the suffrages of society. Medical prac- 
 tice has been defined, for the most part, guessing at nature's 
 intentions and wishes, and then endeavoring to supplement 
 them, by the application of chemical agents. 
 
 " Nature," says a French philosophical writer, " is fighting 
 with disease ; a blind man armed with a club, — that is, the 
 physician, — comes to settle the difference. He first tries to 
 make peace ; when he cannot accomplish this, he lifts his club 
 and strikes at random. If he strikes the disease, he kills it ; if 
 he strikes nature, he kills the patient." One who himself 
 turned states-evidence on this point, — D'Alembert, — relates, that 
 an individual, after conducting a prominent practice for thirty 
 years, confessed, as his reason for retiring from it, that he was 
 weary of guessing I An industrious nosologist has estimated, 
 that there are about twenty-four hundred disorders incident to 
 the human frame ! Possibly our great dramatist was not aware 
 to what numerical extent reached " the ills that flesh is heir 
 
 J 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINK 201 
 
 to," or he would scarcely have so disparagingly suggested that 
 we should " throw physic to the dogs." Or it may possibly 
 have been because there is, according to Punchy " an evident 
 affinity between physic and the dogs, a fact, that shows the 
 master mind of Shakspeare in suggesting the throwing of the 
 former to the latter ; for it is clear that every medicine, like 
 every dog, has its day. Pills have had their popularity, and 
 elixirs have had their run. Lozenges have taken their turn on 
 the wheel of fortune, and even pastes have been stuck to, for a 
 time, by crowds of adherents." 
 
 Napoleon once said to one of his physicians (Dr. Antom- 
 marchi), '' Believe me, we had better leave off all these reme- 
 dies, — life is a fortress that neither you, nor I, know anything 
 about. "Why throw obstacles in the way of its defence ? Its 
 own means are superior to all the apparatus of your laborato- 
 ries. Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the 
 results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful 
 to mankind." 
 
 The celebrated Zimmerman went from Hanover to attend 
 Frederick the Great, in his last illness. One day the king said 
 to him, " You have, I presume, sir, helped many a man into 
 another world % " This was rather a bitter j!?^7^ for the doctor ; 
 but the dose he gave the king in return, was a judicious mix- 
 ture of truth and flattery : " ]^ot so many as your majesty, nor 
 with so much honor to myseK," was the reply. Colman says, 
 " the medical and military, both deal in death ; " and if true, 
 that two of a trade never agree, it may be the emperor was 
 jealous of his reputation. 
 
 It has been well said : " The world is peopled by two classes 
 of beings, who seem to be cognate and necessary to each other. 
 Charlatans and dupes exist by a mutual dependence. There 
 is a tacit understanding, that whatever the one invents, the 
 other must believe. All bills which the former draws, the 
 
202 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 latter comes forward at once and honors. One is Prosjpero, the 
 other his poor slave, Caliban, Let the rogue open shop to dis- 
 pense pills, the simpleton, as soon as he learns the fact, hies to 
 the place, and takes his box of specifics, and complacently 
 walks away with his prize. The knaves seem to consider the 
 world as a rich parish — a large diocese of dunces, into which 
 they have an hereditary and prescriptive right to be installed." 
 
 Addison, who surrounded himself with all the accessories of 
 fortune, seems to have had a depreciating estimate of the 
 Faculty. These are his words : " If we look into the profes- 
 sion of physic, we shall find a most formidable body of men ; 
 the sight of them is enough to make a man serious, for we may 
 lay it down as a maxim that when a nation abounds in physi- 
 cians, it grows thin of people." This body of men, he com- 
 pares to the British army in Csesar's time — some of them slay 
 in chariots, and some on foot. If the infantry do less execu- 
 tion than the charioteers, it is because they cannot be carried 
 so soon into all quarters, and dispatch so much business in so 
 short a time. 
 
 Empirics and charlatans are the excrescences of the medical 
 profession ; they have obtained in all ages, yet the healing art 
 is not necessarily the occasion for deception ; nor the operations 
 of witchcraft, charms, amulets, astrology, necromancy, alchemy, 
 or magic ; although it has its mysteries like other branches of 
 occult science. 
 
 It is not surprising that men in early ages of civilization, 
 should ascribe the curative art, to the potency of some unseen 
 and supernatural agency, since the diseases incident to the 
 human family were supposed to be the result of the ire of the 
 heathen deities. 
 
 The Jews are the first people on record who practised the 
 art of healing, which they probably learned from the Egyp- 
 tians ; but the Greeks, who worshipped ^sculapius, as the god 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF IVIEDICIKE. 203 
 
 of medicine, first reduced that art to a regular system. Hippo- 
 crates, is justly considered the father of physic, being the 
 most ancient author, whose writings on that subject are pre- 
 served. The most celebrated physicians who succeeded him 
 were Asclepiades, Celsus, and Galen. 
 
 Old astrologers, and the like fraternity, with their mathe- 
 matical marks and zodiacal signs, sought to invest their craft 
 with a mysterious sanctity. Boasting its origin and authority 
 to be heaven-derived, with its blazonry of factitious distinction ; 
 would it be suspected after all, that the curative art is to be 
 traced even to the instinct of the brutes ? For example, the 
 sagacious dog, when indisposed, may be seen to enact himself 
 the doctor, by a resort to the fields to eat a quantity of prickly 
 grass — an expedient which seldom fails of success, by acting as 
 an emetic. The same with the cat, when she finds herself " a 
 little under the weather," forthwith she sneaks off for some 
 catnip. There is a story related of an Arabian shepherd, who, 
 having observed the goats of his flock, as often as they browsed 
 upon the coffee-fruit, to skip about and exhibit signs of intoxi- 
 cation, tasting the berry himself, tested the fact. The a]3es of 
 Abyssinia, in the same way, indicated to their superior masters, 
 the laxative qualities of the cassia fistula. One might almost 
 suppose, therefore, a necessity for the resorting to sorcery, 
 witchcraft, stichomancy, and other mysterious agencies, in 
 order to disguise the humble sources of some elementary 
 branches of our famed medical lore. Egypt, India, and Pales- 
 tine seem to have been blessed with no small supply of the 
 erudite in these matters ; such as pneumatologists, exorcists, 
 magicians, thaumaturgists, and enchanters. These magi com- 
 bined, w4th their exercise of the healing art for the body, the 
 power of curing psychological maladies, and with such an ex- 
 tensive variety of practice, these ancient sages must have made 
 a tolerably good thing of it. In Greece and Eome, sorcery and 
 
204 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 its kindred arts were extensively resorted to; and even till 
 recent times, such incantations were practised in some of the 
 most polished countries of Europe. 
 
 Pliny ,speaks of one Chrysippas, reputed a famous practi- 
 tioner of his day, who gained his notoriety by advocating cab- 
 hages as the panacea for all complaints ! 
 
 In Egypt, medicine was fettered by absurd regulations. 
 The chief priests confined themselves to the exercise of magic 
 rites and prophecies, which they considered the higher 
 branches of the art, and left the exhibition of remedies to the 
 pastophori, or image-bearers. They were compelled to follow 
 implicitly the medical precepts of the sacred records contained 
 in the " hermetical books," a deviation fi-om which was punish- 
 able with death. From a superstitious dread of evil, and a de- 
 sire to penetrate into futurity, arose the mystic divination of 
 Greece and Rome, as well as that of the Druids. This divina- 
 tion assumed the sanctity of a religious ceremony, and thus 
 priests became invested with a supposed supernatural power 
 for the cure of diseases. Thus, magic and medicine were 
 allied with astrology and religion. 
 
 Paracelsus was the prince of charlatans ; he styled himself, 
 indeed, the " King of physic " ; and although he professed to 
 have discovered the elixir of life, yet it does not seem to have 
 been available in his own case, for he died at the early age of 
 forty-eight years. 
 
 Among quaint and marvellous nostrums of the renowned 
 Alhertus Magnus is the following sagacious specific against a 
 faithless memory : " If the harte, eye or brayne of a lapwinge 
 or black plover, be hanged upon a man's necke, it is profitable 
 agaynste forgetfulnesse, and sharpeth man's understandinge." 
 
 That notorious old astrologer, Nostradamus of Salon, was of 
 the medical fraternity, and also a mathematician and prophet ! 
 His reputation was established by the publication, in 1555, of 
 
THE IVIYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 205 
 
 a grim folio, comprising his mystic prophecies. These attract- 
 ing the notice of Henry II., he sent for the author to Paris to 
 consult him, as also did Catharine de Medici. 
 
 Among other delusions of past times was that of the royal 
 gift of healing. It has been remarked as singular, that, with the 
 vulgar errors exposed by Sir Thomas Browne, in his Pseiido- 
 doxia Epidemica^ there should be no mention made of this ; 
 but, from a case related in the Adenochdiradelogia, it would 
 seem that this eccentric but able man had himself faith in the 
 thing. Burton, in his Anatomie of Melancholie, notices many 
 curious recipes and " Bookes of Physicke." One work, en- 
 titled The Queeu^s Closet Ojpened, containing " divers things 
 necessary to be knowne, collected out of sundrie olde written 
 bookes, and broughte into one order. The several things- here- 
 in contayned may be seen in the bookes and tables follow- 
 inge, written in the yeare of our Lorde God 1610.'' The work 
 commences with the " thirty-three evil dayes " of the yeare, 
 and a general calendar; there is a curious medley of rules 
 about the weather, astronomical calculations, and prognostica- 
 tions. The first book has this : " A coppye of all such medi- 
 cines wherewith ye noble Countess of Oxenforde, most chari- 
 tably, in her owne person, did manye greate and notable cures 
 upon poor neighboures." The second book is entitled, '^ Here 
 beginneth a true coppye of such medicines wherewith Mrs. 
 Johan Ounsteade, daughter unto the worshipfule Mr. John 
 Oliffe, Alderman of London, hath cured and healed many f or- 
 lorne and deadlie diseases," etc. An extract from the above 
 will show the then state of medical science. " To take away 
 frekels — take the blonde of an hare, annoynte them with it, 
 and it will doe them away." " For a man or woman that hath 
 lost theire speeche — take wormwood, and stampe it, and tem- 
 per it with water, strayne it, and with a spoone doe of it into 
 theire mouthes." 
 
206 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 In Andrew Borde's Breviarie of Health, one of the earliest 
 medical works (1547), in the English language, occurs the fol- 
 lowing curious passage respecting love-sickness. " Hereos is 
 the Greke word ; in Latin it is named amor ; in English it is 
 named love-sick ; and women may have this fickleness as well 
 as men. Young persons be much troubled with this impedi- 
 ment." After stating the cause of this " infirmitie," he pre- 
 scribes the following remedy : " First I do advertise every per- 
 son not to set to the harte, what another doth set to the heale ; 
 let no man, set his love so far, but that he may withdraw it be- 
 time ; and muse not, but use mirth and merrie company, and 
 be wise and not foolish." 
 
 The practice of physic, it must be apparent, is easily sus- 
 ceptible of being made the occasion of cheat and imposture. 
 Abernethy, on being appealed to by a patient on behalf of her 
 fancied indisposition, had the frankness (after taking his 
 guinea fee) to state that her symptoms merely indicated the ab- 
 sence of health and also of disease, and handing her back a shil- 
 ling, advised her to get a skijpping-rojpe and use it. Walpole says 
 that acute and sensible people are frequently the most easily de- 
 ceived by quacks. A recent writer, referring to the success 
 which generally attends any daring and impudent imposture, 
 remarks : " If the cheat required ingenuity to detect it, there 
 might be some hope for mankind; but it actually lies con- 
 cealed in its liery dhviousnessP 
 
 Physicians were formerly ecclesiastics. A curious instance 
 of preferring the medical to the clerical profession, from the 
 conceit of supposed destiny, is thus related : 
 
 " Andrew Rudiger, a physician of Leipsic, took it into his 
 head to form an anagram on his name ; and in the words 
 Andreas Rudigerus he found a vocation, namely, ' Arare rus 
 Dei dignus? Thereupon he concluded that he was called to 
 the priesthood, and began to study theology. Soon after, he 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 207 
 
 became tutor to the cliildren of the learned Thomasius. This 
 philosopher one day told him that he had much better apply to 
 medicine. Rudiger admitted his inclination to that profession, 
 but stated that the anagram of his name — which he explained 
 to Thomasius — had seemed to him a divine vocation to the 
 priesthood. ' What a simpleton you are ! ' said Thomasius ; 
 ^ why, 'tis the very anagram of your name that calls you to 
 medicine. Bus del — is not that the hurial ground? And who 
 ploughs it better than the doctors ? ' In effect, Rudiger turned 
 doctor, unable to resist the interpretation of his anagram." 
 
 In the year 1776, there lived a German doctor, who styled 
 himself, or was called, " the Rain-water doctor " ; all the diseases 
 to which flesh is heir,* he professed to cure by this simple agent. 
 Some wonderful cures were, it is said, achieved by means of 
 his application of this fluid, and his reputation spread far and 
 wide ; crowds of maimed and sickly folk flocked to him, seek- 
 ing relief at his hands. What is yet more remarkable still, 
 he declined accepting any fee from his patients ! 
 
 l^ostrums, like Nostradamus, have their day ; when the spe- 
 cific for all diseases, some years hence, was camomile tea, a wag 
 thus sang its virtues : 
 
 " Let doctors, or quacks, prescribe as they may, 
 Yet none of their nostrums for me ; 
 For I firmly beheve — what the old women say 
 That there's nothing like camomile tea ! 
 
 " In health it is harmless, and, say what you please, 
 One thiag- is still certain with me, 
 It suits equally well with every disease, 
 O, there's nothing like camomUe tea. 
 
 " The cancer and colic, the scurvy and gout, 
 The blues, and all evils d' esprit^ 
 "When once fairly lodged, can be only forced out 
 By forcing in camomile tea !" 
 
208 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The laborious professional study of the matriculated physi- 
 cian is unsought by the quack ; he, — Pallas-like, all armed 
 from the brain of Jove, — rushes into his reckless practice, " en- 
 cased over in native brass, from top to toe," but wholly desti- 
 tute of the requisite skill for his office. He knows not even 
 the alphabet of medicine ; yet, defiant of reason and responsi- 
 bility, his supposed intuitive wit and arrogance prevail. It 
 has been said, however, with truth, that the followers of quacks 
 are the cause of quackery ; they are the cause of the number- 
 less homicides that have been committed with such impunity. 
 These are sceptics of the faculty, but idolaters of empiricism. 
 These deluded patients persevere with a pertinacity that is in- 
 vincible, till they discover, too late, that they have been advan- 
 cing, backwards. As illustrative of the reckless wickedness of 
 these pseudo-doctors, we present the following instances. The 
 Duke de Eohan, while in Switzerland, had occasion to send for 
 a physician ; the most famous of the day came to him, styling 
 himself Monsieur Thibaud. " Your face," said the Duke, 
 " seems familiar to me ; pray, where have I seen you before ? " 
 " At Paris, perhaps, my Lord Duke," he replied, " when I had 
 the honor to be farrier to your grace's stables. I have now a 
 great reputation as a physician ; I treat the Swiss as I used to 
 do your horses, and I find, in general, I succeed as well. I 
 must request your grace not to make me known, for if you do, 
 I shall be ruined ! " There was a notorious charlatan at Paris, 
 some years ago, named Mantaccini, who, after having squan- 
 dered his patrimony, sought to retrieve his fortune by turning 
 quack. He started his carriage, and made tours round the 
 country, pompously professing to effect cures of all diseases 
 with a single touch, or even a look. Failing in this bold 
 essay, he attempted another yet more daring — that of reviving 
 the dead, at will ! To remove all doubt, he declared that, in 
 fifteen days, he would go to the church-yard, and restore to life 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 209 
 
 its inhabitants, thongli buried fifteen years. This declaration 
 excited a general murmur against the doctor, who, not in the 
 least disconcerted, applied to the magistrate, and requested 
 that he might be put under a guard to prevent his escape, 
 until he should perform his undertaking. The proposition 
 inspired the greatest confidence, and the whole city came to 
 consult the daring empiric, and pm-chase his haume de vie. 
 His consultations were numerous, and he received large sums 
 of money. At length the noted day approached, and the doc- 
 tor's valet, fearing for his shoulders, began to manifest signs 
 of uneasiness. ''You know nothing of mankind," said the 
 quack to his servant ; " be quiet." Scarcely had he spoken 
 the words, when the following letter was presented to hini 
 from a rich citizen: " Sir, the great operation you are about to 
 perform has broken my rest. I have a wife buried for some 
 time who was a fury, and I am unhappy enough already, with- 
 out her resurrection. . In the name of heaven, do not make the 
 experiment. I will give you fifty louis to keep your secret to 
 yourself." Soon after, two dashing beaux arrived, who urged 
 him with the most earnest entreaties not to raise their old 
 father, formerly the greatest miser in the city, as in such an 
 event, they would be reduced to the most deplorable indigence. 
 They offered him a fee of sixty louis ; but the doctor shook his 
 head in doubtful compliance. Scarcely had they retired, when 
 a young widow, on the eve of matrimony, threw herself at the 
 feet of the quack, and with sobs and sighs, implored his mercy. 
 In short, from morn till night, he received letters, visits, pre- 
 sents, and fees, to an excess which absolutely overwhelmed 
 him. The minds of the citizens were differently and violently 
 agitated ; some by fear, and others by curiosity, so that the 
 mayor of the city waited upon the doctor, and said : " Sir, I 
 have not the least doubt, from my experience of your rare 
 talents, that you will be able to accomplish the resurrection in 
 14 
 
210 THE MYSTERIES OF lilEDICINE. 
 
 our church-yard, the day after to-morrow, according to your 
 pro!nise ; but I pray you to observe that our city is in the 
 utmost uproar and confusion ; and to consider the dreadful 
 revolution your experiment must produce in every family ; I 
 entreat you, t'herefore, not to attempt it, but to go away, and 
 thus restore tranquillity to the city. In justice, however, to 
 your rare talents, I shall give you an attestation, in due form, 
 under our seal, that you can revive the dead, and that it was 
 our own fault that we were not eye-witnesses of your power." 
 This certificate, our reliable authority continues, was duly 
 signed and delivered. The illustrious Mantaccini left Lyons 
 for other cities, to work new miracles and manoeuvres. In a 
 short time, he returned to Paris loaded with gold, laughing at 
 the credulity of his victims. One more citation of this kind. 
 Count Cagliostro and his wife made their debut at St. Peters- 
 burg, pretending to a power of conferring perpetual youth — 
 investing old people with rejuvenescence. The countess, who 
 was not more than twenty, spoke of her son, who had long 
 served in the army. This expedient of making old people 
 young again, could not fail to affect certain aged ladies, who 
 are expert in diminishing instead of adding to their years. 
 This experiment upon popular credulity did not, however, 
 last long ; yet it yielded a golden harvest while it continued. 
 
 It is related of a certain quack, in a country town in Eng- 
 land, that he resorted to the following expedient, for creating 
 a little notoriety, by way of a start. On his arrival, he an- 
 nounced himself by sending the bell-man — an official of great 
 importance in former times — to disturb the quiet of the honest 
 people of the place, by proclaiming the reward of fifty guineas 
 for the recovery of his pet poodle ; of course, the physician 
 who could be so lavish with his money for sucli a trifiing pur- 
 pose, could not but be a man of preeminence in his profession. 
 Millingen records the curious fact of two miracle-working doc- 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 211 
 
 toi-s having taken London by storm, many years ago, wlio laid 
 claim to the unpronounceable names of Tetrachymagogon and 
 Fellino Guffino Cardimo CardhnaG Frames (!), which were 
 plastered about the walls of the city, exciting the amazement 
 and curiosity of the gullible multitude. 
 
 The next instance we have to introduce to our friends re- 
 joiced in the not uncommon name of Graham, who, in the 
 year 1782, made a great sensation in London. He was gifted 
 with great fluency of speech, and indulged in towering hyper- 
 bole and bombast, with which he sought to gull the wonder- 
 loving multitude. He opened a splendid mansion in Pali-Mall, 
 which he styled the " Temple of Health." 
 
 Among other whimsicalities, he, too, pretended to have dis- 
 covered the elixir of life. His terms for this invaluable spe- 
 cific for longevity, were, it is true, rather extravagant for 
 common people, — but, of course, so desirable a boon ought not 
 to be made too cheap. More than one nobleman, it is recorded, 
 actually paid him the enormous fee of one thousand pounds ! 
 Eather an expensive premium for the purchase of a little com- 
 mon sense. This wonderful discovery, however, did not last 
 long; the delusion exploded, — tlie quack himself died, after 
 vainly practising various other mummeries, at the age of fifty- 
 two years — neglected, and despised. 
 
 Among notable and eccentric physicians of former times, 
 was Jerome Cardan, of Milan, who flourished, and physicked 
 the valetudinarians of the sixteenth century. His life, also, 
 was full of various incidents. After enduring the extreme of 
 misfortune, he rose to the height of professional honor ; lie 
 was battling throughout his life, both with men and with 
 books ; so we need not wonder that he became notorious. 
 
 His name has been placed in succession to that of Galen, 
 who was the great authority, when he made his professional 
 appearance. His first book bore the title, De Mala Medendi 
 
212 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Tlsa — denouncing seventy-two errors in existing practice! 
 Most of his corrections, have been re-corrected by his suc- 
 cessors. Astrology by no means satisfied his thirst for divi- 
 nation. He had a system of Cheiromancy, and was very pro- 
 found on the lines in the human hand, and a science com- 
 pletely his own, which he called Metojposcojpy. The following 
 extract will sliow that the character and fortunes of an indi- 
 vidual are thus revealed by the lines in his forehead : 
 
 " Seven lines, drawn at equal distances, one above another, 
 horizontally across the whole forehead, beginning close over 
 the eyes, indicate respectively the regions of the Moon, Mer- 
 cury, Yenus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The signifi- 
 cation of each planet is always the same, and forehead-reading 
 is thus philosophically allied to the science of palmistry." 
 
 Doctors have, by some, been called a class of men w^ho live 
 on the misfortunes of their fellow-creatures; by others, the 
 alleviators of life's miseries. Illustrative instances of both 
 abound. Doubtless, many, by potions, but multitudes by pills 
 have been sent out of the world, sooner than they need have 
 gone ; and yet, at this moment, what a pillage is going on 
 among our patients and valetudinarians ! Who has not heard 
 of that triumvirate of pill-princes — Morrison, Moffatt, and 
 Brandreth ; not to refer to the plebeian pill-mongers who 
 prowl about all places, seeking whom thej^ may betray ! 
 
 One of the most notable instances on record of pill taking, is 
 the following : an eccentric old bachelor, named Jessup, who 
 died in Lincolnshire, in 1817, had such an inordinate appetite 
 for pills, that his apothecary had to sue him at law, for his bill. 
 At the trial the defendant was proved to have taken during 
 twenty-one years (1791-1816), no less than 226,934 pills ; which 
 is at the rate of 10,806 pills a year, or 29 pills each day ! But 
 as the patient began with a less voracious craving, and it in- 
 creased as he proceeded, in the last ^\'Q years, he took the pills 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 213 
 
 at the rate of 78 a day, and in the year 1814, he swallowed not less 
 than 51,590 ! Notwithstanding this, and the addition of 40,000 
 bottles of mixture, this pill-devourer extraordinary contrived 
 to live to sixty-five years. One can scarcely swallow the story. 
 
 One, and not the least of the mysteries of medicine, is its 
 technology ; let ns look at it : for it is a pnzzle to all but the 
 initiated, — the disciples of ^sculapius. A recent writer * re- 
 marks that medical lore would lose much of its potency and 
 control over the faith of mankind, were its dicta uttered in the 
 vulgar tongue. The same technical and, to the popular mind, 
 unintelligible verbiage is no less applicable to most of the sci- 
 ences — botany, chemistry, astronomy, natural history, and meta- 
 physics, not to mention law. " A fish- woman was silenced by 
 the word hypothenuse, applied as an epithet ; and many persons 
 who would have no objection to bleeding, would receive a pro- 
 position to phlebotomize them, with much alarm. The language 
 of the men of medicine is a fearful concoction of sesquipedalian 
 words, numbered by thousands. He was a mere novice who 
 spoke of ' a severe contusion of the integuments under the left 
 orbit, with great extravasation of blood and ecchymosis in the 
 surrounding cellular tissue, which was in a "• tunefied state ; " ' 
 — meaning a black eye ! The medical authorities describe, for 
 instance, ' Blood root ' {Sanguinaria Canadensiis) as acrid, 
 emetic, with narcotic and stimulant properties, expectorant, 
 sudorific, alterative, emmenagogue, escharotic, and errhine, ac- 
 cording to the way in which it is used. Its escharotic action 
 renders it beneficial when applied in hypochondriasis. Prickly 
 ash {Xanthoxylum Fraxineum) is stimulant, tonic, alterative, 
 and sialogogue, producing heat, arterial excitement, and a ten- 
 dency to diaphoresis." 
 
 Latin, or " dog-latin," as it has been styled, seems to be as 
 essential an accessory to the profession of medicine, as to that of 
 
 * Putnam's Magazine. 
 
214 THE MYSTERIES OF lilEDICINE. 
 
 law. So long as mystery has a controlling influence over the 
 untutored mind; the practitioners in both these departments 
 of professional life, will, doubtless, adhere to the use of the so- 
 called <^^(2^ language, as most consistent with the genius of 
 their calling. We offer, for the sake of change, however, a 
 fugitive prescription, free of charge, and in the vulgar tongue, 
 — in verse moreover : a poetical prescription to be taken, if re- 
 quired : 
 
 " Take, take, pill and colocyntli; 
 
 Aye, sir, your liver is mucli out of order ; 
 Take, take, rhubarb and ague menth. ; 
 Close on acute inflammation you border. 
 
 Symptoms about your bead. 
 
 Makes me congestion dread, 
 When I take them with the rest in conjunction ; 
 
 Leave off wine, beer, and grog ; 
 
 Arrowroot all your prog. 
 Let organs rest to recover their function." 
 
 "Doctor, what do you think is the cause of this frequent 
 rush of blood to my head ? " asked a patient, " O, it is nothing 
 but an effort of nature," was the reply ; " nature, you know, 
 abhors a vacuum." 
 
 In the times of the renowned Eadcliffe, the gold-headed 
 cane was the sceptre of authority, among the medical profes- 
 sion. Dignity dwelt in that mysterious symbol, and safeguard, 
 — for such it was. It served the double purpose of imparting 
 dignity to the doctor, and as a protector against contagious 
 diseases, it being filled with disinfecting herbs, which he ap- 
 plied to his olfactories when with patients. A good joke is re- 
 lated of him and his next door neighbor. 
 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller and Dr. Eadcliffe lived next door to 
 each other, in Bow street, London. Kneller had a fine garden, 
 and as the parties were intimate friends, and the doctor was 
 fond of flowers, the other consented to his having a door into 
 
THE lilYSTERIES OF IMEDICIKE. 215 
 
 it. Some of the doctor's servants, however, destroyed the 
 flowers, and Sir Godfrey sent word to him, that he would nail 
 up the door ; to which Eadcliffe responded thus, " Tell him he 
 may do anything but paint it." " Well," retorted Kneller, " he 
 may say what he will, for I will take anything from him ex- 
 cept physic ! " Another good story is told of Eadcliffe : he 
 attended a friend professionally for a year gratuitously, al- 
 though the accustomed fee was uniformly tendered, when he 
 called. On his last visit his friend said, " Doctor, here is a 
 purse in which I have put every day's fee ; and your goodness 
 must not get the better of my gratitude. Take your money." 
 Radcliffe was not proof against the temptation ; so he said, — 
 " Singly, sir, I could have refused them for a twelvemonth ; 
 but altogether, they are irresistible." 
 
 "When the celebrated Dumoulin was on his death-bed, and 
 some of the most eminent physicians of Paris were bemoaning 
 his expected loss to the profession, he said, — " Gentlemen, I 
 shall leave behind me three excellent doctors to supply my ab- 
 sence." Being pressed to name them, as each expected jto be 
 included in the trio, he answered, — " Wafer, Exercise, and DietP 
 
 Whether we think of it, or not, the weather has not a little 
 to do with the doctors. We often say, — " It is an ill wind that 
 blows nobody any good;" and that means, we suppose, an 
 east-wind. Dr. Alexander, of Princeton, was once asked, if 
 he enjoyed " assurance of faith ? " " Yes," he replied, " except 
 when the wind is in the east ! " 
 
 AYe found recently a doctor's reflections on this airy subject, 
 and the direct bearings it has upon his practice : 
 
 *' 111 is the wind, good, that no one doth blow, 
 \ Taking mankind altogether ; 
 
 \ HaU to that wind which blows hard frost and snow, 
 : Medico-surgical weather ! 
 
 Prospects of many a bill and a fee, 
 Suscitate pleasing reflections ; 
 
216 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Ills blown to others, are good blown to me, 
 
 Namely, tboracic affections ; 
 Air-tubes, disorders of ; also, catarrh, 
 
 Cough, influenza, bronchitis. 
 Peripneumonia's gainful ; so are 
 
 Phthisis, dyspnoea, pleuritis. 
 Numerous patients, moreover, accrue, 
 
 Just now, from those inflammations, 
 Which, a peculiar diathesis through. 
 
 Seize on the articulations. 
 Nerves, muscles, tendons ; rheumatic attacks, 
 
 Cases, no end, of lumbago. 
 And of the hip that sciatica racks ; 
 
 Down in my visit-book they go." 
 
 For the sake of variety, we will glance at some comical 
 patients, the victims of mental illusion, hypochondria, phan- 
 tasm, and monomania. It is scarcely necessary to inquire into 
 the physical causes to which usually these maladies are to be 
 ascribed ; we cite a case, from the numerous instances recorded 
 by Dr. Rush, of mental derangement, and for the accuracy of 
 which he vouches. It was of an unfortunate individual who 
 was possessed with the strange conceit that he was once a 
 calf ; the name of the butcher that killed him being given, who 
 kept a stall in Philadelphia market, at which place was sold, 
 without his leave or license, his hodily right and title, previous 
 to his inhabiting his present " fleshly tabernacle." We do not 
 venture into the region of spectral illusions, or ghosts, but we 
 may mention, in passing, the case of a crazy young lady, re- 
 corded by Dr. Ferriar, who fancied herself accompanied by 
 her own apparition, and who may, of course, therefore, justly 
 be said to have been, indeed, often — heside herself. A Lusi- 
 tanian physician had a patient who insisted that he was en- 
 tirely frozen, so that he would sit before a large fire, even dur- 
 ing the dog-days, and yet cry of cold. A dress of rough sheep- 
 
THE JMYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 217 
 
 skins, saturated with aqua vitse, was made for liim, and they 
 set him on fire ; he then confessed that he was, for the first 
 time, quite warm — rather too much so ; and thus this genial 
 remedy cured him of his frigidity altogether. 
 
 The following ludicrous story is told in the London Lancet : 
 " While residing at Eome," says the narrator, " I paid a visit 
 to the lunatic asylum there, and among the remarkable patients 
 was one, pointed out to me, who had been saved, with much 
 difficulty, from inflicting death upon himself by voluntary 
 starvation in bed, under an impression that he was defunct, 
 declaring that dead people never eat. It was soon obvious to 
 all, that the issue must be fatal, when the humane doctor be- 
 thought of the following stratagem: Half-a-dozen of the 
 attendants, dressed in wliite shrouds, and their faces and hands 
 covered with chalk, were marched in single tile, with dead 
 silence, into a room adjoining that of the patient, where he 
 observed them, through a door purposely left open, sit down 
 to a hearty meal. ' Hallo ! ' said he, that was deceased, pres- 
 ently to an attendant ; ' who be they ? ' ' Dead men,' was 
 the reply. 'What!' rejoined the corpse, 'dead men eat?' 
 'To be sure they do, as you see,' answered the attendant. 
 ' If that's the case ! ' exclaimed the defunct, ' I'll join them, 
 for I'm famished ; ' and thus instantly was the spell broken." 
 
 A young man had a strange conceit that he was dead, and 
 earnestly begged his friends to bury him. They consented by 
 the advice of the physician. He was laid upon a bier, and car- 
 ried upon the shoulders of men to church, when some pleasant 
 fellows, up to the joke, met the procession, and inquired who 
 it was ; they answered : " And a very good job it is," said one 
 of them, " for the world is well rid of a very bad and vicious 
 character, which the gallows must have had in due course." The 
 pseudo-dead young man, hearing this, popped his head up, 
 and said, they ought to be ashamed of themselves in thus tra- 
 
218 THE IMra'STERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 diicing his fair fame, and if he were only alive, he would thrash 
 them for their insolence. But they proceeded to utter the 
 most disgraceful and reproachful language, — dead flesh and 
 blood could no longer bear it ; up he jumps, they run, he after 
 them, until he fell down quite exhausted. He was put to bed; 
 the violent exertion he had gone through promoted perspira- 
 tion, and he got well. 
 
 It is pertinent to our subject to refer, perhaps, to the anal- 
 ogy and reciprocal influence of the body and soul — mind and 
 matter. That such analogy exists, and exhibits itself in a most 
 indubitable manner, exerting a most powerful sympathy, none, 
 of course, will question ; were it otherwise, a matter in dis- 
 pute, we might offer many suggestions proposed by various phy- 
 sicians and metaphysicians ; but we shall content ourselves by 
 simply quoting a passage on the subject, from Haslam, in his 
 work on Sound Mind. Referring to these curious analogies, 
 he says : " There seems to be a considerable similarity between 
 the morbid state of the instruments of voluntary motion {i. e.^ 
 the body), and certain affections of the mental powers. Thus, 
 paralysis has its counterpart in the defects of recollection, 
 where the utmost endeavor to remember is ineffectually ex- 
 erted. Tremor may be compared with incapability of fixing 
 the attention ; and this involuntary state of the muscles, ordi- 
 narily subjected to the will, also finds a parallel where the 
 mind loses its influence in the train of thought, and becomes 
 subject to spontaneous intrusions ; as may be exemplified in 
 reveries, dreaming, and some species of madness." Excessive 
 irritation of the brain is the result of inordinate mental excite- 
 ment ; the physical economy thus becomes deranged, and this 
 condition of bodily disease again reacts prejudicial^ on the 
 mental powers. These effects are more or less observable 
 under different conditions, much depending on organic struc- 
 ture, constitutional predisposition, climate, or the peculiar cir- 
 
THE BIYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 219 
 
 cnmstances by whicl^ the individual may be surrounded. 
 While the effects, however, of this reciprocal influence of mind 
 and matter are apparent, the cause remains unrevealed ; and 
 to this fact may be referred tlie many ludicrous blunders and 
 wild imaginings of sundry wise-acres, who have sought to ac- 
 count for a matter so occult. So inscrutable and all-pervading 
 is this union and sympathy between the "fleshly tabernacle" 
 and its noble occupant, that in essaying to address any part of 
 the fabric, the dweller is inevitably found to respond to the 
 appeal. Physiologists tell us that our imagination is freest 
 when the stomach is but slightly replenished with food; it is 
 also more healthful in spring than in winter ; in solitude than 
 in company ; and in modulated light, rather than in the full 
 blaze of the noonday sun. Climate affects the temper, because 
 it first influences the muscular system and the animal solids ; 
 and who does not know that our happiness and repose are de- 
 pendent upon the well-balanced condition of the biliary sys- 
 tem. In such cases, it is the province of medicine to rectify 
 the moral, as well as the physical derangement at the same 
 moment of time. An eminent physician at Leyden, Dr. Gau- 
 bius, who styled himself " Professor of the Passions," recites a 
 curious case of a woman, upon whom he repeatedly enacted 
 venesection, being of an inflammable temperament, as avouched 
 by her liege-lord ; which operation, he says, finally induced the 
 happiest results. This notable practitioner was as au fait at 
 metaphysics as medicine ; he cured morals and manners, as 
 well as maladies of the body. Dryden confessed his indebted- 
 ness to cathartics for the propitiating of his muse ; -his imagin- 
 ative faculty being thus dependent, as he thought, upon the 
 elasticity of his viscera. And as we before intimated, there 
 are, unquestionably, constitutional moral disorders — such as 
 temporary or periodical fits of passion, or melancholy, as well 
 as other impulsive emotions ; these, for the most part, are in- 
 
220 THE MYSTEEIES OF IVIEDICINE. 
 
 voluntary, or easily provoked under certain exciting circum- 
 stances. A moral patient, who suffers himself to become the 
 wretched victim of intemperance, is sure to need only opiates ; 
 and nature, in due time, recovers from the outrage, although 
 he may not from the disgrace. And when some pitiable wight 
 is found suffering from the master-passion, love (a perfect ty- 
 rant in its way, which usually overturns all a man's common 
 sense, and blinds him into the bargain), the unfortunate one 
 is sure to come " right side up," in his sober senses, too, by ad- 
 ministering the process of a cold bath in the river, provided 
 some benevolent bystander rescue him in time to cheat the 
 fishes. A certain Milanese doctor is said to have resorted to a 
 similar expedient for the cure of madness and other distempers. 
 His practice consisted in placing his patients in a great high- 
 walled enclosure, in the midst of which there was a deep well 
 of water, as cold as ice, into which his unfortunate victims 
 were plunged, being secured to a pillar; when they were 
 thoroughly saturated, and their courage cooled, they were liber- 
 ated. In their bodily fear and shock they generally got rid of 
 their complaints. That was a cold water cure ! 
 
 The effects of the imagination upon bodily health are al- 
 ready familiar to the reader. 
 
 Bouchet, a French author of the sixteenth century, states 
 that the physicians at Montpelier, which was the great school 
 of medicine, had every year two criminals, the one living, the 
 other dead, delivered to them for dissection. He relates that 
 on one occasion they tried what effect the mere expectation of 
 death would produce upon a subject in perfect health, and in 
 order to these experiments, they told the gentleman (for such 
 was his rank), who was placed at their discretion, that, as the 
 easiest mode of taking away his life, they would employ the 
 means which Seneca had chosen for himself, and would there- 
 fore open his veins in warm water. Accordingly, they covered 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF ]!,IEDICI^^:. 221 
 
 his face, pinched his feet without lancing them, and set them 
 in a footbath, and then spoke to each other as if they saw blood 
 flowing freely, and life departing with it. Then the man re- 
 mained motionless; and when, after awhile, they uncovered 
 his face, they found hira dead. 
 
 Hope and success are finer tonics than any to be found in 
 the apothecaries' shops, and even fear may boast its cures. A 
 German physician, so reads the tale, succeeded in curing an 
 epidemic convulsion, among the children of a poor-house, by 
 the fear of a red-hot poker. The fits had spread by sympathy 
 and imitation ; and this great physician, mistrusting the ordi- 
 nary remedies in so grave a case, heated his instrument, and 
 threatened to burn the first who should fall into a fit. The 
 convulsions did not return. 
 
 A celebrated scholar was once attacked with fever at a coun- 
 try inn. He was visited by two physicians ; and one of them, 
 supposing from the poverty of his appearance that he would 
 not understand a foreign language, said to the other in Latin, 
 '' Let's try an experiment on this poor fellow." As soon as 
 they were gone, the patient got out of bed, hurried on his 
 clothes, scampered off as fast as he could, and was cured of his 
 fever by his fright. 
 
 In England, some years ago, a girl, being attacked with ty- 
 phus fever, was sent to the hospital. A week afterwards, her 
 brother was seized with the same disease, and was sent to the 
 same institution. The nurses were helping him up the stairs 
 at the hospital. On the way, he was met by some persons who 
 were descending with a coflSn on their shoulders. The sick 
 man inquired whose body they were removing, when one of 
 the bearers inadvertently mentioned the girl's name. It was 
 his sister. The brother, horror-struck, sprang fi'om his con- 
 ductors, dashed down stairs, out of the hospital gate, and never 
 stopped running until he had reached home — a distance of 
 
222 THE IMYSTBRIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 twelve miles ! He flung himself on the bed immediately, fell 
 into a sound sleep, and awoke next morning, entirely cured of 
 his illness. 
 
 Solomon tells us that " a merry heart doeth good, like a 
 medicine," and experience has proved it to be a panacea for 
 many minor ills. Not a few of the Faculty are aware of the 
 fact, and hence they have achieved marvellous cures by their 
 combination of puns, potions, and pills. 
 
 Among our various maladies, apparently midway between 
 the mental and physical is the headache — a malady by no 
 means uncommon, but which we welcome none the more from 
 its frequency. Like a cold in the head, it is no joke, yet some 
 wag has had the temerity to treat it as one, in the following 
 lyric lines : 
 
 " A cold in tlie liead ! 
 What need be said 
 Uglier, stupider, more ill-bred : 
 Almost any other disease 
 May be romantic, if you please ; 
 But who can scoff 
 At a very bad cough ? 
 If you have a fever, you're laid on the shelf, 
 To be sure — but then you pity yourself. 
 And your friends' anxiety highly excited. 
 The curtains are drawn, and the chamber lighted, 
 Dimly, and softly, pleasanter f ar. 
 Than the staring sunshine that seems to jar 
 Every nerve into a separate knock, 
 And aU at her mortal calamities mock. 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Who do jou suppose 
 
 Ever pitied a man for blowing his nose ? 
 Yet, what minor trial could ever be worse — 
 Unless it be reading this blundering verse, 
 
 Never fit to be written, or read ; 
 
 No — nor said, 
 Except by a man — witJi a cold in Ms head I " 
 
THE SIYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 223 
 
 Among the long list of cases in the Materia Medica, here is 
 a new and fatal one. During the prevalence of the cholera in 
 Ireland, a soldier, hurrying into the mess-room, told his com- 
 manding officer that his brother had been carried off, two days 
 ago, by a fatal malady, expressing his apprehensions that the 
 whole regiment would be exposed to a similar danger, in the 
 course of the following week. ■' Good heavens ! " ejaculated 
 the officer, " what, then, did he die of ? " " ^hy, your honor, 
 he died of a Tuesday." Another extraordinary case, chroni- 
 cled by Punchy was that of a voracious individual who bolted 
 a door, and threw up a window ! 
 
 Many of the phenomena presented by disease are exceeding- 
 ly curious, and even romantic. The disease, commonly known 
 as St. Yitus' dance (chorea), presents some remarkable pheno- 
 mena. The patient becomes a merry Andrew, and twists the 
 face into all kinds of ridiculous forms. A case is mentioned 
 in which a young woman would dance on one leg and hold the 
 other in her hand. When a drum sounded a kind of air, she 
 would dance up to the drum and continue dancing till out of 
 breath. Another would leap, exactly as a fish might do, from 
 the top of a wardrobe five feet high. Another patient, a little 
 girl, would twirl round on her feet like a top. And yet an- 
 other would walk backwards, thereby receiving many falls 
 and bruises. " Such histories," says Sir Thomas AYatson, 
 " would sound very like romances, if they were met with in the 
 old authors alone, or if they were not attested by unimpeach- 
 able authority." Such diseases are morbid affections of the 
 nerves, and are well called " the dark corners of pathology." 
 The whole subject of the influence of the nervous system on 
 the organic functions is replete with curious memorabilia. 
 
 Dr. Brown, of Edinburgh, author of the ^^ IIovcb Suhsecivce,^^ 
 informs us, that " many years ago a countryman called on a 
 physician in New York. He was in the depth of dyspeptic 
 
224 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 despair. The doctor gave him some plain advice as to his food 
 and ended bj writing a prescription for some tonic, saying, 
 ' Take that and come back in a fortnight.' In ten days Giles 
 came in, blooming and happy, quite well. The doctor w^as 
 delighted, and not a little proud of his skill. He asked to see 
 what he had given him. Giles said he hadn't got it. ' Where 
 was it?' ^I took it, sir.' 'Took it! What have you done 
 with the prescription V '1 ate it, sir. You told me to take 
 it.'" 
 
 It is curious that a doctor cannot always be trusted with the 
 diagnosis and prognosis of his own case. The great Dr. Baillie 
 seems to have been a case of this kind. He is said to have 
 died of consumption, and yet to have denied ^that he was con- 
 sumptive. He did not experience any difficult}'' in breathing, 
 and argued that, while his breathing was good, his lungs could 
 not be bad. But no medical man now takes this as decisive. 
 J^ature, in her bounty, provides a larger space of lung than is 
 necessary, and will long go on with a very small amount of 
 lung, and with very little difficulty in breathing. Another 
 noteworthy case of lung disease is a very different person, the 
 notorious empiric, St. John Long. He professed to cure con- 
 sumption, but in reality, like other similar quacks, he only 
 cured cases of cough and bronchitis with symptoms imitative 
 of those in phthisis. He unquestionably caused death in sev- 
 eral instances by a treatment which would be perfectly harm- 
 less in some cases, but which was fatal to many delicate 
 women. He was himself struck down by consumption, and 
 died at the early age of thirty-seven. One of our most promis- 
 ing doctors in chest complaints. Dr. Hope, who, at an early 
 age, had reached almost the summit of his profession, was 
 prematurely cut off" by consumption. 
 
 Medicine has often very startling surprises in store, which 
 are frequently gloomy enough, though sometimes of a pleasant 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF :MEDICINE. 225 
 
 nature. We will, in the first place, select some of the former. 
 A clergyman in the neighborliood of Mount Edgecumbe was 
 one day walking very fast, when he was met by his doctor. 
 He explained, in conversation, that he was suffering from pains 
 of indigestion, and was in the habit of taking long walks in 
 order to get rid of them. The medical man insisted on 
 examining him, and then explained to him that he was in fact 
 suffering from aneurism of the heart, and that these long walks 
 were the worst things possible for him ; and was obliged to add 
 that the disease would some day prove suddenly fatal. The 
 statement was sadly verified. He died suddenly while preach- 
 ing in church. A yonng nobleman in the country was danger- 
 ously ill with a fever. Physicians were summoned from differ- 
 ent quarters, and the bishop relates that no less a sum than 
 seven hundred guineas was paid to them as fees. All the 
 means used were unavailing, and the patient sank rapidly. 
 When he was quite given over, and left alone to die, he was 
 heard to murmur a request for beer. A large goblet, contain- 
 ing nearly a quart of small beer, was handed to him, which he 
 drained at a draught, and then drank again. He recovered. 
 
 Burney, in his History of Music ^ refers to the case of a lady 
 who could hear only while a drum was heating y insomuch 
 tliat her husband actually hired a drummer, as a servant, in 
 order to enjoy the pleasure of her conversation. A certain 
 Frenchman, Yigneul de Marville, insists that musical sounds 
 contribute to the health of the body and the mind, assist the 
 circulation of the blood, dissipate vapors, and open the vessels, 
 so that the action of perspiration is freer. He tells a story of 
 a person of distinction, who assured him, that once, being sud- 
 denly seized by violent illness, instead of a consultation of phy- 
 sicians, he immediately called a band of musicians, and their 
 violins pla3^ed so well in his inside, " that his viscera became 
 perfectly in tune, and in a few hours were completely be- 
 15 
 
226 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 calmed." Naturalists assert that animals are sensible to the 
 charms of the divine art ; why not the biped, man ? The well- 
 known line will occur to the reader, 
 
 " Music hatli charms to sootlie tlie savage breast ; " 
 
 and the great dramatist predicates moral delinquency where 
 the effect of its dulcet influence is not acknowledged — 
 
 Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." 
 
 A little plaintive, soothing melody after dinner has long 
 been resorted to as an auxiliary to the digestive process ; the 
 effect is to induce a temporary state of mental quiescence and 
 repose, while it confers all the advantages of sleep with none 
 of its disadvantages. It is " putting the soul in tune," as Milton 
 expresses it, for any subsequent exertion. 
 
 We have an instance on record of David in his youth, with 
 his harp, striving by the aid of music to cure the mental de- 
 rangement of Saul ; a method of cure in those early times 
 which seems to have been commonly resorted to. Many of the 
 classic writers allude to the practice ; some even proposing it 
 as a certain remedy for a dislocated limb, the gout, or even the 
 bite of a viper. The medicinal properties of music were mani- 
 fold and marvellous. For example : a fever was removed by a 
 song ; deafness, by a trumpet ; and the pestilence chased away 
 by the harmonious lyre ! That deaf people can hear best in a 
 great noise, is a fact alleged by some moderns in favor of the 
 ancient mode of removing deafness by the trumpet. 
 
 Medical lore would not probably have been so far behind the 
 other sciences, had its professors but husbanded, in a collect- 
 ive form, the experience of the past, as has been the case in 
 most of the other sciences. To begin with Galen, as a starting 
 
THE jMYSTERIES OF IVIEDICINE. 227 
 
 point, it will be sufficient to remark, that he reprobated such 
 prescriptions as were composed of any portions of the human 
 body ; and he severely condemned Xenocrates for having in- 
 troduced them, as being worse than useless, as well as positive- 
 ly unjustifiable. Yet these abominable ingredients continued 
 in use till, what may be styled, the reformation of medicine, 
 in the seventeenth century. Human bones were administered 
 internally as a cure for ulcers, and the bones were to be those 
 of the part affected. 
 
 The mummery of medicine, with all its cabalistic and 
 imintelligible mysticisms, formed a part of the age which 
 sanctioned such buffoonery. The state of medicine may be 
 considered as the criterion or barometer of the state of morals, 
 as well as science, in a nation. This is evidenced bv the io-no- 
 ranee and degradation of Europe so late, even as the tenth 
 century, when there was scarcely a physician in Spain. 
 
 Great was Diana of the Ephesians, and we follow suit, for, 
 great are we in our credulity, great in our manifold sufferings, 
 great in our multitudinous quacks, great in the princely for- 
 tunes we bestow upon those vampires who batten upon disease 
 and sorrow. Take up the first newspaper that comes to hand ; 
 look over the advertisements entitled Medical ; is there not a 
 panacea for every disability — consumption, dyspepsia, in short, 
 everything that can make up the total of human wretchedness 
 or human infirmity? How wonderful that death is still the 
 great iconoclast, in spite of potions, ointments, and drops ; in 
 spite of pills that are infallible, in spite of philanthropists who 
 profess to eradicate all the " ills that flesh is heir to," and others 
 that never existed. 
 
 Yet, after all the empiricism that belongs to medicine, or 
 that is too often associated with it, there is yet very much in it 
 that demands our respect. It is no evidence to the contrary, 
 moreover, that the best practitioners give to their patients the 
 
228 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 least medicine. Many persons say they do not believe in medi- 
 cine, yet, like sceptics in religion, tliey usually are eager enough 
 to seek the aid they can render, in the sick or dying hour. To 
 speak with precision, medicine is an art that involves the ap- 
 plication of many sciences ; and while it is true that the physi- 
 cian may be, or ought to be, master of the situation, when he 
 prescribes for his patient ; that is no reason for paying to him 
 a l)lind superstitious reverence, as if he were supernaturally 
 endowed. 
 
 If Hippocrates be regarded as the father of physic, science 
 was then in its infancy, and it is to the collective wisdom and 
 experience of his successors that it owes all its present glory 
 and renown. 
 
 In justice to the many illustrious benefactors of their age, 
 we must not forget that, although the profession has been dis- 
 graced by empirics and quacks, a host of great names have 
 ennobled it by their virtues, their brilliant attainments and 
 services, as v/ell as their self-denial. Such men have been 
 indeed blessings to their age, and to the world at large; and 
 the fragrant memory of their benevolence and skill, would, of 
 course, go far to redeem the profession they ennobled, from the 
 rebuke of charlatanism. It is to such men as Harvey, Garth, 
 Had cliff e, Meade, Askew, Pitcairn, Baillie, CuUen, Freind, 
 Linacre, Cains, Hunter, Denman, Yelpeau, Liston, Mott, and 
 Brocklesby, the friend of Johnson, with many others of refined 
 literary attainments, that it owes much of its glory. 
 
 Pope, a few days prior to his decease, records the following 
 high testimony to the urbanity and courtesy of his medical 
 friends, — " There is no end of my kind treatment from the 
 Faculty ; they are in general the most amiable companions, 
 and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know." 
 And Diyden, in the postscript to his translation of Yirgil, 
 speaks in a similar way of the profession. "That I have 
 
THE ]MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 229 
 
 recovered," says he, " in some measure the liealth which I had 
 lost by too much application to this work, is owing, next to 
 God's mercy, to the skill and care of Dr. Guibbons and Dr. 
 Ilobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, whom I can only 
 pay by this acknowledgment." 
 
 The healino^ art is not without its heroes also. Madame de 
 Genlis relates the story of one who, to save his native city from 
 the ravages of the plague, voluntarily surrendered himself a 
 sacrifice. The incident is as follows : " The plague raged vio- 
 lently in Marseilles. Every link of affection was broken ; the 
 father turned from the child, the child from the father ; ingra- 
 titude no longer excited indignation. Misery is at its height 
 when it thus destroys every generous feeling, thus dissolves 
 every tie of humanity ! The city became a desert, grass grew 
 in the streets, a funeral met you at every step. The physicians 
 assembled in a body at the Hotel de Ville^ to hold a consulta- 
 tion on the fearful disease, for which no remedy had yet been 
 discovered. After a long deliberation, they decided unani- 
 mously that the malady had a peculiar and mysterious charac- 
 ter, which opening a corpse alone might develop — an operation 
 it was impossible to attempt, since the operator must infallibly 
 become a victim in a few hours, beyond the power of human 
 art to save him, as the violence of the attack would preclude 
 their administering the customary remedies. A dead pause 
 succeeded this fatal declaration. Suddenly a surgeon named 
 Guyon, in the prime of life, and of great celebrity in his pro- 
 fession, rose, and said firmly, ' Be it so : I devote myself for 
 the safety of my country. Before this numerous assembly I 
 swear, in the name of humanity and religion, that to-morrow, 
 at the break of day, I will dissect a corpse, and write down as I 
 proceed what I observe.' " 
 
 He took with him his instruments, and locking himself up in 
 the room with a dead victim of the disease he finished the 
 
230 THE MYSTERIES OF IVIEDICmE. 
 
 dreadful operation, recording in detail Lis surgical observa- 
 tions ; he threw the papers into a vase of vinegar, and then 
 songht the lazaretto, where within twelve hours he expired, 
 l^oble hero ! he sacrificed his own life for that of his country ! 
 
 A word or two regarding the modern systems of Homoeo- 
 pathy and Hydropathy, both which are, as might have been 
 anticipated, obnoxious to the advocates of the old system of 
 Allopathy. The Hahnemannian theory, however, now num- 
 bers among its supporters many intelligent and philosophic 
 minds, although the infinitesimal reduction of its doses to the 
 millionth, billionth, and trillionth part of a grain, is more than 
 enough to stagger the belief of those who have been accus- 
 tomed to solutions by the pailful, and powders in any quantity. 
 
 The principle of the Homceopathists is founded in truth and 
 reason, but its administrators require to be well skilled in its 
 doctrines, as their remedial agents include many of the most 
 subtle and powerful poisons. We are for Homoeopathy on 
 account of its modest inflictions upon the poor, afflicted patient, 
 who, in appealing to the old system, has, often as much to 
 abide in his shattered corporeity from the attacks of the cura- 
 tive process, as from the original disease. The logic- of the 
 following may be questioned, but it is, of course, intended as a 
 
 sarcasm : 
 
 • 
 
 ■' The Homoeopatliic system, sir, just suits me to a tittle, 
 It clearly proves of physic you cannot take too little ; 
 If it be good in aU complaints to take a dose so small, 
 It surely must be better still, to take no dose at all." 
 
 There is only one suggestion we have to offer in this con- 
 nection — it is this : ought not the Homoeopathic practitioners to 
 regulate their fees in the ratio of their doses? The cold-water 
 system is rapidly extending its popularity among us. Of 
 mesmerism, and its application to nervous and neuralgic 
 diseases, we shall not pause to notice. The advantages of 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 231 
 
 cliloroform have been so fully discussed bj everybody, that 
 we shall simply give the reader a taste of one of these exposi- 
 tions in a kind of mock heroic verse, cut from an Englisli 
 paper : 
 
 " Take but a snuff at this essence ajisesthetical, 
 Dropp'd upon a liandkercluef , or bit of sponge, 
 And on your eyelids 'twill clap a seal hermetical, 
 And your senses in a trance tliat instant plunge. 
 
 " Then you may be piuch'd and punctured, bump'd and thump'd and 
 whack'd about, 
 Scotch'd, and scored, and lacerated, cauterized, and hacked about ; 
 And though tender as a chick — a Sybarite for queasiness — 
 Flay'd alive, unconscious of a feeling of uneasiness. 
 
 ' ' Celsus will witness our deft chirurgeons presently. 
 Manage operations as he said they should ; 
 Doing them safely, speedily, and 'pleasantly^ 
 Just as if the body were a log of wood. 
 
 ' ' Teeth, instead of being drawn with agonies immeasurable, 
 Now will be extracted with sensations rather pleasurable. 
 Chloroform will render quite agreeable the parting with 
 Any useless member the patient has been smarting with." 
 
 An instance of the disadvantages of this anaesthetical agent 
 is seen in the following incident however, which occurred at 
 Taunton Hospital, where, as a patient was undergoing amputa- 
 tion of a limb while under the influence of chloroform, the 
 nurse let fall the bottle containing the gas, which quickly 
 spread its somniferous effects over the operators, and some 
 time elapsed before they recovered from their partial insensi- 
 bility. 
 
 There are several distinct varieties among the medical pro- 
 fession ; as the following : First, the silent doctor, who is 
 evidently a lover of creature comforts, and whose taciturn, 
 dignified, and mysterious deportment passes current with the 
 unsuspecting, for profound wisdom. He ingeniously manages 
 
232 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 to secure the greatest nuniber of patients with the fewest 
 possible words. "The silent doctor is a great favorite with 
 the fair sex ; they regard him as Coleridge did his quondam 
 acquaintance of dumpling celebrity, and think that as stillest 
 streams are of ttimes the deepest, so there must be something 
 intensely fascinating in the said doctor, if it only could be dis- 
 covered. Everybody knows, too, how each individual woman 
 believes herself endowed by nature with peculiar faculties for 
 discovering the occult, for unravelling the mysterious; and 
 who more mysterious than the silent doctor ? 
 
 " But, leaving him now in their safe keeping, our next illus- 
 tration shall be of the sceptical doctor. Though confessedly 
 against his interest, he is very slow to believe that anything is 
 the matter with anybody. If people are resolved to be 
 quacked, he finds a bread-pill, to be taken four times a day — 
 a safe and wholesome remedy. Still, though mortally averse 
 to old women and nervous invalids, when there is real suffer- 
 ing, the sceptical doctor feels keenly, all the more, perhaps, 
 from his efforts to conceal it. 
 
 " Of all others, perhaps, the most provoking is the talkative 
 doctor. Well versed in almost every subject, fond of litera- 
 ture, of politics, and of science, it is difficult to keep him to 
 the point, and obtain any definite opinion or practical advice 
 from liim. Quite forgetful that you are in actual pain, or 
 grievous discomforture, a single hint or remote allusion is 
 sufficient to draw forth a learned discussion on ancient or 
 mediaeval art, or the marbles of Nineveh." 
 
 Then, there is another type, which may be styled the mor- 
 bid doctor, who is ever looking at the dark side of a case, and 
 whose visage is long and lugubrious. A vision of such an 
 impersonation of the dismal, is of itself sufficient to shock the 
 nerves of a patient and aggravate his disease, of whatsoever 
 nature it may be. 
 
THE miYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 233 
 
 So much, then, for our pleasantries with the gentlemen of 
 the curative art. 
 
 Let us look, for a moment, at that troublesome personage, 
 whose oft-dilapidated condition makes such onerous demands 
 upon the doctor's skill. Physiologists assert that this " paragon 
 of animals" is physically a machine — a steam-engine — his 
 brain the engine, his lungs the boiler, his viscera the furnace. 
 That he glides along the track of life, often at the fearful 
 speed of sixty or seventy pulsations in a minute, never stop- 
 ping, so long as the machine is in working order. He has 
 also been compai-ed to a steamship, a chemical laboratory, a 
 distillery, a forcing-pump, a grist-mill, a furnace, an electric 
 telegraph. 
 
 Man has the power of imitating almost every motion but 
 that of flight. To effect these he has, in maturity and health, 
 60 bones in his head, 60 in his thighs and legs, 62 in his arms 
 and hands, and 67 in the trunk. He has also 434 muscles. 
 His heart makes 60 pulsations in a minute. There are also 
 three complete circulations of the blood, in the short space of 
 an hour. Who thinks he carries so much about with him ? 
 
 Whittier observes : " It is the special vocation of the doctor 
 to grow familiar with suffering — to look upon humanity dis- 
 robed of its pride and glory — robbed of all its fictitious 
 ornaments — weak, hopeless, naked — and undergoing the last 
 fearful metempsychosis, from its erect and god-like image, the 
 living temple of an enshrined divinity, to the loathsome clod 
 and the inanimate dust ! Of what ghastly secrets of moral and 
 physical disease is he the depository ! " With what a sanctity, 
 therefore, is the character of the true physician invested. 
 
 It has been well said, that the theory and practice of 
 medicine is the noblest and most difficult science in the world ; 
 and that there is no other art for the practice of which the 
 most thorough education is so essential. 
 
234 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Add to this the society of all kinds into which the medical 
 man is thrown, the knowledge of human nature he acquires 
 thereby, the many beautiful traits of domestic affection and 
 woman's love, which pass daily before him, the gratitude of 
 some hearts, the cordial friendship of others, the respect to be 
 attained from all — and it will scarcely be denied that the prac- 
 tice of medicine is one of the most interesting and delightful, 
 as well as responsible, of all professions. 
 
 In fine, since there is a sacredness in the trust confided to 
 the professor of the healing art, a corresponding fidelity to its 
 claims and responsibilities is indispensably requisite ; and, 
 consequently, he who is recklessly indifferent to these, is guilty 
 of the highest style of crime, in a wanton betrayal of the faith 
 reposed in him. This would exclude quacks. 
 
 Our own age has made several remarkable discoveries in 
 medical science. Look at the grand discovery of chloroform, 
 which has saved thousands of hours of helpless agony. There 
 is no tale of daring and discovery more remarkable than the 
 narrative of the hours which Professor Simpson, and his friends 
 in Edinburgh, spent in testing various narcotic agencies, until 
 they became first exhilarated and then insensible, while testing 
 chloroform, and awoke to the conviction that they had now 
 become acquainted with the most powerful anaesthetic known 
 or conceived. The discovery of cod-liver oil has been a boon 
 of the most inestimable kind. Dr. Williams states that in a 
 certain time he prescribed it in eleven thousand cases, and in 
 ninety-five per cent with beneficial results. It is now known 
 that consumption is curable in its earlier stages. The average 
 length of consumptive cases, which used to be two years, is 
 now prolonged to -Q.ve years. Even where medicine cannot 
 heal, it obtains one of its greatest triumphs in palliating a 
 disorder. There never was a time in the history of medicine 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF ]VIEDICINE. 235 
 
 when its soothing and alleviating side was so assiduously and 
 successfully cultivated, as at the present day. 
 
 Then the knowledge of the human frame daily grows more 
 extensive and exact. Look at Laennec's wonderful discovery 
 of the stethoscope. It is now known that of the three organs 
 which make the tripod of life, brain, lungs, and heart (accord- 
 ing to Bichat's theory, now generally received, death always 
 issues from one of these three avenues), diseases of the heart, 
 which were once tlionght exceedingly rare, are the most com- 
 mon, and probably the least hurtful. It is half the battle 
 with disease to know accurately what is really the matter with 
 the patient. Harvey had heard the healthy sounds of the 
 heart ; but its morbid sounds inform us now of the nature of 
 its structm-al defects. The sounds of breathing must, count- 
 less times ere this, have met the ear ; but it was reserved for 
 our own days, to study them so often as to enable every tyro 
 to say what is the state of those great organs, hidden from our 
 view, but so indispensable to life. And so with percussion. 
 Kay, with our eyes we can now behold, for the first time in its 
 living acts, that marvellous mechanism in its most exquisite 
 and joy-inspiring movements, as well as when it is oppressed 
 by disease, which stands as a sentinel at the orifice of the air- 
 passages, and on which the voice and speech primarily depend. 
 
 Thus much, then, about the mission of medicine and its 
 administrators — the doctors. When we do indulge a little in- 
 trospection, and observe what a marvellous piece of mechanism 
 the " house we live in " is, we ought to be grateful for what- 
 ever aid the wit and skill of the doctor may afford, rather than 
 ridicule his vocation. When we look abroad, and see the surg- 
 ing multitudes that crowd the. streets and lanes of our cities, 
 and remember, that, notwithstanding their gay and flaunting 
 attire and healthy look, that ere to-morrow, or to-morrow- week, 
 many may be summoned to a sicli room, the victims of disease, 
 
23G 
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 we shall learn tlie better to prize tlie province of the kindly 
 physician. 
 
 ' ' Tills is the way physicians mend — or end us, 
 Secundum artem — bub althougli we sneer, 
 In health — we caU them to attend us, 
 Without the least propensity to jeer." 
 
 Byron hits it exactly — when in health, we throw physic to 
 the dogs, and laugh at the doctor; but, when we are pros- 
 trated by disease, when " sickness sits caverned in the hollow 
 eye," we are glad enough to seek his aid, and remunerate him, 
 as far as we can, for it. Some, after having passed under the 
 recuperative process, are ungrateful enough to forget the 
 doctor's fee. 
 

 TALK ABOUT TEEES. 
 
 AViiAT more sublime and spirit-stirring than to " thread the 
 mazy grove," to wander beneath the thiclv overhanging 
 foliage, penetrating into its embowered recesses ? The impos- 
 ing grandeur of the scene impresses us with a religious awe, 
 and we bow reverently before these visible tokens of the 
 Creator's beneficence and power, as seen in myriad forms of 
 vernal beauty. From the creeping ivy, that clings with fond 
 tenacity to the crumbling ruin, as if to rescue it from the de- 
 stroying touch of Time, to the stately '* kings of the forest," 
 in their leafy grandeur, what a world of wonders is encircled, 
 inviting our astonished gaze. With what infinite variety of 
 beauty is the broad realm of nature decked — what an endless 
 succession of delicate forms ao we discover in the spiral grass, 
 the genera of plants, and the ever-varying foliage of trees. 
 
 The Elm, with its rich pendulous branches, the sturdy oak, 
 the maple, " clad in scarlet and gold," the lioary poplar, the 
 " tulip-tree," with its brilliant, glossy leaves and blossoms, and 
 
238 
 
 TALK ABOUT TREES. 
 
 many others, with whose generous shade, graceful outline, and 
 exceeding beauty, we all are familiar. As majestic forms of 
 beauty, which none can contemplate, without having the finer 
 sensibilities of their nature brought into exercise, trees may 
 well be regarded with grateful love, if not wdth a feeling of 
 veneration. IN^ot only did they form the luxurious arbors of 
 repose in Eden, they constituted also the arched and leafy 
 temples of the first worshippers. " The groves were God's first 
 temples." 
 
 The oratories of the Jews were beneath the shadow of olive 
 trees. 
 
 The ancient Druids of Gaul, Britain, and Germany were ac- 
 customed to perform their mystic rites and sacrifices in the re- 
 cesses of the forest ; and our Pilgrim Fathers worshipped God 
 under a like canopy. 
 
 " Do not trees talk — have they not leafy lungs — do they not, 
 at sunrise, when the wind is low, and when the birds are carolling 
 their songs, play sweet music ? Who has ever heard the soft 
 whisper of the green leaves in spring time, on a sunny morn- 
 ing, that did not feel as though rainbow gleams of kindness 
 were running through his heart ? — and then, when the morn- 
 ing-glory, like a nun before the shrine of God, discloses her 
 beautiful face, — and the moss-roses open their crimson lips, 
 sparkling with the nectar that falls from heaven, who does not 
 bless his Maker? — and when autumn comes, the season of 
 ' the sere and yellow leaf,' — when the wheat is in its golden 
 prime, and the corn waves like silken tassels in the charmed 
 air, is not minded of the reaper — Death ? " ^ 
 
 Forests have been by a poetic fancy styled " Nature's no- 
 blest sanctuaries." The over-arching branches of trees first 
 suggested to the skill of the sculptor the delicate fret-work. 
 
 * De Vere. 
 
TALK ABOUT TREES. 239 
 
 and arborescent decorations of our ecclesiastical architecture. 
 The leafy column, nave and transept of our grand old cathe- 
 drals, were but the imitations of art, drawn from the leafy soli- 
 tudes of ]S"ature. The trees of the field and forests, are replete 
 with poetic, historic, and. sacred associations: the voice of 
 prayer and psalm has oft ascended to Heaven, from beneath 
 their leafy recesses ; and the welkin has also resounded with 
 the clash of arras and the wail of sorrow beneath their shade. 
 How largely, too, have the classic poets, like Euripides, been 
 indebted to the inspiration of the sylvan groves of Greece, for 
 their themes. 
 
 The idea, which some amateur naturalists seem to advance, 
 that trees and fiowers have intelligence, is not new to poetry, 
 though not accepted by science. Ovid in his Metamorphoses, 
 and other writei-s of the classic mythology, hold to it. 
 
 Few objects in nature are capable of exciting in us emotions 
 more deep and impressive than a majestic tree. If trees, in- 
 deed, had tongues to tell us what they have witnessed, how 
 many a legend of thrilling interest, of patient suffering, heroic 
 achievement, or of deadly strife, might they not rehearse to us ! 
 But theirs is a silent eloquence, and like the music of the 
 spheres, potent and persuasive only to those whose inner ear is 
 attent to their voices. How royally do those patriarchal kings 
 of the forest rear their leaf-crowned heads ; and how sweetly 
 amidst their foliage do the feathered songsters charm the syl- 
 van solitudes with their minstrelsy ; while Flora, with a lavish 
 prodigality, scatters her festive glories alike o'er meadow, 
 copse, hill -side, forest, and field. 
 
 " Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good ! 
 Hail, ye plebeian underwood ! 
 Where the poetic birds rejoice, 
 And for their quiet nests and plenteous food, 
 Pay with their grateful voice ! " * 
 
 * Cowley. 
 
240 TALK ABOUT TREES. 
 
 The mention of ancestral trees suggests to us those grand old 
 Cedars of Lebanon, with their histories reaching adown the 
 centuries as some conjecture, even to the age of Solomon, and 
 the august and matchless Temple of Jerusalem. The Eastern 
 poets say, "the cedar bears winter in its head, spring on its 
 shoulders, and autumn on its bosom, while summer sleeps at its 
 feet." 
 
 There is a beautiful legend of the " Tree of Life," which, in 
 the words of John Evelyn, reads thus : " Trees and woods have 
 twice saved the whole world, — first by the ark, then by the 
 Cross; making full amends for the evil fruit of the tree in 
 Paradise, by that which was borne on the tree at Golgotha ! " 
 
 The palm, once so prolific in Palestine, but now scarcely to 
 be seen there, is frequently referred to in the Sacred Scrip- 
 tures, historically and allegorically. Palms have been styled 
 " Princes of the Vegetable Kingdom," from the fact that they 
 are the most valuable of all ; every portion — the bark, fruit, 
 leaf, and wood, being available for use. The Palm-tree most 
 abounds in Persia, Syria, Arabia, and the Delta of Egypt, — 
 lands that do not yield much corn. This was regarded as the 
 traditional tree, whose branches sweetened the bitter waters of 
 Marah, as furnishing the festal boughs of the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles, and, as also giving its name to Jericho — the " City of 
 Palms." The Palm became to tlie Jews, and also the Greeks 
 and Pomans, the emblem of Victory : and it will be remem- 
 bered that our Saviour's entry into Jerusalem was greeted with 
 branches of this tree. 
 
 The Olive has also its historic associations, sacred and pro- 
 fane. Noah's dove bore an olive leaf ; the Israelites held it in 
 reverence ; and its wood formed the material of the door-posts 
 of the Temple ; while from the Olive also were carved the 
 Cherubins of the Oracle. Among the sacred mountains of Pales- 
 
TALK ABOUT TREES. 241 
 
 tine was the ever memorable Momit of Olives. As a Chris- 
 tian symbol, the olive branch indicates peace. 
 
 The Holly, — with which at Christmas tide we are accus- 
 tomed to deck our churches, — was to the ancient races of 
 the N'ortli, a sign of the life which preserved nature through the 
 desolations of winter. Southey's well-known lines on the 
 ILjlly suggest themselves here : 
 
 '' 0, reader ! hast thou ever stood to see the Holly tree ? 
 The eye that contemplates it well, perceives its glossy leaves, 
 Ordered by an Intelligence so wise. 
 As might confound the atheist's sophistries." 
 
 Then there is Chaucer's oak, so called from the tradition 
 that it was planted by the hand of the pioneer-poet of England ; 
 it yet stands in Dennington Park, England, for aught we know 
 to the contrary. The oak in the ISTew Forest, against which 
 Tyrrell's arrow glanced before it killed William Ruf as, which 
 was standing until a century since, has, like the Royal Oak, at 
 Boscobel House, which screened the fugitive King Charles II., 
 disappeared. AVallace's oak, at Torwood, Stirlingshire, under 
 whicli the hero is believed to have convened and addressed his 
 followers, is still extant. The Charter-oak at Hartford, Con- 
 necticut, believed to have been six hundred years old when 
 the Commonwealth was founded, was so called because in it 
 was concealed the British charter of Governor Andros, in 1687. 
 It fell about a dozen years ago. Another memorable oak 
 was that which stood until 1857, on the bank of the Genesee 
 river, 'New York ; it was pre-historic ; beneath its wide-spread 
 branches, doubtless, many an Indian war-council was held, for 
 its age has been computed at not less than five centuries. At 
 Allonville, in Normandy, we are told there is, or was, an aged 
 oak, the trunk of which was so large as to admit of being fitted 
 up as a place of worship. At Kidlington, England, we read 
 of an enormous, hollow oak, which served for a time as the 
 16 
 
242 
 
 TALK ABOUT TREES. 
 
 village prison, — from which we may infer that the criminal 
 calendar of that quiet hamlet of Oxfordshire, could not have 
 been excessively crowded. If, as tradition says, King John 
 once held his parliament under the great Torworth chestnut, in 
 Gloucestershire, he might have done the same with greater 
 facility under the then, and still existing grand old trees near 
 Datchett, Windsor, adjoining what is kno^vn as his "hunting 
 lodge." 
 
 Another giant oak is on record, known as Damory's, in Dor- 
 setshire, of which the circumference is stated at sixty-eight feet 
 the cavity of the trunk being sixteen feet wide and twenty 
 feet high. It was fitted up for what do you suppose ? — an ale- 
 house, and used as such during the Commonwealth. The re- 
 markable chestnnt, on Mount Etna, known as the " Tree of one 
 hundred horses," which has been supposed, from its immense 
 proportions, to be five trees united, has been since ascertained 
 to spring from one root, although it is said to measure two 
 hundred feet in circumference. There is one other legendary 
 tree that deserves mention, — that majestic , old Pine, which, 
 until quite recently, stood near Fort Edward, on the Hudson ; 
 for it witnessed the sad fate of the beautiful but hapless Jane 
 McCrea, who, when captured by the Indians, in 1777, lost her 
 life by the very bullet intended for her savage and relentless 
 captors. 1^0 one is likely to forget the " rugged elms " and 
 " yew-trees' shade," beneath which repose the ashes of Gray ; 
 or the neighboring " beeches," under whose leafy branches the 
 " Elegy" was bom, or indeed the thick grove of overhanging 
 elms that embosom the " ivy-mantled tower " of Upton church. 
 Nor ought we to forget that noble old elm, known as Washing- 
 ton's elm, since beneath its outstretched arms, the General first 
 stepped forward to his officers and assumed the command of 
 the American' forces. 
 
 There is, or was, until recently, a famous yew-tree near 
 
TALK ABOUT TREES. 243 
 
 Staines, England, which stood prior to the meeting of the 
 Barons at Runnjmede, when King John was compelled to grant 
 the Magna Charta. 
 
 Shakspeare, Milton, and Pope, have each their memorial 
 trees ; the two former, — Mulberry trees, and the latter the 
 Willow. Pope's " weeping willow " sprang from a small twig 
 which the poet received from his friend Lady Montague, at 
 Smyrna, and which he planted near his villa at Twickenham. 
 This tree, which was felled in 1801, was the progenitor of its 
 race in Great Britain, and the United States ; a British officer 
 during the war of the Revolution, having brought over a twig 
 from the tree at Twickenham, which he presented to Mr. Cus- 
 tis, who planted it in his grounds at Abingdon, Virginia, where 
 it took root and flourished, and from which twigs were often 
 transplanted. 
 
 On her return from France, Mary Queen of Scots brought 
 over with her a little Sycamore tree, which she planted in the 
 gardens of Holyrood ; and from this source, it is said, have 
 sprung the beautiful groves of sycamores now to be seen in 
 Scotland. We might refer to multitudes of other interestiug 
 instances ; for example the Holly with its sacred allegoric as- 
 sociations ; and many other notable objects in the grounds at 
 Blenheim, Woburn Abbey, Wotton, Kew Gardens, Hampton 
 Court, Kensington, and Chiswick Botanical Gardens, so rich in 
 exotics from all parts of the globe, — not to speak of the superb 
 grounds at Crystal Palace, Versailles, St. Cloud, and other 
 notable places. 
 
 The Dragon-tree of Orotava is described as about seventy- 
 five feet in height and sixteen in circumference at the base. 
 All travellers to Teneriffe visit this gigantic lily. Tradition 
 affirms that it was an object of veneration with the native 
 Guanchos, as the olive and the elm of Ephesus, were to the 
 ancient Greeks. 
 
244 
 
 TALK ABOUT TREES. 
 
 The bark of trees, which is essentially fibrous and cellular 
 tissue, presents a great diversity of appearance. This bark 
 consists of a succession of annular layers, which are covered 
 with a thin cuticle or skin. We can only refer to the cork- 
 tree. This beautiful tree, which is a species of oak, and fur- 
 nishes to us one of the most useful commercial products, ac- 
 quires an extraordinary thickness of layer, known as cork. 
 This mass of cork attains by degrees to a considerable thick- 
 ness ; and if not removed, would crack so deeply, as to become 
 unfit for use to which it is devoted. This tree is peculiar to 
 hot climates. Algeria possesses several forests of the cork tree, 
 in course of working. Spain has long been celebrated for its 
 produce. The crops of cork are generally gathered once 
 every eight years. The banyan-tree is considered one of the 
 most remarkable natural phenomena in India, each tree being 
 in itself a grove, and in some instances of prodigious dimen- 
 sions ; while this self-augmenting tree seems to bid defiance 
 to decay. This tree is worshipped by the Hindoos. Humboldt 
 refers to a magnificent specimen of the banyan, the large trunks 
 of which number three hundred and fifty, the smaller ones 
 amounting to about 'Q.Ye thousand ; " each of these," he states, 
 "is constantly sending forth branches and hanging roots to 
 form other trunks." Seven thousand persons are said to find 
 ample room to repose under its shade. 
 
 Among the arborescent marvels of nature, may be mentioned 
 the Baobab tree of tropical Africa, referred to by Livingstone. 
 Its trunk does not exceed fifteen or eighteen feet in height, 
 but its girth is enormous, attaining, as it sometimes does, the 
 circumference of thirty to forty feet. This trunk separates at 
 the summit into branches fifty to sixty feet long, which bend 
 toward the earth at their extremities ; which, seen at a dis- 
 tance, presents the appearance of a huge dome, or ball, of ver- 
 dure, over a circuit of a hundred and sixty feet ! Its flowers 
 
TALK ABOUT TREES. 245 
 
 fire proportioned to its gigantic trunk, — often measuring five 
 by eight inches. The Baobab abounds most in Senegal, where 
 it was first discovered. There is a singular use made of the 
 trunk of this tree, when hollow, by the negroes ; when any of 
 their Guerrots, or musicians and poets die, they bury them 
 within the trunk, and close it up with a plank ; for these su- 
 perstitious people imagine that if they were to bury their 
 sorcerers, as they consider them^ in the earth, they would draw 
 down upon themselves the Celestial malediction. There is 
 something poetic in this custom of a barbarous people, which 
 leads them to bury their poets between heaven and earth, in the 
 side of the vegetable king. 
 
 The picturesque scenery of San Joaquin and Tulare valleys 
 is on a scale of grandeur surpassing that of Switzerland. 
 Throughout this Alpine region hundreds of lofty peaks rise one 
 above another, the highest reaching an altitude of some 15,000 
 feet above the water line. The Sierra Nevada mountain-range 
 comprises above one hundred peaks over ten thousand feet 
 high; and one, Mount Shasta, towers in solitary grandeur 7,000 
 feet above everything in its vicinity, and some others are sup- 
 posed even to exceed this in altitude. And this is not all ; im- 
 agine an entire forest, extending as far as the eye can reach, of 
 trees from eight to twelve feet in diameter, and from two hun- 
 dred to three hundred feet high thickly grouped, their trunks 
 marvellously straight with a dense canopy of branching foliage ; 
 and you may obtain a faint idea of the magnificence of the 
 great forests of California. 
 
 As far as can be ascertained, the greatest of the mammoth 
 trees of California are the following ; namely, one measuring 
 twenty-seven feet in diameter, — its circumference having been, 
 before it became partially burned at the base, nearly one hun- 
 dred feet, and its height three hundred and thirty feet! The 
 other, in the Mariposa grove, known as the " grizzly giant," 
 
246 TALK ABOUT TREES. 
 
 which is estimated at upwards of 500 years old, has a dia- 
 meter of thirty feet, and even some of its branches measure six 
 feet in diameter. These Titanic trees liave been botanically 
 named, Sequoia gigantea from Sequoya, a Cherokee chief who 
 invented an Indian alphabet of characters, which the tribe and 
 the missionaries adopted. These California trees are, it is be- 
 lieved, only surpassed by an Australian species ; one of which 
 Miiller, the Botanist, computed to measure four hundred feet 
 in height. 
 
 Of fruit trees, with which all are familiar, it is needless to 
 speak; we may, however, refer to the date tree, wliich affords 
 to many tribes of Upper Egypt, and to multitudes in other 
 countries, almost their only sustenance. It is a remarkable in- 
 stance of the design of Providence to render most parts of the 
 earth habitable, that the date-palm abounds everywhere on the 
 verge of the vast African desert, where no grain, and scarcely 
 any other tree can grow. Linnaeus asserts that the region of 
 palms was the first country of our race, and that man is essen- 
 tially palmivorous. Burkhardt informs us that date trees often 
 constitute the dowry of an eastern bride. The bread-fruit tree 
 supplies the natives of the Polynesian isles, their principle ar- 
 ticle of diet ; its fruit is as large as a melon, the eatable part 
 white as snow, and when roasted has a sweet taste. The cocoa- 
 nut tree supplies, as we all know, a pleasant kind of food with 
 a milky fluid ; the plantain, or banana, is in the torrid zone 
 what wheat and rice are to other regions. The maple and the 
 beet root, alike supply a saccharine matter, which is used very 
 generally ; and the birch tree yields, by incision, a copious 
 supply of juice, which is made the basis of a light and agree- 
 able wine. The beautiful Spanish chestnut tree, also bears a 
 fruit upon which the people are said largely to subsist ; and 
 we are well acquainted with the article, for when roasted it di- 
 vides the choice with the hazel, the hickory, walnut, the Brazil, 
 
TALK ABOUT TREES. 247 
 
 and other nuts. Not every buyer, or even seller of sago, knows 
 it to be the heart of a tree, nor that it is used, in Asia for 
 bread. When mature, which is about thirty years' growth, the 
 branches show a yellowish meal ; the tree is then felled, and 
 on splitting it the sago appears, resembling the pith of elder. 
 The eatable sago is the meal parted from the filaments. 
 
 The coffee plant, or tree, for it sometimes attains to eighteen 
 feet in height, yields the well-known berry, from which we de- 
 rive the delicious beverage, used at breakfast ; its counterpart, 
 the tea plant, also possesses a world-wide fame, and forms the 
 decoction so refreshing to the weary, and is such an indispen- 
 sable accompaniment with the loquacious Johnsons and Pioz- 
 zis of all countries. 
 
 Thus it will be seen we stand indebted, not only for many 
 internal comforts, but some external advantages also, to the 
 scions of the forest ; and even when trees have served for util- 
 ity, and graceful decoration to the cottage or the landscape, we 
 cut them down for fuel, or convert them to a thousand other 
 important uses, in the construction of ships, houses, and the 
 numerous arts of life. 
 
 IS^ew York City, till recently possessed a relic of olden 
 time in its Stuyvesant pear-tree, which was planted by that 
 notable Dutch Governor, in 1647, and bore fruit until a brief 
 interval of its being cut down in 1860. The tree that inspired 
 the pathetic appeal in its behalf, by George P. Morris, — 
 " Woodman, spare that tree," stood on the spot now forming 
 the corner of St. Paul's, on Church street, between Yesey and 
 Fulton. 
 
 " Woodman, forbear thy stroke ! cut not its earth-bound ties ; 
 Oh, spare that aged oak, now towering to the skies ! 
 When but an idle boy, I sought its grateful shade ; 
 
 In all their gushing joy, here, too, my sisters played : 
 My mother kissed me here, — my father pressed my hand, — 
 Forgive this foolish tear, but let that old oak stand !" 
 
248 
 
 TALK .\BOUT TEEES. 
 
 The great Elm on Boston Common is of unknown age. It 
 was a great tree when Indian chiefs held council beneath its 
 shadow. 
 
 The American Elm is an historic tree. Under its shade 
 many interesting scenes have transpired, among them the 
 preaching of Whitefield. It was beneath the shade of a noble 
 elm that William Penn made his celebrated treaty with the 
 Red Men of the forest, adjoining what is now Philadelphia, or 
 more precisely on a spot now occupied by Kensington. 
 
 At Trenton, J^ew Jersey, is an interesting Willow tree, it 
 having sprung from a twig brought from the tree that over- 
 shadowed the tomb of Kapoleon, at St. Helena. 
 
 After all we have attempted in these desultory references, 
 much more remains yet unnoticed concerning the marvels of 
 nature, among her shrubs, herbs, plants, mosses, lichens, fungi, 
 and the algae of the world of waters. 
 
 1 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 "What is here? 
 Grold I gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold, 
 Saint-seducing gold 1 " Shakspeare. 
 
 ' O, cursed love of gold ! when for thy sake 
 The fool throws up his interest in both worlds. 
 
 Toung. 
 
 The question proposed bj little Paul, in Domhey and Son^ 
 is suggested by the caption of our chapter — '' What's money ? " 
 The reply of many would doubtless be the same as that re- 
 turned to the young querist referred to— a mere mercantile 
 one — namely, that it is currency, specie, and bank-notes, or 
 gold, silver, and copper. But this did not suffice for little 
 Paul ; he repeated his inquiry — " 1 mean what's money, after 
 all ? " This is the question we propose to discuss in an illus- 
 
250 
 
 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 trative way. First as to its materiaL Gold and silver, styled 
 the precious metals — are both pure, ductile, and malleable, 
 and unaffected by most conditions of atmosphere. They are 
 of intrinsic and positive v^^orth, and vsrere therefore adopted as 
 the standards of value, to represent all commercial exchanges. 
 
 According to the Parian Chronicle, a record of the third 
 century before Christ, Phiedon, king of Argos, in order to 
 facilitate commerce, stamped silver money in the island of 
 ^gina, B.C. 895. Money, as to its name, is derived from 
 Juno Moneta, the Roman Temple where it was coined 260 n.c. 
 
 The most ancient Jewish coins represented 2i.^ot of manna 
 on one side, and AarorCs hlossoming rod on the other ; the 
 inscription being in Samaritan. 
 
 Jewish sheJcels were Is. Id. ; a talent was 3,000 shekels, or 
 £342 3s. 9^. sterling. 
 
 The Egyptians did not coin till the accession of the Ptole- 
 mies, nor the Jews till the age of the Maccabees; the most 
 ancient known coins are the Macedonian, of the date of about 
 500 years before Christ. 
 
 Athelstan first established a uniform coin in England. The 
 Egbert silver coins were shillings^ thrimsas^ pennies, halflings, 
 and feorthlings. Gold coin was introduced by Edward III., 
 in six-shilling pieces, nearly equal in size, but not in weight, to 
 modern sovereigns. Nohles followed at 6^. 8<^., and became 
 the lawyer's fee. Edward lY. coined angels^ with a figure of 
 Michael and the Dragon. 
 
 Money had its equivalent in salt in Abyssinia — a small shell 
 called cowry ^ in Hindostan — dried fish in Iceland — and wam- 
 pum among the J^orth American Indians. ]^ails were for- 
 merly in use in Scotland, as we learn from Smith's Wealth of 
 Nations. 
 
 To lack money, it has been remarked, is to lack a passport 
 or admission-ticket into the pleasant places of God's earth — to 
 

 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 251 
 
 much that is glorious and wonderful in nature, and nearly all 
 that is rare, curious, and enchanting in art. 
 Hood's lines suggest a little moralizing : 
 
 "Gold! gold ! gold! gold! 
 Bright and yellow, hard and cold, 
 Molten, graven, hammered, rolled ; 
 Heavy to get, and light to hold ; 
 Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold ; 
 Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled; 
 SpxuTied by the young, but hugged by the old, 
 To the very verge of the church-yard mould ; 
 Price of many a crime untold ; 
 Gold ! gold ! gold ! gold ! " 
 
 What has not man sacrificed upon the altar of Moloch ? his 
 time, his health, his friendships, his reputation, his conscience, 
 and even life itself, and all its great issues. Rightly used, 
 money is the procurer of the domestic comforts and luxuries, 
 as well as the necessaries of life ; but when inordinately cher- 
 ished and coveted, it becomes the bane of happiness and peace. 
 In the affair of marriage, liow much of disaster has it superin- 
 duced — how much of infelicity entailed iipon the domestic 
 relations. Fuller wisely insists that it is much better to have 
 your gold in the hand, than in the heart. A man's character 
 is often indicated by his mode of using money. 
 
 A vain man's motto is " win gold and wear it " — a generous 
 man's " win gold and share it " — a miser's, " win gold and 
 spare it " — a profligate's, "win gold and spend it" — a broker's, 
 " win gold and lend it " — a fool's, " win gold and end it " — a 
 gambler's, " win gold and lose it " — a wise man's, " win gold 
 and use it." 
 
 "Of all the evil propensities to which human nature is 
 subject, there is no one so general, so insinuating, so corruptive, 
 and so obstinate, as the love of money. It begins to operate 
 
252 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 early, and it continues to the end of life. One of the first 
 lessons which children learn, and one which old men never 
 forget, is the value of money. The covetous seek and guard it 
 for its own sake, and the prodigal himself must first be avari- 
 cious, before he can be profuse. This, of all our passions, is best 
 able to fortify itself by reason, and is the last to yield to the 
 force of reason. Philosophy combats, satire exposes, religion 
 condemns it in vain ; it yields neither to argument, nor ridi- 
 cule, nor conscience." * 
 
 This love of money, which Holy S(;ripture tells us is " the root 
 of all evil," Jeremy Ta^^or describes as a vertiginous pool, suck- 
 ing all into its vortex, to destroy it. That this love of gold is 
 the master passion of the age, few will question. It is " the 
 age of gold ; " the auriferous sands of the Pacific for the west- 
 ern hemisphere, and those of Australia for the eastern, are 
 incessantly pouring out their treasures to feed the insatiate 
 cravings of avarice. The liturgy " on 'Change " seems to read 
 — Man's chief end is to make money, and to enjoy it while he 
 can. The votaries of Mammon, however, do not enjoy their 
 possessions — they have no leisure for it, in their ceaseless, toil- 
 some efforts, to augment their fortunes. 
 
 Thousands in the great city there are, who never look out of 
 the narrow circle of self-interest ; whose decalogue is their 
 arithmetic ; whose Bible is their ledger ; who have so con- 
 tracted, and hardened, and indurated their natures, that in any 
 spiritual estimate, they would only represent so many bags of 
 dollars. 
 
 It is indispensable, in some cases, that men should have 
 money, for without it they would be worth nothing. This, 
 however, offers no apology for the universal scramble after 
 money. Is this money-mania the highest development of our 
 
 * nnntcr's Biography. 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 253 
 
 vaunted civilization? — the suinmum honicm of human exist- 
 ence ? — the Ultima Thide of human effort ? 
 
 " The plague of gold strikes far and near, 
 And deep and strong it enters ; 
 The purple cymar which we wear, 
 Makes madder than the centaurs ; 
 Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange, 
 
 TVe cheer the pale gold-diggers, 
 Each soul is worth so much on 'Change, 
 And marked, like sheep, with figures. " 
 
 " Men work for it, fight for it, beg for it, steal for it, starve 
 for it, lie for it, live for it, and die for it. And all the while, 
 from the cradle to the grave, Nature and God are ever thun- 
 dering in our ears the solemn question — ' What shall it profit 
 a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? ' This 
 madness for money is the strongest and the lowest of the pas- 
 sions ; it is the insatiate Moloch of the human heart, before 
 whose remorseless altar all the finer attributes of humanity are 
 sacrificed. It makes merchandise of all that is sacred in 
 human affections ; and even trafiics in the awful solemnities of 
 the eternal world." 
 
 " Gone, the spirit-quickening leaven. 
 Faith and love, and hope in heaven — 
 
 ALL that warmed the earth of old. 
 
 Dead and cold, its pulses flutter ; 
 
 Weak and old, its parched lips mutter. 
 Nothing nobler, nothing higher 
 Than the imappeased desire, 
 
 The quenchless thirst for gold ! " 
 
 Money is a good servant, but a bad master. It may be 
 accused of injustice towards mankind, inasmuch as there are 
 only a few who make false money, whereas money makes 
 many false men. Mammon is the largest slaveholder in the 
 
254 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 world — it is a composition for taking stains out of character — 
 it is an altar on which self sacrifices to self. 
 
 ' ' How many a man from love of pelf, 
 To stuff his coffers, starves himself ; 
 Labors, accumulates, and spares, 
 To lay up ruin for his heirs ; 
 Grudges the poor their scanty dole, 
 Saves everything except his soul ; 
 And always anxious, always vexed, 
 Loses both this world and the next ! " 
 
 Shakspeare defines the sordid passion as — 
 
 ' ' Worse poison to men's souls, 
 Doing more murders in this loathsome world 
 Than any mortal drug." 
 
 In the words of Johnson, it is the 
 
 " Wide-wasting pest ! that rages unconfined, 
 And crowds with crimes the records of mankind ; 
 For gold, his sword the hireling ruflSan draws, 
 For gold, the hireling judge distorts the laws ; 
 Wealth heaped on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys, 
 The dangers gather as the treasures rise." 
 
 "The covetous man lives as if the world were made altogether 
 for him, and not he for the world, to take in everything, and to 
 pai-t with nothing. Charity is accounted no grace with him, 
 nor gratitude any virtue. In short he is a pest and a monster, 
 greedier than the sea, and barrener than the shore." * 
 
 " The wretch concentered all in self, 
 Living, shall forfeit fair renown. 
 And, doubly dying, shall go down 
 To the vile dust from whence he sprung 
 Unwept, unhonored, andimsung." 
 
 Wealth usually ministers to the baser passions of our nature 
 
 * South. 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 255 
 
 — it engenders selfishness, feeds arrogance, and inspires a sense 
 of self -security, and deadens and stultifies the nobler feelings 
 and holier aspirations of the heart. Wealth is a source of end- 
 less discontent ; it creates more wants than it supplies, and 
 keeps its incumbent constantly craving, crafty, and covetous. 
 Lord Bacon says, " I cannot call riches by a better name than 
 the ' baggage ' of virtue. It cannot be spared or left behind, 
 and yet it hindereth the march." " Misery assails riches, as 
 lightning does the highest towers ; or as a tree that is heavy 
 laden with fruit, breaks its own boughs, so do riches destroy the 
 virtue of their possessor." 
 
 Burton quaintly but forcibly observes, — " Worldly wealth is 
 the devil's bait ; and those whose minds feed upon riches, re- 
 cede in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their 
 stores increase ; as the moon, when she is fullest of light, is 
 furthest from the sun." 
 
 A miser is, moreover, the most oblivious, as well as the most 
 vindictive of mortals ; he is said to be always f or-getting, and 
 never for-giving. He lives unloved, and dies unlamented. His 
 self-denial is only surpassed by his denial of the poor and des- 
 titute. The miser starves himself in the midst of plenty, that 
 he may feast his imagination on his useless hoards. Avarice, 
 unlike most other passions, becomes more exacting as its victim 
 increases in age. Fielding speaks of a miser, who consoled 
 himself on his death-bed " by making a crafty and advanta- 
 geous bargain concerning his funeral, with an undertaker who 
 had married his only child." There have been examples of 
 misers who have died in the dark to save the cost of a candle. 
 How debasing the passion which can survive every other feel- 
 ing, sear the conscience, and deaden the moral sense ! " Of all 
 creatures upon earth none is so despicable as the miser. He 
 meets with no sympathy. Even the nurse who is hired to at- 
 tend him in his latest hours, loathes the ghastly occupation, and 
 
256 
 
 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 longs for the moment of her release ; for although the 3'(^ 
 damp is already gathering on his brow, the thoughts of the de- 
 parting sinner are still upon his gold ; and, at the mere jingle 
 of a key, he starts from his torpor in a paroxysm of terror, lest 
 a surreptitious attempt should be made upon the sanctity of his 
 strong box. There are no prayers of the orphan or widow for 
 him — not a solitary voice has ever breathed his name to heaven 
 as a benefactor. One poor penny given away in the spirit of 
 true charity would now be worth more to him than all the world 
 contains ; he has never yet been able to divorce himself from 
 his solitary love of lucre, or to part with one atom of his pelf. 
 And so, from a miserable life — deserted, despised, he passes in- 
 to a dread eternity ; and those whom he has neglected or mis- 
 used, make merry with the hoards of the miser ! " * 
 
 ' ' The aged man that cofiEers up his gold, 
 
 Is plagued with cramps, and gouts, and painful fits, 
 
 And scarce has eyes his treasure to behold ; 
 But like still pining Tantalus he sits. 
 And useless bams the harvest of his wits ; 
 
 Having no other pleasure of his gain 
 
 But torment that it cannot cure his pain." 
 
 The animating principle of both miser and hog is, of course, 
 selfishness. Both are delvers of the grovelling sort, both are 
 ill-tempered and sometimes cruel. It is noticed by a Swedish 
 writer, that " the hog does not enjoy the society of man, as the 
 dog does. He likes going about by himself, grunting in an un- 
 dertone, which he prefers to raising his voice to its highest 
 pitch." This is eminently true of the miser. He is thoroughly 
 unsocial in his disposition, burrows by himself, and mutters to 
 himself, not daring to raise his voice in manly tones, lest it 
 should draw attention to his ill-gotten gains. 
 
 * Blackwood. 
 
 i 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 257 
 
 " The wretched victim of avarice is ever striving to amass 
 wealth by every expedient that will not subject him to the 
 criminal laws, ci,nd to place it in security, is the great and ulti- 
 mate object of his pursuit. Mammon is the great idol he wor- 
 ships, and whatever the specious and plausible pretexts he may 
 assume, he pays homage at no other shrine. In his selfish iso- 
 lation, he surrenders himself up to the domination of his de- 
 basing passion — a voluntary exile from the endearing offices of 
 friendship, and the gentle charities of domestic and social life. 
 The benis^n and blessed influence of heaven-born Peace sheds 
 not her halcyon rays upon his dark and desolate heart. A miser 
 is one who, though he loves himself better than all the world, 
 uses himself worse : for he lives like a pauper in order that he 
 may enrich his heirs, whom he naturally hates, because he knows 
 they hate him." " 
 
 At a subscription of the French Academy for some charita- 
 ble object, each contributor putting in a louis d'^or^ the collec- 
 tor, by mistake, made a second application to a member noted 
 for his penuriousness — " I have already paid," exclaimed the 
 latter with some asperity. " I beg your pardon," said the ap- 
 plicant, " I have no doubt but you paid ; I believe it though I 
 did not see it." " And I saw it, and do not believe it," whis- 
 pered Yoltaire. 
 
 " Other passions have their holidays," says an old writer, 
 " but avarice never suffers its votaries to rest." 
 
 " O, cursed love of gold ! when for thy sake 
 The fool throws up his interest in both worlds." 
 
 " Joshua," said Ambrose, " could stop the course of the sun, 
 but all his power could not stop the course of avarice. The 
 sun stood still, but avarice went on ; Joshua obtained a victory 
 
 * Horace Smith. 
 17 
 
258 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 wlien the sun stood still ; but when avarice was at work Joshua 
 was defeated." We have other recorded facts in sacred story 
 illustrative of the crime of cupidity. Achan's covetous humor 
 made him steal that wedge of gold which served to " cleave 
 his soul from God ; " it made Jadas betray Christ ; and Absa- 
 lom to attempt to pluck the crown from his father's head. 
 
 Sands has written a beautiful apostrophe to Poverty, and 
 by way of contrast, we cite a sentence or two : 
 
 "They have chained the good goddess — they have beaten 
 her and persecuted her ; but the}^ cannot debase her. She has 
 taken refuge in the souls of poets, of peasants, of artists, of 
 martyrs, and of saints. Many children has she had, and many 
 a divine secret lias she taught them. She does all the greatest 
 and most beautiful things that are done in the world ; it is she 
 who cultivates the fields, and prunes the trees — who drives the 
 herds to pasture, singing the while all sweet songs — who sees 
 the day-break, and catches the sun's first smile. It is she who 
 inspires the poet, and makes eloquent the guitar, the violin, and 
 the flute ; who instructs the dexterous artisan, and teaches him 
 to hew stone, to carve marble, to fashion gold and silver, copper 
 and iron. It is she who supplies oil for the lamp, who reaps the 
 harvest fields, kneads bread for us, weaves our garments, in 
 summer and winter, and who maintains and feeds the world. 
 It is she who nurses us in infancy, succors us in sorrow and 
 sickness, and attends us to the silent sleeping-place of death. 
 Thou art all gentleness, all patience, all strength and all com- 
 passion. It is thou who dost reunite all thy children in a holy 
 love, givest them charity, faith, hope, O, goddess of Poverty ! " 
 
 Every man is rich or poor, according to the proportion be- 
 tween his desires and enjoyments. Of riches, as of other things, 
 the pursuit is more than the enjoyment ; while we consider 
 them as the means to be used at some future time for the at- 
 tainment of felicity, ardor after them secures us from weari- 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 259 
 
 ness of ourselves ; but no sooner do we sit down to enjoy our 
 acquisitions, than we find them insufficient to fill up the vacui- 
 ties of life. We are poor only when we want necessaries ; it 
 is custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superflui- 
 ties. 
 
 "Worthy Izaak Walton has something to say on this subject, 
 too good to be omitted : 
 
 " I have a rich neighbor that is always so busy that he has 
 no leisure to laugh ; the whole business of his life is to get 
 money, more money that he may still get more. He is still 
 drudging, saying what Solomon says : ' The diligent hand mak- 
 eth rich.' And it is true, indeed ; but he considers not that it 
 is not in the power of riches to make a man happy ; for it was 
 wisely said by a man of great observation, ' that there be as 
 many miseries beyond riches, as on this side of them.' And 
 yet heaven deliver us from pinching poverty, and grant that, 
 having a competency, we may be content and thankful. Let 
 us not repine, or so much as think the gifts of God unequally 
 dealt, if we see another abound in riches, when, as God knows, 
 the cares that are the keys that keep those riches, hang often 
 so heavily at the rich man's girdle, that they clog him with 
 weary days and restless nights, even where others sleep quietly." 
 
 What material difference is it to us, provided we inliale the 
 perfume of the fragrant flowers, whether they belong to our 
 neighbor or ourself ; or whether the fair estate be the property 
 of and called after the name of another, so we are refreshed 
 with the vision ? We share a community of interest in this re- 
 spect, in all the fair and beautiful things of earth. 
 
 For nature's care, to all her children just, 
 
 With richer treasures and an ampler state 
 
 Endows at large whatever happy man will deign to use them. 
 
 His the city's pomp, the rural honors his — 
 
260 
 
 THE BIODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 Whate'er adorns the princely dome, the column, and the arch, 
 The breathing marble, and the sculptured gold — 
 Beyond the proud possessor's narrow claim, 
 His tuneful breast enjoys." 
 
 Man is necessarily a selfish being to a certain extent, but the 
 social principle is no less an attribute of his nature ; and the 
 divine injunction requiring him to love his neighbor as himself 
 was doubtless imposed for the preservation of the weak and de- 
 pendent, as well as being the palladium of all the virtues. 
 As a class, the poor are, indeed, often prodigal of their gifts, 
 while the affluent are no less penurious; the former may 
 almost be said to rob themselves, while the latter defraud the 
 necessitous of their just claims. To choose between the two 
 conditions, indeed, were not difficult ; the miser sees dazzling 
 visions, and wields the will of others at his nod, but to all 
 other hopes and pleasures he is dead, and cut oif from all con- 
 nection with his kind. 
 
 The miser's ideal sum of happiness is, always, — addition : 
 yet he sometimes finds, at the end of the reckoning, that the 
 sum total is misery. Does not the name import as much — for 
 is there not, at least, an etymological connection between, — 
 miser and miserj^ ? 
 
 " I am rich enough," says Pope to Swift, " and can afford to 
 give away a hundred pounds a year. I would not crawl upon 
 the earth without doing a little good. I will enjoy the pleasure 
 of what I give, by giving it alive, and seeing another enjoy it. 
 When I die, I should be ashamed to leave enough for a monu- 
 ment, if a wanting friend was above ground." Tliat speech 
 of Pope is enough to immortalize him ; independently of his 
 philosophic verse. 
 
 The classic page furnishes examples of a noble contempt of 
 wealth, and a virtuous preference of poverty over venality and 
 lust of riches. These, however, are rather exceptions to the 
 
 I 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 261 
 
 rule which sustains the converse of the proposition ; and be- 
 fore turning to the bright side, let us briefly refer to one or 
 two instances of the baneful effects of avarice on the human 
 heart. The history of nations, is, indeed, but little more than 
 a chronicle of the crimes engendered by the cupidity of man- 
 kind. The inordinate desire of wealth has been the occasion 
 of more mischief and misery in the world than anything else. 
 Some of the direst evils with which the world has ever been 
 afflicted, have emanated from this source. Ko sooner had 
 Columbus solved the problem of the Western Continent, than 
 the accursed lust of gold began to fire the sordid hearts of his 
 successors. Every species of perfidy, cruelty, and inhumanity 
 towards the aborigines was practised against them, in order to 
 extort from them their treasures. These mercenary wretches 
 forced the natives of Hispaniola so mercilessly to delve and 
 toil for the much-coveted ore, that they actually reduced their 
 numbers, within less than half a century, from two millions to 
 about one hundred and fifty. The conquest of Mexico, by 
 Cortez and his followers, impelled by the same insatiable pas- 
 sion, was accompanied with horrors, atrocities, and slaughters, 
 more dreadful and revolting than almost any recorded in the 
 annals of our race. To prepare the way for enjoying the 
 plunder they had in view, the unoffending Indians were butch- 
 ered by thousands ; while carnage and every species of heart- 
 less cruelty marked their progress of spoliation. In the siege 
 of Mexico, no less than a hundred thousand of the natives 
 were sacrificed ; and, as if to add to the effrontery and depra- 
 vity of the act, it vv^as perpetrated under the standard of the 
 Cross ^ and with the invocation of the God of armies to aid the 
 conquests. The like atrocities characterized the expedition of 
 Pizarro for the conquest of Peru. Under perfidious profes- 
 sions of amity, they captured the Inca, butchering some four 
 thousand of his unresisting attendants. 
 
262 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 The baneful effects of avarice, whether displayed in individ- 
 ual conduct, or among communities of men, are the same. 
 We must content ourselves with referring briefly to a few in- 
 stances of the former, as illustrative of the force of this debas- 
 ing evil. 
 
 In the year 1790, died at Paris, literally of want, the well- 
 known banker — Ostervald. This miserable victim of this dis- 
 ease, a few days prior to his death, resisted the importunities 
 of his attendant to purchase some meat for the purpose of 
 making a little soup for him. " True, I should like the soup," 
 he said, " but I have no appetite for the meat ; what is to be- 
 come of that ? it will be a sad waste." This poor wretch died 
 possessed of £125,000 sterliug. Another desperate case was 
 that of Elwes, whose diet and dress were alike of the most re- 
 Yolting kind, and whose property was estimated at £800,000 
 sterling. Among other characteristic incidents related of him? 
 it is said that on the approach of that dread summons which 
 was to divorce him from his cherished gold, he exclaimed, " I 
 will keep my money — nobody shall rob me of my property." 
 
 We meet with the name of Daniel Dancer, whose miserly 
 propensities were indulged to such a degree, that on one occa- 
 sion, when at the urgent solicitation of a friend, he ventured to 
 ffive a shillina: to a Jew for an old hat — " better as new " — to 
 the astonishment of his friend, the next day he actually retailed 
 it for eighteen pence. He was in the habit of carrying a snuff- 
 box about with him, not for the purpose of regaling his olfac- 
 tory organ, but for what, does the reader suppose ? to collect 
 pinches of the aromatic dust from his snuff-taking friends : 
 and when the box was filled, he would barter its contents for a 
 farthing rushlight ! He performed his ablutions at a neigh- 
 boring pool, drying himself in the sun, to save the extravagant 
 indulgence of a towel. Other eccentricities are chronicled of 
 this remarkable " case" — such as lying in bed during the cold 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 263 
 
 weather to save the cost of fuel, and eating garbage to save 
 the charges for food : yet this poor mendicant had property 
 to the extent of upwards of £3,000 per annum. There was a 
 Hussian merchant — never mind his name, it is too barbarously 
 burdened with consonants to spell or pronounce — who was so 
 prodigiously wealthy, that on one occasion he loaned the Em- 
 press Catherine the Second a million of rubles, although he 
 lived in the most deplorable state of indigence, privation, and 
 wretchedness. He buried his money in casks in liis cellar, and 
 was so great a miser that he seemed almost to thrive upon his 
 very passion. He had his troubles, however, for, reposing his 
 trust for the security of his possessions upon the fierceness and 
 fidelity of his favorite dog, his bulwark of safety failed him. 
 The dog very perversely died, and his master was driven to 
 the disagreeable alternative of officiating in the place of the 
 deceased functionary, by imitating the canine service — going 
 his rounds every evening and barking as well as any human 
 dog could be expected to do. 
 
 M. Yandille, of Paris, was one of the most remarkable in- 
 stances on record of immense wealth being combined with ex- 
 treme pennriousness ; he lodged as high up as the roof would 
 admit, as certain poor poets are said to do, and lived on stale 
 bread and diluted milk ; notwithstanding he possessed great 
 property in the public funds. Chancellor Hardwicke, when 
 worth £800,000, set the same miserly value on a shilling as 
 when he possessed but £100 ; and the great Duke of Marlbo- 
 rough, when near the close of life, was in the habit of exhibit- 
 ing singular meanness to save a sixpence, although his pro- 
 perty was over a million and a half sterling. The cases we 
 have adduced are extreme instances of the influence of avar- 
 ice ; but it should not be forgotten that the principle of cove- 
 tousness is the same in its tendency wherever it exists, and it is 
 only in consequence of the counteracting force of circumstan- 
 
264 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 ces that all its victims fail to present the same degree of degra- 
 dation and VvTetched moral deformity. 
 
 More recently, we read of an instance which occurred at 
 !N^ewby, in Westmoreland. This individual, wlien a young 
 man, became possessed of a little property ; he worked as a 
 laborer, and added to his store ; through a long series of years 
 he scraped and saved, denying himself every comfort and 
 almost real necessaries. During his latter years lie lived in a 
 cottage alone, in the most wretched style. Several estates had 
 been mortgaged to him ; and a box vv^hich he kept at the foot 
 of his bed, and upon which his eyes were fixed when dying, 
 contained money and securities of the value of £20,000. 
 
 The well-known Nat. Bently (alias Dirty Dick) of London, 
 belongs to this category. This eccentric specimen of humanity 
 was the victim not only .to a craving for gold, but also for old 
 iron. "We have a dim recollection of the dingy old shop in 
 Leadenhall street, piled up with heaps of all kinds of old iron 
 and lumber. The last twenty years of his miserable existence 
 were spent in dirt and destitution. Another deplorable 
 case might be cited — that of Thomas Pitt, of Warwickshire. 
 All his solicitude was about his money ; his pulse rose and fell 
 with the public funds. He lived over thirty years ensconced 
 in a gloomy garret, never enlivened with light of lamp or fire, 
 or the cheering smile of friendship. It is reported, that some 
 weeks prior to the sickness which terminated his despicable 
 career, he went to several undertakers in quest of a cheap cof- 
 fin! As he lived without the regards, so he died without the 
 regrets, of his neighbors — a miserable illustration of the cor- 
 rupting influence of cupidity. He left behind him £2,475 
 in the public funds. Another instance is that of the notorious 
 Thomas Cook. His ruling passion showed itself in all its in- 
 tensity at the close of his life, for on his physician intimating 
 the possibility of his* not existing more than five or six days. 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 265 
 
 with a fierce look of indignation, he protested against the use- 
 less expense of sending hiin medicine, and charged the doctor 
 never to show his face to him again. This wretched man died 
 unlamented in liis 86th year — a long lease shamefully abused 
 and dishonored. His property was estimated at about £130,- 
 000 ! How horribly debased a man becomes when he surren- 
 ders himself up to the fiendish passion for gain. Ilis influence 
 is moral poison. Audley was another notorious instance. He 
 lived in the days of the Stuarts, and amassed much wealth 
 during the reign of the first Charles, and the Protectorate. 
 He made most of his money by usury and legal chican- 
 ery. On one occasion, having obtained for fifty pounds 
 the debt of an insolvent for £200 — he induced the party 
 under obligation, to sign a contract that he should pay, 
 within twenty years from that time, one penny progressively 
 doubled on the first day of twenty consecutive months, 
 and in case of failure, to forfeit £500. 'Not suspecting 
 the cunningly devised (;heat, the poor debtor recommences 
 business, succeeds, and at the appointed time is called upon by 
 the miser for the instalments. After making several payments, 
 he began to figure up the amount for which he had made him- 
 self liable, in liquidation of his debt of £200. To what sum, 
 do you suppose, would his new liabilities amount ? To no less 
 than £2,180 ? and to what the aggregate sum of all these twen- 
 ty monthly payments ? Why, the enormous total of four tliou- 
 sand three hundred and sixty-six pounds, eleven shillings, and 
 three pence ! 
 
 Misers like to feast their eyes with their treasure, as well as 
 to handle it. We cite an instance from a recent writer,*^ to 
 this effect. It is an anecdote related of Sir William Smyth, 
 of Bedfordshire. He was immensely rich, but most parsimo- 
 nious and miserly in his habits. At seventy years of age, he 
 
 * Merryweather. 
 
266 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 was entirely deprived of his sight, unahle to gloat over his 
 hoarded heaps of gold ; this was a terrible affliction. He was 
 persuaded by Taylor, the celebrated oculist, to be couched ; 
 who was, by agreement, to have sixty guineas if he restored 
 his patient to any degree of sight. Taylor succeeded in his 
 operation, and Sir William was enabled to read and write, 
 without the aid of spectacles, during the rest of his life. But 
 no sooner was his sight restored, than the baronet began to 
 regret that his agreement had been for so large a sum ; he felt 
 no joy as others would have felt, but grieved and sighed over 
 the loss of his sixty guineas. His thoughts were now how to 
 cheat the oculist ; he pretended that he had only a glimmering 
 and could see nothing distinctly ; for which reason, the ban- 
 dage on his eyes was continued a month longer than the usual 
 time. Taylor was deceived by these misrepresentations, and 
 agreed to compound the bargain, and accepted twenty guineas, 
 instead of sixty. At the time Taylor attended him, he had a 
 large estate, an immense sum of money in the stocks, and six 
 thousand pounds in the house. 
 
 Our last citation exhibits an involuntary case of immolation 
 to Moloch. 
 
 A miser, of the name of Foscue, who had amassed enormous 
 wealth by the most sordid parsimony and discreditable extor- 
 tion, was requested by the government to advance a sum of 
 money, as a loan. The miser, to whom a fair interest was not 
 inducement sufficiently strong to enable him to part with his 
 treasured gold, declared his incapacity to meet this demand ; he 
 pleaded severe losses, and the utmost poverty. Fearing, how- 
 ever, that some of his neighbors, among whom he was very un- 
 popular, would report his immense wealth to the government, 
 he applied his ingenuity to discover some effectual way of hid- 
 ing his gold, should they attempt to institute a search to 
 ascertain the truth or falsehood of his plea. With great care 
 
THE MODEEN MOLOCH. 267 
 
 and secrecy, he dug a great cave in his cellar ; to this recepta- 
 cle for his treasure he descended by a ladder, and to the trap- 
 door he attached a spring-lock, so that, on shutting, it would 
 fasten of itself. By and by the miser disappeared : inquiries 
 were made ; the house was searched ; woods were explored, 
 and the ponds were dragged : but no Foscue could they find ; 
 and gossips began to conclude that the miser had fled, with his 
 gold, to some part where, by living incognito, he wonld be free 
 from the hands of the government. Some time passed on ; the 
 house in which he had lived was sold, and workmen were 
 busily employed in its repair. In the progress of their work 
 they met with the door of the secret cave, with the key in the 
 lock outside. They threw back the door, and descended with 
 a light. The first object npon which the lamp reflected was 
 the ghastly body of Foscue, the miser, and scattered around 
 him were heavy bags of gold, and ponderous chests of untold 
 treasure; a candlestick lay beside him on the floor. This 
 worshipper of Mammon had gone into his cave, to pay his 
 devoirs to his golden god, and had thus become a sacrifice to 
 his devotion ! 
 
 Occasionally, these wretched monopolizers of money are 
 really more indulgent to the world than to themselves. Guyot 
 of Marseilles, was a despised tatterdemalion all his life, yet 
 many benefited by his parsimony. His executors, on opening 
 his will, found these remarkable words : " Having observed, 
 from my infancy, that the poor of Marseilles are ill-supplied 
 with water, which can only be procured at a great price, I have 
 cheerfully labored the whole of my life to procure for them 
 this great blessing, and I direct that the whole of my property 
 shall be expended in building an aqueduct for their use " ! 
 
 "We might here glance at the effects of an opposite disposition, 
 as illustrated in a few examples of distinguished benevoleuce. 
 Alfred the Great, among other noble traits of character, ex- 
 
268 
 
 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 hibited, on a certain occasion, an instance of exemplary 
 sympathy for suffering, nnder circumstances which tested 
 unequivocally the goodness of his heart. Shortly after the 
 retreat from his enemies, a beggar came to his little castle, 
 soliciting alms. The queen informed him that they had but 
 one small loaf remaining, which was insufficient for themselves 
 and their friends, who were gone in quest of food, though with 
 little hope of success. The king replied, '' Give the poor 
 Christian one-half of the loaf. He that could feed five thou- 
 sand with five loaves and two fishes, can certainly make that 
 half-loaf suffice for more than our necessity." His fortitude 
 and faith were rewarded, for the messengers and adherents 
 of the monarch soon after returned with a liberal supply of 
 provisions. The late king of Prussia affords another instance 
 of benevolence. On a certain occasion ho rang the bell of his 
 cabinet, but, as nobody answered, he opened the door of the 
 ante-chamber, and found his page fast asleep upon a chair. 
 He went up to awake him ; but, on coming nearer, he observed 
 a paper in his pocket upon which something was written. 
 This excited his curiosity. He pulled it out, and found that it 
 was a letter from the page's mother, the contents of wh^'ch were 
 nearly as follows : " She returned her son many thanks for the 
 money he had saved out of his salary, and sent to her, and 
 which had proved a very timely assistance. God would cer- 
 tainly reward him for it, and, if he continued to serve God and 
 his king faithfully and conscientiously, he would not fail of 
 success and prosperity in this world." Upon reading this the 
 king stepped softly into his closet, fetched a rouleau of ducats, 
 and put it, with the letter, into the page's pocket. He then 
 rang the bell again, till the page awoke, and came into his 
 closet. " You have been asleep, I suppose ? " said the king. 
 The i^age could not deny it, stammered out an excuse (in his 
 embarrassmen,t), put his liand into his pocket, and felt the 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 260 
 
 rouleau of ducats. He immediately pulled it out, turned pale, 
 and looked at the king with tears in his eyes. " What is the 
 matter with you?" said the king. "Oh," replied the page, 
 " somebody has contrived my ruin: I know nothing of this 
 money!" "What God bestows," resumed the king, "he be- 
 stows in sleep. Send the money to your mother — give my re- 
 spects to her, and inform her that I will take care both of her 
 and you." 
 
 Take a passage from the Life of AYashington : "Eeuben 
 Rouzy, of Yirginia, owed the general about one thousand 
 pounds. While President of the United States, one of his 
 agents brought an action for the money; judgment was ob- 
 tained, and execution issued against the body of the defendant, 
 who was taken to jail. He had a considerable landed estate, 
 but this kind of property cannot be sold in Yirginia for debts, 
 unless at the discretion of the owner. He had a large family, 
 and for the sake of his children, preferred lying in jail to 
 selling his land. A friend hinted to him that probably Gen- 
 eral Washington did not know anything of the proceeding, and 
 that it might be well to send him a petition, with a statement 
 of the circumstances. He did so, and the very next post from 
 Philadelphia, after the arrival of his petition in that city, 
 brought an order for his immediate release, together with a 
 full discharge, and a severe reprimand to the agent, for having 
 acted in such a manner. Poor Houzy was, in consequence, 
 restored to his family, who never laid down their heads at 
 night without presenting prayers to Heaven for their ' beloved 
 Washington.' Providence smiled upon the labors of the 
 grateful family, and in a few years Rouzy enjoyed the exqui- 
 site pleasure of being able to lay the one tliousand pounds, 
 with the interest, at the feet of this truly great man. Wash- 
 ington reminded him that the debt was discharged; Rouzy 
 replied, the debt of his family to the father of their country. 
 
270 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 and the preserver of their parent, conld never be discharged : 
 and the general to avoid the pleasing importunity of the grate- 
 ful Virginian, who would not be denied, accepted the money, 
 only, however, to divide it among Rouzy's children, which he 
 immediately did." 
 
 There is an interesting fact related of the hero of Poland, 
 indicative of his customary practice of alms-giving. Wishing 
 to convey a present to a clerical friend, he gave the commission 
 to a young man of the name of Teltner, desiring him to take 
 the horse which he himself usually rode. On his return, the 
 messenger informed Kosciusko that he would never again ride 
 his horse unless he gave him his purse at the same time ; and 
 on the latter inquiring what he meant^ he replied : " As soon 
 as a poor man on tlie road takes off his hat and asks charity, 
 the animal immediately stands still, and will not stir till some- 
 thing is bestowed upon the petitioner ; and as I had no money 
 about me, I had to feign giving in order to satisfy the horse, 
 and induce him to proceed." This noble creature deserved a 
 pension and exemption from active service for the term of his 
 natural life, on account of his superior education and refined 
 moral sensibility. 
 
 Among the bright galaxy of noble names, that of John 
 Howard will ever take prominent rank in the list of benefac- 
 tors. After inspecting the receptacles of crime and poverty 
 throughout Great Britain and Ireland, he left his native coun- 
 try, relinquishing his own ease, to visit the wretched abodes of 
 those who were in want, and were bound in fetters of iron, in 
 other parts of the world. He travelled three times through 
 France, four through Germany, five through Holland, twice 
 through Italy, once through Spain, and Portugal, Russia, 
 Sweden, Denmark, and part of Turkey — occupying a period of 
 about twelve years. "Without the few bright spots in the 
 world's arid waste of selfishness, that occasionally irradiate the 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 271 
 
 gloomy lot of the oppressed and poor, what a dreary life of 
 deprivation and sorrow would be their portion. 
 
 " He wlio knows, like St. Paul, both how to suffer need, and 
 how to abound, has a great knowledge ; for if we take account 
 of all the virtues with which money is mixed up — honesty, 
 justice, generosity, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice 
 — and of their correlative vices, it is a knowledge which goes 
 near to cover the length and breadth of humanity ; and a right 
 measure and manner in getting, saving, spending, giving, tak- 
 ing, lending, borrowing, and bequeathing, would almost argue 
 a perfect man." * 
 
 We must not forget that, while some few abuse wealth, 
 there are vastly more who know its appropriate use and worth. 
 With such, money is the procurer of our common blessings. 
 Money is then the universal talisman, the mainspring of our 
 social system, the lever that moves the world. Some moderns, 
 like Socrates (who wrote in praise of poverty on a table of 
 solid gold), cynically speak against wealth. It is, however, the 
 great motive agent in all departments of the social economy ; 
 helping on the civilization of the world, and ministering not 
 merely to the elegances, but also the essentials of life. Money 
 represents labor. An eloquent writer f asks " who can ade- 
 quately describe the triumphs of labor, urged on by the potent 
 spell of money ? It has extorted the secrets of the universe, 
 and trained its powers into mp-iads of forms of use and beauty. 
 From the bosom of the old creation, it has developed anew the 
 creation of industry and art. It has been its task and' its 
 glory to overcome obstacles. Mountains have been levelled, 
 and valleys been exalted before it. It has broken the rocky 
 soil into fertile glades ; it has crowned the hill-tops with fruit 
 and verdure, and bound around the very feet of ocean, ridges 
 of golden corn. Up from the sunless and hoary deeps, up 
 
 • * Notes ou Life, f Chapin. 
 
272 THE MODERN MOLOCH. 
 
 from the shapeless qiiany, it drags its spotless marbles, and 
 rears its palaces of pomp. It tears the stubborn metals from 
 the bowels of the globe, and makes them ductile to its will. 
 It marches steadily on over the swelling flood, and through the 
 mountain clefts. It fans its way through the winds of ocean, 
 tramples them in its course, surges and mingles them with 
 flakes of fire. Civilization follows in its paths. It achieves 
 grander victories, it weaves more durable trophies, it holds 
 wider sway than the conqueror. His name becomes tainted 
 and his monuments crumble; but labor converts his red battle- 
 fields into gardens, and erects monuments significant of better 
 things. It rides in a chariot driven by the wind. It writes 
 with the lightning. It sits crowned as a queen in a thousand 
 cities, and sends up its roar of triumph from a million wheels. 
 It glistens in the fabric of the loom, it rings and sparkles from 
 the steely hammer, it glories in shapes of beaut}- ; it speaks in 
 words of power, it makes the sinewy arm strong with liberty, 
 the poor man's heart rich with content, crowns the swarthy 
 and sweaty brow with honor, and dignity, and peace." 
 
 We have not mentioned a class who have been styled jpar- 
 t'enuj such as have acquired wealth, and with it the vulgar 
 passion for display. Such characters are to be found in all 
 communities, but especially in those of recent formation. Un- 
 less culture and refinement accompany the possession of great 
 wealth, the deformity is but the more obtrusive. 
 
 " Worth makes the man, the want of it the fellow, 
 The rest is naught but leather and prunello." 
 
 A gentleman has been defined " a Christian in spirit that 
 will take a polish." The rest are but plated goods, and, what- 
 ever their fashion, rub them as you may, the base metal will 
 show itself still. 
 
 Whether in ermine or fustian, there is no disguising char- 
 
THE MODERN MOLOCH. 273 
 
 acter ; the refined may be seen in the latter, as palpably as the 
 vulgar in the former : 
 
 " You may daub and bedizen the man as you will, 
 But tbe stamp of the vulgar remains on bim stiU." 
 
 It is from this class that virtuous poverty has most to suffer. 
 These are they who *' grind the faces of the poor," who, not- 
 withstanding the proverb that " poverty is no crime," yet treat 
 a man without money as if he were without principle ; who 
 gauge the wit and worth of a man by his wearing-apparel and 
 his wealth ; who deem it absurd for a poor man to assert his 
 possession of intelligence, learning, or, in fact, any endowment 
 whatever. Goldsmith, referring to this depreciating influence 
 of poverty, says, — " A poor man resembles a fiddler, whose 
 music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by 
 it ; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched 
 scraper alive, throws the audience into raptures." 
 
 The want of money but deprives us of friends not worth the 
 keeping ; it cuts us out of society, to which dress and equipage 
 are the only introduction, and deprives us of a number of need- 
 less luxuries and gilded fetters. 
 
 That which was so diligently sought by the alchemists of old, 
 the contented man has discovered. Contentment is the true 
 philosopher's stone which transmutes all it touches to gold ; and 
 the divine maxim, that " a man's life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of the things which he possesseth," is a golden 
 maxim. 
 
 " Why need I strive or sigh for wealth ? 
 It is enough for me 
 That Heaven hath sent me strength and health, 
 A spirit glad and free ; 
 Grateful these blessings to receive, 
 I sing my hymn at mom and eve." 
 
 Of all the artificial distinctions which obtain in civilized 
 18 
 
274 
 
 THE MODEBN MOLOCH. 
 
 life, none are more absolute in their nature, or tyrannical in 
 their effects, than those which divide the poor from the rich. 
 Difference of condition tends more to disturb the harmony of 
 the social compact, and to annihilate the common sympathies 
 of mankind, than anything else in the world. 
 
 "A poor relation," according to Charles Lamb, "is the most 
 irrelevant thing in nature — an unwelcome remembrancer — a 
 perpetually-recurring mortification — a drain on your purse, 
 a more intolerable dun than your pride — a drawback upon 
 success." 
 
INFELICITIES OF AUTHOECEAFT. 
 
 ' A spot near Cripplegate extends — 
 
 Grub Street, — 'tis called the modem Pindus ; 
 Where (not that bards are never friends) 
 Bards might shake hands from adverse windows. 
 
 -Butler. 
 
 The subject of the present chapter presents some o£ the 
 various fallacies and foibles of the literary profession. With 
 out attempting a psychological analysis of literary life, we 
 propose simply to group together a few of the more striking 
 idiosyncrasies which seem to be indigenous to great minds. 
 If frailty and fame are twin attributes, one might be tempted 
 to conclude that ITature designed such an allotment as an equi- 
 poise, to silence the envy of those from whom she has with- 
 held her noblest endowments, and to serve as a counteracting 
 
270 INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 
 
 check to the inordinate self-esteem which their possession 
 might otlierwise superinduce. 
 
 Possession of the creative faculty, says Leigh Hunt, pre- 
 supposes a superiority to adverse circumstances and " low- 
 thoiighted care." 
 
 So it was with Fielding, Steele, and others, honorable in lit- 
 erature, and so also with Handel, Mozart, and Weber, in 
 music ; and it is one of the kindly compensations of Nature, by 
 which she contrives to adjust so equitably the good and tlie 
 evil of this life, that when injury to the individual arises from 
 an excess of sympathy with the mass, that injury is commonly 
 but lightly felt. It is yet affecting to think that during the 
 composition of his great masterpieces, Mozart was scarcely 
 supplied with the necessaries of life ; and Handel's immortal 
 oratorios were produced under similar circumstances. 
 
 It is supposed, and with great reason, that but for these pre- 
 cise circumstances, men of genius, naturally indolent, would 
 not Iiave achieved so much, or so well ; under more favorable 
 auspices their energies would have remained dormant for lack 
 of stimulus. Burns was an instance of an author writing for 
 love, and not for money, for he got little pecuniary reward for 
 his exquisite effusions, and was ever in embarrassments. 
 
 How many an immortal work that has proved a revenue of 
 enjoyment to the world has been born amid dire affliction and 
 privation! Think of almost all the inventors, in science and 
 song, — from Roger Bacon, the friar, to whom we owe the 
 discoveries of gunpowder and the telescope, — down to the in- 
 ventors of the cotton-gin and the sewing-machine. Think, 
 also, of Milton, the prince of poets, — inditing his vision of 
 Paradise in blindness and destitution, — and of Dryden, sunk 
 into neglect in his old age, having died in a garret, in an 
 obscure corner of London. 
 
 Pity that the awards of fame should come so laggardly to 
 
INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. * 277 
 
 her true votaries ; but so it is. In how many cases has it been 
 proven that the only requitals of transcendent genius have been 
 poverty, dislionor, and sometimes an inglorious end ; leaving it 
 to after times to repair the injustice of lordly ignorance and 
 superstitious intolerance! Friar Bacon, the parent of more 
 original discoveries than any one of his day, as already 
 referred to, committed this treason against his contemporaries, 
 and in consequence enlisted their persecution. 
 
 The storm is better for the development of genius than the 
 calm. We are told by naturalists, that birds of paradise fly 
 best against tlie wind ; it drifts behind them the gorgeous 
 train of feathers, which only entangle their flight with the gale. 
 Pure imagination, of which the loveliest of winged creatures 
 is the fitting emblem, seems always to gain a vigor and grace 
 by the tempests it encoimters. 
 
 So the flower, when crushed, emits its richest fragrance ; 
 and the grape, when bruised, the richest wine. To the poor 
 author, the ordeal is severe, while it is yet the procuring cause 
 of much of the intellectual wealth of the world. 
 
 Fickle Fortune has often dealt unfairly with the sons of 
 genius. They generally get more credit than cash as the awards 
 of their toil. It has been justly claimed for these gifted un- 
 fortunates, that when even Fame will not protect them from 
 Famine, Charity ought. This, certainly, is but just tribute, 
 due to noble service rendei^d. Camoens, — the pride of Por- 
 tugal, and Cervantes J — the immortal genius of Spain, alike 
 wanted bread, while they furnished literar}^ food to the whole 
 civilized family of man. Vondel, the Shakspeare of Holland, 
 died, as he had lived, in great poverty ; his cofiin, however, 
 was conveyed to the grave by fourteen poets, with every dem- 
 onstration of respect. The great Tasso was compelled to 
 solicit pecuniary aid for his very subsistence. He thus patheti- 
 cally alludes to his distress, when entreating his cat to assist 
 
278 INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 
 
 liim during the night with the lustre of her eyes, — " JVbn 
 ovendo candele jper inscrivere i suovi versi I " (having no can- 
 dle to see to write his verses by.) 
 
 What shall we say of the heartless ingratitude shown to the 
 intellectual, magnanimous, and humane Bentivoglio, who, when 
 reduced to the extremest distress, caused by his own munifi- 
 cence, was actually refused admission into the very hospital 
 himself had erected. 
 
 " Thus birds for others build the downy nest ; 
 Thus sheep for others bear the fleecy vest ; 
 Thus bees collect for others honey' d food ; 
 Thus ploughs the patient ox for others' good." 
 
 How much imperishable literature has been engendered 
 within prison-walls: JBoethius, in prison composed his excel- 
 lent "Consolations of Philosophy; " and Grotius, his " Com- 
 mentary." Cervantes, it is said, wrote that masterpiece of 
 Spanish romance, " Don Quixote," on board one of the gal- 
 leys, in Barbary : and Sir Walter Raleigh compiled his " His- 
 tory of the World " in his prison-chamber of the Tower ; while 
 John Bunyan composed his immortal allegory in Bedford 
 jail: and Luther gave the Bible to Germany, having trans- 
 lated it in Wartburg castle. 
 
 D'Israeli justly remarks, that "those who have labored 
 most zealously to instruct mankind, have been those who have 
 suffered most from ignorance ; and the discoverers of new 
 arts and sciences have hardly ever lived to see them accepted 
 by the world." Until Galileo and Harvey appeared, both the 
 earth and the blood were supposed to be immovable ; for de- 
 nying which, the first-named was persecuted, and the other 
 ridiculed. Among the classic authors, Socrates and Aristotle 
 were the victims of poison ; while Anaxagoras and others 
 were imprisoned. Those pioneer chemists and mathematicians, 
 
INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 279 
 
 Cornelius Agrippa and Roger Bacon^ were branded as 
 magicians, because they knew too much. " If the metaphy- 
 sician stood a chance of being burnt as a heretic, the natural 
 philosopher was not in less jeopardy of exile, as a magician. 
 The ordeal of fire was the great purifier of books and men." ^" 
 This persecution of science and genius lasted till the close of 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
 Keferring to the infelicities of authors, one is reminded of 
 the memorable crisis in the career of Goldsmith^ when under 
 arrest for rent. What a tableau is here presented to us — two 
 of the foremost men of letters of their day meeting together 
 under circumstances of such peculiar and touching interest. 
 
 Bos well gives us so graphic a sketch of Goldsmith's inter- 
 view with Johnson, that we reproduce it entire : Dr. Johnson 
 said, " I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith 
 that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to 
 come to me, begged that I would come to him as soon as possi- 
 ble. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him di- 
 rectly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found 
 that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he 
 was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already 
 changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of madeira and a 
 glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he 
 would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by 
 which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had 
 a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I 
 looked into it, and saw its merit ; told the landlady I should 
 soon return ; and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty 
 pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged 
 his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for 
 having used him so ill." The book was the immortal Yicar 
 of Wakefield. 
 
 ♦ HaUam. 
 
280 INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 
 
 Authors, like the sun, are yet not without dark spots on their 
 disc! Aristotle said, long ago, there was no distinguished 
 genius altogether exempt from some infusion of madness. 
 Their obliquities are sometimes superinduced bj physical 
 causes, their overwrought mental faculties causing their irri- 
 tability of temperament, and feeling of indolence and languor. 
 Thomson was a case in point ; he was so reluctant to rise from 
 his bed, that when remonstrated with, he replied : " Troth, 
 mon, I see nae motive for rising." Pope would sometimes lie 
 in bed at Bolingbroke's for whole days together. Calvin also 
 studied in his bed ; and Milton frequently composed lying 
 abed late in the morning. It must be evident, however, that 
 such indolent habits must ultimately prove as injurious in 
 their influence upon the health, as mental overworking. 
 Owen, who also indulged the lazy habit, once remarked that 
 he would gladly barter all his learning obtained in bed, for his 
 lost health. A frequent concomitant of genius is that ready 
 susceptibility to delusion and credulity, which seems to be en- 
 gendered by their enthusiastic temperament. Who would have 
 suspected Sir Isaac Newton of a belief in astrology, or John- 
 son and Wesley of the weakness of a faith in ghosts ? Again, 
 what curious contradictions of character are evinced by some 
 men of genius. Locke, the matter-of-fact philosopher, revelled 
 in fiction; Hobbes, the deist, was a believer in ghosts and 
 spiritual existences ; and Lord Bacon has been described as 
 "the wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind." 
 
 If it be fair to peer into the private life of authorship, we 
 shall find there many ludicrous idiosyncrasies of character. 
 Johnson evinced his nervous irritability by biting his nails to 
 the quick ; but let it be remembered, that he was once found 
 in the most desponding hopelessness in a garret, destitute of 
 even ink, paper, and pen with which to transcribe his lucubra- 
 tions. 
 
INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 281 
 
 As a rule, our greatest wits have not been men of a gay and 
 vivacious disposition, but the opposite : such were Swift, Butler, 
 Byron, Hood, and many others. Swift was never known to 
 smile ; of the private history of Butler, autlior of Hudibras^ 
 little remains but the records of his miseries; Byron was a 
 wretched misanthrope, at issue with himself, his Maker, and 
 mankind ; and Hood was overcharged with sudorous brain- 
 work, under the pressure of poverty and sickness. There is a 
 ludicrous illustration of this seeming freak of Nature, in the 
 instance of Liston, the comedian, who, one day in a fit of 
 melancholy, applying to Abernethy for some cure of his distem- 
 per, was told by that eccentric physician " to go and see Liston " ! 
 
 D'Israeli has a diverting chapter on the amusements of 
 authors. Angling was with Izaak Walton, indeed, more than 
 a mere pastime ; its tranquil employment was also the favorite 
 diversion of Paley, and many more contemplative minds, as 
 well as Sir Henry Wotton, who styled the pursuit " idle time 
 not idly spent." . 
 
 Others asjain induls^ed strans^e vao-aries and humors ; — such 
 as Menage, who, while science covered his head with laurels, 
 used to cover his feet with several pairs of stockings. Pope 
 used to brace himself up with corsets. 
 
 It is said that the learned Magliabecchi, librarian to the 
 Duke of Tuscany, used to divert himself in intervals of leisure 
 with teasing spiders. Bousseau, when doomed to the company 
 of the common-place, is said to have amused himself with 
 knitting lace-strings, which he evidently preferred to long 
 yarns. With all due respect to those of high intellectual en- 
 dowments, we must admit that they are sometimes sadly defi- 
 cient in that also rare attribute, common-sense. Hence, to this 
 cause may be traced their oft pecuniary embarrassments and 
 privations. Goldsmith was a prince with his pen, but an 
 idiot without it. Then, again, it must also be conceded that 
 
282 
 
 INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 
 
 the literary profession is not superior to envy, malice, and un- 
 cliaritableness ; but on the contrary is terribly tormented with 
 them. The republic of letters is said to be the most factious and 
 discordant of all republics, ancient or modern. The literary 
 world is made up of little confederacies or cliques, each look- 
 ing upon its own party as tJie fixed intellectual luminaries of 
 society, and regarding all others as mere transient meteors that 
 flash for a moment and — expire. 
 
 On the otlier hand, we also admit, that some of the most 
 celebrated authors have been of all men the least self-asserting 
 and demonstrative. Such in the foremost rank were, as we all 
 know, Washington Irving, Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, and 
 many who might be added to the category. 
 
 Appearances are not always to be relied upon : it is related 
 of the celebrated poet of Holland — Beldeych, that in his early 
 days he was so careless and idle as to cause his father great 
 anxiety ; and that one day, with the hope of stimulating him to 
 some ambition, he showed him the advertisement of a prize 
 offered by the Society of Ley den, which had been decreed to the 
 author of a piece signed with the words, " An author eighteen 
 years old," who was invited to make himself known. " You 
 ought to blush, idler," said the father; "here is a boy who is 
 only of your age, and though so young, is the pride and happi- 
 ness of his parents; and you," — "It's myself," answered the son, 
 — and the reproaches of the sire were soon exchanged for caresses 
 and tears of joy. The instance of the anonymous publication 
 of Evelina^ by Miss Burney, is a similar case of pleasurable 
 discovery of authorship. It is interesting to note some of the 
 books that beguiled some of their readers into authorship. 
 The genius of Scott received its first impulse from the perusal 
 of Percy's " Eeliques of Early English Poetry ; " Rogers, from 
 reading Beattie's "Minstrel;" Lisle Bowles' poetry stimulated 
 the mind of Coleridge. 
 
IJfFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 283 
 
 John Evelyn was indebted for mucli of liis success to his 
 amiable wife, whose refined taste and skill were equal to any 
 emergency, and whose breast was fired wdth the same passion 
 that inflamed her husband's pen. The majority of great men 
 seem, however, to have repudiated matrimony altogether, 
 probably from some premonition of their disqualification for 
 its enjoyments. A host of great names occur to us, presenting 
 an astounding array of sturdy old bachelors, enough to startle 
 the complacency of the most charitable of the fair sex. 
 Michael Angelo, Boyle, Newton, Locke, Bayle, Shenstone, 
 Leibnitz, Ilobbes, Yoltaire, Pope, Adam Smith, Swift, Thom- 
 son, Akenside, Arbuthnot, Hume, Gibbon, Cowper, Goldsmith, 
 Gay, Lamb, Washington Irving, et cum multis aliis, were all 
 decided for celibacy. Michael Angelo replied to a remon- 
 strance on the subject, that he had espoused his art, and his 
 works were his children. Dr. Radcliffe lived and died unmar- 
 ried, although within five or six years prior to his decease he 
 fell desperately in love with a patient of rank, wealth, and 
 beauty, triple charms to fascinate even an old beau ; but alas 
 for this gallant hero, his suit was non^suited, and to his morti- 
 fication his rejected addresses were afterward immortalized by 
 Steele in his '' Tattler." 
 
 Some of the old scribes were addicted to wonderful pro- 
 lixity, their productions exceeding all bounds. Epicurus, we 
 are told, left behind him three hundred volumes of his own 
 works, wherein he had not inserted a single quotation. Seneca 
 assures us that Didymus, the grammarian, wrote no less than 
 four thousand; but Origen, it seems, was yet more prolific, 
 having written six thousand treatises. We remember some 
 years ago to have seen in a bookseller's shop two huge folios, 
 printed in double columns, being a commentary on the Book 
 of Job : surely more than Job-like patience would be required 
 for their perusal ; wliat should be claimed for its production ? 
 
284 INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCKAFT. 
 
 Authorcraf t has its whims, and caprices also : Racine was ac- 
 customed to walk the gardens of the Tuileries, and recite his 
 verses aloud with such violent gesticulations, that people sup- 
 posed him crazy. Morel, another Frenchman, was so absorbed 
 in his studies, that when a messenger informed him of the 
 death of his spouse, he calmly replied, " I am very sorry ; she 
 was a good woman " ! 
 
 Sir Isaac ITewton, on one occasion, invited a friend to dine 
 with him ; but he not only forgot to tell his cook to provide 
 for him : he sat at the table in a state of mental abstraction, 
 while his friend was satisfying his hunger, and exclaimed, 
 " Well, really, if it were not for the proof before my eyes, I 
 could have sworn that I had not yet dined " ! 
 
 Lessing, the German philosopher, was occasionally so absent- 
 minded, that once he knocked at his own door, when the ser- 
 vant, not recognizing her master, looked out of the window, 
 and said, " The Professor is not at home." " Oh, very well," 
 replied Lessing, composedly walking away, " I will call again." 
 
 Thackeray, it is stated, never began upon less than a quire 
 of letter paper. Half of this he would cover with comic draw- 
 ings ; a fourth he would tear up into minute pieces ; and on 
 two or three slips of the remainder lie would do his work — 
 walking about the room at intervals, with his hands in his 
 pockets, and with a perturbed and woe-begone expression of 
 countenance. Bloomfield wrote his " Farmer's Boy " with chalk, 
 upon the top of a pair of bellows — a wind instrument, till then, 
 a novelty in the choir of the Muses. The author, it is thus 
 evident, is both more at ease and more to advantage in his 
 study, than anywhere else. Clifford worked his first problem 
 in mathematics, when a cobbler's apprentice, upon small scraps 
 of leather, which he beat smooth for the purpose ; while Ritten- 
 house, the astronomer, first calculated eclipses on his plougli- 
 handle. 
 
INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 285 
 
 A pan of water and two thermometers were the means by 
 which Dr. Black discovered latent heat ; and a prism, a lens, 
 and sheet of pasteboard enabled Newton to unfold the compo- 
 sition of light and the origin of color. 
 
 An eminent foreign savant once called upon Dr. Wollaston 
 and requested to be shown over his laboratories, in which 
 science had been enriched by so many important discoveries, 
 when the Doctor took him into a study, and, pointing to an old 
 tea-tray, containing a few watch-glasses, test-papers, a small 
 balance, and a blow-pipe, said, " There is all the laboratory I 
 have." 
 
 A writer in the Quarterly Review remarks, that " it was in 
 the open air that Wordsworth found the materials for his 
 poems, and it was in the open air, according to the poet him- 
 self, that nine-tenths of them were shaped. A stranger asked 
 permission of the servant, at Rydal, to see the study. ' This,' 
 said she, as she showed the room, ' is my master's library, 
 where he keeps his books, but his study is out of doors.' The 
 poor neighbors, on catching the sound of his humming, in the 
 act of verse-making, after some prolonged absence from home, 
 were wont to exclaim, ' There he is ; we are glad to hear him 
 'booing about again.' From the time of his settlement at Gras- 
 mere, he had a physical infirmity, which prevented his compos- 
 ing pen in hand. Before he had been five minutes at his desk, 
 his chest became oppressed, and a perspiration started out over 
 his whole body ; to which was added, in subsequent years, in- 
 cessant liability to inflammation in his eyes. Thus, when he 
 had inwardly digested as many lines as his memory could 
 carry, he usually had recourse to some of the inmates of his 
 house, to commit them to paper." 
 
 Ferguson laid himself down in the fields at night in a 
 blanket, and made a map of the heavenly bodies by means of 
 a thread with small beads on it, stretched between his eye and 
 
286 INFELICITIES OF ATJTHOECRAFT. 
 
 the stars. Franklin first robbed the thunder cloud of its light- 
 ning by means of a kite made with two cross-sticks and a silk 
 handkerchief. His experiments were first tried in the tower 
 of the old church, since used as the ITew York Post-ofiice. 
 
 Our sympathies become the more deeply enlisted for the pen- 
 alties of authorship, when we remember that the emanations 
 of mind have been attended with severe and laborious indus- 
 try. 
 
 So scrupulously fastidious was Pope as to nicety of expres- 
 sion, that it is known he seldom committed to the press anything 
 till it had passed under repeated revision ; and his publisher, 
 Dodsley, on one occasion deemed it easier to reprint the whole 
 of his corrected proofs, than attempt the needed emendations. 
 Thomson, Akenside, G-ray, and Cowper were equally devoted 
 in their elaboration of a line ; and Goldsmith gave seven long 
 years to the perfection of his inimitable production, the De- 
 serted Tillage : producing, on the average, something like three 
 or four lines a day, which he thought good w^ork. Hume and 
 Hobertson were incessantly laboring over their language — the 
 latter used to write his sentences on small slips of paper, and 
 after rounding and polishing them to his satisfaction, he entered 
 them in a book. 
 
 Burke had all his principal works printed once or twice, at a 
 private press, before submitting them to his publisher. John- 
 son and Gibbon were exceptions to these, it is true ; they wrote 
 spontaneously, and their first draft was the only one they gave 
 to the press: and yet the majesty and beauty of their diction 
 remain unsurpassed at the present day. The French writers 
 Eousseau and St. Pierre carried their scrupulosity to an 
 amusing excess. The former wrote oat his new Heloise on 
 fine gilt-edged paper, and with the twofold affection of a 
 lover and a parent, rehearsed his effusions to the ravishment of 
 his own delighted ears, before sending them to the printer ; 
 
 I 
 
INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 287 
 
 and the latter transcribed his Paul and Virginia no less than 
 nine times. Burns was another hard worker with his brain ; 
 when his fickle muse jaded, he used to rock himself on a chair, 
 and gaze upon the sky, patiently waiting inspiration. He was 
 fastidious to a fault in the perfecting of his phrase and rhythm. 
 The same delicate sense characterizes Byron, Scott, Moore, 
 Campbell, and Bulwer. 
 
 Among the pains and penalties of authorship, the critical 
 censorship of the press lias had its share. 
 
 Severe and unmerited criticism has been but too frequently 
 the bane of literature, although, as in the instance of Byron, 
 it ultimately tended to elicit the development of talent, which 
 otherwise might never have been brought into action. Some 
 writers have been driven mad, and others have actually died of 
 criticism. Yoltaire called these " dreaded ministers of literary 
 justice" la canaille de la litter ature^ but he, like Pope, suffered 
 retribution at their hands. 
 
 An amusing anecdote is related of a certain French writer, 
 who, failing to please the critics of his day by his avowed pro- 
 ductions, afterwards resorted to the expedient of publishing 
 three volumes of poetry and essays, as the works of a journey- 
 man blacksmith. The trick succeeded — all France was in 
 amazement ; and the poems of this child of nature — this untu- 
 tored genius — this inspired son of Vulcan, as he was now called, 
 were immediately and enthusiastically praised, even by the very 
 critics who before repudiated the effusions of the same pen. 
 Byron was condemned, among other crimes, for not having 
 dated his first poems from the purlieus of Grub Street ; and 
 Keats was barbarously attacked in a similar manner by no less 
 a critic than Gifiord. Moore relates that such was the effect 
 of the savage attack upon Byron, that a friend who happened to 
 call on him shortly after he had read it, inquired whether he 
 had received a challenge, such fierce defiance was depicted in 
 
288 INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 
 
 his countenance. The result was that fine satire, " English Bards 
 and Scotch Reviewers." It was about the same time that the 
 opposite critical organ commenced a critique on Wordsworth's 
 " ExGUTsion " with the derisive words — " This will never do ; 
 we give him up as altogether incjirable and beyond the power 
 of criticism." The sweet sonneteer of Windermere has for- 
 tunately outlived the ignorant intolerance of this sapient cen- 
 sor. Kirke White was another instance of literary assassination. 
 Southey kindly consoled and encouraged him to persevere, 
 but wasting disease soon hurried the young poet away, and it 
 was Southey's friendly hand that first gathered his scattered 
 and despised works, and gave them to the world. 
 
 It would be no uninteresting literary speculation, remarks 
 ]!ilr. D'Israeli, to describe the difiiculties which some of our 
 most favorite works encountered in their manuscript state, and 
 even after they had passed through the press. Sterne, when 
 he had finished his first and second volumes of " Tristram 
 Shandy," offered them to a bookseller at York for fifty pounds, 
 but was refused : he came to town with his MSS., and he and 
 Dodsley the publisher entered into an agreement, of which 
 neither repented. 
 
 " The Rosciad," with all its merit, lay for a considerable time 
 in a dormant state, till Churchill and his publisher became im- 
 patient, and almost hopeless of success. " Burn's Justice " 
 was disposed of by its author, who was weary of soliciting 
 booksellers to purchase the MS., for a trifle, and now it yields 
 an annual income. Collins burnt his " odes " before the door of 
 his publisher. 
 
 Some laborious writers devote their lifetime to the produc- 
 tion of a single work ; as in the instance of the ill-fated but 
 erudite Castell. His "Lexicon Heptaglotton " presents a re- 
 markable example of great generosity, combined with the 
 most herculean literary industry. He was literally a martyr 
 
INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 289 
 
 to letters, a case of voluntary immolation of himself and his 
 fortune to his darling pursuits. It is impossible to read un- 
 moved his pathetic appeal to Charles II., in which he laments 
 the seventeen years of incredible pains, during which he 
 thought himself idle when he had not devoted sixteen or 
 eighteen hours a day to the Lexicon ; that he had expended 
 all his inheritance (more than twelve thousand pounds) ; that 
 it had broken his constitution, and left him blind, as well as 
 poor. When this invaluable Polyglott was published, the 
 copies remained unsold on his hands ; for the learned Castell 
 had anticipated the curiosity and knowledge of the public by a 
 full century. He had so completely devoted liimself to 
 Oriental studies, that they had a very remarkable consequence ; 
 for he had totally forgotten his own language, and could 
 scarcely spell a single word. This appears in some of his 
 English letters, preserved by Mr. Nichols in his "Literary 
 Anecdotes." 
 
 Prideaux, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, was in early life 
 so poor as to be obliged to walk on foot to the university, 
 where he at first obtained a menial situation in the kitchen of 
 Exeter College, which college he did not leave till he became 
 one of its fellows. The two Milners, who wrote the well- 
 known history of the Christian Church, were originally 
 weavers, as was also Dr. White, late regius professor of Arabic. 
 The celebrated John Hunter received scarcely any education 
 until he had attained the age of twenty, and then was appren- 
 ticed to a cabinet-maker : yet he became one of the greatest 
 anatomists that ever lived. 
 
 Numerous as have been the institutions designed for the 
 relief of the indigent poor, but one is known to have been 
 erected for the especial benefit of the hapless author ; and this, 
 established by Pope Urban YIIL, bore the strangely signifi- 
 cant name of the " Eetreat of the Incurables," as if implying 
 19 
 
290- 
 
 INFELICITIES OF AUTHORCRAFT. 
 
 that its devotees were deemed irreclaimable alike from the 
 crime of poverty and authorship. 
 
 Like many other works which have since become classics, 
 Thomson's Seasons long in vain sought a publisher. 
 
 " Poetry is," according to Coleridge, " its own exceeding great 
 reward," and this is, sometimes, about all that falls to its votaries. 
 Intellectual endowments are of themselves too costly and rare 
 to be vulgarized by sordid gains. Yet who does not compas- 
 sionate the privations and poverty of the mighty minds, whose 
 genius has enriched the realm of thought with the bright crea- 
 tions of fancy, or whose patient and laborious studies have re- 
 vealed to us the great mysteries of science ; — a wealth so vast, 
 that no pecuniary returns on our part could adequately com- 
 pensate. 
 
,„flIl11[illlll|nUi|:M 
 
 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, 
 And beauty draws us with a single hair ! 
 
 Pope. 
 
 " Woman was made ' exceedingly fair,' a creature not only 
 fitted for all the deference and homage our minds could be- 
 stow, but obviously intended for the most elegant wardrobes 
 and brilliants trousseaus our purses could furnish. But, how- 
 ever we may fall short of om^ duty to the sex in this latter re- 
 spect, let no woman, therefore, suppose that any man can be 
 really indifferent to her appearance. Of course, the immedi- 
 ate effect of a well-chosen feminine toilet operates differently 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 in diiferent minds. In some it causes a sense of actual pleas- 
 ure ; in others a consciousness of passive enjoyment. In some 
 it is intensely felt while present ; in others only missed when 
 gone. N^one can deny its power over them, more or less ; or, 
 for their own sakes, had better not be believed, if they do." * 
 
 The intimate relations between woman's beauty and her 
 mirror render it impossible for the fair possessor to be uncon- 
 scious of her endowment ; and consequently it would be always 
 at a premium. 
 
 " Smilingly fronting the mirror she stands, 
 
 Her white fingers loosening the prisoned brown bands 
 
 To wander at wiU — and they kiss as they go, 
 
 Her brow, and her cheek, and her shoulders of snow, 
 
 Her violet eyes, with their soft, changing Hght, 
 
 Growing darker when sad, and when merry more bright, 
 
 Look in at the image, till the lips of the twain 
 
 Smile at seeing how each gives the smile back again." 
 
 The looking-glass, although it is personal in its reflections, 
 yet they are given silently, so that however much we may feel 
 cm* pride mortified occasionally by its revelations, we never 
 fail to cherish a friendly feeling for so faithful a monitor. 
 Kinder, also, is the looking-glass than the wine-glass ; for, not- 
 withstanding the tendency of the former to self -flattery, when 
 it reveals our defects, it does so confidentially ; whereas the 
 wine-glass makes us betray our own frailties alike to friends 
 and foes. 
 
 It has been observed that God intended all women to be 
 beautiful, as much as he did the morning-glories and the roses. 
 Beauty is 
 
 " Like the sweet South, 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets. 
 Stealing, and giving odor." 
 
 * Quarterly Rev. 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 293 
 
 Ideal beauty, as well as beautiful objects of art and nature, 
 affect us with a sort of sweet contagion. In the contempla- 
 tion of a tine picture, we drink in the spirit of beauty through 
 the eye : and this is probably the reason why lovely women 
 are occasionally addicted to aesthetics — the study of their 
 charms in the mirror. 
 
 Milton supposes Eve was fascinated with her own charms as 
 mirrored in the waters of Paradise, and her daughters have 
 faithfully followed her example, for they are seldom disinclined 
 to contemplate ideal beauty in their own symmetrical forms 
 and features. If the " proper study of mankind is man," why 
 may not woman be allowed a like privilege, for thereby a 
 blemish may be removed and many a charm heightened. 
 
 The love of ornament creeps slowly, but surely, into woman's 
 heart ; the girl who twines the lily in her tresses, and looks at 
 herself in the clear 'stream, will soon wish that the lily was 
 fadeless, and the stream a mirror. 
 
 Southey, in his Omniana^ relates the following : " When 
 I was last in Lisbon, a nun made her escape from the nunnery. 
 The tii'st thing for which she inquired when she reached the 
 house in which she was to be secreted was a looking-glass. She 
 had entered the convent when only five years old, and from 
 that time had never seen her own face." There was some ex- 
 cuse for her wishing to peruse her own features. 
 
 A mirror has been thus variously described, as the only 
 truth-teller in general favor — a journal in which Time records 
 his progress — a smooth acquaintance, but no flatterer. We may 
 add, that it is the only tolerated medium of reflection upon 
 woman's beauty, and the last discarded ; Queen Elizabeth, we 
 learn, did not desert her looking-glass while there was any ves- 
 tige left in the way of beauty with which to regale herself."^ 
 
 * WTien Queen Elizabeth was far advanced in life, she ordered all pictures 
 of herself painted by artists who had not flattered her faded features, to be 
 
294 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny ; Plato, a privi- 
 lege of nature ; Theoplirastus, a silent cheat ; Theocritus, a 
 delightful prejudice ; and Aristotle aiSrmed, that it was better 
 than all the letters of recommendation in the world. 
 
 Fontenelle thus daintily compliments the sex, when he com- 
 pares women and clocks — the latter serve to point out the 
 hours, the former to make us forget them. 
 
 There is a magic power in beauty that all confess — a strange 
 witchery that fascinates and enchants us, with a potency as 
 irresistible as that of the magnet. It is to the moral world 
 what gravitation is to the physical. 
 
 Dean Swift proposed to tax female beauty, and to leave 
 every lady to rate her own charms. He said the tax would be 
 cheerfully paid, and prove very productive. 
 
 Beauty is inflexible : it appears to us a dream, when we 
 contemplate the works of the great artists ; it is a hovering, 
 floating, and glittering shadow, whose outline eludes the grasp 
 of definition. Mendelssohn, the philosopher, grandfather of 
 the composer, tried to catch Beauty, as a butterfly, and pin it 
 down for inspection ; but both defy pursuit. 
 
 Lord Bacon justly remarked, tliat the best part of beauty is 
 that which a picture cannot express. Yes, beauty is indescri- 
 bable and inexplicable ; all we know is, that it fascinates, daz- 
 zles, and bewilders us with its mystic power. 'No wonder the 
 poets define woman as something midway between a flower 
 and an angel. 
 
 Women are the poetry of the world, in the same sense as 
 
 collected and burned : and in 1593 issued a proclamation forbidding- aU persons 
 save " special cunning painters " to draw her likeness. She quarrelled at last 
 with her looking-glass as well as with her painters. During the last years of her 
 Uf e, the maids of honor removed mirrors as they would have removed poison 
 from the apartments of royal pride. It is said that at the time of her death 
 her wardrobe contained more than two thousand dresses. 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 295 
 
 the stars are the poetry of heaven. Clear, light-giving, harmo- 
 nious, they are the terrestrial planets that rule the destinies of 
 mankind. 
 
 Leigh Hunt seems to have caught a vision of beauty, where 
 he sings : 
 
 ' ' I saw her, upon nearer view, 
 A spirit, yet a woman too. 
 Her houselaold motions light and free, 
 And steps of virgin liberty ; 
 A countenance in which did meet 
 Sweet records, promises as sweet. 
 A creature not too bright or good 
 For human nature's daUy food, 
 For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
 Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles." 
 
 " Beauty, — the eye's idol," does not consist merely in a fair 
 face, a sparkling eye, or a symmetrical form, so much as in 
 that nameless charm, — " that elevation of soul, that heart- 
 warm, sunny smile, playing about the mouth, that sweetly- 
 subdued voice, and that love-light of the eye — all which 
 make up womanly worth and excellence." 
 
 Beauty of countenance, which, being the light of the soul 
 shining through the face, is independent of features or com- 
 plexion, is the most attractive, as well as the most endnring 
 charm. 
 
 In truth, it is difficult to form any fixed standard of beauty. 
 Qualities of personal attraction, the most opposite imaginable, 
 are each looked upon as beautiful in different countries, or by 
 different people in the same country. That which is deformity 
 at Paris may be beauty at Pekin ? 
 
 " Beauty, thou wild, fantastic ape — 
 
 Who dost in every country change thy shape ; 
 
 Here black, there brown, here tawny, and there white ! " 
 
296 
 
 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 The frantic lover sees " Helen's beauty in an Egyptian 
 brow." The black teeth, the painted eyelids, the plucked eye- 
 brows of the Chinese fair, have admirers ; and should their 
 feet be large enough to walk upon, their owners are regarded 
 as monsters of ugliness. 
 
 With the modern Greeks, and other nations on the shores of 
 the Mediterranean, corpulency is the perfection of form in a 
 woman ; and those very attributes which disgust the western 
 European form the attractions of an Oriental fair. It was 
 from the common and admired shape of his countrywomen 
 that E-ubens in his pictures delights so much in a vulgar and 
 odious plumpness : — when this master was desirous to repre- 
 sent the " beautiful," he had no idea of beauty under two hun- 
 dredweight. 
 
 The hair is a beautiful ornament of woman, but it has 
 always been a disputed point which color most becomes it. 
 We account red hair an abomination ; but in the time of Eliza- 
 beth it found admirers, and was in fashion. Mary of Scotland, 
 though she had exquisite hair of her own, wore what is called 
 red fronts. Cleopatra was red-haired ; and the Venetian 
 ladies to this day counterfeit yellow hair. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbur}^ asserts that all beauty is truth. True 
 features make the beauty of a face ; and true proportions the 
 beauty of architecture ; as true measures that of harmony and 
 music. In poetry, which is all fable, truth still is the perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 It has been well observed, that homely women are often 
 altogether the best at heart, head, and soul. A pretty face 
 frequently presides over a false heart and a weak head, with the 
 smallest shadow of a soul. 
 
 " The bombastic misrepresentations of the encomiasts of Beau- 
 ty," observed Ayton, "have exposed her just claims to much 
 odium and ill-will. If a perfect face is the only bait that can 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. i."J7 
 
 tempt an angel from the skies, what is to be the recompense 
 of the unfortunate with a wide mouth and a turn-up nose ? 
 The conduct of men, since the Dehige, has proved, however, 
 that love (the true thing) is not mere fealty to a face. If an 
 ugly woman of wit and worth cannot be loved till she is known 
 — a beautiful fool will cease to please when she is found out." 
 
 " After all, is the world so very absurd in its love of pretty 
 women? Is woman so very ridiculous in her chase after 
 beauty ? A pretty woman is doing woman's work in the world 
 — making life sunnier and more beautiful. Man has forsworn 
 beauty altogether. The world of action^s a world of ugliness. 
 But woman does for mankind what man has ceased to do. 
 
 Her aim from very childhood is to be beautiful 
 
 There is a charm, however, of life's after-glow over the gray, 
 quiet head, the pale, tender face, lit up with a sweetness — a 
 pitifulness that only experience and sorrow can give. It is 
 there, at any rate, that we read a subtler and diviner beauty 
 than in the rosy cheek of girlhood — a beauty spiritualized, 
 mobile with every thought and emotion, yet restful with the 
 rest of ye u-s. An infinite tenderness and largeness of heart, 
 a toUi.ch that has in it all the gentleness of earth, a smile that 
 has in ig something of the compassionateness of heaven — this 
 is th^^otheosis of pretty women." 
 
 " Tne divine right of Beauty," said Junius, " is the only 
 divine right a man can acknowledge, and a pretty woman the 
 only tyrant he is not authorized to resist." 
 
 " Woman has never failed, since the world began, to illus- 
 trate, in instances, the glory of her nature — never ceased to 
 manifest the divine in the human. With the regal Esther, 
 yearning to bless her enslaved kindred^ And the filial-love- 
 inspired daughter, who sustained the life of her gray-haired 
 father through prison bars, there have not been parallels want- 
 ing in all ages to prove that the angels of God still wander on 
 
298 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 earth, to remind man of Eden, and give him a foretaste of 
 heaven. 
 
 Of such type of virtue were Penelope, weaving amid her 
 maidens through weary years the web that shielded her virtue, 
 until her royal husband returned from his wanderings, and was 
 to gladden her heart ; or courteous Hebecca at the well ; or 
 timid Ruth, gleaning in the field ; or the Roman Cornelia, 
 who, taunted in Rome's decaying age, by rivals, with her 
 poverty, held up her virtuous children, ^ exclaiming, " These 
 are my jewels ! " Fit woman to have been the mother of the 
 Gracchi. 
 
 Richter observes, '' A woman's soul is by nature a beautiful 
 fresco-painting, painted on rooms, clothes, silver waiters, and 
 upon the whole domestic establishment." 
 
 Beautiful women may be admired, but who can refrain from 
 loving the impersonation of grace and virtue we every day 
 encounter in the charmed circles of domestic life. Love is a 
 hallowed passion ; it is angel-like — a gleam of the celestial to 
 gladden the dark places of our earthly pilgrimage. The true 
 woman has been beautifully described as — 
 
 — "a queen of noble Nature's crowning-, 
 A smile of hers was like an act of grace ; 
 She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, 
 Like daily beauties of the vulgar race ; 
 But if she smiled, a light was on her face ; 
 A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam 
 Of peaceful radiance, silvering in the stream 
 Of human thought, of unabiding glory- 
 Not quite awaking truth, not quite a dream, 
 A visitation bright and transitory." * 
 
 D'Israeli observes, " It is at the foot of woman we lay the 
 laurels that, without her smile, would never have been gained ; 
 
 * H. Coleridge. 
 
 I 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 299 
 
 it is lier image that strings the lyre of the poet, that animates 
 the voice in the blaze of eloquent faction, and guides the brain 
 in the angust toils of stately councils. Whatever may be the 
 lot of man — however unfortunate, however oppressed — if he 
 only love and be loved, he must strike a balance in favor of 
 existence ; for love can illumine the dark roof of poverty, and 
 can lighten the fetters of the slave." 
 
 " Honored be woman, she beams on the sight 
 Graceful and fair like a being of light, 
 Scatters around her wherever she strays 
 Roses of bliss on our thorn- covered ways, ^ 
 
 Roses of Paradise fresh from above, 
 To be gathered and twined in a garland of love." * 
 
 " Comets, doubtless, answer some wise and good purpose in 
 the creation ; so do women. Comets are incomprehensible, 
 beautiful, and eccentric ; so are women. Comets shine with 
 peculiar splendor, but at night appear most brilliant ; so do 
 women. Comets confound the most learned, when they at- 
 tempt to ascertain their nature ; so do women. Comets 
 equally excite the admiration of the philosopher and of the 
 clod of the valley ; so do women. Comets and women, there- 
 fore, are closely analogous ; but the nature of both being 
 alike inscrutable, all that remains for us is, to view with admi- 
 ration the one, and devotedly love the other." f 
 
 It was probably under such lialluci nation that the following 
 confession of returning consciousness was perpetrated : 
 
 ^^ When Eve brought woe to all ma.nki-nd. 
 
 Old Adam called her icc-man ; 
 And when he found she wooed so kind, 
 
 He then pronounced her woo-man. 
 But now with smiles and artful wiles. 
 
 Their husbands' pockets trimmin'. 
 The women are so full of wMms^ 
 That people caU them wJdm-iaeji.'^ 
 
 ♦Schiller. f Hood. 
 
300 
 
 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 Coleridge used to say " that the most happy marriage he 
 could imagine would be the union of a deaf man with a blind 
 woman." Years before he was not so much of a cynic, when 
 he wrote those tender lines about the wooing of the love-sick 
 Genevieve. 
 
 After all that may be said or sung about it, beauty is an un- 
 deniable fact, and its endowment not to be disparaged. Sid- 
 ney Smith gives some good advice on the subject : 
 
 "Never teach false morality. How exquisitely absurd to 
 teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no nse ! 
 Beauty is of value — her whole prospects and happiness in life 
 may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet ; if 
 she has five grains of common sense, she will find this out. 
 The great thing is to teach her their just value, and that there 
 must be something better under the bonnet than a pretty face, 
 for real happiness. But never sacrifice truth." Instantane- 
 ous and universal admiration — the eye-worship of the world is 
 unquestionably the reward of the best faces ; and the malcon- 
 tents had much better come into the general opinion with a 
 good grace, than be making themselves at once unhappy and 
 ridiculous, by their hollow and self -betraying recusancy.* [N'ow 
 an ill-conditioned countenance, accompanied, as it always is, 
 of course, with shining abilities and all the arts of pleasing, 
 has this signal compensation — that it improves under observa- 
 tion, grows less and less objectionable the more you look into 
 it, and the better you know it, till it becomes almost agreeable 
 on its own account— nay, really so — actually pretty ; whereas 
 beauty, we have seen, witless beauty, cannot resist the test of 
 long acquaintance, but declines, as you gaze, while in the full 
 pride of its perfection ; " fades on the eye and palls upon the 
 sense," with all its bloom about it. 
 
 Ayton's Essays. 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 301 
 
 '*He that loves a rosy cheek, or a coral lip admires, 
 Or from star-like eyes doth seek fuel to maintain his fires. 
 
 As old Time makes these decay 
 
 So his flames must waste away ; 
 But a smooth and steadfast mind, gentle thoughts and calm desires, 
 Hearts with equal love combined kindle never-dying fires. 
 
 Where these are not, I despise 
 
 Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes." * 
 
 Bjron also condenses the same sentiment in a single line — 
 
 " Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes." 
 
 The last word — eyes, and the eloquent language they ex- 
 press — has been a prolific theme with the poets. Some have 
 dilated on their brilliancy till they have been bewildered and 
 blinded to all things else around them, and some are fastidious 
 as to their color, size, and expression. One thus describes the 
 respective claims of black and blue : 
 
 " Black eyes most dazzle at a baU ; 
 Blue eyes most please at evening fall. 
 Black a conquest soonest gain ; 
 The blue a conquest most retain ; 
 The black bespeak a lively heart ; 
 Whose soft emotions soon depart ; 
 The blue a steadier flame betray, 
 That bums and lives beyond a day ; 
 The black may features best disclose ; 
 In blue may feelings all repose. 
 Then let each reign without control, 
 The black all mind — the blue all soul." 
 
 Leigh Hunt says of those who have thin lips, and are not 
 shrews or niggards — " 1 must give here as my firm opinion, 
 founded on what I have observed, that lips become more or 
 less contracted in the course of years, in proportion as they are 
 
 * Carew. 
 
 k 
 
302 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 accustomed to express good humor and generosity, or peevish- 
 ness and a contracted mind. Kemark the effect which a mo- 
 ment of ill-humor and grudgingness has npon the lips, and 
 judge what may be expected from an habitual series of such 
 moments. Remark the reverse, and make a similar judgment. 
 The mouth is the frankest part of the face ; it can the least 
 conceal its sensations. We can hide neither ill-temper with it 
 nor good ; we may affect what we please, but affectation will 
 not help us. In a wrong cause it will only make our observers 
 resent the endeavor to impose upon them. The mouth is the 
 seat of one class of emotions, as the eyes are of another ; or 
 rather, it expresses the same emotions but in greater detail, and 
 with a more irrepressible tendency to be in motion. It is the 
 region of smiles and dimples, and of trembling tenderness ; 
 of a sharp sorrow, of a full breathing joy, of candor, of reserve, 
 of a carking care, of a liberal sympathy." 
 
 " There is a charm that brighter grows mid beauty's swift decay, 
 And o'er the heart a glory throws that will not fade away. 
 When beauty's voice and beauty's glance the heart no longer move, 
 This holy charm will still entrance, and wake the spirit's love." 
 
 Long hair in woman is an essential element of beauty. The 
 Roman ladies generally wore it long, and dressed it in a variety 
 of ways, bedecking it with gold, silver, pearls, and other orna- 
 ments. 
 
 The custom of decking the hair with pearls and gems, al- 
 though not a modern invention, is still in vogue with royalty 
 and courtly circles ; yet the author of The Honeymoon thus 
 repudiates the fashion : 
 
 — " Thus modestly attired, 
 A half -blown rose stuck in thy braided hair. 
 With no more diamonds than those eyes are made of, 
 No deeper rubies than compose thy lips. 
 Nor pearls more precious than inhabit them ; 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 303 
 
 With the pure red and white, which that same hand 
 Which' blends the rainbow mingles in thy cheeks ; 
 This well-proportioned form (think not I flatter) 
 In graceful motion to harmonious sounds, 
 And thy free tresses dancing in the wind, 
 Thou'lt fix as much observance as chaste dames 
 Can meet without a blush," 
 
 The Roman patrician ladies had niiinerous slaves chiefly ap- 
 pointed to attend their toilette. Their hair used to be per- 
 fumed and powdered with gold dust. 
 
 Of all the articles of luxury and ostentation known to the 
 Homans, pearls seem to have been the most esteemed. They 
 were worn on all parts of the dress, and such was the diversity 
 of their size, purity, and value, that they were found to suit all 
 classes fi'om those of moderate to those of the most colossal 
 fortune. The pearl earrings of Cleopatra are said to have been 
 of fabulous value. After pearls and diamonds, the emerald 
 held the highest place in the estimation of the Romans. 
 
 In France, during the reign of Louis XIY. the use of dia- 
 monds revived. Robes were embroidered with them, besides 
 forming necklaces, aigrettes, bracelets, etc. This costly fash- 
 ion subsided about the end of the French Revolution. 
 
 The favorites of fortune are too frequently the servile vota- 
 ries of fashion, and this passion for dress entails many social 
 evils. AYhile it fosters imperious pride in its votaries, it de- 
 stroys all the finer sensibilities of our nature. The gentle hand 
 of charity, that ministers to the children of want, belongs not 
 to the flaunting lady of fashion ; her ambition is rather to daz- 
 zle and bewilder the gazing, thoughtless multitude — to become 
 the " cynosure of all eyes." To such the luxury of doing good 
 is unknown ; self is the idol they adore and worship, and it is 
 idolatry of the worst type. 
 
 " There are certain moralists in the world, who labor under 
 
304: 
 
 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 the impression that it is no matter what people wear, or how 
 they pat on their apparel. Such people cover themselves up 
 — they do not dress. No one doubts that the mind is more im- 
 portant than the body, the jewel than the setting ; and yet the 
 virtue of the one and the brilliancy of the other are enhanced 
 by the mode in which they are presented to the senses. Let a 
 woman have every virtue under the sun, if she is slatternly, or 
 even inappropriate in her dress, her merits will be more than 
 half obscured. If, being young, she is untidy, or, being old, 
 fantastic, or slovenly, her mental qualifications stand a chance 
 of being passed over with indifference." * 
 
 A right loyal scribe thus enacts the champion for beauty : 
 ' Plain women were formerly so common that they were termed 
 ordinary^ to signify the frequency of their occurrence; in 
 these happier days the phrase ^a3^^<a^ordinary would be more ap- 
 plicable. However parsimonious, or even cruel, ]S"ature may 
 have been in other respects, they all cling to admiration by 
 some solitary tenure that redeems them from the unqualified 
 imputation of unattractiveness. One has an eye that, like, 
 charity, covers a multitude of sins; another, like Samson, boasts 
 her strength in her hair ; a third holds you spell-bound by her 
 teeth ; a fourth is a Cinderella, who wins hearts by her pretty 
 little foot; a fifth makes an irresistible appeal from her face to 
 her figure." But — - 
 
 " A woman with a beaming face, but with a heart imtrae, 
 Though beautiful, is valueless as diamonds formed of dew." 
 
 The true art of assisting beauty consists in embellishing the 
 whole person by the proper ornaments of virtuous and com- 
 mendable qualities. By this help alone it is that those who 
 are the favorites of Nature become animated, and are in a cap- 
 acity for exerting a controlling influence ; and those who seem 
 
 * Chambers. 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 305 
 
 to have been neglected by her, like models vvTouglit in haste, 
 are capable, in a great measure, of finishing what she has left 
 imperfect. 
 
 Chevrenl remarks : " Drapery of a lustreless white, such as 
 cambric muslin, assorts well with a fresh complexion, of which 
 it relieves the rose color ; but it is unsuitable to complexions 
 which have a disagreeable tint, because white always exalts all 
 colors by raising their tone ; consequently, it is unsuitable to 
 those skins which, without having this disagreeable tint, very 
 nearly approach it. Yery light white draperies, such as point 
 lace, have an entirely different aspect. Black draperies, low- 
 ering the tone of the colors with which they are in juxtaposi- 
 tion, whiten the skin ; but if the vermilion or rosy parts are to 
 a certain point distant from the drapery, it will follow that, al- 
 though lowered in tone, they appear relatively to the white 
 parts of the skin contiguous to this same drapery, redder than 
 if the contiguity to the black did not exist." 
 
 '' If Kature has given man a strong instinct to dress, says a 
 writer in the Quarterly Review, " it is because she has given 
 him woman as an object for it; whatever, therefore, maybe 
 the outward practice of the present day, the moral foundation 
 is right. She dresses herself to please him, and he dresses her to 
 please himself; and this is a distinction between the two which 
 may apply to more subjects than that of dress ^ 
 
 Yet by nothing, perhaps, save his boasted reason, is man 
 more signally distinguished from the lower orders of creation, 
 than by the decorations of the toilet — the drapery and various 
 appendages with which he invests his person. So universal is 
 the custom among all civilized communities, that an individual 
 would as soon think of intermitting his necessary food as to at- 
 tempt to infringe upon the claims of so irreversible a decree. 
 Some there are, it is true, of more pristine habits, whose un- 
 sophisticated tastes induce a preference for the purely natural 
 20 
 
306 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 over the artificial in this respect, — a state of nature, to that of 
 art : bat these belong to the untutored and the rude of savage 
 life, and therefore the less said about them the better. There 
 is, moreover, less of the feeling of compulsion in complying 
 with the i-equisition, from the jprevalent passion for adornment 
 and decoration, to which all are, in a greater or less degree, 
 inclined. It seems somewhat strange that l^ature, in her 
 lavish distribution of fleece, and fur, and gaudy plumage, should 
 have left the monarch of all mundane creatures in a state of 
 destitution, which it so sorely taxes his purse to supply ; but 
 such is the fact, and against it there is no appeal. The world 
 has been long accustomed to do homage to elegance and refine- 
 ment in costume ; it is not surprising, therefore, that it should 
 have become a matter of such universal regard. 
 
 Pride of personal appearance is naturally one result of a 
 passion for dress, which is alike evinced by the rude trappings 
 of the savage and the gorgeous appendages of refinement and 
 luxury : 
 
 " Because you flourisli in worldly affairs, 
 Don't be hauglity and put on airs, 
 
 Witli insolent pride of station ; 
 Don't be proud and turn up your nose, 
 At poorer people, in plainer clothes. 
 But learn, for the sake of your mind's repose, 
 That Wealth's a bubble that comes and goes ! 
 And that all Proud Flesh, wherever it grows. 
 Is subject to irritation." * 
 
 It is in fact difiicult to determine whether the same may not 
 be affirmed of those who affect the greatest simplicity in their 
 habiliments — ^for it is not certain that* the Quaker, even, is 
 wholly divested of vanity, although he may be of the finery 
 he repudiates. 
 
 * Saxe. 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 307 
 
 If any fair nymph is in quest of further details as to the ac- 
 cessories of the toilette, here is ready prepared a catalogue of 
 moral cosmetics: 
 
 An enchanted mirror , p 
 
 Lip-salve Truth. 
 
 Eye-water Compassion. 
 
 For the voice Prayer. 
 
 For wrinkles Contentment. 
 
 An elastic girdle Patience. 
 
 Solid gold ring Principle. 
 
 Pearl necklace Resignation. 
 
 Diamond breast-pin Love. 
 
 Fashion, the veriest despot in her decrees, arbitrates through 
 the agency of her devotees — the milliner, the modiste, and the 
 tailor — the style and manner of one's habiliments ; and so 
 absolute is her sway in this matter, that it is difficult, perhaps, 
 to indicate any class who may boast exemption from her juris- 
 diction. 
 
 Fashion rules the world, and a most tyrannical mistress she 
 is — compelling people to submit to the most inconvenient 
 things imaginable, for her sake. 
 
 She pinches our feet with tight shoes — or chokes us with a 
 tight handkerchief, or squeezes the breath out of onr bodies by 
 tight lacing; she makes people sit up by night when they 
 ought to be in bed, and keeps them in bed when they ought to 
 be up. She makes it vulgar to wait on one's self, and genteel 
 to live idle and useless. She makes people visit when they 
 would rather be at home, eat when they are not hungry, and 
 drink when they are not thirsty. She invades our pleasure^ 
 and interrupts our business. She compels people to dress gayly 
 — whether upon their own property or that of others. She 
 ruins health and produces sickness — destroys life and occasions 
 premature death. She makes foolish parents, invalids of chil- 
 dren, and servants of us all. She is a tormentor of conscience, 
 despoiler of morality, an enemy to religion, and no one can be 
 
308 
 
 THE TOILETTE AXD ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 her companion and enjoy either. She is a despot of the high- 
 est grade, full of intrigue and cunning — and yet husbands, 
 wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, and servants all strive 
 to see who shall be most obsequious. Fashion obtains in all 
 countries — there being ever some Beau Brummells at hand to 
 issue her mandates and illustrate her Protean shapes and end- 
 less metamorphoses. 
 
 Oh, FasMon ! it were vain indeed to' try your wondrous flights to foUow: 
 Onward at such a pace you speed, beating the Belle Assemhlee hollow. 
 One moment hovering in our coats to change the cutting of the skirts : 
 Then with rude grasp you seize our throats, altering the collars of our shirts ; 
 Now trimming up with ribbons gay, and flowers as weU, a lady's bonnet; 
 Then with rash hand tearing away each bit of finery upon it. 
 Shrouding one day the arm from sight, in sleeve so large that six might 
 
 share it ; 
 And making it next month so tight, 'tis scarcely possible to bear it. 
 Upon a lady's dress again, with arbitrary hand it pounces, 
 Making it one day meanly plain, then idly loading it with flounces." 
 
 There are few things that have not been done, and few 
 things that have not been worn, under the sanction of fashion. 
 What could exhibit a more fantastical appearance than an 
 English beau of the fourteenth century? He wore long, 
 pointed shoes, fastened to his knee by gold or silver chains ; 
 hose of one color on one leg, and another color on the other ; a 
 coat, the one half white, and the other black or blue ; a long 
 silk hood, buttoned under his chin, embroidered with grotesque 
 figures of animals, dancing men, etc. This dress was the 
 height of the mode in the reign of Edward III. In view of 
 such facts, shall we upbraid woman for her vanity and love of 
 linei'y ? 
 
 Leigli Hunt informs us that fashions have a short life or a 
 long one, according as it suits the makers to startle us with a 
 variety, or save themselves observation of a defect. Hence 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 309 
 
 fashions set by 3'oung or handsome people are fugitive, and 
 such are usually those that bring custom to the milliner. 
 
 The Edinburgh Beview observes: "Peculiarities of dress, 
 even amounting to fopper}-, so common among eminent men, 
 are carried off from ridicule by ease in some, or stateliness in 
 others. "We may smile at Chatham, scrupulously crowned in 
 his best wig, if intending to speak ; at Erskine, drawling on his 
 bright yellow gloves, before he rose to plead ; at Horace Wal- 
 pole, in a cravat of Gibbon's carvings; at Ealeigh loading his 
 shoes with jewels so heavy tliat he could scarcely walk; at 
 Petrarch, pinching his feet till he crippled them ; at the rings 
 which covei-ed the philosophical fingers of Aristotle ; at the 
 bare throat of Byron ; the Armenian dress of Rousseau ; the 
 scarlet and gold coat of Voltaire ; or tlie prudent carefulness 
 with which Caesar scratched his head, so as not to disturb the 
 locks arranged over the bald place. But most of these men, 
 we apprehend, found it easy to enforce respect and curb imper- 
 tinence. 
 
 It would be impossible to enter upon the details of a subject 
 so copious in its historic data : nor can we attempt to go into a 
 minute examination of the prodigal magnificence of the ward- 
 robe of distinguished personages, but must confine our remarks 
 to more modern fashions. 
 
 A recent writer says he likes "flounces when they wave and 
 flow, as in a very light material — muslin, or gauze, or barege — 
 when a lady has no outline and no mass, but looks like a reced- 
 ing angel or a ' dissolving view ; ' but he does not like them in 
 a rich material, where they flop, or in a stiff one w^here they 
 bristle ; and w^here they break the flowing lines of the petticoat, 
 and throw light and shade where you do not expect them to 
 exist." 
 
 " The amply-folding robe, cast round the harmonious form ; 
 the modest clasp and zone on the bosom ; the braided hair, or 
 
310 
 
 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 the veiled head — these were the fashions alike of the wife of a 
 Phocion and the mistress of an Alcibiades. A chastened taste 
 ruled at their toilets ; and from that hour to this, the forms and 
 modes of Greece have been those of the poet, the sculptor, and 
 the painter. The flowing robe, the easy shape, the soft, unfet- 
 tered hair, gave place to skirts shortened for flight or contest — 
 to the hardened vest, and head buckled in gold or silver." 
 
 Thence, by a natural descent, we have the iron bodice, stiff 
 farthingale, and spiral coiffure of the middle ages. The courts 
 of Charlemagne, of Edward, Henry, and Elizabeth, all exhibit 
 the figures of women as if in a state of siege. Such lines of 
 circumvallation and outwork ; such impregnable bulwarks of 
 whalebone, wood, and steel ; such impassable mazes of gold, 
 silver, silk, and furbelows, met a man's view, that, before he 
 had time to guess it was a woman that he saw, she had passed 
 from his sight ; and he only formed a vague wish on the sub- 
 ject, by hearing, from an interested father or brother, that the 
 moving castle was one of the softer sex. 
 
 These preposterous fashions disappeared in England a short 
 time after the Restoration : 
 
 " "What thought, what various numbers can express 
 The inconstant equipage of woman's dress." 
 
 It is not so much the richness of the material as the way it 
 is made up, and the manner in which it is worn, that give the 
 desired elegance. A neat fit, a graceful bearing, and a proper 
 harmony between the complexion and the colors, have more to 
 do with heightening woman's attractions than many are willing 
 to believe. 
 
 Attention to a few general rules would prevent a great 
 many anomalous appearances ; for instance, " a woman should 
 never be dressed too little, nor a girl too much — nor should a 
 woman of small stature attempt large patterns, nor a bad 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 311 
 
 walker flounces — nor a short throat carry feathers, nor liigh 
 shoulders a shawl. From tlie highest to the lowest, there is 
 not a single style of beauty with which the plain straw hat is 
 not upon the best understanding. It refines the homeliest and 
 composes the wildest — it gives the coquettish young lady a 
 little dash of demureness, and the demure one a slight touch 
 of coquetry — it makes the blooming beauty look more fresh, 
 and the pale one more interesting — it makes the plain woman 
 look, at all events, a lady, and the lady more lady-like still." 
 Then all the sweet associations that throng about it ! pic- 
 tures of happy childhood and unconscious girlhood — thoughts 
 of blissful bridal tours and of healthy country life. Bonnets, 
 too, are an index of character. Some wag has furnished the 
 following " Recipe for a bonnet," free of cost: 
 
 " Two scraps of foundation, some fragments of lace, 
 A shower of French rosebuds to droop o'er the face ; 
 Fine ribbons and feathers, with crape and illusion, 
 Then mix and de-range them in graceful confusion ; 
 Inveigle some fairy, out roaming for pleasure, 
 And beg the slight favor of taking her measure ; 
 The length and breadth of her dear little pate, 
 And hasten a miniature frame to create ; 
 Then pour, as above, the bright mixture upon it, 
 And lo ! you possess ' such a love of a bonnet.' " 
 
 In searching for some of the absurdities of the toilet, we meet 
 with the following. The ladies of Japan are said to gild their 
 teeth, and those of the Indies to paint them red, while in 
 Guzerat the test of beauty is to render them sable. In Green- 
 land, the women used to color their faces with blue and yellow. 
 The Chinese must torture their feet into the smallest possible 
 dimensions — a proof positive of their contracted understandings. 
 The ancient Peruvians, and some of our Indian tribes, used to 
 flatten their heads ; and among other nations, the mothers, in 
 a similar way, maltreat the noses of their offspring. 
 
312 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 Kings are o£ remote origin ; their use is mentioned by many 
 of the classic writers, and also in the Scriptures. 
 
 The armlet or bracelet is also of equal antiquit}^ ; its adoption 
 is referred to in the Eook of Genesis. Ear-rings, or, as they 
 were formerly styled, pendants, are worn by most nations, and, 
 in many instances, by both sexes. In the East Indies they are 
 unusually large, and are generally of gold and jew^els. 
 
 Of head-dresses, the earliest kind upon record seems to have 
 been the tiara ; the caul is also mentioned, in Holy Writ, as hav- 
 ing been in vogue in primitive times'. It was usually made of 
 network, of gold or silk, and enclosed all the hair. Some of the 
 various items of a lady's wardrobe it will not be our venture 
 to dilate upon; we may, however, just refer to the corsets. 
 Tradition insists that corsets were first invented by a brutal 
 butcher of the thirteenth century, as a punishment for his wife. 
 She w^as very loquacious, and, finding nothing would cure her, 
 he put corsets on her, in order to take away her breath, and so 
 prevent her, as he thought, from talking. This cruel punish- 
 ment was inflicted by other heartless husbands The punish- 
 ment became so universal at last, that the ladies in their defence 
 made a fashion of it, and so it has continued to the present day. 
 The fair sex of our own day seem economic in this respect, for 
 however prodigal they may be in other matters, they are for 
 the least possible waist. Soemmering enumerates a catalogue 
 of ninety-six diseases resulting from this stringent hahit among 
 them ; many of the most frightful maladies — cancer, asthma, 
 and consumption are among them. Such unnatural compres- 
 sion, moreover, seems to indicate a very limited scope for the 
 play of the affections, for what room is there for any heart at 
 all? As if to atone for brevity of waist, the ladies indulge, 
 then, in an amplitude of skirt. The merry dames of Elizabeth's 
 court, in a wild spirit of fun, adopted the fashion of hideously 
 deforming farthingales to ridicule the enormous trunk-hose 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 313 
 
 worn by gentlemen of that period — determined, if not success- 
 ful in shaming away tliat absurdity, at least to have a prepos- 
 terous contrivance of their own. The idea was full of woman's 
 wit. But, alas ! they were caught in their own snare. Pre- 
 cious stones were profusely displayed on the bodices and skirts 
 of brocade gowns, and vanity soon discovered that the stiff 
 whalebone framework under the upper skirt formed an excel- 
 lent showcase for family jewels. The passion thus gratified, 
 the farthingale at once became the darling of court costume, 
 and in its original shape continued in feminine favor till the 
 reign of Queen Anne, when it underwent the modification 
 lately revived for us — the Hoop. In vain did the Spectator 
 lash and ridicule by turns the " unnatural disguisement ; " in 
 vain did grossest caricatures appear and wits exhaust their 
 invention in lampoons and current epigrams ; in vain even the 
 publication of a grave pamphlet, entitled The Enormous 
 Ahomination of the Hooj^ Petticoat^ as the Fashion now is • 
 the mode, for once immutable, stands on the page of folly an 
 enduring monument of feminine persistency. 
 
 Encouraged by the prolonged and indisputed sway of the 
 farthingale, the hoop maintained an absolute supremacy through 
 the three succeeding reigns, though often undergoing changes 
 which only served to make it more and more ridiculous. The 
 most ludicrous of these alterations were the triangular-shaped 
 hoops, which, according to the Bjpectator^ gave a lady all the 
 appearance of being in a go-cart ; and the " pocket-hoops," 
 which look like nothing so much as panniers on the side of a 
 donkey — we mean the quadruped. Quite a funny incident is 
 related by Bulwer about the wife of an Englisli ambassador 
 to Constantinople, in the time of James I. The lady, attended 
 by her serving- women, all attired in enormous farthingales, 
 waited upon tlie sultana, who received them with every show 
 of respect and hospitality. Soon, however, the 
 
314 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 curiosity got the better of her courtesy, and expressing her 
 great surprise at the monstrous development of their form, 
 she asked if it were possible that such could be the shape pecu- 
 liar to the women of England. The English lady in reply has- 
 tened to assure her that their forms in nowise differed from 
 those of the women of other countries, and carefully demon- 
 strated to her Highness the construction of their dress, which 
 alone bestowed the appearance so puzzling to her. There could 
 scarcely be a more wholesome satire upon the absurd fashion 
 than is conveyed in the simple recital of this well-authenticated 
 anecdote. 
 
 " It was but a year or two ago that complaints were loud 
 against the amplitude of ladies' dresses. The extent of ground 
 they covered was almost fabulous, and the consequent cost of 
 a gown was a serious item of expenditure, and alarmed young 
 men and old. The young feared an entanglement which 
 might lead to matrimony, when a lady's dress was so costly, 
 and their means were not great ; and their elders looked with 
 apprehension upon a state of things which, if it should find its 
 way into their homes, would paralyze all their energies and 
 exhaust their resources. But now the complaint is that, while 
 the dresses are plain in front, they have such immense trains 
 that they actually interfere with the enjoyment of the public. 
 A lady who walks in the Park with a long train trailing be- 
 hind her in the dust and dirt, occupies so much space that no 
 one dares to follow within three or four yards of her. Imag- 
 ine, then, what the inconvenience must be in large assemblies 
 within doors, where space is not illimitable, and where the 
 trains are even longer than those for morning wear. The 
 inconvenience has been felt to such a degree that it has given 
 rise to a different kind of costume for those who care for walk- 
 ing exercise, and dislike equally to hold up their dress, and to 
 suffer it to sweep the ground. Their costume consists of a 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 315 
 
 petticoat, a short dress which shows the petticoat, and a kind 
 of cloak or mantle to match." * 
 
 But, leaving the hoojps dragging along the dusty avenues of 
 the long-trodden past, with all the accumulated ridicule of 
 aires clinfrins: to its skirts, let us be thankful that the decrees 
 of Fasliion have at length forbidden their further extension 
 and expansion amongst us. 
 
 Feminine fashions repeat themselves. In Pepys' Journal, 
 1662, he says, " The women wear doublets, coats, and great 
 shirts, just for all the world like mine ; so that was it not for a 
 long petticoat draggling under their skirts, nobody could take 
 them for women in any way whatever." 
 
 Another impeachment concerning cosmetics we find levied 
 by John Evelyn, in his Diary (1654), where he says : " I now 
 observe that the women began to paint themselves, formerly a 
 most ignominious thing." In the question of face-painting 
 there is neither right nor wrong ; it belongs to the inferior con- 
 siderations of pretty or ugly, and it cannot be treated on serious 
 grounds. "Well, be it so ; and when 
 
 " Affectation, with a sickly mien, 
 Shows on her cheek the roses of eighteen," 
 
 let us only inquire why she does it ? She does it unblush- 
 ingly, as might be expected, but does she do it to command 
 admiration ? Of course we speak of the painters of to-day, 
 not of those who belonged to a past generation. 
 
 Not long since it was the fashion to dye the hair red and 
 gold, and make the skin white with paint, the cheeks pink 
 with rouge, and the eyelids stained ; but now this capricious 
 goddess, whom fine ladies worship with such devotion, prefers 
 dark hair and olive complexions, and the rage is now for brown 
 
 * Saturday Review. 
 
316 THE TOILETTE AKD ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 waslies as it used to be for white. The blue-black hair and 
 dark skin of the gypsy have become the envy of the ladies of 
 fashion, and they liope, by means of washes and dies, to make 
 themselves " beautiful forever." * 
 
 The head-dresses of the fair sex in our memorable year, 
 1776, were sometimes simply remarkable for their enormous 
 height. Fasliion ruled its votaries then as arbitrarily as in 
 our day ; the coiffure of a belle of fashion was described as " a 
 mountain of wool, hair, powder, lawn, muslin, net, lace, gauze, 
 ribbon, flowers, feathers, and wire." Sometimes these varied 
 materials were built up tier upon tier, like the stages of a 
 pagoda ! 
 
 " If we were called upon to say what is the distinctive char- 
 acteristic of the age in which we live, we should be inclined to 
 designate it as an age of shams. Unreality creeps into every- 
 thing. The gravest matters are tainted with it. Even in 
 religion, where unrealities should find no place, there is con- 
 tention about externals which are devoid of any real meaning. 
 Bishops and clergy contend for pastoral staffs and vestments, 
 when they no longer have the things they symbolize. Lan- 
 guage is made to conceal the truth, and exaggeration distorts 
 it. Professions of friendship are hollow, and treachery under- 
 mines the closest ties. In the political world we hear it for- 
 ever stated that parties are betrayed by ther chiefs, and that 
 principle is at a discount. And in the smaller details of life 
 we find that, instead of the instincts of nature rebelling against 
 anything that is unreal, there is an appetite for it ; that shams 
 are in favor, and that every one is attracted by them rather 
 than otherwise. 
 
 In the matter now before us Ave find this to be especially the 
 case. False hair, false color, false ears, are used without 
 
 * London Society. 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 317 
 
 compunction where they are considered to be needed. The 
 consequence is that woman has become an imposture. We 
 do not, of course, refer to those perfectly innocent embellish- 
 ments which relate to the preference of one dress for another, 
 or for one style for another. These are most legitimate and 
 innocent. We refer to those impostures in dress by which 
 things seem to be wliich are not, and the adoption of which is 
 in itself a great indignity to the whole race of womankind. 
 1^0 one is bound to dress herself unbecomingly ; but, on the 
 contrary, is more than justified in making the best use of 
 Nature's gifts. Our protest is against the introduction of nov- 
 elties by which women are taught to impose upon the world, 
 which cannot fail to have a demoralizing influence over them, 
 and which desecrate that modesty which is the best jewel a 
 woman can wear." * 
 
 In the early ages of Christianity, gloves were a part of mon- 
 astic custom, and, in later periods, formed a part of the episco- 
 pal habit. The glove was employed by princes as a token of 
 investiture ; and to deprive a person of his gloves was a mark 
 of divesting him of his office. Throwing down a glove or 
 gauntlet constituted a challenge, and the taking it up an ac- 
 ceptance. 
 
 Fans have become, in many countries, so necessary an append- 
 age of the toilet with both sexes, that a word respecting them 
 in this place seems demanded. The use of them was first dis- 
 covered in the East, where the beat suggested their utility. In 
 the Greek Church a fan is placed in the hands of the deacons, 
 in the ceremony of their ordination, in allusion to a part of 
 their office in that Church, which is to keep the files ofi: the 
 priests during the celebration of the sacrament. In Japan, 
 where neither men nor women wear hats, except as a protection 
 
 * London Society. 
 
318 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 against rain, a fan is to be seen in the hand or the girdle of 
 every inhabitant. Visitors receive dainties offered them upon 
 their fans : the beggar, imploring charity, holds out his fan for 
 the alms his prayers may obtain. In England, this seemingly 
 indispensable article was almost unknown till the age of Eliza- 
 beth. During the reign of Charles II. they became pretty 
 generally used. At the present day, they are in universal re- 
 quisition. Hats and bonnets are of remote antiquity : it is dif- 
 ficult to say when they took their rise. Of perfumeries, also, 
 little need be said ; they were always, like flowers, artificial 
 and real, favorites with the fair, as they ever should be. 
 
 In beings so near perfection as the fair sex, it is invidious to 
 point out defects, and we refrain from such audacity. Punch 
 affirms, " there are several things which you never can by any 
 chance get a lady — be she young or old — to confess to." Here 
 are some of them : " That she laces tight ; that her shoes are 
 too small for her ; that she is ever tired at a ball ; that she 
 paints ; that she is as old as she looks ; that she has been more 
 than ^SQ> minutes dressing ; that she has kept you waiting ; 
 that she blushed when a certain person's name was mentioned ; 
 that she ever says a thing she doesn't mean ; that she is fond of 
 scandal ; that she can't keep a secret ; that she — she of all 
 persons in the world — is in love ; that she doesn't want a new 
 bonnet ; that she can do with one single thing less when she is 
 about to travel ; that she hasn't the disposition of an angel, or 
 the temper of a saint — or how else could she go through one- 
 half of what she does ? that she doesn't know better than every 
 one else what is best for her ; that she is a flirt or a coquette ; 
 that she is ever in the wrong." 
 
 A curious correspondent in Notes and Queries observes that, 
 notwithstanding the mutations of fashion in England, some old 
 habits are still retained with great tenacity. " The Thames 
 watermen rejoice in the dress of the age of Elizabeth, while 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 319 
 
 the rojal beef -eaters (buffetiers) wear that of private soldiers 
 of the time of Henry YII. ; the blue-coat boy, the costume of 
 the reign of Edward YI. ; and the London charity-school girls 
 the plain mob cap and long gloves of the time of Queen Anne. 
 In the brass badge of the cabman we see a retention of a dress 
 of Elizabethan retainers, while the shoulder-knots that once 
 decked an officer now adorn a footman. The attire of a sailor 
 of the reign of William III. is now seen among our fishermen. 
 The university dress is as old as the age of the Smithfield mar- 
 tyrs. The linen bands of the pulpit and the bar are abridg- 
 ments of the falling collar." Shoes with very long points, full 
 two feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke 
 of Anjou, to conceal an excrescence on one of his feet. 
 Others, on the contrary, adopted fashions to set off their pe- 
 culiar beauties — as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her 
 gallantry and the fairness of her complexion, who introduced 
 the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck un- 
 covered. 
 
 A shameful extravagance in dress has been a most venerable 
 folly in spite of the enactment of sumptuary laws. In the reign 
 of Itichurd II., the dress was sumptuous beyond belief. Sir 
 John Arundel had a change of no less than lifty-two new suits 
 of cloth of gold tissue. Brantome records of Elizabeth, Queen 
 of Philip II. of Spain, that she never wore a gown twice. It 
 cannot be denied that the votaries of fashion too often starve 
 their happiness to feed their vanity and pride. A passion for 
 dress is nothing new ; a satirist thus lampoons the ladies of his 
 day: 
 
 ' ' What is the reason — can you guess, 
 
 Why men are poor, and women thinner ? 
 So much do they for dinner dress, 
 That nothing's left to dress for dinner." 
 
 It is not women alone that evince a proclivity in this direc- 
 
320 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 tion ; there are as many coxcombs in tlie world as coquettes. 
 The folly is more reprehensible in the former than the latter 
 because it has even less show of excuse. 
 
 Leigh Hunt says : " Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. 
 The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the wilful ; not 
 the graceful, but the fantastic ; not the superior in the abstract, 
 but the superior in the worst of all concretes — the vulgar. It 
 is the vulgarity that can afford to shift and vary itself, opposed 
 to the vulgarity that longs to do so, .but cannot. The high 
 point of taste and elegance is to be sought for, not in the most 
 fashionable circles, but in the best-bred, and such as can dis- 
 pense with the eternal necessity of never being the same thing." 
 
 The mere devotees of Fashion have been defined as a class 
 of would-be-refined people, perpetually struggling in a race to 
 escape from the fancied vulgar. Neatness in our costume is 
 needful to our self-respect ; a person thinks better of himself 
 when neatly clad, and others form a similar estimate of him. 
 It has been quaintly said that "A coat is a letter of credit 
 written with a needle upon broadcloth." 
 
 Character is indexed by costume. First impressions are 
 thus formed which are not easily obliterated. Taste and neat- 
 ness in dress distinguish the refined from the vulgar. Persons 
 of rude feelings are usually roughly attired ; they evince none 
 of the grace and delicacy of the cultivated in intellect, morals, 
 and manners. 
 
 Pride, like laudanum, and other poisonous medicines, is 
 beneficial in small, though injurious in large quantities, l^o 
 man, who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, 
 can please others, for it is the belief of his own grace that 
 makes him graceful and gracious. If it be a recommendation 
 to dress our minds to the best advantage, and to render our- 
 selves as agreeable as possible, why should it be an objection 
 to bestow the same pains upon our personal appearance ? 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 321 
 
 Girard, tlie famous French painter, when very young, was 
 the bearer of a letter of introduction to Lanjuinais, then of the 
 Council of Napoleon. The young painter was shabbily attired, 
 and his reception was extremely cold; but Lanjuinais discov- 
 ered in him such striking proofs of talent, good sense, and 
 amiability, that on Girard's rising to take leave, he rose too, and 
 accompanied his visitor to the ante-chamber. The change was 
 so striking that Girard could not avoid an expression of sur- 
 prise. "My young friend," said Lanjuinais, anticipating the 
 inquiry, " we receive an unknown person according to his dress 
 — we take leave of him according to his merit." 
 
 Ben Jonson, in one of his plays, expresses the same opinion : 
 
 " Believe it, sir, 
 That clothes do much upon the wit, as weather 
 Does on the brain ; and thence, sir, conies your proverb, 
 The tailor makes the man," 
 
 One of our greatest historians says : " Dress is characteristic 
 of manners, and manners are the mirror of ideas." 
 
 Old coats are essential to the ease of the body and mind ; 
 and some of the greatest achievements of men have been exe- 
 cuted when the owners were in rags. Napoleon wore an old, 
 seedy coat during the whole of the Russian campaign; and 
 Wellino^ton wore one out at the elbow at Waterloo. Poets are 
 proverbial for their ^^enchant for seedy garments. 
 
 " A hat is the symbol and characteristic of its wearer. It is 
 a sign and token of liis avocation, habits, and opinions — the 
 creature of his phantasy. Minerva-like, it bursts forth in full 
 maturity from his brain. Extravagance, pride, cold-hearted - 
 ness, and vulgarity, with many other of the ruling passions, may 
 be detected by its form and fashion. One may ascertain 
 whether a man is whimsical, grotesque, or venially flexible in 
 his taste, by this test. Much may be deduced from the style 
 in which it is worn." 
 21 
 
322 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 The celebrated poet and professor, Bnschin, who was very 
 careless in his dress, went out in his dressing-gown, and met in 
 the street a citizen with whom he was acquainted. The gen- 
 tleman, however, passed him, without even raising his hat. 
 Divining the cause, the poet hastened home, and put on a cloak 
 of velvet and ermine, in which he again went out, and con- 
 trived once more to meet the same citizen, who this time raised 
 his hat, and bowed profoundly. This made the poet still more 
 angry, when he saw that his velvet cloak claimed more respect 
 than his professorship and poetical fame. He hastened home, 
 threw his cloak on the floor, and stamped on it, saying, " Art 
 thou Buschin, or am I ? " 
 
 It is a well-known fact that ladies seldom become gray, while 
 the heads of the ''lords of creation" are often early in life 
 either bald or gray — sometimes both. Douglas Jerrold tells a 
 piquant joke as follows: " At a private party in London, a lady 
 — who, though in the autumn of life, had not lost all dreams 
 of its spring — said to Jerrold, 'I cannot imagine what makes 
 my hair turn gray ; I sometimes fancy it must be the " essence 
 of rosemary " with which my maid is in the habit of brushing 
 it.' ' I should rather be afraid, madam,' replied the dramatist, 
 ' that it is the essence of Time ' (thyme)." 
 
 " What is life — the flourishing array 
 Of the proud summer meadow which to-day 
 Wears her green flush, and is to-morrow hay." 
 
 Compared with earlier times, with some slight exceptions, 
 our modern costume certainly has the preeminence : it has 
 been said that to this cause is to be attributed the seeming ab- 
 sence, in our day, of any transcendent instances of remarkable 
 beauty in the fair sex : all may be made up attractively where 
 even Nature has been niggard of her endowments. Dress con- 
 fers dignity and self-satisfaction, besides possessing the advan- 
 
THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 323 
 
 tafje of attractiveness. We are startled to hear a man well 
 attired use vulgar speech, but our amazement is materially less- 
 ened if the part}^ be attached to a very menial employment 
 and is enveloped in meaner clothes. Over-fastidiousness at the 
 toilet is, nevertheless, an evil equally to be deprecated : a fop 
 is as much to be despised as a slattern or shrevs^ — both are ob- 
 noxious to good taste. 
 
 Prompted by their loyalty to woman, we find the poets have 
 ever made her charms the inspiring theme of their muse ; not, 
 however, in the realm of song merely has she been celebrated : 
 sober writers in prose have been scarcely less enthusiastic in 
 their laudations. Jeremy Taylor styles woman " the precious 
 porcelain of human clay." Not only is she potent in physical 
 endowment — hers is the more enduring excellence of moral 
 beauty, for her heart is the home of the \drtues ; and while 
 the fascinations of her personal beauty captivate the sense, our 
 grateful love and veneration do willing homage to her moral 
 excellence and worth. Therefore, with one who felt the mys- 
 tic power of her bewildering charms, we exclaim — 
 
 " Denied the smile from partial beauty won, 
 Oh, what were man — a world without a sun ! " 
 
 We yet instinctively yield to the still more potent influence 
 of her enduring love, her patient faith, and the nameless clus- 
 ters of graces which constitute her moral beauty. 
 
 It was a pertinent and forcible saying of the Emperor Na- 
 poleon that " a handsome woman pleases the eye, but a good 
 woman pleases the heart. The one is a jewel, and the other 
 tlie casket." 
 
 A contemporary poet has epitomized it all in two flowing 
 stanzas : 
 
 "What's a fair or noble face, if the mind ignoble be ? 
 What though Beauty, in each grace, may her own resemblance see ! 
 Eyes may catch from heaven their spell, lips the ruby's light recall ; 
 In the Home for Love to dwell one g«^od feeling's worth them all. 
 
324 THE TOILETTE AND ITS DEVOTEES. 
 
 ' ' Give me Virtue's rose to trace, honor's kindling glance and mien, 
 Howsoever plain tlie face, Beauty is where these are seen ! 
 Raven ringlets o'er the snow of the whitest neck may fall ; 
 In the Home for love we know one good feeling's worth them all ! " 
 
 Beauty being the theme with which our chapter commenced, 
 it should also conclude it. We sum up the case, then, as legal 
 gentlemen have it, in the words of an American poetess : 
 
 ' ' Thou wert a worship in the ages olden, 
 
 Thou bright-veiled image of divinity, 
 Crowned with such gleams, imperial and golden. 
 
 As Phidias gave to immortality ! 
 A type exquisite of the pure Ideal, 
 
 Forth shadowed in perfect loveliness — 
 Embodied and existent in the Real, 
 
 A perfect shape to kneel before and bless." 
 
 I! 
 
 A 
 
THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 
 
 Wiiioii side do you propose to advocate ? Is it better to make 
 self the coinmoii centre, to which all conceivable interests are 
 to converge ; or, like the sun, to diffuse all around the genial 
 glow of generous sympathy for others ? Do you demur to the 
 form of the proposition, as being too absolute ; and insist that 
 a neutral course, a midway path between the two extremes, is 
 the " golden mean " ? Granted, and that would settle the ques- 
 tion, were it not the almost inevitable tendency of our frail 
 humanity to drift speedily to the one extreme, but not to the 
 other. If, therefore, self-indulgence is the prevailing proclivity 
 
326 THE SELFISH AJSTD THE SOCIAL. 
 
 of most people, and self-denial the converse of the proposi- 
 tion, it may be worth while to try the question in some of its 
 relations, direct and collateral, to ourselves and others. To 
 begin, then, with self, since we profess to know something 
 about the party, although, perchance, it may be but a superfi- 
 cial acquaintance at best. The personal pronoun I, indeed, cuts 
 a very prominent and important figure in the world, and is of 
 prime significance to each of us respectively. Let us, then, 
 forget the egotism that is thus more than implied, and proceed 
 with om* investigation. It is quite right to stand up for If urn- 
 her One, on all occasions, for not only has the individual nu- 
 merical precedence, but the prior claim. It has been justly 
 said, that "self-love is not so vile a thing as self -neglecting. 
 You cannot find a more companionable person than yourself, 
 if proper attention be paid to the individual. Yourself will 
 go with you wherever you like, and come away when you please 
 — approve. your jokes, assent to your propositions, and, in short, 
 be in every way agreeable, if you only learn the art of being on 
 good terms with yourself. This, however, is not so easy as some 
 imagine, who do not often try the experiment. Yourself, when 
 it catches you in company with no other person, is apt to be a 
 severe critic on your faults and foibles, and when you are cen- 
 sured by yourself, it is generally the severest and most intoler- 
 able species of reproof. It is on this account that you are afraid 
 of yourself, and seek any associates, no matter how inferior, 
 whose bold chat may keep yourself from playing the censor. 
 Yourself is likewise a jealous friend. If neglected and slighted, 
 it becomes a tore, and to be left, even a short time, ' by your- 
 self ' is then regarded as actually a cruel penance, as many find 
 when youth, health, or wealth have departed. How important 
 is it then to ' know thyself,' to cultivate thyself, to respect thy- 
 self, to love thyself warmly but rationally. A sensible self is the 
 best of guides, for few commit errors but in broad disregard of 
 
THE SELFISH AJ^D THE SOCIAL. 327 
 
 its admonitions. It tugs continually at the skirt of men to draw 
 them from their cherished vices. It holds up its shadowy fin- 
 ger in warning when you go astray, and it sermonizes sharply 
 on your sins after they have been committed. Our nature is 
 twofold, and its noblest part is the self to which we refer." 
 Wordsworth's excellent counsel is meant to be personal : 
 
 ' ' By all means, use sometimes to be alone ; 
 
 Salute thyself ; see what thy soul doth wear ; 
 Dare to look in thy chest, for 'tis thine own, 
 
 And tumble up and down what thou findest there." 
 
 Since the longer we live in the world, and the more we test 
 the value of mundane friendships we prove their insecurity, 
 it is better to be fortified against surprisals and disappoint- 
 ments by cherishing a good opinion of, and acquaintance with 
 — one's self. We must not confound d^jprojper regard for one's 
 own interest with what is usually termed selfishness ; because 
 much that may seem like it may be caused by the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances in which a person may be placed. 
 
 " cynic, deem no more the world all base ; 
 And scoff no more with either tongue or pen, — 
 You do not see the face behind the face ! 
 As God exists, there must be noble men ; 
 And many, who to us seem hard and cold, 
 Have sunshine in their hearts as pure as gold ! 
 
 In the battle of life, a perpetual contest and struggle for the 
 acquisition of its emoluments and prizes is kept up ; so that to 
 enter the lists successfully, a man must be fitly panoplied, and 
 thus he may seem to be the very impersonation of selfishness, 
 while, in reality, he may be of just the opposite disposition. 
 Take another point : the question, whether man is capable of 
 performing a purely disinterested action, has long been a topic 
 
328 THE SELFISH A^B THE SOCIAL. 
 
 of dispute with the metaphysician and the moralist. Doubtless, 
 the most specious and plausible, as well as popular, hypothesis 
 is that of the negative of the proposition. Among others 
 holding to this side, might be mentioned Ilelvetius, Hobbes, 
 and Shaftesbury; while the advocacy of the opposite opin- 
 ion lias enlisted the ingenious reasoning and analytical skill of 
 others, with Hazlitt at their head. Without attempting to fol- 
 low the ratiociuative process pursued by these disputants, we 
 shall prefer to leave the question to be determined by the 
 reader. All we would submit is, that while a due regard to 
 one's own interest is a paramount obligation — as self-preserva- 
 tion is the first law of nature — it does not necessarily follow 
 that the rule should be so resolutely insisted upon, and to such 
 an extreme as to absorb all human sympathy for our fellow- 
 men. It is true that man is an individualism, a separate exis- 
 tence, and yet it is no less true, that he is naturally a gregar- 
 ious being, and governed by a social law, analogous to that of 
 gravitation, by which the physical universe is controlled. This 
 law of moral gravitation is further reflected by the lower orders 
 of creation^animals and birds, and even faintly shadowed in 
 the vegetable kingdom ; all congregate and illustrate the law 
 of electric affinities. 
 
 It has been well remarked : " Tlie domestic fireside is a sem- 
 inary of infinite importance. It is important because it is un- 
 iversal, and because the education it bestows, being woven in 
 with the woof of childhood, gives form and color to the whole 
 texture of life. There are few who can receive the honors of 
 a college, but all are graduates of the heart. The learning of 
 the university may fade from recollection ; its classic lore may 
 moulder in the halls of memory ; but the simple lessons of 
 home, enamelled upon the heart of childhood, defy the rust of 
 years, and outlive the more mature but less vivid pictures of 
 after days. So deep, so lasting, are the impressions of early 
 
THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 329 
 
 life, that you often see a man in the imbecility of age holding 
 fresh in his recollection the events of childhood, wliile all the 
 wide space between that and the present liour is a forgotten 
 waste," 
 
 It is an old saying, that charity begins at home ; but this is 
 no reason it should never go abroad ; a man should live with 
 the world as a citizen of tlie world, and he should cherish 
 charity for his neighbor as well as for his household. Coleridge 
 remarks : " General benevolence is begotten and rendered per- 
 manent by social and domestic affections. Let us beware of 
 that proud philosophy which affects to inculcate philanthropy 
 while it denounces every home-born feelino; bv which it is 
 produced and nurtured. The intensity of private attachments 
 encourages, not prevents, universal benevolence. The nearer 
 we approach the sun, the more intense his heat, yet what cor- 
 ner of the system does he not cheer and vivify 'i " 
 
 The Deity has not only constituted man a social being ; He 
 has also ordained this moral attribute a source of his most ex- 
 quisite enjoyment ; so that he who possesses a spirit of benevo- 
 lence in its highest development is necessarily the happiest of 
 mortals. 
 
 Some generous-hearted beings there are who seem to devote 
 their lives, and to derive their principal enjoyment in minister- 
 ing to the happiness of their kind : these are the joyous spirits 
 that ever 
 
 " Make sunshine in a shady place," 
 
 dispel from the suffering spirit the demon of despair, and re- 
 flect the radiance of celestial love all around,— changing the 
 heart's wilderness of worldly care into a cultured garden of all 
 pleasant things. Despite all efforts to meliorate their condi- 
 tion, however, some people there are who will not consent to be 
 made happy : they find their greatest satisfaction in incessant 
 grumbling, and repining against destiny. Discontent, like a 
 
330 THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 
 
 murky cloud impervious to the light of heaven, broods ever 
 upon their horizon, — no matter whether their condition be one 
 of privation or of prosperity, they are alike dissatisfied with 
 their lot. 
 
 " They err who say life is not sweet, 
 
 Though cares are long and pleasures fleet ; 
 
 Though smiles and tears, and sun and storm, 
 
 Still change life's ever- varying form. 
 , The mind that looks on things aright, 
 
 Sees through the clouds the deep blue light." 
 
 Cheerfulness is an amulet, a charm that makes us perma- 
 nently contented and happy. A cheerful face is sometimes as 
 good for an invalid as healthy atmosphere. To make a sick 
 man think he is dying, all that is necessary is to look dismal 
 and doleful yourself. Merriment is a safety-valve to the heart 
 overburdened with care. 
 
 " A smile on the face and kind words on the tongue 
 Will serve you as passports all nations among ; 
 A heart that is cheerful, a spirit that's free, 
 Will carry you bravely o'er life's stormy sea. 
 
 ' ' Talk not of fortune, talk not of fate — 
 We make our own troubles, however we prate ! 
 This world would be honey where now it is gaU, 
 Were we but contented and merry withal ! " 
 
 The cheerful philosopher enjoys everything as he goes along ; 
 he does not fret over every little mistake he encounters on 
 life's pilgrimage. Ills flow of spirits never slackens till the 
 tide of life has ceased to ebb ; hence he always appears ten 
 years younger than he actually is. Ilis step never loses its 
 elasticity, and his heart glows with a religious love to God and 
 man- 
 
 Dr. Johnson remai^ked that a habit of looking on the bright 
 side of every event is better than a thousand pounds a year. 
 
THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 331 
 
 Bishop Hall quaintly remarks, " For every bad there might be 
 a worse, and when a man breaks his leg, let him be thankful 
 that it was not his neck ! " When Feiielon's library was on 
 fire, " God be praised," he exclaimed, " that it is not the dwell- 
 ing of some poor man ! "' This is the true spirit of submission — 
 one of the most beautiful traits that can possess the human 
 heart. Resolve to see this world on its sunny side, and you 
 have almost half won the battle of life at the outset. 
 
 Of all the bores that are inflicted upon our social life, none 
 is more 'disagreeable than the sour-tempered man ; he is not 
 content with being miserable himself, but he insists upon mak- 
 ing everybody else so, if he can. It is best not to let such an 
 one have his own way. 
 
 If he would be content to confine his mutterings and mur- 
 murings to himself, and to maintain a strict seclusion, he might 
 be pardoned and pitied ; but when he thrusts his grievances 
 upon society, he then becomes, as Dogberry eloquently ob- 
 serves, "most tolerable, and not to be endured." 
 
 " The sour man is always sour ; the milk of human kindness 
 in his breast is curdled — there is no sweetness in the acid prin- 
 ciple of his composition ; nature has given him a quantum 
 sufficit of lemon-juice, but has forgotten the saccharine ingre- 
 dient, lie is sour from the rising of the sun to the going 
 down of the same ; in sunshine and moonshine, twilight and gas- 
 light. When he awakes in the morning, he grumbles because 
 it is time to get up ; his coffee is always too hot or too cold ; his 
 toast and steak either overdone or underdone ; he finds noth- 
 ing satisfactory in the morning papers ; he is always in the op- 
 position, let whatever party be in the ascendant. When he 
 goes out he invariably grumbles at the weather ; if it is a little 
 cool, he calls it Arctic weather ; if it is mild, he compares it to 
 the tropics ; if it drizzles, he declares it rains pitchforks, and a 
 orentle breeze is a hurricane." 
 
332 THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 
 
 A man's life divested of the social virtues must necessarily 
 be one of wretchedness ; for they constitute as truly and es- 
 sentially an integral part of his own happiness, as they confer 
 happiness upon those around him : it is suicidal to neglect 
 their cultivation. Philosophers, however, have sought to urge 
 this principle to an unreasonable extreme, by insisting that the 
 universal love of our species was but a fuller development of 
 self-love ; and that consequently no act of pure, disinterested 
 benevolence could possibly exist. Magnanimity and courage, 
 as well as philanthrophy and patriotism, have been classed to- 
 gether under the same category — as merely modifications of 
 this universal self-love. It is the supremacy of wisdom to 
 cherish this passion, or principle, and to submit to its rule 
 under the guidance and authority of reason; for rightly to 
 estimate life is to value it in proportion to the amount of real 
 good it confers. If happiness be the chief good, and of which 
 all are in diligent pursuit, our reason would teach us, that not 
 in blindly obeying the selfish impulses or passions of our na- 
 ture should we attain its possession, but by simply submitting 
 our conduct to the arbitration and test of that reason, irrespec- 
 tive of present, personal, or ostensible advantage. Lord Shaftes- 
 bury remarks that a great many people pass for very good- 
 natured persons, for no other reason than because they care 
 about nobody but themselves; and consequently, as nothing 
 annoys them but what touches their own interest, they never 
 irritate themselves unnecessarily about what does not concern 
 them, and seem to be made of the very milk of human kind- 
 ness. This kind of good-nature is, of course, the most con- 
 summate selfishness, partaking, in no small degree, of a love of 
 indolence and exclusive personal indulgence : such individuals 
 are apparently inoffensive and harmless in society, but they are 
 injurious, because in the way. They are drones in the hives 
 of human industry, or if they accumulate, the common weal is 
 
THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 333 
 
 little benefited by their acquisitiou. Ilazlitt remarks : " Your 
 good-natured man is, generally speaking, one who does not like 
 to be put out of his way : and as long as he can help it, that is 
 till the provocation comes home to himself, will not. He does 
 not create fictitious uneasiness out of the distresses of others ; lie 
 does not fret and fume, and make himself uncomfortable about 
 things he cannot mend, and that no way concern him, even if 
 he could ; but then there is no one who is more apt to be dis- 
 concerted by what puts him to any personal inconvenience, 
 however trifling ; who is more tenacious of his self-indulgences, 
 however unreasonable ; or who resents more violently any inter- 
 ruption of his ease and comforts, — the very trouble he is put to 
 in resenting it being felt as an aggravation of the injury. A 
 person of this character feels no emotions of anger if you tell * 
 him of the devastation of a province, or the massacre of the 
 inhabitants of a town, or the enslaving of a people ; but if his 
 dinner is spoiled, he is thrown into irretrievable consternation 
 and confusion. He thinks nothing can go amiss, as long as he 
 is at his ease, though possibly a pain in his little finger renders 
 him so peevish and impatient that no one can approach his 
 presence." Such are the protean forms of human life, that it 
 is next to impossible for a man to assume the same aspect 
 under its manifold phases, and yet bo honest : a disposition 
 like that we have exhibited cannot therefore consist w^ith strict 
 moral integrity. Good nature, on the other hand, has been 
 defined ^' humanity that costs notliing," for it incurs no risk of 
 martyrdom in any cause, while it sacrifices all on the altar of 
 self-interest. 
 
 ' ' Self is the medium least refined of all 
 Througli which opinion's searching- beam can fall ; 
 And passing there, the clearest, steadiest ray 
 Will tinge its light and turn its line astray." 
 
 la 
 
33tl: THE SELFISH AIS'D THE SOCIAL. 
 
 It may be difficult to analyze the true motive which induces 
 the patriot to serve his country's interest at the seeming ex- 
 pense of his own ; it must be either a pure sentiment of disin- 
 terested patriotism, or that of an ardent love of popular re- 
 nown. The same may be said of the philanthropist and the 
 pioneer missionary ; the latter, however, is doubtless actuated 
 by the higher convictions of religious obligation. It is possi- 
 ble also for a man to prefer the interests of his friend to his 
 own, from a feeling of pure benevolence ; although history and 
 experience furnish but few instances of such exalted virtue. 
 It is contended by writers adverse to the proposition, that this 
 benevolence toward others is always found in proportion to 
 the utility they are likely to be of to the party in return. 
 
 The argument of Hazlitt may be thus briefly stated — that the 
 habitual or known connection between our own welfare and 
 that of others is one great source of our attachment to them, 
 is not denied ; but to insist that it is the exclusive one, and 
 that benevolence has not a natural basis of its own to rest upon, 
 as well as self-love, is contrary to the dictates of sound reason 
 and human experience. Grant this, and the actual effects 
 which we observe in human life will follow from both princi- 
 ples combined ; for example, take that purest of all earthly 
 loves — the affection of the mother for her child — it cannot be 
 the effect of the good received or bestowed, or the child's 
 power of conferring benefits, or its standing in need of assist- 
 ance. Are not the fatigues which the mother undergoes for 
 the child — its helpless condition, its little vexations, its suffer- 
 ing's from ill-health or accidents, additional claims upon mater- 
 nal tenderness, and act as so many causes that tend to increase 
 its devotion ? 
 
 Again, we not only participate in the successes of our friends, 
 but also in their reverses and trials, not for the reason already 
 assigned, so much as from real regard to their welfare ; benev- 
 
THE SELFISH AND l^HS SOCIAL. 335 
 
 olence is not therefore a mere physical reflection of self-love : 
 it is more the result of moral feeling, or at least a combination 
 with this. It is the nature of compassion or pity to forget 
 self, in the commiseration of the sufferings of another, and such 
 human hearts yet linger among us. 
 
 " 'Tis a little tMng 
 To give a cup of water ; yet its draught 
 Of cool refreshment drained by fevered lips, 
 May give a shock of pleasure to the frame 
 More exquisite than where nectarian juice 
 Renews the life of joy in happier hours." 
 
 The best portion of a good man's life consists in such name- 
 less, unrecorded, oft unremembered, little acts of kindness and 
 love. 
 
 Goldsmith's good nature is illustrated by many characteristic 
 incidents ; here is one : once visiting a poor woman whose sick- 
 ness he plainly perceived was caused by an empty cupboard, 
 he sent her, on his return home, a pill-box containing a few 
 sovereigns, with this inscription on the outside, — " to be taken 
 as occasion may require." 
 
 Our sympathy, therefore, is not the servile, ready tool of our 
 self-love, but this latter principle is itself subservient to, and 
 overruled by the former, — that is, an attachment to others is a 
 real, independent principle of human action. The only sense, 
 then, in which our s}Tnpathy with others can be construed into 
 self-love, must ]:>e that the mind is so constituted, that without 
 forethought, or any reflection in itself, or when seeming most 
 occupied with others, it is still governed by the same universal 
 feeling of which it is wholly unconscious ; and that we indulge 
 in compassion only because and in so far as it coincides with 
 our own immediate gratification. It is doubtless in this sense 
 we are to apply the lines of Pope : 
 
336 THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 
 
 '.' Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, 
 As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ; 
 The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds. 
 Another stiU, and stiU another speeds ; 
 Friend, parent, neighbor, first its wiU embrace ; 
 His country next — next the whole human race." 
 
 In fine, the argument may be summed up in the Divine re- 
 quirement, " love thy neighbor as thyself." lu proportion as 
 we subordinate the selfish principle, we accelerate our personal 
 enjoyment. The purest pleasure of life is the consciousness of 
 loving and being beloved. 
 
 " Grant me, Heaven, my earnest prayer— 
 Whether life of ease or care 
 Be the one to me assigned, 
 That each coming year may find 
 Loving thoughts and gentle words 
 Twined within my bosom's chords, 
 And that age may but impart 
 Eiper freshness to my heart ! " ^ 
 
 Again, when the kindly offices of friendship and charity are 
 not required, how lavishly, sometimes, are they proffered ; but 
 let the dark shades of adversity gather thickly around us, and 
 vainly and long may we wait for the promised sympathetic 
 aid. 
 
 Sympathy and self-love are inconsistent ; and we invest man 
 with the attribute of ideas of things out of himself, and to be 
 influenced by them he must necessarily cease to be a merely 
 selfish agent. He is then under another law and another ne- 
 cessity, and in spite of himself is forced out of the direct line oi 
 his own interest, both future and present, by other principles 
 inseparable from his nature. 
 
THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 337 
 
 " Man, like tlie generous vine, supported lives ; 
 The strength he gains is from th' embrace he gives. 
 On their own axis, as the planets run. 
 Yet make at once their circle round the sun- 
 So two consistent motions act the soul ; 
 And one regards itself and one the whole. 
 Thus G-od and nature linked the general frame, 
 And bade self-love and social be the same ! " 
 
 A smile speaks the universal language. " If I value myself 
 on anything," said Hawthorne, " it is on having a smile that 
 children love." They are such prompt little beings, too ; they 
 require so little prelude ; hearts are won in two minutes, at 
 that frank period, and so long as you are true to them they will 
 be true to you. They use no argument, no bribery. They 
 have a hearty appetite for gifts, no doubt, but it is not for these 
 they love the giver. Take the wealth of the world and lavish 
 it with counterfeited affection ; 1 will win all the children's 
 hearts away from you by empty-handed love. The gorgeous 
 toys will dazzle them an hour ; then their instincts will revert 
 to their natural friends. 
 
 To love children is to love childhood, instinctively, at what- 
 ever distance, the first impulse being one of attraction, though it 
 may be checked by later discoveries. Unless your heart com- 
 mands at least as long a range as your eye, it is not worth 
 much. 
 
 " Allow me, gentlemen," said Curran, one evening to a large 
 party, " to give you a sentiment. When a boy, I was one morn- 
 ing playing at marbles in the village of Ball-alley, with a light 
 heart and lighter pocket. The gibe and the jest went gladly 
 round, when suddenly among us appeared a stranger, of a re- 
 markable and very cheerful aspect ; his intrusion was not the 
 least restraint upon our merry little assemblage. He was a 
 benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after all, the 
 happiest we shall ever see) perhaps rose upon his memory. 
 22 
 
338 THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 
 
 Heaven bless him ! I see liis fine form, at the distance of half 
 a century, just as he stood before me in the little Ball-alley, in 
 the day of my childhood. His name was Boyse ; he was the 
 rector of Newmarket. To me he took a particular fancy. I 
 was winning, and full of waggery ; thinking everything that 
 was eccentric, and by no means a miser of my eccentrici- 
 ties ; every one was welcome to a share of them, and I had 
 plenty to spare, after having frightened the company. Some 
 sweatmeats easily bribed me home with him. I learned from 
 Boyse my alphabet and my grammar, and the rudiments of the 
 classics. He taught me all he could, and then he sent me to a 
 school at Middleton. In short, he made me a man. I recollect 
 it was about thirty-five years afterwards, when I had risen to 
 some eminence at the bar, and when I had a seat in Parliament, 
 on my return one day from the Court, I found an old gentleman 
 seated alone in my drawing-room, his feet familiarly placed on 
 each side of the Italian marble chimney-piece, and his whole 
 air bespeaking the consciousness of one quite at home. He 
 turned round — it was my friend of Ball-alley. I rushed in- 
 stinctively into his arms, and burst into tears. Words cannot 
 describe the scene which followed. ' You are right, sir, you 
 are right. The chimney-piece is yours — the pictures are yours 
 — the house is yours. You gave me all I have — my friend — 
 my benefactor ! ' He dined with me ; and in the evening I 
 caught the tear glistening in his fine blue eye, when he saw poor 
 little Jack, the creature of his bounty, rising in the House of 
 Commons to reply to a right honorable. Poor Boyse ! he is 
 now gone ; and no suitor had a longer deposit of practical 
 benevolence in the Court above. This is his wine — let us drink 
 to his memory ! " 
 
 Southey must have sung from his heart those sweet syllables 
 about the longevity of love : 
 
THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 339 
 
 " They sin who ^ell us love can die : 
 With life all other passions fly, 
 All others are but vanity. 
 But love is indestructible ! 
 Its holy flame forever bumeth, 
 From heaven it came, to heaven retumeth ! 
 Too oft, on earth, a troubled guest. 
 At times deceived, at times opprest ; 
 It is here tried and purified 
 Then hath in heaven its perfect rest. 
 It soweth here with toil and care, 
 But the harvest-time of love is there ! " 
 
 Charity, or love to our neighbor, is " the best-natured thing 
 and the best-complexioned thing in the world. Let us express 
 this sweet, harmonious afPection in these jarring times, that sc , 
 if it be possible, we may tune the world into better music." * 
 
 Sydney Smith asserts that "there is nothing which an 
 Englishman enjoys more than the pleasure of sulkiness — of not 
 being forced to hear a word from anybody which may occasion 
 to him the necessity of replying. It is not so much that Mr. 
 Bull disdains to talk, as that Mr. Bull has nothing to say. His 
 forefathers have been out of spirits for six or seven hundred 
 years, and, seeing nothing but fog and vapor, he is out of 
 spirits, too ; and when there is no selling or buying, or no busi- 
 ness to settle, he prefers being alone, and looking at the fire." 
 
 Wealth and station are what we call the accidents of life, 
 or rather they are apportioned by Providence ; but love may 
 exist with humble poverty as really as with luxury and pomp. 
 
 ' ' In ourselves the sunshine dwells, 
 From ourselves the music swells ; 
 By ourselves our life is fed 
 With sweet or bitter daily bread." 
 
 * Cudworth. 
 
340 THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 
 
 Sydney Smith pleasantly remarks, " God lias given us wit 
 and flavor, and brightness and laughter and perfumes, to enliven 
 the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps 
 over the burning marie." And our great essayist * wisely 
 insists that "there is no real life but cheerful life." Steele 
 said, " I am persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much 
 more so when he laughs, it adds something to this fragment of 
 life." He has another piquant remark, where he refers to 
 sociality : " Conversation never sits easier upon us than when we 
 now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter, 
 which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversa- 
 tion." Therefore valetudinarians and long-visaged personages, 
 who prefer to look on the dark side of things, should be sworn, 
 before they enter into company, not to say a word of themselves 
 or their tribulations until the meeting is dissolved. There are 
 some ascetic souls, whose lugubrious looks cast dark shadows 
 wherever they go ; and whose presence, like the fabled upas 
 tree, diffuses a deadly poison over all the felicities and gayeties 
 of life. Who does not prefer the joyance- and the fragrant 
 breath of the warm, jubilant spring, with her gay garniture of 
 flowers and sweet minstrelsy of birds, to the icy breath and 
 solemn desolation of winter ? So a radiant face, all aglow with 
 sunny smiles, and a voice attuned to the music of love, embel- 
 lish and bless with their inspiration all with whom they come 
 in contact. 
 
 '.' To laugh is man's prerogative, we say, — 
 It makes the wheels of nature ghbber play ; 
 DuU care suppresses, — smooths life's thorny way, — 
 Propels the dancing current through each veia, — 
 Braces the nerves, — corroborates the brain, — 
 Moves every muscle, — makes one young again !" 
 
 " There is an old-fashioned virtue which often strikes us as 
 
 * Addison. 
 
THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 341 
 
 very little in favor with the people of our time, probably because 
 they do not recognize it as a virtue at all ; and, indeed, it does 
 its work with such a bright face and easy air that among the 
 strenuous, anstere brotherhood of duties and merits it may well 
 pass for something else — as a mean and worldly conformity, 
 perhaps. We name it Complaisance. In fact, we doubt if 
 anybody gives it its proper rank until he misses and feels the 
 want of it. Even the old writers, who had much more pro- 
 nounced ideas on the duty of being pleasant than people have 
 nowadays, hesitate to place it among the moral virtues. True, 
 it renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, an inferior 
 acceptable. It sweetens conversation ; it produces good nature 
 and mutual benevolence ; ' it encourages the timorous, soothes 
 the turbulent, humanizes the fierce, and distinguishes a society 
 of civilized persons from a confusion of savages ; ' and yet 
 because it never makes itself disagreeable or unwelcome there 
 is a doubt whether to call it a virtue simple or only a social 
 virtue — that is, a charm, a grace, a fine manner, a performance 
 for the actor's sake. Yet genuine complaisance, as the effusion 
 of a benevolent nature, rendering the sacrifice of personal in- 
 clination and ease a sliojht, unthoug-ht-of thino; when set ao-ainst 
 the general satisfaction, is surely worthy of some considerable 
 estimation even on the score of self-denial. 
 
 " True complaisance never sleeps where the red^any body to 
 please or to make more comfortable. Politeness is society's 
 method of making things run smooth. Complaisance is a more 
 intimate quality — an impulse to seek points of agreement with 
 others ; it is the spirit of welcome, whether to strangers, or to 
 new suggestions, untried pleasures, fresh impressions. It is a 
 belief in the reciprocal servic.es which men, as members of 
 society, can confer on each other — a willingness to confer and 
 to receive; it is toleration, accessibility, and expectation. In 
 fact, it is charity in its social aspect, as concerned with the 
 
342 
 
 THE SELFISH AND THE SOCIAL. 
 
 minor satisfactions and perplexities of life. Conscience is 
 rarely a sleepless influence." * 
 
 Let us, then, seek to eschew the idea of living exclusively for 
 self — narrowing down the sphere of our earthly existence to so 
 ignoble a purpose ; rather ought we to embellish it with the 
 outgQshings of a generous good- will to those who are less en- 
 dowed than ourselves. 
 
 If the Divine maxim be admitted, we enrich ourselves most 
 when most generous in our benefactions to others. How glori- 
 ous a.thing it is — the consciousness of doing good ! What a 
 galaxy of the great and good, who have scattered sunshine over 
 the dark places of sorrow and suffering, illumine the scroll of 
 our human history in all ages of the world, — worthy of all imi- 
 tation ! 
 
 * Saturday Review. 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASON'S. 
 
 " The shadow on the dial's face, that steals, from day to day, 
 "With slow, unseen, unceasing pace, moments, and months, and years away ; 
 This shadow, which, in every clime, 
 Since light and motion first began, 
 Hath held its course sublime." 
 
 Time is so intangible a thing, that the moment we essay to 
 grasp it, it is gone. Although impalpable it is yet real, for, 
 like the circumambient atmosphere, it is ever present with us, 
 although unseen. If we attempt to symbolize it, we fail fully 
 to portray it, and yet images are its only mode of illustration. 
 It is both the longest and the shortest, the swiftest and the 
 
344 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 slowest ; the most regretted and the least valued ; without 
 which nothing can be done ; that which devours everything, 
 and jet gives existence to everything. 
 
 " It is the account current with all, in which more are found 
 bankrupt than wealthy, when the balance-sheet is demanded. 
 It marks the rising and the setting sun, spreads over us the 
 black veil of night, and giWs with gladness the face of day ; it 
 rolls on the revolving seasons, chronicling the deeds of cen- 
 turies ; watching over the birth of infancy, the ardent aspira- 
 tions of youth, toiling manhood, and the tottering steps of the 
 infirm and aged — his sorrows, loves, and cares, nor forsakes 
 him so long as life shall last." It is always the friend of the 
 virtuous and the true, a tormenting foe to those who abuse 
 the gift ; to the former, it is redolent of fragrant and pleasant 
 memories, — to the latter, of gloomy remorse and despair. 
 
 " It rolls away, and bears along 
 A mingled mass of right and wrong ; 
 The flowers of love that bloomed beside- 
 The margin of life's sunny tide ; 
 The poisoned weeds of passion, torn 
 From dripping rocks, and headlong borne 
 Into that unhorizoned sea — 
 Which mortals caU eternity ! "" 
 
 And such is that mysterious myth, named Time, who meas- 
 ures our allotted span, from the cradle to the cofiiu, mingles 
 our joys and griefs in the chalice of life, and then terminates 
 it with his scythe, — 
 
 " A shadow only to the eye. 
 It levels an beneath the sky.". 
 
 Time itself is but a shadow ; it is what is done in time that 
 is the substance. What are twenty-four centuries to the hard 
 rock, more than twenty-four hours to man, or twenty-four min- 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 345 
 
 ates to the ephemera ? " Are there not periods in our own exist- 
 ence," writes an ingenious thinker, " in which space, computed 
 by its measure of thoughts, feelings, and events, mocks the 
 penury of man's artificial scale and comprises a lifetime in a 
 day." 
 
 " I asked an aged man, a man of cares, 
 
 Wrinkled and curved, and wMte witli hoary hairs : 
 ' Time is the warp of life,' he said, ' Oh tell 
 
 The young, the fair, the gay, to weave it well. " 
 
 I asked the ancient, venerable dead — 
 
 Sages who wrote, and warriors who bled : 
 
 From the cold grave a hoUow murmur flowed — 
 ' Time sowed the seed we reap in this abode.' 
 
 I asked a dying sinner, ere the tide 
 
 Of life had left his veins : ' Time,' he replied, 
 ' I've lost it — ah, the treasure ! ' and he died. 
 
 I asked the golden sun and silver spheres. 
 
 Those bright chronometers of days and years ; 
 
 They answered — ' Time is but a meteor's glare,' 
 
 And bade me for eternity prepare. 
 
 I asked the seasons, in their annual round, 
 
 Which beautify or desolate the ground : 
 
 And they replied (no oracle more wise) : 
 
 'Tis Folly's blank, and Wisdom's highest prize.' " * 
 
 Shakespeare thus inimitably portrays " old father Time," and 
 his various progressive journeys with ns : 
 
 "Time travels in divers paces, with divers persons; I'll tell 
 you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who 
 Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. He trots 
 hard with a young maid, between the contract of her marriage, 
 and the day it is solemnized ; if the interim be but a se'nnight, 
 Time's pace is so hard, that it seems the length of seven years. 
 He ambles with a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that 
 hath not the gout — for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot 
 
 ** * Marsden. 
 
346 
 
 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 study ; and the other lives merrily, because he feels no pain ; 
 the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning — the 
 other knowing no burden of heavy, tedious penury ; then Time 
 ambles withal. He gallops with a thief to the gallows — for, 
 though he go softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon 
 there. He stays still with lawyers in the vacation — for they 
 sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how 
 Time moves." 
 
 Time is portrayed with wings to indicate his rapid flight, and 
 if he strew our pathway with life's spring flowers, he also 
 brings, too swiftly, its wintry frosts and desolation. He is also 
 represented with a scythe, to notify that he mows down all alike 
 — the young and the old, the refined and the vulgar, the good 
 and the bad. 
 
 " Even such is Time that takes on trust, 
 Our youth, our joys, our all we have, 
 
 And pays us but with age and dust; 
 Who, in the dark and silent grave, 
 
 When we have wandered all our ways, 
 
 Shuts up the story of our days. " * 
 
 The earliest expedient for reckoning time seems to have 
 been the sundial. Allusion to its use is to be found in Holy 
 Writ. 
 
 Herodotus informs us that the Greeks borrowed the inven- 
 tion from the Babylonians. The sundial was first used at Rome, 
 about 300 B.C. Prior to that time there was no division of 
 the day into hours, but only sun-rising and sun-setting, hefore 
 and after mid-day. 
 
 The Mejpsydra, or water-clock, was introduced at Rome, 157 
 B.C. It served its purpose in all weathers, while the dial, of 
 course, depended upon the sun. 
 
 There is a dial in the Temple Gardens, London, upon which 
 
 Raleigh. 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 347 
 
 is inscribed the admonitory line for loiterers, " Begone about 
 your business." 
 
 One of the oldest clocks in England is in the Palace of 
 Hampton Court. It still works well, and wears well, like old 
 father Time himself. 
 
 One of the best clocks now in London is that of the Eoyal 
 Exchange. That placed in the Clock Tower of the [N^ew 
 Houses of Parliament is an eight-day one, and strikes the hour 
 on a bell weighing nearly ten tons ; it chimes the quarter upon 
 eight bells, and shows the time upon four dials, about thirty 
 feet in diameter. The length of the minute-hand of the clock 
 of St. Paul's Cathedral is 8 feet, and its weight 75 lbs. ; the 
 length of the hour-hand is 5 feet 5 inches, and its weight 44 lbs. 
 The diameter of the dial is 18 feet. The diaineter of the bell 
 is ten feet, and its weight four tons and a quarter. It is never 
 used except for the striking of the hour, and for tolling at the 
 deaths and funerals of any of the Royal family, the Bishops of 
 London, the Deans of St. Paul's, and the Lord Mayor, should 
 he die during mayoralty. 
 
 The astronomical clock at Strasburg is composed of three 
 parts, respectively dedicated to the measure of time, to the 
 calendar, and to astronomical movements. The first thing to 
 be created was a central moving power, communicating its 
 motion to the whole of its mechanism. The motive power, 
 which is itself a very perfect and exact timepiece, indicates on 
 an outer face the hours and their subdivisions, as well as the 
 days of the week ; it strikes the hours and the quarters, and 
 puts in motion divers allegorical figures. 
 
 Watches w^ere first introduced at the close of the fifteenth 
 century. Watchmaking has been carried to great perfection 
 by the Swiss, French, and English. Some minute w^atches 
 have been constructed of less than half an inch diameter. 
 
 A watch has been facetiously designated as the image of 
 
348 
 
 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 modesty, since it always holds its hands before its face, and 
 however good its works may be, it is always running itself 
 down 
 
 A woi'd respecting Almanacs. Some suppose the term to be 
 Arabic, others give it a Teutonic origin, from the words al and 
 moan, the moon. Others again assign it a Saxon derivation. 
 
 In 1472 the earliest European almanac was issued from the 
 press ; and, before the end of that century, they became com- 
 mon on the Continent. In England they were not in general 
 use until the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 
 The almanac, in its simple form as a calendar, agrees in 
 many respects to ih.Q fasti or festival-roll of the Eomans. The 
 word calendar comes from the Latin verb calare, to call, or 
 calens, its participle, on account of the custom of the pontiffs 
 summoning the people to apprise them of the festivals occur- 
 ring in each respective month ; these occasions are designated 
 dies calendoe — the calends or first days of the month. Such 
 was the beginning of our almanac. The fasti seems to be an 
 extension of the primitive religious calendar, and to the pagan 
 feast-days added the days on which the magistrates were 
 elected and held court. This was its first civil form. 
 
 The calendar of the almanac now in use is an improvement 
 on that of Romulus. He divided the year into ten months, 
 beginning with March. His year consisted of 304 days. 
 Numa improved on Homulus, and added two months, January 
 to the beginning, and February to the end of the year. In 452 
 B.C., the Decemvirs placed February after January, and fixed 
 the order of the months. The year at this time consisted of 
 365 J days. According to the imperfect mode of reckoning by 
 the Romans, after the addition of the months of January and 
 February, b.c. 452, the twenty-fourth of February was called 
 the sixth before the calends of March, sexto caUndas. In the 
 intercalary year this day was repeated and styled his sexto cat- 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 349 
 
 endas — whence we derive the term hissextile. The correspond- 
 ing term leap-year is, however, infelicitously applied, inasmuch 
 as it seems to intimate that a day was leaped over, instead of 
 being thrust in, which is the fact. It may be remarked that 
 in the ecclesiastical calendar, the intercalary day is still in- 
 serted between the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of February. 
 Bissextile, or leap-year, therefore contains three hundred and 
 sixty-six days, and occurs every fourth year. Leap-year is, ac- 
 cording to traditionary lore, invested with sundry privileges 
 and immunities to the fair. The Comic Almanac says, " it takes 
 three springs to make one leap-year.^'' 
 
 Sosigenies, the astronomer, induced Caesar to abolish the 
 lunar year, and regulate time by the sun. Gregory the Thir- 
 teenth, in 1582, corrected the calendar, and placed it on its 
 present basis. The Gregorian calendar was received at once 
 by all the Roman Catholic States of Europe. The Protestant 
 powers refused, for some time, to adopt it. England did not 
 receive it till 1752. In that year, the Julian calendar, or old 
 style, was abolished, and the Gregorian, or new style, adopted. 
 This was done by dropping eleven days, the excess of the Julian 
 over the trtie solar time. Russia still adheres to the old. 
 
 A prominent feature of the earlier almanacs was the prog- 
 nostications respecting the weather, calculated from the various 
 phases of the moon. The divisions of time into periods of 
 seven days have been made in all ages, and are as old as the 
 creation. The Chinese, the Egyptians, the Arabs, and other 
 Oriental nations, as well as the Jews, counted in this way. 
 
 The word " week " is taken from the Saxon language and 
 means seven days, the same as in ours. Some people suppose 
 that the number seven was chosen because the ancients knew 
 of only seven planets, and because they believed the planets 
 had a great deal of influence over human affairs, they named 
 
350 
 
 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 one day in honor of each, and so obtained the names of the 
 days and their division at the same time. 
 
 We have kept a part of these names and changed the others 
 for words taken from the Saxon deities. The days of Mars, 
 Jupiter, Mercury, and Yenus have been called Tuesday, Wed- 
 nesday, Thursday, and Friday, from Tuesco, Woden, Thor, and 
 Friga, the Mars, Jupiter, and Yenus of the Saxons. 
 
 The day on which the week begins is not always the same. 
 Among the Jews the Sabbath was made to fall on the seventh 
 day. Among Christians the first day was set apart as a Sab- 
 bath. 
 
 The changes of the moon evidently caused the next division 
 of time into months. A year is the period in which the sun 
 makes his circuit of the heavens. 
 
 There has been a good deal of confusion from the attempt to 
 make the periods of time correspond precisely with the revolu • 
 tions of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 The moon makes more than twelve revolutions in a year, and 
 the year itself is a little more than three hundred and sixty- 
 five days; so while it would make no difference for short 
 periods, yet in centuries these fractions would amount to quite 
 a sum. 
 
 From time to time the year has been pushed forward, so to 
 speak, by adding enough days to make up deficiencies. The 
 names of the months have come to us from the Romans. 
 With them March was the first month (and for a while they 
 had only ten) and December the tenth, November the ninth, 
 October the eighth. They soon found that ten months made a 
 short year, and so added two — January and February— from 
 the names of two of their gods. The fifth and sixth were 
 afterward changed to July and August, in honor of two em- 
 perors. 
 
 An exact computation of time is very important, and learned 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 351 
 
 men have always endeavored to avoid mistakes. Corrections 
 have been made from time to time, until a system almost per- 
 fect has been established. 
 
 Among the ancient nations the day began at sunrise and con- 
 tinued till its light expired : others supposed their day to com- 
 mence at sunset. The Arabians, again, make theirs to begin at 
 noon, with all navigators and astronomers : while we, in com- 
 mon with the ancient Egyptians, and most of the modern Eu- 
 ropeans, date from midnight, which, allowing of all the waking 
 hours of day to come together, is manifestly the most conve- 
 nient and rational. The ancients were accustomed to group 
 together the various clusters of stars ; these groups, which they 
 termed constellations, they gave the names of celebrated per- 
 sonages of their day, and others they named after such birds, 
 beasts, or insects as seemed to be portrayed in the space de- 
 scribed by these stellar objects. The divisions of the heavens 
 designated, to some extent, the seasons of the year, and hence 
 the origin of the signs of the zodiac. 
 
 January is a name which is derived from Janus, who was in 
 classic mythology the tutelary deity that presided over this 
 gate of the New Year. Janus was represented with two faces, 
 looking in opposite directions — to the past and the future. 
 The temple in Home, erected to his memory, was always kept 
 open in time of war. It was closed only three times during 
 the lapse of seven hundred years. It was closed at the time of 
 the birth of Christ, for then the whole world was at peace. 
 
 " He cometli, the elder-bom child of the year, 
 With a turbulent voice, and a visage austere ; 
 But his cold, caUous hand, and his boreal breath, 
 Prepare for new life the low relics of death ; 
 A changeling in temper, but ever sublime. 
 Is this moody, mad offspring of stern winter-time." 
 
 New Year's Day has been, from time immemorial, kept as a 
 
352 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 day of rejoicing. By the Greeks it was a solemn festival: by 
 the Romans, one of feasting and congratulation. Throughout 
 Christendom it is kept as a holiday. Bells are rung at mid- 
 night to celebrate the exit of the old, and the advent of the 
 new year. 
 
 Despite its icy breath and frigid aspect, rugged winter seems 
 to be prophetic of a joyous new existence, as those who have 
 become frosted with age appear for the time to have acquired 
 a spirit of rejuvenescence. It forms a sort of resting-place in 
 the progress of life's journey, from which we all persuade our- 
 selves, however we may deprecate the past, that the future is 
 gilded with Iris hopes of happiness. If the external aspect of 
 nature appear cheerless and chilly, the scene is but the more 
 heightened by the contrast of the sunny smiles and generous 
 hospitalities of the happy fireside of kindred and friends. 
 There is something picturesque as well as grateful in this time- 
 honored custom of commemorating the nativity of the year, 
 by acts of beneficence and votive offerings to friendship. 
 
 Friendly interchange of visits, congratulations and the pre- 
 sentation of gifts, seem to have been in vogue in every age. 
 The ancient Druids were accustomed to cut the sacred mistle- 
 toe, with a golden knife, in a forest dedicated to the gods, and 
 to distribute its branches with much ceremony, as new-year's 
 gifts to the people. 
 
 Of the special holidays and festivals of this month, the first 
 in order is that of Circumcision — a festival of the Homish 
 Church, and adopted also by the Episcopacy since the year 
 1550. The next festival in the Calendar is that styled Ejpijph- 
 any^ or Twelfth-day— mdi\ii2iimg the manifestation of Christ 
 to the Gentile world, which event is ascribed to this date. 
 This holiday used to be characterized in Saxon times by the 
 wassail-howl — a spiced decoction, deriving its name from wcbs- 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 353 
 
 JicbI (be healthy), the toast the sturdy old Saxons adopted on 
 the occasion of then' libations. 
 
 The second, and briefest of the family of months, Febru- 
 ary, derives its name from Fehruo, to purify ; hence Februa- 
 rius, the appellation assigned b}^ the Romans to the expiatory 
 sacrifices they were accustomed to offer at tins season. Pisces^ 
 the constellation over which ISTeptune was supposed to preside, 
 was regarded by the ancients as tlie last of the winter signs, 
 and was represented under the figure of two fishes; but at 
 present it is the first in ordei* of the stellar groups of the zo- 
 diac, presiding over the vernal equinox. 
 
 The Saxon name for this month was sproitt-Jcele^ also sal- 
 monath, or pancake month, from their custom of offering cakes 
 to the sun, for his increasing power. 
 
 Midway in this month comes the festival of St. Valentine. 
 All we know of him is that he was canonized in consequence 
 of his having suffered martyrdom in the third century, under 
 the Emperor Claudius. Some have conjectured that the custom 
 of devoting this day to Cupid is traceable to the ancient Komans, 
 whose festivals, called Lupercalia, were celebrated about this 
 time. On these occasions, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the 
 names of young women were placed in a box, from which they 
 were drawn by a band of devotees, as chance determined. 
 
 The practical joking which prevails so universally on the day 
 in question, the love of fun and caricature with Cupid, is of 
 comparatively modern date. Formerly, love-making among 
 our sober progenitors wore a much more grave and demure as- 
 pect: it was not a matter to be trifled with, that of linking 
 hearts and liands, with the joint fortunes or misfortunes of life. 
 
 " Oh love ! how potent is thy sway ; , 
 
 Thou'rt terrible, indeed, to most men ! 
 But once a year there comes a day 
 
 When thou tormentest chiefly postmen. 
 23 
 
354 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 " Oh. hard indeed the lot must be 
 
 Of him who wears thy galling fetters ! 
 But e'en more miserable he 
 
 Who must go round with all thy letters." 
 
 "Without pretending to estimate the obligations of many of 
 the devotees of Hymen to this worthy saint's influence, the fes- 
 tival, occurring half-way in this most inclement and unpopular 
 month, certainly tends to beguile many of its objectionable ac- 
 companiments — snow, sleet, and that worst of all kinds of 
 weather — a penetrating thaw, against which even a suit of mail 
 may be said to be scarcely impervious. 
 
 Shrove -Tuesday regulates most of the movable feasts. It is 
 the next after the first new moon in the month of February, 
 and follows the first Sunday in Lent. Formerly, the people 
 were expected to prepare themselves for Lent by confessing 
 themselves; hence* the word shrove. 
 
 Ash- Wednesday is the first day of Lent, supposed to have 
 been so called from a custom in the Church of sprinkling ashes 
 that day on the heads of the penitents. 
 
 March is so called from Mars, the pagan god of war. 
 
 The Saxons called it lenct monath, or length month, be- 
 cause the days then begin to exceed in length the nights. 
 
 Lenct, now called Lent, means spring. 
 
 March is a rude, boisterous month, possessing many of the 
 characteristics of winter, yet it gives us the fii'st announcement 
 and foretaste of spring. What can equal the delight of the 
 heart at the very first glimpse of spring — the first peeping of 
 buds and green herbs ? It is like a new life infused into our 
 bosoms. A spirit of tenderness — a burst of freshness and lux- 
 ury of feeling possesses us ; and though fifty springs have 
 broken upon us, their joy, unlike many joys of time, is not an 
 atom impaired. 
 
 True it is that blustering, rude Boreas causes boisterous ex- 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 355 
 
 citement about this time, as if seeking to awaken Nature from 
 her long sleep of winter ; while dusty particles scorn all local 
 habitation, performing fantastic gyrations in the air, to the se- 
 rious discomfiture of our physical organs, especially the optical 
 and olfactory. 
 
 The dry winds of lusty March, however they may be depre- 
 cated for their personal incivilities, are nevertheless useful to 
 the purposes of agriculture. Its zodiacal sign, Allies, was as- 
 signed to this, originally the first month of the year, because 
 the ancients considered the ram as the father of the fleecy flock 
 which afforded them both food and raiment. 
 
 St. David's Day is celebrated by the Welsh as commemora- 
 tive of their patron saint : it occurs on the first of the month. 
 
 We now come to the festival held in honor of the tutelar 
 saint of Quid Ireland — Saint Patrick — who, according to 
 ancient lore, in the year of grace 433 landed near Wicklow, 
 having, it is said, been born at KiTpatrick, Scotland. His glo- 
 rious memory is mnemonized by the well-known Shamroch. 
 The real name of this notable apostle of the Irish was Maen- 
 wyn. Pope Celestine gave him his ecclesiastical patronymic of 
 Patricus^ when he consecrated him as bishop to Ireland in 
 A.D. 433. Originally there was a dispute, according to Lover, 
 as to the true anniversary of this renowned saint, some suppos- 
 ing the eighth and others the ninth to be the correct date : the 
 humorist, however, represents a priest as settling the difiiculty 
 as follows: 
 
 '• Says lie, ' Boys, don't be fighting for eight or for nine ; 
 Don't be always dividing — but sometimes combine. 
 Combine eight with nine, and seventeen is the mark. 
 So let that be his birthday.' 'Amen,' says the clerk. 
 So they all got blind drunk — which completed their bliss, 
 » And we keep up the practice from that day to this." 
 
 Palm Sunday is the first Sunday before Easter, so 
 
I 
 
 356 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 called in commemoration of Christ's entering into Jerusalem, 
 eight days before the Passover. The Passover of the Jews 
 closely agrees with the time when the sun crosses or jpasses 
 over the equator, an event that could hardly fail to be cele- 
 brated with rites and ceremonies by a people so devoted to as- 
 tronomy as the Egyptians, who had educated Moses. Pascha 
 was the primitive term, the English name passover being de- 
 rived from God^s passing over the houses of the Israelites and 
 sparing their first-born, when those of the Egyptians were put 
 to death. 
 
 The first of April was by the Romans consecrated to Yenus, 
 the goddess of beauty, as the earth begins at this time to be 
 arrayed in her beautiful garments and bedeck herself with 
 flowers. 
 
 The month of April is one of alternating smiles and tears. 
 By some writers it has been designated the sweetest of the 
 aerial sisters, because it ushers in the " delicate-footed May." 
 
 ' ' Sighing, storming, singing, smiling, 
 With her many moods beguiling, 
 
 April walks the wakening earth. 
 Wheresoe'er she looks and lingers, 
 Wheresoe'er she lays her fingers, 
 
 Some new charm starts into birth. " * 
 
 This month, it will be recollected, is introduced by the equi- 
 vocal practice of imposing upon our credulity, under the style 
 and title of April-fooling. 
 
 Be very circumspect on this day of attending to gratuitous 
 advice, given in the street, respecting your costume or personal 
 appearance. Do not heed any ofiicious person who may insist 
 upon your picking up anything he may imagine you to have 
 dropped. 
 
 * J. C. Prince. 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 357 
 
 About the middle of April the sun enters Taurus — a con- 
 stellation which includes one hundred and forty-one stars, the 
 principal of which is Aldebaran, of the first magnitude ; it also 
 comprises two remarkable representations, viz. : the Pleiades 
 and the Ilyades. Alcyone, the principal star in the Pleiades, 
 is supposed by Prof. Madler to be the grand central sun in the 
 universe. 
 
 Good Friday^ designed to commemorate the crucifixion, is 
 religiously regarded as a solemn festival. At St. Peter's, at 
 Rome, it is kept up in the service of the Tenebrce — a cere- 
 monial representing the entombment of the Saviour. Cross- 
 buns used on this day are in imitation of the ecclesiastical 
 eulogia, or consecrated loaves, formerly bestowed in the church 
 as alms, or given to those who, from any impediment, could 
 not receive the host. It will be remembered that popular 
 superstition has marked this day of the week (Friday) as " un- 
 lucky." 
 
 If Friday was ever ill-omened, its reputation is sufficiently 
 redeemed, for it was on that day that Columbus discovered the 
 New World, that George Washington was born, and that the 
 Pilgrim fathers reached the Plymouth rock. 
 
 " The flowery May, who from her green lap throws 
 The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose." 
 
 Thus sung the '' blind old bard," and a right fruitful theme 
 has this " queen month " of the calendar been to the many wor- 
 shippers of the muse, from the days of old Chaucer down to 
 our own. 
 
 May seems to be the bridal season of heaven and earth, and 
 the whole month the honeymoon. 
 
 " Buds are filling, leaves are sweUiag, flowers on field, and bloom on tree : 
 O'er the earth, and air, and ocean. Nature holds her jubilee." 
 
358 
 
 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 Wordsworth thus daintily pictures forth the harbingers ol 
 spring : 
 
 "Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, 
 Let them live upon their praises ; 
 Long as there's a sun that sets, primroses will have their glory — 
 Long as there are violets, they will have a place in story." 
 
 The rural festivities of the May-queen are no longer seen, 
 but the denizens of New York, for the special benefit of the 
 landlords, have substituted a custom instead, of a most moving 
 and exciting character ; we refer to their curious passion for 
 changing their habitations on that day. On this eventful day, 
 the entire community is in a transition state. Like a busy 
 swarm of ants, people are hurrying to and fro, hither and 
 thither, in the most amusing confusion, each eagerly in quest 
 of his new abode. This singular fancy for change of habita- 
 tion seems peculiar to our locomotive people of New York. 
 
 The zodiacal sign of May is Gemini (the twins), named 
 Castor and Pollux, who are fabled to have appeared to sailors 
 in • storms with lambent fires on their heads, as propitious to 
 the mariner. 
 
 May is synonymous with sunny weather ; the state of the 
 weather, by the way, is an ever-fruitful theme of discourse 
 with all sorts of people at all sorts of times. It seems ever 
 uppermost in our thoughts, or upon the tip of the tongue. 
 
 *' It is worthy of note when two friends meet together 
 The first topic they start is the state of the weather — 
 It is always the same, both with young and with old : 
 'Tis either too hot, or else 'tis too cold, 
 'Tis either too wet, or else 'tis too dry. 
 The glass is too low, or else 'tis too high ; 
 But if aU had their wishes once jumbled together, 
 No mortal on earth could exist in such weather." 
 
 We now approach the rosy month of June. It was by the 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 359 
 
 Romans called Junius^ in honor of the youth who served 
 Regulus in the war; or it was more probably derived from 
 Juno, the goddess of heaven. 
 
 The Saxons gave it the name of weyd-monath^ from the 
 German weidcn^ to pasture. 
 
 This is the season for fresh and fragrant flowers — those 
 gaudy and brilliant gems IN'ature bedecks herself withal : the 
 very air is perfumed with their rich odors, and, in the words of 
 Coleridge, — ■ 
 
 " Many a hidden brook, in this leafy month of June, 
 To the sleeping woods aU night singeth a quiet tune." 
 
 Toward the close of the month, that pleasant rural occupa- 
 tion, hay-making, commences: the country now begins to 
 assume a most beautiful aspect — here the corn is already begin- 
 ning to peep out, here the meadows are mown and cleared, 
 and here again the grass still waves in all the rich luxuriance 
 of wild flowers. 
 
 "We have now completed just half the circuit of the calen- 
 dar, and it is high noon of the year ; suppose we indulge in a 
 brief homily upon Time — by way of tempering our trifling, 
 and in order to save our sobriety from shipwreck. How im- 
 portant is it that we duly value the passing moment — all we 
 can boast of Time in possession — jQt are we not ever prone 
 rather to indulge vain regrets for the past, or eager anticipa- 
 tions for the future ? 
 
 " The past ! what is it but a gleam which memory faintly throws ? 
 The future ! 'tis the fairy dream that hope and fear compose. 
 The present ! is the lightrdng glance that comes and disappears : 
 Thus Hf e is but a moment's trance of memories, hopes, and fears ! " 
 
 ^'' Spare minutes are the gold-dust of time," says a quaint 
 author ; " of all portions of our life they are the most to be 
 
360 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 guarded and watched, for they are the gaps through which 
 idleness tempts us astray." An impartial review of the past is 
 fraught with instruction to tlie future : 
 
 " 'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, 
 And ask them what report they bore to heaven." 
 
 Midsummer, also, naturally reminds us of the meridian of 
 life — a point in our history when we may, with advantage, 
 take a retrospective, as well as a prospective survey ; when the 
 premonitions of an occasional gray hair, or wrinkle on the 
 brow, are too decisive to be mistaken. 
 
 " The more we live, more brief appear 
 
 Our life's succeeding- stages : 
 A day to childhood seems a year. 
 
 And years like passing ages. 
 Heaven gives our years of fading strength 
 
 Indemnifying fleetness ; | 
 And those of youth a seeming lengthy 
 
 Proportioned to their sweetness." * 
 
 The sultry summer month of July is now come, — when Sol 
 is in the ascendant, and in his glowing ardor to entertain his 
 guests, gives to all creation such an ardent greeting. Punches 
 humorous apostrophe is too good to be omitted in this place : it 
 runs in this wise : 
 
 ' ' Well done, thou glorious orb ! well done, indeed, 
 Thou sun ; for nature now is one great feast. 
 Roasted, and boiled, and fried, and baked, by thee. 
 Thy fire hath boiled the fishes in the streams ; 
 Roasted the living mutton on the Downs ; 
 Fried all the parsley on its very bed ; 
 And baking the potatoes under ground. 
 Hath cooked them growing ; so that men may dig 
 'Taters all hot ! " 
 
 * Campbell. 
 
 i 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 361 
 
 This month is distinguished by its Dog-days. That every 
 dog has his day, is an admitted axiom, but why the canine 
 fraternity at large should thus monopolize this particular part 
 of the calendar, we cannot divine ; and as we prefer not to dog- 
 matize, we respectfully refer the reader to an old authority, 
 and a witty dog into the bargain — Dog-herry. Whether it is 
 that they expect to run mad with impunity during this term, 
 to the terror of all mayors and municipalities ; or whether it is 
 because all the rest of the year they get kicked out of sight, 
 that this brief interval is secured for their jubilee, we are alike 
 unable to determine ; and must, therefore, leave the learned in 
 such matters to decide, and shall be content to con-cur in their 
 decision. 
 
 Tom Hood has something to add on the subject, which we 
 subjoin : 
 
 ' ' Most doggedly I do maintain, and hold tlie dogma true — 
 That four-legged dogs although we see we've some that walk on two, • 
 Among them there are clever dogs — a few you'd reckon mad, 
 While some are very jolly dogs and others very sad. 
 I've heard of physic thrown to dogs, and very much incline, 
 To think it true, for we've a pack who only bark and w{h)ine.^'' 
 
 The zodiacal sign of the month is Sirius, which is apparently 
 one of the largest objects in the sidereal heavens. 
 
 St. Swithiu's Day is memorable from the tradition that, if 
 there should be rain on that day, it would continue for forty 
 days afterward. 
 
 The " glorious Fourth " is the national birthday of Freedom 
 in the United States, when the Sovereign people indulge in 
 the exercise of the " largest liberty," and by way of canonizing 
 the goddess disturb the quiet air with incessant booming of 
 guns, firing of pistols, and rushing of rockets. 
 
 The golden August now bursts upon us — that gorgeous 
 
362 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 month, most rife with all sorts of delicious fruits and sheaves 
 of garnered grain. 
 
 This month is introduced by Lammas-daj — one of the great 
 thanksgiving festivals of former time : and it closes under the 
 saintly patronage of Jerome. Harvest-home, the rustic jubilee 
 of rural life, also belongs to this glorious month. 
 
 August was called Sextilis by the E-omans, from its being 
 the sixth month in their calendar, until the Senate compli- 
 mented Augustus by naming it after him, because he had then 
 first entered upon his consulship, having subdued Egypt to 
 the Roman dominion ! 
 
 The Saxons called this month arn-monath, more rightly 
 barn-monath, indicating the filling of barns with corn. 
 
 The zodiacal sign of the month — that of Yirgo — the Virgin. 
 
 St. Bartholomew's Day occurs on the 24:th of this month : 
 and it possesses a sad notoriety for its connection with the hor- 
 rible butchery of 15Y2, in Paris. 
 
 The splendor of the summer months now gives place to the 
 sober tints of russet autumn. 
 
 A pastoral writer observes, "Autumn, yet with her hand 
 grasped in the feeble clasp of Summer, as if the latter were 
 loth to depart, still retains much green hanging about the 
 woods, and much blue and sunshine about the sky and earth. 
 But the leaves are rustling in the forest paths, the harvest-fields 
 are silent, and the heavy fruit that bows down the branches 
 proclaims that the labor of Summer is ended — that her yellow- 
 robed sister has come to gather in and garner the rich treasures 
 she has left behind." 
 
 Hope, who looked with a cheerful countenance upon the 
 landscape of Spring, has departed. Instead of watching each 
 green and fiowery object, day by day, as it budded and blos- 
 somed, we now see only the traces of slow and sure decay, the 
 green fading, bit by bit, until the leaves become like the skele- 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 363 
 
 ton wings of an insect, tlie wind blowing through those places 
 which were before marked with azure, and crimson, and gold. 
 The sun himself seems growing older ; he rises later from his 
 bed in the morning, and returns to rest earlier in the evening, 
 and seems not to have that strength which he possessed when 
 he rose in the youthful vigor of Spring, and the bright and 
 cheerful manhood of Summer ; for his golden eyes seem 
 clouded, and his breath thick and heavy, as he struggles 
 through the surrounding fog. All these are marks of the sea- 
 sons, telling us that the year is growing gray, and slowly tot- 
 tering towards the darkness and grave-like silence of Winter. 
 
 Seasons — Punch suggests that an assertion so frequently 
 made, that it is impossible to arrest the flight of Time, is alto- 
 gether erroneous, for who is there that cannot stojp a minute. 
 
 "A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes — the 
 leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, 
 the clouds fleeting like our illasions, the light diminishing like 
 our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the 
 rivers becoming frozen like our lives — all bear secret relations 
 to our destinies." * 
 
 The name September, being derived from Sejptem^ seven, 
 indicates its order in the Roman Calendar, prior to the Julian 
 reform. The zodiacal sign is the constellation of Libra^ or the 
 Balance / because when the sun entered this asterism it seemed 
 to hold the days and nights in equilibrio, giving the same pro- 
 portion of light as darkness to the inhabitants of all parts of 
 the globe. 
 
 The transition from autumnal richness to the desolation of 
 winter is gradual, almost imperceptible, like our own advanc- 
 ing years. Miller, the poet, thus writes about it : 
 
 " Forest scenery never looks so beautiful as in Autumn. It 
 is then that Nature seems to have exhausted all the fantastic 
 
 * Chateaubriand. 
 
364 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 colors of her palette, and to have scattered her richest red, 
 brown, yellow, and purple upon the foliage. Every gust of 
 wdnd that now blows brings down thousands of golden-colored 
 acorns, that come pattering like little feet among the fallen 
 leaves, leaving empty their smooth, round, hollow cups, from 
 which the old poets in their fables framed the drinking 
 vessels of the fairies." 
 
 October is from the Latin octo, eight ; with the Saxons it 
 was styled winterfyllith — winter beginning. 
 
 The principal Saints' days of this month are those of St. 
 Dennis — who, according to the legend, walked two miles with 
 his head in his hand, after it had been cut off — and of St. 
 Crispin, the patron of the shoe-making fraternity. 
 
 One of the Comia Almanacs attempts the facetious on this 
 month, in the following playful stanzas : 
 
 " The sum of Summer is cast at last, 
 
 And carried to Wintry season, 
 And the frightened leaves are leaving" us fast, 
 
 If they stayed it would be high trees-on. 
 The sheep, exposed to the rain and drift, 
 
 Are left to all sorts of wetliers^ 
 And the ragged young birds must make a sMft 
 
 Until they can get new feathers." 
 
 In noting the chronicles of Time, we find " The pale, 
 descending year, yet pleasing still ; " for although the sere and 
 3^ellow leaf now greets us, where a short time since all was 
 verdant, and Nature has doffed her gay attire, yet is there 
 great beauty even in the blanched and frozen landscape, 
 which dull spirits deem all dreary, desolate, and dead. 
 
 Shelley's exquisite dirge is known to many readers ; it may 
 not be to all ; listen : 
 
 " The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, 
 The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 365 
 
 And the year 
 On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, 
 
 Is lying-. 
 Come months, come away, from November to May, 
 
 In your saddest array ; 
 Follow the bier of the dead, cold year. 
 And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre." 
 
 November is the next month we reach'; its name being de- 
 rived from novem — nine. 
 
 All-Souls Day occurs on the second of this month — conse- 
 crated to the memory of those saintly personages of yore, to 
 the invocation of whom the Church had not assigned any par- 
 ticular date. The closing day of November is St. Andrew's ; 
 St. Cecilia has also conferred a ghostly honor on this month, 
 as well as upon music. 
 
 We close our notice of this notable month with a brief but 
 elegant passage from the pen of that sunny and healthful 
 writer, Leigh Hunt. " November," he says, " with its loss of 
 verdure, its frequent rains, the fall of the leaf, and the visible 
 approach of winter, is imdoubtedly a gloomy month to the 
 gloomy, but to others its brings but pensiveness — a feeling very 
 far from being destitute of pleasure ; and if the healthiest and 
 most imaginative of us may feel their spirits pulled down by 
 reflections connected with eartli, — its mortalities and its mis- 
 takes, we shall but strengthen ourselves the more to make 
 strong and sweet music with the changeful but harmonious 
 movements of nature." 
 
 December, from Decern — ten. The Saxons named it wiiiter- 
 monath. 
 
 We have watched the progress of the year, from its birth to 
 its death. We have watched the procession of tlie sister 
 months, and in their course the successive seasons — the bright, 
 brilliant, and evanescent glories of the joyous spring, the gor- 
 
366 THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 geous sunsets of the sultry summer, the rich exuberance of 
 fruit-bearing autumn; and now we are fairly in companionship 
 with the frigid winter, with its brief days and prolonged nights. 
 We are reminded here of a very literal reason once rendered, 
 in reply to the inquiry, as to the cause of the length of days in 
 summer, and their brevity in winter ; namely, that it the na- 
 ture of heat to expand, and of cold to contract. 
 
 Punch thus refers to the frozen desolation of winter : 
 
 " There is a stoppage in the currency 
 Of all the streams, which cannot liqiiidate 
 Their tribute to the sea. The frozen soil, 
 Hard up, no more repays the husbandman. 
 Each object, crusted o'er with rime and snow — 
 Seems whitewashed. Of their furniture the trees 
 Are stripped ; and everywhere distringas reign. 
 On one vast picture of insolvency 
 We gaze around ; and did we not repose 
 In Mother Earth's resources confidence 
 Should see no prospect of a dividend 
 Of sixpence in the pound ! " 
 
 '^o\emher and Deceinher are called the embers of the dying 
 year. 
 
 The famous festival of St. Nicholas — " the boy-bishop," and 
 the tutelar saint of childhood — is celebrated on the sixth. 
 Dreary, indeed, would this ice-clad month be, were it not for 
 the glowing associations of its merry Christmas, with its liolly 
 and mistletoe, and the gladsome gatherings and rejoicings of 
 social life. What bright visions of joyous faces, well-spread 
 tables, and happy firesides, does it kindle up in the memory ; 
 and with what glowing and grateful contrast does the dreary 
 desolation without invest the radiant and jubilant scenes of the 
 domestic hearth. The hearty and generous hospitality which 
 characterizes Christmas celebrations — with the old, orthodox 
 
THE CYCLE OP THE SEASONS. 6bl 
 
 accessories of that delicious conglomerate of all good tilings — 
 plum-pudding, and its accompaniment, the glorious sirloin — 
 are enough to tempt the veriest anchorite to participate in 
 Epicurean delights ; for surely the palate that could not appre- 
 ciate, nay, luxuriate over such dainty and delectable dishes, 
 must have become sadly perverted and depraved. 
 
 The term Christmas is derived from the I^atin Church — it is 
 properly Christi Massa (the Mass of Christ). 
 
 In former times, the celebration of Christmas began in the 
 latter part of the previous day — Christmas Eve. The house 
 was first decked with holly, ivy, and other evergreens. Candles 
 of an uncommon size were then lighted under the name of Christ- 
 mas candles ; an enormous log, called the Yule log, or Christ- 
 mas block, was laid upon the fire, while the people sat round, 
 regaling themselves with beer. In the course of the night 
 small parties went about from house to house, singing what 
 were called Christmas Carols, commemorative of the nativity 
 of our Lord. 
 
 Twelfth-day — the anniversary of the adoration of the magi 
 — occurs on the twelfth day after Christmas. Many curious 
 customs are associated with its celebration, in Great Britain 
 and on the Continent. Thus we find in the Gentleman^ s Mag- 
 azine for 1759, in the record for January : " Being Twelfth- 
 day, his majesty went to the Chapel Royal, with the usual 
 solemnity, and offered gold, myrrh, and frankincense, in three 
 purses, at the altar, according to ancient custom." 
 
 Time is the universal talent, subjecting every man living to 
 a charge and an account. Within its circles all our other 
 talents turn. They are the wheels within this great wheel, 
 whose united movement causes it to revolve, for, as they are 
 duly exercised, Time is successfully employed. It is the entail 
 of humanity, come down to us as our inalienable heritage ; 
 and, as in the law of primogeniture, unencumbered with our 
 
THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. 
 
 father's debts. May we prove sncli wise occupants and inheri- 
 tors of this valuable property, that, whatever may be the 
 passing anxieties of its tenure, we may realize its profits here- 
 after ! 
 
 " 'Tis not for man to trifle ! Life is brief, 
 
 And sin. is here. 
 Our age is but the falling of a leaf, 
 
 A dropping tear. 
 We have no time to sport away the hours ; 
 All must be earnest in a world like ours. 
 
 *' Not many lives, but only one have we ; 
 
 One, only one — 
 How sacred should that one Hfe ever be — 
 
 That narrow span ! 
 Day after day filled up with blessed toil. 
 Hour after hour stUl bringing in new spoil." 
 
 i 
 

 PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 
 
 " Of all writers, the poet," wrote Washington Irving, " be- 
 comes the most fascinated with his gentle vocation. Others 
 may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the 
 heart will always understand him. His writings contain the 
 spirit, the aroma, if I may use the phrase, of the age in which 
 he lives. They are caskets which enclose within a small com- 
 pass the wealth of the language — its family jewels, which are 
 thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity." " There is a 
 pleasure in poetic pains," we have been told ; and not seldom 
 have the votaries of the muse had to learn in suffering what 
 they teach in song; yet what poet has not strung his lyre to 
 the honor of his muse, and with Chaucer rather have 
 
 " At his bedde's head 
 A twenty bokes, clothed in blacke and red, 
 Of Aristotle, and his phylosophie, 
 Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psalterie." 
 
 24 
 
370 PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 
 
 The pleasures of writing are among the chief incentives to 
 authorship. There are millions of men, says Byron, who have 
 never written a book, but few who have written only one. 
 
 " Literature," says a modern essayist, '^ has its solitary pleas- 
 ures, and they are many / it has also its social pleasures, and 
 they are "inore. 
 
 In the olden time, when life went on its way less swiftly, 
 men of meditative character had leisure for retirement and 
 study ; and albeit they indulged somewhat in verbose prolixity, 
 yet they did the world some service, for they gathered for us 
 many a sweet flower of rhetoric and of poesy, the sweets of 
 which we have since sought to distil, although the blossoms 
 have faded away. 
 
 The domestic life of genius has afforded many touching in- 
 stances of happy contentment under privation, and of the 
 heroic pursuit of knowledge under difficulties ; because sus- 
 tained and inspired by a devotion to study. 
 
 Who would not like to have seen Eichardson reading chap- 
 ters of his novels to his listening friends, in his favorite grotto ; 
 or Sterne, by his own fireside with his daughter copying, and his 
 wife knitting ; or Scott, with his favorite dogs, amid the antique 
 armorial insignia of his sanctum, at Abbotsf ord ; or Dickens, in 
 his, at Gadshill, surrounded with the multitudinous creations of 
 his fertile fancy ? Then think of Milton, in his blindness, in- 
 diting those majestic measures concerning a Paradise Lost and 
 Regained. Humble yet stately as to his worldly aspect, but how 
 imperial as to his mental ; and how good as well as great ! Like 
 Shakespeare, Burke and Goldsmith, in their respective depart- 
 ments, what have they not achieved and what does not the world 
 owe to their genius ? 
 
 Scott and Goethe alike confessed their obligations to the 
 Vicar of Wakefield ; and it has been welcomed, like the Pil- 
 grim^ s Progress^ with smiles and tears by myriads of readers. 
 
PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 371 
 
 It has been well said, therefore, that " Books are not seldom 
 talismans and spells." With most of the poets. Homer, 
 Spenser, and Shakespeare have been ever favorite books. 
 Alexander the Great is said to have slept with a copy of 
 Homer under his pillow. Plutarch's Lives was one of 
 Franklin's favorite works, as his own practical maxims have 
 been of many in later times. 
 
 Cobbett's earliest choice of a book was Swift's Tale of a 
 Tub ; and strangely enough it seems to have had a quicken- 
 ing influence upon his mind. He seems to have been delighted 
 with it, carrying it about with him wherever he went. Three 
 of Byron's favorite books were, Burton's Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly. D'Israeli's Literary Character^ and Scott's Novels. 
 Who does not remember that fairy book, the Arabian Nights^ 
 and the exploits of Don Quixote f 
 
 In spite of all mutations, the cadences of the true muse must 
 live still in the sweet echoes that reverberate through the 
 caverns of human thought. The poet's forms of speech are 
 deathless, for in him 
 
 " Language was a perpetual Orphic song, 
 ■V\Tiich ruled, with Dsedal harmonie, a throng 
 Of thoughts and forms." 
 
 Let us now note some of the curious modes in which writers 
 have indulged their quaint conceits and felicitous thoughts. 
 
 About the middle of the seventeenth century, the scribes, or 
 rather those whose ambition was not of the most soaring order, 
 used to divert themselves and rack their inventive powers by 
 torturing and twisting their verses into odd devices and shapes, 
 expressive of the themes they discussed — as might be expected, 
 to the serious detriment of their poetic merit. Many of these 
 fantastic performances were of grotesque or even ludicrous de- 
 scription. 
 
372 PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 
 
 It was the literary humor of a certain Maecenas, when he en- 
 tertained his scribes, to place at the head of the table those who 
 had published huge folios, next to them authors in quarto, and 
 below them the octavos and duodecimos. As specimens of in- 
 genious trifling, we might mention the minute document pre- 
 sented to Queen Elizabeth. It comprised the Decalogue, Creed, 
 and Lord's Prayer, all beautifully written in the compass of a 
 finger-nail. Yet the early scribes found it much easier to write 
 up to a folio than down to a duodecimo ; for the condensing 
 process was an art with which they were wholly unacquainted. 
 
 The fancy for alliteration is far from being a novelty ; it 
 prevailed among the Elizabethan poets, and the yet earlier 
 ballads and nursery ditties, which, although they still remain 
 with us, date back as far as the renowned " Peter Piper," who 
 is said to have " picked a peck of pickled peppers," and that 
 other worthy, " Theophilus Thistlethwaite," who thoughtlessly 
 " thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb ! " 
 Many, indeed, of our poets occasionally indulged in this allit- 
 erative fancy; for example, Southey, in his Falls of Lodore, 
 and Edgar Poe, in his rhythmical Bells. One of the most 
 ingenious, if not the most ingenious, of alliterative poems in our 
 language, is the following, the authorship of which is, we be- 
 lieve, unknown. It is entitled the " Siege of Belgrade." 
 
 " An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, 
 Boldly, by battery, besieged Belgrade ; 
 Cossack commanders cannonading come, 
 Dealing destruction's devastating doom ; 
 Every endeavor engineers essay. 
 For fame, for fortune fighting — furious fray ! 
 Generals 'gainst generals grapple — gracious God ! 
 How honors Heav'n heroic hardihood ! 
 Infuriate, indiscriminate, in ill. 
 Kinsmen kill kindred, kindred kinsmen kill ! 
 Labor low levels longest, loftiest lines ; 
 
PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 373 
 
 Men march, 'mid moimds, 'mid moles, 'mid mnrd'rous mines ; 
 
 Now noisy, noxious numbers notice naught 
 
 Of outward obstacles opposing ought ; 
 
 Poor patriots ! partly purchas'd, partly press'd. 
 
 Quite quaking, quickly ' quarter, quarter' quest. 
 
 Eeason returns, religious right redounds, 
 
 Suwarrow stops such sanguinary sounds ; 
 
 Truce to thee Turkey ! triumph to thy train I 
 
 Unjust, unwise, unmerciful Ukraine ! 
 
 Vanish vain victory ! — vanish victory vain ! 
 
 Why wish we warfare ? wherefore welcome were 
 
 Xerxes, Ximenas, Xanthus, Xavier, 
 
 Yield, yield, ye youths ! ye yeomen yield your yell I 
 
 Zeno's, Zarpater's, Zoroaster's zeal ; 
 
 Attracting all, arms against acts appeal." 
 
 As affording an illustration of tlie union of sound and sense, 
 we select from many other examples the following well-known 
 lines of Pope : 
 
 ' ' When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, 
 The words, too, labor, and the line moves slow : 
 Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, — 
 Flies o'er the imbending com, and skims along the main." 
 
 Even the grave Dr. Johnson could relax occasionally from 
 his severer studies, as the following lines attest : 
 
 " If the man who turnips cries 
 Cry not when his father dies, 
 'Tis a proof that he had rather 
 Have a turnip than his father ! " 
 
 As an ingenious play upon words and sounds, rather than 
 a collection of " wise saws," we cite the chorus to a popular 
 London street song : 
 
 " I saw Esau kissing Kate, 
 
 And the fact is, we all three saw ; 
 For I saw Esau, he saw me. 
 And she saw — I saw Esau ! " 
 
374 PASTIMES OF THE PEK 
 
 We offer another example of the use of a word in a variety 
 of senses and witty combinations : 
 
 ' ' He took her fancy when lie came, 
 
 He took her hand, he took a kiss, 
 He took no notice of the shame 
 
 That glowed her happy face at this ; 
 He took to coming afternoons, 
 
 He took an oath he'd ne'er deceive, 
 He took her master's silver spoons ! 
 
 And after that — ^he took his leave." 
 
 The following is from one of Quarles^ Emblems : 
 
 " "We sack, we ransack to the utmost sands. 
 Of native kingdoms, and of foreign lands ; 
 We travel sea and soil, we pry, we prowl. 
 We progress and we prog, from pole to pole." 
 
 Some writer, referring to this old scribe, observes that " he is 
 neither prolix, prosy, or pragmatic, though often queer, quaint, 
 and querulous." So it seems he minds his ^'5 if not his c^s. 
 
 The celebrated cacophonous couplet, on Cardinal Wolsey, is 
 ingenious, each word, in each line, beginning and continuing 
 with the same letter : 
 
 " Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred. 
 How high his Honor holds^his haughty head ! " 
 
 Ingenious literary trifling, it may be called ; but we must 
 remember that much of it owes its origin to monkish seclusion, 
 or the quiet of the scholar's hermitage ; we may well excuse an 
 occasional indulgence in such trivialities. Monastic life must 
 have been a monotonous one at the best, and needed something 
 to beguile it of its tedium. 
 
 Here is an example of what has been called Concatenation, or 
 
PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 375 
 
 cliain verses, in which the last phrase of every line is the first 
 of the following : 
 
 " The longer life, the more offence : 
 
 The more offence, the greater pain ; 
 The greater pain, the less defence ; 
 
 The less defence, the lesser gain ; 
 The loss of gain long ill doth try, 
 Wherefore, come, death, and let me die ! 
 Come, gentle death, the ebb of care ; 
 
 The ebb of care, the flood of life ; 
 The flood of life, the joyful fare ; 
 
 The joyful fare, the end of strife ; 
 The end of strife, that thing wish I, 
 "Wherefore, come, death, and let me die ! 
 
 The merit of the following specimen of monastic verse con- 
 sists in its being alike acrostic, mesostic, and telestic : 
 
 " Inter cuncta micans " Igniti sidera coell 
 
 Expellit tenebras E toto Phoebus ut orbE 
 
 Sic cascas removet JESUS caliginis umbraS 
 
 Vivificansque simul Vero praBcordia motV 
 
 Solem justitiae." Sese probat esse beatiS." 
 
 The following translation preserves the acrostic and mesostic, 
 though not the telestic form of the original : 
 
 " In glory, see the rising sun, Illustrious orb of day, 
 
 Enlightening heaven's wide expanse. Expel night's gloom away. 
 So light into the darkest soul, JeSus, Thou dost impart 
 
 Uplifting thy life-giving smiles, Upon the deadened heart. 
 
 Sun, Thou of righteousness divine. Sole King of saints Thou art." 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable anagram known is that on the 
 Latin of Pilate's question to the Saviour. 
 
 ' ' Quid est Veritas ? — Est vir qui adest. 
 An anagram, which is a species of literary trifling, is the 
 
376 PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 
 
 transposition of the letters of a sentence into a new combina- 
 tion, still retaining its characteristic applicability. 
 
 Some of the old monkish scribes, known as the lipogram- 
 matists, used to beguile their leisure by composing a poem on 
 a given subject, from which some particular letter of the 
 alphabet should be excluded. Gregorio Leti presented a dis- 
 course to the Academy of the Humorists at Kome, wherein the 
 letter t was excluded ; and a friend having requested a copy, 
 as a literary curiosity, he replied by a copious answer of seven 
 pages, written in the same manner. 
 
 Another description of eccentric poetry that might be men- 
 tioned is that wherein every word of a poem begins with the 
 same letter ; of which the Pugna Porcorum is an instance, 
 containing about three hundred lines, every word of which 
 begins with the letter^. 
 
 MaoaroniG poetry is a mixing of words from different lan- 
 guages, like a dish of macaroni ; in its more general accepta- 
 tion it includes alliterative verse and other peculiar and 
 affected styles of writing. For example, the line of Ennius : 
 
 ' O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta, Tyrarme, tulisti." 
 
 And the following, which has been attributed to Prof. Per- 
 son: 
 
 " Cane decane cane, ne tu cane cane decane, 
 De cane sed canis cane decane cane." 
 
 A monk of the Benedictine order, Folengi, of Yen ice (better 
 known as Merlin), was a noted writer of this kind of poetry in 
 Latin. He lived during the first half of the sixteenth century. 
 In later times, Drummond of Hawthornden wrote the first 
 British macaronic poem ; then followed Dr. Geddes (1737- 
 1802), who wrote several small volumes of this kind of litera- 
 ture. 
 
PASTIIVIES OF THE PEN. 377 
 
 Porson once observing that he could pan on any subject, a 
 person present defied hhn to do so on the Latin gerunds, which, 
 however, he immediately did in the following admirable coup- 
 let: 
 
 " Wlien Dido found ^neas would not come, 
 She sat in silence, and was Di-do-dum." 
 
 The anagram is formed by the transposition of the letters of 
 a name, by which a new word or phrase of some characteristic 
 significance with the former is formed. One of the most suc- 
 cessful specimens is that by Dr. Burney on Horatio Nelson^ — 
 Honor est a Nilo^ — referring to his celebrated victory. 
 
 One of the most skilful anagrams known was that on Ma- 
 gliahechi, by Pere Finardi : Antonius Magliabechius — Is unus 
 hibliotheca magna. 
 
 Among ingenious literary fabrications. Swift's celebrated 
 Latin puns deserve a prominent place, for they have never 
 been excelled. This species of composition consists of Latin 
 words, and allowing for false spelling and the running the 
 words into each other, makes good sense in English as well as 
 Latin. For example — 
 
 " Apud in is almi de si re, "A pudding is all my desire, 
 Mi-m i a tres I ne ver re qui re, My mistress I never require, 
 
 Alo veri findit a gestis, A lover I find it a jest is, 
 
 His miseri ne ver at restis." His misery never at rest is." 
 
 " Mollis abuti, • "Moll is a beauty, 
 
 Has an acuti. Has an acute eye, < 
 
 No lasso finis, No lass so fine is, 
 
 Omni de armistress, Oh my dear mistress, 
 
 Cantu disco ver, Can't you discover, 
 
 Meas alo ver ? " Me as a lover." 
 
 Here is another waif belonging to the same class : 
 
 '* There was a bard in sad quandary, 
 To find the rhyme for Tipperary ; 
 
*' 
 
 378 PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 
 
 He hunted through the dictionary, 
 But found no rhyme for Tipperary ; 
 He rummaged the vocabulary, 
 But still no rhyme for Tipperary ; 
 He applied unto his mother Mary, 
 To know the rhyme for Tipperary ; 
 But she, good woman, knew her dairy, 
 But not the rhyme for Tipperary." 
 
 Among rhythmical puns may be cited the Hnes attributed 
 to the bard of Avon, whether correctly or not, we need not 
 stay to inquire. We subjoin the first and third stanzas 
 only : 
 
 " Would ye be taught, ye feathered throng. 
 
 With love's sweet notes to grace your song, 
 
 To pierce the heart ^vith thrilling lay, 
 
 Listen to mine Anne Hathaway ! 
 
 She hath a way to sing so clear, 
 
 Phoebus might, wondering, stop to hear 1 
 
 To melt the sad, make blithe the gay, 
 
 And nature charm, Anne hath a way ; 
 
 She hath a way, 
 
 Anne Hathaway : 
 
 To breathe delight, Anne hath a way." 
 ****** 
 
 Talk not of gems, the orient list. 
 The diamond, topaz, amethyst. 
 The emerald mild, the ruby gay. 
 Talk of my gem — Anne Hathaway 1 
 She hath a way, with her bright eye, 
 Their various lustre to defy — 
 The jewel she, the foil, they, 
 So sweet to look, Anne Hathaway ; 
 She hath a way, 
 Anne Hathaway : 
 To shame bright gems Anne hath a way ! " 
 
 Here is another poetical play upon a name not unworthy of 
 
PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 379 
 
 a place here. It is an epigram upon a lady rejoicing in the 
 name of Kain : the author is not known : 
 
 " WMle shivering- beaux at weatlier rail, — 
 Of frost and snow, and wind and hail, 
 
 And heat and cold complain ; 
 My steadier mind is always bent, 
 On one sole object of content, 
 
 I ever wish for Kain ; 
 Hymen, thy votary's prayer attend, 
 His anxious hope and suit befriend, 
 
 Let him not ask in vain ; 
 His thirsty soul, his parched estate, 
 His glowing breast commiserate — 
 
 In pity give him — Rain ! " 
 
 Here are a few more eccentricities of the pen, which have 
 been styled Paronomasia (which is the short for play upon 
 words) : 
 
 " Write, we know is written right. 
 Then we see it written — write ; * 
 
 But when we see it written wright 
 We know it is not written right : 
 For write, to have it written right, 
 Must not be written, right or wright. 
 Nor yet should it be written rite ; — 
 But write, for so 'tis written right." 
 
 Now, t/mt is a word, that may often be joined. 
 For that tJiat may be doubled is clear to the mind ; 
 And tJiat that that is right, is as plain to the view. 
 As tJiat, tliat that that we use, is rightly used, too, 
 And that that that that that line has in it, is right — 
 In accordance with grammar — is plain in our sight. " 
 
 Schott and Willirig did engage in duel fierce and hot ; 
 Schott shot Willing willingly, and Willing he shot Schott. 
 The shot Schott shot made Willing quite a spectacle to see, 
 WhUe WiUing's willing shot went right through Schott's anatomy.' 
 
T! 
 
 380 PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 
 
 " I cannot bear to see a bear bear down upon a bare, 
 When bare of bair he strips tbe bare, for bare I cry, ' forbear ' ! " 
 
 As an instance of echo- versifying, Addison's sqng is note- 
 v/orthy : 
 
 " Ecbo, tell me, wbile I wander o'er tbis fairy plain to prove him, 
 If my sbepberd stOl grows fonder, ougbt I, in return, to love bim ? 
 
 ^c^— ^Love bim, love bim. 
 " If be loves, as is tbe fasbion, sbould I cburlisbly forsake bim ? 
 Or, in pity to bis passion, fondly to my bosom take bim ? 
 
 Echo — Take bim, take bim. ' 
 Here is another example : 
 
 " Has Phoebe not a beavenly brow ? 
 Is it not wbite as pearl — as snow ? 
 
 Ass! no! 
 ' ' Her eyes — was ever such a pair ? 
 Are tbe stars brigbter tban tbey are ? 
 
 TJiey are ! 
 " Ecbo, tbou iiest,-^but can't deceive me ; 
 Her eyes eclipse tbe stars, — believe me — 
 
 Leave me ! 
 " But come, tbou saucy, pert romancer. 
 Who is as fair as Pboebe ? answer ! 
 
 Ann^ Sir! " 
 
 The line from Gray's "Elegy," "The ploughman homeward 
 plods his weary way," has been found to admit of eighteen 
 transpositions, without destroying the rhyme, or altering the 
 sense ; the reader will be content with the following : 
 
 " The weary plougbman plods bis bomeward way. 
 Tbe weary plougbman bomeward plods bis way. 
 Tbe plougbman, weary, plods bis bomeward way. 
 Tbe plougbman, weary, bomeward plods bis way. 
 Weary tbe plougbman plods bis bomeward way. 
 Weary tbe plougbman bomeward plods bis way. 
 Homeward tbe plougbman plods bis weary way. 
 Homeward tbe weary plougbman plods bis way. 
 Homeward tbe ploughman, weary, plods bis way. 
 
 ■11 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 381 
 
 The homeward ploughman weary plods his way. 
 The homeward ploughman plods his'weary way." 
 
 The following mongrel stanzas afford a good instance of 
 Mosaic verse : 
 
 "'■ The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
 In every clime, from Lapland to Japan ; 
 To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray 
 The proper study of mankind is man. 
 
 "Tell ! for you can, what is it to be wise, 
 
 Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain ? 
 ' The man of Ross 1 ' each lisping babe replies, 
 And drags, at each remove, a lengthening chain. 
 
 " Ah ! who can tell how hard it is to climb 
 Far as the solar walk or milky- way ? 
 Procrastination is the thief of time. 
 Let Hercules himself do what he may. 
 
 ' ' 'Tis education forms the common mind. 
 The feast of reason and the flow of soul ; 
 I must be cruel only to be kind, 
 And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole. 
 
 " Syphax ! I joy to meet thee thus alone. 
 Where'er I roam, whatever lands I see ; 
 A youth to fortune and to fame unknown. 
 In maiden meditation fancy free. 
 
 " Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, 
 
 Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 
 Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, 
 Man never is, but always to be blest." 
 
 Here is another specimen of literary ingenuity. Two words 
 of opposite meanings, spelled with exactly the same letters, 
 form a Telestick ; that is, the letters beginning the lines — when 
 
 I 
 
382 PASTIMES OF THE PEX. 
 
 uuited — were to give one of the words, and the letters at the 
 end were to produce the other — thus : 
 
 "U-nite and untie are the same— so say yo-U 
 N-ot in -wedlock, I wean, has the unity bee-N 
 I-n the drama of marriage, each wandering gou-T 
 T-o a new face would fly — aU except you and I, 
 E-ach seeking to alter the spdl in their scen-E." 
 
 Hood, the " prince of punsters," never exceeded, perhaps, the 
 following adroit surprises of this one stanza : 
 
 " His death, which happened in his berth, 
 At forty odd bef eU ; 
 They went and told the sexton, and 
 The sexton tolled the beU." 
 
 Scott said once that some of his friends were bad accountants, 
 but excellent hooh-heejpers. Hood has some witty lines on the 
 subject of literary larceny : 
 
 " How hard, when those who do not wish to lend — ^that's lose — their books, 
 Are snared by anglers — folks that fish with literary hooks, 
 Who caU and take some favorite tome, but never read it through. 
 They thus complete their set at home, by making one of you ! 
 I, of my Spenser, quite bereft, last winter sore was shaken ; 
 Of Lamb, I've but a quarter left, nor could I save my Bacon. 
 They picked my Locke, to me far more than Brahma's patent worth ; 
 And now my losses I deplore, without a Hojne on earth ! 
 My life is wasting fast away — I suffer from these shocks 
 And though I've fixed a lock on Gray, there's gray upon my locks." 
 
 We ought to supplement the foregoing with PuncJh's advice 
 under such circumstances, to wit : " Never lend your books." 
 
 Hood's NoctuTnal Sketch is a successful illustration of a 
 triple rhyme. Most bards are content with one rhyme at the 
 end of the line, but here we have three, without weakening the 
 sense. 
 
 ' ' Even has come, and from the dark park, hark ! 
 The signal of the setting sun — one gun \ 
 
 1 
 
PASTIMES OF THE PEN. 38e3 
 
 And six is sounding from the chime, — prime time 
 
 To go and see the Drury Lane Dane slain ; 
 
 Or hear Othello's jealous doubt spout out, 
 
 Or Macbeth raving at that shade-made blade : 
 
 Or in the small Olympic pit, sit split. 
 
 Laughing at Liston, while you quiz his phiz ! 
 
 Anon, Night comes — and with her wings, brings things 
 
 Such as, with his poetic tongue, Young sung : 
 
 The gas upblazes with its bright, white light. 
 
 And paralytic watchmen prowl, howl, growl. 
 
 Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads, 
 
 And sleepers grumble — ' ' drat that cat ! " 
 
 Who in the gutter catterwauls, squalls, mauls. 
 
 Some feline foe, and screams in shrill ill-will. 
 
 While nurse-maid in a nightmare rest, chest-pressed, 
 
 Dreameth of one of her old flames, James G-rames ; * 
 
 And that she hears — what faith is man's — Anne's banns. 
 
 And his, from Reverend Mr. Rice, twice, thrice ! 
 
 White ribbons flourish, and a stout shout out. 
 
 That upward goes, shows Rose knows those beaux's woes ! " 
 
 At the commencement of our desultory gossip concerning 
 the eccentricities of the pen we referred to some of the pet- 
 books of authors ; we all have our especial book-loves — books 
 that nestle closely around our affections, and which through 
 life we cling to with the ardor of a hrst-love. 
 
 Do we err, gentle reader, in suspecting that such literary 
 loves are thine? That some select favorites occupy the place 
 of honor on the shelves of thy library ? Were* we to venture 
 a conjecture as to who these favorites of thine may be, we 
 should instinctively be guided by our o^vn choice. Does not 
 honest Izaak Walton belong to the category ? For a sequestered 
 place and hour w^ho could be preferred before him — so replete 
 with genial sentiment and sagacious aphorism ? Do not Haz- 
 litt, Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb form a triumvirate of wor- 
 thies unsurpassed in belles-lettres? For winter's fireside or 
 summer-time ramble who can offer to us pleasanter matter of 
 
384 PASTBIES OF THE PEN. 
 
 discourse than Elia ; so charged with electric wit and subtle 
 humor ? And are not the delightful collectanea of literary cu- 
 riosities of D' Israeli an inexhaustible resource of intellectual 
 pleasure ? If, a-wearj and toil-worn, we turn from the din and 
 turmoil of the world, what can be devised better suited to be- 
 guile our cares into peace ; and if we can excuse their prolixity, 
 are there not also Montaigne, and Burton ; seed-books for cen- 
 turies of later writers and rife as ever with curious and saera- 
 cious facts and fancies. Then, again, we do not forget the 
 essayists and novelists, Irving, Dickens, and Bulwer ; and the 
 priesthood of song, from Shakespeare to Tennyson and Long- 
 fellow. Yes, we subscribe to the sentiment of the poet where 
 he sings: 
 
 " Oil, sweet 'twill be — or hope would so believe, 
 When close round life its fading tints of eve 
 To turn again, our earlier volumes o'er. 
 And love them then, because we've loved before, 
 And inly bless the waning hour that brings 
 A will to lean once more on simple things. 
 If this be weakness, welcome life's decline, 
 If this be second childhood, be it mine." 
 
PULPIT PECULIAEITIES. 
 
 The " odor of sanctity " which attaches to the olHce of the 
 Christian ministry has ever claimed and received the deference 
 of mankind. The ancient seers, prophets, and patriarchs who 
 were commissioned to make known the will of the Supreme, 
 under the impulse of a direct inspiration, were regarded as 
 supernatu rally endowed, and their utterances deemed oracular. 
 A commission divinely authorized and invested with such moral 
 grandeur, demands a corresponding elevation of character — 
 intellectual, moral, and religious — in those who assume its 
 functions ; and the world naturally looks for these accessories. 
 
 "A parson," writes George Herbert^ "is the deputy of 
 25 
 
386 PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 
 
 Christ for the reducing of man to the obedience of God." He 
 further quaintly adds : " His apparel is plain, but reverend, and 
 clean without spots or dust ; the purity of his mind breaking 
 out and dilating itself, even to his body, clothes, and habi- 
 tation." This remark of Herbert probably originated the 
 saying that '' cleanliness is next to godliness," which has beerf 
 ascribed to John Wesley. 
 
 Some regard the clerical profession with a blind, supersti- 
 tious reverence — these are the victims of priestcraft. There 
 are others with equal absurdity, who deem it the asylum of 
 infatuation and indolence — these are the sceptical and profane. 
 A third class are those who appreciate its ^orth, and who ven- 
 erate the sacred office, regarding it as Heaven's expedient for 
 securing the moral elevation and happiness of the race ; an 
 institution of the highest importance to man's present and 
 eternal well-being. 
 
 That the embassy with which the Christian minister is 
 charged is one of difficulty, is undeniable, for it has to contend 
 against the moral forces constantly in operation in the human 
 heart, which are antagonistic to its claims. Yet the sacredness 
 of its sanctions may well fire the zeal of its advocate, and ren- 
 der him superior to all opposition. 
 
 Among the early Christians the modern style of preaching 
 was reversed ; the preacher generally delivered his exhortation 
 in a sitting posture, while the congregation heard him standing. 
 Chrysostom preached in this manner. 
 
 It is related even of Constantine the Great that he did not 
 resume his seat during a long sermon by Eusebius, and that all 
 the assembly followed his example. 
 
 The old English name, parson, is supposed to be a corrup- 
 tion of person, the person — by eminence. Fuller remarks that 
 the Scriptures give four names to Christians, taken from the 
 four cardinal graces : Saints^ for their holiness ; helievers, for 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 387 
 
 their faith ; hrethren, for their love ; discvples^ for their 
 knowledge. 
 
 The clergy were originally styled clerks, from the IN'orman 
 custom of their judges being chosen from the sacred order. 
 In the first century, they were distinguished by the titles of 
 presbyter and bishops. Church music is supposed to have been 
 first introduced by Gregory the Great, a.d. 602. Church- 
 steeples were originally parochial fortresses. 
 
 Sydney Smith thus defines the object of preaching : " It is 
 constantly to remind mankind of what mankind is constantly 
 forgetting ; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, 
 but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions ; to recall 
 mankind from the by-paths where they turn, into the path of 
 salvation which all know but few tread." 
 
 The aims and topics of the pulpit have been eloquently con- 
 densed by Talfourd. We transcribe the passage : 
 
 " The subjects of the pulpit have never been varied from 
 the day the Holy Spirit visibly descended on the first advocates 
 of the gospel in tongues of fire. They are in no danger of 
 being exhausted by frequency, or changed with the vicissitudes 
 of mortal fortune. They have immediate relation to that eter- 
 nity, the idea of which is the living soul of all poetry and art. 
 It is the provin(3e of the preacher of Christianity to develop 
 the connection between this world and the next ; to watch over 
 the beginning of a course that will endure forever, and to trace 
 the broad shadows cast from imperishable realities on the shift- 
 ing scenery of earth. The mysteries of our being, life and 
 death, both in their strange essences and in their sublimer re- 
 lation, are topics of their ministry. There is nothing affecting 
 in the human conditions, nothing majestic in the affections, 
 nothing touching in the instability of human dignities, the 
 fragility of loveliness, or the heroism of self-sacrifice, which is 
 not a theme suited to their high purposes. It is theirs to dwell 
 
388 PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 
 
 on the oldest history of the world ; on the beautiful simplicity 
 of the patriarchal age ; on the stern and awful religion, and 
 marvellous story of the Hebrews ; on the glorious visions of 
 the prophets and their fulfilment ; on the character, miracles, 
 and death of the Saviour; on all the wonders and all the 
 beauty of the Scriptures." 
 
 What a sermon should be, may be gathered from the follow- 
 ing : " It should be brief ; if lengthy, it will steep our hearts 
 in apathy, our eyes in sleep. It should be warm, a living altar- 
 coal, to melt the icy heart and charm the soul. It should be 
 simple, practical and clear ; no fine-spun theory to charm the 
 ear. It should be tender and affectionate, as His warm theme, 
 who wept lost Salem's fate. It should be mixed with many an 
 ardent prayer, to reach the heart, and -^ and fasten there." 
 
 We are as much under law to religion as to morals. " Mor- 
 ality, without religion, is only a kind of dead reckoning — an 
 endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea, by measuring the 
 distance we have to run, but without any observation of the 
 heavenly bodies." 
 
 " Oratio est clavis diei, et sera noctis^'' — the key of the day, 
 and the lock of the night, is prayer. This was the beautiful 
 saying of a monk of olden time, and it is fragrant for all sea- 
 sons. 
 
 Luther said : " Prayer, meditation, and temptation make a 
 minister." Another vigorous phrase of his is well known — 
 ''Bene orasse, 'bene studuisse^^ — to pray well, is to study well. 
 Prayer is not, however, the solemn duty of the clergy alone, 
 but of all ; the common privilege of dependent creatures. An 
 old writer has quaintly said : " God looks not at the oratory 
 of our prayers, how eloquent they are ; nor at their geometry, 
 how long they are ; nor at their arithmetic, how many they 
 are ; nor at their logic, how methodical they are ; but he looks 
 at their sincerity, how spiritual they are." 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 389 
 
 A Neapolitan monk, named Gabrielle Barlette, wished on one 
 occasion to rebuke the distracting thoughts which too often be- 
 set men when engaged in prayer. He ilhistrated the point by 
 introducing a priest engaged in his morning devotions, and say- 
 ing, " Pater noster qui es in coslis " — (I say, lad, saddle the horse, 
 I'm going to town to-day !) sanctiiicatur nomen tuum — (Cathe- 
 rine, put the pot on the fire), fiat voluntas tua — (take care, the 
 cat's at the cheese), panem nostrum quotidianum — (mind the 
 white horse has his feed of oats). This seems like double deal- 
 ing, and yet it does not necessarily follow that these monks of 
 old meant to be undevout ; it was rather the natural result of 
 formalism. 
 
 " Texts have always been regarded with curiosity and inter- 
 est, have been selected from worthy and unworthy motives ; 
 they have been applied and misapplied, and made the vehicles 
 for personal and political allusions ; with wilful ingenuity and 
 unscriptural spirit, they have been turned into jokes, twisted 
 into puns, and treated with as little scruple as though they had 
 been the words of heathen poets ; they have been manipulated 
 by abbreviated quotations, and tortured with false emphasis, in 
 order to present oddities and incongruities by no means in ac- 
 cordance with the original terms ; and we can hardly wonder 
 at so much attention being drawn to the text that it fre- 
 quently eclipses the sermon in the memory of its hearers." 
 
 Whitefield once gave as his text, " There came unto Him cer- 
 tain lawyers ; " and then apparently detected his purposed mis- 
 quotation, and said, "not certain lawyers, but a certain lawyer. 
 It was wonderful that even one lawyer should have been found 
 to do this ; it would have been perfectly incredible had there 
 been more ; " the point of this lying in the circumstance that some 
 lawyers were present who had expressly come there to scoff at 
 him. A Shrewsbury dissenting minister preached a funeral ser- 
 mon for the Eev. John Angell James, of Birmingham, from 
 
390 PULPIT PECULIAKITIES. 
 
 the combined texts, " A man sent from God whose name was 
 John. I saw the Angel fly in the midst of heaven. James the 
 servant of God." The first portion of this text is also said to 
 have been used by the Archbishop of Vienna, when he 
 preached before John Sobieski, King of Poland, who had de- 
 livered Vienna from the Turks. "There is no fool like the 
 foolhardy," was the text of the Rev. Dr. Williamson, who had 
 a quarrel with a parishioner named Hardy. " Adam, where 
 art thou % " was the text of the probation sermon of Mr. Low, 
 who, with a Mr. Adam, was a candidate for a lectureship ; 
 '' Lo, here I am ! " was the responsive text of his rival, Mr. 
 Adam. When Dr. Mountain^ longing for a vacant bishopric, 
 preached before Charles II., his text was, " If thou hadst faith 
 as a grain of mustard-seed, and said unto this mountain, be 
 thou removed and cast into the "5^^, it should be done." 
 
 When Dr. Bradon was rector of Etham in Kent, the text he 
 one day took to preach from was, " Who art thou ? " Just at 
 the instant a military functionary, somewhat verdant, supposing 
 the question addressed to himself, was marching up the middle 
 aisle of the church, and replied, " I am, sir, an ofiicer of the 
 17th regiment of foot, on a ' recruiting party here ' ! " 
 
 A certain bishop, in a sermon to his parishioners, repeated 
 the above text, " All flesh is grass." The season was Lent, 
 and a few days afterward he encountered one of his flock, who 
 appeared to have something on his mind. ^* The top of the 
 mornin' to your riverence," said Terence ; " did I fairly under- 
 stand your riverence to say, ^ All flesh is grass,' last Sunday ? " 
 " To be sure you did," replied the bishop, " and you're a here- 
 tic if you doubt it." " Oh, I don't doubt anything your river- 
 ence says," was the reply, " but I wish to know whether in this 
 Lint time I could not be after havin' a small piece of hafe by 
 way of a salad ? " 
 
 An eccentric dominie, Mathew Byles, of Boston, Mass., in 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 391 
 
 1776, seems to have been as inveterate a joker as. Sydney 
 Smith. Upon a fast day, Dr. Byles had negotiated an ex- 
 change with a country clergyman. Upon the appointed morn- 
 ing, each of them — for vehicles were not common then — pro- 
 ceeded on horseback to his respective place of appointment. 
 Dr. Byles no sooner observed his brother clergyman ap- 
 proaching, at a distance, than he applied tlie whip, put his 
 horse into a gallop, and with his canonicals flying all abroad, 
 passed his friend at full run. "What is the matter?" he ex- 
 claimed, raising his hand in astonishment ; " why so fast, 
 Brother Byles ? " To which the doctor without slackening his 
 speed replied over his shoulder, " It is fast day ! " 
 
 As he was once occupied in nailing some list upon his doors, to 
 exclude the cold, a parishioner said to him, " Tlie wind bloweth 
 wheresoever it listeth. Dr. Byles." " Yes, sir," replied the doc- 
 tor, " and man listeth wheresoever the wind bloweth." 
 
 Byles was arrested as a Tory^ and subsequently tried, con- 
 victed, and sentenced to confinement on board a guard-ship, and 
 to be sent to England with his family in forty days. This sen- 
 tence was changed, by the board of war, to confinement in his 
 own house. A guard was placed over him. After a time the 
 sentinel was removed, afterward replaced, and again removed, 
 when the doctor exclaimed, that he had been guarded^ re- 
 garded^ and disregarded. He called his sentry his ohserv-a- 
 tory. 
 
 The two celebrated divines and scholars. Doctors South and 
 Sherlock, were once disputing on some religious subject, when 
 the latter accused his opponent of using his wit in the contro- 
 versy. " Well," said South, " suppose it had pleased God to 
 give you wit, what would you have done ? " 
 
 Among the eccentricities of the pulpit we ought not to omit 
 the temperance lecture ascribed to a Mr. Dodd, of Cambridge, 
 England. On one occasion, when challenged to preach against 
 
392 PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 
 
 intoxication, he delivered the following unpremeditated short 
 sermon, under a tree, bj the road -side, from the word 
 rrialt. He commenced bj stating that he had chosen a short 
 text, whicli could not be divided into sentences, there being 
 none ; nor into words, there being but one ; he therefore 
 divided it into letters, thus: M, is moral. A, is allegorical, L, is 
 literal, T, is theological. His exposition ran as follows : The 
 moral is to teach you good manners ; therefore, M, my masters, 
 A, all of you, L, leave off, T, tippling. The allegorical is, when 
 one thing is spoken of, and another meant. The thing spoken 
 of is malt, the thing meant is the spirit of malt, which you 
 make, M, your meat. A, your apparel, L, your liberty, and T, 
 your trust. The literal is, according to the letters, M, much, 
 A, ale, L, little, T, trust. The theological is, according to the 
 effects it works in some, M, murder, in others. A, adultery, in 
 all, L, looseness of life, and in many, T, treachery. 
 
 A certain minister had a custom of writing the heads of his 
 discourse on small slips of paper, which he placed on the Bible 
 before him, to be used in succession. One day, when he was 
 explaining the second head, he got so excited in his discourse 
 that he caused the ensuing slip to fall over the edge of the pul- 
 pit, though unperceived by himself. On reaching the end of his 
 second head, he looked down for the third slip ; but, alas ! it 
 was not to be found. " Thirdly," he cried, looking round him 
 with great anxiety. After a little pause, " Thirdly," again he 
 exclaimed ; but still no thirdly appeared. " Thirdly, I say, my 
 brethren," pursued the bewildered clergyman ; but not another 
 word could he utter. At this point, while the congregation 
 were partly sympathizing in his distress, and partly rejoicing in 
 such a decisive instance of the impropriety of using notes in the 
 preaching — which has always been an unpopular thiag in the 
 Scotch clergy — an old woman rose up and thus addressed the 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 393 
 
 preacher : " If I'm nae mista'en, sir, I saw thirdly flee out at the 
 east window a quarter of an hour sj^ne." 
 
 Frederick the Great being informed of the death of one of 
 his chaplains took the following method of ascertaining the 
 merits of one of the candidates for the appointment. lie told 
 the applicant that he would himself f urnisli him with a text the 
 following Sunday, when he was to preach at the royal chapel, 
 from which he was to make an extempore sermon. The cler- 
 gyman accepted the proposition. The whim of such a proba- 
 tionary discourse was spread abroad widely, and at an early 
 hour the royal chapel was crowed to excess. The king arrived 
 at the end of the prayers, and on the candidate's ascending the 
 pulpit, one of his majesty's aides-de-camp presented him with 
 a sealed paper. The preacher opened it and found nothing 
 therein ; turning the paper on both sides, he said : " My breth- 
 ren, here is nothing, and there is nothing ; out of nothing God 
 created all things ; " and proceeded to deliver a discourse upon 
 the wonders of Creation. 
 
 The following anecdote illustrates the peculiarities of charac- 
 ter of western pioneer life, as well as of a certain " presiding 
 elder," Peter Cartwright. When the State of Illinois was 
 admitted into the Union it was as a free State. Not long 
 after the question was largely discussed whether the Consti- 
 tution of the State should not be so amended as to permit 
 slavery. Cartwright, who then resided in Tennessee, w^as a 
 strong opponent of slavery, and determined to remove to Illi- 
 nois to take part in the settlement of the question. So he was 
 appointed " Presiding Elder " over a district about as large as 
 England. lie kept his appointments, and after preaching on 
 Sunday was wont to announce that on Monday he would 
 deliver a " stump speech." He soon became regarded as a poli- 
 tician, and no little anger was excited against him. One day 
 coming to a ferry across the river, where he was not personally 
 
394 PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 
 
 known, he heard the ferry-man holding forth to a crowd in bit- 
 ter terms against that "old renegade," — prefixing sundry em- 
 phatic expletives to that flattering term — Pete Cartwright, 
 declaring that he would drown him if he ever came that way. 
 After a while Peter engaged the ferry-man to put him over. 
 They were alone in the boat, and when they had reached the cen- 
 tre of the stream, in full sight of the shore, the preacher, throw- 
 ing the bridle of his horse over a post, ordered the ferry-man to 
 put down his pole. " What is the matter ? " asked the ferry- 
 man. "You have just been making free with my name and 
 threatening to drown me in the river. I want to give you a 
 chance to do so." "You are Pete Cartwright, are you?" 
 " M.J name is Peter Cartwright," replied the preacher. The 
 ferry-man, nothing loath, laid down his pole, and the contest 
 began. The preacher proved the better man, and seizing his 
 antagonist by the nape of the neck and the seat of his nether 
 garments, plunged him three times under water. Then hold- 
 ing his head out of the water, he asked, " Did you ever pray ? " 
 " No," was the reply. " Then it is time you should." The 
 ferry-man refused, and down went his head under water, 
 and there it was held long enough, as Peter thought, to conquer 
 his reluctance. He raised him up and repeated his demand. 
 " Let me breathe," gasped the ferry-man. " Give me a few min- 
 utes to think about it." " Not a moment," and under went his 
 nead again. The inquiry was again put when the ferry-man's 
 head was next raised, " Will you pray now ? " " Yes, I'll do 
 anything," and the fellow obediently repeated the Lord's 
 Prayer, after the dictation of Cartwright. " Now let me up," 
 he added. "' No, not yet," replied the inexorable Peter. " You 
 must make me three promises before I let you up. First, you 
 must promise to pray every night and morning as long as you 
 live ; then you must promise to put every Methodist preacher 
 who comes along over the river for nothing ; and lastly, you 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 395 
 
 must promise hereafter to attend pver j meeting of the Method- 
 ists held within four miles of you." The whole transaction 
 took place in full view of the ferry-man's comrades on the 
 shore, but the intervening river insured " fair play," and the 
 ferry-rnan felt himself in Cartwright's hands. He promised 
 faithfully to do all that was demanded of him.* 
 
 Rather a remarkable incident is related of the preaching 
 of Dr. Lyman Beecher. Many years ago he was engaged 
 to officiate in Ohio; it was in the depth of winter, and the 
 roads were nearly impassable with snow, yet the doctor pur- 
 sued his journey, and, on reaching the church, found not a 
 single individual there. With his characteristic decision of 
 purpose he ascended the pulpit and waited the arrival of his 
 congregation. One solitary person at length entered, and the 
 doctor commenced the service. At the conclusion he hast- 
 ened to greet his auditor, but he had vanished. Some score 
 of years subsequently the parties accidentally met, when the 
 pleasing fact was communicated to the doctor that that ser- 
 mon had proved the means of his conversion, and that he 
 had since become himself a minister over a large congrega- 
 tion. 
 
 Louis XIY. said one day to Massillon, after hearing him 
 preach at Yersailles : " Father, I have heard many great ora- 
 tors in this chapel ; I have been highly pleased with them ; but 
 for you, whenever I hear you, I go away displeased with 
 myself, for I see more of my own character." This has been 
 considered the finest encomiima ever bestowed upon a 
 preacher. 
 
 There are many amusing things related of the notorious ora- 
 tor, Henley : One day at a coifee-house he met a friend, when 
 the following dialogue ensued : " Pray what has become of 
 
 * Blilbum. 
 
396 PULPIT PECULIAEITIES. 
 
 our old friend, Smith ? " said Henley ; " I have not seen him 
 for several years." " I really do not know," was the reply ; 
 " the last time I heard of him he was at Ceylon, or some of 
 our other settlements in the West Indies." " My good sir, in 
 one sentence there are two mistakes ; Ceylon is not one of our 
 settlements, and it is situated in the East Indies, not the 
 West." " That I deny," said the gentleman, with some heat. 
 " More shame for you," responded Henley. " I will engage to 
 bring a boy of eight years old who w^ill confute you." " Well, 
 be it where it may, thank God, I loiow very little about these 
 sort of things ! " " What ! you thank God for your ignorance, 
 do you ? " "I do, sir," answered the gentleman, in a violent 
 rage; " what then ? " " Sir, you have a great deal to be thank- 
 ful for," was Henley's sarcastic reply. 
 
 Among incorrigible punning parsons may be named Dr. 
 Barton, who, when the fellows of his college wished to have an 
 organ in the chapel, said, "I put a stojp to it!" It is said two 
 friends, Mr. Crowe and Mr. Rooke, were invited to dine with 
 him, where they met with a Mr. Birdmore. "Allow me, 
 Crowe and Rooke, to introduce to you one Bird more," he ex- 
 claimed. He married his niece to a gentleman of the hope- 
 ful name of Buckle : " Ah ! " he said, " a pair of Buckles." 
 Hearing that a valetudinarian, who had recovered his health by 
 a diet of milk and eggs, had espoused a wife, he is reported to 
 have said, " So you have been egged on to matrimony ; I hope 
 the yohe will sit easy on you." 
 
 During the reign of Charles II. it was the fashion to in- 
 dulge to excess the habit of humorous preaching. Sterne 
 seems to have revived the custom, and South's discourses 
 sparkle perpetually with wit and pun. 
 
 Eccentricities and angularities of character are not excluded 
 from the clerical profession of modern times any more than the 
 past. The well-known name of Rowland Hill has long been 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 397 
 
 associated with pulpit peculiarities. This worthy ecclesiastic 
 was once preaching for a charitable institution, when a note 
 was handed up to the pulpit asking whether it would be con- 
 sistent for a bankrupt to contribute. Mr. Hill referred to the 
 note and, of course, decided against such an act, but added, " I 
 would advise all who are not insolvent not to pass the plate 
 without giving, lest thej should be considered bankrupt. On 
 another occasion, when preaching at St. John's, Wapping, he 
 said, " I am come to preach to great sinners^ notorious sinners, 
 wajpjping sinners." One wet Sunday he noticed some persons 
 crowding into Surrey Chapel to be sheltered from a shower of 
 rain, and he thus referred to the circumstance : " Some people 
 are blamed for making religion a cloak^'' he said, " but I do 
 not think those are much better who make it an umbrella." 
 Many other stories told of this remarkable man are fictitious, 
 among them those which reflected upon his wife's love of dress, 
 and that of throwing his Bible at a sleeper. 
 
 A dissenting minister once complaining of the dealing he met 
 with from an ecclesiastical hoard, to Kowland Hill, observed 
 that "for his part he did not see the difference between a 
 board and a bench," meaning that the rule of his board was 
 as stringent as that of the bishops. " Pardon me, my friend," 
 replied Hill, " I will show you a most essential difference 
 between the two : A board is a bench that has no legs to stand 
 uponP 
 
 With many strong points of character he combined notions 
 prodigiously odd. One of those commonly called Antinomians 
 one day called on Rowland Hill to call him to account for his 
 too severe and legal gospel. " Do you, sir," asked Rowland, 
 " hold the ten commandments to be a rule of life to Chris- 
 tians % " " Certainly not," replied the visitor. The minister 
 rang the bell, and on the servant making his appearance, he 
 quietly added, " John show that man the door, and keep your 
 
398 PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 
 
 eye on him until he is beyond the reach of every article of 
 wearing apparel or other property in the hall ! " 
 
 There is a great difference between occasionally introducing 
 an illustration, which may serve its end, though slightly tinc- 
 tured with the comic, and that depraved taste which would 
 desecrate the sacred desk by the exhibitions of buffoonery. A 
 minister should never be insensible to the claims of his mission 
 as it is taught in that 
 
 "Book, wlierein his Saviour's Testament, 
 "Written with golden letters, rich and brave : 
 A work of wondrous grace, and able souls to save." 
 
 There is a story told of a popular preacher of London, whose 
 genius was displayed more in reproducing the thoughts and 
 words of others than in the use of his own. His sermons were 
 replete with petty larcenies : but as fashionable audiences are 
 not proverbial for proficiency in pulpit lore, his ministerial 
 misdemeanors were for some time carried on with impunity. 
 On one occasion, however, he was detected. A grave old gentle- 
 man well-posted came one Sunday, and seating himself close to 
 the pulpit, enacted the inquisitor. The preacher had scarcely 
 finished his tliird sentence before the stranger muttered loud 
 enough to be heard by those near him, " That's Sherlock ! " 
 The preacher frowned, but went on. He was glibly proceed- 
 ing when the tormentor again interrupted him with, " That's 
 Tillotson!" Our clerical plagiarist bit his lip and paused, 
 but again thought it better to proceed with his discourse. A 
 third exclamation of " That's Blair ! " was, however, too much, 
 and completely exhausted his patience. Leaning over the pul- 
 pit, he said: ^'Fellow, if you do not hold your tongue you 
 shall be turned out ! " Without altering q, muscle of his coun- 
 tenance, the imperturbable censor looked up at the incumbent 
 of the pulpit, and retorted, " That's his own 1 " 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 399 
 
 A certain Yorkshire clergyman, who, when asked if he stud- 
 ied the fathers before he began to write his sermons, said, 
 "No, I rather study the mothers, iov they have the greater 
 need of comfort and encouragement." 
 
 A clergyman once preached rather a long sermon from the 
 text, " Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." 
 After the congregation had listened about an hour, some began 
 to get weary and went out ; others soon followed, greatly to 
 the annoyance of the minister. Whereupon he stopped his 
 sermon and said, " That is right, gentlemen ; as fast as you are 
 weighed pass out." No one else passed. 
 
 Robert Hall, on one occasion, being disgusted by the egotism 
 and conceit of a preacher, who, with a mixture of self-compla- 
 cency and impudence, challenged his admiration of a sermon, 
 was provoked to say, " Yes, there was one very fine passage in 
 your discourse, sir." " I am rejoiced to hear you say so — which 
 was it ? " was the reply. " Why, sir," said Hall, " it was the 
 jpassage from the^uljpit to the vestry P 
 
 Some divines are often too deeply read in theology to appre- 
 ciate the full grandeur and the proper tendencies of religion. 
 Losing the abstract in the concrete, the comprehensive in the 
 technical, the principal in its accessories. Such are in the pre- 
 dicament of the rustic who could not see London for the 
 houses. 
 
 Others, claiming to be religious teachers and superiors, might 
 have done better service in a different department of duty* A 
 dull and illiterate leader wdll produce his kind in those over 
 whom he presides, since he but administers theological opiates 
 to them, confirming them in their apathy, ignorance, and 
 bigotry. How few divines dare venture to become original ; 
 fewer still have we of ^rational enthusiasts. 
 
 " How comes it," demanded a bishop, of Garrick, " that I, in 
 expounding divine doctrines, produce so little effect upon my 
 
400 PULPIT PECULIAEITIES. 
 
 congregation, while you can so easily rouse the passions of your 
 auditors by the representation of fiction ? " The answer was 
 short and pithy : " Because I recite falsehoods as if they were 
 true, while you deliver truths as if they were fiction." 
 
 Robert Hall, even, admitted that he was tormented with the 
 desire of preaching better than he did. He was for greater 
 earnestness and zeal. It was said of Rowland Hill's preach- 
 ing, that his ideas, like Baxter's, came hot from the heart. 
 This is effective preaching. Keble sweetly suggests — 
 
 " Love on tlie Saviour's dying head, 
 
 Her spikenard drops, unblamed, may pour ; 
 May mount his cross, and wrap him dead, 
 
 In spices from the golden shore. 
 Risen, may embalm his sacred name 
 With an a painter's art, and all a minstrel's flame." 
 
 Steele observes : " When a man has no design but to speak 
 plain truth he may say a great deal in a very narrow com- 
 pass. The true pulpit style is that which brings the intellect 
 down through the heart, and melts all its precious metals in 
 that glowing furnace. Prolixity in preaching is an ancient 
 heresy of the priesthood. As if conscious of this weakness, the 
 Greek and Latin fathers used hour-glasses in their pulpits to 
 admonish them when to wind up. George Herbert says : " The 
 pai-son exceeds not an hour in preaching, because all ages have 
 thought that a competency." Southey cites a passage from 
 the church records, in 1664, of St. Catharine's, Aldgate, Lon- 
 don, which is as follows : " Paid for an hour-glass that hanged 
 by the pulpit when the preacher doth make a sermon, that he 
 may know how the hour passeth away." 
 
 There are few things against which a preacher should be 
 more guarded than prolixity. "l!*^othing can justify a long 
 sermon. H it be a good one it need not be long ; and if it be 
 a bad one it ought not to be long." Luther, in the enumera- 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 401 
 
 'tion of nine qualities of a good preacher, gives as tlie sixth, 
 " That he should know when to stop." Boyle has an essay on 
 patience under long preaching. 
 
 John Aylmer, bishop of London in the time of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, having a congregation not so attentive as tliey ought to 
 have been, began reading the Bible in the Hebrew. The 
 strange sounds disturbed the sleepers, who awoke one after 
 another; and when the minister perceived this, after he ad- 
 monished them for their indifference to the Bible in the vul- 
 gar tongue, he proceeded vn^th his sermon. 
 
 The sin of sleeping during divine service is of no modern 
 date. In Henry YIL's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, there were 
 ingeniously contrived stalls for preventing the drowsy monks 
 indulging a nap. 
 
 A celebrated clergyman once told his parishioners he should 
 reserve the best efforts of his mind for rainy days — the worse 
 the weather the better should be his sermons — and he kept his 
 word. The consequence naturally was that his church was 
 never so well filled as in wet weather, and the harder the rain 
 poured down the more the people flocked in, until it finally 
 became his practice to include in his prayers rainy Sundays ! 
 
 A well-known clerical personage was on one occasion found 
 in a pew instead of a pulpit, listening to a dull and prolix dis- 
 course, when he began to grow sleepy. '" Yon were caught 
 napping," said a friend, " and I suppose cannot tell me what 
 the sermon was about?" "Yes I can," he replied; "it was 
 about an hour too long ! " 
 
 Dean Swift, whom our artist has so well sketched, once 
 preached at Dublin Cathedral, from Acts xx. 9 : " And there sat 
 in the window a certain young man, named Eutychus, being 
 fallen into a deep sleep," etc. " I have chosen these words," he 
 said, " with a design, if possible, to disturb some part of this 
 audience of half an hour's sleep ; for the convenience and 
 2C 
 
402 PULPIT PECULIABITIES. 
 
 exercise whereof this place, at this season of the day, is very 
 much celebrated. The accident which happened to the young 
 man in the text hath not been sufficient to discourage his suc- 
 cessors ; but because the preachers now in the world, however 
 they may exceed Paul in the art of setting men to sleep, do 
 extremely fall short of him in the working of miracles, there- 
 fore men are become so cautious as to choose more safe and 
 convenient stations and postures for taking their repose, with- 
 out hazard of their persons, and upon the whole matter choose 
 rather to trust their destruction to a miracle than their safety." 
 
 Robert Hall's afternoon sermons — masterly as they were — 
 were attended by a very small yet appreciative audience, which 
 he once described as consisting equally of those who were 
 asleep and those who were going to sleep ! 
 
 Sydney Smith once said, in speaking of the prosy nature of 
 some sermons, " they are written, as if sin were to be taken out 
 of man, like Eve out of Adam — by putting him to sleep." 
 
 Dr. Barrow once preached so long that all his congregation 
 dropped off, leaving the sexton and himself alone. The sexton 
 finding the doctor apparently no nearer a conclusion, said to 
 him, "Sir, here are the keys; please to lock up the church 
 when you get through your discourse." 
 
 A somewhat peculiar expedient was adopted by a minister 
 in New York, some years since, while holding forth to his con- 
 gregation in a style that ought to have kept them awake. 
 Suddenly he stopped in his discourse, and said, " Brethren, I 
 have preached about half of my sermon, and I perceive that 
 twenty-five or thirty of my congregation are fast asleep. I 
 shall postpone the delivery of the remainder of it until they 
 wake up ! " There was a dead pause for about ^ve minutes, 
 during which time the sleepers awoke, when the preacher 
 resumed. Another instance might be cited which proved no 
 less effective. A worthy divine, in a church at Norwich, 
 
PULPIT PECULIAPJTIES. 403 
 
 Connecticut, observing many sleeping, paused awhile and then 
 said", " I come now to the third head of my discourse, to which 
 I ask the serious and candid attention of all who are not asleejp^^ 
 emphasizing the last word. 
 
 '' Benevolence," said. Sydney Smith, in a charity sermon, 
 " is a sentiment common to human nature. A never sees B 
 in distress without wishing C to relieve him." 
 
 Once when preaching a charity sermon, he repeated the 
 assertion that, of all nations, Englishmen were most distin- 
 guished for generosity and the love of their species. The 
 collection happening to be inferior to his expectations, he 
 said that he had evidently made a great mistake, for that his 
 expression should have been that they were distinguished for 
 the love of their sjyecie. 
 
 Franklin, in his " Memoirs," bears witness to the extraordinary 
 effect which was produced by Whitefield's preaching in Amer- 
 ica, and relates an anecdote equally characteristic of the 
 preacher and of himself. "I happened," he says, "to attend 
 one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he 
 intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he 
 should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful 
 of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles 
 in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to 
 give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me 
 ashamed of that, aj-xid determined me to give the silver ; and 
 he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly 
 into the collector's dish, gold and all." 
 
 "We have referred to prolix preachers and jocular preachers, 
 as well as drowsy congregations ; but we have not alluded to 
 one of the modern clerical innovations, whose aim it is to su- 
 persede the simplicity and integrity of Divine worship. We 
 refer to the Ritualistic party in the Episcopal Church, which 
 Punch portrays as, LatitudinaHans^ Platitudinarians, and 
 
404: PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 
 
 Attitvdinarians ! The same authority also points these perti- 
 nent questions ; 
 
 ' ' Friend Ritualist, how can a cope 
 Encourage any Christian hope ? 
 And what advantage hath a stole 
 To render his immortal soul ? 
 Aught can a chasuble conduce 
 To any spiritual use ? 
 In what way can an alh relate 
 To anybody's future state 
 Or Dalmatics concern hereafter ? 
 No more expose thyself to laughter," 
 
 Sydney Smith said : " Puseyism consists of inflections and 
 genuflections, posture and imposture, bowing to the east and 
 curtesy ing to the west." 
 
 Dean Swift has the following pointed remarks about absen- 
 tees from church : " There is no excuse so trivial that will not 
 pass upon some men's consciences, to excuse their attendance 
 at the public worship of God. Some are so unfortunate as to 
 be always indisposed on the Lord's day, and think nothing so 
 unwholesome as the air of a church. Others have their affairs 
 so oddly contrived as to be always unluckily prevented by busi- 
 ness. With some it is a great mark of wit and deep under- 
 standing to stay at home on Sabbath. Others again discover 
 strange fits of laziness, Vvhich seize them particularly on that 
 day and confine them to their beds. Others are absent out of 
 mere contempt for religion. And, lastly, there are not a few 
 who look upon it as a day of rest ; therefore claim the privilege 
 of their cattle to keep the Sabbath by eating, drinking, and 
 sleeping, after the toil and labor of the week." 
 
 Coleridge, referring to the theological literature of the sev- 
 enteenth century, asserts it as his conviction " that in any half 
 dozen sermons of Donne or Taylor there are more thoughts, 
 more facts and images, more incitements to inquiry and intel- 
 
PULPIT PECULIARITIES. 405 
 
 lectual effort, than ai-e presented to the congregations of our 
 day in as many churches or meetings during twice as many 
 months. The very length of the discourses with which these 
 rich souls of wit and knowledge fixed the eyes, ears, and hearts 
 of their crowded congregations are a source of wonder to us. 
 
 The pulpit may be styled the palladium of the wT)rld's vir- 
 tue — the conservator of its liberties, the panacea for its woes, 
 and the prophecy of its future restoration and glory. Its pre- 
 rogative is to exert a paramount power over the human heart. 
 Its themes are sublime and momentous — the arcana of science 
 are rendered tributary to its teachings, because the works illus- 
 trate the Will of the Supreme. This mission of the gospel it 
 was that fired the zeal of that worthy of old, whose eloquent 
 appeals " shook Areopagus and reverberated through the Fo- 
 rum." 
 
 " The Christian priesthood, although the temptation incident 
 to conventional elevation may have served to develop among 
 them many of the subtler forms of evil latent in the undisci- 
 plined heart, is yet lustrous with many virtues. What sweet- 
 ness has baptized the clerical function in the past ! What for- 
 titude, what self-denial, what patience, what labor in season and 
 out of season, have been the heritage of the great mass of these 
 men ! What stores of learning have they accumulated ; what 
 splendid additions have they made to the best literature of 
 every land ; how they have enriched the sciences by their ob- 
 servation and studious inquiries ; how they have kept the flame 
 of patriotism aglow ; how they have encouraged the generous 
 ambition of youth and directed it to worthy and useful ends ; 
 how they have dignified the family altar and cherished the 
 purity of women and diffused through society the charm of 
 honest and gentle manners ; all these things must be cordially 
 acknowledged by every one competent to speak on the ques- 
 tion." This tribute to the pulpit is by Dr. Chapin. 
 
406 
 
 PULPIT PECULIABITIES. 
 
 " Religion," said Webster, " is the tie that connects man with 
 his Maker and holds him to His throne. A man with no sense 
 of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures desc^ribe in such 
 terse but terrific language, as living 'without God in the 
 world.'" 
 
 " Come, blest religion, then, and with, thee bring 
 Peace on thy smile, and healing on thy wing." 
 
 I A s !:Ci^ 
 
 J 
 
THE SimiNES OF GEOTUS. 
 
 "The love 
 Of mighty minds doth hallow, in the core 
 Of human hearts, the ruin of a wall 
 Where dwelt the wise and wondrous." — Byron. 
 
 Theee is a low-roofed, antique room belonging to an old pile, 
 situated in the very heart of old England, to which multitudes 
 of pilgrim feet are ever tending from all parts of the civilized 
 globe. Among these spell-bound hosts are most of the illustri- 
 ous sons of science and song,, seeking to do homage at that hum- 
 ble homestead, as though it were the " Mecca of the Mind," the 
 great central shrine of genius ; and such indeed it really is ! It 
 is now nearly three centuries since that great literary luminary 
 that first dawned upon us there, left the sphere of earth ; and 
 yet such is the spell of liis transcendent genius that his name 
 and fame shed a greater intellectual glory to-day over the world 
 
408 THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 
 
 than ever they have done before ! A rudely painted sign-board 
 projects from the front of that small, mean-looking edifice to 
 tell us that the immortal Shakespeare was born there. The 
 walls of the room of his nativity are so closely covered over 
 with names and inscriptions, in almost every language, as to re- 
 semble at a distance spiders' webs. On the memorable twenty- 
 third of April, 1616, the poet was left sleeping, as to his mortal 
 part, in the church which had witnessed his baptism and his 
 marriage. The closing scene of his own life-drama claims for 
 us a deeper and more touching interest than that of any of those 
 renowned creations of his genius that so charm the world. 
 "Washington Irving thus beautifully describes the grave of 
 Shakespeare : " The inscription on the tombstone has not been," 
 he remarks, " without its effect ; it has prevented the removal 
 of his remains from the bosom of his native place to "Westmin- 
 ster Abbey, which was at one time contemplated. A few years 
 since, as some laborers were digging to make an adjoining 
 vault, the earth caved in so as to leave a vacant space almost 
 like an arch, through which one might have reached into his 
 grave. No one, however, presumed to meddle with his remains, 
 so awfully guarded by a malediction ; and lest any of the idle 
 or curious, or any collector of relics, should be tempted to commit 
 depredations, the old sexton kept watch over the place for two 
 days until the vault was finished and the aperture closed again. 
 He told me that he had made bold to look in at the hole, but 
 could see nothing but dust ! It was something, I thought, to 
 have seen the dust of Shakespeare ! " In the chancel of Strat- 
 ford Church are Shakespeare's monumental bust and grave, 
 already noted ; near by are also the house of Anne Hathaway, 
 the lady of his love, and the fine old historic relic of feudal and 
 Elizabethan times, Kenilworth Castle ; triple attractions, either 
 of which, one would suppose, were sufliicient to stir the dullest 
 spirits to enthusiasm and pilgrimage. It is a grateful fact to 
 
THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 409 
 
 note, that this Shakespearian shrine is to be guarded henceforth 
 with a religious care; for had it not been purchased by the 
 Shakespearian Society of London, the destroying touch of Time 
 would otherwise have soon made it his prey. Pilgrimages have 
 ever been made to the shrines of those who have filled the 
 world with their fame. Not alone do men make toilsome pil- 
 grimage to the sacred sites of Palestine, once hallowed by the 
 presence of " Divinity veiled in humanity ; " or the devotees 
 of Mahomet make their annual visit to Mecca ; there are yet 
 greater multitudes who love to do honor to the memory of the 
 good and great among men — such as, having enriched our 
 earthly life by the ministry of song or the revelations of sci- 
 ence, or in some other forms, have become the benefactors of 
 the race, and beautified and glorified our human existence. If 
 we refer to tlie ancient world, think of Babylon, ITineveh, 
 Baalbec, Egypt, and Holy Land. Who, visiting the shores of 
 the Mediterranean, does not gaze with peculiar interest upon the 
 spots made memorable by the pens of the classic authors? 
 Who, when passing through the meadows of Mantua, or amid 
 the groves of Umbria, or on the rocky heights of Tivoli, does 
 not recall the glowing pages of Horace, Yirgil, and Tibullus • 
 He, indeed, is little to be envied, who can traverse the plain of 
 Marathon or the pass of Thermopylae unmoved. Who can 
 wander with Byron amid the ruins of the Forum or the 
 Coliseum, and not feel his heart stirred to its depths with the 
 clustered memories of the past ? Think of Florence, of Yenice, 
 and the manifold historic and literary memorials of France, 
 Spain, Belgium, and Germany, with its glorious. Rhine. Nor 
 forget the storied castles, homes, and abbeys of Old England 
 and Scotland in the days of their ancient chivalry. It is not our 
 purpose to make an imaginative tour to the historic sites and 
 shrines of the world, but merely to instance the more interesting 
 of tlie literary localities of the land of Shakespeare. 
 
4:10 THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 
 
 How potent is the influence of association. The home of 
 childhood — however humble — ^becomes invested with a thou- 
 sand endearing charms, which cluster around the heart with 
 sweet and enduring tenacity, compared with which the most 
 ravishing beauties of nature or glittering blandishments of art 
 lose all their witchery and force. This feeling, which seems 
 closely allied to that of consanguinity, love, or friendship, 
 transfers itself to inanimate objects, times, and places, which 
 the presence of those once loved or venerated may have hal- 
 lowed ; thus transforming them into sainted shrines, at which 
 memory loves to be the devoted worshipper. Everything con- 
 nected with the children of genius awakens our sympathy — 
 the places where they have dwelt and labored in thought, which 
 have witnessed their sufferings and mental anguish and given 
 birth to the brilliant creations of intellect, acquire a sacredness 
 and an interest unknown to any other. 
 
 " More sweet than odors caught by him who sails 
 Near spicy shores of Araby the blest, — 
 A thousand times more exquisitely sweet 
 The freight of holy f eehng which we meet 
 In thoughtful moments, wafted on the gales 
 From fields where good men walk, or bowers wherein they rest." * 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact, that men of genius have usually— 
 seemingly in accordance with their lofty, sky-ward aspirations 
 — produced their first and greatest works in a garret ! Gold- 
 smith, with a host of others known to fame, being in evi- 
 dence. The reader will think kindlier of these obscure places 
 as he recalls Johnson's fine reflections on local Associations; 
 when the scenes we visit suggest the men or the deeds which 
 have left their celebrity to the spot. We are in the presence of 
 their fame and feel its influence ! 
 
 It was with this feeling that Pope, one day, meeting with a 
 
 * Wordsworth. 
 
THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 411 
 
 friend in the Hajmarket desired him to enter a little shop, 
 where, going up three pair of stairs into a small room, the poet 
 said, " In this garret Addison wrote." We can liardly venture to 
 travel out of the domain of our English literature in search of 
 these cherished memorials, or we might refer to the house of 
 Rubens at Antwerp, and that of Michael Angelo and also the 
 decorated memorial of Galileo^ near Florence. 
 
 ^o matter how rude and unattractive may be the spot, if but 
 the light of genius has glorified it, it becomes henceforth a sa- 
 cred shrine. Greece, with all her classic glory, is to the stu- 
 dent doubly endeared because Homer, Plato, and Phidias 
 were among the nobles of her soil. And great as were the im- 
 perial splendors of her Caesars, Italy derives yet greater lus- 
 tre from the imperishable names of Paphael, Titian, and Mi- 
 chael Angelo, in painting; and from Cicero,Yirgil, Dante, Tasso, 
 Petrarch, and Ariosto, in song. And in our own day the same 
 is no less true : we instinctively think of Stratford, as the home 
 of Shakespeare ; of Abbotsford, as that of Scott ; and of Mossgiel, 
 as that of the peasant-poet of Scotland. The Kingdom of Mind 
 is the true sovereignty ; and such is the loyal tribute paid to it 
 in all ages and climes. Most of the literary magnates of the 
 Elizabethan age w^ere accustomed to congregate at inns and 
 hostelries — the Mitre, the Mermaid, and others, in the nooks 
 and corners of old London. It was at the Mitre tavern that 
 Johnson imbibed his port, and Boswell chronicled his patron's 
 oracular wisdom. And on the opposite side of Fleet street, at 
 No. 8 in Bolt Court, the great lexicographer lived and died, 
 after leaving Gough square, where he lost his wife. The 
 house no longer exists. Johnson's intemperate taste for tea 
 is well-linown : and it is on record that a lady on one occasion 
 poured out for him seventeen cups ; the cups were small, how- 
 
 * Mark Leman. 
 
412 THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 
 
 ever.* The " Rainbow," formerly called the " Devil " tavern, 
 facing Chancery lane, was the rendezvous of Shakespeare, and 
 Ben Jonson with his boon companions in hilarious mirth. Here, 
 and at the Mermaid also, might have been seen Ealeigh, Spen- 
 ser, Sydney, Pope, Addison, Swift, and others of their class 
 and time. At No. 3 Ivy lane, leading to the great book mart, 
 Paternoster row, there was formerly a tavern, frequented by 
 the literati of those days, where, according to the Spectator, 
 " was held the Humdrum Club, who used to sit together, smoke 
 their pipes, and say nothing till midnight." Franklin worked 
 at Wall's Printing-house in 1725, situated in Portugal street, 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields ; he lodged at a house facing the Catho- 
 lic chapel, in Duke street. 
 
 Milton was born in Bread street, Cheapside : the house was 
 burned in the fire of London. The house in which Milton re- 
 sided between the years 1651 and 1659 existed only a few years 
 back, at I^o. 18 York street, Westminster. Chalfont, in Buck- 
 inghamshire, was another residence of Milton, in which he 
 composed " Paradise Regained." The mulberry-tree planted 
 by Milton is still flourishing in the pleasant garden of Christ's 
 College, Cambridge, where it was planted by the youthful 
 student. Its fertility appeared to have undergone no change ; 
 in the summer of 1835 it was laden with fruit. 
 
 The birthplace of " Paradise Lost " was at a house in Hol- 
 born that looked into "Red Lion Fields" (now Red Lion 
 square). In that dim, obscure spot was born the noble Eng- 
 lish epic. 
 
 " Pope's house at Binfield has been pulled down, but the poet's 
 parlor still exists as a part of the present mansion erected on 
 the spot. A patch of the great forest, near Binfield, has been 
 honorably preserved, under the name of Pope's Wood. His 
 house at Twickenham is gone, the garden is bare, but the cele- 
 
THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 413 
 
 brated grotto remains, stript, however, of all that gave it pic- 
 turesqiieness, grace, and beauty. 
 
 " Cowper's house, at Olney, is still standing in the same ru- 
 inous state so humorously described by the poet ; his parlor is 
 occupied as a girl's school. The summer house in the garden, 
 in whicli he used to sit conning his verses, also remains, its 
 walls covered with visitors' names. His residence in the neigh- 
 borinor village of Weston has been much altered, but is still 
 beautiful, with a profusion of roses about it." 
 
 The Borough of Southwark, south of the Thames, is mem- 
 orable for its Tabard, the hostlerie of Chaucer's " Canter- 
 bury Pilgrims," and the wits of the olden time ; although 
 little if any of the old building now exists. In its precincts once 
 stood the well-remembered Globe theatre, of which Shake- 
 speare was at one time proprietor. Shakespeare's first appear- 
 ance in public was as an attendant at the door of this theatre, 
 which stood near Bankside. Bankside is also full of interest, 
 from the fact of its being the spot where the great dramatist 
 lived durino^ his stay in London. Near the Globe were the 
 Bear Gardens, where Elizabeth, her nobles and ladies, used to 
 solace their tender sensibilities with the elegant sport of bear- 
 hunting. Two other early dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 also lived near neighbors with the great dramatist. The mortal 
 remains of Fletcher and Massinger rest within the time-honored 
 walls of St. Saviour's. 
 
 " Our cathedrals and old churches," observes Willmott, " gray 
 with the rust of centuries, speak to the heart through the eye. 
 Death is never unlovely, but meets us with the Gospel upon his 
 lips and the garland of hope upon his forehead. Addison 
 might well delight to pass an afternoon among the tombs of 
 "Westminster Abbey. The truest and most cheering eloquence 
 speaks from the grave of piety. The white marble monument 
 of William of Wykeham is a livelier exhortation to Christian 
 
414 THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 
 
 benevolence than a philosophic treatise upon generosity. If we 
 delight to keep green the graves of our poets, who have be- 
 guiled with their music the sorrows of life, our feelings become 
 enlivened by purer elevation when lingering by the sepulchres 
 of those who have ministered to us of the oracles of heavenly 
 wisdom. We call to mind their hallowed example of holy liv- 
 ing — their illuminated wisdom, their chastened temper, and 
 their serene and happy exit from a life of sorrow and self-de- 
 nial, which was to them " a baptism unto immortality." 
 
 Among the proud temples of Fame, the grand old Abbey of 
 Westminster stands pre-eminent, with its clustered glories of 
 gloomy, regal pomp and splendor. Westminster Abbey is it- 
 self a vast mausoleum, enriched with the proudest spoils of the 
 Destroyer. Here repose the ashes of potentates and poets, he- 
 roes and historians, martyrs and confessors. The very walls are 
 histories, illustrated by monumental bust and sculptured shrine. 
 In the " Poets' Corner " sleep the remains of England's great- 
 est bards — from Chaucer to Campbell ^ of Ben Jonson and the 
 Elizabethan dramatists ; and of Addison and the essayists and 
 philosophers. Here, too, is that marvel of sculptured skill — 
 Henry the Seventh's Chapel ; with its gorgeously fretted pend- 
 ants and vaulted ceiling ; its knightly bannerets, and last, but not 
 least, the sumptuous tomb of the founder, and those of the 
 rival queens — Elizabeth and Mary Stuart — now at peace — side 
 by side ! 
 
 Henry the Seventh's magnificent tomb was rivalled by the 
 grand mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders 
 of the world, which, however, in the twelfth century, being 
 overthrown by an earthquake, became a mass of ruins. 
 
 At Agra, Northern Ilindostan, is that marvel of eastern splen- 
 dor, the Taj Mahal, the chef-d^oeuvre of Saracenic art. This 
 superb specimen of Oriental splendor was erected by the Em- 
 peror Shah Jehan, as a mausoleum for his deceased wife. It 
 
THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 415 
 
 is said to have cost a fabulous sum, equal to nearly sixteen mil- 
 lions of dollars. What illustrious vanity ! " All the greatness, 
 the pride, the cruelty, and the ambition of man," said one who 
 knew how little worth were worldly honors,* "are covered over 
 by death with these two narrow words — Hie Jacet! " 
 
 The poets whose lyres are now all unstrung have still be- 
 queathed to us the rich legacy of their sweet songs, which, like 
 the music of the sylvan streams they loved so well, are e^-er 
 charming us with their melody. 
 
 Westminster Abbey boasts its " Poets' Corner " and St. Paul's 
 has its " Painters' Corner " ; for here in the crypt of the catlie- 
 dral rest the remains of England's great painters — Eeynolds, 
 Lawrence Barry, Opie, West, Fuseli, and Turner. In Kensall 
 Green Cemetery repose the ashes of a multitude of eminent 
 characters, including Sydney Smith, Allan Cunningham, Thack- 
 eray, and Kemble ; and in Norwood Cemetery, among many 
 other celebrities, Talfourd and Douglas Jerrold. Adieu, then, 
 and peace to these gifted sons of genius ; theirs is an immortality 
 of fame ; for the world has indeed been enriched by their hav- 
 ing passed a brief lifetime in it. Of how much of sorrow have 
 they beguiled us, what lessons of wisdom have they not taught 
 us by their bright visions of spiritual beauty and cherished hopes 
 of a life beyond. 
 
 Then there are other shrines of memory : Waller, in Bea- 
 consfield churchyard ; Butler, in St. Paul's, Covent Garden ; 
 Young, at Welwyn in Hertfordshire ; Burns, in St. Michael's, 
 Dumfries ; Byron, in the church of Hucknall, near Newstead ; 
 Crabbe, at Trowbridge ; Scott, at Dryburgh Abbey ; Southey, in 
 Crosthwaite church, near Keswick ; and Wordsworth, in the 
 churchyard at Grasmere, hard by the lake he so loved. 
 
 Dry den's house was in Fetter lane, London ; the stately old 
 
 * Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 
416 THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 
 
 building was noticeable by its two grim-looking lions in stone, 
 over the door. 
 
 Goldsmith has hallowed a dingy spot in London by his resi- 
 dence there ; it is called Green Arbor Court, Old Bailey. Here 
 Oliver resided in the outset of his career, ere his fame dawned 
 upon the world ; and here he wrote those amusing papers, which 
 were afterwards collected under the title of " The Citizen of 
 the World." The author was writing in a wretched, dirty 
 room, in which there was but one chair; and when he, from 
 civility, offered it to his visitors, he himself was obliged to sit in 
 the window. This house was the last in the alley, looking on 
 a descent known by the name of " Breakneck-stairs." 
 
 East Sraithfield was the birthplace of that rare poet of the 
 elder school, Spenser. The checkered career of the gentle au- 
 thor of the Faerie Queene is familiar to the reader — his resi- 
 dence, Kilcolman Castle, Ireland — its being fired by the pop- 
 ulace — his return to England — poverty and disasters, and 
 subsequent death, in an obscure lodging-house in King street, 
 Westminster. His death was more honored than his life ; for, 
 says Camden, " his hearse was attended by poets ; and mournful 
 elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, were thrown 
 into his tomb, in Westminster Abbey." 
 
 Lord Bacon has bequeathed the memory of his noble genius 
 to Gray's Inn, where he lived and wrote. The corner of Fleet 
 street and Chancery lane witnessed the advent dtf the poet 
 Cowley. Two renowned painters, Sir Joshua Reynolds and 
 Hogarth, immortalized their art in Leicester square, at the 
 house since called the Sabloniere Hotel. 
 
 Byron was born in Holies street, Cavendish square. He 
 wrote his " Siege of Corinth " in a house in Piccadilly, opposite 
 the Green Park. Most of his productions were composed in 
 Greece and other parts of the Continent. 
 
 It was in one of these aerial abodes, already referred to, that 
 
THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 417 
 
 Butler wrote Ins " Iludibras," wliicli, while it contributed to the 
 convulsive merriment of the court and all classes of readers, 
 left its ill-fated author to pine under the inconvenient prospect 
 of starvation. 
 
 It is grateful to reflect, however, that all are not found dom- 
 iciled in these upper regions. Some, on the contrary, moved 
 not in the upper stories, but among the upper circles of society ; 
 such as Pliny, in early times, and Yoltaire, Pope, Eogers, and 
 others, among the moderns. Others, again, have appeared 
 under the most obscure circumstances and bounded into noto- 
 riety by the force of their genius. Of this class we might 
 mention Keats, the most " poetical of poets," who was born in, 
 a stable at Moorfields, London. 
 
 Let us pay the passing tribute of sympathy at that shrine of 
 suffering genius, the last abode of poor Chatterton, whom 
 Wordsworth describes as "the sleepless boy who perished in his 
 pride ! " After enduring the pangs of mortal hunger for three 
 days he destroyed himself, in an obscure house in Brooke street, 
 Holborn. At Bristol Cathedral there is a beautiful monument 
 to his memory; another illustration of the sad neglect with 
 which the children of genius are suffered to pass away from 
 among us : they ask bread and we give them — a stone ! 
 
 In Salisbury Court lived Thomas Sackvill, Earl of Dorset, 
 the precursor of Spenser. Here also resided Pichardson, where 
 he kept his printing-ofiice. The Temple is eminently classic 
 in its associations. Crown-office Pow, Temple, was the birth- 
 place of Charles Lamb : he styles it in his " Elia " — " Cheer- 
 ful Crown-office Pow, place of my kindly engender." Many 
 illustrious names cluster about these antique buildings, such as 
 Paleigh, Selden, Clarendon, Congreve, Wycherly, Fielding, 
 Burke, Johnson, Cowper, Powe, Beaumont, Ford, and Gold- 
 smith, who had chambers here. 
 
 Addison, it will be remembered, lived and died at Holland 
 27 
 
418 THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 
 
 House. It was at Holland House, of which he became possessed 
 by marriage, that Addison, in the fine couplet of Tickell, 
 
 " Tauglit us liow to live ; and, oh ! too high 
 A price for knowledge, taught us how to die ! " 
 
 Cowley's name is associated with Chertsey and Barn Elms, 
 both in the county of Surrey. The house at Chertsey, we be- 
 lieve, yet remains, somewhat modernized. Over the door is a 
 small tablet of stone on which is inscribed, 
 
 " Here the last accents fell from Cowley's tongue." 
 
 Grub street is replete with literary memories, inelegant as its 
 name is ; it is called Milton street, and is in the parish of St. 
 Giles, Cripplegate, near Bunhill fields. Many of its old houses 
 remain as they were in the time of Charles II. 
 
 In Covent Garden Market is a spot around which genius 
 seems to have loved to hover. In Tavistock house, Johnson 
 first met his devoted biographer, Boswell ; close by was Will's 
 coffee house, at which place Addison and his confreres used to 
 meet. Not far ofl: was also Evans's Club and the "Savage 
 Club," the frequent rendezvous of the writers and actors of 
 their day. 
 
 It is impossible to enumerate even the most noted names, in 
 our rapid survey of the shrines of genius ; they are scattered 
 all over British soil. There are a few names we have omitted, 
 however, which it seems like treason to loyalty to ignore : 
 Charles Lamb, who lived sometime and died — not at Enfield, as 
 has been supposed by some — but at Edmonton ; his grave is in 
 the church-yard of that pleasant retreat. Mrs. Barrett Brown- 
 ing, who lived and wrote and died at sunny Florence ; Mrs. 
 Hemans, whose grave is in St. Anne's church-yard, Dublin ; 
 Dr. Chalmers, whose mortal part sleeps in the cemetery at 
 Grange, near Morningside ; and the saintly and eloquent Ed- 
 
THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 419 
 
 ward Irving, whose dust rests beneath the crypt of Glasgow 
 Cathedral. Also the mighty though mystic Coleridge, who 
 lived, died, and was buried at Ilighgate, near London ; Cowper, 
 '^ the Christian household poet of England," whose ashes rest at 
 East Durham church-yard; Hood, "the prince of punsters," 
 and, may we not add, of pathos, whose monument stands in 
 Kensall Green Cemeteiy. 
 
 Among the historic sites of London there are not many which 
 can lay claim to more venerable associations than the Bunhill- 
 fields burial-ground in Finsbury. It was first used for interment 
 at the time of the Great Plague, and is the site of the " great 
 pit in Finsbury," spoken of in Defoe's narrative. 
 
 Old Bunhill-fields burying-ground is rich in memories of 
 eminent men. Among the celebrated graves of this " Campo. 
 Santo of the Dissenters," may be mentioned those of De Foe, 
 the well-known author of " Robinson Crusoe," John Bunyan, 
 Isaac Watts, General Fleetwood, George Fox, the first of the 
 Quakers, and Stothard, the great painter. 
 
 Dickens' last residence was Gadshill, Rochester, near London 
 Here he died in the midst of his work, and of his days, sud- 
 denly, to the great sorrow of a world of readers. This was 
 the Gadshill of Shakespeare's time, and here passed Chaucer 
 and his pilgrims, and Falstaff and his lawless crew ; and here 
 followed the future bard of Avon, shaping the ancient ballad 
 of the "Robbery at Gadshill" into one of those "jewels," as 
 Tennyson defines them, "which sparkle in the forefinger of 
 Time." 
 
 In another direction, amid the luxuriant foliage of Stoke- 
 Pogeis, Buckinghamshire, is Gray's church-yard, almost sur- 
 rounded with high fir-trees covered with ivy, which impart a 
 pleasing gloom in summer to the spot. It is impossible to ap- 
 proach it without feeling that it is a spot calculated to have in- 
 spired the poet with those feelings which drew from him his 
 
420 THE SHMNES OF GEMXJS. 
 
 beautiful and well-known " Elegy." Here he wrote, here he 
 wandered, and here he was buried. But where is his monu- 
 ment ? We look for it in vain, either in the church or church- 
 yard. There is, indeed, the tomb of "the careful, tender 
 mother of many children, one of whom had the misfortune to 
 survive her." That child was Thomas Gray, the poet. In 
 that simple tomb his ashes repose, with those of the mother he 
 so affectionately loved. Our artist has given us a beautiful 
 sketch of the scene. 
 
 Ireland claims a passing allusion : if its literary localities are 
 less numerous, they are scarcely less interesting. To begin 
 with the metropolis : there is Glasnevin, with its recollections 
 of Tickell, Parnell, and the rest of that brilliant circle which 
 there met ; there is Swift's birthplace in Hoey's Court, and his 
 tomb in St. Patrick's ; there is 12 Dorset street, where Sheridan 
 first drew his breath, and Aungier street, where his biographer, 
 Thomas Moore, was born. And how many a one — even the 
 admirer of her poetry — passes 20 Dawson street, without think- 
 ing of Mrs. Hemans ; yet in that house the " falcon-hearted 
 dove" folded its wing and fell asleep, and in the vaults of St. 
 Anne's Church, hard by, her mortal remains are laid. 
 
 Thomson's natal place was Ednam, near Kelso, Scotland ; 
 he removed thence to Southdean, where he is supposed to have 
 indited his justly celebrated "Seasons;" afterward he re- 
 paired to a house near Richmond. His remains rest in Rich- 
 mond Church, where a brass tablet is erected to his memory. 
 
 But in our rapid survey of the shrines of old England we 
 had well-nigh forgotten those of our own land. When gliding 
 along the placid Hudson, why do we instinctively bend our 
 gaze as we near Tarrytown, to a little thickly-embowered 
 nook, with its vine-clad cottage nestling in its bosom ? Along 
 the grand old wooded and rocky borders of this noble river 
 are many more imposing and picturesque vistas and views than 
 
THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 421 
 
 this modest raviue presents ; here is a shrine of genius — it is 
 Sunnyside^ the home of Washington Irving. Grand and spirit- 
 stirring as are foreign sites and shrines, there is yet a home- 
 interest for lis in the spot that our foremost representative in 
 American letters has consecrated to memory. We visit the 
 grave of his sleeping dust in the rural cemetery of his legend- 
 ary " Sleepy Hollow," to pay the tribute of loving remem- 
 brance to his genial and gifted character. Irving is no more 
 with us, but he has bequeathed to us a cherished possession, the 
 fruits of his exalted genius, and the pleasant memory of his 
 exemplary life. 
 
 Stretching up the river a few miles is another memorial 
 spot, Willis's "Idlewild," amid whose picturesque ravines 
 some of the poetic prose and glowing verse of that well-known 
 and elegant wi'iter emanated. His life-tours of Europe were to 
 him a kind of perpetual phantasmagoria. 
 
 Every one laiows, or is supposed to know, the resting-place 
 of the great and good Washington, at Mount Yernon, which is 
 indicated by a beautiful marble sarcophagus ; and also that of 
 Franklin, with its quaint epitaph, at the corner of Fifth and 
 Arch streets, Philadelphia. The tomb of Jefferson, at Monti- 
 cello, in Yirginia, is another shrine of memory for the Ameri- 
 can tourist. 
 
 Among memorable sites in New York City we should not 
 omit to mention the old Dutch Church, for some years used as 
 the New York Post Office. It was in the old wooden steeple 
 of this church that Franklin performed his first experiments 
 in electricity. Dirty and dingy as it is, who would not look at 
 the old belfry with a new interest as the starting-point of that 
 luminous train which now encircles the globe, and by which 
 we communicate with our antipodes with almost the celerity of 
 thouo^ht ? We shall never f orc^et the historic memories of old 
 Faneuil Hall, Boston ; or Independence Hall, with its daunt 
 
422 
 
 THE SHRINES OF GENIUS. 
 
 less " Declaration of Independence." Memory is busy, also, 
 with the locale of Longfellow, at his historic mansion, Cam- 
 bridge, Massachusetts ; with that of the veteran of the Ameri- 
 can muse, Bryant, at his rustic home, Eoslyn, Long Island; 
 and with that of Emerson, at Concord : not to speak of others 
 of like fame in our literary world — Motley, Bancroft, Hildreth ; 
 Lossing, in history, and Holmes, Saxe, and Lowell, in song. 
 And, lastly, let us not forget those other worthies, now passed 
 away — Audubon, Prescott, Paulding, Hawthorne, Everett, 
 Cooper, and Webster, the undesigned prophecy of whose 
 words — " I still live " — are so applicable to alL 
 
THE HUMOES OF LAW. 
 
 Law, legally considered, and in hTief^ is jurisprudence, 
 and this again may be distinguished as civil, ecclesiastical, and 
 criminal. But there are sundry other kinds of law ; to wit : 
 that which pertains to the universe at large, gravitation, and 
 the laws of physical, social, and civil life. Law is indeed in- 
 dispensable to the well-being of society, since a lawless condi- 
 tion is one of anarchy and confusion. "Liberty is born of 
 law^'' for " true liberty is the power of doing that which the law 
 permits." 
 
 But as there is a comic phase to most things, we find that 
 even the stern inflexible, and severe gravity of law is not with- 
 
424: THE HUMORS OF LAW. 
 
 out its ludicrous aspect. Let us glance at some of its humors 
 and absurdities ; careful, meanwhile, that our pleasantries do 
 not betray us into a lawsuit for libel or impeachment for con- 
 tempt of court ; albeit, neither might be in accordance with 
 equity or justice. For much as we are disposed to revere the 
 majesty of law, we would keep at a respectful distance from 
 its clutches, lest we become unwittingly entangled in its meshes 
 and toils. Therefore we must be discreet in handling our sub- 
 ject, for not only are we admonished by an old ditty that law 
 is litigation and tergiversation, but mystification and a mon- 
 strous delusion ; so that — 
 
 " If fond of pure vexation, Latin, and botlieration, 
 We're just in a situation 
 
 To enjoy a suit at law." 
 
 Law is law — and, as in such, and so forth, and hereby, and 
 aforesaid, provided always, nevertheless, notwithstanding. Law 
 is like a blistering plaster — it is a great irritator, and only to be 
 used in cases of great extremity. Law, again, is compared to 
 a country- dance ; people are led up and down in it until they 
 are thoroughly tired. Law is like a book of surgery ; there 
 are a great many terrible cases in it. 
 
 Law always expresses itself with true grammatical precision^ 
 never confounding moods, tenses, cases, or genders, except, 
 indeed, when a woman happens accidentally to be slain, then 
 the verdict brought in is manslaughter. The essence of law 
 is altercation, for the law can altercate, fulminate, deprecate, 
 irritate, and go on at any rate. 
 
 " Law is like longitude, about never completely yet found out; 
 Thougli practised notwithstanding. 
 
 'Tis like the fatalist's strange creed, which justifies a wicked deed, 
 While sternly reprimanding ! " 
 
THE HUMORS OF LAW. 425 
 
 " Law has been compared to fire ; since those who meddle 
 with it generally burn their fingers. Law is like a sieve ; you 
 may see through it — but you will be considerably reduced 
 before you get through it. It is to the litigant what the poul- 
 terer is to the goose — it plucks and it draws him; but here the 
 simile ends, for the litigant, unlike the goose, never gets trusty 
 although he may be roasted and dishedP 
 
 Human laws are designed mainly to protect absolute rights ; 
 the laws, or the lawyers, however, often interfere with what 
 seems absolutely right, till there is nothing absolutely left of 
 the original right — and absolute wrong is of necessity the con- 
 sequence. Those reputed allies — equity and justice — seem, in 
 these boasted days of " progress," not only to have repudiated 
 their avowed relationship, but even to have wellnigh lost all 
 kind of respect for each other. But we must remember that 
 Justice is hlind, althougli she balances the scales. It is with 
 law as with physic : so long as diseases and discord disturb the 
 social fabric, legal pacification and pills seem to be indispensa- 
 ble. We must all have our share of trials in this life ; but trial 
 by jury should by all means be avoided. 
 
 An amusing paper on the " Legerdemain of Law-craft," thus 
 defines an honest counsel : " He is not double-faced, like 
 Janus, to take a retaining fee from plaintiff, and afterward a 
 back-handed bribe from the defendant ; nor so double-tongued 
 that one may purchase his pleading, and the other, at the same 
 or a larger price, his silence. . . . He does not play the 
 empiric with his client, and put him on the rack to make him 
 bleed more freely, casting him into a swoon with frights of a 
 judgment, and then reviving him again with a cordial- writ of 
 error, or the choice elixir of an injunction." 
 
 The scene presented at a court of justice {i.e. law) is one of 
 strange interest. It is there human nature may be studied 
 with great effect. The passions of men are not only brought into 
 
426 THE HUMOES OF LAW. 
 
 play — they riot in dire confusion. The cupidity and cunning 
 of counsel, the qualms and querulousness of the clients, the 
 stern immobility of the j udge, the officiousness of the crier, and 
 the stolid indifference of those ominous individuals who are to 
 decide' the fate of the contending parties, contrast broadly 
 with the vulgar curiosity evinced by the promiscuous crowd. 
 A suit at law is, beyond all controversy, a most uncomfortable 
 one — it unfits a man for everything else ; it disturbs his peace, 
 wastes his money, and too often ruins his reputation. The 
 very term, suit at law, is, by the way, a misnomer ; for it 
 frequently strips a man of all he has, and he seldom gets any 
 re-dress. 
 
 The law courts are not unfrequently the scene of severe 
 gladiatorial rhetoric between counsel, on the diamond-cut- 
 diamond principle. In a London court a counsel for the 
 defendant, in an action, after dissecting his antagonist's speech 
 and deducing inferences diametrically opposite to him, observ- 
 ing him wince nnder the infliction, cruelly intensified his 
 discomfiture by adding, "My learned friend on the other 
 side shakes his head (emphasizing the word), but I don't know 
 that there's much in that ! " 
 
 Counsellor Lamb, an old man when Lord Erskine was at the 
 height of his reputation, was a man of timid manners and 
 nervous temperament, and usually prefaced his plea with an 
 apology to that effect. On one occasion, when opposed to 
 Erskine, he happened to remark that he felt himself growing 
 more and more timid as he grew older. " No wonder," 
 replied the witty but relentless barrister, " every one knows 
 that the older a lamh grows the more sheepish he becomes." 
 
 Brow-beating of witnesses is an old standing charge against 
 counsel. The poor victim of legal torture is placed on the 
 stand, and after having undergone the most exhaustive process 
 of pumping, by the one counsel, he is handed over to the cross- 
 
THE HUMORS OF LAW. 427 
 
 examiner, who ingeniously endeavors to make him contradict 
 the testimony he has just given. 
 
 If even law were proved to be a positive good, we have so 
 much of it that it has come to be a positive evil. Added to its 
 countless statute-books, its codes, civil, common, and canon, we 
 have such voluminous commentaries as no mortal man can 
 comprehend or even read. This prodigality of law has proved 
 the occasion of an equally prolific race of lawyers, scarcely 
 any two of whom interpret law alike. 
 
 We have looked enough at the negative side of law ; but 
 where it is made synonymous with equity and justice, it is in- 
 vested with the sanctions of Divinity. One of the old divines. 
 Hooker, said of law that " her seat is the bosom of God and 
 her voice the harmony of the universe." 
 
 The ancients, as a proof of their reverence for law and 
 justice, represented their goddess, Themis, as the daughter of 
 Heaven and Earth — of Heaven, as typical of her purity and 
 holiness — of Earth, as representing her abode and sphere of 
 action. To denote her strength she was of Titanic origin ; as 
 an appreciation of her consequence she was placed by the side 
 of Jupiter. 
 
 Well may we congratulate ourselves when we remember 
 that the laws of Draco, the Pandects of Justinian, and the 
 Decretals of Gregory are now among the things that were, 
 and that we live in an age when men know and realize what 
 are their rights and can defend them. 
 
 If any one would like to see the form of a barrister's or 
 rather a lawyer's " declaration " in an action, here is one : 
 
 *' The pleadings state that John-a-Gtill, 
 
 With envy, wrath, and malice full, 
 
 With swords, knives, sticks, staves, fist, and bludgeon, 
 
 Beat, bruised, and wounded John-a-Gudgeon ! 
 
 First count's for that with divers jugs, — 
 
 To wit : twelve pots, twelve cups, twelve mugs, 
 
428 THE HUMORS OF LAW. 
 
 Of certain vulgar drink, called toddy, 
 
 Said Gull did sluice said Gudgeon's body. 
 
 The second count's for other toddy, 
 
 Thrown by said Gull on Gudgeon's body, — 
 
 To wit, his gold-laced hat, and hair on, 
 
 And clothes, which he had then and there on, — 
 
 To wit : twelve jackets, twelve surtouts, 
 
 Twelve pantaloons, twelve pair of boots ; 
 
 Which did thereby much discompose 
 
 Said Gudgeon's mouth, eyes, ears, and nose, 
 
 Back, stomach, neck, thighs, feet, and toes ; 
 
 By which, and other wrongs unheard of, 
 
 His clothes were spoiled, and life despaired of." 
 
 Lord Eldon was renowned for his doubting propensity. 
 Many were the squibs, in prose and verse, of which this Fabius 
 of Chancellors was the subject. It is stated that during his 
 chancellorship, such was his high sense of rectitude, that he is 
 said to have retained counsel, in some instances, five, ten, and 
 even twenty years (according to the capacity of the purse of the 
 parties concerned), rather than venture a rash judgment in some 
 equity cases. The longest suit on record, in England, is that of 
 the heirs of Sir Thomas Talbot and the heirs of Lord Berkeley, 
 respecting some property in the county of Gloucester. It began 
 at the close of the reign of Edward lY., and was depending 
 until the beginning of that of James L, when it was finally com- 
 founded — being a period of not less than one hundred and 
 twenty years ! ' 
 
 Erskine once met a grandiloquent barrister who delighted in 
 flowery language. Perceiving that his ankle was tied up, Er- 
 skine asked the cause. " Why, my dear sir," answered the 
 wordy lawyer, " I was taking a romantic ramble in my broth- 
 er's grounds, when, coming to a gate, I had to climb over it, in 
 doing which I came in contact with the uppermost bar and 
 have grazed the epidermis of my shin, attended with a slight 
 extravasation of blood." " You may thank your stars," replied 
 
THE HUMORS OF LAW. 429 
 
 Ei-skine, '• that your brother's gate was not as lofty as your style 
 or you must have broken your neck." 
 
 Slieridan was one day much annoyed by a fellow-member 
 of the House of Commons, who kept crying out every minute? 
 '' Hear ! hear ! " In describing a political contemporary that 
 wished to play rogue, but had only sense enough to act fool, 
 he took occasion to exclaim with great emphasis : " Where, 
 where shall we find a more foolish knave or a more knavish 
 fool than he ? " " Hear ! hear ! " was shouted by the trouble- 
 some member. Sheridan turned round, and thanking him for 
 the prompt information, sat down amid a general roar of laugh- 
 ter. We meet with punning pleaders and sarcastic counsellors 
 in abundance ; so the reader, it is hoped, will relish their jokes 
 and repartees " hereinafter following." To refrain from multi- 
 plying instances of the ludicrous in law is, indeed, no easy mat- 
 ter, since the recollection of the names even of prominent 
 members of the Irish bar are so suggestive of fun. Who can 
 think of Philpott, Shiel, Curran, and Norbury, without recol- 
 lecting their jokes ? 
 
 Curran was engaged in a legal argument ; behind him stood 
 his colleague, a gentleman whose person was remarkably tall 
 and slender, and who had originally intended to take orders. 
 The judge observing that the case under, discussion involved a 
 question of ecclesiastical law — '^ Then," said Curran, " I can 
 refer your lordship to a high authority behind me, who was 
 once intended for the Church, though, in my opinion, he was 
 fitter for the steeple." " No man," said a wealthy but weak- 
 headed barrister, " should be admitted to the bar who has not 
 an independent landed property." " May I ask, sir," said Cur- 
 ran, " how many acres make a ^b^5^-acre ? " On another occa- 
 sion he was asked, " Could you not have known this boy to be 
 ray son from his resemblance to me?" Curran answered, 
 " Y'es, sir, the maker's name is stamped upon the hladeP Being 
 
430 THE HUMOES OF LAW. 
 
 asked again, "what an Irish gentleman, just arrived in Eng- 
 land, could mean by perpetually putting out his tongue ? " he 
 answered, " I suppose he's trying to catch the English accent." 
 
 Plunkett, while pleading one day, observing the hour to be 
 late, said it was his wish to proceed with the trial if the jury 
 would set. " Bit^ sir," said the judge, correcting him, " not set ; 
 hens set." " I thank you, my lord," was the reply. Shortly 
 after the judge had occasion to observe, " that if such were the 
 case, he feared the action would not layP " Lie^ my lord," 
 said the barrister, " not lay ; hens layT 
 
 A British lawyer was engaged some time since to defend a 
 man who had been charged with theft. Assuming the prerog- 
 ative of his position, the counsel, in a private interview with his 
 client, said to him, " Now, Patrick, as I am to defend you I 
 want you to tell me frankly whether you are guilty or not. 
 Did you steal the goods % " " Faith, then," said Pat, " I s'pose 
 I must tell yez. In troth, I did stale 'em ! " " Then you ought 
 to be ashamed of yourself to come here and disgrace your 
 country by stealing ? " said the honest counsel. " In troth, sir, 
 maybe I ought ; but, then, if I didn't stale, you wouldn't have 
 the honor and credit of getting me off ! " 
 
 It may be remembered, a curious instance occurred of a wit- 
 ness confounding a counsel, at Gloucester, England, some years 
 ago. The witness, on being asked his name, gave it Ottiwell 
 Woodd. He pronounced it hurriedly several times, as the 
 learn,ed counsel did not seem to catch it. "Spell it, sir, if 
 you please," he said, somewhat angrily ; the witness complied 
 thus : " O, tt, i, w, e, 11, W, oo, dd." The spelling more con- 
 founded the counsel than ever, and in his confusion, amid the 
 riotous laughter of the court, he took the witness aside to help 
 him to spell it after him. 
 
 O'Connell was once examining a witness, whose inebriety, at 
 the time to which the evidence referred, it was essential to his 
 
 ■■■I 
 
THE HUMORS OF LAW. 431 
 
 client's case to prove. lie quickly discovered the man's char- 
 acter. He was a fellow who may be described as " half -foolish 
 with roguery." " Well, Darby, you told the truth to this gen- 
 tleman ? " " Yes, your honor. Counsellor O'Connell." " How 
 do you know my name ? " " Ah ! sure every one knows our 
 own jpathriotP " Well, you are a good-humored, honest fel- 
 low ; now tell me, Darby, did you take a drop of anything that 
 day ? " " Why, your honor, I took my share of a pint of 
 spirits." " Your share of it ; now, by virtue of your oath, was 
 not your share of it all hut the pewter? " " Why, then, dear 
 knows, that's true for you, sir." The court was convulsed at 
 both question and answer. 
 
 Here is an instance of his ready tact and infinite resource in 
 the defence of his client. In a trial at Cork for murder the 
 principal witness swore strongly against the prisoner. He 
 particularly swore that a hat, found near the place of the mur- 
 der, belonged to the prisoner, whose name was James. " By 
 virtue of your oath, are you sure that this is the same hat ? '^ 
 " Yes." " Did you examine it carefully before you swore, in 
 your information, that it was the prisoner's ? " "I did." " Now 
 let me see," said O'Connell, as he took up the hat and began 
 to examine it carefully in the inside. He then spelled aloud 
 the name of James, slowly, and repeated the question as to 
 whether the hat contained the name; when the respondent 
 promptly replied, " It did." " Now, my lord," said O'Connell, 
 holding up the hat to the bench, " there is an end of the case 
 — there is no name whatever inscribed in the hat." The result 
 was, of course, acquittal. 
 
 The following anecdote of two eminent pleaders, Pinckney 
 and Emmet, we copy from the KnickerboGker : it is an admir- 
 able rebuke upon those who suppose that irony, sarcasm, and 
 invective constitute the essentials of forensic eloquence. 
 
 " We do not know when we have encountered a more forci 
 
432 THE HUMORS OF LAW. 
 
 ble exemplification of the truth, ^that a soft answer tumeth 
 away wrath,' than is afforded in the ensuing anecdote : On 
 one occasion in the Supreme Court of the United States, the 
 eloquent Irish exile, Emmet, and the distinguished orator, 
 Pinckney, were on opposite sides in an important cause, and 
 one which the latter had much at heart. In the course of the 
 argument he made some offensive personal observations on 
 Emmet, with a view of irritating him and weakening his reply. 
 Emmet sat quiet and endured it all. It seemed to have sharp- 
 ened his intellect without having irritated his temper. When 
 the argument was finished, he said : ' Perhaps he ought to 
 notice the remarks of the opposite counsel, but this was a 
 species of warfare in which he had the good fortune to have 
 little experience and one in which he never dealt — he was 
 willing that his learned opponent should have all the advan- 
 tages he promised himself from the display of his talents in 
 that way. Wten he came to this country he was a stranger, 
 and was happy to say that from the bar generally and the 
 court universally he had experienced nothing but politeness 
 and even kindness. He believed the court would do him the 
 justice to say that he had said or done nothing in this cause to 
 merit a different treatment. He had always been accustomed 
 to admire and even reverence the learning and eloquence of 
 Mr. Pinckney, and he was the last man from whom he should 
 have expected personal observations of the sort the court had 
 just witnessed. ' He had been in early life taught by the high- 
 est authority not to return railing for railing. He would only 
 say that he had been informed that the learned gentleman had 
 filled the highest oflBce his country could bestow at the court 
 of St. James. He was very sure that he had not learned his 
 breeding in that school.' 
 
 " The court and the bar were delighted ; for Mr. Pinckney 
 was apt to be occasionally a little too overbearing. When we 
 
THE HUMORS OF LAW. 433 
 
 take into consideration the merit of resistance against the 
 natural impulse of a warm Irish temperament, we must admire 
 still more the manner adopted by Mr. Emmet. Mr. Pinckney 
 afterward tendered the most ample apology. ' The manner,' 
 said he, ' in which Mr. Emmet has replied, reproaches me by 
 its forbearance and urbanity, and could not fail to'hasten the 
 repentance which reflection alone would have produced, and 
 which 1 am glad to have so public an occasion of avowing. I 
 offer him a gratuitous and cheerful atonement : cheerful 
 because it puts me to rights with myself, and because it is 
 tendered not to ignorance and presumption, but to the highest 
 worth, intellect, and morals, enhanced by such eloquence as 
 few may hope to equal ; to an interesting stranger whom ad- 
 versity has tried, and affliction struck severely to the heart ; to 
 an exile whom any country might be proud to receive and 
 every man of a generous temper would be ashamed to offend.' " 
 
 Special pleaders sometimes resort to curious expedients for 
 producing an effect on the sympathies of the jury — a body of 
 men distinguished alike for their acute sensibilities and criti- 
 cal sagacity. In a criminal case, in which the culprit w^as 
 arraigned upon a charge of manslaughter, which seemed to 
 bear very much against the prisoner, the counsel held up his 
 little child, who was crying aloud, as an eloquent appeal to the 
 jury in his behalf. This might have answered very well had 
 not one of their mimber put the pertinent question to the 
 youngster, " What are you crying for ? " wlien the artless rej^ly 
 was, " He pinched me, sir." 
 
 As no one denies that the bar has been ever distinguislied 
 for eloquence, it is not needful for us to cite a list of luminous 
 names to prove the fact. Eather would we present the follow- 
 ing curious case of an attorney, who was possessed of a won- 
 derful facility in " facing both ways." A Scottish advocate, 
 we have forgotten his name, having on a certain occasion drank 
 
 Ak 
 
434 THE HUMORS OF LAW. 
 
 rather too freely, was called on unexpectedly to plead in a 
 cause in which he had been retained. The lawyer mistook the 
 party for whom he was engaged, and to the great amazement 
 of the agent who had feed him, and to the absolute horror of 
 the poor client, who was in court, he delivered a long arid fer- 
 vent speech directly opposite to the interests he had been 
 called upon to defend. Such was his zeal that no whispered 
 remonstrance, no jostling of the elbow, could stop him. But 
 just as he was about to sit down the trembling client, in a brief 
 note, informed him that he had been pleading for the wrong 
 party. ^ This intimation, which would have disconcerted most 
 men, had a very different effect on the advocate, who, w^ith an 
 air of infinite composure, resumed his oration. " Such, my 
 lords," said he, " is the statement which you will probably hear 
 from my learned brother on the opposite side in this cause. I 
 shall now, therefore, beg leave, in a few words, to show your 
 lordships how utterly im tenable are the principles and how dis- 
 torted are the facts upon which this very specious statement 
 has proceeded." The learned gentleman then went over the 
 whole ground, and did not take his seat until he had completely 
 and energetically refuted the whole of his former pleading. 
 
 We pause not to notice any of the peculiarities of pleading, 
 in connection with hriefs — those legal documentary instru- 
 ments, usually more remarkable for their expansion and verbos- 
 ity than anything else. In early times pleading was carried 
 on without the aid of hriefs. 
 
 Sterne insinuates that attorneys are to lawj^ers what apothe- 
 caries are to physicians — only that they do not deal in scrwples! 
 Attorneys and la\vyers in our courts are convertible terms. 
 
 Having referred to briefs, we are reminded of the opposite. 
 
 We liave not dilated upon "the law's delay." The topic is, 
 however, too trite to talk about — let an instance suffice. 
 
 The fault, in some instances, rests more with the client than 
 
THE HUMORS OF LAW. 435 
 
 the counsel : the judicial reports exhibit many such absurdi- 
 ties. In the Chancery Court of England, the case of N"arty 
 vs. Duncan occurred, in which suit actually two thousand 
 pounds sterling were expended in determining which party 
 was liable to paint a board and whitewash a sign ! 
 
 We have at our hand a case, and as it is a very striking one, 
 we may as well introduce it with the view of adding force to 
 our obsei*vations. 
 
 A lawyer, retained in a case of assault and battery, was 
 cross-examining a witness in relation to the force of a blow 
 struck : " What kind of a blow was given ? " "A blow of 
 the common kind." " Describe the blow." " I am not good 
 at description." " Show me what kind of a blow it was." " I 
 cannot." " You must." " I wont." The lawyer appealed to 
 the court. The court told the witness that if the counsel in- 
 sisted upon his showing what kind of a blow it was, he must 
 do so. " Do you insist upon it ? " asked the witness. " I do." 
 " Well, then, since you compel me to show you, it was this 
 kind of a blow ! " at the same time suiting the action to the 
 word) and knocking over tho astonished disciple of Coke upon 
 Littleton. Is this authentic, say you ? Deponent saith not. 
 
 In this connection we have yet another case to present, in 
 which the irritating and too irritable counsel was completely 
 nonplussed. It is as follows : 
 
 " I call upon you," said the counsellor, " to state distinctly 
 upon what authority you are prepared to swear to the mare's 
 age." " Upon what authority ? " said the ostler, interroga- 
 tively. " You are to reply to, and not to repeat the questions 
 put to you." " I doesn't consider a man's bound to answer a 
 question afore he's time to turn it in his mind." "N'othing 
 can be more simple, sir, than the question put. I again repeat 
 it : ' Upon what authority do you swear to the animal's age ? '" 
 " The best authority," responded the witness, gruffly. " Then 
 
43G THE HUMORS OF LAW. 
 
 why such evasion ? Why not state it at once ? " " Well, then? 
 if you must have it." " Must ! I will have it," vociferated the 
 counsellor, interrupting the witness. " Well, then, if you must 
 and will have it," rejoined the ostler, with imperturbable grav- 
 ity, " why, then, I had it myself from the mare's own mouth." 
 A simultaneous burst of laughter rang through the court. 
 
 We do not intend to reproduce any of the insta.nces of matri- 
 monial infelicity, that, alas, too frequently occur, and are re- 
 ported by the periodical press with such heightened effect. 
 We have, however, at hand a case of desertion by a faithless 
 swain, bearing the suspicious name of Bachelor, for breach of 
 promise of marriage. A number of the defendant's love-letters 
 were produced, in which the fluctuations of his love were very 
 amusingly exhibited. His first epistles terminated with, 
 " Yours, J. B. ; " then fired up to " My ever dearest Maria ; " 
 afterward they softened into " My Darling ; " then cooled into 
 " Dear Maria ; " then formalized into " Dear Miss Eogers ; " 
 and broke off with the following announcement : " You wish 
 to know how I intend to settle ; all I can say is that I cannot 
 be more settled than I am." 
 
 The following bit of the humorous once occurred in a Dub- 
 lin court. Judge : " Pray, my good man, what passed between 
 you and the prisoner ? state it to the court." " Och, thin, plase 
 yer worship," says Pat, " sure I sees Phelan on the top of a 
 wall. ' Paddy,' says he ; ' what ? ' says I ; ' here,' says he ; 
 ^ where,' says I ; ' whist ! ' says he ; ' hush,' says I ; and 
 that is all I know about it, plase yer worship." After this 
 lucid testimony Pat was dismissed without further questioning. 
 
 Sometimes a simple rustic proves more than a match for the 
 tactics of learned counsel. Some years ago, at the Lincoln 
 Assizes, the temper of the examining counsel was somewhat 
 tried by a certain timid witness whose testimony could scarcely 
 be heard. After this there appeared upon the stand one who 
 
THE HUMORS OF LAW. 437 
 
 seemed to be simplicity personified. "Xow, sir," said the 
 learned representative of law, in a lond voice, " I hope we shall 
 have no difficulty in making yon speak up." "I hope not, sir," 
 was shouted, or rather bellowed out by the witness, that startled 
 the whole com-t out of its propriety. " How dare you speak in 
 that way, sir," said the counsel. " Please, zur, I cannot speak 
 any louder, zur," replied the astonished witness, attempting to 
 shout even louder than before. " Pi'ay, have you been drink- 
 ing this morning ? " screamed out the man of law, quite losing 
 his self-control. " Yes, zur," was the reply. " And what have 
 you been drinking ? " " Coffee, zur." " And what did you 
 have in yom* coffee, sir?" shouted the exasperated lawyer. 
 "A spoon, zur," was the answer, amid the roars of the 
 whole court. 
 
 A member of the Kew York Bar was once asked by a man 
 in the street, whether a five-dollar bill which he showed to him 
 was a good one. " Yes," was the reply, putting the bank-note 
 into his pocket. The interrogator thanked him, and asked him 
 to return the note. All he got was, " I never give an opinion 
 under five dollars." 
 
 Is^ames are sometimes significant, professionally, as in 
 the instance of the well-known legal firm, in Kew York — 
 Ketchum and Cheatham. As the combination was found to be 
 provocative of risible curiosity the firm changed it so as to 
 read thus : " I. Ketchum and U. Cheatham ! " (their Christian 
 names being respectively Isaac and Uriah.) 
 
 A certain judicial functionary on the confines of our western 
 clearings once confessed, in the simplicity of his heart, that he 
 could decide well enough upon a case when he heard one side, 
 but it bothered him to listen to both. That seems to have been 
 the case with that renowned doubter. Chancellor Eldon; so 
 we need not wonder that a lesser luminary should be lost in the 
 fog. 
 
438 THE HUMORS OF LAW. 
 
 In a county town of Georgia a man named Knott was tried, 
 and his case was indeed a knotty one, for the judge even was 
 unable to decide upon the verdict rendered, whether to pro- 
 nounce sentence or not. The Jury found "the prisoner, 
 Knott, guilty ! " 
 
 Judge Story and Edward Everett once met at a public din- 
 ner in Boston, when the first-named offered as a toast the fol- 
 lowing: "Fame follows merit where Everett goes." The 
 retort courteous was no less felicitous : " To whatever height 
 judicial learning may attain in this country, there will be al- 
 ways one Story higher." • This reminds us of a similar in- 
 stance, when Prof. Longfellow met Mr. Longworth ; and on the 
 host introducing them to each other, the professor remarked 
 that their names bore some resemblance, but were suggestive of 
 the old maxim, that " worth makes the man, the want of it, 
 the fellow." 
 
 Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, on one occasion referring to 
 a witness, said he had a vegetahle head. " How so," was the 
 inquiry. " He has carroty hair, reddish cheeks, a tuimwp nose, 
 and a sage look," was the reply. 
 
 The same facetious functionary asked his friend Condy for a 
 book. The latter replied, " With pleasure ; I will send it to 
 you." " That," said he, " will be truly condescending " (Condy- 
 sending). 
 
 On another occasion a counsel so tormented a witness by 
 cross-examination that he called for water; the judge exclaimed, 
 " I thought you would pump him dry." 
 
 Sir Boyle Roche has been made responsible for several irre- 
 sistible jokes. For instance; he it was who first gave utterance 
 to that sagacious aphorism, " Single misfortunes never come 
 alone ; and the greatest of all is generally followed by a much 
 greater." He ordered his shoemaker on one occasion to make 
 on(3 boot larger than the other to suit his gouty foot. They 
 
THE HUMOKS OF LAW. 439 
 
 were bronglit home to him, and as he was trying them on he 
 exclaimed, " I told you to make on-e larger than the other, and 
 you have done exactly the reverse, for you have made one 
 smaller than the other." During the troublous times in which 
 he lived property and life were deemed insecure. lie wrote 
 once to a friend ; " You may judge of our state when I tell you 
 that I write this with a pistol in each hand and a sword in 
 the other ! " 
 
 He it was who, in the exuberance of his loyalty, described 
 that remarkable performance in gymnastics, when he declared 
 that he " stood prostrate at the feet of his sovereign ! " It was 
 he who first suggested that ''• w^e should not put ourselves out 
 of the way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity 
 done for us ? " " And by posterity," he continued, " I do not 
 mean our ancestors, but those who are to come immediately 
 after tliem ! " 
 
 At a trial in the Court of King's Bench, in 1833, between 
 certain music publishers as to an alleged piracy of an arrange- 
 ment of the song of The Old English Gentleman^ Cooke, the 
 actor, was subpoenaed as a witness by one of the parties. On his 
 cross-examination, by Sir James Scarlett, afterward Lord Abin- 
 ger, for the opposite side, that learned counsel questioned him 
 thus : " ISTow, sir, you say that the two melodies are the same, but 
 different ; now what do you mean by that, sir % " To this Tom 
 promptly answered : " I said that the notes in the two copies 
 were alike, but with a different accent, the one being in com- 
 mon time, the other in six-eight time ; and consequently, the 
 position of the accented notes was different." " Now, pray sir, 
 don't beat about the bush, but explain to the jury, who are 
 supposed to know nothing about music, the meaning of what 
 you call accent." Cooke : " Accent in music is a certain stress 
 laid upon a particular note, in the same manner as you would 
 lay a stress upon any given word for the purpose of being better 
 
uo 
 
 THE HUMOES OF LAW. 
 
 understood. Thus, if 1 were to say ' you are an ass,'' it rests 
 on ass ; but if I were to say, * You are an ass,' it rests on you, 
 Sir James." Shouts of laughter by the whole court followed 
 this repartee. Silence at length having been obtained, the 
 judge, with much seeming gravity, accosted the counsel thus : 
 " Are you satisfied, Sir James ? " Sir James (who had become 
 scarlet in more than name), in a great huff, said, " The witness 
 may go down." 
 
 After all we have to urge against the law, we beg to ac- 
 knowledge allegiance to its high authority ; and, as to its ad- 
 ministrators, let the words of an old epigram speak for us : 
 
 " When we've nothing to dread from the law's sternest frowns, 
 We all laugh at the barristers' wigs, bags, and gowns ; 
 But as soon as we want them to sue or defend, 
 Then their laughter begins, and our mirth's at an end." 
 
FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWEES 
 
 "The bright mosaics, that with storied beauty 
 • The floor of nature's temple tesselate."— Horace Smith. 
 
 " A PASSION for flowers," wrote Mrs. Hemans, '^ is, 1 really 
 think, the only one w^hich long sickness leaves -antoiiched with 
 its chilling influence. Often, during a weary illness, have I 
 looked upon new books with perfect apathy, when, if a friend 
 has sent me a few flowers, m}^ heart has leapt up to their dreamy 
 hues and odors, with a sudden sense of renovated childhood — 
 which seems to me one of the mysteries of our being." To a 
 cultivated taste, indeed, flowers ever present the rarest attrac- 
 tions, and the most fascinating charms. Many-tinted and 
 raany-voiced, they are associated with all that we share in the 
 
442 FACTS ^'D FAJ^CIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 poetry and romance of life : — they deck, alike, the sunny, joy- 
 ous hours of youth, the Eden bliss of the bridal, and the saintly 
 associations of the burial. To these, and all life's minor scenes, 
 they impart a glory and a splendor unapproachable by all the 
 appliances of art. 
 
 " Barren, indeed, were this world of ours 
 Denied the sweet smile of the beautiful flowers," — 
 
 since they not only adorn and enrich the various phases of 
 our earthly life with their myriad forms of beauty, but they 
 perfume the very atmosphere of our being with their fragrant 
 breath, and when a- weary, gladden the heart that is open to 
 their appeal. 
 
 ' ' Not a tree, 
 A plant, a leaf, a blossom but contains 
 A folio volume. We may read, and read. 
 And read again, and still find something. new. 
 Something to please, and something to instruct, 
 E'en in the noisome weed." 
 
 Poets and painters have ever delighted to portray the 
 charms of nature, under w^hatever phase or aspect she presenfs 
 them ; as much when decked in the silvery sheen of winter, as 
 when arrayed in the prismatic Imes of the vernal spring — when 
 the meadows are gemmed with buttercups and daisies, and the 
 glorious trees of the forest are bursting into new life and leafy 
 beauty. With one exception — that of love — no subject has, to 
 a like extent, challenged the rich and quaint device of the 
 votaries of the muse. How pleasant an hour might we while 
 away by citations of the pleasurable passages of the poets, who 
 have luxuriated over the treasures of Flora ! 
 
 Lei^h Hunt thus delicately makes vocal the fairy tribes : 
 
 iMi 
 
FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 443 
 
 " We are the sweet flowers, bom of sunny showers ; 
 Think (whene'er you see us, what our beauty saith) — 
 Utterance mute and bright of some unknown delight, 
 We fill the air with pleasure, by our simple breath ; 
 All who sec us, love us ; we befit aU places ; 
 Unto sorrow we give smUes, — and unto graces, graces ! " 
 
 The silent, yet persuasive appeals of the radiant and per- 
 fumed flowers were lovingly heeded by the bards of old, who 
 tuned their lyre to the sweetest melody whenever they sang 
 their praises ; Chaucer, Spenser, and their illustrious successors 
 in the priesthood of song, down to the pastoral poet, Wordsworth, 
 have derived no little of their inspiration therefrom. It was 
 that bard of Kydal lake that confessed they stirred within him 
 " thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 Listen to his chant, — how daintily he syllables their names : 
 
 '' Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies ; 
 Let them live upon their praises ; 
 Long as there 's a sun that sets 
 Primroses will have their glory ; 
 Long as there are violets. 
 They will have a place in story." 
 
 Flowers have not only a symbolical language and literature, 
 they also indicate, as in an illuminated calendar, the procession 
 of the months and the changes of the seasons. The woods 
 and fields, the meadows and the water-courses, and the rocks 
 and hills, are alike bedecked and beautified with these floral 
 gems. 
 
 They are the gorgeous illuminations of the book of nature, 
 and the interpreters of her mysteries. A few there are, even 
 in this prosaic age, who, with Leigh Hunt, confessed to a faith 
 in the fairy lore of the sweet flowers ; and who among the 
 mists of the moonlit dell, or by the margin of some sylvan 
 
444 FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 stream, see sylphs and genii nestling amidst the modest flowers 
 Did our great dramatist dream, when he sang : 
 
 " I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, 
 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows ; 
 Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, 
 With sweet musk roses and with eglantine ; 
 There sleeps Titania, sometime of the night 
 Lulled in these flowers with dances and deUght ! " 
 
 But leaving the elfin tribe, let ns bend our gaze upon the 
 fairy flowers themselves, awhile. Their very name is suggestive 
 of all that is fresh and fragrant in nature. The gems that 
 sparkle in her diadem^the rich embroidery and glittering 
 adornments of her gayest and her simplest robes — the pearls, 
 the rubies, the diamonds, the sapphires, the gorgeous jewels 
 that enrich and beautify creation — are they not the sweet 
 flowers ? "Who loves not flowers ? The highest and the lowli- 
 est, the rich and the humble, those who are gifted with high 
 intellect, and those of limited capacity — all unite in this one 
 sweet sense of the beautiful. It is a sad house, that has no 
 flowers in it ; a hard and harsh soul who can let the glorious 
 summer-time glide away, and find no pleasure in looking upon 
 these choicest gifts of nature. A poetic fancy will indulge a 
 sweet colloquy with these beautiful " terrestrial stars." 
 
 The flowers are, indeed, holy things, their teachings are re- 
 plete with sagacious suggestions, 
 
 " And he is happiest who hath power 
 To gather wisdom from a flower, 
 And wake his heart, in every hour, 
 
 To pleasant gratitude." 
 
 Horace Smith, in his beautiful Hymn, thus apostrophizes 
 them : 
 
FACTS Am) FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 445 
 
 " Your voiceless lips, O flowers ! are living preacliers, 
 Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book, 
 Supplying" to my fancy numerous teachers 
 
 From lonehest nook. 
 
 " Were I in churchless solitudes remaining, 
 Far from all voice of teachers or divines, — 
 My soul would find in flowers of G-od's ordaining — 
 
 Floral language is a beautiful system of symbolism — a bril- 
 liant code of hieroglyphics ; and to those who can scan their 
 mystic meaning, how eloquently they speak ! Many there are, 
 however, wliose ears are not attent, and whose souls are not 
 attuned to the soft music of their speech. To such an one : 
 
 " The primrose by the water's brim 
 A yehow primrose is to him. 
 And it is nothing more ! " 
 
 " There are two books," says Sir Thomas Browne, " from 
 whence I collect my divinity ; besides that written one of God, 
 another of His servant, nature, that universal and public manu- 
 script that lies expanded unto the eyes of all. Surely the 
 heathens knew better how to join and read these mystical 
 letters, than we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on 
 these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from 
 the flowers of nature." 
 
 ' ' Ye poetry of woods ! romance of fields ! 
 
 Nature's imagination bodied bright I 
 Earth's floral page, that high instruction yields ! — 
 
 For not, oh, not alone to charm our sight. 
 
 Gave God your blooming forms, your leaves of light. 
 Ye speak a language which ice yet may leam — 
 
 A divination of mysterious might ! 
 And glorious thoughts may angel-eyes discern 
 Flower- writ in mead and vale, where'er man's footsteps turn." 
 
446 FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWEES. 
 
 With what a rich profusion of variegated and glowing beauty 
 has the beneficent Creator bedecked forest, field, and meadow ! 
 Not only is this prodigal display of floral gems to be seen gar- 
 nishing the cultivated garden and the gay parterre ; but even 
 tlie wayside, the wild heath, and the nigged mountain-side are 
 alike glorified with the presence of the beautiful buds and 
 blossoms. 
 
 "Everywhere about us are they glowing — 
 
 Some, like stars, to tell us spring is bom ; 
 Others, their blue eyes with tears o'efflowing, 
 
 Stand like Kuth amid the golden com. 
 Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing, 
 
 And in Summer's green emblazoned jBelds, 
 But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing, 
 
 In the centre of his brazen shield ; 
 Not alone in her vast dome of glory, 
 
 Not on graves of bird and beast alone, 
 But in old cathedrals high and hoary, 
 
 On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone ; 
 In the cottage of the rudest peasant ; 
 
 In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers, 
 Speaking of the Past unto the Present, 
 
 TeU us of the ancient Games of flowers." * 
 
 Flowers are, indeed, meet objects of our reverence as well as 
 admiration ; for are they not the wondrous manifestations of 
 the infinite wisdom and power, as well as beneficence, of the 
 Creator ; and what a lesson of the " Fatherhood of God " did 
 He " who spake as never man spake " open unto us from the 
 pale petals of the Lily. How manj^ glowing floral allegories 
 from the book of Nature have been embalmed in the book of 
 Grace. 
 
 How dormant and obtuse must that mind be, that fails to 
 derive a feeling of elevating and. refined delight from the con- 
 templation of these pearly gems, that grace the bosom of our 
 Mother Earth — the jewelry with which Heaven has so richly 
 
 * Longfellow. 
 
FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 447 
 
 adorned her ! Yet too many there are, " in the close city 
 pent," for whom these gay and brilliant things possess nc 
 charms ; they prefer the sordid pursuit of gold, to the soul- 
 elevating study of Nature in all her enamelled beauty; yet 
 what can be more deliciously refreshing to the vision than to 
 gaze upon her ever-varying charms ? 
 
 Woman, from her finer sensibilities and keener appreciation 
 of the beautiful, possesses an innate passion for buds and blos- 
 soms, and these emblems of innocence, grace, and beauty natu- 
 rally enlist her sympathies. She is indeed, herself, the queenly 
 blossom of Paradise, and her peerless charms find their nearest 
 emblems in the blushing tints, the nectar sweets, and glowing 
 beauties of Flora. Hence the fitting grace with which she 
 prefers to cull from the leafy temple of the goddess, the rarest 
 gems to heighten her fascinations, rather than costly pearls or 
 the dazzling decorations of art. 
 
 Flowers, it will be recollected, are used for national emblems : 
 thus, that of England is the rose, the queen of fiowers ; France 
 has adopted the iris ; Ireland, the shamrock ; and Scotland, the 
 thistle. 
 
 The imitative art has ever been devoted to the arrangement 
 and combination of these cherished objects. The designs that 
 flowers have afforded to painting, sculpture, and architecture 
 also furnish a fruitful theme. 
 
 In the distribution of honors and badges of distinction. 
 Nature is generally appealed to ; poets were crowned with 
 bays, and conquerors with laurel ; and of the several heraldic 
 decorations, many of the emblems are derived from Flora. 
 Ou the triumphant return of a victorious hero, garlands of gay 
 flowers are wreathed and dispensed by fair hands. There are 
 certain rural festivals of ancient origin, a few of which are still 
 extant in some parts of Europe, at which the resources of Flora 
 
M8 FACTS AKD FAXCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 are called into requisition ; such as that of the May Queen, the 
 festival of the Rose, Harvest Home, etc. 
 
 Augustine once said, " When no one asks me what is Time, 
 I know it very well ; but I do not know it when I am asked." 
 " One might say as much of a Flower — of its beauty, at least, 
 which is the prey of Time," — was the remark of Eousseau. 
 
 We do not, of course, refer to its botanical definition, but 
 its poetical — for is not the poetry of the plant its highest trans- 
 formation of beauty ? 
 
 " The flowers all tell to thee a sacred, mystic story, 
 
 How moistened earthy dust can wear celestial glory ! 
 
 On thousand stems is found the love -inscription graven, 
 
 ^ow beautiful is earth when it can image heaven." * 
 
 To be a lover of flowers, it is not indispensable that one 
 should be a floriculturist, or a botanist, but it is necessary to 
 have a soul for the beautiful. 
 
 Flowers are always on the sunny side of things ; and we, too, 
 should certainly keep there as much as we possibly can. 
 
 " Happy are they," said G-ray, " who can create a rose-tree, 
 or erect a honeysuckle." Who can fail to respond to the senti- 
 ment? Linnaeus constructed a dial of flowers, indicative of 
 their times of expanding and closing, by planting them in such 
 a manner as that at each succeeding hour a blossom should 
 unfold. 
 
 As the thrice-welcome harbinger of spring, the Snowdrop 
 fii-st claims our notice. Look at its pleasing contrast of white 
 and green, symbolizing, at once, the livery of winter and of 
 spring ; suggestive, too, of death and the resurrection. The 
 pale, gentle snowdrop teaches us all the sweet lesson of trust 
 and patience, when memory is picturing the cherished past ; 
 hope, by its floral emblem, is thus pointing us onward to the 
 
 * Riikert. 
 
FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 449 
 
 glorified future. Among the first-born flowers of spring, also, 
 is the Daisy (day's eye) ; it is the poets' favorite ; from Chaucer 
 to Burns and Wordsworth have its praises been chanted. 
 
 It is supposed to have been so called from the nature of its 
 blossom, which expands at the dawn of day and closes at sun- 
 set. 
 
 A poetical superstition is attached to this flower, which is 
 found to grace both mountain and meadow, and which Words- 
 worth designates " the Pearl of Spring," which makes it a test 
 of friendship. It is a custom with simple-hearted rustics, 
 when they wish to ascertain whether a professed attachment is 
 sincere, for the trysting parties to pull off, one by one, the white 
 rays of the flowers, saying alternately, " Does he love me ? " 
 " Does he not ? " until they stripped off all the rays of the daisy. 
 If the first appeal happens to occur at the last ray, the conclu- 
 sion is believed to be auspicious. 
 
 The contemplation of flowers is a theme rife with interest to 
 all classes : the child, fascinated by their exceeding beauty, is 
 delighted to gather them into a bright bouquet ; the fair 
 maiden seeks to employ the expressive symbols to reveal the 
 gentle emotions of her heart ; while the lover of nature luxuri- 
 ates over their variegated cliarms, or scans with inquisitive gaze 
 their manifold mysteries. 
 
 '' In Eastern lands they talk in flowers, 
 
 And tell in a garland their loves and cares : 
 Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers, 
 On its leaves a mystic language bears." 
 
 Well might Izaak Walton exclaim, as he reclined on a prim- 
 rose bank, and bent his enraptured eye upon the enamelled 
 meadow before him, "I regard them as Charles, the Emperor 
 did Florence : that they are too pleasant to be looked upon 
 except on holidays." 
 
450 FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 With the Primrose we are apt instinctively to associate 
 rural sights and sounds ; it is so suggestive of a thatched cottage 
 in a woody dell, a rippling stream, and the rustic accessories 
 of peaceful pastoral life. The " meek and soft-eyed Primrose " 
 is, in the vocabulary of Flora, expressive of youthful bloom. 
 
 The generic name of this flower is derived from primus^ 
 it being one of the firstlings of the spring. 
 
 Let us now cull a bunch of fresh violets, and take a glance 
 at their wondrous beauty. Yiolets are among the sweetest 
 flowers that deck the woods. 
 
 These exquisite little woodland fairies have inspired many 
 poetic pens, and many have sung their modest charms in 
 melodious numbers. Not to speak of their exquisite aroma, it 
 is impossible to look into their deep cups without being struck 
 with their rare beauty. And we no sooner become impressed 
 with this feeling, than we begin to recollect what Shakspeare 
 has said about them — what beautiful and passionate pictures 
 they have formed, and what lovable spots they nestle in, in 
 the realm of song. 
 
 That the Yiolet was a favorite with Shakespeare, is evident by 
 the beautiful simile he makes Perdita deliver in the Winter* s 
 Tale : 
 
 " Violets dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
 Or Gytherea's "breath, " 
 
 And Milton makes echo to dwell amongst Yiolets : 
 
 " Sweet echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen] 
 By slow Meaiider's margent green, 
 And in the violet-embroidered vale." 
 
 Then we have to notice the Pansy (from Pensee, thought) : 
 
 " Styled by sportive fancy's better choice 
 A Thought — the Hearts Ease — or Forget-me-not^ 
 Decking alike the peasant's garden plot, 
 And castle's proud parterre." 
 
FACTS A^D FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 451 
 
 The tints of this variable flower are even more numerous 
 than the names that have been bestowed upon it ; and these 
 are some half a dozen more than we have given above. 
 
 The Wallflower, in floral language, is the emblem of fidelity 
 in misfortune, fi'om the fact that it is found attached to walls 
 and ruins. There is another little favorite flower of Shake- 
 speare, which he so daintily introduces in one of Ariel's songs 
 of the Tempest : 
 
 " Where the bee sucks, there lurk I ; 
 In a cowslip's beil I lie ; 
 There I couch when owls do cry." 
 
 The JVarcissus is the generic name of a beautiful family 
 of bulbs so celebrated by the ancient poets under that name ; 
 but the moderns have, with Herrick at their head, chosen to 
 sing their praises under the name — Daffodil. Here we have 
 his beautiful lines : 
 
 " Fair Daffodils, we weep to see you haste away so soon; 
 As yet the early-risiag sun has not attained his noon : 
 Stay, stay, until the hastening day 
 
 Has run but to the even-song ; 
 And, having prayed together, we 
 WiU go with you along." 
 
 Another species of this group, distinguished by its rush- 
 like foliage, is known as the Jonquil / this is the most fragrant 
 of all the varieties of the genus. The haunts of these flowers 
 are the shady banks of rivulets and streams ; hence their my- 
 thological name. 
 
 The Hyacinth has also been ever a pet flower with the poets, 
 from Homer down to our own times. Crowns of Hyacinth were 
 worn by the young Greek Yirgins who assisted at the nuptial 
 ceremony. One of the varieties of this flower is called the 
 Blue-bell, from the bell-shape and color of its blossoms. 
 
452 FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 Then there are those queenly spring blossoms, the sweet- 
 scented Anemone ; and " the pearl-like buds " of the odorous 
 May^ or Hawthorn^ symbolical of conjugal love. 
 
 The Tulip^ with its numerous varieties of color, has been, 
 from time immemorial, in the East, the token-flower indicative 
 of a declaration of love. The Lily lias seemed to acquire some- 
 what " an odor of sanctity " from the fact that our Lord made 
 it the occasion of his beautiful appeal to our trust and faith 
 in the divine Providence. Keats thus refers to this delicate 
 flower : 
 
 " No flower amid the garden fairer grows, 
 Than the sweet Lily of the lowly vale, 
 The queen of flowers ! " 
 
 How gracefully its perfumed bells are suspended on the 
 stem, and how glowing the contrast of its snowy corollas with 
 its bright green leaves! The Fleur-de-lis (a contraction of 
 Fleur de Louis) has no affinity with the Lily, but is known as 
 the Iris ; it has long been emblematically used in France as 
 part of the national arms. 
 
 But we have not alluded to the grand array of Pinks, Car- 
 nations, and Gillyflowers, the full-blown beauties of the sum- 
 mer months. These gay flowers are almost as great favorites 
 as the Rose. The prismatic Larhsjpur claims also a place 
 among the most brilliant favorites of Flora. The Dahlia, so 
 named after the Swedish botanist, DaJil, is a native of the 
 marshes of Peru ; the number of its known varieties is, we be- 
 lieve, over five hundred. But it is time we did homage to that 
 most regal of flowers — the queenly Rose — 
 
 " The sweetest flower 
 
 That ever drank the amber shower." 
 
 The Rose of Sharon, one of the most exquisite of flowers in 
 
FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 453 
 
 shape and hue, has not only a Bibh'cal association, but it is re- 
 garded by the Orientals as a symbol of the resurrection, from 
 the fact that when the blossom dies, it is carried by the wind 
 elsewhere, and again takes root, and blossoms. 
 
 The origin of the rose's hue has been made the subject of a 
 beautiful legend by Carey, thus : 
 
 " As erst, in Eden's blissful bowers, 
 
 Young Eve surveyed her countless flowers, 
 An opening rose of purest white 
 She marked, with eye that beamed delight ; 
 Its leaves she kissed, and straight it drew 
 From Beauty's lip the vermeil hue ! " 
 
 The rose is replete with legendary lore; it was the fa- 
 vorite flower at classic festivals ; showers of roses adorned the 
 couches of the guests at Cleopatra's sumptuous banquet to 
 Mark Antony. It was also used as an emblem of chivalry by the 
 knights of the middle ages. The rival factions of the Houses 
 of York and Lancaster, which entailed some thirty years' civil 
 war in England, wore as their respective insignia, the white and 
 red rose. And the name Rosary^ from rosa^ was first given to 
 a strmg of beads, in 1571, in memory of the victory of the 
 Christians over the Turks. Mary Queen of Scots sent to Ron- 
 sard, for his beautiful poetry on this chef-d^oeuvre of the vege- 
 table kingdom, a magnificent rose of silver, valued at ^wq 
 hundred guineas. 
 
 " There is one circumstance connected with the rose, which 
 renders it a more true and striking emblem of earthly pleasure 
 than any other flower — it hears a thorn. While its odorous 
 breath is floating on the summer gale, and its blushing cheek, 
 half hid amongst the sheltering leaves, seems to woo and yet 
 shrink from the beholder's gaze, touch but with adventurous 
 hand the garden queen, and you are pierced with her protect- 
 
454 FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 ing thorns ; would you pluck the rose and weave it into a gar- 
 land for the brow you love best, that brow will be wounded." * 
 The rose is, moreover, in floral rhetoric, symbolical of the 
 tender passion ; and its blushing beauty is well deserving of 
 the honor, for what other gem in the diadem of Flora pos- 
 sesses 
 
 " Such blaze of beauty as translates 
 To dullest hearts the dialect of love " ? 
 
 But we have to turn from this stately and peerless flower, 
 although much more might be said or sung in its praise. 
 
 It has been well said that " in the East men care little for 
 the flowers of rhetoric, while the women are well versed in the 
 rhetoric of flowers. A bouquet is a discourse, with its exordium 
 and its peroration ; each blossom is a Ciceronian period. The 
 most delicate sliades of sentiment, the most subtle ideas of the 
 heart's metaphysics, can all be expressed in the language of 
 flowers." f 
 
 One of the most curious and interesting specimens of the 
 floral kingdom is the so-called " Resurrection-flower." "When 
 closed it resembles a poppy-head, bnt when its blossoms are 
 expanded it looks somewhat like the Passion-flower, with radia- 
 tions like a star. Its botanical history is somewhat involved in 
 obscurity. It has been supposed to be a type or variety of the 
 long-lost Eose of Jericho, also called the Rose of Sharon and 
 Star of Betlilehem, from the fact that it presents some resem- 
 blance to the flower sculptured on two of the tombs of the 
 Crusaders, in the Temple Church, London. There is a Califor- 
 nian plant also called by the same name, from the fact that its 
 root and fibres are contracted and of brown color when kept 
 from moisture, but after being put into water, the leaves in a 
 short time become green again. The Scarlet PiTnjpernel is 
 one of the " English Cottager's " favorite flowers ; for it serves 
 * Mrs. Ellis. t So. Lit. Miss. , 7. 
 
FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 455 
 
 him for a time-teller as well as an indicator of the weather ; 
 upon the approach of rain it closes itself up. A similar sensi- 
 tiveness to rain and the return of evening' is observable also 
 in the familiar Moi'ning-glory^ or Convolvulus^ with its many- 
 colored blossoms. 
 
 The part from which the aroma proceeds is various in differ- 
 ent plants ; most frequently it exists in the blooming corolla ; 
 it is thus with the honeysuckle, the hawthorn, and many 
 others. Sometimes it is found in the herbage, as the sweet- 
 brier, the sweet woodruff, or the ground ivy ; it is even occa- 
 sionally in the root. So pungent is the scent of some flowers, 
 that persons of a nervous temperament are unable to inhale 
 it without suffering acute pain ; some will be affected with 
 headache by the smell of mignonette, the hawthorn, the lily, 
 the lilac, and the laburnum. The fragrance yielded by some 
 plants, when crushed, has suggested many beautiful images to 
 poets : Moore alludes to this circumstance when, referring to 
 the only consolation in sorrow, he says : 
 
 "And thou canst lieal the broken heart, 
 Which like the plants that throw 
 Their fragrance from the wounded part, 
 Breathe sweetness out of woe." 
 
 Leigh Hunt has the following genial passage touching the 
 perfume of flowers : 
 
 " What world of mystery everywhere hangs about us and 
 within us! Who can, even in imagination, penetrate to the 
 depths of the commonest of the phenomena of our daily life % 
 Take, for instance, one of those pots of Narcissi. We have 
 ourselves had a plant of the variety known as soleil d'or^ in 
 flower, in a sitting-room for six weeks, during the depth of 
 winter, giving forth the whole of that time, without (so far as 
 we know) ceasing, even during sleep (for we need hardly tell 
 our readers that plants do sleep), the same full stream of fra- 
 
456 FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 grance. Love itself does not seem to preserve more absolutely 
 its wealth, while most liberally dispensing it ! That fragrance 
 has a material basis, though we cannot detect it by our finest 
 tests. What millions of millions of atoms must go to the for- 
 mation of even a single gust, as it were, of this divine floAver- 
 breath! Yet this goes on, through seconds, minutes, hours, 
 days, weeks, and ceases only with the health of the flower 
 petals. Where, then, in these petals — these thin, unsubstantial 
 cream-flakes — may we look to find stored up all these in- 
 exhaustible supplies! Where, indeed? and if they are not 
 stored up, but newly created as given forth — is not that 
 even more wonderful ? Would that any one could show us 
 the nature and modes of operation of such miraculous chemis- 
 try." 
 
 Both the Egyptian Lotus and the Water Lily expand their 
 blossoms in the sunshine, and during the day onl}^, closing 
 them towards evening, when they recline on the surface of the 
 water, or sink beneath it. 
 
 The jessamine, also, with its dark green leaves, and little 
 silver stars, saluting us with its delicious scent, and impregnating 
 the surrounding atmosphere with odoriferous sweets, has been 
 the recognized symbol of poetic sentiment with the bards of 
 all ages. 
 
 Jessica, the French naturalist, says he was intoxicated with 
 delight when first he discovered that fragrant blossom — the 
 Heliotrope, on the mountains of the Cordilleras. When first 
 introduced to France, no vase was thought too expensive or 
 precious for the growth of this odorous plant. 
 
 Like the " Morning-glory," or Convolvulus, and the sensitive 
 plant, there are other fiowers and herbs, which close up their 
 leaves and blossoms during the night and re-open them with 
 the return of day. This has been called " the sleep of plants." 
 The slightest touch of the " Sensitive Plant," however, causes its 
 
 \ 
 
FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 457 
 
 leaves suddenly to collapse. Keats' fine lines come to our mem- 
 ory here : 
 
 " A sensitive plant in a garden grew, 
 And the young winds fed it with silver dew ; 
 And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
 And closed them beneath the kisses of night ! " 
 
 The Victoria Regia, or gigantic Water-lily, is unrivalled among 
 the aquatic flowers. The entire plant measures about twenty 
 feet; it is a native of Central America, and is found upon the 
 marshes of the Amazon and its tributaries. This superb plant 
 was discovered about forty years ago ; and a colossal illustrated 
 volume, descriptive of a beautiful specimen of this lily, at the 
 ^Botanical Gardens, Kew, England, has been published by 
 Hooker. D'Orbigny describes the one he saw as overspreading 
 nearly a mile of water with its huge, round, and curiously mar- 
 gined leaves, among which glittered here and there the magni- 
 ficent white and pink flowers, scenting the air with their deli- 
 cious fragrance. One of these gigantic leaves measured six feet 
 -Sive inches in diameter, and was as heavy as a man could carry ; 
 and yet these leaves float by means of air-cells, contained in 
 their thick, projecting, innumerable nerves. Its seeds, when 
 roasted, form a valuable article of food, and resemble maize. 
 
 One of the most splendid of the Cactus species is the Cereus 
 Grandiflorus, or Night-blooming Cereus, the blossoms of which 
 begin to expand about sunset, and are fully blown about mid- 
 night. During its short continuance, there is scarcely any flower 
 of greater known beauty. When several of these magnificent 
 fiowers are open at once upon a single plant, they seem like 
 stars shining out in all their lustre. 
 
 Of all objects of the vegetable kingdom, the ivy is perhaps 
 one of the most poetical. It is at once suggestive of some 
 ancient religious fane, or some venerable ruin, some old 
 cathedral or monastic remains; for around such cherished 
 
FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 relics of the past it loves to cliug and to beautify with its 
 luxuriant and fanciful festoons. We all remember Dickens's 
 beautiful tribute to it : 
 
 *' Oh ! a dainty plant is the Ivy green, that creepeth o'er ruins old ! 
 « * * * * * * 
 
 The brave old plant in its lonely days shall fatten upon the past ; 
 
 For the stateliest building man can raise is the Ivy's food at last ! 
 
 Creeping where no life is seen, 
 
 A rare old plant is the Ivy green." 
 
 The American Aloe, of the Pine-tree tribe, is a gorgeous 
 evergreen: its flower-stem is from twenty to thirty feet in 
 height; when in flower it is of surpassing beauty. It was 
 formerly supposed to blossom once in a century (and hence it 
 was sometimes called the Century Plant), and then to die; 
 but it usually flowers about every tenth year. 
 
 "We are all familiar with the witch-hazel, and its mystic cu- 
 rative virtues. Here is an apostrophe to it : 
 
 " Mysterious plant I whose golden tresses wave 
 With a sad beauty in the dying year, 
 Blooming amid November's frost severe, 
 Like the pale corpse-light o'er the recent grave I 
 If shepherds tell us true, thy word hath power, 
 With gracious influence, to avert the harm 
 Of ominous planets, and the fatal charm 
 Of spirits wandering at the midnight hour ; 
 And thou canst point where buried treasures lie. 
 But yet to me thou art an emblem high 
 Of patient virtue, to the Christian given, 
 Unchang'd and bright, when all is dark beside ; 
 Our shield from wild temptations, and our guide 
 To treasures for the just laid up in heaven." 
 
 In the economy of nature plants give out small portions of 
 carbonic acid gas at night; but during the day they absorb it, 
 retaining its carbon, and thus restore the equilibrium of the 
 atmosphere, by again exhaling the oxygen. 
 
FACTS Am) FANCIES ABOUT FLOWEES. 459 
 
 Many interesting particulars might be adduced touching the 
 botanic history of ornamental plants — for instance, the almost 
 infinite variety of their leaves and blossoms. Some leaves are 
 smooth, others are hairy on their surface — which latter kind, 
 when laden with dew, glisten like diamonds in the sun's ray. 
 Leaves are, in the vegetable kingdom, what lungs are in the 
 animal ; this may be readily ascertained by placing a young 
 vine-leaf over a wine glass, when, if it be a hot day, you will 
 very soon find the glass quite damp, and in the course of a short 
 time the moisture, from the emitted perspiration, will run down 
 in drops. It is the chemical action of light upon leaves and 
 stems that causes their green color ; if kept a long period in 
 darkness, they would become white or colorless. 
 
 Flowers were not only used for personal decoration among 
 the Romans; they were made the accessories of religion. 
 Their priests, altars, and even their sacrifices were adorned 
 with these delicate emblems. Their statues were also crowned 
 with them: hence Yenus is sometimes represented wearing 
 roses, Juno with the lily, and Ceres with her hair entwined 
 with wheat and poppies. The bridal wreath is still the beauti- 
 ful emblem of innocence and truth. The Cypress, in all na- 
 tions an emblem of sorrow, was used by the Romans to deck 
 the dwellings of the deceased, because, if once cut down, that 
 plant will not spring up again ; it had, therefore, a true signifi- 
 cance in their case, since they believed death to be an eternal 
 sleep; with the more cheering faith of Christianity, the ever- 
 green is the emblem. The custom of garnishing the graves 
 of the departed with flowers is a universal and felicitous one — 
 full of eloquent appeals to the heart of sorrow^ing survivors ; 
 for while they form expressive emblems of the frailty of the 
 present, are they not also the brilliant prophecy of a glorious 
 immortality ? 
 
 Many of the choicest of Flora's beauties have been christened 
 
460 
 
 FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 with sacred memorial names by the early botanists. Thus we 
 have : Holy Rhood-flower, Mary-gold, Passion-flower, Cross of 
 Jerusalem, the Cross of Malta, etc. The floral nomenclature 
 of more modern times is more for the poetic sentiment : Forget, 
 me-not, Fox-glove (i.e., folks' or fairy glove), Daisy (day's eye), 
 Night-shade, Heart's Ease, etc. 
 
 Adieu, then, to the sweet sisterhood of the fairy Flowers, 
 and let our farewell tribute be a paean of praise to their Great 
 Author, who has so lavishly beautified our pathway of life with 
 their fragrance and their smiles. 
 
 " Full dull the eye, and dull the heart, that cannot feel how fair, 
 Amid all beauty, beautiful their dainty blossoms are." 
 
LITEEAEr LARCENIES. 
 
 "For out of the olde fieldes, as men saithe, 
 
 Oometh all this newe com fro yere to yere : 
 And out of olde bookes, in good faithe, 
 
 Cometh aU this newe science that men lere." — Chaucer. 
 
 Ortginalitt has been defined " unconscious or undetected 
 imitation." " As for originality," wrote Bjron, in his journal, 
 " all pretentions to it are ridiculous ; ' there is nothing new un- 
 der the sun.' " Moore, once observing Byron with a book full 
 of paper-marks, asked him what it was. " Only a book," he 
 answered, " from which I am trying to crib; as I do whenever I 
 can, and that's the way I get the character of an original poet." 
 
462 LITERARY LARCENIES. 
 
 " Though in imputing to himself premeditated plagiarism," ob- 
 serves his biographer, "he was, of course, but jesting ; it was, 
 I am inclined to think, his practice, when engaged in the com- 
 position of any work, to excite thus his vein, by the perusal of 
 other3 on the same subject." " When I was a young man," 
 says Goldsmith, " being anxious to distinguish myself, I was 
 perpetually starting new propositions ; but I soon gave this 
 over, for I found that generally what was new was false. 
 Strictly speaking, we may be original without being new; 
 the thought may be our own, and yet commonplace." 
 
 On the other hand, it must be admitted, with Pollok, that 
 while " the siccaneous critic or the meagre scribbler may hang 
 his head in despair, and murmur out that what can be done 
 is done already ; yet he who has drank of Castalia's fount, and 
 listened to the mighty voice of the Parnassian sisters, and who 
 casts his bold eye on Creation, inexhaustible as its Maker, and 
 catches inspiration while he gazes ; will take the lyre in his 
 hand, delight with new melody the ear of mortals, and write 
 his name among the immortal in song." 
 
 Many, if not most, of the poets can scarcely plead guiltless of 
 the charge of plagiarism, if not in its direct sense, at least in 
 some of its modified forms. There may be accidental coinci- 
 dences of thought and resemblances of expression on the one 
 part, and there are on the other hand a class of commonly re- 
 ceived words and ideas which are, indeed, the current coin of 
 the republic of letters. A writer may, therefore, be a frequent 
 plagiarist and yet in other respects exhibit undoubted origin- 
 ality. "Montaigne borrowed largely from Seneca and Plu- 
 tarch ; and what he has copied, without acknowledgment, from 
 them, Charron and Corneille have adopted in the same unscru- 
 pulous manner from him. Pascal, who is generally reckoned 
 one of the most original thinkers of the seventeenth century, is 
 described as surpassing all others by his daring feats of plagiar- 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 463 
 
 ism. In a single chapter of his Pcjisees, Nodier has pointed 
 out seven or eight instances of this species of theft ; and for 
 farther examples he invites the curious reader to a compari- 
 son of the Pensees with the Essays of Montaigne." 
 
 Emerson assumes that it is the duty and the province of great 
 minds to adopt the thoughts of others — to embalm them for fu- 
 turity — to take the roughly -hewn blocks from the thought-mines 
 of others and fashion them into mosques, feudal towers, or pyr- 
 amids, as the loving, chivalrous, or sublime spirit of the builder 
 may suggest. 
 
 This communistic appropriation of ideas — this building from 
 another's quarry, is a species of free-masonry , that may some- 
 times be more free than welcome. 
 
 It has been gravely asked who are original thinkers ; even 
 those who rank as philosophical writers, adopt the opinions of 
 their predecessors — some favorite theory of a former age ; and 
 having espoused it, they indorsed the new creed with an enthu- 
 siasm as zealous as if it were one of their own creation. There 
 are a few noble exceptions to the rule, however, for the honor 
 of learning ; the daring Florentine, for instance : a large propor- 
 tion of our modern literature might be, with advantage to all 
 parties, suppressed, since it possesses in the main but the ques- 
 tionable merit of a metamorphoses. 
 
 The remark ascribed to Pope Ganganelli, that all books in 
 the known world might be comprised in six thousand folio vol- 
 umes, if filled with original matter, was, we think, an ex- 
 tremely liberal estimate. 
 
 One age battens upon its predecessor with gnome-like rapa- 
 city and thus a host of pseudo-authors acquire an undeserved 
 reputation. Homer, Dante, Eabelais, and Shakespeare, Cha- 
 teaubriand styles the great universal individualities and great 
 parent geniuses, who appear to have nourished all others. The 
 first fertilized antiquity ; JEschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Hor- 
 
4^G4: LITERABY LABCENIES. 
 
 ace, Aristophanes, and Yirgil were his sons. Dante, in like 
 manner, was the father of modern Italy, from Petrarch to 
 Tasso. Eabelais created the literature of France : Montaiorne, 
 La Fontaine, Moliere, descended from him ; while England 
 owes nearly all to Shakespeare and Bacon. People often deny 
 the authority of these supreme masters — they rebel against them, 
 proclaim their defects, but with as much propriety as one might 
 the spots on the sun's disc ; they even accuse them of tedious- 
 ness, and sometimes absurdity, while in the very act of robbing 
 them and decking themselves in their spoils. 
 
 The student in his literary progress will derive no small in- 
 terest in discovering, as he inevitably will, if he goes deep 
 enough, the hidden germs of many of the happiest expressions 
 which adorn the pages of our distinguished writers. 
 
 Almost every author of any standing in the ranks of litera- 
 ture may be regarded as a borrower, in a greater or less degree, 
 from the commonwealth of letters. Even Shakespeare, Milton, 
 Gray, are frequently indebted to their predecessors in " boke- 
 craf t ; " the latter to the classic writers. 
 
 Butler compares a literary plagiarist to an Italian thief, who 
 never robs but he murders to prevent discovery. Another defi- 
 nition, somewhat akin, describes the plagiarist as a " purloiner, 
 who filches the fruit that others have gathered and then throws 
 away the basket." 
 
 After all that may be urged on the score of accidental coin- 
 cidences of thought and expression, it cannot be questioned 
 that there has been perpetrated a vast amount of literary fraud. 
 
 Could we invoke the spirits of the departed, what pitiless 
 plaints would be preferred against the spoliations of many a 
 modem scribe, who, to avoid the trouble of thinking for him- 
 self has chosen the more summary mode of allowing others to 
 do so for him. Yet, after all, who should complain, when such 
 
 1 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 465 
 
 a vast economy of time and trouble mav be achieved by the 
 labor-saving process. 
 
 A writer, it is observed, may steal after the manner of bees, 
 without wronging anybody ; but the theft of the ant, which 
 takes away the whole grain of corn, is not to be imitated. A 
 French writer* observes, " To take from the ancients, and make 
 one's advantage of what they have written, is like pirating be- 
 yond the line ; but to steal from one's contemporaries, by sur- 
 reptitiously appropriating to one's self their thoughts and pro- 
 ductions, is like picking people's pockets in the open street." 
 
 Instances of petty larceny are undoubtedly more numerous 
 than such as may be styled cases of grand literary larceny ; and 
 we have even heard it advocated as a meritorious virtue in a 
 writer, when he shall abstract from a previous author some ac- 
 knowledged beauty, either of rhetoric or thought, and afresh 
 incorporate it as his own, on the plea that a gem may often lie 
 long obscured, and acquire redoubled lustre by the skill of the 
 artist in the resetting. 
 
 A strong resemblance may occur between two writers, if not 
 indeed a strict identity both of ideas and language, which may 
 be purely accidental ; but this must be an occurrence exceed- 
 ingly rare. A bold or beautiful thought is sometimes likely so 
 to impress the imagination as to exist in the memory long after 
 its paternity is forgotten, and thus become ingrafted into the 
 mind so as to seem part of itself ; such a case would certainly 
 admit of great extenuation in the criminal code of literary jur- 
 isprudence. 
 
 Literary frauds of various kinds have been practised by in- 
 genious fabricators in almost every age and every civilized 
 country. Supposititious books and literary impostures by scores, 
 have ever been floating on the tide of Time. 
 
 * Vayer. 
 30 
 
466 LITERARY LARCENIES. 
 
 Let us glance rapidly at some of the more noteworthy poetic 
 parallels, accidental or plagiaristic. 
 
 Perhaps Shakespeare's prolific muse has been more laid under 
 contribution by literary filchers than any other writer of mod- 
 ern times ; for instance, it is apparent that Pope's oft-quoted 
 lines, 
 
 " Honor and sliame from no condition rise, 
 Act well your part, there all the honor lies," 
 
 were but another rendering of the same thought, expressed not 
 less forcibly, by the great dramatic bard — 
 
 " From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, 
 The place is dignified by the doer's deed." 
 
 Byron, in Cfiilde Harold, has the image of a broken mirror 
 to show how a broken heart multiplies images of sorrow. But 
 the same simile is in Burton. Giordano Bruns said that the fi.rst 
 people of the world should rather be called the youngsters than 
 the ancients. Lord Bacon (a great plagiarist) makes use of the 
 very same idea, 
 
 Addison speaks of the stars " forever singing as they shine." 
 Sir Thomas Browne talks of " the singing constellations ; " 
 though both have followed the idea expressed in the Scripture. 
 Shelley speaks of Death and his brother Sleep. The thought 
 is taken from Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
 Goldsmith's well-known line, — 
 
 " Man wants but little here below, nor wants that little long," — 
 
 was evidently taken from Young, who, in his Night Thoughts, 
 says: 
 
 " Man wants but little, nor that little long." 
 
 That hackneyed line in Campbell's Pleasures of Hojpe, 
 " Like angel visits, few and far between," 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 467 
 
 is borrowed almost literally from Blair's Grave, where we 
 have— 
 
 -" its visits, 
 Like those of angels, short and far between." * 
 
 Pope, again, was not innocent of the charge, as may be seen 
 in one or two examples : 
 
 " Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies. 
 And catch the manners living as they rise ; 
 Laugh when we must, be candid when we can. 
 And vindicate the ways of God to man." 
 
 Dryden's lines, in Absalom, read, 
 
 " While he with watchful eye 
 Observes and shoots their treasons as they fly." 
 
 And Milton supplies Pope's last line, in the following : 
 
 ' ' That to the height of this great argument 
 I may assert eternal Providence 
 And justify the ways of God to men ? " 
 
 Against his celebrated "Essay on Criticism," Lady Wort- 
 ley Montague has preferred a far more serious accusation : 
 she writes, "' I admired Mr. Pope's ' Essay on Criticism,' at 
 fij'st very much, because I had not then read any of the ancient 
 critics, and did not know that it was all stolenP 
 
 * Wilmott contends that this beautiful conceit originated with Norris of Ben- 
 ton, in his poem, entitled The Parting. The stanza reads : 
 
 ' ' How fading are the joys we dote upon ; 
 Like apparitions seen and gone ; 
 
 But those who soonest take their flight 
 Are the most exquisite and strong. 
 Like angels' visits sTwrt and bright ; 
 Mortality's too weak to bear them long." 
 
468 LITEEARY LARCENIES. 
 
 The couplet, 
 
 *' Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
 As to be hated, needs but to be seen," 
 
 is evidently traceable to a passage from Leighton. 
 
 Pope's famous line, " The proper study of mankind is 
 man," which Charron had said before him, is evidently a trans- 
 fer from Pascal's " Pensees," — '* I'etude de I'homme, puisque 
 c'est celle qui lui est propre." The origin of the thought is prob- 
 ably traceable to Xenophon. 
 
 Again, in his " Essay on Criticism," we have the couplet, 
 
 " A little learning is a dangerous tMng ; 
 Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring ; " 
 
 which has its source in Lord Bacon's " Essay on Atheism : " 
 "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but 
 depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. 
 
 Pope's " Vital spark of heavenly flame" is evidently derived 
 from Hadrian's lines, also from a fragment of Sappho, and 
 later still Flatman's lines on a departing spirit. 
 
 Gray's classic Elegy is said to be a kind of literary mosaic. 
 Its beautiful thoughts are taken from the Greek and Latin au- 
 thors, and also from Dante. One of the finest stanzas of the 
 Elegy is but a free translation of the Latin couplet : 
 
 " Plurima gemma latet caeca teUure sepulta ; 
 Plurima neglecto fragrat odore rosa." 
 
 Gray's lines are : 
 
 " FuU many a gem, of purest ray serene, 
 
 The dark, unf athomed caves of ocean bear ; 
 Full many a flower is bom to blush unseen. 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 469 
 
 Even Cowper seems to have taken that oft-quoted line, 
 " England, with all thy faults, I love thee stUI," 
 from Churchill's " Farewell : " 
 
 " Be England what she will, 
 With all her faults, she is my country stiU." 
 
 Bjron, again, in his " Bride of Abjdos," imitates a song in 
 Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister." The former commences, 
 
 " Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle 
 Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime." 
 
 And the latter reads : 
 
 " Elnow'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom. 
 Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom." 
 
 Campbell seems to have had a couplet from Pope's " Battle of 
 the Frogs and Mice," in his mind when he wrote his " Pleas- 
 ures of Hope." The former reads : 
 
 " When front to front the marching armies shine, 
 Halt ere they meet, and form the lengthening line ;" 
 
 and Campbell's lines are : 
 
 " When front to front the bannered hosts combine. 
 Halt ere they close, and form the dreadful line." 
 
 The plagiarism of Campbell from an elder poet, Yaughan, is 
 
 worthy of being cited : 
 
 (CampbeU^s.) 
 
 " When o'er the green, undeluged earth, 
 Heaven's covenant thou didst shine ; 
 How came the world's gray fatJiers forth, 
 To watch thy sacred sign." 
 
470 LITERARY LARCENIES. 
 
 ( YaugharCs.) 
 
 " StiU young and fine ! but wliat is still in view 
 We slight as old and soiled, thougli fresh and new : 
 How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye 
 Thy burning, flaming arch did first descry ; 
 "When Zerah, Nahor, Haram, Abram, Lot, 
 The youthful worWs gray fathers, in one knot, 
 Did, with intentive looks watch every hour 
 For thy new light, and trembled at each shower ! " 
 
 The occasional conceits in this black-letter bard, coupled 
 with his earnest straightforwardness and sincerity, compensate 
 ns for the absence of the rich embellishment of Campbell. 
 
 We cannot forbear quoting, from the English Bards and 
 Scotch Reviewers, Byron's well-known lines on the death of 
 Kirke White, because the most beautiful figure in them seems i 
 
 evidently copied from Waller. We commence with Byron : 
 
 " 'Twas thine own genius gave the fatal blow, 
 And helped to plant the wound that laid thee low ! 
 So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plaiu, , 
 No more through rolling clouds to soar agaia, 
 Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart. 
 And winged the shaft that quivered ia his heart : 
 Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel. 
 He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel. 
 While the same plumage that had warmc,^ his nest, 
 Drank the last Uf e-drop of his bleeding breast ! " 
 
 Waller's stanza, which expresses a similar sentiment, is as 
 
 follows : 
 
 *' 'that eagle's fate and mine are one. 
 
 Which on the shaft that made him die 
 Espied a feather of his own 
 
 Wherewith he'd wont to soar so high." 
 
 In Thomas Moore's poetic epistle, Corrujption, the same 
 figure also occurs : 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 471 
 
 ** Like a young- eag-le, who has lent his plume 
 To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom, 
 See their own feathers plucked to wing" the dart, 
 "Which rank corruption destines for their heart." 
 
 Moore has been charged with liberal plagiarisms upon Beran- 
 ger, as well as being a close copyist of some of his other 
 contemporaries in vernacular verse, a detailed account of which 
 was given in Blackwood some years ago, exhibiting a series of 
 specifications amounting to sixty-five ! 
 
 The fine moral poem of the " Hermit," by Parnell, is taken 
 from Martin Luther's tale of a hermit, who murmured against 
 the decrees of Divine Providence. What Sterne has not 
 plagiarized, we shall not stay to notice, notwithstanding he 
 counterfeited most excellent coin. He has been charged with 
 pilfering from Burton, Habelais, Montaigne, Bayle, and others. 
 
 Scott was always esteemed an original writer, but Lord 
 Jeffrey, in reviewing his works, said : " Even in him the 
 traces of imitation are obvious and abundant." 
 
 The best couplet of Tickell's best poem is in his elegy on 
 Addison : 
 
 " He taught us how to live, and oh ! too high 
 The price of knowledge, taught us how to die ! " 
 
 Now compare the following, from Sandys' Anglorum Sjpec- 
 ulum : " I have taught you, my dear flock, for above thirty 
 years, how to live ; I wish to show you, in a very short time, 
 how to die." See also Goldsmith's " Village Clergyman," for 
 another and later rendering of the idea. 
 
 As for Coleridge, he stole in such an opiatic way, and so 
 totally forgot from whence he stole, that in many editions of 
 his poems epigrams from Schiller and Goethe are still inserted 
 without acknowledgment; and he actually to his dying day 
 believed that Faust was an old idea of his own. 
 
472 LITERARY LARCENIES. 
 
 Fuller thus beautifully depicts the last moments of a dying 
 saint : 
 
 *' Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as 
 harbingers to heaven ; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness 
 through the chinks of her sickness-broken body." And Waller 
 versifies the same beautiful idea : 
 
 *• The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
 Lets in new liglit through chinks that time has made. 
 Stronger by weakness, wiser men become, 
 As they draw near to their eternal home, " 
 
 Addison and Pope may be said to " divide the honors" as to 
 the authorship of the line — 
 
 since it appears in the writings of both. 
 
 Some critics have supposed that even Milton's "Paradise 
 Lost " was suggested by De Bartas's " Divine Weekes ; " while 
 others, with greater plausibility, trace its origin to Avitus, one 
 of the Fathers of the Church, who wrote Latin poems on the 
 Creation, the Fall, etc. There is yet another conjecture that 
 the works of Yondel, the Shakespeare of Holland, may have 
 suggested the idea of our English epic. His "Lucifer" ap- 
 peared some fourteen years before the "Paradise Lost" of 
 Milton. The principal resemblances between them, however, 
 consist in the subjects selected, and the names of some of the 
 characters introduced into our great epic. Another literary 
 censor, Landor, suggests that Milton was indebted to a Latin 
 drama, entitled " Sarcotidos," written by Grotius ; as there are 
 evident parallels both in structure and thought between the 
 productions. Even Shakespeare, " the blameless idol of all 
 intellectual men," is charged, as intimated, with having stolen 
 his plots from earlier dramatists and the Italian poets. 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 473 
 
 The litersivy faux-j}as of a once celebrated chemist, bj his 
 work on Chemical Tests, is known to the scientific in both 
 hemispheres. lie published a work on poisons, entitled 
 Death in the Pot, which at first bid fair to yield its author a 
 moderately good revenue of fame and fortune, but for the dis- 
 covery which was soon made, that it consisted of a series of pil- 
 fered pages, torn out of old books in the British Museum ; he 
 was tried upon a criminal suit for felony, and although for- 
 mally acquitted, yet so strong was the impression of his guilt 
 that he was compelled to retire from observation. 
 
 The departments of law, physic, and theology have not been 
 exempt from literary pilferers ; even Biblical commentators are 
 not innocent of this charge, as we learn from the preface to 
 Cobbin's " Condensed Commentary." He there says : 
 
 " All the commentators have drawn largely from the Fathers, 
 especially from St. Augustine ; and most of them have made 
 common property of Patrick, South, and Whitby. Henry has 
 made very free use with Bishop Hall and others, and Scott has 
 again enriched himself abundantly from Henry ; Poole ex- 
 hausted the continental writers, while Gill, unlike the others, 
 acknowledges his obligations." The number of commentators 
 is great ; yet if the uncopied portions were to be collected, they 
 would, perhaps, occupy a single duodecimo. 
 
 Akenside first published his Pleasures of Imagination 
 anonymously ; and very soon after a pretender, of the name of 
 Rolt, actually had the impudence to go over to Dublin and 
 publish an edition of that fine poem with his own name at- 
 tached to it as the author. The ^' Man of Feeling," by Mac- 
 kenzie, w^as also originally published under the assumed name 
 of Eccles, who borrowed the manuscript on pretence of perus- 
 ing it. This rogue succeeded to such an extent in his impos- 
 ture, that the real author found at first great trouble in estab- 
 lishing his just claim to its authorship before the world. 
 
474 LITERARY LARCENIES. 
 
 Hunter's " Captivity among the Indians " is a pure fabrica- 
 cation ; yet it acquired considerable notoriety in London, some 
 fifty years ago, and its author was lionized by the public. Sir 
 Everard Home was a notorious instance of wholesale literary 
 fraud, upon the celebrated Dr. Hunter's writings, which formed 
 the basis of Home's pretended " Lectures before the Royal Col- 
 lege of Surgeons." 
 
 ISText of kin to literary thefts may be classed impostures ; and 
 of these we might mention as prominent instances, Chatterton's 
 " Rowley Poems," Macpherson's " Poems of Ossian," Ireland's 
 " Shakespeare Forgeries," Landor's " Trial of Shakespeare for 
 Deer-stealing," and several others of French origin. 
 
 The Ossian poems were once so admired by the French, that 
 they were thought to rival many of the prominent productions 
 of the British Muse. Napoleon is said to have made them his 
 constant study. 
 
 A mysterious individual (we shall never know who he was, 
 or whence he came ; for George P Salmanazar was his assumed 
 name) is supposed to have been a native of Provence. He 
 was educated among the Jesuits, and after some years 
 travelled over Germany and elsewhere, disguised as a mendi- 
 cant, or pilgrim. When he reached England he gave himself 
 out as a Japanese from the island of Formosa. He died at 
 the age of eighty-three, in the year 1763. He was not only a 
 literary forger of manuscripts, but an inventor of a language, 
 of a chirography, and indeed of an imaginary island called 
 Formosa. His autobiography is one of the most curious and 
 romantic pieces of writing extant. 
 
 The work appeared in 1704, and was speedily translated into 
 French and German ; and for nearly a century this ingenious 
 fabrication was quoted by savans as an authority I Ireland, 
 with far less talent than Psalmanazar, displayed yet the greater 
 audacity in his attempt to counterfeit Shakespeare ; and yet he 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 475 
 
 had adroitness sufficient to dupe the learned world for a sea- 
 son, for many of its representatives were only too eager to pay 
 liberally for even fac-similes of these pseudo-Shakespearean 
 manuscripts. 
 
 It is doubtful if such devout consternation and enthusiastic 
 admiration were ever enkindled among the cognoscenti and 
 dilettanti of the civilized world, as were caused by his fabrica- 
 tions. Dr. Parr has, we believe, the credit of having detected 
 the fraud. 
 
 The literary forgeries of Chatterton were induced by the 
 cold neglect with which he found his own original effusions 
 were received ; and yet Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Southey, 
 Wordsworth, and other great poets, have lauded Chatterton as 
 a precocious and remarkable genius. Keats dedicated his 
 " Endymion " to his memory, and Wordsworth styled him 
 
 " The marvellous boy, 
 The sleepless soul that perished in its pride," 
 
 Poor Chatterton wrote graceful verses at the early age of 
 eleven ; at sixteen he produced his " Rowley Poems ; " at nine- 
 teen his life was embittered by terrible privation, and suicidal 
 death soon after succeeded. These literary forgeries have, 
 however, from their great merit, become incorporated into our 
 " English " literature, after having provoked among the learned 
 an unusually prolonged discussion and controversy. One of 
 the most deeply interesting biographies we ever read was that 
 of the poet Chatterton. His brief but hapless career was 
 crowded with touching incidents. 
 
 Not long since a celebrated French savant was victimized 
 by an ingenious imposture, which cost him, it is said, some 
 20,000 francs. It was the so-called discovery of a valuable 
 collection of manuscripts by Pascal, on some pretended 
 scientific discovery. Cases of literary freebooting and 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 
 
 fraud crowd upon us; but we must content ourselves with 
 what has been already adduced, for fear we become sceptical 
 as to the existence of any remaining integrity in the world of 
 letters; and possibly the reader may even begin to suspect the 
 integrity of the present writing. 
 
 We lately met with an amusing Booh of Blunders^ in 
 which is given an expose of the anachronisms and errors of 
 syntax or fact, committed by some of our prominent authors ! 
 To quote some of these literary bulls and blunders might be 
 amusing, as presenting some points of humor for their absurdity. 
 Many of these literary curiosities will surprise the reader also 
 on account of their paternity. 
 
 Eyron says in " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage : " "I stood in 
 Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, a palace and a prison on each 
 hand." Meaning the Ducal palace on the one hand and the 
 State prison on the other. 
 
 Instances of grammatical blunders not a few might be cited 
 against accredited writers ; but we pass them over. There are 
 also the anachronisms of Shakespeare, which occur in Corio- 
 lanus, King Lear, Macbeth^ and King John. 
 
 In the first-named play, the error consists in making Cato 
 contemporary with Coriolanus, whereas the former lived two 
 centuries later ! In the King Lear occurs the line, " If it be 
 nothing, I shall not want spectacles." Now Lear was an early 
 Anglo-Saxon King, and spectacles were known only to the 14:th 
 century. Again, Macbeth was killed in 1054 and King John be- 
 gan his reign in 1199, while the battle of Cressy, where cannon 
 were first used, occurred in 1346 ; and yet Shakespeare antici- 
 pates, in both these plays, the use of cannon. In " Julius Caesar" 
 and the *' Comedy of Errors " are similar errors of date. 
 
 We should scarcely suspect Milton of a bull, yet in Para- 
 dise Lost Adam is represented as one of his own sons, and Eve 
 one of her own daug-hters ; 
 
 i 
 
 x^iik 
 
LITERARY LARCENIES. 477 
 
 " Adam, the goodliest man of men since bom, 
 His sons, — the fairest of her daughters, Eve." 
 
 Nor is the classic English of Addison free from such blem- 
 ishes ; in his Oato we read, 
 
 " So the pure limpid stream, when foul with stains 
 Of mshing torrents and descending rains." 
 
 And in his " Letter from Italy " he thus mingles up his 
 metaphorical allusions : 
 
 " I bridle in my struggling muse with pain, 
 That longs to launch into a bolder strain." 
 
 What connection is there between a horse and a ship ? Even 
 the learned lexicographer, Dr. Johnson, has been detected of 
 similar blunders ; to wit, the following : " Every monumental 
 inscription should be in Latin ; for that being a dead language, 
 it will always live ! " And again in the following lines : 
 
 " Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled. 
 But still fought on, nor knew that lie was dead/ " 
 
 Some of these illustrations are as paradoxical as the infatu- 
 ated faction in one of the Irish rebellions, who, to revenge 
 themselves of a prominent banker, actually burned all his 
 bank-notes that they could find. 
 
 Having thus taken a brief glance at prominent cases of liter- 
 ary fraud, we are tempted to inquire whether there is such a 
 thing in existence as absolute moral honesty. The earliest in- 
 dications of childhood afford us no very conclusive evidence in 
 its behalf, however guileless the incipient knavery, while 
 among the unsophisticated rangers of the forest, similar de- 
 velopments of a natural law of secretiveness are no less obser- 
 vable. The governing impulse of the robber seems but the 
 exuberant outgrowth of the very principle, otherwise known by 
 
478 
 
 LITERARY LARCENIES. 
 
 tlie less objectionable epithet — covetousness ; and we cannot but 
 conclude that he must be an ingenious sophist who can adduce 
 any substantial reasons against their positive identity. If, 
 then, they are convertible terms, it is solely to our conventional 
 usage we must ascribe the fact that both are not alike visited 
 by penal enactment. How far such a course may coniiict with 
 our notions of abstract justice we leave the reader to decide, 
 since to both we admit an eager, if not an equal, proclivity. 
 
 " In the crowd, 
 May it please your excellency, your tMef looks 
 Exactly like the rest, or rather better ; 
 'Tis only at the bar, and ia the dungeon, 
 That wise men know your felon by his features." 
 
 J 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 We do not propose any metaphysical or psychological 
 inquiry as to whether animals possess reasoning powers ; but 
 rather to group together for our amusement some of the illus- 
 trative instances which seem to favor such a conclusion. Vol- 
 umes have been written about the economy of the ants, and 
 the monarchy of the bees, as well as of sagacious dogs and 
 their doings, cats and their cunning ways, parrots and their 
 prattle, and monkeys and their comic manoeuvres. Let us then 
 con over some of these curious connecting links in the great 
 chain of creation, with its boasted lord — the "paragon of 
 animals." 
 
480 THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 Instinct seems to be the incipient state of reason, although the 
 instinctive sensations of which animals are the subjects cannot 
 be properly classed in the same category with the ideas or the 
 rationative process of the human mind. Here is the dividing 
 line between instinct and reason, and yet it is difficult for the 
 metaphysician to define the boundaries of each, since, as in 
 the several kingdoms of nature — animal, vegetable, mineral — 
 they seem to commingle where they unite. 
 
 The instinct of animals, it has been urged, is limited to 
 memory enlightened by experience ; the intelligence of man, 
 on the contrary, is unrestricted and free. This constitutes his 
 superiority. Hence, animals are stationary, while man is 
 progressive. Beavers construct their habitations, birds their 
 nests, bees their hives, and the spider its web, with an admira- 
 ble ingenuity; but the most sagacious of them cannot apply 
 their skill to purposes beyond the sphere of their particular 
 wants, nor do any of them improve in the smallest degree on 
 their predecessors. Exactly as they respectively built at the 
 time of the creation, so will they continue to build until the 
 end of time. 
 
 On the other hand man is dependent on education ; he is 
 the most helpless of animals in infancy; for he has to be 
 taught to eat, to speak, and to walk. 
 
 Aristotle concludes there "are between man and animals 
 faculties in common, near and analogous." He ascribes to the 
 elephant the character of being the most teachable and tama- 
 ble: but he adds, "one sole animal, man, can reflect and 
 deliberate." 
 
 Flourens contends that there is a direct opposition between 
 instinct and intelligence, the former being blind, necessary, 
 and invariable, while the latter is elective, conditional, and 
 changeable. Horses learn to obey man, and understand some 
 of his words; this intelligence, in a qualified sense, is the 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 481 
 
 result of experience and instruction or training. Monkeys 
 and cats are taught to drink tea, elephants to fire pistols, don- 
 keys and pigs to find cards or numbers. If brutes are not 
 invested with reasoning powers — though Plutarch, Montaigne, 
 and others have sought to establish the fact — sometliing very 
 analogous to tliis they seem to possess ; indeed, it is difficult to 
 account for the proofs of sagacity and intelligence which in 
 some instances they evince, on any other hypothesis. Thus 
 serpents are said to obey the voice of their masters ; the trum- 
 peter-bird follows its owner like a spaniel ; and the jacana acts 
 as a guard to poultry, preserving them in the fields from birds 
 of prey, and escorting them home regularly at night. 
 
 For the better illustration of our subject we shall now 
 adduce some illustrative anecdotes ; and, as the dog is a very 
 general favorite, we propose, first, thus to exemplify not only 
 his superior sagacity but his exemplary fidelity. 
 
 A remarkable illustration of canine sagacity is related by 
 Chambers, which is substantially as follows : A gentleman of 
 Suffolk, on an excursion with his friend, was attended by a 
 Newfoundland dog, which soon became the subject of conver- 
 sation. As a test of the animal's sagacity his master put a 
 mark upon a shilling, and after showing it to the dog he put 
 it under a large stone by the roadside. After riding some 
 three miles distant the master made a signal to the dog to 
 return and fetch the coin. He turned back, the gentlemen 
 rode on and reached home, but to their surprise and disap- 
 pointment, the hitherto faithful messenger did not return 
 during the day. It afterward appeared that he had gone to 
 the place where the shilling was deposited, but the stone being 
 too large for him to remove, he had stayed howling at the place, 
 till a horseman riding by, attracted by his seeming distress, 
 dismounted, removed the stone, and seeing the shilling, put it 
 into his pocket. The dog followed the rider some twenty miles, 
 31 
 
482 THE MUTE CREATIOK 
 
 remained undisturbed in the room where Ke supped, and on 
 his retiring for the night followed him to his bed, beneath 
 which he secreted himself. When fairly asleep the dog made 
 for his pantaloons containing his money, and rushed with his 
 booty out the window, which, on account of the heat, had been 
 left partly open, and thus made his way home. Besides the 
 shilling, the gentleman's nether garments contained a purse 
 full of money and a watch. These were afterward advertised 
 and reclaimed. Sir Walter Scott tells us, among other anecdotes 
 of the kind, of a dog called Dandle^ that seemed to know 
 much that was said in his presence. On a certain night his 
 master, returning home later than usual, found the family had 
 retired to bed ; and not finding the boot-jack in its usual place 
 he said to his dog, "Dandie, I cannot find my boot-jack; 
 search for it." The dog, quite sensible of what was spoken, 
 scratched at the room door, which his master opened, pro- 
 ceeded to a distant part of the house, and soon returned carry- 
 ing in his mouth the boot-jack, which his master had left that 
 morning under the sofa. 
 
 In a village near Caen, N"ormandy, lived in domestic dis- 
 quiet an ill-assorted couple : and one day the husband, with 
 evil intent, took his refractory spouse for a walk, and seeing a 
 sparkling stream near at hand, he affected thirst and stooped 
 down to drink, and then induced his " better half " to do the 
 same. Which, no sooner had she done, than he tried to push 
 her into the river, when she would have been drowned had it 
 not been for the prompt assistance of her faithful dog. The 
 noble animal seized the assassin by the throat and would not 
 relinquish his hold, thus saving the life of his mistress. 
 
 We have all heard of the famous dogs of St. Bernard, and 
 of their marvellous exploits in the rescue of Alpine travellers 
 when overtaken with the snow-storm. Early in the present 
 century one of these noble creatures was decorated with a 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 483 
 
 medal in reward for having saved the lives of no less tlian 
 twenty-two snow-bound tourists. So keen is the sense of 
 smell possessed by these dogs, that although a perishing man 
 lie beneath a snow-drift to the depth of several feet, they will 
 detect the spot, scrape away the snow with their feet, make a 
 howling that will be heard at a great distance, and exert them- 
 selves to the utmost in his behalf. An anecdote is told of one 
 of these dogs that found a child whose mother had just been 
 destroyed by an avalanche ; the child, alive and unhurt, was in 
 some way induced to get upon the dog's back, and was thus 
 safely conveyed to the Hospice. 
 
 The aptitude of the Kewfoundland dog to take to the water 
 and rescue drowning persons is no less proverbial. We shall 
 give but an instance or two. A person while bathing at 
 Portsmouth was seized with cramp and struggling for his life. 
 A ISTewfoundland dog on the dock, seeing the man sinking, 
 plunged into the water and saved his life, while two boatmen 
 were debating about what was to be done. 
 
 Take another incident of a more recent date. Two children 
 were playing on the banks of a canal near Pimlico, London ; 
 the younger of them fell into the water and the elder plunged 
 in with the hope of saving him. Both sank; and just at the 
 moment a Newfoundland dog was looking on, and rushing to 
 the rescue, he soon brought up one and then the other safe to 
 shore. The happy father gave a dinner-party in commemora- 
 tion of the event, at which the noble dog was a specially-invited 
 guest ! 
 
 At Mecklenburgh some years since a traveller witnessed the 
 following: After dinner the landlord of the inn placed on 
 the floor a large dish of soup and gave a loud whistle. Im- 
 mediately there came into the room a mastiff, an Angora cat, 
 an old raven, and a remarkably large rat with a bell about its 
 neck. They all four went to the dish, and, without disturbing 
 
484: THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 each other, fed together ; after which the three reclined on the 
 rag, the raven hopping among them. 
 
 Dogs may be treated ^c>^matically or cursorilj, as the case 
 may demand. Dogs are of various orders, — " both puppy, mon- 
 grel, whelp, and hound, and curs of low degree." Some ani- 
 mals are styled "lucky dogs," some "jolly dogs," and some 
 again are " literary dogs," and deal in doggerel ditties, or dog- 
 latin. Some are also unprincipled dogs ; Goldsmith speaks of 
 a dog, which, to gain some private ends, went mad and bit the 
 man"! 
 
 Although we cannot find any explanation of the fact, yet it 
 exists, that our dumb neighbors — the dogs — have a method of 
 making themselves understood to each other. Otherwise what 
 are we to say to the two following instances : A gentleman who 
 was occasionally in the habit of visiting London from a distant 
 county performed the journey on horseback, accompanied by 
 a favorite little terrier dog, which he left at an inn at some dis- 
 tance from London, until his return. On one occasion, on 
 calling for his dog, the landlady told him that it was lost, for it 
 had a fierce encounter with a large house-dog, and was sadly 
 worsted in the fight, so that it was supposed he had gone away 
 and died. After a few days he again made his appearance, 
 accompanied with another dog, bigger than his enemy, on 
 whom they both made such an attack that he was nearly killed. 
 
 Here is another illustration : There was a little spaniel which 
 had been found lame by a surgeon at Leeds, who carried the 
 poor animal home, bandaged up his leg, and after three days 
 sent him away. The dog returned to the surgeon's house every 
 morning till his leg was perfectly well. Several months after- 
 ward the spaniel again presented himself, in company with 
 another dog, which had also been lamed ; and he intimated, as 
 well as piteous and intelligent looks could intimate, that he 
 desired the surgeon's good offices for his friend. 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 485 
 
 There is a story told of a person who, being desirous of get- 
 ting rid of his dog, took it along with him in a boat, and 
 rowing out into the river Seine, threw it overboard. The poor 
 animal repeatedly struggled to regain the boat, but was as 
 often beaten off ; till at length, in the attempts to baffle the efforts 
 of the dog, the man upset the boat, and he fell into the water. 
 No sooner, however, did the generous brute see his master 
 struggle in the stream than he forsook the boat, and held 
 him above water till assistance arrived, and thus saved his life. 
 Was not this dog morally superior to his owner in thus return- 
 ing good for evil ? Here is another example of generosity : 
 A favorite house-dog, left to the care of its master's servants, at 
 Edinburgh, while he was himself in the country, would have 
 been starved by them had it not had recourse to the kitchen of 
 a friend of its master's, which it occasionally visited. 'Not con- 
 tent with indulging himself simply in this streak of good- 
 fortune, this liberally-minded animal, a few days subsequently, 
 falling in with a poor solitary duck, and possibly deeming it to 
 be in destitute circumstances, caught it up in his teeth and 
 carried it to the well-stored larder that had so amply supplied 
 his own necessities. He laid the duck at the cook's feet, with 
 many polite movements of his tail — that most expressive of 
 canine features — then scampered off, with much seeming com- 
 placency at having given his hostess this substantial proof of 
 his grateful sense of favors received. 
 
 Our illustrations of canine instinct or intelligence would be 
 incomplete were we to omit the following : A gentleman was 
 missed in London, and was supposed to have met with some 
 foul play. No clue could be obtained to the mystery till it 
 was gained from observing that his dog continued to crouch 
 down before a certain house. The animal would not be induced 
 to leave the spot, and it was at length inferred that he might 
 be waiting for his master. The house, hitherto above suspicion, 
 
4:86 THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 was searched, and the result was the discovery of the body of 
 the missing individual, who had been murdered. 
 
 Cats, categorically considered, present some curious char- 
 acteristics, as distinct from those of dogs ; they are often 
 treacherous and sly; whereas dogs are demonstrative, out- 
 spoken, and frank in disposition and character. Cats are 
 not overdone with brain power ; dogs are sagacious and intel- 
 ligent. Dogs, civilized dogs, evince surprising attachment to 
 their masters; cats, on the contrary, are attached to places 
 rather than persons. The balance of the virtues, we think, 
 will be found against the feline and in favor of the canine. 
 
 Some dogs, indeed, have acquired a kind of literary cele- 
 brity from having been the favorites of distinguished men : 
 Scott had his, so had Byron, and Lord Eldon actually pensioned 
 his favorite poodle. Thus much, then, concerning cats and 
 curs ; and possibly the reader will con-cur with our conclusions ? 
 There used to be seen in London streets what was called the 
 " Happy Family," a curious collection of domesticated animals 
 and birds, among which Pussy figured conspicuously in the 
 centre of the cage, with becoming gravity, while canaries and 
 other singing birds perched upon her back, and mice, rats, 
 rabbits, and other creatures were all mingled together in perfect 
 harmony — all their natural antipathies seemingly annihilated 
 by educational training. Cats, after all that may be alleged 
 against them or their claws, have yet been celebrated in books. 
 We have the charming story of '' Puss in Boots," and the fairy 
 tale of " Whittington and his Cat." Then there is the legend 
 of the hapless " Kilkenny Cats." Besides, Egyptians em- 
 balmed and Chinese ate cats. 
 
 Of all the curious institutions of charity ever heard of, is the 
 cat asylum at Aleppo, which is attached to one of the mosques 
 there, and was founded by a misanthropic old Turk, who, 
 being possessed of large granaries, was much annoyed by rats 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 487 
 
 and mice, to rid himself of which he employed a legion of cats ; 
 they rendered such effective service against his assailants, that 
 it is said, he left an endowed asylum for sickly and destitute 
 cats. 
 
 Puss has yet somehow got mixed up with witches and 
 wizards, with ghosts and goblins ; moreover she is charged with 
 terrible crimes, such as sucking the breath out of babies, and 
 other horrible things. But who would believe such charges, to 
 look at her sleek and sober face, and green, glassy eyes ? 
 
 More dainty and delicate are pussy's tastes and manners than 
 those of dogs ; and they are, therefore, preferred and admitted 
 to the companionship of maiden ladies and elderly spinsters. 
 Cowper, the pensive poet, had a penchant for Pussy, as well as 
 hares and rabbits ; and Petrarch was so fond of the animal, 
 that on the death of his cat he had it embalmed. Johnson, 
 " Ursus Major " though he has been styled, had his feline favor- 
 ite, and such was his fondness for her, that when on one occa- 
 sion she fell ill, he administered personally to her wants, feed- 
 ing her upon a dish of oysters for several days. 
 
 Instances of personal attachment of the cat are on record ; 
 one of these is the following: A lady residing in France 
 had a favorite which constantly lay at her feet, seemingly 
 always ready to defend her. It never molested the birds 
 which its mistress kept ; it would not even take food from any 
 person but herself. At the lady's death the cat was removed 
 from her chamber, but it made its way there again the next 
 morning, and kept pacing about the room, crying most pite- 
 ously, as if lamenting its mistress. After the funeral it was 
 found stretched on her grave, apparently having died from ex- 
 cess of grief. The following anecdote of combined attach- 
 ment and sagacity rivals anything that has been told even of 
 the dog : " In the summer of 1800 a physician of Lyons was 
 requested to inquire into a murder that had been committed on 
 
^S8 THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 a woman of that city. He accordingly went to the residence 
 of the deceased, where he found her extended lifeless on the 
 floor and weltering in her blood. A large white cat was 
 mounted on the cornice of a cupboard ; there he sat motion- 
 less, mth his eyes fixed on the corpse. There he continued 
 till the following dsij, when the room was filled with the 
 ofiicers of justice ; and as soon as the suspected persons were 
 brought in, the cat's eyes glared with increased fury, his hair 
 bristled, and he darted into the middle of the room, where he 
 stopped for a moment to gaze at them, and then precipitately 
 retreated. The countenances of the assassins were discon- 
 certed, and they now, for the first time, during the whole 
 course of the horrid business, felt their atrocious audacity for- 
 sake them." * 
 
 Cats difi:er as much in character as human beings do ; and 
 like human beings, their character is very much to be predi- 
 cated from their countenances. Southey, in his " Doctor," 
 gives a curious chapter upon the cats of his acquaintance — a 
 chapter in which humor and natural history are agreeably min- 
 gled together ; he was evidently a close observer of the habits 
 of poor puss, and took much delight in the whims, frolics, and 
 peculiarities of his favorites. 
 
 The elephant, unwieldly and uncouth as he seems, pre- 
 sents some remarkable features of character, combining the 
 fidelity of the dog, the endurance of the camel, and the 
 docility of the horse, with singular sagacity, prudence, and 
 courage. 
 
 In one of the accounts of Indian warfare, a body of artillery 
 was described as proceeding up a hill, and the great strength 
 of elephants was found highly advantageous in drawing up the 
 guns. On the carriage of one of these guns, a little in front of 
 
 * Chambers* Miscellany. 
 
THE MUTE CREATION". 489 
 
 the wheels, sat an artillery man, resting himself. An elephant, 
 drawing another gun, was advancing in regular order close be- 
 hind. Whether from falling asleep, or over-fatigue, the man 
 fell fi'om his seat, and the wheel of the gun-carriage, with its 
 heavy gun, was just rolling over him. The elephant, compre- 
 hending the danger, and seeing that he could not reach the 
 body of the man with his trunk, seized the wheel by the top, 
 and, lifting it up, passed it carefully over the fallen man, and 
 set it down on the other side. An Oriental traveller furnishes 
 some amusing incidents respecting the docility and sagacious- 
 ness of this monstrous creature. In his journeys, he says, if he 
 wished to stop to admire a beautiful prospect, the animal re- 
 mained immovable until his sketch was finished ; if he wished 
 for mangoes growing out of his reach, this faithful servant 
 selected the most fruitful branch, and, breaking it off with his 
 trunk for him, accepted very thankfully of any part for him- 
 self, respectfully and politely acknowledging the compliment 
 by raising his trunk three times above his head, in the manner 
 of Oriental obeisance. Docile as he is, this noble quadruped 
 seems conscious of his superior strength over the rest of the 
 brute creation. 
 
 Take yet another example of the shrewd wit of this colossal 
 creature. Some men were teasing an elephant they were con- 
 veying across a river. In the boat that was towed alongside 
 they had a dog which began to torment it by pulling its ears. 
 The elephant was resolved to resent the impertinence, and 
 what do you suppose was her expedient ? She filled her pro- 
 boscis with water, and then deluged the whole party. At first 
 the men laughed at the manoeuvre, but she persisted until they 
 were compelled to bale to keep from sinking ; when seeing 
 this she redoubled her efforts, and it is said she certainly 
 would have swamped the boat had the passage across been 
 prolonged a few minutes further. Thus much — althougli 
 
4:90 THE MUTE CEEATIOK 
 
 mucli more iniglit be presented — in behalf of the noble quali- 
 ties of the elephant. 
 
 We have heard and read about " learned pigs ; " but as their 
 physiognomical development does not indicate much in that 
 direction, and further, as their habits are untidy, we shall not 
 introduce the parties to our readers. 
 
 The love of fun seems to be inherent with the monkey tribe. 
 Dr. Guthrie relates the following amusing anecdote: Jack, 
 as he was called, seeing his master and some companions 
 drinking, with those imitative powers for which his species is 
 remarkable, finding half a glass of whiskey left, took it up and 
 drank it off. It flew, of course, to his head. Amid their loud 
 roars of laughter he began to skip, hop, and dance. Jack 
 was drunk. Next day, when they went, with the intention of 
 repeating the fun, to take the poor monkey from his box, he 
 was not to be seen. Looking inside, there he lay, crouching 
 in a corner. ' Come out ! ' said his master. Afraid to disobey, 
 he came, walking on three legs — the fore-paw that was laid 
 on his forehead saying, as plain as words could do, that he 
 had a headache. Having left him some days to get well and 
 resume his gayety, they at length carried him off to the old 
 scene of revel. On entering, he eyed the glasses with manifest 
 terror, skulking behind the chair ; and on his master ordering 
 him to drink, he bolted, and he was on the house-top in a 
 twinkling. They called him down. He would not come. 
 His master shook the whip at him. Jack, astride on the 
 ridge-pole, grinned defiance. A gun, of which he was always 
 much afraid, was pointed at this disciple of temperance ; he 
 ducked his head and slipped over to the back of the house ; 
 upon which, seeing his predicament, and less afraid apparently 
 of the fire than the fire-water, the monkey leaped at a bound 
 on the chimney-top, and, getting down into a flue, held on by 
 his fore-paws. He would rather be singed than drunk. He 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 491 
 
 triumphed, and, althougli his master kept him for twelve years 
 after that, he never could persuade the monkey to taste 
 another drop of whiskey." Good temperance monkey that. 
 
 Mrs. Lee, the naturalist, tells ns of one belonging to her 
 eldest dau2:hter, which seemed to know he could master the 
 child, "and did not hesitate to bite and scratch her whenever 
 she pulled him a little harder than he thought proper. I pun- 
 ished him," she adds, " for each offence, yet fed and caressed 
 him when good ; by which means I possessed an entire ascend- 
 ancy over him." The same writer also gives an interesting 
 account of a monkey which a man in Paris had trained to a 
 variety of clever tricks. "I met him one day," says she, "sud- 
 denly, as he was coming up the drawing-room staii'S. He 
 made way for me by standing in an angle, and when I said, 
 'Good-morning,' took off his cap, and made me a low bow. 
 ' Are you going away ? ' I asked ; ' where is your passport ? ' 
 Upon which he took from the same cap a square piece of paper, 
 which he opened and showed to me. His master told him 
 my gown was dusty, and he instantly took a small brush 
 from his master's pocket, raised the hem of my dress, cleaned 
 it, and then did the same for my shoes. He was perfectly 
 docile and obedient ; when we gave him something to eat he 
 did not cram his pouches with it, but delicately and tidily 
 devoured it ; and when we bestowed money on him he imme- 
 diately put it into his master's hands." 
 
 A ludicrous story is told of a French monkey, belonging to 
 Father Cassabon, who was in the habit of carefully locking 
 him up on the Sabbath. The animal, however, made his 
 escape one Sunday and contrived to secret himself in a 
 crevice behind the priest's pulpit. The church service com- 
 menced, and presently a boy was seen by the dominie to laugh 
 risrht in his face : this unseemlv behavior was of course 
 frowned upon from the pulpit, and checked by his mother, 
 
492 THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 who was seated with him. Soon she caught the infection, and 
 indeed it spread rapidly throughout the entire congregation, 
 notwithstanding the terrible anathemas with which such con- 
 duct was visited by the astonished and perplexed parson. 
 Finding all eyes directed to the sounding-board over his pul- 
 pit, the unfortunate priest looked there, when, to his dismay, 
 he saw his irreverent monkey grinning at him, and mimicking 
 him to the life. 
 
 Naturalists tell us that the wonderfully minute organization 
 of the insect tribes comprises brain, nervous, and glandular 
 systems, and that in consequence their instructive intelligence 
 is inferred. The ants, for instance, the models of industry and 
 ingenuity, afford astonishing intelligence in the construction of 
 their cells and the procuring of their food. The bees exhibit 
 a yet more surprising example of mimic human life, in their 
 gregarious habits and constructive skill, as well as in the social 
 friendships and feuds and organized battles ; not to speak of 
 the architectural wonders of these animals, so often described, 
 nor of the cares of the workers for the little larvae. 
 
 The finny tribes are hidden from our gaze because sub- 
 merged ; but they have instincts, and, for aught we know to 
 the contrary, social affections, and skill in the construction of 
 their nests. The pike, and especially the cod, are said to be 
 easily tamed, and in some instances trained to follow to the 
 bank of a river even their human friends. Sir Walter Scott 
 being once asked whether fishes possessed less sensibility than 
 man, said, " it is a delicate question, and one which fishes alone 
 would be able to solve." 
 
 Mr. Jesse mentions a parrot which, when pleased, would 
 laugh most heartily, and then cry out, " Don't make me laugh 
 so : I shall die, I shall die." The bird wonld also mimic sob- 
 bing, and exclaim, " So bad, so bad ; got such a cold." If any 
 one happened to cough, he would call out, '' What a bad cold ! " 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 493 
 
 Take another illustration; Mrs. Lee, in lier "Anecdotes," 
 states that one day her gardener was struck by the strange con- 
 duct of a robin, which the man had often fed. The bird flut- 
 tered about him in so strange a manner — now coming close, 
 then hurrying away, always in the same direction — that the 
 gardener followed its retreating movements. The robin stopped 
 near a flower-pot and fluttered over it in great agitation. A 
 nest had been formed there containing several young ones ; and 
 close by was discovered a snake, intent doubtless upon making 
 a meal of the brood. The man saw the reason of the bird's con- 
 duct, and carried off the snake, upon which the redbreast ex- 
 pressed its joy by a burst of song and triumphant flutterings. 
 The incident carries its own comment : the bird sought protec- 
 tion from its foe, and, having succeeded in obtaining it, did 
 more than some bipeds do — sang his thanks in return. 
 
 The same authority relates the case of an unprincipled Mag- 
 fie^ who belonged to a toll-keeper in an English county town ; 
 the bird having often heard the words, " gate ahoy," learned to 
 pronounce them himself ; and finding that his mistress always 
 went out to the gate whenever the call was made, he mimicked 
 the sound so perfectly that on one occasion he induced her to 
 leave her dinner, when the bird instantly flew to the table and 
 made free with its dainties. This trick he practised again, but 
 he was at length found out in the fraud. It was a clear case 
 of obtaining food under false pretences ; yet what an ingenious 
 theft it was. 
 
 Even the goose, which is not the accepted symbol of wisdom, 
 has been much slandered, if the story related by a recent au- 
 thority^ be admitted in evidence. " In Germany an aged blind 
 woman was led to church every Sunday by a gander, which 
 dragged her along, holding her gown in his beak. As soon as 
 the old woman was seated in her pew the gander retired to the 
 
 * Menault. 
 
494 THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 cLnrcli-yard to feed upon the grass, and when the service was 
 ended he conducted his mistress to her home ! " 
 
 But it is among the mammalia that we are to look for the 
 closest approximation to, and understanding of, the human race. 
 Jackson relates an instance of the sagacity of the horse : " The 
 animal had been carelessly shod, and probably suffered pain in 
 consequence. The creature seems to have been quite aware of 
 the proper remedy, for a few days after the shoeing operation 
 the farrier was amazed to see tlie horse approach the door of 
 the workshop and hold up the hoof. An inspection soon 
 showed the nature of the fault, which being rectified, the ani- 
 mal went off satisfied." The clever manner in which this horse 
 escaped from its meadow was as follows : having no means of 
 unlocking the gate he had actually lifted one end off the hinges 
 with his teeth, and was thus able to get through. 
 
 ITumerous anecdotes of the fidelity and sagacity of the horse 
 are given, one of which we transcribe ; it is as follows : " On 
 one occasion a farmer was returning to his home near Edin- 
 burgh, from a jovial meeting, where he had been very liberal 
 in his potations. After riding some distance on horseback he 
 became somewhat drowsy, when he had the misfortune to fall 
 from the saddle. His fall was, however, so easy that it did not 
 rouse him from his sleepy fit and he felt quite contented to rest 
 where he had alighted. His faithful steed, on being eased of 
 his burden, instead of scampering home, stood and kept a watch 
 all night over his prostrate master, whom some early wayfarers 
 discovered next day still sleeping. They attempted to replace 
 him on the saddle, but every attempt to come near him was 
 resolutely opposed by the grinning teeth and ready heels of his 
 faithful and determined guardian." 
 
 Even the donkey is a misunderstood and much injured ani- 
 mal, as well as the poor unoffending, innocent sheep ; for both 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 495 
 
 have much more intelligence than we are accnstomed to sup- 
 pose, even though they may not be brilliant. 
 
 A good story is told of the donkey of a Lancashire carrier. 
 The master was accustomed to stop at a public house for ale, a 
 little of which was always kindly given to his quadruped. Af- 
 ter a time the carrier turned teetotaler, but the animal objected 
 to the change, for whenever he came to the aforesaid alehouse 
 he insisted, as heretofore, in stopping, and no expostulation of 
 his master could prevent it. The publican, who held teetotalism 
 to be the eighth deadly sin, at length persuaded the good-na- 
 tured master actually to purchase the ale now, not to please 
 himself, but his ass, as he felt himself responsible to the poor 
 brute for first teaching him the evil habit. The ass sank as a 
 moralist, but rose as a genius by the force of his will. It was 
 an honor, some even thought, to have such a donkey in the 
 district. 
 
 The " busy bee " is so familiar to all that it will not be 
 necessary for us to refer to its peculiarity of structure, further 
 than to state that the worker is invested with an extra stomach, 
 which is called the honey-bag, in which it deposits the sweets 
 or saccharine matter it collects from blossoms, fruits, and flow- 
 ers. " The most profound philosopher, equally with the most 
 incurious mortals," says Kirby, " is struck with astonishment 
 on inspecting the interior of a bee-hive : he beholds a city in 
 miniature. He sees this city divided into regular streets, these 
 streets composed of houses constructed on the most exact 
 geometrical principles, and the most symmetrical plan; — some 
 serving for storehouses for food, others for the habitations of 
 the citizens, and a few, much more extensive than the rest, 
 destined for the palaces of the sovereign. He perceives that 
 the substance of which the whole city is built is one which 
 man, with all his skill, is unable to fabricate ; and that the 
 edifices are such as the most expert artist would find himself 
 
496 THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 incompetent to erect : jet the whole is the work of a society of 
 mere insects ! " 
 
 A number of honeycombs, composed of cells for the most 
 part hexagonal or six-sided, regularly applied to each other's 
 sides, and arranged in two strata or layers, placed end to end, 
 are fixed to the upper part and sides of the interior of the hive. 
 These combs are arranged vertically at a small distance from 
 each other, so that the cells composing them are placed in a 
 horizontal position, and have their openings in different direc- 
 tions. The distance between the combs is about half an inch, 
 sufficient to allow two bees to pass each other easily : besides 
 these vacancies, the combs are here and there pierced with 
 holes, which serve as a means of communication from one 
 comb to another. 
 
 Many amusing if not extravagant stories are given by 
 naturalists respecting the exceeding loyalty of bees to their 
 queen ; their passion for monarchy indeed brings them into 
 near connection with the ants. The following anecdote will 
 illustrate this : " A young girl of my acquaintance," says the 
 narrator, " was greatly afraid of bees, and she became com- 
 pletely cured of her timidity by the following incident. A 
 swarm having come off, I observed the queen alight by herself 
 at a little distance from the apiary. I immediately called my 
 little friend, that I might show her the queen ; she wished to 
 inspect her more closely ; so, having caused her to put on her 
 gloves, I gave the queen into her hand. We were in an in- 
 stant surrounded by the whole bees of the swarm. In this 
 emergency I encouraged the girl to be steady, bidding her to 
 be silent and to fear nothing, and remaining myself close by 
 her. I then made her stretch out her right hand, which held 
 the queen, and covered her head and shoulders with a very 
 thin handkerchief: the swarm soon fixed on her hand, and 
 hung from it as from the branch of a tree. The little girl was 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 497 
 
 delighted bej^oiid measure at the novel sight, and so entirely 
 freed from all fear, that she bade me uncover her face. The 
 spectators were charmed by the interesting spectacle. At 
 length I brought a hive, and shaking the swarm from the 
 child's hand, it was lodged in safety, and without inflicting a 
 single wound." 
 
 The delicate fabric of the spider's web is a miracle of skill ; 
 although so fine as to be scarcely visible without the aid of a 
 microscope, the spider's thread is nevertheless composed, not of 
 a single line, as is usually supposed, but, as we learn from good 
 authority, of not less than four thousand strands. And this is 
 true with respect to spiders not larger than a grain of sand, as 
 well as the largest specimens. The gauze-like texture of the 
 web of the house-spider, as well as the beautiful net more com- 
 monly found among the foliage, composed of a series of con- 
 centric circles, united by radii diverging from the centre, are 
 ^both exquisite specimens of insect skill. 
 
 " Man thinks that he stands unrivalled as an architect, and 
 that his productions far transcend the works of the inferior 
 order of animals. He would be of a different opinion did he 
 attend to the history of insects ; he would find that many of 
 them have been architects from time immemorial ; that they 
 had their houses divided into various apartments, and contain- 
 ing staircases, elegant arches, domes, colonnades, and the like. 
 No feminine ornament is more prized and costly than lace, the 
 invention and fabrication of which seems the exclusive claim 
 of the softer sex. But even here they have been anticipated by 
 these little industrious creatures, which often defend their help- 
 less chrysalides by a most singular covering — and as beautiful 
 as singular — of lace. Other arts have been equally forestalled 
 by these insects. We imagine that nothing short of human 
 intellect can be equal to the construction of a diving-bell or 
 air-pump — yet a spider is in the daily habit of using the one, 
 33 
 
498 THE MUTE CREATION. 
 
 and what is more, one exactly similar in principle to ours, but 
 more ingeniously contrived; by means of which she resides 
 unwetted in the bosom of the water, and procures the neces- 
 sary supplies of air by a much more simple process than our al- 
 ternating buckets — and the caterpillar of a little moth knows 
 how to imitate the other, producing a vacuum, when necessary 
 for its purposes, without any piston besides its own body. 
 
 " If we think with wonder of the populous cities which have 
 employed the united labors of man for many ages to bring 
 them to their full extent, what shall we think of the white 
 ants, which require only a few months to build a metropolis 
 capable of containing an infinitely greater number of inhabit- 
 ants than even the imperial Kineveh, Babylon, or Pekin, in 
 all their glory ? " * 
 
 That insects should thus have forestalled us in our inven- 
 tions ought to urge us to pay a closer attention to them and 
 their ways than we have hitherto done ; since it is not at all 
 improbable that the result would supply useful hints for the 
 improvement of our arts and manufactures,- and perhaps be 
 the clue to some beneficial discoveries. 
 
 Although parrots are excessively amusing in their small 
 talk, yet, as they cannot be supposed to be conscious of what 
 they say, we can only refer to them here, en passant, on the 
 ground that they bear some seeming analogy, in this respect, 
 to some human talkers. Mrs. Lee, in her " Anecdotes of Birds," 
 mentions the instance of a parrot that had lost one of its legs, 
 and no sooner did any one remark this, or ask how it had been 
 lost, than it replied : " I lost my leg in the merchant service ; 
 pray remember the lame." 
 
 The following story has often been recited before, but it will 
 bear repeating : " A tradesman who had a shop in the Old 
 
 Kirby. 
 
THE MUTE CREATION. 499 
 
 Bailey, London, opposite T»fewgate prison, kept two parrots, a 
 green and a gray. The green parrot was taught to speak when 
 there was a knock at the street-door ; the gray, whenever the 
 bell rang ; but they only knew two short phrases of English. 
 The house in which they lived had an old-fashioned, project- 
 ing front, so that the first floor could not be seen from the 
 pavement on the same side of the way, and, on one occasion, 
 they were left outside the window by themselves, when some 
 one knocked at the street-door. ^ Who is there ? ' said the sreen 
 parrot. ' The man with the leather,' was the reply ; to which 
 the bird answered, ' Oh ! oh ! ' The door not being opened, 
 the stranger knocked a second time. ^ Who is there ? ' said 
 green poll. * Who is there ? ' exclaimed the man. ' Why 
 don't you come down ? ' ' Oh, oh ! ' repeated the parrot. 
 This so enraged the stranger that he rang the bell furiously. 
 ' Go to the gate,' said a new voice, which belonged to the gray 
 parrot. ' To the gate ? ' repeated the man, who saw no such 
 entrance, and who thought that the servants were bantering 
 him. ' What gate ? ' he asked, stepping back to view the prem- 
 ises. 
 
 " ' New-gate,' responded the gray, j ust as the angry appli- 
 cant discovered who had been answering his summons." 
 
 Parrots have been known to mimic the sound of planing a 
 deal board, the mewing of a cat, or the barking of a dog, so ac- 
 curately as to deceive the closest observers. 
 
 The predilection of animals for particular persons was once 
 the means of deciding, very amusingly, a case before a court 
 of justice. It was at a Dublin police-office, and the object of 
 dispute was a pet parrot which had been stolen from a Mr. 
 Davis and sold to a Mr. Moore. The plaintiff, taking the bird 
 upon his finger, said, " Come, old boy, give me a kiss," which 
 the parrot instantly did. A youth, in the defendant's interest, 
 remarked that this proved nothing, as the parrot would kiss 
 
500 THE MUTE CKEATION. 
 
 anybody. " You had better not try," remarked the plaintiff. 
 Nevertheless the young man asked the parrot to kiss him. 
 Poll, Judas-like, advanced as if to give the required salute, 
 but seized the youth's lip and made him roar with pain. This 
 fact, and the parrot's obeying the plaintiff in several other 
 requisitions, caused it to be instantly ordered into the posses- 
 sion of its original master. 
 
 Here we close our remarks about the winged and walking 
 things of earth, whose characteristic developments are so sug- 
 gestive of moral instruction to us ; and although the lessons 
 they teach are fraught with deepest interest, and cannot but 
 reflect a beneficial influence, yet it is to be feared but too 
 many are found inaccessible to their power and inaudible to 
 their teaching. 
 
SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 
 
 *' sleep ! the certain knot of peace, — 
 
 The baiting-place of vsdt, the balm of woe : 
 The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
 The impartial judge between the high and low."' — Sir P. Sidney. 
 
 What is the phenomenon we call sleep, — that is the ques- 
 tion? We ask the physiologist, and he gives us its diagnosis, 
 but that is all. Blumenbach attributed it to a diminished flow 
 of arterial blood to the brain, but Elliotson, his commentator, 
 suggests that this slower circulation is the effect, not the cause 
 of sleep. Indeed, although much learned discussion has been 
 devoted to the subject, sleep is yet a profound puzzle to us. 
 
502 ■ SLEEP AJ^D ITS MYSTERIES. 
 
 Boerliaave speaks of a German pliysician or metaphysician 
 who held to the drowsy theory, that sleep was the natural con- 
 dition of man ; but his own experience bore witness against 
 him, for he is said to have slept himself at last into an 
 apoplexy. It is, however, safe to affirm that sleeping and wak- 
 ing are the two great phenomena of our existence. It is also 
 patent to all that our bodies, like our watches, require winding 
 up, or they will run down and stop ! The mainspring of the 
 one, however, has to be treated differently to that of the other, 
 because its mechanism is differently constructed. In attempt- 
 ing a little familiar talk about so soporific as ubject as sleep, 
 we must be careful on our part not to put the reader under 
 the somnolent influence of the drowsy god Morpheus. " Half 
 our days we pass in the shadow of the earth," says Sir Thomas 
 Browne, " and the brother of death extracteth a third part of our 
 lives." Rest and activity make up the existence we call life ; 
 their alternation is as inexorable a law as that of day and 
 night. Our physical system recuperates principally during 
 sleep, because then it is that nutrition goes on most actively ; it 
 is then also, as the doctors say, that " the brain feeds." Some 
 writers call sleep a temporary metaphysical death. Shakespeare 
 beautifully says, " Our little life is rounded by a sleep." 
 Cervantes piquantly remarks, "It covers a man all over, 
 thoughts and all, like a cloak." Saxe adds a stanza : 
 
 " ' God bless the man wlio first invented sleep ! ' 
 
 So Sancho Panza said, and so say I ! 
 And bless bim also, that be didn't keep 
 
 His great discovery to bimself, or try 
 To make it — as tbe lucky fellow might — 
 
 A close monopoly, by 'patent-right.' " 
 
 Sleep, then, being a fixed institution of humanity as well as 
 of animals, and, in part at least, of the vegetable kingdom, is, 
 like the air we breathe, an indispensable blessing. We are not 
 
SLEEP AND ITS ]VIYSTERIES. 603 
 
 apt to estimate too highly the priceless boon: yet were its 
 gentle visitations but intermitted even for a night or two in 
 succession, we should be better fitted to form an idea of its 
 inestimable value. When wearied with the day's drudgery and 
 turmoil, how inexpressibly grateful is it to surrender our- 
 selves to its sweet oblivion. The quiet hour of wonted repose 
 steals upon us like a charm, and we yield ourselves to its 
 mollifying and soothing influence as the universal pr-nacea. It 
 has been said that, 
 
 "In perfect sleep there is no consciousness. It has been 
 therefore called with truth the image of death. It is a tempo- 
 rary death, as far as concerns all action and motion which lie 
 under the power of our will. But although the brain is at rest, 
 the heart and lungs continue their tasks, because they are pre- 
 sided over by a department of the nervous system, which acts 
 independently of the brain. The brain is the seat of conscious- 
 ness, and from it all the nerves which originate and control 
 voluntary motions more or less directly take their rise." 
 
 There is also a state of coma, or abnormal sleep ; which is, 
 indeed, a preternatural or morbid condition of lethargy, in- 
 duced by natural or artificial causes. Collateral with sleep 
 may be also mentioned hysteria, trance, catalepsy, syncope, 
 paralysis, magnetic sleep, and epilepsy, which last is caused by 
 a stoppage of the electric currents centring in the spine. 
 
 If sleep be such an essential restorative to our physical and 
 mental systems, how terrible upon criminals must be the tor- 
 ture of the Chinese punishment of preventing it. The victim 
 is kept awake by guards alternately watching: death super- 
 venes, usually, after from twelve to twenty days' endurance. 
 
 The most unfavorable condition for sleep cannot prevent its 
 approach. Coachmen slumber on their boxes, and couriers 
 on their horses, while soldiers fall asleep on the field of battle, 
 amidst all the noise of artillery and the tumult of war. Dur- 
 
504 SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 
 
 ing the retreat of Sir John Moore several of the British 
 soldiers were reported to have fallen asleep on the march, and 
 yet they continued walking onward. The most violent pas- 
 sions and excitement of mind cannot preserve even powerful 
 minds from sleep ; thus Alexander the Great slept on the field 
 of Arbela, and JSTapoleon on that of Austerlitz. Noises, which 
 serve at first to drive away sleep, soon become indispensable to 
 its existence ; thus a stage-coach stopping to change horses 
 wakes all the passengers. The proprietor of an iron forge 
 who slept close to the din of hammers, forges, and blast fur- 
 naces, would awake if there was any interruption to them during 
 the night ; and a sick miller, who had his mill stopped on that 
 account, passed sleepless nights till the mill resumed its noise. 
 
 Leigh Hunt furnishes some pleasant thoughts upon the sub- 
 ject, from which we cite a passage. " It is a delicious moment, 
 certainly," he writes, " that of being well nestled in bed and 
 feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to 
 come, not past ; the limbs have just been tired enough to ren- 
 der the remaining in one posture delightful ; the labor of the 
 day is done. A gentle failure of the perceptions comes creep- 
 ing over one ; the spirit of consciousness disengages itself more 
 and more, with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother de- 
 taching her hand from her sleeping child ; the mind seems to 
 have a balmy lid over it, like the eye ; 'tis closing — more clos- 
 ing — 'tis closed. The mysterious spirit has gone to make its 
 airy rounds. 
 
 " The day emphatically belongs to earth : we yield it with- 
 out reluctance to care and labor. We toil, we drudge, we 
 pant, we play the hack-horse; we do things smilingly from 
 which we recoil in secret ; we pass by sweet spots and rare 
 faces that our very heart yearns for, without betraying the 
 effort it costs; and thus we drag through the twelve long 
 hours, disgusted almost, but gladdened withal, that the mask 
 
SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 505 
 
 will have an end, and the tedious game be over, and onr visor 
 and our weapons be laid aside. But the night is the gift of 
 heaven; it brings freedom and repose; its influence falls 
 coolly and gratefully upon the mind as well as the body ; and 
 when drops the extinguisher upon the light which glimmers 
 upon the round, untouched pillow, we, at the same time, put 
 out a world of cares and perplexities." 
 
 But for this wonted repose how monotonous and wearisome 
 would life become ; not man alone, but all nature would begin 
 to faint and die, like the seared foliage of autumn. This ne- 
 cessity for periodical repose seems to be an essential law of all 
 animated life, with scarce a single exception. The feathered 
 tribe cease their minstrelsy as the shades of eventide spread 
 over the face of all things — a type of sleep itself with its closed 
 eyelids. All seek their needed rest. 
 
 Instances on record of protracted sleep are both numerous 
 and interesting ; but we can notice one or two only. It is 
 stated in the records of the Koyal Society of Edinburgh, that 
 " a woman slept continuously from the first of July until the 
 eighth of August. During the first seven days she continued 
 motionless, and exhibited no inclination to eat ; after which 
 time she would move her hand to her mouth, signifying a wish 
 for food, which was given to her. She evinced no symptom of 
 hearing till about four days prior to her recovery. During 
 this long interval of nearly forty days and nights, she contin- 
 ued in a state of unconsciousness." In the somnolent state, 
 life can be sustained by a small portion of food. 
 
 " In the middle of the last century a young Frenchwoman, at 
 Toulouse, had, for half a year, fits of lengthened sleep, varying 
 from three to thirteen days each. About the same time, a girl 
 at Newcastle-on-Tyne slept fourteen weeks without waking; 
 and the waking process occupied three days to complete. Doc- 
 tor Blanchet, of Paris, mentions the case of a lady who slept for 
 
506 SLEEP AKD ITS MYSTERIES. 
 
 twenty days together when she was about eighteen years of age, 
 fifty days when she was about twenty, and had nearly a whole 
 year's sleep, from Easter Sunday, 1862, till March, 1863 ; during 
 this long sleep (which physicians call hysteric coma) she was 
 fed with milk and soup, one of her front teeth being extracted 
 to obtain an opening into her mouth. 
 
 Cognate with sleep is the phenomenon we call dreams. Phy- 
 sics and metaphysics, psychology and other occult sciences, have 
 been appealed to for a solution of the mystery, but in vain. 
 Dreams cannot be called echoes of our waking-thoughts, be- 
 cause they do not reflect them with any uniformity ; indeed it is 
 but rarely they do so. Dreams seem to be sometimes engen- 
 dered of a disturbed digestion and also of a morbid state of 
 mental excitement. We do not know much more than the an- 
 cients about dreams ; although such multitudes have been in 
 dreamland, is it not strange that it yet remains a terra incog- 
 nita f Physiologists now incline to the theory that all dream, 
 and dream at all times throughout their sleep ; which has been 
 heretofore a debatable point with the doctors. Few, however, 
 remember their dreams, if they do always dream in sleep. Of 
 the class of dreams suggested by previous mental preoccupa- 
 tion, there are many recorded incidents. It is undeniable that 
 some men have been smarter when they were asleep than when 
 they were awake. Chess-players, metaphysicians, and mathe- 
 maticians often dream to good purpose. Sir Thomas Browne 
 confesses that he could grapple with metaphysical difficulties 
 better in his dreams than in his waking hours. Napier is said 
 to have dreamed out the science of logarithms. 
 
 There seem to be a mystery and fascination connected with 
 the subject, from the fact that dreams are involuntary and in 
 some instances are prophetic of evil or good fortune. Then, 
 again the strange incongruities which characterize most dreams 
 — memory and imagination mingling their wildest flights in 
 
SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 507 
 
 defiance of reason and common sense. On the other hand some. 
 
 like Coleridge, have had remarkably intellectual dreams ; his 
 gorgeous poem of Kubla Khan for example. Sartini, a cele- 
 brated violinist, composed one of his famous sonatas in a dream. 
 Condorcet, having once left his calculations in an unfinished 
 state, took up the thread of them in a dream, and finished them. 
 It is in the nocturnal hours of sleep that conscience some- 
 times holds her court of inquest upon crime. " The Furies still 
 follow Orestes ; " and where the culprit has escaped convic- 
 tion at a human tribunal, conscience has occasionally become 
 his accuser to bring him to judgment. 
 
 Visions nocturnal have been the divinely appointed media of 
 communication in the patriarchal age, and it was doubtless 
 owing to these real events that a superstitious veneration for 
 dreams has obtained in all times among the nations of the 
 world. Many surprising instances of prophetic dreams and 
 premonitions have been collected by writers, which tend to keep 
 alive a belief in their supernatural origin. 
 
 Dr. Abercrombie says he is enabled to give the following 
 anecdote as entirely authentic : " A lady dreamed that an aged 
 female relative had been murdered by a black servant, and the 
 dream occurred more than once. She was then so strangely 
 impressed by it that she went to the house of the lady to whom 
 it related, and prevailed upon a gentleman to watch in an ad- 
 joining room the following night. About three o'clock in the 
 morning, the gentleman, hearing footsteps on the stairs, left 
 his place of concealment, and met the servant carrying up a 
 quantity of coals. Being questioned as to where he was going, 
 he replied, in a confused manner, that he was going to mend his 
 mistress' fire, which, at three o'clock in the morning, in the 
 middle of summer, was evidently impossible ; and, on further 
 investigation, a strong knife was found concealed beneath the 
 coals." " Another lady," he says, " dreamed that a boy, lier 
 
508 SLEEP AND ITS JVIYSTERIES. 
 
 nephew, had been drowned along with some yonng companions 
 with whom he had been engaged to go on a sailing excursion 
 in the Frith of Forth. She sent for him in the morning, and 
 prevailed on him to give up his engagement. His companions 
 went and were all drowned." 
 
 The alarm with regard to the disappearance of Maria Martin 
 was brought to its height by the mother dreaming, three suc- 
 cessive nights, that her daughter had been murdered and 
 buried in the Bed Barn. Upon this, search was made, the 
 floor taken up, and the murdered body discovered. The story 
 is fully related in Chambers^ Journal for 1832. 
 
 That many remarkable and well-attested dreams have been 
 reconcilable to after events, is beyond question — night visions 
 and night promptings which could not be explained by any 
 theory of connection of ideas, or " imperfect recollections," or 
 revival of associations utterly forgotten by the waking senses. 
 On the contrary, new images have been evolved in slumber, 
 apparently pointing toward future events, or seeming to con- 
 vey awful warnings against unsuspected dangers, or suggesting 
 remedies for evils long endured ; and numerous are the cases 
 wherein results have been in unison with the supposed augury. 
 
 But it is not so much in reference to the causes and general 
 nature of dreams, as to their supposed power of divination, that 
 a few words are devoted to them in the present pages. " We 
 know, pretty well now," says Horace Walpole, in one of his 
 letters, " that dreams which used to pass for predictions are 
 imperfect recollections." Be this as it may, the oneirocritics, 
 when baffled in their attempts to establish any similitude 
 between the " auguries " of sleep and subsequent or preceding 
 facts, turn about, and vindicate the prophetic character of 
 dreams by dissimilitude and coiitrariety. Thus, they are 
 certain to be right, one way or the other. 
 
 A gravestone-cutter of Wakefield, in Yorkshire, desiring to 
 
SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 509 
 
 finish the epitaph on a certain tombstone, left his home one 
 evening for the church, in which he was permitted occasionally 
 to work. Having arrived there, he set down his lantern, and 
 lighting another candle, resumed his rather gloomy task. 
 Midnight approached, and still his work was not completed. 
 On a sudden, a strange noise, as of the utterance of " hiss ! " 
 or " hush ! " startled him. He looked round, but nothing was 
 seen^not even a bat, or owl flitting athwart the upper dark- 
 ness. 
 
 Recovering from his surprise, Peter concluded he had been 
 deceived, and plied his chisel with fresh vigor. In a few 
 minutes, however, the ominous word was again audible. He 
 once more searched, but in vain, for the cause of so uncommon 
 a sound ; and, being at length terrified, was about to quit 
 the church when a sense of duty withheld him, and he renewed 
 his work, which was completed as the clock struck twelve. 
 While, with downcast head, intently examining the epitaph he 
 had cut, the dreadful word, " hush ! " came louder than ever 
 on his ear. Peter was now fairly appalled. He concluded 
 that he himself was summoned to the grave — that in fact he 
 had been carving his own " IIic Jacet." Tottering home he 
 went to bed, but could not sleep. 
 
 Next morning his wife, happening to observe his wig, ex- 
 claimed, " O, Peter ! what liast thou been doing to burn all the 
 hair off one side of thy wig ? " 
 
 " Ah, God bless thee ! " vociferated the stone cutter, jumping 
 out of bed ; " thou hast cured me with that word." 
 
 The mysterious midnight sound was occasioned by the friz- 
 zling of Peter's wig, as it accidentally came in contact with the 
 candle, while he bent over his work ; and the discovery thus 
 made afforded many a jest and laugh." * 
 
 * " Hone's Year-Book." 
 
510 SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 
 
 Sorrmambulisni appears to differ frora dreaming chiefly in 
 the degree in which the bodily functions are affected ; in the 
 former the will seems to control the body, and its organs are 
 more susceptible of the mental impressions. The incipient 
 form of somnambulism shows itself in talking in sleep : this is 
 sometimes a dangerous disease, as occasionally the most impor- 
 tant secrets are, by the very party himself, involuntarily revealed 
 — which in his waking moments he would reserve with 
 especial care. The second stage of the phenomenon, from 
 which indeed it derives its name, is that of walking during 
 sleep. Numerous remarkable instances of sleep-walking are to 
 be met with ; one of the most singular of which we remember 
 to have read, years ago, was that of a certain restless youth, 
 who, so impetuous was he to obey the impulse of his noctur- 
 nal vision, rushed from his bed to the street, clad only in the 
 usual drapery of the dormitory, and was found pursuing his 
 route in the London streets at midnight, till some humane 
 guardian of a policeman startled him from his state of dreamy 
 complacency, and remonstrated with him as to the paucity of 
 his apparel, etc. 
 
 Dr. Elacklock, the blind poet, on one occasion, arose from 
 his bed, to which he had retired at an early hour, came into 
 the room where his family were assembled, conversed with 
 them, and afterward entertained them with a pleasant song ; 
 after he awoke he had not the least knowledge or recollection 
 of what he had done. 
 
 Two instances of sleep-swimming might be mentioned. " I 
 went out," says Franklin, " to bathe in Martin's salt-water hot- 
 bath, in Southampton, and, floating on my back, fell asleep, 
 nearly an hour by my watch, without sinking or turning — a 
 thing I never did before, and should hardly have thought 
 possible." A man was disporting himself in the water about a 
 hundred yards from the shore ; he was discovered by the 
 
SLEEP Am> ITS MYSTERIES. 511 
 
 watclimeii at two o'clock in the morning. The revenue boat's 
 crew pushed off and succeeded in rescuing him : but, strange 
 to say, he had no idea of his perilous situation, and it was a 
 hard matter to persuade him that he was not in his bed. The 
 man had left his home at midnight, and walked through a 
 difficult and to him dangerous road over two miles, and had 
 actually swam more than a mile before he was picked up.* 
 
 Dr. Abercrombie relates some curious instances of persons 
 having performed literary exploits during a state of somnolency ; 
 among others he speaks of a certain member of a foreign uni- 
 versity, who, after having devoted himself during his waking 
 hours to the composition of some verses, which, however, he 
 had not been able to complete, seems to have been honored 
 with more success in a visitation from his muse during his 
 nocturnal slumbers ; for the following night he arose in his 
 sleep, finished his poetic performance, and exulting in his suc- 
 cess returned again contentedly to his couch — all in a state of 
 unconsciousness. 
 
 Take another case, from the same source; it is one even 
 more remarkable — and we might add a tax upon credulity 
 were it not given by so respectable an authority. It is that of a 
 young botanical student who resided at the house of his profes- 
 sor in London, and who was zealously devoted to his pursuit, 
 having indeed just received the highest botanical prize from 
 a public institution. One night, about an hour after he had 
 gone to bed, having returned from a long botanical excursion, 
 his master, who was sitting in his room below, heard a person 
 coming down stairs with a heavy measured step, and on going 
 into the passage found his pupil with nothing on him but his 
 hat and his shirt, his tin case swung across his shoulders, and a 
 large stick in his hand. " His eyes were even more open than 
 
 * Macnish. 
 
512 SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 
 
 usual," says the narrator, " but I observed he never directed 
 them to me or to the candle which I held. While I was con- 
 templating the best method of getting liim to bed again, he 
 commenced the following dialogue : ' Are you going to Green- 
 wich, sir ? ' ' Yes, sir.' ' Going by water, sir ? ' ' Yes, sir.' ' May 
 I go with you, sir ? ' ' Yes, sir ; but I am going directly, there- 
 fore please to follow me.' Upon this I walked up to his room, 
 and he followed me without the least error in stepping up the 
 stairs. At the side of his bed, I begged he would get into the 
 boat, as I must be off immediately. I then removed the tin 
 case from his shoulders, his hat dropped off, and he got into 
 bed, observing, ' he knew my face very well — he had often 
 seen me at the river's side.' A long conversation then ensued 
 between him and the supposed boatman, in which he understood 
 all that was said to him, and answered quite correctly respect- 
 ing botanical excursions to Greenwich made by the professor 
 and his pupils ; and named a rare plant he had lately had, of 
 which the superintendent of the botanic garden had seen only 
 one specimen in his life, and the professor only two. After 
 some further conversation, he was asked whether he knew who 
 had gained the highest botanical prize ; when he named a 
 gentleman, but did not name himself. ' Indeed,' was the re- 
 ply, ' did he gain the highest prize ? ' To this he made no answer. 
 
 He was then asked, * Do you know Mr. ,' naming himself. 
 
 After much hesitation he replied, ' If I must confess it, my name 
 
 is .' This conversation lasted three-quarters of an hour, 
 
 during which time he never made an irrelevant answer, and 
 never hesitated, excepting about the prize and his own name. 
 He then lay down in bed, saying ' he was tired, and would lie 
 upon the grass till the prof essor came ; ' but he soon sat up again 
 and held a long conversation with another gentleman who then 
 came into the room ; when he again understood everything 
 that was said to him, to which he answered no less readily and 
 
SLEEP AKD ITS MYSTERIES. 513 
 
 accurately, sometimes uttering long sentences without the least 
 hesitation. xVf ter a conversation of about an hour, he said, ' It 
 is very cold on this grass, but I am so tired I must lie down.' 
 He soon after laid down and remained quiet during the rest of 
 the night. Kext morning he had not the least knowledge of 
 what hdd passed, and was not even aware of having dreamed of 
 anything whatever." 
 
 Psychologists tell us that somnambulism is " a condition in 
 which certain senses and faculties are suppressed, or rendered 
 thoroughly impassive, while others prevail in most unwonted 
 exaltation." 
 
 The phenomenon resembles in part what sometimes occurs in 
 reading ; when we continue reading with our mind diverted 
 to some other subject. All cases of absence of mind belong to 
 this category. It is the opinion of some writers that the brain 
 cannot entertain two distinct ideas simultaneously : it cannot 
 think and determine at the same moment of time. 
 
 Those somnambulists wJao wander about in streets, or (like 
 Amina, in Bellini's opera) walk along narrow planks in peril- 
 ous situations, have the nmscular sense, whatever it may be, 
 effectively awake. The sense of fear is asleep, whatever else 
 may be awake. Some somnambulists start off while asleep to 
 attend to their regular work, though under very irregular cir- 
 cumstances. There was a rope-maker in Germany who often 
 fell asleep when at work, and either continued his work in a 
 proper way, or uselessly re-made cordage already finished. 
 Sometimes when walking long distances he was similarly over- 
 taken with sleep; he went on safely, avoiding horses and 
 carriages, and timber lying in the road. On one occasion he 
 fell asleep just as he got on horseback ; yet he went ouj 
 rode through a shallow river, allowed his horse to drink, drew 
 up his legs to prevent his feet from being wetted, passed 
 through a crowded market-place, and arrived safely at the 
 
514 SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 
 
 house of an acquaintance ; his eyes were closed the whole time, 
 and he awoke just after reaching the house. 
 
 Some of our readers may not be familiar with the legend of 
 the beautiful opera La Sonnambula, and as our artist has 
 portrayed the heroine of the story, we present a brief outline 
 of the plot. 
 
 A certain nobleman visiting his estates in Switzerland, but 
 unrecognized by the peasantry, stopped at an inn where he was 
 told that a ghost haunted the house nightly, to the terror of the 
 villagers. Hetiring to the room prepared for him, about mid- 
 night he is startled by the somnambulist Amina, a village-maiden 
 who is betrothed to Elvino ; she enters his room in her night- 
 dress, and is discovered by the peasantry, to the detriment of 
 her reputation and the dismay of her lover. The following 
 night, however, the mystery is explained — when Amina is seen 
 to repeat her nocturnal visit at the inn, emerge from it with 
 her candle in hand, and pursue her way over a dilapidated and 
 deserted bridge at the imminent risk of her life. The bridge 
 breaks down, but she makes a miraculous leap over the chasm, 
 and the intense fright awakening her, the erratic wanderings 
 of the maiden are at once accounted for. The lovers are then 
 married, the nobleman gives the dowry, and the village is again 
 restored to its wonted peace and happiness. 
 
 In Poyntz's World of Wonders^ we find, among other 
 remarkable citations, the following instance recorded of an 
 accomplished somnambulist, the circumstances of which are 
 attested by a beneficed member of the Koman Catholic Clhurch : 
 ' In the college where he was educated was a young seminarist 
 who habitually walked in his sleep, and while in a state of 
 somnambulism used to sit down to his desk and compose the 
 most eloquent sermons ; scrupulously erasing, effacing, or inter- 
 lining, whenever an incorrect expression had fallen from his 
 pen. Though his eyes were apparently fixed upon the paper 
 
SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 515 
 
 when he wrote, it was clear that they exercised no optical 
 functions ; for he wrote just as well when an opaque sub- 
 stance was interposed between them and the sheet of paper. 
 Sometimes an attempt was made to remove the paper, in the 
 idea that he would write upon the desk beneath. But it was 
 observed that he instantly discerned the change, and sought 
 another sheet of paper as nearly as possible resembling the 
 former one. At other times a blank sheet of paper was substi- 
 tuted by the bystanders for the one on which he had been 
 writing ; in which case, on reading over, as it were, his compo- 
 sition, he was sure to place the corrections, suggested by the 
 perusal, at precisely the same intervals they would have oc- 
 cupied in the original sheet of manuscript. This young priest, 
 moreover, was an able musician ; and was seen to compose 
 several pieces of music while in a state of somnambulism, 
 drawing the lines of the music-paper for the purpose with a 
 ruler, and pen and ink, and filling the spaces with his notes 
 with the utmost precision, besides a careful adaptation of the 
 words in vocal pieces. On one occasion the somnambulist 
 dreamed that he sprang into the river to save a drowning child ; 
 and on his bed he was seen to imitate the movement of swim- 
 ming. Seizing the pillow, he appeared to snatch it from the 
 waves and lay it on the shore. The night was intensely cold ; 
 and so severely did he appear affected by the imaginary chill 
 of the river as to tremble in every limb ; and his state of cold 
 and exhaustion, when roused, was so alarming, that it was 
 judged necessary to administer wine and other restoratives." 
 
 A case is related of a woman in Edinburgh Infirmary, who 
 during her paroxysms not only mimicked the manner of her 
 medical attendants, but repeated correctly some of their pre- 
 scriptions in Latin. A yet more singular instance of the kind 
 is on record, described by Dr. Dyce, of Aberdeen, namely, that 
 of a young girl subject to fits of somnolency, during which she 
 
516 SLEEP AND ITS IVIYSTERIES. 
 
 was in the habit of talking of things that seemed to pass be- 
 fore her like a dream, and was not at the time sensible of any- 
 thing that was said to her. At one time she would lay out 
 the table for breakfast, and repeatedly dress herself and the 
 children, all the while being in a state of unconsciousness. 
 
 The memory plays some strange tricks with sleep-walkers. 
 A military officer, after a hard day of much marching and 
 little eating, was told that there would be some hot soup ready 
 at midnight ; he threw himself down to rest, requesting to be 
 called at the supper hour ; next morning he knew nothing of 
 the fact that he had really been called, and had really had his 
 share of the soup. The two portions of sleep had been welded 
 together in his mind, and he was not conscious of the interval 
 that had separated them. Doctor Abercrombie notices the 
 case of a woman who carried on a somnambulistic conversation 
 in a remarkable way. She would, when asleep, relate events 
 of the preceding day (like the young lady mentioned in a for- 
 mer paragraph), with this peculiarity — that she repeated every- 
 thing which she herself had said, but " regularly left intervals 
 in her discourse corresponding to the periods when the other 
 party was supposed to be speaking ; and she also left intervals 
 between different conversations, shorter in reality, but corre- 
 sponding in relative length to the intervals which had, in fact, 
 taken place." She repeated in her sleep nearly everything 
 which she had uttered during the day, whether good or bad, 
 but left blank spaces of time for everything that had been said 
 to her by other persons. She was scarcely ever known to re- 
 peat anything that she had read ; the muscular and audible act 
 of speaking was the one thing that reproduced itself in this 
 way. 
 
 A curious case occurred at Yauxhall, London, in 1843, 
 which is related by a recent authority : * " A servant in a respect- 
 
 * Binns. 
 
SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 517 
 
 able family got up in the middle of the night, cleaned the kit- 
 chen, the knives and forks, and washed the dog. The latter, 
 probably not relishing such copious ablution in the dark, made 
 direct for the chamber of his mistress, awoke her, and, by some 
 sagacious intimations, induced her to search for the servant, 
 whom she forthwith conducted to bed without her being 
 awake." 
 
 " Well may sleep present us fictions, since our walking moments teem 
 Witli such fanciful convictions as make life itself a dream ! 
 Half our daylight faith's a fable, — sleep disports with phantoms too, 
 Seeming, in their turn, as stable as the world we wake to view ! " 
 
 Some find their wits much keener while fast asleep than 
 when " wide awake." " Mankind," says a quaint writer, " are 
 so generally indisposed to think, that such drowsy souls really 
 make the world a vast dormitory. The heaven-appointed des- 
 tiny under which they are placed seems to protect them from 
 reflection ; there is an opium sky stretched over all the world 
 which continually rains soporifics." As this is the boasted age 
 of progress, sleepers will probably be aroused by the din of the 
 locomotive, and the world in its dotage at last begin to think. 
 Undue indulgence of sleep may cheat us of much of our brief 
 life ; but the listlessness of an undisciplined mind may accom- 
 plish as great a wrong upon us, and with as wily an artifice. 
 
 An admonitory paragraph from a recent homilist, and the 
 reader may dream over our dissertation, if found to be suffi- 
 ciently soporific : 
 
 " The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, drink, and 
 sleep ; to be exposed to darkness and the light ; to pace around 
 in the mill of habit, and turn the wheel of wealth ; to make 
 reason our book-keeper, and turn thought into an implement 
 of trade — this is not life. In all this but a poor fraction of the 
 unconsciousness of humanity is awakened ; and the sanctities 
 
518 
 
 SLEEP AND ITS MYSTERIES. 
 
 still slumber which make it most worth while to be. Knowl- 
 edge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vital- 
 ity to the mechanism of existence ; the laugh of mirth which 
 vibrates through the heart, the tears which freshen the dry 
 wastes within, the music that brings childhood back, the prayer 
 that calls the future near, the doubt which makes us meditate, 
 the death which startles us with mystery, the hardship which 
 forces us to struggle, the anxiety that ends in trust — are the true 
 nourishment that end in being." 
 
 " Dreams do divide our being; they become 
 A portion of ourselves, as of our time, 
 And look like heralds of eternity ; 
 They pass like spirits of the past — they speak 
 Like sibyls of the future ; they have power — 
 The tyranny of pleasure, and of pain." 
 
/ 
 
 
 
 A PUFF AT PAKTING. 
 
 !N'oT unfrequently the after-thought, that suggests the post- 
 script, contains the most important item of the whole communi- 
 cation ; however this may prove in the present instance — our 
 pen seems reluctant to resign its office, without a few words 
 supplementary — a brief tete-d-tete with our excellent friends 
 who have shared our literary repast. So, with permission, we 
 will adjourn for a short season to our domestic divan, and 
 regale ourselves with the fragrant aroma of that soothing seda- 
 tive — the weed. Its magic power to cement good friendship 
 and to foster good-feeling is admitted the world over, from 
 the roving red men of the West, to the indolent Turk of the 
 
520 A PUFF AT PARTING. 
 
 East ; it cannot fail, therefore, to secure ours — a consummation 
 devoutly to be wished. 
 
 A great dignitary of the Church once remarked, that " happi- 
 ness was no laughing matter." We agree with the opinion ; and 
 as friendship and happiness are next of kin, we do not, of 
 course, intend to trifle with so serious a subject. 
 
 " A companion that feasts the company with wit and mirth, 
 and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, is 
 the man," said worthy Izaak Walto7i ; who adds : " And let 
 me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very 
 sinews of virtue." We thank this genial old gentleman for de- 
 fining our aim and position so well, since it leaves us nothing 
 further to urge in the way of apology ; so now let us talk about 
 the witching weed. 
 
 ^Notwithstanding the fulminations of its foes. Tobacco — 
 which may be said to be in almost everybody's mouth — can 
 never fail to be a favorite resource and pastime of mankind. 
 Yet popular as it is at present, the " pipe of peace " has been the 
 occasion of much discord and disputation, in. past times. In 
 1623 the crusade against the weed was headed by the Pope 
 himself, who thundered his anathema of excommunication 
 against all smokers ; and in Turkey, even, smoking was a capital 
 crime. In Russia the weed was forbidden to be used under 
 severe penalties ; and in the Canton of Berne its prohibition was 
 even incorporated with the Decalogue ! The " plant divine " 
 has, indeed, passed through scenes of dire persecution, alike 
 from Pagan and Christian powers: yet, notwithstanding all 
 their opposition, although blackened by calumny, the pipes have 
 not yet been put out. 
 
 " O Plant divine, — potent plant ! 
 Let others for the laurel-garland pant — 
 Content with my rich meed, I'll sit me down, 
 Nor ask for fame, nor heroes' high renown." 
 
A PUFF AT PARTING. 521 
 
 Tobacco has been styled "the anodyne of poverty," while 
 the bowl of the pipe has been characterized as the " bowl that 
 cheers, but not inebriates." A writer in the North British 
 Heview, referring to the beneficial influence of the pipe, re- 
 marks, that " much angry bitter feeling is puffed out and dis- 
 sipated with the fumes of the tobacco. On the whole, there- 
 fore, the pipe is not an offence, but a protection to woman. 
 Among the sunbeams let into the cottage, not the least is the 
 poor man's pipe." The pipe is also one great medium of fra- 
 ternization ; it expands the heart with generous emotions and 
 stimulates the mind to noble and earnest thoughts. The man 
 who smokes has been said to "think like a sage, and to act like 
 a Samaritan ! " Even among the uncivilized, the Calumet is 
 the accepted symbol of peace and good- will : let not the pipe, 
 then, be blackened with reproach and aspersion. 
 
 " Since life and the anxieties that share 
 Our hope and trust, are smoke and dust, 
 Give me the smoke and dust that banish care : 
 
 The rolled leaf bring 
 Which, from its ashes, phoenix-like, can spring — 
 The fragrant leaf, whose magic balm 
 .Can, like Nepenthe, all our sorrows charm." 
 
 With the clubs of London in olden times, the tobacco-box 
 was the accepted symbol of the brotherhood. We have a 
 glimpse, presented to us at the head of our chapter, of the 
 jovial scene, in which the long clay pipes figure so conspicu- 
 ously, and send forth such clouds of fragrant incense to genius 
 and good fellowship. 
 
 The history and mystery of smoking is a theme of imperish- 
 able interest ; for although it is environed by a somewhat cloudy 
 atmosphere, it nevertheless is associated with some of the best 
 feelings of our nature, and the best specimens of humanity. 
 
 " So you see the drift, sir, you take it, — you smoke ?" Fasci- 
 
522 A PUFF AT PARTING. 
 
 nating, indeed, as are woman's ways and wiles, to lead us poor 
 mortals captive ; the " witching weed " seems to possess quite 
 as potent a charm over us. Bulwer Lytton thus compares 
 these two magnetizing powers ; " He who doth not smoke, 
 hath either known no griefs, or refuseth himself the softest 
 consolation next to that which comes from Heaven. ' What 
 softer than woman?' whispers the young reader. Young 
 reader ! woman teazes us, as well as consoles ! Woman makes 
 half the sorrows she boasts the privilege to console. Woman 
 consoles, it is true, while we are young and handsome ; when 
 we are old and ugly, woman snubs and scolds us ! On the 
 whole, then, woman in this scale, and the weed in that, Jupiter 
 hang out thy balance and weigh them both ; and if thou give 
 the preference to woman, ail I can say is, the next time Juno 
 ruffles thee, O Jupiter, tr}^ the weed ! " 
 
 To be loyal to the weed, however, does not necessarily in- 
 volve the ]-epudiation of woman ; rather let us do fitting hom- 
 age to the claims of both. 
 
 Sir Walter Ealeigh has the credit of having introduced 
 tobacco into England in 1585 ; but some authorities claim the 
 honor for Sir Francis Drake. Jean Mcot, the French ambas- 
 sador at Portugal, sent some specimens of the herb as a present 
 to Catherine de Medici. Its botanical name is derived from 
 this incident ; and its popular name, tobacco, is, according to 
 Humboldt, from the Haytien name for the pipe or instrument 
 the natives used for smoking the herb. 
 
 Besides the " Counterblast " of King James, there were some 
 hundred other treatises,* and among them one by Sylvestre, in 
 1641, so quaint that we give the title : " Tobacco battered, and 
 the pipes shattered, about their ears, that idolize so base and 
 barbarous a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome a 
 vanitie," etc. Another authority, burton, in his " Anatomic of 
 Melancholic " designates it " The divine, rare, superexcellent 
 
A PUFF AT PARTING. 523 
 
 tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, portable gold 
 and philosopher's stone,— a sovereign remedy for all diseases," 
 etc. We owe something, indeed, to those early defenders of the 
 pipe, and the liberty of smoking which they have bequeathed 
 to us. 
 
 " Let who will rave,^we smokers know thy worth ; 
 
 Our classic wits have sung tobacco's praise, 
 And given to many a page of wisdom birth, 
 
 Beneath thine argent clouds and ruby rays ! 
 FuU many a charm, my pipe, I've found in thee, — 
 Thou healing balm, — thou mithridatic weed ! 
 From foul aspersion not to set thee free, — 
 
 Had been a black ingratitude indeed !" 
 
 Among the illustrious fraternity of smokers we find a galaxy 
 of great names, such as Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Henry Wotton, 
 Izaak Walton, Napoleon, Johnson, Milton, and hosts of others 
 whose names are on the scroll of fame. Dr. Parr, an octo- 
 genarian, smoked, it is said, sometimes a score of pipes a 
 day ! One day dining at a friend's house, he made signals to 
 his host for a pipe. " I hope you will excuse me," interposed 
 the lady of the house, " but I cannot permit smoking in my 
 drawing-room." " Why not, madam ? " responded the discom- 
 forted doctor ; " I have smoked a pipe with my sovereign ! " 
 " Notwithstanding that, sir, I never will allow my rooms to be 
 defiled with the nauseous smell of tobacco," was the rejoinder. 
 "Madam," — "Sir," — "Madam, you are," — quickly echoed 
 through the apartments. " I hope, sir, you will not express any 
 rudeness," said the inexorable lady, when the former, raising 
 his voice to full concert pitch, cried out, " Madam, you are the 
 greatest tohacco-stojpjper in all England ! " Charles Lamb was 
 a confirmed smoker, yet he determined to give it up, and so he 
 wrote his " Farewell to Tobacco." " I have had it in my head," 
 he wrote to Wordsworth, " to write this poem these two years ; 
 
524 A PUFF AT PARTING. 
 
 but tobacco stood in its own light when it gave me headaches 
 that prevented my singing its praises." Dr. Parr, the twenty- 
 pipes man, once asked Lamb how he acquired so prodigious a 
 smoking power. " I have acquired it," he replied, '* by toiling 
 after it, as some men toil after virtue." Parr made the cele- 
 brated Pobert Hall a proselyte to the pipe. One day he 
 surprised his friend enveloped with a cloudy atmosphere, and 
 exclaimed, " Ah ! I find you, again, at your old idol." " Yes," 
 said Hall, " turning it ! " 
 
 " Than my homely, oblivious pipe, I find no greater solace," 
 wrote a valetudinarian, " during my dark hours of afiliction ! " 
 What would become of the weary and the heavy-laden, the 
 oppressed with toil — the mariner at sea, or the soldier on the 
 field of conflict — were they denied the solace of the weed ? 
 Prince Frederick William, of Prussia, it is said, founded a kind 
 of College, at Berlin, for smoking and good fellowship. Apart 
 from its positive enjoyment, the pipe or cigar is often an im- 
 portant aid to our social intercourse ; for are there not often 
 inextricable dilemmas and perplexing pauses in conversation 
 which the parenthetical puff relieves ? 
 
 There are many varieties of the smoking fraternity, some 
 smoke mechanically, and from fixed habit, without much enjoy- 
 ment of the pastime ; while others linger luxuriously over 
 their weed, and surrender themselves to all its intoxicating 
 fascination. These are they who exclaim, Eureka, to 2icho\QQ 
 Havana, and become oblivious to everything else. 
 
 Of all classes of smokers the Turks are the most entitled to 
 consideration and gratitude for the refinements they have 
 blended with the use of the weed. The Turk seems most to 
 catch its deep inspiration, as he reclines upon his velvet otto- 
 man, and inhales the fragrant odors of the leaf, through his 
 rose-scented chibook. He looks the very impersonation of 
 luxurious indolence — he is most prodigal of his time in the 
 
A PUFF AT PARTING. 525 
 
 ndulgence of a pastime which has indeed become a passion — 
 out possibly he has nothing else to do. 
 
 Thus much, then, pertaining to pipes and their patrons : a 
 word or two, now, touching snuff-taking ; which took its rise 
 during the reign of Louis XI Y., when even ladies attached to 
 the court of that monarch indulged in its use. Imagine the 
 advanced minds of the fair sex — the belles " of the period " — 
 snuffing — " up to snuff " ! For the rougher sex it may be all 
 very well, and not to be sneezed at. Many an old-time notability 
 indeed took snuff, and plenty of it. Lamb pays tribute thus : 
 
 '' Roses, violets, are but toys 
 For the smaller sort of boys, 
 Or for greener damsels meant ; 
 Snuff, thou'rt tlie only manly scent ! " 
 
 In former times the tobacconists of England used to display 
 their wit on their envelopes ; they also used signs on which 
 they attempted the facetious. A tobacconist who lived on Tower 
 hill, named Farr, put the following notice over his shop : ^'The 
 best tobacco hy FarrP'^ A short time afterward appeared a 
 rival, who opposed him, with '^Better tobacco than the best 
 tobacco by Farr ! " 
 
 Let this suffice, then, touching 
 
 " That glorious weed, 
 Dear to mankind, whate'er his race, his creed, 
 Condition, color, dwelling, or degree ; 
 From Zembla's snows to parched Arabia's sands, 
 Loved by aU lips, and common to aU hands ! 
 Hail, sole cosmopolite ! Tobacco, hail ! " 
 
 Having thus reached the climax of our fragrant and volatile 
 subject — the " plant divine " — that sweet, oblivious antidote to 
 grief and care — we take our leave of it, with the conviction, 
 that bewitching as is its aroma, yet, unlike our Salad, it all 
 ends in smoke ! 
 
526 
 
 A PUFF AT PARTING. 
 
 Trae, the one is most fascinating to the olfactory nerve, but 
 the other flatters and felicitates the palate. The one is ethe- 
 real and impalpable ; the other substantial, real. The first is 
 undoubtedly very seductive and delicious ; but the latter may 
 stand the test that Homer is said to have claimed for true poetry 
 — that, ten times repeated, it should still please. So, gentle 
 critics, in applying that test, v^heresoever generosity may prompt, 
 please to remember, that notes of admiration as well as kindly 
 -:ticism will be strictly in order. Farewell. 
 
 ,//, r.)J)I^,t 
 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Recently published, a new, revised edition, small 8vo, cloth, extra, $2.50. 
 
 EVENINGS WITH THE SACRED POETS 
 
 A SERIES OF QUIET TALKS ABOUT THE SINGERS 
 AN^D THEIR SONGS. 
 
 By the Author of 
 
 "Salad for the Solitary and the Social," "Festival of 
 Song," etc. 
 
 ' ' Mr. Saunders, vsrhose ' Salad for tlie Solitary and tlie Social ' has de- 
 lighted thousands of homes and readers, has just prepared ' Evenings with 
 the Sacred Poets,' and his exquisite taste, extensive reading, and rare famil- 
 iarity with bibliography, shine in these elegant pages. He roams through all 
 the realms of Poesy, from the earliest times to our own ; wanders among all 
 nations and through all cHmes, culling the sweetest flowers and giving us aU 
 the most brilliant gems of Song. It is a book to be kept near at hand, for 
 refreshment and strength, for comfort and joy ; and when once read is aU the 
 more attractive to be read again." — New York Observer. 
 
 "This volume does something more than string together a number of pieces 
 of poetry more or less known : the author has evidently brought considerable 
 research and study to the task of presenting a complete picture of the sacred 
 poetry and hymnology of the Christian ages. Altogether, we know of no 
 selection of sacred poetry so suitable for Sunday reading as this. Not the 
 least of its merits is that it is not likely to become tiresome, for the comments 
 of the author give it freshness and variety."—^. Y. Times. 
 
 " To the general reader it will afford at once instruction and gratification, 
 and will be an acceptable addition to the libraries of innumerable families to 
 whom a work of greater learning and labor would be uninteresting." — London 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 " The requisites for the proper execution of such a task as this are good 
 taste and large research, and these are abundantly manifested in the volume. " 
 — N. Y. Evening Post. 
 
 " The work displays a full mastery of the field, a fine critical power, and a 
 catholic and evangelical spirit." — Methodist (Quarterly Review. 
 
 "There are nearly four hundred personal sketches of poets, and among 
 them the favorites of all." — Northern Christian Advocate. 
 
 "It is a thesaurus of sacred treasures that should be in every cultivated 
 Christian household." — Newa/rk Courier. 
 

 
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