twigs of even some of our American species; the cork elm, for
instance. The hawthorn, the cedar, and the pine and the oak
especially, are most naturally treated. These are Shakespeare's
familiar trees. The cedar of Shakespeare is the cedar of Lebanon,
commonly planted throughout Europe since the time of the Crusades.
Shakespeare had probably seen specimens in England. He uses it as the
type of all that is great and fine. One author thinks he copies
Ezekiel, chapter xxxi. The pine was beside him all the while. He knew
the secret of the pine knot, and well describes it (Troilus and
Cressida, i, 3):
"... checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest reared,
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Deflect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth."
Any one who has ever examined the case, or even one who has handled
knotty lumber, has seen the wood fiber run around the persistent base
of some dead limb, and can appreciate these lines.
All these quotations show that Shakespeare used his own eyes and used
them well. He saw the real distinctions of things, the hoariness on
the willow leaf. He found character in the oak as in the king, and
beauty in both. In many of his notices of natural objects, however,
the poet is not the original observer. He often uses current opinions,
fancies, dreams, for these also were the realities in his day, quite
as much sometimes as oaks and forests. There is concerning plants a
sort of orthodox mythology, and thousands of years have sometimes
contributed to the reputation born by a single species. A curious
illustration is found in what Shakespeare has to say about the
mandrake (Antony and Cleopatra, i, 5):
"Give me to drink mandragora.
Why, madam?
That I might sleep out this great gap of time."
Othello, iii, 3:
"Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."
Juliet, reflecting on her proposed entombment in the dark grave of the
Capulets, exclaims (Romeo and Juliet, iv, 3):
"Alack, alack! is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrake's torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:
Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environèd with all these hideous fears?"
The mandrake _Atropa officinalis_ belongs to the _Solanaceæ_, and,
like others of the family, has narcotic properties. This was doubtless
known to Shakespeare, as in the passage cited he compares the mandrake
with the poppy. The groaning and shrieking are, of course, the purest
superstition. The root of the mandrake was supposed to resemble the
human form. The favorite habitat assigned to the plant was the foot of
the gallows, and men believed that in some way the bodies of criminals
were reproduced in the growing plant; their very pains and cries
renewed, especially for him who profanely dared to pull the mandrake
from the earth. The curious may consult Gerarde.
These ideas, it is needless to say, are very old; Pliny refers to
them, and, if I recollect well, Vergil has his hero pull up some plant
amid the strangest of sights and sounds. With these old myths are tied
up, perchance, the mandrakes of King James's version. Nay, the
superstition still survives; look at the woodcut in Webster's
Unabridged, and you will discover that the artist who set out to
illustrate the word mandrake for that somewhat venerable authority was
by no means able to free himself from the ancient spell. Credulity is
evermore a factor in the compound called human nature. Men love to be
fooled, or to find some support for belief in manifest absurdity.
There is nothing so silly but has its advocates among men who ought to
know better.
A year or two since, a man brought from Ohio to the University of Iowa
an innocent five-parted, digitate, black fungus. It was treasured in
alcohol. Why? Because of its origin. An honest mechanic meeting with
accident lost his fingers under the surgeon's knife. The amputated
members were neglected, but presently discovered and duly buried in
the garden. The following spring from the "identical spot" uprose a
swarthy hand, black without, white within. The hand was a perfect
_main-de-gloire_ for that sensation-loving community. The matter was
discussed in newspapers. A long and careful account of the wonder was
prepared, put in print and circulated among the friends of the
deceased--fingers! "What fools we mortals be!" For sheer superstition
and crass stupidity who may say that the nineteenth century may not
yet discount the days of the virgin Queen?
But I said at the outset that Shakespeare had in some instances
anticipated modern scientific teaching. To illustrate this in its most
striking instance, I am compelled to offer a somewhat long quotation
(Winter's Tale, iv, 4, 76-106):
"POLIXENES. Shepherdess,
A fair one are you, well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
PERDITA. Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnation and streaked gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
POLIXENES. Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
PERDITA. For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
POLIXENES. Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.
PERDITA. So it is.
POLIXENES. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards."
Here we have brought out very distinctly the effect of
cross-fertilization in flowers, the result of grafting and the
development of varieties. Better than that, we have here the
recognition of that tendency in organisms to vary that lies at the
very root of the development of species. Natural selection, survival
of the fittest, were impossible were it not true that "Nature is made
better by no mean but Nature makes that mean"; or, as it is more
broadly stated a few lines further on, "This is an art which does mend
Nature, change it rather, but the art itself is Nature." I consider
these very remarkable statements when we reflect on the time in which
they were written. Darwin, in 1860, does but unfold the thought. The
selection which Shakespeare notes as practiced by gardeners, and a
similar selection seen in the world of domestic animals, gave Darwin
his cue of natural selection. The beauty of Darwin's thesis lies in
the fact that the process is natural, and such is Shakespeare's
dictum. Later on, lines 112-128, Perdita brings out another remarkable
observation that has only lately been confirmed by the conclusions of
science:
"... Now my fairest friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours; and yours;
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength--a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds;
The flower-de-luce being one!"
Primroses are dimorphic--i. e., on the same species we find flowers of
different sorts. These are complete, but in any particular flower the
essential organs fail of adaptation to each other--the style in one
too long, in another too short, to receive pollen from the stamens of
its own flower. For fertilization such flowers are absolutely
dependent upon the assistance brought by insect visitors. Perdita's
primrose is _Primula veris_, the early primrose, "that takes the
winds of March with beauty," and dies ere it beholds "bright Phoebus
in his strength," and it is precisely this species that forms the
basis of one of Darwin's earliest and most fruitful studies in the
cross-fertilization of flowers. The styles in one form of the early
primrose are three times as long as in the other, the stigmas differ,
and the coadaptation of the parts of the different flowers extends
even to the grains of pollen. Such flowers in the absence of insects
are entirely unproductive. Insects are rare so early in the year, and
accordingly many of the primroses die, as Perdita says, "unmarried."
Of course, it is not pretended that Shakespeare knew anything of this;
but that he should have discovered the fact that the early primrose
bears little or no seed, and that he should have been impressed by the
truth that this is due to lack of fertilization, is wonderful. This
circumstance might well lead to the suspicion that the poet was a
gardener.
We must not forget to notice, too, in this connection, that
carnations--i. e., pinks--are remarkable for the great number of their
varieties. We have, if I may so say, pinks of every color, from
crimson to white, even brown it is said. This was true in
Shakespeare's time, if one may trust Gerarde again; he says, "A great
and large volume would not suffice to write of every one at large
considering how infinite they are, and how every year the climate and
country bringeth forth new sorts and such as have not heretofore been
written of."
Another passage in which the poet has instinctively hit upon a
scientific truth is found in Sonnet IV, the last ten lines. The beauty
of the passage as a whole is so remarkable that the delicate touches
in particular lines are apt to be overlooked:
"For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass.
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor remembrance what it was:
But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,
Lose but their show; their substance still lives sweet."
No botanist can read the line "A liquid prisoner pent in walls of
glass" and not recognize the exact portrayal of the living vegetable
cell. The living protoplasm is a liquid prisoner sure enough, hemmed
in by walls transparent. There could be no more striking image. And
when in herb and tree, in every living plant, the summer's work is
ended and hideous winter falls, the new cells, summer's distillation
left, do in all perennials actually survive, lest of the effect of
beauty, beauty be bereft. There is no more marvelous picture in all
the vegetal world than that of a great tree with all its myriad cells,
in summer so filled with the rush of life's activity and change that
we might hear its music, in autumn sinking to quiescence, and the
winter's silent chill where liquid prisoners sleep 'neath walls of
glass. The poet did not understand it; he simply prophesied better
than he knew. He makes us think of Goethe, of Lucretius. These men
made happy guesses. Lucretius especially surprises us by his views of
the constitution of matter--unverified, so far as we can know. Goethe
lived in the age of science and went on laboriously to verify his
surmises. The only natural science which Shakespeare knew was
gardening--if that may be called a science. His Sonnets are supposed
to have been written about 1590, and the first scientific glimpse of
the "prisoner pent in walls of glass" came about 1670, through the
lenses of Nehemiah Grew, a Puritan physicist and botanist.
I am aware that it is said by some that in a critique like this we are
apt to read much into the writings of our author. The quotations I
have submitted show, it seems to me, that this is unnecessary in the
present case at least. The words are generally unequivocal. Of course,
the language is poetical, metaphoric, but the metaphor has reference
to something else; the description is not the metaphor. But, in fact,
ought we to expect in Shakespeare very exact or complete description?
His whole art lies in the power of suggestion. The deep impressions a
man of genius makes upon our minds lie often, if not always, in what
he does not say. A word or two and the vision rises, whether in Nature
or in life, a passion or a landscape. Take the broken phrases of
Ophelia depicting her broken heart, her "no more but so"; or the
picture of the winter woods in Sonnet LXXIII:
"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves or none or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."
Does any one pretend that we are reading into the lines when we
appreciate the marvelous sorrow of the one picture or the exquisite
truthfulness and splendor of the other?
Shakespeare's natural eye was clear indeed, but none the less he seems
to have seen everything with the eye of his mind. Faraday so saw the
world of force, Newton of mathematical law, and Tyndall's scientific
use of the imagination lies in the same direction.
And so the man of science and the poet have much in common. Both use
the natural world, and the imagination is for each an instrument of
effort. The poet's generalization is a splendid vision in a world
ideal, suggested, no doubt, by what is actual and liable here and
there to coincide with truth; the generalization of the scientific man
is likewise a vision, but it rests upon the actual, upon the
ascertained fact at the greatest number of points possible, and
disappoints us only that it is not everywhere coincident. The poet
dreams of Atlantis, the lost continents, the islands of the blest, and
builds us pictures that vanish with his song; the man of science too
beholds the continents rise; scene after scene he likewise makes to
pass across our startled vision; but his are history, his tapestries
are wrought in the loom of time.
The poet writes the book of Genesis, with the herbs bringing forth
fruit after their kind; the man of science figures fossil leaves and
cones and fruit. Only at the last do poetry and science possibly again
agree:
"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself--
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind!"
And when the man of science gathers all his data, and collates fact
with fact, and builds the superstructure of his vision, with him, too,
all things fade and vanish in the infinity of the future.
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL EXPOSITIONS--THEIR PURPOSES AND BENEFITS.
BY MARCUS BENJAMIN, PH. D.
Industrial expositions are a natural development of the fairs of the
middle ages. The latter are believed to have originated in the
religious gatherings which afforded an opportunity for the sale of
wares to large numbers of people. Such fairs still persist in northern
Europe, and the best known of them is probably that held three times a
year in Leipsic, to which, it is said, "some twenty-five or thirty
thousand foreign merchants" are still attracted each year.
In course of time international exhibitions at which specimens of the
arts and industries of the great nations of the world were contrasted
came into vogue. These began with the International Exhibition held in
London in 1851, and of them three have been held in the United States,
as follows: The first in New York, in 1853; the second in
Philadelphia, in 1876; and the third in Chicago, in 1893. The great
magnitude of such expositions has led in recent years to their
specialization or subdivision into expositions at which only a
specialty was presented. Notable among such have been the following,
which were for the most part international: Of articles connected
with the leather industry, held in Berlin, in 1877; of all kinds of
paper and pasteboard, held in Berlin, in 1878; of fisheries, held in
Berlin, in 1880; of electricity, held in Paris, in 1881; of geography,
held in Venice, in 1881; of cotton, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1881;
of early data in American history, held in Madrid, in 1881; of
fisheries, held in London, in 1883; of historical matters pertaining
to Columbus and the discovery of America, held in Madrid, in 1892; and
of hygiene, including chemical, pharmaceutical, and sanitary objects,
held in Naples, in 1894.
Similarly there has been a development in the United States from local
fairs, such as those of the various mechanics' institutes, typical of
which is the one held annually since 1828 in New York city under the
auspices of the American Institute, into interstate expositions. Of
these, since 1880, the following have been held: Cincinnati Industrial
Exposition, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 30 to October 4, 1883;
Southern Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky, August 16 to October 25,
1883; World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, New
Orleans, Louisiana, December 16, 1883, to June 30, 1884; Central
Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States, Cincinnati, Ohio,
July 4 to October 7, 1888; California Midwinter Fair, San Francisco,
California, January 1 to July 4, 1894; Cotton States and Industrial
Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia, September 18 to December 31, 1895;
Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville, Tennessee, May 1 to
October 31, 1897; and Trans-Mississippi International Exposition,
Omaha, Nebraska, June 1 to November 1, 1898.
Of the foregoing, the more important were those held in New Orleans,
in 1884; in San Francisco, in 1894; in Atlanta, in 1895; in Nashville,
in 1897, and in Omaha, in 1898; especially so from the fact that all
of these received recognition by the Government; and, with the
exception of that held in San Francisco, liberal appropriations were
made for their support by Congress. Moreover, at each of them,
excepting again that held in San Francisco, a special Government
building was erected in which the national Government made exhibits of
the workings of the several executive departments, together with the
Smithsonian Institution and its dependencies and the Fish Commission.
The first named, that of New Orleans, was held as a celebration of the
centenary of the cotton industry in the United States. The first
record of cotton as a factor in the foreign trade of this country
appeared in the shipment in 1784 of six bags, amounting to about one
bale, from Charleston, South Carolina. Audubon Park was the site on
which the buildings were erected.
The exposition held in San Francisco, in 1894, had for its purpose
the affording of an opportunity to foreign exhibitors at the World's
Fair to further display their goods in the United States, and in
consequence a great number of exhibits were shipped direct from
Chicago to the Pacific coast. The exposition was located in Golden
Gate Park.
The Atlanta Exposition had its inception in a belief that the
agricultural, mineral, and manufacturing resources of the South were
not adequately represented in Chicago in 1893. It was believed that a
better exhibit of the products of the Southland would tend to foster
greater trade relations between that section of our country and other
parts of the United States, as well as with foreign countries,
especially those to the south, such as Mexico. The Cotton States
Exposition was held in Piedmont Park.
The exposition in Nashville was designed primarily to celebrate the
one hundredth anniversary of the admission of Tennessee into the
Federal Union. Recognizing the commercial and educational advantages
to be derived from such a demonstration, it was deemed wise to
characterize the celebration as an exhibit of "the matchless resources
of Tennessee, and at the same time to lead to their greater
development." The old West Side Park was chosen as the site of the
"Centennial City."
The exposition held last year in Omaha had for its purposes to do for
the Trans-Mississippi States what the more local exhibitions had done
for Atlanta and Nashville. It was claimed that it would for the "first
time fully illustrate the wealth-producing power and the extent of
productive industries of the Greater West," and it did. The exposition
grounds were included within what was called the Kountze tract and the
old fair grounds.
Each of these expositions has been projected for distinct commercial
reasons. They have had for their immediate purposes the presentation
of the products of the region in which they were located to their
neighbors, to the nation, and to the world. In this sense they have
been simply the offspring of the fairs of the middle ages, differing
from them only in that the feature of sale has been largely
eliminated. That they have been successful in accomplishing the
results desired is beyond doubt; indeed, the expositions in Nashville
and Omaha were even financial successes. But they have done more than
this; they have accomplished a world of good in the way of education.
Let us consider some of these benefits. Beginning with the grounds,
these have been given over to the charge of some competent landscape
architect under whose skillful supervision the desert has been made to
blossom like a rose. The sand hills of San Francisco became the
beautiful "Palm City," which since the close of the exposition has
become one of the most attractive spots in the Golden Gate Park. At
Nashville the landscape effects were claimed by many to excel in
beauty those of the World's Fair in Chicago. "Evergreens, vines, and
shrubs are everywhere, and three lakes break this vista of green," was
the opinion of one visitor. Besides the general architectural effect
of the buildings, which can not but impress those who are so fortunate
as to visit these expositions, there is a special value in the
reproductions of historical buildings. At Atlanta the Massachusetts
Building was a representation of the Craigie House, the headquarters
of Washington when in Cambridge at the beginning of the Revolution,
and later the home of the poet Longfellow. It was a fortunate
inspiration of the late Dr. G. Brown Goode that led to its
presentation by the State of Massachusetts to the local Society of the
Daughters of the American Revolution. The architectural feature of the
Nashville Exposition was the replica of the Athenian Parthenon in all
its artistic beauty. Every detail was true to the original in design
and coloring. It was the chief glory of the centennial, and as it was
a permanent structure it will long remain to the "Athens of the South"
a memorial of its exposition. Of less conspicuous interest were the
reproductions of the Rialto of Venice and the Alamo of San Antonio.
The only architectural feature of historic character announced for
Omaha was that "the Arkansas Building will be a reproduction of the
mansion of General Albert Pike in 1843." The long oval waterway around
which the buildings were grouped afforded, however, excellent
opportunity for studying the architecture of the buildings,
which, it was claimed with much justice, approached those of the
never-to-be-forgotten "White City" in their beauty of design.