Since the recent death of Governor Newman, Leete had been Chief Magistrateof the Colony of New Haven, which was now, and for a few years later,distinct from Connecticut.
The Deputy-Governor received them in the presence of several otherpersons. He looked over their papers, and then “began to read themaudibly; whereupon we told him,” say the messengers, “it wasconvenient to be more private in such concernments as that was.” Theydesired to be furnished “with horses, &c.,” for their furtherjourney, “which was prepared with some delays.” They were accosted,on coming out, by a person who told them that the Colonels weresecreted at Mr. Davenport’s, “and that, without all question, DeputyLeete knew as much”; and that “in the head of a company in the fielda-training,” it had lately been “openly spoken by them, that, if theyhad but two hundred friends that would stand by them, they would notcare for Old or New England.”
The messengers returned to Leete, and made an application for “aidand a power to search and apprehend” the fugitives. “He refused togive any power to apprehend them, nor order any other, and said hecould do nothing until he had spoken with one Mr. Gilbert and therest of his magistrates.” New Haven, the seat of government of theColony, was twenty miles distant from Guilford. It was now Saturdayafternoon, and for a New-England Governor to break the Sabbath bysetting off on a journey, or by procuring horses for any othertraveller, was impossible. An Indian was observed to have leftGuilford while the parley was going on, and was supposed to have goneon an errand to New Haven.
Monday morning the messengers proceeded thither. “To our certainknowledge,” they write, “one John Meigs was sent a-horseback beforeus, and by his speedy and unexpected going so early before day was togive them an information, and the rather because by the delays wasused, it was break of day before we got to horse; so he got therebefore us. Upon our suspicion, we required the Deputy that the saidJohn Meigs might be examined what his business was, that mightoccasion so early going; to which the Deputy answered, that he didnot know any such thing, and refused to examine him.” Leete was in nohaste to make his own journey to the capital. It was for themessengers to judge whether they would use such despatch as to givean alarm there some time before any magistrate was present, to beinvoked for aid. He arrived, they write, “within two hours, orthereabouts, after us and came to us to the Court chamber, where weagain acquainted him with the information we had received, and thatwe had cause to believe they [the fugitives] were concealed in NewHaven, and thereupon we required his assistance and aid for theirapprehension; to which he answered, that he did not believe theywere; whereupon we desired him to empower us, or order others for it;to which he gave us this answer, the he could not, or would not, makeus magistrates… We set before him the danger of that delay andtheir inevitable escape, and how much the honor and service of hisMajesty was despised and trampled on by him, and that we supposed byhis unwillingness to assist in the apprehension he was willing theyshould escape. After which he left us, and went to several of themagistrates, and were together five or six hours in consultation, andupon breaking up of their council they told us they would not norcould not to anything until they had called a General Court of thefreemen.”
The messengers labored with great earnestness to shake thisdetermination, but all in vain. For precedents they appealed to thepromptness of the Governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut, “who,upon the recite of his Majesty’s pleasure and order concerning thesaid persons, stood not upon such niceties and formalities.” Theyrepresented “how much the honor and justice of his Majesty wasconcerned, and how ill his Sacred Majesty would resent such horridand detestable concealments and abettings of such traitors andregicides as they were, and asked him whether he would honor and obeythe King or no in this affair, and set before him the danger which bylaw is incurred by any one that conceals or abets traitors; to whichthe Deputy Leete answered, ‘We honor his Majesty, but we have tenderconsciences’; to which we replied, that we believed that he knewwhere they were, and only pretended tenderness of conscience for arefusal…. We told them that for their respect to two traitors theywould do themselves injury, and possibly ruin themselves and thewhole Colony of New Haven.”
“Finding them obstinate and pertinacious in their contempt of hisMajesty,” the messengers, probably misled by some false information,took the road to New Netherland, the next day, in further prosecutionof their business. The Dutch Governor at that place promised them,that, if the Colonels appeared within his jurisdiction, he would givenotice to Endicott, and take measures to prevent their escape by sea.Thereupon Kellond and Kirk returned by water to Boston, where theymade oath before the magistrates to a report of their proceedings.
The fugitives had received timely notice of the chase. A week beforeKellond and Kirk left Boston, they removed from Mr. Davenport’s houseto that of William Jones, son-in-law of Governor Eaton, andafterwards Deputy-Governor of Connecticut. On the day when themessengers were debating with Governor Leete at Guilford, Whalley andGoffe were conducted to a mill, at a short distance from New Haven,where they were hidden two days and nights. Thence they were led to aspot called Hatchet Harbor, about as much farther in a northwesterlydirection, where they lay two nights more. Meantime, for fear of theeffect of the large rewards which the messengers had offered fortheir capture, a more secure hiding-place had been provided for themin a hollow on the east side of West Rock, five miles from the town.In this retreat they remained four weeks, being supplied with foodfrom a lonely farm-house in the neighborhood, to which they alsosometimes withdrew in stormy weather. They caused the Deputy-Governorto be informed of their hiding-place; and on hearing that Mr.Davenport was in danger from a suspicion of harboring them, they leftit, and for a week or two showed themselves at different times at NewHaven and elsewhere. After two months more of concealment in theirretreat on the side of West Bock, they betook themselves, just afterthe middle of August, to the house of one Tomkins, in or nearMilford. There they remained in complete secrecy for two years, afterwhich time they indulged themselves in more freedom, and evenconducted the devotions of a few neighbors assembled in theirchamber.
But the arrival at Boston of Commissioners from the King withextraordinary powers was now expected, and it was likely that theywould be charged to institute a new search, which might endanger thefugitives, and would certainly be embarrassing to their protectors.Just at this time a feud in the churches of Hartford and Wethersfieldhad led to an emigration to a spot of fertile meadow forty milesfarther up the river. Mr. Russell, hitherto minister of Wethersfield,accompanied the new settlers as their pastor. The General Court gavetheir town the name of Hadley. In this remotest northwestern frontierof New England a refuge was prepared for the fugitives. On hearing ofthe arrival of the Commissioners at Boston, they withdrew to theircave; but some Indians in hunting observed that it had been occupied,and its secrecy could no longer be counted on. They consequentlydirected their steps towards Hadley, travelling only by night, andthere, in the month of October, 1664, were received into the house ofMr. Russell.
There–except for a remarkable momentary appearance of one of them,and except for the visits of a few confidential friends–theyremained lost forever to the view of men. Presents were made to themby leading persons among the colonists, and they received remittancesfrom friends in England. Governor Hutchinson, when he wrote hisHistory, had in his hands the Diary of Goffe, begun at the time oftheir leaving London, and continued for six or seven years. They werefor a time encouraged by a belief, founded on their interpretation ofthe Apocalypse, that the execution of their comrades was “the slayingof the witnesses,” and that their own triumph was speedily to follow.Letters passed between Goffe and his wife, purporting to be between ason and mother, and signed respectively with the names of Walter andFrances Goldsmith. Four of these letters survive; tender,magnanimous, and devout, they are scarcely to be read without tears.
In the tenth year of his abode at Hadley Whalley had become extremelyinfirm in mind and body, and he probably did not outlive that year.Mr. Russell’s house was standing till within a little more than halfa century ago. At its demolition, the removal of a slab in the cellardiscovered human remains of a large size. They are believed to havebelonged to the stout frame which swept through Prince Rupert’s linesat Naseby. Goffe survived his father-in-law nearly five years, atleast; how much longer, is not known. Once he was seen abroad, afterhis retirement to Mr. Russell’s house. The dreadful war, to which theIndian King Philip bequeathed his long execrated name, was ragingwith its worst terrors in the autumn of 1675. On the first day ofSeptember, the people of Hadley kept a fast, to implore the Divineprotection in their distress. While they were engaged in theirworship, a sentry’s shot gave notice that the stealthy savages wereupon them. Hutchinson, in his History, relates what follows, as hehad received it from the family of Governor Leverett, who was one ofthe few visitors of Goffe in his retreat. “The people were in theutmost confusion. Suddenly a grave, elderly person appeared in themidst of them. In his mien and dress he differed from the rest of thepeople. He not only encouraged them to defend themselves, but puthimself at their head, rallied, instructed, and led them on toencounter the enemy, who by this means were repulsed. As suddenly thedeliverer of Hadley disappeared. The people were left inconsternation, utterly unable to account for this strange phenomenon.It is not probable that they were ever able to explain it.”
In the first years of the retirement of the Colonels at Hadley, theyenjoyed the society of a former friend, who did not feel obliged touse the same strict precautions against discovery. John Dixwell, likethemselves, was a colonel in the Parliamentary service, a member ofthe High Court of Justice, and a signer of the death-warrant of theKing. Nothing is known of his proceedings after the restoration ofthe monarchy, till he came to Hadley, three or four months later thanWhalley and Goffe. After a residence of some years in theirneighborhood, he removed to New Haven, where, bearing the name ofJames Davids, and affecting no particular privacy, he lived to oldage. The home-government never traced him to America; and though,among his acquaintance, it was understood that he had a secret tokeep, there was no disposition to penetrate it. He married twice atNew Haven, and by his second nuptials established a family, onebranch of which survives. In testamentary documents, as well as incommunications, while he lived, to his minister and others, hefrankly made known his character and history. He died just too earlyto hear the tidings, which would have renewed his strength like theeagle’s, of the expulsion of the House of Stuart. A fit monumentdirects the traveller to the place of his burial, in the squarebounded on one side by the halls of Yale College.
TO THE CAT-BIRD.
You, who would with wanton artCounterfeit another’s part,And with noisy utterance claimRight to an ignoble name,–Inharmonious!–why must you,To a better self untrue,Gifted with the charm of song,Do the generous gift such wrong?
Delicate and downy throat,Shaped for pure, melodious note,–Silvery wing of softest gray,–Bright eyes glancing every way,–Graceful outline,–motion free:Types of perfect harmony!
Ah! you much mistake your duty,Mating discord thus with beauty,–‘Mid these heavenly sunset gleams,Vexing the smooth air with screams,–Burdening the dainty breezeWith insane discordancies.
I have heard you tell a taleTender as the nightingale,Sweeter than the early thrushPipes at day-dawn from the bush.Wake once more the liquid strainThat you poured, like music-rain,When, last night, in the sweet weather,You and I were out together.Unto whom two notes are given,One of earth, and one of heaven,Were it not a shameful taleThat the earth-note should prevail?
For the sake of those who love us,For the sake of God above us,Each and all should do their bestTo make music for the rest.So will I no more reprove,Though the chiding be in love:Uttering harsh rebuke to you,That were inharmonious, too.
THE PROFESSOR’S STORY.
CHAPTER XIII.
CURIOSITY.
People will talk. _Ciascun lo dice_ is a tune that is played oftenerthan the national air of this country or any other.
“That’s what they say. Means to marry her, if she _is_ his cousin.Got money himself,–that’s the story,–but wants to come and live inthe old place, and get the Dudley property by-and-by.”–“Mother’sfolks was wealthy.”–“Twenty-three to twenty-five year old.”–“Hea’n’t more’n twenty, or twenty-one at the outside.”–“Looks as if heknew too much to be only twenty year old.”–“Guess he’s been throughthe mill,–don’t look so green, anyhow,–hey? Did y’ ever mind thatcut over his left eyebrow?”
So they gossipped in Rockland. The young fellows could make nothingof Dick Venner. He was shy and proud with the few who made advancesto him. The young ladies called him handsome and romantic, but helooked at them like a many-tailed pacha who was in the habit ofordering his wives by the dozen.
“What do you think of the young man over there at the Venners’?” saidMiss Arabella Thornton to her father.
“Handsome,” said the Judge, “but dangerous-looking. His face isindictable at common law. Do you know, my dear, I think there is ablank at the Sheriff’s office, with a place for his name in it?”
The Judge paused and looked grave, as if he had just listened to theverdict of the jury and was going to pronounce sentence.
“Have you heard anything against him?” said the Judge’s daughter.
“Nothing. But I don’t like these mixed bloods and half-told stories.Besides, I have seen a good many desperate fellows at the bar, and Ihave a fancy they all have a look belonging to them. The worst one Iever sentenced looked a good deal like this fellow. A wicked mouth.All our other features are made for us; but a man makes his ownmouth.”
“Who was the person you sentenced?”
“He was a young fellow that undertook to garrote a man who had wonhis money at cards. The same slender shape, the same cunning, fiercelook, smoothed over with a plausible air. Depend upon it, there is anexpression in all the sort of people that live by their wits whenthey can, and by worse weapons when their wits fail them, that we oldlaw-doctors know just as well as the medical counselors know themarks of disease in a man’s face. Dr. Kittredge looks at a man andsays he is going to die; I look at another man and say he is going tobe hanged, if nothing happens. I don’t say so of this one, but Idon’t like his looks. I wonder Dudley Venner takes to him so kindly.”
“It’s all for Elsie’s sake,” said Miss Thornton; “I feel quite sureof that. He never does anything that is not meant for her in someway. I suppose it amuses her to have her cousin about the house. Sherides a good deal since he has been here. Have you seen themgalloping about together? He looks like my idea of a Spanish banditon that wild horse of his.”
“Possibly he has been one,–or is one,” said the Judge,–smiling asmen smile whose lips have often been freighted with the life anddeath of their fellow-creatures. “I met them riding the other day.Perhaps Dudley is right, if it pleases her to have a companion. Whatwill happen, though, if he makes love to her? Will Elsie be easilytaken with such a fellow? You young folks are supposed to know moreabout these matters than we middle-aged people.”
“Nobody can tell. Elsie is not like anybody else. The girls that haveseen most of her think she hates men, all but ‘Dudley,’ as she callsher father. Some of them doubt whether she loves him. They doubtwhether she can love anything human, except perhaps the old blackwoman that has taken care of her since she was a baby. The villagepeople have the strangest stories about her: you know what they callher?”
She whispered three words in her father’s ear. The Judge changedcolor as she spoke, sighed deeply, and was silent as if lost inthought for a moment.
“I remember her mother,” he said, “so well! A sweeter creature neverlived. Elsie has something of her in her look, but those are not theDudley eyes. They were dark, but soft, in all I ever saw of the race.Her father’s are dark too, but mild, and even tender, I should say. Idon’t know what there is about Elsie’s,–but do you know, my dear, Ifind myself curiously influenced by them? I have had to face a goodmany sharp eyes and hard ones,–murderers’ eyes and pirates’,–menthat had to be watched in the bar, where they stood on trial, forfear they should spring on the prosecuting officers like tigers,–butI never saw such eyes as Elsie’s; and yet they have a kind of drawingvirtue or power about them,–I don’t know what else to call it: haveyou never observed this?”
His daughter smiled in her turn.
“Never observed it? Why, of course, nobody could be with Elsie Vennerand not observe it. There are a good many other strange things abouther: did you ever notice how she dresses?”
“Why, handsomely enough, I should think,” the Judge answered. “Isuppose she dresses as she likes, and sends to the city for what shewants. What do you mean in particular? We men notice effects indress, but not much in detail.”
“You never noticed the colors and patterns of her dresses? You neverremarked anything curious about her ornaments? Well! I don’t believeyou men know, half the time, whether a lady wears a ninepenny collaror a thread-lace cape worth a thousand dollars. I don’t believe youknow a silk dress from a bombazine one. I don’t believe you can tellwhether a woman is in black or in colors, unless you happen to knowshe is a widow. Elsie Venner has a strange taste in dress, let metell you. She sends for the oddest patterns of stuffs, and picks outthe most curious things at the jeweller’s, whenever she goes to townwith her father. They say the old Doctor tells him to let her haveher way about all such matters. Afraid of her mind, if she iscontradicted, I suppose.–You’ve heard about her going to school atthat place,–the ‘Institoot,’ as those people call it? They say she’sbright enough in her way,–has studied at home, you know, with herfather a good deal,–knows some modern languages and Latin, Ibelieve: at any rate, she would have it so,–she must go to the’Institoot.’ They have a very good female teacher there, I hear; andthe new master, that young Mr. Langdon, looks and talks like awell-educated young man. I wonder what they’ll make of Elsie, betweenthem!”
So they talked at the Judge’s, in the calm, judicial-lookingmansion-house, in the grave, still library, with the troops of wan-huedlaw-books staring blindly out of their titles at them as they talked,like the ghosts of dead attorneys fixed motionless and speechless,each with a thin, golden film over his unwinking eyes.
In the mean time, everything went on quietly enough after CousinRichard’s return. A man of sense,–that is, a man who knows perfectlywell that a cool head is worth a dozen warm hearts in carrying thefortress of a woman’s affections, (not yours, “Astarte,” nor yours,”Viola,”)–who knows that men are rejected by women every day becausethey, the men, love them, and are accepted every day because they donot, and therefore can study the arts of pleasing,–a man of sense,when he finds he has established his second parallel too soon,retires quietly to his first, and begins working on his covered waysagain. [The whole art of love may be read in any Encyclopaedia underthe title _Fortification_, where the terms just used are explained.]After the little adventure of the necklace, Dick retreated at once tohis first parallel. Elsie loved riding,–and would go off with him ona gallop now and then. He was a master of all those strange Indianhorseback-feats which shame the tricks of the circus-riders, and usedto astonish and almost amuse her sometimes by disappearing from hissaddle, like a phantom horseman, lying flat against the side of thebounding creature that bore him, as if he were a hunting leopard withhis claws in the horse’s flank and flattening himself out against hisheaving ribs. Elsie knew a little Spanish too, which she had learnedfrom the young person who had taught her dancing, and Dick enlargedher vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing her a songsometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar they hadfound with the ghostly things in the garret,–a quaint oldinstrument, marked E.M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged toa certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with awork of art,–a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and sung and fadedaway, unwedded, a hundred years ago, as dowerless ladies, not a few,are smiling and singing and fading now,–God grant each of them Hislove,–and one human heart as its interpreter!
As for school, Elsie went or stayed away as she liked. Sometimes,when they thought she was at her desk in the great school-room, shewould be on The Mountain,–alone always. Dick wanted to go with her,but she would never let him. Once, when she had followed the zigzagpath a little way up, she looked back and caught a glimpse of himfollowing her. She turned and passed him without a word, but givinghim a look which seemed to make the scars on his wrist tingle, wentto her room, where she locked herself up, and did not come out againtill evening,–old Sophy having brought her food, and set it down,not speaking, but looking into her eyes inquiringly, like a dumbbeast trying to feel out his master’s will in his face. The eveningwas clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at his chamber-window,looking at the mountain-side, he saw a gray-dressed figure flitbetween the trees and steal along the narrow path that led upward.Elsie’s pillow was impressed that night, but she had not been missedby the household,–for Dick knew enough to keep his own counsel. Thenext morning she avoided him and went off early to school. It was thesame morning that the young master found the flower between theleaves of his Virgil.
The girl got over her angry fit, and was pleasant enough with hercousin for a few days after this; but she shunned rather than soughthim. She had taken a new interest in her books, and especially incertain poetical readings which the master conducted with the elderscholars. This gave Master Langdon a good chance to study her wayswhen her eye was on her book, to notice the inflections of her voice,to watch for any expression of her sentiments; for, to tell thetruth, he had a kind of fear that the girl had taken a fancy to him,and, though she interested him, he did not wish to study her heartfrom the inside.
The more he saw her, the more the sadness of her beauty wrought uponhim. She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardlysmiled at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her naturalpower of expression lay all in her bright eyes, the force of which somany had felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. Aperson accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in bodyor mind, and to search in every line and tint for some underlyingsource of disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such aface produced upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was likethe lustre of ice; in all her features there was nothing of thathuman warmth which shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneaththe mask of flesh it wears. The look was that of remoteness, of utterisolation. There was in its stony apathy, it seemed to him, thepathos which we find in the blind who show no film or speck over theorgans of sight; for Nature had meant her to be lovely, and left outnothing but love. And yet the master could not help feeling that someinstinct was working in this girl which was in some way leading herto seek his presence. She did not lift her glittering eyes upon himas at first. It seemed strange that she did not, for they were surelyher natural weapons of conquest. Her color did not come and go likethat of young girls under excitement. She had a clear brunettecomplexion, a little sun-touched, it may be,–for the master noticedonce, when her necklace was slightly displaced, that a faint ring orband of a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface encircledher neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enunciation, whenshe read? Not a lisp, certainly, but the least possible imperfectionin articulating some of the lingual sounds,–just enough to benoticed at first, and quite forgotten after being a few times heard.
Not a word about the flower on either side. It was not uncommon forthe schoolgirls to leave a rose or pink or wild flower on theteacher’s desk. Finding it in the Virgil was nothing, after all; itwas a little delicate flower, that looked as if it were made topress, and it was probably shut in by accident at the particularplace where he found it. He took it into his head to examine it in abotanical point of view. He found it was not common,–that it grewonly in certain localities,–and that one of these was among therocks of the eastern spur of The Mountain.
It happened to come into his head how the Swiss youth climb the sidesof the Alps to find the flower called the _Edelweiss_ for the maidenswhom they wish to please. It is a pretty fancy, that of scaling somedangerous height before the dawn, so as to gather the flower in itsfreshness, that the favored maiden may wear it to church on Sundaymorning, a proof at once of her lover’s devotion and his courage. Mr.Bernard determined to explore the region where this flower was saidto grow, that he might see where the wild girl sought the blossoms ofwhich Nature was so jealous.
It was on a warm, fair Saturday afternoon that he undertook hisland-voyage of discovery. He had more curiosity, it may be, than hewould have owned; for he had heard of the girl’s wandering habits, andthe guesses about her sylvan haunts, and was thinking what the chanceswere that he should meet her in some strange place, or come upontraces of her which would tell secrets she would not care to haveknown.
The woods are all alive to one who walks through them with his mindin an excited state, and his eyes and ears wide open. The trees arealways talking, not merely whispering with their leaves, (for everytree talks to itself in that way, even when it stands alone in themiddle of a pasture,) but grating their boughs against eachother, as old horn-handed farmers press their dry, rustling palmstogether,–dropping a nut or a leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of awoodpecker, or rustling as a squirrel flashes along a branch. It wasnow the season of singing-birds, and the woods were haunted withmysterious, tender music. The voices of the birds which love thedeeper shades of the forest are sadder than those of the open fields:these are the nuns that have taken themselves away from the world andtell their griefs to the infinite listening Silences of thewilderness,–for the one deep inner silence that Nature breaks withher fitful superficial sounds becomes multiplied as the image of astar in ruffled waters. Strange! The woods at first convey theimpression of profound repose, and yet, if you watch their ways withopen ear, you find the life which is in them is restless and nervousas that of a woman: the little twigs are crossing and twining andseparating like slender fingers that cannot be still; the stray leafis to be flattened into its place like a truant curl; the limbs swayand twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; and the roundedmasses of foliage swell upward and subside from time to time withlong soft sighs, and, it may be, the falling of a few rain-dropswhich had lain hidden among the deeper shadows. I pray you, notice,in the sweet summer days which will soon see you among the mountains,this inward tranquillity that belongs to the heart of the woodland,with this nervousness, for I do not know what else to call it, ofouter movement. One would say, that Nature, like untrained persons,could not sit still without nestling about or doing something withher limbs or features, and that high breeding was only to be lookedfor in trim gardens, where the soul of the trees is ill at easeperhaps, but their manners are unexceptionable, and a rustling branchor leaf falling out of season is an indecorum. The real forest ishardly still except in the Indian summer; then there is death in thehouse, and they are waiting for the sharp shrunken months to comewith white raiment for the summer’s burial.
There were many hemlocks in this neighborhood, the grandest and mostsolemn of all the forest-trees in the mountain regions. Up to acertain period of growth they are eminently beautiful, their boughsdisposed in the most graceful pagoda-like series of close terraces,thick and dark with green crystalline leaflets. In spring the tendershoots come out of a paler green, finger-like, as if they werepointing to the violets at their feet. But when the trees have grownold, and their rough boles measure a yard through their diameter,they are no longer beautiful, but they have a sad solemnity all theirown, too full of meaning to require the heart’s comment to be framedin words. Below, all their earthward-looking branches are sapless andshattered, splintered by the weight of many winters’ snows; above,they are still green and full of life, but their summits overtop allthe deciduous trees around them, and in their companionship withheaven they are alone. On these the lightning loves to fall. One suchMr. Bernard saw,–or rather, what had been one such; for the bolt hadtorn the tree like an explosion from within, and the ground wasstrewed all around the broken stump with flakes of rough bark andstrips and chips of shivered wood, into which the old tree had beenrent by the bursting rocket from the thunder-cloud.
—-The master had struck up The Mountain obliquely from the westernside of the Dudley mansion-house. In this way he ascended until hereached a point many hundred feet above the level of the plain, andcommanding all the country beneath and around. Almost at his feet hesaw the mansion-house, the chimney standing out of the middle of theroof, or rather, like a black square hole in it,–the trees almostdirectly over their stems, the fences as lines, the whole nearly asan architect would draw a ground-plan of the house and the inclosuresround it. It frightened him to see how the huge masses of rock andold forest-growths hung over the home below. As he descended a littleand drew near the ledge of evil name, he was struck with theappearance of a long narrow fissure that ran parallel with it andabove it for many rods, not seemingly of very old standing,–forthere were many fibres of roots which had evidently been snappedasunder when the rent took place, and some of which were stillsucculent in both separated portions.
Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, when he set forth, not to come backbefore he had examined the dreaded ledge. He had half persuadedhimself that it was scientific curiosity. He wished to examine therocks, _to see what flowers grew there_, and perhaps to pick up anadventure in the zooelogical line; for he had on a pair of high, stoutboots, and he carried a stick in his hand, which was forked at oneextremity, so as to be very convenient to hold down a _crotalus_with, if he should happen to encounter one. He knew the aspect of theledge, from a distance; for its bald and leprous-looking declivitiesstood out in their nakedness from the wooded sides of The Mountain,when this was viewed from certain points of the village. But thenearer aspect of the blasted region had something frightful in it.The cliffs were water-worn, as if they had been gnawed for thousandsof years by hungry waves. In some places they overhung their base soas to look like leaning towers that might topple over at any minute.In other parts they were scooped into niches or caverns. Here andthere they were cracked in deep fissures, some of them of such widththat one might enter them, if he cared to run the risk of meeting theregular tenants, who might treat him as an intruder.
Parts of the ledge were cloven perpendicularly, with nothing butcracks or slightly projecting edges in which or on which a foot couldfind hold. High up on one of these precipitous walls of rock he sawsome tufts of flowers, and knew them at once for the same that he hadfound between the leaves of his Virgil. Not there, surely! No womanwould have clung against that steep, rough parapet to gather an idleblossom. And yet the master looked round everywhere, and even up theside of that rock, to see if there were no signs of a woman’sfootstep. He peered about curiously, as if his eye might fall on someof those fragments of dress which women leave after them, wheneverthey run against each other or against anything else,–in crowdedballrooms, in the brushwood after picnics, on the fences afterrambles, scattered round over every place that has witnessed an actof violence, where rude hands have been laid upon them. Nothing.Stop, though, one moment. That stone is smooth and polished, as if ithad been somewhat worn by the pressure of human feet. There is onetwig broken among the stems of that clump of shrubs. He put his footupon the stone and took hold of the close-clinging shrub. In this wayhe turned a sharp angle of the rock and found himself on a naturalplatform, which lay in front of one of the wider fissures,–whetherthe mouth of a cavern or not he could not yet tell. A flat stone madean easy seat, upon which he sat down, as he was very glad to do, andlooked mechanically about him. A small fragment splintered from therock was at his feet. He took it and threw it down the declivity alittle below where he sat. He looked about for a stem or a straw ofsome kind to bite upon,–a country-instinct,–relic, no doubt, of theold vegetable-feeding habits of Eden. Is that a stem or a straw? Hepicked it up. It was a hairpin.
To say that Mr. Langdon had a strange sort of thrill shoot throughhim at the sight of this harmless little implement would be astatement not at variance with the fact of the case. That smoothstone had been often trodden, and by what foot he could not doubt. Herose up from his seat to look round for other signs of a woman’svisits. What if there is a cavern here, where she has a retreat,fitted up, perhaps, as anchorites fitted their cells,–nay, it maybe, carpeted and mirrored, and with one of those tiger-skins for acouch, such as they say the girl loves to lie on? Let us look, at anyrate.
Mr. Bernard walked to the mouth of the cavern or fissure and lookedinto it. His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, small,sharp, cold, shining out of the darkness, but gliding with a smooth,steady motion towards the light, and himself. He stood fixed, struckdumb, staring back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbnessof fear that cannot move, as in the terror of dreams. The two sparksof light came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all atonce lifted themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the firsttime thrilled in Mr. Bernard’s ears the dreadful sound that nothingwhich breathes, be it man or brute, can hear unmoved,–the long,loud, stinging whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook hismany-jointed rattle and flung his jaw back for the fatal stroke. Hiseyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His earsrung as in the overture to the swooning dream of chloroform. Naturewas before man with her anesthetics: the cat’s first shake stupefiesthe mouse; the lion’s first shake deadens the man’s fear and feeling;and the _crotalus_ paralyzes before he strikes. He waited as in atrance,–waited as one that longs to have the blow fall, and allover, as the man who shall be in two pieces in a second waits for theaxe to drop. But while he looked straight into the flaming eyes, itseemed to him that they were losing their light and terror, that theywere growing tame and dull; the open jaws closed, the neck fellbackward and downward on the coil from which it rose, the charm wasdissolving, the numbness was passing away, he could move once more.He heard a light breathing close to his ear, and, half turning, sawthe face of Elsie Venner, looking motionless into the reptile’s eyes,which had shrunk and faded under the stronger enchantment of her own.
CHAPTER XIV.
FAMILY SECRETS.
It was commonly understood in the town of Rockland that Dudley Vennerhad had a great deal of trouble with that daughter of his, sohandsome, yet so peculiar, about whom there were so many strangestories. There was no end to the tales that were told of herextraordinary doings. Yet her name was never coupled with that of anyyouth or man, until this cousin had provoked remark by his visit; andeven then it was rather in the shape of wondering conjectures whetherhe would dare to make love to her, than in any pretended knowledge oftheir relations to each other, that the public tongue exercised itsvillage-prerogative of tattle.
The more common version of the trouble at the mansion-house wasthis:–Elsie was not exactly in her right mind. Her temper wassingular, her tastes were anomalous, her habits were lawless, herantipathies were many and intense, and she was liable to explosionsof ungovernable anger. Some said that was not the worst of it. Atnearly fifteen years old, when she was growing fast, and in anirritable state of mind and body, she had had a governess placed overher for whom she had conceived an aversion. It was whispered among afew who knew more of the family secrets than others, that, worriedand exasperated by the presence and jealous oversight of this person,Elsie had attempted to get finally rid of her by unlawful means, suchas young girls have been known to employ in their straits, and towhich the sex at all ages has a certain instinctive tendency, inpreference to more palpable instruments for the righting of itswrongs. At any rate, this governess had been taken suddenly ill, andthe Doctor had been sent for at midnight. Old Sophy had taken hermaster into a room apart, and said a few words to him which turnedhim as white as a sheet. As soon as he recovered himself, he sentSophy out, called in the old Doctor, and gave him some few hints, onwhich he acted at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing hispatient out of danger before he left in the morning. It is proper tosay, that, during the following days, the most thorough search wasmade in every nook and cranny of those parts of the house which Elsiechiefly haunted, but nothing was found which might be accused ofhaving been the intentional cause of the probably accidental suddenillness of the governess. From this time forward her father was nevereasy. Should he keep her apart, or shut her up, for fear of risk toothers, and so lose every chance of restoring her mind to its healthytone by kindly influences and intercourse with wholesome natures?There was no proof, only presumption, as to the agency of Elsie inthe matter referred to. But the doubt was worse, perhaps, thancertainty would have been,–for then he would have known what to do.
He took the old Doctor as his adviser. The shrewd old man listened tothe father’s story, his explanations of possibilities, ofprobabilities, of dangers, of hopes. When he had got through, theDoctor looked him in the face steadily, as if he were saying, _Isthat all?_
The father’s eyes fell. That was not all. There was something at thebottom of his soul which he could not bear to speak of,–nay, which,as often as it reared itself through the dark waves of unwordedconsciousness into the breathing air of thought, he trod down as theruined angels tread down a lost soul trying to come up out of theseething sea of torture. Only this one daughter! No! God never wouldhave ordained such a thing. There was nothing ever heard of like it;it could not be; she was ill,–she would outgrow all thesesingularities; he had had an aunt who was peculiar; he had heard thathysteric girls showed the strangest forms of moral obliquity for atime, but came right at last. She would change all at once, when herhealth got more firmly settled in the course of her growth. Are therenot rough buds that open into sweet flowers? Are there not fruits,which, while unripe, are not to be tasted or endured, that matureinto the richest taste and fragrance? In God’s good time she wouldcome to her true nature; her eyes would lose that frightful, coldglitter; her lips would not feel so cold when she pressed themmechanically against his cheek; and that faint birth-mark, her motherswooned when she first saw, would fade wholly out,–it was lessmarked, surely, now than it used to be!
So Dudley Venner felt, and would have thought, if he had let histhoughts breathe the air of his soul. But the Doctor read throughwords and thoughts and all into the father’s consciousness. There arestates of mind that may be shared by two persons in presence of eachother, which remain not only unworded, but _unthoughted_, if such aword may be coined for our special need. Such a mutuallyinterpenetrative consciousness there was between the father and theold physician. By a common impulse, both of them rose in a mechanicalway and went to the western window, where each started, as he saw theother’s look directed towards the white stone that stood in the midstof the small plot of green turf.
The Doctor had, for a moment, forgotten himself, but he looked up atthe clouds, which were angry, and said, as if speaking of theweather, “It is dark now, but we hope it will clear up by-and-by.There are a great many more clouds than rains, and more rains thanstrokes of lightning, and more strokes of lightning than there arepeople killed. We must let this girl of ours have her way, as far asit is safe. Send away this woman she hates, quietly. Get her aforeigner for a governess, if you can,–one that can dance and singand will teach her. In the house old Sophy will watch her best. Outof it you must trust her, I am afraid,–for she will not be followedround, and she is in less danger than you think. If she wanders atnight, find her, if you can; the woods are not absolutely safe. Ifshe will be friendly with any young people, have them to seeher,–young men, especially. She will not love any one easily, perhapsnot at all; yet love would be more like to bring her right than anythingelse. If any young person seems in danger of falling in love withher, send him to me for counsel.”
Dry, hard advice, but given from a kind heart, with a moist eye, andin tones that tried to be cheerful and were full of sympathy. Thisadvice was the key to the more than indulgent treatment which, as wehave seen, the girl had received from her father and all about her.The old Doctor often came in, in the kindest, most natural sort ofway, got into pleasant relations with Elsie by always treating her inthe same easy manner as at the great party, encouraging all herharmless fancies, and rarely reminding her that he was a professionaladviser, except when she came out of her own accord, as in the talkthey had at the party, telling him of some wild trick she had beenplaying.
“Let her go to the girls’ school, by all means,” said the Doctor,when she had begun to talk about it. “Possibly she may take to someof the girls or of the teachers. Anything to interest her.Friendship, love, religion,–whatever will set her nature at work. Wemust have headway on, or there will be no piloting her. Action firstof all, and then we will see what to do with it.”
So, when Cousin Richard came along, the Doctor, though he did notlike his looks any too well, told her father to encourage his stayingfor a time. If she liked him, it was good; if she only tolerated him,it was better than nothing.
“You know something about that nephew of yours, during these lastyears, I suppose?” the Doctor said. “Looks as if he had seen life.Has a scar that was made by a sword-cut, and a white spot on the sideof his neck that looks like a bulletmark. I think he has been whatfolks call a ‘hard customer.'”
Dudley Venner owned that he had heard little or nothing of him oflate years. He had invited himself, and of course it would not bedecent not to receive him as a relative. He thought Elsie ratherliked having him about the house for a while. She was verycapricious,–acted as if she fancied him one day and disliked him thenext. He did not know,–but (he said in a low voice) he had asuspicion that this nephew of his was disposed to take a seriousliking to Elsie. What should he do about it, if it turned out so?
The Doctor lifted his eyebrows a little. He thought there was nofear. Elsie was naturally what they call a man-hater, and there wasvery little danger of any sudden passion springing up between twosuch young persons. Let him stay awhile; it gives her something tothink about.–So he stayed awhile, as we have seen.
The more Mr. Richard became acquainted with the family,–that is,with the two persons of whom it consisted,–the more favorably theidea of a permanent residence in the mansion-house seemed to impresshim. The estate was large,–hundreds of acres, with woodlands andmeadows of great value. The father and daughter had been livingquietly, and there could not be a doubt that the property which camethrough the Dudleys must have largely increased of late years. It wasevident enough that they had an abundant income, from the way inwhich Elsie’s caprices were indulged. She had horses and carriages tosuit herself; she sent to the great city for everything she wanted inthe way of dress. Even her diamonds–and the young man knew somethingabout these gems–must be of considerable value; and yet she worethem carelessly, as it pleased her fancy. She had precious old laces,too, almost worth their weight in diamonds,–laces which had beensnatched from altars in ancient Spanish cathedrals during the wars,and which it would not be safe to leave a duchess alone with for tenminutes. The old house was fat with the deposits of rich generationswhich had gone before. The famous “golden” fireset was a purchase ofone of the family who had been in France during the Revolution, andmust have come from a princely palace, if not from one of the royalresidences. As for silver, the iron closet which had been made in thedining-room wall was running over with it: tea-kettles, coffee-pots,heavy-lidded tankards, chafing-dishes, punch-bowls, all that all theDudleys had ever used, from the caudle-cup that used to be handedround the young mother’s chamber, and the porringer from whichchildren scooped their bread-and-milk with spoons as solid as ingots,to that ominous vessel, on the upper shelf, far back in the dark,with a spout like a slender italic S, out of which the sick anddying, all along the last century, and since, had taken the lastdrops that passed their lips. Without being much of a scholar, Dickcould see well enough, too, that the books in the library had beenordered from the great London houses, whose imprint they bore, bypersons that knew what was best and meant to have it. A man does notrequire much learning to feel pretty sure, when he takes one of thosesolid, smooth, velvet-leaved quartos, say a Baskerville Addison, forinstance, bound in red morocco, with a margin of gold, as rich as theembroidery of a prince’s collar, as Vandyck drew it,–he need notknow much to feel pretty sure that a score or two of shelves full ofsuch books mean that it took a long purse, as well as a literarytaste, to bring them together.
To all these attractions the mind of this thoughtful young gentlemanmay be said to have been fully open. He did not disguise fromhimself, however, that there were a number of drawbacks in the way ofhis becoming established as the heir of the Dudley mansion-house andfortune. In the first place, Cousin Elsie was, unquestionably, verypiquant, very handsome, game as a hawk, and hard to please, whichmade her worth trying for. But then there was something about CousinElsie,–(the small, white scars began stinging, as he said this tohimself, and he pushed his sleeve up to look at them,)–there wassomething about Cousin Elsie he couldn’t make out. What was thematter with her eyes, that they sucked your life out of you in thatstrange way? What did she always wear a necklace for? Had she somesuch love-token on her neck as the old Don’s revolver had left onhis? How safe would anybody feel to live with her? Besides, herfather would last forever, if he was left to himself. And he may takeit into his head to marry again. That would be pleasant!
So talked Cousin Richard to himself, in the calm of the night and inthe tranquillity of his own soul. There was much to be said on bothsides. It was a balance to be struck after the two columns were addedup. He struck the balance, and came to the conclusion that he wouldfall in love with Elsie Venner.
The intelligent reader will not confound this matured and seriousintention of falling in love with the young lady with that mereimpulse of the moment before mentioned as an instance of making love.On the contrary, the moment Mr. Richard had made up his mind that heshould fall in love with Elsie, he began to be more reserved withher, and to try to make friends in other quarters. Sensible men, youknow, care very little what a girl’s present fancy is. The questionis: Who manages her, and how can you get at that person or thosepersons? Her foolish little sentiments are all very well in theirway; but business is business, and we can’t stop for such trifles.The old political wire-pullers never go near the man they want togain, if they can help it; they find out who his intimates andmanagers are, and work through them. Always handle any positivelyelectrical body, whether it is charged with passion, or power, withsome non-conductor between you and it, not with your nakedhands.–The above were some of the young gentleman’s working axioms;and he proceeded to act in accordance with them.
He began by paying his court more assiduously to his uncle. It wasnot very hard to ingratiate himself in that quarter; for his mannerswere insinuating, and his precocious experience of life made himentertaining. The old neglected billiard-room was soon put in order,and Dick, who was a magnificent player, had a series of games withhis uncle, in which, singularly enough, he was beaten, though hisantagonist had been out of play for years. He evinced a profoundinterest in the family history, insisted on having the details of itsearly alliances, and professed a great pride of race, which he hadinherited from his father, who, though he had allied himself with thedaughter of an alien race, had yet chosen one with the real azureblood in her veins, as proud as if she had Castile and Aragon for herdower and the Cid for her grandpapa. He also asked a great deal ofadvice, such as inexperienced young persons are in need of, andlistened to it with great reverence.
It is not very strange that Uncle Dudley took a kinder view of hisnephew than the Judge, who thought he could read a questionablehistory in his face,–or the old Doctor, who knew men’s temperamentsand organizations pretty well, and had his prejudices about races,and could tell an old sword-cut and a bullet-mark in two seconds froma scar got by falling against the fender, or a mark left by king’sevil. He could not be expected to share our own prejudices; for hehad heard nothing of the wild youth’s adventures, or his scamper overthe Pampas at short notice. So, then, “Richard Venner, Esquire, guestof Dudley Venner, Esquire, at his elegant mansion,” prolonged hisvisit until his presence became something like a matter of habit, andthe neighbors settled it beyond doubt that the fine old house wouldbe illuminated before long for a grand marriage.
He had done pretty well with the father: the next thing was to gainover the nurse. Old Sophy was as cunning as a red fox or a graywoodchuck. She had nothing in the world to do but to watch Elsie; shehad nothing to care for but this girl and her father. She had neverliked Dick too well; for he used to make faces at her and tease herwhen he was a boy, and now he was a man there was something abouthim–she could not tell what–that made her suspicious of him. It wasno small matter to get her over to his side.
The jet-black Africans know that gold never looks so well as on thefoil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of goldbeads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he hadbrought from the gold region of Chili,–so he said,–for the expresspurpose of giving them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have aperfect passion for gay-colored clothing; being condemned by Nature,as it were, to a perpetual mourning-suit, they love to enliven itwith all sorts of variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, aflamewith red and yellow. The considerate young man had remembered this,too, and brought home for Sophy some handkerchiefs of rainbow hue,which had been strangely overlooked till now, at the bottom of one ofhis trunks. Old Sophy took his gifts, but kept her black eyes openand watched every movement of the young people all the more closely.It was through her that the father had always known most of theactions and tendencies of his daughter.
In the mean time the strange adventure on The Mountain had broughtthe young master into new relations with Elsie. She had saved him inthe extremity of peril by the exercise of some mysterious power. Hewas grateful, and yet shuddered at the recollection of the wholescene. In his dreams he was pursued by the glare of cold glitteringeyes,–whether they were in the head of a woman or of a reptile hecould not always tell, the images had so run together. But he couldnot help seeing that the eyes of the young girl had been often, veryoften, turned upon him when he had been looking away, and fell as hisown glance met them. Helen Darley told him very plainly that thisgirl was thinking about him more than about her book. Dick Vennerfound she was getting more constant in her attendance at school. Helearned, on inquiry, that there was a new master, a handsome youngman. The handsome young man would not have liked the look that cameover Dick’s face when he heard this fact mentioned.
In short, everything was getting tangled up together, and there wouldbe no chance of disentangling the threads in this chapter.
ON THE FORMATION OF GALLERIES OF ART.
It is barely fifty years since England refused the gift of thepictures that now constitute the Dulwich Gallery. So rapidly,however, did public opinion and taste become enlightened, thattwenty-five years afterwards Parliament voted seventy-three thousandpounds for the purchase of thirty-eight pictures collected by Mr.Angerstein. This was the commencement of their National Gallery. In1790 but three national galleries existed in Europe,–those ofDresden, Florence, and Amsterdam. The Louvre was then firstoriginated by a decree of the Constituent Assembly of France. Englandnow spends with open hand on schools of design, the accumulation oftreasures of art of every epoch and character, and whatever tends toelevate the taste and enlarge the means of the artistic education ofher people,–perceiving, with far-sighted wisdom, that, throughimproved manufacture and riper civilization, eventually a tenfoldreturn will result to her treasury. The nations of Europe exult overa new acquisition to their galleries, though its cost may haveexceeded a hundred thousand dollars.
We are in that stage of indifference and neglect that one of ourwealthiest cities recently refused to accept the donation of agallery of some three hundred pictures, collected with taste anddiscrimination by a generous lover of art, because it did not wish tobe put to the expense of finding wall-room for them. But this spiritis departing, and now our slowness or reluctance is rather the resultof a want of knowledge and critical judgment than of a want offeeling for art.
To stimulate this feeling, it is requisite that our public shouldhave free access to galleries in which shall be exhibited inchronological series specimens of the art of all nations and schools,arranged according to their motives and the special influences thatattended their development. After this manner a mental and artistichistory of the world may be spread out like a chart before thestudent, while the artist with equal facility can trace up to theirorigin the varied methods, styles, and excellences of each prominentepoch. A gallery of art is a perpetual feast of the most intense andrefined enjoyment to every one capable of entering into its phases ofthought and execution, analyzing its external and internal being, andtracing the mysterious transformations of spirit into form. It hasbeen well said, that a complete gallery, on a broad foundation, inwhich all tastes, styles, and methods harmoniously mingle, is a courtof final appeal of one phase of civilization against another, from anexamination of which we can sum up their respective qualities andmerits, drawing therefrom for our own edification as from a perpetualwellspring of inspiration and knowledge. But if we sit in judgmentupon the great departed, they likewise sit in judgment upon us. Andit is precisely where such means of testing artistic growth bestexist that modern art is at once most humble and most aspiring:conscious of its own power and in many respects superior technicaladvantages, both it and the public are still content to go to thepast for instruction, and each to seek to rise above the transitorybias of fashion or local passions to a standard of taste that willabide world-wide comparison and criticism.
An edifice for a gallery or museum of art should be fire-proof,sufficiently isolated for light and effective ornamentation, andconstructed so as to admit of indefinite extension. Its chief featureshould be the suitable accommodation and exhibition of its contents.But provision should be made for its becoming eventually inarchitectural effect consistent with its object. The skeleton of sucha building need not be costly. Its chief expense would be in itsultimate adornment with marble facings, richly colored stones,sculpture or frescoes, according to a design which should enforcestrict purity of taste and conformity to its motive. This gradualcompletion, as happened to the mediaeval monuments of Europe, could beextended through many generations, which would thus be linked withone another in a common object of artistic and patriotic pridegradually growing up among them, as a national monument, with itsfoundations deeply laid in a unity of feeling and those desirableassociations of love and veneration which in older civilizations sodelightfully harmonize the past with the present. Each epoch ofartists would be instructed by the skill of its predecessor, andstimulated to connect its name permanently with so glorious a shrine.Wealth, as in the days of democratic Greece and Italy, would belavished upon the completion of a temple of art destined to endure aslong as material can defy time, a monument of the people’s taste andmunificence. There would be born among them the spirit of thoseAthenians who said to Phidias, when he asked if he should use ivoryor marble for the statue of their protecting goddess, “Use thatmaterial which is most _worthy_ of our city.”
Until recently, no attention has been paid, even in Europe, tohistorical sequence and special motives in the arrangement ofgalleries. As in the Pitti Gallery, pictures were generally hung soas to conform to the symmetry of the rooms,–various styles, schools,and epochs being intermixed. As the progress of ideas is of moreimportance to note than the variations of styles or the degree oftechnical merit, the chief attention in selection and position shouldbe given to lucidly exhibiting the varied phases of artistic thoughtamong the diverse races and widely separated eras and inspirationswhich gave them being. The mechanism of art is, however, gointimately interwoven with the idea, that by giving precedence to thelatter we most readily arrive at the best arrangement of the former.Each cycle of civilization should have its special department,Paganism and Christianity being kept apart, and not, as in theFlorentine Gallery, intermixed,–presenting a strange jumble ofclassical statuary and modern paintings in anachronistic disorder, tothe loss of the finest properties of each to the eye, and thedestruction of that unity of motive and harmonious association soessential to the proper exhibition of art. For it is essential thatevery variety of artistic development should be associated solelywith those objects or conditions most in keeping with itsinspirations. In this way we quickest come to an understanding of itsoriginating idea, and sympathize with its feeling, tracing itsprogress from infancy to maturity and decay, and comparing it as awhole with corresponding or rival varieties of artistic development.This systematized variety of one great unity is of the highestimportance in placing the spectator in affinity with art as a wholeand with its diversities of character, and in giving him soundstand-points of comparison and criticism. In this way, as in the Louvre,feeling and thought are readily transported from one epoch ofcivilization to another, grasping the motives and execution of eachwith pleasurable accuracy. We perceive that no conventional standardof criticism, founded upon the opinions or fashions of one age, isapplicable to all. To rightly comprehend each, we must broadly surveythe entire ground of art, and make ourselves for the time members, asit were, of the political and social conditions of life that giveorigin to the objects of our investigations. This philosophical modeof viewing art does not exclude an aesthetic point of view, but ratherheightens that and makes it more intelligible. Paganism would besubdivided into the various national forms that illustrated its riseand fall. Egypt, India, China, Assyria, Greece, Etruria, and Rome,would stand each by itself as a component part of a great whole: sowith Christianity, in such shapes as have already taken foothold inhistory, the Latin, Byzantine, Lombard, Mediaeval, Renaissant, andProtestant art, subdivided into its diversified schools or leadingideas, all graphically arranged so as to demonstrate, amid theinfinite varieties of humanity, a divine unity of origin and design,linking together mankind in one common family.
Beside statuary and paintings, an institution of this nature shouldcontain specimens of every kind of industry in which art is theprimary inspiration, to illustrate the qualities and degrees ofsocial refinement in nations and eras. This would include everyvariety of ornamental art in which invention and skill areconspicuous, as well as those works more directly inspired by highermotives and intended as a joy forever. Architecture and objects nottransportable could be represented by casts or photographs. Models,drawings, and engravings also come within its scope; and there shouldbe attached to the parent gallery a library of reference and alecture- and reading-room.
Connected with it there might be schools of design for improvement inornamental manufacture, the development of architecture, and whateveraids to refine and give beauty to social life, including a simpleacademic system for the elementary branches of drawing and coloring,upon a scientific basis of accumulated knowledge and experience,providing models and other advantages not readily accessible toprivate resources, but leaving individual genius free to follow itsown promptings upon a well-laid technical foundation. As soon as theyoung artist has acquired the grammar of his profession, he should besent forth to study directly from Nature and to mature his inventionunfettered by authoritative academic system, which more frequentlyfosters conventionalism and imposes trammels upon talent than endowsit with strength and freedom.
Such is a brief sketch of institutions feasible amongst us fromhumble beginnings by individual enterprise. Once founded and theirvalue demonstrated, the countenance of the state may be hopefullyinvoked. Their very existence would become an incentive to munificentgifts. Individuals owning fine works of art would grow ambitious tohave their memories associated with patriotic enterprise. Art invokesliberality and evokes fraternity. The sentiment, that there is acommon property in the productions of genius, making possession atrust for the public welfare, will increase among those by whosetaste and wealth they have been accumulated. Masterpieces will ceaseto be regarded as the selfish acquisitions of covetous amateurs, but,like spoken truth, will become the inalienable birthright of thepeople,–finding their way freely and generously, through themagnetic influences of public spirit and pertinent examples, to thosedepositories where they can most efficaciously perform their missionof truth and beauty to the world. Then the people themselves willbegin to take pride in their artistic wealth, to honor artists asthey now do soldiers and statesmen, and to value the more highlythose virtues which are interwoven with all noble effort.
In 1823, when the National Gallery of England was founded, theEnglish were nearly as dead to art as we are now. A few amateursalone cultivated it, but there was no general sympathy with norknowledge of it. Yet by 1837, in donations alone, the gallery hadreceived one hundred and thirty-seven pictures. Since that periodgifts have increased tenfold in value and numbers. Connected with it,and a part of that noble, comprehensive, and munificent system ofart-education which the British government has inculcated, are theBritish and Kensington Museums. Schools of design, with everyappliance for the growth of art, have rapidly sprung into existence.Private enterprise and research have correspondingly increased.British agents, with unstinted means, are everywhere ransacking theearth in quest of everything that can add to the value and utility oftheir national and private collections. A keen regard for all thatconcerns art, a desire for its national development, an enlightenedstandard of criticism, and with it the most eloquent art-literatureof any tongue, have all recently sprung into existence in ourmotherland. All honor to those generous spirits that have producedthis,–and honor to the nation that so wisely expends its wealth! Anoble example for America! England also throws open to thecompetition of the world plans for her public buildings andmonuments. Mistakes and defects there have been, but an honest desirefor amendment and to promote the intellectual growth of the nationnow characterizes her pioneers in this cause. And what progress!Between 1823 and 1850, in the Museum alone, there have been expended$10,000,000. Within twelve years, $450,000 have been expended on theNational Gallery for pictures, and yet its largest accession oftreasures is by gifts and bequests. Lately, beside the PisaniVeronese bought for $70,000, eight other paintings have beenpurchased at a cost of $50,000. In 1858, $36,000 were given for thechoice of twenty, of the early Italian schools, from the LombardiGallery at Florence,–not masterpieces, but simply characteristicspecimens, more or less restored. The average cost of lateacquisitions has been about $6,000 each. In 1858, there were 823,000visitors to both branches of the National Gallery. Who can estimatenot alone the pleasure and instruction afforded by such aninstitution to its million of annual visitors, but the ideas andinspiration thence born, destined to grow and fructify to the gloryand good of the nation? At present there are seventy-seven schools ofart in England, attended by 68,000 students. In 1859, they andkindred institutions received a public grant of nearly $450,000. Theappropriation for the British Museum alone, for 1860, is L77,452.
To the Louvre Louis XVIII. added one hundred and eleven pictures, ata cost of about $132,000; Charles X., twenty-four, at $12,000; LouisPhilippe, fifty-three, at $14,500; and Napoleon III., thus far,thirty paintings, costing $200,000, one of which, the Murillo, cost$125,000. Russia is following in the same path. Italy, Greece, andEgypt, by stringent regulations, are making it yearly more difficultfor any precious work to leave their shores. If, therefore, Americais ever to follow in the same path, she must soon bestir herself, orshe will have nothing but barren fields to glean from.
DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
Novelties are enticing to most people: to us they are simplyannoying. We cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to anold suit of clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches, (“TheAtlantic” still affects the older type of nether garment,) is sure tohave hard-fitting places; or even when no particular fault can befound with the article, it oppresses with a sense of generaldiscomfort. New notions and new styles worry us, till we get wellused to them, which is only by slow degrees.
Wherefore, in Galileo’s time, we might have helped to proscribe, orto burn–had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation–even thegreat pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairlyrecovered our composure, and had leisurely excogitated the matter, wemight have come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than theold one, after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn.
Such being our habitual state of mind, it may well be believed thatthe perusal of the new book “On the Origin of Species by Means ofNatural Selection” left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of itsplausible and winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, asmany of our contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific readingin which we indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raiseddim forebodings. Investigations about the succession of species intime, and their actual geographical distribution over the earth’ssurface, were leading up from all sides and in various ways to thequestion of their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence,like Professor Owen’s “axiom of the continuous operation of theordained becoming of living things,” which haunted us like anapparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what suchoracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we feltconfident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yetdeprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped, that, withsome repairs and make-shifts, the old views might last out our days._Apres nous le deluge_. Still, not to lag behind the rest of theworld, we read the book in which the new theory is promulgated. Wetook it up, like our neighbors, and, as was natural, in a somewhatcaptious frame of mind.
Well, we found no cause of quarrel with the first chapter. Here theauthor takes us directly to the barn-yard and the kitchen-garden.Like an honorable rural member of our General Court, who sat silentuntil, near the close of a long session, a bill requiring all swineat large to wear pokes was introduced, when he claimed the privilegeof addressing the house, on the proper ground that he had been”brought up among the pigs, and knew all about them,”–so we werebrought up among cows and cabbages; and the lowing of cattle, thecackling of hens, and the cooing of pigeons were sounds native andpleasant to our ears. So “Variation under Domestication” dealt withfamiliar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced “Variationunder Nature,” which seemed likely enough. Then follows “Struggle forExistence,”–a principle which we experimentally know to be true andcogent,–bringing the comfortable assurance, that man, even uponLeviathan Hobbes’s theory of society, is no worse than the rest ofcreation, since all Nature is at war, one species with another, andthe nearer kindred the more internecine,–bringing in thousand-foldconfirmation and extension of the Malthusian doctrine, thatpopulation tends far to outrun means of subsistence throughout theanimal and vegetable world, and has to be kept down by sharppreventive checks; so that not more than one of a hundred or athousand of the individuals whose existence is so wonderfully and sosedulously provided for ever comes to anything, under ordinarycircumstances; so the lucky and the strong must prevail, and theweaker and ill-favored must perish;–and then follows, as naturallyas one sheep follows another, the chapter on “Natural Selection,”Darwin’s _cheval de bataille_, which is very much the Napoleonicdoctrine, that Providence favors the strongest battalions,–that,since many more individuals are born than can possibly survive, thoseindividuals and those variations which possess any advantage, howeverslight, over the rest, are in the long run sure to survive, topropagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the exclusion ordestruction of the weaker brethren. All this we pondered, and couldnot much object to. In fact, we began to contract a liking for asystem which at the outset illustrates the advantages of goodbreeding, and which makes the most “of every creature’s best.”
Could we “let by-gones be by-gones,” and, beginning now, goon improving and diversifying for the future by naturalselection,–could we even take up the theory at the introduction of theactually existing species, we should be well content, and so perhaps wouldmost naturalists be. It is by no means difficult to believe thatvarieties are incipient or possible species, when we see what troublenaturalists, especially botanists, have to distinguish betweenthem,–one regarding as a true species what another regards as avariety; when the progress of knowledge increases, rather thandiminishes, the number of doubtful instances; and when there is lessagreement than ever among naturalists as to what the basis is inNature upon which our idea of species reposes, or how the word ispractically to be defined. Indeed, when we consider the endlessdisputes of naturalists and ethnologists over the human races, as towhether they belong to one species or to more, and if to more,whether to three, or five, or fifty, we can hardly help fancying thatboth may be right,–or rather, that the uni-humanitarians would havebeen right several thousand years ago, and the multi-humanitarianswill be a few thousand years later; while at present the safe thingto say is, that, probably, there is some truth on both sides.”Natural selection,” Darwin remarks, “leads to divergence ofcharacter; for more living brings can be supported on the same areathe more they diverge in structure, habits, and constitution,” (aprinciple which, by the way, is paralleled and illustrated by thediversification of human labor,) and also leads to much extinction ofintermediate or unimproved forms. Now, though this divergence may”steadily tend to increase,” yet this is evidently a slow process inNature, and liable to much counteraction wherever man does notinterpose, and so not likely to work much harm for the future. And ifnatural selection, with artificial to help it, will produce betteranimals and better men than the present, and fit them better to “theconditions of existence,” why, let it work, say we, to the top of itsbent. There is still room enough for improvement. Only let us hopethat it always works for good: if not, the divergent lines onDarwin’s diagram of transmutation made easy ominously show what smalldeviations from the straight path may come to in the end.
The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant andencouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the longvista of the past, that reveals anything alarming. Here the linesconverge as they recede into the geological ages, and point toconclusions which, upon the theory, are inevitable, but by no meanswelcome. The very first step backwards makes the Negro and theHottentot our blood-relations;–not that reason or Scripture objectsto that, though pride may. The next suggests a closer association ofour ancestors of the olden time with “our poor relations” of thequadrumanous family than we like to acknowledge. Fortunately,however,–even if we must account for him scientifically,–man withhis two feet stands upon a foundation of his own. Intermediate linksbetween the _Bimana_ and the _Quadrumana_ are lacking altogether; sothat, put the genealogy of the brutes upon what footing you will, thefour-handed races will not serve for our forerunners;–at least, notuntil some monkey, live or fossil, is producible with great toes,instead of thumbs, upon his nether extremities; or until some luckygeologist turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in Franceor England, who was so busy “napping the chuckie-stanes” and chippingout flint knives and arrow-heads in the time of the drift, very manyages ago,–before the British Channel existed, says Lyell[1],–anduntil these men of the olden time are shown to have worn theirgreat-toes in a divergent and thumb-like fashion. That would be evidenceindeed: but until some testimony of the sort is produced, we mustneeds believe in the separate and special creation of man, however itmay have been with the lower animals and with plants.
No doubt, the full development and symmetry of Darwin’s hypothesisstrongly suggest the evolution of the human no less than the loweranimal races out of some simple primordial animal,–that all areequally “lineal descendants of sense few beings which lived longbefore the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.” But, asthe author speaks disrespectfully of spontaneous generation, andaccepts a supernatural beginning of life on earth, in some form orforms of being which included potentially all that have since existedand are yet to be, he is thereby not warranted to extend hisinferences beyond the evidence or the fair probability. There seemsas great likelihood that one special origination should be followedby another upon fitting occasion, (such as the introduction of man,)as that one form should be transmuted into another upon fittingoccasion, as, for instance, in the succession of species which differfrom each other only in some details. To compare small things withgreat in a homely illustration: man alters from time to time hisinstruments or machines, as new circumstances or conditions mayrequire and his wit suggest. Minor alterations and improvements headds to the machine he possesses: he adapts a new rig or a new rudderto an old boat: this answers to _variation_. If boats could engender,the variations would doubtless be propagated, like those of domesticcattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked;the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and furtherimproved upon, and so the primordial boat be developed into the scow,the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft,–the verydiversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailingthe disappearance of many intermediate forms, less adapted to any oneparticular purpose; wherefore these go slowly out of use, and becomeextinct species: this is _natural selection_. Now let a great andimportant advance be made, like that of steam-navigation: here,though the engine might be added to the old vessel, yet the wiser andtherefore the actual way is to make a new vessel on a modified plan:this may answer to _specific creation_. Anyhow, the one does notnecessarily exclude the other. Variation and natural selection mayplay their part, and so may specific creation also. Why not?
[Footnote 1: Vide _Proceedings of the British Association for theAdvancement of Science_, 1859, and London _Athenaeum_, passim. Itappears to be conceded that these “celts” or stone knives areartificial productions, and of the age of the mammoth, the fossilrhinoceros, etc.]
This leads us to ask for the reasons which call for this new theoryof transmutation. The beginning of things must needs lie inobscurity, beyond the bounds of proof, though within those ofconjecture or of analogical inference. Why not hold fast to thecustomary view, that all species were directly, instead ofindirectly, created after their respective kinds, as we now beholdthem,–and that in a manner which, passing our comprehension, weintuitively refer to the supernatural? Why this continual strivingafter “the unattained and dim,”–these anxious endeavors, especiallyof late years, by naturalists and philosophers of various schools anddifferent tendencies, to penetrate what one of them calls “themystery of mysteries,” the origin of species? To this, in general,sufficient answer may be found in the activity of the humanintellect, “the delirious yet divine desire to know,” stimulated asit has been by its own success in unveiling the laws and processes ofinorganic Nature,–in the fact that the principal triumphs of our agein physical science have consisted in tracing connections where nonewere known before, in reducing heterogeneous phenomena to a commoncause or origin, in a manner quite analogous to that of the reductionof supposed independently originated species to a common ultimateorigin,–thus, and in various other ways, largely and legitimatelyextending the domain of secondary causes. Surely the scientific mindof an age which contemplates the solar system as evolved from acommon, revolving, fluid mass,–which, through experimental research,has come to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemicalaffinity, and mechanical power as varieties or derivativeand convertible forms of one force, instead of independentspecies,–which has brought the so-called elementary kinds of matter, suchas the metals, into kindred groups, and raised the question, whether themembers of each group may not be mere varieties of one species,–andwhich speculates steadily in the direction of the ultimate unity ofmatter, of a sort of prototype or simple element which may be to theordinary species of matter what the _protozoa_ or component cells ofan organism are to the higher sorts of animals and plants,–the mindof such an age cannot be expected to let the old belief about speciespass unquestioned.
It will raise the question, how the diverse sorts of plants andanimals came to be as they are and where they are, and will allowthat the whole inquiry transcends its powers only when all endeavorshave failed. Granting the origin to be supernatural, or miraculouseven, will not arrest the inquiry. All real origination, thephilosophers will say, is supernatural; their very question is,whether we have yet gone back to the origin, and can affirm that thepresent forms of plants and animals are the primordial, themiraculously created ones. And even if they admit that, they willstill inquire into the order of the phenomena, into the form of themiracle. You might as well expect the child to grow up content withwhat it is told about the advent of its infant brother. Indeed, tolearn that the new-comer is the gift of God, far from lullinginquiry, only stimulates speculation as to how the precious gift wasbestowed. That questioning child is father to the man,–isphilosopher in short-clothes.
Since, then, questions about the origin of species will be raised,and have been raised,–and since the theorizings, however differentin particulars, all proceed upon the notion that one species of plantor animal is somehow derived from another, that the different sortswhich now flourish are lineal (or unlineal) descendants of other andearlier sorts,–it now concerns us to ask, What are the grounds inNature, the admitted facts, which suggest hypotheses of derivation,in some shape or other? Reasons there must be, and plausible ones,for the persistent recurrence of theories upon this genetic basis. Astudy of Darwin’s book, and a general glance at the present state ofthe natural sciences, enable us to gather the following as perhapsthe most suggestive and influential. We can only enumerate them here,without much indication of their particular bearing. There is,–
1. The general fact of variability;–the patent fact, that allspecies vary more or less; that domesticated plants and animals,being in conditions favorable to the production and preservation ofvarieties, are apt to vary widely; and that by interbreeding, anyvariety may be fixed into a race, that is, into a variety which comestrue from seed. Many such races, it is allowed, differ from eachother in structure and appearance as widely as do many admittedspecies; and it is practically very difficult, perhaps impossible, todraw a clear line between races and species. Witness the human races,for instance.
Wild species also vary, perhaps about as widely as those ofdomestication, though in different ways. Some of them appear to varylittle, others moderately, others immoderately, to the greatbewilderment of systematic botanists and zoologists, and theirincreasing disagreement as to whether various forms shall be held tobe original species or marked varieties. Moreover, the degree towhich the descendants of the same stock, varying in differentdirections, may at length diverge is unknown. All we know is, thatvarieties are themselves variable, and that very diverse forms havebeen educed from one stock.
2. Species of the same genus are not distinguished from each other byequal amounts of difference. There is diversity in this respectanalogous to that of the varieties of a polymorphous species, some ofthem slight, others extreme. And in large genera the unequalresemblance shows itself in the clustering of the species aroundseveral types or central species, like satellites around theirrespective planets. Obviously suggestive this of the hypothesis thatthey were satellites, not thrown off by revolution, like the moons ofJupiter, Saturn, and our own solitary moon, but gradually andpeacefully detached by divergent variation. That such closely relatedspecies may be only varieties of higher grade, earlier origin, ormore favored evolution, is not a very violent supposition. Anyhow, itwas a supposition sure to be made.
3. The actual geographical distribution of species upon the earth’ssurface tends to suggest the same notion. For, as a general thing,all or most of the species of a peculiar genus or other type aregrouped in the same country, or occupy continuous, proximate, oraccessible areas. So well does this rule hold, so general is theimplication that kindred species are or were associatedgeographically, that most trustworthy naturalists, quite free fromhypotheses of transmutation, are constantly inferring formergeographical continuity between parts of the world now widelydisjoined, in order to account thereby for the generic similaritiesamong their inhabitants. Yet no scientific explanation has beenoffered to account for the geographical association of kindredspecies, except the hypothesis of a common origin.
4. Here the fact of the antiquity of creation, and in particular ofthe present kinds of the earth’s inhabitants, or of a large part ofthem, comes in to rebut the objection, that there has not been timeenough for any marked diversification of living things throughdivergent variation,–not time enough for varieties to have divergedinto what we call species.
So long as the existing species of plants and animals were thought tohave originated a few thousand years ago and without predecessors,there was no room for a theory of derivation of one sort fromanother, nor time enough even to account for the establishment of theraces which are generally believed to have diverged from a commonstock. Not that five or six thousand years was a short allowance forthis; but because some of our familiar domesticated varieties ofgrain, of fowls, and of other animals, were pictured and mummified bythe old Egyptians more than half that number of years ago, if notmuch earlier. Indeed, perhaps the strongest argument for the originalplurality of human species was drawn from the identification of someof the present races of men upon these early historical monuments andrecords.
But this very extension of the current chronology, if we may relyupon the archaeologists, removes the difficulty by opening up a longervista. So does the discovery in Europe of remains and implements ofpre-historic races of men to whom the use of metals was unknown,–menof the _stone age_, as the Scandinavian archaeologists designate them.And now, “axes and knives of flint, evidently wrought by human skill,are found in beds of the drift at Amiens, (also in other places, bothin France and England,) associated with the bones of extinct speciesof animals.” These implements, indeed, were noticed twenty years ago;at a place in Suffolk they have been exhumed from time to time formore than a century; but the full confirmation, the recognition ofthe age of the deposit in which the implements occur, theirabundance, and the appreciation of their bearings upon mostinteresting questions, belong to the present time. To complete theconnection of these primitive people with the fossil ages, the Frenchgeologists, we are told, have now “found these axes in Picardyassociated with remains of _Elephas primigenius, Rhinocerostichorhinus, Equus fossilis_, and an extinct species of _Bos_.”[1] Inplain language, these workers in flint lived in the time of themammoth, of a rhinoceros now extinct, and along with horses andcattle unlike any now existing,–specifically different, asnaturalists say, from those with which man is now associated. Theirconnection with existing human races may perhaps be traced throughthe intervening people of the stone age, who were succeeded by thepeople of the bronze age, and these by workers in iron.[2] Now,various evidence carries back the existence of many of the presentlower species of animals, and probably of a larger number of plants,to the same drift period. All agree that this was very many thousandyears ago. Agassiz tells us that the same species of polyps which arenow building coral walls around the present peninsula of Floridaactually made that peninsula, and have been building there forcenturies which must be reckoned by thousands.
[Footnote 1: See Correspondence of M. Nickles, in _American Journalof Science and Arts_, for March, 1860.]
[Footnote 2: See Morlet, _Some General Views on Archaeology_, in_American Journal of Science and Arts_, for January, 1860, translatedfrom _Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise_, 1859.]
5. The overlapping of existing and extinct species, and the seeminglygradual transition of the life of the drift period into that of thepresent, may be turned to the same account. Mammoths, mastodons, andIrish elks, now extinct, must have lived down to human, if not almostto historic times. Perhaps the last dodo did not long outlive hishuge New Zealand kindred. The auroch, once the companion of mammoths,still survives, but apparently owes his present and precariousexistence to man’s care. Now, nothing that we know of forbids thehypothesis that some new species have been independently andsupernaturally created within the period which other species havesurvived. It may even be believed that man was created in the days ofthe mammoth, became extinct, and was recreated at a later date. Butwhy not say the same of the auroch, contemporary both of the old manand of the new? Still it is more natural, if not inevitable, toinfer, that, if the aurochs of that olden time were the ancestors ofthe aurochs of the Lithuanian forests, so likewise were the men ofthat age–if men they were–the ancestors of the present human races.Then, whoever concludes that these primitive makers of rude flintaxes and knives were the ancestors of the better workmen of thesucceeding stone age, and these again of the succeeding artificers inbrass and iron, will also be likely to suppose that the _Equus_ and_Bos_ of that time were the remote progenitors of our own horses andcattle. In all candor we must at least concede that suchconsiderations suggest a genetic descent from the drift period downto the present, and allow time enough–if time is of any account–forvariation and natural selection to work out some appreciable resultsin the way of divergence into races or even into so-called species.Whatever might have been thought, when geological time was supposedto be separated from the present era by a clear line, it is certainthat a gradual replacement of old forms by new ones is stronglysuggestive of some mode of origination which may still be operative.When species, like individuals, were found to die out one by one, andapparently to come in one by one, a theory for what Owen sonorouslycalls “the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of livingthings” could not be far off.
That all such theories should take the form of a derivation of thenew from the old seems to be inevitable, perhaps from our inabilityto conceive of any other line of secondary causes, in thisconnection. Owen himself is apparently in travail with sometransmutation theory of his own conceiving, which may yet see thelight, although Darwin’s came first to the birth. Different as thetwo theories will probably be in particulars, they cannot fail toexhibit that fundamental resemblance in this respect which betokens acommunity of origin, a common foundation on the general facts and theobvious suggestions of modern science. Indeed,–to turn the point ofa taking simile directed against Darwin,–the difference between theDarwinian and the Owenian hypotheses may, after all, be only thatbetween homoeopathic and heroic doses of the same drug.
If theories of derivation could only stop here, content withexplaining the diversification and succession of species between thetertiary period and the present time, through natural agencies orsecondary causes still in operation, we fancy they would not begenerally or violently objected to by the _savans_ of the presentday. But it is hard, if not impossible, to find a stopping-place.Some of the facts or accepted conclusions already referred to, andseveral others, of a more general character, which must be taken intothe account, impel the theory onward with accumulated force. _Vires_(not to say _virus) acquirit eundo_. The theory hitches onwonderfully well to Lyell’s uniformitarian theory in geology,–thatthe thing that has been is the thing that is and shall be,–that thenatural operations now going on will account for all geologicalchanges in a quiet and easy way, only give them time enough, soconnecting the present and the proximate with the farthest past byalmost imperceptible gradations,–a view which finds large andincreasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology, and ofwhich Darwin’s theory is the natural complement.
So the Darwinian theory, once getting a foothold, marches boldly on,follows the supposed near ancestors of our present species fartherand yet farther back into the dim past, and ends with an analogicalinference which “makes the whole world kin.” As we said at thebeginning, this upshot discomposes us. Several features of the theoryhave an uncanny look. They may prove to be innocent: but their firstaspect is suspicious, and high authorities pronounce the whole thingto be positively mischievous.
In this dilemma we are going to take advice. Following the bent ofour prejudices, and hoping to fortify these by new and strongarguments, we are going now to read the principal reviews whichundertake to demolish the theory;–with what result our readers shallbe duly informed.
Meanwhile, we call attention to the fact, that the Appletons havejust brought out a second and revised edition of Mr. Darwin’s book,with numerous corrections, important additions, and a preface, allprepared by the author for this edition, in advance of a new Englishedition.
VANITY (1).
(ON A PICTURE OF HERODIAS’S DAUGHTER BY LUINI.)
Alas, Salome! Could’st thou knowHow great man is,–how great thou art,–What destined worlds of weal or woeLurk in the shallowest human heart,–
From thee thy vanities would drop,Like lusts in noble anger spurnedBy one who finds, beyond all hope,The passion of his youth returned.
Ah, sun-bright face, whose brittle smileIs cold as sunbeams flashed on ice!Ah, lips how sweet, yet hard the while!Ah, soul too barren even for vice!
Mirror of Vanity! Those eyesNo beam the less around them shed,Albeit in that red scarf there liesThe Dancer’s meed,–the Prophet’s head.
VANITY (2.)
I.False and Fair! Beware, beware!There is a Tale that stabs at thee!The Arab Seer! he stripped thee bareLong since! He knew thee, Vanity!By day a mincing foot is thine:Thou runnest along the spider’s line:–Ay, but heavy sounds thy treadBy night, among the uncoffined dead!
II.Fair and Foul! Thy mate, the Ghoul,Beats, bat-like, at thy golden gate!Around the graves the night-winds howl:”Arise!” they cry, “thy feast doth wait!”Dainty fingers thine, and nice,With thy bodkin picking rice!–
Ay, but when the night’s o’erhead,Limb from limb they rend the dead!
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_Popular Astronomy. A Concise Elementary Treatise on the Sun,Planets, Satellites, and Comets_. By O.M. MITCHELL, Director of theCincinnati and Dudley Observatories. New York. 1860.
In this volume Professor Mitchell gives a very clear, and, in thegeneral plan pursued, a very good account of the methods and resultsof investigation in modern astronomy. He has explained with greatfulness the laws of motion of the heavenly bodies, and has thus aimedat giving more than the collection of disconnected facts whichfrequently form the staple of elementary works on astronomy.
In doing this, however, he has fallen into errors so numerous, andoccasionally so grave, that they are difficult to be accounted for,except on the supposition that some portions of the work were writtenin great haste. Passing over a few mere oversights, such as astatement from which it would follow that a transit of Venus occurredevery eight years, mistakes of dates, etc., we cite the following.
On page 114, speaking of Kepler’s third law, the author says, “Andeven those extraordinary objects, the revolving double stars, aresubject to the same controlling law.” Since Kepler’s third lawexpresses a relationship between the motions of three bodies, two ofwhich revolve around a third much larger than either, it is a logicalimpossibility that a system of only two bodies should conform to thislaw.
On page 182, it is stated, that Newton’s proving, that, if a bodyrevolved in an elliptical orbit with the sun as a focus, the force ofgravitation toward the sun would always be in the inverse ratio ofthe square of its distance, “was equivalent to proving, that, if abody in space, free to move, received a single impulse, and at thesame moment was attracted to a fixed centre by a force whichdiminished as the square of the distance at which it operatedincreased, such a body, thus deflected from its rectilinear path,would describe an ellipse,” etc. Not only does this deduction, beingmade in the logical form,
If A is B, X is Y;but X is Y;therefore A is B,
not follow at all, but it is absolutely not true. The body under thecircumstances might describe an hyperbola as welt as an ellipse, asProfessor Mitchell himself subsequently remarks.
The author’s explanation of the manner in which the attraction of thesun changes the position of the moon’s orbit is entirely at fault. Hesupposes the line of nodes of the moon’s orbit perpendicular to theline joining the centres of the earth and sun, and the moon to startfrom her ascending node toward the sun, and says that in this casethe effect of the sun’s attraction will be to diminish theinclination of the moon’s orbit during the first half of therevolution, and thus cause the node to retrograde; and to increase itduring the second half, and thus cause the nodes to retrograde. Butthe real effect of the sun’s attraction, in the case supposed, wouldbe to diminish the inclination during the first quarter of itsrevolution, to increase it during the second, to diminish it againduring the third, and increase it again during the fourth, as shownby Newton a century and a half ago.
In Chapter XV. we find the greatest number of errors. Take, forexample, the following computation of the diminution of gravity atthe surface of the sun in consequence of the centrifugal force,–partof the data being, that a pound at the earth’s surface will weightwenty-eight pounds at the sun’s surface, and that the centrifugalforce at the earth’s equator is 1/289 of gravity.
“Now, if the sun rotated in the same time as the earth, and theirdiameters were equal, the centrifugal force on the equators of thetwo orbs would be equal. But the sun’s radius is about 111 times thatof the earth, and if the period of rotation were the same, thecentrifugal force at the sun’s equator would be greater than that atthe earth’s in the ratio of (111)^2 to 1, or, more exactly, in theratio of 12,342.27 to 1. But the sun rotates on its axis much slowerthan the earth, requiring more than 25 days for one revolution. Thiswill reduce the above in the ratio of 1 to (25)^2, or 1 to 625; sothat we shall have the earth’s equatorial centrifugal force (1/289) x12,342.27 / 625 = 12,342.27/180,605 = 0.07 nearly for the sun’sequatorial centrifugal force. Hence the weight before obtained, 28pounds, must be reduced seven hundredths of its whole value, and wethus obtain 28 – 0.196 = 27.804 pounds as the true weight of onepound transported from the earth’s equator to that of the sun.”
In this calculation we have three errors, the effect of one of whichwould be to increase the true answer 111 times, of another 28 times,and of a third to diminish it 10 times; so that the final result ismore than 300 times too great. If this result were correct, Leverrierwould have no need of looking for intermercurial planets to accountfor the motion of the perihelion of Mercury; he would find asufficient cause in the ellipticity of the sun.
Considered from a scientific point of view, some of the gravesterrors into which the author has fallen are the suppositions, thatthe perihelia and nodes of the planetary orbits move uniformly, andthat they can ever become exactly circular. At the end of abouttwenty-four thousand years the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit willbe smaller than at any other time during the next two hundredthousand, at least; but it will begin to increase again long beforethe orbit becomes circular. Astronomers have long known that theeccentricity of Mercury’s orbit will never be much greater or muchless than it is now; and moreover, instead of diminishing, as statedby Professor Mitchell, it is increasing, and has been increasing forthe last hundred thousand years.
Finally, the chapter closes with an attempt to state the principleknown to mathematicians as “the law of the conservation of areas,”which statement is entirely unlike the correct one in nearly everyparticular.
It will be observed that we have criticized this work from ascientific rather than from a popular point of view. As questions ofpopular interest, it is perhaps of very little importance whether theearth’s orbit will or will not become circular in the course ofmillions of years, or in what the principle of areas consists or doesnot consist. But if such facts or principles are to be stated at all,we have a right to see them stated correctly. However, in the firstnine chapters, which part of the book will be most read, few mistakesof any importance occur, and the method pursued by Newton in deducingthe law of gravitation is explained in the author’s most felicitousstyle.
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_El Fureidis_. By the Author of “The Lamplighter” and “MabelVaughan.” Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.
That large army of readers whose mere number gave celebrity at onceto the authoress of “The Lamplighter” will at first be disappointedwith what they may call the location of this new romance by MissCummins. The scene is laid in Syria, instead of New England, and the”village” known to New Yorkers as Boston gives way to “El Fureidis,”a village in the valley of Lebanon. But while so swift a transitionfrom the West to the East may disappoint that “Expectation” whichFletcher tells us “sits i’ the air,” and which we all know is not tobe balked with impunity, there can be no doubt, that, in shifting thescene, the authoress has enabled us to judge her essential talentwith more accuracy. Possessing none of the elements which are thoughtessential to the production of a sensation, “The Lamplighter” forceditself into notice as a “sensation book.” The writer was innocent ofall the grave literary crimes implied in such a distinction. Thefirst hundred and fifty pages were as simple, and as true to ordinarynature, as the daisies and buttercups of the common fields; theremaining two hundred pages repeated the stereotyped traditions andcustomary hearsays which make up the capital of every professionalstory-teller. The book began in the spirit of Jane Austen, and endedin that of Jane Porter.
In “El Fureidis” everything really native to the sentiment andexperience of Miss Cummins is exhibited in its last perfection, withthe addition of a positive, though not creative, faculty ofimagination. Feeling a strong attraction for all that related to theEast, through an accidental connection with friends who inconversation discoursed of its peculiarities and wonders, she was ledto an extensive and thorough study of the numerous eminent scholarsand travellers who have recorded their experience and researches inSyria and Damascus. Gradually she obtained a vivid internal vision ofthe scenery, and a practical acquaintance with the details of life,of those far-off Eastern lands. On this imaginative reproduction ofthe external characteristics of the Orient she projected her ownstandards of excellence and ideals of character; and the result isthe present romance, the most elaborate and the most pleasingexpression of her genius.
There is hardly anything in the work which can rightfully be calledplot. The incidents are not combined, but happen. A shy, sensitive,fastidious, high-minded, and somewhat melancholy and dissatisfiedEnglishman, by the name of Meredith, travelling from Beyrout toLebanon, falls in love with a Christian maiden by the name ofHavilah. She rejects him, on the ground, that, however blessed withall human virtues, he is deficient in Christian graces. One of thoserare women who combine the most exquisite sensuous beauty with thebeauty of holiness, she cannot consent to marry, unless souls arejoined, as well as hands. Meredith, in the course of the somewhatrambling narrative, “experiences religion,” and the heroine thenfeels for him that affection which she did not feel even in thosemoments when he recklessly risked his life to save hers. In regard tocharacterization, Meredith, the hero, is throughout a mere name,without personality; but the authoress has succeeded in transformingHavilah from an abstract proposition into an individual existence.Her Bedouin lover, the wild, fierce, passionate Arab boy, Abdoul,with his vehement wrath and no less vehement love, passing from afrustrated design to assassinate Meredith, whom he considered theaccepted lover of Havilah, to an abject prostration of his wholebeing, corporeal and mental, at the feet of his mistress, salutingthem with “a devouring storm of kisses,” is by far the most intenseand successful effort at characterization in the whole volume. Theconclusion of the story, which results in the acceptance by Meredithof the conditions enforced by the celestial purity of the heroine,will be far less satisfactory to the majority of readers than ifHavilah had been represented as possessed of sufficient spiritualpower to convert her passionate Arab lover into a being fit to be aChristian husband. By all the accredited rules of the logic ofpassion, Abdoul deserved her, rather than Meredith. Leaving, however,all those considerations which relate to the management of the storyas connected with the impulses of the characters, great praise cannotbe denied to the authoress for her conception and development of thecharacter of Havilah. Virgin innocence has rarely been more happilycombined with intellectual culture, and the reader follows the courseof her thoughts–and so vital are her thoughts that they cause allthe real events of the story–with a tranquil delight in herbeautiful simplicity and intelligent affectionateness, compared withwhich the pleasure derived from the ordinary stimulants of romance ispoor and tame. At least two-thirds of the volume are devoted todescriptions of Eastern scenery, habits, customs, manners, and men,and these are generally excellent. Altogether, the book will add tothe reputation of the authoress.
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_Life and Times of General Sam. Dale, the Mississippi Partisan_. ByJ.F.H. CLAIBORNE. Illustrated by John M’Lenan. New York: Harper &Brothers.
The adventures of General Dale, Mr. Claiborne tells us, were takenfrom his own lips by the author and two friends, and from the notesof all three a memoir was compiled, but the MSS. were lost in theMississippi. We regret that Dale’s own words were thus lost; for thestories of the hardy partisan are not improved by his biographer’swell-meant efforts to tell them in more graceful language. Mr.Claiborne’s cheap eloquence is perhaps suited to the unfastidioustaste of a lower latitude; but we prefer those stories, too few innumber, in which the homely words of Dale are preserved.
Dale does not appear to have done anything to warrant this “attempton his life,” being no more remarkable than hundreds of others. Hesaw several distinguished men; but of his anecdotes about them we canonly quote the old opinion, that the good stories are not new, andthe new are not good. As there is nothing particularly interesting inthe subject, so there is no peculiar charm thrown around it by themanner in which Mr. Claiborne has executed his task. A noticeable andvery comic feature is presented in the praises which he hasinterpolated, when ever any acquaintance of his is referred to. Wereadily acquiesce, when we are told that Mr. A is a model citizen,and that Mr. B is alike unsurpassed in public and private life; butthe latter statement becomes less intensely gratifying when we learnthe fact that Mr. C also has no superior, and that there are nobetter or abler men than D, E, F, or G. We were aware thatMississippi was uncommonly fortunate in having meritorious sons, butnot that so singularly exact an equality existed among them. Are theyall best? It is like the case of the volunteer regiment in which theywere all Major-Generals. Occasional eminence we can easily believe,but a table-land of merit is more than we are prepared for; and weare strongly led to suspect that praise so lavishly given may becheaply won.
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_The Money-King and Other Poems_. By JOHN G. SAXE. Boston: Ticknor &Fields. 16mo.
We regret having overlooked this pleasant volume so long. In aprevious collection of poems, which has run through fifteen editions,Mr. Saxe fully established his popularity; and the present volume,which is better than its predecessor, has in it all the elements of asimilar success. The two longest poems, “The Money-King” and “ThePress,” have been put to the severe test of repeated delivery beforelyceum audiences in different parts of the country; and a poet issure to learn by such a method of publication, what he may not learnby an appearance in print, the real judgment of the miscellaneouspublic on his performance. He may doubt the justice of the praise orthe censure of the professional critic; but it is hard for him toresist the fact of failure, when it comes to him palpably in thesatire that scowls in an ominous stare and the irony that lurks in anaudible yawn,–hard for him to question the reality of triumph, whenteeth flash at every gleam of his wit and eyes moisten at every touchof his sentiment. Having tried each of these poems before more than ahundred audiences, Mr. Saxe has fairly earned the right to facecritics fearlessly; and, indeed, the poems themselves so abound insense, shrewdness, sagacity, and fancy, in sayings so pithy and witso sparkling, are so lull of humor and good-humor, and flow on theirrhythmic and rhyming way with so much of the easy abandonment ofvivacious conversation, that few critics will desire to reverse thefavorable decisions of the audiences they have enlivened.
Among the miscellaneous poems, there are many which, in brilliancy,in keen, good-natured satire, in facility and variety ofversification, in ingenious fancy, in joyousness of spirit and purelove of fun, excel the longer poems to which we have just referred.