F.R.S.
A page or two about my connection with the Royal Society may have some
small interest. When my father (who had long been a Fellow) died in
1844, I wished to give to the Society his marble bust by Behnes as a
memorial of honour to him; but my mother preferred to keep it, as was
natural. Meanwhile, however, some of my father's friends, and in
particular his old patron, Lord Melbourne, then recently elected, put me
up as a candidate, and as I find recorded in my Archive-book, vol. ii.,
my certificate "was signed by Argyll, Bristol, Henry Hallam, Thomas
Brande, Dr. Paris, P.B.C.S., Sir C.M. Clarke, and Sir Benjamin Brodie:
in due time I was elected, and on the 8th of May 1845 was admitted by
Lord Northampton." At my election occurred this very strange and
characteristic incident. There was only one ball against me among
twenty-seven for me in the ballot-box; the meetings were then held at
Somerset House, the Society on a less numerous scale than at present,
and the elections easier and more frequent. When the President announced
the result, up jumped Lord Melbourne, begging pardon for his mistake in
having dropped his ball into the wrong hole!--an amusing instance of the
_laissez-faire_ carelessness habitual to that good-humoured Minister.
As I have now been more than forty years a Fellow, I ought to be ashamed
to confess that I never contributed a Paper to its learned Proceedings;
all of which as they come to me I give appropriately enough to the
famous Wotton Library, belonging to my excellent friend Evelyn, heir and
successor to the celebrated John Evelyn of the Sylva, one of the
Society's founders. That I have seldom even read them is also a pitiful
truth; for the mysterious nomenclature of modern chemistry, the
incomprehensibility (to my ignorance) of the higher mathematics, the
hopeless profundity of treatises on the tides, dynamics, electricity,
and microscopic anatomicals, are, I am free to avow, worse to me than
"heathen Greek," nay (for I _can_ in some sort tackle that), more
difficult than the clay tablets of Assyria or a papyrus of Rameses II.
So I must confess to being an idle drone among the working bees.
Only thrice have I ventured to ask questions of consequence, scarcely
yet answered by the pundits. One regards Spectrum Analysis: How can we
be sure that the lines indicative of gases and other elements are not
mainly due to the emanations from our own globe, swathed as it is by
more than forty miles of an atmosphere impregnated by its own salts and
acids in aerial solution? May we not be deducing false conclusions as to
the varying lights of stars and nebulæ, if all the while to our vision
they are as it were clouded by our own smoke? Telescopes have to pierce
so thick a stratum of earth's aura and ether that it is expectable they,
would show us only our own composites in those of other worlds. The
spectra are varied, I know, but so may be our wrappings of atmosphere
from one night to another. Let this ignorant query suffice about Dr.
Huggins' great discovery.
Again, I certainly (after some knowledge of strange facts) could have
wished that Mr. Crookes's philosophical spiritualism had met with a more
patient hearing than Dr. Carpenter or Mr. Huxley offered at the time;
and that Faraday's clumsy mechanical refutation of table-turning had not
been considered so conclusive. For there really are "more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio," &c., than even your omniscience is aware of;
and without pinning faith on Madame Blavatsky, or Mr. Hume, or any other
wonder-worker from America or Thibet, there doubtless are petty miracles
in what is called spiritualism (possibly some form of electricity) that
demand more scrutiny than our materialists will have the patience to
vouchsafe: I for one believe in human testimony even as to the
miraculous.
For a third and last inquiry: justly indignant at the horrors of
Continental vivisection, and especially in our own humane England at Dr.
Ferrier's red-hot wires thrust into live monkeys' brains, I have often
vainly asked _cui bono_ such terrible cruelty? The highest authorities
are at variance with each other as to the practical utility in human
therapeutics of experiments upon agonised brutes; but all must be agreed
that, so far as morals are concerned, vivisection only hardens the heart
and sears the feelings and conscience of doctors who may surround the
dying-bed of our dearest, and very possibly make capital of peculiar
symptoms in their patient, by experiments transferred from dogs and
rabbits to himself! Single votes are useless against the annual list of
selected candidates, or I for one would have at all inconvenience
testified both at Oxford and in the Royal Society against the election
of a certain Professor whose glory lies in vivisection.
For an appropriate end to these discursive sentences, let me add this
poetic morsel in my own vein. Mr. Butler of Philadelphia was quite right
in his judgment of my _indoles_: I "write by impulse on occasion." Here
is a very recent instance in point. I had lately visited Mr. Barraud's
painted-window works near Seven Dials, and when I told Mr. Herbert Rix,
our Assistant-Secretary, of what you may read below, he exhorted me to
put it into verse, which I did impromptu, and sent it to him: now thus
first printed:--
"I saw the artist in a colour-shop
Staining some bits of glass variously shaped
To map the painted window of a church,
And marvelled that the tintings all seemed wrong;
Red, green, and brown should have been interchanged
To show the colours right. Why did he use
His brush so carelessly, my folly asked.
'Wait for the fire,--the fire will make all right,
The reds and greens and browns will change again,
Fusing harmoniously,' so Knowledge spake;
And thus a thought of wisdom came to me
Touching the truth, how kindly curative
Must be the pains and cares and griefs of life,
For that the furnace of adversity,
Melts to its proper good each seeming ill.
Again, I noticed how the artist chose
Not clear good glass, whether of plate or crown,
But common-looking stuff, bubbled and flawed,
As if selected for its blemishes
Rather than for transparent purity.
'Why not choose better glass to paint upon?'
To this he answered, 'Wouldn't do at all.
My faces mustn't look lifeless and dull,
But, as instinct with motion, light and life,
Not in enamelled uniformity:
The sunshine cannot sparkle where all's smooth;
I choose the most imperfect panes to make
A perfect, vigorous picture.'--Then I learnt
How wonderfully Providence is pleased
To cause all evil things to help the good;
Nay, deeper, to ordain that good itself
Can scarcely be discerned without the harm
Of some companion-ill; even as gold
Is useless unalloyed; and Very Light
Unshadowed kills, as unapproachable;
And absolute unmitigated good
Alone is Godhead. Every creature here
(In this our human trial-world at least)
Is full of faults and spots and blemishes,
If only to set off his better self,
His talents, graces, excellent good gifts,
Burnt in the fire to brighter excellence
And fused harmonious into perfect man."
I have often thought that our Great Teacher's parables were true
pictures of things around Him; He painted from living models,
"impulsively and on occasion." The prodigal son, the unjust judge, the
rich fool, the camel unladen to pass the narrow tunnel of the needle's
eye, the lost sheep, the found piece of money and the like,--all were
real incidents made use of by His wisdom, who spake as never man spake,
and did all things well.