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THE JOURNAL
OF
' SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
Vol. £
~
18 6 7.
■
No. 1.
TO THE READER.
For the reason that a journal devoted
exclusively to the interests of Speculative
Philosophy is a rare phenomenon in the
English language, some words may reason
ably be expected from the Editors upon
the scope and design of the present under
taking.
There is no need, it is presumed, to
speak of the immense religious movements
now going on in this country and in Eng
land. The tendency to break with the
traditional, and to accept only what bears
for the soul its own justification, is widely
active, and can end only in the demand
that Reason shall find and establish a phil
osophical basis for all those great ideas
which are taught as religious dogmas. Thus
it is that side by side with the naturalism of
such men as Renan, a school of mystics is
beginning to spring up who prefer to ignore
utterly all historical wrappages, and cleave
only to the speculative kernel itself. The
vortex between the traditional faith and the
intellectual conviction cannot be closed by
renouncing the latter, but only by deepen
ing it to speculative insight.
Likewise it will be acknowledged that
the national consciousness has moved for
ward on to a new platform during the last
few years. The idea underlying our form
of government had hitherto developed
only one of its essential phases—that of
brittle individualism—in which national
unity seemed an external mechanism,
soon to be entirely dispensed with, and
the enterprise of the private man or of the
corporation substituted for it. Now we
have arrived at the consciousness of the
other essential phase, and each individual
recognizes his substantial side to be the
State as such. The freedom of the citizen
does not consist in the mere Arbitrary, but
in the realization of the rational convic
tion tvhich finds expression in established
law. That this new phase of national life
demands to be digested and comprehended,
is a further occasion for the cultivation of
the Speculative.
More ’significant still is the scientific
revolution, working out especially in the
domain of physics. The day of simple
empiricism is past, and with the doctrine
of “ Correlation of forces ” there has arisen
a stage of reflection that deepens rapidly
into the purely speculative. For the fur
ther elucidation of this important point the
two following articles have been prepared.
It is hoped that the first one will answer
more definitely the question now arising in
the mind of the reader, “ What is this
Speculative Knowing of which you speak ?”
and that the second one will show whither
Natural Science is fast hastening.
With regard to the pretensions of this
Journal, its editors know well how much
its literary conduct will deserve censure
and need apology. They hope that the
substance will make up in some degree for
deficiencies in form; and, moreover, they
expect to improve in this respect through
experience and the kind criticisms of
friends.
�2
The Speculative.
THE SPECULATIVE.
“ We need what Genius is unconsciously seeking, and, by some daring generalization of the
universe, shall assuredly discover, a spiritual calculus, a Novum Organon, whereby nature shall
be divined in the soul, the soul in God, matter in spirit, polarity resolved into unity; and that
power which pulsates in all life, animates and builds all organizations, shall manifest itself as
one universal deific energy, present alike at the outskirts and centre of the universe, whose
centre ana circumference are one; omniscient, omnipotent, self-subsisting, uncontained, yet
containing all things in the unbroken synthesis of its being.”—(“Calculus,” one of Alcott’s
“Orphic Sayings.”)
At the end of the sixth book of Plato’s
Republic, after a characterization of the
two grades of sensuous knowing and the
grade of the understanding, (i which is
obliged to set out from hypotheses, for the
reason that it does not deal with principles
but only with results,” we find the specu
lative grade of knowing characterized as
<£ that in which the soul, setting out from
an hypothesis, proceeds to an unhypothetical principle, and makes its way without
the aid of [sensuous] images, but solely
through ideas themselves.” The mathe
matical procedure which begins by hy
pothecating definitions, axioms, postulates,
and the like, which it never examines nor
attempts to deduce or prove, is the exam
ple given by Plato of the method of theUnderstanding, while he makes the specula
tive Reason “ to posit hypotheses by the
Dialectic, not as fixed principles, but only
as starting points, in order that, by remov
ing them, it may arrive at the unhypothetical—the principle of the universe.”
This most admirable description is fully
endorsed by Aristotle, and firmly estab
lished in a two-fold manner :
1. In the Metaphysics (xi. 7) he shows
ontologically, starting with motion as an
hypothesis, that the self-moved is the first
principle ; and this he identifies with the
speculative, and the being of God.
2. In the De Anima (iii. 5-8) he dis
tinguishes psychologically the “ active in
tellect” as the highest form of knowing,
as that which is its own object, (subject
and object,) and hence as containing its
own end and aim in itself—as being infin
ite. He identifies this with the Specula
tive result, which he found ontologically
as the Absolute.
Spinoza in his Ethics (Prop. xl. Scbol.
ii., and Prop, xliv., Cor. ii. of Part II.)
has well described the Speculative, which
he names C{ Scienlia intuiliva,” as the
thinking of things under the form of eter
nity, (De natura rationis est res sub quadam specie ceternitatis percipere.)
Though great diversity is found in re
spect to form and systematic exposition
among the great philosophers, yet there is
the most complete unanimity, not only
with respect to the transcendency of the
Speculative, but also with reference to the
content of its knowing. If the reader of
different systems of Philosophy has in
himself achieved some degree of Specula
tive culture, he will at every step be de
lighted and confirmed at the agreement of
what, to the ordinary reader, seem irrecon
cilable statements.
Not only do speculative writers agree
among themselves as to the nature of
things, and the destiny of man and the
world, but their results furnish us in the
form of pure thought what the artist has
wrought out in the form of beauty.
Whether one tests architecture, sculpture,
painting, music or poetry, it is all the
same. Goethe has said:
“As all Nature’s thousand changes
But one changeless God proclaim ;
So in Art’s wide kingdoms ranges
One sole meaning, still the same:
This is Truth, eternal Reason,
Which from Beautj' takes its dress,
And serene, through time and season,
Stands for aye in loveliness.”
While Art presents this content to the
senses, Religion offers it to the conception
in the form of a dogma to be held by faith ;
the deepest Speculative truth is allegori
cally typified in a historical form, so that
it acts upon the mind partly through fan
tasy and partly through the understand
ing. Thus Religion presents the same
content as Art and Philosophy, but stands
between them, and forms a kind of middle
�The Speculative.
ground upon which the purification takes
place. “ It is the purgatory between the
Inferno of Sense and the Paradise of Rea
son.” Its function is mediation ; a contin
ual degrading of the sensuous and exter
nal, and an elevation to the supersensual
and internal. The transition of Religion
into Speculative Philosophy is found in
the mystics. Filled with the profound
significance of religious symbolism, and
seeing in it the explanation of the uni
verse, they essay to communicate their in
sights. But the form of Science is not
yet attained by them. They express
themselves, not in those universal catego
ries that the Spirit of the Race has formed
in language for its utterance, but they
<have recourse to symbols more or less in
adequate because ambiguous, and of insuf
ficient universality to stand for the arche
types themselves. Thus “ Becoming ” is
the most pure germinal archetype, and be
longs therefore to logic, or the system of
pure thought, and it has correspondences
on concrete planes, as e. g., time, motion,
life, fyc. Now if one o^. these concrete
terms is used for the pure logical category,
we have mysticism. The alchemists, as
shown by a genial writer of our day, use
the technique of their craft to express the
profound mysteries of spirit and its regen
eration. The Eleusinian and other mys
teries do the like.
While it is one of the most inspiring
things connected with Speculative Philo
sophy to discover that the “ Open Secret
of the Universe” has been read by so
many, and to see, under various expres
sions, the same meaning ; yet it is the
highest problem of Speculative Philoso
phy to seize a method that is adequate to
the expression of the “ Secret;” for its
(the content’s) own method of genetic de
velopment must be the only adequate one.
Hence it is that we can classify philosophic
systems by their success in seizing the
content which is common to Art and Re
ligion, as well as to Philosophy, in such a
manner as to allow its free evolution ; to
have as little in the method that is merely
formal or extraneous to the idea itself.
The rigid formalism of Spinoza—though
manipulated by a clear speculative spirit—
3
is inadequate to the unfolding of its con
tent ; for how could the mathematical
method, which is that of quantity or ex
ternal determinations alone, ever suffice to
unfold those first principles which attain
to the quantitative only in their result?
In this, the profoundest of subjects, we
always find in Plato light for the way. Al
though he has not given us complete ex
amples, yet he has pointed out the road of
the true Speculative method in a way not
to be mistaken. Instead of setting out
with first principles presupposed as true,
by which all is to be established, (as math
ematics and 6uch sciences do), he asserts
that the first starting points must be re
moved as inadequate. We begin with the
immediate, which is utterly insufficient,
and exhibits itself as such. We ascend to
a more adequate, by removing the first
hypothesis ; and this process repeats itself
until we come to the first principle, which
of course bears its own evidence in this,
that it is absolutely universal and abso
lutely determined at the same time; in
other words it is the self-determining, the
“self-moved,” as Plato and Aristotle call
it. It is its own other, and hence it is the
true infinite, for it is not limited but con
tinued by its other.
From this peculiarity results the difficul
ty of Speculative Philosophy. The unused
mind, accepting with naivete' the first pro
position as settled, finds itself brought,
into confusion when this is contradicted,
and condemns the whole procedure. The
irony of Socrates, that always begins by
positing the ground of his adversary, and
reducing it through its own inadequateness
to contradict itself, is of this character,
and the unsophisticated might say, and do
say: “ See how illogical is Socrates, for
he sets out to establish something, and ar
rives rather at the destruction of it.” The
reductio ad absardum is a faint imita
tion of the same method. It is not suffi
cient to prove your own system by itself,
for each of the opposing systems can do
that; but you must show that any and all
counter-hypotheses result in your own.
God makes the wrath of men to praise
Him, and all imperfect things must con
tinually demonstrate the perfect, for the
�4
The. Speculative.
reason that they do not exist by reason of
their defects, but through what of truth
there is in them, and the imperfection is
continually manifesting the want of the
perfect. ££ Spirit,” says Hegel, ££ is selfcontained being. But matter, which is
spirit outside of itself, [turned inside out,]
continually manifests this, its inadequacy,
through gravity—attraction to a central
point beyond each particle. (If it could
get at this central point, it would have no
extension, and hence would be anni
hilated.)”
The soul of this method lies in the com
prehension of the negative. In that won
derful expose of the importance of the
negative, which Plato gives in the Par
menides and Sophist, we see how justly
he appreciated its true place in Philoso
phic Method. Spinoza’s “ omnis determinatio est negatio ” is the most famous
of modern statements respecting the nega
tive, and has been very fruitful in re
sults.
One would greatly misunderstand the
Speculative view of the negative should
he take it to mean, as some have done,
ee that the negative is as essential as the
positive.” For if they are two indepen
dent somewhats over against each other,
having equal validity, then all unity of
system is absolutely impossible—we can
have only the Persian Ahriman and Ormuzd ; nay, not even these—for unless
there is a primal unity, a “ Zeruane-Akerene”—the uncreated one, these are im
possible as opposites, for there can be no
tension from which the strife should pro
ceed.
The Speculative has insight into the
constitution of the positive out of the
negative. “ That which has the form of
Being,” says Hegel, £‘ is the self-related ;”
but relation of all kinds is negation, and
hence whatever has the form of being and
is a positive somewhat, is a self-related
negative. Those three stages of culture in
knowing, talked of by Plato and Spinoza,
may be characterized in a new way by
their relation to this concept.
The first stage of consciousness—that of
immediate or sensuous knowing—seizes
objects by themselves—isolatedly—without
their relations ; each seems to have valid
ity in and for itself, and to be wholly pos
itive and real. The negative is the mere
absence of the real thing ; and it utterly
ignores it in its scientific activity.
But the second stage traces relations,
and finds that things do not exist in imme
diate independence, but that each is re
lated to others, and it comes to say that
££ Were a grain of sand to be destroyed,
the universe would collapse.” It is a
necessary consequent to the previous stage,
for the reason that so soon as the first
stage gets over its childish engrossment
with the novelty of variety, and attempts
to seize the individual thing, it finds its
characteristic marks or properties. But
these consist invariably of relations to
other things, and it learns that these prop
erties, without which the thing could
have no distinct existence, are the very
destruction of its independence, since
they are its complications with other
things.
In this stage the negative has entered
and has full sway. For all that was before
firm and fixed, is now seen to be, not
through itself, but through others, and
hence the being of everything is its nega
tion. For if this stone exists only through
its relations to the sun, which is not the
stone but something else, then the being
of this stone is its own negation. But the
second stage only reduces all to depend
ence and finitude, and does net show us
how any real, true, or independent being
can be found to exist. It holds fast to the
stage of mediation alone, just as the first
stage held by the immediate. But the
dialectic of this position forces it over
into the third.
If things exist only in their relations,
and relations are the negatives of things,
then all that appears positive—all being—
must rest upon negation. How is this?
The negative is essentially a relative, but
since it is the only substrate (for all is
relative), it can relate only to itself. But
self-relation is always identity, and here
we have the solution of the previous diffi
culty. All positive forms, all forms of im
mediateness or being, all forms of identity,
are self-relatiops, consisting of a negative
�The Speculative,
or relative, relating to itself. But the
most wonderful side of this, is the fact that
since this relation is that of the negative,
it negates itself in its very relation, and
hence its identity is a producing of non
identity. Identity and distinction are
produced by the self-same process, and
thus self-determination is the origin of all
identity and distinction likewise. This
is the speculative stand-point in its com
pleteness. It not only possesses specula
tive content, but is able to evolve a spec
ulative system likewise. It is not only
conscious of the principles, but of their
method, and thus all is transparent.
To suppose that this may be made so
plain that one shall see it at first sight,
would be the height of absurdity. Doubt
less far clearer expositions can be made
of this than those found in Plato or
Proclus, or even in Fichte and Ilegel; but
any and every exposition must incur the
same difficulty, viz : The one who masters
it must undergo a thorough change in his
innermost. The í( Palingenesia” of the
intellect is as essential as the “ regenera
tion of the heart,” and is at bottom the
same thing, as the mystics teach us.
But this great difference is obvious su
perficially : In religious regeneration it
seems the yielding up of the self to an
alien, though beneficent, power, while in
philosophy it seems the complete identifi
cation of one’s self with it.
He, then, who would ascend into the
thought of the best thinkers the world has
seen, must spare no pains to elevate his
thinking to the plane of pure thought.
•The completest discipline for this may be
found in Hegel’s Logic. Let one not de
spair, though he seem to be baffled seventy
and seven times; his earnest and vigorous
assault is repaid by surprisingly increased
strength of mental acumen which he will
be assured of, if he tries his powers on
lower planes after his attack has failed on
the highest thought.
These desultory remarks on the Specu
lative, may be closed with a few illustra
tions of whSt has been said of the negative.
I. Everything must have limits that
mark it off from other things, and these
limits are its negations, in which it ceases.
5
II. It must likewise have qualities which
distinguish it from others, but these
likewise are negatives in the sense that
they exclude it from them. Its determin
ing by means of qualities is the making
it not this and not that, but exactly what
it is. Thus the affirmation of anything is
at the same time the negation of others.
III. Not only is the negative manifest
in the above general and abstract form,
but its penetration is more specific. Ev
erything has distinctions from others in
general, but also from its other. Sweet is
opposed not only to other properties in
general, as white, round, soft, etc.,s but
to its other, or sour. So, too, white is
opposed to black, soft to hard, heat to
cold, etc., and in general a positive thing
to a negative thing. In this kind of rela
tive, the negative is more essential, for it
seems to constitute the intimate nature of
the opposites, so that each is reflected in
the other.
IV. More remarkable are the appear
ances of the negative in nature. The elementyire is a negative which destroys the
form of the combustible. It reduces or
ganic substances to inorganic elements,
and is that which negates the organic.
Air is another negative element. It acts
upon all terrestrial elements ; upon water,
converting it into invisible vapor; upon
metals, reducing them to earths through
corrosion—eating up iron to form rust,
rotting wood into mould—destructive
or negative alike to the mineral
and vegetable world, like fire, to which
it has a speculative affinity. The grand
type of all negatives in nature, such as
air and fire, is Time, the great devourer, and archetype of all changes and
movements in nature.
Attraction is
another appearance of the negative. It
is a manifestation in some body of an es
sential connection with another which is
not it; or rather it is an embodied selfcontradiction : “that other (the sun)
which is not me (the earth) is my true
being.” Of course its own being is its
own negation, then.
Thus, too, the plant is negative to the
inorganic—it assimilates it; the animal is
negative to the vegetable world.
�6
Herbert Spencer.
As we approach these higher forms of
negation, we see the negative acting
against itself, and this constitutes a pro
cess. The food that life requires, which
it negates in the process of digestion, and
assimilates, is, in the life process, again
negated, eliminated from the organism,
and replaced by new elements. A nega
tion is made, and this is again negated.
But the higher form of negation appears
in the generic ; “ The species lives and the
individual dies.” The generic continually
transcends the individual—going forth to
new individuals and deserting the old—
a process of birth and decay, both nega
HERBERT
CHAPTER I.
THE CRISIS IN NATURAL SCIENCE.
During the past twenty years a revolu
tion has been working in physical science.
Within the last ten it has come to the sur
face, and is now rapidly spreading into
all departments of mental activity.
Although its centre is to be found in the
doctrine of the £-'Correlation of Forces,” it
would be a narrow view that counted only
the expounders of this doctrine, numerous
as they are; the spirit of this movement
inspires a heterogeneous multitude—Car
penter, Grove, Mayer, Faraday, Thompson,
Tyndall and Helmholtz ; Herbert Spencer,
Stuart Mill, Buckle, Draper, Lewes, Lecky,
Max Muller, Marsh, Liebig, Darwin and
Agassiz ; these names, selected at random,
are suggested on account of the extensive
circulation of their books. Every day the
press announces some new name in this
field of research.
What is the character of the old which
is displaced, and of the new which gets
established ?
By way of preliminary, it must be re
marked that there are observable in mod
ern times three general phases of culture,
more or less historic.
The first phase is thoroughly dogmatic:
it accepts as of like validity metaphysical
tive processes. In conscious Spirit both
are united in one movement. The generic
here enters the individual as pure ego—
the undetermined possibility of all deter
minations. Since it is. undetermined,
it is negative to all special deter
minations. But this ego not only exists as
subject, but also as objeet—a process of
self-determination or self-negation. And
this negation or particularization contin
ually proceeds from one object to another,
and remains conscious under the whole,
not dying, as the mere animal does, in the
transition from individual to individual.
This is the aperçu of Immortality.
SPENCER.
abstractions, and empirical observations.
It has not arrived at such a degree of
clearness as to perceive contradictions be
tween form and content. For the most
part, it is characterized by a reverence for
external authority. With the revival of
learning commences the protest of spirit
against this phase. Descartes and Lord
Bacon begin the contest, and are followed
by the many — Locke, Newton, Leibnitz,
Clark, and the rest. All are animated with
the spirit of that time — to come to the
matter in hand without so much mediation.
Thought wishes to rid itself of its fetterB ;
religious sentiment, to get rid of forms.
This reaction against the former stage,
which has been called by Hegel the meta
physical, finds a kind of climax in the in
tellectual movement just preceding the
French revolution. Thought no longer is
contented to say “ Cogito, ergo sum,” ab
stractly, but applies the doctrine in all di
rections, “I think; in that deed, I am.”
“ I am a man only in so far as I think. In
so far as I think, I am an essence. What I
get from others is not mine. What I can
comprehend, or dissolve in my reason, that
is mine.” It looks around and spies insti
tutions—“ clothes of spirit,” as Herr Tcufelsdroeck calls them. “ What are you
doing here, you sniveling priest ?” says
Voltaire: “you are imposing delusions
�Herbert Spencer.
upon society for your own aggrandizement.
I had no part or lot in making the church ;
cogito, ergo sum; I will only have over me
what I put there !”
“ I see that all these complications of
society are artificial,” adds Rousseau;
“man has made them ; they are not good,
and let us tear them down and make
anew.” These utterances echo all over
France and Europe. “ The state is merely
a machine by which the few exploiter the
many”—“ off with crowns !” Thereupon
they snatch off the crown of poor Louis,
and his head follows with it. “Reason”
is enthroned and dethroned. Thirty years
of war satiates at length this negative sec
ond period, and the third phase begins.
Its characteristic is to be constructive, not
to accept the heritage of the past with pas
sivity, noi’ wantonly to destroy, but to
realize itself in the world of objectivity—
the world of laws and institutions.
The first appearance of the second phase
of consciousness is characterized by the
grossest inconsistencies. It says in gene
ral, (see D’Holbach’s “ Systeme de la Na
ture”: “The immediate, only, is true;
what we know by our senses, alone has
reality ; all is matter and force.” But in
this utterance it is unconscious that matter
and force are purely general concepts, and
not objects of immediate consciousness.
What we see and feel is not matter or
force in general, but only some special
form. The self-refutation of this phase
may be exhibited as follows :
I. “What is known is known through
the senses : it is matter and force.”
II. But by the senses, the particular only
is perceived, and this can never be matter,
but merely a form. The general is a medi
ated result, and not an object of the senses.
III. Hence, in positing matter and force
as the content of sensuous knowing, they
unwittingly assert mediation to be the
content of immediateness.
The decline of this period of science re
sults from the perception of the contradic
tion involved. Kant was the first to show
this; his labors in this field may be
summed up thus;
The universal and necessary is not an
empirical result. (General laws cannot be
7
sensuously perceived.) The constitution
of the mind itself, furnishes the ground for
it :—first, we have an a priori basis (time
and space) necessarily presupposed as the
condition of all sensuous perception ; and
then we have categories presupposed as the
basis of every generalization whatever.
Utter any general proposition : for example
the one above quoted—“ all is matter and
force”—and you merely posit two cate
gories— Inherence and Causality — as ob
jectively valid. In all universal and neces
sary propositions we announce only the
subjective conditions of experience, and
not anything in and for itself true (i. e.
applicable to things in themselves).
At once the popular side of this doctrine
began to take effect. il We know only phe
nomena; the true object in itself we do
not know.”
This doctrine of phenomenal knowing
was outgrown in Germany at the com
mencement of the present century. In
1791—ten years after the publication of
the Critique of Pure Reason—the deep
spirit of Fichte began to generalize Kant’s
labors, and soon he announced the legiti
mate results of the doctrine. Schelling
and Hegel completed the work of trans
forming what Kant had left in a negative
state, into an affirmative system of truth.
The following is an outline of the refuta
tion of Kantian scepticism :
I. Kant reduces all objective knowledge
to phenomenal : we furnish the form of
knowing, and hence whatever we announce
in general concerning it—and all that we
call science has, of course, the form of
generality—is merely our subjective forms,
and does not belong to the thing in itself.
II. This granted, say the later philoso
phers, it follows that the subjective swal
lows up all and becomes itself the univer
sal (subject and object of itself), and
hence Reason is the true substance of the
universe. Spinoza’s substance is thus seen
to become subject. We partake of God as
intellectually seeing, and we see only God
as object, which Malebranche and Berkeley
held with other Platonists.
1. The categories (e. g. Unity, Reality,
Causality, Existence, etc.) being merely
subjective, or given by the constitution of
�8
Herbert Spencer.
the mind itself—for such universals are
presupposed by all experience, and hence
not derived from it—it follows :
2. If we abstract what we know to be
subjective, that we abstract all possibility
of a thing in itself, too. For “ existence”
is a category, and hence if subjective, we
may reasonably conclude that nothing ob
jective can have existence.
3. Hence, since one category has no pre
ference over another, and we cannot give
one of them objectivity without granting it
to all others, it follows that there can be
no talk of noumena, or of things in them
selves, existing beyond the reach of the
mind, for such talk merely applies what it
pronounces to be subjective categories,
(existence) while at the same time it de
nies the validity of their application.
III. But since we remove the supposed
“ noumena,” the so-called phenomena are
not opposed any longer to a correlate be
yond the intelligence, and the noumenon
proves to be mind itself.
An obvious corollary from this is, that by
the self-determination of mind in pure
thinking we shall find the fundamental
laws of all phenomena.
Though the Kantian doctrine soon gave
place in Germany to deeper insights, it
found its way slowly to other countries.
Comte and Sir Wm. Hamilton have made
the negative results very widely known—
the former, in natural science ; the latter,
in literature and philosophy. Most of the
writers named at the beginning are more or
less imbued with Comte’s doctrines, while
a few follow Hamilton. For rhetorical
purposes, the Hamiltonian statement is far
superior to all others; for practical pur
poses, the Comtian. The physicist wishing
to give his undivided attention to empiri
cal observation, desires an excuse for neg
lecting pure thinking ; he therefore refers
to the well-known result of philosophy,
that we cannot know anything of ultimate
causes—we are limited to phenomena and
laws. Although it must be conceded that
this consolation is somewhat similar to
that of the ostrich, who cunningly con
ceals his head in the sand when annoyed
by the hunters, yet great benefit has
thereby accrued to science through the
undivided zeal of the investigators thus
consoled.
When, however, a sufficiently large col
lection has been made, and the laws are
sought for in the chaotic mass of observa
tions, then thought must be had. Thought
is the only crucible capable of dissolving
“ the many into the one.” Tycho Brahe
served a good purpose in collecting obser
vations, but a Kepler was required to dis
cern the celestial harmony involved therein.
This discovery of laws and relations, or
of relative unities, proceeds to the final
stage of science, which is that of the abso
lute comprehension.
Thus modern science, commencing with
the close of the metaphysical epoch, has
three stages or phases :
I. The first rests on mere isolated facts
of experience ; accepts the first phase of
things, or that which comes directly before
it, and hence may be termed the Btage of
immediateness.
II. The second relates its thoughts to
one another and compares them ; it developes inequalities; tests one through an
other, and discovers dependencies every
where ; since it learns that the first phase
of objects is phenomenal, and depends up
on somewhat lying beyond it; since it de
nies truth to the immediate, it may be
termed the stage of mediation.
III. A final stage which considers a phe
nomenon in its totality, and thus seizes it
in its noumenon, and is the stage of the
comprehension.
To resume: the first is that of sensuous
knowing; the second, that of reflection (the
understanding); the third, that of the rea
son (or the speculative stage).
In the sensuous knowing, we have crude,
undigested masses all co-ordinated; each
is in and for itself, and perfectly valid
without the others. But as soon as re
flection enters, dissolution is at work.
Each is thought in sharp contrast with the
rest; contradictions arise on every hand.
The third stage finds its way out of these
quarrelsome abstractions, and arrives at a
synthetic unity, at a system, wherein the
antagonisms are seen to form an organism.
The first stage of the development closes
with attempts on all hands to put the re
�9
Herbert Spencer.
suits in an encyclopaediacal form. Hum
boldt’s Cosmos is a good example of this
tendency, manifested so ■widely. Matter,
masses, and functions are the subjects of
investigation.
Reflection investigates functions and
seizes the abstract category of force, and
straightway we are in the second stage.
Matter, as such, loses its interest, and “cor
relation of forces” absorbs all attention.
Force is an arrogant category and will
not be co-ordinated with matter; if ad
mitted, we are led to a pure dynamism.
This will become evident as follows :
I. Force implies confinement (to give it
direction) ; it demands, likewise, an “ oc
casion,” or soliciting force to call it into
activity.
II. But it cannot be confined except by
force; its occasion must be a force like
wise.
III. Thus, since its confinement and “oc
casion” are forces, force can only act upon
forces—upon matter only in so far as that
is a force. Its nature requires confinement
in order to manifest it, and hence it can
not act or exist except in unity with other
forces which likewise have the same de
pendence upon it that it has upon them.
Hence a force has no independent subsist
ence, but is only an element of a combination
of opposed forces, which combination is a
unity existing in an opposed manner (or
composed of forces in a Btate of tension).
This deeper unity which we come upon as
the ground of force is properly named law.
From this, two corollaries are to be
drawn : (I.) That matter is merely a name
for various forces, as resistance, attraction
and repulsion, etc. (2.) That force is no
ultimate category, but, upon reflection, is
seen to rest upon law as a deeper category
(not law as a mere similarity of phe
nomena, but as a true unity underlying
phenomenal multiplicity).
From the nature of the category of force
we see that whoever adopts it as the ulti
mate, embarks on an ocean of dualism, and
instead of “ seeing everywhere the one and
all” as did Xenophanes, he will see every
where the self opposed, the contradictory.
The crisis which science has now reached
is of this nature. The second stage is at
its commencement with the great bulk of
scientific men.
To illustrate the self-nugatory character
ascribed to this stage we shall adduce
some of the most prominent positions of
Herbert Spencer, whom we regard as the
ablest exponent of this movement. These
contradictions are not to be deprecated, as
though they indicated a decline of thought ;
on the contrary, they show an increased ac
tivity, (though in the stage of mere reflec
tion,) and give us good omens for the future.
The era of .stupid mechanical thinkers is
over, and we have entered upon the active,
chemical stage of thought, wherein the
thinker is trained to consciousness con
cerning his abstract categories, which, as
Hegel says, “ drive him around in their
whirling circle.”
Now that the body of scientific men are
turned in this direction, we behold a vast
upheaval towards philosophic thought ; and
this is entirely unlike the isolated pheno
menon (hitherto observed in history) of a
single group of men lifted above the sur
rounding darkness of their age into clear
ness. We do not have such a phenomenon
in our time ; it is the spirit of the nine
teenth century to move by masses.
CHAPTER II.
THE “ FIRST PRINCIPLES5’ OF THE “UNKNOW
ABLE.”
The British Quarterly speaking of Spen
cer, says : “ These i First Principles ’ are
merely the foundation of a system of Phil
osophy, bolder, more elaborate and com
prehensive, perhaps, than any other which
has been hitherto designed in England.”
The persistence and sincerity, so gener
allyprevailing among these correlationists,
we have occasion to admire in Herbert
Spencer. He seems to be always ready to
sacrifice his individual interest for truth,
and is bold and fearless in uttering what
he believes it to be.
For critical consideration no better divi
sion can be found than that adopted in the
“ First Principles” by Mr. Spencer himself,
to wit: 1st, the unknowable, 2nd, the know
�10
Herbert Spencer.
able. Accordingly, let us examine first his
theory of
for the scepticism can only legitimately
conclude that the objective which we do
THE UNKNOWABLE.
know is of a nature kindred with reason:
When Mr. Spencer announces the con and that by an a priori necessity we can
tent of the “ unknowable” to be(e ultimate affirm that not only all knowable must
religious and scientific ideas,” we are re have this nature, but also all possible ex
minded at once of the old adage in juris istence must.
prudence—“ Ornnis definitio in jure civili
In this we discover that the mistake on
est periculosa
the definition is liable to the part of the sceptic consists in taking
prove self-contradictory in practice. So self-conscious intelligence as something
when we have a content assigned to the one-sided or subjective, whereas it must
unknowable we at once inquire, whence be, according to its very definition, subject
come the distinctions in the unknowable? and object in one, and thus universal.
If unknown they are not distinct to us.
The difficulty underlying this stage of
When we are told that Time, Space, Force, consciousness is that the mind has not
Matter, God, Creation, etc., are unknow- been cultivated to a clear separation of
ables, we must regard these words as cor the imagination from the thinking. As
responding to no distinct objects, but Sir Wm. Hamilton remarks, (Metaphysics,
rather as all of the same import to us. It p. 487,) “Vagueness and confusion are
should be always borne in mind that all produced by the confounding of objects so
universal negatives are self-contradictory. different as the images of sense and the
Moreover, since all judgments are made by unpicturable notions of intelligence.”
subjective intelligences, it follows that all
Indeed the great “law of the condition
general assertions concerning the nature ed” so much boasted of by that philoso
of the intellect affect the judgment itself. pher himself and his disciples, vanishes at
The naïveté with which certain writers once when the mentioned confusion is
wield these double-edged weapons is a avoided. Applied to space it results as
source of solicitude to the spectator.
follows :
When one says that he knows that he
I.— Thought, of Space.
knows nothing, he asserts knowledge and
1. Space, if finite, must be limited from
denies it in the same sentence. If one without;
says il all knowledge is relative,” as Spen
2. But such external limitations would
cer does, (p. 68, et seq., of First Principles,) require space to exist in ;
he of course asserts that his knowledge of
3. And hence the supposed limits of
the fact is relative and not absolute. If a space that were to make it finite do in fact
distinct content is asserted of ignorance, continue it.
the same contradiction occurs.
It appears, therefore, that space is of
The perception of this principle by the such a nature that it can only end in, or be
later German philosophers at once led limited by itself, and thus is universally
them out of the Kantian nightmare, into continuous or infinite.
positive truth. The principle may be ap
II.—Imagination of Space.
plied in general to any subjective scepti
cism. The following is a general scheme
If the result attained by pure thought is
that will apply to all particular instances : correct, space is infinite, and if so, it can
I. “We cannot know things in them not be imagined. If, however, it should
selves; all our knowledge is subjective ; it be found possible to compass it by imagi
is confined to our own states and changes.” nation, it must be conceded that there
II. If this is so, then still more is what really is a contradiction in the intelligence.
we name the ‘objective” only a state or That the result of such an attempt coin
change of us as subjective; it is a mere cides with our anticipations we have Ham
fiction of the mind so far as it is regarded ilton’s testimony—“ imagination sinks ex
as a “beyond” or thing in itself.
hausted.”
III. Hence we do know the objective ;
Therefore, instead of this result contra
�Herbert Spencer.
dieting the first, as Hamilton supposes, it
really confirms it.
In fact if the mind is disciplined to
separate pure thinking from mere imagin
ing, the infinite is not difficult to think.
Spinoza saw and expressed this by making
a distinction between “ infinitum actu
(or rationis),” and “infinitum imaginationis,” and his first and second axioms
are the immediate results of thought ele
vated to this clearness. This distinction
and his “ omnis determinatio est negatio,”
together with the development of the third
stage of thinking (according to reason),
(e sub quadam specie ceternitatis,”—these
distinctions are the priceless legacy of the
clearest-minded thinker of modern times;
and it behooves the critic of “human
knowing” to consider well the results that
the “human mind” has produced through
those great masters — Plato and Aristotle,
Spinoza and Hegel.
Herbert Spencer, however, not only be
trays unconsciousness of this distinction,
but employs it in far grosser and self
destructive applications.
On page 25,
(“ First Principles,”) he says : When on
the sea shore we note how the hulls of dis
tant vessels are hidden below the horizon,
and how of still remoter vessels only the
uppermost sails are visible, we realize with
tolerable clearness the slight curvature of
that portion of the sea’s surface which lies
before us. But when we seek in imagina
tion to follow out this curved surface as it
actually exists, slowly bending round until
all its meridians meet in a point eight
thousand miles below our feet, we find
ourselves utterly baffled. We cannot con
ceive in its real form and magnitude even
that small segment of our globe which ex
tends a hundred miles on every side of us,
much less the globe as a whole. The piece
of rock on which we stand can be mentally
represented with something like complete
ness ; we find ourselves able to think of
its top,"its sides, and its under surface at
the same time, or so nearly at the same
time that they seem all present in con
sciousness together; and so we can form
what we call a conception of the rock, but
to do the like with the earth we find im
possible.” “We form of the earth not a
11
conception properly so-called, but only a
symbolic conception.”
Conception here is held to be adequate
when it is formed of an object of a given
size; when the object is above that size the
conception thereof becomes symbolical.
Here we do not have the exact limit stated,
though we have an example given (a rock)
which is conceivable, and another (the
earth) which is not.
“ We must predicate nothing of objects
too great or too multitudinous to be men
tally represented, or we must make our
predications by means of extremely inade
quate representations of such objects, mere
symbols of them.” (27 page.)
But not only is the earth an indefinitely
multiple object, but so is the rock; nay,
even the smallest grain of sand. Suppose
the rock to be a rod in diameter; a micro
scope magnifying two and a half millions
of diameters would make its apparent mag
nitude as large as the earth. It is thus
only a question of relative distance from
the person conceiving, and this reduces it
to the mere sensuous image of the retina.
Remove the earth to the distance of the
moon, and our conception of it would, upon
these principles, become quite adequate.
But if our conception of the moon be held
inadequate, then must that of the rock or
the grain of sand be equally inadequate.
Whatever occupies space is continuous
and discrete ; i. e., may be divided into
parts. It is hence a question of relativity
whether the image or picture of it corre
spond to it.
The legitimate conclusion is that all our
conceptions are symbolic, and if that pro
perty invalidates their reliability, it fol
lows that we have no reliable knowledge
of things perceived, whether great or small.
Mathematical knowledge is conversant
with pure lines, points, and surfaces ; hence
it must rest on inconceivables.
But Mr. Spencer would by no means con
cede that we do not know the shape of the
earth, its size, and many other inconceiv
able things about it. Conception is thus
no criterion of knowledge, and all built
upon this doctrine (i. e. depending upon
the conceivability of a somewhat) falls to
the ground.
�12
Herbert Spencer.
But he applies it to the questions of the says : “ no other result would happen if I
divisibility of matter (page 50): “ If we went on forever.’")
say that matter is infinitely divisible, we
III. Pure thought, however, grasps this
commit ourselves to a supposition not process as a totality, and sees that it only
realizable in thought. We can bisect and arises through a self-relation. The “ pro
rebisect a body, and continually repeating gress ” is nothing but a return to itself,
the act until we reduce its parts to a size the same monotonous round. It would be
no longer physically divisible, may then a similar attempt to seek the end of a cir
mentally continue the process without cle by travelling round it, and one might
limit.”
make the profound remark : “ If mv pow
Setting aside conceivability as indiffer ers were equal to the task, I should doubt
ent to our knowledge or thinking, we have less come to the end.” This difficulty
the following solution of this point:
vanishes as soon as the experience is made
I. That which is extended may be bi that the line returns into itself. “ It is the
sected (i. e. has two halves).
same thing whether said once or repeated
II. Thus two extensions arise, which, in forever,” says Simplicius, treating of this
turn, have the same property of divisibil paradox.
ity that the first one had.
The “Infinite Progress” is the most
III. Since, then, bisection is a process stubborn fortress of Scepticism. By it
entirely indifferent to the nature of exten our negative writers establish the imposion (i. e. does not change an extension tency of Reason for various ulterior pur
into two non-extendeds), it follows that poses. Some wish to use it as a lubrica
body is infinitely divisible.
ting fluid upon certain religious dogmas
We do not have to test this in imagina that cannot otherwise be swallowed. Oth
tion to verify it; and this very truth must ers wish to save themselves the trouble of
be evident to him who says that the pro thinking out the solutions to the Problem
gress must be Ci continued without limit.” of Life. But the Sphinx devours him who
For if we examine the general conditions does not faithfully grapple with, and solve
under which any such “ infinite progress ” her enigmas.
is possible, we find them to rest upon the
Mephistopheles (a good authority on this
presupposition of a real infinite, thus :
subject) says of Faust, whom he finds
grumbling at the littleness of man’s mind:
Infinite Progress.
“ Verachte nur Vernunft und Wissenchaft,
I. Certain attributes are found to be
Des Menschen allerhöchste Kraft!
long to an object, and are not affected by
Und hätt’ er sich auch nicht dem Teufel übergehen,
Er müsste doch zu Grunde gehen.”
a certain process. (For example, divisi
bility as a process in space does not affect
Only prove that there is a large field of
the continuity of space, which makes that the unknowable and one has at once the
process possible. Or again, the process of vade mecum for stupidity. Crude reflec
limiting space does not interfere with its tion can pour in its distinctions into a sub
continuity, for space will not permit any ject, and save itself from the consequences
limit except space itself.)
by pronouncing the basis incomprehensi
II. When the untutored reflection en ble. It also removes all possibility of
deavors to apprehend a relation of this Theology, or of the Piety of the Intellect,
nature, it seizes one side of the dualism and leaves a very narrow margin for re
and is hurled to the other. (It bisects ligious sentiment, or the Piety of the
space, and then finds itself before two ob Heart.
jects identical in nature with the first; it
The stage of Science represented by the
has effected nothing; it repeats the pro French Encyclopaedists was immediately
cess, and, by and by getting exhausted, hostile to each and every form of religion.
wonders whether it could meet a different This second stage, however, has a choice.
result if its powers of endurance were It can, like Hamilton or Mansel, let re
greater. Or else suspecting the true case, ligious belief alone, as pertaining to the
�Herbert Spencer.
unknown and unknowable—which may be
believed in as much as one likes ; or it may
44 strip off,” as Spencer does, u determina
tions from a religion,” by which it is dis
tinguished from other religions, and show
their truth to consist in a common doc
trine held by all, to-wit : 41 The truth of
things is unknowable.”
Thus the scientific man can baffle all at
tacks from the religious standpoint ; nay,
he can even elicit the most unbounded ap
proval, while he saps the entire structure
of Christianity.
Says Spencer (p. 4G) : 44 Science and Re
ligion agree in this, that the power which
the Universe manifests to us is utterly in
scrutable.” He goes on to show that
though this harmony exists, yet it is
broken by the inconsistency of Religion :
44 For every religion, setting out with the
tacit assertion of a mystery, forthwith
proceeds to give some solution of this
mystery, and so asserts that it is not a
mystery passing human comprehension.”
In this confession he admits that all relig
ions agree in professing to reveal the solu
tion of the Mystery of the Universe to man ;
and they agree, moreover, that man, as
simply a being of sense and reflection, can
not comprehend the revelation ; but that
he must first pass through a profound me
diation—be regenerated, not merely in his
heart, but in intellect also. The misty
limitations (4<vagueness and confusion”)
of the imagination must give way to the
purifying dialectic of pure thought before
one can see the Eternal Verities.
These revelations profess to make known
the nature of the Absolute. They call the
Absolute 44 Him,” 44 Infinite,” 44 Self-cre
ated,” 44 Self-existent,” 44 Personal,” and
ascribe to this 44 Him” attributes implying
profound mediation. All definite forms
of religion, all definite theology, must at
once be discarded according to Spencer’s
principle. Self-consciousness, even, is re
garded as impossible by him (p. 65) :
44 Clearly a true cognition of self implies a
state in which the knowing and known are
one, in which subject and object are iden
tified ; and this Mr. Mansel rightly holds
to be the annihilation of both.” He con
siders it a degradation (p. 109) to apply
13
personality to God: 44 Is it not possible
that there is a mode of being as much
transcending intelligence and will as these
transcend mechanical motion ?” And
again (p. 112) he holds that the mere
44 negation of absolute knowing contains
more religion than all dogmatic theology.”
(P. 121,) 4<A11 religions-are envelopes of
truth, which reveal to the lower and con
ceal to the higher.” (P. 66,) 44 Objective
and subjective things are alike inscrutable
in their substance and genesis.” 44 Ulti
mate religious and scientific ideas (p. 68)
alike turn out to be mere symbols of the
actual, and not cognitions of it.” (P. 69,)
44 We come to the negative result that the
reality existing behind all appearances
must ever be unknown.”
In these passages we see a dualism pos
ited in this form : “ Everything immediate
is phenomenal, a manifestation of the hid
den and inscrutable essence.” This es
sence is the unknown and unknowable ;
yet it manifests itself in the immediate or
phenomenal.
The first stage of thought was uncon
scious that it dealt all the time with a
mediated result (a dualism) while it as
sumed an immediate ; that it asserted all
truth to lie in the sensuous object, while it
named at the same time “matter and/orce,”
categories of reflection.
The second stage has got over that dif
ficulty, but has fallen into another. For
if the phenomenon manifested the essence,
it could not be said to be 44 unknowable,
hidden, and inscrutable.” But if the es
sence is not manifested by the phenome
non, then we have the so-called phenome
non as a self-existent, and therefore inde
pendent of the so-called essence, which
stands coordinated to it as another exist
ent, which cannot be known because it
does not manifest itself to us. Hence the
44 phenomenon ” is no phenomenon, or
manifestation of aught but itself, and the
44 essence” is simply a fiction of the phil
osopher.
Hence his talk about essence is purely
gratuitous, for there is not shown the need
of one.
A dialectical consideration of essence
and phenomenon will result as follows :
�14
Herbert Spencer.
Essence and PhenomenonI. If essence is seized as independent
or absolute being, it may be taken in two
senses:
a. As entirely unaffected by “ other
ness” (or limitation) and entirely unde
termined ; and this would be pure nothing,
for it cannot distinguish itself or be dis
tinguished from pure nothing.
b. As relating to itself, and hence
making itself a duality—becoming its own
other; in this case the “other” is a van
ishing one, for it is at the same time iden
tical and non-identical — a process in
which the essence may be said to appear
or become phenomenal. The entire pro
cess is the absolute or self-related (and
hence independent). It is determined, but
by itself, and hence not in a finite man
ner.
II. The Phenomenon is thus seen to
arise through the self-determination of
essence, and has obviously the following
characteristics:
a. It is the “ other ” of the essence, and
yet the own self of the essence existing in
this opposed manner, and thus self-nuga
tory; and this non-abiding character gives
it the name of phenomenon (or that which
merely appears, but is no permanent es
sence).
b. If this were simply another to the
essence, and not the eelf-opposition of the
same, then it would be through itself, and
itself the essence in its first (or immediate)
phase. But this is the essence only as ne
gated, or as returned from the otherness.
c. This self-nugatoriness is seen to arise
from the contradiction involved in its be
ing other to itself, i. e. outside of its true
being. Without this self-nugatoriness it
would be an abiding, an essence itself, and
hence no phenomenon ; with this self-nu
gatoriness the phenomenon simply exhib
its or “ manifests ” the essence ; in fact,
with the appearance and its negation taken
together, we have before us a totality of
essence and phenomenon.
III. Therefore : a. The phenomenal is
such because it is not an abiding some
what. It is dependent upon other or es
sence. b. Whatever it posesses belongs
to that upon which it depends, i. e. be
longs to essence, c. In the self-nugatoriness of the phenomenal we have the entire
essence manifested.
This latter point is the important result,
and may be stated in a less strict and more
popular form thus : The real world (socalled) is said to be in a state of change
origination and decay. Things pass away
and others come in their places. Under
this change, however, there is a permanent
called Essence.
The imaginative thinking finds it impos
sible to realize such an abiding as exists
through the decay of all external form,
and hence pronounces it unknowable. But
pure thought seizes it, and finds it a pure
self-relation or process of return to itself,
which accordingly has duality, thus:
a. The positing or producing of a some
what or an immediate, and, b. The cancel
ling of the same. In this duality of be
ginning and ceasing, this self-relation
completes its circle, and is thus, c. the en
tire movement.
All categories of the understanding
(cause and effect, matter and form, possi
bility, etc.) are found to contain this
movement when dissolved. And hence
they have self-determination for their pre
supposition and explanation. It is un
necessary to add that unless one gives up
trying to imagine truth, that this is all
very absurd reasoning. (At the end of the
sixth book of Plato’s Republic, ch. xxi.,
and in the seventh book, ch.xiii., one may
see how clearly this matter was understood
two thousand, and more, years ago.)
To manifest or reveal is to make known ;
and hence to speak of the “manifestation
of a hidden and inscrutable essence” is to
speak of the making known of an unknow
able.
Mr. Spencer goes on; no hypothesis of
the universe is possible—creation not con
ceivable, for that would be something out
of nothing—self-existence not conceivable,
for that involves unlimited past time.
He holds that “all knowledge is rela
tive,'” for all explanation is the reducing
of a cognition to a more general. He says,
(p. G9,) “ Of necessity, therefore, explana
tion must eventually bring us down to the
inexplicable—the deepest truth which we
�Herbert Spencer.
15
can get at must be unaccountable.” This will prove a confused affair; especially
much valued insight has a positive side as since to the above-mentioned “inscruta
well as the negative one usually developed : bility” of the absolute, he adds the doc
I. (a.) To explain something we sub trine of an “ obscure consciousness of it,”
holding, in fact, that the knowable is only
sume it under a more general.
(6.) The ee summum genus” cannot be a relative, and that it cannot be known
without at the same time possessing a
subsumed, and
knowledge of the unknowable.
(c.) Hence is inexplicable.
(P. 82) he says : “ A thought involves
II. But those who conclude from this
that we base our knowledge ultimately relation, difference and likeness; what
upon faiih (from the supposed fact that we ever does not present each of them does
not admit of cognition. And hence we
cannot prove our premises) forget that—
(a.) If the subsuming process ends in an may say that the unconditioned as present
unknown, then all the subsuming has re ing none of these, is trebly unthinkable.”
sulted in nothing; for to subsume some And yet he says, (p. 96): “ The relative is
thing under an unknown does not explain itself inconceivable except as related to a
it. (Plato’s Republic, Book VII, chap, xiii.) real non-relative.”
We will leave this infinite self-contradic
(&.) The more general, however, is the
more simple, and hence the summum tion thus developed, and turn to the posi
genus” is the purely simple—it is Being. tions established concerning the knowable.
But the simpler the clearer, and the pure They concern the nature of Force, Matter
and Motion, and the predicates set up are
simple is the absolutely clear.
(c.) At the i( summum genus” subsump “persistence,” “indestructibility” and
tion becomes the principle of identity— similar.
THE KNOWABLE.
being is being; and thus stated we have
Although in the first part “ conceivabil
simple self-relation as the origin of all
ity” was shown to be utterly inadequate
clearness and knowing whatsoever.
III. Hence it is seen that it is not the as a test of truth ; that with it we could not
mere fact of subsumption that makes some even establish that the earth is round, or
thing clear, but rather it is the reduction that space is infinitely continuous, yet here
Mr. Spencer finds that inconceivability is
of it to identity.
In pure being as the summum genus, the the most convenient of all positive proofs.
The first example to be noticed is his
mind contemplates the pure form of know
ing—“ a is a,” or “ a subject is a predi proof of the compressibility of matter (p.
cate”—(a is b). The pure “is” is the 51): “It is an established mechanical
empty form of mental affirmation, the pure truth that if a body moving at a given ve
copula; and thus in the summum genus locity, strikes an equal body at rest in
the mind recognizes the pure form of itself. such wise that the two move on together,
All objectivity is at this point dissolved their joint velocity will be but half that of
into the thinking, and hence the subsump the striking body. Now it is a law of
tion becomes identity—(being=e</o, or “co- which the negative is inconceivable, that
gito, ergo sum” the process turns round in passing from any one degree of magni
and becomes synthetic, (“dialectic” or tude to another all intermediate degrees
‘‘genetic,” as called by some). From this must be passed through. Or in the case
it is evident that self-consciousness is the before us, a body moving at velocity 4,
cannot, by collision, be reduced-to velocity
basis of all knowledge.
2, without passing through all velocities
between 4 and 2. But were matter truly
CHAPTER III.
solid — were its units absolutely incom
THE “ FIRST PRINCIPLES” OF THE “ KNOWpressible fand in unbroken contact — this
ABLE.”
“ law of continuity,” as it is called, would
As might be expected from Spencer’s be broken in every case of collision. For
treatment of the unknowable, the knowable when, of two such units, one moving at ve
�16
Herbert Spencer.
locity 4 strikes another at rest, the striking
unit must have its velocity 4 instantane
ously reduced to velocity 2; must pass
from velocity 4 tq velocity 2 without any
lapse of time, and without passing through
intermediate velocities; must be moving
with velocities 4 and 2 at the same instant,
which is impossible.” On page 57 he ac
knowledges that any transition from one
rate of motion to another is inconceivable ;
hence it does not help the matter to “pass
through intermediate velocities.” It is
just as great a contradiction and just as
inconceivable that velocity 4 should be
come velocity 3.9999-f-, as it is that it
should become velocity 2; for no change
whatever of the motion can be thought (as
he cofifesses) without having two motions
in one time. Motion, in fact, is the syn
thesis of place and time, and cannot be
comprehended except as their unity. The
argument here quoted is only adduced by
Mr. S. for the purpose of antithesis to other
arguments on the other side as weak as
itself.
On page 241, Mr. Spencer deals with the
question of the destructibility of matter:
“The annihilation of matter is unthink
able for the same reason that the creation
of matter is unthinkable.” (P. 54): “ Mat
ter in its ultimate nature is as absolutely
incomprehensible as space and time.” The
nature of matter is unthinkable, its crea
tion or destructibility is unthinkable, and
in this style of reasoning we can add that
its indestructibility is likewise unthinkable;
in fact the argument concerning self-exis
tence will apply here. (P. 31) : “ Self
existence necessarily means existence with
out a beginning; and to form a conception
of self-existence is to form a conception of
existence without a beginning. Now by
no mental effort can we do this. To con
ceive existence through infinite past time,
implies the conception of infinite past time,
which is an impossibility.” Thus, too,
we might argue in a strain identical; in
destructibility implies existence through
infinite future time, but by no mental effort
can infinite time be conceived. ^And thus,
too, we prove and disprove the persistence
of force and motion. When occasion re
quires, the cver-convenient argument of
££ inconceivability” enters. It reminds
one of Sir Wm. Hamilton’s “imbecility”
upon which are based “ sundry of the most
important phenomena of intelligence,”
among which he mentions the category of
causality. If causality is founded upon
imbecility, and all experience upon it, it
follows that all empirical knowledge rests
upon imbecility.
On page 247, our author asserts that the
first law of motion “ is in our flay being
merged in the more general one, that mo
tion, like matter, is indestructible.” It is
interesting t<5 observe that this so-called
“ First law of motion” rests on no better
basis than very crude reflection.
“When not influenced by external forces,
a moving body will go on in a straight
line with a uniform velocity,” is Spencer’s
statement of it.
This abstract, supposed law has neces
sitated much scaffolding in Natural Phil
osophy that is otherwise entirely unneces
sary; it contradicts the idea of momen
tum, and is thus refuted :
I. A body set in motion continues in
motion after the impulse’ has ceased from
without, for the reason that it retains mo
mentum.
II. Momentum is the product of weight
by velocity, and weight is the attraction of
the body in question to another body exter
nal to it. If all bodies external to the
moving body were entirely removed, the
latter would have no weight, and hence
the product of weight by velocity would
be zero.
III. The “ external influences” referred
to in the so-called “ law,” mean chiefly
attraction. Since no body could have mo
mentum except through weight, another
name for attraction, it follows that all free
motion has reference to another body, and
hence is curvilinear; thus we are rid of
that embarrassing ££ straight line motion”
which gives so much trouble in mechanics.
It has all to be reduced back again through
various processes to curvilinear movement.
We come, finally, to consider the central
point of this system ;
THE CORRELATION OF FORCES.
Speaking of persistence of force, Mr.
Spencer concedes (p. 252) that this doc
�Herbert Spencer.
trine is not demonstrable from experience.
He says (p. 254): “Clearly the persistence
of force is an ultimate truth of which no
inductive proof is possible.” (P. 255) :
“By the persistence of force we really
mean the persistence of some power which
transcends our knowledge and conception.”
(P. 257): “The indestructibility of matter
and the continuity of motion we saw to be
really .corollaries from the impossibility of
establishing in thought a relation between
something and nothing.” (Thus what
was established as a mental impotence is
now made to have objective validity.)
“Our inability to conceive matter and
motion destroyed is our inability to sup
press consciousness itself.” (P. 258) :
“ Whoever alleges that the inability to con
ceive a beginning or end of the universe
is a negative result of our mental struc
ture, cannot deny that our consciousness
of the universe as persistent is a positive
result of our mental structure. And this
persistence of the universe is the persist
ence of that unknown cause, power, or
force, which is manifested to us through
all phenomena.” This “ positive result of
our mental structure” is said to rest on
our ££ inability to conceive the limitation
of consciousness” which is ££ simply the
obverse of our inability to put an end to
the thinking subject while still continuing
to think.” (P. 257) : “To think of some
thing becoming nothing, would involve
that this substance of consciousness having
just existed under a given form, should
next assume no form, or should cease to
be consciousness.”
It will be observed here that he is en
deavoring te solve the First Antinomy of
Kant, and that his argument in this place
differs from Kant’s proof of the “ Antithe
sis” in this, that while Kant proves that
“The world [or universe] has no begin
ning,” etc., by the impossibility of the
origination of anything in a ££ void time,”
that Mr. Spencer proves the same thing by
asserting it to be a “positive result of our
mental structure,” and then proceeds to
show that this is a sort of “inability”
which has a subjective explanation ; it is,
according to him, merely the “ substance
17
of consciousness” objectified and regarded
as the law of reality.
But how is it with the “Thesis” to that
Antinomy, “The world has a beginning
in time ?” Kant proves this apagogically by showing the absurdity of an “ in
finite series already elapsed.” That our
author did not escape the contradiction
has already been shown in our remarks
upon the “indestructibility of matter.”
While he was treating of the unknowable
it was his special province to prove that
self-existence is unthinkable. (P. 31) : He
says it means ££ existence without a begin
ning,” and “to conceive existence through
infinite past time, implies the conception
of infinite past time, which is an impos
sibility.” Thus we have the Thesis of the
Antinomy supported in his doctrine of the
“ unknowable,” and the antithesis of the
same proved in the doctrine of the know
able.
We shall next find him involved with
Kant’s Third Antinomy.
The doctrine of the correlation is stated
in the following passages :
(P. 280): “ Those modes of the un
knowable, which we call motion, heat,
light, chemical affinity, etc., are alike
transformable into each other, and into
those modes of the unknowable which we
distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought:
these, in their turns, being directly or in
directly re-transformable into the original
shapes. That no idea or feeling arises,
save as a result of some physical force ex
pended in producing it, is fast becoming a
common-place of science; and whoever
duly weighs the evidence, will see that
nothing but an overwhelming bias in favor
of a preconceived theory can explain its
non-acceptance. How this metamorphosis
takes place—how a force existing as mo
tion, heat, or light, can become a mode of
consciousness—how it is possible for aerial
vibrations to generate the sensation we
call sound, or for the forces liberated by
chemical changes in the brain to give rise
to emotion—these are mysteries which it
is impossible to fathom.” (P. 284): “Each
manifestation of force can be interpreted
only as the effect of some antecedent force ;
�18
Herbert Spencer.
no matter whether it be an inorganic ac
tion, an animal movement, a thought, or a
feeling. Either this must be conceded, or
else it must be asserted that our successive
states of consciousness are self-created.”
“ Either mental energies as well as bodily
ones are quantitatively correlated to cer
tain energies expended in their production,
and to certain other energies they initiate ;
or else nothing must become something
and something, nothing. Since persistence
of force, being a datum of consciousness,
cannot be denied, its unavoidable corol
lary must be accepted.”
On p. 294 he supports the doctrine that
“ motion takes the direction of the least
resistance,” mentally as well as physically.
Here are some of the inferences to be
drawn from the passages quoted :
1. Every act is determined from with
out, and hence does not belong to the sub
ject in which it manifests itself. "
2. To change the course of a force, is to
make another direction “ that of the least
resistance,” or to remove or diminish a
resistance.
3. But to change a resistance requires
force, which (in motion) must act in “ the
direction of the least resistance,” and
hence it is entirely determined from with
out, and governed by the disposition of
the forces it meets.
4. Hence, of will, it is an absurdity to
talk; freedom or moral agency is an im
possible phantom.
5. That there is self-determination in
self-consciousness—that it is “self-cre
ated ”—is to Mr. Spencer the absurd al
ternative which at once turns the scale in
favor of the doctrine that mental phenom
ena are the productions of external
forces.
After this, what are we to Bay of the
following ? (P. 501): “ Notwithstanding
all evidence to the contrary, there will
probably have arisen in not a few minds
the conviction that the solutions which
have been given, along with those to be
derived from them, are essentially mate
rialistic. Let none persist in these mis
conceptions.” (P. 502): “Their implica
tions are no more materialistic than they
are spiritualistic, and no more spiritual
istic than they are materialistic.”
If we hold these positions by the side of
Kant’s Third Antinomy, we shall see that
they all belong to the proof of the “ Anti
thesis,” viz : “ There is no freedom, but
everything in the world happens accord
ing to the laws of nature.” The “Thesis,”
viz : “ That a causality of freedom is nec
essary to account fully for the phenomena
of the world,” he has not anywhere sup
ported. We find, in fact, only those
thinkers who have in some measure mas
tered the third phase of culture in thought,
standing upon the basis presented by
Kant in the Thesis. The chief point in
the Thesis maybe stated as follows: 1.
If everything that happens presupposes a
previous condition, (which the law of
causality states,) 2. This previous condi
tion cannot be a permanent (or have been
always in existence); for, if so, its conse
quence, or the effect, would have always
existed. Thus the previous condition must
be a thing which has happened. 3. With
this the whole law of causality collapses';
for (a) since each cause is an effect, (5) its
determining power escapes into a higher
member of the series, and, (c) unless the
law changes, wholly vanishes ; there result
an indefinite series of effects with no
cause ; each member of the series is a de
pendent, has its being in another, which
again has its being in another, and hence
cannot support the subsequent term.
Hence it is evident that this Antinomy
consists, first: in the setting up of the law
of causality as having absolute validity,
which is the antithesis. Secondly, the
experience is made that such absolute law
of causality is a self-nugatory one, and thus
it is to be inferred that causality, to be at
all, presupposes an origination in a “ self
moved.” as Plato calls it. Aristotle (Meta
physics, xi. 6-7, and ix. 8) exhibits this ul
timate as the “ self-active,” and the Schol
astics take the same, under the designation
<( actus purus,” for the definition of God.
The Antinomy thus reduced gives :
I. Thesis : Self-determination must lie
at the basis of all causality, otherwise
causality cannot be at all.
�Herbert Spencer.
II. Antithesis : If there is self-determin
ation, “ the unity of experience (which
leads us to look for a cause) is destroyed,
and hence no such case could arise in ex
perience.”
In comparing the two proofs it is at once
seen that they are of different degrees of
universality. The argument of the Thesis is
based upon the nature of the thing itself,
i. e. a pure thought; while that of the
Antithesis loses sight of the idea of
“ efficient ” cause, and seeks mere contin
uity in the sequence of time, and thus ex
hibits itself as the second stage of thought,
which leans on the staff of fancy, i. e. mere
representative thinking. This “ unity of
experience,” as Kant calls it, is the same
thing, stated in other words, that Spencer
refers to as the “ positive result of our
mental structure.” In one sense those are
true antinomies—those of Kant, Hamilton,
et al.—viz. in this : that the “ representa
tive” stage of thinking finds itself unable
to shake off the sensuouB picture, and think
“ sub quadani specie ceternitatis.” To the
mind disciplined to the third stage of
thought, these are no antinomies; Spinoza,
Leibnitz, Plato and Aristotle are not con
fused by them. The Thesis, properly
stated, is a true universal, and exhibits its
own truth, as that upon which the law of
causality rests; and hence the antithesis
itself—less universal—resting upon the
law of causality, is based upon the Thesis.
Moreover, the Thesis does not deny an in
finite succession in time and space, it only
states that there must be an efficient cause
—-just what the law of causalty states, but
shows, in addition, that this efficient cause
must be a “ self-determined.”
On page 282 we learn that, “The solar
heat is the final source of the force mani
fested by society.” “ It (the force of so
ciety) is based on animal and vegetable
products, and these in turn are dependent
on the light and heat of the sun.”
As an episode in this somewhat abstract
discussion, it may be diverting to notice
the question of priority of discovery,
touched upon in the following note (p.
454): “Until I recently consulted his
‘ Outlines of Astronomy’ on another ques
tion, I was not aware that, so far back as
19
1833, Sir John Herschel had enunciated
the doctrine that ‘ the sun’s rays are the
ultimate source of almost every motion
which takes place on the surface of the
earth.’ He expressly includes all geologic,
meteorologic, and vital actions; as also
those which we produce by the combus
tion of coal. The late George Stephenson
appears to have been wrongly credited
with this last idea.”
In order to add to the thorough discus
sion of this important question, we wish
to suggest the claims of Thomas Carlyle,
who, as far back as 1830, wrote the foling passage in his Sartor Resartus (Am.
ed. pp. 55-6): “ Well sang the Hebrew
Psalmist: ‘If I take the wings of the
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts
of the Universe, God is there.’ Thou, too,
0 cultivated reader, who too probably art
no psalmist, but a prosaist, knowing God
only by tradition, knowest thou any corner
of the world where at least force is not ?
The drop which thou shakest from thy wet
hand, rests not where it falls, but to-mor
row thou findest it swept away ; already,
on the wings of the north wind, it is near
ing the tropic of Cancer. How it came to
evaporate and not lie motionless ? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless, without
force, and dead ?
“ As I rode through the Schwartzwald,
I said to myself: That little fire which
glows starlike across the dark-growing
(nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith
bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to
replace thy lost horseshoe—is it a detach
ed, separated speck, cut off from the whole
universe, or indissolubly joined to the
whole ? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was
primarily kindled at the sun ; is fed by air
that circulates from beyond Noah’s deluge,
from beyond the Dog star; it is a little
ganglion, or nervous centre in the great
vital system of immensity.”
We have, finally, to consider the correl
ation theory in connection with equilib
rium.
I. Motion results from destroyed equi
librium. The whole totality does not cor
respond to itself, its ideal and real contra
dict each other. The movement is the re
storing of the equilibrium, or the bringing
�20
Herbert Spencer.
into unity of the ideal and real. To illus
trate : a spring (made of steel, rubber, or
any elastic material) has a certain form in
which it may exist without tension ; this
may be called the ideal shape, or simply
the ideal. If the spring is forced to as
sume another shape, its real shape becomes
different from the ideal; its equilibrium
is destroyed, and force is manifested as a
tendency to restore the equilibrium (or
unity of the ideal and real). Generalize
this : all forces have the same nature;
(a) expansive forces arise from the ideal
existing without—a gas, steam, for ex
ample, ideally takes up a more extended
space than it has really; it expands to fill
it. Or (6) contractive forces : the multi
plicity ideally exists within; e. g. attrac
tion of gravitation; matter trying to find
the centre of the earth, its ideal. The will
acts in this way: The ideal is changed
first, and draws the real after it. I first
destroy, in thought and will, the identity
of ideal and real; the tension resulting is
force. Thinking, since it deals with the
universal (or the potential and the actual)
is an original source of force, and, as will
result in the sequel from a reverse analysis
(see below, V. 3, c) the only source of force.
II. Persistence of force requires an unrestorable equilibrium ; in moving to re
store one equilibrium, it must destroy
another—its equivalent.
III. But this contradicts the above de
veloped conception of force as follows :
(a) Since force results from destroyed
equilibrium, it follows (Z>) that it requires
as much force to destroy the equilibrium
as is developed in the restoring of it (and
this notion is the basis of the correlation
theory). But (c) if the first equilibrium
(already destroyed) can only be restored
by the destroying of another equal to the
same, it has already formed an equilibrium
with the second, and the occasion of the
motion is removed.
If two forces are equal and opposed,
which will give way ?
By this dialectic consideration of force,
we learn the insufficiency of the theory of
correlation as the ultimate truth. Instead
of being “ the sole truth, which transcends
experience by underlying it ” (p. 258), we
are obliged to confess that this “ persist
ence of force” rests on the category of
causality; its thin disguise consists in the
substitution of other words for the meta
physical expression, “Every effect must
be equal to its cause.” And this, when
tortured in the crucible, confesses that
the only efficient cause is “ causi sui
hence the effect is equal to its cause, be
cause it is the cause.
And the correlation theory results in
showing that force cannot be, unless self
originated.
That self-determination is the inevitable
result, no matter what hypothesis be as
sumed, is also evident. Taking all counter
hypotheses and generalizing them, we have
this analysis:
I. Any and every being is determined
from without through another. (This theo
rem includes all anti-self-determination
doctrines.)
II. It results from this that any and
every being is dependent upon another and
is a finite one ; it cannot be isolated with
out destroying it. Hence it results that
every being is an element of a whole that
includes it as a subordinate moment.
III. Dependent being, as a subordinate
element, cannot be said to support any
thing attached to it, for its own support is
not in itself but in another, namely, the
whole that includes it. From this it re
sults that no dependent being can depend
upon another dependent being, but rather
upon the including whole.
The including whole is therefore not a
dependent; since it is for itself, and each
element is determined through it, and for
it, it may be called the negative unity (or
the unity which negates the independence
of the elements).
Remark.—A chain of dependent beings
collapses into one dependent being. De
pendence is not converted into independ
ence by simple multiplication. All de
pendence is thus an element of an inde
pendent whole.
IV. What is the character of this inde
pendent w’hole, this negative “unity I “Char
acter” means determination, and we are
prepared to sav that its determination can
not be through another, for then it would
�Herbert Spencer.
be a dependent, and we should be referred
again to the whole, including it. Its de
termination by which the multiplicity of
elements arises is hence its own self-deter
mination. Thus all finitude and depend
ence presupposes as its condition, selfdetermination.
V. Self-determination more closely ex
amined exhibits some remarkable results,
(which -will throw light on the discussion
of “ Essence and Phenomena” above):
(1.) It is “causa sui;” active and pas
sive; existing dually as determining and
determined ; this self-diremption produces
a distinction in itself which is again can
celled.
(2.) As determiner (or active, or cause),
it is the pure universal—the possibility of
any determinations. But as determined
(passive or effect) it is the special, the par
ticular, the one-sided reality that enters
into change.
(3.) But it is “ negative unity” of these
two sides, and hence an individual. The
pure universal w’hose negative relation to
itself as determiner makes the particular,
completes itself to individuality through
this act.
(a.) Since its pure universality is the
substrate of its determination, and at the
same time a self-related activity (or nega
tivity), it at once becomes its own object.
(6.) Its activity (limiting or determin
ing)— a pure negativity — turned to itself
as object, dissolves the particular in the
universal, and thus continually realizes
its subjectivity.
(c.) Hence these two sides of the nega
tive unity are more properly subject and
object, and since they are identical (causa
sui} we may name the result “ self-con
sciousness.”
The absolute truth of all truths, then, is
that self-consciousness is the form of the
Total. God is a Person, or rather the
Person. Through His self-consciousness
(thought of Himself) he makes Himself
an object to Himself (Nature), and in the
same act cancels it again into Ilis own
image (finite spirit), and thus comprehends
Himself in this self-revelation.
Two remarks must be made here: (1.)
This is not “Pantheism;” for it results
21
that God is a Person; and secondly Nature
is a self-cancelling side in the process;
thirdly, the so-called “finite spirit,” or
man, is immortal, since otherwise he would
not be the last link of the chain; but such
he is, because he can develop out of his
sensuous life to pure thought, uncondition
ed by time and space, and hence he can
surpass any fixed “higher intelligence,”
no matter how high created.
(2.) It is the result that all profound
thinkers have arrived at.
Aristotle (Metaphysics XI. 6 & 7) car
ries this whole question of motion back to
its presupposition in a mode of treatment,
“ sub quadam specie aternitatis” He
concludes thus : “ The thinking, however,
of that which is purely for itself, is a think
ing'of that which is most excellent in and
for itself.
“ The thinking thinks itself, however,
through participation in that which is
thought by it; it becomes this object in
its own activity, in such a manner that the
subject and object are identical. For the
apprehending of thought and essence is
what constitutes reason. The activity of
thinking produces that which is perceived ;
so that the activity is rather that which
Beason seems to have of a divine nature;
speculation [pure thinking] is the most ex
cellent employment; if, then, God is al
ways engaged in this, as we are at times,
lie is admirable, and if in a higher degree,
more admirable. But He is in this pure
thinking, and life too belongs to Him; for
the activity of thought is life. He is this
activity. The activity, returning into it
self, is the most excellent and eternal life.
We say, therefore, that God is an eternal
and the best living being. So that life and
duration are uninterrupted and eternal;
for this is God.”
When one gets rid of those “images of
sense” called by Spencer “ conceivables,”
and arrives at the “ unpicturable notions
of intelligence,” he will find it easy to re
duce the vexed antinomies of force, matter,
motion, time, space and causality; arriv
ing at the fundamental principle — selfdetermination—he will be able to make a
science of Biology. The organic realm
will not yield to dualistic Reflection.
�22
Herbert Spencer.
Goethe is the great pioneer of the school of
physicists that will spring out of the pre
sent activity of Reflection when it shall
have arrived at a perception of its method.
Résumé'.—Mr. Spencer’s results, so far
as philosophy is concerned, may be briefly
summed up under four general heads : I.
Psychology. 2. Ontology. 3. Theology.
4. Cosmology.
PSYCHOLOGY.
(1.) Conception is a mere picture in the
mind; therefore what cannot be pictured
cannot be conceived; therefore the Infinite,
the Absolute, God, Essence,Matter, Motion,
Force—anything, in short, that involves
mediation—cannot be conceived ; hence
they are unknowable.
(2.) Consciousness is self-knowing; but
that subject and object are one, is impos
sible. We can neither know ourselves nor
any real being.
(3.) All reasoning or explaining is the
subsuming of a somewhat under a more
general category; hence the highest cate
gory is unsubsumed, and hence inexpli
cable.
(4.) Our intellectual faculties may be
improved to a certain extent, and beyond
this, no amount of training can avail any
thing. (Biology, vol. I, p. 188.)
(5.) The ££ substance of consciousness”
is the basis of our ideas of persistence of
Force, Matter, etc.
(6.) All knowing is relative ; our knowl
edge of this fact, however, is not relative
but absolute.
the hidden and inscrutable essence of the
correlate of our knowledge of phenomena.
We know that it exists.
(3.) Though what is inconceivable is for
that reason unknowable, yet we know that
persistence belongs to force, motion and
matter ; it is a positive result of our “ men
tal structure,” although we cannot con
ceive either destructibility or indestructi
bility.
(4.) Though self-consciousness is an
impossibility, yet it sometimes occurs,since
the ££ substance of consciousness” is the
object of consciousness when it decides
upon the persistence of the Universe, and
of Force, Matter, etc.
THEOLOGY.
ONTOLOGY.
The Supreme Being is unknown and un
knowable ; unrevealed and unrevealable,
either naturally or supernaturally : for to
reveal, requires that some one shall com
prehend what is revealed. The sole doc
trine of Religion of great value is the doc
trine that God transcends the human intel
lect. When Religion professes to reveal
Him to man and declare His attributes,
then it is irreligious. Though God is the
unknown, yet personality, reason, con
sciousness, etc., are degrading when ap
plied to Him. The t£ Thirty-nine Arti
cles” should be condensed into one, thus :
There is an Unknown which I know that I
cannot know.”
££ Religions are envelopes of truth which
reveal to the lower, and conceal to the
higher.” “They are modes of manifesta
tion of the unknowable.”
(1.) All that we know is phenomenal.
The reality passes all understanding. In
the phenomenon the essence is “ manifest
ed,” but still it is not revealed thereby;
it remains hidden behind it, inscrutable to
our perception,
(2.) And yet, since all our knowledge is
relative, we have an obscure knowledge of
“ Evolution is a change from an indefi
nite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite,
coherent heterogeneity ; through continu
ous differentiations and integrations.”
This is the law of the Universe. All pro
gresses to an equilibration—to a moving
equilibrium.
COSMOLOGY.
�23
Fichtes Science of Knowledge.
INTRODUCTION TO FICHTE’S SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE.
TRANSLATED BY A. E. KROEGER.
[Note.—Tn presenting this "Introduction” to the readers of the Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, we believe we afford them the easiest means of gaining an insight into Fichte’s great
work on the Science of Knowledge. The present introduction was written by Fichte in 1797,
three years after the first publication of his full system. It is certainly written in a remarkably
clear and vigorous style, so as to be likely to arrest the attention even of those who have but
little acquaintance with the rudiments of the Science of Philosophy. This led us to give it
the preference over other essays, also written by Fichte, as Introductions to his Science of
Knowledge. A translation of the Science of Knowledge, by Mr. Kroeger, is at present in course
of publication in New York. This article is, moreover, interesting as being a more complete un
folding of the doctrine of Plato upon Method, heretofore announced.—Ed.]
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
Do re, quae agitur, petimus, ut homines, earn non
opinionem, sed opus esse, cogitent ac pro certo habeant,
non sectae nos alicujus, ant placiti, sed utilitatis
et amplitudinis humanae fundamenta moliri. Deinde,
ut, suis commodis aequi, in commune consulant, et ipsi
in partem veniant.—Baco de Verulamio.
The author of the Science of Knowledge
was soon convinced, through a slight ac
quaintance with the philosophical literature
since the appearance of Kant’s Critiques,
that the object of this great man—to ef
fect a total reform in the study of philoso
phy, and hence of all science—had result
ed in a failure, Bince not one of his
numerous successors appeared to under
stand what he had really spoken of. The
author believed that he had understood
the latter; he resolved 'to devote his
life to a representation—totally independ
ent from Kant’s—of that great discovery,
and he will not give up this resolve.
Whether he will succeed better in making
himself understood to his age, time alone
can show. At all events, he knows that
nothing true and useful, which has once
been given to mankind, is lost, though only
remote posterity should learn how to use it.
Determined by my academical vocation,
I wrote, in the first instance, for my hear
ers, with whom it was in my power to ex
plain myself in words until I was under
stood.
This is not the place to testify how
much cause I have to be satisfied with my
efforts, and to entertain, of some of my
students, the best hopes for science. That
book of mine has also become known else
where, and there are various opinions
afloat concerning it amongst the learned.
A judgment, which even pretended to bring
forth arguments, I have neither read nor
heard, except from my students; but I
have both heard and read a vast amount of
derision, denunciation, and the general
assurance that everybody is heartily op
posed to this doctrine, and the confession
that no one can understand it. As far as
the latter is concerned, I will cheerfully
assume all the blame, until others shall rep
resent it so as to make it comprehensible,
when students will doubtless discover that
my representation was not so very bad
after all; or I will assume it altogether
and unconditionally, if the reader thereby
should be encouraged to study the present
representation, in which I shall endeavor
to be as clear as possible. I shall con
tinue these representations so long as I am
convinced that I do not write altogether in
vain. But I write in vain when nobody
examines my argument.
I still owe my readers the following ex
planations : I have always said, and say
again, that my system is the same ag
Kant’s. That is to say, it contains the
same view of the subject, but is totally in
dependent of Kant’s mode of representa
tion. I have said this, not to cover myself
by a great authority, or to support my
doctrine except by itself, but in order to
say the truth and to be just.
Perhaps it may be proven after twenty
years. Kant is as yet a sealed book, and
what he has been understood to teach, is
exactly what he intended to eradicate.
My writings are neither to explain Kant,
nor to be explained by his ; they must
stand by themselves, and Kant must not be
counted in the game at all. My object is—
I
/
�24
Fichtes Science of Knowledge,
let me say it frankly—not to correct or
amplify such philosophical reflections as
may be current, be they called anti
Kant or Kant, but to totally eradicate
them, and to effect a complete revolution
in the mode of thinking regarding these
subjects, so that hereafter the Object will
be posited and determined by Knowledge
(Reason), and not vice versa-, and this
seriously, not merely in words.
Let no one object: “If this system is
true, certain axioms cannot be upheld,”
for I do not intend that anything should
be upheld which this system refutes.
Again : “Ido not understand this book,”
is to me a very uninteresting and insignifi
cant confession. No one can and shall
understand my writings, without having
studied them ; for they do not contain a
lesson heretofore taught, but something—
since Kant has not been understood—alto
gether new to the age.
Censure without argument tells me
simply that my doctrine does not please ;
and this confession is again very unim
portant; for the question is not at all,
whether it pleases you or not, but whether
it has been proven. In the present sketch
I write only for those, in whom there
still dwells an inner sense of love for
truth; who still value science and con
viction, and who are impelled by a lively
zeal to seek truth. With those, who, by
long spiritual slavery, have lost with the
faith in their own conviction their faith
in the conviction of others; who consider
it folly if anybody attempts to seek truth
for himself ; who see nothing in sci
ence but a comfortable mode of subsist
ence ; who are horrified at every proposi
tion to enlarge its boundaries involving as
a new labor, and who consider no means
disgraceful by which they can hope to sup
press him who makes such a proposition,—
with those I have nothing to do.
I should be sorry if they understood me.
Hitherto this wish of mine has been real
ized; and I hope, even now, that these
present lines will so confuse them that they
can perceive nothing more in them than
mere words, while that which represents
their mind is torn hither and thither by
their ill-concealed rage.
INTRODUCTION.
I. Attend to thyself; turn thine eye away
from all that surrounds thee and into thine
own inner self! Such is the first task im
posed upon the student by Philosophy.
We speak of nothing that is without thee,
but merely of thyself.
The slightest self-observation must show
every one a remarkable difference between
the various immediate conditions of his
consciousness, which we may also call
representations. For some of them appear
altogether dependent upon our freedom,
and we cannot possibly believe that there
is without us anything corresponding to
them. Our imagination, our will, appears
to us as free. Others, however, we refer to
a Truth as their model, which is held to be
firmly fixed, independent of us; and in
determining such representations, we find
ourselves conditioned by the necessity of
their harmony with this Truth. In the
knowledge of them we do not consider
ourselves free, as far as their contents are
concerned. In short: while some of our
representations are accompanied by the
feeling of freedom, others are accompanied
by the feeling of necessity.
Reasonably the question cannot arise—
why are the representations dependent
upon our freedom determined in precisely
this manner, and not otherwise? For in
supposing them to be dependent upon our
freedom, all application of the conception
of a ground is rejected; they are thus, be
cause I so fashioned them, and if I had
fashioned them differently, they would be
otherwise.
But it is certainly a question worthy of
reflection—what is the ground of the sys
tem of those representations which are ac
companied by the feeling of necessity and
of that feeling of necessity itself? To
answer this question is the object of phil
osophy ; and, in my opinion, nothing is
philosophy but the Science which solves
this problem. The system of those repre
sentations, which are accompanied by the
feeling of necessity, is also called Experi
ence—internal as well as external experi
ence. Philosophy, therefore, to say the
same thing in other words, has to find the
ground of all Experience.
�Fichte’s Science of Knowledge.
Only three objections can be raised
against this. Somebody might deny that
representations, accompanied by the feel
ing of necessity, and referred to a Truth
determined without any action of ours, do
ever occur in our consciousness. Such a
person would either deny his own know
ledge, or be altogether differently con
structed from other men ; in which latter
case his denial would be of no concern to
us. Or somebody might say : the question
is completely unanswerable, we are in ir
removable ignorance concerning it, and
must remain so. To enter into argument
with such a person is altogether superflu
ous. The best reply he can receive is an
actual answer to the question, and then
all he can do is to examine our answer,
and tell us why and in what matters it does
not appear satisfactory to him. Finally,
somebody might quarrel about the desig
nation, and assert: “Philosophy is some
thing else than what you have stated
above, or at least something else besides.”
It might be easily shown to such a one,
that scholars have at all times designated
exactly what we have just stated to be
Philosophy, and that whatever else he
might assert to be Philosophy, has already
another name, and that if this word signi
fies anything at all, it must mean exactly
this Science. But as we are not inclined
to enter upon any dispute about words,
we, for our part, have already given up
the name of Philosophy, and have called
the Science which has the solution of this
problem for its object, the Science of
Knowledge.
II. Only when speaking of something,
which we’consider accidental, i. e. which
we suppose might also have been other
wise, though it was not determined by free
dom, can we ask for its ground ; and by
this very asking for its ground does it be
come accidental to the questioner. To
find the ground of anything accidental
means, to find something else, from the
determinedness of which it can be seen
why the accidental, amongst the various
conditions it might have assumed, assumed
precisely the one it did. The ground lies
—by the very thinking of a ground—be
yond its Grounded, and both are, in so far
25
as they are Ground and Grounded, opposed
to each other, related to each other, and
thus the latter is explained from the former.
Now Philosophy is to discover the
ground of all experience; hence its object
lies necessarily beyond all Experience.
This sentence applies to all Philosophy,
and has been so applied always heretofore,
if we except these latter days of Kant’s
miconstruers and their facts of conscious
ness, i. e. of inner experience.
No objection can be raised to this para
graph ; for the premise of our conclusion
is a mere analysis of the above-stated con
ception of Philosophy, and from the prem
ise the conclusion is drawn. If some
body should wish to remind us that the
conception of a ground must be differently
explained, we can, to be sure, not prevent
him from forming another conception of
it, if he so chooses ; but we declare, on
the strength of our good right, that we, in
the above description of Philosophy, wish
to have nothing else understood by that
word. Hence, if it is not to be so under
stood, the possibility of Philosophy, as we
have described it, must be altogether de
nied, and such a denial we have replied to
in our first section.
III. The finite intelligence has nothing
beyond experience ; experience contains
the whole substance of its thinking. The
philosopher stands necessarily under thé
same conditions, and hence it seems impos
sible that he can elevate himself beyond
experience.
But he can abstract; i. e. he can separate
by the freedom of thinking what in experi
ence is united. In Experience, the Thing
—that which is to be determined in itself
independent of our freedom, and in ac
cordance with which our knowledge is to
shape itself—and the Intelligence—which
is to obtain a knowledge of it—are in
separably united. The philosopher may
abstract from both, and if he does, he bas
abstracted from Experience and elevated,
himself above it. If he abstracts from the
first, he retains an intelligence in itself,
i. e. abstracted from its relation to experi
ence ; if he abstract from the latter, he re
tains the Thing in itself, i. e. abstracted
from the fact that it occurs in experience;
�26
Fichte's Science of Knowledge.
and thus retains the Intelligence in it
self, or the “Thing in itself,” as the
explanatory ground of Experience. The
former mode of proceeding is called Ideal
ism, the latter Dogmatism.
Only these two philosophical systems—
and of that these remarks should convince
everybody—are possible. According to
the first system the representations, which
are accompanied by the feeling of neces
sity, are productions of the Intelligence,
which must be presupposed in their ex
planation ; according to the latter system
they are the productions of a thing in itself
which must be presupposed to explain
them. If anybody desired to deny this,
he would have to prove that there is still
another way to go beyond experience than
the one by means of abstraction, or that
the consciousness of experience contains
more than the two components just men
tioned.
Now in regard to the first, it will appear
below, it is true, that what we have here
called Intelligence does, indeed, occur in
consciousness under another name, and
hence is not altogether produced by ab
straction ; but it will at the same time be
shown that the consciousness of it is con
ditioned by an abstraction, which, how
ever, occurs naturally to mankind.
We do not at all deny that it is possible
to compose a whole system from fragments
of these incongruous systems, and that
this illogical labor has often been under
taken ; but we do deny that more than
these two systems are possible in a logical
course of proceeding.
IV. Between the object—(we shall call
the explanatory ground of experience,
which a philosophy asserts, the object of
that philosophy, since it appears to be only
through and for such philosophy) — be
tween the object of Idealism and that of
Dogmatism there is a remarkable distinc
tion in regard to their relation to con
sciousness generally. All whereof I am con
scious is called object of consciousness.
There are three ways in which the object
can be related to consciousness. Either
it appears to have been produced by the
representation, or as existing without any
action of ours; and in the latter case, as
either also determined in regard to its
qualitativeness, or as existing merely in
regard to its existence, while determinable
in regard to its qualitativeness by the free
intelligence.
The first relation applies merely to an
imaginary object; the second merely to an
object of Experience; the third applies
only to an object, which we shall at once
proceed to describe.
I can determine myself by freedom to
think, for instance, the Thing in itself of
the Dogmatists. Now if I am to abstract
from the thought and look simply upon
myself, I myself become the object of a
particular representation. That I appear to
myself as determined in precisely this
manner, and none other, e. g. as thinking,
and as thinking of all possible thoughts—
precisely this Thing in itself, is to depend
exclusively upon my own freedom of selfdetermination ; I have made myself such a
particular object out of my own free will.
1 have not made myself; on the contrary, I
am forced to think myself in advance as
determinable through this self-determina
tion. Hence I am myself my own object,
the determinateness of which, under cer
tain conditions, depends altogether upon
the intelligence, but the existence of which
must always be presupposed. Now this
very “I” is the object of Idealism. The
object of this system does not occur actu
ally as something real in consciousness, not
as a Thing in itself—for then Idealism
would cease to be what it is, and become
Dogmatism—but as “Z” in itself-, not as
an object of Experience—for it is not de
termined, but is exclusively determinable
through my freedom, and without this de
termination it would be nothing, and is
really not at all—but as something beyond
all Experience.
The object of Dogmatism, on the con
trary, belongs to the objects of the first
class, which are produced solely by free
Thinking. The Thing in itself is a mere
invention, and has no reality at all. It
does not occur in Experience, for the sys
tem of Experience is nothing else than
Thinking accompanied by the feeling of
necessity, and can not even be said to be
anything else by the dogmatist, who, like
�Fichte's Science of Knowledge.
every philosopher, has to explain its cause.
True, the dogmatist wants to obtain re
ality for it through the necessity of think
ing it as ground of all experience, and
would succeed, if he could prove that ex
perience can be, and can be explained only
by means of it. But this is the very thing
in dispute, and he cannot presuppose what
must first be proven.
Hence the object of Idealism has this
advantage over the object of Dogmatism,
that it is not to be deduced as the explana
tory ground of Experience—which would
be a contradiction, and change this system
itself into a part of Experience—but that
it is, nevertheless, to be pointed out as a
part of consciousness ; whereas, the object
of Dogmatism can pass for nothing but a
mere invention, which obtains validity
only through the success of the system.
This we have said merely to promote a
clearer insight into the distinction between
the two systems, but not to draw from it
conclusions against the latter system.
That the object of every philosophy, as
explanatory ground of Experience, must
lie beyond all experience, is required by
the very nature of Philosophy, and is far
from being derogotary to a system. But
we have as yet discovered no reasons why
that object should also occur in a particu
lar manner within consciousness.
If anybody should not be able to convince
himself of the truth of what we have just
said, this would not make his conviction
of the truth of the whole system an impos
sibility, since what we have just said was
only intended as a passing remark. Still
in conformity to our plan we will also here
take possible objections into consideration.
Somebody might deny the asserted im
mediate self-consciousness in a free act of
the mind. Such a one we should refer to
the conditions stated above. This selfconsciousness does not obtrude itself upon
us, and comes not of its own accord; it is
necessary first to act free, and next to ab
stract from the object, and attend to one’s
self. Nobody can be forced to do this,
and though he may say he has done it, it
is impossible to say whether he has done
it correctly. In one word, this conscious
ness cannot be proven to any one, but
27
everybody must freely produce it within
himself. Against the second assertion,
that the “Thing in itself” is a mere in
vention, an objection could only be raised,
because it were misunderstood.
V. Neither of these two systems can di
rectly refute the other ; for their dispute is
a dispute about the first principle; each
system—if you only admit its first axiom—
proves the other one wrong; each denies
all to the opposite, and these« two systems
have no point in common from which they
might bring about a mutual understanding
and reconciliation. Though they may agree
on the words of a sentence, they will sure
ly attach a different meaning to the words.
(Hence the reason why Kant has not
been understood and why the Science of
Knowledge can find no friends. The sys
tems of Kant and of the Science of Knowl
edge are idealistic—not in the general in
definite, but in the just described definite
sense of the word; but the modern phil
osophers are all of them dogmatists, and
are firmly resolved to remain so. Kant
was merely tolerated, because it was possi
ble to make a dogmatist out of him; but
the Science of Knowledge, which cannot
be thus construed, is insupportable to these
wise men. The rapid extension of Kant’s
philosophy—when it'was thus misunder
stood— is not a proof of the profundity,
but rather of the shallowness of the age.
For in this shape it is the most wonderful
abortion ever created by human imagina
tion, and it does little honor to its defend
ers that they do not perceive this. It
can also be shown that this philosophy was
accepted so greedily only because people
thought it would put a stop to all serious
speculation, and continue the era of shal
low Empiricism.)
First. Idealism cannot refute Dogma
tism. True, the former system has the ad
vantage, as we have already said, of being
enabled to point out its explanatory ground
of all experience—the free acting intelli
gence—as a fact of consciousness. This
fact the dogmatist must also admit, for
otherwise he would render himself incapa
ble of maintaining the argument with his
opponent; but he at the same time, by a cor
rect conclusion from his principle, changes
�2S
Fichte's Science of Knowledge.
this explanatory ground into a deception
and appearance, and thus renders it inca
pable of being the explanatory ground of
anything else, since it cannot maintain its
own existence in its own philosophy. Ac
cording to the Dogmatist, all phenomena
of our consciousness are productions of a
Thing in itself, even our pretended deter
minations by freedom, and the belief that
we are free. This belief is produced by
the effect of the Thing upon ourselves, and
the determinations, which we deduced from
freedom, are also produced by it. The only
difference is, that we are not aware of it in
these cases, and hence ascribe it to no
cause, i. e. to our freed-om. Every logical
dogmatist is necsssarily a Fatalist; he does
not deny the fact of consciousness, that we
consider ourselves free—for this would be
against reason ;—but he proves from his
principle that this is a false view. He de
nies the independence of the Ego, which is
the basis of the Idealist, in toto, makes it
merely a production of the Thing, an acci
dence of the World; and hence the logical
dogmatist is necessarily also materialist.
He can only be refuted from the postulate
of the freedom and independence of the
Ego ; but this is precisely what he denies.
Neither can the dogmatist refute the Ideal
ist.
The principle of the former, the Thing
in itself, is nothing, and has no reality, as
its defenders themselves must admit, ex
cept that which it is to receive from the
fact that experience can only be explained
by it. But this proof the Idealist annihi
lates by explaining experience in another
manner, hence by denying precisely what
dogmatism assumes. Thus the Thing in
itself becomes a complete Chimera; there
is no further reason why it should be as
sumed; and with it the whole edifice of
dogmatism tumbles down.
♦
From what we have just stated, is more
over evident the complete irreconcilability
of both systems; since the results of the
one destroy those of the other. Wherever
their union has been attempted the mem
bers would not fit together, and somewhere
an immense gulf appeared which could not
be spanned.
If any one were to deny this he would
have to prove the possibility of such a
union—of a union which consists in an
everlasting composition of Matter and
Spirit, or, which is the same, of Necessity
and Liberty.
Now since, as far as we can see at pres
ent, both systems appear to have the same
speculative value, but since both cannot
stand together, nor yet either convince the
other, it occurs as a very interesting ques
tion : What can possibly tempt persons who
comprehend this—and to comprehend it is
so very easy a matter—to prefer the one
over the other ; and why skepticism, as the
total renunciation of an answer to this
problem, does not become universal?
The dispute between the Idealist and the
Dogmatist is, in reality, the question,
whether the independence of the Ego is
to be sacrificed to that of the Thing, or vice
versa? What, then, is it, which induces
sensible men to decide in favor of the one
or the other ?
The philosopher discovers from this point
of view—in which he must necessarily place
himself, if he wants to pass for a philos
opher, and which, in the progress of Think
ing, every man necessarily occupies sooner
or later, — nothing farther than that he
is forced to represent to himself both:
that he is free, and that there are de
termined things outside of him. But it
is impossible for man to stop at this
thought; the thought of a representation
is but a half-thought, a broken off frag
ment of a thought; something must be
thought and added to it, as corresponding
with the representation independent of it.
In other words : the representation cannot
exist alone by itself, it is only something
in connection with something else, and in
itself it is nothing. This necessity of think
ing it is, which forces one from that point
of view to the question : What is the ground
of the representations ? or, which is exact
ly the same, What is that which corresponds
with them ?
Now the representation of the independ
ence of the Ego and that of the Thing can
very well exist together; but not the inde
pendence itself of both. Only one can be
the first, the beginning, the independent;
the second, by the very fact of being the
�Fichte's Science of Knowledge.
second, becomes necessarily dependent
upon the first, with which it is to be con
nected—now, which of the two is to be
made the first ? Reason furnishes no ground
for a decision ; since the question concerns
not the connecting of one link with an
other, but the commencement of the first
link, which as an absolute first act is al
together conditional upon the freedom of
Thinking. Hence the decision is arbitra
ry ; and since this arbitrariness is never
theless to have a cause, the decision is de
pendent upon inclination and interest.
The last ground, therefore, of the differ
ence between the Dogmatist and the Ideal
ist is the difference of their interest.
The highest interest, and hence the
ground of all other interest, is that which
we feel for ourselves. Thus with the Phil
osopher. Not to lose his Self in his argu
mentation, but to retain and assert it, this
is the interest which unconsciously guides
all his Thinking. Now, there are two
grades of mankind ; and in the progress
of our race, before the last grade has been
universally attained, two chief kinds of
men. The one kind is composed of those
who have not yet elevated themselves to
the full feeling of their freedom and abso
lute independence, who are merely con
scious of themselves in the representation
of outward things. These men have only
a desultory consciousness, linked together
with the outward objects, and put together
out of their manifoldness. They receive a
picture of their Self only from the Things,
as from a mirror; for their own sake they
cannot renounce their faith in the inde
pendence of those things, since they exist
only together with these things. What
ever they are they have become through
the outer World. Whosoever is only a
production of the Things will never view
himself in any other manner; and he is
perfectly correct, so long as he speaks
merely for himself and for those like him.
The principle of the dogmatist is : Faith
in the things, for their own sake ; hence,
mediated Faith in their own desultory self,
as simply the result of the Things.
But whosoever becomes conscious of his
self-existence and independence from all
outward things—and this men can only be
29
come by making something of themselves,
through their own Self, independently of
all outward things—needs no longer the
Things as supports of his Self, and cannot
use them, because they annihilate his inde
pendence and turn it into an empty appear
ance. The Ego which he possesses, and
which interests him, destroys that Faith in
the Things; he believes in his independ
ence, from inclination, and seizes it with
affection. His Faith in himself is imme
diate.
From this interest the various passions
are explicable, which mix generally with
the defence of these philosophical systems.
The dogmatist is in danger of losing his
Self when his system is attacked ; and yet
he is not armed against this attack, because
there is something within him which takes
part with the aggressor ; hence, he defends
himself with bitterness and heat. The ideal
ist, on the contrary, cannot well refrain
from looking down upon his opponent with
a certain carelessness, since the latter can
tell him nothing which he has not known
long ago and has cast away as useless. The
dogmatist gets angry, misconstrues, and
would persecute, if he had the power; the
idealist is cold and in danger of ridiculing
his antagonist.
Hence, what philosophy a man chooses
depends entirely upon what kind of man
he is; for a philosophical system is not a
piece of dead household furniture, which
you may use or not use, but is animated
by the soul of the man who has it. Men
of a naturally weak-minded character, or
who have become weak-minded and crooked
through intellectual slavery, scholarly lux
ury and vanity, will never elevate them
selves to idealism.
You can show the dogmatist the insuffi
ciency and inconsequence of bis system, of
which we shall speak directly; you can
confuse and terrify him from all sides ; but
you cannot convince him, because he is un
able to listen to and examine with calm
ness what he cannot tolerate. If Idealism
should prove to be the only real Philosophy,
it will also appear that a man must be born
a philosopher, be educated to be one, and
educate himself to be one; but that no
human art (no external force) can make a
�30
Fichte’s Science of Knowledge.
philosopher out of him. Hence, this Sci
ence expects few proselytes from men who
have already formed their character; if
our Philosophy has any hopes at all, it en
tertains them rather from the young gene
ration, the natural vigor of which has not
yet been submerged in the weak-mindednessof the age.
VI. But dogmatism is totally incapable
of explaining what it should explain, and
this is decisive in regard to its insufficien
cy. It is to explain the representation of
things, and proposes to explain them as an
effect of the Things. Now, the dogmatist
cannot deny what immediate conscious
ness asserts of this representation. What,
then, does it assert thereof? It is not my
purpose here to put in a conception what
can only be gathered in immediate contem
plation, nor to exhaust that which forms a
great portion of the Science of Knowledge.
I will merely recall to memory what every
one, who has but firmly looked within him
self, must long since have discovered.
The Intelligence, as such, sees itself, and
this seeing of its self is immediately con
nected with all that appertains to the Intel
ligence ; and in this immediate uniting of
Being and Seeing the nature of the Intel
ligence consists. Whatever is in the In
telligence, whatever the Intelligence is
itself, the Intelligence is for itself, and
only in so far as it is this for itself is it
this, as Intelligence.
I think this or that object! Now what
does this mean, and how do I appear to
myself in this Thinking ? Not otherwise
than thus : I produce certain conditions
within myself, if the object is a mere in
vention ; but if the objects are real and
exist without my invention, I simply con
template, as a spectator, the production of
those conditions within me. They are
within me only in so far as I contemplate
them; my contemplation and their Being
are inseparably united.
A Thing, on the contrary, is to be this
or that; but as soon as the question is put:
For whom is it this? Nobody, who but
comprehends the word, will reply : For
itself! But he will have to add the
thought of an Intelligence, for which the
Thing is to be; while, on the contrary, the
Intelligence is self-sufficient and requires
no additional thought. By thinking it as
the Intelligence you include already that
for which it is to be. Hence, there is in
the Intelligence, to express myself figura
tively, a twofold—Being and Seeing, the
Real and the Ideal; and in the inseparabil
ity of th is twofold the nature of the Intelli
gence consists, while the Thing is simply
a unit—the Real. Hence Intelligence and
Thing are directly opposed to each other;
they move in two worlds, between which
there is no bridge.
The nature of the Intelligence and its
particular determinations Dogmatism en
deavors to explain by the principle of
Causality ; the Intelligence is to be a pro
duction, the second link in a series.
But the principle of causality applies to
a real series, and not to a double one. The
power of the cause goes over into an Other
opposed to it, and produces therein a Be
ing, and nothing further; a Being for a
possible outside Intelligence, but not for
the thing itself. You may give this Other
even a mechanical power, and it will trans
fer the received impression to the next
link, and thus the movement proceeding
from the first may be transferred through
as long a series as you choose to make;
but nowhere will you find a link which re
acts back upon itself. Or give the Other
the highest quality which you can give a
thing—Sensibility—whereby it will follow
the laws of its own inner nature, and not
the law given to it by the cause—and it
will, to be sure, react upon the outward
cause ; but it will, nevertheless, remain a
mere simple Being, a Being for a possible
intelligence outside of it. The Intelligence
you will not get, unless you add it in think
ing as the primary and absolute, the con
nection of which, with this your independ
ent Being, you will find it very difficult to
explain.
The series is and remains a simple one;
and you have not at all explained what was
to be explained. You were to prove the
connection betweeen Being and Represen
tation ; but this you do not, nor can you
do it; for your principle contains merely
the ground of a Being, and not of a Repre ■
sentation, totally opposed to Being. You
�Fichtes Science of Knowledge.
take an immense leap into a world, totally
removed from your principle. This leap
they seek to hide in various ways. Rig
orously— and this is the course of con
sistent dogmatism, which thus becomes
materialism ;—the soul is to them no Thing
at all, and indeed nothing at all, but merely
a production, the result of the reciprocal ac
tion of Things amongst themselves. But
this reciprocal action produces merely a
change in the Things, and by no means
anything apart from the Things, unless you
add an observing intelligence. The similes
which they adduce to make their system
comprehensible, for instance, that of the
harmony resulting from sounds of different
instruments, make its irrationality only
more apparent. For the harmony is not in
the instruments, but merely in the mind of
the hearer, who combines within himself
the manifold into One; and unless you
have such a hearer there is no harmony at
all.
But who can prevent Dogmatism from
assuming the Soul as one of the Things,
per se? The soul would thus belong to
what it has postulated for the solution of
its problem, and, indeed, would thereby
be made the category of cause and effect
applicable to the Soul and the Things—
materialism only permitting a reciprocal
action of the Things amongst themselves—
and thoughts might now be produced. To
make the Unthinkable thinkable, Dogma
tism has, indeed, attempted to presuppose
Thing or the Soul, or both, in such a man
ner, that the effect of the Thing was to
produce a representation. The Thing, as
influencing the Soul, is to be such, as to
make its influences representations; God,
for instance, in Berkley’s system, was such
a thing. (Ilis system is dogmatic, not
idealistic.) But this does not better mat
ters ; we understand only mechanical
effects, and it is impossible for us to under
stand any other kind of effects. Hence,
that presupposition contains merely words,
but there is no sense in it. Or the soul
is to be of such a nature that every effect
upon the Soul turns into a representation.
But this also we find it impossible to
understand.
In this manner Dogmatism proceeds
31
everywhere, whatever phase it may assume.
In the immense gulf, which in that system
remains always open between Things and
Representations, it places a few empty
words instead of an explanation, which
words may certainly be committed to mem
ory, but in saying which nobody has ever
yet thought, nor ever will think, anything.
For whenever one attempts to think the
manner in which is accomplished what
Dogmatism asserts to be accomplished, the
whole idea vanishes into empty foam.
Hence Dogmatism can only repeat its
principle, and repeat it in different forms;
can only assert and re-assert the same
thing; but it cannot proceed from what it
asserts to what is to be explained, nor ever
deduce the one from the other. But in
this deduction Philosophy consists. Hence
Dogmatism, even when viewed from a
speculative stand-point, is no Philosophy
at all, but merely an impotent assertion.
Idealism iB the only possible remaining
Philosophy. What we have here said can
meet with no objection ; but it may -well
meet with incapability of understanding
it. That all influences are of a mechanical
nature, and that no mechanism can pro
duce a representation, nobody will deny,
who but understands the words. But this
is the very difficulty. It requires a certain
degree of independence and freedom of
spirit to comprehend the nature of the in
telligence, which we have described, and
upon which our whole refutation of Dog
matism is founded. Many persons have
not advanced further with their Thinking
than to comprehend the simple chain of na
tural mechanism; and very naturally,there
fore, the Representation, if they choose
to think it at all, belongs, in their eyes, to
the same chain of-which alone they have
any knowledge. The Representation thus
becomes to them a sort of Thing of which
we have divers examples in some of the
most celebrated philosophical writers. For
such persons Dogmatism is sufficient; for
them there is no gulf,since the opposite does
not exist for them at all. Hence you can
not convince the Dogmatist by the proof
just stated, however clear it may be, for you
cannot bring the proof to his knowledge,
since he lacks the power to comprehend it.
�32
Fichte’s Science of Knovdedge.
Moreover, the manner in which Dogma
tism is treated here, is opposed to the mild
way of thinking which characterizes our
age, and which, though it has been exten
sively accepted in all ages, has never been
converted to an express principle except in
ours; i. e. that philosophers must not be
so strict in their logic; in philosophy one
should not be so particular as, for instance,
in Mathematics. If persons of this mode
of thinking see but a few links of the
chain and the rule, according to which
conclusions are drawn, they at once fill up
the remaining part through their imagina
tion, never investigating further of what
they may consist. If, for instance, an
Alexander Von loch tells them: “All
things are determined by natural neces
sity ; now our representations depend
upon the condition of Things, and our
will depends upon our representations :
hence all our will is determined by natural
necessity, and our opinion of a free will is
mere deception !”—then these people think
it mightily comprehensible and clear, al
though there is no sense in it; and they go
away convinced and satisfied at the strin
gency of this his demonstration.
I must call to mind, that the Science of
Knowledge does not proceed from this
mild way of thinking, nor calculate upon
it. If only a single link in the long chain
it has to draw does not fit closely to the
following, this Science does not pretend to
have established anything.
VII. Idealism, as we have said above?
explains the determinations of conscious
ness from the activity of the Intelligence,
which, in its view, is only active and abso
lute, not passive ; since it is postulated
as the first and highest, preceded by noth
ing, which might explain its passivity.
From the same reason actual Existence can
not well be ascribed to the Intelligence,
since such Existence is the result of re
ciprocal causality, but there is nothing
wherewith the Intelligence might be placed
in reciprocal causality. From the view of
Idealism, the Intelligence is a Doing, and
absolutely nothing else; it is even wrong
to call it an Active, since this expression
points to something existing, in which the
activity is inherent.
But to assume anything of this kind is
against the principle of Idealism, which
proposes to deduce all other things from
the Intelligence. Now certain determined
representations—as, for instance, of a
world, of a material world in space, exist
ing without any work of our own—are to
be deduced from the action of the Intelli
gence; but you cannot deduce anything
determined from an undetermined; the
form of all deductions, the category of
ground and sequence, is not applicable
here. Hence the action of the Intelligence,
which is made the ground, must be a de
termined action, and since the action of
the Intelligence itself is the highest ground
of explanation, that action must be so de
termined by the Intelligence itself, and not
by anything foreign to it. Hence the pre
supposition of Idealism will be this : the In
telligence acts, but by its very essence it
can only act in a certain manner. If this
necessary manner of its action is considered
apart from the action, it may properly be
called Laws of Action. Hence, there are
necessary laws of the Intelligence.
This explains also, at the same time, the
feeling of necessity which accompanies
the determined representations ; the Intel
ligence experiences in those cases, not an
impression from without, but feels in its
action the limits of its own Essence. In
so far as Idealism makes this only reason
able and really explanatory presupposition
of necessary laws of the Intelligence, it is
called Critical or Transcendental Idealism.
A transcendent Idealism would be a sys
tem w’hich were to undertake a deduction
of determined representations from the
free and perfectly lawless action of the
Intelligence: an altogether contradictory
presupposition, since, as we have said
above, the category of ground and sequence
is not applicable in that case.
The laws of action of the Intelligence,
as sure as they are to be founded in the
one nature of the Intelligence, constitute
in themselves a system ; that is to say, the
fact that the Intelligence acts in this par
ticular manner under this particular condition is explainable, and explainable be
cause under a condition it has always a
determined mode of action, which again is
�Fichte's Science of Knowledge.
explainable from one highest fundamental
law. In the course of its action the Intel
ligence gives itself its own laws ; and this
legislation itself is done by virtue of a
higher necessary action or Representation.
For instance : the law of Causality is not a
first original law, but only one of the many
modes of combining the manifold, and to
be deduced from the fundamental law of
this combination ; this law of combining
the manifold is again, like the manifold
itself, to be deduced from higher laws.
Hence, even Critical Idealism can pro
ceed in a twofold manner. Either it de
duces this system of necessary modes of
action, and together with it the objective
representations arising therefrom, really
from the fundamental laws of the Intelli
gence, and thus causes gradually to arise
under the very eyes of the reader or hearer
the whole extent of our representations ; or
it gathers these laws—perhaps as they are
already immediately applied to objects ;
Hence, in a lower condition, and then they
are called categories—gathers these laws
somewhere, and now asserts, that the ob
jects are determined and regulated by
them.
I ask the critic who follows the l&stmentioned method, and who does not de
duce the assumed laws of the Intelligence
from the Essence of the Intelligence,
where he gets the material knowledge of
these laws, the knowledge that they are
just these very same laws ; for instance,
that of Substantiality or Causality ? For
I do not want to trouble him yet with the
question, how he knows that they are mere
immanent laws of the Intelligence. They
are the laws which are immediately applied
to objects, and he can only have obtained
them by abstraction from these objects,
i. e. from Experience. It is of no avail if
he takes them, by a roundabout way, from
logic, for logic is to him only the result
of abstraction from the objects, and hence
he would do indirectly, what directly might
appear too clearly in its true nature.
Hence he can prove by nothing that his
postulated Laws of Thinking are really
Laws of Thinking, are really nothing but
immanent laws of the Intelligence. The
Dogmatist asserts in opposition, that they
3
33
are not, but that they are general quali
ties of Things, founded on the nature of
Things, and there is no reason why we
should place more faith in the unproved
assertion of the one than in the unproved
assertion of the other. This course of pro
ceeding, indeed, furnishes no understand
ing that and why the Intelligence should act
just in this particular manner. To produce
such an understanding, it would be neces
sary to premise something which can only
appertain to the Intelligence, and from
those premises to deduce before our eyes
the laws of Thinking.
By such a course of proceeding it is
above all incomprehensible how the object
itself is obtained: for although you may
admit the unproved postulates of the critic,
they explain nothing further than the
qualities and relations of the Thing : (that
it is, for instance, in space, manifested in
time, with accidences which must be re
ferred to a substance, &c.) But whence
that which has these relations and quali
ties ? whence then the substance which
is clothed in these forms ? This substance
Dogmatism takes refuge in, and you have
but increased the evil.
We know very well: the Thing arises only
from an act done in accordance with these
laws, and is, indeed, nothing else than
all th°se relations gathered together by the
power of imagination; and all these rela
tions together are the Thing. The Object
is the original Synthesis of all these con
ceptions. Form and Substance are not
separates ; the whole formness is the sub
stance, and only in the analysis do we ar
rive at separate forms.
But this the critic, who follows the above
method, can only assert, and it is even a
secret whence he knows it, if he does know
it. Until you cause the whole Thing to
arise before the eyes of the thinker, you
have not pursued Dogmatism into its last
hiding places. But this is only possible
by letting the Intelligence act in its whole,
and not in its partial, lawfulness.
Hence, an Idealism of this character is
unproven and unprovable. Against Dog
matism it has no other weapon than the
assertion that it is in the right; and against
the more perfected criticism no other wea
�31
Fichte's Science of Knowledge,
pon than impotent anger, and the assu
rance that you can go no further than itself
goes.
Finally a system of this character puts
forth only those laws, according to which
the objects of external experience are de
termined. But these constitute by far the
smallest portion of the laws of the Intelli
gence. Hence, on the field of Practical Rea
son and of Reflective Judgment, this half
criticism, lacking the insight into the
whole procedure of reason, gropes about
as in total darkness.
The method of complete transcendental
Idealism, which the Science of Knowledge
pursues, I have explained once before in
my Essay, On the conception of the Science
of Knowledge. I cannot understand why
that Essay has not been understood; but
suffice it to say, that I am assured it has
not been understood. I am therefore com
pelled to repeat what I have said, and to
recall to mind that everything depends
upon the correct understanding thereof.
This Idealism proceeds from a single
fundamental Law of Reason, which is im
mediately shown as contained in con
sciousness. This is done in the following
manner : The teacher of that Science re
quests his reader or hearer to think freely
a certain conception. If he does so, he will
find himself forced to proceed in a partic
ular manner. Two things are to be distin
guished here : the act of Thinking,which is
required—the realization of which depends
upon each individual’s freedom,—and un
less he realizes it thus, he will not under
stand anything which the Science of
Knowledge teaches; and the necessary
manner in which it alone can be realized,
which manner is grounded in the Essence
of the Intelligence, and does not depend
upon freedom; it is something necessary,
but which is only discovered in and to
gether with a free action; it is something
discovered, but the discovery of which de
pends upon an act of freedom.
So far as this goes, the teacher of Ideal
ism shows his assertion to be contained in
immediate consciousness, But that this
necessary manner is the fundamental law
of all reason, that from it the whole sys
tem of our necessary representations, not
only of a world and the determinedness and
relations of objects, but also of ourselves,
as free and practical beings acting under
laws, can be deduced. All this is a mere
presupposition, which can only be proven
by the actual deduction, which deduction is
therefore the real business of the teacher.
In realizing this deduction, he proceeds
as follows : He shows that the first funda
mental law which was discovered in im
mediate consciousness, is not possible, unless
a second action is combined with it, which
again is not possible without a third action;
and so on, until the conditions of the First
are completely exhausted, and itself is now
made perfectly comprehensible in its possi
bility. The teacher’s method is a contin
ual progression from the conditioned to
the condition. The condition becomes
again conditioned, and its condition is next
to be discovered.
If the presupposition of Idealism is cor
rect, and if no errors have been made in the
deduction, the last result, as containing all
the conditions of the first act, must con
tain the system of all necessary representa
tions, or the total experience;—a compari
son, however, which is not instituted in
Philosophy itself, but only after that sci
ence has finished its work.
For Idealism has not kept this experi
ence in sight, as the preknown object and
result, which it should arrive at; in its
course of proceeding it knows nothing at
all of experience, and does not look upon
it; it proceeds from its starting point ac
cording to its rules, careless as to what the
result of its investigations might turn out
to be. The right angle, from which it has
to draw its straight line, is given to it; is
there any need of another point to which
the line should be drawn ? Surely not; for
all the points of its line arc already given
to it with the angle. A certain number is
given to you. You suppose that it is
the product of certain factors. All you
have to do is to search for the product of
these factors according to the well-known
rules. Whether that product will agree
with the given number, you will find out,
without any difficulty, as soon as you have
obtained it. The given number is the total
experience ; those factors are : the part of
�Fichte’s Science of Knowledge.
immediate consciousness which was dis
covered, and the laws of Thinking; the
multiplication is the Philosophizing. Those
who advise you, while philosophizing,
also to keep an eye upon experience, advise
you to change the factors a little, and to
multiply falsely, so as to obtain by all
means corresponding numbers ; a course of
proceeding as dishonest as it is shallow.
In so far as those final results of Idealism
are viewed as such, as consequences of our
reasoning, they are what is called the a
priori of the human mind ; and in so far
as they are viewed, also—if they should
agree with experience—as given in expe
rience, they are called a posteriori. Hence
the a priori and the a posteriori are, in a
true Philosophy, not two, but one and the
same, only viewed in two different ways,
and distinguished only by the manner in
which they are obtained. Philosophy an
ticipates the whole experience, thinks it
only as necessary ; and, in so far, Philoso
phy is, in comparison with real experience,
a priori. The number is a posteriori, if re
garded as given ; the same number is a
priori, if regarded as product of the fac
tors. Whosoever says otherwise knows
not what he talks about.
If the results of a Philosophy do not
agree with experience, that Philosophy is
surely wrong; for it has not fulfilled its
promise of deducing the whole experience
from the necessary action of the intelli
gence. In that case, either the presuppo
sition of transcendental Idealism is alto
gether incorrect, or it has merely been in
correctly treated in the particular repre
sentation of that science. Now, since the
problem, to explain experience from its
ground, is a problem contained in human
reason, and as no rational man will ad
mit that human reason contains any prob
lem the solution of which is altogether im
possible; and since, moreover, there are
only two ways of solving it, the dogmatic
system (which, as we have shown, cannot
accomplish what it promises) and the Ideal
istic system, every resolute Thinker will
always declare that the latter has been the
case; that the presupposition in itself is
correct enough, and that no failure in at
tempts to represent it should deter men
85
from attempting it again until finally it
must succeed. The course of this Ideal
ism proceeds, as we have seen, from a fact
of consciousness—but which is only obtain
ed by a free act of Thinking—to the total
experience. Its peculiar ground is be
tween these two. It is not a fact of con
sciousness and does not belong within the
sphere of experience; and, indeed, how
could it be called Philosophy if it did, since
Philosophy has to discover the ground of
experience, and since the ground lies, of
course, beyond the sequence. It is the
production of free Thinking, but proceed
ing according to laws. This will be at once
clear, if we look a little closer at the funda
mental assertion of Idealism. It proves
that the Postulated is not possible without
a second, this not without a third, &c., &c.;
hence none of all its conditions is possible
alone and by itself, but each one is only
possible in its union with all the rest.
Hence, according to its own assertion, only
the Whole is found in consciousness, and
this Whole is the experience. You want
to obtain a better knowledge of it; hence
you must analyze it, not by blindly groping
about, but according to the fixed rule of
composition, so that it arises under your
eyes as a Whole. You are enabled to do
this because you have the power of ab
straction ; because in free Thinking you can
certainly take hold of each single condi
tion. For consciousness contains not only
necessity of Representations, but also free
dom thereof ; and this freedom again may
proceed according to rules. The Whole is
given to you from the point of view of ne
cessary consciousness ; you find it just as
you find yourself. But the composition of
this Whole, the order of its arrangement,
is produced by freedom. Whosoever un
dertakes this act of freedom, becomes con
scious of freedom, and thus establishes, as
it were, a new field within his conscious
ness ; whosoever does not undertake it, for
him this new field, dependent thereupon,
does not exist. The chemist composes a
body, a metal for instance, from its ele
ments. The common beholder sees the
metal well known to him ; the chemist be
holds, moreover, the composition thereof
and the elements which it comprises. Do
�36
Hegel's Philosophy of Art.
both now see different objects? I should
think not! Both see the same, only in a
different manner. The chemist’s sight is
a priori; he sees the separates ; the ordi
nary beholder’s sight is a posteriori; he
sees the Whole. The only distinction is
this : the chemist must first analyze the
Whole before he can compose it, because
he works upon an object of which he can
not know the rule of composition before
he has analyzed it ; while the philosopher
can compose without a foregoing analysis,
because he knows already the rule of his
object, of reason.
Hence the content of Philosophy can
claim no other reality than that of neces
sary Thinking, on the condition that you
desire to think of the ground of Expe
rience. The Intelligence can only be
thought as active, and can only be thought
active in this particular manner ! Such is
the assertion of Philosophy. And this
reality is perfectly sufficient for Philosophy,
since it is evident from the development of
that science that there is no other reality.
This now described complete critical
Idealism, the Science of Kn owledge intends
to establish. What I have said just now
contains the conception of that science, and
I shall listen to no objections which may
touch this conception, since no one can
know better than myself what I intend to
accomplish, and to demonstrate the impos
sibility of a thing which is already rea
lized, is ridiculous.
Objections, to be legitimate, should only
be raised against the elaboration of that
conception, and should only consider
whether it has fulfilled what it promised to
accomplish or not.
ANALYTICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY UPON THE ÆSTHETICS
OF HEGEL.
[Translated from the French of M. Ch. Bénard by J. A. Martling.j
of architecture, sculpture, painting, music,
ANALYSIS.
Having undertaken to translate into our and poetry.
language the ./Esthetics of Hegel, we hope
PART I.
to render a new service to our readers, by
OF THE BEAUTIFUL IN ART.
presenting, in an analysis at once cursory
In an extended introduction, Hegel lays
and detailed the outline of the ideas which
form the basis of that vast work. The the foundations of the science of the Beau
thought of the author will appear shorn of tiful : he defines its object, demonstrates
its rich developments ; but it will be more its legitimacy, and indicates its method;
easy to seize the general spirit, the connec he then undertakes to determine the nature
tion of the various parts of the work, and and the end of art. Upon each of these
to appreciate their value. In order not to points let us endeavor to state, in a brief
mar the clearness of our work, we shall manner, his thought, and, if it is neces
abstain from mingling criticism with expo sary, explain it.
Aesthetics is the science of the Beautiful.
sition; but reserve for the conclusion a
general judgment upon this book, which The Beautiful manifests itself in nature and
represents even to-day the state of the in art; but the variety and multiplicity
of forms under which beauty presents
philosophy of art in Germany.
The work is divided into three parts ; itself in the real world, does not permit
the first treats of the beautiful in art in their description and systematic classifi
general; the second, of the general forms of cation. The science of the Beautiful has
art in its historic development; the third then as its principal object, art and its
Contains the system of the arts—the theory works; it is the philosophy oj the fine arts.
�Hegel's Philosophy of Jiri.
Is art a proper object of science? No,
undoubtedly, if we consider it only as an
amusement or a frivolous relaxation. But
it has a nobler purpose. It will even be a
misconception of its true aim to regard it
simply as an auxiliary of morals and re
ligion. Although it often serves as inter
preter of moral and religious ideas, it pre
serves its independence. Its proper object
is to reveal truth under sensuous forms.
Nor is it allowable to say that it pro
duces its effects by illusion. Appearance,
here, is truer than reality. The images
which it places under our eyes are more
ideal, more transparent, and also more du
rable than the mobile and fugitive existen
ces of the real world. The world of art is
truer than that of nature and of history.
Can science subject to its formulas the
free creations of the imagination ? Art
and science, it is true, differ in their meth
ods ; but imagination, also, has its laws;
though free, it has not the right to be law
less. In art, nothing is arbitrary.; its
ground is the essence of things', its form is
borrowed from the real world, and the
Beautiful is the accord, the harmony of
the two terms. Philosophy recognizes in
works of art the eternal content of its
meditations, the lofty conceptions of in
telligence, the passions of man, and the
motives of his volition. Philosophy does
not pretend to furnish prescriptions to art,
but is able to give useful advice; it fol
lows it in its procedures, it points out to
it the paths whereon it may go astray; it
alone can furnish to criticism a solid basis
and fixed principles.
As to the method to be followed, two
exclusive and opposite courses present
themselves. The one, empiric and historic,
seeks to draw from the study of the master
pieces of art, the laws of criticism and the
principles of taste. The other, rational
and a priori, rises immediately to the idea
of the beautiful, and deduces from it cer
tain general rules. Aristotle and Plato re
present these two methods. The first
reaches only a narrow theory, incapable of
comprehending art in its universality ; the
other, isolating itself on the heights of
metaphysics, knows not how to descend
therefrom to apply itself to particular arts,
37
and to appreciate their works. The true
method consists in the union of these two
methods, in their reconciliation and simul
taneous employment. To a positive ac
quaintance with works of art, to the dis
crimination and delicacy of taste neces
sary to appreciate them, there should be
joined philosophic reflection, and the ca
pacity of seizing the Beautiful in itself,
and of comprehending its characteristics
and immutable laws.
What is the nature of art? The answer
to this question can only be the philosophy
of art itself ; and, furthermore, this again
can be perfectly understood only in its con
nection with the other philosophic sciences.
One is here compelled to limit himself to
general reflections, and to the discussion
of received opinions.
In the first place, art is a product of hu
man activity, a creation of the mind. What
distinguishes it from science is this, that
it is the fruit of inspiration, not of reflec
tion. On this account it can not be learned
or transmitted; it is a gift of genius.
Nothing can possibly supply a lack of tal
ent in the arts.
Let us guard ourselves meanwhile from
supposing that, like the blind forces of
nature, the artist does not know what he
does, that reflection has no part in his
works. There is, in the first place, in the
arts a technical part which must be learned,
and a skill which is acquired by practice.
Furthermore, the more elevated art be
comes, the more it demands an extended
and varied culture, a study of the objects
of nature, and a profound knowledge of
the human heart. This is eminently true
of the higher spheres of art, especially in
Poetry.
If works of art are creations of the hu
man spirit, they are not on that account
inferior to those of nature. They are, it
is true, living, only in appearance ; but the
aim of art is not to create living beings;
it seeks to offer to the spirit an image of
life clearer than the reality. In this, it
surpasses nature. There is also something
divine in man, and God derives no less
honor from the works of human intelligence
than from the works of nature.
Now what is the cause which incites mai
�38
Hegel’s Philosophy of Jlrt.
to the production of such works ? Is it a
caprice, a freak, or an earnest, fundamen
tal inclination of his nature ?
It is the same principle which causes
him to seek in science food for his mind,
in public life a theatre for his activity. In
science he endeavors to cognize the truth,
pure and unveiled; in art, truth appears
to him not in its pure form, but expressed
by images which strike his sense at the same
time that they speak to his intelligence.
This is the principle in which art originates,
and which assigns to it a rank so high
among the creations of the human mind.
Although art is addressed to the sensi
bility, nevertheless its direct aim is not to
excite sensation, and to give birth to pleas
ure. Sensation is changeful, varied, con
tradictory. It represents only the various
states or modifications of the soul. If then
we consider only the impressions which
art produces upon us, we make abstrac
tion of the truth which it reveals to us. It
becomes even impossible to comprehend
its grand effects ; for the sentiments which
it excites in us, are explicable only through
the ideas which attach to them.
The sensuous element, nevertheless, oc
cupies a large place in art. What part
must be assigned to it? There are two
modes of considering sensuous objects in
their connection with our mind. The first
is that of simple perception of objects by
the senses. The mind then knows only
their individual side, their particular and
concrete form; the essence, the law, the
substance of things escapes it. At the
same time the desire which is awakened
in us, is a desire to appropriate them to our
use, to consume them, to destroy them.
The soul, in the presence of these objects,
feels its dependence; it cannot contem
plate them with a free and disinterested
eye.
Another relation of sensuous objects
with spirit, is that of speculative thought
or science. Here the intelligence is not
content to perceive the object in its con
crete form and its individuality; it dis
cards the individual side in order to ab
stract and disengage from it the law, the
universal, the essence. Reason thus lifts
itself above the individual form perceived
by sense, in order to conceive the pure
idea in its universality.
Art differs both from the one and from
the other of these modes; it holds the
mean between sensuous perception and
rational abstraction. It is distinguished
from the first in that it does not attach
itself to the real but to the appearance, to
the form of the object, and in that it does
not feel any selfish longing to consume it,
to cause it to serve a purpose, to utilize it.
It differs from science in that it is interest
ed in this particular object, and in its sen
suous form. What it loves to see in it, is
neither its materiality, nor the pure idea
in its generality, but an appearance, an
image of the truth, something ideal which
appears in it; it seizes the connective of
the two terms, their accord and their inner
harmony. Thus the want which it feels
is wholly contemplative. In the presence
of this vision the soul feels itself freed
from all selfish desire.
In a word, art purposely creates images,
appearances, designed to represent ideas,
to show to us the truth under sensuous
forms. Thereby it has the power of stir
ring the soul in its profoundest depths, of
causing it to experience the pure delight
springing from the sight and contempla
tion of the Beautiful.
The two principles are found equally
combined in the artist. The sensuous side
is included in the faculty which creates—
the imagination. It is not by mechanical
toil, directed by rules learned by heart
that he executes his works; nor is it by a
process of reflection like that of the philos
opher who is seeking the truth. The mind
has a consciousness of itself, but it cannot
seize in an abstract manner the idea which
it conceives; it can represent it only under
sensuous forms. The image and the idea
coexist in thought, and cannot be separat
ed. Thus the imagination is itself a
gift of nature. Scientific genius is rather
a general capacity than an innate and spe
cial talent. To succeed in the arts, there
is necessary a determinate talent which
reveals itself early under the form of
an active and irresistible longing, and
a certain facility in the manipulation
of the materials of art. It is this which
�Hegel's Philosophy of Jlrt.
makes the painter, th§ sculptor, the musi
cian.
Such is the nature of art. If it be asked,
what is its end, here we encounter the most
diverse opinions. The most common is
that which gives imitation as its object.
This is the foundation of nearly all the
theories upon art. Now of what use to re
produce that which nature already offers
to our view? This puerile talk, unworthy
of spirit to which it is addressed, unworthy
of man who produces it, would only end
in the revelation of its impotency and
the vanity of its efforts ; for the copy will
always remain inferior to the original.
Besides, the more exact the imitation, the
less vivid is the pleasure. That which
pleases us is not imitation, but creation.
The very least invention surpasses all the
masterpieces of imitation.
In vain is it said that art ought to imi
tate beautiful Nature. To select is no
longer to imitate. Perfection in imitation
is exactness ; moreover, choice supposes a
rule; where find the criterion ? What
signifies, in fine, imitation in architecture,
in music, and even in poetry ? At most,
one can thus explain descriptive poetry,
that is to say, the most prosaic kind. We
must conclude, therefore, that if, in its
compositions, art employs the forms of
Nature, and must study them, its aim iB
not to copy and to reproduce them. Its mis
sion is higher—its procedure freer. Ri
val of nature, it represents ideas as well as
she, and even better ; it uses her forms as
symbols to express them ; and it fashions
even these, remodels them upon a type
more perfect and more pure. It is not
without significance that its works are
styled the creations of the genius of man.
A second system substitutes expression
for imitation. Art accordingly has for its
aim, not to represent the external form of
things, but their internal and living prin
ciple, particularly the ideas, sentiments,
passions, and conditions of the soul.
Less gross than the preceding, this
theory is no less false and dangerous.
Let us here distinguish two things: the
idea and the expression—the content and
the form. Now, if Art is designed for ex
pression solely—if expression is its essen
39
tial object—its content is indifferent.
Provided that the picture be faithful, the
expression lively and animated, the good
and the bad, the vicious, the hideous, the
ugly, have the same right to figure here as
the Beautiful. Immoral, licentious, impi
ous, the artist will have fulfilled his obli
gation and reached perfection, when he
has succeeded in faithfully rendering a
situation, a passion, an idea, be it true or
false. It is clear that if in this system
the object of imitation is changed, the
procedure is the same. Art would be only
an echo, a harmonious language; a liv
ing mirror, where all sentiments and all
passions would find themselves reflected,
the base part and the noble part of the soul
contending here for the same place. The
true, here, would be the real, would include
objects the most diverse and the most con
tradictory. Indifferent as to the content,
the artist seeks only to represent it well. He
troubles himself little concerning truth in
itself. Skeptic or enthusiast indifferently,
he makes us partake of the delirium of
the Bacchanals, or the unconcern of the
Sophist. Such is the system which takes
for a motto the maxim, Art is for art; that
is to say, mere expression for its own sake.
Its consequences, and the fatal tendency
which it has at all times pressed upon the
arts, are well known.
A third system sets up moral perfection
as the aim of art. It cannot be denied
that one of the effects of art is to soften
and purify manners (emollit mores'). In
mirroring man to himself, it tempers the
rudeness of his appetites and his passions ;
it disposes him to contemplation and re
flection ; it elevates his thought and sen
timents, by leading them to an ideal which
it suggests,—to ideas of a superior order.
Art has, from all time, been regarded as
a powerful instrument of civilization, as
an auxiliary of religion. It is, together
with religion, the earliest instructor of
nations ; it is besides a means of instruc
tion for minds incapable of comprehending
truth otherwise than under the veil of a
symbol, and by images that address them
selves to the sense as well as to the spirit.
But this theory, although much superior
to the preceding, is no more exact. Its
�40
Hegel's Philosophy of Art.
defect consists in confounding the moral
effect of art with its real aim. This con
fusion has inconveniences which do not
appear at the first glance. Let care be
taken, meanwhile, lest, in thus assigning
to aft a foreign aim, it be not robbed of
its liberty, which is its essence, and with
out which it has no inspiration—that
thereby it be not prevented from produ
cing the effects which are to be expected
from it. Between religion, morals and
art, there exists an eternal and intimate
harmony; but they are, none the less, es
sentially diverse forms of truth, and,
while preserving entire the bonds which
unite them, they claim a complete inde
pendence. Art has its peculiar laws,
methods and jurisdiction; though it ought
not to wound the moral sense, yet it is the
sense of the Beautiful to which it is ad
dressed. When its works are pure, its
effect on the soul is salutary, but its direct
and immediate aim is not this result.
Seeking it, it risks losing it, and does lose
its own end. Suppose, indeed, that the
aim of art should be to instruct, under the
veil of allegory; the idea, the abstract
and general thought, must be present in
the spirit of the artist at the very moment
of composition. It seeks, then, a form
which is adapted to that idea, and furn
ishes drapery for it. Who does not see
that this procedure is the very opposite of
inspiration ? There can be born of it only
frigid and lifeless works; its effect will
thus be neither moral nor religious ; it
will produce only ennui.
Another consequence of the opinion
which makes moral perfection the object
of art and its creations, is that this end is
imposed so completely upon art, and con
trols it to such a degree, that it has no
longer even a choice of subjects. The severe
moralist would have it represent moral
subjects alone. Art is then undone. This
system led Plato to banish poets from his
republic. If, then, it is necessary to
maintain the agreement of morality and
art, and the harmony of their laws, their
distinct bases and independence must also
be recognized. In order to understand
thoroughly this distinction between morals
and art, it is necessary to have solved the
moral problem. Morality is the realiza
tion of the. <c ought” by the free will; it
is the conflict between passion and'reason,
inclination and law, the flesh and the
spirit. It hinges upon an opposition.
Antagonism is, indeed, the very law of
the physical and moral universe. But this
opposition ought to be cancelled. This is
the destiny of beings who by their devel
opment and progress continually realize
themselves.
Now, in morals, this harmony of the
powers of our being, which should restore
peace and happiness, does not exist.
Morality proposes it as an end to the free
will. The aim and the realization are dis
tinct. Duty consists in an incessant striv
ing. Thus, in one respect, morals and
art have the same principle and the same
aim; the harmony of rectitude, and hap
piness of actions and law. But that
wherein they differ is, that in morals the
end is never wholly attained. It appears
separated from the means ; the con
sequence is equally separated from the
principle. The harmony of rectitude and
happiness ought to be the result of the
efforts of virtue. In order to conceive
the identity of the two terms, it is neces
sary to elevate one’s self to a superior
point of view, which is not that of morals.
In empirical science equally, the law ap
pears distinct from the phenomenon, the
essence separated from its form. In order
that this distinction may be cancelled,
there is necessary a mode of thinking
which is superior to that of reflection, or
of empirical science.
Art, on the contrary, offers to us in a
visible image, the realized harmony of the
two terms of existence, of the law of be
ings and their manifestation, of essence
and form, of rectitude and happiness.
The beautiful is essence realized, ac
tivity in conformity with its end, and
identified with it; it is the force which iB
harmoniously developed under our eyes,
in the innermost of existences, and
which cancels the contradictions of its
nature : happy, free, full of serenity in
the very midst of suffering and of sorrow.
The problem of art is then distinct from
the moral problem. The good is harmony
�Hegel's Philosophy of Jiri.
sought for; beauty is harmony realized.
So must we understand the thought of
Hegel; he here only intimates it, but it
will be fully developed in the sequel.
The true aim of art is then to represent
the Beautiful, to reveal this harmony. This
is its only purpose. Every other aim,
purification, moral amelioration, edifica
tion, are accessories or consequences. The
effect of the contemplation of the Beautiful
is to produce in us a calm and pure joy, in
compatible with the gross pleasures of
sense ; it lifts the soul above the ordinary
sphere of its thoughts ; it disposes to noble
resolutions and generous actions by the
close affinity which exists between the three
sentiments and the three ideas of the Good,
the Beautiful, and the Divine.
Such are the principal ideas which this
remarkable introduction contains. The re
mainder, devoted to the examination of
works which have marked the development
of aesthetic science in Germany since
Kant, is scarcely susceptible of analysis,
and does not so much deserve our atten
tion.
The first part of the science of aesthetics,
which might be called the Metaphysics of
the Beautiful, contains, together with the
analysis of the idea of the Beautiful, the
general principles common to all the arts.
Thus Hegel here treats : First, of the ab
stract idea of the Beautiful; second, of the
Beautiful in nature; third, of the Beautiful
in art, or of the ideal. He concludes with
an examination of the qualities of the art
ist. But before entering upon these ques
tions, he thought it necessary to point out
the place of art in human life, and espe
cially its connections with religion and
philosophy.
The destination of man, the law of his
nature, is to develop himself incessantly,
to stretch unceasingly towards the infinite.
He ought, at the same time, to put an end
to the opposition which he finds in himself
between the elements and powers of his be
ing ; to place them in accord by realizing
and developing them externally. Physical
life is a struggle between opposing forces,
and the living being can sustain itself only
through the conflict and the triumph of the
force which constitutes it. With man, and
41
in the moral sphere, this conflict and pro
gressive enfranchisement are manifested
under the form of freedom, which is the
highest destination of spirit. Freedom
consists in surmounting the obstacles which
it encounters within and without, in re
moving the limits, in effacing all contra
diction, in vanquishing evil and sorrow, in
order to attain to harmony with the world
and with itself. In actual life, man seeks
to destroy that opposition by the satisfac
tion of his physical wants. He calls to his
aid, industry and the useful arts ; but he
obtains thus only limited, relative, and
transient enjoyments. He finds a nobler
pleasure in science, which furnishes food
for his ardent curiosity, and piomises to
reveal to h’m the laws of nature and to
unveil the secrets of the universe. Civil
life opens another channel to his activity;
he burns to realize his conceptions ; he
marches to the conquest of the right, and
pursues the ideal of justice which he bears
within him. He endeavors to realize in
civil society his instinct of sociability,
which is also the law of his being, and one
of the fundamental inclinations of his mor
al nature.
But here, again, he attains an imperfect
felicity ; he encounters limits and obstacles
which he cannot surmount, and against
which, his will is broken. He cannot ob
tain the perfect realization of his ideas,
nor attain the ideal which his spirit con
ceives and toward which it aspires. He
then feels the necessity of elevating him
self to a higher sphere where all contradic
tions are cancelled ; where the idea of the
good and of happiness in their perfect ac
cord and their enduring harmony is real
ized. This profound want of the soul is
satisfied in three ways : in art, in religion,
and in philosophy. The function of art is
to lead us to the contemplation of the true,
the infinite, under sensuous forms ; for the
beautiful is the unity, the realized harmo
ny of two principles of existence, of the
idea and the form, of the infinite and the
finite. This is the principle and the hid
den essence of things, beaming through
their visible form. Art presents us, in its
works, the image of this happy accord
where all opposition ceases, and where all
�42
Hegel's Philosophy of Art.
contradiction is Cancelled. Such is the
aim of art: to represent the divine, the in
finite, under sensuous forms. This is its
mission; it has no other and this it alone
can fulfil. By this title it takes its place
by the side of religion, and preserves its
independence. It takes its rank also with
philosophy, whose object is the knowledge
of the true, of absolute truth.
Alike then as to their general ground
and aims, these three spheres are distin
guished by the form under which they be
come revealed to the spirit and conscious
ness of man. Art is addressed to sensuous
perception and to the imagination; reli
gion is addressed to the soul, to the con
science, and to sentiment; philosophy is
addressed to pure thought or to the reason,
which conceives the truth in an abstract
manner.
Art, which offers us truth under sensu
ous forms, does not, however, respond to
the profoundest needs of the soul. The
spirit is possessed of the desire of entering
into itself, of contemplating the truth in
the inner recesses of consciousness. Above
the domain of art, then, religion is placed,
which reveals the infinite, and by medita
tion conveys to the depths of the heart, to
the centre of the soul, that which in art we
contemplate externally. As to philosophy,
its peculiar aim is to conceive and to com
prehend, by the intellect alone, under an
abstract form, that which is given as sen
timent or as sensuous representation.
I. Of the Idea of the Beautiful.
After these preliminaries, Ilegel enters
upon the questions which form the object
of this first part. He treats, in the first
place, of the idea of the beautiful in itself,
in its abstract nature. Freeing his thought
from the metaphysical forms which render
it difficult of comprehension to minds not
familiar with his system, we arrive at this
definition, already contained in the fore
going : the Beautiful is the true, that is to
say, the essence, the inmost substance of
things ; the true, not such as the mind con
ceives it in its abstract and pure nature,
but as manifested to the senses under visi
ble forms. It is the sensuous manifesta
tion of the idea, which is the soul and
principle of things. This definition recalls
that of Plato : the Beautiful is the splendor
of the true.
What are the characteristics of the beau
tiful ? First, it is infinite in this sense,
that it is the divine principle itself which
is revealed and manifested, and that the
form which expresses it, in place of limit
ing it, realizes it and confounds itself with
it; second, it is free, for true freedom is
not the absence of rule and measure, it is
force which develops itself easily and har
moniously. It appears in the bosom of
the existences of the sensuous world, as
their principle of life, of unity, and of
harmony, whether free from all obstacle,
or victorious and triumphant in conflict,
always calm and serene.
The spectator who contemplates beauty
feels himself equally free, and has a con
sciousness of his infinite nature. He tastes
a pure pleasure, resulting from the felt ac
cord of the powers of his being ; a celestial
and divine joy, which has nothing in com
mon with material pleasures, and does not
suffer to exist in the soul a single impure
or gross desire.
The contemplation of the Beautiful
awakens no such craving; it is self-suf
ficing, and is not accompanied by any re
turn of the me upon itself. It suffers the
object to preserve its independence for its
own sake. The soul experiences some
thing analogous to divine felicity; it is
transported into a sphere foreign to the
miseries of life and terrestrial existence.
This theory, it is apparent, would need
only to be developed to return wholly to the
Platonic theory. Hegel limits himself to
referring to it. We recognize here, also,
the results of the Kantian analysis.
II. Of the Beautiful in Nature.
Although science cannot pause to de
scribe the beauties of nature, it ought,
nevertheless, to study, in a general man
ner, the characteristics of the Beautiful,
as it appears to us in the physical world
and in the beings which it contains. This is
the subject of a somewhat extended chap
ter, with the following title : Of the Beau
tiful in Nature. Hegel herein considers
the question from the particular point of
�Hegel's Philosophy of Jiri.
view of his philosophy, and he applies his
theory of the Idea. Nevertheless, the re
sults at which he arrives, and the manner
in which he describes the forms of physical
beauty, can be comprehended and accepted
independently of his system, little adapt
ed, it must be confessed, to cast light upon
this subject.
The Beautiful in nature is the first mani
festation of the Idea. The successive de
grees of beauty correspond to the develop
ment of life and organization in beings.
Unity is an essential characteristic of it.
Thus, in the mineral, beauty consists in the
arrangement or disposition of the parts,
in the force which resides in them, and
which reveals itself in this unity. The so
lar system offers us a more perfect unity
and a higher beauty. The bodies in that
system, while preserving entire their indi
vidual existence, co-ordinate themselves
into a whole, the parts of which are inde
pendent, although attached to a common
centre, the sun. Beauty of this order
strikes us by the regularity of the move
ments of the celestial bodies. A unity
more real and true is that which is mani
fested in organized and living beings. The
unity here consists in a relation of re-*
ciprocity and of mutual dependence be
tween the organs, so that each of them
loses its independent existence in order to
give place to a wholly ideal unity which
reveals itself as the principle of life ani
mating them.
Life is beautiful in nature : for it is es
sence, force, the idea realized under its
firs'- form. Nevertheless, beauty in nature
is still wholly external; it has no conscious
ness of itself; it is beautiful solely for an
intelligence which sees and contem
plates it.
How do we perceive beauty in natural
beings? Beauty, with living and animate
beings, is neither accidental and capricious
movements, nor simple conformity of those
movements to an end—the uniform and
mutual connection of parts. This point of
view is that of the naturalist, of the man
of science ; it is not that of the Beautiful.
Beauty is total form in so far as it reveals
the force which animates it; it is this
force itself, manifested by a totality of
43
forms, of independent and free move
ments ; it is the internal harmony which
reveals itself in this secret accord of mem
bers, and which betrays itself outwardly,
without the eye’s pausing to consider the
relation of the parts to the whole, and their
functions or reciprocal connection, as sci
ence does. The unity exhibits itself mere
ly externally as the principle which binds
the members together. It manifests itself
especially through the sensibility. The
point of view of beauty is then that of pure
contemplation, not that of reflection,
which analyzes, compares and seizes the
connection of parts and their destination.
This internal and visible unity, this ac
cord, and this harmony, are not distinct
from the material element; they are its
very form. This is the principle which «
serves to determine beauty in its inferior
grades, the beauty of the crystal with its
regular forms, forms produced by an in
ternal and free force. A similar activity
is developed in a more perfect manner in
the living organism, its outlines, the dispo
sition of its members, the movements, and
the expression of sensibility.
Such is beauty in individual beings. It
is otherwise with it when we consider na
ture in its totality, the beauty of a land
scape, for example. There is no longer
question here about an organic disposition
of parts and of the life which animates
them ; we have under our eyes a rich mul
tiplicity of objects which form a whole,
mountains, trees, rivers, etc. In this di
versity there appears an external unity
which interests us by its agreeable or im
posing character. To this aspect there is
added that property of the objects of na
ture through which they awaken in us,
sympathetically, certain sentiments, by the
secret analogy which exists between them
and the situations of the human soul.
Such is the effect produced by the silence
of the night, the calm of a still valley, the
sublime aspect of a vast sea in tumult,
and the imposing grandeur of the starry
heavens. The significance of these objects
is not in themselves ; they are only sym
bols of the sentiments of the soul which
they excite. It is thus we attribute to an
imals the qualities which belong only to
�44
Hegel's Philosophy of Art.
man, courage, fortitude, cunning. Physi consists in a totality of elements essen
cal beauty is a reflex of moral beauty.
tially distinct, but whose opposition is
To recapitulate, physical beauty, viewed destroyed and reduced to unity by a secret
in its ground or essence, consists in the accord, a reciprocal adaptation. Such is
manifestation of the concealed principle, the harmony of forms and colors, that of
of the force which is developed in the bo sounds and movements, Here the unity is
som of matter. This force reveals itself stronger, more prononce, precisely be
in a manner more or less perfect, by unity cause the differences and the oppositions
in inert matter, and in living beings by the are more marked. Harmony, however, is
different modes of organization.
not as yet true unity, spiritual unity,
Hegel then devotes a special examination that of the soul, although the latter pos
to the external side, or to beauty of form sesses within it a principle of harmony.
in natural objects. Physical beauty, con Harmony alone, as yet, reveals neither the
sidered externally, presents itself succes soul nor the spirit, as one may see in music
sively under the aspects of regularity and and dancing.
symmetry, of conformity to law and of har
Beauty exists also in matter itself,
mony ; lastly, of purity and simplicity of abstraction being made of its form; it
matter.
consists, then, in the unity and simplicity
1. Regularity, which is only the repeti which constitutes purity. Such is the
tion of a form equal to itself, is the most purity of the sky and of the atmosphere,
elementary and simple form. In symmetry the purity of colors and of sounds ; that of
there already appears a diversity which certain substances—of precious stones, of
breaks the uniformity. These two forms gold, and of the diamond. Pure and sim
of beauty pertain to quantity, and consti ple colors are also the most agreeable.
tute mathematical beauty ; they are found
After having described the beautiful in
in organic and inorganic bodies, minerals nature, in order that the necessity of a
and crystals. In plants are presented less beauty more exalted and more ideal, shall
regular, and freer forms. In the organiza- be comprehended, Hegel sets forth the im
ation of animals, this regular and sym perfections of real beauty. He begins with
metrical disposition becomes more and animal life, which is the most elevated
more subordinated in proportion as we as point we have reached, and he dwells upon
cend to higher degrees of the animal scale. the characteristics and causes of that im
2. Conformity to a law marks a degree perfection.
still more elevated, and serves as a transi
Thus, first in the animal, although the
tion to freer forms. Here there appears organism is more perfect than that of the
an accord more real and more profound, plant, what we see is not the central point
which begins to transcend mathematical of life; the special seat of the operations
rigor. It is no longer a simple numerical of the force which animates the whole, re
relation, where quantity plays the princi mains concealed from us. We see only
pal role ; we discover a relation of quality the outlines of the external form, covered
between different terms. A law rules with hairs, scales, feathers, skin; second
the whole, but it cannot be calcu ly, the human body, it is true, exhibits
lated; it remains a hidden bond, which more beautiful proportions, and a more
reveals itself to the spectator. Such is perfect form, because in it, life and sensi
the oval line, and above all, the undulating bility are everywhere manifested—in the
line, which Hogarth has given as the line color, the flesh, the freer movements,
of beauty. These lines determine, in fact, nobler attitudes, &c. Yet here, besides
the beautiful forms of organic nature in the imperfections in details, the sensibil
living beings of a high order, and, above ity does not appear equally distributed.
all, the beautiful forms of the human body, Certain parts are appropriated to animal
of man and of woman.
functions, and exhibit their destination in
3. Harmony is a degree still superior’to their form. Further, individuals in nature,
the preceding, and it includes them. It placed as they are under a dependence
�Hegels Philosophy of Jiri.
upon external causes, and under the in
fluence of the elements, are under the
dominion of necessity and want. Under
the continual action of these causes, phy
sical being is exposed to losing the fulness
of its forms and the flower of its beauty;
rarely do these causes permit it to attain
to its complete, free and regular develop
ment. The human body is placed under a
like dependence upon external agents. If
we pass from the physical to the moral
world, that dependence appears still more
clearly.
Everywhere there is manifested diver
sity, and opposition of tendencies and
interests. The individual, in the pleni
tude of his life and beauty, cannot pre
serve the appearance of a free force. Each
individual being is limited and particular
ized in his excellence. His life flows in a
narrow circle of space and time; he be
longs to a determinate species ; his type
is given, his form defined, and the condi
tions of his development fixed. The hu
man body itself offers, in respect to beauty,
a progression of forms dependent on the
diversity of races. Then come hereditary
qualities, the peculiarities which are due
to temperament, profession, age, and sex.
All these causes alter and disfigure the
purest and most perfect primitive type.
All these imperfections are summed up
in a word: the finite. Human life and
animal life realize their idea only imper
fectly. Moreover, spirit—not being able
to find, in the limits of the real, the sight
and the enjoyment of its proper freedom—
seeks to satisfy itself in a region more ele
vated, that of ari, or of the ideal.
III. Of the beautiful in Art or of the Ideal.
Art has as its end and aim the repre
sentation of the ideal. Now what is the
ideal7. It is beauty in a degree of perfec
tion superior to real beauty. It is force,
life, spirit, the essence of things, develop
ing themselves harmoniously in a sensu
ous reality, which is its resplendent image,
its faithful expression ; it is beauty dis
engaged and purified from the accidents
which veil and disfigure it, and which alter
its purity in the real world.
The ideal, in art, is not then the con
45
trary of the real, but the real idealized,
purified, rendered conformable to its
idea, and perfectly expressing it. In a
word, it is the perfect accord of the idea
and the sensuous form.
On the other hand, the true ideal is not
life in its inferior degrees—blind, unde
veloped force—but the soul arrived at the
consciousness of itself, free, and in the
full enjoyment of its faculties; it is life,
but spiritual life—in a word, spirit. The
representation of the spiritual principle, in
the plenitude of its life and freedom, with
its high conceptions, its profound and no
ble sentiments, its joys and its sufferings :
this is the true aim of art, the true ideal.
Finally, the ideal is not a lifeless ab
straction, a frigid generality; it is the
spiritual principle under the form of the
living individual, freed from the bonds of
the finite, and developing itself in its per
fect harmony with its inmost nature and
essence.
We see, thus, what are the characteris
tics of the ideal. It is evident that in all
its degrees it is calmness, serenity, felici
ty, happy existence, freed from the mis
eries and wants of life. This serenity
does not exclude earnestness ; for the ideal
appears in the midst of the conflicts of
life ; but even in the roughest experiences,
in the midst of intense suffering, the soul
preserves an evident calmness as a funda
mental trait. It is felicity in suffering,
the glorification of sorrow, smiling in
tears. The echo of this felicity resounds
in all the spheres of the ideal.
It is important to determine, with still
more precision, the relations of the ideal
and the real.
The opposition of the ideal and the real
has given rise to two conflicting opinions.
Some conceive of the ideal as something
vague, an abstract, lifeless generality,
without individuality. Others extol the
natural, the imitation of the real in the
most minute and prosaic details. Equal
exaggeration I The truth lies between the
two extremes.
In the first place, the ideal may be, in
fact, something external and accidental,
an insignificant form or appearance, a
common existence. But that which con
�4G
Hegel's Philosophy of Art.
stitutes the ideal, in this inferior degree,
is the fact that this reality, imitated by
art, is a creation of spirit, and becomes
then something artificial, not real. It is
an image and a metamorphosis. This
image, moreover, is more permanent than
its model, more durable than the real ob
ject. In fixing that which is mobile and
transient, in eternizing that which is mo
mentary and fugitive—a flower, a smile—
art surpasses nature and idealizes it.
But it does not stop here. Instead of
simply reproducing these objects, while
preserving their natural form, it seizeB
their internal and deepest character, it
extends their signification, and gives to
them a more elevated and .more general
significance; for it must manifest the uni
versal in the individual, and render visible
the idea which they represent, their eter
nal and fixed type. It allows this charac
ter of generality to penetrate everywhere,
without reducing it to an abstraction.
Thus the artist does not slavishly repro
duce all the features of the object, and its
accidents, but only the true traits, those
conformable to its idea. If, then, he takes
nature as a model, he still surpasses and
idealizes it. Naturalness, faithfulness,
truth, these are not exact imitation, but
the perfect conformity of the form to the
idea; they are the creation of a more
perfect form, whose essential traits repre
sent the idea more faithfully and more
clearly than it is expressed in nature itself.
To know how to disengage the operative,
energetic, essential and significant ele
ments in objects,—this is the task of the
artist. The ideal, then, is not the real; the
latter contains many elements insignifi
cant, useless, confused and foreign, or op
posed to the idea. The natural here loses
its vulgar significance. By this word must
be understood the more exalted expression
of spirit. The ideal is a transfigured, glo
rified nature.
As to vulgar and common nature, if art
takes it also for its object, it is not for its
own sake, but because of what in it is
true, excellent, interesting, ingenuous or
gay, as in genre painting, in Dutch paint
ing particularly. It occupies, neverthe
less, an inferior rank, and cannot make
pretensions to a place beside the grand
compositions of art.
But there are other subjects—a nature
more elevated and more ideal. Art, at its
culminating stage, represents the develop
ment of the internal powers of the soul,
its grand passions, profound sentiments,
and lofty destinies. Now, it is clear that
the artist does not find in the real world,
forms so pure and ideal that he may safely
confine himself to imitating and copying.
Moreover, if the form itself be given, ex
pression must be added. Besides, he
ought to secure, in a just measure, the
union of the individual and the universal,
of the form and the idea; to create a
living ideal, penetrated with the idea, and
in which it animates the sensuous form
and appearance throughout, so that there
shall be nothing in it empty or insig
nificant, nothing that is not alive with ex
pression itself. Where shall he find in
the real world, this just measure, this
animation, and this exact correspondence
of all the parts and of all the details con
spiring to the same end, to the same effect ?
To say that he will succeed in conceiving
and realizing the ideal, by making a feli
citous selection of ideas and forms, is to
ignore the secret of artistic composition ;
it is to misconceive the entirely sponta
neous method of genius,—inspiration which
creates at a single effort,—to replace it by a
reflective drudgery, which only results in
the production of frigid and lifeless
works.
It does not suffice to define the ideal in
an abstract manner; the ideal is exhibited
to us in the works of art under very va
rious and diverse forms. Thus sculpture
represents it under the motionless features
of its figures. In the other arts it assumes
the form of movement and of action ; in
poetry, particularly, it manifests itself in
the midst of most varied situations and
events, of conflicts between persons ani
mated by diverse passions. IIow, and
under what conditions, is each art in par
ticular’ called upon to represent thus the
ideal ? This will be the object of the
theory of the arts. In the general expo
sition of the principles of art, we may,
nevertheless, attempt to define the degrees
�Hegel's Philosophy of Art.
of this development, to study the princi
pal aspects under which it manifests it
self. Such is the object of those con
siderations, the title of which is, Of
the Determination of the Ideal, and
which the author develops iu this first
part of the work. We can trace only
summarily the principal ideas, devoting
ourselves to marking their order and con
nection.
The gradation which the author estab
lishes between the progressively determ
ined forms of the ideal is as follows :
1. The ideal, under the most elevated
form, is the divine idea, the divine such
as the imagination can represent it under
sensuous forms; such is the Greek ideal
of the divinities of Polytheism ; such the
Christian ideal in its highest purity, under
the form of God the Father, of Christ, of
the Virgin, of the Apostles, etc. It is
given above all to sculpture and painting,
to present us the image of it. Its essen
tial characteristics are calmness, majesty,
serenity.
2. In a degree less elevated, but more
determined, in the circle of human life,
the ideal appears to us, with man, as the
victory of the eternal principles which fill
the human heart, the triumph of the noble
part of the soul over the inferior and
passionate. The noble, the excellent,
the perfect, in the human soul, is the
moral and divine principle which is mani
fested in it, which governs its will, and
causes it to accomplish grand actions;
this is the true source of self-sacrifice and
of heroism.
3. But the idea, when it is manifested
in the real world, can be developed only
under the form of action. Now, action
itself has for its condition a conflict be
tween principles and persons, divided as
to interests, ideas, passions, and charac
ters. It is this especially that is repre
sented by poetry—the art par excellence,
the only art which can reproduce an action
in its successive phases, with its complica
tions, its sudden turns of fortune, its
catastrophe and its denouement.
Action, if one considers it more closely,
includes the following conditions : 1st. A
world which serves it as a basis and thea
47
tre, a form of society which renders it pos
sible, and is favorable to the development
of ideal figures. 2d. A determinate situa
tion, in which the personages are placed
who render necessary the conflict between
opposing interests and passions, whence
a collision may arise. 3d. An action, prop
erly so called, which develops itself in
its essential moments, which has a begin
ning, a middle, and an end. This action,
in order to afford a high interest, should
revolve upon ideas of an elevated order,
which inspire and sustain the personages,
ennobling their passions, and farming the
basis of their character.
Hegel treats, in a general manner, each
of these points, which will appear anew,
under a more special form, in the study of
poetry, and particularly of epic and dra
matic poetry.
1. The state of society most favorable
to the ideal is that which allows the char
acters to act with most freedom, to reveal
a lofty and powerful personality. This
cannot be a social order, where all is fixed
and regulated by laws and a constitution.
Nor can it be the savage state, where all
is subject to caprice and violence, and
where man is dependent upon a thousand
external causes, which render his existence
precarious. Now the state intermediate
between the barbarous state and an ad
vanced civilization, is the heroic age, that
in which the epic poets locate their action,
and from which the tragic poets them
selves have often borrowed their subjects
and their personages. That which char
acterizes heroes in this epoch is, above all,
the independence which is manifested in
their characters and acts. On the other
hand, the hero is all of a piece; he as
sumes not only the responsibility of his
acts and their consequences, but the re
sults of actions he has not perpetrated,
of the faults or crimes of his race; he
bears in his person an entire race.
Another reason why the ideal existences
of art belong to the mythologic ages, and
to remote epochs of history, is that the
artist or the poet, in representing or re
counting events, has a freer scope in his
ideal creations. Art, also, for the same
reason, has a predilection for the higher
�48
Hegel's Philosophy of Jiri.
conditions of society, those of princes par
ticularly, because of the perfect indepen
dence of will and action which character
izes them. In this respect, our actual
society, with its civil and political organi
zation, its manners, administration,police,
etc., is prosaic. The sphere of activity of
the individual is too restricted ; he en
counters everywhere limits and shackles
to his will. Our monarchs themselves are
subject to these conditions ; their power is
limited by institutions, laws and customs.
War, peace, and treaties are determined
by political relations independent of their
will.
The greatest poets have not been able
to escape these conditions ; and when they
have desired to represent personages
nearer to us, as Charles Moor, or Wallen
stein, they have been obliged to place
them in revolt against society or against
their sovereign. Moreover, these heroes
rush on to an inevitable ruin, or they fall
into the ridiculous situation, of which the
Don Quixote of Cervantes gives us the
most striking example.
2. To represent the ideal in personages
or in an action, there is necessary not only
a favorable world from which the subject
is to be borrowed, but a situation. This
situation can be either indeterminate, like
that of many of the immobile personages
of antique or religious sculpture, or de
terminate, but yet of little earnestness.
Such are also the greater number of the
situations of the personages of antique
sculpture. Finally, it may be earnest, and
furnish material for a veritable action. It
supposes, then, an opposition, an action and
a reaction, a conflict, a collision. The
beauty of the ideal consists in absolute
serenity and perfection. Now, collision
destroys this harmony. The problem of
art consists, then, in so managing that the
harmony reappears in the denouement. Po
etry alone is capable of developing this op
position upon which the interest, particu
larly, of tragic art turns.
Without examining here the nature of
the different collisions, the study of which
belongs to the theory of dramatic art, we
must already have remarked that the collis
ions of the highest order are those in
which the conflict takes place between
moral forces, as in the ancient tragedies.
This is the subject of true classic tragedy,
moral as well as religious, as will be seen
from what follows.
Thus the ideal, in this superior degree,
is the manifestation of moral powers and
of the ideas of spirit, of the grand move
ments of the soul, and of the characters
which appear and are revealed in the de
velopment of the representation.
3. In action, properly so-called, three
things are to be considered which consti
tute its ideal object: 1. The general inter
ests, the ideas, the universal principles,
whose opposition forms the very foundation
of the action ; 2. The personages; 3. Their
character and their passions, or the mo
tives which impel them to act.
In the first place, the eternal principles
of religion, of morality, of the family, of
the state—the grand sentiments of the
soul, love, honor, etc.—these constitute the
basis, the true interest of the action.
These are the grand and true motives of
art, the eternal theme of exalted poetry.
To these legitimate and true powers oth
ers are, without doubt, added ; the powers
of evil; but they ought not to be repre
sented as forming the real foundation and
end of the action. ciIf the idea, the end
and aim, be something false in itself, the
hideousness of the ground will allow still
less beauty of form. The sophistry of the
passions may, indeed, by a true picture,
attempt to represent the false under the
colors of the true, but it places under our
eyes only a whited sepulchre. Cruelty and
the violent employment of force can be en
dured in representation, but only when
they are relieved by the grandeur of the
character and ennobled by the aim which
is pursued by the dramatis personae. Per
versity, envy, cowardice, baseness, are only
repulsive.
“ Evil, in itself, is stripped of real in
terest, because nothing but the false can
spring from what is false ; it produces on
ly misfortune, while art should present to
us order and harmony. The great artists,
the great poets of antiquity, never give us
the spectacle of pure wickedness and per
versity.”
�Hegel's Philosophy of Jlrt.
We cite this passage because it exhibits
the character and high moral tone which
prevails in the entire work, as we shall
have occasion to observe more than once
hereafter.
If the ideas and interests of human life
form the ground of the action, the latter is
accomplished by the characters upon whom
the interest is fastened. General ideas
may, indeed, be personated by beings su
perior to man, by certain divinities like
those which figure in ancient epic poetry
and tragedy. But it is to man that action,
properly so-called, returns; it is he who
occupies the scene. Now, how reconcile
divine action and human action, the will
of the gods and that of man ? Such is the
problem which has made shipwreck of so
many poets and artists. To maintain a
proper equipoise it is necessary that the
gods have supreme direction, and that man
preserve his freedom and his independence
without which he is no more than the pas
sive instrument of the will of the gods; fa
tality weighs upon all his acts. The true
solution consists in maintaining the ident
ity of the two terms, in spite of their dif
ference ; in so acting that what is attributed
to the gods shall appear at the same time
to emanate from the inner nature of the
dramatis personce and from their character.
The talent of the artist must reconcile the
two aspects’. “ The heart of man must be
revealed in his gods, personifications of
the grand motives which allure him and
govern him within.” This is the problem
resolved by the great poets of antiquity,
Homer, .¿Eschylus, and Sophocles.
The general principles, those grand mo
tives which are the basis of the action, by
the fact that they are living in the soul of
the characters, form, also, the very ground
of the passions; this is the essence of true
pathos. Passion, here, in the elevated ideal
sense, is, in fact, not an arbitrary, capri
cious, irregular movement of the soul ; it is
a noble principle, which blends itself with
a great idea, with^ne of the eternal veri
ties of moral or religious order. Such is
the passion of Antigone, the holy love for
her brother ; such, the vengeance of Orestes.
It is an essentially legitimate power of the
soul which contains one of the eternal
4
49
principles of the reason and the will. This
is still the ideal, the true ideal, although it
appears under the form of a passion. It
relieves, ennobles and purifies it; it thus
gives to the action a serious and profound
interest.
It is in this sense that passion consti
tutes the centre and true domain of art ; it
is the principle of emotion, the source of
true pathos.
Now, this moral verity, this eternal
principle which descends into the heart of
man and there takes the form of great and
noble passion, identifying itself with the
will of ^ie dramatis persona., constitutes,
also, their character. Without this high
idea which serves as support and as basis
to passion, there is no true character.
Character is the culminating point of ideal
representation. It is the embodiment of
all that precedes. It is in the creation
of the characters, that the genius of the art
ist or of the poet is displayed.
Three principal elements must be united
to form the ideal character, richness, vital
ity, and stability. Richness consists in not
being limited to a single quality, which
would make of the person an abstraction,
an allegoric being. To a single dominant
quality there should be added all those
which make of the personage or hero
a real and complete man, capable of be
ing developed in diverse situations and
under varying aspects. Such a multiplici
ty alone can give vitality to the character.
This is not sufficient, however; it is neces
sary that the qualities be moulded together
in such a manner as to form not a simple
assemblage and a complex whole, but one
and the same individual, having peculiar
and original physiognomy. This is the
case when a particular sentiment, a ruling
passion, presents the salient trait of the
character of a person, and gives to him a
fixed aim, to which all his resolutions and
his acts, refer. Unity and variety, sim
plicity and completeness of detail, these
are presented to us in the characters of
Sophocles, Shakspeare, and others.
Lastly, what constitutes essentially the
ideal in character is consistency and stabil
ity. An inconsistent, undecided, irresolute
character, is the utter want of character.
�50
Hegel's Philosophy of Jlrt.
Contradictions, without doubt, exist in hu
man nature, but unity should be maintain
ed in spite of these fluctuations. Some
thing identical ought to be found through
out, as a fundamental trait. To be self-de
termining, to follow a design, to embrace a
resolution and persist in it, constitute the
very foundation of personality; to suffer
one’s self to be determined by another, to
hesitate, to vacillate, this is to surrender
one’s will, to cease to be one's self, to lack
character; this is, in all cases, the oppo
site of the ideal character.
Hegel on this subject strongly protests
against the characters which figure in mod
ern pieces and romances, and of which
Werthcr is the type.
These pretended characters, says he, rep
resent only unhealthiness of spirit, and
feebleness of soul. Now true and healthy
art does not represent what is false and
sickly, what lacks consistency and de
cision, but that which is true, healthy and
strong. The ideal, in a word, is the idea
realized ; man can realize it only as a free
person, that is to say, by displaying all
the energy and constancy which can make
it triumph.
We shall find more than once, in the
course of the work, the same ideas de
veloped with the same force and precision.
That which constitutes the very ground
of the ideal is the inmost essence of things,
especially the lofty conceptions of the
spirit, and the development of the powers
of the soul. These ideas are manifest in
an action in which are placed upon the
scene the grand interests of life, the pas
sions of the human heart, the will and the
character of actors. But this action is
itself developed in the midst of an external
nature which, moreover, lends to the ideal,
colors and a determinate form. These
external surroundings must also be con
ceived and fashioned in the meaning of the
ideal, according to the laws of regularity,
symmetry, and harmony, of which mention
has been made above. How-ought man to be
represented in his relations with external
nature ? How ought this prose of life to be
idealized? If art, in fact, frees man from
the wants of material life, it cannot, how
ever, elevate him above the conditions of
human existence, and suppress these con
nections.
Hegel devotes a special examination to
this new phase of the question of the ideal,
which he designates by this title—Of the
external determination of the ideal.
In our days we have given an exaggerated
importance to this external side, which
we have made the principal object. We
are too unmindful that art should repre
sent the ideas and sentiments of the hu
man soul, that this is the true ground of
its works. Hence all these minute de
scriptions, this external care given to the
picturesque element or to the local color,
to furniture, to costumes, to all those arti
ficial means employed to disguise the
emptiness and insignificance of the sub
ject, the absence of ideas, the falsity of
the situations, the feebleness of the char
acters, and the improbability of the
action.
Nevertheless, this side has its place in
art, and should not be neglected. It gives
clearness, truthfulness, life, and interest
to its works, by the secret sympathy which
exists between man and nature. It is
Characteristic of the great masters to rep
resent nature with perfect truthfulness.
Homer is an example of this. Without
forgetting the content for the form, pic
ture for the frame, he presents to us a
faultless and precise image of the theatre
of action. The arts differ much in this
respect. Sculpture limits itself to certain
symbolic indications ; painting, which has
at its disposal means more extended, en
riches with these objects the content of its
pictures. Among the varieties of poetry, the
epic is more circumstantial in its descrip
tions than the drama or lyric poetry. But
this external fidelity should not, in any
art, extend to the representation of insig
nificant details, to the making of them an
object of predeliction, and to subordinat
ing to them the developments which the
subject itself claims. The grand point in
these descriptions is that we perceive a
secret harmony between man and nature,
between the action and the theatre on
which it occurs.
Another species of accord is established
between man and the objects of physical
�Hegel's Philosophy of Art.
nature, when, through his free activity, he
impresses upon them his intelligence and
will, and appropriates them to his own
use; the ideal consists in causing misery
and necessity to disappear from the do
main of art, in revealing the freedom
which develops itself without effort under
our eyes, and easily surmounts obstacles.
Such is the ideal considered under this
aspect. Thus the gods of polytheism
themselves have garments and arms ; they
drink nectar and are nourished by ambro
sia. The garment is an ornament designed
to heighten the glory of the features, to
give nobleness to the countenance, to fa
cilitate movement, or to indicate force and
agility. The most brilliant objects, the
metals, precious stones, purple and ivory,
are employed for the same end. All con
cur to produce the effect of grace and
beauty.
In the satisfaction of physical wants the
ideal consists, above all, in the simplicity
of the means. Instead of being artificial,
factitious, complex, the latter emanate
directly from the activity of man, and free
dom. The heroes of Homer themselves
slay the oxen which are to serve for the
feast, and roast them; they forge their
arms, and prepare their couches. This is
not, as one might think, a relic of barbar
ous manners, something prosaic; but we
see, penetrating everywhere the delight of
invention, the pleasure of easy toil and
free activity exercised on material objects.
Everything is peculiar to and inherent in
his character, and a means for the hero
of revealing the force of his arm and the
skill of his hand ; while, in civilized so
ciety, these objects depend on a thousand
foreign causes, on a complex adjustment
in which man is converted into a machine
subordinated to other machines. Things
have lost their freshness and vitality;
they remain inanimate, and are no longer
proper, direct creations of the human per
son, in which the man loves to solace and
contemplate himself.
A final point relative to the external
form of the ideal is that which concerns
the relation of works of art to the public,
that is to say, to the nation and epoch for
which the artist or the poet composes his
51
works. Ought the artist, when he treats a
subject, to consult, above all, the spirit,
taste and manners of the people whom he
addresses, and conform himself to their
ideas ? This is the means of exciting in
terest in fabulous and imaginary or even
historic persons. But then there is a lia
bility to distort history and tradition.
Ought he, on the other hand, to repro
duce with scrupulous exactness the man
ners and customs of another time, to give
to the facts and the characters their proper
coloring and their original and primitive
costume? This is the problem. Hence
arise two schools and two opposite modes
of representation. In the age of Louis
XIV., for example, the Greeks and Romans
are conceived in the likeness of French
men. Since then, by a natural reaction,
the contrary tendency has prevailed. • To
day the poet must have the knowledge of
an archeologist, and possess his scrupu
lous exactness, and pay close attention,
above all, to local color, and historic verity
has become the principal and essential
aim of art.
Truth here, as always, lies between the
two extremes. It is necessary to maintain,
at the same time, the rights of art and
those of the public, to have a proper re
gard for the spirit of the epoch, and to
satisfy the exigencies of the subject
treated. These are the very judicious
rules which the author states upon this
delicate point.
The subject should be intelligible and
interesting to the public to which it is ad
dressed. But this end the poet or the
artist will attain only so far as, by his
general spirit, his work responds to some
one of the essential ideas of the human
spirit and to the general interests of hu
manity. The particularities of an epoch
are not of true and enduring interest
to us.
If, then, the subject is borrowed from re
mote epochs of history, or from some faroff tradition, it is necessary that, by our
general culture, we should be familiarized
with it. It is thus only that we can sym
pathize with an epoch and with manners
that are no more. Hence the two essen
tial conditions ; that the subject present
�52
Hegel's Philosophy of Art.
the general human character, then that it
be in relation with our ideas.
Art is not designed for a small number
of scholars and men of science; it is ad
dressed to the entire nation. Its works
should be comprehended and relished of
themselves, and not after a course of diffi
cult research. Thus national subjects are
the most favorable. All great poems are
national poems. The Bible histories have
for us a particular charm, because we are
familiar with them from our infancy. Nev
ertheless, in the measure that relations are
multiplied between peoples, art can bor
row its subjects from all latitudes and from
all epochs. It should, indeed, as to the
principal features, preserve, to the tradi
tions, events, and personages, to manners
and institutions, their historic or tradi
tional character ; but the duty of the artist,
above all, is to place the idea which consti
tutes its content in harmony with the
spirit of his own age, and the peculiar
genius of his nation.
In this necessity lies the reason and ex
cuse for what is called anachronism in art.
When the anachronism bears only upon
external circumstances it is unimportant.
It becomes a matter of more moment if
we attribute to the characters, the ideas,
and sentiments of another epoch. Re
spect must be paid to historic truth, but
regard must also be had to the manners
and intellectual culture of one’s own time.
The heroes of Homer themselves are more
than were the real personages of the epoch
which he presents ; and the characters of
Sophocles are brought still nearer to us.
To violate thus the rules of historic reali
ty, is a necessary anachronism in art. Fi
nally, another form of anachronism, which
the utmost moderation and genius can
alone make pardonable, is that which
transfers the religious or moral ideas of a
more advanced civilization to an anterior
epoch; when one attributes, for example,
to the ancients the ideas of the mod
erns. Some great poets have ventured up
on this intentionally ; few have been suc
cessful in it.
The general conclusion is this: “ The
artist should be required to make himself
the cotemporary of past ages, and become
penetrated himself with their spirit. For if
the substance of those ideas be true, it re
mains clear for all time. But to undertake
to reproduce with a scrupulous exactness
the external element of history, with all its
details and particulars,—in a word, all the
rust of antiquity, is the work of a puerile
erudition, which attaches itself only to a
superficial aim. We should not wrest from
art the right which it has to float between
reality and fiction.”
This first part concludes with an exam
ination of the qualities necessary to an
artist, such as imagination, genius, inspi
ration, originality, etc. The author does
not deem it obligatory to treat at much
length this subject, which appears to him
to allow only a small number of general
rules or psychological observations. The
manner in which he treats of many points,
and particularly of the imagination, causes
us to regret that he has not thought it
worth while to give a larger space to these
questions, which occupy the principal
place in the majority of aesthetical treati
ses; we shall find them again under an
other form in the theory of the arts.
[The next number will continue this trans
lation through the treatment of the Sym
bolic, Classic, and Romantic forms of art.]
�Raphael's Transfiguration.
53
NOTES ON RAPHAEL’S “ TRANSFIGURATION.”
[Bead before the St. Louis Art Society in November, 1866.]
I. THE ENGRAVING.
He who studies the ei Transfiguration ”
of Raphael is fortunate if he has access to
the engraving of it by Raphael Morghen.
This engraver, as one learns from the En
cyclopaedia, was a Florentine, and executed
this—his most elaborate work—in 1795,
from a drawing of Tofanelli, after having
discovered that a copy he had partly fin
ished from another drawing, was very in
adequate when compared with the origi
nal.
Upon comparison with engravings by
other artists, it seems to me that this en
graving has not received all the praise it
deserves ; I refer especially to the seizing of
the “motives” of the picture, which are so
essential in a work of great scope, to give it
the requisite unity. What the engraver has
achieved in the present instance, I hope to
be able to show in some degree. But one
will not be able to verify my results if he
takes up an engraving by a less fortunate
artist; e. g. : one by Pavoni, of recent
origin.
IL HISTORICAL.
It is currently reported that Raphael
painted the “ Transfiguration ” at the in
stance of Cardinal Giulio de Medici, and
that in honor of the latter he introduced
the two saints—Julian and Lawrence—on
the mount; St. Julian suggesting the illfated Giuliano de Medici, the Cardinal’s
father, and St. Lawrence representing his
uncle, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” the
greatest of the Medici line, and greatest
man of his time in Italy. (( The haughty
Michael Angelo refused to enter the lists
in person against Raphael, but put forward
as a fitting rival Sebastian del Piombo, a
Venetian.” Raphael painted, as his mas
terpiece, the “ Transfiguration,” and Se
bastian, with the help of Michael Angelo,
painted the “ Raising of Lazarus.” In
1520, before the picture was quite finished,
Raphael died. His favorite disciple, Giu
lio Romano, finished the lower part of the
picture (especially the demoniac) in the
spirit of Raphael, who had completed the
upper portion and most of the lower.
III. LEGEND.
The Legend portrayed here—slightly va
rying from the one in the New Testament,
but not contradicting it—is as follows :
Christ goes out with his twelve disciples to
Mount Tabor, (?) and, leaving the nine
others at the foot, ascends with the favor
ed three to the summit, where the scene of
the Transfiguration takes place. While
this transpires, the family group approach
with the demoniac, seeking help from a
miraculous source.
Raphael has added to this legend the
circumstance that two sympathetic strang
ers, passing that way up the mount, carry
to the Beatified One the intelligence of the
event below, and solicit his immediate and
gracious interference.
The Testament account leads us to sup
pose the scene to be Mount Tabor, south
east of Nazareth, at whose base he had
healed many, a few days before, and
where he had held many conversations
with his disciples. “ On the following
day, when they were come down, they met
the family,” says Luke ; but Matthew and
Mark do not fix so precisely the day.
IV. CHARACTERIZATION.
It may be safely affirmed that there is
scarcely a picture in existence in which
the individualities are more strongly mark
ed by internal essential characteristics.
Above, there is no figure to be mistaken :
Christ floats toward the source of light—
the Invisible Father, by whom all is made
visible that is visible. On the right, Moses
appears in strong contrast to Elias on the
left—the former the law-giver, and the
latter the spontaneous, fiery, eagle-eyed
prophet.
On the mountain top—prostrate beneath,
are the three disciples—one recognizes on
the right hand, John, gracefully bending
his face down from the overpowering light,
while on the left James buries his face in
�54
Raphaels Transfiguration.
his humility. But Peter, the bold one, is
fain to gaze directly on the splendor. He
turns his face up in the act, but is, as on
another occasion, mistaken in his estimate
of his own endurance, and is obliged to
cover his eyes, involuntarily, with his hand.
Below the mount, are two opposed groups.
On the right, coming from the hamlet in
the distance, is the family group, of which
a demoniac boy forms the centre. They,
without doubt, saw Christ pass on his way
to this solitude, and, at length, concluded
to follow him and test his might which had
been c£ noised abroad” in that region. It
is easy to see the relationship of the whole
group. First the boy, actually “ possess
ed,” or a maniac ; then his father—a man
evidently predisposed to insanity—support
ing and restraining him. Kneeling at the
right of the boy is his mother, whose fair
Grecian face has become haggard with the
trials she has endured from her son. Just
beyond her is her brother, and in the shade
of the mountain, is her father. In the fore
ground is her sister. Back of the father,
to the right, is seen an uncle (on the fa
ther’s side) of the demoniac boy, whose
features and gestures show him to be a sim
pleton, and near him is seen the face of the
father’s sister, also a weak-minded person.
The parents of the father are not to be
seen, for the obvious reason that old age
is not a characteristic of persons predis
posed to insanity. Again, it is marked
that in a family thus predisposed, some
will be brilliant to a degree resembling ge
nius, and others will be simpletons. The
whole group at the right are supplicating
the nine disciples, in the most earnest
manner, for relief. The disciples, group
ed on the left, are full of sympathy, but
their looks tell plainly that they can do
nothing. One, at the left and near the
front, holds the books of the Law in his
right hand, but the letter needs the spirit
to give life, and the mere Law of Moses
does not help the demoniac, and only ex
cites the sorrowful indignation of the
beautiful sister in the foreground.
The curious student of the New Testa
ment may succeed in identifying the differ
ent disciples : Andrew, holding the books
of the Law, is Peter’s brother, and bears a
family resemblance. Judas, at the extreme
left, cannot be mistaken. Matthew looks
over the shoulder of Bartholomew, who is
pointing to the demoniac ; while Thomas—
distinguished by his youthful appearance—
bends over toward the boy with a look of
intense interest. Simon (?), kneeling be
tween Thomas and Bartholomew, is indi
cating to the mother, by the gesture with
his left hand, the absence of the Master.
Philip, whose face is turned towards Ju
das, is pointing to the scene on the mount,
and apparently suggesting the propriety of
going for the absent one. James, the son
of Alpheus, resembles Christ in features,
and stands behind Jude, his brother, who
points up to the mount while looking at
the father.
V. ORGANIC UNITY.
(а) Doubtless every true work of art
should have what is called an ‘‘organic uni
ty.” That is to say, all the parts of the work
should be related to each other in such a
way that a harmony of design arises. Two
entirely unrelated things brought into the
piece would form two centres of attraction
and hence divide the work into two differ
ent works. It should be so constituted
that the study of one part leads to all the
other parts as being necessarily implied in
it. This common life of the whole work
is the central idea which necessitates all
the parts, and hence makes the work an or
ganism instead of a mare conglomerate or
mechanical aggregate,—a fortuitous con
course of atoms which would make a chaos
only.
(б) This central idea, however, cannot
be represented in a work of art without
contrasts, and hence there must be antithe
ses present.
(c) And these antitheses must be again
reduced to unity by the manifest depend
ence of each side upon the central idea.
What is the central idea of this picture 2
(a) Almost every thoughtful person that
has examined it, has said : “ Here is the
Divine in contrast with the Human, and
the dependence of the latter upon the
former.” This may be stated in a variety
of ways. The Infinite is there above, and
the Finite here below seeking it.
(Z>) The grandest antithesis iB that be
�Raphael's Transfiguration,
tween the two parts of the Picture, the
above and the below. The transfigured
Christ, there,dazzling with light; below, the
shadow of mortal life, only illuminated by
such rays as come from above. There, se
renity ; and here, rending calamity.
Then there are minor antitheses.
(1) Above we have a Twofold. The
three celestial light-seekers who soar rap
turously to the invisible source of light,
and below them, the three disciples swoon
ing beneath the power of the celestial vis
ion. (2) Then below the mountain we
have a similar contrast in the two groups ;
the one broken in spirit by the calamity
that “ pierces their own souls,” and the
other group powerfully affected by sympa
thy, and feeling keenly their impotence
during the absence of their Lord.
Again even, there appear other anti
theses. So completely does the idea pen
etrate the material in this work of art, that
everywhere we see the mirror of the whole.
In the highest and most celestial we have
the antithesis of Christ and the twain ;
Moses the law or letter, Elias the spirit or
the prophet, and Christ the living unity.
Even Christ himself, though comparative
ly the point of repose of the whole picture,
is a contrast of soul striving against the
visible body. So, too, the antitheses of
the three disciples, John, Peter, James,—
grace, strength, and humility. Everywhere
the subject is exhaustively treated; the
family in its different members, the disci
ples with the different shades of sympa
thy and concern. (The maniac boy is a
perfect picture of a being, torn asunder by
violent internal contradiction.)
(c) The unity is no less remarkable.
First, the absolute unity of the piece, is the
transfigured Christ. To it, mediately or
immediately, everything refers. All the
light in the picture streams thence. All the
action in the piece has its motive power in
Him;—first, the two celestials soar to gaze
in his light ; then the three disciples are
expressing, by the posture of every limb,
the intense effect of the same light. On
the left, the mediating strangers stand im
ploring Christ to descend and be merciful
to the miserable of this life. Below, the
disciples are painfully reminded of Him
55
absent, by the present need of his all-heal
ing power, and their gestures refer to his
stay on the mountain top ; while the group
at the right, are frantic in supplications for
his assistance.
Besides the central unity, we find minor
unities that do not contradict the higher
unity, for the reason that they are only re
flections of it, and each one carries us, of
its own accord, to the higher unity, and
loses itself in it. Toillustrate: Below, the
immediate unity of all (centre of interest)
is the maniac boy, and yet he convulsively
points to the miraculous scene above, and
the perfect unrest exhibited in his attitude
repels the soul irresistibly to seek another
unity. The Christ above, gives^us a com
paratively serene point of repose, while
the unity of the Below or finite side of the
picture is an absolute antagonism, hurling
us beyond to the higher unity.
Before the approach of the distressed
family, the others were intently listening
to the grave and elderly disciple, Andrew,
who was reading and expounding the
Scriptures to them. This was a different
unity, and would have clashed with the
organic unity of the piece; the approach of
the boy brings in a new unity, which im
mediately reflects all to the higher unity.
VI.
SENSE AND REASON VS. UNDERSTANDING.
At this point a few reflections are sug
gested to render more obvious, certain
higher phases in the unity of this work of
art, which must now be considered.
A work of art, it will be conceded, must,
first of all, appeal to the senses. Equally,
too, its content must be an idea of the Rea
son, and this is not so readily granted by
every one. But if there were no idea of
the Reason in it, there would be no unity
to the work, and it could not be distin
guished from any other work not a work
of art. Between the Reason and the Senses
there lies a broad realm, called the “ Un
derstanding” by modern speculative wri
ters. It was formerly called the ‘‘discur
sive intellect.” The Understanding applies
the criterion “use.” It does not know
beauty, or, indeed, anything which is
for itself-, it knows only what is good for
something else. In a work of art, after it
�56
Raphael's Transfiguration.
has asked what it is good for, it proceeds
to construe it all into prose, for it is the
prose faculty. It must have the picture
tell us what is the external fact in nature,
and not trouble us with any transcendental
imaginative products. It wants imitation
of nature merely.
But the artist frequently neglects this
faculty, and shocks it to the uttermost by
such things as the abridged mountain in
this picture, or the shadow cast toward the
sun, that Eckermann tells of.
The artist must never violate the sensu
ous harmony, nor fail to have*the deeper
unity of the Idea. It is evident that the
sensuous side is always cared for by Ra
phael.
Here are some of the effects in the pic
ture that are purely sensuous and yet
of such a kind that they immediately call
up the idea. The source of light in the
picture is Christ’s form; below, it is re
flected in the garments of the conspicuous
figure in the foreground. Above, is Christ;
opposite and below, a female that suggests
the Madonna. In the same manner Elias,
or the inspired prophet, is the opposite to
the maniac boy ; the former inspired by the
celestial', the latter, by the demonic. So
Moses, the law-giver, is antithetic to the
old disciple that has the roll of the Law in
his hand. So, too, in the posture, Elias
floats freely, while Moses is brought against
the tree, and mars the impression of free
self-support. The heavy tables of the Law
seem to draw him down, while Elias seems
to have difficulty in descending sufficiently
to place himself in subordination to
Christ.
Even the contradiction that the under
standing finds in the abridgment of the
mountain, is corrected sensuously by the
perspective at the right, and the shade that
the edge of the rock casts which isolates
the above so completely from the below.
We see that Raphael has brought them
to a secluded spot just near the top of the
mountain. The view of the distant vale
tells us as effectually that this is ar moun
tain top as could be done by a full length
painting of it. Hence the criticism rests
upon a misunderstanding of the fact Ra
phael has portrayed.
VII. ROMANTIC VS. CLASSIC.
Finally, we must recur to those distinc
tions so much talked of, in order to intro
duce the consideration of the grandest
strokes of genius which Raphael has dis
played in this work.
The distinction of Classic and Romantic
Art, of Greek Art from Christian : the form
er is characterized by a complete repose, or
equilibrium between the Sense and Rea
son—or between matter and form. The
idea seems completely expressed, and the
expression completely adequate to the idea.
But in Christian Art we do not find this
equilibrium; but everywhere we find an
intimation that the idea is too transcend
ent for the matter to express. Hence, Ro
mantic Art is self contradictory—it ex
presses the inadequacy of expression.
“ I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”
In Gothic Architecture, all strives up
ward and seems to derive its support from
above (i. e. the Spiritual, light). All Ro
mantic Art points to a beyond. The Ma
donnas seem to say : "'lama beyond which
cannot be represented in a sensuous form;”
“a saintly contempt for the flesh hovers
about their features.” as some one has ex
pressed it.
But in this picture, Christ himself, no
more a child in the Madonna’s arms, but
even in his meridian glory, looks beyond,
and expresses dependence on a Being who
is not and cannot be represented. His face
is serene, beatific ; he is at unity with this
Absolute Being, but the unity is an inter
nal one, and his upraised gaze towards the
source of light is a plain statement that the
True which supports him is not a sensuous
one. <£ God dwelleth not in temples made
with hands; but those who would ap
proach Him must do it in spirit and in
truth.”
This is the idea which belongs to the
method of all modern Art; but Raphael
has not left this as the general spirit of
the picture merely, but has emphasized it
in a way that exhibits the happy temper of
his genius in dealing with refractory sub
jects. And this last point has proved too
much for his critics. Reference is made
�Introduction to Philosophy.
to the two saints painted at the left. How
fine it would be, thought the Cardinal de
Medici, to have St. Lawrence and St. Ju
lian painted in there, to commemorate my
father and uncle! They can represent
mediators, and thereby connect the two
parts of the picture more closely !
Of course, Raphael put them in there !
“Alas 1” say his critics, “ what a fatal mis
take ! What have those two figures to
do there but to mar the work! All for
the gratification of a selfish pride!”
Always trust an Artist to dispose of the
Finite ; he, of all men, knows how to digest
it and subordinate it to the idea.
Raphael wanted just such figures in just
that place. Of course, the most natural
thing in the world that could happen, would
be the ascent of some one to bear the mes
sage to Christ that there was need of him
below. But what is the effect of that upon
the work as a piece of Romantic Art? It
would destroy that characteristic- if per
mitted in certain forms. Raphael, how
ever, seizes upon this incident to show the
entire spiritual character of the upper part
of the picture. The disciples are dazzled
so, that even the firm Peter cannot endure
the light at all. Is this a physical light?
Look at the messengers that have come up
the mountain ! Do their eyes indicate any
thing bright, not to say dazzling? They
stand there with supplicating looks and
gestures, but see no transfiguration. It
must be confessed, Cardinal de Medici,
57
that your uncle and father are not much
complimented, after all; they are merely
natural men, and have no inner sense by
which to see the Eternal Verities that il
lume the mystery of existence! Even if
you are Cardinal, and they were Popes’
counselors, they never saw anything higher
in Religion than what should add comfort
to us here below!
No! The transfiguration, as Raphael
clearly tells us, was a Spiritual one : Christ,
on the mountain with his favored three
disciples, opened up such celestial clear
ness in his exposition of the truth, that
they saw Moses and Elias, as it were, com
bined in one Person, and a new Heaven
and a new Earth arose before them, and
they were lost in that revelation of infinite
splendor.
In closing, a remark forces itself upon
us with reference to the comparative mer
its of Raphael and Michael Angelo.
Raphael is the perfection of Romantic
Art. Michael Angelo is almost a Greek.
His paintings all seem to bei pictures of
statuary. In his grandest—The Last Judg
ment—we have the visible presence as the
highest. Art with him could represent the
Absolute. With Raphael it could only, in
its loftiest flights, express its own impo
tence.
Whether we are to consider Raphael or
Michael Angelo as the higher artist, must
be decided by an investigation of the mer
its of the “Last Judgment.”
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.
The object of this series is to furnish,
in as popular a form as possible, a course
of discipline for those who are beginning
the study of philosophy. Strictly popular,
in the sense the word is used—i. e. sig
nifying that which holds fast to the ordi
nary consciousness of men, and does not
take flights beyond—I am well aware, no
philosophy can be. The nearest approach
to it that can be made, consists in starting
from the common external views, and
1
drawing them into the speculative, stepbv
step. For this purpose the method of defi
nitions and axioms, with deductions there
from, as employed by Spinoza, is more ap
propriate at first, and afterwards a gradual
approach to the Dialectic, or true philoso
phic method. In the mathematical method
(that of Spinoza just alluded to) the con
tent may be speculative, but its form,
never. Hence the student of philosophy
needs only to turn his attention to the
content at first ; when that becomes in a
�58
Introduction to Philosophy.
measure familiar, he can then the more others put into ordinary phrases. He
readily pass over to the true form of the does not seem to think that the concepts
speculative content, and thus achieve com likewise are new. It is just as though an
plete insight. A course of discipline in Indian were to say to the carpenter, “I
the speculative content, though under an could make as good work as you, if I only
inadequate form, would make a grand had the secret of using my finger-nails and
preparation for the study of Hegel or teeth as you do the plane and saw.” Spec
Plato; while a study of these, or, in short, ulative philosophy—it cannot be too early
of any writers who employ speculative inculcated—does not “ conceal under cum
methods in treating speculative content— brous terminology views which men ordin
a study of these without previous ac arily hold.” The ordinary reflection would
quaintance with the content is well nigh say that Being is the ground of thought,
fruitless. One needs only to read the while speculative philosophy would say
comments of translators of Plato upon his that thought is the ground of Being;
speculative passages, or the prevailing whether of other being, or of itself as
verdicts upon Hegel, to be satisfied on this being—for it is causa sui.
point.
Let us now address ourselves to the task
The course that I shall here present will of elaborating our technique—the tools of
embody my own experience, to a great ex thought—and see what new worlds become
tent, in the chronological order of its de accessible through our mental telescopes
velopment. Each lesson will endeavor to and microscopes, our analytical scalpels
present an aperçu derived from some great and psychological plummets.
philosopher. Those coming later will pre
I.---- A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI.
suppose the earlier ones, and frequently
throw new light upon them.
A priori, as applied to knowledge, signi
As one who undertakes the manufacture fies that which belongs to the nature of' the
of an elegant piece of furniture needs mind itself. Knowledge which is before
carefully elaborated tools for that end, so experience, or not dependent on it, is a
must the thinker who wishes to compre priori.
hend the universe be equipped with the
A posteriori or empirical knowledge is
tools of thought, or else he will come off derived from experience.
as poorly as he who should undertake to
A criterion to be applied in order to test
make a carved mahogany chair with no the application of these categories to any
tools except his teeth and finger nails. knowledge in question, is to be found in
What complicated machinery is required universality and necessity. If the truth ex
to transmute the rough ores into an Ameri pressed has universal and necessary valid
can watch! And yet how common is the ity it must be a priori, for it could not have
delusion that no elaboration of tools of been derived from experience. Of empir
thought is required to enable the common ical knowledge we can only say: “ It is
est mind to manipulate the highest sub true so far as experience has extended.”
jects of investigation. The alchemy that Of a priori knowledge, on the contrary, we
turned base metal into gold is only a sym affirm: “ It is universally and necessarily
bol of that cunning alchemy of thought true and no experience of its opposite can
that by means of the philosopher’s stone possibly occur; from the very nature of
(scientific method) dissolves the base/ac/s things it must be so.”
of experience into universal truths.
II.---- ANALYTICAL AND SYNTHETICAL.
The uninitiated regards the philosophic
treatment of a theme as difficult solely by
A judgment which, in the predicate,
reason of its technical terms. “If I only adds nothing new to the subject, is said to
understood your use of words, I think I be analytical, as e. g. “ Horse is an ani
should find no difficulty in your thought.” mal;”—the concept “animal” is already
He supposes that under those bizarre terms contained in that of “horse.”
there lurks only the meaning that he and
Synthetical judgments, on the contrary,
�59
Introduction to Philosophy.
add in the predicate something new to the
conception of the subject, as e. g. “This
rose is red,” or “ The shortest distance
between two points is a straight line ;”—in
the first judgment we have “red” added
to the general concept “rose;” while in
the second example we have straightness,
which is quality, added to shortest, which
is quantity.
III.—APODEICTICAL.
Omitting the consideration of aposteriori
knowledge for the present, let us investi
gate the a priori in order to learn some
thing of the constitution of the intelligence
which knows—always a proper subject for
philosophy. Since, moreover, the a priori
analytical (“ A horse is an animal ”) adds
nothing to our knowledge, we may con
fine ourselves, as Kant does, to a priori
synthetical knowledge. The axioms of
mathematics are of this character. They
are universal and necessary in their appli
cation, and we know this without milking
a single practical experiment. “Only one
straight line can be drawn between two
points,” or the proposition : “The sum of
the three angles of a triangle is equal to
two right angles,”—these are true in all
possible experiences, and hence transcend
any actual experience. Take any a poste
riori judgment, e. g. “All bodies are
heavy,” and we see at once that it im
plies the restriction, “ So far as we have
experienced,” or else is a mere analytical
judgment. The universal and necessary is
sometimes called the apodeictical. The
conception of the apodeictical lies at the
basis of all true philosophical thinking.
He who does not distinguish between apodeictic and contingent judgments must
pause here until he can do so.
IV. SPACE AND TIME.
In order to give a more exhaustive appli
cation to our technique, let us seek the
universal conditions of experience. The
mathematical truths that we quoted re
late to Space, and similar ones relate to
Time. No experience would be possible
without presupposing Time and Space as
its logical condition. Indeed, we should
never conceive our sensations to have an
origin outside of ourselves and in distinct
objects, unless we had the conception of
Space a priori by which to render it pos
sible. Instead, therefore, of our being
able to generalize particular experiences,
and collect therefrom the idea of Space
and Time in general, we must have added
the idea of Space and Time to our sensa
tion before it could possibly become an
experience at all. This becomes more clear
when we recur to the apodeictic nature of
Space and Time. Time and Space are
thought as infinites, i. e. they can only be
limited by themselves, and hence are uni
versally continuous. But no 6uch concep
tion as infinite can be derived analytically
from an object of experience, for it does
not contain it. All objects of experience
must be within Time and Space, and not
vice versa. All that is limited in extent
and duration presupposes Time and Space
as its logical condition, and this we know,
not from the senses but from the constitu
tion of Reason itself. “ The third side of a
triangle is less than the sum of the two
other sides.” This we never measured, and
yet we are certain that we cannot be mis
taken about it. It is so in all triangles,
present, past, future, actual, or possible.
If this was an inference a posteriori, we
could only say : “ It has been found to be
so in all cases that have been measured
and reported to us.”
v. MIND.
Mind has a certain a priori constitution ;
this is our inference. It must be so, or
else we could never have any experience
whatever. It is the only way in which the
possibility of apodeictic knowledge can be
accounted for. What I do not get from
without I must get from within, if I have
it at all. Mind, it would seem from this,
cannot be, according to its nature, a finite
affair—a thing with properties. Were it
limited in Time or Space, it could never
(without transcending itself) conceive Time
and Space as universally continuous or in
finite. Mind is not within Time and Space,
it is as universal and necessary as the
apodeictic judgments it forms, and hence
it is the substantial essence of all that ex
ists. Time and Space are the logical con
ditions of finite existences, and Mind is
�60
Seed Life.
the logical condition of Time and Space.
Hence it is ridiculous to speak of my mind
and your mind, for mind is rather the uni
versal substrate of all individuality than
owned by any particular individual.
These results are so startling to the one
who first begins to think, that he is tempt
ed to reject the whole. If he does not do
this, but scrutinizes the whole fabric keen
ly, he will discover wThat he supposes to be
fallacies. We cannot anticipate the an
swer to his objections here, for his objec
tions arise from his inability to distinguish
between his imagination and his thinking
and this must be treated of in the next
chapter. Here, we can only interpose an
earnest request to the reader to persevere
and thoroughly refute the whole argument
before he leaves it. But this is only one
and the most elementary position from
which the philosophic traveller sees the
Eternal Verities. Every perfect analysis
—no matter what the subject be—will bring
us to the same result, though the degrees
of concreteness will vary,—some leaving
the solution in an abstract and vague form,
—others again arriving at a complete and
satisfactory view of the matter in detail.
SEED LIFE.
BY E. V.
Ah ! woe for the endless stirring,
The hunger for air and light,
The fire of the blazing noonday
Wrapped round in a chilling night!
The muffled throb of an instinct
That is kin to the mystic To Be ;
Strong muscles, cut with their fetters,
As they writhe with claim to be free.
A voice that cries out in the silence,
And is choked in a stifling air;
Arms full of an endless reaching,
While the “Nay” stands everywhere.
The burning of conscious selfhood,
That fights with pitiless fate !
God grant that deliverance stay not,
Till it come at last too late ;
Till the crushed out instinct waver,
And fainter and fainter grow,
And by suicide, through unusing,
Seek freedom from its woe.
Oh ! despair of constant losing
The life that is clutched in vain!
Is it death or a joyous growing
That shall put an end to pain ?
�Dialogue on Immortality.
61
A DIALOGUE ON IMMORTALITY.
BY ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.
(Translated from the German, by Chas. L. Bernays.)
Philalethes.—I could tell you that, after
your death, you will be what you were pre
vious to your birth; I could tell you that
we are never born, and that we only seem
to die—that we have always been precisely
the same that we are now, and that we
shall always remain the same—that Time
is the apparatus which prevents us from
being aware of all this; I could tell you
that our consciousness stands always in
the centre of Time — never on one of its
termini; and that any one among us,
therefore, has the immovable centre of
the whole infinite Time in himself. I then
could tell you that those who, by that
knowledge, are assured that the present
time always originates in ourselves, can
never doubt the indestructibility of their
own essence.
Thrasymachus.—All of that is too long
and too ambiguous for me. Tell me,
briefly, what I shall be after death.
Phil.—All and nothing.
Thras.—There we are ! Instead of a so
lution to the problem you give me a con
tradiction ; that is an old trick.
Phil.—To answer transcendental ques
tions in language that is only made for
immanent perceptions, may in fact lead us
into contradictions.
Thras.—What do you mean by “ trans
cendental” and “immanent” perceptions?
Phil.—Well! Transcendental perception
is rather the knowledge, which, by exceed
ing any possibility of experience, tends to
discover the essence of things as they are
by themselves ; immanent perception it is,
if it keeps inside of the limits of experi
ence. In this case, it can only speak of
appearances. You, as an individual, end
with your death. Yet individuality is not
your true and final essence, but only a
mere appearance of it. It is not the thing
in itself, but only its appearance, estab
lished in the form of time, thereby having
a beginning and an end. That which is es
sential in you, knows neither of beginning
nor ending, nor of Time itself; it knows
no limits such as belong to a given indi
viduality, but exists in all and in each. In
the first sense, therefore, you will become
nothing after your death; in the second
sense, you are and remain all. For that
reason I said you would be all and nothing.
You desired a short answer, and I believe
that hardly a more correct answer could be
given briefly. No wonder, too, that it con
tains a contradiction; for your life is in
Time, while your immortality is in Eter
nity.
Thras. — Without the continuation of
my individuality, I would not give a far
thing for all youi- “immortality/’
Phil.—Perhaps you could have it even
cheaper. Suppose that I warrant to you
the continuation of your individuality, but
under the condition that a perfectly un
conscious slumber of death for three
months should precede its resuscitation.
Thras.—Well, I accept the condition.
Phil. — Now, in an absolutely uncon
scious condition, we have no measure of
time; hence it is perfectly indifferent
whether, whilst we lie asleep in death in
the unconscious world, three months or
ten thousand years are passing away. We
do not know either of the one or of the
other, and have to accept some one’s word
with regard to the duration of our sleep,
when we awake. Hence it is indifferent
to you whether your individuality is given
back to you after three months or after
ten thousand years.
Thras.—That I cannot deny.
Phil. — Now, suppose that after ten
thousand years, one had' forgotten to
awake you at all, then I believe that the
long, long state of non-being would be
come so habitual to you that your mis
fortune could hardly be very great. Cer
tain it is, any way, that you would know
nothing of it; nay, you would even console
yourself very easily, if you were aware
that the secret mechanism which now keeps
�62
Dialogue on Immortality.
your actual appearance in motion, had not
ceased during all the ten thousand years
for a single moment to establish and to
move other beings of the same kind.
Thras.—In that manner you mean to
cheat me out of my individuality, do you?
I will not be fooled in that way. I have
bargained for the continuation of my in
dividuality, and none of your motives can
console me for the loss of that; I have it
at heart, and I never will abandon it.
Phil.—It seems that you hold individu
ality to be so noble, so perfect, so incom
parable, that there can be nothing superior
to it; you therefore would not like to ex
change it for another one, though in that,
you could live with greater ease and per
fection.
Thras.—Let my individuality be as it'
may, it is always myself. It is I—I my
self—who want to be. That is the indi
viduality which I insist upon, and not such
a one as needs argument to convince me
that it may be my own or a better one.
Phil. — Only look about you! That
which cries out—{CI, I myself, wish to ex
ist”—that is not yourself alone, but all
that has the least vestige of consciousness.
Hence this desire of yours, is just that
which is not individual, but common
rather to all without exception; it does
not originate in individuality, but in the
very nature of existence itself; it is es
sential to anybody who lives, nay, it is
that through which it is at all; it seems
to belong only to the individual because
it can become conscious only in the indi
vidual. What cries in us so loud for ex
istence, does so only through the media
tion of the individual; immediately and
essentially it is the will to exist or to live,
and this will is one and the same in all of
us. Our existence being only the free
work of the will, existence can never fail
to belong to it, as far, at least, as that
eternally dissatisfied will, can be satisfied.
The individualities are indifferent to the
will; it never speaks of them; though it
seems to the individual, who, in himself is
the immediate percipient of it, as if it
spoke only of his own individuality. The
consequence is, that the individual cares
for his own existence with so great
anxiety, and that he thereby secures the
preservation of his kind. Hence it fol
lows that individuality is no perfection,
but rather a restriction or imperfection ;
to get rid of it is not a loss but a gain.
Hence, if you would not appeal at once
childish and ridiculous, you should aban
don that care for mere individuality; for
childish and ridiculous it will appear
when you perceive your own essence to be
the universal will to live.
Thras.—You yourself and all philoso
phers are childish and ridiculous, and in
fact it is only for a momentary diversion
that a man of good common sense ever
consents to squander away an idle hour
with the like of you. I leave your talk for
weightier matters.
[The reader will perceive by the posi
tions here assumed that Schopenhauer has
a truly speculative stand-point; that he
holds self-determination to be the only
substantial (or abiding) reality. But
while Aristotle and those like him have
seized this more definitely as the selfconscious thinking, it is evident that
Schopenhauer seizes it only from its im
mediate side, i. e. as the will. On this
account he meets with some difficulty in
solving the problem of immortality, and
leaves the question of conscious identity
hereafter, not a little obscure. Ilegel, on
the contrary, for whom Schopenhauer
everywhere evinces a hearty contempt,
does not leave the individual in any doubt
as to his destiny, but shows how individu
ality and universality coincide in self-con
sciousness, so that the desire for eternal
existence is fully satisfied. This is the
legitimate result that Philalethes arrives
at in his last speech, when he makes the
individuality a product of the will; for if
the will is the essential that he holds it to
be, and the product of its activity is indi
viduality, of course individuality belongs
eternally to it. At the close of his Philos
ophy of Nature, (Encyclopaedia, vol. II.,)
Ilegel shows how death which follows life
in the mere animal—and in man as mere
animal—enters consciousness as one of its
necessary elements, and hence does not
stand opposed to it as it does to animal
life. Conscious being (Spirit or Mind as
it may be called,) is therefore immortal
because it contains already, within itself,
its limits or determinations, and thus can
not, like finite things, encounter dissolu
tion through external ones.—Ed.]
�Goethes Theory oj Colors.
63
GOETHE’S THEORY OF COLORS.
Krom an exposition given before the St. Louis Philosophical Society, Nov. 2nd, 1866.
I. —Color arises through the reciprocal
action of light and darkness.
(a.) When a light object is seen through
a medium that dims it, it appears of differ
ent degrees of yellow; if the medium is
dark or dense, the color is orange, or ap
proaches red. Examples : the sun seen in
the morning through a slightly hazy atmos
phere appears yellow, but if the air is
thick with mist or smoke the sun looks red.
(&.) On the other hand a dark object,
seen through a medium slightly illuminat
ed, looks blue. If the medium is very
strongly illuminated, the blue approaches
a light blue; if less so, then indigo; if
still less, the deep violet appears. Ex
amples: a mountain situated at a great
distance, from which very few rays of light
come, looks blue, because we see it through
a light medium, the air illuminated by the
sun. The sky at high altitudes appears of
a deep violet; at still higher ones, almost
perfectly black; at lower ones, of a faint
blue. Smoke—an illuminated medium—
appears blue against a dark ground, but
yellow or fiery against a light ground.
(c.) The process of bluing steel is a
fine illustration of Goethe’s theory. The
steel is polished so that it reflects light
like a mirror. On placing it in the char
coal furnace a film of oxydization begins to
form so that the light is reflected through
this dimming medium; this gives a straw
color. Then, as the film thickens, the
color deepens, passing through red to blue
and indigo.
(d.) The prism is the grand instrument
in the experimental field of research into
light. The current theory that light, when
pure, is composed of seven colors, is de
rived from supposed actual verifications
with this instrument. The Goethean ex
planation is by far the simplest, and, in
the end, it propounds a question which
the Newtonian theory cannot answer with
out admitting the truth of Goethe’s theory.
II. —The phenomenon of refraction is
produced by interposing different trans
parent media between the luminous object
and the illuminated one, in such a manner
that there arises an apparent displacement
of one of the objects as viewed from the
other. By means of a prism the displace
ment is caused to lack uniformity; one
part of the light image is displaced more
than another part; several images, as it
were, being formed with different de
grees of displacement, so that they to
gether make an image whose edges are
blurred in the line of displacement. If
the displacement were perfectly uniform,
no color would arise, as is’demonstrated
by the achromatic prism or lens. The
difference of degrees of refraction causes
the elongation of the image into a spec
trum, and hence a mingling of the edges
of the image with the outlying dark sur
face of the wall, (which dark surface is
essential to the production of the ordinary
spectrum). Its rationale is the following :
(a) The light image refracted by the
prism is extended over the dark on one
side, while the dark on the other side is
extended over it.
(Z>) The bright over the dark produces
the blue in different degrees. The side
nearest the dark being the deepest or vio
let, and the side nearest the light image
being the lightest blue.
(c) On the other side, the dark over light
produces yellow in different degrees; near
est the dark we have the deepest color,
(orange approaching to red) and on the
side nearest the light, the light yellow or
saffron tint.
(d) If the image is large and but little
refracted (as with a water prism) there will
appear between the two opposite colored
edges a colorless image, proving that the
colors arise from the mingling of the light
and dark edges, and not from any peculiar
property of the prism which should “ de
compose the ray of light,” as the current
theory expresses it. If the latter theory
�64
Goethe's Theory of Colors.
were correct the decomposition would be
throughout, and the whole image be col
ored.
fe) If the image is a small one, or it is
very strongly refracted, the colored edges
come together in the middle, and the ming
ling of the light yellow with the light blue
produces green—a new color which did
not appear so long as the light ground
appeared in the middle.
(/) If the refraction is still stronger,
the edges of the opposite colors lap still
more, and the green vanishes. The New
tonian theory cannot explain this, but it is
to be expected according to Goethe’s the
ory.
(<7) According to Goethe’s theory, if the
object were a dark one instead of a light
one, and were refracted on a light surface,
the order of colors would be reversed on
each edge of the image. This is the same
experiment as one makes by looking
through a prism at the bar of a window
appearing against the sky. Where in the
light image we had the yellow colors we
should now expect the blue, for now it is
dark over light where before it was light
over dark. So, also, where we had blue
we should now have yellow. This experi
ment may be so conducted that the cur
rent doctrine that violet is refracted the
most, and red the least, shall be refuted^
(h) This constitutes the experimentum
crucis. If the prism be a large water prism,
and a black strip be pasted across the mid
dle of it, parallel with its axis, so that in
the midst of the image a dark shadow in
tervenes, the spectrum appears inverted in
the middle, so that the red is seen where
the green would otherwise appear, and
those rays supposed to be the least re
frangible are found refracted the most.
(i) When the two colored edges do not
meet in this latter experiment, we have
blue, indigo, violet, as the ordQf on one
side; and on the other, orange, yellow,
saffron ; the deeper colors being next to
the dark image. If the two colored edges
come together the union of the orange with
the violet produces the perfect red (called
by Goethe (f purpur
(J) The best method of making experi
ments is not the one that Newton employ
ed—that of a dark room and a pencil of
light—but it is better to look at dark and
bright stripes on grounds of the opposite
hue, or at the bars of a window, the prism
being held in the hand of the investigator.
In the Newtonian form of the experiment
one is apt to forget the importance of the
dark edge where it meets the light.
[For further information on this inter
esting subject the English reader is refer
red to Eastlake’s translation of Goethe’s
Philosophy of Colors, published in Lon
don.]
�
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The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Vol. 1, No. 1, 1867
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Place of publication: [St. Louis, Miss.]
Collation: [1]-64 p. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Journal edited by William Torrey Harris. Printed in double columns. Complete issue: Contents include an article on Herbert Spencer -- Introduction to Fichte's science of knowledge / trans. A.E. Kroeger -- Analytical and critical essay upon the aesthetics of Hegel / M. Ch. Bebards, trans. J.A. Martling -- Notes on Raphael's 'Transfiguration' -- A dialogue on immortality / Arthur Schopenhauer -- Goethe's theory of colours.
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[Pennsylvania State University Press]
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Conway Tracts
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Text
THE
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.
OCTOBER, 1873.
SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.1
By A. DE QUATBEFAGES.
TRANSLATED
BY
ELIZA
A.
YOUMANS.
ENTLEMEN : When your honorable director invited me to
speak before you, I felt much embarrassed. I desired both to
interest and instruct you, but the subjects with which I am occupied
are of too abstract a nature to offer you much interest. In entering
upon them I run the risk of tiring you, and, as people who are tired
are little instructed, my aim would be doubly missed.
However, among the animals I have studied, there is one which, I
think, will awaken your attention. I mean the silk-worm. Its history
is full of serious instruction. It teaches us not to despise a being be
cause, at first, it seems useless ; it proves that creatures, in ap
pearance the most humble, may play a part of great importance to the
world ; it shows us that the most useful things are often slow to attract
public attention, but that sooner or later their day of justice arrives.
It teaches us, consequently, not to despair when valuable ideas or
practical inventions are not at first welcomed as they should be, for,
though their triumph is delayed, it is not less sure.
Perhaps, also, in choosing this subject, I have yielded a little to
national egotism. I was born in that province which was the first in
France to understand the importance of the silk-worm ; which owes to
this industry, fertilized by study and management, a prosperity rarely
equalled, and which, of late cruelly smitten, bears its misfortunes with
a firmness worthy of imitation.
We are to speak, then, of industry, of studious care, of perseverance,
of courage ; I am certain that you will be interested.
Pemit me, at first, to make a supposition—what we call an hypoth
esis : what would you say if a traveller, coming from some distant
G
1 A lecture delivered at the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes.
vol. hi.—42
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
country, or a philosopher, who had found in some old book forgotten
facts, should tell you, “ There exists, in a country three or four thou
sand leagues from here, in the south of Asia, a tree and a caterpillar.
The tree produces nothing but leaves which nourish the caterpillar.”
To a certainty, most of you would say at first, “What of it?”
If the traveller or the man of learning should go on to say: “ But
this caterpillar is good for something; it produces a species of cocoon,
which the inhabitants know how to spin, and which they weave into
beautiful and durable fabrics. Would you not like to enter upon the
manufacture?” You would infallibly reply: “Have we not wool
from which to weave our winter vestments, and hemp, flax, and cotton,
for our summer clothing? Why should we cultivate this caterpillar'
and its cocoons ? ”
But suppose that the traveller or philosopher, insisting, should add:
“We should have to acclimate this tree and this caterpillar. The
tree, it is true, bears no fruit, and we must plant thousands of them,
for their leaves are to nourish the caterpillar, and it is necessary to
raise these caterpillars by the millions. To this end we must build
houses expressly for them, enlist and pay men to take care of them—
to feed them, watch them, and gather by hand the leaves on which
they live. The rooms where these insects are kept must be warmed
and ventilated with the greatest care. Well-paid laborers will pre
pare and serve their repasts, at regular hours. When the moment
arrives for the animal to spin his cocoon, he must have a sort of bower
of heather (Fig. 1), or branches of some other kind, properly prepared.
Sprigs of Heather
arranged so that the
Silk-worm
may mount into them.
And then, at the last day of its life, we must, with the minutest care
and the greatest pains, assure its reproduction.” Would you not
shrug your shoulders and say, “ Who, then, is such a madman as to
spend so much care and money to raise—what ?—some caterpillars ! ”
Finally, if your interlocutor should add—“ We will gather the co
coons spun by these caterpillars, and then the manufacture which spins
them will arise, which will call out all the resources of mechanics.
Still another new industry would employ this thread in fabricating
stuffs. The value of this thread, of these tissues, would be counted by
hundreds of millions for France alone; millions that would benefit
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
659
agriculture, industry, commerce; the producer and the artisan, the
laborer in the fields, and the laborer in towns. Our caterpillar and
its products will find a place in the elaborate treatises of states
men; and a time will come when France will think herself happy
that the sovereign of a distant empire, some four thousand leagues
away, had been pleased to permit her to buy in his states, and pay
very dear for, the eggs of this caterpillar ”—you would abruptly
turn your back and say, “ This man is a fool.” And you would
not be alone: agriculturists, manufacturers, bankers, and officials,
could not find sarcasms enough for this poor dreamer.
And yet it is the dreamer who is in the right. He has not
traced a picture of fancy. The caterpillar exists, and I do not ex
aggerate the importance of this humble insect, which plays a part
so superior to what seemed to have fallen to it. It is this of which
I wish to give you the history.
Let us first rapidly observe this animal, within and without. We
call it a silk-worm, but I have told you it was a caterpillar. (Fig. 7.)
I add that it has nothing marked in its appearance. It is larger
than the caterpillars that habitually prey upon our fruit-trees, but
smaller than the magnificent pearl-blue caterpillar so easy to find in
the potato-field. Like all caterpillars, it is is transformed into a but
terfly. To know the history of this species is to know the history of
all others.
Here in these bottles are some adult silk-worms, but here also
are some large pictures, where you will more easily follow the de
tails that I shall point out, beginning with the exterior.
At one of the extremities of its long, almost cylindrical body
(Fig. 7), we find the small head, provided with two jaws. These jaws
do not move up and down, as in man and most animals that surround
us, but laterally. All insects present the same arrangement.
The body is divided into rings, and you see some little black points
placed on the side of each of these rings ; these are the orifices of res
piration. The air enters by these openings, and penetrates the canals
that we shall presently find.
The silk-worm has ten pairs of feet. The three first pairs are
called the true feet, or scaly feet; the five last, placed behind, are the
false feet, or the membranous feet. These are destined to disappear
at length.
Let us pass to the interior of the body. Here we find, at first, the
digestive tube, which extends from one extremity to the other. It
commences at the oesophagus, that which you call the throat. Below
you remark an enormous cylindrical sac; it is the stomach, which is
followed by the very short intestine. These canals, slendei* and tor
tuous, placed on the side, represent, at the same time, the liver and
kidneys. This great yellow cord is the very important organ in which
is secreted the silky material (Fig. 2). In proportion as the animal
�66o
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
grows, this organ is filled with a liquid which, in passing through
the spinners, the orifice of which you see, dries in the air, and forms
a thread. This thread constitutes the silk.
The nervous system of the animal, placed below the digestive tube,
is with insects, as with all animals, of the highest importance. It is
the nervous system which seems to animate all the other organs, and
particularly the muscles. The latter are what we call flesh or meat.
They are in reality the organs of movement, with our caterpillar as
with man himself. Each of them is formed of elementary fibres that
have the property of contracting and relaxing; that is to say, of
shortening and lengthening under the influence of the will and of the
nervous system. Upon this property depend all the movements exe
cuted by any animal whatever.
Fig. 3.
Silk-secreting Apparatus of One Side of a Silk-worm. A, B, C, the part nearest the tail of
the worm.where the silk-matter is formed. D, E, enlarged portion—reservoir of silky matter.
E. F. capillary tubes proceeding from the two glands, and uniting in one single short canal F,
which opens in the mouth of the worm, at its under lip. Two silk threads are therefore
united together, and come out through the orifice with the appearance of a single thread.
I wish you to remark, d propos of the caterpillar—of this insect
that when crushed seems to be only a formless pulp—that its muscular
system is admirably organized. It is superior to that of man himself,
at least, in relation to the multiplicity of organs. We count in man
529 muscles; the caterpillar has 1,647, without counting those of the
feet and head, which give 1,118 more.
In us, as in most animals, there exists a nourishing liquid par ex
cellence that we know under the name of blood. This liquid, set in mo
tion by a heart, is carried into all parts of the body by arteries, and
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
661
comes back to the heart by veins. In making this circuit it finds on
its route the lungs filled with air by means of respiration.
In our caterpillar we also find blood and a species of heart, but it
has neither arteries nor veins. The blood is diffused throughout the
body and bathes the organs in all directions. However, it ought to
respire. Here step in the openings of which I have spoken. They
lead to a system of ramified canals, of which the last divisions pene
trate everywhere, and carry everywhere the air—that fluid essential
to the existence of all living beings. In our bodies the air and blood
are brought together. In insects the air seeks the blood in all parts
of the body.
I have sketched for you a caterpillar when it is full grown. But
you well know that living beings are not born in this state. The
general law is, small at birth, growth, and death. The caterpillar
passes through all these phases.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4.
Egg and First Age, lasting five days. (An
age is the interval between two moultings.)
Second Age, lasting six days.
I pass around among you some samples of what we call seeds of
the silk-worm. These so-called seeds are in reality eggs. The cater
pillar comes out of the egg very small ; its length at birth is about
one-twentieth of an inch. Look at these samples, and you will see how
Fig. 6.
Fourth Age, lasting six days.
Fig. 7.
Fifth Age, lasting nine days. The mature worm near the end of its career, and at the time of
its greatest voracity.
great is the difference of size between the worm at birth and the fullgrown specimens I have shown you. This difference is much greater
than in man. A man weighs about forty times as much as the new
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
born infant; the caterpillar, when perfectly developed, is 72,000 times
heavier than when it first came from the egg.
In every thing that relates to the body, there is between men and
animals more resemblance than is ordinarily believed. We also come
from an egg which essentially resembles all others. That this egg
may become a man, it must undergo very great changes, many meta
morphoses. But all these changes, all these metamorphoses occur in
the bosom of the mother, as they are accomplished within the shell for
the chicken. For insects in general, and consequently for the silk-worm
a part of these metamorphoses occur in the open day. Hence they
have drawn the attention, excited the curiosity, and provoked for a
long time the study of naturalists. Let us say a few words about them.
Scarcely is the caterpillar born than it begins to eat. It has no
time to lose in gaining a volume 72,000 times greater than it had at
first; so it acquits itself conscientiously of its task, and does nothing
but eat, diges|, and sleep. At the end of some days this devouring
appetite ceases ; the little worm becomes almost motionless, hangs
itself by the hind-feet, raising and holding a little inclined the ante
rior of its body.
This repose lasts 24, 36, and even 48 hours, according to the tem
perature ; then the dried-up skin splits open behind the head, and
soon along the length of the body. The caterpillar comes out with a
new skin, which is formed during this species of sleep.
This singular crisis, during which the animal changes his skin as
we change our shirt, is called moulting, when it is a question of cater
pillars in general. For the silk-worm, we designate it under the name
of sickness. It is, in fact, for the silk-worm, a grave period, during
which it often succumbs, if its health is not perfect.
Fig. 8.
Head of Silk-worm during Moulting ;
swollen, and skin wrinkled.
Fig. 9.
Position of Silk-worm while Moulting.—It
remains at rest for from 12 to 24 hours, fast
ing, but begins to eat an hour after the crisis
in which it escapes from the old skin.
The silk-worms change their skin four times. After the fourth
moulting comes a redoubled appetite, which permits them to attain
their full size in a few days. Then other phenomena appear. The
caterpillar ceases to eat, and empties itself entirely ; it seems uneasy,
wanders here and there, and seeks to climb. Warned by these symp
toms, the breeder constructs for it with branches a cradle or bower, into
which it mounts. It chooses a convenient place, hangs itself by the hind
feet, and soon, through the spinner of which I have spoken (Fig. 2),
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
663
we see come out a thread of silk. This is at first cast out in any di
rection, and forms a collection of cords destined to fix the cocoon that
is to be spun. Soon the work becomes regular, and the form of the
cocoon is outlined. For some hours we can see the worker performing
his task across the transparent gauze with which he surrounds him
self. By little and little, this gauze thickens, and grows opaque and
firm; finally it becomes a cocoon like these I place before you. At
the end of about 72 hours the work is done.
Once it has given out its first bit of silk, a worm in good health
never stops, and the thread continues without interruption from one
end to the other. You see that the cocoon is in reality a ball wound
from the outside inward. The thread which forms this ball is 11 miles
in length; its thickness is only
of an inch. It is so light that 28
miles of it weigh only 15^ grains. So that 2| lbs. of silk is more
than 2,700 miles long.
Let me insist a moment on the prodigious activity of the silk-worm
while weaving his cocoon. To dispose of its silk when spinning, it
moves its head in all directions, and each movement is about one-sixth
of an inch. As we know the length of the thread, we can calculate
how many movements are made in disposing of the silk in 72 hours.
We find in this way that a silk-worm makes nearly 300,000 motions
in 24 hours, or 4,166 an hour, or 69 per minute. You see that our in
sect yields not in activity to any weaver ; but we must add that it is
beaten by the marvellous machines that the industry of our day has
produced.
Fig. 10.
Spherical Cocoon or Bombyx Mori.
Fig. 11.
Cocoon drawn in toward the Middle.
All cocoons are not alike. There exist, in fact, different races of
silk-worms, as we have different races of dogs. These differences are
less obvious in the animals themselves ; they are best seen in the co
coons, which may be either white, yellow, green, or gray; some are
round, others oval or depressed in the middle (Figs. 10 and 11).
The silk of one is very fine and very strong, that of others is coarse
and easily broken. Hence their very different values.
All I have said applies to the silk-worm properly so called—to the
silk-worm which feeds on the leaves of the mulberry-tree, the Bombyx
mori of naturalists. But, some years since, there were introduced
into France new species of caterpillars that produce cocoons, and
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
that live upon other leaves than the mulberry. Among these new im
portations, the two principal ones are the yama-mai worm, which
comes from Japan, and feeds upon the leaves of the oak, and the
ailanthus worm. The first gives a very beautiful and very fine silk,
while that of the second is dull and coarse. But the ailanthus grows
very well in unproductive soils, and hence the caterpillar which it
nourishes renders an important service.
But let us return to our mulberry caterpillar, or the silk-worm
properly so called. We left it at the moment when it disappeared
from our eyes enveloped in its cocoon. There, in its 'mysterious re
treat, it becomes torpid once more. It now shortens itself, changes
form, and submits to a fifth moulting. But the animal which emerges
from the old skin is no longer a caterpillar. It is in some sort a new
being; it is what we call a chrysalis. This chrysalis scarcely reminds
us of the silk-worm. The body is entirely swaddled ; we no longer
see either head or feet (Fig. 14). The color is changed, and has be
come a golden yellow. Only by certain obscure movements of the
posterior part do we know that it is not a dead body.
This apparent torpor in reality conceals a strange activity in all
the organs and all the tissues, which ends in the transformation of the
entire being.
In fifteen or seventeen days, according to the temperature, this
work is accomplished, and the last crisis arrives. The skin splits on
the back; the animal moults for the last time, but the creature that
now appears is no longer a caterpillar or a chrysalis ; it is a butterfly
(Fig. 12).
Fig. 12.
Silk-worm Moth (Male).
Is it needful to explain the details of this wonderful metamorpho
sis ? The body, before almost all alike, presents now three distinct
regions: the head, the chest (thorax)^ the belly (abdomen). Wings,
of which there was not the least vestige, are now developed. In com
pensation, the hind-feet have disappeared. The fore-feet persist, but
you would not know them, they have become so slender, and a fine
down covers all the parts.
In the interior, the transformation is also complete. The oesopha
gus (throat) is no longer a simple reversed funnel ; it is a narrow,
lengthened tube, with an aerial vessel attached, of which the caterpil
lar offers no trace. The stomach is strangely shortened. The intes
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
665
tine is elongated, and its different parts, that we found so difficult to
distinguish, are very much changed. If we examine in detail all the
organs just now indicated, even to the nervous system, we shall find
modifications not less striking.
But these are not the strangest changes that have occurred. There
are others which still more arrest our attention; they are those which
relate to the production of a new generation.
All caterpillars are neuters—that is to say, there are no males orfe
males among them. They have no apparatus of reproduction. These
organs are developed during the period that follows the formation of
the chrysalis while the animal is motionless, and seemingly dead.
Marriages occur at the coming out from the cocoon, and, immediately
after, the female lays her eggs, averaging about 500 (Fig. 13). This
Fig. 13.
done, she dies, the male ordinarily dying first. It is a general law for
insects; the butterfly of the silk-worm does not escape it. It is even
more rigorous for him than for his brethren that we see flying from
flower to flower. From the moment of entering the cocoon, the silk
worm takes no nourishment. When it becomes a butterfly, and has
assured the perpetuity of the species, its task is accomplished; there
is nothing more but to die.
Such, briefly, is the natural history of the silk-worm. It remains
to trace rapidly its industrial history.
Whence came this insect ? What is its country and that of the
mulberry for the tree and the animal seem to have always travelled
side by side? Every thing seems to indicate that China—Northern
China is its point of departure. Chinese annals establish the exist
ence of industries connected with it from those remote and semifabulous times when the emperors of the Celestial Empire had, it is
said, the head of a tiger, the body of a dragon, and the horns of
cattle. They attribute to the Emperor Fo-IIi, 3,400 years before our
era, the merit of employing silk in a musical instrument of his own
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TIIE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
invention. This date carries us back 5,265 years. They are said to
have employed the silk of wild caterpillars, and to have spun a sort
of floss. At that time they knew nothing of raising the worm or of
winding the cocoon into skeins.
This double industry appears to have arisen 2,650 years before our
era, or 4,515 years ago, through the efforts of an empress named Siling-Chi. To her is attributed the invention of silk stuffs. You will
not be surprised to see that the fabrication of silks should have a
woman as its inventor.
Si-ling-Chi, in creating this industry, which was to be so immense
ly developed, enriched her country. Her countrymen seem to have
understood the extent of the benefit, and to have been not ungrateful.
They placed her among their deities, under the name of Sein-Thsan,
two words that, according to M. Stanislas Julien, signify the first who
raised the silk-worm. And still, in our time, the empresses of China,
with their maids-of-honor, on an appointed day, offer solemn sacrifices
to Sien-Thsan. They lay aside their brilliant dress, renounce their
sewing, their embroidery, and their habitual work, and devote them
selves to raising the silk-worm. In their sphere they imitate the Em
peror of China, who, on his part, descends once a year from his throne
to trace a furrow with the plough.
The Chinese are an eminently practical race. No sooner did they
understand that silk would be to them a source of wealth, than they
strove to obtain a monopoly of it. They established guards along
their frontier—true custom-house officers—with orders to prevent the
going qut of seeds of the mulberry or of the silk-worm. Death was
pronounced against him who attempted to transport from the country
these precious elements which enriched the empire. So, during more
than twenty centuries, we were completely ignorant of the source of
these marvellous goods—the brilliant tissues manufactured from silk.
For a long time we believed them to be a sort of cotton; some sup
posed even that they were gathered in the fields, and were the webs
of certain gigantic spiders. The price of silk continued so high that
the Emperor Aurelian, after his victories in the Orient, refused his
jvife a silken robe, as being an object of immoderate luxury, even for
a Roman empress.
A monopoly founded on a secret ought necessarily to come to an
end, particularly when the secret is known by several millions of men.
But, to export the industry of Si-ling-Chi, it was needful to risk life in
deceiving the custom-house officer. It was a woman who undertook
this fine contraband stroke. Toward the year* 140 before our era, a
princess of the dynasty of Han, affianced to a King of Khokan,
learned that the country in which she was destined to live had neither
the mulberry nor the silk-worm. To renounce the worship of SeinThsan, and doubtless also to do without the beautiful stuffs, so dear to
the coquette, appeared to hei' impossible. So she did not hesitate to use
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
66?
the privileges of her rank to violate the laws of the empire. On ap
proaching the frontier, the princess concealed in her hair some mul
berry-seed and eggs of the butterfly. The guards dared not put their
hands on the head of a “ Princess of Heaven ; ” eggs and seeds passed
the officer without disturbance, and prospered well in Khokan, situated
near the middle of Asia.
And so commenced that journey which was not to be arrested till
the entire world possessed the mulberry and the silk-worm ; but it
was accomplished slowly and with long halts. That which had oc
curred in China occurred everywhere, each new state that obtained
the precious seeds attempting prohibition.
The silk-worm and mulberry got to Europe in 552, under Justinian.
At this time two monks of the order of St. Basil delivered to this em.peror the seeds, said to have come from the heart of Asia. To smug
gle them, they had taken still greater precautions than the Chinese
princess, for they hollowed out their walking-sticks, and filled the in
terior with the precious material. The Emperor Justinian did not
imitate the Asiatic potentates, but sought to propagate and extend
the silk-manufacture. Morea, Sicily, and Italy, were the first Euro
pean countries that accepted and cultivated the new products.
It was not till the twelfth or thirteenth century that the silk-worm
penetrated into France. Louis XI. planted mulberry-trees around his
Château of Plessis les-Tours. Besides, he called a Calabrian named
Francis to initiate the neighboring population in raising this precious
insect, and developing the several industries that are connected with it.
Under Henry IV., sericulture received a great impulse, thanks chiefly,
perhaps, to a simple gardener of Nîmes named François Traucat. It
is always said that this nurseryman distributed throughout the neigh
boring country more than four million mulberry-sprouts. In enrich
ing the country, Traucat acquired a considerable fortune ; but he lost
it foolishly. He had heard of treasures buried near a great castle
which commanded the town of Nîmes, and which is called the Castle
of Magne. He wished to increase the money he had nobly and use
fully gained, by this imaginary gold ; he bought the great castle and
neighboring ground, and dug the earth, which brought him nothing,
till he ruined himself.
The minister of Louis XIV., Colbert, sought also to propagate the
mulberry. Sully with reluctance had done the same, and sent trees
to various parts of the kingdom, some of which were still living when
I was a child. They were called by the name of this minister, and I
remember to have seen two of them in my father’s grounds, which no
longer bore leaves, but were piously preserved as souvenirs of their
origin.
To lead in the development of sericulture, a man was needed who
would not hesitate to set an example, and to make considerable sacri
fices. This man, I am proud to say, was a modest officer, Captain
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
François de Carles, my grandfather. Returning from a campaign in
Italy, where he had seen how much the culture of the mulberry en.
nched the population, he resolved to transplant this industry into the
heart of Cévennes, where were his estates. He proceeded in this way :
He made plantations, and, in order to extend them, he did not hesitate
to uproot the chestnuts, those old nourishers of the ancient Cévennols.
Fig. 14.
Larva, Pupa, Cocoon,
and
Moth, of Silk-worm.
To water the mulberries, he constructed ditches and aqueducts ; then
efoiced, so to say, the peasants to take these improved lands at
their own price and on their own conditions. In this way he alienated
almost all his land, and singularly diminished his fortune ; but he en
riched the country. The results speak too distinctly to be misunder
stood. You shall judge by the figures.
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
66g
The little valley where Captain Carles made his experiments, and
where I was born, belongs to the Commune of Valleraugue. At the
time of which I speak, they harvested scarcely 4,400 lbs. of very poor
cocoons, that sold for very little. Recently there were produced, before
the malady of which I shall presently speak, 440,000 lbs. of excellent
quality, valued on an average at 2| or 2| francs per pound. At this
price, a million of silver money found its way each year into this little
commune of not more than 4,000 inhabitants.
Let me remark that this money went not alone to the rich. The
small proprietors, the day-laborers, those even who owned not the
least land, had the greatest part. In fact, most of the easy proprie
tors did not raise their own silk-worms; they contracted for them in
this way: The laborer received a certain quantity of eggs of the silk
worm on the condition of giving a fifth of the cocoons for an ounce
of eggs ; they received, besides, enough mulberry-leaves to nourish
all the worms from these eggs, plus a certain quantity to boot. All
the cocoons above this constituted the wages or gain of the raiser.
You see, we had resolved in our mountains this problem, so often
encountered and still unsettled, of the association of capital and labor;
and resolved it in the best possible way for both. The interest of the
proprietor was, in this case, identical with that of the rearer, and re
ciprocally ; for the success of a good workman would equally benefit
both parties, and the poor workman could profit only according to his
work.
Now, this labor was in reality of little account. Until after the
fourth moulting, when the silk-worm is preparing to make his cocoon,
the rearing of the worms can be performed by the women and chil
dren while the father pursues his ordinary occupation. Only after the
fourth moult is he obliged to interrupt his work, and occupy himself,
in his turn, in the gathering of leaves. The rearing ended, an indus
trious family—and such are not rare with us—will have, on an average,
from 250 to 500 francs of profit. This bright silver, added to the re
sources of the year, this profit obtained without the investment of
capital, seconded by the wise conduct of our mountaineer Cevennols,
leads rapidly to competency. At the end of a few years, the laborer,
who had nothing, possesses a little capital to buy some corner of rock,
which, by his intelligent industry, he quickly transforms into fertile
soil, and in his turn becomes a proprietor.
What I am telling you is not fancy. I speak of facts that have
occurred under my own eyes, and that I well know. In the country,
and particularly on the soil of our old mountains, people are not
strangers to each other, as in our great cities. Between the gentle
man and the peasant there are not the same barriers as between the
citizen and the laborer in towns. When a child, I played with all my
little neighbors; I knew the most secret nooks of the eight or ten
houses composing the modest hamlet which bordered the place where
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
I was born; I saluted by their names the members of all the families
of the valley. And now, when I go to the country, it is always a
great pleasure to visit these houses, one by one, and take by the hand
those from whom I have been so long separated. But this happiness
is always mingled with sorrow; the number of those I knew dimin
ishes with each visit, and those who have come since cannot replace
them for me.
Permit me to give you the history of one of these families. It
occurs to me first, as it contrasted with all the others by its miserable
dwelling. This was a little thatch-built cottage, standing by itself at
the foot of an irregular slope of perfectly bare rocks. It consisted of
a single story, with only one room, scarcely larger than one of our
bedrooms ; the wall, built without mortar, was any thing but regular;
the roof consisted of flags of stone, retaining, as well as they were
able, a mass of straw and branches. Between the rocks that sup
ported this house and the wall, there was a little place where was
kept a pig, the ordinary resource of all Cevennol house-keeping.
This cottage was occupied, when I was eleven or twelve years old,
by a man with his wife and four children. The father and mother
worked in the field ; the eldest child, scarcely of my age, had begun to
be useful, particularly in the time of gathering the mulberry-leaves ;
the smaller ones drove the pig along the road, where it grew and fat
tened, the best it could, without any expense.
After an absence of ten years, I returned to my mountains, and the
first thing was to call upon my old neighbors, those of whom I have
spoken among the rest. In approaching, I scarcely knew the place. The
rocks that supported the house had disappeared to make way for those
traversiers of which I shall tell you presently; the house had been re
built, it had gained a story, and was of double its former extent; its
walls were laid in mortar; its roof covered with beautiful slate. The
master of the house was absent, but his wife welcomed me with a glass
of wine from a neat walnut table. Then she showed me, with proper
pride, a room with two beds at the farther end, the first portion being
devoted to the rearing of silk-worms; and, above all, the favorite ar
ticle of furniture of all good Cevennol housekeeping—an immense
cupboard of walnut, crammed with clothing, dresses, and raiment
of all sorts. At the same time she gave me news of all the family :
the eldest son was a soldier; a daughter was married ; the eldest re
maining children attended to the business, and, as of old, the younger
ones ran about watching the pig. I clasped with pleasure the hand
of this brave woman, because this competence was the fruit of good
conduct, of industry, of perseverance, and of economy. And what
the silk-worm did in ten years for one family it has been doing for
nearly a century for the whole region of Cevennes, because among
them you generally find the same elements of success.
That you may better understand me, I wish to give you some idea
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SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
of these valleys. Let me sketch for you the one I know best, the one
in which I was born. It is composed of ascents so steep that, when
two neighboring houses are placed one above the other, the cellar of
the upper one is on the same level as the garret of the lower one.
There is not much earth on these declivities, and the rocks stick out
everywhere. But it is, as it were, from the rocks themselves that
our mountaineers make their mulberry-plantations. They proceed
in this way: They first break up the rocks, and with the larger
Fig. 15.
Sheets of Papeb, with Rows
of
Cocoons
prepared for the
fob laying Eggs.
Exit
of the
Moths
designed
stones so obtained they raise a wall; then, with the smaller pieces,
they fill up the interval between the wall and the mountain. This
done, they bring upon their backs, from the bottom of the valley, soil
and manure enough entirely to fill the space. This is what is called
a traversier, and it is in this soil that most of the mulberry-trees are
planted. I have seen a bridge built across a mountain-stream ex
pressly to give foothold for two or three of these precious trees. To
pay for all this preparation the produce should be very great. The
following figures give the average value of ground planted to mulber
ries for 20 years:
Traversiers not watered
Fields watered
Meadows planted with mulberries
1 acre,
1 acre,
1 acre,
9,800 francs.
12,000 “
12,400 “
and even then the money yielded five per cent. This price, which
some would not believe when I told them, has been officially confirmed
by M. de Lavergne, in his remarkable writings upon French agricul
ture. This value of land, and the way it has been obtained, explain
the nature of our country’s wealth. With the exception of some fami
lies recently enriched by the silk-manufacture and the silk-trade, the
level of this wealth, although very high, is more of the nature of gen
eral competence than of great fortunes. Industry and economy have
�672
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
produced general well-being, without the growth of offensive differ
ences. I cannot say how it is now, but in my childhood there were
no paupers in our commune, except two infirm people who were sup
ported in their misfortunes by voluntary aid.
Fig. 16.
These striking results could not fail to affect the neighboring
country. This example of the culture of the mulberry was imitated
throughout the south of France, and adopted more or less in other
departments. You can judge of the progress made in this culture by
the following figures, giving the quantity of cocoons produced an
nually :
From 1821 to 1830
44
1831 44 1840
44
1841 44 1845
44
1846 44 1852
44
1853
.
.
.
.
22,000,000 pounds.
44
31,000,000
37,000,000 44
46,000,000 44
56,000,000 44
These 56,000,000 lbs. of cocoons sold at from 2^ to 2$ francs per
lb., representing a value of about 130,000,000 francs. Now, these
millions all went to agriculture, to the first producer; and so they
added to the national wealth at its most vital source. If this progress
had continued, in a few years we should have been able to supply our own
manufactures, and relieve ourselves of the tribute of 60 or 65,000,000
francs that we pay to foreign countries. But, unhappily, at the moment
when this culture was most prosperous, when mulberry-plantations
were springing up on all sides, fed by the nurseries which were each
day more numerous, all this prosperity disappeared before the terrible
scourge to which I alluded in the beginning of my discourse.
Like all our domestic animals, the silk-worm is subject to various
maladies. One, called the muscardlne, that for a long time was the
terror of breeders, is caused by a species of mould or microscopic
mushroom. This mushroom invades the interior of the body of the
insect. After affecting all the tissues, this vegetal parasite sometimes
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
&73
suddenly appears upon the outside of the body in the form of a white
powder. Each grain of this powder, falling upon a silk-worm, plants
the seed of this formidable mushroom, the ravages of which will
destroy all the worms of a rearing-chamber in a few hours. Happily,
science has found the means of killing these seeds, and of completely
disinfecting the locality. At the very moment when this victory was
announced, another yet more terrible scourge, the pebrine, appeared.
The muscardine caused isolated disaster; it had never been so wide
spread as seriously to injure the general business. Not so this other
malady. It is a true epidemic, which attacks life at its very source in
an inexplicable fashion. It is a pestilence like the cholera. Under
the influence of this scourge, the chambers of the silk-worm no longer
thrive; most of the worms die without producing silk. Those that
survive as butterflies give infected eggs, and the next generation is
worse than the first. To get healthy eggs, we had to go to the neigh
boring countries; but other countries have been invaded in their turn.
To-day we have to get them in Japan. Even when the egg is healthy,
the epidemic bears equally on its product; a great part of the worms
always succumb, and when the breeder gets half a crop he is very
happy. Upon the whole, the great majority of breeders have worked
at a loss since the invasion of this disease.
You understand the consequences of such a state of things, con
tinued since 1849. The people make nothing ; they lose, and yet
VOL. III.—43
�674
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
they have to live and cultivate their ground. In this business the
profits melt away rapidly, and particularly where the mulberry was
the only crop, as at Cevennes, misery has taken the place of comfort.
Those who once called themselves rich are to-day scarcely able to get
food to eat. Those who used to hire day-laborers to gather their har
vest have become day-laborers, and the laborers of former times have
emigrated. This will give you an idea of the extremities to which
they are reduced, for to uproot a mountaineer of Cevennes he must be
dying of hunger.
To escape a fatality so heavy, these people have displayed perse
verance and courage of the highest kind. . They have undertaken dis
tant journeys to get non-infected eggs. More than one has not come
back from these journeys, where it was needful to struggle against
great fatigue in inhospitable countries. Although they fell not on a
field of battle, struck by ball or bullet, they were true soldiers; and,
although they did not carry arms, they died in the service of the
country.
Fig. 18.
Fig. 19.
Square Net.
Lozenge-shaped Net.
Nets used to separate the worms from their faded and withered leaves. Fresh leaves are spread
on these nets, and the worms leave the old food to get on to the new leaves.
During seventeen years this exhaustion has been most aggravated
in places chiefly devoted to sericulture. But, if these local sufferings
merit all our sympathy, their general consequences still more demand
our attention. Confidence in the culture of the silk-worm has dimin
ished wherever it was not the exclusive occupation. Where other
crops could replace it, that of the mulberry was easily discouraged.
In many countries they have destroyed the tree so lately known as
the tree of gold.
As the foregoing interesting discourse was delivered in 1866, the
following statement of Prof. Huxley regarding the p'ebrine malady,
made in 1870, in his address before the British Association, will be in
teresting.—[Editor.
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
12122110
675
�676
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,
“ The Italian naturalist, Filippi, discovered, in the blood of silk
worms affected by this strange disease, p'ebrine, a multitude of cylin
drical corpuscles, each of about -g-gVtr of an inch long. These have been
carefully studied by Lebert, and named by him Panhistophyton ; for
the reason that", in subjects in which the disease is strongly developed,
the corpuscles swarm in every tissue and organ of the body, and even
pass into the undeveloped eggs of the female moth. The French Gov
ernment, alarmed by the continued ravages of the malady and the in
efficiency of the remedies which had been suggested, dispatched M.
Pasteur to study it, and the question has received its final settlement.
It is now certain that this devastating, cholera-like p'ebrine is the effect
of the growth and multiplication of the Panhistophyton in the silk
worm. It is contagious and infectious, because the corpuscles of the
Panhistophyton pass away from the bodies of the diseased caterpillars,
directly or indirectly, to the alimentary canal of healthy silk-worms in
their neighborhood; it is hereditary, because the corpuscles enter into
the egg. There is not a single one of all the apparently capricious
and unaccountable phenomena presented by the plbrine, but has re
ceived its explanation from the fact that the disease is the result of the
presence of the microscopic organism Panhistophyton. M. Pasteur
has devised a method of extirpating the disease, which has proved to
be completely successful when properly carried out.”
MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
By HERBERT SPENCER.
ROBABLY astonishment would make the reporters drop their
pencils, were any member of Parliament to enunciate a psycho
logical principle as justifying his opposition to a proposed measure.
That some law of association of ideas, or some trait in emotional de
velopment, should be deliberately set forth as a sufficient ground for
saying “ ay” or “no” to a motion for second reading, would doubt
less be too much for the gravity of legislators. And along with
laughter from many there would come from a few cries of “ question: ”
the entire irrelevancy to the matter in hand being conspicuous. It is
true that during debates the possible behavior of citizens under the
suggested arrangements is described. Evasions of this or that pro
vision, difficulties in carrying it out, probabilities of resistance, con
nivance, corruption, etc., are urged; and these tacitly assert that the
mind of man has certain characters, and under the conditions named
is likely to act in certain ways. In other words, there is an implied
recognition of the truth that the effects of a law will depend on the
-L
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
677
manner in which human intelligence and human feeling are influenced
by it. Experiences of men’s conduct which the legislator has gath
ered, and which lie partially sorted in his memory, furnish him with
empirical notions that guide his judgment on each question raised;
and he would think it folly to ignore all this unsystematized knowl
edge about people’s characters and actions. But, at the same time,
he regards as foolish the proposal to proceed, not on vaguely-gen
eralized facts, but on facts accurately generalized; and, as still more
foolish, the proposal to merge these minor definite generalizations in
generalizations expressing the ultimate laws of Mind. Guidance by
intuition seems to him much more rational.
Of course, I do not mean to say that his intuition is of small
value. How should I say this, remembering the immense accumula
tion of experiences by which his thoughts have been moulded into
harmony with things ? We all know that when the successful man of
business is urged by wife and daughters to get into Parliament, that
they may attain a higher social standing, he always replies that his
occupations through life have left him no leisure to prepare himself,
by collecting and digesting the voluminous evidence respecting the
effects of institutions and policies, and that he fears he might do mis
chief. If the heir to some large estate, or scion of a noble house
powerful in the locality, receives a deputation asking him to stand for
the county, we constantly read that he pleads inadequate knowledge
as a reason for declining : perhaps hinting that, after ten years spent
in the needful studies, he may have courage to undertake the heavy
responsibilities proposed to him. So, too, we have the familiar fact
that, when, at length, men who have gathered vast stores of political
information gain the confidence of voters who know how carefully
they have thus fitted themselves, it still perpetually happens that after
election they find they have entered on their work prematurely. It is
true that beforehand they had sought anxiously through the records
of the past, that they might avoid legislative errors of multitudinous
kinds, like those committed in early times. Nevertheless, when acts
are proposed referring to matters dealt with in past generations by
acts long since cancelled or obsolete, immense inquiries open before
them. Even limiting themselves to the 1,126 acts repealed in 1823-’29,
and the further 770 repealed in 1861, they find that to learn what
these aimed at, how they worked, why they failed, and whence^ arose
the mischiefs they wrought, is an arduous task, which yet they feel
bound to undertake lest they should reinflict these mischiefs; and
hence the reason why so many break down under the effort, and retire
with health destroyed. Nay, more—on those with constitutions vig
orous enough to carry them through such inquiries, there continually
presses the duty of making yet further inquiries. Besides tracing the
results of abandoned laws in other societies, there is at home, year by
year, more futile law-making to be investigated and lessons to be
�678
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
drawn from it; as, for example, from the 134 public acts passed in
1856-’57, of which all but 68 are wholly or partially repealed. And
thus it happens that, as every autumn shows us, even the strongest
men, finding their lives during the recess overtaxed with the needful
study, are obliged so to locate themselves that by an occasional day’s
hard riding after the hounds, or a long walk over the moors with gun
in hand, they may be enabled to bear the excessive strain on their ner
vous systems. Of course, therefore, I am not so unreasonable as to
deny that judgments, even empirical, which are guided by such care
fully-amassed experiences, must be of much worth.
But, fully recognizing the vast amount of information which the
legislator has laboriously gathered from the accounts of institutions
and laws, past and present, here and elsewhere, and admitting that,
before thus instructing himself, he would no more think of enforcing a
new law than would a medical student think of plunging an operating
knife into the human body before learning where the arteries ran, the
remarkable anomaly here demanding our attention is, that he objects
to any thing like analysis of these phenomena he has so diligently
collected, and has no faith in conclusions drawn from the ensemble of
them. Not discriminating very correctly between the word “gen
eral ” and the word “ abstract,” and regarding as abstract principles
what are in nearly all cases general principles, he speaks contemptu
ously of these as belonging to the region of theory, and as not con
cerning the law-maker. Any wide truth that is insisted upon as being
implied in many narrow truths, seems to him remote from reality and
unimportant for guidance. The results of recent experiments in legis
lation he thinks worth attending to; and, if any one reminds him of
the experiments he has read so much about, that were made in other
times and other places, he regards these also, separately taken, as de
serving of consideration. But, if, instead of studying special classes
of legislative experiments, some one compares many classes together,
generalizes the results, and proposes to be guided by the generaliza
tion, he shakes his head skeptically. And his skepticism passes into
ridicule if it is proposed to affiliate such generalized results on the
laws of Mind. To prescribe for society on the strength of countless
unclassified observations, appears to him a sensible course ; but, to
colligate and systematize the observations so as to educe tendencies
of human behavior displayed throughout cases of numerous kinds, to
trace these tendencies to their sources in the mental natures of men,
and thence to draw conclusions for guidance, appears to him a vision
ary course.
Let us look at some of the fundamental facts he ignores, and at
the results of ignoring them.
Rational legislation, based as it can only be on a true theory of
conduct, which is derivable only from a true theory of mind, must
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
679
recognize as a datum the direct connection of action with feeling.
That feeling and action bear a constant ratio, is a statement needing
qualification ; for at the one extreme there are automatic actions which
take place without feeling, and at the other extreme there are feelings so
intense that, by deranging the vital functions, they impede or arrest
action. But, speaking of those activities which life in general pre
sents, it is a law tacitly recognized by all, though not distinctly formu
lated, that action and feeling vary together in their amounts. Pas
sivity and absence of facial expression, both implying rest of the mus
cles, are held to show that there is being experienced neither much
sensation nor much emotion, while the degree of external demon
stration, be it in movements that rise finally to spasms and contor
tions, or be it in sounds that end in laughter, and shrieks, and groans,
is habitually accepted as a measure of the pleasure or pain, sensa
tional or emotional. And so, too, where continued expenditure of
energy is seen, be it in a violent struggle to escape, or be it in the
persevering pursuit of an object, the quantity of effort is held to show
the quantity of feeling.
This truth, undeniable in its generality, whatever qualifications
secondary truths make in it, must be joined with the truth that cog
nition does not produce action. If I tread on a pin, or unawares dip
my hand into very hot water, I start: the strong sensation produces
motion without any thought intervening. Conversely, the proposition
that a pin pricks, or that hot water scalds, leaves me quite unmoved.
True, if to one of these propositions is joined the idea that a pin is
about to pierce my skin, or to the other the idea that some hot water
will fall on it, there results a tendency, more or less decided, to shrink.
But that which causes shrinking is the ideal pain. The statement that
the pin will hurt or the water scald produces no effect, so long as there
is nothing beyond a recognition of its meaning : it produces an effect
only when the pain verbally asserted becomes a pain actually con
ceived as impending—only when there rises in consciousness a repre
sentation of the pain, which is a faint form of the pain as before felt.
That is to say, the cause of movement here, as in other cases, is a feel
ing and not a cognition. What we see even in these simplest actions,
runs through actions of all degrees of complexity. It is never the
knowledge which is the moving agent in conduct, but it is always the
feeling which goes along with that knowledge, or is excited by it.
Though the drunkard knows that after to-day’s debauch will come to
morrow’s headache, yet he is not deterred by consciousness of this
truth, unless the penalty is distinctly represented—unless there rises
in his consciousness a vivid idea of the misery to be borne—unless
there is excited in him an adequate amount of feeling antagonistic to
his desire for drink. Similarly with improvidence in general. If com
ing evils are imagined with clearness and the threatened sufferings
ideally felt, there is a due check on the tendency to take immediate
*
�68o
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
gratifications without stint; but, in the absence of that consciousness
of future ills which is constituted by the ideas of pains, distinct or
vague, the passing desire is not opposed effectually. The truth that
recklessness brings distress, fully acknowledged though it may be, re
mains inoperative. The mere cognition does not affect conduct—con
duct is affected only when the cognition passes out of that intellectual
form in which the idea of distress is little more than verbal, into a form
in which this term of the proposition is developed into a vivid imagi
nation of distress—a mass of painful feeling. It is thus with conduct
of every kind. See this group of persons clustered at the river-side.
A boat has upset, and some one is in danger of drowning. The fact,
that, in the absence of aid, the youth in the water will shortly die, is
known to them all. That by swimming to his assistance his life may
be saved, is a proposition denied by none of them. The duty of help
ing fellow-creatures who are in difficulties, they have been taught all
their lives ; and they will severally admit that running a risk to pre
vent a death is praiseworthy. Nevertheless, though sundry of them
can swim, they do nothing beyond shouting for assistance or giving
advice. But now here comes one who, tearing off his coat, plunges in
to the rescue. In what does he differ from the others ? Not in knowl
edge. Their cognitions are equally clear with his. They know as
well as he does that death is impending, and know, too, how it
may be prevented. In him, however, these cognitions arouse certain
correlative emotions more strongly than they are aroused in the
rest. Groups of feelings are excited in all; but, whereas in the
others the deterrent feelings of fear, etc., preponderate, in him
there is a surplus of the feelings excited by sympathy, joined, it
may be, with others not of so high a kind. In each case, however,
the behavior is not determined by knowledge, but by emotion. Ob
viously, change in the actions of these passive spectators is not to be
effected by making their cognitions clearer, but by making their higher
feelings stronger.
Have we not here, then, a cardinal psychological truth, to which
any rational system of human discipline must conform ? Is it not mani
fest that a legislation which ignores it and tacitly assumes its opposite
will inevitably fail ? Yet much of our legislation does this ; and we
are at present, legislature and nation together, eagerly pushing for
ward schemes which proceed on the postulate that conduct is deter
mined not by feelings, but by cognitions.
For what else is the assumption underlying this anxious urging-on
of organizations for teaching ? What is the root-notion common to
Secularists and Denominational!sts, but the notion that spread of
knowledge is the one thing needful for bettering behavior ? Having
both swallowed certain statistical fallacies, there has grown up in them
the belief that State-education will check ill-doing. In newspapers,
�MENTAL SCIENCE ANN SOCIOLOGY.
681
they have often met with comparisons between the numbers of crimi
nals who can read and write and the numbers who cannot; and, find
ing the numbers who cannot greatly exceed the numbers who can,
they accept the inference that ignorance is the cause of crime. It does
not occur to them to ask whether other statistics, similarly drawn up,
would not prove with like conclusiveness that crime is caused by ab
sence of ablutions, or by lack of clean linen, or by bad ventilation, or
by want of a separate bedroom. Go through any jail, and ascertain
how many prisoners had been in the habit of taking a morning bath,
and you would find that criminality habitually went with dirtiness of
skin. Count up those who had possessed a second suit of clothes, and
a comparison of the figures would show you that but a small percent
age of criminals were habitually able to change their garments. In
quire whether they had lived in main streets or down courts, and you
would discover that nearly all urban crime comes from holes and
corners. Similarly, a fanatical advocate of total abstinence or of sani
tary improvement could get equally strong statistical justifications
for his belief. But, if, not accepting the random inference presented
to you, that ignorance and crime are cause and effect, you consider, as
above, whether crime may not with equal reason be ascribed to various
other causes, you are led to see that it is really connected with an in
ferior mode of life, itself usually consequent on original inferiority of
nature ; and you are led to see that ignorance is simply one of the
concomitants, no more to be held the cause of crime than various
other concomitants.
But this obvious criticism, and the obvious counter-conclusion it
implies, are not simply overlooked, but, when insisted on, seem pow
erless to affect the belief which has taken possession of men. Disap
pointment alone will now affect it. A wave of opinion, reaching a cer
tain height, cannot be changed by any evidence or argument, but has
to spend itself in the gradual course of things before a reaction of
opinion can arise. Otherwise it would be incomprehensible that this
confidence in the curative effects of teaching, which men have care
lessly allowed to be generated in them by the reiterations of doctrinaire
politicians, should survive the direct disproofs yielded by daily ex
perience. Is it not the trouble of every mother and every governess,
that perpetual insisting on the right and denouncing the wrong do not
suffice ? Is it not the constant complaint that on many natures reason
ing and explanation and the clear demonstration of consequences are
scarcely at all operative; that where they are operative there is a more
or less marked difference of emotional nature ; and that where, having
before failed, they begin to succeed, change of feeling rather than differ
ence of apprehension is the cause ? Do we not similarly hear from
every house-keeper that servants usually pay but little attention to re
proofs ; that they go on perversely in old habits, regardless of clear
evidence of their foolishness; and that their actions are to be altered
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
not by explanations and reasonings, but by either the fear of penalties
or the experience of penalties—that is, by the emotions awakened in
them ? When we turn from domestic life to the life of the outer world,
do not like disproofs everywhere meet us ? Are not fraudulent bank
rupts educated people, and getters-up of bubble-companies, and makers
of adulterated goods, and users of false trade-marks, and retailers who
have light weights, and owners of unseaworthy ships, and those who
cheat insurance-companies, and those who carry on turf-chicaneries,
and the great majority of gamblers ? Or, to take a more extreme
form of turpitude—is there not, among those who have committed
murder by poison within our memories, a considerable number of the
educated—a number bearing as large a ratio to the educated classes
as does the total number of murderers to the total population ?
This belief in the moralizing effects of intellectual culture, flatly
contradicted by facts, is absurd a priori. What imaginable connection
is there between the learning that certain clusters of marks on paper
stand for certain words and the getting a higher sense of duty ? What
possible effect can acquirement of facility in making written signs of
sounds have in strengthening the desire to do right? How does
knowledge of the multiplication-table, or quickness in adding and
dividing, so increase the sympathies as to restrain the tendency to
trespass against fellow-creatures ? In what way can th? attainment
of accuracy in spelling and parsing, etc., make the sentiment of justice
more powerful than it was; or why from stores of geographical in
formation, perseveringly gained, is there likely to come increased re
gard for truth ? The irrelation between such causes and such effects
is almost as great as that between exercise of the fingers and strength
ening of the legs. One who should by lessons in Latin hope to give
a knowledge of geometry, or one who should expect practice in draw
ing to be followed by expressive rendering of a sonata, would be
thought fit for an asylum; and yet he would be scarcely more irra
tional than are those who by discipline of the intellectual faculties ex
pect to produce better feelings.
This faith in lesson-books and readings is one of the superstitions
of the age. Even as appliances to intellectual culture, books are
greatly over-estimated. Instead of second-hand knowledge being re
garded as of less value than first-hand knowledge, and as a knowledge
to be sought only where first-hand knowledge cannot be had, it is
actually regarded as of greater value. Something gathered from
printed pages is supposed to enter into a course of education; but,
if gathered by observation of Life and Nature, is supposed not thus
to enter. Reading is seeing by proxy—is learning indirectly through
another man’s faculties, instead of directly through one’s own facul
ties ; and such is the prevailing bias that the indirect learning is
thought preferable to the direct learning, and usurps the name of
cultivation! We smile when told that savages consider writing as
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
683
a kind of magic: and we laugh at the story of the negro who hid a
letter under a stone, that it might not inform against him when he
devoured the fruit he was sent with. Yet the current notions about
printed information betray a kindred delusion: a kind of magical
efficacy is ascribed to ideas gained through artificial appliances, as
compared with ideas otherwise gained. And this delusion, injurious
in its effects even on intellectual culture, produces effects still more
injurious on moral culture, by generating the assumption that this,
too, can be got by reading and the repeating of lessons.
It will, I know, be said that not from intellectual teaching, but
from moral teaching, are improvement of conduct and diminution of
crime looked for. While, unquestionably, many of those who urge on
educational schemes believe in the moralizing effects of knowledge
in general, it must be admitted that some hold general knowledge to
be inadequate, and contend that rules of right conduct must be
taught. Already, however, reasons have been given why the expec
tations even of these are illusory; proceeding, as they do, on the as
sumption that the intellectual acceptance of moral precepts will pro
duce conformity to them. Plenty more reasons are forthcoming. I
will not dwell on the contradictions to this assumption furnished by
the Chinese, to all of whom the high ethical maxims of Confucius are
taught, and who yet fail to show us a conduct proportionately exem
plary. Nor will I enlarge on the lesson to be derived from the United
States, the school-system of which brings up the whole population
under the daily influence of chapters which set forth principles of right
conduct, and which nevertheless in its political life, and by many of
its social occurrences, shows us that conformity to these principles is
any thing but complete. It will suffice if I limit myself to evidence
supplied by our own society, past and present, which negatives, very
decisively, these sanguine expectations. For, what have we been do
ing all these many centuries by our religious agencies, but preaching
right principles to old and young? What has been the aim of ser
vices in our ten thousand churches, week after week, but to enforce a
code of good conduct by promised rewards and threatened penalties ?
—the whole population having been for many generations compelled
to listen. What have Dissenting chapels, more numerous still, been
used for, unless as places where pursuance of right and desistance from
wrong have been unceasingly commended to all from childhood up
ward ? And if now it is held that something more must be done—
if, notwithstanding perpetual explanations and denunciations and ex
hortations, the misconduct is so great that society is endangered,
why, after all this insistance has failed, is it expected that more insistance will succeed ? See here the proposals and the implied beliefs.
Teaching by clergymen not having had the desired effect, let us try
teaching by school-masters. Bible-reading from a pulpit, with the ac
companiment of imposing architecture, painted windows, tombs, and
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“ dim religious light,” having proved inadequate, suppose we try bible
reading in rooms with bare walls, relieved only by maps and drawings
of animals. Commands and interdicts, uttered by a surpliced priest
to minds prepared by chant and organ-peal, not having been obeyed,
let us see whether they will be obeyed when mechanically repeated
in school-boy sing-song to a threadbare usher, amid the buzz of lesson
learning and clatter of slates. No very hopeful proposals, one would
say; proceeding, as they do, upon one or other of the beliefs, that a
moral precept will be effective in proportion as it is received without
emotional accompaniment, and that its effectiveness will increase in
proportion to the number of times it is repeated. Both these beliefs
are directly at variance with the results of psychological analysis and
of daily experience. Certainly, such influence as may be gained by
addressing moral truths to the intellect, is made greater if the ac
companiments arouse an appropriate emotional excitement, as a re
ligious service does; while, conversely, there can be no more effectual
way of divesting such moral truths of their impressiveness, than as
sociating them with the prosaic and vulgarizing sounds and sights
and smells coming from crowded children. And no less certain is it
that precepts, often heard and little regarded, lose by repetition the
small influence they had. What do public-schools show us ?—are
the boys rendered merciful to one another by listening to religious
injunctions every morning? What do universities show us?—have
perpetual chapels habitually made undergraduates behave better than
the average of young men ? What do cathedral-towns show us ?—
is there in them a moral tone above that of other towns, or must we
from the common saying, “ the nearer the church,” etc., infer a per
vading impression to the contrary ? What do clergymen’s sons show
us?—has constant insistance on right conduct made them conspicu
ously superior, or do we not rather hear it whispered that something
like an opposite effect seems produced. Or, to take one more case,
what do religious newspapers show us ?—is it that the precepts of
Christianity, more familiar to their writers than to other writers, are
more clearly to be traced in their articles, or has there not ever been
displayed a want of charity in their dealings with opponents, and is
it not still displayed? Nowhere do we find that repetition of rules
of right, already known but disregarded, produces regard for them;
but we find that, contrariwise, it makes the regard for them less than
before.
The prevailing assumption is, indeed, as much disproved by analy
sis as it is contradicted by familiar facts. Already we have seen that
the connection is between action and feeling ; and hence the corollary,
that only by a frequent passing of feeling into action is the tendency
to such action strengthened. Just as two ideas often repeated in a
certain'order become coherent in that order; and just as muscular
motions, at first difficult to combine properly with one another and
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
685
with guiding perceptions, become by practice facile, and at length au
tomatic ; so the recurring production of any conduct by its prompting
emotion makes that conduct relatively easy. Not by precept, though
heard daily; not by example, unless it is followed; but only by action,
often caused by the related feeling, can a moral habit be formed. And
yet this truth, which Mental Science clearly teaches, and which is in
harmony with familiar sayings, is a truth wholly ignored in current
educational fanaticisms.
There is ignored, too, the correlative truth; and ignoring it threat
ens results still more disastrous. While we see an expectation of ben
efits which the means used cannot achieve, we see no consciousness of
injuries which will be entailed by these means. As usually happens
with those absorbed in the eager pursuit of some good by govern
mental action, there is a blindness to the evil reaction on the natures
of citizens. Already the natures of citizens have suffered from kin
dred reactions, due to actions set up centuries ago ; and now the mis
chievous effects are to be increased by further such reactions.
The English people are complained of as improvident. Very few
of them lay by in anticipation of times when work is slack; and the
general testimony is that higher wages commonly result only in more
extravagant living or in drinking to greater excess. As we saw a
while since, they neglect opportunities of becoming shareholders in
the companies they are engaged under; and those who are most anx
ious for their welfare despair on finding how little they do to raise
themselves when they have the means. This tendency to seize imme
diate gratification regardless of future penalty is commented on as
characteristic of the English people ; and, contrasts between them and
their Continental neighbors having been drawn, surprise is expressed
that such contrasts should exist. Improvidence is spoken of as an in
explicable trait of the race—no regard being paid to the fact that
races with which it is compared are allied in blood. The people of
Norway are economical and extremely prudent. The Danes, too, are
thrifty; and Defoe, commenting on the extravagance of his countrymen,
says that a Dutchman gets rich on wages out of which an Englishman
but just lives. So, too, if we take the modern Germans. Alike by
the complaints of the Americans, that the Germans are ousting them
from their own businesses by working hard and living cheaply, and by
the success here of German traders and the preference shown for Ger
man waiters, we are taught that in other divisions of the Teutonic race
there is nothing like this lack of self-control. Nor can we ascribe to
such portion of Norman blood as exists among us this peculiar trait: de
scendants of the Normans in France are industrious and saving. Why,
then, should the English people be improvident ? If we seek explana
tion in their remote lineage, we find none; but, if we seek it in the
social conditions to which they have been subject, we find a sufficient
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explanation. The English are improvident because they have been
for ages disciplined in improvidence. Extravagance has been made
habitual by shielding them from the sharp penalties extravagance
brings. Carefulness has been discouraged by continually showing to
the careful that those who were careless did as well as, or better than,
themselves. Nay, there have been positive penalties on carefulness.
Laborers working hard and paying their way have constantly found
themselves called on to help in supporting the idle around them ; have
had their goods taken under distress-warrants that paupers might be
fed; and eventually have found themselves and their children reduced
also to pauperism. Well-conducted poor women, supporting them
selves without aid or encouragement, have seen the ill-conducted re
ceiving parish-pay for their illegitimate children. Nay, to such ex
tremes has the process gone, that women with many illegitimate
children, getting from the rates a weekly sum for each, have been
chosen as wives by men who wanted the sums thus derived ! Genera
tion after generation the honest and independent, not marrying till
they had means, and striving to bring up their families without assist
ance, have been saddled with extra burdens, and hindered from leav
ing a desirable posterity; while the dissolute and the idle, especially
when given to that lying and servility by which those in authority are
deluded, have been helped to produce and to rear progeny, charac
terized, like themselves, by absence of the mental traits needed for
good citizenship. And then, after centuries during which we have
been breeding the race as much as possible from the improvident, and
repressing the multiplication of the provident, we lift our hands and
exclaim at the recklessness our people exhibit! If men, who, for a
score of generations, had by preference bred from their worst-tem
pered horses and their least-sagacious dogs, were then to wonder be
cause their horses were vicious and their dogs stupid, we should think
the absurdity of their policy paralleled only by the absurdity of their
astonishment; but human beings instead of inferior animals being in
question, no absurdity is seen either in the policy or in the astonish
ment.
And now something more serious happens than the overlooking of
these evils wrought on men’s natures by centuries of demoralizing in
fluences. We are deliberately establishing further such influences.
Having, as much as we could, suspended the civilizing discipline of
an industrial life so carried on as to achieve self-maintenance without in
jury to others, we now proceed to suspend that civilizing discipline in
another direction. Having in successive generations done our best to
diminish the sense of responsibility, by warding off evils which disre
gard of responsibility brings, we now carry the policy further by re
lieving parents from certain other responsibilities which, in the order
of Nature, fall on them. By way of checking recklessness, and dis
couraging improvident marriages, and raising the conception of duty,
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
687
we are diffusing the belief that it is not the concern of parents to fit
their children for the business of life; but that the nation is bound to
do this. Everywhere there is a tacit enunciation of the marvellous
doctrine that citizens are not responsible individually for the bringing
up each of his own children, but that these same citizens, incorporated
into a society, are each of them responsible for the bringing up of
everybody else’s children I The obligation does not fall upon A in
his capacity of father to rear the minds as well as the bodies of his
offspring; but in his capacity of citizen there does fall on him the ob
ligation of mentally rearing the offspring of B, C, D, and the rest, who
similarly have their direct parental obligations made secondary to
their indirect obligations to children not their own ! Already it is
estimated that, as matters are now being arranged, parents will soon
pay in school-fees for their own children only one-sixth of the amount
which is paid by them through taxes, rates, and voluntary contribu
tions, for children at large: in terms of money, the claims of children
at large to their care will be taken as six times the claim of their own
children 1 And, if, looking back forty years, we observe the growth
of the public claim versus the private claim, we may infer that the
private claim will presently be absorbed wholly. Already the correl
ative theory is becoming so definite and positive that you meet with
the notion, uttered as though it were an unquestionable truth, that
criminals are “ society’s failures.” Presently it will be seen that, since
good bodily development, as well as good mental development, is a
prerequisite to good citizenship (for without it the citizen cannot main
tain himself, and so avoid wrong-doing), society is responsible also for
the proper feeding and clothing of children : indeed, in school-board
discussions, there is already an occasional admission that no logicallydefensible halting-place can be found between the two. And so we
are progressing toward the wonderful notion, here and there finding
tacit expression, that people are to marry when they feel inclined, and
other people are to take the consequences !
And this is thought to be the policy conducive to improvement of
behavior. Men who have been made improvident by shielding them
from many of the evil results of improvidence are now to be made
more provident by further shielding them from the evil results of im
providence. Having had their self-control decreased by social ar
rangements which lessened the need for self-control, other social ar
rangements are devised which will make self-control still less needful:
and it is hoped so to make self-control greater. This expectation is
absolutely at variance with the whole order of things. Life of every
kind, human included, proceeds on an exactly-opposite principle. All
lower types of beings show us that the rearing of offspring affords the
highest discipline for the faculties. The. parental instinct is every
where that which calls out the energies most persistently, and in the
greatest degree exercises the intelligence. The self-sacrifice and the
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sagacity which inferior creatures display in the care of their young
are often commented upon; and every one may see that parenthood
produces a mental exaltation not otherwise producible. That it is so
among mankind is daily proved. Continually we remark that men
who were random grow steady when they have children to provide
for; and vain, thoughtless girls, becoming mothers, begin to show
higher feelings, and capacities that were not before drawn out. In
both there is a daily discipline in unselfishness, in industry, in fore
sight. The parental relation strengthens from hour to hour the habit
of postponing immediate ease and egoistic pleasure to the altruistic
pleasure obtained by furthering the welfare of offspring. There is a
frequent subordination of the claims of self to the claims of fellow
beings ; and by no other agency can the practice of this subordination
be so effectually secured. Not, then, by a decreased, but by an in
creased, sense of parental responsibility is self-control to be made
greater and recklessness to be checked. And yet the policy now so
earnestly and undoubtingly pursued is one which will inevitably di
minish the sense of parental responsibility. This all-important dis
cipline of parents’ emotions is to be weakened that children may get
reading, and grammar, and geography, more generally than they would
otherwise do. A superficial intellectualization is to be secured at the
cost of a deep-seated demoralization.
Few, I suppose, will deliberately assert that information is impor
tant and character relatively unimportant. Every one observes from
time to time how much more valuable to himself and others is the
workman who, though unable to read, is diligent, sober, and honest,
than is the well-taught workman who breaks his engagements, spends
days in drinking, and neglects his family. And, comparing members
of the upper classes, no one doubts that the spendthrift or the gam
bler, however good his intellectual training, is inferior as a social unit
to the man who, not having passed through the approved curriculum,
nevertheless prospers by performing well the work he undertakes, and
provides for his children instead of leaving them in poverty to the
care of relatives. That is to say, looking at the matter in the con
crete, all see that, for social welfare, good character is more important
than much knowledge. And yet the manifest corollary is not drawn.
What effect will be produced on character by artificial appliances for
spreading knowledge is not asked. Of the ends to be kept in view by
the legislator, all are unimportant compared with the end of char
acter-making; and yet character-making is an end wholly unrecog
nized.
Let it be seen that the future of a nation depends on the natures
of its units ; that their natures are inevitably modified in adaptation
to the conditions in which they are placed; that the feelings called
into play by these conditions will strengthen, while those which have
diminished demands on them will dwindle; and it will be seen that
�A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.
689
the bettering of conduct can be effected, not by insisting on maxims
of good conduct, still less by mere intellectual culture, but only by
that daily exercise of the higher sentiments and repression of the
lower, which results from keeping men subordinate to the requirements
of orderly social life—letting them suffer the inevitable penalties of
breaking these requirements, and reap the benefits of conforming to
them. This alone is national education.
A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.1
By CHARLES W. ELIOT,
PRESIDENT OF HARVARD
COLLEGE.
TURN next to my third topic, the true policy of our government
as regards university instruction. In almost all the writings about
a nation’s university, and of course in the two Senate bills now under
discussion, there will be found the implication, if not the express as
sertion, that it is somehow the duty of our government to maintain a
magnificent university. This assumption is the foundation upon which
rest the ambitious projects before us, and many similar schemes. Let
me try to demonstrate that the foundation is itself unsound.
The general notion that a beneficent government should provide
and control an elaborate organization for teaching, just as it maintains
an army, a navy, or a post-office, is of European origin, being a legiti
mate corollary to the theory of government by divine right. It is
said that the state is a person having a conscience and a moral respon
sibility ; that the government is the visible representative of a peo
ple’s civilization, and the guardian of its honor and its morals, and
should be the embodiment of all that is high and good in the people’s
character and aspirations. This moral person, this corporate repre
sentative of a Christian nation, has high duties and functions com
mensurate with its great powers, and none more imperative than that
of diffusing knowledge and advancing science.
I desire to state this argument for the conduct of high educational
institutions by government, as a matter of abstract duty, with all the
force which belongs to it; for, under an endless variety of thin dis
guises, and with all sorts of amplifications and dilutions, it is a staple
commodity with writers upon the relation of government to educa
tion. The conception of government upon which this argument is
I
1 Closing argument of a report by President Eliot to the National Educational Asso
ciation at its recent session in Elmira. The first part of the report gives an account of
what had been done by the Association about the project of a national university since
1869 ; and the second part examines the two bills on the subject which were brought
before Congress in 1872.
vol. hi.—44
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
based is obsolescent everywhere. In a free community the govern
ment does not hold this parental, or patriarchal—I should better say
godlike—position. Our government is a group of servants appointed
to do certain difficult and important work. It is not the guardian of
the nation’s morals ; it does not necessarily represent the best virtue
of the republic, and is not responsible for the national character, being
itself one of the products of that character. The doctrine of state
personality and conscience, and the whole argument of the dignity
and moral elevation of a Christian nation’s government as the basis
of government duties, are natural enough under grace-of-God gov
ernments, but they find no ground of practical application to modern
republican confederations; they have no bearing on governments con
sidered as purely human agencies with defined powers and limited re
sponsibilities. Moreover, for most Americans these arguments prove
a great deal too much ; for, if they have the least tendency to persuade
us that government should direct any part of secular education, with
how much greater force do they apply to the conduct by government
of the religious education of the people ! These propositions are, in
deed, the main arguments for an established church. Religion is the
supreme human interest, government is the supreme human organiza
tion ; therefore, government ought to take care for religion, and a
Christian government should maintain distinctively Christian religious
institutions. This is not theory alone ; it is the practice of all Christen
dom, except in America and Switzerland. Now, we do not admit it
to be our duty to establish a national church. We believe not only
that our people are more religious than many nations which have es
tablished churches, but also that they are far more religious under
their own voluntary system than they would be under any government
establishment of religion. We do not admit for a moment that estab
lishment or no establishment is synonymous with national piety or
impiety. Now, if a beneficent Christian government may rightly
leave the jfeople to provide themselves with religious institutions,
surely it may leave them to provide suitable universities for the edu
cation of their youth. And here again the question of national uni
versity or no national university is by no means synonymous with the
question, Shall the country have good university education or not?
The only question is, Shall we have a university supported and con
trolled by government, or shall we continue to rely upon universities
supported and controlled by other agencies ?
There is, then, no foundation whatever for the assumption that it
is the duty of our government to establish a national university. I
venture to state one broad reason why our government should not es
tablish and maintain a university. If the people of the United States
have any special destiny, any peculiar function in the world, it is to
try to work out under extraordinarily favorable circumstances the
problem of free institutions for a heterogeneous, rich, multitudinous
�A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.
691
population, spread over a vast territory. We, indeed, want to breed
scholars, artists, poets, historians, novelists, engineers, physicians,
jurists, theologians, and orators; but, first of all, we want to breed a
race of independent, self-reliant freemen, capable of helping, guiding,
and governing themselves. Now, the habit of being helped by the
government, even if it be to things good in themselves—to churches,
universities, and railroads—is a most insidious and irresistible enemy
of republicanism ; for the very essence of republicanism is self-reliance.
With the Continental nations of Europe it is an axiom that the gov
ernment is to do every thing, and is responsible for every thing. The
French have no word for “ public spirit,” for the reason that the sen
timent is unknown to them. This abject dependence on the govern
ment is an accursed inheritance from the days of the divine right of
kings. Americans, on the contrary, maintain precisely the opposite
theory—namely, that government is to do nothing not expressly as
signed it to do, that it is to perform no function which any private
agency can perform as well, and that it is not to do a public good
even, unless that good be otherwise unattainable. It is hardly too
much to say that this doctrine is the foundation of our public liberty.
So long as the people are really free they will maintain it in theory
and in practice. During the war of the rebellion we got accustomed
to seeing the government spend vast sums of money and put forth
vast efforts, and we asked ourselves, Why should not some of these
great resources and powers be applied to works of peace, to creation
as well as to destruction? So we subsidized railroads and steamship
companies, and agricultural colleges, and now it is proposed to sub
sidize a university. The fatal objection to this subsidizing process is
that it saps the foundations of public liberty. The only adequate se
curities of public liberty are the national habits, traditions, and char
acter, acquired and accumulated in the practice of liberty and self
control. Interrupt these traditions, break up these habits or cultivate
the opposite ones, or poison that national character, and public liberty
will suddenly be found defenceless. We deceive ourselves danger
ously when we think or speak as if education, whether primary or
university, could guarantee republican institutions. Education can
do no such thing. A republican people should, indeed, be educated
and intelligent; but it by no means follows that an educated and in
telligent people will be republican. Do I seem to conjure up imaginary
evils to follow from this beneficent establishment of a superb national
university? We teachers should be the last people to forget the
sound advice—obsta principiis. A drop of water will put out a spark
which otherwise would have kindled a conflagration that rivers could
not quench.
Let us cling fast to the genuine American method—the old Massachu
setts method—in the matter of public instruction. The essential feat
ures of that system are local taxes for universal elementary education
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voted by the citizens themselves, local elective boards to spend the money
raised by taxation and control the schools, and for the higher grades
of instruction permanent endowments administered by incorporated
bodies of trustees. This is the American voluntary system, in sharp
contrast with the military, despotic organization of public instruction
which prevails in Prussia and most other states of Continental Europe.
Both systems have peculiar advantages, the crowning advantage of
the American method being that it breeds freemen. Our ancestors
well understood the principle that, to make a people free and self-re
liant, it is necessary to let them take care of themselves, even if they
do not take quite as good care of themselves as some superior power
might.
And now, finally, let us ask what should make a university at the
capital of the United States, established and supported by the Gen
eral Government, more national than any other American university.
It might be larger and richer than any other, and it might not be;
but certainly it could not have a monopoly of patriotism or of catho
licity, or of literary or scientific enthusiasm. There are an attractive
comprehensiveness and a suggestion of public spirit and love of coun
try in the term “ national; ” but, after all, the adjective only narrows
and belittles the noble conception contained in the word “ university.”
Letters, science, art, philosophy, medicine, law, and theology, are
larger and more enduring than nations. There is something childish
in this uneasy hankering for a big university in America, as there is
also in that impatient longing for a distinctive American literature
which we so often hear expressed. As American life grows more
various and richer in sentiment, passion, thought, and accumulated ex
perience, American literature will become richer and more abounding,
and in that better day let us hope that there will be found several
universities in America, though by no means one in each State, as free,
liberal, rich, national, and glorious, as the warmest advocate of a
single crowning university at the national capital could imagine his
desired institution to become.
AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
By JOHN FISKE,
BEOENTLY LECTITBER ON PHILOSOPHY AT HABVABD UNIVERSITY.
NE Friday morning, a few weeks ago, as I was looking over the
Nation, my eye fell upon an advertisement, inserted by the
proprietors of the New-York Tribune, announcing the final destruc
tion of Darwinism. What especially riveted my attention was the pe
culiar style of the announcement: “ The Darwinian Theory utterly de
O
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
693
molished ” (or words to that effect) “ by Agassiz Himself ! ” Whether
from accident or design, the type-setter’s choice of Roman capitals
was very happy. Upon many readers the effect must have been tre
mendous ; and quite possibly there may be some who, without further
investigation, will carry to their dying day the opinion that it is all
over with the Darwinian theory, since “ Agassiz Himself” has re
futed it.
Upon me the effect was such as to make me lay down my paper
and ask myself: Can it be that we have, after all, a sort of scientific
pope among us ? Has it come to this, that the dicta of some one
“servant and interpreter of Nature” are to be accepted as final, even
against the better judgment of the majority of his compeers ? In
short, who is Agassiz himself, that he should thus single-handed
have demolished the stoutest edifice which observation and deduc
tion have reared since the day when Newton built to such good pur
pose ?
Prof. Agassiz is a naturalist who is justly world-renowned for his
achievements. His contributions to geology, to paleontology, and to
systematic zoology, have been such as to place him in a very high rank
among contemporary naturalists. Not quite in the highest place, I
should say; for, apart from all questions of theory, it is probable that
Mr. Darwin’s gigantic industry, his wonderful thoroughness and ac
curacy as an observer, and his unrivalled fertility of suggestion, will
cause him in the future to be ranked along with Aristotle, Linnaeus,
and Cuvier; and upon this high level we cannot place Prof. Agassiz.
Leaving Mr. Darwin out of the account, we may say that Prof. Agas
siz stands in the first rank of contemporary naturalists. But any ex
ceptional supremacy in this first rank can by no means be claimed for
him. Both for learning and for sagacity, the names of Gray, Wyman,
Huxley, Hooker, Wallace, Lubbock, Lyell, Vogt, Haeckel, and Gegenbaur, are quite as illustrious as the name of Agassiz; and we may
note, in passing, that these are the names of men who openly indorse
and defend the Darwinian theory.
Possibly, however, there are some who will not be inclined to ac
cept the estimates made in the foregoing paragraph. No doubt there
are many people in this country who have long accustomed themselves
to regard Prof. Agassiz not simply as one among a dozen or twenty
living naturalists of the highest rank, but as occupying a solitary po
sition as the greatest of all living naturalists—as a kind of second
Cuvier, for example. There is, to the popular eye, a halo about the
name of Agassiz which there is not about the name of Gray; though,
if there is any man now living in America, of whom America might,
justly boast as her chief ornament and pride, so far as science is con
cerned, that man is unquestionably Prof. Asa Gray. Now, this
greater popular fame of Agassiz is due to the fact that he is a Euro
pean who cast in his lot with us at a time when we were wont to over-
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
rate foreign importations of whatever sort. As a European, there
fore, he outshines such men as Profs. Gray and Wyman, and, as a man
whom we know, he outshines other Europeans, like Haeckel and Gegenbaur, whose acquaintance we happen not to have made; just as
Rubinstein, whose fame has filled the American newspapers, outshines
Bulow (probably his equal as a pianist), who has not yet visited this
country. In this way Prof. Agassiz has acquired a reputation in
America which is greater than his reputation in Europe, and which is
greater than his achievements—admirable as they are—would be able,
on trial, to sustain.
And now I come to my first point. Admitting for Prof. Agassiz
all the wonderful greatness as a naturalist with which the vague
sentiments of the uneducated multitude in this country would accredit
him ; admitting, in other words, that he is the greatest of naturalists,
and not one among a dozen or twenty equals; it must still be asked,
why should his rejection of Darwinism be regarded as conclusively
fatal to the Darwinian theory ? The history of science supplies us
with many an instance in which a new and unpopular theory has been
vehemently opposed by those whom one would at first suppose most
competent to judge of its merits, and has nevertheless gained the vic
tory. Dr. Draper brings a terrible indictment against Bacon for re
jecting the Copernican theory, and refusing to profit by the discov
eries of Gilbert in magnetism. This should not be allowed to detract
from Bacon’s real greatness, any more than the rejection of Darwinism
should be allowed to detract from the real merit of Agassiz. Great men
must be measured by their positive achievements rather than by their
negative shortcomings, otherwise they might all have to step down from
their pedestals. Leibnitz rejected Newton’s law of gravitation ; Harvey
saw nothing but foolishness in Aselli’s discovery of the lacteals ; Magen
die ridiculed the great work in which the younger Geoffroy Saint-IIilaire
began to investigate the conditions of nutrition which determine the
birth of monsters ; and when Young, Fresnel, and Malus, completed
the demonstration of that undulatory theory of light which has made
their names immortal, Laplace, nevertheless, the greatest mathemati
cian of the age, persisted until his dying day in heaping contumely
upon these eminent men and upon their arguments. Nay, even Cu
vier—the teacher whom Prof. Agassiz so justly reveres—did not Cuvier
adhere to the last to the grotesque theory of “ pre-formation,” and reject
the true theory of “ epigenesis,” which C. F. Wolff, even before Baer,
had placed upon a scientific basis ? Supposing, then, that the Dar
winian theory is rejected by Agassiz, this fact is no more decisive
against the Darwinian theory than the rejection of Fresnel’s theory
by Laplace was decisive against Fresnel’s theory.
For the facts just cited show that even the wisest and most learned
men are not infallible, and that it will not do to have a papacy where
scientific questions are concerned. Strange as it may at first seem,
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695
nothing is more certain than that a man’s opinion may be eminently
fallible, even with reference to matters which might appear to come
directly within the range of his own specialty. Many people, I pre
sume, think that, because Prof. Agassiz has made a specialty of the
study of extinct and living organisms, because he has devoted a long
and industrious life to this study, therefore his opinion with reference
to the relations of present life upon the globe to past life ought to be
at once conclusive. The fallacy of this inference becomes apparent as
soon as we recollect that Profs. Gray, Wyman, Huxley, and Haeckel,
who are equally well qualified to have an opinion on such matters, have
agreed in forming an opinion diametrically opposite to that of Prof.
Agassiz. But the fallacy may be shown independently of any such com
parison. Even if all the foundations of certainty seem to be shaking
beneath us when we say that an expert is not always the best judge of
matters pertaining to his own specialty, we must still say it, for facts
will bear us out in saying it. I have known excellent mathematicians
and astronomers who had not the first word to say about the Nebular
Hypothesis : they had never felt interested in it, had never studied it,
and consequently did not understand it, and could hardly state it cor
rectly. After a while one ceases to be surprised at such things. It is
quite possible for one to study the structure of echinoderms and fishes
during a long life, and yet remain unable to offer a satisfactory opin
ion upon any subject connected with zoology, for the proper treatment
of which there are required some power of generalization and some fa
miliarity with large considerations. Indeed, there are many admirable
experts in natural history, as well as in other studies, who never pay
the slightest heed to questions involving wide-reaching considera
tions ; and who, with all their amazing minuteness of memory con
cerning the metamorphoses of insects and the changes which the em
bryo of a white-fish undergoes from fecundation to maturity, are nev
ertheless unable to see the evidentiary value of the great general facts
of geological succession and geographical distribution, even when it
is thrust directly before their eyes. To such persons, “ science ” means
the collecting of polyps, the dissecting of mollusks, the vivisection of
frogs, the registration of innumerable facts of detail, without regard
to the connected story which all these facts, when put together, have
it in their powei’ to tell. And all putting together of facts, with a
view to elicit this connected story, they are too apt to brand as unsci
entific speculation; forgetting that if Newton had merely occupied
himself with taking observations and measuring celestial distances, in
stead of propounding an audacious hypothesis, and then patiently
verifying it, the law of gravitation might never have been discovered.
Herein lies the explanation of the twice-repeated rejection of Mr.
Darwin’s name by the French Academy of Sciences. The lamentable
decline of science in France since the beginning of the Second Empire
has been most conspicuously marked by the tendency of scientific
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inquirers to occupy themselves exclusively with matters of detail, to
the neglect of wide-reaching generalizations. And the rejection of
Mr. Darwin’s name was justified upon the ground, not that he had
made unscientific generalizations, but that he had been a mere (!) generalizer, instead of a collector of facts. The allegation was, indeed,
incorrect; since Mr. Darwin is as eminent for his industry in collect
ing facts as for his boldness in generalizing. But the form of the
allegation well illustrates the truth of what I have been seeking to
show—that familiarity with the details of a subject does not enable
one to deal with it in the grand style, and elicit new truth from old
facts, unless one also possesses some faculty for penetrating into the
hidden implications of the facts ; or, in other words, some faculty for
philosophizing.
Now, I am far from saying of Prof. Agassiz that he is a mere col
lector of echinoderms and dissector of fishes, with no tact whatever
in philosophizing. He does not stand in the position of those who
think that the end of scientific research is attained when we have
carefully ticketed a few thousand specimens of corals and butterflies,
in much the same spirit as that in which a school-girl collects and clas
sifies autographs or postage-stamps. Along with his indefatigable in
dustry as a collector and observer, Prof. Agassiz has a decided inclina
tion toward general views. However lamentably deficient we may
think him in his ability to discern the hidden implications of facts,
there can be no question that his facts are of little importance to him
save as items in a philosophic scheme. He knows very well—perhaps
almost too well—that the value of facts lies in the conclusions to which
they point. And, accordingly, lack of philosophizing is the last short
coming with which, as a scientific writer, he can be charged. If he
errs on a great scientific question, lying within his own range of inves
tigation, it is not because he refrains steadfastly from all general con
siderations, but because he philosophizes—and philosophizes on un
sound principles. It is because his philosophizing is not a natural
outgrowth from the facts of Nature which lie at his disposal, but is
made up out of sundry traditions of his youth, which, by dint of play
ing upon the associations of ideas which are grouped around certain
combinations of words, have come to usurp the place of observed facts
as a basis for forming conclusions. It is not because he abstains from
generalizing that Prof. Agassiz is unable to appreciate the arguments
by which Mr. Darwin has established his theory, but it is because he
long ago brought his mind to acquiesce in various generalizations, of a
thoroughly unscientific or non-scientific character, with the further
maintenance of which the acceptance of the Darwinian theory is (or
seems to Prof. Agassiz to be) incompatible.
The generalizations which have thus preoccupied Prof. Agassiz’s
mind are purely theological or mythological in their nature. In esti
mating the probable soundness of his opinion upon any scientific ques-
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
697
tion, it must always be remembered that he is, above all things, a dev
otee of what J's called “ natural theology.” In his discussions concern
ing the character of the relationships between the various members of
the animal kingdom, the foreground of his consciousness is always
completely occupied by theological considerations, to such an extent
that the evidentiary value of scientific facts cannot always get a foot
ing there, and is, consequently, pushed away into the background.
One feels, in reading his writings, that, except when he is narrating
facts with the pure joyfulness of a specialist exulting in the exposition
of his subject (and, when in this mood, he often narrates facts with
which his inferences are wholly incompatible), he never makes a point
without some regard to its bearings upon theological propositions which
his early training has led him to place paramount to all facts of obser
vation whatever. In virtue of this peculiarity of disposition, Prof.
Agassiz has become the welcome ally of those zealous but narrow
minded theologians, in whom the rapid progress of the Darwinian
theory has awakened the easily explicable but totally groundless fear
that the necessary foundations of true religion, or true Christianity,
are imperilled. It is not many years since these very persons re
garded Prof. Agassiz with dread and abhorrence, because of his flat
contradiction of the Bible in his theory of the multiple origin of the
human race. But, now that the doctrine of Evolution has come to be
the unclean thing above all others to be dreaded and abhorred, this
comparatively slight iniquity of Prof. Agassiz has been condoned or
forgotten, and, as the great antagonist of Evolution, he is welcomed
as the defender of the true Church against her foes.
This preference of theological over scientific considerations once
led Prof. Agassiz (if my memory serves me rightly) to use language
very unbecoming in a professed student of Nature. Some seven years
ago he delivered a course of lectures at the Cooper Union, and in one
of these lectures he observed that he preferred the theory which makes
man out a fallen angel to the theory which makes him out an improved
monkey—a remark which was quite naturally greeted with laughter
and applause. But the applause was ill-bestowed, for the remark was
one of the most degrading which a scientific lecturer could make. A
scientific inquirer has no business to have “ preferences.” Such things
are fit only for silly women of society, or for young children who play
with facts, instead of making sober use of them. What matters it
whether we are pleased with the notion of a monkey-ancestry or not ?
The end of scientific research is the discovery of truth, and not the
satisfaction of our whims or fancies, or even of what we are pleased to
call our finer feelings. The proper reason for refusing to accept any
doctrine is, that it is inconsistent with observed facts, or with some
other doctrine which has been firmly established on a basis of fact.
The refusal to entertain a theory because it seems disagreeable or de
grading, is a mark of intellectual cowardice and insincerity. In mat
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
ters of scientific inquiry, it is as grave an offence as the letting one’s
note go to protest is in matters of business. In saying these things, I
do not mean to charge Prof. Agassiz with intellectual cowardice and
insincerity, for the remark which I criticise so sharply was not worthy
of him, it did not comport with his real character as a student of sci
ence, and to judge of him by this utterance alone would be to do him
injustice.
It was with the hope of finding some more legitimate objections to
the Darwinian theory that I procured the Tribune's lecture-sheet con
taining Prof. Agassiz’s twelve lectures on the natural foundations of
organic affinity, and diligently searched it from beginning to end. I
believe I am truthful in saying that a good staggering objection would
have been quite welcome to me, just for the sake of the intellectual
stimulus implied in dealing with it, for on this subject my mind was
so thoroughly made up thirteen years ago, that the discussion of it,
as ordinarily conducted, has long since ceased to have any interest for
me. I am just as firmly convinced that the human race is descended
from lower animal forms, as I am that the earth revolves in an elliptical
orbit about the sun. So completely, indeed, is this proposition wrought
in with my whole mental structure, that the negation of it seems to me
utterly nonsensical and void of meaning, and I doubt if my mind is ca
pable of shaping such a negation into a proposition which I could intel
ligently state. To have such deeply-rooted convictions shaken once in
a while is, I believe, a very useful and wdiolesome experiment in men
tal hygiene. That rigidity of mind which prevents the thorough re
vising of our opinions is sure, sooner or later, to come upon all of us ;
but we ought to dread it, as we dread the stagnation of old age or
death. For some such reasons as these, I am sure that I should have
been glad to find, in the course of Prof. Agassiz’s lectures, at least one
powerful argument against the interpretation of organic affinities
which Mr. Darwin has done so much to establish. I should have
been still more glad to find some alternative interpretation proposed
which could deserve to be entertained as scientific in character. I am
sure no task could be more delightful, or more quickening to one’s
energies, than that of comparing two alternative theories upon this
subject, upon which, thus far, only one has ever been propounded
which possesses the marks of a scientific hypothesis. But no such
pleasure or profit is in store for any one who studies these twelve lect
ures of Prof. Agassiz. In all these lectures, there is not a single al
lusion to Mr. Darwin’s name, save once in a citation from another
author; there is not the remotest allusion to any of the arguments by
which Mr. Darwin has contributed most largely to tlie establishment
of the development theory; nay, there is not a single sentence from
which one could learn that Mr. Darwin’s books had ever been written,
or that the theories which they expound had ever taken shape in the
mind of any thinking man. I do not doubt that Prof. Agassiz has, at
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699
some time read, or looked over, the “ Origin of Species
but there is
not a word in these lectures which might not have been written by
one who had never heard of that book, or of the arguments which
made the publication of it the beginning of a new epoch in the history
of science.
Not only is it that Prof. Agassiz does not attack the Darwinian
theory in these lectures; it is also that, until the ninth lecture, he does
not allude to the doctrine of Evolution in any way. TIis first eight
lectures consist mostly in an account of the development of the embryo
in various animals; and in this we have a pure description of facts
with which no one certainly will feel like quarrelling, so far as theories
are concerned. He goes to work, very much as Max Müller does, in
lecturing about the science of language, when he gives you a maximum
of interesting etymologies and a minimum of real philosophizing which
goes to the bottom of things. But Prof. Agassiz is not so interesting
or so stimulating in his discourse as Max, Müller. He does not lead us
into pleasant fields of illustration, where we would fain tarry longer,
forgetting the main purpose of the discussion in our delight at the un
essential matters which occupy our attention. On the contrary, it
seems to me that Prof. Agassiz’s explanation of the development of
eggs is rather tedious and dry, and by no means richly fraught with
novel suggestions. The exposition is a commonplace one, such as is
good for students in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, who are
beginning to study embryology, but there are no features which make
it especially interesting or instructive to any one who has already
served an apprenticeship in these matters.
In his ninth lecture, Prof. Agassiz begins to make some allusion
to the development theory—not to the development theory as it now
stands since the publication of the “ Origin of Species,” but to the de
velopment theory as it stood in the days when Prof. Agassiz was a
young student, when Cuvier and the elder Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
waged fierce warfare in the French Academy, and when the aged
Goethe, sanest and wisest of men, foresaw in the issue of that battle
the speedy triumph of the development theory. Beyond this point, I
will venture to say, Prof. Agassiz has never travelled. The doctrine
of Evolution is still, to him, what it was in those early days ; and all
the discoveries and reasonings of Mr. Darwin have passed by him un
heeded and unnoticed. He arrived too early at that rigidity of mind
which prevents us from properly comprehending new theories, and
which we should all of us dread.
What, now, is the doctrine which Prof. Agassiz begins to attack,
in his ninth lecture, and what is the doctrine which he would propose
as a substitute ? The doctrine which he attacks is simply this—that
all organic beings have come into existence through some natural pro
cess of causation ; and the doctrine which he defends is just this—that
all organic beings, as classed in species, have come into existence at
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the outset by means of some act of which our ordinary notions of cause
and effect can give no account whatever. For every one of the indi
viduals of which a species is made up, he will admit the adequacy of
the ordinary process of generation ; but for the species as a whole, this
process seems to him inadequate, and he flies at once to that refuge
of inconsequent and timid minds—miracle !
This is really just what Prof. Agassiz’s theory of the origin of spe
cific forms amounts to, and this is the reason why, in spite of grave
heresy on minor points, he is now regarded by the evangelical Church
as one of its chief champions. Instead of the natural process of gen
eration—which is the only process by which we have ever known or
ganic beings to be produced—he would fain set up some unknown mys
terious process, the nature of which he is careful not to define, but for
which he endeavors to persuade us that we have a fair equivalent in
sonorous phrases concerning “ creative will,” “ free action of an intel
ligent mind,” and so on. In thus postponing considerations of pure
science to considerations of “ natural theology,” I have no doubt Prof.
Agassiz is actuated by a praiseworthy desire to do something for the
glory of that Power of which the phenomenal universe is the perpetual
but ever-changing manifestation. But how futile is such an attempt
as this I How contrary to common-sense it is to say that a species is
produced, not by the action of blind natural forces, but by an intelli
gent will! For, although this most prominent of all facts seems to be
oftenest overlooked by theologians and others whom it most especially
concerns, we are all the time, day by day and year by year, in each
and every event of our lives, having experience of the workings of
that Divine Power which, whether we attribute to it “ intelligent will ”
or not, is unquestionably the one active agent in all the dynamic phe
nomena of Nature. Little as we know of the intrinsic nature of this
Omnipresent Power, which, in our poor human talk, we call God,
we do at least know, by daily and hourly experience, what is the char
acter of its working. The whole experience of our lives teaches us
that this Power works after a method which, in our scholastic expression,
we call the method of cause and effect, or the method of natural law.
Traditions of a barbarous and uncultivated age, in which mere gro
tesque associations of thoughts were mistaken for facts, have told us
that this Power has, at various times in the past, worked in a different
way—causing effects to appear without cognizable antecedents, even
as Aladdin’s palace rose in all its wondrous magnificence, without
sound of carpenter’s hammer or mason’s chisel, in a single night. But
about such modes of divine action we know nothing whatever from
experience; and the awakening of literary criticism, in modern times,
has taught us to distrust all such accounts of divine action which con
flict with the lessons we learn from what is ever going on round
about us. So far as we know aught concerning the works of God,
which are being performed in us, through us, and around us, during
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
701
every moment of that conscious intelligence which enables us to bear
witness to them, we know they are works from which the essential re
lation of a given effect to its adequate cause is never absent. And for
this reason, if we view the matter in pure accordance with experience,
we are led to maintain that the antagonism or contrariety which seems
to exist in Prof. Agassiz’s mind between the action of God and the
action of natural forces is nothing but a figment of that ancestral im
agination from which the lessons which shaped Prof. Agassiz’s ways
of thinking were derived. So far as experience can tell us any thing,
it tells us that divine action is the action of natural forces; for, if we
refuse to accept this conclusion, what have we to do but retreat to the
confession that we have no experience of divine action whatever, and
that the works of God have been made manifest only to those who
lived in that unknown time when Aladdin’s palaces were built, and
when species were created, in a single night, without the intervention
of any natural process ?
Trusting, then, in this universal teaching of experience, let us for
a moment face fairly the problem which the existence of men upon the
earth presents to us. Here is actually existing a group of organisms,
which we call the human race. Either it has existed eternally, or
some combination of circumstances has determined its coming into
existence. The first alternative is maintained by no one, and our
astronomical knowledge of the past career of our planet is sufficient
decisively to exclude it. There is no doubt that at some time in the
past the human race did not exist, and that its gradual or sudden
coming into existence was determined by some combination of circum
stances. Now, when Prof. Agassiz asks us to see, in this origination
of mankind, the working of a Divine Power, we acquiesce in all rever
ence. But when he asks us to see in this origination of mankind the
working of a Divine Power, instead of the working of natural causes,
we do not acquiesce, because, so far as experience has taught us any
thing, it has taught us that Divine Power never works except by the
way of natural causation. Experience tells us that God causes Alad
din’s palaces to come into existence gradually, through the coopera
tion of countless minute antecedents. And it tells us, most emphati
cally, that such structures do not come into existence without an
adequate array of antecedents, no matter what the Arabian Nights
may tell us to the contrary.
Now, when Prof. Agassiz asks us to believe that species have come
into existence by means of a special creative fiat, and not through
the operation of what are called natural causes, we reply that his
request is mere inanity and nonsense. We have no reason to suppose
that any creature like a man, or any other vertebrate, or articulate, or
mollusk, ever came into existence by any other process than the
familar process of physical generation. To ask us to believe in any
other process is to ask us to abandon the experience which we have
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for the chimeras which we had best not seek to acquire. But Prof.
Agassiz does not even suggest any other process for our acceptance.
He simply retreats upon his empty phrases, “ creative will,” the “ free
workings of an intelligent mind,” and so on. Now, in his second
course of lectures, I hope he will proceed to tell us, not necessarily how
“ creative will ” actually operated in bringing forth a new species, but
how it may conceivably have operated, save through the process of
physical generation, which we know. In his “ Essay on Classifica
tion,” I remember a passage in which he rightly rejects the notion that
any species has arisen from a single pair of parents, and propounds the
formula : “ Pines have originated in forests, heaths in heather, grasses
in prairies, bees in hives, herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in
nations.” Now, when Prof. Agassiz asserts that men originated in
nations, by some other process than that of physical generation, what
does he mean ? Does he mean that men dropped down from the sky ?
Does he mean that the untold millions of organic particles which make
up a man all rushed together from the four quarters of the compass,
and proceeded, spontaneously or by virtue of some divine sorcery, to
aggregate themselves into the infinitely complex organs and tissues
of the human body, with all their wondrous and well-defined apti
tudes ? It is time that this question should be faced, by Prof. Agassiz
and those who agree with him, without further shirking. Instead of
grandiloquent phrases about the “ free action of an intelligent mind,”
let us have something like a candid suggestion of some process, other
than that of physical generation, by which a creature like man can
even be imagined to have come into existence. When the time comes
for answering this question, we shall find that even Prof. Agassiz
is utterly dumb and helpless. The sonorous phrase “ special creation,”
in which he has so long taken refuge, is nothing but a synthesis of
vocal sounds which covers and, to some minds, conceals a thoroughly
idiotic absence of sense or significance. To say that “ Abracadabra
is not a genial corkscrew,” is to make a statement quite as full of mean
ing as the statement that species have originated by “ special crea
tion.”
The purely theological (or theologico-metaphysical and at all
events unscientific) character of Prof. Agassiz’s objections to the de
velopment theory is sufficiently shown by the fact that, in the fore
going paragraphs, I have considered whatever of any account there is
in his lectures which can be regarded as an objection. Arguments
against the development theory such objections cannot be called : they
are, at their very best, nothing but expressions of fear and dislike.
The only remark which I have been able to find, worthy of being
dignified as an argument, is the following: “We see that fishes are
lowest, that reptiles are higher, that birds have a superior organization
to both, and that mammals, with man at their head, are highest. The
phases of development which a quadruped undergoes, in his embryonic
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
7°3
growth, recall this gradation. He has a fish-like, a reptile-like stage
before he shows unmistakable mammal-like features. We do not on
this account suppose a quadruped grows out of a fish in our time, for
this simple reason, that we live among quadrupeds and fishes, and we
know that no such thing takes place. But resemblances of the same
kind, separated by geological ages, allow play for the imagination, and
for inference unchecked by observation.”
I do not believe that Prof. Agassiz’s worst enemy—if he ever had
an enemy—could have been so hard-hearted as to wish for* him the
direful catastrophe into which this wonderful piece of argument has
plunged him irretrievably. For the question must at once suggest
itself to every reader at all familiar with the subject, If Prof. Agassiz
supposes that the development theory, as held nowadays, implies that
a quadruped was ever the direct issue of a fish, of what possible value
can his opinion be as regards the development theory in any way ?
If I may speak frankly, as I have indeed been doing from the out
set, I will say that, as regards the Darwinian theory, Prof. Agassiz
seems to me to be hopelessly behind the age. I have never yet come
across the first indication that he knows what the Darwinian theory is.
Against the development theory, as it was taught him by the discus
sions of forty years ago, he is fond of uttering, I will not say argu
ments, but expressions of dislike. With the modern development
theory, with the circumstances of variation, heredity, and natural se
lection, he never, in any of his writings, betrays the slightest acquaint
ance. Against a mere man of straw of his own devising, he indus
triously hurls anathemas of a quasi-theological character. But any
thing like a scientific examination of the character and limits of the
agency of natural selection in modifying the appearance and structure
of a species, any thing like such an examination as is to be found in
the interesting work of Mr. St. George Mivart, he has never yet
brought forth.
Now, when Prof. Agassiz fairly comes to an issue, if he ever does, and
undertakes to refute the Darwinian theory, these are some of the ques
tions which he will have to answer: 1. If all organisms are not asso
ciated through the bonds of common descent, why is it that the facts
of classification are just such as they would have been had they been
due to such a common descent ? 2. Why does a mammal always
begin to develop as if it were going to become a fish, and then, chang
ing its tactics, proceed as if it were going to become a reptile or bird,
and only after great delay and circumlocution take the direct road
toward mammality ? In answer to this, we do not care to be told that
a mammal never was the son of a fish, because we know that already ;
nor do we care to hear any more about the “ free manifestations of an
intelligent mind,” because we have had quite enough of metaphysical
phrases which do not contain a description of some actual or imagi
nable process. We want to know how this state of things can be sci-
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
entifically interpreted save on the hypothesis of a common ultimate
origin for mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes. 3. What is the mean
ing of such facts as the homologies which exist between corresponding
parts of organisms constructed on the same type ? Why does the
black salamander retain fully-developed gills which he never uses, and
what is the significance of rudimentary and aborted organs in gen
eral ? Again I say, we do not want to hear about “ uniformity of de
sign ” and “ reminiscences of a plan,” and so on, but we wish to know
how this* state of things was physically brought about, save by com
munity of descent. 4. Why is it that the facts of geological succes
sion and geographical distribution so clearly indicate community of
descent, unless there has actually been community of descent? Why
have marsupials in Australia followed after other marsupials, and
edentata in South America followed after other edentata, with such
remarkable regularity, unless the bond which unites present with past
ages be the well-known, the only known, and the only imaginable bond
of physical generation ? Why are the fauna and flora of each geologic
epoch in general intermediate in character between the flora and fauna
of the epochs immediately preceding and succeeding? And, 5. What
are we to do with the great fact of extinction if we reject Mr. Dar
win’s explanations ? When a race is extinguished, is it because of a
universal deluge, or because of the “ free manifestations of an intelli
gent mind ? ” For surely Prof. Agassiz will not attribute such a sol
emn result to such ignoble causes as insufficiency of food or any other
of the thousand causes, “ blindly mechanical,” which conspire to make
a species succumb in the struggle for life.
And here the phrase, “ struggle for life,” reminds me of yet an
other difficult task which Prof. Agassiz will have before him when he
comes to undertake the refutation of Darwinism in earnest. He will
have to explain away the enormous multitude of facts which show that
there is a struggle for life in which the fittest survive ; or he will at
any rate have to show in what imaginable way an organic type can
remain constant in all its features through countless ages under the
influence of such circumstances, unless by taking into the account the
Darwinian interpretation of persistent types offered by Prof. Huxley.
But I will desist from further enumeration of the difficulties which
surround this task which Prof. Agassiz has not undertaken, and is
not likely ever to undertake. For the direct grappling with that com
plicated array of theorems which the genius of such men as Darwin
and Spencer and their companions has established on a firm basis of
observation and deduction, Prof. Agassiz seems in these lectures hardly
better qualified than a child is qualified for improving the methods of
the integral calculus. These questions have begun to occupy earnest
thinkers since the period when his mind acquired that rigidity which
prevents the revising of one’s opinions. The marvellous flexibility of
thought with which Sir Charles Lyell so gracefully abandoned his an-
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
705
tiquated position, Prof. Agassiz is never likely to show. This is
largely because Lyell has always been a thinker of purely scientific
habit, while Agassiz has long been accustomed to making profoundly
dark metaphysical phrases do the work which properly belongs to
observation and deduction. But, however we may best account for
these idiosyncrasies, it remains most probable among those facts which
are still future, that Prof. Agassiz will never advance any more crush
ing refutation of the Darwinian theory than the simple expression of
his personal dislike for “ mechanical agencies,” and his belief in the
“ free manifestations of an intelligent mind.” Were he only to be left
to himself, such expressions of personal preference could not mar the
pleasure with which we often read his exposition of purely scientific
truths. But when he is brought before the public as the destroyer of
a theory, the elements of which he has never yet given any sign of
having mastered, he is placed in a false position, which would be lu
dicrous could he be supposed to have sought it, and which is, at all
events, unworthy of his eminent fame.
m-n-TT. nuTWAuv nnYPPPTR OF MODERN PHYSICAL
ERRATUM.
Page 710, line 32, for “impenetrability,” read “ compenetrability.”
Lierman
ULuraxinvn au«
j.
t. j
--------- . .
x
_
Du Bois-Reymond, one of the most noted physicists of the age.
“Natural science,” says Du Bois-Reymond,1 “is a reduction of the
changes in the material world to motions of atoms caused by central
forces independent of time, or a resolution of the phenomena of Na
ture into atomic mechanics. . . . The resolution of all changes in the
material world into motions of atoms caused by their constant central
forces would be the completion of natural science.”
Obviously, the proposition thus enounced assigns to physical sci1 “ Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens. Ein Vortrag in der zweiten öffentlichen
Sitzung der 45. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte zu Leipzig am 14.
August 1872, gehalten von Emil Du Bois-Reymond.” Leipzig, Veit & Comp., 1872.
VOL. in.—45
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•
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
enee limits so narrow that all attempts to bring the characteristic
phenomena of organic life (not to speak of mental action) within them
are utterly hopeless. Nevertheless, it is asserted that organic phe
nomena are the product of ordinary physical forces alone, and that
the assumption of vital agencies, as distinct from the forces of inor
ganic Nature, is wholly inadmissible. In view of this, it seems strange
that the validity of the proposition above referred to has never, so far
as I know, been questioned, except in the interest of some metaphysi
cal or theological system. It is my purpose in the following essays
to offer a few suggestions in this behalf, in order to ascertain, if pos
sible, whether the prevailing primary notions of physical science can
stand, or are in need of revision.
One of the prime postulates of the mechanical theory is the atomic
constitution of matter. A discussion of this theory, therefore, at
once leads to an examination of the grounds upon which the assump
tion of atoms, as the ultimate constituents of the physical world,
rests.
The doctrine that an exhaustive analysis of a material body into
its real elements, if it could be practically effected, would yield an ag
gregate of indivisible and indestructible particles, is almost coeval
with human speculation, and has held its ground more persistently
than any other tenet of science or philosophy. It is true that the
atomic theory, since its first promulgation by the early Greek philoso
phers, and its elaborate statement by Lucretius, has been modified and
refined. There is probably no one, at this day, who invests the atoms
with hooks and loops, or (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, ii., 398, et seq.)
accounts for the bitter taste of wormwood by the raggedness, and for
the sweetness of honey by the smooth roundness of the constituent
atoms. But the “ atom ” of modern science is still of determinate
weight, if not of determinate figure, and stands for something more
than an abstract unit, even in the view of those who, like Boscovich,
Faraday, Ampère, or Fechner, profess to regard it as a mere centre of
force. And there is no difficulty in stating the atomic doctrine in
terms applicable alike to all the acceptations in which it is now held by
scientific men. Whatever diversity of opinion may prevail as to the
form, size, etc., of the atoms, all who advance the atomic hypothesis,
in any of its varieties, as a physical theory, agree in three propositions,
which may be stated as follows :
1. Atoms are absolutely simple, unchangeable, indestructible ; they
are physically, if not mathematically, indivisible.
2. Matter consists of discrete parts, the constituent atoms being
separated by void interstitial spaces. In contrast to the continuity of
space stands the discontinuity of matter. The expansion of a body
is simply an increase, its contraction a lessening of the spatial inter
vals between the atoms.
3. The atoms composing the different chemical elements are of de-
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
7q7
terminate specific weights, corresponding to their equivalents of com
bination.1
Confessedly the atomic theory is hut an hypothesis. This in itself
is not decisive against its value; all physical theories properly so
called are hypotheses whose eventual recognition as truths depends
upon their consistency with themselves, upon their agreement with
the canons of logic, upon their congruence with the facts which they
serve to connect and explain, upon their conformity with the ascer
tained order of Nature, upon the extent to which they approve them
selves as reliable anticipations or previsions of facts verified by subse
quent observation or experiment, and finally upon their simplicity, or
rather their reducing power. The merits of the atomic theory, too,
are to be determined by seeing whether or not it satisfactorily and
simply accounts for the phenomena as the explanation of which it is
propounded, and whether or not it is in harmony with itself and with
the known laws of Reason and of Nature.
For what facts, then, is the atomic hypothesis meant to account,
and to what degree is the account it offers satisfactory?
It is claimed that the first of the three propositions above enu
merated (the proposition which asserts the persistent integrity of
atoms, or their unchangeability both in weight and volume) accounts
for the indestructibility and impenetrability of matter; that the sec
ond of these propositions (relating to the discontinuity of matter) is
an indispensable postulate for the explanation of certain physical phe
nomena, such as the dispersion and polarization of light; and that the
third proposition (according to which the atoms composing the chem
ical elements are of determinate specific gravities) is the necessary
general expression of the laws of definite constitution, equivalent pro
portion, and multiple combination, in chemistry.
In discussing these claims, it is important, first, to verify the facts
and to reduce the statements of these facts to exact expression, and
then to see how far they are fused by the theory:
1. The indestructibility of matter is an unquestionable truth. But
in what sense, and upon what grounds, is this indestructibility predi
cated of matter ? The unanimous answer of the atomists is: Expe
rience teaches that all the changes to which matter is subject are but
variations of form, and that amid these variations there is an unvary
ing constant—the mass or quantity of matter. The constancy of the
mass is attested by the balance, which shows that neither fusion nor
sublimation, neither generation nor corruption, can add to or detract
from the weight of a body subjected to experiment. When a pound
of carbon is burned, the balance demonstrates the continuing exist1 To avoid confusion, I purposely ignore the distinction between molecules as the ulti
mate products of the physical division of matter, and atoms as the ultimate products of
its chemical decomposition, preferring to use the word atoms in the sense of the least
particles into which bodies are divisible or reducible by any means.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
ence of this pound in the carbonic acid, which is the product of com
bustion, and from which the original weight of carbon may be re
covered. The quantity of matter is measured by its weight, and this
weight is unchangeable.
Such is the fact, familiar to every one, and its interpretation, equally
familiar. To test the correctness of this interpretation, we may be
permitted slightly to vary the method of verifying it. Instead of
burning the pound of carbon, let us simply carry it to the summit of a
mountain, or remove it to a lower latitude; is its weight still the same ?
Relatively it is; it will still balance the original counterpoise. But
the absolute weight is no longer the same. This appears at once, if
we give to the balance another form, taking a pendulum instead of a
pair of scales. The pendulum on the mountain or near the equator
vibrates more slowly than at the foot of the mountain or near the
pole, for the reason that it has become specifically lighter by being
farther removed from the centre of the earth’s attraction, in conformity
to the law that the attractions of bodies vary inversely as the squares
of their distances.
It is thus evident that the constancy, upon the observation of which
the assertion of the indestructibility of matter is based, is simply the
constancy of a relation, and that the ordinary statement of the fact is
crude and inadequate. Indeed, while it is true that the weight of a
body is a measure of its mass, this is but a single case of the more
general fact that the masses of bodies are inversely as the velocities
imparted to them by the action of the same force, or, more generally
still, inversely as the accelerations produced in them by the same force.
In the case of gravity, the forces of attraction are directly propor
tional to the masses, so that the action of the forces (weight) is the
simplest measure of the relation between any two masses as such;
but, in any inquiry relating to the validity of the atomic theory, it is
necessary to bear in mind that this weight is not the equivalent, or
rather presentation, of an absolute substantive entity in one of the
bodies (the body weighed), but the mere expression of a relation be
tween two bodies mutually attracting each other. And it is further
necessary to remember that this weight may be indefinitely reduced,
without any diminution in the mass of the body weighed, by a mere
change of its position in reference to the body between which and the
body weighed the relation subsists.1
1 The thoughtlessness with which it is assumed by some of the most eminent mathe
maticians and physicists that matter is composed of particles which have an absolute
primordial weight persisting in all positions, and under all circumstances, is one of the
most remarkable facts in the history of science. To cite but one instance : Prof. Rettenbacher, one of the ablest analysts of his day, in his “ Dynamidensystem ” (Mannheim,
Bassermann, 1857), p. 14, says, “The absolute weight of atoms is unknown”—his
meaning being, as is evident from the context and from the whole tenor of his discus
sion, that our ignorance of this absolute weight is due solely to the practical impossi
bility of insulating an atom, and of contriving instruments delicate enough to weigh it.
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
709
Masses find their true and only measure in the action of forces, and
the quantitative persistence of the effect of this action is the simple
and accurate expression of the fact which is ordinarily described as
the indestructibility of matter. It is obvious that this persistence is
in no sense explained or accounted for by the atomic hypothesis. It
may be that such persistence is an attribute of the minute, insensible
particles which are supposed to constitute matter, as well as of sen
sible masses ; but, surely, the hypothetical recurrence of a fact in the
atom is no explanation of the actual occurrence of the same fact in
the conglomerate mass. Whatever mystery is involved in the phe
nomenon is as great in the case of the atom as in that of a solar or
planetary sphere. Breaking a magnet into fragments, and showing
that each fragment is endowed with the magnetic polarity of the in
teger magnet, is no explanation of the phenomenon of magnetism. A
phenomenon is not explained by being dwarfed. A fact is not trans
formed into a theory by being looked at through an inverted telescope.
The hypothesis of ultimate indestructible atoms is not a necessary im
plication of the persistence of weight, and can at best account for the
indestructibility of matter if it can be shown that there is an absolute
limit to the compressibility of matter—in other words, that there is
an absolutely least volume for every determinate mass. This brings
us to the consideration of that general property of matter which prob
ably, in the minds of most men, most urgently requires the assump
tion of atoms—its impenetrability.
“ Two bodies cannot occupy the same space ”—such is the familiar
statement of the fact in question. Like the indestructibility of matter,
it is claimed to be a datum of experience. “ Corpora omnia impenotrabilla esse” says Sir Isaac Newton (Phil. Nat. Prine. Math., lib.
iii., reg. 3), “ non ratione sed sensu colligimus.” Let us see in what
sense and to what extent this claim is legitimate.
The proposition, according to which a space occupied by one body
cannot be occupied by another, implies the assumption that space is
an absolute, self-measuring entity—an assumption which I may have
occasion to examine hereafter—and the further assumption that there
is a least space which a given body will absolutely fill so as to exclude
any other body. A verification of this proposition by experience,
therefore, must amount to proof that there is an absolute limit to the
compressibility of all matter whatsoever. Now, does experience au
thorize us to assign such a limit ? Assuredly not. It is true that in
the case of solids and liquids there are practical limits beyond which
compression by the mechanical means at our command is impossible ;
but even here we are met by the fact that the volumes of fluids, which
effectually resist all efforts at further reduction by external pressure,
are readily reduced by mere mixture. Thus, sulphuric acid and water
at ordinary temperatures do not sensibly yield to pressure; but, when
they are mixed, the resulting volume is materially less than the aggre
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
gate volumes of the liquids mixed. But, waiving this, as well as the
phenomena which emerge in the processes of solution and chemical ac
tion, it must be said that experience does not in any manner vouch
for the impenetrability of matter as such in all its states of aggrega
tion. When gases are subjected to pressure, the result is simply an
increase of the expansive force in proportion to the pressure exerted,
according to the law of Boyle and Mariotte (the modifications of and
apparent exceptions to which, as exhibited in the experimental results
obtained by Regnault and others, need not here be stated, because
they do not affect the argument). A definite experimental limit, is
reached in the case of those gases only in which the pressure produces
liquefaction or solidification. The most significant phenomenon, how
ever, which experience contributes to the testimony on this subject is
the diffusion of gases. Whenever two or more gases which do not act
upon each other chemically are introduced into a given space, each gas
diffuses itself in this space as though it were alone present there; or,
as Dalton, the reputed father of the modern atomic theory, expresses
it, “ Gases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as into
vacua.”
Whatever reality may correspond to the notion of the impenetra
bility of matter, this impenetrability is not, in the sense of the atomists, a datum of experience.
Upon the whole, it would seem that the validity of the first propo
sition of the atomic theory is not sustained by the facts. Even if the
assumed unchangeability of the supposed ultimate constituent particles
of matter presented itself, upon its own showing, as more than a bare
reproduction of an observed fact in the form of an hypothesis, and
could be dignified with the name of a generalization or of a theory,
it would still be obnoxious to the criticism that it is a generalization
from facts crudely observed and imperfectly apprehended.
In this connection it may be observed that the atomic theory has
become next to valueless as an explanation of the impenetrability
of matter, since it has been pressed into the service of the undulatory
theory of light, heat, etc., and assumed the form in which it is now
held by the majority of physicists, as we shall presently see. Ac
cording to this form of the theory, the atoms are either mere points,
wholly without extension, or their dimensions are infinitely small as
compared with the distances between them, whatever be the state
aggregation of the substances into which they enter. In this view
the resistance which a body, i. e., a system of atoms, offers to the in
trusion of another body is due, not to the rigidity or unchangeability
of volume of the individual atoms, but to the relation between the
attractive and repulsive forces with which they are supposed to be
endowed. There are physicists holding this view who are of opinion
that the atomic constitution of matter is consistent with its impene
trability among them M. Cauchy, who, in his Sept Lemons de Phy-
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
7n
sique Genérale (ed. Moigno, Paris, 1868, p. 38), after defining atoms
as “ material points without extension,” uses this language: “ Thus,
this property of matter which we call impenetrability is explained,
when we consider the atoms as material points exerting on each other
attractions and repulsions which vary with the distances that separate
them. . . . From this it follows that, if it pleased the author of Na
ture simply to modify the laws according to which the atoms attract
or repel each other, we might instantly see the hardest bodies pene
trate each other ” (that we might see), “ the smallest particles of matter
occupy immense spaces, or the largest masses reduce themselves to
the smallest volumes, the entire universe concentrating itself, as it
were, in a single point.”
2. The second fundamental proposition of the modern atomic
theory avouches the essential discontinuity of matter. The advocates
of the theory affirm that there is a series of physical phenomena
which are inexplicable, unless we assume that the constituent par
ticles of matter are separated by void interspaces. The most notable
among these phenomena are the dispersion and polarization of light.
The grounds upon which the assumption of a discrete molecular
structure of matter is deemed indispensable for the explanation of
these phenomena may be stated in a few words.
According to the undulatory theory, the dispersion of light, or its
separation into spectral colors, by means of refraction, is a conse
quence of the unequal retardation experienced by the different waves,
which produce the different colors, in their transmission through the
refracting medium. This unequal retardation presupposes differences
in the velocities with which the various-colored rays are transmitted
through any medium whatever, and a dependence of these velocities
upon the lengths of the waves. But, according to a well-established
mechanical theorem, the velocities with which undulations are prop
agated through a continuous medium depend solely upon the elasticity
of the medium as compared with its inertia, and are wholly indepen
dent of the length and form of the waves. The correctness of this the
orem is attested by experience in the case of sound. Sounds of every
pitch travel with the same velocity. If it were otherwise, music heard
at a distance would evidently become chaotic; differences of velocity
in the propagation of sound would entail a distortion of the rhythm,
and, in many cases, a reversal of the order of succession. Now, differ
ences of color are analogous to differences of pitch in sound, both re
ducing themselves to differences of wave-length. The lengths of the
waves increase as we descend the scale of sounds from those of a higher
to those of a lower pitch; and similarly, the length of a luminar undu
lation increases as we descend the spectral scale, from violet to red. It
follows, then, that the rays of different color, like the sounds of differ
ent pitch, should be propagated with equal velocities, and be equally
refracted; that, therefore, no dispersion of light should take place.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
This theoretical impossibility of dispersion has always been recog
nized as one of the most formidable difficulties of the undulatory
theory. In order to obviate it, Cauchy, at the suggestion of his friend
Coriolis, entered upon a series of analytical investigations, in which he
succeeded in showing that the velocities with which the various colored
rays are propagated may vary according to the wave-lengths, if it be
assumed that the ethereal medium of propagation, instead of being
continuous, consists of particles separated by sensible distances.
By means of a similar assumption, Fresnel has sought to remove
the difficulties presented by the phenomena of polarization. In ordi
nary light, the different undulations are supposed to take place in dif
ferent directions, all transverse to the course or line of propagation,
while in polarized light the vibrations, though still transverse to the
ray, are parallelized, so as to occur in the same plane. Soon after this
hypothesis had been expanded into an elaborate theory of polarization,
Poisson observed that, at any considerable distance from the source
of the light, all transverse vibrations in a continuous elastic medium
must become longitudinal. As in the case of dispersion, this objection
was met by the hypothesis of the existence of “definite intervals”
between the ethereal particles.
These are the considerations, succinctly stated, which theoretical
physics are supposed to bring to the support of the atomic theory. In
reference to the cogency of the argument founded upon them, it is to
be said, generally, that evidence of the discrete molecular arrangement
of matter is by no means proof of the alternation of unchangeable and
indivisible atoms with absolute spatial voids. But it is to be feared
that the argument in question is not only formally, but also materially,
fallacious. It is very questionable whether the assumption of definite
intervals between the particles of the luminiferous ether is competent
to relieve the undulatory theory of light from its embarrassments.
This subject, in one of its aspects, has been thoroughly discussed by E.
B. Hunt, in an article on the dispersion of light (SiUimari8 Journal,
vol. vii., 2d series, p. 364, et seq.), and the suggestions there made ap
pear to me worthy of serious attention. They are briefly these:
M. Cauchy brings the phenomena of dispersion within the do
minion of the undulatory theory, by deducing the differences in the
velocities of the several chromatic rays from the differences in the cor
responding wave-lengths by means of the hypothesis of definite inter
vals between the particles of the light-bearing medium. He takes it
for granted, therefore, that these chromatic rays are propagated with
different velocities. But is this the fact ? Astronomy affords the
means to answer this question.
We experience the sensation of white light, when all the chromatic
rays of which it is composed strike the eye simultaneously. The light
proceeding from a luminous body will appear colorless, even if the
component rays move with unequal velocities, provided all the colored
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
713
rays, which together make up white light, concur in their action on
the retina at a given moment; in ordinary cases it is immaterial
whether these rays have left the luminous body successively or together.
But it is otherwise when a luminous body becomes visible suddenly,
as in the case of the satellites of Jupiter, or Saturn, after their eclipses.
At certain periods, more than 49 minutes are requisite for the trans
mission of light from Jupiter to the earth. Now, at the moment when
one of Jupiter’s satellites, which has been eclipsed by that planet,
emerges from the shadow, the red rays, if their velocity were the great
est, would evidently reach the eye first, the orange next, and so on
through the chromatic scale, until finally the complement of colors
would be filled by the arrival of the violet ray, whose velocity is
supposed to be the least. The satellite, immediately after its emersion,
would appear red, and gradually, in proportion to the arrival of the
other rays, pass into white. Conversely, at the beginning of the
eclipse, the violet rays would continue to arrive after the red and
other intervening rays, and the satellite, up to the moment of its total
disappearance, will gradually shade into violet.
Unfortunately for Cauchy’s hypothesis, the most careful observation
of the eclipses in question has failed to reveal any such variations of
color, either before immersion, or after emersion, the transition between
light and darkness taking place instantaneously, and without chro
matic gradations.
If it be said that these chromatic gradations escape our vision by
reason of the inappreciability of the differences under discussion, as
tronomy points to other phenomena no less subversive of the doctrine
of unequal velocities in the movements of the chromatic undulations.
Fixed stars beyond the parallactic limit, whose light must travel more
than three years before it reaches us, are subject to great periodical
variations of splendor; and yet these variations are unaccompanied
by variations of color. Again, the assumption of different velocities
for the different chromatic rays is discountenanced by the theory of
aberration. Aberration is due to the fact that, in all cases where the
orbit of the planet, on which the observer is stationed, forms an angle
with the direction of the luminar ray, a composition takes place be
tween the motion of the light and the motion of the planet, so that
the direction in which the light meets the eye is a resultant of the two
component directions—the direction of the ray and that of the ob
server’s motion. If the several rays of color moved with different
velocities there would evidently be several resultants, and each star
would appear as a colored spectrum longitudinally parallel to the
direction of the earth’s motion.
The alleged dependence of the velocity of the undulatory move
ments, which correspond to, or produce, the different colors, upon the
length of the waves, is thus at variance with observed fact. The
hypothesis of definite intervals is unavailable as a supplement to the
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
undulatory theory ; other methods will have to be resorted to in order
to free this theory from its difficulties.1
3. The third proposition of the atomic hypothesis assigns to the
atoms, which are said to compose the different chemical elements, de
terminate weights corresponding to their equivalents of combination,
and is supposed to be necessary to account for the facts whose enumeration and theory constitute the science of chemistry. The proper
verification of these facts is of great difficulty, because they have gen
erally been observed through the lenses of the atomic theory, and
stated in its doctrinal terms. Thus the differentiation and integration
of bodies are invariably described as decomposition and composition ;
the equivalents of combination are designated as atomic weights or
volumes, and the greater part of chemical nomenclature is a system
atic reproduction of the assumptions of atomism. Nearly all the facts
to be verified are in need of preparatory enucleation from the envelops
of this theory.
The phenomena usually described as chemical composition and de
composition present themselves to observation thus: A number of
heterogeneous bodies concur in definite proportions of weight or vol
ume; they interact; they disappear, and give rise to a new body pos
sessing properties which are neither the sum nor the mean of the prop
erties of the bodies concurring and interacting (excepting the weight
which is the aggregate of the weights of the interacting bodies), and
this conversion of several bodies into one is accompanied, in most
cases, by changes of volume, and in all cases by the evolution or in
volution of heat, or light, or of both. Conversely, a single homogeneous
body gives rise to heterogeneous bodies, between which and the body
out of which they originate the persistence of weight is the only re
lation of identity.
For the sake of convenience, these phenomena may be distributed
into three classes, of which the first embraces the persistence of weight
and the combination in definite proportions ; the second, the changes
of volume and the evolution of light and heat; and the third, the
emergence of a wholly new complement of chemical properties.
Obviously, the atomic hypothesis is in no sense an explanation of
the phenomena of the second class. It is clearly and confessedly in
1 Cauchy’s theory of dispersion is subject to another difficulty, of which no note is
taken by Hunt: it does not account for the different refracting powers of different, sub
stances. Indeed, according to Cauchy’s formula) (whose terms are expressive simply of
the distances between the ethereal particles and their hypothetical forces of attraction
and repulsion), the refracting powers of all substances whatever must be the same, un
less each substance is provided with a peculiar ether of its own. If this be the case, the
assemblage of atoms in a given body is certainly a very motley affair, especially if it be
true, as W. A. Norton and several other physicists assert, that there is an electric ether
distinct from the luminiferous ether. Rettenbacher (“Dynamidensystem,” p. 130, et seq.)
attempts to overcome the difficulty by the hypothesis of mutual action between the cor
puscular and ethereal atoms.
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
715
competent to account for changes of volume or of temperature. And,
with the phenomena of the third class, it is apparently incompatible.
For, in the light of the atomic hypothesis, chemical compositions and
decompositions are in their nature nothing more than aggregations
and segregations of masses whose integrity remains inviolate. But
the radical change of chemical properties, which is the result of all
true chemical action, and serves to distinguish it from mere mechani
cal mixture or separation, evinces a thorough destruction of that in
tegrity. It may be that the appearance of this incompatibility can be
obliterated by the device of ancillary hypotheses; but that leads to
an abandonment of the simplicity of the atomic hypothesis itself, and
thus to a surrender of its claims to merit as a theory.
At best, then, the hypothesis of atoms of definite and different
weights can be offered as an explanation of the phenomena of the first
class. Does it explain them in the sense of generalizing them, of re
ducing many facts to one? Not at all; it accounts for them, as it
professed to account for the indestructibility and impenetrability of
matter, by simply iterating the observed fact in the form of an hy
pothesis. It is another case (to borrow a scholastic phrase) of illus
trating idem per idem. It says: The large masses combine in definitely-proportionate weights because the small masses, the atoms of
which they are multiples, are of definitely-proportionate weight. It
pulverizes the fact, and claims thereby to have sublimated it into a
theory.
Upon closer examination, moreover, the assumption of atoms of
different specific gravities proves to be, not only futile, but absurd.
Its manifest theoretical ineptitude is found to mask the most fatal
inconsistencies. According to the mechanical conception which un
derlies the whole atomic hypothesis, differences of weight are differ
ences of density; and differences of density are differences of distance
between the particles contained in a given space. Now, in the atom
there is no multiplicity of particles, and no void space; hence dif
ferences of density or weight Are impossible in the case of atoms.
It is to be observed that the attribution of different weights to dif
ferent atoms is an indispensable feature of the atomic theory in chem
istry, especially in view of the combination of gases in simple ratios
of volume, so as to give rise to gaseous products bearing a simple
ratio to the volumes of its constituents, and in view of the law of
Ampere and Clausius, according to which all gases, of whatever nature
or weight, contain equal numbers of molecules in equal volumes.
The inadequacy of the atomic hypothesis as a theory of chemical
changes has been repeatedly pointed out by men of the highest scien
tific authority, such as Grove (Correlation of Physical Forces, in
Youmans’s “Correlation and Conservation of Forces,” p. 164, et seqf
and is becoming more apparent from day to day. I shall have occa
sion to inquire, hereafter, what promise there is, in the present state
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
of chemical science, of a true generalization of the phenomena of com
bination in definite proportions, both of weight and volume, which is
independent of the atomic doctrine, and will serve to connect a num
ber of concomitant facts for which this doctrine is utterly incompetent
to account.
It is not infrequently asserted by the advocates of the atomic
theory that there is a number of other phenomena, in addition to
those of combination in definite proportions, which are strongly indica
tive of the truth of the atomic theory. Among these phenomena are
isomerism, polymerism, and allotropy. But it is very doubtful whether
this theory is countenanced by the phenomena in question. The exist
ence of different allotropic states, in an elementary body said to con
sist of but one kind of atoms, is explicable by the atomic hypothesis
in no other way than by deducing these different states from diversi
ties in the grouping of the different atoms. But this explanation ap
plies to solids only, and fails in the cases of liquids and gases. The
same remark applies to isomerism and polymerism.
From the foregoing considerations, I take it to be clear that the
atomic hypothesis mistakes many of the facts which it seeks to ex
plain ; that it accounts imperfectly or not at all for a number of other
facts which are correctly apprehended; and that there are cases in
which it appears to be in irreconcilable conflict with the data of expe
rience. As a physical theory, it is barren and useless, inasmuch as it
lacks the first requisite of a true theory—that of being a generaliza
tion, a reduction of several facts to one; it is essentially one of those
spurious figments of the brain, based upon an ever-increasing multiplicatio ent turn praeter necessitatem, which are characteristic of the prescientific epochs of human intelligence, and against which the whole
spirit of modern science is an emphatic protest. Moreover, in its
logical and psychological aspect, as we shall hereafter see more
clearly, it is the clumsiest attempt ever made to transcend the sphere
of relations in which all objective reality, as well as all thought,
has its being, and to grasp the absolute “ ens per sese, jinitum, reale,
totumP
I do not speak here of a number of other difficulties which emerge
upon a minute examination of the atomic hypothesis in its two prin
cipal varieties, the atoms being regarded by some physicists as ex
tended and figured masses, and by others as mere centres of force.
In the former case the assumption of physical indivisibility becomes
gratuitous, and that of mathematical indivisibility absurd; while in
the latter case the whole basis of the relation between force and mass,
or rather force and inertia, without which the conception of either
term of the relation is impossible, is destroyed. Some of these diffi
culties are frankly admitted by leading men of science—for instance,
by Du Bois-Reymond, in the lecture above cited. Nevertheless, it is
asserted that the atomic, or at least molecular, constitution of matter
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
7*7
is the only form of material existence which can be realized in thought.
In what sense, and to what extent, this assertion is well founded, will
be my next subject of examination.
FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
By E. A. PEOCTOE.
IHE wreck of the Atlantic, followed closely by that of the City of
JL Washington nearly on the same spot, has led many to inquire
into the circumstances on which depends a captain’s knowledge of the
position of his ship. In each case, though not in the same way, the
ship was supposed to be far from land, when in reality quite close to
it. In each case, in fact, the ship had oversailed her reckoning. A
slight exaggeration of what travellers so much desire—a rapid pas
sage—proved the destruction of the ship, and in one case occasioned
a fearful loss of life. And, although such events are fortunately infre
quent in Atlantic voyages, yet the bare possibility that, besides or
dinary sea-risks, a ship is exposed to danger from simply losing her
way, suggests unpleasant apprehensions as to the general reliability
of the methods in use for determining where a ship is, and her prog
ress from day to day.
I propose to give a brief sketch of the methods in use for finding
the way at sea, in order that the general principles on which safety
depends may be recognized by the general reader.
It is known, of course, to every one, that a ship’s course and rate
of sailing are carefully noted throughout her voyage. Every change
of her course is taken account of, as well as every change in her rate
of advance, whether under sail or steam, or both combined. If all
this could be quite accurately managed, the position of the ship at
any hour could be known, because it would be easy to mark down on
a chart the successive stages of her journey, from the moment when
she left port. But a variety of circumstances renders this impossible.
To begin with: the exact course of a ship cannot be known, be
cause there is only the ship’s compass to determine her course by, and
a ship’s compass is not an instrument affording perfectly exact indica
tions. Let any one on a sea-voyage observe the compass for a short
time, being careful not to break the good old rule which forbids speech
to the “ man at the wheel,” and he will presently become aware of
the fact that the ship is not kept rigidly to one course, even for a short
time. The steersman keeps her as near as he can to a particular
course, but she is continually deviating, now a little on one side, now
a little on the other, of the intended direction; and even the general
accuracy with which that course is followed is a matter of estimation,
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
and depends on the skill of the individual steersman. Looking at
the compass-card, in steady weather, a course may seem very closely
followed; perhaps the needle’s end may not be a hundredth part of
an inch (on the average) from the position it should have. But a hun
dredth part of an inch on the circumference of the compass-card
would correspond to a considerable deviation in the course of a run
of twenty or thirty knots ; and there is nothing to prevent the errors
so arising from accumulating in a long journey until a ship might be
thirty or forty miles from her estimated place. To this may be added
the circumstance that the direction of the needle is different in differ
ent parts of the earth. In some places it points to the east of the
north, in others to the west. And, although the actual “ variation of
the compass,” as this peculiarity is called, is known in a general way
for all parts of the earth, yet such knowledge has no claim to actual
exactness. There is also an important danger, as recent instances
have shown, in the possible change of the position of the ship’s com
pass, on account of iron in her cargo.
But a far more important cause of error, in determinations merely
depending on the log-book, is that arising from uncertainty as to the
ship’s rate of progress. The log-line gives only a rough idea of the
4 ship’s rate at the time when the log is cast;1 and, of course, a ship’s
rate does not remain constant, even when she is under steam alone.
Then, again, currents carry the ship along sometimes with consider
able rapidity; and the log-line affords no indication of their action:
while no reliance can be placed on the estimated rates, even of known
currents. Thus the distance made on any course may differ consider
ably from the estimated distance; and, when several days’ sailing are
dealt with, an error of large amount may readily accumulate.
For these and other reasons, a ship’s captain places little reliance
on what is called “ the day’s work ”—that is, the change in the ship’s
position from noon to noon as estimated from the compass-courses en
tered in the log-book, and the distances supposed to be run on these
courses. It is absolutely essential that such estimates should be careful
ly made, because, under favorable conditions of weather, there may be
no other means of guessing at the ship’s position. But the only really
reliable way of determining a ship’s place is- by astronomical observa
tions. It is on this account that the almanac published by the Ad
miralty, in which the position and apparent motions of the celestial
bodies are indicated, four or five years in advance, is called, par excel1 The log is a flat piece of wood of quadrantal shape, so loaded at the rim as to float
with the point (that is, the centre of the quadrant) uppermost. To this a line about
300 yards long is fastened. The log is thrown overboard, and comes almost immediately
to rest on the surface of the sea, the line being suffered to run freely out. By marks on
the log-line divided into equal spaces, called knots, of known length, and by observing
how many of these run out, while the sand in a half-minute hour-glass is running, the
ship’s rate of motion is roughly inferred. The whole process is necessarily rough, since
the line cannot even be straightened.
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
719
fence, the Nautical Almanac. The astronomer, in his fixed observa
tory, finds this almanac essential to the prosecution of his observa
tions ; the student of theoretical astronomy has continual occasion to
refer to it; but, to the sea-captain, the Nautical Almanac has a far
more important use. The lives of sailors and passengers are depend
ent upon its accuracy. It is, again, chiefly for the sailor that our
great nautical observatories have been erected, and that our astron
omer-royal and his officers are engaged. What other work they
may do is subsidiary, and, as it were, incidental. Their chief work is
to time this great clock, our earth, and so to trace the motions of
those celestial indices, which afford our fundamental time-measures,
as to insure as far as possible the safety of our navy, royal and mer
cantile.1
Let us see how this is brought about, not, indeed, by inquiring into
the processes by which, at the Greenwich Observatory, the elements
of safety are obtained, but by considering the method by which a sea
man makes use of these elements.
In the measures heretofore considered, the captain of a ship in
reality relies on terrestrial measurements. He reasons that, being on
such and such a day in a given place, and having in the interval sailed
so many miles in such and such directions, he must at the time being
be in such and such a place. This is called “ navigation.” In the
processes next to be considered, which constitute a part of the science
of nautical astronomy, the seaman trusts to celestial observations in
dependently of all terrestrial measurements.
The points to be determined by the voyager are his latitude and
longitude. The latitude is the distance north or south of the equa
tor, and is measured always from the equator in degrees, the distance
from equator to pole being divided into ninety equal parts, each of
which is a degree.3 The longitude is the distance east or west of
Greenwich (in English usage, but other nations employ a different
starting-point for measuring longitudes from). Longitude is not meas
ured in miles, but in degrees. The way of measuring is not very
1 This consideration has been altogether lost sight of in certain recent propositions
for extending government aid to astronomical inquiries of another sort. It may be a
most desirable thing that government should find means for inquiring into the physical
condition of sun and moon, planets and comets, stars and all the various orders of star
clusters. But, if such matters are to be studied at government expense, it should be un
derstood that the inquiry is undertaken with the sole purpose of advancing our knowl
edge of these interesting subjects, and should not be brought into comparison with the
utilitarian labors for which our Royal Observatory was founded.
2 Throughout this explanation all minuter details are neglected. In reality, in conse
quence of the flattening of the earth’s globe, the degrees of latitude are not equal, being
larger the farther we go from the equator. Moreover, strictly speaking, it is incorrect
to speak of distances being divided into degrees, or to say that a degree of latitude or
longitude contains so many miles ; yet it is so exceedingly inconvenient to employ any
other way of speaking in popular description, that I trust any astronomers or mathema
ticians who may read this article will forgive the solecism.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
readily explained without a globe or diagrams, but may be thus indi
cated : Suppose a circle to run completely round the earth, through
Greenwich and both the poles; now, if this circle be supposed free to
turn upon the polar axis, or on the poles as pivots, and the half which
crosses Greenwich be carried (the nearest way round) till it crosses
some other station, then the arc through which it is carried is called
the longitude of the station, and the longitude is easterly or westerly
according as this half-circle has to be shifted toward the east or west.
A complete half-turn is 180°, and, by taking such a half-turn either
eastwardly or westwardly, the whole surface of the earth is included.
Points which are 180° east of Greenwich are thus also 180° west of
Greenwich.
So much is premised in the way of explanation to make the present
paper complete ; but ten minutes’ inspection of an ordinary terrestrial
globe will show the true meaning of latitude and longitude more
clearly (to those who happen to have forgotten what they learned at
school on these points) than any verbal description.
Now, it is sufficiently easy for a sea-captain in fine weather to de
termine his latitude. For places in different latitudes have different
celestial scenery, if one may so describe the aspect of the stellar heav
ens by night and the course traversed by the sun by day. The height
of the pole-star above the horizon, for instance, at once indicates the
latitude very closely, and would indicate the latitude exactly if the
pole-star were exactly at the pole instead of being merely close to it.
But the height of any known star when due south also gives the lati
tude. For, at every place in a given latitude, a star rises to a given
greatest height when due south; if we travel farther south, the star
will be higher when due south ; if we travel farther north, it will be
lower; and thus its observed height shows just how far north of the
equator any northerly station is, while, if the traveller is in the South
ern Hemisphere, corresponding observations show how far to the south
of the equator he is.
But commonly the seaman trusts to observation of the sun to give
him his latitude. The observation is made at noon, when the sun is
highest above the horizon. The actual height is determined by means
of the instrument called the sextant. This instrument need not be
here described; but thus much may be mentioned to explain that pro
cess of taking the sun’s meridian altitude which, no doubt, every one
has witnessed who has taken a long sea-journey. The sextant is so
devised that the observer can see two objects at once, one directly and
the other after reflection of its light; and the amount by which he has
to move a certain bar carrying the reflecting arrangement, in order to
bring the two objects into view in the same direction, shows him the
real divergence of lines drawn from his eye to the two objects. To
take the sun’s altitude, then, with this instrument, the observer takes
the sun as one object and the horizon directly below the sun as the
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
721
other: he brings them into view together, and then, looking at the
sextant to see how much he has had to move the swinging arm which
carries the reflecting glasses, he learns how high the sun is. This being
done at noon, with proper arrangements to insure that the greatest
height then reached by the sun is observed, at once indicates the lati
tude of the observer. Suppose, for example, he finds the sun to be
40° above the horizon, and the Nautical Almanac tells him that, at
the time the sun is 10° north of the celestial equator, then he knows
that the celestial equator is 30° above the southern horizon. The pole
of the heavens is, therefore, 60° above the northern horizon, and the
voyager is in 60° north latitude. Of course, in all ordinary cases, the
number of degrees is not exact, as I have here for simplicity sup
posed, and there are some niceties of observation which would have
to be taken into account in real work. But the principle of the method
is sufficiently indicated by what has been said, and no useful purpose
could be served by considering minutiae.
Unfortunately, the longitude is not determined so readily. The
very circumstance which makes the determination of the latitude so
simple introduces the great difficulty which exists in finding the lon
gitude. I have said that all places in the same latitude have the same
celestial scenery; and precisely for this reason it is difficult to dis
tinguish one such place from another, that is, to find on what part of
its particular latitude-circle any place may lie.
If we consider, however, how longitude is measured, and what it
really means, we shall readily see where a solution of the difficulty is
to be sought. The latitude of a station means how far toward either
pole the station is; its longitude means how far round the station is
from some fixed longitude. But it is by turning round on her axis
that the earth causes the changes which we call day and night; and
therefore these must happen at different times in places at different
distances round. For example, it is clear that, if it is noon at one sta
tion, it must be midnight at a station half-way round from the former.
And if any one at one station could telegraph to a person at another,
“ It is exactly noon here,” while this latter person knew from his clock
or watch that it was exactly midnight where he was, then he would
know that he was half-way round exactly. He would, in fact, know
his longitude from the other station. And so with smaller differences.
The earth turns, we know, from west to east—that is, a place lying due
west of another is so carried as presently to occupy the place which*
its easterly neighbor had before occupied, while this last place has
gone farther east yet. Let us suppose an hour is the time required to
carry a westerly station to the position which had been occupied by a
station to the east of it. Then manifestly every celestial phenomenon
depending on the earth’s turning will occur an hour later at the west
erly station. Sunrise and sunset are phenomena of this kind. If I
telegraph to a friend at some station far to the west, but in the same
vol. ni.—46
�722
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
latitude, “ The sun is rising here,” and he finds that he has to wait ex
actly an hour before the sun rises there, then he knows that he is one
hour west of me in longitude, a most inexact yet very convenient and
unmistakable way of speaking. As there are twenty-four hours in the
day, while a complete circle running through my station and his (and
everywhere in the same latitude) is supposed to be divided into 360°,
he is 15° (a 24th part of 360) west of me; and, if my station is Green
wich, he is in what we, in England, call 15° west longitude.1
But what is true of sunrise and sunset in the same latitudes and
different longitudes, is true of noon whatever the latitude may be.
And of course it is true of the southing of any known star. Only un
fortunately one cannot tell the exact instant when either the sun or a
star is due south or at its highest above the horizon. Still, speaking
generally, and for the moment limiting our attention to noon, every
station toward the west has noon later, while every station toward
the east has noon earlier, than Greenwich (or whatever reference sta
tion is employed).
I shall presently return to the question how the longitude is to be
determined with sufficient exactness for safety in sea-voyages. But
I may digress here to note what happens in sea-voyages where the
longitude changes. If a voyage is made toward the west, as from
England to America, it is manifest that a watch set to Greenwich
time will be in advance of the local time as the ship proceeds west
ward, and will be more and more in advance the farther the ship trav
els in that direction. For instance, suppose a watch shows Greenwich
time ; then when it is noon at Greenwich the watch will point to
twelve, but it will be an hour before noon at a place 15° west of
Greenwich, two hours before noon at a place 30° west, and so on :
that is, the watch will point to twelve when it is only eleven
o’clock, ten o’clock, and so on, of local time. On arrival at New
York, the traveller would find that his watch was nearly five
hours fast. Of course the reverse happens in a voyage toward the
east. For instance, a watch set to New-York time would be found
to be nearly five hours slow, for Greenwich time, when the traveller
arrived in England.
In the following passage these effects are humorously illustrated
by Mark Twain:
“ Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West, and on his first
yoyage” (from New York to Europe) “was a good deal worried by
the constantly-changing ‘ ship-time.’ He was proud of his new watch
at first, and used to drag it out promptly when eight bells struck at
noon, but he came to look after a while as if he were losing confi1 In this case, he is “ at sea ” (which, I trust, will not be the case with the reader),
and, we may suppose, connected with Greenwich by submarine telegraph in course of
being laid. In fact, the position of the Great Eastern throughout her cable-laying jour
neys, was determined by a method analogous to that sketched above.
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
723
dence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on deck, and
said with great decision, ‘This thing’s a swindle ! ’ ‘ What’s a swin
dle?’ ‘Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois—gave $150
for her, and I thought she was good. And, by George, she is good
on shore, but somehow she don’t keep up her lick here on the water—
gets sea-sick, may be. She skips ; she runs along regular enough, till
half-past eleven, and then all of a sudden she lets down. I’ve set that
old regulator up faster and faster, till I’ve shoved it clear round, but
it don’t do any good; she just distances every watch in the ship,1 and
clatters along in a way that’s astonishing till it’s noon, but them “ eight
bells ” always gets in about ten minutes ahead of her any way. I don’t
know what to do with her now. She’s doing all she can; she’s going
her best gait, but it won’t save her. Now, don’t you know there ain’t
a watch in the ship that’s making better time than she is ; but what
does it signify ? When you hear them “ eight bells,” you’ll find her
just ten minutes short of her score—sure.’ The ship was gaining a
full hour every three days, and this fellow was trying to make his
watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he had said, he had
pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the watch was
‘ on its best gait,’ and so nothing was left him but to fold his hands
and see the ship beat in the race. We sent him to the captain, and
he explained to him the mystery of ‘ ship-time,’ and set his troubled
mind at rest. This young man,” proceeds Mr. Clemens, d propos
des bottes, “ had asked a great many questions about sea-sickness be
fore we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were, and how
he was to tell when he had it. He found out.”
I cannot leave Mark Twain’s narrative, however, without gently
criticising a passage in which he has allowed his imagination to invent
effects of longitude which assuredly were never perceived in any voy
age since the ship Argo set out after the Golden Fleece. “We had
the phenomenon of a full moon,” he says, “ located just in the same
spot in the heavens, at the same hour every night. The reason of this
singular conduct on the part of the moon did not occur to us at first,
but it did afterward, when we reflected that we were gaining about
twenty minutes every day ; because we were going east so fast, we
gained just about enough every day to keep along with the moon. It
was becoming an old moon to the friends we had left behind us, but
to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place, and remained always the
same.” O Mr. Clemens, Mr. Clemens! In a work of imagination
(as the “Innocents Abroad” must, I suppose, be to a great extent
considered), a mistake such as that here made is perhaps not a very
serious matter; but, suppose some unfortunate compiler of astronomi
cal works should happen to remember this passage, and to state (as a
1 Because set to go “ fast.” Of course, the other watches on board would be left to
go at their usual rate, and simply put forward at noon each day by so many minutes as
corresponded to the run eastward since the preceding noon.
�724
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
compiler would be tolerably sure to do, unless he had a mathematical
friend at his elbow) that, by voyaging eastward at such and such a
rate, a traveller can always have the moon “ full ” at night, in what an
unpleasant predicament would the mistake have placed him ’ Such
things happen, unfortunately ; nay, I have even seen works, in which
precisely such mistakes have been made, in use positively as text-books
for examinations. On this account, our fiction writers must be careful
in introducing science details, lest peradventure science-teachers (save
the mark !) be led astray.
It need scarcely be said that no amount of eastwardly voyaging
would cause the moon to remain always “ full ” as seen by the voyager.
The moon’s phase is the same from whatever part of the earth she may
be seen, and she will become “ new,” that is, pass between the earth
and the sun, no matter what voyages may be undertaken by the in
habitants of earth. Mr. Clemens has confounded the monthly motion
of the moon with her daily motion. A traveller who could only go
fast enough eastward might keep the moon always due south. To do
this he would have to travel completely round the earth in a day and
(roughly) about 50| minutes. If he continued this for a whole month,
the moon would never leave the southern heavens ; but she would not
continue “ full.” In fact, we see that the hour of the day (local time)
would be continually changing—since the traveller would not go round
once in twenty-four hours (which would be following the sun, and
would cause the hour of the day to remain always the same), but in
twenty-four hours and the best part of another hour; so that the day
would seem to pass on, though very slowly, lasting a lunar month in
stead of a common day.
Every one who makes a long sea-voyage must have noted the im
portance attached to moon observations; and many are misled into
the supposition that these observations are directly intended for the
determination of the longitude (or, which is the same thing in effect,
for determining true ship-time). This, however, is a mistake. The
latitude can be determined at noon, as we have seen. A rough ap
proximation to the local time can be obtained also, and is commonly
obtained, by noting when the sun begins to dip after reaching the
highest part of his course above the horizon. But this is necessarily
only a rough approximation, and quite unsuited for determining the
ship’s longitude. For the sun’s elevation changes very slowly at
noon, and no dip can be certainly recognized, even from terrafirrna, far
less from a ship, within a few minutes of true noon. A determination
of time effected in this way serves very well for the ship’s “ watches,”
and accordingly when the sun, so observed, begins to dip, they strike
“ eight bells ” and “ make it noon.” But it would be a serious matter
for the crew if that was made the noon for working the ship’s place;
for an error of many miles would be inevitable.
The following passage from “Foul Play” illustrates the way in
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
725
which mistakes have arisen on this point: The hero, who, being a cler
gyman and a university man, is, of course, a master of every branch
of science, is about to distinguish himself before the heroine by work
ing out the position of the ship Proserpine, whose captain is senseless
ly drunk. After ten days’ murky weather, “ the sky suddenly cleared,
and a rare opportunity occurred to take an observation. Hazel sug
gested to Wylie, the mate, the propriety of taking advantage of the
moment, as the fog-bank out of which they had just emerged would
soon envelop them again, and they had not more than an hour or so
of such observation available. The man gave a shuffling answer.
So he sought the captain in his cabin. He found him in bed. He
was dead drunk. On a shelf lay the instruments. These Hazel
took, and then looked round for the chronometers. They were safely
locked in their cases. He carried the instruments on deck, together
with a book of tables, and quietly began to make preparations, at
which Wylie, arresting his walk, gazed with utter astonishment ” (as
well he might).
“ ‘ Now, Mr. Wylie, I want the key of the chronometer-cases.’
“ ‘ Here is a chronometer, Mr. Hazel,’ said Helen, very innocently,
‘ if that is all you want.’
“ Hazel smiled, and explained that a ship’s clock is made to keep
the most exact time; that he did not require the time of the spot
where they were, but Greenwich time. He took the watch, however.
It was a large one for a lady to carry; but it was one of Frodsham’s
masterpieces.
“ ‘ Why, Miss Rolleston,’ said he, ‘ this watch must be two hours
slow. It marks ten o’clock; it is now nearly mid-day. Ah, I see,’ he
added, with a smile, ‘you have wound it regularly every day, but you
have forgotten to set it daily. Indeed, you may be right; it would be
a useless trouble, since we change our longitude hourly. Well, let us
suppose that this watch shows the exact time at Sydney, as I presume
it does, I can work the ship’s reckoning from that meridian, instead of
that of Greenwich.’ And he set about doing it.” Wylie, after some
angry words with Hazel, brings the chronometers and the charts.
Hazel “ verified Miss Rolleston’s chronometer, and, allowing for differ
ence of time, found it to be accurate. He returned it to her, and pro
ceeded to work on the chart. The men looked on; so did Wylie.
After a few moments, Hazel read as follows: ‘West longitude 146°
53' 18”. South latitude 35° 24'. The island of Oparo 1 and the Four
Crowns distant 420 miles on the N. N. E.,’ ” and so on. And, of course,
“ Miss Rolleston fixed her large, soft eyes on the young clergyman
with the undisguised admiration a woman is apt to feel for what she
does not understand.”
1 The island fixes the longitude at about It?0, otherwise I should have thought the 4
was a misprint for 7. In longitude 177° west, Sydney time would be about 2 hours slow,
but about 4 hours slow in longitude 147° west.
�726
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
The scene here described corresponds pretty closely, I have little
doubt, with one actually witnessed by the novelist, except only that
the captain or chief officer made the observations, and that either
there had not been ten days’ murky weather, or else that in the fore
noon, several hours at least before noon, an observation of the sun had
been made. The noon observation would give the latitude, and com
bined with a forenoon observation, would give the longitude, but
alone would be practically useless for that purpose. It is curious that
the novelist sets the longitude as assigned much more closely than the
latitude, and the value given would imply that the ship’s time was
known within less than a second. This would in any case be imprac
ticable ; but, from noon observations, the time could not be learned
within a minute at the least. The real fact is, that, to determine true
time, the seaman selects, not noon, as is commonly supposed, but a
time when the sun is nearly due east or due west. For then the sun’s
elevation changes most rapidly, and so gives the surest means of de
termining the time. The reader can easily see the rationale of this by
considering the case of an ordinary clock-hand. Suppose our only
means of telling the time was by noting how high the end of the min
ute-hand was: then, clearly, we should be apt to make a greater mistake in estimating the time, when the hand was near XII., than at any
other time, because then its end changes very slowly in height, and a
minute more or less makes very little difference. On the contrary,
when the hand was near III. and IX., we could in a very few seconds
note any change of the height of its extremity. In one case we could
not tell the time within a minute or two; in the other, we could tell it
within a few seconds.
But the noon observation would be wanted to complete the deter
mination of the longitude ; for, until the latitude was known, the cap
tain would not be aware what apparent path the sun was describing
in the heavens, and therefore would not know the time corresponding
to any particular solar observation. So that a passenger, curious in
watching the captain’s work, would be apt to infer that the noon ob
servations gave the longitude, since he would perceive that from them
the captain worked out both the longitude and the latitude.
It is curious that another and critical portion of the same enter
taining novel is affected by the mistake of the novelist on this subject.
After the scuttling of the Proserpine, and other events, Hazel and Miss
Rolleston are alone on an island in the Pacific. Hazel seeks to deter
mine their position, as one step toward escape. Now, “ you must
know that Hazel, as he lay on his back in the boat, had often, in a
half-drowsy way, watched the effect of the sun upon the boat’s mast:
it now stood, a bare pole, and at certain hours acted like the needle of
a dial by casting a shadow on the sands. Above all, he could see
pretty well, by means of this pole and its shadow, when the sun at
tained its greatest elevation. He now asked Miss Rolleston to assist
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
7*7
him in making this observation exactly. She obeyed his instructions,
and, the moment the shadow reached its highest angle and showed the
minutest symptom of declension, she said ‘Now,’ and Hazel called out
in a loud voice ” (why did he do that ?) “ ‘ Noon ! ’ ‘ And forty nine
minutes past eight at Sydney,’ said Helen, holding out her chronome
ter ; for she had been sharp enough to get it ready of her own accord.
Hazel looked at her and at the watch with amazement and incredulity.
‘ What ? ’ said he. ‘ Impossible 1 You can’t have kept Sydney time
all this while.’ ‘ And pray why not ? ’ said Helen. ‘ Have you forgot
ten that some one praised me for keeping Sydney time ? it helped you
somehow or other to know where we were.’ ” After some discussion,
in which she shows how natural it was that she should have wound up
her watch every night, even when “ neither of them expected to see
the morning,” she asks to be praised. “ ‘ Praised ! ’ cried Hazel, ex
citedly, ‘ worshipped, you mean. Why, we have got the longitude by
means of your chronometer. It is wonderful ! It is providential. It
is the finger of Heaven. Pen and ink, and let me work it out.’ ” He
was “ soon busy calculating the longitude of Godsend Island.” What
follows is even more curiously erroneous. “ ‘ There,’ said he. ‘Now,
the latitude I must guess at by certain combinations. In the first
place the slight variation in the length of the days. Then I must try
and make a rough calculation of the sun’s parallax.’ ” (It would have
been equally to the purpose to have calculated how many cows’ tails
would reach to the moon.) “ ‘ And then my botany will help me a
little ; spices furnish a clew ; there are one or two that will not grow
outside the tropic,’ ” and so on. He finally sets the latitude between
the 26th and 33d parallels, a range of nearly 500 miles. The longi
tude, however, which is much more closely assigned, is wrong alto
gether, being set at 3 O3-J-0 west, as the rest of the story requires. For
Godsend Island is within not many days’ sail of Valparaiso. The
mistake has probably arisen from setting Sydney in west longitude in
stead of east longitude, 151° 14' ; for the difference of time, 3h. 11m.,
corresponds within a minute to the difference of longitude between
151° 14' west and 103-£° west.
Mere mistakes of calculation, however, matter little in such cases.
They do not affect the interest of a story even in such extreme cases
as in “Ivanhoe,” where a full century is dropped in such sort that
one of Richard I.’s knights holds converse with a contemporary of
the Conqueror, who, if my memory deceives me not, was Cœur de
Lion’s great-great-grandfather. It is a pity, however, that a nov
elist or indeed any writer should attempt to sketch scientific methods
with which he is not familiar. No discredit can attach to any per
son, not an astronomer, who does not understand the astronomical
processes for determining latitude and longitude, any more than to
one who, not being a lawyer, is unfamiliar with the rules of convey
ancing. But, when an attempt is made by a writer of fiction to give
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an exact description of any technical matter, it is as well to secure
correctness by submitting the description to some friend acquainted
with the principles of the subject. For, singularly enough, people pay
much more attention to these descriptions when met with in novels,
than when given in text-books of science, and they thus come to re
member thoroughly well precisely what they ought to forget. I think
for instance, that it may not improbably have been some recollection
of “ Foul Play” which led Mr. Lockyer to make the surprising state
ment that longitude is determined at sea by comparing chronometer
time with local time, which is found “ at noon by observing, with the
aid of a sextant, when the sun is at the highest point of its path.”
Our novelists really must not lead the students of astronomy astray in
this manner.
It will be clear to the reader, by this time, that the great point
in determining the longitude is, to have the true time of Greenwich
or some other reference station, in order that, by comparing this time
with ship-time, the longitude east or west of the reference station may
be ascertained. Ship-time can always be determined by a morning
or afternoon observation of the sun, or by observing a known star
when toward the east or west, at which time the diurnal motion
raises or depresses it most rapidly. The latitude being known, the
time of day (any given day) at which the sun or a star should have
any particular altitude is known also, and, therefore, conversely, when
the altitude of the sun or a star has been noted, the seaman has learned
the time of day. But to find Greenwich time is another matter;
and, without Greenwich time, ship-time teaches nothing as to the lon
gitude. How is the voyager at sea or in desert places to know the
exact time at Greenwich or some other fixed station? We have seen
that chronometers are used for this purpose; and chronometers are
now made so marvellously perfect in construction that they can be
trusted to show true time within a few seconds, under ordinary con
ditions. But it must not be overlooked that in long voyages a chro
nometer, however perfect its construction, is more liable to get wrong
than at a fixed station. That it is continually tossed and shaken is
something, but is not the chief trial to which it is exposed. The
great changes of temperature endured, when a ship passes from the
temperate latitudes across the torrid zone to the temperate zone
again, try a chronometer far more severely than any ordinary form of
motion. And then it is to be noted that a very insignificant time
error corresponds to a difference of longitude quite sufficient to occa
sion a serious error in the ship’s estimated position. For this reason
and for others, it is desirable to have some means of determining
Greenwich time independently of chronometers.
This, in fact, is the famous problem for the solution of which such
high rewards were offered and have been given.1 It was to solve this
1 For invention of the chronometer, Harrison (a Yorkshire carpenter, and the son of
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
77D
problem that Whiston, the same who fondly imagined Newton was
afraid of him,1 suggested the use of bombs and mortars ; for which
Hogarth pilloried him in the celebrated mad-house scene of the Rake’s
Progress. Of course Whiston had perceived the essential feature of
all methods intended for determining the longitude. Any signal
which is recognizable, no matter by eye or ear, or in whatsoever way,
at both stations, the reference station and the station whose longitude
is required, must necessarily suffice to convey the time of one station
to the other. The absurdity of Whiston’s scheme lay in the implied
supposition that any form of ordnance could propel rocket-signals far
enough to be seen or heard in mid-ocean. Manifestly the only signals
available, when telegraphic communication is impossible, are signals
in the celestial spaces, for these alone can be discerned simultaneously
from widely-distant parts of the earth. It has been to such signals,
then, that men of science have turned for the required means of de
termining longitude.
Galileo was the first to point out that the satellites of Jupiter sup
ply a series of signals which might serve to determine the longitude.
When one of these bodies is eclipsed in Jupiter’s shadow, or passes
out of sight behind Jupiter’s disk, or reappears from eclipse or occul
tation, the phenomenon is one which can be seen from a whole hemi
sphere of the earth’s surface. It is as truly a signal as the appear
ance or disappearance of a light in ordinary night-signalling. If it
can be calculated beforehand that one of these events will take place
at any given hour of Greenwich time, then, from whatever spot the
phenomenon is observed, it is known there that the Greenwich hour
is that indicated. Theoretically, this is a solution of the famous
problem ; and Galileo, the discoverer of Jupiter’s four satellites,
thought he had found the means of determining the longitude with
great accuracy. Unfortunately, these hopes have not been realized.
At sea, indeed, except in the calmest weather, it is impossible to ob
serve the phenomena of Jupiter’s satellites, simply because the tele
scope cannot be directed steadily upon the planet. But even on land
Jupiter’s satellites afford but imperfect means of guessing at the
longitude. For, at present, their motions have not been thoroughly
mastered by astronomers, and though the Nautical Almanac gives
the estimated epochs for the various phenomena of the four satellites,
a carpenter) received £20,000. This sum had been offered for a marine chronometer
which would stand the test of two voyages of assigned length. Harrison labored fifty
years before he succeeded in meeting the required condition.
1 Newton, for excellent reasons, had opposed Whiston’s election to the Royal Society.
Like most small men, Whiston was eager to secure a distinction which, unless sponta
neously offered to him, could have conferred no real honor. Accordingly he was amusingly
indignant with Newton for opposing him. “ Newton perceived,” he wrote, “ that I could
not do as his other darling friends did, that is, learn of him without contradicting him
when I differed in opinion from him : he could not in his old age bear such contradiction,
and so he was afraid of me the last thirteen years of his life.”
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yet, owing to the imperfection of the tables, these epochs are often
found to be appreciably in error. There is yet another difficulty.
The satellites are not mere points, but, being in reality also as large
as or larger than our moon, they have disks of appreciable though
small dimensions. Accordingly, they do not vanish or reappear in
stantaneously, but gradually, the process lasting in reality several
seconds (a longer or shorter time, according to the particular satellites
considered), and the estimated moment of the phenomenon thus comes
to depend on the power of the telescope employed, or the skill or the
visual powers of the observer, or the condition of the atmosphere, and
so on. Accordingly, very little reliance could be placed on such ob
servations as a mean for determining the longitude with any consid
erable degree of exactness.
No other celestial phenomena present themselves except those
depending on the moon’s motions.1 All the planets, as well as the
sun and moon, traverse at various rates and in different paths the
sphere of the fixed stars. But the moon alone moves with sufficient
1 If but one star or a few would periodically (and quite regularly) “ go out ” for a few
moments, the intervals between such vanishings being long enough to insure that one
would not be mistaken in point of time for the next or following one, then it would be pos
sible to determine Greenwich or other reference time with great exactness. And here
one cannot but recognize an argument against the singular theory that the stars were in
tended simply as lights to adorn our heavens and to be of use to mankind. The ideolo
gists who have adopted this strange view can hardly show how the theory is consistent
with the fact that quite readily the stars (or a few of them) might have been so contrived
as to give man the means of travelling with much more security over the length and
breadth of his domain than is at present possible. In this connection I venture to quote
a passage in which Sir John Herschel has touched on the usefulness of the stars, in terms
which, were they not corrected by other and better-known passages in his writings,
might suggest that he had adopted the theory I have just mentioned: “The stars,” he
said, in an address to the Astronomical Society, in 1827, “ are landmarks of the universe;
and, amid the endless and complicated fluctuations of our system, seem placed by its
Creator as guides and records, not merely to elevate our minds by the contemplation
of what is vast, but to teach us to direct our actions by reference to what is immutable
in his works. It is indeed hardly possible to over-appreciate their value in this point
of view. Every well-determined star, from the moment its place is registered, becomes
to the astronomer, the geographer, the navigator, the surveyor, a point of departure
which can never deceive or fail him—the same forever and in all places, of a delicacy
so extreme as to be a test for every instrument yet invented by man, yet equally adapted
for the most ordinary purposes; as available for regulating a town-clock as for con
ducting a navy to the Indies; as effective for mapping down the intricacies of a petty
barony as for adjusting the boundaries of transatlantic empires. When once its place
has been thoroughly ascertained, and carefblly recorded, the brazen circle with which
the useful work was done may moulder, the marble pillar may totter on its base, and
the astronomer himself survive only in the gratitude of posterity; but the record remains,
and transfuses all its own exactness into every determination which takes it for a
groundwork, giving to inferior instruments, nay, even to temporary contrivances, and
to the observations of a few weeks or days, all the precision attained originally at the
cost of so much time, labor, and expense.” It is only necessary, as a corrective to the
erroneous ideas which might otherwise be suggested by this somewhat high-flown pas
sage, to quote the following remarks from the work which represented Sir John Her-
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
731
rapidity to act as a time indicator for terrestrial voyagers. It is hardly
necessary to explain why rapidity of motion is important; but the
following illustration may be given for the purpose. The hour-hand
of a clock does in reality indicate the minute as well as the hour;
yet, owing to the slowness of its motion, we regard the hour-hand as
an unsatisfactory time-indicator, and only consider it as showing what
hour is in progress. So with the more slowly-moving celestial bodies.
They would serve well enough, at least some among them would, to
show the day of the year, if we could only imagine that such informa
tion were ever required from celestial bodies. But it would be hope
less to attempt to ascertain the true time with any degree of accuracy
from their motions. Now, the moon really moves with considerable
rapidity among the stars.1 She completes the circuit of the celestial
sphere in 27£ days (a period less than the common lunation), so that
in one day she traverses about 13°, or her own diameter (which is
rather more than half a degree), in about an hour. This, astronomi
cally speaking, is very rapid motion; and, as it can be detected in a
few seconds by telescopic comparison of the moon’s place with that
of some fixed star, it serves to show the time within a few seconds,
which is precisely what is required by the seaman. Theoretically, all
he has to do is, to take the moon’s apparent distance from a known
star, and also her height and the star’s height above the horizon.
Thence he can calculate what would be the moon’s distance from the
star at the moment of observation, if the observer were at the earth’s
centre. But the Nautical Almanac informs him of the precise instant
of Greenwich time corresponding to this calculated distance. So he
has, what he requires, the true Greenwich time.
It will be manifest that all methods of finding the way at sea,
except the rough processes depending on the log and compass, re
quire that the celestial bodies, or some of them, should be seen.
Hence it is that cloudy weather, for any considerable length of time,
occasions danger, and sometimes leads to shipwreck and loss of life.
Of course the captain of a ship proceeds with extreme caution when
the weather has long been cloudy, especially if, according to his reck
oning, he is drawing near shore. Then the lead comes into play, that
by soundings, if possible, the approach to shore may be indicated,
schel’s more matured views, his well-known “ Outlines of Astronomy:” “For what
purpose are we to suppose such magnificent bodies scattered through the abyss of
space ? Surely not to illuminate our nights, which an additional moon of the thousandth
part of the size of our own world would do much better; nor to sparkle as a pageant
void of meaning and reality, and bewilder us among vain conjectures. Useful, it is
true, they are to man as points of exact and permanent reference, but he must have
studied astronomy to little purpose, who can suppose man to be the only object of his
Creator’s care; or who does not see, in the vast and wonderful apparatus around us,
provision for other races of animated beings.”
1 It was this doubtless which led to the distinction recognized in the book of Job,
where the moon is described as “ walking in brightness.”
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Then, also, by day and night, a careful watch is kept for the signs of
land. But it sometimes happens that, despite all such precautions, a
ship is lost; for there are conditions of weather which, occurring when
a ship is nearing shore, render the most careful lookout futile. These
conditions may be regarded as included among ordinary sea-risks, by
which term are understood all such dangers as would leave a captain
blameless if shipwreck occurred. It would be well if no ships were
ever lost save from ordinary sea-risks; but, unfortunately, ships are
sometimes cast ashore for want of care ; either in maintaining due
watch as the shore is approached, or taking advantage of oppor
tunities, which may be few and far between, for observing sun, or
moon, or stars, as the voyage proceeds. It may safely be said that
the greater number of avoidable shipwrecks have been occasioned by
the neglect of due care in finding the way at sea.
SECULAR PROPHECY.
LTHOUGH prophecy is usually supposed to be the special gift
of inspiration, nothing comes more glibly from secular pens.
Half of the leading articles in the daily newspapers are more or less
disguised predictions. The prophecies of the Times are more numer
ous, more confident, and more explicit, than those of Jeremiah or Isaiah.
“ Secular Prophecy fulfilled” would be a good title for a book written
after the model of those old and half-educated divines who zealously
looked through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and the Apocalypse, for
shadowy hints that Hildebrand would enforce celibacy on the clergy
of the Latin Church ; that Luther would cut up the Christianity of the
West into two sections; that Cromwell would sign the death-warrant
of Charles I.; and that the Stuarts would become wanderers over the
face of the earth. There are still, we believe, devout, mystical, and
studious sectaries, who find such events as the disestablishment of
the Irish Church and the meeting of the Vatican Council plainly fore
told in the book of Revelation. They also find Mr. Gladstone’s name
written in letters of fire by inspired pens that left their record while
the captivity of Babylon was a recent memory, or while Nero was the
scourge of the Church. Nay, Dr. Cumming, who is as different from
those mystical interpreters as a smart Yankee trader is from Parson
Adams, sees that the Prophet Daniel and St. John had a still more
minute acquaintance with the home and Continental politics of these
latter days. But “ Secular Prophecy fulfilled ” would show a much
more wonderful series of glimpses into the future than we find in the
interpretations of Dr. Cumming, and it would certainly bring together
a strange set of soothsayers.
�SECULAR PROPHECY.
733
Arthur Young, Lord Chesterfield, and William Cobbett, are not
exactly the kind of men whom we should expect to find among the
prophets. Arthur Young was a shrewd traveller, with a keen eye for
leading facts, and a remarkable power of describing what he saw in
plain, homely words. Chesterfield was a literary and philosophical
dandy, who, richly furnished with the small coin of wisdom, and fear
ing nothing so much as indecorum, would have been a great teacher
if the earth had been a drawing-room. Cobbett was a coarse, rough
English farmer, with an extraordinary power of reasoning at the dic
tate of his prejudices, and with such a faculty of writing racy, vigorous
English as excites the admiration and the despair of scholars. It seems
almost ludicrous to speak of such men as prophets. And yet Arthur
Young foretold the coming of the French Revolution at a time when
the foremost men of France did not dream that the greatest of political
convulsions was soon to lay low the proudest of monarchies. And the
dandified morality of Lord Chesterfield did not prevent him from
making a similar prediction. Cobbett made a guess which was still
more notable ; for, at the beginning of the present century, he foretold
the secession of the Southern States. But the most remarkable of all
the secular prophets who have spoken to our time is Heine. He might
seem indeed to have been a living irony on the very name of prophet,
for he read backward all the sanctities of religion and all the com
mands of the moral law. Essentially a humorist, to whom life seemed
now the saddest of mysteries, and now the most laughable of jokes, he
made sport of every thing that he touched. His most fervid English
devotee, Mr. Matthew Arnold, is forced to admit that he was pro
foundly disrespectable. He quarrelled with his best friends for frivo
lously petty reasons, and he repaid their kindness by writing lampoons
which are masterpieces at once of literary skill and of malignity.
Neither Voltaire nor Pope scattered calumnies with such a lack of scru
ple, and Byron himself was not a more persistent or more systematic
voluptuary. Yet Heine was so true a prophet that his predictions
might have been accounted the work of inspiration if he had been as
famed for piety or purity as he was notorious for irreligion and profli
gacy. He predicted that Germany and France would fight, and that
France would be utterly put down. He predicted that the line of for
tifications which M. Thiers was then building round Paris would draw
to the capital a great hostile army, and that they would crush the
city as if they were a contracting iron shroud. He predicted that the
Communists would some day get the upper hand in Paris, that they
would strike in a spirit of fiendish rage at the statues, the beautiful
buildings, and all the other tangible marks of the civilization which
they sought to destroy; that they would throw down the Vendome
Column in their hate of the man who had made France the foe of
every other people ; and that they would further show their execration
for his memory by taking his ashes from the Invalides and flinging
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
them into the Seine. All these predictions, save the last, have been
fulfilled to the letter, and it would need a bolder prophet than even
Heine himself to say that the last will not be verified also. For
nothing is more remarkable in France than the success with which the
International is teaching the artisans that the first as well as the third
Napoleon was the worst enemy of their class. Although they still
regard his achievements with pride, they fervently believe that he was
the foe of their order, and the acts of the Commune showed their
eagerness to insult his name. And there may be another Commune.
Intrepid prophets would say that there certainly will be another. If
that should happen, it is quite possible that the fanatics of the In
ternational may fling the ashes of the great soldier into the Seine to
mark their abhorrence of military glory.
Prevost-Paradol was as different from Heine as a gifted voluptuary
can be from a polished, fastidious, and decorous gentleman. Yet the
refined, reserved, satirical Orleanist, who seemed to be uncomfortable
when his hands were not encased in kid gloves, and who was a mas
ter of all the literary resources of innuendo, would be as much out of
place among the Hebrew prophets as Heine himself. He would find
a place, nevertheless, in “ Secular Prophecy fulfilled,” by reason of
the startling exactness with which he foretold the outbreak of the
war between his own country and Germany. In a passage which
promises to become classic, he said that the two nations were like
two trains which, starting from opposite points, and placed on the
same line of rails, were driven toward each other at full speed.
There must be a collision. The only doubt was, where it would
happen, and when, and with what results. De Tocqueville better
fulfilled the traditionary idea of a prophet, and there is a startling
accuracy in some of the predictions as to the future of France which
he flung forth in talking with his friends, and of which we find a
partial record in the journal of Mr. Nassau Senior. Eighteen years
before the fall of the empire, he predicted that it would wreck itself
“ in some extravagant foreign enterprise.” “ War,” he added, “ would
assuredly be its death, but its death would perhaps cost dear.” M.
Renan also aspires to a place among the prophets, and he has made
a prediction which may be a subject of some curiosity when the next
pope shall be elected. The Church of Rome will not, he says, be
split up by disputes about doctrine. But he does look for a schism,
and it will come, he thinks, when some papal election shall be deemed
invalid; when there shall be two competing pontiffs, and Europe
shall see a renewal of the strife between Rome and Avignon.
It may be said, no doubt, that the verified predictions which we
have cited are only stray hits; that the oracles make still more re
markable misses; and that, since guesses about the future are shot off
every hour of the day, it would be a marvel if the bull’s-eye were not
struck sometimes. Such a theory might suffice to account for the hits,
�SECULAR PROPHECY.
735
if the prophecies were let off in the dark and at random ; but that is
not the case. It is easy to trace the path along which the mind of
Heine or De Tocqueville travelled to the results of the future, and.
their predictions betray nothing more wonderful than a rare power of
drawing correct inferences from confused facts. A set of general rules
might be laid down as a guide to prophecy. In the first place, we
might give the negative caution that the analogy of past events is mis
leading, because the same set of conditions does not appear at two
different times, and an almost unseen element might suffice to deter
mine an all-important event. Forgetting this fact, Archbishop Man
ning has ventured into the field of prophecy with the argument that
Catholics should not be made uneasy because the pope has lost his
temporal power, for they should remember that he has again and
again suffered worse calamities, and has then won back all his old au
thority. Between 1378 and 1418 the Church witnessed the scandal of
a schism, in which there were rival popes, and in which Rome and
Avignon competed for the mastery. That calamity is worse than any
which has come to the Church in our days, yet the Papacy regained
its old power and glory. So late as within the present century the
temporal power was reduced to nullity by the first Napoleon, and
Pius TX. himself had to flee from Rome in the beginning of his reign.
Why, then, should not the robber-band of Victor Emmanuel be
paralyzed in turn, and the Papacy once more regain its old splendor ?
Not being ambitious to play the part of prophets, we do not undertake
to say whether the Papacy will or will not again climb or be flung into
its ancient place, but it is not the less certain that Archbishop Man
ning’s prophecy is a conspicuous example of a false inference. When
he argues that a pope in the nineteenth century will again be the tem
poral ruler of Rome because a pope triumphed over the schism of
Avignon in the fifteenth, he forgets that the lapse of centuries has
wrought a vast change of conditions. At the end of the fourteenth
century a keen onlooker, a Heine or a De Tocqueville, might have con
fidently foretold that a pope of unquestioned authority would soon
govern the historic city of the Papacy, because the political and the
social interests of Europe, no less than the piety or superstition of the
times, required that the pope should be powerful and free. The cur
rent of the age, if we may use the philosophical slang, was running
from Avignon to Rome in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and
now the current of the age is not less distinctly running against the
temporal power. The very reasons which would have led a prophet
in 1400 to predict that Rome would again be the unquestioned seat of
the Papacy would lead the same soothsayer to affirm in 1873 that the
temporal power has been shattered forever.
It is in general causes that we find the guide of prophecy. Mr.
Buckle attached so much importance to the physical conditions of a
country, the food of a people, the air they breathe, the occupations
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which they are forced to follow, and the habits of thought which they
display, that he undertook to tell the end of a nation from the begin
ning. Spain was no mystery to him when he remembered that it had
originally been a country of volcanoes ; that the people had conse
quently been filled with a dread of the unseen and inscrutable power
which reveals itself in convulsions of the earth; that their diseased
fear of shadowy influences made them resent the teachings of science,
and hence left them an easy prey to the Holy Office and Ignatius
Loyola when Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle, drew away from sacerdotal
ism all the Christianity of Northern Europe. There can be no doubt
that Buckle’s theory did rest on a basis of truth, and that it erred
simply by trying to account for every thing. In fact, it is not spe
cially his doctrine, but simply the rigid and systematized application
of a principle which is as old as speculative curiosity. We apply it
every day of our lives. If a family go into a badly-drained house,
we say the chances are that they will have typhus, diarrhoea, or chol
era. If a rich and foolish young man bets largely on the turf, the prob
ability is that he will be ruined. And the statistician comes to help
us with a set of tables which throw uncomfortable light on the me
chanical character of those mental and moral processes which might
seem to be determined by the unprompted bidding of our own wills.
Mr. Buckle was no doubt beguiled by a mere dream when he fancied
that we could account for every turn and winding in the history of a
country if we had only a large knowledge of its general conditions,
such as the temperature of the land, the qualities of the soil, the food
of the people, and their relations to their neighbors. He paid too
little heed to subtle qualities of race, and he did not make sufficient
allowance for the disturbing force of men gifted with extraordinary
power of brain and will. Still it is a mere truism that the more cor
rectly and fully we know the general condition of a country, the more
does mystery vanish from its history, and the successive events tend
to take their place in orderly sequence.
It is impossible, however, to prophesy by rule, and such system
mongers as Mr. Buckle would be the most treacherous of all ora<?les.
Their hard and fast canons will not bend into the subtle crevices of
human life. Men who are so ostentatiously logical that they cannot
do a bit of thinking without the aid of a huge apparatus of sharplycut principles always lack a keen scent for truth. They blunder by
rule when less showy people find their way by mother-wit. Hence
they are the worst of all prophets. It was not by counting up how
many things tell in one way, and how many tell in another, that Heine
and De Tocqueville were able to guess correctly what was coming, but
by watching the chief currents of the age, or, as more homely folk
would say, by finding out which way the wind was blowing. They
had to decide which among many social, religious, or political forces
were the strongest, and which would be the most lasting. They had
�SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY. 737
to give a correct decision as to the stability of particular institutions
and the strength of popular passions. General rules could not be of
much avail, and they had to rely on their knowledge of human nature,
their acquaintance with the forces which have been at work in history,
and their own sagacity. Most likely Heine could not have given such
an explanation of the grounds on which he made his predictions as
would have satisfied any average jury of historical students. But he
could have said that he knew the working-men of Paris; that his
power of poetic sympathy enabled him to see how their minds veered
toward socialism, and he also knew what forces were on the side of
order; and that a mental comparison of the two made him look with
certainty to a ferocious outbreak of democratic passion. Being thus
sure that the storm would come, he had next to ask himself which
points the lightning would strike, and he looked for the most promi
nent symbols of kingship, wealth, refinement, and military glory. The
Tuileries would be a mark for the fury of the mob, because that was
the palace of the man who had destroyed the populace. The public
offices must go, because they represented what the bourgeois called order
and the workmen called tyranny. The Louvre must go, for the mere
sake of maddening rich people who took a delight in art. And the
Vendóme Column must go, because it glorified a man who was the in
carnation of the w ar-spirit, and who was consequently the w’orst foe
of the working-classes. To a select committee of the House of Com
mons such reasons would have seemed the dreams of a moon-struck
visionary, and they certainly did not admit of being logically defended.
No prophecy does. The power of predicting events is the power of
guessing, and those guess best who are least dependent on rules, and
most gifted with the mother-wit which works with the quietude and
unconsciousness of instinct.—Saturday Review.
4«»
SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY.*
By Pbof. J. LOVEEING,
.
OF HARVARD COLLEGE.
T the meeting of this Association in Burlington, I showed some
experiments in illustration of the optical method of making sen
sible the vibrations of the column of air in an organ-pipe. At the
Chicago meeting I demonstrated the way in which the vibrations of
strings could be studied by the eye in place of the ear, when these
strings were attached to tuning-forks with which they could vibrate in
sympathy; substituting for the small forks, originally used by Melde,
A
1 From the Proceedings of the Twenty-first Meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science.
—47
vol. hi.
�738
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
a colossal tuning-fork, the prongs of which were placed between the
poles of a powerful electro-magnet. This fork, which interrupted
the battery current, at the proper time, by its own motion, was
able to put a heavy cord, thirty feet in length, in the most ener
getic vibration, and for an indefinite time. I propose, at the present
time, to speak of those sympathetic vibrations which are pitched so
low as not to come within the limits of human ears, but which are
felt rather than heard, and to show how they may be seen as well
as felt.
All structures, large or small, simple or complex, have a definite
rate of vibration, depending on their materials, size, and shape, and as
fixed as the fundamental note of a musical cord. They may also vi
brate in parts, as the cord does, and thus be capable of various increas
ing rates of vibration, which constitute their harmonics. If one body
vibrates, all others in the neighborhood will respond, if the rate of
vibration in the first agrees with their own principal or secondary
rates of vibration, even when no more substantial bond than the air
unites a body with its neighbors. In this way, mechanical disturb
ances, harmless in their origin, assume a troublesome and perhaps a
dangerous character, when they enter bodies all too ready to move at
the required rate, and sometimes beyond the sphere of their stability.
When the bridge at Colebrooke Dale (the first iron bridge in the
world) was building, a fiddler came along and said to the workmen
that he could fiddle their bridge down. The builders thought this
boast a fiddle-de-dee, and invited the itinerant musician to fiddle away
to his heart’s content. One note after another was struck upon the
strings until one was found with which the bridge was in sympathy.
When the bridge began to shake violently, the incredulous workmen
were alarmed at the unexpected result, and ordered the fiddler to stop.
At one time, considerable annoyance was experienced in one of
the mills in Lowell, because the walls of the building and the floors
were violently shaken by the machinery: so much so that, on certain
days, a pail of water would be nearly emptied of its contents, while on
other days all was quiet. Upon investigation it appeared that the
building shook in response to the motion of the machinery only when
that moved at a particular rate, coinciding with one of the harmoriics
of the structure ; and the simple remedy for the trouble consisted in
making the machinery move at a little more or a little less speed, so
as to put it out of time with the building.
We can easily believe that, in many cases, these violent vibrations
will loosen the cement and derange the parts of a building, so that it
may afterward fall under the pressure of a weight which otherwise
it was fully able to bear, and at a time, possibly, when the machinery
is not in motion; and this may have something to do with such acci
dents as that which happened to the Pemberton Mills in Lawrence.
Large trees are uprooted in powerful gales, because the wind comes in
�SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY,
gusts; and, if these gusts happen to be timed in accordance with the
natural swing of the tree, the effect is irresistible. The slow vibra
tions which proceed from the largest pipes of a large organ, and
which are below the range of musical sounds, are able to shake the
walls and floors of a building so as to be felt, if not heard, thereby
furnishing a background of noise on which the true musical sounds
may be projected.
We have here the reason of the rule observed by marching ar
mies when they cross a bridge; viz., to stop the music, break step,
and open column, lest the measured cadence of a condensed mass of
men should urge the bridge to vibrate beyond its sphere of cohesion.
A neglect of this rule has led to serious accidents. The Broughton
bridge, near Manchester, gave way beneath the measured tread of
only sixty men who were marching over it. The celebrated engineer,
Robert Stephenson, has remarked 1 that there is not so much danger
to a bridge, when it is crowded with men or cattle, or if cavalry are
passing over it, as when men go over it in marching order. A
chain-bridge crosses the river Dordogne on the road to Bordeaux.
One of the Stephensons passed over it in 1845, and was so much struck
with its defects, although it had been recently erected, that he noti
fied the authorities in regard to them. A few years afterward it
gave way when troops were marching over it.’
A few years ago, a terrible disaster befell a battalion of French
infantry, while crossing the suspension-bridge at Angers, in France.
Reiterated warnings were given to the troops to break into sections,
as is usually done. But the rain was falling heavily, and, in the hurry
of the moment, the orders were disregarded. The bridge, which was
only twelve years old, and which had been repaired the year before at
a cost of $7,000, fell, and 280 dead bodies were found, besides many
who were wounded. Among the killed or drowned were the chief of
battalion and four other officers. Many of the guns were bent double,
and one musket pierced completely through the body of a soldier.
The wholesale slaughter at the bridge of Beresina, in Russia, when
Napoleon was retreating from Moscow, in 1812, and his troops crowded
upon the bridge and broke it, furnishes a fitting parallel to this great
calamity.
When Galileo set a pendulum in strong vibration by blowing on it
whenever it was moving away from his mouth, he gave a good illus
tration of the way in which small but regularly-repeated disturbances
grow into consequence. Tyndall tells us that the Swiss muleteers tie
up the bells of the mules, for fear that the tinkle should bring an
avalanche down. The breaking of a drinking-glass by the human
voice, when its fundamental note is sounded, is a well-authenticated
feat; and Chladni mentions an innkeeper who frequently repeated the
1 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. v., p. 255.
• Smiles’s “ Life of Stephenson,” p. 390.
�740
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
experiment for the entertainment of his guests and his own profit.
The nightingale is said to kill by the power of its notes. The bark of
a dog is able to call forth a response from certain strings of the piano.
And a curious passage has been pointed out in the Talmud, which dis
cusses the indemnity to be claimed when a vessel is broken by the
voice of a domestic animal. If we enter the domain of music, there
is no end to the illustrations which might be given of these sympathetic
vibrations. They play a conspicuous part in most musical instru
ments, and the sounds which these instruments produce would be
meagre and ineffective without them.
In the case of vibrations which are simply mechanical, without
being audible, or at any rate musical, the following ocular demonstra
tion may be given: A train of wheels, set in motion by a strong
spring wound up in a drum, causes an horizontal spindle to revolve
with great velocity. Two pieces of apparatus like this are placed at
the opposite sides of a room. On the ends of the spindles which face
one another are attached buttons about an inch in diameter, The two
ends of a piece of white tape are fastened to the rims of these buttons.
When the spindles, with the attached buttons, revolve, the two ends of
the tape revolve, and in such directions as to prevent the tape from twistunless the velocities are different. Even if the two trains of wheels
move with unequal velocities, when independent of each other, the
motions tend to uniformity when the two spindles are connected by
the tape. Now, by moving slightly the apparatus at one end of the
room, the tape may be tightened or loosened. If the tape is tight
ened, its rate of vibration is increased, and, at the same time, the ve
locity of the spindles is diminished on account of the greater resist
ance. If the tape is slackened, its rate of vibration is less, and the
velocity of the spindles is greater. By this change we can readily
bring the fundamental vibi’ation of the tape into unison with the machinery, and then the tape responds by a vibration of great amplitude,
visible to all beholders. If we begin gradually to loosen the tape, it
soon ceases to respond, on account of the twofold effect already de
scribed, until the time comes when the velocity of the machinery ac
cords with the first harmonic of the tape, and the latter divides beau
tifully into two vibrating segments with a node at the middle. As
the tension slowly diminishes, the different harmonics are successively
developed, until finally the tape is broken up into numerous segments
only an inch or two in length. The eye is as much delighted by this
visible music as the ear could be if the vibrations were audible; and
the optical demonstration has this advantage, that all may see, while
few have musical ears. A tape is preferred to a cord in this experi
ment, because it is better seen, and any accidental twist it may ac
quire is less troublesome.
�SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.
741
SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.1
By Pbof. J. LAWRENCE SMITH.
NOW pass to the second part of my discourse. It is in reference
to the methods of modern science—the caution to be observed in
pursuing it, if we do not wish to pervert its end by too confident as
sertions and deductions.
It is a very common attempt, nowadays, for scientists to transcend
the limits of their legitimate studies, and in doing this they run into
speculations apparently the most unphilosophical, wild, and absurd;
quitting the true basis of inductive philosophy, and building up the
most curious theories on little else than assertion; speculating upon
the merest analogy; adopting the curious views of some metaphysi
cians, as Edward von Hartmann; striving to work out speculative
results by the inductive method of natural science.
And such an example as this is of great value to the reflective
mind, teaching caution, and demonstrating the fact that, while the
rules by which we are guided in scientific research are far in advance
of those of ancient days, we must not conclude that they are perfect
by any means. In our modern method of investigation how many
conspicuous examples of deception we have had in pursuing even the
best method of investigation ! Take, for instance, the science of ge
ology, from the time of Werner to the present day. While we always
thought we had the true interpretation of the structural phenomena
of the globe, as we progressed from year to year, yet how vastly dif
ferent are our interpretations of the present day from what they were
in the time of Werner! In chemistry, the same thing is true. How
clearly were all things explained to the chemist of the last century by
Phlogiston, which, in the present century, receive no credence, and
chemical phenomena are now viewed in an entirely different light!
Lavoisier, in the latter part of the last century, elucidated the phe
nomena of respiration and the production of animal heat by one of the
most beautiful theories, based, to all appearances, upon well-observed
facts; yet, at the present day, more delicate observations, and the
discovery of the want of balance between the inhaled oxygen and ex
haled carbonic acid, subverted that beautiful theory, and we are left
entirely without one. It is true we have collated a number of facts
in regard to respiration, molecular changes in the tissues, etc., all of
which are recognized as having something to do with animal heat;
still it is acknowledged that we are incapable of giving any concrete
expression to the phenomena of respiration and animal heat as La
voisier did eighty or ninety years ago.
I
1 Abstract of the address before the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, at its late meeting in Portland, Me., by the retiring president.
�742
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
Electricity is the same now as it has ever been, yet it was once
spoken of as a fluid, then as a force, now as an energy readily con
vertible into caloric or mechanical energy; and in what light it will
be considered fifty years hence no one can predict.
Now, what I desire to enforce here is, that amid all these changes
and revolutions of theories, so called, it is simply man, the inter
preter, that has erred, and not Nature; her laws are the same; we
simply have not been able to read them correctly, and perhaps never
will be.
AVhat, it may be asked, are we to do, then ? Must we cease
theorizing ? Not at all. The lesson to be learned from this is to be
more modest in our generalizations; to generalize as far as our carefully-made-out facts will permit us, and no further; check the imagina
tion, and let it not run riot and shipwreck us upon some metaphysical
quicksand.
The fact is, it becomes a question whether there is such a thing as
pure theory in science. No true scientific theory deserves the name
that is not based on verified hypothesis; in fact, it is but a concise in
terpretation of the deductions of scientific facts. Dumas has well said
that theories are like crutches, the strength of them is, to be tested
by attempting to walk with them. And I might further add, that very
often scientists, who are without sure-footed facts to carry them along,
take to these crutches.
It is common to speak of the theory of gravitation, when there is
nothing purely hypothetical in connection with the manner in which it
was studied; in it we only see a clear generalization of observed laws
which govern the mutual attraction of bodies. If at any time New
ton did assume an hypothesis, it was only for the purpose of facilitat
ing his calculations: “Newton’s passage from the falling of an apple
to the falling of a moon was at the outset a leap of the imagination; ”
but it was this hypothesis, verified by mathematics, which gave to the
so-called theory of gravitation its present status.
In regard to light, we are in the habit of connecting with it a pure
hypothesis, viz., the impressions of light being produced by emission
from luminous bodies, or by the undulation of an all-pervading, at
tenuated medium; and these hypotheses are to be regarded as probable
so long as the phenomena of light are explained by them, and no
longer. The failure to explain one single well-observed fact is suffi
cient to cast doubt upon or subvert any pure hypothesis, as has been
the case with the emission theory of light, and may be the fate of the
undulatory theory, which, however, up to the present time, serves in
all cases.
It is not my object to criticise the speculations of any one or more
of the modern scientists who have carried their investigations into
the world of the imagination; in fact, it could not be done in a dis
course so limited as this, and one only intended as a prologue to the
�SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.
743
present meeting. But, in order to illustrate this subject of method
more fully, I will refer to Darwin, whose name has become synonymous
with progressive development and natural selection, which we had
thought had died out with Lamarck fifty years ago. In Darwin we
have one of those philosophers whose great knowledge of animal and
vegetable life is only transcended by his imagination. In fact, he is
to be regarded more as a metaphysician with a highly-wrought im
agination than as a scientist, although a man having a most wonderful
knowledge of the facts of natural history. In England and America
we find scientific men of the profoundest intellects differing completely
in regard to his logic, analogies, and deductions; and in Germany and
France the same thing—in the former of these countries some specu
lators saying that “his theory is our starting-point,” and in France
many of her best scientific men not ranking the labors of Darwin with
those of pure science. Darwin takes up the law of life, and runs it
into progressive development. In doing this, he seems to me to in
crease the embarrassment which surrounds us on looking into the mys
teries of creation. He is not satisfied to leave the laws of life where
he finds them, or to pursue their study by logical and inductive rea
soning. His method of reasoning will not allow him to remain at
rest; he must be moving onward in his unification of the universe.
He started with the lower order of animals, and brought them through
their various stages of progressive development until he supposed he
had touched the confines of man ; he then seems to have recoiled, and
hesitated to pass the boundary which separated man from the lower
order of animals ; but he saw that all his previous logic was bad if he
stopped there, so man was made from the ape (with which no one can
find fault, if the descent be legitimate). This stubborn logic pushes
him still further, and he must find some connecting link between that
most remarkable property of the human face called expression; so his
ingenuity has given us a very curious and readable treatise on that
subject. Yet still another step must be taken in this linking together
man and the lower order of animals ; it is in connection with language;
and before long it is not unreasonable to expect another production
from that most wonderful and ingenious intellect on the connection be
tween the language of man and the brute creation.
Let us see for a moment what this reasoning from analogy would
lead us to. The chemist has as much right to revel in the imaginary
formation of sodium from potassium, or iodine and bromine from
chlorine, by a process of development, and call it science, as for the
naturalist to revel in many of his wild speculations, or for the physicist
who studies the stellar space to imagine it permeated by mind as well
as light—mind such as has formed the poet, the statesman, or the
philosopher. Yet any chemist who would quit his method of investi
gation, of marking every foot of his advance by some indelible im
print, and go back to the speculations of Albertus Magnus, Roger
�744
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
Bacon, and other alchemists of former ages, would soon he dropped
from the list of chemists and ranked with dreamers and speculators.
What I have said is, in my humble opinion, warranted by the de
parture Darwin and others have made from true science in their purely
speculative studies; and neither he nor any other searcher after truth
expects to hazard great and startling opinions without at the same
time courting and desiring criticism; yet dissension from his views in
no way proves him wrong—it only shows how his ideas impress the
minds of other men. And just here let me contrast the daring of
Darwin with the position assumed by one of the great French natural
ists of the present day, Prof. Quatrefages, in a recent discourse of his
on the physical character of the human race. In referring to the ques
tion of the first origin of man, he says distinctly that, in his opinion,
it is one that belongs not to science; these questions are treated
by theologians and philosophers: “Neither here nor at the Museum
am I, nor do I wish to be, either a theologian or a philosopher. I
am simply a man of science; and it is in the name of comparative
physiology, of botanical and zoological geography, of geology and
paleontology, in the name of the laws which govern man as well as
animals and plants, that I have always spoken.” And, studying man
as a scientist, he goes on to say: “ It is established that man has two
grand faculties, of which we find not even a trace among animals. He
alone has the moral sentiment of good and evil; he alone believes in
a future existence succeeding this natural life; he alone believes in
beings superior to himself, that he has never seen, and that are capable
of influencing his life for good or evil; in other words, man alone is
endowed with morality and religion.” Our own distinguished nat
uralist and associate, Prof. Agassiz, reverts to this theory of evolution
in the same positive manner, and with such earnestness and warmth
as to call forth severe editorial criticisms, by his speaking of it as a
“ mere mine of assertions,” and the “ danger of stretching inferences
from a few observations to a wide field; ” and he is called upon to col
lect 11 real observations to disprove the evolution hypothesis.” I
would here remark, in defence of my distinguished friend, that scien
tific investigation will assume a curious phase when its votaries are
required to occupy time in looking up facts, and seriously attempting
to disprove any and every hypothesis based upon proof, some of it
not even rising to the dignity of circumstantial evidence.
I now come to the last point to which I wish to call the attention
of the members of the Association in the pursuit of their investiga
tions, and the speculations that these give rise to in their minds. Ref
erence has already been made to the tendency of quitting the physical
to revel in the metaphysical, which, however, is not peculiar to this
age, for it belonged as well to the times of Plato and Aristotle as it
does to ours. More special reference will be made here to the pro
clivity of the present epoch among philosophers and theologians to be
�SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.
745
parading science and religion side by side, talking of reconciling sci
ence and religion, as if they have ever been unreconciled. Scientists
and theologians may have quarrelled, but never science and religion.
At dinners they are toasted in the same breath, and calls made on cler
gymen to respond, who, for fear of giving offence, or lacking the fire
and firmness of St. Paul, utter a vast amount of platitudes about the
beauty of science and the truth of religion, trembling in theii* shoes
all the time, fearing that science falsely so called may take away their
professional calling, instead of uttering in a voice of thunder, like the
Boanerges of the Gospel, that the “ world by wisdom knew not God.”
And it never will. Our religion is made so plain by the light of faith
that the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot err therein.
No, gentlemen, I firmly believe that there is less connection be
tween science and religion than there is between jurisprudence and
astronomy, and the sooner this is understood the better it will be for
both. Religion is based upon revelations as given to us in a book, the
contents of which are never changed, and of which there have been no
revised or corrected editions since it was first given, except so far as
man has interpolated; a book more or less perfectly understood by
mankind, but clear and unequivocal in all essential points concerning
the relation of man to his Creator; a book that affords practical di
rections, but no theory; a book of facts, and not of arguments ; a book
that has been damaged more by theologians than by all the panthe
ists and atheists that have ever lived and turned their invectives
against it—and no one source of mischief on the part of theologians is
greater than that of admitting the profound mystery of many parts
of it, and almost in the next breath attempting some sort of explana
tion of these mysteries. The book is just what Richard Whately says
it is, viz., “ Not the philosophy of the human mind, nor yet the philos
ophy of the divine nature in itself, but (that which is properly religion)
the relation and connection of the two beings—what God is to us,
what he has done and will do for us, and what we are to be in regard
to him.” . . . Let us stick to science, pure, unadulterated science, and
leave to religion things which pertain to it; for science and religion
are like two mighty rivers flowing toward the same ocean, and, before
reaching it, they will meet and mingle their pure streams, and flow
together into that vast ocean of truth which encircles the throne
of the great Author of all truth, whether pertaining to science or
to religion. And I will here, in defence of science, assert that there
is a greater proportion of its votaries who now revere and honor re
ligion in its broadest sense, as understood by the Christian world, than
that of any other of the learned secular pursuits.
But, before concluding, I cannot refrain from referring to one great
event in the history of American science during the past year, as it
will doubtless mark an epoch in the development of science in this
country. I refer to the noble gift of a noble foreigner to encourage
�746
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the pool* but worthy student of pure science in this country. It is
needless for me to insist on the estimation in which Prof. John Tyndall
is held among us. We know him to be a man whose heart is as large
as his head, both contributing to the cause of science. We regard
him as one of the ablest physicists of the time, and one of the most
level-headed philosophers that England has ever produced—a man
whose intellect is as symmetrical as the circle, with its every point
equidistant from the centre. We have been the recipient of former
endowments from that land which, we thank God, was our mother
country, for from it we have drawn our language, our liberty, our
laws, our literature, our science, and our energy, and without whose
wealth our material development would not be what it is at the pres
ent day. Count Rumford, the founder of the Royal Society of Lon
don, in earlier years endowed a scientific chair in one of our larger
universities, and Smithson transferred his fortune to our shores to
promote the diffusion of science. Now, while these are noble gifts,
yet Count Rumford was giving to his own countrymen—for he was
an American—and they were posthumous gifts from men of large for
tune. But the one I now refer to was from a man who ranks not with
the wealthy, and he laid his offering upon the altar of science in this
country with his own hands; and it has been both consecrated and
blest by noble words from his own lips; all of which makes the gift a
rich treasure to American science; and I think we can assure him that,
as the same Anglo-Saxon blood flows in our veins as does in his (tem
pered, ’tis true, with the Celtic, Teutonic, Latin, etc.), he may expect
much from the American student in pure science as the offspring of his
gift and his example.
THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS.
By Prof. JOHN TYNDALL.
OON after my return from America, I learned with great concern
that a little book of mine, published prior to my departure, had
given grave offence to some of the friends and relatives of the late
Principal Forbes; and I was specially grieved when informed that the
chastisement considered due to this offence was to be administered by
gentlemen between whom and myself I had hoped mutual respect and
amity would forever reign. We had, it is true, met in conflict on an
other field; but hostilities had honorably ceased, old wounds had, to
all appearance, been healed, and I had no misgiving as to the per
manence of the peace established between us.
The genesis of the book referred to is this: At Christmas, 1871, it
fell to my lot to give the brief course of “ Juvenile Lectures ” to which
S
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS.
Faraday for many years before his death lent such an inexpressible
charm. The subject of glaciers, which I had never previously treated
in a course of lectures, might, it was thought, be rendered pleasant
and profitable to a youthful audience. The sight of young people
wandering over the glaciers of the Alps with closed eyes, desiring
knowledge, but not always finding it, had been a familiar one to me,
and I thought it no unworthy task to respond to this desire, and to
give such of my young hearers as might visit the Alps an intelligent
interest in glacier phenomena.
The course was, therefore, resolved upon; and, to render its value
more permanent, I wrote out copious “Notes,” had them bound to
gether, and distributed among the boys and girls. Knowing the
damage which elementary books, wearily and confusedly written, had
done to my own young mind, I tried, to the best of my ability, to
confer upon these “ Notes ” clearness, thoroughness, and life. It was
my particular desire that the imaginary pupil chosen for my com
panion in the Alps, and for whom, odd as it may sound, I entertained
a real affection, should rise from the study of the “ Notes ” with no
other feeling than one of attachment and respect for those who had
worked upon the glaciers. I therefore avoided all allusion to those
sore personal dissensions which, to the detriment of science and of
men, had begun fifteen years prior to my connection with the glaciers,
and which have been unhappily continued to the present time.
Prof. Youmans, of New York, was then in London, organizing the
“ International Scientific Series,” with which his name and energy are
identified. To prove my sympathy for his work, I had given him per
mission to use my name as one of his probable contributors, the date
of my contribution being understood to belong to the distant, and in
deed indefinite, future. He, however, read the “ Notes,” liked them,
urged me to expand them a little, and to permit him to publish them
as the first volume of his series. His request was aided by that of an
other friend, and I acceded to it—hence the little book, entitled the
“Forms of Water,” which the friends and relatives of Principal
Forbes have read with so much discontent.
That modest volume has, we are informed, caused an uncontem
plated addition to be made to the Life of Principal Forbes, lately
published under the triple auspices of Principal Shairp, the successor
of Principal Forbes in the College of St. Andrew’s, Mr. AdamsReilly, and Prof. Tait. “ It had been our hope,” says Principal Shairp,
in his preface, “ that we might have been allowed to tell our story
without reverting to controversies which, we had thought, had been
long since extinguished. But, after most of these sheets were in press,
a book appeared, in which many of the old charges against Principal
Forbes in the matter of the glaciers were, if not openly repeated, not
obscurely indicated. Neither the interests of truth, nor justice to the
dead, could suffer such remarks to pass unchallenged. How it has
�748
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
been thought best for the present to meet them, I must leave my friend
and fellow-laborer, Prof. Tait, to tell.”
The book here referred to is the unpretending volume whose blame
less advent I have just described.
I have not the honor of knowing Principal Shairp personally, but
he will, I trust, permit me to assure him of two things : Firstly, that,
in writing my book, I had no notion of rekindling an extinct fire, or
of treating with any thing but tenderness the memory of his friend.
Secondly, that, had such been my intention, the negative attribute,
“ not obscure,” is hardly the one which he would have chosen to de
scribe the words that I should have employed. But the fact is, the fire
was not extinct : the anger of former combats, which I thought spent,
was still potential, and my little book was but the finger which pulled
the trigger of an already-loaded gun.
Let the book speak for itself. I reproduce here in extenso the ref
erences to Principal Forbes, which have been translated into “ charges ”
against him by Principal Shairp. Having, in section 20, mentioned
the early measurements of glaciers made by Hugi and Agassiz, I con
tinue thus :
“ We now approach an epoch in the scientific history of glaciers. Had the
first observers been practically acquainted with the instruments of precision
used in surveying, accurate measurements of the motion of glaciers would
probably have been earlier executed. We are now on the point of seeing such
instruments introduced almost simultaneously by Al. Agassiz on the glacier of
the Unteraar, and by Prof. Forbes on the Aler de Glace. Attempts had been
made by Af. Escher de la Linth to determine the motion of a series of wooden
stakes driven into the Aletsch Glacier, but the melting was so rapid that the
stakes soon fell. To remedy this, Af. Agassiz, in 1841, undertook the great
labor of carrying boring-tools to his ‘hotel,’ and piercing the Unteraar Glacier
at six different places to a depth of ten feet, in a straight line across the glacier.
Into the holes six piles were so firmly driven that they remained in the glacier
for a year, and, in 1842, the displacements of all six were determined. They
were found to be 160 feet, 225 feet, 269 feet, 245 feet, 210 feet, and 125 feet, re
spectively.
“ A great step is here gained. You notice that the middle numbers are the
largest. They correspond to the central portion of the glacier. Hence, these
measurements conclusively establish, not only the fact of glacier motion, but
that the centre of the glacier, like that of a river, moves more rapidly than the
sides.
“ With the aid of trained engineers, AT. Agassiz followed up these measure
ments in subsequent years. His researches are recorded in a work entitled
‘ Système Glaciaire,’ which is accompanied by a very noble Atlas of the Glacier
of the Unteraar, published in 1847.
“ These determinations were made by means of a theodolite, of which I will
give you some notion immediately. The same instrument was employed the
same year by the late Principal Forbes upon the Afer de Glace. He established
independently the greater central motion. He showed, moreover, that it is not
necessary to wait a year, or even a week, to determine the motion of a glacier ;
with a correctly-adjusted theodolite he was able to determine the motion of va
rious points of the Afer de Glace from day to day. He affirmed, and with truth,
that the motion of the glacier might be determined from hour to hour. We
shall prove this farther on. Prof. Forbes also triangulated the Afer de Glace,
and laid down an excellent map of it. His first observations and his survey
are recorded in a celebrated book published in 1843, and entitled ‘ Travels in
the Alps.’
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS.
“ These observations were also followed up in subsequent years, the results
being recorded in a series of detached letters and essays of great interest. These
were subsequently collected in a volume entitled ‘ Occasional Papers on the
Theory of Glaciers,’ published in 1859. The labors of Agassiz and Forbes are
the two chief sources of our knowledge of glacier phenomena.”
It would be difficult for an unbiassed person to find in these words
any semblance of a “ charge ” against Principal Forbes. His friends
and relatives may be dissatisfied to see the name of M. Agassiz placed
first in relation to the question of the quicker central flow of glaciers ;
but in giving it this position I was guided by the printed data which
are open to any writer upon this subject.
I have checked this brief historic statement by consulting again
the proper authorities, and this is the result: In 1841 Principal Forbes
became the guest of M. Agassiz on the glacier of the Aar; and in a
very able article, published some time subsequently in the Edinburgh
Review, he speaks of “ the noble ardor, the generous friendship, the
unvarying good temper, the true hospitality ” of his host. In order
to explain the subsequent action of Principal Forbes, it is necessary to
say that the kindly feeling implied in the foregoing words did not
continue long to subsist between him and M. Agassiz. I am dealing,
however, for the moment with scientific facts, not with personal dif
ferences ; and, as a matter of indisputable fact, M. Agassiz did, in
1841, incur the labor of boring six holes in a straight line across the
glacier of the Aar, of fixing in these holes a series of piles, and of
measuring, in 1842, the distance through which the motion of the
glacier had carried them. This measurement was made on July 20th ;
some results of it were communicated to the Academy of Science in
Paris on August 1st, and they stand in the “ Comptes Rendus ” of the
Academy as an unquestionable record, from which date can be taken.
But the friends quarrelled. Who was to blame I will not venture
here to intimate; but the assumption that M. Agassiz was wholly in
the wrong would, I am bound to say, be required to justify the sub
sequent conduct of Principal Forbes. He was, I gather from the Life,
acquainted with the use of surveying instruments; and knowing
roughly the annual rate of glacier-motion, he would also know that
through the precision attainable with a theodolite, a single day’s—
probably a single hour’s motion—especially in summer, must be dis
cernible. With such knowledge in his possession, as early as June,
1842, and without deeming it necessary to give his host of the Aar
any notice of his intention, Principal Forbes repaired to the Mer de
Glace, made in the first instance a few rapid measurements at the
Montanvert, and in a letter dated from Courmayeur, on July 4th, com
municated them to the editor of the Edinburgh New Philosophical
Journal.
He did not at that time give any numbers expressing the ratio of
the side to the central motion of the glacier, but contented himself
with announcing the result in these terms: “ The central portion of
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the Mer de Glace moves past the edges in a very considerable pro
portion, quite contrary to the opinion generally entertained.” This
communication, as I have said, bears the date of July 4th; but it was
first published in the October number of the journal to which it was
addressed. My reason, therefore, for mentioning Agassiz first in the
“Forms of Water” is, that, apart from all personal complications,
his experiment was begun ten months prior to that of his rival, and
that he had also two months’ priority of publication.
Neither in his “ Travels in the Alps,” nor in his “ Occasional Pa
pers,” does Principal Forbes, to my knowledge, make any reference
to this communication of Agassiz. I am far from charging him with
conscious wrong, or doubting that he justified this reticence to his
own mind. But my duty at present lies with objective facts, and not
with subjective judgments. And the fact is that, for eighteen years
subsequent to this campaign of 1842, Agassiz, as far as the glaciers
are concerned, was practically extinguished in England. The labors
of the following years failed to gain for him any recognition. His
early mistake regarding the quicker motion of the sides of a glacier,
and other weaknesses, were duly kept in view; but his positive meas
urements, and his Atlas, which prove the observations upon the glacier
of the Aar to be far more complete than those made upon any other
glacier, were never permitted to yield the slightest credit to their au
thor. I am no partisan of Agassiz, but I desire to be just.
Here, then, my case ends as regards the first reference to Principal
Forbes, in section 20 of the “Forms of Water.”
In section 48 I describe the dirt-bands of the Mer de Glace, and
ascribe the discovery of them to Principal Forbes. There can be no
thought of a “ charge ” here.
The next reference that has any bearing upon this discussion oc
curs in sections 59 and 60 of the “ Forms of Water.” I quote it fully:
By none of these writers is the property of viscosity or plasticity ascribed
to glacier-ice; the appearances of many glaciers are, however, so suggestive of
this idea that we may be sure it would have found more frequent expression
were it not in such apparent contradiction with our every-day experience of ice.
“ Still the idea found its advocates. In a little book, published in 1773, and
entitled ‘Picturesque Journey to the Glaciers of Savoy,’Bordier, of Geneva,
wrote thus: ‘ It is now time to look at all these objects with the eyes of reason;
to study, in the first place, the position and the progression of glaciers, and to
seek the solution of their principal phenomena. At the first aspect of the ice
mountains an observation presents itself, which appears sufficient to explain all.
It is that the entire mass of ice is connected together, and presses from above
downward after the manner of fluids. Let us, then, regard the ice, not as a
mass entirely rigid and immobile, but as a heap of coagulated matter, or as
softened wax, flexible and ductile to a certain point.’ Here probably for the
hrst^time the quality of plasticity is ascribed to the ice of glaciers.
To us, familiar with the aspect of the glaciers, it must seem strange that
this idea once expressed did not at once receive recognition and development,
those early days explorers were few, and the ‘Picturesque Journey’
Pr°t>ably but little known, so that the notion of plasticity lay dormant for more
t an half a century. But Bordier was at length succeeded by a man of far
greater scientific grasp and insight than himself. This was Rendu, a Catholic
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 751
priest and canon when he wrote, and afterward Bishop of Annecy. In 1841
Rendu laid before the Academy of Sciences of Savoy his 4 Theory of the Gla
ciers of Savoy,’ a contribution forever memorable in relation to this subject.
“Rendu seized the idea of glacier plasticity with great power and clearness,
and followed it resolutely to its consequences. It is not known that he had
ever seen the work of Bordier; probably not, as he never mentions it. Let me
quote for you some of Rendu’s expressions, which, however, fail to give an ade
quate idea of his insight and precision of thought: 4 Between the Mer de Glace
and a river there is a resemblance so complete that it is impossible to find in
the glacier a circumstance which does not exist in the river. In currents of
water the motion is not uniform, either throughout their width or throughout
their depth. The friction of the bottom and of the sides, with the action of
local hindrances, causes the motion to vary, and only toward the middle of the
surface do we obtain the full motion.’
“ This reads like a prediction of what has since been established by meas
urement. Looking at the glacier of Mont Dolent, which resembles a sheaf in
form, wide at both ends and narrow in the middle, and reflecting that the upper
wide part had become narrow, and the narrow middle part again wide, Rendu
observes: 4 There is a multitude of facts which seem to necessitate the belief
that glacier-ice enjoys a kind of ductility, which enables it to mould itself to its
locality, to thin out, to swell, and to contract, as if it were a soft paste.’
“ To fully test his conclusions, Rendu required the accurate measurement
of glacier motion. Had he added to his other endowments the practical skill
of a land-surveyor, he would now be regarded as the prince of glacialists. As
it was, he was obliged to be content with imperfect measurements. In one of
his excursions he examined the guides regarding the successive positions of a
vast rock which he found upon the ice close to the side of the glacier. The
mean of five years gave him a motion for this block of forty feet a year.
44 Another block, the transport of which he subsequently measured more
accurately, gave him a velocity of 400 feet a year. Note his explanation of this
discrepancy: 4 The enormous difference of these two observations arises from
the fact that one block stood near the centre of the glacier, which moves most
rapidly, while the other stood near the side, where the ice is held back by fric
tion.’ So clear and definite were Rendu’s ideas of the plastic motion of gla
ciers, that, had the question of curvature occurred to him, I entertain no doubt
that he would have enunciated beforehand the shifting of the point of maximum
motion from side to side across the axis of the glacier (§ 25).
44 It is right that you should know that scientific men do not always agree
in their estimates of the comparative value of facts and ideas ; and it is espe
cially right that you should know that your present tutor attaches a very high
value to ideas when they spring from the profound and persistent pondering of
superior minds, and are not, as is too often the case, thrown out without the
warrant of either deep thought or natural capacity. It is because I believe
Rendu’s labors fulfil this condition that I ascribe to them so high a value. But,
when you become older and better informed, you may differ from me; and I
write these words lest you should too readily accept my opinion of Rendu.
Judge me, if you care to do so, when your knowledge is matured. I certainly
shall not fear your verdict.
44 But, much as I prize the prompting idea, and thoroughly as I believe that
often in it the force of genius mainly lies, it would, in my opinion, be an error
of omission of the gravest kind, and which, if habitual, would insure the ulti
mate decay of natural knowledge, to neglect verifying our ideas, and giving them
outward reality and substance when the means of doing so are at hand. In
science, thought, as far as possible, ought to be wedded to fact. This was at
tempted by Rendu, and in great part accomplished by Agassiz and Forbes.
“ Here, indeed, the merits of the distinguished glacialist last named rise con
spicuously to view. From the able and earnest advocacy of Prof. Forbes, the
public knowledge of this doctrine of glacial plasticity is almost wholly derived.
He gave the doctrine a more distinctive form ; he first applied the term viscous
to glacier-ice, and sought to found upon precise measurements a ‘viscous
theory ’ of glacier-motion.
44 I am here obliged to state facts in their historic sequence. Prof. Forbes,
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
when he began his investigations, was acquainted with the labors of Rendu. In
his earliest works upon the Alps he refers to those labors in terms of flattering
recognition. But, though, as a matter of fact, Rendu’s ideas were there to
prompt him, it would be too much to say that he needed their inspiration.
Had Rendu not preceded him, he might none the less have grasped the idea of
viscosity, executing his measurements, and applying his knowledge to maintain
it. Be that as it may, the appearance of Prof. Forbes on the Unteraar Glacier
in 1841, and on the Her de Glace in 1842, and his labors then and subse
quently, have given him a name not to be forgotten in the scientific history of
glaciers.”
Here, again, I have to declare that, in writing thus, I had no no
tion of “raking up” an old controversy. My object was to render
my account historically continuous, and there is not a single word to
intimate that I took exception to Principal Forbes’s treatment of
Rendu. Nay, while placing the bishop in the position he merited, I
went out of my way to point out that, in all probability, Principal
Forbes required no such antecedent. So desirous was I that no un
kind or disparaging word should escape me regarding Principal Forbes,
that, had a reasonable objection to the phraseology here used been
communicated to me by his friends, I should have altered the whole
edition of the work sooner than allow the objectionable matter to ap
pear in it............
My final reference to Principal Forbes was in § 67 of the “ Forms
of Water,” where the veined structure of glacier-ice is dealt with. Its
description by Guyot, who first observed it, is so brief and appropriate
that I quoted his account of it. But this was certainly not with a
view of damaging the originality of Principal Forbes. In paragraph
474 of my book the observation of the structure upon the glacier of
the Aar is thus spoken of: “The blue veins were observed indepen
dently three years after M. Guyot had first described them. I say in
dependently, because M. Guyot’s description, though written in 1838,
remained unprinted, and was unknown in 1841 to the observers on the
Aar. These were M. Agassiz and Prof. Forbes. To the question of
structure, Prof. Forbes subsequently devoted much attention, and it
was mainly his observations and reasonings that gave it the important
position now assigned to it in glacier phenomena.”
This is the account of Guyot’s observation given by Principal
Forbes himself. But it may be objected that I am not correct in class
ing him and Agassiz thus together, and that to Principal Forbes alone
belongs the credit of observing the veined structure upon the Aar
Glacier. This may be true, but would an impartial writer be justified
in ignoring the indignant protests of M. Agassiz and his companions ?
With regard to the development of the subject, I felt perfectly sure
of the merits of Principal Forbes, and did not hesitate to give him
the benefit of my conviction.
Such, then, are the grounds of Principal Shairp’s complaint quoted
at the outset—such the “charges ” that I have made “against Prin
cipal Forbes,” and which the “ interests of truth” and “justice to the
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 753
dead” could not “suffer to pass unchallenged. ” There is, I submit,
no color of reason in such a complaint, and it would never, I am per
suaded, have been made had not Principal Shairp and his colleagues
found themselves in possession of a document which, though pub
lished a dozen years ago by Principal Forbes, was never answered by
me, and which, in the belief that I am unable to answer it, is now re
produced for my confutation.
The document here referred to appeared soon after the publication
of the “ Glaciers of the Alps ” in 1860. It is entitled “ Reply to Pro
fessor Tyndall’s Remarks in his Work on the ‘ Glaciers of the Alps,
relating to Rendu’s ‘ Theorie des Glaciers.’ ” It was obviously written
under feelings of great irritation, and, longing for peace, the only
public notice I took of it at the time was to say that “ I have ab
stained from answering my distinguished censor, not from inability to
do so, but because I thought, and think, that within the limits of the
case it is better to submit to misconception than to make science the
arena of personal controversy.” My critics, however, do not seem to
understand that, for the sake of higher occupations, statements may
be allowed to pass unchallenged which, were their refutation worth
the necessary time, might be blown in shreds to the winds. Of this
precise character, I apprehend, are the accusations contained in the
republished essay of Principal Forbes, which his friends, professing to
know what he would have done were he alive, now challenge me to
meet. I accept the challenge, and throw upon them the responsibility
of my answer, . . ?
Having thus disposed of the two really serious allegations in the
reply, I am unwilling to follow it through its minor details, or to spend
time in refuting the various intimations of littleness on my part con
tained in it. The whole reply betrays a state of mental exacerbation
which I willingly left to the softening influence of time, and to which,
unless forced to it, I shall not recur.
The biographer who has revived this subject speaks of “ the numer
ous controversies into which he” (Principal Forbes) “was dragged.”
I hardly think the passive verb the appropriate one here. The fol
lowing momentary glimpse of Principal Forbes’s character points to a
truer theory of his controversies than that which would refer them to
a “ drag ” external to himself :
“ The hasty glance,” says this biographer, “ which I have been able
to bestow upon his less scientific letters has shown me that Forbes at
tached great importance to mere honorary distinctions, as well as the
opinion of others regarding the value of his discoveries. It has opened
up a view of a, to me, totally unexpected feature of his character.”
This is honest, but that the revelation should be “unexpected” is to
me surprising. The “ love of approbation ” here glanced at was in
Principal Forbes so strong that he could not bear the least criticism
1 We omit this portion of the discussion, for lack of space.—Editor.
vol. hi.—4S
�754
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
of his work without resenting it as personal. I well remember the
late excellent William Hopkins describing to me his astonishment
when, at the meeting of the British Association at York, a purely sci
entific remark of his on Forbes’s glacier theory was turned, with sud
den acerbity, into a personal matter. It is of a discussion arising out
of this remark that Principal Forbes writes thus : “We had a post
poned discussion on glaciers on Saturday morning, when Hopkins and
I did battle, and I am sorry to say I felt it exceedingly; it discomposed
my nerves and made me very uncomfortable indeed, until I was soothed
by the minster-service yesterday.” 1
But no amount of “ minster-service ” could cope with so strong a
natural bias, and many a bitter drop fell from the pen of Principal
Forbes into the lives of those whom he opposed subsequent to this
service at York. On hearing of the paper presented by Mr. Huxley
and myself to the Royal Society, he at once jumped to the conclusion
that the glaciers were to be made a “ regular party question.” “ All
I can do,” he says, “ is to sit still till the indictment is made out; and
I cordially wish my enemy to write a book and print it speedily, as
any thing is better than innuendo and suspense.”9 What he meant
by “ indictment ” I do not know; and, with regard to “ innuendo,”
neither of the writers of the paper would be likely to resort to it in
preference to plain speaking. The words of a witty philosopher at
the time here referred to are significant: “ Tyndall,” he said, “ is be
ginning with ice, but he will end in hot water.” He knew the circum
stances, and was able to predict the course of events with the cer
tainty of physical prevision.
The quality referred to by his biographer, and the tendency arising
from it to look at things in a personal light, caused his intellect to run
rapidly into hypotheses of moral action which had no counterpart in
real life. I read with simple amazement his explanation to his friend
Mr. Wills of the postponement of the publication of the “ Glaciers of
the Alps.” Some of his supporters in the Council of the Royal So
ciety had proposed him for the Copley Medal, but without success.
Had the rules of good taste been observed, he would have known
nothing of these discussions ; and, knowing them, he ought to have
ignored them. But he writes to his friend : “ I believe the effect of
the struggle, though unsuccessful in its immediate object, will be to
render Tyndall and Huxley and their friends more cautious in their
further proceedings. For instance, Tyndall’s book, again withdrawn
from Murray’s ‘ immediate ’ list, will probably be infinitely more care
fully worded relative to Rendu than he first intended.” 8
I should be exceedingly sorry to apply to Principal Forbes the
noun-substantive which Byron, in “ Childe Harold,” applied to Rous
seau, but the adjective “ self-torturing” is, I fear, only too applicable.
His quick imagination suggested chimerical causes for events, but
1 Life, p. 165.
9 Ibid., p. 369.
8 Ibid., p. 387.
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 755
never any thing more chimerical than that here assigned for the post
ponement of my book and its probable improvement. The “ struggle ”
in the council had no influence upon me, for this good reason, if for
no other, that I knew absolutely nothing of the character of the strug
gle. In Naiure, for May 22, 1873, Prof. Huxley has effectually dis
posed of this hypothesis ;1 and those who care to look at the opening
sentences of a paper of mine in Mr. Francis Galton’s “ Vacation Tour
ists for 1860,” will find there indicated another reason for the delay.
I may add, that the only part I ever took in relation to Principal
Forbes and a medal was to go on one occasion to the Royal Society
with the express intention of recommending that he should have one.
The features of character partly revealed by his biographer also
explain that tendency on the part of Principal Forbes to bring his
own labors into relief, to the manifest danger of toning down the
labors of others. This is illustrated by the foot-note appended to page
419. It is also illustrated by his references to Rendu, which, frequent
and flattering as they are, left no abiding impression upon the reader’s
mind. By some qualifying phrase the quotation in each case is de
prived of weight; while practical extinction for eighteen years was,
as already intimated, the fate of the “ generous ” and “ hospitable ”
Agassiz.
Toward the close of the “ Life ” his biographer, while admitting
that “ to say that Forbes thoroughly explained the behavior of gla
ciers would be an exaggeration,” claims for him that he must “ ever
stand forward in the history of the question as one of its most effective
and scientific promoters.” This meed of praise I should be the last
to deny him, for I believe it to be perfectly just. To secure it, how
ever, no bitterness of controversy, no depreciation of the services of
others, was necessary. One point here needs a moment’s clearing up.
The word.“ theory,” as regards glaciers, slides incessantly, and with
out warning, from one into the other of two different senses. It means
sometimes the purely physical theory of their formation, structure, and
motion, with which the name of Principal Forbes is so largely iden
tified. But it has a wider sense where it embraces the geological
action of glaciers on the surface of the globe. For a long time “ gla
cier theory ” had reference mainly to the geological phenomena ; it was
in this sense that the words were employed by Principal Forbes in his
article in the Edinburgh Review, published in 1842. It is in this
sense that they are now habitually applied by M. Agassiz, and in rela
tion to the theory thus defined it is no more than natural for his sup
porters to assign to M. Agassiz the highest place. I mention this to
abolish the mystification which threatens to surround a question which
this simple statement will render clear.
I trust I may be permitted to end here. Strong reasons may cause
1 The words “ drift of ray statement,” employed in Prof. Huxley’6 letter, ought to
be draft of my statement.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
me to revert to this question, but they must be very strong. I would
only warn my readers against the assumption that, if I do not reply
to further attack, I am unable to reply to it. The present rejoinder
furnishes sufficient proof of the doubtfulness of such a conclusion.
There is one darkly-expressed passage in the “Life of Principal
Forbes” which may cover something requiring notice. We are in
formed that he preserved and carefully docketed all letters written to
him, and that he retained copies of all his own. It is with regard to
this correspondence that his biographer writes thus : “ Many extracts,
and even entire letters, may be selected which are free from contro
versy, yet in general these would give but an imperfect notion of the
import of the whole. Others again cannot be published at present, be
cause the writers supply him with details of that mysterious wire
pulling which seems to be inseparable from every transaction involving
honors (scientific, in common with all others, it is humiliating to con
fess). The value of this unique series is, however, so great, and its
preservation so complete, that it is to be hoped it may be safely de
posited (under seal) in the care of some scientific society or institution,
to be opened only when all the actors have passed from the scene.”
These undignified allusions to “ wire-pulling ” are perfectly dark
to me; but if the letter addressed to Mr. Wills may be taken as a
specimen of the entire “series,” here referred to, then I agree with the
biographer in pronouncing it “ unique.” Would it not, however, be a
manlier course, and a fairer one to those who, writing without arrièrepensée, retain no copies of what they write, to let them know, while
they are here to take care of themselves, how their reputations are
affected by these letters of Principal Forbes ? For my own personal
part I am prepared to challenge the production of this correspondence
now.— Contemporary Review.
THE MOON.
JJR satellite holds a somewhat anomalous position in the liter.
ature of astronomy. The most beautiful object in the heavens,
the orb which telescopists study under the most favorable conditions,
and the planet—for a planet she is—which has afforded the most im
portant information respecting the economy of the universe, she never
theless has not received that attention from descriptive writers which
she really merits. The cause is, perhaps, not far to seek. The beauty
of the moon can scarcely be described in words, and cannot be pict1 “ The Moon : her Motions, Aspect, Scenery, and Physical Condition.” By Richard
A. Pïoctor, B. A., Cambridge (England), Honorary Secretary of the Royal Astronomical
Society of London ; author of the “ Sun,” “ Saturn,” “ Other Worlds,” etc. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Price, $4.50.
�THE HO ON.
757
ured by the most skilful artist; the information conveyed by the
telescope is too definite to permit of speculation as with the other
planets, yet not definite enough to solve the questions about which
the students of astronomical works take most interest; and the infor
mation which astronomers have obtained from the moon’s motions can
only be appreciated when those motions are thoroughly analyzed, and
it has not been found easy to simplify this analysis, that the general
reader might fairly be expected to take interest in the matter.
The work before us is intended to remove this long-recognized
want in the literature of astronomy. The time has come when this is
practicable. The splendid photographs of Rutherford, of New York,
and De La Rue, in England, supply the means of exhibiting truthfully
the real nature of our satellite’s surface. Mr. Proctor has been for
tunate in obtaining from Mr. Rutherford permission to use three of his
most effective photographs of the moon to illustrate the present work.
Recent researches, ¿gain, into the processes which are going on withiu
the solar system (so long mistakenly supposed to be unchanging in
condition), suggest considerations respecting the past condition of
the moon, at once bringing her within the range of speculation and
theory. Telescopic observations, also more scrutinizing than those
made of yore, and applied more persistently, begin to indicate the
possibility at least of recognizing the signs of change, and perhaps of
showing that our moon is not the dead and arid waste which astron
omers have hitherto supposed her to be. The heat measurements of
Lord Rosse also throw important light on the question of her present
condition. And then, as respects those points which constitute the
main scientific interest of our satellite, her motions under the varying
influences to which she is subjected, Mr. Proctor has devoted here his
full energies and the results of a long experience, to the endeavor to
make clear, even to those who are not mathematicians, the consider
ations which, weighed and analyzed in the wonderful brain of Newton,
supplied the means of demonstrating the theory of the universe.
On this important department of his subject, Mr. Proctor makes
the following remarks in his preface : “In Chapter II. I have given a
very full account of the peculiarities of the moon’s motions ; and, not
withstanding the acknowledged difficulty of the subject, I think my
account is sufficiently clear and simple to be understood by any one,
even though not acquainted with the elements of mathematics, who
will be at the pains to read it attentively through. I have sought to
make the subject clear to a far wider range of readers than the class
for which Sir G. Airy’s treatise on ‘ Gravitation ’ was written, while
yet not omitting any essential points in the argument. In order to
combine independence of treatment with exactness and completeness,
I first wrote the chapter without consulting any other work. Then I
went through it afresh, carefully comparing each section with the cor
responding part of Sir G. Airy’s ‘Gravitation,’ and Sir J. Herschel’s
�758
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
chapters on the lunar motions in his ‘ Outlines of Astronomy.’ I was
thus able to correct any errors in my own work, while in turn I de
tected a few (mentioned in the notes) in the works referred to. I have
adopted a much more complete and exact system of illustration in
dealing with the moon’s motions than either of my predecessors in
the explanation of this subject. I attach great importance to this feat
ure of my explanation, experience having satisfied me not only that
such matters should be very freely illustrated, but that the illustra
tions should aim at correctness of detail, and (wherevei- practicable) of
scale also. Some features, as the advance of the perigee and the retreat
of the nodes, have, I believe, never before been illustrated at all.”
In Chapter III. Mr. Proctor gives, among other matters, a full
explanation of the effects due to the strange balancing motion called
the lunar librations. He says: “ I have been surprised to find how
imperfectly this interesting and important subject has been dealt with
hitherto. In fact, I have sought in vain for any discussion of the
subject with which to compare my own results. I have, however, in
various ways sufficiently tested these results.”
But probably, to the greater number of readers, the main interest
of the book will be found in the chapters relating to the condition of
the moon’s surface—the mountains, craters, hills, valleys, which diver
sify its strange varieties of brightness, color, and tone, and the changes
of appearance which are noted as the illumination varies, and as the
lunar librations change the position of different regions. It is, bythe-way, to be noted that the moon, which we regard as of silvery
whiteness, is in reality more nearly black than white, a fact which will
recall to many of our readers a remark of Prof. Tyndall’s in the first
lecture of the course recently delivered here.
“ The moon appears to us,” he said, “ as if
‘ Clothed in white samite, mystic, beautiful,’1
but, were she covered with the blackest velvet, she would still hang in
the heavens as a white orb, shining upon the world substantially as
she does now.”
Mr. Proctor discusses also the phenomena presented to lunarians,
if such there be. The extreme rarity of the lunar atmosphere ren
ders the idea of existence on the moon rather strange to our concep
tions, but, as Sir J. Herschel has said in a similar case, “ we should do
wrong to judge of the fitness or unfitness of” the condition of luna
rians “ from what we see around us, when perhaps the very combina
tions which convey to our minds only images of horror may be, in
reality, theatres of the most striking and glorious displays of benefi
cent contrivance.” Speaking of the appearances presented by lunar
landscapes, two of which we borrow from his work, Mr. Proctor remarks
1 We quote Tyndall.
Tennyson wrote :
“ Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful.”
�THE MO OX.
739
that “ we know far too little respecting the real details of lunar scenery
to form any satisfactory opinion on the subject. If a landscape-painter
were invited to draw a picture presenting his conceptions of the
scenery of a region which he had only viewed from a distance of a hun
dred miles, he would be under no greater difficulties than the astrono
mer who undertakes to draw a lunar landscape, as it would actually
appear to any one placed on the surface of the moon. We know cer
tain facts—we know that there are striking forms of irregularity, that
the shadows must be much darker as well during the lunar day as
during an earth-lit lunar light, than on our own earth in sunlight or
moonlight, and we know that, whatever features of our own land
scapes are certainly due to the action of water in river, rain, or flood,
to the action of wind and weather, or to the growth of forms of vege
tation with which we are familiar, ought assuredly not to be shown in
any lunar landscape. But a multitude of details absolutely necessary
for the due presentation of lunar scenery are absolutely unknown to
us. Nor is it so easy as many imagine to draw a landscape which
shall be correct even as respects the circumstances known to us. For
instance, though I have seen many pictures called lunar landscapes, I
have never seen one in which there have not been features manifestly
due to weathering and to the action of running water. The shadows,
again, are never shown as they would be actually seen if regions of the
indicated configuration were illuminated by a sun, but not by a sky
of light. Again, aerial perspective is never totally abandoned, as it
ought to be in any delineation of lunar scenery. I do not profess to
have done better myself in the accompanying lunar landscapes. I
have, in fact, cared rather to indicate the celestial than the lunarian
features shown in these drawings. Still, I have selected a class of
lunar objects which may be regarded as, on the whole, more charac
teristic than the mountain-scenery usually exhibited. And, by pictu
ring the greater part of the landscape as at a considerable distance, I
have been freer to reproduce what the telescope actually reveals. In
looking at one of these views, the observer must suppose himself sta
tioned at the summit of some very lofty peak, and that the view shows
only a very small portion of what would really be seen under such cir
cumstances in any particular direction. The portion of the sky shown
in either picture extends only a few degrees from the horizon, as is
manifest from the dimensions of the earth’s disk; and thus it is shown
that only a few degrees of the horizon are included in the landscape.
Our author then pictures the aspect of the lunar heavens by night
and by day. We have space but for a few passages from this descrip
tion : • “ To an observer stationed upon a summit of the lunar Apen
nines on the evening of November 1, 1872, a scene was presented un
like any known to the inhabitants of earth. It was near the middle
of the long lunar night. On a sky of inky blackness stars innu
merable were spread, among which the orbs forming our constella-
�760
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
tions could be recognized by their superior lustre, but yet were almost
lost amid myriads of stars unseen by the inhabitants of earth.
Nearly overhead shone the Pleiades, closely girt round by hundreds
of lesser lights. From them toward Aldebaran and the clustering
Hyades, and onward to the belted Orion, streams and convolutions of
stars, interwoven as in fantastic garlands, marked the presence of that
mysterious branch-like extension of the Milky-Way which the ob
server on earth can, with unaided vision, trace no farther than the
winged foot of Perseus. High overhead, and toward the north, the
Milky-Way shone resplendent, like a vast inclined arch, full ‘ thick in
laid with patines of bright gold.’ Instead of that faint, cloud-like
zone known to terrestrial astronomers, the galaxy presented itself as
an infinitely complicated star-region—
‘ With isles of light and silvery streams,
And gloomy griefs of mystic shade.’
“ On all sides, this mighty star-belt spread its outlying bands of
stars, far away on the one hand toward Lyra and Bobtes, where on
earth we see no traces of milky lustre, and on the other toward the
Twins and the clustering glories of Cancer—the ‘ dark constellation ’
of the ancients, but full of telescopic splendors. Most marvellous,
too, appeared the great dark gap which lies between the Milky-Way
and Taurus ; here, in the very heart of the richest region of the heavens—with Orion and the Hyades and Pleiades blazing on one side, and
on the other the splendid stream laving the feet of the Twins—there
lay a deep, black gulf which seemed like an opening through our star
system into starless depths beyond.
Yet, though the sky was thus aglow with starlight, though stars
far fainter than the least we see on the clearest and darkest night were
shining in countless myriads, an orb was above the horizon whose
light would pale the lustre of our brightest stars. This orb occupied
a space on the heavens more than twelve times larger than is occupied
by the full moon as we see her. Its light, unlike the moon’s, was
tinted with beautiful and well-marked colors. . . .
“ The globe which thus adorned the lunar sky, and illuminated the
lunar lands with a light far exceeding that of the full moon, was our
earth. The scene was not unlike that shown to Satan when Uriel—
* One of the seven
Who in God’s presence, nearest to the throne,
Stand ready at command ”—
pointing earthward from his station amid the splendor of the sun,
said to the arch-fiend:
‘ Look downward on that globe whose hither side
AX ith light from hence, though but reflected, shines:
That place is earth, the seat of man ; that light
His day, which else, as th’ other hemisphere,
Night would invade.’
�THE MOON.
761
“ In all other respects the scene presented to the spectator on the
moon was similar; but, as seen from the lunar Apennines, the glorious
orb of earth shone high in the heavens; and the sun, source of the
light then bathing her oceans and continents, lay far down below the
level of the lunar horizon. . . .
“ Infinitely more wonderful, however, and transcending in sublimity
all that the heavens display to the contemplation of the inhabitants
of earth, was the scene presented when the sun himself had risen. I
shall venture here to borrow some passages from an essay entitled ‘ A
Voyage to the Sun,’ in which a friend of mine has described the aspect
of the sun as seen from a station outside that atmosphere of ours
which veils the chief glories of the luminary of day: ‘ The sun’s
orb was more brilliantly white than when seen through the air, but
close scrutiny revealed a diminution of brilliancy toward the edge of
the disk, which, when fully recognized, presented him at once as the
globe he really is. On this globe could be distinguished the spots
and the bright streaks called faculse. This globe was surrounded with
the most amazingly complex halo of glory. Close around the bright
whiteness of the disk, and shining far more beautiful by contrast with
that whiteness than as seen against the black disk of the moon in
total eclipses, stood the colored region called the chromatosphere, not
red, as it appears during eclipses, but gleaming with a mixed lustre
of pink and green, through which, from time to time, passed the most
startlingly brilliant coruscations of orange and golden yellow light.
Above this delicate circle of color towered tall prominences and mul
titudes of smaller ones. These, like the chromatosphere, were not red,
but beautifully variegated. . . .’
“Much more might be said on this inviting subject, only that the
requirements of space forbid, obliging me to remember that the
moon and not the sun is the subject of this treatise. The reader,
therefore, must picture to himself the advance of the sun with his
splendid and complicated surroundings toward the earth, suspended
almost unchangingly in the heavens, but assuming gradually the cres
cent form as the sun drew slowly near, lie must imagine also how,
in the mean time, the star-sphere was slowly moving westward, the
constellations of the ecliptic in orderly succession passing behind the
earth at a rate slightly exceeding that of the 6un’s approach, so that
he, like the earth, only more slowly, was moving eastward, so far as
the star-sphere was concerned, even while the moon’s slow diurnal ro
tation was carrying him westward toward the earth.”
In the last chapter the physical condition of the moon’s surface is
treated, and the processes by which she probably reached her present
condition are discussed at considerable length.
�THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,
EDITOR’S TABLE.
ing many excellent suggestions, was not
conformed to the better type of such
HE twenty-second meeting of the productions. It is the custom of the
American Association for the Ad eminent scientific men who are honored
vancement of Science, which com with the office but once in their lives
menced at Portland, Me., August 20th, to devote the occasion, either to a gen
was fairly attended by the members, eral review of recent scientific work,
and presented very good results in the or to some special subject with which
way of scientific work. In estimating they are most familiar, and upon which
its contributions, we must not over they can speak with the force of au
look the fact that, while the numbers thority. Dr. Smith has been favorably
of those in this country who are at known in the world of science as a
liberty to pursue original investigations chemist who has made valuable con
untrammelled, is not large, on the other tributions in its inorganic department.
hand we have two national associations, The great activity in chemical inquiries
through which the moderate amount of at the present time, and the impor
original research that takes place is pub tant transition through which chemical
lished to the world. While the Ameri theory is now passing, would certainly
can Association was the only organiza have afforded the president a most per
tion of national scope for the publication tinent and instructive theme, but he
of new scientific results, its papers were preferred to employ the occasion in
creditable both in number and quality, considering certain aspects of science
and it compared favorably with its pro that are now prominent in public atten
totype, the British Association for the tion, and upon which the scientific
Advancement of Science. But, when, world is in much disagreement. The
a few years ago, a considerable number leading feature of the address was an
of its ablest members joined in the or attack on the Darwinians, and this
ganization of the National Academy portion of it we publish; and, as the
of Sciences, having substantially the question is thus reopened officially, it
same object in view as the American becomes a proper subject of comment.
The predecessor of President Smith,
Association, but exclusive in its mem
bership, and under government patron Dr. Asa Gray, of Harvard College, had
age, the necessary effect was greatly to followed the better usage of presid
weaken the older organization. The ing officers in his address at Dubuque
National Academy meets twice a year, last year, and discussed some of the
and draws closely upon the original larger problems of botany in the light
work of its associates. If, therefore, of the derivation theory. The most
the numbers in attendance upon the eminent of American botanists, an old
Association and the grade of scientific and untiring student of the subject, a
contributions might seem to indicate a man of philosophic grasp, and with a
decline in American science, the cir candor and sincerity of conviction that
cumstances here referred to will suffi commanded the highest respect, after
long and thorough study of the ques
ciently qualify the conclusion.
tion, Prof. Gray did not hesitate to
The address of the retiring presi give the weight of his authority to that
dent, J. Lawrence Smith, while contain view of the origin and diversities of
AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION—
PRESIDENT SMITH'S ADDRESS.
�EDITOR'S TADLE.
living forms of which Mr. Darwin is
now the leading representative. And
although in the field of biology large
numbers of its most eminent students,
who are of all men most competent to
decide upon it, have accepted that doc
trine as representing the truth of Na
ture more perfectly than any other, and
as of immense value in their researches
into the laws of life, yet Dr. Smith, as
our readers will see, denounces it as a
groundless hypothesis due to a riotous
imagination, and, in the language of
Agassiz, a “mere mire of assertions.”
His declarations have called forth the
applause of the press—always so can
did, and intelligent, and independent,
on such matters—who seize the occa
sion to preach new sermons on the “ va
garies of science,” and declare that they
“take sides with the angels against the
monkeys,” and are “ with the Creator
against Darwin.”
The course of the president was
not commended even by his own
party. Dr. Newberry, an eminent
student of biology and geology, is re
ported as having spoken in the follow
ing decided way : “ Prof. Newberry,
after a handsome allusion to the re
tiring president, Prof. J. Lawrence
Smith, protested against the opposition
to the development theory as ex
pounded in that gentleman's address.
Prof. Newberry said he was not him
self a Darwinian, but he recognized
the value of the evolution theory in
science. You cannot measure its value
as you can the work of an astronomer,
measured by definite ratios of space
and time; but he considered the hy
pothesis one of the most important con
tributions ever made to a knowledge
of Nature. Most men and women are
partisans, and some are willing to sup
pose that the hypothesis is sufficient to
account for all the phenomena of the
animal kingdom, while, on the other
hand, there are those who see in it
nothing but failure and deficiency. Let
us assume a judicial position, and al
763
low the tests of time and truth to settle
the questions involved. Go, however,
in whatever direction the facts may lead,
and throw prejudice to the winds. Rec
ollect that all truth is consistent with
itself.”
Dr. Smith can hardly be said to
have argued the question of Darwinism.
He gave us his own opinion of it, and
quoted, to sustain it, two distinguished
authorities in natural history. But he
gave the influence of his name and po
sition to the charge that it transcends
the legitimate limits of inductive in
quiry, and is only a wild and absurd
speculation. While the technical and
difficult questions of natural history by
which the truth or falsity of the doc
trine must be determined are beyond
the reach of unscientific readers, and
belong to the biologists to decide, the
question here raised as to whether
the investigation, as conducted, is le
gitimately scientific or not, is one of
which all intelligent persons ought to
be capable of forming a judgment.
We have repeatedly considered thi3
point in the pages of The Populae Sci
ence Monthly, and have endeavored
to show that the present attitude of
the doctrine of evolution is precisely
the attitude which all the great es
tablished theories and laws of science
had to take at their first promulgation.
It is familiar to all who know any thing
of the progress of science, that astrono
my and geology, in their early stages,
passed through precisely the same or
deal that biology is passing through
now; their leading doctrines were rep
robated as false science, and the wild
dreams of distempered imaginations.
Let us now take another case, in the
department of pure physics, and see
how scientific history repeats itself:
The undulatory theory of light is
now a firmly established principle in
physics. Dr. Smith says that “the
failure to explain one single well-ob
served fact is sufficient to cast doubt
upon, or subvert, any pure hypothesis,”
�764
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
and, he adds, in reference to the undulatory theory, that, “ op to the present
time, it serves in all cases.” In order
that this theory, now so perfect, should
be adopted, it had, of course, to be first
propounded. The conception of an
ethereal medium to explain the phe
nomena of light was suggested by Huyghens and Euler, but they did not ex
perimentally demonstrate it, and their
authority was overborne by that of
Newton,who maintained the emission or
corpuscular theory. The true founder
of the undulatory hypothesis of light
was Dr. Thomas Young, Professor of
Natural Philosophy in the Royal Insti
tution of Great Britain, and whom
Prof. Tyndall regards as the greatest
physicist who has appeared since New
ton. Dr. Young is thus estimated by
the German Helmholtz: “ His was one
of the most profound minds that the
world has ever seen; but he had the
misfortune to be in advance of his age.
He excited the wonder of his contem
poraries, who, however, were unable
to follow him to the heights at which
his daring intellect was accustomed to
soar. His most important ideas lay,
therefore, buried and forgotten in the
folios of the Royal Society, until a new
generation gradually and painfully
made the same discoveries, and proved
the exactness of his assertions, and the
truth of his demonstrations.”
Now, in this case, there was no
monkey in the question, and no capital
of public prejudice that could be made
available in the discussion, to repress
obnoxious opinions. The hypothesis
was certainly innocent enough, and its
truth or falsehood was a matter of sim
ple determination by experiment. Dr.
Young made the experiments which es
tablished it—the Royal Society recog
nized the value of the experiments,
and, in 1801, assigned to their author
the distinguished honor of delivering
the Bakerian lecture, in which his ex
periments were described, and their con
clusions demonstrated. Yet, with the
Royal Society to back him, and with
his views capable of proof before all
men, Dr. Young was crushed, and that
by outside influences appealing to the
public, on the ground that his hypothe
sis was spurious science—mere wild ab
surdity of the imagination.
We ask attention to the similarity of
the present ground of attack upon Dar
win, and the ground of attack upon Dr.
Young three-quarters of a century ago.
Dr. Smith prefaces his strictures upon
Darwinism with the following declara
tion : “It is a very common attempt
nowadays for scientists to transcend the
limits of their legitimate studies, and,
in doing this, they run into speculations
apparently the most unphilosophical,
wild, and absurd; quitting the true
basis of inductive philosophy, and
building up the most curious theories
on little else than assertion.”
Henry Brougham, afterward LordChancellor of England, writing in the
second number of the Edinburgh Re
view concerning Young’s Bakerian lect
ure, said: “We have of late observed
in the physical world a most unac
countable predilection for vague hy
potheses daily gaining ground ; and we
are mortified to see that the Royal So
ciety, forgetful of those improvements
in science to which it owes its origin,
and neglecting the precepts of its most
illustrious members, is now, by the pub
lication of such papers, giving the
countenance of its highest authority to
dangerous relaxations in the principles
of physical logic. We wish to raise
our feeble voice against innovations
that can have no other effect than to
check the progress of science, and re
new all those wild phantoms of the
imagination which Bacon and Newton
put to flight from her temple. . . .
Has the Royal Society degraded its
publications into bulletins of new and
fashionable theories for the ladies of
the Royal Institution ? Prohpudor ! 1
Let the professor continue to amuse his
audience with an endless variety of
For shame!
�EDITOR'S TABLE.
such harmless trifles, but, in the name
of science, let them not find admittance
into that venerable repository which
contains the works of Newton and
Boyle. . . . The making of an hy
pothesis is not the discovery of a truth.
It is a mere sporting with the subject ;
it is a sham-fight which may amuse in
the moment of idleness and relaxation,
but will neither gain victories over pre
judice and error, nor extend the em
pire of science. A mere theory is in
truth destitute of merit of every kind,
except that of a warm and misguided
imagination.” Dr. Young’s theory
“ teaches no truth, reconciles no con
tradictions, arranges no anomalous
facts, suggests no new experiments,
and leads to no new inquiries. It has
not even the pitiful merit of affording
an agreeable play to the fancy. It is
infinitely more useless, and less ingen
ious, than the Indian theory of the
elephant and tortoise. It may be
ranked in the same class with that
stupid invention of metaphysical the
ology. ... We cannot conclude our
review of these articles without en
treating for a moment the attention
of that illustrious body which has ad
mitted of late years so many paltry
and unsubstantial papers into its trans
actions. ... We implore the coun
cil, if they will deign to cast their
eyes upon our humble page, to prevent
a degradation of the institution which
has so long held the first rank among
scientific bodies.”
For the second time Dr. Young was
selected by the Royal Society to give
the Bakerian lecture, and he again
chose for its subject “Experiments and
Calculations relative to Physical Op
tics,” and again the Edinburgh Review
came down upon him as follows : “ The
paper which stands first is another Ba
kerian lecture, containing more fan
cies, more blunders, more unfounded
hypotheses, more gratuitous fictions,
all upon the same field on which New
ton trode, and all from the fertile yet
7^5
fruitless brain of the same eternal Dr.
Young.” The reviewer thus winds up
the controversy: “We now dismiss, for
the present, the feeble lucubrations of
this author, in which we have searched
without success for some traces of
learning, acuteness, and ingenuity, that
might compensate his evident defi
ciency in the powers of solid thinking,
calm and patient investigation, and
successful development of the laws of
Nature, by steady and modest observa
tion of her operations. We came to
the examination with no other preju
dice than the very allowable prepos
session against vague hypothesis, by
which all true lovers of science have
for above a century and a half been
swayed. We pursued it, both on the
present and on a former occasion, with
out any feelings except those of regret
at the abuse of that time and oppor
tunity which no greater share of tal
ents than Dr. Young’s are sufficient to
render fruitful by mere diligence and
moderation. From us, however, he
cannot claim any portion of respect,
until he shall alter his mode of pro
ceeding, or change the subject of his
lucubrations; and we feel ourselves
more particularly called upon to ex
press our disapprobation, because, as
distinction has been unwarily bestowed
on his labors by the most illustrious
of scientific bodies, it is the more ne
cessary that a free protest should be
recorded before the more humble tri
bunals of literature.”
The reader will perceive that this
strain is not unfamiliar. Young was
denounced as Darwin is now de
nounced, professedly in the interest
of science; but the pretext was as
false then as it is now. In the former
case the animus of the assault was
mere personal spite: Brougham’s in
ordinate vanity having been wounded
by some very moderate criticisms of
Dr. Young upon his mathematical
works. But a man who did not un
derstand the subject, appealing to a
�766
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
tribunal which knew nothing about it,
against wild speculations degrading to
science, was able to depreciate and
suppress for a quarter of a century one
of the most solid and perfect theories
of natural phenomena that modern re
search has produced. And, strange as
it may seem, the work was effectually
done; for, although Young made a
masterly reply, but a single copy was
sold, and, as Tyndall remarks, “for
twenty years this man of genius was
quenched—hidden from the apprecia
tive intellect of his countrymen —
deemed, in fact, a dreamer through
the vigorous sarcasm of a writer who
had then possession of the public ear.”
Happily, the time is past when the
investigators of Nature can be thus
crushed out; but still the old tactics
are imitated, and not without evil
effect for the time. The men of sci
ence, to whom the question belongs,
are not left to pursue it in peace. The
press and the pulpit, with such scientific
help as it is not difficult to get, stir up
such a clamor of popular opprobrium
that biological students who hold to
evolution as the fact and law of Na
ture, and guide their researches by
its light, do not choose to have it pub
licly known that they are adherents
of the doctrine. We are behind Eng
land in fair and tolerant treatment
of the Darwinian question, but may
expect the same improvement in this
respect that Huxley tells us has taken
place with the English. In a recent
article he remarks: “The gradual lapse
of time has now separated us by more
than a decade from the date of the pub
lication of the ‘ Origin of Species; ’ and
whatever may be thought or said about
Mr. Darwin’s doctrines, or the manner
in which he has propounded them, this
much is certain, that, in a dozen years,
the ‘ Origin of Species’ has worked as
complete a revolution in biological sci
ence as the ‘ Principia ’ did in astrono
my—and it has done so, because, in
the words of Helmholtz, it contains
‘ an essentially new creative thought.’
And, as time has slipped by, a happy
change has come over Mr. Darwin’s
critics. The mixture of ignorance and
insolence which, at first, characterized
a large proportion of the attacks with
which he was assailed, is no longer the
sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criti
cism. Instead of abusive nonsense,
which merely discredited its writers,
we read essays, which are, at worst,
more or less intelligent and apprecia
tive ; while, sometimes, like that which
appeared in the North British Review
for 1867, they have a real and perma
nent value.”
THE EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION AT
ELIIIRA.
The national educational associa
tion recently held at Elmira, N. Y.,
was of unusual interest, and evinced a
marked progress in the public method
of dealing with educational subjects.
We have for some years refrained from
attendance upon teachers’ conventions,
having been wearied ■with the narrow
technical range and pedantic pettiness
of the discussions. But the recent
meeting showed that educators are be
ginning to outgrow their old profes
sional limitations, and to consider the
various questions that come before them
in the light of broad principles, and in
the spirit of radical and rational im
provement. Many men of ability, presi
dents of leading colleges, eminent pro
fessors, principals of high-schools, and
State and city superintendents, were
present, contributing valuable papers,
and giving strength and character to
the debates which followed them.
President McCosh delivered an able
address on the higher education, and
maintained that the national Govern
ment should not give the balance of its
lands to the agricultural colleges, nor
yet to other collegiate institutions, but
should appropriate them for the benefit
of high-schools and academies through
�EDITOR'S TABLE.
767
out the country. Dr. McCosh thus old scholastic culture which took its
stated his main position :
shape at a period when popular educa
“ I don’t propose that any portion of this tion was not thought of, and culture
$90,000,000 should be given to colleges. We was confined to the professional classes.
cannot aid all, and to select a few would be These institutions are not holding their
injurious. In regard to elementary educa own at the present time. Their stu
tion, the Northern, the Middle, and the dents are falling off, for the reason that
Western States, are able and willing to do there is a decline in the academies by
their duty. I venture to propose that in
these the unappropriated lands be devoted which the colleges are fed; that is, as
to the encouragement of secondary schools. Dr. McCosh says, “ the grand difficulty
Let each State obtain its share, and the which colleges have to contend against
money handed over to it under certain rigid arises from there being so few schools
rules and restrictions to prevent the abuse fitted to prepare young men for them.”
of the public money. In particular, to se
But the cause of the decline of the
cure that upper schools be endowed only
where needed, I suggest that money be allo academies is the rivalry of the newlycated only when a district, or, it may be, a instituted high-schools, and these are
combination of two or more districts, has the outgrowth and now an essential
raised a certain portion, say one-half, of the part of the common - school system.
necessary funds. By this means the money
The modern idea of universal educa
may be made to stimulate the erection
of high-schools all over America. These tion has become organized in such a
schools would aid colleges far more power way as to antagonize the old college
fully than a direct grant to them, as, in fact, system. The common schools are not
the grand difficulty which colleges have to constructed upon the scholastic pattern;
contend against ariseB from there being so they aim to give to all a useful practical
few schools fitted to prepare young men for
education, that shall be available in
them with their rising standard of excellence.
the common work of life. It was
But I plead for these schools, not merely as
a means of feeding colleges, but as compe found that they did not go far enough
tent to give a high education in varied in this direction for the wants of many,
branches, literary and scientific, to a far and so high-schools were organized in
greater number who do not go on to any thing which the pupils of the common schools
higher. These schools, like the elementary
schools, should be open to all children, of might graduate into the working world
the poor as well as the rich. They should with a better preparation than the
be set up, like the German gymnasium, in lower schools can furnish. It was stated
convenient localities, so that all the popula in the discussion that but one in fif
tion may have access to them. They should teen hundred of the population passes
embrace every useful branch suited to young through college, while it is left for
men and women under sixteen and eighteen
years of age—English composition, English the common and high schools to edu
language, history, classics, modern language, cate the rest of the people. As the
and elementary science. The best scholars old academies disappear, therefore,
in our primary schools would be drafted up the colleges seek to get control of
to these higher schools, and thus the young the high-schools, to be used as feeders
talent of the country would be turned to
for themselves; and this, of course, ne
good account, while the teachers in the com
mon schools would be encouraged by seeing cessitates a high-school curriculum fit
ted to prepare young men for college.
their best pupils advance.” «
This is the point at which the two sys
The discussion that followed this tems are unconformable, and is to be
speech brought out difficulties which the point of conflict in the future.
the doctor had not considered, and, in What shall be the course of study in
fact, opened the way to the most vital the high-schools? Shall it be a sequel
problem of American education. The to the common schools, or a prelude to
colleges of the country represent the the colleges, for these are different
�768
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
things? Already in some of them we
have two distinct systems of education.
A principal of one of these institutions
in the West said to the writer: “We
are working under the disadvantages
of a double curriculum. We have a
scheme of studies, scientific and practi
cal, drawn with reference to the larger
number of our pupils who come from
the common schools, and who close their
studies with us. We take them through
an English course, with mathematics,
book-keeping, political economy, phys
ics, chemistry, botany, and physiology.
And we have also a classical course for
a small number of students who are
preparing for college. But the exac
tions of Latin and Greek are so great
upon these that they get hardly a smat
tering of the subjects pursued by the
other students.” The tactics of Dr.
McCosh were admirable. To keep the
proceeds of the public lands from going
to the agricultural colleges and scien
tific institutions, he is willing to resign
all claim upon them for the benefit of
the classical colleges ; at the same time,
if the money is expended for the ex
tension of high-schools, as the doctor
says, “ these schools would aid colleges
far more powerfully than a direct grant
to them.” Yet, as long as the two sys
tems of education remain so diverse that
the regular high-school graduation is
not accepted as preparation for college,
there will be conflict for the control of
these establishments. Only as the col
lege curriculum becomes more broad,
modern, and scientific, and the classical
studies are restricted to the special
classes who have need of them, can
American education become harmon
ized in its elements and unified in its
system.
Tne report of President Eliot, of
Harvard, on a national university, was
a strong document. We publish the
last portion of it, which deals with the
main question, and ask attention to the
high grounds on which he bases his de
mand for the non-interference of gov
ernment with the system of higher edu
cation. His paper started a warm
debate on the broad and important
question of the proper relations of gov
ernment to the work of instruction,
and, of course, his views met with
vigorous opposition. It was maintained
that there is no break in the logic by
which government action is prescribed;
and that, admitting the propriety of
state action in primary education, there
is no halting-place until the govern
ment takes charge of the entire school
machinery of the country. And such
is the overshadowing influence of poli
tics, and so profound the superstition
regarding government omnipotence,
that this view found its urgent advo
cates, who seem blind to the conse
quences that are certain to follow when
the people shirk the responsibilities of
attending directly to the education of
the young, and shoulder it off upon a
mass of politicians holding the offices
of government. The friends of state
education certainly pressed their case
to its extreme conclusions. Govern
ment contributes money to support
common schools, and appoints officers
to regulate them; therefore let it
appropriate $20,000,000 to establish
a national university at Washington,
with $1,000,000 a year to be divided
among the congressional appointees,
who will hold the professorships. Dr.
McCosh suggested that recent congres
sional experiences were hardly calcu
lated to inspire confidence in the action
of that body, and asked what guarantee
we should have against a university
ring and systematic educational job
bing ; and it was objected by others
that the class of men who congregate
in the capital, and the whole spirit of
the place, would make it more unfit
than any other in the country for such
an institution. Prof. Eichards, of
Washington, came to the rescue of the
reputation of his town, and asked, em
�EDITOR'S TABLE.
phatically, “Where do its knaves and
rascals come from? We do not make
them; you send them to us from all
parts of the nation.” But the argu
ment was not helped by the retort, for
it is quite immaterial whether Wash
ington breeds its scoundrels or imports
them. If our republican system is one
that sifts out its most venal and un
scrupulous intriguers and sharpers, and
gathers them into one place, it is ques
tionable whether that place had better
not be avoided as the seat of a great
model university—especially if said in
triguers and sharpers are to have the
management of it.
769
for 1872-’73, and presents the statistics
which bear upon the subject. The
“ elections ” of subjects of study or
choices of the students are shown in a
succession of tables, the last of which
divides the college studies into “dis
ciplinary” and “practical,” and ex
hibits the results as follows:
DISCIPLINARY STUDIES.
Ancient languages
. 100
History.....................................
8T
Mathematics
....
. 21
Philosophy..............................
15
Political science ....
. 12
185
PRACTICAL STUDIES.
Modern languages
Physics and chemistry
Natural history ....
.
.
80
87
28
145
ELECTIVE STUDIES AT HARVARD.
In an instructive article upon this
subject, the Nation says : “ There was
a vague but very general impression,
a few years ago, that, if the elective
system were introduced into the older
American colleges, the practical sci
ences, as they are called, especially
physics, chemistry, and natural his
tory, would crowd out the study of
the ancient languages. There was also
a feeling that the obvious utility of the
modern languages, and particularly of
French and of German, would help to
throw the “ dead languages ” into the
background. A great many enthusiasts
fancied that the good time a-coming
was at hand, when books would be
thrown aside, and all intellectual ac
tivity would be narrowed down to the
study of physical Nature; and so much
noise has been made about the natural
sciences that a great many people un
doubtedly think this is the principal if
not the only subject taught where an
elective system prevails.”
To submit this matter to a test, and
“ ascertain what it is that the mass of
students feel the need of most and flock
to most when the choice is left entirely
to themselves,” the Nation overhauls
the university catalogue of Harvard
vol. hi.—49
“By this arrangement the disci
plinary studies preponderate over the
practical in the ratio of 185:145 or
100: 78.”
Upon this the Nation proceeds to
remark: “ The figures show conclusive
ly that, in spite of the crusade which
has been carried on against the ancient
languages, they are still full of vitality,
still a power, still a popular study, and,
in fact, the greatest interest in the
little college world. As our inquiry is
purely numerical and statistical, we do
not ask why the students make the
selections they do. Doubtless, the
reasons are not very obvious; still, one
fact is plain, that they are not guided
wholly by utilitarian views.”
Now, if the Nation had looked a
little into the “ why ” of this matter,
we are sure it would have found the
reasons for this state of things obvious
enough, and, although it might have
somewhat qualified its conclusion, it
would have made the statement more
valuable. The number of votes cast
at an election is usually an expression
of public opinion, but, if in any case
there happen to have been military
interference and dictation, the numeri
cal report of ballots cast, if taken alone,
would be misleading. We are told that
�770
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the working of the option system at Har
vard affords an indication of the prefer
ences and tendencies of the students in
regard to the studies they incline to pur
sue ; but is not entrance to Harvard a
part of its policy, and what about the
option there? Is there not at the door
of the university a big winnowingmachine which delivers the “ discipli
nary ” studies as acceptable wheat, and
blows the “ utilitarian ” studies to the
winds as the veriest chaff? All the
preparation exacted of students for
entrance to college is in the “ discipli
nary ” studies, and mainly in the Latin
and Greek languages. Besides being
incessantly told in the preparatory
schools that the very poles of the intel
lectual world are two dead languages,
and that a classical education is the
only real broad liberal education, they
are kept for years drilling at Latin
and Greek as the only condition upon
which they can get to college at all.
The standard is here kept as high as it
was twenty years ago, and President
Eliot stated at the late Elmira conven
tion that, in the estimation of the pre
paratory teachers in New England, Har
vard requires a year more study of
Latin and Greek than the other col
leges. The student thus enters college
warped and biassed by his preparation
for it. Of the sciences he knows noth
ing, and he is prejudiced against them
as mere utilitarian studies to be con
trasted on all occasions with liberal
mental pursuits. When these facts are
remembered, it is certainly no matter
of surprise that Latin and Greek lead
in the collegiate elections of study; it
is rather surprising that they lead by
so small a number. It is very far from
being a fair or open choice when a
pupil has to repudiate his past acquisi
tions, and stem the tide of opinion
which has forced them upon him, to
take up studies under the grave dis
advantage of no early preparation. We
think the lesson of the Harvard statis
tics is not altogether exhilarating to
the partisans of the classics. When
Harvard will accept a scientific prep
aration for college as of equal value
with the classical, we shall be better
prepared to estimate the strength of
the tendencies in the two directions.
LIFE OF PRINCIPAL FORBES.
biographer of Sir Walter Scott
alludes to a “ first love ” which ended
unfortunately for the great romancer.
It is related that, rain happening to fall
one Sunday after church-time, Scott
offered his umbrella to a young lady,
and, the tender having been accepted,
he escorted her to her home. The ac
quaintance was continued, and ripened
into a strong attachment on the part
of Scott; but he was doomed to
disappointment, and Lockhart states
that it produced a profound effect upon
his character. “Keble, in a beautiful
essay on Scott, more than hints a .be
lief that it was this imaginary regret
haunting Scott all his life long which
became the true well-spring of his in
spiration in all his minstrelsy and ro
mance.” Be that as it may, the lady,
whose name was Williamina Belches,
instead of marrying Scott, chose his
friend, Sir William Forbes. They had
a family, of which the youngest, James
David, was born in 1809. When the
son was nineteen years old his father
died, and, under the immediate influ
ence of the bereavement, he drew up
a set of brief resolutions for the regu
lation of his life, one of which was “ to
curb pride and over-anxiety in the
pursuit of worldly objects, especially
fame.” Young Forbes became a fa
mous man. He took to science, and mas
tered it rapidly under the guidance of
his intimate friend Sir David Brewster,
choosing physics as his department.
At the death of Sir John Leslie, Pro
fessor of Natural Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh, he offered
himself as a candidate for the chair, in
The
�EDITOR'S TABLE.
opposition to his old friend Brewster
and others, and was elected to the po
sition at the age of twenty-four. He
was an original investigator in a wide
field of physics, contributed to the ex
tension of knowledge in many direc
tions, and was an able writer. His
health failing, he resigned his chair in
the Edinburgh University, and accept
ed the principalship of St. Andrew’s,
and is therefore known as Principal
Forbes. He died the last day of 1868,
and an elaborate biography, by three
of his Scotch friends, has just been pub
lished by Macmillan, which is an ex
tremely interesting book.
Among other subjects of his inves
tigation were the glaciers, upon which
he published an important volume. He
met Agassiz in the Alps, while that
gentleman was experimenting upon
glacial motions, and they made obser
vations together, but subsequently fell
out with each other about the division
of the honors of discovery. The com
plication extended, involving the claims
of Bishop Rendu, Prof. Guyot, and
others. In his “ Glaciers of the Alps,”
published in 1860, Prof. Tyndall under
took to do justice to the claims of all
parties. Prof. Forbes was not satisfied
with the awards, and replied to Prof.
Tyndall’s work, vindicating his own
claims to a larger share of the investi
gation than had been accorded him. To
this Prof. Tyndall at the time made no
rejoinder; but in his recently-published
“Forms of Water” he restated the
case in a way that was not satisfactory
to Forbes’s biographers, who have met
it by an appendix to the volume. In
the Contemporary Review for August,
Prof. Tyndall returns to the question
in an elaborate paper, entitled “ Prin
cipal Forbes and his Biographers,” of
which we publish the first and last
portions, that are of most general
interest. We have not space for the
whole article, which is long, and omit
ted the extended extracts from Rendu’s
work in French, and that portion of
771
the argument which will mainly con
cern the special students of glacial lit
erature. In an introductory note to
the article, Prof. Tyndall briefly states
the origin and cause of the controversy,
and earnestly deprecates its present re
vival. He says, speaking of the biogra
phers : “I am challenged to meet their
criticisms, which, I find, are considered
to be conclusive by some able public
journals and magazines. Thus the at
titude of a controversialist is once more
forced upon me. Since the death of
Principal Forbes no one has heard me
utter a word inconsistent with tender
ness for his memory; and it is with an'
unwillingness amounting to repugnance
that I now defend myself across his
grave. His biographers profess to
know what he would have done were
he alive, and hold themselves to be the
simple executors of his will. I cannot
act entirely upon this assumption, or
deal with the dead as I should with
the living. Hence, though these pages
may appear to some to be sufficiently
full, they lack the completeness, and
still more the strength, which I ’should
have sought to confer upon them had
my present position been forced upon
me by Principal Forbes himself instead
of by his friends.”
It is to be feared that Prof. Forbes
did not sufficiently abide by the rule
of life which was formed under the
solemn circumstances of his father’s
death.
We commend to the attention of
our scientific readers, with philosophi
cal inclinations, the series of articles
on “The Primary Concepts of Modern
Physical Science,” the first of which
appears this month, on “The Theory
of the Atomic Constitution of Matter.”
The depth and force of the criticism are
only equalled by the clearness of the
conceptions, and the precision and
felicity of the statement. The interest
of the discussion will not be lessened
�772
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
when we say that ;t is by an Ohio law
yer-formerly a judge of Cincinnati.
It has been held as one of the redeem
ing features of the English bar, that
the author of the able and admirable
essay on “The Correlation of Forces ”
belongs to it; and it is certainly to the
credit of the legal profession in this
country that a member of it has culti
vated physical philosophy to such ex
cellent purpose as is evinced by the
article we now publish.
• LITERARY NOTICES.
A
Popular Introduction to the Study of
the Forces of Nature. From the French
of M. Emile Saigey. With an Intro
duction and Notes by Thomas Freeman
Moses, A. M., M. D. Boston : Estes &
Laureat. Price $1.50. 253 pages.
Although this neat and attractive little
volume claims to be a popular introduction
to the study of the forces of Nature, we
think it should rather be regarded as a
book for those who have been previously
introduced to the subject. It is rather
devoted to an exposition of the author’s
speculative views than to a simplified and
elementary statement for those who are
beginning to study. The author holds to a
universal ether, and maintains besides that
matter is constituted from it, and consists
of it, and he aims to build up the universe
of ethereal atoms and motion. The work
is written from the modem point of view
of the correlation of forces, and contains
much interesting information upon this
subject, but the author is less concerned
merely to interpret the phenomena of inter
action among the forces than to get below
them to what he regards as the causes of
their unity. “The atom and motion, be
hold the universe! ” is a somewhat Frenchy
and fantastic cosmology. To readers of a
speculative turn of mind the book will prove
interesting.
The Unity of Natural Phenomena.
Sanitary Engineering : a Guide to the
Construction of Works of Sewerage and
House-Drainage. By Baldwin Latham,
C. E. 352 pages. Price $12. New
York : E. & F. N. Spon.
This work is in all respects a contrast
to that of M. Saigey. Instead of transcen
dental ether, it treats of descendental sew
erage, and, instead of remote imaginative
speculations, it is occupied with the most
immediate and practical of the interests of
daily life. Of the importance of the sub
ject treated, the preservation of life and
health by the thorough construction of
sanitary works, there can be no question,
and the author claims that it is the first
book exclusively devoted to subjects re
lating to sanitary engineering. He has
gathered his material from official reports,
periodical papers, and various works which
touch the subject incidentally, and, adding
to them the results of his own practice, has
produced a most valuable treatise. As
science unravels the complicated conditions
of life, it becomes more and more apparent
that health can only be maintained by the
destruction or thorough removal of those
deleterious products which are engendered
in dwellings. The necessity of drainage is
well understood, and the art has been long
practised in all civilized countries; but, like
all other arts, its intelligent and efficient
practice depends upon scientific principles,
and therefore progresses with a growing
knowledge of the subject. The questions
involved in the proper sewerage of a district
are numerous. Its geological character and
physical features have to be considered;
the meteorological element of rainfall is
important; the constitution of the soil and
subsoil must be taken into account; the
sources and extent of artificial water-supply
are of moment; and the area of the district
to be sewered, and its present and pro
spective population, cannot be overlooked.
Much information of this kind requires also
to be called into requisition in the construc
tion of separate country-residences. The
physical circumstances being given, there
then arise numerous questions in regard to
drainage, construction, household contriv
ances, the materials employed, and the cost,
efficiency, and permanency of works. Mr.
Latham’s volume treats this whole series
of topics in a systematic and exhaustive
way. It is profusely illustrated with wood
cuts and maps, and contains numerous
tables which are indispensable for the
guidance of constructors. It is not re
printed, but is supplied by the New-York
branch of the London house, who hold it
at an exorbitant pice.
�LITERARY NOTICES.
773
and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and attractiveness, due to a certain subtle tact
Superstitions interpreted by Compara or refinement hard to analyze, but quite
tive Mythology. By John Fiske. Price, sensibly felt, which marks the best Ameri
$2.00. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.,
can essay-writing; and his manner of deal
1873.
ing with his subject is well fitted to reassure
Travellers to the United States, and those who have been deterred from seeking
American authors themselves, have often any acquaintance with comparative my
remarked on the affectionate veneration thology, either by the formidable appearance
shown by Americans for the oldest things of philological apparatus and Vedic proper
in Europe, and for all the associations con names, or by the aggressive boldness of
necting their present life with the life of one or two champions of the new learning.
their forefathers in the old country. Not It is very natural to feel a rebellious impulse
long ago, it may be remembered, the build at being told that half the gods and heroes
ers of a new meeting-house at Boston of the classical epics, or even the nursery
(United States), sent for a brick from the tales, which have delighted us from our
prototype still standing at our Boston in youth up, are sun and sky, light and dark
England. We now find an officer of Har ness, summer and winter, in various dis
vard University putting forth labor which guises.
is evidently a labor of love, and the literary
The myth is in its origin neither an al
skill and taste in which the best American legory—as Bacon and many others have
writers set an example worth commending thought—nor a metaphor—as seems now
to many of ours ; and the things he speaks and then to be implied in the language of
of belong to the Old World; to a world, modern comparative mythologists—but a
indeed, so far off that for centuries we had genuinely-accepted explanation of facts, a
lost its meaning, and have only just learned “ theorem of primitive Aryan science,” as
to spell it out again. His theme takes Mr. Fiske happily expresses it. This view
him back from the New World, not only to is brought out in the last essay of the vol
England, not only to Europe, but to the ume, entitled “ The Primeval Ghost World,”
ancient home of the Aryan race, a world where the genesis of mythology is held not
still full of wonders for the dwellers in it, to be explicable by the science of language
whose changes of days' and seasons, inter alone, and is rather ascribed to the complete
preted by the analogy of human will and absence of distinction between animate and
action, were instinct with manifold life; inanimate Nature, which is now known to
where the imagination of our fathers shaped be common to all tribes of men in a primi
the splendid and gracious forms which have tive condition, and to which Mr. Tylor has
gone forth over the earth, as their children given the name of Animism. We are
went forth, and prevailed in many lands, pleased to find Mr. Fiske praising Mr. Tyand have lived on through all the diverse lor’s work warmly, and even enthusiasti
fates of the kindred peoples in India, in cally : here is another of the many proofs
Greece, in Iceland, to bear witness in the that the ties of common language and cult
latter days to the unity of the parent stock. ure are in the long-run stronger than diplo
This book, which Mr. Fiske modestly intro macy and Indirect Claims. We find men
duces as a “ somewhat rambling and unsys tioned, among other instances of animism,
tematic series of papers,” seems to us to the belief that a man’s shadow is a sort of
give the leading results of comparative my ghost or other self. This belief has, in
thology in a happier manner and with comparatively-recent times, made its mark
greater success than has yet been attained even in so civilized a tongue as the Greek,
in so small a compass. It is the work of
in Romaic is a ghost, or rather a
a student who follows in the steps of the personified object generally, and seems to
great leaders with right-minded apprecia correspond exactly to the other self attrib
tion, and who, though he does not make uted by primitive man to all creatures, liv
any claim to originality, is no ordinary ing or not living, indiscriminately. Mr.
compiler. He is enthusiastic in his pursuit, Geldart, in a note to his book on Modem
without being a fanatic; his style has the Greek (Oxford, 1870), which well deserves
Myths
�774
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the attention of students of language and
mythology, traces this as well as older al
lied meanings from the original meaning of
aroi-xYiov in classical Greek, as the shadow
on the sun-dial, acutely observing that the
moving shadow would seem to the natural
man far more alive and mysterious than the
fixed rod.
There are several matters dealt with in
special chapters by Mr. Fiske which we
must put off with little more than allusion:
the book is indeed a small one, but so full
of interest that choice among its contents
is not easy. An essay on “ The Descent of
Fire ” treats of the divining-rod and other
talismans endowed with the faculty of rend
ing open rocks and revealing hidden treas
ure, which all appear to be symbols, some
times obvious, sometimes remotely and fan
cifully derived, of the lightning which breaks
the cloud and lets loose the treasures of the
rain. There is also a chapter on the my
thology of non-Aryan tribes, showing the
difference between the vague resemblance
of these to Aryan myths and to one another,
and the close family likeness which leads to
the certain conclusion that the great mass
of Aryan mythology came from a common
stock.—Spectator.
and School : A Journal of Popular
Education. Morton & Co., Louisville.
In a late number of this journal is an
excellent article by Prof. Alexander Hogg,
of the Alabama Agricultural and Mechani
cal College, entitled “ More Geometry—
less Arithmetic,” that contains various sug
gestions worthy the thoughtful attention of
teachers. It was a favorite idea of the
late Josiah Holbrook, which he enforced
upon educators on all occasions, that rudi
mentary geometry should be introduced
into all primary schools; but he insisted
with equal earnestness upon his theory of
their order, which was embodied in his
aphorism, “ Drawing before writing, and
geometry before arithmetic.” The priority
of geometrical or arithmetical conception
in the unfolding mind is a subtle psycho
logical question, into which it is not neces
sary for the teacher to go, the practical
question being to get a recognition of the
larger claims of geometry, and this is the
point to which Prof. Hogg wisely directs
Home
the discussion. The fact is, mental devel
opment has been too much considered in
its linear and successive aspects, and the
theories that are laid down concerning the
true order of studies have been hitherto
too much confined to this idea. Starting
with inherited aptitudes, mental develop
ment begins in the intercourse of the infant
mind with the environment, and, while it is
true that there is a sequence of mental ex
perience in each increasing complexity, it is
equally true that many kinds of mental ac
tion are unfolded together. Ideas of form
are certainly among the earliest, and there
fore should have an early cultivation. To
all that Prof. Hogg says about the need of
increasing the amount of geometry in edu
cation we cordially subscribe, and we think
he is equally right in condemning the excess
of attention that is given to arithmetic,
which is mainly due to its supposed prac
tical character as a preparation for business.
But neither is geometry without its impor
tant practical uses. The professor says :
“ Let us see, then, what a pupil with
enough arithmetic and the plane geometry
can perform. He can measure heights and
distances; determine areas; knows that,
having enclosed one acre with a certain
amount of fencing, to enclose four acres
he only has to double the amount of fencing;
that the same is true of his buildings. In
circles, in round plats, or in cylindrical ves
sels, he will see a beautiful, universal law
pervading the whole—the increase of the
circumference is proportional to the in
crease of the diameter, while the increase
of the circle is as the square of the diam
eter. . . .
“ Thousands of boys are stuffed to re
pletion with ‘interest,’ ‘discount,’ and
‘ partnership,’ in which they have experi
enced much ‘ loss ’ but no ‘ profit; ’ have
mastered as many as five arithmetics, and
yet, upon being sent into the surveyor’s of
fice, machine-shop, and carpenter-shop,
could not erect a perpendicular to a
straight line, or find the centre of a circle
already described, if their lives depended
upon it. Many eminent teachers think that
young persons are incapable of reasoning,
and that the truths of geometry are too ab
struse to be comprehended by them. . . .
“ Children are taught to read, not for
�LITERARY NOTICES.
what is contained in the reading-books, but
that they may be able to read through life;
so, let enough of the leading branches be
taught, if no more, to enable the pupil to
pursue whatever he may need most in after
life. Let, then, an amount of geometry
commensurate with its importance be
taught even in the common schools; let it
be taught at the same time with arithmetic;
let as much time be given to it, and we shall
find thousands who, instead of closing their
mathematical books on leaving school, will
be led to pursue the higher mathematics in
their maturer years.”
The Mystery of Matter and Other Es
says. By J. Allanson Picton. 12mo,
pp. 482. Price $3.50. Macmillan & Co.
The purpose of this work is to reconcile
the essential principles of religious faith with
the present tendencies of thought in the
sphere of positive and physical science. Mr.
Picton is not a votary of modem skepti
cism, although he recognizes the fact of its
existence, and its bearing on vital questions.
Nor is he a partisan of any of the current
systems of philosophy or science, but dis
cusses their various pretensions in the spirit
of intelligent and impartial criticism. He
has no fear of their progress or influence;
he accepts many of their conclusions; he
honors the earnestness and ability of their
expounders ; while he believes that their re
sults are in harmony with the essential ideas
of religion. It is possible, he affirms, that
all forms of finite existence may be reduced
to modes of motion. But this is of no con
sequence in a religious point of view, for
motion itself is only the visible manifesta
tion of the energy of an infinite life. “ To
me,” he says, “ the doctrine of an eternal
continuity of development has no terrors ;
for, believing matter to be in its ultimate
essence spiritual, I see in every cosmic revo
lution a ‘ change from glory to glory, as by
the Spirit of the Lord.’ I can look down
the uncreated, unbeginning past, without
the sickness of bewildered faith. I want no
silent dark eternity in which no world was ;
for I am a disciple of One who said, * My
Father worketh hitherto.’ My sense of
eternal order is no longer jarred by the sud
den appearance in the universe of a dead,
inane substance, foreign to God and spiritual
775
being. And if, with a true insight, I could
stand so high above the world as to take
any comprehensive survey of its unceasing
evolutions—here a nebula dawning at the
silent fiat ‘ be light,’ there the populous
globe, where the communion of the many
with the One brings the creature back to
the Creator—I am sure that the oneness of
the vision, so far from degrading, would un
speakably elevate my sense of the dignity
and blessedness of created being. I have
no temptation, therefore, to join in cursing
the discoverer who tracks the chain of divine
forces by which finite consciousness has
been brought to take its present form ; be
cause I know he can never find more than
that which was in the beginning, and is, and
ever shall be—the ‘ power of an endless
life.’ ”
With regard to the speculations of Prof.
Huxley, the author, so far from bewailing
their effects, pronounces them decidedly
favorable to the interests of religion. They
present a formidable barrier to the encroach
ments of materialism. In this respect, he
thinks that Prof. Huxley has rendered ser
vices to the Church, if less signal, not less
valuable, than those which he has rendered
to science. He has brought the religious
world face to face with facts with a vigor
and a clearness peculiar to himself. Not
only so. In the opinion of the author, he
has made suggestions concerning those facts
of vast importance to the future of religion.
He has defined the only terms on which
harmony is possible between spiritual re
ligion and physical science. Equalling
Berkeley in transparent distinctness of
statement, while he far surpasses him in
knowledge of physical phenomena, Mr. Hux
ley has shown that, whether we start with
materialism or idealism, we are brought at
length to the same point. He has thus
proved himself one of the most powerful op
ponents that materialism ever had. All
that he did in his celebrated discourse on
the “ Physical Basis of Life ” was, to call
attention to certain indisputable facts.
“And perhaps it was the impossibility of
denying these facts which was a main cause
of the uneasiness that most of us felt.
Thus he told us that all organizations, from
the lichen up to the man, are all composed
mainly of one sort of matter, which in all
�776
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
cases, even those at the extremity of the deed follow that materialism, in a fair sense
scale, is almost identical in composition. of the word, is impossible, still the conclu
And the one other fact on which he insisted sion cannot be avoided that materialism
was, that every living action, from the vi and spiritualism would then exhibit only
brations of cilia by the foraminifer to the different aspects of the same everlasting
imagination of Hamlet or the composition fact, and physical research might henceforth
of the Messiah, is accompanied by, and in a unfold to us only the energies of Infinite
sense finds an equivalent expression in, a Life self-governed by eternal law.
definite waste or disintegration of material
But, admitting the universal action of
tissue. Thus it is no less certain that the molecular mechanics, the author adduces
muscles of a horse are strained by a heavy numerous instances which show that the
load, than it is that the brain of a Shake explanation they offer of the phenomena of
speare undergoes molecular agitation, pro sensation cannot be realized in conscious
ducing definite chemical results, in the sub ness. Nothing is really an explanation
lime effort of imagination.”
which cannot be reproduced in conscious
But, at first blush, such statements pro ness as such. We demand a cause from
duce a shock in the minds of most readers. which the effect can rationally be educed.
They are reluctant to be told that the soul The perception of distance, for example, is
never acts by itself apart from some excite explained by the action of the muscular
ment of bodily tissue. It seems monstrous sense and the experience of touch. This is
that thought and love, which in one direc an adequate explanation, for it can be re
tion find their expression in the majesty of alized in consciousness. But the case is far
eloquence, should in another direction find otherwise with the explanation of sensation
their expression in evolving carbonic acid by molecular mechanics. Physical research
and water. Such a union between soul and lands us in a dead inert substance called
body seemed to amount to identity. And matter, which, though without soul or mean
yet the soul was conscious that, whatever ing in itself, produces by its vibrations the
might be said, it was not one of the chemi most beautiful visions and sublime emotions
cal elements, nor all of them put together.
in our consciousness. But the external phe
The mental anxiety referred to has been nomena, inseparable from our consciousness
aggravated by the hold which has been of sight or sound, cannot be rationally con
taken on most inquiring minds, by the doc nected with the consciousness that gives
trine of development. Whether natural them all their interest. No one to whom
selection is or is not sufficient to account the Hallelujah Chorus utters the joy of
for the origin of species, the idea of suc heaven, or for whom a sonata of Beethoven
cessive acts of creation out of nothing has gives a voice to the unutterable, can make
been virtually abandoned by all whose ob it seem real to himself that his mind is in
servations of Nature have been on such a vaded by mere waves of vibrating air. At
scale as to entitle their opinions to any no point in the chain of vibrations, not even
weight. What was once the property of a the point most deeply buried in the brain,
few isolated thinkers has been made com can we conceive that molecular action is
pletely accessible to minds of common in converted into any thing besides material
telligence. But the terrors which have movement, or resistance to movement. But
been awakened by the popular reception of this does not exhaust the consciousness.
novel scientific theories are entirely founded The emotional, imaginative, and moral
on the assumption that matter and spirit wealth of human life opens a world of re
are fundamentally distinct in their nature. ality immeasurably greater than can be con
It has been the general belief that matter tained in mere mechanical movement.
was something heavy, lifeless, inert, some
Assuming, then, the fact of a nature in
thing that forms the hidden basis of the man, of which the molecular laws are not
ethereal vision of the world. But, argues the substance, but the condition, the author
the author, if that assumption be the mere takes up the inquiry as to the essential
creature of false analogy, and is wholly in nature of religion. This he defines to be
congruous and unthinkable, it does not in the endeavor after a practical expression of
�LITERARY NOTICES.
man’s conscious relation to the Infinite.
The savage who wonders at the unseen but
mighty wind that streams from unknown
realms of power has already the germ of
the feeling which inspires religion. But the
conscious relation to the Infinite includes
every stage in this consciousness, just as
the name of a plant includes the blade as
well as the fruit. If the evolution of reli
gion be a normal phase in the development
of mankind, there must be at the root of it
that grand and measureless Power which is
the inevitable complement of the conception
of evolution. All evolution implies a divine
Power, but religious evolution has to do
with the dim apprehension of that Power in
consciousness. Mr. Herbert Spencer, to
continue the reasoning of the author, has
been much blamed, by many religious think
ers, for making the reconciliation between
science and religion to lie in the recognition
on both sides that “ the Power which the
universe manifests to us is utterly inscru
table.” Yet the very persons who most
strenuously object to this suggestion are in
the habit of quoting the words of Scripture
which declare the unsearchable mystery of
the Divine Nature. Those words are used
to rebuke the arrogance of philosophy. But,
when philosophy learns the lesson, its hu
mility is condemned as wilful blindness.
The true philosophy of ignorance, however,
retains as an indestructible element of hu
man consciousness an apprehension of
something beyond all fragmentary existence,
the Absolute Being, at once the only true
substance, and the One that constitutes a
universe from the phenomenal world. It
is inevitable that attempts should be made
to give practical expression to this feeling.
And in such efforts we find the first germs
of religion.
With the imperfect summary which we
have given of the views maintained in this
volume, it will be perceived that its position
in literature is that of a commentary on
new developments of thought, rather than
of a complete exposition of any system of
philosophy or science. Accepting the con
sequences of modem physical research, it
aims to establish their consistency with the
principles of a high religious faith, and thus
to remove the vague alarms which their
prevalence has called forth in certain por
711
tions of the community. The author is
evidently a man of an ardent poetical tem
perament, of a reverent and tender spirit,
and an aptitude for illustration rather than
for demonstration.—N. Y. Tribune.
Chimneys for Furnaces, Fireplaces, and
Steam-Boilers. By R. Armstrong, C.
E., 12mo, 76 pages. Price, 50 cents.
This is number one of Van Nostrand’s
science series, and is a technological mono
graph that will be useful to engineers and
builders. The author says : “ Furnaces or
closed fireplaces, which it is the main de
sign of this essay to treat upon, are essen
tially different in principle and construction
to the ordinary open fireplaces of dwelling
houses, as they are exceedingly different in
their general scope and object, and in the
vast variety of their applications; ” and he
then proceeds to expound the general phi
losophy of special chimneys for furnaces
and steam-boilers.
Steam-Boiler Explosions. By Zerah Col
burn. 12mo, 98 pages.
New York :
D. Van Nostrand.
This is number two of the same series,
and is a most instructive and readable essay.
The editor states that, although published
ten years ago, later experiences would add
but little if any thing to the knowledge it
affords. The various observed scientific
questions in regard to the causes of steamboiler explosions, such as over-heating, elec
tricity, the spheroidal state, decomposed
steam, etc., are considered, but Mr. Colburn
maintains that, whether these are valid
causes of explosion or not, they are colleotively as nothing compared with the one
great cause—defective boilers. The style
in which this essay is written is a model of
simplicity and clearness.
Bulletin
ural
of the Buffalo Society of Nat
Sciences. Vol. I., Nos. 1 and 2.
Buffalo, 1873.
The Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences
commences this year the publication of their
Bulletin, which it is proposed to continue,
four numbers to be issued annually. The
two numbers before us contain seven papers,
six of which are devoted to the describing
and cataloguing of American moths, and
one gives descriptions of new species of
�778
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
fungi. The author of the latter paper is
Charles H. Peck ; all the others are by Au
gustus R. Grote. Mr. Grote is well known
to entomologists as an authority on the sub
jects which he discusses, and the Buffalo
society is to be congratulated for being the
medium through which the laborious and
valuable researches of so able a naturalist
are published to the world. The papers are
strictly scientific and technical, being in
tended solely for those who pursue method
ically the special branches of science to
which they refer. They are not popular
expositions, but rather brief notes on cer
tain departments of natural science, to be
understood and valued only by the initiated.
The Bulletin is handsomely printed on good
paper, in octavo form. Subscription price,
$2.50 per volume.
Scientific and Industrial Education. A
Lecture. By G. B. Stebbins. Detroit, 1873,
pp. 24.
The Railroads of the United States. By
Henry V. Poor. New York : H. V. & H. W.
Poor, 68 Broadway, pp. 29.
Cosmical and Molecular Harmonics, No.
II. By Pliny Earle Chase, M. A. Philadel
phia, 1873, pp. 16.
Nickel.
pp. 19.
By Dr. Lewis Feuchtwanger,
Diminution of Water on the Earth, and
its Permament Conversion into Solid Forms.
By Mrs. George W. Houk. Dayton, 0., 1873,
pp. 39.
Sixth Annual Report of the Trustees of
the Peabody Museum of American Archaeol
ogy and Ethnology. Cambridge, 1873, pp.
Atmospheric Theory of the Open Polar 27. Mr. Gillman’s report of his explora
Sea : with Remarks on the Present State tions of the ancient mounds on the St. Clair
of the Question. By William W. Wheil- River is an important contribution to ar
don. First Paper. Boston, 1872.
chaeology. The museum is in a flourishing
This paper was read at the meeting of the state, and growing steadily. The Niccolucci
American Association for the Advancement collection of ancient crania and implements
of Science, held at Newport, R. I., in 1860, was the most important addition made
and was published in the volume of proceed during the past year.
ings of the Association for that year. The ex
traordinary interest taken in Arctic affairs
during the past two years has led to its re
MISCELLANY.
issue in pamphlet form, with brief introduc
Utilization of Waste Coal.—The English
tory observations on the present state of the
problem. Accepting the view, now quite gen Mechanic gives an historical sketch of the
erally held, that an open sea, or at least a various processes suggested for the utiliza
much ameliorated climate, exists in the vi tion of the waste of coal-mines. From this
cinity of the pole, the author, in this paper, account it would appear that so early as the
aims to show that such a condition of things close of the sixteenth century the waste of
“ is largely if not entirely <Me to the cur small coal attracted notice. About the year
rents of the air from the equatorial regions 1594 one Sir Hugh Platt proposed a mixture
which move in the higher strata of the of coal-dust and loam, together with such
earth’s atmosphere, bearing heat and moist combustible materials as sawdust and tan
ure with them.” How well he succeeds in ners’ bark: the loam being the cement
this undertaking, we leave the readers of which was to hold the other ingredients to
gether. But Sir Hugh’s suggestions did not
the argument to judge.
receive much attention in those early times,
when coal was but little, used, wood being
the staple fuel of England.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
It was only at the beginning of the
Washington Catalogue of Stars. By or present century that this question began to
der of Rear-Admiral Sands, U. S. N. Wash receive serious attention. A patent was
ington, 1873.
then granted for a mixture of refuse coal
First Annual Report of the Minnesota with charcoal, wood, breeze, tan, peat, saw
State Board of Health. St. Paul, 1873, dust, cork-cuttings, and other inflammable
pp. 102.
ingredients. A capital objection to such a
�MISCELLANY.
scheme is its expense. The product would
necessarily cost about as much per ton as
good coal, without being at all as service
able. The next attempt was the production
of “gaseous coke.” Here the object was to
convert small coal, by the addition of coaltar, either pure, or mixed with naphtha, into
a well-mixed mass. It was then to be put
into an oven and coked ; afterward it was
to be broken into suitable blocks for use.
There were several modifications of this
process, but as they all more or less involved
the previous manufacture of their most es
sential ingredient, coal-tar, the anticipations
of the projectors were not realized.
In 1823 a step was taken in the right
direction by the combination of bituminous
and anthracite coals, and converting them,
by partial carbonization in an oven, into a
kind of soft coke. In 1845 Frederick Ran
some introduced a plan for cementing to
gether small coal by means of a solution of
silica dissolved in caustic soda, the small
refuse coal so treated to be then compressed
into blocks suitable for use. In 1849 Henry
Bessemer proposed simply to heat small
coal sufficient to soften it, and thus render
it capable of being easily pressed into
moulds and formed into solid blocks. The
coal, according to this plan, might be soft
ened either by the action of steam or in
suitable ovens. Coal alone was used, no
extraneous matter of any kind being em
ployed. In 1856 F. Ransome brought for
ward one of the best plans yet offered. He
placed the small coal in suitable moulds,
which were then passed into an oven, and
there heated just sufficiently to cause the
mass to agglomerate.
Though the writer in the Mechanic com
mends highly the Ransome and the Besse
mer plans, it is clear that they do not fully
solve the problem, for inventors are still
busy on both sides of the Atlantic devising
other and better methods. Perhaps, how
ever, the successful working of the Crans
ton “Automatic Reverberatory Furnace,”
which is adapted for the consumption of
powdered coal, will cause such a demand
for small coal as will leave these utilizing
processes without material to work on.
779
nia of the Human Races,” and recently
laid before the Paris Academy of Sciences
a synopsis of the results which he there
proposes to establish. The materials he
has at hand for this investigation are
abundant—no less than 4,000 skulls; and
he acknowledges the valuable assistance
rendered to him by the most eminent sa
vants both of France and of the rest of
Europe. He holds that the fossil races are
not extinct, but that, on the contrary, they
have yet living representatives. He regards
the skull discovered in 1700 at Canstadt,
near Stuttgart, as the type of the most an
cient human race of which we have ac
knowledge. This skull is dolichocephalous
—that is, having a length greater than its
breadth. With the Canstadt skull he
classes those of Enghisheim, Brux, Nean
derthal, La Denise, Staengenaes, Olmo, and
Clichy—the last-named three being the
skulls of females. Among the representa
tives, in historical times, of the dolichoceph
alous race, M. Quatrefages reckons Kay
Lykke, a Danish statesman of the seven
teenth century, whose skull is portrayed in
the forthcoming work; Saint Mansuy, Bishop
of Toul in the fourth century, whose skull is
also figured ; and Robert Bruce. Whether
the cranium is long or short—dolichoceph
alous or brachycephalous—is a question
which has nothing to do with the intel
lectual status of the man, according to M.
Quatrefages.
Heart-Disease and Overwork.—The ear
ly break-down of health observed among
Cornish miners, and commonly regarded
as an affection of the lungs —“ miners’
phthisis ”—is declared, by competent au
thority, to proceed rather from disturbed
action of the heart; and this, according to
Dr. Houghton, the distinguished Dublin
physiologist, is caused by the great and
sudden strain put upon the system by the
ascent from the pits, at a time when the
body is not sufficiently fortified with food.
In his valuable address on the “ Relation
of Food to Work,” Dr. Houghton says:
“ The labor of the miner is peculiar, and his
food appears to me badly suited to meet its
requirements. At the close of a hard day’s
Qnatrefages on Human Crania.—Quatre- toil the weary miner has to climb, by verti
fages is engaged on a work entitled “ Cra cal ladders, through a height of from 600 to
�780
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
1,200 feet, before he can reach his cottage,
where he naturally looks for his food and
sleep. This climbing of the ladders is per
formed hastily, almost as a gymnastic feat,
and throws a heavy strain (amounting to
from one-eighth to one-quarter of the whole
day’s work) upon the muscles of the tired
miner, during the half-hour or hour that con
cludes his daily toil. A flesh-fed man (as a
red Indian) would run up the ladders like a
cat, using the stores of force already in re
serve in his blood ; but the Cornish miner,
who is fed chiefly upon dough and fat, finds
himself greatly distressed by the climbing of
the ladders—more so, indeed, than by the
slower labor of quarrying in the mine. His
heart, over-stimulated by the rapid exer
tion of muscular work, beats more and
more quickly in its efforts to oxidate the
blood in the lungs, and so supply the force
required. Local congestion of the lung it
self frequently follows, and lays the founda
tion for the affection so graphically though
sadly described by the miner at forty years
of age, who tells you that his other works
are very good, but that he is ‘ beginning to
leak in the valves ’ Were I a Cornish miner,
and able to afford the luxury, I should train
myself for the ‘ ladder-feat ’ by dining on
half a pound of rare beefsteak and a glass
of ale from one to two hours before com
mencing the ascent,”
San Jorge. In 1866, for instance, the vol
cano of Santorin emitted smoke charged
with acid, which produced on plants effects
similar to those observed at San Jorge in
1808.
A writer in the Revue Scientijique is of
the opinion that the facts above stated
give the solution of some of the problems
raised by the exhumations at Pompeii. The
strange posture of skeletons found in the
streets of that town is very difficult to ac
count for, if we insist on finding analogies
with phenomena observed in modem erup
tions of Vesuvius. A shower of ashes, how
ever heavy, however charged with humidity,
could never have thrown down and choked
a strong man like the one who met his
death while making his escape, in company
with his two daughters, along one of the
public roads. They must have inhaled a
poisonous gas of some kind, which caused
them to perish in fearful agony. This gas
would not lie in a layer of equal thickness :
in some places it might have a greater depth
than in others. Hence, while some of the
inhabitants would perish, the remainder
would escape.
It is very probable that the eruption in
the year 79 was accompanied with local
emissions of carbonic acid, springing from
points remote from the crater. In all vol
canic regions, says the author, there are
localities where, even when the volcano is
inactive, carbonic acid exists in the atmos
phere, in quantities sufficient to produce
asphyxia: and the neighborhood of Vesu
vius is particularly noted for the number of
6uch localities. During an eruption, the
amount of the gas given out is usually in
creased, and wells, ditches, quarries, etc.,
are filled with carbonic acid. It is some
times dangerous to enter cavities in the
rocks on the coast when a fresh breeze does
not keep them free of the poisonous gas.
In 1861 Ste.-Claire Deville came near meet
ing his death by entering one of these cavi
ties for a few moments. The following
week he and the author barely escaped
being asphyxiated in the bed of a great
quarry, which they had previously visited
many a time with impunity.
Poisonous Volcanie Gases. — During a
volcanic eruption on the little island of San
Jorge, one of the Azores, in the year 1808,
vaporous clouds were seen to roll down the
sides of the mountain, and to move along
the valley. Wherever they passed, plants
and animals wilted and perished instanta
neously. From this asphyxiating action,
as also from their downward movement on
the mountain-side and toward the sea, we
may conclude that they consisted chiefly of
some dense, deleterious gas, most probably
carbonic acid. Their opacity is to be at
tributed to the presence of watery vapor,
and their reddish color to the presence of
tine volcanic dust. Finally, their injurious
action on plants was doubtless owing to the
presence of chlorhydric and sulphurous acid.
Similar phenomena have been observed
on occasion of other volcanic outbreaks,
A Relie of Ancient Etrurian Art. — An
but nowhere so marked as in the case of antiquarian discovery of very considerable
�MISCELLANY.
interest was recently made at Cervetri,
Italy, being a terra-cotta sarcophagus of
native Etruscan production. The ancient
Etrurians were noted for the honor they
bestowed upon their dead, and their custom
of paying homage to ancestors by placing
their effigies upon their tombs seems to
have been peculiar to themselves, and un
known among the Greeks. The recentlydiscovered sarcophagus is now in the British
Museum. It measures internally four feet
ten inches in length, and two feet in width.
The floor is hollowed out, or rather marked
by a raised border, which takes the form
of a human figure. It rests upon four claw
feet projecting beyond the angles, and ter
minating above in the head and breasts of
a winged siren. The lid of the sarcophagus
represents an upholstered couch upon which
recline two human figures, male and female.
There are inscriptions on the four sides of
the couch. The panel at the foot has the
figures of two warriors in panoply, and the
front panel exhibits the same pair of war
riors engaged in mortal combat. Several
accessory figures are also to be seen. On
the panel at the head of the couch are rep
resented four sitting figures in opposing
pairs, plunged in deep sorrow. The monu
ment has no counterpart among those of its
kind hitherto discovered, the only one at
all resembling it being that of the Campana
Collection in the Louvre. The latter is,
however, of a much more recent date than
the former, nor is it adorned with either
reliefs or inscriptions. The Cervetri sar
cophagus probably dates from the period of
Etruscan ascendency in Italy.
Audible and Inaudible Sounds.—The
phenomenon of color-blindness is a familiar
fact; but an analogous phenomenon, what
might be called pitch-deafness, though not
uncommon, is not so generally known. By
•Ditch-deafness is meant insensibility to cer
tain sound-vibrations. Prof. Donaldson, of
the University of Edinburgh, used to illus
trate the different grades of sensibility to
sound by a very simple experiment, namely,
by sounding a set of small organ-pipes of
great acuteness of tone. The gravest note
would be sounded first, and this would be
heard by the entire class. Soon some one
would remark, “ There, ’tis silent,” whereas
781
all the rest, perhaps, would distinctly hear
the shrill piping continued. As the tone
rose, one after another of the students
would lose sensation of the acute sounds,
until finally they became inaudible to all.
There is reason for supposing that per
sons whose ear is sensitive to very acute
sounds are least able to hear very grave
notes, and vice versa. Probably the hear
ing capacity of the human ear ranges over
no more than 12 octaves. The gravest
note audible to the human ear is supposed
to represent about 15 vibrations per second,
and the sharpest 48,000 per second.
The auditory range of animals is doubt
less very different from that of man; they
hear sounds which are insensible to us, and
vice versa. Many persons are insensible to
the scream of the bat—it is too acute. But
to the bat itself that sound must be in all
cases perfectly sensible. If, then, we sup
pose the bat to have an auditory range of
12 octaves, and its scream or cry to stand
midway in that range, the animal would
hear tones some six octaves higher than
those audible to the human ear—two and a
half million vibrations per second.
Scoresby and other arctic voyagers and
whale-hunters have observed that whales
have some means of communicating with
one another at great distances. It is prob
able that the animals bellow in a tone too
grave for the human ear, but quite within
the range of the cetacean ear.
The Motions of the Heart.—According
to the generally-accepted teachings of phys
iologists, the heart rests after each pulsa
tion ; that is, each complete contraction
during which the auricles are emptied into
the ventricles, and the ventricles into the
vessels, is followed by a moment’s repose,
when the organ is entirely at rest. Dr. J.
Bell Pettigrew, in his recently-published
lectures on the “ Physiology of the Circula
tion,” takes a different view, affirming that
the normal action of the heart is a con
tinuous one, and that as a whole it never
ceases to act until it comes to a final stop.
He says : “ When the heart is beating nor
mally, one or other part of it is always mov
ing. When the veins cease to close, and
the auricles to open, the auricles begin to
close and the ventricles to open ; and so on
�782
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
in endless succession. In order to admit
of these changes, the auriculo-ventricular
valves, as has been stated, rise and fall like
the diaphragm in respiration; the valves
protruding, now into the auricular cavities,
now into the ventricular ones. There is in
reality no pause in the heart’s action. The
one movement glides into the other as a
snake glides into the grass. All that the
eye can detect is a quickening of the gliding
movements, at stated and very short inter
vals. A careful examination of the sounds
of the heart shows that the sounds, like the
movements, glide into each other. There
is no actual cessation of sound when the
heart is in action. There are periods when
the sounds are very faint, and when only a
sharp or an educated ear can detect them,
and there are other periods when the sounds
are so distinct that even a dull person must
hear; but the sounds—and this is the point
to be attended to—merge into each other
by slow or sudden transitions. It would
be more accurate, when speaking of the
movements and sounds of the heart, to say
they are only faintly indicated at one time,
and strongly emphasized at another, but that
neither ever altogether ceases. If, however,
the heart is acting more or less vigorously
as a whole, the question which naturally
presents itself is, How is the heart rested ?
There can be little doubt it rests, as it acts,
viz., in parts. The centripetal and centrif
ugal wave-movements pass through the
sarcous elements of the different portions
of the heart very much as the wind passes
through the leaves : its particles are stirred
in rapid succession, but never at exactly the
same instant; the heart is moving as a
whole, but its particles are only moving at
regular and stated intervals ; the periods
of repose, there is every reason to believe,
greatly exceeding the periods of activity.
The nourishment, life, and movements of
the heart are, in this sense, synonymous.”
phere being represented as 100), he found
the birds seized with violent convulsions.
The same result followed when sparrows
were confined in common air under a press
ure of 17 atmospheres. In oxygen, at 3|
atmospheres’ pressure, or in air at 22 at
mospheres, the convulsions were extremely
violent and quickly fatal. The symptoms
in the latter case were these: Convulsions
set in after four or five minutes: in moving
about, the bird hobbles on its feet, as
though walking on hot coals. It then flut
ters its wings, falls on its back, and spins
about, the claws doubled up. Death super
venes after a few such spasms.
The toxic dose of oxygen for a dog was
found to require, for convulsions, a pressure
of 350 in oxygen; and a pressure of 500 is
fatal. The amount of oxygen in the arterial
blood of a dog in convulsions was found to
be considerably less than twice the normal
quantity. Hence the author’s startling con
clusion, that oxygen is the mostfearful poison
known.
Taking a dog in full convulsion out of
the receiver, M. Bert found the paws rigid,
the body bent backward in the shape of an
arch, the eyes protruding, pupil dilated,
jaws clinched. Soon there is relaxation,
followed by another crisis, combining the
symptoms of strychnine-poisoning and of
lockjaw. The convulsionary periods, at
first recurring every five or six minutes, be
come gradually less violent and less fre
quent.
The author sums up his conclusions as
follows : 1. Oxygen behaves like a rapidlyfatal poison, when its amount in the arte
rial blood is about 35 cubic centimetres per
cent, of the liquid; 2. The poisoning is
characterized by convulsions which repre
sent, according to the intensity of the symp
toms, the various types of tetanus, epilepsy,
poisoning by phrenic acid and strychnine,
etc.; 3. These symptoms, which are allayed
by chloroform, are due to an exaggeration
of the excito-motor power of the spinal cord;
4. They are accompanied by a considerable
and constant diminution of the internal tem
perature of the animal.
Poisoning by Oxygen.—M. Paul Bert,
whose observations upon the physiological
effects of high atmospheric pressure we have
already noted in the Monthly, communi
cates to the Paris Academy of Sciences the
Infant Mortality.—During the year 1868,
results of his observations on the toxic ac
tion of oxygen. Placing sparrows in oxygen 23,198 children under one year of age,
under a pressure of 850 (that of the atmos died by convulsions in England, the num
�NOTES.
ber of births being 786,858—one in 34.
In the same year the births in Scotland
were 115,514, and only.312 infants under
one year—one in 370—fell victims to con
vulsions. This striking difference in the
mortality statistics of the two countries is
accounted for in a report of the Scottish
Registrar-General by the difference between
the English and the Scottish modes of rear
ing infants. “ The English,” he writes,
“ are in the habit of stuffing their babies
with spoon-meat almost from birth, while
the Scotch, excepting in cases where the
mother is delicate, or the child is out nurs
ing, w isely give nothing but the mother’s
milk till the child begins to cut its teeth.”
The statistics of infantile deaths from
diarrhoea may also be adduced as an argu
ment in favor of the Scottish system. In
England more than twice as many infants
die of this disorder than in Scotland.
On comparing these statistics with those
of the last United States census, it will be
seen that the chances of life for infants in
their first year are far more favorable in
this country than in England, though not so
favorable as in Scotland. In the year end
ing May 31, 1870, there were born in the
United States 1,100,475 children. Of these
there died, during the same year 4,863 by
convulsions, and 1,534 by diarrhoea, or one
in 236 from the former cause, and one in
724 from the latter. In England the deaths
from diarrhoea amounted to 138 in 100,000
infants, and in Scotland to 66 in the same
number. It will be seen, on computation,
that the proportion of deaths from this
cause are by a very small fraction less in
the United States than in Scotland. But
now are we to attribute these very credita
ble results to our more rational system of
rearing children, or to the better social con
dition of the population here ?
783
He has the testimony of fifty-six witnesses
who saw the young enter the parent’s
mouth. Of these fifty-six, nineteen testify
that they heard the parent snake warning
her young of danger by a loud whistle.
Two of the witnesses waited to see the young
emerge again from their refuge, after the
danger was past; and one of them went
again and again to the snake’s haunt, ob
serving the same act on several successive
days. Four saw the young rush out when
the parent was struck ; eighteen saw the
young shaken out by dogs, or escaping from
the mouth of their dead parent. These tes
timonies are confirmed by the observations
of scientific men, such as Prof. Smith, of
Yale College, Dr. Palmer, of the Smithsonian
Institution, and others.
NOTES.
The year 1759, which witnessed the
completion of the Eddystone Lighthouse,
closed with tremendous storms, and the
courage of the light-keepers was tested to
the utmost. A biography of John Smeaton,
the builder of the Eddystone, states that
for twelve days the sea ran over them so
much that they could not open the door of
the lantern, or any other door. “The
house did shake,” said one of the keepers,
“ as if we had been up a great tree. The
old men were frightened out of their lives,
wishing they had never seen the place.
The fear seized them in the back, but rub
bing them with oil of turpentine gave them
relief!”
Sir Charles Lyell, in his “ Geology,”
speaking of Madagascar, says that, with two
or three small islands in its immediate vicin
ity, it forms a zoological sub-province, in
which all the species except one, and nearly
all the genera, are peculiar. He singles out
for special remark the lemurs of Madagas
car, comprising seven genera, only one of
which has any representatives on the nearest
main-land of Africa. Hitherto no fossil re
mains of these Madagascar species have
Snakes swallowing their Young.—The been known to exist, but M. Delfortrie, of
question, “ Do snakes swallow their young ?” the French Academy of Sciences, announces
that he has found, in the phosphorite of
that is, give them shelter in the maternal the department of Lot, an almost complete
stomach when danger threatens, was dis skull of an individual belonging to this lecussed in a paper presented to the Ameri murine family.
can Association by G. Brown Goode. The
Of the 35,170,294 passengers carried
author some time since asked, through the over the railroads of Pennsylvania last year,
public press, for testimony bearing on this only thirty-three were killed, less than one
subject, and he now comes forward with in a million. But the English lines make a
far more favorable showing, the number
what appears to be perfectly satisfactory killed in the year 1871 being only twelve—■
evidence in favor of the affirmative side. or one in 31,000,000.
�784
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
In the “ History of the Fishes of the Brit
ish Islands,” Giraldus Cambrensis, a writer
of the twelfth century, is quoted for the•
observation that in the Lyn y Cwn, or Pool1
of Dogs, in Wales, the trout, the perch, andI
the eel, were deficient of the left eye. A
recent work on “ Trout and Salmon Fishing;
in Wales,” strangely enough, confirms in
part this observation, asserting that one-•
eyed trout are still caught in the same
waters.
Professor Smee recently, at the Berlin
Chemical Society, proposed a method for
detecting organic matters contained in the
air, and for effecting at the same time a
kind of distillation by cold. A glass fun
nel, closed at its narrow end, is held sus
pended in the air and filled with ice. The
moisture of the air is condensed, in contact
with the exterior surface; it trickles to the
bottom of the apparatus, and falls into a
small basin placed for its reception. The
liquid obtained in a given time is weighed.
It generally contains ammonia, which is de
termined by known methods. Distillation
by cold may be employed for separating
volatile substances which might be injured
by heat. Thus, if flowers are placed under
a large bell-glass along with the refrigerat
ing funnel, a liquid is obtained in the basin
saturated with the odorous principles of
the flowers.
At various points on the river Thames,
between Woolwich and Erith, there are
visible at low water the remains of a sub
merged forest, over which the river now
flows. This fact, taken in connection with
other local phenomena, has led geologists
to conclude that the present outlet of the
Thames to the North Sea is of quite recent
origin, the waters having formerly passed
southward into the Weald by channels
which still remain. Excavations in the
marshes expose to view a deep stratum of
twigs, leaves, seed-vessels, and stools of
trees, chiefly of the yew, alder, and oak
kinds.
A traveller in Zanzibar describes the
red and black ants as one of the greatest
scourges with which Eastern Africa is af
flicted. These insects, he says, move along
the roads in masses so dense that beasts of
burden refuse to step among them. If the
traveller should fail to see them coming, in
time to make his escape, he soon finds them
swarming about his person. Sometimes,
too, they ascend the trees and drop upon
the wayfarer. The natives call them madinodo, that is, boiling water, to signify the
scalding sensation produced by their bite.
These ants are of great size, and burrow so
deep into the flesh that it is not easy to
pick them out. In certain forests they are
said to exist in such numbers as to be able
to destroy rats and lizards.
An eccentric and methodical man is Dr.
Rudolf, Danish governor of Upernavik,
Greenland. Dr. Rudolf is a scientist of some
distinction, and has contributed his share
to the scientific literature of his own coun
try, yet it is his choice to live in a region
where darkness prevails four months in the
year, and where he can have no communication with civilized life beyond the annual
visit from the government storeship, and the
casual arrival of whalers. By the storeship
the governor receives annually a file of
Danish newspapers; but instead of glan
cing through them hastily, he takes a fresh
journal every morning, reading the Dagblad
of Jan. 1, 1872, on Jan. 1, 1873. He thus
follows, day for day, the changes in the mind
of Denmark: is glad in the order in which
Copenhagen is glad, and vice versa, but al
ways precisely twelve months after the event.
If the white of an egg be immersed for
some 12 hours in cold water, it undergoes a
chemico-molecular change, becoming solid
and insoluble. The hitherto transparent
albumen assumes an opaque and snow-white
appearance, far surpassing that of the ordi
nary egg. Dr. John Goodman, writing in
the Chemical News, recommends this mate
rial for diet in cases where a patient’s blood
lacks fibrine. The substance being light and
easily digested, it is not rejected even by a
feeble stomach; and as it creates a feeling
of want rather than of repletion, it pro
motes, rather than decreases, the appetite
for food. After the fibrine has been pro
duced in the manner described above, it
must be submitted to the action of a boil
ing heat, and is then ready for use.
One of the great dangers attending the
use of the various sedatives employed in
the nursery is that they tend to produce
the opium-habit. These quack medicines
owe their soothing and quieting effects to
the action of opium, and the infant is by
them given a morbid appetite for narcotic
stimulants. The offering for sale of such
nostrums should be prohibited, as tending
to the physical and moral deterioration of
the race. In India mothers give to their
infants sugar-pills containing opium, and
the result is a languid, sensual race of hope
less debauchees. In the United States the
poisonous dose is administered under an
other name ; but the consequences will prob
ably be the same.
During last autumn, says the Journal of
ithe Society of Arts, there were no less than
1
seventeen companies engaged in extracting
j
gold from the auriferous sand of Finland.
'The alluvial deposits at Toalo are said to be
<extremely rich in gold, the total production
1last season being estimated at about $50,000.
<One of the companies returned a dividend
<of 70 per cent The largest nugget weighed
t40 grammes.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 3, October 1873
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Place of publication: [Harlan, Iowa]
Collation: [657]-784 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Complete issue. Contents: Silk-worms and sericulture / A. de Quatrefages -- Mental science and sociology / Herbert Spencer -- A national university / Charles Eliot -- Agassiz and Darwinism / John Fiske -- The primary concepts of modern physical science / J.B. Stallo -- Finding the way at sea / R.A. Proctor -- Secular prophecy [from Saturday Review] -- Sympathetic vibrations in machinery / Prof. J. Lovering -- Speculation in science / Prof. J. Lawrence Smith -- The glaciers and their investigation / Prof. John Tyndall -- The Moon / Richard A. Proctor. The Popular Science is an American bi-monthly magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects; edited by Joe Brown.
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Text
MILITARY MAGAZINE.
No. II.]
DE C E MB E R
1846.
[Vol. I.
OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY FORCES OF THE AGE.
In the least attempt to estimate the existing character of public
affairs, regard must be paid to past eras. It is only with a knowledge
of antecedent epochs, that we can possibly arrive at an appreciation
of subsequent periods. The present is but a sequence of the past.
The condition of the world, and of nations, is simply what the law of
progression may have ordained it to be. Empires are not great
merely through the force of a self-volition; and their aspects change
because their destinies are merely parts of that universal sympathy
which evolves in an everlasting flux of its symbols. Hence, the vi
cissitudes of kingdoms—hence, periods of the world in which one
principle of government, or of being, rather than another, soars to an
ascendant—hence, that we have at one season an all-sacerdotal .EEgypt
and an all-commercial Carthage; and, at another, an Athens, re
splendent in arts and arms, in poetry and philosophy; in whatever
goes to form the apotheosis of the species—and again a monkish
period, when hundreds upon hundreds of cycles are lost in enchain
ing the human spirit, and in imposing upon it fetters and super
stition.
To trace, or rathei’ to penetrate to the incipiency of change, were,
of course, curious occupation enough. To discover how imperial
Rome became macadamised (perhaps, the term may be allowed) to
the level of modern Italy, were strange indeed; but, although no
philosophic enquirer may have, as yet, reached the fond of the proMilitary Magazine. No. 2, Vol. 1.
H
�52
OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY FORCES OF THE AGE.
blem, yet does the fact not less present itself, that modification in the
circumstances of nations does momentarily ensue, and that imperial
Rome is lost in existing impotency.
Whatever, therefore, the cause, the fact is obvious, that the govern
ing influences of nations vary. Yesterday they were political—to
day they are social. At one epoch an enlightened Absolutism has
determined the general destiny; at another, a multitude of Federa
tive associations regulate the advance of the human tide. In one
age a Cincinatus is summoned to the Dictatorship; at another, an
Anti-Corn Law League, and a Richard Cobden. In one is seen the
military—at the other, the industrial phase of society. How the
economic mass have succeeded to the martial principle is not easily
traceable; but that the phenomenon exists, in fact, none can deny.
It is then the case that arms are falling under the domination of the
peaceful pursuits of life: in what degree, it behoves us now to en
quire.
Ostensibly—and it must be granted that the military principle is
as much in force now as ever—the large armies of the world appear
at once in proof of this. No one can suppose that in France the
martial ardour of the present century is less than it was in the last,
or than what it was at the time of the dazzling and chivalrous
Francis the First. The war party in Paris would have its ire
kindled to frenzy, at the rude surmise that its nation had abated one
jot of that gallant promptitude which sufficed to draw half a million
of soldiers to the walls of Moscow. Nevertheless, we repeat, the
spirit of an age does not wait to mould itself to the caprices or the
pertinacities of feeling in individuals. The genius of the times sweeps
on, independently of that; and we imagine it may be remarked, even
of France, that the military principle is in abeyance to those economic
and industrial influences which are so singularly manifest in this
country.
In Russia, and Austria also, the term tariff is growing louder than
that of commissariat. In the former instance, the mind is becoming
accustomed to think not so much on vast military appointments, as of
duties on tallow and hemp; while, under Prince Metternich, the
clearance and steam navigation of the Danube appear far readier
themes than speculations on the number of troops Vienna were pre
pared to transport over the Alps to Lombardy. In Prussia, the
�OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY FORCES OF THE AGE.
53
military power seems rather an exercise for discipline’s sake, than
for any real purpose of actual warfare. The country of Frederick the
Great seems reduced in these present times to a military experiment,
as an example, rather than a terror, to nations ; while, glancing to
wards the Ottoman Empire, the eye beholds a military mass, lessened
not so much in amount, as lost to all approximation, in point of any
of the formidable elements of valour or strength which composed its
former character. When Bacon wrote his celebrated axiom that
“ above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth most, that a na
tion do profess arms as their principal honour, study, and occupa
tion,” it is evident he had no “ inkling” upon his mind of the order of
things at the present time. It may, without scruple, be assumed
that martial powers were not now the salvatory power of the once
glorious City of the Golden Horn. All the military capacity in the
world would not lessen its impotency and degradation ; but its mili
tary fame has become tarnished because of its deficiency in those
traits which are necessary to uphold the military character. Gibbon
observes, of the purer ages of the Commonwealth: “ the use of arms
was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a
property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws which it
was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain.” And here we are
presented with a grand view of what the military power of a State
might be. Here it is shewn that a military power, so far from being
incompatible with civil freedom, as is frequently falsely asserted,
may take its origin in the loftiest conditions of freedom. In fact,
with military organizations, as with the clerical, and every other
order which exists in a State, it is the genius with which it is embued
that renders it either a blessing or a curse. In Great Britain espe
cially, the military principle has not enthusiastic supporters. Where
fore it has not, is scarcely our vocation at present to enquire ; but
what it is necessary to ascertain is, the extent to which, for the conso
lidation and security of the empire, it is required; and why and inas
much that it cannot be dispensed with.
Having frankly and fairly admitted that the tone of the age is not
military—that, in the flux and progress of circumstances, nations
have proceeded from military to other governing rules of action—it
may not be presumptuous to insist why, notwithstanding, a military
organization cannot be departed from ?—and why the condition of
�54
OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY FORCES OF THE AGE.
the world renders an armed force essential to the interests of coun
tries ?
To any one, then, who glances over the political map of the world,
it will be evident that, although no nation is prepared for aggression,
yet that all are upon the defensive. To be thus, is a stage from
actual warfare. In fact, the earth lies bound in the arms of peace.
The period is precisely that of Adrian, when it is described of the
Roman arms : “ They preserved peace by a constant preparation for
war.” And the great powers of Europe feel this to be the case, that
the general security is guaranteed by the readiness of each for war.
The discipline then of those armed ranks should be the highest.
Away with brute force !—there is no demand for it; but intellectual
culture, profound science—in fine, mentai operation—are now called
to do the work of mere physical sinew. Is England to neglect her
military ability under such circumstances ? Surely not. Her se
curity is more and more dependant upon the character of her military
ability. The old Romans, it should be remembered, laid so little
stress upon valour, unless accompanied by skill and practice, that in
their language, the name of an army was borrowed from the word
which signifies exercise. At a period when refinement has been
carried far in every thing, it is time to introduce it into our army.
It is time that its organization should become matter of thought, not
merely as relates to its physique, but to its morale. The British
legions should hasten to become patterns to the world of refined in
tellectual superiority. If our present military tactics mean bullying,
and our military fortitude the faculty of applying, or enduring, the
“ cat,” the sooner we look to the reform of the system the better.
Do without soldiers, Britain cannot. Her colonies are a call upon her
for them—India is held by them—Ireland rejoices in a third of her
whole standing army. Our military positions, in the Mediterranean,
in the Atlantic, and in China, were not worth an hour’s purchase
without them. In our penal settlements there are thousands of mal
contents retained in something like moral decency and subjection by
only the presence of a few bayonets. Yet, with all the importance
of the British arms, what has the State done towards its improvement
and advancement ? The truth is, it has been shamefully left without
any public enquiry. It is never heard of, unless a volley of cannon,
from some crimson field in the East, recalls the knowledge of its
�OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY FORCES OF THE AGE.
55
existence: then a crown of laurel may be decreed to the General;
but what is yet thought of the prospects of the private ? To be sure,
if he be wounded, there is a shabby pension for him ; but, if he com
mit a breach of discipline, he is to be flogged—or recently was so—
aye, to the score of a thousand lashes I 1 Shame that a flogging
system should have obtained in the British army, when Frenchmen
scouted it in theirs. Why, if we have no honour for our actual
defenders, let us at least honourably dispense with their services. If
we scout the sword of our soldiers, let us lay it in its scabbard. At
all events, and in calm truthfulness, it is necessary for the public to
examine into the question of its military force, and estimate its value
to the Civil requirements of the State, or the position of the empire
will be hazarded. In plain terms, the British army cannot longer be
abandoned to itself, and shut out from the general enlightenment of
the age, without the entrainment of difficulties which future States
men may shrink from coping with. As formerly an army was the
brute force of a nation, so it should now be the intellectual adjunct to
a dignified principle of diplomacy. If the British legions had been
inspired with the sentiments which should have ennobled them, when
Poland fell before the cruel ambition of the Czar, freedom would then
have been safe, as it would have been sufficient that England should
have evinced her indignant rage at the approach of the Cossack, to
have saved Warsaw by a mere demonstration. But when war opens
between uncultivated forces, who shall say where it shall terminate ;
and it was this dread which stood between England and the land of
Sobiesky when the Vistula was crossed by the Scythian savage, in
1830.
Above all nations of the earth, England requires a refined soldiery.
She wants it as a metaphysical engine; and she must rise to it, if she
wish to keep her position in the balance without rivalry or fear. At
the same time, we heartily echo the opinion of the Times, that she
should not be anxious to exhibit herself in “ a regiment and a half”
to Czars of Russia, or Princes of Prussia. Real strength is most fre
quently covert: at any rate, it never seeks to display itself in a spirit
of empty ostentation. The country has really seen enough of no
meaning reviews, and should, for the future, be content in cultivating
a more intrinsic martial power. In an age of earnestness like the
present, we might add, that park exhibitions of the character alluded
�56
OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY FORCES OF THE AGE.
to by the Times have more for their intent to bring military operations into ridicule, than to endow them with national respect. Men
smile as the artillery pours forth its mock terrors; and bayonets glis
tering for no object under heaven but to gratify a puerile vanity,
leave an impression on the fancy of a theatrical pageant on which one
places no faith, nor for which do we cherish any esteem. In place of
sham contests, it were preferable to pursue the study of real skill and
accomplishments. Because a soldier is not actually in the heat of a
campaign, it does not follow that he should not master the theory of
his subject. There is a system of intellectual tactics in which it
henceforth becomes the duty of the British soldier to perfect himself.
It is to the degradation of the military art that it has been so long one
of exclusively physical thrusts and bruises. In fact, it were to anni
hilate the reality of war, to make its idealisation perfect. The
evolutions to which a general would have to resort in actual encounter
with an enemy, he should have acquired by his mind, as a matter of
abstract study, before the field were ever entered. The commonest
drill-sergeant should participate the scientific prescience of the superior
officer. Each man in his regiment should be able to seize the ideas
of his military leader with the same ease and rapidity as he is now
merely able to proceed from slow to quickened paces.
The veteran
who knows only to shoulder his musket, is still raw in comparison of
the informed recruit whose reading and meditation have made him
acquainted with the strategy of a Turenne, and the true secret of
military superiority. When military knowledge should be thus
universally diffused, bloodshed would already have been proscribed.
The old ideas of carnage would be swept into those records of past
barbarism in which are numbered the wholesale scouring of regions
of Jengis Khan or Tamerlane.
*
It is, too, precisely as the means of
a more deadly warfare have arrived to the knowledge of mankind,
that the chances of a positive state of belligerence have been lessened.
When amongst all nations the calculations on the military art are
become obvious, war will not be attempted. Hence, the phase of an
* “ This irruption,” says Elphinstone, “ of the Moguls was the greatest calamity
that has fallen on mankind since the Deluge. They had no religion to teach, and
no seeds of improvement to sow; nor did they offer an alternative of conversion or
tribute; their only object was to slaughter or destroy; and the only trace they left
was in the devastation of every country which they visited.”
�OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY FORCES OF THE AGE.
57
Armed Neutrality—the phase that nations have almost put on at
the present period. But an Armed Neutrality calls for the very
highest consummation of military science; it calls for the last perfec
tion of, not mere martial prowess, but of profound and subtle theory.
An Armed Neutrality, while it passes a veto on actual bloodshed, yet ■
requires in an imperative degree the sagacity, the study, and the
judgment, of how mankind may be most certainly slaughtered. Brute
force is an element beside the question in an Armed Neutrality. It
is as if it did not exist; or worse, becomes a terror to itself. It is not
brute force, but the educated soldier an Armed Neurality imperatively
calls for. It is a Military principle abounding in intelligence, an
Armed Neutrality forcibly exacts; it is a military organization—self
gifted as an intellectual inspiration—that a State requires to aid in
the endeavour to arrest the approaches of real war.
In fine, the Civil security of nations now demands an educated
and refined Military principle. In Great Britain especially, the idea
of what were martial has been long regarded with suspicion and
distaste. The general impresion is, that Civil liberty is imperilled by
an approximation to any license of military prerogative. The empire
has, in fact, tolerated a necessity before which it has appeared to
tremble. Yet, can an army be dispensed with? Would one English
man spring to the platform and declare that an army were a useless
encumbrance? If it cannot be dispensed with, common sense de
mands why it should be uncared for, or be distasteful? Common
reason exclaims,—strip it of its terrors, by investing it with
graces. That is,—convert it from barbarism to an intelligence—give
it affections; a character to maintain—give it culture and amenity.
Then, it could not well be conceived how the Civil element should
rebel against the Military; rather, why they might not mutually
assimilate and combine. Why they have seemed antagonistic ele
ments, is, inasmuch as that the Civil enjoins order, and the Military
had seemed to have conferred its sanction upon discord. The British
soldier has been dreaded by the Civilian, because his habits seemed
irregular, his manners low, his propensities running to self-indulgence
amidst gross pleasures. The ale-house seemed the native element
of the private escaped from duty, and, combined with these traits, a
total disregard of domestic duties. The higher enjoyments of exist
ence seemed unsought by the tumid grades under the rank of Ensign
�58
OF THE
CIVIL AND MILITARY FORCES OF THE AGE.
and Cornet. But the axiom should be, let the State care for its army,
so that change come ovekthe spirit of the dream ; and above all let it be
exhorted to the army itself:—“ Renovate yourself, reform yourself,
march on with the improvements of the times.”
The political question involved is, however, of the greatest magnitude
and interest. It is the destiny of nations that most truly may be said to
tremble in what may be the character of their armed force; until the
adverse principle of civilization is supplanted by one entirely of pro
mise, the world may depend upon it, armies must be maintained, and
will, to the end of the chapter. If Military principle must be kept up,
let it be put to its full force; it should embellish while it protects a
State, and should certainly solace instead of alarm.
The aspect of Europe is strictly that in which the Military principle
must remain in its full vigour. Yet it were preposterous to suppose
that the Civil force were destined to suffer any abatement in its influ
ence from that cause. Commerce must now beautify the earth.
Bloodshed may cease; but not a battalion must be sliced from the
army estimates. The Military must now come in to support the
Commercial and Civil power. Cannon may not bellow ; but where
a British ship spreads its canvass to the gale, garrisons must exist to
its protection on the shore whither it bears its way.
There is no denying it—Armed Neutrality is the order of the
period. France, Germany, Russia,—even Switzerland, even Spain,
—array their armed forces, and England—Shall she not do the same?
But if a British army is to continue in existence, why let it do so to
the honour and glory of the empire. Let it not be a stigma to the
country. Let it not be a terror to the timid—a violation of, or an
antithesis to, the Civil desiderata of the age. The Army of England
—why let it perform its functions; let it fulfil its mission.
There is no reas’on why the Civil and Military forces of a State
should be in mutual opposition; there is no reason why they should not
intimately coalesce. But to realise the possibility, they must not be
held in dissonance. The Civil must not be allowed to outstrip the
intellectual advancement of the Military. The Military element must
rise to the same standard of excellence as the Civil, and then, un
questionably, they may co-exist, not to their mutual disparagement,
but in the light of forces combined for the consolidation of the
interests of the State.
�59
THE DUKE AND THE WATERLOO VETERANS.
On perusing, the other day, the motion of l\Ir. Duncombe, Member
for Finsbury, in the late Session of Parliament,- regarding the New
port conspirators, Frost, Davis, and Williams, a military occurrence,
to which the treasonable attempt of those men gave rise, was recalled
to our remembrance.
On the occasion alluded to. every member of the military profes
sion felt pleased that the gallant leaders of the military parties—to
whom, under Divine Providence, the town of Newport owed its pre
servation—were deemed worthy of being raised one step in the
ladder of promotion—not only because it was nobly earned, but that
it afforded an earnest that for the future the advisers of the Crown
would be more alive to the merits of the subalterns, though to those
who were fast descending into the vale of years the introduction of a
new system of promotion could afford but a small portion of conso
lation. Had those who had the power from 1810 to 1840, and whom
gratitude should have prompted to generous deeds, shown an equal
alacrity in bestowing rewards for military merit, we should not now
have the melancholy spectacle daily presented to our view, of Cap
tains and Lieutenants with silvery, if not hoary locks, serving their
country in the same rank that they held thirty years ago when at the
head of their gallant companions they rushed to the deadly combat,
—'not against a half-armed, half-clad, undisciplined rabble ; but wellarmed, well-trained, and well-tried soldiers ; and commanded, not by
such poltrons as a Frost, a Davis, or a Williams, but by Napoleon
himself, or one of his marshals, aided by experience acquired in an
hundred fights. That Lieutenant Gray nobly upheld the high cha
racter which the 45th acquired in the Peninsula, we admit, and also
that his promotion was a judicious act on the part of her Majesty’s
advisers ; but it was neither a prudent nor a grateful act on the part of
the country to promote so young an officer as Lieutenant Gray then
was, for a fifteen or twenty minutes'tilt with poor squallid wretches
altogether unskilled in the art of war, and to pass over those old
Lieutenants—who in the Peninsula, and at Waterloo—had been
engaged with troops, by their leader denominated invincible, and not
for fifteen or twenty ninutes, but some of them for more than
THREE HOURS FOR EVERY MINUTE LIEUTENANT GRAY WAS ENGAGED
Newport. Was this a grateful, a prudent, a generous, or a just
act? But what has added very much to the poignancy of their
feelings is the fact, that the memorial which they forwarded last year
to the Sovereign, for permission to suspend from' their breasts some
small decoration commemorative of the services in which they had been
at
Military Magazine.
No. 2, Vol. 1,
I
�60
BRITISH AND FRENCH SOLDIERS.
respectively engaged, was not only not supported, but actually opposed
by the distinguished chief who should have been the first to carry
their humble petition to the foot of the throne. May he live long to
enjoy his well won honours, but repent soon of the course he has
hitherto pursued regarding the claims of the war veterans. And if
a few words of truthful advice could have any effect in bringing
about so desirable an object, we would at once say to his Grace,
“ Press the claims of your old companions in arms on the attention of
the Sovereign, and should your efforts be baffled by some pitiful ob
jection from the Minister of the day on the score of expense, make
him a tender of the full amount of such expense, for considerable
though it undoubtedly would be, it would make but a very insignifi
cant impression on the stores of the good things of this life which
the Peninsula and Waterloo heroes, by their gallantry and a profuse
expenditure of their blood on a hundred fields, have placed at your
Grace’s disposal.”
BRITISH AND FRENCH SOLDIERS.
Volumes of no ordinary magnitude might be filled with the plans
which officers have adopted to rouse the spirits of their followers, but
it was reserved for the late ruler of France to show the world that
there once lived a man with heart so callous, so completely steeled
against everything approaching to the common feelings of our nature,
that to elevate himself to universal empire, he stooped to practise
upon his soldiers the most detestable frauds, by means of which
thousands—yea, tens of thousands of his fellow men rushed at his
bidding to the cannon’s mouth, and there found a premature grave.
We are assured by one who knew Napoleon well, that previous to
a Review, he would say to one of his aides-de-camp, “ Ascertain
from the colonel of such a regiment, whether he has in his corps a
man who has served in the campaigns of Italy or Egypt. Ascertain
his name, where he was born, the particulars of his family, and what
he has done. Learn his number in the ranks, and to what company
he belongs, and furnish me with the information.”
On the day of the Review, Bonaparte, at a single glance, could
perceive the man who had been described to him. He would go up
to him, as if he recognised him, address him by his name, and say,
“ Oh! so you are here ; you are a brave fellow. I saw you at
Aboukir. How is your old father ? What! have you not got the
Cross ? Stay, I will give it you.” Then the delighted soldiers would
�BRITISH AND FRENCH SOLDIERS.
61
say to each other, you see the Emperor knows us all ; he knows oiir
families; he knows where we have served.
On perusing this extract, one is tempted to exclaim, Can the man
who practised so unworthy a stratagem to stimulate the soldiers to
fresh deeds of blood and slaughter, to induce them to devote them
selves like a Decius in some daring enterprise undertaken to raise
him another step on the ladder of ambition ; who, to increase his
ascendency over his followers, and thereby the more surely secure
their aid in the prosecution of his grand scheme of personal aggran
dizement was base enough to take advantage of the position he occu
pied, and compel officers commanding battalions to join him in the
commission of a vile, a despicable fraud ; and upon the very men to
whom he. owed all he possessed, and whose interests it was his duty
to watch over with more than a parent’s care, be the same person who
on almost all occasions, arrogated to himself the distinctive appella
tion of the soldier’s friend and father ; the same person, at the bare
mention of whose name the most powerful potentates of the Euro
pean Continental family were at one time wont to tremble on their
thrones ; the same person, who, wishing, like Pellas’ ambitious youth,
when treading the same ground, to be considered of Origin Divine ;
impiously declared to the Mufti, on entering the Sepulchral Chamber,
in the Pyramid of Cheops, that he could command a car op fire to
descend from Heaven, and guide and direct its course upon earth ;
and on being answered in the affirmative, not less apt to exclaim
impossible—the base qualities of the mind exhibited by the French
ruler on the occasions alluded to, being more nearly allied to those
incased in the hearts of the friends inhabiting the lowest depths of
Pandemonium, than in the breasts of the blessed inhabitants of the
realms above.
Nothing can more clearly show, than the conduct of Napoleon, as
narrated by his friend and secretary, Bourrienne, that when successful
in their first attempts to acquire an ascendency over their fellow men,
ambitious individuals like him, but seldom relax in their endeavours
to extend that influence, until, by not unfrequently false and fraudu
lent practices, they have seated themselves so firmly on the highest
pinnacle of human greatness to which man can be elevated, that they
can dictate whatever laws they please, even to those by whose aid
they have been elevated to power. The worshippers of the would-be
God ever ready with an apology for their idol, very gravely assure
us, that it was from no wish to gratify any personal feeling of his
own that he was induced to establish despotism, and to rule with a
rod of iron even those brave men who had raised him from the depths
•of poverty to a throne, but from an over-ruling necessity. But who
�62
BRITISH AND FRENCH SOLDIERS.
forced him to play the tyrant, and the charlatan ? Who advised him ?
It could not, we think, be his Secretary. And where had he another
friend on earth ? Friendship with Bonaparte being but a name.
What says Bourrienne, “ IIow often has he said to me, friendship is
but a name ; I love no one, no, not even my brothers ; Joseph perhaps
a little ; and if I do love him, it is from habit, and because he is my
elder. Duroc I ah, yes! I love him too ; but why ? his character
pleases me ; he is cold, reserved, and resolute ; and I really believe he
never shed a tear I As to myself, it is all one to me ; I know ivell
that 1 have not one true friend.” From this it is evident that no per
sonal friend could have urged Napoleon to pursue the despicable
course he did. To what then are we to attribute his conduct to his
soldiers, but to an unbounded ambition, and which he perceived
he never could hope to see gratified unless he could secure the
entire devotion of his soldiers to his interests, and rouse their
courage to that point which would enable them to contend, suc
cessfully, man to man, with their British rivals ; the only obstacle
which then obstructed his -progress towards the object which
from his earliest campaign he had kept steadily in view, for, that be
tween the troops of the two nations, there then existed this difference
as regards military virtues, “ the French required the spur; the
British the curb”—all who have witnessed the conduct of the two
armies in action must allow. This may prove a bitter pill for our friends
on the other side of the channel to swallow, and not the less unpala
table, perhaps, that the assertion is true. At the commencement of
the action, French troops almost universally exhibit a great deal of
ardour ; but when, in their progress, they meet with greater obstacles
than they expected at starting, their ardour evaporates, and by-andbye it requires all the tact and courage for which French officers have
ever been celebrated to keep their men at their posts. John Bull, on
the other hand, is less animated at the beginning of a battle, but, as
the action proceeds, his ire kindles, and instead of recoiling from
before an obstacle which he may have found greater than he expected,
his courage encreases with the danger until he succeeds in planting
the standard of victory on the field of honour. That we shall be
joined in the opinion we have formed of the character of the troops
of the rival countries, by all officers who took part in the Peninsular and
Waterloo campaigns, and are qualified to form an estimate of military
character, the following little anecdote is a sufficient guarantee :—
A French officer, taken in the battles of the Pyrenees, having one
day asked Colonel Belson, of the 28th Regiment, if he could assign
any cause why in every engagement the number of officers killed and
wounded in each army were much larger in proportion to the number
engaged than that of the privates, the gallant colonel, more at home
�BRITISH AND FRENCH SOLDIERS.
63
at the head of his corps when it was about to present the enemy with
a “ bit of the steel,” than when playing the courtier, replied to the
querist with all the bluntness and blandness of the soldier, “ I know
of no other cause than this, that your officers are compelled to go in
front of their men to show them, the way to the cannon’s mouth, we
are obliged to go in front of our .men to keep them back," a remark
which proved a staggerer for the querist, who was evidently fishing
for a compliment, and rather abruptly retired, anything but pleased at
having, instead of a highly-seasoned dish of flattei'y, caught a Tartar.
It is, however, no doubt true, that through the incapacity, or some
thing worse, of the General-in-Chief, British soldiers have occasion
ally been foiled in their attempts to attach victory to their standard, but
from a thorough knowledge of the bull-dog courage which lies incased
in the breasts of British troops, acquired on not a few crimsoned
coloured fields—I assert, that employ them wherever you may—on
the banks of the Sutlej, in the frozen regions of America, or the fer
tile plains of Europe—they will return from every field, on which
they may be marshalled, with brows encircled with wreaths of laurel,
if led by a General of even common talent, and not out-numbered in
a greater proportion than three to two.
As corroborative of this opinion, we trust we shall be excused for
adverting to a little good-natured sparring match, which occurred at
Abrantes, in 1812, between two rather celebrated officers, members
of the two distinguished corps, the Bragge-slashers and the Connaught-rangers, who, being birds of passage, were invited to dine at
the mess of a few brother-officers, stationed there on duty. During
dinner, warlike exploits were forgotten, but when the wine began to
circulate, Egypt, Corunna, Talavera, Busaco, Barrosa, Cuidad Rod
rigo, &c., were echoed and re-echoed, until the gallant disputants had
proved, to their own entire satisfaction, at least, that every soldier in
their respective corps could upset twenty Frenchmen, with as much
ease as they could the glasses before them. To. the no small amuse
ment of the other members around the festive board, the friendly war
of words continued, until
“ Six battles a piece had well wore out the night,
When Bragge’s gallant Major, to finish the fight,”
rose, and in his usual humourous manner, but in rather a parade tone
of voice, said to his equally gallant opponent, “ Pooh, pooh, my good
fellow; away with your Connaught-rangers; give me the Braggeslashers, the dirty half hundred, and the Gordon Highlanders, and I
will clear a way through five thousand of the best French Infantry
that ever trod old mother earth.”
�64
ON BRITISH AND FRENCH SOLDIERS.
History, though prolific in examples of officers attempting to rouse
the spirit of their soldiers by fictitious means, is almost silent as re
gards the means adopted by Bonaparte to obtain a similar object.
And why? Because he was the first individual, occupying an im
perial throne, who, in order to obtain a purely personal object, de
scended so low, as to put in practice a base, a grovelling device—so
totally unworthy of imitation—that, were it to be acted upon on an
extensive scale, all confidence in the officers, on the part of the
soldiers, would be banished from the ranks ; and the armies of Europe
would soon become little better than an armed rabble.
During the late struggle in the Peninsula, and the short and
glorious one in Belgium, the British Government held out to the
private soldier no sort of inducement for one man to equal, or surpass
another either in good conduct or gallantry in the field, and yet the
Duke of Wellington never experienced the slightest difficulty in
prevailing upon his heroic followers to thrash their opponents
to their hearts’ content without having recourse to so paltry—
so mean a device, not even on those occasions when he was out
numbered in the proportion of five to one in Cavalry, and
more than two to one in Infantry, as on the 3d and 4th of
May, 1811. And that those officers who may hereafter he in
trusted with the command of British troops will have no greater
difficulty in getting their men to give an enemy an equally “ sound
bateing,” may very naturally be inferred, from what has lately taken
place in India, and elsewhere. Distant, far distant, be the day when,
in obedience to the call of duty, Britons shall again have to buckle on
their armour to chastise foreign insolence, repel invasion, or protect
the weak against the aggressive acts of a more powerful neighbour ;
but come when it may, we have not the slightest dread, that on being
run alongside of a hostile man-of-war, the future race of British
Blue Jackets will ever require any other inducement to force their
way to the quarter-deck of their opponent than, “ England expects
every man to do his duty,” or that on being ordered to come to close
quarters with an enemy, their gallant brethren in scarlet will require
any other spur to induce them to mount a breach, or take the enemy s
bull-dogs by the muzzle than “ Up Lads and at them.”
�ON MILITARY LAW *
Military Law has usually been considered, not only by the ma
jority of that portion of the public induced at times to ponder on
the matter and others allied to it, but also by the ablest military juris
consults and writers, (including, amongst others, Adye, Tytler,
Kennedy, and Simmons,) as merely an emanation from the social
law, dependent upon it, responsible to it, and seeking its assistance
under all difficulties. The gallant author of the work—to a cursory
notice of which we purpose confining ourselves, and the title of which
we have subjoined—entertains however an adverse opinion to these
several, and not altogether unimportant authorities ; and throughout
his “ Remarks” he merely advocates the separation of military from
social law. Major General Napier deems this amalgamation—this
mutual dependence—of the two systems, although laid down and
acted upon by the legislature, as founded upon an erroneous principle,
and affirms that the authors who have written upon military law,
have hitherto endeavoured to claim it upon this principle, that they
had, really and unmistakeably, “ no alternative.” “ Their works,” he
adds, “ were written to expound the law as it is, for the instruction
of young officers, mine is written to controvert the propriety of union
between the social and military law.”
The views adopted and put forth by our author with reference to
the army and its administration, together with the tone and general
style of his argument, may be gathered from the following extract:_ ■with considerable spirit, though somewhat dictatorially phrased, he
employs the following language in discussing the connection between
the two systems :
What concerns us in this book is, the consideration of the army and its
government as they at present exist. That army is annually paid and
governed by virtue of a vote passed in the House of Commons ; the
members of which represent, a portion of the people of England, according
to some ; and the whole, according to others. But, in either case, the House
of Commons holds the strings of the public purse, and is consequently
supreme.
Now this House of Commons has placed the Army under the full control
of the King; has very justly so placed it; and whatever may be the variety
of opinions, as to the proper formation of the House of Commons, it must
be admitted by every man, that the most democratically formed legislature
would, if it allowed an army to exist at all, place it, in like manner, under
* Remarks on Military Law and the Punishment of Flogging, by Major Gem
Charles J. Napier, C.B.—Messrs. Boone, New Bond-street,
�66
OX MILITARY LAW.
the control of the chief magistrate. At all events so it is now ; and con
sequently that army (both collectively and individually) breaks the Social.,
as well as the military law, in disobeying the King, or “ Captain-General,”
set over it by the constitution: if once an army deliberates whether it shall
obey orders, or not, it ceases to be an army ; and soon becomes an armed
mob, without the unity of purpose which generally animates a mob ; for
difference of opinion will arise of necessity in most deliberative bodies ;
and difference of opinion among armed men soon becomes a combat. The
right of an army to exist is, therefore, settled by the constitution; and
existing constitutionally, its essence consists in implicit obedience to the King
as its constitutional commander. Nor does this principle admit of any com
promise or infringement. It is true that individual opinions are and must
be free ; we know that that men cannot control their opinions ; for
“ He that complies against his will
Is of the same opinion still.”
But if opinions are uncontrollable, and that free men have a tight to speak
their opinions, it is not so with deeds : deeds ate not always free, and least
of all in the army. I strenuously deny to the soldier the right to hesitate
before he obeys orders. And for the same reason, I deny the justice of
punishing him for any deed that he may commit in obedience to orders, be
cause to do so is inconsistent; it is to make the law punish soldiers for
obedience to its own enactments. It is true that a solder is a citizen ; but
he is an armed and a paid citizen ; and therefore, necessarily, in such bonds
and trammels that his field of action as a denizen of the community is
limited to a small space indeed. The fact is, that the British soldier s heart
and feelings are those of a citizen; but his actions are only so far those of a
citizen as they consist in obedience to military authority. That authority is
set over him by the citizens themselves, through the means of their repre
sentatives 5 and by the slightest breach of obedience he offends and fails in
his duties to those citizens,who (supposing their representatives to be on a just
footing) tax themselves to pay and arm him for their defence. Perfect
obedience is then a yoke which every soldier of the British army voluntarily
places upon his own neck when he enlists. It may be said, that in case of
civil war my reasoning will not hold good. The only answer I make to this
objection is by asking, what reasoning ever did, or ever will hold good,
when “ might is right?" Charles was a felon in 1649, and a martyr ml 660!
Cromwell was enthroned] in -1653, axdi gibetted in 1660 ! and all amid public
acclamation.
The punishment of flogging is also treated of in the volume under
our notice. General Napier confesses that he has entered on the sub
ject with much hesitation, but he concludes it to be one from the
consideration of which he ought not to shrink, <5 The public, he
writes, c£ have raised this question, which is now like 1 a troubled
spirit,’ and can be laid by discussion alone.
We do not propose
however at present, entangling either ourselves or oui’ readers in the
discussion of so momentous—so vitally important a question to the
�ON MILITARY LAW.
67
interests and well-being of the Army and its members. Suffice it,
therefore, that we now limit ourselves to a brief exposition of our
author’s opinion on the subject.
In reply, then, to the question which he asks, “ Can flogging be
safely abolished ?” General Napier adopts a middle course—“ medio
tutiseimus ibis”—and affirms that “it can be safely abolished in
peace ; but cannot be abolished in war''
The inherent objections to flogging, he states to be, its unequal in
fliction ; its indelibly branding the man ; its danger to his life ; its ill
effects on the soldiers’ minds ; in a word, its being torture ; and he
thus recites the details of his affirmation as to the safe abolition of the
punishment during the time of peace. Believing it to be then a
needless act of severity, he continues :—
If sailors are not promptly obedient in a ship tossed by the storm, the
vessel is lost: so an army in the field, without prompt obedience, may be
lost. As greater promptness is necessary in a ship than in an army, so we
see necessity forms the law, and ordains that instead of the slower process of
punishment by a court-martial, the captain of a ship may flog at once,
without any court. By analagous reasoning it appears, that an army at
home, and in time of peace, will require less vigorous and prompt punish
ment than it does abroad, and in time of war; because,
First.—There is no immediate, and if I may be allowed to use the expres
sion, no convulsive effort to be produced.
Secondly.—There are not the same crimes to punish; for in war, on a
campaign, and in the colonies, all crimes are tried by military law. whereas
in time of peace, and at home even in time of war, all the great crimes are
tried by social law, or according to social law, excepting mutiny.
Here, then, we find that flogging has been established promptly to sup
press those great crimes which military law has to grapple with in war,
Which do not merit death; and which, were there means and time, would be
adequately punished by imprisonment and fines; and that among these
crimes are some created by war, crimes which are purely military; and still
farther, we know that immediate and violent results are to be produced,
which are not demanded in peace. Flogging is then a means suited to an
end, and that end is war\ now if the end ceases to exist, we may reasonably
suppose that the means are no longer necessary, and may be safely abolished.
Such is General Napier’s chief reason for believing that the
punishment of the lash may be given up in time of peace;
We had designed extracting, and at the same time adding a few of
our own comments upon, many other portions of this volume, but our
space, for the present, is exhausted. Like a true soldier, General
Napier shows himself, by these writings, a brave yet benevolent man,
and on all points demanding the exercise of mind, exhibits consider
able shrewdness, if not sagacity. A constant stream of interesting
and professional anecdote, enlivens the entire volume.
Military Magazine. No. 2, Vol. 1.
K
�68
LETTER FROM THE SKELETON BROTHERS TO
MR. JOHN BULL.
We are none of those, my dear Mr. Bull, who are never happy but
when making free with the character of an absent friend, or neigh
bour; but your conduct to us has been so widely different from that
which we had every right to expect—all the communications ad
dressed to you during the last twenty years having been treated with
marked neglect—we are compelled thus publicly to submit our
grievances, for doing which, the unenviable position we occupy must
plead our apology.
Through your parsimony, ingratitude, or penny-wise-and-poundfoolish economy, we have, for more than twenty years, been daily
exposed to the taunts and sneers of every knight, and lady-fair, who
have been induced to visit the Acropolis of the modern Athens; and
it adds not a little to our miseries, to see our neighbours—and should
be, friends—the Nelson, the Playfair, the Stuart, the Burns, the
Melville, and other monuments, raised to departed worth, not only
joining the other parties in their attempts to bring us into ridicule,
but daily, yea hourly reminding us of our poverty-stricken appear
ance, by contrasting, in the presence of strangers, their highlyfinished and symmetrical with our own skeleton figures. But all
this we could patiently bear, and in silence, were none but natives of
Scotland permitted to visit the celebrated eminences, where for
twenty years we have borne, almost without a murmur, the pelting
of the pitiless storm; but, unfortunately for us, for our beloved coun
try, and not less in concern for our friend, Mr. Bull, travellers, in
considerable numbers, from all quarters of the world, are annually
attracted to the Acropolis, to enjoy the splendid panoramic view of
Auld Reekie which it affords, and who are not content with a hearty
laugh at our expense, but, on returning to their native land, they, on
submitting a plan of Edinburgh for the inspection of their friends,
never fail to point to us with the finger of scorn, as monuments of our
country’s poverty, and John Bull’s ingratitude.
In days of yore the Land of Cakes, and you, my dear Mr. Bull,
were wont to handle each other rather roughly, but, surely, now that
you and Auld Scotia have buried all your little bickerings in oblivion,
and become one for weal or for woe, you do not still permit the issue
of Edward’s march to Bannockburn to rankle in your bosom. We do
not for a moment suppose you capable of any thing of the sort, though
not a few of our countrymen fancy, that either that or some other
ancient affair in which you came off second best, must be preying
upon your mind. Otherwise you would, long ere this, have shewn a
�SKELETON BROTHERS.
69
disposition to present to the land of the mountain and flood some small
token of personal friendship, in grateful remembrance of the important
services which her sons had rendered to you in your late terrific
struggle for your very existence. It is possible that you may fancy
yourself not at all indebted to our much-loved country, or that the
services of the latter may have escaped your recollection, for there is
no denying the fact that the memory often proves treacherous when
we wish to forget a favour conferred upon us. With your permission,
therefore, I will endea vour to recall to your remembrance a few of the
services in which the sons of Scotland acted no unimportant parts.
From the breaking out of the late war to its final termination, what
engagement took place, by land or by sea, in which the soul of Cale
donia wefe, if not the foremost, equally forward, with that gallant
countryman in the fight ? Who commanded the British fleet in the
glorious battle of Camperdown ? A Scotsman. From what country
were the majority of the European forces who wrested the important
fortress of Seringapatam from the hands of the Indian Chief, and
secured a peerage for their General ? Was it not Scotland? Who
commanded the expedition to Egypt, in 1801, and fell mortally
wounded at the close of that victory which secured the capitulation of
the enemy ? A Scotsman ! From what country were the men com
posing the two regiments who, on the 13th of March, 1801, dis
tinguished themselves so nobly at Mandora, in Egypt? Scotland. What
country claims the man by whose noble daring on the field of Assaye,
the brow of the hero of that memorable fight was encircled with
a wreath which will never fade—is it not Scotland. Were not the men
composing three of the regiments of the military armament, which, in
1806, secured the permanent annexation of that splendid colony, the
Cape of Good Hope, to the Crown of England, as also the first and
second in command—natives of Scotland. Who commanded the
British army which on the Plains of Maida first taught the enemy
that even with a numerical superiority of three to two they had no
chance of success ?—a Scotsman. From what country were those
soldiers transported to the Calabrian shore, who not only charged, but
actually measured bayonets with the enemy on the plains of Maida,
and drove from the field all who escaped the points of their weapons ?
—was it not Scotland ? Who commanded the British army at the
capture of Copenhagen, in 1807 ?—a Scotsman. Who destroyed the
French fleet in the Basque roads ?—a Scotsman. Who commanded
the British army at Corunna, and died in the arms of victory ?—a
Scotsman. Who was second in command on that occasion, and lost
an arm in the action ?—a Scotsman. And who succeeded to the
command on the fall of the two officers just named, and drove the
�70
SKELETON BROTHERS.
enemy from the field ?—also a Scotsman. Who commanded the
naval armament to Holland, in 1809, the most important that ever
left the British coast ?—a Scotsman. And------of the------ divisions
into which the army of------ men was divided, were commanded by
Scotsmen. What country claims the hero of Barrosa, one of the hardest
fought battles in which British troops were engaged ?—is it not Scot
land ? Does not Scotia claim as her own the only two generals who fell
on the breach of Ciudad Rodrigo, in 1802 ? Were not two of the three
regiments engaged at the storming and capture of the French works,
at Almarez, in 1812, composed of Scotchmen, and the third regiment
commanded by a Scotchman ? From what country were those men
whose conduct at Maya, in July 1813, is characterized by the gallant
historian of the Peninsular war equal to that of the Spartans at Ther*
mopylaa ?—the heath-covered mountains of Scotland. And, lastly,
from what country were the men who composed three of the four
British regiments, particularly reported by the Duke for their gal
lantry at Quatre Bi’as ? Scotland. From what country were the
260 soldiers who, on the plains of Waterloo, not only charged, but
actually broke, a column of 3,000 French infantry, and paved the
way for their total destruction by the Cavalry Brigade of Sir William
Ponsonby? The mountains of Scotland.
In fine, throughout the whole of the frightful struggle the sons of
Scotland were never backward when stern duty called upon them to
face the grim king on the field of strife, but in every action whether
in the Peninsula or elsewhere, poured out their blood in torrents for
their country.
It is extremely painful for us to advert to the services of our coun
trymen in the way we have just now done, but we have no other al
ternative ; for, although you are perfectly aware that, in proportion
to her population,. Scotland furnished considerably more than her
quota of men for the two services in the late war, that the aid she
rendered to you was of so efficient a description that you were enabled
not only to keep the seat of war far from your own fireside, but to
drive the would-be conqueror from the throne he had usurped, to give
peace to the world, and enable you to claim the pre-eminence among
the nations of the earth. You have hitherto failed to acknow
ledge the services of the living, by bestowing upon them some
trifling badge; or to commemorate the services of the fallen brave,
by subscribing to the general fund established for the purpose of
raising a suitable edifice to their memory. Such was not the way that
the nations in olden time were wont to reward their brave defenders,
as you very well know. Why then do you not follow the example of
those who honoured the dead warriors with a monument, and the liv
ing by inscribing their names on tablets of brass. To hesitate what
�SKELETON BROTHERS.
71
course to pursue will but tend to heap odium on your head. For,
with a perfect knowledge of the services performed for you by the
sons of the north, it says but little, we fear, either for your head or
your heart, to have allowed us to remain so long in our present de
graded position, when a very small annual grant, for four or five
years, would have raised us to that rank among our monumental bre
thren which we were originally intended to hold. Poverty you can
not plead as an excuse for having so long refused to cover the Skele
ton Brothers with the unlimited folds of your capacious purse. For
have you not, since the foundation stone of the edifice was laid, parted
with millions of pounds, as if each pound was of no greater value than
a particle of dust beneath your feet, the bare interest of which at five
per cent., would amount to a sum twenty times more than would finish
the monumental church, and endow it besides.
And upon whom did you bestow the twenty millions of pounds, but
men who for any service they ever rendered the country, would have
been most amply rewarded with the smallest coin known in this
realm. What will posterity think or say when they read that in the
exuberance of his gratitude, John Bull actually forced twenty
millions of pounds into the pockets of men, to whom he owed
nothing, while he refused the four-hundredth part of that sum to
commemorate, by the erection of a sacred edifice, the heroic actions
of those brave men to whom he owes all he possesses, dominion,
power, riches, prosperity, and a degree of comfort and happiness
never before enjoyed by any nation under the canopy of Heaven ?
Why that in your conduct towards your old military servants you
have not been guided by stern old British justice, for nothing can be
more unjust than to deprive of their reward those who have rendered
you prompt and efficient aid in the hour of peril.
We do not wish to be ill-natured, but you must excuse us for
saying that at the time you so generously parted with your millions,
we considered the whole transaction as the queerest price of legisla
tion and gratitude we had ever read of. May those to whom you may
hereafter confide the arrangement of similar matters possess feelings
more in accordance with patriotism, and make such arrangements in
matters of finance, as will enable you to secure the speedy completion
of a work so admirably calculated to inspire the youth of the country
with the same romantic courage which was displayed by their
ancestors when they achieved those victories which have raised their
country to the degree of glory she now enjoys.
It was with very sincere pleasure that we lately perused the war
rants respecting good conduct, pay-medals, &c., for, although we are
satisfied that the benefits therein held out to the private soldier will
�72
SKELETON BROTHERS.
fail to produce the one-half of the good anticipated, yet we willingly
concede that the principle on which the warrant is founded is a souud
one. That you are of a similar opinion it is but natural to infer.
Why not then act upon the same principle in all your transactions
with those who own you as a father, whethers member of the naval,
military, or civil society? To prevent crime is evidently the object
aimed at by the promoters of the warrants. We cannot help think
ing, however, that you occasionally break through that rule, and
by rewarding crime in some quarters, encourage the perpetration of
it in others. Even at this moment we fancy you are on the point of
acting upon this principle on rather an extensive scale ; but before
you finally commit yourselves, we beg you to recollect, that during the
late war Scotland furnished more than her proportion of men for the
defence of the country, and without a murmur deposited in the
national chest her due proportion of the public burdens. That since
the peace of 1815 she has continued to pay with equal pleasure her
rateable proportion of the taxes, and to improve the condition of her
people in every possible way she could devise, and with what success
may be guessed from the very high price of land, the abundance of
labour at increased rates, and the absence of everything like discon
tent. Compare for a moment the state of crime in Scotland with that
in her sister country, and the number of troops required in each for
the protection of the lieges. With a population of two millions and a
half, the former requires at present the presence of but one regiment
of cavalry, one of infantry, and two depots; while the latter, with a
population but three times greater, requires no fewer than eight
regiments of cavalry, 15 regiments of infantry, - and 18 depots,
besides a police force of from 7,000 to 8,000 men. Compare the con
cessions you have made to the inhabitants of the Green Isle, the favours
you have lavished on them with the concessions you have made, and
the favours you have bestowed on our native land. Compare the
gratitude of the former with that of the latter — the expense
which Ireland, by the restlessness of its population, press you
to incur, with the trifling sum required from you by Scotland.
And yet it is upon those who are daily covering you with their
venom—who are daily brow-beating you, and almost setting you at
defiance—who are one day spurning every thing in the shape of a
favour, and the next begging on their knees for a morsel of bread—
who, in fact, have for years been, and who still are, exerting all their
energies, to bring about a separation of the two countries—that you
have heaped, that you are daily bestowing, and that you are on the
point of conferring numerous favours When acting upon so liberal
a scale to those who do not deny the fact that they hold you in de-
�SKELETON BROTHERS.
testation, what inducement do you intend to hold out to your friends
north of the Tweed, to pursue the same praiseworthy, honourable
course which they have hitherto done, with so much credit to them
selves and advantage to you< Although we hold in the utmost
detestation the bullying system pursued in the sister isle; yet
seeing that you are altogether disinclined to listen to our appli
cations, though made submitted in the most respectful form we
could think of, and that you have in almost every case attended to the
wants and the wishes of others when backed with big words and
threats of immediate repeal,—we tell you very plainly, that unless
your inducements extend to five annual payments of four thousand
pounds each, to be paid on our friends producing an equal sum, to be
applied to the finishing of the Waterloo Monumental Church, the
senior member of this family holding the rather lucrative appointment
of Liberator ; the second, that of Conciliator ; and the third, that of
Head Pacificator, will place themselves at the head of the flower of
the Scottish youth,—then march
“ The Blue Bonnets over the border,”
And on the right bank of the Tweed take up a position, until a sense
of shame shall induce you to come down with at least an instalment
of the debt of gratitude which you owe to the sons of the mist, that
they may proceed without one day’s delay, to complete the sacred edi
fice in a manner every way worthy of the gallant men whose heroic
deeds it is intended to commemorate, and of your much despised, and
almost broken-hearted children,
The Skeleton Brothers.
Calton Hill, Sept. 1846.
�BATTLES OF MOODKEE, FEROZESHAH, AND SOBRAON.
That officers appointed to command others, should possess other
qualities than either zeal, or activity, or gallantry, or intelligence, is
the opinion of one whose authority in all military matters few will
dispute; but what those other qualities are, and whether any, or all
of them, lie encased in the breasts of the officers now at the head of the
Indian Government and army, we will leave for decision to the mem
bers of the Government by whom they were appointed, and the rela
tives of those gallant men who died on the fields of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, Aliwal, and Sobraon, and whom they never again can address
by the endearing appellations of father, son, brother, or husband.
Far be it from us to add to the pangs which we fear must still be felt
by those with whom rested the sole control of the resources of our
Indian empire, as often as they recal to their remembrance the scenes
which passed before their eyes at the close of the battles of Moodkee
and Ferozeshah, and reflect that the horrors of those spectacles might
have been, if not altogether prevented, at least greatly lessened, by an
earlier attention to the grave matters adverted to in the letters of the
political agent, particularly after the receipt of those communications,
the contents of which rendered it no longer doubtful, but that to get
quit of its mutinous soldiery, the Court of Lahore had resolved to
bring about a collision with the British on the banks of the Sutlej.
Far be it from us to criticise too closely the conduct of those on whom
devolved the duty of directing the late operations in India, seeing that
whatever errors may have been committed, not a few of them have
been redeemed by the gallant bearing of the parties, on those occa
sions when duty called then to meet the daring foe in moral combat.
But we cannot refrain from expressing our astonishment, that with
the hostile demonstration of the Sikhs in 1843, and 1844, and the
anti-English spirit exhibited by the Sikhs in the year 1845, before
their eyes, the authorities should have listened for a moment to an
assurance of continued amity, emanating from the leaders of a muti
nous soldiery, or the ministers of a Court, composed of individuals to
compare whom with the veriest dregs of the populace in the purlieus
of St. Giles, would be to cast an unmerited stigma upon the latter.
In the first stages of a disease, an error in a physician’s prescrip
tion generally proves fatal. In like manner, an error in a general’s
preparatory arrangements, at the commencement of a campaign, but
too often leads to unfortunate results.
Had the maxim, “ Suspect every act, every movement of an enemy,
though there should really be no apparent cause for it,” been kept in
view by the Governor-General, Ferozepore would not have been left
�75
BATTLES OF MOODKEEj &C..
so far from its supports, with so slender a garrison as one regiment of
British, and seven regiments of Native Infantry, two regiments of
Native Cavalry, and twenty-four pieces—a force adequate for the
duties of the place in a period of profound peace, but altogether inade
quate for its defence at so critical a juncture, being within fifty miles
of the head-quarters of the Sikh army, amounting to 80,000 men, with
a field-train of 150 pieces of artillery, many of them of large calibre;
whilst the nearest body of troops intended for its support, in case of
attack, was quartered at least 120 miles in its rear, an arrangement
which the Sihks accepted as an invitation to attack the post before it
could be succoured from the rear. For what says Lal Singh:—
“ Sirdar Jonaher Singh used to speak to me about attacking the
English; my heart’s desire is now accomplished; therefore, I hope to
be sent against Ferozepore, and will bring over the whole army of
the English to the Sikh Government, and Ferozepore, will be
taken without fighting:” a letter which tends to show us that the
chief officers of the Sikh army were of opinion that the garrison of
Ferozepore was of itself so unable to cope with the force they could
send against it—that they had nothing to do but appear before its
gates, to make it submit without firing a shot.
It is quite true, as stated by the Governor-General, that Ferozepore
was treacherously attacked, without provocation, or declaration of
hostilities. But did the Governor-General expect anything else? If
he did, he unquestionably was the only subject of the British Crown
who entertained the Quixotic notion that the Sikh Commander
—before crossing the Rubicon—would, in imitation of the celebrated
royal Tuscan chief, Porsena, intimate to the British Commander-inChief the time when, and the place where, he intended to make an
attack—or once think of publicly declaring war against the Indian
Government, until he had the whole of the legions marshalled on the
right bank of the Sutlej, ready to pounce upon what they fancied an
easy prey. Sir John Littler and his gallant little band are also
noticed in the despatches, and in a way to have it thought that the
authorities were warranted in leaving so sm ill a force in Ferozepore—
the long service, tried valour, and experience of that officer, being
equal to a reinforcement of some battalions. But all this furnishes
but a poor and unsatisfactory apology for putting to hazard the very
existence of the splendid empire entrusted to his rule, for that it
was placed in the most imminent danger by the inadequate means
taken to meet the threatened danger, is obvious from various portions of
the despatches before us. What says the Commander-in-Chief, in his
despatch of the 29th December, detailing the battle of Moodkee:—
“ The junction was soon effected, and thus was accomplished one of
Military Magazine.
No, 2, Vol. 1.
L
�BATTLES OF MOODKEE, &C.
the great objects of all our harassing marches and privations in the
relief of that division (Ferozepore garrison)of our army from the block
ade of the numerous forces by which it was surrounded.” But
ticklish as were the positions of the various corps of the army, previous
to the relief of Ferozepore, they were in a still more ticklish state towards
the close of the day of Ferozeshah, for the proof of which we again refer
toapassage in thedespatches oftheBritish General, dated the 22d Dec.:
—“ His guns, during this manoeuvre, maintained an incessant fire
whilst our artillery ammunition being expended in these protracted
combats, we were unable to answer him with a single shot” a passage?
which leads us to inquirejoy whom so monstrous an error could be com
mitted; as to force the British troops to engage in so momentous a
struggle without first securing for them an ample supply of powder
and shot; for that a very palpable error was committed by some one
is evidenced by the fact, the the British were the assailants, not the
assailed, and consequently that battle was of their own seeking—an
error but for which thousands of human beings would, for a further
term, have continued to tread the earth which now encircles their
inanimate clay on the deeply-crimsoned fields of.Moodkee, Ferozeshah?
Aliwal, and Sobraon—fields on which thousands of our brave defen
ders had to face the grim king in all the hideous forms which he as
sumes on those plains where nations met‘in battle-array.
But, however desperate the afiairs of the British may have been
previous to the relief of the garrison of Ferozepore, their position was
so much improved by that fortunate event, as to render the very des
perate remedies subsequently applied by the British chief for the cure
of the disease which they had occasioned, altogether uncalled for.
On the 19th and 20th of December, the whole of the Sikh disposa
ble force was in front of the British. If, therefore, the Sikhs did not
consider themselves strong enough to attack their opponents on one or
other of those days, when but a portion of the British troops had
arrived at the scene of active operations, was it at all likely that they
would leave their entrenched camp to give their antagonists a meet
ing, after the latter had been strongly reinforced ? Consequently,the
British generals must be considered as having laid themselves open
to the charge of having prematurely brought on the battle of Feroze
shah; as the object which they wished to obtain by engaging in that
terrible conflict, might, by waiting a few days, until the heavy ar
tillery, and the whole of tire reserves, had joined them, have been
achieved with the loss of less than a tithe of the British blood so
profusely expended on that occasion.
Half a century having elapsed since those gallant individuals
entered the military service of their country, it is not a little remarka
�BATTLES OF MOODKEE, &C.,
77
ble that the old military maxim, “ wait for praise until your comrades
bestow it,” should have been unknown on the banks of the Sutlej, at
the date of the despatch from the celebrated field of Ferozeshah. On
that occasion the Governor-General, then second in command, writes
to the Commander-in-Chief as follows:—“ The whole line instantly
advanced, and animated by your example, carried every thing before
them; and, having traversed the camp from one extremity to the
other, drew up in a perfect line, expressing by loud cheers, as we rode
up the line, their conscious pride that every man had done his duty.”
We rode up the line, may possibly help our friends to come to a
correct notion as to the object which the writer had in view in penning
this paragraph. That the gallant officers should, under the circum
stances, have been more than usually excited on that occasion, is
perhaps not to be wondered at; but, after making every allowance for
the little display of egotistic feeling which their warmest friends could
wish, we cannot help thinking but that they would have occupied a
still higher place in public estimation than they now do, had the
passage from the Go ver nor-General’s despatch just quoted, and the
following from that of the Commander-in-Chief, viz., “ The line then
halted, as if on a day of manoeuvre, receiving its leaders as they
rode along its front with a gratifying cheer,” never met the public
eye; passages which, they will, no doubt, be grieved to learn,
have been the unfortunate cause of introducing into almost every
barrack-room a severe description of head-ache, occasioned, it is
believed, by the inmates indulging, after perusing the extracts, in a
too immoderate use of their risible powers.
Much has been said and written respecting the generalship dis
played by the British generals in the various battles, but after
maturely considering everything bearing upon the subject—whether
in the despatches, the private letters from the scene of action, or the
commentaries of friends, and others, at home—we cling to our original
opinion, and, in the language of the “ Duke,” respecting his great
rival at Waterloo, say, they did not manoeuvre at all, but went to
work in the true bull-dog fashion, and accomplished their purpose in
a manner which, had they lived in the good old time of Spartan
glory, would have secured for them the minor privilege of sacrificing
a cock, but not the major privilege of sacrificing an ox, that warlike
people being of opinion that as the performances of the mind are su
perior and preferable to those of the body, so was stratagem, on all
occasions, to be preferred to open force. Though the chiefs succeeded,
therefore, in defeating their powerful antagonists, yet by attempting
to take “ the lions” by the beard, instead of attempting to draw them
�78
BATTLES OF MOODKEE, &C.
from their lair by some one or other of the thousands of stratagems
which had been adopted, on similar occasions, by those who had gone
before them, and thereby adopting a mode of attack which rendered a
stout heart, and a no less active than willing pair of hands, of much
greater service than a good head, they must be prepared to surrender
no small portion of the honour and glory acquired on those sanguinary
fields to the gallant officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers,
by whose indomitable courage the laurels were secured, and who, on
every occasion,
“ Firm did front the threatening storm,
And braved with fearless breasts fell death’s terrific form.”
Most fervently do we pray that no friend of ours may ever be
reduced to the necessity of quitting home and friends to secure a scanty
subsistence at the cannon’s mouth, if on all future similar occasions,
officers in command are to be permitted to render valour as hazardous
a trade, as the despatches of Lords Gough and Hardinge prove it to
have been on the banks of the Sutlej. If the Governor-General is to
receive £5000 per annum from the East India Company, and £3000
from the British Government, for an terror ofpolicy which led him to
postpone to far too late a period the preparations necessary for avert
ing or resisting the invasion of the Sikhs—what provision, we ask, is
intended to be made for the families of those gallant spirits who gave
their lives in those sanguinary battles to retrieve that error ? Or
what reward is to be bestowed upon the survivors, by whose extra
ordinary feats of heroism those victories were achieved, for which the
Governor-General of India has been elevated to the peerage ; and
either has been, or is to be, otherwise most munificently rewarded ?
We wait for a reply.
�79
IS WAR NECESSARY?
And if necessary, should it be made to appear a luxury by being
trapped with so much glitter and gaud? We have been led into this
inquiry by two rather inapposite things, the perusal of accounts of
Peace Meetings at the Hall of Commerce, and the inspection of a
series of beautiful plates illustrative of the garb of the Indian army.
*
The argument of the lecturers at the Hall of Commerce was that
war is a horrible, and peace a desirable thing. This is as true as
if said by “ poor Richard” himself. The highest living authority
has pronounced it impossible to exaggerate the horrors of war.
Man’s imagination—indeed, woman’s too—lags in the wake of the
reality. As the bray of trumpets has often drowned the groans, en
treaties, aye, and curses of the wounded and dying on the battle field,
so does the news of victory—with the details of gallant daring and
brave endurance—drive from the thought of those who live at home
in ease the agonies, present and enduring, that very victory has en
tailed. All that we grant; we grant, too, that the rights of property
in a scene of warfare are set at nought; life has no sacredness, for it
is the soldier’s duty to destroy it in his enemy—to take it from men
with whom he has no personal quarrel, whom he very properly re
gards with no animosity. These things, and many more, have been
stated by the lecturers in question (and their motives are deserving of
all respect, while their eloquence is that of earnest men); but the
remedy they would apply, would aggravate the evil they seek to
remove. Let the belief once be established in England, that a soldier,
even a private soldier, is not an honourable, as well as necessary calling,
let the people be induced to think that war is but a base and bloody
trade—let discontent be engendered at the cost of the two services,
and a niggard spirit be allowed by the legislature to reduce the num
bers, and lessen the efficiency of the men, and the materiel of war,
and what would be the result? War would be inevitable, because
victory over this wealthy country, would be thought assured.
What caused the Americans to consent to the peaceful settlement
of the Oregon question, what but the knowledge that England was
* Costumes of the Indian Army.—R. Ackerman, Regent-street.
�80
IS WAR NECESSARY?
fully prepared for war? That, though not anxious to wound, she
was prepared to strike, and to strike home too. What, we repeat, in
this instance manifestly preserved the peace ? Our being armed at
all points for war. And so, until society is very different, it will
ever be.
No, gentlemen of the Peace Society, if you succeed in making the
soldier’s calling an unpopular and, therefore, a slighted one—if you
succeed in diminishing the number of our forces, and make an army
and a navy appear costly encumbrances, the Emperor Nicholas, Mr.
President Polk, and M. Thiers, would declare that, to their views,
you were the best friends the age had produced.
To maintain, then, as we contend it should be maintained, the feel
ing of the honourableness of a soldier’s life, distinctive dress and martial
bearing are necessary ; hence the importance of constant drill and
carefully distinctive equipment. Viewed in this light the soldier’s
dress is not mere tailor’s work, and the study of Mr. Ackermann’s
admirable engravings will strengthen our argument. From the fit
ness and the gracefulness of many of those costumes the home regi
ments might derive useful hints. The profession is certainly much
indebted to the publisher for the manner in which, at the present
time, he has brought out these facsimiles of a soldier as he should be.
F. B.
�81
BATTLE OF WATERLOO.
25th, 35th, 54th, 59th, and 91st
regiments.
To the Editor of the “Military Magazine.”
Sir,—In the last number of your Magazine, your correspondent,
Miles, complains of a capricious distribution of the Waterloo medal.
His words are—But I affirm that the Waterloo medal w'as given to
a regiment that was not under fire, and to even more than one. Will
any military man tell me that the 54th regiment was under fire at
Waterloo? Yet if you turn to the Army List, you will find that they
received the medal. There were also two or three other regiments
in the same brigade with them, who were bivouacked on the ramparts
of Brussels, waiting for orders with piled arms, and ready to march at
a moment’s notice, but whose services were required to march the
prisoners taken on the field into the rear, but they did not get the
medal. Will any one tell me that these men were not employed upon
the duties of the battle of Waterloo ? One of these regiments was the
25th, or the King’s Own Borderers ; surely that was not equal justice
to these corps.”
Who your correspondent is, I have no means of knowing ; but it is
sufficiently clear, from his statement, that he is not a military man—>
at all events, he could not have been attached to any of the regiments
under the orders of the Duke of Wellington in Belgium at the date of
the battle of Waterloo, the greater part of that statement being con
trary to facts known to the whole military world.
True it is that the 54th regiment received a medal for the battle of
Waterloo, though not engaged ; but then it is equally true that all the
other regiments of that brigade, the 35th, 59th, and 91st, received
medals, none of whom were engaged. So much for your correspon
dent’s assertion that the 54th regiment received a medal to the exclu
sion of the other regiments of the brigade.
But not less unfortunate is the assertion of Miles, that those four
regiments forming the brigade of General Johnston were stationed on
the ramparts of Brussels during the engagement. If he had known
anything at all of the subject on which he addressed you, he
would have known that these regiments were not at Brussels, but sta-
�82
RATTLE Of WATERLOO.
tioned in advance of it, on the road to Mons, near to Braine-le-Comte,
to watch the motions of any column of French troops which Napoleon
might push forward in that direction, and, therefore, could not have
been engaged in removing the prisoners to the rear, for in the position
in which they were posted on the morning of the battle, they remained
Until the following day ; in confirmation of which I may state, and
this fact is not a little singular, that not one of the four regiments,
though only eight or ten miles distant, were aware that a battle was
fought, until eight o’clock, A.M., on the 19th of June.
This statement, you will perceive, limits your correspondent’s ca
pricious distribution of Waterloo medals to one regiment, the 25th,
or King’s Own Borderers, which, according to his own assertion, was
stationed on the ramparts of Brussels, ten miles in rear of the field of
battle, the Duke, the whole of the allied army, and the almost im
penetrable forest of Soigny, betwen them and the enemy. Now just
run your eye over the map, and you will at once perceive that, in
stead of being stationed at Brussels, the four regiments, the 35 th,
54th, 59th, and 91st regiments, occupied a most important post, in
line with the allied army, in whieh their chief expected they would
be attacked, and consequently had some claim to a participation in the
distribution of the Waterloo medal; but the 25th being stationed
behind stone walls at Brussels—ten miles in rear of the gory field—
with the allied army between the corps and the enemy, could have no
claim whatever; for, even if the Duke had been defeated, the gallant
Borderers could not have smelt French gunpowder at a less distance
than nine miles at any period of that, our memorable, day.
H. P. O.
�BREVET.
91
Benoit Bender, of the 82nd Foot
Richard Henry John Beaumont M’Cum
ming, of the 15th Foot
William Atkin, of the Royal Canadian
« Rifle Regt.
Donald Stuart, of the 46th Foot
Henry Francis Ainslie, of the 83rd
Foot
John Rowley Hevland, of the35th Foot
William Henry Robinson, of the 72nd
Foot
George Mylius, of the 26th Foot
Thomas Josephus Deverell, of the 67th
Foot
Frederick Eld, of the 90th Foot
William Bletterman Caldwell of the
92nd Foot
Robert Carr, of the 38th Foot
Thomas Maitland Wilson, of the 96th
Foot
Abraham Splaine, of the 81st Foot
Robert Bush, of the 96th Foot
James Alexander Robertson( of the
82nd Foot
Charles Kelson, of the Ceylon Rifle
Regt.
James Ward, of the 81st Foot
Hon. George Cecil Weld Forester, of
the Royal Regt, of Horse Guards
John Norman, of the 54th Foot
Angus William Mackay, of the 21st
Foot
James Robert Brunker, of the 15th
Foot
Gervase Parker Bushe, of the 7 th Light
Dragoons
Charles Francis Maxwell, of the 82nd
Foot
Robert Vansittart, of the Coldstream
Regt, of Foot Guards
Jonh M'Mahon Kidd, of the 87th Foot
Henry B. Harvey, of the 87th Foot
Edward A. G. Muller, of the I st Foot
CAPTAINS to be MAJORS in the
William Jonathan Clerke, of the 77th
Army.
Foot.
Isaac Foster, of the 3rd West India Regt.
Abraham Bolton, of the 5th Dragoon
Robert Alexander Andrews, of the
Guards
30th Foot
Walter Hamilton, of the 78th Foot
John Spence, of the 5th Foot
William John Saunders, of the 57th
James Draper, of the 64th Foot
Foot.
Henry Penleaze, of the 1st or Grena
James Graham, of the 89th Foot
dier Regt, of Foot Guards
Richard Leckonby Phipps, of the 68th
George Weston, of the 14th Light
Foot
Dragoons
Charles Ash Windham, of the Cold
John Harris, of the 24th Foot
stream Regt, of Foot Guards
Thomas John Taylor, of the 78th Foot
Jaffray Nicholson, of the 99th Foot
John James Peck, of the 2nd West
Thomas Tulloch, of the 42nd Foot
India Regt.
George Ogle Moore, of the 82nd Foot
Henry Richmond Jones, of the 6th
Hon. Robert Edward Boyle, of the
Dragoon Guards
Coldstream Regt, of Foot Guards
Sir James Edward Alexander, of the
John Hildebrand Oakes Moore, of th«
14th Foot
35th Foot
David Burds, of the 19th Foot
N
Military Magazine, No. 2, Vol. 1.
DaVid England Johnson, of the Sth Eoot
Gillies Maopherson, of the Royal
Canadian Rifle Regt.
Robert Edward Burrowes, hp Unatt.
Thomas Gloster, hp Unatt.
Thomas George Harriott, hp Royal
Staff Corps
John Watter, of the 95th Root
James Kerr Ross, hp Unatt.
Eardly Wilmot, hp Unatt.
Edward Basil Brooke, of the 67 th Foot
Christian Frederick Lardy, hp Unatt.
Edward George Walpole Keppel, hp
Unatt.
Robert Henry Willcock, of the 81st
Foot
John FitzMaurice, hp Unatt.
Henry Dundas Maclean, hp Unatt.
John Campbell, of the 38th Foot
John Blood, hp Royal Waggon Train
Edward Allen, hp Unatt.
John Crawford Young, hp Unatt.
Frederick Hope, hp Anatt.
James Bowes, of the 87th Foot
Lewis Alexander During, hp Unatt.
Joshua Simmonds Smith, of the 1st
Dragoon Guards
Basil Jackson, hp Royal Staff Corps
Aralander Tennant, of the 35th Foot
William Nesbitt Orange, of the 67th
Foot
Sir James John Hamilton, Bart, hp
Unatt.
Charles Deane, of the 1st Foot
Henry Arthur O’Neill, hp Unatt.
Hon. William Noel Hill, hp Unatt.
Henry Clinton, hp Unatt.
Charles Stewart, hp Unatt.
Frederick Chidley Irwin, hp Unatt.
Henry C. Cowell, hp Unatt.
John Flamank, hp Unatt.
�92
BREVET.
Luke Smyth O’Connor, of the 1st West
India Regt.
Jamest Piggot, of the Sa int HelenaRegt.
Authur Horne, of the 12th Foot.
Gervas Stanford Deverill, of the 90th
Foot
Loftus Francis Jones, of the 96th Foot
Henry P. Raymond, of the 1st Foot
Henry SadlierBruere,of the 4 3rd. Foot
Henry Grimes, of the 98th Foot
Thomas Middleton Biddulph, of the
1st Life Guards
Thomas E. Lacy, of the 72nd Foot
Philip Smyly, of the 99th Foot
Oswald Samuel Blachford, of the 15th
Light Dragoons
John Gray, of the 40th Foot
Henry Jenkins Pogson, hp Ceylon
Regt., Garrison Quarter Master at
Gibraltar
John Holland, of 86th Eoot
Edward Charles Soden, of the 2nd
West India Regt.
Brownlow Villiers Layard, of the 37th
Foot
James Loftus Elrington, of the Cold
stream Regt, of Foot Guards
Wyndham Edward Hammer, of the
Royal Regt, of Horse Guards
John Impett, of the 25th Foot
George Wynell Mayow, of the 4th
Dragoon Guards
Henry Robert Thurlow, of the 90th
Foot
Geore Talbot, of the 43rd Foot
James Campbell of the 87th Foot
Edward Littledale, of the 1st Dragoons
Charles Murray, of the 16th Foot
Hon. David Henry Murray, of the
Scots Fusilier Guards
Robert Baillie of the 72nd Foot
Richard Going, of the 1st Foot
Robert Sherbourne Murry, of the 38th
Foot
John Bolton, of the 75th Foot
Mountford Stoughton Heyliger Lloyd,
of the 2nd Foot
William Barnes, of the 17th Foot
Thomas Holes Tidy, of the 14th Foot
Charles James, of the 84th Foot
Edward Clarges Ansell, of the 74th
Foot
Daniel Riley, of the 24th Foot
Charles Henry Edmonstone, ofthe81st
Foot
John Mayne, of the 1st Foot
Richard Francis Brownlow Rusbrooke,
of the Scots Fusilier Guards
Henry Douglas Cowper, of the 40th
Foot
Alexander Jardine, of the 75th Foot
Edward Foy, of the 71st Foot
Henry Alexander Kerr, of the 1st Foot
John Roche, of the 2nd Life Guards
Thomas Skinner, of the Ceylon Rifle
Regt.
James Clarke, of the 1st West India
Regt.
Francis Mountjoy Martyn, of the 2nd
Life Guards
William Henry Gillman, of the 68th
Foot
John Wegg, of the 56th Foot
Robert Clifford Lloyd, of the 76th Foot
James Fraser, of the 35th Foot
Mitchell George Sparks, of the 10th
Foot
Andrew Armstrong Barnes, of the 25th
Foot
George Frederick Cooper Scott, of the
76th Foot
Hon, Alexander Nelson Hood, of the
Scots Fusilier Guards
William Davenport Davenport, of the
95th Foot
William Sutton, of the Cape Mounted
Riflemen
Thomas Abbott, of the 3rd West India
Regt.
Archibald Inglis Lockhart, of the 92nd
Foot
William Shaw, of the 3rd West India
Regt.
Thomas Moore, of the 12 th Foot
Johnson Ford, of the 43rd Foot
George M'Beath, of the 68th Foot
Hon. Horace Pitt, of the Royal Regt, of
Horse Guards
William Robert Haliday, 93d Foot
William Johnson, of the 65th Foot
WAR OFFICE, 9th Novestbek.
Her Majesty has been pleased to
appoint the following Officers, of the
Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers,
to take rank by Brevet, as under-men
tioned. The Commissions to be dated
9th November, 1846 : —
ROYAL ARTILLERY.
MAJOR GENERALS to be LIEU
TENANT GENERALS in the Army,
Sir Thomas Downman, C.B.
Sir Joseph Hugh Carncross, K.C.B.
Alexander Watson
Edward Vaughan Worsley
Henry Evelegh
Hon, Henry William Gardner
Frederick Walker
Joseph Webbe Tobin
COLONELS to be MAJOR GENE
RALS in the Army.
John Slessor, late Royal Irish Artillery
James Irving, late Royal Irish Artillery
�BREVET.
Patrick Campbell, Retired Royal Ar
tillery
John Boteler Parker, Retired Royal
Artillery
William Greenshields Power
Alexander Macdonald
Thomas John Forbes
Alexander Munro
James Pattison Cockburn
Robert Henry Birch
James Armstrong
Thomas Patterson
Nathaniel Wilmot Oliver
Richard John James Lacy
LIEUTENANT COLONELS to be
COLONELS in the Army.
Sir William Macbean George Colebrooke
Thomas Tisdall, late Royal Irish Ar
tillery
William Cator
John Chester, hp Royal Artillery
Alexander Maclachlan
Charles Gilmour, Retired Royal Ar
tillery
Stephen Kirby, Retired Royal Artillery
John Wilson Kettlewell, Retired Royal
Artillery
Guy Carleton Coffin, Retired Royal
Artillery
James Stokes Bastard
Thomas Gore Browne
Duncan Grant
Henry Alexander Scott
William Wylde, C.B.
CAPTAINS to be MAJORS in the
Army.
William Henry Bent
Francis Ward
William Bates Ingilby
Thomas Orlando Cater
Henry Pester
Robert William Story
George James
Charles Henry Nevett
John Bloomfield
Henry Palliser
Robert Longmore Garstin
John Alexander Wilson
Richard Tomkins
Henry Williams
Richard Goodwin Bowen Wilson
Burke Cuppage
Robert Burn
Richard Beaumont Burnaby
John Hungerford Griffin
Thomas Arscott Lethbridge
Da»iel Thorndike
Harry Stow
William Frazer
93
Charles Gostling
Charles Henry Mee
Theophilus Desbrisay
Charles Bertie Symons
Thomas Congreve Robe.
ROYAL ENGINEERS.
MAJOR GENERALS to be LIEUT. GENERALS iu the Army.
Elias Walker Durnford
Sir George Whitmore
Frederick Rennel Thackeray, C.B.
Sir Stephen Remnant Chapman, C.B.
John Francis Birch, C.B.
Gustavus Nicholls
George Wright,
COLONELS to be MAJOR GENE
RALS in the Army.
Sir William Gosset, C.B.
George Cardew
Thomas Fyers
Edward Fanshawe, C.B.
Thomas Cunningham
Thomas Colby
LIEUTENANT COLONELS to be
COLONELS in the Army.
Sir John Mark Frederick Smith
Rice Jones
Thomas Moody
Matthew Charles Dixon
Patrick Douall Calder
CAPTAINS to be MAJORS in the
Army.
George Tait
Henry Rowland Brandreth
Charles Ogle Streatfeild
Joseph Elison Portlock
Charles Carson Alexander
George Currie Page
Henry Sandham
Thomas Coryndon Luxmoore
William Faris
Frederick Henry Baddeley
Thomas Budgeon
Vincent Joseph Biscoe
Henry Powell Wulff
WAR OFFICE, 9th November.
Her Majesty has been pleased to ap
point the following Officers of the
Royal Marines, to take rank, by
Brevet, as undermentioned. The Com
missions to be dated 9th November,
1846:—
COLONELS to be MAJOR GENE
RALS in the Army.
Edward Nicolls
George Lewis, C.B.
Elas Lawrence, C.B.
�BREVET.
94
George Jones
Thomas Benjamin Adair, C.B.
William Hallett Conolly
George Beatty
Lieut. Col. James Nisbet Colquhoun,
vice Rudyerd
Anthony Robinson Harrison, v. Cator
Henry Richard Wright, vice Dansey
LIEUTENANT COLONEL to be
COLONEL in the Army.
John Wolrige
Alfred Tylee, vice Otway
Charles James Daiton, vice Anderson
William Henry Forbes, vice Palmer
David Edward Wood, vice Hornsby
Hugh Manly Tuite, vice Armstrong
William Emerton Heitland, vice Evans
George Innes, vice Rowland
Frederick Eardley Wilmot, vice Col
quhoun
James William Fitzmayer, vice Har
rison
George Robert Harry Kennedy, vice
Wright.
SECOND CAPTAINS TO BE CAPTAINS.
CAPTAINS to be MAJORS in the
Army.
Robert Eord
Henry James Gillespie
David M‘Adam
Samuel Garmston
John Harvey Stevens
William Taylor
Charles Compton Pratt
Henry Ivatt Delacombe
George Hunt Coryton
John Ashmore
Charles Fegen
Richard Lyde Hornbrook
Thomas Scott
Villiam Lewis Dawes
John Alexander Philips
William Jolliffe
William Calamy
James Fynmore
OFFICE OF ORDNANCE, Nov. 16.
Royal Regt, of Artillery.
TO BE COLONELS.
FIRST LIEUTENANTS TO BE SECOND
CAPTAINS.
Frederick Alexander Campbell, vice
Tylee
Henry Philip Goodenough, vice Dalton
George Bucknail Shakespear, vice
Forbes
Richard Henry Crofton, vice Wood
Matthew Smith Dodsworth, vice Tuite
Murray Octavius Nixon, vice Heatland
Henry Lynedoch Gardiner, vice Innes
Benjamin Bathurst, vice F. Eardley
Wilmot
Henry Bouchier Osborne Savile, vice
Fitzmayer
Robert Parker Radcliffe, vice Kennedy
Bt. Colonel James Stokes Bastard,vice
Forbes
SECOND LIEUTENANTS TO BE FIRST
Bt. Colonel Thomas Gore Browne,vice
LIEUTENANTS.
Munro
Bt. Colonel Duncan Grant, vice Cock Joseph Godby, vice Campbell
Dominick Sarsfield Green, vice Good
burn.
enough
Bt. Colonel Henry Alexander Scott,
Philip Francis Miller, Vice G.B. Shake
vice Birch
spear
Bt. Colonel Thomas Dyneley, vice
William Wigram Barry, vice Crofton
Armstrong
Lieut. Colonel Henry Charles Russel, James Thomas Orme, vice Dodsworth
George Hatton Colomb, vice Nixon
vice Paterson
Lieut. Colonel Samuel Rudyerd, vice George William Drummond Hay, vice
Gardiner
Oliver
Bt. Colonel William Cator, vice Lacy Thomas Henry Harding, vice Bathurst
Lieut. Colonel Chas. Cornwallis Dansey, Philip Daves Margesson, vice H. B. 0.
Savile
vice W. P. Power
Mervyn Stewart, vice Radcliffe
BREVET MAJORS TO BE LIEUTENANT
Corps of Royal Engineers.
COLONELS.
BREVET COLONELS TO BE COLONELS
Charles Otway, vice Macdonald, re
Sir John Mark Frederick Smith, vice
moved as a General Officer
Cardew, removed as a General Officer
William Cockrane Anderson, vice
Rice Jones, vice Fyers, removed as a
Bastard
General Officer
Reynolds Palmer, vice Brown
Thomas Moody, vice Fanshawe, re
John Romaine Hornsby, vice Grant
moved as a General Officer
Richard Say Armstrong, vice Scott
John Oldfield, vice Cunningham, re
Mark Evans, vice Dyneley
moved as a General Officer
George Tempest Rowland, vice Russel
�95
BREVET.
Matthew Charles Dixon, vice Colby,
removed as a General Officer
BREVET MAJORS TO BE LIEUTENANT
COLONELS.
Charles Jasper Selwyn, vice Smith
William Matthew Gossett, vice Jones
Daniel Bolton, vice Moody
Frederick William Whinyates, vice
Oldfield
Alexander Watt Robe, vice Dixon
SECOND CAPTAINS TO BE CAPTAINS.
John Williams, vice Selwyn
Edward William Durnford, vice Gosset
Edward Thomas Lloyd, vice Bolton
Henry James
William Robinson, vice Whinyates,
promoted
Thomas Rawlings Mould
George Wynne, vice Robe, promoted
FIRST LIEUTENANTS TO BE SECOND
CAPTAINS.
Harry St. George Ord, vice Williams
David William Tylee, vice Durnford
Hampden Clement Blamire Moody,
vice Lloyd
John Lintorn Arabin Simmons, vice
Robinson
George Archibald Leach, vice Wynne
SECOND LIEUTENANTS TO BE FIRST
LIEUTENANTS.
Charles Thomas Hutchinson, vice Ord
Edward Metcalfe Grain, vice Tylee
Arthur Payne Smith, vice Moody
Augustus Meyer Lochner, vice Sim
mons
Philip Ravenhill, vice Leach
DEPUTY ADJUTANT GENERAL’S
OFFICE, WOOLWICH, Nov. 16.
Royal Artillery—General Order.
His Lordship, the Master General,
has been pleased to make the following
appointments, consequent upon the
promotion announced in the Gazette
of the 9th instant.
Colonel Turner, C.B., to command the
Royal Artillery in Ireland
Colonel Rudyerd, Superintendent of the
Royal Military Repository
Lieut. Colonel Gordon, Inspector of
Royal Carriage Department
Lieut. Colonel Hardinge, Director of
Royal Laboratory
The two latter appointments to take
effect on January 1, 1847.
Bt. Major Pester, Fire Master
Captain C. J. Wright to Royal Mili
tary Repository.
The under-mentioned Officers are
posted to the Royal Horse Artillery:
Lieut. Colonel Bell, vice Dyneley
Lieut. Colonel Louis, vice Cator
Lieut. Colonel Brereton, vice Mac
donald, on Lieut. Colonel’s pay
Lieut. Colonel Strangways, vice Har
dinge, on Major’s pay
Captain Dupins, vice Pester
Second Captain Philpotts, vice Wood
First Lieut. Willett, vice Goodenough
First Lieut. Neill, v'cj Gardiner
First Lieut. D. M. C. D. Fraser, vice
Radcliffe.
In consequence of the promotions
and foregoing appointments, the un
dermentioned are posted as follows;
Lieut. Colonel Rawnsley to the7thBattalion, vice Bastard
Lieut. Colonel Hardinge to the 2nd
Battalion, nice Browne
Lient. Colonel Andrews to the 8th
Battalion, vice Grant
Lieut. Colonel Locke to the 8th Bat
talion, vice Scott
Lieut. Colonel Wells to the 6th Bat
talion, vice Bell
Lieut. Colonel Arbuckle to the 1st
Battalion, vice Russell
Lieut. Colonel Higgins to the 4th Bat
talion, vice Rudyerd
Lieut. Colonel Freer to the 3rd Bat• talion, vice Louis
Lieut. Colonel Hope to the 10th Bat
talion, vice Brereton
Lieut. Colonel Eyre to the 8th Bat
talion, vice Dansey.
ON LIEUTENANT COLONELS’ PAY.
Lieut. Colonel Otway, the 8th Bat
talion, vice Rawnsley
Lieut. Colonel Anderson to the 10th
Battalion, vice Stiangways
Lieut. Colonel Palmer to the 4th Bat
talion, vice Andrews
Lieut. Colonel Hornsby to the 3rd Bat
talion, vice Locke
Lieut. Colonel Armstrong to the 5th
Battalion, vice Willis
Lieut. Colonel Evans to the 9 th Bat
talion, vice Arbuckle.
Lieut. Colonel Rowland to the 2nd
Battalion, vice Higgins
Lieut. Colonel Colquhoun to the 1st
Battalion, vice Freer
Lieut. Colonel Harrison to the 7th
Battalion, vice Hope
Lieut. Colonel Wright to the 6th Bat
talion, vice Eyre.
LIEUTENANT
COLONEPS
PAY.
OX
MAJORS’
Bt. Major Pester to the 8th Battalion,
vice Depuis
Second Capt. Crofton to the 6th Bat
talion, vice Phillpotts
�96
BREVET.
First Lieutenant D. S. theGreen to
5th Battalion, vice Wilnett
First Lieutenant G. W. D. Hay to the
8th Battalion, vice Neill
First Lieutenant M. Stewart to the 3rd
Battalion, vice Fraser
BREVET.
The following Officers were omitted
in the list of promotions by Brevet,
which were published in the Gazette of
the 10th November :—
TO BE LIEUTENANT GENERAL IN THE
ARMY.
Major General Sir Charles Wade
Thornton, Lieut. Governor of Hull.
TO BE MAJOR GENERALS IN THE ARMY.
Colonel Peter Augustus Lantonr, C.B.,
Half Pay 23d Light Dragoons
Colonel Richard William Howard
Howard Vyse, Half Pay, Unatt.
Colonel Archibald Maclachlan, Half
Pay 69 th Foot
Colonel John Whetham, Half Pay 1st
Garrison Battalion
Colonel John Williams Aldred, Half
Pay 60th Foot
TO BE COLONELS IN THE ARMY.
Lieut. Colonel Charles Milner, Half
Pay 3d Foot
Lieut. Colonel William Mansfield Mor
rison, Half Pay 23rd Light Dragoons
Lieut. Col. George Saunders Thwaites,
Half Pay 57th Foot
Lieut. Colonel Joseph Jerrard, Half
Pay 6th Garrison Battalion
Lieut. Colonel John Linton, Half Pay
Unattached
Lieut. Colonel William Fraser, Half
Pay Unattached
TO BE MAJORS IN THE ARMY.
Captain the Hon. Charles Robert Weld
Forester, Half Pay Unattached, As
sistant Military Secretary in Ireland
Captain Henry Daniell, Colistream
Regiment of Foot Guards
Captain Henry Anderson,Staff Captain
Chatham
The above Commissions to bear date
9th Nov. 1846
The following Captains, upon Half
Pay, who are serving as Staff Officers
of Pensioners,
TO BE MAJORS IN THE ARMY.
Captain Willoughby Montagu, Half
Pay Royal Artillery to bear date 23rd
Nov. 1841, and
Captain Archibald Campbell, Half Pay
Ceylon Regiment
Captain Thomas Beckham, Half Pay
Unattached
Captain Martin Orr, Half Pay Un
attached
Captain Henry Frederick Hawker, Half
Pay 12th Foot
Captain Edward Trevor,HalfPayRoyal
Artillery
Captain George Herbert Frederick
Campbell, Half Pay Royal Staff Corps
Caytain Walter Campbell, Half Pay
Unattached
Captain Edward Stirling Farmar, Half
Pay Unattached
Captain John Edward Orange, Half
Pay 34th Foot
Captain William Joshua Crompton,
Half Pay Unattached
Captain John Francis Du Vernet, Half
Pay Royal African Corps
Captain William Calder, Half Pay Un
attached
Captain James Stuart, Half Pay 84th
Foot
Captain William Harloe Phibbs, Half
Pay Unattached
Captain William Beales, Half Pay 9th
Light Dragoons
Captain William M'Pherson, Half Pay
Unattached
Captain John Forbes, Half Pay Unat
tached
Commissions to bear date 9th Nov.,
1846
�PROMOTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS.
WAR OFFICE, 3rd. Nov.
llth Light Dragoons—Lieutenant
E. Peel to be Captain, by purchase,
vice Cathcart, who retires; Cornet F.
H. Sykes to be Lieutenant, by purchas, vice Peel; R. Dennistoun, Gent.,
to be Cornet, by Purchase, vice Sykes.
15th—Lieutenant J. Clancy, from
57th Foot, to be Lieutenant, vice Blake,
who exchanges.
1st, or Grenadier Regiment of Foot
Guards—E, S. Burnaby, Gent., to be
Ensign and Lieutenant, by purchase,
vice Munro, promoted.
1st Regiment of Foot—Ensign W.
J. Bampfield, to be Lieutenant, without
purchase, vice Grey, deceased; B.
Carter, Gent, to be Ensign, vice
Bampfield.
6th—F. W. H. M'Cleland, Gent., to
Ensign, without purchase, vice Sandwith, whose appointment has been
cancelled.
13th—Major A. A. T. Cunvnghame
to be Lieutenant Colonel,by purchase,
vice Squire, whoretires; Bt. Major A.
P. S. Wilkinson to be Major, by pur
chase, vice Cunynghame; Lieutenant
G. Mein, to be Captain, by purchase,
vice Wilkinson; Ensign J. D, Longden
to be Lieutenant, by purchase, vice
Mein; S. Senior, Gent., to be Ensign,
by purchase, vice Longden.
16th—Ensign L. S. R. Lovell to be
Lieutenant, by purchase, vice Flood,
who retires; J. Parker, Gent., to be
Ensign, by purchase, wee Lovell.
41 st—Lieutenant C. T. Tuckey to be
Captain, by purchase, vice Sadlier,
who retires; Ensign C. Graham to be
Lieutenant, by purchase, vice Tuckey;
G. Skipwith, Gent., to be Ensign, by
purchase, vice Graham.
42nd—Lieutenant F. Campbell to be
Captain, by purchase, vice Goldie, who
retires; Ensign A. Bethune to be
Lieutenant,by purchase, vice Campbell;
Ensign J. E. Paterson, from 72nd
Foot, to be Ensign, vice Bethune.
49th—H. Beckwith, Gent., to be As
sistent Surgeon, vice Garret, promoted
to be Staff Surgeon of the Second
Class.
57th—Lieutenant M. L. Blake, from
15th Light Dragoons, to be Lieutenant,
vice Clancy, who exchanges ; Lieut.
G. H. Hunt to be Adjutant, vice
M'Namce, deceased.
67th—Ensign R. C. Peel to be Lieu
tenant, by purchase, vice Humfrey,
who retires; R. Blakeney, Gent., to be
Ensign, by purchase, vice Peel.
69th—Lieutenant W. Rhodes to be
Captain, by purchase, vice Grant, who
retires ; Ensign H. H. Morant to be
Lieutenant, by purchase, vice Rhodes;
R. Westropp, Gent., to be Ensign, by
purchase, vice Morant.
72nd—A. Alison, Gent., to be Ensign,
by purchase, vice Paterson, appointed
to 42nd Foot.
79 th—Ensign H. J. Street to be
Lieutenant, by purchase, vice Fairrie,
whoretires; C. M. Harrisson, Gent.,
to be Ensign, bv purchase, vice Street.
96th—J. W. S. Moffatt, Gent., to be
Ensign, without purchase, vice Ford,
whose appointment has been cancelled.
WAR-OFFICE, 6th November.
7 th, Dragoon Guards—Nugent Chi
chester Nagle, Gent., to be Cornet, by
purchase, vice Johnston, who retires,
6th November.
2nd. Dragoons—Bt. Colonel Henry
Salwey, from Half Pay Unattached, tobe Lieut. Colonel, vice John Frederick
Sales Clarke, wbo exchanges; Major
St. Vincent W. Picketts to be Lieut.
Colonel, by purchase, vice Salwey. who
retires; Captain Henry Darby Griffith
to be Major, by purchase, vice Ricketts;
Lieutenant Henry Thomas Coward
Smyth Pigott to be Captain, by pur
chase, vice Griffith; Cornet William
Wallace Hozier to be Lieutenant, by
purchase, vice Pigott; Ensign William
Cunninghame Bontine, from 15th Foot,
to be Cornet, by purchase, vice Hozier,
6th November.
14 th, Light Dragoons—Cornet Wm.
M'Mahon to be Lieutenant, by pur
chase, vice Hodson, who retires; Her
bert Edward, Gent., to be Cornet, by
purchase, vice M'Mahon, 6th Nov.
15th Regiment of Foot — Ensign
Charles William Clayton East to be
Lieutenant, by purchase, vice Hatchett,
who retires; Samuel James Blencowe,
Gent., to be Ensign, by purchase, vice
East, 6th November.
37th—Assistant Surgeon Jas. Wm..
Fleming, from the 70th Foot, to be
Assistant Surgeon, 6th November.
44th — Ensign George Lethbridge
Ottley, to be Lieutenant, by purchaes-
�98
PROMOTIONS ANT) APPOINTMENTS.
vice Noake, who retires ; William
Fletcher, Gent., to be Ensign, by pur
chase, vice Ottley; Lieutenant John
Allen Lloyd Phillips to be Adjutant,
vice Noake, who resigns, 6th Nov.
46th—Lieutenant Alexander John
Macpherson, from Half Pay 6th Foot,
to beLieutenant, vice Yonge, promoted;
Ensign John Edward Lyons to be Lieu
tenant, by purchase, vice Macpherson,
Whoretires; C. Somerville M‘Alester,
Gent., to be Ensign, by purchase, vice
Lyons, 6th November.
66th—Bt. Colonel Fielding Browne,
from Half Pay Rifle Brigade, to be
Major, vice Bt. Lieutenant Colonel
William Longworth Dames, who ex
changes; Capt. Sir William Gordon,
Bart., to be Major, by purchase, vice
Browne, who retires; Lieut. James
Hunter Blair Birch to be Captain, by
purchase, vice Sir W. Gordon; Ensign
Robert Conner, to be Lieutenant, by
purchase, vice Birch, 6th November.
70th—Assistant Surgeon John Wm.
Johnston, M.D., from the 1st West
India Regiment, to be Assistant Sur
geon, vice Fleming, appointed to the
37th Foot, 6th November,
88th—Lieut. Edward John Vessey
Brown to be Captain, by purchase,
vice Townshend, who retires; Ensign
Claries O’Donel to be Lieutenant, by
pbrchase, vice Brown; John Salmon
Bayley, Gent., to be Ensign, by pur
chase, vice O’Donel, 6th November.
27th—Lieutenant William Murray
to be Captain, by purchase, vice Kinderley, who retires; Ensign Henry
George Woods to be Lieutenant, by
purchase, vice Murray; William Fred.
,
*
Norma Gent., to be Ensign, by pur
chase, vice Woods, 6tli November.
1st West India Regiment—William
Sedgwick Saunders, Gent., to be Assis
tant Surgeon, vice Johnston, appointed
to the 70th Foot, 6th November.
2nd West India Regiment—Edward
John Stephens Knapman, Gent., to
be Ensign, without purchase, vice
Strachan, whose appointment has been
cancelled, 6th November.
BREVET.
Capt. William Holland Lecky Daniel
Cuddy, of the 55th Foot, to be Major
in the Army, 6th November.
UNATTACHED.
Bt. Major Thomas Parke, from the
Ceylon Rifle Regiment, to be Major,
without purchase, 6th November.
WAR OFFICE, 9th November.
1st Regiment of Life Guards—Maj of
and Lieutenant Colonel John Hall to
be Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel,
without purchase ; Bt. Major Richard
Parker to be Major and Lieutenant
Colonel, vice Hall; Lieutenant William
Anderton to be Captain, vice Parker.
3rd Light Dragoons—Bt. Lieutenant
Colonel George Henry Lock wood, C.B.
to be Lieutenant Colonel, without pur
chase; Captain John William Yerbury
to be Major, vice Lockwood; Lieut.
James Martin to be Captain, vice
Yerbury; Cornet Charles Russell Colt
to be Lieutenant, vice Martin.
Coldstream Regiment ofFoot Guards
—Bt. Colonel Charles Anthony Ferdi
nand Bentinck to be Lieutenant Colo
nel, without purchase ; Bt. Colonel
Henry John William Bentinck to be
Major, vice Charles A. F. Bentinck ;
Lieutenant and Captain Robert Van
sittart to be Captain and Lieutenant
Colonel, vice Henry J. W. Bentinck
5th Regiment of Foot—Major David
England Johnson to be Lieutenant
Colonel, without purchase ; Captain
John Spence to be Major, vice Johnson;
Lieutenant William Seymour Scroggs
to be Captain, vice Spence ; Second
Lieutenant John Swaine Hogge to be
First Lieutenant, vice Scroggs
67th—Major Edward Basil Brooke
to be Lieutenant Colonel, without pur
chase ; Bt. Major Thomas James Adair
to be Major vice Brooke ; Lieutenant
William Pils worth to be Captain, vice
Adair ; Ensign John Cuthbert Murray
to be Lieutenant, vice Pilsworth
78th—Major Jonathan Forbes to be
Lieutenant Colonel, without purchase;
Bt. Major Rawdon J. Popliam Vassal!
to be Major, vice Forbes ; Lieutenant
Digby St. Vincent Hamilton to be Cap
tain, viceVassall; Ensign George Floy
er Sydenham to be Lieutenant, vice
Hamilton.
92nd—Major John Ackerley Forbes
to be Lieutenant Colonel, without pur
chase ; Rt. Major Mark Ker Atherley
to be Major, vice Forbes ; Lieutenant
Charles Edward Stewart GJeig to be
Captain, vice Atherley; Ensign George
William Hamilton Viscount Kirkwall
to be Lieutenant, vice Gleig
94th—Major James Brown to be
Lieutenant Colonel without purchase;
Captain William Davenport Davenport
to be Major, vice Brown ; Lieutenant
George Abbas Kooli D’Arcy to be Cap
tain, vice Davenport ; Ensign Henry
�83
REVIEWS.
The Wars of England, &c. &c., By John Harwood, Esq.,
Thomas Allman, Holborn-Hill.
This is a very gaily ornamented little volume, containing a narrative of the
various wars, and most notable contests in which England has been engaged.
The list commences with the Battle of Hastings, A.D, 1066, and closes with
a recital of the capture of Canton, in 1841;—a sufficiently lengthened range
in all conscience; and as the details of the several affairs are gathered from
the best and most authentic sources, the record may be deemed as very
serviceably complete. Mr. Harwood has employed his materials like an
artist, and describes the various exciting scenes, with commendable anima
tion. Deprived of its abominable disfigurement s — miscalled embellishments,
the volume would gain considerably in attractiveness.
Sharpe’s London Magazine,
Volume 2.
J. B. Sharpe, Skinner-street.
This is the very book for a Military library, with its rich and varied contents,
as well in verse as in prose;—indeed, with its attractive reviews, its profuse
and showy decorations, and the becoming scarlet uniform, in which it is
arrayed, the book itself forms no inappreciable type of the soldier. It is
truly a “ Journal of Entertainment and Instruction, for General Reading,”
and at the same time so low in price, that the most avaricious churl would
scarce be enabled to withstand its purchase.
The object of the proprietor has evidently been to make their field as
extensive as possible—having something for all, and nothing which could
exclude any—to present subjects of all sorts in such a dress, and to infuse
into them such a spirit, as would produce an improving and elevating effect
upon the moral and intellectual character of every class of readers. All
this has been accomplished, and the present work contains a mass of valuable
information—solid tangible facts—a substantial body of knowledge, with a
soul, too, breathed throughout the entire of its frame—the like to which w e
seldom encountered in one single volume.
It may be noted as a distinguishing feature of this handsome volume, that
there is nothing approaching to mediocrity in its contents; they are all of a
first rate character, the illustrative engravings are well executed by artists
of eminence, and the several articles have beeji contributed by writers of
high talents and acquirements.
A Map
of
South Africa.
By G. Wyld, Geographer to the Queen, &c..
Charing Cross.
A generation or two back, and
“ Geographers on pathless downs,
Placed elephants inst ead of towns.”
Nearly all that in this admirable map of South Africa is laid down with
precision, the courses of the rivers, and indeed, every geographical requisite
Military Magazine. No. 2, Vol. 1.
M
�84
REVIEWS.
would then have merely presented a few non-descript-looking palm trees,
perhaps also a few giraffes or ostriches, at the present period ; when the Caffre
war has directed men’s attention more especially to the Cape colony, Mr.
Wyld’s map is a more timely publication. Any one studying it, with the
aid of the accompanying chart of Graham’s Town and the Out Ports, will
find the details of the Caffre warfare, which without such help seem hope
lessly confused, simple and easy of comprehension.
A Treatise
on
Urino-Genital Diseases.
by G. Franks, Surgeon, Blackffiars Road.
This is a very valuable treatise, and doubly so from the way in which the
author has treated a subject replete with difficulties. Not being professional,
we can only speak from the impression produced by perusal, and that is
decidedly favourable. The author is very happy in his manner of explain
ing strictly medical symptoms, so clearly, indeed, that he who runs may
read; and yet not encouraging the presumption that a little knowledge of
the subject is sufficient. To this end, he begins with noticing derangement
of the digestive organs, and proceeds gradually to trace all disturbing
causes that may affect the equilibrium of a healthy state of body, before he
enters upon the particular subject of his work. None but a highly edu
cated medical man could have adopted and carried out the system he has
pursued in the investigation of his matter.
CHARADE.
Come from my first I—aye, come !
The battle dawn is nigh;
And the screaming trump, and thundering drum,
Are calling thee to die!
Fight as thy father fought,
Fall as thy father fell;
Thy task is taught—thy shroud is wrought—
So forward!—and farewell.
Toll ye, my second—toll!
Fling high the flambeau’s light.
Let the hymn be sung for a parted soul,
Beneath the silent night.
The wreath upon his brow—
The cross upon his breast;
Let the prayer be said, and the tear be shed
So—take him to his rest.
Call ye, my whole!—aye, call!
The Lord of Lute and Lay;
And let him greet the sable pall
With a noble song to-day.
Go!—call him by his name;
No meaner hand may crave
To light the flame of a soldier’s fame,
On the turf of a soldier’s grave.
M. M.
�85
THE BREVET.
To the Editor of the “Military Magazine.”
Sir,—While seated with my friend, Captain Arrow, enjoying a very snug
little dinner at the --------- Club, on the evening of the 10th instant, our
attention was for a few moments abstracted from the good things before us,
and fixed upon three elderly gentlemen, who, hobbling in the best manner
that age, wounds, and bodily infirmities would permit them, were threading
their way from the door of entrance towards the table adjoining ours, then
occupied by another gentleman, who, previous to their appearance, seemed
sadly on the fidgets, ever and anon casting his eye first to the clock, then to
the door, as if he expected the arrival of some people of consequence. The
moment his friends entered, up he started as if prompted by some sharp
invisible monitor, and, like a wounded hare, proceeded to meet them. On
approaching them, he gave a hand to each of the two in advance, and on their
grasping them eagerly and affectionately, he stammered out, “ Long looked
for has come at last.” Conceiving he alluded to some long appointed
meeting, Arrow and I were about to recommence our attack on the pies,
puddings, &c., when we were diverted from our purpose by one of the three
remarking, “ True, General, the Brevet has come at last, but not until you
and I are on our last legs. It appears to me little less than a mockery for
that country which we have served in every quarter of the world, and for a
period of half a century, to bestow on us the rank of Major-General when
verging towards that period of human existence denominated man s alloted
span, and when the only benefit which we can now possibly derive from it
amounts to a paltry addition to a pitiful retiring allowance. Had our
country, some fifteen or twenty years ago, recognised our claims,
and bestowed upon us the rank which she has this day done, we should have
received the token of our country’s gratitude with delight; but our country
having prolonged her recognition of our claims to a much later period than
a truly grateful country would have done, she has, instead of making us her
debtors, placed herself in the position of our debtor, and to an extent which
it would be idle to estimate, seeing that at our period of life, no act of hers
could now compensate for her past ingratitude and neglect.” To this short
address, delivered with much feeling and earnestness of manner, General
P.—replied, “ Come, come, you are taking the matter rather too much
to heart. Time lost cannot be regained. Our country cannot renew our
age, consequently she cannot do away with the effects of the injustice of
which you so naturally complain. I therefore propose we shall drown all
recollection of past grievances in a bottle of port, as we have frequently done
before, particularly in those good old times when the services of a British
�86
BREVET.
soldier were held in much highei’ estimation than they have been ever since
they planted the British standard on the walls of Toulouse, and subsequently
on those of the capital of France.”
This, under the circumstances, prudent advice being approved by the other
members, dinner was ordered, and on the cloth being removed, after ample
justice had been done to the delicious viands, “ Port, if you please,” was in
troduced, when “ Champagne to our real friends, and real pain to our sham
friends,” was given from the chair, received with cheers, drank with all the
honours, and one cheer more.
One of the four heroes having rather singularly fancied that he could trace
in the countenance of my friend Arrow a very striking resemblance to an old
brother officer, in whose society he had spent many happy days, and the
conjecture proving correct, my friend and I were kindly invited to share
with them the festivities of the evening, which we very gladly accepted, and
had no occasion to regret our acceptance of their hospitality, for a more
delightful evening I have seldom or ever passed.
In the early part of the evening, the Brevet seemed to be completely
forgotten, but as time progressed, merrily and more merrily the glass went
round, old topics were re-introduced, the Military Gazette was called for;
the names of all the general officers were carefully read over by General A,
the operation being occasionally interrupted by a few interesting remarks
from himself and brother veterans, some of which I have endeavoured to
preserve.
On the first paragraph of the Gazette
WAR OFFICE, Nov. 9, 1846.
Her Majesty has been pleased to
appoint the following Officers to take
rank by Brevet as undermentioned. The
Commissions to be dated November 9th,
1846:—
To be FIELD MARSHALS in the ARMY.
General Sir G. Nugent, Bart., G.C.B.
General Henry William Marquess of
General Thomas Grosvenor
Anglesey, K.G. and G.C.B.
being read, the question “ Should the two first new Field Marshals have
been raised to their present rank on this occasion ; if, instead of preceding
they had succeeded the third on the list of general officers?” was put from
the Chair, during which Arrow’s father’s friend remarked, that it was bor
dering on the burlesque to nominate to the rank of General of Brigade,
men, few of whom could, if required, mount their chargers without the aid
of their orderly ; but to nominate an officer in the 89th year of his age to
the high rank of Field Marshal of the armies of Great Britain, was, un
questionably, to indulge largely in the ridiculous, an opinion in which all
seemed to concur. And in giving his opinion, General P. remarked that
the nomination would have this good effect,—it would show the Peninsular
�BREVET.
87
and Waterloo subalterns that “ the Duke” had not forgotten his old officers.
On disposing of the Field Marshals, General B. said, we will now, if
you please, proceed with the Lists of Generals and Lieutenant-Generals,
which at every successive Brevet are, 1 am sorry to see, getting “ smaller by
degrees, and beautifully less.”
LIEUTENANT GENERALS to
Sir Charles Imhoff
Gabriel Gordon
Charles Craven
James Orde
Sir Charles Bulkeley Egerton, G.C.M.G.
Sir Henry John Cumming
Thomas Birch Reynard son
be GENERALS in the ARMY.
John Earl of Carysfort
Sir Peregrine Maitland, K.C.B.
Hon Thomas Edward Capel
Godfrey Basil Mundy
Sir Colin Hulkett, K.C.B.
Right Hon. Sir Frederick Adam, G.C.B.
MAJOR-GENERALS to be LIEUTENANT-GENERALS in the ARMY.
Sir Henery King, C.B.
Hon. Henry Beauchamp Lygon
Sir Edward Gibbs, K.C.B.
Hon. Edward Pyndar Lygon, C.B.
Sir George Thomas Napier, K.C.B.
Henry Shadforth
Hon. Sir Hercules Robert Pakenham,
Arthur Lloyd
K.C.B.
John Millet Hammerton, C.B.
Sir John Harvey, K.C.B.
Parry Jones Parry
Sir George Scovell, K.C.B.
Sir David Ximenes
Sir Neil Douglas, K.C.B.
Daniel Colquhoun
Charles Nicol, G.B.
George Marquess of Tweeddale, K.T.
and C.B.
Sir William Tuyll
Sir George Henry Frederick Berkeley,
Sir Frederick William Trench
Alexander George Lord Saltoun, K.C.B.
K.C.B.
Harry Wyndham
Sackville Hamilton Berkeley
Sir Edward Bowater
Sir Charles James Napier, G.C.B.
Helier Touzel
Sir William Maynard Gomm, K.C.B.
Sir Jeremiah Dickson, K.C.B.
“ There goes a splendid batch of old warriors,” said General S., “ men
who in the late war were ever foremost where danger appeared most immi
nent—men in whose breasts still rests that spirit, before which the boasted
invincibles of Napoleon quailed, on all the fields of Spain, of Belgium, and
of France.”
Nothing could be more truly soul-stirring than the numerous little ebul
litions of patriotic feeling which escaped the lips of my new friends, as
General A------ called out the names, in what he designated their own List,
that of Colonels to be Major-Generals. I should be encroaching too much
on your space, however, were I to crave a place for the fiftieth part of the
remarks made, and anecdotes related, of the conduct of many of their
absent friends ; how Major-General P------ , at a critical stage of the battle
of------------ , flew like a meteor across a plain, threw himself and regiment
in rear of the enemy’s left wing, and thereby contributed most materially
to the success of that glorious day—how Major-General B------ charged a
body of the enemy double the numerical strength of his own corps, and
made them fly like chaff before the wind—how poor Major-General A-----lost an arm at the battle of----- - ; how Major-General M‘D------ , when
—
�88
BREVET.
covering with his Portuguese battalion the retreat of a portion of the 2nd
division in Spain, had his clothes perforated with musket-bullets. A con
siderable portion of his battalion being in recollection of the old adage,
“ He that fights and runs away,
Will live to fight another day.”
took the road that best suited their views, and left the gallant chief to exe
cute the orders he had received in the best way he could. But it would
be impossible in a less space than an octavo volume to do justice to this
subject, and therefore, on submitting the list of Colonels lately promoted to
Major-Generals, I shall merely state, thatas all those officers were personally
known to one or more of my gallant friends, the eyes of the latter, as each
name was pronounced by General A------ , glistened with the purest delight
that they had been afforded an opportunity of bearing the amplest testimony
to the conduct of their absent friends in all the relations of life—as Christian
men and unflinching soldiers.
COLONELS to be MAJOR- GENERALS in the ARMY.
Charles Edward Conyers, C.B., hp, In Thomas William Taylor, C.B., hp Unatt.
Lieutenant Governor Royal Military
specting Field Officer
College
George Augustus Henderson, hp, In
Lawrence Arguimbau, C.B., hp 1st Foot
specting Field Officer
Sir Henry George Wakelyn Smith, Bart.,
Roger Parke, hp Unatt.
G.C.B., hp Unatt.
Robert Barclay Macpherson, C.B., hp,
Felix Calvert, C.B., hp Unatt.
Unatt.
William Stavely, C.B., hp Unatt., De
Philip Hay, hp 25th Light Dragoons
puty Quarter Master General, Mauritius
James Allan, C.B., of the 57th Foot
Sir De Lacy Evans, K.C.B., hp Unatt.
Archibald Money, C.B., hp 60th Foot
William Henry Scott, hp Unatt.
David Forbes, C.B., hp 78th Foot
John Frederick Ewart, C.B., Inspecting Hugh Percy Davison, hp 5th West India
Regt.
Field Officer of a Recruiting District
Henry Adolphus Proctor, C.B., hp 6th Sir Thomas Willshire, Bart., K.C.B., hp
Unatt., Commandant at Chatham
Foot
Hon. Henry Edward Butler, hp 2d GarWilliam Jervois, hp 53rd Foot
Garrison Batt.
William Riddall, hp Unatt
Edward Fleming, C.B., Inspecting Field
Thomas Fenn Addison, hp 99th Foot
Officer of a Recruiting District
Sir Francis Cockburn, of 2nd West In
John Rolt, C.B., hp Unatt.
dia Regt.
Philip Bainbridge, C.B., hp, Unatt. De
Thomas Steele, hp Unatt.
puty Quarter Master General in Irel.
Carlo Joseph Doyle, hp 2nd Garrison
Thomas Erskine Napier, C.B., hp Unatt.,
Batt.
Deputy Adjutant General in Ireland
Thomas Charretie, hp 7th West India
Nathaniel Thorn, C.B., hp, Permanent
Regt.
Assistant Quarter Master General
Sir George Arthur, Bt., K.C.H., hp York
William Henry Sewell, C.B., of the 94th
Chasseurs
Foot
Edward Parkinson, C.B., hp 11th Foot
Wm. Lindsay Darling, hp 2d Garrison
Thomas Hunter Blair, C.B., hp Unatt.
Batt.
Richard Lluellyn, C.B., hp Unatt.
Sir Joseph Thackwell, K.C.B., of the
John Hare, C.B., hp 20th Light Dra
3rd Light Dragoons
goons
Sir William Lewis Herries, C.B., hp
Richard Egerton, C.B., hp Unatt.
Unatt.
Sir William Chalmers, C.B., hp Unatt.
John M‘Donald, C.B., of the 92d Foot
Charles Beckwith, C.B., hp Unatt.
Thomas Staunton St. Clair, C.B., hp
William Campbell, C.B., hp Unatt.
Unatt.
James Claud Bourchier, hp 22d Light
George William Patty, C.B., hp Unatt.
Dragoons
Thomas James Wemyss, C.B., hp Unatt.
James Grant, C,B., hp Unatt.
�brevet.
8$
George Bowles, hp Unatt.
Robert Burd Gabriel, C.B., hp 22nd
Thomas Bunbury, of the 67th Root
Light Dragoons
Hon. Henry Rrederick Compton Caven
Henry Thomas, C.B., hp Unatt.
dish, of the 1 st Regt, of Life Guards
William Rowan, C.B., hp Unatt.
Philip Ray, hp Scots Fusilier Guards
James Shaw Kennedy, C.B., hp Uratt.
Henry Godwin, C.B., hp 87th Root
Arthur William Moyses Lord Sandys,
Thomas William Robbins, hp 18th Root
hp (Jnatt.
Roderick Macneil, of the 78th Root
Sir Thomas Henry Browne, hp Unatt.
George Dean Pitt, Inspecting Rield Of
Thomas Phipps Howard, hp 23rd Light
ficer of a Recruiting District
Dragoons
•
William Sutherland, of the 5th Root
Robert William Mills, hp 9th Root
Henry Rainey, C.B., hp Unatt.
Frederick Ashworth, hp 58th Root
Hon. Charles Gore, C.B., Deputy Quar
Robert Bryce Rearon, C.B., of the 40th
ter MasterGeneral inCanada,hpUnatt.
Root
Robert Dalyell, hp Unatt.
Henry Balneavis, C.M.G., hp Unatt.
Vincent Edward Eyre, late Horse Gre William Levelace Walton, hp Unatt.
Charles Richard Fox, hp Unatt., A.D.C.nadier Guards
to the Queen
Thomas Thornbury Wooldridge, hp 91st
Charles Augustus Shawe, of the Cold
Root
stream Regt, of Root Guards
George Leigh Goldie, C.B., hp Unatt.
George Powell Higginson, hp Unatt.
The clock having reminded us that it was time to retire before we had
arrived at the last name on the list of Major-Generals, General B------ , who
had occupied the chair during the evening, rose as the name of Charles
Augustus Shawe died away on the lips of his friend, General A------ , and
with much feeling, and great spirit, said, “ Seeing that time will not permit
us to go over the names of our junior brethren to-night, I am sure you will
not hesitate to join me in the fervent prayer, that all of them may be more
fortunate in obtaining promotion than a large portion of their gallant prede
cessors, who, in the hour of danger, stepped forward and not only prevented
a bold, an experienced, and then unconquered enemy from landing on our
shores, but subsequently soundly thrashed the same haughty and insolent foe
on every field on which they met him, from Vemeira to Waterloo. And not
less fervently also in the additional prayer, that they may be more fortunate
in having their conduct in action, and other merits, submited for consideration
in that quarter from which all honours and rewards proceed, than our grey
headed brethren, the remnant of the thousands of subaltern officers who, in
Portugal, in Spain, in France, and in Belgium, poured out their blood without
measure for their country, but who most unaccountably have been left to plod
their way through the world on their pitiful half-pay allowance, unheeded by
all, even by the writer of the following :—“ Whatever may be the future
destination of those brave troops of which the Field Marshal now takes his
leave, he trusts that every individual will believe that he will ever feel the
deepest interest in their honour and welfare, and will always he happy to promote
either."—A pledge which, made thirty-one years ago, cannot be too soon
redeemed, for so many of those to whom the pledge was given are yearly
taking their departure for that bourne from whence neither Field Marshals
nor Subalterns return, that, in a few years, not one will remain to have
their honour and welfare promoted by him to whose long train of successes they
so largely contributed."
P.
�90
BREVET?.
LIEUTENANT COLONELS to be
COLONELS in the the Army.
Alexander Findlay, hp Royal African
Corps
William Bush, of the 1st W. I. Regt.
Frederick Thomas Buller, hp Unatt.
Henry Despard, of the 99 th Foot
Benjamin Chapman Browne, hp Unatt.
Saumarez Brock, hp 48th Foot
Edward Wells Bell, hp Unatt.
Alexander Campbell, C.B., of the Sth
Light Dragoons
John Reed, hp 54th Foot
James Jones, hp Unatt.
Edward Carlyon, hp 66th Foot
Thomas Burke, hp 4th Foot
Thomas Samuel Trafford, hp 24th Foot
Courtenay Chambers, of the 25th Foot
William Graham, hp Unatt.
Janies Thomas Earl of Cardigan, of
the 11th Light Dragoons
Godfrey Thorton, of the 1st or Grena
dier Regt, of Foot Guards
William Cowper Coles, hp Unatt.
Sir Michael Creagh, hp Unatt.
John Eden, C.B., hp Unatt., Assistant
Adjutant General in North Britain
Edmund Richard Story, hp Unatt.
Sir Robert Burdett, Bart., hp Unatt.
Charles Shee, hp Unatt.
Humphrey Robert Hartley, hp Unatt.
Henry William Barnard, of the 1st or
Grenadier Regt, of Foot Guards
James Campbell, hp Unatt.
Sir Charles Chichester, of the 81st Foot
Hon. Charles Grey, hp Unatt.
William Lord de Ros, hp Unatt.
John Geddes, hp. Unatt.
William Henry Cornwall, of the Cold
stream Regt, of Foot Guards
Charles FitzRoy Maclean, hp Unatt.
Fhilip Spencer Stanhope, of the 1st or
Grenadier Regt, of Foot Guards
Charles Collins Blane, hp Unatt.
Brinckman Brinckman, of the Cold
stream Regt, of Foot Guards
Philip Dundas, hp Unatt.
Edward French Boys, of the 45th Foot
Charles Murray Hay, of the Coldstream
Regt, of Foot Guards
Frederick Farquharson, of the 7thFoot
Hon. Henry Montagu, of the Scots
Fusilier Guards
Charles Leslie, hp Unatt.
Henry Edward Porter, hp Unatt.
George E. Jones, of the 57th Foot
John Dawson Rawdon, hp Unatt.
William Persse, C.B., of the 16th Light
Dragoons
William Beckwith, hp Unatt.
Henry Edward Robinson, hp Unatt.
George Todd, hp Unatt.
Hon. Edward Gordon Douglas Peiinant, hp Unatt.
Francis Venables Harcourt, hp Unatt.
Hon. Henry Sutton Fane, hp Unatt.
Henry William Breton, of the 4th Foot
Allan T. Maclean, hp 13th Lt. Dragoons
Arthur Marquess of Douro, hp Unatt.
George Gawler, hp Unatt.
John'Julius William Angerstein, of the
1st or Grenadier Regt, of Ft. Guards
Thomas Marten, of the 1st Dragoons
Sir John Montagu BurgoyUe, Bart., of
the 1st or Grenadier Regt, of Foot
Guards
Philip James Vorke, of the Scots Fusi
lier Guards
Thomas Gerrard Ball, hp Unatt.
Eaton Monins. of the 69th Foot
William Cox, hp Unatt.
William Croker, C.B., of the 17th Foot
Henry Capadose, of the 1st West India
Regt.
George Morton Eden, of the Scots
Fusilier Guards
George Dixon, of the Scots Fusilier
Guards
Frederick MaUnsell, Inspecting Field
Officer of a Recruiting District
George Baker, hp Unatt.
William John Codrington, of the Cold
stream Regt, of Foot Guards
William Turnor, hp Unatt.
William Fludyer, of the 1st or Grena
dier Regt, of Foot Guards
John Ross, of the St. Helena Regt.
John Wharton Frith, Inspecting Field
Officer of a Recruiting District
Thomas Falls, hp Unatt.
MAJORS to be LIEUTENANT
COLONELS in the Army.
Thomas Wright, hp Royal Staff Corps
William James King, hp Royal Staff
Corps
Hon. N. Henry Charles Massey, hp
Unatt.
John Joseph Hollis, of the 25th Foot
John Procter, of the 30th Foot
Francis Barraillier, hp Rifle Brigade
James Henderson, hp Unatt.
Peter Shadwell Norman, of the 56th
Foot
Samuel Workman, hp Unatt.
John Swinburn, hp Unatt.
Robert Kelly, hp Unatt., Fort Major
at Dartmouth
George Stuart, hp 42nd Foot
Thomas Kelly, hp Cheshire Fencibles,
Fort Major at Tilbury Fort
Malcolm Macgregor, of the 5th Foot
Charles Andrews Bayley, C.M.G., hp
Unatt.
�99
PROMOTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS.
Hamilton Pratt to be Lieutenant, vice
D’Arcy.
2nd West India Regiment—Major
James Allen to be Lieutenant Colonel,
without purchase ; Captain John Jas.
Peck to be Major, vice Allen ; Lieute
nant William Anderson to be Captain,
vice Peck ; Ensign Conway James
George Williams to be Lieutenant, vice
Anderson.
Commissions to bear date 9th Nov.,
1846
WAR-OFFICE, 13th November.
12th Light Dragoons—Peter Thomas
Gunning, Gent., to be Assistant Surgeon,
vice MTntyre, appointed to the 26th
Foot, 13th November.
3rd Regiment of Foot—The Hon.
William Henry Lysagbt, to be Ensign,
without purchase, vice M‘Dermott, pro
moted in the 8th Foot, 13th November.
5th—Serjeant Major C. Carter to be
Second Lieutenant, without purchase,
vice Hogge, promoted, 13th November.
8th—Ensign Benjamin Kennicott
M'Dermot, from 3rd Foot, to be Lieut,
without purchase, vice Cox, deceased,
3rd November.
10 th—Ensign George Thompson
Whitaker to be Adjutant, vice Galloway,
who resigns the Adjutancy only, 24th
August.
15th—John Lloyd, Gent., to be
Ensign, by purchase, vice Bontine, ap
pointed to the 2nd Dragoons, 13th Nov.
18th—Assistant Surgeon James Stew
art to be Surgeon, vice Grigor Stewart,
deceased, 5th August; William Kelman
Chalmers, M.D.,to be Assistant Surgeon,
vice James Stewart, 13 th November.
19th—George Varnham Macdonald,
Gent., to be Ensign, without purchase,
vice Anderson, appointed to 37th Foot,
13th November.
26th—Assistant Surgeon Duncan
MTntyre, M.D., from 12th Light Dra
goons, to be Assistant Surgeon, vice
Home, promoted on Staff, 13th Nov.
29th—Captain JEneas William Fraser,
from 39th Foot, to be Captain, vice
Wilbraham, who exchanges, 24th Aug.
37 th—Lieutenant Herbert Russell
Manners, to be Captain, without pur
chase, vice John Harvey, who retires
upon Full Pay; Ensign John Grattan
Anderson, from 19th Foot, to be Ensign
without purchase, 13th November.
39 th—Captain Thomas Wright Hud
son, from 61st Foot, to be Captain, vice
Fraser,who exchanges; Captain^Thomas
Edward Wilbraham, from 29th Foot, to
Military Magazine. No. 2, Vol. 1.
be Captain, vice Fraser, who exchanges,
24th August.
50th—Henry John Hinde, Gent., to
be Ensign, without purchase, vice Cormick, deceased, 13th November.
61st—Captain James S. Atkinson,
from 39th Foot, to be Captain, vice
Hudson, who exchanges, 24th August.
63rd—Ensign Henry White to be
Lieutenant, without purchase, vice
Hughes, deceased, 31st July; Ensign
WilliamHunt to be Lieutenant, without
purchase, vice White, whose promotion
the 25th August, 1846, has been cancelled,
25 th August.
67 th—G eorge Augustus M‘N air, Gent,
to be Ensign, without purchase, vice
Murray promoted, 13th November.
76th—Ensign John William Preston
to be Lieutenant, by purchase, vice Peel,
who retires; Edward George Gray,
Gent., to be Ensign, by purchase, vice
Preston, 13th November.
78th—Ensign Allan John Robertson,
from 92nd Foot, to be Ensign, vice
Sydenham, 13th November.
80th—EnsignRobert Cassels 01 iphant,
from the Royal Newfoundland Compa
nies, to be Lieutenant, without purchase
vice Kershaw, deceased, 13th November.
92nd—Walter John Macdonald, Gent,
to be Ensign, without purchase, vice
Robertson, appointed to the 78th Foot,
13th November.
94th—Whiteford John Bell, Gent., to
be Ensign, without purchase, vice Pratt,
promoted, 13th November.
2nd West India Regiment—Fre lerick
Blanco Forster, Gent., to be Ensign,
without purchase, vice Williams, pro
moted, 12th November; George Ellis,
Gent., to be Ensign, without purchase,
vice Lawless, deceased, 13th November.
HOSPITAL STARE.
Assistant Surgeon William Home,
M.D., from 26th Foot, to be Staff Sur
geon of the Second Class, vice Garret,
deceased, 13th November.
WAR OFFICE, 20th November.
3rd Light Dragoons—Cornet James
Macqueen, from the 16th Light Dra
goons, to be Cornet, vice Colt, promoted
20th November.
1 st, or Grenadier Regiment of Foot
Guards—Lieut, and Captain Henry
Penleaze, to be Captain and Lieut
enant Colonel, without purchase, vice
Spottiswoode, deceased 4th November.
3rd Regiment of Foot—Lieutenant
Peter Browne to be Captain, by pur
chase, vice Pryse who retires; Ensign
o
�100
PROMOTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS.
Charles Hood to be Lieutenant, by pur
chase, vice Browne; Octavius Cobb
Rooke, Gent, to be Ensign, by purchase
vice Hood, 20th of November.
| 7th—Assistant Surgeon Wm. Sedg
wick Saunders, from the IstWest India
Regiment, to be Assistant Surgeon,
vice Collings, promoted in the 2nd
West India Regiment, 20th November.
21st—Herbert Charles Gray, Gent.,
to be Second Lieutenant, without pur
chase, vice Peddie, deceased, 20th Nov.
25th—William Trail Arnold, Gent.,
to be Ensign, by purchase, vice John
Hunt Cumming, whose appointment
has been cancelled, 20th Nov.
27 th—Ensign Brabazon Noble to be
Lieutenant, by purchase, vice Cox,
who retires; William Archibald Kidd,
Gent., to be Ensign, by purchase, vice
Noble, 20th Nov.
36th—Major Charles Trollope to be
Lieutenant Colonel, without purchase;
Captain Lorenzo Rothe to be Major,
vice Trollope; Lieutenant Robert Hal
lowell Carew to be Captain, vice Rothe;
Lieutenant Roger Barnston to be Ad
jutant ; Quartermaster Serjeant Patrick
Owens to be Quartermaster, 20th Nov.
37th—Ensign Edward Joseph Netterville Burton to be Lieutenant, by
purchase, vice Hobson, who retires;
Joseph Hobson, Gent., to be Ensign,
by purchase, vice Burton, 20th Nov.
41st—Ensign Henry Walter Mere
dith to be Lieutenant, by purchase,
vice Campbell Graham, whose promo
tion, by purchase, has been cancelled,
3rd November.
56th—Bt. Lieutenant Colonel Peter
Shadwell Norman to be Lieutenant
Colonel, without purchase; Bt. Major
Nicholas Palmer to be Major, vice
Norman; Lieutenant the Honourable
John Arbuthnot Keane, from the 33rd
Root, to be Captain, vice Palmer;
Lieutenant Fox Maule Ramsay to be
Adjutant; Serjeant Major Joseph
Swaine to be Quartermaster, 20th
November.
92d—Gentleman Cadet John Henry
St. John, from the Royal Military
College, to be Ensign, without pur
chase, vice Viscount Kirkwall, pro
moted, 20th November.
1st West India Regiment—Thomas
Frederick Wall, Gent., to be Assistant
Surgeon, vice Saunders, removed to
the 7th Foot, 20th November.
2nd West India Regiment—Assist
ant Surgeon Adolphus Collings, M.D.,
from the 7th Foot, to be Surgeon, vice
Richardson, promoted to the Staff,
20th November.
HOSPITAL STAFF.
Surgeon John Richardson, from the
2nd West India Regiment, to be Staff
Surgeon of the First Class, vice Cham
bers, deceased, 20th November.
MEMORANDUM.
The names of the Cornet, appointed
to the 7th Dragoon Guards, are
Nugent Chichester, not as previously
stated.
The Army.—On the 10th of Nov.
last, a Parliamentary return was
printed, showing the average effective
strength of the army in each year
from 1834 to 1843, specifying severally
Dragoon Guards, Dragoons, and Foot
Guards, and Infantry of the Line. It
hence appears, that in 1834 there were
5,675 sergeants, 1,789 trumpeters and
drummers, and 90,831 rank and file, in
the army. In 1835, there were 5,722
sergeants,1,794 trumpeters and drum
mers, and 87,378 rank and file. In
1838,5,730 sergeants, 1,794 trumpeters
and drummers, and 86,523 rank and
file. In 1837, 5,731 sergeants, 1,811
trumpeters and drummers, and 86,599
rank and file. In 1838, 5,779 sergeants,
1,814 trumpeters and drummers, and
89,314 rank and file. In 1839, 5,876
sergeants, 1,814 trumpeters and drum
mers, and 95,460 rank and file. In
1840, 6,217 sergeants, 1,840 trumpeters
and drummers, and 104,597 rank and
file. In 1841, 6,308 sergeants, 1,864
trumpeters and drummers, and 108,194
rank and file. In 1842,6,530 sergeants,
1,950 trumpeters and drummers, and
111,831 rank and file; and in 1843,
the effective strength of the army
consisted of 6,760 sergeants, 2,064
trumpeters and drummers, and 115,124
rank and file.
�101
STATIONS OF THE ARMY.
1st Life Guards; Windsor.
2nd do.; Regent’s Park.
Royal Horse Guards; Hyde Park.
1st Dragoon Guards ; Birmingham.
2nd do.; Newbridge.
3rd do.; Piershill.
4th do.; Nottingham.
5tli do.; York.
6th do.; Dublin.
7th do.; Cape of Good Hope, Maidstone.
1st Dragoons; Cork.
2nd do.; Clonmell.
3rd do.; Bengal, Maidstone.
4th do.; Dublin.
6th do.; Longford.
7th Hussars; Athlone.
8th do.; Cahir,
9th Lancers ; Bengal, Maidstone.
10th Hussars; India, Canterbury.
11th Hussars; Coventry.
12th Lancers; Hounslow.
13th Light Dragoons; Newbridge.
14th do.; Bombay, Maidstone.
15th Hussars; Madras, Maidstone.
16th Lancers ; Bengal, Maidstone.
17th do.; Dundalk.
Grenadier Guards [1stbatt.]; Winchester
Do. [2nd batt.]; St. John’s Wood.
Do. [3rd batt.] ; the Tower.
Coldstream Guards [1stbat.]; St.George’s B.
Do. [2nd batt ]; Portman-street Barracks
Scotch Fusilier Gds. [1stbat.]; WellingtonB.
Do. [2nd batt.]; Windsor.
1st Foot [1st batt.]; Trinidad, Newbridge.
Do. [2nd batt.]; Edinburgh.
S
2nd do.; Portsmouth.
3rd do.; Dublin.
4th do.; India, Chatham.
5th do.; Plymouth.
6th do.; Cape of Good Hope.
Do. [Reserve bat.]; Hudson’s Bay.Buttevant,
7th do.; Barbadoes, Newry.
8th do.; Bombay, Chatham.
9th do.; Bengal, Chatham.
10th do.; Meerut, Chatham.
11th do.; New South Wales, Chatham.
12th do.; Mauritius, Isle of Wight.
Do. [Reserve batt.]; Mauritius.
13th do.; Portsmouth.
14th do.; Canada, Plymouth.
15th do.; Ceylon, Waterford.
16th do.; Gibraltar, Fermoy.
17th do.; Bombay, Chatham.
18th do. ; China, Chatham.
19th do.: Barbadoes, Boyle.
20th do.; Bermuda, Isle of Wight.
Do. [Reserve batt.]; Bermuda.
21st do. ; Bengal, Chatham.
22nd do.; Bombay, Chatham.
23rd do.; Antigua, Isle of Wight.
Do. [Reserve batt.]; Canada.
24th do.; India, Chatham.
25th do.; Madras, Chatham.
26th do.; Dublin.
27th do.; Cape of Good Hope, Gosport.
28th do.; Bombay, Chatham.
29th do.; Bengal, Chatham.
30th do.; Newcastle-on-Tyne.
31st do.; Bengal, Chatham.
32nd do.; India, Chatham.
33rd do.; Nova Scotia, Mullingar.
34th do.; Corfu, Clonmel.
35th do.; Mauritius, Charles Fort.
36th do.; Weedon.
37th do.; Chatham.
38th do.; Jamaica, Londonderry.
39th do.; Bengal, Chatham.
40th do.; Winchester.
41st Foot; Mullingar.
42nd do; Malta, Isle of Wight.
Do. [Reserve batt.]; Malta.
43rd do.; Dover.
44th do.; Belfast.
45th do.; Cape of Good Hope, Isle of Wight.
Do. [Reserve batt.]; Cape.
46th do.; Canada, Chatham.
47th do.; Cork.
48th do.; Jamaica, Dublin.
49th do.; Galway.
50th do.; Lodianah, Chatham.
51st do.; Van Diemen’s Land, Chatham.
52nd do.; Quebec, Brecon.
53rd do.; Bengal, Chatham.
54th do.; Gibraltar, Kinsale.
55th do.; Limerick.
56th do.; Chatham.
Do. [Reserve batt.]; Manchester.
57th do.; Canterbury.
58th do.; N. S. Wales, Chatham.
59th do.; Limerick.
60th do. [1st batt.]; Bombay. Chatham.
Do. [2nd batt.]; Canada, Chatham.
61st do.; Bengal, Chatham.
62nd do.; Ferozepore. Chatham.
63rd do.; Secunderabad, Chatham.
64th do.; Kilkenny.
65th do.; N. S. Wales, Chatham (on passage.)
66th do.; Gibraltar, Templemore.
67th do.; Cork.
68th do.; Dublin.
69th do.; Bury.
70th do.; Templemore.
71st do.; Barbadoes, Isle of Wight.
Do. [Reserve batt.]; Canada.
72nd do.; Gibraltar, Nenagh.
73rd do.; Cape of Good Hope, Clare Castle.
74th do.; Aberdeen.
75th do.; Athlone.
76th do. ; Fort George, N. B.
77th do.; Halifax, N. S., Fermoy.
78th do. ; Bombay, Chatham.
79th do.; Gibraltar, Castlebar.
80th do.; Lahore, Chatham.
81st do.; Canada, Jersey.
82nd do.; Canada, Fermoy.
83d do.; Dublin.
84th do.; Madras, Chatham.
85th do.; Birr.
86th do.; Bombay, Chatham,
87th do.; Newport, S. W.
88th do.; Malta, Birr.
89th do.; Canada, Hull.
90th do.; Cape of Good Hope, Chester.
91st do.; Cape of Good Hope; Isle of Wight
Do. [Reserve batt.] Cape of Good Hope.
92nd do.; Enniskillen.
93rd do.; Canada, Naas.
94th do.; Aden, Chatham.
95th do.; Ceylon, Tralee.
96th do.; Van Diemen’s Land, Chatham.
97th do.; Corfu, Isle of Wight.
Do. [Reserve batt.]; Corfu.
98th do.; China, Chatham,
99th do.; N. S. Wales, Chatham.
Rifle Brig. [1st. batt.]; Corfu, Sheerness.
Do. [2nd bat.]; Halifax, N. S., Isle of Wight
Do. [Reserve bat.] ; Halifax, N. S.
1st West India Regt.; Jamaica, &c.
2nd do.; Nassau.
3rd do.; Demerara, Sierra Leone, &c
Ceylon Rifle Regt.—Ceylon.
Royal Canadian Rifle Regt.; Canada
Cape Mounted Riflemen—Cape of G. Hope
RL Newfoundland Comps.: Newfoundland
Royal Malta Fencible Regt.; Malta.
St. Helena Regt.; St. Helena.
�102
MEMORANDA.
Pensioners in the Army.—By a
return lately printed (obtained by Mr.
Hume) an account was rendered of the
number of pensioners received from the
army on the pension establishment
from the year 1834 to the year 1843,
both inclusive. The average age of
the pensioners was 40 years and 4
months, and the average service of
those admitted on the pension esta
blishment 20 years and 10 months.
The number of pensioners who died
in the year 1843 was 3,752, and the
average age of the pensioners at the
time of their decease was 59 years, 2
months, and 15 days. The list of the
total number of out-pensioners of all
branches of the army on the establish
ment of Chelsea Hospital in each
year from 1834 to 1843, both years in
clusive, is as follows. In 1834 the
number was 86,538,; in 1835, 84,960;
in 1836, 86,495; in 1837, 85,396; in
1838, 83,952; in 1839, 82,755; in 1840,
81,553; in 1841, 80,070; in 1842,78,501;
and in 1843, 76,692. The numbers
included all descriptions of out-pen
sioners of Chelsea Hospital, as well as
black pensioners from 1836, then first
transferred to Chelsea Hospital.
The Departure of the 37th Re
giment.—The head quarters of this re
giment embarked at Gravesend on the
16th ulto: on board the ship Minerva,
for Ceylon; the strength consisted of 17
sergeants, eight drummers, and 287
rank and file, under command of Lieu
tenant Colonel the Hon. Augustus Spen
cer, with the following officers, Captain
A. M. A. Bower, Captain J. Owen
Lewis, Lieutenant Charles Luxmoore,
Lieutenant W. J. Bazalgette, Lieute
nant Jackson, Ensigns Shad, Jones,
and Hamilton, with surgeon Alexander
Brown,M.D. The following detachment
of this regiment, comprising 11 ser
geants, 7 drummers, and 257 rank and
file, marched on the 15th from Brompton barracks, en route for Gravesend,
and embarked on board the ship Castle
Eden for the same destination. The de
tachment will be in command of Major
F. Skelly, with Captain E. D. Atkin
son, Lieutenant J. B Stavely, Lieu
tenant R. R. Pelly, Lieutenant James
H. Wyatt, Lieutenant T. M. Machel,
Ensign E. J. N. Burton, Ensign C. S
Blois, and assistant-surgeon Alexander
Forbrath. The usual allowance of
women and children proceeded with
the above troops.
The Patent Epithem :—A Substi
tute for Poultices and Fomentation Cloths.
—The perusal of Mr. Marwick’s little
treatise respecting this novel combina
tion of absorbent and waterproof sub
stances has much interested us. We
cannot but admire the ingenuity dis
played in obviating the many and se
rious inconveniences of the common
methods of poulticing and fomenting
go strongly dwelt upon by Dr. Thomp
son, and other high authorities. We
would suggest that epitheme would
be as classical as Epithem, and more
euphonious, and that the upper sur
face of the spongio-piline should be
made much finer, being at present too
rough and course for a skin that is ten
der or irritable. We hope it will re
ceive the extensive support it seems to
merit.
Corporal Punishment in India.—
A Parliamentary document has been
issued, of twenty-eight pages, contain
ing several papers relative to corporal
punishment in India. Mr. Hume
moved for a copy “ of any orders is
sued by the Govenor-General or Com
mander-in-Chief in India, Frespecting
corporal punishment of Europeans and
natives in British India since the 19th
of March, 1827.” By a circular, dated
the 16th of June, 1827, the Commander
in-Chief gave some explanation respect
ing a former circular letter, and the
General Orders restricting the punish
ment of flogging in the native army.
Regimental or detachment courtsmartial were reminded that where
they sentenced a native soldier to be
flogged, his dismissal would also follow,
and that they ought not to award the
punishment of flogging except for very
serious offences against discipline, or
actions of a disgraceful and infamous
nature, unbecoming the character of a
soldier. Another circular was issued
in November, 1832. When it happened
that a soldier had been found guilty of
an offence which rendered it improper
that he should remain any longer in
the service, although the general con
duct of the man had been such that an
example was unnecessary, or he might
have relations in the regiment of ex
cellent character, upon whom some
part of the disgrace would fall if he
�MEMORANDA.
were flogged, the Commander-inGhief
authorised commanding officers of re
giments, in all cases where a native
soldier had been sentenced to coporal
punishment, to discharge him from the
service, if they considered it to be ex
pedient, although the punishment was
remitted altogether. In every case of
a discharge ordered in consequence.of
< Court-martial, the circumstances of
the soldier having been found guilty
and sentenced to corporal punishment
was to be distinctly specified in his dis
charge certificate, and in the monthly
casualty list transmitted to head
quarters. The following is very gra
tifying:—“ The Commander-in-Chief
has observed with great satisfaction
how. seldom it is necessary to resort to
such punishment in order to maintain
discipline amongst a body of men who
are free from the vice of inebriety; who
are, in general, remarkable for their
orderly, quiet, and obedient behaviour,
and for whom dismisal from the service,
where any individual betrays an op
posite character, constitutes of itself a
severe, and in most cases, a sufficient
punishment.” In February, 1835, the
following General Order was issued:—
“ The Governor General of India in
council is pleased to direct that the
practice of punishing soldiers of the
native army by the cat-o’-nine tails,
or rattans, be discontinued at all the
presidencies, and that it shall hence
forth be competent to any regimental
detachment or brigade court-martial
to sentence a soldier of the native army
to dismissal from the service for any
offence for which such soldier might
now be punished by flogging, provided
such sentence of dismissal shall not be
carried into effect unless confirmed by
the general, or other officer command
ing the division.” The document con
tains an Act passed by the Governor,
and the Articles of War for the govern
ment of the native officers and soldiers
in the military service of the East
India Company.
Court Martial.—Head Quarters,
Simla, 28th Aug. At a General Court
Martial holden at Bombay, on Monday
the 20th day of July, 1846, Lieut. John
A. Macdougall, Her Majesty’s 28th
Regt, of Foot, was arraigned on the
following charge :— For fraudulent
Conduct, highly unbecoming the cha
racter of an Officer and a gentleman,
in the following instances, viz.:—1st.,
For having, at Bombay, on or about
103
the 23rd Nov., 1844, obtained from the
firm of Messrs. Remington and Co., of
that place, the sum of rupees five hun
dred, under a promise made in a letter
addressed to them of the same date, of
sending to the said firm his Pay Cer
tificate, when received by him|from
Calcutta, to enable them to draw his
Pay in liquidation of the said sum;
but which promise he (Lieut. Macdou
gall) has failed to fulfil. 2nd. In hav
ing, at Bombay, on the 22nd Jan.,
1845, given in payment for expenses
incurred by him at the British Hotel
there, a draft dated on the aforesaid
day, payable 14 days after sight, on
Messrs. Remington and Co., of that
place, in favour of Mr. Chamberlain,
or order, for the sum of rupees fifteen
hundred and fifty-four, he (Lieut.
Macdougall) well knowing at the time
that he had no authority to draw on
that firm, and no funds with them to
meet the same, and in not having
placed funds with the aforesaid firm
to discharge the said draft when it be
came due. 3rd. In having, at Poona,
on the 11th March, 1845, given to Mr.
.Thomas Blackwell, of the British
Hotel, Bombay, a promissary note
bearing the date, for the sum of rupees
one thousand nine hundred and fiftyfour, being the amount of an original
bill for hotel expenses and law and
travelling expenses, payable in differ
ent instalments, on the 1st May, 1st
June, 1st July ; and in not having
taken measures for liquidating the
same on the different dates on which
he (Lieut. Macdougall) stood engaged
to pay the same. Finding.—The
Court, having most maturely weighed
and considered the evidence adduced
on the part of the prosecution, toge
ther with what the prisoner, Lieut. J.
A. Macdougall, has urged on his de
fence, are of opinion, that he, the said
prisoner, is, with respect to the first
instance of the charge, guilty. With
respect to the 2nd instance, guilty to
the extent of having given a draft
for rupees fifteen hundred and fortyfour, instead of fifteen hundred and
fifty-four as therein set forth. With
respect to the 3rd instance, guilty.
Guilty also of the preamble. Sen
tence.—The Court having found the
prisoner guilty, as above specified, do
sentence him, Lieut. John A. Macdou
gall, of her Majesty’s 28th Regt, of
Foot, to be cashiered. Not confirmed.
Gough, General Com.-in-Chief, East
�104
NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS.
Indies. Hd. Qr. Simla, 26th August,
1846. Remarks by the Right Hon.
the Com.-in-Chief.—The evidence is
by no means so conclusive as to justify
confirmation of the sentence. Lieut.
Macdougall is to be released from
arrest, and will return to his duty.
Suicide of Lieutenant Douglas.
—On Wednesday evening Mr. Payne
held an inquest at the Horselydown,
Fair-street. Horselydown, on the body
of Lieut. William Douglas, late of the
12th Regt, of Foot, aged 37 years, who
committed suicide by cutting his throat
on that morning,being the anniversary
of his birth-day. Caroline Dally said
the deceased had lodged at her mothers
house for the last six weeks, at No. 4,
Church-row, Horselydown. About ten
o’clock in the morning witness was
passing the parlour door, whichrwas
wide open, and saw the deceased stand
ing before a looking-glass in the act of
cutting his throat with a razor, the
blood flowing profusely. Assistance
was immediately sent forj a medical
gentleman arrived, but his case was
hopeless, and he died in a few moments.
Witness had observed a great change
in his conduct since Saturday, and she
thought he was mad. Mr. H. Gwillam, of 316, Strand, said he had known
the deceased from his boyhood. He
was of a very strange and impetuous
temper. Witness was his guardian.
In 1826 he entered the 12th Regt, of
Foot ; he had for years been addicted
to drink ardent spirits ; his conduct,
whilst under its influence, was that of
a madman. He had been confined in
three different lunatic asylums in
Florence within four years. Witness
had him brought to England, and he
placed him under the care of several
eminent medical gentlemen. Witness
saw him alive last on Saturday. He
had three times before attempted sui
cide ; twice by stabbing himself, and
once, at Leghorn, he threw himself
into the sea whilst on board ship. The
Jury returned a verdict of Insanity.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
To the courteous Author of “ Engines of War," we return our best thanks, and shall
be much obliged for his valuable paper.
Qui Vive wi'l find part of the information in our columns. The remaining particulars
will be readily given, on applying at the Horse Guards. There is no compilation of
such information published.
Mons. S. H----- , Paris, and J. W. G----- , Esq., Bristol— Our arrangements do not
admit at present. We must return the same reply to several other Correspondents,
C. F. L----- , I. C----- , &c.
Once for all, we beg to state, no unauthenticated case of injustice, reflection on su
periors, fyc. can be admitted; and though we are always willing to help the right, it does
not thence follow, wefeel ourselves bound to publish such. Indeed, it is not always the
most advisable plan for the sufferer.
Many Notices of Works, Inventions, §•<?., are unavoidably postponed, from the length of
our Correspondent's Remarks on the Brevet.
All Letters, Books for Review, Communications, &c., should be addressed
“ To the Editor of the Military Magazine,” care of Mr. Munro, at the Office,
6, New Turnstile, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.
Advertisements must be sent on or before the 28th of the month.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Military Magazine. Vol. 1, No. II, December 1846
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: [51]-104 p.
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1846
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Military
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The Military Magazine. Vol. 1, No. II, December 1846), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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Conway Tracts
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national secular society
CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
iIHE records of every country abound in remarkable cases
of persons being judicially put to death for crimes of
j which they were entirely innocent. A mistaken resem
blance to the actual perpetrator, the fact of having been
Il seen near the spot where the crime was committed, or
some other suspicious circumstance, has contributed, to bring the
guilt and punishment on the wrong party. At one time, cases of
injustice were also committed by condemning individuals for murder
when it was not proved that a murder had been perpetrated. The
now well-recognised principle in criminal law, that no murder can
be held as having been committed till the body of the deceased has
been discovered, has terminated this form of legal oppression.
Another, and perhaps one of the most common causes of injustice in
trials of this nature, is the prevarication of the party charged with the
offence. Finding himself, though innocent, placed in an awkward
predicament, he invents a plausible story in his defence, and the
deceit being discovered, he is at once presumed to be in every
respect guilty. Sir Edward Coke mentions a melancholy case of
this kind; A gentleman was charged with having made away with
his niece. He was innocent of the crime ; but having, in a state of
No. 4.
1
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
trepidation, put forward another child as the one said to have been
destioyed, the trick was discovered, and the poor gentleman was
executed—a victim of his own disingenuousness.
The following interesting cases of loss of life from too great a
leaning on circumstantial or presumptive evidence, we select from
various authorities, English and foreign.
WILLIAM SHAW.
In the year 1721 there resided in Edinburgh an upholsterer
named William Shaw, who had a daughter, Catherine Shaw, who
lived with him. This young woman, it appears, encouraged the
addresses of John Lawson, a jeweller, to whom William Shaw
declared the most insuperable objections, alleging him to be a pro
fligate young man, addicted to every kind of dissipation. He was
forbidden the house; but the daughter continuing to see him clan
destinely, the father, on the discovery, kept her strictly confined.
William Shaw had for some time urged his daughter to receive
the addresses of a son of Alexander Robertson, a friend and neigh
bour; and one evening, being very urgent with her thereon, she
peremptorily refused, declaring she preferred death to being young
Robertson’s wife. The father grew enraged, and the daughter more
positive, so that the most passionate expressions arose on both
sides, and the words barbarity, cruelty, and death, were frequently
pronounced by the daughter. At length he left her, locking the
door after him.
The greater number of the buildings in Edinburgh are tall and
massive, divided into fiats or floors, each inhabited by one or more
families, all of whom enter by a general stair leading to the respective
floors. _ William Shaw resided in one of these flats, and a partition
only divided his dwelling from that of James Morrison, a watch-case
maker. This man had indistinctly overheard the conversation and
quarrel between Catherine Shaw and her father, and was particularly
struck with the repetition of the above words, she having pronounced
them loudly and emphatically. For some little time after the father
was gone out all was silent, but presently Morrison heard several
groans from the daughter. Alarmed, he ran to some of his neigh
bours. under the same roof; these entering Morrison’s room, and
listening attentively, not only heard the groans, but distinctly heard
Catherine Shaw two or three times faintly exclaim, 1 Cruel father,
thou art the cause of my death} Struck with this, they flew to the
door of Shaw5s apartment; they knocked—no answer was given.
The knocking was repeated—still no answer. Suspicions had
before arisen against the father; they were now confirmed. A con
stable was procured and an entrance forced: Catherine was found
weltering in her blood, and the fatal knife by her side. She was
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
alive, but speechless ; but on questioning her as to owing her death
to her father, was just able to make a motion with her head,
apparently in the affirmative, and expired. At this critical moment
William Shaw returns, and enters the room: immediately all eyes
are on him. Seeing his neighbours and a constable in his apart
ment, he appears much disordered ; but at the sight of his daughter
he turns pale, trembles, and is ready to sink. The first surprise
and the succeeding horror leave little doubt of his guilt in the
breasts of the beholders ; and even that little is done away on the
constable discovering that the shirt of William Shaw is bloody.
He was instantly hurried before a magistrate, and, upon the
depositions of all the parties, committed to prison on suspicion. He
was shortly after brought to trial, when in his defence he acknow
ledged his having confined his daughter to prevent her intercourse
with Lawson; that he had frequently insisted on her marrying
Robertson ; and that he had quarrelled with her on the subject the
evening she was found murdered, as the witness Morrison had
deposed ; but he averred that he left his daughter unharmed and
untouched, and that the blood found upon his shirt was there in con
sequence of his having bled himself some days before, and the
bandage becoming untied. Thèse assertions did not weigh a feather
with the jury when opposed to the strong circumstantial evidence of
the daughter’s expressions of 4 barbarity, cruelty, death,’ and of 4 cruel
father, thou art the cause of my death,’ together with that apparently
affirmative motion with her head, and of the blood so seemingly
providentially discovered on the father’s shirt. On these several
concurring circumstances was William Shaw found guilty, and
executed at Leith Walk in November 1721.
Was there a person in Edinburgh who believed the father guilt
less ? No, not one, notwithstanding his latest words at the gallows
were, 11 am innocent of my daughter’s murder.’ But in August
1722, as a man, who had become the possessor of the late William
Shaw’s apartments, was rummaging by chance in the chamber where
Catherine Shaw died, he accidentally perceived a paper that had
fallen into a cavity on one side of the chimney. It was folded as a
letter, which on being opened ran as follows : 4 Barbarous father, your
cruelty in having put it out of my power ever to join my fate to that
of the only man I could love, and tyrannically insisting upon my
marrying one whom I always hated, has made me form a resolution
to put an end to an existence which is become a burden to me. I
•doubt not I shall find mercy in another world, for sure no benevolent
Being can require that I should any longer live in torment to myself
in this. My death I lay to your charge : when you read this, con
sider yourself as the inhuman wretch that plunged the murderous
knife into the bosom of the unhappy—Catherine Shaw.’
This letter being shewn, the handwriting was recognised and
avowed to be Catherine Shaw’s by many of her relations and friends.
3
�CASES 'OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
It became the public talk; and the magistracy of Edinburgh, on a
scrutiny, being convinced of its authenticity, ordered the body of
William Shaw to be given to his family for interment; and as the
only reparation to his memory and the honour of his surviving
relations, they caused a pair of colours to be waved over his
grave in token of his innocence—a poor compensation, it will
be allowed, for an act of gross cruelty and injustice.
THE FRENCH REFUGEE.
The following singularly involved case is given in the Gentleman's
Magazine for 1754, with the initials of a correspondent, who states it
to have been extracted from some minutes of evidence made by his
grandfather in criminal causes in which he was counsel on the part
of the crown in the reign of Charles II.
Jaques du Moulin, a French refugee, having brought over his
family and a small sum of money, employed it in purchasing lots of
goods that had been condemned at the custom-house, which he again
disposed of by retail. As these goods were such as, having a high
duty, were frequently smuggled, those who dealt in this way were
generally suspected of increasing their stock by illicit means, and
smuggling, or purchasing smuggled articles, under colour of dealing
only in goods that had been legally seized by the king’s officers, and
taken from smugglers. This trade, however, did not, in the general
estimation, impeach his honesty, though it gave no sanction to his
character; but he was often detected in uttering false gold. He
came frequently to persons of whom he had received money with
several of these pieces of counterfeit coin, and pretended that they
were among the pieces which had been paid him : this was generally
denied with great eagerness ; but, if particular circumstances did not
confirm the contrary, he was always peremptory and obstinate in his
charge. This soon brought him into disrepute, and he gradually
lost not only his business but his credit. It happened that, haying
sold a parcel of goods, which amounted to £78, to one Harris, a
person with whom he had before had no dealings, he received the
money in guineas and Portugal gold, about several pieces of which
he scrupled; but the man having assured him that he himself had
carefully examined and weighed those very pieces, and found them
good, Du Moulin took them, and gave his receipt.
In a few days he returned with six pieces, which he averred were
of base metal, and part of the sum which he had a few days before
received of him for the lot of goods. Harris examined the pieces,
and told Du Moulin that he was sure there were none of them among
those which he had paid him, and refused to exchange them for
others. Du Moulin as peremptorily insisted on the contrary, alleging
that he had put the money in a drawer by itself, and locked it up till
4
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
he offered it in payment of a bill of exchange, and then the pieces'
were found to be bad; insisting that they were the same to which he
had objected. Harris now became angry, and charged Du Moulin
with intending a fraud. Du Moulin appeared to be rather piqued
than intimidated at this charge; and having sworn that these were
the pieces he received, Harris was at length obliged to make them
good ; but as he was confident that Du Moulin had injured him by a
fraud supported by perjury, he told his story wherever he went,
exclaiming against him with great bitterness, and met with many
persons who made nearly the same complaints, and told him that it
had been a practice of Du Moulin’s for a considerable time. Du
Moulin now found himself universally shunned; and hearing from
all parts what Harris had reported, he brought an action for defama
tory words, and Harris, irritated to the highest degree, stood upon
Ms defence; and in the meantime having procured a meeting of
several persons who had suffered the same way in their dealings with
Du Moulin, they procured a warrant against him, and he was appre
hended upon suspicion of counterfeiting the coin. Upon searching
his drawers, a great number of pieces of counterfeit gold were found
in a drawer by themselves, and several others were picked from
Other money that was found in different parcels in his scrutoire :
Upon further search, a flask, several files, a pair of moulds, some
powdered chalk, a small quantity of aqua regia, and several other
implements, were discovered. No doubt could now be entertained
of his guilt, which was extremely aggravated by the methods he had
taken to dispose of the money he made, the insolence with which he
had insisted upon its being paid him by others, and the perjury by
which he had supported his claim. His action against Harris for
defamation was also considered as greatly increasing his guilt, and
everybody was impatient to see him punished. In these circum
stances he was brought to trial; and his many attempts to put off
bad money, the quantity found by itself in his scrutoire, and, above
all, the instruments of coining, which, upon a comparison, exactly
answered the money in his possession, being proved, he was upon
this evidence convicted, and received sentence of death.
Now, it happened that, a few days before he was to have been
executed, one Williams, who had been bred a seal-engraver, but had
left his business, was killed by a fall from his horse : and his wife,
who was then pregnant, and near her time, immediately fell into fits
and miscarried. She was soon sensible that she could not live; and
therefore sending for the wife of Du Moulin, she desired to be left
fidone, and then gave her the following account :
That her husband was one of four, whom she named, that had for
many years subsisted by counterfeiting gold coin, which she had
been frequently employed to put off, and was therefore intrusted
with the whole secret; that another of these persons had hired
himself to Du Moulin as a kind of footman and porter, and being
5
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
provided by the gang with false keys, had disposed of a very con.
siderable sum of bad money by opening his master’s scrutoire, and
leaving it there in the stead of an equal number of good pieces which
he took out; that by this iniquitous practice Du Moulin had been
defrauded of his business, his credit, and his liberty, to which in a
short time his life would be added, if application were not imme
diately made to save him. After this account, which she gave iir
great agony of mind, she was much exhausted, and having given
directions where to find the persons whom she impeached, she fell
into convulsions, and soon after expired. Du Moulin’s wife imme
diately applied to a magistrate; and having related the story she had
heard, procured a warrant against the three men, who were taken
the same day, and separately examined. Du Moulin’s servant
steadily denied the whole charge, and so did one of the other two ;
but while the last was being examined, a messenger, who had been
sent to search their lodgings, arrived with a great quantity of bad
money, and many instruments for coining. This threw him into
confusion, and the magistrate improving the opportunity by offering
him his life if he would become evidence for the king, he confessed
that he had been long associated with the other prisoners and the
man who was dead, and he directed where other tools and money
might be found ; but he could say nothing as to the manner in which
Du Moulin’s servant was employed to put it off. Upon this discovery
Du Moulin’s execution was suspended; and the king’s witness
swearing positively that his servant and the other prisoner had
frequently coined in his presence, and giving a particular account of
the process, and the part which each of them usually performed, they
were convicted and condemned to die. Both of them, however,
denied the fact, and the public were still in doubt about Du Moulin.
In his defence, he had declared that the bad money which was
found together was such as he could not trace to the-persons of whom
he had received it; that the parcels with which bad money was
found mixed he kept separate, that he might know to whom to apply
if it should appear to be bad; but the finding of the moulds and
other instruments in his custody was a particular not yet accounted
for, as he only alleged in general terms that he knew not how they
came there ; and it was doubted whether the impeachment of others
had not been managed with a view to save him who was equally
guilty, there being no evidence of his servant’s treachery but that of
a woman who was dead, reported at second-hand by the wife of
Du Moulin, who was manifestly an interested party. He was not,
however, charged by either of the convicts as an accomplice, a
particular which was strongly urged by his friends in his behalf;
but it happened that, while the public opinion was thus held in
suspense, a private drawer was discovered in a chest that belonged
to his servant, and in it a bunch of keys, and the impression of one
in wax : the impression was compared with the keys, and that which
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
it corresponded with was found to. open Du Moulin’s scrutoire, in
which the bad money and implements had been found. When this
particular, so strong and unexpected, was urged, and the key
produced, he burst into tears and confessed all that had been alleged
against him. He was then asked how the tools came into his
master’s scrutoire ; and he answered, that when the officers of justice
Came to seize his master, he was terrified for himself, knowing that
he had in his chest these instruments, which the private drawer
could not contain; and fearing that he might be included in the
warrant, his consciousness of guilt kept him in continual dread and
suspicion : that for this reason, before the officers went up stairs,
he opened the scrutoire with his false key, and having fetched his
tools from his box in the garret, he deposited them there, and had
just locked it when he heard them at the door.
In this case even the positive evidence of Du Moulin, that the
money he brought back to Harris was the same he had received
of him, was not true, though Du Moulin was not guilty of perjury
either wilfully or by neglect, inattention or forgetfulness. And the
circumstantial evidence against him, however strong, would only
have heaped one injury upon another, and have taken away the life
of an unhappy wretch, from whom a perfidious servant had taken
away everything else.
BRUNELL’S CASE.
In the year 1742 a case of a very remarkable nature occurred
near Hull. A gentleman travelling to that place was stopped late
in the evening, about seven miles from the town, by a single high
wayman with a mask on his face, who robbed the traveller of a
purse containing, twenty guineas. The highwayman rode off by a
different path full speed, and the gentleman, frightened, but not
injured, except in purse, pursued his journey. It was growing late,
however, and being naturally much agitated by what had passed,
he rode only two miles further, and stopped at the Bell Inn, kept
by Mr James Brunell. He went into the kitchen to give directions
for his supper, where he related to several persons present the fact
of his having been robbed ; to which he added this peculiar circum
stance, that when he travelled he always gave his gold a peculiar
mark, and that every guinea in the purse taken from him was thus
marked. Hence he hoped that the robber would yet be detected.
Supper being ready, he retired.
The gentleman had not long finished his supper, when Mr Brunell
came into the parlour where he was, and after the usual inquiries
of landlords as to the guest’s satisfaction with his meal, observed,
* Sir, I understand you have been robbed not far hence this even
ing?’ ‘ I have, sir,’ was the reply. ‘And your money was marked?’
7
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
continued the landlord. ‘It was,’ said the traveller. ‘A circum
stance has arisen,’ resumed Mr Brunell, ‘ which leads me to think'
that I can point out the robber. Pray, at what time in the evening,
were you stopped ?’ ‘ It was just setting in to be dark,’ replied
the traveller. ‘ The time confirms my suspicions,’ said the landlord;
and he then informed the gentleman that he had a waiter, one John
Jennings, who had of late been so very full of money, and so very
extravagant, that he (the landlord) had been surprised at it, and had
determined to part with him, his conduct being every way suspicious;
that long before dark that day he had sent out Jennings to change
a guinea for him; that the man had only come back since the
arrival of the traveller, saying he could not get change ; and that,
seeing Jennings to be in liquor, he had sent him off to bed, deter
mining to discharge him in the morning. Mr Brunell continued tosay, that when the guinea was brought back to him, it struck him
that it was not the same which he had sent out for change, there
being on the returned one a mark, which he was very sure was not
upon the other; but that he should probably have thought no more
of the matter, Jennings having frequently had gold in his pocket of
late, had not the people in the kitchen told him what the traveller
had related respecting the robbery, and the circumstance of the
guineas being marked. He (Mr Brunell) had not been present
when this relation was made, and unluckily, before he heard of it
from the people in the kitchen, he had paid away the guinea to a
man who lived at some distance, and who had now gone home.
‘The circumstance, however,’ said the landlord in conclusion, ‘struck
me so very strongly, that I could not refrain, as an honest man, from
coming and giving you information of it.’
Mr Brunell was duly thanked for his candid disclosure. There
appeared from it the strongest reasons for suspecting Jennings; and
if, on searching him, any others of the marked guineas should be
found, and the gentleman could identify them, there would then
remain no doubt in the matter. It was now agreed to go up to his
room. Jennings was fast asleep : his pockets were searched, and
from one of them was drawn forth a purse, containing exactly
nineteen guineas. Suspicion now became certainty ; for the gentle
man declared the purse and guineas to be identically those of which
he had been robbed. Assistance was called; Jennings was
awakened, dragged out of bed, and charged with the robbery. He
denied it firmly; but circumstances were too strong to gain him
belief. He was secured that night, and next day taken before a
justice-of-the-peace. The gentleman and Mr Brunell deposed to
the facts upon oath ; and Jennings, having no proofs, nothing but
mere assertions of innocence, which could not be credited, was
committed to take his trial at the next assizes.
So strong seemed the case against him, that most of the man’s
friends advised him to plead guilty, and throw himself on the mercy
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
of the court. This advice he rejected, and when arraigned, pled not
guilty. The prosecutor swore to the fact of the robbery; though,
as it took place in the dusk, and the highwayman was in a mask,
lie could not swear to the person of the prisoner, but thought him
of the same stature nearly as the man who robbed him. To the
purse and guineas, when they were produced in court, he swore—as
to the purse, positively, and as to the marked guineas, to the best
of his belief; and he testified to their having been taken from the
pocket of the prisoner.
The prisoner’s master, Mr Brunell, deposed as to the sending of
Jennings for the change of a guinea, and to the waiter’s having
Drought back to him a marked one, in the room of one he had given
him unmarked. He also gave evidence as to the discovery of the
purse and guineas on the prisoner. To consummate the proof, the
man to whom Mr Brunell had paid the guinea, as mentioned, came
forward and produced the coin, testifying at the same time that he
had received it on the evening of the robbery from the prisoner’s
master in payment of a debt; and the traveller, or prosecutor, on
comparing it with the other nineteen, swore to its being, to the best
of his belief, one of the twenty marked guineas taken from him by
the highwayman, and of which the other nineteen were found on
Jennings.
The judge summed up the evidence, pointing out all the concurring
circumstances against the prisoner ; and the jury, convinced by this
strong accumulation of circumstantial evidence, without going out
of court brought in a verdict of guilty. Jennings was executed some
little time afterwards at Hull, repeatedly declaring his innocence up
till the very moment of his execution.
Within a twelvemonth afterwards, Brunell, the master of Jennings,
was himself taken up for a robbery committed on a guest in his
house, and the fact being proved on trial, he was convicted, and
ordered for execution. The approach of death brought on repent
ance, and repentance confession. Brunell not only acknowledged
he had been guilty of many highway robberies, but owned himself
to have committed the very one for which poor Jennings suffered.
The account which Brunell gave was, that after robbing the
traveller, he had got home before him by swifter riding and by a
nearer way. That he found a man at home waiting for him, to
whom he owed a little bill, and to whom, not having enough of other
money in his pocket, he gave away one of the twenty guineas which
he had just obtained by the robbery. Presently came in the robbed
gentleman, who, whilst Brunell, not knowing of his arrival, was in
the stable, told his tale, as before related, in the kitchen. The
gentleman had scarcely left the kitchen before Brunell entered it,
and there, to his consternation, heard of the facts, and of the guineas
being marked. He became dreadfully alarmed. The guinea which
he had paid away he dared not ask back again; and as the affair
No. 4-
9
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
of the robbery, as well as the circumstance of the marked guineas,
would soon become publicly known, he saw nothing before him but
detection, disgrace, and death. In this dilemma, the thought of
accusing and sacrificing poor Jennings occurred to him. The state
of intoxication in which Jennings was, gave him an opportunity of
concealing the money in the waiter’s pocket. The rest of the storv
the reader knows.
LADY MAZEL.
Ln
yefr *^9 there lived in Paris a woman of fashion, called
Lady Mazel. Her house was capacious, and four stories high : on
the ground-floor was a large servants’ hall, in which was a grand
staircase, and a cupboard where the plate was locked up, of which
°2-er°f the chambermaids kept the key. In a small room partitioned
oft from the hall slept the valet-de-chambre, whose name was Le
Brun : the rest of this floor consisted of apartments in which the
lady saw company ; which was very frequent and numerous, as she
hept public nights for play. In the floor up one pair of stairs was
the lady s own chamber, which was in the front of the house, and
was the innermost of three rooms from the grand staircase. The
key of this chamber was usually taken out of the door and laid on a
chair Dy
servant who was last with the lady, and who, pulling’
the door after her, it shut with a spring, so that it could not be
opened from without. In this chamber, also, were two doors ; one
communicating with a back staircase, the other with a wardrobe,
which opened to the back stairs also.
On the second floor slept the Abbé Poulard, in the only room
which was furnished on that floor. On the third story were two
chambers, which contained two chambermaids and two foot-boys ;
the fourth story consisted of lofts and granaries, whose doors were
always open. The cook slept below in a place where the wood
was kept, an old woman in the kitchen, and the coachman in the
stable.
On the 27th of November, being Sunday, the two daughters of Le
Brun, the valet, who were eminent milliners, waited on the lady, and
Were kindly received ; but as she was going to church to afternoon
service, she pressed them to come again, when she could have more
of their company. _ Le Brun attended his lady to church, and then
went to another himself ; after which he went to play at bowls, aS
was customary at that time, and from the bowling-green he went to
several places ; and after supping with a friend, he went home seem
ingly cheerful and easy, as he had been all the afternoon. Lady
Mazel supped with the Abbé Poulard as usual, and about eleven
o clock went to her chamber, where she was attended by her maids.
Before they left her, Le Brun came to the door to receive his orders
for the next day, after which one of the maids laid the key of thè
Tn
J
�Cases
of circumstantial evidence.
chamber door on the chair next it; they then went out, and Le Brun
tollowing them, shut the door after him, and talked with the maids
a few minutes about his daughters, and then they parted, he seeming
Still very cheerful.
In the morning he went to market, and was jocular and plea
sant with everybody he met, as was his usual manner He then
returned home, and transacted his usual business. At eight o’clock
he expressed surprise that his lady did not get up, as she usually
rose at seven : he went to his wife’s lodging, which was in the
neighbourhood, and told her he was uneasy that his lady’s bell
had not rung, and gave her seven louis-d’ors, and some crowns
in gold, which he desired her to lock up, and then went home
again, and found the servants in great consternation at hearing
nothing of their lady; when one observed that he feared she had
been seized with an apoplexy, or a bleeding at the nose, to which
she was subject. Le Brun said : ‘ It must be something worse;
my mind misgives me; for I found the street door open last
night after all the family were in bed but myself.’ They then
sent for the lady’s son, M. de Savonieie, who hinted to Le Brun
his fear of an apoplexy. Le Brun said: ‘ It is certainly something
worse ; my mind has been uneasy ever since. I found the street
door open last night after the family were in bed.’ A smith being
now brought, the door was broken open, and Le Brun' entering
first, ran to the bed ; and after calling several times, he drew
back the curtains, and said : 1 Oh, my lady is murdered ! ’ He
then ran into the wardrobe, and took up the strong box, which
being heavy, he said : 1 She has not been robbed ; how is this ? ’
A surgeon then examined the body, which was covered with no
less than fifty wounds : they found in the bed, which was full of
blood, a scrap of a cravat of coarse lace, and a napkin made into
a night-cap, which was bloody, and had the family mark on it ;
and from the wounds in the lady’s hands, it appeared she had
Straggled hard with the murderer, which obliged him to cut the
muscles before he could disengage himself. The bell-strings were
twisted round the frame of the tester, so that they were out of
reach, and could hot ring. A clasp-knife was found in the ashes
almost consumed by the fire, which had burned off all marks of
blood that might have ever been upon it: the key of the chamber
was gone from the seat by the door ; but no marks of violence
appeared on any of the doors, nor were there any signs of a
robbery, as a large sum of money and all the lady’s jewels were
found in the strong box and other places.
Le Brun being examined, said, that 1 after he left the maids on
the stairs, he went down into the kitchen ; he laid his hat and
the key of the street door on the table, and sitting down by the
fire to warm himself, he fell asleep ; that he slept, as he thought^
about an hour, and going to lock the street door, he found it
II
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
open ; that he locked it, and took the key with him to his chamber.
On searching him, they found in his pocket a key, the wards of
which were new filed, and made remarkably large ; and on trial
it was found to open the street door, the antechamber, and both
the doors in Lady Mazel’s chamber. On trying the bloody night*
cap on Le Brun’s head, it was found to fit him exactly, where
upon he was committed to prison.
On his trial it appeared as if the lady was murdered by some
persons who had been let in by Le Brun for that purpose, and
had afterwards fled. It could not be done by himself, because no
blood was upon his clothes, nor any scratch on his body, which
must have been on the murderer from the lady’s struggling ; but
that it was Le Brun who let him in seemed very clear. None-of
the locks were forced ; and his own story of finding the street
door open, the circumstances of the key and the night-cap, also a
ladder of ropes being found in the house, which might be supposed
to be laid there by Le Brun to take off the attention from himself,
were all interpreted as strong proofs of his guilt; and that he had an
accomplice was inferred, because part of the cravat found in the bed
was discovered not to be like his ; but the maids deposed that they
had washed such a cravat for one Berry, who had been a footman to
the lady, and was turned away about four months before for robbing
her. There was also found in the loft at the top of the house, under
some straw, a shirt very bloody, but which was not like the linen of
Le Brun, nor would it fit him.
Le Brun had nothing to oppose to these strong circumstances but
a uniformly good character, which he had maintained during twentynine years he had served his lady; and that he was generally]
esteemed a good husband, a good father, and a good servant. It
was therefore resolved to put him to the torture, in order to discover I
his accomplices. This was done with such severity on February 23,
1690, that he died the week after of the injuries he received,
declaring his innocence with his dying breath.
About a month after, notice was sent from the provost of Sens
that a dealer in horses had lately set up there by the name of John
Garlet, but his true name was found to be Berry, and that he had
been a footman in Paris. In consequence of this he was taken up,
and the suspicion of his guilt was increased by his attempting to
bribe the officers. On searching him a gold watch was found, which
proved to be Lady Mazel’s. Being brought to Paris, a person swore
to seeing him go out of Lady Mazel’s the night she was murdered,
and a barber swore to shaving him next morning, when, on his
observing the hands of his customer to be very much scratched,
Berry said he had been killing a cat.
On these circumstances he was condemned to the torture, and
afterwards to be broken alive on the wheel. On being tortured, he
confessed that, by the direction and order of Madame de Savoniere
12
�CASES OF circumstantial evidence.
(Lady Mazel’s daughter), he and Le Bran had undertaken to rob and
murder -Lady Mazel, and that Le Brun murdered her whilst he stood
at the door to prevent surprise. In the truth of this declaration he
persisted till he was brought to the place of execution, when, begging
to speak with one of the judges, he recanted what he had said against
Le Bran and Madame de Savoniere, and confessed ‘ that he came to
Paris on the Wednesday before the murder was committed. On.the
Friday evening he went into the house, and, unperceived, got into
one Of the lofts, where he lay till Sunday morning, subsisting on
apples and bread which he had in his pockets ; that about eleven
oxlock on Sunday morning, when he knew the lady had gone to
mass, he stole down to her chamber, and the door being open, he
•tried to get under her bed ; but it being too low, he returned to
the loft, pulled off his coat and waistcoat, and returned to the
Chamber a second time in his shirt; he then got under the bed,
where he continued till the afternoon, when Lady Mazel went to
church; that knowing she would not come back soon, he left his hiding
place, and being incommoded with his hat, he threw it under the bed,
and made a cap of a napkin which lay on a chair, secured the bellStrings, and then sat down by the fire, where he continued till he
heard her coach drive into the courtyard, when he again got under
the bed, and remained there ; that Lady Mazel having been in bed
about an hour, he got from under it and demanded her money ; she
•began to cry out, and attempted to ring, upon which he stabbed her,
and she resisting with all her strength, he repeated his stabs till she
was dead ; that he then took the key of the wardrobe cupboard from
the bed's head, opened this cupboard, found the key of the strong
box, opened it, and took out all the gold he could find, to the amount
of about six hundred livres ; that he then locked the cupboard, and
replaced the key at the bed’s head, threw his knife into the fire, took
Kg hat from under the bed, left the napkin in it, took the key of the
chamber from the chair, and let himself out; went to the loft, where
he pulled off his shirt and cravat, and, leaving them there, put on his
coat and waistcoat, and stole softly down stairs ; and finding the
Street door only on the single lock, he opened it, went out, and left it
open ; that he had brought a rope-ladder to let himself down from a
window if he had found the street door double-locked ; but finding
it otherwise, he left his rope-ladder at the bottom of the stairs, where
it was found.’
Thus was the veil removed from this deed of darkness, and all the
Circumstances which appeared against Le Brun were accounted for
leonsistently with his innocence. From the whole story, the reader
Will perceive how fallible human reason is when applied to circumstances; and the humane will agree that in such cases even improba
bilities ought to be admitted, rather than a man should be condemned
who may possibly be innocent.
13
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
THE YOUNG SAILMAKER.
■_ In the year 1723, a young man, who was serving his apprenticeship
in London to a. master sailmaker, got leave to visit his mother, to
spend the Christmas holidays. She lived a few miles beyond Deal
in Kent. He walked the journey ; and on his arrival at Deal in the
evening, being much fatigued, and also troubled with a bowel
complaint, he applied to the landlady of a public-house, who was
acquainted with his mother, for a night’s lodging. Her house was
full, and every bed occupied ; but she told him that if he would
sleep with her uncle, who had lately come ashore, and was boat
swain of an Indiaman, he should be welcome. He was glad to
-accept the offer, and after spending the evening with his new
.comrade, they retired to rest.
In the middle of the night he was attacked with his complaint, and
wakening his bedfellow, he asked him the way to the garden. The
boatswain told him to go through the kitchen ; but as he would find
it difficult to open the door into the yard, the latch being out of
■order, he desired him to take a knife out of his pocket, with which he
could raise the latch. The young man did as he was directed, and
after remaining nearly half an hour in the yard he returned to his
bed, but was much surprised to find his companion had risen and
gone. Being impatient to visit his mother and friends, he also arose
before day, and pursued his journey, and arrived at home at noon,
The landlady, who had been told of his intention to depart early,
was not surprised ; but not seeing her uncle in the morning, she
went to call him. She was dreadfully shocked to find the bed
stained with blood, and every inquiry after her uncle was in vain.
The alarm now became general, and on further examination, marks
of blood were traced from the bedroom into the street, and at intervals
down to the edge of the pier-head. Rumour was immediately busy,
and suspicion fell of course on the young man who slept with him,
■that he had committed the murder and thrown the body over the
pier into the sea. A warrant was issued against him, and he was
taken that evening at his mother’s house. On his being examined
and searched, marks of blood were discovered on his shirt and
.trousers, and in his pocket were a knife and a remarkable silver
coin, both of which the landlady swore positively were her uncle’s
property, and that she saw them in his possession on the evening he
retired to rest with the young man. On these strong circumstances
the unfortunate youth was found guilty.
He related all the above particulars in his defence ; but as he
•could not account for the marks of blood on his person, unless that
he got them when he returned to the bed, nor for the silver coin
being in his possession, his story was not credited. The certainty of
the boatswain’s disappearance, and the blood at the pier, traced, from
14
�CASES OF -CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
his'bedroom, were supposed to be too evident signs of his being
murdered ; and even the judge was so convinced of his guilt, that he
ordered the execution to take place in three days. At the fatal tree
the youth declared his innocence, and persisted in it with such
affecting asseverations, that many pitied him, though none doubted
the justness of his sentence. .
« .
The executioners of those days were not so expert at their trade
as modern ones, nor were drops and platfoims invented. The
young man was very tall; his feet sometimes touched the ground;
and some of his friends who surrounded the gallows contrived to
give the body some support as it was suspended. After being cut
down, those friends bore it speedily away in a coffin, and m the
course of a few hours animation was restored, and the innocent
gaved. When he was able to move, his friends insisted on his
quitting the country, and never returning. He accordingly travelled
by night to Portsmouth, where he entered on board a man-of-war on
the point of sailing for a distant part of the. world ; and as he
changed his name, and disguised his person, his melancholy story
never was discovered.
After a few years of service, during which his exemplary conduct
was the cause of his promotion through the lower grades, he was
at last made a master’s mate, and his ship being paid off in the
West Indies, he and a few more of the. crew were transferred to
another man-of-war, which had just arrived short of hands from
a different station. What were his feelings of astonishment, and
then of delight and ecstacy, when almost the first person he saw
On board his new ship was the identical boatswain for whose
murder he had been tried, condemned, and executed five years
before! Nor was the surprise of the old boatswain much less
when he heard the story.
An explanation of all the mysterious circumstances then took
place. It appeared that the boatswain had been bled for a pain
in the side by the barber, unknown to his niece, on the day of
the young man’s arrival at Deal; that when the young man
wakened him, and retired to the yard, he found the bandage had
•come off his arm during the night, and that the blood was flowing
afresh. Being alarmed, he rose to go to the barber, who lived
across the street, but a press-gang laid hold of him just as he left
I the public-house. They hurried him to the pier, where their boat
I was waiting; a few minutes brought them on board a frigate then
I under-way for the East Indies; and he omitted ever writing home
I to account for his sudden disappearance. Thus were the chief
circumstances explained by the two friends thus strangely met.
The Silver coin being found in the possession of the young man
could only be explained by the conjecture, that when he took the
knife out of the boatswain’s pocket in the dark, it is probable, as
the coin was in the same pocket, it stuck between the blades of
15
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
the knife, and in this manner became the strongest proof against
him.
On their return to England, this wonderful explanation was told
to the judge and jury who tried the cause, and it is probable they
never after convicted a man on circumstantial evidence. It also»
made a great noise in Kent at the time.*
THOMAS GEDDELY’S CASE.
Thomas Geddely lived as a waiter with Mrs Hannah Williams,
who kept a public-house at York. It being a house of much
business, and the mistress very assiduous therein, she was deemed,
in wealthy circumstances. One morning her scrutoire was fonnd.
broken open and robbed, and Thomas Geddely disappearing at th®
same time, no doubt was entertained as to the robber. About a
twelvemonth after, a man calling himself James Crow came to York,
and worked a few days for a precarious subsistence in carrying'
goods as a porter. Many accosted him as Thomas Geddely. He
declared he did not know them, that his name was James Cro^,
and that he never was at York before. But this was held as merely
a trick to save himself from the consequences of the robbery
committed in the house of Mrs Williams, when he lived with her as
waiter.
His mistress was sent for, and in the midst of many people
instantly singled him out, called him by his name (Thomas Geadely),
and charged him with his unfaithfulness and ingratitude in robbing
her. He was directly hurried before a justice-of-peace ; but on his
examination absolutely affirmed that he was not Thomas Geddely,
that he knew no such person, that he never was at York before, and
that his name was James Crow. Not, however, giving a good
account of himself, but rather admitting that he was a vagabond
and petty rogue, and Mrs Williams and another person swearing
positively to his person, he was committed to York Castle for trial
at the next assizes.
On arraignment, he pled not guilty, still denying that he was the
person he was taken for; but Mrs Williams and some others made
oath that he was the identical Thomas Geddely who lived with her
when she was robbed ; and a servant girl deposed that she had seen
him, on the veiy morning of the robbery, in the room where the
scrutoire was broken open, with a poker in his hand. The prisoner,
being unable to prove an alibi, was found guilty of the robbery. H®
was soon after executed, but persisted to his latest breath in
* We present this cáse as usually recounted by popular tradition, without vouching for
its accuracy. If true, the jury, it will be observed, had no proof of the murder, as the
body was not found. We doubt that any judge would have sanctioned such a gross
perversion of justice.
16
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
affirming that he was not Thomas Geddely, and that his name was
James Crow.
And so it proved! Some time after, the true Thomas Geddely,
who, on robbing his mistress, had fled from York to Ireland, was
taken up in Dublin for a crime of the same stamp, and there con
demned and executed. Between his conviction and execution, and
again at the fatal tree, he confessed himself to be the very Thomas
Geddely who had committed the robbery at York for which the
unfortunate James Crow had been executed.
We must add, that a gentleman, an inhabitant of York, happening
to be in Dublin at the time of Geddely’s trial and execution, and
who knew him when he lived with Mrs Williams, declared that the
resemblance between the two men was so exceedingly great, that it
was next to impossible to distinguish their persons asunder.
BRADFORD THE INNKEEPER.
Jonathan Bradford kept an inn in Oxfordshire, on the London
road to Oxford. He bore a respectable character. Mr Hayes, a
gentleman of fortune, being on his way to Oxford on a visit to a
relation, put up at Bradford’s. He there joined company with two
gentlemen, with whom he supped, and in conversation unguardedly
mentioned that he had then about him a considerable sum of money.
In due time they retired to their respective chambers ; the gentlemen
to a two-bedded room, leaving, as is customary with many, a candle
burning in the chimney corner. Some hours after they were in bed,
one of the gentlemen being awake, thought he heard a deep groan
in an adjoining chamber; and this being repeated, he softly awoke
his friend. They listened together, and the groans increasing, as of
one dying and in pain, they both instantly arose, and proceeded,
silently to the door of the next chamber, from which the groans had
seemed to come. The door being ajar, they saw a light in the room.
They entered, but it is impossible to paint their consternation on
perceiving a person weltering in his blood in the bed, and a man
Standing over him with a dark lantern in one hand, and a knife in
the other ! The man seemed as much petrified as themselves, but
his terror carried with it all the appearance of guilt. The gentlemen
soon discovered that the murdered person was the stranger with
whom they had that night supped, and that the man who was
Standing over him was their host. They seized Bradford directly,
disarmed him of his knife, and charged him with being the
murderer. He assumed by this time the air of innocence, positively
denied the crime, and asserted that he came there with the same
humane intentions as themselves ; for that, hearing a noise, which
was succeeded by a groaning, he got out of bed, struck a light,
armed himself with a knife for his defence, and had but that minute
17
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE,
entered the room before them. These assertions were of little avail *
he was kept in close custody till the morning, and then taken before
a neighbouring justice-of-the-peace. Bradford still denied the
murder, but with such apparent indications of guilt, that the justice
hesitated not to make use of this extraordinary expression on writing
his mittimus, i Mr Bradford, either you or myself committed this
murder.’
This remarkable affair became a topic of conversation to the whole
country. Bradford was condemned by the general voice of every
company. In the midst of all this predetermination, came on the
assizes at Oxford. Bradford was brought to trial • he pled not
guilty. Nothing could be stronger than the evidence of the two
gentlemen. They testified to the finding Mr Hayes murdered in his
bed, Bradford at the side of the body with a light and a knife, and
that knife, and the hand which held it, bloody. They stated that,,
on their entering the room, he betrayed all the signs of a guilty man;
and that, but a few minutes preceding, they had heard the groans
of the deceased.
Bradford’s defence on his trial was the same as before : he had
heard a noise ; he suspected that some villainy was transacting; he
struck a light, snatched up the knife, the only weapon at hand, to
defend himself, and entered the room of the deceased. He averred
that the terrors he betrayed were merely the feelings natural to
innocence, as well as guilt, on beholding so horrid a scene. The
defence, however, could not but be considered as weak, contrasted with
the several powerful circumstances against him. Never was circum
stantial evidence so strong, so far as it went. There was little need
for comment from the judge in summing up the evidence ; no room
appeared for extenuation; and the prisoner was declared guilty by
the jury without their even leaving the box.
Bradford was executed shortly after, still declaring that he was
not the murderer, nor privy to the murder, of Mr Hayes; but he
died disbelieved by all.
Yet were these assertions not untrue ! The murder was actually
committed by the footman of Mr Hayes; and the assassin, imine*
diately on stabbing his master, rifled his pockets of his money, gold
watch, and snuff-box, and then escaped back to his own room,
This could scarcely have been effected, as after-circumstances
shewed, more than two seconds before Bradford’s entering the
unfortunate gentleman’s chamber. The world owes this information
to remorse of conscience on the part of the footman (eighteen
months after the execution of Bradford) when laid on a bed of
sickness.. It was a death-bed repentance, and by that death the
law lost its victim.
It were to be wished that this account could close here; but there
is more to be told. Bradford, though innocent of the murder, and
not even privy to it, was nevertheless a murderer in design. He
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
had heard, as well as the footman, what Mr Hayes had declared at
¿Upper, as to the having a sum of money about him; and he went
to the chamber of the deceased with the same dreadful intentions as
the servant. He was struck with amazement on beholding himself
■anticipated in the crime. He could not believe his senses ; and in
turning back the bed-clothes to assure himself of the fact, he in his
agitation dropped his knife on the bleeding body, by which means
both his hands and the weapon became bloody. These circum
stances Bradford acknowledged to the clergyman who attended him
after sentence, but who, it is extremely probable, would not believe
them at the time.
Besides the graver lesson to be drawn from this extraordinary
case, in which we behold the simple intention of crime so signally
and wonderfully punished, these events furnish a striking warning
against the careless, and, it may be, vain display of money or other
property in strange places. To heedlessness on this score the
unfortunate Mr Hayes fell a victim. The temptation, we have seen,
proved too strong for two persons out of the few who heard his illtimed disclosure.
THE LYON COURIER.
In the month of April 1796—or, according to the dates of the
French republic, in Floreal of the year 4—a young man, named
Joseph Lesurques, arrived in Paris with his wife and his three
children from Douai, his native town. He was thirty-three years of
age, and possessed a fortune of 15,000 livres (.£600) per annum,
inherited from his own and his wife’s relations. He took apartments
■in the house of a M. Monnet, a notary in the Rue Montmartre, and
made preparations for permanently residing in Paris and educating
his children. One of his first cares was to repay one Guesno,
proprietor of a carrying establishment at Douai, 2000 livres he had
formerly borrowed. On the day following, Guesno invited Lesurques
to breakfast. They accordingly went to No. 27, Rue des Boucheries,
■in company with two other persons, one of whom, a gentleman of the
name of Couriol, was invited in consequence of his calling on the
third party just as they were sitting down to breakfast. The party
remained at table until nearly twelve o’clock, when they proceeded
to the Palais Royal, and after having taken coffee at the Rolonde du
Caveau, separated.
Four days afterwards (on the 27th April), four horsemen, mounted
on good but evidently hired horses, were observed to ride out of
Paris through the Barriere de Charenton, as if on a party of pleasure.
They all wore long cloaks, as was then the fashion, and sabres
hanging from their waists. One of the party was Couriol.
Between twelve and one o’clock the four horsemen arrived at the
pretty village of Mongeron, on the road to Melun and Burgagne.
19
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
One of the party had galloped forward to order dinner at the Hotel
de la Poste, kept by Sieur Evrard : after dinner, they asked for
pipes and tobacco, and two of them smoked. They paid their bill,
and went to the casino of the place, where they took four cups of
coffee. Shortly afterwards, they mounted their horses, and following
the road, shaded by beech-trees, which leads from Mongeron to the
forest of Lenart, they proceeded at a foot pace towards Lieursaint,
a picturesque village in the midst of a grove.
They arrived at Lieursaint about three o’clock in the afternoon,
and there made another long halt. The horse of one of the party
had lost a shoe, and another of them had broken the chain of his
spur by collision with a friend’s horse. This one stopped at the
beginning of the village, at the cottage of a woman named Chatelin,
a lemonade-seller, and requested her to give him coffee, and supply
him with some coarse thread to mend the chain of his spur. This
woman immediately complied with his double request ; and as the
traveller was not very skilful in mending the chain, she called her
servant, one Grossetete, who accordingly mended the chain, and
assisted in putting the spur on the boot. The three other horsemen
during this time had dismounted at one Champeaux’s, an innkeeper,
and took something to drink, while he conducted the horse and
horseman to the village smith, a man named Motteau. When the
horse was shod, the four travellers went to the café of the woman
Chatelin, where they played some games at billiards. At half-past
seven o’clock, after taking a stirrup-cup with the innkeeper, to whose
house they returned for their horses, they mounted and rode off
towards Melun.
On going in, Champeaux saw on a table a sabre, which one of the
travellers had forgotten to put in his belt: he wished his stable-boy
to run after them, but they were already out of sight. It was not
until an hour afterwards that the traveller to whom the weapon
belonged, and who was the same who had mended his spur, returned
at full galop for it. He then drank a glass of brandy, and set off at
full speed in the direction taken by his companions. At this
moment the mail courier from Paris to Lyon arrived to change
horses. It was then about half-past eight o’clock, and the night had
been for some time dark. The courier, after having changed horses,
and taken a fresh postilion, set out to pass the long forest of Lenart.
The mail at this period was a sort of postchaise, with a large trunk
behind containing the dispatches. There was one place only open
to the public, at the side of the courier. It was on that day occupied
by a man about thirty years of age, who had that morning taken his
place to Lyon in the name of Laborde, silk merchant.
The next morning the mail was found rifled, the courier dead in
his seat, with one wound right through his heart, and his head cut
nearly off; and the postilion lying in the road, also dead, his head
cut open, his right hand divided, and his breast wounded in three
,20
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
places. The postilion’s wounds were evidently inflicted by sabres,
wie-ldeci by two persons. One horse only was found near the
carriage. The mail had been robbed of 75,coo livres in assignats,
silver, and bank bills.
The officers of justice, in their researches, immediately discovered
that five persons had passed through the barrier of Rambouillet,
proceeding to Paris between four and five o’clock in the morning
after the murder. The horse ridden by the postilion was found
wandering about the Place Royale ; and they ascertained that four
horses, covered with foam, and quite exhausted, had been brought
about five o’clock in the morning to a man named Muiron, Rue des
Fosses-Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, by two persons who had hired
them the evening before. These two persons were named Bernard
and Couriol. Bernard was immediately arrested ; Couriol escaped.
In the course of the inquiry, it became evident that the criminals
must have been five in number. A description was obtained of the
four who had ridden from Paris and stopped at Mongeron and
Lieursaint, from the many persons with whom they had conversed
on the road. A description was also obtained of the man who had
taken his place with the courier under the name of Laborde, from
the person at the coach-office, and from those who had seen him
take his seat.
Couriol was traced to Chateau Thierry, where he lodged in the
house of one Bruer, with whom, too, Guesno, the carrier of Douai,
was also staying. The police proceeded there, and arrested Couriol:
in his possession was found a sum, in assignats, drafts, and money,
equal to about a fifth of what had been taken from the mail. Guesno
and Bruer were also taken into custody, but they proved alibis so
distinctly, that they were discharged as soon as they arrived in
Paris.
The Bureau Central intrusted to one Daubenton, the Juge de Paix
of the division of Pont-Neuf, and an officer of the judicial police, the
preliminary investigations in this affair. This magistrate, after
discharging Guesno, had told him to apply at his office the next
.morning for the return of his papers, which had been seized at
Chateau Thierry; at the same time he had ordered a police-officer,
named Heudon, to set out immediately for Mongeron and Lieur.saint, and to bring back with him the witnesses, of whom he gave a
list, so as to have them all together the next day at the central office
ready to be examined.
Guesno, being desirous to obtain his papers as soon as possible,
left home earlier than usual; just before he reached the central
office, he met his friend Lesurques. They conversed together, and
Guesno having explained the cause which took him to the office of
the Juge de Paix, proposed that he should accompany him. They
went to the office, then at the hotel now occupied by the Prefect de
Police; and as Citizen Daubenton had not yet arrived, they sat
at
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
down in the antechamber, on purpose to wait his arrival, and be
more speedily released.
About ten o’clock the Juge de Paix, who had entered his room by
a back door, was interrupted in his perusal of the documents, before
examining the witnesses, by the officer H eudon, who said : ‘ Among
the witnesses there are two, the woman Santon, servant of Evrard
the innkeeper at Mongeron, and the girl Grossetete, servant of the
woman Chatelin, the lemonade-seller at Lieursaint, who declare in
the most precise manner that two of the assassins were waiting
in the antechamber. They said they could not be mistaken, as
one of them had waited at the dinner of the four travellers at
Mongeron, and the other had conversed with them at Lieursaint,
and had remained more than an hour in the room while they played
at billiards.
;
The Juge de Paix, not believing this improbable statement, ordered
the two women to be introduced separately. He then examined each
of them, when they energetically repeated their statement, and said
that they could not be mistaken. He then, after warning the women
that life and death depended on their answers, had Guesno brought
into his room. ‘What,’ said the Juge, ‘do you want here?’ ‘I
come,’ replied Guesno, ‘for my papers, which you promised th
restore to me yesterday. I am accompanied by one of my friends
from Douai, my native place. His name is Lesurques. We met OH
the road, and he is waiting for me in the other room.’
The Juge de Paix then ordered the other person pointed out by
the two women to be introduced. This was Lesurques. He con
versed with him and Guesno for a few minutes, requested them to
walk into another room, where the papers would be brought to
them, and privately told Heudon not to lose sight of them. When
they had left the room, the magistrate again asked the women if
they persisted in their previous declarations ; they did persist; their
evidence was taken down in writing; and the two friends were
immediately arrested.
From this time the proceedings were pressed on with great
rapidity. Guesno and Lesurques, when confronted by the witnesses^
were recognised by almost all. The woman Santon asserted that
it was Lesurques who, after dinner at Mongeron, wished to pay in,
assignats, but that the tall dark man (Couriol) paid in silver.
Champeaux and his wife, the innkeepers at Lieursaint, recognised
Lesurques as the man who had mended his spur and returned
for his sabre. Lafolie, the stable-boy at Mongeron, the woman
Alfroy, a florist at Lieursaint, all recognised him. Laurent Charbant,
a labourer who had dined in the same room with the four horsemen^
deposed that he was the one who had spurs affixed to his boots
hussar fashion.
On the day of his arrest, Lesurques wrote to his friend the follow
ing letter, which was intercepted and added to the legal documents :
22
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
* My friend, since rny arrival in Paris I have experienced nothing
but troubles, but I did not expect the misfortune which now over
whelms me. Thou knowest me, and thou knowest whether I am
capable of degrading myself by crime; yet the most frightful of
crimes is imputed to me. I am accused of the murder of the courier
to Lyon. Three men and two women, whom I know not, nor even
their abode (for thou knowest that I have never left Paris), have had
the assurance to declare that they remembered me, and that I was
th© first who rode up on horseback. Thou knowest that I have
never mounted a horse since I arrived in Paris. Thou wilt see of
what vital import to me is such testimony as this, which tends to my
judicial assassination. Assist me with thy memory, and try to
remember where I was and what persons I saw in Paris—I think it
was the 7th or 8th of last month—so that I may confound these
infamous calumniators, and punish them as the laws direct.’
At the bottom of this letter were written the names of the persons
he had seen on that day : Citizen Tixier, General Cambrai, Made
moiselle. Eugenie, Citizen Hilaire, Ledru, his wife’s hairdresser, the
workmen engaged on his apartments, and the porter of the house»
He concluded by saying : ‘ Thou wilt oblige by seeing my wife
often, and trying to console her.’
Lesurques, Guesno, Couriol, Bernard, Richard, and Bruer were
tried before the criminal tribunal: the first three as authors ot
accomplices of the assassination and robbery; Bernard for having
Supplied the four horses ; Richard for having concealed Couriol and
his mistress Madeleine Breban, and for having concealed and divided
all or part of the stolen property ; Bruer for having received Couriol
and Guesno into his house at Chateau Thierry. In the course of
the trial, the witnesses who pretended to recognise Guesno and
Lesurques persisted in their declarations. Guesno and Bruer
produced evidence that completely cleared them. Guesno proved
his alibi in the most distinct manner, and thus insured his acquittal.
Lesurques called fifteen witnesses, all citizens, exercising respectable
professions, and enjoying the esteem of the public. He appeared at
the bar with remarkable confidence and calmness. The first witness
for the defence was Citizen Legrand, a countryman of Lesurques, a
wealthy silversmith and jeweller. He testified that, on the 8th, the
very day the crime was committed, Lesurques passed one part of the
morning with him. In addition, Aldenof, a jeweller, and Hilaire
Ledru Chausfer, affirmed that they had dined with the prisoner on
¡the same day at his relation’s, Lesurques, in the Rue Montorquiel.
They stated, that after dinner they went to a café, and after taking
Some liqueur, had seen him to his own house.
The painter Beudart added, that he meant to have dined with his
friends, but that being on duty as a National Guard, he could not
►arrive m time, but that he had been at Lesurques’s house the same
evening in uniform, and had seen him retire to rest. In support of
43
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
this deposition, this witness produced his billet-de-gardc, dated the
Sth. The workmen who were employed on the apartments Lesurques
was about to occupy, deposed that they had seen him several times
in the course of the 8th and 9th.
The jeweller Legrand, to corroborate his testimony, had stated
that on the day, the 8th Floreal (27th April), he had before dinner
made an exchange with Aldenof, or, at anyrate, that it was men
tioned in his book on that day. He proposed that his book should
be brought. It was examined in court, and discovered that the 9th
had been clumsily scratched out, and the 8th substituted. This at
once changed the favourable impression which had been produced
in favour of the prisoner, and the witness was ordered into custody.
He then lost all presence of mind, and owned that he was not certain
of having seen Lesurques on that day, but that, feeling convinced of
his innocence, he had altered his register to corroborate his own
testimony. This circumstance produced the most unfavourable
effect on the judges ; but in spite of the dark complexion of his case,
Lesurques continued to maintain his innocence.
The discussions and examinations were closed, and the jury had
retired to deliberate. At this moment a woman, in a violent state of
excitement, called aloud from the midst of the crowd in the court for
leave to speak to the president. She was, she said, urged by the
voice of conscience to save the tribunal from committing a dreadful
crime. On being placed before the judge, she declared that
Lesurques was innocent; that the witnesses had mistaken him for
a man of the name of Dubosq, to whom he bore an extraordinary
resemblance. This woman was Madeleine Breban, the mistress of
Couriol, and the confidante of his most secret thoughts ; who now
abandoned him, and avowed her own guilt to save Lesurques.
Madeleine Breban’s evidence was rejected, and the jury brought
in their verdict, by which Couriol, Lesurques, and Bernard were
condemned to death. Richard was sentenced to twenty-four years’
labour in irons ; Guesno and Bruer were acquitted.*
No sooner had sentence been pronounced, than Lesurques, rising
calmly, and addressing his judges, said : ‘ I am innocent of the crime
imputed to me. Ah ! citizens, if murder on the highway be atrocious,
to execute an innocent man is not less a crime.’ Couriol then rose,
and exclaimed : ‘ I am guilty; I own my crime ; but Lesurques is
innocent; and Bernard did not participate in the assassination!’
He repeated these words four times, and on returning to his prison,
wrote a letter to his judges, full of anguish and repentance, in which
was this passage : ‘ I never knew Lesurques. My accomplices were
Vidal, Rossi, Durochat, and Dubosq. The resemblance of Dubosq
has deceived the witnesses.’
Madeleine Breban presented herself, after sentence had been
At that period the sentence was part of the jury’s verdict.
=4
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
pronounced, to renew her declaration. Two parties attested that,
before the condemnation of the prisoners, Madeleine had said to
them that Lesurques had never had any connection with the guilty
parties—that he was the victim of his fatal likeness to Dubosq. The
declaration of Couriol caused some doubt in the minds of the judges.
They immediately applied to the Directory for a reprieve, who,
alarmed at the probability of an innocent man being executed,
applied to the legislative assemblies ; for all judicial means had been
exhausted. The message of the Directory to the ‘ Five Hundred’
was urgent. It requested a reprieve, and instructions on the subse
quent steps to be taken. It concluded in these words—1 Ought
Lesurques to die on the scaffold because he resembles a criminal?’
The legislative body passed to the order of the day, considering
that, as all legal forms had been fulfilled, a single case ought not to
cause an infraction of forms previously settled ; and that to annul
on such grounds the sentence legally pronounced by a jury would
subvert all ideas ofjustice and of equality before the law 1
The right of pardon had been abolished. Lesurques was left
without help or hope. He bore his fate with firmness and resigna
tion. On the day of his death he wrote to his wife the following
letter : ‘ My dear friend, we cannot avoid our fate. I shall, at any
rate, endure it with the courage which becomes a man. I send some
locks of my hair ; when my children are older, divide it with them.
It is the only thing that I can leave them.’
In a letter of adieu addressed to his friends, he merely observed :
‘ Truth has not been heard ; I shall die the victim of mistake.’
He published in the newspapers the following letter to Dubosq,
whose name had been revealed by Couriol: ‘ Man, in whose place I
am to die, be satisfied with the sacrifice of my life : if you be ever
brought to justice, think of my three children, covered with shame,
and of their mother’s despair, and do not prolong the misfortunes of
SO fatal a resemblance.’
On the loth of March 1797, Lesurques went to the place of execu
tion dressed completely in white, as a symbol of his innocence, with
his shirt turned over his shoulders. The day was Holy Thursday
(old style). He expressed his regret at not having to die the next
day, the anniversary of the Passion. On the way from prison to the
place of execution, Couriol, who was seated in the car beside him,
cried in a loud voice, addressing himself to the people : ‘ I am guilty,
but Lesurques is innocent! ’
When he reached the scaffold, already red with the blood of
Bernard, Lesurques gave himself up to the executioners, saying : ‘ I
pardon my judges ; the witnesses, whose mistake has murdered me ;
and Legrand, who has not a little contributed to this judicial assas
sination. I die protesting my innocence.’
Many of the jury afterwards expressed their regret at having given
credit to the witnesses from Mongeron and Lieursaint; and Citizen
25
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
Daubenton, the Juge de Paix, who had arrested Lesurques, and
conducted the first proceedings, resolved to investigate the truth
which could only be satisfactorily effected through the arrest and
trial of the four persons denounced by Couriol as his accomplices.
Two years elapsed without the conscientious magistrate being
able, in spite of all his inquiries, to discover the slightest trace of the
fugitives. At length, in examining the numerous warrants and
registers of persons daily brought to his bureau, he discovered that
Durochat, the individual whom Couriol had denounced as the one
who had taken his place by the side of the courier, under the name
of Laborde, had just been arrested for *a robbery he had latelyeffected, and lodged in St Pelagie. At the time of Lesurques’s trial,
it had come out in evidence that several persons, amongst others an
inspector of the post-mails, had preserved a perfect recollection of
the pretended Laborde, having seen him when waiting for the mail.
. Citizen Daubenton, by great exertion, secured the presence of the
inspector in the court on the day of Durochat’s trial. He was con
demned to fourteen years’ labour in chains ; and as the gens-d’armes
were conducting him to prison, the inspector recognised the prisoner
as the same person who had travelled in the mail towards Lyon,
under the name of Laborde, on the day on which the courier was
assassinated.
Durochat made but feeble denials, and was reconducted to the
Conciergerie, where Citizen Daubenton had him immediately
detained, under a charge arising out of the proceedings against
Couriol. The next morning the magistrate, assisted by Citizen
Masson, an officer of the criminal tribunal, took means for transfer
ring the prisoner to the prisons of Melun, where he arrived the same
evening. After being examined early the next morning, it was found
necessary to transfer him to Versailles, where he was to be tried.
The magistrate and officer set out, followed by two gens-d’armes, to
convey the prisoner to Versailles. On arriving at a village near
Grosbois, he asked for breakfast; for he had eaten nothing since
the preceding evening. The escort therefore stopped at the first inn,
and Durochat then asked to speak with the Juge de Paix alone.
The Juge having sent away the two gens-d’armes and the officer
Masson, although the latter made signs to him that it was dangerous
to remain alone with such a consummate villain, ordered breakfast
for himself and Durochat. A table was placed between them ; the
servant, acting under the orders of Masson, brought only one knife.
Citizen Daubenton took it to open an egg, when Durochat, looking
hard at him said : ‘Monsieur le Juge, you are afraid !’ ‘Of whom?’
said Daubenton.. ‘Of me,’ replied Durochat; ‘you have armed
yourself with a knife.’ The Juge de Paix presented the knife to him
by the handle, saying: ‘ There, cut me some bread, and tell me
what you know about the assassination of the courier.’
Durochat rose up from his seat, and laying down the knife, which
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
he had at first grasped menacingly, exclaimed: ‘You are a brave
fellow, citizen. I am a lost man—my time’s up—but you shall know
all!’ He then related every particular of the murder, which com
pletely agreed with the statements made by Couriol. He stated that
Vidal had projected the affair, and had communicated it to him at a
restaurant’s in the Champs Elysées. The criminals were Couriol,
Rossi, alias Beroldy, Vidal, himself, and Dubosq. Dubosq had
forged for him the passport in the name of Laborde, by means of
which he easily procured another for Lyon, to enable him to take
his place in the mail. He had also lent the party 3000 francs in
assignats. Bernard had supplied four horses for Couriol, Rossi,
Vidal, and Dubosq. They had attacked the carriage as the postilion
was slackening his pace to ascend a little hill. It was he (Durochat)
who had stabbed the courier at the instant that Rossi cut down the
postilion with a sabre ; he had then given up his horse to him
(Durochat), and had returned to Paris on that of the postilion. As
soon as they arrived there, they all met at Dubosq’s, Rue Croix-desPetits-Champs, where they proceeded to divide the booty. Bernard,
who had only procured the horses, was there, and claimed his share,
and got it. ‘ I have heard,’ he added, 1 that there was a fellow
named Lesurques condemned for this business ; but to tell the
truth, I never knew the fellow either at the planning of the business,
or at its execution, or at the division of the spoil. After the crime, I
lodged with Vidal, Rue des Fontaines. I left there soon afterwards,
on hearing of thè arrest of Couriol. The porter at that house was
named Perrier.’
The confession of Durochat was taken down in writing, and
signed by him. The party then resumed their journey to Versailles,
and on the prisoner’s arrival there, he renewed it before one of the
judges of the tribunal. ‘ The magistrate,’ says Citizen Daubenton,
‘ present at this examination observed to Durochat that Lesurques
had been sworn to as one of the party of four,’ and also 1 that he had
silver spurs on his boots, which he had been seen to repair with
thread, and that this spur had been found on the place where the
mail had been attacked.’ Durochat replied : ‘ It was Dubosq who
had the silver spurs. The morning we divided the plunder, I
remember hearing that he had broken one of the chains of his
Spurs ; that he had mended it where he dined, and lost it in the
scuffle. I saw in his hand the other spur, which he said he was
going to throw into the mixen.’ Durochat then described Dubosq,
and added that on the day of the murder he wore a blonde wig.
Some days after the arrest of Durochat, Vidal, one of the other
authors of the crime, was also arrested. Although all the witnesses
swore to him as one of the party who had dined and played at
billiards, he denied everything. Special proceedings were instituted
against him, and he remained in the prisons of La Seine.
Durochat was condemned to death, and executed. He underwent
27
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
his fate with perfect indifference. Vidal was shut up in the principal
prison of Seine and Oise, where the prosecution commenced in Paris
was carried on.
Towards the end of the year 8 (1799—1800), four years after the
assassination of the courier, Dubosq, having been arrested for a
robbery in the department of Allier, where he had retired under a
false name, was recognised in the prisons, brought to Paris, and
thence to Versailles, to be tried at the same time as Vidal before the
criminal tribunal. It was discovered, on searching the registers,
that while very young he had been condemned to the galleys for life
for stealing plate at the archbishop’s of Besançon. He had after
wards escaped at the time of the revolutionary disturbances.
Arrested in Paris for a second robbery, he had been again con
demned, and had again escaped. Retaken at Rouen, he had once
more succeeded in breaking loose ; and, arrested at Lyon, he had
a fourth time broken from prison. This last escape occurred a few
weeks before the attack on the mail and double murder in the forest
of Lenart. Like Vidal, however, he denied everything.
Dubosq and Vidal, being both confined in the prison of Versailles,
planned an escape, which they soon executed. After having climbed
over the two first walls, and reached the top of the outside one, they
had only to jump down twenty-five feet into the street. Vidal tried
first, and succeeded ; Dubosq broke his leg in the attempt, and was
retaken. The Citizen Daubenton spared no pains to discover
Vidal’s retreat. He learned soon afterwards that he had been
arrested at Lyon for new crimes. He was brought back to
Versailles ; but in the meantime Dubosq had recovered from his
fracture, and found means to break out of prison. Vidal was tried
alone, condemned, and executed.
At length, in the latter part of the year 9 (1800—1801), Dubosq
was again arrested, and immediately brought before the criminal
tribunal of Versailles. The president had ordered a blonde wig to
be placed on his head before the witnesses were called in. ‘ The
Citizen Perault, a member of the legislative assembly, and one of
those who had seen the four cavaliers who had dined at Mongeron
on the day of the murder of the courier, and who had recognised
Lesurques as one of them, stated that there was a striking resem
blance between Dubosq and Lesurques.’ The woman Alfroy, who
had before sworn to Lesurques as one of the four, declared that she
was mistaken in her evidence before the Tribunal de la Seine, and
that she was now firmly convinced that it was not Lesurques but
Dubosq that she had seen. To this evidence Dubosq replied by
stubborn denials. It was proved that he was intimate with the
guilty parties ; indeed he could not deny it ; and the declarations
of Couriol, Durochat, and Madeleine Breban had great weight
against him.
He was unanimously condemned, and was executed the 3d
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
Ventose, in the year io (22d February 1802). At length the last of
the accomplices denounced by Couriol and Durochat, Rossi, other
wise Ferrari, or the Great Italian, whose real name was Beroldy,
was discovered near Madrid, and given up at the request of the
French government. Having been tried and sentenced to death at
Versailles, he testified the utmost repentance, and went to execution,
receiving religious attentions from Monsieur de Grandpre. After the
.execution, Monsieur de Grandpre stated to the president that he had
been authorised by the criminal to confess the justice of his sentence.
The same Monsieur Grandpre deposited with M. Destrumeau, a
notary at Versailles, a declaration written and signed by Beroldy,
Otherwise Rossi, which was not to be published until six months after
his death. The following is the tenor of this document, which is
given, with all the particulars of this extraordinary case, in a memoir
written by M. Daubenton, the Juge de Paix. i I declare that the
man named Lesurques is innocent; but this declaration, which I
give to my confessor, is not to be published until six months after my
death.’
Thus terminated this long judicial drama. Ferrari, otherwise
Rossi, was the sixth executed as one of the authors or accomplices
in the murder of the Lyon courier, besides Richard, who was con
demned to the galleys for having received the stolen property, and
for having concealed Couriol, and afterwards assisted him to fly.
Yet it was most distinctly proved, in the course of the trials, that
there were only five murderers. The one who, under the name of
Laborde, had taken his place beside the courier, and the four horse
men who rode on the horses hired by Bernard, dined at Mongeron,
and took coffee and played at billiards at Lieursaint.
The widow and family of Lesurques, relying on these facts, and
supported by the declarations of Couriol and Durochat, the confes
sions of Rossi and Vidal, and the retractions of the witnesses in
Dubosq’s trial, applied for a revision of the sentence so far as con
cerned Lesurques, in order to obtain a rehabilitation (a judicial
declaration of his innocence, and the restoration of his property), if
he should be proved the victim of an awful judicial error.
The Citizen Daubenton devoted the latter part of his life, and the
greater part of his fortune to the discovery of the truth. In the con
clusion of his memoir, he declared that, according to his conviction,
there were sufficient grounds to induce the government to order a
revision of Lesurques’s sentence. He concluded his statement by
saying, that ‘ the Calases, the Servens, and all the others for whom
the justice of our sovereigns had ordered a like revision, had none
of them had such strong presumptions in their favour as the unhappy
Lesurques.’
But the right of revision no longer existed in the French code.
Under the Directory, the Consulate, and the Restoration, the applica
tions of the widow and family of Lesurques were equally unsuccessful.
29
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
All that the family could obtain was the restoration, in the last two years
of the reign of the elder Bourbons, of part of the property sequestrated
according to the law in force at the time of Lesurques’s execution
Since the revolution of 1830, the Lesurques family have made more
than one appeal to the legislature, but still in vain. The widow of
Lesurques died m the month of October 1842. His eldest son fell
fighting in the ranks of the French army. A son and daughter only
remained whom their mother, on her death-bed, adjured to continue
the pious labour which she had commenced the day when her husband
perished on the scaffold.*
net uus Dana
CASES IN AMERICA.
Mr,s
her.w?rk> Letters from New York (1843), advocating
the abolition of capital punishments, gives a notice of two cases in
which circumstantial evidence led to the execution of the wron^ parties.
The testimony from all parts of the world is invariable and con
clusive, that crime diminishes in proportion to the mildness of the
laws. The real danger is in having laws on the statute-book at
variance with universal instincts of the human heart, and thus
tempting men to continual evasion. The evasion even of a bad law
is attended with many mischievous results : its abolition is always
sate. In looking at capital punishment in its practical bearings on
the operation of justice, an observing mind is at once struck with the
extreme uncertainty _ attending it. Another thought which forces
itself upon the mind in consideration of this subject, is the danger of
convicting the innocent. Murder is a crime which must of course
be committed in secret, and therefore the proof must be mainly cir
cumstantial. This kind of evidence is in its nature so precarious,
that men have learned great timidity in trusting to it.
A few years ago a poor German came to New York, and took
lodgings, where he was allowed to do his cooking in the same room
with the family. The husband and wife lived in a perpetual quarrel.
One day the German came into the kitchen with a clasp-knife and a
pan of potatoes, and began to pare them for his dinner. The
thaiIihIpbenndSht tostatethat some of the highest juridical authorities in France either deny
that the condemnation of Lesurques was an error, or hold that, at all events the case is
far from being so clear as the advocates of his innocence would make it appear’ President
°n\°J
m°St enlShtenecl and conscientious members^ the Court of
Cassation, presented a Report on the case to the Council of State, which appeared hi the
^iar'o “of^hFnine wT’ KrOm, thl,S Feport.it aPPears that, at the trial of Dubosq in the
K a „ 9’ of th T! e witnesses who had previously testified to having seen Lesurques in
persisted in declaring that they had not been mistaken,
appearance
nf V* DuboSq’ they pointed out varioui differences between his
nfC* 1 f hesurques, on which they grounded their persistence. The voice
dLkStion^f thenr?nfeaChdb 6 ^ltnesse? ouSht> M- Zangiacomi thinks, to outweigh the
declaration of the confessed murderers that Lesurques was not an accomplice. As to the
nlrnUIjS-ta>Ce>°f m°re,. Rersons bei”g condemned and executed for the crime than were concetned in it, it is pointed out as remarkable that the accused themselves vary as to the exact
number, making it either five or six ; while, from the statements of two ofThe witnessed h
appears very probable that the assassins were seven in number.
witnesses, it
30
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
quarrelsome couple were in a more violent altercation than usual;
but he sat with his back towards them, and being ignorant of their
language, felt in no danger of being involved in their disputes. But
the woman, with a sudden and unexpected movement, snatched the
knife from his hand, and plunged it in her husband’s heart. She
had sufficient presence of mind to rush into the street and scream
murder. The poor foreigner, in the meanwhile, seeing the wounded
man reel, sprang forward to catch him in his arms, and drew out
the knife. People from the street crowded in, and found him with
the dying man in his arms, the knife in his hand, and blood upon
his clothes. The wicked woman swore, in the most positive terms,
that he had been fighting with her husband, and had stabbed him
with a knife he always carried. The unfortunate German knew too
little English to understand her accusation or to tell his own story.
He was dragged off to prison, and the true state of the case was
made known through an interpreter; but it was not believed.
Circumstantial evidence was exceedingly strong against the accused,
and the real criminal swore unhesitatingly that she saw him commit
the murder. He was executed, notwithstanding the most persevering
efforts of his lawyer, John Anthon, Esq., whose convictions of the
man’s innocence were so painfully strong, that from that day to this
he has refused to have any connection with a capital case. Some
years after this tragic event the woman died, and on her death-bed
confessed her agency in the diabolical transaction; but her poor
victim could receive no benefit from this tardy repentance; society
had wantonly thrown away its power to atone for the grievous wrong.
Many of my readers will doubtless recollect the tragical fate of
Burton, in Missouri, on which a novel was founded, that still
circulates in the libraries. A young lady, belonging to a genteel
and very proud family in Missouri, was beloved by a young man
named Burton; but unfortunately her affections were fixed on
another less worthy. He left her with a tarnished reputation. She
was by nature energetic and high-spirited ; her family were proud;
and she lived in the midst of a society which considered revenge a
virtue, and named it honour. Misled by this false popular sentiment
and her own excited feelings, she resolved to repay her lover’s
treachery with death. But she kept her secret so well, that no one
suspected her purpose, though she purchased pistols, and practised
with them daily. Mr Burton gave evidence of his strong attach
ment by renewing his attentions when the world looked most coldly
upon her. His generous kindness won her bleeding heart, but the
softening influence of love did not lead her to forego the dreadful
purpose she had formed. She watched for a favourable opportunity,
and shot her betrayer when no one was near to witness the horrible
deed. Some little incident excited the suspicion of Burton, and he
induced her to confess to him the whole transaction. It was obvious
enough that suspicion would naturally fasten upon him, the well-
31
�CASES OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
known lover of her who had been so deeply injured. He was
arrested, but succeeded in persuading her that he was in no danger.
Circumstantial evidence was fearfully against him, and he soon saw
that his chance was doubtful; but with affectionate magnanimity he
concealed this from her. He was convicted and condemned. A
short time before the execution he endeavoured to cut his throat •
but his life was saved for the cruel purpose of taking it away
according to the cold-blooded barbarism of the law. Pale and
wounded, he was hoisted to the gallows before the gaze of a
Christian community.
The guilty cause of all this was almost frantic when she found
that he had thus sacrificed himself to save her. She immediately
published the whole history of her wrongs and her revenge. Her
keen sense of wounded honour was in accordance with public
sentiment, her wrongs excited indignation and compassion, and the
knowledge that an innocent and magnanimous man had been so
brutally treated, excited a general revulsion of popular feeling. No
one wished for another victim, and she was left unpunished, save by
the dreadful records of her memory.
32
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Cases of circumstantial evidence
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Place of publication: [S.l.]
Collation: 32 p. : ill. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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[s.n.]
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Law
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Circumstantial
Crime and criminals
Evidence
Law
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Text
FROM THE
��A
MAN
FROM THE
MOON.
LONDON:
C. R. BROWN, ELDON STREET, CITY, E.C.
PRICE SIXPENCE.
�• Jjll'J
MOfli
�^4 Man from the Moon.
As I stood on the summit of Aconcagua, the loftiest peak of
the Chilian Andes, looking down on Anluco, Descabezado, and
Nevado de Chorolque, drinking in the beauties of the splendid
mountain scenery, I diverted my gaze from the space, and suddenly
became aware of the presence of an individual, apparently a human
being of the male sex; although very much resembling an
ordinary man, he differed entirely from any one I had ever seen;
his face was naturally hairless, and although he gave me the
impression of not being more than thirty years old, he looked as
though he bad attained that age many centuries ago.
Starting slightly, at what seemed almost like an apparition, I
said “ Good gracious I how long have you been here ? ”
In the coolest possible manner he replied, “ I’ve been on your
little planet just three days and a half according to your reckoning.”
Merely intending to ask him how long he had been on the
mountain beside me, I was surprised at his reply, and falteringly
enquired “Do I understand you to say that you are not an inhabitant
of this earth ? ”
“Exactly,” he replied, “when I’m at home I live on the moon.”
The moon ! ! I said in astonishment, as I looked searchingly at
at him; besides his old young look, I could deteft nothing ex
traordinary, except that he had none of the fresh color usual in a
�1
man of his apparent age, his entire face and neck being of a bronzy,
pink, blotting paper hue.
Smiling blandly at my look of surprise, he said, “Yes we don’t
often visit you, you’re so much behind us in everything.”
I felt that I could have kicked him for his cool impudence, but I
let it pass, merely remarking, “ I don’t quite see how you could
overcome the attraction of gravity.”
“ No, I dare say not,” he replied condescendingly, “we got over
that little difficulty a very long time ago.”
“ Do you mean to say that you can move off this earth, when
you like ? ”
“ Certainly, nothing is easier,” replied the lunar excursionist;
springing lightly into the air and ascending to the height of about
twelve feet, he stood there looking down benignly.
He descended at my request without the least shock; and I said,
“It must have taken you a long time to come all the way ? ”
Lunar Excursionist. No, only a fortnight.
Writer. But how about food ?
L. E. Well you see we’re not nearly so gross as you are 5 I
could carry almost enough for that short time; besides we have
certain methods of extracting a limited amount of sustenance from
the air.
W. Did any one see you arrive ?
L. E. No I always manage to alight during the night.
W. Why ?
L. E. Because you see one might be used as a target for rifle
practice.
W. Yes, that would be unpleasant, but did I understand you to
say that you lived on the air during your journey ?
L. E. Yes partially 5 not that I mean to say it’s good living, but
one can make shift with it for a short time; it’s not so difficult for
us, because we do’nt feed in the same heavy way that you do.
W. Indeed, how’s that ?
�3
L. E. Well, we don’t eat flesh, our animals are never slaughtered,
W. But don’t you ever require animal food ?
L. E. Yes, sometimes, and then we make it chemically.
W. That seems a great waste of time.
L. E. One must have some employment, but if we choose, we
can always find some of the less learned who don’t understand the
process, to do the mechanical work.
W. But have you no other employmentthan procuring your food ?
L. E. I never yet knew any one, either on your planet or ours,
to whom that was’nt the principal employment 5 you work in order
that you may earn money to buy food, we’ve long since progressed
beyond all that barbarism; we have no money.
W. No money, then how do you buy food and necessaries ?
L. E. We don’t buy them; there are various things which nature
sends ready made; anything else that we may require we make
chemically, this is very much better than your method 5 if you want
tea or coffee you first build a ship, then you pay sailors to navigate
her, after that you send out money to the grower, then you bring
it home and roast it, &c., &c., whereas we never take the trouble to
send a long way for anything, we have the elements always handy,
and we make all that we require.
W. But if you make no use of money, it seems to me that
you are not far removed from a savage state.
L. E. On the contrary, we have long since passed through the
money using stage of existence, when every one knew how to
make money as well as his neighbour, it became of no value;
people were tired of the unceasing round of work ■, life had become
so fast, that it was really too much trouble to live, and the weaker
individuals solved the difficulty by dying voluntary, “'committing
suicide ” as you roughly term it, but for a long time there had been
growing up a large body who pitied and despised the money
grubbers 5 this section of the people calling themselves “scientists”
promulgated the doctrine that the money grubbers mode of life
�4
was, in point of fact slow suicide ; by a long series of experiments,
extending over two or three hundred years, they proved that man
could live vastly longer and more comfortably, than he had been in
the habit of doing, if he would take the trouble to observe certain
rules of diet and exercise, and eschew the feverish excitement, of
money getting. Children were raised from birth on scientific
principles, and it was found that at the end of 200 years they had
more vitality than an ordinary man of forty.
W. Impossible ! !
L. E. Not at all, you must remember that these scientists were
better chemists than you will be for many centuries; they learnt, by
countless experiments, the exa^Rsort and amount of food which
best repaired the normal waste of material, and the quantity of
exercise necessary for tht* dispersion otlthat food 5 the brain was
just sufficiently exercised in a gentle pursuit after knowledge, to
keep it from stagnation,*0 that the only two constituents of
animal existence, brain and stomacn, act and re-act on each other
in a reciprocally health^manner.
W. Very good, all very well in it’s way, but these “ scientists ”
must be quite isolated from**fhe r'est of society.
L. E. Of course they were at first; but now everyone is, or as
pires to be a scientist; we have no society as you understand the
term; that mean desire to d®'ex1retly as your neighbours do, has
long since ceased among us ; we desire only our own approbation.
W. That’s all very fine, but tf^lly I don’t see how you can go
on, if you have no money you can have no House of Commons,
no judges, no police, no order.
L. E. We keep ourselves in order, there are no incentives to
disorder, money is your great cause of crime; we have abolished
money, therefore we require no police to protect property, no judges
to try criminals—there are none; there is only one description of
property on our planet, viz. :—public libraries, and everyone is
interested in preserving them and adding to them.
�5
W. But there’s another cause of crime, how do you manage
about love ?
L. E. Yes, we had some trouble with it at first;' priests having
been improved out of existence, no ceremony was performed at
marriage, and people sometimes left their husbands or wives, as
you can do here, if you choose to take the consequences; but this
sort of thing soon remedied itself, all ill-regulated passions being
deleterious to life, no one who desires to live indulges in them; if
a man deserts his wife, he is looked down upon in the same way
as a drunkard is with you; he has given way to an irregular and
debasing passion, he probably gives way to others, such as excessive
feeding or drinking, he rapidly deteriorates and dies, as you call it,
or as we say “he becomes inanimate matter;” the woman has
lost nothing, if she has continued to keep her passions under proper
control, she has become no older, and in course of time she finds
another husband.
W. But do the women keep their passions under the same
control as the men ?
L. E. Almost, they are still slightly inferior to men in all
respects, but vastly superior to your women, intellectually I mean.
W. You can’t argue with them, I suppose ?
L. E. Yes you’Can.
W. Nonsense, you’re joking ?
L. E. No I’m not, but then you see we have no subjects of any
importance left to argue with them.
W. They bear children, of course ?
L. E.. Only the comparatively ignorant.
W. But the population must decrease.
L. E. Exactly.
W. In time it must die out altogether.
L. E. Just so.
W. What a dreadful thing !
L. E. Why would it be more dreadful for man to die out than
for the megatherium to become extinct ?
�6
W. It’s a different thing altogether.
L. E. Yes, only the difference does’nt just now occur to you J
if women ever become sufficiently strong of intellect, they will
refuse to be at the inconvenience of peopling the earth. On our
planet they are becoming more and more unwilling to have children,
and in ten or twenty thousand years, perhaps, the moon will be
without human inhabitants.
W. What, in spite of your achievement of a sort of limited
immortality ?
L. E. I did’nt say it was limited, what I say is that we can
live just as long as we like ■, but after a time it becomes so trouble
some and monotonous to obey the necessary rules, that very few
care to live more than 500 years j we have a few who have reached
1500, but they are very tired of it, and continue to exist purely
on public grounds.
W. Just to show what they can do ?
L. E. Exactly.
W. But your 1500 year olders don’t beat Methusalah by much.
L. E. The inhabitants of this earth never lived longer than
they do now.
W. But the Bible says so.
L. E. It’s either a pure invention, or, perhaps, the word months
has been altered into years.
W. It’s quite impossible that the word of God should be
altered.
L. E. You Christians, with the finest code of morality, have
the most ridiculous religion on the earth ■, you call a history of the
Jews, written by themselves, the “Word of God; ” on to this you
tack a legend, with which the Jews will have nothing to do, and
this mixture you try to thrust down the throats of other people as
the “ only true religion /’if they laugh at it, you call them blas
phemers. I should like to know whether you would’nt laugh
if any one mixed up some negro religion with a fancy of their
�7
own, and called it the only true religion ? I’am riot suprised that
it should have happened when it did, but that it should be believed
up to the present time does’nt say much for—however I must’nt
be too hard, for we were a long time getting rid of our numerous
religions.
W. You’re very kind, but you speak of the Jews as if they
were an ordinary people.
L. E. I think them a very ordinary people, if any Eastern race
had adopted the same exclusive method for the same number of
years, they would present precisely similar features.
W. I suppose you allude to the nose ?
L. E. No no, I meant general features, but it certainly is to be
feared that the nose may develop into a small trunk, if they remain
a separate race for about ten thousand years longer however, there’s
no fear of that, another two or three centuries will amalgamate
them.
W. You may depend they will always be a “ peculiar people,”
and remain separate to the end of the world, when they will all be
converted to Christianity.
L. E. You forget that the period they have passed through has
been one of intense ignorance, and that every year it becomes more
difficult for them to indulge in their Oriental superstitions •, as for
their being converted to Christianity, when the world comes to an
end, I’ll back the world to last a great deal longer than Christianity.
W. But Christianity will never die out.
L. E. Exactly, every religion in it’s turn has been believed to be
everlasting; unluckily they can’t all be right.
WAh ! but ours is the only one with a truly divine origin.
L. E. I can point you out half a dozen whose origins are
equally divine.
W. They have no immaculate conception.
L. E. No, but they could have had, it’s not more difficult to
manage than any other miracle.
�8
W. Oblige me by dropping the subject, I can’t tolerate such
rank blasphemy.
,
L. E. Oh certainly, I had no wish to hurt your feelings; you
4 see we’ve got rid of all those old prejudices, so I hope you’ll excuse
me.
W. Well I ca’nt see that you gain much by your longevity, it
does’nt seem worth the trouble as you have to live after death.
L. E. Live after death ! ah I yejTS suppose it will take you a
good many centuries to reason out of that semi-barbarous notion.
W. Belief in a future life, a semi-barbarous notion !! good ! I - - L. E. Why yes, does’nt it carry absurdity on the face of it ? it’s
a mere fancy, you have never had a shadowlof proof.
W. But we’re told so.
L. E. Told so ! do you believe everything you’re told ?
W. No, but that’s a thing on which there’s never been the
slightest doubt.
L. E. Just so, it’s purely the result of self-conceit, you see dogs,
horses, and elephants die, without a thought about there future
state, but because you’re superior to them by a mere accident, you
say that you’re going to have another life, I should have thought
that common justice would make you consider that you already
have a sufficient advantage over them.
W. I do’nt think that has anything to do with it, but what’s
the mere accident you allude to ?
L. E. Speech; if any of the large apes acquired the power of
languages—as they probably will do sooner or later—they would
progress as far as you have done in the same time.
W. Then you say that man is no better than the other animals ?
L. E. On the contrary I say that he is far superior to all the
other animals, but still he is only an animal, and is not more likely to
have two lives than any other beast.
W. Then what becomes of man after death ?
L. E. I’ll answer your question by asking another, “ Whafl
becomes of other animals after death ? ”
�9
W. But we’ve always been taught that man is quite different
from the other animals.
L. E. Yes, but you’d have known better, by this time if you
had ever troubled to reason to a conclusion.
W. But it is a part of our religion.
L. E. Yes, that accounts for it, religion is answerable for a
great deal of ignorance, your Angljcan priest retards the advance
ment of thought less than the Roman Catholic priest, still, without
any special desire to do so, he does retard it; such is the natural
tendency of his business, for if every one made a proper use of his
reason the priestly office could not exist.
W. What, do you mean to say that we could do without priests
altogether ?
L. E. Certainly, I don’t mean that you could very well dispense
with them to-morrow, but in course of time you’ll do without
them, as we have done j they’ve held you in subjection for a very
long time, but their influence is becoming less every day, even poor
Roman Catholics are beginning to see through their priests.
W. Well, I agree with you so far, the influence of the clergy
has certainly decreased, even in my time ■, some people will always
believe in them, but the proportion of those who care nothing
about either the church or the priesthood is certainly larger.
L. E. Naturally, why even among the Jews the better educated
laugh at their religious observances, but they know that without
them their nationality mhst cease.
W. The Jewesses are very devout ?
L. E. Of course, women are always more so than men religious
fervour is generally in inverse proportion to intellect.
W. If I understand your system, the exercise of the intellect
is a universal panacea ?
L. E. Certainly, by that means we have gradually done away
with all you most complain of. If we suffer disease it is purely
our own fault, if we - - -
�IO
W. You have no wars, of course ?
L. E. Wars ! no, we’ve nothing to fight for, everyone is complete and self-supporting, ages ago we used to have wars just as you
do, but when one looks back at them they do seem so utterly
ludicrous and childish, that it’s difficult to imagine how they could
have taken place, progress is intensely slow, it’s taken you untold
ages even to see the absurdity of the duel between individuals r
having abolished that, it ought not to take you very long to do away
with duelling between nations.
W I suppose you did’nt manage these things in a day or two ?
L. E. Oh no, but it’^fuch a long time since we were like you,
that it seems quite funny it’s s&mlthing like you’re paying a visit
to some aboriginal tribe, only you’remnuch further behind us than
any of your aborigines are behind you.
W. You’re not bo^sdywithlj the working man” I suppose?
L. E. No, we’re alb working men, Everyone works for himself
the worst of your typiSlworking man, is that they all want to be
masters, not that anyonej|frzishe* to prevent them, but they seem
to fancy that their Esters shouldTvoluntarily change places with
them.
W. I expect they’d soon find their level again.
L. E. Of course thejJ would, thevj|®modified Communists,
their vice proceeds mainly from ignorance, and although with us
some are more ignoranty^an othe^jnone are dangerous. I think
you clearly understand that it’s imp®sible they should be so.
W. Yes, I think I do j if none of you have any property, there
can be no inducement for anyone to be dangerous; but stay, the
thought has just struck me, that the evil-disposed might make slaves
of the others.
,
L. E. No, everyone thoroughly understands that such a course
could not possibly result in any good; we have a few dangerous
animals, and - - W. Which you kill, of course ?
�11
L. E. Oh no, we simply avoid their haunts, there’s plenty of
room ; you use animals very badly, you ought to treat them quite
as well as you treat niggers, your daily slaughter of sheep and
bullocks, is as immoral as killing a similar number of men, in fact
as they are slightly your inferiors, you ought to be all the more
forbearing towards them.
W. But what are we to do for animal food ?
L. E. Why, do without it, there are plenty of substitutes, we
don’t kill animals, either for food or sport.
W. But I don’t believe we could exist without animal food.
L. E. Nonsense, it might not suit so well for a generation or
two ; but use is everything ; even tigers could be taught to live
without flesh diet.
W. Perhaps, but I don’t quite see how all the animals would be
disposed ©f; if we did’nt kill them, they would become too numerous.
L. E. You might as well say that man would become too numer
ous, because he is not eaten as food; there are plenty of animals
that you don’t kill to any appreciable extent, and yet they don’t
cause any inconvenience.
W. But we’ve always been taught that animals were specially
created for man’s use.
L. E. Ah, that’s to be accounted for by the barbarous origin of
your religion; to me it seems ridiculous, that a civilised people
should retain such a word as “create” in their language.
W. But the world was created ?
L. E. Such an idea might be excusable in Moses, but surely
you ought by this time, to have discarded that silly fable ; does’nt it
carry absurdity on the face of it, you see things develop and alter
year by year, and yet you say that they were “created” a few
thousand years ago only a little different from what you now see
them, and since that they have been allowed to take their chance,
or to be tampered with by man for profit or caprice.
W. I don’t quite understand you.
�12
L. E. Well I mean that by careful selection you can effect very
marked changes in any animal or plant, even in a few years.
W. Yes, I know it.
L. E. Does’nt that suggest to you that everything must have al
ways been in a state of development ?
W. Well, I suppose it does, but the missing link between man
and the monkey has never been discovered.
L. E. I could never see that any link was missing; you might
as well ask for the missing link between the big apes and the little
apes, you might as reasonably expect to find fossils extending over
millions of years, showing the origin of man when he was not only
lower in an organization than monkeys, but inferior to the jelly fish;
man is an ape, so I don’t know where the missing link is to come
from.
W. If man is only an ape why don’t the apes do as he does ?
L. E. They probably will in a reasonable tim,e after they have
acquired speech, not that I intend to prophecy anything; they may
never acquire speech—although never is a very long day—but look
at the most intelligent ape as he now is, and ask yourself whether,
if circumstances proved favourable, it would require many millions
of years to develop him into as good a man as the lowest form of
savage, especially when you remember that even now the skulls
of man and the more advanced apes, differ less than the highest
and lowest apes.
W. Yes but when you talk of millions of years - - L. E. Exactly, it’s an interval you can’t appreciate, simply
because you’ve got bogged in the notion that the universe has only
been “ created ” about ten thousand years.
W. But the oldest fossil men hardly differ from man of to-day.
L. E. Which convinces me that it must have occupied many
millions of years to develop him up to the position which he held
ten thousand years ago; if it convinces you that he was conjured
�T3
into existence at about that period, you’re quite welcome to your
opinion, I can’t disprove it, that is to say I’ve no eye witness to
produce.
W. Therefore I shall rest satisfied with what the Bible tells me.
L. E. A mournful example of the state of intellectual blindness
induced by any given religion. Why should you believe a man
who tells you that a short time ago, all the animals and things
you see were created almost in their present form ?
W. But everything is possibleHMth God.
L. E. That’s merely another w^Eof saying, everything is
possible to the imagination. You must admit that, if some Deity
created everything a few years ago, he’s been wonderfully inactive
ever since; you can’t point oitt.fl solitary instance of “creation,”
although everything keeps on developing.
W. But is’nt it all the same? God is the prime mover of
everything.
L. E. How can you say that, when you know that you can
alter trees and animals, and d®. almost what you like with them.
There are certain forces of nature which you do understand, and
others of which you know little or nothing, in time you may
understand them all, and be able to control them ; meanwhile it
would be much more reasonable to call every force in nature a
God, than to ascribe everything to one God.
W. Well it amounts to the same thing.
L. E. Excuse me if I say you’re very shallow, I was merely
making a reductio ad absurdum; to illustrate my meaning, take
steam, you evoke it, I might almost say, you create it, and you
have it under perfect control; if natural force is the same thing as
God, you ought to worship steam—a thing which you make your
slave.
W. But the very essence «of our religion is, that God created
everything.
�14
L. E. Exactly, you’re over-ridden by that silly eastern tale, about
the creation, if you could only manage to abolish Moses it----W. But Moses is the founder of our religion.
L. E. Never mind your religion, if it fetters your reason;
people tell you that there’s no such thing as development, because
your oldest fossil men, whose age is about ten thousand years, are
like man of the present day ■, they can’t see that this merely shows
how long a time must have been occupied in developing up to the
lowest form of man. I was asked, yesterday, how can you say man
has developed, when we find the figures on the Egyptian monuments
exactly the same as man of to-day; I replied, “ the figure on the
top of the Nelson Column is very much like the men of the present
day,” which is quite as strong an argument against the doctrine of
development; people look on two or three thousand years ago as such
a very long time. Then they go on to say, but where do you stop ?
Practically you don’t stop anywhere. People think it so conclusive
to say, “out of nothing, nothing comes,” but the establishment of
spontaneous generation almost upsets this sweeping aphorism,
because thdre is nothing left to account for except the air, which
would naturally produce everything you see, in course of time;
but not in a little flea-bite of time like 10,000 years, or even
jo,000,000. Why not rest satisfied with our theory, that every
thing has developed itself out of space ? Spontaneous generation
has been proved to a certainty, space must have always existed, in
this way you can account for the universe more rationally than by
your creation theory.
W. But that would do away with the necessity for belief in the
existence of a God.
L. E. Yes, the abolition of any old theory or practice must
cause pain or damage to some one; fancy the grief of the ancient
Roman mothers when they heard their sons ridicule the respectable
old system of Pantheism, which had been all sufficient for so many
years; or the horror of the stage coach proprietors, when they found
railways spreading all over the country.
�W. I can’t see how anyone can have any doubt as to the existance
of a God, how can you account for everything we see around us ?
L. E. I’ve just told you.
W. Oh ! I thought you merely put it as a theory.
L. E. It’s all theory of course, the only question is, which re
oommends itself most to the reason ?
W. Why, if your ideas were correct, thieves and murderers
would have no fear of future punishment.
L. E. Every whit as much as they have now, virtue is its own
and only reward, and vice is its own punishment, or receives present
punishment, anything else you must own to be at the best, a pure
speculation, let me ask you whether you yourself or any one you
know really has any fear of future punishment, in a vague sort of way
they fancy they have been brought upon the idea j but careful self
analysis will show that every action, whether good or bad, is done
solely with a view to the cousequences in this world 5 in fact I think
your are all beginning to understand that you will never see any
other.
W. Are we like the beasts that perish then ?
L. E. We are the beasts that perish.
W. Those holding such a creed must be of all things the most
miserable.
L. E. Implicit belief in the tenets of your religion must ne
cessarily make you much more miserable.
W. How so ?
L. E. Because no one can be certain whether he’s just good
enough to go to glory 5 there are no rules laid down by which a
man may know exactly how much or how little will obtain for him
the desired position after death.
W. No, he must have faith.
L. E. Which means that he must refrain from using his reason ;
I think I am justified in saying that a belief in death bringing a
total cessation of all joys and pleasures is more comfortable than
�16
the miserable uncertainty of your creed, but as no one seems to
have the least fear of punishment in another world, I am led to
conclude either that you are all very conceited or that you have no
real belief in your dogmas.
W. Well you certainly have some excuse for your view of the
matter;. but I firmly believe that the soul of man will live again.
L. E. You might as well talk of the soul of the rose in your
button-hole; not a particle of it will be lost or destroyed but it will
never exist again as a rose.
W. .You say nothing is lost or destroyed, where then does the
life of man go, if you object to call it the soul ?
*
L. E. You might as well ask me where the steam goes which
has dragged you from London to Brighton ; your life carries you
about for a number of years, and when, like the steam, it’s used up
you ask me where it goes to. I realy can’t tell you; be contented
to believe only in what you see; rest assured that there is nothing
supernatural and that nothing has more power over nature than man.
I turned round towards the speaker to protest against this
subversive doctrine, but he had left me, and I sat for some time
thinking of all he had said.
It seemed that he totally differed from the Communists and other
idiots who have endeavoured to suddenly force their schemes—good,
bad, or indifferent—down their neighbours’ throats, either at the
point of the bayonet, or by the expenditure of large sums; he had
merely given me the outline of the state of things on his own planet,
and he had specially pointed out that any radical change, can only
be very gradually produced.
His Theology—or rather the want of it—was certainly most
startling, but many of his ideas seemed to have the merit of common
sense.
According to established precedent, I ought to say, “ and I woke,
and found it was a dream;” but I had’nt been asleep.
�Dr. RIDGE’S
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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A man from the moon
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16, [2] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Advertisements for patent food and tonic wines on unnumbered pages at the end. Unidentified author. Tentative date of publication from British Library catalogue.
An account in which a mountain climber, resting at the summit of Mount Aconcagua in the Andes, encounters there a man from the Moon who tells him that humanity is part but not necessarily the peak of Evolution, and who decries the feeble arguments of human Religions against this fact. When the climber asks him "Are we like the beasts that perish then?" the "Lunar Excursionist" responds, "We are the beasts that perish".
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C.R. Brown
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[1870?]
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G5229
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Secularism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A man from the moon), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Evolution
Secularism
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Text
THE EXAMINER:
A Monthly Review of Religious and Humane Questions,
and of Literattire.
Vol. I. — NOVEMBER,
1870. — No. 1.
aMjicago;
OR,
THE BACK STAIRS TO FORTUNE.
“ Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do.
Not light them for themselves : for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues ; nor nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.”
Measurefor Measure.
CHAPTER I.—Introduction.
I WILL frankly say, that my object in writing this serial is. to
strike a succession of the hardest blows I can, at follies, vices, and
crimes, which I find around me, in the society, religion, and types of
character which are current among us.
It is now nearly twenty-eight years since I was walking home one
winter s night with my father, to our log cottage on the west bank of
the Fox river, some thirty-five miles from Chicago, when certain
questions he put to me about my soul and my future destiny,—we
were returning from a “ prayer and inquiry meeting,”—led me to
take the oaths, as it were, of awful fealty to God, and to set my heart
upon intense seeking after the invisible path by which human feet
find entrance to divine life. And for more than a quarter of a cen
tury, from extreme youth to manhood, I have not ceased to contend
with myself, and with all the forces of the world besetting me, for the
attainment of that ideal of a heart right with God, which was before
my young imagination when I first consecrated my powers to religion.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by Edward C. Towne, in the Office of the
Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
VOL. I.—NO. I.
�o
Crazy Chicago.
The lesson I have best learned is, that I am to myself, by many
varieties of ignorance and short-coming, fault and transgression, the
greatest hurt and hindrance; so that it were extreme stupidity and
wrong in me to attempt to cudgel mankind out of my path, as if the
world only stood between me and the gates of light; or to complain
of my earthly condition, as if but for cloud and storm, and the inces
sant turning of earth into her own shadow, I could get away easily
enough on the wings of my own endeavor to some place of eternal,
unclouded day. Out of the depths I confess that I am of the earth,
earthy, born of the dust and compact of common clay, and that for
me there is no problem more immediate and urgent than that of
detaining the incarnate spark in my own breast, and finding other
than the meanest cradle for that of God which is born into my own
life. These pages will bear constant witness, I trust, to my “ personal
conviction of sin,” even if I should not be found spitting out in the
presence of the public the husks I have been fain to eat, and should
hesitate, for decency’s sake, to do as the Pharisees, with their manners
mended in the school of Christ, now do, raise, with smitten breast,
the publican’s wail, to be seen and heard of men.
And it will always appear in what I write, unless I come greatly
short of my aim, that in no case do I propose that kind of judgment
which denies excuse and knows no arrest of the severities of justice.
I mean to comprehend, and to deal generous justice, even when I
strike the hardest and crush the most unsparingly ; believing that so
it is with the truth, and that in the final judgment of perfect wisdom
and absolute power, there is complete reconciliation of the criminal
and the court, and no such thing at last as the chains and prison of
uupitying penalty.
Very many good people on earth, appealing to God in heaven and
to the Devil in hell, are, indeed, still digesting the sour wrath against
wrong which comes of crudeness of faith and virtue, and are still
muttering, boldly or slyly, the foul curses of heathenism, in creeds
Catholic, Calvinist, and other, against the race of mortal men ; but I
no more propose to deem that sort of thing Christian, or decent, or
other than spiritually unclean and detestable, than I propose to accept
human sacrifice and the banquets of pious cannibalism.
The study of follies, faults, and crimes in men, is the study also of
human nature, and no delineation of the former can be true, or even
tolerable, to a just mind, which does not pick out the threads of the
original fabric, and show the work of the Creator under all the marred
�Crazy Chicago.
3
life of the creature. God forbid that I should forget, or fail to
indicate, in speaking of what goes sadly wrong in the details of human
life, that for every soul made in the divine image, there is adequate
discipline, causing a final tendency of character, and of the whole
course of being, to good, even the perfect and eternal good which is
the aim of God and the end of the kingdom of heaven. In the end,
therefore, whatever plainness and sharpness I may use, I hope to
speak kindly of men and of women, and permit my readers to see,
even on the back stairs to fortune, angels ascending and descending,
under whatever disguise and humiliation of soiled humanity.
But let it be understood that I do not mean to forbear criticism
and the exposure of facts, because of my personal consciousness of
deficiency and fault, and my unswerving faith in good in all and
divine good will to all. I shall analyze and portray life as I find it,
and shall take every suitable occasion to pierce the very core of our
doubtful and difficult questions, and to depict in their naked reality
the characters which swarm along the new paths of our new
civilization.
I have the blood of this new life in my own veins ; its great hopes
throb in my heart; I have closely observed and faithfully studied its
manifold, marvellous manifestations; and I feel wholly convinced of
the immeasurable course it is to run, and of the absolute necessity of
making haste to prepare the full success of that course, by culture
such as never before was needed, and never yet has been produced.
New elements of a new world are gathered in this great chaos which
we call The West, and the ever enduring spirit of truth, order,
beneficence, which has had so varied incarnations in human history,
seems destined to attempt here a new manifestation, to the interpre
tation of which new seers must be called. While greater masters of
prophecy prepare their burden, I propose to utter my word, in a
faithful picture of certain aspects of things about us, the criticism of
which, and reform of which, must precede any satisfactory establish
ment of a culture suited to our needs, which are the needs of
enterprise and liberty vastly greater and more radical than were ever
before ventured on.
It must not be thought, as my title may suggest, that I am about
to hold up the great city of the West to contempt. I use her name
to designate a type, a new expansion of energy and freedom, fully
believing that the event will show her to be one of the great centres
of the modern world. Incident to the progress which she represents,
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are insanities of enterprise and liberty, the aggregate of which I may
justly call Crazy Chicago. And in thus naming my picture, I leave
myself at liberty to introduce features brought from far, illustrations
of American insanity which I have gathered in other fields, and which
I am able to use to more advantage than the particular instances
nearer the scene of my tale. Crazy Chicago is an American product.
Some of the elements which mingle in the aggregate designated by
the term, are seen to best advantage in New York or Boston, though
doubtless the natural attraction of all is to the city whose name I use.
Here then, in my story, let them come, and let us behold in one
view the worst and the best of our new march of American energy
and freedom.
CHAPTER II.
It was impossible not to pity her. Only three days before a
bride, and a widow before the sun went down on her wedding-day,
she was journeying with her lover’s remains to lay them where the
new home for the new life had been prepared; and now an inexpli
cable event brought an additional and wholly unthought of shock.
The baggage car, in which was contained the casket of precious clay,
had taken fire, and was already enveloped in fierce, devouring flames.
Nobody could tell how it had happened, but the car, with all its
contents, was burning up. Had some careless person packed matches
in his trunk, along with something readily combustible, and so fur
nished the seed of this destruction ? Had a spark stolen in by an
accidental crack, and fallen on stuff easy to ignite ? Surmises were
abundant, but even the most plausible left the origin of the fire a
mystery. There were two baggage cars, and this one, entirely filled
with through-baggage, express matter and mails, had not been opened
since the train left P------ , ten hours before. The engineer was as
much at a loss as any one, as to how it had happened. He could
only say that he suddenly became aware that this closed and locked
car was bursting out in flames on all sides, and that to stop the train,
to uncouple and drag forward the burning mass, and to himself cut
loose from it, were barely possible for the tongues of flame which shot
fiercely out in every direction. A sense of awe stole over every one,
such as inexplicable manifestations of destroying power always excite,
when it was generally known that no one could tell how the confla
gration had originated.
�Crazy Chicago.
5
The utmost exertions of all hands did not suffice to break open a
door, or to get out even a single trunk, box, or mail-bag. Even the
attempt to lift one side of the car, by means of poles and rails, and
throw it over, and off the track, was of no avail. There was no
alternative but to let the fire rage until the chief weight of the
burning mass should be dissipated. It would not take a very long
time to make that heavy load almost as light as nothing, tossing its
elements back into the womb of air and chaos of dust whence they
came. Half a ton of letters, the business and love of New York and
New England written out by thousands of scribes, would become a
few pounds of ashes and lost cloudlets of elemental matter, within a
couple of hours. The huge pile of boxes and trunks, with the varied
belongings of a crowd of persons, things mean and things precious,
things gay and costly, and things cheap and vile ; the gentleman’s
apparel and keepsakes; the lady’s rich collection of necessities of
comfort, beauty, and pride; the student’s books, and love tokens, and
single best suit; and similar treasures of different classes of travelers,
were dissolving in that raging furnace, and their elements flying
away to the treasuries of nature. The full light of noon-day softened
the fire spectacle, extinguishing somewhat the white tips of the
tongues of flame, but still an intensely raging fire was evidently doing
its cruel work. And in the very heart of the fiery pile lay all that
death had left of Marion White’s husband.
Had there been no peculiar distress in the event, almost every one
would have watched the progress of the flames with bitter regret for
his or her own personal loss, but when it was known that those low
wails of irrepressible anguish in the second car were because of a
body burning up,— the last relic of one day of wedlock to a young
bride,— the single thought which pressed upon all hearts, was of
compassion for this unusual aggravation of a dreadful woe. Rough
men as well as gentle, and women commonly thoughtless of either
pleasure or pain not their own, as well as those not bereft by a false
life of the power of womanly sympathy, moved about or looked sadly
on, with that air of real compassion which always seems like a soft
outbreak in human flesh of the divine tenderness. Not a soul there
but sincerely pitied Marion White, for her great sorrow, and for this
strange after-blow of suffering. No one knew her; but her name,
which was distinctly marked on her traveling-bag, had been passed
from one to another in the crowd, as tenderly and reverently as
communion bread and wine are handed about when sacrament is
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administered. It was, indeed, one of the hours when the religion of
our common sympathy, and our common awe before invisible realities,
held its service of communion, and swayed all hearts with its gracious
power. There were bad men standing by, to whom greed was more
than grace, and women looking on who had grown sadly faithless to
womanhood through pride, or passion, or harshness of virtue and
heathenism in religion,— whom in this moment the kingdom of heaven
baptized, so that ever after they were under one memory at least of
sweet human nature, touched once at least with love towards the fellow
creature and natural trust towards the Providence which is behind all
our mysteries and all our woes. The lookers on had, indeed, been
less than human, if the quick tenderness of sympathy had not flushed
every face, and they had not thus tried dumbly to ease Marion White’s
load of pain. But it was only as the hour wore on, and when most
of the passengers were gone to watch the last work of the fire and to
prepare to throw the wreck from the track, that the terrible distress
of the doubly bereaved young wife began to abate a little.
Could she but have thought, there was nothing really dreadful in
this funeral pyre. But she did not think, not even as much as she
had begun to do before the suddenness and strangeness of this
experience came upon her.
The religion which tradition had taught her required a gloomy
contemplation of death. It barely offered its “professors” a candle
of hope for a passage through this valley of terrors, and neither she
nor her lover had ever consented to become “ professors.” There fell
no light, therefore, on the path of her bereavement, from any knowl
edge she had had of Christian faith. On the contrary, all her
instruction, every thing she was accustomed to hear, and even the
prayer in the dreary funeral service, had carefully excluded every
ray of light, and forced her desolate heart upon either blank despair
or desperate trust. The despair was too terrible for endurance, yet
she could not have trusted, if it had been for herself alone. On either
side of her way, as she strove to follow the departed spirit to which
they said “God had joined” her, she saw the Jesus of Christian
superstition,* clothed in blood and breathing fire, and the Devil of the
same dreadful tale, only less horrible than the Judging Christ, while
* A recent evangelical poem, “ Yesterday, To-day and Forever,” which has already had a very
wide circulation, describes the Lord Jesus as rising from the “ Bridal Supper of the Lamb ” to
say, “Now is the day of vengeance in my heart,” and going forth G Apparell’d in a vesture
dipped in blood,” while his angels cry,
“ Ride on and prosper! Thy right hand alone
Shall teach thee deeds of vengeance, and Thy shafts
Shall drink the life-blood of Thy vaunting foes,”
�far before yawned bottomless perdition, and over all was that Infinite
Horror, the presence of “ an angry God.” That it was a heathen
mythology which had created this picture, she could not be expected to
know, but she soon did know, by some better revelation than she had
been taught, that the angry God, the lake of fire, the nearly infinite
devil, and the Jesus of the judgment-throne, were shapes of fear
known only to p ious fiction.
The unreality of customary religion had strongly impressed her
ever since she had first had its lessons pressed upon her attention.
Without distinctly reflecting, she had gathered a strong impression,
and in fact reached a profound conviction, that the usual administra
tion of Christian dogma was formal only, and was wholly false to the
real faith both of ministers and peoples. It was her nursery experi
ence over again, only the tales of catechism, and creed, and church
worship, while solemn and grim as grown men could make them, were
less real than Blue Beard and Jack and the Bean Stalk,— mere
mummery kept up by decent custom and vague fear,— or by the
difficulty ministers found in extricating their real faith from this
customary, consecrated, and said to be Divine Form. She had so
clearly felt this, without distinctly expressing it even to herself, that
the general idea that pious fiction is as much a rule in the religion of
sects and churches, as pleasant fiction is in the nursery, was perfectly
familiar to her.
When, therefore, early impressions and the influences about her,
conjured up the usual dreadful picture of the gods of Christian
heathenism,— Jesus, Satan, and Jehovah,— it was inevitable that her
brave love should recur to the thought that these shapes of terror had
no sanction in any human or any Christian truth.
This, her own individual thought, which had had but a timid
existence in her mind, would have hardly served her needs when the
shadow of utter darkness fell on her life, but for the fact that love
and desperation nerved her spirit, and together drove her upon the
experiment of trust. And once that she dared brave the triune
Horror of her early creed, the conviction grew into dauntless vigof,
that the real truth would unmask and dethrone this image of complex
dread. Of Devil and angry Jehovah, in fact, she at once found the
fear entirely gone. The dreadful figure of the Judge alone remained
to plague her timid trust in God. Unhesitatingly, however, using
this simple liturgy of Old and New Testaments, ‘The Lord is my
Shepherd’ — ‘Our Father which art in Heaven,’ — she defied, for
�Crazy Chicago.
her lover’s sake, and trusting Love as true God and God as true Love,
the Messianic Lord of Vengeance, in whom she had wholly lost the
simple Christ of history.
A bitter feeling that some dreadful pretension, in parable or in
false report of parable, had done a most cruel thing to human hearts,
in affording a basis for the fiction of damnation, entirely separated her
from the thought of the teacher whose prayer she had on her lips,
and whose faith towards God her heart repeated. He was less than
nothing to her; he was wholly excluded from her sight; nor can one
wonder, who considers the extent to which Jesus, in the existing
records of his life, apparently lent himself to the idea of a Messianic
avenging deliverer.
“ I have hated Jesus ever since I was a little girl, and first read
about giving bad people to the devil to be put in hell fire,” were actual
words of a perfectly simple, perfectly just, and exceptionally Christian
experience, on the part of one, a very simple, earnest woman, who
could not be expected to discriminate the gross Judaism of some
things in the teaching of Jesus from the pure Christian truth of other
parts of his doctrine.
A resolute idealist, who sets out with the assumption that all the
bad words in the New Testament are to be read any way but simply,
in order to get a good meaning into them, may easily enough create
a Jesus all transcendent goodness and greatness, and think it very
strange that the millions do not see all colors white as he does, but
this is no exploit for common minds. And to many, who have
been diligently instructed in that orthodoxy, which says, as Ecce Deus
expresses it,— “ Christ must be more than a good man, or worse than
the worst man ; if he be not God, he is the Devil,” — it is impossible
to see the real teacher, as he speaks real truth, the attention is so taken
with the figure which he makes, or is represented as making, in some
scene which has no true revelation in it.
Women are commonly the sufferers who revolt finally against the
Jesus of pious fiction, and utterly, though secretly, turn away from
gospel and epistles, to the simple revelation which nature, and provi
dence, and inspiration, furnish to their own hearts. The young wife
of our story was such a sufferer and recusant. Instantly that her
mind became composed to reflection, she found herself a Christian
without Christ, an unfaltering believer in precious truths of God, and
eternal life, which had come to her under the Christian name, and
with that divine quality of mercy which the word “ Christian”
�Crazy Chicago.
9
seemed to most signify in the best Christian hearts, and yet a resolute,
defiant disbeliever in the whole form of creed and custom on which
had been enthroned so long the Judging Christ. The whole matter
had become divided, and a great gulf fixed between the one part and
the other, all the realities of God, and mercy, and heaven on one side,
and the fictions, the forms, and the black idols on the other. Defiance
of the latter was part, for the moment, of the faith with which she
regarded the former.
It was to this state of mind that Marion White had come, when the
sudden intelligence of the burning of her husband’s body threw her
from all self possession, and brought back upon her, with excess of
terror, the gloomiest impressions she had ever had. It seemed almost
as if the offended Judge had kindled those flames, to devour the dead
form, and give her a horrible symbol of the second death, to which
her lover had been received in hell torment. The event was so
unexpected and so inexplicable, and so harrowing at the best, even if
she could have remembered that it was no more than “ dust to dust,”
that, even with a more resolute mind, she must have been made
unusually susceptible, for the time, to dark impressions and depress
ing thoughts, such as early religious associations had always tended to
force upon her. Had her faith met at that moment with disastrous
overthrow, and fear recovered possession of her trembling spirit, it
would have been no more than usually happens. A plausible, tender
appeal to her sense of helplessness, to her feeling of ill desert, to her
natural terror in view of destruction, might have extinguished in her
heart the pure aspiration of the child towards the Father in Heaven,
and fastened on her some one of the forms of current Christian
heathenism. No such advocate was at hand, however, and with the
moving on of the train, and her final departure from the last relic of
her past, Marion White struggled out of the depths with a sad strength
of soul which she was destined never to lose.
CHAPTER III.
There were two persons in the car with Marion White, who each
had an impulse to offer her assistance, of the sort which sympathy
endeavors to render on such occasions. Both of them had the
clerical title, and both were ministers of religion, but they were every
way a singular contrast to each other ; they had in fact no more in
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common than the publican and the Pharisee in the temple. That one
of the two whose presence might have been of real service, we will
call, without his title, John Paul, a modest, earnest gentleman of
nearly fifty, whose countenance told a plain story of very profound,
and possibly very sad, experience. Him, however, we must defer
introducing, because he was anticipated by the Rev. Athanasius
Channing Blowman, a clergyman of national reputation, who was
en route to Chicago to deliver his celebrated lecture on Napoleon
Bonaparte and Modern History.
The Rev. Athanasius Channing Blowman was still a young man,—
thirty-three perhaps,— but he did not lack assurance, and he felt it
incumbent upon him to employ his pastoral, not to say his episcopal,
authority, with the sighs and tears of Marion White. Not that he
was a priest of ‘ The Church,’ much less a bishop, for he belonged to
a small denomination of heretics, and had only the standing which
excessive self-assertion gives; but he made a large and loud claim as
a “minister of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” and he held in
great esteem that prophecy, wherein the master assured the disciples,
“ He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and
greater than these shall he do.” It was from the last clause of this
text that Athanasius Channing Blowman purposed to preach in the
Chicago Opera House, on the Sunday evening previous to his lecture,
which would be given on Monday night.
Nature had used inexplicable freedom in mixing characters in this
young apostle. There was a little of Pope Hildebrand, just enough
to warrant the sublime assurance with which he had demanded and
obtained ecclesiastical dignities, on the various boards engaged in
managing the machinery of the sect. Of Tom Paine, Voltaire, and
any nameless mountebank, there were about equal parts, giving a
considerable dash of irreverent common sense, of egotistic wit, and of
grand and lofty tumbling with figures of speech, epithets fit and unfit,
and the usual weapons of sensational oratory. It was, however, in
personal appearance, that Athanasius Channing Blowman believed
himself indubitably in the line of prophets and apostles, and of his
“ Lord and Master.” Probably he would never have been called a
handsome man; and he certainly was not interesting in appearance;
but he had quite unusual stature, an animated countenance, eyes that
habitually flashed, or were meant to flash, and locks, abundant and
dark, worthy of an Apollo. Two thoughts frequently came to him
through the smoke of his cigar, that the figures of “ the Lord Jesus,”
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11
in pictures by very old masters, strangely resembled tbe person he
appeared in what he called “ my glorified moments,” and that Apollo
Athanasius Channing would have been a name strikingly suitable for
one who had added to the substance of Greek wisdom and orthodox
inspiration, the advanced views of most reputable heresy, and whose
lofty aim it was to invite Moses and Elias, Catholic and Calvinist, to
abide with him on his mount of transfiguration, “ our elevated liberal
views.”
In the matter of actual religion, this Apollo Athanasius once
naively confessed that it was the unknown quantity in his problem of
life. At the very first of his ministry he had inclined wholly to the
most V radical” paths, and he never had had, or could have, any
other than “ radical ” private opinions. But preferment, such as it
could be had in his sect, did not lie in that direction, and really the
workings of his mind were not so positive as to compel him to minister
one set of opinions rather than another. He went over, therefore, to
the conservative side of the denominational conventicle, and shouted
the shibboleths of orthodox heresy at the head of the “ right wing.”
Here he thought it mighty clever to confute the “ radicals,” who said
much of “ intuition ” and “ inspiration,” by confessing, as if that of
course settled the matter, that his soul was as empty of “ inspiration ”
as a brass horn of the Holy Ghost; and that of “ intuition” he had
never known any more than a dutch cheese; propositions which
nobody felt able to dispute. The single passion of his nature seemed
to be, to raise his voice loudest of all among “ the chief speakers,” and
to persuade himself that he led the van of the Christian religion,
because he was a successful sensational preacher.
In fact, however, the Christian religion, with all its sins of error
and wrong upon it, would have been infinitely indebted to this fellow
if he had looked up some honest employment. There undoubtedly
ought to be a quasi-hell just at present, convenient to urgent mundane
necessities, into which all not honest teachers of religion might be
thrust, long enough to smoke out thejr pretension, and save their
souls, as by fire, from the worst break-down of character to which
man or woman can come. The emptying thereby of numerous
pulpits, which it costs from $7,000 to $12,000 a year to keep a star
performer in, would do no harm whatever to public virtue or popular
interest in religion, and would rid us of a prodigious amount of
humbug, besides turning over to modest and honest labor, and to
good character, quite a number of persons originally capable of a
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career much nobler than that of careless, reckless, sensational
administration of no-truths, half-truths, and lies, in the name of
religion.
It was a pet conceit of young Mr. Blowman, since he had taken
charge of the “ conservative liberal movement of the Christian mind,”
to constitute himself spokesman of the latest discovered true intent of
the only original gospel of “ Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,”
and invite the warring sects of Christendom to say after him this last
revised and finally genuine Christian confession of faith. It was not
that he really had any particular faith to confess himself, but he
imagined himself competent, as conductor of a metropolitan religious
theatre, drawing crowded houses every Sunday morning and evening,
to give a good guess at the average religious notions afloat in the
popular mind, and had no hesitation in assuming that a compend of
such notions would have prodigious popular success.
With his usual largeness and boldness of view, he purposed
obtaining what he called a “ Consensus,” or agreed-upon statement
of beliefs, endorsed by leading divines,— selected by himself from all
parts of Christendom, and addressed by a circular letter under his
own hand,— as an authoritative exposition of faith and practice. To
his mind it was plain that large numbers of the popular clergy of
various sects would welcome so good an opportunity to fall into line
under one banner, and behind a leader whose star was so undeniably
in the ascendant, wherever theatres and opera houses had opened
their doors. The “ liberal views” of his own sect rendered the bare
suggestion of a “ Creed ” dangerous, not because there was really any
indisposition to have a creed, in a small and sly way, by a sort of
ecclesiastical thimblerig, but from the average aversion of the sect to
call the distinctly proclaimed confession by the usual name, the
general impression seeming to be that clever sleight-of-hand infidelity
to the boasted principle of liberty, would escape detection, and
enable the body to save appearances.
In this peculiar exigency, our young apostle was very lucky to hit
on the Latin term, Consensus, which at once sounds neither definite
nor dangerous, and has an impressive suggestion of dignity and
divinity, as much as to say, reversing a scripture word, “ It seems
good to US and to the Holy Ghost.” This term he almost considered
a divine suggestion, only he was not sure that the assumptions of that
word “ divine,” such as the existence of God. inspiration, etc., were
not a little doubtful, useful but misty, while of his own cleverness he
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was certain beyond a doubt, and on the whole preferred to assume
that, in the absence or inattention of Divine Wisdom, and “the Lord
Jesus ” having left the excelsior opportunities to future disciples, he
had invented a kind of Nicholson pavement for religion, over which
ark and hearse, the hope and the terror of traditional faith, might
trundle, smoothly as never before, their glorious onward way.
He often said to himself, and to his numerous admiring confidants,
the quasi-religious clever fellows, of both sexes, who constituted the
voluntary vestry of his grand metropolitan conventicle, “ The Church
of Holy Enoch,” that he should never forget the hour and the
moment when the scheme of a “ Consensus ” occurred to him. It
was on his first visit to Chicago, when for the first time he was driven
down Wabash Avenue, by the Hon. Jupiter William. His calmness
of mind had been disturbed for a moment by the contrast between
his own elegant patent-leather “ Oxford ties ” and the “ heavy kip ”
of the Hon. Jupiter William’s unvarnished boots, resting conspicu
ously on the front seat of the carriage, when suddenly, as the vehicle
swept round into the Avenue, and rolled with soothing smoothness
along the block roadway, a kind of vision brought a recurrence of his
frequent thoughts on the momentous subject of a “ banner-statement
of belief,” and in a moment, as if a Latin Dictionary,— a sealed book
to his education,— had been let down between the scraggy and
smutty trees which line this “ superb drive,” he read this word of
words for his purpose, Consensus, and instantly imagined a grand
turn-out of ecclesiastical vehicles, rolling in noiseless majesty in the
wake of his suggestion, over the way his cleverness should lay down.
From that moment “Consensus” had been his banner in the sky.
Fie had had the word illuminated, and framed in velvet and gold, to
stand on his study table. And straightway he had proceeded to write
out fairly his compend of all known winds of doctrine, attaching thereto
his own bold, decisive, oecumenical signature, Athanasius Channing
Blowman, preparatory to receiving the concurrent attestation of elect
fathers and brethren to whom he would vouchsafe circular epistolary
application. This compend, which was meant to be to the original
materials of prophecy, gospels, and epistles, what an ordered and
elegantly served dinner would have been to the great sheet let down,
full of things clean and unclean, of Peter’s vision, had been printed
in gilt and colors, on a large, elegant broad-sheet, and also in a primer
executed in the richest style of the designer’s art.
It was the broad-sheet which had best pleased the eye and heart of
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the author, because the first words and the last, the title and the signa
ture, stood as he deemed they should, in one view, the Alpha and
the Omega of this last authoritative interpretation of revelation; and
then it suggested a new Luther, nailing theses of everlasting gospel on
the doors of “ Atheism, Free Religion, and Romanism,” with “ blows
heard in heaven.” “Consensus” and “ Blowman I ” Would not
numberless Simeons now say, “ Mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people ? ”
But the broad-sheet was less convenient than a primer to hand
about, and less durable in the frowsy pockets of unctious youths
who besieged the pulpit steps, at close of service on Sunday nights,
for more words of everlasting bunkum; and then report had it, on too
good ground, alas! that the Reverend Doctor Archangelicus Sanctus
Sanctorum, had made contemptuous reference to the “Consensus” as
“ Blowman’s Handbill,” and really threatened a split in the party of
“ us and the Holy Ghost,” unless “ us” used somewhat more reserve
in presence of the long time “ Liberal ” Vicar of the “ Lord Jesus.”
The primer, therefore, had finally engaged the ardent dogmatic and
aesthetic interest of the inventor of “Consensus.” and was already
privately published, while the large scheme of concurrent attestation
was delayed, until due attention could be afforded it. Some experi
ence which Mr. Blowman had had, with a richly printed and orna
mented insurance tract, which his popular pen had been engaged to
write, and which the enterprising managers, with plenty of other
people’s money to spend, had brought out regardless of expense, now
came in play. Suffice it to say that heavy tinted paper, border lines
which varied with each page through all the colors of the rainbow, a
text printed in old English black letter, with illuminated initial letters
in blue, scarlet, and gold, and an illuminated cover, done in chromo
lithograph, were the main features of the “ Consensus ” primer, the
striking effects of which had moved Blowman to soliloquize, “ Wonder
what J. C. would say to that,” these initials being his usual, strictly
private, familiar designation of the personage professionally spoken of
as “ our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
It was with two or three of these gay picture books in his hand
that Mr. Blowman improved an opportunity to take the seat directly
in front of Marion White, soon after the train had left the scene of
the fire. It was not difficult for him to introduce conversation, as it
certainly would have been for John Paul, or for any other person of
quick sympathies.
�Crazy Chicago.
f
15
“ Permit me, dear Madame, to hand you a short statement of
religious beliefs,— liberal beliefs, Madame, which may afford you some
suggestions.”
“Thank you; you are very kind. It is not a Tract Society —
thing — is it ? ”
Great emotions are apt to induce extreme frankness, which Marion
White had certainly used in intimating the disgust she felt for the
“ blood of Jesus ” leaflets of heathenism which Tract distributors had
so frequently thrust upon her. Her Quaker uncle, good Thomas
White, had long ago shown her that the Tract Society had no moral
character, and her own sense of religious truth had led her to consider
such of its publications as had come in her way as very stupid illustra
tions of the sentimentalism of Christian superstition. The bare
thought of one of these vulgar appeals to fear, and selfishness, and
gross credulity, excited in her an intense desire to cover her grief and
her faith from every eye save that of the One, who was to her the
Lord our Shepherd, and the Father in heaven. However, she did
not wish to be impolite, and then Mr. Blowman’s primer certainly did
not bear the aspect,— generally mean and smutty,— of Tract Society
origin; she added therefore, with some hesitation :
“ I shall be happy to look at it at some time,” and handed it to her
traveling companion, a brother, a youth of eighteen perhaps, who had
found himself not good for much during these last hours of his sister’s
trouble.
Mr. Blowman responded, “ You hold some form, I presume, Madame,
of Christian faith, and are able to —;” exactly what, Mr. Blowman
did not himself know, and the clear, frank eyes of Marion White so
evidently spoke of knowledge, that he dared not make a random
reference; so he stopped, quite at his ease, however, letting a manner
of high self-assurance serve as a resting-place for his broken question,
until he should see what particular hope it might be which kindled
so pure a light in those saddened eyes.
It was painful for Marion White to speak at all just then; it was
torture almost to uncover her heart; but all the more because of the
pain did she reply from her deepest feeling and her most distinct
thought,—
“ I suppose I do not hold any form of what is called Christian faith,
but I believe very strongly indeed.”
That was a distinction quite beyond the Blowman mind, which, to
use a colloquial phrase, ‘took s'ock’ in certain forms and in the
�16
Crazy Chicago.
‘ Lord Jesus,’ as the impersonation of these forms, but of faith apart
from these knew no more than the unborn know of life. But it did
not become the author of the “ Consensus ” to be puzzled, or to betray
any desire for information on that to him, most remote of subjects,
real faith apart from assent to forms, faith without the touch or sight
of a symbol or idol. Accordingly, to set himself duly above this
young woman, who evidently had something like a ‘ radical ’ conception
of the nature of faith, or rather imagined herself having faith, such
as ‘ radicalism ’ represented it necessary to have, Mr. Blowman, with
his lofty oecumenical tone, said,—
“ Ah, indeed, Free Religion ? ”
The hardly veiled sneer of this question did not escape the notice
of Marion White. The evident skepticism of Mr. Blowman she
readily discovered. It was not the first time she had taken notice
that infidels and scoffers, by any real rule of genuine faith, are to be
found often enough under clerical profession of the popular creed.
Indeed, it had seemed the nearly universal rule, with the class of
ministers she had known, to contemptuously call in question the
natural and genuine experience of spiritual things which people
commonly had, in order to thrust upon everybody the orthodox tradi
tional preconceptions, and compel human hearts to come unto the
Father by the orthodox way. To her simple honesty, her fervent
moral integrity, and her always quick and direct faith in the divine
love and care, this clerical trick had come to seem as barefaced and
unworthy as any other form of false and faithless behavior. Mr.
Blowman, therefore, who apparently meant to intimate that her faith
was a delusion, she looked on with sad wonder, quite unable to
comprehend that any man, seeing her sorrow, and hearing her confes
sion of strong trust, should think it fit, or other than false and wicked,
to carelessly mock at her confidence, and by implication warn her of
the folly of trust such as hers. Exactly what the terms Mr. Blowman
had used, might mean, Marion White did not know, but she saw at
once what they might in truth mean, and she understood clearly that
Mr. Blowman intended to express decided disapproval of the confes
sion she had made. Her first impulse was to say no more, but her
eyes involuntarily turned directly to her questioner, with the frank,
quiet honesty in them which moved her to speak at all, and once that
her attention was taken by Mr. Blowman’s clerical cut and counte
nance, and she saw the unreality, the pretension, the ecclesiastical
frivolity even, of the man, a wholesome force of truth seized her, and
�Crazy Chicago.
W
(
17
she answered, with gentle firmness, and just enough brokenness of
feeling to make every tone of her voice pathetic, —
“ I do not know what you, Sir, may mean by free religion, and
therefore, cannot answer your question. But I confess that I do feel
entirely free to accept religion as my own experience has taught it to
me, and do believe that this freedom is justified by all really religious
truth. Your pamphlet has a very pretty cover, Sir, and your views
are doubtless very good if you believe them, but a Father in heaven
must have better ways of coming to our souls than by ministers and
tracts, or books and histories. I have not seen or heard anything,
since my trouble came, which did me any good, except the kind faces (
of people, and their loving words. All the religion which has come
to me has come of itself, in my heart, with my feelings which only
God knows; and that has kept coming almost all the time, so that I
feel almost as if I were God’s only child, and could not trust him
enough. I hope you do not consider such feeling wrong, because it
seems to me that ministers ought not to kill such religion, merely
because it is free and separate from their views. If God gives religion
to his children, so that it is a new life in their souls, like an angel
child born into a mother’s arms, it cannot be right for anybody to
meddle with it or injure it. I think I could not believe in anything
which would take away any of my faith in God’s being near to me
himself, and taking care of me himself.”
There was a pleading earnestness in Marion White’s concluding
words, which might have led an observer to suspect that she looked
on Mr. Blowman as no better than one of the servants of Herod, who
were sent to slay the infant Jesus, and that she was half afraid he
wished to murder the divine hope which was born in her heart, and
to which she clung with more than a mother’s passion. So many
ministers had seemed to her no better, towards the actual religious
experiences of people, than Herod’s purpose about Jesus, that uncon
sciously this fear did lend a tone to her manner. The Jesus of the
churches had become, so long since, a jealous king, to whom knees
must bend and heads bow, and his ministers had lent themselves so
completely to the Jesuit office of making his kingship the chief
interest, and had so unscrupulously used cruel violence against all
religion, springing up in human hearts, which turned to God directly,
without regard to the king-mediator’s claim, as sole keeper of access
to God, that Marion White, with her unusual possession of natural
and genuine direct faith in God, could not but feel distinct and strong
VOL. I.—NO. I.
2
�18
Crazy Chicago.
aversion, in the presence of any interference with her religious
experience.
For once in his life Mr. Blowman was nonplussed. He had
thought himself an Apollo of ministers to young women; indeed he
had, as near as his dry, wooden nature could, indulged in the spiritual
concupiscence which so commonly befouls the Protestant confessional;
he believed few females could remain unmoved to tender devotion
under the flash of his eye, and the shake of his locks ; to the best of his
belief, — and he kept a list. — not less than seventy young womeD, of
tolerable charms, worshipped through him, and closely associated the
bliss of heaven with his handsome person; while of unattractive
feminine devotees, who had languished under his flashing eye, he
imagined there must already be several meeting houses full in various
parts of the country, and that his retinue of houris, in the “ fields of living
green ” revealed in the hymn book, would perhaps astonish even the
angels, and go far to entitle him to high rank in the kingdom of “ the
Lord Jesus; ” but here was an instance quite contrary to his philos
ophy and practice of apostleship, a young and sweet woman, in special
need of consolation, who evidently saw neither charm nor help, either
in the Lord Jesus or in him, and who amazed him still further by the
clearness and earnestness of her direct, free confidence in God ! He
did not feel quite easy as he turned away, keeping the seat in front of
Marion White, but quite unable to carry on the interview, and gazing
fixedly out of the window to console his wounded vanity with a
pretence of important occupation for his mind. The thought really
plagued him, as the train sped over the prairie. ‘ What if one might
believe really in God, as he believed in himself, and feel the nearness
of Infinite Spirit, as he felt the visible and tangible fact of his own
person ! If that were so, what might not a man become as a minister,
not of historical recollections, but of actual divine inspiration!’ The
grandeur of the idea teased him, but not into faith, and he gradually
composed himself to abide in the old assumptions, and to go on in the
old way.
�Charles Dickens and his Christian Critics.
CHARLES DICKENS AND
19
HIS CHRISTIAN CRITICS.
The theological heathenism which still sticks to Christianity, has
few consistent, outspoken representatives. Total depravity, wrath of
God, blood atonement, and damnation, are rarely taught in the
orthodox pulpit, and still less rarely applied. It is commonly felt to
be brutal and infamous to rigidly apply them, and worse than useless
to honestly teach them. People do not want to hear of these dogmas,
and they are outraged by any direct application of them. To stand
over a human creature, in the presence of the loving and the weeping,
and argue of depravity, wrath, atoning blood, and damnation, with
intent to intimate that a soul has gone to hell, is commonly felt to
show a kind of cannibal appetite.
Undoubtedly “ Calvary,” as theologically understood, means human
sacrifice, or worse than that, and damnation certainly means that, but
average decent people want to forget it, even if they are not ready to
put it out of their creed. They feel the horrible heathenism of it,
although they have not yet definitely rejected it, and they no more
wish to recall the “ blood of Jesus,” and all it has implied, than they
wish to attempt appeasing God by drawing a butcher knife through
the throat of the eldest son. The sacrifice of Isaac, so often said to
be typical of Calvary, they do not more truly leave behind, than they
do the sacrifice of Jesus, justly assuming that the blood of Jesus has
no more to do with redemption than father Abraham’s knife. When,
therefore, a minister of religion flourishes the old heathen knife over
a dead man, and talks of hell and blood as if Moloch were his god,
and he wanted to cut somebody’s heart out for a sacrifice, the ortho
dox world is not less shocked than the heretic and secular world.
The Tremont Temple Baptist pulpit of Boston, is occupied by a
clergyman,— Fulton by name,— whose theology is that of Abraham’s
knife, and of what he calls the “ reeking cross.” He reads human
history, he tells us, “ in the light of burning Sodom and in the
presence of a reeking cross,” and advises us that “ the mighty tidal
wave of Almighty wrath approaches,” and that all of us who are not
“ clothed in the blood of Christ ” will go to “ hell, the prison-house
of the damned.” It would seem that this Fulton must burn brim
�20
Charles Dickens and hìs
stone, and keep a puddle of blood on his study table, and must, on
special occasions, visit slaughter-houses and hangings, to derive
inspiration and imagery for his gospel of Golgotha and GehennaHe has the fierce, “reeking” godliness of unadulterated heathenism,
and teaches that God hates us like hell, and only restrains his
vengeance a moment, to speedily roll in horrible destruction over us,
and be a hell of torment to us forever. The impatience of God to
drink our blood, is the striking feature of his theism; the necessity to
us of being all over blood,— dipped in the blood of Jesus,— if God is
to be kind to us, is the chief word of his gospel; and the certainty
that, if we reject this vile gospel of blood, God will damn — damn —
damn us, is his one prophetic utterance.
We are not surprised, therefore, to find that his humanity is on a
par with that of the pious cannibalism which enjoins the sacrificial
eating of aged relatives, or that of the Mormon Danite doctrine of
murder as a means of grace, killing people to save their souls. He
takes a great, and loving, and beloved soul, such as he confesses
Charles Dickens to have been, and “ eats him raw,” to use a Greek
metaphor,— damns him to hell, to use his own choice vocabulary,—
as a matter of mercy and truth to us who, vainly and villainously, as
he deems it, trust that God will be kind to our great brother, and
will lead him in the way of eternal life. Merely for appearance’s
sake, he professes not to pronounce “ an opinion as to the home of
his soul,” but he does this nevertheless, and in terms which add
blasphemy to brutality. He “ leaves him with God,” and expounds
“God” as meaning “hell.” And this disgusting Calcraft of
preachers, with his blood-reeking gospel of pious ferocity, asks us to
hear him as a minister of Christian grace and truth ! It is much as
if the slaughter-house offal should be brought us in place of butcher’s
meat; Mr. Fulton keeps the refuse of Christianity without its truth.
The truth of Christianity teaches us to implicitly trust the paternal
sovereignty of God, and to hope the best, and believe the best, and
have full assurance of the best, in any and every instance of the
offspring of God, simply on the ground that God’s care is perfectly
adequate to secure the best. The theological heathenism, which has
so long made part of Christianity, and which undoubtedly is
suggested, if not found, in Jesus and Paul, as part of the heathen
tradition which helped give an envelop, husk, or shell, to Christian
truth, denies the fact of this care of God, chiefly on these grounds, as
now explained, that God cannot consistently be a kind father to
�Christian Critics.
21
unworthy children, and that, even if he could be, the nature of the
freedom he ought to give his children forbids it. That is to say, if
God should effectually influence us, here or hereafter, to be good, and
thereby make us holy and blessed, he would violate our creature
freedom, and if he should concern himself to do this while we were
disobedient, he would fail to show due respect for good character,
which can be fitly shown only by penalty, and that not helpful and
redemptive 1
It is disgraceful, but it is true, that so-called theologians, supposed
to have had at least a common education, and entrusted with the
instruction of the community, unite in forbidding God Almighty to
train up his children in the way in which they should go, and, with
one accord, doubt whether the creatures would walk in that way, even
if the Creator were permitted to use all the powers of divine paternal
discipline. They assert the inconsistency of moral discipline with
human freedom I To persuade, even with the utmost care and
wisdom of God, is to violate the will! A human father may do this,
yea, must do this; but God must not do it I The human father is
derelict in duty if he do not aim to break the disobedient will, and
bring to repentance and perfect obedience; but it is God’s duty to
avoid doing this!
Is it possible to conceive a more absurd doctrine ? Here are the
moral offspring of Deity, made susceptible to moral influence, capable
of due development only under moral influence, and to be brought
under human good influence as much as possible, and yet we are
asked to believe that God must not use good influence, or at least
must avoid using this effectively, because he would thereby make his
children holy and happy forever, at the dreadfid cost of violated free
will! That will do to tell in Tremont Temple. Christian common
sense knows better.
The other point of the popular dogma about God, is no less absurd,
and, besides, it is wicked, if any dogma whatever can be said to be
wicked. This forbids God to make men good, lest thereby he should
not seem to love goodness and hate sin. It forbids God to be kind
and helpful, in divine moral and spiritual ways, lest by so doing he
get the reputation in the universe of a bad moral character. The
mere suspicion that the Father-Creator will deal so wisely with his
creature children as to redeem them finally every one, excites an
orthodox theologian as a red rag is said to do a wild bull. Universal
redemption, by the perfect fatherhood of God, is the abomination of
�22
*
Charles Dickens and his
desolation set up in the holy place of orthodoxy, because, if it is a
fact, then orthodoxy is heathen folly.
Dr. J. P. Thompson, of the Broadway Tabernacle Congregational
church, New York, wrote a book a few years since to prove the neces
sary damning effect of the love of God, on the ground that true love
must respect right, and that right forbids God to be a Father to
sinners. According to the orthodox idea, God must stand off from
the sinner and deal out every possible hurt and pain, by way of
proper penalty. That is the word, “penalty.” Dr. Thompson called
his book “ Love and Penalty.” A more exact title would have been
“ Damning Love.”
By “ penalty ” the orthodox dogmatist means punishment which will
hurt and will not help. This damning penalty, — hurting the sinner
and taking care /wi to help him, or in any way do him any good,—
this infernal, hellish, damnable infliction of unmitigated evil, — is said
by orthodoxy to be the only means by which God can show proper
regard for goodness and suitable dislike of sin. Orthodoxy is fiercely
anxious to have God show that he hates sin. Prophesy to it of God’s
showing that he loves goodness by making every soul good, and it will
retort that such a God is good for nothing, a mere sentimental driv
eller, a goody Being, whose “ throne ” is not worth an hour’s purchase.
Hatred of sin, “ burning to the lowest hell,” is the orthodox charac
teristic of Deity.
Now of this conception of divine law, pure Christian truth knows
nothing whatever. The justice of God is paternal and effective. Its
embodiment is perfect fatherhood. Such a thing as penalty intended
to do evil only, is unknown to Deity. Nothing more would be needed
to make God devilish than the adoption of such penalty. Divine
penalty is intended to do good only, and would not be divine if it
were not redemptive. All the judgment of God looks to reform, and
all divine execution of law causes repentance and obedience. It is
simply by want of faith in God, that the question is, or can be, raised,
whether a soul will fail of holiness and blessedness. Orthodoxy
assumes that God has no more wisdom than our human law embodies,
and that our miserable failure to deal with offenders is an example of
justice which Deity cannot surpass. It stubbornly, blindly, wickedly
almost, refuses to see that fatherhood is the better type, and that the
justice of God must appear, not in harsh, ineffective judgeship, but in
effective, paternal discipline.
�Christian Critics.
23
The “ Our Father,” then, is the true Christian word; the Judge
of the parable is a suggestion from heathenism. Away, therefore,
with the abominable doubt whether a great soul is on the way to
heaven. Away with the brutal and blasphemous suggestion that
Charles Dickens, “ in the hands of God,” is in hell.
Mr. Beecher said of Dickens, —
I
,
/
“ I think that his death produces more the feeling of personal loss than
any since the death of Walter Scott. His books are books of the household
— broad, tender, genial, humane. No man iu our day has so won his way
to the hearts of the people; he took hold of the great middle class of feeling
in human nature, Whether he was a Christian or not, in our acceptation of
the term, God knows. . . One class of men we feel to be Christians — they
are producers of spiritual influences ; another class produce malign influ
ences. . . I recollect hearing my father say of Bishop Heber, after having
read his life, that he doubted whether he was a Christian ; he thought he was
a moral man and had ‘nateral virtoos.’ I think none of us now would share
his doubts. . . All that Dickens wrote tended to brace up manhood; the
generic influences of his writings were to make men stronger, and to make
the household purer, and sweeter, and tenderer. . . I consider him as the
benefactor of his race. Providence did not call him to the spiritual element;
but it gave him no mean task, and equipped him with no mean skill for his
work. . . About the question of his spiritual work we cannot decide. But
we cannot help being grateful to God that he raised such a man up to do a
great work ; and he did his work well. . . I thank God for the life and works
of Charles Dickens.”
This was said in reply to the following remark, made by a Mr. Bell,
at one of Mr. Beecher’s Friday Evening Lectures,—
“There are very few men whose works have a more beneficial influence
in our homes, or of whom we have thought with more kindly interest. We
have all loved the man; but, when I ask myself whether or not Charles
Dickens was a Christian, I can’t help feeling sorry that such a man has passed
away and left us in doubt about his future.”
It was this doubt, whether Dickens would be found to have gone to
hell or to heaven, to which Mr. Beecher attempted to reply; and his
reply, after a sufficient summary of Mr. Dickens’ good and great work
in the world, was “ God knows — we cannot decide.” That is to say,
a good and great work in the world, is not evidence of hopeful Chris
tian character, and does not warrant faith that the doer of that work
will not be damned
Assuming no more than Mr. Bell and Mr. Beecher admit, in regard
to the good work of Dickens, we may say that he oW the Sermon on
�24
Charles Dickens and his
the Mount as thoroughly and largely as any man of his generation,
and that no man living when he did, was more bound to his fellows
by simple and true love than he was. Even the Tremont Temple
cannibal had to say, “all men loved him; he loved all men.” Yet
Mr. Beecher professes not to know whether we may believe that this
great and good man, who was so bound to his fellows by the covenaut
of love, a universally beloved benefactor of his race, has escaped hell,
and may be expected ultimately to reach heaven ! The Brooklyn
prophet thanks God for the life and works of Charles Dickens, and
yet pretends to be “ in doubt about his future.” He does not even
demand that his dead brother’s great and good life be considered
enough to give him a start towards heaven, just enough at least so
that one can feel sure that he has escaped hell! He concedes that, for
all we know or may believe, Dickens is damned !
Mr. Beecher knows better than this. He has a faith which is
utterly misrepresented by the doubt he here confesses. Why did not
the occasion bring out his real faith, and manifest his Christian
common sense ? Because he is, to use plain terms, a Time-Server.
He is afraid of the orthodox public, who buy Plymouth Pulpit and The
Christian Union, and are expected to buy the “ Life of Christ” which
he is writing. If ever hesitation, timidity, faithlessness, ought to be
lashed without mercy, it is when a minister of faith, such as Mr.
Beecher is, offers a stone for bread, a doubt in place of truth, in
answering, in any instance, the question under which so many hearts
are pressed down to the ground and crushed almost out of life,
whether a good life, without special faith in the atonement, is
ground for sure hope that God will be kind. If Mr. Beecher did
not trust, and could honestly say so, the case would be wholly altered.
He had the trust, but gave instead a doubt. He answered the most
serious and widely applicable question which could have been put to
him, by an evasion, the effect of which was a falsehood. He makes
us ask the question, whether to be a Christian, in his “ acceptation
of the term,” includes honesty and courage. And knowing that it
does, we wonder how much he lacks of being half as good a Christian
as Charles Dickens was.
There is a much braver man in the pulpit of Park Street Church,
Boston. He is less endowed with inspiration than Mr. Beecher, but
what he sees, and all that he believes, he dares to preach. We refer
to Mr. Murray. He said of Dickens, —
�Christian Critics.
25
“That the man loved his fellow-men, I know; that he loved his God, I
hope, and have faith to believe. In thought I stand uncovered beside the
tomb in which his body sleeps, in silent sadness, that so sweet and gentle a
spirit is taken from the earth. In reverent gratitude I thank the Lord that
he did bless mankind with the birth of such a mind. I thank him as for a
blessing vouchsafed to me personally. I feel that I am a better man than I
should have been had no Charles Dickens lived. . . Farewell, gentle spirit!
Thou wast not perfect until now! Thou didst have thy passions, and thy
share of human errors; but death has freed thee. Thou art no longer
trammeled. Thou art delivered out of bondage, and thy freed spirit walks
in glory.”
It was in reply to this that Mr. ‘ Believe-or-be-Damned ’ Fulton
said,—
“It is a more than mistake for any man who takes Christ’s gospel for
authority to intimate that death frees a man from human errors, delivers him
from the bondage of sin, or permits him to walk the realms of light. . . He
[Dickens] stands naked before God. . . With what is he clothed upon?
Nothing wrought by himself will answer. The blood of Christ alone cleanseth from all sin. . . Does love won from men insure eternal life? The
question confronts us. Is it or is it not a fearful thing to fall into the hands
of the Living God? . . Never, since I received my commission to preach,
have I seen such universal desire to push by the peril, and ignore the teach
ings, of the gospel. Jesus says, ‘Whosoever believeth, and is baptized,
shall be saved. Whosoever believeth not shall be damned’ . . . Now is
the time to bring the truth home. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of
the living God.”
If a recent criminal, with the double infamy on his soul of marital
brutality and cowardly assassination, had been sentenced to be
hanged, and had summoned to his side, as a sympathizer on the
woman-and-marriage question, our Gehenna apostle of Tremont
Temple, and we had seen the Baptist minister on the scaffold, with
an execrable wretch in his hands, we should have beheld the former
unhesitatingly offering salvation to the latter, and confidently urging
it upon him, on the single condition of penitent faith in the atoning
blood of Jesus, if, indeed, the two were not already fellow-communi
cants. But when Charles Dickens dies without a moment’s warning,
and falls instantly into the hands of God, and is found not clothed
in the blood of Jesus, and a minister who preaches a gospel which
pushes by ‘ Believe or be damned,’ far enough to give the Almighty
a decent moral character, and to anticipate from the fatherhood of
God respectable care of human creatures, intimates that the hands of
God mean kindness, help, deliverance, redemption, and that a good
�26
Charles Dickens and his
and great soul gone to God has emerged from the valley and shadow
of mortal limitation, and failure and trouble, and has entered upon a
path which will grow brighter and brighter until it reach the perfect
light of heaven, then, behold ! we hear that “ It is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God ! ” The Baptist minister would
assume to administer redemption, and to send a murderer direct to
heaven, but not all the powers of the world to come, not even God
himself, may meet the soul of Charles Dickens and guide it to the
realms of light.
We beg some one to explain to Mr. Fulton that the world to come
has at least as ample an equipment for ministering to souls as this
world, and that it is highly probable, considering that God, the holy
angels, and the blessed saints, are neither fiends, fools, nor Fultons,
that our departed who arrive in that world, as babes born into a new
life, will be received with due care, and aided to find in the new
sphere the blessed way of eternal life. It seems to be according to
the gospel in Tremont Temple, that God’s hands in the world to
come, are much as the hands of what are known as “ baby-farmers ”
are in this world, and that most of us, as soon as God gets hold of us,
may expect to be spiritually put out of the way, murdered, and
thrown, not to the dogs, but worse, to the devils.
The tribute of Dr. Bellows to the genius and character of Charles
Dickens, was at once remarkably appreciative and strikingly signifi
cant. The gist of it was in these words :
“ Rarely have the genius and gifts of the individual soul been so empha
sized as in the world-wide interest and sorrow felt in the extinction of that
shining lamp suddenly dashed from the altar of literature—Charles Dickens.
The burning coal at which a million hearts ignited their dull fancies is
quenched. He that wrote more and better than any novelist of his time,
who had the dangerous field of the comic for his peculiar sphere, yet never
penned a line that dying he could wish to blot, can add nothing to the inex
haustible store of his creations. . . His aim was always pure and
generous and high ; to exalt integrity and truth, to abase falsehood, cruelty
and hypocrisy ; and to do it by stealing upon universal sympathies, and
leaguing all the fun-loving and pathetic sensibilities of the soul in the
service of a common humanity. He enlisted ordinary universal man in his
cause. Whom profound moralists, Christian preachers could not reach, he
touched and ruled. His spiritual knife was so sharp and so sheathed that
its edge was neither seen nor felt while it did its surgical work. He
wrought, doubtless, many a substantial conversion from the purposes of
crime, or folly, or cruelty, by a dose of laughter, whose tears are oftener
more purifying than those of sorrow. He made hypocrisy, selfishness, and
�Christian Critics.
27
sentimentality, absurd and contemptible, when it would have been of no
avail simply to prove them sinful and wrong. But, after all, what I envy
him most for is . . . the immeasurable sum of great, unadulterated
pleasure he has given the world ; the countless hours of amused and
absorbed gratification he has brought into all sorts of homes in both hemi
spheres. Ah ! what a godlike thing it is to Bhed so much self-forgetfulness
and balm into the sore and tired heart of humanity ! . . . As a vindicator
of the intrinsic worth of all human souls, Dickens, not a professed moralist,
has excelled all the professed moralists and preachers and teachers of his
day. If he was not a Christian, he was a glorious instrument of God’s
providence, and may shame, at the great account, many whose Christianity
is unquestioned, but whose usefulness and worth are taken on trust. Let us
be cautious how we raise questions about the Christianity of men like
Washington, Lincoln, or even Charles Dickens ; lest the profane should say,
‘What is the use of a Christianity which such men could live without ? ’
The sword of bigotry has two edges, and often cuts off the bigot’s own head
when aimed at the victim of his self-righteousness. We can well leave such
men to Christ’s own judgment seat, while we try to emulate their usefulness
and bounty of life and character.”
With these words before us, we are reminded of the evident fact,
that Nature, in the large, divine sense, the Substance and Soul of
all this universe of men and things, has very diverse modes of mani
festation. In other words, God speaks to us through varied special
organs of his presence, a Socrates, a Paul, a Spinoza, a Wesley, a
Parker, and the numerous other lights, greater and lesser, of our
race. It is made quite plain by the statement above given, that
Charles Dickens was, in a peculiar way, a remarkable servant of
Infinite Grace. In him dwelt a power to give innocent and whole
some pleasure which may well lead us to own that he was a true
apostle. Honestly toiling, as he did, to unseal the fountain of our
purer and happier sensibilities, and achieving his task, at once with
unexampled fidelity and unexampled success, he is as much entitled
to Christian gratitude and reverence as any master or prophet of all
the ages.
Undoubtedly we had this treasure in an earthen vessel, the excel
lency of the power being of God, as it has always been, and always
must be, but none the less is it evident that the God of all consolation
had shined marvellously into that simple, kindly, capacious heart,
with the true and blessed illumination of eternal wisdom, love, and
faith. There is more pure and undefiled religion in the writings of
Charles Dickens than in all that has been said by orthodox theologi
cal speculation since Paul began confusedly to inquire into the ways
�28
Charles Dickens and his
of God with man. These inspired pages, from the hand of a “ god
like ” genius, which glow with the pure light of a tender humanity,
and from which has been reflected so immeasurable a sum of unadul
terated pleasure, so vast and varied a consolation of human souls, just
as truly betoken the presence of God with man, and the love of God
freely shed abroad in the world, as do gospels and epistles, prophecies
and psalms, or anything whatever which has been called revelation.
The author was no better, perhaps, than Matthew the publican, or
Paul the preaching tent-maker, or Jesus the Nazarene carpenter and
Galilean enthusiast, but then God made him, and made him with
what he deemed sufficient pains, and he came into his generation, and
passed through it, as honest a lover of his fellow-men, as simple and
true and glorious a man, as ever human heart warmed to, or eye of
heaven looked upon with pleasure; and when his winning, heart
lightening, soul-cheering words ran like a river of heaven through
the common life of his fellow-men, his work was no mere human
meddling and making, but one of the eminent manifestations of the
divine mind.
If theological scoffers say nay to this, and angrily accuse us of
depreciating an old story of God with us some two thousand years
ago, we beg to say with emphasis that we know of nothing more
senseless and hurtful than the rank atheism which forever assumes
the absence of divine inspiration in the great and good of our own, or
indeed of any age, and that we should as soon think of maintaining
that Charles Dickens was an automaton, as that he spoke, in his
many brave and blessed words, without a flood-tide of motion in his
soul from the Holy Ghost.
Dr. Bellows acknowledges that Dickens touched and ruled those
whom Christian preachers and moralists could not reach; that he, as
a vindicator of the intrinsic worth of all human souls, excelled all the
professed moralists and preachers and teachers of his day; and that
he was a glorious instrument of God’s providence, and may shame
many whose Christianity is unquestioned. He deems it well to be
cautious about questioning the position of Dickens before God, and
advises, in case he is to be condemned and cast out, that unquestioned
Christians keep quiet about it, until Christ’s judgment seat shall be
set, and the matter can be attended to without danger of profane
interference. Such at least seems to be the implication of Dr.
Bellow’s statement. He does not venture to say that Dickens was a
Christian, and is sure to reach heaven. He implies that he was not
�Christian Critics.
29
a Christian, as he understands Christianity. He doubtless knew that
Mr. Dickens no more sympathized with dogmatic Christianity than
he did with dogmatic Mahometanism, and that it would be as dis
honest, as it was useless, to pretend that any other than natural
religion had any place in his life or played any part in his writings.
But he cannot avoid recognizing that such as he was, in his beneficent
genius and his providential mission, he stood above the usual Christian
level, and did a better than common Christian work. Thereby Dr.
Bellows shows conclusively how inadequate is his separation between
false and true in his appreciation of Christianity, and how much he
needs to revise his interpretation, in the light of such grace and truth
as he confesses to finding outside what he deems the Christian
confession. The superstition which made Jesus a Lord Messiah, and
erected for him a Messianic judgment seat, is found wanting in
presence of an example of inspiration such as Charles Dickens was.
It is in the Christianity of pure and simple faith in God our Father
in heaven, and of love towards the fellow-man, that a life such as the
beloved story-teller lived, finds its full explanation and its due recogni
tion. There was no sham in that life; can as much be said of any
life which still enshrines the dead superstition that Jesus was, or at
least was meant to represent, God ? There was no snuffle in the
simple, genuine religious experience of that man; can as much be
said of any intelligent man who still pretends to append ‘ for Christ’s
sake ’ to his prayers ? And when the marvellous play of Dickens’
peculiar faculties began, and the creations of his observation and
in agination filled the stage, we saw no false light, no beggarly display
of ecclesiastical old clothes, not a half page, not a line, devoted to
popular superstition, but an honest human spectacle, under the ample
natural light of infinite heaven. There was honest humanity in
Charles Dickens, in degree and quality unknown to the professional
confessors of religion, and very much truer to the Christian ideal
than anything these official and officious Christians can show.
�30
The Woman and the Trial.
THE WOMAN AND THE TRIAL.
When individual histories lead up to some Golgotha, where
“striving against sin” ends in some dreadful death and terrible
crushing of living hearts, and the conspicuous awful tragedy chal
lenges universal attention, an observer endued by his knowledge and
his faith with the power of prophetic anticipation, cannot fail to look
for some large and worthy significance of the scene, although, in
general, intelligence and virtue may barely keep timid watch afar off,
and the great world may sweep by in an undisturbed torrent of
condemnation and contempt. In such a spirit do we believe that a
prophet to-day would interpret the spectacle recently made by an
assassination, a marriage, a murder-trial, and the passing of one
crushed woman across the stage of public observation.
It was the foul assassination of as true, pure, and gallant a man as
honor ever crowned. It was as just and holy a marriage as religion
and law ever celebrated. It was as wicked a mockery in court as has
been perpetrated since Pilate sat, Peter evaded and equivocated, and
the mad rabble of Jerusalem yelled for the delivery of Barabbas and
the shedding of innocent blood. And the woman, who was condemned
when an assassin went out free, passed from the stage as true to holy
truth, as pure of stain or sin, and as sure to draw all pure hearts to
see the crime against her and to seek its remedy, as was ever holy
martyr in the furnace of dreadful trial. There is one sufficient use
of such scenes, to point great lessons of difficult revolution, and compel
adequate attention to wrong which lies embedded in some one of the
sacred traditions of mankind.
The first lie, to the races which inherit the ancient Hebrew tradi
tions, was that which charged upon woman the fault of human fall
from grace and truth. The deepest wrong of Hebrew barbarism, was
the law of fierce masculine assertion of prerogative, according to which
the wife was made “ one flesh ” with her husband, and put under his
absolute power, to be in subjection to him for things carnal and
earthly, as he to God for things moral and heavenly. The religious
instinct never erred more seriously and needlessly than in imagining
for a divine hero a birth outside of wedlock, nor ever guided belief
�The Woman and the Trial.
31
more completely astray than when it brought a god-man upon earth
by a way remote from the common path of ordinary human entrance
to life. Christian record and tradition, in asserting, as the great law
of marriage, “they twain shall be one flesh,” and doing little more
than to sanction and cover up the fleshly instincts of the ruder and
ruling sex, has remained at the level of barbarism only less than in
the perpetuation and consecration of heathen notions of God, of human
nature, and of the destiny of souls.
To a faithful thinker, who joins to thought deep and disciplined
emotions, such as make that rarest of gifts and most perfect of attain
ments for a man, a complete pure heart, it cannot but be plain that
marriage ought not to mean power, possession, or even opportunity
and liberty, on the part of the man, but consideration, care, protec
tion, the greatest, and tenderest and bravest possible. The vocation
of the wife to maternity is so significant, so wonderfully sacred, and
her part in the sacraments of a united life has so much of utter
surrender in it, so much pain and sorrow too, and so beautiful a charm
and blessing with it, that only as blind animals, hurried into heedless
liberty, with no just reflection and no proper consideration, do men
assert power, instead of affording protection.
Unhappily very many enter upon wedlock with no proper knowledge
of the wrong and the right of the relation. Love before marriage is
forced to be considerate, and naturally takes a noble tone. Love
after marriage is supposed to be quite another thing, as regards a
chief feature of the union, and too commonly sinks at once to a level
which is far more of the flesh than of ideal truth.
Possibly one party consents as much as the other, and neither may
be conscious, as the tone of mutual relations ceases to be divine, what
it is which is at fault. The man perhaps contents himself with such
gratification as his lower nature finds, and lets the hope of sacrament
go as a dream of his days of inexperience. In some of these instances,
possibly, — perhaps in many of them, — the woman also accepts the
low view, though we would fain believe that in most cases of the class
in point, the wife barely submits to the situation, even if she do not
revolt against it.
On the supposition that ignorance of the real laws of marriage is
the main occasion of this failure of wedlock to be nobly happy, and
that, while the woman is generally the greater sufferer, one party is
no more to blame than the other, the case is yet terribly bad ; bad for
the husband, who fails of true manly love and loses the blessing of
�32
The Woman and the Trial.
true response to such love; worse still for the wife, whose womanhood
is abased and degraded, if not outraged: and most of all bad for the
children, who are not born under influences of natural holiness and
genuine pure happiness, but come as incidents, if not as untoward
accidents, of the united life.
The lazy acquiescence of social and religious sentiment in this state
of things; the assumption that the animal aspects of human nature
must present some such picture at the best • and the rigor and fury
even with which formal marriage, the outward fact without the real,
is insisted on as a fit cloak to these uncomely doings, ought to cover
our civilization and our Christianity with overwhelming confusion and
shame. The fact is that even decent society is but half civilized, and
is very little Christianized, in this matter of marriage.
But the state of things just described is by no means the worst
which the student of society will find. Numbers of husbands in
every community stand at a much lower level than that we have been
considering; the level, we blush to say, of irresponsible brutalisin.
The masculine instinct for exclusive possession of the object of
affection is naturally very strong. It easily becomes fierce. And
when the husband’s interest in virtue is chiefly the result of this
instinct, and he erects his jealousy into absolute law, we behold a
very peculiar, and often very dreadful transformation of wedlock,
under which the only sacredness recognized is that of the husband’s
right to possession of the woman bound to him by marriage vows.
By this theory of marriage one woman is devoted to one man, made
his sacred property, and placed under absolute and awful obligations
to be his without reserve or remedy until death end the service. It
is assumed that a man may so have one woman, if he will get her and
keep her under the sanction of a marriage compact. It is even
claimed that this right of the man to the woman, of the male to the
female, is one of the most sacred rights of existence ; so that no fouler
crime can be than to interfere with the exercise of this right. A
perfectly savage virtue watches against the violation of this law of
the conjugal possessor’s right. No regard for the woman, not even
of a coarse and common sort, enters into it. She may be a crushed
victim of the most brutal abuse, but the “ laws of marriage ” are still
supposed to protect her tyrant’s right to have and to hold her as his
own. The worst forms of crime against woman outside of marriage,
are held of no account compared with touching a woman to the injury
of the man’s right to her. Numberless sad and dreadful incidents of
�The Woman and the Trial.
33
wicked undoing of woman will pass without notice, but report one
deliverance of an outraged, broken-hearted wife, out of the power of
a brutal master, and the whole herd of virtuous human brutes is
thrilled with righteous indignation.
It was this virtuous brutalism which lately delivered an assassin
from the deserved penalty of manifold infamous crime. The hesita
tion of wise and just representatives of public virtue and exponents
of public opinion, to lay bare the ingrained rascality of the virtue
fiercely paraded on this occasion, shows how little courage for the
just comprehension of the matter has been cultivated by our civiliza
tion. In the one man who had so cheerfully risked his life, and
more than his life, his good name,— and had lost one if not both,—
to render help to a helplessly outraged woman, there was more clear
insight and spotless courage, with one dash of^rashness, as the bravest
spirits almost always have it, than in a regiment of those who lent
the countenance of their concern for the laws of marriage to the brute
and assassin over whom a court of pretended justice made villainous
mockery of law.
It is possible to make excuses for the lamentable failure of wellmeaning members of society to be found on the side of justice, by the
side of a worse than murdered woman. It is also possible to give an
explanation of the mad concourse and mad clamor .of the virtuous
rabble, whose fierce rage blazed so hotly around the altars of unholy
brutalism, as if in real defence of some sacred right. These masters
of a servitude more dreadful than any other known to human
experience, with their deluded sympathizers among women, are
natural enough results of the lower tendencies of human nature, or of
extreme ignorance, and the prevalence of a tradition which lacks both
the doctrine and the spirit of adequate justice to woman. The
influence of Hebrew heathenism, coming through the channel which
also brought the best lessons of religion and humanity, has made
Christian society an easy refuge for the hideous wrong we are
contemplating. Ample explanation of this monstrous failure of
justice and departure from truth, will not be far to seek as long as
accredited Christianity, in the name of a half-heathen tradition, for
bids and resists free inquiry for the truth, and proceeds upon the
twofold assumption that man is by nature base, and his lower instincts
unclean at best, and that righteousness cannot come in mens’ lives
and character by actual discipline and culture, but must come as a
cloak of imputed merit. In like manner, excuses for timid inhumanvol. i.—no. i.
3
�34
The Woman and the Tidal.
ity, for total failure of comprehension, such as were pointed at by
Jesus in the priest and Levite who “ passed by on the other side,”
are close at hand. It is much easier and safer not to meddle with
wounded folk, of any of the classes against whom popular prejudice is
virulent. A wife left half dead, under the operation of a brutal
interpretation of the laws of marriage, will get little or no sympathy
from the ordinary administrators of religion and guardians of social
order.
The instances of Mrs. Stowe and Mr. Beecher may be cited,
particularly in view of their final judgments pronounced in The
Christian Union of June 18. If the latter yielded to a just request
and a generous sympathy, when he assisted at the death-bed mar
riage, he evidently came to regret afterwards that he did not pass
virtuously by on the other side. In “ The Meaning of the Verdict,”
the leading article of The Christian Union of June 18, he disa
vowed any Christianity he may have shown before, and summed up
the case for brutalism. We omit names, in quoting Mr. Beecher’s
cold, barbarous homily, because we cannot join in any unnecessary
rudeness to the persons on one side of the case, and will not pollute
our pages with the names on the other side. Mr. Beecher says,—
“Whether------ was worse or better than the average of his journal
istic friends—whether the unhappy woman who has assumed his name is a
pattern of all wifely virtues; whether------ was in the habit of drinking to
excess, and whether, being a drunkard, he was more or less an affliction to
his wife than drunken husbands generally are to their wives, are questions
which need not be agitated further. Higher and wider than all such debates
about persons is the question, What is the Meaning of the Verdict? ... It
was as clear a case of killing with deliberate intention and with no other
warrant than private vengeance, as ever was submitted to a jury. But the
verdict was ‘Not Guilty.’ What does that verdict mean? . . . Just
what was meant by that famous verdict in another case, often quoted but
not found in the books, ‘ Served him right.’ The phrase, ‘ Not Guilty,’ in
this case, means not that------ did not kill------- , but that he ought not to be
punished for that killing. The lesson of the verdict is that any man who
has as much reason as------ had to believe that his wife has been seduced
from her fidelity to him, has a right to do what------ did. .
. The law is
that an adulterer may be punished with death, at the discretion and by the hands
of the injured husband.”
We are not at a loss to characterize the assumptions and the sig
nificance of this statement
It means the sacred right of brutalism,
and it assumes the indifference of all other facts in comparison with
�The 'Woman and the Trial.
35
the crime of delivering a woman from a brute. No need to ask out
of what hell the woman fled, or from what fiend she was protected,
or with what heroism of sanctity that protection was given, the one
important fact being that a brutal man was deprived of his victim,
and the one sacred law being that such interference with marital brutalism may be punished by summary assassination.
Mr. Beecher
appears to dreadful disadvantage in this justification of horrible mani
fold crime. Had he been a vindicator of the New York negro riots,
and appealed to law in justification of Kuklux outrage, we might
have been prepared for the present lapse from manly mercy, consid
erate justice, large comprehension of principle, and fearless devotion
to holiness and truth.*
Mrs. Stowe went to no such extreme, in the judgment which she
pronounced. In fact she condemned with as little harshness, and as
much womanly sympathy and Christian charity, as possible. But she
condemned. In her article mentioned above, she brought in the case
under cover of an elaborate exposition of Christ’s treatment of a
woman “convicted of adultery.” From that she argued to this case
“of a woman not guilty of this offence,” and announced that she saw
“only evidence that a much tried woman in circumstances of great
hardship and perplexity has in certain respects lamentably erred in
judgment.” She then instantly turned away from the woman before
her, to loudly profess her concurrence with “ the sensitiveness of the
community in regard to the enduring sacredness of the marriage
bond,” and her opinion that the “ whole domain of marriage ought
to be guarded by laws as inflexible as those of nature,” and that indi
viduals on whom “they bear severely,” “must be content to suffer for
the good of the whole.” At most she only asked that the judges of
her sister consider, that under extreme tortures “principle often may
become bewildered, and even religious faith may give out,” and that
they temper judgment as Christ tempered the sentence of the woman
“convicted of adultery.”
The offensive association of her sister with the adulteress, the com
prehensive approval of the concern about marriage, which lent so
much support to an assassin, and even gave eclat to the last crime of
a human brute, and the rigorous demand for inflexible protection to
every species of conjugal right, suffer who may thereby, enabled Mrs.
* Mr. Parker said of Mr. Beecher, in connection with the John Brown affair, “Beecher
showed that part of him which is Jesuitical,—not so small a part as I could wish it was. How
ridiculous of Sharpe’s-rifle Beecher to be preaching such stuff at this time; but he can’t stand
up straight unless he have something as big as the Plymouth Church to lean against.”—
Parker’s Life and Correspondence. London Ed., Vol. II., p. 394.
�36
The Woman and the Trial.
Stowe to fully save her credit with the worst expouents of brutalisni,
and completely undo any purpose she may have had to speak a word
of justice, mercy, and holiness on behalf of her sister. Using threefourths of her two columns to come to the point that this woman
to-day was not an adulteress, and almost all the rest of her article to
protest her own desire that marriage should be chains and slavery to
all who find it unhappy, she barely gave a few lines to a half-plea for
the outraged sister on whose behalf she purported to speak.
Yet this same Mrs. Stowe lately served to two continents a nauseous
tale of horrible abomination, polluting men’s and women’s thoughts,
as far as our language is read, with needless mention of nameless
crime, and has not to this day betrayed the smallest regret for her
deed. Does it make so much difference on which side popular taste
and prejudice are ? The same Mrs. Stowe, in her “ Old Town Folks,”
gave the pure young girl of the story to a libertine, who had long
had an unwedded but devoted wife; and when this wronged woman
came upon the scene, within a few hours after her betrayer’s new mar
riage, and all the facts of her love and surrender and fidelity were
before the new bride, the latter saw no wrong whatever in taking
from her outcast sister her all, and felt no hesitation in consummating
wedlock with a convicted villain, because,—as Mrs. Stowe makes her
say,—“7 cazí7iu¿ help loving him; it is my duty to; I promised, you
know, before God, ‘for better for worse’; and what I promised I must
keep; I am his wife; there is no going back from that.” The young
lover of this second wife of a bigamist, took his lady’s fate patiently,
and at the end of four years received her, then a widow, as his bride.
Such admirable patience with bad men’s triumphs, and such con
sent of women to outrage under decent cover of regular marriage,
was the lesson with which Mrs. Stowe left us at the close of “ Old
Town Folks.” Her woman’s instincts made no plea for a creature
wronged as much as woman could be wronged. Testifying that this
rejected woman had shown “ all the single-hearted fervor of a true
wife”; that she had taken her position from “a full and conscientious
belief that the choice of the individuals alone constituted a true mar
riage”; that her betrayer had urged this view and ‘‘assumed and
acted with great success the part of the moral hero during their early
attachment”; that she ‘‘fell by her higher nature,” believing that
‘•she was acting heroically and virtuously in sacrificing her whole life
to her lover,” and that “ her connection had all the sacredness of mar
riage”; testifying these things, and making the new wife confess, “I
�The Woman and the Trial.
37
can see in all a noble woman, gone astray from noble motives; I can
see that she was grand and unselfish in her love, that she was per
fectly self-sacrificing”; Mrs. Stowe yet permitted no one to even
suggest that this woman had the smallest right to the man whom she
had so given herself to for years, and to whom she had borne what
was to her at least a child of pure love. Taking care to interpose a
marriage ceremony, that and nothing more, Mrs. Stowe showed us the
libertine of her tale, in the presence of the two wives, the one bound
to him by years of “ single-hearted fervor of a true wife,” and still
loving him with “full and conscientious belief” that theirs was a
“true marriage,” and the other bound to him only by the ceremony
of a few hours before; and made the former admit, and the other
claim, that the ceremony had created a relation compared with which
the relation based on actual wifehood of love and life need not be so
much as considered. And the new wife gave this reason first of all
for keeping the other woman’s husband, “ I cannot help loving him,”
and then supported herself by: “it is my duty to; I promised, you
know, before God.”
We have very small respect indeed for anything Mrs. Stowe may
say after choosing such a picture with which to conclude her tale of
Old New England. ^And until such leaders of opinion in ethics and
religion, as Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. Stowe, learn to respect
realities of truth, at least as much as they do mere forms, and are
neither unable nor afraid to look at the real facts of tragic lives, and
to declare for justice and holiness, at any cost whatever to decent
shams, popular religion and popular ethics will be despicable. We
deem it shameful in Mr. Beecher that he dared cheer the heart of a
hel/ion with words of downright approval. We utterly refuse to Mrs.
Stowe the privilege of making any apology for a woman whose errors
of judgment do not do her a hundredth part of the discredit which
the author of the Byron scandal has justly earned. The theory
assumed in the closing scene of “Old Town Folks,” that wifehood is
nothing compared with legal marriage, that a woman may take her
sister woman’s actual husband, if that sister woman has had no legal
sanction of the marriage, and she can get the man under legal sanc
tion, is infinitely more immoral than any possible lack of respect for
formal marriage. The duty of holiness and fidelity in all actual
union, is the profound truth on this subject. Until Mrs. Stowe
appreciates it she had as well not meddle with any important aspects
of the woman question. We speak thus strongly with great regret.
�38
The Woman and the Trial.
because we would gladly see, and celebrate, in Mrs. Stowe, insight and
courage worthy of a woman of marked ability and character. But at
this juncture, we cannot forbear strong speech, remembering as we do
a spotless man dead, and a spotless woman living “at the sepulchre,”
while Mrs. Stowe only ventures to beg the brutalism of our time to
consider that these two did not commit adultery.
At present we do the persons just mentioned, one of whom is
beyond reach of either praise or blame, the honor to assume as self*
evident at this moment, to any decently informed person, that they
stand high above any judgment which their generation may pronounce
upon them, the one for heroic womanly endurance of brutalism, out of
far more than just respect for the supposed “laws of marriage,” and
the other for heroic manly obedience to simple dictates of mercy and
honor, with a most exact and noble sense of the sacredness of woman
hood and of the absolute sanctity of true marriage. It may be our
privilege at a future time to add some contribution to the evidence
which has already forced this verdict upon the purest and most
thoughtful of our contemporaries. We content ourselves now with
emphasizing, as fully as we can, our declaration, that brutalism ought
not to find shelter under the laws of marriage; that any decent
delivery of a woman from brutalism is just and right; and that the
instance now awaiting the decision of our social philosophy can not
possibly be brought under any other head than that of perfectly fit,
and strikingly noble, delivery of an exceptionally pure and true
woman from a brute. The question how far legal and conventional sup
ports of brutalism were rashly overleaped, in the crisis and catastrophe
of this drama, need not be answered, before pronouncing the actors in
the scene immaculate, and cannot be answered in any such way as to
raise any just doubt of their perfect purity of purpose. Further
more, it becomes all, who seek a wise solution of our social perplexi
ties, and hope for more truth of character and life in the most
important of human relations, to distinctly advise the undisguised
exponents of virtuous brutalism—the editor of the New York Sun,
for example; that they can only render themselves infamous by such
criticisms and reports as they were guilty of during the late trial.
�Dr. J. F. Clarke against Theism.
39
DR. J. F. CLARKE AGAINST THEISM.
The American Unitarian Association has recently published a small
book, from the pen of Dr. James Freeman Clarke, entitled, “Steps
of Belief, or, Rational Christianity maintained against Atheism, Free
Religion, and Romanism.” Like the previous theological work of the
same author, “Steps of Belief” is in some respects excellent, in
others very unsatisfactory. We forbear criticism of many points
which invite it, and merely consider Dr. Clarke’s attempt to elevate
his sort of Christianity at the expense of “ pure Theism,” which is to
us true Christianity.
It would not be unfair to ask, in view of the title above quoted,
whether Dr. Clarke objects to freedom or to religion itself, and if to
neither, as he would doubtless reply, why to the combination ? But
we may take him in hand quite as well from another point of view.
He identifies free religion and theism. “ The second step of belief,”
he says, “ is from theism to Christianity.” The advocates of free
religion, he tells us, “ deny that Christianity is any advance beyond
theism.” And in chapter third of this portion of his book he attempts
to “ show wherein Christianity is an advance on pure theism.” Of
course we may inquire what objection he makes to theism? Or to
put the matter more clearly, why does he deem faith in God through
Christ better than direct faith in God ? It must be because Christ
is more to him as a direct object of faith, than God. But he makes
Christ a mere man, at most “ a perfect man.” He must, therefore,
in his theism, make very little of God, as a direct object of faith, if he
goes upward from religion towards God directly, to religion towards
God through Christ. And since his “rational Christianity ” is only
religion towards God through a man, it must be regarded as a species
of idolatry, like the Romanist’s devotion to the Virgin Mary.
To show Dr. Clarke’s method of comparing theism and Christianity,
we may cite the following statement:
“ In all the dimensions of space [depth, height, breadth, length] we find
in Christianity something in advance of theism. It is deeper in its life,
higher in its aspiration, broader in its sweep, more far reaching in its per
petual advance.” P. 166.
This is arbitrary assertion. What is deeper than the life of God,
or higher than the thought of God, or broader than the love of God,
or more far-reaching than eternal union with God ?
�40
Dr. J. F. Clarke against Theism.
Another specimen of Dr. Clarke’s treatise will show from how low
a theism he steps up to the level which he deems the highest Chris
tian ground. Thus he says :
“Theism reasons about God; Christianity lives from him and to him.
Theism gives us speculations and probabilities ; Christianity, convictions
and realities. . . Theism says light is the life of men; Christianity declares
that life is the light of men.” Pp. 143, 144.
If this means anything, it is, that direct faith in God is mere
doubtful talk, by which a man cannot live, while faith in God through
the man, Christ, is a deep and real life for the soul. All which we
set down as Dr. Clarke’s opinion, and are sorry that he did not take
more of a step when he undertook to rise from atheism to theism.
Another bit of Dr. Clarke’s argument is as follows:
“ The apostles of free religion take more pleasure in standing apart, to
think; than in coming together, to live. . . If thought could ever become a
fountain of life, it would have done so in the case of Socrates. . . But, though
always seeking he seldom found.” Pp. 147, 148.
Doubtless Dr. Clarke tells us here what he supposes true, about the
thinkers and their Greek master, and believes that he has done them
justice. He seems to have known Socrates and free thought only by
vague heresay, and to have spoken out of the entire honesty of entire
ignorance. As, however, he is arguing down “ pure theism,” or pure
direct faith in God, he might have remembered, without knowing any
thing at all about the apostles of free religion and Socrates, that the
point to be made was, that simple direct faith in God makes men
lonely and barren thinkers, while faith in God through the man,
Christ, makes them sympathetic and fruitful believers. Will he
venture to assert this ?
Dr. Clarke appears to be profoundly ignorant of the true method
and matter of that pure direct faith in God, which constitutes the life
and power of pure theism. He gets hold of a sentence of Rev. Samuel
Johnson, or an affirmation of Rev. Mr. Abbot, and deals with it as if
in it he saw the necessary measure of pure theism, and limit of free
religion. He catches a mere glimpse of Socrates, and talks of the
master of Plato, and the most fruitful teacher of all time, as if he
would have been better for some instruction in a Sunday School. Of
the range, the richness, and the living power of true thought of God,
or indeed of thought at all, he seems to have no conception. With
him to think means to puzzle over dark enigmas; and to think of God
�Dr. J. F. Clarke against Theism.
41
to chop logic with the scholastics. His idea of religion by direct faith
in God, as in pure theism, is, that it is not religion, but a mere vain
attempt at religion.
In order to do Dr. Clarke’s Jesuism no injustice, we will now quote
at length several of his statements :
“ Christianity is an historic religion, with a Founder, a church or commun
ion, with its sacred books, its rites and ceremonies, its faith and its morality.
These doctrines, worship, books, church, and morals, all have the historic
person of Jesus for their centre and source. Theism, or Free Religion, on
the contrary, is a system of belief and method of life which grows up in the
human mind, independently of any such historic source, proceeding only
from the soul itself. P. 141. Christianity is essentially a stream of spiritual,
moral, and intellectual life, proceeding from Jesus of Nazareth. He did not
present it as an intellectual system, but it overflowed from his lips in his
da’’y intercourse with men. Hed'd not speak from his speculation, but from
his knowledge. He spoke what he knew, and testified what he had seen.
This living knowledge created like conviction in other minds. The truth
was its own evidence. Man needs this knowledge. We need to know God,
not merely to think it probable that he exists. We need to live in the light
of his truth and his love. We do Dot get this knowledge of God by reading
books of theology, but by communion with those who have it. If we have
any such faith in God, how did we first obtain it. We caught it as a blessed
contagion, from the eyes and lips, the words freighted with conviction, the
actions inspired by its force, of those who have been themselves filled with
its power. They too usually have received it from others; though after
wards it may have been fed by direct communion with God. It is a trans
mitted as well as an inspired life. . . The deeper, purer, loftier they [the
great modern prophets] are, the more do they love to trace back the great
master-impulse to Jesus of Nazareth. ‘ Of his fullness have we all received,’
say they, ‘and grace upon grace.’ . . Abandon this current, . . and God
becomes an opinion; duty, a social convenience; immortality, a perhaps.
Pp. 145, 146. The doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement have
always been the pivots of Christian theology. The incarnation means, God
descending into the soul of one man to make all humanity divine, to unite
earth with heaven, time with eternity, man with God. The elevation of the
human race, so justly dear to the modern theist, is made possible by this
great providential event in human history. By the law of mediated life,
God is lifting humanity to himself, and penetrating the boundless variety of
his creation with as pervasive a unity. . . Those who were afar off are made
nigh by the blood of Jesus. His death and resurrection have set the seal on
this great atoning work, which is as effective now to create love to God and
to man as it was in the beginning. Pp. 154, 155. God comes near to the
soul in Jesus Christ; through Jesus Christ our sense of sin is taken away;
through Christ, mortal fears are replaced by an immortal hope. . To adhere
to Jesus as the Christ of God, is the very root of Christian experience. Pp.
�42
Dr. J. F. Clarke against 1 heism.
156, 157. Love to Christ is the method of progress, the law of freedom, the
way to knowledge, and the unchecked impulse to God. P. 166. The one
great outward proof that Jesus was thus the Christ of humanity, the ordained
Leader of the human race to God and to each other, is found in his resurrec
tion. . When Jesus appeared to die, he did not die; he remained alive. When
he seemed to go down, he did not go down; he went up. When he seemed
to go away, he did not go away ; he remained. . . The objections to this view
are chiefly a priori and metaphysical. Pp. 114 and 115.
Dr. Clarke appears to believe in a strict external system of tradi
tion and belief, the only channel through which life can come from
God to human souls, and that system he sums up in the “Lord Jesus
Christ,” whom he yet regards as a mere man,* but “a perfect speci
men of the human race.”
Freedom dies in the presence of such a fact, if it be a fact, and
religion equally sinks into nothing with no other direct object of faith
than “ a perfect specimen of the human race.” And seeing the utter
absurdity of taking the historic Jesus as this “ perfect specimen,” the
thoughtful believer must find himself worshipping towards a very
poor idol if he attempt to follow the instruction of Dr. Clarke.
This conception of a historic religion, with the historic person of
Jesus for its centre and source, and distinguished from religion born
in the soul under influences not external and historic, logically points
to an infallible church,—to Romanism in fact. Dr. Clarke puts his
torical human transmission above providential divine instruction and
inspiration, and, therefore, leaves little room to question that the most
direct and largest historical human result of original Jesuism must
be the true faith.
Moral, intellectual and spiritual life comes to us, Dr. Clarke says,
from the man, Jesus, a contagion caught from his person and life by
the first disciples, and historically transmitted. The comprehensive
teaching of theism, that God himself, by perfectly adequate means,
instructs and inspires and disciplines his moral creatures, and so
directly conveys to them the gift of his own eternal life, Dr. Clarke
considers a baseless theory, the delusion of certain absurd people who
“ stand apart to think,” and who “ even prefer speculation to knowl
edge.” Instead of accepting the theistic doctrine of incarnation, the
universal saving presence of God in all souls, he asserts that God
descended “into the soul of one man,” and that “the elevation of
the human race is made possible by this great providential event.”
* “We agree with the Naturalists, that Christ was a pure man, and not superhuman.” P. 133.
�Dr. J. F. Clarke against Theism.
43
And not only does he thus deny the universal providence and
inspiration of God, and reduce the Almighty to dependence upon a
Galilean youth for effective communication with and control of the
human race, but he appears to adopt the wretched superstition that
“the blood of Jesus” is the agency through which God must reach
man.
Neither nature, whose suggestions are so varied, so quickening,
and so universal; nor the universal providence of human events,
which speaks so clearly, so fully, and so powerfully to the thoughtful
student of human life and human history; nor the unceasing inspi
ration which floods the understanding and heart of man, and
marvellously guides the seekers of all the world into one simple faith
in God, are anything to Dr. Clarke, so absorbed is he with worship
through his man-image of God. Omit to look on this image, he says,
and “God becomes an opinion; duty, a social convenience; immor
tality, a perhaps.”
That it is so to him, we do not doubt. We endeavor to accept his
assertion that he knows no other root of Christian experience than
adherence to Jesus; that the death and resurrection of Jesus, alone
or chiefly, induce him to love God and man; and that the proof to
him that this is the true way, he finds in the resurrection of Jesus.
Such external construction of religion, and such reference of its
power to human facts, are doubtless undertaken by Dr. Clarke in
good faith. He undoubtedly believes theological science need say no
more than that Jesus went up when he went down, and that the
objections to this view are chiefly a priori and metaphysical.
The Christianity which Dr. Clarke sets up against Theism, is not
Christian, but Jesuit. Christian religion knows no other object of
faith than God, the “ Our Father” of the prayer of Jesus. The
Jesuism which makes Jesus an object of religious faith is pseudo
Christian. That Jesuism which makes Jesus very God, has some
claims to be considered religion. But that which makes him, as Dr.
Clarke’s does, a mere “ perfect specimen of a man,” is no religion at
all; it is mere hero-worship. And that in fact Dr. Clarke labors to
establish, the worship of Jesus as a hero. For ourselves, we decline,
equally in the name of religion and of Christian teaching, to adopt
the confused sentimentalism of Dr. Clarke’s method, and the feeble
Jesuism of his conclusions. We believe in God.
�44
The Unitarian Situation.
THE UNITARIAN SITUATION.
I.—Mr. Hepworth Relieves Himself.
“There are times when one must relieve himself or die,” said Rev
Geo. II. Hepworth, in the meeting, last May, of the American Unitarian
Association. The Secretary of the Association, Rev. Charles Lowe,
had presented an admirable paper, justifying the general Unitarian
determination to do without a creed, and to depend on the spirit and
the life as a basis of union, when Mr. Hepworth came forward, regard
less of the general disapproval of his intention, to move for a committee
to prepare an “ as-nearly-as-may-be ” representative statement of faith
of the Unitarian denomination, and said, “ Your frequent applause (of
Mr. Lowe’s address) did not daunt my determination to speak because
there are times when one must relieve himself or die.” Of course Mr.
Hepworth could not be expected to assume that the Unitarian body
would prefer the other alternative ; so he proceeded to relieve himself.
The gist of his demand he thus expressed,—
“I want that there shall be a definite signification attached to the word
‘Unitarianism.’ . . The thing it seems to me is demanded; demanded now,
or else we, 1 honestly believe, as a denomination, go under. . . The next two
years will settle, I honestly believe, the fate of the Unitarian denomination.
. . I want a statement of the average views of the Unitarian denomination,
. . something with the endorsement of the Unitarian denomination upon
it.”
How this authoritative statement of faith should relieve Mr. ■
Hepworth, our readers may not quite understand. It seems, how
ever, that be expected it to be good for his back. “Give me,” he
said, “ a single Unitarian document, that I can put my back against.”
How desperate he considered his need of a document to put his back
against, may be judged from his concluding sentence, — “ It is a small
thing to ask for, yet I cannot get L, I suppose, but I waDt to give you
notice I am not exactly down, and I am going to keep this thing going
until I do get it.”
Theodore Parker said of Mr. Hepworth, — “ Hepworth would make
a powerful preacher, if he did not drown his thought in a Dead Sea of
words. What a pity ! You don’t want a drove of oxen to drag a
cart-load of potatoes on a smooth road.” This criticism was provoked
by the earliest failure of Mr. Hepworth’s back, when he withdrew
from an engagement to speak at a meeting held in Boston to express
�The Unitarian Situation.
45
sympathy with the family of John Brown, because he found it would
not be considered decent for him to take ‘ the other side.’ Mr.
Hepworth has needed something to put his back against ever since
John A. Andrew, in that great meeting, said that he had supposed
there was but one side to the question of sympathy with the family of
the Harper’s Ferry martyr.
It appears, from Mr. Hepworth’s speeches on the subject, that he
has made “a document” himself, and has found it useful in bringing
inquirers into the Unitarian fold. He tells us that a similar document,
endorsed by the denomination, would double the nifmber of Unitarians
in less than five years, and that without it Unitarianism will “ go
under” within two years.
The simple meaning of this is that Mr. Hepworth is a prodigious
egotist, who is of late ambitious to appear as the maker of the denom
inational creed. He has no idea whatever of accepting any statement
other than his own. His demand is that Unitarianism endorse his
document. This demand he presses with stupid insolence, imagining
that he will be sustained because his document is conservative.
Originally belonging to the radical wing of Unitarianism, and now a
self-appointed leader of the right wing, be has but one leading aim, to
push himself. This aim he follows with insane disregard of all the
decencies of the matter. We regret the necessity of speaking so
harshly, but feel that we ought to say more rather than less of this
ecclesiastical charlatan. The recent overturning of the Liberal Chris
tian vrds his work, done in a spirit and with a purpose which ought to
exclude h,im from the confidence of every honest and honorable
member of the Unitarian body.
II.—Robert Collyer’s “ Amen ” to Hepworth.
The concurrence of Rev. Robert Collyer with Mr. Hepworth’s
demand for an authoritative statement of faith, caused a great deal of
surprise. Mr. Collyer said, in support of Mr. Hepworth, —
“ His feeling about some statement that we could use when we stand up
and preach, has been my feeling too. . . I felt like saying, Amen, to the gist
of his proposition, and wanted to feel that I stood with him. . . My reason
for it is exactly the same as that which he has given as his primary reason.
. . Letters and requests in person come to me continually, like this, ‘Cannot
you give us something that bears the stamp of authority from your body?’
It should be no test of fellowship to bar any man out, . . and if next year
�46
The Unitarian Situation.
we find that it does not express the honest religious faith of our body, it
shall be altered, . . and made to express then what new light may have
come to us from above.”
This was again explained by Mr. Collyer, in one of the meetings of
the Western Conference in June, after some one had suggested that
his creed should be stamped, as railroad tickets are, “ good for this
day only.” Mr. Collyer then said, —
“ If we can present this thing to the inquiring mind as the statement of
five hundred intelligent Unitarians, it will have a good deal more weight
than the statement of any single individual, that is all I ever meant.”
It seems incredible that Mr. Collyer should not see that the stamp
of external authority must injure rather than help the force of truth.
Inquiry has developed no principle more important than this, that
truth stands best on its own evidence, and always loses when made to
rest on an authority outside of itself. If Mr. Collyer wants to employ,
in preaching, a statement bearing the stamp of authority, he wants to
use a purely and strictly orthodox method, in place of the liberal
method. The latter invariably says, ‘ examine and judge for your
selves what is true,’ and it scrupulously avoids introducing any pressure
of authority. The orthodox method appeals to authority, and largely
succeeds in preventing inquiry. It would be a bastard liberalism
which should admit the use of this appeal to authority. Any real
success in such appeal, would be an encroachment of mischief of the
most serious and dangerous sort. And not merely would actual free
inquiry be checked, but all freedom to inquire will be put in peril. It
is a purely chimerical expectation that possessors of authority would
use it for instruction of inquirers only, and not for judgment on doubt
and denial. At this moment the Unitarian body, as organized in the
National Conference, lends its authority to the dogma of the lordship
of Jesus, as thorough a superstition and yoke of heathenism as was
ever fastened upon men’s minds by religion, and this creed is used as
a test, a rule of judgment, and law of condemnation.
But if the idea of using authority without abusing it were not a
delusion and a snare, it would be worse than useless to attempt to
influence inquirers by means of an endorsed statement of faith. There
may be single instances now and then of inquirers foolish enough to
give weight to such a creed, but in general any such attempt to urge
doctrines on the ground that they had been endorsed by “ five hundred
intelligent Unitarians,” or by five hundred thousand even, would at
�The Unitarian Situation.
47
once raise suspicion and provoke contempt. The evidences for
important truths, apart from ordinary human endorsement, are so
significant and decisive, and the fact of ordinary human endorsement
is, in itself, so insignificant and inconclusive, that a religious teacher
could hardly do a worse thing than to confess that he depended at all
on the fact that his sect had voted the creed he urged. The power,
either for good or for evil, of such a vote, is over those who are
already within the connection. In general it is a power of tyranny
and outrage upon dissenting members of the fellowship. At least it
is not a power of persuasion with outside inquirers.
Granting, however, that there would be no tyranny in voting a
denominational creed, and that it might be possible to use such a
creed with good effect, it still remains, and always must remain, that
a Unitarian statement of faith is as impossible as a Unitarian Pope.
The fact which causes so many questions as to the beliefs of Unita
rians,— which occasions so many to ask, “What do Unitarians
believe ? ” — is a fact which ought to show Mr. Collyer the utter
absurdity of talking about a Unitarian statement of faith. Twenty
decidedly different and distinct statements would not represent Unitarianism. Unitarianism is like our national union; it is a union of
individuals, each independent and sovereign in respect to certain most
important matters, while owning allegiance to the common fellowship
for certain other matters. What Mr. Lowe, the Secretary of the Amer
ican Unitarian Associatian, calls “ the spirit and the life,” is the basis
of union in the Unitarian body. With reference to beliefs, the rule is
liberty and diversity, “ every man fully persuaded in his own mind,”
“every one of us give account of himself to God,” and “every man
receive his own reward according to his own labor.” The one great
principle, which has given life and honor to Unitarianism, has been
this recognition of the duty of individual persuasion, and the liberty
of individual difference, in the matter of beliefs. And he must be
exceedingly heedless of facts which are patent to every observer, who
forgets that the Unitarian body now embraces a great diversity of
beliefs, and can no more be represented by one statement of special
beliefs than the different states of our Union could be represented by
one political creed, except as to certain very general principles. The
representative statement of Unitarianism is its immortal declaration of
liberty and diversity. The demand for any other representative state
ment,— for any sort of statement of beliefs, — assumes that Unitari
anism, founded in liberty, has been so far a comprehensive error.
�48
The Unitarian Situation.
It is undeniable, however, thac the votes of the National Confer
ence, affirming the “ lordship of Jesus,” have created an official
Unitarianism, a Unitarian ecclesiasticism, not founded on the principle
of liberty and diversity, but based, as strictly as any sect in the world,
on a creed, and that creed a contemptible superstition. The lordship
of Jesus, in any Unitarian sense, is nondescript. It is anything but
religious and Christian. If it can be assumed that Jesus is very God,
the lordship of Jesus is religious. Deny that he is God, and the
assertion of his lordship drags that grand term The Lord from its only
true Christian significance, and makes it a cover for putting into
offices of Deity one who confessedly is not God. Taken alone, as the
one article of a creed, and the single foundation stone of an ecclesias
ticism, the lordship of Jesus, in any or all of the Unitarian senses, is
the most beggarly, the narrowest, and most barren creed ever devised.
The day when this creed, which has no iota of religion in it, but is
purely a partisan watchword, was adopted, and the other days on
which it was re-affirmed, each time against protest as distinct and
vigorous as outrage ever provoked, were days of shameful treason to
the genius of the Unitarian movement.
Many years since, the Rev. Dr. Eliot, of St. Louis, an excellent
man in his way, but something of a pope, and an apologist for slavery
during the days of Anti-Slavery excitement, seceded from the Western
Unitarian Conference, because that body adopted some resolution of
sympathy with the cause of the slave. Not only did he go out in
wrath, but he never returned? This Dr. Eliot was unfortunately
named on the original committee appointed to prepare a constitution
for the National Unitarian Conference, and he it was who demanded
the lordship-of-Jesus basis, against the judgment of the committee,
and who compelled its insertion by threatening secession I This playing
pope on the part of one man was the original occasion of giving to
the conference a dogmatic basis.
The wrong could not have been consummated, however, had not
Dr. Bellows espoused it, and carried it through in a spirit even worse
than that in which it was conceived, a spirit at once of treason and
of anger. Dr. Bellows had given pledges, as distinct and full as
could be asked, which required him to exclude dogma from the basis
of the Conference, and to respect without qualification the principle
of liberty and diversity. These pledges he disregarded, as recklessly
as if honor were but a name, when he consented to meet Dr. Eliot’s
demand, and to report a basis for the Conference, which asserted the
�The Unitarian Situation.
49
lordship of Jesus. And when he encountered resistance to his plan,
he took a high tone, the tone of a pope, and gave way to bad temper
besides, as if it were but right for him to visit the anger of an
offended pope on his radical brethren. These are the simple facts in
regard to the creed adopted by the National Conference. Drs. Eliot
and Bellows originally forced that creed upon the Conference, in a
way not one whit better than that of Pope Pius at Rome. Mr.
Hepworth brings forward his creed, because he thinks he can play
pope.
That Mr. Collyer should lend his support to so palpable an iniquity,
is as sad as it is surprising, whether we consider his own good name
as a teacher of religion, or the influence he can exert. It would
seem as if he must have seen enough of Unitarianism to show him
that wide diversities exist in it, such as will always make people ask,
“What do Unitarians believe?” and will forever render it impossible
to answer this inquiry by any one statement of faith. Does Mr.
Collyer mean to assume that it would be either honest or honorable,
or anything better than an outrage and a lie, to put forth his creed,
or any creed which he could endorse, and say of it, “ This is what
Unitarians believe”? The answer made him in the Western Confer
ence, by a lawyer of high character and sound judgment, “ This
proposition is a delusion and a humbug,” deservedly rebuked his
assumption that a creed could be made useful. Let him join in
getting one voted, and he will find that he has put his hand to a
business which can only end in mischief and shame.
III.—Rev. A. D. Mayo Settles the Question.
Rev. A. D. Mayo sustained Mr. Hepworth’s demand for a creed, in
a very characteristic way. He said:
“Sooner or later we must meet the issue which brother Hepworth has
presented; the whole Christian world is looking at us and expecting us to
meet it. If we are found skulking, I believe the modern world will just
drop us, and we shall be left a little association of independent churches to
do anything we have a mind to, but the world will lose all its interest in us.
and that will be the end of us ”
Mr. Mayo is the most positive and most dismal of Pharisees. Why
should a man skulk into a dark closet, he would say, when the universe
looks for his appearing at the corner of the street ? Why should he
forfeit the interest of mankind by sneaking to prayer with the publi
can, when justification so abundant awaits broad phylacteries and
VOL. I.—NO. I.
4
�50
The Unitarian Situation.
pompous self-assertion ? How absurd and contemptible to content
ourselves with devout doing of God’s will, when the rewards of
“Lord, Lord,” are so much more immediate and certain! Blow no
trumpet, and let the modern world just drop us? Do justice, love
mercy, and walk humbly with God, and that the end of us? Indulge
the enthusiasm of humanity and the passion of free communion
with God, when seventy sanhedrins of seventy sects already summon
us to judgment, and the whole menagerie of inquisitors thirsts to
extinguish us? Such, it would seem, is the appeal of Mr. Mayo.
This appeal Mr. Mayo took occasion to vindicate in the meeting of
the Western Conference, in an elaborate address on “The Vocation
of The Western Unitarian Church.” The gist of that address was
that Unitarianism has been governed by the rule of liberty long
enough, and that it ought now to go back to the old and universal
orthodox method, define and adopt an orthodoxy of its own, a fixed
correct creed, and work hereafter by means of, and on the basis of,
this definite and established creed, excluding further free-thinking,
and attempting no further progress.
“Hitherto,” he says, “we have had a creed of one article, spiritual
freedom, and all our loosely-jointed organization has revolved around that.
We have been rather a spiritual exploring expedition on the frontiers of the
church than a well defined branch of Christendom.” “Liberal Christianity
remains,” he tells us, “an undefined and diffused spirit of free-thinking,
irresponsible as the wind, and vast as the mind of man.” Unitarians, again
he says, are “an extended picket-line backed by no army,” in danger of
being “gobbled up and left to pursue their ‘scientific religious’ investigation
inside a spiritual Andersonville, with such comfort as may there be found,”
which he thinks would be “a sad coming down from our dreams of illimitable
and irresponsible individuality.”
“The Unitarian body,” Mr. Mayo
declares, “must soon decide this final question: Is it a Church and apart of
Christendom, or is it a dissolving view of spiritual pioneers on the border-land of
Christian civilization? We may indulge in spiritual vagrancy till we lose the
confidence of the country, and expectation no longer turns our way. Our
widely-roving Unitarian enterprise in the West must consolidate into a
number of Christian churches that agree substantially in their understand
ing of Christianity, their methods for its propagation, their relation to other
Christian churches, and their relation to other communities outside of
Christian belief. . . If we decide that we are not a Christian church ip
this sense, then let us go home, each to his own city or hamlet, and pursue
religion on his own account; for the Western people will no longer concern
themselves with our existence.”
�1 he Unitarian Situation.
51
The criticism here made upon the Unitarianism of Dr. Channing
and Theodore Parker, that it was indefinite, vagrant, irresponsible,
and outside Christian limits; the judgment pronounced upon the
historic Unitarian principle of spritual freedom, that it served well
enough to organize “spiritual vagrancy” and “general free-thinking”
upon, and should now be displaced by the opposite principle, that of
dogma and ecclesiasticism; the proposition to consolidate the Unita
rian movement into a body of orthodox Unitarian churches; and the
reason for doing this, to keep the confidence of the country and the
interest of the Western people, and to escape “a spiritual Anderson
ville,”— these are points of Mr. Mayo’s plea which are criticised the
moment they are stated.
The two great principles of pure Christian religion, loyalty to God
and love to man, are sneered at by Mr. Mayo in this fashion,—
“ Religion is not solely, or chiefly, an affair between one man and the
Power he may choose to call his ‘ Maker.’ . . A Christian church
cannot live long on the assertion, it is good to be good; it is lovely to
love.” Chinese, Hebrews, Mormons, Spiritualists, and Oneida Com
munists, he says, do as much as that. If we do no more, the Western
people will no longer concern themselves with our existence, and that
will be the end of us. Could there be a more lamentable infidelity
than this? If Mr. Mayo represents anybody but himself, we are sorry
for the communion which includes such an element.
IV.—Dr. Bellows Protests.
It is never possible to tell on which side of the Unitarian question
Dr. Bellows will be found. In the Hepworth debate last May, he
came out emphatically and eloquently for liberty and diversity. He
said that he would not submit his faith to “ any statement which the
Unitarian body, as such, is prepared to make, or can honestly make,
or make without deceiving itself and without deceiving everybody
else.” He declared that “the Christian religion at this present time
needs a body which will restrain itself, and not undertake to bind
itself by a positive statement which will strangle its growth. He
insisted that Unitarianism must continue to occupy a position of
“ absolute and perfect liberty.” He besought his brethren not to let
Robert Collyer’s “seductive voice,” “incline or seduce you into any
falsification of the fundamental principle of our body.” “ Let every
man,” he said, “ give the best statement he can make, and send it out
on its own authority.”
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History of the Devil.
Now let Dr. Bellows cdnsent to take the lordship-of-Jesus dogma
out of the basis of the National Conference, and Unitarianism may
again mean “ absolute and perfect liberty,” and he cease to be
universally known as Mr. Facing-Both-Ways.
HISTORY OF THE DEVIL.
His Rise, Greatness
and
Downfall.
[Translated from the Revue des Deux Mondes.]
Among the fallen monarchs whom time, yet more than sudden revolutions,
has slowly brought down from their thrones, few are there whose prestige
has been as imposing and as abiding as that of the king of hell, —Satan.
We can safely employ the expression fallen in speaking of him, for those of
our contemporaries who yet profess to believe in his existence and power,
live just as if they did not believe in them; and when faith and life no longer
impress each other, we have a right to say that the former is dead. I speak,
of course, of our educated cotemporaries; the others are no longer of account
in the history of the human mind. It has seemed to us, too, that it would be
interesting to bring together in one view, and to describe in their logical
genesis, the transformations and evolutions of belief in the devil. This is
almost a biography. An occasion has been furnished us by a recent and
remarkable work which we owe to a professor of theology in Vienna.*
Notwithstanding some tedious passages, the book of Professor Roskoff is an
encyclopaedia of everything relating to the matter, and the author will not
complain if we borrow freely from his rich erudition.
I.
The origin of belief in the devil is quite remote; and, like that of every
belief more or less dualistic, that is to say, based on the radical opposition of
two supreme principles, it must be sought in the human mind developing
itself in the bosom of a Nature which is sometimes favorable, sometimes
hostile, to it. There is a certain relative dualism, an antagonism of the I
and not-I, which revealsitself from the time of man’s birth. His first breath
is painful, for it makes him cry out. It is through struggles that he learns
to eat, to walk, to speak. Later, the effort indispensable to his preservation
will reproduce this perpetual struggle under other forms. When the religious
sentiment awakens in him and seeks first its object and support in visible
nature, he finds himself before phenomena which he personifies; some of
which are agreeable and loved, such as the aurora, the fruits of the earth,
and the refreshing and fertilizing rain; the others terrifying and dreaded,
• “ History of the Devil,” by Gustave Roskoff, Professor of the Imperial Faculty of Protestant
Theology in Vienna.
�History of the Deoil.
53
like the storm, the thunder, and the night. Hence good and evil deities. As
a general rule and by virtue of that simple egotism which characterizes
children and the childhood of peoples, the dreaded gods are more worshipped
than those worthy of affection, which always do good of themselves and
without being entreated. Such is at least the convergent result of the observa
tions of all the travelers who have a near view in either hemisphere of peoples
living in a savage state. It is needless to add that their divinities have no
moral character properly so called. They do good or evil because their
nature is thus, and for no other reason. In that, they only resemble their
worshippers. Indeed, man always projects his own ideal upon the divinity
which he adores, and, all things considered, it is in this very manner that
he comes into possession of all which he can comprehend of divine truth.
He always has the feeling that his god is perfect, and that is the essential
thing ; but the traits of this perfection are always more or less those of his
ideal. Some one once asked of two little swine-herds in some remote prov
ince of Austria: “ What would you do, if you were Napoleon?” “I,” said
the younger, “ would put a whole pot of butter on my bread every morning.”
“Andi,” said the other, “ would watch my hogs on horseback!” Thus,
too, a Bushman, when invited by a missionary, who had tried to give him
some notions of morality, to cite some examples showing that he knew how
to distinguish good from evil, said: “Evil is other people who come and
take my wives ; good is me when I take theirs.” The gods of savages are
necessarily savage gods. They usually have hideous forms, as their wor
shippers think themselves bound to become hideous to go to battle, or even
simply for adornment. To them, the beautiful is the odd and grotesque ; the
mysterious is the strange, and the strange is the frightful. To our European
ancestors, the stranger was at the same time the guest and the enemy. With
all due deference to poets, the religion of peoples of this class is tantamount
to the adoration of genii or demons of a bad character. When we pass from
savage peoples, who live only by hunting and fishing, to shepherds, and
especially to agricultural peoples, this adoration of evil deities is no longer
as exclusive. Il et we usually find among them the worship of dreaded gods
predominant. For example, let us cite only that simple prayer of the
Madecassians, who recognize, among many others, two creative divinities*
Zamhor, the author of good things, and Nyang, of the bad :
“ 0 Zamhor! we do not pray to thee. Good gods do not want prayers.
But we must pray to Nyang. We must appease Nyang. Nyang, wicked and
powerful spirit, do not make the thunder roll above our beads ! Bid the sea
keep its limits. Spare, Nyang, the ripening fruits. Wither not the rice in
its flower. Let there be no births in the evil days. Thou knowest the
wicked are thine already, and the number of the wicked, Nyang, is great.
Then torment no more the good.”
It would be easy to multiply facts attesting this characteristic of the
religion of primitive peoples, that terror has more to do with their piety than
veneration or love. Hence the great number of malevolent beings of the
second order which all inferior religions recognize and which are found in
the popular superstitions long clinging to religions of a more elevated spiritual
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History of the Devil.
level. In the great mythologies, like those of India, Egypt, or Greece, the
apparent dualism of nature is reflected in the distinction between the gods
of order and production and those of destruction and disorder. The feeling
that order always gains a decisive victory in the battles between the oppos
ing forces of nature, inspires myths like those of Indra the conqueror of the
storm-cloud, of Horus avenging his father Osiris, wickedly put to death by
Typhon. In developed Brahminism, it is Siva, the god of destruction who
concentrates and puts to work the disturbing elements of the universe. Siva
is besides the most adored of the Hindoo gods. In Semitic polytheism,
dualism becomes sexual, or rather, the sun being always the principal object
of adoration, the supreme god is conceived under two forms, the one smiling,
the other terrifying, Baal or Moloch.
This double character of the divinities worshipped is not less striking
when one studies the most "poetical and most serene of polytheisms, that of
Greece. Like all the others, its roots go down into the worship of the visible
world, but more than elsewhere, unless we should except Egypt, its gods join
to their physical nature a corresponding moral physiognomy. They have
conquered the agents of confusion which under the names of Titans, Giants,
Typhons, threatened established order. They are then the invincible preser
vers of the regular order of things; but, as, after all, this regular order is
far from always conforming itself to the physical and moral well-being of
man, the result is that the Greek gods have all, in varied proportion, their
amiable and their dark side. For instance, Phoebus Apollo is a god of light,
a civilizer, inspirer of arts, refiner of the soil and of souls, and yet he sends
the pestilence, is pitiless in his vengeance, and not very prudent in his
friendships. One may say as much of his sister Diana, or rather the moon,
who is personified now under the enchanting image of a beautiful and chaste
maiden, now under the gloomy physiognomy of a Hecate, a Brimo, or an
Empusa. The blue mists of the horizon of the sea are at first beautiful blue
birds, then daughters of the wave, admirably beautiful down to the waist,
who bewitch navigators with their sweet love songs; but alas for those who
allow themselves to be seduced! This physiognomy of mingled good and
evil is a common trait of the Hellenic pantheon, and is continuously manifest,
from the supreme pair, Jupiter and Hera (Juno) to the under-world couple,
zEdoneus or Pluto and his wife the beautiful Proserpine, the Strangler.
Latin mythology suggests the same class of reflections, and, in what is
peculiarly its own, is still more dualistic than Greek polytheism. It has its
Orcus, its Strigae, its Larvae, its Lemures, etc. Sclavonic mythology has its
white god and its black god. Our Gallic fathers had not very attractive
divinities, and the old Scandinavian-Germanic gods unite to valuable quali
ties defects which render intercourse with them at least difficult. Wherever
in our times one has kept a belief in hob-goblins, witches, fairies, sylphs,
water-nymphs, we find this same mingling of good and bad qualities. These
latter relics of the great army of divinities of the former times are at the
same time graceful, attractive, generous when they wish to be, but also
capricious, vindictive and dangerous. It is important to regard all these
facts in seeking the origin of the devil, for we shall see that he is of compos
�History of the Devil.
55
ite order, and that in several of his essential features he is connected with
the dark elements of all religions which have preceded Christianity.
There is nevertheless one of these religions, which, in this special point of
view, calls for a little more attention to its fundamental doctrines: it is the
Zend-Avesta, or, to employ the usual expression, that of the Persians. It is,
in fact, in this religion that the divine hierarchy and belief appear under the
influence of a systematic < ualism applying to the entire world, moral evil
included. The gods of light and the gods of darkness share time and space.
We do not speak here of Zerwan-Akerene, time without limit, who gave birth
to Ahuramazda or Ormuzd, the God of good, and to his brother Ahriman,
the God of evil. This is evidently a philosophical notion much more recent
than that primitive point of view originating with the Zend religion, which
recognizes only two powers equally eternal, continually at strife, meeting for
combat on the surface of the earth as well as in the heart of men. Wherever
Ormuzd plants the good, Ahriman sows the evil. The story of the moral fall
of the first men, due to the perfidy of Ahriman, who took the form of a serpent,
presents most striking analogies with the parallel account in Genesis. In
regard to that, it has often been alleged that the Bible story of the fall was
only borrowed from Persia. This opinion seems to me without good found
ation, for in the Iranian myth the genius of evil is considered disguised. In
the Hebrew story, on the contrary, it is plainly a serpent which speaks, acts,
and brings upon all his progeny the punishment he suffers. We must then
allow to this story the merit of superior antiquity, if not in its present, at
least in its primitive form. The substitution of a disguised god for a reason
ing and speaking animal, denotes reflection unknown to the ages of mythical
formation. It was reflection, too, which, in later times, led the Jews to see
their Satan under the traits of the serpent of Genesis, although the canon
ical text is as contrary as possible to that conception. I prefer, then, to
regard the two myths, the Hebrew and the Iranian, as two variations, differ
ing in antiquity, of one and the same primitive theme, originating perhaps
when the Iranians and the Semites were living together in the shadow of
Ararat.
However this may be, the fact yet remains that in the most seriously moral
polytheism of the old world, one meets a religious conception which
approaches very near to that which Semitic monotheism has bequeathed to
us under the name of the devil or Satan. Ahriman, like Satan, has his
legions of bad angels which only think of tormenting and destroying mortals.
Not alone physical evils, as storms, darkness, floods, diseases and death, are
attributed to them; but also evil desires and guilty acts. The good man is
consequently a soldier of Ormuzd, under his orders opposing the powers of
evil; the wicked is a servant of Ahriman and becomes his instrument. The
Zend doctrine taught that at last Ahriman would be conquered and even
transformed to good. This latter characteristic distinguishes him favorably
from his Judeo-Christian brother; but one may well ask himself here how
far this beautiful hope made a part of primitive religion.* Of one thing we
♦There have been also theological Christiane, like Origen, who believed in the final conversion
of Satan.
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History of the Devil.
are certain, that the connection between the Jewish Satan and the Persian
Ahriman is very close, and this is only very natural when we think that of
all the polytheistic peoples the Persians are the only ones with whom the
Jews, emancipated by them from Chaldean servitude, kept up prolonged
relations of friendship.
Nevertheless, we shall try to prove false the quite wide-spread opinion which
sees in Satan only a transplanting of the Persian Ahriman into the religious
soil of Semitism. True, the Jewish and the Christian devil owe much to
Ahriman. From the moment when the Jewish Satan makes his acquaintance,
he imitates him, he adopts his manners, his morals, his tactics, he establishes
his infernal court on the same pattern ; in a word, he becomes transformed
to his likeness; but he was already existing, though leading an obscure and
ill defined life. Let us endeavor to sum up his history in the Old Testament.
The Israelites, as we have shown in a previous article, believed for a long
time, with other Semitic peoples, in the plurality of the gods; and the
dualism which is found at the bottom of all polytheisms must consequently
have assumed among them forms peculiar to the religions of the ethnical
group of which they made a part. In proportion as the worship of Jehovah
excluded all others, this dualism must change its forms. Believing still in
the real existence of the neighboring divinities, such as Baal and Moloch,
the fervent adorer of Jehovah must consider these gods immoral, cruel and
hostile to the people of Israel, much as people looked upon demons of another
age. We may go farther, and surmise some relic of a primitive dualism, or
of an opposition between two gods formerly rivals, in that enigmatic being,
the despair of exegetes, which, under the name of Azazel, haunts the
wilderness, and to whom, on the day of expiation, the high-priest sends a
goat on whose head he has put all the sins of the people. Only we must add
that in historical times the meaning of this ceremony seems lost even to
those who observe it, and there is in reality nothing more opposed
to all dualism than the strictly Jehovist point of view. If we except the
books of Job, of Zachariah, and of the Chronicles, all three being among
the less ancient of the sacred collection, there is not one word said of Satan
in the Old Testament, not even,— we repeat it because almost everybody is
deceived thereupon, notwithstanding the evidence of the texts,— not even
in the book of Genesis. Jehovah, once adored as the only real God, has and
can have no competitor. He holds in his hand all the forces, all the energies
of the world. Nothing happens, and nothing is done, on the earth, but he
wills it; and more than one Hebrew author attributes to him directly,
without the least reserve, the inspiring of the errors or faults which were to
be attributed at a later period to Satan. Jehovah hardens those whom he
wishes to harden; Jehovah strikes down those whom he wishes to strike
down, and no one has a right to ask why; but, as he is also believed to be
supremely just, it is admitted that, if he hardens the heart of the wicked,
it is that they may dig their own graves, and that, if he distributes blessings
and evils according to his will, it is to recompense the just and punish the
unjust. The Hebrew could not always hold to this notion, too easy in theory, too
�History of the Devil.
57
often falsified by experience; but he held to it long, as is evident from the
class of ideas out of which we see Satan finally born.
Hebrew monotheism did not exclude a belief in celestial spirits, in sons of
God (bene Elohim), in angels, which were supposed to surround the throne of
the Eternal like a Heavenly army. Subject to his orders, executors of his
will, they were, so to speak, the functionaries of the divine government.
The administering of the punishment or favors of God devolved directly
upon them. Consequently there were some whose office inspired more fear
than confidence. For instance, it is a spirit sent by God which comes to
punish Saul for his misdeeds, by afflicting him with dark thoughts which the
harp of David alone succeeds in dissipating. It is an angel of the Eternal
that appears to Baalam, with a naked sword in his hand as if to slay him,
or which destroys in one night a whole Assyrian army. After a time they
distinguished especially an angel which might pass for the personification of
a guilty conscience, for he filled, in the celestial court, the special office of
accuser of men. Doubtless sovereign justice alone, and in the plenitude of
its sovereignty, made the decision, but it was after pleadings in presence of
the adverse parties. Now the one whose business it was to proceed against
men before the divine tribunal, was an angel whose name of Satan signifies
an adversary, in the judicial as well as the proper sense of this word. Such,
indeed, is the Satan of the book of Job, still a member of the celestial court,
being one of the sons of God, but having as his special office the ‘continual
accusation of men,’ and having become so suspicious by his practice as
public accuser that he believes in the virtue of no one, not even in that of
Job the just man, and always presupposes interested motives for the purest
manifestations of human piety. We see that the character of this angel is
becoming marred, and the history of Job shows that, when he wishes to
accomplish the humiliation of a just man, he spares nothing Satan
appears, too, as the accuser of Israel in the vision of Zachariah: (iii. 1.)
The result of this peculiar character, and the belief that angels intervene in
human affairs, is that Satan had no need of Ahriman in order to be dreaded
by the Israelites as the worst enemy of men. From that time, it was
common to suspect his artifices in private and national misfortunes. Conse
quently, the fatal inspirations which previous Jehovism had attributed
directly to Jehovah, were henceforth regarded as coming from Satan. We
find in the history of king David a curious example of this evolution of
religious belief. King David one day conceived the unlucky idea, considered
impious even from the theocratic-republican point of view of the prophets
of his time, of numbering the people. In regard to this, the second book of
Samuel (xxiv. 1) says that God, angry against Israel, incited David to give
the orders necessary fcr this work; on the contrary, the first of Chronicles
(xxi. 1), recounting the very same story, begins it in these terms: “Satan
stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” Nothing
shows better than this comparison, the change that had taken place in the
interval between the preparation of the two books. Henceforth the mono
theist attributes to the Adversary the bad thoughts and the calamities which
he had formerly traced directly to God. It is even to be presumed that he
A
"
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History of the Devil.
finds some religious comfort in this solution of certain difficulties which must
begin to weigh upon him, for, as in proportion as the idea of God becomes
higher, people can no longer be contented with the simple theories which
could suffice for less reflecting ages.
So we see in the character of adversary of men, of an evil disposed being,
of the angel Satan, the origin, properly so called, of the Jewish and
Christian devil. We need not then rudely identify him with the more or
less wicked divinities of the polytheistic religions. That he has with them
affinities which become continually more close, we fully admit; but his
appearance is quite distinct, and even had the Jews never been in contact
with the Persians, we should have received from Jewish tradition a complete
Satan. Satan, then, is not the son, nor even the brother, of Ahriman; but
we may say that the time came when the resemblance was so great that it
was possible to confound them. Indeed, in the apocryphal books of the Old
Testament, which are distinguished from the canonical books of the same
collection, by the Alexandrian and Persian elements in them, we see Satan
increase in importance and prestige. The seventy, in translating his name
by diabolos, whence comes our word devil, also define exactly his primitive
character of accuser; but henceforth he is something quite different from
that. He is an exciting agent of the first class. He is a very high person
age, counted among the highest rank of angels, who, envious of a still
higher position, was banished from Heaven with those other angels who
were accomplices in his ambitious schemes. Now hatred of God is with him
added to hatred of men. Here begins the imitation of Ahriman. Like the
Persian god, Satan is at the head of an army of wicked beings, who execute
his orders. We know several of them by name; among others Asmodeus,
the demon of pleasure, who plays a great part in the book of Tobias, and
whose Persian origin, since the learned researches of M. Michel Brtial, can
no longer be doubted. In consequence of this increasing importance, and
his separation from the faithful angels, Satan has his kingdom apart, and
his residence in the subterranean hell. Like the Persian Ahriman, he
wished to harm the work of creation and attacked men, whose innocent
happiness was insupportable to him. From that time, it is represented that
it was he, who, like Ahriman, addressed the first woman under the form of
the serpent. Then it was he who introduced death and its horrors; conse
quently the adversaries that he dreads the most, are men capable by their
superior sanctity of fortifying their fellow men against his insidious attacks.
A host of diseases, above all those which, by their strangeness and absence
of exterior symptoms, defy natural explanation, such as idiocy, epilepsy,
Saint Guy’s dance, dumbness, certain kinds of blindness, etc., are attributed
to his agents. It is supposed that the thousands of demons who are under
his orders escape continually from the vents of hell, and,— like the demons
of the night in which people had always believed,— haunt from preference
waste lands and deserts; but there they tire, they become thirsty, whirl
giddily about without finding rest, and their great resource is to find lodg
ment in a human body, in order to consume its substance and be refreshed
by its blood. Sometimes even, they take up their abode in many. Hence,
�History of the Devil.
59
the demoniacs, or possessed, spoken of so many times in evangelical history.
Yet Jewish mythology wculd not carry to the extreme thi^ resemblance to
Ahriman. Satan, for example, would never dare to attack God directlyOrdinarily even certain formulas, in which the name of the Most High
occurred in the first line, sufficed to exorcise him, that is to say, to drive
him away. His power is strictly confined to the circle which it pleased
divine wisdom to trace for his dominion. Dualism, therefore, remains very
incomplete. On the other hand, the Jewish Satan is never to be converted.
A prince of incurable evil, knowing himself condemned by the divine
deerees to a final and irremediable defeat, he will always persist in evil, and
will serve as executioner to Supreme justice, to torment eternally those
whom he has drawn into his terrible nets.
Such was the state of mind on this point in which the first preaching of
the gospel found the Jewish people. The messianic ideas, too, on their side,
in developing themselves, had contributed much to this enrichment of the
popular belief. If the devil, in this order of ideas, did not dare to oppose
God, or even his angels of high rank, he did not fear to resist openly his
servants on the earth. Now the Messiah was to be especially the servant of
God. He was to appear in order to establish the kingdom of God in that
humanity which was almost entirely subject to the power of demons.
Consequently the devil would defend his possessions against him to the last
extremity, and the work of the expected Messiah might be summed up in a
bodily and victorious struggle with the “prince of this world.” This is a
point of view that one should never forget in reading the gospels. Satan
and the Messiah personified, each on his side, the power of evil and good
engaging in a desperate combat at every point of collision. Never would
Jesus, for example, have been able to pass for the Messiah in the eyes of his
countrymen, had he not had the reputation of being stronger than the
demons every time those possessed with them were brought to him.
It is a question which has greatly interested modern theologians, to know
if Jesus himself shared the beliefs of his contemporaries in regard to Satan.
To treat this question as we should, we should have to stop longer on other
points foreign to this history. Let us simply say that nothing authorizes us
to think that Jesus would, from compliance with popular superstitions, have
feigned beliefs which he did not share; but let us add that the principles of
his religion were not in themselves favorable to beliefs of this kind. No
where does Jesus make faith in the devil a condition of entrance into the
kingdom of God, and were the devil only an idea, a symbol, these conditions
would remain literally the same. Purity of heart, strong desire for justice,
love of God and of men, these are all demands completely independent of
the question of knowing whether Satan exists or not. Hence when Jesus
speaks in an abstract, general manner, without any prepossession from
circumstances of place or time, he regularly eliminates the person of Satan
from his field of instruction. For example, he declares that our bad thoughts
come from our heart; according to the Satanic theory, he should have
attributed them to the devil. Sometimes it is plain that he makes use of
popular beliefs as a form, an image, to which he attaches himself no positive
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History of the Devil.
reality; he finds material for parables in them; he addresses as Satan one
of his disciples who is endeavoring to persuade him to withdraw from the
sufferings which await him, and who by his very affection becomes for him
a momentary Tempter One may remark the same thing in studying the
theology of St. Paul, at least in his authentic epistles. St. Paul evidently
believes in the devil, and yet with him moral evil is incident to the mortal
nature of men, and not to the exterior and personal action of a demon. In
a word, the teaching of Jesus and of Paul nowhere combats the belief in the
devil, but it can do without it, and its tendency is to dispense with it. We
see this tendency in our days, when so many excellent Christians have not
the least anxiety about the king of hell; but it was one of those germs of
which the gospel contains many, which needed a different intellectual atmos
phere in order to grow. What I have related will explain why much more
is said of the devil in the New Testament than in the Old. The belief in
the devil and the expectation of the Messiah had grown up side by side.
Yet let us remark that if the New Testament speaks very often of Satan, of
his angels, of the spirits “who are in the air,” and of the devil seeking
whom he may devour, it is more than sober in the descriptions that it gives
of them. A certain spiritual reserve hovers still over all that order of
conceptions; the devils are invisible; no one attributes to them palpable
body, and a crowd of superstitions which arise later, from the idea that we
can see and touch them, are still unknown. Yet, at the commencement of
our era, we may consider the period of the origin of our Satan as concluded.
He represents the union of polytheistic dualism and that relative dualism
which Jewish monotheism could rigorously support. We shall see it grow
still and assume new forms; but, such as it already is, we shall not fail to
recognize it. It is indeed he, the old Satan, the bugbear of our fathers, in
whom is concentrated all impurity, all ugliness, all falsehood, in a word the
ideal of evil.
II.
The first centuries of Christianity, very far from developing that side of
the gospel by which the new doctrine tended logically to banish the devil
to regions of symbol and personal uselessness, on the contrary only increased
his domain, by multiplying his interventions in human life. He served as a
scape-goat to the horror of the primitive Christians for the institutions of
paganism. Even in the early days, Christians did not very clearly distin
guish the Roman empire from the empire of Satan. This too Jewish point
of view did not last, but the favorite theme of most of the apologists was to
attribute to the craft and pride of the devil, everything which polytheism
presented, either fine or disagreeable, bad or good. The beautiful and the
good which might be found mingled there, were in their eyes nothing else
than small portions of truth artfully mingled by the enemy of the human
race with frightful errors, in order better to retain power over men whom
the absolutely false could not have captivated so long. The Alexandrian
teachers alone showed themselves more reasonable, but they took no great
hold on the mass of the faithful. Then especially the idea spread abroad
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History of the Devil.
61
that Satan was a rival really contemptible, but long powerful, of God, alone
adorable. Having an eager desire for honors and dominion, he had imitated
divine perfection as well as he could and had succeeded only in
making an odious caricature of it, but, such as it was, that caricature had
blinded the nations. Tertullian found, even on this subject, one of those
characteristic words in which his mocking spirit excelled. “Satan,” said
he, “is God’s ape,” and the saying was handed down to posterity. Conse
quently the Graeco-Roman gods were, to Christians as to Jews, demons
who had usurped the divine rank. The licentiousness of pagan morals,
too often consecrated by the ceremonies of traditional religion, procured for
this prejudiced point of view a sort of popular justification, enhanced
besides by the moral superiority which the rising church was generally
able to oppose to the corruptions which surrounded it. Satan was then
more than ever “the prince of this world.”
Yet let us not forget one very important circumstance, that other currents,
outside of the Christian church, contributed to extend everywhere a belief
in evil demons. Polytheism, in its decline, obeyed its internal logic, that
is to say, it became continually more dualistic, its last forms, those for
example which are distinguished by what they have borrowed from Platon
ism and Pythagorism, are entirely permeated with dualism, and consequently
they open a large career to the imagination to create every kind of evil
spirits. At that epoch, asceticism, which consists in slowly killing the body
under pretext of developing the mind, was not alone in the most exalted parts
of the Christian church; it was everywhere where people practiced religious
morals. The dreamB of which fasting is the physiological generator, gave
to the imaginary beings which they evoked all the appearance of reality.
Apollonius of Tyana does not drive off fewer demons than a Christian saint.
As Prof. Roskoff very justly remarks, the doctrine of angels and demons,
offered to polytheism, and to Jewish and Christian monotheism, a sort of
neutral territory, on which they might meet to a certain extent.
The
religious movements known under the name of Gnostic sects, which represent
a mingling of pagan, Jewish and Christian views in varied proportions, have,
as a common feature, a belief in fallen spirits, tyrants of men and rivals of
God. The great successes of Manicheism, that union of Persian dualism and
Christianity, were due to the satisfaction which the popular faith took in
everything which resembled a systematic struggle of the geniuB of evil with
the spirit of good. The Talmud and the Cabala underwent the same influ
ence. We need not then impute to Christianity alone the great place which
Satan at that time took in the affairs of this world; it was a universal
tendency of the epoch, and it would be more correct to say that Christianity
suffered the influence of it, with all contemporary forms of religion.
The Jewish Messiah had become to Christianity the Saviour of guilty
humanity; therefore the radical antagonism of Satan and the Messiah was
reflected in the first teaching of redemption. It was represented, from
the end of the Becond century, in a grand drama, in which Christ and the
devil were the principal actors. The multitude satisfied themselves with
thinking that Christ, having descended into hell, had, in virtue of the right
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of the strongest, taken from Satan the souls that he was holding captive;
but this coarse idea was refined upon. Irenaeus taught that men, since the
fall, were Satan’s by right; that it would have been unjust on the part of
God to take away from him violently what was his; that consequently
Christ, in the character of a man perfect and independent of the devil, had
offered himself to him to purchase the human race, and that the devil had
accepted the bargain. Soon, however, it was perceived that the devil had
made a very foolish calculation, since Christ had not remained finally in his
power. Origen, whose ecclesiastical teachings we need not always take for
literally exact representations of his real views, took that view which
admitted without repugnance that, in the work of redemption, Christ and
Satan had played their parts most artfully, the latter thinking he should
keep in his power a prey which he preferred to all the human race, Christ
knowing well that he would not remain in his hands. This point of view,
which ended in making Satan the deceived party and Jesus the deceiving,
scandalous as it appears to us, nevertheless made its way, and was long
predominant in the church. We readily perceive that such a manner of
looking at redemption was not likely to diminish the prestige of the devil.
Nothing could increase fear of the enemy like the exaggerated descriptions
given of his power and of the dangers run by those exposed to his attacks;
especially when, by a singular contradiction which the old theology could
never escape, the devil, declared vanquished, overthrown, reduced to power
lessness by the victorious Christ, none the less continued to exercise his
infernal power over the great majority of men. The saints alone could
consider themselves protected from his snares, and even they, according to
the legends, which began to be circulated, how much prudence and energy
had they not used to escape them! Everything felt the influence of this
continual prepossession. Baptism had become an exorcism. To become a
Christian, was to declare that one renounced Satan, his pomps and his
works. To be driven from the church for moral unworthiness or for heter
odoxy, was to be “delivered over to Satan.” It was also during this period
that was developed the doctrine of the fall of the lost angels. On the one
hand, it was thought that demons were meant in that mythical verse in Genesis
which relates that the “sons of God” married the daughters of men, whom
they found beautiful; and, in this supposition, lust was considered as their
own original sin and their constant prompting; on the other hand, and
since this did not explain the previous presence of a bad angel in the
terrestrial paradise, the fall of the rebellious spirit was carried back to the
moment of creation. Augustine thought that, as an effect of the fall, their
bodies previously subtile and invisible, became less etherial. This was the
beginning of the belief in visible appearances of the devil. Then came that
other idea that demons, in order to satisfy their lust, take advantage of the
night to beguile young men and women during their sleep. Hence the
succubi and incubi, which played so great a part in the middle ages. St.
Victorinus, according to the legend, was conquered by the artifice of a
demon which had taken the form of a seductive young girl lost in the woods
in the night. The ordinances of the councils, from the fourth century,
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enjoin on bishops to watch closely those of their diocese who are addicted to
the practice of magic arts, invented by the devil; there is even talk about
vicious women who run about the fields in the night in the train of heathen
goddesses, Diana among others. As yet, however, there was seen in these
imaginary meetings nothing but dreams suggested by Satan to those who gave
him a hold on them by their guilty inclinations.
But soon everything becomes real and material. There is no saint who
does not see the devil appear to him at least once under human form; Saint
Martin even met him so disguised as to resemble Christ. Generally, however,
in his character of angel of darkness, he appears as a man eutirely black,
and it is under this color that he escapes from heathen temples and idols
which the zeal of neophytes has overthrown. At length the idea that one
can make a compact with the devil, to obtain for himself what he most desires,
in exchange for his soul, takes its rise in the sixth century, with the legend
of St. Theophilus. The latter, in a moment of wounded pride, gives Satan a
signed abjuration; but, devoured by remorse, he persuaded the Virgin Mary
to get back the fatal writing from the bad angel. This legendary story,
written especially with the design of spreading the worship of Mary, was
destined to have serious consequences. The devil, in fact, saw his prestige
increase much more when the conversion of the invaders of the empire, and
the missions sent to countries which had never made a part of it, had intro
duced into the bosom of the church a mass of people absolutely ignorant and
still full of polytheism. The church and state, united in the time of Con
stantine and still more in that of Charlemagne, did what they could to refine
the gross spirits under their tutorship; yet, to tell the truth, the temporal
and spiritual princes ought themselves to have been less under the influence
of the superstitions they wished to oppose. If some able popes could allow
their policy to include a certain toleration for customs and errors which it
seemed impossible to uproot, the great majority of bishops and missionaries
firmly believed they were fighting the devil and his host in trying to exterpate polytheism; they instilled the same belief into their converts and in
that way prolonged very much the existence of pagan divinities. The good
old spirits of rural nature were especially tenacious of life. The sacred
legends collect many of them, and comparative mythology recognizes a great
number of ancient Celtic and German gods in the patrons venerated by our
ancestors. For quite a long time, and without its being regarded as a renun
ciation of the Catholic faith, in England, France and Germany, offerings
were presented, either from gratitude or fear, to spirits of the fields and
forests ; the women were especially tenacious of these old customs. As,
nevertheless, the church did not cease to designate as demons and devils all
superhuman beings who were not saints or angels, and as the character of
the ancient gods had after all nothing angelic, a division took place. The
kingdom of the saints was enriched from the good part under new names ;
the kingdom of the demons had the rest. The belief in the devil, which, in
the first centuries, was still somewhat elevated, became decidedly coarse and
stupid. It was in the beginning of the middle ages that people began to
regard certain animals, such as the cat, the toad, the rat, the mouse, the
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History of the Devil.
black dog, and the wolf, as serving, in preference to all others, as symbols,
auxiliaries, and even as a momentary form, for the devil and his servants.
It has been recently shown that ordinarily these animals were consecrated
or sacrificed to the divinities whose places the demons had taken. Recollec
tions of human sacrifices in honor of the ancient gods must be at the base of
the idea that Satan and his slaves are partial to human flesh. The wehrwolf, man-wolf, which devours children, has been succe; sively a god, a devil,
and a sorcerer going to the wizard’s meeting under the form of a wolf, so as
not to be recognized. We all know that there has never been a sorceress
without a cat. A pest too frequent among a population destitute of all
acquaintance with cleanliness, viz., vermin, was also at that time put to the
account of the devil and his servants. It was also about the same time that
the corporeal form of the devil became a fixed idea; it was that of the old
fauns and satyrs, a horned forehead, blobber-lipped mouth, hairy skin, tail,
and the cloven foot of the goat or the hoof of a horse.
We might accumulate here the half-burlesque, half-tragic details ; but we
prefer to note the salient points of the development of the belief. At the
point we have reached, we must look at it under a new light. Among the
Jews of the time directly preceding our era, Satan had become the so-called
adversary of the Messiah, — among the first Christians, the direct antago
nist of the Saviour of men; but in the middle ages Christ is in Heaven, very
high and far away; the living, immediate organism which is to realize his
kingdom on the earth, is the church. Consequently, it is henceforth the
devil and the church which have to do with one another. The faith of the
collier consists in believing what the church believes, and when one asks the
collier what the church believes, the collier responds boldly: “What I
believe.” So, if one asked during that period : “ What does the devil do ? ”
one would have to respond : “What the church does not do.” “ And what
is it that the church does not do?” “ That which the devil does.” This
would tell the whole story. The nocturnal meetings of evil spirits, which
the old councils, called to consider them, dismissed as imaginary, have become
something very real. The Germanic idea of fealty, that is to say, the idea
that fidelity to the sovereign is the first of virtues, as the treason of the
vassal is the greatest of crimes, was introduced into the church, and con
tributed not a little to give to everything which approached infidelity to
Christ the colors of blackest depravity. The sorcerer, however, is as faithful
to his master Satan as the good Christian to his celestial sovereign, and just
as every year vassals come to render homage to their lord, so the liege-men
of the devil hasten to pay him a like honor, sometimes on a fixed day, some
times by special convocation. The flights through the air of sorcerers and
witches, with hair flying wildly, hastening to the nocturnal rendezvous, are
a transformation of the Celtic and German myth of the wild hunt or the great
hunter ; but the master who appointed this rendezvous is a sort of god, and
in the great assemblies of the diabolical tribe they honor him especially by
celebrating the opposite of the mass. They adore the spirit of evil by
changing the ceremonies which were employed to glorify the God of good. The
name itself of sabbath (a term applied to their nocturnal assemblies,) came
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from the confusion which arose between the worship of the devil and the
celebration of a non-catholic worship. The church put in absolutely the
same rank the Jew, the excommunicated, the heretic, and the sorcerer. One
circumstance contributed greatly to that coufusion. Most of the sects which
had revolted from the church, that especially which holds a grand and
wonderful place in our national history, called the heresy of the Albigenses,
were penetrated to a high degree with the old Gnostic and Manichean leaven.
Dualism was the principle of their theology. Hence came the idea that their
religious assemblies, rivals of the mass, were nothing other than the mass
said in hell, and that such is the kind of worship that Satan prefers. If now
we recall with what docility the state allowed itself to be persuaded by the
church that its first duty was to exterminate heretics, we shall no longer find
anything surprising in the rigor of the penal laws declared against the
pretended sorcerers. It is important that the absorbing character of the
belief in the devil during the middle ages be well understood; those who
believe in Satan now-a-days would have difficulty in conceiving what a sway
this belief had. It was the fixed idea of everybody, especially from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, a period which may be signalized as
having marked the apogee of that superstition. A fixed idea tends, among
those who are possessed with it, to bring over everything to itself. When, for
example, we follow somewhat closely those of our contemporaries who are
devoted to spiritism, we are astonished at the fertility of their imagination
in interpreting in favor of their belief events most insignificant and them
selves indifferent. A door not well closed which half opens, a fly which
describes arabesques in its flight, the falling of an object badly poised, the
cracking of a piece of furniture during the night, is all that is needed to send
them out of sight into space. Let us generalize such a state of mind by
substituting for the innocent illusion of our spiritists the continual interven
tions of the devil, and we shall have quite a good representation of what was
passing in the middle ages. Among the numberless facts and writings which
we could cite, we will mention the Revelations, quite forgotten now-a-days,
but formerly widely known, of the abbé Richeaume or Richalmus, who flour
ished about the year 1270, in Franconia, and who belonged to the order of
Citeaux. The abbé Richeaume attributed to himself a particular gift of
discernment for perceiving and understanding the satellites of Satan, who,
moreover, according to his account, always torment in preference churchmen
and good Christians. What do not these imps of hell make the poor abbé
endure ! From the distractions he may have during mass to the nausea
which too often troubles his digestion, from the false notes of the officiating
precentor to the fits of coughing which interrupt his discourses, all the
annoyances which happen to him are demoniac works. “For example,”
says he to the novice who gives him his cue, “ when I sit down for spiritual
reading, the devils make a desire to sleep seize me. Then it is my custom
to put my hands out of my sleeves so that they may become cold ; but they
bite me under the clothes like a flea, and attract my hand to the place bitten,
so that it becomes warm, and my reading grows careless again.” They like
to disfigure men. To one they give a wrinkled nose, to another hare-lips.
VOL. i.—no. i.
5
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If they perceive that a man likes to close his lips properly, they make his
lower lip hanging. “Stop,” says he to his novice “look at this lip ; for
twenty years a little ilevil has kept himself there, just to make it hang.”
And he goes on in that strain. When the novice asks him if there are many
demons who thus make war on men, abbé Richeaume replies that every one
of us is suriounded by as many demons as a man plunged in the sea has
drops of water around him. Happily the sign of the cross is generally
sufficient to foil their malice, but not always, for they know well the human
heart and know how to reach it through its weaknesses. One day when the
abbé was making his monks pick up stones to build a wall, he heard a young
devil, hidden under the wall, cry out very distinctly: “What distressing
labor!” And he said that only to inspire in the monks a disposition to
complain of the base service imposed on them. To the sign of the cross, it
is often useful to add the effect of holy water and salt. Demons cannot bear
salt. “ When I am at the table and the devil has taken away my appetite,
as soon as I have tasted a little salt, my appetite returns; a little after, it
disappears again, I again take salt, and I am hungry anew.” In the hundred
and thirty chapters of which his Revelations consist, the abbé Richeaume does
nothing but subject thus to his fixed idea the most trivial circumstances of
domestic life, and especially of convent life ; but the popularity which this
book, which appeared after his death, enjoyed, proves that he simply agreed
in opinion with his contemporaries. One might find innumerable parallels
in the literature of the time. The Golden Legend of Jacques de Voraigne,
one of the books most read in the middle ages, will give a sufficient idea
of it.
This continual preoccupation with the devil, had two consequences equally
logical, though of a very opposite character. It had at the same time its comical
and its dark side. By seeing Satan everywhere, people at last became familiar
with him, and by a sort of unconscious protest of mind against imaginary
monsters created by traditional doctrine, they became emboldened to the
point of being quite at ease with his horned majesty. The legends always
showed him so miserably taken in by the sagacity of saints and good priests,
that his reputation for astuteness slowly gave place to a quite contrary fame.
They had even reached the point of believing that it was not impossible to
speculate on the foolishness of the devil. For example, had he not had the
simplicity to furnish to architects in trouble magnificent plans for the con
struction of the cathedrals of Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne ? It is true that
at Aix he had demanded in recompense the soul of the first person who
should enter t he church, and at Cologne that of the architect himself ; but
he had to do with those more cunning than he. At Aix, they drove with
pikes a she-wolf into the church then recently finished ; at Cologne, the
architect, already in possession of the promised plan, in the place of deliver
ing to Satan a conveyance of his soul in due form, draws suddenly from
beneath his gown a bone of the eleven thousand virgins and brandishes it in
the face of the devil, who decamps uttering a thousand imprecations. The
high part which is assigned to him in the religious theatricals of the middle
ages, is well known. Redemption, in the popular mind, still passed for a
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divine trick, piously played at the expense of the enemy of men. It was
then natural to imagine a host of other cases where Satan was taken in his
own snares. What laughs these discomfitures excited among the good people !
By a thousand indications, one would be tempted to believe that he had
become the character, in the mysteries, the most liked, if not the most
agreeable. The others had their part entirely marked out by tradition;
with him, one could anticipate something unexpected. We see him, too,
represent for a long time the comic element of the religious drama. In
France, where the people have always liked to subject the theatre to exact
rules, there was a class of popular pieces called deviltries, coarse and often
obscene masquerades in which at least four devils were to struggle together.
Hence comes, it appears, the expression, “faire le diable d quatre.” In
Germany, too, the devil becomes humorous on the stage. There is an old
Saxon mystery of the passion where Satan repeats, like a mocking echo, the
last words of Judas hanging himself; then, when, according to the sacred
tradition, the entrails of the traitor are burst out, he gathers them in a
basket, and, carrying them away, signs an article appropriate to the
circumstances.
This, however, did not prevent a general distressing fear of the devil. At
the theatre, during the middle ages, one was in a certain sense at church.
There, nothing hindered one from deriding at pleasure the detested being
whose artifices were powerless against the actors of the holy representations ;
but people could not pass their lives listening to mysteries, and the daily
realities were not slow in restoring to him all his prestige. Naturally, the
number of individuals suspected of some kind of intercourse with Satan must
have been enormous. This was the first idea that came into the mind of any
one who did not know how to explain the success of an adversary or the
prosperous issue of an audacious enterprise. Enguerrand de Marigny, the
templars, our poor Joan of Arc, and many other illustrious victims of polit
ical hatred, were convicted of sorcery. Popes themselves, such as John
XXII., Gregory VII., Clement V., incurred the same suspicion. At the same
time, we see appear the idea that the compacts concluded with the devil are
signed with the blood of the sorcerer, in order that it may be firmly cove
nanted that his person, his entire life, belongs henceforth to the infernal
master. At this time, also, an old Italian superstition was revived, the idea
of causing the death of those one hates by mutilating or piercing little
images of wax of the person designated, which had been bewitched. There
were councils purposely to proceed rigorously against sorcery, which was
thought to be spread in every direction. Pope John XXII., himself accused
of sorcery, declares, in a bull of 1317, the bitter grief caused him by the
compacts concluded with the devil by his physicians and courtiers, who draw
other men into the same impious relation. From the thirteenth century, they
proceeded against the crime of sorcery just as against the most henious
offences, and popular ignorance was only too well disposed to furnish food to
the zeal of the inquisitors. Toulouse saw the first sorceress burned. This
was Angela de Labarbte, a noble lady, fifty-six years of age, who took part in
that special character in the grand auto-da-fe in that city, in 1275. At
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Carcassone.from 1320 to 1350, more than four hundred executions for the crime
of sorcery are mentioned as having taken place. Nevertheless those bloody
horrors had even in the fourteenth century a local character; but in 1484
an act of Pope Innocent VIII. extended over all Christendom this terrible
procedure. Then began throughout all Catholic Europe that mournful
pursuit of sorcerers which marks the paroxysm of the belief in the devil,
which concentrates and condenses it for more than three cent uries, and which,
yielding at last under the reprobation of modern conscience, was to carry
away with it the faith of which it was the issue.
III.
In the fifteenth century, a momentary relaxing of orthodox fanaticism
rendered the task of inquisitors quite difficult in what concerned heresy
properly so called. It seems that on the banks of the Rhine, as in France,
people began to weary of the insatiable vampire which threatened everybody
and cured none of the evils of the church, which had employed it as an heroic
remedy. The faith in the church itself as a perfect and infallible institution,
was in peril, and the inquisitors complained to the Holy See of the increas
ing difficulties which the local powers and the local clergy opposed to them;
but those even who questioned the church and inclined to toleration of
religious opinion did not mean to give free course to the wiles of the devil
and his agents. Then appeared the famous bull Summis desiderantes, by
which Innocent VIII. added to the powers of the officers of the inquisition
that of prosecuting the authors of sorcery, and applying to them the rules
which until then had affected only depravatio heretica. Long is the list of
witchcrafts enumerated by the pontificial bull, from tempests and devasta
tion of crops to fates cast upon men and women to prevent them from
perpetuating the human species. Armed with this bull which fulminated
against the refractory the most severe penalties, which was strengthened by
other functions of the same origin and same tendency, the inquisitors Henry
Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, prepared that Hammer of sorceries, — Malleus
maleficarum, — which was a long time for all Europe the classical code of
procedure to be followed against individuals suspected of sorcery. This
book received the pontificial sanction, the approbation of the emperor
Maximilian, and that of the theological faculty of Cologne. The reading of
this dull and wearisome treatise cannot fail to cause a shudder. This pro
longed study of the false held for the true, these perpetual sophisms, the
pedantic simplicity with which the authors recall everything which can give
a shadow of appearance of truth to their bad dreams, the cold cruelty which
dictates their proceedings and their judgments, everything would fill the
modern reader with repulsion, if he had not the duty of indicting at the bar
of history one of the most lamentable aberrations which have falsified the
conscience of humanity. We find an answer to everything in this frightful
conjuring-book. We see there why the devil gives his servants the power to
change themselves reali transformatione et essentialiter to wolves and other
dreadful beasts, why it is a heresy to deny sorcery, how the incubi and
succubi manage to attain their ends, quomodo procreant, why one has never
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seen so many sorcerers as at the present time, why David drove the torment
ing demon from Saul by showing him his harp, which resembled a cross, etc.
If there are more sorceresses than sorcerers, it is because women believe
more in the promises of Satan than men do, it is because the fluidity of their
temperament renders them more fitted to receive revelations, it is in short
that women, being weaker, readily have recourse to supernatural means to
satisfy their vengeance or their sensuality. Recipes of every sort arc
recommended to wise persons to guard themselves from the spells that may
be thrown over them. The sign of the cross, the holy water, the judicious
use of salt, and of the name of the holy Trinity, constitute the principal
exorcisms. The sound of church bells is also regarded as a defence of great
power, and it is therefore well to have them rung during tempestuous storms,
for, by driving away the demons which cannot bear this sacred sound, they
prevent them from continuing their work of perturbation. This supersti
tious custom, which has been perpetuated to our times, clearly denotes a
confounding of the demons of the church and the ancient divinities of the
t hunder and of tempests.
What especially commands attention, is the criminal procedure developed
by the authors, and which beoome law everywhere. They are exactly imi
tated from those which the inquisition had instituted against heretics.
Sorcery, arising from a compact with the devil supposing the abjuration of
the baptismal vow, is a sort of apostacy, a heresy in the first degree.
Denunciations without proof are admitted. . . It is even sufficient that
public rumor call the attention of the judge to the matter. All who present
themselves, even the infamous, even the personal enemies of the sorceress,
are permitted to give evidence. The pleadings must be summary, and as
much as possible relieved from useless formalities. The accused must be
minutely questioned, until there are found in the details of her life some
thing to strengthen the suspicions which press upon her. The judge is not
obliged to name to her the informers against her. She can have one
defender, who must know no more of the matter than she, and who must
limit himself to the defence of the person incriminated, but not of her
criminal acts; otherwise the defender will be in his turn suspected. The
acknowledgment of the guilty person must be obtained by torture, as well
as the declaration of all the circumstances relating to her heinous crime.
Still one may promise her security of life, free not to keep that promise
(so the text says), on condition that confession is complete and prompt.
Torture is repeated every three days, and the judge is to take all suitable
precautions that the effect of it may not be neutralized by some charm
hidden in some secret part of the body of the accused. He must even avoid
looking her in the face, for sorceresses have been seen endowed, by the
devil, with a power such that the judge whose glance they were able to
catch no longer felt the strength to condemn them. When at length she is
well and duly convicted, she is given over to the secular arm, which is to
lead her off to death without farther parley.
It is easy to see from this cursory view that the unfortunate women who
fell into the clutches of this terrible tribunal, had only to abandon hope at
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the door of their prison. Nothing is more afflicting than a careful review
of the proceedings for sorcery. The women are always, as the inquisitors
learnedly explain, in the majority. Hatreds, jealousies, desires for revenge,
above all suspicions inspired by want and ignorance, could have free course
and did not allow the opportunity to escape them. Often, too, unfortunate
women were victims of their own imagination, over-excited by a hysterical
temperament, or by the terrors of eternal torment. Those in our times who
have been able to examine closely the cases of mania religiosa, know with
what readiness women especially believe themselves the objects of divine
reprobation, and fatally given over to the power of the devil. All those
unfortunates, who to-day are treated with extreme gentleness in special
institutions, then were obliged to pass for possessed or sorceresses, and
what is frightful is that many seriously supposed themselves to be so.
Many related that they had really been to the witches’ meeting, that they
had there given themselves up to the most degrading debauches. How many
like confessions aggravated afterwards the position of those who denied with
the firmness of innocence the disgraceful acts of which they were accused!
Torture was there to draw from them what they refused to tell, and thus the
conviction became rooted in the spirit of judges even relatively humane and
equitable, that besides crimes committed by natural means there was a
whole catalogue of heinous offences so much the more dreadful as their
origin was supernatural. How could one show too much rigor to such
criminals ?
In the single year 1485, and in the single district of Worms, eighty-five
witches were committed to the flames. At Geneva, at Basle, at Hamburg,
at Ratisbonne, at Vienna, and in a multitude of other cilies, there were
executions of the same kind. At Hamburg, among others, they burned
alive a physician who had saved a woman in confinement abandoned by the
midwife. In 1523, in Italy, and after a new bull against sorcery issued by
pope Adrian VI. the single diocese of Coma saw more than a hundred
witches burn. In Spain, it was still worse: in 1527, two little girls, from
nine to eleven years old, denounced a number of witches whom they pre
tended to recognize by a sign in the left eye. In England and Scotland,
government took part in the matter; Mary Stuart was particularly hostile
to witches. In France, the parliament of Paris in 1390, had the fortunate
idea of taking away that sort of business from the ecclesiastical tribunal,
and under Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII., there was scarcely any
condemnation under the head of sorcery; but from the time of Francis I.,
and especially of Henry II., the scourge re-appeared. A man of a real
merit in other respects, but literally a madman on the subject of sorcerers,
Jean Bodin, communicated his madness to all classes in the nation. His
contemporary and disciple, Boguet, communicates in a lengthy article the
fact that France is swarming with sorcerers and witches. “They multiply
in the land, said he, like caterpillars in our gardens. I wish they were all
put in one body to have them burned at once and by one single fire.”
Savoy, Flanders, the mountains of the Jura, Lorraine, Bfearn, Provence,
almost all our provinces witnessed frightful hecatombs. In the seventeenth
�History of the Devil.
71
century, the demoniac fever abated, but not without partial returns espe
cially among convents of hysterical nuns. Everybody is acquainted with
the frightful stories of the priests Ganfridy and Urbain Grandier. In
Germany, above all in the southern part, the punishment of sorcerers was
still more frequent. There is a certain insignificant principality in which
two hundred and forty-two persons at least were burned from the year 1640
to 1651. Tale to make one shudder! we find in the official accounts of these
tortures, that there were children from one to six years old among the
victims! In 1697, Nicolas Remy boasted having caused nine hundred persons
to be burned in fifteen years. It appears even that it was to the proceedings
against sorcerers that Germany owed the introduction of the torture as an
ordinary judicial means of discovering the truth.
Prof. Roskoff has
reproduced a catalogue of the executions of sorcerers and witches in the
episcopal city of Würzbourg, in Bavaria, until 1629, in all thirty-one execu
tions, without counting some others that the authors of the catalogue have
not regarded as sufficiently important to be mentioned. The number of
victims, at each of these executions, varies from two to seven. Many are
indicated only by a nick-name: ‘‘the big hunch-back,” “the Sweet-heart,”
“the Bridge-keeper,” “the old Pork-Butcheress,” etc. We find there all
professions and all ranks, actors, workmen, jugglers, city and country girls,
rich bourgeois, nobles, students, even magistrates, as well as quite a large
number of priests. Several are simply marked, “a foreigner,” “a foreign
woman.” Here and there the one who prepares the list adds to the name of
the person condemned his age and a short notice. Thus we notice among the
victims of the twentieth execution, “Babelin, the prettiest girl in Würz
bourg,” “a student who knew how to speak every language, who was an
excellent musician vocaliter et instrumentaliter,” and “the director of the alms
house, a very learned man.” We find also in this mournful catalogue the
heart-rending account of children burned as sorcerers ; here a little girl
from nine to ten years with her little sister still younger (their mother was
burned soon after), boys of from ten to twelve years, a young girl of fifteen,
two alms-house children, the little son of a judge. The pen refuses to
recount such monstrous excesses.
Will those who wish to admit
the correctness of the doctrine of the infallibility of the popes, before giving
in their vote, listen, in the presence of God and history to the cries of the
poor innocents cast into the fire by pontifical bulls?
The seventeenth century, nevertheless, saw the proceedings against sorcer
ers and especially their punishment gradually diminish. Louis XIV., in one of
his better moments, mitigated greatly, in 1675, the rigors of that special
legislation. Yet for that he was obliged to endure the unanimous remon
strance of the parliament of Rouen, which thought society would be ruined,
if the sorcerers were only condemned to perpetual solitary confinement.
The fact is that belief in sorcerers was still sufficiently general for single
executions to take place from time to time, even throughout the eighteenth
century. One of the last and most famous was that of the lady-superior of
the cloister of Unterzell, near Würzbourg, Renata Soenger, (1749.) At
Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756, a young girl of thirteen years was put to
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History of the Devil.
death, having been convicted of having had impure intercourse with the
devil. Seville, in 1781, Glaris, in 1783, saw the last two examples known of
this fatal madness.
IV.
People have sometimes used as a weapon against Christianity, these bloody
horrors, ulteriorly due, they say, to a belief which Christianity alone had
instilled into persons who, without it, would never have entertained such a
belief. This point of view is superficial and not supported by history. The
blame lies primarily with the dualistic point of view, which is much anterior
to Christianity and has outlived it. Pagan antiquity had its necromancers,
its magicians, its old stryges, lamias et verifier, which were not dreaded less
than our witches. We have shown that dualism is inherent in all the relig
ions of nature; that, having attained their complete development, these
religions end, as in Persia, in India, and even in the last evolutions of
Graeco-Roman paganism, by an eminently dualistic conception of the forces
or divinities which direct the course of things ; that the Jewish Satan owes,
not his personal origin but his growth and entire degradation td his contact
with the Persiah Ahriman; that the Christian Satan and his demons have in
turn inherited the worst characteristics and most frightful symbolical formp
of the conquered divinities. In reality, the devil of the middle ages is at
once pagan, Jewish and Christian. He is Christian, because his peculiar
domain is moral evil, the physical ills of which he is the author arising only
in consequence of his passionate desire to corrupt souls, and these
giving themselves up to him only with guilty intent. He is Jewish in
this sense that his power, however great it might be, could not pass the
limits it pleased divine omnipotence to mark out for it. Finally, it is Pagan
by everything which it preserves of ancient polytheistic beliefs. We have a
right to regard the faith in demons, as it came out in the middle ages, as
the retribution of paganism, or, if we please, as the unabsorbed residue of
the old polytheism perpetuating itself under other forms.
That which prolonged the reign of Satan and his demons, was not. alone
the authority of the church, it was above all the state of mind which the
labors pretending to be scientific, of all the period anterior to Bacon and
Descartes, reveal, even to a period approaching ours. There was no real
knowledge of nature: the idea of the inviolability of its laws was yet to
appear. Alchemy, astrology and medicine regularly ministered to magic;
they recognized, as much as did contemporary theology, hidden forces,
talismans, the power of magic words, and impossible transmutations. Even
after the renaissance what a confused mystical medley the physiological
doctrines of Cardan, of Paracelsus, of Van Helmont! The general state of
mind, determined in great part by the church I acknowledge, but by the
church itself under the influence of the ruling ideas, must have been the
true cause of that long series of follies and abominations which constitute
the history of the devil in the middle ages and in modern times. It is an
evidence of this that, in a time and in countries where the church was still
�History of the Devil.
73
very powerful and very intolerant, the belief in the devil visibly drooped,
declined, suffered repeated assault.«, and fell slowly into ridicule, without
any notable persecution having signaled this very serious change in the
ideas of enlightened Europe. The old stories pretended that the most
tumultuous witch-meetings vanished like smoke at sunrise; in truth, the old
Btories did not know how far the future would show them to be right.
The two great facts which, modifying profoundly the general state of
mind, brought about this irremediable decline, were the indirect influence
of the Reformation and the progress of rationalistic science. Some will
perhaps be astonished that I mention the Reformation. The reformers of
the sixteenth century did not at all combat faith in the devil. Luther himself
held to it strongly, and so did most of his friends. Calvin was obliged by a
certain dryness of mind, by his distrust of everything which gave too much
play to the imagination, to remain always very sober in speaking of a subject
which made the best heads delirious ; but he nevertheless shared the common
ideas in regard to Satan and his power, and enounced them more than once.
We should speak also of an indirect influence, which was nevertheless very
strong. That which, among people which adopted the Reformation, gave a
first and very sensible blow to his infernal majesty, was that in virtue of the
principles it proclaimed, they had no longer any fear at all of him. The idea
which had so much power among protestants of the sixteenth century, of the
absolute sovereignty of God, that idea which they push even to the paradox
of predestination, very soon led them no longer to see in Satan anything but
an instrument of the divine will, in his actions only means of which it
pleased God to make use in order to realize his secret plans. In pursuance
of this faith, the Christian had now only to despise the rebellious angel,
wholly powerless against the elect. It is known how Luther received him
when he came to make him a visit at the Wai tbourg. The simplicity of
worship, and the denial of the supernatural powers hitherto delegated to
the clergy, also contributed much to dissipate the delusion in the minds of
the simple. No more exorcisms, neither at baptism, nor in the supposed
cases of demoniacal possession ; no more of those scenic displays which
terrified the imagination, in which the priest, brandishing the brush for
sprinkling holy water, fought with the demon, who replied with frightful
blasphemies. No one henceforth believes in incubi or succubi. If there is
still from time to time talk of persons being possessed, prayer and moral
exhortation are the only remedies practiced, and soon nothing is more rare
than to hear demoniacs spoken of among these peoples. The idea that the
miracles related in the Bible are the only true ones, illogical as it may be,
nevertheless made people accustomed to living without daily hoping or fear
ing them. Now the miracles of the devil are the first to suffer from this
beginning of a decline of the belief in the supernatural. Satan then becomes
again purely what he was in the first century, and even less still, a tempting
spirit, invisible, impalpable, whose suggestions must be repulsed, and from
whom moral regeneration alone delivers, but delivers surely. They cannot
even longer keep for him his old part in the drama of redemption. Every
thing now depends on the relation between the faithful man and his God. In
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History of the. Devil.
a word, without any one thinking yet of denying the existence and the
power of Satan, while even making great use of his name in popular teach
ing and preaching, the Reformation sends him slowly back to an abstract,
ideal sphere, without any very clear relation to real life. We might consider
him only as a convenient personification of the power of moral evil in the
world, without changing at all protestant piety. French Catholicism in its
finest period, that is to say in the seventeenth century, feeling much more than
is generally supposed the influence of the Reformation, presents a quite
similar characteristic. With what sobriety its most illustrious representa
tives, Bossuet, F6n61on, preachers even such as Bourdaloue, treat this part
of catholic doctrine ! Good taste among them took the place of rationalism,
and who is astonished in reading them, that a Louis XIV., who nevertheless '
was not tender when a question of religion was at stake, was able to show
himself skeptical on the subject of sorcery and less superstitious than the
gentlemen of Rouen ?
Even in the times of the greatest ignorance, there were skeptics in regard
to sorcerers and witches. The Lombard law, by a remarkable exception,
had interdicted prosecutions against the masks (thus sorcerers were called
in Italy). A king of Hungary, of theeleventh century, had declared that they
need not be mentioned, for the simple reason that there were none. An
archbishop of Lyons, Agobard, had ranked belief in witches’ meetings among
the absurdities bequeathed by paganism to the ignorant. The Hammer of
Sorceresses must certainly have had in view adversaries who denied sorcery
and even the intervention of the devil in human affairs, when it demonstrated
both by a grand array of scholastic arguments. At the time when condem
nations for the crime of covenanting with the devil were most frequent, there
was a worthy Jesuit by the name of Spee, with whom the feelings of human
ity prevailed against the spirit of his order. Charged with the guidance of
souls in Franconia, be had been obliged to accompany to the stake, in the
space of a few years, more than two hundred alleged sorcerers. One day the
archbishop of Mayence, Philip of Schoenborn, had asked him why his hair
was already becoming grey, although he was scarcely thirty years old.
“ From grief,” he replied, “ because of so many sorcerers that I have been
obliged to prepare for death and of whom not one was guilty.” It was from
him that arose a Cautio criminalis, printed without the author’s name iri 1631,
which, without denying sorcery nor even the legitimacy of the legal penalties
declared against it, adjures the inquisitors and magistrates to multiply
precautions so as not to condemn to death so many innocent. Before him,
Jean Weicar, attached to the person of William of Cleves, had written, to the
same purpose, a work quite learned for the time, the fruit of distant voyages
and numerous observations, in which, while fully admitting the reality of
magic, he denied the so-called sorcery, and violently accused the clergy of
keeping up popular superstitions by making good people believe that the
evils from which they could not deliver them had their origin in sorcerers
sold to the devil. There was courage in using such language in such times.
To take the position of defender of sorcerers, was to expose one’s self to be
accused of sorcery, and it is not rare to find in these sad annals examples of
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75
judges and priests victims of their humanity or their equity, that is to say
condemned and burned with those they had attempted to save. The French
physician Gabriel NaudS, undertook, in the support of the same course of
ideas, his Apology of the Men accused of Magic (1669) ; but the causes, of whose
slow influence we have written, had not yet transformed minds so that they
were capable of emancipating themselves from the devil. A radical demoli
tion of the edifice was necessary on the one side, and on the other a religious
justification of that destruction. There as elsewhere, progress could take
place in a powerful manner only on condition of adding to arguments of a
purely rational sort, the sanction of religious feeling. Otherwise general
opinion divides itself into two camps which continually hold each other in
check, and maintain a menacing attitude without accomplishing anything.
That which had come through the church was to take its departure through
the church. The honor of having inflicted a decisive blow on the diabolical
superstition is due to the Holland pastor Balthazar Bakker, who entered
the lists, no longer simply in the name of good sense or humanity, but as a
theologian, and published his famous book entitled The Enchanted World
(1691-1693). Four thousand copies sent forth in two months, the rapid
translation of this huge work into all the languages of Europe, the ardent
controversies which it aroused and which it has alone survived in the
memory of posterity, all these show what an epoch this book made.
Assuredly the demonstrations of the Dutch theologian would not all have
the same value in our eyes. For example, not yet daring to emancipate
himself from Scripture, considered by him as an infallible authority, he
twists and turns the texts to eliminate from them the doctrine of a personal
devil mingling in the thoughts and actions of men. Nevertheless, he calls
attention to many details not remarked before him, which prove that biblical
teaching about the devil is neither fixed, nor consistent, nor in conformity
to the opinions of the middle ages. He submits to merciless criticism all
the arguments commonly used to support the popular prejudice in regard to
facts drawn from experience. His discussion of the case of Urbain Grandier,
and of the Ursulines of London, which was still fresh in every mind, must
have especially struck his readers.
A fact like that, which one could
analyze and discuss with evidences at hand, threw a clear light on a large
number of other facts older and more obscure, to which the partisans of the
devil constantly appealed. For the first time, too, universal history was
brought into requisition to exhibit the incontestable filiation of the polythe
istic and Christian beliefs in demons. The whole spirit of the book is
expressed in these aphorisms from the latter part. “There is no sorcery
except where people believe in it; do not believe in it, and there will be no
more.” “Rid yourselves of all those superannuated and silly fables, but
exercise yourselves in piety.” It was a true prophecy; but it was not given
to the author to see it realized. To his disrespect for Satan, he added the
wrong then very serious in the eyes of Dutch orthodoxy, of being a zealous
Cartesian. He was accordingly removed by a synod, and died a little after;
but they could not remove his book, which made its way quite alone, and
with great effect. Indeed, from that time the cause of the devil may be
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History of the Devil.
considered as lost in scientific theology. The progress of the human mind
in acquaintance with nature and modern philosophy did the rest.
The scientific spirit, such as it has become since Bacon and Descartes, no
longer admits those hasty conclusions which so readily gained the assent of
the centuries when imagination ruled, when the readiness a man exhibited
in expressing an opinion upon the most obscure subjects was in direct pro
portion to his ignorance. The experimental method, which is the only true
one, obtains as much strength for the theses it verifies, as it inspires mistrust
of everything out of its field of examination. Doubtless there are necessary
truths which we cannot make enter the crucible of experience; however,
they atone for that inconvenience by their close connection wtih our nature,
our life, and our conscience. If, for example, one could say that belief in
the devil recommends itself by its high moral utility, that it makes those
better who share it, that it elevates characters by rendering them more
chaste, more courageous, more devoted, there would yet be respectable
motives for trying to save it from the formidable attacks of modern reason;
but quite the contrary is the case. A belief in the devil tends necessarily to
blunt the feeling of individual responsibility. If I do evil, not because I am
bad, but because another has forced me to it by a power superior to my own
will, my culpability is certainly lessened, if not annihilated. We have just
seen the deplorable superstitions, the dangerous follies, the horrible crimes
of which that belief was so long the inspirer. What is evidence against
sorcery, will perhaps be said, is not evidence against a personal genius of
evil from whom men have to defend themselves as from an enemy continually
around them to drive them to evil. Let us nevertheless reflect that sorcery
is not so detached in principle from that belief whose daughter it is. The
devil once admitted, the sorcerer follows quite naturally. If there really
exists a personal being, in possession of superhuman powers, seeking, as is
said, to ruin us morally for his private satisfaction, is it not evident that, in
order better to succeed, he will try to entice weak souls by furnishing them
the means of procuring for themselves what they most desire? Not without
reason did the belief in the devil reach its full development in a belief in
sorcerers; and the latter, having given way before experience, necessarily
drew down in its ruin the belief in the devil himself. If there is truly a
devil, there are sorcerers, and, since there are no sorcerers, it is clear that
there is no devil; this the combined good sense of the last three centuries
authorizes us to conclude, and this conclusion will forever await its
refutation.
The eighteenth century made the mistake of imagining that to destroy
traditional beliefs it was sufficient to throw ridicule on them. When a
belief which has been ridiculed for some time has deep roots in human
consciousness, it easily survives the sarcasms of which it has been the
object, and the time comes when these sarcasms no longer excite a laugh,
because they chill the dearest feelings of religious minds, and the good taste
of the refined; but, as to the devil, the laugh of the eighteenth century has
remained victorious. It is in fact because the devil is ridiculous. That
being whom they pretend is so cunning, so mischievous, so learnedly ego-
�History of the Devil.
tistic, and who strives eternally in the wearisome business of corrupting
souls, ends by being very foolish. Looked at thus close at hand, brought
down from the heights where poetry and mysticism have been able some
times to place him, put face to face with the bare reality, Satan is .just
simply stupid and since people have clearly felt that it has been impossible
to do him the honor of admitting his real existence. We could prolong this
retrospective study of works which continued through all the eighteenth
century, and are still continuing in our days, a contest henceforth useless.
Since the real constitution of the universe has dissipated the illusions
which served as an indispensable accompaniment to the person of the old
Satan, viz.: a closed heaven, subterranean hell, and the earth between;
since people have been obliged to recognize the universal presence and
everywhere active life of God in all things, there is no longer, in truth, any
place for him in the world. There is nothing so distressing and puerile, as
the efforts of some reactionary theologians, in Germany and elsewhere, to
give back a shadow of reality to the old phantom, without falling into the
gross superstitions which decidedly orthodox reaction itself can no longer
digest. In vain one seeks to preserve for him a place, in the least honor
able, in some doctrinal treatises or pious songs. The sane portion of the
clergy and people shrug their shoulders or are annoyed. Satan is still per
mitted to be an expression, a type, a symbol consecrated by religious
language, but that is all. As to giving him any place whatever in the laws,
the customs, in real life, there is no longer any question about it.
Is there, nevertheless, nothing at all to draw from this long-continued
error, which holds so considerable a place in the history of religions, and
even goes back to their origin? Must we avow that on this subject the
human mind has nourished itself for so many centuries with the absolutely
false? That cannot be. There must necessarily have been something in
human nature which pleaded in its favor and maintained for so many genera
tions a faith contrary to experience. I will not say, as do some thinkers,
that it was the ease with which that doctrine of the devil permitted the
problem of the origin of evil to be resolved, for it resolved nothing. It
carried back to heaven the problem that was thought insoluble on earth;
but what was gained thereby ? That which has maintained a belief in the
devil, that which, indeed, constitutes the eternal foundation of it, is rather
the power of evil in us and outside of us. I admire the singular tranquility
of mind with which all our French philosophers look at that question, or
rather forget it, to launch out in eloquent phrases on free will. Let us then
put ourselves face to face with realities. The fact is that the best among us
is a hundred leagues from the ideal which he proposes to himself, that he is
too weak to realize it, and that he acknowledges this when he is sincere.
Another fact still is, that we are every moment determined toward evil by
the social influences which surround us, and that very few have the desired
energy to react victoriously against the corrupt streams which hurry them
away. We need not fall into the excess of theologians who have taught the
total depravity of human nature, even too, marking out for it the way of
regeneration, as if miracle itself were capable of regenerating a nature
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History of the Devil.
totally corrupt. Observation attests that we are selfish, but capable of
loving; naturally sensual, but not less naturally drawn by the splendor of
the true and the good; very imperfect, but capable of improvement. The
first condition of progress is to feel what we need. To live in harmony with
conscience, one must know how to triumph over the assaults which selfish
pleasures of sense, which flesh and blood, the world and its allurements, gives
us into the power of at every moment. That is the diabolical power from
which we should emancipate ourselves. In one sense, we might say that we
are all more or less possessed. Error comes in as soon as we desire to per
sonify this power of evil. When theists say that God is personal, they do
not fail to recognize what there is defective in the idea of personality bor
rowed from our human nature; but as it is impossible to conceive another
mode of existence than personality and impersonality, as God must possess
every perfection, they say, for want of something better, that he is personal
because he is perfect, and that an impersonal perfection is a contradiction.
Evil, on the contrary, which is the opposite of the perfect, is necessarily
impersonal. It is against its pernicious seductions, against its always fatal
enchantments that it is necessary to struggle in order that our true human
personality, our moral personality, may disengage itself, victorious, from
the vile surroundings where it must grow. It is on that condition that it
attains the pure regions of liberty and of impregnable morality, where
nothing which resembles Satan can longer trouble the ascent towards God.
That is all that remains of the doctrine of the devil, but also all that concerns
our moral health, and which we ought never to forget.
Albert Reville.
�Rev. Mr. Abbot at Toledo.
79
REV. MR. ABBOT AT TOLEDO.
Early in the summer we heard that our friend Abbot, whom we deem not
less worthy of love and honor as a Christian apostle, albeit he calls himself
“outside of Christianity,” than any other man among living religious
leaders, was likely to have a break down with his society at Toledo, though
possibly he might be able to succeed with his weekly paper, The Index. It
was also told us that originally he had crept in privily and stolen a society
and a meeting-house which belonged to regular Unitarianism, and which
were in honor mortgaged to the American Unitarian Association on account
of money paid by it in aid of the society. Knowing that the part of this
information reflecting upon Mr. Abbot must have an explanation honorable
to him, we surmised that the other might also change face upon investiga
tion, and resolved to go and see for ourselves. We went at the end of June,
and spent two days in Toledo, with exceeding satisfaction.
The once Unitarian, and now Independent, society to which Mr.
Abbot preaches, was never aided by the American Unitarian Association.
It twice came near it, and would have put its neck under the yoke, but for
a single circumstance, which was the refusal of the society to accept aid on the
conditions proposed by the American Unitarian Association. Twice in its history
this people, before ever they had heard of Mr. Abbot, had declined to accept
aid as a Unitarian society, lest at some future day they might find tlieir inde
pendence hampered by the implicit pledge thus given. This special provi
dence prepared Mr. Abbot’s way in Toledo. It was but one out of many
which plainly enough show that the Lord is with him.
When Mr. Abbot was asked to go to Toledo to preach a few Sundays, he
wrote a letter stating conditions which he thought would not be accepted,
inasmuch as they included a frank avowal of his most offensive heresies.
This letter was read to a number of the society together, and was then
passed from hand to hand, to anybody who wished to see it. The statement
that it was suppressed, and people kept in ignorance of Mr. Abbot’s views,
is wholly baseless. Moreover, Rev. Mr. Camp, the former pastor, meddlesomely and maliciously towards Mr. Abbot, wrote to a member of the
society against him, and this immoral document circulated freely. Mr.
Abbot came July 3, 18G9, and preached several Sundays with more than his
usual frankness and boldness. What ground he took may be seen by turning
to the masterly discourses in the early numbers of The Index. July 11,
his topic was, “What is Christianity?” July 18, “What is Free Relig
ion?” July 25, “Christianity and Free Religion contrasted as to CornerStones”; August 1, “Christianity and Free Religion contrasted as to
Institutions, Terms of Fellowship, Social Ideal, Moral Ideal, and Essential
Spirit”; August 8, “The Practical Work of Free Religion”; and having
made this full and frank disclosure of his renunciation of Christianity, as
�80
Rev. Mr. Abbot at Toledo.
he deemed and proposed it, for Free Religion, he announced, in view of a
nearly or quite unanimous disposition to give him a call to settle, that such
a step would he of no use unless the society would adopt a preamble and
resolutions offered by him (see No. 7 of The Index), and thereby leave
Unitarian Christianity for Free Religion. His reasons for insisting on this,
Mr. Abbot gave in his discourse of August 15, entitled “ Unitarianism
versus Freedom.” A week later, by a vote of 39 to 18, the preamble and
resolutions were adopted, and “The First Unitarian Society of Toledo,” by
its own free act, became the “First Independent Society of Toledo,” outside
of Unitarian Christianity. That the 18 nays did not represent much hostil
ity to Mr. Abbot is shown by the significant fact that the motion immediately
made to give him a call passed by a vote of 60 to 2. And had there been
from that moment no unscrupulous meddling, Mr. Abbot would have carried
along with him all who joined in this call. It was in consequence of outside
interference that a minority which had joined in the vote to accept Mr.
Abbot's ministry, finally seceded from him. This interference came from the
Unitarian headquarters and from Rev. Mr. Camp, and those who took part
in it have no shadow of ground for their assertion that either Mr. Abbot or
his adherents acted in any but the most open and honorable manner.
We preached to Mr. Abbot’s congregation, saw his Sunday School, con
versed with members of his society, and learned all about what has been and
what is the state of things there, and can gay emphatically that the local
movement has been from the first and still continues to be a remarkable
success. The society had just set out upon a new year, with renewed evi
dences of their hearty devotion to Mr. Abbot. The congregation proved to
be more than double what we had been told it was, and as interesting and
Christian in appearance as any we ever saw. Constant labors of charity, and
benefactions widely and generously bestowed, attest the practical Christian
spirit which, to an unusual extent, pervades it. If any comparison is to be
drawn, we should say that the entire Unitarian body is more likely to be
expunged from contemporary history than Mr. Abbot to come to a break
down in Toledo. At the moment of this writing we learn that the publica
tion of The Index is guaranteed foi- a second year, by the parties in Mr.
Abbot’s society who suggested this enterprise, and who have stood behind it
thus far. The Toledo apostleship is genuine. Good men and women gather
to its support, and the good Lord does not have to go out of his way to seal
it with his blessing. We heartily commend it to all who value truth, of
character and of teaching, and earnestly ask our more liberal contempora
ries to lend their aid to the support of our noble friend. Send him money
outright, and bid him good-speed with his work; for he is the servant of all
of us, and in justice should have our sympathy and help. His attempt to
“stand squarely outside of Christianity” is, in our judgment, a sort of
Messianic mistake, but we no less believe in his mission and urge his support.
Such truth of character we but rarely find; such pure and perfect intellec
tual love of truth only the noblest minds of the race are capable of; and by
“outside of Christianity” he means precisely what the most enlightened
Christians signify by Christianity itself.
He fully accepts the universal
�81
Our Religious Purpose.
element of Christianity, its religion, and only rejects the special element,
its Christism, and calls this rejecting Christianity, which it is not, if there
is any truth in the radical method of interpretation, the very point of which
is that it uncovers the living truth of any system, plants itself on that, and
from that rejects whatever in the special element is not consistent with the
universal. In our next issue we shall show that Mr. Abbott is purely and
rigorously Christian, in the true religious sense, and all the more so for his
rejection of Jesuism, and might as well announce himself outside the solar
system as outside true Christianity.
It concerns Christian interests mightily to be reconciled with such burn
ing and shining truth as every candid observer must see in Mr. Abbot. In
intellectual interest he stands with the leaders of our generation, and does
not suffer by comparison with such elder masters as Emerson, Spencer, and
Mill. He is now but thirty-two years of age, and six years ago he had
attracted the attention of the most distinguished philosophical inquirers and
teachers in this country and abroad, as a philosophical writer of great
originality and power. Men of nearly or quite twice his years, philosoph
ical thinkers of repute on the other side of the Atlantic, have sent to him, a
mere youth except in commanding intellectual power, for his judgment upon
their merits as candidates for distinguished philosophical positions. The
quality of Mr. Abbot’s intellect is even more remarkable than its singular
force. Such pure interest in truth, such veracity of intelligence, such
sincerity of mind, have belonged only to the masters of thought and the
greatest leaders of reform. And in serene, uncompromising loyalty to the
moral ideal, and rigorous application of principle to the conduct of life and
the practice of every virtue, Mr. Abbot belongs with the most revered and
endeared of this or any other time. Were he to call himself, from specula
tive doubts, an atheist, he would yet be one of the noblest and most useful
among masters of religion, from the fact that his moral ideal is the truest
possible image of Deity. His intense devotion to the most exact conception
he can form of right is the real explanation of his resolute rejection of the
Christian name; an error which is truly glorified by the spirit which
accompanies it.
OUR RELIGIOUS PURPOSE.
The editor of The Examiner begs his critics to state distinctly the full
extent of his religious purpose, which is,—
1. To teach a Christianity of which the creed is contained in the words
‘Our Father who art in Heaven,’ and is unfolded in the doctrines of
God’s
perfect fatherhood
over all souls, the real
brotherhood of all men
on earth and in the world to come, our supreme duty of
filial loyalty, of trust and love, to God, and
love to men
and
inspiration and providence
the source and guarantee, author and authority, to every one of us, of
knowledge, holiness and blessedness forever.
vol. i.—no. i.
6
�82
How We Start.
2. To explain and prove, with sound learning and sound reasoning, the
fact of error mingled with truth, from the very first, in historical Christian
ity, and how surely, in the exercise of Christian faith and reason, to distin
guish between Christian truth and Christian error.
3. To root up the theological heathenism,— total depravity, divine wrath,
damnation, and blood atonement, which choke Christian truth in orthodox
teaching.
4. To expel from true Christian religion every form of Jesuism, or regard
for Jesus as more than a mere man, and all Bibliolatry, or regard for the
Bible as more than a collection of mere human writings.
And this to the end of plainly opening to all human feet the path of direct,
obedient, and happy trust in God; and in the sincere belief that the Judaic
and half-heathen Christianity of the existing sects, is doomed of God to
speedy extinction.
HOW WE START.
In making our experiment with The Examiner, we gratefully and devoutly
acknowledge the repeated striking providences by which we have been helped
and guided thus far. Our earliest definite plans for such a publication date
back to a period previous to the establishment of The Radical. Our imme
diate arrangements to bring out The Examiner began with the first of May
last. A single difficulty has alone remained since the last week of June, the
need of $------ , the sum we thought we must add to our resources before
commencing. As the end of August approached, and we still lacked this, we
fixed a day on which we would make one last effort to perfect our arrange
ments, and on that day the needed help came. The first person we met on
taking the train from our residence to Chicago, a friend to whom we had
some time before spoken of our plans and our need, said to us instantly,
“You may draw on me after Sept. 10th, for------ dollars,” just the sum we
had waited for.
He had previously resolved on this, and was waiting
to meet us. It came just right. We had waited none too long, and we were
able to make our trial with the requisite means. Now we make our appeal
to other friends, who may believe our work a good one, to give us help, not
only in subscriptions, but in outright contributions, every dollar of which
shall be faithfully applied to printing and distributing The Examiner, not a
cent to any other use, either of the Editor or of any one else. Friends of true
Christian Religion! The time is fully ripe; the hour is exceedingly oppor
tune; our plans, long meditated and waited for, are working perfectly; and
with reasonable assistance we can secure the permanence of our enterprise
beyond a doubt. We are willing to fail, if so it pleases the good providence.
We should but fall back to the line of hope and faith and study from which
we make this forward movement, and wait for opportunity to try again.
�Is There No Open Vision?
83
But there need be no such temporary failure, nor will there be, if good men
and good women who want to be Christian in simple and pure love to all men
and perfect trust in God, will fairly do their part towards the great work for
which we establish The Examiner. If ever an enterprise was born in faith,
this is, and if it goes down, faith will see it fall, and patiently expect its
rise, or the rise in some better shape of the grand interest which it represents.
Every subscription to The Examiner will be deposited with our
banker as money belonging to our subscribers, and only one-twelfth taken
by us each month. If we should fail, every subscriber will receive back as
many twelfths of his $4, as he fails to get numbers of our Review.
IS THERE NO OPEN VISION?
All experience and study teach the wise believer to be very cautious about
assuming a special providence or special inspiration. Just as far as Jesus
and Paul attempted to rest in special knowledge of the secrets of heaven,
they went wrong. The grand failure of Jesus to discern truly God’s will,
was in respect of that anticipation which proceeded from his assumption
that Deity had vouchsafed special attention to him. Paul never blundered so
badly as when he most confidently claimed to be speaking by the word of the
Lord. This only is legitimate, to repose absolute faith in the providence and
inspiration of Infinite Mind; to work, always, at once with this faith, and
with as much diligence, vigilance and earnestness as if all depended on us;
to aim at success and to anticipate it, yet with a mind ready to accept fail
ure; and ever to give thanks, as events pass, however they may turn, or
whatever they may overturn, with full assurance that the Lord the Ruler
doeth all things well.
It is thus that we have striven to ‘wait on the Lord,’ and, never suffering
ourselves beforehand to say, of either deed to be done or word to be spoken,
‘in this the Lord is with us beyond peradventure or mistake,’ we have grown
more and more, taking successes and failures together, to feel that, for the
large aim and long course of our life, we can depend on the gracious presence
and heavenly providence of Infinite Mind, as implicitly as ever trusting
child depended on a faithful parent, or wise prophet on the perfect inspira
tion of the alone supreme and blessed God.
We say this with extreme hesitation, but we venture to say it, because we
want the whole class of Christian heathen and infidels, who do not believe
in God here and now, and who insist that all worship shall be with knees
bent and heads bowed before the idol which they have found in the person
of Jesus, to understand distinctly that we believe, as earnestly and implic
itly as if we knew that tongue and pen were moved by the unerring inspira
tion of God, and that we so believe in Gon, perfect providence and perfect
illumination, that we would no more turn from His presence, .even if a
pantheon of undoubted god-men invited us, than we would turn from perfect
light to utter darkness.
�84
The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
If Samuel, David, and Isaiah, John, Jesus, and Paul, might trust in the
Lord’s direction, so may we, in the full proportion of our diligence, fidelity,
discipline, and instruction. So at least we do trust, and there remains with
us none the least shadow of doubt, that with us, too, God is, and will be, for
the same purposes of manifestation which in all ages lovers of God and
prophets have served, and that we no more need pin our faith to what Jesus
and Paul said, than we need walk at high noon to-day by the memory or the
record of yesterday’s daylight.
We have lived now more than a quarter of a century by this conviction o^
the direct nearness of God to soul and heart and mind in us individually,
and the immediate direction of our life, study, work, and career, by the
most holy divine providence, and for fourteen of these years we have
eagerly, zealously, diligently, and fearlessly studied how to be a true prophet
of pure Christian truth, how most wisely to believe, and most judiciously to
correct belief by thought, and learning, and the blessed rules of holy living,
and we think it right now to say to those who deny living truth in the name
of tradition, that we challenge their idolatry and defy their idol, in the name
of the living God and the authority of divine direction, believing firmly that
‘•The Love of the Lord passeth all things for Illumination,” and that
“Wisdom, in all ages entering into holy souls, maketh them friends of God,
and prophets.”
THE CHICAGO ADVANCE AND THE EXAMINER.
We have always cherished with intense satisfaction the sentiment of
Christian fellowship. The illusion never forsakes us that church relations
mast be at bottom fraternal, even though fallible men administer them less as
brothers than as judges and executioners. The “Church of Christ in Yale
College,” which was our religious home during the years when our greatest
aims for life were maturing, and which at last excommunicated us for
believing in God,* always rises before our imagination and love as one of our
shrines of delightful communion, where we may expect, sometime if not
now, to be made welcome under the immortal covenants of faith, and holi
ness, and love. Memories of bitter injustice, of cruel contempt, of strange
coldness and harshness fade away more easily than not, and we are ready to
go back there as a lover goes home to the most blessed joys.
It was this intense feeling of Christian communion which led us to wish
to make a personal explanation, through the Chicago Advance, to the
denomination under whose influences we were reared, and whose dogmatic
sanctities we knew that we would be regarded as outraging by the publica
tion of The Examiner. To expect candid and kind treatment from the
editor of the Advance, was indeed a stretch of faith even to our disposition
to expect the best everywhere, but we resolved to make the experiment and
sent a communication, which we reproduce below. In this our point was to
give evidence that we had obeyed a Christian motive, and had followed
*As Father, with effective sanctifying and redeeming care of all his human children.
�The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
85
providential guidance and inspiration, in passing from orthodoxy to radical
Christianity, and it included of course a frank and definite indication of
what we meant by radical Christianity. Had the Advance extracted the
former as a matter of fraternal kindness to us, and excluded the latter as a
statement of dangerous or dreadful error unfit to lay before orthodox
readers, its motives would have been defensible. Instead of this it picked
out and published the most offensive part of the latter, and deliberately told
a befouling and wicked falsehood about the former in the following sentence.
“If a Congregationalist forsakes his faith, we cannot appreciate the ground
upon which he should occupy our crowded columns with a statement of his
progress in religious error; whether he become a Unitarian, a Mormon, a
Free-Religionist, or a Positive Philosopher.” Our readers can judge how
unscrupulous must be the anxiety about orthodoxy which led the Editor of
the Advance to write that sentence with our statement before him, as a
response to our request to be allowed to say to fathers and brethren with
whom we have the most sacred associations, that we had reached our present
faith by strictly obeying, as we believed, the purest motive and highest law
of our life-long Christian faith in God Our Father! As a notice of The
Examiner — 350 words at the head of “Editorial Miscellany”—probably
nothing could have been better, because those of the readers of the Advance
whom we care to reach understand its tricks, and are only excited to look
for a fact which they see has been concealed by a fib. But we want justice
and decency, as a preparation for fraternal communion, and we give notice
to irreligious and unchristian editors of theological newspapers that they
will find it to their interest to tell no lies about us.
The following is the communication referred to above, and refused publi
cation by the Advance:
Editor Advance:
Dear Sir: I send you herewith my proposal to publish The Examiner
as a Monthly Review of Religious and Humane Questions, and of Literature,
and an organ of what I would call Radical Christianity. And I beg leave
to make in your journal a brief explanation, in view of the fact that I was
reared in the Congregationalism which you represent. Some twenty years
ago I was admitted to the Congregational church in St. Charles, 111., by Rev.
G. S. F. Savage. Soon after I became a student in Beloit College for above
two years, and went thence to Yale College, where I was graduated in 1856.
I passed the next year in New York city, teaching and studying theology,
and an attendant upon the ministry of Dr. Win. Adams, of the Madison
Square Presbyterian church. The two following years I was again in New
Haven, studying theology. In all these places I never so much as thought
of going near heretical ministry. I never once saw an heretical book, tract,
or journal, nor did I ever converse with an unorthodox person, until after I
had become as fully settled in unorthodox conclusions as 1 am now. In New
York I did not know of the existence of Drs. Osgood and Bellows, and even
did not hear Henry Ward Beecher. I was wholly and absolutely under
orthodox influences, sincerely and earnestly continuing my confession of
hope in Christ which I had first made when I was but eight years old. In
commencing theological study I set to work in the most earnest manner to
put in working order the orthodox reasons for faith in the Bible as the sole
and absolute rule of truth and duty, and I purposed to prepare myself in
the most thorough manner possible for a strictly Biblical style of preaching,
�86
The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
invariable support of every point by a text, and illustration drawn as much
as possible from the sacred pages. I even selected a large octavo copy of
the Bible for my life’s use and study, to be marked and made familiar in
every page, so that preaching from it I could readily put my hand upon any
passage, and be always able to drive home the sure nail with the very
hammer of’the Lord. Such, moreover, was the deliberate ardor of my
orthodoxy that I contemplated, first, taking a five years’ course of varied
preparation, in view of the special demands of an unsettled state of the
popular mind about Christian faith and duty, and, second, devoting myself
to preaching an armed and aggressive, a confident and conquering faith,
from place to place, and as nearly as possible without reward. I had
earlier, I may say, meant to go as a missionary to South-west Africa, and
had lost this dream under the overwhelming sense of the importance of
saving the faith in our own land.
My orthodoxy came to grief all at once, in the following way: I had
always had an intensely real faith in God Our Father, as he was addressed
in the prayer Jesus gave to his disc-iples. The desire to hallow that name
■was a passion stronger than my life, and as sober and sustained as it was
strong. Filial loyalty to God, as the Heavenly Providence and Holy Spirit
of our life and our eternal destiny, was the substance and soul of my inward
experience, the principle on which I built all my careful devotion to Christ,
the Bible, and the Christian church. This principle became the undoing of
my whole structure of orthodox dogma about depravity, wrath, atonement,
hell, and the divine authority and offices of Jesus and the Bible. For as
soon as my observation was once arrested by the condition of that great
seething and surging mass of souls which New York city presents, I believed
instantly, and without hesitation or qualification, that the Heavenly Father,
by the resources of Heavenly Providence and Holy Spirit, both could and
would redeem all, and that every thought, no matter if found on the lips of
a Jesus or a Paul, which implied doubt or disbelief of this, must be an error.
It was no more possible for me to challenge this expansion of my faith in
God than it would be for me to prefer the light of a candle to full sunrise,
even though I had to see Jesus and Paul as erring men, who had held and
taught Christian truth purely in many passages, and in some had set forth
error, and that God had meant us to depend on his own providence and
inspiration, and had not given us Jesus as more than a mere human teacher
and providential leader.
In January, 1859, after studying in New Haven Dr. Taylor’s systematic
and masterly exposition of the grounds of orthodoxy, and otherwise inves
tigating the foundations of religious belief, I found myself, as I believed, as
secure of my new’ position as possible, although I did not then know that
any Christian had come to any similar conclusion, and I wrote a little tract
to show where I stood, the concluding sentence of which was, “Christ was
a mere man, and the speculative theology which has been taught in his
name, and which he partially taught himself, must pass away before the
progress of that religion of good will to men and loyalty to God which he
practiced.”
I have found this conclusion confirmed by more than ten years of addi
tional study, and I now purpose to ask thoughtful attention, in the pages of
The Examiner, to the exposition of pure Christianity, as it is taught in the
prayer of Jesus, and in the most significant spiritual passages of the Bible
at large, without admixture of the errors which even Jesus did not wholly
exclude, and which his followers have expanded into a system which is a
veritable anti-Christ. Knowing full well that ardent faith, thorough study,
and earnest looking to providence and inspiration, do not in the least entitle
me to exalt myself, or claim any special authority, I do yet, declare, in the
very name of God Our Father, and of the truth as it was in Christ, that the
popular faith in “Lord Jesus,” “Holy Bible,” total depravity, wrath of God,
devil and hell, atonement, separate communion here, and separate heaven
�Free Religion not Anti-Christian.
87
i
hereafter, is of human and heathen conceit, and not of the true Christian
consciousness. This ground I shall take in The Examiner, and am ready
to defend against all dispute. If the faculty of instruction in the Chicago
Theological Seminary, or any one of them, will take up the discussion, I
will undertake to prove, that they are teaching heathenism in presenting for
Christian truth the doctrine of Jesus as God-Man, Divine Lord, Atoning
Saviour, and Final Judge, with the related doctrines of the special divine
character of the Bible, the total depravity of human nature, the consuming
eternal wrath of God, and the separate destiny of souls, part to heaven and
part to hell.
Hoping that I may be dealt with in a fair and candid spirit, I am
Yours very truly,
Edward C. Towne,
Winnetka, III.
August 28, 1870.
FREE RELIGION NOT ANTI-CHRISTIAN.
It has been assumed by a portion of the public of late that free religion
implies disavowal of Christianity. The Radical and the Index have been taken
to represent the entire breadth of this new interpretation of religion. The
course of the Executive Committee of “ The Free Religious Association,” in
adopting the Index as an organ of communication with the public, has given
color to this assumption. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. The
movement which the application of freedom to religion has produced is not
in general unchristian, or antichristian, or other than avowedly and reso
lutely Christian, both in fact and in name. We consider even Mr. Abbot, in
all but the name and certain non-essential notions, one of the lights of recent
Christianity, as new studies, new insight, and new providential indications
have disclosed to devout and thoughtful minds the pure truth suggested and
revealed in Christ’s word and life. And we strenuously insist that free
Religion is pure religion, as it has occupied the heart of formal Christianity,
and is now emancipated from errors of form, and disclosed in its real spirit
and power.
The history of the movement which is represented nominally by “ The
Free Religious Association,” we are entitled to write if any one is. We
suggested to Rev. Dr. Bartol, after Unitarianism had settled down upon a
narrow Jesuism, the propriety of a conference of radicals to consider the
practicability of an organization broader than the Unitarian. And when,
after two such conferences, Dr. Bartol and several others decided for action
without organization, we proposd to Rev. W. J. Potter and Rev. F. E. Abbot
that we three unite in a pledge to secure an organization, and that we work
together as a committee to form a plan. Under that pledge we together
carried the movement forward until the plan devised by our little caucus was
realized in “The Free Religious Association.” The other organization
which has been so much spoken of, and so widely reported, “ The Radical
Club,” of Boston, first met at our suggestion and upon our individual invita
tion of the persons who organized it. The term “ Free Religious ” wras
originally suggested by Mr. Potter; and the courses of lectures given in
�88
A Criticism of Our Aim.
Boston were also suggested by him after he had been appointed Secretary of
“ The Free Religious Association.” Mr. Abbot has recently taken ground
for free religion “ squarely outside of Christianity,” and Mr. Potter has
appeared to concur with him. We do not regret Mr. Potter’s action; he did
just right to use the Index, even at the cost of seeming to identify Free
Religion with the position of Mr. Abbot; but we want it understood that we
at least make Free Religion identical with true Christianity, and look for its
confessors in every communion, from Catholic, Calvanist, etc., to the latest
forms of heresy.
A CRITICISM OF OUR AIM.
One of our truest radicals, an admirably Christian scholar, thinker, and
man, writes to us of our position as follows : —
“ I do not assent to the fundamental proposition which you intend The
Examiner shall support, that Free Religion is Christianity stripped of
unessential opinion and tradition. I don’t care to keep the Christian name
— would rather have it dropped, and expect it some day to be dropped. Of
course I understand your meaning, that what has given to Christianity its
best vitality and power is its free and universal elements, the great spiritual
realities found under all forms of religion. And to this I assent. But I see
no logic in calling these universal elements by the specific name ‘ Christian.’
Why go to the progressive Jew, or the Hindu, or the Confucian, and say
• The essential, vital truth under your religious belief is to be called Chris
tianity ? ’ I am content to find that it is the same with the essential and
permanent in the Christian religion, and will not insist that he shall call it
4 Christianity,’ more than I would yield to his claim that I should call my
religion ‘Judaism’ or ‘Hinduism.’ Why not take at once the large term
that includes them all — universal Religion ? ”
Our friend very seriously misapprehends our position, which is, that we,
and all others, Jews, Mahometans, Hindus, and whoever has a religion
which at heart is religion, should, by radical reform, strip off what is not
true religion, and make, each for his own people, a true Judaism, or true
Christianity, or true Hinduism, or true Mahometanism. We could easily show
our friend that Jews, Arabs, Persians, Hindus, Siamese Buddhists, and other
representatives of world-religions, as well as Christians, are each freeing their
respective faiths of superstition, and are appealing to ther fellow believers
to use each their traditional religious name as properly meaning the pure
truth freed from the husk of error. We, on radical Christian ground, say
to each of these faiths, hold your ground and keep your name, and let us
have a world fellowship of the different religions of the earth. Our idea,
when we asked our friend to join us in a resolution to secure a new organi
zation for religious ends, and the idea we supposed the Free Religious
Association was to represent, was this unity of religions with liberty and
diversity both of names and of special tenets. We wanted to see all classes
of Christians come together, Catholic, Calvinist, etc., etc., on a platform of
generous human recognition of one another, and with them, if occasion should
�A Criticism of Our Aim.
89
be found, men and women of other names than the Christian. We desired
to see each accept the method of radical reform, each putting his truest
truth in the front, and agreeing to hold together by that, and to hold separately
other things as each felt necessary.
Our Free Religion leaves the Catholic a Catholic, and the Hindu a Hindu,
and the Moslem a Moslem, and the Jew a Jew, and the Christian a Chris
tian, each to wear his providential name, and to have his individual pecul
iarities of creed and worship, until we all come in the unity of the faith unto
a perfect jian. But our friend, if he is logically consistent, as he seems to
mean to be, must ask each of these to drop their providential name and take
that of Free Religionist, or universal Religionist. If, to use Mr. Abbot’s
language, he proposes to “stand squarely outside of Christianity,” he must
also stand squarely outside of the other great religions, or else go squarely
into some one of them. Assuming that he has not found any of these reli
gions “a good place to emigrate to,” and that he sees the logic of his
position, he really helps to set up, as far as his nominal relations are
concerned, a very small new sect, in fact making Free Religion a Boston
and Toledo notion, and doing this none the less although those engaged in it
feel as broad and liberal as all out of doors. Our friend in short squares off
against all the religions of the world, nominally, while we accept our Chris
tian name and place, with all the other world-religions. He and we alike
hold, and work for, the truth of pure free Religion, and sympathize with it
wherever found, but he declines, or would prefer to drop out of, nominal
relation to Christians, while we adhere to that relation, and do it on a prin
ciple which warrants the Jew, the Hindu, the Moslem, and other religionists
of the world in keeping each to his own name and fellowship, as God has
made them to dwell on all the face of the earth.
This principle is really radical and free, it makes the name a name only,
and gives freedom of names and peculiarities. Our friend’s principle is
neither radical nor free, for it does not allow perfect liberty as to names, and
it insists, not merely on the root of pure truth, but on a correct name, thus
creating a kind of Free Religious orthodoxy which is all about a name.
Especially if this is carried to the extreme point made by Mr. Abbot, that
none are truly and honestly Christian who do not take Jesus as Messiah, it
gives Free Religion an attitude not merely of strictness but of bigotry. We
have a perfect right to judge for ourselves how to be honest Christians, and
our friend misses the radical mark exceedingly when he makes the ado he
does about other people’s honesty. It is done with a nobly pure purpose,
but it ought to be left undone nevertheless. We consider it our duty to stay
under the Christian name, and make Christianity mean Free Religion.
We do in this matter as Theodore Parker did in the matter of American
politics. He took his part as an American citizen, and worked to make
“American” mean justice to all men. Mr. Phillips was working for the
same thing, but refused all citizen relations, on the ground that “American”
did not mean justice. He was for breaking up the national fellowship, while
Mr. Parker was for purging it. Our friend and Mr. Abbot take just the
ground about Christianity which Mr. Phillips took about the Constitution
�90
Matthew Arnold’s Idea of Christianity.
and the Union. It turned out that Mr. Parker was the true prophet. The
course of events purged the nation and left it united. Does anybody wish
Mr. Phillips could have had his way, to break the country in two, one part
to be free, and the other to be securely slave with no abolition fellow
citizens to molest or make them afraid ? We are for purging Christianity,
not seceding from it. Even excommunicated we claim and will hold our
place. And it is as sure as fate that Christianity will be purged, as our
nation was purged, and made to mean free Religion. The other religions
also will be purged in like manner. Whether some of the great names will
fall, we neither know nor care. Possibly they may. But if they do not, and
probably they will not, we can still have religion free and pure in all the
great divisions of the race.
MATTHEW ARNOLD’S IDEA OF CHRISTIANITY.
The acute English critic, Matthew Arnold, who certainly deserves to rank
with the most thoughtful men of the present generation, lays down the
following principle of Christian confession :
“ The Christian Church is
founded, not on a correct speculative knowledge of the ideas of Paul, but on
the much surer ground, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart
from iniquity ; and holding this to be so, we might change the current strains
of theology from one end to the other, without on that account setting up
any new church, or bringing in any new religion.”—St. Paul and Protest
antism, p. 10.
It is not meant of course by this that the text quoted originally averred
the sufficiency of a simply moral basis for Christian communion, but that
“ Christian ” now means, above all things, good, and that this emphatic
meaning we are to accept as from the inspiration and providence of God, as
the fundamental sense of the word. A venerable Puritan minister, in the
old town of Medford, near Boston,—Dr. David Osgood, — said fifty years
and more ago, to some persons who began to suspect their pastor of heresy,
“ If your minister is a good man let him alone.” In so saying he antici
pated what must become the view of all enlightened Christian minds.
Goodness is the root of the matter. There is no more significant Christian
word than the injunction to be perfect, and this injunction is no less signif
icant taken by itself, apart from the appeal to the divine character. The
threshold of Christian teaching is the rule of good will, the commandment
to love one another. Therefore it is necessary to begin with this, and to
build upon it. And, if need be, we may come back to this for determining
and regulating Christian communion, and may always insist that this is
sufficient for real fellowship, and that all good men are truly Christian.
This being said, however, we deem it important, because truth and fact so
require, to include in complete Christian confession the faith in God, and loyalty
to God, implied in the terms of the prayer “Our Father.” No more signif
�Mr. Abbot on Following Christ.
91
icant passage could be cited from the original memorials of historical Chris
tianity than this prayer. If Jesus had the smallest conception of his mission,
he must have touched the heart of the matter in teaching his disciples to
pray, and cannot have left out of that prayer the main point of religion.
Happily that prayer exactly represents the ordinary frame of mind in which
profoundly religious persons do actually bend in devotion. As Mr. Emerson
says, speaking of Reason, the Creator, the Spirit of the Universe, “Man in
all ages and countries embodies it as the Father.” And it is perhaps truest
to say that Christianity has no greater claim to recognition than its distinct
and emphatic utterance of the words God Our Father.
MR. ABBOT ON FOLLOWING CHRIST.
“There is one more way, however, to interpret the command, ‘Follow
Me,’ namely, ‘I)o as the spirit of Christ would prompt you to do.' If this
means simply, let the same spirit of obedience to principle, self-sacrifice,
courage, and love, which controlled Jesus, also control us, —well and good.
But then I must say that this is not, in any true sense, ‘following his
example;’ it is following the spirit which made his example, — obeying the
law which he also obeyed.”
This illustrates strikingly a way which Mr. Abbot has of using, and
insisting on, a method of interpretation which is to us neither free nor reli
gious, but strangely secular and strict. The only true sense in religion,
especially when we appreciate that religion must be free, of following either
Jesus or the example of Jesus, is that of adopting the ideal suggested by his
character and life, the spirit disclosed to us in his deeds and words. It is
not even necessary, nor so much as permissible, to exactly adopt his ideal,
and closely conform to his precise spirit, if we find that any part of either
appears incongruous with the general purport of the same, and no longer
possible to be obeyed by a soul truly obedient in general to the identical
heavenly vision which caught and fixed the eye of the young Nazarene.
While Mr. Abbot is insisting that the usual strict orthodox way of interpret
ing Jesus is the true way, great numbers of liberal orthodox believers, in
and out of pulpits, books, and religious papers, are finding freedom and
simple pure religion in looking to Jesus precisely as they look to teachers
and masters other than him ; for suggestion of how best to seek God directly
without either master or mediator other than the Truth manifested to their
own souls, as a true free thinker looks to Socrates, not to servilely copy him,
nor to copy him at all, but to get inspiration for doing likewise, with such
difference as a like effort will now be sure to find necessary. It is a great
pity that Mr. Abbot should look at Christianity through orthodox spectacles,
and insist that what he sees bears no aspect of Free Religion, when in fact
the clear upshot of Christianity is Free Religion, and numberless persons in
every quarter of Christendom see it to be so, and hail the discovery with
infinite delight.
�92
The Old Christian Test and the New.
THE OLD CHRISTIAN TEST AND THE NEW.
“We believe it is admitted by all sects, that in the first age of the church
pure living was the test, the distinguishing mark, of a Christian. It was
only later, after the philosophers had been at work at the faith, that doc
trines or points of belief assumed the importance they have since held. In
the first century, and second century, a man proclaimed his faith in Christ
by his morals, and the principal vices of paganism were of a nature to
make the line between the church and the world very broad and distinct.
Those vices were cruelty and licentiousness.”—The Nation, June 16, p. 379.
The distinguishing mark of a Christian of the first age was that he
believed Jesus to have been the Christ. Other points of belief which emi
nently distinguished him were, that Jesus had risen from the dead and would
speedily appear as Messianic King in all the terrors and glories of super
natural power, that he would bring a material, political, moral and spiritual
regeneration of the earth, that this sudden change of all things would be
destruction and horror to all enemies of the kingdom and deliverance and
glory to all who looked in faith for its appearing, and that in view of these
things it was but prudent and decent to live moral and pious lives, trusting
God in his Christ for the sake of salvation, and loving the brethren who
might be brought together by this trust.
No such thing as pure living for its own sake was anywhere characteristic
of the primitive Christians. A Paul, indeed, felt the power of the moral
ideal, and also adored God as God, in the spirit of simple, pure religion.
But even he did this only out of his occasional highest inspiration, rising far
above the average level of his teaching and his practice, while his disciples
were almost exclusively ruled to such decency of life as they attained, by
those points of belief which we have mentioned, the doctrines of early
Jesuism, which had engaged their ignorant and superstitious assent, and had
wrought in them a measure of piety and brotherly love.
In very many classes, and on a very wide scale, the faith of the first age
was even scandalously separate from pure religion in either heart or life.
It was a mere fanaticism, a detestable superstition, the faith of those who
forgot God and goodness equally in looking for a King of terrors, a Jesus
more Devil than either human or divine, whose mission it would be to
execute indiscriminate vengeance upon the mass of men and receive a few
devotees to everlasting enjoyment. Unhappily, it was possible to cite sup
posed words of Jesus and undoubted sentences of Paul, in support of even
this wretchedly heathen type of Christianity.
It might be said of certain pagan teachers, previous to or contemporary
with primitive Christianity, that they made pure living of chief importance.
But this cannot be said of Paul, nor even Jesu3; not because either of them
failed to see the intrinsic worth of goodness and power of godliness, but for
the reason that both the master and the apostle put the groundless Messi
anic expectation in the foreground.
Happily Paul stands on quite other ground, on great heights of Christian
inspiration and prophecy in fact, in several of the most significant passages
�Some Recent Views of Jesus.
93
of his letters; and Jesus still more, led astray though he was in the pres
ence of that Jewish world which at once promised and demanded a Messiah
rather than a simple teacher of truth, must have been chiefly attracted, in
his better moments of meditation and prayer, by the pure vision only of
God and of good, and he certainly came in the moment of his great trial, the
single purely Christian moment of his outward career, to give up the delu
sion of Messiahship, and rest all faith in the will of God.
The truth was in Jesus and Paul, and can be clearly seen in them, but the
characteristic thing with them was the Jesuism which received so hard a blow
in Gethsemane, and is now at last fairly dying, after a career of vast mis
chief through eighteen centuries. Side by side with the slow progress of
truth in her narrow path, has run the comprehensive error of the Nazarene
carpenter and the Cilician tent-maker, so that only now does it begin to be
true that “Christian” first and chiefly means pure in heart.
A new Christianity, latent in that of the first age, and never lost out of
the pure hearts which have kept undefiled truth under all the forms of
pseudo-Christianity, is so clearly manifested within a few years, that it is
now possible to speak of Christians whose sole distinguishing mark is pure
living. The professors of accredited Christianity do not generally admit
that this new Christianity is veritably Christian, but philosophical observers,
and nearly all emancipated or rational believers, justly claim, and joyfully
proclaim, this sifted and pure truth of Christ, the only Christianity worthy
the name.
Of course such Christianity does not take its name from the person, pre
tension, or characteristic teaching of Jesus, nor from its affinity with what
is called "The Christian Religion,” but from its fulfilment of the providen
tial ideal of the Christianity and the Christ of history, its expression of
what was suggested, and was meant of God, in Jesus, and was destined to
be unfolded out of the tradition propagated in his name. In this it stands
towards the teaching of Jesus as that stood toward Judaism; it is a new
birth, another regeneration, leaving the form of the old to more perfectly
fulfil its pure truth and vital power.
SOME RECENT VIEWS OF JESUS.
M. Edouard Reuss, the accomplished author of “Histoire de la Théologie
Chrétienne au Siècle Apostolique,” said of Renan’s “Vie de Jésus,” that it
had popularized a study hitherto confined to theologians, and made the
question of who and what Jesus was one of the common topics of free
discussion everywhere. He anticipated that all sorts of people would feel
called to give the public the benefit of their impressions and convictions,
and that thus a great movement of new inquiry would bring its powerful
aid to the solution of the evangelic problem. These expectations of a
thoughtful scholar, expressed in 1864, in the preface to the third edition of
�94
Some Recent Views of Jesus.
the “Histoire” mentioned above, have been more than realized. And, as
M. Reuss intimated, every sort of advocate has entered the field.
Last year Mr. Wendell Phillips undertook a kind of vindication of the
Christ of popular tradition, the Messiah of whatever progress eighteen
centuries can show. Rev. F. E. Abbot, who is now editing the Index at
Toledo, as the organ of religion emancipated from Christian associations,
has found himself impelled to disown Christian fellowship, and to rate Jesus
as unworthy the name of master in any sense whatever. Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe not long since lifted up her voice, to rebuke the hardy recusant of
Toledo, and to certify her esthetic and pious approval of the figure presented
to her imagination in connection with the name of Jesus. And about the
same time Mr. D. A. Wasson, a very acute thinker, who is also not a little
gifted as a poet, earnestly attempted to shelter the ideal Jesus from the rude
blows of free religious discussion.
The singular defect of all the pleas just mentioned is their lack of con
formity to the best results of recent sound scholarship. In Mr. Abbot’s
argument against respect of any sort for the authority of Jesus as a relig
ious master, there occur citations of reported words of Jesus which ought
never to be made again, and never will be made again by any both fair and
well-informed critic. Mr. Abbot does not lack fairness, nor is he, for a
writer who has devoted himself chiefly and with the highest success to
philosophical speculation, without a highly creditable acquaintance with the
results of New Testament criticism. But he does lack a portion of the
knowledge which should have preceded his renunciation of Christian connec
tion, a renunciation for which he will certainly find no enduring warrant in
either the method or the tenets of a sound free thinker. There can be no
question, we believe, that the candor and broad sympathy with noble
effort which are conspicuous in Mr. Abbot, will bring him at length
to give the young peasant rabbi of Nazareth a place among the prov
idential masters of the human race. He speaks still of “the wonderful
religious genius,” “the transcendant greatness,” of Jesus, terms which
he may find occasion to drop as he becomes more intimately acquainted
with the real man whom Pilate crucified, and whom inscrutable Provi
dence made the standard-bearer of a great movement of mankind, but a
closer knowledge of the facts of a simple and humble life, and of the
incidents and accidents to which peculiar circumstances gave momen
tous significance, can hardly fail to convince him that, without any
particular greatness of either intellect or character, the child of Joseph and
Mary fairly obtained, and must always hold among men on earth, one of the
greatest providential places of human history. Think what we may of the
powers or the qualities, of the ideas or the purposes of Jesus, it is absurd to
strike out his name everywhere, or to undertake to stand outside a definite
relation to him.
The warm, and somewhat arrogant pleas of Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Howe
can barely command respect with anyone accustomed to study, thoroughly
�Some Recent Views of Jesus.
95
and without passion, all the historical aspects of the question who and what
Jesus was. It was of course extremely easy for either the orator or the
lady to take a high tone, sustained as they were in so doing by all the popu
lar assumptions, and to rehearse the claims of Jesus, the one with fascinating
eloquence, the other with half-angry dignity. But even Mr. Phillips errs
egregiously if he supposes that any amount of confidence and of eloquence
can make an utterance respectable, as thinkers and scholars count respect,
which is made in nearly total ignorance of the facts elicited by the noble
and fruitful labors of recent scholarship. The field is not one for brilliant
generalization, but rather for a special knowledge to be had only upon
thorough study and long meditation. No one could make general observa
tions upon the appearances presented by Christianity now and formerly, to
better popular purpose than Mr. Phillips, but unfortunately the particular
demand of the discussion is for a true account of what took place before any
of these now visible appearances had yet been seen, and for historical truth
which must beyond a doubt offend the popular faith. Mr. Phillips, there
fore, made an ill-advised and no way useful attempt to deliver a judgment
where he had yet to possess himself of information. And like most persons
who think they know beyond a question, because current tradition is on
their side, he is probably prepared to resent the suggestion of his ignorance.
He doubtless has never even heard of the books to which we should refer
him as sources of knowledge. So runs the religious world, but the time of
the end of this is not, we trust, far distant.
The treatment which Mr. Wasson gave to the theme “Jesus and Chris
tianity,” was that of an idealist far too little conscious of the sober facts of
history. It is solely in the exercise of a generous imagination that he
assures us that the Hebrew hope of a Messiah had become refined and
spiritualized before Jesus came upon the scene, approaching the typical
idea of history, and that this hope, thus refined, furnished the ideal elements
by which the mind of Jesus was nourished, until he imagined a divine soci
ety here on earth, made so by the unqualified sway of ethical law, and was
so possessed by this holy imagination as to think himself more than an
individual being, and to feel in his own exalted soul, in his “ world-great
heart,” the tides of infinite and eternal life; while around him were
gathered “popular imaginations large enough” to recognize and accept “a
soul so amazingly magnanimous.” It would give us great pleasure to see
the evidence on which Mr. Wasson pronounces Jesus “an imperial soul,”
and the historical ground for his assumption that the young Nazarene enthu
siast expected “a reign of morals pure and simple,” not the reign of an
individual, nor of a nation. Still more curious are we to see in what light
other than of imagination the simple folk who gathered about Jesus appear
to Mr. Wasson as “large popular imaginations.” Doubtless there was
imagination enough in the circle of those who handed down the report of
Jesus’s life and teaching, but unhappily it wrought more in the way of
invention than of recognition, and obscured, a great deal more than it dis
closed, the truth of history.
�96
The Failure of the Pulpit.
THE FAILURE OF THE PULPIT.
The Independent, discussing “ the wide and ever widening breach between
modern preaching and modern culture,” attempts the following disposition
of the question:
“ A great deal of the dissatisfaction expressed by educated men with the
manner and matter of modern preaching is only one form in which the revolt
of the age against all theology, and indeed against all preaching whatsoever,
whether good or bad, finds vent for itself. It is not the sermon, it is Chris
tianity which is objected to. This is explicitly admitted by the writer in the
Spectator of whom we have spoken [as having “ stated the prevalent indict
ment of cultivated men against makers of sermons.”]
‘ About the sermon,’
he says, ‘ I am about to state honestly what I believe thousands of men feel
secretly. I dislike good sermons just as much as bad. I do not want to be
lectured, even by a great lecturer. I object to the usual basis of the very
best sermon ever delivered in a Christian church.’ It is only fair, then, to
a great and most laborious and devoted profession, to indicate where the
trouble really lies. A great many cultivated people at present do not like to
hear preaching, . . chiefly, we think, because much of the cultivated mind
of this age has become alienated from the old faith, and is throwing itself
forth, this way and that, in an agony of bewilderment, baffled energy and
discontent. . . If every preacher of this age could preach like Paul,
preaching would continue to be an impertinence and a bore to those whose
minds have swung away from that system of belief which constitutes the
basis of all Christian preaching, good or bad ”
The truly Christian mind cannot help objecting decidedly to the assump
tions of the pulpit. The perfect Christian attitude is that of filial conscious
ness of Our Father, and absolute, direct trust in him. The pulpit claims,
not merely a hearing, to speak of God, but authority, to speak for God. It
assumes to lecture the hearer, in the name of unquestionable dogma, when
religion, justly interpreted, knows nothing of such dogma, and deems the
assertion of dogmatic authority an outrage upon spiritual freedom. So
long, therefore, as pseudo-Christianity dictates the tone of the pulpit, and
the sermon assumes the right of the preacher to proclaim dogma, instead
of promote free inquiry and persuade to free faith, so long must the first
assumption of the pulpit be hateful to truly religious minds.
Further than this, the “system of belief” which constitutes the customary
basis of preaching, has justly lost its hold upon the cultivated Christian
mind of the age, to which total depravity, wrath of God, damnation, blood
atonement, godhead of a young Jew, and infallibility of Hebrew and Chris
tian books, with transmission of same by ignorant and prejudiced interpre
ters, are superstitions as arrant as any the world ever saw. Until, therefore,
preachers shall consent to be truly Christian, to believe in God and in man
with some spirit and truth, and to thoroughly discriminate the husk of
Christianity from its truth, and offer truth only to truth-loving souls, the
providence and inspiration of our time will more and more set aside the
pulpit.
�The Need of a Free Divinity School.
97
We suggest to The Independent, which we believe means to find and to
follow the truth, a study of Christian Conceit and Christian Superstition,
as causes of the failure of the pulpit. The public ministry of religion is
certain to be welcome to the cultivated classes, and to all other classes, when
it shall be made even tolerably worthy of respect. We also beg to assure
our contemporary that the cultivated mind of this age, which is indeed
‘alienated from the old faith,’ is not in the least unhappy in its new situaation. We have had the opportunities of a pronounced heretic, during ten
or twelve years, to observe the real truth of this matter; we have besides
gathered evidence out of recent literature in all directions ; and we know
that nothing could be more ridiculous than the statement that new belief is
in an agony of bewilderment. Orthodox writers should reflect that they
learn of the exceptions only, and are not in a position to know what new
believers usually may feel.
THE NEED OF A FREE DIVINITY SCHOOL.
One of the first and greatest needs of religious and human progress in
America is a well endowed and appointed Free Religious Divinity School.
We have canvassed the matter pretty thoroughly, during the past few years,
and fully believe that this Free School of Truth must be, and that it will be.
The great cause of spiritual emancipation has many liberal friends, who do
not lack means to carry into effect any wise purpose which they may form.
To secure.this, it only needs to make evident the nature of the opportunity
now open, to wealth and faith and learning and zeal, to organize thinking
and believing people everywhere into free societies, under free teachers and
pastors; and to show the necessity to this end, and the practicability, of a
well endowed ami appointed Free Religious Divinity School. We will not
at this time argue the matter. Our present purpose is only to propound it,
and we propound it in fervent hope and full faith. Right here perhaps on
this shore of Lake Michigan, from which we write, not remote from the great
city of the West, yet among scenes of pure nature eminently suitable, we
may yet see a great Free School of Divinity, such as the world has not yet
had. The sum of Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars ought to be
immediately devoted to this grand purpose, and this generation ought not to
pass away without increasing this endowment to One Million Dollars, to
adequately provide for complete, free instruction in religion, in all its
branches, and adequate aid of every sort to students seeking the sacred
ministry of divine truth. In the whole of Christendom there is hardly one
respectable theological school. The greatly dishonest purpose to conceal, to
evade, and everyway to maintain the creed in vogue by means which equally
lack veracity and courage, ought to render them in general morally disrepu
table. There are few in which inadvertent falsification is not the art of arts.
And to support it is the dark spirit whose foul words are “devil,” “hell,”
“damnation,” ever ready to kill off, by ban if not by burning, any teacher
VOL. I.—no. I.
7
�98
Dr. Me Cosh in Boston.
or student who is led, in the sincerest and strictest development of his deepest
Christian faith, to believe better of God than the current creeds allow. And
these creeds are still a refuge of lies about man and about God, theological
old wives’ fables begotten of the darkness of heathenism, and totally unfit to
convey the grace and truth of Christianity. True Christian Religion has
waited long enough; let there be one housetop from which to proclaim the
pure truth which Jesus whispered in the ear of Judea more than eighteen
hundred years ago.
In venturing to bring to public notice a bare proposition, we yield to a
sense of the extreme urgency of an interest which has no representative yet
among religious organizations, or none prepared to appreciate the situation,
and to take action promptly and with energy. We do not hesitate because
of the possibility, or even probability, that no immediate answer will come.
We more than half believe in the prophetic office, and think it in this matter
at least our solemn duty to say to our generation of scattered believers in
the future of free religion, A Million of Money wanted for a Free
Religious Divinity School.
DR. McCOSH IN BOSTON.
The N. K Tribune thinks Free Religion will probably find a defender,
against a late tremendous assault of Dr. McCosh, in “that deep thinker,
uncommon scholar, and courageous woman, Mrs. Howe.” It is difficult to
understand what the Tribune means by deep thought, uncommon scholarship,
and courage in religion, when it finds these in the estimable woman named,
three of whose striking characteristics are conservative timidity about
departure from tradition as it has come to her, the dogmatism of very
insufficient study, and opinion not obtained by profound meditation nor
expressed usually with the spirit of real thought. The Tribune seems not
aware that Mrs. Howe is more an exponent of traditional Christianity than
of Free Religion, and that at least fifty persons might be named in New
England more likely than she to undertake an effective defence of Free
Religion, even if she chanced to be drawn into the controversy on that side.
As for Dr. McCosh, a rude schoolman who knows no better than to assault
sunlight with paving-stones, and whose utmost achievement is to darken with
dust air which will clear itself as soon as his back is turned, we hold him, on
his own ground, greatly inferior to such ripe scholars and sound thinkers as
Rev. Samuel Johnson or Rev. W. J. Potter, though doubtless in tremendous
bluster he can do more in six lectures than they in six thousand. A certain
massive and portentous ignorance, a hopeless failure of perception, charac
terize Dr. McCosh. Had he lived in America even, still more had he passed
some years in Boston, and suffered himself to open his eyes occasionally, it
is possible that he would know a little something about the nature and ground
of Free Religion. As it is, his voice is the roar of a blind son of Anak,
noticeable only as so much noise. He has no more intelligence of the spirit
�Vicious Piety.—Secularism as Religion.
99
uality, pure fervor of soul, and richness of faith which are found in the Free
Religious leaders, than a cannon has of the glory of sunlight under which
nature renews her life. It is highly probable that whatsoever things are
pure, whatsover things are of good report, will continue to be thought on,
and to be most inspiringly discoursed of, among Free Religious believers in
Boston, in spite of the lectures of Dr. McCosh. Grace and truth do not
perish out of the hearts of men and women because of deafening noise in a
Methodist meeting-house, any more than violets and roses fade and die
because of a coluinbiad fired off at Charlestown navy yard.
VICIOUS PIETY.
“ The vices of our time — that is, of a commercial and scientific age — are
fraud, chicane, falsehood, and over-eagerness in pusuit of material enjoy
ment, and scepticism as to the existence of anything higher or better.
Great numbers of the knaves of our time are in the church, ami even active
in it, ami call themselves ‘Christians’ as a help in their business.”—The
Nation, June 16, p. 379.
It would be more exact to say of the pious knaves of our time,
that they profess strict orthodox faith in “the blood of Jesus,” and
confess a hope of redemption through “the atonement alone,” without
merit of good works. And more than this, knavery finds a chance in the
mind of many tempted confessors of this doctrine, to whom it seems quite
easy to be rascals in trade and redeemed sinners through Christ. It is but
one trick and lie at a time, and the fount of absolution is close by, always
open to faith, and the more open the greater the sinner’s demerit. Life
becomes a plunge into the smut of mammon by day, and a bath of absolution
at night. Many practical men bear witness that a man who puts forward an
“evangelical” profession, among men of the world, either as mere profes
sion or for persuasion, is commonly either too weak to be trusted amid
temptations, or is already tricky, or mean, or knavish.
SECULARISM AS RELIGION.
Secularism is vastly powerful [in England] among those of the working
classes who do make the attempt to think on the most serious questions of
life. It would appear that Secularist societies have spread a net-work of
complete organization over the land,.have an effective system of tract distri
bution, and command eloquent and persuasive lecturers, who know the
working classes well, and gain the more ready access to them on the ground
of this knowledge.”—The Sunday Magazine.
This is called “infidelity” and a “gigantic evil,” by the editor whose
statement, we quote. For our part we deem “those of the working classes
who make the attempt to think on the most serious questions of life ” more
faithful to their light than any of the Christian sects. Furthermore, they
are truer to the Christian foundation than these sects. They begin right,
�100
Dr. McLeod on Buddhism.
with the religion of duty. They come nearer doing the things taught in the
Sermon on the Mount than any man does who goes apart from mankind to
seek his own salvation. But even if they did not, they are honest men and
women, who think seriously, believe sincerely, and labor earnestly, and that,
too, with the heaviest troubles of life pressing particularly upon them, and we
deem it only decent to bid them good-speed, and think them well started on
the right way, especially as there is a God, who made these men and women,
and quite likely is looking after them at least as well as we could, and possi
bly has lent them his inspiration and providence even for getting up a
religion whose sole deity and heaven are the doing of duty in common daily
life. It seems to us more important that such practical religion should
flourish than that the Pharisaism of sects should survive. We do not deem
Secularism a perfect form of religion, but we do think it better than any
form of popular Christianity. It is to us among the cheering evidences that
God Almighty has a little the start of his Grace of Canterbury, and his
Holiness of Rome, and the various potentates of dogma and custom, that
Secularism lies like a rock under the troubled sea of English life, a “gigan
tic ” adherence of the common people to the doctrine that it pays to do
right even if death is, as the poor old Bible so often implies, a final rest.
DR. MACLEOD ON BUDDHISM.
Rev. Norman Macleod, D. D., a distinguished Scotch divine whose
Christianity has been for some time growing less and less dogmatic, and
more and more humane, speaks as follows of Buddhism, in connection with
his account of a visit to a Buddhist temple in Ceylon :
“ It was interesting to see, even once, a temple with its living worshippers
representing a religion which, though now extinct in India, yet still com
mands the faith and reverence of hundreds of millions in Ceylon, Thibet,
Burmah, and China. I cannot think, from the laws of the human mind, that
their Aeari-belief is that they are to be so absorbed into the divine essence,
or Nirvana, as practically to destroy all individual existence. . A religion
which denied the immortality of a living God, or of living men, could not
possibly live from age to age in the heart-convictions of a large portion of
the human race, so opposed is such a negation to the instincts and cravings
of human nature. Either human nature has no such moral instincts, or
Buddhists have no such religion.’’
When the “New Logic,” as we have been accustomed to name it, shall be
written, it will fully justify Dr. Macleod’s'assumption that Buddhism, what
ever it may say, does not, and cannot, mean anything either foolish or bad,
in its great doctrine of the final relation of all being to the divine essence.
We make the quotation here, however, to call attention to Dr. Macleod’s way
of looking at the matter. He speaks of these Buddhists as of human brothers,
and interprets by sympathy and faith, instead of doubt and hatred. Instead
of grasping the usual orthodox side-arm, the tomahawk, with an evident
savage desire to hew in pieces before the Lord his pagan fellows, he extends
�Sakya-Muni and Atheism.—Dr. Stebbins's Demand.
101
a Christian right hand of fellowship. There is, in'the kindness with which
he speaks, no Pharisaism as of one who wishes the Buddhists well yet
expects them to be damned nevertheless, but a generous charity, and com
prehension, which hopetli all things and believeth all things. This is
Christian; the other method is anti-Christian, and none the less so because
commonly employed by those who claim exclusive knowledge of Christian
truth.
SAKYA-MUNI AND ATHEISM.
“ The atheism of Sakya-Muni has been asserted by eminent scholars, whose
judgment I am not entitled to controvert, though quite unable to accept it.”—
D. A. Wasson. “The testimony of the most competents cholars certainly
seems to us decisive in this case, as we have no knowledge of the original
sources of information. But perhaps the fact does not harmonize with Mr.
Wasson’s theories, and this may be the reason for discarding it. . . If
Mr. Wasson has any better reasons (than “ I want to” and “ because ”) for
setting aside the verdict of scholars in a question of scholarship, we fail to
see them.”—F. E. Abbot in reply to Mr. Wasson.
Mr. Abbot’s failure herein we are sorry for. The overwhelming presump
tion, established by all thorough study of religions, is, that the human mind
has ever sought, and never unsuccessfully, to find God. Therefore it is
perfectly legitimate to suspect of insufficiency the study which reports SakyaMuni an atheist, and to decline to accept it, even while modestly confessing
not knowledge enough of the studies in question to otherwise prove SakyaMuni a theist. Mr. Abbot entirely forgets the dignity of the discussion, as
well as fails conspicuously to appreciate a significant point, when he accuses
Mr. Wasson of holding a profound conviction with no better reasons than “ I
want to” and “because,” which he (Mr. A.) quotes from a small boy of his
acquaintance.
DR. STEBBINS’S DEMAND.
Rev. R. P. Stebbins, D. D., is energetically arguing for a conservative
policy among Unitarians, on the ground that this is in harmony with the
antecedents of the Unitarian body. He lamentably forgets, as conservative
Christians of every school do, that regeneration, birth out of the old into the
new, is the supreme law of genuine Christianity. There never has been,
and never can be,—certainly was not in Jesus and Paul, and probably is not
in Stebbins and Hepworth,— any form for religion except a human form.
This human form is inevitably more or less imperfect, and also more or less
stamped with peculiarities of time, place, and people, which make it good
for that time, place and people, but not so good for another time and place,
and other people. Hence the necessity of constant change, with effort at
least for improvement. Dr. Stebbins has had occasion enough to know this.
He some years since became disgusted with the failure of Unitarian parishes
to appreciate the sullen roar of his heavy guns, and their decided preference
�102
The Athauasian Creed.
of light rifled cannon, which the old columbiad says take polish because
they are made of brass. As Secretary of the American Unitarian Associ
ation, after leaving his last parish, Dr. Stebbins succeeded in nothing so
well as in stirring up a general determination to get rid, at all costs, of his
portentious and dismal imitation of orthodoxy, and to put in his place a
man who, while no less conservative in doctrine perhaps, had the sense to
see that the young and agile intelligences of the new generation cannot be
expected to repeat the heavy gait and severe mien of elder Puritanism. A
new time must have new methods and new men. We advise grandpa
Stebbins to quit roaring and storming about it.
THE ATHANASIAN CREED.
The Contemporary Review (Strahan & Co., London and New York) is in
some respects the most interesting and valuable publication of the kind
accessible to English-speaking readers. It represents the liberal element in
the Church of England, than which no section of existing Christian com
munion is more worthy of respect, whether for Christian studies or Christian
graces. Dissenting of course from its continued recognition of Jesuism as
essential to Christianity, we yet would be glad to see so admirable an organ
of truly Christian inquiry in the hands of every clergyman in the land. We
know of nothing among religious reviews equally attractive and instructive
to general readers with this representative of the broader scholarship and
more genial piety of the English national church. The publishers would
render a great service to religion in America if they would put an American
edition into our market, at a moderate price.
The August issue of the Contemporary contains an article by Dean Stanley
on “ The Athanasian Creed,” some points of which we wish to lay before
our readers. We premise that this famous creed is peculiar for the dogmatic
harshness with which it sets forth the doctrine of the Trinity, and the rigor
with which it declares the sure damnation to eternal fire of all who hesitate
to fully accept that fiction of theological speculation. It, as a binding creed,
is substantially held still by all orthodox belief, as it must be so long as Jesus
is made a God-Man and Lord and Saviour, and so long as ‘ He that believeth
not shall be damned ’ (Mark xvi. 16), is read as a text of Christian truth.
Originally, to use the language of “ The English Cyclopaedia,” this creed “was
received by the free conviction of the churches that it contained a correct
exposition of Christian doctrine;” the very way in which the authority of
the Bible, and the divine truth of all orthodox dogmas, were originally set
up among Christians. By the same general authority of the Christian
church, this creed was ascribed to Athanasius, the great theologian of the
fourth century, precisely as the fourth gospel was ascribed to the apostle
John. Nobody ever pretended to really prove the ability of primitive
�The Aihanasinn Creed.
103
Christians to detect godhead in Jesus and divinity in gospels and epistles ;
that ability has been loosely assumed ; and how much the assumption is
worth we can judge from Dean Stanley’s remarks on “ The Creed of St.
Athanasius.” He says,—
“ Its first reception and actual use in Christendom is one of the most
remarkable instances of those literary mistakes (not in the first instance a
deliberate forgery, in the vulgar sense of the word) which have exercised so
great an influence over the history of the Church. It is to be classed in this
respect with the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which formed the basis
of the popular notions of the Celestial Hierarchy ; with the false Decretals of
the early Popes, or early Emperors, which formed the basis of the Pontifical
power. Under the shadow of a great name it crept, like those other docu
ments, into general acceptance ; and then, when that shadow was exorcised
by the spell of critical inquiry, still retained the place which it had won
under false pretences. Through the Middle Ages it was always quoted as
his work. At the time of the Reformation, the name of the champion of
Christian orthodoxy still dazzled the vision of the Reformers. In the Augs
burg Confession, and in the Thirty-nine Articles, in the Belgic and in the
Bohemian Confessions, in the ‘ Ecclesiastical Polity ’ of Hooker, it is unhes
itatingly received as the ‘Creed of St. Athanasius.’ No one at that time
entertained any doubt of its authorship. The very year of its composition
was fixed; the very hole in the Abbey of S. Maximin, near the Black Gate
at Treves, was pointed out as the spot where Athanasius had written it in
the concealment of his western exile. Yet it is now known with absolute
certainty not only that Athanasius never did write it, but never could have
written it. The language in which it was composed was probably unknown
to him. We shall see, as we proceed, that the terminology which it employs
was condemned by him. It contains at least one doctrine which he would
have repudiated. But . . the treatise of the unknown author who composed
this, in some respects, anti-Athanasian Creed, has been embalmed for poster
ity by its early ascription to the Father of orthodoxy. . . By the magic
of his name this confession, of unknown and ambiguous character, found its
way into the Western Church, and has been kept alive and retained a charmed
existence after its real character had been discovered. . . The history of
the reception of the Creed of St. Athanasius is like the parallel history of
the reception of the Pope's Infallibility — ‘ gangrened with imposture ; ’ not
willful imposture it may be, not conscious fraud, but still leaving it so desti
tute of historical foundation as to render doubly imperative the duty of
testing its claims to authority by its own intrinsic merits.”
These last strong words are fully justified by the facts. And not only are
they applicable where Dean Stanley applies them, but over the whole field of
ecclesiastical and theological support of accredited Christianity. That
support is gangrened with imposture, not willful it may be, not conscious and
deliberate fraud, but still leaving it so destitute of honest foundation in any
truth ever taught as to render absolutely imperative the duty of testing all
claims of Christianity to authority by the intrinsic merits of its teaching, as
reason and faith can take cognizance of these.
�104
Duty Without Heaven.
AN EVANGELICAL INSTANCE.
In the article from which we have quoted above, Dean Stanley says that
“it was expected, almost wished (by certain orthodox leaders in England),
that a frightful, sudden death, such as that which befel Arius in the streets
of Constantinople [who was believed by one party to have been killed by
God in answer to orthodox prayers], would be inflicted on an eminent scholar
who had come to take his part in making better understood the Holy Scrip
tures, and in kneeling with his brethren around the table of their common
Lord. . . Sentiments like these . . . are the natural fruits of the ancient
damnatory spirit of the age whence those clauses originated. The meaning
of the clauses is now reduced, by ‘considerable intellectual caution’ to
something much more like the spirit of the Gospel. But, to anyone who
accepts them in their full sense, or who is influenced by their intention, it is
only natural that the persons against whom they are believed to be directed
should be viewed with unspeakable horror. A man, of whom we are unhes
itatingly able to say that, ‘he shall, without doubt, perish everlastingly,’
must be the most miserable of human beings—to be avoided, not only in
sacred, but in common intercourse, as something too awful to be approached
or spoken of.”
DUTY WITHOUT HEAVEN.
“The doing of duty without any hope of a future is a daring but a dreary
faith,” says the editor of The Sunday Magazine, in commenting on the Secu
larist confession of faith. Let each speak for himself. We can testify that
there is an inexpressible, heavenly blessedness in giving up all hope of
reward, future as well as present, to do present duty, and that the gloomier
the outlook from the post of duty has seemed, the more would the irrepres
sible sense of heaven in the heart assert itself. We have frequently found
in men and women this perfectly serene, joyous satisfaction in mere doing
duty. It accords with all our study of the human mind, that the best
attainment of man leaves him where he can find perfect delight in duty,
wholly apart from a future, while our observation of human experience has
repeatedly shown us that doing of duty can be profoundly joyous even where
disbelief of a future exists. Those who have never tried a religion which
forbids eagerness about one’s own redemption, and commands the cultivation
of spiritual courage to share all hope with all souls, ought to remember that
their cowardice in the battle of life cannot be a measure of the courage of
soldiers of humanity, who are perfectly willing to do their duty here and
take the result.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Examiner: a monthly review of religious and humane questions, and of literature. Vol. 1, November,1870, no. 1
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [Winnetka, IL.]
Collation: 104 p. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contents: Crazy Chicago; or the back stairs to fortune -- Charles Dickens and his Christian Critics -- The Women and the trial --Dr. J.F. Clarke against theism --The Unitarian situation -- History of the devil, his rise, greatness and downfall / Albert Reville --Rev. Mr. Abbot at Toledos. 'The woman and the trial' concerns Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher-Tilton trial. Reville's article was possibly the reason why Conway kept this item - a review of Gustave Roskoff's 'History of the Devil' translated from 'Revus des deux mondes'; his own 'Demonology and devil lore' would be published in 1879.
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[s.n.]
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1870
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G5448
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Periodicals
Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Examiner: a monthly review of religious and humane questions, and of literature. Vol. 1, November,1870, no. 1), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Devil
Religion
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Text
1—-----------&
D U AN
jor
A Twofold Journey
With Manifold Purposes.
BY THE AUTHORS OF
“THE COMING K
” and “THE SILIAD.”
Contents :
Dedication
Canto the
Canto the
Canto the
Canto the
Canto the
Canto the
Canto the
Canto the
First .
Second .
Third .
Fourth .
Fifth .
Sixth .
Seventh
Eighth
.
.
.
.
.
.
. Ben Trovato.
. Ancestry, Parentage, and Education.
. The Queenless Court.
. Progress through Bohemia.
. Mother Church and her Children.
. The Savour of Society.
. The Lords and Ladies of the Drama.
. A Sojourn in Deer Land.
. The Smoke-Room at the M------ Club.
Junbun ;
WELDON & CO., 15, Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
1874.
�yON DUAN ADVËRTÏSEMENTS.
E. MOSES & SON,
Merchant Tailors and Outfitters for all Classes.
OVERCOATS in Great Variety, 19s. to £7.
The Newest Styles and Patterns.
Extensive Preparations have been made in every Department for the Winter Season.
A Distinct Department
for
Boys’ Clothing.
ALL GOODS MARKED IN PLAIN FIGURES,
RULES FOR SELF-MEASURE.
Any article Exchanged, or, if desired,
the money returned.
Patterns, List of Prices,
and Fashion Sheet, Post Free.
E. MOSES & SON’S Establishments are Closed every Friday evening at sunset till Saturday
evening at sunset, when business is resumed till eleven o’clock.
The following are the only Addresses of E. MOSES & SON:
¿CORNER OF MINORIES AND ALDGATE,
London]new oxford street, corner of hart street,
(corner
OF TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD & EUSTON ROAD.
COUNTRY BRANCH—BRADFORD, YORKSHIRE.
MUSICAL BOX DEPOTS, 56, Cheapside j and 22, Ludgate Hill.
WATCHES AT ABOUT HALF-PRICE,
By eminent makers (Frodsham, M'Cabe, Barraud, Dent, &c.), in Gold and Silver, quite unimpaired by wear; the system
of warranty ensuring complete satisfaction to purchasers. Catalogues, with prices, gratis «id post free on application»
WALES & M'CULLOCH, 22, Ludgate Hill; and 56, Cheapside, London,
�DUAN.
JON
By the Authors
of
“ The Coming K----- ” and “ The Siliad.”
Dedication.
EN DIZZY ! you’re a humbug—Humbug
laureate,
And representative of all the race ;
Although ’tis true that you turned out a Tory at
Last, yours is still an enigmatic face.
And now, O Sphyntic renegade, what are you at
With all the Rurals in and out of place ?
You'll educate them, won’t you, Master Ben ?
And make them think that they are clever,
very,
Until the trick is won, and they’ll wish, then,
They’d taken you cum grano Salis-\>Mxy.
No wonder Mr. Miall’s making merry,
And rallying his Liberation men—
Where will you leave the boobies in the lurch—
He sees your tongue so plainly in your cheek,
Have you resolved to double D------ the Church ?1
When in your Church’s champion role you speak.
You’ve dished the Whigs before; we now would
Go on, neat humbug, laughing in your sleeve.
sing,
What is the pie that you’re so busy making ?
A dainty dish to set before the Thing—2
Or aught that its digestion will be shaking ?—
Or is it Discord’s apple that you bring
Or will you set the good old Tories quaking,
And winking, as you bid the Church not falter ;
We joy to see her aid from you receive,
To guard her ’gainst the dangers that assault
her;
The English Church has had her last reprieve,
Now_y<?zz are standing boldly by her altar.—
By saying that they hitherto have missed tricks,.
Already in the glass we see the image,
By not going in for equal polling districts ?
Of an impending, big religious scrimmage.
�DEDICA TION.
O, who shall tell the turmoil and the strife—
The more interminable because religious—
With which the coming Session will be rife,
When all the rival creeds shall wax litigious,
To help the State keep Madame Church, his wife,
In proper order ?
It will be prodigious !
The war of politics becomes mere prattle
Beside a rubrical religious battle.
Thank God ! it’s coming ! we shall live to see
The State Church crushed, and God from
Mammon parted ;
England from dowered priestcraft will be free,
The Bishops from the Upper House all started ;
Then flowers and fruit will fill fair wisdom’s
tree,
And Superstition from the land be carted.
O, Dizzy, for the coming state of things,
Our muse her warmest thanks, prospective, sings !
The Pope had better dance his can-cans straight
way,
For weak-souled Marquises he’s proselyted ;
For Truth is mustering at Error’s gateway,
Demanding that
the
people’s wrongs
be
righted ;
Priestcraft is doomed, and this will go a great
way
Tow’rds bringing sunshine into lands be
nighted.
“ The moaning wind
Oh yes, Ben, we have
heard it—
Is rising now, and woe to them that stirred it !
And we, because we call a spade a spade,—
Despising weak and washy euphemisms,—
Find everywhere false accusations made
Against us by the smarting “ ists” and “isms”
�DEDICA TION.
We have attacked ; they like not to be flayed
O’er fires made up with their own catechisms ;
So, as they writhe and twist like dying eels,
They make the air resound with libellous squeals.
Some have accused us of a strange design
Against the Heads and Tales3 of the land ;
They’ve traced it in The Siliad's ev’ry line,
And in The Coming K------ seen treason’s
brand.
Well, it no way displeases natures fine
As ours are, when our readers understand
More than we write ; or less, in very truth :
We mean no war; we’ve only crossed the Pruth.4
To the cool readers of this temp’rate clime,
Our style of writing may appear erotic ;
But what is ours to Musset’s passioned rhyme,
Or Hugo’s shafts ’gainst all that is despotic ?
The nervous English of this modern time
Will own that in our lines, poor things, is no
tic—
’Xcept douloureux, perhaps, which brings a pain—
We’ll hope we have not giv’n a twinge in vain.
We don’t believe, however, in the painful
Expression worn by some whom we have seen,
Who, speaking of our work, seemed, in the main,
full
Of pimples on their mind, and sought to screen
Impostumations foul, feigning a brainful
Of purest thoughts, and fancies always clean :
Such people are like blow-flies, who secrete
Their poisoned ova in the freshest meat.
Then there’s that cadging dodger, who saw fit
To write himself down Ass, on scores of pages,
And, in a volume lacking sense or wit,
To tout for preferment.
When next his wages
�lv
DEDICATION.
Are paid for such like raids, perhaps he’ll hit,
Or try to hit, the foe that he engages :—
It must be so annoying to lickspittle
As he did, and be wrong in every tittle.
Go to ! you reverend, “lining” gentleman ;
Go, take your ’davies, prostitute your pen ;
Go, do your hireling work, as best you can,
And be, as usual, all things to all men ;—
Be high, or broad, or low, as suits your plan,
And, greedily, essay the work of ten ;
But, if you’ve got a spark of manly virtue,
Don’t lie again of one who’s never hurt you.
Enough of scolding—in our purpose pure,
We care not what they call us—Fool, or Van
dal;
Of good and true souls’ approbation sure,
We glory in the hate of those who brand all
Plain truths as treason ; and who can’t endure
That we should lance and probe each public
scandal.
The fact being that these purists, who would
urge on
Our flaying, need themselves the moral surgeon.
’Tis pleasanter to see that light is spreading,
That Science has bowled Dogma’s middle
stump ;
And that the rays which Reason’s surely shedding,
Are penetrating now the dense, dark lump
Of Superstition ; that fair Truth is heading
Splay-footed Prejudice, the ugly frump ;
That Tyndall’s in the van, and naught can turn
him—
Oh, wouldn’t all the Bigots like to burn him !
Confusion fills the priestly camp ; the tocsin
That called to Church is summoning to Arms ;
I
�1,
-
-
■
-
!
iI ------ -—”
|
DEDICA TION.
The frightened priests are calling all their flocks in,
But find they heed no more the ancient charms ;
|
They vainly, now, are robed their smartest smocks
in,
Their threats and curses fill with no alarms ;
But there they stand, the church’s light so dim in,
And find their followers are but fools and women.
v
The morning comes, the outer darkness breaks,
And perfect day upon her shall, at last, steal ;
She dreams, and even in her visions shakes
From her the bloated Bourbon of the Bastile ;
Shrieks, as her hand the young Napoleon takes,
For at his touch dread mem’ries of the past
steal
O’er her ; and, vowing on his race, Vendetta,
She wakes and clings for safety to Gambetta.
Confusion fills the City—Samson’s fall
Has much vexed the financial Philistines ;
P And for another unjust judge they call,
’Stead of King Crump, who crumples their
You’re suffering—is it not so ?—from the gout;
Podagral pains afflict you, so our pen
designs,
And is a burden to them, as King Saul
Was to the Israelites.
And now, we mean to spare your feelings, Ben,
It is hard lines,
No doubt, to find they can nowise ensnare him—
He won’t be bought—no wonder they can’t “ bear”
him.
Confusion fills the Country—Tory Squires,
Elated at their triumph, try to stop
The march of progress, damp down Freedom’s
fires,
And ignorance’s shaking knees to prop ;
The peasant’s child, these worthies say, requires
No education, he his books must drop—
They care not how degraded their poor neighbour,
Shall show you mercy, and we will not flout
You further—may you soon be well! and then,
Why, then, your former mission set about,
Begin again, with resolution hearty,
To educate your stupid Tory party.
Teach it to use its brains, and ears, and eyes,
Teach it to think that Bigotry’s a blunder ;
Teach it that Education is a prize,
Teach it to hear the moaning wind and thunder,
Teach it to heed the people’s warning cries ;
Teach it to rend the Church and State asunder :
TeaGh it—-but, there, we trust to your sagacity,
For you know best your followers’ capacity.
Their sole idea is to get cheap labour.
Meantime, Ben Dizzy, we proceed to dedicate,
Confusion fills fair France—her breast is torn
By Royal Sham bores, Bonapartist bullies;
Her grief is great, and grievous to be borne,
Her cup of tribulation very full is.
But hope is springing, as she sits forlorn,
And waits for Fate to move the proper pulleys ;
In honest, simple verse, our lays to you ;
And though in flattering strains we do not predi-
cate,
Believe us, our intent is good and true.—
We must our Cantos with a moral medicate,
Because we wish a doctor’s work to do :
Her lips shall never an Imperial cub lick,
Our country’s sick, we’ve read the diagnosis,
May she firm found a glorious, free Republic !
The knife, applied in time, may save necrosis.
�DEDICA TION.
vi
We imply no profane intentions to Mr. Disraeli. He is
on the side of the Angels, and, of course, never swears. The
“ double D.” refers merely to that Disendowment and Dis
establishment of the English Church, which we rejoice to
think, thanks to our Prime Minister, are so imminent.
2 Thing or Althing. So was called the first Political
Assembly of the Northern nations. To Iceland, many years
before the Normans overcame the English, went many
thousands of hardy, intelligent settlers from Norway. These
were the men who preferred to be damned with all their an
cestors, than to be saved without them. Rather than give
way to Olaf, who had become a saint, and therefore a perse
cutor, they elected to depart and seek other shores. Thus,
little Iceland became a great community. One Ulfljot was
the man for the Thing; the hour was 930, A.d. Thence
forward it met annually on the plains of Thing Valla. For
the benefit of our present Premier, who may use the informa
tion to serve up in his next Bath Letter, or to his Aylesbury
1
Ordinary Farmers (these yeomen, surely, should be extra
ordinary ones), when next he addresses them, we shall add
one more piece of news. It may be useful to him to know,
and to keep in reserve—in company with Wilkes’s Extinct
Volcanoes, Coningsby's Plundering and Blundering, Balzac’s
Definition of a Critic, M. Thiers’ Obituary Addresses, and
the other choice specimens of his talent for eclectic epigrammatizing—that the President of the Thing was called Lagmadur. The first syllable is unpleasantly suggestive of the
rural régime, under which we have the present happiness,
according to the received formula, to live, but we trust to the
Member for Bucks to keep us moving.
Tales. Suchlike and so distinguished.
See Kinglake’s "Crimea; ” or the work of any veracions
historian of the Russian War, say that of M. Thiers, or,
better still, that of any of the companions of the author of
the “History of Caesar.”
Notes to Canto the First.
Our Gentleman from Dapping (VIII).—Every public
schoolboy knows that the fearless and reproachless Bayard
was the grandfather of Chastelard. But, as everybody is
not a public schoolboy, we print from the Dictionnaire de
Bouillet the following brief account of Mary’s hapless lover :
•—“ Pierre de Boscobel de Chastelard, un gentilhomme
Dauphinois, était petit-fils de Bayard. Ayant conçu une
violente passion pour la célèbre Marie Stuart, épouse de
Francois II., il suivit cette princesse en Ecosse après la mort
de ce monarque. Il fut surpris dans la chambre de Marie,
et condamné à perdre la tète.” Mr. Swinburne has sung, in
impassioned lines, the moving history of Chastelard’s erotic
adventures ; and the Saturday Review, whilst rebuking, has
fully described them.
David, Bathsheba (XIV).—Mr. Peter Bayle, in his Critical
and Historical Dictionary, thus sums up the case he makes
against the royal prophet, the man after God's own heart :
— “Those who shall think it strange that I speak my
mind about the actions of David compared with natural
morality, are desired to consider three things :—I. They
themselves are obliged to own that the conduct of this
prince towards Uriah is one of the greatest crimes which
can be committed. There is then only a difference of more
to less between them and me ; for, I agree with them, that
the other faults of the prophet did not hinder him being filled
with piety, and great zeal for the glory of God. He was
subject alternately to passion and grace. This is a misfor
tune attending our nature since the fall of Adam. The
grace of God very often directed him ; but on several
occasions passion got the better ; policy silenced religion.
2. It is very allowable of private persons, like me, to judge
of Facts contained in the Scripture, when they are not ex
pressly characterized by the Holy Spirit. If the Scripture,
in relating an action, praises or condemns it, none can
appeal from this judgment: every one ought to regulate his
approbation or censure on the model of Scripture. I have
not acted contrary to this Rule: the facts, upon which I
have advanced my humble Opinion, are related in the Holy
Scripture, without any mark of approbation affixed by the
Spirit of God. 3. It would be doing an injury to the
Eternal Laws, and consequently to the true Religion, to
give Libertines occasion to object, that when a man has been
once inspired by God, we look upon his Conduct as the Rule
of Manners; so that we should not dare to condemn the
Actions of People, though most opposite to the notions of
Equity, when such an one had done them. There is no
Medium in this Case ; either these actions are not good, or
Actions like them are not evil ; now, since we must choose
either the one or the other, is it better not to take care of the
Interests of Morality than the glory of a private Person ? •
Otherwise, will it not be evident, that one chooses rather to
expose the Honour of God than that of a mortal Man ?
Own the Corti (XVI).—According to the strict classical
ipsissima verba of the Sacred Vedas of the United States,
this should be written " acknowledge the corn.” Dr. Scheie
de Vere thus narrates the origin of the phrase. It arose out
of the misfortune of a flat-boatman, who had come down to
New Orleans, with two flat boats, laden, the one with corn,
the other with potatoes. He was tempted to enter a gambling
establishment, and lost his money and his produce. On re
turning to the wharf at night, he found the boat laden with
corn had sunk in the river ; and when the winner came next
morning to demand the stake, he received the answer,
“Stranger, I acknowledge the corn, take ’em; but the
potatoes you cant have, by thunder ! ”
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�i
JON
DUAN.
Canto The First.
i.
HE blood of Duan’s race was very blue—
In indigo, indeed, an uncle dealt—
The Heralds’ College, too, had got a clue,
Pursuing which, the prouder members felt
The Duans were as old as any Jew,
Who had been asked by them to kindly melt
Certain acceptances, from time to time—
As done by Israel in every clime.
II.
The fluid in the Duans’ veins was mixed;
Not wholly Saxon, nor of Norman strain— •
For early tribes had not their dwellings fixed,
But wandered forth in search of grass and grain.
Much as, sweet reader, yesterday, thou picksed
Thy villa on the Thames, close to the train ;—To mind thy shop in London smoke; then rush
Into the country from the crowd and crush.
IV.
They searched thro’ Lubbock, his Primeval man
(Whose words weigh well, and far above his coin),
Hoping to find a record of the clan,
But couldn’t trace a single rib or loin
From which they might have come; so chose a branNew pedigree, which sought Jon’s folk to join
With one who came with Marie’s suite from France,
Marie the sweet, who led the men a dance.
v.
All know—a periphrase which means, how few—
’Mongst Marie’s amants stood French Chastelard,
Of whom ’tis saying nothing fresh or new,
That his unfortunate, or lucky, star
Brought her to love him whom she, after, slew;—
A mangled victim ’neath her loving Car.
But Bayard’s grandson felt, when he gained Mary,
Ecstatic bliss, which naught could raise or vary.
VI.
ill.
The Duans’ archives do not throw much light on
What rank they held, as Cave men, in the past;
But, as their modern way is just to fight on,
We may suppose they were the men to last;—
That age was not the one to form a Crichton,
Then were no feeds to speak of, but of mast;
And dinner orat’ry was not in vogue,
Words were so short that all was monologue.
Now, ’tis a very strange, tho’ truthful fact,
That some men, tho’ they’ve known the tip-top
dames,
Have not disdained with lowlier maids to act,
As though the Royal or Imperial flames
Had something in them which so much attacked
The nerves, that ’spite of the most loyal claims.
They’ve fell a-flirting with a “ Waiting Lady”— •
And thought it venial if the Queen was “fadey.”
B
�yON DUAN.
2
VII.
XII.
fis certain. Chastelard had no excuse
Of fadiness in Mary, to atone
For making eyes at others, but the deuce
Is in some men, for when they’re left alone,
They can’t contain themselves ; but on the loose
They get ; and enter the unfaithful zone,
In moment’ry unmindfulness of her
Who, did she know it, would kick up a stir.
She was a Marguerite, Bellanger to wit,
Who pleased the Third Napoleon for awhile,
By wiles well known, and for the old well fit—
These to describe won’t suit our English style ;
So, by your leave, we would them pretermit,
Altho’ naught pleases more than scenes of guile;
And, to speak truth—which is above and ’fore all—
France is, of all known lands, the most immoral!
VIII.
To Duan’s forefathers we would return ;
But must a moment keep you in the South,
To note where Austria’s Empress wished to learn
The English tongue from moustached, warlike
mouth.
Ah ! Francis Joseph, you with rage may burn,
But, if you won’t forsake the ways of youth,
Your charming wife, slim-waisted, full of grace,
Will make her game and start a steeple chase.
XIII.
til
Our gentleman from Dauphiny had seen
The Queen’s four Maries, and full often thought
Had Mary Stuart not his mistress been,
One of these dames d’honneur he would have
sought ;
For he did fancy one of them did lean
A little to his side, when he had brought,
Perchance, some heather from King Arthur’s Seat,
To please his Queen, whom he had come to meet.
IX.
And why is it, sw’eet woman, you incline
To listen to /zA tongue, and note his eye,
And love the fellow, when he isn’t thine ?
Is it because you like to make her cry,
In whose possession this same youth has lien ?
We fear it is so, and must call “Fie ! fie !”
Because, if we don’t, others will do’t, you know,
And we, as Jove, had better scold our Juno.
x.
B
Fîî
F
’Twas true enough ; one of the four was struck,
And Chastelard, the striker, had his way ;
So well it is to live in way of luck ;
And good such facts, for those who sing the lay—
For, if there wrere no doe to please the buck,
No “poor deluded,” nor “ deceiver gay”—
What would become of novelists and poets,
Tho’, for Afflatus’ sake, they drank up “Moet’s ”?
XT.
il
R
Have you not heard of Widow Eugénie,
Who, when a wife, quitting the Emperor,
Did from the Court of France instanter flee,
And scandal make, because a woman bore
A burden she should not ;—one of those filles
Who care for naught but naughtiness, and store
Of di’monds, coral, pearl, and rentes, or rolls
Of billets, notes, or cheques on Coutts or Bowles ?
XIV.
From Dan to Beersheba ’tis all the same :—
Jacob and Rachel; Sarah and the King ;
David, Bathsheba ; very much to blame
(She was a bad mark for the Psalmist’s sling);
The tale don’t change; ’tis only in the name :
’Tis not—thank God!—otir place the dirt to fling,
We leave such work to Beecher and his Church,
Where’s dirt enough all Brooklyn to besmirch.
xv.
We hope it’s now extremely clear to all
Where Duan’s people came from ; for, indeed,
We can’t get on without some facts to fall
Upon ; yet, now, some critic who shall read
This verse, may, if permitted, choose to call
Attention to the fact that our Jon’s breed
Is not legitimate, but bastard-born
Well, if it must be so,—we’ll own the corn.
XVI.
Our first love-making, that’s a great event,
Standing from out the flat shores of our life,
Like Devon sandstone, or chalk cliff in Kent;
But seldom ending in her being our wife,
Whose charms our green youth th’ unknown fire
had lent;
For boys of eighteen, in their first love-strife,
Find older women more omnipotent
Than younger demoiselles who blush and start,
Not having learned the ways of Cupid’s dart.
�JON DUAN.
3
XVII.
|
|
,
XXII.
Not more exempt than other white or black man,
Kalmuck, Caucasian, or wan d’ring Tartar,
Or Indian Red, or pig-tail China Jackman—
Each one for ever wanting some one’s “darter”—Jon felt a shock, and straight became a pack-man
With a love load, for which he gave in barter
That adoration pure, and worship truthful,
Which blasé men sneer down as “ very youthful.”
The hill is breasted, and the top is reached,
And fast down hill the line of hounds extends;
And to the yokel old, and boy just breeched,
Who stand beneath the hedge, just where it
bends,
It is a view superb; and ’twill be preached
That night, in slow Kent phrase, which greatly
tends
To help the talethat- “ ’twor a real bloomin’
Soight to see the hounds over plough a-roomin’.”
XVIII.
Though Duan often laughed at his first hit,
I
I
When harder grown, and much more up to snuff ;
Yet, when ’twas on, he felt the strong love-fit
Shake him with strong sensations, quite enough
To please and torture him, as he did sit
In admiration mute—the simple muff !—
Of sweet Maria, as she bent her head
Over her book or plate, or prayed, or fed.
XXIII.
Lady Maria is but gently moving,
She knows, the paces ; knows, too, the wire
fences;
And tho’ her temperament’s inclined to loving,
She’s found that common sense the topping sense
is;
So she reserves herself, but keeps improving
The place she has; but never once commences
To try her very best, till she’s persuaded
She must try other, charms, since youth’s are
faded.
XXIV.
XIX.
Like other women who have got to thirty,
She knew a little of the ways of men,
IAnd, just as happened to our Royal Bertie,
Duan was taught some things he didn’t ken
Before, and found the new-learned ways so “purty,”
That he became Maria’s slave, and ten
I Times more than many people thought was proper,
They riding went:—and once Jon came a
“cropper.”
In following foxes, she was just the same,
She was as cool at this as when a heart
Was startled by her eyes; or other game,
On which she’d set her mind, was in the mart;
N or cruel, nor selfish was she, but a dam.e
Ready on any jig or joust to start;
And loved that man who near at hand did lay,
To take her to the field or to the play.
xxv.
Now Duan suited her just to a “t,”
Except in this—he was a trifle young;
That didn’t matter for a vis-a-vis,
But in the hunting field, it might be flung
Into her face, by a dear, kind lady
(Thus Charity adorns the female tongue),
That she had brought her nephew out from Eton,
Where, probably, he had been lately beaten.
XXVI.
xx.
’Twas in a hunt down with the West Kent hounds,
Over the hills, from Horton to the right;
And tho’ the pack’s not good, and wood abounds,
Yet ’twas a pretty and exciting sight
To see the horsemen; glorious, too, the sounds
Of the ground-striking hoofs ; fierce, too, the light
She knew that Duan loved her, but she’d passed—
Like nearly all who are bon-ton, just now—■
Through such experiences in years amassed,
That she well knew the value of a vow
�4
JON DUAN.
Made by a youth to her who’s aging fast;—
She knew some day or other they would “ row.”
Were there not hidden in her books and drawers,
Portraits of lovers she had lost by scores ?
XXVII.
But if we slowly canter in this way,
Searching my Lady’s mind, the night will come,
And find our hunters, after a hard day,
Distant a weary twenty miles from home.
So that we catch Jon Duan, let us pray—
And, as it’s heavy going on wet loam,
We’ll spur our Pegasus with hopes of laurel;
And pass the field of horses, bay and sorrel.
XXVIII.
In the best families, accidents occur ;
And hunting accidents are never rare,—
Think of the chances : you may catch your spur,
Cannon your enemy, or throw your mare :,
In many such ways you may make a stir,
And at a county meeting gain a stare,
From some sweet creature, who, like Desdemona,
Loves hair-breadth ’scapes as well as Dea bona.
XXIX.
Duan’s last gallop was almost performed,
Although he’d no idea of what was coming ;
And, as veracious poets, well informed,
We should not merit praises, but a drumming
Out of the Laureate’s fort so late we stormed,
If we delayed from saying, that the numbing
Sensation Duan’s just experiencing
Were not due to ill riding, or bad fencing.
XXX.
For ’twas no fence he’d gone at, nor drop jump,
Nor anything that tries a horseman’s skill;
And tho’ some roarers had begun to pump,
Through having gone the pace that’s sure to kill
The duffers ; yet J on’s mare, a thorough trump,
Went steady, as an old ’un at a mill;
So we must tell you in the following strain,
Why Duan lay extended on the plain.
XXXI.
For him, as many others, ’twas a drain
That settled him ; a drain too much, in fact,
Which had been made to carry off the rain,
But sent our hero spinning—a worse act,
�JON DUAN.
Causing, perhaps, concussion of the brain ;
So sudden and so shocking the impact.
For Duan’s mare, alas, put her foot in it,
And Duan’s head came “ crack,” in half a minute.
5
That he the chase loved well as pill and blister—
Felt Duan’s pulse; and said, there’ll be no hearse
Wanted for him this bout, if common care
Is taken, but he’s bound to lose his hair.
XXXII.
Our hero lay there very much at rest;
The blood oozed from his temple, o’er his eye ;
And all his get-up, hat and coat and vest,
Was sadly soiled ; and some said he would die
Before assistance came ; which added zest
To the day’s sport; though some might haply cry,
When they did hear their favourite was killed,
Upon a field not warlike, but just tilled.
XXXVII.
He’d lost his fox, and now must lose his hair,
’Twas very hard ; at least it seemed hard lines ;
But, then, you see, he’d gained a something there
Which they knew not; for Providence combines
A set of compensations, and don’t spare
For lenience e’en to sinners’ faults and fines ;
Content if of good deeds she find a few—an’
There really was a lot of good in Duan.
XXXIII.
Not many stopped to see what could be done :
A hunt is not the place for sentiment ;
Those for’ard didn’t want to lose the fun,
And were on Reynard’s death much more intent,
Than caring for the life of any one
As human as themselves ; quite innocent
Of any motive, yet no doubt believing
The world would be improved by some men leaving.
XXXIV.
But we will do some justice while we may,—
And, place aux dames, my Lady gallops up
On her old grey, well warranted to stay
The longest run, and ready aye to sup
On his bran mash at close of hardest day ;
Welcomed at home by stable cat and pup,—■
Lady Maria joins the little group,
Nor lets, on seeing Jon, her courage droop.
XXXV.
Forth from her flask a little spirit pours
Into our hero’s mouth ; his poor pale lips
Reminding her of kisses by the scores
She’d had of them ; such as a woman sips,
Who’s fond of kissing, and, in fact, adores
The men who give them ; ’twas her ladyship’s
Delight, indeed ; and we repeat once more,
She’d plenty had from other men before.
xxxvi.
Duan’s white brow she bandaged like a Sister
Of Charity, or like a St. John’s nurse,
With her own handkerchief, while, to assist her,
A little sporting doctor—none the worse
XXXVIII.
Two “varmer’s” men upon a hurdle took him,
Gently as if he’d been their little child,
To a near cottage, nor at all they shook him ;
For little food had made their natures mild.
And Lady May not for an inch forsook him,
But on his handsome face, all-hoping, smiled.
It is quite true—if you’d a woman win,
Get weak or wounded, then you will “ wire in.”
XXXIX.
With more of tender feeling than she’d felt
For Duan all the time that he had courted her,
My Lady, self-controlled, unused to melt,
Smiling most sweetly just when things most
thwarted her,
Having the nature of the'happy Celt—
(Debrett and Burke of Irish blood reported
her)—
My Lady led the way for Duan’s entry,
And, as the yokels bore him in, stood sentry.
XL.
The cottage was a lovely little place,
Belonging to my lord, we mean not ours, but
Lady Maria’s lord, who had the grace,
Being a kind lord—blessed, too, with the
“Gower” strut—■
To be quite blind to the most obvious trace
Of ’Ria’s “goings on,” e’en in her bower shut;
Nor cared a jot for what was said by rumour,
As long as Lady M. kept in good humour.
�JON DUAN
XLI.
We hope we’re clear before our readers now—
We’ve had a deal of trouble with the rhyme ;
We’ve landed Duan, who will make his bow
As soon as may be, in his gaysome prime ;
Cured of his wound;—but, there, we don’t know how
His heart will feel; still, loving is no crime,
And we, with all our hearts, wish Duan joy,
Having become quite spooney on the boy.
XLII.
And sweet on him, my Lady came—Eheu !
’Tis ever so ; one gives the cheek to kiss,
The other kisses it: we know it, so do you :
Duan before his fall had felt the bliss
Of loving; now, somehow, he’d lost the cue,
Whilst Lady May had found how much she’d
miss
When Duan should depart; but in her cooings,
She never once deplored her present doings.
XLIII.
Is that a fact about remorse, we wonder ?
Is it the least true that men do repent
When youth and age lie many years asunder,
And all our brightness and our force are spent?—
Grieve men for youthful follies as a blunder ?—
Is sackcloth worn for salad merriment ?—
It may be so ; still we think, indigestion
Alone makes men say “Yes ” to such a question.
XLIV.
We’ve known a many various men in life,
High, Low, Jack, Game, all four, all sorts and
sizes ;
Some who’ve behaved like bricks in serious strife,
Some on the bench, some summon’d to th’ assizes,
One’s in the Church, one’s just divorced his wife,
And one’s a publisher, who advertises
What he declares is “ Beeton’s Annual New,”
Whilst B. asserts the statement isn’t true.
XLV.
Being inquisitive, that we might know
From diff’rent minds what each felt on this point,
We’ve asked the men above if it is so
With them, if they regretted any joint
�yON DUAN.
Proceedings in those sweet spring days, that go
So swift and are so precious, that anoint
With pungent memories all the years that follow,
When baldness comes, and teeth are growing
hollow.
XLVI.
Well, each one’s answer show’d the self-same thing,
Which was, that they’d enjoyed their youth-time
greatly,
And that the only trouble and real sting
Was, in some cases, that they’d grown too
stately-—(Which meant, too fat) that no new times could bring
The pleasures of the past ; — when Bridget,
“ nately,”
Would dance a jig, Janet the Highland Fling,
Rose fill the cup, and Alice ditties sing.
XLVII.
Ah ! dear old Béranger has caught the strain—
“ La jambe bien faite et le temps perduf
Never such honest verse we’ll see again ;
For, readers (this betwixt ourselves and you),
Humbug has on this land such strong chains lain,
We ne’er, with all our strength, can break them
through,
Until—oh ! happy day, arise ! arise !—
Truth makes Hypocrisy her lawful Prize.
XLVIII.
’Twas most important you should understand
Our feelings on the subject of Remorse,
Because the subject that we have in hand—
(That it’s objective, Bismarck would enforce)
Duan, the subject, is of that stout band
Who nothing but the natural, will endorse;
And, as we can’t be fighting our own hero,
We “ ditto” say, though Cant may weep, “Oh,
dear, oh ! ”
XLIX.
As Duan, soon, became a little better,
And his hurt temple had begun to heal ;
He learnt how much he was my Lady’s debtor,
And with his thanks, and more, soon made her
feel
How sweet caresses are ; and thinking, set her,
How grateful manhood is ; and set the seal
Of real fervour on the yielding wax,
Which, when not felt, makes loving limp and lax.
7
L.
These cottage days, alas, too quickly fled ;
And ever more my Lady treasured them;
For, though she gaily spent her time, and led,
In after life, the rout, nor sought to stem
Her later fancies, when Jon’s love was dead—
Yet, when they met, it needed all her phlegm
To seem as though she’d never cared about him,
And had but nursed, in order just to flout, him.
LI.
One day a maiden, urged by anguish keen,
Went down by the North Kent to Greenhithe
Station,
For in her country home she had just seen—
Amongst the other news of our great nation—■
Duan’s mishap described, and how he’d been
Thought dead. She, in a loving perturbation,
Did not clap spurs into her steed, as knights would,
But left by the first train which called at Briteswood.
LII.
Lady Maria had gone up to town,
To be at Guelpho’s fancy ball that night :
So, met the train which brought the damsel down.
We’ll not go in for telling the brave sight
At Marlborough House—but note the inquiring
frown
My Lady’s maid gave, as she asked “What
might
Miss want with Mister Jon-—-he’s very weak,
And doctor has left word he mustn’t speak?”
LIII.
Poor Letty Lethbridge, she was near to faint,
When the trained maid thus met her anxious
quest;
But love is strong in sinner and in saint,
And to see Jon she still would do her best:—
“ Is there no way to see him ?”—“ No, there ain’t,”
The Cockney said.—“ I won’t disturb his rest,”
Said pretty Letty,—“ Only just to see him;
Oh, won’t the doctor let me, if I fee him ?”
Liv.
“ Fee him, indeed ! If anyone could do it,
I am the party, although I dare not.
My Lady, on the spot, would make me rue it.”
“ Lady !—what lady ?/’ Letty gasped, all hot.
�JON DUAN.
8
“ Lady Maria ; if she only knew it,
She’d give up Coming K----- and all the lot;
My goodness me ! it puts me in a tremyor
Only to think of it! what a dilemyor 1 ”
LV.
Billings was yielding ; only just a little,
But’twas enough to give the Lethbridge hope,—
Not that my Lady’s maid did care a tittle
About my Lady’s anger : she could cope
With that; besides, she knew how very brittle
Was man’s love, and how soon and sharp it
broke;
And she had seen some symptoms of Jon’s tiring,
And thought 7us would go out, bar some new
firing.
LVI.
Letty began then, in a gracious way— r
She had her purse, too, in her open palm :—
“I want to see Jon Duan, and I pray
You do whate’er you can to bring me balm ;
And I will give you all I have, to-day,
If but my fears about him I may calm.
Let me but have one peep at him, sweet honey,
And you shall have—oh, lots and lots of money ! ”
lvii.
The sovereigns did it—Letty gave her purse,
And Billings took her where our hero lay,
Saying, “ You mustn’t make a bit of ‘ furse,’ *
Then I don’t mind how long you with him stay.”
And Letty, happy she was now his nurse,
Felt that her night had brightened into day,
Though, still, the jealous doubt would come to
bother,
Who was this lady, whom she longed to smother ?
LVIII.
Duan was dozing; men do, ill or well;
And nothing’s more enjoyable on earth,
Whether you’re visioning the last night’s belle
You danced with ; or when comes a total dearth
Of news and scandal. So that it befell
Letty did gaze, as Duan dozed. No berth
So pleasurable could anyone have given her—
To write down all her joy, ’twould take a scrivener.
LIX.
Duan, in turning lazily about,
Opened his peepers, and caught sight of something
Which, to his half-roused mind, did seem, no doubt,
A little strange ; however, like a dumb thing,
He stayed ; and baby-like, tried to make out
What ’twas before his eyes—a fee, fo, fum thing,
His doziness divined ;—soon, shape it takes,
And when it did so, quickly Duan wakes.
LX.
We’re not a Wilkie Collins—God be praised ’
Not that we don’t think involutions fine ;
We do, in fact; but don’t wish our brain crazed
To trace a tale in geometric line.
So don’t imagine you are to be mazed
Just after, or before, you’ve been to dine—
For ’twas indeed a simple, plain old thing
That Duan saw—a palpable gold ring.
LXI.
That plain gold rings resemble plain gold rings,
Must be, we think, a proposition simple—
It would not puzzle one of our old kings ;
Still, there is many a woman with a dimple,
Whose nerves are sensitive on such old things ;
And e’en that sister, who doth wear a wimple,
Is touched, maybe, when those smooth circlets
golden
Are seen on hands where they should not be holden.
lxh.
But as a cheese-mite knows another mite,
In that rich Stilton cheese you have in cut;
And as an oyster knows its pearl by sight,—
So Duan knew this ring from out a rut
Of rings ; and would have bet, e’en being “tight,”
He’d spot it in whatever light ’twas put;
For ’twas the one he’d put on Letty Lethbridge
One day at church, when they were down at
Fettridge.
LXIII.
Poor little Robson in that wondrous role
Of wand’ring Minstrel, which he really made,—
Unlike creations now, which most are “ stole,”—
When he did sing of Villikins’s jade,
Was wont to pause, as he his song did troll,
And, looking with that look demurely staid,
Would say, ’Tis not a comic song I’m singing—
So we—’Tis not an intrigue we’re beginning.
���JON DUAN.
LXIV.
There’s nothing on the cross, we do assure you,
No figure of the kind you’ll see in Spain ;—
We don’t invent bad stories to allure you,
We leave such things for Ouida to explain.
Duan’s a gentleman, and is to cure you
Of some crude notions as to future pain ;
Meanwhile, there’s something in the following
stanza,—
At least we’ll hope so, and say—Esperanza !
LXV.
Now for it; let us tell about the ring—
’Tis not the Book and Ring, remember that;
But just a story of a boy in spring,
Who gave his play and pew-mate, pink and fat,
This rounded circlet, whose romance we sing,
Causing amongst her fellows mirth and chat,
Whene’er they met at Manor House or Farm—■_
Now where, ye nasty nice ones, where’s the harm?
LXVI.
.
If you are disappointed, Tartuffe olden,
So much the better ; you have bought our poem,
Hoping for some things you’ll not find so golden—Or gilded, rather, as you hoped we’d show ’em—
You’ve bought J. D., and carefully it folden
In that same drawer with pictures where you
stow ’em ;
And now you’re done—we’re very glad to do you,
And if we could—you and your crew, we’d stew
you !
,
ii
You’ll always find he’s hard upon the pious,—
Who, if they could, would burn us, and then try us.
LXIX.
Sweet, simple Letty, she was very charming,
Such a good little thing, that all did love her ;
And as for anyone to think of harming
Her, ’twas impossible ; for those above her,
And those in rank below, who did the farming
Upon her father’s land, would ever cover her
With blessings for her kind and thoughtful ways,
And give her, what the parson wanted—praise.
LXX.
Duan had seen not much of London town,
Before he scented something dull and vapid,
And though he was too young, as yet, to frown
On those who set the pace a little rapid,
Yet, for all that, he often took a train down
To see the little maid he ne’er found sapid ;
Who, though, o’erjoyed to see her darling lover,
Took time before she could her wits recover.
LXXI.
If you know such a maiden, and are young,
Love her and bless her, keep your troth and
word ;
Not all the songs that poets ever sung,
Not all the sweetest trills from singing-bird,
Not Shelley’s lark, nor linked sweetness flung
By Swan of Avon,—sweetest sounds e’er heard;
Not all these, on a million others mounted,
Can claim an ear, when a maid’s tale’s recounted.
LXVI I.
But all this time we’ve purposely abstained
From peeping at Jon Duan and his Letty ;
UY know she’s thoroughly by spot unstained,
And think that looking on is very petty,
So is eavesdropping ; and if you are pained,
Good-hearted reader, kiss your own dear Betty ;
And you will know, for one thing, what they did,
Although we were not ’hind the curtains hid.
LXXII.
We’ve not a word to say for Duan’s flirting
With other women in his London life ;
He couldn’t be accused, ’tis true, of hurting
The sentiments so dear to Grundy’s wife,
His bonnes fortunes he never thought of blurting ;
No cuckold threatened him with shot or knife ;
No more discreet young fellow’s gone to Hades
In what concerned his doings with the ladies.
LXVIII.
Thanks to his nature fine, a well-bred man
Will reverence what is good and what is pure ;
He mayn’t believe what’s told of prophet Dan,
Nor many things of which the Pope’s cock-sure,
Yet will he carry out what he began ;
His love of truth for truth’s sake will endure ;
LXXIII.
My Lady knew that Duan was a leal lad,
But that he loved like Jeunesse loved the
L’Enclos,
A petite passion, which makes one feel mad
For a few weeks or months, but doesn’t often go
�JON DUAN.
12
Longer than that ; then one feels hard and steelclad
’Gainst her who might have nursed you in
your long clo’—
Old women can’t expect men’s love for ever,
Let them, of all wiles that they know, endeavour.
LXXIV.
It had all past—his heart was wholly L-etty’s ;
Just now at any rate, and he forgot
The hunting and the fall, for he had met his
First love, won in past years, whom not for dot
He loved ; for by the side of Lady Betty’s,
The Lethbridge lands were small and mort
gaged—not
Like neighbouring Lady B.’s, who owned the park,
But hadn’t quite the charms to please our spark.
LXXV.
The day had worn on ; Duan had been served
With all his usual fare, and Letty went
At times to see the walks and roads that curved
Around the cottage built on an ascent,
Commanding a grand view, which well deserved
The title of the prettiest scene in Kent—There down below, seen through its oaks and
beeches,
Stretched Father Thames down to the sea in
reaches.
LXXVI.
They’d spoken of old times, our youth and maid,
And smiled and laughed, and Letty nearly
cried
At the remembrance of a cruel thing said
By Duan once. She’d been, too, sorely tried,
When older girls made eyes at Jon ;•—afraid
That he might change, and take another bride.
But Duan’s just that “kinder sort o’ man,” you
see,
Who knows the sex as well as Ballantyne, Q.C.
lxxvh.
He might make blunders in the books he pub
lished,
Be an enthusiast for Rochefort’s Lanterne;
Be in a bargain with Barabbas vanquished
(Jon in mere trading was the wee-est bairn) ;
But with the women ne’er was Duan dubbed
“ dished ”—
As Derby dished the Whigs—but like Jules
Verne,
Takes Phileas round the world in eighty days,
Duan the women won ; he knew their ways.
LXXVIII.
He had a funny theory on this head,
Which may be worth reporting to the world
(If it is not, just think, then, ’twas not said).
Well, his assertion was, that hair which curled,
Bright eyes which shone (and weren’t like cod
fish dead),
Long arms that clasped as in the waltz they
twirled,
The lissom limb, the backbone straight, and
small feet,
Were manly charms which in most men don’t all
meet.
LXXIX.
And when they did,—and here you’ll see the
point,—
Women admired, and common men did hate
The lucky man who showed the shapely joint :
And in this life ’twas sure to be his fate
That all the sex that’s fair would him anoint
With sweetest unguents, morning, noon, or
late—
And so it worked, that men who’d luck with
women,
Had usually to count most males their foemen.
LXXX.
Poor Letty had been hovering round the question
As to the lady of whom Billings spoke ;
And she had often got as far as “Yes, Jon,
But tell me who?”—and then her courage
broke.
She was afraid, perhaps, of his digestion,
And more she feared that she might be awoke
To listen to some fearful revelation,
More shocking than poor Lady Dilke’s cremation.
LXXXI.
Well, and it came at last, and Duan felt it
A very awkward question to discuss ;
But, the bull taking by the horns, he dealt it
A blow which settled it without much fuss :
�JON DUAN.
He knew the girl’s soft heart, and so, to melt it,
He told her all about his absent “ nuss
Except a fact or two, by some suspected,
At which poor Letty might have felt dejected.
LXXXII.
But we have left Society some time,
And how will that great mart get on without us ?
To-day a hundred would commit a crime
To gain an entry—pray, will any doubt us ?—
To see the Coming I<------ ’s great pantomime
At Marlborough House; and, oh, how some
will flout us
Because we print—what some there dared to say—
“ We wonder if Lome’s mother-in-law will pay ? ”
lxxxhi.
A change of scene now comes ; and for a spell,
Whilst Duan’s getting happier every minute,
We go to town, and cab it to Pall Mall,
And see the world, and hear what fresh news’
in it;—
And there’s a story going, which, if no sell,
Bodes mischief; so we may as well begin it:—
Lady Maria, ’spite of phlegm and fashion,
Has gone into a fearful, towering passion.
13
She knew how useless ’twas her wit to try,
And ’gainst her Grace’s influence to fight;
So unto Duan’s arms she thought she’d fly,
And tell her sorrows to her youthful knight.
Alas ! her cup was soon to overflow,
And she was doomed to feel a harder blow.
LXXXVII.
A woman’s senses are extremely keen,
When she’s in love, and Letty heard some words
Spoken below, and ere the form was seen,
She knew, as know the little mother birds
When danger threatens—there must be a scene ;
And, as a warrior his armour girds,
So Duan’s present nurse her courage braces,
Nor shows of fear even the slightest traces.
LXXXVIII.
Having within us tender hearts and pity,
We feel grief for the elder woman’s case ;
We’re not like those promoters in the City,
Who laugh at victims of their schemings base;
We feel that Duan’s conduct’s not been pretty,
And that he don’t deserve an ounce of grace;
But, having said so in our own defence,
We’ll let the ladies show their skill of fence.
LXXXIX.
LXXXIV.
A Duchess, aged, one of Guelpho’s friends,
Met her at Madame Louise’s to-day ;
And—see how small a thing the sex offends—
Asked if her little boy went out to play.
Furious, on Duchess M. a frown she bends,
Retorting—“ Now, be careful what you say,
Or I shall tell that little tale of Bertie,
When he was but sixteen and you were thirty.”
LXXXV.
This shocked the Duchess very much, perforce ;
But, with the sang froid of a lady born,
She said, “You go to Marlborough House, of
course,
To-night ; you’ll be received just like poor
Lome :
You’ll see if Guelpho will my words endorse,
For all your life yourwords to me you’ll mourn.”
Then spoke to Madame Louise as to lace,
Without the least emotion in her face.
LXXXVI.
Lady Maria did not stay to buy
What she intended for the ball that night;
Duan sat up upon his sofa, thinking,
As on the stairs my Lady’s foot-fall fell,
Whoever got the best in the sharp pinking,
He could not come out of the contest well;
There was no way of skulking or of blinking ;
In fact, he felt quite sea-sick at the swell
Of varying emotions, which, like ocean’s,
Caused heavings tremulous and nauseous motions.
XC.
Entered, the practised woman of the world,
To tread the stage, and act a scene of life ;
Her look was thunder, scorn her pale lips curled,
A very Amazon, arrayed for strife ;
At Letty, epithets like javelins hurled,
Piercing the maiden’s bosom like a knife ;
Yet, past the understanding of our dull wit,
She said no word against the real culprit.
XCI.
Letty grew fierce, as Duan’s heart was wrung;
She, with the divination purely sexual,
Knew why the taunts at her alone were flung ;
And, though there’s no description that’s called
textual,
�-
14
'
JON DUAN.
Of every fierce and horrid phrase that stung ;
Yet, women-folk, though we, so writing, vex
you all,
Believe that if Jon had been absent, then,
The work would have been different for our pen.
xcn.
’Twas jealousy of Letty’s being there—
There, in the very room for Jon made nice,
By her (Maria’s) loving hands and care—
Proved, ’neath the smooth exterior, there was
vice—
Vice like you found in that neat chesnut mare,
Which, bucking freely, threw you, fairly, thrice :
Vesuvian slopes, which vines and verdure drape,
Hide furious fires which, one day, must escape.
xcm.
Letty, whose temper had been growing heated
Under the bellows of my lady’s rage,
Now moved from where Jon lately had been seated,
Just like a frigate going to engage :
“Madam, you have me in a manner treated
Quite unbecoming to your rank and age ;
I felt to Duan as to a dear brother,
And he tells me you’ve been to him a mother.
xciv.
“Why, therefore, Madam, anger should you show,
Because I came to see him, having read,
Altho’ the news had travelled very slow,
He’d had a fall, and had been left for dead ;
Why was I wrong in setting forth to know
If there was truth in what the papers said ?
Jon Duan is my own accepted lover,
Why should I from the world my true love cover ?
’
xcv.
Potent is truth, and potent, too, is candour—
The latter may be now and then excessive,
As in some lines of Walter Savage Landor ;
But there was nothing wrong, or too aggressive,
In Letty’s words ; for she was bound to stand or
Fall by faith in Duan—who, digressive
From virtuous paths, should be received with
more joy,
Than if he’d always been an honest, poor boy.
xcvi.
The moment came, and with it came the man ;
It was too much for Duan to rest longer;
So, gathering his strength, he thus began :
“ I would not wish in any way to wrong her,
Who’s been so kind to me ; and when I scan
The kindness of her ladyship, feel stronger
To declare I shall remain for life her debtor,
And that no woman could be kinder, better;
1
XCVII.
“ Still, and with shame I am obliged to own it,
However kindly Lady May has nursed me,
My loyalty is due, where I’ve not shown it,—
To Letty Lethbridge; for, cruel fate has
cursed me
With a weak nature—oh ! how I bemoan it—
Which has brought grief to you two, and
immersed me
In what I thoroughly deserve—a slough of des
pond—
’Twould serve me right if some one said a
horse-pond.”
XCVIII.
But it avails not to prolong the view
Of this unhappy meeting of the three ;
’Tis better to get each out of the stew
As best we can ; and Duan will agree
He’d rather be one of a Lascar crew
Under a Yankee “boss,” or “up a tree/’;
Or be in any sort of bad condition,
Than stay in that room, in his then position.
xcix.
So plucking up his courage and his strength,—
“ Lady Maria, I will take my leave,”
He said ; and saying, rose, erect, full length,—
“Miss Lethbridge,” turning to the girl, “I
grieve
That my misconduct should (here a parenthEsis occurred from failing breath)—I grieve
I have occasioned so much pain to friends—
I will do all I can to make amends.”
c.
And bowing “farewell” to her ladyship—
As, with a courtesy, Letty went out too,—
Duan, with faltering step and many a “ trip,”
Passed down the stairs, and then the door
went through,
Into the grounds, where to his trembling lip
Came from the beating heart, “ Thank God,
I do,
That that is over.” So do we sincerely ;
The printers, too, whose patience we’ve tried,
dearly.
�JON DUAN.
15
Canto The Second.
1.
E sing our Court—select, sedate, demure,
Bound in the virtuous chainsVictoria forges;
So good, so dull, so proper, and so pure,
And O ! so different from her Uncle George’s—
That “ first of gentlemen,” who, it seems sure,
Was fond of “life” and bacchanalian orgies ;
That blood relation of “ our kings to be,”
Who did not spell his “ quean” with double (i a ”
e.
II.
How great the change ! the courtly newsman’s pen
Has never now to rise above the level
Of commonplace particulars, save when
Victoria in her Highland home holds revel,
And dances with her Scotch dependents then,
As though she’d learned the castanets at Seville—■
N ot that with such vivacity we quarrel—
But why does she confine it to Balmoral ?
ill.
We wish our Queen would dance a little more,
Would follow Queen Elizabeth’s example;
And of her powers upon the dancing-floor
Would give us Englishmen, down south, a
sample.
That Scots alone are favoured makes us sore,
For surely London loyalty’s as ample :
And, with all deference, we think it silly
To dance a reel with gamekeeper or gillie.
IV.
How “ Good Queen Bess’’danced, history relates—•
You find it in her memoirs by Miss Aikin,
“ High and disposedly” she danced, as states
Quaint Sir James Melvil, who was somewhat
shaken
By what he saw ; and yet we find by dates
Her age then may at twenty-nine be taken—
A by no means too great age for a maiden
To dance, although with Queenly duties laden.
V.
And yet the people talked, and wagged their chins,
To hear the English Church’s head was danc
ing ;r
But now, when England’s Sovereign begins
To step it—vide note2—we’re not romancing—
�JON DUAN.
16
We’re rather glad, nor care a pair of pins,
Though she in years is certainly advancing ;
But, as we’ve said, its only right and fair,
Royal partners should be picked out with more care.
VI.
When, too, our virgin monarch ruled the land
(And, by the way, there’s doubt of her virginity),
She showed for certain nobles, great and grand,
A manifest and somewhat warm affinity;
And favourites ruled her Court, we understand,
And queenly heart as well, and the divinity
That hedges kings and queens—see Shakspeare’s
plays—
Was at a discount, rather, in those days.
VII.
Now quite another scene is being enacted
(Our Queen has morals far above suspicion),
And quite another way our Sovereign’s acted,
A way not wholly fitting her position ;—
For now the British public’s ear’s attracted
By circumstantial tales of the admission
Of menial Scotchmen to the royal favour ;—
This does not of the regal instinct savour.
VIII.
Cophetua loved a beggar-maid, ’tis true,
But that was passion, love has some excuse ;
But how excuse the Sovereign who can view
A set of stalwart gillies, sans the trews,
With what we call a preference undue ?
Not that our Lady has no right to choose,
But—wishing to be loyally obedient,—
We still assert such friendship’s not expedient.
IX.
If she’d have councillors, and friends, and guides,
Let her choose them ’mongst British gentlemen ;
And not select them from Scotch mountain-sides,
Nor pick them from the crofter’s smoky den ;
Nor trust the adventurers Germany provides,
Nor furnish tattle for the reckless pen
By efforts vain—the adage old and terse is —
To make the sow’s ears into silken purses.
Nor that she only hold high carnival .
When her Scotch servants marry; ’tis not fair
To us, who royal smiles are never rich in,
To find them lavished freely on her kitchen.
XI.
It may be pleasing, in a way, to hear
The luck of Ballater, and Braemar Glen;
How there our Sovereign for half the year
Retires from midst the haunts of Englishmen,
And spends her morning, dropping the sad tear,
And building Albert cairns on every Ben—
Then courts reaction in the afternoons,
By hearing Willie Blair play Scottish tunes.
XII.
Or taking tea in some dependent’s cottage,
Or seeing poor old widow Farquharson,
Or sharing some ’cute Highland woman’s pottage,
Or choosing for a gillie her stout son;—
But such things smack a “wee” too much of dotage,
To make us happy when we hear they’re done;
We want our Queen, in whom such duties rests,
To come and entertain her Royal guests.
XIII.
Come, if you please, Victoria, do not waste
Your valued time ’midst stalwart grooms' and
keepers,—
We dare not question your most royal taste,
Or we would add, cut off the “widow’s weepers,”—
Come back to us to do your duties, haste;
And leave old memories among the sleepers;
And if for quiet you still sometimes burn,
Let Ireland, long-neglected, have its turn.
XIV.
Nor make the Crathie church a raree-show,
To which the enterprising landlords run
Post-chaises, omnibuses, to and fro,
Crowded with tourists eager for the fun
Of scrambling for the places whence they know
A good view of their Sovereign may be won—
And, in a spirit less devout than jocular,
Their eyesight aid with Dolland’s binocular.
X.
xv.'
It is not seemly that the servants’ hall
Should form a Court, nor that the servants there
Should be the sole invités to a ball
Which the Queen graces with her presence rare ;
They turn their backs on altar and on preacher,
For the best pews with golden bribes they treat,
Regardless of the words of our great Teacher—
“ Make not My house a money-changer’s seat!’’—
�JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
DISCOUNT-THREEPENCE.
Books for Christmas ; Books for Easter;
In olden days, when Time was young,
To publish was a glorious trade ;
BOOKS for faster ; Books for feaster;
Though poets grumbled, poets sung,
Books for Shipping ; Books in Sets;
Books about our Household Pets;
And fortunes were most quickly made,
Books for Wholesale; Books for Retail;
By publishers, who never let
General Books ; and Books of detail;
Booksellers charge a penny less
Books for Children; BOOKS for Babies;
Than price resolved on ; or to fret
Them with remonstrance. You will guess
Books for Girls; and Books for Ladies;
*
Books with pretty Illustrations ;
Books on all the Foreign Nations;
That men like Stoneham could not live :
(Stoneham, of Seventy-nine, Cheapside),
Who discount has resolved to give,
And fight the Publishers beside.
For every shilling that you pay,
Returned are to you just three pence,
By Stoneham, bookseller; now say
If it does not seem common sense,
That if he can afford to sell
At threepence less than other men,
This very work, Jon Duan, well,
May be not all the same again.
Books for Prizes; Books for Presents ;
. Books for Princes; Books for Peasants ;
Books for Scholars ; Books for Schools ;
Books about Dame Nature’s rules ;
Books in binding gay or neat;
BOOKS all warranted complete ;
Annual Books and Magazines ;
BOOKS of Fine Arts fit for Queens ;
BOOKS about the search for gold;
BOOKS for all; nay, we are told
That—but you’ll think it is too bad—
He sells that shocking Siliad.
Nay more, we’ve heard some people say,
“ Stoneham has yet a Coming K----- .”
With Books for Young, and Books for Old;
We don’t believe it, these are libels ;
Books for Summer ; Books for cold ;
We know he has a Stock of Bibles.
�•SIIVMO SHilOOTVJLVO
th e I V O R L D
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS AND NEW YEAR ’S GIFTS.
O N L Y E s ta b lis h m e n ts in
3d.
79,
IN
THE
S H IL L IN G .
CHEAPSIDE, AND BRANCHES.
D IS C O U N T
Christm as Cards, Valentines, Playing Cards,
B IB L E S , P R A Y E R B O O K S , C H U R C H S E R V IC E S ,
The
JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
�THE CENTRE AND RIGHT.—A “Coup de M‘Mahon.”
�i
�yON DUAN.
Forgetting God, they gaze up at his creature.
Your Majesty, this, surely, is not meet:-—•
Then they slip out as soon as they are able,
And make the tombstones serve as luncheon-table.
XVI.
O, stop this crying scandal, if you please,
Encourage not this sacrilege so shocking ;
Let not the tourists push, and rush, and squeeze,
Like London roughs to play-house gallery
flocking ;
Nor let next summer bring such scenes as these,
All that is sacred so completely mocking.
It can on no pretence be right and proper, a
House of God should be “ Her Majesty’s Opera!”
XVII.
What is there in stern Caledonia’s air
That makes our Sovereign forget her grief?
We wish profoundly she’d conceal her care
From English subject as from Scottish fief.
For we be loyal too, and cannot bear
The Gael should solely give our Queen relief—
That Highland pibrochs should her joys enhance,
Whilst we pipe on in vain to make her dance.
XVIII.
Surely would sing all England a Te Deum
If she could her beloved Queen persuade
To lock lor once and all the Mausoleum,
To leave in peace the dear, departed shade ;
Be less the égoïste, think less of “ meum,”
Save hard-worked ministers, and commerce aid,
By ending her seclusion ;—and to lean,
Being still a woman, to be more a Queen !
XIX.
We know her virtues—how she drives and walks,
And goes to church with charming regularity ;
We know her business tact—how well she talks
On politics ; we know her gracious charity
To German poverty—(’tis true, want stalks
In Osborne Cottages : why this disparity
We cannot say, though surely what is right
In Gotha, ’s ditto in the Isle of Wight).
xx.
We know, we say, how very pure our Queen is,
And what a manager ! and what a mother !
But, though all this so very plainly seen is,
We cannot quite our discontentment smother.
17
Her virtues we admire ;—but what we mean is,
Of two moves she should choose the one or
t’other :—
The one is—Coming out amongst the nation ;
The other—Going in for Abdication.
XXI.
’Tis give and take. If we continue loyal—
And we are so without the slightest doubt—We certainly expect our lady royal
Will keep a court, and not aye fret and pout,—
Water without a fire will cease to boil,
And loyalty unshone on may go out.
If shining on it is not in her line,
Then let the Son appear and have a shine !
XXII.
We do not pay our Sovereign to hide
In northern solitudes, however sweet;
We want to view her in her pomp and pride,
And cheer her in the park and in the street;
We want her in our midst and at our side,
To grace our triumphs and our joys complete.
It does not seem a dignified position
To put Great Britain’s sceptre in commission.
XXIII.
Our Royal Mistress, yet, should have her due,—
She did come up to town a bit last season;
May she, next year, again, that course pursue,
And longer stay—we trust this is not treason—
Indeed, we personally yield to few
In loyalty; and therein lies the reason
Why on her Gracious Majesty we call
To heed the handwriting upon the wall.
XXIV.
Well, as we’ve said, last season saw the Queen
In London; and, most marvellous to say,
Whilst she was ling’ring sadly on the scene,
She held a drawing-room herself one day:
And, naturally, with ardour very keen,
Our fairest rushed their compliments to pay.
Duan, of course, as in his bounden duty,
Was in attendance at the beck of beauty.
xxv.
He wish’d, sans doittefasX beauty had not beckon’d,
For drawing-rooms were not in Duan’s line,—
Most etiquette insuff’rable he reckon’d,
And hated going out to dance or fee;
c
�JON DUAN.
Nor could he tolerate a single second,
The social miseries that we incline
To call, good God! in their inane variety,
The usages of elegant society.
XXVI.
Despite which, to the “drawing-room” he went,
For beauty draws, we know, with single hairs,
(And paints with hares’ feet, we might add, if bent
On being cynical, authorial bears ;
But as to be so is not our intent,
Our muse to no such cruel length repairs,
But simply adds that our great hero’s knock
Was heard in Clarges Street at twelve o’clock).
XXVII.
Beauty was ready, in a low-necked dress,
That showed more shoulder, certainly, than sense;
And dragged behind a train in all the mess,
That might have served, at just the same expense,
To cover up a bust which, we confess,
Was fair to see, but might p’rhaps give offence
To leaner sisters and to envious tongues—•
N ot to forget the danger to her lungs.
XXVIII.
Beauty’s mamma, a Countess of four-score,
Showed even more of charms, though they were
bony ;
And with a dress, than Beauty’s even lower,
Displayed much skin, the hue of macaroni;
Whilst in a wig most palpable, she wore
Three ostrich plumes, — poor Duan gave a
groan, he
Felt tempted sore to get up an eruption
’Gainst going to Court with such bedecked cor
ruption.
XXIX.
What sight on God’s earth can be more disgusting
Than painted, powder’d, and made-up old age ?
Its scragginess on the beholder thrusting,
And fighting time with feeble, wrinkled rage ;
Covering with tinsel what has long been rusting,
And writing hideous lies upon life’s page.
Ruins, when left alone, are often grand,
But worthless if they feel the plasterer’s hand.
XXX.
But there’s no time to moralise like this,—
The carriage of the Countess waits below,
And offering his arm to ma’ and miss,
Our hero hands them in, and off they go
�JON DUAN.
To plunge into the yaw-yawning abyss,
And mingle with the never-ceasing flow
That fills the Mall and Bird-cage Walk, intent
To crowd and take the Social Sacrament.
XXXI.
Full soon the bloated coachman had to stop
His horses, as the carriage falls in line ;
And from the curious crowd begin to drop
Remarks that made Jon Duan much incline
Out of the door of the barouche to pop,
And visit them with punishment condign ;
Though all they said to put him in a passion
Was, “ I say, here’s an old ewe dressed lamb
fashion 1 ”
19
As ’twas, a rowel made her ankle bleed,
And scores of feet her long train trod upon,
Till, well-nigh fainting, and with terror dumb,
She almost wished that she had never come.
XXXVI.
Beauty’s mamma, a tried old dowager,
Made better progress, worked her skinny arms
In neighbouring sides, till they made way for her,
And op’ed a passage for her bony charms ;
She’d often pass’d the ordeal; so the stir
Filled her old crusty breast with no alarms :
Indeed, she must have been devoid of feeling,
As though her frame had undergone annealing.
XXXII.
XXXVII.
A tedious houi' went by : the carriage crawled
By slow degrees, and made its way by inches ;
The people chaff’d and cheer’d ; the p’licemen
bawled,
.But not a high-born dame or maid that flinches.
Nor would they, one of them, have been appall’d
Had all of Purgatory’s pains and pinches
To be passed through to gain St. James’s portal,
And courtesy low before a royal mortal!
Thus on they struggled, inch by inch, and stair
By stair ; now losing, now a little gaining ;
As though it were a life and death affair—
As though the goal to which they all were
straining
Were worth an endless lot of wear and tear,
And efforts manifold, and arduous training—
As though, indeed, this courtly p'resentation
Worked out their future and their full salvation.
XXXIII.
- At last the gate is gained where sentries stand,
Nor aim the inroad of the great to stay,
But grimly watch the fairest of the land
As they pass in to mix in the wild fray ;
To join the seething, surging, swaying band
That pushes on, its best respects to pay
To her, who for a whim—it can’t be malice—
Will use what our Jeames calls St. James’s “Palice.”
XXXIV.
And then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And hustling crowds, and symptoms of distress ;
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blush’d at the sight of their own loveliness ;
And there were sudden rents and sounds of woe,
As skirts were torn and trampled in the press ;
Till Beauty, who that day was first presented,
Thought all “Who’s Who” were certainly demented.
xxxv.
She clung to Duan’s arm, and there was need,
For like a wave the well-dressed mob surged on,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
Till she had been o’erwhelmed but for our Jon.
XXXVIII.
Still, ’tis no secret what they went to see,
A widow’d lady ; getting near three-score ;
Still mourning, in a costume “ ca.p”-d-ftU,
One dead some thirteen years ago and more.
An estimable lady as may be,
Yet looking on the whole thing as a bore.
Can we, if we dispassionately handle
The subject, say the game is worth the candle ?
XXXIX.
Duan thought not. If you the crown respect,
Go to the Tower and see the whole regalia,
It costs but sixpence ; or if you affect
The royal person, ’midst the penetralia
Of Tussaud’s wax-works we may soon detect
The waxen effigy ; and slobber daily a
Kiss or two upon the figure’s garments,
To show you are not democratic “varmints.”
XL.
But as to putting on absurd attire,
And running risks of damage and mishap,
Exposing corns and clothes to danger dire
To see a woman in a widow’s cap—
�JON DUAN.
20
George IV. As portrayed by the Tories.
Jon did not to such ecstasy aspire ;
In point of fact, he did not care a rap—
’Spite all the gushing of the penny journals—
To gaze at royalty sans its externals :
XLI.
But thousands do and thousands did that day,
Whose history, so far, has been related :
And as these rhymes must not go on for aye,
We think that Beauty long enough has waited
Upon the stairs ; we’ll take her from the fray,
And, with her pleasure all but dissipated,
We’ll pass her on, as Yankees put it, slickly,
And bring her to the presence-chamber quickly.
XLII.
Stay ! for thy tread is where a sovereign sits !
An Empire’s Queen is seated on that chair!
N or let a palsy overwhelm thy wits,
When thou perceiv’st she is not lonely there ; —
Nor sink into the earth ; since fate permits
Thine eyes to rest—if thou the sight canst bear—
On Princes and Princesses, fecund found,
In Guelphic lavishness arranged around.
XLIII.
See ! there is Albor’s eldest,—-language fails
To write the reverence his face inspires :
The sight of Coming K----- our colour pales,
Till loyalty lights up our facial fires.
God bless, by all means, Albert Prince of Wales!
For certainly His blessing he requires.
Though happily we long ago have sunk all
Fear that he’ll turn out like his gross great-uncle.
XLIV.
We do not mean the Duke of York, that cheat
■ Who, saving that of nature, paid no debts;
Nor Sussex, that nonentity complete,
Whose failings, fortunately, one forgets ;
Nor mean we Clarence, that buffoon effete
Whose reign each loyal Englishman regrets—
Rascal or madman, it is hard to class him :
See for yourselves in “Greville’s Memoirs ”/zzjjz'zzz.
XLV.
We mean that other brother foul and false,
That vulgar ruffian whom no oath restrained ;
*
That bloated sot, who when too fat to valse,
Was fit for nothing; that coarse king who’s gained
"Who’s your fat friend?”—Beau Brummel.
(From the Originals, published by Hone.)
* Daily News, Oct. 31, 1874.
�JON DUAN.
More obloquy from history’s assaults
Than any monarch who has o’er us reigned.
We would not visit harshly mere frivolity,
But where in George was one redeeming quality ?
XLVI.
He lied ; he swore ; he was obscene and lewd;
And rakish past e’en what’s a regal latitude ;
He broke his word; his duties he eschew’d ;
He understood not what was meant by gratitude;
The two great aims in life that he pursued
Were how to dress and howto strike an attitude—
Another king so mean and vile as he,
And England’s kingly race would cease to be.
2i
The coming Court will not be quite so dingy
As that o’er which his royal mamma has sway.
And though our notion may be very shocking,
We don’t like sovereigns who “make a stocking.”
LI.
Nor love we princes who have not large hearts—
Nor love we much the Duke of Edinburgh ;
He lives too late. A young man of his parts
Would well have represented a “ close” borough.
As ’tis, no thought incongruous ever starts
At finding him a Scotchmen’s duke, for thorough
Is the connection’twixt them, though ’tis troubling
To find that he’s not dubbed the Duke of Doubling.
LII.
XLVII.
He was an utter brute, a sceptred thing,
A vampire sucking out his country’s life ;
Eclectic in his vice, a compound king,
Charles to his people, Henry to his wife.
Better by far that time again should bring
A Henry, or a Charles, and plunge in strife
Our country, than that it should e’er disgorge
Another heartless, soulless wretch like George,
XLVIII.
Our Heir-apparent will not be like this —
He mayn’t be brilliant, but he is not brutal;
He may be simple, but it’s not amiss
If that is all he is : he will not suit all
Tastes and desires, but it is well, we wis—
Though our opinion here may meet refutal—
Since kings are now for us but gilded toys,
To have one who won’t make a fuss and noise.
XLIX.
Thank God ! the eldest son’s not like his sire,
A meddling, mean, and over-rated man;
A Bailiff on the throne we don’t require,
However neatly he may scheme and plan
To make a property’s return grow higher.
We can’t forget the way Albor began
His steward’s work ; with what a screwy touch he
Wrung increased revenue from Cornwall’s duchy.
L.
No one can say that our A. E. is stingy—
Indeed, his failing lies the other way ;
Yet, though he on his capital infringe, he
Spends his money in a British way.
A sailor should be generous and hearty ;
An English prince ’fore all should not be mean;
And whilst rememb’ring statements made ex parte
Must not be credited too much, we glean
That modern Athens’ duke, however smart he
Upon the fiddle plays, yet has not been
So wise as to despise all petty things,
And keep his scrapings for his fiddle-strings.
LIII.
We had a hope, being married, he’d improve—
He had a lot of money with his Mary,—
We’ll wish some generous impulses will move
Our new Princess, and that, like some good fairy,
She’ll lift her Alfred from his stingy groove,
And make him for the future very chary
Of any acts like those of him recorded,
Which are, to put it mildly, mean and sordid.
LIV.
It gives our enemies so good a handle
To chaff our institutions and our crown,
When princes make themselves a peg for scandal,
And furnish tittle-tattle for the town.
For they should clearly learn to firm withstand all
Queer deeds and words that tarnish their re
renown,
And those who’re near the Princess should advise
her
On no account let Alfred be a miser.
LV.
Nor let him show the instincts of a trader -,
Nor bargain with his friends in search of gain ;
But, that his actions never may degrade her,
Let him from City ways henceforth refrain.
�JON DUAN.
22
His star is now mQst surely in its nadir,
But there is time the zenith to regain ;
Then we will let the Malta business * slip,
And not remember his Australian trip.
LVI.
And whilst addressing Marie, we may add
We hope it is not true she made a fuss,
And summoned to her aid her royal dad,
Because a princess who’s most dear to us
Declined to listen to her foolish fad,
Or questions of precedence to discuss.
But if ’tis true, then Marie must take care
Lest she is called the little Russian Bear.LVII.
Our coming Monarch’s Consort’s loved most
dearly,
Loyal respect for her is most emphatic ;
And whosoever her attacks, is clearly
By no means well-advised or diplomatic ;
We’ll trust that Marie knew no better, merely
Having been bred in Russ ways autocratic.
Yet, for the future, if she’d keep her place,
She mustn’t show the Tartar, but learn grace.
LVIII.
But all this time the royal party waits—
Louise and Arthur, Uncle George and Lome ;
And pretty ’Trixy, who, if rumour states
The truth, will soon be to the altar borne.
See Christian, too, who doubtless stands and rates
His luck, that from his Fatherland he’s torn.
Poor fellow ! notice his dejected carriage—
s thinking of his morganatic marriage.
He’s thinking of the frazt he left behind him,
Of sauer-kraut perchance, and Lager beer ;
And wondering that the skein the Parcee wind him
Has guided him so comfortably here;
With such a kind mamma-in-law to find him
In pocket-money, and with lots a year
As ranger of an English park.—’Tis strange
How those dear Germans like our parks to range.t
* As boys say—Ask the “ Governor” tokell you the story,
Thumb-Nail Sketches
frcm
The Academy.
t “ I will be thy park, and thou shalt be my deer,”—
SHAKSPEARE's Venus and Adonis.
�JON DUAN.
23
LX.
LXV.
At home they starve, but here they live in clover ;
Our best positions are at their command :
Since Coburg-Gotha’s prince to us came over,
Legions of Deutchland’s princelings seek our
land ;
And Queenly eyes and ears swiftly discover
The hidden virtues of that German band.
But though we ’ve had experience of dozens,
There’s not much love lost for these German“ cozens.”
Too long our blushing Beauty’s been neglected,
It’s now her turn to figure on the scene.
For months a mistress has her steps directed,
That she herself may properly demean,
May backwards walk, and bow low, as expected
When subjects dare to pass before their Queen.
All natural instincts have to be dispersed,
When that play called “Society” ’s rehearsed.
LX I.
Society ! O what a hideous sham
Is veiled and masked beneath that specious
name !
Society ! its mission is to damn,
To curse, and blight; to burn with withering
flame
All that is worthiest in us—to cram
The world with polished hypocrites, who claim
To sin, of right—Society has said it—
And think their crimes are greatly to their credit!
A look of anger spreads o’er Kamdux’ face,
As though the Siliad^xQ just had read.
The officer would be in sorry case
Who now approached our army’s titled head ;
For Uncle George does not belie his race,
But swears and blusters—so the Siliad said--As though he had been one of those commanders
Who fought years since with Corporal Trim in
Flanders.
LXVI.
LXII.
His mind is very likely burdened now
With doubts about his army’s straps and buckles;
And care is seated on his massive brow,
Because he fears how military “ suckles ”
Will to his next new button-edict bow ;
Whilst many a line his Guelphic features puckles
As he decides he will, in any case,
Curtail the width of sergeant-majors’ lace.
LXIII.
And here our muse breaks off to sing All hail
Great army tailor ! and hail ! Prince Com
mander,
Thou burker of reforms, that needs must fail
Whilst statesmen to the Geòrgie wishes pander ;
Thou duke of details ! ’tis of no avail,
Except for rhyme, to call thee Alexander :—
For when thou sittest down to weep and falter,
Tis ’cause thou’st no more uniforms to alter.
LXIV.
Now, look at poor young Lome—his face averring
That, though a royal princess he has got,
He’s neither fish, nor joint, nor good red-herring,
Thanks to the special nature of his lot ;
Snubbed by the Court : the world beneath inferring
He’s now no part in it—he p’rhaps is not
So happy as he might be, and may rue
He ever played so very high for “ Loo.” •
LXVII.
What worships rank, and makes a god of gold ?
What turns fair women into painted frights ?
What tempts to vice and villainy untold ?
And claims frorii all of us its devilish rites ?
What prompts ambition, base and uncontrolled ?
What never on the side of mercy fights ?
What causes sin in horrible variety ?—
Mostly, the demon that we call Society.
LXVIII.
’Tis in obedience to its unwrit laws
We bow beneath the iron yoke of Fashion ;
In its stern edicts see the primal cause
Why we as sin treat every healthy passion—
Why we a daughter sell, without a pause,
As though she were a Georgian or Circassian—
Yet shudder when we meet a painted harlot,
And say, “ Thank God 1 ” that she is not our
Charlotte.
LX IX.
And what is Charlotte, then, in Heaven’s name ?
She did not love the fellow that she married ;
But he some hundred thousand pounds could claim,
And such a weapon could not well be parried.
*
* Although, be it observed, the weapon in question was
undoubtedly “blunt.”
�24
JON DUAN.
She sold herself for life.—Is’t not the same
As though the sale but brief possession carried ?
We think it worse—though Mother Church has
prayed
The sordid union may be fruitful made.
LXX.
And yet Society makes much of Charlotte,
And takes her to its bosom with delight,
Receives effusively the life-long harlot—But curses her who sins but for a night,
Expels her from its midst—her sins are scarlet,
And ne’er can be atoned for in its sight.
Thus serves two ends—the Social Evil nourishing,
And keeping the Divorce Court cause-list flourish
ing.
LXXI.
But it is vain of us to run a-tilt
Against Society with bitter verses,
Its fabric is by far too firmly built
To yield to them ; it only yields to purses.
We will not longer linger on its guilt,
Save to bestow upon it final curses,
And in the name of all that’s pure and holy,
Denounce it and its sinful doings wholly !
LXXII.
In Beauty’s name denounce it;—though but twenty,
She’d learn’d some of its lessons from her mother;
She’d learn’d to feign the dolce far niente,
And how her appetite to check and smother;
She’d learned to lace too tight—to use a plenty
Of toilet adjuncts : rouge, and many another
Such weighty preparation.—Gott in Himmel!
He’s much to answer for, has Monsieur Rimmel.
LXXIH.
She’d learn’d to flirt, and calmly to cast off
The man she’d loved, when he his money lost;
She had a lisp and an affected cough,
And valued things according to their cost.
She’d practised, too, the usual sneer and scoff,
And could not bear her slightest wishes cross’d •
In fact, although out of her teens but lately,
She had advanced in worldly knowledge greatly,
LXXIV.
Still, as we’ve said, ’twas her first drawing-room.
She’d been in mobs before at “drums” and dances,
But ne’er before this had it been her doom
To mix in such a mob as that which chances
*
�JON DUAN.
When Queen Victoria comes out from her gloom,
And, following out one of her widowed fancies,
Won’t hold receptions where there’s space to
spare,
But at St. James’s has a crush and scare.
LXXV.
’Twas well she had Jon Duan at her side
To whisper in her ear and make her brave;
“Now, go!” he said, when Beauty’s name was
cried;
And Beauty did go then, and by a shave
Just managed not to fall down, as she tried
To show the Queen she knew how to behave,
By walking backwards, when she’d courtesied low,
And had out at a distant door to go.
LXXVI.
Court etiquette of course must be maintained;
But, in the name of common sense and reason,
This “backwards” business long enough has
reigned ;
Such fooleries have long since had their season.
If subjects from such crab-like steps refrained,
Lese-majeste, wouldst call it, or high treason ?
Surely one can the Sovereign love and honour,
Although his back were sometimes turned upon
her.
LXXVII.
Poor Beauty had a very near escape,
For, as she from the presence retrograded,
A gouty General interposed his shape;
And had not watchful Duan once more aided,
His charge had fell into a pretty scrape.
As ’twas, the warrior’s steel her train invaded,
And, making in it quite a deep incision,
Writ ’mongst its folds much long and short division.
Lxxvni.
Still she escaped uninjured save in. dress,
And that was cause for some congratulation;
Though at that stage ’twas early to express
A sense of gratitude or exultation ;
For there was yet to come, we must confess,
The worst alarm, the greatest consternation.
To get in was a “caution ;” sans a doubt,
’Twas twenty times more trouble to get out!
25
LXXIX.
It was but quitting frying-pan for fire,
’Twas very “hot,” poor Beauty quickly found;
The crowd was worse; the temperature was higher;
And there were swords that hitched, and heels
that ground;—Patrician faces glared with anger dire,
Patricians strove like porkers in a pound ;
And many plainly muttered observations
Sounded extremely like'to execrations.
LXXX.
Two hours they-pushed and pressed from pen to
pen,
And there was nothing there to drink or eat;
A biscuit and a glass of wine would, then,
Have fetched a price we scarcely dare repeat,—
For tender girls were faint; and lusty men
For very hunger scarce could keep their feet.
Meantime, the Sovereign serenely rests
Upon her chair, nor troubles ’bout her guests.
LXXXI.
Thus Duan thought“’Tis inconsiderate, very ;
Either hold drawing-rooms where there is space,
Or give the weary guests a glass of sherry,
When they’ve to struggle so from place to place;
The cost would not be so extraordinary—
The boon would priceless be in many a case;
For it is apt both strong and weak to ‘ flummox,’
To push for several hours on empty stomachs !”
LXXXII.
Beauty, for instance, had no breakfast eaten,
Excitement took away her appetite ;—
By one o’clock she felt she was dead-beaten :
But there was not a chance of sup or bite.
At four, resignedly, she took her seat on
A chair our hero found, and fainted quite ;
And then for twenty minutes she’d to stay
Before her mother’s carriage stopped the way.
LXXXIII.
And what a scene she left !—of fainting girls,
And gasping duchesses, and sinking dames;
Confusion everywhere the people whirls,
’Midst hasty shouts and calling out of names ;
�26
JON DUAN.
And all the ground is strewn with scraps and curls,
And shreds of stuff and beads which no one claims,
Whilst England’s highest-born, with might and
main,
Fight like a gallery crowd at Drury Lane.
LXXXIV.
The morn beheld them full of lusty life,
In radiant toilets decked and proudly gay:
Four hours of pushing toil and crushing strife,
And who so tattered and so limp as they?
N ow rents are everywhere and rags are rife—
Destruction has succeeded to display ;
And wondrous costumes, “built” by foreign artistes,
Are wreck’d and ruined like the Bonapartists !
LXXXV.
Sweet Mistress, why let such a scandal be,
When thy fond subjects flock to see thy face ?
Thou wilt now to its reformation see,
And act as doth become thy royal race ;
For all that read this will with us agree,
That such a state of things is a disgrace.
And if your Highness won’t believe our rhymes,
We just refer you to last July’s “ Times D
LXXXVI.
That night, when Beauty had devoured her dinner,
And her mamma had filled up all her creases—
For, truth to tell, that very ancient sinner
Had almost literally been pulled to pieces—
Jon Duan, looking p’rhaps a little thinner,
Sits down, when casual conversation ceases,
At the piano, and with anger rising,
Performed the following piece of improvising.
Qty -Haul nf SSHtjrafita.
i.
The Belgravians came down on the Queen in her
hold,
And their costumes were gleaming with purple
and gold,
And the sheen of their jewels was like stars on the
sea,
As their chariots roll’d proudly down Piccadill-ee.
¡QI
�27
JON DUAN.
2.
Like the leaves of Le Follet when summer is green,
That host in its glory at noontide was seen ;
Like the leaves of a toy-book all thumb-marked
and worn,
That host four hours later was tattered and torn.
3For the crush of the crowd, which was eager and
vast,
Had rumpled and ruin’d and‘wreck’d as it pass’d ;
And the eyes of the wearer wax’d angry in haste,
As a dress but once-worn was dragged out of waist.
4And there lay the feather and fan, side by side,
But no longer they nodded or waved in their pride ;
And there lay lace flounces, and ruching in slips,
And spur-torn material in plentiful strips.
5And there were odd gauntlets, and pieces of hair;
And fragments of back-combs, and slippers were
there ;
1 The well-known exclamation of the Spanish Ambassador
to Elizabeth’s Court—“ I have seen the head of the English
Church dancing!”-—may be remembered. To his notion
there was something strikingly incongruous in the grave and
lawful governess of the Church stepping it merrily with the
favourite gentlemen of the Court. What would that Spanish
Ambassador have exclaimed had he witnessed the scene
detailed in the next note ? What should we think now of
Elizabeth if she had danced with a stable-help?
And the gay were all silent; their mirth was all
hush’d ;
Whilst the dew-drops stood out on the brows of
the crush’d.
6.
And the dames of Belgravia were loud in their wail,
And the matrons of Mayfair all took up the tale ;
And they vow, as they hurry, unnerved, from the
scene,
That it’s no trifling matter to call on the Queen.
LXXXVII.
Soon after, seeing Beauty was so weary,
Jon Duan press’d her hand and said “ Good
bye ! ”
And, fancying that his room would be too dreary,
He bade a hansom to far Fulham hie.
Why he should go down there we leave a query,
Lest some who read these lines should say
“Fie ! fle !”
Though from this hint we cannot well refrain,
That p’rhaps he wished to go to “ court” again.
2 Her Majesty gave a ball at Balmoral, on Friday. In
the course of the evening Her Majesty danced for the first
time since the death of the Prince Consort. She danced
with Prince Albert Victor and Prince George, sons of the
Prince of Wales, and afterwards took part in a reel with
John Brown, her attendant, and Donald Stewart, game
keeper.— The Leeds Weekly News, Saturday, June 6th, 1874.
�28
JON DUAN.
Canto The Third.
i.
There stands, or once stood, for on several pleas,
It’s most unsafe to use the present tense
In speaking of these paper argosies
That pirate daily all a lounger’s pence ;
And have to labour against heavy seas,
And sail, most of them, in a fog as dense
As any that rasps London lungs quite raw—
Then, go to pieces on the rocks of law :
II.
So there stood once—we’ll say once on a time—
A time when newspapers were not a spec,”
Consisting in the offering for a dime
Of seven murders, one rape, ditto wreck,
Critiques on the Academy, sublime,
The last accouchement of the Princess Teck,
Fashionable scandals, exits and arrivals—
All latest, news—picked from the morning rivals—
ill.
There stood, then, but a few doors from the Strand,
A dingy mansion, such as is best fitted
To shrine that fourth estate, which rules the land—
That is to say, outrageously pock-pitted
And tumble-down, with proofs of devil’s hand
On every door, with windows grimed and gritted,
And so clothed in old broad-sheets that it stood
For almanack to all the neighbourhood.
IV.
The reader has a character to lose—
Or one to sell; and characters are cheap
In offices of newspapers that choose
To rather scandalise than let one sleep ;
And therefore all concerning them is news ;
And being curious, you long to peep
At places where they scarify Disraeli,
Or tell Lord Salisbury his conduct’s scaly.
V.
A crowd of ragamuffins in a court,
Who wait for papers, playing pitch and toss ;
Cabmen and loafers ready at retort,
And generally talking of a “ ’oss ” ;
�JON DUAN.
A dribbling stream who 11 flimsily ” report,
And feel Sir Roger a tremendous loss ;
Surely a peeler—sometimes an M.P. ;
This is the usual mise en scene you see.
VI.
Within the temple, order of the sternest
Prevails, supported by a well-drilled staff.
Woe to thee, compos., if a pipe thou burnest I
Woe to thee, reader, if thou dar’st to laugh !
Here everybody must appear in earnest ;
They’re all half theologians here, and half
Teetotallers; their aim is strict propriety—They’re read in families of Quivering piety.
VII.
Respectability, you Juggernaut,
You fetish insular and insolent,
You’re everywhere ! the nation’s neck you’ve
caught
In one big noose—a white cravat; you’ve sent
Pecksniff to Parliament, and’gainst us wrought
The worst of ills—on humbugs ever bent ;
But never did we deem you so infernal
As when you set up your own daily journal.
VIII.
There are so many Mrs. Grundys preaching
A blind obedience to your nods and firmans ;
There are so many Mr. Podsnaps teaching
Your gospel to the French and Turks and Ger
mans—
Who’re all Bohemian vagrants and want breech
ing—
The stage and pulpit echo with your sermons—
A thing they never did for Dr. Paley—
Surely you’re not obliged to print them daily !
29
x.
The sheet in question, then, is widely read,
Chiefly by cabmen—and it’s not elating,
For when they’ve got that pure prose in their head,
They always sixpence ask, at least, for waiting.
Its politics are liberal, too, ’tis said,
Which means they’re radical with silver plating ;
But all sorts write in it, Rad, Whig, or Tory,
With any coloured ink, buff, blue, or gory.
XI.
Mong writers, printers, clerks, and advertisers,
All in a hurry and as grave as J ob,
Moved by a noble rage to print the Kaiser’s
Last ukase half an hour before the Globe—
For that’s true journalism, though paid disguisers
Essay with pompous phrase the truth to robe;—
Among these, then, Jon Duan passed ; his pocket
Bulged with MSS. ’twould take an hour to docket.
XII.
He went towards the pigeon-hole to which
The needle’s eye of Scripture is a fool—
That’s a mere figure to rebuke the rich—
Here poor and wealthy find their welcome cool;—
Why, Saint Augustine might step from his niche,
And knock, and they’d not offer him a stool,
Unless he’d cry “No Popery,” or would make
A speech or two supporting Miss Jex Blake.
XIII.
There was another way, and that Jon Duan
By chance alone and innocently took.
One gets a civil letter written to one
By some famed author of a Bill or book—
If it’s a woman—she must be a blue ’un ;
They’ll print the missive forthwith, and will look
Thankfully on you ; one of their anxieties
Is to seem popular with notorieties.
IX.
But we must bow, for we must read ;—a want
That makes us more dyspeptic than our sires,
And also favours an increase of cant;
For though to highest thought a man aspires,
He can’t be always reading Hume and Kant,
Nor Swinburne, nor the rest of the high-flyers.
The fire divine fatigues—one takes to tapers,
That is to say, one reads the daily papers.
XIV.
Up went Jon Duan’s lucky name, and soon
With beating heart and pulse his card he followed.
Downstairs the steam-press hummed its drowsy
tune,
Clerks passed in corridors, and urchins hollo’d;
He heard naught, but walked on as in a swoon,
Fancying somefree and fearlesspresencehallowed
�3°
F'
y ON DUAN.
The creaking floors, the wall’s perspiring dun
blank—
Spirit of Wilkes, Swift, Junius, Jerrold, Fonblanque.
xv.
I see a smile come to the reader’s eyes,
Which view, of course, all things thro’ micro
scopes,
And read between the lines of leaders—lies ;
The reader, naturally, “ knows the ropes ”
In these press matters : we apologise ;
But faith, our hero’s sadly young, and hopes
Love’s not all lust nor Liberty an ogress—And thinks—the simpleton—the press means pro
gress.
XVI.
Forgive him. You may hear how he was punished;
How soon the warm, quick blood oozed cooler,
calmer;
How women laughed at him, and men admonished;
How he grew deaf unto the illusive charmer,—
Was never grieved, delighted, nor astonished,
Dined, slept, walked, flirted in a suit of armour—
In short, so perfect got, you scarce could hit on
A prettier portrait of the ideal Briton.
XVII.
But now we have left him innocent and blushing—
Remembering those manuscripts, before
A door whereon, awe-struck, he read the crushing,
August, and gorgeous title : Editor !
He cleared his throat, pulled down his cuffs, and
pushing
With timid touches that Plutonian door,
Which, opening promptly, swung back with a
slam,—
He saw the great chief—eating bread and jam !
XVIII.
Jon Duan brought a note from Castelar,
One from Caprera, one from bold Bazaine ;—So he was well received. These heroes are
Acquaintances of value, for they deign
Write numerous letters on the Carlist war,
Peace Congresses, Courts Martial; and it’s plain
Each one’s a puff for which he thanks them deeply—
Besides, they serve to fill the paper cheaply.
XIX.
After Jon Duan had been sagely pumped,
Concerning all he’d seen in his excursions,
He mustered up some confidence, and plumped
Into the theme of literary exertions.
He said: “I am, Sir, what you may call—stumped”—
(The chief sighed at neologists’ perversions)—
I’ve loved, loafed, danced, drank, gambled, and
played polo ;
I’d try at Journalism—tho’ they say it’s so low !
XX.
“ I want to write—above all to be printed ;'
The modern mania burns within my breast.
I’ve some experience, as I just now hinted,
Perhaps ’twould give my articles a zest.
Would, now, this sonnet----- ” Here his listener
squinted
At a broadsheet a boy presented. “ Pest!”
Exclaimed the Editor ; “ the sub’s wits wander,
Tell him to put in ‘ Latest from Santander !’”
XXI.
Then, blandly turning round: “You mentioned
Verses!
Young man, you’re in a very vicious path.
They are among an Editor’s chief curses.
I have now—pray don’t whisper it in Gath—
Three spinsters who have met with sore reverses,
Ten Tuppers, seven Swinburnes, very wroth,
All writing daily and requesting answers
Concerning all their madrigals and “ stanzers.”
’
XXII.
Of course, Jon Duan said he’d naught in common
With humble rhymsters, who essay to climb
Parnassus in list slippers. He’d seen human
Nature almost in every phase and clime ;
And didn’t sing thé usual song of Woman
In Alexandrines, elephants of rhyme ;
He’d read a specimen—and really grew so
Pressing, at last the bland chief bade him do so.
iKaiuinmifclIe ^ruMjnmnre.
Her dress is high, and there’s nothing within.
Polished in Clapham, its pale flowers’ pick,
She is just twenty-one and spruce as a pin,—
Her head is the only thing she has thick.
�3i
JON DUAN.
A meagre bosom, and shoulder, and mind,
A meagre mouth, that will never miss
The tender touch it will never find—
The passionate pulse of a lover’s kiss.
The eyes speak no language, much less a soul ;
The brows are faint, and the forehead is spare,
And low and empty. Then over the whole
That fool’s straw crown of submissive hair.
O, happy the man with wrought-iron nerves,
Who shall say of this tempting morsel, “Mine”—
O treasure in pottery and preserves—
O Hebe, careful of gooseberry wine !
Has it a heart ? oh, arise and appeal,
Lost sisters, that famine and cold destroyed ;
Will you prick to pity the hearts that feel
For Magdalen less than Aurora Floyd?
Has it a mind ? Come, arise and unfold,
Redeemer, the lives to be raised at last !
Is there room for thought in the brains that hold
Kitchen and nursery sufficiently vast ?
And yet she shall be a woman in fine ;
Some one will worship her thimble and fan,
Some one grow drunk on her gooseberry wine ;
And she’ll find a husband—perhaps a man.
For fate will be good and provide one—meek,
And long, and good, and foolish, and flat,
A curate—immaculate, sour and sleek,
A Pillar of Grace with a Blanched Cravat !
And duly the two will endow their kind
With the old Clapham growth as spruce as a pin ;
Meagre in bosom, and shoulder, and mind,
Her horrible virtue sanctifies sin.
Mademoiselle Prudhomme will hamper and stay
The world’s march onwards—will gossip and
dress,
And sew, and suckle, and dine, and pray :
“Madonna Grundy have pity or bless ;”—•
Mademoiselle Prudhomme will simper and slay
“ Strong Minds,” with her poor little anodyne
wit ;
And flatter herself as she’s dying one day,
She’s a heart—while the sawdust leaks out of it.
XXIII.
This was a little piece of lyric flattery ;
For anyone not quite a savage knows
Our Editor’s renowned for milk and watery
Elegies on the sweeter sex’s woes.
He thought their masters too much given to battery
With fire-irons, doubled fists,and hobnailed shoes,
Which don’t, he said, reform domestic Tartars;—
At home, ’tis said, he suffers for the martyrs.
XXIV.
He said Jon Duan’s principles were proper ;
' He liked the matter and he liked the name ;
And then abruptly he applied a stopper
To all the poet’s rising hopes of fame.
“The fact is, such things are not worth a copper.
Your young enthusiasm I don’t blame;
But really you don’t think—it is too funny !—
You don’t think that this kind of thing’s worth
money!
XXV.
“ No man writes poetry to-day, unless
He’s leisure, and some hundreds sure a year—
Ev’n then he’ll often find that going to press,
Mean’s going to Queer Street, E.C.; and when
there
He’ll find the Registrar no whit the less
Severe, because he’s only paid too dear
For writing verse—and not for acting prose—
At St. John’s Wood with Miss or Madame Chose.
XXVI.
“ The Press, sir, is the modern channel flowing
To Pactolus : compress into a column
Your finest thought, your dreams most grand and
glowing ;
Frequent good clubs ; grow staid, and stout, and
solemn;
And, with a little cringing and kotowing,
Your fortune’s made. I don’t want to extol ’em,
But we’ve a few bards of imagination—
They’re now reporting a Great Conflagration.
XXVII.
“ We may not want bays, laurels, crowns, and
mitres ;
We’d do without some J.P.s and policemen ;
We’d do without some lawyers and some fighters—
The fools who bully, and the knaves who fleece
men;
�JON DUAN.
32
But, sir, this Age must have its ready writers—
Not too profound, but aiming to release men,
By aid of half a dozen library shelves,
From that dread task of thinking for themselves.”
XXVIII.
Humility, that worst of all good qualities—
And Heaven knows there’s plenty bad enough!—
Is common, but Jon Duan wouldn’t call it his.
He knew his intellect was of the stuff
That makes men feel above such vain frivolities;
He rhymed, it’s true ; but he was also tough
In logic, versed in art, a studious reader,
So he sat down and wrote a social leader.
XXIX.
You know the social leader—it’s designed
To please the ladies o’er the morning toast.
We’ve written them ourselves sometimes, and find
Wrecks, royal visits, and divorces, most
Apt to enthrall the lovely creatures’ mind.
A breach of promise isn’t bad ; you coast
Round naughty subjects, show an inch of stocking,
Observing all the while : How very shocking !
XXX.
We know the bits to quote to show your learning,
And those to prove your feeling or your humour ;
Swift, Hook, Hood, Smith, or Jerrold; the discerning
Reader will add the rest; Pepys, Evelyn,
Hume, or
Bacon, La Rochefoucauld—they all bear churning
In frothy paragraphs ; and one or two more
Make up a hodge-podge which, served after warm
ing,
People not yet at Earlswood call quite charming.
XXXI.
I think Jon Duan tried his ’prentice hand
At something more or less to do with Beer
(What hasn’t in this free and thirsty land ?),
He lashed tremendously, he had no fear ;
On highly moral grounds he took his stand,
And vigorously, with biting jest and jeer,
Spoke out about the publicans’ last grievance,
To be assuaged by brewers at St. Stephen’s.
XXXII.
Thumb-Nail Sketches from The Acade
iy.
II Highly commendable,” the chief observed ;
And mildly glowed the austere spectacles ;
“ From those great principles I’ve never swerved.
But this will never do—our paper sells—
�ADVERTISEMENTS.
JCXV
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��JON DUAN.
33
Of muses, singing some old London rhyme ;
And then—and then we see the tribe of Levy
Entering their broughams with smug ostentation—
And, somehow, that arrests our inspiration.
(Of course I know your strictures are deserved)—■
Largely in cafés, taverns, and hotels ;
We have sent out poor Truth dress’d so succinctly,
She’s caught cold—that’s why she don’t speak
distinctly.”
XXXVIII.
XXXIII.
We drop back to the role of chronicler,
Following Jon Duan and his new-found,friend,
Maloy. That juvenile philosopher
Descanted freely on the aim and end
Of literature ; and glibly could refer
To several famous gentlemen who’ve penned
Verse, novels, essays, which we’ve all admired—
Not knowing how the authors were inspired.
Jon Duan, downcast and confused was standing,
Thinking he’d ne’er a leader read again,
His mind with notions new and strange expanding ;
When some one cried : “ Put in my news from
Spain.”
And bounding upstairs, bumped him on the landing,
A stranger, who’s—we may as well explain,
Mr. Maloy, a li special,” who makes free
To date from Irun, write in Bloomsbury.
xxxix.
Maloy was made to be an interviewer,
There was no Fleet Street curtain and no blind
He didn’t raise, and with some comments truer
Than tender, scarify the scribes behind.
Here rose a hiccough, there a hallelujah—
Not far from Shoe Lane once the two combined—
Here they declare the Ballot Act’s a sad law—
Here kid-glove Radicals haw-haw at Bradlaugh.
XXXIV.
There’s nothing like this odd kind of collision—
If one’s not seeking rhymes or lost one’s purse—
As introduction, it makes an incision
Into that Saxon cloak of pride we curse
But still will wear, through death, despair, division,
The Robe of Nessus, of Ovidian verse—
At least to-day it made Jon Duan enter
A friendship in which he soon found a Mentor.
XL.
xxxv.
Here, to the left, two-pennyworth of gall
Wars with two-pennyworth of gall and water,
One shrieking £‘ Yankee !” and the other “ Gaul!”
And threatening weekly libel suits and slaughter.
Flere lies poor Punch, a Taylor sews his pall,
While opposite there stands the brick and mortar
Palace of Truth, where, to instruct us, Stanley
Finds out the Nile, while Greenwood hunts at
Hanley.
Fleet Street, receive the writers’ salutation!
We never pass through tottering Temple Bar,
Without a feeling of profound elation
At the grand panorama stretched afar;
We take our hats off, and from Ludgate Station
See Genius coming, in triumphal car,
And with a flaming crest, and waving pinions,
Beating the boundaries of its own dominions.
XLI.
xxxvi.
Here’s the great factory where they puff the
Premier,
The Lords, the Bishops, Publicans and Princes ;
Only they’d make the soft-soap rather creamier,
Were it not that my Lord of Salisbury winces ;
Besides t’wards a new rival, rather dreamier,
Favour at times the Government evinces.
They sell though, still, from poppies of their growing,
The largest pennyworth of opium going.
We see the nation’s brain, its best lobe seething
In the strong throb and clamour of the road :
We see the legion of the teachers sheathing
Theirpensin monkish creed and Pecksniff’s code;
Tis here each high idea begins its breathing,
From here it takes its armed flight abroad —
To fall, a thunderbolt on thrones and steeples—
To fall, as manna, to the calling peoples.
XXXVII.
XLII.
Temple of Fame, all stained with dust and grime,
In air oft foul, in architecture heavy,
We freedom see and knowledge guard, sublime,
Thy low dark eaves ; and in thy courts a bevy
The best of chatterers is a scandal-monger ;
His pills are bitter, and he gilds a bit ;
And all men, though they smirk and say No, hunger
To have their famous neighbours’ windbags slit.
i
D
�aK
34
W' J
JON DUAN.
So laughed Jon Duan as Maloy grew stronger
In aphorisms—those stalactites of wit ;
And when they had dined en garçon at the
“ Mitre,”
Resolved he’d die, or be a well-known writer.
XLIII.
A writer—bravo ! The idea’s not new,
At least, it’s shared by all the Civil Service ;
The Bar, the Church, and in the Army, too,
It rages with the force of several scurvies ;
But, faith, the aim, with this unique reserve, is
As good as any British youths pursue—
It’s mostly, when a lad is fresh from school
A horse, champagne, Anonyma, or pool.
XLIV.
“ But what’s your special genius, talent, line—
Prose, verse,or ‘rhythmic Saxon,’ like dear Dixon ?
Wish you to scandalise, or mildly shine ?
Swinburne’s or Houghton’s, which renown d’you
fix on ?
Come, choose your mate among the tuneful Nine ;
There’s Tupper’s Twaddle, and Buchanan’s
Vixen ;
That Pale One, made O’Shaughnessy’s by mar
riage—
And Browning’s Blue, oft subject to miscarriage.
XLV.
“ There’s Bret Harte’s Yankee—though she does
say d----- n,
She’s quite the lady in her principles.
And what d’you say to Lockyer’s, a grande dame
Coiffée at moments à la cap and bells ?
There’s Tennyson’s would serve you like a lamb,
And teach you to ‘ring out wild bells,’ and knells,
Whene’er a German, corpulent and moral,
Expires, lies in, or marries, at Balmoral.
XLVI.
iC But maybe odder fancies make you moody—
Perhaps you’d write your novel, like your neigh
bours ;
Walk up—make your selection : There’s the goody,
The gamy, the idyllic, arduous labours
Which bring in millions—unto Mr. Mudie :
The military, full of oaths and sabres,
The hectic, allegoric, or the pastoral—
But only Jeafferson has time to master all.
�I
JON DUAN.
XLVII.
“ The eight vols. like George Eliot’s—there’s afield
Fresh, wide, and rich in fine food for the flail;
But pray wear spectacles ; it doesn’t yield
Unless you analyse each slug and snail;
And read theology in blocks congealed
From safes of Kant, Spinoza, Reid, and Bayle ;
Unless, too, you’ve a friend, and can wade through
his
Complete Edition of the Works of Lewes.
XLVIII.
“ I might suggest likewise those smaller spheres
Where several virgins, widows—even wives—•
But husbands hinder terribly, one hears—Are writing novels for their very lives.
Oh, if they’d do it in their uglier years—
. Ink’s a cosmetic when old age arrives ;
But no, the dears have scarce left pinafores,
.Before they’re knocking at Sam Tinsley’s doors.
XLIX.
“ And what astounding manuscripts they carry,
These innocents just fresh from Mangnall’s Ques
tions !
How very oddly all their heroines marry !
How very frequently the very best shuns
Her Lord and Master, for Tom, and Dick, and
Harry—•
Who’re always in the Guards, have good diges
tions,
Tawny moustaches, ‘ lean flanks ’ — charming
Satans,
Come up from Hell in kid gloves and mail
phaetons.
L.
“ Pardon, Miss Mulocch and Miss’Yonge—you’re
free
From any taint the moralist impure rates ;—
O, that your world were real, that we might be
All Lady Bountifuls and model curates,
Talking good grammar o’er eternal tea,
With one ambition—to reduce the'poor rates !
But fie ! Miss Braddon, Broughton, Ouida—you
Seduce us from the Band of Hope Review.
Li.
“Reade, Lawrance, Yates, and Holme Lee, Kings
ley, Grant,
Black the idyllic, Collins (Mortimer),
35
Collins, called Wilkie, Trollope, whom they vaunt
In proud Belgravia, and in Westminster;
Grave Farjeon, and E. Jenkins, who decant
The wine of Dickens in a cullender ;
And then there’s—but how dare you keep your hat
on ?■■—
That proud provincial Editor, Joe Hatton !
Lil.
passe et des meilleurs] ” Maloy concluded :
“ Fitzgerald, Oliphant, George Meredith,
Sell ; so perhaps they shouldn’t be excluded ;
Whyte Melville, Francillon, are men of pith ;
I also might have said that one or two did
Wonders to neutralize the brand of Smith;—■
But catalogues were ever an infliction—
E’en Homer’s ships—fai- lighter than our fiction.
LUI.
“ One’s born a woman ; one becomes a man.
Jon Duan, when you write, bear this in mind,
And interest the ladies if you can ;
For all the wide world over, womankind
Loves the same books ; male readers pry and
scan ;
Boys, young men, fogies, different authors find—
But schoolgirl, grandmamma, French, German'
Briton—
Show me the woman who don’t dote on Lytton.
LIV.
“But he’s their classic. You, the modern, must
Select your heroes and your heroines
From their own drawing-rooms, and then adjust
Your dolls in patch works made of all the sins ; •
Be roué, and disclose a bit of bust,
Raise Dolly Vardens o’er somç shapely shins ;
Suggest, but don’t be crude ; and don’t say Vice—
But hint your villain’s conduct isn’t nice.
LV.
“ And then, slang, croquet, champagne, clubs, and
horses ;
Plump painted c persons,’ who will bear the blame
For all misguided heroes’ evil courses;
Bad French, when sloven English is too tame ;
Danseuses and Guardsmen, Duchesses, divorces—
Mix up and spice—the elixir this, of fame
Of modern Balzacs-—of this pure and mighty
Age, that’s produced two publishers for ‘ Clytie.’ ”
�JON DUAN.
36
LVI.
Here poor Jon Duan rose and paid the bill.
“ But you must choose your set as well as style,”
Pursued Maloy, who, though not meaning ill,
Was apt to make his inch of talk a mile.
“ There is a spectacle hard by that will
Make plain my meaning in a little while.”
A few steps brought them to a—well, a “pub”—
(Rhyme’s a great leveller), and a liter’ry club.
LVII.
It is the Great Club of the Disappointed
And bald Bohemian mediocrities,
Who think the century is all disjointed,
Because they can’t direct it as they please ;
And so they choose to make their own Anointed,
Regardless of the outer world’s decrees ;
No matter how their idols it excoriates,
Here they’re all statesmen, M.P.s, R.A.s, Laureates.
LXI.
I want an Invocation, for the theme
Is one of that sublime and solemn kind
That ought to be approached with half a ream
Of “ Ohs ” addressed to deities, designed
To give us time to invent and get up steam,
And tune our fiddles ere we raise the blind—■
Also to make the publisher advance a
Pound or two more ’cause of the extra stanza.
LXII.
But really I find nothing to invoke.
Before the Great Apollo Club, the Muses
Shrink back, and blushes clothe them as a cloak ;
Venus, Diana, Jupiter refuses.
Priapus might do, but much finer folk
Retain his services ; one picks and chooses—
But, faith, the naughtiest gods in Lempriere,
Are quite surpassed in Hanoveria Square.
LVIII.
There’s Hack, their novelist; George Eliot quakes
When one of his Scotch pastorals appears ;
And Mr. Browning, too, ’tis said, “ sees snakes,”
When Carver, their own poet, drops the shears,
(The bard’s Sub-Editor—fate makes mistakes),
And in a magazine sheds lyric tears ;
Their Bowman, too, a wondrous name has got,
Though it does not appear what he has shot.
LIX.
They’ve publishers who print railway reports,
And so, of course, are guides to literature ;
They’ve journalists who do the County Courts,
And know the Times’ great guns, and tell you
who’re
The authors of the “ Coming K----- ”; all sorts
Of Lilliputians, empty and obscure,
Swell out here twice a week, and, lulled by shag,
Dream that they’re citizens of Brobdingnag.
LX.
“ That’s old Bohemia,” said Jon Duan’s guide,’
“ Impotent, gouty, full of age and spite ;
Let’s leave them o’er their whisky to decide
Browning’s a bubble, Morris is a mite,
And only Ashby Sterry opens wide
A window on the starry infinite.
Come westward — there’s Bohemia, young and
sunny,
With no gray hairs—and generally no money.”
LXIII.
So let the chaste Apollo Club be seen
Without vain dallying at the modest door;
Follow Jon Duan and Maloy between
Two rows of hats, and pictures, which all bore
The impress of free minds that scorned to screen
The beauties Nature meant us to adore :
Here they’d corrupt, such thin toilettes enwrap
’em,
The seminaries most select in Clapham.
LXIV.
Upstairs, a lively circle is fulfilling
The promise of the pictures—that’s to say,
Divesting truth of all the flounce and frilling,
That so disguise her in the present day;
And in our “ cleanly^ English tongue” * instilling
The subtle piquancy of Rabelais ;
They don’t mince words here—if they did they’d
hurry
To put in spice, and make the mincemeat—curry.
LXV.
Champagne and seltzer corks are popping gaily ;
It’s two o’clock ; the night has just begun ;
In pour the critics from the theatres, palely,
Suffering from Byron s or Burnand’s last pun.
* An idiom of the Daily Telegraph.
«
�JON DUAN.
Here comes Fred Bates, who dines with Viscounts
daily,
And hatches “high life” novels by the ton ;
Here’s the sleek Jew band leader, Knight — and
then,
One “ Gentleman who writes for Gentlemen.”
LXVI.
Smoke, and a rivulet of seltz. and brandy ;
A buzz of talk that oft becomes a roar ;
Impassive waiters setting glasses handy;
On settees, arm-chairs, lounging, some three
score
Tenors and poets, dramatists and dandy
Diplomatists and dilettanti ; four
Painters who’ve coloured nothing but a pipe,
Because the Royal Academy’s not ripe
LXVII.
For philosophic realism ; a common
Creature or two, who neither wrote nor drew,
And whom, therefore, the Club expects to summon
Up fierce enthusiasm for the men who do—
Clerks from the War Office, who love to strum on
Their red-tape lyres, and think they’re poets too ;
A Communist freed from Versailles inquisitors—
They make a point of showing him to visitors.
LXVIII.
There’s a broad line fire of buffoonery,
There are the single cracks of paradox;
Here, splutters from the whip of Irony ;
And cynicism’s icy ooze that mocks
■One moment, the last moment’s deity :—
An intellectual Babel, that oft shocks
At first the pious stranger, and confuses—
That’s how most of us cultivate the Muses.
LXIX.
Jon Duan promptly made himself at home.
He’d just such erudition as they prize
At the Apollo Club : he’d read Brantome,
Faublas, and Casanova—which supplies
A man with many anecdotes and some
Vices ; but here it served to make him rise
In favour with his friends, who won’t deny
Their library is very like a sty.
37
LXX.
As dawn approached, the conversation grew
More lyrical: they passed the loving cup ;
They felt all men were brothers—which is true—
All Cains and Abels ; and, like men who sup
In the small hours, they felt old songs steal through
The vapours of the wine, and struggle up
Unto the lips. So, finding they grew dreamy, a
Poet trolled this Carol of Bohemia.
S (¡Carol of Baljentta.
1.
Bohemians ! this our trade and rank, we drift
without an anchor,
All idle ’prentices who’ve broke Society’s inden
ture ;
Gil Blas, whose lives are voyages to some hazy
Salamanca;—
We’ll pit against your L. S. D. our motto : Per
adventure.
2.
The hostelries upon our way keep open house and
table;
And if e’en at the first relay, we find the money
short,
With muleteers of old romance we sup in barn or
stable,
And if the bread is black, the wine but vinegar
—qu? importe!
3Qu' importe the chasm and precipice, qu' importe
too, death and danger 1
We take the truant’s path in life, and there one
never slips.
If all the men we meet are foes, there’s not a girl a
stranger,
When one has Murger in the heart, and Musset
on the lips !
4O, green ways trodden hand in hand ! O sweet
things that mean nothing !
And Raphael’s fair sister, who makes vagrant
hearts beat louder.
Ah, for the golden spring of life! Ah, for the
autumn loathing !—
Raphael robs the traveller, Madonna’s plumes
are powder.
�JON DUAN.
38
5And russet comes upon the green ; we see the
roses’ canker ;
Lorenza’s little hands I hold have trenchant tips
and scar mine,
Gil Blas grows fat and falls asleep, half-way to
Salamanca ;
And Laura’s kisses are so sweet—they make
one’s moustache carmine !
LXXI.
As the last echoes into stillness sunk,
Jon Duan rose and bade adieu to Babel;
He’d seen and heard enough ; his ideal shrunk
Within him, and he felt his gods unstable ;
He left a famous poet very drunk,
Reciting bits from Pindar, on the table ;
And others, dry as wither’d leaves in Arden,
To finish up the night at Covent Garden.
LXXII.
These are the ordeals through which greenhorns
pass
Before they’re fit to form public opinion,
Or in romance to hold up a clear glass
To modern men and manners ; their dominion
Is reached by by-ways tortuous and crass,
Wherein one’s pure ambition moults its pinion,
And changes so in heart and aim and soul—
What was an eagle dwindles to poor poll.
LXXIII.
They set forth with their poems in their wallet,
And nothing much to speak of in their purse,
Thinking they’re going to wield Thor’s mighty
mallet,
And all the bubbles of the age disperse ;
Proud of their Mission, as the poor lads call it—
To mend the world in philosophic verse,
To speak out boldly, giving stout all-rounders,
From Vested Interests unto Pious Founders ;
LXXIV.
To laugh to scorn our wars of sacristies,
That set us flying at each other’s throats,
Because some curates like gay draperies,
Or rather higher collars to their coats :—
And then they bandy talk of11 heresies ”—
That’s what the beams denominate the motes,—
Set doctors arguing and lawyers fighting—
And, one good thing, set Mr. Gladstone writing ;
LXXV.
To tilt against—but who shall give the list
Of all the wrongs and ills that want redressing
In this sweet isle, where, if a sore exist,
Fourscore-year bishops say it’s a great blessing?
Who’ll count the reefs and rocks seen through the
mist,
Through which Pangloss, M.P., says we’re progressing ?
Who’ll count our paupers, plutocrats—none can
aver—
And oh! who’ll count the Royal House of Hanover?
LXXVI.
One thought that one could do it all, elated
With young dreams, when life’s morning star
its best shone;
Political economy we rated
Merely the art of sidling round the question :—
St. Giles’s hunger isn’t compensated
Or cured by Lord St. James’s indigestion :
And then we found blank looks on either hand—
St. Giles can’t read—St. James can’t understand.
LXXYII.
And all our wings fell from us, and we stumbled,
Crawled crablike, sneaked, and sidled with the
best;
iExalted Toole, Vance, H.R.H.S,—humbled
Your Arch’s, Bradlaughs, Odgers, and the rest;
We hung on to Fame’s chariot as it rumbled
Down Fleet Street—and from that day, were well
dressed,
And had a cheque-book—knew a peer who pities
Us scribes, and sat on several Club Committees.
LXXVIII.
An old, old tale : a lucky hero ours,
To have it all made plain before he started
On that road, which seems carpeted with flowers
To amateurs who’re young and simple hearted ;
He grieved at first, and, for a few brief hours,’
His eyes, because the scales had dropp’d off,
smarted;
But soon he hardened into crying, Bosh !—
Couleur da res#—that colour doesn’t wash !
LXXIX.
And he went in for all the browns and grays
Of stern reality, for perfect prose
�JON DUAN.
I;
I
In life, in literature, in aims, and ways:
He came to know the fact that no man goes
To market with an ingot: bread or bays,
Small change will buy the best that’s baked or
grows.
He sent his grand old idols to the mint—
And rich and godless, soon prepared to print
LXXX.
L
‘J
You’ve seen his progress in the magazines,
Reviews and Quarterlies ; his course is planned
After the best authorities, on means
Whereby to keep one’s name before the land :
To start with, his identity he screens,
Forthwith, a weekly says : “We understand
The paper in this month’s ‘True Blue,’ which
no one
Failed to remark, is written by Jon Duan.”
I
Or ere the paper’s printed : “ We’re informed
The 1 Unicorn’ for next month will contain
An essay by Jon Duan.” Thus he charmed
The public with reiterative strain,
Till simple outsiders grew quite alarmed
At the prodigious business of his brain ;
And he grew known so, he’d a near escape
From having his fine features limned by “Ape.”
1
LXXXI.
39
LXXXIV.
No bribes ! Thank Heaven, the English press is
pure •—
A model for all Europe, and a score tall
Yankees ! but sometimes salaries aren’t secure ;—
And sometimes even journalists are mortal;
Therefore a little dinner-card, when you’re
In want of praise, will open many a portal;—
I’d name.—if libel cases weren’t so brisk—
A dozen laurel wreaths that sprung from bisque.
'
LXXXV.
Laurels Jon Duan got, or substitutes
For what they called wreaths eighty years ago :
Success in our days yields more solid fruits
Than figurative chaplets—fruits that grow
Too quickly, maybe, and from rotten roots,
But still afford a pleasant meal or so.
And after all, to make a crop secure,
Don’t the best cultivators use manure ?
LXXXVI.
We don’t say that Jon Duan did ; he merely
Knew his age well, and catered for its taste.
It loves the portrait of its vices dearly,
Provided certain angles are effaced,
And certain details not described too clearly—
A photograph half libertine, half chaste,
That matrons smile at, and girls in their teens
Say prettily they can’t see what it means.
i
•
i
i
;
LXXXVII.
That is our “ social, psychologic ” fiction,
In which Grub Street takes vengeance car Bel
gravia,
Denouncing all its sins with feigned affliction
At having to describe the bad behaviour
Of titled folks—for there’s an interdiction
On vulgar crimes; we treat those that are caviar
Unto the general—pigeon-shooting, gaming,
Genteel polygamy—all won’t bear naming.
LXXXVIII.
LXXXII.
And to their country cousins Cockneys said :
“ Pray notice! look! he’s passing! that is he!
That noble presence—that inspired head—
Lit by the dawn of young celebrity—•
That is Jon Duan, following up the thread
Of his new serial for the 1 Busy Bee,’
Or gleaning bits of realism in the gutter,
That’s what makes his romance go down like
butter.”
And this Jon Duan painted to the life.
Ne’er was a better writer to portray
Thoroughbreds, cocottes, and post-nuptial strife,
And scenery in a pretty Mignard way;
To show how one makes love to a friend’s wife,
Or leads a virgin’s timid steps astray,—
*
j
i
.
;
i
|
�40
JON DUAN.
How to transgress the Ten Commandments daily,
Wear good coats well—and not end at the Old
Bailey.
LXXXIX.
He also touched on politics, and wrote
The usual anonymous report,
From Cloudland allegorical; we dote
On pamphlets of the Prince Florestan sort,
Putting them down to ten M.P.s of note,
F or lively satire is our statesmen’s forte.
Talk of the daily press, Mill, Grote—oh, fiddle !
The best loved flower of literature’s a riddle.
xc.
Reviews, translations, travels, essays, stories,
Liberal programmes, letters to the Times—
The record of his exploits would crack Glory’s
Trumpet, unused to praise this kind of crimes;
Each week the acid Athenaeum bore his
Name in some column, linked to prose or rhymes,
Which being largely advertised and often,
Made the most stony critic’s bosom soften.
xci.
N o evanescent Period was founded,
Or foundered, but he had his finger in it;
No Mirror crack’d, no Junius fell down dead,
No Torch illumed the country for a minute,
But in their columns his MS. abounded;
Eclecticism was his prevailing sin, it
Led him to promise prose to that transcendent
Modern press joke : The Daily Independent !
XCII.
That crowns a man’s career ; no further goes
The force of sane ambition. For the rest,
He’d all the wealth of privilege one owes
To having frequently in print express’d
Old thoughts about some older joys and woes '
He had his stalls for nothing, and the best
Place on first nights—a manager’s civility,
Which is the author’s patent of nobility.
XCIII.
He had the run of philosophic bars,
Where literature’s professors congregate,
With haply, some clean-shaven tragic stars,
And a few faithful servants of the State,
Who make enough to pay for their cigars,
By writing critiques for the press—a fate
So few sane men in our days seem
to
*
covet—
Thank God ! the Civil Service ain’t above it.
�JON DUAN.
XCIV.
The damsels who deign serve you with your beer
Are deeply versed in literature and art;
And oh! the things those virgins see and hear
Would rather make the goddess Grundy start.
It’s not improving always to sit near
Authors, who, if they don’t attack your heart,—
For they can’t touch it, though they’ve won some
laurels—
Do play the very devil with your morals.
xcv.
Wide as they range, a flavour of sour ink
Goes with them, from the City to the Strand,
And thence to Panton Street. Just watch them pink
A reputation with a master-hand ;
List to them squabbling, and observe them drink—
And then reflect, to-morrow all the land
Will only know which way the world’s inclining,
By what they all have put into their “ lining,”
XCVI.
Leave them. The Muse, poor jade, has had her fill
Of copy and of copy writers. Satis,
Even Jon Duan, though he’s prosperous, still
Cries now and then, when he sees what his fate
is—
To grind for ever in the same old mill
The same old thoughts, for evermore to mate his
Dreams with the need of publishers and editors—
Because the Ideal won’t appease one’s creditors.
XCVII.
Leave them, and leave Jon Duan for awhile,
One of their band, a brother—till one sees
A way that’s safe to say his prose is vile,
And his successes only plagiaries;
4i
You’ll meet them all to-morrow and you’ll smile
At their old jokes, weep o’er their elegies,
Admire them all in copy which encumbers
The New Year Annuals and the Christmas Numbers.
XCVIII.
We’ve seen Jon Duan through Grub Street, safe and
sound—
The passage isn’t always so secure :
Footpads are plenty, publishers abound—
Things which don’t tend to keep a young man
pure.
We’ve seen him fêted, published, bought and
crowned,
And shown at all Smith’s bookstalls : now he’s
sure
Of immortality—and, such is fame-—
Forty years hence, e’en Timbs won’t know his name.
XCIX.
’Tis the best way to leave a hero—great,
The friend of critics, prosperous and fat ;
Keeping his brougham, asked to civic fêtes,
And noble poets’ garden parties.—That
Is not invariably an author’s fate,
But we want an exception, for thereat
The amateurs take fire, write verse by scores—
And that’s the way to punish editors.
C.
And so he’s reached the glorious apogee ;
And success has no history ;—like Peace,
He’s at an altitude whereunto we
Can’t follow, for our wings are fixed with grease,
And in the sun’s red rays shake wofully :
But this will prove he’s found the golden fleece :
We leave him, with a set, refined and manly,
Talking of Gladstone’s pamphlet with Dean Stanley.
�42
JON DUAN.
Canto The Fourth.
i.
||||T‘ PAUL once had apartments with a
The street, you may remember, was called
Straight,—
But whether Peter lodged in such a manner,
The pens of the Apostles don’t relate:
We know he’d several blots upon his banner,
And that he now keeps guard at Heaven’s gate:
But as to what his social habits were,
The details we can find are very rare.
II.
Though we are bound our full belief to give
To that sad business about the Cock;
And though that other incident will live—
When he gave Ma'lchus such a sudden shock.—
Our information’s mostly negative
’Bout this Barjona, who was christened “Rock”;
Yet we’re inclined to think Pierre a hearty,
Hot-temper’d, bold, and fearless sort of party.
III.
He readily gave up his little all—
The fishing business p’rhaps was slow just then—
And, feeling he for preaching had a call,
He went forthwith to fish for souls of men.
The thought of leaving home did not appal,
.And that he gladly went’s no wonder, when,
Alike from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we find
He must have left a mother-in-law behind!
IV.
However, let St. Peter have his due,
He was a faithful follower, on the whole;
Human, of course—so, equally, are you —
But he’d a loving and an ardent soul,
Which, after persecutions not a few,
Bore him in triumph to a martyr’s goal;
And left behind him an undying fame,
Heirship to which Rome’s Pope advances claim.
V.
Poor Peter ! It is monstrously unfair
That such a Church should take his name in
vain;
To say that he first filled the Papal chair
Must surely give him much post mortem pain.
�JON DUAN.
For not his worst detractor could declare
He e’er did aught the name of Pope to gain.
The lives of few of them will bear inspection;
For lust and blood most had a predilection.
VI.
And Peter’s free from that; he did not fill
His life with villainies the pen can’t write;
His name is not mixed up with crimes that chill;
With sins incestuous that the soul affright;
He did not torture, persecute, and kill,
And make his influence a cursing blight;—
When sinning most, he still might have the hope
He’d never sinned enough to be a Pope!
VII.
He ne’er his helpless fellow-creatures robbed,
To live in sensuality and ease;
He never schemed, and lied, and planned, and
jobbed,
In Heaven’s name, his mistresses to please;
His steps were not with guilty favourites mobbed,
He did not use the Church’s holy keys
The door to damned and devilish sins to ope,—
In short, St. Peter never was a Pope !
VIII.
He had no gold nor houses, tithes nor land,
He had no pictures, and no jewels nor plate;
He never bore a crozier in his hand,
He never put a mitre on his pate;
He simply followed Jesus Christ’s command,
Which so-called Christians have not done of
late;—
Oh! we would raise Hosannahs in our metre,
If pioús people were more like St. Peter.
IX.
We will not talk of Rome ; its annals black
Our pages would too deeply, darkly soil;
Upon the Vatican we’ll turn our back,
Lest indignation should too fiercely boil ;
Its fiendish crimes have reached a depth, alack !
T’wards which our feeble pen would vainly toil :
We will not dabble in the dirt of Rome,
We have enough to do to look at home.
x.
Each sect of Christians in numbers grows,
Who with the nomination are suffic’d;
43
Who are to what their Founder taught, fierce
foes,
Boasting a bastard creed, with errors spiced.
The Christians of the present day are those
Whose words and actions savour least of Christ,
And reckon but of very little count
The precepts of the Sermon on the Mount !
XI.
The English Church our serious thought bespeaks—
We write as friend to it, and not as foeman;
We write to save it from the trait’rous sneaks
Who, English-named, at heart are wholly Roman;
We write, unfettered, with a pen that seeks
Fair field from all, favour undue from no man ;
We write because a thousand blots besmear
Th’ escutcheon of the Church we hold so dear.
XII.
Blots of all kinds and colours, sorts and sizes—
Blots Evangelical and Ritualistic ;
Blots so pronounced that indignation rises ;
Blots hidden carefully in language mystic ;
Blots publicly exhibited as prizes ;
Blots to all usefulness antagonistic—
Blots so diffuse, in fact, that without doubt
They threaten soon to blot the Church right out.
XIII.
Our hero knew that some such blots existed,
For he’d an uncle who’d been Bishop made;
The reason being that he for years persisted
In giving to the Tory party aid.
Though how it was such services could be twisted
To show a fitness for the Bishop grade,
We’ve tried to find out, but we’ve tried in vain—
Perhaps Lord Shaftesbury could this explain.
XIV.
Jon’s Bishop-uncle was a portly man,
With well-filled waistcoat, and a port-wine nose;
Who, since to be a vicar he began,
Had never seen his watch-seals or his toes ;
Who, knowing life to be at best a span,
Resolved to eat good dinners to its close ;
And giving thanks each day to God the giver,
O’erfed himself, and took those pills called liver.
�44
JON DUAN.
XV.
It did not seem, save as an awful warning,
He thought of the directions Christ had given ;
His Purse was large; he search’d the Times each
morning,
That he might see how well his Scrip had thriven
Was far from bed-accommodation scorning,
And never walked it, when he could be driven.
And if the meek in heart alone are bless’d,
He must for cursing long have been assessed.
XVI.
He hunger’d and he thirsted, it is true—
But not for Righteousness—it is most clear.
He mourn’d—but that was merely ’cause he knew
A neighbouring Bishop had more pounds a year;
He laid up earthly treasures not a few,
But of the moth and rust he had no fear;
And whilst of meat and drink he took much
thought,
Consider’d not the lilies as he ought.
XVII.
In sooth, Jon Duan could not find a trait
In which the Bishop followed the Great Master;
. His diocese brought ^15 a day,
And he contriv’d to make a fortune faster
Than money-changers, for he’d a’cute way
Of speculating that ne’er met disaster ;—■
And as his will proved, later, it is gammon
To think one cannot worship God and Mammon.
XVIII.
Of course he something did his pay to earn:
He wrote a bitter book against Dissent ;
And once a year, in May, his soul would burn,
Because the Hindoo had no Testament ;
And to the House of Lords his feet would turn,
If by his aid reforms he could prevent :
And he’d some trouble, too, in duly giving
To all his reverend relatives a living !
XIX.
He has in Ember * weeks to lay his hands
Upon the candidates for ordination ;
In his be-puffed lawn sleeves, and linen bands,
He ’mongst the ladies makes no small sensation ;
* It is not singular perhaps that Ember week is prolific in
“ sticks."
�JON DUAN.
And periodically his lordship stands
To consummate the rite of confirmation,
Which, being an Epicure, he finds not easy,
For as a rule the children’s heads are greasy.
45
Our 36fi£f)rrp)5'.
Meantime, whilst this good man in wealth is rolling,
His slaving curates scarce get bread to eat;
As he his soul with choice old wine’s consoling
(Fit follower of the Apostles’ feet !),
They, as their wretched stipend they are doling
(The Bishop in three months spends more in
meat),
Must recollect, although it seems odd, rather,
That he, in God, is their Right Reverend Father.
1.
Who follow Christ with humble feet,
And rarely have enough to eat,
Who “ Misereres ” oft repeat ?—Our Bishops.
2.
Who, like the fishermen of old,
Care not for house, nor lands, nor gold,
But boldly brave the damp and cold ?—Our Bishops.
3Who preach the gospel to the poor,
And nurse the sick, and teach the boor —
Who faithful to the end endure ?—
Our Bishops.
4Who give up all for Jesus’ sake,
And no thought for the morrow take,
But daily sacrifices make ?—
Our Bishops.
5And who count everything a loss
Except their Lord and Master’s cross,
And reckon riches as but dross ?—
Our Bishops.
xx.
And shame to say, this pillar of the Church
Is the severest landlord in the county ;
Woe to the tenant, who, left in the lurch,
Is not quite ready with the right amount; he
Gets no mercy, for the strictest search
Reveals no instance of this Bishop’s bounty—
Bounty, indeed, ne’er enters in his plans,
Except it is that Bounty called Queen Anne’s !
XXI.
XXII.
XXIV.
How very strange it is that Mr. Miall
Won’t let a state of things like this alone !
For him to say the Church is on its trial
Is but mere foolery, we all must own ;
The Bench of Bishops cannot fail to smile,—The Church they grace is steadfast as the
♦
throne,—•
“ Ged rid of us indeed, what nonsense ! Zounds 1
We cost each year two hundred thousand pounds !w
Thus Duan sings as he one night is dining
With his good Bishop-uncle tête à tête ;
What time the prelate’s nose is redly shining,
And brightly gleams his bald and polished pate.
He does not speak, they had some time been
wining,
Yet on his face is satisfaction great ;
And when his nephew the decanter passes,
They toast the Bench of Bishops in full glasses.
XXIII.
Let’s leave the reverend Epicure to fuddle,
Of many bishop-types he is but one ;
And who can wonder at the Church’s muddle,
When half a dozen ways its leaders run ?
When some are smeared with Babylonish ruddle,
And some are steeped in Evangelic dun;
When Broad and High Church meet in battle
shocks,
And Low Church pelts the pair of them with
Rocks.
xxv.
The Bishops ! What a volume in a word !
Our hearts beat quicker at the very sound ;
Get rid of them, indeed !—it’s too absurd.
Shame on the men who such a scheme pro
pound!
Oh ! can it be that they have never heard
How in good works the Bishops all abound ?
Let Science, Art, and Learning pass away,
But leave us Bishops to crown Coming K----- .
�JON DUAN.
XXVI.
Meantime, whilst High and Narrow, Low and
Broad,
And Deep (the Deep are those who get the prizes)
All fight together, for the praise of God,
The thought in some few people’s minds arises,
Why any longer they the land defraud,
And common-sense most certainly advises
That if their zeal for fighting’s so intense,
They ought to combat at their own expense.
XXVII.
For who takes interest in their petty quarrels ?
Who cares for what they wear or how they stan
Let the big babies have their bells and corals,
And play the fool ; but men the right demand
To say these “posers ” shall not teach us morals,
Nor be upheld by law throughout the land.
,
’Tis time, indeed, the Church to roughly handle,
And stop what has become a crying scandal.
XXVIII.
When Christian Bishops do but bark and bite
In silly speeches and in unread books ;
When shepherds leave their flocks in sorry plight,
And lay about them with their pastoral crooks ;
When Congress breaks up in a smart, free fight,
The state of things delay no longer brooks,
But every day makes the impression stronger—
We should support the Church’s wars no longer.
XXIX.
Nor must we in our midst still go on breeding
A set of priests both pestilent and prying;
Who, on our daughters’ superstition feeding,
The strongest bonds of home-love are untying;
At whose attacks morality is bleeding,
And Englishwomen’s honour lies a-dying—
Who are reviving, with zeal retrogressional,
The grievous scandals of the old confessional.
XXX.
&
These fellows are the worst;—not half so bad
The Calvinists who say we must be damned,
Nor those who go at times revival mad,
And glory in conversions that are shamm’d ;
Nor those who, Spurgeon apeing, think to add
To their renown by getting churches cramm’d,
Nor think how much they let religion down
By posturing weekly as a pulpit clown.
nwaiwwnitffic-i;
�JON DUAN.
XXXI.
A truce, though—we are getting very prosy,
And quite forgetting our long-suffering hero. .
For the long sermon to atone, suppose he
Appear at once and dance a gay bolero,
Or sing a ditty, amorous and rosy,
To bring our readers’ spirits up from zero—
Or stay, what’s better still, let us prevail
On him to tell a Ritualistic tale.
San ©uatt’tf
A STORY OF THE CONFESSIONAL.
I.
Know ye the place where they press and they
hurtle,
And do daring deeds for greed and for gain,
Where the mellow milk-punch and the green-fatted
turtle
Now mildly digest, and now madden with pain ?
Know ye the land of Stone and of Vine,
Where mayors ever banquet and aidermen dine ;
Where Emma was wooed, and Abbott laid low,
And they fly paper kites and big bubbles blow ;
Where Gold is a god unassail’d in his might,
And neck-ties are loosened when stocks get too
tight ?
If this district you know—it is E.C. to guess,
And you go up a street which the Hebrews possess,
And turn to the right,—why, then, for a wager,
You come to the Church of St. Wackslite the Major;
And list, as o’er noises that constantly swell,
Comes the soul-stirring sound of its evensong bell.
2'.
Robed in the vestments of the East,
Apparell’d as becomes a priest,
Awaiting his sacristan’s knock,
The Reverend Hippolytus Stock
Sat musing in his vestry chair.
Deep thought was in his pasty face,
His tonsured head was racked with care:—
A smell of spirits filled the place—
(Terrestrial spirits such as we
Call mystic’ly Brett’s O. D. V.)
His crafty soul, well skill’d to hide,
The guilty secrets kept inside, *
Could smoothe not from his furrow’d brow
The anxious lines that seared it now.
3’Twas strange what troubled him, he had
All things that Ritualists make glad:
Embroider’d banners, silken flags,
And velvet Offertory Bags :
Two Utrecht Altar-cloths with lace,
Font Jugs and Buckets in their place.
Of Candlesticks a wondrous pair,
A Chalice Veil of texture rare.
Rich Dossals in the chancel hang ;
From Carven Desks the choir-boys sang ;
The Pavement was encaustic tiles ;
The Fauld Stools of the latest styles.
Even the Hat-suspenders show’d
The latest ritualistic mode ;
His Maniples were fair and white ;
His Sacramental Spoons a sight;
The Chancel nothing could surpass,
The Altar-rails were polish’d brass ;
Assorted Crosses every where,
Assist the congregation’s prayer ;
Indeed, though it involved some loss,
The Napkins were cut on the cross ;
*
He’d Cutters for the sacred bread ;
And from an Eagle lectern read;
The Pews were new, the Windows stained,—
In short, no single want remained,
Suggested by religious pride,
Which had not promptly been supplied.
So ’twas no use to go again
To Cox and Sons in Maiden Lane.—
Yet still those reverend features bore
The anxious look we’ve named before.
4The knock was heard, a form appear’d,
A black, lank form with copious beard—
“ Three minutes, and the bell will cease.”
Then, Hippolytus, “ Hold thy pe^ce !
Has the communion plate been clean’d?”
The lank one acquiescence lean’d—
“ Three boys,” he said, “ have work’d for hours,
Gard’s Plate Cloth capitally scours,
I never saw it look so bright,
You will feel proud of it to-night.”
“ And has that sack of incense come ?”
The lank one, save for “ Yes,” was dumb.
* A friend who thinks all Ritualists are vipers,
These napkins christens Ritualistic Wipers. ”
47
�48
JON DUAN.
“ Incense is up again, beware !
The Acolytes must take more care.
They burn too much of it at nights.”
And here the black form silence brake—
“ O, Sir, concerning those wax lights :
Wicks says he will a discount make
On thirty pounds for ready cash.”
The vicar smiled, he was not rash,
And merely murmuring softly, “ Thirty ? ”
Continued in a louder tone,
“Joseph, that I. H. S. is dirty,
See by a sister it is scrubbed,
And have my pocket-service rubbed.
And say to Mrs. Sniggs, it’s bosh !
That Alb did not come from the wash.
And now, enough of worldly cares,
Lead on the way to evening prayers ! ”
5St. Wackslite’s filled with floods of light,
’Tis celebration high to-night.
The organ peals, the people kneels.
The “ supers ” first their banners bear,
The vergers with their wands are there,
The choristers march two by two,
The Acolytes their duties do.
And as their censers high are sway’d,
They would a sweet perfume have made,
Had not the incense been of late
Cheap, truly,—but adulterate.
Lay brothers in due sequence walk,
The assistant-priests behind them stalk.
Last comes in robes which rainbows mock
The Reverend Hippolytus Stock ;
And round the church in order slow,
They with triumphal music go.
But by the door a son of sin,
A writer in the rabid Rock,
Has managed early to slip in—
’Tis his to cause a sudden shock.
For in a tone so full and clear
That everyone cannot but hear,
His voice he raises and recites
These lines, and not a line but bites :—
dje
of Rrintr.
i.
“ The aisles of Rome ! the aisles of Rome 1
Where burning censers oft are swung,
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p'HE LUXURY & PRACTICAL UTILITY
QF AUTUMN & WINTER COSTUMES.
JJMIFORM SUITS for LADIES and GENTLEMEN.
ULSTER
TRAVELLING COATS,
With all the Latest Improvements,
301-. to 130J.
Ditto, lined with Fur, 15 to 75 guineas.
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COUNTRY & TOURING SUITS A®
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DITTO SUITS, 6o.v. to oo.r
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FROCK DITTO SUITS, So,, to ° 201
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Ready for immediate use, or made to order at a few hours’
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From Soft, Pliable Materials, specially Manufactured and
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„
novelties, foi-the present season which Mr. B en rAM^Jrf Ulster
House, Conduit Street, has prepared for his lady custoaMHL we mav
more especially call attention to one which most of A™ers, we
KE S» “ f
Measurement Required ; Size of Breast and Waist, and
the Height.
TTLSTER HOUSE,
CONDUIT STREET. — It were
Vy superfluous, of course, to point out that this well-known establish
ment of Mr. benjamin s contains at all seasons every variety of the
newest and most approved description of apparel, suitable both for
gentlemen and the gentler sex. But certain of his novelties deserve
special mention. Among the latest wonders of the tailor’s art, as here
practised,„is the Universal,” which may well be described as i{no end
of a coat.
The cloth is all wool, soft, warm, and waterproof—the last
epithet applies to all the cloths used here. It is furnished with a large
hood, has numerous and capacious pockets, and is provided likewise
with a gun-flap, which may be taken off when no longer needed. It is
equally adapted for riding, driving, or walking, and is so built that the
wearer when on horseback may, by a skilful arrangement of straps and
buttons, convert Jt into both coat and leggings. For this purpose the
skl?11S m three pieces, the centre one of which can be turned up inside,
while the two outer ones fasten round the legs below the knee, leaving
ample room for the play of those limbs. It is scarcely possible to
imagine a class of coat more suitable for the sportsman. Another
novelty is a new kind of shooting coat with expanding pleats, so
arranged that, no matter how placed, the body and arms enjoy perfect
freedom of action. It looks like an improved Norfolk jacket, and is
made to fit the. figure admirably, so that it is sightly as well as useful.
Another, and indeed the latest, of Mr. Benjamin’s novelties, is the
Kink suit, intended for ladies, chiefly when skating, but available also
for rough cross-country walking. This comprises an underskirt or petti
coat ; an overskirt, opening both back and front ; a jacket fitting tight
behind, but pleated in front ; a pair of gaiters, and a hat to match. It
forms, indeed, a complete outer costume, and we should judge it
would stand rough wear admirably. Above this may also be worn an
over-jacket, with muff to match, when the intensity of the cold makes
such additions desirable.
Other habits, polonaises, ladies’ Ulsters,
with hood and cape—so contrived that the wearer may detach them if
she chooses—and jackets with, if required, a skirt long enough for
riding, and that may be looped up and formed into a pannier for
walking All these coats and costumes can be made in such different
materials as homespuns, cheviots, &c., and of a thickness suitable
either to our temperate climate, or the severer cold of a Russian or
Canadian winter. We are not prepared to say if the garment known of
ail men as an Upper Benjamin is indebted for its name to the proprietor
of Ulster House, but certainly those who need such an article might do
worse than test Mr. Benjamin’s skill and ingenuity as a builder of coats.
L,and and Water, Nov. 21st, 1874.
ULSTER COVERT COATS, 45s. to 70s”
'pHE DRAG DRIVING and RIDING COAT.
'pHE AUTUMN UPPER COAT.
H
*
pE
IMPROVED INVERNESS, with Belt, &c.
’
T TLSTER STALKING or UNIVERSAL COATS, with
Movable Cape, Hood, and Pocket Gun Flaps, 70s. to 100s.
WINTER OVERCOATS, 35s. to 100s.
TTLSTER and HIGHLAND
PLEATED SUITS for
SHOOTING and FISHING.
‘^^’ITH BREEKS, Knicks, or Pants, 70J. to 905.
ITH all the LATEST IMPROVEMENTS, including
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JpiGHLAND KILT SUITS.
which then takes fho nlan 3 ?se^u s.kirt> longer than the one] below,
„ ? 1 -J ta^es the place of a petticoat; on the principle of the verv
*
useful riding habit introduced by this firm some Time sfoce which bv
ohfeaSawaeikhiv <leimrthanCe’
reqU1fred’ can be transformed’into skirte
ot a walking length—a great boon for travelling.
Now that tailorfittfoVcImh1indr hS° much th<? fashi?n: Iadies wil1 find the exquisitely
particularly1 tem^^V“15 anl Jackets made by Mr' **
jamin
PJrtlcuIariy tempting. The same firm has a speciality for well-cut
for h ThSieSa°f
grey cloth Wlth velvet revers, and pockets as well as
jackets Vku±terS/n tktraVClling C,l0aks’ and every variety oOadies?
former years fnd
°ther
?°ths are StiI1 as much "v°™ « in
pan^in/thete art
now exclusively trimmed with fur; and Kcom?r yln» these are muffs of the same material edged with fur Ulster
House has made a name for itself in the matter of Children^ Uhtos
beenCso muchfo
^7
be
the leatber Petticoats wlgXhave
ceen so much m request of late.—Oct. 3 rst, 1874
THERTrTrTdING HABITj^r^rto^/yTT:--------------
"pHE WATERPROOF SPENCER, 35.f. to 45j.
'T'HE ULSTER and HIGHLAND PLEATED & KILTED
DRESSES, 703 to 100^.
.
*
THE TAILORS' IMPROVED POLONAISE, 70X to
9oa
IVTEW POLONAISE WALKING DRESS.—That index
fatigable caterer for the ladies, Mr. Benjamin, of Ulster House,
Conduit Street, is again in the field with an Improved Polonaise Walking
Dress. Though in view of the recent torrid weather it seems almost
out of place to speak of dresses made of woollen materials at all, yet it
is not always May, and even in spring and summer the chilly and damp
days of our changeable climate often, make a woollen dress of light
colour and stylish make at the same time seasonable and comfortable.
Both these qualifications can be united in the new polonaise suit which
has been brought under our notice. It is composed of a double-breasted
polonaise, with a very artistically draped pannier tunic, to be worn over
a plain skint of the same material as the polonaise, both being finished
off with several rows of stitching at the edge. To these may be added
if desired, a double-breasted jacket for out-door wear in wet or cold
weather. The series of garments are put and made up with the neat
ness and accuracy of workmanship which we have always found to be
the characteristics of Mr. Benjamin’s confections for ladies; neither
has he forgotten to add the many convenient pockets hitherto reserved
for the use of the sterner sex. To suit all requirements in the way of
make of material and colour, Mr. Benjamin shows an extremely large
assortment of homespuns, cheviots, and tweeds, manufactured of every
imaginable tint, ranging from Oxford grey to the lightest stone colour,
¿nd including the heather, granite, and yellow shades so much worn at
the present time. Some vicuna cloth in this collection, made from un
dyed wool of the animal, whence it takes its name, is very effective
from its pale golden, tint; while the softness of its texture makes it
most suitable fordraping into these polonaise tunics.-Queen, May 2,1874.
T ADIES’
ULSTER
TRAVELLING
COATS,
from
42s. to roos.
RADIES’ UNIVERSAL CLOAKS,
y^ITH MOVABLE CAPE and HOOD, 50X. to
8oj.
U’LSTER RIDING and HUNTING HABITS, yor. to
iooj.
LSTER WALKING and TRAVELLING DRESSES,
703'. to 1003
.
*
AT ULSTER HOUSE, No. 38, Conduit Street, W
�3
THE “ BUSKIN.”—A Tragedy Tracing.
—------------------------------- :-------------------------------------------- i, i
J
1
��JON DUAN.
49
Where saints are worshipp’d ’neath the dome,
Where banners sway and mass is sung—<
In Papal Sees these aisles have place,
But English churches they disgrace.
II.
“ The vestments, many-hued and quaint,
The alb, the stole, the hood, the cope,
The prayers to Virgin and to saint—
These are for them who serve the Pope :
Shame ! that such mummeries besmirch
The ritual of the English Church!
ill.
“ I took the train to Farringdon,
From Farringdon I walked due E.;
And musing there an hour alone,
I scarce could think such things could be.
At Smithfield—scene of martyrs slain—
I could not deem they died in vain.
IV.
u And is it so ? and can it be,
My country ? Is what we deplore
Aught but a phase of idiocy ?
Is England Protestant no more?
Is she led captive by a man—
The dotard of the Vatican ?
V.
“ Must we but weep o’er days more blest ?
Must we but blush ?—Our fathers bled.
Earth, render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our martyred dead !
Of all the hundreds grant but three
To fight anew Mackonochie.”
This while had all around been dazed,
And no one tried his tongue to stay ;
The choristers had ceased, amazed,
The organ did no longer play.
But soon a sense of wrong return’d,
And scores of eager fingers burn’d
To turn the ribald traitor out;
And there arose a shaming shout,
And several vergers for him made;
Still he no sign of fear betrayed.
In truth, so full of zeal was he,
Another verse he did begin,
But, promptly fetched, P.C. 9 E.
Appears, and forthwith “runs him in.”
E
�5o
The organ then peals forth once more,
And the processional is o’er.
6.
The three assistant priests await
The signal to officiate,
And bide till ’tis their vicar’s will
To dance the usual quadrille.
Then, when he joins their little band,
And all before the altar stand,
They face the east, they face the west,
They face the ways that please them best ;
They scuffle quickly dos-à-dos,
And through gymnastic motions go ;
They turn to corners, do the chain,
Kneel down, get up, and kneel again ;
The vicar, plainly as can be,
Makes an exemplary M.C.
Each tangled move he regulates,
And juggles with the cups and plates—
No slip, no stumble, not a fault ;
Though he is near two-score and fat,
He could have turned a somersault,
This Ritualistic acrobat.
Nay, it obtains among his friends,
And is in Low Church circles said,
That Hippolytus soon intends
To celebrate “upon his head !”
7The organ plays its final note,
The church is wrapp’d in silent gloom,
A dreamy stillness seems to float,
The vicar seeks his robing-room.
One duty now remains for him,
’Tis the Confessional to seek,
Where burns the waxen taper dim,
And hear the heart-thoughts of the weak.
And, as he goes, he murmurs low,
“ Yes ! she will come, for she was there !”
And in his eyes hot passions glow,
As sits he in his oaken chair.
And now, one parts the curtains red,
And kneels, and bows a guilty head,
With many a tale of sin and woe ;
Still others come, and kneel,.and go—
Escaping thus, they think, the ban
Shed o’er them by this wicked man.
x
His eyes still peer with anxious care,
He mutters, “ Surely she was there !”
JON DUAN.
Then fiendish lustre fills his eyes,
And colour to his pale cheeks flies,
For down the aisle, in the light so dim,
A female form comes straight to him,
And he knows by the hat with the sea-gull’s wing,
And the cuirass cut in the latest fashion,
That those faintly-falling footsteps bring
The woman he loves with a guilty passion.
8.
Thoughts of the past rush through his brain,
Thoughts rapturous, yet link’d with pain,
Of the sweet face when first she came
His spiritual aid to claim—
Of her soft arms, in meekness bending
Across her maiden’s budding breast;
Of those soft arms anon extending
To clasp the hands of him who blest.
O she was fair ! her eyes were blue,
Her hair was golden, as spun sunbeams are ;
Her cheeks had robbed the rosebuds of their hue,
Her voice was music coming from afar ;
And she, suspecting naught, was full of trust—
Trust, confidence and innocence inspire ;
Whilst he look’d on her lovely form and bust,
And vow’d to win her to his fierce desire.
Yes, she was fair as first of womankind,
When in her virgin innocence first smiling ;
And he, with cruel purpose in his mind,
Was wily as the serpent; her beguiling
With holy words and hypocritic speeches,
Such as the Ritualistic manual teaches.
.
Too many times she came, and he
Plied her with subtle Jesuitry;
Poison’d her mind and soil’d her heart
With all his cunning, priestly art;
Dealing his every venomed stroke
From underneath religion’s cloak,
Till, counting her within his power,
He hailed th’ approach of triumph’s hour,
And, as her frail form meets his sight,
He plans her fall that very night.
9In silence bow’d the virgin’s head ;
As if her eyes were fill’d with tears,
That stifled feeling dared not shed—
As if o’ercome by maiden’s fears.
�51
JON DUAN.
“ My daughter ! ” quoth the wicked priest,
il Your face lift up, tell me, at least,
What ghostly trouble rives your soul—
God gives me power to make it whole.”
And, as he spoke, behind her head
He closely drew the curtains red ;
But still no word her silence broke,
Her presence sighs alone bespoke.
“ My daughter ! ” thus the priest again,
“Your studied reticence is vain.”
His lips bent forward near her ear,
“ Come, cast away your foolish fear ;
Confess the sins that on you press—
Confess to me, sweet girl, confess ! ”
Save heavier sighs, no answer came,
The vicar’s breath came quicklier, then—
“ Dear Alice !”—for he knew her name—
Burst forth that villain amongst men,
I quite forget my own distress
In telling you I love you well,—
So well, that all the pains of Hell
I’d bear for one long, close caress.”
No movement yet. “ O, Alice, make
Some answer, lest my heart should break.
I am your priest, I know your heart;
Alice, I will not from you part.
I’ve sworn to be a celibate,
And marriage vows are not for me ;
But holy love and passion great
A mingled fate for us decree.
I claim you, who shall dare say nay,
Or tear you from my arms away?
Come, darling, we are all alone,
One hour will all past pain atone ;
Come, let no longer aught divide—
Come, darling, be the Church’s bride 1 ”
10.
All suddenly the female form arose,
And as the vicar stretched his arms to seize her,
A manly fist dash’d right into his nose,
A crushing blow, call’d vulgarly a “ sneezer ”;
And whilst he felt all nose and strange surprise,
The fist work’d piston-like just twice or thrice,
And bunged up straightway were his sunken eyes,
And then his throat^was seized as in a vice.
Whilst, as his breath was being shaken out,
And he felt he would very quickly smother—
Then, just before he fainted, came a shout,
Of “Alice could not come! but I’m her brother!”
i
11.
The Reverend Hippolytus Stock
Was kept for several weeks in bed ;
It was a very sudden shock,
And very copiously he bled.
He suffered very dreadful pain,
His mental torture was still greater ;
His nose will ne’er be straight again,—
Let’s hope his notions will be straighter !
XXXII.
Thus told, or would, or could, or should have told
Our hero Duan, in tolerable rhyme,
The story of the Ritualist, so sold,
A precious product of this popish time.
Such men o’er wives and daughters get a hold,
Combining snake-like venom with its slime.—
J on knew the details well; he was no other
Than the revenging metamorphosed brother,
XXXIII.
He’d seen his sister mope for weeks and weeks,.
And grow more melancholy every day ;
He half suspected Ritualistic freaks,
Knowing her inclinations went that way.
At last, her fullest confidence he seeks,
And learns enough to fill him with dismay ;
Then warns her promptly of her wily foe,
And lays the stratagem of which you know.
XXXIV.
When all his sister’s clothes he had put on,
And sought from paint and tweezers artful aid,
No casual glance could have detected Jon,
He looked so very like a pretty maid ;
And with long tresses his head pinn’d upon,
A perfect transformation was display’d.
In fact, to Alice, for the parson’s liking,
He show’d resemblance very much too striking t
XXXV.
'
Exuno disce omnes / ’Tis a saying
We cannot well too strongly bear in mind—
Beware the clergymen at Popery playing,
The set to priestly arrogance inclined ;
They are, at best, beguiling and betraying
The sacred ties around our hearts entwined.
Husbands and Brothers ! stamp out like small-pox,
Virus that breeds in the Confession-box.
b
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�52
' JON DUAN.
Canto The Fifth.
i.
ELL is a city (very) much like London ”—
The words are Shelley’s, reader, not our
own—If it be so, then there’s no lack of Pun done
Down in that place where Satan has his throne.
Nor would the hardened sinner be quite undone,
Were he sent there for sinning to atone.
In fact, the Ranters would not make us cry,
If we’d to go to London when we die.
i
I
;
j
II.
Of course there are two sides to every question,
There’s not a medal has not its obverse—
Good dinners have their following indigestion,
And London has its bad side and its worse;
But, if we choose the good side and the rest shun,
Who can our somewhat natural choice asperse ?
If Duan chose what he thought best, with zest,
’Tis not for us to say—Bad was his best.
1
III.
■
For all these things are matters of opinion—
And one man’s poison is another’s meat;
We’re not to say a man’s the Devil’s minion,
Because no creed he happens to repeat;
Or doom to flames eternal, a Socinian,
Because One God to him is all complete.
All men have power to choose—by which we mean,
There are such things as moral fat and lean.
IV.
The fat suits one, the lean may suit another ;
And why should we, against our will, eat fat,
Or force the lean on an unwilling brother,
Who thinks it fit to only feed the cat ?
And if a man will eat nor one, nor t’other,
He surely is best judge what he is at—
No man’s a right to, wholly or in part,
Prescribe his brother’s moral dinner carte.
v-
Wherefore, we say, we will not raise our voice
To say what Duan chose as best was bad;
He, certainly, did not repent his choice,
And very rarely was he hipp’d or sad ;
Au contraire,—in his youth he did rejoice,
And who are we that he should not be glad ?
He slept well, drank well, ate well, and his dinners
Digested admirably for a sinner’s.
.
1
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�JON DUAN.
53
VI.
XI.
And, by-the-by, what is a sinner, pray ?
“ A man who sins.” Then, prithee, what is sin ?
Let rival sect’ries have on this their say,
And each a different answer will begin.
Which is confusing, and would cause delay,
The fact being, we have to look within.
What use are dogmas, doctrines,myths,and creeds?
A man’s own heart supplies the truth he needs.
Think what he went through ! Flow he’d to observe
A code of laws unwritten, but Draconic,
Which make life all straight lines without a curve—
And so conservative and non-Byronic,
That he who from their ruling dares to swerve
Is punished with severity Masonic—
The eternal laws of Fashion’s legislature,
Being ever urged ’gainst those who go for Nature.
VII.
But these digressions cannot be allow’d,
Or we shall never tell how Duan fared ;
Whilst seeking pleasure in the London crowd—
How he was pleas’d and flatter’d, trick’d and
snared—
But, thanks to his good heart and lineage proud,
Was yet from every degradation spared.
And how he lived, and went a killing pace,
With polished footsteps and a finished grace.
VIII.
No wonder Duan was a favourite,
Or that his handsome person was admired ;
That he was rather spoilt, if not so quite,
And that no end of passions he inspired.
It was indeed a trial by no means light
When he from ’mongst the “ upper ten” retired ;
And all Society was rather riled
When he took refuge in Bohemia’s wild.
IX.
For, he was such a pet, his mirror’s frame
(He had a suite of rooms in Piccadilly)
Was studded with the cards with which the game
Of good Society is played. ’Tis silly
How one admits a piece of pasteboard’s claim,
And has to do its bidding “willy-nilly,”
And dine and dance, and dawdle without measure,
Because it is Society’s good pleasure.
x.
No other mistress could be so severe,
Or bully man so much, or so afflict him,
As Duan found when, in his twentieth year,
He to her tyranny became a victim;
And served her until, from exhaustion sheer,
He well-nigh wished Society had kick’d him,
Or that, still better, he had kick’d Society,
And gone in for Bohemian variety.
........ "«■■I«'
XII.
Duan soon found he had to dress by rule ;
His own sartorial taste did not avail; or
Could he help the idea he was a fool
When he had audiences of his tailor.
Scorn mixed with pity filled the face of Poole
As he, as though he had been Duan’s jailer,
To his directions turned a deaf ear, utter,
And passed him on, unheeded, to the cutter.
XIII.
In vain Jon Duan very mildly states,
He thinks that pattern and this cut will suit him;
The cutter coolly for his silence waits,
Nor deigns to take the trouble to refute him;
But, standing sternly to “ Le Coupeur” plates,
Seems as a forward youngster to compute him,
And simply says, as though to save all fuss—
“ Gents usually leave such things to us !”
XIV.
We know what that means; for, ’tis no small
matter.
Why do we wear to-day the “chimney-pot”?
Because we leave our head-gear to our hatter,
And not because one useful point it’s got.
Why not the old delusive notion scatter,
And have a hat not heavy, hard, and hot ?—
(That last line, we may make especial mention,
Is worth the Cockney’s serious attention.)
XV.
Think of the modern boot, and then say whether
Such pedal torture must perforce be borne.
Why not encase our feet in untann’d leather,
And say farewell to blister and to corn ?
Let boots and bunions pass away together,
’Mid universal ecstasy and scorn !
We are but pilgrims, yet, can’t there be made
A single “Progress” without “Bunyan’s” aid?
�JON DUAN.
54
XVI.
Must we be always abject slaves, in fact,
And martyrs to the taste of those who dress us ?
Bear meekly all that Fashion does enact
(She clothes poor woman in a shirt of Nessus !),
And stand, and, like the tailors’ dummies, act,
Whilst into trussed-up blocks our snips com
press us ?
Free Land ! Free Love !—these two cries just now
press :
Well, add a third, and clamour for Free Dress !
XVII.
Again, digression ! Duan meekly wore
The clothes his first-class tailors kindly made
him;
Bought Hoby’s boots, by Lincoln’s “stove-pipe”
swore;
And did his hair as Mr. Truefitt bade him:
Had collars, gloves, and useless things galore,
All which helped in Society to aid him—
And warmly welcomed by Patricia’s host,
His name was daily in the Morning Post.
XVIII.
Here could be seen—who doubts the Morning
Post ?
Its articles are like the Thirty-nine—
How often Duan with a noble host
Would, with more victims, “greatly daring,
dine I”
And wonder that, with such parade and boast,
There was so little food, and such bad wine;
And ask himself, with natural surprise,
If noble hosts fed hunger through the eyes ?
Dined, too, with Lord Cinqfoil, in Blankley Square,
Who is another of these curious mixtures;
Who has a name and reputation glorious,
Yet takes his neighbours’ spoons in way notorious.
XXI.
He put his legs ’neath Lord Maecenas’ table,
Who’s so much money and so little mind,
Whose sensuality smacks of the stable,
Though he to Art and Music seems inclined.
He fed with Viscount Quicksot, and was able,
From after-dinner confidence, to find
The strongest reason why this peer should press
To rescue pretty nurse-girls in distress.
XXII.
He dined at Lambeth Palace with the saints,
He dined at Richmond (often) with a sinner;
He found that nearly every lady paints,
And laces far too tight to eat her dinner.
Hidden, in upper circles, he found taints,
’Neath a disguise that daily waxes thinner.
And that for morals ’tis a very queer age,
And more especially amongst the Peerage.
XXIII.
Yes, ’neath the very dull and placid level,
He found the morals of high life but lame;
Beneath its mask of etiquette, the Devil
Promoting scandals that we dare not name.
We’ll leave th’ exposé to some future Gre ville,
Nor hurt the fame of any high-born dame —
Though, truth to tell, despite our Sovereign Lady,
Society’s repute was ne’er more shady.
XXIV.
XIX.
He dined with Omnium’s Duke, that titled rake,
Who keeps a private house of assignation;
Whose agents, from the West End, nightly take,
Fresh damsels for his Grace’s delectation;
Who, publicly, such efforts seems to make
For wicked London’s moral reformation;
And, as becomes his dignified position,
Is liberal patron of the “ Midnight Mission.”
XX.
He dined with Earl Tartuffe, who takes the chair,
When Vice requires his periodic strictures;
And when he dined, saw his collection rare
Of obscene pamphlets and indecent pictures.
The air is full of scandals of divorces,
The smoking-rooms of Pall Mall reek with
rumour ;
And if we trace it to its various sources,
’Tis not, we find, a freak of spite of humour.
No ; everywhere demoralizing force is
Right hard at work ; and in a very few more
Years, if there is no change, our upper crust
Will crumble up, destroyed—its lust in dust.
XXV.
At Brookes’s, Prince’s, at the “Rag” or Raleigh,
Wherever Duan went, by night or day,
The conversation turned, methodically,
Upon patrician damsels gone astray ;
:
�JON DUAN.
55
And scarce an anecdote or witty sally,
But took a woman’s character away.
Titled transgressions seemed the only fashion;
And joys, unblessed by Church, the ruling passion.
XXVI.
But on the surface, as has been expressed,
Society was placid as before,
And called, and rode, and drove, and 11 drummed,”
and dressed,
As though it had at heart no cancerous sore;
And Duan, being so much in request,
Full often entered its portentous door,
And, with a Spartan heroism, danced,
Or tea’d at five o’clock with air entranced.
XXVII.
He went to many a hostess’s “At home”—
Where everybody is so much abroad—
Through crammed-up halls and salons doomed to
roam,
Where, ’spite the heat, the etiquette’s not thaw’d;
Up crowded staircases he slowly clomb,
Hustled and pushed, and trodden on and
claw’d.—
Such inconvenience much too great a price is
To pay for cold weak tea and lukewarm ices.
XXVIII.
Or e’en to hear the last new baritone,
Or shake the hand of the receiving Duchess,
Or see the Heir-apparent to the Throne,
Trotted round proudly in her eager clutches;
Or catch some flirting matron all alone,
And make a future assignation; much is
This last in vogue ; it is not hard to chouse
The husbands, specially if in the “ House.”
XXIX.
They go, dear innocents! and sit and snore,
And vote to order in St. Stephen’s Chapel ;
Nor dream that gallant captains haunt their door,
And Princes with their wives’ fair virtue
grapple ;
And—well, our womankind are as of yore, 1
They have not changed since Eve devoured
the apple,—
But, ’twould be “rough” on Hannen, past all
doubt,
If half the husbands found their spouses out.
�56
yON DUAN.
XXX.
All her reputed pleasures he had tasted,
And found them, oft repeated, apt to pall
Upon his palate ; he no longer hasted
To get an invite for the Prince’s ball,
And thought the hours were altogether wasted
He spent in evening routs and morning call ;
And even found, in time, to care one fails
’Bout meeting Him of Cambridge or of Wales.
XXXI.
Whilst his friends’ husbands, not to be outdone,
Kept pretty, painted cages in “ The Wood ” ;
With pretty birdies in them, full of fun,
And often in a rather naughty mood ;—
Thus is it that the double trick is done.
(To speak such facts is, as we know, tabooed ;
But we, spite Mrs. Grundy’s interfering,
Intend to strip off modern life’s veneering.)
He tired of Dudley’s china and his pictures ;
Nor cared for Pender’s most elaborate “ feeds”;
He wearied of those Chiswick Garden mixtures,
Where names so heterogeneous one reads.
He shunned, at last, all Lady Devonshire’s
“ fixtures,”
And feared the Waldegravian "friendlyleads.”
And, as a child a powder or a pill dreads,
Shirked Art at Mr. Hope’s and Lady Mildred’s.
XXXII.
,
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xxxv.
It is not strange that, since our women marry
For riches and position, name and fame,
They seek for love elsewhere, and quickly carry
A fierce flirtation on with some old " flame,”
And freely yield to Dick, or Tom, or Harry,
The pleasant leisure-hours their lords should
claim.
And Duan found, when once well in the swim,
His friends’ wives made too many calls on him.
XXXVII.
XXXVI.
;
;
)
,
i
It’s very thin, you scratch the Politician,
And find that he’s a hungerer for place ;
The great Philanthropist—he makes admission
His motives would his character disgrace ;
The Bishop—and he mourns that his position
Does not admit that he should go the pace—
Removes from yon Prude’s face her veil, so thin,
And, with a leer, she’ll lure you into sin.
XXXIII.
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,
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i
:
Pull off the Church’s gown, and she will stand
A greedy tyrant, gorged with guilt and gold ;
Take from Justitia’s eyes the blinding band,
And see her wink as truth is bought and sold ;
The mask from Thespis snatch with sudden hand,
And then in every London stage behold
A mart for painted women, and an aid
To padded Cyprians to ply their trade.
The Hamiltonian Hall no more he seeks,
Nor treads the corridors of Leveson Gower;
The tableaux vivants down at Mrs. Freke’s
Raise no excitement in him as of yore ;
He did not go to Grosvenor House for weeks,
And never darkened Bentinck’s ducal door.
In fact, the more he saw, and heard, and knew,
Did la crème de la crème seem but “ sky-blue.”
XXXVIII.
And even intrigues grew great bores at last,
For they, too, savoured strongly of De Brett ;
And, also, when a girl was more than fast,
Her sin was fenced about with etiquette
To such extent that Duan was aghast
At an hypocrisy unequalled yet ;
And longing for an unrestrain’d variety,
Vow’d he would have the sins jzz/zj' the society.
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' XXXIV.
XXXIX.
i
Pull—no, please don’t, on reconsideration !
Our hero’s patient, but to keep him waiting,
While we indulge in moral observation,
Is calculated to be irritating.
Besides, we have some further information
To give you of his later doings, dating
From those days when both wiser grown and older,
He gave Society the frigid shoulder.
So he to the " ten thousand ” bade adieu,
And said ‘‘Good-bye” to "Prince’s” and its
rink—
(" Prince’s ” is too select for most of you,
But there are warmish corners there, we think),
And with regret he said " Farewell ” to few
Of those who’d given him their meat and
drink :
i
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�y'ON DUAN-.
57
For as the average modern dinner goes,
’Tis a fit torture not for friends but foes.
XL.
He also turned upon Mayfair his back,
And wholly left Belgravia in the lurch ;
Gladly he gave Tyburnia the "sack,”
In vain did Kensingtonia for him search ;
He sailed completely on another tack,
And gave up leaving cards or going to church—
Sins of omission in the topmost zone,
Which no committed virtues can condone.
XLI.
So now behold Jon Duan set quite free
To suck the sweets from every London flower ;
More like a butterfly, perhaps, than bee—•
For he did not improve the shining hour.
And had you chance and money, then we’d see
If you, good reader, would own virtue’s power.
For though the truth, sweet innocents, may hurt
you,
Necessity’s a powerful aid to virtue.
XLII.
Flow often acrid women virtue boast,
Of which a trial would be a new sensation !
So, all the goody-goody priggish host,
Are prigs perforce—they follow their vocation,
It is no credit to a senseless post,
Because it does not fall into temptation ;
Nor do we crown an icicle with laurels
Because it hasn’t thawn into soft morals.
XLIII.
Therefore, our hero we don’t mean to censure
For having, what in slang is called his "fling” ;
He had to bear the sequel of his venture,
And Nature is the goddess that we sing !—
For he who breaks her laws, or tries to wrench
her
Rules, so well balanc’d, naturally will bring—
Sure as contempt has fallen on Bazaine—
Just retribution and deserved disdain.
XLIV.
This granted, without any more preamble,
Duan may start upon his search for pleasure ;
We’ll try to only chronicle his scramble,
And not to moralize in every measure ;
�JON DUAN.
58
But if again we into preaching ramble,
And weary out your patience and your leisure,—
Why, blame the metre !—which, of all we know,
Most tempts one from the beaten track to go.
XLV.
The public pleasures of our wondrous city
Are not so plentiful as one would think,
Thanks to the sapient licensing committee,
Who from the very thought of dancing shrink.
The Alhambra’s spoiled—it is a shame and pity;
The Holborn’s given up to meat and drink,
And nothing could be just now so forlorn
As passing a long evening at Cremorne ! ~
XLVI.
’Twas not in this direction Duan found
The pleasure that he sought. He went, ’tis
true,
The usual dull and soul-depressing round,
And raked and rioted till all was blue ;
He trod, of course, the old familiar ground,
And liked it not a whit more than did you,
When you—consule Planco—’woke with pain,
And cursed the women and the vile champagne.
XLVI I.
He went to the Alhambra, found it dirty,
With “ Ichabod ’’.writ large upon its walls.
He sought the “ Duke’s ” about eleven thirty,
And wandered listlessly through Argyle’s Halls ;
SawTottie, Lottie, Dottie, Mottie, Gertie,—
And liquors stood responsive to their calls ;
Thinking the openly conducted traffic
Was far more Cityish in its tone than Sapphic.
XLVIII.
He lounged about the Haymarket, and smoked ;
And felt quite sad amidst its scenes and sights ;
He haunted bars, and with their Hebes joked,
He “ finished” at Kate H.’s, several nights ;
He saw, God knows ! a mass of misery, cloak’d
With ghastly gaiety, beneath the lights,
Until the hideous visions made his soul burn,
And sent him virtuously back to Holborn.
XLIX.
For he had taken Chambers in Gray’s Inn,
Since he had cut the West End so completely .
And had a laundress smelling much of gin,
Who could do nothing noiselessly or neatly.
’Twas here his other life he did begin,
In rooms whose look-out, chosen most dis
creetly,
Show’d those old elms, each one of them a big
tree,—
And here he sinned ’neath his own vine and fig
tree.
L.
If walls had ears !—the notion is not new—
You’d like to hear Jon Duan’s tell their tale.
And still, the same old notion to pursue,
If chairs and sofas talked, we would avail
Us of their confidences, also ; you
May be quite sure that, were they writ, the
sale'
Of these poor rhymes, then, would be more
immense,
Though hypocritiq cries rose more intense.
LI.
As ’tis, we’d Figaro want to tabulate
For us a list of all Jon Duan’s loves ;
To catalogue his cartes, each with its date,
And give the history of the flowers and gloves,
And snipp’d-off tresses, which in numbers great
From time to time into his drawer he shoves.
But, failing that, here is a peg to hang
A little song upon, that once he sang.
Qty ¿Hath nf (Clapljam.
Maid of Clapham ! ere I part,
Tell me if thou hast a heart!
For, so padded is thy breast,
I begin to doubt the rest!
Tell me now before I go—
Apr 0ov aXX p.a.Se viropvu ?
Are those tresses thickly twined,
Only hair-pinned on behind ?
Is thy blush which roses mocks,
Bought at three-and-six per box?
Tell me, for I ask in woe—
Apr 6ov aXX p.a.5e vvopvu> ?
�59
JON DUAN.
'
3And those lips I seem to taste,
Are they pink with cherry-paste ?
Gladly I’d the notion scout,
But do those white teeth take out ?
Answer me, it is not so—
But to improve, he managed to secure
This model’s services—nor did it vex
Her, when, with face and voice alike demure,
He called her the most lovely of her sex,
And pleading but poor skill to paint her beauty,
Yet many times a week essayed the duty.
Apr Gov aXX /¿a.8e virbpvQi ?
4Maid of Clapham! come, no larks !
For thy shoulders leave white marks—
Tell me ! quickly tell to me
What is really real in thee !
Tell me, or at once I go—
Apr Gov aXX /mSc vjropvco ?
LII.
His taste for girls was certainly eclectic,
He loved the dark ones even as the fair ;
He liked complexions pale, complexions hectic,
He liked black tresses, he liked golden hair,
And ne’er got amatorily dyspeptic—
Which is a state of heart by no means rare ;
But managed by the means detailed above,
To never be completely out of love.
LUI.
Gussie was dark, a perfect gipsy she,
With sloe-black eyes, of raven hair an ocean ;
With lips so red, they well might tempt the bee,
And full of many a quaint artistic notion,—
She was an artist’s model, you could see
It was so in her graceful, flowing motion.
It must, we think, be a most pleasing duty
To draw and paint the curves' of female beauty.
LIV.
The girl had sat for many a well-known painter,
Before her path across Jon Duan’s came ;
As beggar-girl, as sinner, and as saint, her
Pretty face oft peeped from out a frame.
In ’73 no picture could be quainter
Than that—it bore a rising painter’s name—
Which represented her in grandma’s bonnet—
We recollect that it called forth a sonnet.
LV.
Now Jon was no great artist, that was sure,—
Not much he’d ever drawn but bills and
cheques,
LVI.
Nor did he weary of his occupation,
For she was very jolly in her style ;
Full of artistic chatter, animation
In every look, and word, and frown, and smile.
And she could play—a great consideration
To have a girl who thus your time can while ;
And take a hand at whist, and play it, too—
A thing not one girl in ten-score can do.
LVI I.
And naturally she was very skilful
In falling into stock artistic poses ;
A little petulant, sometimes, and wilful—
Que voulez-vous ? Without a thorn no rose is.
A “model” girl is very often still full
Of that old Adam which the Church, you
know, says
Is in us all ; and which, as we’re advised,
Means all our hearts are old (Me) Adamized.
LVIII.
Be this as’t may. In time Miss Gussie went,
And fair-haired Looie reigned in her stead ;
Whilst Duan seemed by no means discontent---Having escaped the plate flung at his head
By the retiring beauty ;—nor gave vent
To vain regrets, nor wished that he were dead.
Instead of this, his spirits seemed to rally,
As he cried, “ L’Art est mort, so, Vive le Ballet!”
LIX.
For Loo was in the ballet at the Strand,
And thus possess’d that halo of romance
Which footlights ever throw on all who stand
Before them, let them act, or sing, or dance.—
It even spreads a little o’er the band—
Nay, we a weak-kneed fellow knew by chance,
Who was a very bad and drunken “super,”
’Cause his admirers treated him to “ cooper.”
�JON DUAN.
6o
LX.
Looie was in the foremost row, a token
She danced with more than average ability :
And many a stallite’s heart no doubt she’d
broken
With her plump legs and marvellous agility.
But when our hero once to her had spoken,
The intimacy grew with great facility.
And as he knew the critics, and had means,
Jon Duan spent much time behind the scenes,
LXI.
And waited for his charmer many nights,
And hung about what ‘‘Yanks” call the
“ theater ” ;
Supped to the full on Thespian delights ;
But p’rhaps his feeling of delight was greater
When she rehearsed new dances in her tights,
He being her only critic and spectator.
Had he been good, he should have tried to stop
her,
But, then, it is so nice to be improper.
And then dismiss them with a curt good-bye,
As though they’d been so many Brighton flymen ?
No 1 if our hero had the right way fix’d on,
Then what becomes of married life at Brixton—•
LXV.
At Peckham, Clapham, Islington, and Walworth,
At Ball’s Pond, Pentonville, and Kentish Town ?
Surely these homes of misery you’ll call worth
The great rewards that virtue always crown.
Jon Duan’s wicked life is naught at all worth,
And he and all like him must be put down.
He’s happy, truly, but his joy’s unstable—
Most married ones are always miserable.
LXVI.
Sewing-machines and cooks on trial we get,
And horses we may try before we buy ;
And ev’n if afterwards we should regret
Our bargains, we can sometimes off them cry;—
But matrimonial bargains, don’t forget,
Last till one of the parties chance to die.
’Twas knowing if he married, ’twas for life,
Made Duan hesitate to take a wife.
LXII.
“ Man’s a phenomenon, one knows not what,
And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure :
’Tis pity, though, in this sublime world, that
Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.”
Which lines are Byron’s. You will find them pat,
If you look up Don Juan when you’ve leisure.
If sin’s unpleasant, as the churches din so,
Then, why the dickens is it that we sin so ?
LXVII.
’Twas very wrong of him, of course, to do so :
Men ought from marriage never thus to shrink ;
For is it not ordained ?—Jon Duan knew so,
And yet stood lingering at the altar’s brink.
He thought that he the life-long step might rue ; so
Do others; and there are some men who think
Hannan would hear less charging and denial
If we could take our spouses upon trial.
LXIII.
Is it unpleasant ?—that’s the awkward question—
And many sinners answer with a “ No !”
Jon Duan, when he had no indigestion,
Thought it was most decidedly not so ;
That if you pick your sins, and all the rest shun,
You may most pleasantly through this world go.
Which shows us plainly, ’spite his great vitality,
How very cold and dead was his morality.
LXVI 11.
On trial, indeed ! Why, not one in ten thousand
Women would e’er be wed on such a term ;
For rare’s the one who does not break her vows,
and
Show very quickly that she has the germ
Of mutiny within her, and makes rows, and
Most speedily her husband’s fears confirm.
If married life were terminable at will,
How many would next week be married still ?
LXIV.
How else could he have dared to thus defy
The ethics of society and Hymen ;
And half a dozen amoratas try,
Just like as many tarts bought of a pieman,
LXIX.
How long our young friend loved the ballet
dancer
We do not mean to tell, nor shall we add
�61
JON DUAN.
More details of his charmers; ’twould not answer
To waste so much space on what is so bad.
No ! let us shun the subject like a cancer,
’Twould only make us and our readers sad.
We will, instead, with their permission, fit a
Small song in here—Jon sung it with his zither.
1.
O, pocket edition of Phryne !
Your robe is bewitchingly Greek ;
O, kiss me, my charmer most tiny—
I mean on my mouth, not my cheek.
Come, sit on my knee and be jolly—
The classical’s now out of date—
And let us toast passion and folly—
For you are not marble, thank fate !
2.
What! haven’t you heard of her story,
And how all her judges she won,
By suddenly showing her glory
Of beauty, which warmed like the sun?
Yes, that was in Cecrops’ fair city,
And we are ’neath London’s green trees—
But, Tiny, you’re awfully pretty,
And I’ll be your judge, if you please.
LXX.
Love is an ailment dangerously zymotic—
’Twould be no use for us to here deplore
That Duan’s song has savour so erotic—
No ! we will leave him on his second-floor,
Puffing the weed the doctors call narcotic,
And with his eyes fixed keenly on his door—
Whom he expects it’s not for us to say,
It isn't his old laundress, any way.
LXXI.
What are the Mission people all about,
That to Gray’s Inn they do not send a preacher?
Why to Ashanti and Fiji go out,
And leave unvisited by tract or teacher
The district where the foolish fling and flaunt,
And sink the Christian too much in the creature ?
Call back ! say we, the men from Timbuctoo,
There’s better work at home for them to do.
�62
JON DUAN.
LXXII.
We mean to start a Mission of our own,
To preach the Testament in Grosvenor Square;
And when the funds sufficiently have grown,
We’ll ^end a Missionary to Mayfair ;
And we’ll leave large-type leaflets on the throne,
And preach in Pall Mall in the open air :
In time, too, we’ll endeavour to arrange
A set of sermons for the Stock Exchange.
LXXIII.
The texts used there shall be, “ Thou shalt not
steal,”
And Lying lips are an abomination” ; *
All the discourses should most plainly deal
With paper frauds and bubble speculation.
How sweet to make a cheating broker kneel
In penitent and tearful agitation I
Surely a London broker on his knees
Is worth a score of Christianised Burmese.
LXXIV.
What could be grander than a “ Bull ” in tears,
Or a “ Bear ” giving up all he possesses ?
How pleasant to the missionary’s ears
When some McEwen his dark deed confesses,
And promises repentance ! when the jeers
Of jobbers cease ; and all the Mission presses.
Spread the glad news that, as they’re just advised,
Fifteen stockbrokers were last night baptized.
Let fear and trembling come upon thee now,
For closer than a leech McDougal sticketh ;—
Let consternation sit upon thy brow
When thought of ‘Emma,’ thy profuse heart
pricketh, —
Nor glory in thy riches—house or arable-—
But recollect the rich fool in the parable ! ”
LXXVII.
The “ upper ten ” there parlous state should see;
There should be preaching at the Carlton Club ;
A Boanerges should the preacher be,
With words and will Aristos’ sin to drub.
And Lazarus should come from penury,
And hold forth in the ‘‘ Row,” upon a tub.
Whilst some great light—the “toppest” of topsawyers—
Should the New Testament proclaim to lawyers.
LXXVIII.
The publishers, too, must not be forgotten,
Since great above all others is their need ;
For Paternoster Row is getting rotten,
And worships but one God, and that is
“ Greed.”
To lie, cheat, cozen, and to cringe and cotton,
Is now the publisher’s adopted creed ;
They’r.e grasping, greedy, vulgar, and omni
vorous,—
From publishers, we pray, Good Lord deliver us!
LXXIX.
LXXV.
Oh ! what a noble work the news to spread
Amongst the streets and alleys of the City ;
To tell the heathens there what has been said
Of those who have no principle or pity :
To pour denunciation on their head,
And wake up Lothbury with a pious ditty ;
And oh ! how eagerly we yearn and pant
To send a special missionary to Grant 1
LXXVI.
And this should be his message—“ Albert! thou
Of whom ’tis said, ‘ He waxeth fat and kicketh,’
* The.se passages are evidently not included in the " Scrip
ture ” in use in Capel Court ; though we suppose it is
generally known there that “ Barabbas was a publisher.”
We have heard of the “Thieves’ Litany,” maybe there is
such a volume in existence as the “ Stockbrokers’ Bible."
Our readers perhaps by this time will be ready,
To pray to be delivered from us ;—
Our Pegasus, in fact, had got his head, he
Often bites his bit, and bolts off thus.
But now we promise that his pace we’ll steady,
And, without any further fume or fuss,
To Duan we’ll return, though, since we started,
He very likely has to bed departed.
LXXX.
There let us leave him—for ’tis doubtless best
To “ring down” whilst we set the next new
scene on—■
Leaning, it may be, on a maiden’s breast,—
Happy the man’s who’s such a place to lean on !
For certain he’s caressing or caress’d :—
But it is two a.m.; and we have been on
Rhythmical duty since we dined at eight :
We’ll put the light out—it is getting late.
�JON DUAN.
63
Canto The Sixth.
I.
U Grand Hotel, Paris, the 10th November—
Dear Boy,—The stage is going to the
deuce,
The kiosques, naked, and there’s not an ember
Of fiery France alive. It is no use
To seek the Imperial Paris we remember,
Dear Venus Meretrix of cities, loose
But lovely, and beloved—of Saxon tourists,
Who when abroad are not such rigid purists.
II.
“ School atlases still tell us it’s called Paris,
They talk French still, a little, in its walls—
Though nasal North American less rare is ;
There still are cafes, and the naughty balls ;
The Boulevards—though they’re widowed of Gus
Harris,
Are not precisely hung with shrouds and palls ;
Crowds, not more virtuous and not more solemn,
Still saunter past the new-erected Column.
III.
THE BRI 1JSH ' DRAMATIST.
11 Still in the Palais Royal, yellow covers,
Abhorred by strict mammas in England, beg
Attention to their tales of loves and lovers,
Crammed full of wholesome nurture as an egg—
Still, at street crossings, prurient Saxon rovers
Look shocked at some faint soupçon of a leg,
Disclosed by vicious sylph or luring modiste,
Loose-principled—but very tightly bodiced.
IV.
11 But the sweet home of British drama—that is
A thing to seek as Schliemann seeks for TroyHome of the Capouls, Schneiders, Faures, and
Pattis,
Who take our millions, and who give us joy—
The birthplace of all persona dramatis
That e’er amused since Taylor was a boy,
Where is it ?—where’s the generous Providence
Whence all of us draw plots, and fame, and pence ?
v.
“ Where’s the great reservoir of milk and water
Which Oxenford’s keen pen was wont to tap,
Before that horrid Madame Angot’s daughter
Had made the pure old five-acts seem like pap ?
�JON DUAN.
64
■
Those old ‘grandes machines] full of fire and
slaughter,
And doeskin boots, that soothed one’s evening
nap,
Where are they ?—Ah ! they have left this drear
and pallid day
To Walter Scott, improved by Andrew Halliday.
VI.
“ The Vaudeville, preposterous and broad,
Where heroes in check suits could damn a bit,
And into bed get, while the house guffawed—
And those brave poker-scenes that made ^us
split—
The singing chambermaids who weren’t outlawed 1
By chaste dress circles that like Gilbert’s wit—The gay old farce, loud, jovial, coarse, and fat—
Hasn’t disastrous Sedan left us that ?
VII.
“It hasn’t, I assure you—not a line.
I’ve tried the Variétés and Palais Royal,
But though our H.R.H.’s tastes incline
To that snug house—and though I’m strictly
loyal—
I can’t find the old salt ; defeats refine,
And theatres here have grown so very coy all,
They have not one poor smile for “ adaptators ”—
Those eunuchs who all yearn to look like paters.
VIII.
“ As poor Brooks said—‘ There’s nothing in the
papers,’
And I remark there’s nothing on the stage—
The old familiar bony legs cut capers,
Their owners in the old intrigues engage
Before the usual crowd of languid gapers,
Kept silent by the sanctity of age.
Lemaître and Bernhardt still pass round the hat,
Léonide’s still lean, and Celine’s still fat.
X.
“ The Demi-monde won’t do : it is enticing,
I own—but no ; it really will not do,
E’en though we made it seemlier by splicing
A roué and a courtezan or two,
According to the English way of icing
French fancies, found red-hot and deemed too
true ;
And even then, when we have changed the visors,
There’s always that prude Piggott with the scissors.
XI.
“Always those scissors ! Halévy might yield
A thing or two, and Meilhac’s not quite dried ;
But what can a poor devil do when sealed
To that old haggard Spiritual bride,
The Censorship? Its maimed limbs scarcely healed,
On to the stage your poor piece takes a stride,
And halts half-way, then with a limp crawls out—
Forthose official shears are worse than gout.
XII.
“I think we must encourage ‘native talent’—
That’s how we’ll make our poverty seem grand,
And not at all enforced by the repellant
Airs of our French originals. Your hand
Put into those deep drawers, where all the gallant
And unplayed amateurs, a numerous band,
Have left the ashes of their simple hopes—Those MSS. that no one ever opes.
XIII.
“ Perhaps you’ll find a pearl of rarest price,
Or rubbish written by a lord, which will
Do quite as well ; the public aren’t too nice
When a peer condescends to hold a quill.
Give it to Byron—he’ll put in the spice.
But as for here—my verdict still is : nil !
There’s not a piece to steal, so we must do one
Ourselves. Ta, ta, old boy; till—Jon Duan.”
i
XIV.
IX.
“ And there you have the worst of the collapse
Of our dear famous factory of plays.
Now, what is to be done ? We’re tired of traps,
And care no more to see blue-fire ablaze
Around three-score old ladies, who want caps
And snuff to comfort their declining days.
Poor Comedy, the Comedy of Sheridan,
Is done—and Mrs. Bancroft echoes : Very done.
One doesn’t always call a manager
Old boy, or write as lengthily as this.
Some, one should call “ My Lord,” one “ Reverend
Sir,”
And many a “Mrs.” more correctly “Miss !”
But fame, thank Heaven, ’s a glorious leveller,
And straight inducts you into that great bliss
Of penetrating the most awful portals,
And treating even managers as mortals.
i
�JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
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�JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
TO THE READERS OF JON DUAN.
We reprint from The Times, of Not. 2.6th, the Report
re Ward v. Beeton, in order that the purchasers and readers
of Jon Duan may have a correct version of the question
raised between Mr. Beeton and his Publishers. We should
no trepeat this notice were it not for the rumours which have
been freely circulated that Jon XTunn would not be published.
Even coercion has been used to prevent certain tradesmen
lending us their valuable assistance in the production of the
New Annual.
The Public and the Trade are now in the position of
being our judges, and we shall rest satisfied with the verdict
which may be accorded us.
■• ■
• <;
From “The Times,” Nov. 26, 1874.
{Before Vice-Chancellor Sir R.
Malins.)
Ward v. Beeton (“Beeton’s Christmas Annual”).
This was a motion on behalf of the plaintiffs, Messrs.
Ward and Lock, the publishers, for an injunction to restrain
the defendant, Mr. S. O. Beeton, from publishing or circu
lating any advertisements or letters representing that he
was interested or concerned in any annual book or publica
tion other than “Beeton’s Christmas Annual,” published
by .the _ plaintiffs, or that the defendant’s connexion with
the plaintiffs’ firm was terminated, or that the use of the
defendant’s name by the plaintiffs for the purposes of their
“Beeton’s Christmas Annual” was improper or un
authorized. According to the statements contained in the
bill, the defendant was in business on his own account as a
publisher down to the year 1866, and among the publica
tions of which he was the proprietor was “ Beeton’s Christ
mas Annual,” now in its 15th year. In 1866 the plaintiffs pur
chased the copyrights and business property of the defendant,
and in September of that year an agreement was entered
into between the plaintiffs and the defendant, by which it
was provided, among other things, that the defendant was to
devote himself to the development of the plaintiffs’ busi
ness and not to be interested in any other business without
their consent; that the plaintiffs were to have the use of
the defendant’s name for the purposes of their present and
future publications, and that the defendant should not
permit the use of his name for any other publication with
out their consent; and the defendant was to be remu
nerated by a salary which was at first to consist of a fixed
annual sum, and was subsequently to be equivalent to a
fourth share of the profits of the plaintiffs’ business. Under
this agreement “Beeton’s Christmas Annual” was pub
lished by the plaintiffs with the assistance of the defendant
down to and including Christmas last. In the year 1872
the annual consisted of a production called “The Coming
K----- .” It waspublished, however, as the plaintiffs alleged,
without their having seen the MSS., and, as it con
tained passages which they considered were open to grave
objections, they refused to print or publish a second edition
of it. In 1873 the annual consisted of a publication called
“The Siliad,” which was written By the same author as
“The Coming K----- .” In July last the plaintiffs applied
to the defendant to prepare the volume of the annual for
Christmas next, but desired that its character and contents
might differ from those of “ The Siliad,” with which they
were dissatisfied ; the defendant, however, “neglected to
prepare or assist in preparing the same.” In October last th
plaintiffs heard that the defendant was engaged in prepar
ing another annual in opposition to theirs. A correspondence
ensued, in which the plaintiffs gave the defendant notice
that they would maintain their rights, and required him to
make proper arrangements for the production _ of the
annual, while the defendant denied that he was in fault,
and alleged that the plaintiffs- had rejected the production
he had proposed, which was to be by the authors of “The
Coming K----- ,” and that those gentlemen had then made
their own arrangements for publishing their work. The
plaintiffs then made arrangements with one of the authors of
“The Siliad ” for the annual of 1874, and announced it by
advertisements in the newspapers,under the titleof “Beeton’s
Christmas Annual for 1874, 15th season.” T he title of the
coming annual is “The Fijiad.” The defendant then caused
advertisements to be inserted in the Standard, Athenceum,
and other newspapers, addressed to booksellers, advertisers,
and the public, stating that he had no hand in the annual
announced by the plaintiffs; that he devised long ago
his usual annual in collaboration with the authors of “The
Coming K.----- ” and “The Siliad;” that the title of the
annual now in the press was “Jon Duan;” that it was
written by the authors of “The Coming K----- ” and “ The
Siliad,” and would not be published by the plaintiffs,
but by another publisher. Under these circumstances the
present bill was filed yesterday, and in pursuance of leave
then obtained the motion for injunction was made this
morning. The defendant did not appear; and upon an
affidavit that service of the notice of motion had been
effected upon him before five o’clock yesterday afternoon at
his country residence, an order was made by the Court for
an injunction in terms of the motion, extending until the
hearing of the cause.
London: WELDON & CO., 15, Wine Office Court, Fleet Street.
�■■■■
��JON DUAN.
XV.
The person whom. Jon Duan thus addressed
Had an odd mania—general with his class—
For novelties, without which Spring’s no zest
In managerial eyes : he’d fix his glass,
Perceive the world with April-green new-dressed,
And only think: the Spring’s turned up the gas,
We’ve done Burnand—for fear of a reversal,
It’s time to put Bob Reece into rehearsal.
67
XX.
But, following the ancient pure tradition
Of English art to borrow from the French,
Jon Duan had set out upon a mission,
To see what Paris drama one could wrench.
Into a Saxon shape, by clever scission
Of evil branches, which emit a stench
We breathe with rapture at the “ Delass. Com.,”
But call a pestilential death at home.
XXI.
XVI.
He’d got Jon Duan this year—a rare catch,
That bothered Buckstone sorely, and made
Bateman
Talk privately of bowie-knives ; a batch
Of critics—his club-fellows—all elate, man
The yards of paper barks, where they keep watch
On actors, ready to call Irving great man,
And Neville, stickor quite the other way :
It just depends on what their rivals say.
XVII.
Hollingshead hides his head; the craft looks sour,
From classic Surrey to coquettish Court.
It’s such a glorious thing to get the flower .
’ Of a young author’s mind, whom wide report
Proclaims the sovereign genius of the hour,
And when the stale Byronic stream runs short—
Which even that perpetual fountain may,
When Gilbert’s proper, and “ Old Sailors” pay.
And seeing there was nothing that could give
The Insular adapter a fair chance
To catch the rare French nectar in a sieve—
For that’s the way we get our sustenance,
Who don’t know French, go to the play—and live 1— ’
Jon Duan shook the sterile dust of France
From off his feet, and reappeared in town,
Resolved to bring out three acts of his own.
XXII.
Then in a dim and dusty room, somewhere
Near Covent Garden, a dull chamber, smelling
Of orange-peel and gas, the native air
Of Thespis, there ensued long talk, which
dwelling
On things theatrical, would make the hair
Of stage-struck youths stand upright—so repelhng,
Hard and materialistic as a Hun’s,
The manager who’s looking for long “ runs.”
XXIII.
XVIII.
You managers, when wearied—as you weary
The public—of the tight dramatic ring
That writes eulogious notices, and dreary
Dramas, alternately, from Spring to Spring,
Don’t dare too much—and don’t revive Dundreary,
But simply ask a man whom critics sing,
And at whose feet the publishers all grovel,
To dialogue you his last prurient novel.
'
XIX.
!
There is your man. He’s been well advertised,
Which saves a lot of posting and of puffs ;
You know the papers where his copy’s prized,
And which, therefore, are sure not to be rough
On his new venture. Then a book, disguised
In five acts, with a new name’s just the stuff
To run two hundred nights ; we all adore
Hearing the jokes we’ve read a month before.
“ I have told you so : I’d much prefer a bouffe,
A bouffe of thorough native growth: d’you see ?
Something that we can say affords a proof
Wit and song ain’t a French monopoly.
Something that shows at times the cloven hoof—
Of Meilhac, great in impropriety,
But sentimental chiefly—even sad,
A Tennysonian pastoral gone mad.
XXIV.
“ There’d be a part for Cecil—heavy father,
Eccentric, muddle-headed: that’s his line.
We must give little Lou a lift—I’m rather
Spoony on little Lou; besides, she’ll shine,
If you but give her a catch-song to gather
The plaudits of the gods with. There’s a mine
Worth working—there’s ten thousand pounds in
that—
And, by-the-by, give Isabel some fat.
�JON DUAN.
XXV.
j
Ci Lord D----- insists upon it: Bella must
Have three good scenes, at least, in which to drop
Her h’s—or the old boy will entrust
His love and money to a rival shop.
There’s Belamour, too, who will not be thrust
Into a minor part; he’ll want a sop,
Because of those fine legs of his^ on which
He counts to catch a “relict” old and rich.
XXVI.
<c As for the rest, we’ll have a galaxy
Of stars seduced by gold from lesser spheres:
Cox, Terry, Toole, Brough, and the rest; you’ll see
We’ll do the thing superbly----- Now, my dears 1”
(This to two pleasing damsels who’d made free
To push the door ajar, and stood all ears,
And those all red, regarding the uncertain
And ghostly region called Behind the Curtain.)
XXVII.
The postulants, for such they were, of course,
Were average growths of English womanhood,
Sprung from the same poor petty tradesman source,
Not capable of much ill or much good ;
But conscious of some appetite perforce
Restrained, the which in their weak natures stood
For mind, ambition, heart—some simple needs
Of love, champagne, fine dresses, and good feeds.
XXVIII.
We all know, though decorum keeps us mute,
How shop-girl, servant wench, and seamstress
feel,
When pretty broughams of world-wide repute
Bear sinning sisters by on rapid wheel,
And Regent Street’s battalions, in pursuit
Of night-bound swell, flash by them, down at heel
And threadbare, thinking—not: how shocking !—
oh no—
But simply of their labouring lives : Cui bono ?
XXIX.
Cui bono, having learnt one’s catechism
And making shirts for close on ninepence each ?
Cui bono, all this vulgar heroism
That only serves to make a parson preach
About our pure examples ? Egotism,
That’s what you pay—the moral that you teach ;
Vice has its brougham, Virtue its foul alley—
This is the reason why girls join the Ballet.
�JON DUAN.
69
r—
XXX.
The first one of the two who spoke had passed
The Rubicon, and left false shame behind her ;
Her bonnet might have been a whit less fast,
Her speech a bit more modest and refined ; her
Red hands bulged from Jouvin’s gloves. She cast
A side-leer at Jon Duan rather kinder
Than their acquaintance warranted, and said
She knew the business ; she’d already played.
XXXI.
“ At the East End Imperial Bower of Song,
I used to sing ‘The Chick-a-Leary Bloke,’
With breakdown, all complete. ’Twas rather
strong—
The beaks refused the licence. But I’ve spoke
To----- (here she whispered earnestly and long)
He’ll come down handsomely: just one small
joke,
And then a dance. What! fifty pounds!—Well,
then,
You’ll throw a speech in for another ten.”
XXXII.
“ It’s sixty pounds; no salary at first.”
And then the manager turned round: “And
you ?”
The second humble applicant was cursed
With knowledge of her own defects, and drew
Back as he spoke. Then feebly from her burst:
“ I heard you wanted figurantes who knew
Something of music, prepossessing—Oh,
I want to know, sir, if I’m like to do 1”
XXXIII.
Jon Duan pitied; but his friend looked stern.
This one had no Protector and no past.
She couldn’t pay, and might expect to earn
Her living—the pretension of her caste,
Who in each yawning trap and slide discern
Mines where all women’s treasures are amassed—
Diamonds, Bond Street dresses, silks and sashes,
And tall Nonentities with blond moustaches.
XXXIV.
“Young woman, you may do; I don’t object
To trying you: just bring your ‘props’ next
week----- ■”
“ Props ?”----- “ That’s your shoes and tights; but
recollect,
You’re never likely to do more than speak
Ten words, and show—your ankles. We expect
Our ladies to wear costumes new and chic,
Which they provide—with some gems of pure
water----The salary? It’s five pounds ten per quarter.
XXXV.
“ You couldn’t live on that ? Of course you can’t.
Did you expect it ?— Where have you been
taught ?—
A brougham’s at the door : its occupant
Gets one pound ten a week—and she’s just
bought
A pair of bays—which proves she’s not in want.
No, no, young woman, salaries are nought—
Our treasurer don’t count ; you’ll find far finer—
A millionaire—a dotard—or a minor.
XXXVI.
“ All of them do it : it’s the modern plan
Of getting up a pretty ballet cheap ;
And since the public don’t like Sheridan—
Except as Amy—and since we can’t keep
Ladies—most of them of enormous space—
In silken robes and satin shoes ; we leap
At amateurs with protégées, whose rage
It is to see their darlings on the stage.”
XXXVII.
Then they went back to business, and talked over
Which points Odell should make,which speeches
Stoyle ;
If Wyndham or Lal. Brough should do the lover,
Say with Laverne or Farren as a foil.
And whether Miss A.’s part was not above her,
Or Miss B. meet Miss C. without a broil.—
In short, the heavy talk, the prime First Cause
Of plays received with rapturous applause.
XXXVIII.
Jon Duan gave in to the bouffe idea,
His hopes resigning of regenerating
The public taste. He gazed, and could but see a
Vast Amphitheatre, its lungs inflating
With one loud universal Ave Dea,
Madonna Cascade of our own creating,
Gross, gaudy goddess of our fleshly charlatan
’ Period, with tinsel wings and robes of tarlatan.
xxxix.
That is the cry, the Ideal----- Oh, Rare Ben,
See what they’ve made of your old jovial muse !
�70
JON DUAN.
Enter, great Shade, no matter where or when,
The bill of fare’s the same—you cannot choose.
It’s an Aquarium—and once again
Fifty familiar naked backs one views—
Then naked breasts, legs, naked arms with wings
Of gauze—innumerable naked things !
XL.
The footlights glow on thin arms, twisted knees,
Lean shoulders rising, fleshy chins that drop;
Oh for the awful busts’ concavities !
Oh for the busts that don’t know where to stop.
They smirk, and grin, and ogle at their ease,
But one thinks vaguely of a butcher’s shop
Lit up on Saturdays—one hears the cry,
A cry they all might echo : “ Come, buy, buy ! ”
XLI.
a
M
0K
I
N (r
Ah, one divines how, mute, the song-nymphs flee,
And Watteau’s muse drops down themagic brush
Before that swollen, restless, muddy sea
Of shapeless flesh, pink with a painted blush ;
Those meagre shoulder-blades that don’t agree,
Those overflowing waists that corsets crush,
Those poor old calves, for twice a hundred nights
Entombed with pain in cherry-coloured tights.
XLII.
A sprite, long, lean, and languid as a worm,
A sprite that trails a cotton-velvet cloak,
Carols a topic song, with not a germ
Of tune or sense in it. Ay, Ben, they croak—
These mounds of chignons-false and flesh-infirm—
Dreary distortions of thy Attic joke,
With tripping feet and leering eyes, and shifty,
As if they weren’t all grandmammas of fifty !
XLIII.
Oh Byron, Farnie, oh Burnand, and Reece,
Maybe your consciences are very full,
For you’ve committed many a dreary piece;
But oh, we’d hold your grievous sinnings null
If you had not—Heaven send your souls release !—
You—and some thousand bales of cotton-wool—
Produced, to torture your long-suffering patrons,
That bevy of obese and padded matrons !
XLIV.
But Goldie, Cibber, Knowles, whene’er we pray
For one gleam of your wit or poesy;
When with the jingle of Lecocq, and bray
Of Offenbach distraught, we make a plea
�7*
JON DUAN.
For Tobin or for Coleman—for the gay
Old glorious peal of laughter, frank and free—
Bah ! cry the lessees—Helicon !—a treat!—
Sir—what the public dotes upon is Meat!
XLV.
And faith, they get it, calves and necks, huge
boulders
Smeared with cold-cream, and bismuth, and
ceruse;
Not much heart anywhere, but such fine shoulders !
Not much art, but such bright metallic hues !
Fat Aphrodites—born for their beholders
From froth of champagne-cup—upon their cruise
To spoil our gilded youth, dupe hoary age,
Making a bagnio of the British stage.
XLVI.
Jon Duan passed some agonizing weeks,
Conning Joe Miller and his Lempriere •,
Laying the strata of burlesque in streaks
Of slang and puns; also refusing fair
Touters for parts, with badly painted cheeks,
And insolently red and oily hair;
Who pet one—till you don’t know where to get to—
That is the worst of writing a libretto.
XLVII.
The paragraph, which, to the Era carried,
The world tells that you’re “on” a bouffe,
wakes up
Three hundred ladies, who have found life arid,
Because they never dine, and seldom sup,
And who begin to pester you : if married,
With gall they fill your matrimonial cup ;
If single—well, of course they will not hurt you—
Only their friendship don’t conduce to virtue !
XLIX.
The formula’s quite simple : all depends
On an anachronism, the more absurd
The better. Take a monarch and his friends
From Livy—Roman—for they’re much preferred,
The Grecian’s quite used up except for bends—
Send them to Prince’s, and pretend they’ve heard
Of Gladstone’s pamphlets, Arnim’s case, whatever
You choose, provided that you’re not too clever.
L.
Talent will kill. Leave actors to invent
Whatever gags they can; they’ll find a number,
Not too refined, about each day’s event,
At those dramatic “ publics ” which encumber
The lanes of Covent Garden. If they’re spent,
And find the audience somewhat prone to
slumber,
A wink, grimace, a slang phrase—clownish acting—
That stirs your patrons up—they’re not exacting.
LI.
They have broad backs, and not too lively brains;
They’ll bear whatever burdens you impose ;
So that the playbill says it entertains,
Don’t think of them—they’ll never hiss nor doze,
Provided you leave room for Herve’s strains,
And give them a perspective of pink hose
From back to footlights, in bright buoyant
masses—
Before six hundred levelled opera-glasses.
LIL
Jon Duan at his writing-table, strewn
With delicately scented little notes—
All begging him, as a tremendous boon,
To lengthen parts and shorten petticoats—
Wrote feverishly; and, humming o’er a tune,
Beside him lounged his partner—who devotes
His life to writing can-can and fandango—
Waiting for his hour and his Madame Angot.
XLVIII.
LIII.
As for the writing—that’s the easiest part—
So easy, that if it the public guessed,
They’d never pay to see Burnand, but start
A theatre themselves—perhaps the best.
A plot—who listens ?—Dialogue—it’s smart
If loose : for ladies, have them much undressed,
Have two French mimics, lime-light, vulgar jokes,
Danseuses like Sara, villains like Fred Yokes.
“ I must have that new song to-morrow—that
About the second-class—four lines of six,
And two of four for chorus. You’ve been flat
Of late; redeem yourself this time, and mix
The Old Hundredth up with Herve’s pit-a-pat,
Or any other of their Paris tricks.”
The maestro grumbled—then, remembering
Gluck’s works at home—said he had just the thing.
�JON DUAN.
LIV.
“ Have you heard anything from Piggott ?” said he,
After a pause, in which Jon Duan’s quill
Ran fiercely. 11 I’m afraid our chance is shady,
Unless you drop those jokes he’s taken ill.”
J ust then the servant came, and said a lady
Wanted Jon Duan, and the maestro, still
Humming, went, leaving the field free to fair
Miss Constance Smith—Fitz-Fulke by nom de
guerre.
LV.
The sweetest little creature man has ever
Paid modiste’s bills for; clouds of breezy curls
Blowing about her face, from such a clever
And daring poem of a hat. She furls
Her veil, and, drugging one—and spreading fever—
Fever of love and longing, round her whirls
A wind of subtle scents, corrupt and vicious—
Monstrous—exaggerated—and delicious 1
LVI.
Wine-scarlet was her mouth—a flower of blood—
A flower fed by the dew of many kisses ;
And her eyes, fathomless, made one’s heart thud,
Though nought lay in their violet-grey abysses;
She was a creature, on the whole, who could
Give man a vast variety of blisses—
The bliss of wooing, quarrelling, and playing—
With one monotonous—the bliss of paying 1
LVII.
And yet she doesn’t merit all the stones
Austere and portly ladies, who “ sit under”
Good parsons, are prepared to fling : she owns
Some fervent, heavenly impulses, that sunder
Those venal lips, and break out in meek moans.
Not less sincere than Pharisaic thunder,
About her sinfulness—whence fall, at times,
Prayers not less pure because they follow rhymes.
LVIII.
It is a little bosom full of eddies
And counter-eddies, gusts, and whirls of whimsy
That turn, re-turn her, till her pretty head is
A chaos of conflicting thoughts, and swims,
A labyrinth through which no man can thread his
Way—for she shifts and turns, and tacks and
trims
So wildly, that Jon Duan’s lighter, gayer
Poem—composed much later—must portray her.
�h
t
‘
JON DUAN.
^atnt CHltnetm.
i
I’d give—the bliss she’s given me—to perceive
What moves her most—Caprice or Charity.
Turn her glove back—just where it meets the
sleeve—
You smell involved incense, and patchouli.
I
1
2.
The march of music up long aisles, the dirges,
Ormolu censers, waxen saints and lights,
Move the frail facile heart, albeit she merges
Devoutest days in Saturnalian nights.
'
■
j
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J
!
!
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73
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1 '
3‘
I’d have you watch her as she bends alone
In some prim pew, her mouth composed, hands
crossed—
Fancying, vaguely, the priest’s monotone
Is something like Faure’s lower notes in Faust.
4She seeks salvation with the beautiful,
Loves David’s psalms—no less than Swinburne’s
sonnets—
Respects the Follet like a papal bull,
And holds we’re saved by perfect faith—and
bonnets.
5Her mode of charity includes a ball;
And such her pity of each pauper claimant—
Watching her waltz, one deems she’s given all—Even like St. Martin—more than half her raiment.
6
9For though one lose the fabled fox’s quiet
When the good grapes to low lips’ level fall ;
She seems more fit for mankind’s daily diet—
“ And she might like one really, after all.”
IO.
Like one ! to her guitar’s erotic thrum
She sets the preacher’s precept: love all men;
And founds her plea for pardon on muli-um—
Et multos—amavi—like Magdalen.
11.
She makes a dainty mouth of doubt; her fan
Rebukes that soft Parisian purr: Je t’aime !
But she loves you—well, even as she can—
A month or two—and then forgets your name.
12.
Forgets it all—till one day when her vapours
Dispose to prayer the two months’ devotee,
And in the glow of Ritualistic tapers,
She finds a love not in her breviary.
LIX.
Aye, she was Moliere’s heroine,..the jade !—
“ I am Miss Constance Fitzfulke.” Duan bowed.
“ They call me Rattlesnake.” “Who’s they?” he
said;
And felt, somehow, girls should not be allowed
To make eyes of the enticing kind she made.
“ They ? — Why the fellows —- all of them—a
crowd,
De Lacy, Pierpoint, Charlie Lisle—you know,”
“ I understand—you’re not what one calls—slow !”
LX.
When she comes begging for a fund or mission,
Jew, Greek, Voltairian, weak or very wise,
You give your obolus—with shamed contrition,
When Heaven returns it threefold, through her
eyes.
7And when you’ve watched Saint Cdlimfene receding,
Veiled like a Quakeress in coif of grey,
The recollection of her tender pleading
Makes you admire Lord Ripon, for the day.
il Slow—not a bit, I’m fast as an express—■
Upon the Midland—and as dangerous.
One of those dolls all you men die to dress,
So that your wives may safely copy us ;
You’ve got a part for me—now come, confess—
You have one : something nice and frivolous,
None of your high art that thins all the houses
Of managers with tragic girls and spouses.
8.
Nor that same evening, when she quits the cloister.
Is the antithesis of her bare breast
Aught than a drop of acid with one’s oyster'—
The peppery pod that gives the dish a zest.
“ You’ll hear me sing; you’ll see me dance : I
flatter
Myself in both I’ll rather startle you.
You see we vagabond ne’er-do-wells scatter
The old traditions to the winds. We’re new,
LXI.
�74
JON DUAN.
And young, and—well, not hideous.” Staring at
her,
Jon Duan, with conviction murmured : “ True.’
u We ’ve seen life off the stage; while your old
shoppy
Damsels know nought beyond a prompter’s copy.
LXII.
“ Our boudoirs, which are little Royal Exchanges,
Afford a curious study of mankind ;
Roam as you like, from Tiber to the Ganges,
And not a better point of sight you’ll find.
But the pure player’s vision seldom ranges
Beyond—say that small spy-hole in the blind,
Through which we peer to see if he is in
His stall; if 1 paper5 ’s in the house—or 1 tin.’
LXIII.
“ Therefore my play will be original,
I’ll be myself upon the boards—a thing
The critic always sees—and ever shall,
Till players are cultivated, and don’t spring,
Like lichens, from the vestiges of all
Professions they have failed in ; covering
Gown, surplice, red coat that’s grown limp and
dangles,
With tragic robes or acrobatic spangles.”
LXIV.
Oh, wiser than the serpent—and much harder
Than any stone, becomes the lovely woman
Who looks on London streets as a vast larder—
A Hounslow Heath where she can stop and do
man
Out of his purse and life. Good fortunes guard her,
As though the one dear creature, frankly human,
In our sick century, whose jaundiced face is
Veiled, and who sespeech one endless periphrase is.
LXV.
Is ’t vile—the Demi monde'?—Why, sale and
barter
In noble drawing-rooms, are just the same,—
The dot, the face, the hoary lecher’s garter,
The father’s money, and the mother’s shame.
Let trousseaux rain, let diamonds of pure water
Deck the dear well-bred maid who’s made her
game !—
Arrange for monsieur’s mistress, madame’s car
riage—
You parody a vile Haymarket marriage.
�JON DUAN.
75
LXXI.
LXVI.
“Your part, my princess ? Oh, it is the best
That even Rachel ever undertook.
The scene: Green Woods, that would make
Telbin’s breast
Grow hot with envy, a small shady nook
That doesn’t smell of paint—The Prettiest
Woman in the World, A Man, whose look
Indicates spooniness beyond disguises—
Discovered talking as the curtain rises.
The wicked Demi monde !—well, is your monde
So whole and sound and healthy ? Are your
wives
Much better than “the others,” and less fond
Of princes, lions, lead they purer lives ?
And is the Social Evil far beyond
Your pinchbeck imitation ? If it thrives,
Is it because it’s honester and franker,
And don’t put so much cold cream on the canker ?
LXXII.
LXVII.
“ The dialogue’s poetic nonsense, Wills
Would give his ears to equal; the bye-play
Is charming ; not all Robertson’s best quills
Could sketch out ‘ business ’ half as sweet
and gay :
The kisses are on flesh and blood that thrills —
Not the light, cold contact of Eau des Fees,
With the best rouge, laid on by feet of hares,
To hide—the feet of crows from searching stares.
We never held Jon Duan an example
Of virtue, such as one finds in the Peerage—
Which teems, of course, with many a brilliant
sample
Of godliness—above all in the sere age,
When man’s ability to sin aint ample—
But lots of genteel Josephs will, I fear, rage
(And wish they’d had a chance with the “ beguil-ah”,)
On hearing how he gave in to Dalilah.
LXXIII.
“ The Time—the Present. Costume—rich enough
To show the wearers are of decent station,
And have a little leisure left for love.
The Plot—ah, ’tis the airiest creation
That ever bard—strong-voiced or silent—wove ;
The simple plot that’s pleased each age and
nation
From Adam’s day to Darwin’s, though the latter,
Thanks unto Gilbert, finds the story flatter.
lxviii.
He fell; where is the man who never fell
At beck of like fair fingers, at th’ invite
Of such a Syren, such a Satan’s belle ?—
He’d be indeed a pure Arthurian knight,
Unlike the Marlborough Club men in Pall Mall.
Jon Duan perished—we may’nt think him right,
Though even blood and iron do give in
To beauty decked out with the Wage of Sin------
LXXIV.
LXIX.
“ The Piece is Love—The Plot, it is love-making.
It’s had a run of some six thousand years.
Come, let us put it in rehearsal, taking
The stage alone, and keeping it. Our ears
Weren’t made for prompter’s whispers !” But
she, shaking
That sunny head of hers, said she had fears
About her memory—was he sure that he'd do ?—
And was that quite a good lever de rideau ?
Which isn’t a bad salary on the whole,
As wages go in these degenerate days ;
When violet powder is less dear than coal;—
At least we know that several pairs of bays
Are kept on those same wages, which a shoal
Of Jew promoters, bankers, lordlings, pays,
Without reflecting on that heinous libel
About the Wage, they might find in the Bible.
LXX.
LXXV.
Jon Duan, fascinated, just declared
The giving of a lady’s part depended
Upon Miss Constance Fitzfulke—and he stared
Quite rudely at the opulent and splendid figure
Before him. But, by no means scared,
With coquetry and prudence subtly blended,
She said his demonstrations touched her heart—
But she would rather like to know her part.
It might come afterwards—as final farce,
For farce it must be—she’s nought, if not funny;
But a too quick denouement often mars
An author’s best piece—and, above all, one he
Has planned so hastily. Profits are sparse,
When one commences with so little money.
She’d see—a little later on—and her
Eyes said that day he’d be the Manager!
|
�JON DUAN.
LXXVI.
“ Well, though we’re very full, I think I’ve found
A small part, that will fit you like a glove,
In my ‘^Eneas,’ a burlesque that’s bound
To beat ‘ Ixion.’ ” " You’re a perfect love !—
But what’s the dress?” “Oh, Roman robes.”
She frowned.
"‘Robes,’ that sounds bad. Don’t Roman
swells approve
Of tights ?” " Well, don’t obey us to the letter,
Wear what you like-—perhaps the less the better.
i
I
LXXVII.
“We’ve got EumidiaJohnson to play Dido.
You’ll have a scene with her.”—“A scene with
Miss
Eumidia Johnson !”—and Miss Constance cried :
" Oh,
You are a darling—Come now—there’s a
kiss!”—
“ She enters speaking to a village guide, who
Stays in the wings—Then Dido utters this :
* Is this the road to Sicily ? ’ The wight
Responds : ‘Just past the cabstand, to your right.’
lxxviii.
‘‘You’ll play the village lass.”—"Well, what
comes next ? ”
"Next—why there’s nothing.” "What! I
don’t appear
At all ! ”—and Miss Fitzfulke looked rather
vexed,—
“Of course not.” “Then why do you make
me wear
A costume ? ”—The librettist said the text
Of his engagement stipulated there
Should be, in smallest details, a sublime
Aud true historic picture of the time.
LXXIX.
"Besides, you’re sure to make Eumidia furious,
She hates a pretty colleague worse than sin ;
And then the Stalls are sure to be most curious
To know who’s Miss Fitzfulke, who ne’er
comes in ;—
A mystery is not at all injurious
When figurantes, who would ‘ see life,’ begin ;
It whets the appetite of wealthy sinners
Seeking their vis-à-vis for Richmond dinners.”
LXXX.
So it was settled. Heaven knows what pact
Between the pair was furthermore concluded.
L
�JON DUAN
One can’t say always how one’s heroes act,
And we’re quite ignorant of what these two
did ;
But there’s one positive and patent fact,
Miss Constance Fitzfulke’s name henceforth
obtruded
Itself in bills, which said her part would be as
Julia in the new Bouffe—“ Pious ?Eneas.”
77 K
in.
The dahlias bleus in courts of Spanish castles,
And, where it’s shady,
The merle blanc chanting,
And floating robes, and feathers, fringe and tassels
That frame the lady
One’s always wanting.
IV.
How sweet are memories of the thin white bodies,
When, sooner or later
Two puffs dismiss them ;
And what love grows for vague lips of the goddess
When the creator
Can never kiss them !
LXXXI.
We know the link between them was soon broken,
That he forgot—and she would not forgive ;—
The usual end of light vows rashly spoken—
The usual end of immortelles we weave
Into a passing fancy’s foolish token.
The Love goes out, and-—well, the lovers live,
And, turning o’er some old creased yellow letter,
He cannot, for his life, tell where he met her.
V.
Ah, those clouds aid the preachers’ exhortations
With apt examples
Of hope’s fruitions,
And breed, in time, that comfortable patience
Which mutely tramples
On vain ambitions.
lxxxii.
One lives—with just another cause for saying
Hard things against the sex which, from our
nurses
Unto our widows, lives but for betraying.
One lives—to vent a few dramatic curses
Upon their heads, and, for our pain’s allaying,
To smoke more pipes, and write more doleful
verses,
Such as Jon Duan wrote in the dyspeptic
Tone of the Jilted who would seem a Sceptic.
VI.
The goddess grows amorphous in the fusion
Of fumes, and none deign
To mend or drape her—
Hence, stoic smokers draw the trite conclusion
That most things mundane
Must end in vapour.
©amtaS.
'
:
VII.
And in the place of peace, and praise, and laurel,
A bay-wrecked boat sees,
From which in deep tone,
Comes o’er the water’s waste—the Master’s moral
Of M<xtcu6t77s
i.
Tell me I’m weary ; say of Pride—it cowers ;
Of love—it bored me ;
Of faith—dove broke it ;
But add, the world’s a weed worth all its flowers,
And fate afford me
The time to smoke it.
MaraiirijTWi'
LXXXIII.
II.
1
They who pretend that this last joy, disabled
From pleasing, duly
Will leave you lonely,
Know not how fortune’s wizard-wand has labelled
The fairy Thule
“For smokers only ;”
|
A first night at the Pandemonium. All
The facade is ablaze. Electric light
Streams from the fronting houses on a wall,
Bearing in letters, half a yard in height:
“Pious .¿Eneas ; or, the Roman Fall,”—
With a few witticisms just as bright
( Vide the theatre columns of the Times'),
Filched from the bills of ancient pantomimes.
�JON DUAN.
y8
LXXXIV.
Cabs are Echeloned in adjoining streets ;
The first-night clan has mustered in full force :
The critics, who’ve got pocketfuls of sheets
Of ready-made abuse or praise, of course ;
Some actors—first nights are their special treats—
An actress, yearning for that strange divorce
Which hangs fire—not because her lord don’t
doubt her,
But just because he’d get no parts without her.
LXXXV.
There’s the small German banker come to see
If this thing threatens his majestic place
As millionaire, supporting two or three
Flourishing houses—not from any base
Desire of pelf, but just to win the key
Of a few dressing-rooms, to know a brace
Of low comedians—and perhaps arrive at
A knowledge of how authors look in private.
LXXXVI.
There’s Rhadamanthus of the Thunderer,
Who generally, to prime himself, dines freely ;
There’s Papa Levy, breathing nard and myrrh
Proffered by Freddy Arnold—styled the Mealy
Gusher—his fond and faithful thurifer.
There’s Sala—with that one jocose and steely
Orb levelled at Hain Friswell like a pistol—•
A fierce carbuncle glowing at a crystal.
LXXXVII.
There’s bland E. Blanchard, with the sleek curled
locks,
There’s the white head that gives the Athenaum
Those pure and classic notices; there flocks
The Civil Service legion—You should see ’em
Passing pretentiously from box to box,
Chanting Anathema, or a Te Deum,
According to their hearers’ love or spite,
For, or against, the author of the night.
LXXXVIII.
And nameless crowds fill up the stalls ; a hum
Subdued goes down the critics’ own first row;
Dawdling Guy Livingstones are stricken dumb
By their profound anxiety to know
Whether Amanda, Lou or Nell will “ come
Out strong ”—or make dear friends'and rivals
crow :
And one by one the detrimentals rise,
And saunter off to see how the ground lies.
LXXXIX.
The secret of this theatre’s success
They know. You pass behind the boxes, thread
Some corridors and galleries that grow less
Thronged as you push on, save by some wellbred
Patrons profound of drama and the Press •
They bribe the latter, by the first are bled ;
You come across a small door where officials
Demand of you your name and her initials.
XC.
And you descend a Dantesque staircase, filled
With that foul feverish air of the coulisse,
Into a world where all essay to build,
Apparently a Babel, not a piece.
At every step you take you’re nearly killed
By carpenters ; by call-boys—cackling geese—■
And men who’re shifting temples, wings, and
drops,
Or handing Grecian goddesses their “props.”
XCI.
Only the maestro is self-possessed
In this great madhouse, set on fire by night—
That’s tHb comparison that suits it best ;—
He, humming shreds of opera airs, makes
light
Of each defect, because all his hopes rest
Upon his music, which will set all right ;
Jon Duan, being a novice at the trade,
Though not less vain, was rather more afraid.
xcn.
He gave the worst directions, quite forgetting
The most important ; he strode to and fro
From prompter to stage manager, upsetting
The watering pots, with which the dust’s laid
low,
When all the scene-shifters have finished “ setting,”
He felt a subtle fever stealing thro’
Him—“Author ! ” heard, and hisses, madly
mingled,
’Twas like champagne drunk through his ears,
which tingled.
xeni.
“ Lend me your rouge.”—“ Miss Amy’s borrowed
it.”
‘‘The hairdresser!”—“He’s occupied.”—
“ I’m in
»
-J
�1 »"
■
I
JON DUAN.
The second scene.”—“I’m in the first!”—“A
chit! ”
“A minx!”—“Oh, dresser, take care with
that pin ! ”
“ Dresser—I’m sure my shoulder-straps will
split.”—
That is the usual last moment’s din—
Traversed by call-boy’s cries, tenor’s objections,
Mechanics’ oaths, and author’s last directions.
XCIV.
Then Dido came down from her dressing-room.
Her maid held up her train—she strode
superb
In sheeny satin—dazzling, with a bloom
From Rimmel’s on that face—that neck you
curb
But with a diamond necklace. Vague perfume,
Distilled from many a rare and precious herb,
Enveloped her—as some ethereal presence,
To which all present made profound obeisance.
xcv.
The maestro bore her poodle, and her fan
Was carried by the manager. She knew
Her power, the jade ! and calmly her gaze ran
Around the stage.
“That chair will never
do”—
And it was changed. “ That drop’s too high ”—
a man
Was straightway sent to lower it—they flew,
They bowed, they, cringed, and felt it a great
honour—
1 Hadn’t they spent ten thousand pounds upon her ?
XCVI.
Then the bell rings—that tinkle which the
hearts
Of authors echo with re-tingling force.
The curtain rises, and the public starts
Quick to its feet, and in a moment’s hoarse
With hailing the fair favourite—from all parts
Bouquets rain down upon her, hurled of course,
79
By hands that have held her’s—and left, too,
there,
Not a few fortunes poets would call fair.
xcvn.
And the applause ne’er ceased, for no one heard
A line, but saw legs after legs succeed
Each other, caper and poussette. No word
Was wanted. All who’ve come have what they
need—
Plenty of lime-light, music, and a herd
Of puppets, pink, and finest of their breed :
That’s why the papers next day chronicled
The piece as one in which France was excelled.
xcvin.
Oh, those encores—those bravoes, how they make
One’s bosom bound, one’s vanity brim o’er.
The modest bounds of reticence we break,
Only behind our inmost chamber’s door—
Where, it is true, a rich revenge we take
For the feigned meekness of an hour before—
But on a first night it’s legitimate
To say, as well as feel convinced, you’re great.
XCIX.
But o’er Jon Duan’s brow a shade would come,
E’en while Queen Dido ran off, flushed with
praise,
And said he was “a perfect treasure.” Some
Dim struggling recollections of the plays
He’d hoped to write—ere this indecent dumb
Show of fine legs—plays, worthy of old days,
And which do one more honour in one’s desk,
Perhaps, than many a popular burlesque.
c.
And so, when Dido and jEneas had
Been called on thrice, he answered to the shout
For “Author ! Author !” with a face half sad,
Half cynical; as, gazing round about,
He saw what philtres made the public mad,
And why they hissed not those fat women out—
And in his heart he thanked, the while he made
his
Bow, the dear friends of all his “ leading ladies.”
�.8o
JON DUAN.
Canto The Seventh.
i.
EARY of London and of London ways,
The glare and glitter of the London nights,
And very weary also of the days,
Which once could minister such rare delights,
Duan, who erst had written many lays
Praising the hundred pleasant sounds and sights
Of this great hive of very busy bees,
Resolved to quit the town and take his ease.
II.
He sometimes liked, although in Fashion’s season,
To bid farewell to sun-dried London streets ;
He could not, nor could we, afford a reason,
To every stupid questioner one meets
Who pries about, as'if suspecting treason,
To find out why the pulse so languid beats,
Or why we seek the hillside, sea, or river,—
And puts it down to a disordered liver.
in.
So Duan turned to fields and pastures new,
Taking a ticket'for the Midland line;
For on the pleasant shores full" well he knew
He might find scenes to soften and refine;
And thinking much about the same, he grew
Almost poetic—till he w ished to dine ;
And then he roused from fancy’s meditation,
And looked in Bradshaw for the stopping station.
IV.
He crossed the border, and at once he felt
A keenness and a rawness in the air ;
A fume of oats and cock-a-leekie smelt,
Heard mingled sounds of blasphemy and prayer;
And saw that on the people’s faces dwelt
A hard and bony Calvinistic stare,
Which seemed to express it] was a Scot’s life
labour
To skin a flint and damn outright his- neighbour.
v.
O, Caledonia ! very stern and wild,
And only dear to those who travel through you ;
The poet says you’re lov’d by each Scotch child,
But you do not believe such nonsense, do you?
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�I"
I
THE “ SOCK.”—A Comedy Company.
��JON DUAN,
What Scotchman is there that would not be riled,
If he was bound for life to stick close to you ?
No, Land of heath, and loch, and shaggy moor,
You’re only dear, say we, to those who tour.
VI.
0, Land of Whisky, Oatmeal, Bastards, Bibles ;
O Land of Kirks, Kilts, Claymores, Kail, and
Cant,—
Of lofty mountains and of very high hills,
Of dreary “Sawbaths,” and of patriot rant;
0 Land which Dr. Johnson foully libels,
To sound thy praises does our hero pant;
And to relate how, from engagements freed,
He calmly vegetated north of Tweed.
VII.
He saw “Auld Reekie,” climbed up Arthur’s Seat,
And thought the modern Athens a fine city;
Admired the view he got from Prince’s Street,
And wished the lassies could have been more
pretty—
With smaller bones, and less decided feet;
He found the cabmen insolent, though witty ;
The Castle "did,” and, ere he slept, had been on
The Carlton’Hill and seen the new Parthenon.
VIII.
The Edinburgh “Sawbath” bored him, though,
’Twas like being in a city of the dead ;
With solemn steps, and faces full of woe,
The people to their kirks and chapels sped,
Heard damning doctrines, droned some psalms,
and so
Went home again with Puritanic tread;
Pulled down their blinds, and in the evening
glooms,
Got very drunk in their back sitting-rooms.
IX.
All, outward form—it is the old, old story :
The Pharisee his presence still discloses:—
They go to church, they give to God the glory ;
They roll their eyes, and snuffle through their
noses;
Tow’rds other sinners hold views sternly gory,
And are great sticklers for the law of Moses.
Then go home, shut their doors, and, as a body,
Go in for secret sins and too much “ toddy.”
81
�82
JON DUAN.
x.
But westward was the cry, and Duan went
To Balloch Pier, and steamed up Lomond’s
loch ;
And felt inclined for silent sentiment ;* —
But tourists crowded round him in a flock,
And vulgarised the scenery, and lent
A disenchantment to the view ; ’tis shock
ing how they can a fellow-traveller worry,
And bore him with th'eir manners and their
“ Murray.”
XI.
They “ do ” their nature as they would a sum,
And rule off scenery like so much cash :
They quote their guide-books, or they would be
dumb :
A waterfall to them is but a splash ;
A mountain but so many feet;—they come,
And go, and see that nature does not clash
With dinner. And take home as travel’s fruit
An empty purse and worn-out tourist-suit.
XII.
Soon Duan fled the beaten track, nor rested
Till, fortunate, he chanced upon a village
From tourist-locusts free, and uninfested
By Highland landlords who the traveller
pillage—•
A spot with towering mountain-walls invested,
And given up to pasturage and tillage,
Whilst in the distance, dimly, through a crevice,
You saw the summit of cloud-capp’d Ben Nevis.
XIII.
Here Duan stayed, and fished—there was a burn ;
And flirted—for of course there was a lass
there ;
Tried Gaelic epithets of love to learn ;
Climbed every mountain, and explored each
pass there,
And set himself, in philosophic turn,
To study the condition of the mass there ;
And found they lived, chiefly on milk and porridge,
In hovels where we wouldn’t store up forage.
XIV.
Hovels of mud and peat, with plots of ground
Just large enough to grow their owner’s oats ;
A cow, a lank, lean sheep or two he found, i
Some long-legged fowls, and p’rhaps a pair of
goats :
�JON DUAN.
------- —...
—~—.-------------------- ,------------------- ----
Inside, nor roofs, nor walls, nor windows sound—
They’re worse than huts of Sclaves, or Czechs,
or Croats :
So lives, and will live, till lairds’ hearts grow
softer,
That remnant of the feudal days, the crofter.
xv.
He pays but little rent, but even then
Body and soul he scarce can keep together:
His wife and daughters have to work like men,
Subsistence hangs on such a fragile tether;
And when the snow comes drifting up the glen,
God knows how they survive the wintry weather.
We fuss about the happy South Sea Islanders,
But have no thought for these half-starving
Highlanders.
XVI.
He walked through tracts of country—countless
acres,—
White men ejected that red-deer may live ;
And let to rich and purse-proud sugar-bakers,
Who care not what the rent is that they give ;
Nor that they have been desolation-makers,—
To use a very mild appelative—
And when he saw these forests so extensive,
Those Highland deer, thought he, were too ex
pensive.
XVII.
Sport is a proper thing enough—we are
No weak and sickly sentimentalists ;
But what is sport ? For very, very far
The definitions differ : one insists
It’s battue-shooting; then, a butcher, bar
None, is the greatest sportsman that exists—
He’s slaughtering always ; not a lord whose study
It is to make big bags, is half as bloody.
XVIII.
A slaughter-house would be a new delight
For high-born ladies who “ warm corners visit,5’
And relish pigeon-shooting—’twould excite
Fresh joys to see a pig stuck, and to quiz it
As it dies slowly with a squeal of fright ;
For if they like the killing so, why is it
They draw the line at pigeon or at pheasant ?—
To see big beasts killed would be still more
pleasant.
83
�84
JON DUAN.
XIX.
But to our muttons, that is, to our deer—
Stalking the stag is proper sport, we grant ;
But British sport should never interfere
With British people’s welfare—if we can’t
Hunt deer unless a country-side’s made drear
And desolate,—why, then it’s clear, we shan’t
Be acting properly to make a waste
To suit a few rich sportsmen’s vulgar taste.
xx.
John Duan heard sad tales of men being turned
From ’neath their treasured and ancestral roof;
And sheep by thousands could be kept, he learn’d,
Where now, save for the deer, there roams no
hoof ;—
He look’d on ruin’d homes, and his heart burned
With indignation, as he saw fresh proof
Of how the man, with money in his hand,
Can rough-shod ride o’er all the privileged land.
*
XXI.
And he came back to England, his heart burning
To tell his story in the Daily News ;
Resolved to stay this very general turning
Of fertile land to desert : but his views
Met with but faint encouragement ;—discerning
I® Men thought him right : but, just then, to amuse
The public, there came up a new sensation—Sir Henry Thompson’s paper on Cremation.
XXII.
So, up in Scotland there are, still, evictions,
And still all else gives way to sport a»d game :
No matter how severe are the inflictions
On harmless people : still it is the same.
There must be deer and grouse ; and soon in
fictions
Alone will live the Highlander’s proud name.
Perish the people, and whate’er would war
With rich and selfish pleasures—Vive le Sport !
* It is worthy of record that a’ Scotch nobleman, whose
large estate is, by dint of wholesale evictions and purposed
neglect, being turned into deer-forests—called forests, seem
ingly, because they do not contain a single tree—has been
able, by the exercise of his lordly will, to prevent the post
office telegraph-wires passing over a part of his property,
where, for the convenience of hundreds of isolated people, it
would have been especially useful. His lordship's most
urgent argument against the wires was that they would
frighten his grouse ! The wires have accordingly made a
détour, and his lordship's unfortunate tenants are left prac
tically cut off from the world, to get ill, and get well again,
as best they can, and to die without being able to make a
sign. Meanwhile, the grouse are not frightened—which is,
of course, a great blessing.
�JON DUAN.
Canto The Eighth.
1.
iHss^gji FRAGRANT odour of the choicest weeds,
A hum of voices, pitched in high-born tones ;
A score of fellows, some of our best breeds,
The Heir-apparent to the British throne ;
Soft-footed flunkeys tending to their needs—
The vintage in request, to-night, is Beaune—
Luxurious lounging-chairs, well-stuffed settees,
An air of lavishness, and taste, and ease.
II.
The walls are covered with a set of frames
Containing all the members limned by “ Ape”;
The loungers bear our most illustrious names,
At which the outside public gasp and gape.
That is a duke’s son who just now exclaims—
“ Avaunt, ye ‘ World’ly and unholy shape ! ”
And he who enters, being the “ shape ” he means,
Is little Labby, fresh from City scenes.
III.
There is more chatter: — “ How are ‘Anglo's'
now ?”—
“Were you at Prince’s
Isn’t Amy stunning ? ”—
“ The bets are off.”—“.She waltzes like a cow.”—
“ It’s Somerset is making all the running.”—
“Churchill’s on guard.”—“ 0, yes, a devilish
row! ”—
“ It’s in the World?—“ I say, Wales, Yorke is
punning.”—
“The framjous muff!”—“By Jove! an awful
joke!”—
Such are the words that penetrate the smoke.
IV.
Guelpho is beaming, as he always beams,
And listening to Jon Duan’s latest “ tips”;
Upon a sofa Wodecot lies and dreams
Of other hearts, and Nellie’s charming lips ;
The air with pretty little scandals teems,
Of men’s mistakes and pretty women’s slips.
What looked you for within the sacred portals ?—
The Guelpho Clubmen, after all, are mortals.
V.
;
Again the noiseless door swings open wide,
And Coachington is with a loud roar greeted.
85
1 Is Bromley still by Bow? ” a witling cried,
Before the new arrival could be seated;
But he—he had sat down by Guelpho’s side—
Said, “ I bought this outside,” and then repeated,
From a broadsheet of ballads, ’midst much
laughter,
The “ Coster’s Carol ” you’ll find following after.
•
'GIjc Cms'trr’ja Garni.
1.
I may be rough an’ like 0’ that,
But I ain’t no bloomin’ fool;
An’ I’m rather up to what is what,
Though I never goed to school.
I know my way about a bit,
An’ this is what I say :—■
That it’s those as does the business
As ought to get the pay !
2.
I ain’t no grudge agen the Queen,
Leastways, that is, no spite ;
But I helps to keep her, so I mean
To ax for what’s my right:—
An’ as she won’t come out at all,
It’s not no ’arm to say,
That if she don’t do the business,
Why, she shouldn’t get the pay.
*
0
She’s livin’ on the cheap, I’m told.
An’ puttin’ lots away—
Some gets like that when they is old—
But what I want’s fair play !
Let Wictoria get her pension,
An’ up in Scotland stay—
But let them as do her business,
Be the ones to get most pay.
4I think as ’ow her eldest son
’As got a hopen ’art;
I likes his looks, myself, for one,
An’ I alius takes his part.
And then there’s Alexandrar,
She’s a proper sort, I say ;
Them’s the two as do the business,
An’ they ought to get the pay.
•
�JON DUAN.
86
5.
There ain’t to me the slightest doubt
(An’ no hoffence I means)—•
’Tis the moke as draws the truck about,
As ought to get most greens.
We do not starve the old ’uns,
But we give much less to they—
’Tis the ones as do the business
As ought to have the pay«
>
6.
I pay my whack for queen or king,
Like them o’ ’igher birth ;
An’ ’taint a werry wicked thing
To want my money’s worth :
An’ if I’m discontented,
’Tis only ’cause I say—
That the coves as does the business .
Ought to get the bloomin’ pay.
• 7So let the Queen her ways pursoo,
An’ I for one won’t weep ;
An’ all the idle Jarmints, too,
As I helps for to keep.
But what I ’ope ain’t treason,
Is boldly for to say
That the Prince and Alexandrar
Ought to get their mother’s pay.
VI.
“ What impudence 1 ” they cry, and yet they laugh,
And Duan says, “ The logic isn’t bad :
A lot of truth is sometimes mixed with chaff.
And, by-the-by, if’t please you, I will add
A parody I’ve made : on its behalf
I claim your leniency.” Then he gave tongue,
And in his rich, ripe voice these verses sung :—
€I)at (Germans 3)£h>.
London, 18'74.
Which I wish to remark—
And my language is plain—
That for ways that are dark,
And tricks far from vain,
The Germany Jew is peculiar,
Which the same I’m about to explain.
Eim Gott was his name ;
And I shall not deny
In regard to the same,
He was wonderful “ fly,”
But his watch-chain was vulgar and massive,
And his manner was dapper and spry.
It’s two years come the time,
Since the mine first came out;
Which in language sublime
It was puffed all about:—
But if there’s a mine called Miss Emma
I’m beginning to werry much doubt.
Which there was a small game
And Eim Gott had a hand
In promoting ! The same
He did well understand
But he sat at Miss Emma’s board-table,
With a smile that was child-like and bland.
Yet the shares they were “ bulled,”
In a way that I grieve,
And the public was fooled,
Which Eim Gott, I believe,
Sold 22,000 Miss Emmas,
And the same with intent to deceive.
And the tricks that were played’
By that Germany Jew,
And the pounds that he made
Are quite well known to you.
But the way that he flooded Miss Emma
Is a “watering” of shares that is new.
Which it woke up MacD------ ,
And his words were but few.
For he said, “ Can this be ? ”
And he whistled a “ Whew !”
“ We are ruined by German-Jew swindlers”!—
And he went for that Germany J ew.
In the trial that ensued
I did not take a hand ;
But the Court was quite filled
With the fi-nancing band,
And Eim Gott was “ had ” with hard labour,
For the games he did well understand.
Which is why I remark—
And my language is plain—
That for ways that are dark,
And for tricks far from vain.
The Germany Jew was peculiar,—
But he won’t soon be at it again.
�JON DUAN.
VII.
The verdict was “ Not bad ! ” and then the chat
Turned on the Mordaunt Trial and Vert-Vert
case :—
“ The plaintiff’s 1 Fairlie ’ beaten,” Jon said ; at
Which witticism there was a grimace ;
Next, little Labby, who till then had sat
Quite quietly, said, at Fred Bates’s place
He’d seen a skit, he quite forgot to bring it,
But knew the words, and if they liked, he’d sing it.
“ 3E
im'tlj (grant.”
“ I was with Grant----- ” the stranger said ;
Said McDougal, 11 Say no more,
But come you in—I have much to ask—
And please to shut the door.”
“ I was with Grant----- ” the stranger said;
Said McDougal, “Nay, no more,—
You have seen him sit at the Emma board ?
Come, draw on your mem’ry’s store.
“ What said my Albert—my Baron brave,
Of the great financing corps ?
I warrant he bore him scurvily
’Midst the interruption’s roar ! ”
“No doubt he did,” said the stranger then ;
“ But, as I remarked before,
I was with Grant----- ” “Nay, nay, I know,”
Said McDougal; “but tell me more.
“ He’s presented another square 1—I see,
You’d smooth the tidings o’er—
Or started, perchance, more Water works
On the Mediterranean shore ?
“ Or made the Credit Foncier pay,
Or floated a mine with ore ?
Oh, tell me not he is pass’d away
From his home in Kensington Gore !”
“ I cannot tell,” said the unknown man,
“ And should have remarked before,
That I was with Grant—Ulysses, I mean—
In the great American war.”
End
87
Then McDougal spake him never a word,
But beat, with his fist, full sore
The stranger who’d been with Ulysses Grant,
In the great American war.
VIII.
Then City men they most severely “ slated”—
Chiefly the banking German Jew variety.
How is it, Landford asked, cads, aggravated
As they, have wriggled into good society ?
And some one said their path to it is plated,
And looked at Guelpho with assumed anxiety.
But Guelpho, ever genial, smiled and said,
“ Suppose we have some loo (unlimited).”
IX.
But Duan wouldn’t play, but said he’d read
Some of the proofs of his new work instead ;
At which there was a loud outcry, indeed,
And soda corks assailed our hero’s head,
Until he promised he would not proceed.
“ And, by the way, J on,” Beersford said, “ I read
That Lord and Dock’s new Annual was out.”
Jon shrugged his shoulders, “ Yes,” he said, “no
doubt,
X.
“ Very much out indeed ; 4t seems to me
That Beeton’s statement was not far from true,
For from internal evidence I see
He could have had naught with their book to do.
I know him, and whatever he may be,
He is not vulgar ; knows a thing or two ;
Has brains, in fact, and has not got to grovel
In worn-out notions, but goes in for novel.”
XI.
And now for loo the cry was raised again,
And there’s a general movement towards the
door;
And humming as he went the coster’s strain,
Duan, with Guelpho, sought the second-floor.
Said Coming K----- , “ Come, Duan, please refrain;
Such sentiments, you know, I must deplore.”
But Duan—“ It’s done ; we’ve put it to the nation—
We’ve gone in for an Early Abdication !”
OF J on
Duan.
�88
SPINNINGS IN TOWN
Spinnings in Town.
•
i.
Although unversed in lays and ways Byronic,
And of Don Juan not a line have read,
Although I’ve never touched the lyre Ionic,
And even nursery-rhymes in prose have said,
Yet for a change I’ll try the gentle Tonic
Of verses, that must be with kindness read,
And, being counselled by some good advisers,
Will journey, too—but to see advertisers.
II.
For I have heard a murmur of fair sights,
All to be seen within gay London town,
Of robes delicious, bonnets gay as sprites,
Cuirasses braided, and jet-spangled gown.
Inventions useful, such as give delight
To all good housewives (those that do not frown
At novelty, or, when they’re asked to try it,
Say, “ It looks very nice, but I shan’t buy it.”)
hi.
Not for such churlish souls, I sing the news—
Not for the women who don’t care for dress ;
Our sex’s armour ne’er did I refuse,
And, without mauvaise honte, I will confess
That, when I’m asked of two new gowns to choose,
I do not take the one which costs the less,
Unless ’tis prettier far ; and then I say,
“ Admire your sposds moderation, pray !”
IV.
I am a Silkworm, spinner by profession,
And make long yarns from very slender case,
I love new things and pretty—this confession
Alone should give me absolution’s grace
From all who read my lines and my digression,
Which I can’t really help—words grow apace—
For I could write whole volumes on a feather,
If I had not to put the rhymes together.
v.
Man’s dress is of man’s life a thing apart:
To Poole or Melton he with calmness goes ;
But woman’s toilette lies so near her heart,
That ’tis with doubts, and fears, and many throes
�BY THE i1ILK WORM.
!
'
’
!
i
In visiting the rounds of shop and mart,
That she selects a ribbon or a rose.
Her fate in life doth oft depend, I ween,
If she be struck with just that shade of green.
VI.
Beauteous Hibernia ! (Britons, do not frown
At rhapsodies from one who owes her much)
What could one do without a poplin gown,
Whose folds take graceful form from every
touch ?
These lips have never pressed the Blarney
11 stone ”—
No flattery ’tis to speak of fabrics such
As are produced in Inglis-Tinckler factory—
Oh dear me! all these rhymes are so refractory.
VII.
To Ireland, too, we owe a great invention ;
For warmth and comfort in the wintry cold,
The Ulster Coat is just the thing to mention,
For driving to the covert, or be rolled
In, for the morning train, or Great Extension
Line Terminus, within its cosy fold,
N or snow nor wet shall harm you, if but ye
Buy Ulster Coats alone of John McGee.
X.
And for yourselves, who to the coverts go,
In dog-cart neat, oft in the pouring rain,
The Ulster Deer-Stalker’s a coat that so
Will keep you dry, and save rheumatic pain.
It useful is in travelling, to and fro
The country station, and must prove a gain.
’Tis so becoming to a figure tall !
In fact, it suits all mankind, great and small.
XI.
Where to begin, and whither wend my way !
Shall I to Atkinson or Jay first go?
Look at Black Silk Costumes sold cheap by Jay;
Or view chairs, tables, carpets, row by row ;
Inspect the “ Brussels, five-and-two,” or say,
“ Prices of furniture I wish to know ; ”
Look at the mirrors, view the marquet’rie,
Gaze at the inlaid work, or wander free ?
XII.
Through gall’ries large, and through saloons light,
vast,
I cast a hasty glance on either hand,
Rich carvings chaste, cretonnes so bright, and
fast
Colours.
VIII.
Say what you will about furs in cold weather,
Sing of the warmth of seal skin as you please,
’Gainst cold, or ice, or snow, or all together,
Give me the Ulster Overcoat of frieze !
Useful in Autumn, driving the heather;
Safeguard in Winter against cough or sneeze ;
But, as they imitate the Ulster Coat,
See that the maker’s name (McGee) you note.
*
IX.
Ladies’ Costumes, and Suits of Irish stuff,
Windermere lining, soft, of every shade,
Cuirasses matelasse see enough
To turn the head of either wife or maid.
I think no woman born could ever “huff”
If in such lovely garments but arrayed,
So, Fathers, Husbands, Brothers, try to find
If Ladies’ Ulster Coats” won’t suit your
womankind.
* John G. McGee and Co., Belfast, Ireland.
89
I note enough to deck the land
With CURTAINS, COVERS, that will surely last
When Time has ta’en the pencil from this hand,
Which strives to give a notion (somewhat faint)
Of furniture that would tempt e’en a saint.
XIII.
Talk of Temptation ! just call in at Jay’s !
The London Mourning Warehouses, I
mean,
In Regent Street ; ’tis crowded on fine days
With the élite of London, and the Queen
Has patronised the house, and without lèseMajesté, I may mention she has seen
Such crêpe of English and of foreign make,
That from no other house she will it take.
XIV.
Yet at the present moment ’tis not crêpe,
But SILK COSTUMES that I would bid all see
(Six pounds sixteen !) of the last cut and shape
The best Parisian models ! flowing free,
--------------- - ----------------------------._____ .___________ _t
�SPINNINGS IN TOWN
90
The graceful folds from dainty bows escape,
Harmonious corsages with the skirts agree;
See what a change French politics have made—
Silks cost just double when they Nap. obeyed ! J
XV.
Then there’s another Jay, whose house full well
Both English maids and New York matrons
know ;
“ The best store out for lingerie, du tell,”
’Tis near unto the mourning warehouse, so
You can’t mistake the maison Samuel
Jay, of high renown for brides’ trousseaux,
Infants’ layettes, and morning toilettes cozy
(For my part, I like cashmere, blue or rosy).
XVI.
Those who do mourn, or wish to compliment
Acquaintances, connections, or their friends,
Who do not care to see much money spent
(For crape turns brown, and ravels at the ends),
Should get the Albert Crape, an excellent
Crape, good to look at; it intends
To be the only crape used ; GOOD and cheap—
Considerations strong for those who weep.
XVII.
Being close by, what hinders me to visit
The Wanzer Company, Great Portland
Street ?—
The Little Wanzer, a machine exquisite—
With such a lockstitch, sewing is a treat;
It works away on any stuff, nor is it
One of those kind whose stitching is not neat ;
Though small, it sews as well as Wanzer D,
Or Wanzer F—“ machine for family.”
XVIII.
Why trouble we to stitch by midnight taper,
New cuffs and collars for our future wear,
When we can buy our lingerie of PAPER,
Each day put on a parure, white and fair?
Collars,which keep their stiffness ’spite of vapour,
Cuffs fit for maid and matron debonair.
Collars and CUFFS, shirt-fronts for gentleman—
These are in Holborn sold, by Edward Tann.
xix.
Holborn the High, number three hundred eight,
There one can buy all kinds of paper things,—
Japanese curtains, ws&jupons for state
Occasions, ’broidered all in wheels and rings.
The paper well doth ’broidery simulate,
’Tis raised and open; then the’re blinds and
strings,
Of paper all, most curious to view—
Think of the saving in the washing, too !
xx.
How difficult it is to find out rhymes
For Vose’s Portable Annihilator,
Which gardens waters, fires checks betimes !
Or Loysel’s Hydrostatic Percolator
For making coffee in,—oh Christmas chimes !
I can’t find any rhyme except Equator,
And that means naught: I want the world to
know it,
They’re made at Birmingham by Griffiths,
Browett.
xxi.
Respite is near, or surely I’d be undone;
’Tis one o’clock, and time to have some lunch.
Where shall I turn ? Of course unto the London,
Where, in the Ladies’ Room, we find Fim,
Punch,
To while the time we spend on things so mundane
(As well as other papers), while we munch
Good things, and menus gay and cartes unravel,
Learn that the restaurant is kept by Reed and
Cavell.
xxii.
The London Restaurant is famed for dinners,
(The London is in Fleet Street, by the way,
Close unto Temple Bar); too good for sinners,
By far the dinner that is set each day.
I took my lads there when not out of “ pinners,”
The first time that they ever saw a play.
When children go to see the Pantomime,
’Tis at The London they should stop and dine.
XXIII.
The SKATING SUITS for ladies next claim my
Attention, for the weather’s very cold;
�91
BY THE SILKWORM.
These suits are useful both for wet and dry
Weather, and draped are in graceful fold,
Shorter or longer, looped up low or high,
Forming jupons by means of ribbons’ hold ;—
And these costumes, accompanied by muff
To match, and edged with fur, are warm enough
XXIV.
To keep each joliefrileuse free from harm,
E’en in Siberia’s frozen climate drear;
Where everlasting snows keep endless calm,
And toes are nipped up in a way that here
We cannot comprehend, nor guess what charm
Keeps men alive, far from all they hold dear—
I’m sure that I should die could I not meet
A friend and go to shop in Conduit Street.
xxv.
Where, by the bye, ladies will always find,
At Benjamin’s, cloth habits to their taste ;
And will discover, if they have a mind,
Most useful pleated skirts, in which a waist
(That’s pretty in itself) looks most refined,
And tapers from the folds, if neatly laced.
Dear dames, if you will give my words fair weight,
Call in Conduit Street at Number Thirty-eight.
xxvi.
But if indeed, you will “Take my Advice,”
As well as all “Things that you ought to
KNOW,”
You’ll go for Diaries and books so nice
Unto James Blackwood’s, Paternoster
Row,
Where information’s given in a trice,
On Pocket Books and Diaries, and so
Cheap are these works that there is no excuse
Left, if these diaries you do not use.
xxviii.
Auriferous visions on my eyeballs strike—
No imitation, it must be real gold,
This jewell’ry made by the Brothers Pyke ;
Yet ’tis but Abyssinian, we are told;
How difficult to credit! It’s so like
To eighteen carat that we’re often “ sold.”
As for pickpockets, I have heard that they
Have left off stealing chains, finding they may
XXIX.
No profit get from Gold that is AS good
As the real, veritable Simon Pure ;
So, honest turn these rogues, once understood
Among their set, that profits come no more.—
With Abyssinian gold to clasp one’s hood,
We safely stand at Covent Garden’s door;
For many a thief has got in sad disgrace
For gold made by The Pykes in Ely Place.
xxx.
To wear with Abyssinian Golden chain,
A cheap and good watch you will get of Dyer,
At Number Ninety, Regent Street; remain
Till you have seen the watches you require,
Superior Levers, patent keyless—gain,
These watches don’t, or lose ; at prices higher
You may have watches, but not better see
Than Dyer’s Watches, Clocks, and Jewellery.
xxxi.
Oh, for the pen of Byron, or such a wight
Who could help a poor rhymster in a fix I
How can I e’er explain that Mr. Hight
’s invented a Revolving Cipher Disc.
Easy to execute by day or night,
Yet difficult to solve or to unmix
The cipher, and from all suspicion clear ;
Essentials held by Bacon and Napier.
XXVII.
But wherefore ask for clever Cooking Book,
If open fires are seen where’er one roves,
Or why on coloured illustrations look,
If that we can’t have Solar cooking Stoves;
Oh! joyful news for housewives and for cooks !—
Portable, too, fancy a stove that moves
Easily ! Yet these stoves are to be seen
At Bishopsgate Street Within, at Brown and
Green.
-
XXXII.
To rest awhile from “ciphering” my brain,
I turn to Pictures of fair Scenery—
The Upper Alpine World—again, again,
These visions fair by Loppe I would see :
They’re shown in Conduit Street; and I would fain
Return unto that lovely gallery—
Pictures by Loppe please me so, I’m willing
For six days in the week to pay my shilling.
�92
SPINNINGS IN TOWN
XXXIII.
A shilling is a pretty little sum,
And with three halfpence added, we can get
Almost each PlLL that’s made ; let’s count them ;
come
And see if the long list I do know yet—
I ought to, for the press is never dumb
Upon the merits of the whole, round set;
Thinking with Thackeray, that we shall find
A favourite pill with each “ well-ordered mind.”
XXXIV.
First, Grains of Health must stand, because
they’re new
And TASTELESS, being COATED o’er with PEARL,
I think they’re Dr. Ridge’s ; ’tis he who
Gives us digestive biscuits fit for girl,
Or infant delicate ; truth, there are few
Dyspeptics who don’t take them. Where’s the
churl
Who will not try, to ease life’s many ills,
A single remedy, say Roberts’ Pills.
XXXV.
Page Woodcock, too, has made a wondrous name
For curing every ill that you may mention ;
While Brodie’s cures (miraculous) the same
For Corns and Bunions :—it wasmy intention
To name Clarke’s Blood Mixture, of which
the fame
Is well established ; but I must my pen shun,
If I go on like this : I really feel
My hair turns grey while rhyming—where’s LaTREILLE ?
XXXVI.
Restoring and producing all one’s hair
Within short time and on the baldest place :
“ Waiting for copy ! ” is the cry, so there,
I cannot mention half I would, with grace :—
Wright’s Pilosagine, Eade’s Pills for pain
in face—
And yet I think ’twould really be a scandal
If I omit the Hair Restorer : Sandell.
xxxvii.
For New Year’s Offering, and for Christmas Box,
Rowland’s Odonto, and Macassar Oil,
With Rowlands’ Kalydor, which really mocks
Youth’s bloom, removing trace of time and toil.
For Jewel-Safes and thief-detecting locks
Try Chubb, his patent safes will always foil
Both fire and thief, do with them all they can—■
A first-rate present for a gentleman !
XXXVIII.
While for the ladies, surely you can’t err,
To buy for them a Whight and Mann Ma
chine,
For hand or foot, indeed this will please her,
Whom you denominate your household Oueen :
But as some women dearly love to stir
Abroad to choose their presents, then I ween,
You will do well to take her some morn,
To buy a new machine in famed Holborri.
XXXIX.
In Charles Street, number four, you’ll find
that Smith
And Co. have of MACHINES a various stock;
There you can test machines and see the pith
Of all their varied workings—chain and lock.
’ Oh, for the pen of Owen Meredith,
That I no more with such bad rhymes need shock
Your feelings ; but, remember, while you’re there,
To look at Weir’s machines, also in Soho
Square.
XL.
Taking one’s teeth out is a painful thing; —
We don’t much like this parting with our bones;—
But what if PAINLESS DENTISTRY I sing,
Which all mankind can have from Mr. JONES?
Of all the new inventions ’tis the king.
Imagine teeth out, minus all the groans !
We’ll turn to other subjects, if you please,
A GUINEA BUNCH of TWENTY-FIVE ROSE TREES.
XLI.
This is a Christmas-box for those who love
Their gardens; and George Cooling’s nursery,
Bath,
Roses supplies in quantities above
This number at a cheaper rate : he hath
�93
BY THE SILKWORM.
Collections good, as many prizes prove,
Taken for roses for the bed or path.
Another swift transition if you please,
Go to H. Webber for your Christmas cheese.
xlii.
With cheese we want good wine; and, as the short
Old-fashioned phrase is, “ Good wine needs no
bush,”
So I name simply Hedges-Butler’s PORT,
Sure that when you your chair backward do push
The vintage will not upon you retort
With sudden seizure or with gouty rush.
In fact, I’m told you may drink many pledges
In wine that’s bought of Butler and of Hedges.
xliii.
How can I possibly find rhymes to fit
The MAGNETICON, Or SYCHNOPHYLAX ;
Even our well-beloved Ozokerit
Candles, which do so much resemble wax,
Not easy are to verse on ; I will quit
These subjects, and try if Opoponax,
Sweetest of perfumes, will not yield me any.
Oh, yes ! here’s one—Piesse’s Frangipanni.
XLIV.
Piesse and Lubin an oasis make,
All in the foggy air of New Bond Street;
At number two, their resting place they take,
Filling surroundings with their odours sweet.
LlGN Aloes, Turkish pastiles for your sake,
Oh, English maids, to make your charms com
plete.
Ladies, indeed, you will have cause to bless
The labours skilled of Lubin and Piesse.
xlv.
No space is left of Bragg’s Carbon to speak,
Or mention Stevenson’s new firewood ;
To praise Slack’s spoons and forks would take
a week,
Or Crosby’s Elixir for cough so good ;
Magnetine (Darlow’s patent for the weak),
Or Barnard’s pretty novelties in wood ;
The “ Eastern Condiment ” for our cold mutton,
And Green and Cadbury’s the very button.
xlvi.
MOSES and SON require an annual quite
Unto themselves to simply name their stock ;
OetzmAnn’s carpets all the world delight,
And scraps for SCREENS are sold by Jam&s Lock
Chocolat Menier is the thing for night
And morning meals. You can physicians mock
If you but take—indeed I am not maline—
A daily draught of the Pyretic Saline.
xlvii.
Who can explain why Stoneham, of Cheapside,
Should of EACH SHILLING SPENT, THREEPENCE
RETURN
Unto the buyer? and in fact has tried,
By this means, custom to his till to turn ;
Succeeded, too : hath not the public hied
To him, and “come” like butter in a churn.
Pour moi, I feel so very, very cross,
When in a crowd, that threepence gained is
loss.
XL VIII.
Fleet’s Mineral Waters next demand a word ;
Dietz and Co. have lamps not to be slighted—
Where these burn grumbling tones are never
heard—
The largest room by Paragon’s well lighted.
There are so many, that ’tis quite absurd,
With Asser-Sherwin’s bags I am delighted ;
Their wedding presents and their writing
cases
Will bring a blush of joy to merry faces.
XLIX.
In dear old Shakespeare I have often read
Of 44 bourne from which no traveller returns,”
And an idea will come into my head,
Just think of never leaving Addley Bourne’s,
Renowned for trousseaux and for cradle-beds,
Infants’ layettes—fair robes de chambre—one
learns
Such trimmings, sees such treasures—willy, nilly,
We can’t keep long away from Piccadilly.
�SPINNINGS IN TOWN.
94
L.
A change comes o’er the spirit of my dream,
Where I have often stood I seem to stand,
Sweet odours on my aching senses stream—
I’m opposite to Rimmel in the Strand,
Whose kindly influence on our homes doth beam,
And fills with joy each child’s heart in the land,
Where we behold his Christmas novelties,
His perfumed almanacs, and such things as
these:
LI.
The robin, and the toys for Christmas trees,
The Comic Almanac and fan bouquet,
Delicious scents and perfumes that do seize
Upon the weary brain :—restore the gay
And cheerful tone, and give the headache ease.
All these we owe to him, who holdeth sway
O’er all sweet scents ! Ye perfumed sachets tell
This great magician’s name! It is—it is—Rimmel !
LII.
And now my pen from weary hand doth fall,
And with humility I lay aside
A task which p’raps some spinners might appal;
But pleasant has it been to me to glide
From one to other subject, touching all
With kindly hand, and what doth me betide
At critic’s pen I care not, for the rest
I’ve done,comme toujours, just my “level best.”
The Silkworm.
MYRA, late Editress of BEETONS “ YOUNG ENGLISHWOMAN."
MYRA’S LETTERS on DRESS & FASHION.
In Illustrated Wrapper.
Containing Sixteen Pages, Large Quarto, size of the London Journal, Bow Bells, Qh’c.
PRICE TWOPENCE, MONTHLY.
PROPOSE to issue, every month, beginning next
February, a Journal for Ladies, which shall contain Instruc
tions and Advice in connection with Dress and Fashion.
Several different departments will be necessary to make this
Journal useful to the thousands of Ladies whom I hope to have
as Subscribers or Correspondents. >
Original Articles from Paris, contributed by Madame
Goubaud, will appear, from which a knowledge will be gained
of the newest Materials and coming Modes.
Mademoiselle Agnes Verboom, long a Contributor to Mr.
Beeton’S Fashion Journals here, and to the leading Lady’s
Paper in America, will write a Monthly Letter on the Changes in
Fashion.
Diagrams, full-sized, for cutting out all kinds of Articles of
Dress, will be issued every month ; and frequently Paper Models
themselves will be issued with Myra’s Journal.
From the Grand Magasin du Louvre, the first house in Paris,
I shall receive bulletins of their latest Purchases, and accounts
of what is most in vogue in the Capital of Fashion.
For my. personal writing, I shall continue the same plan
which I originated, under the name of Myra, in Mr. Beeton’s
“Young Englishwoman.” Mr. Beeton no longer edits that
Journal, and Myra's Letters will not appear there in future.
My Letters there were so successful, and the Advice I was
able to give seemed so prized by my Correspondents, that I
believe I shall be doing some service by devoting the whole
space of a Monthly Journal to the subjects of Taste and
Economy in Dress, and the Alteration of Dress.
I shall, therefore, every month, answer all Correspondents
who seek information upon
I
WHAT DRESSES TO WEAR
. AND
HOW TO ALTER DRESSES.
I will pay the most careful attention to any Letters sent me,
so that I may answer enquiries with the closest and most exact
details ; and whilst giving Instructions as .to the best Style of
Dress and the Alteration of Dress, I shall be anxious to state
what is not to be done, aS well as what is to be done, in the
important matter of the Toilette.
Letters from Correspondents received by me not later than
the 20th of the month- will be answered in the next Myra’S
Journal. But all enquiries should be made of me, as much as
possible, at the beginning of the month, so as to give me ample
time to obtain and prepare particular information on any knotty
point.
A Free Exchange, gratis, and open to all who have Articles
to dispose of, or barter for others, will be opened in Myra's
Journal. The Addresses of Exchangers must be printed, in
order to have the benefit of the Free Exchange. Addresses,
however, can be entered upon the payment of One Shilling in
postage stamps, to defray necessary expenses. Rules in con
nection with the Exchange will be found in Myra’s Journal.
Some Ladies, on certain occasions, are anxious to receive
immediately information as to what is the proper kind of Dress
to Wear, or how to Alter the Dresses that they have. To serve
these Ladies, I will state in writing, by return of post, what is
the best course for them to take. When questions are thus
asked for, to be answered by post, enquiries must be accom
panied by twelve postage stamps, for expenses of various kinds
which will naturally be incurred
All Communications to be addressed to Myra, care of Weldon & Co., 15, Wine Office Court, London, E.C.
J. OGDEN AND CO., PRINTERS, 17», ST. JOHN STRBST, LONDON, E.C.
�JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
ix
INDIGESTION !
INDIGESTION!!
J
MORSON’S PREPARATIONS OF PEPSINE.
See Name on Label.
Highly Recommended by the Medical Profession.
Sold in Bottles as Wine, at 35., 5L, and 9J.; Lozenges, zs. 6d. and 4s. 6d.-, Globules, 2j., 3^. 6d., and 6s. 6d.;
and Powder in 1 oz. bottles, at 5-1. each, by all Chemists and the Manufacturers,
T. MORSON & SON, Southampton Row, Russell Square, London.
WHOLESALE & RETAIL MANUFACTURING 8TA TIONERS,
192, Fleet Street, and 1 & 2, Chancery Lane, London.
The Sole Proprietors
and
Manufacturers of
the
VELLUM WOVE CLUB-HOUSE NOTE PAPER,
Which combines a perfectly smooth surface with total freedom from grease.
Relief Stamping reduced to is. per ioo.
Illuminating and Die Sinking done by the Best Artists.
.ZVb Charge for Plain Stamping.
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS AND NEW YEAR’S GIFTS,
An immense variety, suitable for every Age and every Class.
HOUSEHOLD, OFFICE, COMMERCIAL, AND LEGAL STATIONERY,
,
Supplied 20 per cent, lower than any other House in the Trade.
192, FLEET STREET, AND 1 & 2, CHANCERY LANE, E.C.
Established 1841.
FUNERAL REFORM.
'pHE LONDON NECROPOLIS COMPANY,
"
*
■
as the Originators of the Funeral Reform, have
published a small Pamphlet explanatory' of their system,
which is simple, unostentatious, and inexpensive. It can be
had gratis, or will be sent by post, upon application.
Chief Office, 2, Lancaster Place, Strand, W.C.
SOLID THIRST-QUENCHERS,
Or Effervescing Lozenges,
. Relieve the most intense Thirst, at the same time
obviating the frequent desire for taking fluids. Price ij. •
by Post, u. 2d.
' ’
W. T. OOOPEE, Patentee, 26, Oxford Street, London.
EFFERVESCING
ASTRINGENT VOICE LOZENGE.
CRAINS OF HEALTH (Registered).—A Pearl Coated
1 • *.PlLRiT??iiessi A certdin Cure for Indigestion, Bilious and Liver Com
plaints. Of all Chemists, at ij. 4«?. and ar. gd, per box.
Used with the greatest success by Mdlle. Tietjens,
Madame Marie Roze, and other distinguished Operatic
Artistes. Do not produce dryness. Do not contain any
irritant. Impart a most agreeable odour to the breath. Are
perfectly harmless.
�JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
x
FOR BREAKFAST.
GRAND
MEDAL AT THE
VIENNA
EXHIBITION.
LOWEST PRICES. ~
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Country free.
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FIRST-CLASS SILKS.
LOWEST PRICES.
Patterns Post Free.
FIRST-CLASS FURNITURE.
LOWEST PRICES.
An Illustrated Price List Post Free.
ents can have the full advantageof Lowest London Prices by writing for Patterns, which will
be forwarded Post Free.
T. VENABLES & SONS, 103, 104, & 105, WHITECHAPEL,
And 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, & 16, COMMERCIAL STREET, LONDON, E.
Postal Address : T. Venables & Sons, 103, Whitechapel, London, E.
A CHEERFUL HOME
SECURED BY USING
“THE WINDOW BLIND OF THE PERIOD.”
This Blind has obtained an unimpeachable reputation for
Elegance, Durability, and Economy in Window Space. It
adorn.., enecrs, ul jeautifies the Palaces of the Nobility and
the Mansions of the Gentry in all parts of the World.
It Fixes
in
Less than Half the Space of a Wood Blind.
SEE IT AT ONCE.
Send for a Sample Lath, Price Lisi, and Testimonials, which
■will be forwarded free on application to the Patentees.
HODKINSON & CLARKE,
Who. are the only Corrugated Metallic Window Blind Manufacturers in
the World. Best House for all kinds of Sun Blinds.
Canada Works, Small Heath, Birmingham,
And 2, Chiswell Street, Finsbury Square, London, E.C.
THE ROYAL GALVANIC BATH,
55, Marylebone Road, N.W., close to Baker Street Station.
These celebrated Galvanic Baths have been proved to be wonderfully
efficacious, both as Hygienic and Curative Agents. They are soothing,
tonic, and invigorating in their action, and have a specific effect upon
all disorders of the nervous and muscular systems. They can be applied
without pain or shock, and be adjusted with the greatest nicety to suit
age, sex, and constitution.
TARIFF OF PRICES.
Subscription for 12 First-Class Bath Tickets .......... ,£4 45.
Single Galvanic Bath....................................................
85.
The Baths are open daily from 9 to 6 (Sundays excepted).
x^xiE OF WIGHT.
RECOMMENDED BY EMINENT PHYSICIANS.
HOPGOOD & CO.’S
NUTRITIVE & SEDATIVE CREAM
FOR THE HAIR, HAS THE TESTIMONY OF
Eminent Physicians to its “ surprising ” and “ unfailing success.”
In Bottles at 1/6, 2/-, 2/6, 3/6, 5/-, 6/6, and 11/- each.
(~)UT on the Waters, Ocean, River, or Lake; in Steamer,
Ship, Yacht, Yawl, Boat, Canoe, or other craft.
Wherever
self-help is a condition, THE PORTABLE KITCHENERS,
supplied at No 11, Oxford Street, obtain for the possessor in all
culinary operations ample and speedy Services.
Breakfast or Tea,
with Eggs and Bacon, Chops, Kidney, Sausage, &c., &c., for one-to
three'or four persons, in Ten to Twenty Minutes. Dinner for ditto in
Tweljve to Thirty Minutes. Fire, without fuel ! No dirt! No nuisance !
Available in Cabin or on Deck, on River Bank, in Railway Carriage, on
Tour, Excursion, or Picnic; in Sanctum, Office, Chamber, Study,
Boudoir, or Mountain top. Anywhere and instantly, under any circum
stances. Price for one person, complete, 5s.; for two, ys. 6d.; for three,
105. 6d. to 13s. 6d.; for four, 185. 6d., 21s., or 255. 6d.
Failure or disappointment absolutely unknown.
Also THE POCKET KITCHENER, now familiarised all the
world over, 35. gd. Also, THE COMRADE COOKING STOVE,
for Home Service, for Jungle, Backwoods, Bush, Prairie, Gold or Dia
mond Fields, &c., &c., los. fid. Ditto, in Japanned Case (occupying less
space than a hat-box), with fifteen to twenty-five utensils, 175. fd. to 255.6^.
Invented and sold Export, Wholesale, and Retail, by
THOMAS GRE VILLE POTTER, Stella Lamp Depot,
Full of Instructions about Seeds and Plants, with Parti
culars of everything relating to Gardening.
Price Is., Post Free.
No 11, Oxford Street, near “The Oxford.”
Send for Catalogtie, interesting as a Novel.
HOOPER & CO, Couent Garden, London.
�gp—-------- ---------—-
�JON DUAN AD VERTISEMENTS.
xii
DARLOW & CO.’S
Original Patent, 1866.
IMPROVED PATENT FLEXIBLE
MAGNETIC APPLIANCES.
The ever-increasing success of Messrs. DARLOW & CO.’S MAGNETIC
Appliances during the past EIGHT YEARS, is evidence of their apprecia—------ ~ Improved Patent 1873
tion by the public, and the testimony of gentlemen of the highest standing in
medical Profession is that MAGNETINE far surpasses all other inventions of a similar character for curative purposes.
mISnETINE is unique ata PERFECTLY FLEXIBLE MAGNET. It is an entirely original indention oiJlL^rs.
DARI OW &CO improved by them on their previous invention patented in 1866, and possessing qualities which cannot
be found in any other magnetic substance. It is soft, light, and durable-entirely elastic, perfectly flexible through
out, and permanently magnetic.___________ _
______ _
________ _____
arlow
D
& co.’s
TES TIMON I A L .
magnetine appliances
are now freely recommended by some of the most emi
From Garth Wilkinson, Esq., M.D., M.R.C.S.E.
nent in the medical profession, from the established fact of their
76, Wimpole Street, Cavendish square, London, W.
power to afford both relief and cure to the exhausted nervous W. Darlow, Esq.
F.
March 17, 1874. _
system; also in Incipient Paralysis and Consumption,
Sir,—I am able to certify that I have used your Magnetic
Loss of Brain and Nerve power, and in cases of
Appliances pretty largely in my practice, and that in personal
convenience to my patients they are unexceptionable, and far
GOUT and RHEUMATISM, SPINAL, LIVER,
superior to any other inventions of the kind which I have
KIDNEY, LUNG, THROAT, and CHEST
employed ; and that of their efficacy, their positive powers, I
COMPLAINTS, GENERAL DEBILITY, INDI
have no doubt. I have found them useful in constipation, in
GESTION, HERNIA, SCIATICA. NEURALGIA,
abdominal congestion, in neuralgia, and in many cases involving
BRONCHITIS, and OTHER FORMS of NERV
weakness of the spine, and of the great organs of the abdomen.
OUS and RHEUMATIC AFFECTIONS.
In the public interest I wish you to use my unqualified testimony
The adaptation of these appliances is so simple that a child
in favour of your Magnetic Appliances.
can use them ; and so gentle, soothing, and vitalising is their
I remain, yours faithfully,
action, that they can be placed on the most delicate invalid
Garth Wilkinson, M.D., M.R.C.S.E.
without fear of inconvenience.
_____ __________
DARLOW & CO., 435, WEST STRAND, LONDON, W.C.,
Nearly opposite Charing Cross Station, three doors east of the Lowther Arcade.
Descriptive Pamphlets pest free.}
_____________________ [Illustrated Price Lists fastfree.
“BREATHES THERE A MAN.”—Scott.
OUT AND RHEUMATISM.—The excruciating
pain of Gout or Rheumatism is quickly relieved,and cured
in a few days by that celebrated Medicine, BLAIR'S GOUT
AND RHEUMATIC PILLS. They require no restraint of
diet or confinement during their use, and are certain to prevent
the disease attacking any vital part.
Sold at it.
and 2s. gd. per Box by all Medicine Vendors.
G
T
FRAM PTON’S^PILlToF^HEALTH.
HIS excellent Family Medicine is the most
Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
“To have moustaches would be grand;”
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As o’er the paper he hath turned,
And Wright’s advertisement hath scanned
If such there be, go, mark him well,
And in his ears the good news tell:
PILOSAGINE has gained a name,
All who have tried it own its fame ;
While thousands prove its great renown
By the moustaches they have grown,
Whiskers and beards on many a face
Their origin to it can trace.
It contains neither oil nor grease,
And now, forsooth, our rhyme must cease.
But what, you ask, is the expense?
’Tis sent post free for eighteenpence.
Wright and Co., Pilosagine Manufactory, Hull.
effective remedy for indigestion, bilious and liver, com
plaints, sick headache, loss of appetite, drowsiness, giddiness,
spasms, and all disorders of the stomach and bowels ; and, where
an occasional aperient is required, nothing can be better adapted.
For Females these Pills are truly excellent, removing all
obstructions, the distressing headache so very prevalent with the
AA7HISKERS, MOUSTACHES, &c., guaranteed by
sex, depression of spirits, dulness of sight, nervous affections,
VV
PILOSAGINE.
Price is. (>d., of all Chemists (by post
blotches, pimples, and sallowness of the skin, and give a healthy
18 stamps), a liquid free from oil and grease. Before purchasing any
bloom to the complexion.
preparation send add ress for Testimonials and Treatise (gratis). Whole
sale : Sanger & Son s, London; Lofthouse & Saltmer, Hull.
Sold by all Medicine Vendors, price ts. Vfd. and 2s. gd. per Box.
WRIGHT & CO., Filosagine Manufactory, Hull.
FREEMAN’S CHLORODYNE
the original and only
genuine
Considered by the Faculty one of the greatest discoveries of the century.
FREEMAN’S CHLORODYNE is the best remedy known for Coughs,
Consumption, Bronchitis, and Asthma.
,,
,
,
,
,
FREEMAN’S CHLORODYNE effectually checks and arrests those too
often fatal diseases-Diphtheria, Fever, Croup, and Ague.
.
FREEMAN’S CHLORODYNE acts like a charm in Diarrhoea, and is
the only specific in Cholera and Dysentery.
FREEMAN'S CHLORODYNE effectually cuts short all attacks of
Epilepsy, Hysteria, Palpitation, and Spasms.
..................
FREEMAN'S CHLORODYNE is the only palliative in Neuralgia,
Rheumatism, Gout. Cancer, Tooth-ache, Meningitis, &c.
FREEMAN’S CHLORODYNE rapidly relieves pain from whatever
FREEMAN’S CHLORODYNE allays the irritation of Fever, soothes
the system under exhausting diseases, and gives quiet and refreshing sleep.
IMPORTANT Caution.—Four Chancery Suits terminated in favour of FREE
MAN'S ORIGINAL Chlorodyne. Lord Chancellor Selborne, Lord Justice James,
Lord Tustice Mellish, and Vice-Chancellor Sir W. Page Wood (now Lord HatherIey) all decided in its favour, and against the proprietors of J. Collis Browne s, con
demning their conduct, and ordering them to pay all costs of the suit»
Sold by ait Chemists, in Bottles at is. fd.; 2 oz., 2s. gd.; 4 oz., 4s. 6d.;
10 oz., ui.; and 20 oz., 20s. each.
CAUTION. —Beware of Piracy, Spurious Imitations, and Fraud.
GOOD for the cure of WIND on the STOMACH,
GOOD for the cure of INDIGESTION.
GOOD for the cure of SICK HEADACHE,
GOOD for the cure of HEARTBURN.
GOOD for the cure of BILIOUSNESS,
GOOD for the cure of LIVER COMPLAINT.
JU
GOOD for all COMPLAINTS arising from a disordered
state of the STOMACH, BOWELS, or LIVER.
Sold by all Medicine Vendors, in Boxes, at ij. ifid.,
2s. gd., and 4s. 6d. each ; or, free for 14, 33, or 54
from PAGE D. WOODCOCK, “Lincoln House, St.
Faith’s, Norwich.
��JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
xiv
JOHN STEVEN, Bookseller,
~
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AND
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WHITE WOOD ARTICLES,
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For Painting, Fern-printing, and Decalcomanie.
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J. T. WOOD & CO., 278, 279, & 280, Strand.
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THINGS YOU
OUGHT TO
KNOW
CLEARLY EX
PLAINED Containing Thing’s Social, Personal, Profitable, Scientific, Sta
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BLACKWOOD’S DIARIES, 1875.
BLACKWOOD’S SHILLING SCRIBBLING DIARY, Seven
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13 Dy inches.
*• The best and cheapest of its kind ”—Civil Service Gazette.
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BLACKWOOD’S POCKET-BOOK AND DIARY, for Ladies,
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London: JAMES BLACKWOOD & CO., 8, Lovell's Court, Paternoster Row.
A few Copies to be had of
“THE COMING K----- and “THE SILIAD.”
Apply to the Publishers of “Jon Duan,” 15, Wine Office Court, Fleet Street.
�uced by Gillotype process. J
Tom *T‘wl.tu^jT-^Bimeat, I
tell you,” saidthe Giant.
[Ageuf, A. Maxon.
�JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
xvi
I
AT H AM'SSHK I
-,
POLYTCCH NI C ^AMUSEMENTS. !
ARE THE BEST PRESENTS FOR YOUTH.
They combine Science with Play, Knowledge with Amusement, and afford end
less Pastime for Holidays and Evenings.
A Choice Selection of Novelties suitable for the above
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Statham’s Box of Chemical Magic contains materials and direc
tions for performing 50 and 100 instructive Experiments, ix., ss. 6d.; by post,
u. 2d., 2s. gd.
Statham’s Youth’s Chemical Cabinets, with Book of Experiments,
6s., 8s., 11s., and 15X. 6d.
Statham’s Student’s Chemical Cabinets, for studying Chemistry,
Analysing, Experimenting, &c., 2ix., 3U 6d., 42s, 63X., 84X., aiox.
Agent for Joseph Rodgers ’ & Sons celebrated Outlery.
Statham’s “ First Steps in Chemistry,” containing 145 Experimeats, 6d. ; by post, 7<Z.
Statham’s “ Panopticon ” (or see everything). No. i., 25$.; No. 2.
E. N. PEARCE, (from 77, Cornhill)
Albert Buildings, Queen Victoria St., E.C.
Statham's Electrical Sets, 42X., 6gx ,
105J.
Electrotype Sets, ys. 6d., xos. 6d.t 21s.,
42s.
Youth's Microscopes, xos. 6d., 21s., 42s.
Student's Microscopes, 63X., 105X., 210X.
Geological Cabinets, jr. 6d., js. (td., 25J.
Conjurer s Cabinets, js. 6d., 15X., 21s.
Model Steam Engines,
Ci., iox. 6d.,
2ix., 42J.
Magic Lanterns, with 12 Slides, ys. 6d.,
10s. 6d., 21j., &c.
Printing Press (with type, ink &c.), 6s. 6d.t 8x., i2X., 14$. 6d.ix6s.i 24X.
Sendfor Illustrated Catalogue of above and numberless other
EDUCATIONAL TOYS, SCIENTIFIC MODELS, GAMES, &c.
(Near Mansion House Station.)
W. STATHAM, no%, Strand, London.
BARTHOLOMEW & FLETCHER,
217 & 219, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD.
DRAWING ROOM SUITES
.
. From IO Guineas to £50.
DININGROOM SUITES
12
„
to £80.
BED ROOM SUITES
....,,
8
„to 1OO.
Estimates Free. Every Article Guaranteed.
GENERAL
HOUSE
FURNISHERS.
HEALTH'!
STRENGTH 1 !
ENERGY ! ! 1
PEPPER’S QUININE AND IRON TONIC.
HOLLOWAY’SPILLS
pEPPER’S QUININE AND IRON TONIC Purifies and enriches the Blood.
Sir SAMUEL BAKER,
fo Ms work on the Sources of the Nile, says:—
“ I ordered my dragoman Mahomet to inform the Faky that I was
“ a doctor, and that I had the best medicines at the service of the
** sick, with advice gratis. In a short time I had many applicants,
“ to whom I served out a quantity of Holloway’s Pills. These are
“ most useful to an explorer, as, possessing unmistakable purgative
“ properties, they create an undeniable effect upon the patient, which
“ satisfies him of their value.”
This fine Medicine cures all disorders of the Liver,
Stomach, Kidneys and Bowels, is a Great PURIFIER
of the BLOOD, and wonderfully efficacious in aU
ailments incidental to Females. In WEAKNESS and
DEBILITY, a powerful invigorator of the system.
EPPER’S QUININE AND IRON TONIC Strengthens the Nerves and
Muscular System._______________________ _
EPPER’S QUININE AND IRON TONIC Promotes Appetite and Improves
Digestion.__________________________ _
EPPER’S QUININE AND IRON TON IC Animates the Spirits and Mental
Faculties.
___
PEPPER’S QUININE AND IRON TONIC, in Scrofula, Wasting Diseases,
Neuralgia, Sciatica, Indigestion, Flatulence, Weakness of the Chest and
Respiratory Organs, Ague, Fevers of all kinds. ______________________________ __
PEPPER’S" QUININE AN D~IRON TON IC, for Delicate Females and weakly,
ailing Children.
________
PEPPER’S QUININE AND IRON TONIC thoroughly Recruits the General
Bodily Health.
Is sold by Chemists everywhere, in capsuled bottles, 45. 6d. and us.,and in stone
jars, 225. each. For protection be sure the Name, Address, and Trade Mark of
JOHN PEPPER, «87, Tottenham Court Road, London, is on the Label. Any
Chemist will procure it to order, but do not be prevailed on to try any other com
pound.
_
_________________________________________________ .
LOCKYER’S SULPHUR HAIR RESTORER will completely restore, in a
few days, grey hair to its original colour, without injury. The Hair Restorer
is the best ever offered for sale; thoroughly cleanses the head from scurf, and
causes the growth o< rew hair. It is soid everywhere by Chemists and HairDressers, in Targe bottles, at is. 6d. each.
Important Notice to all who wish to preserve “Jon Duan.”
A
HANDSOME
COVER
FOR
BINDING
THIS
ANNUAL,
Specially designed, in cloth and gold, is now ready, price 2s., postage free, and may be had through
any Bookseller, or of the Publisher, Weldon & Co., 15, Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, E.C._________ __
ANTIQUEPOINLaNDHONITON LACE.
BY
MRS. TREADWIN.
"Contains full and clear directions on Lace Making, Lace Joining, and Lace Cleaning.”
PRICE
lOs. 6d.
MRS. TREA.DWIN, 5, Cathedral Yard, Exeter.
��xviii
yON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
A BEAUTIFUL SET OF TEETH.
JOHN GOSN ELL & CO.’S
o
c-t
O
W
s
b
Q>
b
Q
O
02
K
*
ir
t“1
&
Q
O
SQ
>3
>3
N
b
b
Thames St., London
I
THE
MAGNETICON,
PATENTED.
WETTON’S Patent Magnetic Belts, Lung Invigorators, Chest Protectors, Throat Pro
tectors, Spine Bands, Anklets, Wristlets, Knee Caps, Friction Gloves, &c. &c., for
Liver, Kidney, Spinal, and Chest Complaints, and all forms of Nervous and Rheumatic
Afflictions.
The Appliances, which are made up of light comfortable materials, such as flannel, silk, merino, and velvet, are powerfully
Magnetic, and supply gentle and continuous currents of ELECTRICITY, withoutthe aid of batteries, chains, or acids. They are
worn oyer the under-clothing, require no preparation, give no shocks, and generate no sores. Little or no sensation is experienced,
unless it be the glow of returning health ; and experience has proved that the Appliances may be worn with much benefit and perfect
safety by infants or the most delicate invalids. Prices, jr. to 50J.
Those whose names are appended have kindly consented to aillow the same to be published, as a guarantee of the genuineness
of '‘THE MAGNETICON.” Their reasons for testifying to the great curative properties of "THE MAGNETICON " are
derived either from their own experience or from their knowledge of the benefits which others have received.
The Dowager Lady Palmer, Dorney House, Windsor.
The Rev. R. A. Knox, M.A., Rector of Shobrooke, Devon.
C. R. Woodford, Esq., M.D., Marlborough House, Ventnor.
Charles Lowder, Esq., M.D., Lansdowne House, Ryde.
The Rev. A. Morton Brown, LL.D., Minister of the Congregational
Church, Cheltenham.
Thos. J. Cottle, Esq., M.R.C.S., L.S. A., Pulteney Villa, Cheltenham.
E. P. Bulkeley, Esq., Strathdum, Cheltenham.
I._S. Aplin, Merchant, Yeovil.
Lieut.-Col. C. W. Hodson, 25, Priory Street, Cheltenham.
The Rev. J. Wilkinson, Stanwell House, Ventnor.
Henry Hopkins, Esq., Ph.D., M.A., F.C.P., formerly Principal of
Sumner Hill School, Birmingham, and Author of several Educationa
Works, 14, Belvedere, Bath,
The Rev. R. Williamson, The Manse, Waltham Abbey.
Mr. C. S. M. Lockhart, M.B.A.A., Author of the “ Centenary Me
morial of Sir Walter Scott.”
The Rev. J. B. Talbot, Secretary and Founder of “The Princess
Louise Home,” Woodhouse, Wanstead.
Arthur S. Mbdwin, Esq., 28, George Street, Euston Square, London.
Mrs. Ginevkr, Kingsdown Orphan Home, 12, Kingsdown Road, Upper
Holloway, London.
For additional nc les see Pamphlet.
WETTON & CO., 9, Upper Baker Street, Portman Square, London.
A 48-page Illustrated Pamphlet, containing numerous Testimonials, a Lecture on Magnetism and Health by Professor HAGARTY,
and full particulars of " THE MAGNETICON,” may be had on application, or will be forwarded post free.
_ A copy of ‘ The Magnetic Review: a Record of Curative Electric Science and Journal of Health, published by Wetton and Co., 9, Upper Baker Street, will also be forwarded post free.
�yCw WAN ADV£RTIS£M£NTS.
Tom Thumb,—“When the
ife? h>ega^ tQ|ff^|
�yON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
MURDOCH &*CO.,
WW I®’ Laurence Pountney Hill, Cannon St, f
Late of 115, Cannon Street,
LONDON, E.C.
Works ; Larbert, N.B.
is
HS THE
LIVINGSTONE
RANGE.
(Stove and Name Registered}.
CAN BE PLACED IN A FIRE-PLACE.
CAN BE PLACED IN FRONT OF A FIRE-PLACE.
CAN BE PLACED AWAY FROM A FIRE-PLACE.
No. 6 will standin a 2 ft. 10 in. opening.
”7
,,
3 n 2 >»
,,
>> 8
_>>
3 >> 6,,
,,
Height of Range, 2 ft.
The “LIVINGSTONE RANGE” has been constructed to meet
a want widely felt. It embraces all the best points of English Open
Ranges and Fire-Places, without their faults. A Large Hot
Plate is available for general cookery, and an Oven soconstructed that
it will bake bread or pastry, and also roast meat as sweetly and
Size of Oven in Inches.
12 hiah
THOROUGHLY AS IF DONE IN FRONT OF A FIRE.
A good frontage,
No. 6. 12 wide.
12 deep.
k ■
however, is secured to the fire itself. It can be closed in by a door,
>> 7- 14
14 >,
*
”
which, when let down, forms a shelf or stand, and then fowls, small joints
„ 8. 16 „
16 „
” ”
of meat, steaks, fish, &c., can be roasted or broiled.
The HOT-WATER SUPPLY has been well considered and provided for in constructing this stove, “ boilers being usually a source of
great discomfort, expense, and danger in English Homes.” The Water Cistern is made of copper, tinned inside, or else of malleable iron, gal
vanized ; and as it stands above, as well as below, the level of the hot plate, it affords proportionately a larger quantity of hot water than
any other stove, range, or kitchener in use. The water is heated by a very safe and simple plan, which is patented, and only to be had with
these stoves. The cistern can be easily taken out and replaced, made self-supplying, and the water can be used for culinary purposes, never
BEING “RUSTY.”
No BRICKWORK SETTING is required or these Stoves, and they are equally good in action, whether placed in or away from a fire
place. A smoky chimney is perfectly overcome by their use.
The CONSUMPTION OF COAL is wonderfully small, from the excellence of the construction of the “ Livingstone,” and the judicious
arrangements of fire-place and flues. Means are used to prevent the escape of heat from the stove, and thus the full value is taken out of the pro
ducts of combustion. We make the deliberate statement that the Economy in Fuel is such that, ¡fused daily, the whole cost of the Stove can
be saved in twelve months at the normal price of Coal in London, or in nine months at the 1873-4 prices. Wood and Peat are ex'•ellent for heating these stoves, and for most kinds of cooking, Coke may be solely used. Dust is avoided, as the ashes fall into a secured pan.
Fire-bricks, with which each Stove is provided, can be easily renewed when needed. The same remark applies to any part of the stove
which from use or accident may need replacing.
For further particulars of this and other Cooking and Heating Stoves, address MURDOCH & CO., as above.
NEWTONS
QUININE, RHUBARB, & DANDELION PILLS,
(Prepared from the Recipe of
an
Eminent Physician),
A Simple but Effectual Remedy for Indigestion, Stomach,
and Liver Complaints.
The properties of Quinine and Rhubarb in stomachic affections are too well known to require any comment, and the
medicinal virtues of Dandelion have long been held in high, estimation by the faculty for all disorders of the Liver. By a
peculiar process of extraction and condensation, the active properties of these valuable Medicines have been carefully com
bined in the form of Pills, in which will be found a certain remedy for Indigestion, all Stomach Complaints, Sluggish Liver,
Constipation of the Bowels, Headache, Giddiness, Loss of Appetite, Pains in the Chest, Fullness after Eating, Depression
of Spirits, Disturbed Sleep, and as a Renovator to the Nervous System invaluable. These purifying Vegetable Pills may
be taken lay persons of all ages, in all conditions, and by both sexes. Their action, though gentle, is effectual in removing
all impurities from the blood and system, gradually compelling the bowels and various functions of the body to act in a
regular and spontaneous manner; and as a general Family Aperient they are much preferred to any other medicine.
Sold in Boxes, with Directions, at I J. I%<7. and 2s. gd.; or sent, Post Free, for 15 and 30 Stamps.
Every Sufferer is earnestly invited to try their wonderful efficacy.
Barclay & Sons are the London Agents, and all Chemists.
prepared solely by
J. W. NEWTON, M.P.S., Family Chemist,Salisbury.
Ask your Chemist to obtain the above, if not in stock.
�JtON DUAN A DIE/UWEEM ENTS.
xxi
�xxii
JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
'4>ceneral
PATENT
furnishing coy'
OZOKERIT
NEHWiïi
CANDLES.
; ~Wx4JrtriztÎvg"Rg a.cfrb
-ALL.PT^e.AV^Tx-cTVg^a^^9>Sout'h/a-Ttvp fro tv S.E \ S frra/nd/7
All Sizes, Sold. Everywhere.
CHOICE ROSE TREES.
Ask for the
'T'HE Amateur’s GUINEA BUNDLE of ROSE TREES
“LYCHNOPHYLAX,”
contains 25 of the choicest-named kinds in cultivation, all extra
large plants, especially selected for villa gardens. Carriage and packing
free on receipt of P.O.O. for/i is-.; or twelve choice kinds as sample
for 105. (id. Full particulars of other cheap collections post free.
GEORGE COOLING, The Nurseries, Bath.
Or Candle Guard (Patented).
Sold Everywhere. J. C. & J. FIELD, London.
The above make very suitable Christmas Gifts.
“ Inventions to delight the taste.”—Shakspere.
THE “EASTERFlOHDIMENT
“ The greatest aid. to Digestion known to man.”
This delicious Condiment should be eaten with all Meals.
Is. and. Is. 6d. per Jar.
THE “ EASTERN ” SAUCE OR RELISH,
KECISTIS5O
THE
THE
THE
THE
“EASTERN”
“EASTERN”
“EASTERN”
“EASTERN”
Prepared in conjunction with the celebrated Condiment,
is pronounced unequalled for flavour, richness, and price.
6d., ij., and 15. 6d. per bottle.
.k*
MUSTARD. Ready Mixed. Most Economical.
BAKING POWDER. No Penny Packet in the World can touch it.
CUSTARD POWDER. A Penny Packet equal to two eggs and a half.
_____ ----CURRY POWDER. The Great Baboo’s original, improved.
88
SS
«EClSTtR*»
These preparations are all most care
fully compounded, are highly recom
mended, and much approved by all
classes.
To be had of all Family Grocers.
JONES, PALMER, & CO., “Eastern” Works, Tabernacle Walk, Finsbury.
FACTORS.
from
^TURKISH PASTILS^
/ 7 Through all my travels few things as- '
tonished me more than seeing the Beauties
of the Harem sfnoking the Stamboul. After
smoking, a sweet aromatic Pastil is used,
which imparts an odour of flowers to the
breath. I have never.seen these Pastils but
once in Europe; it was at Piesse & Lubin’s
' CBz"' ” -Lady W. Montague.
\ Ladies who admire a “ Breath of Flowers”
1 take aPastil night anf
/q
*
Ì (S' every flower that
breathes a fragrance
LIGN-ALOE. OPOPONAX.
LOVE-AMONG-THE-ROSES.
FRANGI PANNI
TO BE OBTAINED OF ALL
'tv.
Perfumers and
THOUSAND OTHERS.
case,
5ond St J
RITING, BOOKKEEPING, &c.—Persons of
W
Steuen’s Model Cutters, Schooners,
any age, however bad their Writing, may in Eight Easy
Lessons acquire permanently an elegant and flowing style of Brigs, Screzi) and Paddle Boats?, propelled by Steam or
Penmanship, adapted either to Professional pursuits or Private Clock-work.
Correspondence ; Bookkeeping by Double Entry, as practised in
Steven’s Model Fittings for Ships and
the Government, Banking, and Mercantile Offices ; Arithmetic,
Shorthand, &c. Apply to Mr. W. Smart, at his sole Institution, Boats. Blocks, Deadeyes, Wheels, Skylights, Com
panions, Flags, &c.
97B, Quadrant, Regent Street.
Agent to the West of England Fire and Life
Steuen’s Model Steam Engines, Loco
Insurance Company.
IMPORTANT TO
LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN.—
C. A. can confidently recommend, as a most strictly honest person, and one
whom she and her friends have dealt with for many years, Mrs.
COCKREM, 1, Queen Street, Barnstaple, North Devon, who gives the
greatest value for all sorts of Ladies’. Gentlemen’s, and Children’s
Cast Ï-EFT-OFF WEARING APPAREL of every description. Officers
*
Uniforms, Misfits, Jewellery, Court Suits, Furs, Outfits, Old Lace,
nff
Underclothing, Boots, Household Linen, and every description of
miscellaneous property, in however large or small quantities, or in good
ninth nc or inferior condition, purchased for Cash at the utmost value. The
viuuueb. strictest honour is observed in remitting, per return, the full value, by
cheque or P.O.O., for all parcels. The expense of Carriage borne by
X
motive, Marine, Vertical and Horizontal;
Saw and Bench.
Steuen’s
Model
Parts
of
Circular
Engines,
Cylinders, Pumps, Steam and, Water Gauges, SafetyValves, Eccentrics, Taps, &c.
STE VEN’S MODEL DOCKYARD, 22, Aidgate, London.
Catalogues, 3 Stamps.
Chemical Chests, Magic-Lanterns, Floor Skates, Balloons, arc.
�W
ADVERTISEMENT S.
Reduced ly Gdloty/e/roccss.~\
, *
The Golden Ass.—The King went to consult an old Druid.
Uta—vol; ttk~
'
ji .
WTW
_
>-*g
�J ON DÜAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
XXIV
“ FIRES INSTANTLY LIGHTED: ” GREAT SAVING of TIME to SERVANTS.
By STEVENSON'S
PATENT FIREWOOD,
Entirely superseding Bundle Wood, requiring no paper, adapted for
any grate, and not affected- by Damp.
SOLD BY ALL OILMEN AND GROCERS.
Extensively Patronised in the House of Peers, University of Cambridge,
among the Nobility, Gentry, Principal Hotels, Club Houses, &c.
500, in Tenon. and Suburbs,
12S. fxi.
Directions.—Place small coal and cinders in grate, then the Patent Fire
wood wheel or square (dipped side down), cover over with coal, and light
the centre with a match.________________________
M, STEVENSON & 00., Sole Patentees and Manufacturers,
18, Wharf Road, City Road.
OETZMANN & CO.,
67, 69, 71, & 73, Hampstead Road,
Near Tottenham Court Road, London.
CARPETS, FURNITURE,
BEDDING, DRAPERY,
FURNISHING IRONMONGERY,
CHINA, GLASS, &c., &c.
A Descriptive Catalogue {the best Furnishing Guide
extant}, post free on application.
HEDGES AND BUTLER
Invite attention to the following WINES and SPIRITS:—
Good Sherry, Pale or Gold.............
20s. 244. 304. 36s. 424. per doz.
Very choice Sherry .........................
484. 544. 604. 724. per doz.
Port, of various ages.........................
24s. 304. 364, 424-. 484. per doz.
Good Claret........................................
144. 184. 204. 244. per doz.
Choice De.-sert Clarets.....................
304. 364. 424. 484. È04. per doz.
Sparkling Champagne .....................
3 4. 424. 484. ¿04. 784. per doz.
Hock and Moselle............................. 244. 304. 364. 424. 484. 604. per doz.
Old Pa'e Brandy .............................
444. 484. 604. 724. 844. per doz.
Fine Old Irish and Scotch Whisky..
424. 484. per doz.
Wines in Wood.
Callon.
Octave.
Otr. Cask.
Hhd.
Pale Sherry ................
94. ini.
£6 5 0 £12 0 O
Good Sherry................. . 114. id.
15 10 0
8 0 Q
3°
Choice Sherry ............
i-js. 6d.
II IQ O
22 IO
44
Old Sherry................... . 23J. 6d.
29 0 O
14 15 O
57
20 O G
Good Port..................... 14s. 6d.
IO
5 O
39
Old Port.......................... 20s. 6d.
27 G O
13 15 O
53
Old Pale Brandy.......... 21s. 24J. 30$. 36^. per imperial gallon.
IO
10
10
0
0
©
0
G
O
O
©
•
Price Lists of all other Wines, &*c, on application to
HEDGES & BUTLER, 155, Regent Street, London,
30 and 74, King’s Road, Brighton.
RIMMEL’S PERFUMED ALMA
VOSE’8 PATENT HYDROPULT,
NAC for 1875 (the Hours), beautifully Illu
minated, Id., by post for 7 stamps.
RIMMEL’S NEW COMIC ALMANAC
(Signs of the Zodiac), 14., by post for 13 stamps.
RIMMEL’S CHRISTMAS BOUQUET,
changing into a Fan, 14. 6<f., by post 19 stamps.
RIMMEL’S FANCY ARTICLES for Christ
mas Presents and New Year’s Gifts in endless
variety. List on Application.
RIMMEL, Perfumer, 96, Strand ; 128, Regent
Street ; and 24, Cornhill, London.
A PORTABLE FIRE ANNIHILATOR.
The best article ever invented for Watering Gardens, &c.;
weighs but 81bs., and will throw water 50 feet.
LOYSEL’S PATENT HYDROSTATIC
TEA & COFFEE PERCOLATORS.
These Urns are elegant inform, are the most efficient ones
yet introduced, and effect a saving of 50 per cent. The
Times newspaper remarks :—“ M. Loysel’s hydrostatic
machine for making tea or coffee is justly considered as one
of the most complete inventions of its kind.”
Sold by all respectable Ironmongers.
Manufacturers:
More than 200,000 now i use.
GRIFFITHS & BROWETT, Birmingham.
12, Moorgate Street, London ; and 25, Boulevard Magenta, Paris,
WISS FAIRY ORGANS, 2.S., ^s., and 55-. each.
Patented in Europe and America. Four Gold Medals
awarded for excellence. Each Instrument is constructed to play
a variety of modern airs, sacred, operatic, dance, and song,
perfect in tone and of marvellous power. Carriage free for
Stamps, or P. O. O. at above prices. Numerous copies of fully
directed Testimonials post free. Address J acques.Baum, &Co.,
Kingston Works, Sparkbrook, Birmingham.
S
DUNN &ISLANDICUS, OR ’S
HEWETT
“LICHEN
ICELAND MOSS COCOA,'’
(registered),
In i-lb., ilb., ani 1-lb. Packets, at Is. 4d. per lb.
In Tin Canisters at Is. 6d. lb.
Strongly recommended by the Faculty in all cases of Debility, Indigestion, Consumption and all Pulmonary
and Chest Diseases.
<fI have carefully examined, both Microscopically and Chenrcally, the preparation of ICELAND MOSS and COCOA,
made by Messrs. DUNN & HEWITT. I find it to be carefully manufactured with ingredients of the first quality.
“The combination ofTCELAND MOSS and COCOA forms a valuable article of diet, suited equally fcr the Robust and
’ 1 _
i
’’
for Invalids, especially those whose digestion is HHpwwwL It is very nutritious, of easy digestibility, and it possesses, moreover, tonic properties.
impaired.
(Signed) “ARTHUR HILL HASSALL, M.D.,”
, .
TRADE MARK.
Analyst of the Lancet Sanitary Commission, Author of the Refort of the Lancet Commission j of
“Food and its Adulterations \ “ “ Adulterations Detected ** and other VForks»
PENTONVILLE,
LONDON.
�XXV
JJjMMfc,. Al _
- U— —1
JM»
�JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
xxvi
DIETZ & CO
15
to
LONDON,
21, Carter Lane,
I, Sermon Lane,
and
Exporters of the celebrated
Inventors, Manufacturers, and
LAMPS
PARAGON
HURRICANE LANTERNS,
COOKING & HEATING STOVES
BURNING KEROSENE
OR PARAFFIN.
UNRIVALLED FOR
Over 5000 Patterns of
TABLE LAMPS, HALL LAMPS,
SIMPLICITY,
SAFETY,
Chandeliers, Erackets,
Billiard Lamps, Street Lamps,
LIBRARY LAMPS,
LANTERNS, STOVES, &c.
Pitferl until
J. illeCl V1UU
Our Famous
¿the climax
AND ABSOLUTE FREEDOM
FROM SMOEE,
SMELL, and DANGER.
a
M
a
g A, fl a
JSL Jg
i
*a.
BURNERS,
t-AS
JUa
Which give a magnificent white and steady Light, equal to 25, 20, 14, and II
Candles, at the cost of l-4th, l-5th, l-6th, and l-7th of a Penny per Hour.
J1
_Jj
fegwnnngÿ
BRILLIANCY,
Church Lamps, Ship Lamps,
Our HURRICANE LANTERNS are absolutely windproof and safe ; simple in consr.-action, and give a splendid
■white and steady light. They
are the most serviceable Lan
terns for use in Stables, Farms,
Gardens, Boats, Cellars, &c.
0
Economy, Durability,
BiE.TZ.&.C”.
Our CLIMAX COOKING
and HEATING STOVES, in
six sizes, will be found ex
tremely useful in every house
hold, being always ready for
use, and saving time and
money, coals, trouble of light
ing fire, dust, and refuse.
BLACK SILK COSTUMES,
Parisian Models.
Owing to the Reduced Price of manufactured French Silk, Messrs. Jay are happy to announce they
sell good and Fashionable Black Silk Costumes at ^6 i6l 6d. each.
J A Y S’,
THE LONDON GENERAL MOURNING WAREHOUSE,
243, 245, 247, 249, 251, Regent Street, W.
WHITE,
EDWARD
(FROM DENT’S,)
Manufacturer of Chronometers, Watches and Clocks, Gold Chains, Lockets, &c.,
Of best quality only and moderate price. »
PRIZE MEDALLIST AT LONDON, DUBLIN, AND PARIS EXHIBITIONS,
For “ Excellence of Workmanship, Taste, and Sfttll.”
20, COCKSPUR STREET, LONDON, S.W.
Sold
by
All Drapers.
Ask for “THE VERY BUTTON.”—Shakespeare.
GREEN
&
CADBURY’S
PATENT
2-HOLE
LINEN
BUTTONS.
And see that you get them, as inferior kinds are often substitutedfor the sake of extra profits.
“ ‘ The Very Button ’ is a capital button for use and wear.”—The Young Englishwoman.
CHUBB’S
ATENT FIRE AND THIEF RESISTING
^ur?4FES’
LftlCHE.S.
PATENT DETECTOR LOCKS AND
Illustrated Price Lists Post Free.
CHUBB & SON,
57, ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD, E.C.,
68, ST. JAMES'S STREET, S.W.
Manchester, Liverpool,
and
AND
Wolverhampton.
EHPI WT01 HWZX, HEBF BLEI ORZPT YGZB.
TflVE POUNDS REWARD to anyone able to decipher
X
the above, written by HIGHT’S REVOLVING CIPHER DISC.
Very useful for Telegrams, Postal Cards, and Love-letter, or any private
writing. Quickly and easily written. The only absolutely undiscoverable system of Cryptography. T« be had, with full Instructions, of all
Stationers, or of the Publishers,
WALMESLEY & CO., 384, City Road, E.C.
Post free for 14 Stamps.
�JON D'JAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
Reduced by allotype/recess.]
Blue Beard.—* *
xxvir
[Agent, A.. MexAe
�xxviii
JON DUAN ADVERTISEMENTS.
DR. ROBERTS’
POOR MAN’S FRIEND!
THE COMING GREAT TRIAL
By the Public in 1875.
Is confidently recommended to the Public as an unfailing remedy
for Wounds of every description, Burns, Scalds, Chilblains, Scorbutic
Eruptions, Sore and Inflamed Eyes, &c.
Sold in Pots, is. i\d., is. gd., xis., and 22s. each.
DR. ROBERTS’
PILULJE ANTISGROPHULJE,
Or Alterative Pills,
For Scrofula, Leprosy,
and all Skin Diseases.
Proved by Sixty Years’ experience to be one of the best Alterative
Medicines ever offered to the Public. They may be taken at all times,
without confinement or change of diet. Sold in Boxes, ij. i%<Z., is. gd.,
4s. 6d., 11s., and 22s. each.
Sold by the Proprietors, BEACH & BABNICOTT, Bridport.
And by all respec'able Medicine Vendors.
OU shall well and truly try—
APPROVED
Y MANN’Smay quickly go ! MED’CINE buy,
That your ills
Take, and health will shortly flow ;
Colds and Iiooping-conghs will flee.
Read the bills and you will see
>
Nothing with it can compare.
“ Nice!” the children all declare.
Young and old its glories tell;
Both did take, and now are well.
True the evidence that stands
On the bills throughout all lands,
This, the public verdict, give—
“ Take, oh sickly one, and live ! ”
Sixteen affidavits before the Sussex Magistrates prove MANN’S
APPROVED MEDICINE to be the GREAT RESTORATIVE TO
HEALTH for Coughs, Colds, Asthma, Influenza, Convulsive Fits, and
Consumptions. Sold by all Chemists, who will obtain it for you if not
in stock, at is.
, is. 6d., and 4s. 6d. per bottle. Be not persuaded
to take any other remedy._________________
Proprietor, THOMAS MANN, Horsham, Sussex.
QOUT, RHEUMATISM, LUMBAGO, &c.
JNSTANT RELIEF AND RAPID CURE.
A S professionally certified, have saved the lives of many when
11. all other nourishment has failed. In cases of Cholera Infantum, Dysentery,
Chronic Diarrhoea, Dyspepsia, Prostration of the System, and General Debility, Dr.
RIDGE’S Digestive Biscuits will be found particularly beneficial in co-opera
tion with medical treatment, as a perfectly safe, nourishing, and strengthening diet
In Canisters, ix. each, by post ^d. extra.—Dr. RlDGE & CO., Kingsland, London,
and of Chemists and Grocers.
IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.
CAN D'ELL’S HAIR RESTORER,
,...
O the certain Cure for Dandriff and Baldness,
and the only reliable and harmless preparation
for restoring grey hair to its original colour.
Sold by all Chemists, in bottles, is. and 3s. 6d.
UADE’S GOUT AND RHEUMATIC PILLS,
the safest and most effectual cure for Gout, Rheumatism,
Rheumatic Gout, Lumbago, Sciatica, Pains in the Head,
Face, and Limbs. They require neither confinement nor
alteration of diet, and in no case can their effects be injurious.
Prepared only by GEORGE EADE, 72, Goswell
Road, London, and Sold by all Chemists, in Bottles at
or Three in One, 2s. gd.
Ij.
Do not be persuaded to have any other kind.
®ott'es sent cafr>aSe free-
S.O.SANDELL,Sole Manufacturer,Yeovil.
Ask for Fade's Celebrated Gout and Rheumatic Pills.
DR. HAYWARD'S NEW DISCOVERY,THE TREATMENT & MODE OF CURE.
HOW TO USE SUCCESSFULLY, WITH SAFETY AND CERTAINTY,
In all cases of Weakness, Lou) Spirits, Indigestion, Rheumatism, Loss of Nerve Power, Functional Ailments, Despondency,
Langour, Exhaustion, Muscular Debility, arising from various excesses, Loss of Strength, Appetite, &=c., &>c.
WITHOUT MEDICINE.
THE NEW MODE re-animates and revives the failing functions of Life, and thus imparts Energy
and fresh Vitality to the Exhausted and Debilitated Constitution, and may fairly be termed the Fountain of Health
THE LOCAL AND NERVINE TREATMENT imparts tone and vigour to the Nervous
System, and possesses highly re-animating properties ; its inflrence on the secretions and functions is speedily manifested; and
in all cases of Debility, Nervousness, Depression, Palpitation of the Heart, Trembling in the Limbs, Pains in the Back, &c.,
resulting from over-taxed energies of body or mind, &c.
Full Printed Instructions, with Pamphlets and Diagrams, for Invalids, post-free, Six stamps,
(From Sole Inventor and Patentee,)
DR. HAYWARD, M.R.C.S., L.S.A., 14, York Street, Portman Square, London, W.
N.B. For Qualifications, vide “ Medical Register."
OPA AAA REWARD.—The above sum
50 O kJ ■ LJ kJ kJ having during the last twelve years been
received on the sale of LATREILLE’S
invention for the production of WHISKERS and MOUSTACHIOS and curing BALDNESS, it may fairly be called the
reward of merit, as the article is universally acknowledged to be
the only producer of hair. Full particulars, with Testimonials
and Opinions of the Press, sent free to any person addressing
John Latreille, Walworth.
DRCAPLIN’S ELE TRO-CHEMICAL BATHS.
NEW WORKS BY DR. SMITH.
Just Published, 104 pages, Free by Post Two Stamps.
UIDE TO HEALTH -, or, Prescriptions and
Instructions for the Cure of Nervous Exhaustion.
By
Henry Smith, M.D. (Jena), Author of the “ Volunteers’
G
Manual.” This work gives Instructions for Strengthening the
Human Body. How to Regain Health and Secure Long Life.
Prescriptions for the Cure of Debilitating Diseases, Indigestion,
Mental Depression, Prostration, Timidity, &c., resulting from
Loss of Nerve Power. Testimonials, Treatment, &c.
“ In this Work the Doctor gives ‘ Advice as to the Choice of a Phy
sician ;’ ‘ What to Eat, Drink, and Avoid ;’ ‘ Health: how to Procure it,
and other subjects of interest to man as well as woman.”--6’zzwa'izj'
Times, May 4, 1873.
Also by the same Author,
For the Cure of Paralysis, Rheumatism, Gout, Nervous
Third Thousand. Post free in an envelope, 13 stamps,
Affections, axd many kinds of Chronic Diseases.
WOMAN : Her Duties, Relations, and Position.
Prospectuses and Testimonials free by post, on application to
N.B. A Special Edition, beautifully Illustrated by
the Secretary, The Electro-Chemical Bath Institution, i Engravings on Wood. Cloth gilt, One Shilling.
��XXX
DUAN ADVERTISEMENI S.
TRAVELLING
WEDDING PRESENTS.
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.
WRITING-OASES.
NEW YEAR’S PRESENTS.
ASSER & SHERWIN, 80 and 81, Strand, W.C.; and 69, Oxford Street, W., London.
MRS. SAMUEL JAY,
LADIES’ OUTFITTER,
Address.
} 259, Regent Circus, Oxford Streep 259.
SPECIALITY FOR THE WINTER MONTHS.
THE ARAGON
MORNING
ROBE,
In. French Cashmere, Richly Ornamented in Soutache-Broderie.
COMPLETE SUITS OF WASHED AND GOT-UP UNDER-CLOTHING READY FOR IMMEDIATE USE.
Guinea Flannel Dressing Gozvns, Dressing Jackets, Bodices, Fichus, and Embroidered Flannel Petticoats.
Infants’ Layettes.—Marriage Trousseaux.—Good Materials.-—Tasteful Trimmings.—Dainty Stitches.
MRS.
‘ABYSSINIAN GOLD JEWELLERY’
SAMUEL JAY.
LIONEL & ALFRED PYKE’S.
‘ABYSSINIAN GOLD JEWELLERY ’
Is now worn by Ladies to avoid
IS THE ONLY IMITA
the risk of losing their “ Real
TION which cannot be detected
Sold Jewellery,” the Imitation
from “Real Gold Jewellery,”
•REGISTEREDbeing so perfect, detection need
possessing qualities so long
not befeared. It received a Prize
needed and desired in Imitation
Medal for its superiority over
Gold Jewellery, viz. :—supe
all other Imitation Jewellery.
APPEARANCE
Catalogues, with Press Opinions,
riority of finish, elegance of
forwardedpostfree on applica
design, solidity, and durability. T 018 Garat
qOLD tion.
Sole Manufacturers,
JEWELLERY.WM
I. & A. PYKE, 32, Ely Place, Holborn.
Retail Depots : 153, Cheapside,
I53A> Cheapside; 68, Fleet Street,
E. C. ; and at the Royal Polytechnic,
Regent Street, W.
MEDAL
TRADE-MARK.
18 JO.
Sole Manufacturers.
L. & A. PYKE, 32, Ely Place, Holbom.
Retail Depots : 153, Cheapside,
153A, Cheapside ; 68, Fleet Street,
E. C.; and at the Royal Polytechnic,
Regent Street, W.
Medical Testimony states that, unquestionably no remedy exists which is so certain in its effects.
_
ASTHMA,
WINTER COUGH,
DIFFICULTY OF BREATHING,
TRADE MARK alike yield to its influence. One Lozenge alone gives the sufferer relief. Many remedies are sold that contain Morphia,
....
. , , Opium, or violent drugs, but KEATING’S COUGH LOZENGES are composed only of the purest simple drugs and the
most delicate m health may use them with perfect confidence. KEATING’S COUGH LOZENGES are prepared by Thomas Keating St
Paul s Churchyard, and sold by all Chemists, in Boxes, is. i-RZ. and 2s. gd. each.
’
KEATING’S CHILDREN’S WORM TABLETS.
A PURELY VEGETABLE SWEETMEAT, both in apnearance and taste, furnishing a most agreeable method of administering the onlv
certain remedy for INTESTINAL or THREAD WORMS, itis a perfectly safe and mild preparation, and is especially adapted for Children.
bold by all Druggists, in Tins, is. ijrf. and 2s. gd. eacn. Put up in small boxes “specially ” for post, which will be forwarded on receipt of
15 stamps.
*
THOMAS KEATING, St. Paul’s Churchyard, London.
�JON DUAN AD UEDTISEMENDS.
XXXI
�JON DUAN AD VE r. riSEMENTS.
xxxii
DO NOT LET fOUR CHILD DIE.
FENNING’S CHILDREN’S POWDERS PREVENT CONVULSIONS,
Are Cooling and Soothing.
M •
W a)
FENNINGS’CHILDREN’S POWDERS
For Children Cutting their Teeth, to prevent Convulsions.
Sold in Stamped Boxes at ij. x^d. and qj. gd. (great saving), with full Directions. Sent post free for 15 stamps.
Direct to Alfred Fennings, West Cowes, I. W.
1-1 w
Q
Read FENNINGS’ EVERY MOTHER’S BOOK, sent post free for 8 stamps.
REMEMBER LAMPLOUGH’S
PYRETIC SALINE
AND HAVE IT IN YOUR HOUSES.
It is most invigorating, vitalising, and refreshing. Gives instant relief in Headaches, Sea or Bilious Sickness, and quickly cures the worst form of
Eruptive or Skin Complaints. The various diseases arising from Climatic Causes, Constipation, the Liver, or Blood Impurities, Inoculation, the
Results of Breathing Air Infected with Fever, Measles, or SMALLPOX, are frequently prevented, and these diseases cured by its use. Any
person who has already Smallpox should take it, and be kept in a cool and darkened room to prevent its leaving any trace on the features.
The numerous statements and letters relating to its marvellous effect, as a positive cure in TYPHUS, SCARLET FEVER, SMALL
POX, and other BLOOD POISONS, are most remarkable, and are painfully suggestive of great neglect, whenever the PYRETIC
SALINE is not employed in these diseases.
“ It furnishes the blood with its lost Saline constituents."—Dr. Morgan, M'.D., &c.
The late Dr. Turley states in his letters and lectures:—“ I found it act as a specific in the worst form of Scarlet Fever, NO OTHER
Medicine being given. ’ ’
Caution.—The great reputation of this remedy having called forth spurious imitations, whose only merit is a transposition of the words of
my label and wrappers, without any of the health-restoring properties, it is needful to observe my Name and Trade Mark, as above, on a buffcoloured Wrapper, without which the Saline cannot be genuine.
Sold by all Chemists and the Maker, in patent glass-stoppered Bottles, at 2s. (>d., 4>r. i>d., Ilf.. and 2U. each.
H. LAMPLOUGH, 113, Holborn Hill, London, E.C.
“Magna est veritas, et prævalebit.”
THE MIRACULOUS CURE
For Corns and Bunions.
BRODIE’S CELEBRATED REMEDY.
This Preparation,
which, from its wonder
ful efficacy, has been
named the “ Miraculous
Cure,” is rapidly becom
ing the most popular one
of the day; it is quite
Painless in its operation,
and will remove the
most obstinate Corns.
ft is earnestly recom
mended to all sufferers.
Sold in Packets is.
each, by all the principal
the miraculous cure Chemists in England.
If your Chemist does
not keep it, you can obtain it direct from the Manufactory and Depot,
485, Oxford Street, London, or by Post for 14 Stamps.
"
:
OROIDE GOLD JEWELLERY (Registered).
SCARF RINGS and PINS, in New Designs of great Beauty,
Y~TIEESE.—CHEDDAR, CHESHIRE, SOMERSET,
and WILTSHIRE, the produce of some of the Choicest Dairies,
in constant supply.
AMERICAN CHEESE are relatively cheap, and very pleasing in
quality this season.
Buyers are requested to inspect the produce of some of the Finest
United States Dairy and Fancy qualities of Factory Cheese now
arriving, in splendid condition.
HENRY WEBBER, Cheese and Bacon Factor, 17, Long Lanb ,
West Smithfield,
three Doors East of Metropolitan Market.
FINE CHEESE FOR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.
SEND FOR ONE ON TRIAL.
WEIR’S GLOBE SEWING MACHINE, Suit
able for Dressmakers. Reduced price, ,£2 as., Com
plete.
WEIR’S
55s.
SEWING
MACHINE,
for
Families, improved and Patented (Prize Medals),
works by Hand or Foot, the most simple Sewing
Machine in the world.
Guaranteed to do every
kind of work.
Weik’S New Patent Lockstitch Machine, "THE
ZEPHYR,” price £443-., Complete, works by Hand
or Foot. The most perfect and simple Lock-Stitch
Machine. One month’s free trial. Easy terms of payment. Carriage paid to
any Railway Station. Illustrated Prospectus and Patterns of Work, Pose Frit.
■TAMFIS G. WEIR, 2, Carlisle St.,Soho Square, London.
TWO TEASPOONFULS of NEWTON'S CELEBRATED
I
BALM OF LICORICE, Coltsfoot, Honey, and Horehound, instantly
RELIEVES COUGHS, Colds, Bronchitis, Asthma, Whooping Cough, and all
post free, y. ALBERT CHAINS, in best Finish, and perfectly Undistinguishable from 18 carat gold, 7J. 6d. LOCKETS, handsomely Engraved, 4J 6J.,.Obstructions of the Throat, Chest, and Lungs. For Children invaluable No
.
*
home should be without it. In Bottles ir. t\d. and as. gd. Proprietor, J. W.
and 7J. 6<Z. Post Free. Illustrated Price Lists and Opinions of the Press
NEWTON, Chemist and M.P.S., Salisbury; BARCLAY & SONS, London; and
free per Postall Chemists.
C. C. ROWE, 53, All Saints’ Road, Westbourne Park, London, W.
MW
i
The best article for Cleaning and Polishing Silver, Electro Plate, Plate Glass, Marble, &c. Produces an immediate, brilliant, and
lasting polish. Tablets, 6a. each.
Prepared expressly for the Patent Knife Cleaning Machines, India Rubber and Buff Leather Knife Boards. Knives -- eafh
--_ constantly
«leaned with it have a brilliant polish, equal to new cutlery. Sold m Packets, 3d. each ; and in Tins, 6d„ is., 2s. 6d., and 45. eacn.
Prevent friction in cleaning and injury to the knife. Price from is. 6ff. each. OAKEY’S WELLINGTON KNIFE POLISH should
be used with the boards. Sold Everywhere, by Grocers, Ironmongers, Brushmakers, Oilmen, Chemists, &c.
Wholesale ■ JOHN Q A KEV & SONS, Manufacturers of Emery, Emery Cloth, Black Lead, Cabinet Glass Paper, &c.
Wellington Emery
and
Black Lead Mills, Westminster Bridge Road, London, S.E.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Jon Duan: a twofold journey with manifold purposes by the authors of "The Coming K---" and "The Siliad"
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: vi, [2], 94, ix-xxxii p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Advertisements throughout the text and on numbered pages at the beginning and end.
Publisher
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Weldon & Co.
Date
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1874
Identifier
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G5455
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Poetry
Periodicals
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Jon Duan: a twofold journey with manifold purposes by the authors of "The Coming K---" and "The Siliad"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
English Poetry
Poetry in English
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Text
CT ^9
PUBLISHED
BY THOMAS
SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD.)
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
Price Threepence.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
•
NOVEMBER, 1875.
HE Archbishop of Canterbury deserves pre
cedence of all meaner folk, both by right of
his primacy in the Church, and by right of
having talked more than any of his brother
Bishops during the past month. He has been
delivering his soul upon the intricate subject of
“ Christian unity,” and, as a proof of the unity, we
suppose, upon “ Church and Dissent,” also on Foreign
Missions. The readers of this series will fully
understand the deep reverence with which should be
received all the utterances of England’s primate, and
they will not share in the evil sentiments of the
Stockwhip, an Australian Free Thought paper, which
profanely says that the Archbishop’s logic is not
�2
always faultless, and that some of his arguments are
sophisms, while others are fallacies. So, with child
like faith, let us incline our hearts to listen to his
Grace. On the subject of Christian unity the
Archbishop was extremely facetious; he made jokes
about his own enormous correspondence, and caused
“ renewed laughter ” by speaking of a Bishop who
lived “ in a place where it was dark a great portion
of the year, and as a man cannot sleep during the
whole of that long night, he naturally writes letters.”
What a useful Bishop! not being able to be always
asleep, he fills up the intervals of slumber with letter
writing ! But also, what an injurious Bishop, for
these same letters take up so much of the English
Archbishop’s time, that he finds it difficult to visit
his diocese as much as he should do. Might not the
letter-writing and somnolent Bishop leave his See,
and take ship to some other diocese F However, it
seems that the letter-writing of this Father-in-God,
together with the like—but less voluminous—writing
from many other Bishops, is a proof of Christian
unity, and of the desire of all Churches to enter into
—or bind closer already existing — bonds with
Canterbury. Then, not only is our Primate over
whelmed with the number of letters, but he is also
very busy in managing a number of thoughts.
“ Every man has an opinion of his own nowadays,
and I am not sorry that he should have. I think it
is a wholesome sign that men think for themselves.
But then it does not make the management of their
various thoughts at all more easy.” But, in the
name of common sense, who asks the Archbishop of
Canterbury to manage his, or her, thoughts ? And
how does he do it, and why ? This is as superfluous
as the Bishop of the dark region, and is, in very
truth, a work of supererogation. It would be deeply
interesting to see the Archbishop at work, managing
people’s thoughts : does he do it by “good words ?”
�n
O
It is pleasant, at least, to be assured that the Arch
bishop is “ not sorry ” that people should have
opinions of their own, but does he really mean that
Free Thought “ is a wholesome sign ? ” However,
as “ every man, and I must almost say, every woman ”
has an opinion, “ it becomes more difficult than ever
to keep them altogether. That is my special mission
—to try and keep people on good terms with one
another.” Is the Archbishop making fun of us
again ? there is no “ renewed laughter ” in the
report, and yet it is impossible to forget that the
speaker is the Archbishop of a Church which has
just had passed a Public Worship Bill, and whose
officers are already appealing to the secular LawCourts to crush out one division of the very united
Christian body. Neither is it easy to avoid the re
flection : “ If this be the special mission of the
Archbishop, what a terrible failure his Grace makes
of it; ” for the various opinions which it is his duty
to manage are clashing together with such vigour
and such fierceness, that the Church is rent in all
directions, and is bleeding to death from the wounds
inflicted by her own children. The Primate winds
up by saying that he is continually being warned
about “ detestable heresies,” and that “ if I were a
nervous person, which, thank God, I am not, I should
be frightened out of my wits.” The Church of
England is to be congratulated on having so cool and
careless a hand upon her helm, to guide her through
the waves which rise higher day by day, and past
the rocks which threaten her on every side. The
day following the discourse of Christian unity, found
our Archbishop discussing Christian divisions. Now,
our Primate is not jocund; he is belligerent; he is
self-asserting; it is “ the Primate of all England ”
who speaks, and none must dare gainsay, “We are
in very difficult times—very difficult times indeed.
(Our Archbishop is not a Demosthenes.) We have
�4
got a number of people who are very anxious to pull
down the good works which we have undertaken.”
This is true Christian humility; we desire to do
good, but these Gentiles, these outer-court dogs,
they are trying to hinder us, and to mar our work.
There are the philosophers, the sceptics ; but “ those
who entertain these opinions are in a very small
minority.” True, 0 Archbishop! the thinkers are
always in a small minority, but the thinkers rule never
theless, and this small minority moulds the majority,
and when they say “ go,” the world goes, and when
they say “ come,”, the world comes. Luther was in
a minority, but Luther conquered Rome; all Refor
mations begin in the labours of the minority, because
all Reformers are a few steps in advance of the
crowd, and from their vantage-ground on the moun
tain top, they proclaim the coming of the rising sun,
whose first rays have not yet reached the dwellers in
the valleys below. But the sun rises, and the minority
becomes the majority. The Archbishop cares little
for the thinkers ; he dismisses, in a curt sentence,
“ modern philosophy, and modern theorists as to the
regeneration of society ; ” but to an Archbishop, with
several palaces, society needs no regeneration; the
sorrows, the agonies, of humanity touch him not; the
archiepiscopal throne remains unmoved. But now
Dr. Tait attacks the Dissenters: “ Christian unity ”
is forgotten : it was spoken of yesterday, and yester
day is numbered with the past. Dissenters object to
Archbishops : do they ? they had better put up with
Archbishop Tait, for there is Archbishop Manning
looming behind him, that “ I defy all the Dissenters
in Europe to get rid of.” If “ I were to depart
to-morrow ” he would be left, with “ a very old and
powerful historical system ” behind him. This is
very much like a plea ad misericordiam; it sounds
like : “ I may be bad, but he is worse, so you had
better put up with me.” The Dissenters are prayed
�to hold their hands, lest “ a worse thing happen unto ”
them. The Primate then declares : “ the seat I
occupy is a sort of rallying point for all the civilisa
tion and the reasonable religion of the world.” Alas,
for the world, with nought to rally round save the
throne of Canterbury filled by a Dr. Tait! Then the
lover of unity generously says that the Dissenters
“ keep up a sort of running fire against the Church
©f England,” but they only do it because “ it is part
of their business.” (How, this will increase Christian
unity!) True, “the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,
and all sorts of commissioners, have been cutting and
paring away at our revenues.” Poor Archbishop,
passing poor, on £15,000 a year; from our heart’s
depths we sympathise with him. Yet is there balm
in Gilead; Lord Hampton has moved for a return of
“ how much has been spent in the extension of the
Church of England during the last forty years?”
The Primate thinks that about thirty millions “ have
been added to the aggregate property of the Church
of England in the matter of repairing of churches.”
Thirty millions spent to make houses for the God,
who, according to the Bible, “ dwelleth not in temples
made with hands ; ” and, meanwhile, man pines and
agonises in filthy dens and hovels, and “no man
careth ” for him. When the return is made to Lord
Hampton’s motion, perhaps the Archbishop of Can
terbury will deign to move for “ a return of how
much has been spent in the education of the people,
and the improving of labourers’ dwellings, during
the last forty years.” In his speech at Maidstone, on
Eoreign Missions, the Archbishop clearly shows that
if God does care for mission work, he, just at present,
if we may judge from what is going on in Africa,
approves more of Mahomedanism than of Christianism.
But the Archbishop of Canterbury must not make
us forget the Bishop of Lincoln. Dr. Wordsworth
�6
takes up the cudgels on behalf of the licensed
victuallers, and declares that the temperance pledge
is unscriptural, that it undermines belief in the deity
of Christ, that it is therefore heretical, and that it is
“ a deadly sin for Christians to sign it.” Hereupon,
all those whose interest lies in drinking rejoice
mightily; the Licensed Victuallers’ Guardian reprints
extracts from the Bishop’s sermon, and this is, in
turn, reprinted at the end of a wine-merchant’s list.
Imagine the Bishop of Lincoln quoted to gain cus
tomers for wine, “ gin, whiskey, and rum.” Dr.
Wordsworth is certainly marvellously unfortunate;
he always appears to be doing the wrong thing. It
is curious to note that some very prominent Chris
tians must have committed deadly sin; there is the
Rev. Basil Wilberforce, for instance, the son of the
late Bishop, who raves against wine as an invention
of the devil, and who urges all Christians to sign the
pledge as a matter of duty to God. Whom is a
poor, puzzled, anxious believer to follow ? One
light of the Church urges him to do the very thing
which another light of the Church declares to be
a deadly sin. If only these good people would
settle among themselves what to say !
A very sad event has taken place. The Rev. R.
S. Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow, Cornwall, was
received into the Roman Catholic Church on his
deathbed, and was duly buried in the Roman Catholic
cemetery at Plymouth, by a Roman Catholic priest.
This is terrible for all believers in a One Holy Catholic
Church. The Lock takes it seriously to heart, and
spends nearly two columns in lamentations : besides,
who can tell how long Mr. Hawker may have been a
Roman Catholic at heart, and how many such may
there not be in our Church of England ? Is not
Bishop Claughton craftily encouraging such, by pro
claiming that the Public Worship Act is but empty
thundering, and that no Ritualists will be interfered
�7
with ? But why should Bishop Claughton bring
“balm and comfort and hope to the trembling bosom
of the foe?” The Rock is sad at heart, and fore
bodes disaster, unless all good men and true come
“to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord
against the mighty.” Poor Almighty Lord ! but the
editor of the Rock will stand by him.
No words of ours could add solemnity to the
following notice :—The Church Herald announced, at
the end of September, that “ after our next issue we
shall cease to appear.” In times past the readers of
Signs of the Times have gained much amusement from
the pages of the deceased paper, and, recording its
death, we drop a farewell tear upon its tomb.
What the Rock is to the Low Churchman, and what
the Church Herald was to the High Churchman, that
is the Christian to the “ believer.” Many gems
might be drawn from this delightful paper. In a
review of past and present the Herald says : “ The
nations of Christendom have almost without excep
tion left Christianity behind,” and not only Chris
tianity, startling as the assertion may be, nations as
nations have nothing to do with God. It is the
impelling power of the great Liberal movement of these
latter days that secular governments as such have
nothing to do with God. This is from the Herald’s
point of view, whose ideal of Christendom is that
“ Christ is the head of nations in temporal as in
spiritual affairs, and delegated his offices to others
to rule for him till he should return to occupy his
own again.” That reign of superstition is,, thanks
to liberal education, nearly over; the Church which
is considered in the light of Christ’s delegate has
ruled the world for pretty nigh two thousand years,
and in parts of it, autocratically and absolutely, and
what has come of it ? “ That the fool says in his
heart there is no God.” By confession of its
staunchest friends and adherents “ the Church is torn
�8
by internal strife, and is all powerless to meet the
dangers to overcome which is her special mission;
indeed it is a sad truth that to a great extent she has
been the cause of them,—where should be the unity
of heaven, is the discord of hell.” From it we also
learn that a new danger is added to railway travel
ing ; a plan is started for placing large texts along
the tops of houses, so that railway travellers may see
them as they whiz past. A lad, “ passing in a train
for a ‘ change of air,’ was seriously impressed by one
of these ghastly signs: it is depressing to be told,
immediately afterwards, that he died, trusting in
Jesus.” These suddenly converted people always do
die, by some strange fatality. The “ Rev. F. Baldey,
of Southsea, has over his door: ‘ When I see the
blood I will pass over you!”” Why it should do
any one the smallest good to see offensive texts of this
kind, it is hard to say. Placarding texts has become
quite a fashion in London just now, especially at the
East end. It is really hard to believe that any earnest
Christian can like to see, “ Prepare to meet thy
God,” flanked on either side by Newsome’s circus,
and the latest comic singer.
It is somewhat trying to hear that the irrepressible
Moody and Sankey have started again in America,
and are going “ to revive ” the United States. In
England their whilom friends are complaining that
they have done more harm than good, because they
have only reached the church and chapel-goers, and
they have made these discontented with less exciting
ministrations. If they will kindly persevere, and
visit each country in turn, we may then look for a
serious decrease in church-goers.
Abroad, there are signs of much disturbance. We
are pretty well accustomed to “ Burial Scandals ” at
home, but one has taken place at Montreal, Canada,
which throws all ours into the shade. “ A literary
society, known as the ‘ Canadian Institute,’ has in
�9
its library a number of books that several years ago
came under the ban of the Roman Catholic Church.”
The Bishop objected to the books, and, as the Society
did not discard them, he promptly excommunicated
the Society. A member of the Institute, one Joseph
Guibord, died, and before his death was refused the
Sacrament, he being one of the banned Society. His
widow claimed that he should be buried in a grave in
the Catholic cemetery, owned by the heirs of the
deceased. This was refused. The widow died, and
left the Institute legatee ; the Institute carried on the
lawsuit begun by the widow, and at last triumphed ;
a royal, decree was issued to bury Joseph Guibord.
Mr. Guibord was duly exhumed, and carried towards
the cemetery; but the gates were barred, and a crowd
had assembled round them. Stones were thrown;
the cross was pulled down; the hearse was driven
away. According to the last advices, an escort of
troops had been asked for to convey Joseph Guibord
to his grave, and to protect his corpse from his Chris
tian brethren.
The Bishop of Montreal has threatened to “ curse
the ground if compelled by the Privy Council to bury
Mr. Guibord.” This brings out forcibly the truth of
Mr. Gladstone’s warning that, in a conflict between
the civil power and the Pope, Catholics, though sub
jects of England, would side with the head of their
Church. It is a pity for its own sake that Trans
atlantic Vaticanism does not think it necessary to
sheath its claws in velvet, and this episode of the
nineteenth century is a curious comment on the
vaunted advance of Christian civilisation, on the power
of “ Christian charity and brotherly love over the
passions.”
In Spain, matters look very dark. The Pope’s
Nuncio has issued a letter to all the Spanish Bishops,
which has evoked much popular indignation. This
circular appears to have aroused a really strong
�10
national feeling, and it is even rumoured that the
Nuncio will have to ask for his passport. Article XI.
of the proposed Constitution states that: “ No persons
shall be molested in Spanish territory for their reli
gious opinions, nor for the exercise of their respective
worships.” This Article has much troubled the Holy
See, and the Pope, through his Nuncio, denies the
right of Spain to pass such an Article without his
consent. The Nuncio states that no worship, save'
the Roman Catholic, should be tolerated in Spain,
“ all consent to the exercise of other worships ” should
be withheld. Further, the Spanish Bishops have the
right, by the Concordat, to invoke “ the efficacy and
strength of the secular arm, wherever these might be
necessary to resist the malignity of men,” who spread
false doctrine and print heretical books. But this
promise of support is perfectly useless if religious
toleration is to exist in Spain, and the Nuncio adds
that the nation “ rejects freedom, or even toleration,
of worship, and asks with loud voice the re-establish
ment in Spain of her traditional religious unity.” It
is surely a welcome “sign of the times” that this
circular has been received with one shout of indigna
tion, and that “ the press of every colour, save the
Neo-Catholic, is up in arms.” Even Spain is not, as
she once was, the complete slave of the Papacy.
FEINTED BY C. W. RRYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Signs of the times. November 1875
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 10 p. ; 18 cm.
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Thomas Scott
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1875
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CT139
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Signs of the times), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Catholic Church
Catholic Church-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
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Text
“TWO OR THREE BERRIES,”
AN AUTUMN SUBJECT,
BY THE
Rev. FRANK E. MILLSON,
OF HALIFAX,
DELIVERED AT
Jjouth
J^LACE
Chapel,
piNSBURY,
OCTOBER 31 st, 1875.
��“TWO OR THREE BERRIES.”
In that day it shall come to pass that the glory of Jacob
shall be made thin I
And it shall be as when the harvest man gathereth the com
and reapeth the ears with his arm ;
And it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of
Rephaim.
Yet gleaning, grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of
an olive tree.
Two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough.
Four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the
Lord God of Israel.—Isaiah xvii., 4-6.
“ Two or three berries in the top of the upper
most bough. Four or five in the outmost fruitful
branches.”
It is strange to note the enduring value of a true
image. Here is a sight, which we may see now
in every hedge-row, on the skirts of the woods,
in the thickets of our gardens, and we find that it
was seen and mused upon in the far-off ages, when
the Jewish prophet lived, and that it seemed to him
to be the very best illustration of his thought. His
�4
message was that with the downfall of Damascus
should come ruin to Israel. Drawing an illustration
from the bareness of the land after the harvest, the
prophet says—“ It shall be as when the harvest man
gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his
arm ; as when they have gleaned after the reaper
in the valley of Rephaim,” till the land is stripped
of its last show of fertility. But the very image
that he has used calls to his mind another, the
recollection of what he has seen in the time of the
latter harvest; and, when that flashes on his
mind, he adds some words of consolation—all shall
not be taken away, and the land made utterly deso
late. There shall be a gleaning of grapes in it,
the shaking of an olive tree; two or three berries in
the top of the uppermost bough—four or five in the
utmost fruitful branches thereof. In the general
bareness of the land, these, “the things that remain,”
have a peculiar beauty, and a value which we should
never think of giving them, when we are in the full
enjoyment of the luxurious abundance, the full
clusters and many fruits of summer. It is the true
autumn lesson—as new and as valuable now as it
was in those old days, taught to us quite as impres
sively as ever it was.
Value the things that are left
to you, they are worth more because they are left
�5
and have survived; and, if the crop is but small, it
- is, at any rate, all that there is. We have the sug
gestive imagery about us now, meeting us in our
rambles, speaking to us in the shining berries which
have taken the place of the richly coloured foliage,
most of all, perhaps, in the shy, solitary rose,
mounted almost out of sight to the very topmost
twig—more beautiful than the somewhat rampant
glories of the summer roses, for it has to contrast
and to set out its perfection, the damp and decay,
the blackening leaves and naked stems, dripping and
sodden with the showers. It has the beauty and
the value of the things that are left, and the sugges
tiveness to thought of all these later autumn beauties
is just this, that they seem to say to us, “ We are
all that are left to you, make of us all that you can.
Yet, in spite of the general ruin and decay, earth is
not left without some beauty; pale, scentless, it is
true, but prized perhaps more than the common
beauties of the summer and the spring.” Make the
most of the things that remain. We may very usefully
apply the lesson to our circumstances of life. How
seldom is it given to any one to enjoy full summer
all his days, to live a prosperous life quite to the
end. Circumstances are but surroundings. They
are not ourselves; and often it is well for us that
�6
we should be taught by sharp experience that this
is so. They drop away from us and leave us, even
as the summer glories fade away from the earth;
and the man who was rich and influential, who
seemed to be secure in the possession of all that he
could wish, finds that he can be separated from it,
and that sometimes it leaves him little more than a
late autumn crop, of property and possession, two
or three berries only, and those on the uppermost
bough, four or five in the outmost fruiting branches
of his life. It is the part of a true wisdom to make
the most of them—from all that is left to seek for
the greatest gain, surely not to despair and to re
fuse to see any beauty of advantage or use in the
wrecks and shattered remains of what was once so
fair a show. It is so, because the law of our life is
like that scientific law of evolution in this, that the
things which remain to us are usually those which
deserved to remain, the fruits of our life. Success
may have gone and failure come, but the failure
may bring with it patience and endurance, earned by
the qualities which once ensured success; now
ornamenting the career which has no longer any
other fruits of its success to show. “Not what they
have failed in, not what they have suffered, but
what they have done, ought to occupy the survivors,”
�7
says Goethe. And it is a true saying, the man who
has lived a true life, always obeying the demands
of conscience, is released from the tyranny of cir
cumstance, and if but little is left him of the things,
riches, honour, wealth, which seemed so essential to
his condition whilst he had them, he can do without
them, having in himself the well-ordered mind
which can find good in little. Such was Jeremy
Taylor, who, when his house had been plundered
and his family driven out of doors and his worldly
estate sequestrated, wrote, “ I am fallen into the
hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they
have taken all from me. What now? Let me
look about me. They have left me the sun and the
moon, much to see, many friends to pity me and
some to relieve me; and I can discourse still, and,
unless I list, they have not taken away my merry
countenance and my cheerful spirit and a good con
science ; they have still left me the providence of
God and all the hopes of the gospel and my reli
gion, and my hopes of heaven and my charity to
them too; and he that hath so many causes of joy
and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and
peevishness, who loves all these pleasures and
chooses to sit down upon his little handful of
thorns.”
�8
This seems to me to be in the right, cheerful
spirit of contentment, which is not by any means
the abstract virtue that it is supposed to be, but may
be easily acquired by those who know its secret, which
is only to make the most of the things that remain,
admiring the two or three berries which cling to the
uppermost bough of life. As you look at them you
find that they are not merely “two or three,” there
are “ four or five,” and to the wintry landscape with
its bareness they impart some of the beauty and
colour of summer. Discontent always remains dis
content so long as it is occupied with itself; but, if
once we look outside ourselves, nature makes the
present things, the claims of the day, of paramount
interest to us, and we are gradually coaxed back
again into activity and hope. As we have often
found—have we not ?—some sorrow or change has
come upon us, and for a time all the interests of
life seemed to be carried into the past and life itself
to be turned into stagnancy; but sorrow generally
brings with it its occupancies and duties, and they
win back the mind to calm and resignation. You
may note this in any sorrow of your own or of your
friends. There is a little history of it in those suc
cessive Christmas-days in “ In Memoriam.” The poet
has lost his friend, and Christmas brings him only
�9
sadness and a quick feeling of his loss. It is merely
for use and wont, in obedience to old custom, that
Christmas is kept at all. “ They gambol, making
vain pretence” of gladness, and “sadly falls the
Christmas eve.” Another Christmas has the “quiet
sense of something lost; ” but now the game and
dance and song have place, none “shows a token
of distress,” and the poet asks almost self-accusingly; Can grief be changed to less ? and answers
his own thought—
“ O, last regret; regret can die !
No—mix’t with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same
But with long use her tears are dry.”
This is the lesson, then of the season. Look for
the few beauties that it has. They may, perhaps,
prove to be as suggestive, almost as satisfying, as
the summer glories or the hopefulness of spring.
And, learning a lesson from nature, practise it in
life. Do not allow sorrow or discontent to master
the soul. They will if you are always thinking
about them, but fix your attention on present duties.
Make life happier for those about you, be helpful
and useful so far as you can. Now and then “ take
stock” of the pleasures that remain to you, and, as
Jeremy Taylor did in his deprivation, you will find
�IO
that life is still endurable—nay, that it has some
pleasures, which, like the late berries on the trees,
are, if not very sweet to the taste, at least cheerful
to the eye.
There is a similar wisdom which may be shown
in our judgments of and dealing with our characters.
Many a man reaches the autumn of his days only
to find that of the seeds of endeavour which he has
sown there have come up but a very poor crop.
He has conscientiously striven and has often failed.
Many good resolutions, much earnest effort, a great
deal of self-denial, and many very seeming successes,
have ended in little real gain. The besetting sin,
whatever it may be, has proved too strong for the
resisting will; and I have noticed that it is
characteristic of such a life to grow bitter against
itself at the end. It is as if a husbandman had
ploughed, and sown, and weeded, and found but in
the end a very scanty crop—ground nearly as bare
as if it had been reaped already; and in such a
case it is cold comfort, I know, to point out a few
ears, or, if his crop is of the vineyard, some
straggling grapes; but there is some comfort in it
too, for a vine that will grow some grapes has the
possibility, under more favourable circumstances,
of growing more, and there is the chance of a full
harvest another year.
�II
Much of the shameless sin that marks the end
of some lives that have never been quite free from
very conscientious efforts at self-improvement come,
I am convinced, of hopelessness. A man is weary
of trying- to overcome some temptation. He has
tried for years, perhaps, and some strong- innertendency, some weakness, which it seems as if he
could not help, has got the better of him again and
again. So he gives up all effort, loses all self-respect,
and resigns himself up to sin. It is a weakness which
none of us can greatly blame, which he certainly
who knows how hardly he preserves the balance
of his own soul, will look at with a very pitying eye,
and perhaps the wisest word that can be spoken in
such a case is this—don’t say that you are altogether
bad. You have still the preference for what is
right—the wish to do well. It is but a poor crop of a
life to have only that, but it is much better than no
crop at all, infinitely superior to the luxuriance of
wilful sin, for it means that, so long as we feel
this dissatisfaction with ourselves—so long as we
keep a clear notion of the right which we ought to
do, we are not left quite to ourselves, are not, there
fore, in an altogether hopeless condition. I suppose
that most of us can remember that when we
were children the hardest punishment to bear,—
�12
the most effectual, too, I believe,—was that
of being- left to ourselves—forbidden nothing—
restrained in nothing—treated as if we were
nothing. God never so treats us, He never leaves
us to our own devices, never lets us put ourselves
outside his suggestions of right and wrong, and to
these we ought to cling, when they are all that we
have left to us. When will is weakness and good
examples fail us, and respect even for the opinion of
our friends is not a strong enough compulsion, then
do not let us be blind to this last chance, and, re
fusing to see it, rush into sin. “ At that day a man
shall look to his Maker,” says the prophet, speaking
of Israel in its utmost need, and as with the nation
so with the man—the last glimmer of a sense of
right, the poorest gleanings of a crop of good reso
lutions, even the wish to do right, may avail to save
us from the utter despair which strives no more,
and is led away helpless by temptation.
How I wish that any words of mine could make
this a real truth to those who are in such danger as
I have described! But words are very powerless
in such a case as this. Only I would suggest the
thought.
One other thought the picture which is my text
suggests to me. It is that which is contained in the
�13
practical conclusion of the passage which I have
read to you. “ At that day shall man look to his
bM
Maker, and his eye shall have respect to the Holy
hO|
One of Israel.” The religious attitude of mind for
gotten in the midst of plenty is recovered when
few| want is felt. And is it not so, that there is a moral
gel J lesson for us in the scantiness and rarity of natural
sdl beauty in the wintry landscape? Two or three
9<I
berries then, when we see them on the mountain
2J5
ash making a scarlet glow amidst the bare
W
woods or on the long-swinging rose-tendrils where
rf) the clusters of flowers have been, or on the
&
thorn, which has lost its delicate texture of
flowers and the dense green of its foliage, even
two or three catch the eye and fix the atten
tion, and stimulate the thought which the wealth
and luxuriance of summer had only distracted.
Meditation is the autumnal mood, for then the mind
rf
finds enough of beauty to suggest, and not enough
to oppress reflection. Autumn is for this reason
J
the poet’s fruitful season. Fancy is not over
1
weighted with imagery; and of natural beauty
there is enough to suggest and to quicken thought.
So Milton, and Wordsworth, and Coleridge all
found late autumn and early winter their most fruitful
and productive time of the year. The things that
fjnq
�remain, few as they are, may suggest, will very
likely, in consequence of their fewness, suggest,
religious reflection, for we seek God in our needs
more readily than when we abound in all things,
and a few objects of beauty amidst a world of
bareness and sterility may lead the thoughts, which
are troubled at the loss of summer wealth and
spring suggestiveness, to seek, in reflection, the
meaning and lesson of it all.
These are the thoughts, a little far-fetched it
seems to me as I write them, which the image
of my text suggests. They are thoughts of cheer
fulness under disappointments, and courage to
persevere when the sense of repeated failure
oppresses the mind, and suggestions of the thought
fulness that comes to the mind which is compelled
to concentrate itself on a few objects; and if we can
find these in them, the “ two or three berries,” our
autumn picture may teach us more than we can
learn from summer flowers.
�i5
Leaf by leaf the roses fall,
Drop by drop the springs run dry,
One by one, beyond recall,
Summer beauties fade and die.
But the roses bloom again,
And the springs will gush anew,
In the pleasant April rain
And the summer sun and dew.
So in hours of deepest gloom,
When the springs of gladness fail,
And the roses in their bloom
Droop like maidens wan and pale ;
We shall find some hope that lies,
Like a silent germ apart,
Hidden far from careless eyes
In the garden of the heart :
Some sweet hope to gladness wed,
That will spring afresh and new,
When grief’s winter shall have fled,
Giving place to sun and dew :
Some sweet hope that breathes of spring
Through the weaiy, weary time,
Budding forth its blossoming
In the spirit’s silent clime.
Howe.
�3
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Two or three berries,: an autumn subject ... delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, October 31st, 1875
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 15 p. ; 16 cm
Series number: 5
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[South Place Chapel]
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G3366
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Sermons
Autumn
Sermons
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Text
CHRISTIANITY.
FOURTH PART.
THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY.
BEING
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY, 29th JANUARY, 1882,
BY
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
Hanbon:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1882.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS.
The development of human culture from a general historical point of
view.
Our modern method of studying.
The Free-Thinkers of England, France, and Germany.
Evolution.
Myths and Miracles.
Astronomy, Geology, and Zoology.
Chemistry and Archaeology.
Cosmogony, Gqpthe, Alexander von Humboldt, Darwin.
Comparative Philology, Mythology, and Religion.
Comparative General History and Politics.
Emotion and Reason.
Art and Science.
Biology and Sociology.
Dr. Strauss, Biblical Criticism.
Agnosticism and Atheism.
The future of Christianity.
Conclusion.
�CHRISTIANITY.
II Emotion and Reason. Art and Science. Common Sense and Theology.
The attainment of a perfect balance between the static (moral), and
|
the dynamic (intellectual) forces working in Humanity. The
future of Christianity.
HAT Christianity had an historical development I endeavoured
to
my three previous lectures. Pure
Tbasedshow inunalloyed principles of its founder, wasChristianity,
on the
sadly changed,
and dogmatic Christianity, with its admixture of Hebraism and
Heathenism, remained stationary for a time. Its assumed spiritual
authority was entirely devoted to a one-sided culture of emotional
credulity in man, and with very few isolated exceptions in single
individuals, it failed to keep pace with the suddenly aroused scien
tific tendencies of the seventeenth century.
In considering the development of humanity from a general
historical point of view, we must necessarily become conscious
of the fact that religion played a prominent part in the destinies
of mankind;
In modern times we have learnt to combine facts, to draw
analogies, and to decipher allegories. We point out similarities,
ignore incongruities, trace affinities, and have thus succeeded in
establishing, through a more logical treatment of our emotional
(religious), and reasoning (scientific) faculties, a “ oneness ’’ and
“ sameness ” in the most discordant moral and philosophical
systems. Alan in history had invariably to pass through certain
stages of culture, which can be as clearly defined as the different
geological strata in the formation of the earth’s crust.
All was separation and isolation with the Orientals, as I en
deavoured to prove in my former lectures. Their mystic sym
bolism exclusively occupied itself with the “One,” the Monotheos,
the “Nuk pu Nuk,” the “ I am I,” the Javeh, the Brahma. This
mystic first cause was symbolized or personified in clay, stone,
�4
Christianity.
marble, in concrete, or as with the Jews in abstracto, as an elderly
human Being, whose actions were assumed to be arbitrary, cruel,
jealous, revengeful, despotic, and full of wrath. The glance of his
eyes was lightning; his voice was thunder. Fire and water were
the paternal means which he used to correct, and punish his sinful,
trembling, and crouching children. To terrify and horrify was his
aim. This false conception of the Deity had its origin in a gross
ignorance of the phenomena of nature, as I showed in my lecture
“ On Natural Phenomena and their Influence on Different Reli
gious Systems ” (1873). This ignorance was first dispersed by the
Greeks, who, through their religious combinations and mythological
conceptions in poetry and art, deprived the hideous divine phantoms
of the East of their revolting attributes. The Greeks had a far
purer notion of the abstract powers of the Deity, and of the phe
nomena of nature, which they personified as beautiful concrete
gods and goddesses. They thus succeeded in blending the Divine
with the Human, making their gods more humane, and raising
men towards the Divine. This harmonious union between the
universal or divine, and the special or human, is the most impor
tant feature in Greek thought.
During the mythical period, the natural causes of cosmical phe
nomena being unknown, they were assumed to be miracles, and
miracles were transferred to the incidents of everyday life in a
thousand different forms. This tendency still exists, as a survival
of those times, amongst our prejudiced and untutored believers, or,
as they prefer calling themselves, “religious people.” The “mythi
cal ” was followed by a “ symbolic ” period, which again changed
into a period of confused “ dogmatism.” The leaders of the people,
the priests or religious teachers, and their subordinates, the kings
and lay rulers, did not strive to promote knowledge or truth, but
for thousands of years worked upon certain phenomena in politics,
religion, and science, as the hidden, though sometimes revealed,
mysteries of a God or several gods, or of some wicked and diabolical
power, and they strove by sacrificial performances and prescribed
prayers to appease the former, or to conquer and pacify the latter.
A similar change took place in the simple teachings of Christ,
W'hich were made wholly unintelligible by means of a complicated
theological and dogmatic system, borrowed from the ancient
heathen priests, and often directly opposed to the fundamental
principles of true ethics.
With the Seventeenth Century a new impetus was given to the
�Christianity.
5
intellectual development of humanity through the revival of the
study of the ancient classics on their own general, moral, and
scientific merits, and the study of nature inaugurated by Francis
Lord Bacon (1560-1626). This advance was followed up by the
inquiring intellects of the world, and the “ theological ” age had to
yield to a “philosophically speculative,”and this again to a “purely
scientific” age, in which our knowledge of the marvellous proper
ties of matter has been increased to such an extent that we are
in danger of assuming, that we ought to shun all speculation as
vain word juggling, restrict our researches exclusively to mere
matter, looking upon philosophy, art, history and religion (in
the pthical meaning of the word), as so much idle and useless
waste of time.
The mental condition of humanity, fostered by this realistic one
sidedness, is, however, far less perilous than that engendered by
an exclusive culture of the emotional and ideal, for the ignorant
masses have been, and are always much more easily led by abstract
speculations than by a hard study of facts, and their causes and
effects. It is not without a terrible struggle that man will give up
supernatural authorities, petrified into mental idols, which save
him all the trouble of inquiry, ratiocination, and investigation.
What Bacon began in philosophy, “ was afterwards carried into
politics by Cromwell; ” and “ during that very generation was en
forced in theology by Chillingworth, Owen, and Hales ; in meta
physics by Hobbes and Glanvil; and in the theory of government
by Harrington, Sidney, and Locke.”* The transition from blind
credulity into violent scepticism may best be studied in the writings
of Sir Thomas Brown (1606-1682). In his “Beligio Medici,”
published about 1633, he shares in all the vagaries of religious
obscurantism. He professes his firm belief in spirits, tutelary
angels, predestination, palmistry, and witches, and even goes so
far as to say that those who deny the existence of witches “ are
not merely infidels, but atheists.” He loves to keep the road in
divinity. He follows the great wheel of the church, by which he
moves. He has no gap for heresy, schisms, or errors of which
he “ has no taint or tincture.” And yet we may trace in this work
a mighty undercurrent of scepticism. The book was translated
into French, German, Italian, and Dutch, and produced more than
* See “ History of Civilization in England,” by H. T. Buckle, vol. i,,.
p. 333. London, 1858.
�6
. Christianity.
thirty independent works on the religion of soldiers, lawyers,
noblemen, princes, bookworms, laymen, stoics, clergymen, philoso
phers, gentiles, and churchmen.
Only thirteen years after the publication of this apparently
orthodox work, the same author published his still more celebrated
“ Inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors.” His faith in the
infallibility of dogmatism, witches, and the philosopher’s stone had
disappeared as if by magic. He clearly and sharply pointed out
that the two great pillars of truth “are experience and solid
reason.” “ Adherence to authority,” “ neglect of inquiry,” and
“ credulity,” he set down as the main causes of error. He exposed
some of the innumerable blunders of the Fathers, and to his in
fluence may be ascribed the fact that Christians began to doubt,
to inquire, to discover, and to seek to establish a correct and wellbalanced union between empiricism and speculative philosophy, for
the two are so closely allied that only a culture of both has pro
duced our most modern unparalleled advance in sciences. It was
Sir Isaac Newton (1642—1727) who, through the mystic w®rd
“ gravitation,” solved many unintelligible phenomena of the visible
world in space and time. He did away with isolation in the
material world by showing that cosmical bodies acted on other
cosmieal bodies, and that the minutest particles composing these
bodies were all subject to immutable laws of combination and
dissolution.
Why should these laws not apply equally to the variegated
phenomena in plants and animals, and finally be found in man’s
historical development ? Up to the Seventeenth Century, in spite
of Greek philosophers and Boman orators,—Christian Casuists,
miracle-mongers, and inspired emotionalists, Jewish Babbis, Tal
mudists and Cabalists, learned mediaeval Bealists and Nominalists,
Boman Catholics, Inquisitors, and Protestant witch-finders, Cal
vinists and Methodists, had continually confounded cause and
effect, and pandered to credulity, prejudice, and mere authorita
tive assumptions, based on misunderstood and unexplained facts.
John Locke (1632-1704) broke the spell, and showed humanity
that we can know nothing beyond what our senses can grasp.
Impressions, sensations (or emotions), and consciousness, are the
only gates, windows, openings, and crevices, through which the
dark night of our intellect may receive some rays of knowledge.
From the times of the patriarchal beginnings of man’s social con
dition, the efforts of all priesthoods have been directed to taking
�Christianity.
1
possession of this earth, whilst creating somewhere in infinite space
a more glorious abode for those who blindly followed their dictates.
Through the whole sanguinary period of mediaeval feudalism,
during the Reformation, and down to our own times, all sorts of
means were used to create false impressions, which produced cor
responding false sensations or emotions, and having once become
conscious of them, we cherished, fostered, propagated, and left
them as sacred inheritances to future generations, thus sadly hin
dering, preventing, and retarding man’s progressive culture. Single
phrases, often single words, kept up false knowledge and credulity,
and all this was done under the mystic pretext of religion which
often showed itself to be the greatest irreligion, especially from a
Christian point of view.
One of the greatest fallacies, blocking the path of inquiry, was
the assumption that a thing must be true, because millions and
millions believed in it. The question how, and in what way did
these millions come to take some prejudice, some ignorant assertion
for truth, was not even thought of, and never inquired into.
“ Credulity, however widespread, is no proof of truth,” said Locke;
and he went further, and insisted that “ even revelation ought to
stand the test of reason,” and that “ fanaticism was no criterion
for the divine origin of any creed.” Locke thus broke still more
with the old traditional authorities in Philosophy and Theology.
Basedow (1723-1790), in Germany, worked out a systematic
method of education by means of “ object lessons,” without any
intermixture of texts, or sentimental tales about sickly boys and
girls who became little angels, playing endless hymns on harps
that never required tuning. Before children became sectarians
they were to be trained to be good, intellectual, and useful human
beings, thinking, inventing, and arguing for themselves. Through
the efforts of our liberal government we have, in most recent
times, introduced the same system by rooting out denominationalism in our Board Schools; and these unsectarian schools are
sure to become the foundation of that broader Religiousness which
was already dreamt of by the great philosopher Spinoza (1632—
1677), who opposed the priests of every nation, sect, or denomi
nation as fostering hatred, and transforming synagogues, mosques,
temples,, churches, and chapels into mock-stages on which dog
matists were heard, “ who did not care to instruct the people, but
rather to excite their admiration, and to condemn publicly those
who held different opinions, and to preach only what was new, in
�8
Christianity.
comprehensible, and most delighted the crowd.” We have still many
survivals of this species of “prsedicatores” amongst us, industriously
spreading “ odium theologicum.” If these praedicatores “ possessed
but one spark of the Divine light they would not be so senselessly
proud, and would learn to worship God more wisely; and, instead
of distinguishing themselves by hatred, would foster love towards
everyone.” Dor such ideas Spinoza was stamped an atheist—
though he was one of the most pious Philosophers.
We may look upon the Seventeenth Century as a transition
period during which a wholesome reaction against some of the most
objectionable teachings of Luther and Calvin set in. Both repu
diated “ good works.” The one declared them “ mortal sins; ” the
other went not so far, but asserted “that God pays no attention
to good works;” whilst some divines in England insisted “that
works done before the grace of Christ, are not only not pleasant to
God, but have the nature of sin.” In 1618 (after Bacon had
published his “Novum Organum ”) the Calvinist synod had the
audacity to proclaim “thatmorality had nothing to do with justifica
tion.” This teaching culminated in the Westminster Confession of
Faith, asserting “ that God has chosen those of mankind that are
predestinated into life before the foundation of the world was laid,
without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance
in either of them, and that the rest of mankind God was pleased
to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their
sins, to the praise of his glorious justice.”
Horrified at these monstrous assertions, which trampled all moral
laws under foot, the Eighteenth Century was ushered in by a long
row of independent thinkers, who could only have been produced
by a correct understanding of the truly moral in Christianity.
The “Patres majorum gentium” of Free-thought, pure reasoning,
and logical criticism began to proclaim the modern “ gospel of
common sense,” and to turn the scapegoat of dogmatism into the
wilderness, burdened with the dark sins of ignorance and super
stition.
These “Fathers of free thought” were all Englishmen—their
ideas were transcribed into French and German, and their homilies,
essays, sermons, epistles, and commentaries, form the very elements
of that progressive intellectual air which we are now allowed to
breathe, without being compelled to filter it through a theological
respirator. At their head stood the Earl of Shaftbsbuky (16711713), one of those independent thinkers so often found in the
�Christianity.
9
ranks of the English aristocracy. The glorious spirit that inspired
the Chandos on the battle-field, has never left some of the nobles of
England on the subtle fighting-ground of advanced thought and
free inquiry. Shaftesbury’s works were to a certain degree the
revival of the ideas of Plato, tempered by the notions of Aristotle,
modified by an interval of more than 2,000 years, and transcribed
into practical, plain English. To Shaftesbury “ the world existed in
all her glory and beauty through eternally contrasting, acting and
reacting forces that formed a marvellous picture of light and shade.”
Life around us consisted of an everlasting change of matter. Plants
died away, to foster with their death the life of animals and men;
and animals and men died, to give life to plants in their turn. The
air that surrounded us, the vapours that rose from the water, the
meteors that shot above our heads, all followed their laws, and
contributed to the preservation of the whole.
Next to Shaftesbury stood Toland (1670-1722), whose most
important work, amongst many others, was “ Christianity not
*
Mysterious ” (1696). Though the book gave great offence, it was
one of the most remarkable signs of the times, foreshadowing a
treatment of Christianity which, after a lapse of nearly two cen
turies, is undoubtedly becoming more and more general.
The tendency to keep up mysticism is certainly on the wane.
Astronomy has lost none of its importance or truthfulness because
we have substituted the heliocentric theory for the geocentric, or
because we no longer assume that the 365 days of the year are
presided over by so many guardian saints, some of them of a rather
doubtful character. The animal kingdom has not been deprived of
its marvels, nor have public morals deteriorated, because we now
know that Moses, in spite of his inspiration, was not deeply versed
in zoology or geology. The sun has lost nothing of his splendour,
because we are convinced that he is no Divine charioteer, driving
across the heavens in a fiery chariot, drawn by four horses. Nor
has the earth been degraded, because in opposition to inspired
geography, it has been proved to be spherical in form, and not
square or flat. Our moral sense has not suffered, even though
we have learnt through chemistry that there are more than four
elements. Are the master-works of art less glorious because
through a correct knowledge of archaeology we are able to trace in
* “ Abeisidsemon,” “ Nazarenus,” “ Tetradynamus,” and “ Pantheisticon,”
works scarcely known even by name in our educational establishments.
I
L
�10
Christianity.'
them a gradual and slow development from the most primitive
stone weapons and pottery of pre-historic times ?
Have religions been deprived of their moral grandeur and the
Creator of His omnipotence, because we are convinced, as was
already Collins (1676-1729), that “all religions were everywhere
at first natural and simple, plain and intelligible ” ? Sir William
Jones (Diss. vi. on the Persians) confirms the views of Collins, for
he says: “ The primeval religion of Iran, on the authorities
adduced by Monsani Farft, was that which Newton calls the oldest
(and it may justly be called the noblest) of all religions; a firm
belief that ‘ one supreme God made the world by His power ’
(acting on matter through motion, and thus producing all the
different phenomena in the universe) ; continually governed it by
His providence (manifesting itself as immutable law of causation;
same cause producing the same effect); a pious fear, love, and
adoration of Him (which can be best effected in reverential silence,
and a deep study of His direct works in nature, or in the works
of art and science made by the instrumentality of man) ; and due
reverence for parents and aged persons; a fraternal affection for
the whole human species ; and a compassionate tenderness even
for the brute creation. But like every other religion its simplicity
was changed.” “ Myths and fables were added,” as Collins says ;
“ sacrifices, whether real or typical, were introduced which had to
be paid for; the priests grew wealthy and fat, and the people
became poor and lean.” What we want in modern times is not
exactly to invert the relation of leanness and fatness between
people and priests, but in a true Christian sense to give only such
hire to the labourer as he is worthy of. Would religion lose any
thing of its moral efficacy, if we were to assume with Dr. Matthew
Tyndal (1657-1733) that “ Christianity is as old as the Creation,”
instead of having myths and miracles of our own, whilst constantly
discrediting the myths and miracles of others? Would it not be
far more reasonable to assume that the moral laws of Christianity
must have existed from eternity, “ as God acts (and has acted) in
conformity to the Beason and Nature of things,” and has never
contradicted Himself by entering into old or new covenants with
certain people, neglecting others ? Dogmatically, only the chosen
people and believers in certain “ formulae ” are to be saved. Accord
ing to the Bomans “ the welfare, or rather safety, of the Bepublic
(of course of their own Bepublic, to the detriment and destruction
of all the other surrounding States), was the foundation of all
�>
Christianity.
11
morals ; ” whilst Tyndal proclaimed “ the good of the people to be
the supreme law.”
William Wollaston (1659-1724), more than 150 years ago,
endeavoured to improve the religious feelings of the masses. He
demanded that instead of being based on unintelligible dogmas,
the whole of our State organization should have for its firm
foundation the Triad: “Beason, Truth, and Happiness.” His
celebrated work, which appeared under the title of “ The Religion
of Nature Delineated,” and the principles laid down in it are still
applicable to the burning questions that agitate our own times.
The demand for the disestablishment of the Church, and its separa
tion from the State, as well as the refusal of the masses in Ger
many, Belgium, France, and Italy to leave education exclusively
in the hands of the clergy, are natural out-growths of that intel
lectual movement which was inaugurated in England, and which,
after an apparent inactivity of more than a century and a half,
begins anew to disturb the dogmatic slumber of our stationary
believers.
In studying the writings of Mandeville (?—1733), and the accu
sations which theological charity hurled against him, we may learn
that a free-thinker may be a far better Christian than those who
throw their sharp missiles of abuse at him. Mandeville published
in 1714 a poem under the title of “ The Grumbling Hive, or
Knaves Turned Honest,” and re-published the same in 1723 under
the title of “ The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public
Benefits; with an Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, and a
Search into the Nature of Society.” One hundred and fifty-nine
years ago a keen and honest writer, in a truly prophetic spirit,
already exposed our present workhouses and their shortcomings;
our charities and their atrocious uncharitableness ; our hospitals,
where a patient may hear an abundance of cant, but can never be
sure that when a pious sister is engaged in meditation on the
salvation of her soul, she may not make a mistake, and give him
poison instead of quinine; our charity and industrial schools,
where pious masters and mistresses flog the children of the poor
almost to death, stint them in food, and leave them in the most
revolting ignorance, consoling them with some reflections on the
wickedness of poverty. As to the “ Nature of our Society,” we
need only glance superficially over our so-called “ Society papers,”
to convince ourselves that even if orthodox Theology, under the
banner of dogmatism, may have regained the ground lost in the
�12
C hristianity.
Eighteenth Century, true practical Christianity has been left where
it was 160 years ago. Mandeville was especially accused of having
collected all the false notions of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, and
Bayle; of having openly blasphemed, and denied the doctrine of
the ever-blessed Trinity. He was further charged with having
endeavoured to revive the Arian Heresy, with believing in Fate,
and denying Providence; with attempting to undermine the order
and discipline of the Church; with maliciously and falsely decry
ing the Universities, in order to prevent them from instructing
youth in the Christian religion; and with recommending luxury,
avarice, pride, and all the vices, as necessary to public welfare.
Mandeville committed none of all these grave crimes. He showed
that in the highly artificial society of his times, gross selfishness
and unscrupulous egotism prospered—exactly as in our own day—
that knavery and flattery could boast of success, whilst honesty and
straightforwardness did not always bear out the modern theory of
the survival of the fittest. This accusation can, however, no longer
be advanced against the majority of our people, who, in opposition
to dogmatism and social flunkeyism, have fortunately begun to free
themselves from the fetters of prejudice, forged on the anvil of
ignorance by dialectical blacksmiths.
Mandeville asserted further that falsehood, hypocrisy and crime
ruled supreme, if their votaries could only succeed in making
money. Money is still a very great factor in our social organi
zation. In no direction are the enactments of Christ more
discarded and ignored than in the paths of money-making. That
all sorts of falsehoods are often propounded, that hypocrisy is made
use of, that even crimes against widows and orphans, who are
robbed of all they possess, are committed for the purpose of making
money, cannot be denied. Let a statistical compiler collect the
sums of money that have been extorted under the false pretence of
“ life and insurance companies,” “ co-operative stores,” “ commer
cial, railway, navigation, canal, building, and mining companies and
societies,” and we shall find that the longing for turning an honest
penny with Pecksniffian hypocrisy into a dishonest pound, is far
from being extinguished. On the other hand, we must admit that
our honest manufacturers, merchants, traders, and working men
have on the whole become convinced that the opinion a man holds
about “ the colour of the beatitude,” “ the efficacy of grace,” or
“ the power of election ” has very little to do with his merchandise
or his productions. It is the distinguishing feature of progressive
�Christianity.
13
Christianity that it has step by step given up wild hatred and
frantic religious “ boycotting,” the merciless torturing and burning
of so-called heretics, the drowning and hanging of witches, Noncon
formists, Papists, Latitudinarians, and Socinians. It has changed
the cruel “Act of Uniformity ” into an “Edict of Tolerance,”
emancipated Dissenters, Papists, and Jews, and will finally per
mit every one to be saved according to his own light. Bronze and
marble statues are now erected to John Huss, Giordano Bruno,
and Savonarola, who were burnt alive by the very ancestors of
those who now, with truer Christian feelings, honour the memory
of these fearless martyrs of free-thought. Christians at last have
extended equal rights to their most hostile religious antagonists.
We have public officials of many various religious creeds. Unitatarians, Jews, Papists, and Nonconformists sit on the benches of
our highest Courts of Justice. In this broadness of tolerance lies
the power of Christianity, and all those who attempt to diminish
this equalization of humanity, are men without any higher princi
ples.
Mobgan (?—1743) felt all this more than 150 years ago. The
religion of pure reason alone was divine with him. Discussions
on the parabolical or symbolical, the typical or mystical, or any
thing remote from human understanding, he treated with the
utmost contempt. The salvation of persons “ elected ” could never
be attained, save by their own individual moral exertions.
Thomas Chubb (1697-1747) was more systematic than any of
his predecessors. He must be considered the very founder of a
regulated system of secular Christianity, which is still looked upon
as very heretical in certain quarters. Chubb was “ the partner of
a tallow-chandler,” and, no historian can deny, that he kindled a
fiery torch of enlightenment which spread tolerance and freedom not
only throughout all the classes of English society, but extended its
rays to the mighty philosophers of France and Germany, and the
entire Continent. He could not see the necessity of mysticism ;
his brain was not made for senseless impressions, producing dim
and inexplicable emotions. He wished to honour the “ Father,”
in asserting His supremacy ; he opposed the immoral doctrine of
“ Predestination,” destroying in man all his moral responsibility ;
he controverted the degrading assumption of “ original sin,” and
contradicted the equally pernicious doctrine, that “ man was
naturally incapable of doing anything good.”
The last, and by far,the most celebrated of these English Fathers
�14
Christianity.
of Free-thought, was the witty and learned Viscount Bolingbboke
(1672-1751), the contemporary of Vico in Italy, and the fore
runner of Herder in Germany and Voltaire in France. His
“Letters on the Study and Use of History,” published for the
first time in 1735, have become the corner-stone of that broad,
ever-widening edifice of modern culture, in which all branches of
arts and sciences are cultivated on entirely different principles.
In accordance with Bolingbroke’s teachings, history became, and
is, and must continue to be, the most important branch of educa
tion. We must fight on for political freedom, but at the same
time not allow ourselves to be fettered by dogmatism, otherwise
our so-called freedom will prove a delusion. What is the use of
our being free to grumble at a half-penny tax, when we are for
bidden to compare one religion with another; when we are socially
(and social tyranny is far worse than any other autocracy) bound
to believe dates which we know must be wrong, or a cosmogony
which is certainly contrary to the very laws which God teaches us
in His Nature. Why should we not be permitted to draw analo
gies between the mythological and religious systems of different
nations ? Some persons consider that it poisons the mind of the
people to tell them that Zerdusht (Zoroaster), long before Con
fucius, said, “ Hold it not meet to do unto others what thou
wouldest not have done to thyselfand that Confucius, nearly
500 years before Christ exhorted his disciples “ to do to another
what you would he should do unto you; and not do unto another
what you would not should be done unto you ”; adding the memor
able words, •“ Thou only needest this law alone, it is the founda
tion and principle of all the rest.” Is telling the truth poison to
the mind ? Are we to be allowed to state truth only so far as it
may suit the distorters of all history: and must we store our minds
with crude undigested facts and sentences, with fables and myths,
with improbabilities and impossibilities ; are we not to be allowed
to awaken in ourselves and others the latent energy of reason, and
to find out a connection between cause and effect ? Bolingbroke
already scorned the idea of filling our brains with assumptions and
details; with facts that never happened; with oracular sayings
that have generally been written down long after the facts pre
dicted had occurred. The ponderous works of Scaliger, Bochart,
Petavius, Usher, and even of Marsham, were robbed of their dim
halo of authority. These writers, like the generality of theological
arguers, did not write to find out facts in their possible or probable
�Christianity.
15
truthfulness, but continually practised deception, to prove, that
what they assumed and believed to have happened, must have
occurred. It is of little avail to connect disjointed passages, to
use fantastic similitudes of sounds, in order to prop up some pre
conceived historical system. Egyptology, Assyriology; the decyphering of hieroglyphs and cuneiform inscriptions, have on all
sides helped us to unmask the pompous dignitaries of stationary
sal learning, however loudly the survivals of by-gone scholastic systems
:ur may clamour. Eor nearly 1800 years general history, and the comparative historical studies of special countries and nations have been
iiZ distorted. Dates or facts, whole epochs of civilization and com
bi plicated religious systems have been, either altogether ignored, or
'ji if mentioned, the dates of their development altered. The priority
Jp of moral principles in other religions has been denied, and the
| world taught to believe them taken from later systems. All our
■±a| studies have been made subservient to the requirements of the
i < dialectical banner-bearers of some arbitrarily worked out theoloi J gical system, who held aloft the flimsy flag of prejudice and bigotry,
nil under which they gather the ignorant, and terrify independent
ujl inquirers and votaries of true morals and pure Christianity.
j Eor more than half a century the reactionary opponents of proigI gress were in the ascendant. This terrible. period of Reaction,
uj| distinguished by an increasing power of stationary dogmatism and
despotism, was due to that political, moral, and religious cataclysm,
m which took place in Erance. The Erench people had been left
njl in utter ignorance by aristocrats, bureaucrats, priests, and monks ;
iis the normal development of the intellectual and moral welfare of
B| the masses was prevented; everything was exaggerated, and all
■B the ties of society were forcibly broken. Neither reason, nor a
i'j regulated emotion, but obstinate passion and fanaticism, the out
re growths of that very religious system which some wished to support,
jj ruled supreme, and plunged Europe into mad rebellions and sanre guinary wars. Whilst in Erance the demented lawgivers of the
j Convention deposed God (on the 7th of May, 1794) ; in England
penal or civil laws began to protect old-fashioned theological noI tions; and in Germany the rulers gave up the supernatural to the
$ people as a bone of contention, but kept them in strict order by
ffl means of severe police overregulation. The practical was to formthe only aim of tl^p English people; the Erench, with an utter
contempt for all religion, began to occupy themselves with politics ;
whilst in Germany the spirit of inquiry was to find vent in ponnJ
fw
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�16
Christianity.
derous critical volumes on all sorts of metaphysical and religious
subjects. Only thus we can explain the following apparently
incredible fact.
A chair for geology was founded at the Cambridge University in
1815, and down to 1830 not one student dared to attend the pro
posed Lectures of the Rev. Mr. Sedgwick for fear of being at once
looked down upon as a heretic, and so blighting the whole of his
worldly career. That this state of narrow-mindedness has con
siderably changed is in some part owing to a few English Bivines.
We have learnt to rise from particular and detached, to general and
connected knowledge; from single incoherent facts to a higher
study of the universal causal connection between incidents and in
cidents, and periods and periods. What is the use of all such
studies is still the terrible question asked by tens of thousands, if
they only serve “ to disturb the peace of mind of believers.” A
peace of mind, based on ignorance, is a very poor peace.
This was deeply felt by the master minds of France and Ger
many. At the head of the French reformers stood Montesquieu
(1689-1755), who had seen and studied England, and who united
in himself all the brilliant qualities of a Frenchman with the stern
virtues of an independent Englishman. Next to him stood Vol
taire (1694-1778), the prophet, apostle, teacher, and idol of a
court and people which produced a Louis XIV., a Louis XV., a
Robespierre, and a Marat. Voltaire, though a firm believer in a
God, was accused of Atheism, because he devoted all his genial
powers to denouncing the false doctrines according to which
Church and State ruled, oppressed, insulted, and beggared the
people on the Continent. Only a Titanic spirit, like his, could have
succeeded in counteracting the growing immorality of the State,
the rampant hypocrisy of the Church, the revolting cant of priests,
the foolish pretensions of the scholastics and Jesuits, and the
sentimental distortions of the Jansenists. Voltaire was honoured,
protected, and admired by Frederick the Great of Prussia, who
never looked upon genius, truthfulness, and satire as dangerous
foes, but, on the contrary, welcomed them as worthy helpmates to
purify the sunken moral and intellectual state of Europe. That
Voltaire was used by low scoffers and sarcastic critics, that he was
misunderstood, and made a tool in the hands of headless revolu
tionaries in France, was not his fault. Nothjng can excuse the
duplicity of those aristocrats, bureaucrats, priests, monks, and
bigots who, instead of studying his writings, and learning from
�Christianity.
17
them, considered it their duty to abuse, vilify, and curse him.
His spirit has never died away, and is even at this present moment
far more active than the priests suspect. In France, as in Ger
many, if an idol of the past has once been dissolved in its compo
nent particles, and if these particles are found to have been incon
gruously put together, the idol is for ever destroyed. Not so in
England. The powerful vested interests, living, thriving, and pros
pering on antiquated ideas, sometimes relax in their static force,
and permit a dynamic current of progress to pervade the intellec
tual atmosphere of the people; but, trembling for their tempo
ralities, they soon rouse themselves to oppose the progressive
continuity of new ideas.
When the courageous Lessing (1729-1781) once attacked idling
monks and nuns, bigoted pastors and ignorant preachers; monks
and nuns began to vanish, and pastors and preachers were com
pelled to study, and to endeavour to attain the same degree of learn
ing as that possessed by the better informed lay-world. This fact
may serve to explain the existence of that phalanx of fearless
Theologians in Germany who, during the Eighteenth and Nine
teenth Centuries, influenced the Christians of all countries. After
Lessing had exposed pedants to ridicule; hypocrisy to scorn; falsi
fiers to contempt; dialecticians to derision, and false moralists to
mockery, men like Gesenius, Jost, Schleiermacher, Niebuhr, Schel
ling, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, were enabled, individually and
collectively, to use the ponderous clubs of their deep learning and
correct reasoning to prepare the way for the immortal Darwin, who
put an end to the assumption of a detached, arbitrary, and special
creation, and established the fact of “ evolution,” as the firm founda
tion of all bur studies. Mental reforms are no longer hated,
critical inquiries no longer despised, analogies and comparisons
may be drawn even at the University of Oxford.
According to Dean Ramsay, four millions of sermons are
preached annually in Great Britain; these four millions of sermons
are only listened to by thirty per cent, of our population, whilst
seventy per cent, can do without them. The 100 per cent, however,
have to pay annually £ 10,211,321 (exclusive of payments made by
Boman Catholics and Jews). All this is at the very lowest com
putation, and yet even these four millions of sermons represent a
lamentable waste of time. Assuming that each sermon takes up
only 30 minutes, we arrive at a period of 83,333 days, or 22|
years, half at least of which are annually spent by the combined
�18
Cliristianity.
efforts of the clergy in. discussing dogmatic matters. As to
material,—if every sermon were only 15 pages in length, the'
amount spoken annually would furnish us with 60,000,000 of
pages, or 83,333 vols. of 720 pages each.
It would be as well to enquire how much of this collective
brain-force, and complex lung-power has been used to bring about
a union between Christ’s enactments, and our often diametrically
opposed social organization, without which, however, our present
state of civilization would be impossible.
Christ said: “ Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for
the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof ” (Matt. vi. 34). If we were to
live according to this precept we should have long given up all
progress in arts, sciences, discoveries, and inventions. We should
have lived like Buddhist mendicants, and lost ourselves in useless
meditations ; mean poverty would have been our lot, and in
carrying out the command of God the Son, we should have acted
in direct opposition to the dictates of Grod the Father who
endowed us with intellect and reason.
Christ said: “ Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matt. x. 8).
And what do the heads of the different denominations do ? They
freely demand money, and as freely keep it. Church dignitaries
are liberally paid, and leave the hard working curates to some 300
charity organizations.
Christ said: “ Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in
your purses ” (Matt. x. 9, Luke ix. 3, x. 4, xxii. 35). The eternal
collections, the everlasting sending round of plates, the merciless
exactions of tithes are in contradiction to this law.
Christ said: “ I say unto you, swear not at all, neither by
heaven . . . nor by the earth . . . neither shalt thou
swear by thy head . . . But let your communication be, Yea,
yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”
(Matt. v. 34-37.)
We boastfully call England a “God-fearing and Christian”
country, and yet we ignore God’s direct, and most explicit com
mand: “swear not.” After many tardy steps in tolerance, we
are sure not to stop half way. The greatest and wisest in the
land will out-number the prejudiced and narrow-minded, and free
every citizen from all the shackles of religious qualification. Not
what a man “ professes to believe,” but how he acts, ought to
be taken as the criterion of his character.
�Christianity.
19
M
The higher inner life of the masses, in spite of the. 4,000,000
W of annual sermons, was till lately sorely neglected. We at last
lai attained the conviction that Reason, Politics, and Science, as well
sb I as Emotion, Religion, and Art, had their rights. We have learnt
ft that Reason cannot be satisfied with mere dogmatic assumptions,
[B and, that to be truly free, we must emancipate ourselves from all
$ fetters imposed on our development as human beings.
What is Man ?
Man consists of matter, forming the constituent particles of his
id body. The study of this, his material constitution, has led to
ff Biology. Biology must not be treated one-sidedly, as if there were
For man consists also of mind, a
T! in man nothing but matter.
q power of doing work, receiving impressions, which produce sensa
ii tions, of which we become conscious. Man has, therefore, a double
Both matter and mind
fi nature, composed of matter and mind.
R) can only be brought into life and activity by a force ; and wherever
ft . we are able to trace a force, we can trace law. We may thus treat
ft man scientifically as a unit, and consequently we can similarly con
This is done by Sociology and
E8 sider any number of these units.
a \ General History. For, any principle applicable to the unit, must
a ' similarly affect any number composed of the same units.
All natural science is based on tracing the working of acting
B and counteracting, combining or dissolving forces. In mechanics
i those forces are assumed to be two in number, the one static, the
o other dynamic. The first manifests itself as the law of conserva
d tion of force or energy, the second as the ever-varying, creating,
3 changing, combining, transforming force of activity.
We here face the mystic Indian Trimurty (Trinity), as Creator,
i Preserver, and Transformer; or the great Egyptian “Unity in
E Trinity” of their more advanced religious and philosophical de
Leaving the
'.i velopment—as “ Creator, Created, and Creature.”
Creator, in humble reverence, we have around us the Created world
) (the phenomenal) and the Creature (as the embodiment of the
Ct noumenal), and in this Creature we find combined the two acting
and reacting forces, pervading the universe as static and dynamic
£
energy, which manifests itself in man as morals and intellect.
$ Morals are and can only be static; they are a restraining, correcting
•1 force—they are the passive element in our nature: moral laws are
I generally given in the negative form. On the other hand, intellect
d is undoubtedly the dynamic pushing, inquiring, inventing force—
1 the active element; for all efforts in arts, sciences, and discoveries
�20
Christianity.
are of a positive nature. The working of these two forces may be
either conflicting, or harmonious, and on the greater or less degree
of harmony must depend the progressive development of single
individuals, and that of whole communities, nations, and Humanity
at large. We may thus scientifically reduce all the phenomena of
history to a plus or minus in the relative quantities of the two acting
and reacting forces in man.
Those who, under the pretext of religion, wish one-sidedly to
cultivate the moral force in humanity, often commit the most re
volting immoralities. We have on one side the Mormons, a sect
living in polygamy, according to the practice of the Patriarchs as
recorded in the Old Testament, and we have opposed to them the
state authority quoting the same sacred Book, protesting against
polygamy, and endeavouring to put it down by the force of law.
And intellect, reason that could alone decide between the two sects,
is abhorred by both. For controversy and contradictions are the
eternal outgrowths of so called sacred Books which, assumed to
have been inspired by infinite wisdom, are so little understood by
finite commentators that they have led to nothing but confusion in
our most important social relations.
A popular preacher protests against “ vivisection,” and this
preacher feeds on killed fishes, eats oysters with delight, enjoys a
brace of partridges, and has no condemnation for fox-hunting, deer
stalking, pigeon-shooting, &c. Now, if a Buddhist priest or teacher
who never touched food that was derived from any creature once
alive, were to speak against the dissection of living animals, with
the object of extending our knowledge of physiology and biology,
in order to lessen the sufferings of our more highly developed
fellow-creatures, we could understand his horror of the practice;
but it can only be mere verbiage and hypocritical rodomontade
when some priests, who feed on mutton, beef, and pork, rave
against vivisection in order to stop the prying into the wonderful,
and awful mysteries of God, and declare that the Darwins and
Huxleys of our times should not be furnished with more facts for
their unorthodox theories.
These contradictions between practical life, and the enactments
of religious books, at last led men, like Mr. Houston, to devote
themselves to biblical criticism in the spirit of simple reason,
unassisted by assumptions, theological dictates, dialectical distinc
tions and differences, and the amount of work since done in this
direction is incredible. Houston published in 1813 a book under
�C hristianity.
21
kb the title “ Ecce Homo,” or a “ Rational Analysis of the Gospels,”
V- which created a tremendous sensation.
The clergy took no trouble
>$! to refute the writer, but set the courts of j ustice in motion, and
III Houston was condemned to two years’ imprisonment, and a fine
oil of <£200 to be paid to the king!
The enactment of “judge not that ye be not judged” (Matt,
«|
V ; vii. 1) was disregarded by King and Judges. Neither Houston,
nor Dr. Strauss in more recent times, did “judge.” They simply
applied the commonest rules of criticism to a compilation of
writings which were pronounced to be infallible; and for this use
& of their reason, the one was imprisoned and fined, and the other
8 sent out of the country as a detestable heretic, and nearly mur
»| dered by a fanatical mob in Switzerland.
The enemies of progress, the controversialists on doctrine, the
1 propounders of revelations had continually to take refuge behind
I , new inspirations and new revelations, till the people became
8> I convinced that a revelation which produces so many contradictory
M deductions, must be after all simply a revelation worked out in
jI the inner consciousness of the prophets and revealers themselves.
[| But as feelings, emotions, and ideas, through self-consciousness,
1 have but a subjective meaning, the independent thinkers of Christ
ianity have now turned to a more correct contemplation of nature
with an entirely objective tendency. The province of the emotional
has been thus assigned to art, morals are studied as natural effects
> of our very bodily organization, the quarrels about formulae have
i become fainter, and man begins to understand true religion.
What is religion in a Christian sense ?
It is neither Pessimism, nor Agnosticism, and least of all,
Atheism.
Pessimism is a morbid craving after an ideal world, which con
>. demns the present variegated reality, because optimism has not
r worked itself into a tangible entity.
Agnosticism goes as far as our finite senses can go in grasping
£ the phenomenal outward nature, and stops at the first cause of
! which it professes to know nothing.
Atheism has, in its dogmatic assertions, the most repulsive
3, similarity to orthodoxy. It is, in fact, nothing but an illogical
I negation of a positive assertion, and has therefore no sense at all.
True religion, according to the origin of the Latin word “religo,”
f, means to honour, to take care of, to order, to treat, to observe
> carefully, or to be bound down, which does not mean to observe or
�22
Christianity.
to be bound down to ritualistic performances, the burning of can
dles, embroidered altar-cloths, sacrificial symbols and types, but to
take care of, and honour a close study and understanding of the
laws of nature in a clear recognition of our relations to our fellow
creatures.
Mind and matter : the one the cause, the other the effect; the
one the pervading ideality, the other the pervaded reality; these
two completing each other, and manifesting themselves as com
bined elements in the variegated phenomena of the universe, can
be the only objects of study for Christianity in the Future.
Christianity which is the only Religion through which inward
reflection, and outward contemplation may be best evolved in man,
as a complex power to balance morals and intellect, emotion, and
reason in us, will have to accomplish the following glorious tasks :—
(a.) To bring back Christ’s teachings to their primitive purity and
simplicity ; to eliminate everything that has been imported into it
from older heathen religions and creeds, in the shape of ceremonies
and contradictory mysteries.
(6.) To fulfil what the Reformation began in the sixteenth cen
tury, and not to stop half-way in the purification of faith, allowing
dogmatic petrifications to hinder the progressive development of
Humanity. We must try to establish a perfect balance between
our morals and our intellect, basing all our actions on such
principles as are universal, and easily understood by reason.
(c.) To educate our clergy in all the branches of true knowledge,
that the people may not accustom themselves to look down upon
them as survivals of a by-gone, bigoted, ante-intellectual period,
and only attend their sermons because it is respectable to be seen
amongst one’s neighbours at a place of worship on a Sunday. Let
the teachers of the more than two hundred quarrelling uncharitable
sects of Christendom stand on the common platform of human
nature, loving and not hating those who, through self thought and
indefatigable study, have acquired a different mode of seeing,
judging, and believing, and they will be sure to regain that bene
ficial influence on the fields of pure ethics which they have lost in
the dark labyrinths of mysticism.
(cZ.) To find a common ground in Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, Sokratian principles, Hebraism, and
Mahometanism, connecting all that is pure, moral, and intellectual
in all the different religious sects into one grand whole, cemented
together with brotherly love and forbearance, allowing to art and
�Christianity.
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science their free, purifying, and elevating influences, and fostering
them to the fullest possible extent.
Similar notions were already set forth in the Twelfth Century
within the Romish Church, in a new gospel, called “ Evangelium
Eternum,” preached for some time by Joachim, the Abbot of Sora,
in Calabria. This gospel was also called the Covenant of Peace,
or the Gospel of the Holy Ghost. It taught that the two imper
fect ages, that of the Father and of the Son, represented by the
Old and New Testaments, were past, and that that of the Holy
Ghost, the perfect one, was at hand. According to this gospel
Jews, Christians, Mahometans, and all other sects were to be
united into one loving brotherhood. For upwards of thirty years
the Roman See supported this gospel. In 1250 A.D. a Franciscan
*
monk, Gerhard, published an introduction to it, in which he pro
phesied the destruction of the Roman See, in 1260 ; but neither
the moon nor the stars fell from heaven to bring about the Millenium
—so the prophecy is yet to be fulfilled; and we still wait for the
time when Indians and Chinese, philosophers and free-thinkers,
Hebrews, Mahometans and Christians, will be enabled to raise to
their different teachers one grand Walhalla in which all who have
contributed to the fulfilment of Christ’s promise of One Shepherd
(God in Heaven, or first cause in the universe), and one fold
(enclosing the whole of Humanity), might find a place.
To sum up, we have individually and collectively :
(1.) to purify Christianity of all Dogmatism and Mysticism ;
(2.) to make morals, which are ingrafted in our very nature, the
foundation of our social organization ;
(3.) to enlarge religion through genuine tolerance into a code of
our duties towards our fellow-creatures ;
(4.) to educate our public teachers so that with broad hearts and
independent thoughts they may propagate the beauties of art and
the truths of science.
So MAY IT BE I
* For further information see “The Gospel History and Doctrinal Teach
ing” critically examined by the Author of “Mankind, their Origin and
Destiny.” London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1873.
�
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Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Christianity: fourth part. The future of Christianity, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's, Langham Place, on Sunday 29th January 1882
Creator
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
An account of the resource
In the fourth part of his series of lectures on the history of Christianity, Dr. G. G. Zerffi explores current and future issues affecting the faith such as evolution, atheism and free thought.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 5. A list of the Society's lectures by the same author which have been printed listed on unnumbered final page.
Publisher
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Sunday Lecture Society
Date
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1882
Identifier
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G3434
Subject
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Christianity
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Christianity: fourth part. The future of Christianity, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's, Langham Place, on Sunday 29th January 1882), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Christianity
Morris Tracts