CHAPTER V.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XLI. August, 1852. No. 2.

Table of Contents

Departed Joys

Midsummer Days

Widows

Astronomy

Hymn to the Sun

Antony and Cleopatra

The Two Birds.—A Street Lyric.

Miss Harper’s Maid

“Whatever He Doeth Shall Prosper.”

The Useful Arts

To a Whip-Poor-Will Singing in a Grave-Yard

Hesperius—A Vision

The Pedant

Life’s Battle March

The Harvest of Gold

Seminole War Song

Stability

Lines

Sonnet—Virtue

The Shark and His Habits

The Fountain of Youth

Hush! Hush!

Annie Morton

Adieu

The Ranger’s Chase

Impressions of England

Sonnet.—Cydnus.

Nelly Nowlan on Bloomers

Yesterday—To-day—To-morrow!

Among the Moors

The Old Man’s Evening Thoughts

My First Inkling of a Royal Tiger

Review of New Books

The Aztec Children

Graham’s Small-Talk

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

[Illustration: =BELLA.=]

* * * * *

[Illustration: =FIRST AFFECTION.=]

* * * * *

[Illustration: DEPARTED JOYS.]

=DEPARTED JOYS.=

=FROM THE MELODIES OF SIR H. R. BISHOP.=

[Illustration]

Could we recal departed joys,

At price of parted pain,

Oh who that prizes happy hours,

Would live his life again?

Such

[Illustration]

burning tears as once we shed

No pleasures can repay;

Pass to oblivion, joy and grief!

We’re thankful for today.

Calm be the current of our lives,

As rivers deep and clear;

Mild be the light upon our path,

To guide us and to cheer!

For streams of joy that burst and foam

May leave their channels dry.

And deadliest lightnings ever flash

The brightest in the sky!

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

* * * * *

Vol. XLI. PHILADELPHIA, AUGUST, 1852. No. 2.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

=MIDSUMMER DAYS.=

I scent the ancient sward!

I feel it ’neath my tread!

The moss, the wiry nard,

And the harebells bend their head!

I see the foxgloves glow,

Where plow did never go;

And the streams, the streams once more,

Hurrying brightly o’er

Their sandy beds; they roll

With the joy of a living soul.

Ye know that wood-walk sweet,

Where we are wont to meet;

On either hand the knolls and swells

Are crimson with the heather-bells;

And the eye sees,

Mid distant trees,

Where moorland beauty dwells.

* * * * *

=WIDOWS.=

=BY THOMPSON WESTCOTT.=

[Illustration]

The word widowhood, from whatever angle of observation it maybe viewed,

has about it a dull, bleak, uncomfortable aspect. Clouds encompass it.

Wo englooms it. Loneliness isolates it from social comfort, and befogs

it amidst lowering disquiet. It floats amidst tears on a dusky day, like

a solitary buoy on the salt sea.

We speak of widowhood which is really such. There are philosophers, who

are willing to wager that the solitary state is the most delightful of

existence. To them, wedlock is a fast bind fast find condition, in which

two persons are confined by a clerical jailor, who condemns them to

imprisonment for life, and then throws away the key. They transform

“wedlock” to “padlock;” and though there is no parautopticism about the

wards and chambers of affection, they consider the matrimonial lock, one

which may bid defiance to the most dexterous Hobbs. Yet we know that to

every heart there is a master-key. Lucky is he who keeps it in his own

possession without a necessity for its use; and happy is he who needs

not the services of some legal lock-picker to release him ere the coming

of the great skeleton-key carrier—Death.

But sentimental prosing is not our purpose. Widowhood has its bright

side, though many look too steadily at its darkest aspect. Widows are,

according to the venerable Weller, gifted with innumerable methods of

circumventing unsuspicious men; and the great inquiry is—How do they

manage those blandishments?

From the institution of debating societies down to the present era of

Spirit Rapping and feminine right conventions, “the influence of woman,”

has been a favorite topic with anniversary orators and declamatory

speakers. They have spent vast stores of eloquence in showing her

influence as a sister. They have proved how, in her days of pinafores,

she obligingly devoured her brother’s candies, or took more than her

share of his bread and butter. They have pleasantly adverted to the

sisterly affection which, in more mature age, was content to accept or

demand the ciceronage of brother to parties or concerts, if no other

beau was available. With a very delicate touch they have skimmed over

that important period when the love for the brother is all given up to

the husband, and have judiciously omitted any reference to sisterhood

after wifehood commenced. The influence of wives has, of course, been so

thoroughly demonstrated, that all that can be said on that subject are

axioms. The privileges of a matron to love her husband and adore her

baby, are subjects which have been rhapsodized over in glowing poetry,

and treated substantially, and with becoming dignity in unimpassioned

prose. Rhymers, dreamers, and orators, have devoted words in endless

profusion to the influence of woman, as sister, daughter, wife and

mother; but there has never been a full crop of elogiums harvested in

relation to her influence as a widow. The singular dearth of cotemporary

literature upon this subject, will be acknowledged by bibliopoles. The

reason is one which cannot be satisfactorily demonstrated. It may be

that literary people are disposed to consider that widows are like

sturgeons, who have merely leaped out of the placid current of matrimony

for a moment or two, and who will, by the gravity of their wo,

inevitably fall back into the connubial tide. Such a simile may do in

some cases, but will scarcely hold water upon trial. It is a

metaphysical sieve, and may catch many widows in its meshes, but some

will inevitably pass through its interstices. Some unfortunate “relicts”

are for a long time like fish out of the stream; but they have

sufficient determination to keep alive, until they manage to become

again immersed in matrimony. Nevertheless, the desire to return to their

“destined element” _does_ exist, in many cases, and that very desire

forms the great constituent in the influence of widows.

[Illustration]

The manner in which this authority is exercised differs according to

circumstances. Some of the unfortunate fair ones who have lost their

mates have attractions in the shape of weighty dower. Men of a certain

age have keen noses for such charms; and when the widow suspects it, she

often leads her importunate admirer by that organ, and by a dexterous

management of the mystery of courtship, which is called “getting a bean

on a string.” Once the gentleman is secured by that means, the widow

takes into her hand the whip of management, and compels the poor beau to

trot a weary round in an arena which extends its charmed circle about

her.

If the French system of espionage, which is now a constituent of society

in Louis Napoleon’s dominions, were in vogue here, we are sure that the

index of the chief of police would bear opposite to the name of each

widow the word “_dangerous_!” And what can be more threatening to the

liberty of a too susceptible man, than a young, accomplished, and

fascinating widow? What is bashful maidenhood, with its cherry lips and

monosyllabic sentences, to buxom widowhood, with its matured

development, sensible ideas, and frank manners? What other witcheries

are there about young misses than a taste for ice creams and giddy

companionship? Those fascinations fade away when the widow charms us

with the certainty that she knows how to make the pot boil, and has a

horror of boy beaus. Maidenhood is poetical and theoretical, widowhood

is sensible and practical. The young lady, before marriage, is unsteady,

indecisive, and capricious. The widow is certain, firm, and

self-possessed. The girl scarcely knows her own mind, but the widow not

only understands herself but all her male acquaintances. The young lady

is greedy of admiration, exacting in her demands, and expects from her

lover an obsequiousness of attention which cannot be too excessive. The

widow knows that men may admire without adulation, and love fondly

without abjectly suing for a return of affection. She knows, also, that

those who daring the days of courtship are compelled to excessive

complaisance, generally revenge themselves after marriage by neglect and

indifference. The fact is, the widow knows something of mankind by

actual experience, the maiden has little but romance to tutor her.

Philosophy like this, must have given force to the observations of the

venerable parent of Weller the younger—and he was justified by personal

experience, in maintaining the position that “widders,” are “werry

dangerous.” The world has long since phraseologically settled it, that

men “fall in love.” This presupposes that the tender passion is gotten

like a broken leg, altogether by accident. The language of Cupid’s

surgery is rich in terms which are descriptive of sudden casualties. We

know that many a poor fellow has been “shot through the heart” by a pair

of eyes, and the records of divers bachelor coroner’s juries held upon

unfortunate Benedicts show that woman

May smile, and smile, and murder while they smile,

having committed upon determined celibacy a grievous homicide, or at

least a manslaughter. But although love may come to some in the balls of

optical revolvers; although, at times, a big whiskered fellow may be

charmed out of his single life by the smile of a fair damsel—as a

pretty little tomtit is overcome by the glamour of a black-snake—we

must not forget, that idiomatic expression hath it, that men “fall in

love.” To “fall in love!” what an unhappy catastrophe! To be walking

along upon the firm ground of bachelorism, but now, and hey presto! to

suddenly find one’s self “over head and ears in love,” like a fly in a

cream-jug! Distressing calamity! Who may ever be able to scramble out of

such delicious danger; and how many are there that once in are not able

to swim a single stroke? There is also this peculiarity about an

accident of the sort, that it strongly exemplifies the old adage, that

“misery loves company.” The youth who, gazing fondly on Maria Jane,

misses his footing, and souses at once in love, cannot help himself. If

Maria Jane, pitying his condition, drops him a line, (through the

post-office,) or encourages him with hopes—which are generally

anchors—it will not do the least bit of good. No! she must be his

life-preserver—and unless, in regarding his struggles, she gets too

near the brink and herself falls in love, there will be no help for the

poor bachelor. But if this casualty _does_ happen, and both are in love,

it is wonderful to see how easily they float along. Each helps the

other, and in a very short space of time, they are quite comfortable.

But it is not every one who “falls in love;” and herein, as we shall

shortly show, lies the superiority of widows over spinsters. Some get

into the trouble very slowly. At first they survey the ocean of

affection with as placid an air as a cosmopolite would gaze upon a

mill-pond. Neither admiration nor detestation rules their thoughts. They

are altogether indifferent; and although they see many who are treading

water, or floating or swimming along with the tide, they feel no anxiety

to join in such aquatic feats. But at length the diversion tempts them,

and they cautiously take off their shoes and stockings, and venture in a

little way. The shore shelves gently, so they think—why should they not

venture more? Little by little they progress, until suddenly they step

from their sure footing, and are over their heads in a moment without

cork or spatterdocks to rely upon. They may struggle against the strong

current, but there is no assistance, and they are certain to be carried

off by the strong tide.

Difficulties like these are entirely obviated by the widow. She does not

suffer a man to fall in love, or to wade in, but she catches the admirer

by the hand, drags him at once to deep water, and in a moment he is “out

of his pains.” He is not suffered to stand shilly-shally; he is plumped

at once souse into Love’s Pacific ocean, and carried along with the

billows until he lands at Hymen’s Golden Gate. The maiden may doubt,

consider, resolve, and hesitate, whilst the poor fellow who is in love,

seeks in vain for a floating timber to support him, but the widow is

generally willing to help him out of trouble by getting in it herself,

and going along with him hand-in-hand.

These apophthegms may seem too general; and it may be said that there is

a tendency in our observations to draw a picture of widowhood by a

_silhouette_ of a young widow who is free from incumbrances. This is

partly true. There is a marked difference between the widow whose

matrimonial interests ended with the grave, and she whose reminiscences

of wedlock are daily revived by surviving children. The former is free

from earthly ties—she is a girl again, knowing enough about matrimony

to have no objection to a second experiment. The latter feels dear bonds

which should attach her to her lonely state, and cause her to doubt the

policy of prejudicing the interests of her children by rashly assuming

new vows. If she is gained, it must be by direct courtship, whilst the

young widow is always ready to meet an admirer half way.

But even young widows are of different dispositions. They are all

admirers of matrimony, and candidates for second husbands, but they

choose various means—according to their inclinations. They may be

divided into three great classes—the gay—the sentimental—and the sad.

The gay young widow is like cream candy, a vast improvement upon the

crude flour and sugar of maidenhood. The young girl is coy, even in her

giddiness; she considers love as an exquisite romance—a mysterious

state of happiness—which she desires, yet fears. Hence she is most

cautious when she would be most earnest; and whilst she hopes to gain

the heart she covets, she often perversely adopts a course which is

calculated to alienate that heart forever. With the exception of

trifling fops who have not attained the age of maturity—although they

may vote and shave—men are earnest, straightforward, and sincere. If

they seek the love of a woman, they do so openly and with manly

frankness. The young girl may coquette, or flirt with the man who adores

her; she may wring his heart with bitter agony; she may show her power,

and he may acknowledge it, but he will lose some respect for her—though

he bows to her influence. He is honest and sincere. She, perhaps, admits

it, but trifles with him. How many young ladies have lost the esteem of

those who would have loved and cherished them for life by mere

thoughtlessness or caprice. The young widow understands men better. She

is rarely a flirt. She can distinguish between the honest lover and the

mere admirer. With the latter she may trifle, because she understands

him. The former, if not acceptable, will not be allowed to deceive

himself; and if he is liked, will be speedily drawn onward to his own

happiness. The gay widow is lively, of course. She is fascinating, and

she knows human nature. If she “sets her cap” at any particular

gentleman, he might as well yield. He cannot hold out against the

artillery of charms which are brought against him. He may surrender at

discretion, and be led off, a captive, to be confined permanently in

silken fetters. All the little fascinations of manner which the belle

may possess, but knows not how to use, are by the widow managed with the

skill of a veteran. Her eyes are by turns entreating, languishing,

merry, or devilish. Her smiles are moulded to bewitch and to mystify.

Her manners are easy, and pleasant, and her voice is melodious with

rapture, or heart-touching with sincerity. Then, too, she is so lively

and yet so sensible, that the “seven senses” of celibacy (two more than

the general complement awarded to married people) are quite unable to

withstand so many attractions.

The sentimental widow is quite as generous as her livelier sister. She

believes in romance and gushing affection. She is lonely after her great

loss, and would like another mate. After her first dear man was buried,

she felt like a lobster which has parted with a claw, and she retired

from gay life until nature, or good luck, should furnish her with the

means of reparation. Her heart is buried with her husband, but she

considers it only as a seed which in good time will spring up again and

blossom. If she weeps, she does it with a gentle sorrow, like a slight

sprinkle on a sunshiny day. Her sky has its clouds, but the cerulean of

anticipation lies beyond, and gives a pleasant aspect to the mists of

sadness. The gay widow laughs as if she had never been married; the

sentimental one smiles, but evidently remembers.

The one pretends that she is gay because she is free; the other is

cheerful, but hopes to become more cheerful in time. The first

audaciously declares that marriage is tyranny, and hopes that no man

will ever come near her! the second thinks mournfully upon the past, and

wonders whether she “will ever have another Charles Augustus;” yet the

sentimentalist mingles with the gay world, a sober votary of pleasure.

If she dances, it is but a plain cotillion; and she is shocked when the

lively Maria dashes out in a giddy polka. All such things are vanities

to the sentimental widow. She thinks how happy she was with her dear

departed Charles Augustus, and hopes that she will soon be as happy

again.

The sad widow is, for a long time after her bereavement, a sighing

pattern of inconsolable grief. The atmosphere of her home is rainy with

tears, and when abroad she is cloudy. Yet as time wears on, it is

evident that the forty days and forty nights of affliction’s great

deluge must go by, and at length the sorrowful widow will look for the

appearance of the sun of cheerfulness, and trust that with it will come

a rain beau. The gradual assumption of cheerfulness begins to make

itself visible in her costume. Half mourning assumes the place of sombre

weeds. On her face smiles occasionally chase away the lingering vestiges

of regret. The spring of calmness has come, and hyacinthine blossoms of

hope struggle up from the sodden desolation of wintry bleakness. Little

by little the sad widow becomes resigned to her great loss, and

gradually she learns to think that it may be repaired by a new

matrimonial gain. Yet she is slow in assuming the garniture of

happiness. She may occasionally be coaxed out into the world, and even

tempted to attend a party or ball; but she does not forget that she is a

widow. She is in the world, but yet not of it. She demeans herself as

becomes the lone relict of the late Mr. Sad, and does not like the

gayety of Mrs. Lively or the composure of Mrs. Sentiment.

If the persevering Mr. Nosey should approach the trio of widows in the

hope of obtaining a partner for the next set, Mrs. Lively may suddenly

put on an affectation of grave coyness, Mrs. Sentiment may be gracefully

leaning her cheek against her fan whilst thinking of her dear lamented

Charles Augustus, but Mrs. Sad will show surprise that the forward Mr.

Nosey should dare to presume that _they_ would dance when there are so

many “young chits” who have not partners for the dance. But Mrs. L. has

no care for these things, and in a very short time she is treading a

measure to lively music as if she had never known a single sorrow.

There are so many peculiarities about widowhood, that it would require

volumes to treat properly upon the subject. Mathematics might be called

in to cipher out the problem of the elder Weller, as to how many times

more fascinating is a widow than a maiden—but figures would not satisfy

us. We would be sure to continue the subject by the further query—What

is a widow like? And the result of all the cogitations might be summed

up into the grand deduction—that widows are like gunpowder, always sure

to go off when fired by a match.

* * * * *

=ASTRONOMY.=

[Illustration: =ERA OF NEWTON, HALLEY, AND HERSCHELL.=]

There is no great operation of which we are cognizant, by which Nature

at a single bound perfects her marvelous productions. It is only by a

combination of instruments operating generally through a series of

years. The ultimate result is reached by a progressive advance, to which

a number of artificers contribute. The cedar, on whose boughs the snow

rests and the fowls nestle, is the work of centuries; and the soil that

laps its roots, the air that stirs its branches, the light that plays

upon its crest, and the rain that drops upon its foliage, minister to

the final development of the original cone. In like manner the social

and political changes that have improved the tone of society, elevated

the condition of nations, and endowed them with an enduring liberty,

have not been accomplished in the twinkling of an eye, or by individual

intelligence and will. Popular history may embalm the name of some

distinguished patriot or philanthropist, as having been the agent is

rescuing a country from the yoke of arbitrary power, and it may record a

crisis of revolution confined within the limits of a year or a day; but

a comprehensive view of such occurrences will embrace a time of

preparation, and crown with honor a variety of laborers, though to one

may be due the glory of the sun, and to another the glory of the stars.

The signature of the edict that dethroned the heathenism of the ancient

civilized world occupied the imperial hand a moment’s space, but the

work of apostles, martyrs, and confessors, with the toils and sufferings

of ages, are prominent in the picture. So the great demonstrations and

achievements of science have transpired by slow degrees, and yield a

distinction to be divided among a fellowship of kindred spirits, rather

than assigned exclusively to a solitary example of mental prowess. If

Keppler discovered the general laws of the universe, the basis of the

discovery was laid by Tycho; and the marvelous Napier contributed

essentially to the issue obtained, by the invention of the logarithms,

an admirable artifice, as it has been justly called, which, by reducing

to a few days the labor of many months, doubles the life of the

astronomer, and saves him the errors and disgust connected with long

calculations. If Newton developed the cause of those laws, he started to

his grand result from a point expressly prepared by Keppler, and left

the solution of the problem imperfect, for Laplace to finish. It is

obviously in wise accordance with the happiness of mankind, that no

nation possesses a monopoly of talent and fame, that many of the most

remarkable efforts of human genius owe a debt of obligation to the

accomplishments of genius at another era, and in a different clime. The

fact proclaims the affinity of the species, between whom the mighty deep

may roll, or the mountain rampart rise. It evinces, too, their mutual

dependence, and will be hailed as a motive by the considerate mind, to

the maintenance of universal amity.

To Hevelius, one of the merchant princes of Dantzic, an example of the

close alliance of commerce with the fine arts and science which runs

through the page of history, we owe the first accurate delineation of

the lunar surface, the discovery of a libration in longitude; by his

observation of the comet of 1664, he further corroborated the view

previously taken, that such bodies are not sublunary, and approximated

to the nature of their orbits. His contemporary Huygens, after effecting

various improvements in the telescope, discovered one of the satellites

of Saturn, that which is now termed the fourth, and obtained an insight

into the singular structure of the planet, an inexplicable appearance to

all preceding observers. An anagram, in the year 1656, announced to the

world the following sentence by a transposition of letters, _annulo_

_cingitur, tenui, plano, nusquam cohærenta, ad eclipticam,_

_inclinatio_—the planet is surrounded with a ring, thin, plane, nowhere

adhering, and inclined to the ecliptic. He justly observes, in a letter

to his brother: “If any one shall gravely tell me that I have spent my

time idly in a vain and fruitless inquiry, after what I can never become

sure of; the answer is, that at this rate, he would put down all natural

philosophy, as far as it concerns itself in searching into the nature of

things. In such noble and sublime studies as these, it is a glory to

arrive at probability, and the search itself rewards the pains. But

besides the nobleness and pleasure of the studies, may we not be so bold

as to say, they are no small help to the advancement of wisdom and

morality?” The discovery of the great nebula in Orion was accidentally

made by Huygens in the year 1656. Cassini, nurtured in France, soon

afterward added four more satellites to the system of Saturn, those now

called the first, second, third, and fifth, and he detected the black

list, or dark, elliptical line bisecting the surface of the ring, and

dividing it into two. Astronomy is under immense obligations to a

measure adopted by the courts of France and England at nearly the same

period, for the patronage of scientific associations, and the founding

of national observatories. The Royal Society of London was incorporated

by charter in the year 1662, and numbered among its early members Boyle,

Hooke, Wallis, Ward, Newton, and Flamstead. The Royal Academy of

Sciences at Paris, was founded in the year 1666, and enrolled among its

first members Auzout, Picard, Roberval, and Richer. Upon the invitation

of Louis XIV. Huygens left Holland to become a royal academician, but

being a Protestant, the revocation of the edict of Nantes ultimately

compelled him to return to his native soil. The edict did not affect

Cassini, a Catholic foreigner similarly invited; and to him, with his

son and grandson, the French academy owes much of its early distinction.

Besides his before named discoveries, he determined the periods of

rotation of the principal planets, and observed the elliptical form of

Jupiter’s disc, owing to compression at the poles.

Roëmer, the inventor of the transit instrument with which he made

observations from the window of his house, rendered no unimportant

service by showing that the instruments need not be fixed on high

towers: he also discovered, in the year 1675, the interesting and

hitherto unsuspected fact, of the progressive transmission of light

through space, and the appreciable velocity with which it travels. This

was attained by a series of careful observations of the eclipses of

Jupiter’s satellites. It was found, by comparing the times of immersion

of the satellites in the planet’s shadow and emersion from it, with the

times calculated from the laws of their movements, that there was an

acceleration or retardation of the phenomena by a few minutes, plainly

dependent upon the variations of the earth’s distance from Jupiter; for

[Illustration]

the retardation was observed to be the greatest when the earth was in

that part of its orbit most remote from him. The diameter of the orbit

of the earth being a hundred and ninety millions of miles, we are more

remote from Jupiter, by the whole of that distance, at one time than at

another; as, when the earth is in its orbit at _a_, its distance is

greater from _c_ than when at _b_ by the interval between the two

points. But notwithstanding this immense addition of space, or any

conceivable increase, an eclipse would be observed to occur no later at

the one than at the other, if light were propagated instantaneously.

Roëmer found, however, a difference of eleven minutes to exist, which he

afterward estimated at fourteen, but which the precision of modern

astronomy has fixed at sixteen minutes and a quarter. This determines

the progressive motion of light, and the rate of its velocity. It

requires time for its transmission; and flying over the diameter of the

earth’s orbit in sixteen and a quarter minutes gives it a velocity of

twelve millions of miles a minute, or upward of a hundred and ninety

thousand miles a second. Thus, in the eighth part of a second, it

accomplishes the passage of a space equal to the equatorial

circumference of our globe: yet so vast is the system to which we

belong, that this swift-winged messenger, which requires no more than

two hours to travel from the central sun to the farthest planet, could

not dart through the intervening solitudes between us and the nearest of

the stars under a period of five years. Notwithstanding the velocity of

the rays of light, which travel more than fifteen hundred thousand times

faster than a cannon ball, experiment has not yet been able to detect

that they have any impulsive power. The surmise has, however, been

thrown out—and it is not improbable—that the attrition of the solar

beams with the terrestrial surface may have some connection with the

phenomena of heat.

The national observatory of England—the noblest institution in the

world for the extent and exactitude of its astronomical tables, and

their practical value in the art of navigation—was originated by the

spread of foreign commerce. The growth of colonies across the Atlantic,

together with the establishment of relations with India, rendered it of

the first importance to have an easy and accurate method of finding the

longitude at sea. A plan was proposed, founded upon the principle now in

use, of observing the lunar motions and distances during a voyage, and

comparing them with a previous home calculation, thus ascertaining the

difference between home time and time at sea, from whence the difference

of longitude is readily deduced. A reward being sought by the proposer

from the government of Charles II. it was referred to a commission to

report upon the merits of the scheme. Flamstead, one of the

commissioners, at once decided against its practical utility, on the

ground of the inaccuracy both of the lunar tables and of the positions

of the stars in existing catalogues, which only a lengthened course of

observation could rectify. The king, declaring that his pilots and

sailors should not want such assistance, immediately instituted the

office of astronomer royal, and determined upon founding an observatory.

The site—selected by Wren—was a commanding eminence in Greenwich Park,

in former times the seat of Duke Humphrey’s tower, within view of all

vessels passing along the Thames; a spot which Piazzi was accustomed to

call the “paradise” for an observer; being free from a fluctuating

atmospheric refraction which annoyed him in the climate of Sicily. The

foundation-stone was laid August 10th, 1675. An original inscription,

still existing, states the design of the building—the benefit of

astronomy and navigation. The observatory has been successively under

the superintendence of Flamstead, Halley, Bradley, Bliss, Maskelyne,

Pond, and Airy, its present head, with assistants for its proper

management. It is not a spot devoted to star-gazing, and the general

observance of celestial phenomena, but essentially a place of business,

carrying on by day and by night, when the weather permits, those

observations of the sun, moon, planets, and principal stars, passing the

meridian, from which the nautical almanac derives its information. This

has been done with admirable regularity for a long series of years, nor

has Europe any data comparable with the Greenwich tables. During the

interval in which the office of astronomer royal is necessarily vacant,

the business of the observatory proceeds; and that interval is now less

than formerly. Thirty-three days elapsed between Bradley’s last

observation and Bliss’s first; fifty-three between Bliss’s last and

Maskelyne’s first; four between Maskelyne’s last and Pond’s first; and

two between Pond’s last and Airy’s first. It has been asserted by Baron

Zach, that, if the other observatories had never existed, our

astronomical tables would be equally perfect; and Delambre, when

delivering an _éloge_ on Maskelyne before the Institute of France,

remarked, that if by some grand revolution in the moral or physical

world, the whole of the monuments of existing science should be swept

away, leaving only the Greenwich observations and some methods of

computation, it would be possible to reconstruct from these materials

the entire edifice of modern astronomy.

A few years ago it was resolved by the Lords of the Admiralty, that the

time should be shown at Greenwich once in every day of the year. This is

done by means of a large black ball which surmounts the north-western

turret of the observatory. The ball, seen in the vignette, is elevated

by machinery to the index, showing the four cardinal points; and, the

instant it begins to descend, marks the mean solar time to be 1 P.M.

Being plainly observable from the Thames, the arrangement affords a

convenient opportunity for seamen to regulate their chronometers and

clocks.

[Illustration: =Greenwich Observatory.=]

The fame of Flamstead, the first astronomer royal, does not rest upon

any brilliant discovery, but upon an enlightened view of the importance

of accurate observation, and the unwearied zeal and industry with which

he pursued it. A better representation of him cannot be given than by

supposing Tycho Brahe in possession of a telescope, and the adaptation

of it to other instruments. Laplace calls him “one of the greatest

observers that has ever appeared,” and Delambre remarks, “his name will

be eternally cited like those of Hipparchus and Tycho, both of whom, as

an observer, he surpassed.” Born in the neighborhood of Derby, and

brought up in limited circumstances in that town, he wrought his way to

a station at the head of practical astronomy, and established a

continental reputation by dint of strong natural genius and unremitting

application, in the face of great discouragements. Bad health was a

frequent attendant upon him all his days. The patronage of the crown did

not screen him from the want of adequate resources, while from several

of his scientific contemporaries he encountered dishonorable treatment.

The salary attached to his office, then a hundred a year, was often in

arrears. Instruments were promised him by the government, but he had to

find his own, commencing his duties in 1676 with an iron sextant of

seven feet radius, two clocks, and a quadrant of three feet radius, with

two telescopes, which he brought with him from Derby. With these

instruments he could only measure the relative positions of the stars,

and it was not until 1689 that he succeeded in constructing at his own

expense a mural arc to determine their absolute places. From this

period, through an interval of thirty years, his time was spent in

valuable labors, the fruit of which appears in the formation of a

catalogue of three thousand stars, and a vast collection of lunar and

planetary observations, from which Newton derived material assistance in

forming his lunar theory. Yet, as if some annoyance must follow him to

the grave, upon his death in 1719, the government of the day attempted

to claim his instruments as public property, because found in the

national observatory. The name of Flamstead, lost in a great measure to

public recollection, or only dimly recognized as one of those who, with

“lamp at midnight hour

in some high, lonely tower,

——may oft outwatch the Bear,

With thrice great Hermes”—

was revived a few years ago, and acquired notoriety at the expense of

Newton and Halley’s fame. It fell to the lot of Mr. Baily to discover a

large number of his letters in private hands, with others, and a

manuscript autobiography, upon the shelves of the library in the

observatory; and, upon their publication in 1835, by order of the Lords

Commissioners of the Admiralty, some painful and unexpected disclosures

were made. It may be admitted that Flamstead exaggerates his own case,

that his temper was irascible, that he did not appreciate the value of

Newton’s theory, and over-estimated the importance of his own labors;

yet, after having allowed these elements of correction full force, the

conclusion is sufficiently plain, that he was most injuriously treated,

and that much of the moral distinction with which posterity has crowned

the head of Newton, is altogether misplaced. His deep obligations to

Flamstead’s lunar observations are acknowledged in the first edition of

the Principia, but carefully suppressed in the second, apparently when

vindictive feeling had begun to operate; and, in fact, nothing is more

remarkable than the opinion universally entertained of the meek and

placable disposition of the great philosopher, and the want of temper

and honor displayed in his dealings with Flamstead. The truth appears to

be, that as when we view a country beneath a brilliant sky and a balmy

atmosphere, we are apt to frame our impressions of the people in harmony

with the beauty of the scene; so, to the early admirers of Newton, his

intellectual greatness invested with fictitious lustre his private

character, and the infirmities of the man were lost sight of in the

glory of the sage.

But however much we may take from the moral greatness usually attributed

to Newton—and a considerable abatement is unquestionably necessary—his

reputation for wonderful sagacity and grasp of mind is incapable of

impeachment. The course of events has only served to render more

conspicuous that sublime intelligence by which he unraveled the

mechanism of the heavens, and establish more indisputably his claim to

be regarded as the architect of physical astronomy. To determine the

motions of the heavenly bodies was the work of Keppler: to explain and

demonstrate the causes of those motions was the achievement of Newton.

So far, however, from gaining universal assent when first proposed, his

theory was ill understood, slightly appreciated, or altogether rejected

by numbers of scientific men; and—especially on the continent—it very

slowly won its way to notice and confidence. Newton survived the

publication of the Principia forty years, and at the time of his

death—according to Voltaire—it had not twenty readers out of the

country of its production. It was not until the mutual perturbations of

the planets began to occupy the attention of the continental

philosophers, that his theory was fully admitted abroad, and the work in

which it was developed took the rank it has since occupied,

preëminent—in the words of Laplace—above all the productions of the

human mind. It is a common, but vulgar error, to suppose the merit of

our countryman to lie in conceiving the idea of the attraction of

gravitation. That idea had been suggested to many minds long before his

time, and the impression had been created that such a power in nature

was the cause of the planetary motions. Thus Keppler surmised an

attractive force to reside in the sun, producing these movements; and he

even threw out the conjecture that this force diminishes in proportion

to the square of the distance of the body on which it was exerted.

Borelli and Hooke, also, distinctly developed the influence of gravity;

and both referred the orbits of the planets to the doctrine of

attraction combining with their own proper motions to produce

curvilinear movements. What really distinguished Newton, was not the

idea of gravity as the principle of attachment between the different

members of the solar system, but proving it to be so. He succeeded vague

surmise upon the point with mathematical demonstration: explained and

applied the laws of the force—an accomplishment which crowns him with

honor above all his rivals; inasmuch as he who works a mine, and

distributes its wealth through society, is incomparably in advance of

him who has merely apprehended its existence, but failed in gaining

access to its treasures.

[Illustration]

The manor-house of Woolsthorpe, a few miles from Grantham, seated in a

little valley near the source of the Witham, was the scene of Newton’s

birth. Popular tradition reports, that the fall of an apple from a tree,

in the orchard belonging to this house, was the mustard-seed out of

which ultimately grew the grand theory of universal gravitation, and the

story is not without a leaven of truth. It is certain that, to avoid the

plague which ravaged England in 1666, Newton retired from Cambridge;

and, when sitting alone, in his garden at Woolsthorpe, his thoughts were

directed to that remarkable power which causes all bodies to descend

toward the centre of the earth. The supposition presented itself, that

as this power extends to the highest altitudes of the earth’s surface,

it probably extends much farther into space; so that even the moon may

gravitate toward the earth, and be balanced in her orbit by the combined

force of attraction and the centrifugal force implied in her motion. If

this were true, the planets might be supposed to gravitate toward the

sun, and to be restrained thereby from flying off under the action of

the centrifugal force. Sixteen years rolled away before this beautiful

hypothesis was verified, and difficulties arose in testing it, which

seemed to disprove it altogether. It was necessary to calculate the

force of gravity at the surface of the earth; to estimate its diminished

energy at an increased distance; and, after having found the law of the

diminution, to ascertain whether the phenomena of the lunar motions

corresponded proportionably with those of falling bodies at the

terrestrial surface. Assuming the force of gravity to vary inversely as

the square of the distance, it followed that, at the distance of the

moon, it would be about 3600 times less than at the surface of the

earth. The problem, therefore, to be solved was, whether the versed sine

of an arc described by the moon—which measures the space through which

in the same time she would fall to the earth, if abandoned to the action

of gravity—would be 3600 times less than the space through which in the

same time a heavy body falls, at the earth’s surface,

[Illustration]

A B being the arc of the moon’s orbit, _c d_ the sine of the arc, and _e

f_ the versed sine. After a careful study of the lunar observations

supplied by Flamstead, and a series of calculations—displaying

unexampled originality and industry—Newton fully demonstrated that the

versed sine of an arc described by the moon in one minute, was equal to

the space traversed in descent by a heavy body at the surface of the

earth in one second—the exact proportion that ought to exist, according

to the modification to which the intensity of gravity is subject by

variation of distance.

The first certain gleam of this grand conclusion obtained by Newton, is

said so to have overpowered him, that he was obliged to suspend his

calculations, and call in the aid of a friend, to finish the last few

arithmetical computations. He saw the important relations of the

demonstration—the planets wheeling round the sun—the satellites round

the planets—the far wandering comets returning to the source of light

in obedience to the law of gravitation: a result sufficient to throw the

successful discoverer into nervous excitement. It is clear that, if a

body be projected into space, it will proceed in the direction of the

original impulse, and with a uniform velocity, forever—supposing no

obstacle to impede its course. But the combination of two antagonistic

forces will produce a resulting motion in a diagonal direction.

[Illustration]

Suppose the straight lines A B, to represent the direction in which the

earth would travel under the influence of the projectile force, which

launched it into universal space: the straight lines A S, are those it

would describe at any point of its orbit, if surrendered to the

influence of the sun’s attraction. The primitive impulse is, however,

checked by the solar attraction, and the latter by the former; so, that

while the earth—if abandoned to either—would describe A B, or A S, the

effect of their joint influence incessantly acting is to deflect it from

both, and produce a curved path. The cause perpetually operating, the

effect is constant—and hence the formation of the terrestrial orbit;

and the cause extending to the other bodies in the system, the planetary

orbs are deflected from their natural rectilinear paths, and pursue a

circuit round the common centre. The force of attraction is, however,

proportional to the quantity of matter, and the proximity of the

attracting body. Like light, the power of gravitation is weakened by

diffusion, and diminishes as the square of the distance increases. This

square is the product of a number multiplied by itself. A planet,

therefore, twice our distance from the sun, will gravitate four times

less than we do—the product of two multiplied by itself being four.

Such is the great Law of Gravity, subject to the two conditions, that

its force is directly as the mass of the bodies, and inversely as the

square of the distance. It extends to the confines of the system, and

acts as a mighty invisible chain to keep the primary bodies in brotherly

relationship to each other, and in mutual subjection to the central

luminary. And who can trace its operation without recognizing a Supreme

Potentate, who appointed to the sun his place, launched the planets in

the depths, obedient to a law which has preserved the family

compact—originally established—unbroken through the long series of

ages.

It must, however, be borne in mind that the attraction between bodies is

mutual, proportioned to their masses and distances. While the sun

attracts the planets toward himself, they also attract the sun, though

their effect is comparatively small, owing to the vastness of the solar

mass. The planets likewise act upon each other; and as their relative

distances are perpetually varying, certain perturbations are caused in

the system, which, though minute in each particular case, become

considerable by accumulation, and yet are ultimately corrected and

repaired by the same cause that produces them. Newton left to posterity

the task of thoroughly investigating these inequalities, of showing them

to be a result of the law of gravitation, and establishing the

permanence of the system, notwithstanding the accumulating influence of

its internal disturbances. He himself had no gleam of the latter truth,

but seems to have entertained an opinion that the irregularities

occasioned by the mutual action of the planets and comets would probably

go on increasing till the system either wrought out its own destruction

or received reparation from the direct intervention of its Creator. But

Euler, Clairaut, D’Alembert, Lagrange, and Laplace, have demonstrated

the problem that the perturbations of the planets are periodic in their

nature, that accurate compensation for them is laid up in store, so that

the system is not arranged upon a principle of self-destruction. The

elements of disorder and decay are removed from it. The very conditions

of its existence guarantee its stability till the will of the great

Ruler shall be expressed to the contrary. When an end shall come to its

present constitution, that will not be the effect of its own faulty

architecture, but of the fiat of Omnipotence.

[Illustration: =Room in which Newton was born.=]

The house of Newton at Woolsthorpe, now the homestead of a farmer, has

been in the ownership of persons anxious to protect it, and preserve

every relic of its former occupant. Stukeley thus described it in 1727:

“’Tis built of stone, as is the way of the country hereabouts, and a

reasonable good one. They led me upstairs, and showed me Sir Isaac’s

study, where I suppose he studied when in the country in his younger

days, or perhaps when he visited his mother from the university. I

observed the shelves were of his own making, being pieces of deal boxes

which probably he sent his books and clothes down in on those

occasions.” Two sun-dials remain which he made when a boy; but the

styles of both are wanting, and one has been recently taken from the

wall to be presented to the Royal Society. The room in which he was born

has the following inscription upon a tablet of white marble: “Sir Isaac

Newton, son of John Newton, Lord of the Manor of Woolsthorpe, was born

in this room on the 25th of December, 1642.” The apple-tree, the fall of

one of the apples of which, according to tradition, drew his attention

to the subject of gravity, was blown down by a gale some years ago, and

a chair was constructed out of its timber. The Royal Society of London

possesses his telescope; the Royal Society of Edinburgh the door of his

book-case; and Trinity College, Cambridge, has a lock of his silver

white hair.

While the foundations of physical astronomy were laid by Newton, his

confidant and friend, the brilliant and active Halley, pursued a

remarkably successful career in the practical departments of the

science. Born in mercantile life, yet independent of it through the

wealth amassed by his father, he early embarked his means and energies

in the advancement of observation. Leaving Hevelius and Flamstead to

keep guard over the northern hemisphere, he sailed to St. Helena to

inspect the southern; and in honor of the reigning monarch who

patronized the expedition, the oak which had screened him from his

pursuers after the battle of Worcester, was raised to a place in the

skies, forming the constellation Robur Carolinum. The object of the

voyage was to determine the absolute and relative positions of the stars

invisible to the European eye; but owing to the unpropitious climate of

the island, only a catalogue of 360 was made after more than a year’s

residence. Upon this voyage the oscillations of the pendulum were

observed to decrease in number as the instrument approached the equator;

a fact noticed a few years previous by Richer, and explained by Newton

to result from the greater intensity of centrifugal force there,

proportionably diminishing the force of gravity. The life of Halley was

remarkable for locomotion, devoted to various scientific objects. He was

twice at St. Helena, twice in the Adriatic, once in the West Indies, now

with Newton in his study at Cambridge, anon with Hevelius in his

observatory at Dantzic, and then with Cassini watching a comet at Paris.

Upon the death of Flamstead, he succeeded to the office of astronomer

royal, and though then in the sixty-fourth year of his age, he commenced

the observation of the moon through a complete revolution of her nodes,

involving a period of nineteen years, and lived to finish it,

registering upward of two thousand observed lunar places. It was while

journeying in France toward the close of 1680, that he observed the

great comet of that year, on its return from proximity to the sun: and

being aware of the conclusion of Newton, that such bodies describe very

eccentric ellipses, his active mind began to study intently their

phenomena, which resulted in a prophecy that has immortalized his name.

After cataloguing and comparing a considerable number of comets, that of

1682 fortunately appeared. This he was led to regard as identical with

those of 1456, 1531, and 1607, between which there is nearly the same

interval. Hence he anticipated its return after the lapse of a similar

period. “I dare venture,” said he, “to foretell that it will return

again in 1758;” and, sanguine as to the result, he called upon posterity

to notice that it was an Englishman who had hazarded the statement. This

was a prediction announced in 1705, the accomplishment of which ranks

with the greatest achievements of modern astronomy, and will perpetuate

the fame of Halley to the remotest generations. He had been gathered to

his grave in Lee church-yard seventeen years, when the celestial

traveler re-appeared, at the time announced, to verify his words,

illustrate his sagacity, and invest him with undying honor.

[Illustration: =Halley’s Tomb.=]

Bradley, the English Hipparchus, the model of observers, as he is styled

by Laplace, became the third astronomer royal upon the death of Halley.

He had previously effected one of his two great discoveries, the

aberration of the stars, an optical illusion, arising from the combined

movement of the earth in space, and the progressive transmission of

light; a discovery of the highest importance, requiring the greatest

precision of observation to detect. Ever since the doctrine of the

earth’s translation in space had been received, astronomers had been

anxious to find some parallax of the fixed stars, as a sensible

confirmation of the fact. Although the whole diameter of the earth’s

orbit is relatively insignificant, it is yet absolutely vast. Hence it

was deemed no unreasonable expectation that some small apparent change

of place in the heavens would be discerned in the case of the fixed

stars, when viewed from the two extremities of the earth’s annual

orbit—separated from each other by the mighty chasm of a hundred and

ninety millions of miles.

Aberration, or wandering, is the name given to this phenomenon. The term

is not strictly accurate, as the apparent movements thus denominated are

not irregular, but uniform. To discover the physical cause became an

object of intense interest to Bradley, but it long baffled his

researches and reasonings, and was at length developed by an accidental

circumstance. He was accompanying a pleasure-party in a sail on the

river Thames. The boat in which they were was provided with a mast which

had a vane on the top of it; it blew a moderate wind, and the party

sailed up and down the river for a considerable time. Bradley remarked,

that every time the boat put about, the vane at the top of the mast

shifted a little, as if there had been a slight change in the direction

of the wind. He observed this three or four times without speaking; at

last he mentioned it to the sailors, and expressed his surprise that the

wind should shift so regularly every time they put about. The sailors

told him that the wind had not shifted, but that the apparent change was

owing to the change in the direction of the boat, and assured him that

the same thing invariably happened in all cases. From that moment he

conjectured that all the phenomena of aberration he had observed, arose

from the progressive motion of light combined with the earth’s motion in

its orbit. This sagacious conjecture satisfactorily explains the

apparent movement of the stars. Suppose a body to pass from A to B in

the same time that a ray of light passes from C to B. Owing to the two

motions, the impression of the ray of light meeting the eye of a

spectator at B will be exactly similar to what it would have been if the

[Illustration]

eye had been at rest at B, and the molecule of light had come to it in

the direction D, B. The star, therefore, whose real place is at C, will

appear at D to the spectator at B. This effect is precisely analogous to

what takes place when a person moves or travels rapidly through a shower

of rain or snow in a perfectly calm state of the atmosphere. Without

locomotion the rain-drops or snow-flakes will fall upon his hat, or upon

the head of the carriage that conveys him, and not beat in his face, or

against the front windows of the carriage. But if he is passing along

swiftly, in any direction, east, west, north or south, the rain or snow

will come in contact with his face, or enter the front windows of the

carriage if they are open, as though the drops or flakes fell obliquely,

and not from the zenith. Now as an object appears to us in the direction

in which the rays of light strike the eye, it is easy to understand that

a star in the zenith will appear at a little distance from it, to a

spectator carried along with the earth in its orbit. This discovery

established the fame of Bradley, who was exonerated from all future

payments to the Royal Society on account of it; and it is of great

importance, as the only sensible evidence we have of the earth’s annual

motion. Soon after his appointment to the Greenwich observatory, he

effected his second great discovery, that of the nutation of the earth’s

axis, a slight oscillation of the pole of the equator about its mean

place, describing an ellipse in the period of eighteen years. He

determined likewise its cause, which theory had previously inferred to

be the action of the moon upon the equatorial regions of the earth. Some

idea of his industry may be formed from the fact, that in conjunction

with his nephew, he made no less than eighteen thousand observations in

a single year while astronomer royal; and the number from the year 1750

to 1762 amounted to upward of sixty thousand. The death of Bradley was

interpreted as a Divine judgment by the populace. He had taken an active

part with the Earl of Macclesfield and others, in urging on and

assimilating the British calendar to that of other nations. This

rendered it necessary to throw eleven days out of the current year in

the month of September 1752—a measure which the ignorance of great

numbers of the people led them to regard as an impious intermeddling

with the Divine prerogative. Lord Macclesfield’s eldest son, at a

contested election for Oxfordshire, was greeted with the cry from the

mob, “Give us back the eleven days we have been robbed of!” and

Bradley’s mortal sickness, some years later, was viewed as a punitive

dispensation for having participated in the sacrilegious theft.

The latter half of the eighteenth century furnishes a large catalogue of

distinguished names, men of high scientific ability, and, for the most

part, of the finest mathematical minds, by whose labors practical

astronomy made vast advances, and the physical theory of the universe,

as previously developed, was amply illustrated and confirmed. During

this era lunar tables were constructed of sufficient accuracy to be

employed to solve the great problem of the longitude at sea. This was

the work of Mayer, for which his widow received the sum of £3000 from

government; and since that period, the publication of such tables,

showing the places of the sun and moon, with the distance of the later

from certain fixed stars, for every three hours, three years in advance,

has been a national object, contributing to the safety of navigators

upon the trackless deep. The same period is also celebrated for the

determination of the figure and magnitude of the earth, and for the

great improvements made in instruments of observation. If the century

opened with lustre derived from the physical demonstrations of Newton,

it closed magnificently with the telescopic discoveries of Herschel, the

wonderful resident by the stately battlements of Windsor, by whose

mechanical skill and matchless industry new regions were added to our

solar system, and views unfolded of the infinity of the firmament, and

the character of its architecture, which eye had not seen or the mind

conceived.

A work specially devoted to the life and labors of Herschel is a

desideratum. It is not to the credit of the country, that the men who

have headed its physical force upon the field of battle have enjoyed a

larger measure of public admiration and gratitude, and found a more

speedy chronicle, than those who have enlarged the field of thought,

ministered to the intellectual gratification, and elevated the mental

character of the community. Bradley had lain in his grave 70 years,

Newton 104, and Flamstead 116, before their memory received its meed of

justice from the hands of Rigaud, Brewster, and Baily; a slackness to be

attributed to the want of a due national estimate of the value of

science, rather than to the reluctance of those who were competent to do

ample honor to their merits. Herschel still remains without a record of

this kind, though the materials for it are abundant, and his claims

undoubted. Born at Hanover, the son of a musician in comparatively

humble life, but early a resident in England, he appeared first as a

professor and teacher of music, but rapidly rose by his own unaided

efforts to eminence as an optician and astronomer. Anxious to inspect

for himself the sublime revelations of the heavens, but destitute of

means to purchase a telescope of sufficient power for his purpose, he

resolved to employ some previous knowledge of optics and mechanics in

the construction of an instrument. The earliest, a five-foot reflector,

was completed in 1774: but altogether he accomplished the construction

of upward of five hundred specula of various sizes, selecting the best

of them for his telescopes. After having established his fame by the

discovery of a new planet, and fixed his residence at Slough, under the

munificent patronage of George the Third, he completed the giant

instrument that attracted travelers from all parts to the spot, and

rendered it one of the most remarkable sites of the civilized world. The

tube was forty feet long, the speculum four feet in diameter, three

inches and a half thick in every part, and weighing nearly two tons. Its

space-penetrating power was estimated at 192, that is, it could search

into the depths of the firmament 192 times farther than the naked eye.

We can form no adequate conception of this extent, but only feebly

approximate to it. Sirius, a star of the first magnitude, is separated

by an immeasurable distance from us. But stars of a far inferior order

of magnitude are visible to the naked eye. These we may conclude to be

bodies far more remote, and reasonably suppose the star which presents

the faintest pencil of light to the eye to be at least twice or thrice

the distance of Sirius. Yet onward, 192 times farther, the

space-penetrating power of the telescope at Slough swept the heavens. It

was completed in the year 1789, but the frame of the instrument becoming

decayed, through exposure to the weather, it was taken down by Sir John

Herschel in 1823.

It will be convenient here to notice a reflecting telescope of far

greater magnitude and power, recently constructed by the Earl of Rosse,

and now in use at the seat of that nobleman, Birr Castle, in Ireland.

The mechanical difficulties involved in this work, the patience,

perseverance, and talent required to overcome them—and the great

expenditure necessarily incurred—render the successful completion of

this instrument one of the most extraordinary accomplishments of modern

times; and entitle its owner and projector, from first to last, to the

admiration of his countrymen. When the mechanical skill and profound

mathematical knowledge essential to produce such a work are duly

considered, together with the years devoted to previous experimenting,

and an outlay of upward of twelve thousand pounds, this telescope must

be regarded as one of the most remarkable and splendid offerings ever

laid upon the altar of science. The speculum has a diameter of six feet,

and therefore an area of reflecting surface nearly four times greater

than that of the Herschelian, and its weight approaches to four tons.

The casting—a work of no ordinary interest and difficulty—took place

on the 13th of April, 1842, at nine in the evening; and as the crucibles

poured forth their glowing contents—a burning mass of fluid matter,

hissing, heaving and pitching—for the moment almost every one was

anxious and fearful of accident or failure but Lord Rosse, who was

observed directing his men as collectedly as on one of the ordinary

occurrences of life. The speculum has been formed into a telescope of

fifty feet local length, and is established between two walls of

castellated architecture, against one of which the tube bears when in

the meridian. It is no slight triumph of ingenuity, that this enormous

instrument may be moved about and regulated by one man’s arm with

perfect ease and certainty.

To return to Herschel. No addition had been made of any new body to the

universe since Cassini discovered a fifth satellite in the train of

Saturn. Nearly a century had elapsed without any further progress of

that kind. The solar system, including the planets, satellites, and

Halley’s comet, consisted of eighteen bodies when Herschel turned his

attention to astronomy; but, before his career of observation

terminated, he increased the number to twenty-seven, thus making the

system half as large again as he found it, as to the number of its

constituents—a brilliant recompense, but not an over-payment,

considering the immense expenditure of time, and toil, and care. A

primary planet with six moons, and two more satellites about Saturn,

composed the reward. It was on the 13th of March, 1781, that, turning a

telescope of high magnifying power—though not his gigantic

instrument—to the constellation Gemini, he perceived a cluster of stars

at the foot of Castor, and one in particular, which sensibly increased

in diameter, while the rest of the stars remained unaltered. Two nights

afterward, its place was changed, which originated the idea of its being

a cometary body; an opinion embraced upon the continent when attention

was called to it, but soon dispelled by clear evidence of its planetary

nature. The new planet was named after the reigning monarch by the

discoverer, but received his own name from astronomers, which was

finally exchanged for the Uranus of heathen mythology, the oldest of the

gods, the fabled father of Saturn and the grandsire of

Jupiter—referring to the position of the planet beyond the orbits of

the bodies named after the latter. By this discovery, the extent of the

system was at once doubled; for the path of the stranger lies as far

beyond what had been deemed its extreme confine, as that limit is

removed from the sun. The first moment of his “attack” upon Saturn, upon

completing the forty-feet reflector, he saw a sixth satellite, and a

seventh moon later. But Herschel realized his most surprising results,

and derives his greatest glory, from the observation of the sidereal

heavens. The resolution of nebulæ and the Milky Way into an infinite

number of stars—the discovery of new nebulæ of various forms, from the

light luminous cloud to the nebulous star—of double and multiple

stars—of the smaller revolving round the greater in the binary systems:

these were some of his revelations to the world, as night after night,

from dewy eve till break of dawn, he gauged the firmament. Caroline

Herschel was the constant partner of her brother in his laborious

undertakings—submitting to the fatigues of night attendance—braving

with him the inclemency of the weather—noting down his observations as

they issued from his lips—and taking, as the best of all authorities

reports, the rough manuscript to the cottage at the dawn of day, and

producing a fair copy of the night’s work on the ensuing morning. He

died in 1822; but she has survived to see the heir of his name

recognized by the world as the heir also of his talents and fame. It was

one of the conceptions of this remarkable man—as bold an idea as ever

entered the human mind—that the whole solar system has a motion in

space, and is advancing toward a point in the heavens near the star λ

Herculis. The idea remains to be verified; but it is not altogether

unsupported by evidence, and quite consistent with the analogies of the

universe.

The nineteenth century commenced with a fresh ingathering of members

into the planetary family. It had been deemed a matter of surprise that

the immense interval of about 350 millions of miles between Mars and

Jupiter should be void, when only spaces varying from 25 to 50 millions

divide Mars, the Earth, and the inferior planets. Keppler had therefore

started the conjecture that a planet would be discovered in the vast

region between the two former bodies; and thus bring it into something

like proportion with the spaces between the latter. This idea was

confirmed by a curious relation discovered by Professor Bode, of Berlin,

that the intervals between the orbits of any two planets is about twice

as great as the inferior interval, and only half the superior one. Thus,

the distance between Venus and the Earth is double that between Mercury

and Venus, and the half of that between the Earth and Mars. Uranus had

not been discovered when Bode arrived at this remarkable analogy, but

the distance of that planet being found to correspond with the law,

furnished a striking confirmation of its truth. The respective distances

of the planets may be expressed by the following series of numbers,

whose law of progression is evident.

Mercury’s distance = 4

Venus 4 + 3·0 = 7

Earth 4 + 3·2 = 10

Mars 4 + 3·2^{2} = 16

Jupiter 4 + 3·2^{4} = 52

Saturn 4 + 3·2^{5} = 100

Uranus 4 + 3·2^{6} = 196

The void in the series between Mars and Jupiter, so convinced the German

astronomers of the existence of a planet to occupy it—which had

hitherto escaped observation—that a systematic search for the concealed

body was commenced. At Lilienthal, the residence of Schroeter, an

association of twenty-four observers was formed in the year 1800, for

the purpose of examining all the telescopic stars of the zodiac. The

opening years of the century witnessed the anticipation substantially

realized by the discovery of four planets—Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and

Vesta, revolving round the sun, at a mean distance of one hundred

millions of miles from Mars, so small as only to be telescopic objects.

This discovery we owe to Piazzi, Olbers, and Harding. Some singular

features—without parallel in the planetary system—such as their close

contiguity, the intersection of their orbits, with their diminutive

size—Vesta not being much larger than the Spanish peninsula—led to the

surmise that these bodies are fragments of a planet, which once revolved

in their mean path with a magnitude proportionate to that of its

neighbors. The possibility of such a disruption cannot be denied—the

revolution of the fragments round the sun would follow in obedience to

the mechanical laws by which the system is governed: but the point is

obviously one of those questions which must remain entirely

hypothetical. Next to this addition to the system, the most remarkable

astronomical occurrences of the present age are the November meteors,

the renewed return of Halley’s comet, and the determination of the

annual parallax of the star 61 Cygni by Bessel. These will come under

consideration in future pages, with the important contributions made to

science by the great names of the day, Sir John Herschel, Sir James

South, Struve, Airy, Arago, and others.

The progress of Astronomical discovery which has now been hastily

traced, reminds us of the obligations we owe to those who have gone

before us. While supplied with views respecting the constitution of the

solar universe—the number, forms, magnitudes, distances, and movements

of its members—upon the general accuracy of which the mind may repose

with full satisfaction, the mode of its formation has been grappled

with, and a theory presented, derived from the study of the sidereal

heavens, which—though not demonstrable—is invested with a high degree

of probability. The firmament exhibits dimly luminous appearances, like

patches of white cloud, displaying various forms and peculiarities of

structure, which are not resolvable into closely packed clusters of

stars by any telescopic power, and whose phases are at variance with the

idea that they are stellar groups, indistinct and blended from their

remoteness. The nebulous substance, in one of its states, is evenly

diffused, resembling a sheet of fog. Under another aspect, it is seen

winding, and we detect a tendency toward structure, in the material

congregating in different places, as if under the influence of a law of

attraction. Definite structure appears in other cases, generally the

spherical form, with great condensation at the centre, like regular

stars in the midst of a thick haze. The question has hence naturally

arisen, and it is one of profound interest—What do such appearances

indicate? What do the differences in their character portend? Are they

void and unmeaning substances in a universe of organization and order;

or, are they advancing by a principle of progressive formation to share

themselves in that order and organization? The idea has been started

that, in these phenomena, we have an exhibition of the first state of

the now organized bodies of our system, and of their progress to the

ultimate conditions of their being, passing from one stage of

construction to another, under control of the law of gravitation. This

is substantially the nebular hypothesis of Laplace and Herschel: it

supposes a diffused nebulosity, rotating with the solar nucleus, and

extending beyond the bounds of the farthest planet, to have gradually

condensed at the surface of the nucleus, accelerating thereby the solar

rotation, and increasing the centrifugal force, by the action of which

successive zones were detached, assuming spheroidal masses by the mutual

attraction of their particles. This theory enlists a variety of evidence

in its behalf. The fact of the projectile motions of all the planets and

satellites taking place from west to east, in nearly the same plane—of

their axical rotation likewise being all in the same direction, and

corresponding with that of the solar body—is an instance of coincidence

so extraordinary as strongly to support the theory of their common

origin in obedience to a common law. It is no unimportant consideration

that, in the physical and mental constitution of our own nature—with

reference also to the inferior animals, both the feeble and the

powerful, the tractable and the untamed—in relation too to the

vegetable productions of the earth, whether flourishing in green

savannas, or rooted in the clefts of the rock—we have a law of gradual

formation now operating, which vindicates the idea from the charge of

vain conceit, that an analogical law has operated with reference to the

earth itself, and the various worlds that compose our system,

supported—as the hypothesis is—by such significant evidences as the

nebulous appearances in the heavens.

From the view which has now been taken, it is evidently no doubtful

point to us—

“Whether the sun, predominant in heaven,

Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun;

He from the east his flaming rond begin,

Or she from the west her silent course advance,

With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps

On her soft axle.” . . . .

How incumbent the duty upon us, then, as we have largely benefited by

our predecessors, that—as faithful stewards of their gifts—we should

hand them down to posterity with an increase of value! How grand, and

yet how simple, those views of the universe, upon the evidence of which

we are now invited to gaze! The Sun, a central orb, attended by a

stately cortège of planets, forming a system under the empire of law—a

system not unique, but a general type of others as countless as the

members of the stellar host, whose front ranks alone come within the

range of telescopic vision: systems, probably, not physically insulated,

but bound together by fine relationships, the nature of which—judging

from the progress of the past, it is not arrogant to presume—will yet

be revealed to the understanding of man. These are not ingenious

theories—splendid conjectures; but established facts, and sober

anticipations based upon them. To live and learn is the high vocation of

humanity; one of the appointed ends which the great Artificer of

existence contemplates in its continued series: the generations that are

to come improving upon the acquirements of that which now is. Nor can we

fix any limit to the growth of knowledge in relation to the physical

universe, clear and insurmountable in the present state as are its

bounds with respect to the spiritual world. Who can descry a resting

point in the wilderness of space?—discern a barrier to the range of the

creation? Vast as are the regions that have been entered, there are

vaster amplitudes unapproached beyond them, toward which the mind may

advance in endless progression; often indeed faltering in the pilgrimage

beneath the burden of those conceptions of space and magnitude which

immensity suggests, but still going onward.

[Illustration]

* * * * *

=HYMN TO THE SUN.=

=FROM THE GREEK OF DIONYSIUS.=

=BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, TRANSLATOR=

=OF THE PROMETHEUS AND AGAMEMNON=

=OF ÆSCHYLUS, ETC. ETC.=

Mute be the skies and still,

Silent each haunted hill

And valley deep!

Let earth, and ocean’s breast,

And all the breezes rest—

Let every echo sleep!

Unshorn his ringlets bright,

He comes—the lord of light—

Lord of the lyre.

Morn lifts her lids of snow,

Tinged with a rosy glow,

To greet thee, glorious sire.

Climbing, with winged feet

Of fiery coursers fleet,

Heaven’s arch profound,

Far through the realms of air,

From out thy sunny hair,

Thou flingest radiance round.

Thine are the living streams

Of bright immortal beams—

The founts of day!

Before thy path careers

The chorus of the spheres

With wild rejoicing lay.

The sad and silver moon

Before thy gorgeous noon

Slow gliding by,

Joys in her placid soul

To see around her roll

Those armies of the sky.

* * * * *

=ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.=

=BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF “THE BROTHERS,” “THE CAPTAINS OF THE

OLD WORLD,” ETC.=

Some thirty years before the Christian era, Egypt was not as now a

barbarous and desert region, a strip of rudely cultivated land along the

margin of the eternal Nile, and all beyond that semi-civilized district

a waste of howling wilderness, shifting and fiery sands roamed by the

wild hyena, or the wilder Arab, scattered here and there with those

gigantic relics of a former race, which, while they recall the original

magnificence of the kings, and priests yet mightier than kings, who

ruled of yore with a sway revered and dreaded to the very limits of the

earth in those huge halls, are now avoided, or visited in fear and

trembling by the adventurous traveler, as haunts of the ferocious

Bedouin. Her cities were not then the sinks of mingled filthiness and

luxury; a foreign rule had not then paralyzed her commerce, desolated

her fields, and brutified her men. The Moslem had not then poured upon

her, the garden of the Mediterranean shore, a scourge more foul and

loathsome than the most terrible of her ancient plagues.

Egypt, although even then shorn of a portion of her ancient glories, and

sinking by slow steps into a Roman province, was still the garden, and

the glory of the universe. It was a glorious sight to look upon those

almost boundless plains, or on those wondrous valleys, bounded on either

hand by mountains then clothed with artificial verdure even to their

summits, in the early summer, when the tender herbage of the young grain

had spread them with an interminable carpet of the brightest green, or

in the genial noon of autumn, when the tall wheat and bearded barley

undulated in every breeze, a sea of golden fertility.

It was a yet more wondrous sight, and savoring of enchantment, to view

her thousand cities blazing with the barbaric splendors of the East—her

temples far surpassing in strange, awful magnificence, in gloomy

mysticism, and terrific splendor, the simpler and more classic shrines

of Greece—her groves of palm, her thickets of acacia, her canals

embowered with the broad leaves and lovely blossoms of the azure lotus,

her coppices blushing with the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate, or

rich with the bursting fig—her palaces, her libraries, her quays,

trodden by the mariners of every known realm, her galleys, that had

braved the tempests of the “ocean stream,” and visited, in their

adventurous roamings, the dark and stormy Cassiterides, or yet more

wonderful, had been favored with glimpses of those “Edens of the western

wave,” those islands of the blest, in whose remote and uncertain shores

the imaginative poets of the Greeks had placed the residence of the

departed good.

It was about the period above mentioned, that a war-galley of that

construction which had been recently adopted by the Romans, in

preference to the lofty and cumbrous castles of the deep, only used for

purposes of display and pleasure, was to be seen beating in for the

Egyptian shore. She was a noble trireme, and it would seem that the

builder had exerted his utmost skill to render her not only seaworthy,

and formidable as a ship of war, but rich even to magnificence in her

decorations.

Her upturned prow, with its wonted equipage of brazen beaks, to shatter

the bows of an adversary, and brazen plates to protect her own, all

polished till they flashed back the rays of the summer sun with almost

intolerable brightness, displayed along its bulwarks exquisitely moulded

railings of a richer metal; while high in front stood a statue, the

presiding deity of Rome, a helmed and crested Mars, sculptured with the

utmost finish of the Grecian chisel in pure gold. The shields, suspended

from the channels, were charged with thunderbolts of the same precious

material, upon the dark blue steel of Iberia. The oars were gilded, and

from the castled stern floated beneath a golden effigy of the guardian

wolf and the twin founders of the Imperial City, a broad sheet of silk,

blushing with the crimson effulgence of the Tyrian dye, and, as it was

tossed aloft by the light breath of the sirocco, displaying the initials

at which the universe trembled—those dread initials S. P. Q. R.—the

Senate and People of Rome—at whose edicts the remote Indian and nomadic

Scythian shook with unwonted awe.

Gorgeous, however, as were the decorations, perfect as the entire

equipment of the galley, there was something in her motions which

betrayed even at a nearer inspection, it was evident that while several

of her oars were entirely missing, a yet greater number were sprung, and

so far weakened as to give her that slow and crippled progress through

the water, which the master of the Latin Epic has so aptly compared to

the painful writhings of a wounded serpent.

Her prow was in several places pierced and shattered, the sails bore

evident marks of having met with rougher treatment than under so bright

a sky was likely to have been inflicted by the waves. The breeze though

not exactly favorable was not adverse, blowing freshly on her beam. It

was such a wind as would now be hailed with delight; but, in those days

of imperfect navigation, when all weather was considered foul which

would not allow a vessel to run dead before it—though not actually

contrary, it was looked upon with distrust at least, and deprecated as

producing difficulty at the least, if not danger.

In her disabled state, therefore, this noble galley toiled long and

wearily before the lofty pharos of Alexandria was seen towering, like a

vast column of snow, from the bosom of the placid sea. For many an hour

after this splendid landmark had been visible, did she struggle onward,

ere the quays of Parian marble, the long breakwaters, and gigantic moles

at its base, could be distinguished on the horizon.

Gradually the inner shores of the harbor opened, a vista of pillared

porticoes, architrave and frieze, of Corinthian, Ionic, Tuscan

structure, mingled with massive and fantastic forms of the earlier style

of Egypt, sphynx and colossus, obelisk and pyramid, blended with the

everlasting verdure of the palmy gardens that invested the glorious city

with a belt of aromatic verdure.

High on her prow stood the form of a noble-looking leader, in the very

prime of strength and manhood, his frame displaying all the graces of

Antinous mingled with all the sinewy strength of Hercules. To the first

might be referred the massive brow, the short curled, clustering locks

that shaded it, and the somewhat effeminate cast of his singularly

beautiful features—to the latter, the broad shoulders, the brawny neck,

and the firmness of the muscular development that was displayed at every

motion. His eyes were of that long-cut narrow form which has been

supposed to be typical of a soft luxurious character; but in the dark

orbs themselves there lurked, when they were raised, a sparkle, which

might easily be kindled into lightning splendidly different from the

dream-like softness of their wonted expression.

In the curve, too, of his well-defined and ruddy lips there was that

firmness, that bold decision, which almost belied the dimples at their

corners, and the voluptuous curve of the chin. He seemed a man who

possessed the energy to battle with the universe, to win a world, and

when won, the recklessness to cast it away as worthless. Nor did his

countenance misrepresent the character of the Triumvir.

It was Marc Antony, the glorious winner of the Roman world, and its

reckless loser. It was Marc Antony, returning in defeat—with any other

it had been despair; but his was not a temper to yield even for a moment

to so base a sinking of the spirit—returning with a single trireme from

the half-conquered strife of Actium—hurrying away from his almost

victorious fleet on the very instant of victory in a pursuit of a fair

but faithless mistress; leaving his devoted followers to the mercy of a

heartless conqueror, leaving a world, which another hour would have

rendered irrecoverably his own, to cast its subject diadems at the feet

of young Octavius.

Bravely, fiercely, had he striven, while the humor was upon him; and

farthest into the yielding ranks of the enemy had his brave galley

forced her way, until the fatal cry was heard, that Cleopatra, with her

sixty light-armed ships, had abandoned the conflict, and was flying at

the utmost speed of sail and oar, toward her native shores.

At once, and with a double exertion of valor almost supernatural, he had

forced his retrograde passage through the shattered and reeling galleys

of Augustus, and expending tenfold the quantity of noble blood to lose a

half-won battle, which would have secured to him the empire of the

universe.

Even now, although he knew that his all was set upon a single die, that

he who might have been an emperor, was now a vanquished fugitive,

without a home, a country, a place of refuge, there was no touch of

humiliation or sadness in his mien. His eye was thoughtful, indeed, and

perhaps somewhat melancholy in its expression, but at all events such

was, when unexcited, its usual character.

Moreover, as he neared the quay, as he was gradually enabled to

distinguish the things and persons on the quay, there was a sudden

brightening of the features, an eagerness of expression, an anxious

excitement almost to nervousness of manner, displaying itself clearly in

the quivering of the under lip, and the unconscious play of his fingers

on the sword-hilt, the dark spots of blood upon which denoted how deeply

its blade must have been ensanguined.

The vessel worked up to the wharf. Strong cables were extended from her

head and stern to the massive rings of brass which studded the noble

piers. On the instant, a bridge was extended from the galley to the

neighboring pier; but, ere the quivering planks were steadied, with an

active bound the triumvir had thrown himself over the high bulwarks and

stood in the centre of the eager throng that crowded round to witness

the arrival of a galley from the fleet.

“Ho! by the mother of the gods!” cried an aged man, whose toga proved

him a citizen of Rome, as clearly as did the scars on his bold and

bronzed visage prove him a soldier, “’Tis Antony himself—victorious,

too, by Jupiter! else had we not beheld him here. Shout, comrades,

shout—_Io triumphe! Salve Imperator!_”

“Peace ho! Be silent!” shouted a stern, martial-looking figure on the

prow. “Peace, brawlers! This day is to be marked as black as

Acheron—victory! by Pollux, a rare victory!”

Silently, and unheeding the raised voices and loud queries of the

populace, the noble Roman threaded the crowd. Strange—it was passing

strange, that no word from Cleopatra—no sable-visaged messenger, no

bright damsel of her court, should have met him on his return. “By the

faith of Jove!” he muttered, “but that bitter knave, Horace, was not so

much in the wrong either;” and he hummed in reckless gayety the well

known stanza of the lyric bard—

“At vulgus infidum et meretrix retso

Perjura cedit; diffurgiunt cadis

Cum face siccatis amici

Ferre jugum pariter dolosi.”

“Fie on thee, Antony! hast thou, the veteran of a thousand fields of

Mars and Venus, hast thou been cheated by the honeyed words? the last

stake was a heavy one, by Hercules! That crown, for which great Julius

fell, was worth a higher price than a glance of the brightest eye that

ever beamed with a woman’s tenderness. Fie on’t! ’twas boy’s play—boy’s

play! but to-morrow—be the gods propitious—Soh! ’tis the palace gate

at last, and swart Melancthon at the portals. What ho, Melancthon!

Bestir thee, varlet! Say to Cleopatra, Marcus Antonius sends her

greeting; and never will he rest till he be where she tarries, be that

where it may!”

“Now may the gods avert!” muttered the trembling slave.

“What mutterest thou then? Begone, and speed my bidding, else will I

make thee messenger to Hades! Where is the fair Egyptian?”

“She is _not_, Antony,” faltered the trembling Ethiopian, avoiding with

the wonted superstition of the day, the usage of words deemed ominous.

“_Is not!_ What mean’st thou, paltering with thy double speeches?”

“_Mortua est_—she is dead!” he cried, mustering all his resolution, and

then, as if fearing the wrath of the triumvir, fled hastily into the

palace.

“Dead! Cleopatra dead!” muttered the bold Epicurean, and the whiteness

of his lips told how deeply he was affected by the unexpected news. “Ho,

there!” he shouted. “Bear me a flagon of Falernian hither, and the

jeweled cup of Isis—the old Falernian pressed in the first of Caius

Marius! ’Twill be my last on this side Acheron! A battle—an empire—and

a woman! By the Thunderer! loss enough, methinks, for one day! Lost,

too, forever! The first—that—that might be redeemed—ay, and the

second won—but the woman! By the bright eyes of Aphrodite! he who has

once loved Cleopatra, has loved all womankind! Marc Antony has done with

battles. Ho! the Falernian! ’tis well—ay! pour it till it froth—hence

with the water! Pure—let it be pure! for, this quaffed, I have done

with wine, too. Sweet Cleopatra, this to thee, to thee, in Hades or

Elysium, if the poets’ dreams be true. Now hark thee, slave, say thou to

Ahenobarbus, if Antony hath forgotten how brave men conquer, he hath not

forgotten”—he drained the liquor at a single draught, and hurling the

chased and jeweled chalice against the marble pavement, unsheathed his

sword, still crusted with the blood of Romans—“hath not forgotten how

brave men—die!”

Suiting the action to the word, he buried the massive weapon in his

throat, just above the collar-bone, and over the rim of his embossed and

glittering corslet. The force of the blow was so great, that he was

pitched headlong backward, the cone of his lofty helmet striking fire

from the dinted pavement.

The blood gushed in torrents, not from the wound, for there the massive

blade stood fixed hilt deep, but from ears, eyes, and mouth. After he

fell, not a limb moved, not a pulse throbbed, the last breath rushed

forth half choked in blood, with a fearful gurgling murmur. The broad

chest slowly collapsed—the bravest of the brave had perished for a

woman’s lie!

For Cleopatra was not dead—nor as yet had she even thought to die—but

soon

She dared her fallen kingdom to behold

In dauntless pride of majesty serene;

She dared the coiling reptiles to unfold—

Courting their venomed kiss with dauntless mien.

Sublimely fierce—death full before her eyes—

She spurned the thought, that she could e’er be seen

Swelling the Roman’s pomp, his noblest prize!—

A proud reluctant slave, a crownless queen.

And now the coming sun shone in unclouded brilliancy over the lovely

gardens, that extended for many a mile beyond the marble suburbs of the

Egyptian metropolis, the mightiest work of that famed conqueror, who,

building it in the very wantonness of pride, deemed it, perchance, the

slightest of his wonderful achievements. The roads which issued from

that great city, circulating, like arteries from the human heart, wealth

and prosperity to the extremities of her dominion, wandered among brakes

and thickets of the coolest verdure; nor had the almost tropic sun of

those now scorched and sterile climes the power to pierce the embowering

foliage, which covered those magnificent highways with a continuous

vault of living freshness. The glossy leaves of the dark fig, and the

broad canopy of the aspiring palms, towering a hundred feet aloft to

bask in the full glare of day above his head—a pavement of the

milk-white marble of Canopus, cool as the snows of Atlas beneath his

feet—and the waters, drawn from the distant Nile, glancing and

murmuring in their marble channels on either side the highway—the

wayfarer might travel on his path, enjoying the breezy coolness of more

temperate climes, although he stood beneath the intolerable brightness

of an Egyptian sky.

Far in the depths of those fairy gardens, girdled, as it were, by groves

of almost impenetrable richness, watered by a hundred fountains, drawn

through their secret canals, from the one mighty river, which was to

Egypt what the soul is to the human frame, adorned by luxury that could

be made to minister happiness to the living, stood the mansion of the

dead, the mausoleum of the Ptolemies, the palace-tomb of Cleopatra.

Portico above portico, gallery over gallery, it towered a pile of

snow-white alabaster, more ample in its vast accommodations, more

splendid in its sculptures, more rich in its materials than the proudest

dwelling of a line of kings. The lower stories of the building,

surrounded by triple colonnades of Corinthian architecture, were

constructed of gigantic blocks of stone fitted and dovetailed, as it

were, into each other, with a firmness that might well endure forever.

But in these enormous walls there was no opening—door nor window, nor

the smallest crevice, to admit the blessed light of day to those huge

receptacles of the meanest relics of mortality.

Elsewhere, so singular a form of architecture would have been looked

upon as something utterly unnatural and monstrous; but in Egypt, where

every species of deception, and what we should now call stage effect,

was resorted to in all buildings, and particularly in such as were

intended for religious purposes, it was by no means calculated to excite

astonishment. Near the summit of this strange edifice, sheltered from

the glare of the declining luminary by projecting awnings of muslin, the

fabric of the Egyptian loom, then known as Byssus, was a long range of

windows, on which the sunbeams glittered with a brilliancy which showed

that they were fitted with that most precious of ancient luxuries,

transparent glass.

In a small but airy apartment of this mansion of the dead, there were

now collected a small group of females, whose gorgeous draperies and

jeweled ornaments, would have seemed to denote the proud beauties of

some barbaric court, rather than mourners over the soulless tenement

which had so recently inclosed the spirit of a man.

Situated at the very summit of the edifice, and commanding a prospect

far over the wilderness of aromatic gardens that surrounded it, even to

the distant city, overlooking the wide valley of the Nile, with the

ocean-like channel of its giant river glancing like a stream of molten

gold to the evening sun, and the vast cones of the three great pyramids

distinctly drawn against the deep-blue sky, that chamber might well have

vied with the most beautiful retreats of king or kaisar—nor were its

internal decorations less splendid than the scenery which its windows

opened to the view.

Its walls of the purest alabaster, polished till they reflected every

object with the radiant exactness of metallic mirrors, its pilasters of

the same rich materials, with their Corinthian capitals and bases of

solid virgin gold, its tesselated pavement of a thousand dies, its

couches glowing with the pictured fabrics of the Eastern loom, its

curtains of gauze so delicate that they well nigh justified the

hyperbole which had named them woven air, rendered it a befitting shrine

for the form of beauty which seemed the presiding spirit of the place.

On one of those rich couches there lay a figure of almost superhuman

majesty. The eyes were closed, and the short curls parted from the noble

brow; the features were not more pallid than is often seen in life; a

strangely voluptuous smile still slept upon the well-defined and as yet

unaltered lip, and, but for something of rigidity and constraint in the

position of the limbs, it would never have been believed that the dreams

of that warrior were those which know no waking.

His helmet, embossed with golden sculptures, rested on the ground at the

foot of the low bed, its lofty crest of snow-white horse-hair dancing in

the light air which found its way into the chamber, and casting its

wavering shadows upon the features of the dead; the elaborately

ornamented corslet, which still rested on the massive chest, was stained

in several places with broad plashes of gore; but if blood had stained

the face or the bare neck, it had been washed off with a care which had

removed every sign of violence, every symptom of death.

Perfumes had been liberally sprinkled upon the crisp, auburn locks,

censers were steaming with the smoke of musk and ambergris, and garlands

of the freshest flowers were cast like fragrant fetters over the cold

limbs of the sleeper. But what were all these to a single tear drop from

the mourner who sat beside his bed, gazing with a cold, unmeaning gaze

on the features of him whom she had loved so mightily—betrayed so

madly!

Her hair, the uncurled raven hair of Ethiopia, fell to her very feet in

strange profusion, not in the undulating flow of ringlets free from

restraint, but in straight, shadowy masses, such as we have sometimes

seen, and known not whether to praise or censure, in some sacred

painting of the Italian school. Her lineaments of the Coptic cast,

chiseled in their flowing lines of majesty and softness, were such as

men are constrained to admire despite their judgment; but her form, her

limbs, her swan-like neck, her swelling bust, the rounded outlines, the

wavy motion, were of a loveliness which, while they baffled every

attempt at description, explained at once and justified the passionate

adoration of Julius, the frantic devotion of the wild triumvir.

It was Cleopatra who sat there, mourning in desolate despair over him

whom alone she had _loved_. Him, strange it is to say, she had loved for

himself, for himself alone. No delusion of vanity, no pride of boasting

a second ruler of the universe her slave, had mingled with her deep,

indomitable passion.

The conqueror had been merged in the man, the man in the lover. In peace

or war, in triumph or defeat, absent or at her side, in the flush of

health or in the frail humility of sickness, he had been ever the chosen

idol of her heart; and never perhaps had she loved him more entirely, or

more fervently, than at the very moment of that desertion of his cause,

in the hour of his utmost need, which had terminated in the downfall of

his honor and her happiness.

Dark, indeed, and incomprehensible are the mysteries of a woman’s heart,

impenetrable her motives, unfathomable the sources of her hatred or

affection; often most tender in the heart when coldest in the semblance;

most passionate when most unmoved, most faithful when most insincere.

It might have been from mere womanish caprice, from a desire of probing

the depth of her lover’s feelings, from curiosity to learn and look upon

the conduct of a baffled conqueror; or more likely yet from

jealousy—jealousy that his love of honor and empire should interfere

with his devotion to her beauty, that she had so fatally betrayed him.

She might have overlooked, in the moment of action, the consequences of

her flight—she might have fancied the victory gained, and her desertion

a matter of no moment—a desertion that would wring the heart, without

affecting the cause, of him whom she adored the most, when she most

trifled with his peace of mind.

She might have fancied the defeat, should defeat ensue, not

irreparable—the empire lost to-day recoverable on the morrow—she might

have hoped so to teach the proud triumvir by this reverse, that, when

the government of the world should be conquered by their joint forces,

the world were the gift of Cleopatra.

It might have been one of these motives singly; it might have been the

result of all united—felt, perhaps, but not analyzed even by herself,

that had spurred her on till retreat was impossible and hope desperate.

Still it was love that caused her to betray him, as it was love that

caused her to proclaim herself dead already, ere she had yet thought of

dying, in order to mollify his indignation and awaken his sympathies; as

it was love that now led her to curse the day when she was born, born to

be the fate of Antony.

Her beautiful bosom was exposed to the light, which lingered in a pencil

of mellowed lustre, upon its soft, yet sculptured loveliness. The

delicate veil of fine muslin which should have veiled those secret

beauties, had been violently rent asunder, and hung down in natural

folds below her jeweled cincture. On each of her voluptuous bosoms,

which hardly heaved under the influence of the chill despair which had

frozen up the very sources of her grief, there was a small gout of gore,

a speck such as covers the orifice of the smallest punctured wound; but

beyond those tiny witnesses there was no stain upon her snow-white

kerchief, no trace as of blood which had flowed freely and been wiped

away.

Her hands were folded in her lap, the fingers unconsciously playing with

a chain of mingled strands of golden thread and dark, auburn hair. Her

face was very pale, and cold, and almost stern in its passionless

rigidity—the eye was cast downward, immovably riveted on the

countenance of the mighty dead; but, from the long, dark lashes there

hung no tear. All was composed, silent, self-restrained grief. An

occasional shudder crept, as it were, electrically through her whole

frame, and now and then her lips moved, as though she were communing

with some viewless form; but beyond this there was no motion or no

sound.

At a distance from the miserable mistress sat a group of women, attired,

as has been said, most gorgeously, but their sad and clouded aspects

offered a fearful contrast to their sumptuous garments; near them, and

on a table of the richest porphyry, negligently strewn with instruments

of music, the Grecian lute, the wild Egyptian systrum, and the Italian

pipe, with jeweled tiaras, perfumes, cosmetics, and all the luxuries of

a regal toilet, pateræ of solid emerald, drinking-cups of agate, vases

and flasks of crystal, there stood a plain, country-looking basket,

woven of the slender reeds that grow beside the lake of Mœris, filled

with the dark, glossy leaves and purple fruits of the fig-tree.

To a casual glance it might have seemed that there was nothing in the

contents of the basket beyond the casual offering of some simple

rustic’s gratitude to his queen; but on a nearer view, there might be

seen upon the foliage long, slimy trails, twining hither and thither, as

if left by the passage of some loathsome reptile. At times, too, there

was a slight, rustling sound, a motion of the leaves, not waving

regularly as if shaken by the breeze, but heaving up at intervals from

the life-like motions of something beneath; and now a scaly back, a

small, black head, with eyes glowing like sparks of fire, and an arrowy

tongue quivering and darting about like a lambent flame—it was the

deadly aspic of the Nile, the most fatal, the most desperately venomous

of all the serpents of Africa.

Deeply, fearfully skilled, in all the dark secrets of poisoning and

incantation, the wife and sister of the Ptolemies had chosen this

abhorred way of avenging upon herself the wrongs of Antony; of baffling

the cool malignance of the little-minded man whom Rome’s adulation had

even then began to style the August; of freeing herself from the chains,

not emblematic, of Roman servitude; from the humiliation of being led

along in gliding fetters behind the chariot wheels of the perpetual

consul; from the dungeon, the scaffold, the rod, and the axe, which

closed alike the triumph of the victor and the misery of the vanquished.

Already had the news been conveyed to her—the stunning news that, save

in name, she was no more a queen—but the rumor had fallen on a deaf or

unregarding ear.

An earthquake, it is written, shook the earth unnoticed by those who

fought at Thrasymene, an empire crumbled into ruins unmarked by her who

had lost, who had destroyed, an Antony. After the first burst of agony

was over, when the self-immolated victim was borne to her in place of

the burning, feeling, living lover, she had caused those hated reptiles

to be brought to the tomb, which she had entered while yet alive, in the

very recklessness of dissimulation and caprice; she had applied them to

her delicate bosom, and a thrill of triumphant ecstasy had rushed

through her frame as she felt the keen pang of their venomed fangs

piercing her flesh, and imbuing the very sources of life with the

ingredients of death.

And now she sat in patient expectation, brooding over the ruin she had

wrought, calmly awaiting the agony that she well knew must convulse her

limbs and distort her features from their calm serenity; while her

attendant maidens, with strange and unaccountable devotion, had

needlessly and almost unmeaningly followed the example of her, whom they

were determined to accompany faithfully not merely to the portals of the

tomb, but into the dark regions of futurity. Now, however, when the step

was taken from which there is no returning, the courage, which had

buoyed them up for a moment and impelled them to the fatal measure, had

deserted them.

In the aspect of each, remorse, or pain, or terror was engraved in

fearful variety. One gazed with straining eyes, over the glowing

landscape, gloriously bathed in the radiance of that setting luminary

which would arise, indeed, in renewed splendor but not for her. She saw

the distant hills on which she had sported in the uncontaminated

freshness of her youth, ere she had been acquainted with the sin and

sorrow of courts—the nearer palaces, in whose vaulted halls she had

often led the dance in happy, because thoughtless merriment—and her

whole spirit was absorbed in that long, wistful view of scenes never to

be viewed again.

Another stood, as motionless as the marble column against which she

leaned, staring upon her beloved mistress and the lifeless body; but it

was evident that the images which were painted on her eye were not

reflected on her mind. At intervals a large, bright tear stole slowly

down her cheeks and literally plashed on the Mosaic pavement as it fell.

A third, already sensible of the physical agonies that accompany the

action of poison on the human system, rocked her body to and fro, every

separate nerve writhing and quivering in the extremity of pain, yet

still retained so much mastery over her tortures as to repress all

outward indications of her suffering and approaching dissolution, beyond

a low, choking sob, a fearful and indescribable sound, between a

hiccough and a groan.

It was a scene of horribly exciting interest—a scene on which a

spectator feels that it is terror to gaze; yet feels that, for his life,

he cannot avert his eyes until the agony is over: a scene from which—so

strangely were terror and compassion mingled and interwoven with

curiosity—no human being could withdraw himself, till he had looked

upon the end.

The pale, haughty features of the senseless clay which had wielded and

weaponed, a few short hours ago, the energies of a gigantic soul—the

deeply seated despair of the silent mourner, still full of life and

sensation, but forgetful of herself in the contemplation of her lost

idol, unconscious of physical pain in the abstraction of mental

agony—the wretched girls repenting their rashness, yet repressing their

own anguish lest they should augment hers for whom they had cast life

away; and for whom—could it now have been redeemed—they would but have

cast it away once again: the stillness of that gorgeous room, the hated

reptiles crawling and hissing among the beautiful fruits, the sunshine

without and the gloom within, all uniting to make up a picture so awful,

yet so exciting, as no poet’s pen or painter’s pencil ever yet created.

It was a scene, however, rapidly drawing to its conclusion: the girl on

whose system the venom of the aspic had taken the strongest effect, had

already fallen upon the floor; and it seemed, by the long and gasping

efforts with which she caught her breath, that her very minutes were

numbered. Notwithstanding the miserable plight in which she rolled over

and over in her great agony, so callous had the feelings of her

companions been rendered by the immediate pressure of their own

calamities, that—delicate and tender beings as they were, with hearts

ever melting at the slightest indication of sorrow—each one retained

her station, wholly absorbed by her own awful thoughts, and careless of

all besides.

It was at this crisis, that a shrill and prolonged flourish of trumpets

rose—almost painfully—upon the ear. It was a Roman trumpet. There was

a pause—a brief, but awful pause; such as is often felt between the

first peal of a thunder-storm and the bursting deluge of the shower.

Again it rang—nearer, and nearer yet; and now, beneath the very windows

of the mausoleum.

As the first note sank into silence, the queen had arisen breathlessly

to her feet; and there she stood, motionless as a statue, her eyes still

fixed on Antony; but her lips slightly severed, her head and her whole

frame expressing the earnestness with which she listened for a

repetition of the sounds; but, as the second flourish smote her ear, she

threw her arm aloft in triumph, a flash of exultation kindled that

glorious brow like a sunburst, and her eyes danced in their sockets with

the highly-wrought ecstasy of the moment; but, while her brow and eyes

were radiant with delight, the wide expansion of the nostril and the

curl of the chiseled lip spoke volumes of defiance and contempt.

“It is too late,” she cried, in accents still clear and musical, though

strained far above the natural pitch of her voice. “It is too late, ye

Roman robbers. He whom your sacrilegious trumpets would have but now

aroused to vengeance, from the lightning of whose eye ye would have fled

like howling wolves before the bolt of Jove, whose voice would have

stunned you like the thunders of the Omnipotent—the conqueror of the

universe has fallen asleep, nor can your senseless clangors waken him to

vengeance.”

Even, as she spoke, the rattle of the ladders, by which the legionaries

of the victor were scaling the porticoes of that fortress tomb, the

shouts of the rude veterans, and the clash of their brazen harness were

distinctly audible; and, ere her words were ended, the same wild sounds

were heard echoing along the vaulted passages and spacious halls of the

story next beneath. Another moment, and their steps were heard mounting

the long sloping passages which, in Egyptian architecture, supplied the

want of stairs, affording access to the upper chambers. The door, formed

like the walls of the apartment, of polished alabaster, and invisible

when closed, was evidently forced; and a group of men, whose Italian

complexions and features, prominent and strongly marked, denoted them to

be the victors of the world, the iron men of Rome—stood on the

threshold. All sheathed in complete armor: not decked, like that of the

soft Orientals, with gold and precious stones, but of bronze so brightly

polished that it reflected every object; perfect in the accuracy with

which it was adapted to their frames, in the facility of motion it left

to all their limbs, and in its exquisite finish; with crested casques

and crimson tunics, it would have been impossible to conceive more

martial figures.

Foremost of all, the conqueror of Actium entered the arena of his

triumph; and, in truth, although he could not have sustained a moment’s

comparison with his more fortunate rival, he looked—at least, if he

were not—the hero. No flush of exultation tinged his complexion, no

insolence of victory sparkled in his eye; but, not the less did

exultation, insolence, and cruelty live within his breast, although he

was sufficiently versed in dissimulation to conceal his odious character

beneath a vail of stoical philosophy and magnanimous indifference.

“Hail, emperor!” cried the dying sovereign, confronting him with a

demeanor a thousand times more lofty than his own. “Hail,

conqueror!”—her countenance alone would have expressed the scorn she

felt, had not her tones been such that the cold-blooded despot writhed

beneath them.

“Comest thou hither, puissant lord, noble successor of the mighty

Julius, comest thou hither to violate the ashes of the dead, or to prove

thy virgin valor on a woman? _Macte tuâ virtute!_ On, in thy valor and

thy glory! Why—the dead Cæsar was to thee as Omphale to Hercules! We

are no Amazon to dare thy valor, O, thou second Thesius! Out with thy

broad-sword, Cæsar, _the august_!—and see who first will shrink from

it—I, or my dead, yonder?”

“No—by the Faith of Jove!—we would have the superb Cleopatra our

friend, as she was our uncle’s,” replied the arch dissembler. “Thou art

still free—still Queen of Egypt!”

“By the great gods, I am!—nor is it in thy power to make me other! Free

was I born and royal—free will I die and royal! Cæsar—I scorn your

mercy as I defy your menace! My fathers left to me a crown: crowned will

I go to my fathers! What—think you, Cleopatra will live to be a

slave?—will live to _be at all_, at your bidding? Go—trample on the

subject necks of Romans! The Egyptian spits at your clemency. Why cling

you not to your vaunting motto?—It was Rome’s word of old—

Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.

And dare you think me subject, or dare you not assail my pride? I tell

you, Roman, you can slay men by thousands at a word; but, for your

empire, you cannot make one woman live. Away—defile not me with your

hangman hands! These are my subjects,” and she pointed to the dying

girls around her, “this my empire—this the sepulchre of my forefathers;

who were sages, priests, and kings, when yours were robbers and

banditti. And this, that but this morning was a man, and now is nothing,

this is my idol and my god! Away—one death like this, is worth a

thousand abject lives like thine; and one dead, a hundred live Octavii,

if ever earth bore aught so base by hundreds. If I betrayed in thy

prime, thou mighty one, most dearly—I, upon myself, have I avenged the

treason. If I sent thee before me, behold! I follow in thy footsteps!

_Manes_ of the dead rejoice—rejoice, ye are avenged!”

Her eyes glared, awful. The death-sweat was already darkening her

brow—the death-foam clammy on her white lip. She must have been

devoured by the fiercest inward tortures, yet she made them subject to

her will; and the veterans of a hundred battles quailed before the edge

of her eloquence, more cutting than the mortal sword. She flung her arm

toward the astonished tyrant in defiance, folded her garments decently

about her limbs, placed the antique diadem of the Ptolmies upon her

raven tresses, and, without another word, composed herself on the couch

beside him toward whom she had proved her love so fearfully, and closed

her eyes for the last time—for ever!

For many minutes longer, while—mute between astonishment, regret at his

frustrated triumph, and admiration of her undaunted valor—the cold

Cæsar watched her silent agonies, the convulsed heavings of her bosom,

and her loud and painful breathings alone told that she lived.

One long and shuddering sigh—one short, sharp spasm—and the dark eyes

opened, but their orbs were glazed and sightless—her jaw fell.

And Egypt never more bowed to a native sovereign.

And Rome was never more uncursed by a Cæsar.

* * * * *

=THE TWO BIRDS.—A STREET LYRIC.=

=BY GEORGE H. BOKER.=

Two birds hang from two facing windows;

One on a lady’s marble wall,

The other, a seamstress’ sole companion,

Rests on her lattice dark and small.

The one, embowered by rare exotics,

Swings in a curious golden cage;

The other, beside a lone geranium,

Peeps between wires of rusty age.

The one consumes a dainty seedling

That, leagues on leagues, in vessels comes;

The other pecks at the scanty leavings,

Strained from his mistress’ painful crumbs.

The lady’s bird has careful lackeys,

To leave him in the cheerful sun;

Upon her bird the seamstress glances,

Between each stitch, till work is done.

Doubtless the marble wall shines gayly,

And sometimes to the window roam

Guests in their stately silken garments;—

But yon small blind looks more like home.

Doubtless the tropic flowers are dazzling,

The golden cage is rare to see;

But sweeter smells the low geranium—

The mean cage has more liberty.

’Tis well to feed upon the fruitage,

Brought from a distant southern grove;

But better is a homely offering,

Divided by the hand of love.

The purchased service of a menial

May, to the letter, fill its part;

But there’s an overflowing kindness

Springs from the service of a heart.

Hark! yonder bird begins to warble:

Well done, my lady’s pretty pet!

Thy song is somewhat faint and straitened,

Yet sweeter tones I seldom met.

And now the seamstress’ bird—Oh, listen!

Hear with what power his daring song

Sweeps through its musical divisions,

Striking each note in rapture strong!

Hear how he trills, with what abundance

He flings his varied stores away!

Bursting through wood and woven iron

With the wild freedom of his lay!

Cease, little prisoner to the lady,

Cease, till the rising of the moon;

Thy feeble song is all unsuited

To the full mid-day glare of June.

Cease, for thy rival’s throat is throbbing

With the fierce splendor of the hour:

His is the art that grasps a passion,

To cast it back with tenfold power.

Cease, until yonder feathered poet

Through all his wondrous song has run,

And made the heart of wide creation

Leap in the glory of the sun!

* * * * *

=MISS HARPER’S MAID.=

It had been a day of boisterous excitement. The gravity of the ship had

been strangely disturbed. We had “crossed the line” in the morning, and

there had been the usual saturnalia on deck. Of these, as I was

returning to India, after a sick furlough, I had been only a spectator;

but still, when the evening came, and the fun was at an end, I felt

sufficiently weary with the heat and excitement, to enjoy a quiet

_causerie_ in my own cool cabin.

My companions were a bottle of “private” claret, and the “chief officer”

of the ship. Now this chief officer was an excellent fellow; I think

that I never knew a better. His name was Bloxham. He was about

eight-and-twenty years of age, with a round, fresh-colored, but

intelligent face; bright, laughing eyes, and the whitest teeth in the

world. There was in him a rare union of the best parts of the old and

the new race of merchant seamen; that is, he had all the openness and

frankness, the seaman-like qualities of the old men, without their

coarseness and vulgarity; and he had the more refined and gentleman-like

manners of the new, without their dandyism and effeminacy. He was in my

eyes the very pink and perfection of a sailor.

We discussed the incidents of the day, and discoursed upon the character

and objects of the Saturnalia, or rather, as we agreed, the Neptunalia,

which we had been witnessing. I have no intention of describing what has

been so often been described before. But there is one part of the

ceremony on which I must say a few words. Before the unhappy neophyte

who has to be initiated into the mysteries of the equator is finally

soused in the tub of water, which by a merciful dispensation is made to

follow on the begriming and befouling operation of the shaving, he is

asked by the operator if he has been “Sworn at Highgate.” Now, to be

sworn at Highgate, is to undertake not to do certain things, when you

can do better, as “never to drink small beer when you can get strong,

_unless_,” (there is always a saving clause,) “unless you like small

beer better than strong.” I do not remember all the obligations, though

they are not many, named in the recital. But one I have every reason to

recollect. Bloxham, with his smiling face and joyous manner, was talking

over this part of the ceremony; and when he repeated the words of the

Highgate oath, “Never to kiss the maid, when you can kiss the

mistress—_unless_, you like the maid better than the mistress,” I could

see a significant twinkling in his eyes, which stimulated my curiosity.

I asked him what he was thinking of, and he said that he “could believe

it very possible to like the maid better than the mistress,” and I said

so too. “At all events,” added Bloxham, “it often happens that the maid

is the better worth kissing of the two.”

I could see plainly enough from my friend’s manner, that I had not got

at the bottom of this roguish twinkling of the eye. His whole face was

indeed one bright smile, and there was a world of meaning dancing

beneath it. I was determined, as sportsmen say, to “unearth” it; so I

said at once, that I should enjoy my claret all the more, if he would

impart to it the relish of a good story. Then I took the bottle off the

swinging tray, filled our glasses, and told him to “leave off making

faces and begin.”

“Well,” he said, making himself comfortable in a corner of my couch, “I

must acknowledge that ‘thereby hangs a tale.’ ‘Never kiss the maid when

you can kiss the mistress, _unless_, you like the maid better than the

mistress.’ At the risk of your thinking me a low fellow, I’ll give you a

chapter of my own experiences, illustrative of this portion of our

sailorly interpretation of being sworn at Highgate.

“After the last voyage but one, our good ship went into dock for a

thorough refitting, and I had a longer spell at home than I had enjoyed

for many years. I would not change this way of life for any in the

world; but I was glad for once to stretch my legs fairly on dry land,

and see something of green fields, brick and mortar, and my shore-going

friends in the neighborhood of Canterbury.

“Among the families in which I was most intimate was that of a Mr.

Harper. He had made a comfortable fortune by trade, and now was enjoying

his _otium cum dignitate_ in a good house on the outskirts of the city.

An only daughter kept house for him; for he was a widower. Now Julia

Harper, when I first knew her, was a fine, handsome girl of

two-and-twenty; tall, well-made, but on rather a large scale, with

bright, restless eyes, and a profusion of dark hair. She had a great

many admirers in Canterbury, some of whom, there is every reason to

suppose, admired the old gentleman’s money as much as the young lady’s

eyes, but they met with no great encouragement. Miss Harper, it was

whispered, had determined not to marry a Canterbury man. She wished to

see more of the world. Her tastes inclined toward the army or the navy;

and it was predicted that some fine day a young officer from one of the

regiments in garrison, with an eye to the paternal guineas, would

succeed in carrying off the prize. Everybody, however, said that she was

heart-whole, when I was first introduced to her, and some of my more

intimate friends jestingly said that there was a chance for me. I

confess that I was a good deal struck by the girl. The artillery of her

bright eyes soon began to do some execution. I liked her open, bold

manner. I had very little experience of the sex, and I thought that her

candor and unreserve betokened a genuineness of character, and a

truthfulness of disposition, very refreshing in such an age of shams. I

think I liked the old gentleman, too—I know I liked his dinners and his

wines—I was certainly a favorite with Mr. Harper. Whether he ever

contemplated the probability of his daughter and myself becoming

attached to one another, I do not know; but if he did contemplate it,

and with pleasure, it must have been pleasure of the most unselfish

kind, for of all his daughter’s admirers, in point of worldly

advantages, I must have been the least eligible. However, he had been

heard to say, that he did not look for a rich son-in-law, as his

daughter would have plenty of money of her own; so, sometimes, I thought

it possible that the old gentleman would not close his paternal heart

against me, if I were to offer myself as a suitor for the fair Julia’s

hand, and a claimant to her heart.

“I often met with Julia at the house of mutual friends. I certainly

liked the girl; and my vanity was flattered, because, with so many

admirers around her, she showed me, as I thought, a decided preference.

She seemed to be never tired of talking about the sea. She wearied me

with questions about it; and on more than one occasion said—very

unguardedly—that she thought a voyage to India would be the most

delightful thing in the world. Of course, I made fitting answer, that

with a congenial companion, a voyage anywhere would be delightful; and,

more than once, opportunity being favorable, I was on the point of

declaring myself, when an internal qualm of conscience arrested the

dangerous avowal.

“Affairs were in this state, when an accident befell me which brought

matters to a crisis. There was a steeple-chase one day in the

neighborhood of Canterbury, which I attended on foot. During the

excitement of the race, I attempted a difficult cut across the country,

failed at a leap which was beyond my powers, and had the misfortune to

sprain my ankle. The injury was a very severe one, and I was laid up for

many weeks in my lodgings. You have often laughed at me for taking every

thing so coolly. I assure you that I did not take this coolly at all. I

chafed, indeed, like a lion in the toils; and was continually arresting

the progress of my recovery, by putting—in spite of repeated

prohibitions—the crippled member to the ground. At last, I began to

learn a little philosophy, and resigned myself to the sofa with a groan.

“The loss of my liberty was bad enough; but the loss of Julia’s society

was a hundred times worse. Her father came often to see me, and brought

me kind messages from his daughter; but, if I had had no more

substantial consolations, I believe that I should have gone mad. Julia

did not actually come to see me; but she wrote me repeated notes of

inquiry, and often sent me flowers, and books, and other tokens of

womanly kindness. The messenger employed on these occasions was Miss

Harper’s maid—”

“Ah! sworn at Highgate,” I interrupted; “we are coming to it now.

Another glass of claret to improve the flavor of the story.”

He tossed off the bumper I had given him, as though he were drinking

devoutly to some lady’s health, and then continued with increased

animation.

“The messenger employed on these occasions was Miss Harper’s maid. She

was generally enjoined to deliver the letters and parcels into my own

hands, and sometimes to wait for an answer. She came, therefore, into my

drawing-room, and if she had occasion to wait, I would always desire her

to be seated. The girl’s name was _Rachel_. She might have been old, or

ugly, or deformed, for any thing I cared, or, indeed, that I knew about

her. I had a dim consciousness that she had a very pleasant manner of

speaking; but I give you my word that, after she had been half-a-dozen

times into my room, I should not have known her if I had met her in the

streets: I regarded her only as an appendage to the fair Julia, whose

image was ever before my eyes, shutting out all else from my view.

“This, however, did not last forever. It happened one day, that when

Rachel brought me a parcel, I—in my lover-like enthusiasm—started up

from the sofa, and incautiously planted my injured foot on the ground.

The result was a spasm of such acute pain, that I fell back upon my

couch with an involuntary cry, and a face as colorless as marble. Rachel

immediately stepped forward; and, with a cordial expression of sympathy,

asked if she could do any thing for me, and proceeded, with a light,

gentle hand to arrange the pillows under my crippled limb. I felt very

grateful for these ministrations, and as I gave utterance to my

gratitude, I looked for the first time inquiringly into Rachel’s face.

Though she bore a Jewish name, she did not bear by any means a Jewish

cast of countenance. She had dark hair and dark eyes, it is true—but

her face was round, her nose short, and if any thing, rather

_retroussé_; and she had the sweetest little mouth in the world. I

thought that, altogether, she was a very pretty girl, and moreover a

very genteel one. I observed now, what I had never observed—indeed, had

had no opportunity of observing—that she had a charming little figure.

Her shawl had fallen off whilst she was arranging my pillows, so that I

could now see her delicate waist, and the graceful outline of her

lightsome form; and there was something in her movements that pleased me

better than all. I was interested in her now for the first time; and was

sorry when she took her departure, with the expression of a hope that I

might not suffer further inconvenience.

“I hoped that she would come again on the following day, and I was not

disappointed. She came with a note and a _boquet_ from Julia; but,

before delivering either, she inquired after me, with—what I

thought—genuine concern. I answered kindly and gratefully; and before

opening her mistress’s note, asked her several questions, and drew her

into conversation. The more I saw of her the better I liked her. She was

at first a little reserved—perhaps embarrassed; but, after a few more

visits, this wore off, and there was a quiet self-possession about her,

which pleased me mightily. I could not get rid of the impression that

she was something better than her social position seemed to indicate; at

all events, she was very much unlike all the waiting-maids I had ever

seen. I soon began to delight in her visits. She came almost every day

with some letter or message from her mistress. I looked forward to the

time of her coming, and felt duller when she was gone. I thought that it

would be very delightful to have such a handmaiden always about me, to

smooth my pillows, and bring me my meals, and talk to me when she had

nothing better to do.

“I was interested in Rachel, and enjoyed her visits; but, believing

still in Julia Harper’s fidelity, I was faithful to the core myself. But

circumstances soon occurred which shook my faith, and then my love began

to dwindle. The first of these was a mere trifle—but it was a

suggestive one. Rachel brought me, one day, a note, and a little bundle

of flowers, unusually well-arranged. I read the note, and to my

astonishment there was a postscript to it in these words—‘I am sorry

that I cannot send you a boquet to-day; there is positively not a flower

in the garden.’ I mentioned this to Rachel, and asked whence the flowers

had come. She blushed, and said with some confusion of manner, that she

had picked them in the garden herself.

“The next was something still more demonstrative of the fair Julia’s

disregard of truth. Rachel brought me a note one day, and a parcel

containing a pair of worsted-work slippers, which her mistress said she

hoped I would wear for her sake until I was able to leave my room. She

did not actually say, but she implied that she had worked them for me

herself. When I said something to Rachel about the time and trouble Miss

Harper—I never said ‘your mistress’ now—must have expended on them, I

observed a very curious and significant expression on the girl’s face. I

had observed it once or twice before, when I had said something

indicative of my confidence in Julia’s sincerity. It was an expression

partly of pity—partly of disgust; and seemed to be attended, for I

could see the compressure of her little mouth, with a painful effort to

repress the utterance of something that was forcing its way to her lips.

I was thinking what this could mean, when a piece of folded paper fell

from the parcel: I picked it up, and found it was a bill—a bill for my

slippers, which Miss Harper had bought at the Berlin Repository in the

High Street. I knew now the meaning of the look. Rachel saw that I had

got a glimmering of the truth, and I thought that she seemed more happy.

“She had wished me ‘good morning,’ and was about to depart, but I told

her that I could not suffer her to go. It was altogether a deplorable

day, what we call in the log _squally_. There was a great deal of

wind—a great deal of rain; and, just at this moment, the latter was

coming down in torrents. After some persuasion, she consented to remain.

Then I asked her if she would do something for me; and, with a bright

smile, she answered—‘Yes.’ I had a new silk neckcloth waiting on the

table to be hemmed. She took it up, and then turning to me, asked

naively how she was to hem it without needle and thread. To this

question—for which I was well prepared—I replied, that in the other

table-drawer she would find something containing both. She searched, and

found a very pretty Russian-leather case, silver-mounted, with all the

appliances a seamstress could desire. Then I begged her acceptance of

it—said that I had ordered it to be made on purpose for her use, and

that I should be bitterly disappointed if she did not accept of it. And

she did accept it with undisguised pleasure. And every pleasant thing it

was to lie on the sofa, and watch her neat little white hands plying the

needle in my behalf. I had been longing to see the hand without the

glove, and I was abundantly satisfied when I saw it.

“She had hemmed one side of the handkerchief, and we had conversed on a

great variety of topics, when the weather began to clear up, and the sun

to shine in at the windows. Rachel rose at once to depart. I said that I

was quite sure it must be dreadfully wet under foot, and that I was

certain she was thinly shod.

“‘Not very,’ she said.

“But I insisted on satisfying myself, and would not be content until she

had suffered to peep out beneath the hem of her gown one of the neatest

little patent-leather slippers I had ever seen in my life. I said that

they were very dainty little things, but altogether fine-weather shoes,

and not meant for wet decks. But I remembered presently that I had seen

in her hand, when she entered the room, a pair of India-rubber

overshoes, and I reminded her of them.

“‘They are my mistress’s,’ she said: ‘I had been desired to fetch them

from the shop.’

“‘Wear them,’ I said, ‘all the same—they will be none the worse, and

will keep your little feet dry.’

“‘But how can I?’ she answered with a smile; ‘they will not fit me at

all.’

“‘Too _small_?’ I said, laughing.

“‘Yes, sir,’ she said, with another smile, even more charming than the

first. I told her that I should not be satisfied until I had decided

that point for myself; and at last I persuaded her to try. The little

rogue knew well the result. Her feet were quite lost in them.

“If I have a weakness in the world, my good fellow, it is in favor of

pretty feet and ankles; so, when Rachel insisted on taking her

departure, I hobbled as well as I could to the window to see her pick

her way across the puddles in the Close. I satisfied myself that the

girl’s ankles were as undeniable as her feet; and she was unequivocally

_bien chaussée_. I could not help thinking of this long after she was

gone. And then it occurred to me that Julia Harper was certainly on a

rather large scale. She had a good figure of its kind, and she had fine

eyes; but Rachel’s were quite as bright, and much softer; and as for all

the essentials of a graceful and feminine figure, the mistress’s was far

inferior to the maid’s. I kept thinking of this all the evening, and

after I had gone to bed. And I thought, too, of the very unpleasant

specimen of Julia’s insincerity which had betrayed itself in the case of

the slippers. But it is astonishing how little it pained me to think

that Julia might not be really attached to me, and that our almost

engagement might come to naught after all.

“I am afraid that if I dreamt at all about female beauty that night, it

was less in the style of the mistress than the maid. Morning came, and

with it an eager hope that I should see Rachel in the course of the day;

but she did not appear. I never kept such long watches in my life. I got

horribly impatient. I left my couch, and seated myself at the window,

with a sort of forlorn hope that I might see Rachel pass; but I saw only

a distressing number of clumsy feet and thick ankles, and no one

remotely resembling Miss Harper’s spicy little maid. Night closed in

upon me savage as a bear. But the next day was a more auspicious one.

Looking prettier than ever, Rachel came with a note from her mistress. I

was in no hurry to open it, you may be sure. I asked Rachel a great

number of questions, and was especially solicitous on the score of the

wet feet, which I feared had been the result of her last homeward voyage

from my lodgings. She had by this time habituated herself to talk to me

in a much more free and unembarrassed manner than when first she came to

my apartments; and the more she talked to me, the more charmed I was;

for she expressed herself so well, had such a pleasant voice, and

delivered such sensible opinions, that I soon began to think that the

mental qualifications of the mistress (none of the highest, be it said)

were by no means superior to those of the maid. Indeed, to tell you the

truth, my good fellow, I was falling in love with little Rachel as fast

as I possibly could.

“This day, indeed, precipitated the crisis. We had talked some time

together, when Rachel reminded me (I thought that there was an

expression of mock reproachfulness in the little round face) that I had

not read her mistress’s letter. I opened it in a careless manner; and

had no sooner read the first line, than I burst out into loud laughter.

‘Bravo! Rachel,’ I exclaimed. ‘You are a nice little messenger, indeed,

to carry a young lady’s _billets doux_. You have given me the wrong

letter.’ She took up the envelope, which had fallen to the ground, and

showed me that it was directed to ‘_Edward Bloxham, Esq._’ ‘All the

better, Rachel,’ I said; ‘but this begins ‘_I am so delighted, my dear_

_Captain Cox_—’ Hurrah, for the envelopes!’

“I looked into Rachel’s face. It was not easy to read the expression of

it. First she seemed inclined to laugh—then to cry. Then she blushed up

to the very roots of her hair. She was evidently in a state of

incertitude and confusion—puzzled what course to pursue. I folded up

the letter, placed it in another envelope—not having, of course, read

another word of its contents. What was the cause of Julia’s excessive

delight I am not aware up to this moment; but I could not help asking

Rachel something about Captain Cox. One question led to another. Rachel

hesitated at first; but at last, with faltering voice and tearful face

told me the whole truth. She said that she had felt herself, for some

time, in a very painful and embarrassing situation. She recognized her

duty to her mistress, who had been kind and indulgent to her—but she

could not help seeing that much which had been done was extremely wrong.

She had all along been ashamed of the duty on which she was employed,

and had more than once hinted her disapprobation; but had been only

laughed at as a prude. She had often reproached herself for having been

a party to the fraud which had been practiced on me. She had not at

first fathomed the whole extent of it; but now she knew how bad a matter

it was. The truth was, that Miss Harper had for some time been carrying

on something more than a flirtation with Captain Cox. But her father

disliked the man, who, though very handsome and agreeable, bore any

thing but a good character—and, therefore, Julia had acted cautiously

and guardedly in the matter, and had feigned an indifference which had

deceived Mr. Harper.

“When I first came to anchor at Canterbury, Captain Cox was on ‘leave of

Absence;’ and, as he had gone away without making a declaration, it had

appeared to Julia that an overt flirtation with me in the captain’s

absence—something that would certainly reach his ears—might stimulate

him to greater activity, and elicit an unretractable avowal. Her

flirtation with me was intended also, to impress on Mr. Harper’s mind

the conviction that she was really attached to me, and he ceased,

therefore, to trouble himself about Captain Cox. He liked me, and he

encouraged me, on purpose that the odious captain might be thrown into

the shade. Such was the state of affairs at the outset of Julia’s

flirtation with me. But Rachel assured me that I really had made an

impression on the young lady’s heart, though she had not by any means

given up the gallant captain.

“I asked Rachel how this could be—how it was possible that any heart

could bear two impressions at the same time. She said, that she supposed

some impressions were not as deep and ineffaceable as others. At all

events, she believed that to Miss Harper it was a matter of no very

vital concernment whether she married Captain Cox or Mr. Bloxham; but

that she was determined to have one or other. The fact is, the girl was

playing a double game, and deceiving both of us. All this was very clear

to me from Rachel’s story. But she told me it was her own belief, that

Julia would determine on taking me, after all—and that for the very

excellent reason that Captain Cox was engaged elsewhere. At least, that

was the story in the town since his return to barracks.

“Poor Rachel shed a great many tears whilst she was telling me all this.

She said that, having betrayed her mistress, she could not think of

remaining with her. She was decided on this point. With warm expressions

of gratitude, I took her little hand into mine, and said that I would be

her friend—that she had done me an inestimable service—that I was glad

to be undeceived—that the little incident of the flowers and that of

the slippers, had shaken my belief in Miss Harper’s truth, that

altogether my opinions had changed, and that I knew there were worthier

objects of affection. Then I spoke of her own position—said that of

course her determination was right—but that she would confer a very

great favor on me, if she would do nothing until she saw me again. This

she readily promised; and it was agreed that on the following day, which

was Sunday, she should call on me during afternoon service. I pressed

her hand warmly when I wished her goodbye, and with greedy eyes followed

her receding figure across the Close.

“She came at the appointed hour, looking prettier and more lady-like

than ever. She was extremely well-dressed. I shook hands with her and

asked her to seat herself upon the couch beside me; and then asked her,

laughingly, ‘What news of Captain Cox?’ She said there was not the least

doubt that Captain Cox was engaged to be married to a lady in London;

and that Miss Harper, on the preceding evening, not before, had been

made acquainted with the fact. I then asked Rachel what the young lady

had said on receiving back her letter to the captain; and learnt that

she had been greatly excited by the discovery, and had been very eager

to ascertain how much of the letter I had read. When Rachel told her

that I had read only the words, _I am so delighted, my dear Captain_

_Cox_, she somewhat recovered her spirits, but this morning she had

pleaded illness as an excuse for not coming down to breakfast, and had

not since left her room.

“There was at this time lying unopened on my table, a note from Miss

Harper, which had been brought by her father, an hour before. I asked

Rachel to give it to me, saying ‘Now let us see, Rachel, whether any new

light is thrown upon the subject.’ I think her hand trembled when she

gave it to me. I opened and read—

“‘My dear Mr. Bloxham,—Very many thanks to you for your promptitude in

returning the note, which, stupid little bungler that I am’ (‘Not so

very little, is she, Rachel?’ I paused to remark) ‘I sent you by

mistake—I am very glad that I had not sent _the other_ to Captain

Cox—for, although it does not much matter if one’s letters to one’s

acquaintance fall into the hands of one’s friends, it is not at all

pleasant if one’s letters to one’s friends fall into the hands of one’s

acquaintance. I wrote to Captain Cox only to tell him how delighted I

was to hear of his engagement—for he is going to be married to a Miss

Fitz-Smythe—a very lady-like girl, who was spending some time here with

the Maurices; and was really quite a friend of my own.’

“I had not patience to read any more. I knew it to be all a lie. So I

tossed the letter into the middle of the room, and said, ‘We have had

enough of that.’ I was ineffably disgusted. One thing, however, was

certain; that Julia Harper, with her £15,000, was now to be had by me

for the asking. But I would not have asked, if the money had been told

over twenty times.

“I had other views for my humble self. Rachel, I found on inquiry, was

the daughter of a Mrs. Earnshaw, the widow of an officer in the

Preventive Service. The widow’s means of subsistence were slight, and

her daughter had obtained a situation as, what people called, Miss

Harper’s maid.

“My good fellow, I can hardly tell you what happened after this; I have

a confused recollection of having looked inquiringly into Rachel’s face,

read whole chapters of love in it; then threw my arms round her waist,

pressed her fondly to my bosom, and whilst I untied her bonnet strings,

and removed the obtrusive covering from her head, said to her, ‘We

sailors have all been sworn at Highgate—all sworn never to kiss the

maid when we can kiss the mistress—_unless we like the maid better

than_ _the mistress_, and heaven knows how much _I_ do!’

“After the lapse of two or three weeks, and very delightful weeks they

were, too—Rachel Earnshaw became Rachel Bloxham, and I the happiest

husband in the world. I have got the very best of little wives, and

never, I assure you, for one moment, though we have little enough to

live upon, and I cannot bear these long separations, have I deplored the

loss of Miss Harper and her fifteen thousand pounds, or regretted that I

availed myself of the _saving clause_, when I proved that I had been

Sworn at Highgate.”

* * * * *

=“WHATEVER HE DOETH SHALL PROSPER.”=

=BY MRS. MARY ARTHUR.=

I read the records of passing life,

With a careful, earnest eye—

And smiled or wept, as my pulses leapt,

To the scenes that hurried by;

From the busy play of infancy

To the busier care of age—

And nothing so fair as an upright soul

Was traced on the glowing page.

“Whatever he doeth shall prosper well”—

“In his darkness ariseth light”—

So—softly and sweetly a whisper fell,

Like the smile of an angel bright.

Though he win not the glitter of gold or fame,

Yet his wealth shall be far above;

He shall coin it freely of precious words

From the treasure of God’s deep love.

“Whatever he doeth shall prosper well,”

Though his path may be rough awhile,

Enough for him is the lights of truth

And his Father’s ceaseless smile.

He shall grow like a tree by the river-side,

And if tempests sweep around—

Then proved and tried by their searching wrath

Shall the ripened fruit be found.

“Whatever he doth shall prosper well,”

(For he waiteth his Father’s will,)

Though it seems not so in this outer world,

In a better and brighter still.

His leaf shall not wither—it keepeth fair,

Through the cold or gusty blast;

And his fruit shall ripen to holiness

When the season comes at last.

* * * * *

=THE USEFUL ARTS.=

=THEIR ORIGIN AND THEIR EARLIEST HISTORY.=

=BY CHARLES WILLIAMS.=

The origin of the useful arts is not like a spring gushing forth from

the earth, a simple and indivisible cause of diversified results; it

rather resembles the noble river, whose waters arise and increase from a

large confluence of streams.

I. _Endowments for Labor._

How greatly, for instance, are the arts attributable to the human hand!

The paw of the beaver is admirably adapted to its habits of masonry, but

immensely superior is the organ of prehension with which we are gifted,

which readily applies itself to, and securely grasps, bodies of every

form and size, capable of being moved by the arms of man. Had the hand

been undivided, it could only have held such a portion of any mass as

was equal to itself; but now, by separating the fingers, it can

encompass one larger than itself; and by compressing two of them

together, it can safely hold a minute object. And as some bodies are too

large to be held by one hand alone, we are endowed with two, inclining

toward, and precisely adapted to, each other. The highest advantages of

a single hand of much larger dimensions is therefore gained, without any

of the discomforts that would arise from a different arrangement.

The admirable division of the hand, and the exquisite adjustment of its

several parts, are consequently indispensable to its perfection. Only

take from it one of them, and the efficiency of the whole is seriously

impaired. The Roman soldier deprived of his thumb was regarded as unfit

for service; and there have been instances in England and other

countries of such self-mutilation, as an effectual security against a

martial life. The thumb is, indeed, of special use. It is neither

situated directly opposite to the fingers, nor in the same plane with

them, but obliquely, that it may be brought at pleasure to bear on them

all, or on each finger separately. How manifestly superior is it to the

rudimental thumb of the ape, which is designed for no such services! In

strong contrast to the hand, also, as examination will show, is the

lion’s paw, which, though consisting of four fingers and a thumb, is

only adapted to very different purposes. In the human feet, where extent

of surface is required for support, all the toes, unlike the fingers,

are arranged in the same plane.

Were the tips of the fingers of bone, instead of flesh, we could not

take up such minute bodies as a millet seed, a thorn, or a hair, which

we can now do so readily from their being soft and round. Less soft, or

more soft, equal difficulty would arise: the fingers have precisely the

degree of consistence which is adapted to their intended use. And that

they may hold hard bodies, they are provided with nails, admirable

indeed for structure and position: were these placed on the tips of the

fingers, power would be lost; but they occupy exactly the situation, and

are of just the length, which will insure their utmost efficiency. In

almost every art where nicety of execution is required, the nails are

continually called into action. Who can, indeed, overrate the value of

the hand? Smoothness and roughness, fineness and coarseness, heat and

cold, are among the many sensible qualities of matter which it enables

us to recognize, from the nerves with which it is so abundantly

supplied, while its uses defy enumeration. The cuticle, indeed, becomes

hard, thickened, and almost horny, thus suffering a loss of sensibility

from years of labor; but in this there is a wise and kind law of

Providence, by which the laboring man is fitted for his daily and useful

toil. Did his hands thrill with every impression, he would be constantly

exposed to pain, and restrained by fear from pursuing as he does now his

rugged work. But early use has inured him to labor; he therefore wields

the axe, strikes in the spade, or swings over his head the huge hammer,

almost unconscious of effort; or, equally unharmed, dips his vessel into

the furnace of molten metal when it has attained the intensity of a

dazzling and scorching whiteness.

Complicated as the mechanism of the hand appears, when the attention is

restricted to its surface, it proves still more so when there is a

careful examination of its internal structure; while its complexity can

only be adequately regarded as other parts of the physical system are

duly considered. The wrist, which forms the base of the hand, is

composed of eight small bones compacted together; and having little or

no motion, they constitute a solid mass. The wrist is joined to the

bones of the fore-arm, the radius, and the ulna, which lie alongside

each other, and touch only toward the ends. Only one of them is joined

to the upper arm, at the elbow; the other only to the hand, at the

wrist. The former, by means of a hinge-joint at the elbow, swings

backward and forward, carrying with it the whole fore-arm. As often,

too, as there is occasion to turn the palm of the hand upward, the

radius rolls upon the ulna by the help of a cavity near each end of one

bone, to which, in the other, there is a corresponding tubercle.

Other arrangements are equally worthy of consideration. The bones of the

shoulders not only give firm attachment to the upper extremity of the

frame, but supply origins to the muscles of the arm and fore-arm. The

free use of the hand, and the square form of the chest, are alike

greatly owing to the clavicle, or collar-bone, which runs across from

the breast-bone to the top of the shoulders. The scapula, or

shoulder-blade, which is flat and triangular, lies on the ribs, is

cushioned with muscles, shifts and revolves in its place with every

movement of the arm, and has the power of moving upward and downward,

backward and forward, so that when these motions succeed rapidly, the

arm is rotated. The upper arm consists of a single bone, the head of

which is hemispherical; standing obliquely backward from the bone, and

received into a cavity with which the scapula is provided, it forms a

ball and socket-joint. In this arrangement there is a provision for the

rotating of the arm-bone on the scapula: thus the guards are made in

fencing, and various similar movements are performed. In others the

wrist has a finer and easier rolling, but this is from the motion of the

radius and the ulna. How exquisite and wondrous, then, are the

complicated, yet harmonious arrangements of the organic structure, by

which the endless diversity of our manipulations is so effectually and

happily secured!

Nor must we pause even here; for what is it that directs the hand? It is

the mind. The instruments of sense with which we are provided are

employed by a being capable of volition. We thus pass from the palpable

to the invisible. For that which feels and acts must be distinct from

the body, unless the body itself feels and acts. But in as far as the

body possesses a distinct organization of nerves for distinct purposes,

as sympathy, feeling, and motion, and all the frame does not act

together in feeling and volition, something besides the body must exist

and operate. And it is mind which enables the man not only to contrive,

but to execute. Without it, how useless; with it, when under the power

of disease, how injurious, were the hand! But when mind is in healthy

play, much may be effected by one hand, or even when the hands are never

possessed or lost. On its due exercise the elevation of man is

instrumentally and entirely dependent.

Inferior creatures are endowed with an amazing power. We stand

astonished and confounded at the phenomena of instinct. But that power

is at once perfected.

“The winged inhabitants of Paradise

Wove their first nests as curiously and well

As the wood-minstrels of our evil day.”

In the first exercise of instinct, the comb of the bee, the habitation

of the beaver, and the web of the spider, like the nest of the bird,

were not to be surpassed. The dog, or the elephant, justly renowned for

sagacity, could not by any effort be taught to fabricate or use the

simplest implements. But man is destined to progression. Not only may he

be raised from a savage state to the elevation of civilized life, but

urged forward from that position through a career of indefinite

advancement. “Onwards! Onwards!” is the characteristic motto of

humanity. And hence, while man has a hand to be directed by his mind, he

has a mind on which circumstances operate; and of these art is the

offspring. Sometimes it evinces only a slight or transient stimulus; at

others, the stimulus is powerful and continuous. As invention consists

in new combinations, its exercise will be inconsiderable when the mind

has only few objects to combine, and proportionately great when such

objects are numerous. In savage life, invention flags—its exercise is

rare; but it is frequent in a highly civilized condition. The history of

the arts, therefore, is that of man’s physical and intellectual

progress. One art rises after another before our view, as the successive

memorials of a triumphal course. Who can describe by anticipation the

appropriate insignia of man’s ultimate achievements!

II. _The Hunter._

In accomplishing our present purpose, we shall glance at man in

exceedingly diversified circumstances. The pursuit and capture of the

fowls of the air and of the beasts of the field, and the taking of fish

from the waters, for example, were early means of obtaining sustenance

to which the human race must have had recourse. Long before hunting

became a sport, such employments were necessarily a prime business of

life. Men must, therefore, have soon invented and constructed a net; the

Hebrew name of which, signifying “to shut up,” suggests that it arose

from the net being contrived to inclose the prey. Nets were used in

taking birds in distant times, to an extent of which we can now form no

adequate conception. Of clap-nets there were several kinds, but the most

common consisted of two sides or frames, over which the net-work was

spread. At one end was a short net, which the fowlers fastened to a

bush, or a cluster of reeds, and at the other end one of considerable

length, which being pulled as soon as the birds were seen feeding in the

area within, the two sides instantly collapsed. According to Sir J. G.

Wilkinson, the nets of the ancient Egyptians were very similar to those

still used in Europe, except that they were usually of a larger size.

From these, it is probable that the fishing-nets of the Hebrews did not

materially differ. Indeed, the nets and the fishers of Egypt are more

than once mentioned in Scripture; and we know that the common

fishing-nets of this people are of a long form, with floats on the upper

and weights on the lower side.

At the present day, the Arabs, knowing that the birds become fatigued

and languid after having been put up two or three times, hastily run in

upon them, and knock them down with their bludgeons. They also

frequently use a net, placing within it a cage containing some tame

birds, that by their chirping and calling they may bring down others; a

mode by which numbers of these creatures are and have been destroyed.

Other devices are, moreover, adopted, which may, most probably, be

traced to a very remote date.

In hunting, a space of considerable size was sometimes inclosed with

nets in the vicinity of the water-brooks to which animals repaired in

the morning and evening. Here the hunters anxiously waited, taking

precautions for observing them unseen; sometimes driving them into the

nets, and at others inclosing the prey. On other occasions smaller nets,

when employed in a smaller space, proved equally effective. Of Esau we

read, in patriarchal times, as being engaged in the chase. Impelled by

the ardor of his spirit to seek in the toils, adventures, and perils of

hunting, not only his occupation but his sustenance, he appears to have

gained high repute by his daring and his skill. And yet the weapons he

employed were very simple; for his aged father, when he longed for

venison, told Esau to take his “quiver and his bow,” that it might be

obtained. To these, however, great power may be given. How much do the

aborigines of the North American continent owe to these weapons!

III. _Pastoral Life._

Other means of subsistence are observable in the primitive condition of

man. Such are those of Pastoral Life. Abel, the second son of Adam, was

“a keeper of sheep;” Jabal, a descendant of Cain, a son of Lamech and

Adah, is described as “the father of such as dwell in tents and have

cattle;” thus intimating that he was the first who adopted that nomade

life, which is still followed by numerous Arab and Tartar tribes in

Asia. In primitive times, some branches of the human family tended their

flocks and herds on the banks of the Euphrates and its tributary

streams; while, during succeeding ages, the descendants of Abraham

followed the same employment amidst the fertile pastures of Canaan.

The Oriental shepherd and his family, just as their remotest ancestors

did, occasionally take up their abode in caves, with which some parts of

the East abound. So capacious are some of these caverns as to admit the

master and the whole of his property. In times of great peril, the

inhabitants of towns and villages retire, with their wives and children,

their flocks and herds, into these dark recesses; which have served as

an asylum for those exposed to danger or tyranny, from time immemorial.

Some of the caves of Syria are ascribed chiefly to the erosive effect of

limestone rocks charged with free carbonic acid; but others are more

artificial, consisting of natural fissures enlarged or modified for some

particular purpose. Of this we are reminded as we read, that “because of

the Midianites, the children of Israel made them the dens which are in

the mountains, and caves, and strongholds;” and many excavations formed

by human hands are described by Oriental travelers.

But there was a continual migration of ancient tribes, of which we have

still mementos:

“The weary Arabs roam from plain to plain,

Guiding the languid herd in quest of food;

And shift their little home’s uncertain scene

With frequent farewell: strangers, pilgrims all,

As were their fathers.”

To this mode of existence the tent was peculiarly adapted, consisting

only at first, like the common Arab dwellings of the East, of a pole or

two in the middle, with a covering of skin, and afterward of hair-cloth,

which, though mean and coarse, effectually repels the rain and the dew.

The erection of this light and fragile habitation was only the work of a

few minutes. No sooner was a suitable spot found for a halting-place,

than those on whom that duty devolved hastily unpacked the covering, and

addressed themselves to the setting up the pole which forms the centre

of the house; another party ran to mark out the space of ground which it

was to cover; while a third stood ready to spread out the canopy and tie

its extremities to the wooden pins, which the hands of a fourth had just

driven into the ground with a huge mallet. Tents were sometimes, as they

are still, of an oblong figure, supported, according to their size, by

one or more pillars, while a curtain let down occasionally from each of

these divisions turned the whole into so many separate apartments.

In the coverings and curtains of the tent we have an exercise of art

worthy of special notice. A mingling of hair, wool, or fur plaited

together, and fastened down by some natural threads, as hairs of greater

length than usual, blades of tough grass, or other vegetable fibres

separated from trees and plants, was probably the first advance toward

such a fabric. Or it might be after the fashion of a net, so early in

use, only with meshes unusually minute. Or hairs of fur, or down, bound

about the feet, to prevent inconvenience, would thus become pressed

together, and might suggest a somewhat solid and yet elastic fabric. But

the idea, however obtained, of a cloth-like substance produced by fibres

pressed together, would doubtless lead to efforts to produce it, and

here the arts of spinning and weaving take their rise; and the coverings

and curtains of the tent stand in relation to the dresses of the people.

An early mode of providing them would, doubtless, be to stretch a number

of long threads side by side, and then to pass another alternately above

and below them, so that with them this thread might be interwoven. The

attempt made on a large scale might lead to another on a smaller, and

this to others still more minute. In like manner, the primary use of

broad pieces might suggest the employment of narrower ones, till small

fibres were used for the same purpose. A mat-mantle was usually worn by

the secondary chiefs of the South Sea islands prior to the introduction

of European clothing. This article was carefully prepared from the

hibiscus bark; that of the young shoots being preferred, which having

been slit into shreds, were woven at the top by the hand with singular

neatness; and the sight of one of these mat-mantles in the British

National Museum, may well suggest similar processes as passed through in

times of primitive simplicity.

The Oriental shepherd is, at the present day, very simply attired, as

were those of patriarchal times. He puts on his garment, consisting of a

single piece, by making his left elbow fast in one of its folds, and

then throwing it several times round his body. Light and easy in itself,

it is also a firm and secure defense, well adapted to a wandering life;

preserving the shepherd from the falling rain, the dewy grass, the

coldness of the season, or the hard ground on which he finds his bed. In

other instances he wears a cloak, which is altogether shapeless,

resembling a square sack with an opening in front, and slit at the sides

to let out the arms, and which is his sleeping-dress at night. The dress

of the women was, most probably, of a lighter fabric than that of the

men in primitive times; but on it much obscurity rests. All accorded,

however, with extreme simplicity. Wooden bowls and dishes, sacks made of

hair-cloth, and bottles formed of a goat, kid, or calf’s skin, stripped

off, without an opening; the apertures made by cutting off the tail and

legs being sewed up, and when filled tied about the neck, are still the

principal furniture of an Eastern shepherd’s tent. A rod or staff, an

ox-goad, a sling, a bow, a javelin, are, at the same time, all his

implements and weapons.

To provide water for the flock is a duty of the first importance. There

is an abundant supply from the living fountain and the flowing stream;

but these are not always to be found. Happy is the shepherd, then, who

sees in the expanse before him the clear waters of a pool or lake, at

which his flocks and herds may eagerly slake their thirst. But these may

fail to be enjoyed; what appeared to be water may prove to be only the

mirage—emblem of forbidden pleasures, exciting hope to entail only

bitter disappointment. There remains, then, but one alternative—to dig

a well; a process indispensable in the earliest days of human history.

The well was often covered with a great stone, which being removed, the

person descended some steps to the surface of the water, and on his

return poured into a trough that which he had brought up. But as this

could only be applicable when the well was not deep, other contrivances

still employed in the East, and some of which appear on the Egyptian

monuments, must have been of high antiquity. “Sir, thou hast nothing to

draw with, and the well is deep,” were words which give additional

probability to this supposition. The shadoof, consisting of a tapering

lever, unequally balanced upon an upright body, and from the small end

of which the bucket is suspended by a rope, has long been the most

simple and common of all the machines employed to raise water in the

East.

In pastoral regions we have the art of music in its primitive form. To

Mercury the invention of the pipe was ascribed in pagan mythology; and

with this rustic instrument the shepherd often amused and solaced his

leisure hours. Apollo was celebrated as the inventor of the harp; and

the hand of the shepherd frequently swept its strings while he rested

with his flocks at noontide, or watched and guarded them during the

lonely hours of the night. For his skill on this instrument the son of

Jesse was distinguished in early life among the shepherds of Palestine.

In the antediluvian age, however, Jubal lived—“the father of all such

as handle the harp and organ;” the one being, probably, a kind of lyre,

and the other a bundle of reeds.

“Thus music’s empire in the soul began:

The first-born poet ruled the first-born man.”

IV. _Agriculture._

Agriculture is an art which has ever been a source both of the

necessaries and conveniences of life. Moses, following the example of

the Egyptians, made it the basis of the state. Accordingly, he

apportioned to every citizen a certain quantity of land, and gave him,

not only the right of tilling it himself, but also of transmitting it to

his heirs. The custom of marking the boundaries of lands by stones,

which had prevailed in earlier times, he perpetuated by an express law;

and against him who removed them without authority a curse was

denounced. Joshua divided the whole country, of which he had taken

possession, among the individual Hebrews, running it out with the aid of

a “measuring line.”

The occupation of the husbandman was held in honor, not only for the

profits it brought, but from its being supported and protected by the

fundamental laws of the State; security being an indispensable element

of human progress. All who were not set apart for sacred duties, as the

priests and levites, were regarded by the laws, and were, in fact,

agriculturalists. It is true that the rich and the noble did not place

themselves on a level with their inferiors; but none were so

distinguished as to disdain the culture of the soil. Elisha the son of

Shaphat was ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen when Elijah passed by and

cast his mantle upon him. Of Uzziah, king of Judah, it was said—“He

loved husbandry.” And it became natural to speak of a man, engaging in

the highest and noblest service, as “putting his hand to the plough.”

This implement was at first extremely simple, the turning up of the soil

being effected by means of sharp sticks. The plough, strictly so called,

as observed by many recent travelers, is generally a branch, or small

tree, cut below the bifurcation; the share is of wood, and the point of

iron. As the husbandman guides the plough, he carries a rod, armed at

the extremity with a sharp piece of iron, with which he clears away the

weeds from the share of his implement, or goads his oxen. So light is

the whole apparatus, that he has to press hardly on it in the upturning

of the soil; and he often carries his plough home on his shoulder on

returning from the fields at night. The only harrow seems to have been a

thick clump of wood, borne down by a weight, or a man sitting upon it,

and drawn by oxen over the ploughed field: the same which the Egyptians

use at the present time. In this way the turfs were, and still are,

broken in pieces, and the fields leveled.

In harvest, the Hebrews used the sickle, so that the stubble remained in

the earth. The crops, when bound in bundles, were conveyed by hand, on

beasts of burden, or in wagons, to the threshing-floor. This was in some

elevated part of the field, and was nothing more than a circular space

thirty or forty paces in diameter, where the ground had been leveled and

beaten down. At first the grain was thrashed with sticks; but afterward

this mode was adopted only in respect to the lesser kinds of grain, and

in beating out small quantities. At a later period, it was trodden out

by the hoofs of oxen, as it is in the East to this day.

These allusions to agricultural pursuits recall to the mind the words of

the prophet—

“Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.

Doth the ploughman plough all day to sow? Doth he open and break

the clods of his ground?

When he hath made plain the face thereof,

Doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin,

And cast in the principal wheat, and the appointed barley, and

the rye, in their place?

For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.

For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument,

Neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin;

But the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with

a rod.

Bread-corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it,

Nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his

horsemen.

This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts,

Which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.”

Isaiah mentions four ways of threshing: the staff or flail, which was

used for the smaller seeds; the drag, formed of strong planks, the lower

part of which was made rough with stones or iron; the cart, having

wheels furnished with iron edges or teeth; and the feet of oxen driven

over the corn when laid on the floor. The grain was winnowed by being

thrown against the wind with a shovel.

The traditions of ancient times ascribe many of its arts to the visions

and instructions of superior beings. Among these stands forth with

special prominence the legend of “the fire-bringing Prometheus,” as

depicted by Æschylus with extraordinary power. He appears chained to the

mountains of Caucasus; and why is he thus doomed to suffering? For

disobedience to the power that rules the world, in bestowing fire on the

human race. “Laboring for the people,” and intent on giving them

“all-working fire,” it is to restrain him from “his man-loving turn of

mind,” that he is cast forth from society, and that the far-distant and

barren rock is his inexorable destiny.

How man received the gift of fire we have no means of knowing. It is a

Moslem fable that the angel Gabriel brought it to our first parents.

Poetry says that the winds blew through the grove, that two trees became

ignited from continued attrition, and that Adam beholding the lighted

copse fled, turned back, caught the glow of the flame, and then tried

various means to obtain it. Again, it tells us that a flint-shaft, aimed

at a beast, ground against a rock, and elicited sparks of fire, which

led Adam to rub stones together over dry leaves, while Eve gently

cherished the kindling flame. More than one ancient people ascribe it to

the rubbing of two pieces of wood together, a practice still adopted

among barbarous tribes. But however this might be, fire must have been

possessed in earliest times for the preparation of human food, as well

as for the practice of those arts which are ascribable to the fatherhood

of Tubal-Cain.

The presence of the metals, and particularly iron, must have become, in

various ways, too obvious to allow the art of smelting the ores to have

remained long undiscovered. The detection of virgin fragments, or the

accidental effect of fires on the more fusible ores, accounts at once

for the strange fictions which existed among the ancients on this

subject, especially that of the accidental conflagration of a forest,

and the consequent fluxion of some of the metal, from ores lying exposed

on, or near the surface. It is a natural conjecture, that in a little

time after the deluge, and long before the earth could have been peopled

by the posterity of Noah, a large part of it must have become covered

with wood. Its removal from many spots would, therefore, be

indispensable. Now, the most obvious method of clearing any space from

wood is the setting it on fire: and as in the most mineral countries

there are veins of metallic ores lying contiguous to the surface of the

earth, these being fused while the woods growing over them were burning,

might have suggested the first idea of the process of smelting. To adopt

a poet’s notion—

“Thus powerful gold first raised its lofty head,

And brass, and silver, and ignoble lead:

When shady woods on lofty mountains grown,

Felt scorching fires, whether from thunder thrown,

Or else by men’s design the flames arose—

Whatever ’t was that gave these flames their birth,

Which burnt the towering trees and scorched the earth;

Hot streams of silver, gold, and lead, and brass,

As nature gave a hollow, proper place,

Descended down, and formed a glittering mass.”

Nor is this merely a poetic fiction: it is sustained by the testimony of

many ancient historians, who speak of silver and other metals being

melted out of the earth, during the burning of the woods on the lofty

Alps and Pyrenees. A similar circumstance is said to have happened at

Croatia, not two centuries ago. A large mass of mixed metal, composed of

copper, iron, tin, and silver, was fluxed during the conflagration of a

wood which was accidentally set on fire.

The structure and use of the bellows may be traced to a very remote

period. Rosellini exhibits it, as it was employed in ancient Thebes. Men

appear heating a vessel over a charcoal fire, to each side of which is

applied a pair of bellows worked by the feet, each operator standing

upon and pressing them alternately, while he pulls up the exhausted skin

by a string which he holds in his hand. In one representation, the man

has left the bellows, which are raised as if full of air, and imply a

knowledge of the valve. The common bellows, made of two boards joined

together by a piece of leather, was known very early to the Greeks. How

serviceable this machine would be in the practice of the arts will be at

once perceptible.

Wool, in its native whiteness, was peculiarly suited for clothing to the

circumstances of the Israelites, whose economy required so many

sprinklings and cleansings. This substance was used for garments, both

by those of humbler and of higher grade, until accompanied or superseded

by other fabrics.

Among the wild flowers of our rural districts, the eye is sometimes

attracted—for example—by the blue flowers of the flax-plant. This

vegetable product is so little affected by soil and climate, that one

species, with all its characteristics unaltered, flourishes in the cold

as well as the temperate regions of the globe. There is scarcely a

plant, not even excepting the corn-plants, which can be regarded as of

more service to mankind than the flax. Its free use in ancient Egypt is

abundantly proved, while many representations are extant of the various

processes through which it passed. One of these is found in a very

ancient tomb at Beni Hassan, in Middle Egypt. On the right is seen a

boiler, an irregularly-shaped vessel. The hieroglyphic inscription

means, “The boiling of the knot, bundle of flax.” The three men who

complete the picture are beating the flax-stalks, thus prepared, with

wooden mallets, in order to deprive it of its outer skin. The

hieroglyphic inscription above reads, “Pickling, or hackling the thread

of the knot of flax.”

In some of the ancient statues, Minerva is represented with a distaff,

to intimate that she taught our progenitors the art of spinning. The

Egyptians ascribe this gift to Isis; and the Mohammedans to a son of

Japhet. In all countries, from the earliest times, the distaff was

accompanied by the spindle. The material employed—being duly

prepared—was rolled into a ball, loose enough for the fibres to be

easily drawn out by the hands of the spinner. Into the ball the upper

part of the distaff was thrust, while the lower was held in the left

hand under the left arm, so as to be most convenient for the process.

The fibres were drawn out, and at the same time spirally twisted,

chiefly by the fore-finger and thumb of the right hand, and the thread

so produced was wound on the spindle. The spindle was a stick ten or

twelve inches long, having at the top a slit or catch in which to fix

the thread, so that the weight of the spindle might continually carry

down the thread as it was formed. Its lower extremity was inserted into

a small wheel of wood, stone, or metal, the use of which was to keep the

spindle more steady, and to promote its rotation: for the spinner, who

was commonly a female, every now and then twirled round the spindle with

her right hand, so as to twist the thread still more completely; and,

whenever—by its continual prolongation—it let down the spindle to the

ground, she took it out of the slit, wound it upon the spindle, and

having replaced the thread in the slit, drew out and twisted another

length. The Arab women twirl the spindle in the same manner to this day.

A still simpler process is passed through by the women of the Tartar

tribes. They use a reel, which is connected with some silk, cotton, or

wool, fastened at the girdle. This reel is spun round and let fall, and

as it goes toward the ground it spins out the thread; when it approaches

the ground it is taken up, the thread is wound around the reel, which is

then set spinning again, and so on, till it has acquired as much thread

as it can carry. This may seem very slow work, but habit gives a

dexterity of manipulation which renders it less so than would be

ordinarily supposed.

In ancient Egypt great skill must have been obtained in spinning. The

threads used for nets, for instance, were remarkable for their fineness.

Pliny says, so delicate were some of them that a net could pass through

a ring, and a single person could carry a sufficient number of nets to

surround a whole wood. He tells us that one of the governors of Egypt

had some of these nets, each string of which contained 150 threads; and

that the Rhodians preserved to his day, in the Temple of Minerva, the

remains of a linen corslet, presented to them by Amasis, king of Egypt,

the threads of which were individually composed of 365 fibres.

The tomb at Beni Hassan, already referred to, supplies a representation

of ancient weaving. The warp is strained vertically on a frame, which

seems to be attached by wooden tenons to the wall or roof of the

dwelling. Beneath, the roller appears on which the web is wound. Two

females, crouching in a posture not uncommon in the East, are at work

upon it. The alternate threads of the warp are stretched apart by means

of two smooth sticks, one end of which is held by each worker. The woof

was then passed by the hand from one to the other. The shuttle does not

appear to have been known at that time. The beam was introduced between

the threads, perhaps fixed at one end by a slight metal catch; and, when

thus fastened, the leverage would enable another woman to press the woof

home with considerable force. The beam must have been withdrawn and

re-inserted at every turn of the woof. Exceedingly clumsy as this

instrument was, yet an extremely beautiful cloth was produced by it.

The Hebrew loom was most probably the counterpart of those still

observed by our Eastern travelers. One of them noticed its use in

Jerusalem, where the worsted was not worked in, but woven into the

piece, and the pattern of the weaving changed, so that the color of the

thread was completely thrown out, forming a triple fringe, through which

the weft could not be seen. “In two of our specimens,” says Mr. Wilde,

“we find twelve thick threads crossing the piece, and the tassels tied

exactly as they are at the end of a piece of modern Irish linen. But the

slipping of the weft is prevented by a curious process, performed by

tying the threads of the warp together, so that each is secured to the

thread at each side of it. This process forms a slight ridge at the end

of the piece, and is rather ornamental. This fringe appears to be

alluded to in that passage of Scripture, where the Israelites were

directed to make fringes in the borders of their garments, and that they

put upon the fringe of the borders a ribbon of blue. I have seen a

species of mummy-cloth in Egypt corresponding to this description

precisely. Such was, probably, ‘the hem of the garment.’”[1]

Many of the Egyptian stuffs presented various patterns worked in colors

by the loom, independently of those produced by the dyeing or printing

process, and so richly composed, that they vied with cloths embroidered

by the needle. The art of embroidering was commonly practiced by that

people. The Israelites, when in the wilderness, used the skill which

they acquired in their captivity, for they made a rich “hanging for the

door of the tent, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twisted

linen wrought with needlework;” “a coat of fine linen” was embroidered

for Aaron; and his girdle was “of fine-twined linen, and blue, and

purple, and scarlet, of needlework.”

In connection with these manufactures of different kinds there is a

process of great interest; it is that of bleaching: for cloth washed and

exposed to the sun and air assume an unwonted whiteness. We are in

ignorance as to the origin of this process; but, in some way or other, a

certain degree of putrid fermentation was observed to carry off coloring

matter from vegetable fibres. The practice must therefore have arisen of

macerating cloth in water mixed with putrescent animal matter, which has

continued to the present day from the earliest times. The secret was

also found out by many nations of antiquity, that natron, the nitre of

Scripture, combined with and carried off the coloring matter with which

cloth is stained; and the substance is still used for the same purpose.

According to Pliny, the ancient Gauls knew the use of a lixivium formed

from the ashes of burnt vegetables as a detergent, and also how to

combine it with oil so as to form a soap. In one of the tombs of Egypt

we have a representation, as the hieroglyphic inscription denotes, of

the washing or fulling of cloth. One man is seen rubbing the fabric in a

vessel containing some liquid, and another is shaking it out, preparing

it for the next process, which is often depicted—its being well wrung

out, stretched lengthwise, and fully exposed to the air.

Another process of great importance is that of dyeing. It is based on

the natural attractiveness of color. How often is the infant’s eye first

caught by some bright hue! The blue sky and the verdant carpet of nature

have a loveliness for all; while these, with the roseate tints of the

morning, the golden sheen of noon, and the rich, empurpled dyes of

evening, have furnished epithets freely lavished on the topics they have

adorned, by the poets of every age. Even Herodotus says of a nation on

the borders of the Caspian—“They have trees whose leaves possess a most

singular property; they beat them to powder, and then steep them in

water: this forms a dye, with which they paint on their garments figures

of animals. The impression is so very strong that it cannot be washed

out: it appears to be interwoven with the cloth, and wears as long as

the garment.” Strabo, in his account of the Indians, mentions on the

authority of Nearchus the various and beautiful dyes with which their

cloths were figured. Pliny says of the Egyptians, that they began by

painting on white cloth with certain drugs, which in themselves

possessed no color, but had the property of attracting or absorbing

coloring matters. That these cloths were afterward immersed in a heated

dyeing liquor of a uniform color, and yet when removed from it soon

after, they were found to be stained with indelible colors, differing

from one another according to the nature of the drugs that had been

applied to different parts of the stuff.

Purple is well known to have been a color of high repute. Moses, under

Divine instruction, used purple stuffs for the furniture of the

tabernacle and the dress of the high-priest. Purple raiment was worn by

the kings of Midian; and a garment of fine linen and purple was given to

a favorite by the Monarch Ahasuerus, whose palace was furnished with

curtains of this color, on a pavement of red, and blue, and white

marble. The Jews made a decree that Simon should wear purple and gold,

in token that he was their chief magistrate; and that none of the people

should wear purple or a buckle of gold, without his express permission.

And Homer thus describes a king—

“In ample mode,

A robe of military purple flowed o’er all his frame.”

There is a story that the celebrated Tyrian dye was discovered by

accident. A dog having broken one of the shells of the rock-whelk,

stained his mouth with the color it contains, and thus led to the

examination of this mollusc. It was then found that near to the head,

and lying in a little furrow, is a white vein, yielding the beautiful

purple tint which was long so highly esteemed.

It might be supposed that such processes as that of dyeing could only be

conducted in an advanced state of society; but to this it is not

exclusively confined. There is no doubt that, even during the captivity

in Egypt, the Israelitish women became acquainted with them. For

scarcely had they entered the wilderness than we hear that “the

wise-hearted among them” did not only “spin with their hands,” but

“brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of

scarlet,” as well as “of fine linen.”

We even find another process analogous to dyeing, in circumstances in

which we should not expect it to be discovered. In some of the islands

of the South Sea elegant small ferns grow in abundance, and with these

the native women impress figures, in divers colors, upon their

cloth—literally, a method of printing, which is but one remove below

the boasted invention of the Chinese, by means of engraven blocks,

before the art was discovered in Europe. Its resemblance to calico

printing is even more striking. For the old method, still continued for

certain parts of the work, were by blocks of sycamore, on the surface of

which the pattern was cut in relief, in the common method of wood

engraving.

Vessels to hold water would be an early requirement of the human race.

The shells of some vegetable productions, as those of gourds and the

larger kinds of nuts, would readily occur to the mind as adapted to this

purpose. The skins of animals taken in the chase would form another

resource. The bowls and dishes of the common Arabs are, and have been,

made of wood; but, for their production, some tools must be possessed,

as well as some dexterity in their use. It is a singular practice of

some tribes to cast stones made hot into the fluids contained in wooden

bowls, in order to raise their temperature; but the discovery that

certain substances could be made to resist the action of fire would at

once cause them to have the preference. Who made the discovery—the

brickmaker or the potter—we have no means of knowing.

The art of the potter was especially necessary at an early period, from

the scarcity of fuel in some parts of the East. Hence we are told of

people “who make in their tents a hole about a foot and a half deep,

wherein they put their earthen pipkins or pots, with the meat within,

closed up, so that they are in the turf above the middle. Three-fourth

parts thereof they lay about with stones, and the fourth part of which

is left open, through which they throw in their dried dung, which burns

immediately, and gives so great a heat, that the pot groweth so hot as

if it had stood in the middle of a lighted coal-heap; so that they boil

their meat with a little fire, quicker than we do ours with a great one

on our hearths.” As the Israelites must have had as much occasion to be

sparing of their fuel as any people, and especially while journeying in

the wilderness, it has been supposed that they must have had some such

practice. It is certain that we read in the Levitical law of “ranges of

pots,” thus showing their use at that period. It became still more

familiar in after times.

“I went down,” says the Prophet Jeremiah, “to the potter’s house, and

behold he wrought a work on the wheels.” The name of the inventor of

this simple, yet effective machine, has been lost for ages, if indeed it

was ever made known. It consists merely of two wheels or round plates

placed horizontally, to which a rotary motion is given. If, then, on the

upper one be heaped a mass of clay, it is evident that a tendency to a

centrifugal motion will be given to it, which will greatly facilitate

the action of the potter’s fingers, in forming out of the rude lump

whatever vessel he pleases. With his thumbs separated from the fingers,

and held on the clay as it revolves, the rapid motion will enable him

readily to mould a hollow vessel.

Of earthenware, jars and drinking-vessels were chiefly made; and, it is

probable, from the unvarying character of Eastern customs, that they had

the same shapes as those still in use. Vessels formed of clay hardened

by the sun, of a globular shape, and large at the mouth, not unlike the

vitriol-bottles used in this country, but somewhat smaller, have been

observed by modern travelers as borne by females going down to the well

to fetch water; while their resemblance to the vessels used at the

marriage of Cana in Galilee was exceedingly interesting.

In Egypt and Western Asia the inhabitants have in common use vessels of

porous clay, lightly baked, and rather thin in proportion to the size of

the vessels. The water they hold constantly oozes through the minute

pores of the vessel, forming a thick dew or moisture on the outer

surface, the rapid evaporation of which reduces the temperature of the

vessel and of the water also much below that of the atmosphere, so that

the inhabitants enjoy a perfectly cool and refreshing draught. The

vessel forms, at the same time, a most effectual filter. The work of the

potter continues to be, as it was, extensive in the East. The people are

accustomed to break their earthen vessels when they become defiled, just

as they were required to do under the Levitical law.

-----

[1] Wilde’s Travels.

V. _Settlers in towns._

While, however, these various branches of art were advancing with

greater or lesser speed, while the number of the people was increasing,

a division of property arose, and the desire was naturally kindled in

the bosom of families to dwell apart: a dissatisfaction would therefore

arise with the tent, and an effort be made to collect other materials,

and to construct separate and more durable dwellings. In the time of

Job, and probably for ages afterward, the houses of all ranks in the

land of Uz appear to have been built of mud; for of some transgressors

he says—“In the dark they dig through houses which they had marked for

themselves in the day-time.” We read of others who “dig through” houses

“and steal;” thus suggesting to us those clay-built dwellings, which,

though not substantial like edifices of later date, were still

sufficiently so to require that he should _dig_ through them who would

gain a forcible entrance.

On men determining to become settlers in towns, more stable materials

were rendered available. The manufacture of bricks ascends to the

earliest time of historical record. The first building of which there is

any mention after the deluge is the Tower of Babel. Considerable

progress appears to have been made, not only in this but the city before

“the confusion of tongues” took place. It is expressly stated that

well-burned brick was used, instead of stone, in these structures, and

that slime, which is generally understood to be bitumen, was employed

instead of mortar. Other edifices were reared from bricks formed of

earth, and then burned in furnaces or kilns.

The manufacture of bricks was familiar to the ancient Egyptians. In

this, as is well known, the children of Israel were greatly oppressed.

The circumstance of the bricks they made being mixed with chopped straw,

renders it probable that they were not burned, but merely dried in the

sun. Herodotus records of Asychis, one of the kings of Egypt, that he

built a pyramid of bricks, made of the mud or silt dredged up from the

bottom of the Nile. In one compartment of a tomb in Thebes the whole

process of brick-making is portrayed. Some persons appear carrying the

clay in vessels from the field, others beating it with spades, others

taking the bricks out of the mould, and others bearing away the dried

bricks, making a balance over their shoulders with ropes attached to a

beam.

The first effort of those who would rear a town would be to mark out the

extent of the ground they required, including not only a desirable space

for building, but pasture-lands for flocks and herds, and also fields

for the produce of grain. A wall would now be necessary at the boundary

line, as a defense from the assaults of ravenous beasts, or the

incursions of hostile bands. This would at first be formed of any stones

that could be dug out or collected, and then heaped together; a strong

and stable, but rude protection.

The earliest houses would probably be only one story in height: all of

them having a similarity in general appearance. But the chief would soon

require that his dwelling should accord with his personal elevation, and

obedience to his mandate would result in the rudiments of a palace. The

sound knowledge or the superstition of the sovereign and his people

would give rise to the structure of a temple, and in the course of time

to the multiplying of edifices accounted sacred. Other distinctive

circumstances would inevitably arise. To walls rendered increasingly

massive would be added towers, gradually acquiring a military character;

and places of security to which the inhabitants might retire in seasons

of peril. On an assault being made, the men who tilled the ground, and

those who carried on the business of the town, would unite in its

defense; but as attacks continued to be threatened, or were actually

experienced, there would be the organization of a martial force, and the

population be divisible into the civil and the military; the latter

class being supplied with weapons and trained to the exercises of

assault and defense.

The implements of the carpenter, like those of other artisans, were long

both few and simple. It does not follow that the axe was first formed of

iron. As a spear-head of hard wood serves the purpose of some of the

South Sea Islanders, so does still an axe of green jade. If to this

there was a resemblance in early times, a sharpened piece of iron with a

wooden helve would naturally succeed. We know that celebrity might be

acquired in its use; for “a man was famous according as he had lifted up

axes upon the thick trees.” When Solomon was about to build the Temple,

he conveyed his wish to the King of Tyre for a supply of timber, knowing

as he said, “there is not among us any that can skill to _hew_ timber

like unto the Sidonians.”

In early times, the trunks of trees were split with wedges into as many,

and as thin pieces as possible; and if they were required to be still

thinner, they were hewn on both sides to the proper size. Much advantage

was therefore gained by the invention of the saw. As it could only be

made of metal, this would occur at a far later period than that to which

it is just to ascribe the origin of the axe. That the Egyptians

possessed the saw is manifest from their sculptures. David, on the

subjugation of the Ammonites, appears to have put them to labor with

different implements, among which was the saw. The use of this was not

confined to wood; for parts of Solomon’s palace were formed of “costly

stones, according to the measure of hewn stones, sawed with a saw.”

The art of the locksmith is nowhere apparent in early times: the bolt,

the lock, the key, were all of wood, as they are in the metropolis of

Egypt to the present day. To produce these, therefore, the carpenter

must have been employed. The Orientals looked to watchmen as their chief

means of defense.

The lamp-maker must have been, however, in great request. Metals were

often employed in the structure of lamps. The one commonly used in Cairo

is of palm-tree wood; the glass that hangs in the middle is half-filled

with water, and has oil on the top, about three fingers in depth. The

wick is preserved dry at the bottom of the glass, and ascends through a

pipe. Such Lamps are very convenient, from their being easily removed

from place to place.

And here we are reminded of a valuable substance not yet noticed.

According to Pliny, some storm-beaten mariners were boiling their food

at the mouth of the river Belus—a small stream running from the foot of

Mount Carmel—where the herb kali was growing abundantly, when they

perceived that the sand—when incorporated with the ashes of the

plant—melted, and ran into a vitreous substance. Nor is the supposition

unnatural; for the sand at this place was well adapted to the

manufacture of glass; and it is scarcely possible to produce a fire of

sufficient heat for metallurgical operations without vitrefying part of

the bricks or stones of the furnace. Strabo and Josephus alike supported

the statement of Pliny, and probably from the spot referred to, the

material was obtained that was used in the glass-works of Tyre and

Sidon. At Beni Hassan, glass-blowers are represented at work: glazed

pottery was used by the Egyptians; they also made glass bugles and beads

for necklaces, and a sort of network with which they covered the

wrappers of mummies, so as to form by their various hues numerous

devices and figures, resembling those that are made in our bead-purses.

The chief articles of that people were, however, bottles, vases, and

other utensils, though they must have had great skill in the manufacture

of glass, as they counterfeited amethysts, emeralds, and other precious

stones, and were practiced in cutting glass and gems. A pane of glass,

and numerous fragments of broken glass bottles were discovered on the

excavation of the city of Pompeii. And Mr. Layard has found that the

people of Nineveh had also acquired the art of making glass. Several

small bottles, or vases—of elegant shape—in this material, were found

at Nimroud and Kouyunjik. One bears the name of the Khorsabad king. The

gems and cylinders still frequently found in ruins, prove that the

Assyrians were also very skillful in engraving on stone.

Not very long after the rise of the arts we discover the practice of

working in gold. The golden ear-ring presented by Abraham’s steward to

Rebekah weighed half a shekel, and the two bracelets for her hands were

ten shekels’ weight of gold. The ark of the covenant, though made of

wood, was to be overlaid with pure gold, within and without. It was also

to have a crown of gold round about, and rings of gold in the four

corners. Even the staves were to be overlaid with gold. Similar

directions were given as to the table of shewbread and the altar of

incense. And Solomon garnished the house of the Lord with gold.

The Egyptians appear to have been familiar with the manufacture of gold.

The gold-leaf still found in and about mummy-cases, some thousands of

years old, proves not only that they had an abundant supply of the

precious metal, but were acquainted with the art of gilding. Their

making of golden ornaments and golden vases, of large size and beautiful

workmanship, might be inferred from various incidental notices in

ancient writers; but, it is placed beyond all doubt by the

representations of Rosellini. Among these are numerous vases of a golden

color, many of them showing not only manual dexterity, but also

considerable taste. A picture in the tomb of Rameses IV. contains a

golden vase of great beauty, supported by two Philistines.

There is no mention of silver in Scripture till the time of Abraham. It

then appears in the form of money, estimated by weight: “Abraham weighed

to Ephron the silver which he had named in the audience of the sons of

Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant.”

Jeremiah paid for the field of Hanameel in the same way. The shekel and

the talent indeed do not appear to have been originally fixed and

stamped pieces of money, but merely weights used in traffic. So general

did this become, that the Jews usually had scales attached to their

girdles for weighing the gold and silver they received in payment, while

the Canaanites carried them in their hands. Silver was so abundant in

the days of Solomon that it was “nothing accounted of;” for “the king

made silver to be as stones in Jerusalem.”

The mention of brass which occurs in ancient writers must often be

understood as meaning copper, either in its pure state or alloyed with

tin, rather than the metallic compound with which we are familiar. It is

stated that the chief sources of the wealth of the Pharaohs were the

mines of the neighboring countries of Nubia and Ethiopia, which were

abundantly productive of copper.

The mirrors which were in possession of the Israelitish women when they

left Egypt are said to have been of brass, for the laver and the foot of

it were made of that metal. Such were all the mirrors made in ancient

times. Many metallic mirrors may be observed in our collections of

Egyptian antiquities. They are nearly round, but varied in form,

according to the taste of the artisan, and are inserted in handles of

wood, stone, or metal. Their substance is chiefly copper, but mixed with

other metals, most carefully wrought and highly polished. In the

Egyptian Museum at Paris, there are several mirrors of a metal which

looks like brass.

David provided an immense quantity of copper for the use of the Temple.

Of this substance all sorts of vessels were made for the Temple, as they

had been for the Tabernacle; and to these may be added weapons, more

especially helmets, armor, shields, and spears. Hiram of Tyre was

celebrated as a worker in brass. The larger vessels, and the pillars for

architectural ornaments, were moulded in foundries; but it appears that

this art, even in the time of Solomon, was little known among the Jews,

and was peculiar to foreigners, particularly the Phœnicians.

Mines of copper occur in the mountains of Kourdistan, which appear to

have been worked from remote antiquity. They formed the chief source

from which copper, iron, and lead were obtained by the ancient

Assyrians. A disused copper-mine, nearly blocked up with earth and

rubbish, and only known to a few mountaineers, was visited by Mr.

Layard. He found the metal in various states. Inscriptions on copper,

various utensils, and figures of lions in solid metal, have been exhumed

from the ruins of Nineveh. Tools, daggers, arrow-heads and armor, were

formed from the ore, as was commonly the case among Asiatic nations,

while the metal in powder was used to color the bricks and ornaments in

the Assyrian palaces.

The general style of building in the East, with which our modern

travelers are so familiar, accords with that which is traceable to the

remotest ages. Fronting the street, which is usually narrow, as

providing a better defense from the sun, and sometimes with a range of

shops on one or both sides, dead walls appear, here and there only

broken by a window, to which a grotesque frame of lattice-work serves as

a guard. The house is entered by a porch or gateway, which conducts into

a quadrangular court paved with stone or marble, and is generally

surrounded by a cloister; over which, when the house has a number of

stories, a gallery, having a balustrade, or else a piece of carved or

latticed work, is erected of the same dimensions as the cloister. The

apartments are approached by doors from the quadrangular court. When

houses are built close together, the staircase is placed in the porch,

or at the entrance into the court, and continued through one corner of

the gallery or another to the top of the house; but when the houses are

not contiguous, the staircase appears to have been conducted along the

outside of the building. The roof is always flat; it is often composed

of branches of wood laid across rude beams, and is covered with a strong

plaster of terrace, to defend it from injury in the rainy season. It is

surrounded by a parapet or a wall breast high, serving as a protection

to those who go on the roof for various purposes, and also as a means of

separation from the adjacent houses. Such a battlement was expressly

required by the law of Moses, intimating probably, that terraced houses

were at that time less common in Syria than they were in Egypt.

In the survey of ancient buildings, the use of immense masses of stone

cannot fail to be observed. It appears from recent discoveries that they

were cut from the quarries by a number of metal wedges, placed in a

line, and struck simultaneously with a wooden mallet; or that a mass was

split by wedges of highly-dried wood saturated with water, and thus

acquiring a great expansive force. They were sometimes hewn, either

roughly or with greater care. They were raised aloft by means still

employed in India, as mounds, or inclined planes, or others equally

simple. In all the remains of ancient Egypt we have no trace of any

machinery being employed in building; a fact not a little remarkable

when we consider how vast and stupendous were many of its edifices.

In the language of the Hebrews, the name of a garden was given to every

place where plants and trees were cultivated with greater care than in

the open field. Such inclosures are generally defended, as they have

been for ages, by loose stones, a wall, or a hedge formed of the wild

pomegranate tree, or of thorns mingled with rose-bushes, adorned in

their season with their lovely flowers, and giving forth their

delightful fragrance. Within, however, but little design or beauty is

apparent, the whole commonly presenting only a confused medley of

fruit-trees, with beds of esculent plants, having even plots of wheat

and barley sometimes interspersed. Solomon could say, “I made me gardens

and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits;” but

then he had not only an unusual knowledge of the vegetable tribes, but

also vast resources as a sovereign. And travelers still tell us of the

supposed remains of the works he constructed, when he said, “I made me

pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.”

Particular attention appears to have been bestowed on the culture of the

vine by the Israelites and other Oriental people. The site for this

purpose was carefully selected in fields of a loose, crumbling soil, on

a rich plain, on a sloping hill, or where the acclivity was very steep,

or on terraces supported by masonry; the whole being inclosed by a wall.

How luxuriant was the produce of Palestine is evident from the fact,

that on the return of the spies they passed through the valley of

Eshcol, where they were so much struck by the size and beauty of the

vines, that they broke off a branch to take with them to the camp, and

to prevent the attached and rich clusters from being bruised, bore it

between two on a staff. That the vine was cultured in Egypt, and that

the juice of the grape was expressed from its clusters, is apparent, not

only from Scripture, but the paintings and sculptures of that country,

in which are often and strikingly depicted the vineyards and

vine-arbors, the gathering of the grapes, and the treading of the

wine-press.

On the construction of military machines we do not enter; we dwell

rather on the arts of peace. Music, to which allusion has been made, in

connection with pastoral life, has, however, in all ages furnished a

powerful stimulus to men when engaged either in assault or defense. The

ancient inhabitants of Etruria used the trumpet for this purpose; the

Arcadians, the whistle; the Sicilians, the pectida; the Cretians, the

harp; the Lacedemonians, the pipe; the Thracians, the cornet; the

Egyptians, the drum; and the Arabians, the cymbal.

The transmission of persons and goods on the surface of the water would

appear to be desirable in a very remote age. How the idea of doing so

arose we know not. It is, however, certain that man did not

“Learn of the little nautilus to sail;”

for that this mollusc has no membrane that it can elevate to catch the

wind, has been satisfactorily demonstrated. It is manifest, in other

ways, that very different vessels from any having sails were first used.

The raft, constructed of rude timbers lashed together, would, for

example, be devised at an early period. The means employed to this day

on the Euphrates must also have been adopted in a very distant age. The

kelck is composed of goat or sheep skins, inflated and fastened close

together, on which cross-pieces of wood are placed. The skins, of which

great care is taken lest they should burst from becoming dry, are

examined and inflated afresh during a voyage. Floated down by the

strength of the current, with the occasional use of rudely-formed oars,

the materials of the raft are sold on the cargo being discharged, while

the skins, exhausted of air, are carried back overland, to be used on

the next voyage.

The Arabs, male and female, still cross the Euphrates, or pass upon it

to a considerable distance, for agricultural and other purposes, by

means of inflated skins; which were probably employed by the patriarch

Jacob when he fled from Padan-aran, and “carried away all his cattle and

all his goods.” In after times armies crossed rivers by inflated skins,

and other contrivances. And among the sculptures of Nineveh obtained by

Mr. Layard, is one representing three warriors passing a river: one

struggles with the current, the others are sustained by inflated skins.

The ark of bulrushes prepared by the parents of Moses for their beloved

child, presents another type of ancient modes of conveyance. Egypt is

described by the prophet Isaiah as sending “ambassadors by the sea;”

“And in vessels of papyrus on the face of the waters.”

That the ancients were accustomed to make light boats or vessels of this

substance is well known. Theophrastus, describing the papyrus as useful

for many things, says, “for from this they make vessels,” or ships;

while Pliny observes, “from the papyrus they weave vessels.” Herodotus

speaks of covered coracles, or basket-boats, their ribs being formed of

poplar, united and lined within with reeds, covered without with

leather, and worked by two men, each having a paddle, as common in his

day. Similar vessels, excepting only that a covering of bitumen is

substituted for one of leather, are still to be seen floating on the

bosom of the Euphrates. But to these Egyptian art was not restricted.

Herodotus describes boats formed of planks laid together in the manner

of bricks, and fastened by an outer layer of deals, the joinings of

which were stopped up by cement.

Large vessels, capable of performing long and distant voyages, appear

also to have been constructed in early times. They were impelled by

oars, or by these combined with sails. Not venturing into the high seas,

the mariners merely cruised along the coast, so that in stress of

weather a port might easily be gained. Slow and tedious were those early

voyages, as they could be directed only by an observation of the stars,

which a hazy atmosphere would effectually obscure. In winter no progress

could be made; the vessel was then laid up in harbor until the return of

the sailing season.

VI. _Inhabitants of Cities._

If, in conclusion, we turn to the contemplation of man in the city, we

shall observe the arts at their greatest elevation. It is worthy of

remark that the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, and also of the

Nile, as well as of Syria, from the sea-coast eastward to the great

desert that parts it from Mesopotamia, were occupied by highly-civilized

nations, clothed in fabrics of cotton, linen, and wool; while the

grassy, treeless plains, extending from the Arab sea westward, as far as

the mouths of the Danube, and along the northern borders of the Caspian

and Euxine seas, and the intervening chain of the Caucasus, were

traversed by independent tribes, clothed in skins and furs. Commercial

intercourse and visits took place, as well as hostile excursions, and

thus the manufactures of Babylonia were exchanged for the native

productions of the Scythian plains and of the interminable forests on

their northern boundary.

The Jews seem to have been precluded by the Mosaic law from the

preparation and use of fur; and the Greeks and Romans considered the

skins of animals badges of rusticity and barbarism; but the finer kinds

of fur were known and esteemed by the nobles of Babylon. Ælian, who

wrote about the year 110, states that a certain species of mice are

found in the district of Teredon, in Babylonia, the soft skins of which

are taken to Persia, where they are sewn together into garments

remarkable for their warmth.

Of the use of fur both among civilized and barbarous people there are

many traces. Thus we have notices of the employment of the skins of

sables, ermine, and squirrels, with various contrivances to produce a

variegated surface. The practice is supposed to be of Oriental origin,

and the tent of Sapor to supply the earliest instance of this

parti-colored arrangement. Tacitus, however, describes the same fashion

of variegating furs to have been in use among the German tribes at a

still earlier period.

The costume of the people who live in cities attains to the highest

elegance, splendor, and gorgeousness of which it is capable. Here we

discover all that properly belongs to rank, with the means of appeasing

an insatiable vanity. Oriental women, in every age, have been

distinguished by a passion for dress, personal decoration constituting

one of the chief occupations and pleasures of their life. Variety

becomes, therefore, an element of delight as well as splendor. But rare

and costly garments are also highly prized by the other sex, who

frequently regard an immense wardrobe as indicative of rank and taste.

“Solomon made for himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon. He made the

pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, and the covering

of it of purple;” and the city is traversed by the varied equipages of

an opulent people, in which many of the arts are clearly discernible.

War-chariots, observable among other nations, were not to be seen among

the forces of the Hebrews, whose great men used them chiefly for

purposes of state.

Even the tents in which the modern princes of the East often spend the

season of summer are arrayed in beauty and magnificence, of which such a

fabric might scarcely be deemed susceptible. One belonging to a late

king of Persia is said to have cost two millions of money. It was called

“the house of gold,” because it was everywhere resplendent with the

precious metal. An inscription on the cornice or the antechamber

described it as “the throne of the second Solomon.”

The Dewan Khass of the far-famed Shah Allun is a building situated at

the upper end of a spacious square, elevated upon a terrace of marble.

In former times it was adorned with excessive magnificence. It is about

a hundred and fifty feet in length, and forty in breadth. The flat roof

is supported by numerous columns of fine white marble, which have been

richly ornamented with inlaid flowered work of different colored stones,

the cornices and borders having been decorated with a frieze and

sculptured work. Formerly the ceiling was encrusted, throughout its

whole extent, with a rich foliage of silver. The compartments of the

walls were inlaid with the greatest delicacy. Around the exterior of the

cornice are the following lines, written in letters of gold, on a ground

of white marble—“If there be a paradise upon earth, it is this, it is

this.”

In some Oriental edifices, the lower part of the walls is adorned with

rich hangings or damask, tinged with the liveliest colors, and investing

the apartments “with purpureal gleams.” In the royal garden at Shushan

there were “white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine

linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble.” Ingenious

devices, as wreaths and festoons in stucco and fretwork, are the

ornaments of the upper part of the walls. In the days of Jeremiah, we

read of apartments “ceiled with cedar and painted with vermilion;” and

since then, costly and fragrant wood, on which exquisite decorations in

colors and gold are displayed, have been frequently employed. Painted

tiles or slabs of the finest marble have formed the floors, reminding us

of the palace of Ahasuerus, where “the beds,” or couches “were of gold

and silver, upon a pavement of red and blue, and white and black

marble;” and all the furniture of the house was in full accordance with

the imperial state of the sovereign.

Some of the edifices of the East are thus associated in our minds with

the greatest splendor and magnificence. The choicest marble, granite and

porphyry form their walls, columns, and floors; silver and gold supply

some of their decorations, while others are adorned with the costliest

gems. The effect of light falling on such resplendent materials is

indescribably dazzling and imposing. The allusions to such buildings in

the prophecies of Isaiah, and the Revelation of “the beloved disciple,”

will at once occur to those who are familiar with the Scriptures.

The remains of the departed greatness of Egypt, which the congeniality

of its climate has contributed so remarkably to perpetuate, consist

generally of places for civil assemblies and religious ceremonies. In

Upper or Southern Egypt, the site of almost every memorable city is

marked by the ruins of a temple, or palace-temple, which was

appropriated to both these purposes. The visitor cannot fail to be

struck by the vastness of the edifice, or the solemn air by which its

ruins are pervaded. The walls bear upon them the records of the past.

Covered with reliefs, which are generally colored, the idols appear

receiving the homage of the sovereign who founded the structure,

together with the battles, sieges, and other events of the wars, out of

the spoils of which the majestic pile was reared. Sometimes the king is

portrayed returning as a conqueror in triumph, and dragging a long

series of captives of different nations to the feet of the presiding

divinity. These pictures frequently cover a large extent of surface, and

are crowded with figures in action, executed with great spirit and

fidelity; the peculiar features and color of the different people being

strictly preserved. Explanatory inscriptions in the hieroglyphics of

Egypt accompany these reliefs. Some of these halls are six hundred feet

both in length and breadth, and are crowded throughout their entire area

with massive columns of majestic height. On first surveying the immense

cavern temple at Ipsambul, in Nubia, the spectator might well imagine,

from the whiteness of its walls, the sharpness of its figures, their

brilliant hues, and especially from the parts where the tracings and

first outlines appear, showing that this stupendous edifice was never

completed, that the artists had only just left their work. But as his

eye falls on the deep, black dust, covering the rocky floor on which he

treads, into which have mouldered the doors, the door-posts, and all the

inner fittings of the temple, he feels that ages have rolled away since

the artisans were numbered among the dead.

The art of design, whether apparent in painting or sculpture, was used

in Egypt, as must already have appeared, not to excite the imagination,

but to inform the understanding. According to Clement of Alexandria, an

Egyptian temple was “a writing,” addressing itself, like a volume, to

the mind. Accordingly, their artists imitated nature only so far as to

convey the intended idea clearly and precisely; generally they did not

aim at beauty and grace. When, however, they wished to give a portrait

of any particular individual, we find so exact a representation that the

features of several of the Pharaohs may be easily recognized. But it is

evident that they were ignorant of perspective, and that they did not

feel the necessity of studying light and shade in the use of colors.

Analogous to the practice of the Egyptians is that of the Chinese, in

reference to the rooms of their dwellings, in our own day; for they are

adorned with pictorial characters, conveying wise sayings and moral

precepts; combining in the person of one artist the work of the scribe,

the painter, and the engraver.

Recent discoveries enable us to call up before the mind Nineveh, that

“exceeding great city,” where the arts of life attained their utmost

elevation. Passing a ponderous and richly-sculptured gate, we see, at

certain distances within the walls, other gates flanked by towers

adorned by sculptures, or gigantic figures, as winged bulls or lions.

Lofty pyramidal structures arise, which served as watch-towers. Tents,

often visible within the walls of Oriental cities, occupy open spaces.

Other spaces, without the great public edifices, are covered by private

houses, standing in the midst of gardens, and built at a distance from

each other, or forming streets, which inclose gardens and even arable

land, and stretch out to a vast extent.

Distinguished from all other residences is a palatial edifice: its

doorways are formed by gigantic winged lions or bulls, or by figures of

guardian deities, and lead into apartments which again open into more

distant halls. The pavement of these rooms is of sunburnt bricks, or

alabaster slabs, of a color agreeable to the eye; and the ceilings are

divided into square compartments, inlaid with ivory, adorned with gold,

and richly painted with flowers. The tables, seats, and couches are made

of metal and wood, some being inlaid with ivory; the legs of the chairs

are tastefully carved, and terminate in the feet of a lion or the hoofs

of a bull, made of gold, silver, or bronze.

In the walls of the chambers, as in those of the hall, are alabaster

slabs, used as panels, with various scenes depicted upon them, and

painted in gorgeous colors. _Here_ appears the colossal figure of a

king, in the act of adoring his chief divinity, or of receiving from his

eunuch the holy cup; the robes of the sovereign and his attendants being

painted with brilliant colors, and adorned with groups of animals,

figures and flowers. _There_ is a scene of a different character: the

king, attended by his eunuchs and warriors, is entering into alliance

with other monarchs, or receiving the homage of his captives. And

beneath this range there is still a different spectacle: the siege—the

battle—the triumph, are all sculptured by the artist’s hand, and

decorated with rich and glowing tints, while under each picture are

engraved in characters filled up with bright copper, the descriptions of

the various objects that are portrayed.

But as we survey building after building, the vast city teems with life.

Myriads of rational and intelligent beings occupy its habitations and

crowd its streets. Here are the architects, of consummate skill and

taste—the builders who can rear edifices of the loftiest proportions

and of real grandeur—the sculptors, who cannot only decorate with

exquisite ability, but chronicle to coming ages events of the highest

interest in the annals of Assyria—and the painters, who array their

productions with the liveliest and brightest hues. Here, too, are the

artisans, who work with ingenuity, taste, and skill, in wood, silver,

copper, gold, lead, ivory, and glass—supplying the costume of the

people, the furniture of their houses, their chariots, and missiles of

war, and all that is required for the comfort, indulgence, luxury,

defense, and enterprise of Nineveh’s vast, energetic, and prosperous

population.

But imagination only calls up the spectacle.

“Her walls are gone; her palaces are dust;

The desert is around her, and within

Like shadows have the mighty passed away!

So let the nations learn, that not in wealth,

Nor in the grosser pleasures of the sense,

Nor in the glare of conquest, nor the pomp

Of vassal kings and tributary lands,

Do happiness and lasting power abide;

That virtue unto man’s best glory is,

His strength and truest wisdom; and that guilt,

Though for a season it the heart delight,

Or to worst deeds the bad man do make strong,

Brings misery yet, and terror, and remorse;

And weakness and destruction in the end.”[2]

There is yet, however, one art, to which, in conclusion, a brief

reference must be made; it is that by which thought is embodied in

written and “winged words.” We look with interest on the historic

paintings of the Mexicans, on the hieroglyphics of Egypt, and on the

cuneiform characters of Assyria and Persia; but we must not forget the

fact, that the people of Israel—to whom we have frequently had occasion

to refer throughout this paper—are distinguished from all other nations

by the authentic history which they possess of their origin and of the

most remarkable events of their subsequent progress, as well as by the

predictions that regard their future lot. The most ancient books in the

world were written, under Divine inspiration, by the hand of Moses; and

Herodotus, “the father of history,” was a contemporary of Malachi, the

last of the prophets.

In general literature Egypt attained the earliest pre-eminence. To that

country many went athirst for wisdom, while none of its children sought

it in other climes. At Thebes was its library of sacred books, over

which was the inscription, “The Remedy for the Soul;” while the

hieroglyphics above the heads of “Thoth” and “Safk,” as deciphered by

Champollion, denote that the one was the “Lady of Letters,” and the

other the “President of the Library.” Where, then, are we to look for

the origin and early history of the arts associated with letters? Before

the time of the patriarch Abraham the Egyptians were furnished with the

scroll, or papyrus, and with the pen dipped in ink, with which its

characters were inscribed. All the implements required for the process

are exhibited in pictures of the remotest date. Even the Arabic numerals

are older than any of the pyramids.

Small as is the number of our alphabetic signs, they are proved to be

capable of more than six hundred thousand millions of billions of

different horizontal arrangements. What a power is thus entrusted to the

hand at the dictate of the mind—a power which, whether its range, its

variety, or its permanence be considered, is alike unparalleled! When

the costliest fabrics are moth-eaten, and the colors of the picture have

fled, and the marble statue is defaced, and the proud and towering

edifice is hurled into ruins, the written words may live, retaining all

their power to strike on the mind, to touch the inmost chords of the

soul. “Words,” it has been said, “are the only things that last for

ever.” “The images of men’s wits,” says Lord Bacon, “remain unmaimed in

books for ever, exempt from the injuries of time, because capable of

perpetual renovation. Neither can they properly be called images,

because they cast forth seeds in the minds of men, raising and producing

infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages; so that if the

invention of a ship was thought so noble and wonderful, which transports

riches and merchandise from place to place, and consociates the most

distant regions in participation of their fruits and commodities—how

much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships passing through

the vast seas of time, connect the remotest ages of wits and inventions

in mutual traffic and correspondence!”

To write is therefore the noblest of the arts of life, and fearful is

the responsibility of its exercise. Happy is he who constantly remembers

it; and whose maturest thoughts, fixed in the palpable and deathless

form of words, enlighten, elevate, and bless, even when the verdant

grass is flourishing over his ashes.

-----

[2] Atherstone.

* * * * *

=TO A WHIP-POOR-WILL=

=SINGING IN A GRAVE-YARD.=

=BY E. ANNA LEWIS.=

Why, melancholy singer,

Dost thou hover here at eve,

Like one who loves to linger

Around the dead and grieve?

Why, in the night-time only,

Do we hear thy pensive lay?

Why art thou ever lonely—

Why shunnest the garish day?

Art thou minstrel born from Heaven,

Who comest to our earth,

At the silent hour of even,

To mock the voice of mirth;

And to soothe the sad and weary,

Who steal away to weep,

In the church-yard lone and dreary,

Or by the mountain-steep?

Art thou spirit of a maiden,

That restless roam’st the air,

With sorrow heavy laden,

And breathing thy despair?

Or one loved, but long departed,

That nightly dost draw near,

To soothe the broken-hearted,

Who are weeping, pining here?

I know not, solemn singer,

What thy deep grief may be;

Nor why thou here dost linger,

But oft thou seem’st like me—

A lonely one each morrow,

Apart from all the throng,

Whose deep and hidden sorrow

Bursts forth in plaintive song.

* * * * *

=HESPERIUS—A VISION.=

=BY WM. ALBERT SUTLIFFE.=

“Whither, sweet lady, whither? the night is chill;

Weary and worn, say, whither tend thy feet?”

“Stranger! I come o’er moor and steepy hill,

To hear the beat

Of ever-toiling billows—and to sail

The midnight deep with daring canvas spread;

To seek some isle where storm may not prevail—

Where tombs are never shaped for loved ones dead—

Where palmy summits lay

Their shadows in clear fountains all the day,

Where lilies lave

Their shining tresses in the resting wave;

Thither, kind stranger, through the night at rest,

I chase the stars down-sloping to the west.”

“Lady, sweet lady, let me guard thee thither!

The wave is treacherous, shivered oft by storm,

And many an ambushed wind quick-bringeth cloudy weather,

And towering thunder-mist with secret lightnings warm;

Many unseemly rocks love human prey,

And devious currents often thrust astray;

A thousand maelstroms sing harsh Runic rhyme,

And sturdy gales beleaguer any time.

Let us be twin in hope, in weal or wo,—

Sweet lady, let me go!”

She smiled a quiet smile, and “Come,” she said—

We entered in, our scanty sail we spread;

And as thin mists that creep

Out of a dingle deep,

Where zephyrs dally,

And, wind-caught, float across the dewy lawn,

When comes the dawn;

So we before the breeze, that then did rally

Its powers to bear us on;

While she, wrapt up as from the night’s cool kiss,

Lay like a chrysalis.

Westward we bore through that propitious night—

Through the slow-creeping hours the moonshine lay

Upon her alabaster breast and tresses bright,

Like furbished silver—Houri gone astray

From Mahomet’s heaven seemed she—gloriously

Shone her deep eyes, till down the silvered west

Pale Dian hid her shield in Ocean’s breast.

And now Apollo

Sprang, golden-sandaled, from his orient bed,

And quick his upward wonted path ’gan follow

While westward still we sped.

Apollo clomb

The star-deserted dome,

And, at the zenith sat, a noontide king;

There with his outspread hands,

Flaring upon the lands,

Watched our white sail in the wind shivering.

Apollo sank

Adown the west, where many a cloudy bank

Waited his coming, as the down, a king—

While careful shades ’gan clamber,

Out of the night’s dim chamber,

Night of the many eyes and dusky wing.

“Farewell, Apollo!”

The lady sang, “we follow

Thee to thy home, thy golden-curtained West;

Amid the occident seas,

Seeking Hesperides,

Floating, we chase thee o’er the rippled breast

Of Ocean in his rest.

“Come Venus from thy lair,

Up through the stirless air,

Quivering with Love’s young heat and sweet despair;

As thou wast wont to quiver

Upon my childhood’s river,

Where all the pendulous willows thrilled to bear

The breeze, as men do, care.

“Come out ye many stars!

The liberal night unbars

Your doors impalpable, that ye may see,

And gaze a twinkling fill

On human good and ill,

Till daybreak’s irksome goad compelleth ye

Behind the azure sea.

“We come, we come,

Seeking an islet home,

Whose breezes all are balm, whose seas are calm;

Where, when the eyes grow dim,

Fair myths forever swim

About the inward vision, and no harm

E’er spreads a palsying arm.

“Here would we lie

Amid this tremulous beauty till we die;

Here would descry

Through roofing orange-boughs the pleasant sky,

And silently decay in rapturous ease,

When death so please.”

She ceased; and now we slid along a sea

Of tinted wavelets, such as ne’er before

Had blest my seeing; on one side a shore

Slipt past us backward, thickly over-bowed

With flowered shrubs and trees, all such as flee

Harsh Boreal bitings where the North blows loud.

And now a quay we neared, whence led aback

Full many a leafy-hung, nymph-haunted track.

Then, slow-ascending a white marble stair,

A grove we entered in, all carpeted

With rarest moss, and every way there led

Dim paths ’mid obelisks and fountains fair,

And sculptured graces, and some streamlets fled

All day and night down to the circling sea,

Singing fore’er in music’s earnest glee.

Up ’mid the boughs the zephyrs went a-playing,

Making the stars like swinging cressets seem;

And from the east came silver arrows straying

Of Dian at her moonrise; while a stream

Of melody, the Bulbul, rose-embowered,

Incessant through the dew-tipt leaflets showered,

Sweeter than any dream.

No earthly night,

Mantled with dismal light

This paradise; but a broad lovely moon,

Made a glad twilight here,

Unsoiled by any fear,

Or harsh intruding doubt, that comes too soon,

And lays our bright-eyed hopes upon a cypress bier.

Anon, emerging from the woody maze,

There sudden sprang upon the pleased vision,

Glimpses of far Elysian,

Green meadows glowing through a golden haze,

And far-meandering walks, that rose and fell

’Twixt bedded asphodel.

And purling brooks went leaping here and there

Over the flowered slopes all in a foam,

Pealing like vesper bells that win the prayer—

Or silver voices calling loved ones home;

And many bees enringed the fragrant thyme,

And windy melodies stirred every full-leaved lime.

Here flowers grew in circles round and round,

With broad, rich petals for queen’s gathering,

There fountains sprang up with a clear, quick sound

From vases, such as Babylonian king

Ne’er saw the like of; and their spray did fling

O’er pure white statues having marble care

Over the showered pearls and moistened air.

And ever as we past there ever grew

Wondrous variety to stir the sense,

Begetting impotence

Of fond expression, but a rapture true

Claspt all the spirit in a dreamy fold

Of ecstasy and gold.

Until, through shady ranges of tall trees,

Threaded by every breeze,

And well-determined beds of every hue,

Orange, vermeil, and blue,

A central, templed hill, was near espied,

Down-slanting to the sea on every side,

With greensward terraces and blooming meet,

Sloped even to our feet.

Over the lawns were Dryads tripping far,

And Hamadryads peeping from the wood,

And now and then a Naiad, like a star;

And all were clothed in a merry mood—

For not a care there was o’er which to solely brood.

Upon the summit, soothed with lasting ease,

Sat the Hesperides

Beneath the orchard trees—

Sipping the beakered nectar seasoned well,

And temperate hydromel;

And tasting luscious fruitage, such as fell

From boughs ’neath which the scaly dragon rolled,

Lay glaring fold in fold.

“O can we herein bide!” the lady said,

“I feel my head doth swim—

My weary eyes are dim—

With too much pleasure is the sense o’erfed;

How can we herein bide,

And not some ill betide!”

Then said a voice, “Ye may not herein stay!

But immortality

May here incloséd be;

And ye are mortals—ye must hence away,

Or ere the night unwombs the clearer day.

“And ye must wait the riving of the chain

That gives surcease of pain,

And linger lone upon the evening shore

Till ye be ferried o’er.

But now the nymphs shall cease their merriment,

Ere yet your stay be spent,

And music shall be struck—shall charm and please

You to contented ease.”

Then dropt a quiet o’er the enhancéd glee,

As when a Boreal night dusks o’er a frigid sea.

Next grew a hymning sonnet, worded well,

Up ’mid the oaken boles, whose listening green

Tented the Dryad scene,

Wavering across the silence with a spell

Worthy to sink the yesty broil of waves,

And bid huge winds creep into airless graves,

In barred Æolian caves.

“We sing, we sing,

The sweet lyre fingering

On every vibrant string;

The sisters of the sea,

Whose silken dynasty

Holds us in light, and long, and glad captivity.

“We sing, we sing,

The sweet lyre fingering

With sound like Hermes’ wing—

Of nectarous draughts and deep,

Wooing the gods asleep,

What time the crystal honey-dews of heaven weep.

“We sing, we sing,

The sweet lyre fingering

Till windless woodlands ring;

How rich the lofty chime,

When gods converse in rhyme,

And far Olympian peaks reëcho all the time.

“We sing, we sing,

The sweet lyre fingering

With notes that ever cling,

The blue and airy dome

That floors the godly home

Where thunderous Jove is throned, and Here dwells at home.

“We sing, we sing,

With silver vibrating

Of every tuneful string,

The effervescing wine,

In beakers most divine,

By Hebe overbrimmed for whom the half-gods pine.

“Ah, well! ah, well!

Our island home we tell,

Where peace for aye doth dwell;

Where, from the drowsy deep,

A gilded mist doth creep

Up all the sanded shore to shrine us in our sleep.

“Away, away!

Our fingers cease to play

For alien ears our lay;

But, by the sea’s low moan,

Sportive we go alone;

Our lyre’s notes are dead—our measured hymn is done.”

Then died the hymning sonnet, worded well,

Adown the oaken boles that pillared all the dell.

* * * * *

Then all a day and night athwart the sea—

A day and night complete we backward sped—

And as the dawn grew red—

Our half-moon prow slid upward easily

Upon the margent of the ocean foam

That murmured by our home.

* * * * *

=THE PEDANT:=

=OR CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE SPENT PARTLY IN CAROLINA.=

=BY HENRY HOLM, ESQ.=

(_Continued from page 24._)

CHAPTER V.

And as they oft had heard apart,

Sweet lessons of her forceful art,

Each, for Madness ruled the hour,

Would prove his own expressive power.

Collins.

The reason why I came home without completing the tour of Europe was

that my worthy father died insolvent. The little severalty which I had

from my grandfather Winston, was in that most unmanageable of realties,

which Randolph of Roanoke used to describe as the designation of a

Virginian estate—“plenty of woolly-heads, plenty of gullies, but ne’er

a shilling of coin.” I managed, however, by favor of a young friend, an

attaché of the Marshall and Pinckney legation at Paris, to go freely

into the Low Countries, and as far up the Rhine as Heidelberg and the

Schwarzenwald.

At the borders of Holland and Germany I lingered awhile, in the flat

country near the Lippe, in the house of a licentiate in physic, who was

about to emigrate to Philadelphia, and who was eager to learn English.

In my turn I took some lessons in German. Pfeiffers was a smoker, and so

was I. He was a violinist, and I played the flute. He loved to read

aloud, and I loved to loll and listen, among the lindens of a low-lying

but verdant village on the Rhine.

The book which engaged him just then, was a publication of Goethe’s,

translated from Diderot, entitled _Rameau’s Nephew_. I mean Rameau the

great musical composer. The original French I could never alight on; but

the version was irresistibly comic, as I find on reperusal many years

since. Diderot used to frequent the _Café de la Régence_, then as now,

the resort of chess-players. There he found Légal, Philidor, and Mayot.

And there he encountered the Nephew aforesaid, an odd mixture of pride

and meanness, a man of drunken eloquence, venomous sarcasm, and

music-mad enthusiasm.

“Dialogue.

“Ah, Monsieur Philosophe, so I meet you again! What are you after here

among idlers? Do you likewise lose your time in peg-pushing? (Thus he

denominated chess and draughts.)

“_I._—No, but when I have nothing else to do, it is a momentary

diversion to see whether they move aright.

“_He._—A singular diversion, indeed. Leave out Philidor and Légal—the

others know nothing.

“_I._—And Monsieur de Bussi; what say you to him?

“_He._—As chess-player, that he is what Mlle. Clairon is as actress;

both know as much of their play as one can learn.

“_I._—You are hard to please. I observe that none but preëminent men

meet your approbation.

“_He._—Ay, at chess and draughts, poetry, eloquence, music, and such

like trumperies. Who wants mediocrity in these cases?

“_I._—I almost agree with you. But many must attempt these arts in

order that the man of genius may overtop them. Thenceforth he is one

among many. But I have not seen you for an age. I never think of you but

when I see you. Yet I am rejoiced whenever I recover you. What have you

been about?

“_He._—That which you and the others are about—good, bad, and naught.

I have moreover, hungered and eaten if occasion served. Then I was

sometimes athirst, and often drank; yes, and my beard grew and I was

shaved.

“_I._—There you were wrong; for the beard is all you lack in order to

be a sage.

“_He._—Quite so! My brow is large and wrinkled, my eye flashes, my nose

is high, my cheek is broad, my eyebrows brown and heavy, the mouth

well-disclosed, lips well-turned, and the face square. Take notice, this

huge chin, if covered by a long beard, would look well in brass or

marble.

“_I._—Beside Cæsar, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates?

“_He._—No! I would rather stand betwixt Diogenes and Phryne. I am as

shameless as one, and would gladly visit the other.

“_I._—You are always in good case?

“_He._—Yes, usually; but not particularly so to-day.

“_I._—What! with this rotundity of Silenus, and a countenance—

“_He._—A countenance that— Do you consider that the bitter humor which

shrivels up the uncle, makes the nephew fat?

“_I._—_Apropos!_ Your uncle. Do you see him often?

“_He._—Yes, often passing in the street.

“_I._—Does he render you no service?

“_He._—If he serves any body, it is without knowing it. He is a

philosophe in his way; he thinks only of himself, and the rest of the

world he regards as his bellows-hand. His wife and daughter may die for

all that he cares, provided the bells that toll them to their grave ring

in just twelfths and seventeenths. A lucky man is he! and I know how to

reckon this quality in your men of genius, that they are good at one

thing, and over and above this nothing. Nothing know they of being

citizens, fathers, mothers, kinsmen or friends. _Inter nos_, one would

crave to be like them; only wishing that the growth should not become

too common. We must have men—not men of genius. No, surely no! These

are they who turn the world upside down, and the folly of individuals

runs so high at present that one can’t repress them without

manœuvre.—No! the monk’s wisdom, in Rabelais, is the true wisdom for

our peace, and the peace of others. To do duty, as far as may be, to

speak well of the prior, and to let the world wag as it will. And things

go right well, for the mass is content with this. If I knew history, I

would prove to you, that all the ills on earth come of your men of

genius; but history I know none, because I know nothing. Confound me if

I ever learnt any thing, and I find myself none the worse off. One day I

was at the table of a royal minister, who had mind enough for a dozen.

He proved, as plain as two and two make four, that nothing is more

useful to nations than lies, and nothing more hurtful than truth. I

can’t recall his argument, but it followed as clear as a sunbeam, that

men of genius are utterly abominable, and that if a man discerns in his

child a token of this perilous gift of nature, he should strangle or

drown him.

“_I._—And yet the people who deem thus of genius all think they possess

it.”

Such is an introduction to this odd creation, on which the merry

Frenchman dwells for a hundred and fifty pages. Some of the passages

which my host gave with energy, between the gusts of his meerschaum, are

altogether untranslatable. And yet am I tempted to essay one of the

vagaries of the mad satirist.

“_I._—There is some reason in all that you say. [He had been enlarging

on the French music of that period.]

“_He._—Reason? So much the better. That comes seasonably. Think you I

am like the musician in the _cul-de-sac_, as my uncle showed himself?

For my part, I make a hit. A collier ’prentice shall talk better of his

trade, than an academy and all the Duhamels on earth.

“Here he paced up and down, murmuring airs out of the _Ile des Fous_,

the _Peintre amoureux de son modèle_, the _Maréchal ferrant_, the

_Plaideuse_—while ever and anon he would stretch hands and eyes and

cry, ‘Is that fine? Heavens, is that fine! Can a man have two ears on

his head and ask such a question?’ Upon which he would become

sentimental again, sing softly, and then elevate his voice as he grew

more passionate. Then came grimaces, twists of visage, and contortions

of body. Said I to myself, ‘Well, he is losing his wits, and some new

scene is coming.’ And in fact he burst out afresh, singing, _Je suis un_

_pauvre miserable—Aspettar e non venire_, etc. etc. He collected and

confounded thirty airs, Italian, French, tragic, comic, of every sort

and character. Now, with a deep basso he would sink down to the shades;

then, contracting his throat, he would rend the heights of air with a

pipe-like note, imitating with gait, _pose_, and motions, different

musical personages, by turns raving, melted, beseeching and derisive.

Now he is a little maid, weeping, and he represents all her petty

blandishments. Then he is a priest, a king, a tyrant; he threatens,

prays or rages—again, he is a hearkening slave. He grows tender, he

despairs, he bewails and laughs, always in tune, in time, in full sense

of the words, character and action.

“All the chess-players had left their boards and gathered around him;

the windows of the café were besieged outside by passers-by attracted by

the noise. The laughter was a peal which threatened the roof. But he

perceived nothing, but ran on, carried away by such an alienation of

mind and an enthusiasm akin to mania, that it is doubtful whether he

would have come to himself, or have to be thrown into a hackney coach

and carried to a mad-house singing a snatch from the lamentations of

Jomelli.

“Anon, with the utmost precision, truth and incredible warmth, he

repeated the finest passages of that portion; the beautiful obligato

recitative, where the prophet depicts the desolation of Jerusalem, till

he drew a flood of tears; there was not a dry eye. There was nothing

more to be desired in tenderness of singing, or force of expression and

of grief. He dwelt especially on the places where the artist most

evinced himself the great maestro. He abandoned the vocal part, flew to

the instrument, and then returned in an instant to singing, so hurrying

this transition, that the connection and unity of the whole were

maintained. Was I astonished at him? Yes, I was astonished. Was I moved

to sympathy? I was, indeed, so moved, but with a dash of the comic

mingling with the emotion and modifying its nature.

“But you would have broken into laughter at the way in which he imitated

the different instruments. With swoln, out-puffed cheeks, and a rough,

obtuse tone, he represented horns and bassoons; with a crying, nasal

tone the oboes; with incredible quickness he hurried his voice to mimic

stringed-instruments, trying most exactly to give their respective

sounds; piping for the piccolos, cooing for the flutes, screaming,

chanting with the looks of a maniac, and representing solo the danseurs

and danseuses, the men-singers and women-singers, a whole orchestra, a

whole opera-house, splitting himself into twenty different roles,

hastening, retarding, with the mien of one ’rapt, with eyes winking and

mouth in a foam.

“The heat was overpowering, and the moisture, following the furrows of

his brow and the length of his cheeks, mingled with his hair-powder, and

drizzled the upper part of his coat in gutters. What did he not attempt?

He cried, he laughed, he sighed, he gave looks of tenderness, quiet and

rage. Now it was a woman, sinking in wo, a wretch yielding to despair, a

lofty temple, or birds losing themselves in the silence of eve. Then it

was brooks of water, gurgling in some cool and lonesome place; or a

torrent dashing down from mountains; a tempest; the wailing of dying

men, mingled with the whistling of the wind; the roar of thunder; then

night with its darkness, stillness and shade—he even represented

silence by sounds. He was entirely beside himself. Exhausted by effort,

like a man awakened from sleep or a long swoon, he remained motionless,

heavy and stunned. He cast glances around, like one bewildered who tries

to recognize the place in which he comes to himself. Awaiting the return

of his forces and his senses, he mechanically dries his face. Like one

who, awaking, finds his bed surrounded by a great number of persons, in

utter forgetfulness and deeply unconscious of all he has been doing, he

exclaims at the first moment—‘Now, Messieurs, what is this? Why this

mirth? What are you wondering at? What is the matter?’ . . . Then he

adds, ‘This is what they call being a musician! But, indeed, some of

Lulli’s songs are not to be despised. The scene _J’attendrai l’aurore_

can’t be bettered, unless you alter the words. I challenge any man. No

man shall condemn certain passages of Campra, his military marches, the

violin-pieces of my uncle, his gavottes, his priestly and opera parts,

_Pâles flambeaux, Nuits plus affreuses que les ténèbres. . . . Dieu du_

_Tartare, Dieu de l’oubli._’ . . . (Here he strengthened his voice and

sustained the tone with power. Neighbors thrust their heads through the

windows; we put our fingers in our ears.) ‘For this,’ said he, ‘one must

have lungs, a great organ, and plenty of air. But Ascension is arrived,

Lent and the Three Kings are over, and yet they do not know what to set

to music, nor consequently what benefits the composer. Lyric poesy is

yet unborn; but they already approach it, if they give head enough to

Pergolesi, to the Saxon, the Terradeglids, Traetta and others; and if

they only read Metastasio often enough, they have already attained it.’”