general use of camels' hair, or sackcloth, or briars and thorns, in the
Middle Ages, together with seal-skins (not badgers'), and rams' skins
dyed gules, by the Jews, and the Crusaders, as compared with the use of
the two furs, Ermine and Vair, and their final result in the operations
of the Hudson's Bay Company, much casual notice will be found in my
former work. And now, this is the sum of it all, so far as I can
shortly write it.
There is no possibility of explaining the system of life in this world,
on any principle of _conqueringly_ Divine benevolence. That piece of
bold impiety, if it be so, I have always asserted in my well-considered
books,--I considering it, on the contrary, the only really pious thing
to say, namely, that the world is under a curse, which we may, if we
will, gradually remove, by doing as we are bid, and believing what we
are told; and when we are told, for instance, in the best book we have
about our own old history, that "unto Adam also, and to his wife, did
the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them," we are to accept
it as the best thing to be done under the circumstances, and to wear,
if we can get them, wolf skin, or cow skin, or beaver's, or ermine's;
but not therefore to confuse God with the Hudson's Bay Company, nor to
hunt foxes for their brushes instead of their skins, or think the poor
little black tails of a Siberian weasel on a judge's shoulders may
constitute him therefore a Minos in matters of retributive justice, or
an Æacus in distributive, who can at once determine how many millions a
Railroad Company are to make the public pay for not granting them their
exclusive business by telegraph.
133. And every hour of my life, since that paragraph of 'Modern
Painters' was written, has increased, I disdain to say my _feeling_,
but say, with fearless decision, my _knowledge_, of the bitterness of
the curse, which the habits of hunting and 'la chasse' have brought
upon the so-called upper classes of England and France; until, from
knights and gentlemen, they have sunk into jockeys, speculators,
usurers, butchers by battue; and, the English especially, now, as a
political body, into what I have called them in the opening chapter of
'The Bible of Amiens,'--"the scurviest louts that ever fouled God's
earth with their carcasses."
The language appears to be violent. It is simply brief, and accurate.
But I never meant it to remain without justification, and I will give
the justification here at once.
Take your Johnson, and look out the adjective Scurvy, in its higher or
figurative sense.
You find the first quotation he gives is from 'Measure for Measure,'
spoken of the Duke, in monk's disguise:
"I know him for a man divine and holy;
Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler."
In which passage, Shakspeare, who never uses words in vain, nor with a
grain less than their full weight, opposes the divineness of men, or
their walking with God, to the scurviness of men, or their wallowing
with swine; and again, he opposes the holiness of men,--in the sense of
"Holy--harmless, undefiled," and more than that, helpful or healthful
in action--to the harmful and filthy action of temporary meddlers, such
as the hanging of seventeen priests before breakfast, and our
profitable military successes, in such a prolonged piece of 'temporary
meddling' as the Crimean war.
134. But, secondly, if you look down Johnson's column, you will find
his last quotation is not in the higher or figurative, but the lower
and literal sense, from Swift, to the effect that "it would be
convenient to prevent the excess of drink, with that scurvy custom of
taking tobacco." And you will also find, if you ever have the sense or
courage to look the facts of modern history in the face, that those two
itches, for the pot and the pipe, have been the roots of every other
demoralization of the filthiest and literally 'scurviest' sort among
_all_ classes;--the dirty pack of cards; the church pavement _running_
with human saliva,--(I have seen the spittings in ponds half an inch
deep, in the choir of Rouen cathedral); and the entirely infernal
atmosphere of the common cafés and gambling-houses of European
festivity, infecting every condition of what they call 'æsthesis,' left
in the bodies of men, until they cannot be happy with the pines and
pansies of the Alps, until they have mixed tobacco smoke with the scent
of them; and the whole concluding in the endurance--or even
enjoyment--of the most squalid conditions of filth in our capital
cities, that have ever been yet recorded, among the disgraces of
mankind.
135. But, thirdly, Johnson's central quotation is again from 'Measure
for Measure':--
"He spoke _scurvy_ and _provoking_ terms against your honor."
The debates in the English House of Commons, for the last half-century,
having consisted virtually of nothing else!
I next take the word 'lout,' of which Johnson gives two derivations for
our choice: it is either the past participle of 'to lower, or make
low;' a lowed person, (as our House of Lords under the direction of
railway companies and public-house keepers); or else--and more strictly
I believe in etymology--a form of the German 'leute,' 'common people.'
In either case, its proper classical English sense is given by Johnson
as "a mean, awkward fellow; a bumpkin, a clown."
Now I surely cannot refer to any general representation of British
society more acceptable to, and acknowledged by, that society, than the
finished and admirably composed drawings of Du Maurier in _Punch_ which
have become every week more and more consistent, keen, and comprehensive,
during the issues of the last two years.
I take three of them, as quite trustworthy pictures, and the best our
present arts of delineation could produce, of the three Etats, or
representative orders, of the British nation of our day.
Of the Working class, take the type given in Lady Clara Robinson's
garden tea party, p. 174, vol. 79.
Of the Mercantile class, Mr. Smith, in his drawing-room after dinner,
p. 222, vol. 80.
And of the Noblesse, the first five gentlemen on the right (spectator's
right) of the line, in the ball at Stilton House, (July 3d, 1880).
136. Of the manner or state of lout, to which our manufacturing
prosperity has reduced its artisan, as represented in the first of
these frescoes, I do not think it needful to speak here; neither of the
level of sublime temperament and unselfish heroism to which the dangers
of commercial enterprise have exalted Mr. Smith. But the five
consecutive heads in the third fresco are a very notable piece of
English history, representing the polished and more or less lustrous
type of lout; which is indeed a kind of rolled shingle of former
English noblesse capable of nothing now in the way of resistance to
Atlantic liberalism, except of getting itself swept up into ugly harbor
bars, and troublesome shoals in the tideway.
And observe also, that of the three types of lout, whose combined
chorus and tripudiation leads the present British Constitution its
devil's dance, this last and smoothest type is also the dullest. Your
operative lout cannot indeed hold his cup of coffee with a grace, or
possess himself of a biscuit from Lady Clara's salver without
embarrassment; but, in his own mill, he can at least make a needle
without an eye, or a nail without a head, or a knife that won't cut, or
something of that sort, with dexterity. Also, the middle class, or
Smithian lout, at least manages his stockbroking or marketing with
decision and cunning; knows something by eye or touch of his wares, and
something of the characters of the men he has to deal with. But the
Ducal or Marquisian lout has no knowledge of anything under the sun,
except what sort of horse's quarters will carry his own, farther
weighted with that smooth block or pebble of a pow; and no faculty
under the sun of doing anything, except cutting down the trees his
fathers planted for him, and selling the lands his fathers won.
137. That is indeed the final result of hunting and horse-racing on the
British landlord. Of its result on the British soldier, perhaps the
figures of Lord George Sackville at the battle of Minden, and of Lord
Raglan at the battle of Alma, (who in the first part of the battle did
not know where he was, and in the second plumed himself on being where
he had no business to be,) are as illustrative as any I could name; but
the darkest of all, to my own thinking, are the various personages,
civil and military, who have conducted the Caffre war to its last
successes, of blowing women and children to death with dynamite, and
harrying the lands of entirely innocent peasantry, because they would
not betray their defeated king.
138. Of the due and noble relations between man and his companion
creatures, the horse, dog, and falcon, enough has been said in my
former writings--unintelligible enough to a chivalry which passes six
months of its annual life in Rotten Row, and spends the rents of its
Cumberland Hills in building furnaces round Furness Abbey; but which
careful students either of past knighthood, or of future Christianity,
will find securely and always true. For the relations between man and
his beast of burden, whether the burden be himself or his goods, become
beautiful and honorable, just in the degree that both creatures are
useful to the rest of mankind, whether in war or peace. The Greeks gave
the highest symbol of them in the bridling of Pegasus for Bellerophon
by Athena; and from that myth you may go down to modern
times--understanding, according to your own sense and dignity, what all
prophecy, poetry, history, have told you--of the horse whose neck is
clothed with thunder, or the ox who treadeth out the corn--of Joseph's
chariot, or of Elijah's--of Achilles and Xanthus--Herminius and Black
Auster--down to Scott and Brown Adam--or Dandie Dinmont and Dumple.
That pastoral one is, of all, the most enduring. I hear the proudest
tribe of Arabia Felix is now reduced by poverty and civilization to
sell its last well-bred horse; and that we send out our cavalry
regiments to repetitions of the charge at Balaclava, without horses at
all; those that they can pick up wherever they land being good enough
for such military operations. But the cart-horse will remain, when the
charger and hunter are no more; and with a wiser master.
"I'll buy him, for the dogs shall never
Set tooth upon a friend so true;
He'll not live long; but I forever
Shall know I gave the beast his due.
Ready as bird to meet the morn
Were all his efforts at the plow;
Then the mill-brook--with hay or corn,
Good creature! how he'd spatter through.
I left him in the shafts behind,
His fellows all unhook'd and gone;
He neigh'd, and deemed the thing unkind;
Then, starting, drew the load alone.
* * * *
Half choked with joy, with love, and pride,
He now with dainty clover fed him;
Now took a short, triumphant ride,
And then again got down, and led him."
139. Where Paris has had to lead _her_ horses, we know; and where
London had better lead hers, than let her people die of starvation. But
I have not lost my hope that there are yet in England Bewicks and
Bloomfields, who may teach their children--and earn for their
cattle--better ways of fronting, and of waiting for, Death.
Nor are the uses of the inferior creatures to us less consistent with
their happiness. To all that live, Death must come. The manner of it,
and the time, are for the human Master of them, and of the earth, to
determine--not to his pleasure, but to his duty and his need.
In sacrifice, or for his food, or for his clothing, it is lawful for
him to slay animals; but not to delight in slaying any that are
helpless. If he choose, for discipline and trial of courage, to leave
the boar in Calydon, the wolf in Taurus, the tiger in Bengal, or the
wild bull in Aragon, there is forest and mountain wide enough for them:
but the inhabited world in sea and land should be one vast unwalled
park and treasure lake, in which its flocks of sheep, or deer, or fowl,
or fish, should be tended and dealt with, as best may multiply the life
of all Love's Meinie, in strength, and use, and peace.
APPENDIX.
140. This part of the book will, I hope, be continuous with the text of
it, containing henceforward, in each number, the nomenclature hitherto
used for the birds described in it, and the Author's reason for his
choice or change of names. In the present number, it supplies also the
nomenclature required for the two preceding ones, and thus finishes the
first volume.
The names given first, in capitals, for each bird, are those which the
Author will in future give it, and proposes for use in elementary
teaching. They will consist only of a plain Latin specific name, with
one, or at the most two, Latin epithets; and the simplest popular
English name, if there be one; if not, the English name will usually be
the direct translation of the Latin one.
Then in order will follow--
I. Linnæus's name, marked L.
II. Buffon's name, marked F, the F standing also for 'French' when any
popular French name is given with Buffon's.
III. The German popular name, marked T (Teutonic), for I want the G for
Mr. Gould; and this T will include authoritative German scientific
names also.
IV. The Italian popular name, if one exists, to give the connection
with old Latin, marked I.
V. Mr. Gould's name, G; Yarrell's, Y; Dressler's, D; and Gesner's, Ges,
being added, if different.
VI. Bewick's, B.
VII. Shakspeare's and Chaucer's, if I know them; and general
references, such as may be needful.
The Appendix will thus contain the names of all the birds I am able to
think or learn anything about, as I can set down what I think or learn;
and with no other attempt at order than the slight grouping of
convenience: but the numbers of the species examined will be
consecutive, so that L. M. 25,--Love's Meinie, Number twenty-five,--or
whatever the number may be, will at once identify any bird in the
system of the St. George's schools.
The following note by the Author has in previous editions faced the
first page of Lecture III., with the exception of the Nos. i.-vii.,
which are now added by the Editor for the sake of completeness.
* * * *
Names of the birds noticed, according to the Author's system, with
reference to the sections of the text and the Appendix in which the
reader will find their more melodious scientific nomenclature:--
Sect. Sect.
I. _Rutila Familiaris._ _Robin Redbreast_
Text 1 seqq. App. 141
II. _Hirundo Domestica._ _House Swallow_
" 41 seqq. " 142
III. _Hirundo Monastica._ _Martlet_
" -- " 143
IV. _Hirundo Riparia._ _Bank Martlet_
" -- " 144
V. _Hirundo Sagitta._ _Swift_
" 64 " 145
VI. _Hirundo Alpina._ _Alpine Swift_
" -- " 146
VII. _Noctua Europæa._ _Night-jar of Europe_
" -- " 147
VIII. _Merula Fontium._ _Torrent Ouzel_
" 89 " 148
IX. _Allegretta Nymphæa._ _Lily Ouzel_
" 93 " 149
IX.A. _Allegretta Maculata._ _Spotted Allegret_
" 96 " 149
IX.B. _Allegretta Stellaris._ _Starry Allegret_
" 97 " 149
IX.C. _Allegretta Minuta._ _Tiny Allegret_
" 98 " 149
X. _Trepida Stagnarum._ _Little Grebe_
" 100 " 150
XI.A. _Titania Arctica._ _Arctic Fairy_
" 111 " 151
XI. _Titania Inconstans._ _Changeful Fairy_
" 114 " 151
XII. _Rallus Aquaticus._ _Water Rail_
" 116 " 152
XII.A. _Pulla Aquatica._ _Water Hen_
" 133 " 153
I.
141. RUTILA FAMILIARIS. ROBIN REDBREAST.
Motacilla Rubecula. L.
Rouge-Gorge. F.
Roth-breustlein.--Wald-roetele.--Winter-roetele.--Roth-kehlschen. T.
Petti-rosso. I.
Erythacus Rubecula. G. Rubecula Erythacus. Ges.
Erythaca Rubecula. Y.
Rebecula Familiaris. D.
Ruddock. B.
Ruddock, in Cymbeline; _tame_ Ruddocke, in Assembly of Fowlês; full
robin-redebreast, in the Court of Love:
"The second lesson, Robin Redebreast sang."
It is rightly classed by F. and Y. with the Warblers. Gould strangely
puts it with his rock-birds, 'saxicolinæ,'--in which, however, he also
includes the sedge warbler.
The true Robin is properly a wood-bird; the Swedish blue-throated one
lives in marshes and arable fields. I have never seen a robin in really
wild mountain ground.
There is only one European species of the red-breasted Robin. Gould
names two Japanese ones.
II.
142. HIRUNDO DOMESTICA. HOUSE SWALLOW.
Hirundo Rustica. L.
Hirondelle Domestique. F.
Schwalbe. T. Swala, Swedish, and Saxon, whence our Swallow: but compare
Lecture II., § 44.
Rondine Comune. I. (note Rond_i_ne, the Swallow; Rondone, the Swift).
Hirundo Rustica. G. and Y.
Chimney-Swallow. B.
III.
143. HIRUNDO MONASTICA. MARTLET.
Hirundo Urbica. L.
Hirondelle de Fenetre. F.
Kirch-schwalbe. (Church-Swallow.) T.
Balestruccio. I.
Chelidon Urbica. D. and G.
Hirundo Urbica. Martin. Y.
Martlet, Martinet, or Window-Swallow. Y.
I cannot get at the root of this word, 'Martlet,' which is the really
classical and authoritative English one. I have called it Monastica, in
translation of Shakspeare's "temple-haunting." The main idea about this
bird, among people who have any ideas, seems to be that it haunts and
builds among grander masses or clefts of wall than the common Swallow.
Thus the Germans, besides Church-Swallow, call it wall,--rock,--roof,--or
window, swallow, and Mur-Spyren, or Munster Spyren. (Wall-walker?
Minster-walker?) But by the people who have no ideas, the names 'town'
and 'country,' 'urbica' and 'rustica,' have been accepted as indicating
the practical result, that a bird which likes walls will live in towns,
and one which is content with eaves may remain in farms and villages,
and under their straw-built sheds.
My name, Monastica, is farther justified by the Dominican severity of
the bird's dress, dark gray-blue and white only; while the Domestica
has a red cap and light brown bodice, and much longer tail. As far as I
remember, the bird I know best is the Monastica. I have seen it in
happiest flocks in all-monastic Abbeville, playing over the Somme in
morning sunlight, dashing deep through the water at every stoop, like a
hardcast stone.
IV.
144. HIRUNDO RIPARIA. BANK MARTLET.
Hirundo Riparia. L.
Hirondelle de Rivage. F.
Rhein-schwalbe, (Rhine-Swallow,)--ufer-schwalbe,
(Shore-Swallow,)--erd-schwalbe, (Earth-Swallow). T.
Topino, (The mouse-color.)--Rondine de riva. I.
Cotyle Riparia. G. Hirundo Riparia. Y.
Bank-Martin. B.
The Italian name, 'Topino,' is a good familiar one, the bird being
scarcely larger than a mouse, and "the head, neck, breast, and back of
a mouse-color." (B.) It is the smallest of the Swallow tribe, and
shortest of wing; accordingly, I find Spallanzani's experiment on the
rate of swallow-flight was, for greater certainty and severity, made
with this apparently feeblest of its kind:--a marked Topino, brought
from its nest at Pavia to Milan, (fifteen miles,) flew back to Pavia in
thirteen minutes. I imagine a Swift would at least have doubled this
rate of flight, and that we may safely take a hundred miles an hour as
an average of swallow-speed. This, however, is less by three-fifths
than Michelet's estimate. See above, Lecture II., § 48.
I have substituted 'bank' for 'sand' in the English name, since all the
six quoted authorities give it this epithet in Latin or French, and
Bewick in English. Also, it may be well thus to distinguish it from
birds of the sea-shore.
V.
145. HIRUNDO SAGITTA. SWIFT.
Hirundo Apus. L.
Martinet Noir. F.
Geyr-schwalbe. (Vulture-Swallow.) T.
Rondone. (Plural, Rondini.) I.
Cypselus Apus. G. and Y.
Swift, Black Martin, or Deviling. B.
I think it will be often well to admit the license of using a
substantive for epithet, (as one says rock-bird or sea-bird, and not
'rocky,' or 'marine,') in Latin as well as in English. We thus greatly
increase our power, and assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain
the convenience of using the second term by itself, when we wish to do
so, more naturally. Thus, one may shortly speak of 'The Sagitta' (when
one is on a scientific point where 'Swift' would be indecorous!) more
easily than one could speak of 'The Stridula,' or 'The Velox,' if we
gave the bird either of those epithets. I think this of Sagitta is the
most descriptive one could well find; only the reader is always to
recollect that arrow-birds must be more heavy in the head or shaft than
arrow-weapons, and fly more in the manner of rifle-shot than bow-shot.
See Lecture II., §§ 46, 67, 71, in which last paragraph, however, I
have to correct the careless statement, that in the sailing flight,
without stroke, of the larger falcons, their weight ever acts like the
_string_ of a kite. Their weight acts simply as the _weight_ of a kite
acts, and no otherwise. (Compare § 65.) The impulsive force in sailing
can be given only by the tail feathers, like that of a darting trout by
the tail fin. I do not think any excuse necessary for my rejection of
the name which seems most to have established itself lately, 'Cypselus
Apus,' 'Footless Capsule.' It is not footless, and there is no sense in
calling a bird a capsule because it lives in a hole, (which the Swift
does not.) The Greeks had a double idea in the word, which it is not
the least necessary to keep; and Aristotle's cypselus is not the swift,
but the bank-martlet--"they bring up their young in cells made out of
clay, _long_ in the entrance." The swift being precisely the one of the
Hirundines which does _not_ make its nest of clay, but of miscellaneous
straws, threads, and shreds of any adaptable rubbish, which it can
snatch from the ground as it stoops on the wing,[26] or pilfer from any
half-ruined nests of other birds.
[26] "I have in different times and places opened ten or twelve
swifts' nests; in all of them I found the same materials, and
these consisting of a great variety of substances--stalks of
corn, dry grass, moss, hemp, bits of cord, threads of silk and
linen, the tip of an ermine's tail, small shreds of gauze, of
muslin and other light stuffs, the feathers of domestic birds,
_charcoal_,--in short, whatever they can find in the sweepings of
towns."--Buffon.
Belon asserts (Buffon does not venture to guarantee the
assertion), that "they will descry a fly at the distance of a
quarter of a league"!
'Cotyle' is only a synonym for Cypselus, enabling ornithologists to
become farther unintelligible. We will be troubled no more either with
cotyles or capsules, but recollect simply that Hirundo, [Greek: chelidôn],
swallow, schwalbe, and hirondelle, are in each language the sufficing
single words for the entire Hirundine race.
VI.
146. HIRUNDO ALPINA. ALPINE SWIFT.
Hirundo Melba. L.
Le grand Martinet a Ventre Blanc. F.
Cypselus Melba. G.
Cypselus Alpinus. Y.
Alpine Swift,--White-bellied Swift. Y.
Not in Bewick.
I cannot find its German name. The Italians compare it with the
sea-swallow, which is a gull. What 'Melba' means, or ever meant, I have
no conception.
The bird is the noblest of all the swallow tribe--nearly as large as a
hawk, and lives high in air, nothing but rocks or cathedrals serving it
for nest. In France, seen only near the Alps; in Spain, among the
mountains of Aragon. "Almost every person who has had an opportunity of
observing this bird speaks in terms of admiration of its vast powers of
flight; it is not surprising, therefore, that an individual should now
and then wing its way across the Channel to the British Islands, and
roam over our meads and fields until it is shot." (G.) It is, I
believe, the swallow of the Bible,--abundant, though only a summer
migrant, in the Holy Land. I have never seen it, that I know of, nor
thought of it in the lecture on the Swallow; but give here the complete
series of Hirundines, of which some notice may incidentally afterwards
occur in the text.
VII.
147. NOCTUA EUROPÆA. NIGHT-JAR OF EUROPE.
Caprimulgus Europæus. L.
L'Engoulevent. F. (Crapaud-volant, popular.)
Geissmelcher.--Nacht-schade. T.
Covaterra. I.
Caprimulgus Europæus. G. and Y.
Night-jar. B.