There are actions and events in its life over which decent Poverty

often chooses to cast a veil that is not unbecoming wear. We can all,

if we are minded, peer through this poor flimsy screen: often there

is no shame behind it:--only empty platters, poor scraps, and other

threadbare evidence of want and cold. And who is called on to show

his rags to the public, and cry out his hunger in the street? At this

time (her character has developed itself not so amiably since), Mrs.

Prior was outwardly respectable; and yet, as I have said, my groceries

were consumed with remarkable rapidity; my wine and brandy bottles

were all leaky, until they were excluded from air under a patent

lock;--my Morel’s raspberry jam, of which I was passionately fond, if

exposed on the table for a few hours, was always eaten by the cat, or

that wonderful little wretch of a maid-of-all-work, so active, yet so

patient, so kind, so dirty, so obliging. Was it _the maid_ who took

those groceries? I have seen the _Gazza Ladra_, and know that poor

little maids are sometimes wrongfully accused; and besides, in my

particular case, I own I don’t care who the culprit was. At the year’s

end, a single man is not much poorer for this house-tax which he pays.

One Sunday evening, being confined with a cold, and partaking of that

mutton broth which Elizabeth made so well, and which she brought me, I

entreated her to bring from the cupboard, of which I gave her the key,

a certain brandy-bottle. She saw my face when I looked at her: there

was no mistaking its agony. There was scarce any brandy left: it had

all leaked away: and it was Sunday, and no good brandy was to be bought

that evening.

Elizabeth, I say, saw my grief. She put down the bottle, and she

cried: she tried to prevent herself from doing so at first, but she

fairly burst into tears.

“My dear--dear child,” says I, seizing her hand, “you don’t suppose I

fancy you----”

“No--no!” she says, drawing the large hand over her eyes. “No--no!

but I saw it when you and Mr. Warrington last ’ad some. Oh! do have a

patting lock!”

“A patent lock, my dear?” I remarked. “How odd that you, who have

learned to pronounce Italian and French words so well, should make such

strange slips in English? Your mother speaks well enough.”

“She was born a lady. She was not sent to be a milliner’s girl, as I

was, and then among those noisy girls at that--oh! that _place_!” cries

Bessy, in a sort of desperation clenching her hand.

Here the bells of St. Beak’s began to ring quite cheerily for evening

service. I heard “Elizabeth!” cried out from lower regions by Mrs.

Prior’s cracked voice. And the maiden went her way to Church, which she

and her mother never missed of a Sunday; and I daresay I slept just as

well without the brandy-and-water.

Slumley being gone, Mrs. Prior came to me rather wistfully one day,

and wanted to know whether I would object to Madame Bentivoglio, the

opera-singer, having the first floor? This was too much, indeed! How

was my work to go on with that woman practising all day and roaring

underneath me? But after sending away so good a customer, I could not

refuse to lend the Priors a little more money; and Prior insisted

upon treating me to a new stamp, and making out a new and handsome

bill for an amount nearly twice as great as the last: which he had no

doubt under heaven, and which he pledged his honour as an officer and

a gentleman that he would meet. Let me see: That was how many years

ago?--Thirteen, fourteen, twenty? Never mind. My fair Elizabeth, I

think if you saw your poor old father’s signature now, you would pay

it. I came upon it lately in an old box I haven’t opened these fifteen

years, along with some letters written--never mind by whom--and an old

glove that I used to set an absurd value by; and that emerald-green

tabinet waistcoat which kind old Mrs. Macmanus gave me, and which I

wore at the L--d L--t--nt’s ball, Ph-n-x Park, Dublin, once, when I

danced with _her_ there! Lord!--Lord! It would no more meet round my

waist now than round Daniel Lambert’s. How we outgrow things!

But as I never presented this united bill of 43_l._ odd (the first

portion of 23_l._, &c. was advanced by me in order to pay an execution

out of the house),--as I never expected to have it paid any more than I

did to be Lord Mayor of London,--I say it was a little hard that Mrs.

Prior should write off to her brother (she writes a capital letter),

blessing Providence that had given him a noble income, promising him

the benefit of her prayers, in order that he should long live to enjoy

his large salary, and informing him that an obdurate creditor, who

shall be nameless (meaning me), who had Captain Prior _in his power_

(as if being in possession of that dingy scrawl, I should have known

what to do with it), who held Mr. Prior’s acceptance for 43_l._ 14_s._

4_d._ due on the 3rd July (my bill), would infallibly bring their

family to RUIN, unless a part of the money was paid up. When I went up

to my old college, and called on Sargent, at Boniface Lodge, he treated

me as civilly as if I had been an undergraduate; scarcely spoke to me

in hall, where, of course, I dined at the Fellows’ table; and only

asked me to one of Mrs. Sargent’s confounded tea-parties during the

whole time of my stay. Now it was by this man’s entreaty that I went to

lodge at Prior’s; he talked to me after dinner one day, he hummed, he

ha’d, he blushed, he prated in his pompous way, about an unfortunate

sister in London--fatal early marriage--husband, Captain Prior, Knight

of the Swan with two Necks of Portugal, most distinguished officer, but

imprudent speculator--advantageous lodgings in the centre of London,

quiet, though near the Clubs--if I was ill (I am a confirmed invalid),

Mrs. Prior, his sister, would nurse me like a mother. So, in a word, I

went to Prior’s: I took the rooms: I was attracted by some children:

Amelia Jane (that little dirty maid before mentioned) dragging a

go-cart, containing a little dirty pair; another marching by them,

carrying a fourth well nigh as big as himself. These little folks,

having threaded the mighty flood of Regent Street, debouched into the

quiet creek of Beak Street, just as I happened to follow them. And the

door at which the small caravan halted,--the very door I was in search

of,--was opened by Elizabeth, then only just emerging from childhood,

with tawny hair falling into her solemn eyes.

The aspect of these little people, which would have deterred many,

happened to attract me. I am a lonely man. I may have been ill-treated

by some one once, but that is neither here nor there. If I had had

children of my own, I think I should have been good to them. I thought

Prior a dreadful vulgar wretch, and his wife a scheming, greedy little

woman. But the children amused me: and I took the rooms, liking to hear

overhead in the morning the patter of their little feet. The person I

mean has several;--husband, judge in the West Indies. _Allons_! now you

know how I came to live at Mrs. Prior’s.

Though I am now a steady, a _confirmed_ old bachelor (I shall call

myself Mr. Batchelor, if you please, in this story; and there is some

one far--far away who knows why I will NEVER take another title), I

was a gay young fellow enough once. I was not above the pleasures of

youth: in fact, I learned quadrilles on purpose to dance with her

that long vacation when I went to read with my young friend Lord

Viscount Poldoody at Dub--psha! Be still, thou foolish heart! Perhaps I

mis-spent my time as an undergraduate. Perhaps I read too many novels,

occupied myself too much with “elegant literature” (that used to be our

phrase), and spoke too often at the Union, where I had a considerable

reputation. But those fine words got me no college prizes: I missed my

fellowship: was rather in disgrace with my relations afterwards, but

had a small independence of my own, which I eked out by taking a few

pupils for little goes and the common degree. At length, a relation

dying, and leaving me a farther small income, I left the university,

and came to reside in London.

Now, in my third year at college, there came to St. Boniface a young

gentleman, who was one of the few gentlemen-pensioners of our society.

His popularity speedily was great. A kindly and simple youth, he

would have been liked, I daresay, even though he had been no richer

than the rest of us; but this is certain, that flattery, worldliness,

mammon-worship, are vices as well known to young as to old boys; and

a rich lad at school or college has his followers, tuft-hunters,

led-captains, little courts, just as much as any elderly millionary of

Pall-Mall, who gazes round his club to see whom he shall take home to

dinner, while humble trencher-men wait anxiously, thinking--Ah! will

he take me this time? or will he ask that abominable sneak and toady

Henchman again? Well--well! this is an old story about parasites and

flatterers. My dear good sir, I am not for a moment going to say that

_you_ ever were one; and I daresay it was very base and mean of us to

like a man chiefly on account of his money. “I know”--Tom Lovel used to

say--“I know fellows come to my rooms because I have a large allowance,

and plenty of my poor old governor’s wine, and give good dinners: I

am not deceived; but, at least, it is pleasanter to come to me and

have good dinners, and good wine, than to go to Jack Highson’s dreary

tea and turnout, or to Ned Roper’s abominable Oxbridge port.” And so

I admit at once that Lovel’s parties _were_ more agreeable than most

men’s in the college. Perhaps the goodness of the fare, by pleasing the

guests, made them more pleasant. A dinner in hall, and a pewter-plate

is all very well, and I can say grace before it with all my heart; but

a dinner with fish from London, game, and two or three nice little

_entrées_, is better--and there was no better cook in the university

than ours at St. Boniface, and ah, me! there were appetites then, and

digestions which rendered the good dinner doubly good.

Between me and young Lovel a friendship sprang up, which, I trust, even

the publication of this story will not diminish. There is a period,

immediately after the taking of his bachelor’s degree, when many a

university-man finds himself embarrassed. The tradesmen rather rudely

press for a settlement of their accounts. Those prints we ordered

_calidi juventâ_; those shirt-studs and pins which the jewellers would

persist in thrusting into our artless bosoms; those fine coats we would

insist on having for our books, as well as ourselves; all these have

to be paid for by the graduate. And my father, who was then alive,

refusing to meet these demands, under the--I own--just plea, that my

allowance had been ample, and that my half-sisters ought not to be

mulcted of their slender portions, in consequence of my extravagance, I

should have been subject to very serious inconvenience--nay, possibly,

to personal incarceration, had not Lovel, at the risk of rustication,

rushed up to London to his mother (who then had _especial reasons_ for

being very gracious with her son), obtained a supply of money from her,

and brought it to me at Mr. Shackell’s horrible hotel, where I was

lodged. He had tears in his kind eyes; he grasped my hand a hundred

and hundred times as he flung the notes into my lap; and the recording

tutor (Sargent was only tutor then) who was going to bring him up

before the Master for breach of discipline, dashed away a drop from

his own lid, when, with a moving eloquence, I told what had happened,

and blotted out the transaction with some particular old 1811 Port, of

which we freely partook in his private rooms that evening. By laborious

instalments, I had the happiness to pay Lovel back. I took pupils,

as I said; I engaged in literary pursuits: I became connected with a

literary periodical, and I am ashamed to say, I imposed myself upon the

public as a good classical scholar. I was not thought the less learned,

when my relative dying, I found myself in possession of a small

independency; and my _Translations from the Greek_, my _Poems by Beta_,

and my articles in the paper of which I was part proprietor for several

years, have had their little success in their day.

Indeed at Oxbridge, if I did not obtain university honours, at least I

showed literary tastes. I got the prize essay one year at Boniface, and

plead guilty to having written essays, poems, and a tragedy. My college

friends had a joke at my expense (a very small joke serves to amuse

those port-wine-bibbing fogies, and keeps them laughing for ever so

long a time)--they are welcome, I say, to make merry at my charges--in

respect of a certain bargain which I made on coming to London, and in

which, had I been Moses Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I could

scarcely have been more taken in. _My_ Jenkinson was an old college

acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to imagine a respectable man:

the fellow had a very smooth tongue, and sleek, sanctified exterior.

He was rather a popular preacher, and used to cry a good deal in the

pulpit. He, and a queer wine-merchant and bill-discounter, Sherrick by

name, had somehow got possession of that neat little literary paper,

the _Museum_, which, perhaps, you remember; and this eligible literary

property my friend Honeyman, with his wheedling tongue, induced me

to purchase. I bear no malice: the fellow is in India now, where I

trust he pays his butcher and baker. He was in dreadful straits for

money when he sold me the _Museum_. He began crying when I told him

some short time afterwards that he was a swindler, and from behind

his pocket-handkerchief sobbed a prayer that I should one day think

better of him; whereas my remarks to the same effect produced an

exactly contrary impression upon his accomplice, Sherrick, who burst

out laughing in my face, and said, “The more fool you.” Mr. Sherrick

was right. He was a fool, without mistake, who had any money-dealing

with him; and poor Honeyman was right, too; I don’t think so badly of

him as I did. A fellow so hardly pinched for money could not resist

the temptation of extracting it from such a greenhorn. I daresay I

gave myself airs as editor of that confounded _Museum_, and proposed

to educate the public taste, to diffuse morality and sound literature

throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in return for

my services. I daresay I printed my own sonnets, my own tragedy, my

own verses (to a Being who shall be nameless, but whose conduct has

caused a faithful heart to bleed not a little). I daresay I wrote

satirical articles, in which I piqued myself upon the fineness of my

wit, and criticisms, got up for the nonce, out of encyclopædias and

biographical dictionaries; so that I would be actually astounded at my

own knowledge. I daresay I made a gaby of myself to the world: pray, my

good friend, hast thou never done likewise? If thou hast never been a

fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.

I think it was my brilliant _confrère_ on the first floor (he had

pecuniary transactions with Sherrick, and visited two or three of her

Majesty’s metropolitan prisons at that gentleman’s suit) who first

showed me how grievously I had been cheated in the newspaper matter.

Slumley wrote for a paper printed at our office. The same boy often

brought proofs to both of us--a little bit of a puny bright-eyed chap,

who looked scarce twelve years old, when he was sixteen; who in wit was

a man, when in stature he was a child,--like many other children of the

poor.

This little Dick Bedford used to sit many hours asleep on my

landing-place or Slumley’s, whilst we were preparing our invaluable

compositions within our respective apartments. S. was a good-natured

reprobate, and gave the child of his meat and his drink. I used to

like to help the little man from my breakfast, and see him enjoy the

meal. As he sate, with his bag on his knees, his head sunk in sleep,

his little high-lows scarce reaching the floor, Dick made a touching

little picture. The whole house was fond of him. The tipsy captain

nodded him a welcome as he swaggered down stairs, stock, and coat, and

waistcoat in hand, to his worship’s toilette in the back kitchen. The

children and Dick were good friends; and Elizabeth patronized him,

and talked with him now and again, in her grave way. You know Clancy,

the composer?--know him better, perhaps, under his name of Friedrich

Donner? Donner used to write music to Slumley’s words, or _vice versâ_;

and would come now and again to Beak Street, where he and his poet

would try their joint work at the piano. At the sound of that music,

little Dick’s eyes used to kindle. “Oh, it’s prime!” said the young

enthusiast. And I will say, that good-natured miscreant of a Slumley

not only gave the child pence, but tickets for the play, concerts, and

so forth. Dick had a neat little suit of clothes at home; his mother

made him a very nice little waistcoat out of my undergraduate’s gown;

and he and she, a decent woman, when in their best raiment, looked

respectable enough for any theatre-pit in England.

Amongst other places of public amusement which he attended, Mr. Dick

frequented the academy where Miss Bellenden danced, and whence poor

Elizabeth Prior issued forth after midnight in her shabby frock. And

once, the captain, Elizabeth’s father and protector, being unable

to walk very accurately, and noisy and incoherent in his speech, so

that the attention of Messieurs of the police was directed towards

him, Dick came up, placed Elizabeth and her father in a cab, paid the

fare with his own money, and brought the whole party home in triumph,

himself sitting on the box of the vehicle. I chanced to be coming

home myself (from one of Mrs. Wateringham’s elegant tea _soirées_, in

Dorset Square), and reached my door just at the arrival of Dick and his

caravan. “Here, cabby!” says Dick, handing out the fare, and looking

with his brightest eyes. It is pleasanter to look at that beaming

little face, than at the captain yonder, reeling into his house,

supported by his daughter. Dick cried, Elizabeth told me, when, a week

afterwards, she wanted to pay him back his shilling; and she said he

was a strange child, that he was.

I revert to my friend Lovel. I was coaching Lovel for his degree

(which, between ourselves, I think he never would have attained), when

he suddenly announced to me, from Weymouth, where he was passing the

vacation, his intention to quit the university, and to travel abroad.

“Events have happened, dear friend,” he wrote, “which will make my

mother’s home miserable to me (I little knew when I went to town about

your business, what caused her _wonderful complaisance_ to me). She

would have broken my heart, Charles (my Christian name is Charles), but

its wounds have found a _consoler_!”

Now, in this little chapter, there are some little mysteries

propounded, upon which, were I not above any such artifice, I might

easily leave the reader to ponder for a month.

1. Why did Mrs. Prior, at the lodgings, persist in calling the theatre

at which her daughter danced the Academy?

2. What were the special reasons why Mrs. Lovel should be very gracious

with her son, and give him 150_l._ as soon as he asked for the money?

3. Why was Fred Lovel’s heart nearly broken? and 4. Who was his

consoler?

I answer these at once, and without the slightest attempt at delay

or circumlocution. 1. Mrs. Prior, who had repeatedly received money

from her brother, John Erasmus Sargent, D.D., Master of St. Boniface

College, knew perfectly well that if the Master (whom she already

pestered out of his life) heard that she had sent a niece of his on the

stage, he would never give her another shilling.

2. The reason why Emma, widow of the late Adolphus Loeffel, of

Whitechapel Road, sugar-baker, was so particularly gracious to her son,

Adolphus Frederic Lovel, Esq., of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and

principal partner in the house of Loeffel aforesaid, an infant, was

that she, Emma, was about to contract a second marriage with the Rev.

Samuel Bonnington.

3. Fred Lovel’s heart was so very much broken by this intelligence,

that he gave himself airs of Hamlet, dressed in black, wore his long

fair hair over his eyes, and exhibited a hundred signs of grief and

desperation: until--

4. Louisa (widow of the late Sir Popham Baker, of Bakerstown, Co.

Kilkenny, Baronet,) induced Mr. Lovel to take a trip on the Rhine with

her and Cecilia, fourth and only unmarried daughter of the aforesaid

Sir Popham Baker, deceased.

My opinion of Cecilia I have candidly given in a previous page.

I adhere to that opinion. I shall not repeat it. The subject is

disagreeable to me, as the woman herself was in life. What Fred found

in her to admire, I cannot tell: lucky for us all that tastes, men,

women, vary. You will never see her alive in this history. That is

her picture, painted by the late Mr. Gandish. She stands fingering

that harp with which she has often driven me half mad with her _Tara’s

Halls_ and her _Poor Marianne_. She used to bully Fred so, and be so

rude to his guests, that in order to pacify her, he would meanly say,

“Do, my love, let us have a little music!” and thrumpty--thrumpty, off

would go her gloves, and _Tara’s Halls_ would begin. “The harp that

_once_” indeed! the accursed catgut scarce knew any other music, and

“once” was a hundred times at least in _my_ hearing. Then came the

period when I was treated to the cold joint which I have mentioned;

and, not liking it, I gave up going to Shrublands.

So, too, did my Lady Baker, but not of _her own free will_, mind

you. _She_ did not quit the premises because her reception was too

cold, but because the house was made a great deal too hot for her.

I remember Fred coming to me in high spirits, and describing to me,

with no little humour, a great battle between Cecilia and Lady Baker,

and her ladyship’s defeat and flight. She fled, however, only as far

as Putney village, where she formed again, as it were, and fortified

herself in a lodging. Next day she made a desperate and feeble attack,

presenting herself at Shrublands lodge-gate, and threatening that she

and sorrow would sit down before it; and that all the world should know

how a daughter treated her mother. But the gate was locked, and Barnet,

the gardener, appeared behind it, saying, “Since you _are_ come, my

lady, perhaps you will pay my missis the four-and-twenty shillings you

borrowed of her.” And he grinned at her through the bars, until she

fled before him, cowering. Lovel paid the little forgotten account; the

best four-and-twenty shillings he had ever laid out, he said.

Eight years passed away; during the last four of which I scarce saw

my old friend, except at clubs and taverns, where we met privily, and

renewed, not old warmth and hilarity, but old kindness. One winter

he took his family abroad; Cecilia’s health was delicate, Lovel told

me, and the doctor had advised that she should spend a winter in the

south. He did not stay with them: he had pressing affairs at home; he

had embarked in many businesses besides the paternal sugar-bakery; was

concerned in companies, a director of a joint-stock bank, a man in

whose fire were many irons. A faithful governess was with the children;

a faithful man and maid were in attendance on the invalid; and Lovel,

adoring his wife, as he certainly did, yet supported her absence with

great equanimity.

In the spring I was not a little scared to read amongst the deaths

in the newspaper:--“At Naples, of scarlet fever, on the 25th ult.,

Cecilia, wife of Frederick Lovel Esq., and daughter of the late Sir

Popham Baker, Bart.” I knew what my friend’s grief would be. He had

hurried abroad at the news of her illness; he did not reach Naples in

time to receive the last words of his poor Cecilia.

Some months after the catastrophe, I had a note from Shrublands. Lovel

wrote quite in the old affectionate tone. He begged his dear old friend

to go to him, and console him in his solitude. Would I come to dinner

that evening?

Of course I went off to him straightway. I found him in deep sables in

the drawing-room with his children, and I confess I was not astonished

to see my Lady Baker once more in that room.

“You seem surprised to see me here, Mr. Batchelor!” says her ladyship,

with that grace and good breeding which she generally exhibited; for

if she accepted benefits, she took care to insult those from whom she

received them.

“Indeed, no,” said I, looking at Lovel, who piteously hung down his

head. He had his little Cecy at his knee: he was sitting under the

portrait of the defunct musician, whose harp, now muffled in leather,

stood dimly in the corner of the room.

“I am here not at my own wish, but from a feeling of duty towards

that--departed--angel!” says Lady Baker, pointing to the picture.

“I am sure when mamma was here, you were always quarrelling,” says

little Popham, with a scowl.

“This is the way those innocent children have been taught to regard

me,” cries grandmamma.

“Silence Pop!” says papa, “and don’t be a rude boy.”

“Isn’t Pop a rude boy?” echoes Cecy.

“Silence, Pop,” continues papa, “or you must go up to Miss Prior.”

Studies in Animal Life.

“Authentic tidings of invisible things;

Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,

And central peace subsisting at the heart

Of endless agitation.”--THE EXCURSION.

CHAPTER I.

Omnipresence of Life--The Microscope--An Opalina and its

wonders--The uses of Cilia--How our lungs are protected from

dust and filings--Feeding without a mouth or stomach--What is

an organ?--How a complex organism arises--Early stages of a

frog and a philosopher--How the plants feed--Parasites of the

frog--Metamorphoses and migrations of Parasites--Life within

life--The budding of animals--A steady bore--Philosophy of the

infinitely little.

Come with me, and lovingly study Nature, as she breathes, palpitates,

and works under myriad forms of Life--forms unseen, unsuspected, or

unheeded by the mass of ordinary men. Our course may be through park

and meadow, garden and lane, over the swelling hills and spacious

heaths, beside the running and sequestered streams, along the tawny

coast, out on the dark and dangerous reefs, or under dripping caves

and slippery ledges. It matters little where we go: everywhere--in

the air above, the earth beneath, and waters under the earth--we are

surrounded with Life. Avert your eyes awhile from our human world, with

its ceaseless anxieties, its noble sorrow, poignant, yet sublime, of

conscious imperfection aspiring to higher states, and contemplate the

calmer activities of that other world with which we are so mysteriously

related. I hear you exclaim,--

“The proper study of mankind is man;”

nor will I pretend, as some enthusiastic students seem to think, that

“The proper study of mankind is _cells_;”

but agreeing with you, that man is the noblest study, I would suggest

that under the noblest there are other problems which we must not

neglect. Man himself is imperfectly known, because the laws of

universal Life are imperfectly known. His Life forms but one grand

illustration of Biology--the science of Life,[21] as he forms but the

apex of the animal world.

Our studies here will be of Life, and chiefly of those minuter, or

obscurer forms, which seldom attract attention. In the air we breathe,

in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is everywhere.

Nature _lives_: every pore is bursting with Life; every death is only

a new birth, every grave a cradle. And of this we know so little,

think so little! Around us, above us, beneath us, that great mystic

drama of creation is being enacted, and we will not even consent to be

spectators! Unless animals are obviously useful, or obviously hurtful

to us, we disregard them. Yet they are not alien, but akin. The Life

that stirs within us, stirs within them. We are all “parts of one

transcendent whole.” The scales fall from our eyes when we think of

this; it is as if a new sense had been vouchsafed to us; and we learn

to look at Nature with a more intimate and personal love.

Life everywhere! The air is crowded with birds--beautiful, tender,

intelligent birds, to whom life is a song and a thrilling anxiety,

the anxiety of love. The air is swarming with insects--those little

animated miracles. The waters are peopled with innumerable forms, from

the animalcule, so small that one hundred and fifty millions of them

would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large that it seems an island

as it sleeps upon the waves. The bed of the seas is alive with polypes,

crabs, star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animalcules. The

rugged face of rocks is scarred by the silent boring of soft creatures;

and blackened with countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets.

Life everywhere! on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping,

burrowing, boring, leaping, running. If the sequestered coolness of

the wood tempt us to saunter into its chequered shade, we are saluted

by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling

of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts, all telling how

populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree, or

shrub, or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted glance detects a

colony of various inhabitants. We pluck a flower, and in its bosom

we see many a charming insect busy at its appointed labour. We pick

up a fallen leaf, and if nothing is visible on it, there is probably

the trace of an insect larva hidden in its tissue, and awaiting there

development. The drop of dew upon this leaf will probably contain its

animals, visible under the microscope. This same microscope reveals

that the _blood-rain_ suddenly appearing on bread, and awakening

superstitious terrors, is nothing but a collection of minute animals

(_Monas prodigiosa_); and that the vast tracts of snow which are

reddened in a single night, owe their colour to the marvellous rapidity

in reproduction of a minute plant (_Protococcus nivalis_). The very

mould which covers our cheese, our bread, our jam, or our ink, and

disfigures our damp walls; is nothing but a collection of plants. The

many-coloured fire which sparkles on the surface of a summer sea at

night, as the vessel ploughs her way, or which drips from the oars in

lines of jewelled light, is produced by millions of minute animals.

Nor does the vast procession end here. Our very mother-earth is formed

of the débris of life. Plants and animals which have been, build up

its solid fabric.[22] We dig downwards, thousands of feet below the

surface, and discover with surprise the skeletons of strange, uncouth

animals, which roamed the fens and struggled through the woods before

man was. Our surprise is heightened when we learn that the very quarry

itself is mainly composed of the skeletons of microscopic animals; the

flints which grate beneath our carriage wheels are but the remains of

countless skeletons. The Apennines and Cordilleras, the chalk cliffs

so dear to homeward-nearing eyes--these are the pyramids of bygone

generations of atomies. Ages ago, these tiny architects secreted

the tiny shells, which were their palaces; from the ruins of these

palaces we build our Parthenons, our St. Peters, and our Louvres. So

revolves the luminous orb of Life! Generations follow generations; and

the Present becomes the matrix of the Future, as the Past was of the

Present: the Life of one epoch forming the prelude to a higher Life.

When we have thus ranged air, earth, and water, finding everywhere a

prodigality of living forms, visible and invisible, it might seem as

if the survey were complete. And yet it is not so. Life cradles within

Life. The bodies of animals are little worlds, having their own animals

and plants. A celebrated Frenchman has published a thick octavo volume

devoted to the classification and description of “The Plants which grow

on Men and Animals;”[23] and many Germans have described the immense

variety of animals which grow on and in men and animals; so that

science can now boast of a parasitic Flora and Fauna. In the fluids and

tissues, in the eye, in the liver, in the stomach, in the brain, in the

muscles, parasites are found; and these parasites have often _their_

parasites living in them!

We have thus taken a bird’s-eye view of the field in which we may

labour. It is truly inexhaustible. We may begin where we please, we

shall never come to an end; our curiosity will never slacken.

“And whosoe’er in youth

Has thro’ ambition of his soul given way

To such desires, and grasp’d at such delights,

Shall feel congenial stirrings, late and long.”

As a beginning, get a microscope. If you cannot borrow, boldly buy one.

Few purchases will yield you so much pleasure; and while you are about

it, do, if possible, get a good one. Spend as little money as you can

on accessory apparatus and expensive fittings, but get a good stand

and good glasses. Having got your instrument, bear in mind these two

important trifles--work by daylight, seldom or never by lamplight; and

keep the unoccupied eye _open_. With these precautions you may work

daily for hours without serious fatigue to the eye.

Now where shall we begin? Anywhere will do. This dead frog, for

example, that has already been made the subject of experiments, and is

now awaiting the removal of its spinal cord, will serve us as a text

from which profitable lessons may be drawn. We snip out a portion of

its digestive tube, which from its emptiness seems to promise little;

but a drop of the liquid we find in it is placed on a glass slide,

covered with a small piece of very thin glass, and brought under the

microscope. Now look. There are several things which might occupy your

attention; but disregard them now to watch that animalcule which you

observe swimming about. What is it? It is one of the largest of the

Infusoria, and is named _Opalina_. When I call this an Infusorium I

am using the language of text-books; but there seems to be a growing

belief among zoologists that the Opalina is not an Infusorium, but the

infantile condition of some worm (_Distoma_?). However, it will not

grow into a mature worm as long as it inhabits the frog; it waits till

some pike, or bird, has devoured the frog, and then, in the stomach of

its new captor, it will develop into its mature form: then, and not

till then. This surprises you? And well it may; but thereby hangs a

tale, which to unfold--for the present, however, it must be postponed,

because the Opalina itself needs all our notice.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.

A B

OPALINA RANARUM.

A Front view }

} Magnified.

B Side view }

]

Observe how transparent it is, and with what easy, undulating grace

it swims about; yet this swimmer has no arms, no legs, no tail, no

backbone to serve as a fulcrum to moving muscles: nay, it has no

muscles to move with. ’Tis a creature of the most absolute abnegations:

sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything;--no, not sans everything, for

as we look attentively we see certain currents produced in the liquid,

and on applying a higher magnifying power we detect how these currents

are produced. All over the surface of the Opalina there are delicate

hairs, in incessant vibration: these are the _cilia_.[24] They lash the

water, and the animal is propelled by their strokes, as a galley by its

hundred oars. This is your first sight of that ciliary action of which

you have so often read, and which you will henceforth find performing

some important service in almost every animal you examine. Sometimes

the cilia act as instruments of locomotion; sometimes as instruments of

respiration, by continually renewing the current of water; sometimes

as the means of drawing in food--for which purpose they surround the

mouth, and by their incessant action produce a small whirlpool into

which the food is sucked. An example of this is seen in the Vorticella

(Fig. 2).

[Illustration: Fig. 2.

GROUP OF VORTICELLA NEBULIFERA, on a Stem of Weed, Magnified.

A One undergoing spontaneous division.

B Another spirally retracted on its stalk.

C One with cilia retracted.

D A bud detached and swimming free.]

Having studied the action of these cilia in microscopic animals, you

will be prepared to understand their office in your own organism. The

lining membrane of your air-passages is covered with cilia; which may

be observed by following the directions of Professor Sharpey, to whom

science is indebted for a very exhaustive description of these organs.

“To see them in motion, a portion of the ciliated mucous membrane may

be taken from a recently-killed quadruped. The piece of membrane is

to be folded with its free, or ciliated, surface outwards, placed on

a slip of glass, with a little water or serum of blood, and covered

with thin glass or mica. When it is now viewed with a power of 200

diameters, or upwards, a very obvious agitation will be perceived on

the edge of the fold, and this appearance is caused by the moving

cilia with which the surface of the membrane is covered. Being set

close together, and moving simultaneously or in quick succession, the

cilia, when in brisk action, give rise to the appearance of a bright

transparent fringe along the fold of the membrane, agitated by such

a rapid and incessant motion that the single threads which compose

it cannot be perceived. The motion here meant is that of the cilia

themselves; but they also set in motion the adjoining fluid, driving

it along the ciliated surface, as is indicated by the agitation of any

little particles that may accidentally float in it. The fact of the

conveyance of fluids and other matters along the ciliated surface, as

well as the direction in which they are impelled, may also be made

manifest by immersing the membrane in fluid, and dropping on it some

finely-pulverized substance (such as charcoal in fine powder), which

will be slowly but steadily carried along in a constant and determinate

direction.”[25]

It is an interesting fact, that while the direction in which the

cilia propel fluids and particles is generally towards the interior

of the organism, it is sometimes _reversed_; and, instead of beating

the particles inwards, the cilia energetically beat them back, if

they attempt to enter. Fatal results would ensue if this were not so.

Our air-passages would no longer protect the lungs from particles of

sand, coal-dust, and filings, flying about the atmosphere; on the

contrary, the lashing hairs which cover the surface of these passages

would catch up every particle, and drive it onwards into the lungs.

Fortunately for us, the direction of the cilia is reversed, and they

act as vigilant janitors, driving back all vagrant particles with a

stern “No admittance--_even_ on business!” In vain does the whirlwind

dash a column of dust in our faces--in vain does the air, darkened with

coal-dust, impetuously rush up the nostrils: the air is allowed to pass

on, but the dust is inexorably driven back. Were it not so, how could

miners, millers, iron-workers, and all the modern Tubal Cains contrive

to live in their loaded atmospheres? In a week, their lungs would be

choked up.

Perhaps, you will tell me that this _is_ the case: that manufacturers

of iron and steel are very subject to consumption; and that there is a

peculiar discoloration of the lungs which has often been observed in

coal miners, examined after death.

Not being a physician, and not intending to trouble you with medical

questions, I must still place before you three considerations, which

will show how untenable this notion is. First, although consumption

may be frequent among the Sheffield workmen, the cause is not to be

sought in their breathing filings, but in the sedentary and unwholesome

confinement incidental to their occupation. Miners and coal-heavers

are not troubled with consumption. Moreover, if the filings were

the cause, all the artisans would suffer, when all breathe the same

atmosphere. Secondly, while it is true that discoloured lungs have been

observed in some miners, it has not been observed in all, or in many;

whereas, it has been observed in men not miners, not exposed to any

unusual amount of coal-dust. Thirdly, and most conclusively, experiment

has shown that the coal-dust _cannot_ penetrate to the lungs. Claude

Bernard, the brilliant experimenter, tied a bladder, containing a

quantity of powdered charcoal, to the muzzle of a rabbit. Whenever the

animal breathed, the powder within the bladder was seen to be agitated.

Except during feeding time, the bladder was kept constantly on, so that

the animal breathed only this dusty air. If the powder _could_ have

escaped the vigilance of the cilia, and got into the lungs, this was

a good occasion. But when the rabbit was killed and opened, many days

afterwards, no powder whatever was found in the lungs, or bronchial

tubes; several patches were collected about the nostrils and throat;

but the cilia had acted as a strainer, keeping all particles from the

air-tubes.

The swimming apparatus of the Opalina has led us far away from the

little animal, who has been feeding while we have been lecturing.

At the mention of feeding, you naturally look for the food that is

eaten, the mouth and stomach that eat. But I hinted just now that

this ethereal creature dispenses with a stomach, as too gross for

its nature; and of course, by a similar refinement, dispenses with

a mouth. Indeed, it has no organs whatever, except the cilia just

spoken of. The same is true of several of the Infusoria; for you must

know that naturalists no longer recognize the complex organization

which Ehrenberg fancied he had detected in these microscopic beings.

If it pains you to relinquish the piquant notion of a microscopic

animalcule having a structure equal in complexity to that of the

elephant, there will be ample compensation in the notion which replaces

it, the notion of an ascending series of animal organisms, rising

from the structureless _amœba_ to the complex frame of a mammal. On

a future occasion we shall see that, great as Ehrenberg’s services

have been, his _interpretations_ of what he saw have one by one been

replaced by truer notions. His immense class of Infusoria has been,

and is constantly being, diminished; many of his animals turn out to

be plants; many of them embryos of worms; and some of them belong

to the same divisions of the animal kingdom as the oyster and the

shrimp: that is to say, they range with the Molluscs and Crustaceans.

In these, of course, there is a complex organization; but in the

Infusoria, as now understood, the organization is extremely simple.

No one now believes the clear spaces visible in their substance to be

stomachs, as Ehrenberg believed; and the idea of the _Polygastrica_, or

many-stomached Infusoria, is abandoned. No one believes the coloured

specs to be eyes; because, not to mention the difficulty of conceiving

eyes where there is no nervous system, it has been found that even the

spores of some plants have these coloured specs; and they are assuredly

not eyes. If, then, we exclude the highly-organized _Rotifera_, or

“Wheel Animalcules,” which are genuine Crustacea, we may say that all

Infusoria, whether they be the young of worms or not, are of very

simple organization.

And this leads us to consider what biologists mean by an _organ_: it

is a particular portion of the body set apart for the performance of

some particular function. The whole process of development is this

setting apart for special purposes. The starting-point of Life is a

single cell--that is to say, a microscopic sac, filled with liquid and

granules, and having within it a nucleus, or smaller sac. Paley has

somewhere remarked, that in the early stages, there is no difference

discernible between a frog and a philosopher. It is very true; truer

than he conceived. In the earliest stage of all, both the Batrachian

and the Philosopher are nothing but single cells; although the one cell

will develop into an Aristotle or a Newton, and the other will get

no higher than the cold, damp, croaking animal which boys will pelt,

anatomists dissect, and Frenchmen eat. From the starting-point of a

single cell, this is the course taken: the cell divides itself into

two, the two become four, the four eight, and so on, till a mass of

cells is formed, not unlike the shape of a mulberry. This mulberry-mass

then becomes a sac, with double envelopes, or walls: the inner wall,

turned towards the yelk, or food, becomes the _assimilating_ surface

for the whole; the outer wall, turned towards the surrounding medium,

becomes the surface which is to bring frog and philosopher into contact

and relation with the external world--the Non-Ego, as the philosopher,

in after life, will call it. Here we perceive the first grand “setting

apart,” or _differentiation_, has taken place: the embryo having an

assimilating surface, which has little to do with the external world;

and a sensitive, contractile surface, which has little to do with the

preparation and transport of food. The embryo is no longer a mass

of similar cells; it is already become dissimilar, _different_, as

respects its inner and outer envelope. But these envelopes are at

present uniform; one part of each is exactly like the rest. Let us,

therefore, follow the history of Development, and we shall find that

the inner wall gradually becomes unlike itself in various parts;

and that certain organs, constituting a very complex apparatus of

Digestion, Secretion, and Excretion, are all one by one wrought out of

it, by a series of metamorphoses, or _differentiations_. The inner wall

thus passes from a simple assimilating surface to a complex apparatus

serving the functions of vegetative life.

Now glance at the outer wall: from it also various organs have

gradually been wrought: it has developed into muscles, nerves, bones,

organs of sense, and brain: all these from a simple homogeneous

membrane!

With this bird’s-eye view of the course of Development, you will be

able to appreciate the grand law first clearly enunciated by Goethe

and Von Baer, as the law of animal life, namely, that Development is

always from the general to the special, from the simple to the complex,

from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and this by a gradual series

of _differentiations_.[26] Or to put it into the music of our deeply

meditative Tennyson:--

“All nature widens upward. Evermore

The simpler essence lower lies:

More complex is more perfect--owning more

Discourse, more widely wise.”

You are now familiarized with the words “differentiation” and

“development,” so often met with in modern writers; and have gained a

distinct idea of what an “organ” is; so that on hearing of an animal

without organs, you will at once conclude that in such an animal there

has been no setting apart of any portion of the body for special

purposes, but that all parts serve all purposes indiscriminately. Here

is our Opalina, for example, without mouth, or stomach, or any other

organ. It is an assimilating surface in every part; in every part a

breathing, sensitive surface. Living on liquid food, it does not need

a mouth to seize, or a stomach to digest, such food. The liquid, or

gas, passes through the Opalina’s delicate skin, by a process which is

called _endosmosis_; it there serves as food; and the refuse passes

out again by a similar process, called _exosmosis_. This is the way in

which many animals and all plants are nourished. The cell at the end

of a rootlet, which the plant sends burrowing through the earth, has

no mouth to seize, no open pores to admit the liquid that it needs;

nevertheless the liquid passes into the cell, through its delicate

cell-wall, and passes from this cell to _other_ cells, upwards from the

rootlet to the bud. It is in this way, also, that the Opalina feeds: it

is all-mouth, no-mouth; all-stomach, no-stomach. Every part of its body

performs the functions which in more complex animals are performed by

organs specially set apart. It feeds without mouth, breathes without

lungs, and moves without muscles.

The Opalina, as I said, is a parasite. It may be found in various

animals, and almost always in the frog. You will, perhaps, ask why it

should be considered a parasite; why may it not have been swallowed by

the frog in a gulp of water? Certainly, nothing would have been easier.

But to remove your doubts, I open the skull of this frog, and carefully

remove a drop of the liquid found inside, which, on being brought

under the microscope, we shall most probably find containing some

animalcules, especially those named _Monads_. These were not swallowed.

They live in the cerebro-spinal fluid, as the Opalina lives in the

digestive tube. Nay, if we extend our researches, we shall find that

various organs have their various parasites. Here, for instance, is a

parasitic worm from the frog’s bladder. Place it under the microscope,

with a high power, and behold! It is called _Polystomum_--many-mouthed,

or, more properly, many-suckered. You are looking at the under side,

and will observe six large suckers with their starlike clasps (_e_),

and the horny instrument (_f_), with which the animal bores its way. At

_a_ there is another sucker, which serves also as a mouth; at _b_ you

perceive the rudiment of a gullet, and at _d_ the reproductive organs.

But pay attention to the pretty branchings of the digestive tube (_c_)

which ramifies through the body like a blood-vessel.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.

POLYSTOMUM INTEGERRIMUM, Magnified.]

This arrangement of the digestive tube is found in many animals, and

is often mistaken for a system of blood-vessels. In one sense this

is correct; for these branching tubes are carriers of nutriment, and

the only circulating vessels such animals possess; but the nutriment

is _chyme_, not blood: these simple animals have not arrived at the

dignity of blood, which is a higher elaboration of the food, fitted for

higher organisms.

Thus may our frog, besides its own marvels, afford us many “authentic

tidings of invisible things,” and is itself a little colony of Life.

Nature is economic as well as prodigal of space. She fills the

illimitable heavens with planetary and starry grandeurs, and the

tiny atoms moving over the crust of earth she makes the homes of the

infinitely little. Far as the mightiest telescope can reach, it

detects worlds in clusters, like pebbles on the shore of Infinitude;

deep as the microscope can penetrate, it detects Life within Life,

generation within generation; as if the very Universe itself were not

vast enough for the energies of Life!

That phrase, generation within generation, was not a careless phrase;

it is exact. Take the tiny insect (_Aphis_) which, with its companions,

crowds your rose-tree; open it, in a solution of sugar-water, under

your microscope, and you will find in it a young insect nearly formed;

open that young insect with care, and you will find in it, also,

another young one, less advanced in its development, but perfectly

recognizable to the experienced eye; and beside this embryo you will

find many eggs, which would in time become insects!

Or take that lazy water-snail (_Paludina vivipara_), first made known

to science by the great Swammerdamm, the incarnation of patience and

exactness, and you will find, as he found, forty or fifty young snails,

in various stages of development; and you will also find, as he found,

some tiny worms, which, if you cut them open, will suffer three or four

infusoria to escape from the opening.[27] In your astonishment you will

ask, Where is this to end?

The observation recorded by Swammerdamm, like so many others of this

noble worker, fell into neglect; but modern investigators have made

it the starting-point of a very curious inquiry. The worms he found

within the snail are now called _Cercaria-sacs_, because they contain

the _Cercariæ_, once classed as Infusoria, and which are now known to

be the early forms of parasitic worms inhabiting the digestive tube,

and other cavities, of higher animals. These _Cercariæ_ have vigorous

tails, with which they swim through the water like tadpoles, and

like tadpoles, they lose their tails in after life. But how, think

you, did these sacs containing _Cercariæ_ get into the water-snails?

“By spontaneous generation,” formerly said the upholders of that

hypothesis; and those who condemned the hypothesis were forced to admit

they had no better explanation. It was a mystery, which they preferred

leaving unexplained, rather than fly to spontaneous generation. And

they were right. The mystery has at length been cleared up.[28] I will

endeavour to bring together the scattered details, and narrate the

curious story.

Under the eyelids of geese and ducks may be constantly found a

parasitic worm (of the _Trematode_ order), which naturalists have

christened _Monostomum mutabile_--Single-mouth, Changeable. This worm

brings forth living young, in the likeness of active Infusoria, which,

being covered with cilia, swim about in the water, as we saw the

Opalina swim. Here is a portrait of one. (Fig. 4.)

Each of these animalcules develops a sac in its interior. The sac

you may notice in the engraving. Having managed to get into the body

of the water-snail, the animalcule’s part in the drama is at an end.

It dies, and in dying liberates the sac, which is very comfortably

housed and fed by the snail. If you examine this sac (Fig. 5), you will

observe that it has a mouth and digestive tube, and is, therefore, very

far from being, what its name imports, a mere receptacle; it is an

independent animal, and lives an independent life. It feeds generously

on the juices of the snail, and having fed, thinks generously of the

coming generations. It was born inside the animalcule; why should it

not in turn give birth to children of its own? To found a dynasty, to

scatter progeny over the bounteous earth, is a worthy ambition. The

mysterious agency of Reproduction begins in this sac-animal; and in

a short while a brood of _Cercariæ_ move within it. The sac bursts,

and the brood escapes. But how is this? The children are by no means

the “very image” of their parent. They are not sacs, nor in the least

resembling sacs, as you see. (Fig. 6.)

[Illustration: Fig. 4.

A EMBRYO OF MONOSTOMUM MUTABILE.

B Cercaria sac, just set free.

_a_ Mouth; _b_ Pigment spots; _c_ Sac.--Magnified.]

They have tails, and suckers, and sharp boring instruments, with

other organs which their parent was without. To look at them you

would as soon suspect a shrimp to be the progeny of an oyster, as

these to be the progeny of the sac-animal. And what makes the paradox

more paradoxical is, that not only are the _Cercariæ_ unlike their

parent, but their parent was equally unlike its parent the embryo

of _Monostomum_ (compare fig. 4). However, if we pursue this family

history, we shall find the genealogy rights itself at last, and that

this Cercaria will develop in the body of some bird into a _Monostomum

mutabile_ like its ancestor. Thus the worm produces an animalcule,

which produces a sac-animal, which produces a Cercaria, which becomes a

worm exactly resembling its great-grandfather.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.

CERCARIA SAC.

A Mouth;

B Digestive tube;

C A Cercaria newly formed. Four others are seen in different

stages.--Magnified.]

[Illustration: Fig. 6.

CERCARIA DEVELOPED.

A Mouth; B, B, B Excretory organ; C Pigment spots; D Tail.

]

One peculiarity in this history is that while the _Monostomum_ produces

its young in the usual way, the two _intermediate_ forms are produced

by a process of budding, analogous to that observed in plants. Plants,

as you know, are reproduced in two ways, from the seed, and from

the bud. For seed-reproduction, peculiar organs are necessary; for

bud-reproduction, there is no such differentiation needed: it is simply

an out-growth. The same is true of many animals: they also bud like

plants, and produce seeds (eggs) like plants. I have elsewhere argued

that the two processes are essentially identical; and that both are

but special forms of growth.[29] Not, however, to discuss so abstruse

a question here, let us merely note that the Monostomum, into which

the Cercaria will develop, produces eggs, from which young will issue;

the second generation is not produced from eggs, but by internal

budding; the third generation is likewise budded internally; but it,

on acquiring maturity, will produce eggs. For this maturity, it is

indispensable that the Cercaria should be swallowed by some bird or

animal; only in the digestive tube can it acquire its egg-producing

condition. How is it to get there? The ways are many; let us witness

one:--

In this watchglass of water we have several _Cercariæ_ swimming about.

To them we add three or four of those darting, twittering insects

which you have seen in every vase of pond-water, and have learned to

be the larvæ, or early forms, of the _Ephemeron_. The _Cercariæ_ cease

flapping the water with their impatient tails, and commence a severe

scrutiny of the strangers. When Odry, in the riotous farce, _Les

Saltimbanques_, finds a portmanteau, he exclaims, “_Une malle! ce doit

être à moi!_” (“Surely this _must_ belong to me!”) This seems to be the

theory of property adopted by the Cercaria: “An insect! surely this

belongs to me!” Accordingly every one begins creeping over the bodies

of the Ephemera, giving an interrogatory poke with the spine, which

will pierce the first soft place it can detect. Between the segments of

the insect’s armour a soft and pierceable spot is found; and now, lads,

to work! Onwards they bore, never relaxing in their efforts till a hole

is made large enough for them to slip in by elongating their bodies.

Once in, they dismiss their tails as useless appendages; and begin what

is called the process of _encysting_--that is, of rolling themselves up

into a ball, and secreting a mucus from their surface, which hardens

round them like a shell. Thus they remain snugly ensconced in the body

of the insect, which in time develops into a fly, hovers over the pond,

and is swallowed by some bird. The fly is digested, and the liberated

Cercaria finds itself in comfortable quarters, its shell is broken, and

its progress to maturity is rapid.

Von Siebold’s description of another form of emigration he has

observed in parasites will be read with interest. “For a long time,”

he says, “the origin of the threadworm, known as _Filaria insectorum_,

that lives in the cavity of the bodies of adult and larval insects,

could not be accounted for. Shut up within the abdominal cavity

of caterpillars, grasshoppers, beetles, and other insects, these

parasites were supposed to originate by spontaneous generation, under

the influence of wet weather or from decayed food. Helminthologists

(students of parasitic worms) were obliged to content themselves with

this explanation, since they were unable to find a better. Those who

dissected these threadworms and submitted them to a careful inspection,

could not deny the probability, since it was clear that they contained

no trace of sexual organs. But on directing my attention to these

entozoa, I became aware of the fact that they were not true _Filariæ_

at all, but belonged to a peculiar family of threadworms, embracing

the genera of _Gordius_ and _Mermis_. Furthermore, I convinced myself

that these parasites wander away when full-grown, boring their way from

within through any soft place in the body of their host, and creeping

out through the opening. These parasites do not emigrate because they

are uneasy, or because the caterpillar is sickly; but from that same

internal necessity which constrains the horsefly to leave the stomach

of the horse where he has been reared, or which moves the gadfly to

work its way out through the skin of the oxen. The larvæ of both these

insects creep forth in order to become chrysalises, and thence to

proceed to their higher and perfect condition. I have demonstrated

that the perfect, full-grown, but _sexless_ threadworms of insects are

in like manner moved by their desire to wander out of their previous

homes, in order to enter upon a new period of their lives, which ends

in the development of their sex. As they leave the bodies of their

hosts they fall to the ground, and crawl away into the deeper and

moister parts of the soil. Threadworms found in the damp earth, in

digging up gardens and cutting ditches, have often been brought to

me, which presented no external distinctions from the threadworms of

insects. This suggested to me that the wandering threadworms of insects

might instinctively bury themselves in damp ground, and I therefore

instituted a series of experiments by placing the newly-emigrated worms

in flower-pots filled with damp earth. To my delight I soon perceived

that they began to bore with their heads into the earth, and by degrees

drew themselves entirely in. For many months I kept the earth in the

flower-pots moderately moist, and on examining the worms from time to

time I found they had gradually attained their sex-development, and

eggs were deposited in hundreds. Towards the conclusion of winter I

could succeed in detecting the commencing development of the embryos in

these eggs. By the end of spring they were fully formed, and many of

them having left their shells were to be seen creeping about the earth.

I now conjectured that these young worms would be impelled by their

instincts to pursue a parasitic existence, and to seek out an animal

to inhabit and to grow to maturity in; and it seemed not improbable

that the brood I had reared would, like their parents, thrive best

in the caterpillar. In order, therefore, to induce my young brood to

immigrate, I procured a number of very small caterpillars which the

first spring sunshine had just called into life. For the purpose of

my experiment I filled a watch-glass with damp earth, taking it from

amongst the flower-pots where the threadworms had wintered. Upon

this I placed several of the young caterpillars.” The result was as

he expected; the caterpillars were soon bored into by the worms, and

served them at once as food and home.[30]

Frogs and parasites, worms and infusoria--are these worth the attention

of a serious man? They have a less imposing appearance than planets

and asteroids, I admit, but they are nearer to us, and admit of being

more intimately known; and because they are thus accessible, they

become more important to us. The life that stirs within us is also

the life within them. It is for this reason, as I said at the outset,

that although man’s noblest study must always be man, there are other

studies less noble, yet not therefore ignoble, which must be pursued,

even if only with a view to the perfection of the noblest. Many men,

and those not always the ignorant, whose scorn of what they do not

understand is always ready, despise the labours which do not obviously

and directly tend to moral or political advancement. Others there are,

who, fascinated by the grandeur of Astronomy and Geology, or by the

immediate practical results of Physics and Chemistry, disregard all

microscopic research as little better than dilettante curiosity. But

I cannot think any serious study is without its serious value to the

human race; and I know that the great problem of Life can never be

solved while we are in ignorance of its simpler forms. Nor can anything

be more unwise than the attempt to limit the sphere of human inquiry,

especially by applying the test of immediate utility. All truths are

related; and however remote from our daily needs some particular truth

may seem, the time will surely come when its value will be felt. To

the majority of our countrymen during the Revolution, when the conduct

of James seemed of incalculable importance, there would have seemed

something ludicrously absurd in the assertion that the newly-discovered

differential calculus was infinitely more important to England and

to Europe than the fate of all the dynasties; and few things could

have seemed more remote from any useful end than this product of

mathematical genius; yet it is now clear to every one that the conduct

of James was supremely insignificant in comparison with this discovery.

I do not say that men were unwise to throw themselves body and soul

into the Revolution; I only say they would have been unwise to condemn

the researches of mathematicians.

Let all who have a longing to study Nature in any of her manifold

aspects, do so without regard to the sneers or objections of men whose

tastes and faculties are directed elsewhere. From the illumination

of many minds on many points, Truth must finally emerge. Man is, in

Bacon’s noble phrase, the minister and interpreter of Nature; let him

be careful lest he suffer this ministry to sink into a priesthood,

and this interpretation to degenerate into an immovable dogma. The

suggestions of apathy, and the prejudices of ignorance, have at all

times inspired the wish to close the temple against new comers. Let us

be vigilant against such suggestions, and keep the door of the temple

ever open.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] The needful term Biology (from _Bios_, life, and _logos_,

discourse) is now becoming generally adopted in England, as in Germany.

It embraces all the separate sciences of Botany, Zoology, Comparative

Anatomy, and Physiology.

[22] See EHRENBERG: _Microgeologie: das Erden und Felsen schaffende

Wirken des unsichtbar kleinen selbstständigen Lebens auf der Erde_.

1854.

[23] CHARLES ROBIN: _Histoire Naturelle des Végétaux Parasites qui

croissent sur l’Homme et sur les Animaux Vivants_. 1853.

[24] From _cilium_, a hair.

[25] _Quain’s Anatomy._ By SHARPEY AND ELLIS. Sixth edition. I., p.

lxxiii. See also SHARPEY’S article, _Cilia_, in the _Cyclopædia of

Anatomy and Physiology_.

[26] GOETHE: _Zur Morphologie_, 1807. VON BAER: _Zur

Entwickelungsgeschichte_, 1828. Part I., p. 158.

[27] SWAMMERDAMM. _Bibel der Natur_, pp. 75-77.

[28] By VON SIEBOLD. See his interesting work, _Ueber die

Band-und-Blasenwürmer_. It has been translated by HUXLEY, and appended

to the translation of KUECHENMEISTER _on Parasites_, published by the

Sydenham Society.

[29] _Seaside Studies_, pp. 308, _sq._

[30] VON SIEBOLD: _Ueber Band-und-Blasenwürmer_. Translated by HUXLEY.

Father Prout’s Inaugurative Ode

TO THE AUTHOR OF “VANITY FAIR.”

I.

Ours is a faster, quicker age:

Yet erst at GOLDSMITH’S homely Wakefield Vicarage,

While Lady BLARNEY from the West End glozes

Mid the PRIMROSES,

Fudge! cries Squire THORNHILL,

Much to the wonder of young greenhorn MOSES.

Such word of scorn ill

Matches the “Wisdom Fair” thy whim proposes

To hold on CORNHILL.

II.

With Fudge, or Blarney, or the “Thames on Fire!”

Treat not thy buyer;

But proffer good material--

A genuine Cereal,

Value for twelvepence, and not dear at twenty.

Such wit replenishes thy Horn of Plenty!

III.

Nor wit alone dispense,

But sense:

And with thy sparkling Xerez

Let us have Ceres.

Of loaf thou hast no lack,

Nor set, like SHAKESPEARE’S zany, forth,

With lots of sack,

Of bread one pennyworth.

IV.

Sprightly, and yet sagacious,

Funny, yet farinaceous,

Dashing, and yet methodical--

So may thy periodical,

On this auspicious morn,

Exalt its horn,

Thron’d on the HILL OF CORN!

V.

Of aught that smacks of sect, surplice, or synod,

Be thy grain winnow’d!

Nor deign to win our laugh

With empty chaff.

Shun aught o’er which dullard or bigot gloats;

Nor seek our siller

With meal from TITUS OATES

Or flour of JOSEPH MILLER.

VI.

There’s corn in Egypt still

(Pilgrim from Cairo to Cornhill!)

Give each his fill.

But all comers among

Treat best the young;

Fill the big brothers’ knapsacks from thy bins,

But slip the Cup of Love in BENJAMIN’S.

VII.

Next as to those

Who bring their lumbering verse or ponderous prose

To where good SMITH AND ELDER

Have so long held their

Well-garnish’d Cornhill storehouse--

Bid them not bore us.

Tell them instead

To take their load next street, the HALL OF LEAD!

VIII.

Only one word besides--

As he who tanneth hides

Stocketh with proper implements his tannery:

So thou, Friend! do not fail

To store a stout corn flail,

Ready for use, within thy Cornhill granary.

Of old there walked abroad,

Prompt to right wrongs, Caliph HAROUN AL RASHID:

Deal thus with Fraud,

Or Job or Humbug--thrash it!

IX.

Courage, old Friend! long found

Firm at thy task, nor in fixt purpose fickle:

Up! choose thy ground,

Put forth thy shining sickle;--

Shun the dense underwood

Of Dunce or Dunderhood:

But reap North, South, East, Far West,

The world-wide Harvest!

Our Volunteers.

The French nation has indisputably the most warlike propensities

of any in the world. Other countries make warlike preparations in

self-defence, for the maintenance of their own rights and possessions,

and to prevent any other power, or combination of powers, obtaining a

position menacing to their safety, or injurious to their liberties.

Their governments, when there are valid grounds for alarm, instil these

apprehensions into the minds of the people, who are soon roused to meet

the threatened danger. But the unremitting pursuit of the French nation

is military glory: no government of that country can exist without

ministering to it. France is now armed to the teeth, and ready to do

battle for any cause--even “for an idea.”

England is the nation which, perhaps sooner than any other, may be

called upon to check her in the indulgence of this propensity; and this

country also offers more points against which aggressive operations can

be carried out. Hence it is natural that the preparations of France

should be made chiefly with reference to a contest with Great Britain;

and these preparations have now arrived at such formidable proportions

that it would be infatuation in us to neglect the means of resistance.

The strongest evidence in support of this hypothesis is to be found

in the fact that the most extraordinary preparations which have

been gradually but rapidly made by the French Government, at a vast

expense--namely, its naval and coast armaments--can be directed against

no other power but England. It does not necessarily follow that any

aggressive measures are positively contemplated; but it is not the less

essential for us to maintain a corresponding force, available not only

against invasion, should it be attempted, but strong enough to protect

our commerce by securing the freedom of the seas, and thus preventing

this country from being reduced to a subordinate power.

British statesmen know and declare, and the nation feels, that it is

essential to the maintenance of our possessions, our commerce, and our

influence, that we should have a preponderating naval force. Other

governments may demur to this, and may even be disposed to dispute the

point, as France appears to be now preparing to do. It then becomes

a question of national power and resources. This is an unfortunate

alternative, but it is one which will not admit of compromise or

arbitration: _we_ consider an absolute superiority on the seas

essential to the safety of our shores, the prosperity of our commerce,

and the security of our colonies; _they_ manifest a determination to

contest our maritime supremacy, and to create a force which shall give

them even a preponderating influence.

Let us put the case in what may be deemed the legitimate view,

repudiating altogether any feeling of national animosity or prejudice.

Whatever may be the result of the impending struggle for naval

superiority--which does not altogether depend upon numerical force,

but may be greatly influenced by the proficiency of either side in

employing the newly-invented implements and modes of warfare--it

must be conceded that we cannot expect our superiority will be so

absolute as to enable us to trust entirely to our “wooden walls,” or to

defensive armaments afloat: we must have an ample array of land forces

to protect our homes, if menaced by the vast armies of France, which

are constantly maintained in a state of full equipment and readiness.

Large armaments maintained during times of peace are repugnant to

the feelings and good sense of the English nation; and yet if other

nations, less strongly animated by industrial impulses and the

principles of political economy, will accumulate immense powers of

aggression, we must, in self-defence, maintain efficient means of

resisting them. Patriotic feeling and high spirit in the population,

even though aided by abundance of arms and ammunition, will not now, as

in olden times, suffice. Soldiership is become a scientific profession;

and an apprenticeship to the art of war, with skill and experience in

every branch of it, are absolutely necessary to oppose with success a

well-trained and disciplined force.

Our difficulties in the way of self-preservation are materially

increased by the nature of our institutions and our feelings of

personal independence. All other great nations in Europe have a

power of compulsory enlistment; we have not: if we had, our standing

forces for army and navy might be more moderate,--if we only retained

efficacious means of rapid organization and equipment. According to

our system, however, it is so long before we can procure the necessary

number of men for the war establishment, that our only safety must

consist in a much greater amount of permanent forces. In short, our

purse must pay for our pride.

The volunteer system, however, tends, in some degree, to remedy this

disadvantage, and will become more and more valuable in proportion as

it shall conform itself gradually to such arrangements as will make our

volunteers efficient for acting with our regular forces.

The first and prevalent idea from which the volunteer system sprang was

of a _levée en masse_; that every man animated by British pluck and

spirit (and they would number hundreds of thousands) should be well

practised in the use of the rifle, and, in case of invasion, should

turn out to oppose the enemy, to line the hedges, hang upon the flank

and rear of the invading force, and cut it to pieces.

That our volunteers, who have nobly come forward spontaneously, without

any prompting from government, would be ready to devote their lives,

as they are devoting their time and energies, to the defence of their

country against invasion, no one who appreciates the English character

will doubt; but that such a heterogeneous body of men, if opposed to

a highly-trained and disciplined force of veteran soldiers, would be

able to repel the attack of an army, is now generally admitted to be a

fallacy; and it would be doing injustice to the intelligence and good

sense of Englishmen to blink the truth, which must be obvious to every

soldier who has had experience of actual warfare.

Bodies of civilians, however courageous and well drilled, would be ill

calculated to bear the hardships and fatigues of a soldier’s life; nor

could they be relied upon, even as a matter of numbers: a rainy night

or two in the open fields, and occasional short supplies of food, would

thin their ranks prodigiously. It cannot be supposed that men of any

class or nation, however brave, suddenly leaving comfortable homes and

in-door pursuits, could endure that exposure and privation which is

required of soldiers--men selected for their hardy constitutions and

well-knit frames, and trained to implicit obedience, and habituated to

act together. Composed of men of different descriptions and habits,

without military discipline and organization, they would be wanting

in cohesion and unity of action; or if each man or small party acted

on individual impulse, their efforts would be unavailing to arrest

the progress of an army advancing in solid masses, like some vast and

complex machine animated by life and motion. Panics would be rife

amongst them, and but few of the bravest even would stand when they

heard the action gaining on their flanks and rear. Moreover, no general

would know how to deal with numbers of them under his command, for fear

of his dispositions being deranged by their proceedings; nor could

any commissariat or other department be prepared to provide for so

uncertain and fluctuating a body.

A confidence in the efficiency of an armed population to resist

the invasion of their country by regular armies has been created

by reference to history; and the examples of the United States, of

the Tyrol, of Spain, and others, have been triumphantly quoted; but

an investigation into the circumstances of each case will show how

greatly they all differ from such circumstances as would attend an

attack upon England. In the cases cited, either the country was wild

and mountainous, without communications and resources, the invading

army small, or the contest greatly prolonged: rarely, if ever, has

the invader been thoroughly checked _in his first progress_; but when

forced to break into detachments and to act in small bodies, he has, by

a spirited and energetic population, been harassed beyond his strength,

and thus _eventually_ forced to abandon the attempt.

It being evident, then, that a mere rising in mass of the population

would be unavailing, and even mischievous, leading to a lamentable

waste of life, and encouraging the invaders in proportion as the

defenders were discomfited, we have now to consider the best means of

utilizing the present volunteer movement, which assumes for its basis

some degree of organization and training.

Government prudently abstained from any interference with the movement,

or from involving itself in any undertaking to organize the volunteers;

for that would have led, not only to great and indefinite expenses, but

to the abstracting of available resources from the established forces

of the country, and also to other inconveniences, without, as yet, any

reliable and adequate advantages in prospect. The movement being thus

left to its own impulses, a large number of gentlemen, and others in

sufficiently easy circumstances, determined to enrol themselves, in

different localities, into self-supporting corps of riflemen. Their

determination was most spirited and praiseworthy, and government,

without pledging itself to any fixed or great amount of support, now

affords, in many ways, aid and direction to the movement, without too

minute an interference in its essentially voluntary arrangements.

Thus we have already many thousands of stout hearts, constituting

an _impromptu_ armed force, at little cost to government, advancing

in organization and exercises, having arms and accoutrements, and

above all, making preparation for thoroughly practising with the

rifle--their strongest desire being to become first-rate shots. Here

is a mass of most superb material; but we would earnestly impress

upon the volunteers, and upon the country, not to rely too much upon

stout hearts and good shots: much else is needful. It is quite a

mistake to suppose that mere perfection in firing at a mark will make

a good rifleman for the field. Volunteers, to be efficient in action,

must form a component part of an army. Every part of an army in the

field must be well in hand of the generals in command--light infantry

and riflemen must be equal to all movements, in compact as well as

dispersed order, and in the several combinations of the two. By this

alone will they be really formidable, and by this alone will they

acquire a confidence and steadiness which mere innate courage can never

give.

In order to act as riflemen and light infantry conjointly with

regular troops, volunteers will require the highest possible training

as soldiers. Ordinary infantry are put together and kept together,

and--unlike those who must act more independently and with greater

skill--are always under the eye and hand of the officer who directs

the movement. In the confusion of action, and amidst inequalities of

ground and varying circumstances, light troops are very much at a loss,

until, by practice, they acquire a steadiness which is the result of a

thorough knowledge of the business and of active exercise in it. By the

term “acting as light infantry and riflemen” is not meant a system of

irregular or guerilla warfare, for which it may be readily conceived

that a volunteer force of citizens is entirely unfit.

It is to be hoped that our volunteers will not listen to their

flatterers who would persuade them that they will make efficient

irregulars. No one who considers the composition of these bodies, and

the habits and pursuits of the classes from which they spring, can

seriously suppose that they would make anything of the kind. Neither

the nature of this country, nor the occupations of its inhabitants,

are favourable for an irregular system of warfare; nor would the rapid

field operations consequent upon an invasion afford much opportunity

for bringing irregular forces into play, even if we possessed the best

in the world.

In opposition to these views, it will be said that the universal

employment of the rifle has effected a revolution in warfare, and that

our riflemen, sheltered at a distance behind hedges and trees, would

annihilate the enemy’s artillery and paralyze his operations. To this

it may be answered that the enemy will employ riflemen for the same

purpose, who will cover his artillery and produce an equal effect

upon our own; that new systems of warfare are met with new systems of

tactics, and that the advantage is always left with the highest-trained

troops. In whatever order numbers of men may be brought into action,

success will always attend that party which, _cæteris paribus_, brings

the greatest number to bear upon a given point; and this can be

effected only by the organization and discipline of regular troops.

Let us hope, then, that the volunteers will earnestly practise

those more complicated exercises which render light infantry the

highest-trained body in an army. For this purpose they should, after

being pretty well grounded in their business, give themselves up for a

few weeks’ consecutive service at one of the great camps; this would

give them a much better insight into the nature of the service, by

which men of their intelligence would greatly profit. It is probable

that many individuals in each corps would not be able to attend for

such a long period; still, if there were a large party present, a tone

of information on the real duties of a campaign would be instilled into

the body as a whole, which would be most serviceable.

Another advantage which would attend this occasional service of the

volunteers at the camps would consist in their gradually habituating

themselves to long marches, and to carrying a knapsack; both of which

are matters of deep importance for rendering efficient service in the

field: for, as Marshal Saxe truly remarks, the success of an army

depends more upon the judicious use made of the legs than of the arms

of the soldiers.

Apprehensions have been entertained that our volunteers, composed,

as they will be, of men accustomed to the comforts and conveniences

of life, would, however animated by daring for fight, be disgusted

not merely with the hardships, but (as compared with their usual

habits) the indignities of a common soldier’s life, such as the hard

fare, the necessary but menial occupations of cooking, the care and

cleaning of their clothes and arms, and the discomfort of being

huddled together in masses in tents, or houses, if they have the good

fortune to obtain either. But they will, it is to be hoped, have well

considered that such disagreeables are inevitable, and have made up

their minds to bear with what will be, probably, the hardest task for

them; considering, also, that it would hardly be for any long duration.

They will recollect that on many parts of the Continent, young men

of the easiest circumstances, and of rank and station in society,

serve an apprenticeship in the regular army as privates, and submit

to many of the discomforts of a private soldier’s life, even without

the excitement of a state of warfare. There is more danger of the

volunteers failing through want of physical hardihood to endure the

fatigue of long marches, exposure to the weather, and the casualties

of service in the field; and, therefore, preparatory service in a camp

would be needful, not only to make them good soldiers, but to test

their powers of endurance: for it should be borne in mind that a

robust frame and strong constitution are essential to the efficiency

of the soldier; and wanting these physical requisites, the best shot

would soon become incapacitated, and consequently an incumbrance to the

service.

In some districts, the subscriptions raised for the general expenses

of the volunteer corps are allowed to extend to aid the equipment of

men of insufficient means to provide for themselves. This will have a

most beneficial effect; for such men will mostly be of a hardy class

and accustomed to muscular activity or out-door occupations; they will

be selected because they possess the proper qualifications; and many of

them subsequently, with all their military acquirements, may join the

established army. In proportion as this system shall be extended, will

the advantages resulting from the volunteer system be increased.

Another very beneficial effect might be produced--and will probably

arise out of the spirit of the rifle corps--in the establishment of

rifle clubs for the practice of rifle-shooting as a recreation, with

other out-door sports and games; more especially if these can be

encouraged, so as to become general among that class of young men from

which recruits are obtained for the army. Whatever may have been said

against too much faith being placed in good marksmen, as the _only_

essential attribute for our defenders, most indisputably that army

which, equally well regulated in other points, shall be much superior

generally in the art of rifle-shooting, will have an enormous advantage

over its opponent; and even in a greater degree than is usually

supposed.

There is one class of volunteers, the formation of which will be

attended with unexceptionable advantages; and that is localized bodies

on the coast for service near their own homes. These may be either

artillery or infantry, or better still, both combined: that is,

infantry accustomed to exercise in the service of guns in battery. They

will be always at their homes, and at their habitual occupations, till

the period of action shall arrive; and a very few hours of occasional

evening exercise will be sufficient, particularly during peace time,

to afford a basis of organization for bodies which may be then rapidly

made very efficient during war. As their service will be chiefly

in batteries, or in fortified posts--or if in the open field, only

in greatly superior numbers, and within confined limits, to oppose

desultory landings--they will not need the field equipment, nor that

refined knowledge and practice so necessary in every part of an army

in a campaign. Their dress may be of a plain description, such as an

artisan’s or gamekeeper’s jacket, and a foraging cap, which, though of

some uniform pattern, may be suitable for ordinary wear. By such means,

our coasts may be powerfully protected from any but very formidable

efforts against them, at the smallest expense and waste of resources;

and at the same time, these bodies will supply the place of regular

troops, for which they will form an efficient substitute.

In advocating the expediency of rendering the volunteer system

attractive among the labouring classes, as, generally speaking, the

most robust and hardy portion of the population, we must not be

considered as implying any doubt of their thorough good feeling in the

cause; it is absolutely necessary to stimulate, by some substantial

recompence or boon, the exertions of those who are living, as it were,

from hand to mouth, and on the smallest means. The inducement may be

very moderate; still it should be such as to make the service in some

degree popular and advantageous, and cause men who may be rejected or

discharged to feel it as a punishment or misfortune.

Whatever may be said in the way of general considerations affecting

the volunteer system, will admit of exceptions. Thus many of the

difficulties in the way of the efficiency of volunteer corps for

service in the field will be greatly lessened in the case of those

which may be chiefly composed of young men of active habits, and not

yet settled in life: such as university corps, who would, without

doubt, display a degree of hardihood, spirit, and intelligence not

to be surpassed by any troops. And so with regard to the local

bodies. Such corps as the dockyard volunteers, at all those great

establishments, public and private, should be replaced on an improved

system;--a system which should avoid expense and encroachment on a

valuable part of their time, which were the failings of their original

organization, and occasioned their being broken up.

The noble spirit which originated the volunteer movement is one of

which the nation may justly feel proud; it exhibits and fosters a

patriotic and military spirit in the country, which will render us more

fit than any other people to cope with a powerful enemy. The moral

effect of this national movement will influence other countries; it

will dissipate the erroneous idea that the English are only a trading,

and not a warlike people, and make them more cautious of attacking us.

In actual service, the volunteers will be valuable behind works; thus

releasing a corresponding number of the regular troops from garrison

service: but it cannot be too strongly impressed upon them, that

unless they will submit to the necessary training as soldiers, and are

complete in organization as infantry, no general in the world will have

any confidence in them as a field force. The occasional embodiment

of our volunteers at some of the great camps, as before recommended,

would appear the most available means of training them for general

service. It would also have another good effect, by demonstrating

to many who are now carried away by their enthusiasm, how far they

may be really calculated or prepared for the necessary trials and

sacrifices incidental upon taking the field in the emergency. It will

then be perceived by many that their age, want of physical stamina, or

inability to dispense with habitual comforts which may be absolutely

necessary to them, would render them totally unequal to the task they

would willingly undertake. It would be far better that these should be

weeded from the field corps of volunteers, and not remain to give a

false appearance of their strength for actual service.

Lastly, there may be some who, on reflection, must be aware that

certain family ties, or private concerns, may imperatively forbid their

joining the service at the last moment, and it would be far better

that they should withdraw betimes from the engagement. For it should

be borne in mind that these bodies are _volunteers_, in the strictest

sense of the term; their presence or continuance in the field cannot

be constrained. The effort to bear all the trials and hardships of a

campaign requires a patience and endurance which will yield, even where

there is thorough ardour in the cause, and great personal courage,

unless supported by physical strength. The Volunteer Corps is a

service in which the country must trust entirely to the honour of the

individuals composing it; and certainly, those who shall stand the test

will be peculiarly entitled to the gratitude of the nation.

But while deprecating the employment in the field of any volunteers who

are not hardy and trained soldiers, or who have households to protect

and business to attend to, we must not be supposed to recommend the

withdrawal from the ranks of all who are not available for actual

service with regular troops: far from it. There is not a man who has

been drilled as a volunteer but may be serviceable to the community in

a variety of ways at home, by supplying the place of regular soldiers

in mounting guard as sentries, acting as “orderlies” for transmitting

orders between the government officers and head-quarters, as assistants

in the hospital service, as extra clerks in the commissariat and other

departments, and in serving as a military police. Indeed good service

might be rendered to the country by gentlemen of character, ability,

and intelligence, sufficiently _au fait_ to the business of a soldier

to execute with military precision and promptitude such duties as would

not involve any greater amount of fatigue and exposure than a man of

average health and strength could sustain without injury: they would

form a bodyguard, composed of fathers of families and the younger

and less robust of the volunteers, for the protection of their homes

and maintaining the peace of cities and towns; and competent to fill

offices of trust in connection with the military and civil authorities.

The country would thus derive the full benefit of the services of every

volunteer in the kingdom; and no man who had entered the ranks but

would have the satisfaction of knowing that he was serving his Queen

and Country in the most effective way.

A Man of Letters of the Last Generation.

There are fashions in books, as there are in the cut of clothes, or

the building of houses; and if from the great library of our race we

take down the representative volumes, we shall find that successive

ages differ almost as much as the several countries of the world. The

one half of the century scarcely knows what the other half has done,

save through its lasting works, among which books alone possess the

gift of speech. Yet the guild of literature properly knows no bounds

of space or time. If the tricks of craft like those of society belong

to the passing day, literature has been, beyond all other human

influences, enduring and continuous in the main current of its spirit;

and each period has been the stronger if it has recognized so much

of its possessions as was inherited from its predecessor, including

the power to conquer more. A powerful sense of brotherhood clings to

all the veritable members of the fraternity, whose highest diploma is

posthumous; and we cannot see the lingering representatives of a past

day depart, without feeling that one of the great family has gone. A

writer whom we have lost in the year just closed peculiarly associated

past and present, by his own hopeful work for “progress” towards the

future, and his affectionate lingering with the past, and above all by

the strong personal feeling which he brought to his work. LEIGH HUNT

belonged essentially to the earlier portion of the nineteenth century;

but, born in the year when Samuel Johnson died, living among the old

poets, and labouring to draw forth the spirit which the first half has

breathed into the latter half of the century, he may be said to have

been one of those true servitors of the library who unite all ages with

the one we live in. The representative man of a school gone by, in his

history we read the introduction to our own.

Isaac, the father of Leigh Hunt, was the descendant of one of the

oldest settlers in luxurious Barbadoes. He was sent to develop better

fortunes by studying at college in Philadelphia, where he _un_settled

in life; for, having obtained some repute as an advocate, and married

the daughter of the stern merchant, Stephen Shewell, against her

father’s pleasure, Isaac contumaciously opposed the sovereign people

by espousing the side of royalty, and fled with broken fortunes to

England. Here he found not much royal gratitude, much popularity

as a preacher in holy orders--taken as a refuge from want,--but no

preferment. With tutorships, and help from relatives, he managed to

rub on; he sent Leigh, the first of his sons born in England, to the

school of Christ Hospital, and he lived long enough to see him an

established writer. Isaac was a man rather under than above the middle

stature, fair in complexion, smoothly handsome, so engaging in address

as to be readily and undeservedly suspected of insincerity, and in most

things utterly unlike his son. His wife, Mary Shewell, a tall, slender

woman, with Quaker breeding, a dark thoughtful complexion, a heart

tender beyond the wont of the world, and a conscience tenderer still,

contributed more than the father to mould the habits and feelings of

the son. School and books did the rest. His earlier days, save during

the long semi-monastic confinement of the Blue-coat School, were passed

in uncertain alternations between the care-stricken home and the more

luxurious houses of wealthier relatives and friends. In his time

Christ Hospital was the very nursery for a scholarly scholar. It was

divided into the commercial, the nautical, and the grammar schools;

in all, the scholars had hard fare, and much church service; and in

the grammar school plenty of Greek and Latin. Leigh’s antecedents and

school training destined him for the church; a habit of stammering,

which disappeared as he grew up, was among the adverse accidents

which reserved him for the vocation to which he was born--Literature.

But before he left the unsettled roof of his parents, the youth had

been to other schools besides Christ Hospital. His father had been

a royalist flying from infuriated republicans, and doomed to learn

in the metropolitan country the common mistrust of kings. He left

America a lawyer, to become a clergyman here; and entered the pulpit a

Church of England-man, to become, after the mild example of his wife,

a Universalist. Born after his mother had suffered from the terrors

of the revolution, and a severe attack of jaundice, Leigh inherited

an anxious, speculative temperament; to be the sport of unimaginative

brothers, who terrified him by personating the hideous “Mantichora,”

about which he had tremblingly read and talked, and of schoolfellows,

with their ghostly traditions and rough, summary, practical satire. He

had been made acquainted with poverty, yet familiarized to the sight

of ease and refined luxury. His father, if “socially” inclined, yet

read eloquently and critically; his mother read earnestly, piously,

and charitably; reading was the business of his school, reading was

his recreation; and at the age of fifteen, he threw off his blue coat,

a tall stripling, with West Indian blood, a Quaker conscience, and a

fancy excited rather than disciplined by his scholastic studies, to put

on the lax costume of the day, and be tried in the dubious ordeal of

its laxer customs.

His severest trial arose from the vanities, rather than the vices to

which such a youth would be exposed. He had already been sufficiently

“in love,”--now with the anonymous sister of a schoolfellow, next

with his fair cousin Fanny, then with the enchanting Almeria,--to be

shielded from the worst seductions that can beset a youth; and he was

early engaged to the lady whom he married in 1809. But the vanities

beset him in a shape of unwonted power. The stripling, whose essays

the terrible Boyer, of the Blue-coat School, had crumpled up, became

the popular young author of published poems, and not much later the

stern critic of the _News_, whose castigations made actors wince and

playwrights launch prologues at him. Thenceforward the vicissitudes

of his life, save in the inevitable vicissitudes of mortality,

were professional rather than personal; though he always threw his

personality into his profession. He tried a clerkship under his brother

Stephen, an attorney; and a clerkship in the War Office, under the

patronage of the dignified Mr. Addington; but finally he left the

desk, legal or official, for the desk literary, to devote himself

to the _Examiner_, set up in 1808 with his brother John. He went to

prison for two years in 1813, rather than forfeit his consistency as

a political writer. It was as a vindicator of liberal principles in

politics, sociology (word then unused), and art, that he attracted the

friendship of Byron and Shelley; it was to accomplish the literary

speculation of the _Liberal_ that he set out for Italy in 1821; it was

to study Italy and the Italians, with a view to “improve” that and

other “subjects,” that he stopped in Italy till the autumn of 1825.

He returned to England to try his fortune with books in prose and

verse, in periodicals of his own or others’; and it was in the midst

of unrelinquished work that he placidly laid himself down to sleep

in August, 1859,--his last words of anxiety being for Italy and her

enlarging hopes, his latest breath uttering inquiries and messages

of affection. This is essentially a literary life; but it is given

to a literature in which there _is_ life,--for Leigh Hunt, although

he dwelled and passed his days in the library, was no “book-worm,”

divorced from human existence, its natural instincts and affections.

On the contrary, he carried into his study a large heart and a strong

pulse; to him the books spoke in the voice of his fellow-men, audible

from the earliest ages, and he loved to be followed into his retreat by

friends from the outer world.

Leigh Hunt certainly was not driven to this little-broken retirement

by the want of qualities which are attractive in society, or by

the tastes that render society attractive; but under the force of

remarkable contradictions in his character, he was often fain to

waive what he desired and could easily have--“letting _I would not_

wait upon _I may_,” with an apparent caprice most exasperating to the

bystander. He professed readiness for “whatever is going forward,”

seemed eager to meet any approaching pleasure; and then hung back with

a coy, reluctant, anxious delay, that forbore its own satisfaction

altogether. Probably this apparent contradiction may be traced to his

origin and nurture. According to all evidence respecting his immediate

progenitors, he was little of a Hunt, save in his gaiety and avowed

love of “the pleasurable.” His natural energy, which showed itself in

a robust frame, a powerful voice, a great capacity for endurance, and

a strong will, seems to have been inherited from Stephen Shewell, the

stern, headstrong, and implacable. From the Bickleys, possibly--the

gallant Knight Banneret of King William’s Irish wars will pardon

the doubt--his mother transmitted her own material tendency to an

over-conscientious, reflective, hesitating temperament, which drew

back from any action not manifestly and imperatively dictated by duty.

The son showed all these contradictory traits even in his aspect and

bearing.

He was tall rather than otherwise,--five feet ten inches and a half

when measured for the St. James’s Volunteers; though, in common with

men whose length is in the body rather than the legs, his height

diminished as he advanced in life. He was remarkably straight and

upright in his carriage, with a short, firm step, and a cheerful,

almost dashing approach,--smiling, breathing, and making his voice

heard in little inarticulate ejaculations as he met a friend, in an

irrepressible satisfaction at the encounter that not unfrequently

conveyed high gratification to the arriver who was thus greeted. He

had straight black hair, which he wore parted in the centre; a dark

but not pale complexion; features compounded between length and a

certain irregularity of outline, characteristic of the American mould;

black eyebrows, firmly marking the edge of a brow, over which was a

singularly upright, flat, white forehead, and under which beamed a pair

of eyes dark, brilliant, reflecting, gay, and kind, with a certain

look of observant humour, that suggested an idea of what is called

slyness when it is applied to children or girls; for he had _not_ the

aspect given to him in one of his portraits, of which he said that “the

fellow looked as if he had stolen a tankard.” He had a head massive

and tall, and larger than most men’s,--Byron, Shelley, and Keats wore

hats which he could not put on; but it was not out of proportion to the

figure, its outlines being peculiarly smooth and devoid of “bumps.” His

upper lip was long, his mouth large and hard in the flesh; his chin

retreating and gentle like a woman’s. His sloping shoulders, not very

wide, almost concealed the ample proportions of his chest; though that

was of a compass which not every pair of arms could span. He looked

like a man cut out for action,--a soldier; but he shrank from physical

contest, telling you that his sight was short, and that he was “timid.”

We shall understand that mistaken candour better when we have examined

his character a little further. Yet he did shrink from using his

vigorous faculties, even in many ways. Nature had gifted him with an

intense dramatic perception, an exquisite ear for music, and a voice of

extraordinary compass, power, flexibility, and beauty. It extended from

the C below the line to the F sharp above: there were no “passages”

that he could not execute; the quality was sweet, clear, and ringing:

he would equally have sung the music of _Don Giovanni_ or _Sarastro_,

of _Oroveso_ or _Maometto Secondo_. Yet nature had not endowed him with

some of the qualities needed for the practical musician,--he had no

aptitude for mechanical contrivance, but faint enjoyment of power for

its own sake. He dabbled on the pianoforte; delighted to repeat airs

pleasing or plaintive; and if he would occasionally fling himself into

the audacious revels of _Don Giovanni_, he preferred to be _Lindoro_ or

_Don Ottavio_; and still more, by the help of his falsetto, to dally

with the tender treble of the _Countess_ in _Figaro_, or _Polly_ in

_Beggars’ Opera_. This waiving of the potential, this preference for

the lightsome and tender, ran through all his character,--save when

duty bade him draw upon his sterner resources; and then out came the

inflexibility of the Shewell and the unyielding determination of the

Hunts. But as soon as the occasion passed, the manner passed with it;

and the man whose solemn, clear-voiced indignation had made the very

floor and walls vibrate was seen tenderly and blandly extenuating the

error of his persecutor and gaily confessing to a community of mistake.

While he was yet at school, Hunt was pronounced by one of his

schoolfellows a “fool for refining”--that is, one who was a fool

in his judgment through a hair-splitting anxiety to be precise. A

boy all his life, this leading foible of his boyhood attended him

throughout. He has been likened to Hamlet,--only it was a Hamlet who

was not a prince, but a hard-working man. The defect was increased

in Leigh Hunt, as it evidently was in the prince, by a certain

imperfection in understanding, appreciating, or thoroughly mastering

the material, tangible, physical part of nature. This, again, is

inconsistent with his own account of himself, but it will be confirmed

by a close critical scrutiny of his writings. Over-sensitive, he was

exquisitely conscious of such physical perceptions as he had. He was

passionately fond of music, which he took to as we have seen. He was

keenly impressed by painting and by colours,--which he defined with

uncertainty, unless they were, what he liked them to be, very intense.

He revelled in the aspect of the country,--but needed literary, poetic,

or personal association, or habit, to help the appreciation of the

landscape. His animation, his striking appearance, his manly voice,

its sweetness and flexibility, the exhaustless fancy to which it gave

utterance, his almost breathlessly tender manner in saying tender

things, his eyes deep, bright, and genial, with a dash of cunning, his

delicate yet emphatic homage,--all made him a “dangerous” man among

women;--and he shrank back from the danger, the quickest to take alarm;

confessing that “to err is human,” as if he _had_ erred in any but the

most theoretical or imaginative sense! Remind him of his practical

virtue, and, to disprove your too favourable construction, he would

give you a sermon on the sins of the fancy, hallowed by quotations

from the Bible--of which he was as much master as any clergyman--and

illustrated by endless quotations from the poets in all languages, with

innumerable biographical anecdotes of the said poets, to prove the

fearful peril of the first step; and _also_ to prove that, though men,

they were not bad men;--that it is not for us to cast the first stone,

and that, probably, if they had been different, their poetry would have

suffered, to the grievous loss of the library and mankind.

He inculcated the study of minor pleasures with so much industry,

that his writings have caused him to be taken for a minor voluptuary.

His special apparatus for the luxury consisted in some old cloak to

put about his shoulders when cold--which he allowed to slip off while

reading or writing; in a fire--“to toast his feet”--which he let out

many times in the day, with as many apologies to the servant for the

trouble; and in a bill of fare, which he preposterously restricted

for a fancied delicacy of stomach, and a fancied poison in everything

agreeable, and which he could scarcely taste for a natural dulness of

palate. Unable to perceive the smell of flowers, he habitually strove

to imagine it. The Epicurean in theory was something like a Stoic in

practice; and he would break off an “article” on the pleasures of

feasting to ease his hunger, literally, with a supper of bread; turning

round to enjoy by proxy, on report, the daintier food which he had

provided for others. Eyeing the meat in another’s plate, he would quote

Peter Pindar--

“On my life, I could turn glutton,

On such pretty-looking mutton;”

but would still, with the relish of Lazarillo de Tormes, stick to his

own “staff of life,” and quaff his water, jovially repeating after

Armstrong, “Nought like the simple element dilutes.”

Now, most excellent reader, are you in something of a condition to

understand the man’s account of his own failings--his “improvidence”

and his “timidity.” He had no grasp of things material; but

exaggerating his own defects, he so hesitated at any arithmetical

effort, that he could scarcely count. He has been seen unable to find

3_s._ 6_d._ in a drawer full of half-crowns and shillings, since he

could not see the “sixpence.” Hence his stewardship was all performed

by others. He laboured enormously,--making fresh work out of everything

he did; for he would not mention anything, however parenthetically,

without “verifying” it. Hence it is true that he had scarcely time

for stewardship, unless he had neglected his work and wages as a

master-workman. He saw nothing until it had presented itself to him in

a sort of literary, theoretical aspect, and hence endowed his friends,

all round, with fictitious characters founded on fact. One was the

thrifty housewife, another the steady man of business, a third the

poetic enthusiast--and so on. And he _acted_ on these estimates, until

sometimes he found out his mistake, and confessed that he “had been

deceived.” The discovery was sometimes as imaginary as the original

estimate, and friends, whose sterling qualities he could not overrate,

have seen him, for the discovery of his mistake in regard to some

fancied grace, avert his eye in cold “disappointment.” He made the

same supposititious discoveries and estimates with himself. His mother

had the jaundice before he was born; he had unquestionably a tendency

to bilious affections; in the Greek poet’s account of Hercules and

the Serpents, the more timid, because mortal, child, who is aghast at

the horrid visitors sent by the relentless Juno, is called, as Leigh

Hunt translated the oft-repeated quotation, “the extremely bilious

Iphiclus;” and being bilious, Leigh Hunt set himself down as “timid.”

He had probably felt his heart beat at the approach of danger, been

startled by a sudden noise, or hesitated “to snuff a candle with his

fingers,” which Charles the Fifth said would make any man know fear.

Yet he had braved persecution in the refusal to fag at school; was an

undaunted though not skilful rider; a swimmer not unacquainted with

drowning risks; undismayed, except for others, when passing the roaring

torrent at the broad ford,--when braving shipwreck in the British

Channel, or the thunder-hurricane in the Mediterranean; he instantly

confronted the rustic boors who challenged him on the Thames, or in the

Apennines, and stood unmoved to face the sentence of a criminal court,

though the sentence was to be the punishment he most dreaded--the

prison.