The Skull
When Mr Escot entered the breakfast-room he found the majority of the
party assembled, and the little butler very active at his station.
Several of the ladies shrieked at the sight of the skull; and Miss
Tenorina, starting up in great haste and terror, caused the subversion
of a cup of chocolate, which a servant was handing to the Reverend
Doctor Gaster, into the nape of the neck of Sir Patrick O'Prism. Sir
Patrick, rising impetuously, _to clap an extinguisher_, as he
expressed himself, _on the farthing rushlight of the rascal's life_,
pushed over the chair of Marmaduke Milestone, Esquire, who, catching
for support at the first thing that came in his way, which happened
unluckily to be the corner of the table-cloth, drew it instantaneously
with him to the floor, involving plates, cups and saucers, in one
promiscuous ruin. But, as the principal _materiel_ of the breakfast
apparatus was on the little butler's side-table, the confusion
occasioned by this accident was happily greater than the damage. Miss
Tenorina was so agitated that she was obliged to retire: Miss Graziosa
accompanied her through pure sisterly affection and sympathy, not
without a lingering look at Sir Patrick, who likewise retired to
change his coat, but was very expeditious in returning to resume his
attack on the cold partridge. The broken cups were cleared away, the
cloth relaid, and the array of the table restored with wonderful
celerity.
Mr Escot was a little surprised at the scene of confusion which
signalised his entrance; but, perfectly unconscious that it originated
with the skull of Cadwallader, he advanced to seat himself at the
table by the side of the beautiful Cephalis, first placing the skull
in a corner, out of the reach of Mr Cranium, who sate eyeing it with
lively curiosity, and after several efforts to restrain his
impatience, exclaimed, "You seem to have found a rarity."
"A rarity indeed," said Mr Escot, cracking an egg as he spoke; "no
less than the genuine and indubitable skull of Cadwallader."
"The skull of Cadwallader!" vociferated Mr Cranium; "O treasure of
treasures!"
Mr Escot then detailed by what means he had become possessed of it,
which gave birth to various remarks from the other individuals of the
party: after which, rising from table, and taking the skull again in
his hand,
"This skull," said he, "is the skull of a hero, _palai
katatethneiotos_[10.1], and sufficiently demonstrates a point,
concerning which I never myself entertained a doubt, that the human
race is undergoing a gradual process of diminution, in length,
breadth, and thickness. Observe this skull. Even the skull of our
reverend friend, which is the largest and thickest in the company, is
not more than half its size. The frame this skull belonged to could
scarcely have been less than nine feet high. Such is the lamentable
progress of degeneracy and decay. In the course of ages, a boot of the
present generation would form an ample chateau for a large family of
our remote posterity. The mind, too, participates in the contraction
of the body. Poets and philosophers of all ages and nations have
lamented this too visible process of physical and moral deterioration.
'The sons of little men', says Ossian. '_Oioi nun brotoi eisin_,' says
Homer: 'such men as live in these degenerate days.' 'All things,' says
Virgil, 'have a retrocessive tendency, and grow worse and worse by the
inevitable doom of fate.'[10.2] 'We live in the ninth age,' says
Juvenal, 'an age worse than the age of iron; nature has no
metal sufficiently pernicious to give a denomination to its
wickedness.'[10.3] 'Our fathers,' says Horace, 'worse than our
grandfathers, have given birth to us, their more vicious progeny,
who, in our turn, shall become the parents of a still viler
generation.'[10.4] You all know the fable of the buried Pict, who bit
off the end of a pickaxe, with which sacrilegious hands were breaking
open his grave, and called out with a voice like subterranean thunder,
_I perceive the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your
little finger!_ videlicet, the pickaxe. This, to be sure, is a
fiction; but it shows the prevalent opinion, the feeling, the
conviction, of absolute, universal, irremediable deterioration."
"I should be sorry," said Mr Foster, "that such an opinion should
become universal, independently of my conviction of its fallacy. Its
general admission would tend, in a great measure, to produce the very
evils it appears to lament. What could be its effect, but to check the
ardour of investigation, to extinguish the zeal of philanthropy, to
freeze the current of enterprising hope, to bury in the torpor of
scepticism and in the stagnation of despair, every better faculty of
the human mind, which will necessarily become retrograde in ceasing to
be progressive?"
"I am inclined to think, on the contrary," said Mr Escot, "that the
deterioration of man is accelerated by his blindness--in many respects
wilful blindness--to the truth of the fact itself, and to the causes
which produce it; that there is no hope whatever of ameliorating his
condition but in a total and radical change of the whole scheme of
human life, and that the advocates of his indefinite perfectibility
are in reality the greatest enemies to the practical possibility of
their own system, by so strenuously labouring to impress on his
attention that he is going on in a good way, while he is really in a
deplorably bad one."
"I admit," said Mr Foster, "there are many things that may, and
therefore will, be changed for the better."
"Not on the present system," said Mr Escot, "in which every change is
for the worse."
"In matters of taste I am sure it is," said Mr Gall: "there is, in
fact, no such thing as good taste left in the world."
"Oh, Mr Gall!" said Miss Philomela Poppyseed, "I thought my novel----"
"My paintings," said Sir Patrick O'Prism----
"My ode," said Mr Mac Laurel----
"My ballad," said Mr Nightshade----
"My plan for Lord Littlebrain's park," said Marmaduke Milestone,
Esquire----
"My essay," said Mr Treacle----
"My sonata," said Mr Chromatic----
"My claret," said Squire Headlong----
"My lectures," said Mr Cranium----
"Vanity of vanities," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster, turning down an
empty egg-shell; "all is vanity and vexation of spirit."