The "Annus Mirabilis" of Dryden--1870 a more wonderful Year
in its way than 1666--Winter--Number of Killed and Wounded
in the Franco-Prussian War--Battles of Langside, Tippermuir,
Cappel--Carrier Pigeons--The Velocity with which Birds fly.
One of Dryden's best poems, and in many respects one of the most
curious poems in the language, is the Annus Mirabilis, an effusion
of historical panegyric, which, after the lapse of two centuries, no
one can read unmoved or undelighted, so beautifully is it written,
so masterly is the versification, and so vividly are its events
portrayed. The year commemorated is 1666, and the "wonders" that
entitled it to such pre-eminence were the naval war with the Dutch
and Danes and the great fire in London. If 1666, however, was an annus
mirabilis, surely 1870 is an annus mirabilior, a more wonderful year
still, nay, an annus mirabilissimus, if you like, for you shall go
back in our annals very far indeed--much farther, if you try it, than
at the outset you might think at all necessary--before you meet its
match. Just consider, first of all, the great Franco-Prussian war,
with its countless hosts of slain; with its sieges of Strasbourg,
Metz, and Paris, not to mention strongholds of less importance;
its capitulation of Sedan and captive Emperor; the Empire ruined,
and a Republic in its place, with all that may yet happen ere peace is
proclaimed and the Germans have recrossed the Rhine. Think, again, of
the promulgation of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, so speedily,
and let us say unexpectedly, followed by the capture of Rome and
the dethronement of this very infallible Pope as a temporal Prince,
by the Catholic (proh pudor!) King of Italy. At home, a daughter of
the Queen, with the royal consent and concurrence, marries one of
that Queen's subjects, for we suppose we may regard the matter as
a fait accompli, an event so unheard-of and unusual that we must
go back for an exact parallel for more than two hundred years,
when the Duke of York, afterwards James II., "a man of many woes,"
married the Lady Anne Hyde, daughter of Lord Chancellor Clarendon,
whose history of the Rebellion is one of the most interesting, and,
on account of its inimitable portraiture, one of the most valuable
works of its kind in the English language. If to all this be added such
events as the loss of the "Captain," built and armed on a principle,
the ultimate adoption or rejection of which will so materially affect
the navy of the future; the revision of the Authorised Version of the
Scriptures; and many other matters, both at home and abroad, that will
readily occur to the reader, this may be regarded as a very wonderful
year indeed. Occupying the centre, as it were, of all these events,
we are too near them at present to appraise either their magnitude
or importance at their legitimate value. Not the man at the base of
a lofty tower, but he who stands at some distance from it can take
its proportions aright, and we may depend upon it that the reader
of the history of our period a hundred years hence will turn to the
page that records the events of 1870 as at once the most interesting
and important in the annals of many centuries. Reverting for a moment
to the Annus Mirabilis of Dryden, it is but fair to acknowledge that
they seem to have had one wonder to boast of in 1666 that we cannot
claim for 1870, to this date at least; the wonder in question being
two blazing comets in the nocturnal sky. Describing the English fleet
advancing to attack the enemy at night, the poet, with a boldness of
hyperbole for which he is always remarkable, says--
"To see that fleet upon the ocean move,
Angels drew down the curtains of the skies;
And Heaven, as if there wanted lights above,
For tapers, made two glaring comets rise!"
But if we have no comets to boast of in 1870, let not the reader
forget that the 14th November is nigh at hand, and that he who gets up
betimes on the morning of that day, and watches till the daybreak, will
assuredly witness a sight more startling, and grand and "glaring" than
Dryden's comets, wonderful and startling as they doubtless were. We
must be permitted one other extract from this extraordinary poem. It
describes the state of the contending fleets and the feelings of their
respective crews on their withdrawing for a time from an engagement
that resulted in something like what at the present day we should
call a drawn battle:--
"The night comes on, we eager to pursue
The combat still, and they ashamed to leave
Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,
And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.
"In th' English fleet each ship resounds with joy,
And loud applause of their great leader's fame;
In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,
And, slumbering, smile at the imagin'd flame.
"Not so the Holland fleet, who, tired and done,
Stretch'd on their decks, like weary oxen lie;
Faint sweats all down their mighty members run
(Vast hulks which little souls but ill supply).
"In dreams they fearful precipices tread,
Or, shipwreck'd, labour to some distant shore;
Or in dark churches walk among the dead;
They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more."
We do not know whether the reader will agree with us, but we look upon
these verses as wonderfully fine, and upon the Annus Mirabilis as,
of its class, amongst the finest, if not the very finest, poem in
the language.
Even from a meteorological point of view, this year, in our part of
the country at least, has had not a little of the mirabilis about
it. Byron, we know, awoke one morning and found himself famous, and
we awoke one morning last week and found ourselves in mid-winter,
albeit the previous day had been mild, and calm, and sunny, and
bright as if it were Whitsuntide, rather than the Eve of St. Luke the
Evangelist. Since then we have had incessant storms, shifting about
and sometimes blowing from every point of the compass within the
four-and-twenty hours, with such deluges of rain as Lochaber alone
can supply in season, or sometimes, entre nous, out of season as
well. The mountain summits are, at the moment we write, covered with
a lamb's-wool-like coating of virgin snow, and the air has become
so chill and raw that we were fain some days ago to don our winter
habiliments for the season. We have no right or reason to complain,
however; a finer summer and autumn were never known in the Highlands,
and since winter must come some time or other, it is better that it
should come in season. The fourth week of October is not a bit too
early for snow, and sleet, and storms, so that when we hear the
winds howling over ferry and firth, and the waves breaking with
sullen roar upon the vexed strand, and listen to the rattle and
the dash of rain and sleet upon the window panes, we shall, first
taking care that the shutters are properly closed and the curtains
drawn, just draw our arm-chair a little nearer the fire, which our
"lassie," you may be sure, has trimmed betimes, like Horace's boy,
large reponens peats and coals thereon, and then, with the Courier,
Scotsman, or Standard on our knee, or a stray copy of the Saturday
Review or Spectator, which some distant friend has kindly sent us,
or some fresh volume from Ardgour's library, the worst we shall say
will be in the words of poor old Lear, "Blow wind, and crack your
cheeks! rage! blow!" blessing God the while that if our lot be a
humbler one, it is also a happier one than the poor old king's.
A good deal has been written about the enormous numbers of killed
and wounded in the present Franco-Prussian war, the fact being
nevertheless, as we learn on competent authority, that notwithstanding
the improvements made of late years in arms of precision, there were,
considering the numbers engaged, quite as many men disabled as in the
good old days of "Brown Bess" in the wars of the first Napoleon and in
our battles in India. Mr. Hill Burton, in one of his recently published
volumes of the History of Scotland, and an admirable and very impartial
history it is, tells us that in the battle of Langside, an historical
combat on the issue of which so much in the after history of England
and Scotland depended, 10,000 men were engaged for three-quarters of
an hour, with a loss to the Queen's party of 300 hors de combat, while
the victors only lost one man! A very extraordinary fact certainly; but
a more wonderful fact still, and neither Mr. Burton nor his reviewers
seem to be aware of it, is that of the battle of Tippermuir, fought
in 1644, between the Covenanters and the famous Marquis of Montrose,
in which Montrose was victorious without the loss of a single man on
his own side, although of the Covenanters between four and five hundred
were killed in the battle and pursuit. Another curious thing connected
with the battle of Tippermuir was this: a body of Highlanders, keen
enough for the fray, were without arms of any kind, when Montrose,
pointing to the stones that thickly strewed the field, advised them
to try these to begin with, and they did, appropriating the arms
of their enemies as they fell, and using them with such effect that
the battle proper was over in less than half an hour. The only other
battle that we can recollect in which such primitive weapons as stones
were employed by the combatants was that of Cappel, fought in 1531,
between the Protestants of Zurich and the Catholics of the neighbouring
cantons. It was in this battle that the celebrated reformer Zwingle,
or Zwinglius, met his death. He was first of all knocked down by a
stone that, fiercely hurled, struck him on the head, and then, with
the exclamation, "Die, obstinate heretic," the sword of Fockinger of
Unterwalden pierced his throat, and the reformer was no more.
The reader has, of course, seen in the papers how beleaguered Paris
keeps up communication with Belgium and the provinces, by means of
balloons and carrier pigeons. Of balloons and ballooning we have no
practical experience; of carrier pigeons we do know something, the bird
being as well-known to us as is a robin redbreast to a gardener. We
kept them for some time, but were obliged to get quit of them on
account of their ineradicable propensity to purloin our neighbours'
turnip seed from the drill immediately after being sown and before
they got time to sprout. All pigeons have this habit, but the carrier
worse and more persistently than any other. The speed and power of
wing appertaining to the carrier pigeon is extraordinary, and if not
well attested would be deemed incredible. We remember, for instance,
that at the Christmas of 1845, when a student at the University of
St. Andrews (best as well as oldest university in Scotland, gainsay
it who may!) we spent our holidays at Kirkmichael, a pleasant little
village in the Highlands of Perthshire. On leaving St. Andrews we took
with us a carrier pigeon, a magnificent bird. On the 1st of January
1846, at the hour of noon precisely, we gave this bird, with a bit
of narrow blue ribbon tied under his wing, his liberty on the bridge
of Kirkmichael. When let out of his basket he instantly soared up in
a sort of spiral flight, ascending and ascending cork-screw fashion
until he seemed to the eye no bigger than a wren, then straight
and swift as an arrow from a bow he urged his flight southwards,
and became lost to view. On returning to St. Andrews, we found that
our bird had reached his dovecot, eagerly watched and waited for
by his owner, as the College bells were chiming one o'clock on the
same day, so that it must have done the distance, about fifty-four
miles as the crow flies, in about one hour, or very nearly at the
rate of a mile a minute. Now, it must be remembered that this was
the bird's ordinary flight. He doubtless sought his distant home in
what one might call a brisk and business-like manner, nor swerved,
we may be sure, an inch from his course, nor loitered by the way. He
was going well--very well, if you like--throughout, but not going
his best. The probability is that under extraordinary pressure, with
a falcon in chase, for instance, the same bird could and would have
gone twice as fast, or at a rate of something more than a hundred
miles an hour. If the reader likes to experiment in this direction,
he can easily try it with the common domestic pigeon, as we have done
more than once. Years ago we recollect a brother of ours taking, at
our suggestion, a common black and white pigeon from the dovecot here
to Oban, where, at a preconcerted hour on a day agreed upon, he set it
at liberty. The bird took nearly two hours to do the distance, some
twenty-three or twenty-four miles as the crow flies; but it probably
lingered some time by the way to feed, as, instead of being well fed,
which should always be strictly attended to, it received no food
at all on the morning of its liberation at Oban. The house-pigeon,
however, is useless except for comparatively short distances, and
even then is never to be much depended upon. His extreme domesticity
predisposes him to pay a visit to every dovecot on the route, and to
fraternise with every flock of brother pigeons he may happen to fall in
with. His peculiar mode of flight, besides, and his extreme timidity,
mark him out as an easy and desirable prey for any keen-eyed hawk or
falcon that may be at the moment impransus, as Johnson in his early
days once signed a note in London--dinnerless. The common pigeon,
too, wings his flight at a comparatively low altitude, and becomes an
easy shot to any one with a gun ready to hand when it passes by. Not
so the true carrier pigeon, which flies at a great height, far out
of range of needle-gun or artillery--out of range of human sight,
in fact; so that it is never in danger of being brought to grief,
as was poor Gambetta in his balloon when passing above the Prussian
lines the other day. The velocity with which some birds fly is almost
incredible. A hungry falcon, with his blood up and in eager pursuit
of his quarry, will fly at the rate of 150 miles an hour, and keep
it up too until his object is attained; and the tremendous impetus
of the bird at such a speed accounts for the dreadful wounds that
a falcon inflicts when it strikes its prey, sometimes ripping up
a grouse, or blackcock, or mallard, from vent to breastbone, as if
it had been done by the keen edge of a butcher's cleaver. A goshawk
(Falco palumbarius) belonging to Henry of Navarre--the Henri Quatre
of after days--having its royal owner's name engraved on its golden
varvels, made its escape from Fontainebleau in 1574, and was caught
in Malta within four-and-twenty hours afterwards--a distance of 1400
miles, or at the rate of sixty miles an hour, supposing him to have
been on the wing the whole time. But a hawk never flies by night,
so that, on a fair computation, the bird's speed in winging the
enormous distance must have been at the rate of at least 100 miles an
hour. We have calculated that a snipe, thoroughly alarmed, and going
its best, can fly at the rate of a mile a minute, and there are other
well-known birds equally fleet of wing. Nor must it be supposed that
the velocity of birds is a mere "flash-in-the-pan," so to speak--a
"spurt," as it were--which could not be kept up. The long-sustained
flights of migratory birds proves the contrary--that birds are not
only inconceivably fleet, but, to use a racing term, that they can
stay as well. Of our more familiar birds, we should say that the
common wild duck of our meres flies with greater velocity than any
other bird with which the reader is likely to be well acquainted.