The Alphabet and Language 
 
 Immortality of the Big Threes 
 
 iv 
 
 >altb and Poverty of th 
 Chicao Exposition 
 
 assays 
 
 by T^homas Magee 
 
LIBRARV 
 
 01- THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Accessions No. 
 
THOMAS MAGEE DIES|J 
 AFTER A LONG 
 
 Millionaire Real Estate Man 
 Passes Away at Miradero 
 Sanitarium His Death Was 
 Expected for Three Days Past 
 
 SANTA BARBARA, September 30. The j 
 death occurred here late this afternoon, at: 
 Miradero Sanitarium, of Thomas Magee, Sr.^i 
 the San Francisco millionaire real estate; 
 owner. He had been desperately ill for two 
 weeks and for three days his death was ex-1 
 pected. Mr. Magee had been a sick man for j 
 many months. It was a last hope, bringing j 
 him here. His wife, formerly Miss Helen < 
 Curtis of San Francisco, accompanied him 
 to Miradero and was at his bedside \vhen 
 he passed away. Mr. Tom Magee, Jr. 
 reached here yesterday in answer to a tele 
 gram advising him of his father s condition, 
 and to-day Fred Magee and Dr. Philip K. 
 Brown of the Sanitarium arrived. To-night 
 the remains were taken north. 
 
 The news of Mr. Magee s death was not 
 made public from the sanitarium until late 
 to-nigh. i after the widow and sons had left 
 Santa Barbara. 
 
THE LATE THOMAS MAGEE 
 
The Alphabet and Language 
 Immortality of the Big Trees 
 
 Wealth and Poverty of the 
 Chicago Exposition 
 
 Sbree Essays 
 
 By 
 
 Thomas Magee 
 
 
 ?" .- 
 
 WILLIAM DOXEY 
 
 631 MARKET STREET, UNDER PALACE HOTEL 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 1895 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY WILLIAM DOXEY. 
 
 C. A. MURDOCK A CO. 
 PRINTERS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ANY ONE actuated by a proper spirit, who has derived 
 great mental profit and pleasure from prolonged study 
 of outdoor nature, or of art, science, or any branch of 
 instructive literature, desires to extend that pleasure 
 and profit to others. This will especially be true where 
 a lover of good books constantly sees, from library re 
 ports, how small a proportion of such books are tasted 
 beside the vast number of trashy volumes devoured. 
 The writer of these essays knows that the subjects 
 herein treated are great and profitable ones, and that, 
 even if he has been incompetent to do anything like 
 justice to them, or has misapprehended some of their 
 teachings and laws, his book still contains enough 
 instructive and elevating facts to attract the attention 
 of students. He thereby hopes to lead them to pursue 
 the study of some at least of the subjects herein directly 
 or indirectly treated. He has derived intense pleasure 
 and profit therefrom; others cannot fail to give like 
 testimony, if they use like diligence. 
 
 The author has long been deeply impressed with the 
 necessity of mental digestion and assimilation following 
 reading. If they do not, reading is but unprofitable 
 " cramming," from which no real mental nutriment is 
 derived. He, therefore, urges students to think as they 
 read, and to allow no author to impress his conclu 
 sions upon them until they have themselves carefully 
 exercised their best judgment upon the subject under 
 review. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 7 
 
 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE 
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES 59 
 
 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF THE CHICAGO 
 
 EXPOSITION . 79 
 
The Alphabet and Language, 
 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 HOMER, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, 
 Aristophanes. Dante, Shakespeare, and 
 Milton have all produced works upon which 
 the world has stamped the highest seal of 
 approval ; but a vastly greater and more diffi 
 cult work preceded them, without which their 
 authorship and fame would alike have been 
 impossible. This work was the ALPHABET, the 
 production of which was, in some respects, the 
 greatest mental achievement ever accomplished 
 by man. The knowledge of our A B C s, that 
 begins almost when the maternal lacteal nour 
 ishment ends, and which in education bears 
 about the same relation to solid knowledge 
 that first nourishment does to solid food, is 
 more wonderful to contemplate, and was more 
 difficult and tedious of invention and perfec 
 tion, than the works of the world s most deeply 
 revered authors. Individual men were the 
 authors of our greatest books ; but it required 
 the three greatest nations of antiquity, and at 
 least six thousand years of time, to produce a 
 phonetic alphabet. And even then it had not 
 by any means reached its present stage of de 
 velopment; for it is still far from perfection. 
 
10 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 Even yet the alphabet does not by any means 
 furnish a visible sign for every audible sound 
 which the voice utters. It is both redundant 
 and defective ; of the twenty-six letters of our 
 alphabet, three (c, q, and x) are practically 
 useless, and we are therefore left with but 
 twenty-three letters to express not less than 
 thirty-two sounds. The phonetic alphabet was 
 invented or, rather, developed by the Egyp 
 tians, in four stages, from hieroglyphics. Hier 
 oglyphics are picture-writing. All phonetic 
 alphabets have their beginning in hieroglyphic 
 writing. The work of developing a phonetic 
 alphabet from hieroglyphics occupied the 
 Egyptians at least four thousand years. They 
 would, perhaps, have satisfactorily completed 
 the task, but that the use of hieroglyphics, 
 ideograms, and phonograms had such a hold 
 of their conservative minds that they never 
 rose to the untrammeled use of a phonetic 
 alphabet. Belief in the sacredness of the old 
 forms also had its effect in checking their 
 progress. They used the phonetic alphabet, 
 indeed, but so cumbrously that they derived 
 little benefit from its employment. The Egyp 
 tian alphabet was taken from Egypt by two or 
 three branches of the great Semitic race. The 
 Phoenicians, the maritime branch of the fam- 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 11 
 
 ily, did most toward the development of the 
 alphabet. Of the twenty-four letters in the 
 Greek alphabet, sixteen are commonly attrib 
 uted to the Phoenician Cadmus. 
 
 The object and use of an alphabet are to 
 express in speech every sound that is uttered 
 by the voice, and, ultimately, in the far higher 
 development of words, every thought that has 
 its birth in the mind of man. Five leading 
 ancient authors assert that the alphabet passed 
 from Phoenicia into Greece. The best authori 
 ties agree in asserting that the Egyptians in 
 vented the alphabet, that the Phoenicians 
 improved it, and that the mental flower of the 
 Aryan race, the Greeks, in the dawn of their 
 history, did most to bring it to the stage of 
 comparative perfection. From alpha and beta, 
 the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, in 
 its ultimate form, the word alphabet is derived, 
 although, by going back further, we find aleph 
 and beth, the two corresponding characters in 
 the Phoenician, or Semitic, alphabet. The first 
 means an ox, and the second a house. All ex 
 isting European alphabets have been derived 
 from that of Phoenicia. To the Greeks great 
 credit is due for extending the use and signifi 
 cation of the vowel sounds. All of the Semitic 
 alphabets were consonantal ; that is, the conso- 
 
12 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 nants were the radical elements, and the vow 
 els relational only. The Greeks, in the devel 
 opment of the alphabet they received from 
 the Phoenicians, altered this, exhibiting the 
 mental ability and creative genius they subse 
 quently did in architecture, sculpture, oratory, 
 poetry, and science. They made the vowels 
 the pillars upon which the sound structure 
 rests. Consonants in their and our alphabets 
 are largely dumb (soundless) without the 
 vowels. For instance, the letters d-l-l are 
 soundless; but with the aid of the vowel 6, 
 they blossom into sound, and become dell, sig 
 nificant of flowers, grass, and running water. 
 
 In asserting that the invention of the alpha 
 bet was, in some respects, the greatest inven 
 tion of the human mind, probably many will 
 connect the invention with material rather 
 than mental work. The essence of alphabets 
 and words is material, too. That which is 
 most metaphysical, mysterious, and spiritual 
 in both can always be traced back to some 
 physical fact in nature. All picture-writing 
 was drawn from that source, although the 
 analogies were still mental. A picture of a 
 bird (to represent flight), and of the sun (to 
 represent light, brightness, heat, or time), and 
 of a house with a door open (to impart the 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 13 
 
 information that the inhabitant had gone on 
 a journey from the house two suns or days 
 before), was both a material and mental pic 
 ture ; the conveyance of a message as truly to 
 the mind, as far as it went, as the writing of a 
 letter. This is a lower stage of language ; and, 
 as I have said, that is where the Egyptians 
 and all other nations began the majority 
 progressed no further. But beyond this first, 
 this hieroglyphic and ideographic stage, the 
 Egyptians passed to the glory of the true alpha 
 bet, their letters being still copied from living 
 animals, or from the sun, moon, or stars, from 
 fields or from trees, but now representing 
 sounds only. The letters have since been 
 so changed that it is very difficult to trace 
 the physical resemblances, although Dr. Isaac 
 Taylor, in his work on the alphabet, has done 
 so with a fair degree of success. In a lecture 
 on this subject, Max Miiller said : 
 
 " We still write English in hieroglyphics : and, in spite 
 of all the vicissitudes through which the ancient hiero 
 glyphics have passed, in their journey from Egypt to 
 Phosnicia, from Phoenicia to Greece, from Greece to Italy, 
 and from Italy to England, when we write a capital F; 
 when we draw the top line and the smaller line through 
 the middle of the letter, we simply draw the two horns 
 of the cerastes, the horned serpent which the ancient 
 Egyptians used for representing the sound of F. In the 
 same manner, in writing, the form of our capital Jzf^still 
 
14 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 recalls very strikingly the bent back of a crouching lion, 
 which, in the later hieroglyphic inscriptions represents 
 the sound of L. n 
 
 Dr. Taylor and Max Miiller derived all, or 
 nearly all, their information on this subject 
 from the learned French Egyptologist, De 
 Rouge (Memoire sur I Origine Egyptienne de 
 r Alphabet Phcenicien : par E. de Rouge, Paris, 
 187 f). In the transition from the singleness 
 and simplicity of the letters of the alphabet 
 to the combination of words and ideas, resi 
 dent in and capable of expression by them, 
 ages elapsed. The letters, in one sense, were 
 the raw material only words, the finished 
 product ; and it is perhaps approximately cor 
 rect to say that the distance between letters 
 and words is as great as between iron in bars 
 and iron in the works of a watch or in the 
 steam-engine. The difference between words 
 as they now exist in English orthography and 
 as both appeared in the comparatively recent 
 age of Henry the Eighth is very great. Four 
 hundred years ago each writer did that which 
 was right in his own eyes in spelling; but 
 orthography, through subsequent literary cul 
 ture, is now bounded by rules nearly as pre 
 cise as those of grammar. The alphabet is 
 the vehicle for the expression of the varying 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 15 
 
 sounds of the human tongue; words express 
 the feelings and thoughts the most tender 
 or passionate feelings and the most sublime 
 and instructive thoughts of the mental and 
 spiritual powers. They have been truthfully 
 called the wings of thought. Whether it is 
 true or false that we cannot even think with 
 out words, it is certain that we cannot com 
 municate with each other without them. 
 " Things," Dr. Lewand says, "are thinks"; and 
 " thinks," Max Muller adds, " are words." 
 
 Language, more than anything else, enables 
 each generation to transmit to its successor, 
 not alone all its strictly literary treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge, but also all its 
 mechanical, agricultural, metallurgical, and 
 scientific knowledge. The pecuniary and all 
 other material wealth transmitted by each 
 generation to its successor, is of small value 
 compared to that transmitted by language, 
 through word of mouth and the printed page. 
 Speech is friendly, because it cannot be exer 
 cised at all without the social state. 
 
 Mysterious, wonderful, and elevated as the 
 alphabet is, it is still only the alphabet, beside 
 the far higher mental table-land of words. 
 Our words are, indeed, ourselves. Words best 
 show a man. " Speak, that I may see thee," 
 
16 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 says Ben Jonson; and again, our Lord, speak 
 ing on the most solemn subject to which hu 
 man attention can be called, that of the final 
 judgment, says : " For by thy words thou shalt 
 be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be 
 condemned." Our words being ourselves, by 
 them we must stand or fall. Right acts are ne 
 cessarily accompanied by right words. There 
 is, of course, the strongest possible motive to 
 those engaged in wrong acts to cover or ex 
 cuse them by right words; but words thus 
 used lose their force, and are seldom able to 
 convince, when the heart and truth are not in 
 them. Deception by looks is easier than de 
 ception by words. If we will exercise our 
 memories to remember why we have liked one 
 person and disliked another, we will find that 
 the foundation of our decision was based more 
 upon their speech than upon anything else. 
 Words were given us, a charlatan statesman 
 said, to enable us to conceal our thoughts. 
 This is a lie against nature and against lan 
 guage. And no one, not even the most con 
 summate Machiavelli, who under the guise of 
 a saint is endeavoring to play the devil, can 
 long succeed by his words in deceiving any 
 one. One of the best proofs of this is that 
 ethology means the science of character and a 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 17 
 
 treatise on morality. Leaving aside the moral 
 guilt and debasement of the speaker, there 
 fore, altogether, speech itself is debased when 
 not used on the straight lines of truth. 
 
 It is most significant that high deeds in 
 volve high language, and low deeds must have 
 their expression in low language. Sophocles 
 said to his countrymen, who complained that 
 he had debased their language : " You do the 
 deeds, and your ungodly deeds find me the 
 words" Marsh says : " The men who crawled 
 to such a tyrant as Tiberius used as lofty lan 
 guage as was used by the fathers of the Ro 
 man Republic." It will seem like presumption 
 to contradict such an authority, but there can 
 be no doubt that the Roman speech and inde 
 pendence were both alike degraded, by the 
 body-and-mind-crushing despotism of the five 
 monsters who were misnamed Csesars. Of one 
 period in the reign of Tiberius, Tacitus says : 
 
 "At no time was the city in a state of deeper anxiety 
 and alarm. Men were afraid to meet, afraid to discourse ; 
 silence and distrust extended alike to strangers and ac 
 quaintances, and both were equally divided ; even things 
 dumb and inanimate, roofs and walls, were regarded 
 with apprehension. Such was the pestilential character 
 of those times, so contaminated with adulation, that not 
 only the first nobles, but all who had been consuls, strove 
 for priority in the fulsomeness and extravagance of their 
 votes. . . . How fitted for slaves are these men ! 
 
 
 11711 T 
 
18 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 Tiberius constantly said, as he left the Senate. Even he 
 nauseated the crouching tameness of his slaves." 
 
 That I am not doing Marsh and his great 
 works on language injustice, these extracts will 
 show. Besides, he elsewhere asserts, what is 
 recognized as a universal truth by all writers 
 on philology, that the degradation of a nation 
 means the degradation of its language. Never 
 was Rome so degraded, not even under her 
 other imperial monsters (Caligula, Nero, Do- 
 mitian, or Commodus), as under Tiberius, and 
 his real ruler, Sejanus. Language as well as 
 liberty, therefore, undoubtedly suffered. In 
 deed, one of the most painful things to con 
 template in connection with the bondage of a 
 nation is that its language and literature suffer 
 no less than the bodies and minds of its people. 
 The north of England stubbornly resisted 
 William the Conqueror. He retaliated fear 
 fully, and in beating the people into submis 
 sion, he thereby nearly obliterated northern 
 English culture. Macaulay says that for one 
 hundred and fifty years after the Norman Con 
 quest there was, to speak strictly, no English 
 history. The rise of a national literature in 
 Hungary has twice been crushed by Austrian 
 oppression ; first in the sixteenth and the 
 second time in this century. Egypt never re- 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 19 
 
 covered from her crushing conquest by Cam- 
 byses. Rome conquered Carthage, and Car 
 thage has left us no literature. On this sub 
 ject Professor W. D. Whitney, in his work on 
 "Language and the Study of Language," says: 
 
 " Phoenicia has left us no literature. The coffin of one 
 of the kings of Sidon, found but a few years since, pre 
 sents in its detailed inscriptions a fuller view of the 
 Phcenician tongue than is derivable from all its other 
 known records, taken altogether. A few inscriptions 
 and a mutilated and obscure fragment of the Roman 
 poet Plautus, referring to Carthage, are the only relics 
 left us of the idiom of that queenly city." 
 
 A Latin translation was made of Mago s work 
 on agriculture, by order of the Roman Senate. 
 When it is remembered that Hamilcar and 
 Hannibal, in all the varied qualities that go to 
 make up great commanders, were unquestion 
 ably two of the greatest soldiers of the world, 
 it is forever to be regretted that Rome s 
 triumph left Carthage no less without mental 
 than military existence. Had Carthage 
 triumphed, the case would have been very 
 different. Even the gods worshiped by a con 
 quering people were frequently forced on the 
 conquered. In the Hibbert Lectures, by Sayce, 
 he says that if Bel-Merodach, the chief of the 
 Babylonian pantheon, was lord of other gods, 
 he was so only because the king of Babylon 
 
20 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 was lord also of other cities and lauds. But 
 when Babylonia ceased to be an independent 
 power, the star of supremacy of its chief god 
 also set. 
 
 Rome s turn came after that of Carthage: 
 the imperial city was ground down by its 
 tyrants. Its literature, considering that it was 
 mistress of the world for hundreds of year^, 
 is pitifully poor, compared to that of Greece. 
 But the genius of the Roman people was not 
 originally directed toward literature, but tow 
 ard civic virtue, civic obedience, and continued 
 conquest. These are the reasons why Rome 
 never produced any world-work in literature. 
 When conquest left Rome time for mental cul 
 ture, tyranny, luxury, and vice had smothered 
 freedom, and the faith and truth which had 
 characterized the primitive Roman. Even the 
 two most happily circumstanced and most 
 popular of Roman poets, Virgil and Horace, 
 were mentally shackled. The fact that the 
 hand was gloved, and that the tyrant threw 
 continual flowers and favors in their paths, 
 did not take the gyves off their minds. They 
 were there to puff and praise Augustus chiefly. 
 After the second Punic War, lingual and na 
 tional decadence began at Rome. All litera 
 ture was based on Greek models. The Roman 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 21 
 
 mind was almost wholly imitative, and con 
 stantly looked back to Greece. Cicero wrote 
 thus to his brother : " I am not ashamed to 
 confess that all my own attainments are due to 
 those studies and those accomplishments which 
 have been handed down to us in the literary 
 treasures and the philosophical system of the 
 Greeks." Rome conquered the world, and her 
 language was long as imperial as her legions 
 and emperors one eminently of force and 
 command. Rome impressed her language 
 on nearly all of her conquered subjects. She 
 wholly failed to do this with Greece, just 
 as the Mantchus as notably failed with 
 the Chinese, and the Northmen with the 
 French, because the nations conquered in 
 these cases were mentally the superior peo 
 ple. Despite these exceptional facts, however, 
 neither the Greek language under the Ro 
 mans, the Chinese under the Mantchus, nor 
 the French language in the portion of France 
 ruled by the Normans, was what each would 
 have been had no conquest been achieved 
 over the native people. The Dutch resisted 
 Spanish oppression, and overthrew the then 
 greatest nation of Europe. The result is that 
 the Dutch is a living and separate language 
 in Europe to-day; a philological game ban- 
 
 off 
 
22 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 tarn, as it were, holding up its head and 
 crowing. 
 
 Of Arabic, Dr. Isaac Taylor says : " Of all 
 existing alphabets, the Arabic, both from 
 its literary importance and its geographical 
 extent, ranks next after the great Latin alpha 
 bet itself." This is saying very much for 
 all European alphabets came from the Latin 
 alphabet. Dr. Taylor further says : 
 
 " The alphabet of the Koran is now the chief commer 
 cial alphabet of the East ; it constitutes the official script 
 by means of which three Asiatic empires are ruled, and 
 has been adapted to express the peculiar sounds of lan 
 guages of the most varied type Arabic, Turkic, Per 
 sian, Pushti, Beluchi, Hindostani, and Malay. That the 
 local alphabet of Mecca should have exterminated all 
 other Semitic scripts and have established itself as the 
 dominant alphabet of Africa and Asia, is an illustration 
 more striking than any other that can be adduced of the 
 power of religious influences in effecting a wide and 
 rapid diffusion of alphabets." 
 
 Dr. Taylor in these remarks possibly over 
 looks the fact that it is doubtful whether 
 Mohammed himself was able to read or write. 
 He also overlooks the real power in this case, 
 which was that of the sword. That has been 
 a more potent influence than any other power 
 in propagating language. In Mohammed s 
 time, prayer took the form of military exer 
 cises. Brother would have slain brother, had 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 23 
 
 the Prophet willed it. Conquest came through 
 Mohammed and his successors by the sword 
 first and for Arabic afterwards. " It was in 
 the mosque, where the use of the sword was 
 deified, that the Moslems acquired the esprit 
 de corps and that rigid discipline which dis 
 tinguished their armies." " Aggressiveness," 
 Prof. Wellhausen says, " was in the blood of 
 Mohammed and his followers and successors." 
 " There is no question," says the same author 
 ity, " that the material success of Islam was 
 the chief force that attracted new adherents. 
 The unique sovereignty of Allah was induced 
 by the fact that no might could withstand his. 
 In spreading, by means of the sword, the wor 
 ship of Allah, rich booty was gained." 
 
 Practically, Arabic had little or no litera 
 ture until the sword forced nation after nation 
 under its influence. The Arabs were greatly 
 elevated by becoming the pupils of the na 
 tions they conquered. Every man able to 
 bear arms was bound to render military ser 
 vice. The respect, admiration, and awe which 
 mankind has always yielded to military con 
 querors have a deeper foundation and a higher 
 reason than appears on the surface. To be 
 conquered physically largely means to be con 
 quered mentally, in soul as well as in body. 
 
24 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 If a conquered people are elevated intellec 
 tually above their victors, they are thereby 
 enabled to some extent to parry the effects of 
 their degradation. The mind and the pen 
 have ultimately in all ages been mightier 
 than the sword. But this elevation and supe 
 riority always preceded and never followed 
 conquest; at least until the conquered people 
 had long subsequently achieved independence. 
 The Mantchus, who conquered the Chinese, 
 were a people of no mental culture whatever, 
 while the Chinese are, after the Brahrninic 
 Hindoos, the most cultured nation of Asia. 
 China, indeed, it is claimed, is one vast library. 
 The imperial catalogue of national literature 
 forms one hundred and twelve octavo volumes 
 of three hundred pages each. Macaulay speaks 
 of the immortality of the Strulbrugs as repre 
 senting Chinese civilization ; but in this he was 
 greatly mistaken. The Abbe Hue, the best 
 authority on China, says: " From about 1644, 
 China went through fifteen changes of dynas 
 ties, all accomplished by bloody revolutions 
 and civil wars. This means anything but 
 political or mental stagnation. Kepeatedly 
 subjected to foreign domination, China has 
 always vanquished her conquerors, compelling 
 them implicitly to adopt her civilization and 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 25 
 
 respect and maintain her institutions." She 
 was still, however, degraded by conquest. The 
 shaving of the head and wearing of the pig 
 tail are evidences of servitude imposed by her 
 present masters. 
 
 The Chinese have no true alphabet. They 
 have two hundred and thirty-four key charac 
 ters, each of which is a monosyllable. There 
 are about one hundred thousand words in their 
 vocabulary. This large stock of words, in an 
 uninflected language, is formed by joining 
 syllable to syllable. Instead of saying parents, 
 they say father-mother. The word average is 
 expressed by not-greatness, not-smallness ; brother- 
 brother is oldest brother; lady-lady is great lady. 
 A man may trade with unequaled success 
 on a small capital of words in Chinese. Sir 
 George Stanton says the Chinese penal stat 
 utes are all written in eight hundred words. 
 This is remarkable when it is remembered 
 that in China all laws are penal. 
 
 The language of a nation, more than any 
 thing else, shows the genius of the people. No 
 nation of the earth has accomplished so much 
 in the arts, mechanics, and agriculture with 
 such small material as the Chinese. This is 
 especially true of them in the art of arts, 
 agriculture, and is still more true of what they 
 
26 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 have accomplished in language. Their lan 
 guage is yet in the rudeness of infancy the 
 isolating stage, and yet no nation of the 
 earth, perhaps, can point to a more extensive 
 literature. Its quality, too, is worthy of ad 
 miration, judged even by the highest civilized 
 standard. 
 
 The triumphs of a nation, either in the mil 
 itary, literary, scientific, or mechanical sense, 
 mean triumphs for its language and literature. 
 But where there has always been mental stag 
 nation and physical isolation, as in the case 
 of the Tartars, a people may overrun and de 
 stroy surrounding nations and yet themselves 
 remain in barbarism. Genghis Khan left to 
 his successors, an empire which extended from 
 the China Sea to the Dnieper, and yet he im 
 pressed nothing whatever on the nations he 
 conquered but the remembrance of his horri 
 ble massacres. After Tartar conquest and 
 massacres, it was said that " no eye remained 
 open to weep for the dead." Note, however, 
 that the word Mongol is from the root mong, 
 which means brave. They had bravery, and 
 that only. 
 
 English soldiers have been conquerors every 
 where, and, behind wooden walls, English 
 seamen won immortal victories; while her 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 27 
 
 navigators discovered almost innumerable 
 islands, and what is believed to be an Ant 
 arctic continent. The ships of her merchants 
 and mercantile adventurers have fretted all 
 seas. The English language would not now 
 be what it is mentally and philologically 
 the most perfect and most conquering lan 
 guage of the earth but for these facts. Yet 
 there was a time, lasting for about three hun 
 dred years after the Norman conquest, when 
 the Anglo-Saxon language was in the utmost 
 danger of obliteration. It is asserted by Ma- 
 caulay that it would have perished but for 
 the separation from France, through fortunate 
 failure to conquer that country. 
 
 Queen Mary said that if her heart was 
 examined after death Calais would be found 
 written on it, so deeply did its loss affect her. 
 But its loss, and that of all France to English 
 arms, was a vital gain to English language 
 and literature. After the Norman conquest, 
 the Saxon language and literature went into 
 bondage with the Saxon people. Saxon and 
 Norman words fought as fiercely for supremacy 
 as Norman and Saxon men. When, finally, the 
 two people began to coalesce on terms of equal 
 ity, and to become brother Englishmen, the 
 language showed nay, still shows, native 
 
28 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 losses then suffered. Halliwell s dictionary of 
 archaic and provincial words contains over 
 fifty thousand words not recorded in modern 
 dictionaries. Saxon grammar remained com 
 paratively intact for grammar, called the 
 blood and soul of language, is nearly indes 
 tructible ; but Saxon words and Saxon inflec 
 tions both suffered, and that in their best ele 
 ments, too, the language of poetry and of the 
 affections, of the marketplace and of the home. 
 Unquestionably, our English vocabulary is far 
 richer and more copious, especially in the 
 technical terms used in astronomy, botany, 
 mineralogy, chemistry, etc., for the additions 
 it received from the Normans. French words 
 were first blended with Anglo-Saxon by the 
 genius of Chaucer and Spenser ; but the addi 
 tions were so abundant, so overflowing in 
 number, and in many cases so superfluous, 
 that those made then and since were not so 
 much additions as the adding of a new lan 
 guage to English, an addition that prevented 
 the growth of Anglo-Saxon and remitted to 
 obscurity many words the loss of which is 
 ever to be regretted, and can never wholly 
 be atoned. There is one comforting fact, 
 however ; words of French origin, often unre- 
 gretted, drop out of use and are never restored 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 29 
 
 to verbal circulation again; whereas, if a 
 homely but earnest Anglo-Saxon word drops 
 out of use, its loss is regretted, and it is fre 
 quently restored and always welcomed back. 
 
 The highest, the most spiritual, the most 
 mysterious thing about man is his speech. It 
 is a remarkable fact that nothing can be added 
 to or subtracted from the body of any lan 
 guage. The language may be nearly obliter 
 ated by conquest, as was the Ancient Celtic 
 and others herein named, but it cannot be 
 changed. Every language, no matter how 
 barbarous, is complete in itself. No such thing 
 is known as a language in transition. Forms 
 change; even the roots of a language may be 
 disguised, but they cannot possibly be altered 
 their essential element, their fundamental 
 meaning, survives all change. Roots predi 
 cative and roots demonstrative remain, as Max 
 Muller asserts, as the ultimate analysis of all 
 language. The Hindoos were the first to trace 
 all words back to roots. Prof. Max Muller 
 claims that all of the words, numbering at 
 least two hundred and fifty thousand, in the 
 English dictionary, whether of native or im 
 ported speech, the near and far alike, can be 
 traced back to eight hundred roots, and these 
 to one hundred and twenty-one fundamental 
 
30 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 I 
 
 ideas or concepts. From this latter original 
 stock have been forged words and meaning 
 enough to give expression to every thought 
 that ever passed through the mind of man. 
 Never before did man erect so divine a temple 
 from such apparently insignificant materials. 
 Never did he appear so godlike as in thus 
 forging the thunderbolts of speech. Here, 
 if ever, he wielded the powers of Jupiter 
 Tonans. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, and one tending 
 to the glory of mental democracy, that the 
 great works of the imagination and of poetry 
 were produced by men nearly innocent of 
 schools and scholarship. Homer, Shakespeare, 
 Cervantes, De Foe, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Burns, 
 and Abraham Lincoln were all self-taught 
 men, and nearly all spoke one language only. 
 So, too, measured by our almost immeasurably 
 extended standard, were ^Eschylus, Sophocles, 
 Euripides, and Aristophanes. If Milton had 
 not been a schoolman, he would probably have 
 been an immeasurably greater, because an un 
 conscious, poet. This fact he himself recog 
 nized. Macaulay doubted that we should have 
 had Lear if Shakespeare had been able to read 
 Sophocles in Greek. The very best and most 
 earnest words in the four great languages of 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 31 
 
 the world Greek, Latin, German, and Eng 
 lish came from the common people. The 
 language of Luther, of the English Bible, and 
 of Shakespeare, was in each case a language 
 that the unlearned used and could under 
 stand. The best words of the Attic dialect, 
 the lingua Romana, and the mother tongue in 
 Anglo-Saxon, were all not only coined, but 
 long circulated first amongst the common peo 
 ple. The French Academy, composed of the 
 mental and scientific rulers of France, never 
 gave a word to the French language; street 
 gamins and peasants are constantly adding to 
 it; they first stamp the words as being of ster 
 ling philological value, and the learned finally, 
 and often most unwillingly, come to their use. 
 When a language became a dead one, it was 
 always killed by the over-culture of the learned, 
 as the dressing of wheat in milling deprives 
 it of the material from which bone and mus 
 cle the pillars of the human body are erect 
 ed. The best and most forcible, the most ear 
 nest, and most truthful language is democratic 
 rather than aristocratic. Dante was a scholar, 
 and his immortal work may seem to contradict 
 these statements; but in his Divine Comedy he 
 used, though, of course, he sometimes refined, 
 the dialect of peasants and market-women. 
 
32 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 Macaulay s tribute to Dante was, perhaps, the 
 highest ever paid to a latter-day author: 
 " Dante," he says, " used the fewest and best 
 words it is possible to use." 
 
 The highest and best meaning of words is 
 not found in dictionaries, where the words are 
 disconnected, but in the best authors, who, by 
 the exercise of one of the highest gifts of genius, 
 place words in such living and happy combi 
 nations that, married in sentences, they produce 
 mental pictures from which are derived at 
 once the greatest mental profit and the highest 
 mental pleasure. A word standing alone is but 
 the link of a chain ; its greatest strength and 
 highest use can be attained only by combina 
 tion. Genius only can in such cases link and 
 combine words to produce the happiest and 
 best results of meaning. On this subject 
 Marsh says : " Dictionary definitions, consid 
 ered as a means of philological instruction, 
 are as inferior to miscellaneous reading as a 
 herbarium to a botanic garden. The vocabu 
 lary of the passions and the affections lives 
 and breathes only in mutual combinations." 
 In the selection of the very best words to ex 
 press in poetry the warmest feelings of the 
 heart and highest mental powers, Chaucer 
 rendered higher service than any other Eng- 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 33 
 
 lishman. And yet, if he had been more of the 
 people and less of the court, there would have 
 been much more Anglo-Saxon in English than 
 there now is; the language, indeed, would 
 have been almost radically different. No one 
 affects a language like a great poet. God and 
 great poets, say the Italians, are the only 
 creators. Shakespeare and the translators of 
 the Bible were greatly indebted to Chaucer. 
 Marsh calls him "the Charlemagne of the 
 new intellectual dynasty of England. He 
 unites what was best in Latin and Anglo-Saxon 
 words, and produced a polyglottic vocabulary 
 which is superior to that of either language 
 separately." In this connection, note how the 
 Bible is the Book, in another than the Chris 
 tian sense. Macaulay says of it : " At the time 
 when that odious style which deforms the 
 writings of Hall and Lord Bacon was almost 
 universal, appeared that stupendous work, the 
 English Bible, a book which, if everything 
 else in our language should perish, would alone 
 suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty 
 and power." It has been frequently said that 
 the translators of the Bible were inspired. 
 Our greatest translation, that of the time of 
 King James, was made in the language of the 
 common people. If the claim of inspiration 
 
34 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 rested only upon that fact, which, of course, it 
 does not, then the Latin proverb, " Vox populi, 
 vox Dei" ("The voice of the people is the voice 
 of God,") would be true in a higher sense 
 than that in which it has been generally un 
 derstood. And there are high and valid phil 
 ological reasons why this is so. The language 
 of the common people is closest to nature 
 material nature, in which, it cannot be too 
 firmly remembered, the foundations on which 
 all that is best, most vital, and truthful in all 
 languages are laid. Therefore, he who used 
 the people s language used the highest, be 
 cause the most natural, simple, and powerful 
 language with which man s attention can be 
 aroused, his reason convinced, his affections 
 and mental and spiritual powers led captive. 
 Nature here means as she, indeed, always 
 does mean earnestness, truth, simplicity, 
 beauty and power. 
 
 One of the most noticeable, and yet one of 
 the most natural, facts about such a mental 
 man of men as Shakespeare, is that no author, 
 poet, or dramatist has ever imitated, or even 
 tried to imitate, his style. The attempt has 
 not been made, and if made, could not hope 
 to attain even that success which the maker 
 of artificial fruit and flowers achieves. In 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 35 
 
 making them, form and color may at least be 
 mechanically imitated; but none of Shakes 
 peare s greatest qualities are imitable. In 
 this respect he is alone, with all of the authors 
 of the world surrounding him. Shakespeare s 
 language, simple though its general character 
 istic is, is one of the most wonderful features 
 that stamp him as " not for a day, but for all 
 time." 
 
 One of the strongest illustrations of how 
 people can be degraded in a moral and philo 
 logical sense, while they were ardently devoted 
 to literary and artistic progress, is afforded by 
 the Italian Renaissance. Sculpture, architec 
 ture, painting, poetry, and general literature 
 never won more astonishing triumphs than 
 in that era not even in the Golden Age of 
 Greece. Petrarch was crowned with greater 
 honors than are accorded to a military con 
 queror. Michel Angelo was an autocrat who 
 dictated terms to a tyrannical Pope. Lorenzo 
 de Medici was called the Magnificent, far more 
 for his mental ability and culture, his patron 
 age of art and learning, and his devotion to 
 the discovery of ancient manuscripts illus 
 trating classical learning, than for his enor 
 mous wealth, his remarkable abilities as a 
 ruler, and his lovableness as a man. 
 
36 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 But while Italy was thus exalted in a liter 
 ary and artistic sense, it was never more 
 degraded morally. Such personages as the 
 Borgias, Pazzis, and Machiavellis were guilty 
 of murder by poisoning and other forms of 
 assassination, and of adultery and incest, or 
 else defended these crimes. They lied and 
 deceived with a countenance indicative of the 
 utmost candor, and with a boldness that 
 would have deceived the closest reader of 
 faces and actions. These were the leaders in 
 art and literature, no less than the rulers 
 in the government and social life. In the 
 debasement which they created, language 
 suffered in a vital, because a moral, sense. 
 
 A wretch, an assassin who stabbed swiftly, 
 unexpectedly, and devilishly, was a bravo, 
 a brave man, and he was brave, compared 
 to those who hired him. A devotee of music, 
 art, or of learning, was, and is yet, a virtuoso, 
 devoted to the virtues, although his private 
 life may have been black and despicable. A 
 prostitute or mistress had her sin removed, in 
 the social and legal sense at least, in the 
 knowledge that society attached no stigma 
 either to her name or conduct. A bastard 
 inherited equally with legitimate children. 
 The Italian language yet bears strong traces 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 37 
 
 of this moral debasement and of the crushing 
 despotism to which the people s liberties were 
 then and have until lately been subjected. 
 Grandiloquent terms are used for the most 
 trifling articles, and an obsequiousness of 
 thanks akin to crawling is returned for the 
 most trifling favors. Leigh Hunt gives many 
 painful philological illustrations of these facts. 
 Such exaggeration and obsequiousness of lan 
 guage has in it no sincerity, no heart, and is 
 born at once of the degraded condition of 
 those who use it and of their poverty. The 
 Russians of to-day are a nation of shameless 
 liars, because they are cowed by despotism. 
 Lying and debasement of language in such 
 cases are not to be so harshly judged as in a 
 land of mental light and liberty. Lying is a 
 refuge of the weak and oppressed " the vice 
 of slaves," as it is termed by Plutarch. 
 
 Language always conforms to the institu 
 tions of the country in which it is spoken. 
 Asiatic lands furnish the strongest illustration 
 of this principle. The dull, oppressed native 
 Hindoo, not figuratively or partially, but ac 
 tually and wholly, crawled before his superior, 
 in a monetary or social sense ; and his language 
 partook of and reflected his degradation. The 
 punishment prescribed in the Hindoo Vedas 
 
38 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 for a Sudra who attempted either to hear a 
 priest recite or to raise himself in any way 
 above his utterly sunken condition was to the 
 last degree cruel and arbitrary. The Sudras 
 are the farmers and workers of India. They 
 composed three-fourths of the natives of that 
 country. As a consequence, their language is 
 as much a pariah and a product of poverty of 
 mind and spirit, and of utter degradation, 
 ignorance, and poverty, as they themselves. 
 The Gypsy language and grammar equally 
 illustrate the effect of ages of roaming va 
 grancy and illiteracy. 
 
 The nation that enjoys an upright, self- 
 asserting, self-respecting use of words must 
 have successfully demonstrated its courage 
 before domestic and foreign tyrants, and be in 
 the van of national progress and of mental 
 light and physical liberty. If it loses the lat 
 ter, it must to some extent lose its language, 
 in the highest and best sense. The decline of 
 Home, in the sense of a fall of its liberties, is 
 generally dated from the time of Marius, Sulla, 
 Pompey, Crassus, and Julius Csesar. But that 
 fall really began after the second Punic War ; 
 and it is an historical fact, related by Polybius, 
 that the Roman of his day could not read the 
 treaties between Rome and Carthage, so great 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 39 
 
 had been the changes in Latin. The lan 
 guage, like the people, had lost the ancient 
 earnestness, truth, and simplicity. It had 
 gained in copiousness of vocabulary; but this 
 gain was paid for by loss of simplicity and 
 virility, in the moral and social sense. The 
 Apostle Paul charged certain professors with 
 having a form of godliness, but denying the 
 power thereof. Language, in like manner, 
 may retain the form, the words, while the 
 truth, life, earnestness, and simplicity the 
 soul, in short, has departed. It may have 
 a name to live, while it is radically dead. 
 
 The reign of Louis the Fourteenth has been 
 called, and very justly, the Augustan age of 
 French literature. Authors in both those 
 ages were subsidized to write or sing the 
 glories of despots. But literature and art, 
 shackled by royal bounties and the prosti 
 tution born of them, were largely marked 
 by toadyism and the loss of life thereby cre 
 ated. The king named was treated always 
 as a deity. Those who have seen the paint 
 ings still remaining on the walls of Ver 
 sailles know this. The king once removed 
 an official, who, wishing to regain royal favor, 
 addressed the words of the fifty-first Psalm to 
 him, " Cast me not away from Thy presence, 
 
40 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." On 
 this subject, Buckle says : 
 
 " The French, in spite of the heroic efforts of the Fronde, 
 not only fell under the despotism of Louis the Four 
 teenth, but never even cared to resist it, and at length, 
 becoming slaves in their souls as well as in their bodies, 
 they grew proud of a condition which the meanest Eng 
 lishman would have spurned as an intolerable bondage. 
 As if to exhaust every form of absurdity, the most seri 
 ous misunderstanding arose as to who should have the 
 honor of giving the king his napkin as he sat at meals, 
 and who was to enjoy the inestimable privilege of help 
 ing the queen on with her shift. It should be remem 
 bered that these occurrences, and above all the impor 
 tance formerly attached to them, is part of the history of 
 the French mind. The end of this was a corruption, a 
 servility, and a loss of power more complete than has ever 
 been witnessed in any of the great countries of Europe." 
 
 Words can have their dignity wantonly 
 insulted and lowered by intentional misuse. 
 Lex, as is well known, means law in Latin, and 
 Rex, king. Some one, Laud or Strafford, aid 
 ing Charles the First in his attempt to make 
 himself superior to law, said that he had often 
 heard that rex was lex, but that he never be 
 fore heard that lex was rex. This doctrine 
 was derived from James the First, who laid 
 down the despotic maxim, A Dio rex, a rege lex. 
 War was fought to settle the meaning of the 
 two words first named. The result showed all 
 law-breakers, king as well as subject, that law 
 was king of kings in England. The English 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 41 
 
 language no less than English liberty was 
 vitally interested in this contest. Note, on the 
 other hand, the utter degradation of a coun 
 try where the king was not only the law tem 
 poral but spiritual. Of Philip the Second, a 
 contemporary, struck by the universal homage 
 he received, said : " The Spanish people do 
 not merely love, merely reverence, but abso 
 lutely adore him, and deem his commands so 
 sacred that they could not be violated without 
 offense to God." Loyalty and superstition went 
 hand in hand in Spain ; ignorance ruled, and 
 language was necessarily degraded. 
 
 The English aristocracy was greatly de 
 graded in the reign of the heartless, corrupt, 
 immoral, and wholly unpatriotic Charles the 
 Second. Lords and other aristocrats acted as 
 waiters on their knees, in serving the king 
 at table. French manners and customs were 
 slavishly followed by king and courtiers. 
 Literature was very much debased also, but 
 this debasement did not extend to the com 
 mon people ; and, therefore, language did not 
 suffer materially, nor national progress either, 
 in a legislative sense at least, for some of 
 the best laws preservative of the freedom 
 of the people and press were passed in that 
 reign. What was true of public men and 
 
 0? 
 
42 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 literature in the time of Charles remained 
 more or less true during all the succeed 
 ing reigns, until late in George the Third s 
 time. If the works of a majority of authors 
 of the time of Charles the Second, James, and 
 William and Mary could be blotted out, lan 
 guage would suffer little loss, while clean 
 literature would be a decided gainer. This 
 is particularly true of dramatic works and 
 poetry, so-called. 
 
 We are accustomed to think of George the 
 Third as having been a tyrant, only or mostly 
 in his treatment of the American colonies, 
 which he first exasperated into rebellion, 
 and thereby finally ennobled into independ 
 ence; but, in his home policy, he really 
 struck at English liberty and the English 
 language even more fatally, had he succeeded 
 in striking successfully. In 1771, writing to 
 Lord North on the subject of publishing par 
 liamentary debates (the people being desirous 
 of knowing what their law-makers were do 
 ing), he said : " It is highly necessary that this 
 strange and careless method of publishing- 
 debates should be put a stop to. But is not 
 the House of Lords the best court to bring 
 such miscreants before ; as it can fine as well 
 as imprison, and has broader shoulders to 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 43 
 
 support the odium of so salutary a measure?" 
 Now, had this weak and tyrannical king suc 
 ceeded in suppressing the publication of par 
 liamentary reports, the word miscreant would 
 have acquired two new meanings. From the 
 king s and his abettors side it would have 
 meant those who were guilty of the crime, in 
 their eyes, of wanting to know what Parliament 
 was doing, while from the people s side it would 
 have meant those who were opposed to tyranm^. 
 Buckle says : " Every liberal sentiment, every 
 thing approaching to reform nay, even the 
 mere mention of inquiry, was abomination in 
 the eyes of that narrow and ignorant prince." 
 The right to prevent meetings was lodged in 
 an irresponsible appointee of the crown. If a 
 meeting of even twelve persons persisted in 
 discussing public questions for an hour after 
 a magistrate ordered them to disperse, the 
 penalty was death. It is alleged that the 
 word independence, in its modern acceptation, 
 does not occur in our language before the 
 early part of the eighteenth century. Ser 
 vile imitation of the French was the fashion 
 during a large part of the long period named, 
 and words of Latin or French origin were 
 very much used. Professor Morley says of 
 De Foe: "He also reformed the currency of 
 
44 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 English speech, which in his time had been 
 lowered by French alloy." Literary feeble 
 ness was then long married to immorality. 
 Tawdry images were much used in the de 
 scription of natural objects. Nearly every 
 thing was unnatural, soulless, and insincere 
 utterly foreign to the genius and spirit of what 
 is best in English language and literature. 
 
 It is well known that all European languages 
 are derived from the Aryan speech, which came 
 from the highlands of Asia. Professor Sayce 
 attempted to prove that this speech came from 
 the north of Europe ; but he himself has aban 
 doned that theory, I believe. The word Aryan 
 is from the root ar, one of whose fundamental 
 meanings is to plow. A plowing, an agricul 
 tural people were superior to those who lived 
 by pastoral pursuits or by hunting. 
 
 In its wealth of words, modern English is 
 one of the most composite of languages. The 
 Latin or Norman words, of course, vastly pre 
 ponderate over other foreign elements in its 
 vocabulary. This element represents probably 
 one-third of the words in the English diction 
 ary ; but English-speaking people, having been 
 foremost in exploration, and the greatest in 
 maritime and inland conquest and commer 
 cial enterprise, their language has thereby had 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 45 
 
 a larger number of foreign words admitted to 
 its stock of vocables than any other language. 
 It is a striking fact that the intellectual revival 
 in England, from 1485 to 1600, was simulta 
 neous with maritime discovery, military and 
 naval conquests, and mercantile adventure. 
 The foreign words introduced into English 
 then and since have been naturalized into the 
 body of the language, and had the bridle of its 
 grammar imposed upon them ; but they are 
 still not of the household. Anglo-Saxon would 
 be much poorer in words relating to the arts, 
 sciences, and jurisprudence if it had not been 
 for a long period dominated by the Norman 
 tongue; but if this mastery had never oc 
 curred, it would be richer in words expressive 
 of truth, of the home affections and duties, 
 and of morals and religion. Its richness, for 
 the highest and best poetical uses, would like 
 wise have been greater. Even as it is, how 
 ever, it is the most richly endowed, in its own 
 still preserved native resources, of any lan 
 guage of the world. That wealth was best 
 illustrated in immeasurably the greatest era of 
 its history, between the beginning of the reign 
 of Henry the Eighth and the close of that of 
 James the First. 
 
 Latin and Greek have much greater con- 
 
46 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 ciseness of expression than English, because 
 they are fully inflected languages, while Eng 
 lish is most like to Chinese, which is wholly 
 uninflected. English, too, is constantly be 
 coming more uninflected, brief, and direct. Its 
 constant tendency is to abolish genders, tenses, 
 and degrees of comparison. Its collocation and 
 arrangement of prepositions, nouns, and verbs 
 are shorter, stronger, clearer, and more unalter 
 able in expression than either Latin, Greek or 
 German. It dispenses with inflections almost 
 entirely, and relies instead on the collocation 
 or syntax that is, on the relative position of 
 words in sentences. It is in this way that the 
 English language is unconsciously but certainly 
 approaching to Chinese, which is the simplest 
 and most philosophical language in the world. 
 Max Miiller calls Chinese a language comme 
 il faut that is, a language as it should be. 
 On this subject, Professor Sayce says : " If the 
 excellence of a language is to be decided by 
 the attainment of terseness and vividness, 
 Chinese would come to the front. English has 
 fitted itself to become a universal language, by 
 struggling to assimilate its condition to that 
 of Chinese." In these facts, which are facts of 
 brevity, simplicity, and constant tendency to 
 abolish grammar, lie one of the chief claims 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 47 
 
 of English to becoming a universal language. 
 Professor Sayce says: "The prophecy has 
 already been hazarded that Pigeon-English, 
 or a similar grarnmarless jargon, will be the 
 future medium of universal intercourse." If 
 some European language is to be acquired by 
 Oriental and savage people, their language will 
 undoubtedly be English, even if the oppor 
 tunity offered them to acquire French, Italian, 
 or German were equally good, and the reason 
 for the choice of English would lie in the facts 
 stated. "The English language," says Pro 
 fessor Sayce, " is quite as good an instrument 
 of thought as Sanscrit or Greek, and yet Eng 
 lish can hardly be said to be inflectional in the 
 way that Sanscrit and Greek are." If the world 
 is to have a universal language, it will not be, 
 by whatever else it may be characterized, a 
 language of concealment, but one of naked 
 simplicity and directness, both in expression 
 and meaning. Earnestness will also be one of 
 its striking characteristics. If that universal 
 language is to be the English, words of Ro 
 mance origin will no longer form, as they now 
 do, about fifteen per cent, of the vocabulary 
 used, but will dwindle down to three, four, or 
 five per cent. It may be stated, as a fact indi 
 cative of progress in this direction, that, though 
 
48 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 words of foreign derivation have vastly in 
 creased, in the extension and cultivation of 
 chemistry, mineralogy, metallurgy, and in the 
 arts and sciences generally, the number of such 
 words used in general English literature is now 
 about twenty-five per cent, less than in the age 
 of Queen Anne. In the vocabulary of an or 
 dinary speaker, every word of Anglo-Saxon is 
 now included. No disrespect whatever is here 
 intended either to the Komance languages or to 
 the people who speak them. The differences 
 referred to are explicable by historical facts. 
 Under ancient Kome, in all its history, people 
 were ground down. In its earlier history mil 
 itary duty and conquest, slaughter, and blood 
 were the great objects in the life of the people 
 and rulers. In the later stages these objects 
 were still most followed and admired, but added 
 to these was the rule of the Ca3sars, which let 
 loose all the floodgates of evil, in despotism, 
 vice, effeminate luxury, lying, and deceit. The 
 language, like the people, became fearfully de 
 based ; men cowered, and in using language 
 they had to inflate, conceal, and deceive. Later 
 on, in Italy, France, and Spain, there was, to 
 say the least, much more in the government, 
 rulers, and social customs to keep up these 
 habits than to dissipate them. In the case of 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 49 
 
 the Northmen, they were always free. They 
 were, indeed, free-booters and savages, but 
 they became Christianized, civilized, and sof 
 tened with remarkable rapidity. Note how 
 the Icelanders, at first a most bloodthirsty 
 people, have become one of the most gentle 
 and hospitable races in the world. The scenes 
 witnessed in Paris between 1789 and 1793, and 
 in 1871, could never have occurred in Sweden, 
 Denmark, or Norway. But why ? Because 
 those nations never had their bodies, minds, 
 and language crushed for long ages, as have 
 the people of the Latin races. 
 
 Of France in the eighteenth century a great 
 writer said : " If ever there existed a state of 
 society likely by its crying and accumulated 
 evils to madden men to desperation, France 
 was in that state. The people, despised and 
 enslaved, were sunk in abject poverty, and were 
 crushed by laws of stringent cruelty, enforced 
 with merciless barbarism." The recoil and 
 revolt were proportionate to the long crushing 
 and degradation. Taine says that, at the time 
 of the Revolution, out of twenty-six million 
 Frenchmen, only one million could read, and 
 in political matters only five hundred or six 
 hundred were competent. What the aristo 
 crats thought of the common people is illus- 
 
50 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 trated by the assertion quoted by De Tocque- 
 ville in his Ancien Regime, that Madame du 
 Chatelet had no objection to undress before 
 her servants, as she was not convinced that 
 valets were men. The insolence of language of 
 the one class, and the cringing humility of 
 that of the other, can therefore easily be im 
 agined. The effect of suddenly loosing the 
 shackles of this nation of mental slaves, arid 
 assuring them that they were able to rule 
 themselves without aid, and that their great 
 duty was to crush their oppressors and render 
 it impossible for them ever again to rule, was 
 like putting human minds into human tigers 
 and letting them loose to glut their appetites 
 for blood and revenge. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon is to our tongues, what 
 father, mother, sister, brother are to our 
 hearts. Words from other languages have 
 been admitted into our household, but they 
 do not live under the same roof-tree. Many 
 of them are of thin and cold-blooded relation 
 ship only. It is a striking fact that, father, 
 mother, sister, brother, are all Anglo-Saxon ; 
 father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, uncle 
 and aunt, are either half or wholly of Romance 
 origin. The best general account of the differ 
 ence between other languages and Anglo- 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 51 
 
 Saxon is, that the latter is the mother tongue. 
 And this is one of the strongest claims of the 
 Anglo-Saxon to be the universal language 
 of the future. The Latin, under Rome, was 
 Patrius Sermo, the father s speech. 
 
 The steamship and the locomotive, by the 
 promotion of commercial intercourse, are two 
 of the strongest possible auxiliaries to assimi 
 lation of languages. They are democratic, 
 too, in the sense that they tend to spread, not 
 the language of the learned, but of trade and 
 of the common people. Barbarism and isola 
 tion vastly increase, while civilization and 
 intercourse reduce the number of languages. 
 Professor Sayce says : " Destroy literature and 
 facility of inter-communication, and the lan 
 guage of England and America would soon be 
 as different as those of France and Italy." 
 Language, especially of heathen nations, must 
 be elevated before the world can be morally 
 elevated and purified. Missionary labors have 
 shown that the heathen nations cannot be 
 converted until their language has undergone 
 moral re-creation. Where there are no words 
 expressive of purity, morality, truth, honesty, 
 candor, and good faith where, in fact, spir 
 ituality is wanting in a language, how can 
 the people who speak it be elevated to Chris- 
 
52 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 tianity or be converted to its pure and high 
 tenets? Here, perhaps, is best seen the truth 
 of the assertion, heretofore made in these 
 pages, that the language is the people. 
 
 The Greek authors, especially Aristophanes, 
 did much to lower the moral and spiritual 
 dignity of many words. Words used as 
 trumpets by .ZEschylus were used as baubles 
 by Aristophanes. The latter s filthy defini 
 tion of freedom, is perhaps the strongest case 
 in point. How could language fail to be 
 debased and to suffer, when the great men 
 of Athens considered that the objects of life 
 were dominion and lust; that love, self- 
 sacrifice, and devotion were fictions, and that 
 oaths were only good for deception. The 
 Sophists, Dr. Draper says, urged the cultiva 
 tion of rhetoric, that noble art by which the 
 wrong may be made to appear right and the 
 worse the better cause ; by which he who has 
 committed a crime may so mystify society as 
 to delude it into the belief that he is worthy 
 of praise. This is the very depth of phil 
 ological, and, therefore, of moral, degradation. 
 " Base is the slave that pays," said Falstaff. 
 This is a code of morals to which every 
 Jeremy Diddler would give a cheerful assent, 
 and not suppose, either, that in thus reversing 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 53 
 
 the laws of honesty, he would also be assault 
 ing language. If this rule were adopted, the 
 word honesty, in its usual sense, would be in 
 danger of erasure. In numerous islands of the 
 South Pacific that word has never been called 
 into existence ; honesty, with virtue, truth, grati 
 tude, love, and many like words, being utterly 
 unknown. Not to have knowledge of these 
 virtues, and therefore not to have any word 
 expressive of them, is not nearly so bad as 
 first to have them and then, through moral 
 declension, to lose them. Murder was thus 
 almost erased as a crime, when assassination 
 by poisoning was in Italy described as only 
 " assisting " the death of a victim ; and in 
 France administering a fatal powder, to expe 
 dite the death of one from whom a fortune was 
 expected, was jocularly called " giving a pow 
 der of succession." In the fall in the meaning 
 of the word indolence a lie was inserted. It 
 declined into the meaning of not to grieve or 
 have pain. But the lie has been ejected, and 
 the word has gone back to its true meaning of 
 laziness, a habit inevitably productive of pain 
 and sorrow, instead of true ease and enjoy 
 ment. Trench says : " Far more and mightier 
 in every way is a language than any one of the 
 works which may have been composed in it." 
 
54 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 This is true of all but the very greatest 
 works; but the assertion is not true of the Bible 
 or of Shakespeare, at least. In these two 
 works spiritual and mental temples were 
 erected from the stones of language whose 
 summits reach unto heaven; and yet their 
 height is not so wonderful as their wisdom, 
 simplicity, strength, grace, harmony, an<I 
 beauty. It is, indeed, hardly possible to 
 conceive of any author erecting mental struc 
 tures more lofty and sublime than those found 
 in these two books, although every word in 
 the vocabulary was used in the effort. Was 
 Italian greater than the use Dante made of 
 it? Can language, while yet in words simply 
 that is, detached, ever be so great as 
 when used in combination by inspired proph 
 ets, apostles, sages, and poets ? It was created 
 for the latter; and in the two books named 
 we have in the one case men inspired of God 
 spiritually, and in the other mentally, cre 
 ating works the wisdom, beauty, and full 
 meaning of which no man has ever yet been 
 able even to pretend to fathom. 
 
 It is generally admitted that no language 
 is more moral and truthful, in the sense of 
 earnestness and directness of meaning, than 
 the English. It will talk earnestly, plainly, 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 55 
 
 and truthfully; it is a philological hitter, 
 straight out from the shoulder. Much greater 
 modesty is displayed in English, too, than in 
 languages of Latin origin or in Latin itself. 
 Those who have read Tacitus in Latin and in 
 English, or the memoirs of St. Simon in 
 French and English, will understand this. 
 No modesty or concealment is thought neces 
 sary in the majority of Continental languages 
 of Latin origin. The support which English 
 has received from the Bible in these directions 
 has never been, as far as I know, sufficiently 
 understood or acknowledged. St. Paul and 
 St. John are known to the world at large only 
 as apostles of Christ. Few know that, in 
 addition, they were unsurpassed masters of 
 language. Never was greater brevity, strength, 
 power, persuasion, and spiritual and moral 
 beauty evolved from words than these men 
 exhibited in their use. No great sculptor, 
 painter, or poet ever attained his nearest 
 approach to perfection but by the yielding 
 of his higher powers and genius to the most 
 intense earnestness and love of his subject; 
 and he who wishes to see a writer s soul 
 thrown into his words must consult the two 
 inspired writers named. Words in the hands 
 of such authors in the hands of all really 
 
56 THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 great authors become irradiated with divine 
 life, strength, light, and beauty; whereas, 
 when used for deception or in any way to 
 excuse moral turpitude, these elements must 
 go out of them. Their pillars, deflected from 
 the plumb line, begin to totter and to fall. A 
 coniferous tree and a lighthouse have both to 
 withstand strong assaults the one from 
 wind, and the other from waves. Their 
 strength and ability to overcome these as 
 saults lie in having their center of gravity 
 near their base. The center of gravity of 
 words their strength, likewise, is in their 
 roots, their foundations. 
 
 In conclusion, it is necessary to remind all 
 readers that the language they use is not their 
 own, but belongs to the race. Untold labor 
 was spent on the best languages untold sacri 
 fice of blood, suffering, and study, in elevating 
 and preserving them in their present stage of 
 liberty and purity. Language, then, is a sa 
 cred heritage, to be used with respect, and 
 with constant aim after truth and simplicity, 
 which always mean power. A solemn duty 
 rests upon all to contribute toward the eleva 
 tion of language by the use of what is best 
 and highest in words; words that shall not 
 debase, but elevate and refine. The author 
 
THE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE. 57 
 
 does not absolutely assert that great authors 
 cannot be rightly appreciated by those who 
 have not studied philology; but he does say 
 that, after such study, they will be much 
 better understood, and afford much greater 
 mental pleasure. 
 
Immortality of the Big Trees 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 
 
 THE gigantic height and girth of the 
 Conifers of California and Oregon have 
 elicited universal wonder and admiration. 
 The botanist who first discovered and de 
 scribed them, and who in his lonely wander 
 ings suffered untold hardships in the search 
 (David Douglass), said that he could not con 
 template the redwoods and the Douglass spruce 
 without feelings of the deepest awe. So far 
 as the writer knows, no reasons have ever 
 been given for the great size of these trees. 
 The ice of the glacial period, which drove 
 them from their original homes in the far 
 north, to points much farther south than where 
 they are now found, planed and ground down 
 the solid rock of their present mountain 
 homes. The resulting detritus, still existing 
 there in ancient moraines, forms rich forest 
 soil. The force, therefore, which exiled them 
 from their old home at length prepared an 
 other. This glacial grinding and apparent 
 degradation resulted in mountain architecture 
 of the most Cyclopean and wonderful charac 
 ter, as revealed in the Yosemites of California 
 and Norway, in which domed-rock structure 
 
62 IMMOETALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 
 
 predominates. Lifeless, cold, and unpitying 
 the glacial ice-tools may have been ; but they 
 graved and chiseled in curves, making beauty 
 wherever they went. 
 
 Although the moraine soil aids very rapid 
 growth in our gigantic conifers, they attain to 
 massive proportions and their greatest age 
 without it. One of the very largest sequoias 
 of the Sierra Nevada was found on a dry hill 
 side by Mr. John Muir, the well-known Cali 
 fornia botanist and geologist. This tree had 
 a diameter of thirty-five feet eight inches, ex 
 clusive of the bark. Mr. Muir estimated its 
 age, by counting the annual rings, to be over 
 four thousand years. It had evidently grown 
 very slowly, because its food was not the 
 mountain meal of a moraine, but hard fare 
 obtainable from rock; its chief sustenance, 
 indeed, was derived from the air: yet very 
 large growth and comparative immortality 
 were exhibited by that tree. What, then, were 
 the other elements to which it was indebted 
 for its massive size and great age? The answer 
 is, a constant and full supply of never-frozen 
 water at the roots, a still greater daily supply 
 of warm, unclouded sunshine. This continu 
 ous, rich, life-giving sunshine is one of the 
 most remarkable features of the Pacific coast 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 63 
 
 climate, but especially of the Sierra Nevada. 
 
 Whether the oldest sequoias be fifteen hun 
 dred or four thousand years old is not the 
 vital point. That point rests on the fact that 
 not a single one of these big trees has yet 
 been found showing any evidence of the fee 
 bleness of old age or of natural decay not 
 one ! Fires deface and consume them ; storms, 
 when the trees are in exposed situations, may 
 prostrate, and lightning (a frequent agent in 
 their destruction) may blast and destroy, or 
 set fire to them ; but natural decay and death 
 have not yet marked or defiled them. The 
 continuity of unclouded light undoubtedly 
 has very much to do with this. On page 42 
 of " Bog ens Indveindring" the assertion is 
 made, that the trees requiring most light are 
 content with the poorest soils, and vice versa. 
 The almost miraculous rapidity with which 
 crops mature in the brief summers close to or 
 within the Arctic Circle is undoubtedly due, 
 more than is generally imagined, quite as 
 much to the continuity of sunlight as to an 
 extra supply of sun-heat. 
 
 Without sunlight, chlorophyl cannot be 
 formed, and without the latter agent carbonic 
 acid and water cannot be decomposed and as 
 similated in plants. How much heat is pro- 
 
64 IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 
 
 duced by the absorption of light by the leaves 
 of the big Coniferas, or by deciduous trees, can 
 not yet be told; but, no doubt, the amount 
 has a very sensible effect in stimulating the 
 growth and sustenance of the trees. Clear 
 sunshine is continuous in the Sierra Nevada 
 of California from about June to November; 
 and even in the so-called winter months there 
 are, on the average, five days of clear weather 
 overhead to two of clouds and rain or falling 
 snow, even when the snow is on the ground 
 to a depth of from five to forty feet. I have 
 repeatedly been in the upper Sierra Nevada 
 on snowshoes, in winter, when the weather 
 overhead was as clear as in June, and when 
 the thermometer one hundred feet above the 
 snow covering must have registered from sev 
 enty to eighty degrees in the sun. February 
 in the valleys of California answers to the June 
 of the Atlantic States as a growing month. 
 All of the great Coniferse, but especially the 
 big sequoias, have a heavy and widespreading 
 mass of sponge-like roots, which arrest and 
 hold sufficient moisture for constant irriga 
 tion. There is, indeed, such a superabun 
 dance of water, that springs are constantly 
 found issuing from the base of these trees. 
 Now, the growth of trees is as much stimulated 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 65 
 
 by irrigation as that of food plants. By con 
 structing lateral irrigating ditches on hillsides 
 in Europe, firs grew to twice the size of those 
 found in dry soil adjoining. In other experi 
 ments, irrigated trees grew seven times as fast 
 as those not having the advantage of artificial 
 watering. The sequoias, therefore, are under 
 the most constant stimulus of elements most 
 vital at once to their health and growth. The 
 water around their roots, too, is never frozen. 
 When occasional severe frosts prevail, and the 
 thermometer, under their stress, descends to 
 its greatest depth (about five degrees below 
 zero), the ground is covered by snow, which 
 maintains the warmth of both roots and soil. 
 This is not the least of the causes tending to 
 the continuous growth, massive size, health, 
 and therefore great age, of the big trees of 
 California. The Coniferse of New England 
 cease growing in the late summer and fall; 
 they then begin to store up vitality to with 
 stand the cold of winter, as hibernating ani 
 mals do. 
 
 Although the growth of the great Coniferse 
 of California is continuous, there is no over- 
 stimulation in it. The growth is so perfectly 
 natural, and so eminently healthy and strong, 
 that it comes nearer resulting in immortal life 
 
66 IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 
 
 in these trees than the age exhibited by any other 
 trees or any other living thing in the world. 
 Some other trees enumerated by the late Dr. 
 Asa Gray have also records of very great age. 
 
 " Trees [he says] far outlast all other living things, and 
 form familiar and appropriate symbols of long protracted 
 existence. . . . We are therefore naturally led to in 
 quire, whether there is any absolute limit to their exist 
 ence. If not destroyed by accident that is, by extrinsic 
 cause of whatever sort, do trees, like ourselves, even 
 tually perish from old age? The unavoidable indura 
 tion and incrustation of its cells and vessels, apart from 
 other causes, would put an early and sure limit to the life 
 of the tree, just as it does, in fact, terminate the existence 
 of the leaf, the proper emblem of mortality, which, al 
 though it generally only lives a single season, may be 
 said to truly die of old age. . . . The old and central 
 part of the trunk may, indeed, decay ; but this is of little 
 moment, so long as new layers are regularly formed at 
 the circumference. The tree survives, and it is difficult 
 to show that it is liable to death from old age, in any 
 proper sense of the term. . . . Though the wood in the 
 center of the trunks and larger branches, the product of 
 leaves and buds that have long ago disappeared, may die 
 and decay, yet, while new individuals are formed on the 
 surface with each successive crop of fresh buds, and 
 placed in as favorable communication with the soil and 
 air as their predecessors, the aggregate tree would appear 
 to have no necessary, no inherent limit to its existence. 
 . . . This doctrine of the indefinite longevity of trees 
 that they die from injury or disease, or, in one word, 
 from accidents, but never from old age, was first pro 
 pounded by the distinguished De Candolle, near the 
 commencement of the present century." 
 
 All of the remarkably aged specimens of 
 various species in all portions of the world 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 67 
 
 enumerated by Dr. Gray show some signs of 
 decrepitude or decay. Death was at work 
 somewhere in their center or circumference. 
 I am not able to assert that the sequoias are 
 the only exception, but they certainly are an 
 exception, to this rule. If they have any com 
 panions in other trees, they are very few. The 
 sequoia heartwood, the duramen, the oldest 
 wood in the tree, although in one sense dead, 
 is always the hardest and soundest wood in 
 the whole structure. This is a wonderful fact. 
 These sequoias are sustained by a combination 
 of the elements of soil, water, sunlight, and 
 sun-heat, not to speak at all of the sustenance 
 they, in common with all trees, derive from 
 the nourishing air. The quality and conti 
 nuity of this nourishment result in a height 
 and girth that are astonishing. But in this 
 respect the sequoias are not alone ; the sugar- 
 pine almost rivals them in stature, but falls 
 far below them in bulk and age. The sugar- 
 pines, too, are subject to many diseases; they 
 therefore decay and die, while the most dis 
 tinguishing and remarkable feature of the 
 sequoias is, that not one of them, as far as ob 
 served, is subject to any disease. It is possible 
 that this is partly due to the fact that they 
 have greater sap-distributing (that is, life- 
 
68 IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 
 
 giving) power than any other tree whatever. 
 On this subject, Marsh says: 
 
 " In trees affected by no discoverable cause of death, 
 decay begins at the topmost branches, which seem to 
 wither and die for want of nutriment. The mysterious 
 force by which the sap is carried to the roots, -to the 
 utmost twigs, cannot be conceived to be unlimited in 
 power, and it is probable that it differs in different 
 species ; so that, while it may suffice to raise- the fluid to 
 the height of five hundred feet in the sequoia, it may not 
 be able to carry it beyond one hundred and fifty feet in 
 the oak. . . . Whenever a tree attains to the limit 
 beyond which its circulating fluids cannot rise, we may 
 suppose that death begins." 
 
 That limit has never been reached by the 
 most gigantic sequoias now growing, and it is 
 quite probable that, because of the perfection 
 of their nourishment, they have equal perfec 
 tion in the distribution of their sap. For what 
 we know of the living sequoia we are almost 
 wholly indebted to Mr. John Muir, the only 
 man in the world who has made a prolonged 
 botanical, personal study of them in their 
 mountain homes. 
 
 Professor Asa Gray prophesied that the fos 
 sil remains of these trees would be found in 
 the Arctic Circle. Nordenskjold and others 
 subsequently found these remains in great 
 abundance there. Professor Gray says : 
 
 " The difference between the two big trees of California 
 is as noticeable as their resemblance and their isolation. 
 They are the survivors of a numerous family of wide dis- 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 69 
 
 tribution, which is first recognized in the cretaceous for 
 mation in several species, and which reached its maxi 
 mum in middle tertiary in fourteen recognizable species 
 or forms. Almost from the first, these separated into two 
 groups, one foreshadowing the coast, the other the Sierra, 
 redwood. The intermediate species are extinct, the two 
 extreme forms have survived. ... So the sequoias 
 are of ancient stock ; their ancestors and kindreds formed 
 a large part of the forest which flourished about the polar 
 regions, and which extended into the low latitudes of 
 Europe. . . . Libocedrus (the Incense Cedar), ap 
 pears to have passed its lot with the sequoias. Two 
 species, according to Heer, were with them in Spits 
 bergen. Libocedrus decurrens is one of the noblest asso 
 ciates of the present redwoods. But all the rest are in 
 the southern hemisphere two in the southern extremi 
 ties of the Andes, two in the South Sea Islands. Pines of 
 the same species, now found associated with the big trees, 
 were then their associates in Greenland." 
 
 How much is yet to be learned about these 
 trees may be understood from the little we can 
 say definitely about them in points herein 
 mentioned. Could the sequoias be protected 
 from fire, lightning, and storms, we would 
 probably find trees, not one to four thousand 
 years old, but of an age only to be reckoned 
 from the far distant past, when they were first 
 naturally sown in their last, present, and very 
 limited habitat. 
 
 In reference to the age of these trees, Pro 
 fessor Alfred Russel Wallace lately wrote: 
 
 "Very absurd statements are made to visitors as to the 
 antiquity of these trees, three or four thousand years 
 
70 IMMORTALITY OP THE BIG TREES. 
 
 being usually given as their age. This is founded on the 
 fact that, while many of the large sequoias are greatly 
 damaged by fire, the large pines and firs around them are 
 quite uninjured. As many of these pines are assumed to 
 be near a thousand years old, the epoch of the great 
 fire is supposed to be earlier still, and as the sequoias 
 have not outgrown the fire-scars in all that time, they are 
 supposed to have then arrived at their full growth. But 
 the simple explanation of these trees alone having suf 
 fered so much from fire, is that their bark is unusually 
 thick, dry, soft, and fibrous, and it thus catches fire more 
 easily and burns more readily and for a longer time thati 
 that of the other Coniferce. Forest fires occur continu 
 ally, and the visible damage done to these trees has prob 
 ably all occurred in the present century. Professor G. B. 
 Bradley, of the University of California, has carefully 
 counted the rings of annual growth on the stump of the 
 4 Pavilion Tree, and found them to be one thousand two 
 hundred and forty; and, after considering all that has 
 been alleged as to the uncertainty of this mode of esti 
 mating the age of a tree, he believes that, in the climate 
 of California, in the zone of altitude where these trees 
 grow, the seasons of growth and repose are so strongly 
 marked that the number of annual rin&s gives an ac 
 curate result. Other points that have been studied by 
 Professor Bradley are, the reasons why there are so few 
 young trees in the groves, and what is the cause of de 
 struction of the old trees. To take the last point first, 
 these noble trees seem to be singularly free from disease 
 or from decay due to old age. All the trees that have 
 been cut down are solid to the heart, and none of the 
 standing trees show any indications of natural decay. 
 The only apparent cause of their overthrow is the wind; 
 and by noting the direction of a large number of fallen 
 trees it is found that the great majority of them lie more 
 or less toward the south. This is not the direction of the 
 prevalent winds, but many of the tallest trees lean toward 
 the south, owing to the increased growth of the topmost 
 
IMMORTALITY OP THE BIG TREES. 71 
 
 branches toward the sun ; they are then acted upon by 
 violent gales, which loosen their roots, and whatever the 
 direction of the wind that finally overthrows them, they 
 fall in the direction of the over-balancing top weight. 
 
 "The young trees grow spiry and perfectly upright, 
 but as soon as they overtop the surrounding trees and 
 get the full influence of the sun and wind, the highest 
 branches grow out laterally, killing those beneath their 
 shade, and thus a dome-shaped top is produced. Taking 
 into consideration the health and vigor of the largest 
 trees, it seems probable that, under favorable conditions 
 of shelter from violent winds and from a number of trees 
 around them of nearly equal height, big trees might be 
 produced far surpassing in height and bulk any that have 
 yet been discovered." 
 
 If Professor Wallace, by personal examina 
 tion and study, had arrived at the above con 
 clusions, his knowledge and reputation would 
 be the strongest possible guarantee of their cor 
 rectness; but all he says was gathered from 
 Professor Bradley, an associate professor of 
 English in the University of California. Pro 
 fessor Bradley is not a botanist, and is neither 
 here nor elsewhere recognized as an authority 
 on the subject of the sequoias. How, indeed, 
 could he be, since he never made any pretense 
 of long personal study of either their age, 
 growth, homes, or surroundings. He counted 
 the rings of but one tree. 
 
 The sequoias are the coniferous tree kings of 
 the earth. They possess, too, a striking in 
 dividuality and nobility, more remarkable in 
 
72 IMMORTALITY OP THE BIG TREES. 
 
 some respects than any of their other features. 
 They are surpassed in size only by two varie 
 ties of the broad-leafed! eucalyptus species of 
 Australia. The Eucalyptus amygdalina has 
 been seen four hundred and eighty feet in 
 height, and with a circumference of over one 
 hundred feet three feet from the ground, and 
 of eighty feet fifty-six feet from the surface. 
 
 Since California was settled our sequoias 
 have been subject to constant destruction and 
 vandalism by fire and the axe. Even their in 
 fantile children were destroyed. If fire spared 
 them which it never does sheep, more 
 injurious to young trees than all other agents 
 of destruction combined, have for thirty years 
 been let loose in these magnificent and im 
 mortal groves, and each of them, whether the 
 young of one year or the king of four thousand 
 years, were alike doomed to destruction from 
 the various causes enumerated. 
 
 The war with these trees and their pine, 
 cedar, and fir companions is a war against 
 unsurpassed size, grace, strength, beauty, maj 
 esty, and comparatively everlasting age. The 
 United States Government, until lately, was 
 utterly unworthy of the heritage of them. 
 That ruin and desolation would follow their 
 loss was never denied ; and yet all that was 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 73 
 
 said and written on this subject, and all the 
 analogies cited from the experience of numer 
 ous countries where forest denudation has pro 
 duced the most widespread soil and climatic 
 desolation and disaster, fell until lately upon 
 unhearing official ears. But Mr. Noble, Secre 
 tary of the Interior under President Harrison s 
 administration, determined thoroughly to in 
 vestigate this forest question, in which he was 
 ably aided by the Sierra Club (of which Mr. 
 John Muir was President), and by all parties 
 interested in irrigation, which depends wholly 
 in this State on the rivers of the Sierra Nevada, 
 and they, in their turn, are nearly wholly de 
 pendent on forest preservation. Mr. Noble sent 
 two commissioners to the Sierra Nevada, whose 
 reports revealed almost innumerable cases of 
 bold-faced forest robbery under the dummy 
 system of perjury and land-grabbing. Their 
 report also showed the vital need of the im 
 mediate ejection of sheep and cattle from the 
 mountains in summer. Their owners for 
 thirty years have enjoyed free pasture there. 
 Here, as in Europe, it has been abundantly 
 shown that pasturage, especially of sheep, even 
 where it did not cause herders fires, was ut 
 terly destructive to the natural condition of the 
 always friable soil and to all shrubbery and 
 
74 IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 
 
 young trees. The shrubbery as much as the 
 large trees serves as a shade and protection for 
 snow. It is an efficient sunshade, detaining 
 the snow in its summer tendency of hasty re 
 turn to the freedom of water. 
 
 The commissioners referred to, recommend 
 ed that the size of the Yosemite reservation, 
 containing nearly one million acres, be not 
 reduced. A California Congressman (Mr. 
 Caminetti) has been laboring assiduously for 
 its reduction, on the ground that a number of 
 miners and settlers will be treated unjustly if 
 the reservation is preserved intact. Acting upon 
 thorough information thus personally obtained 
 by Mr. Noble s commissioners, and upon the 
 latter s strong recommendation, President Har 
 rison, by virtue of power conferred on him by 
 an act of Congress of 1893, reserved all of the 
 western slope of the Sierra Nevada range from 
 private entry, from the Yosemite National Park 
 on the north to the southern extremity of the 
 range, thus protecting the head-waters of all 
 the streams tributary to the great San Joaquin 
 Valley. This measure was by far the great 
 est boon conferred on California by President 
 Harrison s administration. But the work is 
 not complete. President Cleveland should 
 finish it by reserving the other half of the 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 75 
 
 Sierra Nevada, from the Yosemite Park to the 
 Oregon line. Mr. Muir thinks that all the 
 great forest belts of this coast should be under 
 the control of the General Government forever. 
 But neither Oregon nor Washington need irri 
 gation. 
 
 That portion of the forests of the Sierra still 
 left in Government ownership is so only be 
 cause of its inaccessibility. All timber lands 
 worth two dollars and a half an acre have been 
 appropriated, to an elevation of about six 
 thousand feet. Those higher up, and subject 
 still to reservation, will in many cases not re 
 main long so. Wagon-roads or railroads, by 
 making them accessible, will make them worth 
 stealing ; that being the word expressive of the 
 nearly universal means by which " Uncle Sam " 
 has been despoiled of the most magnificent 
 coniferous woods on the face of the earth. Too 
 soon all too soon they are destroyed or 
 stolen ; but they will never, alas, never return ! 
 Long-drawn centuries were required for their 
 growth, and as long-stretching years would be 
 needed for their replacement ; but the fact is, 
 that when once cut, or otherwise destroyed, 
 they will never be replaced. With their re 
 moval all the requisites of soil protection and 
 moisture will be changed. The Sierra, with 
 
76 IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 
 
 them, has the most glorious forests on the face 
 of the earth ; without them, as in all such cases 
 of denudation, blistered, bare rocks and soils, 
 torn by short-lived spring torrents, carrying 
 sand, rnud, rocks, and desolation to the valleys 
 below, will succeed. The completion of the 
 reservation of the w T hole Sierra Nevada north 
 ward cannot be too speedily included in Mr. 
 Harrison s reservation of the southern half. 
 This business of reserving forests is a case of 
 the most pressing, most vital necessity, not on be 
 half of California alone, but of all the other 
 arid States Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mex 
 ico, Idaho, and Colorado. But this last is a 
 subject upon which I cannot here enter, al 
 though it is a pressing and most mournful one. 
 California s case is the most important, only 
 because the trees to be saved are far the largest 
 and the finest of their species in the world. So 
 far, too, as Colorado is concerned, there is little 
 left for the Government to save. Railroad 
 builders, charcoal burners, cattlemen, sheep- 
 herders, and lumbermen have already swept 
 off nearly all of the comparatively small and 
 sparsely growing forests of that State. 
 
 Another persistent effort is just now being 
 made to reduce the size of the Yosemite timber 
 reservation described, on the plea that honest 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE BIG TREES. 77 
 
 settlers rights will suffer ; that there is irriga 
 ble land on some portions of the tract, and 
 that there are also mineral lands on it. Let 
 the settlers, if there are any honest ones there, 
 be recompensed, but under no circumstances 
 should the reserve be reduced. Any change 
 in it, no matter how disguised, means its re 
 opening to timber-grabbers, and the destruc 
 tion of its forests. 
 
Wealth and Poverty of the 
 Chicago Exposition. 
 
 ~*~ ; ^V v ^X. 
 
 ra, -.XV 
 
 TJHI7EE ;iTY)} 
 ^, 
 
 03T 
 

 
 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF THE 
 CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 
 
 THE World s Fair at Chicago was a greater 
 Exposition than that last held at Paris, as 
 the Paris Exposition was greater than the pre 
 ceding one at Philadelphia. Each of these 
 Expositions, indeed, is greater necessarily 
 greater than its predecessor, simply because 
 each is carrying more time, and with more time 
 more advance in the progressive, as compared 
 with the stationary arts. Of the latter, I 
 especially mean those arts which have mental 
 expression only, poetry and the drama, and 
 by the progressive arts, those which demand 
 both mental invention and physical expression 
 sculpture, architecture, painting, music, and 
 mechanics. Men s minds have not ceased to 
 labor in the greatest of the arts first named 
 -that is, in poetry and the drama, and 
 work has been performed in both within the 
 last half century which is worthy of both 
 deep study and of high praise ; yet small 
 approach to equaling, much less surpassing, 
 the poetry or drama of past ages can now 
 be registered. Indeed, Shakespeare, Homer, 
 ^Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, 
 
82 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 Virgil and Horace, Dante and Milton, and 
 to some minds Goethe and Schiller, Moliere 
 and Racine also, as poets and dramatists, 
 tragic or comic, and as moralists, philosophers, 
 naturalists, sages and wits, have so exhausted 
 human admiration, and so closely attained to 
 perfection, that there seems little real foothold 
 left for their successors. However admirable 
 the latter may have been, and however much 
 read or praised their works may be, it is 
 still generally felt, after the expression of 
 all praise, that they are hardly in the list 
 with the " poets paramount " who so long ago 
 preceded them. As Hazlitt has said: "The 
 niches are occupied ; the tables are full." 
 
 The world is so thoroughly explored, that, 
 omitting science, probably nearly all of what, 
 in a strictly literary sense, is known as learn 
 ing has been revealed. The shackles have 
 for ages been taken from the human mind, 
 and legal obstacles withdrawn from all human 
 effort. We therefore can hardly imagine 
 another age like the golden one of Greece, 
 or the mental triumphs, in a book sense, of 
 that of Elizabeth. The conviction is some 
 what similar, but not nearly so strong, in 
 regard to sculpture, architecture, and painting. 
 Few believe it possible that a mind and age- 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 83 
 
 encircling genius like Shakespeare can again 
 appear, unless by some world-transforming 
 scientific discovery, or new mental revolution 
 far surpassing anything now likely to occur. 
 Puck s promise of putting a girdle around the 
 earth in forty minutes then apparently as 
 light, airy, and fabulous as the play in which 
 it occurs has long ago been more than 
 realized; and even its comparative perform 
 ance, as, a fact of human transportation, either 
 in the air or through the earth, would not now 
 in some respects be as wonderful as was the 
 defeat of the Persians, the birth of a new sense 
 of Hellenic nationality, and the opening up of 
 the Old World to observation and increased 
 colonization by the Greeks, or the discoveries 
 of the treasures of the old learning, the break 
 ing up of ecclesiasticism, the substitution of 
 the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of 
 astronomy, and the discovery of a new world, 
 were to the Continent and England of the time 
 of Elizabeth. In sculpture and architecture, 
 Egypt, originally, had great influence upon 
 Greece; and Italy, in learning, had a similar 
 influence upon England. 
 
 Probably no nation can experience more 
 than one such climacteric as that which the 
 Greece of Pericles, the Italy of Lorenzo, and 
 
84 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 the England of Elizabeth experienced. The 
 events which created those periods were world- 
 transforming in their importance. They af 
 fected every human interest, mental and 
 physical. Beside these, the three most mem 
 orable epochs in the world s history, the late 
 terrible struggle which resulted in the unifi 
 cation of Germany, or the War of the Rebel 
 lion, which first solidly cemented the Great 
 Republic, was a comparatively unimportant 
 event. In each of these cases the struggle and 
 the results were of tremendous importance; 
 but each was but a great episode, and not an 
 epoch, in the history of the nation passing 
 through it. Each was a physical and national, 
 only partially mental, and not at all a world- 
 embracing, new birth. In proof of this, 
 attention may be called to the fact that the 
 literature of neither nation was profoundly 
 affected, and therefore was not transformed 
 by these events. 
 
 The writer does not think of asserting that 
 the nineteenth century has been barren of 
 great poets and prose writers. The fact, 
 indeed, is that the general contributions to 
 literature of the past half-century have never 
 been surpassed, in either quantity or quality. 
 Whatever poverty the nineteenth century has 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 85 
 
 exhibited in poetry is relative only. That is, 
 it is poor only when compared to the works 
 of the few poets the concentrated geniuses 
 of all the ages already named. But leaving 
 these, and these only, aside, Tennyson s " In 
 Memoriam" and "Princess," and Longfellow s 
 u Evangeline" and "Keramos," will bear com 
 parison with the works of any other poets of 
 any other age whatever. Whittier s " Snow 
 Bound," not equal to Gray s " Elegy" or Burns 
 " Cotter s Saturday Night," is still worthy, as 
 simple annals of the New England poor at 
 their hospitable firesides, to be placed beside 
 those great pastorals, both in a poetical and 
 heart-touching sense. Macaulay, Motley, and 
 Fiske, as philosophic, graphic, and brilliant 
 writers of history, have seldom been surpassed 
 in any age; while for double gifts as an es 
 sayist, De Quincey has never been equaled. 
 As a writer of spiritualized English of the most 
 weird and heart-stirring power, he is seen at 
 his best in his " Confessions of an Opium Eat 
 er." Brilliant with high color as his word- 
 painting there is, it never oversteps good taste 
 or chastity of description. Common -sense 
 guides his pen, even when he describes opium 
 dreams and hallucinations. His language, 
 though like his dreams gorgeous, is never 
 
86 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 more extravagant than an attempt at full 
 description necessitates; while, on the other 
 hand, for the qualities of gentle humor, deli 
 cate fancy, and the most subtle wit, he is seen 
 at his best in " Murder as a Fine Art." The 
 best touches of Charles Lamb and Washing 
 ton Irving are not equal to that essay of De 
 Quincey s. 
 
 Other ages, too, cannot, because natural 
 science is so recent, pretend to furnish such 
 graceful prose-writing, illustrating scientific 
 truth, as that of Tyndall and Huxley. Eng 
 lish is there exhibited in a dual capacity, at 
 its best in direct force, power and scientific 
 accuracy, with imagery and description of the 
 most appropriate poetic beauty and felicity. 
 If the works of Darwin, Wallace, Agassiz, and 
 Draper are referred to last, it is not because 
 they are least. These naturalists have made 
 the results of their study of outdoor nature 
 as intensely interesting as the most brillant 
 novel, sober fact being illuminated with the 
 most wonderful scientific theoretical general 
 izations, which, but that they are facts, would 
 be relegated to the airy regions of fancy. 
 The poor earthworm, on which we had pre 
 viously heedlessly trampled, was shown by 
 Darwin almost to deserve deification, for its 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 87 
 
 universal and almost miraculous service to 
 agriculture. 
 
 If, therefore, the student who has confined 
 himself to and made the best poetical and 
 prose writers of the nineteenth century his 
 own, cannot, as he must not, boast that he has 
 drunk at the deepest well-springs, especially 
 of poetic thought, he can at least boast (the 
 limits before prescribed being still prominently 
 remembered), of having indulged in not less 
 fine, while more varied, intellectual nourish 
 ment than any age of the world has hitherto 
 been capable of providing. 
 
 When we take what comes next to author 
 ship, the arts that address themselves to both 
 the mental and physical eye, we are, it is true, 
 in a still very lofty, but yet a lower, world. 
 Therefore, it is still believed to be possible at 
 least, that such sculptors and architects as 
 the unknown Egyptian sculptors of Abou 
 Simel, the architects of Karnak, or such Greek 
 sculptors or architects as Phidias, Praxiteles, 
 Ictinus, and Lysippus; such Italian sculp 
 tors as Brunelleschi, Bramante, Sansovino, 
 Michel Angelo, Omodeo, and Lombardi ; such 
 painters as Michel Angelo, Raphael, Leonardo 
 da Vinci, Correggio, Fra Angelico, Perugino, 
 Titian, Salvator Rosa, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, 
 
00 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 and Eubens; the Gothic architecture of the 
 cathedral of Amiens, Eheims, Salisbury, and 
 Cologne, or the Romanesque Gothic of Milan, 
 may all yet be surpassed. There has not, it 
 is true, since those artists days been any very 
 hopeful sign that this will occur; but it is not 
 regarded, as it is in the case of the work of the 
 poets and dramatists paramount, as almost im 
 possible. Therefore, whatever was exhibited 
 at the Chicago Exposition the great poets 
 works, necessarily, not being on exhibition 
 there for study in architecture, sculpture, 
 and painting, were but copies in some shape of 
 the work of the giants of the olden days, the 
 works of men who have nestled in their brains 
 and therefrom borrowed their ideas. The 
 value of all latter-day work, indeed, is largely 
 measured by its success in keeping the great 
 masters in mind. All later laborers, not ex 
 cepting the greatest of them (in sculpture), 
 Thorwaldsen and Canova, are but copyists, 
 and not improvements on those who preceded 
 them. The giant in the plastic arts who will 
 in genius and execution surpass the ultimate 
 attainments of the old masters, may be pos 
 sible, but he has not yet appeared, nor is he 
 very sanguinely looked for. In his " Short 
 History of Art," Turner asserts that from the 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 89 
 
 eastern frieze of the Parthenon more is to be 
 learnt of the true principles of art than from 
 all the books that have ever been written. 
 Ruskin, quoted and endorsed by Symonds, 
 says: " This is the simple test, then, of a per 
 fect school that it has represented the hu 
 man form so that it is impossible to conceive 
 of its being better done. And that, I repeat, 
 has been accomplished twice only once in 
 Athens, and once in Florence." 
 
 On this subject, W. J. Stillman, the art 
 critic, says: 
 
 " No one can admit that the human intellect is weaker 
 than it was five or twenty centuries ago ; but it is cer 
 tain that if we take the pains to study what was done 
 five centuries ago in painting, or twenty centuries ago 
 in sculpture, and compare it with the best work of 
 to-day, we shall find the latter trivial and prentice 
 work compared with the ordinary work of men whose 
 names are lost in the lustre of a school. The distinction 
 is not one of mental caliber for now and then we see 
 arise an individual of as strong and marked an artistic 
 mind as any but the two or three supreme men of the 
 past ; but their best work (and none are more willing 
 than they to admit it) is but amateurs accomplishment 
 beside the certainty and comprehensiveness, both in 
 vision and execution, of even minor masters of the 
 great time. . . . There is not one living painter who 
 can paint a portrait as a Venetian painter of A. D. 1550 
 would have done it; only one, in my knowledge, who 
 has the same feeling for it. If we go to the work of wider 
 range, the Campo Santo of Pisa, the Stanze, the Sistine 
 Chapel, the distance becomes an abyss; the simplest 
 
90 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 fragment of a Greek statue of B. c. 450 shows us that 
 the best sculpture of this century, even the French, is 
 only a happy child-work, not even to be put in sight of 
 Donatello or Michel Angelo. 
 
 For these reasons, in these directions, the 
 Chicago Exposition did not nearly equal the 
 first London Exhibition of 1851. But in other 
 respects the late Exposition surpassed all of 
 its predecessors. This advance is mostly in 
 what we may term the utilitarian arts, and in 
 practical science, towards perfection in which 
 the most of the genius of the nineteenth cen 
 tury has been and is still running, since the 
 great authors of the past so triumphed that it 
 is felt no present effort can equal, much less 
 surpass, its achievements. The triumphs of the 
 world now are mostly in the mechanical arts; 
 and poetry we say, poetry of a very high 
 character is being wrought in and expressed 
 by them. This assertion may at first sight be 
 doubted ; but a practically unanimous verdict 
 for it can be obtained, we think, by calling at 
 tention to a few facts. Let us take one of the 
 first locomotives, the "Rocket" of Stephen- 
 son, first run on rails in England in 1830. 
 That primitive machine is simply, in general 
 outline and construction, a rough engine and 
 boiler, stuck rudely on boards and wheels. To 
 the mental and physical eye of even the person 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 91 
 
 most ignorant of mechanics, it is an utterly 
 clumsy and inefficient machine ; how much 
 more so, therefore, to the educated mechanic. 
 Place it beside a locomotive of to-day, and the 
 difference in power and speed of the two ma 
 chines is not greater than their difference in 
 appearance. The difference is as great as that 
 between a child s comical drawing of the 
 human figure and a like sketch by a skilled 
 artist. Yet Stephenson s rough-looking boiler 
 on boards and rude wheels was the parent of 
 the present locomotive. The change is so vast, 
 however, in the development of grace, beauty, 
 strength, compactness of build, and intense 
 concentrated propelling energy, as to be really 
 a new creation. In these points, indeed, as a 
 world-transforming means of land transporta 
 tion, that small vehicle, the English locomo 
 tive, has no peer. The American locomotive 
 is equally powerful, but it is not so small, 
 simple, or compact. When we compare the 
 progress thus made, we cannot help seeing 
 that beauty, strength, concentration of power, 
 ease of motion, and therefore grace, have been 
 continuous. Harmony in the highest me 
 chanical expression has consequently elicited 
 poetry from this utilitarian means of land 
 transportation. 
 
92 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 Of the English locomotive Ruskin says : " I 
 cannot express the amazed awe, the crushed 
 humility with which I sometimes watch a 
 locomotive take its breath at a railway station, 
 and think what work there is in its bars and 
 wheels, and what manner of men they must be 
 who dig brown ironstone out of the ground 
 and forge it into that. What assemblage of 
 accurate and mighty faculties in them, . . . 
 infinitely complex anatomy of active steel, 
 compared with which the skeleton of a living 
 creature would seem to a careless observer 
 clumsy and vile." This from Ruskin, who 
 frequently berated steam, smoke, and factories 
 as blots on the landscape, insisting that water- 
 power factories only should be tolerated. 
 
 And yet, true as this illustration is in the 
 case of the locomotive, moving over hill and 
 valley at lightning speed, it does not afford 
 anything like as fine an illustration of mechan 
 ical art progress, moving forward in physical 
 harmony and poetry, as it increases in size, 
 power, concentration, usefulness, and speed, as 
 the ocean steamship offers. The rigid rail 
 affords little opportunity for display of grace 
 and ease of motion, compared to the undula- 
 tory freedom of movement possible in water. 
 The Cunard Steamship Company had on exhi- 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 93 
 
 bition at Chicago a complete and beautiful 
 model of the first steamship of the line, the 
 Britannia, which crossed the Atlantic in 1840, 
 in fourteen days and eight hours, with steam 
 and sail power. She was of eleven hundred 
 and fifty-four tons, and seven hundred and 
 forty horse-power. Her cargo capacity was 
 two hundred and twenty-five tons. She had 
 a length of two hundred and seven feet, a 
 breadth of beam of thirty-four and a third 
 feet, and a depth of twenty - four and a third 
 feet. The company had also models of the 
 other side-wheelers in use, until they were suc 
 ceeded by propellers. Beside these models, is 
 that of the latest triumph of marine engineer 
 ing, the mammoth Campania, of twelve thou 
 sand nine hundred and fifty tons burden, and 
 thirty thousand horse-power. Her length is 
 six hundred and twenty feet, her breadth of 
 beam sixty-five and a quarter feet, and depth 
 of hold forty -three feet. Looking at these 
 various steps of progress in marine architec 
 ture, the most ignorant can see at a glance, 
 that the increased power, size, speed, carrying 
 capacity, and passenger comfort of the Cam 
 pania do not more surpass the Britannia than 
 the grace, beauty of lines, and general appear 
 ance of the former vessel do those of the lat- 
 
94 WEALTH AND POVERTY , 
 
 ter. The tendency evidently has been, and is, 
 to greater length, less breadth of beam and 
 depth of hull, to rounded and keelless bottoms 
 in other words, to greater litheness, more 
 fast-swimming, fish-like shape, and therefore 
 to much greater avoidance of contest with 
 water and wave resistance. Nor can it be 
 claimed that these changes resulted in less 
 strength, safety in sea-going qualities, or more 
 stomach discomfort from rolling and pitching. 
 Anything like a full appreciation of vessels 
 like the Campania and Paris can not be had 
 unless a few facts are recited : The very largest 
 land engines in factories are only of about 
 two thousand horse -power, and the largest 
 locomotives have only two hundred to three 
 hundred; the Campania is of thirty thousand 
 and the Paris of twenty thousand horse-power. 
 No one knows what great mechanical energy 
 is who has not been in the engine-rooms of 
 these vessels while under full headway. The 
 power and rapidity of motion of the engines 
 of the Paris can only be expressed by saying 
 that they are illustrations of tremendous 
 mechanical fury in action; and the wonder, 
 after thus seeing them, is not that the vessel 
 runs so fast, but that she does riot run much 
 faster. This is accounted for by air, wind, 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 95 
 
 and water resistance. Yet lying-to in even 
 a North Atlantic winter tempest is now prac 
 tically out of date. These vessels, and those 
 of the other crack lines also, can uninterrupt 
 edly stride over the most mountainous seas, 
 defy the fury of the wildest head gales, and 
 yet still speed on at the rate of three hundred 
 and fifty to four hundred miles a day their 
 full rate of speed being five hundred to five 
 hundred and fifty miles. Their machinery 
 seems powerful enough almost to turn the 
 world, if ever it should grow tired of revolv 
 ing on its axis. The fires in the boilers seem 
 large and numerous enough to form a Tophet, 
 in point of size and heat. The Campania has 
 one hundred and two furnaces. These are 
 probably the largest fires ever kindled by man 
 on the earth, and the wide-throated blasts of 
 draught let in on them keep them up to a rage 
 of white heat at all times. 
 
 The Cramps of Philadelphia have just fin 
 ished the first of two steamships for the Ameri 
 can line. These vessels will, in speed at least, 
 it is promised, surpass the Campania, Lucania, 
 and Paris. The Campania has forty times the 
 power of the Britannia, but uses only five times 
 the fuel. Either the Campania or Paris can 
 carry as many passengers on one trip as the 
 
 
96 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 first four ships of the Canard line could have 
 carried in a year. 
 
 Steamships of the type of the Campania of 
 the Cunard line, and the Paris of the Inman 
 line, and some of the vessels built by the 
 Cramps of Philadelphia, are such monsters 
 in size, power, and carrying capacity, and 
 yet such perfect models of speed, grace, and 
 beauty, because of their harmony of line s, 
 length of hulls, and seabird ease of sitting 
 the water, that the most stolid beholder would 
 at once admit that these magnificent vessels 
 " which o er green Neptune s back of ships 
 make cities " are literally epic poems on the 
 water poems which their architects built for 
 utility, but which have almost greater grace 
 and beauty than utility. And the great ma 
 rine architect could not avoid, consciously or 
 unconsciously, thus running in lines of grace, 
 although his most ardent intent was increased 
 power, carrying capacity, strength, and speed. 
 Progress in these great utilitarian means of 
 land and ocean transport has all been toward 
 vastly greater ease of motion, beauty, and 
 harmony, and therefore grace and poetry 
 a poetry visible and perfectly appreciable, as 
 I have said, to even the uneducated eye. 
 The same facts will be found in all of our 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 97 
 
 factories perhaps not so plainly visible, be 
 cause the machinery in them is not detached 
 and moving in the same graceful, enclosing 
 vehicles as a locomotive on land or a steam 
 ship in the water. 
 
 The present saving in fuel is most notable, 
 too. The old steamships consumed five pounds 
 of coal per horse-power per hour; the new 
 marine racers but one and a half pounds. In 
 the old engines, steam was used but once; now 
 it does duty three to four times, by triple or 
 quadruple expansion engines. Instead of the 
 old pressure of thirty pounds, one hundred 
 and fifty to one hundred and eighty pounds 
 are used; steel instead of iron boilers make 
 this great pressure consistent with safety. The 
 machinery and boilers are all proportionately 
 lighter and much less complicated. 
 
 Now, after the relation of these facts of me 
 chanical art progress, and the assertion, which 
 will not be disputed, that the world has not 
 recently achieved such triumphs in strictly 
 literary work, or in sculpture, architecture, and 
 painting as it did in past ages, it is time to 
 ask if it must in the future content itself with 
 the development of mechanical grace with 
 utility with poetry and power in the loco 
 motive and the steamship, in the factory and 
 
98 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 in the field, rather than the very highest tri 
 umphs that have ever been recorded in poetry, 
 painting, sculpture, or architecture? We an 
 swer, that this seems probable, and not only 
 probable, but reasonable, if the amelioration 
 of the condition of the world s workers is to 
 continue. The Golden Age is still far off; yet 
 the present age is a very forward one com 
 pared with the past. The steamship and 
 locomotive, either originally or in their im 
 provement, have helped the world forward 
 immensely. They have not wholly or nearly 
 abolished poverty. That is true, indeed ; yet 
 the age, with them, has taken many steps in 
 that direction. The world has improved very 
 much indeed within the last half century. 
 Mechanical invention has been the instrument 
 and means of an exceedingly large proportion 
 of this advance. Without rapid transporta 
 tion, little progress could be made in the 
 amelioration of the condition of the poor. 
 Bad as the condition of the small farmer or 
 agricultural laborer may now be, in conse 
 quence of the vastly increased world competi 
 tion caused by the far greater rapidity of ocean 
 and land transportation, neither of them is 
 anything like as badly off as he was fifty 
 years ago. In other words, let the list of com- 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 99 
 
 plaints against the present age be ever so long 
 and weighty, no one dreams that they could 
 be lessened by a return to the comparatively 
 near past. Very few European laborers now 
 work for six or eight cents a day, while that 
 sum was a common rate of wages everywhere 
 half a century ago. No Scotch peasant has 
 now the hard time that Burns and his father 
 experienced in scraping together the barest 
 necessities of life as small farmers. India has 
 been saved from periodical and unavoidable 
 seasons of famine, not by philanthropy so 
 much as by railroad lines. Without the latter 
 the strongest philanthropy or the most liberal 
 charity could not aid, because it could not in 
 time reach the suffering. The Yellow River 
 and its overflow are still China s sorrow, by 
 creating periodical famines, because Chinese 
 stolidity and unprogressiveness will not toler 
 ate railroads. 
 
 In the comparative infancy of railroads, 
 in 1856, Robert Stephenson asserted that the 
 railroads of Great Britain then effected a 
 direct annual saving of forty million pounds 
 sterling (two hundred millions of dollars). 
 This sum, he said, exceeded by about fifty per 
 cent, the interest on the National debt. The 
 present railroads of that country cost over 
 
100 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 nine hundred millions of pounds sterling, or 
 say four billion five hundred million dol- 
 lars. If all railroads were obliterated in the 
 United States, the property, personal and 
 landed, of the whole country would be re 
 duced at once one-half, if not two-thirds. 
 And yet steam is but an inefficient indus 
 trial tool. About eighty-five per cent, of 
 the heat of coal is lost in turning it into 
 working energy in the steam-engine. But 
 before this loss is modified or wholly cor 
 rected, the world, by electricity or some other 
 mode of creating power, will probably have 
 advanced in mechanics to a higher, faster, 
 and far more effective agent than steam power 
 by land and sea. Coal, of course, will still be 
 needed in the production of electrical power. 
 
 The continued amelioration of the sufferings 
 and hardships of the common people of the 
 world can confidently be looked for from the 
 continued progress of the mechanical arts. 
 They have been and will continue in a much 
 higher degree to be expressions of and ministers 
 to utility, philanthropy and poetry. Look, for 
 instance, at the progress made through gang 
 and steam plows, reapers, and harvesters. The 
 man who now sits comfortably driving a gang 
 plow seems out more for a pleasant day s drive 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 101 
 
 and airing than a day s hard work, and the 
 same is measurably true of the changed modes 
 of reaping and threshing. The worst hand 
 drudgery of plowing, reaping, and threshing 
 has passed away, on the large farms of the 
 United States at least. Thirty steam thresh 
 ers only were required to prepare for mar 
 ket the wheat crop of two counties in Ohio, 
 which would otherwise have required the labor 
 of forty thousand men. These are the lines 
 in which the genius of the world is running; 
 these the tablets on which it is recording both 
 its material and mental expression and pro 
 gress, and inscribing its poetry also. This is 
 the " New Learning " of Bacon, in utilitarian 
 shape, but still in unquestioned wisdom and 
 poetic expression. Perhaps some scholar in 
 his closet, classicist in his study, or worshiper 
 of sculpture, architecture, and painting will 
 mourn and lament over all of this. But, as 
 they have been the very persons who most 
 strongly and continuously iterated and reiter 
 ated the truth upon our remembrance, that 
 these masters of the past cannot possibly be 
 equaled, and, as a rule, but faintly imitated, in 
 the present, perhaps they are partially to 
 blame for turning a portion of the current of 
 the world s genius to fields in which it has 
 
102 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 achieved incomparable triumphs triumphs, 
 too, in which progress is certain to continue 
 to be still more rapid and assured. "What, 
 then," said Macaulay, in his essay on Bacon, 
 "was the end which Bacon proposed to him 
 self? It was, to use his own emphatic ex 
 pression, fruit. It was the multiplying of 
 human enjoyments and the mitigation of- 
 human suffering. It was the relief of man s 
 estate." No Exposition in the world ever 
 exhibited such an array of machines and 
 appliances for the relief of humanity and the 
 mitigation of prostrating drudgery, and there 
 fore for "the relief of man s estate," as that 
 at Chicago. It pointed, too, to a day, not far 
 distant, when machinery will still more effec 
 tually, and far more cheaply, lighten the bur 
 dens of humanity, and transport man by land 
 and sea, and probably through the air, with 
 far greater rapidity. The words of Macaulay 
 inscribed over the Transportation Building 
 at Chicago may be quoted, illustrative of the 
 truths we have been here recording : " Of all 
 inventions, the alphabet and printing-press 
 alone excepted, those which have served to 
 abridge distance have been most useful to 
 civilization." The triumphs of electricity will 
 almost certainly far surpass those of steam. 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 103 
 
 it is the coining giant of greater speed and 
 power. By it steam will be vanquished, 
 though not abolished, for it is needed to pro 
 duce electricity. And since human effort 
 could not compete successfully with past art 
 and genius, it was very natural that it should 
 strike for lines in which it could be regnant, 
 and where the amelioration of the condition 
 of humanity will attain its chief triumphs. 
 Let not the fact be forgotten either, that 
 with great mechanical there has also been 
 vast mental progress. This combination has 
 been so great, and the union so fruitful, that 
 the combined product renders this the greatest 
 mental and material age the world has ever 
 seen. 
 
 Note, too, that a higher science than that 
 embraced in the very highest branches of 
 mechanical art has been directly, or indirectly, 
 constantly laboring for, and aiding, that art 
 on all sides. We allude to natural philosophy 
 and the pure science connected therewith. 
 The most notable laborers in England in this 
 field have been Faraday, Joule, Thomson, 
 Huxley, and Tyndall, with Draper and Edison 
 in America. These great investigators in the 
 practical sciences, especially in the departments 
 of chemistry and electricity, have made dis- 
 
104 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 coveries as ethereal and poetical as anything 
 in the Midsummer Night s Dream or the Tem 
 pest, while at the same time founded, as the 
 magnificent "airy nothings" of these works 
 are not, on immovable pillars of solid fact. 
 Michael Faraday was one of the best repre 
 sentatives of these scientists. Their hands 
 and experiments were on the earth, but their, 
 thoughts and imaginations ranged almost to 
 heaven. It is no exaggeration to say that 
 even Shakespeare himself would have been 
 honored by Faraday s company. Certainly, 
 Faraday soared to and labored in as high a 
 heaven of invention. To the scientist of the 
 nineteenth century, as to the poets of all cen 
 turies, nature is but the sensible expression of 
 the spiritual. His crucibles, machines, and 
 tools may seem very mechanical and coarse 
 instruments of research; but through them, 
 aided and elevated by the highest powers of 
 the imagination, he has revealed truths on 
 which the mind finds a repose productive of 
 the greatest intellectual joy and content. 
 When we perceive and admit this, then "all 
 dregs and sediments," as Symonds says, in 
 another sense, " of the analytical, mechanical 
 alembic sink to the bottom, leaving a clear, 
 crystalline elixir of the spirit." The men who 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 105 
 
 have soared the highest in the scientific sky, 
 too, have not worked for gain. They had 
 their pay in their work a wealth that the 
 world knows not of, in their consultations 
 with nature, and their joy in the laurels from 
 the temple of industrial peace with which 
 their brows were crowned. 
 
 After long labor in the mysterious field of 
 the Correlation of the Forces, Faraday said : " I 
 have long held an opinion, almost amounting 
 to conviction, in common, I believe, with 
 many other lovers of natural knowledge, that 
 the various forms under which the forces of 
 matter are made manifest have one common 
 origin, or, in other words, are so directly 
 related and mutually dependent that they 
 are convertible, as it were, one into another, 
 and possess equivalents of power in their 
 action." 
 
 Commenting on this theory, Tyndall says: 
 "Faraday s difficulty in dealing with these 
 conceptions was at bottom the same as that of 
 Newton that he was, in fact, trying to over 
 leap this difficulty, and with it probably the 
 limits prescribed to the intellect itself." Yet, 
 Tyndall adds : " In his search for the unity of 
 all force, he made all his great discoveries. 
 The discovery of magneto-electricity is the 
 
106 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 greatest experimental result ever obtained by 
 an investigator." In speaking of the import 
 ance and usefulness of the metals, Faraday 
 said that "refined civilization would be im 
 possible without them." He also said that 
 "the ancients deified them for a far more re 
 stricted use." What a pleasure it is to remem 
 ber that the assertion was justly made of this 
 great physicist "that his life was a struggle 
 always to say that which he thought was true, 
 and to do that which he thought was kind." 
 It was said by Sir David Brewster of Sir Isaac 
 Newton s " Principia," that it was a work that 
 might be carried to other worlds, and find its 
 truths there as solid and acceptable as on this 
 speck of earth. Much of Faraday s work was 
 of a like character. 
 
 The nineteenth century, therefore, with such 
 explorers and conquerors in the highest in 
 tellectual realms of physical truth the fruit 
 of their labors nearly all consisting of mechan 
 ical art triumphs is not poor, but rich be 
 yond computation. Those men, though labor 
 ers in a different field, were justly comparable 
 to the greatest poets, architects, sculptors and 
 painters the world has ever seen. 
 
 Considered from a practical and poetical 
 point of view, there never was such an 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 107 
 
 Exposition as that of Chicago. Every civil 
 ized country placed there its masterpieces of 
 mechanical art progress; and if we can im 
 agine the goddess of civilization and human 
 ity presiding there, she must have trium 
 phantly exclaimed, as she looked over the 
 miraculous machines: " These are my jewels." 
 And there is another and more poetical 
 side to these utilitarian Expositions. Emer 
 son expressed it. He said that the real ship 
 is the mind of the ship-builder. Therefore, 
 although expressed in material ships, locomo 
 tives, and gigantic or microscopic machines, 
 to the student by far the most wonderful 
 sights revealed in that Exposition were the 
 expressions of the minds of the inventors, 
 and the physicists, their leaders and allies; and, 
 therefore, those best capable of appreciating 
 them were there as much alone with the mind 
 as with Shakespeare in Hamlet, Macbeth, or 
 the Tempest, with Michel Angelo in the Sis- 
 tine Chapel or in the dome of St. Peter s. 
 Imagination, therefore, still rules the world. 
 Of all the children of genius, indeed, though 
 gifted with very different mental gifts and 
 expressions, it may be said, quoting the 
 Psalmist, " I have said ye are gods, and all 
 of you children of the Most High." In many 
 
108 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 cases, too, as great mental agony, suffering, 
 isolation, and want of world appreciation 
 would be revealed, if the history of all these 
 machines and their progress could be read, 
 as Shakespeare, Dante, and Michel Angelo 
 endured. Every great genius, indeed, in any 
 department of supreme human effort, is at 
 some period, and frequently all his life, " a 
 man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," 
 but his joy cometh in the morning of success; 
 and the greatest and best of these men, but 
 for the sustenance of ideas, could not have 
 worked, endured and triumphed as they 
 did. If the Chicago Exposition, therefore, 
 was comparatively poor in what heretofore 
 has been called the "fine" arts, it was rich 
 beyond expression in those which are both 
 utilitarian and ideal, in useful and demo 
 cratic blessings, the fruits of which all the 
 sons and daughters of men may in some 
 sort largely share. Is not, indeed, the miti 
 gation of human loads and labor the high 
 est poetry; the harnessing of the forces of 
 nature to human use, progress in the great 
 est utility and divine harmony? Kepler s 
 was a mind comparable perhaps only to 
 Shakespeare s, in the elevation of the range 
 of its imaginative element. If restored to 
 
OF THE CHICAGO EXPOSITION. 109 
 
 this life, that "new Prometheus and heaven- 
 sealer," as he was called, would have been an 
 enraptured visitor at Chicago, and doubt 
 less would cheerfully have admitted that his 
 work on Celestial Mechanics ("Harmonies of 
 the World") might well be linked with ter 
 restrial harmonies, as illustrated by the tiny 
 or Titanic mechanical triumphs there on ex 
 hibition, of which triumphs, too, this country 
 can justly claim the largest share. 
 
 
MAR 11 1969 
 
 MAY 1 197G 
 
 DATE 
 
 20771-1, 22 
 
YB 13514 
 
 
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