ENGLISH
LITERATURE
CHAMBERS.
Vol. VIII
820.9
C44
18.79
ACME
EDITION
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:
CHAMBERS'S
CYCLOPEDIA
OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE
A HISTORY, CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL, OF BRITISH
AND AMERICAN AUTHORS, WITH SPECIMENS
OF THEIR WRITINGS,
ORIGINALLY EDITED BY ROBERT CHAMBERS, LL.D.
THIRD EDITION,
REVISED BY ROBERT CARRUTHERS, LL. D.
IN EIGHT VOLUMES.
VOL. VIII.
NEW YORK:
AMERICAN BOOK EXCHANGE,
65 BEEKMAN STREET.
J
TABLE OF CONTENTS-VOL. VIII.
1
Bishop Thirlwall (1797-1875)
George Grote (1794-1871)
• •
Early Greek History not to be judged
y Modern Feeling.
Xenophon's Address to the Army.
Character of Dion...
George Finlay (died in 1875)
Vicissitudes of Nations..
William Mure (1799-1860)
The Unity of the Homeric Poems..
William E. Gladstone (born in 1809)..
The World of Homer, a World of
his Own...
Burning of the Temple.
William F. Skene..
D +
··
D
•
• -
·
PAGE.
·
D
•
C
Earl Stanhope_(1805–1875).
Whig and Tory in the Reign of
Queen Anne..
10
Charles Edward Stuart, the Young
Pretender..
Thomas Keightley (1792-1872).
Superstitious Beliefs.
Could Milton have written Paradise
Lost in the Nineteenth Century? 16
Dean Milman (1791-1868).
How ought the History of the Jews
to be Written...
.16
•
1
2
•
2356TTTS
Յ
6
7
7
7
8
9
9
··
Date of the Welsh Poems
Battle of Mons Granpius.
Lucy Aikin (1781–1864)..
George Lillic Craik (1798-1866).
James Anthony Froude (born in 1818)
Markets and Wages in the Reign of
Henry VIII.
Portrait of Henry VIII.
Death of Mary, Queen of Scots....
W. H. Lecky.
Improved Prospect of Affairs in Ire-
land.
S. R. Gardiner.
Sir John W. Kaye (1814-1876)-Lady
Sale, &c.
Alexander W. Kinglake (born in 1811) 31
The Sphynx...
The Beginning of the Crimean War 32
The March...
33
William Howard Russell (born in 1821) 34
The Battle of Balaklava..
3-4
31
32
..
10
14
15
16
18
19
19
21
22
23
23
25
26
27
29
30
30
PAGE.
Charge of the Light Brigade, and
Tennyson's Lines on the Charge 37
Rev. W. Stubbs..
Influence of Germanic Races in Eu-
rope.
English National Unity, 1155-1215
A. D....
John Richard Green.
Old England..
Free Constitution of British Colo-
nies...
Clements R. Markham-H. M. Stan-
ley-William Massey.
Gambling in the Last Century
Edward A. Freeman.
Death of William the Conqueror..
John Hill Burton (born in 1809).
The Scottish Language after the
Revolution..
Sir Thomas Erskine May (born in
1S15)....
42
•
_____
• •
William Forsyth-William Smyth-
Sir J. Stephen-Thomas Wright
Robert Pitcairn Robert
White-Daniel Wilson-J. J. A.
Warsaae...
· ·
••
··· •
·· •
38 SEE ****99 99998
•
39
++
40
41
41
Cosmo Innes (1798–1874).
Miss Strickland (1801-1874).
Queen Mary at Lochleven Castle... 49
Lord J. Russell..
42
43
44
44
45
46
46
48
John Dunlop-Mark Napier.
J. G. Lockhart-Dean Stanley
The Sous of Great Men.
Burns on his Farm at Ellisland.
Few Men take Life in Earnest.
Home and Old Friends.
London and Mont Blanc.
Sir W. Stirling Maxwell (born in 1818) 56
Epicurean Habits of the Emperor
·· • • • •
Charles V.
48
50
51
52
53
54
54
55
55
2 8* **2 8 299
55
56
57
The Emperor performs the Funeral
Service for Himself..
Velasquez's Faithful Colour-grinder 58
George Henry Lewis (born in 1817)... 59
Superiority of the Moral over the
Intellectual Nature of Man..
Men of Genius Resolute Workers.. 60
Children of Great Men-Hereditary
59
Tendencies..
61
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
!
Colliers
Dr. William Reeves..
Lord Campbell (1781-1861)
James Spedding..
Picture of Weimar.
Death of Goethe...
Mrs. Oliphant.. :
Notice of Edward Irving.
Foreign Memories...
George Whitefield and the Bristol
••
gress...
John Forster (1812-1876)
Lord Bacon's Culpability.
William Nassau Molesworth.
Death of the Duke of Wellington.
William Hepworth Dixon (born in
•
.
………
1821).
Death of Admiral Blake.
The Black Man, the Red Man, the
Yellow Man.
A Hundred Years of White Pro-
•
-- ·
PAGE.
64
66
67
•
The Literary Profession and Law of
Copyright...
Alexander Dyce (1798-1869).
Professor Mason (born in 1822).
Character of Archbishop Laud.
Luther's Satan...
London Suburbs..
•
•
THEOLOGIANS.
The Tracts for the Times.
Dr. Pusey (born in 1800).
•••
**
George Stephenson at Sir Robert
·
Peel's...
Eliza Meteyard.
Henry, Lord Cockburn (1779-1854)-
Dean Ramsay (1793-1872)-R.
Chambers (1802–1871).
Edinburgh Society Eighty Years
Since ...
..
19322 23 2 32 3222228 88287
··
69
69
69
70
70
71
72
72
72
73
73
Sir James Stephen (1789-1859)..
J. P. Muirhead-S. Smiles...
The Steam-engine.
Lord Brougham's Epitaph on Watt. 86
Starting the First Railway Locomo-
tive..
Opening of the Liverpool and Man-
chester Railway....
74
75
76
77
77
79
79
$1
$2
≈2*8 8 8 27
84
88
89
92
93
Scottish Nationality.
94
.....
Picture of an Old Scottish Town...
Sir James Y. Simpson (1811-1870). 96
Indirect Value of Philosophical In-
vestigation.
96
97
J. E. Bailey-H. Crabb Robinson
Wentworth
(1775-1867) — C.
Dilke (1787-1864).
John Morley-Professor Morley-W.
Minto-C. C F. Greville………. 98
Queen Victoria's First Days of Sov-
ereignty.
99
91
..101
..102
Dr. J. H. Newman-F. W. Newman..103
Description of Athens.
Influence and Law..
• •
The Character of Christ.
The New Testament Epistles..
Napoleon Bonaparte.
Great Ideas……….
•
90 Archbishop Trench.
91
The Beautiful and the Virtuous.....105
The Jewish and Christian Churches105
Dr. Channing (1780-1842).
..
. *
Rev. Henry Blunt (1794-1843)
Dr. Kitto (1804–1854)..
Account of his Deafness..
Dr. Robert Vaughan (1795-1868)
Henry Rogers...
The Humanity of the Saviour.
Archbishop Whately (1787-1863)
First Impressions..
A Hint to Anonymous Writers.....115
The Negative Character of Calvinis-
tic Doctrines.
Expediency
Consistency.
Dr. Burton (1794-1836)
•
...
PAGE.
• • •
•
•
•
•
..103
104
D
•
·
..100
..107
..104
..108
.109
.110
.110
111
..111
112
.112
.113
.115
Edward Bickersteth (1786-1850)
Drs. Hawkins, Hinds, Hampden,
Greswell....
•
•
..124
Value of Negative Testimony
Rev. Henry Melvill (1798-1871).
The Great Multitude..
Rev. John James Blunt (1794-1855)...124
Undesigned Coincidences…..
Augustus W. Hare (1794-1834)-Julius
C. Hare (1795-1855)..
Wastefulness of Moral Gifts..
Age Lays Open the Character.
Loss of the Village Green..
..125
.125
..126
..126
126
Influence of the Reformation on the
English Language.
127
Strain at a Gnat aud Swallow a
Camel..
On Proverbs..
Dean Stanley (born in 1815)..
The Oldest Obelisk in the World....129
The Children of the Desert.... ...130
Early Celebration of the Eucharist..130
St. Paul's Manual Labour.
Conversion of St. Augustine.
The Last Encampment..
Professor Maurice (1805–1872)..
Duty and Patriotism.
·
*
.110
.117
..118
..119
..119
.119
..120
..122
..122
•
•
.127
..127
..129
.131
131
132
133
..133
•
•
•
•
Bishop Bloomfield (1786-1857), &c.....134
Rev. W. J. Conybeare (died in 1857)..134
The Varied Life of St. Paul……….
The Martyrdom of Paul..
Dean Alford (1810-1871).
The Prince Consort's Public Life...137
Recognition after Death...
The Household of a Christian.......138
.138
135
.135
..137
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
V
Dr. Rowland Williams (1817-1870)....139
Rev. F. W. Robertson (1816-1853).....140
Christian Energy
·
•
The Bible………….
The Siles and Tears of Life.
Rev. Stopford A. Brooke.
Dr. Liddon..
Dr. William Smith......
Dr. Charles John Vaughan..
Three Partings...
The Ascension..
···
The Creation...
Bishop Wilberforce (1805-1872).
The Reformation of the Church of
England.
Bishop Ellicott..
The Triumphant Entry into Jerusa-
lem.
Bishop E. Harold Browne.
Interpretation of Thirty-Nine Arti-
cles...
•
A
...
Archbishop Thomson.
The Doctrine of Reconciliation.....149
-
Dr. John Caird (born in 1823).
Character and Doctrine.
•••
2
Richard Sharp (1759-1835)..
Maxims and Reflections.
PAGE.
•
·· •
•
.141
.141
..141
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
· •
Faith and Intellect.
The Mysteries of Nature.
Isaac Taylor (1787-1865)....
Rapid Exhaustion of the Emotional
Faculties..
A
•
· * •
•
*
142
.143
144
·
Selfishness of the Anchoret..
Hebrew Figurative Theology
Rev. Thomas Dale (1797-1820).
Prof. Jowett (born in 1817).
On the Interpretation of Scripture..159
Rev. James Martineau (born in 1805).160
Nothing Human Ever Dies..
Space and Time...
Dr. Candlish (1806–1873)-Dr. Cum-
ming (born in 1809)...
Dr. Guthrie (1803–1873)..
Decadence of the Ancient Portion of
Edinburgh.
..163
▼►
Dr. Guthrie's First Interest in Rag-
ged Schcols..
Dr. Norman Macleod (1812-1872)
Life in a Highland Bothy Fifty
Years Since..
·
.145
.147
14-
.146
.147
··
•
..153
153
.154
155
[]
·
·
144
150
.152
..156
..156
.157
.158
..158
•
·
Wee Davie...
Dr. John Eadie (1813-1876).
Dr. John Tulloch (born in 1823)
Liberal English Churchmen
Div.rse Modes of Christian Thought171
149
150
.160
..161
.161
.162
.164
.165
167
169
..169
170
171
*
Dr. John Ker…...
'It Doth not yet Appear what We
shall Be'.
Mind above Matter.
·
.172
.172
.173
.173
.174
.174
175
William Maginn (1793-1842).
Epitaph on Maginn by Lockhart....176
Francis Mahony (1804-1866)
The Shandon Bells.
Sir George Head (1782-1855).
Sir Francis Bond Head (1793-1875).
Description of the Pampas
A French Commissionnaire..
The Electric Wires and Tawell the
Murderer....
T. C. Haliburton (1796-1865)
Soft Sawder and Human Natur.....181
Thomas Miller (1809-1874)-W. Hone
(1779-1842)-Miss Louisa Stuart
Costello (died in 1870)..
Mrs. Jameson (1797-1860).
Counsel to Young Ladies.
Pictures of the Madonna.
The Loves of the Poet..
The Studious Monks of the Middle
4.4
...
•
•
•
Ages...
Venice-Canaletti and Turner.
Charles Waterton (1782-1865)..
Adventure with the Snake.
Riding on a Crocodile...
Eliot Warburton (1810-1852)
Crocodile Shooting in the Nile
Nubian Revenge..
...
•••
..
•
··
•
• ··
PAGE.
175
...
•
· •
•
185
.185
.186
.187
.187
..188
..188
..189
.190
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859).
Dreams of the Opium Eater.
Joan of Arc.
..192
..195
..196
John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Character of Swift....
..196
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)
...198
•
Effects of Love and Happiness on
the Mind..
..199
·
Sea-view from the Window of a Sick
Room..
The Napiers..
The Royal Marriage Law.
Postal Reform.
Anecdote of Coleridge.
William Howitt (born in 1795)..
Extract from Forest Minstrel.
Love of the Beautiful..
→→
..176
.17/
.178
..178
...178
179
•
•
•
•
• •
•
18%
.183
.184
..184
.185
•
•
£
•
«
•
•
•
179
.180
•
..201
204
.204
.205
Mountain Children, by Mary Howitt 210
Mountains.
.205
..207
..208
..209
Country Rambles - the South of
...211
England.
.212
Rev. George Gilfillan (born in 1813)...215
Lochnagar and Byron.
The Rev. Edward Irving.
Bayard Taylor (born in 1825).
Student Life in Germany.
Herman Melville (born in 1819).
....221
Scenery of the Marquesas..
...222
First Interview with the Natives....223
William Gilmore Simms.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (born in 1803).226
Civilisation
225
...
Beauty...
215
..216
.218
.219
.226
227
PARYS.
"
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Old Age.
Mr. Ruskin (born in 1819)
→
PAGE.
223
223
229
.230
The Sky.
The Two Paths..
.232
The Dangers of National Security..230
What is Truly Practical..
The Beautiful Alone not Good or
1
Man...
··
· • ·
Precipices of the Alps.
The Fall of the Leaf..
John Sterling (1806-1814)..
The Miseries of Old Age.
The Worth of Knowledge.
Edward William Lane (1801-1876)....235
F. T. Buckland-C. Knight.
...
A. Hayward-Albany Fonblanque..236
Dr. Doran (born in 1807)
-
232
233
.233
.233
.231
.234
• •
The Style Royal and Critical..
Visit of George III. and Queen Char-
lotte to the City.
William John Thoms.
Sir Arthur Helps (1814-1875)
Advantages of Foreign Travel.....240
The Course of History.
Discovery of the Pacific Ocean 241
Great Questions of the Present Age 242
Advice to Men in Small Authority..242 |
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (born in
240
•
•
*
•
.2:6
..237
1835)..
The Noblest Delight..
Puzzling an Italian Guide.
Dr. John Brown (born in 1810)
Queen Mary's Child Garden
Malcolm M'Lennan.
William Rathboue Greg (born circa
235
237
239
.239
•
1810)..
Glorified Spirits.
Human Development.
Matthew Arnold-W. Minto-Leslie
Stephens..
.242
243
.243
244
.246
.247
SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.
Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829).
....251
The Future State of Human Beings252
Indestructibility of Mind..
Sir John Herschel (1792-1871).
"eudency and Effect of Philosophi-
cal Studies..
.247
.247
.248
.249
.353
253
256
.256
257
.258
•
A Taste for Reading.
Mrs. Mary Somerville (1780-1872)
Scene in the Campagna.
Professor J. D. Forbes (1809-1868)....259
Dr. Whewell (1794-1869)..
Wonders of the Universe.
Final Destiny of the Universe.
C. Babbage (1792-1871)-Sir George B.
Airy (born in 1801)—J. R. Hind
-J. P. Nichol (1804-1859).. .262
Adams-Grant-Proctor-Lockyer...263
The Rev. Baden Powell (1796-1860),.,264
.260
262
..262
Dr. James C. Prichard (1785-1848)
Sir William Hamilton (1788-1864).
On Mathematics
•
Dean Mansel (born in 1820).
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873).
Social Intolerance.
Sir David Brewster (1781-1867).
Is the Planet Jupiter inhabited?
Bacon and Newton..
On the Laws against Intemperance.270
The Limits of Government Interfer-
ence...
..
ᏢᎪᏀᎬ .
265
..265
267
.269
270
..270
...
••
•
Epitaph on a Scotch Jacobite..
Michael Faraday (1791-1867)...
FromChemical History of a Can-
dle'.
•
· • •
Augustus de Morgan (1806-1871.
.279
...280
Dean Swift and the Mathematicians 281
Dr. Alexander Bain (born in 1818)....282
Robert Stephenson (1803-1859). ..28
Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874) .2-13
Sir Charles Wheatstone (born in 1802)283
Dr. Buckland (1784-1856).
Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875).
Geology compared to History
.271
.273
.274
273
..278
.273
*
•
• •
• ...
The Great Earthquake of Lisbon...286
De La Beche-Mantel-Pye Smith, &c287
Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792–
.284
..284
...285
1870)....
.288
The Lower Stlurian Rocks... ...289
The Relative Value of Gold and Sil-
ver.
Пint to Geologists.
Proposed Purchase of Isle of Staffa.291
Professor Sedgwick (circa 1787-1873).291
Professor Owen..
...290
..290
The British Mammoth..
Dr. Carpenter-Dr. Elliotson.
Hugh Miller (1802–1856).
The Turning-point in Hugh Miller's
Life.
..296
...297
The Antiquity of the Globe
The Mosaic Vision of Creation.....300
The Fossil Pine-tree...
...302
The National Intellect of England
and Scotland…….
..309
Dr. Lardner-Professor Ansted-Pro-
fessor Fleming, &c..
..303
.304
Charles Darwin (born in 1809).
First Conception of Theory of Natu-
ral Selection..
..304
A Poetical View of Natural Selection 306
Utilitarianism not the Sole Motive..306
Variability...
Improvement in Flowers.
Prof. Huxley (born in 1825)..
▸
.291
..291
295
.295
.307
..308
.309
Caution to Philosophic Inquirers...310
The Objectors to Scientific Inquiry.310
The Power of Speech.
...311
Professor Max Müller (born in 1823)..311
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
vii
PAGE.
Language the Barrier between Brute
and Man..
..311
Spread of the Latin Language......312
Trofessor Tyndall (born circa 1820)...313
Freedom of Inquiry.
Advance in Science since the days
of Bishop Butler..
Herbert Spencer (born in 1820).
Professor Geikie (born in 1835)
Professor Whitney (born in 1827)………..316
Celtic Branch of Indo-European Lan-
guages..
..316
Dr. John W. Draper (born in 1811)...317
Luxuries of the Spanish Caliphs...318
George Smith (1840-1876)..
TRAVELLERS.
Lord Lindsay.
••
•
•
319
The Rev. Horatio Southgate, &c...
Religious Status of Women in the
Mohammedan System.
L
315
.315
..315
•
..318
The Red Sea..
Lieut. Arthur Conolly.
Miss Roberts-Mrs. Postans..
Sacrifice of a Hindu Widow.
Lieut. T. Bacon-Mountstuart Elphin-
stone (1778-1859)—C. R. Baynes 322
Remark by an Arab Chief.
..322
Legend of the Mosque of the Bloody
Baptism at Cairo.
..319
320
.320
.320
.321
321
Sir John Bowring..
.322
..323
State and Ceremonial of the Sia-
.323
.325
.325
326
.326
..327
George Wingrove Cooke (1814-1865)..328
The Chinese Language...
.328
The Execution-ground of Canton..323
The Horrors of the Canton Prisons 329
John Barrow-The Rev. Mr. Venables330
• ·
Captains King and Fitzroy.
George Combe.
··
An American Cymon and Iphigenia337
J. S. Buckingham (1786-1855), &c....337
314 | George Borrow (born in 1803). .33S
Impressions of the City of Madrid.538
Richard Ford (1796–1858).
Spain and Spaniards.
The Spanish Muleteers.
A. H. Layard (born in 1817)
Appearance of Nimroud.
Discovery of a Colossal Sculpture..343
City of Bagdad.
Sir C. Wentworth Dilke-J. F. Camp-
bell..
Influence of the English Race.
Brigham Young..
William Gifford Palgrave (born in
1826)...
The Arab Character
The Simoon.
mese...
John Francis Davis-Mr. Gutzlaff....34
Commander Bingham, &c...
Chinese Ladies' Feet.
………
Robert Fortune-M. Huc, &c.
Chinese Thieves..
What the Chinese think of the Euro-
peans..
Russian Peasant's Houses..
Employments of the People..
Samuel Lang. &c....
Agricultural Peasantry of Norway..332
Society of Sweden.
▼
Joseph Bullar-John Bullar.
Cultivation of the Orange
Earnest Dieffenbach-Anthony Trol-
..331
331
332
333
..334
.334
•
lope...
..335
Squatters and Free Settlers of New
Zealand...
..336
•••
The Arctic Expeditions.
•
Graves of English Seamen
Captain Burton (born in 1820)
Captains Speke and Grant.....
First View of the Nile.
เ
··
Thomas of Ercildoun..
Chaucer.
- •
...
Selden.
Swift
Mason..
Shelley...
Mrs. Inchbald..
•
· •
··
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.
Barclay.
The Complaynt of Scotland'
Lodge…….
Shakspeare..
•
•
•
Etiquette at the Court of Uganda...354
The Source of the Nile, a Summary 355
Life in Unyanyembe
.357
.358
Sir Samuel Baker (born in 1821)
First Sight of the Albert Nyanza ...359
David Livingstone (1817-1873)-Henry
M. Stanley..
PAGE.
.336
.337
...
An African Explorer's Outfit...
Hunting on a Great Scale.
English Manufacturers in South
Africa.
Meeting of Stanley and Livingstone
at Újiji..
Verrey Lovett Cameron, R. N........368
"
✰✰
340
.340
..341
.342
.342
.345
..345
..345
346
348
34%
348
.349
..351
352
D
.353
.954
.369
..362
363
363
..366
37)
371
.871
872
372
372
875
.375
.375
375
..376
Es
CYCLOPÆDIA
"
OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EIGHTH PERIOD.
-(1830–1876.).
REIGNS OF GEORGE IV. WILLIAM IV. AND QUEEN
VICTORIA.
(Continued.)
BISHOP THIRLWALL-MR. GROTE-GEO.
FINLAY-COLONEL MURE-
MR. GLADSTONE, ETC.
C
DR. CONNOP THIRLWALL contributed to Lardner's Cyclopædia' a
'History of Greece,' which extended to eight volumes, and has been
enlarged and reprinted, 1845-52, and again reprinted in 1855 in eight
volumes. It is a learned and philosophical work, evincing a thor-
ough knowledge of Greek literature and of the German commenta-
tors. Dr. Thirlwall was born in 1797, at Stepney, Middlesex, son of
the rector of Bowers-Gifford, Essex. The latter published, in 1809,
Primitiæ, or Essays and Poems on Various Subjects, Religious,
Moral, and Entertaining, by Connop Thirlwall, eleven years of age.
The future historian of Greece must ther be considered the most
precocious of English authors, eclipsing even Cowley and Pope.
But the son, probably, did not thank the father for thrusting his
childish crudities before the world. Connop Thirlwall studied at
Cambridge, and carried off high academical honours at Trinity Co-
lege. He intended following the profession of the law, and, afte
keeping his terms, was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1825
Three years' experience seems to have disgusted him with the leg
profession; he entered the church, obtained a rectory in Yorkshire,
then became dean of Brecon, and in 1840 was promoted to the see of
St. Davids. In 1874 he resigned his bishopric, in consequence of the
increasing infirmities of age. He died in 1875. Mr. Grote says that,
2
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
had Dr. Thirlwall's 'History of Greece' appeared a few years earlier,
he would probably never have conceived the design of writing his
more elaborate work.
C
C
The History of Greece' by MR. GEORGE GROTE was hailed as a
truly philosophical history. It commences with the earliest or
legendary history of Greece, and closes with the generation contem-
porary with Alexander the Great. This work extends to twelve
volumes. The first two were published in 1846; but it appears from
a letter of Niebuhr, addressed to Professor Lieber, that so early as
1827 Mr. Grote was engaged on the work. The primitive period of
Grecian history-the expedition of the Argonauts and the wars of
Thebes and Troy-he treats as merely poetical inventions. On the
subject of the Homeric poems, he holds that the Odyssey' is an
original unity, a premeditated structure and a concentration of in-
terest upon one prime hero under well-defined circumstances.' The
'Iliad,' he says, produces on his mind an impression totally different;
it 'presents the appearance of a house built upon a plan compara-
tively narrow, and subsequently enlarged by successive additions.'
He conceives that both poems are about the same age, and that age
a very early one, anterior to the First Olympiad. Passing to auth-
entic history, Mr. Grote endeavours to realize the views and feelings
of the Greeks, and not to judge of them by an English standard.
Our idea of a limited monarchy, for example, was unknown even to
the most learned of the Athenians.
Early Greek History not to be Judged by Modern Feeling.
The theory of a constitutional king, especially as it exists in England, would have
appeared to Aristotle impracticable; to establish a king who will reign without gov-
erning-in whose name all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in
practice of little or no effect-exempt from all responsibility, without making use of
the exemption-receiving from every one unmeasured demonstrations of homage,
which are never translated into act, except within the bounds of a known law-sur-
rounded with all the paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in
the hands of ministers marked out for his choice by indications which he is not at
liberty to resist. This remarkable combination of the fiction of superhuman gran-
deur and license with the reality of an invisible strait-waistcoat, is what an English-
man has in his mind when he speaks of a constitutional king. When the Greeks
thought of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as really and
truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenceless community exposed to his
oppressions; and their fear and hatred of him was measured by their reverence for a
government of equal law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole
hopes of security were associated, in the democracy of Athens more, perhaps, than
in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was one of the best in the
Greek mind. so it was also one of the most widely spread, a point of unanimity highly
valuable amidst so many points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticise it by
reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar feelings of
England respecting kingship; and it is the application, sometimes explicit, and some-
times tacit. of this unsuitable standard which renders Mr. Mitford's appreciation of
Givek politics so often incorrect and unfair.
The grea object of the historian is to penetrate the inner life of
the Greeks, and to portray their social, moral, and religious condi
tion. He traces with elaborate minuteness the rise and progress of
THIRLWALL.]
3
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
the Athenian democracy, of which he is an ardent admirer ; and
some of the Athenian institutions previously condemned, he warmly
defends. The institution of ostracism, or banishment without accu-
sation or trial, he conceives to have been necessary for the purpose
of thwarting the efforts of ambitious leaders. With this view it was
devised by Clisthenes,* and it was guarded from abuse by various
precautions, the most important of which was, that the concurrence
of one-fourth of all the citizens was required, and that those citizens
voted by ballot. The two classes of demagogues and sophists he
also vindicates, comparing the former to our popular leaders of the
Opposition in parliament, and the latter to our teachers and profes-
sors. Even Cleon, the greatest of the demagogues, he thinks has
been unfairly traduced by Thucydides and Aristophanes, particu-
larly the latter, who indulged in all the license of a comic sat-
irist. No man,' says Mr. Grote, 'thinks of judging Sir Robert Wal-
pole, or Mr. Fox, or Mirabeau from the numerous lampoons put in
circulation against them; no man will take measure of a political
Englishman from Punch' or of a Frenchman from Charivari.'
The four stages of Athenian democracy represented by Solon, Clis-
thenes, Aristides, and Pericles are carefully described and discrimin-
ated by Mr. Grote; he gives also an admirable account of the Greek
colonies; and his narrative of the Peloponnesian War-which fills
two volumes-contains novel and striking views of events, as well as
of the characters of Pericles, Alcibiades, Lysander, &c. Even the Re-
treat of the Ten Thousand, which apparently had been exhausted by
Xenophon, is told by Mr. Grote with a spirit and freshness, and so
much new illustration as to render it a deeply interesting portion of
his History. The following will give an idea of Mr. Grote's style of
*
C
narrative:
Xenophon's Address to the Army after the betrayed Grecian Generals had
been Slain by the Persians.
While their camp thus remained unmolested. every man within it was a prey to
the most agonizing apprehensions. Ruin appeared impending and inevitable, though
no one could tell in what precise form it would come. The Greeks were in the midst
of a hostile country, ten thousand stadia from home. surrounded by enemies, blocked
up by impassable mountains and rivers, without guides, without provisions. without
cavalry to aid their retreat, without generals to give orders. A stupor of sorrow and
conscious helplessness seized upon all; few came to the evening muster; few lighted
fires to cook their suppers; every man lay down to rest where he was; yet no man
could sleep, for fear, anguish and yearning after relatives whom he was never again
to behold.
Amidst the many causes of despondency which weighed down this forlorn army,
there was none more serious than the fact, that not a single man among them had
now either authority to command, or obligation to take the initiative. Nor was any
ambitious candidate likely to volunteer his pretentions, at a moment when the post
Ka
.
* One peculiarity of Mr. Grote was, spelling the Greek names after the German
fashion: Clisthenes is Kleisthenes; Socrates is 'Sokrates;' Alcibiades, Alkibi-
adês;' Aristides, 'Aristeidès: &c. All this appears unnecessary, and is a sort of pe-
dantic trifling unworthy of a gre it historian.
•
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
ps for det vara for
promised nothing but the maximum of difficulty as well as of hazard. A new, self-
kindled light, and self-originated stimulus, was required to vivify the embers of the
suspended hope and action in a mass paralysed for the moment, but every way capa-
ble of effort; and the inspiration now fell, happily for the army, upon one in whom a
full measure of soldierly strength and courage was combined with the education of
an Athenian, a democrat, and a phi.sopher.
Xenophon had equipped himself in his finest military costume at this his first.
official appearance before the army, when the scales seemed to tremble between life
aud death. Taxing up the protest of Kleanor against the treachery of the Persians,
he insisted that any attempt to enter into convention or trust with such liars would
be utter ruin; but that, if energetic resolution were taken to deal with them only at
the point of the sword, and punish their misdeeds, there was good hope of the favour
of the gods and of ultimate preservation. As be pronounced this last word one of
the soldiers near him happened to sueeze immediately the whole army around
shouted with one accord the accustomed invocation to Zeus the Preserver; and
Xenophon, taking up the accident, continuel: Since, gentlemen, this omen from
Zeus the Preserver has appeared at the instaut when we were talking about preserva-
tion, let us here vow to offer the preserving sacrifice to that god, and at the same
time to sacrifice to the remaining gods as well as we can, in the first friendly country
which we may reach. Let every man who agrees with me hold up his hand.' All
held up their hands: all then joined in the vow, and shouted the pæan.
↓
This accident, so dexteriously turned to profit by the rhetorical skill of Xenophon,
was eminently beneficial in raising the army out of the depression which weighed
them down, and in disposing them to listen to his animating appeal. Repeating his
assurances that the gods were ou their side, and hostile to their perjured enemy, he
recalled to their memory the great invasious of Greece by Darius and Xerxes-how
the vast hosts of Persia had been disgracefully repelled. The army had shewn them-
selves on the field of Kunaxa worthy of such forefathers; and they would, for the
future, be yet bolder, knowing by that battle, of what stuff the Persians were made.
As for Ariæus and his troops, alike traitors and cowards, their desertion was rather a
gain than a loss. The enemy were superior in horsemen: but men on horseback were,
after all, only men, half occupied in the fear of losing their seats, incapable of pre-
vailing against infantry firm on the ground, and only better able to run away. Now
that the satrap refused to furnish them with provisions to buy, they on their side were
released from their covenant, and would take provisions without buying. Then as to
the rivers; those were indeed difficult to be crossed, in the middle of their course;
but the army would march up to their sources, and could then pass them without
wetting the knee. Or, indeed, the Greeks might renounce the idea of retreat, and
establish themselves permanently in the king's own country, defying all his force,
like the Mysians and Pisidiaus. If,' said Xenophon, we plant ourselves here at our
ease in a rich country, with these tall, stately, and beautiful Median and Persian wo-
men for our companions, we shall be only too ready, like the Lotophagi, to forget our
way home. We ought first to go back to Greece, and tell our countrymen that if
they remain poor, it is their own fault, when there are rich settlements in this country
awaiting all who choose to come, and who have courage to seize them. Let us burn
our baggage-wagons and tents, and carry with us nothing but what is of the
strictest necessity. Above all things, let us maintain order, discipline, and obedience
to the commanders, upon which our entire hope of safety depends. Let every man
promise to lend his hand to the commanders in punishing any disobedient indi-
viduals; and let us thus shew the enemy that we have ten thousand persons like
Klearchus, instead of that one whom they have so perfidiously seized. Now is the
time for action. If any man, however obscure, has anything better to suggest let him
come forward and state it; for we have all but one object-the common safety.'
It appears that no one else desired to say a word, and that the speech of Xeno-
phon gave unqualified satisfaction; for when Cheirisophus put the question, that the
neeting should sanction his recommendations, and finally elect the new generals
proposed-every man held up his hand. Xenophon then moved that the army
should break up immediately, and march to some well-stored villages, rather more
than two miles distant; that the march should be in a hollow oblong, with the bag-
gage in the centre; hat Cheirisophus, as a Lacedæmonian, should lead the van;
while Kleanor and the other senior officers would command on each flank; and him-
self with Timasion, as the two youngest of the generals, would lead the rear-guard.
THIRLWALL.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
5
In the later volumes we have an equally interesting and copious
account of the career of Epaminondas-the Washington of Greece;
the struggles of Demosthenes against Philip; and the success of
Timoleon. The historian's fullness of detail and the ethical interest
he imparts to his work, with the associations connected with the
heroic events he relates, and the great names that have
Gone glittering through the dream of things that were,
render the whole the most noble and affecting record in the history
of humanity. From the epoch of Alexander the Great, Mr. Grote
dates not only the extinction of Grecian political freedom and self-
action, but also the decay of productive genius, and the debasement
of that consummate literary and rhetorical excellence which the
fourth century before Christ had seen exhibited in Plato and Demos-
thenes.' There was, however, one branch of intellectual energy
which continued to flourish, comparatively little impaired under the
preponderance of the Macedonian sword -the spirit of speculation
and philosophy, and to this subject Mr. Grote proposed to devote a
separate work. His History was completed in 1856, the author being
then in his sixty-second year. In 1866 appeared 'Plato and the other
Companions of Sokrates,' three volumes, a work which fully sus-
tained the author's fame.
Mr. Grote was of German ancestry. His grandfather, the first of
the family that settled in England, established the banking-house that
still bears the name of Grote as one of the founders, and the historian
was for some time employed in the bank. He sat in parliament as
one of the representatives of the city of London from 1832 till 1841,
and was known as a Radical Reformer and supporter of vote by bal-
lot. His annual motion in favour of the ballot was always prefaced
by a good argumentative speech, and he wrote one or two political
pamphlets and essays in the Reviews. Sydney Smith sarcastically
said: Mr. Grote is a very worthy, honest, and able man; and if the
world were a chess-board, would be an important politician.'
(
Mr.
rote died June 18, 1871, aged seventy-seven. A memoir of the his-
torian has been published by his widow.
Character of Dion.
Apart from wealth and high position, the personal character of Dion was in itself.
marked and prominent. He was of an energetic temper, great bravery and very con-
siderable mental capacities. Though his nature was haughty and disdainful towards
individuals, yet as to political communion, his ambition was by no means purely
self-seeking and egotistic, like that of the elder Dionysius. Animated with vehe-
inent love of power, he was at the same time penetrated with that sense of regulated
polity and submission of individual will to fixed laws, which floated in the atmos-
phere of Grecian talk and literature, and stood so high in Grecian morality. He
was, moreover, capable of acting with enthusiasm, and braving every hazard in
prosecution of his own convictions.
when
Born about the year 408 B.C., Dion was twenty-one years of age in 387 B.C.,
lder Dionysius, having dismantled Rhegium and subdued Kroton, attained the
maximum of his dominion, as master of the Sicilian and Italiau Greeks. Standing
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
high in the favour of his brother-in-law Dionysius, Dion doubtless took part in the
wars whereby this large dominion had been acquired; as well as in the life of indul
gence and luxury which prevailed generally among wealthy Greeks in Sicily and
Italy, and which to the Athenian Plato appeared alike surprising and repulsive.
That great philosopher visited Italy and Sicily about 387 B.C. He was in acquaint-
ance and fellowship with the school of philosophers called Pythagoreans; the rem-
nant of the Pythagorean brotherhood, who had once exercised so powerful a
political influence over the cities of those regions, and who still enjoyed considerable
reputation, even after complete political downfall, through individual ability and
rank of the members, combined with habits of recluse study, mysticism, and attach-
ment among themselves.
With these Pythagoreans Dion also, a young man of open mind and ardent aspir-
ations, was naturally thrown into communication by the proceedings of the elder
Dionysius in Italy. Through them he came into intercourse with Plato, whose con-
versation made an epoch in his life.
The mystic turn of imagination, the sententious brevity, and the mathematical
researches of the Pythagoreans, produced doubtless an imposing effect upon Dion;
just as Lysis, a member of_that brotherhood, had acquired the attachment and in-
fluenced the sentiments of Epaminondas at Thebes. But Plato's power of working
upon the minds of young men was far more impressive and irresistible. He posses-
sed a large range of practical experience, a mastery of political and social topics,
and a charm of eloquence, to which the Pythagoreans were strangers. The stirring
effects of the Socratic talk, as well as of the democratical atmosphere in which Plato
had been brought up, had developed all the communicative aptitude of his mind;
and great as that aptitude appears in his remaining dialogues, there is ground for
believing that it was far greater in his conversation. Brought up as Dion had been at
the court of Dionysius-accustomed to see around him only slavish deference and
luxurious enjoyment-unused to open speech or large philosophical discussion-he
found in Plato a new man exhibited, and a new world opened before him.
As the stimulus from the teacher was here put forth with consummate efficacy,
so the predisposition of the learner enabled it to take full effect. Dion became an
altered man both in public sentiment and in individual behaviour. He recollected
that, twenty years before, his country, Syracuse, had been as free as Athens. He
learned to abhor the iniquity of the despotism by which her liberty had been over-
thrown, and by which subsequently the liberties of so many other Greeks in Italy
and Sicily had beeu trodden down also. He was made to remark that Sicily had
been half barbarised through the foreign mercenaries imported as the despots'
instruments. He conceived the sublime idea or dream of rectifying all this accumu-
lation of wrong and suffering. It was his first wish to cleanse Syracuse from the
blot of slavery, and to clothe her anew in the brightness and dignity of freedom, yet
not with the view of restoring the popular government as it had stood prior to the
usurpation. but of establishing an improved constitutional polity, originated by
himself, with laws which should not only secure individual rights, but also educate
and moralise the citizens. The function which he imagined to himself, and which
the conversation of Plato suggested, was not that of a despot like Dionysius. but
that of a despotic legislator like Lycurgus, taking advantage of a momentary
omnipotence, conferred upon him by grateful citizens in a state of public confusion,
to originate a good system, which when once put in motion, would keep itself alive by
fashioning the minds of the citizens to its own intrinsic excellence. After having
thus both liberated and reformed Syracuse, Dion promised to himself that he would
employ Syracusan force, not in annihilating, but in recreating, other free Hellenic
communities throughout the island, expelling from thence all the barbarians-both
the imported mercenaries and the Carthaginians.
MR. GEORGE FINLAY, an English merchant at Athens, wrote seve-
ral works-concise, but philosophical in spirit, and containing origi-
nal views and information-relative to the history of Greece. His
first was 'Greece under the Romans.' (1845); History of the Byzan-
tine Empire,' from 716 to 1057 (1853), and continued to 1453 A.D.,
(1854); Mediæval Greece and Trebizond' to 1461; and the 'History
(
C
FINLAY.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
of Greece under the Othoman and Venetian Domination,' from 1453
to 1-21 (1856). Mr. Finlay died in 1875, the last survivor of the small
band of enthusiasts who went out to Greece to join Lord Byron and
the Philhellenes. He acted for some years as correspondent of the
'Times' in Athens.
Vicissitudes of Nations.
The vicissitudes which the great masses of the nations of the earth have under-
gone in past ages have hithertō received very little attention from historians, who
have adorned their pages with the records of kings, and the personal exploits of
priuces and great men, or attached their narrative to the fortunes of the dominant
classes, without noticing the fate of the people. History, however, continually re-
peats the lesson that power, numbers, and the highest civilisation of an aristocracy,
àre, even when united, insufficient to insure national prosperity, and establish the
powers of the rulers on so firm and permanent a basis as shall guarantee the domi-
nant class from annihilation. On the other hand, it teaches us that conquered tribes,
destitute of all these advantages, may continue to perpetuate their existence in mis-
ery and contempt. It is that portion only of mankind which eats bread raised from
the soil by the sweat of its brow, that can form the basis of a permanent national ex-
istence. The history of the Romans and of the Jews illustrates these facts. Yet even
the cultivation of the soil cannot always insure a race from destruction, for muta-
bility is nature's bane.' The Thracian race has disappeared. The great Celtic race
has dwindled away, and seems hastening to complete absorption in the Anglo-Saxon.
The Hellenic race, whose colonies extended from Marseille to Bactria. and from the
Cimmerian Bosphorus to the coast of Cyrenaica, has become extinct in many coun-
tries where it once formed the bulk of the population, as in Magna Græcia and Sicily.
On the other hand, mixed races have arisen, and, like the Albanians and Vallachians,
have intruded themselves into the ancient seats of the Hellenes. But these revolu-
tions and changes in the population of the globe imply no degradation of mankind,
as some writers appear to think, for the Romans and English afford examples that
mixed races may attain as high a degree of physical power and mental superiority as
has ever been reached by races of the purest blood in ancient or modern times.
(
A different view of the Homeric question from that entertained by
Mr. Grote, and also of some portions of Athenian history, has been
taken by WILLIAM MURE, Esq., of Caldwell, (1799-1860), in his able
work, A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient
Greece,' four volumes, 1850-53. Colonel Mure had travelled in
Greece; and in the Journal,' of his tour-published in 1842-had
entered into the Homeric controversy, especially with regard to the
supposed localities of the 'Odyssey,' and had adduced several illustra-
A sound
tions of the poems from his observation and studies.
scholar, and chiefly occupied on Greek literature and history for a
period of twenty years, he brought to his Critical History' a degree
of knowledge perhaps not excelled by that of Mr. Grote, but tinc-
tured by political opinions directly opposite to those of his brother
Hellenist. His examination of the Iliad' and 'Odyssey' occupies
a considerable portion of his 'History,' and the general conclusion
at which he arrives is, that each poem was originally composed, in
its substantial integrity, as we now possess it. We give one short
specimen of Colonel Mure's analysis.
The Unity of the Homeric Poems.
It is probable that, like most other great painters of human nature, Homer was
indebted to previous tradition for the original sketches of his principal heroes.
These sketches, however, could have been little more than outlines, which, as worked
8
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
C
up into the finished portraits of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' must rank as his own
genuine productions. In every branch of imitative art, this faculty of representing
to the life the moral phenomena of our nature, in their varied phases of virtue, vice,
weakness, or eccentricity, is the highest and rarest attribute of genius, and rarest of
all as exercised by Homer through the medium of dramatic action, where the charac-
ters are never formally described, but made to develop themselves by their own lan-
guage and conduct. It is this, among his many great qualities, which chiefly raises
Homer above all other poets of his own class; nor, with the single exception, perhaps,
of the great English dramatist, has any poet ever produced so numerous and spirited
a variety of original characters, of different ages, ranks, and sexes. Still more peculiar
to himself than their variety, is the unity of thought, feeling, and expression, often of
minute phraseology, with which they are individually sustained, and yet with-
out an appearance of effort on the part of their author. Each describes himself spon-
taneously when brought on the scene, just as the automata of Vulcan in the Odys-
sey,' though indebted to the divine artist for the mechanism on which they move, ap-
pear to perform their functions by their own unaided powers. That any two or more
poets should simultaneously have conceived such a character as Achilles, is next to
impossible. Still less credible is it, that the different parts of the 'Iliad,' where the
hero successively appears as the same sublime ideal being, under the influence of the
same combination of virtues, failings, and passions-thinking, speaking, acting, and
suffering, according to the same single type of heroic grandeur-can b. the produc-
tion of more than a single mind. Such evidence is, perhaps, even stronger in the
case of the less prominent actors, in so far as it is less possible that different artists
should simultaneously agree in their portraits of mere subordinate incidental person-
ages, than of heroes whose renown may have rendered their characters a species of
public property. Two poets of the Elizabethan age might, without any concert,
have harmonised to a great extent in their portrait of Henry V.; but that the corre-
spondence should have extended to the imaginary companions of his youth-the Fal-
staffs, Pistols, Bardolphs, Quickleys-were incredible. But the nicest shades of pe-
culiarity in the inferior actors of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' are conceived and main-
tained in the same spirit of distinction as in Achilles or Hector.
Colonel Mure's work was left incomplete.
His fourth volume
enters on the attic period of Greek literature-the great era of the
drama and the perfection of Greek prose-from the usurpation of
Pisistratus at Athens, 560 B. C., to the death of Alexander the Great,
323 B.C. He gives an account of the origin and early history of
Greek prose composition, and an elaborate biographical and critical
study of Herodotus, reserving for future volumes the later Greek
prose authors and Attic poets. A fifth volume was published, and
at the time of his death he was engaged on a sixth, devoted to the
Attic drama. Colonel Mure derived his title from being commander
of the Renfrewshire Militia. His family had long been settled in the
counties of Ayr and Renfrew, and he himself was born at the patri-
monial property of Caldwell in Ayrshire. He was an excellent coun-
try gentleman as well as accomplished scholar and antiquary.
Another and more distinguished votary of Greek literature is the
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P., who, in 1858, published
'Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age,' three volumes. Mr. Glad
stone does not enter into any detailed criticism of the 'Iliad' or 'Odys-
sey;' he deals with the geography, history, and chronology of the
poems, maintaining the credibility of Homer as the delineator of an
age, and finding also fragments of revealed religion in his system of
mythology. He traces the notion of a Logos in Minerva, the Deliv-
erer in Apollo, the Virgin in Latona, and even the rainbow of the
MURE.]
9
ENGLISH LITERATURË.
Old Testament in Iris; while the principle of Evil acting by deceit,
This certainly
he conceives to be represented in the Homeric Atè.
appears to be fanciful, though supported by Mr. Gladstone's remark-
One volume of
able subtlety of intellect and variety of illustration.
the work is devoted to Olympus, and another to establish Homer's
right to be considered the father of political science. In supporting
his different hypothesis, we need not say that Mr. Gladstone evinces
great ingenuity and a refined critical taste. His work is indeed a cy:
clopædia of Homeric illustration and classic lore.
-
The World of Homer a World of His Own.
The Greek mind, which became one of the main factors of the civilised life of
Christendom, cannot be fully comprehended without the study of Homer, and is
nowhere so vividly or so sincerely exhibited as in his works. He has a world of his
own, into which, upon his strong wing, he carries us. There we find ourselves
amidst a system of ideas, feelings, and actions different from what are to be found
anywhere else, and forming a new and distinct standard of humanity. Many among
them seem as if they were then shortly about to be buried under a mass of ruins. in
order that they might subsequently reappear, bright and fresh for application, among
later generations of men. Others of them almost carry us back to the early morning
of our race, the hours of its greater simplicity and purity, and inore free intercourse
with God. In much that this Homeric world exhibits, we see the taint of sin at
work, but far, as yet, from its perfect work and its ripeness; it stands between
Paradise and the vices of later heathenism, far from both, from the latter as well as
the former, and if among all earthly knowledge the knowledge of man be that which
we should chiefly court, and if to be genuine it should be founded upon experience,
how is it possible to overvalue this primitive representative of the human race in a
form complete, distinct, and separate with its own religion, ethics, policy, history,
arts, manners, fresh and true to the standard of its nature, like the form of an infaut
from the hand of the Creator, yet mature, full and finished, in its own sense, after its
own laws, like some master-piece of the sculptor's art.
<
<
We may notice here a work now completed, A History of the
Literature of Ancient Greece,' by K. O. MULLER, continued after
the author's death by J. W. DONALDSON, D.D., three volumes, 1858.
Dr. Donaldson's portion of the work embraces the period from the
foundation of the Socratic schools to the taking of Constantinople
by the Turks. The work is altogether a valuable one-concise with-
out being dry or meagre. A History of Greece, mainly based upon
that of Dr. Thirlwall,' by DR. L. SCHMITZ, principal of the Inter-
national College, London (1851), is well adapted for educational pur-
poses: it comes down to the destruction of Corinth, 146 P.C. Dr.
Schmitz is author of a popular History of Rome' (1847), and a
Manual of Ancient History' to the overthrow of the Western Em-
pire, 476 A.D. He has also translated Niebuhr's Lectures. Few for-
eigners have acquired such a mastery of the English language as Dr.
Schmitz.
↓
EARL STANHOPE.
PHILIP HENRY, EARL STANHOPE, when Lord Mahon, commenced
<
a History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle (1713-1783). The first volume appeared in 1836, and
10
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
the work ultimately extended to seven volumes, of which a second
edition has since been published. The period of seventy years thus
copiously treated had been included in Smollett's hasty, voluminous
History, but the ground was certainly not pre-occupied. Great addi-
tional information had also been accumulated in Coxe's Lives of
Marlborough and Walpole, Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of
George II., the Stuart Papers, the Suffolk and Hardwicke Correspon-
dence, and numerous other sources. In the early portion of his work
-the Queen Anne period-there is a strong and abiding interest de-
rived from the great names engaged in the political struggles of the
day, and the nearly equal strength of the parties. Lord Mahon thus
sketches the contending factions:
Whig and Tory in the Reign of Queen Anne.
At that period the two great contending parties were distinguished, as at present,
by the nicknames of Whig and Tory. But it is very remarkable that in Queen
Anne's reign the relative meaning of these terms was not only different but opposite
to that which they bore at the accession of William IV. In theory, indeed, the main
principle of each continues the same. The leading principle of the Tories is the
dread of popular licentiousness. The leading principle of the Whigs is the dread of
royal encroachment. It may, thence, perhaps, be deduced that good and wise men
would attach themselves either to the Whig or to the Tory party, according as there
seemed to be the greater danger at that particular period from despotism or from democ-
racy. The same persou who would have been a Whig in 1712 would have been a Tory in
1830. For, on examination, it will be found that, in nearly all particulars, a modern
Tory resembles a Whig of Queen Anne's reign, and a Tory of Queen Anne's reign a
modern Whig.
First as to the Tories. The Tories of Queen Anne's reign pursued a most un-
ceasing opposition to a just and glorious war against France. They treated the great
general of the age as their peculiar adversary. To our recent enemies, the French,
their policy was supple and crouching. They had an indifference, or even an aver-
sion, to our old allies the Dutch; they had a political leaning towards the Roman
Catholics at home; they were supported by the Roman Catholics in their elections;
they had a love of triennial parliaments, in preference to septennial; they attempted
to abolish the protecting duties and restrictions of commerce; they wished to favour
our trade with France at the expense of our trade with Portugal; they were sup-
ported by a faction whose war-cry was 'Repeal of the Union,' in a sister-kingdom.
To serve a temporary purpose in the House of Lords, they had recourse-for the first
time in our annals-to a large and overwhelming creation of peers. Like the Whigs
in May 1831, they chose the moment of the highest popular passion and excitement
to dissolve the House of Commons, hoping to avail themselves of a short-lived cry
for the purpose of permauent delusion. The Whigs of Queen Anne's time, on the
other hand, supported that splendid war which led to such victories as Ramillies and
Blenheim. They had for a leader the great man who gained those victories; they
advocated the old principles of trade; they prolonged the duration of parliaments;
they took their stand on the principles of the Revolution of 1688; they raised the
cry of No Popery;' they loudly inveighed against the subserviency to France, the
desertion of our old allies, the outrage wrought upon the peers, the deceptions prac-
tised upon the sovereign, and the other measures of the Tory administration. Such
were the Tories, and such were the Whigs of Queen Anne.
เ
We give a specimen of the noble historian's character-painting:
Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender.
Charles Edward Stuart is one of those characters that cannot be portrayed at a
single sketch, but have so greatly altered, as to require a new delineation at different
periods. View him in his later years, and we behold the ruins of intemperance-as
STANHOPE.]
11
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
wasted but not as venerable as those of time; we find him in his anticipated age a
besotted drunkard, a peevish husband, a tyrannical master-his understanding de-
based, and his temper soured. But not such was the Charles Stuart of 1745. Not
such was the gallant Prince full of youth, of hope, of courage, who, landing with
seven men in the wilds of Moidart, could rally a kingdom round his banner, and
scatter his foes before him at Preston and at Falkirk. Not such was the gay and
courtly host of Holyrood. Not such was he, whose endurance of fatigue and eager-
ness for battle shone pre-eminent, even amongst Highland chiefs; while tairer critics
proclaimed him the most winning in conversation, the most graceful in the dance!
Can we think lowly of one who could acquire such unbounded popularity in so few
months, and over so noble a nation as the Scots; who could so deeply stamp his
image on their hearts that, even thirty or forty years after his departure, his name,
as we are told, always awakened the most ardent praises from all who had known
him the most rugged hearts were seen to melt at his remembrance-and tears to
steal down the furrowed cheeks of the veteran ? Let us, then, without denying the
faults of his character, or extenuating the degradation of his age, do justice to the
lustre of his manhood.
The person of Charles-I begin with this for the sake of female readers—was tall
and well formed; his limbs athletic and active. He excelled in all manly exercises,
and was inured to every kind of toil, especially long marches on foot, having applied
himself to field-sports in Italy, and become an excellent walker. His face was strik-
ingly handsome, of a perfect oval and a fair complexion; his eyes light-blue; his fea-
tures high and noble. Contrary to the custom of the time, which prescribed perukes,
his own fair hair usually fell in long ringlets on his neck. This goodly person was en-
hanced by his graceful manners; frequently condescending to the most familiar
kindness, yet always shielded by a regal dignity, he had a peculiar talent to please
and to persuade, and never failed to adapt his conversation to the taste or to the sta-
tion of those whom he addressed. Yet he owed nothing to his education: it had
been intrusted to Sir Thomas Sheridan, an Irish Roman Catholic, who has not es-
caped the suspicion of being in the pay of the British government, and at their insti•
gation betraying his duty as a teacher. I am bound to say that, I have found co
corroboration of so foul a charge. Sheridan appears to me to have lived and died a
man of honour; but history can only acquit him of base perfidy by accusing him of
gross neglect. He had certainly left his pupil uninstructed in the most common elc-
ments of knowledge. Charles's letters, which I have seen amongst the Stuart Papers,
are written in a large, rude, rambling hand like a school-boy's. In spelling, they
are still more deficient. With him humour,' for example, becomes UMER; the
weapon he knew so well how to wield, is a SORD; and even his own father's name
appears under the alias of GEMS. Nor are these errors confined to a single lan-
guage: who, to give another instance from his French-would recognize a hunting
knife in cooTO DE CHAS? I can, therefore, readily believe that, as Dr. King assures
us, he knew very little of the history or constitution of England But the letters of
Charles, while they prove his want of education, no less clearly display his natural
powers, great energy of character, and great warmth of heart. Writing confidenti-
ally, just before he sailed for Scotland, he says: I made my devotions on Pentecost
Day, recommending myself particularly to the Almighty on this occasion to guide
and direct me, and to continue to me always the same sentiments, which are rather
to suffer anything than fail in any of my duties.' His young brother, Henry of
York, is mentioned with the utmost tenderness; and, though on his return from
Scotland, he conceived that he had reason to complain of Henry's coldness and re-
serve, the fault is lightly touched upon, and Charles observes that, whatever may be
his brother's want of kindness, it shall never diminish his own. To his father his
tone is both affectionate and dutiful: he frequently acknowledges his goodness;
and when, at the outset of his great enterprise of 1745, he entreats a blessing from
the pope, surely the sternest Romanist might forgive him for adding, that he shall
think a blessing from his parent more precious and more holy still. As to his friends
and partisans, Prince Charles has been often accused of not being sufficiently moved
by their sufferings, or grateful for their services. Bred up amidst monks and big-
ots, who seemed far less afraid of his remaining excluded from power, than that on
gaining he should use it liberally, he had been taught the highest notions of preroga-
tive and hereditary right. From thence he might infer that those who served him in
Scotland did no more than their duty; were merely fulfilling a plain social
12
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876
obligation; and were not, therefore, entitled to any very especial praise
and admiration. Yet, on the other hand, we must remember how pronę
are all exiles to exaggerate their own desert, to think no rewards sufficient for it, and
to complain of neglect even where none really exists; and moreover that, in point of
fact, many passages from Charles's most familiar correspondeuce might be adduced
to shew a watchful and affectionate care for his adherents. As a very young man, he
determined that he would sooner submit to personal privation than embarrass his
friends by contracting debts. On returning from Scotland, he told the French min-
ister, D'Argenson, that he would never ask anything for himself, but was ready to go
down on his knees to obtain favours for his brother-exiles. Once, after lamenting
some divisions and misconduct amongst his servants, he declares that, nevertheless,
an honest man is so highly to be prized that, unless your majesty orders me, I should
part with them with a sore heart. Nay, more, as it appears to me, this warm feeling
of Charles for his unfortunate friends survived almost alone, when, in his decline of
life, nearly every other noble quality had been dimmed and defaced from his mind.
In 1783, Mr. Greathead, a personal friend of Mr. Fox, succeeded in obtaining an in-
terview with him at Roine. Being alone with him for some time, the English travel-
ler studiously led the conversation to his enterprise in Scotland. The Prince shewed
some reluctance to enter upon the subject, and seemed to suffer much pain at the re-
membrance; but Mr. Greathead, with more of curiosity than of discretion, still per-
severed. At length, then, the Prince appeared to shake off the load which oppressed
him; his eye brightened, his face assumed unwonted animation; and he began the
Darrative of his Scottish campaigns with a vehement energy of mauuer, recounting
hie marches, his battles, his victories, and his defeat; his hairbreadth escapes, aud
the inviolable and devoted attachment to his Highland followers, and at length pro-
ceeding to the dreadful penalties which so many of them had subsequently under-
gone. But the recital of their sufferings appeared to wound him far more deeply
than his own; then, and not till then, his fortitude forsook him, his voice faltered,
his eye became fixed, and he fell to the floor in convulsions. At the noise, in rushed
the Duchess of Albany, his illegitimate daughter, who happened to be in the next
apartment. 'Sir,' she exclaimed to Mr. Greathead, what is this? You must have
been speaking to my father about Scotland and the Highlanders? No one dares to
mention these subjects in his presence.'
6
¿
Once more, however, let me turn from the last gleams of the expiring flame to the
hours of its meridian brightness. In estimating the abilities of Prince Charles, I
may first observe that they stood in most direct contrast to his father's. Each ex-
celled in what the other wanted. No man could express himself with more clear-
ness and elegance than James; it has been said of him that he wrote better than
any of those whom he employed; but, on the other hand, bis conduct was always
deficient in energy and enterprise. Charles, as we have seen, was no penman: while
in action-in doing what deserves to be written, and not in merely writing what de-
serves to be read-he stood far superior. He had some experience of war-baving,
when very young, joined the Spanish army at the siege of Gaeta, and distinguished
biraself on that occasion-and he loved it as the birthright both of a Sobieski and a
Strart. His quick intelligence, his promptness of decision, and his contempt of
danger, are recorded on unquestionable testimony. His talents as a leader probably
never rose above the common level; yet, in some cases in Scotland, where he and
his more practised officers differed in opinion, it will, I think, appear that they were
wrong and he was right. No knight of the olden time could have a loftier sense of
honour; indeed he pushed it to such wild extremes, that it often led him into error
and misfortune. Thus he lost the battle of Culloden in a great measure because he
disdained to take advantage of the ground, and deemed it more chivalrous to meet the
enemy on equal terms. Thus, also, his wilful and froward conduct at the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle proceeded from a false point of honour, which he thought involved
in it. At other times, again, this generous spirit may deserve unmingled praise; he
could never be persuaded or provoked into adopting any harsh measures of retalia-
tion; his extreme lenity to his prisoners, even to such as had attempted his life, was,
it seems, a common matter of complaint among his troops; and even when encour-
agement had been given to his assassination, and a price put upon his head, he con-
tinued most earnestly to urge that in no possible case should 'the Elector,' as he
called his rival, suffer any personal injury or insult. This anxiety was always present
in his mind. Mr. Forsyth, a gentleman whose description of Italy is far the best that
STANHOPE.]
13
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
has appeared. and whose scrupulous accuracy and superior means of information will
be acknowledged by all travellers, relates how, only a few years after the Scottish ex-
pedition, Charles, relying on the faith of a single adherent, set out for London in au
humble disguise, and under the name of Smith. On arriving there, he was intro-
duced at midnight into a room full of conspirators whom he had never previously
seen. Here,' said his conductor, 'is the person you want,' and left him locked up
in the mysterious assembly. These were men who imagined themselves equal,
at that time, to treat with him for the throne of England. Dispose of me, gentle-
men, as you please,' said Charles; my life is in your power, and I therefore can sti-
pulate for nothing. Yet give me. I entreat, one solemn promise, that if your design
should succeed, the present family shall be sent safely and honourably home.'
(
-
•
Another quality of Charles's mind was great firmness of resolution, which pride
and sorrow afterwards hardened into sullen obstinacy. He was likewise at all times.
prone to gusts and sallies of anger, when his language became the more peremptory,
from a haughty consciousness of his adversities. I have found among his papers a
note without direction, but no doubt intended for some tardy officer. It contained only
these words: I order you to execute my orders, or else never to come back.' Such
harshness might, probably, turn a wavering adherent to the latter alternative. Thus,
also, his public expressions of resentment against the court of France, at different
periods, were certainly far more just than politic. There seemed always swelling at
his heart a proud determination that no man should dare to use him the worse for
his evil fortune, and that he should sacrifice anything or everything sooner than his
dignity.
This is a portrait of Charles Edward as he appeared in his prime.
In a subsequent volume, Lord Stanhope gives a sketch of him in his
latter years, part of which we subjoin:
An English lady who was at Rome in 1770 observes: 'The Pretender is naturally
above the middle size, but stoops excessively; he appears bloated and red in the
face; his countenance heavy and sleepy, which is attributed to his having given
into excess of drinking; but, when a young man, he must have been esteemed
handsome. His complexion is of the fair tint, his eyes blue, his hair light-brown,
and the contour of his face a long oval; he is by no means thin, has a noble person,
and a graceful manner. His dress was scarlet, laced with broad gold-lace; he wears
the blue riband outside of his coat, from which depends a cameo antique, as large
as the palm of my hand; and he wears the same garter and motto as those of the
noble Order of St. George in England. Upon the whole, he has a melancholy,
mortified appearance. Two gentlemen constantly attend him; they are of Irish
extraction, and Roman Catholics you may be sure. At Princess Palestrina's he
asked me if I understood the game of tarrochi, which they were about to play at.
I answered in the negative: upon which, taking the pack in his hands, he desired to
kuow if I had ever seen such odd cards. I replied that they were very odd indeed,
He then, displaying them, said: "Here is everything in the world to be found in
these cards-the sun, moon, the stars; and here," says he, throwing me a card, "is
the pope; here is the devil; and," added he, there is but one of the trio wanting,
and you know who that should be!" [The Pretender]. I was so amazed, so astonished,
though he spoke this last in a laughing, good-humoured manner, that I did not know
which way to look; and as to a reply, 1 made none.'
(
In his youth, Charles, as we have seen, had formed the resolution of marrying
only a Protestant princess: however, he remained single during the greater part of
his career; and when, in 1754, he was urged by his father to take a wife, he replied:
The unworthy behaviour of certain ministers, the 10th of December 1748, has put
it out of my power to settle anywhere without honour or interest being at stake; and
were it even possible for me to find a place of abode, I think our family have had
sufferings enough, which will always hinder me to marry, so long as in misfortune,
for that would only conduce to increase misery, or subject any of the family that
should have the spirit of their father to be tied neck and heel, rather than yield to a
vile ministry.' Nevertheless, in 1772, at the age of fifty-two, Charles espoused a
Roman Catholic, and a girl of twenty, Princess Louisa of Stolberg. This uuion
proved as unhappy as it was ill assorted. Charles treated his young wife with very
little kindness. He appears, in fact, to have contracted a disparaging opinion of her
14
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
'As
sex in general; and I have found, in a paper of his writing about that period:
for men, I have studied them closely; and were I to live till fourscore, I could scarcely
know them better than now; but as for women, I have thought it useless, they being
so much more wicked and impenetrable.' Ungenerous and ungrateful words!
Surely, as he wrote them, the image of Flora Macdonald should have risen in his
heart and restrained his pen!
<
C
The History of Lord Stanhope, in style and general merit, may
rank with Mr. P. F. Tytler's History of Scotland.'
History of Scotland.' The narrative
is easy and flowing, and diligence has been exercised in the collec-
tion of facts. The noble historian is also author of a History of
the War of the Succession in Spain,' one volume, 1832; a 'Life of
the Great Prince Condé,' 1845; a Life of Belisarius,' 1848; a volume
of Historical Essays,' contributed to the Quarterly Review,' and
containing sketches of Joan of Arc, Mary, Queen of Scots, the Mar-
quis of Montrose, Frederick II., &c. His lordship has also edited
the Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield,' four volumes, 1845, and
was one of the executors of Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wel-
lington. In conjunction with Mr. E. Caldwell, M. P., Lord Stanhope
published Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel,' being chiefly an attempted
vindication by that statesman of his public conduct as regards Ro-
man Catholic Emancipation and the Corn Laws. His lordship has
also published a Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt,' valuable for
the correspondence and authentic personal details it contains; and a
History of the Reign of Queen Anne until the Peace of Utrecht,'
(1701-1713), a work in one volume (1870), which, however inferior,
may be considered a continuation of Macauley's History.
<
C
Earl Stanhope was born at Walmer in 1805, was educated at Ox-
ford, and was a member of the House of Commons, first for Wooton
Bassett, and afterwards for Hertford, from 1830 to 1852.
He was
for a short time Under-secretary for Foreign Affairs, and Secretary
to the Board of Control. He succeeded to the peerage in 1855, and
died in 1875.
6
·
C
THOMAS KEIGHTLEY.
(
A volume of 'Outlines of History' having appeared in 1830 in
Lardner's Cyclopædia,' Dr. Arnold urged its author, Mr. Thomas
Keightley, to write a series of histories of moderate size, which might
be used in schools, and prove trustworthy manuals in after-life. Mr.
Keightley obeyed the call, and produced a number of historical com-
pilations of merit. His History of England,' two volumes, and the
same enlarged in three volumes, is admitted to be the one most free
from party-spirit; and his Histories of India, Greece and Rome,
each in one volume, may be said to contain the essence of most of
what has been written and discovered regarding those countries. Mr.
Keightley also produced a History of the War of Independence in
Greece,' two volumes, 1830; and The Crusaders,' or scenes, events
and characters from the times of the Crusades. These works have all
been popular. The 'Outlines' are read in schools, colleges, and uni-
C
KEIGHTLEY.]
15
ENGLISH LITERATURË.
→
C
<
versities; the Duke of Wellington directed them to be read by offi
cers and candidates for commissions in the army. The History of
Greece' has been translated into modern Greek and published at
Athens. In the department of mythology, Mr. Keightley was also a
successful student, and author of the Mythology of Ancient Greece
and Italy; Fairy Mythology,' illustrative of the romance and su-
perstition of various countries; and Tales and Popular Fictions,
their Resemblance and Transmission from Country to Country."
From the second of these works we give a brief extract.
C
Superstitious Beliefs.
According to a well-known law of our nature, effects suggest causes; and another
law, perhaps equally general, impels us to ascribe to the actual and efficient cause
the attribute of intelligence. The mind of the deepest philosopher is thus acted
upon equally with that of the peasant or the savage; the only difference lies in the
nature of the intelligent cause at which they respectively stop. The one pursues
the chain of cause and effect, and traces out its various links till he arrives at the
great intelligent cause of all, however he may designate him; the other, when
unusual phenomena excite his attention, ascribes their production to the immediate
agency of some of the inferior beings recognised by his legendary creed. The
action of this latter principle must forcibly strike the minds of those who disdain
not to bestow a portion of their attention on the popular legends and traditions of
different countries. Every extraordinary appearance is found to have its extraordi-
nary cause assigned; a cause always connected with the history or religion, ancient
or modern, of the country, and not unfrequently varying with a change of faith.
The noises and eruptions of Etna and Stromboli were, in ancient times, ascribed
to Typhon or Vulcan, and at this day the popular belief connects them with
the infernal regions. The sounds resembling the clanking of chains, hammer-
ing of iron, and blowing of bellows, once to be heard in the island of Barrie, were
made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wall of brass to sur-
round Caermarthen. The marks which natural causes have impressed on the solid
and unyielding granite rock were produced, according to the popular creed, by the
contact of the hero, the saint, or the god: masses of stone, resembling domestic im-
plements in form, were the toys, or the corresponding implements of the heroes or
giants of old. Grecian imagination ascribed to the galaxy or Milky-way an origin in
the teeming breast of the queen of heaven: marks appeared in the petals of flowers
on the occasion of a youth's or a hero's untimely death: the rose derived its present
hue from the blood of Venus, as she hurried barefooted through the woods and lawns;
while the professors of Islam. less fancifully, refer the origin of this flower to the
moisture that exuded from the sacred person of their prophet. Under a purer form
of religion, the cruciform stripes which mak the back and shoulders of the patient
ass first appeared, according to the popular tradition, when the Son of God conde-
scended to enter the Holy City, mounted on that animal; and a fish, only to be found
in the sea, still bears the impress of the finger and thumb of the apostle, who drew him
out of the waters of Lake Tiberias to take the tribute-money that lay in his mouth.
The repetition of the voice among the hills is, in Norway and Sweden, ascribed to
the dwarfs mocking the human speaker; while the more elegant fancy of Greece gave
birth to Echo, a nymph who pined for love, and who still fondly repeats the accents
that she hears. The magic scenery occasionally presented on the waters of the
Straits of Messina is produced by the power of the fata morgana; the gossamers
that float through the haze of an autumnal morning are woven by the ingenious
dwarfs; the verdant circlets in the mead are traced beneath the light steps of the
dancing elves; and St. Cuthbert forges and fashions the beads that bear his
name, and lie scattered along the shore of Lindisfarne. In accordance with these
laws, we find in most countries a popular belief in different classes of beings distinct
from men, and from the higher orders of divinities. These beings are usually be-
lieved to inhabit, in the caverns of earth, or the depths of the waters, a region of
their own. They generally excel mankind in power and in knowledge, and, like
them, are subject to the inevitable laws of death, though after a more prolonged
16
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDÍA OF
i
period of existence. How these classes were first called into existence it is not easy
to say; but if, as some assert, all the ancient systems of heathen religion were de-
vised by philosophers for the instruction of rude tribes by appeals to their senses, we
might suppose that the minds which peopled the skies with their thousands and tens
of thousands of divinities gave birth also to the inhabitants of the field and flood,
and that the numerous tales of their exploits and adventures are the production of
poetic fiction or rude invention.
(
In 1855, Mr. Keightley published a Life of Milton,' and afterwards
edited Milton's poems. The biography is an original and in many
respects able work. The opinions of Milton are very clearly and fully
elucidated, and the extensive learning of the biographer and his-
torian has enabled him to add some valuable suggestive criticism:
for example, in Milton's time the Ptolemaic astronomy was the pre-
valent one, and Mr. Keightley asks,
Could Milton have written Paradise Lost' in the Nineteenth Century?
Now, with the seventeenth century, at least in England, expired the astronomy of
Ptolemy. Had Milton, then, lived after that century, he could not for a moment
have believed in a solid, globous world, inclosing various revolving spheres, with the
earth in the centre, and unlimited, unoccupied, undigested space beyond. His local
heaven and local hell would then have become, if not impossibilities, fleeting and un-
certain to a degree which would preclude all firm, undoubting faith in their existence;
for far as the most powerful telescopes can pierce into space, there is nothing found
but a uniformity of stars after stars in endless succession, exalting infinitely our idea
of the Deity and his attributes, but enfeebling in proportion that of any portion of
space being his peculiar abode. Were Milton in possession of this knowledge, is it
possible that he could have written the first three books of Paradise Lost?
We are
decidedly of opinion that he could not, for he would never have written that of the
truth of which he could not have persuaded himself by any illusion of the imagina-
tion. It may be said that he would have adapted his fictions to the present state of
astronomy. But he could not have done it; such is the sublime simplicity of the
true system of the universe, that it is quite unsuited to poetry, except in the most
transient form.
C
Mr. Keightley was a native of Ireland, born in 1792. He long re-
sided at Chiswick on the Thames, a retired but busy student, and
died in 1782.
DEAN MILMAN.
The prose works of the late Dean of St. Paul's (ante) place
him in the first rank of historians. His History of the Jews'
was originally published in Murray's Family Library' (1829), but
was subsequently revised (fourth edition, 1866). When thus repub-
lished, the author considered that the circumstances of the day,' or,
in other words, the objections which had been made to his plan of
treating the Jewish history, rendered some observations necessary.
(
How ought the History of the Jews to be Written?
What should be the treatment by a Christian writer, a writer to whom truth is the
one paramount object, of the only documents on which rests the earlier history of
the Jews, the Scriptures of the Old Testament? Are they, like other historical
documents, to be submitted to calm but searching criticism as to their age, their
authenticity, their authorship: above all, their historical sense and historical inter-
pretation?
Some may object (and by their objection may think it right to cut short all this
6
<
MILMAN.]
17
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
momentous question) that Jewish history is a kind of forbidden ground, on which
it is profane to enter; the whole history being so peculiar in its relation to theology,
resting, as it is asserted, even to the most minute particulars, on divine authority,
ought to be sacred from the ordinary laws of investigation. But though the Jewish
people are especially called the people of God, though their polity is grounded on
their religion, though God be held the author of their theocracy, as well as its con-
servator and administrator, yet the Jewish nation is one of the families of mankind;
their history is part of the world's history: the functions which they have performed
in the progress of human development and civilisation are so important, so endur-
ing; the veracity of their history has been made so entirely to depend on the rank
which they are entitled to hold in the social scale of mankind; their barbarism has
been so fiercely and contemptuously exaggerated, their premature wisdom and
humanity so contemptuously depreciated or denied; above all, the barriers which
kept them in their holy seclusion have long been so utterly prostrate; friends as
well as foes, the most pious Christians as well as the most avowed enemies of
Christian faith, have so long expatiated on this open field, that it is as impossible,
in my judgment, as it would be unwise, to limit the full freedom of inquiry.
<
Adopting this course, Dean Milman said he had been able to follow
out all the marvellous discoveries of science, and all the hardly less
marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of historical, ethnological,
linguistic criticism, in the serene confidence that they are utterly
irrelevant to the truth of Christianity, to the truth of the Old Testa-
ment as far as its distinct and perpetual authority, and its indubitable
meaning.' This was the view entertained by Paley, and is the view
now held by some of the most learned and able divines of the present
day. The moral and religious truth of Scripture remains untouched
by the discoveries or theories of science. If on such subjects some
solid ground be not found on which highly educated, reflective, read-
ing, reasoning men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but
a wide, a widening, I fear an irreparable breach between the thought
and the religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly
Catholic Christianity, which knows what is essential to religion, what is
temporary and extraneous to it, may defy the world. Obstinate adhe-
rence to things antiquated, and irreconcilable with advancing know-
ledge and thought, may repel, and for ever, how many, I know not; how
far, I know still less. Acertat omen Deus.' A much greater work than
the History of the Jews' was the 'History of Latin Christianity,' inclu-
ding that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V.,' completed in
six volumes, 1856. The first portion of this work was published in 1840,
and comprised the history of Christianity from the birth of Christ to
the abolition of Paganism in the Roman empire; a further portion
was published in 1854, and the conclusion in 1856. No such work,'
said the Quarterly Review,' has appeared in English ecclesiastical
literature-none which combines such breadth of view with such
depth of research, such high literary and artistic eminence with such
patient and elaborate investigation. This high praise was echoed by
Prescott the historian, and by a host of critics. It is really a great
work-great in all the essentials of history-subject, style, and re-
search. The poetical imagination of the author had imparted
warmth and colour to the conclusions of the philosopher and the
sympathies of the lover of truth and humanity. The last work of
(
เ
18
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Dean Milman was his 'History of St. Paul's Cathedral,' over which
he had presided for nearly twenty years, and in which his remains
were interred. As a brief specimen of the dean's animated style of
narrative, we give an extract from the History of the Jews:'
Burning of the Temple, Aug. 10, 70 a.c.
It was the 10th of August, the day already darkened in the Jewish calendar by the
destruction of the former temple by the king of Babylon; that day was almost past.
Titus withdrew again into the Antonia, intending the next morning to make a gen-
eral assault. The quiet summer evening came on; the setting sun shone for the last
time on the snow-white walls and glistening pinnacles of the Temple roof. Titus
had retired to rest, when suddenly a wild and terrible cry was heard, and a man came
rushing in, announcing that the Temple was on fire. Some of the besieged, notwith-
standing their repulse in the morning, had sallied out to attack the men who were
busily employed in extinguising the fires about the cloisters. The Romans not
merely drove them back, but, entering the sacred space with them, forced their way
to the door of the Temple. A soidier, without orders, mounting on the shoulders of
one of his comrades, threw a blazing brand into a small gilded door on the north
side of the chambers, in the outer building or porch. The flames sprang up at once.
The Jews uttered oué simultaneous shriek, and grasped their swords with a furious
determination of revenging and perishing in the ruins of the Temple. Titus rushed
down with the utmost speed; he shouted, he made signs to his soldiers to quench
the fire; his voice was drowned, and his signs unnoticed, in the blind confusion.
The legionaries either could not or would not hear; they rushed on, trampling each
other down in their furious haste, or stumbling over the crumbling ruins, perished
with the enemy. Each exhorted the other, and cach burled his blazing brand into
the inner part of the edifice, and then hurried to his work of carnage. The un-
armed and defenceless people were slain in thousands; they lay heaped like sacri-
fices round the altar; the steps of the Temple ran with streams of blood, which
washed down the bodies that lay about.
Titus found it impossible to check the rage of the soldiery; he entered with his
officers, and survey the interior of the sacred edifice. The splendour filled them
with wonder; and as the flames had not yet penetrated to the Holy Place, he made a
last effort to save it, and springing forth, again exhorted the soldiers to stay the pro-
gress of the conflagration. The centurion Liberalis endeavored to force obedience
with his staff of office; but even respect for the emperor gave way to the furious
animosity against the Jews, to the fierce excitement of battle, and to the insatiable
hope of plunder. The soldiers saw everything around them radiant with gold, which
shōne dazzlingly in the wild light of the flames; they supposed that incalculable
treasures were laid up in the sanctuary. A soldier, unperceived, thrust a lighted
torch between the hinges of the door; the whole buildings was in flames in an
instant. The blinding smoke and fire forced the officers to retreat, and the noble
edifice was left to its fate.
It was an appalling spectacle to the Roman-what was it to the Jew? The whole
summit of the hill which commanded the city blazed like a volcano. One after another
the buildings fell in, with a tremendous crash, and were swallowed up in the fiery
abyss. The roofs of cedar were like sheets of flame; the gilded pinnacles shone
like spikes of red light; the gate towers sent up tall columus of flame and smoke.
The neighbouring hills were lighted up; and dark groups of people were seen watch-
ing in horrible anxiety the progress of the destruction; the walls and heights of the
upper city were crowded with faces, some pale with the agony of despair, others scowl-
ing unavailing vengeance. The shouts of the Roman soldiery as they ran to and fro,
and the howlings of the insurgents who were perishing in the flames, mingled with
the roaring of the conflagration and the thundering sound of falling timbers. The
echoes of the mountains replied or brought back the shrieks of the people on the
heights; all along the walls resounded screams and wailings; men who were expir-
ing with famine, rallied their remaining strength to utter a cry of anguish and deso-
lation.
The slaughter within was even more dreadful than the spectacle from without.
Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who fought and those
MILMAN.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
19
who entreated mercy, were hewn down in indiscriminate carnage. The number of
the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The legionaries had to clamber over heaps
of dead to carry on the work of ext rimination. John. at the head of some of his
troops, cut bis way through. first into the outer court of the Temple, afterwards into
the upper city. Some of the priests upon the roof wrenched off the gilded spikes,
with the r sockets of lead, and used them as missiles against the Romans below.
Afterwards they fled to a part of the wall, about fourteen feet wide; they were_sum-
moned to surrender, but two of them, Mair, son of Belga. and Joseph, son of Dalai,
plunged headlong into the flames.
No part escaped the fury of the Romans. The treasuries, with all their wealth of
money, jewels, and costly robes-the plunder which the Zealots had laid up-were
totally destroyed. Nothing remained but a small part of the outer cloister, in which
about six thousand unarmed and defenceless people, with women aud children, had
taken refuge. These poor wretches. like multitudes of others, had been led up to
the Temple by a false prophet, who had proclaimed that God commanded all the
Jews to go up to the Temple, where he would display his almighty power to save his
people. The soldiers set fire to the building: cvery soul perished.
The whole Roman army entered the sacred precincts, and pitched their standards
among the smoking ruins; they offered sacrifice for the victory, and with loud accla-
mations saluted Titus as Emperor. Their joy was not a little enhanced by the value
of the plunder they obtained, which was so great that gold fell in Syria to half its
former value.
WILLIAM F. SKENE.
An eminent Celtic antiquary, versant in both branches of the lan-
guage, the Cymric and Gaelic, Mr. WILLIAM F. SKENE, has pub-
lished two important works- The Four Ancient Books of Wales,' 2
vols., 1868; and Celtic Scotland,' vol. i., History and Ethnology,'
1876. The former contains the Cymric Poems attributed to the bards
of the sixth century-to Aneurin (510-560 A.D.); to Taliessin (520-
570); to Llywarch Hen, or the Old (550-640 ;) and to Myrdden, or Mer-
lin (530-600). These dates are uncertain. The Four Books are much
later: (1) the Black Book of Caermarthen, written in the reign of
Henry II, (1054-1189); (2) the Book of Aneurin, a manuscript of the
latter part of the thirteenth century; (3) the Book of Taliessin, a
manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth century; and (4) the
Red Book of Hergest, completed at different times in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. It is in these four books or manuscripts that
the oldest known texts are to be found, and Mr. Skene has had them
translated by two of the most eminent living Welsh scholars-the
Rev. D. Silvan Evans of Llanymawddwy, the author of the Eng-
lish and Welsh Dictionary,' and other works; and the Rev. Robert
Williams of Rhydycroesau, author of the 'Biography of Eminent Welsh
men,`and the *Cornish Dictionary.' Besides the poems in the Red
Book of Hergesi, the manuscript also contains the text of several
prose tales and romances connected with the early history of Wales,
published with an English translation by Lady Charlotte Guest, in
1849, under the title of The Mabinogion.'
เ
•
Date of the Welsh Poems.
During the last half-century of the Roman dominion in Britain, the most import-
ant military events took place at the northern frontier of the province, where it was
chiefly assailed by those whom they called the barbarian races, and their troops were
massed at the Roman walls to protect the province. After their departure it was
·
K
20
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
3
It was
still the scene of a struggle between the contending races for supremacy.
here that the provincial Britons had mainly to contend uuder the Guledig against the
invading Picts and Scots, succeeded by the resistance of the native Cymric popula-
tion of the north to the encroachment of the Angels of Bernicia.
Throughout this clash and jar of contending races, a body of popular poetry
appears to have grown up, and the events of this never-ending war, and the dim
recollections of social changes and revolutions, seem to have been reflected in national
lays attributed to bards supposed to have lived at the time in which the deeds of their
warriors were celebrated, and the legends of the country preserved in language.
which, if not poetical, was figurative and obscure. It was not till the seventh
century that these popular lays floating about among the people were brought into
shape, and assumed à consistent form. I do not attempt to take them farther
back.
• •
The principal poem in the Four Books, supposed to possess his-
torical value, is entitled 'Gododen,' by Aneurin, in which the bar
laments the inglorious defeat of his countrymen by the Saxons.
This war ode or battle-piece is in ninety-four stanzas. One of them
-the twenty-first-has been paraphrased by Gray, and the reader
may be interested by seeing together, the literal translation in Mr.
Skene's book, and the version of the English poet:
The men went to Catraeth; they were renowned ;
Wine and mead from golden cups was their beverage;
That year was to them of exalted solemnity;
Three warriors and three score and three hundred, wearing the golden torques.
Of those who hurried forth after the excess of revelling
But three escaped by the prowess of the gashing sword,
The two war-dogs of Aeron and Cenon the dauntless,
And myself from the spilling of my blood, the reward of my sacred song.
Gray renders the passage thus:
To Cattraeth's vale in glittering row,
Thrice two hundred warriors ago:
Every warrior's manly neck
Chains of regal honour deck,
Wreathed in many a golden link;
From the golden cup they drink
Nectar that the bees produce,
•
C
Or the grape's ecstatic juice.
Flushed with mirth and hope they burn:
But none from Cattracth's vale return.
Save Aeron brave and Conan strong
(Bursting through the bloody throng),
And I, the meanest of them all,
That live to weep and sing their fall.*
The Celtic Scotland' of Mr. Skene is, like his Welsh work, de-
signed to ascertain what can be really extracted from the early au-
thorities. He adopts the conclusion of Professor Huxley, that
eighteen hundred years ago the population of Britain comprised peo-
ples of two types of complexion, the one fair and the other dark-the
latter resembling Aquitani and the Iberians; the fair people resem-
bling the Belgic Gauls. An Iberian or Basque people preceded the
Celtic race in Britain and Ireland. The victory gained by Agricola,
86 A.D., is said by Tacitus to have been fought at 'Mons Grampius.'
The hills now called the Grampians were then known as Drumalban,
J
* As to the scene of the struggle, Mr. Skene says: It is plain from the poem that
two districts, called respectively Gododen and Catraeth, met at or near a great ram-
part; that both were washed by the sea, and that in connection with the latter was a
fort called Eyddin. The name of Eyddin takes us to Lothain, where we have Dune-
din, or Edinburgh, and Caredin on the shore.
SKENE.]
21
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
so that we cannot identify the scene of action with that noble moun-
tain range. But it appears that the latest editor of the Life of Agri-
cola has discovered from some Vatican manuscripts that Tacitus
really wrote Mons Graupius,' and thus the word Grapius is, as Mr.
Burton says, 'an editor's or printer's blunder, nearly four hundred
years old.'+
(
The name of the Western Islands, it may be mentioned, originated
in a similar blunder. The printer of an edition of Pliny in 1503 con-
verted 'Hebudes' into 'Hebrides,' and Boece having copied the error,
it became fixed. Mr. Skene prefers reading Granpius' to 'Grau-
pius.' It is hardly possible, he says, to distinguish u from n in such
manuscripts; but the point is certainly of no importance. The old
fabulous Scotch narratives Mr. Skene traces to the rivalry and ambi-
tion of ecclesiastical establishments and to the great national contro-
versy of old excited by the claim of England to a feudal superiority
over Scotland. The attempt made by Lloyd and Stillingfleet in the
seventeenth century to cut off King Fergus and twenty-four other
Scotch kings chronicled by Hector Boece, filled the Lord Advocate
of that day, Sir George Mackenzie, with horror and dismay. 'Pre-
cedency,' he said, is one of the chief glories of the crown, for which
not only kings but subjects fight and debate, and how could I suffer
this right and privilege of our crown to be stolen from it by the asser-
tion which did expressly substract about eight hundred and thirty
years from its antiquity? Sir George would as willingly have prose-
cuted the iconoclasts, had they been citizens north of the Tweed, as
he prosecuted the poor Covenanters. But King Fergus and his twen-
ty-four royal successors were doomed. They have been all swept off
the stage into the limbo of vanity, and Scotland has lost eight hun-
dred and thirty years of her imaginary but cherished sovereignty.
C
•
Battle of Mons Granpius, 86 a.d.
On the peninsula formed by the junction of the Isla with the Tay are the remains
of a strong and massive vallum, called Cleaven Dyke, extending trom the one rive?
to the other, with a small Roman fort at one end, and inclosing a large triangula"
space capable of containing Agricola's whole troops, guarded by the rampart in front,
and by a river on each side. Before the rampart a plain of some size extends to the
foot of the Blair Hill, or the mount of battle, the lowest of a succession of elevations
which rise from the plain till they attain the full height of the great mountain range of
the so-called Grampians; and où the heights above are the remains of a large native
encampment called Buzzard Dykes, capable of containing upwards of thirty thous
and men. Certainly no position in Scotland presents features which correspond so
remarkably with Tacitus' description as this.
•
Such was the position of the two armies when the echoes of the wild yells and
shouts of the natives, and the glitter of their arms as their divisions were seen in no-
tion and hurrying to the front, announced to Agricola that they were forming the
line of battle. The Roman commander immediately drew out his troops on the
plain. In the centre he placed the auxiliary infantry, amounting to about eight
thousand men, and three thousand horse formed the wings. Behind the main line.
and in front of the great vallum or rampart, he stationed the legions, consisting of
the veteran Roman soldiers. His object was to fight the battle with the auxiliary
✦ Burton's History of Scotland, 2d edit. i. 3.
22
CYCLOPÆDIA OF'
[TC 1876
►
troops, among whom were even Britons, and to support them, if necessary, with the
Roman troops as a body of reserve.
The native army was ranged upon the rising grounds, and their line as far
extended as possible. The first line was stationed on the plains, while the others
were ranged in separate lines on the acclivity of the hill behind them. On the plains
the chariots and horsemen of the native army rushed about in all directions.
Agricola, fearing from the extended line of the enemy that he might be attacked
both in front and Aank at the same time, ordered the ranks to form in wider range, at
the risk even of weakening his line, and placing himself in front with his colours, this
memorable action commenced by the interchange of missiles at a distance. In order
to bring the action to close quarters, Agricola ordered three Batavian and two
Tungrian cohorts to charge the enemy sword in hand. In close combat they proved
to be superior to the natives, whose small targets and large unwieldy swords were no
match for the vigorous onslaught of the auxiliaries; and having driven back their
first line, they were forcing their way up the ascent, when the whole line of the
Roman army advanced and charged with such impetuosity as to carry all before
them. The natives endeavoured to turn the fate of the battle by their chariots, and
dashed with them upon the Roman cavalry, who were driven back and thrown into
confusion; but the chariots becoming mixed with the cavalry, were in their turn
thrown into confusion, and were thus rendered ineffectual as well by the roughness
of the ground.
The reserve of the natives now descended, and endeavoured to outflank the Ro-
man army and attack them in the rear, when Agricola ordered four squadrons
of reserve cavalry to advance to the charge. The native troops were repulsed, and
being attacked in the rear by the cavalry from the wings, were completely routed,
and this concluded the battle. The defeat became general; the natives drew off in a
body to the woods and marshes on the west side of the plain. They attempted to
check the pursuit by making a last effort and again forming, but Agricola sent some
cohorts to the assistance of the pursuers; and, surrounding the ground, while part
of the cavalry scoured the more open woods, and part dismounting entered the closer
thickets, the native line again broke, and the flight became general, till night put an
end to the pursuit.
Such was the great battle at Mons Granpius, and such the events of the day as
they may be gathered from the concise narrative of a Roman writing of a battle in
which the victorious general was his own father-in-law. The slaughter on the part
of the natives was great, though probably as much overstated, wheu put at one-
third of their whole army, as that of the Romans is underestimated; and the sigui-
ficant silence of the historian as to the death of Calgacus, or any other of sufficient
note to be mentioned, and the admission that the great body of the native army at
first drew off in good order, shew that it was not the crushing blow which might
otherwise be inferred. On the succeeding day there was no appearance of the
enemy; silence all around, desolate hills, aud the distant smoke of buruing dwell-
ings alone met the eye of the victor.
A series of historical memoirs by LUCY AIKIN (1781-1864), daughter
of Dr. John Aikin,* and sister of Mrs. Barbauld, enjoyed a consider-
able share of popularity. These are- Memoirs of the Court of
Queen Elizabeth,' 1818; Memoirs of the Court of Charles I.,' 1833;
and Memoirs of the Court of James I.' Miss Aikin also wrote a
Life of Addison,' 1843 (see ante), which, besides being the most
copious, though often incorrect, memoir of that English classic,
had the merit of producing one of the most finished of Macaulay's
critical essays.
↓
<
<
* Dr. John Aikin (1747-1822) was an industrious editor and compiler. Besides
several medical works, he published Essays on Song Writing, 1772, and was editor
successively of the Monthly Magazine, the Atheneum (1807-1809), a General Bio-
graphical Dictionary, Dodsley's Annual Register from 1811 to 1815, and Select Works
of the British Poets (Johnson to Beattie). 1820.
CRAIK.]
23
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
C
PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND: PROFESSOR CRAIK-
C. MACFARLANE.
The Pictorial History of England,' planned by Mr. Charles
Knight, in the manner of Dr. Henry's History, is deserving of honour-
able mention. It was commenced about the year 1840, and was con-
tinued for four years, forming eight large volumes, and extending
from the earliest period to the Peace of 1815. Professing to be a
history of the people as well as of the kingdom, every period of Eng-
lish history includes chapters on religion, the constitution and laws,
national industry, manners, literature, &c. A great number of
illustrations was also added; and the work altogether was precisely
what was wanted by the general reader. The two principal writers
in this work were Mr. Craik and Mr. Macfarlane. GEORGE LILLIE
CRAIK was born in Fife in 1798. He was educated for the church,
but preferred a literary career, and was one of the ablest and most dil-
igent of the writers engaged in the works issued by the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Mr. Craik was editor of the Picto-
rial History of England,' and parts of it he enlarged and published
separately-as, 'Sketches of Literature and Learning from the Nor-
man Conquest,' 1844; and History of British Commerce,' 1844. His
first work was a series of popular biographies, entitled The Pursuit
of Knowledge under Difficulties,' 1831. He contributed numerous
articles to the Penny Cyclopædia.'
6
C
C
•
In 1849 he was appointed to the chair of English History and
Literature in Queen's College, Belfast, which he held till his death in
1866. Mr. Craik was author of The Romance of the Peerage,' 1849;
'Outlines of the History of the English Language,' 1855; The Eng-
lish of Shakspeare,' 1857; History of English Literature and the
English Language,' two volumes, 1861; &c. MR. CHARLES MAC-
FARLANE was a voluminous writer and collaborateur with Mr Craik
and others in Mr. Charles Knight's serial works. He wrote Recollec
tions of the South of Italy,' 1S46; and A Glance at Revolutionis d
Italy,' 1849. The elaborate account of the reign of George III., in
thePictorial History,' was chiefly written by Mr. Macfarlane. He
died in the Charter House in 1858. To render the History still more
complete, Mr. Knight added a narrative of the Thirty Years' Peace,
1816-1846. This History of the Peace' was written by MISS HAR-
RIET MARTINEAU, whose facile and vigorous pen and general know-
ledge rendered her peculiarly well adapted for the task. The Pic-
torial History,' and the History of the Peace,' have been revised
and corrected under the care of Messrs. Chambers, in seven volumes,
with sequels in separate volumes, presenting Pictorial Histories of
the Russian War and Indian Revolt.'
<
C
<
<
C
C
MR. FROUDE.
The research and statistical knowledge evinced by Lord Macaulay
in his view of the state of England in the seventeenth century, have
24
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
<
been rivalled by another historian and investigator of an earlier
period. The History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the
Death of Elizabeth,' by JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, twelve volumes,
1856-1869, is a work of sterling merit, though conceived in the spirit
of a special pleader, and over-coloured both in light and shadow.
Mr. Froude is a son of Dr. Froude, archdeacon of Totness, and rec-
tor of Dartington, Devonshire. He was born in 1818, and educated
at Westminster and at Oriel College, Oxford. In 1842 he carried off
the chancellor's prize for an English essay, his subject being Political
Economy, and the same year he became a Fellow of Exeter College.
Mr. Froude appeared as an author in 1847, when he published Shad-
ows of the Clouds, by Zeta,' consisting of two stories. Next year he
produced The Nemesis of Faith,' a protest, as it has been called,
against the reverence entertained by the church for what Mr. Froude
called the Hebrew mythology. Such a work could not fail to offend
the university authorities. Mr. Froude was deprived of his Fellow-
ship, and also forfeited a situation to which he had been appointed
in Tasmania. He then set to periodical writing, and contributed to
the Westminster Review' and 'Fraser's Magazine:' of the latter he
was sometime editor. His reputation was greatly extended by his
History, as the volumes appeared from time to time; and he threw
off occasional pamphlets and short historical dissertations. One of
these, entitled The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish
Character,' being an address delivered before the Philosophical Insti-
tution of Edinburgh, in 1865, attracted much attention, especially on
account of its eulogy on John Knox, who, according to Mr. Froude,
'saved the kirk which he had founded, and saved with it Scottish
and English freedom.' Another of these occasional addresses was
one on Calvinism, delivered to the university of St. Andrews in 1869,
which was given by Mr. Froude in his capacity of rector of that
university.
<
•
(
<
C
Previous to this (1867) he had issued two volumes of 'Short Studies
on Great Subjects.' The fame of Mr. Froude, however, rests on his
History of England,' so picturesque and dramatic in detail. The
object of the author is to vindicate the character of Henry VIII.,
and to depict the actual condition, the contentment and loyalty of
the people during his reign. For part of the original and curious de
tail in which the work abounds, Mr. Froude was indebted to Sir
Francis Palgrave, but he has himself been indefatigable in collecting
information from state-papers and other sources. The result is, not
justification of the capricious tyranny and cruelty of Henry-which
in essential points is unjustifiable-but the removal of some stains
from his memory which have been continued without examination by
previous writers; and the accumulation of many interesting facts
relative to the great men and the social state of England in that tran-
sitionary era. Life was then, according to the historian, unrefined,
but colored with a broad rosy English health.' Personal freedom,
C
FROUDE.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
25
however, was very limited; and under such a system of statutory re-
striction or protection as then prevailed, no nation could ever have
advanced. In many passages of his history-as the account of the
death of Rizzio and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots-Mr.
Froude has sacrificed strict accuracy in order to produce more com-
And
plete dramatic effects and arrest the attention of the reader.
his work is one of enchaining interest. In 1872 Mr.
In 1872 Mr. Froude pub-
lished The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth century,' volume
Two more
first, the narrative being brought down to the year 1767.
volumes were added in 1874, and the work was read with great
avidity. It is in some respects a vindication, or at least a palliation,
of the conduct of the English government towards Ireland, written
in a strong Anglo Saxon spirit.
<
Markets and Wages in the Reign of Henry VIII.
Whert, the price of which necessarily varied, averaged in the middle of the
fourteenth century tenpence the bushel; barley averaging at the same time three
shillings the quarter. With wheat the fluctuations were excessive; a table of its
possible variations describes it as ranging from eighteenpence the quarter to twenty
When the price was
shillings; the average, however, being six-and-eight pence.
above this sum, the merchants might import to bring it down; when it was below
this price, the farmers were allowed to export to the foreign markets; and the same
average continued to hold, with no perceptible tendency to rise, till the close of the
reign of Elizabeth.
Beef and pork were a halfpenny a pound-mutton was three-farthings. They
But this act was
were fixed at these prices by the 3d of the 24th of Henry VIII.
unpopular both with buyers and with sellers. The old practice had been to sell in
Stowe
the gross, and under that arrangement the rates had been generally lower.
says: 'It was this year enacted that butchers should sell their beef and mutton by
weight-beef for a halfpenuy the pound. and mutton for three-farthings; which
being devised for the great commodity of the realm-as it was thought-hath proved
far otherwise: for at that time fat oxen were sold for six-and-twenty shillings and
eightpence the piece; fat wethers for three shillings and fourpence the piece; fat
calves at a like price; aud fat lambs for twelvepence. The butchers of Loudon sold
penny pieces of beef for the relief of the poor-every piece two pounds and a half,
sometimes three pounds for a peuny; and thirteen and sometimes fourteen of these
pieces for twelvepence; mutton, eightpence the quarter; and an hundredweight of
beef for four shillings and eightpence.' The act was repealed in consequence of
the complaints against it, but the prices never fell agaiù to what they had been,
although beef, sold in the gross, could still be had for a halfpenny a pound in 1570.
Strong beer, such as we now buy for eighteenpence a gallon, was then a penny a
gallon; and table-beer less than a halfpenny. French and German wines were
This was
eightpence the gallon. Spanish and Portuguese wines, a shilling.
highest price at which the best wines might be sold; and if there was any fault in
quality or quantity, the dealers forfeited four times the amount. Rent, another im-
portant consideration, cannot be fixed so accurately. for parliament did not interfere
'My
with it. Here, however, we are not without very tolerable information.
father,' says Latimer, was a yeoman, and had no laud of his own; only he had a
farm of three or four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so
much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother
milk 'd thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness, with himself and
his horse. I remember that I buckled on his harness when he went to Blackheath
field He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the
king's majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds, or twenty nobles,
each, having brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for
his poor neighbours, and som alms he gave to the poor: and all this he did off the
said farm. If three or four pounds at the uttermost' was the rent of a larm yield-
น
26
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
ing such results, the rent of labourers' cottages is not likely to have been con-
siderable.
I am below the truth, therefore, with this scale of prices in assuming the penny
in terms of a labourer's necessities to have been equal in the reign of Henry VIII. to
the present shilling. For a penny, at the time of which I write, the labourer could
buy more bread, beef, beer, and wine-he could do more towards finding lodging for
himself and his family-than the labourer of the niueteenth century can for a shil-
ling. I do not see that this admits of question. Turning, then, to the table of
wages, it will be easy to ascertain his position. By the 3d of the 6th of Henry VIII.,
it was enacted that master carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tylers, plumbers, gla-
ziers, joiners, and other employers of such skilled workmen, should give to each of
their journeymen, if no meat or drink was allowed, sixpence a day for half a year,
fivepence a day for the other half; or fivepence halfpenny for the yearly average.
The common labourers were to receive fourpence a day for half the year, for the
remaining half, threepence. In the harvest mouths they were allowed to work by
the piece, and might earn considerably more; so that, in fact-and this was the rate
at which their wages were usually estimated-the day labourer received, on an aver--
age, fourpence a day for the whole year. Nor was he in danger, except by his own
fault or by unusual accident, of being thrown out of employ; for he was engaged by
contract for not less than a year, and could not be dismissed before his term had ex-
pired, unless some gross misconduct could be proved against him before two magis-
trates. Allowing a deduction of one day in the week for a saint's day or a holiday, he
rceived, therefore, steadily and regularly, if well conducted, an equivalent of twenty
shillings a week; twenty shillings a week and a holiday; and this is far from being
a full account of his advantages. In most parishes, if not in all, there were large
ranges of common and uninclosed forest-land, which furnished his fuel to him gratis,
where pigs might range, and ducks and geese; where, if he could afford a cow, he
was in no danger of being unable to feed it; and so important was this privilege
considered, that when the commons began to be largely inclosed, parliament insisted
that the working-man should not be without some piece of ground on which he
could employ his own and his family's industry. By the 7th of the 31st of Eliza-
beth, it was ordered that no cottage should be built for residence without four acres
of land at lowest being attached to it for the sole use of the occupants of such cot-
tage.
Portrail of Henry VIII.
Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have
resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe.
His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his
manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tourna-
meut, except the Duke of Suffolk; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne
by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigour
by a temperate habit and by constant exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not
left to judge from the suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His state-papers
and letters may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they
lose nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly different, the perception is
equally clear, the expression equally powerful, and they breathe throughout an irresis-
tible vigour of purpose. In addition to this, he had a fine musical taste, carefully
cultivated; he spoke and wrote in four languages; and his knowledge of a multitude
of other subjects, with which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have
formed the reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of
his age; he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artillery, and new con-
structions in ship-building; and this not with the condescending incapacity of a
royal amateur, but with thorough workmanlike understanding. His reading was
vast, especially in theology. which has been ridiculously ascribed by Lord Herbert to
his father's intention of educating him for the archbishopric of Cauterbury-as if
the scientific mastery of such a subject could have been acquired by a boy of twelve
years of age, for he was no more when he became Prince of Wales. He must have
studied theology with the full maturity of his understanding; and he had a fixed, and
perhaps unfortunate, interest in the subject itself.
In all directions of human activity, Henry displayed natural powers of the highest
order, at the highest stretch of industrious culture. He was attentive,' as it is called,
FROUDE
27
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
to his 'religious dutics,' being present at the services in the chapel two or three times
a day with unfailing regularity, and shewing to outward appearance a real sense of
religious obligation in the energy and purity of his life. In private, he was good-
humoured and good-natured. His letters to his secretaries, though never undigni-
fied, are simple, easy aud uurestrained; and the letters written by them to him are
similarly plain and business-like, as if the writers knew that the person whom they
were addressing disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as a man. Again,
from their correspondence with one another, when they describe interviews with
him, we gather the same pleasant impression. He seems to have been always kind,
always considerate; inquiring into their private concerns with genuine interest, and
winning, as a consequence, their warm and unaffected attachment.
As a ruler, he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been successful. He
had the splendid tastes in which the English people most delighted, and he had sub-
stantially acted out his own theory of his duty, which was expressed in the following
words:
Scripture taketh princes to be, as it were, fathers and nurses to their subjects,
and by Scripture it appeareth that it appertaineth unto the office of princes to see
that right religion and true doctrine be maintained and taught, and that their sub-
jects may be well ruled and governed by good and just laws; and to provide and care
for them that all things necessary for them may be plenteous; and that the people
and commonweal may increase; aud to defend them from oppression and invasion,
as well within the realm as without; and to see that justice be administered unto
them indifferently; and to hear benignly all their complaints; and to shew towards
them, although they offend, fatherly pity.'
These principles do really appear to have determined Henry's conduct in his ear-
lier years. He had more than once been tried with insurrection, which he had
soothed down without bloodshed, and extinguished in forgiveness; and London
long recollected the great scene which followed 'evil May-day,' 1517, when the ap-
prentices were brought down to Westminster Hall to receive their pardons. There
had been a dangerous riot in the streets, which might have provoked a mild govern-
ment to severity; but the king contented himself with punishing the five ringleaders,
and four hundred other prisoners, after being paraded down the streets in white
shirts with halters round their necks, were dismissed with an admonition, Wolsey
weeping as he propounced it.
Death of Mary, Queen of Scots, Feb. 8, 1587.
Briefly, solemnly, and sternly they delivered their awful message. They informed
her that they had received a commission under the great seal to see her executed, and
she was told that she must prepare to suffer on the following morning. She was
dreadfully agitated. For a moment she refused to believe them. Then, as the truth
forced itself upon her, tossing her head in disdain, and struggling to control herself,
she called her physician, and began to speak to him of money that was owed to her
in France. At last it seems that she broke down altogether, and they left her with a
fear either that she would destroy herself in the night, or that she would refuse to
come to the scaffold, and that it might be necessary to drag her there by violence.
The end had come. She had long professed to expect it, but the clearest expecta-
tion is not certainty. The scene for which she had affected to prepare she was to en
counter in its dread reality, and all her busy schemes, her dreams of vengeance, her vis-
ions of a revolution, with herself ascending ont of the convulsion and seating herself
on her rival's throne-all were gone. She had played deep, and the dice had goue
against her
Yet in death, if she encountered it bravely, victory was still possible. Could she
but sustain to the last the character of a calumniated suppliant accepting heroically
for God's sake and her creed's the concluding stroke of a long series of wrongs, she
might stir a tempest of indignation which, if it could not save herself, might at least
overwhelm her enemy. Persisting, as she persisted to the last, in denying all
knowledge of Babington, it would be affectation to credit. her with a genuine feel-
ing of religion; but the imperfection of her motive exalts the greatness of her
fortitude. To an impassioned believer death is comparatively easy.
28
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
At eight in the morning the provost-marshal knocked at the outer door which
communicated with her suite of apartments. It was locked, and no one answered,
and he went back in some trepidation lest the fears might prove true which had been
entertained the preceding evening. On his return with the sheriff, however, a few
- minutes later, the door was open, and they were confronted with the tall, majestic
figure of Mary Stuart standing before them in splendour. The plain gray dress had
been exchanged for a robe of black satin; her jacket was of black satin also. loopeá
and slashed and trimmed with velvet. Her false hair was arranged studiously with a
coif, and over her head and falling down over her back was a white veil of delicate
lawn. A crucifix of gold hung from her neck. In her hand she held a crucifix of
ivory, and a number of jewelled paternosters was attached to her girdle. Led by two of
Paulet's gentlemen, the sheriff walking before her, she passed to the chamber of pre-
sence in which she had been tried, where Shrewsbury. Kent Paulet, Drury, and
others were waiting to receive her. Andrew Melville, Sir Robert's brother, who
had been master of her housebold, was kneeling in tears. 'Melville,' she said, you
should rather rejoice than weep that the end of my troubles is come. Tell my
friends I die a true Catholic. Commend me to my son. Tell him I have done noth-
ing to prejudice his kingdom of Scotland, and so, good Melville, farewell.' She
kissed him, and turning, asked for her chaplain Du Preau. He was not present.
There had been a fear of some religious melodrama which it was thought well to
avoid. Her ladies, who had attempted to follow her had been kept back also. She
could not afford to leave the account of her death to be reported by enemies and Pu-
ritans, and she required assistance for the scene which she meditated. Missing
them, she asked the reason of their absence, and said she wished them to see her
die. Kent said he feared they might scream or faint. or attempt perhaps to dip their
handkerchiefs in her blood. She undertook that they should be quiet and obedient.
The queen,' she said, 'would never deny her so slight a request ;' and when Kent still
hesitated, she added, with tears, You know I am cousin to your Queen, of the
blood of Henry the Seventh, a married Queen of France, and anointed Queen of
Scotland.'
6
1
•
•
It was impossible to refuse. She was allowed to take six of her own people with
her, and select them herself. She chose her physician Burgoyne, Andrew Melville,
the apothecary Gorion, and her surgeon, with two ladies, Elizabeth Kennedy and
Curle's young wife Barbara Mowbray, whose child she had baptised. Allons donc,'
she then said, 'let us go;' and passing out attended by the earls, and leaning on the
arm of an officer of the guard, she descended the great staircase to the hall. The
news had spread far through the country. Thousands of people were collected out-
side the walls. About three hundred knights and gentlemen of the country had been
admitted to witness the execution. The tables and forms had been removed, and a
great wood fire was blazing in the chimney. At the upper end of the hall, above the
fireplace, but near it, stood the scaffold, twelve feet square, and two feet and a half
high. It was covered with black cloth; a low rail ran round it covered with black
-cloth also, and the sheriff's guard of halberdiers were ranged on the floor below on
the four sides, to keep off the crowd. On the scaffold was the block, black like the
rest; a square black cushion was placed behind it, and behind the cushion a black
chair on the right were two other chairs for the earls. The axe leant against the
rail, and two masked figures stood like mutes on either side at the back. The Queen
of Scots, as she swept in, seemed as if coming to take a part in some solemn pageant.
Not a muscle of her face could be seen to quiver; she ascended the scaffold with
absolute composure, looked round her smiling, and sat dowu. Shrewsbury and Kent
followed, and took their places, the sheriff stood at her left hand, and Beale then
mounted a platform and read the warrant aloud.
She laid her crucifix on her chair. The chief executioner took it as a perquisite,
but was ordered instantly to lay it down. The lawn veil was lifted carefully off, not
to disturb the hair, and was hung upon the rail. The black robe was next removed.
Below it was a petticoat of crimson velvet. The black jacket followed, and under
the jacket was a body of crimson satin. One of her ladies handed her a pair of
crimson sleeves, with which she hastily covered her arms: and thus she stood on
the black scaffold with the black figures all around her, blood-red from head to foot.
Her reasons for adopting so extraordinary a costume must be left to conjecture.
It is only certain that it must have been carefully studied, and that the pictorial
effect must have been appalling.
FROUDE.]
20
ENGLISH LITERATURË.
L
The women, whose finuess had hitherto borne the trial, began now to give way.
spasmodic sobs bursting from them which they could not check. Ne criez vous.
she said, j'ay promis pour vous' Struggling bravely, they crossed their breasts
again and again, sue crossing them in turn, and bidding them pray for her. Then
she kuelt on the cushion. Barbara Mowbray bound her eyes with her handkerchief.
'Adieu,' she said, smiling for the last time, and waving her hand to them; adieu, au
revoir. They stepped back from off the scaffold, and left her alone. On her knees
she repeated the psalm, In te, Domine, confido,' In thee, O Lord, have I put my
trust. Her shoulders being exposed, two scars became visible, one on either side.
and the earls being now a little behind her, Kent pointed to them with his white
hand, and looked inquiringly at his companion. Shrewsbury whispered that they
were the remains of two abscesses from which she had suffered while living with
him at Sheffield.
↓
·
.
•
When the psalm was finished she felt for the block, and, laying down her head,
muttered: In manus, Domine, tuas, commendo animam meam. The hard wood
seemed to hurt her, for she placed her hands under her neck. The executioners
gently removed them, lest they should deaden the blow, and then one of them
holding her slightly, the other raised the axe and struck. The scene had been too
trying even for the practised headsman of the tower. His arm wandered. The blow
fell on the knot of the handkerchief, and scarcely broke the skin. She neither spoke
nor moved. He struck again, this time effectively. The head hung by a shred o!
skin, which he divided without withdrawing the axe; and at once a metamorphosis
was witnessed, strange as was ever wrought by wand of fabled enchanter. The coif
fell off and the false plaits. The laboured illusion vauished. The lady who had
knelt before the block was in the maturity of grace and loveliness. The executioner.
when he raised the head. as usual, to shew to the crowd, exposed the withered
features of a grizzled, wrinkled old woman.
C
4
So perish all enemies of the Queen,' said the Deau of Peterborough. A oud
amen rose over the hall. Such end,' said the Earl of Kent, rising and standing over-
the body, to the Queen's and the Gospel's enemies.'
W. H. LECKY.
A series of Irish biographies by an intellectual and studious Irish-
man, WILLIAM E. H. LECKY, may be considered as supplementary
to Mr. Froude's history of The English in Ireland in the Eight-
eenth Century.' Mr. Lecky's volume is entitled The Leaders of
Public Opinion in Ireland: Swift, Flood, Grattan and O'Connell.'
Of the four lives, that of Swift is the least valuable, as using only
the old familiar materials, and occasionally inaccurate in detail.
Flood and Grattan he views more favourably than Mr. Froude, and.
like them, he condemns the manner in which the Union was accom-
plished. The career of O'Connell is carefully traced, and forms an
interesting narrative. Mr. Lecky conceives that the_great_agitator
was sincere in his belief that it was possible to carry Repeal. The
occupation of his life for many years was to throw the repeal argu-
ments into the most fascinating and imposing light; and in doing so
his own belief rose to fanaticism.' His support of peaceful agitation,
though it did not survive his own defeat, was an honourable charac-
teristic. He proclaimed himself the first apostle of that sect whose
first doctrine was, that no political change was worth shedding a
drop of blood, and that all might be attained by moral force.'
<
"The more I dwell upon the subject, the more I am convinced of
the splendour and originality of the genius and of the sterling char
acter of the patriotism of O'Connell, in spite of the calumnies that
C
6
30
[TO 1876
CYCLOPÆDIA ÓF
surround his memory, and the many and grievous faults that obscured
his life. But when to the good services he rendered to his country,
we oppose the sectarian and class warfare that resulted from his pol-
icy, the fearful elements of discord he evoked, and which he alone
could in some degree control, it may be questioned whether his life
was a blessing or a curse to Ireland.'
The aim of every statesman should be, as Mr. Lecky justly con-
ceives, to give to Ireland the greatest amount of self-government that
is compatible with the union and the security of the empire. Difficult-
ies of no ordinary kind surround this duty, but influences are in
operation which must tend towards its realisation.
Improved Prospect of Affairs in Ireland.
In spite of frequent and menacing reactions, it is probable that sectarian animosity
will diminish in Ireland. The general intellectual tendencies of the age are certainly
hostile to it. With the increase of wealth and knowledge there must in time grow
up among the Catholics an independent lay public opinion, and the tendency of their
politics will cease to be purely sacerdotal. The establishment of perfect religious
equality and the settlement of the question of the temporal power of the Pope have
removed grave causes of irritation, and united education, if it be steadily maintained
and honestly carried out, will at length assuage the bitterness of sects, and perhaps
secure for Ireland the inestimable benefit of real union. The division of classes is it
present perhaps a graver danger than the division of sects. But the Land Bill of Mr.
Gladstone cannot fail to do much to cure it. If it be possible in a society like our
own to create a yeoman class intervening between landlords and tenants, the facili-
ties now given to tenants to purchase their tenancies will create it; and if, as is
probable. it is economically impossible that such a class should now exist to any
considerable extent, the tenant class have at least been given an unexampled security
-they have been rooted to the soil. and their interests have been more than ever
identified with those of their landlords. The division between rich and poor is also
rapidly ceasing to coincide with that between Protestant and Catholic, and thus the
old lines of demarcation are being gradually effaced. A considerable time must
elapse before the full effect of these changes is felt, but sooner or later they must ex-
ercise a profound influence on opinion; and if they do not extinguish the desire of
the people for national institutions, they will greatly increase the probability of their
obtaining them.
C
C
Mr. Lecky is author of more elaborate works than his Irish volume.
His History of Rationalism in Europe,' 1865, and History of
European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne,' 1869, are contri
butions to philosophical history, in which the narrative or historical
parts are clear and spirited. Their author was born in the neighbor-
hood of Dublin in 1838, and educated at Trinity College.
SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER.
เ
A valuable addition to our knowledge of the reigns of James I. and
Charles I. has been made by a series of historical works by MR.
SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER. These are History of England from
the Accession of James I. to 1616;' Prince Charles and the Spanish
Marriage (1617-1623); History of England under the Duke of
Buckingham and Charles I.' (1624-1628). Mr. Gardiner is more fa-
vourable to the character of James I., in point of learning and acute-
C
6
KAYE.]
31
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ness, than most historians, but agrees with all previous writers as to
the king's want of resolution, dignity, and prudence.
C
It was the great misfortune of James' character that while, both
in his domestic and foreign policy, he was far in advance of his age
in his desire to put a final end to religious strife, he was utterly unfit
to judge what were the proper measures to be taken for the attain-
ment of his object.'
SIR JOHN W. KAYE-LADY SALE, ETC.
A number of military narratives and memoirs has been called forth
by the wars in India, in Russia, and on the continent. Among the
most important of these are the History of the War in Afghanistan'
in 1841-42, by JOHN WILLIAM KAYE (afterwards Sir John), and a
'History of the Sepoy War in India' in 1857-58, of which three vol-
umes have been published (1876), and a fourth is to follow. The
author says: There is no such thing as the easy writing of history.
If it be not truth it is not history, and truth lies far below the surface.
It is a long and laborious task to exhume it. Rapid production is a
proof of the total absence of conscientious investigation. For history
is not the growth of inspiration, but of evidence.' Sir John Kaye
(born in 1814) served for some time in India, as a lieutenant of artil-
lery, but returning to England in 1845, devoted himself to literature.
Previous to his histories of the disastrous events in India, he had
written memoirs of Lord Metcalfe and Sir John Malcolm, and an ac-
count of Christianity in India.' He died July 24, 1876.
•
<
Besides the careful, elaborate work of Sir John Kaye on Afghan-
istan, we have a Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan,' by LADY
FLORENTIA SALE (a woman who shed lustre on her sex,' as Sir
Robert Peel said); and Lady Sale's husband, SIR ROBERT HENRY
SALE, published a Defence of Zellelabad: LIEUTENANT VINCENT
EYRE Wrote Military Operations in Cabul;' J. HARLAN, Memoirs
of India and Afghanistan; Mr. C. NASH, a History of the War in
Afghanistan; and there were also published-Five Years in India,'
by II. G. FANE, Esq., late aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief;
Narrative of the Campaign of the Army of the Indus in Scinde and
Cabul,' by Mr. R. H. KENNEDY;' Scenes and Adventures in Afghan-
istan,' by MR. W. TAYLOR; Letters,' by COLONEL DENNIE; Per-
sonal Observations on Scinde,' by CAPTAIN T. POSTANS, &c.
•
•
↓
·
ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE.
The Invasion of the Crimea, its Origin, and an Account of its
Progress down to the Death of Lord Raglan' (June 28, 1855), has
been described by ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, Sometime M.P.
for Bridgewater, in an elaborate work, of which five volumes have
been published (1875). Mr. Kinglake's history is a clear, animated,
and spirited narrative, written with a strong animus against Louis
Napoleon of France, but forming a valuable addition to our modern
1
32
}
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
historical literature. Its author is a native of Taunton, born in 1811,
educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called
to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1837, but retired from the legal pro-
fession in 1856. In 1844 Mr. Kinglake published his experiences of
Eastern travel under the title of Eothen,' a work which instantly
became popular, and was justly admired for its vivid description and
eloquent expression of sentiment. In the discursive style of Sterne,
Mr. Kinglake rambles over the East, setting down, as he says not
those impressions which ought to have been produced upon any well-
constituted mind,' but those which were really and truly received at
the time. We subjoin his account of
•
The Sphynx.
And near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in the land
of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphuyx. Comely the creature is, but the comeliness
is not of this world; the once worshipped beast is a deformity and a monster to this
generation, and yet you can see that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned
according to some ancient mould of beauty-some mould of beauty now forgotten-
forgotten because that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the
Egean, and in her image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men
that the short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and the main con-
dition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet still there lives on the race.
of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder world, and Christian girls of
Coptic blood will look ou you with the sad, serious gaze, and kiss your charitable
hand with the big pouting lips of the very Sphynx.
Laugh and möck if you will at the worship of stone idols; but mark ye this, ye
breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears awful semblance of Deity
-unchangefulness in the midst of change-the same seeming will, and intent for
ever and ever inexorable! Upon ancient dynasties of Ethiopian aud Egyptian kings
-upon Greck and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors-upon Napoleon
dreaming of an Eastern empire-upon battle and pestilence-upon the ceaseless
misery of the Egyptian race-upon keen-eyed travellers-Herodotus yesterday, and
Warburton to-day-upon all and more this unworldly Sphynx has watched, and
watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil
mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman strain-
ing far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile,
and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and
watching the works of the new busy race, with those same sad, earnest eyes, and
the same tranquil mien everlasting. You dare not mock at the Sphynx!
The Beginning of the Crimean War.
Looking back upon the troubles which ended in the outbreak of war, one sees the
nations at first swaying backward and forward like a throng so vast as to be helpless,
but afterwards falling slowly into warlike array. And when one begins to search for
the man or the men whose volition was governing the crowd, the eye falls upon the
towering form of the Emperor Nicholas. IIe was not single-minded, and therefore
his will was unstable, but it had a huge force; and, since he was armed with the
whole authority of his empire, it seemed plain that it was this man-and only he-
who was bringing danger from the north. And at first, too, it seemed that within his
range of action there was none who could be his equal: but in a little while the looks
of men were turned to the Bosphorus, for thither his ancient adversary was slowly
hending his way. To fit him for the encounter, the Englishman was clothed with
little authority except what he could draw from the resources of his own mind and
from the strength of his own wilful nature. Yet it was presently seen that those
who were near him fell under his dominion, and did as he bid them, and that the
circle of deference to his will was always increasing around him; and soon it
appeared that, though he moved gently, he began to have mastery over a foe
KINGLAKE.]
33
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
>
who was consuming his strength in mere anger. When he had conquered, he stood,
But also in
as it were, with folded arms, and seemed willing to desist from strife.
the west there had been seen a knot of men possessed for the time of the mighty
engine of the French State, and striving so to use it as to be able to keep their hold,
and to shelter themselves from a cruel fate. The volitions of these men were active
enough, because they were toiling for their lives. Their efforts seemed to interest
and to please the lustiest man of those days, for he watched them from over the Chan-
nel with approving smile, and began to declare, in his good-humoured, boisterous way,
that so long as they should be suffered to have the handling of France, so long as
they would execute for him his policy, so long as they would take care not to deceive
him, they ought to be encouraged, they ought to be made use of, they ought to have
the shelter they wanted; and, the Frenchmen agreeing to his conditions, he was
willing to level the barrier-he called it perhaps false pride-which divided the gov
ernment of the Queen from the venturers of the 2d of December. In this thought,
at the moment, he stood almost alone, but he abided his time. At length he saw
the spring of 1853, bringing with it grave peril to the Ottoman State. Then, throw-
ing aside with a laugh some papers which belonged to the Home Office, he gave his
strong shoulder to the levelling work. Under the weight of his touch the barrier
fell. Thenceforth the hindrances that met him were but slight. As he from the first
had willed it, so moved the two great nations of the West.
The March.
[Both in Turkey and in the Crimea, the left was nearest to the enemy, whilst the
right was nearest to the sea]. Lord Raglan had observed all this, but he had ob-
served in silence; and finding the right always seized by our allies, he had quietly
put up with the left. Yet he was not without humour; and now, when he saw that
in this hazardous movement along the coast the French were still taking the right.
there was something like archness in his way of remarking that, although the French
were bent upon taking precedence of him, their courtesy still gave him the post of
danger. This he well might say, for, so far as concerned the duty of covering the.
venturesome march which was about to be undertaken, the whole stress of the enter-
prise was thrown upon the English army. The French force was covered on its
right flank by the sea, on its front and rear by the fire from the steamers, and on its
left by the English army. On the other hand, the English army, though covered on
its right flank by the French, was exposed in front, and in rear, and on its whole left
flank, to the full brunt of the enemy's attacks.
Thus marched the strength of the Western Powers. The sun shone hotly as on a
summer's day in England, but breezes springing fresh from the sea floated briskly
along the hils. The ground was an undulating steppe alluring to cavalry. It was
rankly covered with a herb like southernwood; and when the stems were crushed
under foot by the advancing columns, the whole air became laden with bitter fra-
grance. The aro.na was new to some. To men of the western counties of England
It was so familiar that it carried them back to childhood and the village church; they
remembered the nosegay of boy's love' that used to be set by the prayer-book of
the Sunday maiden too demure for the vanity of flowers.
▸
In each of the close massed columus which were formed by our four complete
d.visions there were more than five thousand foot soldiers. The colours were flying;
the bands at first were playing; and once more the time had come round when in
all this armed pride there was nothing of false majesty; for already videttes could
be seen on the hillocks, and (except at the spots where our horsemen were marching)
there was nothing but air and sunshine, and at intervals, the dark form of a single
rifleman, to divide our columns from the enemy. But more warlike than trumpet
and drum was the grave quiet which followed the ceasing of the bands. The pain
of weariness had begun. Few spoke. All toiled. Waves break upon the shore;
and though they are many, still distance will gather their numberless cadences into
So also it was with one ceaseless hissing sound that a wilderness of tall crisp-
ing herbage bent under the tramp of the coming thousands. As each mighty column
marched on, one hardly remembered at first the weary frames, the aching limbs
which composed it; for-instinct with its own proper soul and purpose, absorbing the
volitions of thousands of men, and bearing no likeness to the mere sum of the
human beings out of whom it was made-the column itself was the living thing, the
one.
T
34
ITO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
}
slow, monstrous unit of strength which walks the modern earth where empire is
brought into question. But a little while, and then the sickness which had clung to
the army began to make it seen that the columns in all their pride were things built
with the bodies of suffering mortals.
WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL.
The Russian war has been brilliantly illustrated by an eye-witness,
MR. WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL, Special Correspondent' of the
'Times. Mr. Russell accompanied the army to the Crimea, and trans-
mitted from day to day letters descriptive of the progress of the
troops, the country through which they passed, the people they met,
and all the public incidents and events of that dreadful campaign.
His picturesque style and glowing narratives deepened the tragic in-
terest of the war. But the letters told also of giv
also of giv us mismanage-
ment on the part of the home authorities, and of supineness on the
part of certain of our commanders. These details, it is now proved,
were in some instances exaggerated; the merits of our allies the
French were also unduly extolled; but much good was undoubtedly
done by the revelations and comments of the fearless and energetic
Correspondent.' A bad system of official routine was broken in
upon, if not entirely uprooted, and a solemn public warning was held
out for the future. The benefit of this was subsequently experi-
enced in India, whither Mr. Russell also went to record the inci-
dents of the revolt. Ilis Russian battle-pictures and descriptions
were collected into two volumes, 1855-56; the first giving an account
of the war from the landing of the troops at Gallipoli to the death of
Lord Raglan, and the second continuing the history to the evacua-
tion of the Crimea. We give a portion of one of his battle-picces.
>
C
The Battle of Balaklava, October 25, 1854.
Never did the painter's eye rest on a more beautiful scene than I beheld from the
ridge. The fleecy vapours still hung around the mountain-tops, and mingled with
the ascending volumes of smoke; the patch of sea sparkled in the rays of the morn-
ing sun, but its light was eclipsed by the flashes which gleamed from the masses of
armed men below. Looking to the left towards the gorge, we beheld six compact
masses of Russian infantry, which had just debouched from the mountain-passes
near the Tchernaya, and were slowly advancing with solemn stateliness up the val-
ley. Immediately in their front was a regular ine of artillery, of at least twenty
pieces strong. Two batteries of light guns were already a mile in advance of them,
and were playing with energy on the redoubts, from which feeble puffs of smoke
came at long intervals. Behind these guus, in front of the infantry, were enormous
bodies of cavalry. They were in six compact squares, three on each flank. moving
down en échelon towards us, and the valley was lit up with the blaze of their sabres,
and lance points, and gay accoutrements. In their front, and extending along the
intervals between each battery of guns, were clouds of mounted skirmishers, wheel-
ing and whirling in the front of their march like autumn leaves tossed by the wind.
The Zouaves close to us were lying like tigers at the spring, with ready rifles in
hand, hidden chin-deep by the earthworks which ran along the line of these ridges
on our rear; but the quick-eyed Russians were manoeuvring on the other
side of the valley, and did not expose their columns to attack. Below the
Zouaves we could see the Turkish gunners in the redoubts, all in confusion as
the shells burst over them. Just as I came up the Russians had carried
No. 1 Redoubt, the furthest and most elevated of all, and their horsemen
were chasing the Turks across the inverval which lay between it and Re-
RUSSELL.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
35
Above
doubt No. 2. At that moment the cavalry, under Lord Lucan, were formed
in glittering masses-the Light Brigade, under Lord Cardigan, in advance; the
They were drawn up
Heavy Brigade, under Brigadier-general Scarlett, in reserve.
just in front of their encampment, and were concealed from the view of the enemy
by a slight wave' in the plain. Cousiderably to the rear of their right, the 93d
Highlanders were drawn up in line, in front of the approach to Balaklava.
and behind them. on the lieights, the marines were visible through the glass, drawn
up under arms, and the gunners could be seen ready in the earthworks, in which
were placed the heavy ships' guns. The 93d had originally been advanced somewhat
more into the plain. but the instant the Russians got possession of the first redoubt
they opened fire on them from our own guus, which inflicted some injury, and Sir
Colin Campbell 'retired' his men to a better position. Meantime the enemy advanced
his cavalry rapidly. To our inexpressible disgust we saw the Turks in Redoubt No.
2 fly at their approach. They ran in scattered groups across towards Redoubt No. 3,
and towards Balaklava; but the horse-hoof of the Cossack was too quick for them,
he yells of the
and sword and lance were busily plied among the retreating herd.
As the lancers and light cavalry of the
pursuers and pursued were plainly audible.
Russians advanced, they gathered up their skirmishes with great speed and in
excellent order-the shifting trails of men, which played all over the valley like
moonlight on the water, contracted, gathered up, and the little peloton in a few
moments became a solid columu. Then up came their guns, in rushed their
gunners to the abandoned redoubt, and the guns of No. 2 Redoubt soon played
Two or three
with deadly effect upon the dispirited defenders of No. 3 Redoubt.
shots in return from the earthworks, and all is silent. The Turks swarm over the earth-
works, and run in confusion towards the town, firing their muskets at the enemy as
they run. Again the solid column of cavalry opens like a fan, and resolves itself into
aloug spray' of skirmishers. It laps the flying Turks, steel flashes in the air, and
down go the poor Moslem quivering on the plain, split through fez and musket-
guard to the chin and breast-belt! There is no support for them. It is evident
The Russians have been too quick for us. The Turks have been too quick also, for
they have not held their redoubts long enough to enable us to bring them
help. In vain the naval guus on the heights fire on the Russian cavalry; the dis-
tance is too great for shot or shell to reach. In vain the Turkish gunners in the
earthen batteries, which are placed along the French intrenchments, strive to pro-
tect their flying countrymen; their shot fly wide and short of the swarming masses.
The Turks betake themselves towards the Highlanders, where they check their
flight, and form into companies on the flanks of the Highlanders. As the Russian
cavalry on the left of their line crown the hill across the valley, they perceive the
Ilighlanders drawn up at the distance of some half-mile, calmly waiting their ap-
proach. They halt, and squadron after squadron flies up from the rear, till they have
a body of some fifteen hundred men along the ridge-lancers, and dragoons, and hus-
sars. Then they move en échelon in two bodies, with another in reserve.
alry, who have been pursuing the Turks on the right, are coming up to the ridge be-
neath us, which conceals our cavalry from view. The Heavy Brigade in advance is
drawn up in two lines. The first line consists of the Scots Greys, and of their old
companions in glory, the Enniskillens; the second, of the 4th Royal Irish, of the 5th
Dragoon Guards, and of the 1st Royal Dragoons. The Light Cavalry Brigade is on
their left, in two lines also. The silence is oppressive; between the cannon bursts
One can hear the champing of bits and the clink of sabres in the valley below. The
Russians on their left drew breath for a moment, and then in one graud line dashed
at the Highlanders. The ground flies beneath their horses' feet; gathering speed at
every stride. they dash on towards that thin red streak topped with a line of steel.
The Turks fire à volley at eight hundred yards, aud run. As the Russians come
within six hundred yards, down goes that line of steel in front, and out rings a roll-
ing volley of Minić musketry. The distance is too great; the Russians are not
checked, but still sweep onward through the smoke, with the whole force of horse
and man, here and there knocked over by the shot of our batteries above. With
breathless suspense every one awaits the bursting of the wave upon the line of Gaelic
rock; but ere they come within a hundred and fifty yards, another deadly volley
flashes from the levelled rifle, and carries death and terror into the Russians. They
wheel about, open files right and left, and fly back faster than thy came. Bravo,
Highlanders! well done!' shouted the excited spectators; but events thicken. The
The cav-
a
•
1
36
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
Highlanders and their splendid front are soon forgotten, men scarcely have a moment
to think of this fact, that the 93d never altered their formation to receive that tide of
horsemen. 'No,' said Sir Colin Campbell, I did not think it worth while to form
them even four deep! The ordinary British line, two deep, was quite sufficient to
repel the attack of these Muscovite cavaliers. Our eyes were, however, turned in a
moment on our own cavalry. We saw Brigadier-general Scarlett ride along in front
of his massive squadrons. The Russians-evidently corps d'élite-their light blue
jackets embroidered with silver lace, were advancing on their left, at an easy gallop,
towards the brow of the hill. A forest of lances glistened in their rear, and several
squadrous of gray-coated dragoons moved up quickly to support them as they
reached the summit. The instant they came in sight the trumpets of our cavalry
gave out the warning-blast, which told us all that in another moment we should
see the shock of battle beneath our very eyes. Lord Raglan, all his staff and
escort. and groups of officers. the Zouaves, French generals and officers, and
bodies of French infantry on the height, were spectators of the scene as though they
were looking on the stage from the boxes of a theatre. Nearly every one dismicunted
and sat down, and not a word was said. The Russians advanced down the hill at
a slow canter, which they changed to a trot, and at last nearly halted. Their first
line was at least double the length of ours-it was three times as deep. Behind
them was a similar line, equally strong and compact. They evidently despised their
insignificant-looking enemy; but their time was come. The trumpets rang out
again through the valley, and the Greys and Enniskilleners wert right at the centre
of the Russian cavalry. The space between them was only a few hundred yards;
it was scarce enough to let the horses' gather way,' nor had the men quite space
sufficient for the full play of their sword-arms. The Russian line brings forward each
wing as our cavalry advance, and threatens to annihilate them as they pass on.
Turning a little to their left, so as to meet the Russian right, the Greys rush on with a
cheer that thrills to every heart-the wild shout of the Enniskilleners rises through
the air at the same instant. As lightning flashes through a cloud, the Greys and
Enniskilleners pierce through the dark nasses of Russians. The shock was but for a
moment. There was a clash of steel and a light play of sword-blades in the air, and
then the Greys and the redcoats disappear in the midst of the shaken and quiver-
ing columns. In another moment we see them emerging and dashing on with
diminished numbers, and in broken order, against the second line, which is ad-
vancing against them as fast as it can to retrieve the fortune of the charge. It was a
terrible moment. God help them! they are lost!' was the exclamation of more
than one man, and the thought of many. With unabated fire the noble hearts dashed
at their enemy. It was a fight of heroes. The first line of Russians, which had been
smashed utterly by our charge, and had fled off at oue flink and towards the centre,
were coming back to swallow up our handful of men. By sheer steel and sheer
courage Enniskillener and Scot were winning their desperate way right through the
enemy's squadrons, and already grey horses and redcoats had appeared right at the
rear of the second mass, when, with irresistible force, like one holt from a bow, the
1st Royals, the 4th Dragoon Guards, and the 5th Dragoon Guards rushed at the rem-
nants of the first line of the enemy; went through it as though it were made of paste-
board; and, dashing on the second body of Russians as they were still disordered by
the terrible assault of the Greys and their companions, put them to utter rout. This
Russian horse, in less than five minutes after it met our dragoons, was flying with all
its speed before a force certainly not half its strength. A cheer burst from every lip-
in the enthusiasm, officers and men took off their caps and shouted with delight, and
thus keeping up the scenic character of their position, they clapped their hands again
and again. Lord Raglan at once despatched Lieutenant Curzon, aide-de-camp. to
convey his congratulations to Brigadier-general Scarlett, and to say: Well done!'
The gallant old officer's face beamed with pleasure when he received the message.
beg to thank his lordship very sincerely,' was his reply. The cavalry did not long
pursue their enemy. Their loss was very slight, about thirty-five killed and wounded
in both affairs.. There were not more than four or five men killed outright, and our
most material loss was from the cannon playing on our heavy dragoons afterwards,
when covering the retreat of our light cavalry.
↓
'I
·
A disastrous scene followed this triumph-the famous Light Cav-
alry charge. It had been Lord Raglan's intention that the cavalry
RUSSELL. j
37
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Į
should aid in regaining the heights surmounted by the redoubts
taken from the Turks, or, in default of this, prevent the Russians
from carrying off the guns at those redoubts. Some misconception
occurred as to the order; Captain Nolan, who conveyed the message,
fell in the charge; but it was construed by the lieutenant-general,
Lord Lucan, to mean, that he should attack at all hazards, and the
Earl of Cardigan, as second in command, put the order in exccu-
tion.*
Charge of the Light Brigade.
The whole brigade scarcely made one effective regiment according to the numbers
of continental armies; and yet it was more than we could spare. As they rushed
towards the front, the Russians opened on them from the guns in the redoubt on the
right, with volleys of musketry and rifles. They swept proudly past, glittering in
the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. We could scarcely believe
the evidence of our senses! Surely that handful of men are not going to charge an
army in position? Alas! it was but too true-their desperate valour knew no
bounds, and far indeed was it removed from its so-called better part-discretion.
They advanced in two lines, quickening their pace as they closed towards the enemy.
A more fearful spectacle was never witnessed than by those who. without the power
to aid. beheld their heroic countrymen rushing to the arms of death. At the distance
of twelve hundred yards, the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron
mouths, a flood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls.
Their
*The poet-laureate. Mr. Tennyson, has commemorated this splendid but melancholy
feat of war ( Works edit, 1872):
The Charge of the Light Brigade.
I.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred,
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he sa.d:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred,
•
II.
Forward the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Some one had blundered:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
III.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in frout of them
Volleyed and thundered:
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Bo dly they rode aud well,
Into the jaws of Death.
Into the mouth of Hell,
"Rode the six hundred.
IV.
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed all at once in air,
Sabring the gunners there.
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered:
Plunged in the battery smoke,
Right through the line they broke-
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered-
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.
V.
Cannon to right of them.
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered.
Stormed at with shot and shell.
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
VI.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
M
23
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
育
​flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds
flying wounded or riderless across the plain. The first line is broken; it is joined by the
second; they never halt or check their speed an instant. With diminished ranks, thinned
by those thirty guns, which the Russians had laid with the most deadly accuracy,
with a halo of flashing steel above their heads, and with a cheer, which was many a
noble fellow's death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries, but ere they were
lost from view the plain was strewed with their bodies, and with the carcasses of
horses. They were exposed to an oblique fire from the batteries on the hills on both
sides, as well as to a direct fire of musketry. Through the clouds of smoke we could
see their sabres flashing as they rode up to the guns and dashed between them, cut-
ting down the gunners as they stood. We saw them riding through the guns, as I
have said; to our delight we saw them returning, after breaking through a column of
Russian infantry, and scattering them like cbaff, when the flank fire of the battery
on the hill swept them, scattered and broken as they were. Wounded men and dis-
mounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale-demi-gods could not have done
what we had failed to do. At the very moment when they were about to retreat, an
enormous mass of lancers was hurled on their flank. Colonel Shewell, of the 8th Hug-
sars, saw the danger, and rode his few men straight at them, cutting his way through
with fearful loss. The other regiments turned and engaged in a desperate encounter.
With courage too great almost for credence, they were breaking their way through
the columns which enveloped them, when there took place an act of atrocity without
parallel in the modern warfare of civilised nations. The Russian gunners when the
storm of cavalry passed, returned to their guns. They saw their own cavalry mingled
with the troopers who had just ridden over them, and, to the eternal disgrace of the
Russian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape aud canister on
the mass of struggling men and horses, mingling friend and foe in one common
ruin! It was as much as our heavy cavalry brigade could do to cover the retreat of
the miserable remnants of that band of heroes as they returned to the place they had
so lately quitted in all the pride of life. At thirty-five minutes past eleven uot a Brit-
ish soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front these bloody Muscovite guns.
Mr. Russell is a native of Dublin, born in 1821, and studied at
Trinity College. In 1843 he was engaged on the Times;' in 1846 he
was entered of the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1850.
In 1856 he received from Dublin University the degree of LL.D.
Besides his account of the Crimean war, Dr. Russell has published
his Diary in India;' his Diary North and South,' containing the re-
sult of observations in the United States; My Diary during the last
Great War,' 1873; and other works.
6
(
4
ARCHIBALD FORBES, like Dr. Russell, engaged on the press as a
special correspondent, published an account of the Franco-German
war, and 'Soldiering and Scribbling,' a series of sketches, 1872. Mr.
Forbes is a native of Banffshire, son of the late Rev. Dr. Forbes,
Boharm.
REV. WILLIAM STUBBS—JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
The Constitutional History of England,' two vols., 1875, by the
REV. WILLIAM STUBBS, is an excellent account of the origin and de-
velopment of the English constitution down to the deposition of
Richard II.
'The roots of the present lie deep in the past,' says Mr. Stubos,
'and nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how
the present comes to be what it is. It is true, constitutional history
has a point of view, an insight, and a language of its own; it reads
the exploits and characters of men by a different light from that shed
STUBBS.
39
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
by the false glare of arins, and interprets positions and facts in words
that are voiceless to those who have only listened to the trumpet of
fame.'
The author of this learned and important work for six years held
the office of Inspector of Schools in the diocese of Rochester, then
became Regius Professor of Modern History in Oxford, and in 1869
Besides his
was elected curator of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
'Constitutional History,' Mr. Stubbs has published a collection of
charters from the earliest period down to the reign of Edward I., and
has edited and translated various historical works. Having been
born in 1825, Mr. Stubbs, still in the prime of life, has, we trust,
many more years of useful and honourable labour before him.
Influence of Germanic Races in Europe.
The English are not aboriginal-that is, they are not identical with the race that
occupied their home at the dawn of history. They are a people of German descent
in the main constituents of blood, character, and language, but most especially in
connection with our subject, in the possession of the elements of primitive German
civilisation and the common germs of German institutions. This descent is not a
matter of inference. It is a recorded fact of history, which those characteristics bear
out to the fullest degree of certainty. The consensus of historians, placing the con-
quest and colonisation of Britain by nations of Gerinan origin between the middle of
the fifth and the end of the sixth century, is confirmed by the evidence of a continu-
ous series of monuments. These shew the unbroken possession of the land thus
occupied, and the growth of the language and institutions thus introduced, either in
purity and unmolested integrity, or, where it has been modified by antagonism and
by the admixture of alien forms, ultimately vindicating itself by eliminating the new
and more strongly developing the genius of the old.
The four great states of Western Christendom-England. France, Spain. and
Germany-owe the leading principles which are worked out in their constitutional
history to the same source. In the regions which had been thoroughly incorporated
with the Roman empire, every vestige of primitive indigenous cultivation had been
crushed out of existence. Roman civilisation in its turn fell before the Germanic
races; in Britain it had perished slowly in the midst of a perishing people, who were
able neither to maintain it nor to substitute for it anything of their own. In Gaul
and Spain it died a somewhat nobler death, and left more lasting influences. In the
greater part of Germany it had never made good its ground. In all four the con-
structive elements of new life are barbarian or Germanic, though its development is
varied by the degrees in which the original stream of influence has been turned aside
in its course. or affected in purity and consistency by the infusion of other elements
and by the nature of the soil through which it flows.
The system which has for the last twelve centuries formed the history of France,
aud in a great measure the character of the French people. of which the present con-
dition of that kingdom is the logical result, was originally little more than a simple
adaptation of the old German polity to the government of a conquered race. The
long sway of the Romans in Gaul had re-created, on their own principles of adminis-
tration, the nation which the Franks conquered. The Franks, gradually uniting in
religion, blood and language with the Gauls, retained and developed the idea of fen-
dal subordination in the organisation of government unmodified by any tendencies
towards popular freedom. "In France accordingly feudal government ruus its log-
ical career. The royal power, that central force which partly has originated, and
partly owes its existence to the conquest, is first limited in its action by the very
agencies that are necessary to its confinuance; then it is reduced to a shadow. The
shadow is still the centre round which the complex system, in spite of itself, revolves ;
it is recognised by that system as its solitary safeguard against disruption, and its wit-
ness of national identity; it survives for ages, charithstanding the attenuation of
its vitality, by its incapacity for mischief. In course of time the system itself loses
¿
40
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
its original energy, and the central force gradually gathers into itself all the nem-
bers of the nationality in detail, thus concentrating all the powers which in earlier
struggles they had won from it, and incorporating in itself those very forces which
the feudatories had imposed as limitations on the sovereign power. So its character
of nominal suzerainty is exchanged for that of absolute sovereignty. The only
checks on the royal power had been the feudatories; the crown ha- outlived them,
absorbed and assimilated their functions; but the increase of power is turned not to
the strengthening of the central force, but to the personal interests of its possessor.
Actual despotism becomes systematic tyranny, and its logical result is the explosion
which is called revolution. The constitutional history of France is thus the summa-
tion of the scries of feudal development, in a logical sequence which is indeed un-
paralleled in the history of any great state, but which is thoroughly in harmony with
the national character, forming it and formed by it. We see in it the German sys-
tem, modified by its work of foreign conquest, and deprived of its home safeguards,
on a field exceptionally favourable, prepared and levelled by Roman agency ander a
civil system which was capable of speedy amalgamation, and into whose language
most of the feudal forms readily translated themselves.
English National Unity, 1155–1215 A.D.
The period is one of amalgamation, of consolidation, of continuous growing
together and new development, which distinguishes the process of organic life from
that of mere mechanic contrivance, internal law from external order.
The nation becomes one and realises its oneness; this realisation is necessary
before the growth can begin. It is completed under Henry II. and his sons. It
finds its first distinct expression in Magna Carta. It is a result, not perhaps of the
design and purpose of the great king, but of the converging lines of the policy by
which he tried to raise the people at large, and to weaken the fendatories and the
principle of feudalism in them. Heury is scarcely an English king, but he is still
less a French feudatory. In his own eyes he is the creator of an empire. Ile rules
England by Englishmen and for English purposes, Normandy by Normans and for
Norman purposes; the end of all his policy being the strengthening of his own
power. He recognises the true way of strengthening his power, by strengthening
the basis on which it rests, the soundness, the security, the sense of a common
interest in the maintenance of peace and order.
L
The national unity is completed in two ways. The English have united; the
English and the Normans have united also. The threefold division of the districts,
the Dane law, the West-Saxon and the Mercian law, which subsisted so long, disap-
pears after the reign of Stephen. The terms are become archaisms which occur in
the pages of the historians in a way that proves them to have become obsolete; the
writers themselves are uncertain which shires fall into the several divisions. Traces
of slight differences of custom may be discovered in the varying rules of the county
courts, which, as Glanvill tells us, are so numerous that it is impossible to put them
on record; but they are now mere local by-laws, no real evidence of permanent divis-
ions of nationality. In the same way Norman and Englishmen are one. Frequent
intermarriages have so united them, that without a careful investigation of pedigree
it cannot be ascertained-so at least the author of the Dialogus de Scaccario'
all.rms-who is English and who Norman. If this be considered a loose statement,
for scarcely two generations have passed away since the Norman blood was first in-
troduced, it is conclusive evidence as to the common consciousness of union. The
earls, the greater barons, the courtiers, might be of pure Norman blood, but they
were few in number; the royal race was as much English as it was Norman. The
numbers of Norman settlers in England are easily exaggerated; it is not probable
that except in the baronial and knightly ranks the infusion was very great, and it is
very probable indeed that, where there was such infusion, it gamed ground by peace-
able settlement and marriage. It is true that Norman lineage was vulgarly regarded
as the more honourable, but the very fact that it was vulgarly so regarded would lead
to its being claimed far more widely than facts would warrant: the bestowal of Nor-
man baptismal names would thus supplant, and did supplant, the old English ones,
and the Norman Christian name would then be alleged as proof of Norman descent.
But it is far from improbable, though it may not have been actually proved, that the
vast majority of surnames derived from English places are evidence of pure English
-
STUBBS.]
41
ENGLISH LÍTERATURE.
}
aescent, whilst only those which are derived from Norman places afford even a pre-
sumptive evidence of Norinan descent. The subject of surnames scarcely rises into
prominence before the fourteenth century; but an examination of the indices to the
Rolls of the Exchequer and Curia Regis shews a continuous increase in number and
importance of persons bearing English names: as early as the reign of Henry I. we
find among the barons Hugh of Bochland, Rainer of Bath, and Alfred of Lincoln,
with many other names which shew either that Englishmen had taken Norinan
names in Baptism, or that Normans were willing to sink their local surnames in the
mass of the national nomenclature.
The union of blood would be naturally expressed in unity of language, a point
which is capable of being more strictly tested. Although French is for a long
period the language of the palace, there is no break in the continuity of the English
as a literary language. It was the tongue, not only of, the people of the towns and
villages. but of a large proportion of those who could read and could enjoy the pur-
suit of knowledge. The growth of the vernacular literature was perhaps retarded
by the influx of Norman lords and clerks, and its character was no doubt modified
by foreign influences under Heury II. and his sons, as it was in a far greater degree
affected by the infusion of French under Henry III. and Edward 1.; but it was never
stopped. It was at its period of slowest growth as rapid in its development as were
most of the other literatures of Europe. Latin was still the language of learning,
of law, and of ritual. The English had to struggle with French as well as with
Latin for its hold on the sermon and the popular poem; when it had forced its way
to light, the books in which it was used had their own perils to undergo from the
contempt of the learned and the profane familiarity of the ignorant. But the fact
that it survived, and at last prevailed, is sufficient to prove its strength.
(
A Short History of the English People,' by JOHN RICHARD
GREEN, Examiner in the School of Modern History, Oxford, 1875,
has been exceedingly popular. Though somewhat inaccurate in de-
tails, the work is lively, spirited, and picturesque, and must be in-
valuable in imbuing young minds with a love of history, and espe-
cially of that of the British nation. The opening sentence, for exam-
ple, at once arrests attention:
Old England.
For the fatherland of the English race we must look far away from England
itself. In the fifth century after the birth of Christ, the one country which bore the
name of England was what we now call Sleswick, a district in the heart of the peniu-
sula which parts the Baltic from the northern seas. Its pleasant pastures, its black-
timbered homesteads, its prim little townships looking down on inlets of purple
water, were then but a wild waste of heather and sand, girt along the coast with sun-
less woodland, broken only on the western side by meadows which crept down to
the marshes and the sea. The dwellers in this district were one out of three tribes,
all belonging to the same low German branch of the Teutonic family, who, at the
moment when history discovers them, were bound together into a confederacy by
the ties of a common blood and a common speech. To the north of the English lay
the tribe of the Jutes. whose name is still preserved in their district of Jutland. To
the south of them the tribe of the Saxons wandered over the sandflats of Holstein,
and along the marshes of Friesland and the Elbe. How close was the union of these
tribes was shewn by their use of a common name, while the choice of this name
points out the tribe which, at the moment when we first meet them, must have been
strongest and most powerful in the confederacy. Although they were all known as
Saxons by the Roman people, who touched them only on their southern border
where the Saxons dwelt, and who remained ignorant of the very existence of the
English or the Jutes, the three tribes bore among themselves the name of the cen-
tral tribe of their league, the name of Englishmen.
Mr. Green has also published a volume of 'Stray Studies' (1876), in
which are some fine descriptive sketches of foreign places-Cannes,
San Remo, Venice, Capri, &c.
1
42
TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
"
{
(
SIR THOMAS ERSKINE MAY.
·Con-
A continuation to Hallam's Constitutional History,' though not
expressly designated as such, appeared in 1861-63, entitled The
Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III.'
(1760-1860), by SIR THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, K. C.B., three volumes.
To the third edition (1871) a supplementary chapter was added,
Eringing down the political history of the country to the passing of
the Ballot Bill in 1871. The work is able and impartial, and forms a
valuable repertory of political information and precedents.
tinually touching upon controverted topics,' says the author, I have
endeavoured to avoid as far as possible the spirit and tone of contro-
versy. But, impressed with an earnest conviction that the develop-
ment of popular libertics has been safe and beneficial, I do not affect
to disguise the interest with which I have traced it through all the
events of history.' The historian was born in 1815, and was called
to the bar in 1838. In 1856 he was appointed Clerk-assistant of the
House of Commons, and in 1871 he succeeded to the higher office of
Clerk. He had previously (in 1866) been made a Knight Commander
of the Bath. Sir Thomas has written several treatises on the law,
usages, and privileges of Parliament, and contributed to the Edin-
burgh Review' and other journals.
(
•
Free Constitution of British Colonies.
It has been the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race to spread through every quarter
of the globe their courage and endurance, their vigorous industry, and their love of
freedom. Wherever they have founded colonies, they have borne with them the
laws and institutions of England as their birthright, so far as they were applicable to
an infant settlement. In territories acquired by conquest or cession, the existing
laws and customs of the people were respected, until they were qualified to share the
franchises of Englishmen. Some of these-held only as garrisons-others peopled
with races hostile to our rule, or unfitted for freedom-were necessarily governed
upon different principles. But in quitting the soil of England to settle new colonies,
Englishmen ever renounced her freedom. Such being the noble principle of Eng-
lish colonisation, circumstances favoured the early development of colonial liberties.
The Puritans, who founded the New England colonies, having fled from the oppres-
sion of Charles I., carried with them a stern love of civil liberty, and established re-
publican institutions. The persecuted Catholics who settled in Maryland, and the
roscribed Quakers who took refuge in Pennsylvania, were little less democratic.
Other colonies founded in America and the West Indies, in the seventeenth century,
merely for the purposes of trade and cultivation, adopted institutions-less demo-
cratic, indeed, but founded on principles of freedom and self-government. Whether
established as proprietary colonies, or under charters held direct from the crown, the
colonists were equally free.
The English constitution was generally the type of these colonial governments.
The governor was the viceroy of the crown; the legislative council, or upper
chamber, appointed by the governor, assumed the place of the House of Lords; and
the representative assembly, chosen by the people, was the express image of the
House of Commons. This miniature parliament, complete in all its parts, made
laws for the internal government of the colony. The governor assembled, prorogued,
and dissolved it and signified his assent or dissent to every act agreed to by the
chambers. The Upper House mimicked the dignity of the House of Peers, and the
Lower House insisted on the privileges of the Commons, especially that of origina-
ting all taxes and grants of 'n.oney for the public service. The elections were also
MAY.]
43
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
conducted after the fashion of the mother-country. Other laws and institutions
were copied not less faithfully.
1
Every colony was a little state, complete in its legislature, its judicature, and its
executive administration. But at the same time, it acknowled, ed the sovereignty of
the mother-country, the prerogatives of the crown, and the legislative supremacy of
parliament. The assent of the king or his representative, was required to give
validity to acts of the colonial legislature; bis veto annulled them; while the imperial
parliament was able to bind the colony by its acts, and to supersede all local legisla-
tion. Every colonial judicature was also subject to an appeal to the king in council,
at Westminster. The dependence of the colonies, however, was little felt in their
internal government. They were secured from interference by the remoteness of the
mother-country, and the ignorance, indifference, and preoccupation of her rulers.
In matters of imperial concern. England imposed her own policy, but otherwise left
them free. Asking no aid of her, they escaped her domination. All their expendi-
ture, civil and milita y, was defrayed by taxes raised by themselves. They provided
for their own defence against the Indians, and the enemies of England. During the
Seven Years' War the American colonies maintained a force of twenty-five thousand
men, at a cost of several millions. In the words of Franklin: They were governed
at the expense to Great Britain of only a little pen, ink, and paper: they were led by
a thread.
↓
4
CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM-H. M
STANLEY-WILLIAM MASSEY.
<
C
The British consul in Abyssinia, Mr. Cameron, and other Europ-
eans, having been detained captives by Theodore, emperor of Abys
sinia (1868), an expedition was fitted out for their release, under the
command of Sir Robert Napier (now Lord Napier of Magdala),
which resulted in the defeat of the Abyssinians, the conquest of their
capital city, Magdala, and the recovery of the English captives. The
emperor, Theodore, committed suicide. A History of the Abyssin-
ian Expedition' was published in 1869 by CLEMENTS ROBERT MARK-
HAM, who accompanied the expedition as geographer. Mr. Mark-
ham had served in the navy, and in the expedition in search of Sir
John Franklin. He was born in 1830, is author of Travels in Peru
and India,' a Life of the Great Lord Fairfax' (1870), Spanish Irri-
gation' (1867), and various geographical papers. A volume by
HENRY M. STANLEY, the adventurous special correspondent of the
New York Herald,' appeared in 1874, entitled Coomassie and
Magdala, the Story of two British Campaigns in Africa.' Mr. Stan-
ley said: Before proceeding to Abyssinia as a special correspondent
of the "New York Herald," I had been employed for American jour--
nals-though very young-in the same capacity, and witnessed
several stirring scenes in our civil war. I had seen Americans fight:
I had seen Indians fight; I was glad to have the opportunity of seeing
how Englishmen fought. In Abyssinia I first saw English soldiers
prepared for war.' And Mr. Stanley acknowledged that more bril-
liant successes than attended these two campaigns which England
undertook in Africa, in behalf of her honour, her dignity, humanity,
and justice, are not recorded in history.
C
A History of England during the Reign of George III.,' by WIL-
LIAM MASSEY, M.P., is a popular work, exhibiting no great research,
but impartially and pleasantly written. It deals chiefly with the
progress of society, and the phases of social life a d manners.
•
44
[TO 1875,
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Gambling in the Last Century.
The vice which, above all others, infested English society during the greater part
of the eighteenth century, was gaming. Men and women, the old and the young,
beaux and statesmen, peers and apprentices, the learned and polite, as well as the
ignorant and vulgar, were alike involved in the vortex of pay. Horse-racing,
cock-fighting betting of every description, with the ordina y resources of cards and
dice, were the chief employment of many, and were tampered with more or less by
almost every person in the higher ranks of life. The proprietary clubs-White's,
Brookes's. Boodle's-were originally instituted to evade the statute against public
gaming-houses. But every fashionable assembly was a gaming-house. Large balls
aud routs had not yet come iu vogue. A ball seldom consisted of more than ten or
twelve couples; and the practice of collecting a crowd of fine people to do uothing,
is an invention of recent date. When a lady received company card-tables were
provided for all the guests; and even where there was dancing, cards formed the
principal part of the entertainment. Games of skill were seldom played. Brag,
crimp, basset, ombre, hazard, commerce, spadille-the very names of which are
hardly known to the present generation-furnished the excitement of play, and
enabled people of fashion to win and lose their money without mental effort. Whist
was not much in vogue until a later period, and was far 100 abstrusc aud slow to
suit the depraved taste which required unadulterated stimulants. The ordinary
stakes at these mixed assemblies would, at the present day, be considered high, even
at clubs where a rubber is still allowed. The consequences of such gaming were
often still more lamentable than those which usually attend such practices. It
would happen that a lady lost more than she could venture to confess to a husband
or father. Her creditor was probably a fine gentleman. or she became indebted to
some rich admirer for the means of discharging her liabilities. In either event, the
result may be guessed. In the one case, the debt of honour was liquidated on the
old principle of the law-merchant, according to which there was but one alternative
to payment in purse. In the other, there was likewise but one mode in which
the acknowledgement of obligation by a fine woman would be acceptable to a man
of the world.
EDWARD A. FREEMAN.
6
'
A copious and excellent History of the Norman Conquest' has
been published (1867-1876) by EDWARD A. FREEMAN, author of
various historical works. Mr. Freeman was born at Harborne, Staf-
fordshire, in 1823; was elected scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, in
1841; filled the office of examiner in law and modern history in 1857–
1864; and was created honorary D.C.L. in 1870. He began his career
as a writer on architecture, having published in 1846 a volume on
Church Restoration,' and in 1849 a History of Architecture.' This
was followed by the Architectural Antiquities of Gower' in 1850,
which reached a second edition in 1851, as did also the Window
Tracery of England,' which had also been published in the previous
year. The Architecture of Landaff Cathedral' followed, and then
the History and Conquest of the Saracens' in 1856. The 'History
of Federal Government' appeared in 1863. The first volume of The
Norman Conquest of England'-which was merely introductory-
appeared in 1867, and the second in 1868, both reaching a second
edition in 1870, whilst the third volume was published in 1869, the
fourth in 1872, and the fifth in 1876. The Popular Old English His-
tory' was published in 1871, as well as 'Historical Essays,' collected
from various reviews. Mr. Freeman's History of the Norman Con-
quest' may be ranked among the great works of the present century.
C
<
<
<
+
<
<
FREEMAN.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
45
Death of William the Conqueror, Sept. 9, 1087.
The death-bed of William was a death-bed of all formal devotion, a death-bed of
penitence which we may trust was more than formal. The English Chronicler
[William of Malmesbury, after weighing the good and evil in him, sends him out of
the world with a charitable prayer for his soul's rest; and his repentance, late and fear-
ful as it was at once marks the distinction between the Conqueror on his bed of
death and his successor cut off without a thought of penitence in the midst of his
crimes. He made his will. The mammon of unrighteousness which he had gathered
together amid the groans and tears of Eugland he now strove so to dispose of as to
pave his way to an everlasting habitation. All his treasures were distributed among
the poor and the churches of his dominions. A special sum was set apart for the
rebuilding of the churches which had been burned at Mautes, and gifts in money
and books and ornaments of every kind were to be distributed among all the churches
of England according to their rank. He then spoke of his own life and of the
arrangements which he wished to make for his dominions after his death. The Nor-
mans, he said, were a brave and unconquered race; but they needed the curb of a
strong and a righteous master to keep them in the path of order. Yet the rule over
them must by all law pass to Robert. Robert was his eldest born; he had promised
him the Norman succession before he won the crown of England, and he had received
the homage of the barons of the Duchy. Normandy and Maine must therefore pass.
to Robert, and for them he must be the man of the French king. Yet he well knew
how sad would be the fate of the laud which had to be ruled by one so proud and
foolish, and for whom a career of shame and sorrow was surely doomed
But what was to be done with England? Now at last the heart of William smote
him. To England he dared not appoint a successor; he could only leave the dis-
posal of the island realm to the Almighty Ruler of the world. The evil deeds of his
past life crowd d upon his soul. Now at last his heart confessed that he had won
England by no right, by no claim of birth: that he had won the English crown by
wrong, and that what he had won by wrong he had no right to give to another. He
had won his realm by warfare aud bloodshed; he had treated the sons of the English
soil with needless harshness; he had cruelly wronged nobles and commons; he had
spoiled many men wrongfully of their inheritance; he had slain countless multitudes
by hunger or by the sword The barrying of Northumberland now rose up before
his eyes in all its blackness The dying man now told how cruelly he had burned
and plundered the land, what thousands of every age and sex among the no.le na-
tion which he had conquered had been done to death at his bidding. The sceptre of
the realm which he had won by so many crimes he dared not hand over to any but
to God alone. Yet he would not hide his wish that his son William, who had ever
been dutiful to him. might reign in Englaud afte him. He would send him beyond
the sea, and he would pray Laufrane to place the crown upon his head, if the Pri-
mate in his wisdom deemed that such an act could be rightly done.
Of the two sons of whom he spoke, Robert was far away, a banished rebel;
William was by his bedside. By his bedside als stood his youngest son, the Eng-
lish Etheling. Henry the Clerk. And what dost thou give to me, my father?' said
the youth. Five thousand pounds of silver from my hoard,' was the Conqueror's
answer. 'But of what use is a hoard to me if I have no place to well in?' • Be
patient, my son, and trus in the Lord. and let thine elders go before thee.' It is
perhaps by the light of later events that our chronicler goes on to make William tell
his youngest son that the day would come when he would succeed both his brothers
in their dominions, and would be richer and mightier than either of them. The king
then dictated a letter to Lanfranc, setting forth his wishes with regard to the kingdom.
He sea ed it and gave it to his son William. and bade him, with his last blessing and
his last kiss, to cross at once into England. William Rufus straightway set forth
for Witsand and there heard of his father's death. Meanwhile Henry, too, left his
father's bedside to take for himself the money that was left to him, to see that
nothing was lacking in its weight, to call together his comrades on whom he could
trust, and to take measures for stowing the treasure in a place of safety.
And now those who stood around the dying king began to implore his mercy for
the captives whom he held in prison. He granted the prayer.
The last earthly acts of the Conqueror were now done. He had striven to make
his peace with God and man, and to make such provision as he could for the children
•
46
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
and the subjccts whom he had left behind him. And now his last hour was come.
On a Thursday morning in September, when the sun had already risen upon the
carth, the sound of the great bell of the metropolitan minster struck on the ears of
the dying king. He asked why it sounded. He was told that it rang for prime in
the church of our Lady. William lifted his eyes to heaven, he stretched forth his
hands, and spake his last words: To my Lady Mary, the Holy Mother of God, I
commend myself, that by her holy prayers she may reconcile me to her dear Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ.' He prayed, and his soul passed away. William, king of the
English and duke of the Normaus, the man whose fame has filled the world in his
own and in every following age, had gone the way of all flesh. No kingdom was left
him now but his seven feci of ground, and even to that his claim was not to be un-
disputed.
The death of a king in those days came near to a break-up of all civil society. Till
a new king was chosen and crowned, there was no longer a power in the land to pro-
tect or to chastise. All bonds were loosed; all puplic authority was in abeyance;
each mau had to look to his own as he best might. No sooner was the breath out of
William's body than the great company which had patiently watched around him
during the night was scattered hither and thither. The great men mounted their
horses and rode with all speed to their own homes, to guard their houses and goods
against the outburst of lawlessness which was sure to break forth now that the land
had no longer a ruler. Their servants and followers, seeing their lords gone, and
deeming that there was no longer any fear of punishment, began to make spoil of
the royal chamber. Weapons, clothes, vessels, the royal bed and its furniture, were
carried off, and for a whole day the body of the Conqueror lay well-nigh bare on the
floor of the room in which he died.
With the fourth volume of his history Mr. Freeman ended what he
Ile
termed his tale-the tale of the Norman Conquest of England.
had recorded the events which made it possible for a foreign prince
In the fifth volume he
to win and to keep England as his own.
traced the results of the Conquest-the fusion of races—which was
accomplished with little or no violence during the reign of William's
son, Henry—and the important changes that then took place in the
language and arts of the English people.
JOHN HILL BURTON.
เ
The history of Scotland was left by MR. FRASER TYTLER at the
A subsequent por-
period of the union of the crowns under James VI.
tion has been fully treated by MR. JOHN HILL BURTON, advocate, in a
work, entitled History of Scotland from the Revolution to the Ex-
tinction of the last Jacobite Insurrection' (16-9-1748), two volumes,
185%. This work has received the approbation of Lord Macaulay
and all other historical readers; it is honestly and diligently executed,
with passages of vigorous and picturesque cloquence-as the account
We
of the battle of Killiecrankie, and the massacre of Glencoe.
subjoin part of the historian's notice of the Scottish language and
literature.
The Scottish Language after the Period of the Revolution.
The development of pure literature in Scotland and, for half a century after the
Revolution, to struggle with a peculiar difficulty arising out of the tenor of the na-
tional history. The languages of England and of Lowland Scotland, speaking of
both in a general sense, were as entirely taken from a northern Teutonic stock com-
mou to both, as the languages of Essex and Yorkshire. Like other national charac-
teristics, the language of Scotland took a direction severing itself from that of Eng-
BURTON.
47
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
land after the War of Independence. Centuries elapsed, however, ere the distinctive
peculiarities of each had gone far in its own direction, and away from the other. The
carliest material change was in the language of England by the infusion of the Nor-
man, while Scotland kept closer to the Old Saxon stock. Thus it is that Scottish
writers of the age of Gower and Chaucer-such as Barbour, the Archdeacon of Ab-
erdeen, and Wyntoun, the monk of Lochleven-wrote a language more intelligible to
the present age thau that of their English contemporaries, because it is not so sensi-
bly tinged with Gallicisms. France had subsequently, as we have seen, a great 80-
cial and constitutional influence in Scotland, which brought a few foreign terms into
use, but it scarcely touched the structure of the language. This gradually assumed
a purely national, or, as it came to be deemed when Scotland was becoming absorbed
into the British community, a provincial tongue. The Scottish poets of the sixteenth
century wrote in a language as different from the English as we might suppose the
Norse of the same age to be from the Danish. John Knox, who lived much in
England, was charged with the affected employment of English novelties, because he
attempted so to modify the Scottish peculiarities as to make his works read-
able to his friends beyond the Border. It was felt, indeed, in his day that the Scottish
tongue was becoming provincial, and those who desired to speak beyond a mere
home audience wrote in Latin. Hence arose that class of scholars headed by Bu-
chanan, who almost made the language of Rome vernacular to themselves. Those
who are acquainted with the epistolary correspondence of learned Scotsmen in the
seventeenth century, will observe how easily they take to Latin-how uneasy and
diffident they feel in the use of English. Sometimes, indeed, the ancient language is
evidently sought as a relief, when the writer is addressing one to whom he cannot
use a Scottish expression, while he is unable to handle the corresponding English
idiom. But Latin was dying away as the common language of literature and sci-
ence. Each great nation was forming her own literary tongue. The revolution was
completed within the time embraced in this history. But Scotland had not kept an
independent literary language of her own, nor was she sufficiently expert in the use
of that which had been created in England. Hence, in a great measure, we can dis-
tinctly account for the literary barrenness of the country. The men may have ex-
isted, but they had not the tools. An acquaintance with the correspondence of Scots-
men, for the first half century after the Revolution, shews the extreme difficulty
which even those who were high in rank and well educated felt in conveying their
thoughts through a dialect imperfectly resembling the language of The Spectator."
Any attempt to keep up a Scottish literary language had been abandoned in prose
before the Revolution. In verse, incidental causes made it seem as if the struggle
were still continued. The old Scottish melodies, so mysterious in their origin, uever
ceased to have the charm of musical association for the people.
Mr. Burton subsequently completed his Scottish history with seven
more volumes, The History of Scotland from Agricola's Invasion to
the Revolution of 1688' (1867-1870). These latter volumes fully sus
tained the author's reputation for research, discrimination, and liter-
ary ability. A second edition, carefully revised, has been published.
Mr. Burton has made further additions to our knowledge of Scottish
literature and society by his valuable Life and Correspondence of
David Hume,' 1846, his Lives of Lord Lovat and Duncan Forbes of
Culloden,' 1847--both works written from family papers and other
original sources of information—and his 'Narratives from Criminal
Trials in Scotland.' In 1862 he produced a very amusing and inter-
esting volume, The Book-Hunter,' containing sketches of the ways
of book-collectors, scholars, literary investigators, desultory readers,
and other persons whose pursuits revolve round books and literature.'
In 1864 appeared 'The Scot Abroad,' two volumes-a work, like the
former, consisting of sketches and anecdotes, and referring to the
relations of Scotland and Scotsmen with foreign countries
<
As a
·
43
CYCLOPÆDÍA OF
[TO 1876.
A
member of the Scottish bar, Mr. Burton has also been a hard legal
student, having written a work on the Scottish Bankrupt Law,' a
Manual of the Law of Scotland,' &c. In another not very promis
ing mine he has been a successful labourer: his Political and Social
Economy,' 1849, is a little volume giving a clear and popular sum-
mary of this science, and he has extracted from the mass of Jeremy
Bentham's works a very readable collection of Benthamiana.' To
the Westminster Review,'Blackwood's Magazine,' and other lit-
erary journals, Mr. Burton has been an occasional contributor.
This able and indefatigable littérateur is a native of Aberdeen, the
son of a military officer, and born August 22, 1809. He was admit-
ted to the Scottish bar in 1831. In 1854 he was appointed secretary
to the Prison Board of Scotland. Mr. Burton has received from
Edinburgh University the degree of LL.D.
s
6
Among other notable contributions to history may be cited the fol-
lowing: Scotland in the Middle Ages,' 1860, and Sketches of Early
Scotch History,' 1861, by COSMO INNES (1798–1874). Mr. Innes was
Professor of History in the University of Edinburgh, and the two
volumes we have named contain the substance of his lectures. They
are interesting works as illustrating the social progress, the church
organisation, the university and home life of the people, and are
written in a pleasing, graphic style. Less popular, but more exact,
is Scotland under Her Early Kings,' 1862, by E. WILLIAM ROBERT-
SON, which contains a history of the kingdom to the close of the thir-
teenth century.
<
•
(
MISS STRICKLAND.
(
<
MISS AGNES STRICKLAND (1801-1874), authoress of historical me-
moirs of the Queens of England and Scotland, was a native of Suf-
folk, daughter of Thomas Strickland, Esq., of Reydon Hall. Her
first publication was a poetical narrative, Worcester Field, or the
Cavalier;' she also wrote a tale, Demetrius;' but she soon struck
into that path for which she seemed best fitted-historical composi-
tion. She wrote historic scenes and stories for children, and in 1835
produced the Pilgrims of Walsingham,' constructed on the plan of
Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims.' She then, aided by a sister, Miss
Elizabeth Strickland, entered upon her elaborate work, Lives of the
Queens of England from the Norman Conquest,' twelve volumes,
1840-49. Of this work, a second edition was published in 1851,
in
eight volumes. The English history was followed by 'Lives of the
Queens of Scotland and English Princesses connected with the Regal
Succession of Great Britain,' eight volumes, 1850-59. The life of
Mary, Queen of Scots, in this work is written with great fullness of
detail and illustration, many new facts having been added by study of
the papers in the Register House, Edinburgh, and documents in the
possession of the Earl of Moray and the representatives of other an-
cient families. The collection of Mary's letters by Prince Labanoff
J
C
STRICKLAND.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
49
+
also afforded new materials, not available to previous historians of
the unfortunate queen. In 1866 Miss Strickland published Lives of
the Seven Bishops.' In 1871 she received a pension of £100 a year.
Queen Mary and the Lords of Council at Lochleven Custle.
↓
<
เ
The conspirators. calling themselves the Lords of Secret Council, having com-
pleted their arrangements for the long-meditated project of depriviug her of her
crown, summoned Lord Lindsay to Edinburgh, and on the 23d of July delivered to
him and Sir Robert Melville three deeds, to which they were instructed to obtain her
signature, either by flattering words or absolute force. The first contained a declara-
tion, as if from herself, that, being in infirm health, and worn out with the cares of
government, she had taken purpose voluntarily to resign her crown and office to her
dearest son, James, Prince of Scotland.' In the second, her trusty brother James,
Earl of Moray, was constituted regent for the prince her son, during the minority of
the royal infant.' The third appointed a provisional council of regency, consisting
of Morton and the other Lords of Secret Council, to carry on the government till
Moray's return; or, in case of his refusing to accept it, till the prince arrived at the
legal age for exercising it himself. Aware that Mary would not easily be induced to
execute such instruments, Sir Robert Melville was especially employed to cajole
her into this political suicide. That ungrateful courtier, who had been employed
and trusted by his unfortunate sovereign ever since her return from France, and
had received nothing but benefits from her, undertook this office. Having obtained
a private interview with her, he deceitfully entreated her to sign certain deeds that
would be presented to her by Lindsay as the only means of preserving her life, which,
he assured her, was in the most imminent danger.' Then he gave her a turquoise
ring, telling her it was sent to her from the Earls of Argyle, Iluntly, and Athole,
Secretary Lethington, and the Laird of Grange, who loved her majesty, and had by
that token accredited him to exhort her to avert the peril to which she would be ex-
posed, if she ventured to refuse the requisition of the Lords of Secret Council, whose
designs, they well knew, were to take her life, either secretly or by a mock-trial
among themselves.' Finding the queen impatient of this insidious advice, he pro-
duced a letter from the English ambassador Throckmorton. out of the scabbard of
his sword, telling her he had concealed it there at the peril of his own life, in order
to convey it to her '-a paltry piece of acting, worthy of the parties by whom it had
been devised. for the letter had been written for the express purpose of inducing
Mary to accede to the demission of her regal dignity, telling her, as if in confidence,
that it was the queen of England's sisterly advice that she should not irritate those
who had her in their power, by refusing the ouly concession that could save her life;
and observing that nothing that was done under her present circumstances could be
of any force when she regained her freedom.' Mary, however, resolutely refused to
sign the deeds: declaring, with truly royal courage, that she would not make her-
self a party to the treason of her own subjects. by acceding to their lawless requisi-
tion, which, as she truly alleged. proceeded only of the ambition of a few, and was
far from the desire of her people.'
·
•
<
The fair-spoken Melville hav ng reported his ill success to his coadjutor Lord
Lindsay, Moray's brother-in-law, the bully of the party, who had been selected
for the honourable office of extorting by force from the royal captive the concession
she denied, that brutal ruffian burst rudely into her presence, and, flinging the deeds
violently upon the table before her, told her to sign them without delay, or worse
would befäll her. 'What!' exclaimed Mary, shall I set my hand to a deliberate
falsehood, and, to gratify the ambition of my nobles, relinquish the office God hath
given to me to my son, au infant little more than a year old, incapable of governing
The realm, that my brother Moray may reign in his name?' She was proceeding to
demonstrate the unreasonableness of what was required of her, but Lindsay con-
temptuously interrupted her with scoruful laughter: theu, scowling ferociously upon
her, he swore with a deep oath, that if she would not sign those instruments, he
would do it with her heart's blood, and cast her into the lake to feed the fishes.'
Full well did the defenceless woman know how capable he was of performing his
threat, having seen his rapier reeking with human blood shed in her presence, when
he as isted at the butchery of her unfortunate secretary. The ink was scarcely dry
•
50
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
of her royal signature to the remission she had granted to him for that outrage ; but,
reckless of the fact that he owed his life, his forfeit lands, yea, the very power of
injuring her, to her generous clemency, he thus requited the grace she had, in evil
hour for herself, accorded to him. Her heart was too full to continue the unequal
contest. I am not yet five-and-twenty,' she pathetically observed; somewhat more
she would have said, but her utterance failed her, and she began to weep with
hysterical emotion. Sir Robert Melville, affecting an air of the deepest concern,
whispered in her ear an earnest entreaty for her to save her life by signing the
papers,' reiterating that whatever she did would be invalid because extorted by
force.'
་
<
(
Mary's tears continued to flow, but sign she would not, till Lindsay, infuriated
by her resolute resistance, swore that having begun the matter, he would also finish
it then and there,' forced the pen into her reluctant hand, and, according to the
popular version of this scene of lawless violence, grasped her arm in the struggle so
rudely, as to leave the prints of his mail-clad fingers visibly impressed. In an access
of pain and terror, with streaming eyes and averted head, she affixed her regal sig-
nature to the three deeds, without once looking upon them. Sir Walter Scott
alludes to Lindsay's barbarous treatment of his hapless queen in these nervous lines:
George Douglas the youngest son of the evil lady of Lochleven, being present,
indignantly remonstrated with his savage brother-in-law, Lindsay, for his miscon-
duct; and though hitherto employed as one of the persons whose office it was to
keep guard over her, he became from that hour the most devoted of her friends and
champions, and the contriver of her escape. His elder brother, Sir William Douglas,
the castellan, absolutely refused to be present; entered a protest against the wrong
that had been perpetrated under his roof; and besought the queen to give him a
letter of exoneration certifying that he had nothing to do with it, and that it was
against his consent—which letter she gave him.
And haggard Lindsay's iron eye,
That saw fair Mary weep in vain.
+
་
This oft-repeated story of Moray's deceit and Lindsay's ferocity
cannot be accepted as historical truth. Private journals and corres-
pondence have thrown much light on modern English history.
Family pride or cupidity has in some instances led to undue disclo-
sures of this description, breaking down the barrier between public
and private life; and already most of the secrets of the courts of
George III. and IV., with domestic details and scandal, have been
published. We have had the Diaries and Correspondence of the
Earl of Malmesbury,' four volumes, 1843-44; the Grenville Papers'
four volumes, 1852-53; the Memorials and Correspondence of
Charles James Fox,' edited by LORD JOHN RUSSELL, three volumes,
1853-54; the Correspondence of the Marquis of Cornwallis,' three
volumes 1859 and Memoirs of the Court of George IV.,' 1820-30,
by the Duke of Buckingham, two volumes, 1859; &c. The late emi-
nent statesman, SIR ROBERT PEEL (1788-1850), solicitous concerning
his reputation for political integrity, left behind him 'Memoirs,
explanatory cf his views and conduct on the Roman Catholic
question, 1828-29; the government of 1834-35; and the repeal of the
corn-laws, 1845-46. The work was published, in two volomes, 1856-
57, but is only a meagre collection of public papers and stale argu
•
(
↓
•
ments.
The History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, from the
Letters and Journals of the late Sir Hudson Lowe,' by MR, WILLIAM
STRICKLAND.} ENGLISH LITERATURE.
51
FORSYTII, barrister, three volumes, 1853, is a painful and humilia-
ting record.
The conduct of the exiled military chief was marked
by disingenuous artifice and petty misrepresentation-by weakness
and meanness almost incredible. But Sir Hudson Lowe was not the
fit person to act as governor: he was sensitive, quick-tempered, and
of a blunt, unpleasing address.
C
Among other works well deserving of study are the Lectures on
Modern History, from the Irruption of the Northern Nations to the
Close of the American Revolution,' two volumes, 1848, by WILLIAM
SMYTHI (1764–1849), some time Professor of Modern History in Cam-
bridge. The successor of Mr. Smyth as historical lecturer in the
university of Cambridge, SIR JAMES STEPHEN, published 'Lectures
on the History of France,' two volumes, 1851. Sir James was well
known from his long connection with the Colonial Office as under-
secretary-which office he resigned in 1848-and for his eloquent
critical and historical contributions to the Edinburgh Review.'
Some of these he collected and published under the title of Essays
on Ecclesiastical Biography,' two volumes, 1853. Sir James died in
1859, aged 70.
L
The writings of MR. THOMAS WRIGHT, a distinguished archæolo-
These are
gist, in illustration of early English history, are valuable.
'Biographia Britannica Literaria, or biography of literary characters
of Great Britain and Ireland, during the Anglo-Norman and Anglo-
Saxon periods, two volumes, 1842-46; and The Celt, the Roman,
and the Saxon,' 1852. Other short contributions connected with the
middle ages have been produced by Mr. Wright, and he has edited
the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, and the Visions of Piers
Ploughman.'
C
<
C
<
(
<
The Criminal Trials in Scotland,' from 1428 to 1624, by ROBERT
PITCAIRN, W.S.-who died in 1855-form also a valuable contribu-
tion to the history of domestic life and manners. Of a different
character, but delightfully minute and descriptive, is a volume by
MR. ROBERT WHITE, Newcastle (1802-1874), a History of the Bat-
tle of Otterburn,' fought in 1388, with memoirs of the chiefs engaged
in the conflict. The same author has written a copious History of
the Battle of Bannockburn,' 1871. The Archæology and Prehistoric
Annals of Scotland,' by MR. DANIEL WILSON, Professor of English
Literature in Toronto College, Canada, published in 1851; and Cal
edonia Romana,' a descriptive account of the Roman antiquities of
Scotland, published in 1845, embody the results of long and careful
study. MR. J. J A. WORSAAE, a Danish archæologist, has given
an 'Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland and
Ireland,' in 1852. Mr. Worsaae was commissioned by the King of
Denmark to investigate the memorials of the ancient Scandinavians
which might still be extant in this country. DEAN STANLEY has
brought local knowledge and antiquarian studies to bear upon gen-
eral history in his Memorials of Canterbury,' 1855; in which we
<
$2
[TO 1876,
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
have details of the landing or Augustine, the murder of Thomas-à-
Becket, the Black Prince, and Becket's shrine.
4
Family histories are good helps to the general historian. Sir
Walter Scott hung with delight over the quaint pages of 'old Pits-
cottie,' or the History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus,' by
David Hume of Godscroft, 1644. The great novelist edited another
work of the same kind, the Memorie of the Somerviles,' written by
a Lord Somerville of the times of Charles II. One of the most in-
teresting and complete works of domestic annals is one published in
1840, Lives of the Lindsays, or a Memoir of the Houses of Crawford
and Balcarres, by Lord Lindsay,' four volumes. The Lindsays were
of the race of the Normans that settled in England under the Con-
queror, and two brothers of the family established themselves in
Scotland in the twelfth century.
•
<
A 'IIistory of Roman Literature' has been written by JOHN
DUNLOP, Esq. From the earliest period to the Augustun age is com-
prised in two volumes, and a third volume is devoted to the Augustan
age. Mr. Dunlop is author also of a History of Fiction,' three vol-
umes, 1814.
His latest production was Memoirs of Spain during the
Reigns of Philip IV. and Charles I. 1621 to 1700, two volumes 18: 4.
Mr. Dunlop was a Scottish advocate, sheriff of Renfrewshire; he
died in 1842.
{
(
<
Some Historical Memoirs' by MR. MARK NAPIER, advocate, pos-
sess interest if not value. The first is Memoirs of John Napier of
Merchiston' (born 1550, died 1617). It is remarkable that so emi-
nent a man as the inventor of logarithms should have been without a
special biographer until the year 1-34, the date of Mr. Mark Napier's
book. The strange combination it presents of abstruse theological
studies, a belief in the art of divination and other superstitions, and
great scientific acquirements, all meeting in the character of the old
Scottish laird, a solitary student in fierce tumultuous times, gives a
picturesqueness and attraction to the story of his life. Mr. Napier's
next work, Memoirs of the Marquis of Montrose,' two volumes,
1856, contains original letters of the military hero, and other docu-
ments from charter-rooms, essential to the history of Montrose. Mr.
- Napier in 1859 produced the Life and Times of John Graham of
Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee,' three volumes. Mr. Napier writes
in the spirit of a keen partisan, with no attempt,' he says, ' to dress
by the purists in composition.' Indeed his writing is such as we
should expect the Baron of Bradwardine to indite if he took up the
historic pen, though the Baroa would have had more courtesy to-
wards opponents. Mr. Napier, however, is eager in pursuit of infor-
mation, and gives his discoveries unmutilated. This veteran defender
of the Jacobite chiefs was in 1820 admitted a member of the Scottish
bar, and is sheriff of Dumfriesshire
V
•
C
+
LOCKHART.]
53
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MR. LOCKILART-DEAN STANLEY.
G
Several important biographical works have already been noticed in
connection with the authors whose lives were related. The number
of new works in this department of our literature continues daily to
increase, but it is only necessary to notice such as have an original
character, or derive special interest from the name and talents of the
biographer.
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., by J. G. LOCK-
HART, Esq., his Literary Executor,' seven volumes, 1837, makes the
nearest approach, in fullness of detail, literary importance, and
general interest, to Boswell's Life of Johnson. The near relation-
ship of the author to his subject might have blinded his judgment,
yet the Life is written in a fair and manly spirit, without either sup-
pressions or misstatements that could alter its essential features.
Into the controversial points of the memoir we shall not enter: the
author has certainly paid too little deference and regard to the feel-
ings of individuals; and in most of his conclusions with regard to
the Messrs. Ballantyne, we believe him to have been wrong; yet far
more than enough remains to enable us to overlook these blemishes.
The fearless confidence with which all that he knew and believed is
laid before the public, and Scott presented to the world exactly as he
was in life--in his schemes of worldly ambition as in his vast literary
undertakings--is greatly to be admired, and well deserves its meed of
praise. The book, in the main, exhibits a sound and healthy spirit,
calculated to exercise a great influence on contemporary literature.
As an example and guide in real life, in doing and in suffering, it is
equally valuable. The more,' says Mr. Lockhart, the details of
Scott's personal history are revealed and studied, the more power-
fully will that be found to inculcate the same great lessons with his
works. Where else shall we be better taught how prosperity may be
extended by beneficence, and adversity confronted by exertion?
Where can we see the follies of the wise" more strikingly rebuked,
and a character more beautifully purified and exalted than in the
passage through affliction to death? His character seems to belong
to some elder and stronger period than ours; and, indeed, I cannot
help likening it to the architectural fabrics of other ages which he
most delighted in, where there is such a congregation of imagery and
tracery, such endless indulgence of whim and fancy, the sublime
blending here with the beautiful, and there contrasted with the gro-
tesque-half perhaps seen in the clear daylight, and half by rays
tinged with the blazoned forms of the past-that one may be apt
to get bewildered among the variety of particular impressions, and
not feel either the unity of the grand design, or the height and solid-
ness of the structure, until the door has been closed on the labyrinth
of aisles and shrines, and you survey it from a distance, but still
within its shadow.'
C
•
·
+
54
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
In 1843 Mr. Lockhart published an abridgment of his Life of
Scott, embracing only what may be called more strictly narrative, to
which he made some slight additions. One of these we subjoin :
The Sons of Great Men.
The children of illustrious men begin the world with great advantages, if they
know how to use them; but this is hard and rare. There is risk that in the flush of
youth, favourable to all illusions, the filial pride may be twisted to personal vanity.
When experience checks this misgrowth, it is apt to do so with a severity that shall
each the best sources of moral and intellectual development. The great sons of
great fathers have been few. It is usual to see their progeny smiled at through life
for stilted pretension, or despised, at best pitied. for an inactive, inglorious humility.
The shadow of the oak is broad, but noble plants seldom rise within that circle. It
was fortunate for the sons of Scott that his day darkened in the morning of theirs.
The sudden calamity anticipated the natural effect of observation and the collisions
of society and business. All weak, unmanly folly was nipped in the bud, and soon
withered to the root. They were both remarkably modest men, but in neither had
the better stimulus of the blood been arrested.
(
Much light is thrown on the Scott and Ballantyne dispute, and on
the Scotch literature of the period, by Archibald Constable, and his
Literary Correspondence; a Memorial by his Son, Thomas Consta-
ble,' three volumes, 1873.
Mr. Lockhart's Life of Burns,' originally published in 1828, made
a valuable addition to the biographical facts in Dr. Currie's memoir
of the poet. It is finely written, in a candid and generous spirit, and
contains passages-that describing Burns's appearance among the
savans of Edinburgh, his life at Ellisland, &c., which mark the hand
of the master.
↓
Burns on his Farm at Ellisland.
It is difficult to imagine anything more beautiful, more noble, than what such a
person as Mrs. Dunlop might at this period be supposed to contemplate as the pro-
bable tenor of his [Burus's] life. What fame can bring of happiness he had already
tasted; he had overleaped, by the force of his genius, all the painful barriers of so-
ciety; and there was probably not a man in Scotland who would not have thought
himself honoured by seeing Burus under his roof He had it in his own power to
place his poetical reputation on a level with the very highest names, by proceeding
in the same course of study and exertiou which had originally raised him into pub-
lic notice and admiration. Surrounded by an affectionate family, occupied but not
engrossed by the agricultural labours in which his youth and early manhood had de-
lighted. communing with nature in one of the loveliest districts of his native land,
and, from time to time, producing to the world some immortal addition to his verse
-thus advancing in years and in fame, with what respect would not Burns have been
thought of; how venerable in the eyes of his contemporaries-how hallowed in those
of after-generatious, would have been the roof of Ellisland, the field on which he
'bound every day after his reapers,' the solemn river by which he delighted to wan-
der! The plain of Baunockburn would hardly have been holier ground.
>
As a reviewer, Mr. Lockhart's critiques were principally biogra-
phical; and his notices of Campbell, Southey, Theodore Hook, Jef-
frey, and others will be recollected by most readers of the 'Quarterly
Review. The sharp, clear, incisive style, and the mixture of scho-
lastic taste with the tact of the man of the world, distinguish them
ali. The biography of Burns afterwards received minute examina-
tion and additional facts from Dr. Robert Chambers and Dr. P.;
Hately Waddell.
I
LOCKHART.)
55
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
'The Life and Correspondence of Dr. Arnold,' by Arthur P.
STANLEY (now dean of Westminster), two volumes, 1844, is valuable
as affording an example of a man of noble, independent nature, and
also as furnishing a great amount of most interesting information
relative to the public schools of England, and the various social and
political questions which agitated the country from 1820 to 1840.
Whether agreeing with, or dissenting from, the views of Dr. Arnold,
it is impossible not to admire his love of truth and perfect integrity of
character. In intellectual energy, decision, and uprightness he re-
sembled Johnson, but happily his constitutional temperament was as
elastic and cheerful as that of Johnson was desponding and melan-
choly. We add a few scraps from Arnold's letters and diary, which
form so interesting a portion of Dean Stanley's memoir.
Few Men take Life in Earnest.
I meet with a great many persons in the course of the year, and with many whom
I admire and like; but what I feel daily more and more to need, as life every year
rises more and more before me in its true reality, is to have intercourse with those
who take life in earnest. It is very painful to me to be always on the surface of
things; and I feel that literature, science, politics, many topics of far greater interest
than mere gossip or talking about the weather, are yet, as they are generally talked
about, still upon the surface-they do not touch the real depths of life. It is not that
I want much of what is called religious conversation-that. I believe, is often on the
surface, like other conversation-but I want a sign which one catches as by a sort of
masonry, that a man knows what he is about in life. whither tending, in what cause
engaged; and when I find this, it seems to open my heart as thoroughly, and with as
fresh a sympathy, as when I was twenty years younger.
Home and Old Friends.
These are times when I am least of all inclined to loosen the links which bind me
to my oldest and dearest friends; for I imagine we shall all want the union of all the
good men we can get together; and the want of sympathy which I cannot but feel
towards many of those whom I meet with, makes me think how delightful it would
be to have daily intercourse with those with whom I ever feel it thoroughly. What
people do in middle life, without a wife and children to turn to. I cannot imagine;
for I think the affections must be sadly checked and chilled, even in the best men,
by their intercourse with people such as one usually finds them in the world. I do
not mean that one does not meet with good and sensible people; but then their
minds are set, and our minds are set, and they will not, in mature age, grow into
each other; but with a home filled with those whom we entirely love and sympathise
with, and with some old friends, to whom one can open one's heart fully from time
to time, the world's society has rather a bracing influence to make one shake off
mere dreams of delight.
London and Mont Blanc.
In
August 1, 1837.—We passed through London, with which I was once so familiar;
and which now I almost gaze at with the wonder of a stranger. That enormous
city, grand beyond all other earthly grandeur, sublime with the sublimity of the sea
or of mountains, is yet a place that I should be most sorry to call my home.
fact, its greatness repels the notion of home: it may be a palace, but it cannot be a
home. How different from the mingled greatness and sweetness of our mountain
valleys! and yet he who were strong in body and mind ought to desire rather, if he
must do one, to spend all his life in London, than all his life in Westmoreland. For
not yet can energy and rest be united in one, and this is not our time and place for
rest, but for energy.
August 2, 1839.—I am come out alone, my dearest, to this spot, to see the morning
56
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
}
sun on Mont Blanc and on the lake, and to look with more, I trust, than outward
eyes on this glorious scene. It is overpowering, like all other intense beauty, if you
dwell upon it; but I contrast it immediately with our Rugby horizon, and our life of
duty there, and our cloudy sky of England-clouded socially, alas! far more darkly
thai physically. But, beautiful as this is, and peaceful, may I never breathe a wish
to retire hither, even with you and our darlings, if it were possible; but may I be
strengthened to labour. and to do and to suffer in our own beloved country and
church, and to give my life, if so called upon, for Christ's cause and for them. And
if-as I trust it will-this rambling and this beauty of nature in foreign lands, shall
have strengthened me for my work at home, then we may both rejoice that we have
had this little parting.
SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL.
The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V.,' 1852, by WILLIAM
STIRLING, of Keir (now Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, Bart.), sup-
plies deficiencies and corrects errors in the popular account of the
emperor in Robertson's History. He had access to documents un-
known to Robertson, and was, besides, more familiar with Spanish
literature. This work, it must be confessed, destroys part of the
romance of the life of Charles, while it adds materially to our knowl-
edge of it. For example, Robertson states that the table of the em-
peror was neat and plain,' but Sir William draws a very different
picture of the cuisine:
<
C
Epicurean Habits of the Emperor Charles V.
८
L
"
In this matter of eating, as in many other habits, the emperor was himself a true
Fleming. His early tendency to gout was increased by his indulgence at table, which
generally far exceeded his feeble powers of digestion. Roger Ascham, standing hard
by the imperial table at the feast of golden fleece,' watched with wonder the emperor's
progress through sod beef. roast mutton, baked hare,' after which he fed well off a
capon,' drinking also, says the Fellow of St. John's, the best that ever I saw; he
had his head in the glass five times as long as any of them, and never drank less than
a good quart at once of Rhenish wine.' Eating was now the only physical gratifica-
tion which he could still enjoy, or was unable to resist. He continued, therefore, to
dine to the last upon the rich dishes, against which his ancient and trusty confessor,
Cardinal Loaysa, had protested a quarter of a century before. The supply of his table
was a main subject of the correspondeuce between the mayordomo and the secretary
of state. The weekly courier from Valladolid to Lishou was ordered to change his
route that he might bring, every Thursday, a provision of eels aud other rich fish
(pescado grueso) for Friday's fast. There was a constant demand for anchovies,
tummy, and other potted fish, and sometimes a complaint that the trouts of the coun-
try were too small; the olives, on the other hand, were too large, and the emperor
wished. instead, for olives of Perejou. One day, the secretary of state was asked
for some partridges from Gama, a place from whence the emperor remembers
that the Count of Orsono once sent him, into Flanders, some of the best partridges
in the world. Another day, sausages were wanted of the kind which the
queen Juana, now in glory, used to pride herself in making, in the Flemish
fashion, at Tordesillas, and for the receipt for which the secretary is referred to
The sausages,
the Marquess of Denia' Both orders were punctually executed.
although sent to a land supreme in that anufacture, gave great satisfaction. Of
the partridges, the emperor said that they used to be better, ordering, however,
the remainder to be pickled. The emperor's weakness being generally known or
soon discovered, dainties of all kinds were sent to him as presents. Mutton, pork,
and game were the provisions most easily obtained at Xarandilla; but they were
dear. The bread was indifferent. and nothing was good and abundant but chestnuts,
the staple food of the people. But in a very few days the castle larder wanted for
nothing. One day the Count of Oropesa sent an offering of game; another day a
C
MAXWELL.]
57
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
pair of fat calves arrived from the archbishop of Zaragoza; the archbishop of Toledo
and the Duchess of Frias were constant and magnificent in their gifts of venison,
fruit, and preserves; and supplies of all kinds came at regular intervals from Seville,
and from Portugal. Luis Quixada, who knew the emperor's habits and constitution
well, beheld with dismay these long trains of mules laden, as it were, with gout and
bile. He never acknowledged the receipt of the good things from Valladolid with-
out adding some dismal forebodings of consequent mischief; and along with an
order he sometimes conveyed a hint that it would be much better if no means were
found of executing it. If the emperor made a hearty meal without being the worse for
it, the mayordomo noted the fact with exultation: and he remarked with complacency
his majesty's foudness for plovers, which he considered harmless. But his office of
purveyor was more commonly exercised under protest; and he interposed between
his master and an cel-pie as, in other days, he would have thrown himself between
the imperial persou and the point of a Moorish lance.
The retirement of the emperor took place on the 3d of February
1557. He carried with him to his cloister sixty attendants-not
twelve, as stated by Robertson; and in his retreat at Yuste he wielded
the royal power as firmly as he had done at Augsburg or Toledo. His
regular life, however, had something in it of monastic quiet-his
time was measured out with punctual attention to his various em-
ployments; he fed his pet birds or suntered among his trees and
Howers, and joined earnestly in the religious observances of_the
monks. The subjoined scene is less strikingly painted than in Rob-
ertson's narrative, but is more correct:
The Emperor performs the Funeral Service for Himself.
About this time [August 1558], according to the historian of St. Jerome, his
thoughts seemed to turn more than usual to religion and its rites. Whenever during
his stay at Yuste any of his friends. of the degree of princes or knights of the fleece,
had died, he had ever been punctual in doing honour to their memory, by causing
their obsequies to be performed by the friars; and these lugubrious services may be
said to have formed the festivals of the gloomy life of the cloister. The daily masses
said for his own soul were always accompanied by others for the souls of his father,
mother, and wife. But now he ordered further solemnities of the funeral kind to be
performed in behalf of these relations, each on a different day, and attended them
himself, preceded by a page bearing a taper, and joining in the chaut, in a very de-
vout and audible manner, out of a tattered prayer-book. These rights ended, he
asked his confessor whether he might not now perform his own funeral, and so do
for himself what would soon have to be done for him by others. Regla replied that
his majesty, please God. might live many years, and that when bis time came these
services would be gratefully rendered, without his taking any thought about the mat-
• But,' persisted Charles, would it not be good for my soul?" The monk said,
that certainly it would; pious works done during life being far more efficacious than
when postponed till after death. Preparations were therefore at once set on foot:
a catafalque, which had served before ou similar occasions, was erected; and on the
following day, the 30th of August, as the monkish historian relates, this celebrated
service was actually performed. The high altar, the catafalque, and the whole
church shone with a blaze of wax-lights; the friars were all in their places, at the
altars, and in the choir, and the household of the emperor attended in deep mourn-
ing. The pious monarch himself was there, attired in sable weeds, and bearing a
taper, to see himself interred and to celebrate his own obsequies.' While the solemu
mass for the dead was sung, he came forward and gave his taper into the hands of
the officiating priest, in token of his desire to yield his soul into the hands of his
Maker. High above, over the kneeling throne and the gorgeous vestments, the
flowers, the curling incense, and the glittering altar. the same idea shone forth in
that splendid canvas whereon Titian had pictured Charles kneeling on the threshold
of the heavenly mansions prepared for the blessed.
ter.
C
.
•
58
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
The funeral-rites ended, the emperor dined in his western alcove. He ate little,
but he remained for a great part of the afternoon sitting in the open air, and bask-
ing in the sun, which, as it descended to the horizon, beat strongly upon the white
walls. Feeling a violent pain in his head, he returned to his chamber and lay down.
Mathisio, whom he had sent in the morning to Xarandrilla to attend the Count of
Oropesa in his illness, found him when he returned still suffering considerably, and
attributed the pain to bis having remained too long in the hot sunshine. Next morning
he was somewhat better, and was able to get up and go to mass, put still felt op-
pressed, and complained much of thirst. He told his confessor, however, that the
service of the day before had done him good. The sunshine again tempted him into
his open gallery. As he sat there, he sent for a portrait of the empress, and hung
for some time, lost in thought, over the gentle face, which, with its blue eyes,
auburn hair, and pensive beauty, somewhat resembled the noble countenance of that
other Isabella, the great queen of Castile. He next called for a picture of Our Lord
Praying in the Garden, and then for a sketch of the Last Judgment, by Titian
Having looked his last upon the image of the wife of his youth, it seemed as if he
were now bidding farewell, in the contemplation of his other favourite pictures, to
the noble art which he had loved with a love which cares, and years, and sickness
could not quench, and that will ever be remembered with his better fame. Thus oc-
cupied, he remained so long abstracted and motionless, that Mathisio, who was on
the watch, thought it right to awake him from his reverie. On being spoken to, he
turned round and complained that he was ill. The doctor felt his pulse, and pro-
nounced him in a fever. Again the afternoon sun was shining over the great walnut
tree, full into the gallery. From this pleasant spot, filled with the fragrance of the
garden and the murmur of the fountain, and bright with glimpses of the golden
Vera, they carried him to the gloomy chamber of his sleepless nights, and laid him
on the bed from which he was to rise no more.
The emperor died in three weeks after this time-on the 21st of
September 1558. Sir William Stirling-Maxwell's narrative, we need
hardly add, is at once graceful and exact. Its author has written
another Spanish memoir-Velasquez and his Works,' 1855. There
was little to tell of the great Spanish painter, whose life was uni-
formly prosperous; but Sir William gives sketches of Philip IV. and
his circle, and adds many critical remarks and illustrations. He
prefers Velasquez to Murillo or Rubens. Sir William Stirling-Max-
well succeeded to the baronetcy and estate of Pollok (Renfrewshire)
in 1865. He was born at the paternal seat of Keir, in Perthshire, in
1818 is an M.A. of Cambridge University, and LL.D. of the uni-
versities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews.
Velasquez's Faithful Colour-grinder.
Juan de Pareja, one of the ablest, and better known to fame as the slave of Velas-
quez, was born at Seville in 1606. His parents belonged to the class of slaves then
numerous in Andalusia. the descendants of negroes imported in large numbers into
Spain by the Moriscos in the sixteenth century; and in the African bue and features
of their son, there is evidence that they were mulattoes, or that one or other of them
was a black. It is not known whether he came into the possession of Velasquez by
purchase or by inheritance, but he was in his service as early as 1623, when he
accompanied him to Madrid. Being employed to clean the brushes, grind the col-
ours, prepare the palettes, and do the other menial work of the studio, and living
amongst pictures and painters, he early acquired an acquaintance with the imple-
ments of art, and an ambition to use them. He therefore watched the proceedings
of his master, and privately copied his works with the eagerness of a lover and the
secrecy of a conspirator. In the Italian journeys in which he accompanied Velasquez,
he scized every opportunity of improvement; and in the end he became an artist of
no mean skill. But his nature was so reserved, and his candle so jealously concealed
under its bushel, that he had returned from his second visit to Rome, and had reached
MAXWELL.]
59
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
the mature ago of forty-five, before his master became aware that he could use the
brushes which he washed. When at last he determined on laying aside the mask, he
contrived that it should be removed by the hand of the king. Finishing a small pic-
ture with peculiar care, he deposited it in his master's studio, with its face turned to
the wall. A picture so placed arouses curiosity, and is perhaps more certain to
attract the eye of a loitering visitor than if it were hung up for the purpose of being
scen. When Philip IV. visited Velasquez, he never failed to cause the daub or the
masterpiece that happened to occupy such a position to be paraded for his inspec-
tion. He therefore fell at once into the trap, and being pleased with the work, asked
for the author. Pareja, who took care to be at the royal elbow, immediately fell on
his knees, owning his guilt, and praying for his majesty's protection. The good-na-
tured king, turning to Velasquez. said: You see that a painter like this ought not to
remain a slave.' Pareja, kissing the royal hand, rose from the ground a free man.
His master gave him a formal deed of manumission, and received the colour-grinder
as a scholar. The attached follower, however, remained with him till he died; and
continued in the service of his daughter, the wife of Mazo Martinez, until his own
death, in 1670.
G. H. LEWES.
MR. GEORGE HENRY LEWES, eminent as a philosophical essayist,
citic and biographer, has written two novels- Ranthorpe,' 1847; and
Rrose, Blanche, and Violet,' 1848. In the former, he traces the
moral influence of genius on its possessor, and though there is little
artistic power evinced in the plot of the tale, it is a suggestive and
able work. In his second novel, which is longer and much more
skilfully constructed, Mr. Lewes aims chiefly at the delineation of
character. His three sisters, Rose, Blanche and Violet, are typical
dfdifferent classes of character-the gay, the gentle and the decided;
and as each of the ladies forms an attachment, we have other char-
acters and contrasts, with various complicated incidents and love-
passages. The author, however, is more of a moral teacher than a
story-teller, and he sets himself resolutely to demolish what he con-
siders popular fallacies, and to satirise the follies and delusions
prevaleut in society. Here is one of his ethical positions:
Superiority of the Moral over the Intellectual Nature of Man.
Strength of Will is the quality most needing cultivation in mankind. Will is
the central force which gives strength and greess to character. We overestimate
the value of talent, because it dazzles us; and we are apt to underrate the import-
ance of Will, because its works are less shining. Talent gracefully adorns life; but
it is Will which carries us victoriously through the struggle. Intellect is the
torch which lights us on our way: Will is the strong arm which rough-hews the
path for us. The clever, weak man sees all the obstacles on his path; the very
forch he carries, being brighter than that of most men, enables him, perhaps, to see
that the path before him may be directest. the best-yet it also enables him to see
the crooked turnings by which he may, as he fancies, reach the goal without encoun-
tering difficulties. If, indeed. Intellect were a sun, instead of a torch-if it irradi-
tated every corner and crevice-then would mau see how, in spite of every obstacle,
the direct path was the only safe one, and he would cut the way through by manful
labour. But constituted as we are, it is the clever, weak men who stumble most-the
strong men who are most virtuous and happy. In this world, there cannot be virtue
without strong Will; the weak know the right, and yet the wrong pursue.'
No one, I suppose, will accuse me of deifying Obstinacy, or even merc brute
Will; nor of depreciating Intellect. But we have had too many dithyrambs in
honour of mere Intelligence; and the older I grow, the clearer I see that Intellect
60
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
}
is not the highest faculty in man, although the most brilliant. Knowledge, after all,
is not the greatest thing in life; it is not the be-all and the end-all here.' Life is
not Science. The light of Intellect is truly a precious light; but its aim and end is
simply to shine. The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intel-
lectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced--that without intelligence we
should be brutes-but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to
give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character
seldom, if ever, astonishes: goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice are worth
all the talents in the world.
And in the following we have a sound, healthy doctrine which has
also received the support of Thackeray:
Real Men of Genius resolute Workers.
There is, in the present day, an overplus of raving about genius, and its pre-
scriptive rights of vagabondage, its irresponsibility, and its iusubordination to all
the laws of commou seuse. Common sense is so prosaic! Yet it appears from the
history of art that the real men of geuius did not rave about anything of the kind.
They were resolute workers, not idle dreamers. They knew that their genius was
not a frenzy, not a supernatural thing at all. but simply the colossal proportions of
faculties which, in a lesser degree. the meanest of mankind shared with them. They
knew that whatever it was. it would not enable them to accomplish with success the
things they undertook, unless they devoted their whole energies to the task.
Would Michael Angelo have built St. Peter's. sculptured the Moses, and made
the walls of the Vatičan sacred with the presence of his gigantic pencil, had he
awaited inspiration while his works were in progress? Would Rubens have dazzled
all the galleries of Europe, had he allowed his brush to hesitate ? would Beethoven
and Mozart have poured out their souls into such abundant melodies? would Goethe
μ
have written the sixty volumes of his works-had they not often, very often, sat
down like drudges to an unwilling task, and found themselves speedily engrossed
with that to which they were so averse ?
• Use the pen.' says the thoughtful and subtle author: there is no magic in it;
but it keeps the mind from staggering about.' This is an aphorism which should be
printed in letters of gold over the studio door of every artist. Use the pen or the
brush; do not pause. do not trifle, have uo misgivings; but keep your mind from
staggering about by fixing it resolutely on the matter before you, and then all that
you can do you will do; inspiration will not enable you to do more. Write or paint:
act, do not hesitate. If what you have written or painted should turn out imperfect,
you can correct it, and the correction will be more efficient than that correction which
takes place in the shifting thoughts of hesitation. You will learn from your failures
infinitely more than from the va rue wandering reflections of a mind loosened from
its mooriugs; because the failure is absolute, it is precise, it stands bodily before you,
your eyes and judgm 'nt cannot be juggled with, you know whether a certain verse is
harmonious, whether the rhyme is there or not there; but in the other case you not
only can juggle with yourself, but do so, the very indeterminateness of your thoughts
makes you do so; as long as the idea is not positively clothed in its artistic form, it
is impossible accurately to say what it will be. The inagic of the pen lies in the con-
centration of your thoughts upon one subject. Let your pen fall, begin to trifle
with blotting-paper. look at the ceiling, bite your nails, and otherwise dally with your
purpose, and you waste your time. scatter your thoughts, and repress the nervous
energy necessary for your task. Some men dally and dally, hesitate and trifle until
the last possible moment, and when the printer's boy is knocking at the door, they
begin; necessity goading them, they write with singular rapidity, and with singular
success; they are astonished at themselves. What is the secret ? Simply this; they
have had no time to hesitate. Concentrating their powers upon the one object b›
fore them, they have done what they could do.
Impatient reader! if I am tedious, forgive me. These lines may meet the eyes of
some to whom they are specially addressed, and may awaken thoughts in their minds
not unimportant to their future career. Forgive me, if only because I have taken
what is called the prosaic side! I have not flattered the shallow sophisms which
would give a gloss to idleness and incapacity. I have not availed myself of the
،
LEWES.}
61
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
splendid tirades, so easy to write, about the glorious privileges of genius. My
'preaching' may be very ineffectual, but at auyrate it advocates the honest dignity
of labour; let my cause excuse my tediousness.
Mr. Lewes is a native of London, born in 1817. He received his
education partly abroad and partly from Dr. Burney at Greenwich.
Being intended for a mercantile life, he was placed in the office of a
Russian merchant, but soon abandoned it for the medical profession.
From this he was driven, it is said, by a feeling of horror at witnessing
surgical operations, and he took to literature as a profession. His
principal works are a 'Biographical History of Philosophy,' four
volumes, 1845; The Spanish Drama, Lope de Vega and Calderon,'
1846; Life of Maximilien Robespierre,' 1849; Exposition of the
Principles of the Cours de Philosophie positif of Auguste Comte,'
1853; The Life and Works of Goethe,' two volumes, 1855; Sea-side
Studies at Ilfracombe, Tenby, the Scilly Isles, and Jersey,' 1857.
In
•
the Physiology of Common Life,' two volumes, 1870. Mr. Lewes
has made a very readable and instructive compendium of informa-
tion on subjects which come home to the business and bosoms of
men '—such as food and drink, mind and brain, feeling and thinking,
life and health, sleep and dreams, &c. We quote a passage which
may be said to be connected with biography:
6
•
<
·
<
Children of Great Men-Hereditary Tendencies.
If the father bestows the nervous system. how are we to explain the notorious in-
feriority of the children of great men? There is considerable exaggeration afloat on
this matter, and able men have been called nullities because they have not manifested
the great talents of their fathers; but allowing for all over-statement, the palpable
fact of the inferiority of some to their fathers is beyond dispute, and has helped to
foster the idea of all great men owing their genius to their mothers; an idea which
will not bear confrontation with the facts. Many men of genius have had remarka-
ble mothers; and that one such instance could be cited is sufficient to prove the error
both of the hypothesis which refers the nervous system to paternal influence, and of
the hypothesis which only refers the preponderance to the paternal influence. If the
male preponderates, how is it that Pericles, who carried the weapons of Zeus upon
his tongue.' produced nothing better than a Paralus and a Xanthippus? How câme
the infamous Lysimachs from the austere Aristides? How was the weighty intel-
leet of Thucydides left to be represented by an idiotic Milesias and a stupid Stepha-
Dus ?
When was the great soul of Oliver Cromwell in his son Richard ? Who were
the inheritors of Henry IV. and Peter the Great? What were Shakspeare's children.
and Milton's daughters? What was Addison's only son [daughter]? an idiot. Un-
less the mother preponderated in these and similar instances, we are without an expla-
nation; for it being proved as a law of heritage, that the individual does transmit his
qualities to his offspring. it is only on the supposition of both individuals transmitting
their organisations, and the one modifying the other, that such anomalies are conceiv-
able. When the paternal influence is not counteracted, we see it transmitted. Hence
the common remark, Talent runs in families.' The proverbial phrases, 'l'esprit
des Mortemarts,' and the wit of the Sheridans,' imply this transmission from father
to son. Bernardo Tasso was a considerable poet, and his son Torquato inherited his
faculties, heightened by the influence of the mother. The two Herschels, the two
Colmans, the Kemble family, and the Coleridges, will at once occur to the reader;
but the most striking example known to us is that of the family which boasted Jean
Sebastian Bach as the culminating illustration of a musical genius, which, more or
less. was distributed over three hundred Bachs, the children of very various mothers.
Here a sceptical reader may be tempted to ask how a man of genius is ever pro-
duced, if the child is always the repetition of the parents? How can two parents of
62
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
ordinary capacity produce a child of extraordinary power? We must consider the
phenomenon of atavism, or ancestral influence, in which the child manifests striking
resemblance to the grandfather or grandmother, and not to the father or mother. It
is to be explained on the supposition that the qualities were transmitted from the
grandfather to the father, in whom they were masked by the presence of some anta-
gonistic or controlling influence, and thence transmitted to the son, in whom, the
antagonistic influence being withdrawn, they manifested themselves. We inherit
the nervous system no less than the muscular and bony, and with the nervous system
we inherit its general and particular characters-that is to say, the general sensibility
of the system, and the conformation of the brain and sensory ganglia, are as much
subject to the law of transmission as the size and conformation of the bony and
muscular structures are; this being so, it is evident that all those tendencies which
depend on the nervous system will likewise be inherited; and even special aptitudes,
such as those for music, mathematics, wit, and so on, will be inherited: nay, even
acquired tendencies and tricks of gesture will be inherited. But this inheritance is
in each case subject to the influence exercised by the other parent; and very often
this influence is such as to modify, to mask, or even to entirely suppress the mani-
festution.
Mr. Lewes has also been an extensive contributor to the reviews and
other periodicals; and he is said to have edited for nearly five years
a weekly paper, The Leader.'
•
•
<
English readers are now becoming familiar with both the life and
writings of the great German Goethe. Mr. Carlyle first awakened at-
tention in this country to the poet's personal history, as well as to the
just appreciation of his genius. Since then MR. OXENFORD has trans-
lated the Autobiography' and Eckerman's Conversations' MRS.
AUSTIN has given us Goethe and his Contemporaries,' of which
Faulk's Reminiscences form the nucleus; and MR. LEWES has pre-
sented the public with the Life and Works of Goethe, with Sketches
We have the man and all
of his Age and Contemporaries,' 1855.
his environments' before us. Goethe's mother seems to have given
him everything, as Mr. Lewes remarks, which bore the stamp of dis-
tinctive individuality. She was a lively, joyous little woman. Order
and quiet,' she said, are my principal characteristics. Hence, I des-
patch at once whatever I have to do, the most disagreeable always
first, and I gulp down the devil without looking at him. When all
has returned to its proper state, I defy any one to surpass me in good-
humour.'
'I and my
Goethe's mother was just eighteen when he was born.
Wolfgang,' she said, 'have always held fast to each other, because
we were both young together.' It is pleasing to know that she lived
to hail him the greatest citizen of Weimar and the most popular
author of Germany. The father, a councillor of Frankfort, was
somewhat cold and formal, but he appears to have been indulgent
Mr. Lewes enters at length
enough to the wayward genius, his son.
into the poet's college life at Leipsic and Strasburg, and has had
The first lit-
access to various unpublished sources of information.
erary work of Goethe, his drama of 'Götz von Berlichingen '—writ-
ten in 1771, but not published till 1773-is a vivid picture of wild
robber life and feudal times. It caught the fancy of Sir Walter
Scott, who became its translator; but though highly popular in its
•
C
.
C
•
LEWES.]
63
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
C
C
day, this tragedy gives but faint indication of the depth or delicacy
of feeling and the subtle imagination that interpenetrates' Werther.,
The poet, it is well known, wrote from genuine impulses. He was,
or fancied himself, desperately in love with Charlotte Buff. Char-
lotte, however, was betrothed to a friend of the poet, Kestner, and a
complication of passion and disappointment agitated the affectionate
trio. Charlotte and Kestner were married, and Goethe sought relief
in his own peculiar way by embodying the story of their love and
his own feelings, with the addition of ideal circumstances, in his
'philosophical romance' of 'Werther.' The romance was published
in 1774, and Mr. Lewes says: Perhaps there never was a fiction
which so startled and enraptured the world. Men of all kinds
and classes were moved by it. It was the companion of Napoleon,
when in Egypt; it penetrated into China. To convey in a sentence
its wondrous popularity, we may state that in Germany it became a
people's book, hawked about the streets, printed upon miserable
paper, like an ancient ballad; and in the Chinese empire. Charlotte
and Werther were modelled in porcelain.' In this country also,
despite its questionable morality and sentimentalism, it had an im-
mense popularity in an English version.
Carlyle touches on one cause of this success: That nameless un-
rest, the blind struggle of a soul in bondage, that high, sad, longing
discontent which was agitating every bosom, had driven Goethe
almost to despair. All felt it; he alone could give it voice, and here
lies the secret of his popularity.' A spirit of speculation was
abroad, men were disgusted with the political institutions of the age,
and had begun to indulge in those visions of emancipation and free-
dom which, in part, led to the French Revolution. Like Ossian's
Poems-which were at first as rapturously received the Sorrows of
Werther' find little acceptance now in this country.* In the original
the work is a masterpiece of style. We may look through German
literature in vain for such clear sunny pictures, fullness of life, and
delicately managed simplicity: its style is one continuous strain of
music.' The real and the ideal had been happily blended. Goethe
was now a literary lion; and the Duke of Weimar-the reigning
prince-visiting Frankfort, insisted on his spending a few weeks
at his court On the 7th of November 1775, Goethe, aged
twenty-six, arrived at the little city on the banks of the Ilm [Wei-
•
C
•*
Thackeray's ballad on the story is more popular :
Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her ?
She was cutting bread and butter.
Charlotte was a married lady.
And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the wealth of Indies,
Would do nothing for to hurt her.
<
So he sighed, and pined, and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by it troubled.
Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.
64
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
mar], where his long residence was to confer on an insignificant
duchy the immortal renown of a German Athens.' Mr. Lewes de-
scribes Weimar in the eighteenth century.
Picture of Weimar.
Weimar is an ancient city on the Ilm, a small stream rising in the Thuringian
forests, and losing itself in the Saal, at Jena, a stream on which the sole navigation
seems to be that of ducks, and which meanders peacefully through pleasant valleys,
except during the rainy season, when mountain torrents swell its current and over-
flow its banks. The Trent, between Trentham and Stafford-' the smug and silver
Trent,' as Shakspeare calls it-will give you an idea of this stream. The town is
charmingly placed in the Ilm valley, and stands some eight hundred feet above the
level of the sea. 'Weimar,' says the old topographer Mathew Merian, 'is Weinmar
because it was the wine-market for Jena and its environs. Others say it was be-
cause some one here in ancient days began to plant the vine, who was hence called
Weinmayer. But of this each reader may believe just what he pleases.'
On a first acquaintance Weimar seems more like a village bordering a park, than
a capital with a court, and having all courtly environments. It is so quict, so sim-
ple; and although ancient in its architecture, has none of the picturesqueness which
delights the eye in most old German cities. The stone-coloured, light-brown and
apple-green houses have high-peaked, slanting roofs, but no quaint gables, no ca-
prices of architectural fancy, none of the mingling of varied styles which elsewhere
charm the traveller. One learns to love its quiet, simple streets, and pleasant paths,
fit theatre for the simple actors moving across the scene; but one must live there
some time to discover its charm. The aspect it presented when Goethe arrived was
of course very different from that presented now; but by diligent inquiry we may
get some rough image of the place restored. First be it noted that the city walls
were still erect; gates and portcullis still spoke of days of warfare. Within these
walls were six or seven hundred houses, not more, most of them very ancient. Un-
der these roofs were about seven thousand inhabitants. Zor the most part not hand-
some. The city gates were strictly guarded. No one could pass through them in
cart or carriage without leaving his name in the sentinel's book; even Goethe, min-
ister and favourite, could not escape this tiresome formality, as we gather from one
of his letters to the Fran Von Stein, directing her to go out alone, and meet him be-
yond the gates, lest their exit together should be known. During Sunday service a
chain was thrown across the streets leading to the church to bar out all passengers-
a practice to this day partially retained: the chain is fastened. but the passengers
step over it without ceremony. There was little safety at night in those silent streets;
for if you were in no great danger from marauders, you were in constant danger of
breaking a limb in some hole or other, the idea of lighting streets not having pre-
sented itself to the Thuringian mind. In the year 1685 the streets of London were
first lighted with lamps; and Germany, in most things a century behind England,
had not yet ventured on that experiment. If in this 1854 Weimar is still innocent of
gas, and perplexes its inhabitants with the dim obscurity of an occasional oil-lamp
slung on a cord across the streets, we may imagine that in 1775 they had not even
advanced so far. And our supposition is exact.
M
A century earlier, stage-coaches were known in England; but in Germany, pub-
lic_conveyances, very rude to this day in places where no railway exists, were few
and miserable, nothing but open carts with unstuffed seats. Diligences on springs
were unknown before 1800, and what they were even twenty years ago many realers
doubtless remember. Then as to speed; if you travelled post, it was said with pride
that seldom more than an hour's waiting was necessary before the horses were got
ready, at least on frequented routes. Mail travelling was at the rate of five English
miles in an hour and a quarter. Letters took nine days from Berlin to Frankfort,
which in 1854 require only twenty-four hours. So slow was the communication of
news, that, as we learn from the Stein correspondence, so great an event as the
death of Frederick the Great was only known as a rumor a week afterwards in Carls-
bad. By this time,' writes Gocthe, you must know in Weimar if it be true.'
With these facilities it was natural that men travelled but rarely, and mostly on
6
LEWES.]
65
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
horseback. What the inns were may be imagined from the unfrequency of travellers,
and the general state of domestic comfort.
The absence of comfort aud luxury-luxury as distinguished from ornament-
may be gathered from the memoirs of the time, and from such works as Bertuch's
Mode Journal.' Such necessities as good locks, doors that shut, drawers opening
easily, tolerable knives, carts on springs, or beds fit for a Christian of any other than
the German persuasion,' are still rarities in Thuringia; but in those days when sew-
ers were undreamed of, and a post-office was a chimera, all that we moderns consider
comfort was necessarily fabulous. The furniture, even of palaces, was extremely
simple. In the houses of wealthy bourgeois, chairs and tables were of common fir;
not until the close of the eighteenth century did mahogany make its appearance.
Looking-glasses followed. The chairs were covered with a coarse green cloth; the
tables likewise; and carpets are only now beginning to loom upon the national
mind as a possible luxury. The windows were hung with woollen curtains when the
extravagance of curtains was ventured on. Easy chairs were unknown; the only
arin-chair allowed was the so-called Grandfather's chair, which was reserved for the
dignity of gray hairs, or the feebleness of age.
C
The salon de reception, or drawing-room, into which greatly honoured visitors
were shewn, had of course, a kind of Sunday splendour, not dimmed by week-day
familiarity. There hung the curtains; the walls were adorned with family portraits
or some work of extremely native talent;' the tables alluring the eye with china in
guise of cups, vases, impossible shepherds, and very allegorical dogs. Into this room
the honoured visitor was ushered; and there, no matter what the hour, he was
handed refreshment of some kind. This custom-a compound product of hospitality
and bad inns-lingered until lately in England, and perhaps is still not unknown in
provincial towns.
·
On eating and drinking was spent the surplus now devoted to finery. No one then,
except gentlemen of the first water, boasted of a gold snuff-box: even a gold-
headed cane was an unusual elegance. The dandy contented himself with a silver
watch. The fine lady blazoned herself with a gold watch and heavy chain; but it
was an heirloom! To see a modern dinner service glittering with silver, glass, and
china, and to think that even the nobility in those days ate off pewter, is enough to
make the lapse of time very vivid to us. A silver tea-pot and tea-tray were held as
princely magnificence. The manners were rough and simple. The journeymen ate
at the same table with their masters, and joined in the coarse jokes which then
passed for hilarity. Filial obedience was rigidly enforced, the stick or strap not un-
frequently aiding parental authority. Even the brothers exercised an almost pa-
ternal authority over their sisters. Indeed, the 'position of women' was by no
means such as our women can conceive with patience; not only were they kept
under the paternal, marital, and fraternal yoke, but society limited their actions by
its prejudices still more than it does now. No woman, for instance, of the better
class of citizens could go out alone; the servant-girl followed her to church, to a
shop, or even to the promenade.
The foregoing survey would be incomplete without some notice of the prices of
things, the more so as we shall learn hereafter that the pension Karl August gave
Schiller was 200 thalers-about £60 of our money-and that the salary Goethe re-
ceived as Councillor of Legation, was only 1200 thalers-about £200 per annum. On
reading this, Mr. Smith jingles the loose silver in his pockets, and, with that superb
British pride, redolent of consols, which makes the family of Smith so accurate a
judge of all social positions, exclaims: These beggarly Germans; I give my head
clerk twice the sum!'
At the little court, Goethe was all but idolised. He dressed in the
costume which he had assigned to his 'Werther,' and the dress was
adopted by the duke and the courtiers. It was not very sentimental,
as Mr. Lewes suggests, being composed of blue coat and brass buttons,
top-boots and leather breeches, surmounted by powder and pig-tail!
The duke, Karl August, though patronising literature in the person
of Goethe, seems to have been somewhat idle and dissipated; the
66
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
}
There was also a
C
Dowager-duchess Amalia was more intellectual.
Baroness von Stein, wife of the Master of the Horse, who captivated
Goethe, and the attachment lapsed into a liaison, not uncommon in
that court, but which Mr. Lewes passes over too slightly, as a matter
of course. The poet, however, applied himself to business, was
made President of the Chamber, Minister of the War Department,
and, finally, elevated to the nobility. Henceforth he is Von Goethe.
He gets tired, however, of public life; travels into Italy: and, by
consent of the duke, is released, after his return to Weimar, from
official duties. His passion for the Frau von Stein now cooled--all
his love-scenes are dissolving views; but in the autumn of 1788,
Goethe, walking in the much-loved park, was accosted by a fresh,
young, bright-looking girl, who, with many reverences, handed him
a petition. The petition contained a request that the great poet
would exert his influence to procure a post for a young author, the
brother of the maiden who then addressed him, and whose name
was Christiane Vulpius. Christiane was humble in rank, clever, but
not highly gifted-not a Frau von Stein.' She was, however,
elevated to the same bad eminence in the poet's regard, and, fifteen
years afterwards, when a son had been born to them-when Wilhelm
Meister,' the Faust,' and Lyrics' had placed Goethe at the head of
German authors-he married Christiane Vulpius. The 'sunset,'
which Mr. Lewes put at the head of Book the Seventh,' had then
commenced. But stirring incidents still remained-the battle of
Jena and sack of Weimar, and, subsequently, the gratifying interview
with Napoleon. Love-passages also were interposed, and the sexa-
genarian poet deposited with deep emotion many a sad experience '
in his fiction and poetry. All this German sentimentalism seems as
unlike real life as the scenes in the sparkling comedics of Congreve
or Wycherley. Goethe at seventy was younger, Mr. Lewes says, than
many men at fifty. The second part of Faust' was completed in his
eighty-first year, and at eighty-two he wrote a scientific paper on
philosophic zoology. In his latter years his daughter-in-law kept
house for him, Christiane having died in 1816. The poet survived
her nearly sixteen years.
Mr. Lewes thus describes the last scene:
4
"
·
•
C
Death of Goethe.
(
The following morning-it was the 22d March 1832-he tried to walk a little up and
down the room, but, after a turn, he found himself too feeble to continue. Réseat-
ing himself in the easy chair, he chatted chicerfully with Ottilie [his daughter-in-law]
on the approaching spring, which would be sure to restore him. He had no idea of
his end being so near. The name of Ottilie was frequently on his lips. She sat be-
side him, holding his hand in both of hers. It was now observed that his thoughts
began to wander incoherently. See,' he exclaimed, the lovely woman's head, with
black curls, in splendid colours-a dark background!' Presently he saw a piece of
paper ou the floor, and asked them how they could leave Schiller's letters so carelessly
lying about. Then he slept softly, and, on awakening, asked for the sketches he had
just seen the sketches of his dream. In silent anguish they awaited the close now
so surely approaching. His speech was becoming less and less distinct. The last
words audible were, More light! The final darkness grew apace, and he whose eter-
LEWES.]
67
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
nal longings had been for more light, gave a parting cry for it as he was passing
under the shadow of death. He continued to express himself by sigus, drawing let-
ters with his forefinger in the air while he had strength; and finally, as life eɓbed,
drawing figures slowly on the shawl which covered his legs. At half-past twelve he
composed himself in the corner of the chair. The watcher placed a finger on her lip
to intimate that he was asleep. If sleep it was, it was a sleep in which a life glided
from the world. He woke no more.
The influence which Goethe's writings exercised on all the litera-
ture of Europe has been noticed by Carlyle, and is fully traced by
Mr. Lewes. He gives copious analyses of the principal works-
especially the Faust'-and on all points of the poet's history and
his romances of the heart' (more properly of the imagination) we
have ample details. No more original or exhaustive memoir has ap-
peared since Lockhart's Life of Scott.'
Life of Scott.' A new edition of Mr.
Lewes's work, still further improved, was published in 1875.
<
•
,
<
•
<
TO MRS. OLIPIANT, the distinguished novelist, we are indebted
for two volumes of Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II.,'
1969, which appeared first in Blackwood's Magazine.' These con-
sist of a series of short biographies, political, literary, and fashiona-
ble. Queen Caroline and Walpole head the list, and to these suc-
ceed the man of the world' (Chesterfield), the woman of fashion'
(Lady Mary Wortley Montagu), the poet' (Pope), the Young
Chevalier (Charles Edward), the reformer (John Wesley), the
´sailor (Anson), the philosopher' (Berkeley), the novelist' (Rich-
ardson), the sceptic' (David Hume), and the painter' (Hogarth).
The portraits in this little gallery are drawn with truth and nice dis-
crimination, and give the reader a good idea of all the leading charac-
teristics, the tastes and opinions, prevailing in the reign of the second
Gecrge. Besides these Historical Sketches, Mrs. Oliphant has writ-
ten two original and interesting biographies-the Life of Edward
Irving,' and the Memoir of Count Montalembert,' the latter ‘a chap-
ter of recent French history,' in which Montalembert was for thirty
years, till his death in 1870, a conspicuous actor.
6
•
<
The Rev. Edward Irving (1792-1834) was a remarkable man, who,
like George Whitefield, enjoyed amazing popularity as a preacher,
but whose writings fail to give even a faint idea of his power and
influence. De Quincey considered him the greatest orator of his
times;' Coleridge and Carlyle were his intimate friends; George Can-
ning heard the Scotch minister preach the most eloquent sermon he
ever listened to;' Sir James Mackintosh, too, was a hearer, and
treasured up a saying of Irving's while praying for an orphan
family, thrown upon the fatherhood of God." Hazlitt, Wordsworth,
and Scott were all more or less attracted by this meteor, and for a
time a whole host of distinguished, noble, and fashionable persons
•
MRS. OLIPHANT.
•
C
68
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
witnessed his manifestations. * Around him in London were mad
extremes of flattery, followed by madder contumely, by indifference
and neglect' (Carlyle). Edward Irving was a native of Annan, Dum-
friesshire; was educated at the university of Edinburgh; then assist-
ant to Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow; afterwards minister of the Scottish
Church in Hatton Garden, London, whence he removed to a larger
church built for him in Regent Square. Whilst officiating in the
latter, he was charged with heresy, and ultimately ejected by the
trustees of the church, and deposed from the ministry by the presby
tery of Annan, by whom he had been licensed. One of his delu-
sions was a belief that the millennium would come in less than forty
years. The heresy charged against him was maintaining the doc-
trine of the fallen state and sinfulness of our Lord's human nature'
<
-the oneness of Christ with us in all the attributes of humanity. He
had also introduced at his church manifestations of miraculous
gifts and prophecy and unknown tongues, occasioning scenes of
excitement and disorder. A number of his hearers still clung to
him, and a sect of Irvingites' was formed, which is now represented
by a body of Christians under the name of the Apostolic Catholic
Church. Irving was profoundly convinced of the truth of what he
preached. He clave to his belief as to his soul's soul,' says Mr. Car-
lyle, toiling as never man toiled to spread it, to gain the world's car
for it-in vain.
Ever wilder waxed the confusion without and within.
The misguided, noble-minded had now nothing left to do but die.
He died the death of the true and brave.' His death took place at
Glasgow, December 8, 1834, in the forty-second year of his age. His
last words were: If I die, I die unto the Lord. Amen.' Mrs. Oli-
phant adds: Scarce any man who knew him can yet name, without
à softened voice and dimmed eye, the name of Edward Irving-true
friend and tender heart-martyr and saint.' When we open the
works of Irving this mournful spell is broken. They are mostly
written in a stilted, unnatural style. Their very titles betray them:
i.e., For the Oracles of God,' Four Orations; For Judgment to
Come, an Argument in Nine Parts,' 1823; and For Missionaries of
the Apostolical School, a Series of Orations in Four Parts,' 1825.
Irving also published several volumes of 'Sermons, Lectures and
Discourses.' A collection of the writings of the once popular divine
has recently (1864-65) been published by his nephew, the Rev. G.
<
•
+
<
•
•
4
s
* The personal appearance of Irving aided the effect of his preaching. He was a
tall, athletic man, with dark, sallow complexion and commanding features, long
glossy black hair, and with a very obvious squint. Sir Walter Scott, who met him
one day at a dinner-party, says: 'I could hardly keep my eyes off him while we were
at table. He put me in mind of the devil disguised as an angel of light, so ill did
that horrible obliquity of vision harmonize with the dark tranquil features of his
face, resembling that of our Saviour in Italian pictures, with the hair carefully ar-
ranged in the same manner.' It was a question with the ladies whether his squint
was a grace or a deformity! One lady said he might have stood as a model for St.
John the Baptist.
MRS, OLIPHANT.]
69
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Carlyle. To the present generation,' says Mr. G. Carlyle, ‘Edward
Irving as a preacher and an author may be said to be unknown;' but
the attempt to revive the writings has not, we believe, been success-
ful. The Life,' as told by Mrs. Oliphant, and illustrated by his
own journals and correspondence, constitutes his best and most
durable memorial.
(
6
Foreign Memories.
There are some landscapes in the world in which foreign memories, alien to the
place, and in some cases less touching and momentous than the natural local as-
sociations, thrust themselves in, and obscure to the spectator at once the nationality
and individual character of the spot. The English traveller, when he climbs the
height of Tusculum, has a scene before him full of the grandest memories of a past
which is the common inheritance of the whole civilised world. His boyish lessons,
his youthful studies, if they have done anything for him, have qualified him to
identify every hillock, and hear a far-off voice out of every tomb. Or, if it is not
old but modern Rome that charms him, there are a hundred lights on that Campagna,
a thousand influences of sound and sense about, enough to move the least imagin-
ative soul. Rome lying distant on the great plain-aud the dome that Buonarotti
hung between earth and heaven. standing out the one thing visible, full of suggestions
of the treasures lying under and about it--are sufficient to overbrim the eager brain.
How is it that, as we stand upon the wistful plateau with that great scene before us,
Rome and her memories fade from our eyes? Shrivelling like a parched scroll'
the plain rolls up aud passes away. The Highland hills all black with storms, the
lonely, desolate, northern seas. the wild moors and mountain-passes, rise up a sad
phantasmagoria over the gray olives and clustering vines. It is the wild pibroch that
rings in our ears; it is the heather that rustles below our feet, and the chill of the
north that breathes into our faces. Why? Because youder in the Duomo a line of
inscription has caught the traveller's eye. obliterating Frascati and Rome, and all
Italian thoughts: Karolus Edoardus, Filius Jacobi. These are the words; and
there lies the high heart mouldered iuto dust, which once beat against the breast of
the Young Chevalier!.
•
<
•
Shipwrecked, weary of life, shamed by his knowledge of better things, cousumed
by vain longings for a real existence such as never could be his. the Chevalier sank as,
God help us! so many sink into the awful abyss. To forget his misery, to deaden
the smart of his ruin, what matters what he did? He lost in shame, in oblivion und
painful decay, the phantasm which was life no longer-with other fantastic shadows
-ill-chosen wife, ill-governed household, faithless and foolish favourites, a staring
silly spectator-crowd-flitting across the tragic mist. A merciful tear springs to the
eye, obscuring the fatal outlines of the last sad picture. There sank a man in wreck
and ruin who was a noble prince when the days were. If he fell into degradation at
the last, he was once as gallant, as tender. as spotless a gentleman as ever breathed
English air or trod Scottish heather. And when the spectator stands by Canova's
marble in the great basilica, in the fated land where, with all the Caesars, Charles
Edward has slept for ucarly a century, it is not the silver trumpets in the choir, nor
the matchless voices in their Agnus Dei, that haunt the ear in the silence; but some
rude long-drawu pibroch note, wailing over land and sea, wailing to earth and heaven,
for a lost cause, a perished house, and, most of all, for the darkening, and shipwreck.
and ruin of a gracious and princely soul.
George Whitefield and the Bristol Colliers.
The colliers of Kingswood, near Bristol, were proverbial for their savage charac-
ter and brutality. They had no place of worship hear them, and nobody so much as
as dreamt of inquiring whether by chance they too might have souls to be saved.
The wandering evangelist [Whitefield] saw, and with that instinct or inspiration
which in a great crisis often seems to direct the instrument of Providence, saw his
opportunity at a glance. On the afternoon of Saturday, February 17, 1739, breaking
the iron decorum of the church, but not a single thread of the allegiance which
bound him to her, he took his stand on a little summit in the benighted heathen dis-
trict, and proclaimed to the gaping amazed populace the message they had never
}
70
[To 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
heard before. Ere long, thousands gathered round him, eager to see so new a thing,
to hear so strange a communication. Under the spring sunshine they gathered, ‘in
an awful manner, in the profoundest silence,' says the preacher, moved to the heart
by the unhoped-for magnitude of his own work. The rude miners stood still as
death, turning their dark countenance towards him, weeping white tears down their
grimy, coal-stained cheeks. Ever since barefooted friars had wandered that way,
with the wide and elastic commission of Rome, had preachers stood in England by
field and hedgerows, calling the lost sheep to the fold. The eighteenth-century
preacher, in his curled wig and comely bands, is uo such picturesque figure as the
Franciscan; but yet nothing could have been more impressive than the scenes he
describes with an evident awe upon his own mind. The trees and hedges were full,'
he says; all was hushed when I began.' Sometimes as many as twenty thousand
collected around the little hill-at times a thrill of emotion rau through the crowd.
They wept aloud together over their sins; they sang together with that wouderful
voice of a multitude which has something in it more impressive than any music.
The sun fell aslant over the sea of heads; the solemnity of approaching evening'
stole over the strange scene. Through the preacher's minute, monotonous diary,
there throbs a sudden fullness of human feeling as he records it. It was sometimes
almost too much for him. And as he tells us the story at this long distance, we are
still touched by the tears in his voice.
•
DR. WILLIAM REEVES.
$
In 1857. DR. WILLIAM REEVES, Dublin, published an edition of
Adamnan's Life of St. Columba' (Vita Sancti Columbæ: Auctore
Adamnano Monasterii Hiensis), edited for the Irish Archæological
Society. Adamnan was the ninth abbott of Hy or Iona, founded by
Columba, the great apostle of the Western Highlanders or Scoto-
Irish, said to be born in the year 521, arrived in Scotland from Ireland
in 563, died in 597. It appears from Adamnan's narrative that Col-
umba required an interprcter when communicating with the king of
the Picts. It is stated, however, that before his death he had founded
above one hundred monasteries, and three hundred churches, and had
ordained three thousand clergy. So much could not have been done
in one life-time if the Scoto-Irish and Pictish tongues had been radi-
cally different Dr. Reeves printed Adamnan's 'Life' from a manu-
script of the eighth century, with the various readings of six other
manuscripts preserved in different parts of Europe. He added copious
notes and dissertations illustrative of the early history of the Colum-
ban institutions in Ireland and Scotland. The work evinces immense
research, learning, and patient investigation.
LORD CAMPBELL.
The legal biographies of JOHN, LORD CAMPBELL, supply a blank
that had often been felt in the record of British worthies, and they
convey in a diffuse but agreeable way a general knowledge of his-
tory, political and social, and of constitutional law and principles. Had
proper research been exercised, they would have been valuable. The
* Lives of the Chancellors and the Keepers of the Great Seal of Eng-
land, from the Earliest Times till the Reign of George IV.,' extend to
seven volumes, published in 1845-47; and the Lives of the Chief
Justices of England, from the Norman Conquest till the death of
Lord Mansfield,' form two volumes, 1843. The style of the noble
CAMPBELL.]
71
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
biographer is often loose and careless, and there are many inaccuracies
in dates and facts; but there are few more pleasant books than the
'Lives of the Chancellors,' and it has been eminently successful. In
his later biographies, Lord Campbell had the advantage of original
papers, as well as some personal knowledge of the chancellors. The
whole of Lord Loughborough's papers were communicated to him by
Lord Rosslyn; he obtained many of Erskine's letters, and also letters
of Lord Eldon. A love of anecdote and gossip seasons these me-
moirs, while, in conclusion, the noble author sums up the merits and
demerits of each of his subjects with judicial impartiality and often
with discrimination. Lord Campbell himself succeeded to the wool-
sack-the crowning glory of a long, laborious life. He was born
September 15, 1781, the son of a Scottish minister, Dr. George
Campbell, of Cupar, Fife. Having received his education, and taken
his degree as A. M. at the university of St. Andrews, he repaired to
London, entered himself of Lincoln's Inn, and while keeping his
terms, officiated as reporter and critic for the Morning Chronicle.'
He was called to the bar in 1806, and though retarded in promotion
by his Whig principles, he was invested with the silk gown in 1827,
and in 1830 was returned to parliament for the borough of Stafford.
In 1834 he was appointed attorney general; in 1841, lord chancellor
of Ireland, with a peerage; in 1850, chief justice of England; and in
1859, loid chancellor-a fortunate and brilliant career, with an old
age of physical and intellectual vigour rarely paralleled. Yet its pos-
sessor failed to command general respect. He died June 23, 1861. In
1869 more than eight years after his death, appeared Lives of Lord
Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham,' which had been written but not
finally revised by Lord Campbell, as a continuation of his Lives of
the Lord Chancellors. This is a gossiping, untrustworthy work,
written in a mean, depreciatory spirit.
•
<
<
JAMES SPEDDING.
The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon -Lord Bacon-collected
and edited, with a commentary, by JAMES SPEDDING, M.A. (1874), is
a work of great research and labour, extending to seven volumes.
It is supplementary to the edition of Lord Bacon's works, collected
and edited by Mr. Spedding, Mr. R. L. Ellis, and Mr. D. D. Heath,
which also extends to seven volumes. The publication of the Works
and Life was spread over the long period of seventeen years, during
which the care and research of the editors seem never to have relaxed.
Mr. Spedding says his object was to enable posterity to form a true
conception of the kind of man Bacon was,' and accordingly he gives
an unusually full record of a more than unusually full life. The
question of legal guilt Bacon himself admitted. The moral culpa-
bility Mr. Spedding does not consider so clear, considering the cor-
rupt practices of the age, and the philosopher's carelessness as to
money and household management.
<
72
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
I know nothing more inexplicable than Bacon's unconsciousness of the state of his
own case, unless it be the case itself. That he, of all men, whose fault had always
been too much carelessness about money-who, though always too ready 'o borrow,
to give, to lend, and to spend, had never been either a bargainer, or a grasper, or a
hoarder, and whose professional experience must have continually reminded him of
the peril of meddling with anything that could be construed into corruption-that he
should have allowed himself on any account to accept money from suitors while their
cases were before him, is wonderful. That he should have done it without feeling at
the time that he was laying himself open to a charge of what in law would be called
bribery, is more wonderful still. That he should have done it often, and not lived
under an abiding sense of insecurity-from the consciousness that he had secrets to
conceal, of which the disclosure would be fatal to his reputation, yet the safe keeping
did not rest solely with himself—is most wonderful of all. Give him credit for noth-
ing more than ordinary intelligence and ordinary prudence-wisdom for a man's self
-and it seems almost incredible. And yet I believe it was the fact. The whole
course of his behaviour, from the first rumour to the final sentence, convinces me
that not the discovery of the thing only, but the thing itself. came upon him as a
surprise; and that if anybody had told him the day before that he stood in danger of
a charge of taking bribes, he would have received the suggestion with unaffected in-
credulity. How far I am justified in thinking so, the reader shall judge for himself;
for the impression is derived solely from the tenor of the correspondence.
C
A History of England' from the year 1830 to 1874 has been pub-
lished in three volumes by WILIAM NASSAU MOLESWORTHI, Vicar of
Spotland, Rochdale. Mr. John Bright, M.P., has commended this
work as a book 'honestly written,' and calculated to give great in-
formation to the young men of the country.' The work appears to
merit the commendation, and it aims at no higher praise. We quote
a brief notice of a memorable national loss and solemnity:
•
Death of the Duke of Wellington.
During the interval between the dissolution and re-assembly of Parliament (1852)
an event occurred which deeply stirred the heart of the whole nation, from the Queen
on the throne to the lowest and meanest of her subjects. The Duke of Wellington,
who had attained to the 84th year of his age, had for some time past been becoming
more and more infirm. On the 14th of September his feebleness had very percepti-
bly increased, and at about a quarter past three in the afternoon of that day he tran-
quilly breathed his last at Waliner Castle, where he was then residing. The qualities
which caused him to be regarded with such deep reverence and admiration by the
great majority of his fellow-countrymen, and made his decease, at the end of so long
a life, to be deeply and sincerely regretted, were admirably described in words which
Mr. Gladstone quoted from a former speech of Lord John Russell, and waich he elo-
quently complimented and applied to the present occasion.
While many of the actions of his life, while many of the qualities he possessed,
are unattainable by others, there are lessons which we may all derive from the life
and actions of that illustrious man. It may never be given to another subject of the
British crown to perform services so brilliant as he performed; it may never he
given to another man to hold the sword which was to gain the independence of
Europe, to rally the nations around it, and while England saved herself by her con-
stancy. to save Europe by her example; it may never be given to another man, after
having attained such eminence, after such an unexampled series of victories, to shew
equal moderation in peace as he has shewn greatness in war, and to devote the re-
mainder of his life to the cause of internal and external peace for that country
which he has so served; it may never be given to another man to have equal antho-
rity both with the sovereign he served and with the senate of which he was to the
end a venerated member; it may never be given to another man after such a career
to preserve even to the last the full possession of those great faculties with which he
was endowed, and to carry on the services of one of the most important departments
of the state with unexampled regularity and success, even to the latest day of his
SPEDDING.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
73
life. These are circumstances, these are qualities which may never again occur in
the history of this country. But there are qualities which the Duke of Wellington
displayed of which we may all act in humble imitation: that sincere aud unceasing
devotion to our country; that honest and upright determination to act for the bene-
fit of the country on every occasion; that devoted loyalty, which, while it made him
ever anxious to serve the crown, never induced him to conceal from the sovereign
that which he believed to be the truth; the devotedness in the constant performance
of duty; that temperance of his life, which enabled him at all times to give his mind
and his faculties to the services which he was called on to perform; that regular,
consistent, and unceasing piety by which he was distinguished at all times in his
life: these are qualities that are attainable by others, and these are qualities which
should not be lost as an example.'
A public funeral was of course decreed, and never in any country was such a sol-
emnity celebrated. The procession was planned, marshalled, and carried out, with
a discretion, a judgment, and a good taste, which reflected the highest honour on the
civil and military authorities by whom it was directed. Men of every arm and of
every regiment in the service, for the first and last time in the history of the British
army, marched together on this occasion. But what was more admirable still was
the conduct of the incredible mass of sympathetic spectators, who had congregated
from all parts of the kingdom, and who formed no insignificant proportion of its
population. From Grosvenor Gate to St. Paul's Cathedral there was not one foot of
unoccupied ground; not a balcony, not a window, that was not filled; and as far as
could be observed, every face amidst that vast multitude wore an expression of re-
spectful sorrow. An unbroken silence was maintained as the funeral cortège moved
slowly and solemnly forward to the mausoleum prepared to receive the remains of
England's greatest warrior in the centre of the stupendous masterpiece of Wren's
architectural genius.
(
The lives of John Howard,' 1850; William Penn.' 1851 (revised
edition, 1872); and Admiral Blake,' 1852, by MR. WILLIAM HEP-
WORTH DIXON, may also be characterised as original biographies.
In the cases of Howard and Blake, Mr. Dixon had access to family
papers, and in that of Penn he has diligently studied the records of
the period and the now neglected works of the Quaker legislator. In
this memoir Mr. Dixon has combated some of the statements of Lord
Macaulay relative to Penn. We have already indicated our impres-
sion that the noble historian had taken too low and unfavourable an
estimate of Penn's character and motives, and it is impossible, we
think, to read Mr. Dixon's memoir without feeling how greatly Penn
transcended most of the public men in that venal period of English
history. As a specimen of the biographer's style, which is occasion-
ally too ornate, we extract part of his account of the death of Blake.
The last great exploit of the admiral had been his punishing the cor-
sairs, and freeing the Christian captives at Sallee, on the western
coast of Africa.
HEPWORTH DIXON.
•
C
The Death of Admiral Blake, August 27, 1657.
This crowning act of a virtuous and honourable life accomplished, the dying ad-
miral turned his thoughts anxiously towards the green hills of his native laud. The
letter of Cromwell, the thanks of parliament, the jewelled ring sent to him by an ad-
miring country, all reached him together out at sea. These tokens of grateful re-
membrance caused him a profound emotion. Without after-thought, without selfish
impulse, he had served the Commonwealth day and night, carnestly, anxiously, and
with rare devotion. England was grateful to her hero. With the letter of thanks
from Cromwell, a new set of instructions arrived, which allowed him to return with
74
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
-
6
part of his fleet, leaving his squadron of some fifteen or twenty frigates to ride be-
fore the Bay of Cadiz and intercept its traders: with their usual deference to his
judgment and experience, the Protector and Board of Admiralty left the appointment
of the command entirely with him; and as his gallaut friend Stayner was gone to
England, where he received a knighthood and other well-won honours from the gov-
erminent, he raised Captain Stoaks, the hero of Porto Ferino, and a commander of
rare promise, to the responsible position of his vice-admiral in the Spanish seas.
Hoisting his pennon on his old flagship, the St. George, Blake saw for the last time
the spires and cupolas, the masts and towers, before which he had kept his long and
torious vigils. While he put in for fresh water at Cascaes Road, he was very
weak. I beseech God to strengthen him,' was the fervent prayer of the English
resident at Lisbon, as he departed on the homeward voyage.
through the tempestuous waters of the Bay of Biscay he grew every day worse aud
While the ships rolled
worse. Some gleams of the old spirit broke forth as they approached the
latitude of England. He inquired often and anxiously if the white cliffs were yet
in sight. He louged to behold the swelling downs. the free cities, the goodly churches
of his native land. But he was now dying beyond all doubt. Many of his favourite
officers silently and mournfully crowded round his bed, anxious to catch the last tones
of a voice which had so often called them to glory and victory. Others stood at the
poop and forecastle, eagerly examining every speck and line on the horizon, in hope
of being first to catch the welcome glimpse of land. Though they were coming home
crowned with laurels, gloom and pain were in every face. At last the Lizard was an-
nounced. Shortly afterwards, the bold cliffs and bare hills of Cornwall loomed out
grandly in the distance. But it was now too late for the dying hero. He had sent
for the captains and other great officers of his fleet to bid them farewell; aud while
they were yet in his cabin, the undulating bills of Devonshire, glowing with the tints
of early autumn, came full in view. As the ships rounded Rame Head, the spires
and masts of Plymouth, the woody heights of Mount Edgecombe. the low island of
St. Nicholas, the rocky steeps of the Hoe, Mount Batten, the citadel, the many pictu-
resque and familiar features of that magnificent harbour rose one by one to sight. But
the eyes which had so yearned to behold this scene once more were at that very in-
staut closing in death, Foremost of the victorious squadron, the St. George rode
with its precious burden into the Sonud; and just as it came into full view of the
cager thousands crowding the beach, the pier-heads, the walls of the citadel, or dart-
ing in countless boats over the smooth waters between St. Nicholas and the docks,
ready to catch the first glimpse of the hero of Santa Cruz, and salute̟nim with a trué
English welcome, he, in his silent cabin, in the midst of his lion-hearted comrades,
now sobbing like little children, yielded up his soul to God.
*
Mr. Dixon is a native of the West Riding of Yorkshire, born in
1821. He was entered of the Middle Temple, but devoted himself
to literature, and in 1853 became editor of the Athenæum.' This
weekly literary journal, often quoted in our pages, was established
about the year 1828, and has certainly done more for modern literary
bistory and bibliography than any other work of this century. Mr.
Dixon relinquished his connection with the Athenæum' in 1869,
and has since become a voluminous author. His chief works are-
The Holy Land,' 1865; New America,' 1867; Spiritual Wives,'
1868; 'Free Russia.' 1870; Her Majesty's Tower,' four volumes,
1871; The Switzers,' 1872; 'History of Two Queens,' 1874; &c.
The Black Man—the Red Man-the Yellow Man.-From New America.'
C
(
C
1
<
$
(
The Black Man, a true child of the tropics, to whom warmth is like the breath of
life, flees from the bleak fields of the north, in which the white man repairs his fibre
and renews his blood; preferring the swamps and savannahs of the south, where,
among palms, cotton-plants, and sugar-canes, he finds the rich colours in which his
eye delights, the sunny heats in which his blood expands. Freedom would not
tempt hiin to go northward into frost and fog. Even now, when Massachusetts and
DIXON.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
75
Connecticut tempt him by the offer of good wages, easy work, and sympathising
people, he will not go to them. He only just endures New York; the most hardy of
his race will hardly stay in Saratoga and Niagara beyond the summer months.
Since the south has been made free to Sam to live in, he has turned his back on the
cold and friendly north, in search of a brighter home. Sitting in the rice-field. by
the cane-brake, under the mulberry-trees of his darling Alabama, with his kerchief
round his head, his banjo ou his knee, he is joyous as a bird, singing his endless and
foolish roundelay, and feeling the sunshine burn upon his face. The negro is but a
local fact in the country; having his proper home in a corner-the most sunny cor-
ner-of the United States.
The Red Man, once a hunter of the Alleghanies. not less than of the prairies and
the Rocky Mountains, has been driven by the pale-face, he and his squaw, his elk,
his buffalo, and his antelope, into the far western country; into the waste and deso-
late lands lying westward ot the Mississippi and Missouri. The exceptious hardly
break the rule. A band of picturesque pedlers may be found at Niagara; Red
Jackets, Cherokee chiefs and Mohawks: selling bows and canes, and generally
sponging on those youths and damsels who roam about the Falls in search of oppor-
tunities to flirt. A colony, hardly of a better sort, may be found at Oneida Creek,
in Madison County; the few sowing maize, growing fruit, and singing psalms; the
many starving on the soil, cutting down the oak and maple, alienating the best acres,
pining after their brethren who have thrown the white man's gift in his face, and gone
away with their weapons and war-paint. Red Jacket at the Falls, Bill Beechtree at
Oneida Creek-the first selling beaded work to girls. the second twisting hickory
canes for boys-are the last representatives of mighty nations, hunters aud warriors,
who at one time owned the broad lands from the Susquehannah to Lake Erie. Red
Jacket will not settle; Beechtree is incapable of work. The red-skin will not dig,
and to beg he is not ashamed. Hence, he has been pushed away from his place.
driven out by the spade, and kept at bay by the smoke of chimney fires. A wild
man of the plain and forest, he makes his home with the wolf, the rattlesnake, the
buffalo, and the elk. When the wild beast flees, the wild man follows. The Alle-
ghany slopes, on which, only seventy years ago, he chased the elk and scalped the
white women, will hear his war-whoop, see his war-dance, feel his scalping-kuite, no
more. In the western country he is still a figure in the landscape. From the Mis-
souri to the Colorado he is master of all the open plains; the forts which the white
men have built to protect their roads to San Francisco, like the Turkish block-
houses built along the Syrian tracks, being mainly of use as a hint of their great re-
serve of power. The red men find it hard to lay down a tomahawk. to take up a hoe;
some thousands of them only yet have done so; some hundreds only have learned
from the whites to drink gin and bitters, to lodge in frame-houses. to tear up the
soil, to forget the.chase, the war-dance, and the Great Spirit.
The Yellow Man, generally a Chinese, often a Malay, sometimes a Dyak. has
been drawn into the Pacific states from Asia, and from the Eastern Archipelago, by
the hot demand for labour; any kind of which comes to him as a boou. From dig-
ging in the mine to cooking an omelet and ironing a shirt. he is equal to everything
by which dollars can be gained. Of these yellow people there are now sixty thou-
sand in California. Utah, and Montana: they come and go; but many more of them
come than go. As yet these harmless crowds are weak and useful. Hop Chang
keeps a laundry; Chi Hi goes out as cook; Cum Thing is a maid-of-all-work.
They are in no man's way, and they labour for a crust of bread. To-day, those yel-
low men are sixty thousand strong. They will ask for votes. They will hold the
balance of parties. In some districts they will make a majority; selecting the
judges. forming the juries, interpreting the laws, Those yellow men are Buddhists,
professing polygamy, practising infanticide. Next year is not more sure to come in
its own season, than a great society of Asiatics to dwell on the Pacific slopes. A
Buddhist church, fronting the Buddhist churches in China aud Ceylon, will rise in
California, Oregon, and Nevada. More than all, a war of labour will commence be-
tween the races which feed on beef and the races which thrive on rice; one of those
wars in which the victory is not necessarily with the strong.
A Hundred Years of White Progress.-From the 'White Conquest.'
The European races are spreading over every continent, and mastering the isles
and islets of every sea. During those hundred years some powers have shot ahead,
76
[To 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
1
aud some have slipped into the second rank. Austria, a hundred years ago, the lead-
ing power in Europe, has been rent asuuder and has forfeited her throue in Germany.
Spain, a hundred years ago, the first colonial empire in the world, has lost her
colonies and conquests. and has sunk into a third-rate power. France, which little
more than a hundred years ago possessed Canada, Louisiana, the Mississippi Valley,
the island of Mauritius, and a strong hold in Hindustan, has lost all those posses-
sions, and exchanged her vineyards and corn-fields on the Rhine for the snows of
Savoy and the sands of Algiers. Piedmont and Prussia, on the other hand, have
sprung into the foremost rank of nations. Piedmont has become Italy, with a
capital in Milan aud Venice, Florence and Naples, as well as in Rome. Still more
striking and more glorious has been the growth of Prussia. A hundred years ago
Prussia was just emerging into notice as a sinall but well-governed and hard-fighting
country, with a territory no larger than Michigan, and a population considerably less
than Ohio. In a hundred years this small but well-governed and hard-fighting
Prussia has become the first military power on earth. Russia, during these hundred
years, has carried her arms into Finlaud. Crim Tartary, the Caucasus. and the Mo-
hammedan Khanates, extending the White empire on the Caspian and the Euxine,
and along the Oxus and Jaxartes into Central Asia. Vaster still have been the
marches and the conquests of Great Britain, her command of the ocean giving her
facilities which are not possessed by any other power. Within a hundred years or
thereabouts, she has grown from a kingdom of fen millions of people into an empire
of two hundred and twenty millions, with a territory covering nearly one-third of
the earth. Ilardly less striking than the progress of Russia and Euglaud has been
that of the United States. Starting with a population no larger than that of Greece,
the Republic has advanced so rapidly that in a hundred years she has become the
third power as to size of territory, the fourth as to wealth of population in the
world.
Sol and population are the two prime clements of power. Climate and fertility
count for much; nationality and compactness count for more; but still the natural
basis of growth is land. the natural basis of strength is population. Taking these
two elements together, the Chinese were, a hundred years ago, the foremost family
of mankind. They held a territory covering three millions of square miles, and a
population counting more than four hundred millions of souls. But what a change
has taken place! China nas been standing still, while England, Russia, and America
have been conquering, plauting, and annexing lands.
JOIN FORSTER.
(
This indefatigable literary student and biographer was a nativè of
Newcastle, born in 1812. Coming early to London, he studied at
the London University, and became a contributor to periodical works.
He was called to the bar, but never practised. In 1834 he joined
the Examiner' newspaper as assistant editor, and on the retirement
of Mr. Albany Fonblanque, he became sole editor, and continued so
for ten years.
He was induced, through friendship with Charles
Dickens, to become, in 1846, editor of the Daily News,' but held
that laborious office for only about eleven months. His future life
was devoted to literary labours-chiefly to historical and literary
biographies. His principal works are--Statesmen of the Common-
wealth of England,' 1831-4; 'Life of Oliver Goldsmith,' 1848;
'Biographical and Historical Essays,' 1859; Arrest of the Five
Members by Charles I.; Debates on the Grand Remonstrance,'
1860; Sir John Eliot, a Biography,' 1864; Walter Savage Landor,
a Biography,' 1868; and Life of Charles Dickens,' three volumes,
1871-4. In 1875 Mr. Forster published the first volume of a new
'Life of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's,' which was to be
(
6
C
FORSTER.]
wy
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
completed in three volumes. This volume is enriched with much
new and valuable information, and like all Mr. Forster's biographies,
the work promised to be thoroughly exhaustive.
•
Swift's later time, when he was governing Ireland as well as his
deanery, and the world was filled with the fame of Gulliver, is,'
says Mr. Forster, broadly and intelligibly written. But as to all
the rest, his life is a work unfinished; to which no one has brought
the minute examination indispensably required, where the whole of
a career has to be considered to get at the proper comprehension
of certain parts of it. The writers accepted as authorities for the
obscurer portion are found to be practically worthless, and the defect
is not supplied by the later and greater biographers. Johnson did
him no kind of justice, because of too little liking for him; and Scott,
with much hearty liking, as well as a generous admiration, had too
much other work to do. Thus, notwithstanding noble passages in
both memoirs, and Scott's pervading tone of healthy, manly wisdom,
it is left to an inferior hand to attempt to complete the tribute begun
by those distinguished men.'
C
Mr. Forster lived to publish only one volume. We may add that
the biographer was successful in life. His name stood well with pub-
lishers and readers. In 1855 he was appointed Secretary to the Lunacy
Commission, and in 1861 a Commissioner in Lunacy. Few English-
men of this generation,' says a friendly writer in the Times,' have
combined such unflinching firmness and honesty of purpose with
such real tenderness and sympathy for all with whom they were
brought into contact. Many there were who, at first sight, thought
John Forster obstinate and overbearing, who, on further acquaint-
ance, were ready to confess that, in reality, he was one of the tender-
est and most generous of men.' Mr. Forster bequeathed his books
and manuscripts to the nation-a valuable bequest-and they remain
in the South Kensington Museum. A similar bequest was made by
Mr. Forster's friend, ALEXANDER DYCE (1798–1869), the editor of
Shakspeare and of the dramatic works of Peele, Greene, Marlowe,
and Beaumont and Fletcher. Mr. Dyce was born in Edinburgh, son
of General Dyce, in the Honourable East India Company's Service.
Having studied at Edinburgh University and at Exeter College, Ox-
ford, he entered into holy orders, and was successively curate in
Fowey, Cornwall, and Nayland in Suffolk. Mr. Dyce was a faithful
and learned editor. His latest employment was revising the second
edition of his Shakspeare; and the third edition was published by Mr.
Forster in 1874.
.
<
The Literary Profession and Law of Copyright.-From Forster's 'Life
of Oliver Goldsmith.'
:
'It were well,' said Goldsmith, on one occasion, with bitter truth, if none but
the dunces of society were combined to render the profession of an author ridiculous
or unhappy.' The profession themselves have yet to learn the secret of co-operation;
they have to put away internal jealousies; they have to claim for themselves, as poor
78
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
f
Goldsmith, after his fashion, very loudly did, that defined position from which
greater respect, and more frequent consideration in public life. could not long be
withheld; in fine, they have frankly to feel that their vocation, properly regarded,
ranks with the worthiest, and that, on all occasions. to do justice to it, and to each
other, is the way to obtain justice from the world. If writers had been thus true to
themselves, the subject of copyright might have been equitably settled when atten-
tion was first drawn to it; but while De Foe was urging the author's claim. Swift was
calling De Foe a fellow that had been pilloried, and we have still to discuss as in
forma pauperis the rights of the English author.
Confiscation is a hard word, but after the decision of the highest English court,
it is the word which alone describes fairly the statute of Anne, for encouragement of
literature. That is now superseded by another statute, having the same gorgeous
name, and the same inglorious meaning; for even this last enactment, sorely re-
sisted as it was, leaves England behind any other country in the world, in the amount
of their own property secured to her authors. In some, to this day, perpetual copy-
right exists; and though it may be reasonable, as Dr. Johnson argued that it was, to
surrender a part for greater efficiency or protection to the rest, yet the commonest
dictates of natural justice might at least require that an author's family should not be
beggared of their inheritance as soon as his own capacity to provide for them may
have ceased. In every continental country this is cared for, the lowest term secured
by the most niggardly arrangement being twenty-five years; whereas in England it
is the munificent number of seven. Yet the most laborious works, and offen the
most delightful, are for the most part of a kind which the hereafter only can repay.
The poet, the historian, the scientific investigator, do indeed find readers to-day; but
if they have laboured with success, they have produced books whose substantial re-
ward is not the large and temporary, but the limited and constant nature of their
sale. No consideration of moral right exists, no principle of economical science can
be stated, which would justify the seizure of such books by the public, before they
had the chance of remunerating the genius and the labour of their producers.
But though parliament can easily commit this wrong, it is not in such case the
quarter to look to for redress. There is no hope of a better state of things till the
Author shall enlist upon his side the power of which parliament is but the inferior ex-
pression. The true remedy for literary wrongs must flow from a higher sense than
has at any period yet prevailed in England of the duties and responsibilities assumed
by the public writer, and of the social consideration and respect that their effectual
discharge should have undisputed right to claim. The world will be greatly the
gainer, when such time shall arrive, and when the biography of the man of genius
shall no longer be a picture of the most harsh struggles and mean necessities to
which man's life is subject, exhibited as in shameful contrast to the calm and classic
glory of his fame. With society itself rests the advent of that time.*
*2
4
It may be interesting to compare Mr. Forster's view of Goldsmith and the supposed
neglect of authors with the opinion of Lord Macaulay: Goldsmith has sometimes been
represented as a man of genius, cruelly treated by the world, and doomed to struggle with
dificulties, which at last broke his heart. But no representation can be more remote
from the truth. He did, indeed, go through much sharp misery before he had done any-
thing considerable in literature. But after his name had appeared on the title-page of The
Traveller, he had none but himself to blame for his distresses. His average income, during
the last seven years of his life. certainly exceeded £400 a year and £400 a year ranked,
among the incomes of that day, at least as high as £800 a year would rank at present. A
single man living in the Temple with £400 a year might then be called opulent. Not
one in ten of the young gentlemen of good families who were studying the law there had
so much. But all the wealth which Lord Clive had brought from Bengal, and Sir Law
rance Dundas from Germany, joined together, would not have sufficed for Goldsmith.
He spent twice as much as he had. He wore fine clothes gave dinners of several courses,
paid court to venial beanties. He had also, it should be remembered, to the honour of his
heart, thougn not of his head. a guinea. or five, or ten, according to the state of his purse,
ready for any tale of distress. true or false. But it was not in dress or feasting. in pro-
miscuons amours or promiscuous charities, that his chief expense lay. He had been from
boyhood a gambler, aud at once the most sanguine and the most unskillful of gamblers.
For a time he put off the day of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients He obtained
advances froni booksellers, by promising to execute works which he never begun. But at
length this source of supply failed. He owed more than £2000 and he saw no hope of
extrication from his embarassments. His spirits and health gave way,
ว
MASSON.]
79
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
།
<
PROFESSOR MASSON-SIR JAMES STEPHEN.
The Life of John Milton, narrated in connection with the Politi-
cal, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time,' volume i, 1608–
1639, by DAVID MASSON, Professor of Rhetoric and English Litera-
ture in the university of Edinburgh, promises to be by far the most
accurate as well as the fullest memoir of the great poet. 'As if to
oblige biography in this instance to pass into history, Milton's life di-
vides itself witli almost mechanical exactness into three periods, cor-
responding with those of the contemporary social movement-the
first extending from 1608 to 1640, which was the period of his educa-
tion and of his minor poems; the second extending from 1640 to
1660, or from the beginning of the civil wars to the Restoration, and
forming the middle period of his polemical activity as a prose-writer;
and the third extending from 1660 to 1674, which was the period of
his later muse and of the publication of "Paradise Lost." It is the
plan of the present work to devote a volume to each of those periods.'
Such is the herculean task Mr. Masson has laid out for himself. He
has cleared up many doubtful points in the poet's pedigree and aca-
demical career, and given a great mass of interesting information,
literary, historical, and ecclesiastical, conveyed in vigorous and often
eloquent language. A second volume of the Life of Milton' was pub-
lished in 1871, and a third in 1873.
·
Character of Archbishop Land.
What with one means of influence, what with another. Laud. in the year 1632,
being then in the sixtieth year of his age, was the dominant spirit in the English
Church, and one of the chiefs of the English state. One would fain think and speak
with some respect of any man who has been beheaded: much more of one who was
beheaded for a cause to which he had conscientiously devoted his life, and which
thousands of his countrymen, two centuries after his death, still adhere to, still
expound, still uphold, albeit with the difference, incalculable to themselves, of all
that time nas flung between. But it is impossible to like or admire Laud. The
nearer we get to him, the more all soft illusion falls off, and the more distinctly we
have before us the hard reality as D'Ewes and others saw it. of a little. low, red-
faced man,' bustling by the side of that king of the narrow forehead and the melau-
choly Vandyck air, or pressing his notions with a raspy voice at the council-board
till Weston became peevish and Cottington wickedly solemn, or bowing his head in
churches not very gracefully.
•
When we examine what remains of his mind in writings, the estimate is not en-
hanced. The texture of his writing is hard. dry, and common; sufficiently clear as
to the meaning, and with no insincerity or superfluity. but without sap, adiance, or
force. Occasionally, when one of his fundamental topies is touched, a kind of dull
heat rises, and one can see that the old man was in earnest. Of anything like depth
or comprehensiveness of intellect, there is no evidence; much less of what is under-
stood by genius. There is never a stroke of original insight; never a flash of jutel-
lectual generality. In Williams there is genius; not in Laud. Many of his bumble
clerical contemporaries, not to speak of such known men as Fuller and Hacket,
must have been greatly his superiors in talent-more discerning men, as well as
more interesting writers. That very ecclesiastical cause which Laud so conspicu-
ously defended, has had, since his time, and has at this day in England, far abler
heads among its adherents. How was it, then, that Land became what he did be-
come, and that slowly, by degrees, and against opposition? how was it that his pre-
cise personality and no other worked its way upwards, through the clerical and acàde-
mic element of the time, to the very top of al, and there fitted itself into the very
1
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[ro
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
socket where the joints of things met? Parvo regitur mundus intellectu. A small
intellect, once in the position of government, may suffice for the official forms of it;
and with Laud's laborionsness and tenacity of purpose. his power of maintaining
his place of minister, under such a master as Charles, needs be no mystery. So long
as the proprietor of an estate is satisfied, the tenants must endure the bailiff, what-
ever the amount of his wisdom. Then, again, in the last stages of Laud's ascent,
be rose through Buckingham and Charles, to both of whom surely his nature, with-
out being great, may have recommended itself by adequate affinities.
Still, that Land impressed these men when he did come in contact with them, and
that, from his original position as a poor student in an Oxford college, he rose step
by step to the point where he could come in contact with them, are facts not ex-
plicable by the mere supposition of a series of external accidents. Perhaps it is that
a nature does not always or necessarily rise by greatness, or intrinsic superiority to
the element about it, but may rise by peculiarity, or proper capillary relation to the
the element about it. When Lord Macaulay speaks of Laud as intellectually an
'imbecile,' and calls him a ridiculous old bigot,' he seems to omit that peculiarity
which gave Laud's nature, whatever its measure by a modern standard, so much
force and pungency among his contemporaries. To have hold of the surrounding
sensations of men, even by pain and irritation, is a kind of power; and Laud had
that kind of power from the first. He affected strongly, if irritatingly, each suc-
cessive part of the body-politic in which he was lodged. As a fellow of a college,
he was more felt than liked; as a master of a college, he was still felt, but not liked;
when he came first about court, he was felt still, but still not liked. And why was
he felt? Why, in each successive position to which he attained, did he affect sur-
rounding sensation so as to domineer? For one thing, he was a man whose views, if
few, were extraordinarily definite. His nature, if not great. was very tight. Early
in life he had taken up certain propositions as to the proper theology of the Angli-
can Church, and had combined them with certain others as to the divine right of
Prelacy, and the necessity and possibility of uniformity in creed and worship.
These few very definite propositious, each answering to some tendency of
society or of opinion at the time in Englaud, he had tied and knotted
round him as his suflicient doctrinal outfit. Wherever he went, he carried
them with him and before him, acting upon them with a brisk and incessaut per-
severance, without regard to circumstances, or even to establish notices of what was
fair, high-minded, and generous. Thus, seeing that the propositions were of a kind
upon which some conclusion or other was or might be made socially imperative, he
could force to his own conclusions ali laxer, though larger natures, that were tending
lazily the same way, and, throwing a continually increasing crowd of such and of
others behind him as his followers, leave only in front of him those who opposed to
his conclusions as resolute contraries. IIis indefatigable official activity contributed
to the result. Beyond all this, however, and adding secret force to it all, there was
something else about Laud. Though the system which he wanted to enforce was
one of strict secular form, the man's own being rested on a trembling basis of the
fantastic and unearthly. Herein lay one notable, and perhaps compensating differ-
ence between his narrow intellect and the broad but secular genins of Williams. In
that strange diary of Laud, which is one of the curiosities of our literature, we see
him in an aspect in which he probably never wished that the public should know
him. His hard and active public life is represented there but casually, and we see the
man in the secrecy of his own thoughts, as he talked to himself when alone.
We hear of certain sins, or, at least, unfortunatenesses.' of his early and past life,
which clung about his memory, were kept by anniversaries of sadness or penance,
and sometimes intruded grinning faces through the gloom of the chamber when
all the house was asleep. We see that, after all, whether from such causes or
from some form of constitutional melancholy, the old man, who walked so briskly
and cheerily about the court, and was so sharp and unhesitating in all his notions of
what was to be done in secret, carry in him some sense of the burden of life's mys-
tery, and feel the air and earth to some depth around him to be full of sounds and
agencies unfeatured and unimaginable. At any moment they may break through!
The twitter of two robin redbreasts in his room, as he is writing a sermon, sets his
heart beating; a curtain rustles-whose hand touched it? Above all he has a belief
in revelation through dreams and coincidences; and as the very definiteness of his
scheme of external worship may have been a refuge to him from that total mystery,
MASSON.}
81
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
"
the skirts of which, and only the skirts, were ever touching him, so in his dreams
and small omens he seems to have had, in his daily advocacy of that scheme, some
petty sense of near metaphysical aid. Out of his many dreams we are fond of this
one: January 5 [1626-7]. Epiphany Eve and Friday, in the night I dreamed,' he
says, that my mother, long since dead, stood by my bed, and drawing aside the
clothes a little, looked pleasantly upon me, and that I was glad to see her with so merry
an aspect. She then shewed to me a certain old man, Toug since deceased, whom,
while alive, 1 both knew and loved. He seemed to lie upon the ground merry enough,
but with a wrinkled countenance. His name was Grove. While I prepared to saluté
him, I awoke.' Were one to adopt what seems to have been Laud's own theory,
might not one suppose that this wrinkled old man of his dream, squat on the super-
natural ground near its confines with the natural, was Laud's spiritual genius, and so
that what of the supernatural there was in his policy consisted mainly of monitions
from Grove of Reading? The question would still remain-at what depth back among
the dead Grove was permitted to roam?
·
•
(
Mr. Masson has published Essays Biographical and Critical,' 1856;
· British Novelists and their Styles,' 1859: Recent British Philoso-
phy, 1865; The Life of William Drummond of Hawthornden,'
1873; &c. Mr. Masson has also been a copious contributor to our
reviews, magazines, and other literary journals. He is a native of
Aberdeen (born Dec. 22, 1822), and enjoys universal respect as a
genial and accomplished author, professor, and member of the lite-
rary society of the Scottish capital.
Luther's Satan.
A
Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles are literary performances; and, for
what they prove, neither Milton nor Goethe nee I have believed in a devil at all. Lu-
ther's devil, on the other hand. was a being recognised by him as actually existing-
as existing, one might say, with a vengeance. The strong conviction which Luther
had on this point is a feature in his character. The narrative of his life abounds in
anecdotes, shewing that the devil with him was no chimera, no mere orthodoxy, no
fiction. In every page of his writings we have the word Teufel, Teufel, repeated
again and again. Occasionally there occurs an express dissertation upon the nature
and functions of the evil spirit; and one of the longest chapters in his Table-talk'
is that entitled The Devil and his Works'-indicating that his conversation with
his friends often turned on the subject of Satanic agency. Teufel was actually the
strongest signification he had; and whenever he was excited to his highest emotional
pitch, it came in to assist his utterance at the climax, and give him a corres-
ponding powerful expression. This thing I will do,' it was commou for him to
say, in spite of all who may oppose me, be it duke, emperor, priest, bishop, cardinal,
pope, or devil.'
Man's heart, hê says, is a ·Stock, Stein, Eisen, Teufel, "hart Herz'
(a stock, stone, iron, devil, hard heart). And it was not a mere vague conception he
had of this being, such as theology might oblige. On the contrary, he had observed
him as a man would his personal enemy, aud in so doing had formed a great many
conclusions regarding his powers and his character. In general, Luther's devil may
be defined as a personification, in the spirit of Scripture, of the resisting medium
which Luther had to coil his way through-spiritual fears, passionate uprisings,
fainting resolutions, within himself; error, weakness, envy, in those around him;
and, without, a whole world howling for his destruction. It is in effect as if Luther
had said: Scripture reveals to me the existence of a great accursed being, whose
function it is to produce evil. It is for me to ascertain the character of this being,
whom I. of all men, have to deal with. And how am I to do so except by observing
him working? God knows I have not far to go in quest of his manifestations.
And thus Luther went on filling up the scriptural proposition with his daily experi-
ence. He was constantly gaining a clearer conception of his great personal antago-
nist, constantly stumbling upon some more concealed trait in the spirit's character.
The being himself was invisible; but men were walking in the midst of his mani-
•
•
C
હા
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
festations. History to Luther was not a physical course of events. It was God act-
ing and the devil opposing.
London Suburbs-Hampstead.
London, with all the evils resulting from its vastness, has suburbs as rich and
beautiful, after the English style of scenery, as any in the world; and even now,
despite the encroachments of the ever-encroaching brick and mortar on the su:-
rounding country, the neighborhood of Hampstead and Highgate, near London, is
one in which the lover of natural beauty and the solitary might well delight. The
ground is much the highest round London; there are real heights and hollows, so
that the omnibuses coming from town have put on additional horses; you ascend
steep roads, lying in part through villages or quaint shops, and old high-gabled brick
houses, still distinct from the great city, though about to be devoured by it-in part
through straggling lines of villas, with gardens and grassy parks round them, and
here and there an old iun; and from the highest eminences, when the view is clear,
you can see Loudon left behind, a mass of purplish mist, with domes and steeples visi-
ble through it. When the villages end, you are really in the country. There is the
Heath, on the Hampstead side-an extensive tract of knolls and little glens, covered
here and there with furze, all abloom with yellow in the summer, when the larks
may be heard singing over it; threaded here and there by paths with seats in them,
or broken by clumps of trees, and blue rusty-nailed palings, which inclose old-
fashioned family-houses and shrubberies, where the coachman in livery may be seen
talking lazily to the gardener, but containing also sequestered spots where one might
wander alone for hours, or lic concealed amid the sheltering furze. At night, Hamp-
stead Heath would be as ghastly a place to wander in as an uneasy spirit could de-
sire. In every hollow seen in the starlight, one could fancy that there had been a
murder; nay, tradition points to spots where foul crimes have been committed, or
where, in the dead of night, forgers, who had walked, with discovery on their track,
along dark intervening roads from the hell of lamp-lit London, had lain down and
poisoned themselves. In the day, however, and especially on a bright summer day,
the scene is open, healthy, and cheerful.
The Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography,' by SIR JAMES STEPHEN
(1789-1859), contain brief memoirs of Hildebrand, St. Francis of
Assisi, Loyola, Luther, Baxter, Wilberforce, the founders of Jesuit-
ism, the Port-Royalists, the Clapham Sect, &c. As originally pub-
lished in the Edinburgh Review,' these essays were nearly as popular
with a large body of readers as those of Macaulay, though on less
attractive subjects. They were first published in a collective form
in 1849, and have gone through several editions. Sir James Stephen
was long legal adviser to the Colonial Office, then assistant Under-
secretary to the Colonial Office, and afterwards Under-secretary of
State, which office he held from 1836 to 1847. He was a valuable
public servant and a good man.
(
(
J. P. MUIRHEAD (Life of Watt)-S SMILES (Life of Stephenson).
A relative of James Wat, JAMES PATRICK MUIRHEAD, M. A.,
who had access to all the family papers, published a volume in 1854,
entitled 'The Origin and Progress of the Mechanical Inventions of
James Watt;' three volumes, 1858. The large copper-plate engrav-
ings of machinery by which it was illustrated necessarily raised the
cost of this work above the means of most people, while the minute
descriptions of patents and their relative drawings, were more desira-
ble for the use of the scientific engineer and the mechanical philoso-
MUIRHEAD.]
83
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
،
•
pher than of the general reader. To meet the wishes of the latter,
Mr. Muirhead, in 1858, remodelled and reproduced, in a form at once
more comprehensive, more convenient, and less costly, the biographi-
cal memoir of Watt, incorporating with it the most interesting pas-
sages in his correspondence, and, as far as possible, Watt's own clear
and forcible descriptions of his inventions. This volume furnishes
an interesting account of the career of the great inventor, of whom
Sir Walter Scott has said that he was not only the most profound
man of science, the most successful combiner of powers and calcu-
lator of numbers, as adapted to practical purposes-was not only one
of the most generally well-informed, but one of the best and kindest
of human beings.' James Watt was born on the 19th of January
1736, at Greenock, and came of a family that for more than a hun-
dred years had more or less professed mathematics and navigation.
Many stories are told of his early turn for science. When he was
six years of age, a gentleman, calling on his father, observed the child
bending over a marble hearth with a piece of coloured chalk in his
haud. Mr. Watt,' said he, you ought to send that boy to a public
school, and not allow him to trifle away his time at home.' Look
how my child is occupied before you condemn him,' replied the
father. The gentleman then observed that the boy bad drawn
mathematical lines and circles on the marble hearth, and was then
marking in letters and figures the result of some calculation be was
carrying on; he put various questions to him, and ended by remark-
ing, he is no common child.' Sitting one evening with his aunt,
Mrs. Muirhead, at the tea-table, she said: James Watt, I never saw
such an idle boy: take a book, or employ yourself usefully. For the
last hour, you have not spoken one word, but taken off the lid of that
kettle and put it on again, holding now a cup and now a silver spoon
over the steam.' James was already observing the process of con-
densation. Before he was fifteen years of age, he had made for him-
self a small electrical machine, with which he sometimes startled his
young friends by giving them sudden shocks from it. This must
have been only a few years after the Leyden phial was invented. His
father's store-rooms, in which he kept a stock of telescopes, quad-
rants, and optical instruments for the supply of ships at Greenock,;
were a valuable school of observation to the young philosopher, and
may have tended to decide the profession which he selected for him-
self that of mathematical instrument-maker.
·
เ
At the age of eighteen, he removed to Glasgow to learn this busi-
ness, and a year afterwards repaired to London for the same pur-
pose. But bad health- a gnawing pain in his back, and weariness
all over his body'-obliged him to quit London in the year 1756; and
after investing about twenty guineas in tools and useful books on his
trade, he returned to Scotland. In 1757 he received permission to
occupy an apartment and open a shop within the precincts of the
college of Glasgow, and to use the designation of mathematical
84
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
เ
instrument-maker to the university.' And now, in his twenty-first
year, may be said to have commenced the wonderful career of James
Watt as a man of inventive genius. Business was sufficiently prosper-
ous, and in his leisure hours he studied without intermission. Obser-
vare was the motto he adopted, and his object, as he himself ex-
pressed it, was 'to find out the weak side of Nature, and vanquish
her;'for Nature,' he says again, has a weak side, if we can only
find it out.' Nothing came amiss. Without knowing one musical
note from another, he undertook to build an organ for a mason-lodge
in Glasgow. He had studied the philosophical theory of music, and
not only did he make the organ, but in the process a thousand things
occurred to him which no organ-builder ever dreamed of-nice iudi-
cators of the strength of the blast, regulators of it, &c. He after-
wards made many organs; and guitars, flutes, and violins of his
manufacture are still in existence. About this time he also contrived
an ingenious machine for drawing in perspective. The great dis-
covery which led to the ultimate triumphs of the steam-engine was
made when Watt was only twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of
age-namely, in 1764 or 1765. Dr. Black, an intimate friend, thus
narrates the circumstance:
The Steam-engine.
A few years after he was settled at Glasgow, he was employed by the Professor
of Natural Philosophy to examine and rectify a small workable model of a steam-
engine, which was out of order. This turned a part of his thoughts and fertile in-
vention to the nature and improvement of steam-engines, to the perfection of their
machinery, and to the different means by which their great consumption of fuel
might be diminished. He soon acquired such a reputation for his knowledge on
this subject, that he was employed to plan and erect several engines in different
places, while at the same time he was frequently making new experiments to lessen
the waste of heat from the external surface of the boiler, and from that of the cylin-
der. But, after he had been thus employed a considerable time, he perceived that by
far the greatest waste of heat proceeded from the waste of steam in filling the cylin-
der with steam. In filling the cylinder with steam, for every stroke of the conimon
engine a great part of the steam is chilled and condensed by the coldness of the
cylinder, before this last is heated enough to qualify it for being filled with elastic
vapour or perfect steam; he perceived, therefore, that by preventing this waste of
steam, au incomparably greater saving of heat and fuel would be attained than by
any other contrivance. It was thus in the beginning of the year 1765 that the fortu-
nate thought occurred to him of condensing the steam by cold in a separate vessel
or apparatus, between which and the cylinder a communication was to be opened for
that purpose every time the steam was to be condensed; while the cylinder itself
might be preserved perpetually hot, no cold water or air being ever admitted into its
cavity. This capital improvement flashed on his mind at ouce, and filled him with
rapture.
Here was the weak side of Nature, by the discovery of which he
vanquished her. Dr. Robison, also an intimate friend, assigns the
discovery to the year 1764 Dr. Robison gives an account of an
interview with Watt at this time: 'I came into Mr. Watt's parlour
without ceremony, and found him sitting before the fire, having
lying on his knee a little tin cistern, which he was looking at. I
entered into conversation on what we had been speaking of at last
MUIRHEAD.)
85
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
meeting-something about steam. All the while Mr. Watt kept
looking at the fire, and laid down the cistern at the foot of his chair.
At last he looked at me, and said briskly : “You need not fash your-
self any more about that, man; I have now made an engine that
shall not waste a particle of steam. It shall all be boiling hot: ay,
and hot water injected, if you please." So saying, Mr. Watt looked
with complacency at the little thing at his feet, and, seeing that I ob-
served him, he shoved it away under a table with his foot. I put a
question about the nature of his contrivance.
He answered me
rather drvly. I did not press him to a further explanation.
I found Mr. Alexander Brown, a very intimate acquaintance of Mr.
Watt's, and he immediately accosted me with: Well, have
you seen Jamie Watt?" Yes." "He'll be in high spirits now
with his engine, isn't he?" Yes," said I, "very fine spirits."
"Ay." says Mr. Brown, "the condenser's the thing; keep it but cold
enough, and you may have a perfect vacuum, whatever be the heat
of the cylinder." The instant he said this, the whole flashed on my
mind at once.'
(C
((
The first experiment was made with a common anatomist's great
injection syringe for a cylinder, but the contrivance was perfect in
Watt's mind, and fitted the engine at once for the greatest and most
powerful, or for the most trifling task. Dr. Robison says he is satis-
fied that when he left town a fortnight before the interview above
quoted, Watt had not thought of the method of keeping the cylinder
hot, and that when he returned, he had completed it, and confirmed
it by experiment. Sir Walter Scott, according to Lockhart, never
considered any amount of literary distinction as entitled to be spoken
of in the same breath with mastery in the higher departments of
practical life; and if ever a discovery in science was entitled to this
exalted position, it was surely that made by James Watt-an inven-
tion which is estimated to have added to the available labour of Great
Britain alone a power equivalent to that of four hundred millions of
men, or more than double the number of males supposed to inhabit
the globe.
To reap the benefits of his discovery was now the great object to
which Watt directed himself; but it was eight or nine years before it
turned to the advantage of the public or to the benefit of the in-
ventor. For a time he was associated with an ingenious but unsuc-
cessful man, Dr. Roebuck, and neither profited much by the connec-
tion. The invention was, however, patented in January 1769, and
Watt continued to experiment upon and to perfect the mechanism of
his 'fire-engine.' He had married a cousin of his own, Miss Miller,
in July 1763, and had now three children; but unhappily,' says Mr.
Muirhead, without receiving that triple proportion of corn which,
among the Romans, the jus trium liberorum brought with it. Those
little voices," whose crying was a cry for gold," were not to be stilled
by the baser metal of a badly cast Carron cylinder, or the “block-tin
4
86
TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
(
and hammered lead" of a Glasgow condenser.' We find Watt writ-
ing thus: I am resolved, unless those things I have brought to some
perfection reward me for the time and money I have lost on them, if
I can resist it, to invent no more. Indeed, I am not near so capable
as I once was. I find that I am not the same person I was four years
ago, when I invented the fire-engine, and foresaw, even before I made
a model, almost every circumstance that has since occurred.'
To carry on the affairs of his household, Watt undertook many
occasional commissions. He projected a canal for carrying coals to
Glasgow, and received £200 a year for superintending its construc-
tion. His mind having been turned to canals, he struck out the idea
of the screw-propeller, or 'spiral oar,' as he called it. He made sur-
veys for various canals in Scotland, and among others, by appoint-
ment of the Court of Police of Glasgow, the Caledonian Canal,
which was afterwards constructed between Inverness and Fort-
William. Mr. Telford, to whom this great work was principally
intrusted, throughout his lengthened labours in connection with it,
has borne testimony to the particular correctness and value of Watt's
survey. The inventive genius of the man was never still: clocks,
micrometers, dividing screws, surveying quadrants, and a hundred
other inventions flowed from him with the case that a litterateur
dashes off an article for a magazine. You might live,' said his
friend Dr. Small, 'by inventing only an hour in a week for mathe-
matical instrument-inakers.'
เ
In 1773, Mr. Watt and Dr. Rocbuck dissolved their connection; and
then began the partnership with Mr. Boulton of the Soho Works, in
Birmingham, which laid the foundation of Watt's future prosperity.
Mr. Boulton was possessed of ample means to do justice to the mag-
nitude of Watt's inventions; and the result was, that both realised
an ample fortune, and the Soho Works of Birmingham were among
the greatest establishments of that city. Watt's inventions continued
to enrich the world almost until his death, at the patriarchal age of
eighty-three. Among the most important of these, not mentioned
above, were the rotative motion and parallel motion, the throttle-
valve, the steam-gauge, the indicator, the governor, &c., in connec-
tion with the steam-engine; the copying-press, the steam tilt-ham-
mer, a smoke-consumer, the discovery of the composition of water,
&c. These are among the works which we owe to the great inventor
and perfecter of the steam-engine. Lord Brougham's beautiful epi-
taph on Watt, in Westminster Abbey, should never be omitted from
any notice of his life and character:
Not to perpetuate a name,
Which must endure, while the peaceful arts flourish,
But to shew
That Mankind have learned to honour those
Who best deserve their gratitude,
The King,
HI_s Ministers, and many of the Nobles
MUIRHEAD.]
87
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
1
And Commons of the Realm,
Raised this Monument to
JAMES WATT,
Who, directing the force of an original genius,
Early exercised in philosophic research,
To the improvement of
The Steam-engine.
Enlarged the Resources of his Country,
Increased the Power of Man,
And rose to an eminent place
Among the most Illustrious Followers of Science
And the real Benefactors of the World.
Born at Greenock. MDCCXXXVI.;
Died at Heathfield, in Staffordshire, MDCCCXLX.
The 'Life of George Stephenson,' by SAMUEL SMILES, 1857, is in-
teresting on account of the history it gives of the application of
locomotives to railway travelling; and it is invaluable as affording
the example of a great principle triumphing over popular prejudice,
ignorance, and the strenuous opposition of vested interests.' The
railway engineer rose from very small beginnings. He was the son
of a labourer in Northumberland, fireman at the pumping-engine of
the colliery at Wylam, near Newcastle. George was born in 1781.
While a child he ran errands, herded cows, and performed field-
labour until, in his fourteenth year, he was promoted to be assistaut
to his father at the rate of one shilling a day. He could not read,
but he imitated everything. He mended clocks and watches, made
shoes, and otherwise displayed such ingenuity, that he was appointed
engine-wright at Killingworth Colliery at a salary of £100 a year.
Here he inspired such confidence in his sagacity and skill, that, on
application, he at once obtained permission from Lord Ravensworth,
the proprietor, to incur the outlay for constructing what he called a
'travelling engine' for the tram-roads, between the colliery and the
shipping-port nine miles off. With the imperfect tools and unskilled
workmen at Killingworth, Stephenson constructed his first locomo-
tive. He called it My Lord; and at its first trial, on an ascending
gradient of 1 in 450, the engine drew eight loaded carriages, of about
thirty tons' weight, at the rate of four miles an hour. This was on
the 25th of July, 1814. It was not until 1830 that the public fully
recognised the practicability of driving locomotives on smooth rails;
and it was then recognised, because the fact could no longer be de-
nied. Stephenson conviced himself of the two great principles-
that friction is a constant quantity at all velocities, and that iron is
capable of adhesion upon iron without roughness of surface. He
therefore discarded cog-wheels on rails and the idea of running loco-
motives on common roads, and laboured to adapt the locomotive and
the rails to the wants of each other, so that, as he said himself,
they might be like man and wife.' His success led to his appoint-
ment as engineer of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, a line
projected in order to find an outlet and new markets for the Bishop-
88
[To 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
•
Auckland coals. Here he succeeded in establishing the first railway
over which passengers and goods were carried by a locomotive. The
opening trial took place 27th September, 1827, and a local chronicler
thus records the event:
Starting the First Railway Locomotive.
The signal being given, the engine started off with this immense train of car-
riages; and such was its velocity, that in some parts the speed was frequently
twelve miles an hour; and at that time the number of passengers was counted to
be 450, which, together with the coal, merchandise, aud carriages, would amount to
near ninety tons. The engine with its load arrived at Darlugton, a distance of
834 miles, in sixty-five minutes. The six wagons, loaded with coal intended for
Darlington, were then left behind; and obtaining a fresh supply of water, and ar-
ranging the procession to accommodate a band of music and numerous passengers
from Darlington, the engine set off again, aud arrived at Stockton in three hours
and seven minutes, including stoppages, the distance being nearly twelve miles. By
the time the train reached Stockton there were about 600 persons in the train or
hanging on to the wagons, which must have gone at a safe and steady pace of from
four to six miles n hour from Darlington. The arrival at Stockton,' it is added,
'excited a deep interest and admiration.'
A more important field was, however, necessary, in order to at-
tract public attention, and to test the inherent soundness of the
principle propounded by Stephenson. This was found in Liverpool
and Manchester. The means of transporting goods between these
great cities had not kept pace with the development of the traffic.
Cotton, as Mr. Huskisson observed in the House of Commons, was
detained a fortnight at Liverpool, while the Manchester manufac-
turers were obliged to suspend their labours; and goods manufac-
tured at Manchester for foreign markets could not be transmitted in
time, in consequence of the tardy conveyance.
In nine years, the
quantity of raw cotton alone sent from the one town to the other
had increased by fifty million pounds' weight.
T
A public meeting was held at Liverpool, and it was resolved to
construct a tram-road, an idea which, under George Stephenson, was
ultimately extended to a railway suitable for either fixed or locomo-
tive engines. At this time the Bridgewater Canal was yielding a re-
turn of the whole original investment about once in two years. The
opposition of the proprietors was therefore natural enough, but the
scheme was opposed on all sides. In making the survey, Stephenson
was refused access to the ground at one point, turned off by the
gamekeepers at another, and on one occasion, when a clergyman
was violently hostile, he had to slip in and make his survey while
divine service was going on. The survey was made, however, in
spite of all opposition. The next difficulty was to get leave to make
the line. A shower of pamphlets warned the public against the lo-
comotive: it would keep cows from grazing, and hens from laying;
the air would be poisoned, and birds fall dead as it passed; the pre-
servation of pheasants and foxes would be impossible; householders
would be ruined, horses become extinct, and oats unsaleable; country
inns would be ruined; travelling rendered dangerous, for boilers
SMILES.]
89
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
would burst, and passengers be blown to atcms. But there was al-
ways this consolation to wind up with-the weight of the locomotive
would prevent its moving, and railways could never be worked by
steam-power. The bill for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at
length came before a committee of the House of Commons. Privately,
Mr. Stephenson talked of driving twenty miles an hour; but the
council warned him of such folly, and in evidence he restricted him-
self to ten miles an hour. 'But assuming this speed,' said a member
of the committee, 'suppose that a cow were to stray upon the line
and get in the way of the engine; would not that, think you, be a
very awkward circumstance?' Yes,' replied the witness, with his
strong Northumberland burr, and a merry twinkle in his eye—‘ yes,
verry awkward indeed for the coo!'
Mr. Stephenson-that unprofessional person,' as one of the en-
gineers of the day called him-failed to convince the committee, and
the bill was lost. We must persevere, sir,' was his invariable reply,
when friends hinted that he might be wrong; and a second bill was
brought in, which, as the new line carefully avoided the lands of a
few short-sighted opponents, passed the House of Commons by 88 to
41, and the House of Lords with the opposition of only Lord Derby
and Lord Wilton. The railway was commenced; and though told
by the first engineers of the day that no man in his senses would
attempt to carry it through Chat Moss, Mr. Stephenson did so, at a
cost not of £270,000, but of only £28,000, and he completed the iine
in a substantial and business-like manner. But the adoption of the
locomotive was still an open question, and he stood alone among the
engineers of the day. The most advanced professional men con-
curred in recommending fixed engines. We must persevere, sir,'
was still George's motto. He persuaded the directors to give the
locomotive a trial, and he made an engine for the purpose. The
trial came on, 6th October 1829. The engine started on its journey,
dragging after it about thirteen tons' weight in wagons, and made
the first ten trips backwards and forwards along the two miles of
road, running the thirty-five miles, including stoppages, in an hour
and forty-eight minutes. The second ten trips were in like manner
performed in two hours and three minutes. The maximum velocity
attained by the 'Rocket' during the trial-trip was twenty-nine miles
an hour, or about three times the speed that one of the judges of the
competition had declared to be the limit of possibility. Now,' cried
one of the directors, lifting up his hands-‘now is George Stephen-
son at last delivered.' This decided the question; locomotives were
immediately constructed and put upon the line; and the public open-
ing of the work took place on the 15th September 1830.
เ
•
-
Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
The completion of the work was justly regarded as a great national event, and
was celebrated accordingly. The Duke of Wellington, then prime-minister. Sir
Robert Peel, secretary of state, Mr. Buskisson, one of the members for Liverpool,
90
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
S
and an earnest supporter of the project from its commencement, were present, to-
gether with a large number of distinguished personages. The Northumbrian'
Engine took the lead of the procession, and was followed by the other locomotives
and their trains, which accommodated about six hundred persons. Many thousands
of spectators cheered them on their way-through the deep ravine of Olive Mount;
up the Sutton incline; over the Sankey viaduct, beneath which a multitude of per-
sons had assembled-carriages filling the narrow lanes, and barges crowding the
river. The people gazed with wonder and admiration at the trains which sped along
the line, far above their heads, at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour. At_Park-
side, seventeen miles from Liverpool, the engines stopped to take in water. Here a
deplorable accident occurred to one of the most distinguished of the illustrious visitors
present, which threw a deep shadow over the subsequent proceedings of the day.
The Northumbrian' engine, with the carriage containing the Duke of Wellington,
was drawn up on one line, in order that the whole of the trains might pass in review
before him and his party on the other. Mr. Huskisson had, unhappily, alighted
from the carriage, and was standing on the opposite road. along which the Rocket'
engine was observed rapidly coming up. At This moment the Duke of Wellington,
between whom and Mr. Huskisson some cooluess had existed, made a sign of recog-
nition, and held out his hand. A hurried but friendly grasp was given; and before
it was loosened, there was a general cry from the bystanders of Get in, get in!
Flurried and confused, Mr. Huskisson endeavoured to get round the open door of
the carriage which projected over the opposite rad, but in so doing he was struck
down by the 'Rocket,' and falling with his leg doubled across the rail, the limb was
instantly crushed. His first words, on being raised, were, I have met my death,
which unhappily proved too true. for he expired that same evening in the neighbour-
ing parsonage of Eccles. It was cited at the time, as a remarkable fact. that the
Northumbrian' engine conveyed the wounded body of the nufortunate gentleman
a distance of about fifteen miles in twenty-five minutes, or at the rate of thirty-six
miles an hour. This incredible speed burst upon the world with all the effect of a
new and unlooked-for phenomenon.
,
+
·
The fortune of George Stephenson was now made. He became a
great man. He was offered, but refused, a knighthood, and bis latter
days were spent as those of a country gentleman. He died in 1848,
at the age of sixty-seven.
George Stephenson at Sir Robert Peel's seat of Drayton.
Though mainly an engineer, he was also a daring thinker on many scientific
questions; and there was scarcely a subject of speculation. or a department of
recoudite science, on which he had not employed his faculties in such a way as
to have formed large and original views. At Drayion the conversation often
turned upon such topics, and Mr. Stephenson freely joined in it One one occa-
sion, an animated discussion took place between himself and Dr. Buckland on one of
his favourite theories as to the formation of coal. But the result was, that Dr Buck-
land, a much greater master of tongne-fence than Stephenson completely silenced
him. Next morning before breakfast, when he was walking in the grounds deeply
pondering, Sir William Follett came up and asked what he was thinking about?
Why, Sir William, I am thinking over that argument. I had with Buckland last
night. I know I am right, and that if I had only the command of words which he
has, I'd have beaten him.' 'Let me know all about it,' said Sir William, and I'll see -
what I can do for you.' The two sat down in an arbour. where the astute lawyer
made himself thoroughly acquainted with the points of the case; entering into it
with all the zeal of an advocate about to plead the dearest interests of his client.
After he had mastered the subject. Sir William rose up. rubbing his hands with glee,
and said: 'Now I am ready for him.' Sir Robert Peel was made acquainted
with the plot, and adroitly introduced the subject of the controversy after dinner.
The result was, that in the argument which followed. the man of science was
overcome by the man of law; and Sir William Follett had at all points the
mastery over Dr. Buckland. What do you say. Mr. Stephenson ?' asked Sir Robert,
laughing. Why,' said he, 'I will only say this, that of all the powers
เ
•
COCKBURN.]
91
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
↓
C
1
above and under the earth, there seems to me to be no power so great as the gift of
the gab.' One day at dinner, during the same visit, a scientific lady asked him the
question, Mr. Stephenson, what do you consider the most powerful force in
nature? 'Oh!' said he, in a gallant spirit, I will soon answer that question: it is
the eye of a woman for the man who loves her; for if a woman look with affection
on a young man, and he should go to the uttermost ends of the earth, the recollec-
tion of that look will bring him back; there is no other force in nature that could
do that.' One Sunday, when the party had just returned from church, they were
standing together on the terrace near the hall, and observed in the distance a rail-
way train flashing along, throwing behind it a long line of white steam. Now,
Buckland,' said Mr. Stephenson, I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is the
power that is driving that train ?? Well.' said the other I suppose it is one of your
big engines.' 'But what drives the engine? ' Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle
driver. • What do you say to the light of the sun?' How can that be?' asked
the doctor. It is nothing else,' said the engineer; it is light bottled up in the
earth for tens of thousands of years-light, absorbed by plauts and vegetables, being
necessary for the condensation of carbon during the process of their growth, if it
be not carbon in another form-and now, after being buried in the earth for long
ages in fields of coal, that latent light is again brought forth and liberated, made to
work, as in that locomotive, tor great human purposes. The idea was certainly a
most striking and original one: like a flash of light, it illuminated in an instant an
entire field of science.
·
6
C
>
ܕ
•
ELIZA METEYARD.
•
In 1865-6 appeared The Life of Josiah Wedgwood,' two volumes,
by ELIZA METEYARD, a lady who had previously written several
sales and other productions under the name of Silverpen.' In 1871
Miss Meteyard produced a series of biographies, under the title of
A Group of Englishmen' (1795 to 1815), being records of the
younger Wedgwoods and their friends, embracing the history of
photography.
HENRY, LORD COCKBURN-DEAN RAMSAY-DR. R. CHAMBERS.
The awakened curiosity of the public regarding Scottish history
and manners—mainly to be attributed to Sir Walter Scott's works-
induced the late HENRY COCKBURN (1779–1854) to write and publish
(1856) ' Memorials of his Time,' or sketches of the public character
and social habits of the leading citizens of Edinburgh, from the end
of the last century to the culminating-point in the celebrity of the
Scottish capital at the date of the Waverley novels. The author of
the 'Memorials,' Lord Cockburn, a Scottish judge, was shrewd, ob-
servant, and playful-a genial humourist and man of fine taste, with
a vein of energetic eloquence, when roused, that was irresistible with
a Scottish audience. In 1874 were issued two more volumes of the
same description, Journal of Henry Cockburn, being a Continuation
of the "Memorials of His Own Time.""
·
Of a similar character with the Memorials,' though more gossip-
ing and anecdotical, is the work entitled Reminiscences of Scottish
Life and Character,' 1857, by the REV. EDWARD BANNERMAN RAM-
SAY (1793–1872), minister of St. John's Episcopal Church, Edinburgh
(1830), and dean of the diocese from 1841 till his death. This vol-
ume has gone through twenty-one editions. Dean Ramsay was a
man of various graces and accomplishments, and as a clergyman he
i
92
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
combined deep and fervent piety with genuine toleration and benev-
olence. The Reminiscences' form a curious record of old times and
manners fast disappearing. It is the best refutation of sidney Smith's
unfortunate joke that the Scotch have no humour, and it has done
almost as much as the Waverley novels to make Scotch customs,
phrases, and traits of character familiar to Englishmen at home and
abroad.
Edinburgh Society Eighty Years Since.-From Memorials of his Time,'
by HENRY COCKBUKN.
There was far more coarseness in the formal age than in the free one. I wo vices
especially, which have been long banished from respectable society, were very preva-
lent, if not universal, among the whole upper ranks-swearing and drunkenness.
Nothing was more common than for gentlemen who had dined with ladies, and
meant to rejoin them, to get drunk. To get drunk in a tavern, seen ed to be con-
sidered as a natural. if not an intended consequence of going to one. Swearing was
thought the right, and the mark, of a gentleman. And, tried by this test, nobody,
who had not seen them, could now be made to believe how many gentlemen
there were. Not that people were worse-tempered then than now. They were only
coarser in their manners, and had got into a bad style of admonition and dissent.
The naval chaplain justified his cursing the sailors, because it made them listen
to him; and Braxfield [a Scottish judge] apologised to a lady whom he danned
at whist for bad play, by declaring that he had mistaken her for his wife. This
odious practice was applied with particular offensiveness by those in authority
towards their inferiors. In the army it was universal by officers towards soldiers,
and far more frequent than is now credible by masters towards servants.
C
The prevailing dinner was about three o'clock. Two o'clock was quite common,
if there was no company. Hence it was no great deviation from their usual custom
for a family to dine on Sundays between sermons,' that is. between one and two.
The hour, in time, but not without groans and predictions, became four, at
which it stuck for several years. Then it got to five, which, however, was thought
positively revolutionary; and four was long and gallantly adhered to by the
haters of chauge as the good old hour.' At last, even they were obliged to give in,
but they only yielded inch by inch, and made a desperate stand at half-past four.
Even five, however, triumphed, and continued the average polite hour from (I think)
about 1806 or 1807 till about 1820. Six has at lust prevailed, and balf-an-hour later
is not unusual. As yet this is the furthest stretch of Loudou imitation, except in
country houses devoted to grouse or deer.
The procession from the drawing-room to the dining-room was formerly arranged
on a different principle from what it is now. There was no such alarming proceed-
ing as that of each gentleman approaching a lady, and the two hooking together.
This would have excited as much horror as the waltz at first did, which never shewed
itself without denunciations of continental manners by correct gentlemen and
worthy mothers and aunts. All the ladies first went off by themselves in a regular
row according to the ordinary rules of precedence. Then the gentlemen moved off
in single file; so that when they reached the dining-room, the ladies were all there,
lingering about the backs of the chairs, till they could see what their fate was to be.
Then began the selection of partners, the leaders of the male line having the advan-
tage of priority; and of course the magnates had an affinity for each other.
The dinners themselves were much the same as at present. Any difference is in
a more liberal adoption of the cookery of France. Healths and toasts were special
torments: oppressions which cannot now be conceived. Every glass during dinner
required to be dedicated to the health of some oue. This prandial nuisance was hor-
rible, but it was nothing to what followed. For after dinner, and before the ladies
retired, there generally began what were called rounds' of toasts, and, worst of all,
there were sentiments.' These were short epigrammatic sentences, expressive of
moral feelings and virtues, and were thought refined and elegant productions. The
glasses being filled, a person was asked for his or for her sentimient, when this or
something similar was committed: May the pleasures of the evening bear the re-
COCKBURN.]
93
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
flections of the morning;' or 'May the friends of our youth be the companions of
our old age;' or Delicate pleasures to susceptible mind-,' &c.
Early dinners begat suppers. But suppers are so delightful, that they have sur-
vived long after dinners have become late. Indeed this has immemorially been a
favourite Edinburgh repast. How many are the reasons, how strong the associa-
tions that inspire the last of the day's friendly meetings! Supper is cheaper than
dinner; shorter, less ceremonious, and more poetical. The business of the day is
over; and its still fresh events interests. It is chiefly intimate associates that are
drawn together at that familiar hour, of which night deepens the socialty. If there
be any fun, or heart, or spirit in a man at all, it is then, if ever, that it will appear.
So far as I have zeen social life, its brightest suushine has been on the last repast of
the day.
As to the comparitive religiousness of the present and the preceding generation,
any such comparison is very difficult to be made. Religion is certainly more the
fashion than it used to be. There is more said about it; there has been a great
rise. aud consequently a great competition of sects; and the general mass of the
religious public has been enlarged. On the other hand, if we are to believe one
half of what some religious persons themselves assure us, religion is now almost
extinct. My opinion is that the balance is in favour of the present time. And I am
certain that it would be much more so. if the modern dictators would only accept of
that as religion which was considered to be so by their devout fathers.
Scottish Nationality-From Preface to Dean Ramsay's 'Reminiscences.'
There is no mistaking the national attachment so strong in the Scottish charac-
ter. Men return after long absence in this respect unchanged; whilst absent,
Scotchmen never forget their native home. In all varieties of lands and climates
their hearts ever turn towards the land o' cakes and brither Scots.' Scottish festi-
vals are kept with Scottish feeling on Greenland's icy mountains or India's coral
strand.' I received an amusing account of an ebullition of this patriotic feeling
from my late noble friend the Marquis of Lothiau, who met with it when travelling
in Ind.a. He happened to arrive at a station upon the eve of St. Andrew's Day,
and received an invitation to join a Scottish dinner-party in commemoration of old
Scotland. There was a great deal of Scottish enthusiasm. There were seven sheep-
heads (singed) down the table: and Lord Lothian told me that after dinner he sang
with great applause The Laird o' Coekpen.'
،
Love of country must draw forth good feeling in men's minds. as it will tend to
make them cherish a desire for its welfare and improvement. To claim kindred
with the honourable and high-minded, as in some degree allied with them, must im-
ply at least an appreciation of great and good qualities. Whatever, then, supplies
men with a motive for following upright and noble conduct-whatever advances in
them a kindly benevolence towards fellow-countrymen in distress, will always exer-
cise a beneficial effect upon the hearts and intellects of a Christian people; aud
these objects are. I think, all more or less fostered and encouraged under the in-
fluence of that patriotic spirit which identifies national honour and national hap-
piness with its own.
C
I desire to preserve peculiarities which I think should be recorded, because they
are national, and because they are reminiscences of gennine Scottish life. No doubt
these peculiarities have been deeply tinged with the quaint and quiet humour which
is more strictly characteristic of our countrymen than their wit. And, as exponents
of that humour, our stories may often have excited some narmless merriment in
those who have appreciated the real fun of the dry Scottish character. That, I
trust, is no offence. I should never be sorry to think that, within the limits of
becoming mirth,' I had contributed, in however small a degree, to the entertainment
and recreation of my countrymen
I am convinced that every one, whether clergy-
man or layman, who adds something to the innocent enjorment of human life, has
joined in a good work, inasmuch as he has diminished the inducement to vicious
indulgence. God knows there is enough of sin and of sorrow in the world to make
sad the heart of every Christian man. No one. I think, need be ashamed of hav-
ing sought to cheer the darker hours of his fellow-travellers' steps through life,
or to beguile their hearts, when weary and heavy-laden, into cheerful and amusing
trains of thought. So far as my experience of life goes, I have never found that the
94.
[To 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
#
cause of morality or of religion was promoted by sternly checking all tendencies of
our nature to relaxation and amusement. If mankind be too ready to enter upon
pleasures which are dangerous or questionable, it is the part of wisdom and of be-
nevolence to supply them with sources of interest, the enjoyment of which shall be
innocent and permissible.
What Lord Cockburn and Dean Ramsay did for their time by per-
sonal observation and memory, has been done for a much earlier
period, through the medium of books and manuscripts, by DR. ROB-
ERT CHAMBERS, in his Domestic Annals of Scotland from the
Reformation to the Revolution,' two volumes, 1858; and from the
Revolution to the Rebellion of 1745,' in one volume, 1861. His ob-
ject, as stated in the preface to the work, was to detail the series of
occurrences beneath the region of history, the effects of passion,
superstition, aud ignorance in the people, the extraordinary natural
events which disturbed their tranquillity; the calamities which
affected their wellbeing, the traits of false political economy by which
that wellbeing was checked, and generally those things which enable
us to see how our forefathers thought, felt, and suffered, and how, on
the whole, ordinary life looked in their days.' The language of the
original contemporary narrators is given wherever it was sufficiently
intelligible and concise. This work has been very successful. Three
other volumes by its author are devoted to local and national annals
The History of the Rebellion of 1745-6,' Traditions of Edin-
burgh,' and' Popular Rhymes of Scotland.' These are valuable as
embodying much curious information presented in a form agreeable
and attractive. The History of the Rebellion' is, indeed, an im-
Dr. Chambers's
portant contribution to our historical literature.
best services, as has been justly remarked, 'were devoted to his na-
tive country; and, with the exception of his illustrious contemporary,
Sir Walter Scott, no other author has done so much to illustrate its
social state, its scenery, romantic historical incidents, and antiquities
-the lives of its eminent men-and the changes in Scottish society
and the condition of the people (especially those in the capital)
during the last two centuries.' The life of Dr. R Chambers has been
written by his brother, Dr. W. Chambers. Both were born in
Peebles-William, April 16, 1800; Robert, July 10, 1902-of an old
Peebleshire family, who, at the beginning of the century, were sub-
stantial woollen manufacturers. Robert has thus graphically de-
scribed his native town:
P
L
C
{
Picture of an old Scottish Town-From Memoir of Robert Chambers.'
In the early years of this century. Peebles was little advanced from the condition
It was
in which it had mainly rested for several hundred years previously.
eminently a quiet pluce-As quiet as the grave or as Peebles.' is a phrase used by
Cockburn. It was said to be a finished town, for no new houses (exceptions to be
of course allowed for) were ever built in it. Situated. however. among beautiful
pastoral hills, with a singularly pure atmosphere, and with the pellucid Tweed run-
* Memoir of Robert Chambers, with Autobiographic Reminiscences, by William
Chambers, 1872.
CHAMBERS.]
95
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
L
ning over its pebbly bed close behind the streets, the town was acknowledged to be,
in the fond language of its inhabitants, a bonuy place. An honest old burgher was
enabled by some strange chance to visit Paris, and was eagerly questioned, when he
came back, as to the character of that capital of capitals; o which, it is said. he
answered that Paris, a' thing considered, was a wonderful place-but still, Peebles
for pleesure!' and this has often ben cited as a ludicrous example of rustic prejudice
and narrowness of judgment. But. on a fair interpretation of the old gentleman's
words, he was not quite so benighted as at first appears. The phe, ur,s” of Peebles
were the beauties of the situation and the opportunities of healthful recreation it
afforded, and these were certainly considerable.
་
There was an old and a new town in Peebles-each of them a single street. or little
more; and as even the new town had an antique look, it may be inferred that
the old looked old indeed. It was, indeed, chiefly composed of thatched cottages,
occupied by weavers and labouring people-a primitive race of homely aspect, in
many instances eking out a scanty subsistence by having a cow on the town con-
mon, or cultivating a rig of potatoes in the fields close to the town. Rows of por-
ridge luggies (small wooden vessels) were to be seen cooling on window-soles; a sineil
of peat sinoke pervaded the place; the click of the shuttle was ev rywhere heard
during the day; and in the evening, the gray old men came out in their Kihearnock
night-caps, and talked of Bonaparte, on the stone scats beside their doors. The
platters used in these humble dwellings were all of wood, and the spoons of horu ;
Knives and forks rather rare articles. The house was generally divided into two
apartments by a couple of box-beds, placed end to end-a bad style of bed, prevalent
in cottages all over Scotland; they were so close as almost to stifle the inmates.
Among these humble people, all costumes, customs, and ways of living smacked of
old times. You would see a venerable patriarch making his way to church on
Sunday, with a long-backed, swing-tailed, light-blne cont of the style of George
II.. which was probably his marriage coat. and half a century old. His head-gear
was a broad-brimmed blue bonnet. The old woman came out on the same occa-
sions in red scarfs. called cardinals, and white matches (caps), bound by a black
ribbon, with the gray hair folded back on the forehead. There was a great deal
of drugget, and huckaback, and serge in that old world, and very little cotton. Que
almost might think he saw the humbler Scotch people of the seventeenth century
before his eyes.
William Chambers, in that part of the volume devoted to his auto-
biographic reminiscences, says of Peebles:
Among that considerable part of the population who lived down closes and in
old thatched cottages, news circulated at third or fourth hand, or was merged in con-
versation on religious or other topics. My brother and I derived much enjoyment,
not to say instruction, from the singing of old ballads, and the telling of legendary
stories, by a kind old female relative, the wife of a decayed tradesman, who dwelt in
one of the ancient closes At her humble fireside, under the canopy of a huge chim-
ney, where her half-blind and superannuated husband sat dozing in a chair. the bat-
tle of Corunna and other prevailing news was strangely mingled with disquisitions
on the Jewish wars. The source of this interesting conversation was a well-worn
copy of L'Estrange's translation of Josephus, a small folio ot date 1720. The en-
vied possessor of the work was Tam Fleck, a flichty chield,' as he was considered,
who. not particularly steady at his legitimate employment, struck out a sort of pro-
fession by going about in the evenings with his Josephus, which he read as the cur-
rent news; the only light he had for doing so being usually that impart d by the
flickering blaze of à piece of parrot coal, It was his practice not to read more than
from two to three pages at a time, interlarded with sagacious remarks of his own by
way of foot-notes. and in this way he sustained au extraordinary interest in the nar
rative. Retailing the matter with great equability in different households, Tam kept
all at the same point of information. and wound them up with a corresponding
anxiety as to the issue of some moving event in Hebrew annals. Although in this
way he went through a course of Josephus yearly, the novelty somehow never
seemed to wear off.
Weel, Tam, what's the news the nicht?' would old Geordie Murray say, as
96
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Tam entered with his Josephus under his arm, and seated himself at the family
fireside.
'
'Bad news, bad news,' replied Tam. Titus has begun to besiege Jerusalem-
it 's gaun to be a terrible business;' and then he opened his budget of intelligence,
to which all paid the most reverential attention. The protracted and severe famine
which was endured by the besieged Jews, was a theme which kept several families in
a state of agony for a week; and when Tain in his readings came to the final conflict
and destruction of the city by the Roman general. there was a perfect paroxysm of
horror. At such séances my brother and I were delighted listeners. All honour to
the memory of Tam Fleck.
Misfortune overtook the old bourgeois family of Chambers, in Pee-
bles. They removed to Edinburgh, and there the two brothers,
William and Robert Chambers, fought hard and nobly to gain a po-
sition in life. How they struggled, manfully and cheerfully-never
relaxing, never complaining-is told in the Memoir' from which we
have quoted, and which is the most interesting and instructive narra-
tive of the kind that has issued from the press since Hugh Miller
wrote his Schools and Schoolmasters.' In 1868, the university of
St. Andrews conferred on Robert the honorary degree of LL.D. He
then resided chiefly in St. Andrews, and there he died on the 17th of
March 1871. On William, who survives, the university of Edin-
burgh conferred the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1872.
↓
SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON.
Professional biographies-legal, military, medical, &c.—are numer-
ous, but having only a special interest, do not seem to require men-
tion here. We make an exception in the case of SIR JAMES YOUNG
SIMPSON (1811-1870), because he proved, by his discovery of the
anæsthetic virtues of chloroform, to be a benefactor of mankind. He
made other improvements and innovations in medical practice, which
are, we believe, considered valuable. His chief distinction, however,
was the relief of human suffering by this agent of chloroform-
wrapping,' as he said, 'men, women, and children in a painless
sleep during some of the most trying moments and hours of human
existence; and especially when our frail brother man is laid upon
the operating table, and subjected to the tortures of the surgeon's
knives and scalpels, his saws and his cauteries.' Chloroform was
first discovered and described at nearly the same time by Soubeiran
(1831) and Liebig (1832); its composition was first accurately ascer-
tained by the distingushed French chemist, Dumas, in 1835.
•
Indirect Value of Philosophical Investigation.
It is (said Sir James Simpson) not unworthy of remark, that when Soubeiran and
Liebig and Dumas engaged in those inquiries and experiments by which the forma-
tion and composition of chloroform was first discovered, their sole and only object
was the investigation of a point in philosophical chemistry. They laboured for the
pure love and extension of knowledge. They had no idea that the substance to
which they called the attention of their chemical brethren could or would be turned
to any practical purpose, or that it possessed any physiological or therapeutic effects
upon the animal economy. I mention this to shew that the cui bono argument
against philosophical investigations, on the ground that there may be at first no ap-
parent practical benefit to be derived from them, has been amply refuted in this, as
SIMPSON.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
97
#
it has been in many other instances. For I feel assured that the use of chloroform
will soon entirely supersede the use of ether; and froin the facility and rapidity of
its exhibition, it will be employed as an anesthetic agent in many cases, and under
many circumstances, in which ether would never have been had recourse to. Here,
then, we have a substance which, in the first instance, was merely interesting as
a matter of scientific curiosity and research, becoming rapidly an object of intense
importance, as au agent by which hunan suffering and agony may be annulled and
abolished, under some of the most trying circumstances in which human nature is
ever placed.'
•
One objection made to the use of anesthesia was, that it enabled
women to avoid one part of the primeval curse! Simpson said ‘the
word translated sorrow (Gen. ii, 16) is truly “labour,'
labour,” “ toil,” and in
the very next verse the very same word means this. Adam was to
cat the ground with sorrow." That does not mean physical pain,
and it was cursed to bear thorns and thistles, which we pull up
without dreaming that it is a sin.' Dr. Chalmers thought the small
theologians' who objected should not be heeded, and so thought
every man of sense. The use of chloroform extended rapidly over
all Europe and America, and is now an established recognised agent
in the mitigation of human suffering.
Professor Simpson was born at Bathgate in Linlithgowshire, one of
a numerous but poor and industrious family. Having studied at
Edinburgh University, he graduated as doctor in medicine in 1832.
In 1840 he succeeded Professor Hamilton as Professor of Midwifery,
and in 1847 first introduced the use of chloroform. After a prosper-
ous career, the Queen, in 1866, conferred upon him the honour of a
baronetcy, and the university of Oxford gave him the honorary
degree of D.C.L. Sir James was a keen antiquary, and published a
treatise on Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, &c. upon stones
and Rocks,' 1867.
(
J. E. BAILEY-H. CRABB ROBINSON-C. WENTWORTH DILKE.
In 1874 MR JOHN EGLINGTON BAILEY, Manchester, published a
'Life of Thomas Fuller, D.D.,' with notices of his books, his kins-
men, and his friends-an elaborate and valuable memoir of the cele-
brated church historian. 'undertaken,' as the author states, 'out of
admiration of the life and character of the very remarkable man
whom it concerns,' and 'the result of the study and research of the
leisure hours of many years.'
In the Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of HENRY
CRABB ROBINSON,' three volumes, 1869, will be found a great amount
of literary anecdote and information concerning German and Eng-
lish authors. The inscription on his tombstone may suffice for a
biographical notice: HENRY CRABB ROBINSON, born May 15, 1775,
died February 5, 1867; friend and associate of Goethe and Wordsworth,
Wieland and Coleridge, Flaxman and Blake, Clarkson and Charles
Lamb; he honoured and loved the great and noble in their thoughts
and characters, his warmth of heart and genial sympathy embraced
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
98
alt whom he could serve,' &c. The best account we have of Words-
worth's literary life and opinions is in Crabb Robinson's diary.
Much interesting and curious literary history, with a dash of pol-
itics intermixed, is contained in two volumes, Papers of a Critic,'
1875, selected from the writings of the late CHARLES WENTWORTH
DILKE by his grandson, the baronet of the same name, author of a
book of travels, Greater Britain.' Mr. Dilke was born in 1787,
served for many years in the Navy Pay Office, and on his retiring
with a pension, devoted himself to literary inquiry and criticism.
He was a man of solid, clear judgment, of unwearying industry, and
of thorough independence of character. He became proprietor of
the Athenæum' literary journal, the price of which he reduced from
eightpence to fourpence, and vastly increased its circulation and influ-
ence. Charles Lamb, Hood, Leigh Hunt, the Howitts, Allan Cun-
ningham, Lady Morgan, &c. were among its writers. To insure im-
partiality as a critic and editor, Mr. Dilke made it a rule not to go into
society of any kind-a self-denying ordinance that it must have been
hard to keep. He had, however, a band of intimate friends among
his regular contributors. In the 'Athenæum ' Mr. Dilke produced his
critical papers on Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Swift, Junius,
Wilkes, Grenville, and Burke. The most important of these are the
papers on Pope, Junius, and Burke. It may safely be said that, not-
withstanding all the labours of Walton, Bowles, aud Roscoe, the
personal history of Pope was never properly understood until it was
taken up by Mr. Dilke. On the authorship of Junius, he differed
from great authorities-Brougham, Macaulay, Lord Stanhope, and
others. He investigated the subject with his usual acuteness and re-
search, but though he corrected numerous errors in previous state-
ments on the subject, he brought forward no name to supersede that
of Sir Philip Francis. With respect to Burke, Mr. Dilke also pointed
out many errors in the works of biographers, and convicted the great
statesman of a fault not uncommon-buying an estate before he had
money to pay for it, and entering on a scheme of life far too expen-
sive for bis means. Mr. Dilke died, universally respected and re-
gretted, August 16, 1864.
JOHN MORLEY-PROFESSOR MORLEY-WILLIAM MINTO-C. C. F.
GREVILLE.
JOHN MORLEY, born at Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1838, has pub-
lished Edmund Burke, a Historical Study,' 1867; and 'Lives of Vol-
(
C
•
*The late Mr. Riztoul of the Spectator adopted the same rule. 'I don't quite
understand Rintoul's point,' wrote Mr. Quillinan. the son-in-law of Wordsworth.
'Making it a rule to avoid authors, he makes it a rule to exclude himself from the
best intellectual society-that is, if he applies his rule rigorously. If he means that
he avoids the small cliques of authorlines and criticlings who puff one another and
abuse every one else, I quite understand him, and "small blame to him," as the
Irishman says.'
GREVILLE.]
99
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
taire,' 1872, and Rousseau,' 1873. Mr. Morley has been editor of the
'Fortnightly Review' since 1867.
HENRY MORLEY, Professor of English Literature at University
College, has written various works, biographical and critical, and
contributed extensively to literary journals. Lives of Palissy the
Potter,' 1852; Jerome Cardan,' 1854; Cornelius Agrippa,' 1856;
'Clement Marot,' 1870; First Sketch of English Literature.' 1873,
are among the most important of his productions, and he is now en-
gaged on an elaborate Library of English Literature,' in course of
publication by Messrs. Cassell & Co.
(
(
↓
(
MR. WILLIAM MINTO, M A., is author of two excellent compen-
diums of English biography and criticism: A Manual of English
Prose Literature,' designed mainly to shew characteristics of style,
1872; and Characteristics of English Poets from Chaucer to Shirley,'
1874. Shortly after the publication of the latter work, Mr. Minto
became editor of The Examiner' weekly paper, so long distin-
guished by its former editors, Leigh Hunt, Albany Fonblanque, and
John Forster.
*
Great interest was excited by the appearance, in 1874, of 'The
Greville Memoirs,' a journal of the reigns of King George IV. and
King William IV., by CHARLES C. F. GREVILLE, clerk of the
council to those sovereigns. Mr. Greville was a grandson of the
third Duke of Portland. At the age of twenty he was appointed
private secretary to Lord Bathurst, and seven years afterwards he
succeeded to the clerkship of the council, which he held for about
forty years Though too free in his comments and disclosures, and
not always just or correct, Mr. Greville's journal will be valuable to
future historians. His sketches of character are drawn with dis-
crimination and talent, and in his gallery of portraits are the two
sovereigns whom he served (George IV. being painted as destitute
of truth and honour, and a mere selfish sensualist), and nearly all the
public men, statesmen, and authors, who figured during that period.
The contrast between the Queen and her uncle is vividly set forth
in the following passage:
Queen Victoria's First Days of Sovereignty.
June 21, 1837.-The king died at twenty minutes after two yesterday morning;
and the young Queen met the council at Kensington Palace at eleven. Never was
anything like the first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admira-
tion which is raised about her manner and behaviour, and certainly not without
justice. It was very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for.
Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning
her, naturally excited intense curiosity to see how she would act on this trying occa-
sion, and there was a considerable assemblage at the palace, notwithstanding the
short notice that was given. The first thing to be done was to teach her her lesson,
which for this purpose Melbourne had himself to learn. I gave him the council
papers, and explained all that was to be done, and he went and explained all this to
her. He asked her if she would enter the room accompanied by the great officers of
state, but she said she would come in alone. When the lords were assembled the
Lord President informed them of the king's death, and suggested, as they were so
100
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
As soon
numerous, that a few of them should repair to the presence of the queen and inform
her of the event, and that their lordships were assembled in conséquence: and ac-
cordingly the two royal dukes, the two archbishops, the chancellor, and Mel-
bourne went with them. The queen received them in the adjoining room alone.
as they had returned, the proclamation was read and the usual
order passed, when the doors were thrown open, and the queen entered, accom-
panied by her two uncles, who advanced to meet her. She bowed to the lords,
took her seat, and then read her speech in a clear, distinct and audible voice,
and without any appearance of fear or embarrassment. She was quite plainly
dressed and in mourning. After she had read her speech, and taken and signed the
oath for the security of the Church of Scotland, the privy councillors were sworn,
the two royal dukes (Cumberlaud and Sussex; the Duke of Cambridge was in Ilau-
over) first, by themselves; and as these two old men, her uncles, kuelt bef re her.
swearing allegiance and kissing her hand. I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she
felt the contrast between their civil and their natural relatious, and this was the only
sign of emotion she evinced. Her mauner to them was very grateful and engaging;
she kissed them both, and rose from her chair and moved towards the Duke of
Sussex, who was farthest from her, and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather
bewildered at the multitude of men who were sworn, and who came, one after
another, to kiss her hand; but she did nor speak to anybody, nor did she make the
slightest difference in her manuer, or shew any in her countenance, to any indi-
vidual of any rank, station, or party. I particularly watched her when Melbourne,
and the ministers, and the Duke of Wellington approached her. She went through
the whole ceremony, occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction when she
had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred, and with perfect calmness
aud self-possession, but at the same time with a graceful modesty and propriety par-
ticularly interesting.and ingratiating. When the business was done, she retired as
she had entered, and I could see that nobody was in the adjoining room.
6
•
Lord Lansdownc insisted upon being declared president of the council, and I was
obliged to write a declaration for him to read to that effect, though it was not usual.
The speech was admired except by Brougham, who appeared in a considerable state
of excitement. He said to Peel (whom he was standing neer, and with whom he is
not in the habit of communicating): AAmelioration-that is not English; you might
perhaps say melioration, but improvement is the proper word.' 'Oh,' said Peel, T
See no harm in the word; it is generally used' You object,' said Brougham, to
the sentiment; I object to the grammar.' No,' said Peel, 'I don't object to the
sentiment.' Well, then, she pledges herself to the policy of our government,' said
Brougham. Peel told me this, which passed in the room, and near to the Queen. He
likewise said how amazed he was at her manner and behaviour, at her apparent deep
sense of her situatiou, her modesty, and at the same time her firmness. She ap-
peared, in fact, to be awed, but not daunted, and afterwards the Duke of Wel-
lington told me the same thing, and added that if she had been his own daughter he
could not have desired to see her perform her part better. It was settled that she
was to hold a council at St James's this day, and be proclaimed there at ten o'clock;
and she expressed a wish to see Lord Albemarle, who went to her, and told her he
was come to take her orders. She said: 'I have no orders to give; you know all
this so much better than I do, that I leave it all to you. I am to be at St. James's at
ten to-morrow, and must beg you to fiud ine a conveyance proper for the occasion'
Accordingly, he went and fetched her in state with a greal escort. The Duchess
of Kent was in the carriage with her, but I was surprised to hear so little shouting,
and to see so few hats off as she went by. I rode down the Park, and saw her ap-
pear at the window when she was proclaimed. The Duchess of Kent was there, but
not prominent; the Queen was surrounded by her ministers, and courtesied repeat-
edly to the people, who did not, however, hurrah till Lord Lansdowne gave them the
signal from the window. At twelve, she held a council, at which she presided with
as much ease as if she had been doing nothing else all her life; and thongh Lord
Lansdowne and my colleague had contrived between them to make some confusion
with the council papers, she was not put out by it. She looked very well; and
though so small in stature, and without much pretension to beanty, the gracefulness
of her manuer and the good expression of her countenance give her, ou the whole,
a very agreeable appearance, and, with her youth, inspire an excessive interest in all
6
6
THEOLOGIANS.]
101
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
kom
who approach her, and which I can't help feeling myself. After the council she re-
ceived the archbishops and bishops, and after them the judges. They all kissed her
hand, but she said nothing to any of them; very different from her predecessor,
who used to harangue theni all, and had a speech ready for everybody.
No contrast can be greater than that between the personal demeanour of the
present and the late sovereigns at their respective accessions. William IV. was a
inan who, coming to the throne at the mature age of sixty-five, was so excited by
the exaltation, that he went nearly mad, and distinguished himself by a thousand
extravagances of language and conduct, to the alarni or amusement of all who wit-
nessed his strange freaks; and though he was shortly afterwards sobered down
into more becoming habits, he always continued to be something of a blackguard,
and something more of a buffoon. It is but fair to his memory, at the same time,
to say that he was a good-natured, kind-hearted, and well-meaning man, and he
always acted an honourable and straightforward, if not always a sound and discreet
part. The two principal ministers of his reign, the Duke of Wellington and Lord
Grey (though the former was only his minister for a few months), have both spoken of
him to me with strong expressions of personal regard and esteem. The young Queen,
who might well be either dazzled or confounded with the grandeur and novelty of
her situation, seems neither the one nor the other, and behaves with a decorum and
propriety beyond ber years, and with all the sedateness and dignity, the want of
which was so conspicuous in her uncle.
THEOLOGIANS.
(
The publication of the Tracts for the Times, by Members of the
University of Oxford,' four volumes, 1833-37, 1orms an era in the
history of the Church of England. The movement was com-
menced,' says Mr. Molesworth, by a small knot of young men, most
of them under thirty years of age. The two most energetic and
original minds among them were RICHARD HURREL FROUDE and
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. Froude died at the early age of thirty-
three of a pulmonary complaint, but lived long enough to witness
the commencement of the Tracts, and to rejoice in their unexpected
success. Newman was the prime mover and real leader of the move-
ment, and one who, not only by his writings, but by his sermons,
his conversation, and, above all, by the influence of his pure motives
and lofty intelligence, nurtured and carried it forward. With them
came to be associated two kindred spirits, less energetic indeed, but
not less firm or earnest-DR. PUSEY, the learned young Regius Pro-
fessor of Hebrew, and KEBLE, the sweet singer of the Church of
England, whose Christian Year' will live as long as the church en-
dures (see ante). With these were associated other men of less mark
and note, of whom WILLIAM PALMER and ARTHUR PERCIVAL Were
the chief. They were connected with the higher authorities of the
church, and a large body of the most influential of the clergy, by Hugh
Rose, chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury, and regarded as the
first theological and German scholar of his day. Purer, holier, and
more unselfish men than those who composed this little band never
เ
(
102
[ro 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
می
lived.'*
The tenets or beliefs of this sacerdotal party were all of a
Romanising stamp-judgment by works equally as by faith, baptis-
mal regeneration, the supreme authority of the church, the apostol-
ical succession of the clergy, &c. At the same time the Tractarian
preachers adopted certain peculiarities in the performance of divine
service-as abjuring the black Geneva gown and preaching in the
white surplice, bowing to the altar and turning their backs to the
people, arraying the altar with tippet and flowers and medieval
embellishments, placing lighted candles on the altar, &c.
(
(
One effect of these innovations was to stir up a violent contro-
versy, in which High and Low and Broad Church all mingled;
while a few, like Dr. Arnold, proposed that the Established Church
should be so comprehensive as to include not merely the churches of
England and Scotland, but nearly all the bodies of Dissenters.
Another effect of the innovations was to drive many supporters of
the establishment into the ranks of the Dissenters, and some into the
Church of Rome. Mr. Newman published a work,' Remains of the
late Rev. Richard H. Froude,' 'who was not a man,' observed his
editor, who said anything at random,' and Mr. Froude spoke of
unprotestantising the church,' and called the Reformation a limb
badly set, which required to be broken again,' &c. The serious and
peaceable heads of the church became alarmed. The tracts were
stopped by recommendation of the bishop of Oxford, and the last of
the series, written by Mr. Newman, was condemned by many of the
bishops, and censured by the Hebdomadal Board. The controversy,
however, was not at an end-books, sermons, reviews, charges, me-
moirs, novels, and poems, continued to be issued by the opposing
parties, and church vestries were occasionally in commotion. Of the
18,000 clergymen said to be in the Church of England, 7000, it was
calculated, belonged to the High Church party, 6500 to the Low
Church, 3500 to the Broad Church, and about 1000 were peasant
clergy in the mountain districts.f
-
DR. PUSEY.
The REV. EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY is the second son of the late
Hon. Philip Bouverie (half-brother of the first Earl of Radnor), and
was born in 1800. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford, was elected
to a fellowship at Oriel College, and in 1828 was appointed Regius
Professor of Hebrew in the university of Oxford. Dr. Pusey was
one of the most persistent of the Tractarians. A sermon preached
by him before the university, was said to contain an avowal of his
belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation; an examination took
* Molesworth's History of England.
+ Edinburgh Review, October 1853. Since this time the High Church party has
increased in numbers, and an act of parliament has been passed, adding to the
ower of the bishops, for the purpose, as stated by Mr. Disraeli, of 'putting down
The Ritualists.' The number of the clergy is now said to be fully 20,000,
PUSEY.]
103
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
place on the part of judges appointed by the university, and the result
was a censure and sentence of suspension from the duties of a
preacher within the precincts of the university. The works of Dr.
Pusey are numerous, and are all theological. Among them are
Remarks on Cathedral Institutions,' 1845; 'Royal Supremacy,' 1850;
'Doctrine of the Real Presence Vindicated,' 1855; History of the
Councils of the Church,' 51-381 A.D.; Nine Sermons,' 1843-55; and
'Nine Lectures,' 1864; and other professional treatises and sermons.
The publications of Dr. Pusey are very numerous, but not one of
them bids fair to take a permanent place in our literature. He is a
man of exemplary piety as well as learning.
C
DR. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN-F. W. NEWMAN.
เ
This eminent controversialist and man of letters is a native of
London, son of a banker, and born in the year 1801. He graduated
at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1820, was afterwards elected a Fellow of
Oriel, and in 1825 became Vice-principal of St. Alban's Hall. He
was sometime tutor of his college, and incumbent of St. Mary's, Ox-
ford, and was associated, as we have stated, with Hurrel Froude and
others in the publication of the Tracts for the Times.' More con-
sistent than some of his associates, Dr. Newinan seceded from the
Established Church and joined the Church of Rome. Since then he
has been priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, rector of a Catholic
university in Dublin, and head of the Oratory near Birmingham. Dr.
Newman has been a voluminous writer His collected works form
twenty-two volumes, exclusive of various contributions to period-
icals. From 1837 to the present time his pen has rarely been idle,
and the variety of his learning, the originality and grace of his style,
his sincerity and earnestness, have placed him high among living
authors. The following is a list of his works as collected and classi-
fied by himself: Parochial and Plain Sermons,' eight volumes;
Sermons on Subjects of the Day;' University Sermons; Cath-
olic Sermons,' two volumes; Present Position of Catholics in Eng-
land; Essay on Assent;'Two Essays on Miracles;' 'Essays,
Critical and Historical,' two volumes; · Discussions and Arguments
on Various Subjects; 'Historical Sketches;'' History of the Arians;'
History of My Religious Opinions (Apologia)' Dr. Newman has
also published a volume of Verses on Various Occasions,' 1868.
C
(
C
<
(
(
C
Description of Athens.-From Historical Sketches.'
The political power of Athens waned and disappeared; kingdoms rose and fell;
centuries rolled away-they did but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and
the sage. There at length the swarthy Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the
blue-eyed Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late_subicct of Mithridates, gazed without
alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. Revolution after revolution passed over
the face of Europe, as well as of Greece, but still she was there-Athens, the city of
mind-as radiant, as splendid, as delicate, as young as ever she had been.
Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue Egean, many a spot is
there more beautiful or sublime to see, many a territory more ample; but there was
104
TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
1
one charm in Attica, which in the same perfection was nowhere else. The deep
pastures of Arcadia, the plain of Argos, the Thessalian vale, these had not the gift;
Boeotia, which lay to its immediate north. was notorious for its very want of it.
The heavy atmosphere of that Boeotia might be good for vegetation, but it was as-
sociated in popular belief with the dullness of the Boeotian intellect; on the con-
trary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness, and salubrity of the air of Attica, fit
concomitant and emblem of its genius, did that for it which earth did not; it
brought out every bright hue and fender shade of the landscape over which it was
spread, and would have illuminated the face even of a more bare and rugged
country.
A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest.
breadth; two elevated rocky barriers, meeting at an angle; three prominent
mountains, commanding the plain-Parues, Pentelicus, and Ilymettus; an unsatis-
factory soil: some streams, not always full-such is about the report which the
agent of a London company would have made of Attica. He would report that the
climate was mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more
pasture land than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient certainly for
sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines once, but long since worked
out; figs fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But what he would not think of
noting down, was, that the olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape,
that it excited a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to the light soil,
as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb up and fringe the
hills. He would not think of writing word to his employers, how that clear air,
of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and subdued the colours on
the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, for all their richness, which, in
He would not
a picture, looks exaggerated. yet is, after all, within the truth.
tell how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive,
till the olive forgot its monotony, and its check glowed like the arbutus or
beech of the Umbrian Hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand
fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymetins; he would hear nothing of the hum of its
bees; nor take much account of the rare flavour of its honey, since Gozo and
Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would look over the Egean
from the height he had ascended; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands,
which, starting from the Surian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of
Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viduct thereto across
the sea; but that fancy would not occur to him nor any admiration of the dark
violet billows with their white edges down below; nor of those faithful, fan-like jets
of silver upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep,
then shiver, and break, and spread. and shroud themselves, and disappear in a soft
mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid
plain; nor of the long waves keeping steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they
resound upon the hollow shore-he would not deign to notice that restless living elé-
ment et all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct de-
tail. nor the refined colouring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the
jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otum or Laurium by the declining
sun; our agent of a mercantile firm would not value these matters even at a low
figure. Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come
from a semi-barbarons land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where
he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible, un-
-originate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote rovince, from Britain or
from Mauritania. who, in a scene so different from that of his chilly, woody swamps,
or of his fiery, choking sands. learned at once what a real university must be, by
coming to understand the sort of country which was its suitable home.
Influence and Law.
Taking influence and law to be the two great principles of government, it is plain
Thus Orpheus pre-
that, historically speaking, influence comes first, aud then law.
ceded Lycurgus and Solon. Thus Deiores the Mede laid the foundations of his power
in the personal reputation for justice, and then established it in the seven walls by
which he surrounded himself in Ecbatana. First we have the virum pietate graem,
whose word 'rules the spirits and soothes the breasts' of the multitude-or the
NEWMAN.}
105
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
warrior-or the mythologist and bard; then follow at length the dynasty and consti-
tution. Such is the history of society: it begins in the poet, and ends in the
policeman.
The Beautiful and the Virtuous.
It is maintained that the beautiful and the virtuous mean the same thing, and are
convertible terms. Accordingly conscience is found out to be but slavish; and a tine
taste, an exquisite sense of the decorous, the graceful, and the appropriate, this is to
be our true guide for ordering our mind and our conduct, and bringing the whole
man into shape. These are great sophisms it is plain; for, true though it be that
virtue is always expedient, it does not therefore follow that everything which is ex-
pedient, and everything which is fair, is virtuous. A pestilence is an evil, yet may
have its undeniable uses; and war, glorious war.' is an evil. yet an army is a very
beautiful object to look upon; and what holds in these cases. may hold in others;
so that it is not very safe or logical to say that utility and beauty are guarantees for
virtue.
From Sermons bearing on the
Subjects of the Day.'
The Jewish and Christian Churches. From
-
•
What took place under the Law is a pattern, what was commanded is a rule,
under the Gospel. The substance remains, the use, the meaning, the circumstances,
the benefit is changed: grace is added, life is infused; the body is of Christ;' but
it is in great measure that same body which was in being before He came. The
Gospel has not put aside, it has incorporated into itself, the revelations which went
before it. It avails itself of the Old Testament, as a great gift to Christian as well
as to Jew. It does not dispense with it, but it dispenses it. Persons sometimes
urge that there is no code of duty in the New Testament, no ceremonial, no rules
for Church polity. Certainly not they are unnecessary; they are already given in
the Old. Why should the Old Testament be retained in the Christian Church, but
to be used? There are we to look for our forms, our rites, our polity; only illus-
trated, tempered, spiritualised by the Gospel. The precepts remain; the observance
of them is changed.
This, I say, is what many persons are slow to understand. They think the Old
Testament must be supposed to be our rule directly and literally, or not at all; and
since we cannot put ourselves under it absolutely and without explanation, they con-
clude that in no sense is it binding on us; but surely there is such a thing as the
application of Scripture: this is no very difficult or strange idea. Surely we cannot
make any practical use even of St. Paul's Epistles, without application. They are
written to Ephesians or Colossians; we apply them to the case of Englishmen.
They speak of customs, and circumstances, and fortunes which do not belong to us;
we cannot take them literally; we must adapt them to our own case; we must ap-
ply them to us. We are not in persecution, or in prison; we do not live in the
south, nor under the Romans; nor have we been converted from heathenism; nor
have we miraculous gifts; nor live we in a country of slaves; yet still we do not find
it impossible to guide ourselves by inspired directions, addressed to those who were
thus circumstanced. And in somewhat a like manner, the directions of the Old
Testament, whether as to conduct, or ritual, or Church polity, may be our guides,
though we are obliged to apply them. Scripture itself does this for us in some
instances, and in some others we ourselves are accustomed to do so for ourselves;
and we may do so in a number of others also in which we are slow to do it. For
instance, the Law says, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Does the Gospel
abrogate this command. Of course not What does it do with it? It explains and
enlarges it. It answers the question. Who is my neighbour?' The substance of
the command is the same under Law and under Gospel; but the Gospel opens and
elevates it. And so again the Ten Commandments belong to the Law, yet we read
them still in the Communion Service, as binding upon ourselves; yet not in the
mere letter; the Gospel has turned the letter into spirit. It has unfolded and
diversified those sacred precepts which were given from the beginning.
MR. FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN brother of the above, and born
in 1805, is a distinguished scholar and author of various works. In
100
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
J
•
1824 he was admitted a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, but re-
signed his fellowship, as he could not subscribe the Thirty-nine
Articles for his Master's degree. He was Latin Professor in Univer-
sity College, London, from 1846 to 1863, when he resigned. A'His-
tory of the Hebrew Monarchy,' and Lectures on History,' were pub-
lished by him in 1847; in 1849, The Soul, her Sorrows and Aspira-
tons; in 1850, Phases of Faith-a work avowing the author's
infidelity, but pervaded by a kind of mystical spiritualism; 'Lectures
on Political Economy,' 1851; Regal Rome,' 1852; The Crimes of
the House of Hapsburg,' 1853. In this year, also, he published
(
·
The Odes of Horace, translated into Unrhymed Metres,' but the
effort is described as not successful. In 1866 Mr. Newman published
a ' Handbook of Modern Arabic,' and is understood to be engaged on
an English-Arabic Dictionary.
16
"
(
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING (1780–1842), cne of the most popular
of the American prose writers and theologians, was a native of New-
port, Rhode Island. After completing his education at Harvard
University (where he took his degree in 1798), he studied divinity,
and was ordained minister of a church in Boston. Though disliking
all sectarian preaching, Channing undertook, in 1819, on occasion of
the ordination of the Rev. Jared Sparks, to explain and defend the
opinions of the Unitarians, dwelling on such topics as bad been
made the subject of misrepresentation. Still he described himself as
'more nearly related to Fenelon than to Priestley,' and in advanced
life he said: 'I am little of a Unitarian, have little sympathy with
the system of Priestley and Belsham, and stand aloof from all but
those who strive and pray for clearer light.' He may be classed with
Archbishop Leighton and Baxter. His unfeigned humility and piety
endeared him to the good of all sects, and among his friends he could
number even the High Church Wordsworth and Coleridge. Dr.
Channing (he received his degree of D.D. from Harvard University
in 1821) was author of various essays and sermons- Essay on Na-
tional Literature, 1823; Remarks on the Character and Writings of
Milton,' 1826; Analysis of the Character of Napoleon Bonaparte,'
1828; The Character and Writings of Fenelon,' 1829; 'On Negro
Slavery,' 1835; 'On Self-Culture,' 1838. and Sermons on the Chris-
tian Evidences,' and other subjects. All his works are distinguished
by purity and elevation of thought, and though rather too measured
and diffuse in style and expression, caunot be read without delight as
well as instruction. The expansive benevolence and Christian
ardour of the writer shine through the whole. Various editions of
Channing's collected works have been issued, and in 1848 a copious
life of him was published by his nephew, W. H. Channing.
<
DR. CHANNING.
CHANNING.]
107
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
The Character of Christ.
We are struck with this peculiarity in the author of Christianity, that whilst all
other men are formed in a measure by the spirit of the age, we can discover in Jesus
no impression of the period in which he lived. We know with considerable accu-
racy the state of society. the modes of thinking, the hopes and expectations of the
country in which Jesus was born and grew up; and he is as free from them, and as
exalted above them, as if he had lived in another world. or, with every sense shut
on the objects around him. His character has in it nothing local or temporary. It
can be explained by nothing around him. His history shews him to is a solitary
being, living for purposes which none but himself comprehended, and enjoying not
so much as the sympathy of a single mind. His apostles, his chosen companions,
brought to him the spirit of the age; and nothing shews its strength more strikingly.
than the slowness with which it yielded in the honest men to the instructions of
Jesus.
Jesus came to a nation expecting a Messiah; and he claimed this character. But
instead of conforming to the opinions which prevailed in regard to the Messiah, he
resisted them wholly and without reserve. To a people anticipating a triumphant
leader, under whom vengeance as well as ambition was to be glutted by the prõstra-
tion of their oppressors. he came as a spiritual leader teaching humility and peace.
This undisguised hostility to the dearest hopes and prejudices of his nation; this
disdain of the usual compliances by which ambition and imposture conciliate adhe-
rents; this deliberate exposure of himself to rejection and hatred, cannot easily be
explained by the common principles of human nature, and excludes the possibility
of selfish aims in the author of Christianity.
One striking peculiarity in Jesus is the extent-the vastness of bis views.
Whilst all around him looked for a Messiah to liberate God's ancient people; whilst
to every other Jew, Judea was the exclusive object of pride and hope-Jesus came
declaring himself to be the deliverer and light of the world and in his whole
teaching and life, you see a consciousness, which never forsakes him, of a rela-
tion to the whole human race. This idea of blessing mankind. of spreading a
universal religion, was the most magnificent which had ever entered into man's
mind. All previous religions had been given to particular nations. No conquerer,
legislator, philosopher, in the extravagance of ambition, had ever dreamed of sub-
jecting all nations to a common faith.
This conception of a universal religion, intended for Jew and Gentile, for all na-
tions and climes, is wholly inexplicable by the circumstances of Jesus. He was a
Jew; and the first and deepest and most constant impression on a Jew's mind, was
that of the superiority conferred on his people and himself by the natio al religion,
introduced by Moses. The wall between the Jew and the Gentile seemed to reach to
heaven. The abolition of the peculiarity of Moses, the overthrow of the temple of
Mount Sinai, the erection of a new religion, in which all men would meet as brethren,
and which would be the common and equal property of Jew and Gentile-these
were of all ideas the last to spring up in Judea, the last for enthusiasm or imposture
to originate.
Compare next these views of Christ with his station in life. He was of humble
birth and education, with nothing in his lot, with no extensive means, no rank, or
wealth, or patronage to infuse vast thoughts and extravagant plans. The shop of a
carpenter, the village of Nazareth, were hot spots for ripening a scheme more aspir-
ing and extensive than had ever been formed. It is a principle in human nature.
that except in cases of insanity, some proportion is observed between the power of
an individual and his plans and hopes. The purpose to which Jesus devoted himself
was as ill suited to his condition as an attempt to change the seasons, or to make
the sun rise in the west. That a young man in obscure life, belonging to an op-
pressed nation, should seriously think of subverting the time-hallowed and deep-
rooted religious of the world, is a strange fact: but with this purpose we see the
mind of Jesus thoroughly imbued; and sublime as it is, he never falls below it in
his language or conduct; but speaks and acts with a consciousness of superiority,
with a dignity and authority, becoming this unparalleled destination. In this con-
nection cannot but add another striking circumstance in Jesus; and that is, the
calm confidence with which he always looked forward to the accomplishment of his
design,
108
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
The New Testament Epistles.
The Epistles, if possible, abound in marks of truth and reality even more than
the Gospels. They are imbued thoroughly with the spirit of the first age of Chris-
tianity. They bear all the marks of having come from men, plunged in the conflicts
which the new religion excited, alive to its interests, identified with its fortunes.
They betray the very state of mind which must have been generated by the peculiar
condition of the first propagators of the religion. They are letters written on real
business, intended for immediate effects, desigued to meet prejudices and passions,
which such a religion must at first have awakened. They contain not a trace of the
circumstances of a later age, cr of the feelings, impressious, and modes of thinking
by which later times were characterised, and from which later writers could not easily
have escaped. The letters of Paul have a remarkable agreement with his history.
They are precisely such as might be expected from a maŭ of a vebement iniud, who
had been brought up in the schools of Jewish literature, who had been converted by
a sudden, overwhelming miracle, who had been entrusted with the preaching of the
new religion to the Gentiles, who had been everywhere met by the prejudices and
persecuting spirit of his own nation. They are full of obscurities, growing out of these
points of Paul's history and character, and out of the circumstances of the infazt
church, and which nothing but an intimate acquaintance with that early period can
illustrate. This remarkable infusion of the spirit of the first age into the Christian
records, cannot easily be explained but by the fact that they were written in that age
by the real and zealous propagators of Christianity, and that they are records of real
convictions and of actual events.
Napoleon Bonaparte
His intellect was distinguished by rapidity of thought. He understood by a glance
what most men, and superior men, could learn only by study. He darted to a con-
clusion rather by intuition than reasoning. In war, which was the only subject of
which he was master, he seized in an instant on the great points of his own and his
enemy's positions; and combined at once the movements by which an overpowering
force might be thrown with unexpected fury on a vulnerable part of the hostile line,
and the fate of au army be decided in a day. He understood war as a science; but
his mind was too hold, rapid, and irrepressible, to be euslaved by the technics of his
profession. He found the old armies fighting by rule, and he discovered the true
characteristic of genins, which, without despising rules, knows when and how to
break them. He understood thoroughly the immense moral power which is gained
by originality and rapidity of operation. He astonished and paralysed his enemies
by his unforeseen and impetuous assaults, by the snddenness with which the storin
of battle barst upon them; and whilst giving to his soldiers the advantages of mod-
ern discipline, breathed into them, by his quick and decisive movements. the enthu-
siasm of ruder ages. The power of disheartening the foe, and of spreading through
his own ranks a confidence and exhilarating courage, which made war a pastime, and
seemed to make victory sure, distinguished Napoleon in an age of uncommon mili-
tary talent, and was one main instrument of his future power.
The wonderful effects of that rapidity of thought by which Bonaparte was
marked, the signal success of his new mode of warfare, and the almost incredible
speed with which his fame was spread through nations, had no small agency in fix-
ing his character, aud determining for a period the fate of empires. These stirring
influences infused a new consciousness of his own might. They gave intensity and
audacity to his ambition; gave form and substance to his indefinite visions of glory,
and raised his fiery hopes to empire. The burst of admiration which his early career
called forth, must, in particular have had an influence in imparting to his ambition
that modification by which it was characterised, and which contributed alike to its
success and to its fall. He began with astonishing the world, with producing a sud-
den and universal sensation, such as modern times had not witnessed. To astonish
as well as to sway by his energies, became the great end of his life. Henceforth to
rule was not enough for Bonaparte. He wauted to amaze, to dazzle, to overpower
men's souls, by striking, bold, magnificent, and unauticipated results. To govern
ever so absolutely would not have satisfied him, if he must have governed silently.
He wanted to reign through wonder and awe, by the grandeur and terror of his
name, by displays of power which would rivet on him every eye, and make him the
CHANNING.}
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
109
thenie of every tongue. Power was his supreme object; but a power which should
be gazed at as well as felt, which should strike men as a prodigy, which should shake
old thrones as an earthquake, and by the suddenness of its new creatious should
awaken something of the submissive wonder which miraculous agency inspires.
His history shews a spirit of self-exaggeration, unrivalled in enlightened ages,
and which reminds us of an oriental king to whom incense had been burned from
his birth as to a deity. This was the chief source of his crimes. He wanted the
sentiment of a common nature with his fellow-beings. He had no sympathies with
his race.
That feeling of brotherhood which is developed in truly great souls with
peculiar energy, and through which they give up themselves willing victims, joyful
His heart,
sacrifices, to the interests of mankind, was wholly unknown to him.
amidst all its wild beatings, never had one throb of disinterested love. The ties
which bind man to man he broke asuuder. The proper happiness of a man, which
consists in the victory of moral energy and social affection over the selfish passions,
be cast away for the lonely joy of a despot. With powers which might have made
him a glorious representative and minister of the beneficent Divinity, and with
natural sensibilities which might have been exalted into sublime virtues, he chose to
separate himself from his kind, to forego their love, esteem, and gratitude, that he
might become their gaze, their fear, their wonder, and, for this selfisn, solitary good,
parted with peace and imperishable renown.*
The spirit of self-exaggeration wrought its own misery, and drew down upon him
terrible punishments; and this it did by vitiating and perverting his high powers.
First. it diseased his fine intellect, gave imagination the ascendency over judgment,
turned the inventiveness and fruitfulness of his mind into rash, impatient, restless
energies, and thus precipitated him into projects which, as the wisdom of his coun-
sellors pronounced, were fraught with ruiu. To a man whose vanity took him out
of the rank of human beings, no foundation for reasoning was lett. All things
seemed possible. His genius and his fortune were not to be bounded by the bar-
riers which experience had assigned to human powers. Ordinary rules did not apply
to him. His imagination, disordered by his egotism, and by unbornded dattery,
leayed over appalling obstacles to the prize which inflamed his ambition.
Great Ideas.
What is needed to elevate the soul is, not that a man should know all that has
been thought and written in regard to the spiritual nature-not that a man should
become an encyclopædia; but that the great ideas, in which all discoveries termi-
nate, which sum up all sciences, which the philosopher extracts from infinite details,
may be comprehended and felt. It is not the quantity, but the quality of knowledge,
which determines the mind's dignity. A man of immense information may. through
the want of large and comprehensive ideas, be far inferior in intellect to a labourer,
who, with little knowledge, has yet seized on great truths. For example, I do not
expect the labourer to study theology in the ancient languages, in the writings of the
Fathers, in the history of sects, &c.; nor is this needful. All theology, scattered as
it is through countless volumes. is summed up in the idea of God; and let this idea
shine bright and clear in the labourer's soul, and he has the essence of theological
libraries, and a far higher light than has visited thousands of renowned divines.
A great mind is formed by a few great ideas, not by an infinity of loose details. I
have known very learned inen, who seemed to me very poor in intellect, because they
*We may illustrate Channing's argument hy quoting part of Coleridge's criticism on
Milton's Satan: The character of Satan is pride and sensual indulgence finding in itself
the motive of action. It is the character so often seen in little on the political stage. It
exhibits all the restlessness, temerity, and cunning which have marked the mighty
hunters of mankind from Nimrod to Napoleon. The common fascination of man is, that
these great men, as they are called. must act from some great motive. Milton has care-
fully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would
rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. To place this Inst of self in opposition to de-
nial of self or duty, and to shew what exertions it would make. and what pains endure
to accomplish its end. is Milton's particular object in the character of Satan. But
around this character he has thrown a singularity of daring. a grandeur of sufferance,
anda ruined splendour, which constitute the very height of poetic sublimity.' The ca-
reer of Napoléon certainly exemplifies the principle here so finely enunciated,
110
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
had no grand thoughts. What avails it that a man has studied ever so minutely the
histories of Greece and Rome, if the great ideas of freedom, and beauty, and valour,
and spiritual energy, have not been kindled by those records into living fires in his
soul? The illumination of an age does not consist in the amount of its knowledge,
but in the broad and noble principles of which that knowledge is the foundation and
inspirer. The truth is, that the most laborious and successful student is confined in
his researches to a very few of God's works: but this limited knowledge of things
may still suggest universal laws, broad principles, grand ideas, and these elevate the
mind. There are certain thoughts, principles, ideas, which by their nature rule over
all knowledge, which are intrinsically glorious, quickening, all-comprehending,
eternal.
REV. HENRY BLUNT.
The REV. HENRY BLUNT (1794-1843) was for several years incum-
bent of Trinity Church, Chelsea, and was not only a popular preacher
but a voluminous author. He belonged to what is known as the
Low Church or Evangelical party. Some of Mr. Blunt's religious
treatises are said to have gone through forty editions in England,
besides having a great circulation in America. Among his works
are-Lectures upon the History of Jacob.' 1828; 'Lectures upon
the History of St. Paul,' two parts, 1832-33; 'Family Exposition of
the Pentateuch;' with several volumes of Sermons,' &c. After Mr.
Blunt's death three volumes of 'Sermons' and Pastoral Letters'
were collected and published
↓
DR. KITTO
DR. JOHN KITTO (1804–1854) devoted himself, amidst many dis-
couragements, to the illustration of the Sacred Scriptures. He was
a native of Plymouth, the son of humble parents, and a fall from
the roof of a house, a few days after he had completed his twelfth
year, deprived him of the sense of hearing. His description of the
calamity is simple and touching:
I was very slow in learning that my hearing was entirely gone. The unusual
stillness of all things was grateful to me in my utter exhaustion; and if in this half-
awakened state, a thought of the matter entered ny mind, I ascribed it to the un-
sual care and success of my friends in preserving silence around nie. I saw them
talking, indeed, to one another, and thought that out of regard to my feeble condi-
tion they spoke in whispers, because I heard them not. The truth was revealed to
me in consequence of my solicitude about the book which had so much interested
me in the day of my fall. It had, it seems, been reclaimed by the good old man
who had sent it to me, and who doubtless concluded that I should have no more
need of books in this life. He was wrong; for there has been nothing in this life
which I have needed more. I asked for this book with much carnestness, and was
answered by signs which I could not comprehend.
'Why do you not speak,' I cried? Pray let me have the book.' This seemed
to create some confusion; and at length some one, more clever than the rest, bit
upon the happy expedient of writing upon a slate that the book had been reclaimed
by the owner, and that I could not in my weak state be allowed to read. But,'
said in great astonishment, why do you write to me; why not speak? Speak
speak!"
C
Those who stood around the bed exchanged significant looks of concern, and the
writer soon displayed upon his slate the awful words-'YOU ARE DEAF!' Did not
this utterly crush ine? By no means. In my then weakened condition nothing like
this could affect me. Besides, I was a child, and to a child the full extent of such a
calamity could not be at once apparent. However. I knew not the future-it was
well I did not; and there was nothing to show me that I suffered under more than a
KITTO. j
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
111
temporary deafness, which in a few days might pass away. It was left for time to
shew me the sad realities of the condition to which I was reduced.
<
6
The deaf boy, after his recovery, was placed in the workhouse,
until some employment could be found for him. He was put ap-
prentice to a shoemaker, who used him with great cruelty, but an
appeal to the magistrates procured his release from this tyranny; and
being assisted, in his nineteenth year, to publish a volume of essays
and letters, friends came forward, and he was enabled to follow out
his strong bias for theological literature. He spent ten years in trav-
elling and residing abroad, the result of which appeared in his Bib-
lical criticisin and illustrations, and in his account of the Scripture
Lands,' 1850. On his return to England, in 1833, he wrote for the
Penny Magazine' a series of papers called The Deaf Traveller,'
and ever afterwards was actively engaged in literature. He edited
The Pictorial Bible,' the Journal of Sacred Literature, and the
'Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature;' also a valuable work, Daily
Bible Illustrations.' Two small volumes, entitled The Lost Senses,'
one on deafness and the other on blindness, were produced by Dr.
Kitto, and are interesting from the facts and anecdotes they contain.
He concludes that the blind are not so badly off as the deaf. 'It is
indeed possible that, so far as regards merely animal sensation, the
blind man is in a worse condition than the deaf; but in all that re-
gards the culture of the mind, he has infinitely the advantage, while
his full enjoyment of society, from which the other is excluded,
keeps up a healthy exercise of his mental faculties, and maintains
him in that cheerful frame of mind, which is as generally observed
among the blind, as the want of it is among the deaf.' A pension of
£100 was settled upon Dr. Kitto by the government. He went abroad
to recruit his health, which had been injured by too close applica-
tion, but died at Cannstadt, near Stuttgart, in his fifty-first year.
&
DR. ROBERT VAUGHAN.
•
ROBERT VAUGHAN, D.D., was for some years Professor of Ancient
and Modern History in the university of London, and President of
the Independent College, Manchester. He was author of various
important historical works, imbued with true constitutional feeling
and principle, and evincing great care and research. Among these
works are Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty from 1603 to 1688,' pub-
lished in 1831; Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and the State of
Europe during the Early Part of the Reign of Louis XIV.,' 1838;
The Age of Great Cities,' 1842; John De Wycliffe,' a monograph,
1854; Revolutions in English History,' 1859; Revolutions in Gov-
ernment,' 1863; English Nonconformity,' 1862; and a great num-
ber of discourses, reviews, and pamphlets on theological and philo-
sophical questions. Dr. Vaughan was born in 1795, and educated at
Bristol, after which he became pastor of the Independent Chapel at
Kensington. This indefatigable and conscientious literary worker
เ
•
•
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•
112
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
died in 1868, in his seventy-third year. His pulpit oratory is de-
scribed as of an impressive intellectual character.
HENRY ROGERS.
(
(
(
Few books of religious controversy have been so popular as 'The
Eclipse of Faith, or a Visit to a Religious Sceptic,' 1852. This work
went through five editions within two years. Though the name of
the author is not prefixed, The Eclipse' is known to be the production.
of MR. HENRY ROGERS, one of the professors at the Independent Col-
lege, Birmingham. Mr. Rogers officiated for some time as minister of
an Independent congregation, but was forced to relinquish his charge
on account of ill health. He has been a contributor to the Edin-
burgh Review,' and a collection of his various papers has been pub-
lished under 'the title of Essays: Contributions to the Edinburgh
Review,' three volumes, 1850-55. In 1856 Mr. Rogers published
an Essay on the Life and Genius of Thomas Fuller, with Selections
from his Writings.' He has also contributed some short biographies
to the Encyclopædia Britannica.' Learned, eloquent, and liberal in
sentiment, Mr. Rogers is an honour to the Dissenting body. The
Eclipse' was written in reply to Mr. F. W. Newman's 'Phases of
Faith,' noticed in a previous page. Mr. Rogers adopts the plan of
sending to a missionary in the Pacific Ocean an account of the re-
ligious distractions in this country. All the controversies and new
theological opinions, English and German, which have been agitated
within the last twenty years are discussed, and a considerable part
of the reasoning is in the form of dialogue. The various interlocu-
tors state their opinions fully, and are answered by other parties.
Deism is represented by a disciple of Professor Newman, who draws
most of his arguments from the 'Phases of Faith.' A new edition
of this work being called for, Mr. Newman added to it a Reply to
the Eclipse of Faith,' 1854, and Mr. Rogers rejoined with 'A Defence
of the Eclipse of Faith.' There is a good deal of vigorous thought
and sarcasm in Mr. Rogers's Eclipse' and 'Defence,' while in logi-
cal acuteness he is vastly superior to his opponent. Occasionally he
rises into a strain of pure eloquence, as in the following passage:
เ
C
The Humanity of the Saviour.
L↓
And now what, after all, does the carping criticism of this chapter amount to?
Little as it is in itself, it absolutely vanishes; it is felt that the Christ thus portrayed
cannot be the right interpretation of the history, in the face of all those glorious
scenes with which the evangelical narrative abounds, but of which there is here an
cutire oblivion. But humanity will not forget them; men still wonder at the gra-
cious words which proceeded out of Christ's mouth,' and persist in saying, “ Never
man spake like this man.' The brightness of the brightest names pales and wanes
before the radiance which shives from the person of Christ. The scenes at the
tomb of Lazarus, at the gate of Nain, in the happy family at Bethany, in the 'upper
room' where He instituted the feast which should for ever consecrate His memory,
and bequeathed to his disciples the legacy of Ilis love; the scenes in the Garden of
Gethsemane, on the summit of Calvary, and at the sepulchre; the sweet remembrance
of the patience with which He bore wrong, the gentleness with which he rebuked
ROGERS.]
113
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
•
}
6
it, and the love with which he forgave it; the thousand acts of benign condescen-
sion by which He well earned for himself, from self-righteous pride and censorious
hypocrisy, the name of the friend of publicans and sinners; these and a hundred
things more, which crowd those coucise memorials of love and sorrow with such
prodigality of beauty and of pathos, will still continue to charin and attract the soul of
humanity, and on these the liighest genius, as well as the humblest mediocrity, will
love to dwell. These things lisping infancy loves to hear on its mother's knees, and
over them age, with its gray locks. bends in devoutest reverence. No; before the
infidel can prevent the influence of these compositions, he must get rid of the gospels
themselves, or he must supplant them by fictions yet more wonderful! Ah, what
bitter irony has involuntarily escaped me: But if the last be impossible. at least the
gospels must cease to exist hefore infidelity can succeed. Yes. before infidels can pre-
vent men from thinking as they have ever done of Christ, they must blot out the
gentle words with which, in the presence of austere hypocrisy, the Saviour
welcomed that timid guilt that could only express its silent love in an agony
of tears; they must blot out the words addressed to the dying penitent, who, soft-
ened by the majestic patience of the mighty sufferer, detected at last the Monarch
under the veil of sorrow, and cast an imploring glance to he remembered by Him
when he came into Ilis kingdom;' they must blot out the scene in which the de-
moniacs sat listening at Iis feet, and in their right mind: they must blot out the
remembrance of the tears which He shed at the grave of Lazarys-not surely for
him whom He was about to raise, but in pure sympathy with the sorrows of hu-
manity—for the myriad myriads of desolate mourners, who could not, with Mary,
fly to Him and say: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my mother, brother, sister, bad
not died!' they must blot out the record of those miracles which charm us. not only
as the proof of His mission. and guarantees of the truth of His doctrine, but as they
illustrate the benevolence of His character and are types of the spiritual cures His
gospel can yet perform; they must blot out the scenes of the sepulchre, where love
and veneration lingered, and saw what was never seen before, but shall henceforth
be seen to the end of time-the tomb itself irradiated with angelic forms, aud bright
with the presence of Him who brought life and immortality 10 light; they must
blot out the scene where deep and grateful love wept so passionately, and found Him
unbidden at her side, type of ten thousand times ten thousand. who have sought
the grave to weep there, and found joy and consolation in Ilim whom, though un-
seen, they loved ;' they must blot out the discourses in which He took leave of his dis-
ciples, the majestic accents of which have filled so many departing souls with pa-
tience and with triumph; they must blot out the yet sublimer words in which He de-
clares himself · the resurrection and the life '—words which have led so many mil-
lions more to breathe out their spirits with childlike trust, and to believe, as the gate
of death closed behind them, that they would see Him who is invested with the
keys of the invisible world,' who opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man
opens,' letting in through the portal which leads to immortality the radiance of the
skies; they must blot out, they must destroy these and a thousand other such things,
before they can prevent Him having the pre-eminence who loved, because he loved
us, to call himself the Son of Man,' though angels called him the Son of God.' It
is in vain to tell men it is an illusion. It it be an illusion, every variety of experiment
proves it to be inveterate, and it will not be dissipated by a million of Strausses and
Newmans! Probatum est. At His feet guilty humanity, of diverse races and na-
tions, for eighteen hundred years, has come to pour forth in faith and love its
sorrows, and finds there the peace which the world can neither give nor take away.'
Myriads of aching heads and weary hearts have found, and will find, repose there,
and have invested him with veneration, love, and gratitude, which will never, never
be paid to any other name than Ilis.
6
>
▸
►
ARCHBISHOP WHATELY.
In intellectual activity, power, and influence, few men of the present
generation exceeded the late learned archbishop of Dublin, Dr.
RICHARD WHATELY. This eminent prelate was a native of London,
born in 1787, fourth son of the Rev. Dr. Whately of Nonsuch Park,
Surrey. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, a college cele-
114
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[To 1876.
1
brated as having sent forth some distinguished modern theologians
Arnold, Copleston, Keble, Hampden, Newman, and Pusey. Whately
graduated in 1808, took a second class in classics and mathematics,
and gained the university prize for an English essay. Having taken
uis M. A. degree in 1812. Whately entered the church, was Bampton
lecturer in Oxford in 1822,* and appointed the same year to the rec-
tory of Halesworth, Suffolk. In 1825 he received the degree of D.D;
in 1830 he was chosen Principal of Alban's Hall, Oxford, and Pro-
fessor of Political Economy, Oxford; and in 1831 he was consecrated
archbishop of Dublin and bishop of Glendalagh, to which was after-
wards added the bishopric of Kildare. The literary career of Arch-
bishop Whately seems to have commenced in 1821, when he was in
his thirty-fourth year. Previous to this, however, he was conspicuous
in the university for his opposition to the High Church views of Dr.
Pusey and Dr. Newman. In 1821 he published 'The Christian's
Duty with respect to the Established Government and the Laws,
considered in three Sermons;' and the same year he issued anony-
mously his tract, Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte
a grave logical satire on scepticism. The subject of his Bampton
lectures was The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Religion,' and
he treated it with distinguished ability and liberality. Bis next two
works were The Elements of Logic,' 1826; and The Elements of
Rhetoric,' 1828 The former treatise gave a new life to the study of
logic, as was admitted by Sir William Hamilton, who combated some
of its doctrines, and it has long since taken its place as a standard in
the library of mental science. Whately said his mind had for four-
teen years brooded over the leading points of his work on Logic.
C
"
1
¿
In the same year (1828) appeared Essays on some of the Difficul-
ties in the Writings of St. Paul, and in other parts of the New Testa-
men;' then 'Thoughts on the Sabbath,' 1830; and Errors of Ro-
manism,' 1830. Of the latter, Miss Martineau says: We do not
know that any of his works more effectually exhibits the character-
istics of his mind. It has the spirit and air of originality which
attend upon sublime good sense; and the freshness thus cast around
a subject supposed to be worn out, is a sample of the vigour which
in those days animated everything he said and did.' On the subject
of Sabbath observance, which has since been keenly controverted,
Whately agrees with Paley, that the Jewish Sabbath and the Sun-
day or Lord's Day are two separate institutions; with the former, the
members of the Church of England have nothing to do, but the
Lord's Day ought to be observed by them, in obedience to the author-
ity of the church, even independent of apostolic example and ancient
usage. Introductory-Lectures to Political Economy,' an Essay on
(
*The Rev. John Bampton, canon of Salisbury (1690-1751), left a sum of money-
producing about £120 per annum-for founding a series of eight lectures each year
on subjects connected with the Christian laith. The lecturer is appointed by the
heads of colleges in Oxford.
WHATELY.]
115
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
·
1
the Omission of Creeds, Liturgies, &c., in the New Testament,' and
several 'Sermons,' were the product of 1831. Next year the prelate
appears to have been chiefly attentive to social and political ques-
tions, induced by his elevation to the archiepiscopal chair. He
published · Evidence before the House of Lords respecting Irish
Tithes,' Thoughts on Secondary Punishment,'' Reply to the Address
of the Clergy on National Education in Ireland,' and an Introduc-
tion to Political Economy.' Speeches or printed remarks on the
question of Jewish disabilities, and the transportation of criminals,
and Sermons on Various Subjects,' were produced between 1833
and 1836. The Tractarian movement called forth from Whately, in
1841, two Essays on Christ and his Kingdom;' and in 1843 he pub-
lished a Charge against the High Church party. Some other re-
ligious treatises, the most important being Lectures on St. Paul's
Epistles,' 1849, were subsequently produced; after which appeared a
collection of English Synonyms,' 1851, and addresses delivered at va-
rious institutions in Cork, Manchester, and London, 1852-55. In 1856
the archbishop published an edition of Bacon's Essays, with Annota-
tions'-the discursive nature of the essays, no less than their preg-
nancy of meaning and illustration, affording scope for abundance of
moral lessons and arguments. Of these the commentator has per-
haps been too proluse, for there are about three hundred and fifty
pages of annotation to one hundred of text, and a good many are
from the archbishop's previous works. The collection, however,
forms a pleasant, readable volume. We give one or two of the com-
meutator's anecdotical contributions.
•
(
↓
First Impressions.
In the days when travelling by post-chaise was common, there were usually certain
lines of inus on all the principal roads—a series of good and a series of inferior ones,
each in connection all the way along; so that if you once got into the worst line you
could not easily get out of it to the journey's end. The White Hart' of one town would
drive you-almost literally-to the White Lion' of the next, and so on all the way
so that of two travellers by post from London to Exeter or York, the one would
have had nothing but bad horses, bad dinners, and bad beds, and the other very
good. This is analogous to what befalls a traveller in any new country, with re-
spect to the impressions he receives, if he falls into the hands of a party. They
consign him, as it were, to those allied with them, and pass him on. from one to
another, all in the same connection, each shewing him and telling him just what
suits the party, and concealing from him everything else.
A Hint to Anonymous Writers.
•
A
A well-known author once received a letter from a peer with whom he was
slightly acquainted, asking him whether he was the author of a certain article in the
Edinburgh Review. He replied that he never made communications of that kind,
except to intimate friends, selected by himself for the purpose, when he saw fit. His
refusal to answer, however, pointed him out-which, as it happened, he did not care
for-as the author. But a case might occur, in which the revelation of the author-
ship might involve a friend in some serious difficulties. In any such case, he might
have answered something in this style: I have received a letter purporting to be
from your lordship. but the matter of it induces me to suspect that it is a forgery by
some mischievous trickster. The writer asks whether I am the author of a certain
(
116
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
article. It is a sort of question which no one has a right to ask; and I think, there-
fore, that every one is bound to discourage such inquiries by answering them-
whether one is or is not the author-with a rebuke for asking impertinent questions
about private matters. I say "private," because, if an article be libellous or sedi-
tious, the law is open, and any one may proceed against the publisher, and compel
him either to give up the author. or to bear the penalty. If, again, it contains false
statements, these, coming from an anonymous pen, may be simply contradicted. And
if the arguments be unsound, the obvious course is to refute them: but who wrote it.
is a question of idle or of mischievous curiosity, as it relates to the private concerus of
an individual. If I were to ask your lordship: "Do you spend your income? or lay
by? or outrun? Do you and your lady ever have an altercation? Was she your first
love? or were you attached to some one else before? "-if I were to ask such questions,
your lordship's answer would probably be, to desire the footman to show me out.
Now, the present inquiry I regard as no less unjustifiable, and relating to private
concerns and, therefore, I think every one bound, when so questioned, always,
whether he is the author or not, to meet the inquiry with a rebuke. Hoping that
my conjecture is right, of the letter's being a forgery, I remain,' &c. In any case,
however, in which a refusal to answer does not convey any information, the best
way, perhaps, of meeting impertinent inquiries, is by saying: Can you keep a se-
cret ? and when the other answers that he can, you may reply: Well, so can I.'
¿
In 1859, Dr. Whately continued this light labour of annotation,
selecting for his second subject, Paley's Moral Philosophy.' This
afforded a much less varied field for remark and illustration than
Bacon's Essays, but it was one as congenial to the tastes and studies
as the commentator. The low ground or fallacy upon which Paley
built his ethical system-namely, that self-interest is the rule of vir-
tue-has been often attacked, and is again assailed by Dr Whately.
'Men,' says the commentator, 'never do, and apparently never did,
account any conduct virtuous which they believe to have proceeded
entirely from calculations of self-interest, even though the external act
itself be such as they conceive would have been done by a virtuous
man.' Paley's fault as a moralist, as Dr. Whately remarks, is chiefly
one of omission, and it is probable that this argument of self-interest
appears much stronger to the reader than it did to the author, who
aimed only at popular leading definitions. Even in this case, he in-
cludes the future world in his view of self-interest. The last publi-
cation of this eminent divine was a Charge directed against the pe-
culiar dangers of the times, inculcating reverence for the Scriptures,
and opposing a spirit of finality in ecclesiastical affairs. In all pub-
lic questions connected with Ireland he took a warm interest. He
supported the National School system with all his energy, and
founded the Statistical Society of Dublin. It is not enough,' he
said, 'to believe what you maintain. You must maintain what you
believe, and maintain it because you believe it.' Archbishop Whately
died October 8, 1863.
4
The Negative Character of Calvinistic Doctrines.-From Whately's
Essays on the Writings of St. Paul?
C
(
t
It has been frequently objected to the Calvinistic doctrines, that they lead, if
consistently acted upon, to a sinful, or to a careless, or to an inactive life; and the
inference deduced from this alleged tendency has been that they are not true. What-
ever may be, in fact, the practical ill tendency of the Calvinistic scheme, it is unde-
WHATELY.]
117
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
1
niable that many pious and active Christians who have adopted it have denied any
such tendency-bave attributed the mischievous consequences drawn, not to their
doctrines rightly understood, but to the perversion and abuse of them; and have so
explained them to their own satisfaction, as to be compatible and consistent with
active virtue. Now, if just ad of objecting to, we admit, the explanations of this
system, which the soundest and most approved of its advocates have given, we shall
find that, when understood as they would have it, it can lead to no practical result
whatever. Some Christians, according to them, are eternally enrolled in the book of
life, and infallibly ordained to salvation, while others are reprobate, and absolutely
excluded; but as the preacher (they add) has no means of knowing, in the first in-
stance at least, which persons belong to which class, and since those who are thus or-
dained are to be saved through the means God has appointed. the offers, and promises,
and threatenings of the Gospel are to be addressed to all alike, as if no such distinc-
tion existed. The preacher, in short, is to act in all respects as if the system were
not true. Each individual Christian, again, according to them, though he is to be-
lieve that he either is, or is not, absolutely destined to eternal salvation, yet is also
to believe that if his salvation is decreed, his holiness of life is also decreed; he is
to judge of his own state by the fruits of the Spirit' which he brings forth to live
in sin, or to relax his virtuous exertions, would be an indication of his not being
really (though he may flatter himself he is) one of the elect. And it may be admit-
ted that one who does practically adopt and conform to this explanation of the doc-
trine, will not be led into any evil by it, since his conduct will not be in any respect
influenced by it. When thus explained, it is reduced to a purely speculative dogna,
barren of all practical results.
C
Expediency.-From Elements of Rhetoric.'
So great is the outery which it has been the fashion among some persons for
several years past to raise against expediency, that the very word has become almost
an ill-omened sound. It seems to be thought by many a sufficient ground of con-
demnation of any legislator to say that he is guided by views of expediency. And
some seem oven to be ashamed of acknowledging that they are in any degree so
guided. I, for one, however, am content to submit to the imputation of being a
votary of expediency. And what is more, I do not see what right any one who is
not so has to sit in parliament, or to take any part in public affairs. Any one who
may choose to acknowledge that the measures he opposes are expedient, or that
those he recommends are inexpedient, ought manifestly to have no seat in a deliber-
ative assembly, which is constituted for the express and sole purpose of considering
what measures are conducive to the public good; in other words, 'expedient.' I say.
the public good,' because, of course, by 'expediency' we mean, not that which may
benefit some individual, or some party or class of men, at the expense of the public.
but what conduces to the good of the nation. Now this, it is evident, is the
very object for which deliberative assemblies are constituted. And so far is this
from being regarded, by our church at least, as something at variance with religious
duty, that we have a prayer specially appointed to be offered up during the sitting of
the Houses of Parliament, that their consultations may be directed and prospered
for the safety, honour, and welfare of our sovereign and her dominions." Now, if
this be not the very definition of political expediency, let any one say what it is.
(
But some persons are so much at variance with the doctrine of our church on this
point-and I may add, with all sound moralists-as to speak of expediency as some-
thing that is, or may be, at variance with duty. If any one really holds that it can
ever be expedient to violate the injunctions of duty-that he who does so is not sac-
rificing a greater good to a less (which all would admit to be inexpedient)—that it
can be really advantageous to do what is morally wrong—and will come forward
and acknowledge that to be his belief, I have only to protest. for my own part, with
the deepest abhorrence, against what I conceive to be so profligate a principle. It
shocks all the notions of morality that I have been accustomed from childhood to
entertain, to speak of expediency being possibly or conceivably opposed to recti-
tude.
There are indeed many questions of expediency in which morality has no con-
cern, one way or the other. In what way, for example, a husbandman should culti-
vate his field, or in what branch of trade a merchant should invest his capital, are
118
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
questions of expediency in which there is usually no moral right or wrong on either
side. But where there is moral right and wrong, it can never be expedient to choose
the wrong. If the husbandman or the merchant should seek to gain increased
profits by defranding his neighbour, this would be at variance with expediency, be-
cause it would be sacrificing a greater good to a less. For what would it profit a
man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'
I believe, however, that the greater part of those who raise a clamour against ex-
pediency mean, in reality, an apparent, but false and delusive expediency-that
which is represented as expedient, but in truth is not so. But if this be their mean-
ing, it would surely be better, with a view to cutting short empty declamation, and
understanding clearly whatever matter is under discussion, that they should express,
It
distinctly, and according to the ordinary use of language, what they do mean.
would be thought absurd for a mau to declaim against virtue,' and then at length
to explain that what he meant was not real virtue, but an hypocritical semblance of
it; or to argue against the use of coin,' meaning all the tinie, not real genuine coin,
but fraudulent counterfeits. And surely it is not at all more reasonable for any one to
declaim against expediency,' if what he means be, not what is really expedient,
but what is erroneously mistaken for it.
•
•
<
•
Consistency.-From Elements of Rhetoric.'
A man is often censured as inconsistent if he changes his plans or his opinions
on any point. And certainly if he does this often, and lightly, that is good ground
for withholding confidence froin him. But it would me more precise to characterise
him as fickle and unsteady, than as inconsistent; because this use of the term tends
to confound one fault with another-namely, with the holding of two incompatible
opinions at once.
But, moreover, a man is often charged with inconsistency for approving some
parts of a book, system, character, &c., and disapproving others; for being now an
advocate for peace, and now for war; in short, for accommodating his judgment or
his conduct to the circumstances before him, as the mariner sets his sails to the
wind. In this case there is not even any change of mind implied; yet for this a
man is often taxed with inconsistency, though in many instances there would even
be an inconsistency in the opposite procedure; e. g. in not shifting the sails, when
the wind changes.
In the other case indeed, when a man docs change his mind, he implies some
error, either first or last. But some errors every man is liable to, who is not infalli-
ble. He, therefore, who prides himself on his consistency, on the ground of resolv-
ing never to change his plans or opinions, does virtually (unless he means to proclaim
himself either too dull to detect his mistakes, or too obstinate to own them) lay claim
to infallibility. And if at the same time he ridicules (as is often done) the absurdity
of a claim to infallibility, he is guilty of a gross inconsistency in the proper and pri-
mary sense of the word.
But it is much easier to boast of consistency than to preserve it. For as, in the
dark, or in a fog, adverse troops may take post near each other, without mutual
recognition, and consequently without contest, but as soon as daylight comes the
weaker give place to the stronger; so, in a misty and darkened mind, the most in-
compatible opinions may exist together, without any perception of their dis-
crepancy, till the understanding becomes sufficiently enlightened to enable the man
to reject the less reasonable opinions, and retain the opposites.
It may be added, that it is a very fair ground for disparaging any one's judgment,
if he maintains any doctrine or system, avowedly for the sake of consistency. That
must always be a bad reasou. If the system, &c., is right, you should pursue it
because it is right, and not because you have pursued it hitherto; if it is wrong, your
having once committed a fault is a poor reason to give for persisting in it. He,
therefore, who makes such an avowal may fairly be considered as thenceforward en-
titled to no voice in the question. His decision having been already given, once for all,
with a resolution not to reconsider it, or to be open to conviction from any fresh ar-
guments, his re-declarations of it are no more to be reckoned repeated acts of judg-
ment, than new impressions from a stereotype plate are to be regarded as new edi-
tions. In short, according to the proverbial phrase, 'His bolt is shot.'
BURTON.]
119
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
DR. BURTON-EDWARD BICKERSTETH.
เ
>
DR. EDWARD BURTON (1794-1836), a native of Shrewsbury, was
Regius Professor of Divinity in the university of Oxford, and Bamp-
ton lecturer in 1829. His first work was Observations on the An-
tiquities of Rome,' which gave evidence of that research which after-
wards characterised his theological works. His most valuable pub-
lications are Testimonies of the Anti-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity
of Christ,' 1826, and to the 'Doctrine of the Trinity,' 1831; 'Inquiry
into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age; The Chronology of the
Apostles and St. Paul's Epistles,' 1830; Lectures on the Ecclesias-
tical History of the First Three Centuries, from the Crucifixion to
313 A.D.,' two volumes, 1831-33; History of the Christian Church to
the Conversion of Constantine,' 1836; &c. Besides these works,
which stamped him as the most profound patristic scholar of his age,
Dr. Burton published an edition of the Greek Testament with notes,
two volumes, 1831.
The Rev. EDWARD BICKERSTETH (1786-1850), rector of Walton,
was a voluminous writer; his collected works, published in 1853, fill
seventeen volumes, and there are five more of his smaller publica-
tions. His views were Low Church or Evangelical. The most pop-
ular of Mr. Bickersteth's writings are- The Scripture Help,' a prac-
tical introduction to the reading of the Scriptures, of which Mr.
Horne, in bis Introduction,' says that 160,000 copies have been sold;
aPractical Guide to the Prophecies,' 1889; The Christian Stu-
dent;' Discourses on Justification, on the Lord's Supper,' &c.
เ
•
DRS. HAWKINS-HINDS-HAMPDEN-GRESWELL.
↓
(
C
L
Among the Oxford divines may be mentioned DR. EDWARD HAW-
KINS, Provost of Oriel College, who has written Unauthoritative
Tradition,' 1819; several volumes of 'Sermons and Discourses;' and
the Bampton Lectures (on Christian Truth') for 1840. DR. SAMUEL
HINDS, vice-principal of St. Alban Hall and bishop of Norwich, has
written, with other works, a History of Christianity,' two volumes.
1829, part of which appeared originally in the Encyclopædia Metro-
politana,' and is characterised by erudite research and literary ability.
Another theological contributor to the Encyclopædia Metropolitana,'
was DR. RENN DICKSON HAMPDEN, who had been Principal of St.
Mary's Hall and Regius Professor of Divinity, and who was
nominated to the bishopric of Hereford in 1847. Dr. Hampden was
born in the island of Barbadoes in 1793. In 1810 he was entered of
Oriel College, Oxford. He was Bampton lecturer in 1832, and his
appointment as Regius Professor was violently opposed by one party
in the church on account of alleged unsoundness of doctrine. The
controversy on this subject raged for some time, but it was as much
political as ecclesiastical, and Lord John Russell evinced his disregard
of it by promoting Dr. Hampden to the see of Hereford. The most
important of the works of this divine are- Plosophical Evidence
:
1
120
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
L
of Christianity,' 1827; the Bampton Lectures;' 'Lectures on
Moral Philosophy;' 'Sermons before the University of Oxford,'
1836-47; a Review of the Writings of Thomas Aquinas in the En-
cyclopædia Metropolitana;' and the articles Socrates, Plato,' and
Aristotle' in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica.' Mr. Hallam bas
characterised Dr. Hampden as 'the only Englishman who, since the
revival of letters, penetrated into the wilderness of scholasticism.'
He died in 1868.
(
เ
The REV. EDWARD GRESWELL, Fellow of Corpus Christi College,
has written a valuable Exposition of the Parables and other parts
of the Gospels,' five volumes, 1834-35; Harmonia Evangelica,'
1835-40; Harmony of the Gospels,' four volumes, 1830-34; Fasti
Tempori Catholici,' five volumes, 1852. The father of Mr. Greswell
-who was incumbent of Denton, Manchester-wrote a very elegant
work, 'Annals of Parisian Typography,' 1818; also a 'View of the
Early Parisian Greek Press,' 1833.
(
(
Value of Negative Testimony.-From Hinds's Inspiration of Scripture.'
To say that numerous old manuscripts exist; that they admit of classification and
date, and other characteristics; to speak of evidence, derived from contemporary
history, from the monuments of art, from national manners and customs; to assert
that there have been persons qualified for the task, who have examined duly these
several branches of evidence, and have given a satisfactory report of that research,
is to make a statement concerning the evidence of Christianity, which is intelligi-
ble indeed, but is not itself the evidence, not itself the proof, of which you speak.
So far from this being the case. we cannot but feel that the author who is guiding
us, and pointing out these pillars of our faith, as they appear engraved on his chart
of evidence, can himself, whatever be his learning. be personally acquainted with
but a very small portion. The most industrious and able scholar, after spending a
life on some individual point of evidence, the collation of manuscripts, the illustra-
trations derived from uninspired authors, translations, or whatever the inquiry be,
must, after all (it would seem), rest by far the greater part of his faith immediately
on the testimony of others; as thousands in turn will rest their faith on his testi-
mony, to the existence of such proof as he has examined. There is no educated
Christian who is not taught to appreciate the force of that proof in favour of the
genuineness of the New Testament, which may be derived from the consent of an-
cient copies, and the quotations found in a long line of fathers, and other writers ;
and yet not one in a thousand ever reads the works of the fathers, or sees a manu-
script, or is even capable of deciphering one, if presented to him. He admits the
I very gromudwork of his faith on the assertion of those who profess to have ascer-
tained these points; and even the most learned are no further exceptions to this case,
than in the particular branch of evidence which they have studied. Nay, eveu in
their use of this, it will be surprising, when we come to reflect on it, how great a
portion must be examined only through statements resting on the testimony of
others.
Nor is it a question which can be waived. by throwing the weight of disproof on
those who cavil and deny. It turns upon the use which is made. more or less, by
all, of the positive proofs urged in defence of Christianity. Christianity is estab-
lished; and it may be fair to bid its assailants prove that it is not what it professes
to be, the presumption and prescriptive title being on its side. But Christianity
does not intrench itself within this fortress; it brings out into the field an array of
evidences to establish that which, on the former view of the case, its adherents are
supposed not to be called on to maintain. It boasts of the sacred volume having
been transmitted pure by means of manuscripts; and by asserting the antiquity, the
freedom from corruption, and the independence and agreement of the several classes
of these, the Christian contends for the existence of liis religion at the time when
GRESWELL.]
!
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
121
Christ and the apostles lived. Ancient writings are appealed to, and quotations
cited by various authors from the New Testament are adduced, which go to prove
the same.
Even profane history is made to furnish contemporary evidence of the
first rise of Christianity. Now it is the way in which this evidence is employed that
is the point to be considered; the question is, in what sense all this can be called
evidence to the mass of Christians. All this is, in short, positive proof; and he who
has examined manuscripts, or read the works in question, has gone through the
demonstration; but he who has not-and this is the case with all. making a very
few exceptions-has not gone through the process of proof himself, but takes the
conclusion on the word of others. He believes those who inform him, that they, or
others, have examined manuscripts, read the fathers, compared profane history with
holy writ. Can this be called reasonable faith? or, at least, do we not pretend to
be believing on proofs of various kinds, when, in fact, our belief rests où the bare
assertions of others?
It is very important that the case should be set in its true light, because, suppos-
ing the Christian ministry able, and at leisure, to investigate and sift the Christian
evidence for themselves, the same cannot be done by the barrister, the physician,
the protessioual man of whatever department besides theology, however enabled by
education; and then, what is to be the lot of the great mass of the people? They,
clearly, are incompetent even to follow up the several steps of proof which cach
proposition would require. They take it for granted, if they apply the evidence at
all, that these things are so, because wiser persons than they say it is so. In the
same spirit as the question was put of old: Have any of the rulers believed on
Christ? but this people who knoweth not the law are cursed,' Christians most gen-
erally, it would seem, believe in Christ, because their spiritual rulers do, and reject
the infidel's views, because these people are pronounced accursed. Nay, the suppo-
tion of the clergy themselves having the qualification, and the opportunity to go
through the process of proof, is only a supposition. They often waut either or both;
and it is impossible that it should not be so. The labour of a life is scarcely suf-
ficient to examine for one's self one branch alone of such evidence For the greater
part, few men, however learned, have satisfied themselves by going through the
proof. They have admitted the main assertions, because proved by others.
And is this conviction then reasonable? Is it more than the adoption of truth
on the authority of another? It is. The principle on which all these assertions are
received, is not that they have been made by this or that creditable individual or
body of persons, who have gone through the proof-this may have its weight with
the critical and learned-but the main principle adopted by all, intelligible by all, and
reasonable in itself, is, that these assertions are sit forth, bearing on their face a
challenge of refutation. The assertions are like witnesses placed in a box to be con-
frouted. Scepticism, infidelity, and scoffing, form the very groundwork of our faith.
As long as these are known to exist and to assail it, so long are we sure that any un-
tenable assertion may and will be refuted. The benefit accruing to Christianity in
this respect from the occasional success of those who have found flaws in the several
parts of evidence, is invaluable. We believe what is not disproved, most reasonably,
because we know that there are those abroad who are doing their utmost to disprove
it. We believe the witness, not because we know him and esteem him. but because
he is confronted, cross-examined, suspected, and assailed by arts fair and unfair.
It is not his authority, but the reasonableness of the case. It becomes conviction
well-grounded, and not assent to man's words.
At the same time nothing has perhaps more contributed to perplex the Christian
Inquirer, than the impression which vague language creates of our conviction arising
not out of the application of this principle to the external and monumental evidences
of Christianity, but out of the examination of the evidence itself. The mind feels
disappointed and unsatisfied, not because it has not ground for belief, but because it
misnames it. The man who has not examined any branch of evidence for himself.
may, according to the principle above stated, very reasonably believe in consequence
of it; but his belief does not arise immediately out of it-is not the same frame of
mind which would be created by an actual examination for himself. It may be more,
or it may be less, a sure source of conviction; but the discontent is occasioned, not
by this circumstance, but by supposing that it is one of these things that does, or
Qught to, influence us, wher in fact it is the other; by putting curselves in the atti-
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1
tude of mind which belongs to the witness, instead of that which belongs to the by-
stander. We very well know how the unbroken testimony of writers during eigh-
teen centuries to the truth of Christianity ought to make us feel, if we had ascer-
tained the fact by an examination of their writings; and we are surprised at finding
that we are not in that frame of mind, forgetting that our use of the evidence may
be founded on a different principle.
REV. HENRY MELVILL.
One of the most eloquent and popular of English preachers for
forty years was the REV. HENRY MELVILL (1798-1871), canon of
St. Paul's. Mr. Melvill was a native of Cornwall, son of Captain
Melvill, lieutenant-governor of Pendennis Castle. Having studied at
St. Peter's College, Cambridge, where he became Fellow and tutor,
he was appointed minister of Camden Chapel, in which he was in-
cumbent from 1829 to 1843. In the latter year he became principal
of the East India College, Haileybury; in 1846, chaplain to the Tower
of London; in 1850, preacher to the Golden Lectureship, St Marga-
ret's. Lothbury; and in 1856, canon-residentiary of St. Paul's.. Mr.
Melvill's works consist solely of sermons, and only a part was pub-
lished by himself. His extraordinary popularity led some of his
hearers to take notes, and print his discourses without his consent.
In 1833 he published one volume, and in 1836 a second. In 1843-45
he published two volumes of Sermons on certain of the less promi-
nent Facts and References in Sacred History.' As now collected
and issued in a popular form, Mr. Melvill's works fill seven volumes,
the Lothbury Lectures constituting one volume, and the sermons
preached during the latter years of his life two volumes. The rich
ornate style of Mr. Melvill's sermons, all carefully prepared, his fine
musical voice and impressive delivery, rendered him a fascinating
preacher, and he is described as having been exemplary and inde-
fatigable in visiting the sick and attending to the poor. The follow-
ing extract is from the Lothbury Lectures, and the reader may com-
pare it with a similar passage from Jeremy Taylor. (See ante.)
The Great Multitude (Rev. vii. 9.)
Taking this vision in the order in which it occurs amongst the visions vouchsafed
to St. John in his exile, it probably delineates the happy estate of those who had ad-
hered to Christ during the fierce persecutions which preceded the establishment of
Christianity by Constantine. There cau be no doubt that the Book of Revelation is
in the main a continuous prophecy, its several parts belonging to several seasons
which follow successively in the history of the Church. But without disputing that,
in its primary import, our text may relate to events which have long ago occurred, it
were not easy to doubt that, in its larger and more comprehensive bearings, it may
be taken as descriptive of the heavenly state, that condition of repose and triumph
which shall be ours, even ours, if we be faithful unto death. Admitting that the
great multitude on which the Evangelist was privileged to gaze, 'clothed with white
robes, and palms in their hands,' must be regarded as the company of those who,
during the early days of Christianity, witnessed manfully for the truth, they must
still, both in number and condition, be emblematic of the Church in its final glory
aud exaltation; and we may therefore safely dismiss all reference to the first fulfil-
ment of the prophecy, and consider heaven as the scene on which the Evangelist
MELVILL }
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
123
gazed, and 'just men made perfect ' as constituting the great multitude drawn together
from all parts of the earth.
It is, therefore, on such notices of the heavenly state as the words before us may
furnish that we désign to discourse on the present occasion. We would refresh you
and animate you, wearied as you may be by the conflicts and struggles of earth, with
glimpses of things within the veil. We do not indeed mean to address ourselves to
the imagination; if we did, there are more dazzling passages in the Book of Reve
lation, and we might strive to set before you the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city,
with its gates of pearl and its streets of gold. But we think to find notices in the
words of our text which, if not so resplendent with the gorgeous things of the
future, shall yet go closer home to the heart, and minister more comfort to those
who find themselves strangers and pilgrims below. We will not anticipate what we
may have to advance. We shall only hope that we may meet with what will cheer
and sustain us amid the changes and chances of this mortal life.' what will keep
alive in us a sense of the exceeding greatness of the recompense of the reward,' of the
desirableness of the inheritance reserved for us above, as, in dependence on the
teachings of the Holy Spirit, we apply to our future state the words of the Evan-
gelist John: 1 beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of
all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tougues, stood before the throne, and be-
fore the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.'
*
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{
Now, when these words are set before us as descriptive of the heavenly state, it can
hardly fail but that the first thing on which the mind shall fasten will be the ex-
pression, a great multitude, which no man could number.' It is so in regard of
parallel sayings: 'In My Father's house are many mansions.' Many shall come
from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abrahanı, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the
kingdom of heaven.' · A great multitude,' many mansions,' 'many shall come.' But
what are many' in the Divine arithmetic? Doubtless thousands, and tens of thou-
sauds; yea, an innumerable company. Many are the worlds scattered through im-
mensity-who shall reckou them? Many are the leaves of the earth's forests—who
shall compute them? Many are the grains of sand on the sea-shore-who shall
count them up? Neither may we think to compass the multitude that St. John saw
'before the throne, and before the Lamb;' indeed, he tells us this when he adds,
'which no man could number,'
6
Even now it is felt to be an ennobling, inspiriting association, if the eminent of
a single church, the illustrious of a solitary country, be gathered together in one
great conclave. How do meaner men flock to the spot; with what interest, what
awe, do they look upon persons so renowned in their day; what a privilege do they
account it if they mingle awhile with sages so profound, with saints so devoted;
how do they treasure the sayings which reach them in so precious au intercourse.
And shall we think little of heaven when we hear of it as the meeting-place of all
that hath been truly great, for of all that hath been truly good; of all that hath been
really wise, for of all that hath yielded itself to the teachings of God's Spirit, from
Adam to his remotest descendant? Nay, let us fear, lest a promise being left us of
entering into that rest, any of us should seem to come short.' There is a voice to
us from the great multitude,' who flock with the sound, like the rush of many
waters, from all nations and tribes. A great multitude -there is room then for us,
A great multitude'-there will be no deficiency without us. We can be spared.
the loss will be ours; but, ob, what a loss! and what an aggravation of that loss,
that perhaps, as we go away into outer darkness, 'where shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth,' we shall see those who were once strangers and aliens flocking
into the places which might have been ours, and be witnesses to the literal accom-
plishment of the vision; Lo. a great multitude which no man could number, of all
nations. and kindreds, and people, and tongues.'
C
•
But it is not merely as asserting the vastness of the multitude which shall finally
be gathered into heaven that our text presents matter for devout meditation. We
are not to overlook the attitude assigned to the celestial assembly, an attitude of rest
and of triumph, as though there had been labour and warfare, and the wearied com-
batants were henceforward to enjoy unbroken quiet. They stood before the throne,
and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands.' This ex-
actly answers to the assertion already quoted, that they had come out of great tribula-
tion,' and denotes-for such is the inference from the robes that they wore, and the
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palms which they carried, both appertaining to conquerors--that all warfare was at
an end, and that there remained nothing henceforwards but the enjoyment of deep
repose in the presence of the Lord. The imagery of the passage is derived, you ob-
serve, from the triumphs of victors. Spiritual things can only be shadowed forth to
us by material; and without pretending to decide that the material is never to be
li erally taken-for who, remembering that man is to be everlastingly compounded
of body and soul, will venture to determine that there shall be nothing but what is
purely spiritual in the future economy? Who, when he reads of new heavens and
a new earth, will rashly conclude that, for such a being as man is to be, there cannot
be reserved an abode rich in all the splendours of a most refined materialisın, pre-
senting correspondences to the golden streets, and the jewelled walls, and the crys-
tal wafers, which passed in such gorgeous and beautiful vision before the Evange-
list? But waiving the consideration that there may be something more than mere
figure, something of literal and actual inport in these scriptural delineations of
heaven, the robe, the pulm, the harp, we may all feel how expressive is the imagery of
triumphant repose after toil and conflict, when applied to the state reserved for those
who shall be faithful unto death.
THE REV. JOHN JAMES BLUNT.
What Dr. Paley accomplished so successfully with regard to the
Scripture history of St. Paul, PROFESSOR BLUNT (1794-1855) at-
tempted on a larger scale in his Undesigned Coincidences in the
Writings, both of the Old and the New Testament, an Argument of
their Veracity,' 1847. This work (twelfth edition, 1873) included a
republication of some earlier treatises by its author, and is a work of
great value to every student of the Scriptures. On the nature of the
argument derived from coincidence without design, Mr. Blunt says:
(
Undesigned Coincidences.
If the instances which I cau offer, gathered from Holy Writ. are so numerous, and
of such a kind us to preclude the possibility of their being the effect of accident, it is
enough. It does not require many circumstantial coincidences to determine the
mind of a jury as to the credibility of a witness in our courts, even where the life of
a fellow-créature is at stake. I say this, not as a matter of charge, but as a matter of
fact. indicating the authority which attaches to this species of evidence, and the con-
fidcuce universally entertained that it cannot deceive. Neither should it be forgotten
that an argument thus popular, thus applicable to the affairs of common life as a test
of truth. derives no small value when enlisted in the cause of Revelation, from the
readiness with which it is apprehended and admitted by mankind at large, and from
the simplicity of the nature of the appeal for it springs out of the documents the
truth of which it is intended to sustaiu, and terminates in them: so that he who has
these has the defence of them. Nor is this all. The argument deduced from coin-
cidence without design has further claims. because if well made out it establishes the
authors of the several books of Scripture as independent witnesses to the facts they
relate; and this whether they consulted each other's writings or not; for the coin-
cidences, if good for anything, are such as could not result from combination, mutual
lerstanding, or arrangement.'
Mr. Blunt was sometime Margaret Professor of Divinity in the
university of Cambridge, and, besides his 'Undesigned Coincidences,'
was author of the following works: History of the Christian Church
in the First Three Centuries,' The Parish Priest,' 'Lectures on the
Right Use of the Early Fathers,' 'Plain Sermons,' University Ser-
mons,' 'Essays from the Quarterly Review,'
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+
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HARE.]
128
ENGLISH LITERATURË.
I
<
1
AUGUSTUS W. HARE-JULIUS C. HARE:
The brothers Hare, accomplished clergymen, were joint authors
of the work entitled Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers,' the first
portion of which appeared in 1827, and a revised edition in 1847-48.
in two volumes. AUGUSTUS WILLIAM HARE was a Fellow of New
College, Oxford, and rector of Alton Barnes. He was author of
These
?
Sermons to a Country Congregation,' two volumes, 1837.
sermons have been much admired for the purity of their style, and
as affording a striking proof of the effect which a refined and culti-
ivated mind may have in directing the devotions and lives of the
simple and ignorant population. Mr. Hare died at Rome in 1834,
aged forty. JULIUS CHARLES HARE was rector of Hurstmonceaux
and archdeacon of Lewes. He was an able scholar and distinguished
member of what has been called the Broad Church party. Part of
his youth was spent abroad. In 1811,' he said, 'I saw the mark of
Luther's ink on the walls of the castle of Wartburg, and there I first
learned to throw inkstands at the devil.' In 1818 he was elected
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and he became assistant-tutor
of the college. In conjunction with Mr. Thirlwall, afterwards bishop
C
of St. David's, he translated Niebuhr's History of Rome,' two vol-
umes, 1828-32. Two courses of sermons by Archdeacon Hare on
the Victory of Faith,' and 'The Mission of the Comforter,' 1847,
have been much admired. In 1848 he wrote the life of his college
friend. John Sterling. He was also author of Parish Sermons,
several Charges' as archdeacon, and a spirited Vindication of
Luther against his English Assailants,' 1855. ~ Archdeacon Hare died
at Hurstmonceaux in 1855, aged sixty. His last words, as life was
departing, were, as the summing-up of all his strivings and prayers
for himself and others- Upwards, upwards! In 1872 was pub-
lished Memorials of a Quiet Life,' by Augustus C. Hare, two vol-
umes. These Memorials' contain accounts of the most brotherly
of brothers,' Francis Augustus, Julius, and Marcus Hare; also of
Mrs. Augustus Hare (nce Maria Leycester), who forms the most in-
teresting person in this family group. We subjoin a few extracts
from Guesses at Truth:'
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•
•
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•
•
↓
Wastefulness of Moral Gifts.
Among the numberless marvels at which nobody marvels. few are more marvel-
lous than the recklessness with which priceless gifts, intellectual and moral, are
squandered and thrown away. Often have I gazed with wonder at the prodigality
displayed by Nature in the cistus, which unfolds hundreds of thousands of its white
starry blossoms morning after morning, to shine in the light of the sun for an hour
or two. and then fall to the ground. But who, among the sons and daughters of
,men-gifted with thoughts which wander through eternity,' and with powers which
have the godlike privilege of working good, and giving happiness-who does not
daily let thousands of those thoughts drop to the ground and rot? Who does not
continually leave his powers to draggle in the mould of their own leaves? The im-
agination can hardly conceive the heights of greatness and glory to which mankind
!
126
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
番
​would be raised, if all their thoughts and energies were to be animated with a living
purpose or even those of a single people, or of the educated among a single people.
But as in a forest of oaks, among the millions of acorns that fall every autumn, there
may perhaps be one in a million that will grow up into a tree, somewhat in like man-
ner it fares with the thoughts and feelings of man. What then must be our confusion,
when we see all these wasted thoughts and feelings rise up in the judgment, and bear
witness against us!
1
But how are we to know whether they are wasted or not? We have a simple
infallible test. Those which are laid up in heaven, those which are laid up in any
heavenly work, those whereby we in any way carry on the work of God upon earth,
are not wasted. Those which are laid up on earth, in any mere earthly work, in car-
rying out our own ends, or the ends of the Spirit of Evil, are heirs of death from the
the first, and can only rise out of it for a moment, to sink back into it for ever.
Age lays open the Character.
Age seems to take away the power of acting a character, even from those who
have done so the most successfully during the main part of their lives. The real
man will appear, at first fitfully, and then predominantly. Time spares the chiseled
beauty of stone and marble, but makes sad havoc in plaster and stucco.
Loss of the Village Green.
What a loss is that of the village green! It is a loss to the picturesque beauty of
our English landscapes. A village green is almost always a subject for a painter
who is fond of quiet home scenes, with its old, knotty, wide-spreading oak or elm or
ash; its gray church-tower; its cottages scattered in pleasing disorder around, each
looking out of its leafy nest; its flock of geese sailing to and fro across it. Where
such spots are still found, they refresh the wayworn traveller, wearied by the inter-
minable hedge walls with which restless ownership'-to use an expression of
Wordsworth's-excludes profane feet from its domain consecrated to Mammon.
The main loss. however, is that to the moral beauty of our landscapes-that to
the innocent, wholesome pleasures of the poor. The village green was the scene of
their sports, of their games. It was the play-ground for their children. It served
for trapball, for cricket, for manly humanising amusements, in which the gentry and
farmers might unite with the peasantry. How dreary is the life of the English hus-
bandman now! Double, double, toil and trouble,' day after day, month after
month, year after year, uucheered by sympathy, unenlivened by a smile; suuless,
moonless, starless. He has no place to be merry in but the beer-shop, uo amuse-
ments but druuken brawls, nothing to bring him into innocent, cheerful fellowship
with his neighbours. The stories of village sports sound like legends of a mythical
age, prior to the time when 'Sabbathless Satan,' as Charles Lamb has so happily
termed him, set up his throne in the land.
ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.
،
C
DR. RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, archbishop of Dublin, began
his literary career, as already stated, by the publication of several
volumes of poems. His theological and other prose works are numer-
ous. Among them are- Notes on the Parables,' 1841; Notes on
the Miracles, 1846; Sermons preached before the University of
Cambridge,' 1856; St. Augustine as an Interpreter of Scripture,' 1851;
'Synonyms of the New Testament,' 1854; The Epistles to the Seven
Churches of Asia Minor;' an Essay on the Life and Genius of Calde-
ron;' On the Authorised Version of the New Testament;' &c. The
last of these works evinces extensivé learning as well as acute philo.
logical observation, and the archbishop has also critically examined the
English language. His 'Five Lectures on the Study of Words,' 1851;
and English, Past and Present,' 1854, are full of curious information,
t
(
>
{
TRENCH.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
127
Influence of the Reformation on the English Language.
It was ouly among the Germanic nations of Europe, as has often been remarked,
that the Reformation struck lasting roots; it found its strength therefore in the
Teutonic element of the national character, which also it, in its turn, further
strengthened, purified, and called out. And thus. though Latin came in upon us
now faster than ever, and in a certain measure also Greek, yet this was not without
its counterpoise, in the contemporaneous unfolding of the more fundamentally pop-
ular side of the language. Popular preaching and discussion, the necessity of deal-
ing with the highest matters in a manuer intelligible not to scholars only, but to the
unlearned, all this served to evoke the native resources of our tongue; and thus the
relative proportion between the one part of the language and the other was not
dangerously disturbed; the balance was not destroyed, as it would have been if only
the Humanists had been at work, and not the Reformers as well.
•
The revival of learning which found place somewhat earlier in Italy, where it had
its birth, than with us, extended to England, and was operative here during the
reigns of Henry VIII, and his immediate successors; in other words, if it slightly
anticipated iu ume, it afterwards ran exactly popular with the period during which
our Reformation was working itself out. It was an epoch in all respects of in-
mense mental and moral activity, and such are always times of extensive changes
and enlargements of a language. The old garment, which served a people's needs in
the time past, is too narrow for it now to wrap itself in any more. Change in lau-
guage is not, as in many natural products, continuous; it is not equable, but eni-
nently by fits aud starts.' When the foundations of the national mind are heaving
under the power of some new truth, greater and more important changes will find
place in fifty years thau in two centuries of calmer or inore stagnaut existence.
Thus the activities and energies which the Reformation set a-stirring among us
here, and these reached far beyond the domain of our directly religious life, caused
mighty alterations in the English tongue. For example, the Reformation had its
scholarly, we might almost say, its scholastic, as well as its popular aspect. Add
this fact to the fact of the revived interest in classical learning and you will not
wonder that a stream of Latin, now larger than ever, began to flow into our
language.
Strain at a Gnat and Swallow a Camel.
•
I cannot doubt that the words of Matthew xxiii 24. which strain at a gnat, and
swallow a camel,' contain a misprint, which, having been passed over in the first
edition of 1611. has held its ground ever since: nor yet that our translators intended,
which strain out a guat, and swallow a camel;' this being at ouce intelligible and a
correct rendering of the original; while our version, as at present it stands, is
neither; or only intelligible on the supposition, no doubt the supposition of most
English readers, that strain at ' means, swallow with difficulty, men hardly, and with
effort swallowing the little insect, but gulping down meanwhile unconcerned the
huge animal. It need scarcely be said that this is very far from the meaning of the
original words. . . . It was the castom of the more accurate and stricter Jews to
strain their wine, vinegar, and other potables through linen or gonze, Jest unawares
they should drink down some little unclean insect therein, and thus transgress
Lev. xi. 20. 23. 41, 42-inst as the Buddhists do now in Ceylon and Hindustan-aud
to this custom of theirs the Lord refers.
C
From words to proverbs is a short step, and Dr. Trench has given
us a volume entitled, On the Lessons in Proverbs, 1855. He treats
of the form and generation of proverbs, and of the poetry, - wit, or
wisdom contained in them. Lord Russell, we may remark, is said to
have given a happy definition of the term proverb: The wit of one
man and the wisdom of many.' Dr. Trench vindicates the import-
ance of proverbs :
On Proverbs.
The fact that they please the people, and have pleased them for ages-that they
possess so vigorous a principle of life as to have maintained their ground, ever new
128
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
and ever young, through all the centuries of a nation's existence-nay, that many of
them have pleased not one nation only, but many, so that they have made themselves
a home in the most different lands-and further, that they have, not a few of them,
come down to us from remotest antiquity, borne safely upon the waters of that great
stream of time, which has swallowed so much beneath its waves-all this, I think,
may well make us pause should we be tempted to turn away from them with any-
thing of indifference or disdain.
And then, further, there is this to be considered, that some of the greatest pocts,
the profoundest philosophers, the most learned scholars, the most genial writers in
every kind, have delighted in them, have made large and frequent use of them, have
bestowed infinite labour on the gathering and elucidating of them. In a fastidious
ge, indeed, and one of false refinement, they may go nearly or quite out of use
nong the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says Lord Chesterfield, or No
man of fashion,' as I think is his exact word, ever uses a proverb.' And with how
¡ine a touch of nature Shakspeare makes Coriolanus, the man who with all his great-
ness is entirely devoid of all sympathy for the people, to utter his scorn of them in
scorn of their proverbs, and of their frequent employment of these:
•
Hàng em!
They said they were an-hungry, sighed forth proverbs;
That, huuger broke stone walls; that, dogs must eat;
That, meat was made for mouths; that, the gods sent not
Corn for the rich men only. With these shreds
They vented their complainings.
Coriolanus, Act I., Sc. 1.
?
But that they have been always dear to the true intellectual aristocracy of a nation,
there is abundant evidence to prove. Take but these three names in evidence, which,
though few, are in themselves a host. Aristotle made a collection of proverbs; nor
did he count that he was herein doing ought unworthy of his great reputation; how-
ever some of his adversaries may have made this a charge against him. He is said
to have been the first who did so, though many afterwards followed in the same
path. Shakspeare loves them so well. that besides often citing them, and innumera-
ble covert allusions, rapid side glances at them, which we are in danger of missing
unless at home in the proverbs of England, several of his plays, as Measure for
Measure,' 'All's Well that Ends Well,' have popular proverbs for their titles. And
Cervantes, a name only inferior to Shakspeare, has not left us in doubt in respect of
the affection with which he regarded them. Every reader of Don Quixote' will
remember his squire, who sometimes cannot open his mouth but there drop from it
lmost as many proverbs as words. I might name others who held the proverb in
honour-men who, though they may not attain to these first three, are yet deservedly
accounted great; as Plautus, the most genial of Latin pocts; Rabelais and Mon-
taigne, the two most original of French authors; and how often Fuller, whom Cole-
ridge has styled the wittiest of writers, justifies this praise in his witty employment
of some old proverb; nor can any thoroughly understand and enjoy Hudibras,' no
one but will miss a multitude of its keenest allusions, who is not thoroughly famil-
iar with the proverbial literature of England.
A
Their habitat, or native place, he thinks, is easily perceived:
"
Thus our own 'Make hay while the sun shines,' is truly English, and could have
had its birth only under such variable skies as ours-not certainly in those southern
lands where, during the summer time at least, the sun always shines. In the same
way there is a fine Cornish proverb in regard of obstinate wrongheads, who will take
no counsel except from calamities, who dash themselves to pieces against obstacles
which. with a little prudence and foresight, they might have avoided. "It is this: lle
who will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock.' It sets us at once
upon some rocky and wreck-strewn coast; we feel that it could never have been the
proverb of an inland people. Do not talk Arabic in the house of a Moor'—that is,
because there thy imperfect knowledge will be detected at once-this we should con-
fidently affirm to be Spanish, wherever we met it. 'Big and empty. like the Heidel-
berg tun.' could have its home only in Germany; that enormous vessel, known as the
Heidelberg tun, constructed to contain nearly 300,000 flasks, having now stood empty
for hundreds of years. As regards, too, the following, 'Not every parish priest Gan
STANLEY.]
129
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
wear Dr. Luther's shoes,' we could be in no doubt to what people it appertains.
Neither could there be any mistake about this solemn Turkish proverb, 'Death is a
black camel which kneels at every man's gate,' in so far at least as that it would be
at once ascribed to the East.
DEAN STANLEY.
DR. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, one of the most eminent scholars
and liberal divines of the Church of England, has been an extensive
'contributor to theological literature. He was born in 1815, son of
Dr. Stanley, rector of Alderly, afterwards bishop of Norwich. Ar-
thur Stanley was the favourite pupil of Dr. Arnold at Rugby, whence
he removed to Oxford, having passed as an exhibitioner to Balliol
College. There he greatly distinguished himself; and in 1838 he was
chosen a Fellow of University College, of which he became tutor and
examiner. His subsequent preferments were-canon of Canterbury,
1851; Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, canon of Christ
Church, and chaplain to the bishop of London, 1858; and dean of
Westminster, 1864. He is also chaplain to the Prince of Wales
(whom he accompanied in his tour in the East), and chaplain-in-ordi-
nary to the Queen. The principal works of Dean Stanley are— The
Life of Dr. Arnold,' 1844; Sermons and Essays on the Apostolical
Age,' 1846; Memoir of Bishop Stanley,' 1850; The Epistles to the
Corinthians,' two volumes, 1854; Sinai and Palestine in Connection
with their History.' 1855; Historical Memorials of Canterbury' (in
which we have details of the landing of Augustine, the murder of
Thomas-à-Becket, the Black Prince and Becket's shrine), 1855; Ser-
mons on the Unity of Evangelical and Apostolical Teaching,' 1859;
Lectures on the Eastern Church,' 1861; Lectures on the Jewish
Church,' two volumes, 1863-65; Sermons preached in the East du-
ring a Tour with the Prince of Wales;' with Sermons on Various
Subjects preached before the University of Oxford,' 1860-63; 'Essays
on Questions of Church and State,' 1850-70; Historical Memorials of
Westminister Abbey' Lectures on the Church of Scotland,' 1871;
&c. In December 1872 Dean Stanley was appointed one of the select
preachers before the university of Oxford. His election was opposed
by the High Church party, but the placets for the dean were 349; the
m-placets 287. This may be considered a distinguished acknow.
ledgment of what Max Müller has designated Dean Stanley's loyalty
to truth, his singleness of purpose, his chivalrous courage, and hi
unchanging devotion to his friends.
<
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C
The Oldest Obelisk in the World-The Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis.
Rising wild amidst garden shrubs is the solitary obelisk which stood in front of
the temple, then in company with another, whose base alone now remains. This is
the first obelisk I have seen standing in its proper place, and there it has stood for
nearly four thousand years. It is the oldest known in Egypt, and therefore in the
world-the father of all that have arisen since. It was raised about a century before
the coming of Joseph; it has looked down on his marriage with Asenath; it has
seen the growth of Moses; it is mentioned by Herodotus; Plato sat under its shadow;
of all the obelisks which sprang up around it, it alone has kept its first position. One
f
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CYCLOPÆDIA OF
by one, it has seen its sons and brothers depart to great destinies elsewhere. From
these gardens came the obelisks of the Lateran, of the Vatican, and of the Porta del
Popolo; and this venerable pillar (for so it looks from a distance) is now almost the
only landmark of the great seat of the wisdom of Egypt.
The Children of the Desert.
C
The relation of the Desert to its modern inhabitants is still illustrative of its ancient
history. The general name by which the Hebrews called the wilderness,' including
always that of Sinai, was the pasture.' Bare as the surface of the Desert is, yet the
thin clothing of vegetation, which is seldom entirely withdrawn, especially the aro-
matic shrubs on the high hillsides, furnish sufficient sustenance for the herds of the
six thousand Bedouins who constitute the present population of the peninsula.
·
Along the mountain ledges green,
The scattered sheep at will may glean
The Desert's spicy stores.
So were they seen following the daughters of the shepherd-slaves of Jethro. So may
they be seen climbing the rocks, or gathered round the pools and springs of the val-
leys, under the charge of the black-veiled Bedouin women of the prescut day. And
in the Tiyaha Towara, or Alouin tribes, with their chiefs and followers, their dress,
and manners, and habitations, we probably see the likeness of the Midianites, the
Amalekites, and the Israelites themselves in this their earliest stage of existence.
The long straight lines of black tents which cluster round the Desert springs, present
to us, on a small scale, the image of the vast encampment gathered round the one
sacred tent which, with its coverings of dyed skins, stood conspicuous in the midst,
and which recalled the period of their nomadic life long after their settlement in
Palestine. The deserted villages, marked by rude enclosures of stone, are doubtless
such as those to which the Hebrew wanderers gave the name of Hazeroth,' and
which afterwards furnished the type of the primitive sanctuary at Shiloh. The rude
burial-grounds, with the many nameless headstones, far away from human babita-
tion, are such as the host of Israel must have left behind them at the different stages
of their progress-at Massah, at Sinai, at Kilbroth-hattaavah, the graves of desire.
The salutations of the chiefs, in their bright scarlet robes, the one going out to
meet the other,' the 'obeisance,' the 'kiss' on each side of the head, the silent cu-
trance into the tent for consultations, are all graphically described in the encounter
between Moses and Jethro. The constitution of the tribes, with the subordinate de-
grees of sheiks, recommended by Jethro to Moses, is the very saine which still ex-
ists amongst those who are possibly his lineal descendants-the gentle race of the
•
.
Towâra.
Early Celebration of the Eucharist.
on
It has been truly said, though with some exaggeration, that for many centuries
the history of the Eucharist might be considered as a history of the Christian
Church. And certainly this passage may be regarded as occupying in that history,
whether in its narrower or larger sphere, a point of remarkable significance. On the
one hand, we may take our stand upon it, and look back, through its medium,
some of the institutions and feelings most peculiar to the apostolic age. We see the
most sacred ordinance of the Christian religion as it was celebrated by those in whose
minds the earthly and the heavenly, the social and the religious aspect of life, were
indistinguishably blended. We see the banquet spread in the late evening, after the
sun had set behind the western ridge of the hills of Achaia: we see the many
torches blazing, as at Troas, to light up the darkness of the upper room, where, as
was their wont, the Christian community assembled; we see the conches laid and
the walls bung. after the manner of the East, as on the night of the betrayal;
we see the sacred loaf representing, in its compact unity, the harmony of the whole
scciety; we hear the blessing or thanksgiving on the cup responded to by the joint
'Amen,' such as even three centuries later is described as like a peal of thunder; we
witness the complete realisation, in outward form, of the apostle's words, suggested
doubtless by the sight of the meal and the sacrament blended thus together,
What-
'Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.'
↓
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STANLEY.]
131
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
soever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to
God and the Father by him.'
St. Paul's Manual Labour.
On the one hand, the scene of the tent-maker's trade at Corinth, where the few
hours of leisure, after the loug arguments in the synagogue and the market-place,
were consumed with Aquila and Priscilla in the uncongenial labour of weaving the
long goats' hair of his native hills into the sackcloth or the tent-cover, for the Greek
fisherman or wandering Arab. On the other hand, the dogged stupidity, or the im-
placable animosity of his adversaries, who were ready with their cold insinuations
to contrast, as they supposed, the enforced meanness and degradation of Paul of
Tarsus with the couscious dignity and calm repose of the apostles at Jerusalem, or
of those who claimed to be their legitimate representatives at Corinth.
Conversion of St. Augustine.
Augustine's youth had been one of reckless self-indulgence. He had plunged
into the worst sins of the heathen world in which he lived; he had adopted wild
opinions to justify those sins; and thus, though his parents were Christians, he
himself remained a heathen in his manner of life, though not without some strug-
gles of his better self and of God's grace against these evil habits. Often he strug-
gled and often he fell; but he had two advantages which again and again have saved
souls from ruin-advantages which no one who enjoys them (and how many of us
do enjoy them!) can prize too highly-he had a good mother and he had good
friends. He had a good mother who wept for him, and prayed for him, and
warned him, and gave him that advice which only a mother can give, forgotten
for the moment, but remembered afterwards. And he had good friends, who
watched every opportunity to encourage better thoughts, and to bring him to his bet-
ter self. In this state of struggle and failure he came to the city of Milan, where the
Christian community was ruled by a man of fame almost equal to that which he
himself afterwards won, the celebrated Ambrose. And now the crisis of his life was
come, and it shall be described in his own words. He was sitting with his friend,
bis whole soul was shaken with the violence of his inward conflict-the conflict
of breaking away from his evil habits, from his evil associates, to a life which
seemed to him poor, and profitless, aud burdensome. Silently the two friends sat
together, and at last, says Augustine: When deep reflection had brought together
and heaped up all my misery in the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm of
grief, bringing a mighty shower of tears.' He left his friend, that he might weep in
solitude; he threw himself down under a fig-tree in the garden (the spot is still point-
ed out in Milan), and he cried in the bitterness of his spirit: How long ? how long?
--to-morrow? to-morrow? Why not now ?-why is there not this hour an end to
my uncleanness? So was I speaking and weeping in the contrition of my heart,'
he says, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice as of a child, chant-
ing and oft repeating, "Take up and read, take up and read." Instantly my counte-
uance altered; I began to think whether children were wont in play to sing such
words, nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So, checking my tears, I
rose, taking it to be a command from God to open the book and read the first chap-
ter I should find.' There lay the volume of St. Paul's Epistles, which he had just
begun to study. 'I seized it,' he says, 'I opened it, and in silence I read that passage
on which my eyes first fell. "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering
and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lust thereof." No further could I read,
nor needed I; for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a serene light infused into
my soul, all the darkuess of doubt vanished away.'
>
¿
↓
·
We need not follow the story further. We know how he broke off all his evil
courses; how his mother's heart was rejoiced; how he was baptised by the great
Ambrose; how the old tradition describes their singing together, as he came up from
the baptismal waters, the alternate verses of the bymu called from its opening words
Te Deum Laudamus. We know how the profligate African youth was thus trans-
formed into the most illustrious saint of the Western Church, how he lived long as
the light of his own generation, and how his works have been cherished and read by
good men, perhaps more extensively than those of any Christian teacher since the
$
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
Apostles. It is a story instructive in many ways. It is an example, like the conver-
sion of St. Paul, of the fact that from time to time God calls His servants not by
gradual, but by sudden changes.
The Last Encampment.*
Our last Sunday in Syria has arrived, and it has been enhanced to us this morning
by the sight of those venerable trees which seemed to the Psalmist and the Prophets
of old one of the chief glories and wonders of the creation. Two main ideas were
conveyed to the minds of those who then saw them, which we may still bear away
with us.
One is that of their greatness, breadth, solidity, vastness. "The righteous,' says
the Psalmist. 'shall flourish like a palm-trec.' That is one part of our life; to be up-
right, graceful, gentle, like that most beautiful of oriental trees. But there is another
quality added-le shall spread abroad like a cedar in Libanus.' That is, his
character shall be sturdy, solid, broad; he shall protect others as well as himself; he
shall support the branches of the weaker trees around him; he shall cover a
vast surface of the earth with his shadow; he shall grow, and spread, and endure;
he and his works shall make the place where he was planted memorable for future
times.
The second feeling is the value of reverence. It was reverence for these great
trees which caused them to be employed for the sacred service of Solomon's Temple,
and which has insured their preservation for so long. It was reverence for Almighty
God that caused these trees, and these only. to be brought down from this remote
situation to be employed for the Temple of old. Reverence, we may be sure, whether
to God or to the great things which God has made in the world, is one of the quali-
ties most needful for every human being, if he ineans to pass through life in a man-
ner worthy of the place which God has given him in the world.
But the sight of the Cedars, and our encampment here, recall to us that this is the
close of a manner of life which in many respects calls to mind that of the ancient
Israelites, as we read it in the Lessons of this and of last Sunday, in the Book of
Numbers and of Deuteronomy, Iow goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy taber-
nacles, O Israel'—so unlike our common life, so suggestive of thoughts which can
hardly come to us again. It brings us back, even with all the luxuries which sur-
round us, to something of the freshness, and rudeness, and simplicity of primitive
life, which it is good for us all to feel at one time or other. It reminds us, though in
a figure, of the uncertainty and instability of human existence, so often compared
to the pitching and striking of a tent. The spots on which, day after day for the
last six weeks, we have been encamped have again become a desolate open waste-
'the spirit of the desert stalks in,' and their place will be known no more. How like
the way in which happy homes rise, and sink, and vanish, and are lost. Only the
great Rock or Tree of Life under which they have been pitched remains on from
generation to generation.
May I take this occasion of speaking of the importance of this oue solemn ordi-
nauce of religion, never to be forgotten. wherever we are-morning and evening
prayer? It is the best means of reminding ourselves of the presence of God. To
place ourselves in his hands before we go forth on our journey, on our pleasure, on
our work-to commit ourselves again to Him before we retire to rest; this is the best
security for keeping up our faith and trust in Him in whom we all profess to believe,
whom we all expect to meet after we leave this world. It is also the best security
for our leading a good and a happy life. It has been well said twice over by the
most powerful delineator of human character (with one exception) ever produced by
our country, that prayer to the Almighty searcher of hearts is the best check to mur-
murs against Providence, or to the inroad of worldly passions, because nothing else
brings before us so strongly their inconsistency and unreasonableness. We shall
find it twice as difficult to fall into sin if we have prayed against it that very morn-
ing, or if we thank God for having kept it from us that very evening. It is the best
means of gaining strength and refreslimeut, and courage and self-denial for the day.
From a sermon preached in the encampment at Ehden, beneath the Mountain of the
Cedars. May 11, 1862, during Dean Stanley's tour in the East with H. R. H. the Prince
of Wales.
་
1
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1
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MAURICE.]
133
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
It is the best means of gaining content, and tranquillity, and rest for the night; for it
brings us, as nothing else can bring us, into the presence of Him who is the source
of all these things, and who gives them freely to those who truly and sincerely ask
for them.
PROFESSOR MAURICE.
In metaphysics and theology, and in practical efforts for the
education of the working-classes, the REV. JOHN FREDERICK DENI-
SON MAURICE (1805-1872) was strikingly conspicuous. He was the
son of a Unitarian minister, and educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
He declined a Fellowship, not being able to declare himself a mem-
ber of the Church of England; but he afterwards entered the church,
and became chaplain of Lincoln's Inn and Professor of Divinity in
King's College, London. In consequence of what were considered
heterodox opinions, Mr. Maurice had to vacate his professorial chair,
but without forfeiting his popularity. His views on the question of
the atonement and the duration of future punishments lost him the
Professorship of Theology. Among the works of this author are-
Lectures delivered at Queen's College, London,' published in 1849;
The Religions of the World and their Relations to Christianity,
being the Boyle Lecture Sermons, 1846-47: Moral and Metaphysical
Philosophy,' reprinted from the Encyclopædia Metropolitana,' three
volumes 1850-56 (characterised by Mr. Thomas Hughes as 'a mine
of learning made living and human, and of original thought made
useful for the humblest student, such as no other living man had
produced'); Christian Socialism,' tracts and lectures by Maurice,
Kingsley, and others, 1851; The Prophets and Kings of the Old
Testament,' 1853; The Word Eternal" and the Punishment of
the Wicked,' a pamphlet, 1853; Lectures on Ecclesiastical History,'
and The Doctrine of Sacrifice,' 1854; Learning and Working.'
six lectures, and The Religion of Rome,' four lectures, 185;
Administrative Reform,' a pamphlet, 1855; Plan of a Female
College,' 1855; with Theological Essays,' and several volumes of
Sermons.' Maurice, like his friend Kingsley, had a high standard
·
•
•
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•
of duty and patriotism:
The action in the heathen world,' he said, which has always in-
spired most of admiration in true minds, is the death of the three
hundred Spartans who guarded the pass of Thermopylæ against the
army of Xerxes (480 B.C.); and it was recorded on the graves of
these three hundred, that they died in obedience to the laws of their
country. They felt that it was their business to be there; that was
all. They did not choose the post for themselves; they only did not
desert the post which it behoved them to occupy. Our countrymen
heartily respond to the doctrine. The notion of dying for glory is
an altogether feeble one for them. They had rather stay by their
comfortable and uncomfortable firesides, than suffer for what seems
to them a fiction. But the words, "England expects every man to
do his duty," are felt to be true and not fictitious words. There is
<
(
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134
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
power in them. The soldier or sailor who hears them ringing through
his heart will meet a charge, or go down in his ship, without dream-
ing that he shall ever be spoken of or remembered, except by a
mother, or a child, or an old friend. So it is in private experience.
Women are fond of sacrificing their lives, not under a sudden im-
pulse of feeling, but through a lo..g course of years, to their children
and their husbands, who often requite them very ill; whose words
are surly, who spend what affection they have on other objects.
The silent devotion goes on; only one here and there knows any-
thing of it; it is quite as likely that the world in general spends its
compassion upon those to whom they are ministering; none count
their ministries so entirely matters of course as themselves.'
BISHOP BLOMFIELD-REV. C. HARDWICK, ETC.
6
+
The scholarship of Cambridge was well supported by the late
Bishop of London, DR. CHARLES JAMES BLOMFIELD (1786-1857), a
native of Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, where his father was a
schoolmaster. Having distinguished himself at Trinity College,
Cambridge (of which he was elected Fellow), Dr. Blomfield evinced
his philological and critical attainments by his editions of Eschylus
and Callimachus (1810-1824), and by his editing the Adversaria
Porsoni.' In 1828 he compiled a Greek Grammar for schools. He
was author also of Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles' and of
numerous sermons and charges. His efforts to increase the number
of churches were most meritorious and highly successful. He began
this pious labour when Bishop of Chester, and continued it in London
with such energy, that during the time he held the see more churches
were erected than had been built by any other bishop since the Re-
formation. In 1856 Dr. Blomfield resigned his bishopric, but was
allowed to retain for life his palace at Fulham, with a pension of
£6000 a year.
A Memoir of the prelate was published by his son in
1863.
،
The REV. CHARLES HARDWICK, of St. Catharine's Hall, has writ-
ten a History of the Thirty-nine Articles,' 1851; a valuable His-
tory of the Christian Church,' 1853; and 'Sermons,' 1853.—The REV.
WILLIAM GOODE, Rector of Allhallows, London, has been a vigor
ous opponent of the Oxford Tractarians, and author of other theolo
gical works- The Gifts of the Spirit,' 1834; 'The Established
Church,' 1834; 'The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice,' 1842; &c.
+
REV. W. J. CONYBEARE-DEAN HOWSON.
A complete guide to the knowledge of St. Paul's life and writings
has been furnished by the large work- The Life and Epistles of St.
Paul,' by the REV. W. J. CONYBEARE, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge, and the REV. J. S. HowsoN, two volumes
quarto, 1852. The purpose of this work is described to be to give
a living picture of St. Paul himself, and of the circumstances by
CONY CEARE.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
135
which he was surrounded.' The biography of the apostle must be
compiled from two sources-his own letters and the narrative in the
Acts. Mr. Conybeare translates the epistles and speeches of the apos-
tle; and his coadjutor, Mr. Howson, contributes the narrative, arche-
ological, and geographical portions. The difficulties of the task are
thus stated by Mr. Conybeare:
The Varied Life of St. Paul.
C
6
•
To comprehend the influences under which he grew to manhood, we must realise
the position of a Jewish family in Tarsus, the chief city of Cilicia;' we must under-
stand the kind of education which the son of such a faniily would receive as a boy in
his Hebrew home, or in the schools of his native city, and in his riper youth at the
feet of Gamaliel' in Jerusalem; we must be acquainted with the profession for which
he was to be prepared by this training, and appreciate the station and duties of an ex-
pounder of the law. And that we may be fully qualified to do all this, we should
have a clear view of the state of the Roman empire at the time, and especially of its
system in the provinces; we should also understand the political position of the Jews
of the dispersion: we should be, so to speak. hearers in their synagogues—we should
be students of their rabbinical theology. And in like manner. as we follow the apostle,
in the different stages of his varied and adventurous career, we must strive continu-
ally to bring out in their true brightness the half-effaced forms and colouring of the
scene in which he acts; and while he becomes all things to all men, that he might by
all means save some,' we must form to ourselves a living likeness of the things and
of the men among whom he moved, if we would rightly estimate his work. Thus we
must study Christianity rising in the midst of Judaism; we must realise the position
of its early churches with their mixed society, to which Jews, proselytes, and heath-
ens had each contributed a characteristic element; we must qualify ourselves to be
umpires. if we may so speak, in their violent internal divisions; we must listen to
the strifes of their schismatic parties, when one said. I am of Paul-and another, I
am of Apollos;' we must study the true character of those early heresies which even
denied the resurrection, and advocated impurity and lawlessness, claiming the right to
sin that grace might abound,' defiling the mind and conscience' of their followers,
and making them abominable and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate ;'
we must trace the extent to which Greek philosophy, Judaising formalism, and East-
eru superstition blended their tainting influence with the pure fermentation of the
new leaven which was at last to leaven the whole mass of civilised society.
6
6
ܐ
To this formidable list of requirements must be added some know-
ledge of the various countries and places visited by Paul; and as re-
lating to the wide range of illustration, Mr. Howson mentions a cir-
cumstance connected with our naval hero Nelson. In the account
of the apostle's voyage to Italy, when overtaken by the storm (Acts
xxvii.), it is mentioned that the ship was anchored by the stern; Mr.
Howson cites some cases in which this has been done in modern
times, adding: There is still greater interest in quoting the instance
of Copenhagen, not only from the accounts we have of the precision
with which each ship let go her anchors astern as she arrived nearly
opposite her appointed station, but because it is said that Nelson
stated after the battle, that he had that morning been reading the
twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.'
The Martyrdom of Paul.
As the martyr and his executioners passed on, their way was crowded with a mot-
ley multitude of goers and comers between the metropolis and its harbour-mer-
chants hastening to superintend the unloading of their cargoes-sailors cager to
136
ITO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
squander the profits of their last voyage in the dissip..tous of the capital-officials of
the goverument, charged with the administration of the provinces, or the command
of the legions on the Euphrates or the Rhine-Chaldean astrologers-Phr in
eunuchs dancing-girls from Syria, with their painted turbans-mendicant priests
from Egypt howling for Osiris-Greek adventurers, eager to coin their national cun-
ning into Romau gold-representatives of the avarice and ambition, the frand and
lust, the superstition and intelligence, of the imperial world. Through the dust and
tumult of that busy throng, the small troop of soldiers threaded their way silently,
under the bright sky of an Italian midsummer. They were marching, though they
knew it not, in a procession more truly triumphal than any they had ever followed,
in the train of general or emperor, along the Sacred Way. Their prisoner, now at
last and for ever delivered from his captivity, rejoiced to follow his Lord without the
gate.' The place of execution was not far distant; and there the sword of the
headsman ended his long course of sufferings, and released that heroic soul from
that feeble body. Weeping friends took up his corpse, and carried it for burial to
those subterranean labyrinths, where, through many ages of oppression, the persecu-
ted church found refuge for the living and sepulchrès for the dead.
Thus died the apostle, the prophet, and the martyr; bequeathing to the church,
in her government and her discipline, the legacy of his apostolic labours; leaving his
prophetic words to be her living oracles; pouring forth his blood to be the seed of a
thousand martyrdoms. Thenceforth, among the glorious company of the apostles,
among the goodly fellowship of the prophets, among the uoble army of martyrs, his
name has stood pre-eminent. And wheresoever the holy church throughout all the
world doth acknowledge God, there Paul of Tarsus is revered, as the great teacher of
a universal redemption and a catholic religion-the herald of glad tidings to all man-
kind.
(
6
Mr. Conybeare, in 1855, published a volume of Essays Ecclesi-
astical and Social,' reprinted with additions from the Edinburgh
Review.' In these he treats of the Mormons, the Welsh Clergy,
Church Parties, Temperance, &c. His views on church parties and
on the different phases of infidelity are further displayed in a novel
-'Perversion,' three volumes, 1856-a very interesting and clever
tale of the times.' The ingenious author died prematurely in 1857.
The father of Dr. Conybeare, WILLIAM DANIEL CONYBEARE, Dean
of Llandaff (1787-1857), was one of the earliest promoters of the Geo-
logical Society, and a frequent and distinguished contributor to its
published Transactions. IIis papers on the Coal-fields were highly
valuable; and he was the discoverer of the Plesiosaurus, that strange
antediluvian animal, the most singular and the most anomalous in its
structure, according to Cuvier, that had been discovered amid the
ruins of former worlds. To the Bampton Lectures the Dean was also
a contributor, having written a work On the Fathers during the
Ante-Nicene Period, 1839; with a series of Theological Lectures,'
1834.
(
(
(
DEAN HOWSON, associated with the Rev. W. J. Conybeare in the
valuable work on St. Paul, was born in 1816, educated at Trinity
College, Cambridge, became Principal of the Collegiate Institution,
Liverpool, in 1849, and Dean of Chester in 1867.
DEAN ALFORD.
The REV. DR. HENRY ALFORD, of Trinity, Vicar of Wimeswould,
Leicestershire, like Dr. Trench, commenced author as a poet--
'Poems and Poetical Fragments,' 1831; The School of the Heart,'
↓
ܕ
ALFORD.]
137
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
1835; &c.-but his Hulsean Lectures, 1841, his various collections
of Sermons,' Greek Testament,' with notes, &c., gave him a reputa-
tion as a divine and a scholar. Dr. Alford was a contributor to va-
rious periodicals, and was cut off suddenly in the midst of a busy
and useful life. This excellent divine was a native of London, born
in 1810, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; from 1841 to
1857 he acted as Examiner in Logic and Moral Philosophy in the uni-
versity of London; and in 1857 was appointed by Lord Palmerston
to the deanery of Canterbury. He died January 12, 1871.
Dean Alford is believed to have had considerable effect, though
indirectly, on the textual criticism of the country. According to
Bishop Ellicott, his present and future fame both is and will be con-
nected with his notes and exegesis. 'Here the fine qualities of his
mind, his quickness, keenness of perception, interpretative instinct,
lucidity, and singular fairness, exhibit themselves to the greatest pos-
sible advantage. Rarely, if ever, does he fail to place before the
reader the exact difficulties of the case, and the true worth of the
different principles of interpretation.'
6
(
The Prince Consort's Public Life.
He came to us in 1840 fresh from a liberal education; and in becoming one of us.
and that in an undefined and exceedingly difficult position, he determined to bend
the great powers of his mind, and to use the influence of his exalted station to do us
good. The early days of his residence among us were cast upon troubled times-
the gloomy years between 1840-1848. First, before we speak directly of his great
national work, deserves mention the high example of that royal household, whose
unstained purity, and ever cautious and punctual propriety in all civil and Christian
duties, has been to this people a greater source of blessing thn we can appreciate.
At last the hour of trial came, and the eventful year 1848, which overturned so
many thrones, passed powerless over our favoured land. Our royal house was be-
yond danger, for its foundations rested in the hearts and prayers of the people.
And now a period of calm succeeded, during which our Prince's designs for the good
of our people found scope and time to unfold themselves.
The Great Exhibition of 1851, the effects of which for good have been so many
and so universally acknowledged, is believed to have been his own conception; and
the plan of it, though filled in by many able hands, was sketched out by himself,
and constantly presided over and brought to maturity by his unwearied care. The
event of that year opened to us views with regard to the intercourse and interde-
pendence of foreign nations and ourselves. unknown to English minds before,
and suggested to us improvements which have shewn new paths of industry
and advancement to thonsânds of families among us. To him we owe, as a direct
consequence of this his plau, our schools of design, which have called out so many
a dormant mind, and brought blessing and competence to so many a household in
the lower ranks of life. Of one great society, the Society for the Encouragement
of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce,' he was to the last the active and indefatiga-
ble president.
Only a week before his death, he determined an important point connected with
the building designed for the Exhibition. Besides these efforts, you will all re-
member the interest which he took in our agricultural progress, and in a matter of
more vital import to our national wellbeing-the better construction, for decency and
comfort, of the cottages of the labouring classes. He has left us his views to be
carried out, his schemes to be completed, his example to be followed. Each citizen,
each head of a family, ought long to remember, and will long remember, the lessons
of his life; we shall not go back again from the higher level to which he has raised
us, but shall, I am persuaded, go on in the same course, with more carnest endeavour,
128
fro 1876.
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CYCLOPÆDIA OF
with more scrupulous anxiety, because to all other motives is added that of not
doing dishonour to his memory, nor violence to what were his own wishes.
Toll out thy towers, toll on, thou old Cathedral,
Filling the ambient air with softest pulses of sorrow;
Toll out a nation's grief, dole for the wail of the people.
Bursting hearts have played with words in the wildness of anguish,
Gathered the bitter herbs that grow in the valley of morning,
Turned the darksome flowers in wreaths for the wept, the lost one.
Toll for the tale that is told, but for the tale left untold;
Toll for the unreturning, but toll tenfold for the mourning;
Toll for the Prince that is gone, but more for the house that is widowed.
Recognition after Death.
With respect to the subject which furnished us mutter for two or three conversa-
tions-the probability of meeting and recognising friends in heaven-I thought a
good deal, and searched Scripture yesterday. The passage, 1 Thess. iv, 13-18, ap-
pears to me almost decisive. Tennyson says:
To search the secret is beyond our lore,
And man must rest till God doth furnish more.
Certainly if there has been one hope which has borne the nearts of Christians up
more than another in trials and separations, it is this. It has in all ages been one of
the loveliest in the checkered prospect of the future, uor has it been confined to
Christians; I mean the idea. You will excuse me, nay, you will thar k me, I know,
for transcribing an exquisite passage from Cicero's treatise on Old Agc.
follows: O glorious day when I shall go to that divine assembly and company of
'Old Age. It is as
spirits, and when I shall depart out of this bustle, this sink of corruption; for I shall
go not only to those great men of whom I have before spoken, but also to my dear
Cato [his son], than whom there never was a better man, or one more excellent in
filial affection, whose funeral rites were performed by me, when the contrary was
natural-namely, that mine should be performed by him. IIis soul not desiring me,
but looking back on me, has departed into those regions where he saw that I myself
must come; and I seem to bear firmly my affliction, not because I did not grieve for
it, but I comforted myself, thinking that the separation and parting between us would
not be for long duration.' The passage from Cicero is considered one of the finest,
if not the finest passage in all the heathen authors. It certainly is very fine; but
now, when you have admired it enough, turn to 2 Tim. iv. 6-8, and compare the
two. Blessed be IIe indeed who has given us such a certainty of hope!
The Household of a Christian.-From Quebec Chapel Sermons.'
The houschold is not an accident of nature, but an ordinance of God. Even na-
ture's processes, could we penetrate their secrets, figure forth spiritual truths; and
her Lighest and noblest arrangements are but the representations of the most glori-
ous of those truths. That very state out of which the household springs, is one, as
Scripture and the Church declare to us, not to be taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly,
or wantouly, seeing that it sets forth and represents to us the relation between Christ
and his Church. The household is a representation, on a small scale, as regards
numbers, but not as regards the interests concerned, of the great family in heaven
and earth. Its whole relations and mutual duties are but reflections of those which
subsist between the Redeemer and the people for whom He hath given Himself. The
household, then, is not an institution whose duties spring from beneath-from the
necessities of circumstances merely; but it is an appointment of God, whose laws
are His laws, and whose members owe direct account to Ilim. The father of a house-
hold stands most immediately in God's place. His is the post of greatest responsi-
bility, of greatest influence for good or for evil. His it is, in the last resort, to fix
and determine the character which his household shall bear. According as he is good
or bad, godly or ungodly, selfish or self-denying, so will for the most part the com-
plexion of the household be also. As he values that which is good, not in his profes-
sions, for which no one cares, but in his practice, which all observe, so will it most
ALFORD.]
139
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
likely be valued also by his family as they grow up and are planted out in the world.
Of all the influences which can be brought to bear on man, paterual influence may be
made the strongest and most salutary; and whether so made or not. is ever of im-
mense weight one way or the other For remember, that paternal influence is not
that which the father tries to exert merely, but that which ia matter of fact he does
exert. That superior life, ever moving in advance of the young and observing and
imitative life of all of us, that source from which all cur first ideas came, that
voice which sounded deeper into our hearts than all other voices, day by day,
year by year, through all our tender and plastic childhood, will all through
life, almost in spite of ourselves, still keep in advance of us, still continue to
sound: no other example will ever take so firm hold. no other superiority be
ever so vividly and constantly felt. And again remember, this example goes for
what it is really worth. Words do not set it-religious phrases do not give it its life
and power-it is not a thing of display and effort, but of inner realities, and recurring
acts and habits. It is not the raving of the wind around the precip ce-not the
sunrise and sunset, clothing it with golden glory-which moulded it and gave it its
worn and rounded form: but the unmarked dropping of the silent waters. the
And so it will be,
melting of the yearly snows, the gushing of the inner springs.
not that which the outward eye sees in him. uot that which men repute him, not
public praise, nor public blame, that will enhance or undo a father's influence
in his household; but that which he really is in the hearts of his family: that which
they know of him iu private: the worth to which they can te-tity. but which the
outer world never saw; the affections which flow in secret, of which they know the
depth, but others only the surface. And so it will be likewise with a father's
He way
religion. None so keen to see into a man's religion as his own household
deceive others without; he may deceive himself: he can hardly long succeed in dè-
ceiving them. If religion with him be merely a thing put on an elaborate series of
outward duties, attended to for expediency's sake-something fitting his children, but
not equally fitting him: oh, none will so soon and so thoroughly learn to appreciate
this, as those children themselves: there is not a y fact which, when discovered, will
have so baneful an effect on their young lives, as such an appreciation. No amount
of external devotion will ever counterbalance it: no use of religious phraseology,
nor converse with religious people without. But if, on the other hand, his religion
is really a thing in his heart: if he moves about day by day as seeing One invisible:
if the love of Christ is really warming the springs of his inner life, then, however
inadequately this is shewn iù matter or in manner, it will be sure to be known and
thoroughly appreciated by those who are ever living their lives around him.
DR. ROWLAND WILLIAMS.
This eminent Welsh scholar and divine was a native of Flint-
shire, Wales, born in 1817. He was educated at Eton and at King's
College, Cambridge, in which he was distinguished as a classical
scholar. He was elected to a Fellowship of his college, and was clas-
sical tutor in it for eight years-from 1842 to 1850. He then removed
to St. David's College, Lampeter, in which he became Vice-principal
and Professor of Hebrew, was appointed chaplain to the Bishop of
Llandaff in 1850, and select preacher to the university of Cambridge
in 1855. In the latter year he published a volume of his sermons.
under the title of Rational Godliness after the Mind of Christ and
the written Voices of his Church.' His views on the subject of in-
spiration were considered unorthodox, and led him into controversy,
ultimately causing his withdrawal from Lampeter, where he had
lived twelve years, greatly benefiting the college there, and discharg
ing his duties as parish minister with exemplary diligence and popu-
lar acceptance. In 1860 appeared tlie volume entitled Essays and
(
140
[10 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Reviews; Dr. Williams was one of the writers, contributing an arti-
cle on Bunsen's Biblical Researches,' for which he was prosecuted
in the Court of Arches, and sentenced to a year's suspension. The
Privy Council, however, reversed the decision, and Dr. Williams con-
tinued his pastoral labours and studies until his death in 1870. Ile
died at a vicarage he held near Salisbury, but his friends in Wales
sent flowers from the land of his birth to be laid on his coffin. The
works of Dr. Williams are numerous. The best is his Hinduism
and Christianity Compared,' 1856; a learned and able treatise. He
was engaged in his latter years on a more elaborate work, part of
which was published in 1866 under the title of The Prophets of Israel
and Judah during the Assyrian Empire.' A second volume was
published after his death, entitled The IIebrew Prophets, translated
afresh from the Original,' 1872. He also wrote various essays on the
Welsh Church, Welsh Bards, and Anglo-Saxon Antiquities. He was
a various as well as a profound scholar, but chiefly excelled in He-
brew and in his ancient native tongue, the Cymric or Welsh. The
'Life and Letters of Dr. Williams' were published by his widow, two
volumes, 1874; and Mrs. Williams claims for her husband having
done good service by advocating an open Bible and free reverential
criticism, and by maintaining these to be consistent with the stand-
ards of the English Church. He helped much to vindicate for the
Anglican Establishment the wide boundary which he, Dean Stanley,
and others considered to be her lawful inheritance.
(
•
64
'Dean Milman,' he says, once wrote to me, that what the world
wants is a kee.er perception of the poctical character of parts, espe-
cially the earlier parts of the Bible. This work," he added, "will
be done slowly, but, in my opinion, surely." In other words, what
the world seems to me to want, is a perception that the religion with
which the Bible, as a whole, impresses us, is a true religion; but that
in its associations, accidents, and personal shortcomings, it has had
no supernatural exemption from those incidents of human nature
which we find in the transmission of our moral sentiments in gene-
ral, strengthened as these are by historical examples, but having a
fresh germ in ourselves, and yet needing a constant glance heaven-
ward, a tone of mind compounded of prayer and of resolve, in order
to keep them sound, and free from all warping influences. Again,
to vary the expression, the great object to be set always before our
consciences is, the Father of our spirits," the Eternal Being; and it
is an infinite aid to have the records of words and deeds of men who
have lived in a like spiritual faith, and who can kindle us afresh.'
REV. FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON,
The Rev. F. W. ROBERTSON of Brighton (1816-1853) was a clergy-
man of the Church of England whose life was devoted to the intel-
lectual and spiritual improvement of the working-classes, and whose
writings have enjoyed a degree of popularity rarely extended to ser-
ROBERTSON.]
141
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
mons and theological treatises. He was a native of London, son of
an officer, Captain Robertson, R. A. He was educated at Edinburgh
and Oxford, taking his degree of MA. at Brasenose College in
1844. Having entered the Church, he was successively curate at
Winchester and Cheltenham, and incumbent of Trinity Chapel,
Brighton. At the latter he continued six years till his death. In
1848 he assisted in establishing a working-man's Institute, and his
address on this occasion, which was afterwards published, attracted,
as he said, more notice than it deserved or he had expected: it was
read by Her Majesty, distributed by nobles and Quakers, sneered at
by Conservatives, praised by Tories, slanged by Radicals, and swal-
lowed, with wry faces, by Chartists!' Within six months, it was
said Mr. Robertson had put himself at variance with the whole accre-
dited theological world of Brighton on the questions of the Sabbath,
the Atonement, Inspiration, and Baptism! His talents, sincerity,
and saint-like character were, however, acknowledged by all parties,
and his death was mourned as a public calamity.
calamity. His funeral was
attended by more than two thousand persons. Four volumes of Mr.
Robertson's Sermons' have been published; also his Life and Let-
ters,' two volumes, by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. Robertson's
Sermons have gone through numerous large editions both in Eng-
iaud and America.
<
<
•
,
Christian Energy.
'Let us be going' There were two ways open to Christ in which to submit to
his doom. IIễ might have waited for it: instead of which He went to meet the sol-
diers. He took up the cross. the cup of anguish was not forced between his lips. He
took it with his own hands and drained it quickly to the last drop. In after years
the disciples understood the lesson, and acted on it. They did not wait till perse-
cution overtook them; they braved the Sanhedrim, they fronted the world, they pro-
claimed aloud the unpopular and unpalatable doctrines of the Resurrection and the
Cross Now in this there lies a principle. Under no conceivable set of circum-
stances are we justified in sitting
By the poisoned springs of life.
Waiting for the niorrow which shall free us from the strife.
Under no circumstances, whether of pain, or grief. or disappointment, or irrepara-
ble mistake, cau it be true that there is not something to be done, as well as some-
thing to be suffered And thus it is that the spirit of Christianity draws over our life,
not a leaden el ud of remorse and despondency, but a sky-not perhaps of radiant,
but yet of most serene and chastened and manly hope. There is à past which is gone
for ever, but there is a future which is still our own.
The Bible.
It is the universal applicability of Scripture which has made the influence of the
Eible universal. This book has spell-bound the hearts of nations in a way in which
no single book has ever held men before. Remember too, in order to enhance the
marvellousness of this, that the nation from which it emanated was a despised peo-
ple. For the last eighteen hundred years, the Jews have been proverbially a by-
word and a reproach. But that contempt for Israel is nothing new to the world, for
before even the Roman despised them, the Assyrian and Egyptian regarded them
with scorn. Yet the words which came from Israel's prophets have been the life-
blood of the world's devotions. And the teachers, the psalmists, the prophets, and
112
(TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
the law-givers of this despised nation spoke out truths that have struck the key-note
of the heart of man; and this, not because they were of Jewish, but because they
were of universal application.
This collection of books has been to the world what no other book has ever been
to a nation. States have been founded on its principles. Kings rule by a compact
based on it. Men hold the Bible in their hands when they prepare to give solemn
evidence affecting life, death, or property; the sick man is almost afraid to die unless
the Book be within reach of his hands; the battle-ship goes into action with one on
board whose office it is to expound it; its prayers, its psalms are the language which
we use when we speak to God: eighteen centuries have found no holier, no diviner
language. If ever there has been a prayer or a hymn enshrined in the heart of a na-
tion, you are sure to find its basis in the Bible. The very translation of it has fixed
language and settled the idioms of speech. Germany and England speak as they
speak because the Bible was translated. It has made the most illiterate peasant
more familiar with the history, customs, and geography of ancient Palestine than
with the localities of his own country. Men who know nothing of the Grampians,
of Snowdon. or of Skiddaw, are at home in Zion, the lake of Gennesareth, or
among the rills of Carmel. People who know little about Loudon, know by heart
the places in Jerusalem where those blessed feet trod which were nailed to the
Cross. Men who know nothing of the architecture of a Christian cathedral can yet
tell you about the pattern of the holy Temple. Even this shews us the influence of
the Bible. The orator holds a thousand men for half an hour breathless-a thou-
sand men as one. listening to a single word. But the Word of God has held a
thousand nations for thrice a thousand years spell-bound; held them by an abiding
power, even the universality of its truth; and we feel it to be no more a collection of
books, but the Book.
The Smiles and Tears of Life.
The sorrows of the past stand out most vividly in our recollections, because they
are the keenest of our sensations. At the end of a long existence we should proba-
bly describe it thus Few and coil have the days of the years of thy servant been. But
the innumerable infinitesimals of happiness that from moment to moment made life
sweet and pleasant are forgotten, and very richly has our Father mixed the mate-
rials of these with the homeliest actions and domesticities of existence. See two men
meeting together in the streets, mere acquaintances. They will not be five minutes
together before a sinile will overspread their countenances, or a merry langh ring off
at the lowest amusement. This has God done. God created the smile and the laugh.
as well as the sigh and the tear. The aspect of this life is steru, very stern. It is a
very superficial account of it which slurs over its grave mystery, and refuses to hear
its low deep undertone of anguish. But there is enough, from hour to hour, of
bright sunuy happiness, to remind us that its Creator's highest name is Love.
REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
The biographer of Mr. Robertson is himself a popular preacher and
author. The REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A., incumbent of
Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury, was sometime preacher in St. James's
- Chapel, York Street; and three volumes of Sermons' (first, second,
and third series) delivered in York Street, have been published. Mr.
Brooke is author also of Freedom in the Church of England,' six
sermons suggested by the Voysey judgment, which were held to con-
tain a fair statement of the views in respect to freedom of thought
entertained by the liberal party in the Church of England. One
volume of Mr. Brooke's Sermons, entitled Christ in Modern Life,'
is now (1876) in its ninth edition. He has also published Theology
in the English Poets, Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Burns;'
the Life and Work of Frederick Denison Maurice,' a memorial ser.
A
¿
•
BROOKE.
143
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
mon; and a little manual on English Literature,' forming one of a
series of primers edited by Mr. J. R. Green. The last sentence in
this manual is suggestive:
(
(
Tennyson has always kept us close to the scenery, the traditions,
the daily life, and the History of England; and his last drama of
Queen Mary," 1875, is written almost exactly twelve hundred years
since the date of our first poem, Cadmon's Paraphrase. To think of
one and then of the other, and of the great and continuous stream of
literature that has flowed between them, is more than enough to make
us all proud of the name of Englishmen.'
The Creation (Genesis i, 1).
It was necessary that a spiritual revelation should be given in harmony with the
physical beliefs of the period; and when we demaud that the revealed writings
should be true to our physical knowledge in order that we should believe in inspira-
tion. we are asking that which would have made all those for whom the Bible was
originally written disbelieve at once in all it revealed to man. We ask too much:
that book was written on wiser principles. It left these questions aside; it spoke
in the language, and through the knowledge, of its time. It was content to reveal
spiritual truth; it left me to find out scientific truth for themselves. It is inspired
with regard to the first; it is not inspired with regard to the latter. It is inspired
with regard to universal principles; it is not inspired with regard to details of fact.
The proof that it is inspired with regard to principles is that those principles which
it lays down or implies are not isolated but universal principles. They are true of
national, social, political, intellectual, as well as of spiritual life, and above all, and
this is the point which I especially wish to urge, they are identical with scientific
principles. Let us test this in the case of this chapter.
The first principle to be inferred is that of the unit of God. One Divine Being is
represented as the sole cause of the universe. Now this is the only foundation of a
true religiou for humanity. Starting from the Semitic peoples, it has gradually made
its way over the whole of the Aryan family with the exception of the Hindus; and
even among them, and wherever else the worship of many gods exists, it is gradually
driving out polytheism and establishing itself as the necessary religion for humanity.
The next principle in this chapter is that all noble work is gradual. God is not
represented as creating everything in a moment. He spent six days at His work,
and then said it was very good. Now there is no principle more universal than this
-that in proportion to the nobility of anything, is it long in reaching its perfection.
The summer fly is born and dies in a few days; the more highly organised animal
has a long youth and a mature age. The inferior plant rises. blooms, and dies in a
year; the oak trausforms the storms and snushine of a century into the knotted
fibres of its stem. The less noble powers of the human mind mature first; the more
noble, such as imagination, comparison, abstract reasoning, demand the work of
years. The greatest ancient nation took the longest time to develop its iron power;
the securest political freedom in a nation did not advance by bounds, or by violent
revolutions, but in England broadened slowly down from precedent to precedent.'
The greatest modern society-the Church of Christ-grow as Christ prophesied,
from à beginuing as small as a grain of mustard-seed into a noble tree, and grows
now more slowly than any other society has ever grown-so slowly, that persons
who are not far-seeing say that it has failed. The same law is true of every indivi-
dual Christian life.
The next truth to be inferred from this chapter is that the universe was prepared
for the good and enjoyment of man. I cannot say that this is universal, for the stars
exist for themselves, and the sun for other planets than ours; and it is a poor thing
to say that the life of animals and plants is not for their own enjoyment as well as
ours! but so far as they regard us, it is a universal truth, and the Bible was written
for our learning. Therefore, in this chapter. the sun and stars are spoken of only
in their relation to us, and man is set as master over all creation.
144
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDÍA OF
The next principle is the interdependence of rest and work. The Sabbath is the
outward express on of God's recognition of this as a truth for man. It was com-
manded because it was necessary. The Sabbath was made for man,' said Christ.
And the same principle ought to be extended over our whole existence The life of
Christ, the type of the highest human life, was not all work. 'Come ye into the
wilderness. and rest awhile.' Toil and refreshment were woven together. But as in
this chapter there were six days of work to one of rest, so in His life, as it ought to
be in ours, labour was the rule, relaxation the exception.' Labour always precedent
rest; rest was only purchased by toil.
Lastly, there is one specially spiritual principle which glorifies this chapter, and
the import of which is universal, God made man in His own image.' It is th› di-
vinest revelation in the Old Testament. In it 's contained the reason of all that bas
ever been great in human nature or in human history. In it are contained all the
sorrows of the race as it looks back to its innocence, and all the hope of the
race as it aspires from the depths of its fall to the height of the imperial palace
whence it came. In it is contained all the joy of the race as it sees in Christ this
great first principle revealed again. In it are contained all the history of the human
heart. all the history of the human mind, all the history of the human conscience, all
the history of the human spirit. It is the foundation-stone of all written and unwrit-
ten poetry, of all metaphysics, of all ethics, of all religion.
These are the universal principles which are to be found in this chapter. And
this, we are told. is not inspiration; this is not the work of a higher spirit than the
spirit of defective and one-sided man. This illuminating constellation of all-embrac-
ing truths; stars which burn, eternal and unwavering, the guides and consolers of
men in the heaven which archies over our spiritual life; their light for ever quiet with
the conscious repose of truth, their seat the bosom of God, their voice the harmony
of the world'-to which, obedience being given, nations are great, souls are free, and
the race marches with triumphant music to its perfect destiny-this is not inspira-
tion! Brethren, it is inspiration.
BISHOP WILBERFORCE.
SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, D.D., Bishop of Winchester (1805-1872),
was the third son of the Christian philanthropist, William Wilber-
force. After his education at Oriel College, Oxford, Mr. Wilberforce
was ordained curate of Checkendon, Oxfordshire, and rose to be
Bishop of Oxford in 1845. In 1869 he was translated to the see of
Winchester. As a scholar, a prelate, and debater in the House of
Lords, of gracious manner and winning address, Bishop Wilberforce
was highly esteemed, and his accidental death by a fall from his horse
was deeply lamented. He published several volumes of 'Sermons
and Charges,' Agathos and other Sunday Stories,' 'History of the
Episcopal Church in America,' 'Hebrew IIeroes,' &c. Two volumes
of Essays' contributed by the bishop to the Quarterly Review',
were published in 1874.
<
C
،
The Reformation of the Church of England.
It bears the mark and impress of the intellectual or spiritual peculiarities of no
single man. Herein at once it is marked off from the Lutheran, the Calvinist. the
Zwinglian, and other smaller bodi s. Ou each one of them lay, as the shadow on the
sleeping water, the unbroken image of some master mind or imperial soul. The mind
of that founder of the new faith, his mode of thought and argument, his religious
principles, and his great defects, were reproduced in the body which he had formed,
and which by a natural instinct appropriated and handed on his name. And so it
might have been with us too, had fliere been amongst the English Reformners such a
leader. If Wycliffe-the great forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere fig-
ure stands out above the crowd of notables in English history-if Wycliffe had
¡ived a hundred and thirty years later than he did, his commanding intellect and
WILBERFORCE.]
145
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
character might then have stamped upon the religion of England the essential char-
acteristic of a sect. But from this the goodness of God preserved the Church of
this land. Like the birth of the beautiful islands of the great Pacific Ocean, the
foundations of the new convictions which were so greatly to modify and purify the
medieval faith were laid slowly, unseen, unsuspected by ten thousand souls, who la-
boured they knew not for what, save to accomplish the necessitics of their own spir-
itual belief. The mighty convulsion which suddenly cast up the submarine founda-
tions into peak, and mountain, and crevasse, aud lake, aud plain, came not from
man's devising, aud obeyed not man's rule. Influences of the heaven above, and of
the daily surrounding atmosphere, wrought their will upon the new-born islands.
Fresh convulsions changed, modified, and completed their shape, and so the new and
the old were blended together into a barn.ony which no skill of man could have devised.
The English Reformers did not attempt to develop a creed or a community out of
their own internal consciousness. Their highest aim was only to come back to what
had been before. They had not the gilts which created in others the ambition to be
the founders of a new system. They did not even set about their task with any fixed
plan or recognised set of doctrines. Their inconsistencies, their variations, their in-
fernal differences, their very retractations witness to the gradualuess with which the
new light dawned upon them, and dispelled the old darkness. The charges of hypoc-
risy and time-serving which have been made so wantonly against Cranmer and his
bethren are all honourably interpreted by the real changes which took place in their
own opinions. The patient, loving, accurate study of Holy Scripture was an emi-
nent characteristic of all these men. Thus the opinions they were receiving from
others who had advanced far before them in the new faith, were continually modified
by this continual voice of God's Word sounding in their ears, and by corresponding
changes in their own views. Thus they were enabled by God's grace, out of the
utter disintegration round them, to restore in its primitive proportions the ancient
Church of England.
BISHOP ELLICOTT.
<
DR. CHARLES JOHN ELLICOTT, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, a
distinguished Scripture commentator and divine, was born in 1819,
son of the Rev. Č. S. Ellicott, Rector of Whitwell, near Stamford,
Lincolnshire. He studied at St. John's College, Cambridge; ob-
tained the Hulsean prize in 1843* in 1858 was chosen to succeed
Dr. French as Professor of Divinity in King's College, London; in 1860
was elected Hulsean Professor of Divinity in Cambridge; in 1861 was
made Dean of Exeter; and in 1-63 was promoted to the see of Gloucester
and Bristol, Dr. Ellicott's first work was a Treatise on Analytical
Science,' 1842, which was followed by the Hulsean lecture on the
History and Obligation of the Sabbath,' 1844. His most important
work is a series of Critical and Grammatical Commentaries on St.
Paul's Epistles,' published separately (all of which have gone through
several editions), namely, Galatians,' Ephesians,' 'Philippians,'
'Colossians, Philemon,' Thessalonians;' also Pastoral Epistles.'
A volume of 'Historical Lectures on the Life of Our Lord' by the
bishop is now in its sixth edition; and he has also published Con-
siderations on the Revision of the Authorised Version of the New
Testament.' In the preface to his Lectures, Bishop Ellicott says:
•
C
I neither feel nor affect to feel the slightest sympathy with the so-
C
A
*The Rev. John Hulse of Elworth, in the county of Chester. by his will, bearing
date 1777. directed that the proceeds of certain estates should be given yearly to a dis-
sertator and a lecturer who should show the evidence for revealed religion, and de-
monstrate the truth and excellence of Christianity. The discourses were to be twenty
in number but the Court of Chancery in 18830 reduced the number to eight,
1
>
J
146
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[10 1876.
called popular theology of the present day, but I still trust that, in
the many places in which it has been almost necessarily called forth
in the present pages, no expression has been used towards sceptical
writings stronger than may have been positively required by allegi-
ance to catholic truth. Towards the honest and serious thinker who
may feel doubts or difficulties in some of the questions connected
with our Lord's life, all tenderness may justly be shewn.'
The Lectures do not aim at being a complete Life of our Saviour,
but go over the leading incidents-the birth and infancy, the Judean,
Eastern Galilee, and Northern Galilee ministries, the journeyings
towards Jerusalem, the Last Passover, and the Forty Days. Copious
notes from the great Greek commentators and German expositors are
given. The critical and grammatical commentaries on St. Paul's
Epistles are also copious and invaluable to students. A passage is
here subjoined from the "Historical Lectures.'
The Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem.
In the retirement of that mountain-hamlet of Bethany-a retirement soon to be
broken in upon-the Redeemer of the world may with reason be supposed to have
spent His last earthly Sabbath. There too, either in their own house or, as sceins
more probable, in the house of one who probably owed to our Lord his return to the
society of his fellow-men, did that loving household make a supper' for their Divi….e
Guest. Joyfully and thankfully did each one of that loving family instinctively do
that which might seem most to tend to the honour and glorification of Him whom
one of them had declared to be, and whom they all knew to be, the Son of God that
was to come into the world. So Martha serves; Lazarus it is specially noticed takes
his place at the table, the visible living proof of the omnipotence of his Lord; Mary
performs the tender office of a mournfully foreseeing love, that thonght nought 100
pure or too costly for its God-that tender office, which, though grudgingly rebuked
by Judas and, alas! others than Judas, who could not appreciate the depths of such
a devotion, nevertheless received a praise which it has been declared shall evermore
hold its place on the pages of the Pook of Life.
As
But that Sabbath soon passed away. Ere night came on, numbers even of those
who were seldom favourably disposed to our Lord, now came to see both Him and
the living monument of Ilis merciful onnipotence. The morrow probably brought
more of these half-curious, half-awed. yet, as it would now seem, in a great measure
believing visitants. The deep heart of the people was stirred, and the time was fully
come when ancient prophecy was to receive its fulfilment, and the daughter of Zion
was to welcome her King. Yea and in kingly state shall he come. Birt not only
by the smaller band of His own disciples but by the great and now hourly increasing
multitude, our Lord leaves the little wooded vale that had ministered to fim its Sab-
bath-day of seclusion and repose, and directs his way onward to Jerusalem.
yet, however, in but humble guise and as a pilgrim among pilgrims Ile traverses the
rough mount in-track which the modern traveller can even now somewhat hopefully
identify; every step bringing him nearer to the ridge of Olivet, and to that hamlet
or district of Bethphage, the exact site of which it is so hard to fix, but which was
separated perhaps ouly by some narrow valley from the road along which the pro-
cession was now wending its way. But the Son of David must not solemnly cuter
the city of David as a scarcely distinguishable wayfarer amid a mixed and wayfar-
ing throug. Prophecy must have its full and exact fulfilment; the King must ap-
proach the city of the King with some meek symbols of kingly majesty. With
haste, it would seem, two disciples are despatched to the village over against them,
to bring to Him who had need of it' the colt whereon yet never man sat:' with
haste the zealous followers cast upon it their garments. and all-unconscious of the
significant nature ot their act, place thereon their Master-the coming King.
Strange it would have been if feelings such as how were eagerly stirring in every
•
ELLICOTT.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
147
•
heart had not found vent in words. Strange indeed if, with the Hill of Zion now
breaking upon their view, the long prophetic past had not seemed to mingle with the
present, and evoke those shours of mysterious welcome and praise, which, first be-
ginning with the disciples and those immediately round our Lord, soou were heard
from every mouth of that glorifying multitude. And not from them alone. Number-
less others there were fast streaming up Olivet, a palm-branch in every hand, to greet
the raiser of Lazarus and the Conqueror of Death; and now all join. One common
feeling of holy enthusiasm now pervades that mighty multitude, and displays itself
in befitting acts. Garments are torn off and cast down before the Holy One; green
boughs bestrew the way; Zion's King rides onward in meek majesty, a thousand
voices before, and a thousand voices behind rising up to heaven with Hosannas and
with mingled words of magnifying acclamation, some of which once had been sugg
But the
to the Psalmist's harp. and some heard even from angelic tongues.
hour of triumph was the hour of deepest and most touching compassion. If, as we
have ventured to believe, the suddenly opening view of Zion may have caused the
excited feelings of that thronging multitude to pour themselves forth in words of
exalted and triumphant praise. full surely we know from the inspired narrative, that
on our Redeemer's nearer approach to the city, as it rose up, perhaps suddenly, in
all its extent and magnificence before Him who even now beheld the trenches cast
about it, and Roman legions mustering round its fated walls, tears fell from those
Divine eyes-yea, the Saviour of the world wept over the city wherein He had come
to suffer and die. The lengthening procession again moves onward, slowly de-
scending into the deep valley of the Cedron, and slowly winding up the opposite
slope, until at length by one of the Eastern gates it passes into one of the now
crowded thoroughfares of the Holy City. Such was the Triumphal Entry into Jeru-
salem.
•
·
BISHOP EDWARD HAROLD BROWNE.
The present learned Bishop of Winchester, son of the late Colonel
Browne of Morton House, Bucks, was born in 1811, and was edu-
cated at Eton, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was
wrangler in 1832. His academical career was highly distinguished.
In 1833 he obtained the Crosse theological scholarship, in 1834 the
first Hebrew scholarship, and in 1835 the Norrisian prize for a theo-
logical essay. He became Fellow and tutor of his college. From
1843 to 1849 he was Vice-principal and Professor of Hebrew in St.
David's College, Lampeter; in 1854 he was elected Norrisian Profes-
sor of Divinity in the university of Cambridge; in 1857 canon resi-
dentiary of Exeter Cathedral; in 1864 he was consecrated Bishop of
Ely; and in 1874, Bishop of Winchester. The principal theological
work of Bishop Browne is his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Arti-
cles, Historical and Doctrinal,' which was published (1850-53) in
two volumes, but is now compressed into one large volume of 864
pages (tenth edition, 1874). In his introduction (which is a clear and
concise historical summary, relating to the Liturgy and Articles) the
bishop has the following sensible remarks:
•
Interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles.
In the interpretation of them, our best guides must bc, first, their own natural,
literal, grammatical meaning; next to th's, a knowledge of the controversies which
had prevailed in the Church, and made such articles necessary; then, the other an-
thorised formularies of the Church; af'er them the writings and known opinions of
such men as Cranmer, Ridley, and Parker, who drew them up; then, the doctrines
of the primitive Church, which they professed to follow; and, lastly, the general
sentiments of the distinguished-English divines who have been content to subscribe
148
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CYCLOPÆDIA OF
the Articles, and have professed their agreement with them for now three hundred
years. These a e our best guides for their interpretation. Their authority is deriv-
able from Scripture alone.
On the subject of subscription, very few words may be sufficient. To sign any
document in a non-natural sense seems neither consistent with Christian integrity
nor with common mauliness. But, on the other hand, a National church should
never be needlessly exclusive. It should, we can hardly doubt, be ready 10 embrace,
if possible, all who truly believe in God, and in Jesus Christ whom He hath sent
Accordingly, our own Church requires of its lay members no confession of their
faith except that contained in the Apostles' Creed.
In the following pages an attempt is made to interpret and explain the Articles of
the Church, which bind the consciences of her clergy, according to their natural and
genuine meaning; aud to prove that meaning to be both scriptural and catholic.
None can feel so satisfied, nor act so straightforwardly, as those who subscribe them
in such a sense. But if we consider how much variety of sentiment may prevai
amongst persons who are, in the main, sound in the faith, we can never wish that a
national Church, which ought to have all the marks of catholicity, should enforce 100
rigid and uniform an interpretation of its formularies and terms of union. The
Church should be not only holy and apostolic, but as well, one and catholic. Unity
and universality are scarcely attainable. where a greater rigour of subscription is re-
quired than such as shall insure an adherence and conformity to those great catholic
truths which the primitive Christians lived by, and died for,
C
Besides his elaborate 'Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles,' Dr.
Browne has published two volumes of Sermons, one on the 'Atone-
ment and other Subjects,' 1859, and the second on Messiah as Fore-
told and Expected,' 1862. The latter is a vindication of the true pre-
dictive character of Messianic prophecy, derived chiefly from Jewish
sources. He is author also of The Pentateuch and the Elohistic
Psalms,' written in reply to Bishop Colenso in 1863; and 'The Dea-
coness,' a sermon preached in 1871. The bishop is also one of the
writers in Aids to Faith,' in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,' the
'Speakers' Commentary,' &c.
C
}
•
<
ARCHBISHOP THOMSON.
C
The Archbishop of York, DR. WILLIAM THOMSON, is a native of
Whitehaven, Cumberland, born February 11, 1819. He was educated
at Shrewsbury School and at Queen's College, Oxford, of which he
was successively scholar, Fellow, and tutor. He took his degree of
B.A. in 1840, was ordained priest in 1843, and was four yeas pastor
at Guildford and Cuddesden; in 1848 he was appointed select preacher
at Oxford, and in 1853 was chosen to preach the Bampton Lecture.
The subject was the Atoning Work of Christ.' Two years after-
wards (1855) he became incumbent of All-Souls, Marylebone; and in
1858 was chosen preacher of Lincoln's Inn. This appointment is
generally held to be preliminary to the bishopric, and Dr. Thomson
was in 1861 made Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. In 1863 he was
promoted to the archiepiscopal see of York. His first work was a
logical treatise, acute and learned, entitled 'An Outline of the Neces-
sary Laws of Thought,' 1842. This was followed by the Bampton
Lecture; by Sermions Preached in Lincoln's Inn Chapel,' 161;
'Pastoral Letter,' 1864; Life in the Light of God's Word,' 1.67;
<
THOMSON.
149
ENGLISH LITERATURË,
(
'Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,' 1869; and by a Life of Christ and
other articles in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,' as well as
contributions to reviews and other literary journals. One of the
most valuable of Archbishop Thomson's professional labours was
editing and assisting in the authorship of Aids to Faith,' a series of
theological essays by several writers, designed as a reply to Essays
and Reviews.' In this volume (third edition, 1870) Dean Mansel took
up the subject of the Miracles;' the Bishop of Cork (Fitzgerald),
the Evidences;' Dr. M'Caul, Prophecy and the Mosaic Record
C
•
<
{
of Creation; Canon Cooke, Ideology and Subscription; Professor
Rawlinson, the Pentateuch;' Dr. Browne, Bishop of Ely, 'Inspira-
tion;' Dr. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Scripture and
its Interpretation;' while the archbishop himself, as editor, selected
as the subject of his essay the Death of Christ, or the doctrine of
Reconciliation:
>
(
↓
•
,
•
•
<
4
What is there about this teaching that has provoked in times past and present so
much disputation? Not, I am persuaded, the hardness of the doctrine, for none of
the theories put in its place are any easier, but its want of logical completeness.
Sketched out for us in a few broad lines, it tempts the fancy to fill it in and lend it
colour; and we do not always remember that the hands that attempt this are trying
to make a mystery into a theory, an infinite truth into a fiuite one, and to reduce the
great things of God into the narrow limits of our little field of view. To whom was
the ransom paid? What was Satan's share of the transaction? How can one suffer
for another? How could the Redeemer be made miserable when He was conscious
that is work was one which could bring happiness to the whole human race? Yet
this condition of indefiniteness is one which is imposed on us in the reception of
every mystery: prayer, the incarnation, the immortality of the soul, are all subjects
that pass far beyond our range of thought. And here we see the wisdom of God in
connecting so closely our redemption with our reformation. If the object were to
give us a complete theory of salvation, no doubt there would be in the Bible much to
seek. The theory is gathered by fragments out of many an exhortation and waru-
ing; nowhere does it stand out entire and without logical flaw. But if we assume
that the New Testament is written for the guidance of sinful hearts, we find a won-
derful aptness for that particular end. Jesus is proclaimed as the solace of our fears,
as the founder of our moral life, as the restorer of our lost relation with our Father.
If He had a cross, there is a cross for us; if He pleased not Himself, let us deny our-
selves; if he suffered for sin, let us hate sin. And the question ought not to be, what
do all these mysteries mean, but are these thoughts really such as will serve to guide
our life, and to assuage our terrors in the fear of death? The answer is twofold-
one from history and one from experience. The preaching of the Cross of the Lord
even in this simple fashion converted the world. The same doctrine is now the
ground of any definite hope that we find in ourselves, of forgiveness of sins and of
everlasting life.
DR. WILLIAM SMITH.
Most of the divines who assisted Archbishop Thomson in his
Aids to Faith' have been associated with DR. WILLIAM SMITH in a
'Dictionary of the Bible,' its antiquities, biography, geography, and
natural history (1860-1863). This work is a complete storehouse of
information on every subject connected with the Bible. Dr. Smith
has also edited Dictionaries of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Biog
raphy, Mythology, and Geography (1840-1852), and several students.
manuals, grammars, and small dictionaries. In 1867 he became ed-
150
[To 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
itor of the 'Quarterly Review This indefatigable scholar and lit-
térateur is a native of London, born in 1815, and educated at the Lon-
don University, in which he was Classical Examiner from 1853 till
1869. In 1870 he published, in conjunction with a friend (Mr. Hall),
a Copious and Critical English-Latin Dictionary,' said to be the
result of fifteen years' labour. In acknowledgment of his services to
the cause of education and classical literature, the university of Ox-
ford, in 1870, conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.C.L.
Perhaps no university honour was ever more worthily won.
DR. CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN.
(
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C
The Master of the Temple, CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN, D.D., is
author of a vast number of sermons and addresses, besides several
works of a more elaborate character. His Expository Lectures on
the Romans,'' on Philippians.
on Philippians,' the First Epistle to the Thessalonians,'
'the Acts,' the Revelation of St. John,' &c., are valuable and popular
theological works. Some of his collected sermons were delivered
in the chapel of Harrow School (two series, 1849 and 1853); in the
parish church of St. Martin's, Leicester, 1853; Epiphany, Lent,
and Easter Sermons,' 1860; Sermons at Doncaster, 1863; The
Book and the Life,' being four sermons at Cambridge, 1863; Twelve
Sermons on Subjects connected with the Church of England,' 1867;
Lessons of the Cross and the Passion' (six lectures), 1869; Earnest
Words for Earnest Men,' 1869; 'Last words in the Parish Church of
Doncaster;' &c. For thirty years or more, it may be said that not
a single year has passed without some work from Dr. Vaughan; and
his ministrations in the beautiful Temple Church in London (of old
the church of the Knights Templars) are attended by large congrega-
tions. Dr. Vaughan was born about 1817, and having passed a
brilliant university career at Trinity College, Cambridge (in 1837
Browne's medallist for the Greek ode and epigram, and gainer of
the members' prize for Latin essay; in 1838, senior classic), he
entered into holy orders, and became Vicar of St. Martin's, Leicester
-a parish of which his father had been incumbent. He was next
Head Master of Harrow School (1844-1859), refused the bishopric
of Rochester in 1860, and shortly afterwards became Vicar of
Doncaster. After a residence of nearly ten years at Doncaster, he
accepted the Mastership of the Temple in 1869. As parish clergy-
man and as Master of the Temple, Dr. Vaughan has been distin-
guished equally for his affectionate earnestness and zeal and his
unwearied activity, while his classical attainments have placed him
in the first rank of English scholars.
Three Partings. — From 'Last Words in the Parish Church of
Doncaster.'
Life is full of partings. Every day we see some one whom we shall never see
gin. Homes are full of these partings, and churches are full of these partings, aud
1.refore Scripture also, the mirror of life, is full of these partings; tells us how
ܪ
•
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搐
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VAUGHAN.]
151
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
bitter they are or takes that for granted, and tells us rather how solemn they are,
how admonitory, how important-bids us regard them, use them, turn them to ac-
count.
If I
First, I will speak of bodily partiugs. Those who were once near together in the
flesh are no longer so. It is a thing of every-day experience. To-night there is a
family in this congregation which before next Sunday will have left the town.
had not gone, they would have gone. You will say it is a small event to chronicle in
this manner. Still it shews, it serves as an example, how common are these local
changes which make people who co-existed before co- xist no longer. It shews how
hopeless it is to avoid such separations. They are part of our lot. They remind us
of the great dispersion; they should make us long for the great reunion,
It is a serious thing 10 stand on the pier of soine seaport town, and see a son or a
brother setting sail for India or New Zealand. Such an experience marks, in a thou-
sand homes, à particular day in the calendar with a peculiar, a life-long sadness.
And when two hearts have grown into each other by a love real and faithful, and the
hour of parting comes-conies under compulsion put upon them, whether by family
arrangement or by God's providence-when they know that in all probability they
can meet never again on this side the grave-tell us not that this is a light sorrow,
a trifling pain; for the time, and it may be for all time, it is a grief. it is a bereave-
ment. it is a death; long days and years may run their course. and yet the image is
there; there, and not there-present in dream and vision, absent in converse and in
communion. The Word of God is so tender to us, so full of sympathy, that it
paints this kind of parting in all its bitterness. No passage of Scripture has been
inore foudly read and re-read by severed friends than that which contains the record
of the love, passing the love of women,' between David and the king's son. That
last farewell, of which the Prophet Samuel did not disdain to write the full, the al-
most photographic history, had in it no pang of unfaithfuluess or broken vow: the
two friends loved afterwards, in absence and distance; and it was given to one of
them to bewail the death, in glorious though disastrous battle, of the other, in a
strain of lyric lamentation which for beauty and pathos stands still unrivalled
among the dirges and dead-marches of the most gifted minstrels aud musicians of
earth.
There are partings between souls. I speak still of this life. The sands of Tyre
and Miletus were wet with tears when St. Paul there took leave of disciples and
elders. But those separations were brightened by an immortal hope, and he could
commend his desolate ones to the word of God's grace, as able to give them an in-
heritance at last with him and with the saved. I call that a tolerable, a bearable
parting. God grant it to us! How different is it when souls part!
There are partings every day between souls. There are those who once knew
each other intimately, calied each other friends, who now scarcely know whether the
once beloved be dead or living. There are those who have drifted asunder, not be-
cause one is a lawyer and the other a clergyman; not because one has had experi-
ence abroad of battles or sieges, and the other has led the home life of a merchaùt or
a landowner; not even because sees and lands have permanently separated them,
and hands once closely clasped in friendship can never meet again in loving embrace
on this side the grave. They have parted, not in body but in spirit. Ghosts of old
obsolete worn-out friendships haunt the chambers of this being, to remind us of the
hollowness of human possessions, and the utter transitoriness of all affections save
one.
Go on then from the partings of time to the death-parting which must come. Set
yourselves in full view of that take into your thought what it is-ask, in each
several aspect of earth's associations and companionships, what will be for you the
meaning of the text- He saw him no more.'
黍
​The life-partings, and the soul-partings, all derive their chief force and sigmfi-
cauce from the latest and most awful-the one death-parting, which is not probably,
but certainly, before each and all. He saw him no more.' That parting which the
text itself describes was momentous, was memorable. That consecration of the
prophet by the prophet-that original casting upon him of the mantle, by which his
designation was announced to him-now fulfilled in the very falling upou him of the
same mantle, as the chariot of fire made its way into the abyss of heaven above-
turned a common life, a life of ploughing and farming, prosperous (it should seem)
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CYCLOPÆDIA OF
and weathy, into a life of absolute unworldliness, a life of dedication to God's scr-
vice, and to the highest interests of a generation. This partiug was indeed a meet-
ing. It brought two lives and two souls into one, as no length of bodily converse
could have united them. The spirit of Elijah then began to rest on Elisha, when
they were parted for ever as to the society and fellowship of the living. It has ever
been so with those highest and most solemu uuities in which man with man, and
man with his God, finds the crown and consummation of his being. It is through
the death-parting that the everlasting meeting begins.
The Ascension.
+
When a man's heart is crushed within him by the galling tyranny of sense; when,
from the dawning of the day till the setting of the sun, and for hours beyond it, he
is compelled to gather straw for Egypt's bricks, and to bake them in the world's
scorching kiln, till the spring of life is dried up within, and he is ready to say. Let
me but eat and drink and sleep, for there is nothing real but this endless task-work;
then, how sweet to say to one's self: And a cloud received him out of their sight.'
Yes, just out of sight, but as certainly as if the eye could pierce it, there is a heaven
all bright, all pure. all real; there is Ore there who has my very nature, in it toiled
as ceaselessly as the most care-worn and world-laden of us all, baving no home, and
no leisure so much as to eat. He is there-His warfare accomplished. His life's
labour fulfilled; He is there. at rest, yet still working, working for me, bearing me
upon His heart, feeling for and feeling with me in each trial and in each temptation;
and not feeling only. but praying too, with that intercession which is not only near
but inside God; and not interceding only, but also ministering grace hour by bour,
coming into me with that very thought and recollection of good, that exact resolu-
tion and purpose and aspiration which is needed to keep me brave and to keep me
pure. Only let my heart be fully set to maintain that connection, that spiritual inar-
riage and union, which is between Christ above and the soul below; only let me
cherish, by proyer and watching that spirit of soberness, that freedom (to use St.
Peter's strong phrase in this day's Epistle) from the intoxications of sense, which
makes a man in the world and yet not of it—and I too shall at last reach that blessed
home where Christ already is, and is for me!
Thus, too, when sorrow comes, when the light of this life is quenched and anni-
hilated by reason of some fond wish frustrated or some precious possession tern
away; when I am beginning to say. take away now my life, for there is nothing left
to live for-then I look upward and see, if not at this moment the bow in the cloud,
the bow of hope and promise, yet at least the cloud-the cloud behind which Jesus
is, Jesus the Man of Sorrows, having still a thought for every struggling sorrowing
man, and holding in His hand the very medicine, the very balm, for the particular sor-
row, the particular void, the particular stroke and pang, of each disconsolate deso-
late wayfarer towards the home and the rest.
Such is one part of the doctrine-let us say, one utterance of the voice-of the
ascension. This is not your home. This life is not your all-no, not even now.
Behind the cloud which witnessed the view of the ascending Lord, there, there is
your country, your city, your church, your dwelling-place, even now.
เ Ye are
come,' the apostle says, 'to the city of the living God, to the spirits of the perfected
just, to Jesus the Mediator, and to God the Father of all.'
6
Comfort is strength. The very word means it. But we separate the two-in idea
at least-and the ascension has both for us. We want not soothing only, but invig-
oration too. The ascension has a voice of this kind. The Lord working with
them.' They went forth everywhere, in the strength of the ascension-the Lord
working with them. He who is Himself in heaven for us, will have us on earth for
Him. We must be His witnesses.
Think we, all of us, of that coming day when the cloud which concealed shall be
the cloud which reveals Hin. It is a solemn and touching thing to gaze into the
fathomless depth of a perfectly clear sunlit or starlit sky, and lose ourselves in won-
der and awe, as we vainly search out its mysterious, its ever-growing and multiply-
ing secrets. But scarcely less solemn or less touching, to one whose Bible is in his
heart, to mark that little cloud, small as a man's hand, which just specks with white
the otherwise blue expanse, and which, though it seems nearer, less ethereal, less
gelestial far than the other, is yet the token to Christian eyes of an ascension past
LIDDON.)
153
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
and an advent future. A cloud then received Him. Ye shall see Him coming in a
cloud. Knit the two in your thoughts-knit the two in your prayers and your aspi-
rations-live in the twofold light of the angels' ascension-day greeting. This same
Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye
have seen him go.'
DR LIDDON.
The REV. HENRY PARRY LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., Canon of St.
Paul's, and Ireland Professor of Exegesis in the university of Oxford,
is author of the Bampton Lectures for 1866, the subject being The
Divinity of our Lord and Saviour;' also Sermons Preached before
the University of Oxford,' Some Elements of Religion, being Lent
Lectures,' &c. Dr. Liddon was educated at Christ Church, Oxford,
and took his degree of M. A. in 1852. From 1854 to 1859 he was Vice-
principal of the Theological College of Cuddesden; in 1864 he was
appointed a prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral. The volume of uni-
versity sermons was originally published under the title Some Words
for God,' but that title was soon dropped-wisely we think-as ‘liable
to misconstruction and in deference to the opinion of critics.' The
author says his volume makes no pretention to be a volume of essays.
'An essay belongs to general literature; a sermon is the language of
the Church.' Dr. Liddon, however, is an eloquent preacher, whose
pulpit ministrations are highly prized, and appear to want no other
graces of literature than those which he adopts.
•
Faith and Intellect (2 Cor. x. 5).
Here is an Apostle of the Lord Jesus who used the language of a soldier. He is
planning a campaign; nay, rather he is making war: he glows with the fire of a gen-
uine military enthusiasm. The original Greek which he uses has in it a vigour and
point which is lost, to a great extent, in our English translation. The writer might
almost be a Roman general, charged to sustain the honour of the Empire in a re-
volted province or beyond a remote frontier, and bent upon illustrating the haughty
maxim which defined the duty of an imperial people-
To spare the vanquished, but to crush the proud.
Indeed, it has been urged that the recent history of Cilicia itself may have well sug-
gested this language to St. Paul. The Apostle's native country had been the scene of
some very fierce struggles in the wars against Mithridates and the pirates; and we are
'told that the latter war was only ended, not sixty years before the Apostle's birth, by the
reduction of one hundred and twenty strongholds and the capture of more than ten
thousand prisoners. The dismantled ruins may have easily and naturally impressed the
boyish imagination of Saul of Tarsus with a vivid sense of the destructive energy of the
military power of Rome; but the Apostle of the nations only remembers these earlier
impressions to give them a spiritual application. The weapons of his warfare are
not carnal; the standard under which he fights is a more sacred sign than that of the
Cæsar; the operations which he projects are to be carried out in a territory more dif-
ficult of conquest than any which kept the conquerors of the world at bay. He
is invading the region of human thought; and as he fights for God. he is sternly re-
solved upon conquest. He sees rising before him the lofty fortresses of hostile errors;
they must be reduced and razed. Every mountain fastness to which the enemy of
Light and Love can retreat must be scaled and destroyed; and all the thought of the
human soul which is hostile to the authority of the Divine truth, must be led away
is a prisoner of war' into the camp of Christ. Truly a vast and unaccountable am-
vition; a dream-if it were not, as it was, a necessity; a tyranny-if anything less
►
i
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
1
vigorous and trenchant had been consistent with the claims of the Truth of God, or
equal to the needs of the soul of man.
The particular opposition to the work of Christ which the Apostle encountered at
Corinth was indeed less intellectual in its form than the Galatian Judaism, or than the
theosophic angel-worship which was popular at Colosse, or than the more sharply-
defined heresies of a later time which, as we know from the pastoral epistles,
threatened or infected the churches of Ephesus and Crete. St. Paul's Corinthian op-
ponents resisted, deprecated. disowned. beyond everything else, the Apostle's own
personal authority. This, however, was the natural course of things at a time when
single apostles well-nigh impersonated the whole doctrinal action of the Church; and
feeling this, St. Paul speaks not as one who was reasserting a personal claim of any
sort, but merely and strictly as a soldier, as an organ. I might say, as a function, of
the truth. The truth had an indefeasible right to reigu in the intellect of man. The
Apostle asserts that right, when he speaks of bringing the whole intelligence of man
into the obedience of Christ. Now, as then, Christ's Church is militant bere on
earth, not less in the sphere of thought than in the sphere of outward and visible ac-
tion; and St. Paul's burning words rise above the temporary circumstances which
called them forth, and furnish a motto and an encouragement to us who, after the
lapse of eighteen centuries, fight in the ranks of the same army and against the same
kind of focs as he did.
.
Remark, first of all, that it is the undue exaltation of' intellect with which the
Church of Christ is in energetic and perpetual conflict. With intellect itself, with
really moral and reasonable intellect, with the thought of man recognising
at once its power and its weakness, its vast range and its necessary lim-
its, religion has, can have, no quarrel. It were a libel on the all-wise Crea-
tor to suppose that between intellect and spirit, between thought and faith,
there could be any original relations other than those of perfect harmony.
Paradise could have been the scene of no such unseemly conflict as that which we
are considering; and here, as elsewhere in human nature, we are met with unmis-
takable traces of the fall of our first parent. A range of granite mountains, which
towers proudly above the alluvial soil of a neighbouring plain and above the softer
rocks at its immediate base, speaks to the geologist of a subterranean fire that at
some remote epoch had thus upheaved the primal crust of the earth with convulsive
violence. And the arrogant pretensious of human thought in the children of Adam
speak no less truly of an ancient convulsion which has marred the harmony of the
faculties of the soul, and has forced the mind of fallen man into an attitude which
instinctively disputes the claims of revelation.
The Mysteries of Nature.
The wonderful world in which we men pass this stage of our existence, whether the
higher world of faith be open to our gaze or not, is a very temple of many and august
mysteries. You will walk perhaps, to-morrow afternoon into the country and bere
or there the swelling buds, or the first fresh green of the opening leaf. will remind
you that already spring is about to re-enact before your eyes the beautiful spectacle
of her yearly triumph. Everywhere around you are evidences of the existence and.
movement of a mysterious power which you can neither see, nor touch, nor define,
nor measure. nor widerstand. This power lives speechless, uoiseless, unseen, yet
energetic, in every bongh above your head. in every blade of grass beneath your feet.
It bursts forth from the grain into the shoot, from the branch into the bud; it bursts
into leaf, and flower. and fruit. It creates bark, and fibre: it creates height and
bulk: it yields grace of form and lustre of colour. It is incessant in its labour; it is
prodigal of its beauty; it is uniformly generous and bountiful in its gifts to man.
Yet, in itself, what is it? You give it a name; you call it vegetation And perhaps
you are a botanist; you trace out and you register the variety of its ffects, and the
sigus of its movement. But after all you have only labelled it. Although it is so
common. it is not in reality familiar to you. Although you' ave watched it unthink-
ingly from your childhood upwards, and perhaps see in it nothing remarkable now,
you may well pause in wonder and awe before it, for of a truth it is a mystery. What
is it in itself this power which is so certainly around you, yet which so perfectly
escapes you when you attempt to detect or to detain it in your grasp ? What is it,
t
LIDDON.)
155
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
this pervading force, this life-principle, this incomprehensible yet most certainly
present fact, but an assertion of the principle of mystery which robes the soil of
God's earth with life and beauty, that everywhere it may cheer the faith and rebuke
the pride of man! Yes, when next you behold the green field or the green tree, be
sure that you are in the presence of a very sacrament of nature; your eye rests upon
the outward and visible sign of an inward and wholly invisible force.
Or look at those other forces with which you seem to be so much at home, and
which you term attraction and gravitation. What do you really know about them?
You name them. perhaps you can repeat a mathematical expression which measures
their action. But after all you have only named and described an effect; you have not
accounted for, you have not penetrated into, you have not unveiled its cause. Why, I
ask, in the nature of things, should such laws reign around us? They do reign;
but why? what is the power which determines gravitation? where does it reside?
how is it to be scized, apprehended, touched, examined? There it is. but there, in-
accessible to your keenest study, it remains veiled and buried. You would gladly
capture and subdue and understand it; but, as it is, you are forced to confess the
presence of something which you cannot even approach.
And you yourselves-fearfully and wonderfully made as you are-what are you
but living embodiments, alike in your lower and your higher natures, and in the law
of their union, of this all-pervading principle of mystery? The life-power which
feels and moves in your bodies successfully eludes the knife of the anatomist, as he
lays bare each nerve and each muscle that contributes to the perfection of feeling and
movement. Yet how much more utterly mysterious is your human nature when you
examine its higher aspects; when you analyse mind, and personality, and that mar-
vellous mystery of language, wherein thought takes nothing less than a physical
form, and passes by means of a sensible vehicle from one immaterial spirit to
another!
ISAAC TAYLOR-DR. WARDLAW.
.
A long series of works on theology and mental philosophy-ingeni-
ous in argument, and often eloquent though peculiar in style-pro-
ceeded from the pen of Isaac Taylor (1787-1865). Mr. Taylor's father
was an artist and engraver, a nonconformist, who afterwards became
minister of an independent congregation at Colchester, and sub-
sequently at Ongar in Essex (ante). Isaac Taylor was born at
Lavenham in Suffolk. He first commenced writing in the Eclectic
Review.' He seems to have early settled down to literature as a pro-
fession. In 1822 appeared Elements of Thought; in 1825, The
History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modern Times;' in
1826, The Process of Historical Proof;' in 1829, The Natural His-
tory of Enthusiasm.' At that time the belief that a bright era of re-
novation, union, and extension presently awaited the Christian
Church was generally entertained. Mr. Taylor participated, he says.
in the cheering hope, and his glowing language and unsectarian zeal
found many admirers. The tenth edition of the volume is now before
Discord, however, soon sprung up in Oxford; and Mr. Taylor,
in some papers on Ancient Christianity,' published periodically, com-
bated the arguments of the Tractarians, and produced a number of
works, all of a kindred character, illustrating Christian faith or mor-
als. Those are- Spiritual Despotism,' 1835; Physical Theory of
Another Life,' 1839 Lectures on Spiritual Christianity,' 1841; Sat-
urday Evening, 1842; History of Fanaticism,' 1843; Loyola and
Jesuitism,' 1849; Wesley and Methodism,' 1851; Home Education,'
us.
C
C
<
•
<
•
6
C
<
C
6
156
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
1852; The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry,' 1852; 'The Restoration of Be-
lief,' 1855; &c. In 1856, Mr. Taylor wrote for the North British
Review' a long critical analysis of the works of Dr. Chalmers, which
gave great offence to many of the leading supporters of the Review,'
With cordial admiration of
and led to its suspension for some time.
the character and exertions of our great countryman, Mr. Taylor
The works of Dr.
questioned if much of his writing would live.
Chalmers, he said, were deficient in method, in condensation, and
style; his reasoning was also frequently inconsistent, and his opinions
were hampered by adherence to creed, or to the systematic theology
of Scotland. The following extracts will give an idea of the style
and manner of Mr. Taylor.
C
<
S M M
4
Rapid Exhaustion of the Emotional Faculties. From Physical Theory
of Another Life.'
•
Every one accustomed to reflect upon the operations of his own mind, must be
aware of a distinction between the intellectual and the moral faculties as to the rate
at which they severally move; for while the reasoning power advances in a manner
that might be likened to an increase according to the rule of arithmetical progres
sion, and which consists in the adding of one proposition to another, and in the
accumulation of equal quantities; it is, on the contrary, the characteristic of the
passions, and of all intense sentiments, to rise with an accelerated movement, and to
increase at the rate of a geometrical progression. Even the milder emotions of love
and joy, and much more the vehement sensations, such as hatred, anger, jealousy,
revenge, despair, tend always towards this sort of rapid enhancement, and fail to do so
only as they are checked, either by a sense of danger connected with the indulgence
of them, or by feelings of corporeal exhaustion, or by the interference of the inci-
dents and interests of common life. Especially it is to be noticed that those of
the emotions which kindle or are kindled by the imagination, are liable to an acceler-
ation such as produces a physical excitement highly perilous both to mind and body,
and needing to be speedily diverted. And although the purely moral emotions are
not accompanied with precisely the same sort of corporeal disturbance, nevertheless,
when they actually gain full possession of the soul, they rapidly exhaust the physical
powers, and bring on a state of torpor, or of general indifference.
Now this exhaustion manifestly belongs to the animal organisation; nor can we
doubt that if it were possible to retain the body in a state of neutrality, or of perfect
quiescence, from the first to the last, during a season of profound emotion, then these
same affections might advance much further, and become far more intense, than as
it is, they ever can or may. The corporeal limitation of the pessions becomes, in
truth, a matter of painful consciousness whenever they rise to an unusual height, or
are long continued; and there takes place then within the bosom, an agony, partly
animal, partly mental, and a very uneasy sense of the inadequateness of our strongest
emotions to the occasion that calls them out. We feel that we cannot feel as we
should emotions are frustrate, and the affections which should have sprung upward
are detained in a paroxysm on earth. It is thus with the noblest sentiments, and
thus with profound grief; and the malign and vindictive passions draw their tor-
menting force from this very sense of restraint, and they rend the soul because they
can move it so little. Does there not arise amid these convulsions of our nature, a tacit
anticipation of a future state, in which the soul shall be able to fecl, and to take its
fill of emotion?
6
Selfishness of the Anchoret.-From The Natural History of Enthusiasm.'
The ancient monkery was a system of the most deliberate selfishness. That
solicitude for the preservation of individual interests which forms the basis of the
human constitution, is so broken up and counteracted by the claims and pleasures
of domestic life, that though the principle remains, its manifestations are sup-
TAYLOR.]
157
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
pressed, and its predominance effectually prevented, except in some few tempers
peculiarly unsocial. But the anchoret is a selfist by his very profession; and like
the sensualist, though his taste is of another kind, he pursues his personal gratifica-
tion, reckless of the welfare of others. His own advantage or delight, or-to use
his favourite phrase-the good of his soul is the sovereign object of his cares.
His meditations, even if they embrace the compass of heaven, come round ever and
again to find their ultimate issue in his own bosom; but can that be true wis-
dom which just ends at the point whence it started? True wisdom is a progressive
principle. In abjuring the use of the active faculties, in reducing himself by the
spell of vows to a condition of physical and moral annihilation, the insulated says to
his fellows, concerning whatever might otherwise have been converted to their
benefit, It is corban; thus making võid the law of love to our neighbour, by a pre-
tended intensity of love to God.
·
>
That so monstrous an immorality should have dared to call itself by the name of
Sanctity, and should have done so too in front of Christianity, is indeed amazing,
and could never have happened if Christianity had not first been shorn of its life-
giving warmth, as the sun is deprived of its power of heat when we ascend into the
Parity of upper space.
The tendency of a taste for imaginative indulgences to petrify the heart, has
been already adverted to, and it receives a signal illustration in the monkish life, es-
pecially in its more perfect form of absolute separation from the society of man.
The anchoret was a disjoined particle, frozen deep into the mass of his own selfish-
ness, and there embedded, below the touch of every human sympathy. This sort of
meditative insulation is the ultimate and natural issue of all enthusiastic piety; and
may be met with even in our own times. among those who have no inclination to
run away from the comforts of common life.
Hebrew Figurative Theology.—From The Spirit of Пbrew Poetry.'
The Hebrew writers, one and all, with marvellous unanimity, speak of God
velatively only or as lle is related to the immediate religious purposes of their
teaching. It is the human spirit always that is the central or cohesive principle of
the Hebrew Theology. The theistic affirmations that are scattered throughout the
books of the Old Testament are not susceptible of a synthetic adjustment by any
rule of logical distribution; and although they are never contradictory one of ano-
ther, they may seem to be so, inasmuch as the principle which would shew their
accordance stands remote from human apprehension : it must be so; and to suppose
otherwise would be to affirm that the finite mind may grasp the infinite. The several
elements of Theism are complementary one of another, only in relation to the needs
and to the discipline of the human mind; not so in relation to its modes of specu-
Jative thought, or to its own reason. Texts packed in order will not build up a
theology, in a scientific sense; what they will do is this: they meet the variable
necessities of the spiritual life, in every mood, and in every possible occasion of that
life.
•
If we were to bring together the entire compass of the figurative theology of the
Scriptures (and this must be the theology of the Old Testament), it would be easy to
arrange the whole in periphery around the human spirit, as related to its manifold
experiences; but a hopeless task it would be to arrange the same passages as if in
circle around the hypothetic attributes of the Absolute Being. The human reason
falters at every step in attempting so to interpret the Divine Nature; yet the
quickened soul intèrprets for itself, and it does so anew every day, those signal
passages upon which the fears, the hopes, the griefs, the consolations of years gone
by have set their mark.
<
A son of Isaac Taylor, bearing the same name, and Vicar of Holy
Trinity, Twickenham, is author of an interesting volume, Words
and Places,' or etymological illustrations of history, ethnology, and
geography (third edition, 1873). Mr. Taylor bids fair to add fresh
lustre to the family pen.'
<
DR. RALPH WARDLAW (1779-1853), of the Independent Church,
°•
KA
158
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
1
<
Glasgow, was author of 'Discourses on the Socinian Controversy,'
1814, which have been frequently reprinted, and which Robert Hall
said completely exhausted the subject. Dr. Wardlaw published various
sermons and theological essays, and was a learned, able divine, and a
very impressive preacher. A Life of Dr. Wardlaw was published in
1856 by Dr. W. L. Alexander.
REV THOMAS DALE, ETC.
•
The REV. THOMAS DALE, Canon of St. Paul's, Vicar of St. Pan-
cras, and ultimately Dean of Rochester, was author of two volumes
of Sermons,' the first preached at St. Bride, 1830, and the second be-
fore the university of Cambridge, 1832-36. The other publications
of Mr. Dale are- The Sabbath Companion,' 1844; Commentary on
the Twenty-third Psalm,' 1845; The Domestic Liturgy and Family
Chaplain, 1846; &c. Mr. Dale, while at college in Cambridge, pub-
lished some poetical narratives, The Widow of Nain,' The Outlaw
of Tarsus,' and Irad and Adah,' afterwards collected into one vol-
ume, 1842. Mr. Dale was a native of London, born in 1797. He
was for some time Professor of English Literature at the London Uni-
versity, and subsequently at King's College. He died in 1870.
<
"
The Bridgewater Treatises' form a valuable series of works on
the theology of natural history. The Earl of Bridgewater (1758-
1829) bequeathed a sum of £8000 to be invested in the public funds,
and paid to persons appointed by the President of the Royal Society
to write and publish works on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of
God as manifested in the Creation. The works so produced are-
The Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments, as evincing De-
sign,' by SIR CHARLES BELL, Professor of Surgery in the university
of Edinburgh (1774-1842); Geology and Mineralogy considered with
Reference to Natural Theology,' by DR. WILLIAM BUCKLAND, Dean
of Westminster (1784-1856); The Moral and Intellectual Constitution
of Man,' by DR. THOMAS CHALMERS (1780-1847); The Physical
Condition of Man,' by DR. JOHN KIDD; The Habits and Instincts
of Animals,' by the REV. W. KIRBY (1759-1851); Chemistry and
Meteorology,' by DR. W. PROUT; Animal and Vegetable Physiology,'
by DR. P. M. ROGET (1779-1869); Astronomy and General Physics,'
by DR. W. WHEWELL (1794-1866). The names here given afford
sufficient evidence of the judicious administration of the trust. The
President of the Royal Society called in to his aid, in selecting the
writers, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London, and
it is creditable to their liberality that the first of the treatises was
assigned to a Presbyterian minister-Dr. Chalmners.
<
•
S
4
C
·
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C
↓
PROFESSOR JOWETT.
The REV. BENJAMIN JOWETT, a native of Camberwell, and born
in 1817, was elected to a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, in
1835, and became a Fellow in 1838. In 1842 he commenced his career
JOWETT.]
159
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
as tutor, which he held till 1870, when he was clected Master of Bal-
liol College. In the interval Mr. Jowett held several appointments
and published several works. In 1855, on the recommendation of
Lord Palmerston, he was appointed Regius Professor of Greek, and
the same year he published a Commentary on the Epistles of St.
Paul to the Thessalonians, Gallatians, and Romans.' In 1860 he con-
tributed an essay on the Interpretation of Scripture' to the volume
entitled Essays and Reviews.' In this essay, and also in his commen-
tary on St. Paul's Epistles, Professor Jowett was charged with having
promulgated heretical opinions, and the case was brought before the
Church courts, but dismissed on the ground of the inapplicability of
the statute under which the proceedings had been instituted. In 1871
the learned professor published the result of many years' labour,
'Plato's Dialogues translated into English, with Analyses and Intro-
ductions,' four volumes.
(
On the Interpretation of Scripture.
The difference of interpretation which prevails among ourselves is partly tradi-
tional, that is to say, inherited from the controversies of former ages. The use made
of Scripture by Fathers of the Church, as well as by Luther and Calvin, affects our
idea of its meaning at the present hour. Another cause of the multitude of interpre-
tations is the growth or progress of the human mind itself. Modes of interpreting
vary as time goes on; they partake of the general state of literature or knowledge.
It has not been easily or at once that mankind have learned to realise the character
of sacred writings-they seem almost necessarily to veil themselves from human eyes
as circumstances change; it is the old age of the world only that has at length under-
stood its childhood. (Or rather perhaps is beginning to understand it, and learning
to make allowance for its own deficiency of knowledge; for the infancy of the human
race, as of the individual, affords but few indications of the workings of the mind
within.) More often than we suppose, the great sayings and doings upon the earth,
thoughts that breathe, and words that burn,' are lost in a sort of chaos to the ap-
prehension of those that come after. Much of past history is dimly seen, and re-
ceives only a conventional interpretation. even when the memorials of it remain.
There is a time at which the freshness of early literature is lost; mankind have
turned rhetoricians, and no longer write or feel in the spirit which created it. In this
unimaginative period in which sacred or ancient writings are partially unintelligible,
many methods have been taken at different times to adapt the ideas of the past to the
wants of the present. One age has wandered into the flowery paths of allegory,
►
In pious meditation fancy fed;
another has straightened the liberty of the Gospel by a rigid application of logic,
the former being a method which was at first more naturally applied to the Old Testa-
ment, the latter to the New. Both methods of interpretation, the mystical and
logical, as they may be termed, have been practised on the Vedas and the Koran, as
well as on the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, the true glory and note of divinity in
these latter being not that they have hidden mysterious or double meanings, but a
simple and universal one, which is beyond them and will survive them. Since the
revival of literature, interpreters have not unfrequently fallen into error of another
kind from a pedantic and misplaced use of classical learning; the minute examina-
tion of words often withdrawing the mind from more important matters. A tend-
ency may be observed within the last century to clothe systems of philosophy in the
phraseology of Scripture. But new wine cannot thus be put into old bottles.'
Though roughly distinguishable by different ages, these modes or tendencies also exist
together; the remains of all of them may be remarked in some of the popular com¬
mentaries of our own day,
•
160
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
More common than any of these methods, and not peculiar to any age, is that
which may be called by way of distinction the rhetorical one. The tendency to ex-
aggerate or amplify the meaning of simple words for the sake of edification may in-
deed have a practical use in sermons, the object of which is to awaken not so much
the intellect as the heart and conscience. Spiritual food, like natural, may require
to he of a certain bulk to nourish the human mind. But this tendency to edifica-
tion' has had an unfortunate influence on the interpretation of Scripture. For the
preacher almost necessarily oversteps the limits of actual knowledge; his feelings
Overflow with the subject; even if he have the power, he has seldom the time for
accurate thought or inquiry; and in the course of years spent in writing, perhaps
without study, he is apt to persuade himself, if not others, of the truth of his own
repetitions.
REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
The REV. JAMES MARTINEAU (brother of Harriet Martineau), born
in 1805, was for some time pastor of dissenting congregations (Uni-
tarian) in Dublin and Liverpool, and afterwards Professor of Moral
Philosophy in New College, Manchester, and in London. In
In 1861,
he accepted the appointment of preacher in a chapel in Little Port-
land Street. Mr. Martineau is an eloquent preacher and writer: his
chief works are- The Rationale of Religious Inquiry,' 1825; 'En-
deavours after the Christian Life,' 1847; Studies of Christianity,'
1858; Essays, Philosophical and Theological,' two series, 1868-69;
&c. We subjoin two passages from the Endeavours after the Chris-
tian Life,'
6
↓
"
Nothing IIuman ever Dies.
Standing as each man does in the centre of a wide circumference of social influ-
ences, recipient as he is of innumerable impressions from the mighty human heart,
his inward being may be justly said to consist far more in others' lives than in his
own; without them and alone, he would have missed the greater part of the thoughts
and emotious which make up his existence; and when he dies, he carries away their
life rather than his own. He dwells still below, within their minds: their image in
his soul (which perhaps is the best element of their being) passes away to the world
incorruptible above.
All that is noble in the world's past history, and especially the minds of the great
and good, are, in like manner, never lost.
The true records of mankind, the human aunals of the earth, are not to be found
in the changes of geographical names, in the shifting boundaries of dominion, in
the travels and adventures of the baubles of royalty, or even in the undulations of
the greater and lesser waves of population. We have learned nothing, till we have
penetrated far beyond these casual and external changes, which are of interest only
History
as the effect and symptoms of the great mental vicissitudes of our race.
is au account of the past experience of humanity; and this, like the life of the
individual, consists in the ideas and sentiments, the deeds and passions, the truths
and toils, the virtues and the guilt, of the mind and heart within. We have a deep
concern in preserving from destruction the thoughts of the past, the leading concep-
tions of all remarkable forms of civilisation; the achievements of genius, of virtue,
and of high faith. And in this nothing can disappoint us; for though these things
may be individually forgotten, collectively they survive, and are in action still.
the past ages of the world were necessary to the formation of the present; they are
essential ingredients in the events that occur daily before our eyes. One layer of
time has Providence piled upon another for immemorial ages: we that live stand
now upon this great mountain of the Lord' were the strata below removed. the
fabric and ourselves would fall in ruins. Had Greece, or Rome, or Palestine been
other than they were, Christianity could not have been what it is: had Romanism
been different, Protestantism could not have been the same, and we might not have
been here this day. The sepurate civilisations of past countries may be of colours
All
C
2
MARTINEAU.]
161
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
singly indiscernible; but in truth they are the prismatic rays which, united, form our
present light. And do we look back on the great and good, lamenting that they are
gone? Do we bend in commemorative reverence before them, and wish that our lot
had been cast in their better days? What is the peculiar function which Heaven as-
signs to such minds, when tenants of our earth? Have the great and the good any
nobler office than to touch the human heart with deep veneration for greatness and
goodness?-to kindle in the understanding the light of more glorious conceptions,
and in the conscience the fires of a holier virtue? And that we grieve for their de-
parture, and invoke their names, is proof that they are performing such blessed
office still-that this their highest life for others, compared with which their personal
agency is nothing, is not extinct. Indeed, God has so framed our memory that it is the
infirmities of noble souls which chiefly fall into the shadows of the past; while
whatever is fair and excellent in their lives, comes forth from the gloom in ideal
beauty, and leads us on through the wilds and mazes of our mortal way. Nor does
the retrospect, thus glorified, deceive us by any fallacy; for things present with us
we comprehend far less completely, and appreciate less impartially, than things past.
Nothing can become a clear object of our thought, while we ourselves are in it: we
understand not our childhood till we have left it; our youth, till it has departed; our
life itself, till it verges to its close; or the majesty of genius and holiness, till we
look back on them as fled. Each portion of our human experience becomes in suc-
cession intelligible to us, as we quit it for a new point of view. God has stationed us
at the intersecting line between the known and the unknown: He has planted us on
a floating island of mystery, from which we survey the expanse behind in the clear
light of experience and truth, and cleave the waves, invisible, yet ever breaking, of
the unbounded future. Our very progress, which is our peculiar glory, consists in at
once losing and learning the past; in gaining fresh stations from which to take a
wiser retrospect, and become more deeply aware of the treasures we have used. We
are never so conscious of the succession of blessings which God's providence has
heaped on us, as when lamenting the lapse of years; and are then richest in the
fruits of time, when mourning that time steals those fruits away.
Space and Time.
Who can deny the effect of wide space alone in aiding the conception of vast
time? The spectator who, in the dingy cellar of the city, under the oppression of a
narrow dwelling, watching the last moments of some poor mendicant, finds incon-
gruity and perplexity in the thought of the eternal state, would feel the difficulty
vanish in an instant, were he transplated to the mountain-top, where the plains and
streams are beneath him, and the clouds are near him, and the untainted brecze
sweeps by, and he stands alone with nature and with God. And when, in addition to
the mere spectacle and love of nature, there is a knowledge of it too; when the laws
and processes are understood which surround us with wonder and beauty every day,
when the great cycles are known through which the material world passes without
decay; then, in the immensity of human hopes, there appears nothing which needs
stagger faith it seems no longer strange, that the mind which interprets the mate-
rial creation should survive its longest period, and be admitted to its remoter realms.
Some Scottish Presbyterian ministers remain to be mentioned:
į
DR. CANDLISII-DR. CUMMING.
DR. ROBERT S. CANDLISHI was one of the ministers of Edinburgh
-son of an early friend of Burns the poet. He was born in Edin-
burgh in 1806. In 1834 he became minister of St George's, Edin-
burgh; but seceding from the Established Church in 1843 along with
Dr. Chalmers and a large body of the clergy, he was an active and influ-
cntial member of the Free Church, and an able debater in its courts.
He wrote several theological works-'Exposition of the Book of
Genesis,' 'Examination of Mr. Maurice's Theological Essays,' 'Dis-
courses on the Resurrection,' &c. Dr. Candlish died in 1873.—DR,
132
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
JOHN CUMMING, of the Scotch Church, London (born in Aberdeen-
shire in 1809), has distinguished himself by his zeal against popery,
and by his interpretation of the Scriptures as to the duration of the
world. He has written a great number of religious works- Apoca-
lyptic Sketches,' Voices of the Night,' 'Voices of the Day,'' Voices
of the Dead,' 'Expository Readings on the Old and New Testament,'
and various controversial tracts. He is in theology what Mr. G. P.
R. James was in fiction-as fluent and as voluminous. Amidst all
the fluctuations of opinion on theology and forms of worship, Dr.
Cumming has kept together a large congregation of various classes in
London.
6
<
DR. GUTHRIE.
•
The REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE was born at Brechin, Forfarshire,
The son
July 12, 1803. His father was a banker and merchant.
was educated for the Scottish Church. It occupied me,' he says,
'eight years to run my regular curriculum. I attended the univer-
sity for two additional years before I became a licentiate, and other
five years elapsed before I obtained a presentation to a vacant church,
and became minister of the parish of Arbirlot. Here were fifteen
years of my life spent-the greater part of them at no small cost-
qualifying myself for a profession which, for all that time, yielded
me nothing for my maintenance.' And Guthrie adds: The inade-
quate means of creditably supporting themselves and their families
of which most ministers have to complain is a very serious matter,
threatening, in an enterprising and commercial, and wealthy country
such as ours, to drain away talent from the pulpit.' This point is
well worthy of consideration. In 1837 Mr. Guthrie was appointed
one of the ministers of Old Greyfriars parish in Edinburgh, and by
his zeal and eloquence and philanthropy rose into high and general
estimation. He left the Establishment at the period of the Disrup-
tion in 1843, and became one of the founders of the Free Church.
His efforts to reclaim the wretched population of the worst parts of
Edinburgh, and his exertions in the promotion of ragged schools,
were appreciated by the public, and Dr. Guthrie became not only one
of the most popular preachers, but one of the best-beloved citizens of
Edinburgh. He was a man of a large heart and truly catholic spirit.
As a pulpit orator he has rarely been surpassed. Ilis sermons were
marked by poetic imagery and illustration—perhaps too profusely—
but generally striking, pathetic, and impressive in a high degree.
<
He had all the external attractions of a pulpit orator; an unusu-
ally tall and commanding person, with an abundance of easy and
powerful, because natural, gesture; a quickly and strongly expressive
countenance, which age rendered finer as well as more comely; a
powerful, clear, and musical voice, the intonations of which were
varied and appropriate, managed with an actor's skill, though there
was not the least appearance of art.'
The variety of his illustrations was immense, but he delighted
GUTHRIE.]
163
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
A
most, and was most successful, in those of a nautical character.
storm at sea and a shipwreck from Guthrie were paintings never to
be forgotten. This
This eminent preacher and philanthropist died at St.
Leonard's-on-Sea, February 24, 1873. His principal works are-
The Gospel in Ezekiel,' 1855; Christ and the Inheritance of the
Saints,' 1858; The Way of Life,' 1862; The City, its Sins and Sor-
rows;' Pleas for Ragged Schools;' Saving Knowledge, addressed
to Young Men;' and various other short religious treatises and tracts
on intemperance.
(
•
.
<
6
Decadence of the Ancient Portion of Edinburgh.
(
There is a remarkable phenomenon to be seen on certain parts of our coast.
Strange to say, it proves, notwithstanding such expressions as the stable and solid
land,' that it is not the land but the sea which is the stable clement. On some sum-
mer day, when there is not a wave to rock her, nor breath of wind to fill her sail or
fan a cheek, you launch your boat upon the waters, and, pulling ont beyond lowest
tide-mark, you idly lie upon her bows to catch the silvery glance of a passing fish.
or watch the movements of the many curious creatures that travel the sea's sandy
If the
bed, or creeping out of their rocky homes, wander amid its tangled mazes.
traveller is surprised to find a deep-sea shell imbedded in the marbles of a mountain
peak, how great is your surprise to see beneath you a vegetatiou foreign to the deep!
Below your boat, submerged many feet beneath the surface of the lowest tide, away
down in these green crystal depths, you see no rusting anchor, no mouldering re-
mains of some shipwrecked one, but in the standing stumps of trees, the mouldering
vestiges of a forest, where once the wild cat prowled, and the birds of heaven, sing-
ing their loves, had nestled and nursed their young. In counterpart to those por-
tions of our coast where sea-hollowed caves, with sides the waves have polished, and
floors still strewed with shells and sand, now stand high above the level of strongest
stream-tides, there stand these dead. decaying trees-entombed in the deep. A
strange phenomenon, which admits of no other explanation than this, that there the
coast-line has sunk beneath its ancient level.
Many of our cities present a phenomenon as melancholy to the eye of a philan-
throphist, as the other is interesting to a philosopher or geologist. In their econom-
ical, educational, moral, and religious aspects, certain parts of this city bear palpable
evidence of a corresponding subsidence. Not a single house, nor a block of houses,
but whole streets, once from end to end the homes of decency, and industry, and
wealth, and rank, and piety, have been engulfed. A flood of ignorance, and misery,
and sin now breaks and roars above the top of their highest tenements. Nor do the
old stumps of a forest still standing up erect beneath the sea-wave, indicate a greater
change, a deeper subsidence, than the relics of ancient grandeur. and the touching
memorials of piety which yet linger about these wretched dwellings, like evening
twilight on the hills-like some traces of beauty on a corpse. The unfurnished floor,
the begrimed and naked walls, the stifling, sickening atmosphere, the patched and
dusty window-through which a sunbeam, like hope, is faintly stealing-the ragged,
hunger-bitten, and sad-faced children, the ruffian man, the heap of straw where some
wretched mother, in muttering dreams, sleeps off last night's debauch, or lies un-
We
shrouded and uucoffined in the ghastliness of a hopeless death, are sad scenes.
have often looked on them. And they appear all the sadder for the restless play of
fancy. Excited by some vestiges of a fresco-painting that still looks out from the
foul and broken plaster, the massive marble rising over the cold and cracked hearth-
stone, an elaborately carved cornice too high for shivering cold to pull it down for
fuel, some stucco flowers or fruit yet pendent on the crumbling ceiling, fancy, kindled
by these, calls up the gay scenes and actors of other days--when beauty, elegance.
and fashion graced these lonely halls, and plenty smoked on groaning tables, and
where these few cinders, gathered from the city dust-heap, are feebly smouldering,
hospitable tires roared up the chimney.
But there is that in and about these houses which bears witness to a deeper subsi-
dence, a yet sadder change. Bent on some mission of mercy, you stand at the
foot of a dark and filthy stair. It conducts you to the crowded rooms of a tenement,
164
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
where-with the exception of some old decent widow who has seen better days, and
when her family are all dead, and her friends all gone still clings to God and her
faith in the dark hour of adversity and amid the wreck of fortune-from the cellar-
dens below to the cold garrets beneath the roof-tree, you shall find none either read-
ing their Bible, or even with a Bible to read. Alas! of prayer, of morning or evening
psalms, of cartbly or heavenly peace, it may be said the place that once knew them
knows them no more. But before you enter the doorway, raise your eyes to the
lintel-stone. Dumb, it yet speaks of other and better times. Carved in Greek or
Latin, or our own mother-tongue, you decipher such texts as these: Peace be to this
house; Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it ;' We
have a building of God, an house not made with hand-, eternal in the heavens;'
'Fear God ;' or this, Love your neighbour.' Like the mouldering remnants of a
forest that once resounded with the melody of birds, but hears nought now save the
angry dash or melancholy moan of breaking waves these vestiges of piety furnish a
gauge which enables us to measure how low in these dark localities the whole stratum
of society has sunk.
?
(
•
•
Dr. Guthrie's First Interest in Ragged Schools.
My first interest in the cause of Ragged Schools was awakened by a picture
which I saw in Anstruther, on the shores of the Firth of Forth. It represented a
cobbler's room; he was there himself, spectacles on nose, an old shoe between his
knees; that massive forehead and firm mouth indicating great determination of
character; and from beneath his shaggy eyebrows benevolence gleamed out on a
group of poor children, some sitting, some standing, but all busy at their lessons
around him. Interested by this scene. we turned from his picture to the inscription
below; and with growing wonder read how this man, by name John Pounds, by
trade a cobbler in Portsmouth, hal taken pity on the ragged children, whom minis-
ters and magistrates, ladies and gentlemen, were leaving to run wild, and go to ruin
on their streets; how, like a good shepherd, he had gone forth to gather in these out-
casts, how he had trained them up in virtue and knowledge, and how, looking for no
fame, no recompense from man, he, single-handed, while earning his daily bread by
the sweat of his face, had, ere he died, rescued from ruin and saved to society no
fewer than five hundred children.
I confess that I felt humbled. I felt ashamed of myself. I well remember saying
to my companiou, in the enthusiasm of the momeut, and in my calmer and cooler
hours I have seen no reason for unsaying it: That man is an honour to humanity.
IIe has deserved the tallest monument ever raised on British shores!" Nor was John
Pounds only a benevolent man. He was a genius in his way; at anyrate he was in-
genious; and if he could not catch a poor boy in any other way, like Paul, he would
win him by guile. He was sometimes seen hunting down a ragged urchin on the
quays of Portsmouth, and compelling him to come to school, not by the power of a
policeman, but a potato! He knew the love of an Irishman for a potato, and might
be seen running alongside an unwilling boy with one held under his nose, with a
temper as hot and a coat as ragged as his own.
•
•
Strolling one day with a friend among the romantic scenery of the crags and green
valleys around Arthur's Seat, we came at length to St. Anthony's well, and sat down
on the great black stone beside it to have a falk with the ragged boys who pursue
their calling there. Their 'tinuies' [tin dishes] were ready with a draught of the
clear cold water in hope of a halfpenny. We began to question them about
schools. As to the boys themselves, one was fatherless, the son of a poor widow;
the father of the other was alive, but a man of low habits and bad character. Both
were poorly clothed. The one had never been at school; the other had sometimes
attended a Sabbath-school. Eucouraged by the success of Sheriff Watson, who had
the honour to lead the enterprise, the idea of a Ragged School was then floating in
my brain; and so, with reference to the scheme, and by way of experiment, I said:
'Would you go to school if-besides your learning-you were to get breakfast, din-
ner, and supper there?' It would have done any man's heart good. to have seen the
flash of joy that broke from the eyes of one of them, the flush of pleasure on his
cheek, as hearing of three sure meals a day-the boy leaped to his feet and ex-
claimed: Ay, will I, sir, and bring the hail land [the whole tenement or flat] too ;'
and then, as if afraid I might withdraw what seemed to him so large and munificent
an offer, he exclaimed: 'I'll come for but my dinner, sir!?
C
•
•
MACLEOD.}
165
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR. NORMAN MACLEOD.
·
4
The REV. NORMAN MACLEOD (1812-1872), a distinguished member
of the Scottish Church, was a native of Campbelton, Argyleshire.
He was descended from a family of Highland clergymen, of whose
life and labours he has drawn an interesting picture in his Reminis-
cences of a Highland Parish,' 1867. His paternal grandfather was
minister of Morven, where his uncle, the Rev. John Macleod, still
labours. His father, an enthusiastic Celtic scholar and a shrewd able
man, became minister of Campsie, in Stirlingshire, but Norman
spent several of his boyish years at Morven, where he enjoyed an
open-air life with the excitement of fishing and boating. A love of
the sea and of ships and sailors remained with him throughout all
his life, and was of importance to him in the way of oratorical illus-
tration, both as a preacher and writer. He studied at Glasgow and
Edinburgh Universities-not with any marked distinction and is
described as a special favourite with his fellow-students, ever ready
with apt quotations from Shakspeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
Keats. He was a short time tutor to the son of a Yorkshire squire,
with whom he visited Weimar. He sang well to the guitar, sketched
cleverly, was as keen a waltzer as any attache in Weimar, and threw
himself with a vivid sense of enjoyment into the gaieties of the little
capital. But with it all, he held fast to his own convictions of right
and truth, and only once attended the duke's court on Sunday. To
the simple forms and service of the Presbyterian Church he was
strongly attached, though he gradually dropped some of the strict
Calvinistic doctrines, and inclined to the more genial theology of
men like Stanley, Maurice, and others of what is termed the Broad
Church. He thus describes a confirmation scene in York Cathedral:
<
The scene was beyond all description. Fancy upwards of three
thousand children under fifteen, the females dressed in white, with
ladies and gentlemen, all assembled in that glorious minster-the
thousand stained glass windows throwing a dazzling light of various
hues on the white mass-the great organ booming through the never-
ending arches! The ceremony is intensely simple: they come in for-
ties and fifties and surround the bishop, who repeats the vows, and
lays his hand successively on each head I could not help compar-
ing this with a sacramental occasion in the Highlands, where there is
no minster but the wide heaven, and no organ but the roar of the
eternal sea, the church with its lonely churchyard and primitive con-
gregation, and-think of my Scotch pride--I thought the latter scene
more grand and more impressive.'
He received his first appointment in the church as minister of
Loudon in Ayrshire, a district inhabited by a small proportion of
Covenanting farmers and a large number of political weavers. With
both, of course, he had his difficulties. The strict theologians exam-
ined him on the fundamentals,' and the weavers scoffed at religion,
(
166
[ro 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
↓
and disputed his political opinions. Visiting one well-known Char-
tist, he was requested to sit down on a bench at the front of the door,
and discuss the seven points.'
seven points.' The weaver, with his shirt sleeves
turned up, his apron rolled about his waist, and his snuff-mull in his
hand, vigorously propounded his favourite political dogmas.
<
6
""
. .
When he had concluded, he turned to the minister and demanded
an answer. In my opinion, was the reply, "your principles
would drive the country into revolution, and create in the long-run
national bankruptcy. Nay-tion-al bankruptcy!" said the old man
meditatively, and diving for a pinch. Div-ye-think-sae?" then,
briskly, after a long snuff, "Dod, I'd risk it? The naiveté of this
philosopher, who had scarcely a sixpence to lose, "risking" the na-
tion for the sake of his theory was never forgotten by his com-
panion.'
C
•
The frankness and geniality of the young minister melted down
all opposition. From Campsie he removed to Dalkeith, and in 1851
he succeeded to the Barony parish, in Glasgow, with which in future
his name was to be identified, and in which he laboured with unflag-
ging zeal. His first publication was a volume entitled 'The Earnest
Student,' being an account of the life of his brother-in-law, John
Mackintosh. The proceeds of the work, amounting to £200, he
sent as a contribution to the Indian missions of the Free Church,
of which Mackintosh had been a student. In 1858 he received the
honorary degree of D.D. He was appointed one of the deans of
the Chapel Royal, and one of Her Majesty's chaplains for Scotland.
From 1860 till his death, he was editor of Good Words,' a periodical
projected by Mr. Strahan, the publisher, and which under Dr.
Macleod became (as it now continues under his brother and biogra-
pher, the Rev. Donald Macleod) eminently successful. To its pages
he contributed his stories, The Old Lieutenant,' 'The Highland
Parish,' The Starling,' &c. He was more a man of action than a
student, but these works-especially his reminiscences of the High-
land parish of his youth-form pleasant and instructive reading.
His 'Peeps in the Far East,' describing scenes he had visited, and
sketches of society, during a mission to India, are of the same
character. His mission to India greatly increased his popularity,
and he was equally a favourite with the court and aristocracy and
with the inmates of the darkest closes and miserable lodgings in
Glasgow. He charmed all circles, and sympathised with all. He
was honoured with the friendship of the Queen. I am never
tempted,' he says, 'to conceal my convictions from the Queen, for I
feel she sympathises with what is true, and likes the speaker to utter
the truth exactly as he believes it.' In another place, he says: She
has a reasoning, searching mind, anxious to get at the root and
reality of things, and abhors all shams, whether in word or deed. . .
It was really grand to hear her talk on moral courage and living for
duty.' The domestic life of her Majesty at Balmoral is indicated in
<
"
(6
(
MACLEOD.]
167
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
a little note which states that 'the Queen sat down to spin at a nice
Scotch wheel, while I read Robert Burns to her-"Tam o'Shanter,"
and "A Man's a Man for a' that."" These particulars are given in
a Memoir of Norman Macleod' by his brother (1876), a work
executed with admirable taste and judgment. The Indian mission
of Dr. Macleod and his incessant work at home, undermined his
naturally robust constitution. On the 3d of June 1872 he completed
his sixtieth year, and on the 16th he expired-leaving behind him a
noble example of devotion to duty, and of self-sacrificing efforts to
promote the good of mankind.
Life in a Highland Bothy Fifty Years Since.
When I was young, I was sent to live among the peasantry in the parish (in
the West Highlands) so as to acquire a knowledge of the language, and living, as
I did, very much like themselves, it was my delight to spend the long evenings in
their huts, hearing their tales and songs. These huts were of the most primitive
description. They were built of loose stones and clay; the walls were thick, the
door low, the rooms numbered one only, or in more aristocratic cases two. The floor
was clay; the peat-fire was built in the middle of the floor, and the smoke, when
amiable and not bullied by a sulky wind, escaped quietly and patiently through a
hole in the roof. The window was like a port-hole, part of it generally filled with
glass and part with pear. One bed, or sometimes two (with clean home-made sheets,
blank te, and counte pane), a 'dresser' with bowls and plates, a large chest. and a
corner full of peat. filled up the space beyond the circle about the fire. Upon the
rafters above, black as ebony from peat-reek, a row of heus and chickens with a
stately cock roosted in a paradise of heat.
Let me describe one of these evenings. Round the fire are seated, some on stools,
some on stones, some on the floor. a bappy group. Two or three girls, fine healthy
blue-eyed lassies, with their hair tied up with ribbon suood, are knitting stockings.
Hugh, the son of Sundy, is busking horks; big Archy is peeling willow-wands and
fashioning them into baskets; the shepherd Donaid, the son of Black John, is play-
ing on the Jew's harp; while beyond the circle are one or two herd-boys in kilts, re-
clining on the floor, all eyes and ears for the stories. The performances of Donald
begin the evening, and form interludes to its songs, tales, and recitations. He has
two large Lochaber trumps. for Lochaber trumps were to the Highlands what Cremona
violins were to musical Europe. He secures the end of each with his teeth, and
grasping them with his hands so that the tiny instruments are invisible, he applies
the little finger of each hand to their vibrating steel tougues. He modulates their
tones with his breath, and brings out of them Highland reels, strathspeys. and jigs-
such wonderfully beautiful, silvery, distinct, and harmonious sounds as would draw
forth cheers and an encore even in St. James's IIall. But Donald, the son of Black
John, is done, and he looks to bonny Mary Cameron for a blink of her hazel eye to re-
ward him, while in virtue of his performance he demands a song from her. Now
Mary has dozens of songs. o has Kirsty. so has Flory-love songs, shearing songs,
washing songs Prince Charlie songs. songs composed by this or that poet in the
parish; and therefore Mary asks What song?' So until she can make up her mind,
and have a little playful flirtation with Donald, she requests Hugh, the son of Sandy,
to tell a story. Although ugh has abundance of this material, he too protests that
he has noue. But having betrayed this modesty, he starts off with one of those
which are given by Mr. Campbell (Highland Tales ). to whose admirable and truth-
ful volumes I refer the reader. When the story is done, improvisation is often tried,
and amidst roars of laughter the aptest verses, the truest and most authentic speci-
mens of tales, are made, sometimes in clever satire, sometimes with knowing illu-
sions to the weakness or predilections of those round the fire. Then follow riddles
and puzzles; then the trumps resume their tunes. and Mary sings her song, and
Kirsty and Flory theirs, and all join in chorus, and who cares for the wind outside or
the pect-reek inside! Never was a more innocent or happy group.
This fondness for music from trump, fiddle, or bagpipe, and for song-singing,
A
168
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
}
story-telling, and improvisation, was universal, and imparted a marvellous buoyancy
and intelligence to the people.
These peasants were, moreover, singularly inquisitive and greedy of information.
It was a great thing if the schoolmaster or any one else was present who could tell
them about other people and other places. I remember an old shepherd who ques-
tioned me closely how the hills and rocks were formed, as a gamekeeper had heard
some sportsmen talking about this. The questions which were put were no doubt
often odd enough. A woman, for example, whose husband was anxious to emigrate
to Australia, stoutly opposed the step until she could get her doubts solved on some
geographical point that greatly disturbed her. She consulted the minister, and the
tremendous question which chiefly weighed on her mind was, whether it was true
that the feet of the people there were opposite to the feet of the people at home?
And if so, what then?
Wee Davie.
$
'Wee Davie' was the only child of William Thorburn, blacksmith. He had
reached the age at which he could venture, with prudence and reflection, on a journey
from one chair to another; his wits kept alive by materual warnings of Tak care,
Davie; mind the fire, Davie.' When the journey was ended in safety, and he looked
over his shoulders with a crow of joy to his mother, he was rewarded, in addition to
the rewards of his own brave and adventurous spirit, by such a smile as equalled only
his own, and by the well-merited approval of Weel done, Davie!'
Davie was the most powerful and influential member of the household. Neither
the British fleet, nor the French army, nor the Armstrong guu had the power of
doing what Davie did. They might as well have tried to make a primrose grow or a
lark sing!
He was, for example, a wonderful stimulus to labour. The smith had been rather
disposed to idleness before his son's arrival. He did not take to his work on cold
mornings as he might have done, and was apt to neglect many opportunities, which
offered themselves, of bettering his condition; and Jeauie was easily put off by some
plausible objection when she urged her husband to make an additional honest penny
to keep the house. But 'the bairn 'became a new motive to exertion; and the thought
of leaving him and Jeanie more co fortable, in case sickness laid the smith aside, or
death took him away, became like a new sinew to his powerful arm, as he wielded the
hammer and made it ring the music of hearty work on the sounding anvil. The
meaning of benefit-clubs, sick-societies, and penny-banks was fully explained by
'wee Davie.'
Davie also exercised a remarkable influence on his father's political views and social
habits. The smith had been fond of debates on political questions; and no more so-
norous growl of discontent than his could be heard against the powers that be,' the
injustice done to the masses, or the misery which was occasioned by class legislation.
He had also made up his mind not to be happy or contented, but only to endure life
as a necessity laid upon him, until the required reforms in church and state, at home
and abroad, had been attained. But his wife, without uttering a syllable on matters
which she did not even pretend to understand; by a scries of acts out of Parliament;
by reforms in household arrangements; by introducing good bills into her own House
of Commons; and by a charter, whose points were chiefly very commonplace ones-
such as a comfortable meal, a tidy home, a clean fireside, a polished grate, above all,
a cheerful countenance and womanly love-by these radical changes she had made
her husband wonderfully fond of his home. He was, under this teaching, getting
too contented for a patriot, and too happy for a man in an ill-governed world. His
old companions at last could not coax him out at night. He was lost as a member of
one of the most philosophical clubs in the neighbourhood. His old pluck,' they
said, 'was gone.' The wife, it was alleged by the patriotic bachelors, had 'cowed'
him, and driven all the spirit out of him. But 'wee Davie' completed this revolu-
tion. I shall tell you how.
↓
One failing of William's had hitherto resisted Jeanie's silent influence. The
smith had formed the habit, before he was married, of meeting a few companions,
'just in a friendly way,' on pay-nights at a public-house. It was true that he was
never 'what might be called a drunkard-Rever lost a day's work '-' never was
the worst for liquor,' &c. But, nevertheless, when he entered the snuggery in Peter
MACLEOD.]
169
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Wilson's whisky-shop, with the blazing fire and comfortable atmosphere; and
when, with half-a-dozen talkative, and, to him, pleasant fellows and old companions.
he sat round the fire, and the glass circulated; and the gossip of the week was dis-
cussed; and racy stories were told; and one or two songs sung, linked together by
memories of old merry-meetings; and current jokes were repeated, with humour, of
the tyrannical influence which some would presume to exercise on 'innocent social
enjoyment-then would the smith's brawny chest expand, and his face beam, and his
feelings become malleable, and his sixpences begin to melt, and flow out in gener-
ous sympathy into Peter Wilson's fozy hand, to be counted greedily beneath his
sodden eyes. And so it was that the smith's wages were always lessened by Peter's
gains. His wife had her fears-her horrid anticipations-but did not like to even
to' her husband anything so dreadful as what she in her heart dreaded. She took
her own way, however, to win him to the house and to good, and gently insinuated
wishes rather than expressed them. The smith, no doubt, she comforted herself by
thinking, was only merry,' and never ill-tempered or unkind-'yet at times'-
and then, what if-!' Yes, Jeanie, you are right! The demon sneaks into the
house by degrees, and at first may be kept out, and the door shut upon him; but let
him only onee take possession, then he will keep it, and shut the door against every-
thing pure, lovely, and of good report-barring it against thee and 'wee Davie,' ay,
and against One who is best of all-aud will fill the house with sin and shame, with
misery and kespair! But 'wee Davie,' with his arm of might, drove the demon out.
It happened thus:
L
One evening when the smith returned home so that 'you could know it on him,'
Davie toddled forward; and his father, lifting him up, made him stand on his knee.
The child began to play with the locks of the Samson, to pat him on the cheek, and
to repeat with glee the name of 'dad-a.' The smith gazed on him intently, and with
a peculiar look of love, mingled with sadness. Isn't he a bonnie bairn ?' asked
Jeanic, as she looked over her husband's shoulder at the child, nodding and smiling
to him. The smith spoke not a word, but gazed intently upon his boy, while some
sudden emotion was strongly working in his countenence.
•
It's done!' he at last said. as he put his child down.
What's wrang? what's wrang ?' exclaimed his wife as she stood before him, and
put her bands round his shoulders, bending down until her face was close to his.
Everything is wrang, Jeanie.'
'Willy, what is 't? are ye no weel ?-tell me what's wrang wi' you!-oh, tell me!"
she exclaimed, in evident alarm.
'It's a' richt noo,' he said, rising up and seizing the child. IIe lifted him to his
breast, and kissed him. Then looking up in silence, he said: 'Davie has done it,
along wi' you. Jeanie. Thank God, I am à free man!'
His wife felt awed, she knew not how.
•
'Sit doon,' he said, as he took out his handkerchief, and wiped away a tear from
his eye, and I'll tell you a' aboot it.'
Jeanie sat on a stool at his feet, with Davie on her knee. The smith seized the
child's little hand in one of his own, and with the other took his wife's.
<
'I hav'na been what ye may ca' a drunkard,' he said, slowly, and like a man
abashed, but I hae been often as I shouldna hac been, and as, wi' God's help, 1
never, never will be again!'
Oh!' exclaimed Jeanie.
C
'It's done, it's done!' he said; as I'm a leevan man, it's done! But dinna greet,
Jeanie. Thank God for you and Davie, my best blessings.'
Except Himsel'!' said Jeanie, as she hung on her husband's neck.
And noo, woman,' replied the smith, nae mair about it; it's done. Gie wee
Davie a piece, and get the supper ready.'
REV. DR. JOHN EADIE.
DR. JOHN EADIE (1813-1876), an eminent Biblical scholar and
Professor of Hermeneutics and Christian Evidences to the United
Presbyterian Church, was a voluminous writer. His principal works
are- An Analytical Concordance of the Holy Scriptures;´ Biblical
Cyclopædia;' Commentaries on the Greek Text of the Epistles of
•
鼎
​170
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
-
(
Paul to the Colossians, Ephesians, and Philippians;' Early Oriental
History' (issued as a volume of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana):
'History of the English Bible,' and various other theological writings
lectures, sermons, biographical sketches, &c. His History of the
English Bible, published only a few weeks before his death, is an ex-
ternal and critical account of the various English translations of
Scripture, and is completely exhaustive of the subject. From his
c.lebrity as a Hebrew scholar and Biblical critic, Dr. Eadie was
appointed a member of the committee engaged at Westminster in
translating and revising the Scriptures, and regularly attended the
monthly meetings of the committee. The Glasgow University (his
alma mater) conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and he received
the degree of D.D. from the university of St. Andrews.
As a pro-
fessor, Dr. Eadie was highly popular, and in private life was greatly
esteemed. He was liberal in many of his views, and differed from
most of his Presbyterian brethren in being favourable to the intro-
duction of instrumental music in churches, and in believing that the
Scriptures did not forbid marriage with a deceased wife's sister. One
interesting trait of the learned divine has been recorded: 'He was
particularly fond of flowers and animals, especially birds, of which
from his earliest years he kept many about him' (Scotsman). Dr.
Eadie was a native of Alva in Stirlingshire. After studying at the
university of Glasgow he was licensed as a preacher in 1835, and at
the time of his death was minister of Lansdowne Church, Glasgow.
In 1860, having attained his semi-jubilee as a pastor, his congregation
honoured him with a substantial token of their good-will and ven-
eration.
DR. JOIN TULLOCH-DR. JOHN CAIRD.
DR. JOHN TULLOCH, Principal of St. Mary's College, St. Andrews,
in 1855 received one of the Burnett prizes for a treatise on 'Theism,
the Witness of Reason and Nature to an All-wise and All-beneficent
Creator.' The Burnett Prize Essays are published under the bequest
of an Aberdeen merchant, John Burnett (1739–1784), who left £1600
to be applied every forty years to the foundation of two premiums
for essays on the Being and Character of God from Reason and
Revelation. Dr. Tulloch, in 1859, published a volume of four lec-
tures, delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh-' Lead-
ers of the Reformation,' or sketches of Luther, Calvin, Latimer,
and Knox. He is also author of English Puritanism and its Lead-
ers-Cromwell,' Milton,' &c. 1861; Beginning Life, Chapters
for Young Men,' 1862; Christ of the Gospels and Christ in Modern
Criticism, 1864; Studies in the Religious Thought of England,'
C
1
C
(
(
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>
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1867; Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in
the Seventeenth Century,' two volumes, 1872. This last is an able
work, supplying a desideratum in our literature. Also 'The Chris-
tian Doctrine of Sin,' 1876.
TULLOCHI.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
171
Liberal English Churchmen.
It was the merit of Hales, and Chillingworth, and Taylor (says Dr. Tulloch), at-
tached as they were personally to one side in this struggle (between the two theories
of church organisation], that they penetrated beneath the theoretical narrowness
which enslaved both sides, and grasped the idea of the church more profoundly and
comprehensively. They saw the inconsistency of a formal jus divinum with the es-
sential spirit of Protestantism, imperfectly as this spirit had been developed in Eng-
land, or indeed elsewhere. According to this spirit, the true idea of the church is
moral and not ritaal. It cor sists in certain verities of faith and worship, rather than
in any formal unities of creed or order. The genuine basis of Christian communion
is to be found in a common recognition of the great realities of Christian thought and
life, and not in any outward adhesion to a definite ecclesiastical or theological sys-
tem. A who profess the Apostles' Creed are members of the church, and the na-
tional worship should be so ordered as to admit of all who make this profession. The
purpose of these churchmen. in short, was comprehension and not exclusion. While
they held that that no single type of church government and worship was absolutely
divine, they acknowledged in different forms of church order an expression more or
less of the divine ideas which lie at the root of all Christian society, and which-and
not any accident of external form-gave to that society its essential character. In a
word, the church appeared to them the more divine, the more ample the spiritual ac-
tivities it embraced, and the less the circle of heresy or dissent it cut off. This
breadth and toleration separated them alike from Prelatists and Puritans.
Principal Tulloch is a native of the parish of Tibbermore, Perth-
shire, of which his father was minister. He was born in 1823. Be-
sides the above works, he has contributed to the reviews and other
periodicals, and holds a conspicuous place in the national church.
He is author also of Religion and Theology, a Sermon for the
Times,' 1876. The object of this discourse is to shew that religion
and theology are two distinct things, and that a person may be de-
voutly religious without accepting a complicated creed :
<
The knowledge that is essential to religion is a simple knowledge, like that which
the loved has of the person who loves, the bride of the bridegroom, the child of the
parent. It springs from the personal and spiritual, azd not from the cognitive or
critical side of our being; from the heart, and not from the head. Not merely so;
but if the heart or spiritual sphere be really awakened in us-if there be a true stir-
ring of life here, and a true seeking towards the light-the essence and strength of a
true religion may be oura, although we are unable to answer many questions that
may be asked, or to solve even the difficulties raised by our own intellect.
In the course of this argument, the preacher notes the fact that
under the most various influences and the most diverse types, the
same fruits of character appear.
Diverse Modes of Christian Thought.
As some men are said to be born Platonists, and some Aristotelians, so some are
born Augustinians, and some Pelagians or Arminians. These names have been
strangely identified with true or false views of Christianity. What they really denote
is diverse modes of Christian thinking, diverse tendencies of the Christian intellect,
which repeat themselves by a law of nature. It is no more possible to make men
think alike in theology than in anything else where the facts are complicated and
the conclusions necessarily fallible. The history of theology is a history of varia-
tions; not indeed, as some have maintained, without an inner principle of move-
inent, but with a constant repetition of oppositions underlying its necessary devel-
opment. The same contrasts continually appear throughout its course, and seem never
to wear themselves out. From the beginning there has always been the broader and
the narrower type of thought-a St. Paul and St. John, as well as a St. Peter and St.
172
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
James; the doctrine which leans to the works and the doctrine which leans to grace;
the milder and the severer interpretations of human nature and of the divine deal-
ings with it-a Clement of Alexandria, an Origen and a Chrysostom, as well as a
Tertullian, an Augustine, and a Cyril of Alexandria, an Erasmus no less than a
Luther, a Castalio as well as a Calvin, a Frederick Robertson as well as a John New-
man. Look at these men and many others equally significant on the spiritual side
as they look to God, or as they work for men, how much do they resemble one
auother! The same diviue life stirs them all. Who will undertake to settle which
is the truer Christian? But look at them on the intellectual side, and they are hope-
lessly disunited. They lead rival forces in the march of Christian thought-forces
which may yet find a point of conciliation, and which may not be so widely opposed
as they seem, but whose present attitude is one of obvious hostility. Men may meet
in common worship and in common work, and find themselves at one.
The same
faith may breathe in their prayers, and the same love fire their hearts. But men
who think can never be at one in their thoughts on the great subjects of the Christian
revelation. They may own the same Lord, and recognise and reverence the same
types of Christian character, but they will differ so soon as they begin to define their
notions of the Divine, and draw conclusions from the researches either of ancient
or of modern theology. Of all the false dreams that have ever haunted humanity,
none is more false than the dream of catholic unity in this sense. It vanishes in
th very effort to grasp it, and the old fissures appear within the most carefully com-
pacted structures of dogma.
The REV. DR. JOIN CAIRD, in the year 1855, preached a sermon
before the Queen in the parish church at Crathie, which was pub-
lished by a royal command, and attracted great attention and admi-
ration, and was translated under the auspices of Chevalier Bun-
sen. This popular discourse was of a practical nature, and was en-
titled The Religion of Common Life. In 1858 Dr. Caird published
a volume of Sermons,' which also was widely circulated.
C
He is one
of the most eloquent of divines. Dr. Caird is a native of Greenock,
born in 1823. In 1873 he was elected Principal of the university of
Glasgow.
C
Character and Doctrine.
Actions in many ways teach better than words, and even the most persuasive oral
instruction is greatly vivified when supplemented by the silent teaching of the life.
Consider, for one thing, that actions are more intelligible than words. All verbal
teaching partakes more or less of the necessary vagueness of language, and its intel-
ligibility is dependent, in a great measure, on the degree of intellectual culture and
ability in the mind of the hearer. Ideas, reflections, deductions, distinctions, when
presented in words, are liable to misapprehension; their power is often modified or
fost by the obscurity of the medium through which they are conveyed, and the im-
pression produced by them is apt very speedily to vanish from the mind. Many minds
are inaccessible to any form of teaching that is not of the most elementary charac-
ter; and there are comparatively few to whom an illustration is not more intelligible
than an argument.
But whatever the difficulty of understanding words, decds are almost always in-
telligible. Let a man not merely speak but act the truth; let him reveal his soul in the
inarticulate speech of an earnest, pure, and truthful life, and this will be a language
which the profoundest must admire, while the simplest can appreciate. The most
elaborate discourse on sanctification will prove tame and ineffective in comparison
with the eloquence of a humble, holy walk with God. In the spectacle of a penitent
soul pouring forth the broken utterance of its contrition at the Savicur's feet, there
is a nobler sermon ou repentance than eloquent lips ever spoke. Instruct your child-
ren in the knowledge of God's great love and mercy, but let them see that love cheer-
ing. animating, hallowing your daily life; describe to them the divinity and glory of
the Saviour's person and work, but let them note how day you think of Him, hear
with what profoundest reverence you name His name, see how the sense of a divine
KER.}
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
173
presence sheds a reflected moral beauty around your own-and this will be a living
and breathing theology to them, without which formal teaching will avail but little.
Sermons and speeches, too, may weary; they may be listened to with irksomeness,
and remembered with effort: but living speech never tires: it makes no formal demand
on the attention, it goes forth in feelings and emanations that win their way insensi-
bly into the secret depths of the soul. The medium of verbal instruction, moreover,
is conventional, and it can be understood only where one special form of speech is
vernacular, but the language of action and life is instinctive and universal. The liv-
ing epistle needs no translation to be understood in every country and clime; a noble
act of heroism or self-sacrifice speaks to the common heart of humanity; a humble,
There is
gentle, holy, Christlike life preaches to the common ear all the world over.
no speech nor language in which this voice is not heard, and its words go forth to the
world's cud
€
The REV. JOIN KER, D.D., minister of a United Presbyterian
church in Glasgow, has published a volume of Sermons,' 1868,
which has gone through several editions, and forms a valuable cen-
tribution to our works of practical divinity. Fine literary taste and
power are combined with the illustration of Christian doctrine and
duty. We subjoin some passages from a sermon on the Eternal
C
Future.'
C
It doth not yet Appear what We shall Be.'
The first step of the soul into another state of being is a mystery. No doubt it
continues conscious, and its conscious existence, in the case of God's children, is
most blessed. To depart and be with Christ is far better. But the existence of the
soul separate from the body, and from all material organs, is incomprehensible.
The place of our future life is obscure. How there can be relation to place with-
out a body, we do not know; aud even when the body is restored, we cannot tell the
locality of the resurrection-world. Nothing in reason, and nothing certain in revela-
tion, connects it with any one spot in God's universe. It may be far away from
earth. in some central kingdom, the gittering confines of which we can perceive in
thick-sown stars, that are the pavement of the land which has its dust of gold. It
may be, as our hearts would rather suggest, in this world renewed and glorified-a
world sacred as the scene of Christ's sufferings, and endeared to us as the cradle of
our immortal life. Or that great word, Hearen-the heaven of heavens-may
gather many worlds around this one as the centre of God's most godlike work-may
inclose the new and old, the near and far, in its wide embrace. It doth not yet ap-
pear.
The outward manner of our final existence is also uncertain. That it will be
blessed and glorious, freed from all that can hurt or annoy, we may well believe.
We may calculate that, in the degree in which the incorruptible and immortal body
shall excel the body of sin and death, our final home, with its scenes of beauty and
grandeur, its landscapes and skies, shall surpass our dwelling-place on this earth.
Whether we may possess merely our present faculties, enlarged and strengthened,
as a child's mind expands into a man's, or whether new faculties of perception may
not be made to spring forth, as if sight were given to a blind man, we find it impos-
sible to affirm..
There are some minds which trouble themselves with the fear lest their present
life and its natural affections should be irrecoverably lost in the future world. The
place and circumstances seem so indefinite, and must be so different from the present,
that they are tossed in uncertainty. Will they meet their friends again so as to know
them, or will they not be separated from them by the vast expanses of that world,
and by the varied courses they may have to pursue? We may have our thoughts
about these things tranquillised, if we bring them into connection with Christ. Our
eternal life begins in unison with Him, and it must for ever so continue. If we are
gathered round Him in heaven, and know Him, and are known of Him, this will in-
sure acquaintance with one another. It is strange that it could ever be made matter of
doubt. And when we think that He gave us human hearts and took one into His own
breast-that He bestowed on us human homes and affections, and solaced Himself
1
174
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
with them-we need not fear that He will deny us our heart's wish, where it is natural
and good. Variety of pursuit and temperament need no more separate us there than
it does here, and his own name for heaven-the Father's house of many mansions--
speaks of unity as well as diversity, of one home, one roof, one paternal presence.
Mind above Matter.
It is the presence of life, above all, of intelligent life, which gives significance to
creation, and which stands like the positive digit in arithmetic, before all its blank
ciphers. The most beautiful landscape wants its chief charm till we see, or fancy in
it, the home of man.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
{
This may be charged as egotism, but it is the law of our being by which we must
judge the world. We must look out on God's universe with the eyes and heart that
its Maker has bestowed upon us, and we must believe that they were meant to guide
us truly. The eras of geology receive their interest as they become instinct with
animation, and as they foreshadow the entrance of the intelligent mind, which was
at last to appear among them to be their interpreter. It is the reason of man which
has reconstructed them out of their dead ashes. It is that same reason which gives
to the present living world all that it has of meaning and unity. The forms of
beauty and grandeur which matter puts on are only the clothing furnished by mind.
The Alps and Andes are but millions of atoms till thought combines them and stamps
on them the conception of the everlasting hills. Niagara is a gush of water-drops
till the soul puts into it that sweep of resistless power which the beholder feels. The
ocean, wave behind wave, is only great when the spirit has breathed into it the idea
of immensity. If we analyse our feelings we shall find that thought meets us
wherever we turn. The real grandeur of the world is in the soul which looks on it,
which sees some conception of its own reflected from the mirror around it-for
mind is not only living, but life-giving, and has received from its Maker a portion
of his own creative power: it breathes into dead matter the breath of life, and it
becomes a living soul.
RICHARD SHARP.
C
• Manag
<
L
This gentleman, commonly called 'Conversation Sharp' (1759–
1835), after mingling in all the distinguished society of London, from
the days of Johnson and Burke to those of Byron, Rogers, and Moore,
in 1834 published-at first anonymously-a small volume of Letters
and Essays in Prose and Verse. Rogers though tthe volume hardiy
equal to Sharp's reputation; but his reputation was founded on his
conversational powers, and the higher order of genius is not-as
Sir Walter Scott observed-favourable to this talent. For forming a
a good converser,' adds Scott, 'good taste, and extensive informa-
tion and accomplishment are the principal requisites, to which must
be added an easy and elegant delivery, and a well-toned voice.'
Mackintosh, however, termed Sharp the best critic he had ever known,
and Byron also bears testimony to his ability. Macaulay said he
never talked scandal. From commercial concerns Mr. Sharp had re-
alized a large fortune-he left £250,000—and had a seat in parlia-
ment. The Essays' evince knowledge of the world and sound sense.
A few of his maxims and reflections are subjoined:
>
SHARP.j
175
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Satirical writers and talkers are not half so clever as they think themselves, nor
as they ought to be. They do winnow the corn, 'tis true, but 'tis to feed upon the
chaff. I am sorry to add that they who are always speaking ill of others, are also very
apt to be doing ill to them. It requires some talent and some generosity to find out
talent and generosity in others; though nothing but selt-conceit and malice are
needed to discover or to imagine faults. The most gifted men that I have known
have been the least addicted to depreciate either friends or foes. Dr. Johnson, Mr.
Burke, and Mr. Fox were always inore inclined to overrate them. Your shrewd, sly,
evil-speaking fellow is generally a shallow personage, and frequently he is as venom-
ous and as false when he flatters as when he reviles-he seldom praises John but to
vex Thomas.
Trifling precautions will often prevent great mischiefs; as a slight turn of the
wrist parries a mortal thrust.
Untoward accidents will sometimes happen; but after many, many years of
thoughtful experience, I can truly say, that nearly all those who began life with me
have succeeded or failed as they deserved.
Even sensible men are too commonly satisfied with tracing their thoughts a little
way backwards; and they are, of course, soon perplexed by a profounder adversary.
In this respect, most people's minds are too like a child's garden, where the flowers
are planted without their roots. It may be said of morals and of literature, as truly
as of sculpture and painting, that to understand the outside of human nature, we
should be well acquainted with the inside.
It appears to me indisputable that benevolent intention and beneficial tendency
must combine to constitute the moral goodness of an action. To do as much good
and as little evil as we can, is the brief and intelligible principle that comprehends all
subordinate maxims. Both good tendency and good will are indispensable; for con-
science may be erroneous as well as callous, may blunder as well as sleep. Perhaps
a man cannot be thoroughly mischievous unless he is honest. In truth, practice is
also necessary, since it is one thing to be able to see that a line is crooked, and an-
other thing to be able to draw a straight one. It is not quite so easy to do good as
those may imagine who never try.
WILLIAM MAGINN.
WILLIAM MAGINN (1793–1842), one of the most distinguished peri
odical writers of his day, a scholar and wit, has left scarcely any per-
manent memorial of his genius or acquirements. He was born at
Cork, and at an early period of life assisted his father in conducting
an academy in that city. He received his degree of LL.D. in his
twenty-fourth year. In 1819 Maginn commenced contributing to
'Blackwood's Magazine.' His papers were lively, learned, and libel-
lous-an alliterative enumeration which may be applied to nearly all
he wrote. He was a keen political partisan, a Tory of the old Orange
stamp, who gave no quarter to an opponent. At the same time there
was so much scholarly wit and literary power about Maginn's con-
tributions, that all parties read and admired him. For nine years he
was one of the most constant writers in Blackwood,' and his Odo-
herty papers (prose and verse) were much admired. He had removed
to London in 1823, and adopted literature as a profession. In 1824
Mr. Murray the publisher commenced a daily newspaper, The
Representative.' Mr. Disraeli was reported to be editor, but he has
contradicted the statement. He was then too young to be intrusted
with such a responsibility. Maginn, however, was engaged as for-
eign or Paris correspondent. His residence in France was short; the
C
+
176
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
1
1
C
'Representative' soon went down, and Maginn returned to London
to spin his daily bread out of his brains. He was associated with
Dr. Giffard in conducting the Standard' newspaper, and when
'Fraser's Magazine' was established in 1830, he became one of its
chief literary supporters. One article in this periodical, a review of
'Berkeley Castle,' led to a hostile meeting between Maginn and the
Hon. Grantley Berkeley Mr. Berkeley had assaulted Fraser, the
publisher of the offensive criticism, when Maginn wrote to him, stat-
ing that he was the author. Hence the challenge and the duel. The
parties exchanged shots three several times, but without any serious
results. Happily, such scenes and such literary personalities have
passed away. The remainder of Maginn's literary career was irreg-
ular. Habits of intemperance gained ground upon him; he was
often arrested and in jail; but his good-humour seems never to have
forsaken him. He wrote a series of admirable Shakspeare papers for
'Blackwood' in 1837, and in the following year he commenced_a
series of Homeric ballads, which extended to sixteen in number.
1842 he was again in prison, and his health gave way. One of his
friends wrote to Sir Robert Peel, acquainting him with the lament-
able condition of Dr. Maginn, and the minister took steps for the re-
lief of the poor author, at the same time transmitting what has been
termed a splendid gift,' but which Maginn did not live to receive.
He died on the 29th of August 1842. The sort of estimation in which
he was held by his contemporaries may be gathered from the follow-
ing rhyming epitaph on him by Lockhart:
In
<
Пere, early to bed, lics kind WILLIAM MAGINN,
Who, with genius, wit, learning, life's trophies to win,
Had neither great lord nor rich cit of this kin,
Nor discretion to set himself up as to tin;
So his portion soon spent-like the poor heir of Lynn-
He turned author ere yet there was beard on his chin,
And, whoever was out, or whoever was in,
For your Tories his fine Irish brains he would spin,
Who received prose and rhyme with a promising grin-
'Go ahead, you queer fish, and more power to your fin,'
But to save from starvation stirred never a pin.
P
Light for long was his heart, though his breeches were thin,
Else his acting for certain was equal to Quin ;
But at last he was beat, and sought help of the bin-
All the same to the doctor from claret fo gin-
Which led swiftly to jail and consumption therein.
It was much when then the bones rattled loose in the skin,
He got leave to die here out of Babylon's din.
Barring drink and the girls, I ne'er heard a sin :
Many worse, better few, than bright, broken MAGINN.,
FRANCIS MAHONY (FATHER PROUT).
The REV. FRANCIS MAHONY (1804–1866) was also a native of Cork,
and equally noted for scholarship and conviviality. He was edu-
cated at St. Acheul, the college of the Jesuits at Amiens. Among
the Jesuits he lived, as he said, in an atmosphere of Latin, and be-
came a first-rate Latin scholar. He studied afterwards at Rome, and
MAHONY.]
177
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
f
<
having taken priest's orders, he officiated in London and at Cork.
He broke off from the Jesuits, and became one of the writers in
Fraser's Magazine' (about 1834), and contributed a series of
papers, afterwards collected and published as The Reliques of
Father Prout,' 1836. From the gay tavern life of the Fraserians,'
Mahony went abroad and travelled for some years. He became
Roman correspondent of the Daily News,' and his letters were in
1847 collected and published as Facts and Figures from Italy, by
Don Jeremy Savonarola, Benedictine Monk.' For the last eight
years of his life he lived chiefly in Paris, and was the correspondent
of the Globe,' his letters forming the chief attraction of that Lon-
don evening journal. A volume of Final Memorials of Father
Prout' (or Mahony) was published in 1876 by Mr. Blanchard Jerrold,
who has recorded Mahony's wonderful facility in Latin composition,
his wit, quaint sayings, genial outbursts of sentiment, reverence for
religion among all his convivialities, and his genuine goodness of
heart. James Hannay said of this Irish humorist: Mahony's fun is
essentially Irish-fanciful, playful, odd, irregular, and more grotes-
que, than Northern fun. In one of his own phrases, he is an Irish
potato, seasoned with Attic salt.
•
+
With deep affection
And recollection,
I often think of
The Shandon Bells.
Those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would,
In the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle
Their magic spells.
On this I pouder,
Where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder,
Sweet Cork, of thee;
With thy bells of Shandon,
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.
I've heard bells chiming,
Full many a clime in,
Tolling sublime in
Cathedral shrine:
While at a glibe rate,
Brass tongues would vibrate-
But all their music
Spoke nought like thine;
For memory dwelling
On cach proud swelling
Of the belfry knelling
Its bold notes free,
Made the bells of Shandon
Sound far more graud on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee,
A
I've heard bells tolling
Old Adrian's Mole' in,
Their thunder rolling
From the Vatican;
And cymbals glorious
Swinging uproarious
In the gorgeous turrets
Of Notre Dame.
But thy sounds were sweeter
Than the dome of Peter
Flings o'er the Tiber,
Pealing solemnly
O the bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.
There's a bell in Moscow,
While on tower and kiosk 0,
In Saint Sophia,
The Turkman gets;
And loud in air
Calls men to prayer,
From the tapering summits
Of tall minarets.
Such empty phantom
I freely grant them;
But there is an anthem
More dear to me-
'Tis the bells of Shandon,
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.
-
;
*
178
[To 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
6
SIR GEORGE AND SIR TRANCIS BOND HEAD.
•
C
C
The elder of these brothers-sons of an English gentleman, James
Roper Head, Esq.—was author of Forest Scenes in North America,'
1829, and Home Tours in England,' 1835-37. The Home Tours'
were made in the manufacturing districts, through which the author
travelled as a Poor-law Commissioner, and were written in a light,
pleasing style. He afterwards applied himself to a laborious topo
graphical and antiquarian account of Rome' in three volumes,
1849, and he translated Cardinal Pacca's Memoirs' and 'Apuleius'
Metamorphoses.' He died in 1855, aged seventy-three.
C
,
His brother, FRANCIS BOND HEAD (born at Rochester, January 1,
1793), had more vivacity and spirit as an author, though retaining
many of the family characteristics. While a captain in the army, he
published Rough Notes taken during some Rapid Journeys across
the Pampas and among the Andes, 1826. The work was exceed-
ingly popular, and the reputation of Galloping Head,' as the gay
captain was termed, was increased by his 'Bubbles from the Brun-
nen of Nassau.' He was appointed governor of Upper Canada in
1835, and created a baronet in 1837; but his administrative was not
equal to his literary talent, and he was forced to resign in 1838. Ile
published a narrative of his administration, which was more amusing
than convincing. Turning again to purely literary pursuits, Sir
Francis wrote The Emigrant,' 1852, and essays in the 'Quarterly
Review,' afterwards republished in a collected form with the title of
Stokers and Pokers-Highways and Byways.' He wrote a 'Life of
Bruce, the Traveller,' for the Family Library.' The national de-
fences of this country appearing to Sir Francis lamentably deficient,
he issued a note of warning, The Defenceless State of Great Brit-
ain,' 1850. Visits to Paris and Ireland produced A Faggot of
French Sticks, or Paris in 1851,' and A Fortnight in Ireland, 1852.
In 1869 he produced a practical work, The Royal Engineer.' The
judgments and opinions of the author are often rash and prejudiced,
but he is seldom dull, and commonplace incidents are related in a
picturesque and attractive manner. Sir Francis died at Croydon in
4
•
1875.
↓
6
Description of the Pampas.
The great plain, or pampas, on the east of the Cordillera, is about nine hundred
miles in breadth, and the part which I have visited, though under the same latitude,
is divided into regions of different climate and produce. On leaving Buenos Ayres,
the first of these regions is covered for one hundred and eighty miles with clover
and thistles; the second region, which extends for four hundred and fifty miles,
produces long grass; and the third region, which reaches the base of the Cordille. a,
is a grove of low trees and shrubs. The second and third of these regions have
nearly the same appearance throughout the year, for the trees and shrubs are ever-
greens, and the immense plain of grass only changes its colour from green to
brown; but the first region varies with the four seasons of the year in a most
extraordinary manner. In winter the leaves of the thistles are large and luxuriant,
and the whole surface of the country has the rough appearance of a turnip-field.
The clover in this season is extremely rich and strong; and the sight of the wild
HEAD.]
179
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
cattle grazing in full liberty on such pasture is very beautiful. In spring the clover
has vanished, the leaves of the thistles have extended along the ground, and the
country still looks like a rough crop of turnips. In less than a month the change is
most extraordinary: the whole region becomes a luxuriant wood of enormous
thistles, which have suddenly shot up to a height of ten or eleven feet, and are all
in full bloom. The road or path is hemmed in on both sides; the view is completely
obstructed; not an animal is to be seen; and the stems of the thistles are so close to
each other, and so strong, that, independent of the prickles with which they are
armed, they form an impenetrable barrier. The sudden growth of these plants is
quite astonishing; and though it would be an unusual misfortune in military history,
yet it is really possible that an invading army, unacquainted with this country,
might be imprisoned by these thistles before it had time to escape from them. The
summer is not over before the scene undergoes another rapid change: the thistles
suddenly lose their sap and verdure, their heads droop, the leaves shrink and fade,
the stems become black and dead, and they remain rattling with the breeze oue
against another, until the violence of the pampero or hurricane levels them with the
ground, where they rapidly decompose and disappear-the clover rushes up, and the
scene is again verdant.
A French Commissionnaire.
In Paris this social luxury has been so admirably supplied, that, like iced water
at Naples, the community could now hardly exist without it. Accordingly, at the
intersection of almost all the principal streets, there is posted by the police an intelli-
gent, respectable-looking man-there are about twelve thousand of them-cleanly
dressed in blue velveteen trowsers, and a blue corduroy jacket. on the breast of which
is affixed a brass ticket. invariably forfeited by reisconduct, bearing his occupation
and number. The duties of this commissionnaire are not only at various fixed prices
to go messages in any direction and at determined rates to perform innumerable
other useful services, but he is especially directed to assist aged and infirm people of
both sexes in crossing streets crowded with carriages, and to give to strangers, who
may inquire their way, every possible assistance. The luxury of living, wherever
you may happen to lodge, within reach of a person of this description, is very great.
For instance, within fifty yards of my lodgings, there was an active, honest, intelli-
gent, dark-blue fellow, who was to me a living book of useful knowledge. Crump-
ling up the newspaper he was usually reading, he could in the middle of a paragraph,
and at a moment's notice, get me any sort of carriage-recommend me to every de-
scription of shop-tell me the colour of the omnibus I wanted-where I was to find
it-where I was to leave it-how I ought to dress to go here, there, or anywhere;
what was done in the IIouse of Assembly last night-who spoke best-what was said
of his speech-and what the world thought of things in general.
The Electric Wires, and Tawell the Murderer.
↓
Whatever may have been his fears-his hopes-his fancies-or his thoughts-there
suddenly flashed along the wires of the electric telegraph, which were stretched close
beside him, the following words: A murder has just been committed at Salthill, and
the suspected murderer was seen to take a first-class ticket for London by the train
which left Slough at 7 h. 42 m. P.M. He is in the garb of a Quaker, with a brown
greatcoat on, which reaches nearly down to his feet. He is in the last compartment
of the second first-class carriage.'
And yet, fest as these words flow like lightning past him, the information they
contained, with all its details, as well as every secret thought that had preceded them,
had already consecutively flown millions of times faster; indeed, at the very instant
that, within the walls of the little cottage at Slough, there had been uttered that
dreadful scream, it had simultaneously reached the judgment-seat of heaven!
On arriving at the Paddington station. after mingling for some moments with the
crowd, he got into an omnibus, and as it rumbled along, taking up one passenger and
putting down another, he probably felt that his identity was every minute becoming
confounded and confused by the exchange of fellow-passengers for strangers that was
constantly taking place. But all the time he was thinking, the cad of the omnibus-
a policeman in disguise-knew that he held his victim like a rat in a cage. Without,
<
180
ΤΟ
CYCLOPEDIA OF
1876.
(To however, apparently taking the slightest notice of him, he took one sixpence, gave
change for a shilling, handed out this lady, stuffed in that one, until, arriving at the
bank, the guilty man, stooping as he walked towards the carriage-door, descended
the steps, paid his fare; crossed over to the Duke of Wellington's statue, where
pansing for a few moments, anxiously to gaze around him, he proceeded to the Jeru-
salem Coffee-house, thence over London Bridge to the Leopard Coffee-house in the
Borough, and finally to a lodging-house in Scott's Yard, Cannon Street.
He probably fancied that, by making so many turns and doubles, he had not only
effectually puzzled all pursuit, but that his appearance at so many coffee-houses
would assist him, if necessary, in proving au alibi; but whatever may have been his
motives or his thoughts. he had scarcely entered the lodging when the policeman-
who, like a wolf, had followed him every step of the way-opening the door, very
calmly said to him-the words no doubt were infinitely more appalling to him even
than the scream that had been haunting him- Haven't you just come trom Slough ?'
The monosyllable 'No,' confusedly uttered in reply, substantiated his guilt.
The policeman made him his prisoner; he was thrown into jail; tried; found
guilty of wilful murder; and hanged.
A few months afterwards, we happened to be travelling by rail from Paddington
to Slough, in a carriage filled with people all strangers to one another. Like English
travellers, they were all mute. For nearly fifteen miles no one had uttered a single
word, until a short-bodied, short-necked, short-nosed, exceedingly respectable-look-
ing man in the corner, fixing his eyes on the apparently fleeting posts and rails of the
electric telegraph, significantly nodded to us as he muttered aloud: Them's the cords
that hung John Tawell!'
T. C. HALIBURTON.
C
THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON (1796-1865), long a judge in
Nova Scotia, is author of a series of amusing works illustrative of
American and colonial manners, marked by shrewd, sarcastic re-
marks on political questions, the colonies, slavery, domestic institu-
tions and customs, and almost every familiar topic of the day. The
first series-which had previously been inserted as letters in a Nova
Scotia paper-appeared in a collected form under the title of The
Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slick-
ville.' A second series was published in 1838, and a third in 1840.
'Sam Slick' was a universal favourite, and in 1843.the author con-
ceived the idea of bringing him to England. The Attaché, or Sam
Slick in England,' gives an account of the sayings and doings of the
clockmaker when elevated to the dignity of the Honourable Mr.
Slick, Attaché of the American Legation to the court of St James's.
There is the same quaint humour, acute observation, and laughable
exaggeration in these volumes as in the former, but, on the whole,
Sam is most amusing on the other side of the Atlantic. Mr. Hali-
burton has also written an Account of Nova Scotia,' 1828; Bubbles
of Canada,' 1839;The Old Judge, or Life in a Colony,' and 'Letter-
bag of the Great Western,' 1839; Rule and Misrule of the English
in America,' 1851; Yankee Stories, and Traits of American Hu-
mour,' 1852; Nature and Human Nature,' 1855.
C
<
C
We must do our publishers the justice to say, that the first periodi-
cal in Great Britain which noticed Mr. Haliburton's works was
Chambers's Journal,'
6
་
HALIBURTON.]
181
ENGLISH LITERATURĒ.
Soft Sawder and Human Natur.
$
•
..
4.
+6
In the course of a journey which Mr. Slick performs in company with the repor-
ter of his humours, the latter asks him how, in a country so poor as Nova Scotia,
he contrives to sell so many clocks. Mr. Slick paused,' continues the author, as if
considering the propriety of answering the question, and looking me in the face,
said, in a confidential tone: "Why, I don't care if I do tell you, for the market is
glutted, and I shall quit this circuit. It is done by a knowledge of soft sawder
and human natur. But here is Deacon Flint's," said he; "I have but one clock
left, and I guess I will sell it to him." At the gate of a most comfortable-looking
farm-house stood Deacon Flint, a respectable old man, who had understood the value
of time better than most of his neighbours, if one might judge from the appearance
of everything about him. After the usual salutation, an invitation to alight was ac-
cepted by Mr. Slick, who said he wished to take leave of Mrs. Flint before he left
Colchester." We had hardly entered the house, before the Clockmaker pointed to
the view from the window and addressing himself to me, said: "If I was to tell
them in Connecticut there was such a farm as this away down east here in Nova
Scotia, they wouldn't believe me-why, there ain't such a location in all New Eng-
land. The deacon has a hundred acres of dike" *
Seventy," said the deă-
cou-"only seventy." Well, seventy; but then there is your fine deep bottom;
why, I could run a ramrod into it. Then there is that wa'er-privilege, worth three
or four thousand dollars, twice as good as what Governor Cass paid fifteen thousand
for. I wonder, deacon, you don't put up a carding-mill on it: the same works would
carry a turning-lathe, a shingle machine, a circular saw, grind bark, and "
"Too old," said the deacon- too old for all those speculations." "Old!" re-
peated the Clockmaker-“not you; why, you are worth half a dozen of the
"Your beasts, dear me,
young men we see nowadays." The deacon was pleased.
your beasts must be put in and have a feed;" saying which, he went out to order them
to be taken to the stable. As the old gentleman closed the door after him. Mr. Slick
drew near to me, and said in an undertone: “That is what I call soft sawder. An
Englishman would pass that man as a sheep passes a hog in a pasture-without
looking at him. Now I find ". Here his lecture on soft sawder was cut short
by the entrance of Mrs. Flint, "Jist come to say good-bye, Mrs. Flint." "What!
have you sold all your clocks?" Yes, and very low, too. for money is scarce, and
I wished to close the consarn; no, I am wrong in saying all, for I have just one left.
Neighbour Steel's wife asked to have the refusal of it, but I guess I won't sell it.
I had but two of them, this one and the feller of it, that I sold Governor Lincoln. Gen-
cral Green, secretary of state for Maine, said he 'd give me fifty dollars for this here one
-it has composition wheels and patent axles; it is a beautiful article-a real first chop
-no mistake, genuine superfine; but I guess I'll take it back: and, beside, Squire
Hawk might think it had that I did not give him the offer.” "Dear me," said Mrs.
Flint. "I should like to see it; where is it?" "It is in a chest of mine over the way.
at Tom Tape's store; I guess he can ship it on to Eastport. "That's a good man,
said Mrs. Flint, "jist let's look at it." Mr. Slick, willing to oblige, yielded to these
entreaties, and soon produced the clock-a gaudy, highly varnished, trumpery-looking
affair. He placed it on the chimney-piece, where its beauties were pointed out
and duly appreciated by Mrs. Flint, whose admiration was about ending in a pro-
posal, when Mr. Flint returned from giving his directions about the care of the
horses. The deacon praised the clock; he, too, thought it a handsome one; but the
deacon was a prudent man: he had a watch, he was sorry, but he had no occasion
for a clock. "I guess you 're in the wrong furrow this time, deacon; in ain't for
sale," said Mr. Slick; and if it was, I reckon neighbor Steel's wife would have it,
for she gives me no peace about it." Mrs. Flint said that Mr. Steel had enough to do,
poor man, to pay his interest, without buying clocks for his wife. "It's no consaru of
mine,"
," said Mr. Slick, as long as he pays me. what he has to do; but I guess I
don't want to sell it; and beside, it comes too high; that clock can't be made at
Rhode Island under forty dollars.-Why, it an't possible !" said the Clockmaker, in
apparent surprise, looking at his watch; "why, as I'm alive, it is four o'clock, and if
I havn't been two hours here-how on airth sl all I reach River Philip to-night?
I'll tell you what Mrs. Flint: I'll leave the clock in your care till I return on my way
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Flat rich land diked in from the sea.
182
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
to the States-I'll set it agoing, and put it to the right time." As soon as this oper-
ation was performed, he delivered the key to the deacon with a sort of serio-comic
injunction to wind up the clock every Saturday night, which Mrs. Flint said she would
take care should be done, and promised to remind her husband of it, in case he should
chance to forget it.
"That," said the Clockmaker, as soon as we were mounted, "that I call human
natur! Now, that clock is sold for forty dollars-it cost me just six dollars and fifty
cents. Mrs. Flint will never let Mrs. Steel have the refusal-nor will the deacon learn
until I call for the clock, that having once indulged in the use of a superfluity, it is
difficult to give it up. We can do without any article of luxury we have never had,
but when once obtained, it is not in human natur to surrender it voluntarily. Of
fifteen thousand sold by myself and partners in this province, twelve thousand were
left in this manner, and only ten clocks were ever returned-when we called for them,
they invariably bought them. We trust to soft sawder to get them into the house,
and to human natur that they never come out of it."'
THOMAS MILLER-W. HONE-MISS COSTELLO.
Among the littérateurs inspired-perhaps equally-by the love of
nature and admiration of the writings of Miss Mitford and the
Howitts, was THOMAS MILLER (1809-1874), a native of Gainsborough,
one of the humble, happy, industrious self-taught sons of genius.
He was brought up to the trade of a basket maker, and while thus
obscurely labouring 'to consort with the muse and support a family,'
he attracted attention by his poetical effusions. Through the kind-
ness of Mr. Rogers, our author was placed in the more congenial
situation of a bookseller, and had the gratification of publishing and
selling his own writings. Mr. Miller was the author of various
works: A Day in the Woods,' 'Royston Gower,' Fair Rosamond,'
'Lady Jane Grey,' and other novels. Several volumes of rural de-
scriptions and poetical effusions also proceeded from his pen.
The Every-day Book,' Table Book,' and Year Book,' by WILLIAM
HONE (1779-1842), published in 1833, in four large volumes, with
above five hundred wood-cut illustrations, form a calendar of popular
English amusements, sports, pastimes, ceremonies, manners, customs,
and events incident to every day in the year. Mr. Southey has said
of these works I may take the opportunity of recommending the
"Every-day Book" and "Table Book" to those who are interested in
the preservation of our national and local customs: by these very
curious publications their compiler has rendered good service in an
important department of literature. Charles Lamb was no less
eulogistic. Some political parodies written by Hone led to his prose-
cution by the government of the day, in which the government was
generally condemned. Hone was acquitted and became popular;
the parodies are now forgotten, but the above works will preserve
his name.
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A number of interesting narratives of foreign travel were published
by MISS LOUISA STUART COSTELLO, who died in 1870; she com-
menced her literary career in 1835 with 'Specimens of the Early
Poetry of France.' Her principal works are-'A Summer among
the Bocages and Vines,' 1840; A Pilgrimage to Auvergne, from
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MRS. JAMESON.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
183
Picardy to Le Velay,' 1842; 'Béarn and the Pyrenees,' 1844; 'The
Falls, Lakes, and Mountains of North Wales,' 1845; A Tour to and
Miss Cos-
from Venice by the Vaudois and the Tyrol,' 1846 ; &c.
tello was also one of the band of lady-novelists, having written ‘The
Queen Mother,' 'Clara Fane,' &c.; and in 1840 she published a series
of Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen,' commencing with the
reign of Elizabeth.
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MRS. JAMESON.
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On subjects of art and taste, and generally in what may be termed
elegant literature, the writings of MRS. ANNA JAMESON (1797-1860)
occupy a prominent place. They are very numerous, including-
The Diary of an Ennuyée, (memoranda made during a tour in France
and Italy), 1826; Loves of the Poets,' two volumes, 1829; 'Lives of
Celebrated Female Sovereigns,' two volumes, 1831; Characteristics
of Women, two volumes, 1832; Beauties of the Court of Charles II.'
(memoirs accompanying engravings from Lely's portraits), two vol
umes, 1833; Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad,' two vol-
umes, 1834; 'Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada,' three
volumes, 1838; Rubens, his Life and Genius,' translated from the
German of Dr. Waagen, 1840; Pictures of the Social Life of Ger-
many, as represented in the Dramas of the Princess Amelia of Sax-
ony, 1840; Hand-book to the Public Galleries of Art,` two volumes,
1842; Companion to Private Galleries of Art in and near London,'
1844; Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters,' two volumes, 1845;
Memoirs and Essays on Art, Literature and Social Morals,' 1846;
Sacred and Legendary Art,' two volumes, 1848; Legends of the
Monastic Orders,' 1850; Legends of the Madonna,' 1852; Common-
place Book of Thoughts, Memories and Fancies,' 1854: 'Sisters of
Charity,' a lecture, 1855; The Communion of Labour,' a lecture,
1856; with various communications to literary journals. In such a
variety of works, all, of course, cannot be equal-some bear the
appearance of task-work; but generally we may apply to Mrs. Jame-
son the warm eulogium of Prof. Wilson: she is one of the most elo-
quent of our female writers; full of feeling and fancy; a true enthu-
siast with a glowing soul. On the subject of art, her writing is next -
to that of Ruskin; to intense love of the beautiful, she adds a fine
discriminating and cultivated taste, with rich stores of knowledge.
Mrs. Jameson was a native of Dublin, daughter of Mr. Murphy, an
artist of ability. Having married a barrister named Jameson, who
accepted an official appointment in Canada, she resided there for some
time, but her marriage proving unhappy, a separation took place, and
Mrs. Jameson returned to England and devoted herself to literature-
especially the literature of art. Her latest work (which she did not
live to complete, but which was finished by Lady Eastlake) was an
account of the Scriptural and Legendary History of our Lord, as
represented in Christian Art.’
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184
[TO 1876.
CYCLOP.EDIA OF
Counsel to Young Ladies.-An Eastern Apologue.
It is a common observation, that girls of lively talents are apt to grow pert and
satirical. I fell into this danger when about ten years old. Sallies at the expense of
certain people, ill-looking, or ill-dressed, or ridiculous, or foolish, had been laughed at
and applauded in company, until, without being naturally malignant, I ran some risk
of becoming so from sheer vanity.
The fables which appeal to our high moral sympathies may sometimes do as
much for us as the truths of science. So thought our Saviour when he taught the
multitude in parables. A good clergyman who lived near us, a famous Persian
scholar, took it into his head to teach me Persian-I was then about seven years old
-and I set to work with infinite delight and earnestness. All I learned was soon
forgotten; but a few years afterwards, happening to stumble on a volume of Sir Wil-
liam Jones's works-his Persian Graminar-it revived my orientalism, and I began
to study it eagerly. Among the exercises given was a Persian fable or poem-one
of those traditions of our Lord which are preserved in the East. The beautiful apo-
logue of St. Peter and the cherries, which Goethe has versified or imitated, is a well-
known example. This fable I allude to was something similar, but I have not met
with the original these forty years, and must give it here from memory.
6.
'Jesus,' says the story, 'arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and
he sent his disciples forward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent on doing
good, walked through the streets into the market-place. And he saw at the corner of
the market some people gathered together looking at an object on the ground; and
he drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog, with a halter round his
neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a
more abject, a more unclean thing, never met the eyes of man. And those who stood
by looked on with abhorrence. Faugh !" said one, stopping his nose;
"it pollutes
the air." "How long," said another, "shall this foul beast offend our sight?"
"Look at his torn hide," said a third; "one could not even cut a shoe out of it."
"And his ears," said a fourth, "all draggled and bleeding!" "No doubt," said a
fifth, "he hath been hanged for thieving!" And Jesus heard them, and looking
down compassionately on the dead creature, he said: "Pearls are not equal to the
whiteness of his teeth!" Then the people turned towards him with amazement, and
said among themselves: Who is this? this must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only He
could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog;" and being ashamed,
they bowed their heads before him, and went each on his way.
66
I can recall, at this hour, the vivid, yet softening and pathetic impression left on
my fancy by this old Eastern story. It struck me as exquisitely humorous, as well
as exquisitely beautiful. It gave me a pain in my conscience, for it seemed thencefor-
ward so easy and so vulgar to say satirical things, and so much uobler to be benign
and merciful, and I look the lesson so home, that I was in great danger of falling into
the opposite extreme-seeking the beautiful even in the midst of the corrupt and
the repulsive.
Pictures of the Madonna.
1
Of the pictures in our galleries, public or private-of the architectural adornments
of those majestic edifices which sprung up in the middle ages (where they have not
been despoiled or desecrated by a zeal as fervent as that which reared them), the
largest and most beautiful portion have reference to the Madonna-her character, her
person, her history. It was a theme which never tired her votaries-whether, as in
the hands of great and sincere artists, it became one of the noblest and loveliest, or,
as in the hands of superficial, unbelieving, time-serving artists, one of the most de-
graded. All that human genius, inspired by faith, could achieve best-all that fanati-
cism, sensualism, atheism, could perpetuate of worst, do we find in the cycle of
those representations which have been dedicated to the glory of the Virgin. Aud,
indeed, the ethics of the Madonna worship, as evolved in art, might be not unaptly
likened to the ethics of human love: so long as the object of sense remained in sub-
jection to the moral idea-so long as the appeal was to the best of our faculties and
affections-so long was the image grand or refined. and the influences to be ranked
with those which have helped to humanise and civilise our race; but so soon as the
object became a mere idol, then worship and worshippers, art and artists, were together
degraded.
MRS. JAMESON.]
185
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
The Loves of the Poets.
The theory which I wish to illustrate, as far as my limited powers permit, is this,
that where a woman has been exalted above the rest of her sex by the talents of a
lover, and consigned to enduring fame and perpetuity of praise, the passion was real,
and was merited; that no deep or lasting interest was ever founded in fancy or in fic-
tion; that truth, in short, is the basis of all excellence in amatory poetry as in every-
thing else; for where truth is, there is good of some sort, and where there is truth
and good, there must be beauty, there must be durability of fame. Truth is the
golden chain which liuks the terrestrial with the celestial, which sets the seal of Heaven
on the things of this earth, and stamps them to immortality. Poets have risen up
and been the mere fashion of a day, and have set up idols which have been the idols
of a day. If the worship be out of date, and the idols cast down, it is because those
adorers wanted sincerity of purpose and feeling; their raptures were feigned; their
incense was bought or adulterate. In the brain or in the fancy, one beauty may
eclipse another-one coquette may drive out another, and, tricked off in airy verse,
they float away unregarded like morning vapours, which the beam of genius has
tinged with a transient brightness; but let the heart be once touched, and it is not
only wakened but inspired; the lover kindled into the poet presents to her he loves
his cup of ambrosial praise; she tastes-and the woman is transmuted into a divinity.
When the Grecian sculptor carved out his deities in marble, and left us wondrous
and godlike shapes, impersonations of ideal grace unapproachable by modern skill,
was it through such mechanical superiority? No; it was the spirit of faith within
which shadowed to his imagination what be would represent. In the same manner,
no woman has ever been truly, lastingly deified in poëtry, but in the spirit of truth
aud love.
The Studious Monks of the Middle Ages.
But for the monks, the light of liberty, and literature, and science, had been for
ever extinguished; and for six centuries there existed for the thoughtful, the gentle,
the inquiring, the devout spirit, no peace, no security, no home but the cloister.
There, Learning trimmed her lamp; there, Contemplation pruned her wings;
there, the traditious of art, preserved from age to age by lonely studious men, kept
alive, in form and colour, the idea of a beauty beyond that of earth- of a might be-
yond that of the spear and the shield-of a Divine sympathy with suffering
humanity. To this we may add another and a stronger claim to our respect and
moral sympathies. The protection and the better education given to women in
these early communities; the venerable and distinguished rank assigned to them
when, as governesses of their order, they became in a manner dignitaries of the
church; the introduction of their beautiful and saintly effigies, clothed with all the
insiguia of sanctity and authority, into the decoration of places of worship and
books of devotion-did more, perhaps, for the general cause of womanhood than all
the boasted institutions of chivalry.
Venice-Canaletti and Turner.
It is this all-pervading presence of light, and this suffusion of rich colour glow-
ng through the deepest shadows, which make the very life and soul of Venice; but
not all who have dwelt in Venice, and breathed her air and lived in her life, have
felt their influences; it is the want of them which enders so many of Canaletti's pic-
tures false and unsatisfactory-to me at least. All the time I was at Venice I was in a
rage with Canaletti. I could not come upon a palace, or a church, or a corner of a
canal which I had not seen in one or other of his pictures. At every moment I was
reminded of him. But how has he painted Venice! Just as we have the face of a
beloved friend reproduced by the daguerreotype, or by some bad conscientious
printer-some fellow who gives us eyes, nose, and mouth by measure of compass,
and leaves out all sentiment, all countenance; we caunot deny the identity, and we
cannot endure it. Where in Canaletti are the glowing evening skies-the transpar-
ent gleaming waters-the bright green of the vine-shadowed Traghetto-the fresh-
ness and the glory-the dreamy, aërial, fantastic splendour of this city of the
sen? Look at one of his pictures-áll is real, opaque, solid, stony. formal ;
evou his skies and water-and is that Venice? But,' says my friend, if you
even
186
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
•
would have Venice, seek it in Turner's pictures! True, I may seek it, but
shall I find it? Venice is like a dream-but this dream upon the canvas, do
you call this Venice? The exquisite precision of form, the wondrous beauty of
detail, the clear, delicate lines of the flying perspective-so sharp and defined in the
midst of a flood of brightness-where are they? Canaletti gives us the forms without
the colour or light. Turner, the colour and light without the forms. But if you would
take into your soul the very soul and inward life and spirit of Venice--breathe the
same air-go to Titian; there is more of Venice in his 'Cornaro Family,' or his Pe-
saro Madonna,' than in all the Caualettis in the corridor at Windsor. Beautiful they
are, I must needs say it; but when I think of Euchauting Venice, the most beautiful
are to me like prose translations of poetry-petrifactious, materialities; ' We start, for
life is wanting there! I know not how it is, but certainly things that would else-
where displease, delight us at Venice. It has been said, for instance, put down the
church of St. Mark anywhere but in the Piazza, it is barbarous :' here, where east and
west have met to blend together, it is glorious. And again, with regard to the sepul-
chral effigies in our churches-I have always been of Mr. Westmacott's principles and
party; always on the side of those who denounce the intrusion of monuments of
human pride insolently paraded in God's temple; and surely cavaliers on prancing
horses in a church should seem the very acme of such irreverence and impropriety
in taste; but here the impression is far different. O those awful, grim, mounted
warriors and dogs, high over our heads against the walls of the San Giovanni e Paolo
and the Frari!-man and horse in panoply of state, colossal, lifelike-suspended, as
it were, so far above us, that we cannot conceive how they came there, or are kept
there, by human means alone. It seems as though they had been lifted up and fixed
on their airy pedestals as by a spell. At whatever hour I visited those churches, and
that was almost daily, whether morn, or noon, or in the deepening twilight, still did
those marvellous effigies-man and steed, and trampled Turk; or mitred doge, up-
right and stiff in his saddle-fix me as if fascinated; and still I looked up at them,
wondering every day with a new wonder, and scarce repressing the startled exclama-
tion. “Good heavens, how came they there?' And not to forget the great wonder of
modern times-I hear people talking of a railway across the Lagune, as if it were to
unpoctise Venice; as if this new approach were a malignant invention to bring the
syren of the Adriatic into the dull catalogue of common things.' and they call on me
to join the outery, to echo sentimental denunciations, quoted out of Murray's Hand-
book; but I cannot-I have no sympathy with them. To me, that tremendous bridge,
spanning the sea, only adds to the wonderful one wonder more; to great source of
thought one yet greater. Those persons, methinks, must be strangely prosaic au fond
who can see poetry in a Gothic pinnacle, or a crumbling temple, or a gladiator's cir-
cns, and in this gigantic causeway and its seventy-five arches, traversed with fiery
speed by dragons, brazen-winged, to which neither alp nor ocean can oppose a bar-
rier-nothing but a commonplace. I must say I pity them. I see a future fraught
with hopes for Venice,
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Twining memories of old time
With new virtues more sublime !
CHARLES WATERTON.
The Wanderings' and 'Essays' of CHARLES WATERTON (1782-
1865), a Yorkshire squire, form very interesting and delightful read-
ing. Mr. Waterton set out from his seat of Walton Hall, Wakefield,
in 1812, to wander through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo,
with the view to reach the inland frontier fort of Portuguese Guiana;
to collect a quantity of the strongest Wourali poison; and to catch
and stuff the beautiful birds which abound in that part of South
America.' He made two more journeys to the same territories-in
1816 and 1820-and in 1825 published his 'Wanderings in South
America, the North-west of the United States, and the Antilles.' His
fatigues and dangers were numerous
1
WATERTON.]
187
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
¡
'In order to pick up matter for natural history, I have wandered
through the wildest parts of South America's equinoctial regions. I
have attacked and slain a modern python, and rode on the back of a
cayman close to the water's edge; a very different situation from that
of a Hyde-Park dandy on his Sunday prancer before the ladies.
Alone and barefoot I have pulled poisonous snakes out of their lurk-
ing-places; climbed up trees to peep into holes for bats and vampires;
and for days together hastened through sun and rain to the thickest
parts of the forest to procure specimens I had never seen before.'
"
The adventures of the python and cayman-or the snake and cro-
codile-made much noise and amusement at the time, and the latter
feat formed the subject of a caricature. Mr. Waterton had long
wished to obtain one of those enormous snakes called Coulacanara,
and at length he saw one coiled up in his den. He advanced towards
it stealthily, and with his lance struck it behind the neck and fixed it
to the ground.
1
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Adventure with the Snake.
That moment the negro next to me seized the lance and held it firm in its place,
while I dashed head foremost into the den to grapple with the snake, and to get hold
of his tail before he could do any mischief.
On pinning him to the ground with the lance, he gave a tremendous loud hiss, and
the little dog ran away, howling as he went. We had a sharp fray in the den, the
rotten sticks flying on all sides, and each party struggling for the superiority. I
called out to the second negro to throw himself upon me, as I found I was not heavy
enough. He did so, and his additional weight was of great service. I had now got
firm hold of his tail, and after a violent struggle or two he gave in, finding himself
overpowered. This was the moment to secure him. So while the first negro con-
tinued to hold the lance firm to the ground, and the other was helping me, I cou-
trived to unloose my braces, and with them tied up the snake's mouth.
The snake, now finding himself in an unpleasant situation, tried to better him-
self, and set resolutely to work, but we overpowered him. [It measured fourteen
feet, and was of great thickness.] We contrived to make him twist himself round
the shaft of the lance, and then prepared to convey him out of the forest. I stood
at his head and held it firm under my arm, one negro supported the belly, and the
other the tail. In this order we began to move slowly towards home, and reached it
after resting ten times.
6
On the following day, Mr. Waterton killed the animal, securing
its skin for Walton Hall. The crocodile was seized on the Essequibo.
He had been tantalised for three days with the hope of securing one
of the animals. He baited a shark-hook with a large fish, and at last
was successful. The difficulty was to pull him up. The Indians
proposed shooting him with arrows; but this the Wanderer' resisted.
'I had come above three hundred miles on purpose to catch a cay-
man uninjured, and not to carry back a mutilated specimen.' The
men pulled, and out he came--Mr. Waterton standing armed with
the mast of the canoe, which he proposed to force down the animal's
throat.
Riding on a Crocodile.
By the time the cayman was within two yards of me, I saw he was in a state of
fear and perturbation; I instantly dropped the mast, sprung up and jumped on his
back, turning half round as I vaulted, so that I gained my seat with my face in a
188
| 1, 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
right position. I immediately seized his fore-legs, and by main force twisted them
on his back; thus they served me for a bridle. He now seemed to have recovered
from his surprise, and, probably fancying himself in hostile company, he began to
plunge furiously, and lashed the sand with his long and powerful tail. I was out of
re..ch of the strokes of it, by being near his head. He continued to plunge and
strike, and made my seat very uncomfortable. It must have been a fine sight for an
unoccupied spectator. The people roared out in triumph, and were so vociferous,
that it was some time before they heard me tell them to pull me and my beast of
burden further inland. I was apprehensive the rope might break, and then there
would have been every chance of going down to the regious under water with the
cayman. That would have beeu more perilous than Arion's marine morning ride-
Delphini insidens, vada caurula sulcat Arion.
The people now dragged us above forty yards on the sand: it was the first and last
time I was ever on a cayman's back. Should it be asked how I managed to keep my
seat, I would answer, I hunted some years with Lord Darlington's fox-hounds.
C
The cayman, killed and stuffed, was also added to the curiosities of
Walton Hall. Mr. Waterton's next work was Essays on Natural
History, chiefly Ornithology, with an Autobiography of the Author
and a view of Walton Hall,' 1838-reprinted with additions in 1851.
His account of his family-an old Roman Catholic family that had
suffered persecution from the days of Henry VIII. downwards-is a
quaint, amusing chronicle; and the notes on the habits of birds
shew minute observation, as well as a kindly genial spirit on the part
of the eccentric squire.
ELIOT WARBURTON.
As a traveller, novelist, and historical writer, Mr. ELIOT WARBUR-
TON, an English barrister (1810-1852), was a popular though incor-
rect author. He had a lively imagination and considerable power of
description, but these were not always under the regulation of taste
or judgment. His first work, The Crescent and the Cross, or Ro-
mance and Realities of Eastern Travel,' 1844, is the best of his pro-
ductions. To ride on a crocodile was Mr. Waterton's unparalleled,
feat, and Mr. Warburton thus describes his first shot at a crocodile,
which, he said, was an epoch in his life.
Crocodile Shooting in the Nile.
:
We had only now arrived in the waters where they abound, for it is a curious fact
that none are ever seen below Mineyeh, though Herodotus speaks of them as fighting
with the dolphins at the mouths of the Nile. A prize had been offered for the first
man who detected a crocodile, and the crew had now been for two days on the alert
In search of them. Buoyed up with the expectation of such game, we had latterly
reserved our fire for them exclusively, aud the wild duck and turtle, nay, even the
vulture and the eagle, had swept past or soared above us in security. At length, the
cry of Timseach, timseach!' was heard from half-a-dozen claimauts of the proffered
prize, and half-a-dozen black fingers were eagerly pointed to a spit of sand, on whien
were strewn apparently some logs of trees. It was a covey of crocodiles! Hastily
and silently the boat was run in-shore. R- was il', so I had the enterprise to my-
self, and clambered up the steep bank with a quicker pulse thau when I first levelled
a rifle at Highland deer. My intended victims might have prided themselves on
their superior nonchalance; and, indeed. as I approached them, there seemed to
be a sueer on their ghastly mouths and winking eyes. Slowly they rose, one after
the other, and waddled to the water, all but one, the most gallaut or most gorged of
the party. He lay still until I was within a hundred yards of him; then slowly ris-
WARBURTON.]
189
ENGLISH LITERATURË.
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•
ing on his finlike legs, he lumbered towards the river, looking askance at me with an
expression of countenance that seemed to say: Ile can do nie no harm; however,
I may as well have a swim.' I took aim at the throat of this supercilious brute,
and, as soon as my hand steadied, the very pulsation of my finger pulled the trigger.
Bang! went the gun; whiz! flew the bullet; and my excited ear could catch the
thud with which it plunged into the scaly leather of his neck. His waddle became a
plunge, the waves closed over him, and the sun shone on the calm water, as I reached
the brink of the shore, that was still indented by the waving of his gigantic tail.
But there is blood upon the water, and he rises for a moment to the surface. ‘A
hundred piasters for the timseach!' I exclaimed, and balf-a-dozen Arabs plunged
into the stream. There! he rises again, and the blacks dash at him as if he had n't
a tooth in his head. Now he is gone, the waters close over him, and I never saw
him since. From that time we saw hundreds of crocodiles of all sizes, and fired
shots enough at them for a Spanish revolution; but we never could get possession of
any, even if we hit them, which to this day remains uncertain. I believe each trav-
eller, who is honest enough, will make the same confession.
In the same work is a striking incident illustrative of savage life :
Nubian Revenge.
،
There appears to be a wild caprice amongst the institutions, if such they may be
called, of all these tropical nations. In a neighbouring state to that of Abyssinia.
the king, when appointed to the r gal dignity, retires into an island, and is never
again visible to the eyes of men but once-when his ministers come to strargle him;
for it may not be that the proud monarch of Behr should die a natural death. No
men, with this fatal exception, are ever allowed even to set foot upon the island.
which is guarded by a band of Amazons. In another border country, called Habeesh.
the monarch is dignified with the title of Tiger. He was formerly Malek of Shendy,
when it was invaded by Ismael Pasha, and was even then designated by this fierce
cognomen. Ismael, Mehemet Ali's second son, advanced through Nubia, claiming
tribute and submission from all the tribes. Nemmir-which signifies Tiger-the
king of Sheudy, received him hospitably, as Mahmoud, our dragoman, informed us,
and, when he was seated in his tent. waited on him to learn his pleasure. 'My
pleasure is,' replied the invader, that you forthwith furnish me with slaves. cattle.
and money to the value of one hundred thousand dollars.' Pooh!' said Nemmir.
'you jest; all my country could not produce what you require in one hundred
moons.' Ha! Wallah!' was the young pasha's reply, and he struck the Tiger across
the face with his pipe. If he had done so to his namesake of the jungle, the in-
sult could not have roused fiercer feelings of revenge, but the human ani-
mal did not shew his wrath at once. 'It is well,' he replied;
¿ let the
pasha rest; to-morrow he shall have nothing more to ask. The Egyptian, and the
few Mameluke officers of the staff, were tranquilly smoking towards evening, enter-
tained by some dancing-girls, whom the Tiger had sent to amuse them; when they
observed that a huge pile of dried stacks of Indian corn was rising rapidly round
the tent. What means this ?' inquired Ismael angrily; am not I pasha?'
but forage for your highness's horses.' replied the Nubian, for, were your troops
once arrived, the people would fear to approach the camp.' Suddenly, the space is
filled with smoke, the tent curtains shrivel up in flames, and the pasha and his
comrades find themselves encircled in what they well know is their funeral pyre
Vainly the invader implores mercy, and assures the Tiger of his warm regard for
him and all his family; vainly he endeavours to break through the fiery fence that
girds him round; a thousand spears bore him back into the flames, and the Tiger's
triumphant yell and bitter mockery mingle with his dying screams. The Egyptians
perished to a man. Nemmir escaped up the country, crowned with savage glory
and married the daughter of a king, who soon left him his successor, and the Tiger
still defies the old pasha's power. The latter, however, took a terrible revenge upon
his people he burned all the inhabitants of the village nearest to the scene of his
son's slaughter, and cut off the right hands of five hundred men besides. So much
for African warfare.
↓
'It is
The other works of Mr. Eliot Warburton are-
Warburton are—'Hochelaga, or
190
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CYCLOPÆDIA OF
C
England in the New World,' 1846 (Hochelaga is an aboriginal In
dian name for Canada); Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cava-
liers,' 1849; Reginald Hastings' and 'Darien,' novels, and a
Memoir of the Earl of Peterborough'—the famous earl (1658-1735).
The last was a posthumous work, published in 1853. Mr. Warburton
had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to
visit the tribes of Indians who inhabit the Isthmus of Darien, with
a view to effect a friendly understanding with them, and to make
himself thoroughly acquainted with their country. He sailed in the
Amazon steamer, and was among the passengers who perished by
fire on board that ill-fated ship. That awful catastrophe carried
grief into many families, and none of its victims were more lamented
than Eliot Warburton.
L
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
C
The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,' originally printed
in the 'London Magazine,' and published in a separate form in 1822,
describe the personal experiences of a scholar and man of genius
who, like Coleridge, became a slave to the use of opium. To such
an extent had he carried this baneful habit that in the meridian
stage of his career' his daily ration was eight thousand drops of
laudanum. He had found, he says, that the solid opium required
a length of time to expand its effects sensibly, oftentimes not less
than four hours, whereas the tincture, laudanum, manifested its
presence instantaneously. The author of the ' Confessions' was
THOMAS DE QUINCEY, son of an English merchant, and born August
15, 1785, at Greenhay, near Manchester. His father died while his
children were young, leaving to his widow a fortune of sixteen hun-
dred pounds a year. Thomas was educated at Bath, and subse-
quently at Worcester College, Oxford. When about sixteen, he
made his way to London, and tried to raise a sum of two hundred
He was re
pounds on his expectations from the paternal estate.
duced to extreme destitution by his dealings with the Jews, and by
his want of any profession or remunerative employment. He was
saved from perishing on the streets by a young woman he knew-one
of the unfortunate waifs of the city-who restored him to conscious-
ness with some warm cordial, after he had fainted from exhaustion.
This youthful benefactress' he tried in vain to trace in his after-
years.
C
It is strange, as Miss Martineau has remarked, and as indeed oc-
curred to himself when reflecting on this miserable period of his
life, that while tortured with hunger in the streets of London for
many weeks, and sleeping (or rather lying awake with cold and
hunger) on the floor of an empty house, it never once occurred to him
to earn money. As a classical corrector of the press, and in othe
ways, he might no doubt have obtained employment, but it was not
C
C
C
DE QUINCEY.]
191
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
till afterwards asked why he did not, that the idea ever entered his
mind.' His friends, however, discovered him before it was too late,
and he proceeded to Oxford. He was then in his eighteenth year.
In the following year (1804) De Quincey seems to have first tasted
opium. He took it as a cure for toothache, and indulged in the
pleasing vice, as he then considered it, for about eight years. He
continued his intellectual pursuits, married, and took up his residence
in the Lake country, making occasional excursions to London, Bath,
and Edinburgh. Pecuniary difficulties at length embarrassed him,
and, enfeebled by opium, he sank into a state of misery and torpor.
From this state he was roused by sharp necessity, and by the success
of his contributions to the London Magazine,' which were highly
prized, and seemed to open up a new source of pleasure and profit.
He also contributed largely to Blackwood's' and Tait's magazines,
in which his Autobiographic Sketches,' Recollections of the
Lakes,' and other papers appeared. Next to Macaulay, he was per-
haps the most brilliant periodical writer of the day. After many
years' residence at Grasmere, De Quincey removed to Scotland, and
lived at Lasswade, near Edinburgh. He died in Edinburgh, Decem-
ber 8, 1859, in his seventy-fifth year.
C
6
C
•
Besides the Confessions,' Mr. De Quincey published the 'Dia-
logues of Three Templars on Political Economy,' 1824; and twenty
years later he produced a volume on the same science- The Logic
of Political Economy,' 1844. The highest authority on political
economy-Mr. M'Culloch-has eulogised these treatises of Mr. De
Quincey as completely successful in exposing the errors of Malthus
and others in applying Ricardo's theory of value. A collected edi-
tion of the works of De Quincey has been published in sixteen vol-
umes, distributed in the main, he says, into three classes: first,
papers whose chief purpose is to interest and amuse (autobiographic
sketches, reminiscences of distinguished contemporaries, biographi-
cal memoirs, whimsical narratives, and such like); secondly, essays,
of a speculative, critical, or philosophical character, addressing the
understanding as an insulated faculty (of these there are many);
and, thirdly, papers belonging to the order of what may be called
prose-poetry-that is, fantasies or imaginations in prose-including
the Suspiria de Profundis,' originally published in Blackwood's
Magazine'-and which are remarkable for pathos and eloquence. In
all departments, De Quincey must rank high, but he would have
been more popular had he practised the art of condensation. His
episodical digressions and diffuseness sometimes overrun all limits—
especially when, like Southey (in the Doctor'), he takes up some
favourite philosophical theory or scholastic illustration, and presents
it in every possible shape and colour. The exquisite conversation
of De Quincey was of the same character-in linked sweetness
long drawn out,' but rich and various in an extraordinary degree.
His autobiographic and personal sketches are almost as minute and
C
<
,
•
•
102
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
unreserved as those of Rousseau, but they cannot be implicitly re-
lied upon. He spared neither neither himself nor his friends, and
has been accused of unpardonable breaches of confidence and exag-
gerations, especially as respects the Wordsworth family. It has been
said that if his life were written truthfully no one would believe it,
so strange the tale would seem.
The following is part of the melancholy yet fascinating Confes-
sions.' One day a Malay wanderer had called on the recluse author
in his cottage at Grasmere, and De Quincey gave him a piece of
opium.
Dreams of the Opium-Eater.
{
May 18.-The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. Every night, through
his means, I have been trasported into Asiatic scenery. I know not whether others
share in my feelings on this point, but I have often thought that if I were compelled
to forego England, and to live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of
ife and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of
them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful
images and associations. As the cradle of the human race, it would have a dim and
reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can
pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage
tribes elsewhere, affect in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental,
cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things,:
of their institutions, history, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast
age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual.
A young
Chinese seems to me au antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not
bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sub-
limity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial
tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges or the
Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that Southern Asia is, and has
been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life;
the great Officina gentium. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires, also,
into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sub-
limity to the feelings associated with all oriental names or images. In China, over
and above what it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by
the modes of life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of
sympathy placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner
live with lunatics or brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say, or have
time to gay, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable
horror which these dreams of oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed
upon me Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I
brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and
appearances, that are to be found in all tropical regions, and assembled them togeth-
er in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her
gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by
monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos.. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centu-
ries at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was wor-
6
* Memoir of Professor Wilson, by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon. I remember,' says
Mrs. Gordon, his (De Quincey's) coming to Gloucester Place one stormy night. He
remained hour after hour, in vain expectation that the waters would assuage, and the
hurly-burly cease. There was nothing for it but that our visitor should remain all night.
The Professor (Wilson) ordered a room to be prepared for him, and they found each other
such good company, that this accidental detention was prolonged without further diffi-
culty, for the greater part of a year. He rarely appeared at the family meals, preferring
to dine in his own room, at his own hour, not unfrequently turning night into day. An
ounce of laudanum per diem prostrated animal life in the early part of day. It was Do
unfrequent sight to find him lying upon the rug in front of the fire, his head resting upon
> He was
a book, with his arms crossed over his breast, plunged in profound slumber.
most brilliant at supper parties, sitting till three or four in the morning,
+
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DE QUINCEY.]
198
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
shipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma, through all the forests
of Asia: Vishnn hated we; Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and
Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at.
I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in
harrow chambers, at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous
kisses, by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all unutterable abortions,
amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.
Some slight abstraction I thus attempt of my oriental dreams, which filled me
always with such amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed
for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that
swallowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and
abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim
sightless incarceration. brooded a killing sense of eternity and infinity. Into these
dreams only it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that auy circumstances of
physical horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here
the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The
cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than all the rest. I was
compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case in my dreams) for centuries.
Sometimes I escaped, and found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the
tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life: the abominable head of the
crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into ten thousand repeti-
tions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. So often did this hideous reptile bâunt
my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same
way. I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and
instantly I awoke: it was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in
hand, at my bedside, come to shew me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let
me see them dressed for going out. No experience was so awful to me, and at the
same time so pathetic, as this abrupt trauslation from the darkness of the infinite to
the gaudy summer air of highest noon, and from the unutterable abortions of mis-
created gigantic vermin to the sight of infancy and innocent human natures.
June 1819.-I have bad occasion to remark, at various periods of my life. that the
deaths of those whom we love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death generally, is
(cæteris paribus) more affecting in summer than in any other season of the year.
And the reasons are these three, I think: first, that the visible heavens in summer
appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infi-
nite; the clouds by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion
stretched over our heads are in summer more voluminous, more massed, and are ac-
cumulated in far grauder and more towering piles; secondly, the light and the ap-
pearances of the declining and the setting sun are much more fitted to be types and
characters of the infinite; and, thirdly (which is the main reason), the exuberant and
riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the antag-
onist thought of death, and the wintry sterility of the grave. For it may be ob-
served generally, thar wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a law of
antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest
each other. On these accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the thought of
death when I am walking alone in the endless days of summer; and any particular
death, if not actually more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately and
besiegingly, in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I'omit,
might have been the immediate occasions of the following dream, to which, however,
a predisposition must always have existed in my mind; but, having been once roused,
it never left me, aud split into a thousand fantastic variations, which often suddenly
re-combined, locked back into a startling unity, and restored the original dream.
I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; that it was Easter Sunday, and
as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of
my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene which could really be con-
manded from that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnised by the power
of dreams. There were the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their
fect; but the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was in-
terspace far larger between them of savannahs and forest lawns; the hedges were
rich with white roses; and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that in the
green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and
particularly round about the grave of a child whom I had once tenderly loved, just
Mag
-
194
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
as I had really beheld them, a little before sunrise, in the same summer when that
child died. I gazed upon the well-known scene, and I said to myself: 'It yet wanis
much of sunrise; and it is Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which they cele-
brate the first fruits of Resurrection. I will walk abroad; old griefs shall be forgot-
ten to-day for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high, and stretch away to
heaven; and the churchyard is as verdant as the forest lawns, and the forest lawns
are as quiet as the churchyard; and with the dew I can wash the fever from my
forehead; and then I shall be unhappy no longer.' I turned, as if to open my gar-
den gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different; but which yet
the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony. The scene was an oriental one;
and there also it was Easter Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a vast
distance were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great
city-an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood from some picture
of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone, shaded by Judean palms,
there sat a woman; and I looked, and it was-Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me
earnestly; and I said to her at length, 'So, then, I have found you at last.' I
waited; but she answered me not a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it
last; the same, and yet, again, how different! Seventeen years ago, when the
lamp-light of mighty London fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips
(lips, Ann, that to me were not polluted !), her eyes were streaming with tears. The
tears were now no longer seen. Sometimes she seemed altered; yet again sometimes
not altered; and hardly older. Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity
of expression, and I now gazed upon her with some awe. Suddenly her countenance
grew dim; and, turning to the mountains, I perceived vapours rolling between us;
in a moment all had vanished; thick darkness came on; and in the twinkling of an
eye I was far away from mountains, and by lamp-light in London, walking again
with Ann-just as we had walked, when both children, eighteen years before, along
the endless terraces of Oxford Street.
I
Then suddenly would come a dream of far different character-a tumultuous
dream-commencing with a music such as now I often heard in sleep-music of pre-
paration and of awakening suspense. The undulations of fast-gathering tumults
were like the opening of the Coronation Anthem; and like that, gave the feeling of a
multitudinous movement, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumer-
able armies. The morning was come of a mighty day-a day of crisis and of ulti-
mate hope for human nature, then suffering mysterious eclipse, and labouring in
some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where-somebow, but I knew
not how-by some beings, but I knew not by whom-a battle, a strife, an agony, was
travelling through all its stages-was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some
mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening
confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue.
(as is usual in dreams where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every move-
ment) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I
could raise myself to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of
twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. Deeper than
ever plummet sounded,' I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened.
Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause, than ever yet the sword had
pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and
fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives; I knew not whether from the good cause
or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the
scuse that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world
to me and but a moment allowed-and clasped hands, with heart-breaking partings,
and then-everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed
when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was
reverberated-everlasting farewells! And again, and yet again reverberated-ever-
lasting farewells!
C
And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, 'I will sleep no more!'
In the same impassioned and melodious prose, De Quincey talks
of dreams' moulding themselves eternally like the billowy sands' of
the desert, as beheld by Bruce, into towering columns.' They 'soar
upwards to a giddy altitude, then stalk about for a minute all aglow
DE QUINCEY.]
195
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
with fiery colour, and finally unmould and dislimn with a collapse as
sudden as the motions of that eddying breeze under which their va-
poury architecture had arisen. De Quincey had a peculiar vein of
humour or irony, often breaking out where least expected, and too
long continued. This is exemplified in his paper on
Murder as one
of the Fine Arts,' which fills above a hundred pages, and in other es-
says and reviews; but the grand distinction of De Quincey is his sub-
tle analytical faculty, and his marvellous power of language and
description.
A

Joan of Arc.
What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd-girl
from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that-like the Hebrew shepherd-boy from the
hills and forests of Judea-rose suddenly out of the quiet. out of the safety,
out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station
in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of
kings? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victori-
ous act, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her
story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to
the boy as no pretender: but so did they to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of
all who saw them from a station of good-will, both were found true and loyal to any
promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference be-
tween their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose-to a splendour and a noonday pros-
perity, both personal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and be-
came a by-word amongst his posterity for a thousand years, until the sceptre was de-
parting from Judah. The poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself
from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together
with them the songs that rose in her native Domrémy, as echoes to the departing
steps of invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which cele-
brated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was then silent. No!
for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, from earliest
youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the
strongest pledges for thy side, that never once-no, not for a moment of weakness-
didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honours from man. Coronets for thee!
O no! Honours, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood.
Daughter of Domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thon wilt be
sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, king of France, but she will not hear thee!
Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be
found en contumace. When the thunders of universal France. as even yet may hap-
pen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd-girl that gave up all for her
country-thy ear, young shepherd-girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To
suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; to do-never for thyself, always for
others; to suffer-never in the persons of generous champions, always in thy own:
that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life,'
thou saidst, is short, and the sleep which is in the grave is long. Let me use that
life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the
sleep which is so long.' This poor creature-pure from every suspicion of even a
visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious-never once did
this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was
travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she
saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators
without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation the surging smoke,
the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but
here and there until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial re-
straints; these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. But
the voice that called her to death, that she heard for ever.
.
Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon
it but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for her;
but, on the contrary, that she was for them, not she by them, but they by her, should
196
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the
privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the
wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at
Domrémy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no
garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom would ever bloom for her.
On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years
of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before mid-
day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, con-
structed of wooden billets, supported by hollow spaces in every direction, for the
creation of air-currents. The pile struck terror," says M. Michelet, by its height.'
There would be a certainty of calumny rising against her-some people would
impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape that. Now, had
she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all
but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment.
And those will often pity that weakness most. who in their own persons would yield
to it least. Meantime there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from
the recorded circumstances. It rests upon no positive testimony, and it has a weight
of contradicting testimony to stem. What else but her meek, saintly demeanour
won, from the enemies that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous ad-
miration? Ten thousand men,' says M. Michelet himself, 'ten thousand men wept ;
and of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by
cords of superstition. What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic
gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier-who had sworn to throw a fagot on
her scaffold as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow-suddenly
to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon
wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood ? What else drove the execu-
tioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? And if all this
were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all
other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch
from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose up in billowy columns. A Dominican
monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he
saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then when the last enemy
was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this noblest of
girls think only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for her-
self; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave
her to God. That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of
self-oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her lips or in her heart. No,
the did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it.
JOHN WILSON CROKER.
<
The last and most indefatigable of the original corps of the 'Quar-
He
terly Review' was MR. JOHN WILSON CROKER (1780-1857).
was a native of Galway, his father being surveyor-general of cus.
toms and excise in Ireland, and he was educa ed at Trinity College,
Dublin. His first literary attempts were satirical-'Familiar Epistles
on the Irish Stage,' 1804; and an Intercepted Letter from Canton,'
or a satire on certain politicians and magnates in the city of Dublin,
1805. These local productions were followed by Songs of Trafal-
gar,' 1806, and a pamphlet, entitled A Sketch of Ireland, Past and
Present,' 1807.
1807. Sir Walter Scott, in his 'Life of Swift,' has copied
one passage from this 'Sketch,' which appears to be an imitation of
the style of Grattan.
C
Character of Swift.
On this gloom one luminary rose, and Ireland worshipped it with Persian idola-
try; her true patriot-her first-almost her last. Sagacious and intrepid, he saw-he
dared; above suspicion, he was trusted; above envy, he was beloved; above rivalry,
#
CROKER.}
197
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
he was obeyed. His wisdom was practical and prophetic-remedial for the present,
warning for the future. He first taught Ireland that she might become a nation, and
Eugland that she must cease to be a despot. But he was a churchman; his gown im-
peded his course, and entangled his efforts. Guiding a senate, or heading an army,
he had been more than Cromwell, and Ireland not less than England. As it was, he
saved her by his courage, improved her by his authority, adorned her by his talents,
and exalted her by his fame. His mission was but of ten years, and for ten years
only did his personal power mitigate the government; but though no longer feared
by the great, he was not forgotten by the wise; his influence, like his writings, has
survived a century; and the foundations of whatever prosperity we have since erected
are laid in the disinterested and maguauimous patriotism of Swift.
(
Mr. Croker studied law at Lincoln's Inn, but getting into parlia-
ment for the borough of Down-patrick (1807) he struck into that
path of public life which he was fitted to turn to the best advantage.
In 1809 he took a prominent part in defending the Duke of York
during the parliamentary investigation into the conduct of His Royal
Highness, and shortly afterwards he was made Secretary to the Ad-
miralty, an office which he held for nearly twenty-two years, until
1830, when he retired with a pension of £1500 per annum. In 180S
he published anonymously The Battles of Talavera,' a poem in the
style of Scott, and which Sir Walter reviewed in the second volume
of the Quarterly Review.' In the same style Mr. Croker commem-
orated the Battle of Al' uera,' 1811. This seems to have been the
last of his poetical efforts. He was now busy with the Quarterly
Review.' Criticism, properly so called, he never attempted. IIis
articles were all personal or historical, confined to attacks on Whigs
and Jacobins, or to the rectification of dates and facts regarding
public characters and events. He was the reviewer of Keats's En
dymion' in 1818, to which Byron playfully alluded:
<
Who killed John Keats?
I, says the Quarterly,'
So savage and Tartarly,
"Twas one of my feats.
(
•
But this deadly article is only a piece of abuse of three pages, in
which Keats is styled a copyist of Leigh Hunt, more unintelligible,
almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and
absurd than his prototype.' Lady Morgan's Italy is despatched in
the same trenchant style. But one of Mr. Croker's greatest feats '
in this way was mortifying the vanity of Fanny Burney or Madame
D'Arblay, who wished to have it believed that she was only seventeen
when her novel of Evelina' was published. She is said to have
kept up the delusion without exactly giving the date; but the
reviewer, knowing that she was born at Lynn, in Norfolk, had the
parish-register examined, and found that the fair novelist was baptised
in June 1752, and consequently was between twenty-five and twenty-
six years of age when. Evelina' appeared, instead of being a prodigy
of seventeen. Mr. Croker's success in this species of literary
statistics led him afterwards to apply it to the case of the Empress
Josephine and Napoleon; he had the French registers examined,
•
198
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
•
and from them proved that both Josephine and Napoleon had
falsified their ages. This fact, with other disparaging details, the
reviewer brought out in a paper which appeared on the occasion of
the late emperor's visit to England-no doubt to mortify the new
Napoleon dynasty. In the same spirit he assailed Soult when he
visited this country-recounting all his military errors and defeats,
and reminding him that the Duke of Wellington had deprived him
of his dinner at Oporto in 1809 and at Waterloo in 1815. The duke
is said to have been seriously displeased with the reviewer on account
of this mistimed article. Two of the later contributions to the
Review' by Mr. Croker made considerable noise. We refer to
those on Macaulay's History and Moore's Memoirs. In the case of
the former, Mr. Rogers said Croker attempted murder, but only
committed suicide.' With Moore the reviewer had been on friendly
terms. They were countrymen and college acquaintances; and
when Lord John Russell published the poet's journals for the benefit
of his widow, a generous man, who had known the deceased, would
have abstained from harsh comments. Croker applied the scalpel
without mercy; Lord John ventured a remark on the critic's safe
malignity; and Croker retaliated by shewing that Moore had been
recording unfavourable notices of him in his journal at the very time
that he was cultivating his acquaintance by letters, and soliciting
favours at his hands. Lord John's faults as an editor were also
unsparingly exposed; and on the whole, in all but good feeling,
Croker was triumphant in this passage-at-arms. No man with any
heart would have acted as Croker did, I he was blinded by his
keen partisanship and pride. He was a political gladiator bound to
do battle against all Whigs and innovators in literature. Mr.
Disraeli has satirised him under the name of Rigby' in his novel
of Coningsby.' Mr. Croker, however, did service to literature by
his annotated edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson,' and his publi-
cation of the Suffolk Papers, the Letters of Lady Hervey, and Lord
Hervey's 'Memoirs of the Court of George II.' He wrote Stories
from the History of England for Children,' which had the merit of
serving as a model for Sir Walter Scott's Tales of a Grandfather,"
and he collected some of his contributions to the Review,' and
published them under the title of Essays on the Early Period of the
French Revolution.' At the time of his death he was engaged in
preparing an edition of Pope's works, which has since passed into
the abler hands of the Rev. Whitworth Elwin.
<
(
(
C
(
<
•
(
C
•
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
The following notice of MISS MARTINEAU appeared in Horne's 'Spirit
of the Age:' Harriet Martineau was born in the year 1802, one of the
youngest among a family of eight children. Her father was a pro-
prietor of one of the manufactories in Norwich, in which place his
MISS MARTINEAU.] ENGLISH LITERATURE.
199
family, originally of French origin, had resided since the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. She was indebted to an uncle, a surgeon in
Norwich, for her education. She has herself ascribed her taste for
literary pursuits to the extreme delicacy of her health in childhood;
to the infirmity (deafness) with which she has been afflicted ever
since, which, without being so complete as to deprive her absolutely
of all intercourse with the world, yet obliged her to seek occupations
and pleasures within herself; and to the affection which subsisted
between her and the brother nearest her own age, the Rev. James
Martineau, whose fine mind and talents are well known.
The occu-
pation of writing, first begun to gratify her own taste and inclination,
became afterwards to her a source of honorable independence, when.
by one of the disasters so common in trade, her family became in-
volved in misfortunes. She was then enabled to reverse the common
lot of unmarried daughters in such circumstances, and cease to be in
any respect a burden. She realised an income sufficient for her sim-
ple habits, but still so small as to enhance the integrity of the sacri-
fice which she made to principle in refusing the pension offered to
her by government in 1840. Her motive for refusing it was, that she
considered herself in the light of a political writer, and that the offer
did not proceed from the people, but from the government, which
did not represent the people. It is said in another account that
when pressed on this subject by Lord Melbourne, she declined to ac-
cept a pension, the proceeds of a system of taxation which she had
condemned in her works.
C
The literary career of Miss Martineau displayed unwearied appli-
cation, as well as great versatility of talent and variety of informa-
tion. It commenced in 1823, when she published ‘Devotional Ex-
ercises for Young Persons.' From this time till 1831 she issued a
number of tracts and short moral tales, and wrote some prize essays,
which were published by the Unitarian Association. Two works on
social questions, The Rioters' and 'The Turn Out,' were among
the first attempts to expound in a popular form the doctrines of polit-
ical economy. In 1832-34 she produced more valuable Illustra-
tions of Political Economy,' Taxation,' and 'Poor Laws. A visit
to America next led to Society in America,' 1837; and 'Retrospect
of Western Travel,' 1838, both_able and interesting works.
In the
same year she published a Letter to the Deaf, and two small
'Guides to Service,' to which she afterwards added two more domes-
tic manuals. To 1838 also belongs a small tract, How to Observe.'
In 1839 appeared Deerbrook,' a novel, containing striking and elo-
quent passages, one of which we subjoin:
<
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(
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<
Effects of Love and Happiness on the Mind.
There needs no other proof that happiness is the most wholesome moral atmos-
phere, and that in which the immortality of man is destined ultimately to thrive, than
the elevation of soul, the religious aspiration, which attends the first assurance,
the first sober certainty of true love. There is much of this religious aspiration
འ
200
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
amidst all warmth of virtuous affections. There is a vivid love of God in the child
that lays its cheek against the cheek of its mother, and clasps its arms about her
neck. God is thanked-perhaps unconsciously-for the brightness of his earth, on
summer evenings, when a brother and sister, who have long been parted, pour out
their heart-stores to each other, and feel their course of thought bright uing as it
runs. When the aged parent hears of the honours his children have won, or looks
round upon their innocent faces as the glory of his decline, his mind reverts to Him
who in them prescribed the purpose of his life, and bestowed its grace. But religious
as is the mood of every good affection, none is so devotional as that of love, espe-
cially so called. The soul is then the very temple of adoration, of faith, of holy
purity, of heroism, of charity. At such a moment the human creature shoots up
into the angel; there is nothing on earth too defiled for its charity-nothing
in hell too appalling for its heroism-nothing in heaven too glorious for its
sympathy. Strengthened, sustained, vivified by that most mysterious power,
union with another spirit, it feels itself set well forth on the way of victory
over evil, sent out conquering and to conquer. There is no other such crisis
in human life. The philosopher may experience uncontrollable agitation in veri-
fying his principle of balancing systems of worlds, feeling, perhaps, as if he
actually saw the creative hand in the act of sending the planets forth on their ever-
lasting way; but this philosopher, solitary seraph as he may be regarded amidst a
myriad of men, knows at such a moment no emotions so divine as those of the
spirit becoming conscious that it is beloved-be it the peasant-girl in the meadow,
or the daughter of the sage reposing in her father's confidence, or the artisan beside
his loom, or the man of letters musing by his fireside. The warrior about to strike
the decisive blow for the liberties of a nation, however impressed with the solemnity
of the hour, is not in a state of such lofty resolution as those who, by joining hearts,
are laying their joint hands on the whole wide realm of futurity for their own. The
statesman who, in the moment of success, feels that an entire class of social sins
and woes is annihilated by his hand, is not conscious of so holy and so intimate a
thankfulness as they who are aware that their redemption is come in the presence
of a new and sovereign affection. And these are many-they are in all corners of
every land. The statesman is the leader of a nation, the warrior is the grace of an
age, the philosopher is the birth of a thousand years; but the lover, where is he not?
Wherever parents look round upon their children, there he has been; wherever
children are at play together, there he will soon be; wherever there are roofs under
which men dwell, wherever there is an atmosphere vibrating with human voices,
there is the lover, and there is his lofty worship going on, unspeakable, but revealed
in the brightness of the eye, the majesty of the presence, and the high temper of
the discourse.
(
The democratic opinions of the authoress-for in all but her anti
Malthusian doctrines Miss Martineau was a sort of female Godwin-
are strikingly brought forward, and the characters are well drawn,
Deerbrook' is a story of English domestic life, The next effort of
Miss Martineau was The Hour and the Man,' 1840, a novel or ro
mance founded on the history of the brave Toussaint L'Ouverture;
and with this man as hero, Miss Martineau exhibits as the hour
of action the period when the slaves of St. Domingo threw off the
yoke of slavery. There is much passionate as well as graceful writing
in this tale; its greatest defect is, that there is too much disquisition,
and too little connected or regular fable. Among the other works of
Miss Martineau are several for children, as The Peasant and the
Prince,' The Settlers at Home,' Feats on the Fiord,' and 'The Crof-
ton Boys'-all pleasing and instructive little tales. Her next work,
'Life in the Sick-Room, or Essays by an Invalid,' 1844, presents many
interesting and pleasing sketches, full of acute and delicate thought
and elegant description.
(
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MISS MARTINEAU.}
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
501
Sea View from the Window of the Sick-Room at Tynemouth.
Think of the difference to us between seeing from our sofas the width of a street,
even if it be Sackville Street, Dublin, or Portland Place, in London, and thirty miles
of sea view, with its long boundary of rocks, and the power of sweeping our glance
over half a county, by means of a telescope! But the chief ground of preference of
the sea is less its space than its motion, and the perpetual shifting of objects caused
by it. There can be nothing in inland scenery which can give the sense of life and
motion and connection with the worldiike sea changes. The motion of a water-fall
is too continuous-too little varied-as the breaking of the waves would be, if that
were all the sea could afford. The fi ful action of a windmill, the waving of trees,
the ever-changing aspects of mountains are good and beautiful; but there is some-
thing more lifelike in the going forth and return of ships, in the passage of fleets,
and in the never-ending variety of a fishery. But, then, there must not be too much
sea. The strongest eyes and nerves could not support the glare and oppressive vast-
ness of an unrelieved expanse of waters. I was aware of this in time, and fixed my-
self where the view of the sea was inferior to what I should have preferred if I had
come to the coast for a summer visit. Between my window and the sea is a green
down, as green as any field in Ireland; and on the nearer half of this down. bay-
making goes forward in its season. It slopes down to a hollow, where the Prior of
old preserved his fish, there being sluices formerly at either end, the one opening
upon the river, and the other upon the little haven below the Priory, whose ruins
still crown the rock. From the Prior's fishpond, the green down slopes upwards
again to a ridge; and on the slope are cows grazing all summer, and half-way into
the winter. Över the ridge, I survey the harbour and all its traffic, the view extend-
ing from the light-houses far to the right, to a horizon of sea to the left. Beyond
the barbour lies another county, with, first. its sandy beach, where there are frequent
wrecks-too interesting to an invalid-aud a fine stretch of rocky shore to the left;
and above the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys flying their kites,
lovers and friends taking their breezy walk on Sundays; the sportsman with his
and dog; and the washerwomen converging from the farmhouses on Saturday evenings,
guu
to carry their loads, in company, to the village on the yet further height. I see them
now talking in a cluster, as they walk cach with a white burden on her bead, and now
in file, as they pass through the Darrow lane; and. fiually, they part off on the vil-
lage-green, each to some neighbouring house of the gentry. Behind the village and
the heath stretches the railway; and I watch the train triumphantly careering along
the level road, and puffing forth its steam above hedges and groups of trees, and then
labouring and panting up the ascent, till it is lost between two heights. which at last
bound my view. But on these heights are more objects; a windmill, now in mo-
tion, and now at rest; a lime-kiln, in a picturesque rocky field; an ancient church
tower, barely visible in the morning, but conspicuous when the setting sun shines
upon it; a colliery, with its lofty wagon-way and the self-moving wagons running
hither and thither, as if in pure wilfulness; and three or four farms. at various de-
grees of ascent, whose yards, paddocks, and dairies I am better acquainted with than
their inhabitants would believe possible. I know every stack of the one on the
heights. Against the sky I see the stacking of corn and hay in the season, and can
detect the slicing away of the provender, with an accurate eye, at the distance of sev-
eral miles. I can follow the sociable farmer in his summer evening ride, pricking on
in the lane where he is alone, in order to have more time for the unconscionable gos-
sip at the gate of the next farmhouse, and for the second talk over the paddock-fence
of the next, or for the third or fourth before the porch, or over the wall, when the
resident farmer comes out, pipe in mouth, and puffs away amidst his chat, till the
wife appears, with a shawl over her cap, to see what can detain him so long; and the
daughter follows, with her gown turned over her bead-for it is now chill evening-
and at last the sociable horseman finds he must be going, looks at his watch, and with
a gesture of surprise, turns his steed down a steep broken way to the beach, and can-
ters home over the sands, left hard and wet by the ebbing tide, the white horse mak-
ing his progress visible to me through the dusk. Then, if the question arises, which
has most of the gossip spirit, he or I? there is no shame in the answer.
small amusement is better than harmless-is salutary-which carries the sick pris-
Any such
202
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
oner abroad into the open air, among country-people. When I shut down my win-
dow, I feel that my mind has had an airing.
6
For four years she was an inmate of this sick room.
A se-
ries of tales, illustrative of the evils springing from the Game
Laws (1845), are marked by Miss Martineau's acuteness and fine
clear style, but are overcoloured in tone and sentiment. Another
short tale, The Billow and the Rock,' 1846, founded on the incidents
of Lady Grange's captivity, is interesting, without any attempt at
conveying a political lesson. In 1848 appeared Eastern Life,
Past and Present,' three volumes-a very interesting book of tra-
vels, but disfigured by wild speculative opinions on Scripture history
and character, and on mesmerism and clairvoyance. A volume on
'Household Education' appeared in 1849, and the 'History of Eng-
land' from 1816 to 1846,.in 1850. This is an admirable account of
the thirty years' peace. In 1851 Miss Martineau published a collec-
tion of letters between herself and Mr. H. G. Atkinson, 'On the
Laws of Man's Nature and Development -a work which met with
universal condemnation. Miss Martineau's friend, Charlotte Brontë,
grieved sadly over this declension on the part of one whom she ad-
mired as combining the highest mental culture with the nicest dis-
charge of feminine duties. The book, she said, was the first exposi-
tion of avowed atheism and materialism she had ever read-the first
unequivocal declaration of disbelief of God or a future life.' Hun-
dreds, she said, had deserted Miss Martineau on account of this book,
but this the authoress has denied. 'I am not aware,' says Miss Mar-
tineau, of having lost any friends whatever by that book, while I
have gained a new world of sympathy.' In fact, most persons re-
garded this singular lady as sui generis, and would never dream of
binding her by the fixed and settled rules.' Her next performance
was a translation and condensation of the Positive Philosophy' of
Augustus Comte, two volumes, 1853. M. Comte's work is a com-
plete account of science and scientific method, as developed at the
time he wrote, beginning with mathematics, and ending with social
physics or sociology; but it is also, says Mr. Brimley, a fierce pole-
mic against theology and metaphysics, with all the notions and
sentiments that have their root in them'a 'strict limitation
of the human faculties to phenomenal knowledge.' Hence the
system not only fails to provide an aim for the action of man
and of society; but if an aim were conceded to it, has no moral force
to keep men steady, no counteracting power to the notorious selfish-
ness and sensuality against which we have ever to be on our guard.'
In 1854 Miss Martineau published a Complete Guide to the Lakes.'
Many years since she fixed her residence in the beautiful Lake coun-
try at Ambleside, where she managed her little farm of two acres
with the skill of a practical agriculturalist, and was esteemed an affec-
tionate friend and good neighbor. She was a regular contributor of
C
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MISS MARTINEAU.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
203
+
political and social articles to the 'Daily News' and other journals.
In 1869 she reproduced in one volume all the short memoirs, royal,
political, professional, scientific, social and literary, which she had
written for the Daily News' from her first connection with the pa-
per in 1852.
These form a very interesting and instructive work—
high-toned in principle, and felicitous in expression.
She is occa-
sionally unjust, as in the case of Macaulay, and inaccurate in others,
but she is never dull. Miss Martineau also contributed articles to
Once a Week' and other periodicals. It was impossible for her to
be idle so long as a shred of health remained. She died on the even-
ing of the 27th of June 1876, having entered on her 75th year. Imme-
diately after her death the Daily News' printed an autobiography
sent to that journal by Miss Martineau when she believed she was near
death in 1855. It is a remarkably frank, unaffected production. As
a writer of fiction, she says of herself: None of her novels or tales
have, or ever had, in the eyes of good judges or in her own, any
character of permanence. The artistic aim and qualifications were
absent; she had no power of dramatic construction; nor the poetic
inspiration on the one hand, nor critical cultivation on the other,
without which no work of the imagination can be worthy to live.
Two or three of her Political Economy Tales are perhaps her best
achievement in fiction-her doctrine furnishing the plot which she
was unable to create, and the brevity of space duly restricting the
indulgence in detail which injured her longer narratives, and at last
warned her to leave off writing them. It was fortunate for her that
her own condemnation anticipated that of the public. To the end of
her life she was subject to solicitations to write more novels and
more tales; but she for the most part remained steady in her refusal.'
Of her book on Society in America,' while claiming credit for it
as a trustworthy account of the political structure and relations of
the Federal and State Governments, she says: On the whole, the
book is not a favourable specimen of Harriet Martineau's writings,
either in regard to moral or artistic taste. It is full of affectations
and preachments.' As to religion, she describes herself as being, in
carly life, an earnest Unitarian. But she says that her Eastern Life,
Past and Present,' which she ranks as the best of her writings-
shewed that at that time (1849) she was no longer a Unitarian, or a
believer in revelation at all.' With regard to the Letters on the
Laws of Man's Nature and Development,' she observes: This book
brought upon its writers, as was inevitable, the imputation of athe-
ism from the multitude who cannot distinguish between the popular
and the philosophical sense of the word-between the disbelief in the
popular theology which has caused a long series of religious men to
be called atheists, and the disbelief in a First Cause a disbelief
which is expressly disclaimed in the book.'
<
•
Miss Martineau thus accounts for her choice of rural instead of
London life: The felt that she could not be happy, or in the best
+
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201
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
way useful, if the declining years of her life were spent in lodgings
in the morning and drawing-rooms in the evening. A quiet home
of her own, and some few dependent on her for their domestic wel·
fare, she believed to be essential to every true woman's peace of
mind: and she chose her plan of life accordingly.'
The Napiers.
Two generations of Englishmen have rejoiced in the felt and lively presence of a
family who seemed born to perpetuate the associations of a heroic age, and to ele-
vate the national sentiment at least to the point reached in the best part of the mil-
tary period of our civilisation, while our mere talkers were bemoaning the material
tendencies and the sordid temper of our people in our own century. The noble old
type of the British knight, lofty in valour and in patriotism, was felt to exist in its
full virtue while we had the Napiers in our frout, conspicuous in the eyes of an
observing world. We have every reason to hope that the type will not be lost, what-
ever may be the destiny of Europe as to war or peace.
We have many gallaut
men left, as we always have had, and always shall have; but there never have been auy,
and there never can be any like the Napiers. They were a group raised from among
the medieval dead, and set in the midst of us, clothed in a temperament which ad-
mitted all the ameliorating influences of our period of civilisation. They were a great
and never-to-be-forgotten sight to our generation; and our posterity will see them
in the mirror of tradition for ages to come. We are wont to say that tradition is old
and has left off work; but it is not often now that tradition has such a theme as the
Napiers. It will not willingly be let die till tradition itself is dead.
•
•
The Royal Marriage Law (1857.)
There was a strong hope that when our young Queen Victoria, who was at fill
liberty as sovereign to please herself in marriage, bad made her choice, this wretched
and demoralising Marriage Act. always reprobated by the wisest and best men of the
time, would be repealed. There were then none left of the last generation who could
be pointed at, or in any way affected by such a repeal; and it was thought that it
would be wise to do the thing before there was a new generation to introduce difh-
culty into the case. The opportunity has almost been allowed to slip from us. The
royal children have ceased to be children. at least the elder ones. Meantime there is,
as we all know, a strong and growing popular distrust in our own country and in
others of the close dynastic connections which are multiplying by means of the per-
petual intermarriages of a very few families. The political difficulties recently, and in-
deed constantly experienced from the complication of family interests involving
almost every throne in Europe, are a matter of universal feeling and conversatiou.
There is no chance for the physical and intellectual welfare of coming generations
when marriages take place among blood relations; and there is no chance for moral-
ity and happiness when, under legal or state compulsion, young people love in one
direction and marry in another. No evils that could possibly arise from marriages
out of the royal pale can for a moment compare with the inevitable results of a mar-
riage law like ours, perpetuated through other generations, than the unhappy one
that is gone. Royalty will have quite difficulties enough to contend with, all through
Europe, in coming times, without the perils consequent on this law. Its operation
will expose all the intermarried royal families in Europe to criticism and ultimate re-
jection by peoples who will not be governed by a coterie of persons diseased in body
through narrow intermarriage, enfeebled in mind-strong only in their prejudices,
and large only in their self-esteem and in requirements. There is yet time to save
the thrones of Europe-or at least the royal palaces of Eugland-from the couse-
quences of a collision between the great natural laws ordained by Providence, and
the narrow and mischievous artificial law ordained by a wilful king of England. Thut
king is in bis grave, and the last of his children is now gone to join him there. Let
the time be laid hold of to bury his evil work in the tomb which is now to be scaled
over him and his for ever; and the act will be gratefully acknowledged by a long line
of future princes and princesses, who will be spared the bitter suffering of those who
have gone before. It can never be, as was said by wise men eighty years ago, that
MISS MARTINEAU.]
205
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
royal personages who are declared of age at eighteen will have no will of their own.
in such a matter as marriage, at five-and-twenty. Marriage is too solemn and sacred
a matter to be treated as a piece of state politics; and the ordinance which is holy in
the freedom of private life may be trusted with the domestic welfare of prince and
peasant alike.
Postal Reform-Anecdote of Coleridge.-From History of the Thirty
Years' Peace' (1816-1846).
Coleridge, when a young man, was walking through the Lake district, when he one
day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman
turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying that she could not pay
the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother,
Coleridge paid the postage, in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman.
As soon as the postman was out of the house, she shewed Coleridge how his money
had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was ar
agreement between her brother and herself, that as long as all went well with him, he
should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter, and she had thus tidings of
him without expense of postage.
Most people would have remembered this incident as a curious story to tell; but
there was one mind which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance of the
fact. It struck Mr. Rowland Hill that there must be something wrong in a system
which drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to hear
of one another's welfare. It was easy enough in those days to collect a mass of
anecdotes of such cheating. Parents and chidreu, brothers and sisters, lovers and
friends, must have tidings of each other, where there is any possibility of obtaining
them; and those who had not shillings to spend in postage-who could no more
spend shillings in postage than the class above them could spend hundreds
of pounds on pictures-would resort to any device of communication, without
thinking ther was any harm iu such cheating, because no money was kept
back from government which could have been paid. There was curious dot-
ting in newspapers. by which messages might be spelled out. Newspapers
being franked by writing on the covers the names of members of parlia-
ment, a set of signals was arranged by which the names selected were made
to serve as a bulletin. Men of business so wrote letters as that several might go on
one sheet, which was to be cut up and distributed. The smuggling of letters by car-
riers was enormous. After all expenditure of time and ingenuity, there remained,
however, a terrible blank of enforced silence. We look back now with a sort of
amazed compassion to the old crusading times when warrior-husbands and their
wives. gray-headed parents an their brave sons, parted with the knowledge that it
must be months or years befor they could hear even of one another's existence.
We wonder how they bore the depth of silence. And we feel the same now about
the families of Polar voyagers. But. till a dozen years ago, it did not occur to many
of us how like this was the fate of the largest classes in our own country. The fact
is. there was no full and free epistolary intercourse in the country, except between
those who had the command of franks. There were few families in the wide middle
class who did not feel the cost of postage a heavy item in their expenditure; and if
the young people sent letters home only once a fortnight, the amount at the year's
end was rather a serious matter. But it was the vast multitude of the lower orders
who suffered like the crusading families of old, and the geographical discoverers
of all time. When once their families parted off from home. it was a separation
almost like that of death. The hundreds of thousands of apprentices, of shopmen,
of governesses, of domestic servants, were cut off from family relations as if seas or
deserto lay between them and home. If the shilling for each letter could be saved
by the economy of weeks or months at first, the rarity of the correspondence went to
increase the rarity; new interests hastened the dying out of old ones; and the
ancient domestic affections were but too apt to wither away, till the wish for inter-
course was gone. The young girl could not ease her heart by pouring out her cares
and difficulties to her mother before she slept, as she can now when the penny and
the sheet of paper are the only condition of the correspondence. The young lad
felt that a letter home was a somewhat serious and formal matter, when it must
A
►
206
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
cost his parents more than any indulgence they ever thought of for themselves and
the old fun and light-heartedness were dropped from such domestic intercourse as
there was. The effect upon morals of this kind of restraint is proved beyond a
doubt by the evidence afforded in the army. It was a well-known fact, that in regi-
ments where the commanding officer was kind and courteous about franking letters
for the privates, and encouraged them to write as often as they pleased, the soldiers
were more sober and mauly, more virtuous and domestic in their affections, than
where difficulty was made by the indolence or stiffness of the franking officer. To
some persons, this aspect has ever appeared the most important of the various inter-
esting aspects of the postage reform achieved by Mr. Rowland Hill. As for others,
it is impossible to estimate the advantage of the change. In reading Cowper's life,
how strange now seems his expenditure of time, thought, and trouble about obtain-
ing franks for the manuscripts and proof of his Homer; now, when every mail car-
ries packets between authors, printers, and publishers, for a few pence, without any
teasing solicitation for frauks, or dependence upon anybody's good offices! What
a mass of tradesmen's patterns and samples, of trade circulars, of bills and small
sums of money, of music and books, of seeds and flowers, of small merchandise and
friendly gifts, of curious specimens passing between men of science, of bulletins of
health to satisfy anxious hearts, is every day sent abroad over the land: aud now
spreading over wide oceans and across continents, through Rowland Hill's discovery
of a way to throw down the old barriers and break through the ancient silence! It
was truly a beneficent legislation which made this change.
It was not easy, however, to make the change. Long after the case was made
clear-long after the old evils and the new possibility were made as evident as facts
and figures can make any proposition-there was difficulty-vexatious, even exaspe-
rating difficulty-in carrying the r form. One great obstacle at the outset was that
the post-office has, through all time, declared itself perfect. As the Duke of Wel-
lington declared of our representative system that it could not be improved, while
the grass and trees of Old Sarum were sending two members to parliament, so the
post-office declared itself perfect when carts and saddle-horses carried its bags; and
again, when Mr. Palmer's mail-coaches-declared an impossible creation in 1797-
brought the Bath letters to London in eighteen hours, and could take no notice of out-
of-the-way towns and small villages; and again, when a letter from Uxbridge, posted
on Friday night, could not reach Gravesend till Tuesday morning; and, finally, when
the state of postal communication in Great Britain was what has been indicated
above. No postal reforms of a comprehensive character have ever originated in the
Post-office itself. This is natural, because its officers are wholly occupied with its
interior affairs, and cannot look abroad so as to compare its provisions with the
growing needs of society. It required a pedestrian traveller in the Lake District.
making his wayside observations, and following up the suggestion; an investigator
who could ascertain something of the extent of the smuggling of letters; a man of
an open heart, who could enter into family sympathies; a man of philosophical inge-
nuity, who could devise a remedial scheme; and a man of business, who could for-
tify such a scheme with an impregnable accuracy, to achieve such a reform. The
man was among us, and the thing was done.
Mr. Hill ascertained that the cost of mere transit incurred upon a letter sent
from London to Edinburgh, a distance of four hundred miles, is not more than one
thirty-sixth part of a penny.' When this was once made clearly known to the peo-
ple of London and Edinburgh, it was not likely that they would be long content to
pay a shilling or upwards. It was not likely that rich merchants would be content;
and much less the multitude to whom a shilling was a prohibitory duty on corres.
pondence. It would strike them all that if government received such a profit as this
on the transmission of latters, the government must be getting much too rich at the
expense of letter-writers, and to the injury of persons who would fain write letters if
they could. If it appeared, however, that the revenue from the post-office was unac-
countably small-that it was diminishing in actual amount instead of increasing with
the spread of population-it was clear that the Post-office could not be so perfect as
it thought itself; that it was not answering its purpose; that whatever might be its
mismanagement and consequent expensiveness, there must also be an enormous
amount of smuggling letters. And the facts were so. Between the years 1815 and
1835, the Post-office annual revenue had declined; while, on its own existing terms,
MISS MARTINEAU.]
207
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
it ought, from the increase of population, to have risen £507.700-from the mere in-
crease of population it ought to have risen thus much, without regard to the improve-
ment of education, and the spread of commerce, which had taken place in these
twenty years.
The way to deal with smuggling is now very well understood. To extinguish
smuggling it is necessary to lower duties to the point which makes smuggling not
worth while. In some of the most populous districts of England it was believed that
the number of letters illegally conveyed by carriers, and delivered in an awkward
and irregular sort of way at the cost of a penny each, far exceeded that of the letters
sent through the Post-office. The penny posts established in towns were found to
answer well. Putting together these and a hundred other facts with that of the ac-
tual cost of transmis ion of an Edinburgh letter, Mr. Hill proposed to reduce the cost
of all letters not exceeding half an ounce in weight to a penny. The shock to the
Post-office of such an audacious proposal was extreme; and so was the amazement
of the public at the opening of such a prospect. As the actual cost of transmission
to any part of the kingdom reached by the mail was less than a farthing, the penny
rate might be made uniform-to the saving of a world of time and trouble-aud still
the profit or tax would be two hundred per cent. Mr. Hill's calculation was, that if
the postage could be paid in advance so as to save time and trouble in delivery, and
other facilities of communication be established, which he pointed out, and the post-
age be reduced to a penny for half-ounce letters, the increase in the rumber of letters.
by the stoppage of smuggling, and the new cheapness must soon be fourfold. When
it became fourfold, the net revenue, after defraying the expense of conveying franks
and newspapers, would amount to £1.278.000 per annum-a sum only £280,000 less
than the existing revenue. As no one supposed that the increase would ultimately
be so little as fourfold, there was every prospect that the Post-office revenue would,
in a few years, recover its then present amount directly while it was certain that,
under other heads, the revenue must be largely increased through the stimulus given
to commerce by improved communication."
When Mr. Hill proposed his plan, the revenue was in a flourishing state-in a state
which would justify such an experiment as this for such ends. It was well that none
foresaw the reverse which was at hand, and the long depression which must ensue;
for none might have had courage to go into the enterprise. But that reverse served
admirably as a test of the reform; and through the long depression which ensued.
Mr. Hill's plan, though cruelly maimed, and allowed at first no fair chance, worked
well while everything else was working ill. The reverne from the Post-office went
on steadily increasing, while every other branch of the national income was declining
or stationary.
•
•
And from our own country the blessing is reaching many more; and cheap postage
is becoming established in one nation after another, extending the benefits of the in-
vention among myriads of men who have not yet heard the name of its author. The
poct's shilling given in the Lake District was well laid out!
WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT.
C
A love of natural history and poetry, great industry, and a happy
talent for description, distinguish these popular writers, originally
members of the Society of Friends. Mary Botham was a native of
Uttoxeter, county of Stafford; William Howitt was born in 1795, at
Heanor, in Derbyshire. They were married in 1823, and the same
year they published, in conjunction, The Forest Minstrel,' a series
of poems. In the preface is the following statement: The history
of our poetical bias is simply what we believe, in reality, to be that
of many others. Poetry has been our youthful amusement, and
our increasing daily enjoyment in happy, and our solace in sorrowful
hours. Amidst the vast and delicious treasures of our national
literature, we have revelled with growing and unsatiated delight;
and at the same time, living chiefly in the quietness of the country,
C
208
[To 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
1
we have watched the changing features of nature; we have felt the
secret charm of those sweet but unostentatious images which she is
perpetually presenting, and given full scope to those workings of
the imagination and of the heart, which natural beauty and solitude
prompt and promote. The natural result was the transcription of
those images and scenes.'
A poem in this volume serves to complete a happy picture of
studies pursued by a married pair in concert:
C
Away with the pleasure that is not partaken ?
There is no enjoyment by oue only ta'en :
I love in my mirth to see gladness awaken
On lips, and in eyes, that reflect it again.
When we sit by the fire that so cheerily blazes
On our cozy hearthstone, with its innocent glee,
Oh! how my soul warms, while my eye fondly gazes,
To see my delight is partaken by thee.
•
And when, as how often, I eagerly listen
To stories thou read'st of the dear olden day,
How delightful to see our eyes mutually glisten,
And feel that affection has sweetened the lay.
Yes, and love-and when wandering even at morning,
Through forest or wild, or by waves foaming white,
I have fancied new beauties the landscape adorning,
Because I have seen thou wast glad in the sight.
And how often in crowds, where a whisper offendeth,
And we fain would express what there might not be said,
How dear is the glance that none else comprehendeth,
And how sweet is the thought that is secretly read!
Then away with the pleasure that is not partaken!
There is no enjoyment by one only ta'en:
I love in my mirth to see gladness awaken
On lips, and in eyes, that reflect it again.
<
Mrs. Howitt has since published a great variety of works-'The
Seven Temptations,' a dramatic poem, 1834; Wood Leighton,' a
novel; The Heir of West Wayland; and several volumes both in
prose and verse for children. The attention of Mr. and Mrs. Howitt
having been drawn to the Swedish language, they studied it with
avidity, and Mrs. Howitt has translated the tales of Frederika Bremer
and the Improvisatore' of Hans Christian Andersen, all of which
have been exceedingly popular, and now circulate extensively both
in England and America. Mr. Howitt has been a still more volumin-
ous writer. His happiest works are those devoted to rural descrip-
tion. The Book of the Seasons,' 1831, delineates the picturesque and
poctical features of the months, and all the objects and appearances
which the year presents in the garden, the field, and the waters. An
enthusiastic lover of his subject, Mr. Howitt is remarkable for the
fullness and variety of his pictorial sketches, the richness and purity
of his fancy, and the occasional force and eloquence of his language.
THE HOWITTS.}
209
ENGLISH LITERATURE,
Love of the Beautiful.
If I could but arouse in other minds (he says) that ardent and ever-growing love
of the beautiful works of God in the creation, which I feel in myself-if I could but
make it in others what it has been to me-
The nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being-
if I could open to any the mental ere which can never be again closed, but which
finds more and more clearly revealed before it beanty, wisdom, and peace in the
splendours of the heavens, in the majesty of seas and mountains, in the freshness of
winds, the everchanging lights and shadows of fair landscapes, the solitude of
heaths, the radiant face of bright lakes, and the solemn depths of woods, then, in-
deed, should I rejoice. Oh that I could but touch a thousand bosoms with that inel-
ancholy which often visits mine, when I behold little children endeavouring to ex-
tract amusement from the very dust, and strawa, and pebbles of squalid alleys, shut
out from the free and glorious countenance of nature, and think how differently the
children of the peasantry are passing the golden hours of childhood, wandering with
bare heads and unshod feet, perhaps, but singing a childish, wordless melody'
through vernal lanes, or prying into a thousand sylvan leafy nooks, by the liquid
music of running waters, amidst the fragrant heath, or on the flowery lap of the
meadow, occupied with winged wonders without end. Oh that I could but baptise
every heart with the sympathetic feeling of what the city-pent child is condemned to
lose; how blank, and poor, and joyless must be the images which fill its infant
bosom, to that of the country one, whose mind
Will be a mansion for all lovely forms,
His memory be a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies!
I feel, however, an animating assurance that nature will exert a perpetually in-
creasing influence, not only as a most fertile source of pure and substantial pleasures
-pleasures which, unlike many others, produce, instead of satiety, desire, but also as
a great moral agent: and what effects I anticipate from this growing taste may be
readily inferred, when I avow it is one of the most fearless articles of my creed, that
it is scarcely possible for a man in whom its power is once firmly established, to be-
come utterly debased in sentiment or abandoned in principle. His soul may be said
to be brought into habitual union with the Author of Nature-
Haunted forever by the Eternal Mind.
In this spirit Mr. Howitt has written The Rural Life of England,'
two volumes. 1838; The Boy's Country Book;' and 'Visits to Re-
markable Places,' two volumes; the latter work giving an account of
old English halls, battle-fields, and the scenes of striking passages in
English history and poetry. Another work of the same kind, The
Homes and Haunts of the Poets,' 1847, is greatly inferior, being dis-
figured by inaccuracies and rash dogmatic assertions. Mr. Howitt
was for some years in business in the town of Nottingham, and a
work from his fertile pen, the nature of which is indicated by its
name, the History of Priestcraft,' 1834, so recommended him to the
Dissenters and reformers of that town, that he was made one of their
aldermen. Disliking the bustle of public life, Mr. Howitt retired
from Nottingham, and resided for three years at Esher, in Surrey
Mr. and Mrs. Howitt then removed to Germany, and after three
years' residence in that country, the former published a work on the
Social and Rural Life of Germany,' which the natives admitted 19
•
C
<
216
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
be the best account of that country ever written by a foreigner. Our
industrious author has also translated a work written expressly for
him, 'The Student Life of Germany.' After his return, Mr. Howitt
embarked in periodical literature as a proprietor, but neither 'The
People's Journal' nor Howitt's Journal' was a successful specula-
tion. He then sailed for Australia, and a two years' residence in that
colony enabled him to publish an interesting and comprehensive
work, in two volumes, entitled 'Land, Labour, and Gold, or Two
Years in Victoria, with visits to Sydney and Van Diemen's Land.'
He has also published The Ruined Castles and Abbeys of Great
Britain,' 1861; History of the Supernatural;' Letters on Transpor-
tation,' 1863: Discovery in Australia,' &c., 1865; The Mad War
Planet, and other Poems,' 1871. The last was a decided failure.
But few writers have displayed greater intellectual activity than
Mary and William Howitt, and to the young they have been special
C
benefactors.
{
6
Mountain Children.-By MARY HOWITT.
Dwellers by lake and hill !
Merry companious of the bird and bee!
Go gladly forth and drink of joy your fill,
With unconstrained step and spirits free!
No crowd impedes your way,
No city wall impedes your further bounds;
Where the wild flock can wander ye may stray
The long day through, 'mid summer sights and sounds.
The sunshine and the flowers,
And the old trees that cast a solemn shade;
C
The pleasant evening, the fresh dewy hours,
And the green hills whereon your fathers played.
The gray and ancient peaks
Round which the silent clouds hang day and night;
And the low voice of water as it makes,
Like a glad creature, murmurings of delight.
These are your joys! Go forth-
Give your hearts up unto their mighty power;
For in his spirit God has clothed the earth,
And speaketh solemuly from tree and flower.
The voice of hidden rills
Its quiet way into your spirits finds;
And awfully the everlasting hills
Address you in their many-toned winds.
Ye sit upon the earth
Twining its flowers, and shouting full of glee,
And a pure mighty influence. 'mid your mirth,
Moulds your unconscious spirits silently.
Hence is it that the lands
Of storm and mountain have te noblest sons;
Whom the world reverences. The patriot bands
Were of the hills like you, ye little ones!
THE HOWITTS.]
211
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Children of pleasant song
Are taught within the mountain solitudes;
For hoary legions to your wilds belong,
And yours are haunts where inspiration broods.
Then go forth-earth and sky
To you are tributary; joys are spread
Profusely, like the summer flowers that lie
In the green path, beneath your gamesome tread!
Mountains.-From The Book of the Seasons.'
There is a charm conrected with mountains, so powerful that the merest mention
of them, the terest sketch of their magnificent feature, kindles the inagination, and
carries the spirit at once into the bosom of their enchanted regions. How the mind
is filled with their vast solitude! how the inward eye is fixed on their silent, their
sublime, their everlasting peaks! How our heart bounds to the music of their solitary
cries, to the tinkle of their gushing rills, to the sound of their cataracts! How in-
spiriting are the odours that breathe from the upland turf, from the rock-hung flower,
from the hoary and solemn pine! how beautiful are those lights and shadows thrown
abroad, and that fine, transparent haze which is diffused over the valleys and lower
slopes, as over a vast, inimitable picture!
At this season of the year [autumn] the ascents of our own mountains are most
practicable. The heat of summer has dried up the moisture with which winter rains
saturate the spongy turf of the hollows; and the atmosphere, clear and settled.
admits of the inost extensive prospects. Whoever has not ascended our mountains
knows little of the beauties of this beautiful island. Whoever has not climbed their
long and heathy ascents, and seen the trembling mountain-flowers, the glowing moss,
the richly tinted lichens at his feet; and scented the fresh aroma of the unculti-
vated sod, and of the spicy shrubs; and heard the bleat of the flock across
their solitary expanses, and the wild cry of the mountain plover, the raven, or the
eagle; aud seen the rich and russet hues of distant slopes and eminences, the livid
gashes of ravines and precipices, the white glittering line of falling waters, and the
cloud tumultuously whirling round the lofty summit; and then stood panting on that
summit, and beheld the clouds uiternately gather and break over a thousand giant
peaks and ridges of every varied hue, but all silent as images of eternity; and cast
his gaze over lakes and forests, and smoking towns, and wide lands to the very ocean,
in all their gleaming and reposing beauty-knows nothing of the treasures of picto-
rial wealth which his own country possesses.
But when we let loose the imagination from even these splendid scenes, and give it
free charter to range through the far more glorious ridges of continental mountains,
through Alps, Apennines, or Andes. how is it possessed and absorbed by all the awful
magnificence of their scenery and character! The skyward and inaccessible pinnacles,
the
Palaces where Nature thrones
Sublimity in icy halls!
the dark Alpine forests, the savage rocks and precipices, the fearful and unfathom-
able chasms filled with the sound of ever-precipitating waters; the cloud, the silence,
the avalanche, the cavernous gloom, the terrible visitation of Heaven's concentrated
Hightning, darkness, and thunder; or the sweeter features of living, rushing streams.
spicy odours of flower and shrub, fresh spirit-elating breezes sounding through the
dark pine-grove; the ever-varying lights and shadows, and aërial hnes, the wide
pects, and, above all, the simple inhabitants.
pros-
We delight to think of the people of mountainous regions: w please our im-
aginations with their picturesque and quiet abodes; with their pea al and secluded
lives, striking and unvarying costumes, and primitive manners. We involuntarily
give to the mountaineer heroic and elevated qualities. He lives amongst noble ob-
jects, and must imbibe some of their nobility; he lives amongst the elements of
poetry, and must be poetical; he lives where his fellow-beings are far, far separated
from their kind, and surrounded by the sternness and the perils of savage nature;
his social affections must therefore be proportionably concentrated, his home-tics
212
(TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDÍA OF
lively and strong; but, more than all, he lives within the barriers, the strongholds;
the very last refuge which Nature herself has reared to preserve alive liberty in the
earth, to preserve to man his highest hopes, his noble t'emotions, his dearest treas-
ures, his faith. his freedom, his hearth, and his home. How glorious do those
mountain-ridges appear when we look upon them as the rnconquerable abodes of
free hearts; as the stern, heaven-built walls from which the few, the feeble, the per-
secuted, the despised, the helpless child, the delicate wonen. have from age 10 age.
in their last peris, in all their weaknesses and emergencies, when power and cruelty
were ready to swallow them up, looked down and beheld the million waves of des-
potism break at their feet: have seen the rage of mu d rous armies and tyrants.
the blasting spirit of ambition, fanaticism and crushing dominat.ou reco 1 from their
bases in despair. Thanks be to God for mountains!' is often the exe amation of
my heart as I trace the history of the world. From age to age they have been the
last friends of man. In a thousand extremities they have saved him. What gre: 1
hearts have throbbed in their defiles from the days of Leonidas to those of Andros
Hofer! What lofty souls, what tender hearts, what poor and persecuted creatures
have they sheltered in the r stony bosoms from the weapons and tortures of their
fellow-men!
+
Avenge, O Lord. thy slaughtered saints. whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold!
was the burning exclamation of Milton's agonised and indignant spirit, as he behold
ihose sacred bulwarks of freedom for ouce violated by the disturbing demons of the
earth; and the sound of his fiery and lamenting appeal to Heaven will be echoed in
every generous soul to the end of time.
--
Thanks be to God for mountains! The variety which they impart to the glorior
bosom of our planet were no small advantage; the beauty which they spread out 1.
or vision in their woods and waters, their crage and slopes, their clouds and atm.eS-
pueric hues, were a splendid gift; the sublinity which they pour info our deepest.
souls from their majestic aspects; the poetry which breathes from their streams, and
dells, and airy heights, from the sweet abodes, the garbs and manners of thir
inhabitauts, the songs and legends which have awoke in them. were a proud herit: ge
to imagmative minds; but what are all these when the thought comes, that without
mountains the spirit of man must have bowed to the brutal and the base, and prob-
ably have sunk to the monotonous level of the unvaried plain.
When I turn my eyes upon the map of the world, and behold how wonderfully the
countries where our faith was nurtured, where our 1 berties were generated, where
our philosophy and literature, the fountains of our intellectual grace and beauty,
sprang up were as distinctly walled out by God's hand with n ountain ramparts from
the eruptions and interruptions of barbarism, as if at the especial prayer of the carly
fathers of man's destinies. I am lost in an exulting admiration. Look at the Lod
barriers of Palestine! see how the infant liberties of Greece were shelter d from the
vast tribes of the uncivilised North by the heights of Hæn us and Rhodope! behold
how the Alps describe their magnificent crescent, inclining their opposite extremities
to the Adriatic and Tyrrhene Seas, locking up Italy from the Gallic and Teutonic
Fordes fill the power and spirit of Rome had reached their maturity and she had
opened the wide forest of Europe to the light, spread far her 'aws and 1 nguage, and
planted the seeds of many mighty natious!
Thanks to God for mountains!
Their colossal firmness seems aln ost to break
the current of time itself; the geologist in them searches for traces of the earlier
world; and it is there, too, that man, resisting the revolutions of lower regions, r-
While a multitude et
taius through innumerable years his habits and his rights
changes has remoulded the people of Europe, while languages, and laws, and dynÁ--
ties, and creeds, have passed over it like shadows over the landscape, the children of
the Celf and the Goth, who fled to the mountains a thousand years ago are found
there now, and shew us in face and figure, in langnage and garb, what their fathers
were: shew us a fine contrast with the modern fr hos deling below and around
them; and shew us, moreover, how adverse is the spir of the mountain to mutabil-
ity, and that there the fiery heart of freedom is found forever.
-
THE HOWITTS.]
213
ENGLİSİİ LİTERATURË.
Country Rambles-The South of England-From The Rural Life of
England.'
Cross only the south of England, and how delightful were the route to him who
has the love of nature and of his country in his heart; and no imperious cares to dis-
pute it with them. Walk up, as I have said, from Salisbury to Stonehenge. Sit
down amid that solemn circle, on one of its fallen stones: contemplate the gigantic
crection, reflect on its antiquity, and what England has passed through and become
while those stones have stood there. Walk forth over that beautiful and immense
plain-see the green circles, and lines, and mounds, which ancient superstition or
heroism has everywhere traced upon it, and which nature has beautified with a carpet
of turf as fine and soft as velvet. Join those simple shepherds, and talk with thein.
Reflect, poetical as our poets have made the shepherd and his life-what must be the
monotony of that life in lowland counties-day after day, and month after month,
and year after year-never varying, except from the geniality of summer to winter;
and what it must be then, how dreary its long reign of cold, and wet, and snow!
When you leave them, plunge into the New Forest in Hampshire. There is a re-
gion where a summer mcnth might be whiled away as in a fairy-land. There, in the
very heart of that old forest, you find the spot where Rufus fell by the bolt of Tyrell,
looking very much as it might look then. All around you lie forest and moorland for
many a mile. The fallow and red deer in thousands herd there as of old. The squir-
rels gambol in the oaks above you; the swine rove in the thick fern and the deep
glades of the forest as in a state of nature. The dull tinkle of the cattle-bell comes
through the wood; and ever aud anon, as you wander forward, you catch the blue
smoke of some hidden abode, curling over the tree tops; and come to sylvan bowers,
and little bough-overshadowed cottages, as primitive as any that the reign of the
Conqueror himself could have shewn. What haunts are in these glades for poets;
what streams flow through their bosky banks, to soothe at once the car and eye en-
amoured of peace and beauty! What endless groupings and colourings for the
painter! At Boldre you may find a spot worth seeing, for it is the parsonage once
inhabited by the venerable William Gilpin-the descendant of Barnard Gilpin, the
apostle of the north-the author of 'Forest Scenery;' and near it is the school, which
he built and endowed for the poor from the sale of his drawings. Not very distant
from this stands the rural dwelling of one of England's truest-hearted women, Caro-
line Bowles-and not far off you have the woods of Netley Abbey, the Isle of Wight,
the Solent, and the open sea.
But still move on through the fair fields of Dorset and Somerset, to the enchanted
land of Devon. If you want stern grandeur, follow its north-western coast; if
peaceful beauty, look down into some one of its rich vales, green as an emerald,
and pastured by its herds of red cattle; if all the summer loveliness of woods and
rivers, you may ascend the Tamar or the Tavy, or many another stream; or you
may stroll on through valleys that for glorious solitudes, or fair English homes
amid their woods and hills, shall leave you nothing to desire. If you want sternness
and loneliness, you may pass into Dartmoor. There are wastes and wilds, crags of
granite, views into far-off districts, and the sounds of waters hurrying away over
their rocky beds, enough to satisfy the largest hungering and thirsting after poetical
delight. I shall never forget the feelings of delicious entrancement with which
I approached the outskirts of Dartmoor. I found myself amongst the woods near
Hayfor Crags. It was an autumn evening. The sun, near its setting, threw its
yellow beams amongst the trees, and lit up the ruddy tors on the opposite side of
the valley into a beautiful glow. Below, the deep dark river went sounding on its
way with a melancholy music, and as I wound up the steep road all beneath the
gnarled oaks, I ever and anon caught glimpses of the winding valley to the left, all
beautiful with wild thickets and half shrouded faces of rock, and still on high these
glowing ruddy tors standing in the blue air in their sublime silence. My road
wound up, and up, the heather and the bilberry on either hand shewing me that cul-
tivation had never disturbed the soil they grew in; and one sole woodlark from the
far-ascending forest to the right, filled the wide solitude with his wild autumnal
note. At that moment I reached an eminence, and at once saw the dark crags of
Dartmoor high aloft before me, and one large solitary house in the valley beneath
the woods. So fair, so silent-save for the woodlark's note and the moaning river-
80 unearthly did the whole scene seem, that my imagination delighted to look upon
214
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
it as an enchanted land, and to persuade itself that that house stood as it would
stand for ages, under the spell of silence, but beyond the reach of death and change.
But even there you need not rest-there lies a land of gray antiquity, of desolate
beauty still before you-Cornwall. It is a land almost without a tree. That is, all
its high and wild plains are destitute of them, and the bulk of its surface is of this
character. Some sweet and sheltered vales it has, filled with noble wocd, as that of
Tresillian near Truro; but over a great portion of it extend gray heaths. It is a
land where the wild furze seems never to have been rooted up, and where the huge
masses of stone that lie about its hills and valleys are clad with the lichen of
centuries. And yet how does this bare and barren land fasten on your imagination !
It is a country that seems to have retained its ancient attachments longer than any
other. The British tongue here lingered till lately-as the ruins of King Arthur's
palace still crown the stormy steep of 'lintagel; and the saints that succeeded the
heroic race, seem to have left their names on almost every town and village.
It were well worth a journey there merely to see the vast mines which perforate
the earth, and pass under the very sea; and the swarming population that they em-
ploy. It were a beautiful sight to see the bauds of young maidens, that sit beneath
long sheds, crushing the ore, and singing in chorus. But far more were it worth
the trip to stand at the Land's-End, on that lofty, savage, and shattered coast, with
the Atlantic roaring all around you. The Hebrides themselves, wild and desolate,
and subject to obscuring mists as they are, never made me feel more shipped into a
dream-land than that scenery. At one moment the sun shining over the calm sea,
in whose transparent depths the tawny rocks were seen far down. Right and left
extend the dun cliffs and cavernous precipices, and at their feet the white billows
playing gracefully to and fro over the nearly sunken rocks, as through the manes of
huge sea-lions. At the next moment all wrapt in the thickest obscurity of mist;
the sea only cognisable by its sound; the dun crags looming through the fog vast
and awfully, and all round you on the land nothing visible, as you trace back your
way, but huge gray stones that strew the whole earth. In the midst of such a
scene I came to a little deserted but, standing close by a solitary mere amongst the
rocke, and the dreamy effect became most perfect. What a quick and beautiful con-
trast was it to this, as the very same night 1 pursued my way along the shore, the
clear moon hanging on the distant horizon, the waves of the ocean on one hand com-
ing up all luminous and breaking on the strand in billows of fire, and on the other
hand the sloping turf sown with glow-worms for some miles, thick as the stars over-
head.
I speak of the delight which a solitary man may gather up for ever from such ex-
cursions; that will come before him again and again in all tlieir beauty from his past
existence, into many a crowd and many a solitary room; but how much more may
To them, a
be reaped by a congenial band of affectionate spirits in such a course.
thousand different incidents or odd adventures, flashes of wit and moments of enjoy-
ment combine to quicken both their pleasures and friendship. The very flight from
a shower, or the dining on a turnip-pie, no very uncommon dish in the rural inns of
Corawall, may furnish merriment for the future. And if this one route would be a
delicious summer's ramble, with all its coasting and its scaports into the bargain,
how many such stretch themselves in every direction through England. The fair
orchard-scenes of Hereford and Worcester, in spring all one region of bloom and
fragrance-the hills of Malvern and the Wrekin. The fairy dales of Derbyshire; the
sweet forest and pastoral scenes of Staffordshire; the wild dales, the scars and tarns
of Yorkshire; the equally beautiful valleys and hills of Lancashire, with all those
quaint old halls that are scattered through it, memorials of past times, and all cou-
nected with some incident or other of English history. And then there is Northum-
berland-the classic ground of the ancient ballad-the country of the Percy—of
Chevy Chace-of the Hermit of Warkworth-of Otterburn and Humbledown-of
Flodden, and many another stirring scene. And besides all these are the mountain
regions of Cumberland, of Wales, of Scotland, and Ireland, that by the power of
What an
steam, are being brought every day more within the reach of thousands.
inexhaustible wealth of beauty lies in those regions! These, if every other portiou
of the kingdom were reduced by ploughing and manufacturing and steaming to the
veriest commonplace, these, in the immortal strength of their nature, bid defiance to
the efforts of any antagonist or reducing spirit. These will still remain wild aud
fair, the refuge and haunt of the painter and the poet-of all lovers of beauty, and
↓
GILFILLAN.]
215
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
breathers after quiet and freshness. Nothing can pull down their lofty and scathed
heads; nothing can dry up those everlasting waters, that leap down their cliffs and
run along their vales in gladness; nothing can certainly exterminate those
dark heatlis, and drain off those mountain lakes, where health and liberty seem to
dwell together; nothing can efface the loveliness of those regions, save the hand of
Him who placed them there. I rejoice to think that while this great nation re-
mains, whatever may be the magnitude of the designs for the good of the world in
which Providence purposes to employ it-however populous it may be necessary for
it to become-whatever the machinery and manufactories that may be needfully at
work in it; that while Cumberland, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland continue, there
will continue regions of indestructible beauty-of free and unpruned nature, so fair
that those who are not satisfied therewith, would not be satisfied with the whole uni-
verse. More sublimity other countries may boast, more beauty has fallen to the lot
of none on God's globe.
REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.
C
(
<
-a
•
<
This gentleman (born at Comrie, in Perthshire, in 1813) is author
of a number of works, critical and biographical. The best known
of these is his Gallery of Literary Portraits,' the first portion pub-
lished in 1845, a second in 1849, and a third in 1855. In the interval
between the successive appearance of these volumes, Mr. Gilfillan
published The Bards of the Bible,' 1850; The Book of British
Poesy,' 1851; The Martyrs, Heroes, and Bards of the Scottish Cove-
nant,' 1852; &c. In 1856 he published 'The History of a Man'
singular melange of fancy sketches and biographical facts; and in the
following year, Christianity and our Era;' in 1864, Martyrs and
Heroes of the Scottish Covenant;' in 1867, Night' (a poem in blank
verse, by no means a happy effort of the author); and the same year
a volume of biographies, entitled 'Remoter Stars in the Church Sky;'
in 1869, Modern Christian Heroes;' in 1871, 'Life of Sir Walter
Scott.' Mr. Gilfillan has also been a large contributor to periodical
works, and has edited a series of the British Poets. At the same
time he discharges the duties of a pastor of the United Presbyterian
Church in Dundee, and has published several volumes of sermons
and discourses. The industry of Mr. Gilfillan is a remarkable and
honourable feature in his character; and his writings, though too
often disfigured by rash judgments and a gaudy rhetorical style, have
an honest warmth and glow of expression which attest the writer's
sincerity, while they occasionally present striking and happy illustra-
tions. From his very unequal pages, many felicitous images and
metaphors might be selected.
C
Lochnagar and Byron.
We remember a pilgrimage we made some years ago to Lochnagar. As we as-
cended, a mist came down over the hill, like a veil dropped by some jealous beauty
over her own fair face. At length the summit was reached, though the prospect was
denied us. It was a proud and thrilling moment. What though darkness was all
around? It was the very atmosphere that suited the scene. It was' dark Lochnagar.'
And culy think how fine it was to climb up and clasp its cairn-to lift a stone from
it, to be in after-time a memorial of our journey-fo sing the song which made it
terrible and dear, in its own proud drawing-room, with those great fog-curtains
floating around-to pass along the brink of its precipices-to snatch a fearful joy, as
we led over and hung down, and saw far beneath the gleam of eternal snow ship-
I
216
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
ing up from its hollows, and columns, or rather perpendicular seas of mist, ctreaming
up upon the wind-
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell,
Where every wave breaks on a living shore-
tinged, too, here and there, on their tops, by gleams of sunshine, the farewell beams
We had stood upon
of the dying day. It was the grandest moment in our lives.
many hills-in sunshine and in shade, in mist and in thunder-but never had before,
nor hope to have again, such a feeling of the grandeur of this lower universe-
such a sense of horrible sublimity. Nay, we question if there be a mountain in the
empire, which, though seen in similar circumstances, could awaken the same emo-
tions in our iniuds. It is not its loftiness, though that be great-nor its bold outline,
nor its savage loneliness, nor its mist-loving precipices, but the associations which
crown its crags with a 'peculiar diadem;' its identification with the image of a
poet, who, amid all his fearful errors, had perhaps more than any of the age's
bards the power of investing all his career-yea, to every corner which his fierce foot
ever touched, or which his genius ever sung-with profound and melancholy interest.
We saw his gen-
We saw the name Byron written in the cloud-characters above us.
ius sadly smiling in those gleams of stray sunshine which gilded the darkness they
could not dispel. We found an emblem of his poetry in that flying rack, and of his
character in those lowering precipices. We seemned to hear the wail of his restless
spirit in the wild sob of the wind, fainting and struggling up under its burden of
darkness. Nay, we could fancy that this hill was designed as an eternal monument
to his name, and to image all those peculiarities which make that name for ever illus-
trious. Not the loftiest of his country's poets, he is the most sharply and terribly de-
fined. In magnitude and round completeness, he yields to many-in jagged, abrupt,
and passionate projection of his own shadow over the world of literature, to none.
The genius of convulsion, a dire attraction, dwells around him, which leads many to
hang over, and some to leap down his precipices. Volcanic as he is, the coldness of
wintry selfishness too often collects in the hollows of his verse. He loves, too, the
cloud and the thick darkness, and comes veiling all the lightnings of his song in
sorrow.' So, like Byron beside Scott and Wordsworth, does Lochnagar stand in the
presence of his neighbour giants, Ben-mac-Dhui, aud Ben-y-boord, less lofty, but
more fiercely eloquent in its jagged outline, reminding us of the via of the forked
lightning, which it seems dumbly to mimic, projecting its cliffs like quenched batter-
ies against earth and heaven, with the cold of snow in its heart, and with a coronet
of mist round its gloomy brow.
(
No poet since Homer and Ida has thus, everlastingly, shot his genius into the
heart of one great mountain, identifying himself and his song with it. Not Horace
with Soracte-not Wordsworth with Helvellyn-not Coleridge with Mont Blanc-not
Wilson with the Black Mount-not even Scott with the Eldons-all these are still
common property, but Lochnagar is Byron's own-no poet will ever venture to sing
it again. In its dread circle none durst walk but he. His allusions to it are not nu-
merous, but its peaks stood often before his eye: a recollection of its grandeur
served more to colour his line than the glaciers of the Alps, the cliffs of Jura, or the
thunder hills of fear, which he heard in Chimari; even from the mountains of Greece
he was carried back to Morven, and
Lochnagar, with Ida, looked o'er Troy.
From a graphic sketch of a once popular divine by Mr. Gilfillan we
make an extract:
The Rev. Edward Irving.
And first, let us
We come, in fine, to the greatest of them all, Edward Irving.
glance at the person of the inan. In reference to other literary men you think, or at
feast, speak of their appearance last. But so it was of this remarkable man, that
most people put his face and figure in the foreground, and spoke of his mental anu
moral facuities as belonging to them, rather than of them as belonging to the man. In
this respect, he bore a strong resemblance to the two heroes of the French Revolu-
1. n. Mirabeau and Danton. Irving was a Danton spiritualised. Had he been born in
GILFILLAN.]
217
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
France, and subjected to its desecrating influences, and hurled head foremost into the
vortex of its revolution, he would, in all probability, have cut some such tremendous
figure as the Mirabeau of the Sans-culottes; he would have laid about him as wildly
at the massacres of September, and carried his huge black head as high in the death-
cart, and under the guillotine. Had he been born in England, in certain circles, he
had perhaps emerged from obscurity in the shape of an actor, the most powerful that
ever trod the stage, combining the statuesque figure and sonorous voice of the Kemble
family, with the energy, the starts, and bursts and inspired fury of Kean, added to
some qualities peculiarly his own. Had he turned his thought to the tuneful art, he
had written rugged and fervent verse, containing much of Milton's grandeur, and
much of Wordsworth's oracular simplicity. Had he snatched the pencil, he would
have wielded it with the savage force of Salvator Rosa, and his conceptions would
have partaken now of Blake's fantastic quaintness, and now of Martin's gigantic mo-
notony. Had he lived in the age of chivalry, he would have stood side by side in glo-
rious and well-foughten field with Cœur de Lion himself, and died in the steel harness
full gallantly. Had he lived in an age of persecution, he had been either a hardy martyr,
leaping into the flames as into his wedding suit, or else a fierce inquisitor, aggravating
by his portentous frown, and more portentous squint, the agonies of his victim.
Had he been born in Calabria, he had been as picturesque a bandit as ever stood on
the point of a rock between a belated painter and the red evening sky, at once an ob-
ject of irresistible terror and irresistible admiration, leaving the poor artist in doubt
whether to take to his pencil or to his heels. But, in whatever part or age of the
world he had lived, he must have been an extraordinary man.
No mere size, however stupendous, or expression of face, however singular, could
have uplifted a common man to the giddy height on which Irving stood for a while,
calm and collected as the statue upon its pedestal. It was the correspondence, the
reflection of his powers and passions upon his person; independence stalking in his
stride, intellect enthroned ou his brow, imagination dreaming on his lips, physical
energy stringing his frame, and athwart the whole a cross ray. as from Bedlam,
shooting in his eye! It was this which excited such curiosity, wouder, awe, rap-
ture, and tears, aud made his very enemies, even while abusing, confess his power,
and tremble in his presence. It was this which made ladies flock and faint, which
divided attention with the theatres, eclipsed the oratory of parliament, drew demi-
reps to hear themselves abused, made Canning's fine countenance flush with pleas-
ure, as if his veins ran lightning,' accelerated in an alarming manner the twitch in
Brougham's dusky visage, and elicited from his eye those singular glances, half of
envy and half of admiration, which are the truest tokens of applause, and made
such men as Hazlitt protest, on returning half squeezed to death from one of his
displays, that a monologue from Coleridge, a recitation of one of his own poems
from Wordsworth, a burst of puns from Lamb, and a burst of passion from Kean,
were not to be compared to a sermon from Edward Irving.
His manner also contributed to the charm. His aspect, wild, yet grave, as of
one labouring with some mighty burden; his voice, deep, clear, and with crashes
of power alternating with cadences of softest melody; his action, now graceful as
the wave of the rose-bush in the breeze, and now fierce and urgent as the motion of
the oak in the hurricane. Then there was the style, curiously uniting the beauties
and faults of a sermon of the seventeenth century with the beauties and fanlts of a
parliamentary haraugue or magazine article of the nineteenth-quaint as Browne,
florid as Taylor, with the bleak wastes which intersect the scattered green spots of
Howe, mixed here with sentences involved, clumsy, and cacophonous as the worst
of Jeremy Beutham's, and interspersed there with threads from the magic loom of
Coleridge. It was a strange amorphous Babylonish dialect, imitative, yet original,
rank with a prodigious growth of intertangled beauties and blemishes, inclosing
amid wide tracts of jungle little bits of clearest and purest loveliness, and throwing
out sudden volcanic bursts of real fire, amid jets of mere smoke and hot water. It
had great passages, but not one finished sermon or sentence. It was a thing of
shreds, and yet a web of witchery. It was perpetually stumbling the least fastidious
hearer or reader, and yet drawing both impetuously on. And then, to make the
medley thick and slab,' there was the matter, a grotesque compound, including
here a panegyric on Burns, and there a fling at Byron; here a plan of future punish-
ment, laid out with as much minutoness as if he had been projecting a bridewell, i
•
•
·
218
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
}
and there a ferocious attack upon the Edinburgh Review; here a glimpse of the
gates of the Celestial City, as if taken from the top of Mount Clear, and there a
description of the scenery and of the poet of the Lakes; here a pensive retrospect
to the days of the Covenant, and there a dig at the heart of Jeremy Bentham; here
a ray of prophecy, and there a bit of politics; here a quotation from the Psalms,
and there from the Rime of the Anciente Mariner.' Such was the strange, yet
overwhelming exhibition which our hero made before the gaping, staring, wonder-
ing, laughing, listening, weeping, and thrilling multitudes of fashionable, political,
and literary Loudon.
¿
<
He was, in fact, as De Quincey one called him to us, a 'demon of power.' We
must not omit, in merest justice, his extraordinary gift of prayer. Some few of his
contemporaries might equal him in preaching, but none approached to the very hem
of his garment while wrapt up into the heaven of devotion. It struck you as the
prayer of a great being conversing with God. Your thoughts were transported to
Sinai, and you heard Moses speaking.with the Majesty on high, under the canopy of
darkness, ainid the quaking of the solid mountain and the glimmerings of celestial
fire; or you thought of Elijah praying in the cave in the intervals of the earthquake,
and the fire and the still small voice. The solemnity of the tones convinced you
that he was conscious of an unearthly presence, and speaking to it, not to you.
The diction and imagery sliewed that his faculties were wrought up to their highest
pitch, and tasked to their noblest endeavour. in that celestial colloquy sublime.'
And yet the elaborate intricacies and selling pomp of his preaching were exchanged
for deep simplicity. A profusion of Scripture was used; and never did inspired
language better become lips than those of Irving. His public prayers fold to those
who could incrpret their language of many a secret conference with Heaven-they
pointed to wings all unseen, and groanings all unheard-they drew aside, invol
untarily, the veil of his secret retirements, and let in a light into the suretuary of
the closet at. Prayers more elegant, and beautiful, and melting, hav often been
heard; pravers more urgent in their fervid inoportunity have been uttered once and
again (such as those which were sometimes heard with deep awe to proceed from the
chamber where the perturbed spirit of Hall was conversing alond with its Maker till
the dawning of the day); but prayers more organ-like and Miltonic, never. The
fastidious Cauning, when told by Sir James Mackintosh, of Irving praying for a
family of orphaus as cast upon the fatherhood of God,' was compelled to start, and
own the beauty of the expression.
C
A
BAYARD TAYLOR.
(
C
<
↓
€
<
An American traveller and miscellaneous writer, BAYARD TAYLOR,
a native of Pennsylvania, born in 1825, was apprenticed to a printer,
and afterwards devoted himself to literature and foreign travel. His
publications are numerous, including Ximena, and other Poems,'
1814; Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff,' 1846 ;
A Voyage to California,' &c., 1850; The Lands of the Saracen,'
1854; A Visit to India, China, and Japan,' 1855; Travels in
Greece and Russia,' 1859; At Home and Abroad,' (sketches of Life
and scenery), two volumes, 1859-1862; The Poet's Journal,' a poet-
ical domestic autobiography, 1862; Hannah Thurston,' a story of
American life, 1863; John Godfrey's Fortunes, ' a novel, 1864; The
Story of Kennet,' a tale of American life, 1866; Colorado,' 1867;
'By-ways of Europe,' 1-69 ; &c. A collective edition of the poems
of Bayard Taylor was published at Boston in 1864, and a collective
edition of bis travels in ten volumes, by Putnam of New York, in
1869. This enterprising traveller in 1862 was appointed secretary to
the American legation at the Court of St. Petersburg.
6
•
·
TAYLOR.]
219
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Student Life in Germany.-From 'Views Afoot.'
Receiving a letter from my cousin one bright December morning, the idea of visit-
ing him struck me, and so, within an hour, B and I were on our way to
Heidelberg. It was delightful weather; the air was mild as the early days of spring,
the pine forests around wore a softer green, and though the sun was but a hand's-
breadth high, even at noon, it was quite warm on the open road. We stopped for
the night at Bensheim; and the next morning was as dark as a cloudy day in the
north can be, wearing a heavy gloom I never saw elsewhere. The wind blew the
snow down from the summits upon us, but, being warm from walking, we did not
heed it. The mountains looked higher than in summer, and the old castles more
grim and frown ing. From the hard roads and freezing wind, my feet became very
sore, and after limping along in excruciating pain for a league or two, I poured some
brandy into my boots, which deadened the wounds so much, that I was enabled to
go on in a kind of trot, which I kept up, only stopping ten minutes to dinner, nutil
we reached Heidelberg. But I have not yet recovered from the lameness which fol-
lowed this performance.
The same evening there was to be a general commers, or meeting of the societies
among the students, and I determined not to omit witnessing one of the most inter-
esting and characteristic features of student life. So, borrowing a cap and coat, I
looked the student well enough to pass for one of them. although the former article
was somewhat of the Philister form. Baader, a young poet of some note, and
president of the Palatia' Society, having promised to take us to the commers, we
met at eight o'clock at an inn frequented by the students, and went to the rendez-
vous, near the Markt Platz.
A
A confused sound of voices came from the inn, as we drew near, and groups of
students were standing around the door. In the entrance-ball we saw the Red Fish-
erman, one of the most conspicuous characters about the University. He is a small,
stout man, with bare neck and breasts, red hair-whence his name-and a strange
mixture of roughuess and benevolence in his countenance. He has saved many per-
sons, at the risk of his own life, from drowning in the Neckar, and on that account
is leniently dealt with by the faculty whenever he is arrested for assisting the stu-
dents in any of their unlawful proceedings. Entering the room I could scarcely see
at first, on account of the smoke that ascended from a hundred pipes. All was noise
and confusion. Near the door sat some half-dozen musicians, who were getting
their instruments ready for action, and the long room was filled with tables, all of
which seemed to be full, yet the students were still pressing in. The tables were cov-
ered with great stone jugs and long beer-glasses; the students were talking and shout-
ing and drinking. One who appeared to have the arrangement of the meeting, found
seats for us together, and having made a slight acquaintance with those sitting next
us, we felt more at liberty to witness their proceedings. They were all talking in a
sociable, friendly way, and I saw no one who appeared to be intoxicated. The beer
was a weak mixture, which I should think would make one fall over from its weight,
rather than its intoxicating properties. Those sitting near me drank but little, and
that principally to make or return compliments. One or two at the other end of the
table were more boisterous, and more than one glass was overturned upon their legs.
Leaves containing the songs for the evening lay at each seat, and at the head,
where the president sat, were two swords crossed, with which he occasionally struck
upon the table to preserve order. Our president was a fine, romantic-looking young
man, dressed in the old German costume-black beaver and plume, and velvet doub-
let with slashed sleeves. I never saw in any company of young men so many hand-
some, manly countenances. If their faces were any index of their characters, there
were many noble, free souls among them. Nearly opposite to me sat a young poet,
whose dark eyes flashed with feeling as he spoke to those near him. After some
time passed in talking and drinking together, varied by an occasional air from the
musicians, the president beat order with the sword, and the whole company joined
in one of their glorious songs, to a melody at the same time joyous and solemn.
Swelled by so many manly voices it arose like a hymn of triumph-all other sounds
were stilled. Three times during the singing all rose to their feet, clashed their
glasses together around the tables and drank to their fatherland, a health and bless-
ing to the patriot, and honour to those who struggle in the cause of freedom.
220
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
After this song, the same order was continued as before, except that students
from the different societies made short speeches, accompanied by some toast or senti-
ment. One spoke of Germany-predicting that all her dissensions would be overcome,
and she would arise at last, like a phoenix, among the nations of Europe; and at the
close, gave strong, united, regenerated Germany!' Instantly all sprang to their feet,
and clashing the glasses together, gave a thundering hoch!' This enthusiasm tor
their country is one of the strongest characteristics of the German students; they
have ever been first in the field for her freedom, aud on them mainly depends her
future redemption.
6
Cloths were passed around, the tables wiped off, and preparations made to sing
the 'Landsfather,' or consecration song. This is one of the most important and solemn
of their ceremonies, since by performing it the new students are made burschen, and
the bands of brotherhood continually kept fresh and sacred. All became still a
moment, then commenced the lofty song:
Silent bending, each one lending
To the solemn tones his ear,
Hark, the song of songs is sounding-
Back from joyful choir resounding,
Hear it, German brothers, hear!
German, proudly rise it, loudly
Singing of your fatherland.
Fatherland! thou land of story,
To the altars of thy glory
Consecrate us, sword in hand!
Take the beaker, pleasure seeker,
With thy country's drink brimmed o'er!
In thy left the sword is blinking,
Pierce it through the cap, while drinking
To thy Fatherland once more!
With the first line of the last stanza, the presidents sitting at the head of the table
take their glasses in their right hands, and at the third line the sword in their left, at
the end striking their glasses together and drinking.
In left hand gleaming, thou art beaming,
Sword from all dishonour free!
Thus I pierce the cap, while swearing,
It in honour ever wearing,
I a valiant Bursch will be!
They clash their swords together till the third line is sung, when each takes his
cap, and piercing the point of the sword through the crown, draws it down to the
guard. Leaving their caps on the swords, the presidents stand behind the two next
students, who go through the same ceremony, receiving the swords at the appropri-
ate time, and giving them back loaded with their caps also. This ceremony is going
on at every table at the same time. These two stanzas are repeated for every pair
of students, till all have performed it and the presidents have arrived at the bottom
of the table, with their swords strung full of caps. Here they exchange swords,
while all sing:
Come, thou bright sword, now made holy,
Of free men the weapon free;
Bring it, solemnly and slowly,
Heavy with pierced caps to me!
From its burden now divest it;
Brothers, be ye covered all,
And till our next festival,
Hallowed and unspotted rest it!
TAYLOR.]
221
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Up, ye feast companions! ever
Honour ye our holy band!
And with heart and soul endeavour
E'er as high-souled men to stand!
Up to feast, ye men united!
Worthy be your fathers' fame,
And the sword may no one claim,
Who to honour is not plighted!
Then each president, taking a cap off his sword, reaches it to the student oppo-
site, and they cross their swords, the ends resting on the two students' heads, while
they sing the next stanza:
So take it back; thy head I now will cover,
And stretch the bright sword over.
Live also then this Bursche, hoch !
Wherever we may meet him,
Will we, as Brother, greet him-
Live also this, our Brother, hoch!
This ceremony was repeated till all the caps were given back, and they then con-
cluded with the following:
Rest, the Burschen-feast is over,
Hallowed sword, and thou art free!
Each one strive a valiant lover
Of his fatherland to be!
Hail to him, who, glory-haunted,
Follows stills his fathers bold;
And the sword may no one hold
But the noble and undaunted!
The Landsfather being over, the students were less orderly; the smol-ing and
drinking began again, and we left, as it was already eleven o'clock, glad to breathe
the pure cold air.
HERMAN MELVILLE.
A native of New York, born in 1819, HERMAN MELVILLE WAS
early struck with a passion for the sea, and in his eighteenth year
made a voyage as a common sailor from New York to Liverpool. A
short experience of this kind usually satisfies youths who dream of
the perils and pleasures of sea life; but Herman Melville liked his
rough nautical novitiate, and after his return home sailed in a whal-
ing vessel for the Pacific. This was in 1841.
This was in 1841. In the following year
the vessel arrived at Nukuheva, one of the Marquesa Islands.
<
Those who for the first time visit the South Seas, generally are
surprised at the appearance of the islands when beheld from the sea.
From the vague accounts we sometimes have of their beauty, many
people are apt to picture to themselves enamelled and softly swelling
plains, shaded over with delicious groves, and watered by purling
brooks, and the entire country but little elevated above the surround-
ing ocean. The reality is very different; bold rock-bound coasts,
with the surf beating high against the lofty cliffs, and broken here
and there into deep inlets, which open to the view thickly-wooded
valleys, separated by the spurs of mountains clothed with tufted
grass, and sweeping down towards the sea from an elevated and fur-
rowed interior, form the principal features of these islands.'
222
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Melville and a brother sailor, Toby, disgusted with the caprice and
tyranny of the captain, clandestinely left the ship, and falling into
the hands of a warlike cannibal-race who inhabit the Typee Valley,
were detained for four months. Melville was rescued by the crew of
a Sidney whaler, and after some time spent in the Society and Sand-
wich Islands, he arrived at Boston, in October 1844, having been
nearly three years absent from home. The adventurer now settled
down in Massachusetts, married, and commenced author. In 1846
appeared Typee: a Peep at Polynesian Life, or Four Months' resi-
dence in a Valley of the Marquesas. The narrative was novel and
striking. It was the first account of the natives of those islands by
one who had lived familiarly amongst them, and the style of the
writer was lively and graphic. Some remarks unfavourable to the
missionaries gave offence, but Melville maintained they were based
on facts, and protested that he had no feeling of animosity in the
matter. The success of Typee' soon led to another volume of sim-
ilar sketches. In 1847 was published Omoo, a Narrative of Adven-
tures in the South Seas.' This also enjoyed great popularity. The
subsequent works of the author were not so successful; though
fresh and vigorous in style, they wanted novelty and continuous in-
terest. These are- Mardi, and a Voyage Thither,' 1849; 'Redburn,
his first Voyage, 1849; White Jacket,' 1850; Moby Dick,' 1851;
Pierre.' 1852; Israel Potter,' 1855; Piazza Tales,' 1856; The
Confidence Man in Masquerade,' 1857. The Refugee,' 1865; and a
volume of poems, entitled 'Battle Pieces and Aspects of War,' 1866.
About 1860, Melville left his farm in Massachusetts and made a voy-
age round the world in a whaling vessel. The rambling propensity
was too strong to be resisted.
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Scenery of the Marquesas-Valley of Tior.
The little space in which some of these clans pass away their days would seem
almost incredible. The glen of Tior will furnish a curious illustration of this. The
inhabited part is not more than four miles in length, and varies in breadth from half a
mile to less than a quarter. The rocky vine-clad cliffs on one side tower almost per-
pendicularly from their base to the height of at least fifteen hundred feet; while across
the vale-in striking contrast to the scenery opposite-grass-grown elevations rise
one above another in blooming terraces. Hemnied in by these stupendous barriers,
the valley would be altogether shut out from the rest of the world, were it not that it
is accessible from the sea at one end, and by a narrow defile at the other.
The impression produced upon my mind, when I first visited this beautiful glen,
will never be obliterated.
I had come from Nakuheva by water in the ship's boat, and when we entered the
bay of Tior it was high noon. The heat bad been intense, as we had been floating
upon the long smooth swell of the ocean. for there was but little wind. The sun's
rays had expended all their fury upon us; and to add to our discomfort, we had omit-
ted to supply ourselves with water previous to starting. What with heat and thirst
together, I became so inpatient to get ashore, that when at last we glided towards
it. I stood up in the bow of the boat ready for a spring. As she shot two-thirds of
her length high upon the beach, propelled by three or four strong strokes of the oars,
I leaped among a parcel of juvenile savages who stood prepared to give us a kind re-
ception; and with them at my heels, yelling like so many imps, I rushed forward
MELVILLE.]
223
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
across the open ground in the vicinity of the sea, and plunged, diver fashion, into the
recesses of the first grove that offered.
What a delightful sensation did I experience! I felt as if floating in some new
element, while all sort of gurgling, trickling liquid sounds fell upon my ear. People
may say what they will about the refreshing influences of a cold-water bath, but
commend me when in a perspiration to the shade baths of Tior, beneath the cocoa-
nut trees, and amidst the cool delightful atmosphere which surrounds them.
How shall I describe the scenery that met my eye, as I looked out from this
verdant recess! The narrow valley, with its steep and close adjoining sides draperied
with vines. and arched overhead with a fretwork of interlacing boughs. nearly hidden
from view by masses of leaiy verdure, seemed from where I stood like an immense
arbour disclosing its vista to the eye, whilst as I advanced it insensibly widened into
he loveliest vale eve ever beheld.
It so happened that the very day I was in Tior the French admiral, attended by
all the boats of his squadrou, came down in state from Nukuleva to take formal
possession of the place. He remained in the valley about two hours, during which
time he had a ceremonious interview with the king.
The patriarch-sovereign of Tior was a man very far advanced in years; but though
age had bowed his form aud rendered him almost decrepid, his gigantic frame re-
tained all its original magnitude and grandeur of appearance. He advanced slowly
and with evident pain, assisting his tottering steps with the heavy war-spear he held
in his hand, and attended by a group of gray-bearded chiefs, ou one of whom he oc-
casionally leaned for support. The admiral came forward with head uucovered and
extended hand, while the old king saluted him by a stately flourish of his weapon.
The next moment they stood side by side, these two extremes of the social scale-
the polished, splendid Frenchman, and the poor tattooed savage. They were both
tall and noble-looking men; but in other respects how strikingly contrasted! Du
Petit Thouars exhibited upon his person all the paraphernalia of his naval rank. He
wore a richly-decorated admiral's frock-coat, á laced chapeau bras, and upon his
breast were à variety of ribbons and orders; while the simple islander, with the ex-
ception of a slight cincture about his loins. appeared in all the nakedness of nature.
·
At what an immeasurable distance, thought I, are these two beings removed from
each other. In the one is shewn the result of long centuries of progressive civilisa-
tion and refinement, which have gradually converted the mere creature into the seni-
blance of all that is elevated and grand; while the other after the lapse of the same
period, has not advanced one step in the career of improvement. Yet, after all,'
quoth I to myself. insensible as he is to a thousand wants, and removed from haras-
sing cares, may not the savage be the happier of the two?' Such were the thoughts
that arose in my mind as I gazed upon the novel spectacle before me. In truth it
was an impressive one, and little likely to be effaced. I can recall even now with
vivid distinctness every feature of the scene. The umbrageous shades where the in-
terview took place-the glorious tropical vegetation around-the picturesque group-
ing of the mingled throug of soldiery and natives-and even the golden-hued bunch
of bananas that I held in my hand at the time, and of which I occasionally partook
while making the aforesaid philosophical reflections.
First Interview with the Natives.
It was now evening, and by the dim light we could just discern the savage coun-
tenances around us. gleaming with wild curiosity and wonder; the naked forms and
tattooed limbs of brawny warriors, with here and there the slighter figures of young
girls, all engaged in a perfect storm of conversation, of which we were of course the
one only the me; whilst our recent guides were fully occupied in answering the in-
numerable questions which every one put to them. Nothing can exceed the fierce
gesticulation of these people when animated in conversation, and ou this occasion
they gave loose to all their natural vivacity, shouting and dancing about in a manner
that well-nigh intimidated us.
Close to where we lay, squatting upon their haunches, were some eight or ten
noble-looking chiefs-for such they subsequently proved to be-who. more reserved
than the rest, regarded us with a fixed and stern attention, which not a little dis-
composed our equanimity. One of them in particular, who appeared to be the high-
224
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
I
est in rank, placed himself directly facing me; looking at me with a rigidity of as-
pect under which I absolutely quailed. He never once opened his lips, out main-
tained his severe expression of countenance, without turning his face aside for a sin-
gle moment. Never before had I been subjected to so strange and steady a glance;
it revealed nothing of the mind of the savage, but appeared to be reading my own.
After undergoing this scrutiny till I grew absolutely nervous, with a view of di-
verting it if possible, and conciliating the good opinion of the warrior, I took some
tobacco from the bosom of my frock and offered it to him. He quietly rejected the
proffered gift, and. without speaking, motioned me to return it to its place.
In my previous intercourse with the natives of Nukuheva and Tior, I had found
that the present of a small piece of tobacco would have rendered any of them devoted
to my service. Was this act of the chief a token of his enmity? Typee or Happar?
I asked within myself. I started, for at the same moment this identical question
was asked by the strange being before me. I turned to Toby; the flickering light of
a native taper shewed me his countenance pale with trepidation at this fatal ques-
tion. I paused for a second, and I know not by what impulse it was that I answered
Typee. The piece o dusky statuary nodded in approval, and then murmured
'Mortarkee!' 'Mortarkee,' said I, without further hesitation- Typee Mortarkee.'
6
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What a transition! The dark figures around us leaped to their feet, clapped their
hands in transport, and shouted again and again the talismanic syllables, the utter-
ance of which appeared to have settled everything.
When this commotion had a little subsided. the principal chief squatted once
more before me, and throwing himself into a sudden rage, poured forth a string of
philippies, which I was at no loss to understand, from the frequent recurrence of the
word Happar, as being directed against the natives of the adjoining valley. In all
these denunciations my companion and I acquiesced, while we extolled the character
of the warlike Typees. To be sure our panegyrics were somewhat laconic, consist-
ing in the repetition of that name, united with the potent adjective mortarkee.'
But this was sufficient, and served to conciliate the good-will of the natives, with
whom our congeniality of sentiment on this point did more towards inspiring a
friendly feeling than anything else that could have happened.
At last the wrath of the chief evaporated, and in a few moments he was as placid
as ever. Laying his hand upon his breast, he now gave me to understand that his
name was Mehevi,' and that, in return, he wished me to communicate my appellation.
I hesitated for an instant, thinking that it might be difficult for him to pronounce
my real name, and then with the most praiseworthy intentions intimated that I was
known as 'Tom.' But I could not have made a worse selection; the chief could not
master it: Tommo,' Tomma,' 'Tommec,' everything but plain Tom.' As he per-
sisted in garnishing the word with an additional syllable, I compromised the matter
with him at the word Tommo;' and by that name I went during the entire period
of my stay in the valley. The same proceeding was gone through with Toby, whose
mellifluous appellation was more easily caught.
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An exchange of names is equivalent to a ratification of good-will and amity
among these simple people; and as we were aware of this fact, we were delighted
that it had taken place on the present occasion.
C
Reclining upou our mats, we now held a kind of levee, giving audience to succes-
sive troops of the natives, who introduced themselves to us by pronouncing their re-
spective names, and retired in high good humour on receiving ours in return. During
this ceremony the greatest merriment prevailed, nearly every announcement on the
part of the islanders being followed by a fresh sally of gaiety, which induced me to
believe that some of them at least were innocently diverting the company at our ex--
pense, by bestowing upon themselves a string of absurd titles, of the humour of
which we were of course entirely ignorant.
All this occupied about an hour, when the throng having a little diminished, I
turned to Mehevi and gave him to understand that we were in need of food and
sleep. Iminediately the attentive chief addressed a few words to one of the crowd,
who disappeared, and returned in a few moments with a calabash of 'poee-poee,' and
two or three young cocoa-nuts stripped of their husks, and with their shells partly
broken. We both of us forthwith placed one of these natural goblets to our lips,
and drained it in a moment of the refreshing draught it contained. The poee-poee
was then placed before us, and even famished as I was, I paused to consider in what
manner to convey it to my mouth,
MELVILLE.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
225
This staple article of food among the Marquese islanders is manufacturea from
the produce of the bread-fruit tree. It somewhat resembles in its plastic nature our
bookbinders' paste. is of a yellow colour, and somewhat tart to the taste.
Such was the dish, the merits of which I was now eager to discuss. I eyed it
wistfully for a moment, and then unable any longer to stand on ceremony, plunged
my hand into the yielding mass, and to the boisterous mirth of the natives drew it
forth laden with the poee-poee, which adhered in lengthy strings to every finger. So
stubborn was its consistency, that in conveying my heavily-freighted hand to my
mouth, the connecting links almost raised the calabash from the mats on which it
had been placed. This display of awkwardness-in which, by-the-bye, Toby kept me
company-convulsed the by-standers with uncontrollable laughter.
As soon as their merriment had somewhat subsided. Mehevi, motioning us to be
attentive, dipped the forefinger of his right hand in the dish, and giving it a rapid
and scientific twirl, drew it out coated smoothly with the preparation. With a
second peculiar flourish he prevented the poee-poee from dropping to the ground
as he raised it to his mouth, into which the finger was inserted and drawn forth
perfectly free from any adhesive matter. This performance was evidently intended
for our instruction; so I again essayed the feat on the principles inculcated. but with
very ill success.
A starving man, however, little heeds conventional proprieties. especially on a
South-Sea Island, and accordingly Toby and I partook of the dish after our own
clumsy fashion, beplastering our faces all over with the glutinous compound, and
daubing our hands nearly to the wrist. This kind of food is by no means disagree-
able to the palate of a European, though at first the mode of eating it may be. For
my own part, after the lapse of a few days I became accustomed to its singular fla-
vour, and grew remarkably fond of it.
So much for the first course; several other dishes followed it, some of which were
positively delicious. We concluded our banquet by tossing off the contents of two
more young cocoa-nuts, after which we regaled ourselves with the soothing fumes of
tobacco, inhaled from a quaintly carved pipe which passed round the circle.
During the repast, the natives eyed us with intense curiosity, observing our minu-
test motions, and appearing to discover abundant matter for comment in the most
trifling occurrence. Their surprise mounted the highest, when we began to remove
our uncomfortable garments, which were saturated with rain. They scanned the
whiteness of our limbs, and seemed utterly unable to account for the contrast they
presented to the swarthy hue of our faces, embrowned from a six months' exposure
to the scorching sun of the Line. They felt our skin, much in the same way that a
silk-mercer would handle a remarkably fine piece of satin; and some of them went
so far in their investigation as to apply the olfactory organ.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS.
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In almost every department of literature this author has distin-
guished himself, but is comparatively little known out of his own
country. DR. SIMMS is a native of Charleston, South Carolina, born
in 1806, and admitted to the bar of that state in 1827. The same
year he published two volumes of Lyrical Poems and
Lyrical Poems and Early Lays,'
which were followed by The Vision of Cortes, and other Poems,'
1829; The Tri-Colour,' 1830; Atalantis, a Drama of the Sea,' 1832;
'Passages and Pictures,' 1839; and several other small volumes of
poems, descriptive, dramatic and legendary. Dr. Simms has written
several volumes of novelettes, colonial romances, revolutionary ro-
mances, and border romances, illustrative of North American history
and manners. A uniform edition of the 'Revolutionary' and 'Bor-
der Romances' (completed in 1859) is published in eighteen volumes,
and the collected poems of Dr. Simms in two volumes. A 'History
<
226
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
of South Carolina,' 'Lives of Francis Marion,' 'Captain Smith (foun-
der of Virginia),' Chevalier Bayard,' and 'Nathaniel Greene,' vari-
ous critical disquisitions, and political pamphlets, have also been pub-
lished by this versatile author.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
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The most original and popular of American philosophers and essay-
ists is RALPH WALDO EMERSON, born at Boston in the year 1803. His
father was a Unitarian minister, and after the usual course of educa-
tion at Harvard College, young Emerson was ordained minister of the
second Unitarian churchi in Boston. He held this charge for about
three years (1829-1832), and resigning it in consequence of some
change in his religious views, he devoted himself to a life of study,
living chiefly at Concord, New Hampshire. His prose works consist
of orations, lectures and essays. Those published previous to 1870
were collected and printed in two volumes at Boston. He has also
produced two volumes of Poems.' His principal works are six ora-
tions-Man Thinking, 1837; Address to the Senior Class in Di-
vinity College, Cambridge, U. S., 1838; Literary Ethics,' 1838;
The Method of Nature,' 1841; Man the Reformer,' 1841; and The
Young American,' 1844. Mr. Emerson has also published four
series of essays-small volumes, issued in the years 1841, 1844,
1870 and 1871. In 1848 he delivered a course of lectures in
Exeter Hall, London. The logicians have an incessant tri-
umph over him,' said Harriet Martineau, but their tri
umph is of no avail; he conquers minds as well as hearts.' In
1849 he delivered another course of lectures on Representative Men'
-namely, Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakspeare, Napoleon,
and Goethe. This selection of representative men,' was probably
suggested by Mr. Carlyle's lectures on hero worship delivered in
1840, and Mr. Emerson has been termed the American Carlyle,'
though he is by no means a slavish imitator of his English friend.
For four years (1840-1844) Mr. Emerson was associated with Marga-
ret Fuller, Countess d'Ossoli, in conducting a literary journal, enti-
tled The Dial;' and on the death of the countess he joined with
Mr. W. H. Channing in writing a memoir of that learned and re-
markable woman, which was published in 1852. The other works
of Mr. Emerson are-English Traits,' 1856; The Conduct of Life,'
1860; an Oration on the Death of President Lincoln,' 1865; Society
and Solitude,' twelve chapters or essays, 1870; 'Parnassus,' Se-
lected Poems;' a volume of Essays,' 1875; &c. In 1866 the uni-
versity of Harvard conferred upon Mr. Emerson the honorary de-
gree of LL.D.
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Civilisation.-From Society and Solitude.'
Poverty and industry with a healthy mind read very easily the laws of humanity,
and love them; place the sexes in right relations of mutual respect, and, a severǝ
EMERSON.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
227
}
morality gives that essential charm to woman which educates all that is delicate, po-
etic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and learning, conversation and wit in her
rough mate; so that I have thought a sufficient measure of civilisation is the influ-
ence of good women.
Another measure of culture is the diffusion of knowledge, overturning all the old
barriers of caste, and, by the cheap press, bringing the university to every poor man's
door in the newsboy's basket. Scraps of science, of thought, of poetry, are in the
coarsest sheet, so that in every house we hesitate to burn a newspaper until we have
looked it through.
The ship. in its latest complete equipment, is an abridgement and compound of a
nation's arts: the ship steered by compass and chart-longitude reckoned by lunar
observation and by chronometer-driven by steam; and in wildest sea-mountains, at
vast distances from home-
The pulses of her iron heart
Go beating through the storm.
No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so weak a creature. of forces so
prodigious. I remember I watched, in crossing the sea, the beautiful skill whereby
the engine in its constant working was made to produce two hundred gallons of
fresh-water out of salt-water every hour-thereby supplying all the ship's wants.
The skill that pervades complex details; the man that maintains himself; the
chimney taught to burn its own smoke; the farm made to produce all that is con-
sumed on it; the very prison compelled to maintain itself and yield a revenue, and,
better still, made a reform school and a manufactory of honest meu ont of rogues,
as the steamer made fresh-water out of salt-all these are examples of that tendency
to combine antagonisms. and utilise evil which is the index of high civilisation.
Civilisation is the result of highly complex organisation. In the snake, all the
organs are sheathed; no hands. no feet, no tius, no wings. In bird and beast, the
organs are released, and begin to play. In man, they are all unbound, and full of
joyful action. With this unswaddling he receives the absolute illumination we call
reason, and thereby true liberty.
Beauty.-From The Conduct of Life.'
The poets are quite right in decking their mistresses with the spoils of the land-
scape, flower-gardens, gems, rainbows, flushes of morning, and stars of night, since
all beauty points at identity, and whatsoever thing does not express to me the sea
and sky, day and night, is somewhat forbidden and wrong. Into every beautiful
object there enters somewhat immeasurable and divine, and just as much bounded
by outlines, like mountains on the horizon, as into tones of music or depths of
space. Polarised light shewed the secret architceture of bodies: and when the
second-sight of the mind is opened, now one colour, or form, or gesture, and now
another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its
deep holdings in the frame of things.
The laws of this translation we do not know, or why one feature or gesture
enchants, why oue word or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that the fine
touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or a phrase of poetry, plants wings at our
shoulders; as if the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away mountains of obstruction,
and designs to draw a truer line, which the mind knows and owns. This is that
haughty force of beauty, vis superba formæ, which the poets praise-under calm
and precise outline, the immeasureable and divine-beauty hiding all wisdom and
power in its calm sky.
All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I find the antique sculpture as ethi-
cal as Marcus Antoninus, and the beauty ever iu proportion to the depth of thought.
Gross and impure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character
gives splendour to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs. An adorer of
truth we cannot choose but obey, and the woman who has shared with us the moral
sentiment-her locks must appear to us sublime. Thus, there is a climbing scale of
culture, from the first agreeable sensation which a sparkling gem or a scarlet stain
affords the eye, up through fair outlines and details of the landscape, features of the
human face and form, signs and tokens of thought and character in manners, up to
the ineffable mysteries of the human intellect. Wherever we begin, thither our steps
228
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
tend: an ascent from the joy of a horse in his trappings up to the perception of
Newton, that the globe on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from a larger
tree; up to the perception of Plato, that globe and universe are rude and early ex-
pressions of an all-dissolving unity-the first stair on the scale to the temple of the
mind.
Old Age.-From 'Society and Solitude.'
When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare-muscular
strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the
central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and, dropping
off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise. I have heard
that whoever loves is in uno condition old. I have heard that, whenever the name of
man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitu-
tion. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side.
But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill-at
the end of life just ready to be boru-affirms the inspirations of affection and of the
moral sentiment.
MR. RUSKIN.
JOIN RUSKIN, author of several works on art, was born in Lon-
don in 1819, the only son of a wealthy wine-merchant. He was en-
tered at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he graduated, and in
1839 took the Newdegate prize for English poetry. Impressed with
the idea that art was his vocation in life, he studied painting under
Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding; but the pencil has long since
become merely the auxiliary of the pen. In 1843 appeared the first
portion of his 'Modern Painters, by an Oxford Graduate,' which,
though published when the author was only twenty-four years of
age, bears the impress of deep thought, and is written with rare clo-
quence and in choice English. The second part was published in
1846, and the third and fourth volumes ten years later, 1856. Many
other works appeared in the interval. Indeed, Mr. Ruskin is now
one of the most voluminous writers of the day; but it may be ques-
tioned if he has ever risen to the level of the first two volumes of the
}
Modern Painters.' Latterly his works have been little more than
hurriedly written pamphlets, reviews, and revisals of popular lec-
tures, which, though often rising into passages of vivid description
and eloquence, and possessing the merit of great clearness, are gen-
erally loose and colloquial in style. The Seven Lamps of Archi-
tecture,' 1849; and the Stones of Venice,' three volumes,' 1851-53,
are the principal of Mr. Ruskin's works, besides the Modern
Painters; but we may also mention the following: Letters in De-
fence of the Pre-Raphaelites,' published at various times since 1851;
The Construction of Sheepfolds' (the discipline of the church),
1851; The Opening of the Crystal Palace,' 1854; Notes on the
Academy Exhibitions,' published in the month of May for the last
few years; The Elements of Drawing' 1857; The Political Econ-
omy of Art,' 1858; The Two Paths, 1859; besides contributions to
the Quarterly Review,' the Art Journal,' the Scotsman,' &c. In
1861 a selection from the works of Mr. Ruskin was published in one
volume-a treasure to all young literary students and lovers of art.
C
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•
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RUSKIN.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
229
His subsequent works have been numerous:
'Lectures on Civilisa-
<
<
*
tion,' 1866; The Queen of the Air, being a Study of the Greek
Myths of Cloud and Storm,' 1869; Lectures on Art,' delivered be-
fore the university of Oxford in 1870, &c. Mr. Ruskin made a
munificent offer of £5000 for the endowment of a master of drawing
in Oxford, which was accepted by the university authorities in
November 1871.
•
Mr. Ruskin's influence upon art and art-literature has been remark-
able. The subject has received a degree of consideration among
general readers that it had not previously enjoyed in our day, or
perhaps in any period of our history; and to Mr. Ruskin's venera-
tion for every work of creation, inculcated in all his writings, may
be ascribed the origin of the society of young artists known as the
Pre-Raphaelites. Protesting against what they conceived to be lax
conventionalism in the style of most modern painters, the innovators
went back, as they said, to Nature, preferring her in all her moods
and phases, to ideal visions of what she occasionally might, or ought
to appear.
Mr. Ruskin seems often to contradict himself; but on
this point his own mind is easy. I never met with a question yet,'
he says in the inaugural address to the Cambridge School of Art,
which did not need, for the right solution of it, at least one positive
and one negative answer, like an equation of the second degree.
Mostly, matters of any consequence are three-sided, or four-sided,
or polygonal; and the trotting round a polygon is severe work for
people any way stiff in their opinions. For myself, I am never
satisfied that I have handled a subject properly till I have contra-
dicted myself at least three times.' With this clever apology we
may pass over apparent incongruities in the details of his system, and
rest satisfied with the great principles which he so eloquently incul-
cates. These are singularly pure and lofty. The aim and object of
his teaching, he says, is to declare that whatever is great in human
art is the expression of man's delight in God's work,' and he insists
upon a pure heart and earnest mind as essential to success.
•
The Sky.
It is a strange thing how little, in general, people know about the sky. It is the
part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more
for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any
other of her works; and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There
are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose
than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organisation;
but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered if,
once in three days or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up
over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time,
with. perhaps, a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And, instead of this,
there is not a moment of any day of our lives when Nature is not producing, scene
after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquis-
ite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain that
it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure, and every man,
wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has
230
TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and
known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst
of them: he injures them by his presence; he ceases to feel them if he be always
with them. But the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not too bright nor good
for human nature's daily food; it is fitted, in all its functions, for the per-
petual comfort and exalting of the heart; for the soothing it, and purifying it
from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes
awful; never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions,
almost spiritual in its tenderuess, almost Divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is
immortal in us is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is
mortal is essential. And yet we never attend to it; we never make it a subject of
thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon all by which
it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the in-
tention of the Supreme, that we are to receive ore from the covering vault than
the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a suc-
cession of meaningless and monotonous accidents, too common and too vain to be
worthy of a moment of watchfulness or a glance of admiration. If, in our moments
of utter idleness aud insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its
phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet. and another it has been
windy, and another it has been warın. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can
tell me of the forms and precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that gilded
the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the
south, and smote upon their summits, until they melted and mouldered away in a
dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds, when the sunlight left
them last night, and the west wind blew them before it, like withered leaves? All
has passed unregretted or unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an
instant, it is only by what is gross or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the
broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail,
nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are de-
veloped. God is not in the earthquake nor in the fire, but in the still small voice.
They are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can ouly be ad-
dressed through lampblack and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued passages of
unobtrusive majesty; the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual; that which must be
sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work
out for us daily, and yet very eternally, which are never wanting, and never repeated;
which are to be found always, yet each found but once. It is through these that the
lesson of devotion is chiefly taught and the blessing of beauty given.
The Troo Paths.
Ask yourselves what is the leading motive which actuates you while you are at
work. I do not ask what your leading motive is for working-that is a different thing;
you may have families to support-parents to help-brides to win; you may have all
these, or other such sacred and pre-eminent motives, to press the morning's labour
and prompt the twilight thought. But when you are fairly at the work, what is the
motive which tells upon every touch of it? If it is the love of that which your work
represents-if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you
-if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty and human soul that moves
you-if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal
and in limb that move you, then the spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and
the fullness thereof. But if, on the other hand, it is petty self-complacency in your
own skill, trust in precepts and laws, hope for academical or popular approbation, or
avarice of wealth-it is quite possible that by steady industry, or even by fortunate
chance, you may win the applause, the position, the fortune that you desire: but
one touch of true art you will never lay on canvas or on stone as long as you live.
The following eloquent passage is from Modern Painters :'
6
•
The Dangers of National Security.
That is to everything created pre-eminently useful which enables it rightly and
fully to perform the functions appointed to it by its Creator. Therefore, that we
may determine 7hat is chicfly useful to man, it is necessary first to determine the
RUSKIN.]
231
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
use of man himself. Man's use and function (and let him who will not grant me
this, follow me no further; for this I purpose always to assume) is to be the
witness of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience
and resultant happiness.
Whatever enables us to fulfil this function is in the pure and first sense of the
word useful to us. Pre-eminently, therefore, whatever sets the glory of God more
brightly before us. But things that ouly help us to exist are in a secondary and mean
sense useful; or rather, if they be looked for alone they are useless and worse; for
it would be better that we should not exist than that we should guiltily disappoint
the purposes of existence. And yet people speak in this working-age, when they
speak from their hearts, as if houses and lauds, and food and raiment, were alone
useful, and as if sight, thought, and admiration were all profitless: so that men
insolently call themselves utilitarians, who would turn, if they had their way, them-
selves and their race into vegetables. Men who think, as far as such can be said to
think, that the meat is more than the life and the raiment than the body, who look
to this earth as a stable and to its fruit as fodder: vine-dressers and husbandmen
who love the corn they grind, and the grapes they crush, better than the gardens of
the angels upon the slopes of Eden; hewers of wood and drawers of water, who
think that the wood they hew, and the water they draw, are better than the pine
forests that cover the mountain like the shadow of God, and than the great rivers
that move like His eternity. And so comes upon us that woe of the Preacher, that
though God hath made everything beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world
in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from
the beginning to the end. This Nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends us to
grass like oxen, seems to follow but too closely on the excess or continuance
in their
of national power and peace. In the perplexities of nations.
struggles for existence, in their infancy, their impotence, or even their dis-
organisatiou, they have higher hopes and ncbler passions. Out of the suffering
comes the serious mind; out of the salvation, the grateful heart; out of endurance,
fortitude; out of deliverance, faith. But when they have learned to live under pro-
vidence of laws, and with decency and justice of regard for each other; and when
they have done away with violent and external sources of suffering, worse evils seem
arising out of their rest-evils that vex less and mortify more, that suck the blood,
though they do not shed it, and ossify the heart, though they do not torture it. And
deep though the causes of thankfulness must be to every people at peace with others,
and at unity in itself, there are causes of fear also—a fear greater than that of sword
and sedition-that dependence on God may be forgotten because the bread is given
and the water is sure, that gratitude to Him may cease because His constancy of pro-
tection has taken the semblance of a natural law, that heavenly hope may grow faint
amidst the full fruition of the world, that selfishness may take place of undemanded
devotion; compassion be lost in vainglory, and love in dissimulation; that enervation.
may succeed to strength, apathy to patience, and the noise of jesting words and foul-
ness of dark thoughts to the earnest purity of the girded loins and the burning lamp.
About the river of human life there is a wintry wind, though a heavenly sunshine;
the iris colours its agitation, the frost fixes upon its repose. Let us beware that our
rest become not the rest of stones, which so long as they are torrcut-tossed and
thunder-stricken maintain their majesty; but when the stream is silent and the storm
passed, suffer the grass to cover them, and the lichen to feed upon them, and are
ploughed down into dust.
And though I believe we bave salt enough of ardent and holy mind amongst us to
keep us in some measure from this moral decay, yet the signs of it must be watched
with anxiety in all matters however trivial, in all directions however distant. - And
at this time. there is need, bitter need, to bring back, if we may, into men's
minds, that to live is nothing unless to live be to know Him by whom we live, and
that He is not to be known by marring His fair works, and blotting out the evidence
of His influences upon His creatures, not amidst the hurry of crowds and crash of
innovation, but in solitary places, and out of the glowing intelligences which He gave
to men of old. He did not teach them how to build for glory and for beauty; He
did not give them the fearless, faithful, inherited energies that worked on and down
from death to death, generation after generation, that we, foul and sensual as we
are, might give the carved work of their poured-out spirit to the axe and the ham-
mer; He has not cloven the earth with rivers, that their white wild waves might
•
232
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CYCLOPÆDIA OF
turn wheels and push paddles, nor turned it up under, as it were fire, that it might
heat wells and cure diseases; He brings not up His quails by the east wind only to
let them fall in flesh about the camp of men; He has not heaped the rocks of the
mountain only for the quarry, nor clothed the grass of the field only for the oven.
We give another extract from the same work:
What is Truly Practical.
All science and all art may be divided into that which is subservient to life and
which is the object of it +—, practical -
-, or theoretical ++. Yet the step between
practical and theoretic science is the step between the miner and the geologist, the
apothecary and the chemist, and the step between practical and theoretic art is that
between the bricklayer and the architect, between the plumber and the artist; and
this is a step allowed on all hands to be froin less to greater, so that the so-called
useless part of each profession does by the authoritative and right instinct of man-
kind assume the superior and more noble place. Only it is ordained that, for our
encouragement, every step we make in the more exalted range of science, adds
something also to its practical applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of
nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us partly as it
reveals to further vision the being and the glory of Him in whom they rejoice and we
live, dispense yet such kind influences and so much of material blessing as to be
joyfully felt by all inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single
desire as the imperfection of their nature may admit; that the strong torrents which
in their own gladness fill the hills with hollow thunder and the vales with winding
light, have yet their bounden charge of field to feed and barge to bear; that the
fierce flames to which the Alps owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper
for us the metal vein and quickening spring; and that for our incitement, I say not
our reward, for knowledge is its own reward, herbs have their healing, stones their
preciousness, and stars their times.
It would appear, therefore, that those pursuits which are altogether theoretic,
whose results are desirable or admirable in themselves, and for their own suke, and
in which no further end to which their productions or discoveries are referred, can
interrupt the contemplation of things as they are, by the endeavour to discover of
what selfish uses they are capable (and of this order are painting and sculpture),
ought to take rank above all pursuits which have any taint in them of subserviency
to life, in so far as all such tendency is the sign of less eternal and less holy
function.
The Beautiful alone not Good for Man.
I believe that it is not good for man to live amongst what is most beautiful; that
he is a creature incapable of satisfaction by anything upon earth; and that to allow
him habitually to possess, in any kind whatsoever, the utmost that carth can give, is
the surest way to cast him into lassitude or discontent.
If the most exquisite orchestral music could be continued without a pause for a
series of years, and children were brought up and educated in the room in which it
was perpetually resounding, I believe their enjoyment of music, or understanding of
it, would be very small. And an accurately parallel effect seems to be produced upon
the powers of contemplation by the redundant and ceaseless loveliness of the high
mountain districts. The faculties are paralysed by the abundance, and cease, as we
before noticed of the imagination, to be capable of excitement, except by other sub-
jects of interest than those which present themselves to the cyc. So that it is, in
reality, better for mankind than the forms of their common landscape should offer
no violent stimulus to the emotions-that the gentle upland, browned by the bending
furrows of the plough, and the fresh sweep of the chalk down, and the narrow wind-
ing of the copse-clad dingle, should be more frequent scenes of human life than the
Arcadias of cloud-capped mountain or luxuriant vale; and that, while humbler
(though always infinite) sources of interest are given to each of us around the homes
to which we are restrained for the greater part of our lives, these mightier and
stranger glories should become the objects of adventure—at once the cynosures of
the fancies of childhood, and themes of the happy memory and the winter's tale of
age.
Nor is it always that the inferiority is felt. For, so natural is it to the human
RUSKIN.
233
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
heart to fix itself in hope rather than in present possession, and so subtle is the
charm which the imagination casts over what is distant or denied, that there is often
a more touching power in the scenes which contain far-away promise of something
greater than themselves, than in those which exhaust the treasures and powers of
Nature in an unconquerable and excellent glory, leaving nothing more to be by the
fancy pictured or pursued.
Precipices of the Alps.
Dark in colour, robed with everlasting mourning, for ever tottering like a great
fortress shaken by war, fearful as much in their weakness as in their strength, und
yet gathered after every fall into darker frowns and unhumiliating threatening; for
ever incapable of comfort or healing from herb or flower, nourishing no root in their
crevices, touched by no hue of life on buttress or ledge, but to the utmost desolate ;
knowing no shaking of leaves in the wind, ror of grass beside the stream-no other
motion but their own mortal shivering, the dreadful crumbling of atom from atom
in their corrupting stones; knowing no sound of living voice or living tread, cheered
neither by the kid's bleat nor the marmot's cry: haunted only by uninterrupted
echoes from afar off, wandering hither and thither among their walls unable to es-
cape, and by the hiss of angry torrents, and sometimes the shriek of a bird that flits
near the face of them, and sweeps frightened back from under their shadow into the
gulf of air; and sometimes, when the echo has fainted, and the wind has carried the
sound of the torrent away, and the bird has vanished, and the mouldering stones are
still for a little time--a brown moth, opening and shutting its wings upon a grain of
dust, may be the only thing that moves or feels in all the waste of weary precipice
darkening five thousand feet of the blue depth of heaven.
The Full of the Leaf.
If ever, in autumn, a pensiveness falls upon us as the leaves drift by in their fad-
ing, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty monuments? Behold how
fair, how far prolonged in arch and aisle, the avenues of the valleys, the fringes of
the hills! So stately-so eterual; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures,
the glory of the earth-they are but the monuments of those poor leaves that flit
faintly past us to die. Let them not pass without our understanding their last counsel
and example; that we also, careless of monument by the grave, may build it in the
world-monument by which men may be taught to remember, not where we died,
but where we lived.
JOHN STERLING.
JOIN STERLING (1806-1844) was born at Kaimes Castle, Isle of Bute.
His father, Captain Sterling, became editor of the Times' daily
journal, and his son John, after being educated at Trinity College,
Cambridge, was early familiar with literary society. Frederick Mau-
rice, Coleridge, Carlyle, and other distinguished men of that period,
were among his friends. He contributed essays, tales, and poems to
the periodicals, all marked by fine taste and culture. Having taken
holy orders in the church, he officiated for eight months as curate at
Hurstmonceaux, in Sussex, where Mr. Hare was rector. Delicate
health, and some change in his religious opinions, induced him to re-
sign this charge, and he continued afterwards to reside chiefly abroad
or in the south of England, occupying himself with occasional con-
tributions in prose and verse to Blackwood's Magazine' and the
"Westminster Review.' He published also a volume of 'Poems,'
1839;The Election,' a poem, 1841; and Stafford,' a tragedy, 1843.
He charmed every society into which he entered by his conversation
and the amiable qualities of his mind and heart. His prose works
have been collected and edited in two volumes, 1848, with a memoir
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
of his life by his friend, Archdeacon Hare. That memoir, with the
letters it contains, and the subsequent memoir by Mr. Carlyle, have
given an interest and fame to John Sterling, which his writings alone
would have failed to produce.
The Miseries of Old Age and the Misfortunes of Early Death.
There are two frequent lamentations which might well teach us to doubt the wis-
dom of popular opinions: men bewail in themselves the miseries of old age, and in
others the misfortune of an early death. They do not reflect that life is made up of
emotions and thoughts, some cares and doubts and hopes and scattered handfuls of
sorrow and pleasure, elements incapable of being measured by rule or dated by an
almanac. It is not from the calendar or the parish-register that we can justly learn
for what to grieve, and wherefore to rejoice; and it is rather an affected refinement
thau a sage instinct, to pour out tears in proportion as our wasting days, or those of
our friends, are marked by clepsydra. And even as old age, if it be the fruit of nate-
ral and regular existence, is full, not of aches and melancholy, but of lightness and
joy; so there are men who perform their course in a small circle of years, whose ma-
turity is to be reckoned, not by the number of their springs and summers, but of
their inward seasons of greenness and glory, and who by a native kindliness have
enjoyed, during a brief and northern period, more sunshine of the soul than ever
came to the clouded breast of a basking Ethiop.
Yet the many men of exalted genius who have died in early life, have all been
lamented, as if they had perished by some strange and unnatural chance, and as if
He, without whose will no sparrow falls to the ground, only suspended His provi-
dence with regard to the eagle ministers of truth and beauty. Happy indeed, thrice
happy, are such beings as Sophocles and Titian, in whom the golden chain ruus out
the last link, and whose hearts are fed by a bright calm current until they fall
asleep in a fresh and blooming antiquity. But happy also were Raphael, Sidney, and
Schiller, who accomplished in the half of man's permitted term, the fulfilment of
their aim, and gained sight of the rising stars, when others were still labouring in
the heats of noon. Happy we may even call the more disturbed and incomplete
career of Byron and Shelley and Burns, who were so much clogged by earthly im-
pediments, and vexed with mental disease, nourished by the disease of the material
frame, that death would rather seem, if we may humbly speak what perhaps we but
ignorantly and wildly fancy, a setting free to further improvement, than a final cut-
tiug off in the midst of imperfection.
The Worth of Knowledge.
Read the oldest records of our race, and you will find the writers holding up to
admiration, or relating with heart-felt emotion, the facts that we ourselves most de-
light in. The fidelity of Joseph to his master, the love of Hector for his wife and
child, come home to our hearts as suddenly as to those of the ancient Hebrew among
the Syrian mountains, or the pagan Greek in the islands of the Egean Sea. In the
Indian code of Menu, said to be at least three thousand years old-as old as Homer
-we find that the husband and all the male relations are strictly enjoined to honour
the women where women are dishonoured, all religious acts become fruitless.
Where a husband is contented with his wife and she with her husband, in that house
will fortune assuredly be permanent.' A hundred generations of mankind have not
changed this.
:
The first Chaldean who observed that the planets seem to journey among the
other stars, and not merely to rise and set with them, that Jupiter and Sirius follow
different laws, kuew a truth which is now the foundation of astronomy in London
and Paris no less than of old in Babylon. The first Egyptian who, meditating on
curved figures, discerned that there is oue in which all the lines from one point to the
circumference are equal, gained the idea of a circle, such as it has presented itself to
every later mind of man from Thales and Euclid down to Laplace and Herschel.
Nay, in truth, those who most exalt the acquirements of our age compared with the
past and they can hardly be too much exalted-must admit that all progress implies
เ
STERLING.
235
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
continuity-that we can take a step forward only by having firm footing for the step
behind it.
According to a well-known story, some Sidonian mariners. probably at least a thou-
sand years before our era, were carrying a cargo of natron or native carbonate of soda,
extensively used for its cleansing properties, as wood-ashes are now. They were
sailing along the coast of Syria, and landed to cook their food at the mouth of a
stream flowing down from the Mount Carmel of Scripture. They took some lumps
of the natron from their boat, and used them as stones to set their cauldron on. The
fire which they kindled beneath melted the soda and the flint sand of the shore, and
to the astonishment of these Sidoniaus, formed a shining liquid, which cooled and
hardened, and was found to be transparent. This was the first invention, of glass.
It was scon manufactured by the Egyptians, and is found abundantly in their tombs.
There is a story in the history of England, told, I think, originally by Bede. so
justly called the Venerable, which is as striking and affecting in its way as any of
those deeds of heroic patriotism that enrich the aunals of Greece and Rome.
&
More than twelve hundred years ago, when the north-eastern part of England was
occupied by the pagan Angles, or people of Jutland and Holstein, who bad conquered
it from the old Celtic population, à Christian missionary from Rome endeavoured to
introduce his better faith among these rude and bloody men. The council of the
chiefs was assembled round their king. Paulinus spoke; and at last one of the
warriors said: The soul of man is like a sparrow, which in a winter night, when the
king with his men is sitting by the warm tire, enters for a moment from the storm
and darkness, flits through the lighted hall, and then passes again into the black
night. Thus,' he said, our life shoots across the world; but whence it comes and
whither it goes we cannot tell. If, then, the new doctrine can give us any certainty,
O king, let us receive it with joy.' In this simple and earnest fashion does the uuap-
peasable longing of man for knowledge speak itself out of the dim barbarian soul.
·
EDWARD WILLIAM LANE, ETC.
This able oriental scholar (1801-1876) was a native of Hereford,
son of a prebendary in the cathedral there. He made three visits to
Egypt, one result of which was his work, The Manners and Cus-
toms of the Modern Egyptians,' 1836, which was highly successful.
He next gave the public a translation, drawn chiefly from the most
copious Eastern sources,' of The Arabian Nights Entertainments.'
But his greatest work was the construction of a complete · Arabic-
English Lexicon,' one volume of which was published in 1863, and
four others at intervals of three or four years. Though incomplete
at the time of his death, Mr. Lane had left materials for three more
volumes, which will complete this great work, which all scholars at
home and abroad consider as an honour to England.
FRANK TREVELYAN BUCKLAND (born in 1826), son of Dr. Buck-
land the eminent geologist, studied at Christ Church, Oxford. Mr.
Buckland is an Inspector of Salmon Fisheries for England and Wales.
He has written Curiosities of Natural History,' and other works, and
edited White's Selbourne,' enriching it with copious additions.
a naturalist and pleasing writer, Mr. Buckland has done much to en-
courage the study of nature and increase our knowledge of the habits
of animals.
As
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CHARLES KNIGHT (1790-1872), a native of Windsor, both as pub-
lisher and author, did good service to the cause of cheap popular liter-
ature. His 'Etonian,' and 'Knight's Quarterly Magazine,' drew forth
many accomplished young scholars as contributors-including Ma-
f
236
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
caulay—and his Pictorial England, the Pictorial Bible, shilling vol-
umes, and other serial works, supplied a fund of excellent reading
and information. As editor of Shakspeare, Mr. Knight took higher
ground, and acquitted himself with distinction, though resting the
text too exclusively on the folio of 1623. A collection of essays was
published by Mr. Knight under the title of Once upon a Time,' 1833,
and another is named The Old Printer and the Modern Press.' His
Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century,' 1863-65, is an
interesting autobiography, illustrating the literary life of the period.
His playful epitaph by Douglas Jerrold, Good Knight,' describes his
character.
(
The Biographical and Critical Essays' of MR. ABRAHAM HAY-
WARD, Queen's Counsel, published in 1858-1865, are lively, interest-
ing papers, originally communicated to the Edinburgh Review.'
Mr. Hayward has also translated Goethe's 'Faust,' and is author of a
number of professional treatises.
•
<
ALBANY FONBLANQUE (1793–1872), a distinguished journalist, for
many years editor of the 'Examiner,' published in 1837 three vol-
umes of political papers under the title of England under Seven
Administrations.' He was a witty sparkling writer, careful and
fastidious. In his early days he frequently wrote an article ten times
over before he had it to his mind. In 1873, a further selection from
his editorial writings, with a sketch of his life, was published by his
nephew, E. B. Fonblanque.
+
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DR. DORAN.
•
In the department of light parlour-books or Ana, the works of DR.
JOHN DORAN have been successful. His Table Traits, and Some-
thing on Them,' 1854, is chiefly on the art of dining, and evinces a
great extent of curious reading and observation. His next work,
Habits and Men, with Remnants of Record touching the Makers of
Both' (also 1854), is full of anecdotes, illustrative of eminent per
sons, customs, manners, dress, &c. Next year the author produced
'Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover,' two
volumes. This work is also chiefly anecdotical, and presents interior
pictures of the courts of the three Georges-the last happily forming a
strong contrast to the coarseness and licentiousness of George I. and
George II. Knights and their Days,' 1856, is a chronicle of knight-
hood from Falstaff downwards, with anecdotes, quaint stories, whim-
sical comments, and episodes of all kinds. 'Monarchs Retired from
Business,' two volumes, 1857, is a work of the same complexion, re-
lating to kings and rulers who voluntarily or involuntarily-Louis
Philippe being among the latter-abandoned the cares and state of
government. The History of Court Fools,' 1858, embraces a good
deal of historical anecdote and illustration; and a few months after
wards the indefatigable doctor was ready with 'New Pictures and
<
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DORAN.]
237
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
4
6
Old Panels,' another collection of Ana, relating to authors, actors,
actresses, preachers, and vanities of all sorts. Dr. Doran's next ap-
pearance was as an editor: Journal of the Reign of King George
III., from the Year 1771 to 1783, by Horace Walpole; being a Sup-
plement to his Memoirs, now first published from the Original Manu-
scripts; edited with Notes;' two volumes, 1859.
1859. As an historian,
Horace Walpole was not to be trusted; he was rather a brilliant gos-
sip with strong prejudices; but he could not have had a better editor
than Dr. Doran, who could trace him into all his recesses and books,
and was familiar with the characters and events of which he treated.
The editor's notes, indeed, are very much like the author's text, and
he had applied himself assiduously to his task. In 1860, Dr. Doran
produced Lives of the Princes of Wales;' in 1861, The Bentley
Ballads;' in 1863, a History of the English Stage;' and in 1868,
Saints and Sinners.'
¿
The Style Royal and Critical-the Plural We.'
¿
•
With respect to the style and title of kings, it may be here stated that the royal
'We' represents, or was supposed originally to represent, the source of the national
power, glory, and intellect in the august person of a sovereign. Le Roi le veut
the King will have it so-sounded as arrogantly as it was meant to sound in the royal
Norman mouth. It is a mere form. now that royalty in England has been relieved of
responsibility. In haughtiness of expression it was matched by the old French for-
mula at the end of a decree: For such is our good pleasure.' The royal subscrip-
tion in Spain, 'Yo, el Re-I, the King—has a thundering sort of echo about it too.
The only gallant expression to be found in royal addresses was made by the kings of
France-that is, by the married kings. Thus, when the French monarch summoned
a council to meet upon affairs of importance, and desired to have around him the
princes of the blood and the wiser nobility of the realm, his majesty invariably com-
menced his address with the words. Having previously consulted on this matter
with the queen,' &c. It is very probable, almost certain, that the king had done noth-
ing of the sort; but the assurance that he had, seemed to give a certain sort of dig-
nity to the consort in the eyes of the grandees and the people at large. Old Michel
de Marolles was proud of this display of gallantry on the part of the kings of France.
'According to my thinking,' says the garrulous old abbé of Villeloin, this is a mat-
ter highly worthy of notice, although few persons have condescended to make re-
marks thereon down to this present time.' It may here be added, with respect to
English kings, that the first king's speech' ever delivered was by Henry I, in 1107.
Exactly a century later, King John first assumed the royal We :' it had never before
been employed in England. The same monarch has the credit of having been the
first English king who claimed for England the sovereignty of the seas. Grace,' and
'My Liege,' were the ordinary titles by which our Henry IV. was addressed. Excel-
lent Grace' was given to Henry VI., who was not the one, nor yet had the other;
Edward IV. was Most High and Mighty Prince; Henry VII. was the first English
'Highness; Henry VIII. was the first complimented by the title of 'Majesty ;' and
James I. prefixed to the last title Sacred and Most Excellent.'
·
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Visit of George III. and Queen Charlotte to the City of London.
The Queen was introduced to the citizens of London on Lord-Mayor's Day; on
which occasion they may be said emphatically to have made a day of it.' They left
St. James's Palace at noon, aud in great state. accompanied by all the royal family,
escorted by guards, and cheered by the people, whose particular holiday was thus
shared in common. There was the usual ceremony at Temple Bar of opening the
gates to royalty, and giving it welcome; and there was the oùce usual address made
at the east end of St. Paul's Churchyard, by the senior scholar of Christ's Hospita
238
[ro 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
}
school. Having survived the cumbrous formalities of the first, and smiled at the
flowery figures of the second, the royal party proceeded on their way, not to Guild-
hall, but to the house of Mr. Barclay, the patent-medicine vendor, an honest Quaker
whom the king respected, and ancestor to the head of the firm whose name is not
unmusical to Volscian ears-Barclay, Perkins, & Co. Robert Barclay, the only sur-
viving son of the author of the same name, who wrote the celebrated 'Apology for
the Quakers,' and who was now the king's entertainer, was an octogenarian, who
had entertained in the same house two Georges before he had given welcome to the
third George and his Queen Charlotte. The hearty old man, without abandoning
Quaker simplicity, went a little beyond it, in order to do honour to the young queen;
and he hung his balcony and rooms with a brilliant crimson damask, that must have
scattered blushes on all who stood near-particularly on the cheeks of the crowds of
'Friends' who had assembled within the house to do honour to their sovereigns.
·
•
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}
Queen Charlotte and George III. were the last of our sovereigns who thus hon-
oured a Lord-Mayor's show. And as it was the last or casion, and that the young
Queen Charlotte was the heroine of the day, the opportunity may be profited by to
shew how that royal lady looked and bore herself in the estimation of one of the Miss
Barclays, whose letter, descriptive of the scene, appeared forty-seven years subse-
sequently, in 1808. The following extracts afe very much to our purpose: 'About
one o'clock papa and mamma, with sister Western to attend them, took their stand
at the street-door, where my two brothers had long been to receive the nobility, more
than a hundred of whom were then waiting in the warehouse. As the royal family
came, they were conducted into one of the counting-houses, which was transformed
into a very pretty parlour. At half-past two their majesties came, which was two
hours later than they intended. On the second pair of stairs was placed our own
company, about forty in number, the chief of whom were of the Puritan order, and
all in their orthodox habits. Next to the drawing-room doors were placed our own
selves, I mean papa's children, none else. to the great mortification of visitors, being
allowed to enter; for as kissing the king's hand without kneeling was an unexam-
pled honour, the king confined that privilege to our own family, as a return for the
trouble we had been at. After the royal pair had shewn themselves at the balcony,
we were all introduced, and you may believe, at that juncture, we felt no small pal-
pitations. The king met us at the door-a coudescension I did not expect-at which
place he saluted us with great politeness. Advancing to the upper end of the room,
we kissed the queen's hand, at the sight of whom we were all in raptures. not only
from the brilliancy of her appearance, which was pleasing beyond, description, but
being throughout her whole person possessed of that inexpressible something that is
beyond a set of features, and equally claims our attention. To be sure, she has
not a fine face, but a most agreeable conntenance, and is vastly genteel..
with an air, notwithstanding her being a little woman, truly majestic; and
I really think, by her manner is expressed that complacency of disposition
which is truly amiable: and though I could never perceive that she deviated from
that dignity which belongs to a crowned head, yet on the most trifling occasions she
displayed all that easy behaviour that negligence can bestow. Her hair, which is of
a light colour, hung in what is called coronation-ringlets, encircled in a band of dia-
monds, so beautiful in themselves, and so prettily disposed, as will admit of no de-
scription. Her clothes, which were as rich as gold, silver, and silk could make them,
was a suit from which fell a train supported by a little page in scarlet and silver.
The lustre of her stomacher was inconceivable. The king I think a very personable
man. All the princes followed the king's example in complimenting each of us with
a kiss. The queen was up-stairs three times, and my little darling, with Patty Bar-
clay, and Priscilla Ball, were introduced to her. I was present, and not a little anx-
ions on account of my girl, who kissed the queen's hand with so much grace that
I thought the princess-dowager would have smothered her with kisses. Such a re-
port was made of her to the king, that Miss was sent for, and afforded him great
amusement by saying, 'that she loved the king, though she must not love fine
things, and her grandpapa would not allow her to ntake a courtesy.' Her sweet'
face made such an impression on the Duke of York, that I rejoiced she was only
five instead of fifteen. When he first met her, he tried to persuade Miss to let him
introduce her to the queen; but she would by no means consent till I informed her he
was a prince, upon which her little female heart relented, and she gave him her
+
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THOMS.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
239
band-a true copy of the sex. The king never sat down, nor did he taste anything
during the whole time. Her majesty drank tea. which was brought her on a sil-
ver waiter by brother John, who delivered it to the lady-in-waiting, and she presented
it kneeling. The leave they took of us was such as we might expect from our
equals; full of apologies for our trouble for their entertainment-which they were
so anxious to have explained, that the queen came up to us, as we stood on one side
of the door, and had every word interpreted. My brothers had the honour of assist-
ing the queen into her coach. Some of us sat up to see them return, and the king
and queen took especial notice of us as they passed. The king ordered twenty-four
of his guard to be placed opposite our door all night, lest any of the canopy should
be pulled down by the mob, in which [the canopy, it is to be presumed] there were
one hundred yards of silk damask.'
ť
•
In Allibone's Dictionary of British and American Authors,' 1859,
we find the following biographical particulars relative to the above
author: John Doran, LL.D., born 1807 in London-family origi-
nally of Drogheda, in Ireland. He was educated chiefly by his
father. His literary bent was manifested at the age of fifteen, when
he produced the melodrama of the Wandering Jew,' which was first
played at the Surrey Theatre in 1822 for Tom Blanchard's benefit.
His early years were spent in France. He was successively tutor in
four of the noblest families in Great Britain.' Dr. Doran has con-
tributed largely to the literary journals.
C
1
WILLIAM JOHN THOMS.
•
In 1849 was commenced a weekly journal, Notes and Queries,' a
medium of inter-communication for literary men, artists, antiquaries,
genealogists, &c. The projector and editor of this excellent little
periodical was MR. WILLIAM JOHN THOMS, born in Westminster in
1803, and librarian in the House of Lords. Mr. Thoms has published
a Collection of Early Prose Romances,' 1828; Lays and Legends of
Various Nations,' 1834; 'Notelets on Shakspeare,' and several histori-
cal treatises. Having retired from the editorship of 'Notes and Queries,'
a complimentary dinner was given to Mr. Thoms on the 1st Novem-
ber, 1872, Earl Stanhope chairman, at which about one hundred and
twenty friends and admirers of the retiring editor were present. Mr.
Thoms has been succeeded in the editorial chair by Dr. Doran.
SIR ARTHUR HELPS.
,
Several works of a thoughtful and earnest character, written in
what Mr. Ruskin has termed 'beautiful and quiet English,' have
been published (most of them anonymously) by ARTHUR HELPS,
afterwards Sir Arthur, this popular author having been honoured in
1872 by the title of K. C.B. Sir Arthur was born in 1814, educated
at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B. A. in 1838, and
having been successively private secretary to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer (Lord Monteagle) and to the Chief Secretary for Ireland
(Lord Morpeth), he was appointed Clerk of the Privy Council in the
year 1859. His works are- Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd,'
1835; Essays written in the Intervals of Business,' 1841; 'King
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240
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CYCLOPÆDIA OF
(
Henry II.,' a historical drama, and 'Catherine Douglas,' a tragedy,
1843; The Claims of Labour,' 1844; Friends in Council, a Series
of Readings and Discourses,' 1847; Companions of my Solitude,'
1851; Conquerors of the New World, and their Bondsmen,' two
volumes, 1848-52; History of the Spanish Conquest of America,'
1855; "
a second series of Friends in Council,' 1859; The Life of
Pizarro,' 1869; Casimir Maremma,' and 'Brevia, or Short Essays,'
in 1870; Conversations on War and General Culture,' The Life of
Hernando Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico,' and 'Thoughts upon
Government,' in 1871; in 1872, the Life of Mr. Brassey the Engi-
neer. The essays and dialogues of this author evince a fine moral
feeling and discriminating taste. They have all gone through nu-
merous editions, and their purity of expression, as well as justness
of thought, must have had a beneficial effect on many minds.
Arthur died March 7, 1875.
(
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Sir
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(
Advantages of Foreign Travel.
This, then, is one of the advantages of travel, that we come upon new ground,
which we tread lightly, which is free from associations that claim too deep and con-
stant an interest from us; and not resting long in any one place, but travelling
onwards, we maintain that desirable lightness of mind; we are spectators, having
for the time no duties, no ties, no associations, no responsibilities; nothing to do
but to look on, and look fairly. Another of the great advantages of travel lies in
what you learn from your companions; not merely from those yon set out with, or
so much from them as from those whom you are thrown together with on the
journey. I reckon this advantage to be so great, that I should be inclined to say,
that you often get more from your companions in travel than from all you come to
see. People imagine they are not known, and that they shall never meet again with
the same company-which is very likely so-they are free for the time from the
trammels of their business, profession, or calling; the marks of the harness begin
to wear out; and altogether they talk more like men than slaves with their several
functions hanging like collars round their necks. An ordinary man on travel will
sometimes talk like a great imaginative man at home, for such are never utterly
enslaved by their functions. Then the diversities of character you meet with
instruct and delight you. The variety in language, dress, behaviour, religious cere-
monies, mode of life, amusements, arts, climate, governments, lays hold of your
attention and takes you out of the wheel-tracks of your everyday cares. He must,
indeed, be either an angel of constancy and perseverance, or a wonderfully obtuse
Caliban of a man, who, amidst all this change, can maintain his private griefs
or vexations exactly in the same place they held in his heart while he was packing
for his journey. The change of language is alone a great delight. You pass along,
living only with gentlemen and scholars, for you rarely detect what is vulgar or inept
in the talk around you. Children's talk in another language is not childish to you,
and indeed everything is literature, from the announcement at a railway-station to
the advertisements in a newspaper. Read the Bible in another tongue, and you
will perhaps find a beauty in it you have not thoroughly appreciated for years
before.
The Course of History.
The course of history is like that of a great river wandering through various
countries; now, in the infancy of its current, collecting its waters from obscure small
springs in splashy meadows, and from unconsidered rivulets which the neighbouring
rusties do not know the name of; now, in its boisterous youth, forcing its way
straight through mountains; now, in middle life, going with equable current busily
by great towns, its waters sullied yet enriched with commerce; and now, in its bur-
dened old age, making its slow and difficult way with great broad surface, over which
HELPS.]
241
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
the declining sun looms grandly to the sea. The uninstructed or careless traveller
generally finds but one form of beauty or of meaning in the river: the romantic
gorge or wild cascade is, perhaps, the only kind of scenery which delights him. And
so it has often been in our estimate of history. Well-fought battles, or the doings
of gay courts, or bloody revolutions, have been the chief sources of attraction; while
less dressed events, but not of less real interest or import, have often escaped all
notice.
Discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Vasco Nuñez.
Early in September 1513 he set out on his renowned expedition for finding' the
other sea,' accompanied by a hundred and ninety men well armed, and by dogs,
which were of more avail than men, and by Indian slaves to carry the burdeus. He
went by sea to the territory of his father-in-law, King Careta, by whom he was well
received, and, accompanied by whose Indians, he moved on into Poncha's territory.
The cacique took flight, as he had done before, seeking refuge amongst his moun-
tains; but Vasco Nuñez, whose first thought in his present undertaking was dis-
covery and not conquest, sent messengers to Poucha, promising not to hurt him.
The Indian chief listened to these overtures, and came to Vasco Nuñez with gold in
his hauds. It was the policy of the Spanish commander on this occasion to keep
his word: we have seen how treacherous he could be when it was not his policy;
but he now did no harm to Poncha, and, on the contrary, he secured bis friend-
ship by presenting him with looking-glasses, hatchets, and hawk-bells, in return for
which he obtained guides and porters from among this cacique's people, which
enabled him to prosecute his journey. Following Poucha's guides, Vasco Nuñez
and his men commenced the ascent of the mountains, until he entered the country
of an Indian chief called Quarequa, whom they found fully prepared to resist them.
The brave Indian advanced at the head of his troops, meauing to make
a vigorous attack; but they could not withstand the discharge of the firearms; in-
deed they believed the Spaniards to have thunder and lightning in their hands-not
au unreasonable fancy-and, flying in the utmost terrror from the place of battle, a
total rout ensued. The rout was a bloody one, and is described by an author, who
gained his information from those who were present at it, as a scene to remind one
of the shambles. The king and his principal men were slain, to the number of six
hundred. In speaking of these people, Peter Martyr makes mention of the sweetness
of their language, and how all the words might be written in Latin letters, as was also
to be remarked in that of the inhabitants of Hispaniola. This writer also mentions,
and there is reason for thinking that he was rightly informed, that there was a
region not two days' journey from Quarequa's territory, in which Vasco Nuñez found
a race of black men, who were conjectured to have come from Africa, and to have
been shipwrecked on this coast. Leaving several of his men, who were ill. or over-
weary, in Quarequa's chief town, and taking with him guides from this country, the
Spanish commander pursued his way up the most lofty sierras there, until, on the
25th of September 1513. he came near to the top of a mountain from whence the
South Sea was visible. The distance from Poncha's chief town to this point was forty
leagues, reckoned then six days' journey, but Vasco Nuñez and his men took twenty-
five days to do it in, suffering much from the roughness of the ways and from
the want of provisions. A little before Vasco Nuñez reached the height. Quare-
qua's Indians informed him of his near approach to it. It was a sight which
any man would wish to be aloue to see. Vasco Nuñez bade his men sit
down while he alone escended and looked down upon the vast Pacific, the
first man of the Old World, so far as we know, who had done so. Falling on his
knees, he gave thanks to God for the favour shewn to him in his being the first
man to discover and behold this sea; then with his hand he beckoned to his men to
come up. When they had come, both he and they knelt down and poured forth their
thanks to God. He then addressed them in these words: You see here, gentlemen
and children mine, how our desires are being accomplished, and the end of our la-
bours. Of that we ought to be certain, for as it has turned out true what King Com-
ogre's son told of this sea to us, who never thought to see it, so I hold for certain
that what he told us there being incomparable treasures in it will be fulfilled. God
and his blessed mother who have assisted us, so that we should arrive here and be-
hold this sea, will favour us that we may enjoy all that there is in it.' Every great
·
242
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
and original action has a prospective greatness, not alone from the thoughts of the
man who achieves it, but from the various aspects and high thoughts which the same
action will continue to present and call up in the minds of others to the end, it may
be, of all time. And so a remarkable event may go ou acquiring more and more sig-,
nificance. In this case, our knowledge that the Pacific, which Vasco Nuñez then
beheld, occupies more than one-half of the earth's surface, is an clement of thought
which in our minds lightens up and gives an awe to this first gaze of his upon those
mighty waters. To him the scene might not at that moment bave suggested much
more than it would have done to a mere conqueror; indeed, Peter Martyr likens
Vasco Nuñez to Hannibal shewing Italy to his soldiers.
Great Questions of the Present Age.-From 'Companions of my Solitude.'
What patient labour and what intellectual power is often bestowed in coming to
a decision on any cause which involves much worldly property. Might there not be
some great hearing of any of the intellectual and spiritual difficulties which beset
the paths of all thoughtful men in the present age? Church questions, for example,
seem to require a vast investigation. As it is, a book or pamphlet is put forward on
one side, and somehow the opposing facts and arguments seldom come into cach
other's presence. And thus truth sustains great loss.
My own opinion is, if I can venture to say that I have an opinion, that what we
ought to seek for is a church of the utmost width of doctrine, and with the most
beautiful expression that can be devised for that doctrine-the most beautiful ex-
pression, I mean, in words. in deeds, in sculpture, and in sacred song; which should
have a simple easy grandeur in its proceedings that should please the elevated and
poetical mind, charm the poor, and yet not lie open to just cavilling on the part of
those somewhat hard, intellectual worshippers who must have a reason for every-
thing; which should have vitality and growth in it; and which should attract and
not repel those who love truth better than any creature.
Pondering these things in the silence of the downs, I at last neared home; and
found that the result of all my thoughts was that any would-be teacher must be con-
tented and humble, or to try to be so, in his efforts of any kind; and that if the great
questions can hardly be determined by man (divided, too, as he is from his brother
in all ways), he must still try and do what he can ou lower levels, hoping ever for
more insight, and looking forward to the knowledge which may be gained by death.
Advice to Men in Small Authority.
It is a great privilege to have an opportunity many times in a day, in the course
of your business, to do a real kindness which is not to be paid for. Graciousness of
demeanour is a large part of the duty of any official person who comes in contact
with the world. Where a man's business is, there is the ground for his religion
to manifest itself.
SAMUEL LANGIIORNE CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN ').
C
This humorous writer and lecturer is a native of Florida, Monroe
county, Missouri, where he was born in 1835.
IIe has been sue-
cessively a printer, a steamboat pilot, a miner, and a newspaper edi-
tor-the last in San Franci-co. In 1867 he published a story of the
Californian gold mines, entitled The Jumping Frog,' which in-
stantly became popular. In the same year he went on a pleasure
trip to Spain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, &c., and the result was two vol-
umes of amusing incidents and description-the first, entitled 'Inno-
cents Abroad,' giving the details of the journey from New York to
Naples; and the second, under the title of the New Pilgrim's
Progress, describing the Holy Land and the Grecian and Syrian
shores. Mr. Clemens is author of various other works- Burlesque
CLEMENS.]
243
ENGLISII LITERATURE.
Autobiography,' Eye-openers,' Good Things,' 'Screamers,' 'A
Gathering of Scraps,' Roughing It,' &c.
<
.
The Noblest Delight.
the
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's
Dis-
breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him?
covery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you
are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin
atmosphere. To give birth to an idea-to discover a great thought-an intellectual
nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over be-
fore. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the light-
nings carry your messages. To be the first-that is the idea. To do something, say
soniething, see something, before anybody else-these are the things that confer à
pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecs-
tacies cheap and trivial. Morse, with his first message, brought by his servant,
lightning; Fulton, in that long-drawn century of suspense, when he placed his hand
upon the throttle-valve, and lo, the steamboat moved; Jenner, when his patient with
the cow's virus in his blood walked through the small-pox hospitals unscathed;
Howe, when the idea shot through his brain that for a hundred and twenty genera-
tions the eye had been hored through the wrong end of the needle; the nameless
lord of art who laid down his chisel in some old age that is forgotten now, and
gloated upon the finished Laocoon; Daguerre, when he commanded the sun, riding
in the zenith, to print the landscape upon his insignificant silvered plate, and he
obeyed; Columbus, in the Pinta's shrouds, when he swung his hat above a fabled
sea and gazed abroad upon an unknown world! These are the men who have really
lived-who have actually comprehended what pleasure is-who have crowded long
lifetimes of ecstacy into a single moment.
Puzzling an Italian Guide.
The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because Ameri-
cans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion before any relic
of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he had swallowed a spring mat-
tress. He was full of animation-full of impatience. He said: 'Come wis me, gen-
teelmen! come! I show you ze letter writing by Christopher Colombo. Write it
himself !—write it wis his own band!—come !
He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of keys
and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread before us. The
guide's eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the parchment with his
finger.
►
What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so ? See! handwriting Christopher
Colombo!-write it himself!'
We looked indifferent-unconcerned. The doctor examined the document very
deliberately, during a painful pause. Then he said, without any show of interest:
Ah, Ferguson, what-what did you say was the name of the party who wrote
this?'
'Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo !'
i
Another deliberate examinatiou. Ah-did he write it himself, or-or how?'
↓
He write it himself!-Christopher Colombo! he's own handwriting, write by
himself!'
Then the doctor laid the document down, and said: "Why, I have seen boys in
America only fourteen years old that could write better than that.'
But zis is ze great Christo'-
'I don't care who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw. Now you mustn't
think you cau impose on us because we are strangers. We are not fools, by a good
deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out!
and if you haven't, drive on!'
We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but he made one more
venture. He had something which he thought would overcome us. He said: 'Ah,
genteelmen, you come wis me! I shew you beautiful, oh, magnificent bust Christo-
pher Colombo !-splendid, grand, magnificent!'
244
[ro 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
He brought us before the beautiful bust-for it was beautiful-and sprang back
and struck an attitude.
1
'Ah, look, genteelmen!-beautiful, grand-bust Christopher Colombo !-beautiful
bust, beautiful pedestal !'
The doctor put up his eye-glass-procured for such occasions.
-procured for such occasions. 'Ah—what did
you say this gentleman's name was ??
Christopher Colombo-ze great Christopher Colombo!'
'Christopher Colombo-the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did he do ?'
'Discover America!-discover America. Oh, ze devil!'
•
'Discover America. No-that statement will hardly wash. We are just from
America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher Colombo-pleasant
name-is-is he dead ?'
↓
Oh, corpo di Baccho!-three hundred year!'
'What did he die of ?'
'I do not know!-I cannot tell.'
"Small-pox, think?'
'I do not know, genteelmen !—I do not know what he die of !'
'Measles, likely ?
Maybe maybe—I do not know—I think he die of somethings.'
'Parents living?'
'Im-posseeble !'
'Ah-which is the bust and which is the pedestal ?'
'Santa Maria!-zis ze bust!-zis ze pedestal !'
Ah, I see, I see-happy combination-very happy combination, indeed. Is-is
this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust ?
That joke was lost on the foreigner-guides cannot master the subtleties of the
American joke.
We have made it interesting to this Roman guide. Yesterday we spent three or
four hours in the Vatican, again-that wonderful world of curiosities.
We came
very near expressing interest, sometimes-even admiration--it was very hard to keep
from it. We succeeded though. Nobody else ever did it in the Vatican museums.
The guide was bewildered-nonplussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up
extraordinary things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but it was a failure; we
never shewed any interest in anything. He had reserved what he considered to be
his greatest wonder till the last-a royal Egyptian muminy, the best preserved in the
world perhaps. He took us there. He felt so sure this time, that some of his old
enthusiasın came back to him:
'See, gentcelmen !-Mummy! Mummy!'
The eye-glass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever.
'Ah-Ferguson-what did I understand you to say the gentleman's name was ?'
"Name ?-he got no name?-Mummy !-'Gyptian mummy!'
'Yes, yes. Börn here?'
"No! 'Gyptian mummy!'
'Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?'
'No!-not Frenchman, not Roman!-born in Egypta !'
'Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before.
Mummy-mummy. How calm he is-how self-possessed.
'Oh, sacré bleu, been dead three thousan' year!'
The doctor turned on him savagely-
'Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this! Playing us for China-
men because we are strangers and trying to learn! Trying to impose your vile
second-hand carcasses on us!-thunder and lighting, I've a notion to-to-if you've
got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!—or by George we'll brain you!'
DR. JOHN BROWN-MR. M. M'LENNAN.
Foreign locality, likely.
Is, ah-is he dead?'
JOHN BROWN, son of the distinguished theological professor in
connection with the Associate Synod (ante), and an accomp-
lished member of the literary society of Edinburgh, was born in
1810, studied medicine, and settled down as a medical practitioner in
the Scottish capital. In 1858 he published Hora Subsecivæ,' a vol-
(
BROWN.]
245
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ume of essays on Locke and Sydenham, with other occasional
papers. One of Dr. Brown's objects in this publication he thus
explains:
To give my vote for going back to the old manly, intellectual, and literary culture
of the days of Sydenham, Arbuthnot. and Gregory; when a physician fed, enlarged,
and quickened his entire nature; when he lived in the world of letters as a free-
holder, and reverenced the ancients, while at the same time te pushed on among
his fellows, and lived in the present, believing that his profession and his patients
need not suffer, though his horce subseciva were devoted occasionally to miscellane-
ous thinking and reading, and to a course of what is elsewhere called fine confused
feeding,' or though, as his Gaelic historian says of Rob Roy at his bye hours, he be
'a man of incoherent transactions.' As I have said, system is not always method,
much less progress.
He adds, as of more important and general application :
·
Physiology and the laws of health are the interpreters of disease and cure, over
whose porch we may best inscribe hine sanitas.
of cure in ourselves and in the lower animals, and in a firm faith in the self-regula-
It is in watching nature's methods
tive, recuperative powers of nature, that all our therapeutic intentions and means
must proceed, and that we should watch and obey their truly divine voice and finger
with reverence aud godly fear, as well as with diligence and worldly wisdom-
humbly standing by while He works, guiding and stemming or withdrawing His
current, and acting as his ministers and helps.
C
One story in this volume, Rab and his Friends,' has been exceed-
ingly popular, and, being published in a separate form, has had as
wide a circulation as any of the novels of Scott or Dickens.
a short and simple tale of a poor Scotch carrier and his dog Rab:
It is
Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought his way all
along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his own line as Julius
Cæsar or the Duke of Wellington, and he had the gravity of all great fighters. A
Highland gamekeeper, when asked why a certain terrier, of singular pluck, was so
much graver than the other dogs, said: 'Oh, sir, life's full o' sairiousness to him—
he can just never get enuff o' fechtin.'
The carrier's wife Ailie, a gentle, delicate old woman, had to sub-
mit to an operation for cancer in the breast. It was performed in the
Edinburgh Hospital, Rab and his master being present, and the scene
is painted with a truth and dramatic vividness which go directly to
the heart. Ailie dies; her husband caught a low fever prevailing in
the village, and died also. Rab is present at both interments: there
was deep snow on the ground; and after the second of the burials he
slunk home to the stable, whence he could neither be tempted or
driven, and ultimately he had to be killed. On this homely and
slender basis of fact, the story of Rab and his Friends' has been con-
structed, and its mixture of fancy, humour, and pathos-all curi-
ously blended, and all thoroughly national in expression and feeling
-is quite inimitable. No right-hearted Scotsman ever read the little
story without tears. In 1861 Dr. Brown published a second series of
'Hora Subsecive,' containing twelve sketches (our dogs' not being
forgotten), one of which we subjoin:
<
248
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
fro 1876.
Queen Mary's Child-Garden.
If any one wants a pleasure that is sure to please, one over which he needn't
growl the sardonic beatitude of the great Dean, let him, when the mercury is at
Fair,' take the nine A.M. train to the north and a return ticket for Callander, and
when he arrives at Stirling, let him ask the most obliging and knowing of station-
masters to telegraph to the Dreadnought for a carriage to be in waiting. When pass-
ing Dunblane Cathedral. let him resolve to write to the 'Scotsman,' advising the remo-
val of a couple of shabby trees which obstruct the view of that beautiful triple end
window which Mr. Ruskin and everybody else admires, aud by the time he has writ-
ten this letter in his mind, and turned the sentences to it, he will find himself at Cal-
lander and the carriage all ready. Giving the order for the Port of Monteith, he will
rattle through this hard-featured, and to our eye, comfortless village, lying ugly amid
so much grandeur and beauty, and let him stop on the crown of the bridge, and fill
his eyes with the perfection of the view up the Pass of Leny-the Teith lying diffuse
and asleep, as if its heart were in the Highlands and it were loath to go, the uoble
Ben Ledi imaged in its broad stream. Then let him make his way across a bit of
pleasant moorland-flushed with maiden-hair and white with cotton grass, and fra-
grant with the Orchis conopsia well deserving its epithet odoratissima.
He will see from the turn of the hillside the Blair of Drummond waving with
corn and shadowed with rich woods, where eighty years ago there was a black
peat-moss; and far off. on the horizon, Damyat and the Touch Fells; and at his
side the little loch of Ruskie, in which he may see five Highland cattle, three tawny
brown and two brindled, standing in the still water-themselves as still, all except
their switching tails and winking ears-the perfect images of quiet enjoyment. By
this time he will have come in sight of the Lake of Monteith, set in its woods, with
its magical shadows and soft gleams. There is a loveliness, a gentleness and peace
about it more like 'loue St. Mary's Lake,' or Derwent Water, than of any of its sister
lochs. It is lovely rather than beautiful, and is a sort of gentle prelude, in the minor
key, to the coming glories and intenser charms of Loch Ard and the true Highlands
beyond.
•
You are now at the Port, and have passed the secluded and cheerful manse, and
the parish kirk with its graves, close to the lake, and the proud aisle of the Grahams
of Gartmore washed by its waves. Across the road is the modest little inn, a Fish-
er's Tryst. On the unruffled water lie several islets, plump with rich foliage, brood-
ing like great birds of calm. You somehow think of them as on, not in the lake, or
like clouds lying in a nether sky-like ships waiting for the wind.' You get a coble,
and a yauld old Celt, its master, and are rowed across to Inchmahome, the Isle
of Rest.' Here you find on lauding huge Spanish chestnuts, one lying dead, others
standing stark and peeled, like gigantic antlers, and others flourishing in their viridis
senectus, and in a thicket of wood you see the remains of a monastery of great
beauty, the design and workmanship exquisite. You wander through the ruins,
overgrown with ferns and Spanish filberts, and old fruit-trees, and at the corner of
the old monkish garden you come upon one of the strangest and most touching
sights you ever saw-an oval space of about eighteen feet by twelve, with the re-
mains of a double row of boxwood all round, the plants of box being about four-
teen feet high, and eight or nine inches in diameter, healthy, but plainly of great age.
What is this? It is called in the guide-books Queen Mary's Bower; but besides
its being plainly not in the least a bower, what could the little Queen, then five years
old, and fancy free,' do with a bower? It is plainly, as was, we believe, first sug-
gested by our keen-sighted and diagnostic Professor of Clinical Surgery, the Child-
Queen's Garden, with her little walk, and its rows of boxwood, left to themselves for
three hundred years. Yes, without doubt, here is that first garden of her simple-
ness.' Fancy the little, lovely royal child, with her four Marys, her playfellows, her
child maids of honour, with their little hands and feet, and their innocent and happy
eyes, pattering about that garden all that time ago, laughing, and running, and gar-
dening as only children do and can. As is well known, Mary was placed by her
mother in this Isle of Rest before sailing from the Clyde for France. There is some-
thing that 'tirls the heart-strings a' to the life' in standing and looking on this un-
mistakable living relic of that strauge and pathetic old time. Were we Mr. Tenny-
son, we would write an Idyll of that child Queen, in that garden of hers, eating her
bread and honey-getting her teaching from the holy men, the monks of old, and
M'LENNAN.]
247
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
running off in wild mirth to her garden and her flowers, all unconscious of the black,
lowering thunder-cloud on Ben Lomond's shoulder.
Oh, blessed vision! happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild:
I think of thee with many fears,
Of what may be thy lot in future years.
I thought of times wheu Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality.
And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest
But when she sat within the touch of thee.
What hast thou to do with sorrow,
Or the injuries of to-morrow?
You have ample time to linger there amid
C
The gleams, the shadows and the peace profound,
and get your mind informed with quietness and beauty, and fed with thoughts of
other years, and of her whose story, like Helen of Troy's, will continue to move the
hearts of men as long as the gray hilis stand round about that gentle lake, and are
irrored at evening in its depths.
•
A volume illustrative of Scotch rustic life-true in speech,
thought, and action—appeared anonymously in 1870, under the title
of Peasant Life: Being Sketches of the Villagers and Field-labour-
ers of Glenaldie.' There is a degree of force and reality in these
homely sketches, drawn directly from nature, equal to the pictures
of Crabbe. Professor Wilson's Lights and Shadows of Scottish
Life' are purely Arcadian. The author of Peasant Life' (under-
stood to be a solicitor in Caithness, Mr. MALCOLM M'LENNAN) en-
lists our sympathy for coarse farm labourers and bondagers' or
field-workers, and shews that pure and natural love, and pure and
natural emotion, are best studied under thatched roofs and in untu-
tored hearts. The author published a second work, Dr. Benoni,'
but it is inferior to the Peasant Life.'
•
·
•
WILLIAM RATHBONE GREG.
> <
} C
> <
This gentleman is author of various works, political and literary—
'Political Problems for our Age and Country: The Creed of Chris-
tendom;' 'Literary and Social Judgments; Truth versus Edifica-
tion; Enigmas of Life; Rocks Ahead, or the Warnings of Cas-
sandra;' &c. Mr. Greg is a man of intellectual power and fine aspi-
rations. Though unorthodox in opinion, he is sound at heart,
religious in feeling, and a sincere well-wisher of humanity. He is
most popular on directly practical questions, with a philanthropic
turn. Mr. Greg (born in Liverpool about 1810) succeeded John
Ramsay M'Culloch in 1864 as Comptroller of H. M. Stationery Office.
The following extracts are from the most eloquent of his writings-
the Enigmas of Life:'
•
C
Glorified Spirits.
Whether in the lapse of ages and in the course of progressive being, the more
dormant portions of each man's nature will be called out, and his desires, and there-
fore the elements of his heaven, change; whether the loving will learn to thirst for
j
!
R48
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
knowledge, and the fiery and energetic to value peace, and the active and carnest to
grow weary of struggle and achievement, and to long for tenderness and repose, and
the rested to begin a new life of aspiration, and those who had long lain satisfied
with the humble constituents of the beatific state, to yearn after the conditions of a
loftier being, we cannot tell. Probably. It may be, too, that the tendency of every
thought and feeling will be to gravitate towards the great centre, to merge in one
mighty and all-absorbing emotion. The thirst for knowledge may find its ultimate
expression in the contemplation of the Divine Nature-in which indeed all may he
contained. It may be that all longings will be finally resolved into striving after a
closer union with God, and all hunian affections merged in the desire to be a partaker
in Ilis nature. It may be that in future stages of our progress, we shall be-
come more and more severed from the human, and joined to the divine; that,
starting on the threshold of the eternal world with the one beloved being
who has been the partner of our thoughts and feelings on this earth, we
may find, as we go forward to the goal, and soar upward to the throne,
and dive deeper and deeper into the mysteries and iminensities of creation,
that affection will gradually
gradually emerge in thought, and the cravings and
yearnings of the heart be calmed and superseded by the sublimer interests of the
perfected intelligence; that the hands which have so long been joined in love may
slowly unclasp, to be stretched forth towards the approaching glory; that the glance
of tenderness which we cast on the companion at our side may become faint, languid,
and hurried before the earnest gaze with which we watch the light that shall be re-
vealed.' We might even picture to ourselves that epoch in our progress through suc-
cessively loftier and more purified existences, when those who on earth strengthened
each other in every temptation, sustained each other under every trial. mingled smiles
at every joy and tears at every sorrow; and who, in succeeding varieties of being,
hand in hand, heart with heart, thought for thought, penetrated together each new
secret, gained each added height, glowed with each new rapture, drank in each suc-
cessive revelation, shall have reached that point where all lower affectious will be
merged in one absorbing Presence; when the awful nearness of the perfect love will
dissolve all other ties and swallow up all other feelings; and when the finished and
completed soul, before melting away into that sea of light which will be its element
for ever, shall turn to take a last fond look of the now glorified but thereby lost com-
panion of so much anguish and so many joys! But we cannot yet contemplate the
prospect without pain: therefore it will not be yet; not till we can contemplate it
without joy for heaven is a scene of bliss and recompense, not of sorrow and be-
(
reavement.
Human Development.
Two glorious futures lie before us the progress of the race here, the progress of
the man hereafter. History indicates that the individual man needs to be transplanted
in order to excel the past. He appears to have reached his perfection centuries ago.
Men lived then whom we have never yet been able to surpass, rarely even to equal.
Our knowledge has, of course, gone on increasing, for that is a material capable of
indefinite accumulation. But for power, for the. highest reach and range of mental
and spiritual capacity in every line, the lapse of two or three thousand years has
shewn no sign of increase or improvement. What sculptor has surpassed Phidias ?
What poet has transcended Eschylus, IIomer, or the author of the Book of Job? What
devout aspirant has soared higher than David or Isaiah? What statesman have modern
times produced mightier or grander than Pericles? What patriot martyr truer or no-
bler than Socrates? Wherein, save in mere acquirements, was Bacon superior to
Plato? or Newton to Thales or Pythagoras? „Very early in our history individual meu
beat their wings against the allotted boundaries of their carthly dominions; early in
history God gave to the human race the types and patterns to imitate and approach,
but never to transcend. Here, then, surely we see clearly imitated to us our appointed
work-namely, to raise the masses to the true standard of harmonious human virtue
and capacity, not to strive ourselves to overleap that standard; not to put our own
souls or brains into a hot-bed, but to put all our fellow men into a fertile and a whole-
some soil. If this be so. both our practical course and our speculative difficulties are
greatly cleared The timid fugitives from the duties and temptations of the world,
the selfish coddlers and nursers of their own souls, the sedulous cultivators either of
ARNOLD.j
249
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
a cold intellect or of a fervent spiritualism, have alike deserted or mistaken their mis-
sion, and turned their back upon the goal. The philanthropists, in the measure of
their wisdom and their purity of zeal, are the real fellow-workmen of the Most High.
This principle may give us the clue to many dispensations which at first seem dark
and grievous, to the grand scale and the distracting slowness of nature's operations;
to her merciless inconsideration for the individual when the interests of the race are
in question:
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.-In Memoriam.
Noble souls are sacrificed to ignoble masses; the good champion often falls, the
wrong competitor often wins: but the great car of humanity moves forward by those
very steps which revolt our sympathies and crush our hopes, and which, if we could,
we would have ordered otherwise.
MATTHEW ARNOLD, ETC.
<
蠢
​C
MR. ARNOLD is perhaps better known as a critic and theologian
than as a poet (ante). He has published Essays on Criticism,'
1865; Lectures ca the Study of Celtic Literature,' 1867; Culture
and Anarchy,' 1870; St. Paul and Protestantism,' 'Literature and
Dogma,' 'God and the Bible,' a review of objections to Literature
and Dogma, 1875; &c. Without subscribing to Mr. Arnold's theo-
logical opinions, we may note the earnest, reverential tone with which
he discusses such subjects, and the amount of thought and reading
he has brought to bear on them. He says: Why meddle with re-
ligion at all? why run the risk of breaking a tie which it is so hard
to join again? And the risk is not to be run lightly, and one is not
always to attack people's illusions about religion merely because illu-
sions they are. But at the present moment two things about the
Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his
head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they
L
cannot do with it as it is.'
<
•
>
(
Two volumes, partly biographical and partly critical-'A Mauual
of English Prose Literature, 1872; and Characteristics of English
Poets from Chaucer to Shirley,' 1874-have been published by WIL-
LIAM MINTO, M.A., now editor of The Examiner.' The first work
' endeavours to criticise upon a methodical plan,' and selects certain
authors (De Quincey, Macaulay, and Carlyle) for full criticism and
exemplification.' The second volume, besides describing the charac-
teristics of the poets, traces how far each was influenced by his liter-
ary predecessors and his contemporaries. The two works are valuable
for students of our literature, and are interesting to all classes of
readers. Mr. Minto is, we believe, a native of Aberdeen, and prom-
ises to take a high place among our critical and political writers-a
place worthy the successor of Leigh Hunt, Albany Fonblanque, and
John Forster
<
Something similar to Mr. Minto's volumes are two by MR. LESLIE
STEPHENS, editor of the Cornhill Magazine,' entitled Hours in a
Library,' being a series of sketches of favourite authors, drawn with
taste and discrimination, and bearing the impress of a true lover of
A
250
[To 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
literature. Another editor, Mr. R. H. HUTTON of the 'Spectator,'
has collected two volumes of his Essays Theological and Literary,'
in which there is more of analytical criticism and ingenious dogmatic
discussion than in the above.
SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.
The progresss of physical and mental science, up to the nineteenth
century, was traced with eminent ability in the dessertations written
for the Encyclopædia Britannica.' Ethical philosophy was treated
by Dugald Stewart and Mackintosh, as already stated, and a third dis-
sertation was added by Archbishop Whately, exhibiting a general
view of the rise, progress, and corruptions of Christianity. Mathe-
matical and physical science was taken up by PROFESSOR JOHN PLAY-
FAIR (1748-1819), distinguished for his illustrations of the Huttonian
theory, and for his biographies of Hutton and Robison. Playfair
treated of the period which closed with Newton and Leibnitz, and the
subject was continued through the course of the eighteenth century by
SIR JOHN LESLIE, who succeeded to Playfair in the chair of Natural
Philosophy in the university of Edinburgh. Sir John (1766-1832)
was celebrated for his ardour in physical research, and for his work,
an Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and Propagation of Heat,
1804. A sixth dissertation was added in 1856 by the Professor of
Natural Philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, DR. JAMES DAVID
FORBES, who continued the general view of the progress of mathe-
matical and physical science principally from 1755 to 1850.
<
'If we look for the distinguishing characteristic of the centenary pe-
riod just elapsed (1750-1850), we find it,' says Professor Forbes, in
this, that it has drawn far more largely upon experiment as a means
of arriving at truth than had previously been done. By a natural
conversion of the process, the knowledge thus acquired has been ap-
plied with more freedom and boldness to the exigencies of mankind,
and to the further investigation of the secrets of nature. If we com-
pare the now extensive subjects of heat, electricity, and magnetism,
with the mere rudiments of these sciences as understood in 1750; or
if we think of the astonishing revival of physical and experimental
optics-which had well-nigh slumbered for more than a century-
during the two short lives of Young and Fresnel, we shall be dispos-
ed to admit the former part of the statement; and when we recol-
lect that the same period has given birth to the steam-engine of Watt,
with its application to shipping and railways-to the gigantic teles
copes of Herschel and Lord Rosse, wonderful as works of art as well
as instruments of sublime discovery-to the electric telegraph, and to
▸
DAVY.Ĵ
251
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
the tubular bridge-we shall be ready to grant the last part of the
proposition, that science and art have been more indissolubly united
than at any previous period.
A series of Lectures on Some Recent Advances in Physical Sci-
ence,' 1876, by PROFESSOR TAIT of the university of Edinburgh,
continues the history of modern progress, and describes fully the
marvels of the spectrum analysis, one of the triumphs of the present
generation.
6
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY.
A great chemist and a distinguished man of letters, HUMPHRY
DAVY, was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, in 1778. He was edu-
cated at the school of Truro, and afterwards apprenticed to a
surgeon at Penzance.
He was an enthusiastic reader and student.
His was an ardent boyhood,' says Professor Forbes: Educated in
a manner somewhat irregular, and with only the advantages of a
remote country town, his talents appeared in the earnestness with
which he cultivated at once the most various branches of knowledge
and speculation. He was fond of metaphysics; he was fond of
experiment; he was an ardent student of nature; and he possessed
at an early age poetic powers, which, had they been cultivated,
would, in the opinion of competent judges, have made him as emi-
nent in literature as he became in science. All these tastes endured
throughout life. Business could not stifle them-even the approach
of death was unable to extingu sh them. The reveries of his boy-
hood on the sea-worn cliff's of Mount's Bay may yet be traced in
many of the pages dictated during the last year of his life amidst
the ruins of the Coliseum. But the physical sciences-those more
emphatically called at that time chemical-speedily attracted and
absorbed his most earnest attention. The philosophy of the impon-
derables-of light, heat, and electricity-was the subject of his
earliest, and also that of his happiest essays.' Of his splendid dis-
coveries, the most useful to mankind have been his experiments on
breathing the gases, his lectures on agricultural chemistry, his inven
tion of the safety-lamp, and his protectors for ships.
C
<
At the early age of twenty-two, Davy was appointed lecturer to
the Royal Institution of London. In 1803 he commenced lecturing
on agriculture, and his lectures were published in 1813, under the title
of Elements of Agricultural Chemistry.' His lecture On Some
Chemical Agents of Electricity' is considered one of the most valu
able contributions ever made to chemical science. Dr. Paris, the
biographer of Davy, observes that, since the account given by New
ton of his first discoveries in optics, it may be questioned whether so
happy and successful an instance of philosophical induction has ever
been afforded as that by which Davy discovered the composition of
the fixed alkalis.' In 1812 he published Elements of Chemical Phil
osophy.' About 1815 he entered on the investigation of fire-damp,
252
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
which is the cause of explosions in mines. The result was his in-
vention of the safety-lamp, for which he was rewarded with a baron-
etcy by the prince regent in 1818, and the coal-owners of the north
of England presented him with a service of plate worth £2000. In
1820 Davy was elected President of the Royal Society, in the room of
Sir Joseph Banks, deceased.
It is mortifying to think that this great man, captivated by the
flatteries of the fashionable world, and having married (1812) a rich
Scottish lady, Mrs. Apreece, lost much of the winning simplicity of
his early manner, and of his pure devotion to science. In 1826 Sir
Humphry had a paralytic attack, and went abroad for the recovery
of his health. He composed an interesting little volume, Salmonia,
or Days of Fly-fishing,' 1828; and he wrote also 'Consolations in
Travel, or the last Days of a Philosopher,' which appeared after his
death. He died at Geneva on the 29th May 1839, and the Genevese
government honoured him with a public funeral.
C
<
The posthumous volume of Consolations' contains some finely
written speculations on moral and ethical questions, with descrip-
tions of Italian scenery. The work is in the form of dialogues be-
tween a liberal and accomplished Roman Catholic and an English
patrician, poetical and discursive, whose views on religion entered
the verge of scepticism. The former he calls Ambrosio; the latter
Onuphrio. Another interlocutor is named Philalethes. We subjoin
part of their dialogues.
The Future State of Human Beings.
AMBROSIO. Revelation has not disclosed to us the nature of this state, but only
fixed its certainty. We are sure from geological facts, as well as from sacred history,
that man is a recent animal on the globe, and that this globe has undergone one
considerable revolution, since the creation, by water; and we are taught that it is
to undergo another, by fire, preparatory to a new and glorified state of existence of
man; but this is all we are permitted to know, and as this state is to be entirely
different from the present one of misery and probation, any knowledge respecting it
wonld be useless, and indeed almost impossible.
PHILALETHES. My genius has placed the more exalted spiritual natures in
cometary worlds, and this last fiery revolution may be produced by the appulse of a
comet.
AMB. Human fancy may imagine a thousand ways in which it may be produced;
but on such notions it is absurd to dwell. I will not allow your genius the slightest.
approach to inspiration, and I can admit no verisimility in a reverie which is fixed on
a founda ion you now allow to be so weak. But see, the twilight is beginning to
appear in the orient sky, and there are some dark clouds on the horizon opposite to
the crater of Vesuvius, the lower edges of which transmit a bright light, shewing the
sun is already risen in the country beneath them. I would say that they may serve
as an image of the hopes of immortality derived from revelation; for we are sure
from the light reflected in those clouds that the lands below us are in the brightest
sunshine, but we are entirely ignorant of the surface and the scenery; so, by revela-
tion, the light of an imperishable and glorious world is disclosed to us; but it is in
eternity, and its objects cannot be seen by mortal eye or imaged by mortal imagina-
tion.
PHIL. I am not so well read in the Scriptures as I hope I shall be at no very dis-
tant time; but I believe the pleasures of heaven are mentioned more distinctly than
you allow in the sacred writings. I think I remember that the saints are said to be
DAVY.]'
253
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
crowned with palms and amaranths, and that they are described as perpetually hymn-
ing and praising God.
AMB. This is evidently only metaphorical; music is the sensual pleasure which
approaches nearest to an intellectual one, and probably may represent the delight
resulting from the perception of the harmony of things aud of truth seen in God.
The palm as an evergreen tree, and the amaranth a perdurable flower, are emblems
of immortality. If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state
of the blest, I should image it by the orange-grove in that sheltered glen, on which
the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are at the same time loaded
with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a
state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling.
Indestructibility of Mind.
The doctrine of the materialists was always, even in my youth, a cold, heavy, dul
and insupportable doctrine to me, and necessarily tending to atheism. When I had
heard, with disgust, in the dissecting rooms, the plan of the physiologist, of the
gradual accretion of matter, and its becoming endowed with irritability, ripening into
sensibility, and acquiring such organs as were necessary by its own inherent forces,
and at last issuing into intellectual existence, a walk into the gre n fields or woods,
by the banks of rivers. brought back my feelings from nature to God. I saw in all
the powers of matter the instruments of the Deity. The sunbeams, the breath of
the zephyr, awakening animation in forms prepared by divine intelligence to receive
it, the insensate seed, the slumbering eggs which were to be vivified, appeared, like
the new-born animal, works of a divine mind; I saw love as the creative principle in
the material world, and this love only as a divine attribute. Then my own mind I
felt connected with new sensations and indefinite hopes-a thirst for immortality;
the great names of other ages and of distant nations appeared to me to be still living
around me, and even in the fancied movements of the heroic and the great, I saw, as
it were, the decrees of the indestructibility of mind. These feelings, though gen-
erally considered as poetical, yet, I think, offer a sound philosophical argument in
favour of the immortality of the soul. In all the habits and instincts of young ani-
mals, their feelings and movements, may be traced an intimate relation to their im-
proved perfect state; their sports have always affinities to their modes of hunting or
catching their food: and young birds, even in the nests, shew marks of foudness
which, when their frames are developed. become signs of actions necessary to the
reproduction and preservation of the species. The desire of glory, of honour, of
immortal fame, and of constant knowledge, so usual in young persons of well-con-
stituted minds, cannot. I think. be other than symptoms of the infinite and progres-
sive nature of the intellect hopes which, as they cannot be gratified here, belong to a
frame of mind suited to a nobler state of existence.
.
―
Religion, whether natural or revealed, has always the same beneficial influence on
the mind. In youth. in health and prosperity, it awakens feelings of gratitude and
sublime love, and purifies at the same time that it exalts. But it is in misfortune, in
sickness, in age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially felt; when submis-
sion in faith and humble trust in the divine will, from duties become pleasures, un-
decaying sources of consolation. Then. it creates powers which were believed to be
extinct; and gives a freshness to the mind, which was supposed to have passed
away for ever. but which is now renovated as an immortal hope. Then it is the
Pharos, guiding the wave-tossed mariner to his home-as the calm and beautiful
still basins or fiords. surrounded by tranquil groves and pastoral meadows, to the
Norwegian pilot escaping from a heavy storm in the North Sea-or as the green and
dewy spot. gushing with fountains, to the exhausted and thirsty traveller in the
midst of the desert. Its influence outlives all earthly enjoyments, and becomes
stronger as the organs decay and the frame dissolves. It appears as that evening-
star of light in the horizon of life. which, we are sure, is to become, in another sea-
son. a morning-star; and it throws its radiance through the gloom and shadow of
death.
SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.
The more popular treatises of this eminent astronomer-the 'Pre-
liminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy,' 1830, and Treatise on
<
4
254
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Astronomy,' 1833, have been widely circulated. Sir John subse-
quently collected a series of Essays which appeared in the Edin-
burgh and Quarterly Reviews, with Addresses and other Pieces,' 1857.
Profoundly versed in almost every branch of physics, Sir John Her-
schel occasionally sported with the Muses, but in the garb of the an-
cients-in hexamet r and pentameter verses. The following stanzas
are at least equal to Southey's hexameters, and the first was made in
a dream in 1841, and written down immediately on waking:
Throw thyself on thy God, nor mock him with feeble denial;
Sure of his love, and oh! sure of his mercy at last,
Bitter and deep though the draught, yet shun not the cup of thy trial,
But in its healing effect, smile at its bitterness past.
Pray for that holier cup while sweet with bitter lies blending,
Tears in the cheerful eye, smiles on the sorrowing cheek,
Death expiring in life, when the long-drawn struggle is ending;
Triumph and joy to the strong, strength to the weary and weak.
The abstruse studies and triumphs of Sir John Herschel-his work
on the Differential Calculus, his Catalogues of Stars and Nebulæ, and
his Treatises on Sound and Light are well known; but perhaps the
most striking instance of his pure devotion to science was his expedi-
tion to the Cape of Good Hope, and his sojourn there for four years,
solely at his own expense, with the view of examining under the
most favourable circumstances the southern hemisphere. This com-
pleted a telescopic survey of the whole surface of the visible heavens,
commenced by Sir William Herschel above seventy years ago, as-
sisted by his sister Caroline and his brother Alexander, and continued
by him almost down to the close of a very long life.* Sir William
*Herschel, a musician residing at Bath, though a native of Hanover, which he
had left in early youth, devoted his leisure to the construction and improvement of
reflecting telescopes, with which he continued ardently to survey the heavens. His
zeal and assiduity had already drawn the notice of astronomers, when he announced
to Dr. Maskelyne, that, on the night of the 13th March, 1781, he observed a shifting
star, which, from its smallness, he judged to be a comet, though it was distinguished
neither by a nebulosity nor a tail. The motion of the star, however, was so slow as
to require distant observations to ascertain its path. The president Saron, an expert
and obliging calculator, was the first who conceived it to be a planet, having in-
ferred, from the few observations communicated to him, that it described a circle
with a radius of about twelve times the mean distance of the earth from the sun.
Lexell removed all doubt, and before the close of the year, he computed the ele-
ments of the new planet with considerable accuracy, making the great axis of its
orbit nineteen times greater than that of the earth, and the period of its revolution
eighty-four years. Herschel proposed, out of gratitude to his royal patron (George
III.). to call the planet he had found by the barbarous appellation of Georgium
Sidus; but the classical name of Uranus, which Bode afterwards applied, is almost
universally adopted. Animated by this happy omen, he prosecuted his astronomical
observations with unwearied zeal and ardour, and continued, during the remainder
of a long life, to enrich science with a succession of splendid discoveries.'-SIR
JOHN LESLIE. Herschel's discoveries were chiefly made by means of his forty-feet
reflector, to construct which funds were advanced by the king. An Irish nobleman,
the Earl of Rosse, after many years' labour to improve the telescope, completed in
1844, and erected at Parsonstown, a telescope of six feet aperture and fifty-three or
fifty-four feet of focal length. The result of Lord Rosse's observations with his
six-feet speculum has been to resolve many nebulæ into stars.
HERSCHEL.]
255
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
died in 1822, aged eighty-four. In 1876 was published a 'Memoir of
Caroline Herschel,' the sister of Sir William and aunt of Sir John,
who died in 1848, aged ninety-seven years and ten months. The
author of this memoir, Mrs. John Herschel, says of Caroline: 'She
stood beside her brother, William Herschel, sharing his labours, help-
ing his life. In the days when he gave up a lucrative career that he
might devote himself to astronomy, it was owing to her thrift and
care that he was not harassed by the rambling vexations of money
matters. She had been his helper and assistant in the days when he
was a leading musician; she became his helper and assistant
when he gave himself up to astronomy. By sheer force of will
and devoted affection, she learned enough of mathematics and
of methods of calculation, which to those unlearned seem myste-
ries, to be able to commit to writing the results of his researches.
She became his assistant in the workshop; she helped him to grind
and polish his mirrors; she stood beside his telescope in the nights of
mid-winter, to write down his observations when the very ink was
frozen in the bottle. She kept him alive by her care; thinking
nothing of herself, she lived for him. She loved him, and believed
in him, and helped him with all her heart and with all her strength.'
This devoted lady discovered eight comets! The survey of the
heavens begun by Sir William Herschel was resumed in 1825 by his
son, Sir John, who published the results in 1847. On his return
from the Cape, the successful astronomer was honoured with a ba-
ronetcy, the university of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of
D.C.L., and the Astronomical Society-of which he was president-
voted him a testimonial for his work on the Southern Hemisphere.
Besides the works to which we have referred, Sir John Herschel pub-
lished Outlines of Astronomy,' 1849, of which a fifth edition, cor-
rected to the existing state of astronomical science, was published in
1858: and he edited A Manual of Scientific Inquiry,' 1849, prepared
by authority of the Admiralty for the use of the navy.
<
Sir John Herschel was born at Slough, near Windsor, in 1792, and
studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his Bache-
lor's Degree in 1813, coming out as Senior Wrangler and Smith's
Prizeman. His first work was a Collection of Examples of the Ap-
plication of the Calculus to Finite Differences,' 1813. He contrib
uted various papers to the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal' and
the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1819-24), and he was employed for
eight years in re-examining the nebule and cluster of stars discovered
by his father. The result was published in the Philosophical Trans-
actions for 1832; the nebule were about 2300 in number, and of
these 525 were discovered by Sir John himself. He also discovered
between three and four thousand double stars. Sir John received
from William IV. the Hanoverian Guelphic order of knighthood.
and Queen Victoria in 1838 conferred upon him a baronetcy. He
(
<
256
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
was literally covered with honorary distinctions from learned socie-
ties and foreign academies. From 1850 till 1855 he held the office of
Master of the Mint, which he was forced to resign from ill-health.
On the 11th of May 1871, this most illustrious of European men of
science died at his seat, Collingwood, near Hawkhurst, Kent, aged
seventy-nine.
Tendency and Effect of Philosophical Studies.
Nothing can be more unfounded than the objection which has been taken, in
limine, by persons. well meaning perhaps, certainly narrow minded, against the
study of natural philosophy-that it fosters in its cultivators an undue and over-
weening self-conceit, leads them to doubt of the immortality of the soul. and to
scoff at revealed religion. Its natural effect, we may confidently assert, on every
well-constituted mind, is, and must be, the direct contrary. No doubt, the testimony
of natural reason, on whatever exercised, must of necessity stop short of those
truths which is the object of revelation to make known; but while it places the ex-
istence and principal attributes of a Deity on such grounds as to render doubt
absurd and atheism ridiculous, it unquestionably opposes no natural or necessary
obstacle to further progress: on the contrary, by cherishing as a vital principle an
unbounded spirit of inquiry and ardency of expectation, it unfetters the mind from
prejudices of every kind, and leaves it open and free to every impression of a higher
nature which it is susceptible of receiving, guarding only against, enthusiasm and
self-deception by a habit of strict investigation, but encouraging, rather than sup-
pressing, everything that can offer a prospect or a hope beyond the present obscure
and unsatisfactory state. The character of the true philosopher is to hope all things
not unreasonable. He who has seen obscurities which appeared impenetrable in
physical and mathematical science suddenly dispelled, and the most barren and
unpromising fields of inquiry converted, as if by inspiration, into rich and inex-
haustible springs of knowledge and power, or a simple change of our point of view,
or by merely bringing them to bear on some principle which it never occurred before
to try, will surely be the very last to acquiesce in any dispiriting prospects of either
the present or the future destinies of mankind; while on the other hand, the bound-
less views of intellectual and moral, as well as material relations which open on him
on all hands in the course of these pursuits, the knowledge of the trivial place he
occupies in the scale of creation, and the sense continually pressed upon him of his
own weakness and incapacity to suspend or modify the slightest movement of the
vast machinery he sees in action around him, must effectually convince him that
humility of pretension, no less than confidence of hope, is what best becomes his
character.
The question'cui bono'-to what practical end and advantage do your researches
tend ?—is one which the speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own
sake, and enjoys, as a rational being should enjoy, the mere contemplation of harmo-
nious and mutually dependent truths. can seldom hear without a sense of humilia-
tion. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations
which ought to exempt them from such questioning; communicating as they do to
his own mind the purest happiness (after the exercise of the benevolent and moral
feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the injury of no one,
he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those whọ, having
themselves little capacity. and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly re-
peating upon him this inquiry.
A Taste for Reading.
If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of
circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life,
and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown
upon me, it would be a taste for reading. I speak of it, of course, only as a worldly
advantage, and not in the slightest degree as superseding or derogating from the
higher office, and surer and stronger panoply of religions princip'es, but as a taste.
an instrument, and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this taste, and
SOMERVILLE.}
257
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
I
mamath a man w
the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless,
indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in
contact with the best society in every period of history-with the wisest, the wittiest
-with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters that have adorned hu-
manity. You make him a denizen of all nations-a contemporary of all ages. The
world has been created for him. It is hardly possible but the character should take a
higher and better tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with a class
of thinkers. to say the least of it, above the average of humanity. It is morally im-
possible but that the manners should take a tinge of good breeding and civilisation
from having constantly before one's eyes the way in which the best-bred and best-
informed have talked and conducted themselves in their intercourse with each other.
There is gentle but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed,
over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual
because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of. It
cannot, in short, be better summed up than in the words of the Latin poet :
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse fercs.
It civilises the conduct of men, and suffers them not to remain barbarɔus.
MRS. MARY SOMERVILLE.
Another distinguished astronomer, a worthy contemporary of
Caroline Herschel, was MARY SOMERVILLE, who died at Naples,
November 28, 1872, aged ninety-two. She had attained to the high-
est proficiency and honours in physical science, was a member of
various learned societies at home and abroad, had received the ap-
probation of Laplace, Humboldt, Playfair, Herschel, and other emi-
nent contemporaries, and at the age of ninety-two was engaged in
solving mathematical problems! Mrs. Somerville was born in the
manse or parsonage of Jedburgh; her father, Sir William George
Fairfax, Vice-admiral of the Red, was Lord Duncan's captain at the
battle of Camperdown in 1797. His daughter Mary was educated at
a school in Musselburgh, and before she was fourteen, it was said,
she had studied Euclid, and Bonnycastle's and Euler's Algebra, but
concealed as much as possible her acquirements. In 1804 she was
married to her cousin, Captain Samuel Greig, son of Admiral Greig,
who served many years in the Russian navy, and died Governor of
Cronstadt. Captain Grieg died two years after their union.
·
In 1812 his widow married another cousin, Dr. William Somerville.
son of the minister of Jedburgh, author of two historical works-
the histories of the Revolution and of the reign of Queen Anne-and
of memoirs of his own Life and Time.' The venerable minister
(1741-1813) records, with pride, that Miss Fairfax had been born and
nursed in his house, her father being at that time abroad on public
service; that she long resided in his family, and was occasionally his
scholar, being remarkable for her ardent thirst of knowledge and her
assiduous application to study. Dr. William Somerville, the son, at-
tained the rank of Inspector of the Army Medical Board, and Physi
cian to the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. He took great pains to foster
the intellectual pursuits of his wife, and lived to witness her success
and celebrity, dying at Florence in 1860, at the great age of ninety.
Mrs. Somerville first attracted notice by experiments on the
one.
-
258
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
<
magnetic influence of the violet rays of the solar spectrum. Lord
Brougham then solicited her to prepare for the Society for Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge, a popular summary of the Mécanique Céleste
of Laplace. She complied, and her manuscript being submitted to
Sir John Herschel, he said he was delighted with it-that it was a
book for posterity, but quite above the class for which Lord Brough-
ham's course was intended. Mrs. Somerville herself modestly said
of it: I simply translated Laplace's work from algebra into common
language. However, she consented to publish it as an independent
work, under the title of The Mechanism of the Heavens,' 1831, and
it at once fixed her reputation as one of the ablest cultivators of
physical science. The Royal Society admitted her a member, and
commissioned a bust of her, which was executed by Chantrey, and
placed in the hall of the Society in Somerset House. It is said that
Mrs. Somerville, meeting one day with Laplace, in Paris, the great
geometer said: There have been only three women who have under-
stood me-yourself, Caroline Herschel, and a Mrs. Greig, of whom I
have never been able to learn anything.' 'I was Mrs. Greig,' said
the modest little woman. So, then, there are only two of you!'
exclaimed the philosopher. The learned Frenchman did not live to
see Mrs. Somerville's version of his great work, as he died in 1827.
In 1834 Mrs. Somerville published 'The Connection of the Physical
Sciences,' a work which affords a condensed view of the phenomena
of the universe, and has enjoyed great popularity; it is now in the ninth
edition. Her next work was her Physical Geography,' published
in 1848. This work was chiefly written in Rome, and while resident
there, Mrs. Somerville met with a little adventure which she thus de-
scribes in her Personal Recollections:'
6
•
<
Scene in the Campagna.
I had very great delight in the Campagna of Rome; the fine range of Apennines
bounding the plain, over which the fleeting shadows of the passing clouds fell, ever
changing and always beautiful, whether viewed in the early morning, or in the glory
of the setting sun, I was never tired of admiring; and whenever I drove out, pre-
ferred a country drive to the more fashionable Villa Borghese. One day Somerville
and I and our daughters went to drive towards the Tavolato, on the road to Albano.
We got out of the carriage and went into a field, tempted by the wild-flowers. On one
side of this field ran the aqueduct; on the other, a deep and wide ditch full of water.
I had gone towards the aqueduct, leaving the others in the field. All at once, we
heard a loud shouting, when an enormous drove of the beautiful Campagna gray cat-
tle, with their wide-spreading horns, came rushing wildly between us, with their
beads down and their tails erect, driven by men with long spears, mounted on little
spirited horses at full gallop. It was so sudden and so rapid, that only after it was
over did we perceive the danger we had run. As there was no possible escape, there
was nothing for it but standing still, which Somerville and my girls had presence of
mind to do, and the drove dividing, rushed like a whirlwind to the right and left of
them. The danger was not so much of being gored, as of being run over by the ex-
cited and terrified animals, and round the walls of Rome places of refuge are pro-
vided for those who may be passing when the cattle are driven.
Near where this occurred there is a house with the inscription, 'Casa Dei Spirit;'
but I do not think the Italians believe in either ghosts or witches; their chief super-
stition seems to be the 'Jettature' or evil eye, which they have inherited from the
SOMERVILLE.]
259
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
the early Romans, and, I believe, Etruscans. They consider it a bad omen to meet
a monk or priest on first going out in the morning. My daughters were engaged to
ride with a large party, and the meet was at our house. A Roman, who happened to
go out first, saw a friar, and rushed in again laughing, and waited till he was out of
sight. Soon after they set off, this gentleman was thrown from his horse and
ducked in a pool; so the Jettature was fulfilled. But my daughters thought his bad
seat on horseback enough to account for his fall without the evil eye.
After an interval of eleven years from the publication of her
'Physical Geography,' Mrs. Somerville came forward with two more
volumes, On Molecular and Microscopic Science.' She continued her
scientific studies and inquiries; and in January 1872, a gentleman
who had visited her, wrote: She is still full of vigour, and working
away at her mathematical researches, being particularly occupied
just now with the theory of quaternions, a branch of transcendent
mathematics which very few, if any, persons of Mrs. Somerville's
age and sex have ever had the wish or power to study.' For many
years the deceased resided with her family at Florence, and there
she was as assiduous in the cultivation of her flower-garden and of
music as she was of her mathematics. Her circumstances were easy
though not opulent, and Sir Robert Peel-the most attentive of all
prime-ministers since the days of Halifax to literary and scientific
claims-had in 1835 placed her on the pension list for £300 per an-
num. She had three children, a son (who died in 1865) and two
daughters. To an American gentleman who visited her, she said: 'I
speak Italian, but no one could ever take me for other than a Scotch
woman.' Her love of science had been to her an inexhaustible source
of interest and gratification; and I have no doubt,' she said, 'but
we shall know more of the heavenly bodies in another state of exist-
ence' in that eternal city which hath no need of the sun, neither of
the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God doth enlighten it, and
the Lamb is the light thereof.'
•
<
In her old age Mrs. Somerville had amused herself by writing out
reminiscences of her early struggles and difficulties in the acquire-
ment of knowledge, and of her subsequent studies and life. These
were published in 1873 by her daughter, Martha Somerville, under
the title of Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age, of
Mary Somerville, with Selections from her Correspondence.'
$
PROFESSOR J. D. FORBES.
JAMES DAVID FORBES is chiefly known for his theory of glacial
motion, which appears to have been independent of that of Rendu,
and also for his observations as to the plastic or viscous theories of
glaciers. His claims have been disputed, but the general opinion
seems to be that the palm of originality, or at least priority of an-
Mr. Forbes was
nouncement, belongs to the Scottish professor.
born at Colinton, near Edinburgh, in 1809, son of Sir William Forbes,
an eminent banker and citizen of Edinburgh; his mother, Williamina
260
CYCLOPÆDIA of
[TO 1876.
•
Belches, heiress of a gentleman of the old stock of Invermay, after-
wards Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn. This lady was the object of
Sir Walter Scott's early and lasting attachment. Visiting at St. An-
drews thirty years later in his life, he says: I remember the name
I had once carved in Runic characters beside the castle gate, and
asked why it should still agitate my heart.' Lady Forbes had
then been long dead. In 1833, Mr. Forbes was appointed Professor
of Natural Philosophy in the university of Aberdeen, which he held
until 1859, when he became Principal of St. Andrews University.
He died December 31, 1868. His principal works are 'Travels
though the Alps and Savoy,' 1843; Norway and its Glaciers,'
1853; The Tour of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa,' 1855; and 'Oc-
casional Papers on the Theory of Glaciers,' 1859. He wrote also
numerous papers in the scientific journals.
•
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
DR. WHEWELL.
<
WILLIAM WHEWELL was a native of Lancaster, born May 24,
1794. He was of humble parentage, and his father, a joiner, intended
him to follow his own trade; but he was early distinguished for
ability, and after passing with honour through the grammar-school
at Lancaster, he was placed at Heversham School, in order to be
qualified for an exhibition at Trinity College, Cambridge, connected
with that seminary. He entered Trinity College in 1812, became a
Fellow in 1817, took his degree of M. A. in 1819, and the same year
published his first work, a Trea ise on Mechanics.'
He was or-
dained priest in 1826. For four years, from 1828 to 1832, he was
Professor of Mineralogy; from 1838 to 1855, he was Professor of
Moral Theology or Casuistical Divinity; and from 1841 till his death,
he was Master of Trinity College. These accumulated university
honours sufficiently indicate the high estimation in which Dr. Whe-
well's talents and services were held. In the Cambridge Philosophi-
cal Society, the Royal Society, and British Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, he was no less distinguished; while his scientific
and philosophic works gave him a European fame." After contributing
various articles to reviews, Dr. Whewell in 1833 published his Bridge-
water Treatise on Astronomy and General Physics considered with
reference to Natural Theology '-an able work, learned and eloquent,
which has passed through seven editions. His next and his greatest
work was his History of the Inductive Sciences,' three volumes,
1837; which was followed in 1840 by The Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences.' Passing over various mathematical publications,
we may notice, as indicating the versatility of Dr. Whewell's talents,
that in the year 1847 he published Verse Translations from the
German,' English Hexameter Translations,' and 'Sermons' preached
in Trinity College Chapel.
(
C
C
C
In 1853 he issued anonymously, 'Of the Plurality of Worlds: an
<
WHEWELL.]
261
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
•
Essay' There was a common belief in the doctrine of the plurality
of worlds, which was supported by Dr Chalmers in his Astronom-
ical Discourses.' Whewell in his Essay (which is one of the clever-
est of his works), opposed the popular belief, maintaining that the
earth alone among stars and planets is the abode of intellectual,
moral, and religious creatures. Sir David Brewster and others op-
posed this theory. Dr. Whewell said the views he had committed to
paper had been long in his mind, and the convictions they involved
had gradually grown deeper. His friend, Sir James Stephen, thought
the plurality of worlds was a doctrine which supplied consolation and
comfort to a mind oppressed with the aspect of the sin and misery of
the earth. But Whewell replied: To me the effect would be the con-
trary I should have no consolation or comfort in thinking that our
earth is selected as the especial abode of sin; and the consolation
which revealed religion offers for this sin and misery is, not that there
are other worlds in the stars sinless and happy, but that on the earth
an atonement and reconciliation were effected. This doctrine gives
a peculiar place to the earth in theology. It is, or has been, in a pe-
culiar manner the scene of God's agency and presence. This was the
view on which I worked.' In opposition to Dean Mansel, who held
that a true knowledge of God is impossible for man, Dr. Whewell
said: 'If we cannot know anything about God, revelation is in vain.
We cannot have anything revealed to us, if we have no power of
seeing what is revealed. It is of no use to take away the veil, when
we are blind. If, in consequence of our defect of sight, we cannot
see God at all by the sun of nature, we cannot see Him by the light-
ning of Sinai, nor by the fire of Mount Carmel, nor by the star in
the East, nor by the rising sun of the Resurrection. If we cannot
know God, to what purpose is it that the Scriptures, Old and New,
constantly exhort us to know Him, and represent to us the knowledge
of Him as the great purpose of man's life, and the sole ground of his
eternal hopes?
•
Numerous works connected with moral philosophy were from
time to time published by Whewell-as 'Elements of Morality,' 1845;
Lectures on Systematic Morality,' 1846; Lectures on the History of
Moral Philosophy in England,' 1852; Platonic Dialogues for Eng-
lish Readers,' 1859-1861, &c. Various scientific memoirs, sermons,
and miscellaneous pieces in prose and verse were thrown off by the
indefatigable Master of Trinity, and perhaps as Sir John Herschel
said, a more wonderful variety and amount of knowledge in almost
every department of human inquiry was never accumulated by any
man. The death of Dr. Whewell was acccidental. He was thrown
from his horse on the 24th of February, and died on the 6th of
March 1866. An account of the writings, with selections from the
correspondence of Dr. Whewell, was lately published by I. Tod-
hunter, M. A., &c.
་
>
•
262
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
I
Wonders of the Universe.
The Book of Job comes down to us freighted apparently with no small portion
of the knowledge of that early age; speaking to us not merely of flocks and herds,
of wine and oil, of writings and judgments; but telling us also of ores and metals
drawn from the recesses of the mountains-of gems and jewels of many names and
from various countries; of constellations and their risings, and seasons, and influ-
ences. And above all, it comes tinged with a deep and contemplative spirit of ob-
servation of the wonders of the animate and inanimate creation. The rain and the
dew, the ice and the hoar-frost, the lightning and the tempest, are noted as contain-·
ing mysteries past men's finding out. Our awe and admiration are demanded for the
care that provides for the lion and the ostrich after their natures; for the spirit that
informs with fire and vigour the war-horse and the eagle; for the power that guides
the huge behemoth and leviathan.
Not only these connections and transitions, but the copiousness with which proper-
ties, as to us it seems, merely ornamental, are diffused through the creation, may well
excite our wonder. Almost all have felt, as it were, a perplexity chastened by the
sense of beauty, when they have thought of the myriads of fair and gorgeous objects
that exist and perish without any eye to witness their glories-the flowers that are
born to blush unseen in the wilderness-the gems, so wondrously fashioned, that
stud the untrodden caverns-the living things with adornments of yet richer work-
manship that, solitary and unknown, glitter and die. Nor is science without food for
such feelings. At every step she discloses things and laws pregnant with unobtrus-
ive splendour. She has unravelled the web of light in which all things are involved,
and has found its texture even more wonderful and exquisite than she could have
thought. This she has done in our own days-and these admirable properties the
sunbeams had borne about with them since light was created, contented as it were,
with their unseen glories. What, then, shall we say ? These forms, these appear-
ances of pervading beauty, though we know not their end and meaning, still touch
all thoughtful minds with a sense of hidden delight, a still and grateful admiration.
They come over our meditations like strains and snatches of a sweet and distant
symphony-sweet indeed, but to us distant and broken, and overpowered by the din
of more earthly perceptions-caught but at intervals-cluding our attempts to learn
it as a whole, but ever and anon returning on our ears, and elevating our thoughts of
the fabric of this world. We might, indeed, well believe that this harmony breathes
not for us alone-that it has nearer listeners-more delighted auditors. But even in
us it raises no unworthy thoughts-even in us it impresses a conviction, indestructible
by harsher voices, that far beyond all that we can know and conceive, the universe is
full of symmetry and order and beauty and life.
Final Destiny of the Universe.
Let us not deceive ourselves. Indefinite duration and gradual decay are not the
destiny of this universe. It will not find its termination only in the imperceptible
crumbling of its materials, or clogging of its wheels. It steals not calmly and
slowly to its end. No ages of long and deepening twilight shall gradually bring the
last setting of the sun-no mountains sinking under the decrepitude of years, or
weary rivers ceasing to rejoice in their courses, shall prepare men for the abolition of
this earth. No placid euthanasia shall silently lead on the dissolution of the natural
world. But the trumpet shall sound-the struggle shall come-this goodly frame of
things shall be rent and crushed by the mighty arm of its Omnipotent Maker. It
shall expire in the throes and agonies of some sudden and fierce convulsion; and
the same hand which plucked the elements from the dark and troubled slumbers of
their chaos, shall cast them into their tomb, pushing them aside, that they may no
longer stand between His face and the creatures whom he shall come to judge.
BABBAGE-AIRY-HIND-NICHOL.
CHARLES BABBAGE (1792-1871) is popularly celebrated for his
calculating-machine. But he was author of about eighty volumes,
including his valuable work on the 'Economy of Manufactures and
BARBAGE.]
263
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Machinery,' 1833-a volume that has been translated into most
foreign languages. Mr. Babbage's most original work is one entitled
'A Ninth Bridgewater Treatise,' a most ingenious attempt to bring
mathematics into the range of sciences which afford proof of Divine
design in the constitution of the world. Mr. Babbage was a native
of Devonshire, and after attending the grammar-school at Totnes,
was entered at Cambridge, and took his Bachelor's degree from
Peterhouse College in 1814. It is said that Mr. Babbage spent some
thousands in perfecting his calculating-machine. It was presented,
together with drawings illustrative of its operation, to King's Col-
lege, London. For eleven years (1828-39) Mr. Babbage held the
appointment of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge.
The Astronomer-royal, SIR GEORGE BIDDELL AIRY (born at
Alnwick in 1801), has done valuable service by his lectures on ex-
perimental philosophy, and his published Observations. He is au-
thor of the treatise on Gravitation in the 'Penny Cyclopædia,' and of
various lectures and communications in scientific journals. From
the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh he has re-
ceived the honorary degrees of D.C.L. and LL.D., and in 1871 he
was nominated a Companion (civil) of the Bath.
MR. JOHN RUSSELL HIND, Foreign Secretary of the Royal Astro-
nomical Society, and Superintendent of the 'Nautical Almanac,' has
discovered ten small planets, for which the Astronomical Society
awarded him their gold medal, and a pension of £200 a year has been
granted to him by royal warrant. Any new discovery or observation
is chronicled by Mr. Hind in the Times' newspaper, and his brief
notes are always welcome. Mr. Hind is a native of Nottingham, born
in 1823. He is author of various astronomical treatises and contribu-
tions to scientfic journals.
4
JOHN PRINGLE NICHOL (1804-1859) did much to popularise astrono-
my by various works at once ingenious and eloquent-as' Views of
the Architecture of the Heavens, 1887; Contemplations on the Solar
System,' 1844; 'Thoughts on the System of the World,' 1848; The
Planet Neptune, an Exposition and History,' 1848; The Stellar Uni-
verse,' 1848; The Planetary System,' 1850. Mr. Nichol was a na-
tive of Brechin, Forfarshire. He was educated at King's College,
Aberdeen, was sometime Rector of Montrose Academy, and in 1836
was appointed Professor of Practical Astronomy in Glasgow. The
professor's son, JOHN NICHOL, B.A. Oxon., is Regius Professor of
English Language and Literature in the university of Glasgow. He
is author of Hannibal,' an historical drama, 1873, and other works,
evincing literary and critical talent of a superior description.
<
(
ADAMS-GRANT-PROCTOR-LOCKYER.
The discoverer of the planet Neptune, MR. JOHN COUCH ADAMS
(born in 1816), is an instance of persevering original genius. He was
intended by his father, a farmer near Bodmin, in Cornwall, to follow
264
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
the paternal occupation, but was constantly absorbed in mathemati-
cal studies. He entered St. John's College, became senior wrangler
in 1843, was soon after elected to a Fellowship, and became one of
the mathematical tutors of his college. In 1844 he sent to the Green-
wich Observatory a paper on the subject of the discovery whence he
derives his chief fame. Certain irregularities in the planet Uranus
being unaccounted for, Mr. Adams conceived that they might be
occasioned by an undiscovered planet beyond it. He made experi-
ments for this purpose; and at the same time a French astronomer,
M. Le Verrier, had arrived at the same result, assigning the place of
the disturbing planet to within one degree of that given by Mr.
Adams. The honour was thus divided, but both were independent
discoverers. In 1858 Mr. Adams was appointed Lowndean Professor
of Astronomy, Cambridge.
A History of Physical Astronomy,' 1852, by ROBERT GRANT, is a
work of great research and completeness, bringing the history of as-
tronomical progress down to 1852. In conjunction with Admiral
Smyth, Mr. Grant has translated Arago's 'Popular Astronomy,' and
he was conjoined with the Rev. B. Powell in translating Arago's
Eminent Men,' 1857. Mr. Grant is a native of Grantown, Inverness-
shire, born in 1814. In 1859, on the death of Professor Nichol, Mr.
Grant was appointed to the chair of Practical Astronomy in the uni-
versity of Glasgow.
(
C
Two of our younger_men of science, happily engaged in popular-
ising astronomy, are RICHARD A. PROCTOR and JOSEPHI NORMAN
LOCKYER. The former (late scholar of St. John's College, Cam-
bridge, and King's College, London) is author of 'Saturn and its
System,' 1865; The Expanse of Heaven' (a series of essays on the
wonders of the firmament), 'Light Science for Leisure Hours,' 'Our
Place among Infinities,' 1875; Science Byways,' 1876; and a great
number of other occasional short astronomical treatises. Mr. Lock-
yer (born at Rugby in 1836) was in 1870 appointed Secretary of the
Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction, and the same year he
was chief of the English Government Eclipse Expedition to Sicily.
In the following year he was elected Rede Lecturer to the university
of Cambridge. Mr. Lockyer is author of 'Elementary Lessons in
Astronomy,' and of various interesting papers in the literary jour-
He is editor of Nature,' a weekly scientific periodical.
<
nals.
BADEN POWELL-PRICHARD.
•
The REV. BADEN POWELL (1796-1860), for some time Savilian Pro-
fessor of Geometry, Oxford, was author of a History of Natural
Philosophy,' 1842; a series of three Essays on the Spirit of the In-
ductive Philosophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy of
Creation,' 1855; a work entitled The Order of Nature,' 1859; and
an essay On the Study and Evidences of Christianity,' 1860-a trea-
POWELL.]
265
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
tise which formed a part of the volume entitled 'Essays and Re-
views.' In some of these treatises, he discusses matters on the border-
land between religion and science, and his opinions on miracles ex-
cited considerable controversy.
6
'Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,' by DR. JAMES
C. PRICHARD (1785-1848), a work in five volumes, 1836-47, and The
Natural History of Man,' one volume, 1843, open up a subject of
interest and importance. Dr. Prichard's investigations tend to con-
firm the belief that man is one in species, and to render it highly
probable that all the varieties of this species are derived from one pair
and a single locality on the earth.' He conceives that the negro must
be considered the primitive type of the human race-an idea that
contrasts curiously with Milton's poetical conception of Adam, his
'fair large front,' and 'eye sublime,' and 'hyacinthine locks,' and of
Eve with her unadorned golden tresses.' Dr. Prichard rests his theory
on the following grounds: (1). That in inferior species of animals any
variations of colour are chiefly from dark to lighter, and this generally
as an effect of domesticity and cultivation; (2). That we have instan
ces of light varieties, as of the Albino among negroes, but never any-
thing like the negro among Europeans; (3). That the dark races are
better fitted by their organisation for the wild or natural state of life;
and (4). That the nations or tribes lowest in the scale of actual civili-
sation have all kindred with the negro race. Of course, this con-
clusion must be conjectural: there is no possibility of arriving at any
certainty on the subject.
,
<
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, ETC.
This eminent metaphysician sustained for some years the fame of
the Scottish colleges for the study of the human mind. He was a
native of Glasgow, born March 8, 1788, son of Dr. William Hamilton,
Professor of Anatomy and Botany. He was of an old Presbyterian
stock, the Hamiltons of Preston. A certain Sir William Hamilton
was created a baronet of Nova Scotia in 1673, and dying without
issue, he was succeeded by his brother, Sir Robert Hamilton, the
leader or rather misleader of the Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge.
This baronet, after the Revolution of 1688, refused to acknowledge
King Williain III., as being an uncovenanted sovereign.' He did
not assume the baronetcy, but the Scottish philosopher in 1816 estab-
lished his claim to the title which the conscientious, wrong-headed
baronet refused, and became the twenty-fourth representative of the
old name and house. William Hamilton studied at Glasgow univer-
sity, and, like his townsman, J. G. Lockhart, obtained a presentation
to Balliol College, Oxford, as a Snell exhibitioner. During his aca-
demical career, he was distinguished for the extent and accuracy of his
knowledge, and for his indefatigible application as a student of
ancient and modern literature. He afterwards studied law, and was
called to the Scottish bar in 1813. In 1820 he was a candidate for
266
[TO 18-6.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
the chair of Moral Philosophy, vacant by the death of Dr. Brown,
but was defeated by the Tory candidate. Mr. John Wilson, the
famous Christopher North.' The state of the vote was twenty-one
to eleven. Hamilton next year obtained the appointment of Professor
of Civil History.
C
•
In 1829 he wrote for the Edinburgh Review' an article on Cousin's
'Cours de Philosophie,' which seems to have been the first public
general exhibition of his talent as a powerful thinker, and which
was hailed by the metaphysicians of the day, British and foreign-
then a very limited class-as a production of extraordinary ability.
He wrote other articles for the Review-papers on phrenology (to
which he was strenuously opposed), on perception, on the philoso-
phers Reid and Brown, and on logic. These essays were collected
and published under the title of Discussions in Philosophy and
Literature, Education, and University Reform,' 1852. In 1836 Sir
William was elected to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics in Edin-
burgh, after a severe contest, in which the rival candidate was Isaac
Taylor, author of The Natural History of Enthusiasm,' and other
works (see ante). The appointment rested with the town-coun-
cil, and Sir William had a majority of four-eighteen members of
council voting for him, and fourteen for Mr. Taylor. His lectures
His
were well attended, and he took much interest in his class.
writings, though limited in quantity, were influential, and according
to Professor Veitch, the spring-time of a new life in Scottish specu-
lation had begun. A more profound analysis, a more comprehen-
sive spirit, a learning that had surveyed the philosophical literature
of Greece and Germany, and marked the relative place in the intel-
lectual world of the sturdy growths of home thought, were the char-
acteristics of the man who had now espoused the cause of Scottish
speculative philosophy.' Sir William Hamilton died May 6, 1856,
at which time he had reached the age of sixty-eight. He was re-
garded as the most profound philosophical scholar of his day-a
man of immense erudition and attainments. His principal works
were, as we have said, contributions to the Edinburgh Review,' but
he also edited the works of Dr. Thomas Reid, 1846, adding preface,
notes, and supplementary dissertations; and at the time of his
death, was engaged on the works of Professor Dugald Stewart. He
contemplated a memoir of Stewart, but did not live to accomplish
the task. This, however, has since been done by one of his pupils,
MR. JOHN VEITCH, 1858.
C
The most celebrated of Sir William Hamilton's essays are those
against phrenology, on Cousin and the philosophy of the uncondi-
tioned, on perception, and on Whately and logic. His philosophy,'
says a Scottish metaphysician in the North British Review," is a
determined recoil against the method and systems of Mylne and
Brown, the two professors who, in Hamilton's younger years, were
(
(
HAMILTON.
267
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ĥ
CC
exercising the greatest influence on the opinions of Scottish students.
So far as he felt attractions, they were towards Reid, the great meta-
physician of his native college; Aristotle, the favourite at Oxford,
where he completed his education; and Kant, whose sun was rising
from the German Ocean on Britain, and this, in spite of all opposing
clouds, about the time when Hamilton was forming his philosophic
creed. Professor Ferrier thinks that the dedication of his powers to
the service of Reid" was the "one mistake in his career;" to us it ap-
pears that it must rather have been the means of saving one possessed
of so speculative a spirit from numberless aberrations. But Kant ex-
ercised as great an influence over Hamilton as even Reid did. His
whole philosophy turns round those topics which are discussed in the
Kritik of Pure Reason," and he can never get out of those "forms" in
which Kant sets all our ideas so methodically, nor lose sight of those
terrible antinomies, or contradictions of reason, which Kant ex-
pounded in order to shew that the laws of reason can have no appli-
cation to objects, and which Hegel glorified in, and was employing as
the ground-principle of his speculations, at the very time when
Hamilton aspired to be a philosopher. From Kant he got the princi-
ple that the mind begins with phenomena and builds thereon by
forms or laws of thought; and it was as he pondered on the Sphinx
enigmas of Kant and Hegel, that he evolved his famous axiom about
all positive thought lying in the proper conditioning of one or other
of two contradictory propositions, one of which, by the rule of ex-
cluded middle, must be true. His pupils have ever since been stand-
ing before this Sphinx proposing, under terrible threats, its supposed
contradictions, and are wondering whether their master has resolved
the riddle.' To those who delight in the shadowy tribes of mind,'
must be left the determination of these difficulties. The general
reader will find many acute and suggestive remarks in Sir William's
essays on education, logic, and the influence of mathematical studies.
Against the latter, as a mental exercise, he waged incessant war. He
defined philosophy to be the knowledge of effects and their causes,
and he limited the term philosophy to the science of the mind, refus-
ing the claim of mathematics and the physical sciences to the title.
Lord Macaulay was as little disposed as Sir William to acknowledge
the claim urged for mathematics, and Sir David Brewster, too,
adopted the heresy.
•
The following is part of Sir William Hamilton's dicta:
On Mathematics
Some knowledge of their object-matter and method is requisite to the philoso-
pher; but their study should be followed out temperately, and with due caution. A
mathematician in contingent matter is like an owl in daylight. Here, the wren pecks
at the bird of Pallas, without anxiety for beak or talon; and there, the feeblest rea-
soner feels no inferiority to the strongest calculator. It is true, no doubt, that a
power of mathematical and a power of philosophical, of general logic, may some-
times be combined; but the individual who unites both, reasons well out of neces-
<<
दु
268
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
sary matter, from a still resisting vigour of intellect, and in spite, not in consequence,
of his geometric or algebraic dexterity. He is naturally strong-not a mere cipherer,
a mere demonstrator; and this is the explanation why Mr. De Morgan, among other
mathematicians, so often argues right. Still, had Mr. De Morgan been less of a
mathematician, he might have been more of a philosopher; and be it remembered
that mathematics and dram-drinking tell, especially in the long-run. For a season,
I admit Toby Philpot may be the champion of England; and Warburton testifies, It
is a thing notorious that the oldest mathematician in England is the worst reasoner
in it.'
•
Notes of Sir William Hamilton's lectures were taken by students
and shorthand reporters, and they have been published in four vol-
umes, 1859-1861, edited by Professors Mansel and Veitch. The lat
ter, in 1869, published a Memoir of Sir William, undertaken at the
request of the family of the deceased philosopher. Professor Veitch,
in his summary of the character and aims of the subject of his inte-
resting memoir, says:
"To the mastery and treatment of a subject, the essential prelimi-
nary with Sir William Hamilton was reading. He must know, in the
first place, what had been thought and written by others on the point
which he proposed to consider. In this respect he may be taken as
the extreme contrast of many men who have given their attention to
speculative questions. Hobbes, Locke, Brown-to say nothing of
writers nearer the present time-were content with a very limited
knowledge of the conclusions of others on the subjects which they
discussed. Hamilton's writings shew how little he sympathised with
men of the non-reading type-how he was even blinded, to some
extent, to their proper merits-as in his references to Brown and
Whately. In the universality of his reading and knowledge of
philosophical opinions, he is to be ranked above all those in Britain
who have given their attention to speculative questions since the time
of Bacon, with the exception, perhaps, of Cudworth. Dugald Stew-
art was probably his superior in acquaintance with general literature,
but certainly far from his equal in philosophical learning. On the
continent, the name which in this respect can be placed most fittingly
alongside of Hamilton during the same period, is Leibnitz.
'Between Leibnitz and Hamilton, indeed, amid essential differ-
ences in their views of what is within the compass of legitimate
speculation, there are several points of resemblance. The predomi-
nating interest of each lay in the pursuit of purely intellecual ideals
and wide-reaching general laws, especially in the highest depart-
ments of metaphysics. Both were distinguished by rare acuteness,
logical consecution, deductive habit of mind, and love of system.
They were greater thinkers than observers; more at home among
abstract conceptions than concrete realities. Both had a deep inter-
est in the important intellectual and moral questions that open on
the vision of thoughtful men in the highest practical sphere of all--
the border-land of metaphysics and theology; both had the truest
sympathy with the moral side of speculation. In each there was a
HAMILTON.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
269
i
firm conviction that our thoughts and feelings about the reality and
nature of Deity, his relation to the world, human personality, free-
dom, responsibility, man's relation to the Divine, were to be vital-
ised, to receive a meaning, and impulse, only from reflection on the
ultimate nature and reach of human thought.'
The words on Sir William Hamilton's tombstone are striking: His
aim was, by a pure philosophy, to teach that now we see through a
glass darkly, now we know in part: his hope that in the time to
come, he should see face to face, and know even as also he is known.'
Sir William's favourite study of logic has been well treated in ‘An
Introduction to Logical Science,' by the late PROFESSOR SPALDING
of St. Andrews, which forms an excellent text-book as to the pro-
gress of the science, 1858. Mr. Spalding was also author of Italy
and the Italins,' an historical and literary summary, 1845, and The
History of English Literature,' 1853, a very careful and ably written
little manual. Professor Spalding died in 1859. Another Professor
of St. Andrews, JAMES FERRIER (who possessed the chair of Moral
Philosophy and Political Economy), published Institutes of Meta-
physics, the Theory of Knowing and Being,' 1854. He died in 1864,
aged fifty-six.
¦
<
DEAN MANSEL.
C
<
•
A distinguished metaphysician, the REV. HENRY LONGUEVILLE
MANSEL, was born, in 1820, son of a clergyman of the same name,
rector of Cotsgrove, in Northamptonshire. He was educated at Mer-
chant Taylors' School and St. John's College, Oxford, of which he
was elected scholar in 1839. He graduated B. A. in 1843. In 1855 he
was appointed Reader in Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy in
Magdalen College, Oxford; and in 1858 he delivered the Bampton
Lectures, which were published with the title of The Limits of Re-
ligious Thought,' and occasioned considerable controversy, into which
the Rev. T. D. Maurice entered. In 1859 Mr. Mansel was appointed
Waynflete Professor of Philosophy; in 1866, Regius Professor of
Ecclesiastical History and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford; and in
186, Dean of St. Paul's. The published works of Mr. Mansel are
various. In his nonage he issued a volume of poems, The Demons
of the Wind,' &c., 1838. This flight of fancy was followed by his
metaphysical and philosophical treatises: Aldrich's Logic,' with
notes, 1849; Prolegomena Logica, 1851; Psychology,' a lecture,
1855; Lecture on the Philosophy of Kant,' 1856; the article Meta-
physics,' in eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica,' 1857; the
Bampton Lectures, 1858; The Philosophy of the Conditioned;
comprising some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy,
and on Mr. J. S. Mill's Examination of that Philosophy,' 1866. Mr.
Mansel was associated with Professor Veitch in editing Sir William
Hamilton's lectures.
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JOHN STUART MILL.
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This philosophical author (son of the late historian of British India,)
(ante), has professed to supersede the Baconian principle of in-
duction, without which, according to Reid, experience is as blind
as a mole.' In 1846, Mr. Mill published A System of Logic, Ratio-
cinative and Inductive, being a Connected View of the Principles of
Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation,' two volumes.
He was author, also, of Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Po-
litical Economy,' 1844, and The Principles of Political Economy,'
two volumes, 1848. The metaphysical opinions of Mr. Mill warped
his judgment as to the Baconian system, but he expounds his
views with clearness and candour, and is a profound as well as in
dependent thinker. This was still further
This was still further evinced in his work 'On
Liberty,' 1859, in which he describes and denounces that 'strong
permanent leaven of intolerance which at all times abides in the mid-
dle classes of this country,' and which, he thinks, subjects society
to an intolerable tyranny.
Social Intolerance.
Though we do not inflict so much evil on those who think differently from us as
it was formerly our custom to do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever
by our treatment of them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy
rose like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole intellectual
firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Christian Church grew up a
stately and spreading tree, overtopping the older and less vigorous growths, and
stifling them by its shade. Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no
opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for
their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain or even lose
ground in each decade or generation. They never blaze out far and wide, but con-
tinue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons, among
whom they originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with
either a true or a deceptive light. A convenient plan for having peace in the
intellectual world, and keeping all things going on therein very much as they do al-
ready. But the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of
the entire moral courage of the human mind. A state of things in which a large por-
tion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the genuine
principles and grounds of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in
what they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own conclusions
to premises which they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fear-
less characters, and logical consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking
world.
·
The sort of men who can be looked for under it are either mere conformers to
commonplace or time-servers for truth, whose arguments on all great subjects are
meant for their hearers, and are not those which have convinced themselves. Those
who avoid this alternative do so by narrowing their thoughts and interest to things
which can be spoken of without venturing within the region of principles-that is, to
small practical matters which would come right of themselves if but the minds of
mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be made effectually
right until then-while that which would strengthen and enlarge men's minds, free
and daring speculation on the higher subjects, is abandoned.
On the Laws against Intemperance.
Under the name of preventing intemperance, the people of one English colony,
and of nearly half the United States, have been interdicted by law from making any
use whatever of fermented drinks, except for medical purposes; for prohibition of
their sale is, in fact, as it is intended to be, prohibition of their use. And though the
MILL.]
271
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
impracticability of executing the law has caused its repeal in several of the states which
had adopted it, including the one from which it derives its name, an attempt has not-
withstanding been commenced, and is prosecuted with considerable zeal by many of
the professed philanthropists, to agitate for a similar law in this country. The asso-
ciation, or Alliance,' as it terms itself, which has been formed for this purpose, has
acquired some notoriety through the publicity given to a correspondence between its
secretary and one of the very few English public men who hold that a politician's
opinions ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley's share in this correspond-
euce is calculated to strengthen the hopes already built on him, by those who know
how rare such qualities as are mauifested in some of his public appearances, un-
happily are among those who figure in political life. The organ of the Alliance, who
would deeply deplore the recognition of any principle which could be wrested to
justi y bigotry and persecution,' undertakes to point out the broad and impassable
All matters
barrier' which divides such principles from those of the association.
relating to thought, opinion. couscience, appear to me,' he says, to be without the
sphere of legislation; all pertaining to social act, habit, relation, subject only to a
discretionary power vested in the state itself, aud not in the individual to be
within it.' No mention is made of a third class, different from either of these-
namely, acts and habits which are not social, but individual-although it is to this
class, surely, that the act of drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling fermented
liquors, however, is trading, and trading is a social act. But the infringement com-
plained of is not on the liberty of the seller, but on that of the buyer and consumer;
since the state might just as well forbid him to drink wine, as purposely make it im-
possible for him to obtain it. The secretary, however, says: "I claim, as a citizen,
a right to legislate whenever my social rights are invaded by the social act of another.'
And now for the definition of these social rights.' If anything invades my social
rights, certainly the traffic in strong drink does. It destroys my primary right of
security, by constantly creating and stimulating social disorder. It invades my right
of equality by deriving a profit from the creation of a misery I am taxed to support.
It impedes my right to free moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my
path with dangers, and by weakening and demoralising society, from which I have a
right to claim mutual aid and intercourse.' A theory of social rights,' the like of
which probably never before found its way into distinct language; being nothing
short of this-that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other
individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof
in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to demand from the
legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dan-
gerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty
which it would no: justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever, ex-
cept, perhaps, to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them; for
the moment an opinion which I consider noxious passes any one's lips, it invades all
the social rights' attributed to me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all
mankind a vested interest in each other's moral, intellectual, and even physical per-
fectiou, to be defined by each claimant according to his own standard.
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The Limits of Government Interference.
The objections to Government interference, when it is not such as to involve in-
fringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.
The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better done by individuals
than by the government. Speaking generally, there is no one so fit to conduct any
business, or to determine how or by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are
personally interested in it. This principle condemns the interferences, once so com-
mon. of the legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary processes of
industry. But this part of the subject has been sufficiently enlarged upon by political
economists, and is not particularly related to the principles of this essay.
The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In many cases, though
individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on the average, as the officers of
government, it is nevertheless desirable that it should be done by them, rather than
by the government, as a means to their own mental education-a mode of strength-
ening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar
knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal. This is a principal,
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though not the sole, recommendation of jury trial (in cases not political); of free and
popular local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of industrial and philan-
thropic enterprises by voluntary associations. These are not questions of
liberty, and are connected with that subject only by remote tendencies; but
they are questions of development. It belongs to a different occasion from
the present to dwell on these things as parts of national education; as
being, in truth, the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of
the political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow circle
of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the comprehension of
joint interests, the management of joint concerns-habituating them to act from
public or semi-public motives, and guide their conduct by aims which unite instead
of isolating them from one another. Without these habits and powers, a free con-
stitution can neither be worked nor preserved; as is exemplified by the too often
transitory nature of political freedom in countries where it does not rest upon a suf-
ficient basis of local liberties. The management of purely local business by the local-
ities, and of the great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily
supply the pecuniary means, is further recommended by all the advantages which
have been set forth in this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and
diversity of modes of action. Government operations tend to be everywhere alike.
With individuals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied experi-
ments, and endless diversity of experience. What the State can usefully do is to
make itself a central depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience
resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit,
by the experiments of others; instead of tolerating no experiments but its own.

The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government,
is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to
those already exercised by the governnient, causes its influence over hopes and fears
to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious
part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which ains
at becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance
offices, the great joint stock companies, the universities, and the public charities,
were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corpora-
tions and local boards, with all that now devolves ou them, became departments of
the central administration; if the employés of all these different enterprises were ap-
pointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in
life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature
would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name.
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Mr. Mill held the office long possessed by his father, that of Ex-
aminer of Indian Correspondence, India House. On the dissolution
of the East India Company, 1859, he retired with a liberal provision,
and, we may add, with universal respect. Subsequently he pub-
lished Considerations on Representative Government,' 1861; 'Util-
itarianism,' 1862; Comte and Positivism,' and Examination of Sir
William Hamilton's Philosophy,' 1865; England and Ireland,' 1868;
The Subjection of Women,' 1869. Mr. Mill was returned to the
House of Commons as one of the members for Westminster, and re-
tained his seat for about three years, from 1865 to 1868. As a politi-
cian, he acted with the Liberal party, but made little impression on
the House or the country. He was aware, he said, of the weak points
in democracy, as well as in Conservatism, and was in favour of a
plurality of votes annexed to education, not to property. His
speeches on Ireland and the Irish Land Question were published.
Mr. Mill died at Avignon in 1873. Shortly after his death appeared
his Autobiography,' one of the most remarkable narratives in
the language. He was trained by his father with extraordinary
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care. He had no recollection of beginning to learn Greek, and be-
fore he was eight years old he had read in Herodotus, Xenophon,
and Plato, and had devoured such English books as the histories of
Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. My father,' he added, 'never per-
mitted anything which I learned to degenerate into a mere exercise
of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along
with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it.' The father
had entirely given up religious belief. Though educated in the Scotch
creed of Presbyterianism, he had come to reject not only the belief in
revelation, but the foundations of what is commonly called natural re-
ligion. Hence the son received no religious instruction. I grew up,'
he says, 'in a negative state with regard to it: I looked upon the modern
exactly as I d d upon the ancient religion, as something which in no
way concerned me.' The result of this system of education and un-
belief was not favourable. The elder Mill thought human life a
poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied
curiosity had gone by;' and the son fell into a state of mental depres-
sion, the habit of analysis having worn away feeling and pleasure in
the ordinary objects of human desire. He never seems to have pos-
sessed the vivacity and tenderness of youth; in his autobiography he
does not once mention his mother. At length he became acquainted
with a married lady, a Mrs. Taylor, of whom he speaks in the most
extravagant terms, comparing her to Shelley in her general spiritual
characteristics as well as in temperament and organisation; but in
thought and intellect the poet,' he says, so far as his powers were
developed in his short life, was but a child to what she ulti-
mately became.' This lady was to Mill an object of idolatry—a
being that seemed to supply the want of religion and veneration.
After twenty years of Platonic affection, and the death of Mr. Tay-
lor, she became the wife of the philosopher. He adds: For seven
years and a half that blessing was mine; for seven and a half only!
I could say nothing which could describe, even in the faintest manner,
what that loss was and is. But because I know that she would have
wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I have left, and
to work for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be
derived from thoughts of her, and communion with her memory.'
He survived her about fifteen years.
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SIR DAVID BREWSTER.
The writings of SIR DAVID BREWSTER present a remarkable
union of the man of science with the man of letters. The experi-
mental philosopher is seldom a master of rhetoric; but Sir David,
far beyond the appointed period of threescore-and-ten, was full of
fancy and imagination, and had a copious and flowing style. This
eminent man was a native of Jedburgh, born in 1781. His father
was rector of the grammar-school of Jedburgh. David, his second
son, was educated for the Scottish Church, was licensed by the Presby-
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
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tery of Edinburgh, and preached occasionally. He soon, however,
devoted himself to science. In his twenty-fourth year he edited Fergu-
son's 'Lectures on Astronomy;' and five years afterwards, in 1810, he
commenced the Edinburgh Encyclopædia,' which was continued at
intervals until 1828, when it had reached eighteen volumes. In 1813
he published a treatise on New Philosophical Instruments,' and he
afterwards commenced the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal' and
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the Edinburgh Journal of Science.' Among his other works are-
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A Treatise on the Kaleidoscope, 1818; Notes to Robison's System
of Mechanical Philosophy,' 1822; Euler's Lectures and Life, 1823;
a Treatise on Optics,' 1831; Letters on Natural Magic,' 1831; The
Martyrs of Science' (lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler);
Treatise on the Microscope;' More Worlds than One,' 1854;
&c. The contributions of Sir David Brewster to scientific and
literary journals would fill at least a score of volumes. A list of his
scientific papers extends to 315 in number, and he contributed 74
articles to the North British Review. His work, More Worlds
than One,' is a reply to the treatise ascribed to Professor Whewell,
on the Plurality of Worlds.' This subject had been fancifully
treated by Fontenelle, and was a favourite source of speculation
during the last century, but it is one evidently destitute of scientific
proof. Inductive philosophy disowned it and it belonged only to the
region of speculation. Dr. Chalmers conceived that there were
strong analogies in favour of such an opinion, while Dr. Whewell, on
the other hand, laboured to reduce such analogies to their true value.
We cannot materialise them, or conceive of beings differing from our
own knowledge and experience. Truth and falsehood, right and
wrong, law and transgression, happiness and misery, reward and
punishment, are the necessary elements of all that can interest us-
of all that we can call government. To transfer these to Jupiter or
to Sirius, is merely to imagine those bodies to be a sort of island of
Formoso, or New Atlantis, or Utopia, or Platonic polity, or some-
thing of the kind.' Sir David Brewster took the opposite side,
maintaining that even the sun may be inhabited by beings having pur-
suits similar to those on earth. The following is part of his argu-
ment respecting another planet:
Is the Planet Jupiter Inhabited?
In studying this subject, persons who have only a superficial knowledge of
astronomy, though firmly believing in a plurality of worlds, have felt the force of
certain objections, or rather difficulties, which naturally present themselves to the
inquirer. The distance of Jupiter from the sun is so great, that the light and heat
which he receives from that luminary are supposed to be incapable of sustaining the
same animal and vegetable life which exists on the earth. If we consider the heat
upon any planet as arising solely from the direct rays of the sun, the cold upon
Jupiter must be very intense, and water could not exist upon its surface in a fluid
state. Its rivers and its seas must be tracks and fields of ice. But the temperature
of a planet depends upon other causes-upon the condition of its atmosphere, and
upon the internal heat of its mass. The temperature of our own globe decreases as
we rise in the atmosphere and approach the sun, and it increases as we descend
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BREWSTER. ¡
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ENGLISH LITERATURE.
into the bowels of the earth and go further from the sun. In the first of these
cases, the increase of heat as we approach the surface of the earth from a great
height in a balloon, or from the summit of a lofty mountain is produced by its
atmosphere; and in Jupiter the atmosphere may be so formed as to compensate to
a certain extent the diminution in the direct heat of the sun arising from the great
distance of the planet. In the second case, the internal heat of Jupiter may be
such as to keep its rivers and seas in a fluid state, and maintain a temperature sufti-
ciently genial to sustain the same animal and vegetable life which exists upon our
own globe. These arrangements, however, if they are required, and have been
adopted, cannot contribute to increase the feeble light which Jupiter receives from
the sun; but in so far as the purposes of vision are concerned, an enlargement of
the pupil of the eye, and an increased sensibility of the retina, would be amply
sufficient to make the sun's light as brilliant as it is to us. The feeble light re-
flected from the moons of Jupiter would then be equal to that which we derive
from our own, even if we do not adopt the hypothesis, which we shall afterwards
have occasion to mention, that a brilliant phosphorescent light may be excited in
the satellites by the action of the solar rays. Another difficulty has presented itself,
though very unnecessarily, in reference to the shortness of the day in Jupiter. A
day of ten hours has been supposed insufficient to afford that period of rest which is
requisite for the renewal of our physical functions when exhausted with the labours
of the day. This objection. however, has no force. Five hours of rest are surely
sufficient for five hours of labour; and when the inhabitants of the temperate zone
of our own globe reside, as many of them have done, for years in the arctic regions,
where the length of the days and nights is so unusual, they have been able to perform
their usual functions as well as in their native climates. A difficulty, however, of a
more serious kind is presented by the great force of gravity upon so gigantic a planet
as Jupiter. The stems of plants, the materials of buildings, the human body itself,
would, it is imagined, be crushed by their own enormous weight. This apparently form-
idable objection will be removed by an accurate calculation of the force of gravity
upon Jupiter, or of the relative weight of bodies on its surface. The mass of Jupiter
is 1230 times greater than that of the earth. so that if both planets consisted of the
same kind of matter, a man weighing 150 pounds on the surface of the earth would
weigh 150X1200, or 180,000 pounds, at a distance from Jupiter's centre equal to the
earth's radius. But as Jupiter's radius is eleven times greater than that of the earth,
the weight of bodies on his surface will be diminished in the ratio of the square of
his radius-that is, in the ratio of 11x11. or 121 to 1. Consequently, if we divide
180,000 pounds by 121. we shall have 1487 pounds as the weight of a man of 150 pounds
on the surface of Jupiter-that is, less than ten times his weight on the earth. But
the matter of Jupiter is much lighter than the matter of our earth, in the ratio of 24
to 100, the numbers which represent the densities of the two planets, so that if we di-
minish 1487 pounds in the ratio of 24 to 100, or divide it by 417, we shall have 312
pounds as the weight of a man on Jupiter, who weighs on the earth only 150 pounds
that is, only double his weight-a difference which actually exists between many
individuals on our own planet. A man, therefore, constituted like ourselves, could
exist without inconvenience upon Jupiter; and plants, and trees, and buildings, such
as occur on our own earth, could grow and stand secure in so far as the force of
gravity is concerned.
A more recent astronomer, MR. RICHARD A. PROCTOR, differs
from Sir David Brewster as to the planet Jupiter. The careful study
of the planets Jupiter and Saturn has shewn him, he says, that any
theory regarding them as the abode of life-that is, of any kind of
life in the least resembling the forms we are familiar with-is alto-
gether untenable. In the case of
In the case of Mars and Venus, he considers the
theory of life at least plausible.
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Clearest evidence shews how our earth was once a fluid haze of
light, and how for countless æons afterwards her globe was instinct
with fiery heat, amidst which no form of life could be conceived to
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
exist, after the manner of life known to us, though the germs of life
may have been present. Then followed ages in which the earth's
glowing crust was drenched by showers of muriatic, nitric, and sul-
phuric acid, not only intensely hot, but fiercely burning through
their chemical activity. Only after periods infinite to our concep-
tions could life such as we know it, or even in the remotest degree
like what is known to us, have begun to exist upon the earth.`
Jupiter he considers to be in this burning state. We see that his
whole surface is enwrapped in cloud-layers of enormous depth, and
undergoing changes which imply an intense activity, or in other
words, an intense heat throughout his whole mass. He is as yet far
from the life-bearing state of planetary existence; ages must elapse
before life can be possible. Mars, on the other hand, is at a later stage
of its existence, far on its way towards the same state of decrepitude
as the moon. Of course, no certainty can be attained as to the sup-
posed plurality of worlds. We have only thoughts that wander
through eternity.'
More popular than any of Sir David Brewster's writings was the in-
strument named the kaleidoscope, invented by Brewster in the year
1816. 'This beautiful little toy, with its marvellous witcheries of
light and colour, spread over Europe and America with a furor
which is now scarcely credible. Although he took out a patent, yet,
as it often has happened in this country, the invention was quickly
pirated.' Sir David received the honour of knighthood in 1831. He
continued his studies and experiments, with scarcely a day's interrup-
tion, until his eighty-sixth year. A few days before his death Sir
James Simpson, the eminent physician, expressed a hope that he
might yet rally. Why, Sir James, should you hope that?' he said,
with much animation. "The machine has worked for above eighty
years, and it is worn out. Life has been very bright to me, and now
there is the brightness beyond.' He did February 10, 1867, and was
interred in the cathedral burying-ground at Melrose.
¿
*
Bacon and Newton.
In the economy of her distributions, nature is seldom thus lavish of her intellec-
tual gifts. The inspired genius which creates is rarely conferred along with the
matured judgment which combines, and yet without the exertion of both, the fabric
of human wisdom could never have been reared. Though a ray from heaven kindled
the vestal fire, yet a humble priesthood was required to keep alive the flame.
The method of investigating truth by observation and experiment, so successfully
pursued in the Principia, has been ascribed by some modern writers of great celeb-
rity to Lord Bacon; and Sir Isaac Newton is represented as having owed all his dis-
coveries to the application of the principles of that distinguished writer. One of the
greatest admirers of Lord Bacon has gone so far as to characterise him as a man who
has had no rival in the times which are past, and as likely to have none in those which
are to come. In a eulogy so overstrained as this, we feel that the language of pane-
gyric has passed into that of idolatry; and we are desirous of weighing the force of
* Science Byways (London, 1876), an interesting volume of esays on scientific sub-
jects popularly treated.
↑ The Home Life of Sir David Brewster, by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon, 1869.
PROCTOR.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Dryky
arguments which tend to depose Newton from the high-priesthood of nature, and to
unsettle the proud destinies of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler.
That Bacon was a man of powerful genius, and endowed with varied and pro-
found talent-the most skilful logician, the most nervous and eloquent writer of the
age which he adorned-are points which have been established by universal suffrage.
The study of ancient systems had early impressed him with the conviction that ex-
periment and observation were the only sure guides in physical inquiries; and, ignor-
ant though he was of the methods, the principles, and the details of the mathemati-
cal sciences, his ambition prompted him to aim at the construction of an artificial
system by which the laws of nature might be investigated, and which might direct the
inquiries of philosophers in every future age. The necessity of experimental re-
search, and of advancing gradually from the study of facts to the determination of
their cause, though the groundwork of Bacon's method, is a doctrine which was
not only inculcated but successfully followed by preceding philosophers. In a letter
from Tycho Brabé to Kepler, this industrious astronomer urges his pupil to lay a solid
foundation for his views by actual observation, and then by ascending from these to
strive to reach the causes of things;' and it was no doust under the influence of this
advice that Kepler submitted his wildest fancies to the test of observation, and was
conducted to his most splendid discoveries. The reasonings of Copernicus, who pre-
ceded Bacon by more than a century, were all founded upon the most legitimate in-
duction. Dr. Gilbert had exhibited in his treatise on the magnet the most perfect speci-
men of physical research. Leonardo da Vinci had described in the clearest manner the
proper method of philosophical investigation; and the whole scientific career of Galileo
was one continued example of the most sagacious application of observation and ex-
periment to the discovery of general laws. The names of Paracelsus, Van Helmont
and Cardan have been ranged in opposition to this constellation of great names, and
while it is admitted that even they had thrown off the yoke of the schools, and had
succeeded in experimental research, their credulity and their pretensions have been
adduced as a proof that to the bulk of philosophers' the method of induction was
unknown. The fault of this argument consists in the conclusion being infinitely
more general than the fact. The errors of these men were not founded on their
ignorance, but on their presumption. They wanted the patience of philosophy and
not her methods. An excess of vanity, a waywardness of fancy, and an insatiable
appetite for that species of passing fame which is derived from eccentricity of opin-
ion, moulded the reasonings and disfigured the writings of these ingenious men; and
it can scarcely admit of a doubt, that had they lived in the present age, their philo-
sophical character would have received the same impress from the peculiarity of their
tempers and dispositions. This is an experiment, however, which cannot now be
made; but the history of modern science supplies the defect, and the experience of
every man furnishes a proof that in the present age there are many philosophers
of elevated talents and inventive genius who are as impatient of experimental
research as Paracelsus, as fanciful as Cardan, and as presumptuous as Van Helmont.
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Having thus shewn that the distinguished philosophers who flourished before.
Bacon were perfect masters both of the principles and practice of inductive research,
it becomes interesting to inquire whether or not the philosophers who succeeded
him acknowledged any obligation to his system, or derived the slightest advantage
from his precepts. If Bacon constructed à method to which modern science owes
its existence, we shall find its cultivators grateful for the gift, and offering the richest
incense at the shrine of a benefactor whose generous labours conducted them to
immortality. No such testimonies, however, are to be fonud. Nearly two hundred
years have gone by, teeming with the richest fruits of human genius, and no grate-
ful disciple has appeared to vindicate the rights of the alleged legislator of science.
Even Newton, who was born and educated after the publication of the Novum
Organon,' never mentions the name of Bacon or his system, and the amiable and
indefatigable Boyle treated him with the same disrespectful silence. When we are
told therefore, that Newton owed all his discoveries to the method of Bacon, nothing
more can be meant than that he proceeded in that path of observation and experi-
ment which had been so warmly recommended in the Novum Organon;' but it ought
to have been added, that the same method was practised by his predecessors-that
Newton possessed no secret that was not used by Galileo and Copernicus-and that
he would have enriched science with the same splendid discoveries if the name and
the writings of Bacon had never been heard of.
(
¿
278
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
Lord Macaulay's epitaph on an English Jacobite (see ante), was
much admired by Sir David Brewster, but he was dissatisfied with
the want of Christian resignation expressed in it, and he wrote the
following imitation-not much inferior to Macaulay:
Epitaph on a Scotch Jacobite.
To Scotland's king I knelt in homage true,
My heart-my all I gave-my sword I drew;
For him I trod Culloden's bloody plain,
And lost the name of father 'mongst its slain.
Chased from my hearth I reached a foreign shore,
My native mountains to behold no more-
No more to listen to Tweed's silver stream-
No more among its glades to love and dream,
Save when in sleep the restless spirit roams
Where Melrose crumbles, and where Gala foams
To that bright fane where plighted vows were paid,
Or that dark aisle where all I loved was laid;
And yet methought I 've heard 'neath Terni's walls,
The fevered pulse of Foyers' wilder falls,
On seen in Tiber's wave my Leader flow,
And heard the southern breeze from Eildon blow.
Childless and widowed on Albano's shore,
I roamed an exile till life's dream was o'er-
Till God, whose trials blessed my wayward lot,
Gave me the rest-the early grave-I sought:
Shewed me, o'er death's dark vale, the strifeless shore
With wife, and child, and king, to part no more.
O patriot wanderer, mark this ivied stone,
Learn from its story what may be thine own:
Should tyrants chase thee from thy hills of blue,
And sever all the ties to nature true,
The broken heart may heal in life's last hour
When hope shall still its throbs, and faith exert her power.
MICHAEL FARADAY.
In electricity and magnetism valuable discoveries were made by
MICHAEL FARADAY (1791-1867) a native of Newington, in Surrey,
the son of a poor blacksmith, who could only give his son the bare
rudiments of education. He was apprenticed to a bookbinder, and
early began to make experiments in chemistry and electricity. He
had attended Sir Humphry Davy's lectures, and taken notes which
he transmitted to Sir Humphry, desiring his assistance to escape
from trade and enter into the service of science.' Through Davy's
exertions he was appointed chemical assistant in the Royal Institu-
tion in 1813. In 1824 he was admitted a member of the Royal Soci-
ety. In 1831, the first series of his 'Experimental Researches in
Electricity' was read before the Royal Society-a work which was
continued to 1856, and afterwards published separately in four vol-
umes. For many years he gave lectures at the Royal Institution,
which were highly popular from the happy simplicity of his style
and his successful illustrations. His publications on physical sci-
ence are numerous. In 1835 a pension was conferred on Faraday.
At first, it is said, Lord Melbourne, then premier, denounced all
<
FARADAY.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
279
such scientific pensions as humbug, upon which Faraday wrote to
him: 'I could not, with satisfaction to myself, accept at your lord-
ship's hands that which, though it has the form of approbation, is
of the character which your lordship so pithily applied to it.' Lord
Melbourne explained, and the pension was granted.
Faraday was a simple, gentle, cheerful man of genius, of strong re-
ligious feeling* and unassuming manners. His Life and Letters,' by
Dr. Bence Jones, two volumes, 1869, and Faraday as a Discoverer,'
The latter considers Fara-
by Mr. Tyndall, are interesting works.
day to have been the greatest experimental philosopher the world has
ever seen, and he describes his principal discoveries under four dis-
tinct heads or groups-magno-electric induction, the chemical pheno-
mena of the current, the magnetisation of light (which,' says Tyndall,
'I should liken to the Weisshorn among mountains-high, beautiful,
and al 'ne'), and diamagnetism. Faraday used to say that it required
twenty years of work to make a man in physical science; the previ-
ous period being one of infancy. When lecturing before a private
society on the element chlorine, Faraday, as Professor Tyndall tells
us, thus expressed himself with reference to the question of utility:
Before leaving this subject I will point out the history of this sub-
stance, as an answer to those who are in the habit of saying to every
What
new fact, What is its use?" Dr. Franklin says to such,
is the use of an infant?" The answer of the experimentalist is, “En-
deavour to make it useful.""
4
CA
CC
<
<
From Chemical History of a Candle.'
What is all this process going on within us which we cannot do without, eithe-
day or night, which is so provided for by the Author of all things, that He has ar
ranged that it shall be independent of all will? If we restrain our respiration, as
we can to a certain extent, we should destroy ourselves. When we are asleep, the
organs of respiration, and the parts that are associated with them, still go on with
their action, so necessary is this process of respiration to us, this contact of air with
the lungs. I must tell you in the briefest possible manner, what this process is. We
consume food: the food goes through that strange set of vessels and organs within
us, and is brought into various parts of the system, into the digestive parts
especially; and alternately the portion which is so changed is carried through
our lungs by one set of vessels, while the air that we inhale and exhale is drawn
into and thrown out of the lungs by another set of vessels, so that the air and the
food come close together, separated only by an exceedingly thin surface: the air
can thus act upon the blood by this process, producing precisely the same results in
kind as we have seen in the case of the candle. The candle combines with parts of
the air, forming carbonic acid, and evolves heat; so in the lungs there is this curious,
wonderful change taking place. The air entering, combines with the carbon (not
carbon in a free state, but, as in this case, placed ready for action at the moment.),
and makes carbonic acid, and is so thrown out into the atmosphere, and thus this
singular result takes place: we may thus look upon the food as fuel. Let me take
that piece of sugar, which will serve my purpose. It is a compound of carbon, hy-
He was of a small sect called Sandemanians. who endeavour to keep up the simple
forms and unworldliness of the primitive Christians, with certain views concerning
saving faith and charity,
280
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
drogen, and oxygen, similar to a candle, as containing the same elements, though
not in the same proportion; the proportions in sugar being as shewn in this table:
Carbor...
Hydrogen.
Oxygen.
..72
C
.11) 99
88)
•
This is, indeed, a very curious thing, which you can well remember, for the oxygen
and hydrogen are in exactly the proportions which form water, so that sugar may be
said to be compounded of 72 parts of carbon and 99 parts of water; and it is the car-
bon in the sugar that combines with the oxygen carried in by the air in the process
of respiration, so making us like candles; producing these actions, warmth, and far
more wonderful results besides, for the sustenance of the system, by a most beauti-
ful and simple process. To make this still more striking, I will take a little sugar;
or to hasten the experiment I will use some syrup, which contains about three-
fourths of sugar and a little water. If I put a little oil of vitriol on it, it takes away
the water, and leaves the carbon in a black mass. (The Lecturer mixed the two to-
gether.) You see how the carbon is coming out, and before long we shall have a
solid mass of charcoal, all of which has come out of sugar. Sugar, as you know, is
food, and here we have absolutely a solid lump of carbon where you would not have
expected it. And if I make arrangements so as to oxidise the carbon of sugar, we
shall have a much more striking result. Here is sugar, and I have here an oxidiser-
a quicker one than the atmosphere; and so we shall oxidise this fuel by a process
different from respiration in its form, though not different in its kind. It is the com-
bustion of the carbon by the contact of oxygen which the body has supplied to it. If
I set this into action at once, you will see combustion produced. Just what occurs
in my lungs-taking in oxygen from another source, namely, the atmosphere-takes
place here by a more rapid process.
You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts
to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must
be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid !
What a quantity of carbon must go from each of us in respiration! What a won-
derful change of carbon must take place under these circumstances of combustion
or respiration! A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of
carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse
seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twenty-
four hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respi-
ration, to supply his natural warmth in that time. All the warm-blooded animals
get their warmth in this way, by the conversion of carbon, not in a free state, but
in a state of combination. And what an extraordinary notion this gives us of the
alterations going on in our atmosphere. As much as five million pounds, or 548
tons, of carbonic acid is formed by respiration in London alone in twenty-four
hours. And where does all this go? Up into the air. If the carbon had been like
the lead which I shewed you, or the iron which. in burning, produces a solid sub-
stance, what would happen? Combustion could not go on. As charcoal burns it
becomes a vapour, and passes off into the atmosphere, which is the great vehicle,
the great carrier for conveying it away to other places. Then what becomes of it ?
Wonderful is it to find that the change produced by respiration. which seems so
injurious to us (for we cannot breathe air twice over), is the very life and support of
plants and vegetables that grow upon the surface of the earth. It is the same also
under the surface, in the great bodies of water; for fishes and other animals respire
upon the same principle, though not exactly by contact with the open air.
AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN.
This distinguished mathematician and teacher (1806-1871) was
born at Madura, in Southern India, son of Colonel de Morgan of
the Madras army.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge,
and studied for the bar, but in 1828 was appointed Professor of Mathe-
matics in the University of London. Professor de Morgan contributed
largely to the Penny Cyclopædia,' 'Notes and Queries,' 'Athe-
DE MORGAN.]
281
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
>
næum, &c. Among his works are- Elements of Arithmetic,' 1830;
Elements of Algebra, 1835; Elements of Trigonometry, 1837;
Essay on Probabilities,' 1838; Formal Logic,' 1847; &c. In 1858
Professor de Morgan contributed to Notes and Queries' some clever
and amusing strictures on Swift's Gulliver's Travels,' an extract
from which we subjoin
C
"
•
L
(
{
(
>
Dean Swift and the Mathematicians.
Swift's satire is of course directed at the mathematicians of his own day. His
first attack upon them is contained in the description of the flappers, by which the
absorbed philosophers were recalled to common life when it was necessary. Now
there is no proof that, in Swift's time or in any time, the mathematician, however
capable of withdrawing his thoughts while actually engaged in study, was apt to wan-
der into mathematics while employed in other business. No such thing is recorded
even of Newton, a man of uncommon power of concentration. The truth I believe
to be, that the power of bringing the whole man to bear on one subject which is fos-
tered by matheinatical study, is a power which can be, and is, brought into action on
any other subject; so that a person used to mathematical thought is deep in the con-
cern of the moment, totus in illo, more than another person; that is, less likely to
wander from the matter in hand.
Swift's technical knowledge is of a poor kind. According to him, beef and mut-
tou were served up in the shapes of equilateral triangles, rhomboids, and cycloids.
This beats the waiter who could cover Vauxhall Gardens with a ham. These plane
figures have no thickness: and I defy all your readers to produce a mathematician
who would be content with mutton of two dimensions. As to the bread, which ap-
peared in cones, cylinders, and parallelograms, the mathematicians would take the
cones and cylinders for themselves, and leave the parallelograms for Swift.
The tailor takes Gulliver's altitude by a quadrant, then measures all the dimen-
sions of his body by rule and compass, and brings home the clothes all out of shape,
by mistaking a figure in the calculation. Now, first, Swift imagines that the altitude
taken by a quadrant is a length, whereas it is an angle. It is awkward satire to re-
present the mathematician as using the quadrant to determine an accessible distance.
Next, what mathematician would use calculation when he had all his results on
paper, obtained by rule and compass? Had Swift lived in our day, he would have
made the tailor measure the length of Gulliver's little finger, and then set up the
whole body by calculation, just as Cuvier or Owen would set up some therium or
saurus with no datum except the end of a toe.
or
Is not Professor de Morgan somewhat hypercritical? When Swift
used those mathematical terms, we may believe he did so in mere
sportiveness, and that he did not, in the shapes of his beef and mut-
ton, ignorantly exclude substance. When he says there was a
shoulder of mutton cut into an equilateral triangle, it seems to us
that the whole fun lay in the choice of that figure. He means a
pyramid, each face of which is an equilateral triangle. There is,
used to be, in the confectioners' shops a certain comfit known as a
triangular puff, which the children would care little for if it had no
substance! So when the satirist talks of cutting a piece of beef into
a rhomboid, it is into a rhomboidal form, as we have rhomboidal
crystals, rhomboidal leaves in plants, and so on: the meat is not
annihilated, into whatever surface figure you cut it. The story of
the tailor who took Gulliver's measure by a quadrant, refers, we be-
lieve, to a blunder made by Sir Isaac Newton's printer, who, by
carelessly adding a cipher to the astronomer's computation of the
282
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
distance between the sun and the earth, had increased it to an
enormous amount.
DR. ALEXANDER BAIN.
Treatises on The Senses and the Intellect,' 1855; The Emotions
and the Will,' 1859; Mental and Moral Science,' 1868; and 'Logic,
Deductive and Inductive,' have been published by DR. BAIN, Pro-
fessor of Logic in the unversity of Aberdeen. These are able works,
and Professor Bain has written various text-books on astronomy,
electricity, meteorology, grammar, &c. The professor is a native of
Aberdeen, born in 1818; in 1845 he was appointed to the Professor-
ship of Natural Philosophy in the Andersonian University, Glasgow.
In the latest work of Dr. Bain's we have seen, Mind and Body:
Theories on their Relation,' 1873, he gives an account of the various
theories of the soul, and the general laws of alliance of mind and
body.
(
<
The arguments for the two substances have, we believe, now en-
tirely lost their validity: they are no longer compatible with ascer-
tained science and clear thinking. The one substance with two sets
of properties, two sides, the physical and the mental-a double-faced
unity-would appear to comply with all the exigencies of the case.
We are to deal with this, as in the language of the Athanasian creed,
not confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance. The mind
is destined to be a double study-to conjoin the mental philosopher
with the physical philosopher; and the momentary glimpse of Aris-
totle is at last converted into a clear and steady vision.'
ROBERT STEPHENSON.
This eminent engineer, son of George Stephenson, was born at
Willington, December 16, 1803. He was educated partly at the uni-
versity of Edinburgh, and early displayed a decided inclination for
mechanics and science. He laboured successfully to bring the rail-
1 ay locomotive to its present perfection. To his genius and perse-
verance, aided by the practical knowledge of Mr. (afterwards Sir
William Fairbairn), we also owe the principle of the tubular bridge.
characterised as 'the greatest discovery in construction in our day.'
At the Menai Strait, two spaces of four hundred and sixty feet in
width are spanned by these iron tubes. The high-level bridge over
the Tyne at Newcastle, the viaduct (supposed to be the largest in the
world) over the Tweed valley at Berwick, and the Victoria tubular
bridge over the St. Lawrence, near Montreal, are among the most
celebrated of Mr. Stephenson's works. He was also largely engaged
in foreign railways. Like his father, he declined the honour of
knighthood. Mr. Stephenson was author of a work On the Loco-
motive Steam-engine,' and another On the Atmospheric Railway
System.' He died October 12, 1859, and was buried in Westminster
Abbey. It is worth noting, that as Lardner predicted that no steam-
C
STEPHENSON.]
283
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
vessel could cross the Atlantic, Stephenson considered that the Suez
Canal was an impossibility. I have surveyed the line; 1 have trav、
elled the whole distance on foot; and I declare there is no fall be-
tween the two seas. A canal is impossible; the thing would be only
a ditch!'
SIR WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN.
<
Some valuable works on the use of iron and engineering operations
have been published by SIR WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN, Bart. Among
these are Mills and Mill work;' 'Iron, its History and Manufacture;
'Application of Iron to Building Purposes;' 'Iron Ship-building;
&c. Sir William was a native of Kelso, Roxburghshire, born in 1789.
He was long established in Manchester, and engaged in various pub-
lic works. In the construction of the tubular bridge across the
Menai Strait, he was of great service to the engineer, Mr. Robert
Stephenson, and has drawn up Useful Information for Engineers,'
as to the strength of iron, iron ship-building, the collapse of tubes,
&c. This eminent engineer was chiefly self-taught. He died August
18, 1874.
<
SIR CHARLES WHEATSTONE.
In the application of electricity to the arts, CHARLES WHEATSTONE
-born at Gloucester in 1802 has been highly distinguished. The
idea of the electric telegraph had been propounded in the last
century, but it was not practically realised until the year 1837. The
three independent inventors are Mr. Morse of the United States, M.
Steinheil of Munich, and Mr. Wheatstone. Of these, the last has
shown the greatest perseverance and skill in overcoming difficulties.
To Wheatstone we also owe the invention of the stereoscope-that
beautiful accompaniment to art and nature. Professor Forbes says:
'Although Mr. Wheatstone's paper was published in the Philosophi-
cal Transactions' for 1838, and the stereoscope became at that time
known to men of science, it by no means attracted for a good many
years the attention which it deserves. It is only since it received a
convenient alteration of form-due, I believe, to Sir David Brewster
-by the substitution of lenses for mirrors, that it has become the popu-
lar instrument which we now see it, but it is not more suggestive than
it always was of the wonderful adaptations of the sense of sight."
The electric telegraph, however, is the great source of Wheatstone's
fame; and the late President of the Royal Society, the Marquis of
Northampton, on presenting him with the Society's medal in 1840,
said the honour had been conferred for the science and ingenuity
by which Professor Wheatstone had measured electrical velocity,
and by which he had also turned his acquaintance with galvanism
to the most important practical purposes.' His services to science
were further acknowledged by Her Majesty conferring upon him the
honour of knighthood (1868), and the university of Edinburgh
awarding him the honorary degree of LL.D.
284
[To 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
DR. BUCKLAND-SIR CHARLES LYELL, ETC.
Geology has had a host of discoverers and illustrators. One of
the earliest of English geologists was MR. WILLIAM SMITH, Who
published his 'Tabular View of the British Strata' in 1790, and con-
structed a geological map of England in 1815. He had explored the
whole country on foot. The first of the prize-medals of the Geolog-
ical Society was awarded to that gentleman in 1831, in considera-
tion,' as stated, 'of his being a great original discoverer in English
geology, and especially for his having been the first in this country
to discover and to teach the identification of strata, and to determine
their succession by means of their imbedded fossils.'*
?
<
The REV. DR. BUCKLAND (1784-1856), by his Vindicia Geo-
logicæ,' 1820, and Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,' 1823, and by various con-
tributions to the Geological Society, awakened public interest to the
claims of this science, although he advocated the old hypothesis of
the universality of the deluge, which he abandoned in his Bridge-
water Treatise' of 1836. His 'Geology and Mineralogy' was re-
printed in 1858, with additions by Professors Owen and Phillips,
and a memoir of the author by his son, Mr. Francis T. Buckland.
The indomitable energy of Buckland, in pursuing his researches and
collecting specimens of organic remains, is brought out fully in this
memoir, with an account of his exertions to procure the endowment
of a Readership in Geology at Oxford, which he accomplished in
1819. His invaluable museum he bequeathed to the university. It
may be noted, also, that the glacial theory, illustrated by Agassiz
and Professor James Forbes, was first promulgated by Dr. Buck-
land, who travelled over the north of England and the wilds of Scot-
land for proofs of glacial action. Sir Robert Peel rewarded the
labours of this ardent man of science by procuring his appointment
to the deanery of Westminster. In its now revised and improved
form, with additional plates of organic remains, Buckland's Geol-
ogy and Mineralogy' is the best general work on this interesting
study. Previous to its first publication, Mr., afterwards SIR
CHARLES LYELL, had published Principles of Geology,, being
an Attempt to Explain the former Changes of the Earth's Sur-
face by a Reference to Causes now in operation, two volumes,
1830-32. Additions and corrections have been made from time to
•
<
*
C
(
This, however. had been clearly indicated more than a century before by the
mathematician and natural philosopher, DR. ROBERT HOOKE (1635-1703.) In alec-
ture dated 1688, and published in Hooke's posthumous works, there occurs this strik-
ing prophetic passage; However trivial a thing a rotten shell may appear to some,
yet these monuments of nature are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or
inedals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design;
and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them-the records of
nature-and to raise a chronology out of them, and to state the intervals of time
wherein such or such catastrophe and mutations have happened, yet it is not impos-
sible. See Lyell's Principles. vol. i., in which the history of geological science is
traced. Also Conybeare's Outlines of the Geo ogy of England and Wales.
•
►
LYELL.]
283
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
time, and the eighth edition of the 'Principles,' entirely revised, 1850,
is a very complete and interesting work. But though introducing
recent facts, Sir Charles still adhered to his original theory, that the
forces now operating upon and beneath the earth's surface, are the
same both in kind and degree with those which, at remote epochs,
have worked out geological revolutions; or, in other words, that we
may dispense with sudden, violent, and general catastrophes, and
regard the ancient and present fluctuations of the inorganic world as
belonging to one continuous and uniform series of events.
C
In 1838 Sir Charles published his 'Elements of Geology,' since en-
larged to two volumes. He is author also of Travels in North
America, with Geological Observations on the United States, Cana-
da, and Nova Scotia,' two volumes, 1845; and Second Visit to the
United States of America in 1845,' two volumes, 1849.
volumes, 1849. These are
agreeable as well as instructive volumes, for Sir Charles was an ac-
complished literary artist, without betraying art in his composition.
This eminent geologist was a native of the county of Forfar, born
November 14, 1797, son of a Scottish landed proprietor of the same
name. He was created a baronet in 1864; and received the honorary
degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford. His great work,
The Principles of Geology,' first elevated geology to the dignity of
a science, and his latest important work on the Antiquity of Man,'
1863, has also had great influence on the thought and speculation of
the present generation. Sir Charles died 22d January 1875, and was
interred in Westminster Abbey.
C
Geology Compared to History.
We often discover with surprise, ou looking back into the chronicles of nations,
how the fortune of some battle has influenced the fate of millions of our contempo-
raries, when it has long been forgotten by the mass of the population. With this
remote event, we may find inseparably connected the geographical boundaries of a
great state, the language now spoken by the inhabitants, their peculiar manners,
laws, and religious opinions. But far more astonishing and unexpected are the con-
nections brought to light, when we carry back our researches into the history of
nature. The form of a coast, the configuration of the interior of a country, the ex-
istence and extent of lakes, valleys, and mountains can often be traced to the former
prevalence of earthquakes and volcanoes in regions which have long been undis-
turbed. To these remote convulsions, the present fertility of some districts, the
sterile character of others, the elevation of land above the sea, the climate, and various
peculiarities, may be distinctly referred. On the other hand, many distinguishing
features of the surface may often be ascribed to the operation, at a remote era, of
slow and tranquil canses-to the gradual deposition of sediment in a lake or in the
ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals.
To select another example; we find in certain localities subterranean deposits of
coal, consisting of vegetable matter formerly drifted into seas and lakes. These seas
and lakes have since been filled up; the lands whereon the forests grew have disap-
appeared or changed their form; the rivers and currents which floated the vegetable
masses can no longer be traced; and the plants belonged to species which for ages
have passed away from the surface of our planet. Yet the commercial prosperity
and numerical strength of a nation may Low be mainly dependent on the local dis-
tribution of fuel determined by that ancient state of things.
Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to
the moral. A historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with
ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word, with all branches
286
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intel-
lectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist
should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, compar-
ative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic
nature. With these accomplishments, the historian and geologist would rarely fail
to draw correct philosophical conclusions from the various monuments transmit ed
to them of former occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes
analogous effects were referrible, and they would often be enabled to supply, by in-
ference, information concerning many events unrecorded in the defective archives of
former ages. But as such extensive acquisitions are scarcely within the reach of any
individual, it is necessary that men who have devoted their lives to different depart-
inents should unite their efforts; and as the historian receives assistance from the anti-
quary, and from those who have cultivated different branches of moral and political
Science, so the geologist should avail himself of the aid of many naturalists, and par-
ticularly of those who have studied the fossil remains of lost species of animals and
plants.
The analogy, however, of the monuments consulted in geology, and those availa-
ble in history, extends no further than to one class of historical monuments-those
which may be said to be undesignedly commemorative of former events. The ca-
noes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat-bogs, afford an insight into
the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin
fixes the date of the reign of some Roman emperor; the ancient eucampment indi-
cates the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of con-
structing military defences; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of em-
balming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of the human race in ancient
Egypt. This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it constitutes
a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies, whereas in geology
it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason we
must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond
the reach of history. But the testimony of geological monuments, if frequently im-
perfect, possesses at least the advantage of being free from all suspicion of misrep-
resentation. We may be deceived in the inferences which we draw, in the same man-
ner as we often mistake the nature and import of phenomena observed in the daily
course of nature, but our liability to err is confined to the interpretation, and, if this
be correct, our information is certain.
·
The Great Earthquake of Lisbon in 1755.
In no part of the volcanic region of Southern Europe has so tremendous an earth-
quake occurred in modern times as that which began on the 1st of November 1755 at
Lisbon. A sound of thunder was heard underground, and immediately afterwards a
violent shock threw down the greater part of that city. In the course of about six
minutes, sixty thousand persous perished. The sea first retired and laid the bar dry;
it then rolled in, rising fitty feet above its ordinary level. The mountains of Arra-
bida, Estrella, Julio, Marvan, and Cintra, being some of the largest in Portugal, were
impetuously shaken, as it were, from their very foundations; and some of thein
opened at their summits, which were split and rent in a wonderful manner, huge
masses of them being thrown down into the subjacent valleys. Flames are related
to have issued from these mountains, which are supposed to have been electric; they
are also said to have smoked; but vast clouds of dust may have given rise to this
appearance.
The most extraordinary circumstance which occurred at Lisbon during the catas-
trophe, was the subsidence of a new quay, built entirely of marble at au immense
expense. A great concourse of people had collected there for safety, as a spot
where they might be beyond the reach of falling ruins: but suddenly the quay sank
down with all the people on it, and not one of the dead bodics ever floated to the sur-
face. A great number of boats and small vessels anchored near it, all full of people,
were swallowed up as in a whirlpool. No fragments of these wrecks ever rose
again to the surface, and the water in the place where the quay had stood is stated, in
many accounts, to be unfathomable; but Whitehurst says he ascertained it to be one
hundred fathoms.
In this case, we must either suppose that a certain tract sank down into a subter-
LYELL.]
28%
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ranean hollow, which would cause a 'fault' in the strata to the depth of six hundred
feet, or we may infer, as some have done, from the entire disappearance of the sub-
stances engulfed, that a chasm opened and closed again. Yet in adopting this latter
hypothesis, we must suppose that the upper part of the chasm, to the depth of one
hundred fathoms, remained open after the shock. According to the observations
made at Lisbon, in 1837, by Mr. Sharpe, the destroying effects of this earthquake
were confined to the tertiary strata, and were most violent on the blue clay, on which
the lower part of the city is constructed. Not a building, he says, on the secondary
limestone or the basalt was injured.
The great area over which this Lisbon earthquake extended is very remarkable.
The movement was most violent in Spain, Portugal, and the north of Africa; but
nearly the whole of Europe, and even the West Indies, felt the shock on the same
day. A seaport called St. Ubes, about twenty miles south of Lisbon, was engulfed.
At Algiers and Fez, in Africa, the agitation of the earth was equally violent; and at
the distance of eight leagues from Morocco, a village with the inhabitants to the
number of about eight or ten thousand persons, together with all their cattle, were
swallowed up. Soon after, the earth closed again over them.
The shock was felt at sea, on the deck of a ship to the west of Lisbon, and pro-
duced very much the same sensation as on dry land. Off St. Lucar, the captain of
the ship Nancy felt his vessel so violently shaken, that he thought she had struck the
ground, but, on heaving the lead, found a great depth of water. Captain Clark, from
Denia, in latitude 36° 24' N., between nine and fen in the morning, had his ship
shaken and strained as if she had struck upon a rock. Another ship, forty leagues
west of St. Vincent, experienced so violent a concussion, that the men were thrown a
foot and a half perpendicularly up from the deck. In Antigua and Barbadoes, as
also in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Corsica, Switzerland, and Italy, tremors
and slight oscillations of the ground were felt.
The agitation of lakes, rivers, and springs in Great Britain was remarkable. At
Loch Lomond, in Scotland, for example, the water, without the least apparent cause,
rose against its banks, and then subsided below its usual level. The greatest per-
dicular height of this swell was two feet four inches. It is said that the movement
of this earthquake was undulatory, and that it travelled at the rate of twenty miles a
minute. A great wave swept over the coast of Spain, and is said to have been sixty
feet high at Cadiz. At Tangier, in Africa, it rose and fell eighteen times on the coast;
at Funchal, in Madeira, it rose full fifteen feet perpendicular above high-water
mark, although the tide, which ebbs and flows there seven feet, was then at half-ebb.
Besides entering the city and committing great havoc, it overflowed other seaports in
the island. At Kinsale, in Ireland, a body of water rushed into the harbour, whirled
round several vessels, and poured into the market-place.
It was before stated that the sea first retired at Lisbon; and this retreat of the
ocean from the shore at the commencement of an earthquake, and its subsequent re-
turn in a violent wave, is a common occurrence. In order to account for the phe-
nomenon, Michell imagined a subsidence at the bottom of the sea from the giving
way of the roof of some cavity, in consequence of a vacuum produced by the con-
densation of steam. Such condensation, he observes, might be the first effect of
the introduction of a large body of water into fissures and cavities already filled
with steam, before there had been sufficient time for the heat of the incandescent
lava to turn so large a supply of water into steam, which, being soon accomplished,
causes a greater explosion.
<
Geological Notes' and 'Sections' were published in 1830 by SIR
HENRY THOMAS DE LA BECHE (1796–1855), and in 1832 a ‹ Manual of
Geology.' But his most valuable work is 'How to Observe: Geol-
ogy,' 1885. In 1851 Sir Henry published another work of the same
kind, The Geological Observer.' DR. GIDEON ALGERNON MANTELL
(1788-1852), an English physician, in 1832 published The Fossils of
the South Downs, which appeared simultaneously with the great
work of Cuvier and Brongniart on the Geology of the Environs of
Paris, and described also many of the organic remains of the chalk,
C
288
[To 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
...
¿
痛
​Dr. Mantell was the original demonstrator of the fresh-water
origin of the mass of Wealden beds, and the discoverer of the
mouster reptile Iguanodon, and other colossal allies. This emi-
nent paleontologist was author of two popular works-The Me-
dals of Creation,' and The Wonders of Geology.' DR. JOHN PYE
SMITH (1774-1857), in his work On the Relation between the Holy
Scriptures and some parts of Geological Science,' 1839, and the dis-
tinguished American geologist, DR. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, in his
· Elementary Geology,' 1841, anticipated the views of Hugh Miller
and others as to the interpretation of the Mosaic account of the crea-
tion and deluge-the latter being local, not universal.
With respect
to the deluge, Dr. Pye Smith forcibly remarks: All land-animals
having their geographical regions, to which their constitutional na-
tures are congenial-many of them being unable to live in any other
situation- -we cannot represent to ourselves the idea of their being
brought into one small spot from the polar regions, the torrid zone,
and all the other climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America,
Australia and the thousands of islands-their preservation and pro-
vision, and the final disposal of them-without bringing up the
idea of miracles more stupendous than any that are recorded in
Scripture.'
The REV. DR. HENRY DUNCAN (1774-1846) of Ruthwell, in Dum-
friesshire, is known as the founder of savings-banks in this country,
and he was the first to discover the footprints of animals, supposed to
be tortoises, on sandstone rocks in a quarry in Dumfriesshire. Dr.
Buckland, who followed up the search for fossil remains with so
much ardour, beautifully remarks of these footsteps before the
flood: The historian may have pursued the line of march of tri-
umphant conquerors whose armies trampled down the most mighty
kingdoms of the world. The winds and storms have utterly oblit-
erated the ephemeral impressions of their course. Not a track re-
mains of a single foot, or a single hoof of all the countless millions of
men and beasts whose progress spread desolation over the earth. But
the reptiles that crawled upon the half-finished surface of our infant
planet, have left memorials of their passage enduring and indelible.
C
?
SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON.
SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON simplified and extended the scl-
ence of geology, and proved one of its most indefatigable explorers,
In the districts of Hereford, Radnor, and Shropshire, large masses of
gray-coloured strata rise out from beneath the Old Red Sandstone;
and these rocks contain fossils differing from any which were known
in the upper deposits. Sir Roderick began to classify these rocks,
and after four years' labour, he assigned to them (1835) the name of
the Silurian System, as occupying the ancient Roman province of Si-
uria. Having first, in the year 1833,' says Sir Roderick, 'separated
C
MURCHISON.]
289
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
these deposits into four formations, and shewn that each is charac-
terized by peculiar organic remains, I next divided them (1834-35)
into a lower and upper group, both of which, I hoped, would be
found applicable to wide regions of the earth. After eight years of
labour in the field and the closet, the proofs of the truth of these
views were more fully published in the work entitled "The Silurian
System, 1839.' A further explanation of this system, embodying
later researches, was published by the author in 1854. entitled 'Silu-
ria, the History of the Oldest Known Rocks containing Organic Re-
mains.'
The Lower Silurian Rocks.
The geologist appeals to the book of nature, when leaves have undergone no
great alteration. He sees before him an enormous peos ries of early subaqueous
sediment originally composed of mud, sand, or pebbles, the successive bottoms of
a former sea, all of which have been derived from pre-existing rocks; and in these
lower beds, even where they are little altered, he can detect no remains of former
creatures. But lying upon them, and therefore evolved after, other strata succeed,
in which some few relics of a primeval ocean are discernible, and these again are
everywhere succeeded by newer deposits in which many fossils occur. In this way
evidences have been fairly obtained, to shew that the sediments which underlie the
strata containing the lowest fossil remains constitute, in all countries which have
been examined, the natural base or bottom rocks of the deposits termed Silurian.
In France, Germany, Spain, and the Mediterranean, in Scandinavia
and Russia, the same basis has been found for higher fossiliferous
rocks. Many years were spent by Sir Roderick, accompanied part
of the time by Professor Sedgwick, in Russia and other countries in
geologic explorations; and in 1846 he published The Geology of
Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains,' in which he was assisted
by E. de Verneuil and Count A. von Keyserling. Sir Roderick is
author of about a hundred separate memoirs, presented to scientific
societies, and he had the merit of pointing out the important fact
that gold must exist in Australia. This was in 1844, after inspect-
ing some specimens of Australian rocks brought to this country by
Count Streleczki, and comparing them with those of the auriferous
Ural Mountains with which he was personally well acquainted. His
observations were printed the same year (1844) in the journal of the
Royal Geographical Society. Two years afterwards, at a geological
meeting in Penzance, Sir Roderick urged the superabundant Cornish
tin-miners to emigrate to the colony of New South Wales, and there
obtain gold from the alluvial soil in the same manner as they ex-
tracted tin from the gravel of their native country. Again, in the
year 1846, when some specimens of Australian gold ore were sent to
him, he addressed a letter to Earl Grey, then secretary for the colo-
nies, stating his views as to the existence of rich gold-fields in the
colony.*
Sir Roderick also predicted (1854) that the present large
flow of gold into Europe from those tracts will begin to diminish
* Hargrave's Australia and its Goldfields, 1855
290
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
1
within a comparatively short period'—a result of which we have as
yet no indication.
The Relative Value of Gold and Silver.
The fear that gold may be greatly depreciated in value relatively to silver-a fear
which may have seized upon the minds of some of my readers-is unwarranted by the
data registered in the crust of the earth. Gold is, after all, by far the most restricted
-in its native distribution-of the precious metals. Silver and argentiferous lead, on
the contrary, expand so largely downwards into the bowels of the rocks, as to lead us
to believe that they must yield enormous profits to the skilful miner for ages to come;
and the more so in proportion as better machinery and new inventions shall lessen
the difficulties of subterranean mining. It may, indeed, well be doubted whether the
quantities of gold and silver, procurable from regions unknown to our progenitors,
will prove more than sufficient to meet the exigencies of an enormously increased
population and our augmenting commerce and luxury. But this is not a theme for a
geologist; and I would simply say, that Providence seems to have originally adjusted
the relative value of these two precious metals, and that their relatious, having re-
mained the same for ages, will long survive all theories. Modern science, instead of
contradicting, only confirms the truth of the aphorism of the patriarch Job, which thus
shadowed forth the downward persistence of the one and the superficial distribution
of the other: Surely there is a vein for the silver. .. The earth hath dust of gold.'
Sir Roderick Murchison was by birth a Scottish Highlander, born
at Tarradale, Ross-shire-of which his father, Dr. Murchison, was
proprietor—in 1792. He served from 1807 to 1816 in the army, lat-
terly as captain in the 6th Dragoons. He was knighted in 1846, and
the emperor of Russia conferred upon him the Grand Cross of the
He was
Order of St. Stanislaus, with other marks of distinction.
some years Secretary to the Royal Geological Society, and twice
elected president. He was also President of the Geographical Soci-
ety, occupying the chair until a short time before his death. He
took the liveliest interest in all geographical discoveries, and his an-
nual addresses to the society were full of information and interesting
He
facts. A baronetcy was conferred upon Sir Roderick in 1866.
died October 22, 1870. A copious life of Sir Roderick was published
by his friend Professor Geikie, two volumes, 1875, from which we
give two short extracts:
Hint to Geologists.
If it be true, as Bacon asserted, that' writing maketh an exact man,' it is no less
true that mapping makes an exact geologist. Without this kind of training, it is not
easy to grasp accurately the details of geological structure, and hence the literature
of the science is sadly overloaded with papers and books which, had their authors
enjoyed this preliminary discipline, would either not have been written, or would at
least have been more worthy of perusal. Murchison wisely resolved not to trust
merely to eye and memory, but to record what he saw as accurately as he could
upon maps. And there can be no doubt that by so doing he gave his work a preci-
sion and harmony which it could never have otherwise possessed, and that, even
though still falling into some errors, he was enabled to get a firmer hold of the
structure of the country which he had resolved to master than he could have ob-
tained in any other way. For, to make his maps complete, he was driven to look
into all manner of out-of-the-way nooks and corners, with which, but for that
necessity, he might have been little likely to make acquaintance. It often happens
that in such half-hidden places-the course of a mountain torrent, the bottom of a
tree-shaded ravine, the gully cut by the frosts and rains of centuries from the face
of a lonely hill-side-lies the key to the geological structure of the neighbourhood.
- 291
·
SEDGWICK.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
In pursuit of his quest, therefore, the geologist is driven to double back to and fro
over tracts never trodden perhaps by the ordinary tourist, but is many a time amply
recompensed by the unexpected insight which this circuitous journeying gives him
into the less obtrusive beauties of the landscape.
Proposed Purchase of the Island of Staffa.
Among the miscellaneous correspondence which the President of the Geological
Society carried on, was one regarding a proposed purchase of the island of Staffa.
It was represented urgently to Murchison that as the island was likely to come into
the market, no more fitting purchaser could be found than the Geological Society of
Londou, and that in the hands of that learned body it would remain as a perpetual
monument consecrated to the progress of science. It is needless to say that this pro-
ject never took shape. There is little sympathy in Britain with any such fanciful
notions regarding the acquirement of places of great natural interest by the State
or learned societies for the good of the country, aud in the cause of scientific pro-
gress. Fortunately that fairy island is too small and too barren to warrant the cost of
protecting walls and notices to trespassers, and its wonders are of too solid and en-
during a nature to be liable to effacement by the ruthless curiosity of the British
tourist. And so it stands amid the lone sea, open to all comers. lifting its little car-
pet of bright green above the waves which have tunnelled its pillared cliffs, and
which are ceaselessly destroying and renewing the beauty of the sculpture they have
revealed.
PROFESSOR SEDGWICK.
The REV. ADAM SEDGWICK endeavoured to substantiate a lower
and still older section of rocks than the Silurian-a slaty formation,
in part fossiliferous, and of enormous thickness. He applies to this
the term ' Cambrian.' The system has, however, met with a dubious
acceptance, Sir Roderick Murchison contending that the Cambrian
rocks are not inferior in position to the lowest stratified rocks of his
Silurian region of Shropshire and the adjacent parts of Montgomery-
shire, but are merely extensions of the same strata. Mr. Sedgwick
was born at Dent, Yorkshire, about the year 1787; in 1809 he was
admitted to a Fellowship in Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1818
was appointed Woodwardian Professor of Geology. He is author of
A Synopsis of the Classification of the British Palæozoic Rocks,'
&c., two volumes, quarto, and A Discourse on the Studies of the
University of Cambridge,' 1850, which was directed against the utili-
tarian theory of morals, as not merely false in reasoning, but as pro-
ducing a degrading effect on the temper and conduct of those who
adopt it. Professor Sedgwick closed his honored life at Cambridge
+
•
in 1878.
PROFESSOR OWEN.
RICHARD OWEN, the great naturalist and anatomist, was, like his
When a
contemporary, Professor Whewell, a native of Lancaster.
mere boy, he was put to sea as a midshipman, but his nautical career
was a very brief one. In his twentieth year we find him at Edin-
burgh University, and in the year following he was a student at St.
Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He became a member of the
College of Surgeons, but his professional prospects were so discoura-
ging that he resolved on re-entering the navy. He was dissuaded
from this step by Abernethy, the famous surgeon--rough, kind-
:
CYCLOPEDIA OF
292
[TO 1876.
↓
This
60
hearted, and eccentric-and Abernethy procured for him the ap-
pointment of colleague or assistant to Mr. Clift, the curator of the
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. In this capacity, he had
to prepare a catalogue of the great museum of John Hunter, which
had come into the possession of the College of Surgeons. In order,'
it is said, 'to identify the specimens in the Hunterian collection, he
was obliged in a large number of cases to dissect and examine fresh
specimens. In this manner, volume after volume of the catalogue
appeared, till at the end of thirty years the whole was printed-a
work of scarcely inferior value and importance to the museum itself:
this catalogue which involved the examination of nearly four thou-
sand specimens, was illustrated by seventy-eight plates.'*
great achievement led a contemporary to say: 'Cuvier, with an
instinctive prescience, asks, "Why should not natural history
one day have its Newton?" and the best proof of the reasona-
bleness of that question we hold to be the success which
has attended the last researches of Cuvier's English successor,
justly styled by Humboldt le plus grand anatomiste de son
siècle",
(Quarterly Review).' In 1834 Mr. Owen was appointed
public lecturer to the chair of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology
in the College of Surgeons. In 1855 he became superintendent or
chief of the Natural History department of the British Museum (which
includes zoology, geology, and mineralogy); and his lectures on palæ-
ontology, on physiology, on extinct animals, &c., have been as popu-
lar as they are valuable. From the sponge to man, he has thrown
light over every subject he has touched-and the number of subjects
is almost incredible. His contributions to scientific journals, and
his separate works, amount together to above three hundred! Among
these we may note- Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus,' 1832; Cata-
logue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy,' five
volumes, 1833-1840; The Fossil Mammalia collected on the Voyage
of the Beagle,' 1840; Odontography, or a Treatise on the Compara-
tive Anatomy of the Teeth,' two volumes, 1840-1845; 'The Extinct
Gigantic Sloth,' 1842; Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy and
Physiology of the Invertebrate and Vertebrate Animals,' two volumes,
1843-1846; History of British Fossils, Mammals and Birds,' 1846;
A History of British Fossil Reptiles,' five parts, 1840-1851; 'On
Palæontology' and 'On the Megatherium,' 1869; On the Gorilla,'
1865; On the Dodo,' 1866; Zoology, or Instructions for Collecting
and Preserving Animals,' 1849; and the articles on Zoology, Com-
parative Anatomy, and Physiology, in Brande's 'Dictionary of Sci-
ence;' &c. Professor Owen's researches and discoveries in compara-
tive anatomy are believed to form his chief claim to the admiration
and gratitude of the civilised world.' In this field, his sagacity, or
rather his genius, in hypothesis and generalisation are pre-emi-
(
<
•
<
C
C
* Memoir of Owen in Knight's Cyclopedia of Biography.
Ĺ
C
OWEN.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
293
Que instance of
rent, and have had no parallel since Cuvier.
this, the discovery of a fragment of the femur or thigh-bone of an
A sea-
unknown animal from New Zealand, excited much interest.
faring man brought this piece of bone, as he said, from New Zea-
land, and offered it for sale. It was taken to Professor Owen, who
having looked at it carefully, thought it right to investigate it more
narrowly; and after much consideration, he ventured to pronounce
his opinion. This opinion from almost anybody else would have
been, perhaps, only laughed at; for, in the first place, he said that
the bone (big enough to suggest that it belonged to an ox) had be-
longed to a bird; but before people had had time to recover from
their surprise at this announcement, they were greeted by another as-
sertion yet more startling-namely, that it had been a bird without
wings! The incredulity and doubt with which the opinion was re-
ceived was too great for a time even for the authority of Professor
Owen entirely to dispel. But mark the truthfulness of a real science;
contemplate the exquisite beauty and accuracy of relation in nature!
By-and-by a whole skeleton was brought over to this country, when
the opinion of the Professor was converted into an established fact.'*
A series of monographs on similar gigantic birds was published by
Professor Owen, and fossils from Australia of gigantic marsupials,
resembling in type those at present existing there. Besides his strictly
scientific investigations, Professor Owen has assisted in public and
benevolent labours-in inquiries into the health of towns, in the or-
ganisation of the Great Exhibition of 1851, as well as of the Paris
Exhibition, and in various other efforts for the benefit of society.
Honours at home and abroad have been showered on the philosophic
worker, and in his native country all classes, from the sovereign
downwards, are proud of his name and fame.
We subjoin an extract from the History of British Fossils, Mam-
mals and Birds,' 1846. When Cuvier found that the remains of the
elephants which are scattered over Europe in the unstratified superficial
deposits, were specifically different from the teeth and bones of the
two known existing elephants, 'this fundamental fact,' says Profes-
sor Owen, opened up to him new views of the theory of the earth,
and a rapid glance, guided by the new and pregnant idea, over other
fossil bones, made him anticipate all that he afterwards proved, and
determined him to consecrate to this great work the future years of
his life.' This was in 1796, and fortunately Cuvier survived till 1832,
and had in Owen a worthy successor.
<
4
&
* MacIlwain's Life of Abernethy. A writer in the Quarterly Review for March
1852, confirms the statement: We well remember seeing this fragment of the shaft
of a femur when it first arrived, and hearing the opinion of the Professor (Owen) as
to the bird to which it must have belonged. He took a piece of paper and drew the
outline of what he conceived to be the complete bone. The fragment. from which
alone be deduced his conclusions, was six inches in length, and five inches and a half
in its smallest circumference: both extremities had been broken off. When a perfect
bone arrived, and was laid on the paper, it fitted the outline exactly.'
294
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
The British Mammoth.
↓
Most of the largest and best preserved tusks of the British mammoth have been
dredged up from submerged drift, near the coasts. In 1827, an enormous tusk was
landed at Ramsgate: although the hollow implanted base was wauting, it still mea-
sured nine feet in length, and its greatest diameter was eight inches; the outer crust
was decomposed into thin layers, and the interior portion had been reduced to a soft
substance resembling putty. A tusk, likewise much decayed, which was dredged up
off Dungeness, measured eleven feet in length; and yielded some pieces of ivory fit
for manufacture. Captain Byam Martin, who has recorded this and other discov-
eries of remains of the mammoth in the British Channel in the Geological Transac-
tions,' procured a section of ivory near the alveolar cavity of the Dungeness tusk, of
an oval form, measuring nineteen inches in circumference. A tusk dredged up
from the Goodwin Sands, which measured six feet six inches in length, and twelve
inches in greatest circumference, probably belonged to a female mammoth: Captain
Martin describes its curvature as being equal to a semicircle turning outwards on its
line of projection. This tusk was sent to a cutler at Canterbury, by whom it was
sawn into five sections, but the interior was found to be fossilised and unfit for
use; it is now in Captain Martin's possession. The tusks of the extinct elephaut
which have thus reposed for thousauds of years in the bed of the ocean which
washes the shore of Britain, are not always so altered by time and the action of sur-
rounding influences as to be unfit for the purposes to which recent ivory is applied.
Mr. Robert Fitch of Norwich possesses a segment of a mammoth's tusk, which was
dredged up by some Yarmouth fishermen off Scarborough, and which was so slightly
altered in texture, that it was sawn up into as many portions as there were men in the
boat, and each claimed his share of the valuable product.
Of the tusks referable by their size to the female mammoth which have been dis-
interred on dry land, I may cite the following instances: A tusk in the Museum of
the Geological Society, from the lacustrine pleistocene bed exposed to the action of
the sea on the coast of Essex at Walton, which measures five feet and a half in
length; and another from the same locality, in the possession of John Brown, Esq.
of Stanway, Essex, which measures four feet in length. A tusk recently discovered
near Barnstaple, on a bed of gravel, beneath a stratum of blue clay five feet deep, and
one of yellow clay about six feet deep, with several feet of coarse gravel and soil
above. This tusk was broken by the pickaxes of the men, but must have been about
six feet in length; it had the grain and markings of ivory, but was reduced to the
colour and consistency of horn, and retained a considerable degree of elasticity.
A very perfect specimen was dug up entire in 1842, twelve feet below the surface,
out of the drift gravel of Cambridge; it measured five feet in length, and two feet
four inches across the chord of its curve, and eleven inches in circumference at the
thickest part of its base; this tusk was purchased by the Royal College of Surgeons.
The smallest mammoth's tusk which I have seen is in the museum of Mr. Wickham
Flower; it is from the drift or til at Ilford, Essex, and has belonged to a very young
mammoth; its length measured along the outer curve is twelve inches and a half,
and the circumference of its base four inches. It has nevertheless been evidently put
to use by the young animal, the tip having been obliquely worn.
Mr. Robert Bald has described a portion of a mammoth's tusk, thirty-nine
inches long and thirteen inches in circumference, which was found imbedded in
diluvial clay at Clifton Hall, between Edinburgh and Falkirk, fifteen or twenty feet
from the present surface. Two other tusks of nearly the same size have been dis-
covered at Kilmanrs in Ayrshire, at the depth of seventeen feet and a half from the
surface, in diluvial clay. The state of preservation of these tusks was nearly equal
to that of the fossil ivory of Siberia; that described by Mr. Bald was sold by the
workmen who found it to an ivory-turner in Edinburgh for two pounds; it was
sawn asunder to be made into chessmen. The tusks of the mammoth found in
England are usually more decayed; but Dr. Buckland alludes to a tusk from argil-
laceous diluvium on the Yorkshire coast, which was hard enough to be used by the
ivory-tarners. A portion of this tusk is now preserved in the museum at Bridling-
ton.
The tusks of the mammoth are so well preserved in the frozen drift of Siberia,
that they have long been collected in great numbers for the purposes of commerce.
E LI TS ON.)
295
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
•
•
In the account of the mammoth's bones and teeth of Siberia, published more than
a century ago in the Philosophical Transactions,' tusks are cited which weighed two
bundred pounds each, and are used as ivory, to make combs, boxes, and such
other things; being but a little more brittle, and easily turning yellow by weather or
heat' From that time to the present there has been no intermission in the supply
of ivory furnished by the extinct elephants of a former world.
DR. CARPENTER-DR. ELLIOTSON.
In physiology, DR. WILLIAM BENJAMIN CARPENTER has also
earned distinction. His chief works are- Principles of General
and Comparative Physiology;' 'Principles of Human Physiology;'
Vegetable Physiology and Botany;' Zoology, and Instinct in
Animals: Popular Cyclopædia of Natural Science,' seven volumes;
'Mechanical Philosophy; On the Microscope;' &c. These works
were produced between 1839 and 1854, and most of them have gone
through several editions. Mr. Morrell, in his History of Modern
Philosophy,' has said that Dr. Carpenter's works manifest some of
the best qualities both of the thinker and the observer.' The father
of the physiologist, DR. LANT CARPENTER (1780-1840), was a well-
known Unitarian minister, and writer on education and theology.
DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON, a London physician, in 1840 published ‘Hu-
man Physiology,' and afterwards attracted attention by lectures on
phrenology and mesmerism. He procured the establishment of a
mesmeric hospital, and set up a periodical, The Zoist,' in support of
his physiological opinions. Mr. Thackeray dedicates his novel of
Pendennis to Dr. Elliotson, in acknowledgment of his medical
skill, 'great goodness, and kindness,' for which the physician would
take no other fee but thanks. This kind physician died in 1858, aged
eighty.
•
C
C
HUGH MILLER.
As a popular illustrator of geology, no author approaches HUGH
MILLER, the self-taught man of science and genius. He was a na-
tive of Cromarty, born October 10, 1802. He was of a race of sea-
faring men well to do in the world, who owned coasting-vessels, and
built houses in the town of Cromarty. One of them had done a little
in the way of bucaneering on the Spanish main. Most of them per-
ished at sea, including Hugh's father, who was lost in a storm in
1807. By the aid of two maternal uncles, Hugh received the com-
mon education of a Scottish country-school, and was put apprentice,
by his own desire, to a stone-mason. His sensations and geological
discoveries while toiling in the Cromarty quarries are beautifully
told in the opening chapters of his work on the Old Red Sandstone.
A life of toil, however, in such a sphere as this has its temptations,
and the drinking usages of the masons were at that time carried to
some excess. Hugh learned to regard the ardent spirits of the dram-
shop as high luxuries; they gave lightness and energy to both body
and mind. 'Usquebaugh,' he says, was simply happiness doled
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
out by the glass and sold by the gill.' Soon, however, his better
genius prevailed.
The Turning-point in Hugh Miller's Life.
着
​In laying down the foundation-stone of one of the larger houses built this year
by Uncle David and his partner, the workmen had a royal founding pint,' and two
whole glasses of the whisky came to my share. A full-grown man would not have
deemed a gill of usquebaugh an overdose, but it was considerably too much for me;
and when the party broke up, and I got home to my books, I found, as I opened the
pages of a favourite author, the letters dancing before my eyes, and that I could no
longer master the sense. I have the volume at preseut before me-a small edition of
the Essays of Bacon, a good deal worn at the corners by the friction of the pocket-
for of Bacon I never tired. The condition into which I had brought myself was, I
felt, one of degradation. I had sunk, by my own act, for the time, to a lower level
of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege to be placed; and though the
state could have been no very favourable one for forming a resolution, I in that hour
determined that I should never again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment
to a drinking usage; and, with God's help, I was enabled to hold by the deterinina-
I see, in looking back on this my first year of labour, a dangerous point,
at which, in the attempt to escape from the sense of depression and fatigue, the
craving appetite of the confirmed tippler might have been formed.
This may be considered a grand epoch in the life of Miller. He
had laid the foundation of a habit of virtuous self-denial and deci-
sion of character, that was certain to bear precious fruits. Removing
to Edinburgh for employment, he saw more of the habits of the
working-men, and had to fight his way among rather noisy and
intemperate associates. He found that mere intelligence formed no
guard amongst them against intemperance or licentiousness, but it
did form a not ineffectual protection against what are peculiarly the
mean vices, such as theft, and the grosser and more creeping forms
of untruthfulness and dishonesty. The following is another of his
experiences:
¿
Burns tells us that he often courted the acquaintance of the part of mankind com'
monly known by the ordinary phrase of backguards, and that though disgraced by
follies, nay sometimes stained with guilt, he had yet found amongst them, in not a
few instances, some of the noblest virtues-magnanimity, generosity, disinterested
friendship, and even modesty.' I cannot say with the poet that I ever courted the
acquaintance of blackguards; but though the labouring-man may select his friends,
he cannot choose his work-fellows; and so I have not unfrequently come in contact
with blackguards, and have had opportunities of pretty thoroughly knowing them.
And my experience of this class has been very much the reverse of that of Burns. I
have usually found their virtues of a merely theatric cast, and their vices real; much
assumed generosity in some instances, but a callousness of feeling and meanness of
spirit lying concealed beneath.
•
Most men, we believe, will agree with the comment rather than
the text, high as Burns's authority is on questions of life and con-
duct. No man saw more clearly or judged more rightly than Burns,
when his passions were not present as a disturbing element; but in
this case the poet's use of the term 'blackguard,' like Dr. Johnson's
use of the term scoundrel,' was perhaps comprehensive enough to
include men worthy of a better designation. His experience was
then limited and confined to a few companions. Men of the stamp
MILLER }
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
297
,
↓
alluded to are often ready to part with money if it does not directly
interfere with their immediate gratification, and have an impulsive
generosity of sentiment. But noble virtues' require prudence, self-
control, regard for the feelings of others, and steady intellectual cul-
ture; and these cannot long co-exist with folly and sensuality. One
must overpower the other-as in the forest the oak and the brush-
wood rise together, and either the tree or the parasite soon asserts
the superiority. Returning to the north, Hugh Miller ventured on
the publication of a volume of Poems, written in the Leisure Hours
of a Journeyman Mason,' 1829. The pieces occasionally rise above me-
diocrity, and are always informed with fine feeling; but there is much
He next wrote some letters on
more real poetry in his prose works.
the Herring Fishing,' descriptive of the fisher's life at sea, and they
shew his happy observant faculty, and his fine English. He had
been a diligent student of the best English authors, and was criti-
cally exact and nice in his choice of language. Mr. Miller was now
too conspicuous to be much longer employed in hewing jambs or lin-
tels, or even cutting inscriptions on tombstones, in which (like Telford
the engineer in his early days) he greatly excelled. He carried on his
geological studies and researches on the coast-lines of the Moray
Firth.
<
(
The Antiquity of the Globe.
I found that the caves hollowed by the surf, when the sea had stood from fifteen
to five-and-twenty feet above its present level, or, as I should perhaps say, when the
land had stood that much lower, were deeper, on the average, by about one-third,
than those caves of the present coast-line that are still in the course of being hol-
lowed by the waves. And yet the waves have been breaking against the present
coast-line during the whole of the historic period. The ancient wall of Antoninus,
which stretched between the Firths of Forthi and Clyde, was built at its terminations
with reference to the existing levels; and ere Cæsar landed in Britain, St. Michael's
Mount was connected with the mainland as now, by a narrow neck of beach, laid
bare by the ebb, across which, according to Diodorus Siculus, the Cornish miners
used to drive at low-water their carts laden with tin. If the sea has stood for two
thousand six hundred years against the present coast-line-and no geologist would
fix his estimate of the term lower-then must it have stood against the old line, ere
it could have excavated caves one-third deeper than the modern ones, three thousand
nine hundred years; and both sums united more than exhaust the Hebrew chronol-
ogy. Yet what a mere beginning of geologic history does not the epoch of the old
coast-line form! It is but a starting-point from the recent period. Not a single
shell seems to have become extinct during the last six thousand years.
The ancient deposits of the lias, with their mollusca, belemnites,
ammonites, and nautili, had by this time overrun the province
of the muses, and a momenclature very different from poetical
diction had to be studied. Theological controversy also broke in;
and as Miller was always stout on the score of polemics, and withal
sufficiently pugnacious, he mingled freely in local church disputes,
the forerunners of a national ecclesiastical struggle, in which he was
also to take a prominent part. The Reform Bill gave fresh scope
for activity, and Miller was zealous on the popular side. He was
elected a member of the town-council of Cromarty, and attended at
298
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
•
least one meeting, at which, he says, the only serious piece of busi-
ness was the councillors clubbing pennies apiece in order to defray,
in the utter lack of town funds, the expense of a ninepenny postage.
Perhaps Miller's interest in burgh politics was a little cooled at this
time by a new influence that began to gain ground upon him. When
working in the churchyard, chiselling his In Memoriam,' he used
to have occasional visitors, and among them several accomplished
intellectual ladies, whom he also met occasionally at tea-parties, and
conducted through the wild scenes and fossiliferous treasures of the
romantic burn of Eathie. Meditations upon the tombs led to love
among the rocks, and geology itself had no discoveries or deposits
hard enough to shut out the new and tender formation. Miller was
overpowered, and circumstances ultimately sanctioned his union
with the youngest, the fairest, and most accomplished of his lady-
visitors.
-
•
<
He next became accountant in a banking establishment in Cro-
marty, and in 1834 he published Scenes and Legends in the North
of Scotland, or the Traditional History of Cromarty'-a work re-
markable for the variety of its traditional lore, and the elegance of
its style. Fifteen years a stone-mason, and about six years a bank-
accountant, Miller's next move was into that position for which he
was best adapted, and in which he spent the remainder of his life.
The ecclesiastical party in Scotland then known as the Non-Intru-
sionists' (now the Free Church), projected a newspaper to advocate
their views; all Mr. Miller's feelings and predilections ran in the same
direction; he had sufficiently evinced his literary talents and his zeal
in the cause—especially by two able pamphlets on the subject; and
accordingly, in 1840, he entered upon his duties as editor of The
Witness, a twice-a-week paper. We well remember his farewell din-
ner at Cromarty-the complacent smiles of old Uncle Sandy, proud
of his nephew-the lively earnestness of the minister, Mr. Stewart,
varied by inextinguishable peals of laughter, for which he was
famous--and Hugh Miller's grave speech, brimful of geology and of
choice figurative expression-and the cordial affectionate feeling with
which the friends of his youth and manhood bade ‘God-speed' to
their townsman and historian. Life has few things better than such
a meeting even to a spectator, and what must it have been to the
prime actor in the little drama? The scene was about to be shifted
-new characters introduced, new machinery, new duties, and a
wi ler theatre of action. Opinions, thoughts, and language, gathered
and fashioned in obscurity, were now to be submitted to the public
glare, and tested by severe standards. But carly trials, discipline,
and study had braced and elevated the mind a mind naturally copi-
ous, vigorous, and buoyant; and Hugh Miller had been taught what
he now set about teaching others, that life itself is a school, and na-
ture always a fresh study, and that the man who keeps his eyes and
(
MILLER.}
299
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
his mind open, will always find fitting, though it may be hard
schoolmasters, to speed hini on his life-long education.'
(
•
During the remaining fifteen years of his life, besides contributing
largely to his paper, Mr. Miller wrote his work on The Old Red
Sandstone,' 1841, part of which appeared originally in Chambers's
Journai,' and part in the Witness;' his First Impressions of Eng-
land and its People,' 1847; Footprints of the Creator, or the Astero-
lepis of Stromness,' 1850; 'My Schools and Schoolmasters,' an auto-
biography, 1854; and The Testimony of the Rocks,' a work com-
pleted, but not published till after his death. Two other posthu-
mous works have since appeared- The Cruise of the Betsey, or a
Summer Ranible among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides,'
1858; and Sketch-Book of Popular Geology, being a Series of Lec-
tures delivered before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh,
with an introduction by Mrs. Miller, giving a résumé of the progress
of geological science within the previous two years, published in
March 1859. The death of Mr. Miller took place on the 24th of
December 1856. He had overtasked his brain, and for some time
suffered from visions and delusions combined with paroxysms of
acute physical pain. In one of those moments of disordered reason,
awaking from a hideous dream, he shot himself in the heart, and
must instantly have expired-a sad and awful termination to a life
of noble exertion and high hopes!
Mr. Miller's first geological work, the treatise on The Old Red Sand-
stone,' is perhaps the most valuable. On that field he was a dis-
coverer, adding to our knowledge of organic remains various members
of a great family of fishes existing ouly in a deposit of the highest
antiquity. One of these bears now the name of Pterichthys Mu
leri. He illustrated also the less known floras of Scotland-those of
the Old Red Sandstone and the Oolite, giving figured illustrations of
the most peculiar. But the great distinguishing merit of Miller is
his power of vivid description, which throws a sort of splendour
over the fossil remains, and gives life and beauty to the geological
landscape. His enthusiasm and word-painting were irresistible. He
was in geology what Carlyle is in history, both possessing the power
of genius to vivify the past and stir at once the heart and the imagi
nation. In his 'Footprints of the Creator,' Miller combated the de-
velopment theory. In his last work, The Testimony of the Rocks,'
1857, he goes at great length into the question of the antiquity of
the globe, endeavouring to reconcile it with the Mosaic account of
the creation. Astronomers do not attempt any such reconciliation,
and the geologists can never attain to certainty. Miller once believed
with Buckland and Chalmers that the six days of the Mosaic narra-
tive were simply natural days of twenty-four hours each, but he was
compelled by further study to believe that the days of creation were
not natural but prophetic days-unmeasured eras of time stretching
เ
•
•
C
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CYCLOPÆDIA OF
far back into the bygone eternity. The revelation to Moses he sup-
poses to have been optical-a series of visions seen in a recess of the
Midian desert, and described by the prophet in language fitted to the
ideas of his times. The hypothesis of the Mosaic vision is old—as
old as the time of Whiston, who propounded it a century and a half
since; but in Miller's hands the vision becomes a splendid piece of
sacred poetry.
The Mosaic Vision of Creation.
Such a description of the creative vision of Moses as the one given by Milton of
that vision of the future which he represents as conjured up before Adam by the
archangel, would be a task rather for the scientific poet than for the mere practical
geologist or sober theologian. Let us suppose that it took place far from men, in an
untrodden recess of the Midean desert, ere yet the vision of the burning bush had
been vouchsafed; aud that, as in the vision of St. John in Patmos, voices were
mingled with scenes, and the ear as certainly addressed as the eye. A great dark-
ness' first fails upon the prophet, like that which in an earlier age fell upon Abraham,
but without the horror and as the Divine Spirit moves on the face of the wildly
troubled waters, as a visible aurora enveloped by the pitchy cloud, the great doctrine
is orally enunciated, that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.'
Unreckoned ages, condensed in the vision into a few brief moments, pass away; the
creative voice is again heard, Let there be light,' and straightway a gray diffused
light springs up in the east, and, casting its sickly gleam over a cloud-limited ex-
panse of steaming vaporous sea, journeys through the heavens towards the west.
One heavy, sunless day is made the representative of myriads; the faint light waxes
fainter-it sinks beneath the dim undefined horizon; the first scene of the drama
closes upon the seer; and he sits awhile on his hill-top in darkness, solitary but not
sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night.
,
>
The light again brightens-it is day; and over an expanse of ocean without visi-
ble bound the horizon has become wider and sharper of outline than before. There
is life in that great sea-invertebrate, mayhap also ichthyic, life; but, from the com-
parative distance of the point of view occupied by the prophet, only the slow roll of
its waves can be discerned, as they rise and fall in long undulations before a gentle
gale; aud what most strongly impresses the eye is the change which has taken place in
the atmospheric scen ry. That lower stratum of the heaveus occupied in the previous
vision by seething steam, or gray, smoke-like fog, is clear and transparent; and only
in an upper region, where the previously invisible vapour of the tepid sea has thick-
ened in the cold, do the clouds appear. But there, in the higher strata of the atmos-
phere, they lie, thick and manifold-an upper sea of great waves, separated from
those beneath by the transparent firmament, and, like them too, impelled in rolling
masses by the wind. A mighty advance has taken place in creation: but its most
conspicuous optical sign is the existence of a transparent atmosphere-of a firma-
men stretched out over the earth, that separates the waters above from the waters
below. But darkness descends for the third time upon the seer, for the evening
and the morning have completed the second day.
Yet again. the light rises under a canopy of cloud; but the scene has changed,
and there is no longer an unbroken expanse of sea. The white surf breaks, at the
distant horizon, on an insulated reef, formed mayhap by the Silurian or Old Red
coral zoophytes ages before, during the bygone yesterday; and beats in long lines of
foam. nearer at hand, against the low, winding shore, the seaward barrier of a widely
spread country. For at the Divine command the land has arisen from the deep--not
inconspicuously and in scattered islets, as at an earlier time, but in extensive though
flat and marshy continents, little raised over the sea-level; and a yet further fiat has
covered them with the great carboniferous flora. The scene is one of mighty forests
of cone-bearing trees-of palms, and tree-ferns, and gigantic club-mosses, on the
opener slopes, and of great reeds clustering by the sides of quiet lakes and dark rol-
ling rivers. There is deep gloom in the recesses of the thicker woods, and low thick
mists creep along the dank marsh or sluggish stream. But there is a general light-
ening of the sky overhead; as the day declines, a redder flush than had hitherto
MILLER.
801
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
lighted up the prospect falls athwart fern-covered bank and long withdrawing glade.
And while the fourth evening has fallen on the prophet, he becomes sensible, as it
wears on, and the fourth dawn approaches, that yet another change has taken place.
The Creator has spoken, and the stars look out from openings of deep unclouded
bue; and as day rises, and the planet of morning pales in the east, the broken
cloudlets are transmited from bronze into gold. and anon the gold becomes fire, and
at length the glorious sun arises out of the sea, and enters on his course rejoicing. It
is a brilliant day; the waves, of a deeper and softer blue than before, dance and
sparkle in the light; the earth with little else to attract the gaze, has assumed a garb
of brighter green; and as the sun declines amid even richer glories than those which
had encircled his rising, the moou appears full-orbed in the east-to the human eye
the second gr at luminary of the heavens-and climbs slowly to the zenith as night
advances, shedding its mild radiance on land and sea.
Again the day breaks; the prospect consists, as before, of land and ocean. There
are great pine-woods, reed-covered swamps, wide plains, winding rivers, aud broad
lakes; and a bright sun shines over all. But the landscape derives its interest and
novelty from a feature unmarked before. Gigantic birds stalk along the sands, or
wade far into the water in quest of their ichthyic food; while birds of lesser size
float upon the lakes, or scream discordant in bovering flocks, thick as insects in the
calm of a summer evening, over the narrower seas; or brighten with the suulit gleam
of their wings the thick woods. And ocean has its monsters: great tanninim tem-
pest the deep, as they heave their huge bulk over the surface, to inhale the life-sus-
taining air; and out of their nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a 'seething pot or cal-
dron. Monstrous creatures, armed in massive scales, haunt the rivers, or scour the
flat rank meadows; eartb, air, and water are charged with animal life; and the sun
sets on a busy scene, in which unerring instinct pursues unremittingly its few simple
ends-the support and preservation of the individual, the propagation of the species,
and the protection and maintenance of the young.
Again the night descends. for the fifth day has closed; and morning breaks on
the sixth and last day of creation. Cattle and beasts of the field graze on the plains;
the thick-skinned rhinoceros wallows in the marshes; the squat hippopotamus rus-
tles among the reeds, or plunges sullenly into the river; great herds of elephants seek
their food amid the young herbage of the woods; while animals of fiercer nature-the
lion, the leopard, and the bear-harbour in deep caves till the evening, or lie in wait
for their prey amid tangled thickets, or beneath some broken bank. At length, as
the day wanes and the shadows lengthen, man, the responsible lord of creation,
formed in God's own image, is introduced upon the scene, and the work of creation
ceases for ever upon the earth. The night falls once more upon the prospect, and
there dawns yet another morrow-the morrow of God's rest-that Divine Sabbath in
which there is no more creative labour, and which, 'blessed and sanctified' beyond
all the days that had gone before, has as its special object the moral elevation and
final redemption of man. And over it no evening is represented in the record as
falling, for its special work is not yet complete. Such seems to have been the sub-
lime panorama of creation exhibited in visions of old to
The shepherd who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos ;
and, rightly understood, I know not a single scientific truth that militates against
even the minutest or least prominent of its details.
The subject of the Noachian deluge is discussed at length, Miller
holding with Stillingfleet, Poole, and modern authorities, that the de-
luge was partial as to the earth, but universal as to the human race.
There was no novelty in this portion of his argument, and he some-
times misconstrues the opinions of those he opposes. His earnestness
and fertility of illustration enchain the reader's attention, but a repe-
rusal only the more convinces us that Mr. Miller's great power lay in
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
description-not in grappling with the difficulties of speculative phil-
osophy. We give a few more specimens of his exquisite composition:
The Fossil Pine-tree.
But let us trace the history of a single pine-tree of the Oolite, as indicated by its
petrified remains. This gnarled and twisted trunk once anchored its roots amid the
crannies of a precipice of dark-gray sandstone, that rose over some nameless stream
of the Oolite, in what is now the north of Scotland. The rock, which, notwithstand-
ing its dingy colour, was a deposit of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, formed a member
of the fish-beds of that system-beds that were charged then, as now, with numer-
ous fossils, as strange and obsolete in the creation of the Oolite as in the creation
which at present exists. It was a firm, indestructible stone, covered by a thin, bar-
ren soil; and the twisted rooilets of the pine, rejected and thrown backwards from
its more solid plaues, had to penetrate into its narrow fissures for a straightened and
meagre subsistence. The tree grew but slowly in considerably more than half a
century it had attained to a diameter of little more than ten inches a foot over the
soil; and its bent and twisted form gave evidence of the life of hardship to which it
was exposed. It was. in truth, a picturesque rag of a tree, that for the first few feet
twisted itself round like an overborne wrestler struggling to escape from under his
enemy, and then struck out at an abrupt angle, and stretched itself like a bent arm
over the stream. It must have resembled, on its bald eminence, that pine-tree of a
later time described by Scott, that high above 'ash and oak'
Cast anchor in the rifted rock,
And o'er the giddy chasm hung
His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrowed sky.
The seasons passed over it: every opening spring gave its fringe of tenderer
green to its spiky foliage, and every returning autumn saw it shed its cones into the
stream below. Many a delicate fern sprang up and decayed around its gnarled and
fantastic root, single-leaved and simple of form, like the Scolopendria of our caverus
and rock recesses, or fretted into many a slim pinnate leaflet, like the minute maiden-
bair or the graceful lady-fern. Flying reptiles have perched amid its boughs; the
light-winged dragon-fly has darted on wings of gauze through the openings of its
lesser twigs; the tortoise and the lizard have hybernated during the chills of winter
amid the hollows of its roots; for many years it formed one of the minor features in
a wild picturesque scene, on which human eye never looked; and at length, touched
by decay, its upper branches began to wither and bleach white in the winds of
heaven; when shaken by a sudden hurricane that came roaring adown the ravine,
the mass of rock in which it had been anchored at once gave way, and, bearing fast
jammed among its roots a fragment of the mass which we still find there, and from
which we read a portion of its story, it was precipitated into the foaming torrent.
Dancing on the eddies, or lingering amid the pools, or shooting, arrow-like, adown
the rapids, it at length finds its way to the sea; and after sailing over beds of
massive coral-the ponderous Isastrea and more delicate Thamuastrea-and after dis-
turbing the Enaliosaur and Belemnite in their deep green haunts, it sinks, saturated
with water, into a bed of arenaceous mud, to make its appearance, after long ages,
in the world of man-a marble mummy of the old Oolite forest-and to be curiously
interrogated regarding its character and history.
The National Intellect of England and Scotland.
There is an order of English mind to which Scotland has not attained: our first
men stand in the secoud rauk, not a foot-breadth behind the foremost of England's
second-rank men; but there is a front rank of British intellect in which there stands
no Scotchman. Like that class of the mighty men of David, to which Abishai and
Benaiah belonged-great captains, who went down into pits in the time of snow and
slow licus, or who lifted up the spear against three hundred men at once, and pre-
viled-they attained not, with all their greatness, to the might of the first class.
Scotland has produced no Shakspeare; Burns and Sir Walter Scott united would fall
6
MILLER.]
303
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
short of the stature of the giant of Avon. Of Milton we have not even a representa-
tive. A Scotch poct has been injudiciously named as not greatly inferior, but I shall
not do wrong to the memory of an ingenious young man [Pollock], cut off just as he
had mustered his powers, by naming him again in a connection so perilous. He at least
was guiltless of the comparison; and it would be cruel to involve him in the ridicule
which it is suited to excite. Bacon is as exclusively unique as Milton, and as exclus-
ively English; and though the grandfather of Newton was a Scotchman, we have cer-
tainly no Scotch Sir Isaac. I question, indeed, whether any Scotchman attains to the
powers of Locke: there is as much solid thinking in the Essay on the Human Under-
standing,' greatly as it has become the fashion of the age to depreciate it, and not-
withstanding his fundamental error, as in the works of all our Scotch metaphysicians
put together. It is, however, a curious fact, and worthy, certainly, of careful exam-
ination, as bearing on the question of development purely through the force of cir-
cumstances, that all the very great men of England all its first-class men-belong
to ages during which the grinding persecutions of the Stuarts repressed Scottish en-
ergy, and crushed the opening mind of the country; and that no sooner was the
weight removed, like a pavement slab from over a flower-bed, than straightway
Scottish intellect sprung up, and attained to the utmost height to which English in-
tellect was rising at the time. The English philosophers and literati of the eighteenth
century were of a greatly lower stature than the Miltous and Shakspeares, Bacons
and Newtons, of the two previous centuries; they were second-class men-the tall-
est, however, of their age anywhere; and among these the men of Scotland take no
subordinate place. Though absent from the competition in the previous century,
through the operation of causes palpable in the history of the time, we find them quite
up to the mark for the age in which they appear. No English philosopher for the
last hundred and fifty years produced a greater revolution in human affairs than
Adam Smith; or exerted a more powerful influence on opinion than David Hume;
or did more to change the face of the mechanical world than James Watt. The
History of England produced by a Scotchman is still emphatically the English
History;' nor, with all its defects, is it likely to be soon superseded. Robertson, if
inferior in the untaught felicities of narration to his illustrious countrymen, is at
least inferior to none of his English contemporaries. The prose fictions of Smollett
have kept their ground quite as well as those of Fielding, and better than those of
Richardson. Nor does England during the century exhibit higher manifestations of
the poetic spirit than those exhibited by Thomson and by Burns. To use a homely
but expressive Scotticism, Scotland seems to have lost her bairn-time of the giants;
but in the after bairn-time of merely tall men, her children were quite as tall as
any of their contemporaries.
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The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller' have been published by
PETER BAYNE, M.A., two volumes, 1871. This is a copious-too
copious-but interesting work, embracing a full account of the
ecclesiastical questions in which Miller was so deeply and earnestly
engaged. An excellent summary of his life and works is also given
in a volume of biographies, entitled Golden Lives,' by HENRY A.
PAGE, 1874.
C
Popular views of physical science in almost every department will
be found in the works of DR. DIONYSIUS LARDNER (1793-1859).
These are-Hand-book of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy,'
three volumes, 1851-53; Museum of Science and Art,' twelve vol-
umes, 18 4-56; Railway Economy,' 1850; with treatises on Hydro-
statics and Pneumatics, Heat, &c.
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MR. DAVID THOMAS ANSTED (born in London in 1814), Professor
of Geology at King's College, London, has written several valuable
works on his favourite science. The most popular of these is his
'Geology, Introductory, Descriptive, and Practical,' two volumes,
304
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
1844; The Ancient World, or Picturesque Sketches of Great Brit-
ain,' 1847; also several geological manuals. Few men have done
more to popularise any one branch of science than Professor Ansted.
In 1844 he was appointed Vice-secretary of the Geological Society;
in 1868, Examiner in Physical Geography in the Department of
Science and Art.
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The late PROFESSOR JOHN FLEMING, Edinburgh (1785-1857), did
much to advance natural science in Scotland. His principal works
are- The Philosophy of Zoology,' two volumes, 1822; The History
of British Animals,' 1828; Molluscous Animals, including Shell-fish,'
1837; The Temperature of the Seasons, 1851; On the Different
Branches of Natural History' (Address at the meeting of the British
Association), 1855; The Lithology of Edinburgh,' 1858; and various
papers in the scientific journals. Dr. Fleming was born at Kirk-
roads, near Bathgate, Linlithgowshire. He entered the Scottish
church, and was successively minister of Bressay in Shetland, Flisk
in Fifeshire, and Clackmannan. He afterwards was Professor of
Natural Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen. Another early
student of geology in Scotland was MR CHARLES MACLAREN, Edin-
burgh (1782-1866), who published an account of the Geology of Fife
and the Lothians,' 1839. Before this, he had contributed to various
scientific journals, and written a Dissertation on the Topography of
the Plain of Troy,' 1822. Mr. Maclaren was the original editor of
The Scotsman," Edinburgh newspaper, commenced in 1817, and
his editorship extended over a period of about thirty years. In 1847
he resigned the conduct of the paper to a very able political writer,
MR. ALEXANDER RUSSEL (1814-1876), who was author of a treatise
on the Salmon, and of contributions to the Edinburgh' and 'Quar-
terly' Reviews: a man of great energy, and of bright and versatile
powers. In 1969, two volumes of Mr. Maclaren's Select Writings'
were published by Mr. Robert Cox and Professor James Nicol of
Aberdeen.
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•
CHARLES DARWIN.
This eminent naturalist, grandson of the poet (see ante), was born
at Shrewsbury in 1809. After education at the grammar-school of
his native town, and at the universities of Edinburgh and Cam-
bridge, he volunteered to accompany Captain Fitzroy in H.M.S.
Beagle as naturalist on an expedition for the survey of South
America and the circumnavigation of the globe. About five years
were spent on this survey, and Mr. Darwin had ample opportunities
for studying nature under new and interesting aspects:
First Conception of the Theory of Natural Selection.
When (he says) I visited, during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, the Galapagos Ar-
chipelago, situated in the Pacific Ocean, about five hundred miles from South Amer-
ica, I found myself surrounded by peculiar species of birds, reptiles, and plants, ex-
isting nowhere else in the world. Yet they nearly all bore an American stamp. In
the song of the mocking-thrush, in the harsh cry of the carrion-hawk, in the great
DARWIN.]
305
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
candlestick-like opuntias, I clearly perceived the neighbourhood of America, though
the islauds was separated by so many miles of ocean from the mainland, and differed
much in their geological constitution and climate. Still more surprising was the fact
that most of the inhabitants of each separate islaud in this small archipelago were
specifically different, though most clearly related to each other. The archipelago,
with its innumerable craters and barc streams of lava, appeared to be of recent ori-
gin, and thus I fancied myself brought near to the very act of creation. I often asked
myself how these many peculiar animals and plants bad been produced: the simplest
auswer seemed to be that the inhabitants of the several islands had descended from each
other, undergoing modification in the course of their descent; and that all the inhabi-
ants of the archipelago were descended from those of the nearest laud, namely, Amer-
ica, whence colonists would naturally have been derived. But it long remained to me
an inexplicable problem how the necessary degree of modification could have been
effected, and it would thus have remained for ever had I not studied domestic pro-
ductions, and thus acquired a just idea of the power of selection. As soon as I had
fully realised this idea, I saw on reading Maltuus on Population, that natural selec-
tion was the inevitable result of the rapid increase of all organic beings; for I was
prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence by having long studied the habits of
nimals.
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Mr. Darwin returned to England in October 1836, and commenced
publishing the results of his long voyage and his minute observation:
Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the
Countries visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1839; 'On
the Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs,' 1842; Geological Ob-
servations on Volcanic Islands,' 1844; Geological Observations on
South America,' 1846; and A Monograph of the Cirripedia,' pub-
lished by the Ray Society in 1851-3 (a remarkable work on zoo-
logy). Mr. Darwin's next work was that which may be said to have
stirred all Europe by the boldness of its speculations and theories-
'On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Pre-
servation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,' 1859. His
subsequent publications have been-Fertilisation of Orchids through
Insect Agency, and as to the Good of Inter-crossing,' 1862; · Varia
tion of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' 1867; 'The Descent
of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871; 'Expression of the
Emotions to Man and Animals,' 1872; Movements and Habits of
Climbing Plants,' 1874; and numerous geological and botanical
papers in scientific journals. The theory of natural selection advo-
cated by Mr. Darwin is of ancient date-as old as Lucretius-and
has been maintained by Lamarck and others; but Mr. Darwin con-
ceived that these previous schemes or theories afford no explana-
tion of the mode in which the alleged progressive transmutation
of organic bodies from the lowest to the highest grades has
taken place. Species, he says, are not immutable. Organisms
vary and mul iply at a greater rate than their means of subsistence.
The offspring resemble their parents in general points, but vary
in particulars. Amid the struggle for existence which has been
always going on among living beings, variations of bodily conforma-
tion and structure, if in any degree profitable to an individual of
any species, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will
generally be inherited by its offing. In the struggle for life, the
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306
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
}
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strongest of course prevail; the weak die; and this is the principle
or hypothesis of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, which
Mr. Darwin illustrates by a vast store of facts, gleaned from almost
innumerable sources, and brought forward with a philosophic calm-
ness and modesty worthy of all honour and imitation. The illustra-
tions are often interesting, but the theory wants proof; even Profes-
sor Huxley admits that it is not absolutely proven that a group of
animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in nature, has
ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural.'
M. Agassiz wholly repudiates it: The animals known to the ancients
are still in existence, exhibiting to this day the characters they ex-
hibited of old. Until the facts of nature are shewn to have been
mistaken by those who have collected them, and that they have a
diff rent meaning from that now generally assigned to them, I shall
therefore consider the transmutation theory as a scientific mistake,
untrue in its facts, unscientific in its methods, and mischievous in
its tendency.' Professor Owen, in his Classification of Mammalia,'
is also opposed to the theory. Mr. Darwin, in his 'Origin of Spe-
cies,' has given what we may call
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A Poetical View of Natural Selection.
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank clothed with many plants of many
kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with
worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately con-
structed forms, so different from each other, aud dependent upon each other in so
complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
These laws,
taken in the largest sense, being growth with reproduction; inheritance, which is
almost implied by reproduction; variability from the indirect and direct action of the
conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a
struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of
character and the extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature,
from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving
-namely, the production of the higher animals-directly follows. There is grau-
deur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by
the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cy-
cling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless
forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.
Utilitarianism is not the sole motive or mover:
I willingly admit that a great number of male animals, as all our most gorgeous
birds. some fishes, reptiles, and mammals, and a host of magnificently coloured but-
terflies, have been rendered beautiful for beauty's sake, but this has been effected
through sexual selection-that is, by the more beautiful males having been continu-
ally preferred by the females, and not for the delight of man. So it is with the
music of birds. We only infer from all this that a nearly similar taste for beautiful
colours and for musical sounds runs through a large part of the animal kingdom.
This seems as fanciful and poetical as the elder Darwin's 'Loves of
the Plants.' The theory of evolution has been carried to its farthest
extreme-the descent of man. Mr. Darwin conceives that our carly
or common progenitor was an ape-one of the quadrumana. The
quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from
an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversi-
DARWIN.]
307
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
fied forms, either from some reptile-like or some amphibian like crea-
ture, and this again from some fish-like animal.' Of course, a theory
so revolting to the pride of human nature—so irreconcilable with
the records of both revelation and geology-was sure to occasion
keen controversy. One of the most learned opponents of Mr. Darwin
is Mr. St. George Mivart, who contends that man, the ape, and the
half-ape cannot be arranged in a single ascending series of which
man is the term and culmination. The similarity of structure in
some things is no proof of common origin. Each species has been
independently created. Bishop Wilberforce attacked the theory in
the Quarterly Review,' and various other answers appeared.
The endeavour of Cuvier to construct from the study of fossil
bones an anatomical and physiological history of the individual ani-
mal of which these bones are the sole remains, was quite logical; but
is wholly different in principle from the fallacious attempts to make
the facts of ontogenesis, or individual embryonic development, prove
the validity of phylogenesis, or evolution of the line of all living forms
by gradual increase and modification of structure throughout innu-
merable generations, in the course of millions of years, from a spon-
taneously produced shapeless mass of protoplasm, like the flake of
the white of an egg. > *
Of the mental difference between man and the lower animals-the
gulf that separates them--and especially on the subject of language,
some remarks by Professor Max Müller will be found in a subsequent
page. The following extracts will give some idea of Mr. Darwin's
style :
Variability.
Not only the various domestic races, but the most distinct genera and orders
within the same great class-for instance, mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes-are
all the descendants of one common progenitor, and we must admit that the whole
vast amount of difference between these forms has primarily arisen from simple
variability. To consider the subject under this point of view is enough to strike
one dumb with amazement. But our amazement ought to be lessened when we
reflect that beings almost infinite in number, during an almost infinite lapse of time,
have often had their whole organisation rendered in some degree plastic, and that
each slight modification of structure which was in any way beneficial under exces-
sively complex conditions of life has been preserved, whilst each which was in any
way injurious has been rigorously destroyed. And the long-continued accumulation
of beneficial variations will infallibly have led to structures as diversified, as beauti-
fully adapted for various purposes, and as excellently co-ordinated as we see in the
animals and plants around us. Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount
power, whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or by nature
to the production of species. If an architect were to rear a noble and commodious
edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of
a precipice wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and
flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill, and regard him as the paramount
power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to
the edifice built by him. the same relation which the fluctuating variations of organic
beings bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by their
modified descendants.
Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the
* Mr. Wharton Joues' Lecture on Evolution.
308
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. If it were explained
to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building how the edifice had been raised
stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat
stones for the roof, &c.; and if the use of each part and of the whole building were
pointed out, it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been made
clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each fragment could not be
told. But this is a nearly parallel case with the objection that selection explains
nothing, because we know not the cause of each individual difference in the struc-
ture of each being.
A
The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may be called
accidental, but this is not strictly correct; for the shape of each depends on
long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws; on the nature of the rock, on the
lines of deposition or cleavage, ou the form of the mountain, which depends
on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly on the storm or earthquake
which throws down the fragments. But in regard to the use to which the frag-
ments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. Aud here w
are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I am aware I am travelling
beyond my proper province. An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every con-
But can it reasonably b
sequence which results from the laws imposed by Him.
maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordi-
nary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that
the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have determined
the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can it
be maintained with any greater probability that He specially ordained for the süke
of the breeder each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and
plants; many of these variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far
more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and
tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his gro-
tesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of
the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with
jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the prin-
ciple in one case-if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were
intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of
symmetry and vigour, might be formed-no shadow of reason can be assigned for
the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws,
which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the
most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and
specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor
Asa Gray in his belief, 'that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines of
irrigation' If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of
all time pre-ordained, then that plasticity of organisation which leads to many inju-
rious deviations of structure as well as the redundant power of reproduction which
inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and as a consequence, to the natural se-
On
lection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature.
the other hand an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordaius everything and fore-
sees everythin. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficultyas insoluble as is
that of free will and predestination.
Improvement in Flowers.
Buffon, on comparing the flowers, fruit, and vegetables which were then cultivated
with some excellent drawings made a hundred and fifty years previously, was struck
with surprise at the great improvement which had been effected; and remarks that
these ancient flowers and vegetables would now be rejected, not only by a florist, but
by a village gardener. Since the time of Buffon the work of improvement has
steadily and rapidly gone on. Every florist who compares our present flowers with
those figured in books published not long since, is astonished at the change. A well-
known amateur, in speaking of the varicties of Pelargonium raised by Mr. Garth
only twenty-two years before, remarks: What a rage they excited; surely we had
attained perfection, it was said, and now not one of the flowers of those days will be
looked at. But none the less is the debt of gratitude which we owe to those who saw
what was to be done, and did it.' Mr. Paul, the well-known horticulturist, in writ-
E
DARWIN.]
309
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
4
ing of the same flower, says he remembers, when young, being delighted with the
portraits in Sweet's work; but what are they in point of beauty compared with the
Pelargoniums of this day? Here, again, nature did not advance by leaps; the im-
provement was gradual, and if we had neglected those very gradual advances, we
must have foregone the present grand results.' How well this practical horticultur-
ist appreciates and illustrates the gradual and accumulative force of selection! The
dahlia has advanced in beauty in like manner; the line of improvement being guided
by fashion, and by the successive modifications which the flower slowly underwent.
A steady and gradual change has been noticed in many other flowers: thus, an old
florist, after describing the leading varieties of the pink which were grown in 1813,
adds, the pinks of those days would now be scarcely grown as border-flowers.' The
improvement of so many flowers, and the number of the varieties which have been
ruised, is all the more striking when we hear (from Prescott's History of Mexico')
that the earliest known flower-garden in Europe, namely, at Padua, dates only from
the year 1545.
·
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY.
In love of science, as well as in similarity of opinions and pur-
suits, PROFESSOR HUXLEY resembles his friend Mr. Darwin. Having
studied medicine in his twenty-first year he obtained the appointment
of assistant surgeon to H.M.S. Rattlesnake during the surveying
cruise in the South Pacific and Torres Straits. During the three
years of the survey, Mr. Huxley studied the numerous marine ani-
mals which were collected from time to time, and sent home notes of
his observations, which were published in the Philosophical Trans-
actions' under the title of On the Anatomy and Affinities of the
Family of the Medusa.' Further contributions to the same work
were published, and were so highly appreciated that in 1851 Mr.
Huxley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and next year re-
ceived one of the two royal medals of the Society. He had now
taken his place as one of the most distinguished naturalists and com-
parative anatomists of the age, and in 1854 he was appointed succes-
sor to Edward Forbes as Professor of Natural History in the Royal
School of Mines. His scientific publications have earned for him
fame and honours both at home and abroad. The most notable of
these works are- Observations on Glaciers,' written jointly with
Mr. Tyndall, 1857; On the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull,' 1858;
"The Oceanic Hydrozoa,' 1858; Man's Place in Nature,' 1863;
Lectures on Comparative Anatomy,' 1864; Lessons in Elementary
Physiology,' 1866; Classification of Animals,' 1869; Lay Sermons,
Addresses and Reviews,' 1870; &c. The contributions of Mr. Huxley
to scientific journals and associations are much too numerous for us to
mention here. Some of his lectures on the Phenomena of Organic
Nature,' delivered to working-men at the museum of Practical Geol-
ogy, have been published in a separate form, and widely circulated.
Mr. Huxley is a bold and fearless thinker and inquirer. Men of
science,' he says, 'do not pledge themselves to creeds; they are bound
by articles of no sort; there is not a single belief that it is not a
bounden duty with them to hold with a light hand, and to part with
it cheerfully the moment it is really proved to be contrary to any
fact, great or small.' The proof, however, must be irresistible, and
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310
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
on this point we may quote another observation made by Mr.
Huxley:
Caution to Philosophic Inquirers.
The growth of physical science is now so prodigiously rapid, that those who are
actively engaged in keeping up with the present, have much ado to find time to look
at the past, and even grow into the habit of neglecting it. But natural as this result
may be, it is none the less detrimental. The intellect loses, for there is assuredly no
more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talk-
ing it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp who have considered it
from a totally different point of view. The parallax of time helps us to the true
conception, as the parallax of space helps us to that of a star. And the moral
nature loses no less. It is well to turn aside from the fretful stir of the present,
and to dwell with gratitude and respect upon the services of those mighty men of
old who have gone down to the grave with their weapons of war, but who, while
they yet lived, won splendid victories over ignorance.
Professor Huxley is a native of Ealing in Middlesex, born in 1825.
He studied medicine in the Medical School of Charing-Cross Hospital,
and in 1846 entered the medical service of the royal navy. He
is now Professor of Anatomy in the Royal College of Surgeons, and
Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution. He is a
Vice-president of the Zoological and the Geological Societies, &c.
The Objectors to Scientific Inquiry.
There are in the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons,
whose judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost respect on account of their
sincerity, who are of opinion that vital phenomena, and especially all questions re-
lating to the origin of vital phenomena, are questions quite apart from the ordinary
run of inquiry, and are, by their very nature, placed out of our reach. They say
that all these phenomena originated miraculously, or in some way totally different
from the ordinary course of nature, and that therefore they conceive it to be futile,
not to say presumptuous, to attempt to inquire into them.
To such sincere and earnest persons I would only say, that a question of this kind
is not to be shelved upon theoretic or speculative grounds. You may remember the
story of the Sophist who demonstrated to Diogenes in the most complete and satis-
factory manner, that he could not walk; that, in fact, all motion was an impossi-
bility; and that Diogenes refuted him by simply getting up and walking round his
tub. So, in the same way, the man of science replies to objections of this kind, by
simply getting up and walking onward, and shewing what science has done and is
doing-by pointing to the immense mass of facts which have been ascertained and
systematised under the forms of the great doctrines of Morphology, of Development,
of Distribution, and the like. He sees an enormous mass of facts and laws relating
to organic beings, which stand on the same good sound foundation as every other
natural law. With this mass of facts and laws before us, therefore, seeing that, as
far as organic matters have hitherto been accessible and studied, they have shewn
themselves capable of yielding to scientific investigation, we may accept this as a
proof that order and law reign there as well as in the rest of nature. The man of
science says nothing to objectors of this sort, but supposes that we can and shall
walk to a knowledge of organic nature, in the same way that we have walked to a
knowledge of the laws and principles of the inorganic world.
But there are objectors who say the same from ignorance and ill-will. To such I
would reply that the objection comes ill from them, and that the real presumption—
I may almost say, the real blasphemy-in this matter, is in the attempt to limit that
inquiry into the causes of phenomena, which is the source of all human blessings,
and from which has sprung all human prosperity and progress; for, after all, we can
accomplish comparatively little; the limited range of our own faculties bounds us on
every side-the field of our powers of observation is small enough, and he who
IIUXLEY.]
311
ENGLISH LITERATUre.
endeavours to narrow the sphere of our inquiries is only pursuing a course that is
likely to produce the greatest harm to his fellow-men.
All human inquiry must stop somewhere; all our knowledge and all our investiga-
tion cannot take us beyond the limits set by the finite and restricted character of our
faculties, or destroy the endless unknown, which accompanies, like its shadow, the
endless procession of phenomena. So far as I can venture to offer an opinion on
such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that human
beings cau set before themselves is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the an-
nihilation of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its
boundary a little further from our little sphere of action.
The Power of Speech.
*
What is it that constitutes and makes man what he is? What is it but his power
of language that language giving him the mears of recording his experience-
making every generation s mewhat wiser than its predecessor-more in accordauce
with the established order of the universe? What is it but this power of speech, of re-
cording experience, which enables men to be men-looking before and after, and, in
some dim sense, understanding the working of this wondrous universe-and which
distinguishes man from the whole of the brute world? I say that this functional
difference is vast, unfathomable, and truly infinite in its consequences.
FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN MÜLLER.
We may supplement Mr. Huxley's eloquent sentence by observa-
tions from Professor Max Müller on the same subject:
Language the Barrier between Brute and Man.
We see that the lowest of savages-men whose language is said to be no better
than the clucking of hens, or the twittering of birds, and who have been declared in
many respects lower than even animals, possess this one specific characteristic, that
if you take one of their babies, and bring it up in England, it will learn to speak as
well as any English baby, while no amount of education will elicit any attempts at
language from the highest animals, whether biped or quadruped. This disposition
cannot have been formed by definite nervous structures, congenitally framed, for we
are told by the best agriologists that both father and mother clucked like hens. This
fact, therefore, unless disproved by experiment, remains, whatever the explanation
may be.
Language is the one great barrier between the brute and man. Man speaks, and
no brute has ever uttered a word. Language is something more palpable than a fold
of the brain or an angle of the skull. It admits of no cavilling, and no process of
natural selection will ever distil significant words out of the notes of birds or the
cries of beasts. No scholar, so far as I know, has ever controverted any of these
statements. But when evolutionism became, as it fully deserved, the absorbing inter-
est of all students of nature; when it was supposed that, if a moneres could develop
into a man, bow-wow and pooh-pooh might well have developed by imperceptible de-
grees into Greek and Latin, I thought it was time to state the case for the science of
language a statement of facts, shewing that the results of the science of language
did not at present tally with the results of evolutionism, that words could no longer
be derived directly from imitative and interjectional sounds, that between these
sounds and the first beginnings of language, in the technical sense of the word, a
barrier had been discovered, represented by what we call roots, and that, as far as we
know, no attempt, not even the faintest, has ever been made by any animal, except
man, to approach or to cross that barrier. I went one step further. I shewed that
roots were with men the embodiments of general concepts, and that the only way
in which man realised general concepts, was by means of those roots, and words de-
rived from roots.
That there is in us an animal-ay, a bestial nature--has never been denied; to
deny it would take away the very foundation of psychology and ethics. We cannot
be reminded too often that all the materials of our knowledge we share with ani-
mals; that, like them, we begin with sensuous impressions, and then, like ourselves,
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
and like ourselves only, proceed to the general, the ideal, and the eternal. We
cannot be reminded too often that in many things we are like the beasts of the field,
but that like ourselves, and like ourselves only, we can rise superior to our bestial
self, and strive after what is unselfish, good, and Godlike. The wing by which we
soar above the sensuous, was called by wise men of old the, ogos; the wing which
lifts us above the sensual, was called by good men of old the daimonion. Let us take
continual care, especially within the precincts of the temple of science, lest by abus-
ing the gift of speech, or doing violence to the voice of conscience, we soil the two
wings of our soul, and fall back, through our own fault, to the dreaded level of the
gorilla.
FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN MÜLLER (usually contracted to F. Max
Müller) is, as his name imports, a native of Germany, born at Dessau
in 1823. He studied at Leipsic, and was early distinguished for his
proficiency in Sanscrit. He repaired to Berlin and to Paris for the
prosecution of his philological studies, and especially to collate MSS.
relative to his Rig-Veda-Sanhita,' or Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans.
For the same purpose, he examined the MSS. in the Bodleian Libra-
ry at Oxford and in the Indian House. His great work was pub-
lished at the expense of the East India Company. He took up his
residence at Oxford, where he gave lectures on comparative philolo-
gy, was made a member of Christ Church and M.A. in 1851, Pro-
fessor of Modern Languages, curator in the Bodleian Library, Fellow
of All Souls, &c. He was made one of the eight foreign members of
the Institute of France, and has received the honorary degree of
LL.D. from both the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh.
Few foreigners have been so honoured in England, or so familiar
As an oriental
with its language and literature and institutions.
scholar, Professor Müller has no superior in England or in Germany.
His 'Rig-Veda' extends to six quarto volumes, and he has published
Hand-books for the study of Sanscrit, a Sanscrit-English Dictionary
and Grammar, &c. His Lectures on the Science of Language,' two
volumes, are now (1876) in their eighth edition; his 'Introduction to
the Science of Religion' (four lectures delivered at the Royal Institu-
tion), with 'Essays on Mythology,' 'On the Stratification of Lan-
guage,' 'On Missions' (a lecture delivered in Westminster Abbey in
1873), and 'Chips from a German Workshop,' are all well known
and appreciated in this country. The Chips' form four volumes,
the latest being published in 1875; they range over various subjects,
but are chiefly on the Professor's favourite science of language, and
are written in a style clear, forcible, and often picturesque. The
following is a short extract from Lectures on the Science of
Language:'
4
(
Spread of the Latin Language.
There is a peculiar charm in watching the various changes of form and meaning
in words passing down from the Ganges or the Tiber into the great ocean of modern
speech. In the eighth century B.C. the Latin dialect was confined to a small territory.
It was but one dialect out of many that were spoken all over Italy. But it grew-it
became the language of Rome and of the Româns, it absorbed all the other dialects
of Italy, the Umbrian, the Oscan, the Etruscan, the Celtic, and became by conquest
the language of Central Italy, of Southern and Northern Italy. From thence it
TYNDALL.]
313
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
spread to Gaul, to Spain, to Germany, to Dacia on the Danube. It became the lan-
guage of law and government in the civilised portions of Northern Asia, and it was
carried through the heralds of Christianity to the most distant parts of the globe.
It supplanted in its victorious progress the ancient vernaculars of Gaul, Spain, and
Portugal, and it struck deep roots in parts of Switzerland and Walachia. When it came
in contact with the more vigorous idioms of the Teutonic tribes, though it could not
supplant or annihilate them, it left on their surface a thick layer of foreign words,
and it thus supplied the greater portion in the dictionary of nearly all the civilised
nations of the world. Words which were first used by Italian shepherds are now
used by the statesmen of England, the poets of France, the philosophers of Germany;
and the faint echo of their pastoral conversation may be heard in the senate of
Washington, in the cathedral of Calcutta, and in the settlements of New Zealand.
I shall trace the career of a few of those early Roman words, in order to shew how
words may change, and how they adapt themselves to the changing wants of each
generation. I begin with the royal word Palace. A palace now is the abode of a
royal family. But if we look at the history of the name we are soon carried back to
the shepherds of the Seven Hills. There, on the Tiber, one of the Seven Hills was
called the Colis Palatinus, and the hill was called Palatiuus, from Pales, a pastoral
deity, whose festival was celebrated every year on the 21st of April as the birthday
of Rome. It was to commemorate the day on which Romulus, the wolf-child, was
supposed to have drawn the first furrow on the foot of that hill, and thus to have
laid the foundation of the most ancient part of Roine, the Roma Quadrata. On this
hill, the Collis Palatinus, stood in later times the houses of Cicero and of his neighbour
and enemy Catiline. Augustus built his mansion on the same hill, and his example
was followed by Tiberius and Nero. Under Nero all private houses had to be pulled
down on the Collis Platinus. in order to make room for the emperor's residence, the
Domus Aurea, as it was called, the Golden House. This house of Nero's was hence-
forth called the Palatium, and it became the type of all the palaces of the kings and
emperors of Europe.
•
Another modern word, the English court, the French cour, the Italian corte, carries
us back to the same locality and to the same distant past. It was on the hill of La-.
tium that cohors or cors was first used in the sense of a hurdle, an inclosure, a cattle-
yard. The cohortes or divisions of the Roman army were called by the same name;
BO many soldiers constituted a pen or a court. .
Thus cors, cortis, from meaning a pen, a cattle-yard, became in medieval Latin
curtis, and was used like the German Hof of the farms and castles built by Roman
settlers in the provinces of the empire. These farms became the centres of villages
and towns, and in the modern names of Vraucourt, Graincourt, Leincourt, Magni-
court, Aubignicourt, the older names of Vari curtis, Grani curtis, Leonii curtis, Manii
curtis, Albini curtis, have been discovered.
Lastly, from meaning a fortified place, curtis rose to the dignity of a royal resi-
dence, and became synonymous with palace. The two names having started from
the same place, met again at the end of their long career.
PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
The Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution has
had a very active and checkered career. JOHN TYNDALL, a native of
Ireland, was born about the year 1820, and was employed for some
years on the Ordnance Survey. While stationed at Cork, he
worked at mapping in the same room with a very able man, Mr.
Lawrence Ivers. Noticing the work and conduct of Tyndall, Mr.
Ivers asked him how he employed his leisure time. "You have five
hours a day at your own disposal," he said, "and these ought to be
devoted to systematic study." Next morning Tyndall was at his
books before five o'clock, and for twelve years afterwards he never
swerved from the practice. X He was next engaged in railway work,
Co
* Supplement to English Cyclopædia (Biography),
$14
['ro 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
(
then studying abroad, first under Professor Bunsen at Marburg in
Hesse Cassel, and afterwards at Berlin in the laboratory of Professor
Magnus. In 1852 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and
in 1853 he was unanimously appointed to the Professorship of Natu-
ral Philosophy. In 1856, in company with Professor Huxley, he
visited Switzerland, and the result was a series of papers by the two
friends on the structure and motion of glaciers. Other journeys and
investigations were undertaken by Professor Tyndall, and described
in his work on the Glaciers of the Alps,' 1860. He has since pub-
lished Mountaineering,' 18 1; A Vacation Tour,' 1862; Heat Con-
sidered as a Mode of Motion,' 1863; On Radiation,' 1855; Sound, a
Course of Eight Lectures,' 1867; 'Faraday as a Discoverer,' 1868;
'Natural Philosophy in Easy Lessons,' 1869; Essays on the Imagi-
nation in Science,' 1870; Fragments of Science for Unscientific Peo-
ple,' 1871; Hours of Exercise in the Alps,' 1871; &c. Professor
Tyndall is an enthusiastic climber and admirer of Alpine scenery,
a remarkable example,' it has been said, of combined cerebral and
muscular activity.' He has done much to popularise science as a
lecturer at the Royal Institution, besides being distinguished for ori-
ginal research. Like Mr. Huxley, he has stood forward as an advo-
cate for free and unrestricted research into all the recesses of mind
and matter; but has indignantly repudiated the creed of atheism
which had been lightly attributed to him.
<
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Freedom of Inquiry.
It is not to the point to say that the views of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and
Spencer, may be wrong. Here I should agree with you, deeming it indeed certain
that these views will undergo modification. But the point is, that, whether right or
wrong, we claim the right to discuss them. For science, however, no exclusive claim
is bere made; you are not urged to erect it into au idol. The inexorable advance of
man's understanding in the path of knowledge, and those unquenchable claims of his
moral and emotional nature which the understanding can never satisfy, are here
equally set forth. The world embraces not only a Newton, but a Shakspeare-not
only a Boyle, but a Raphael-not only a Kant, but a Beethoven-not only a Darwin,
but a Carlyle. Not in each of these, but in all, is human nature whole. They are
not opposed, but supplementary-not mutually exclusive, but reconcilable. And if,
unsatisfied with them all, the human mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for his
distant home, will still turn to the mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so to
fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith; so long as this is done, not only
without intolerance or bigotry of any kind. but with the enlightened recognition that
ultimate fixity of conception is here unattainable, and that each succeeding age must
be held free to fashion the mystery in accordance with its own needs-then, casting
aside all the restrictions of materialism. I would affirm this to be a field for the no-
blest exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing faculties, may be called the crea-
tive faculties of man. Here, however, I touch a theme too great for me to handle,
but which will assuredly be handled by the loftiest minds when you and I, like streaks
of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past.
This extract is from Professor Tyndall's address delivered at Bel-
fast in 1874. From the same address we give another passage;
TYNDALL.]
315
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Advance in Science since the Days of Bishop Butler.
"
Bishop Butler accepted with unwavering trust the chronology of the Old Testa-
ment, describing it as confirmed by the natural and civil history of the world, col-
lected from common historians, from the state of the earth, and from the late inven-
tions of arts and sciences.' These words mark progress; and they must seem some-
what hoary to the bishop's successors of to-day. It is hardly necessary to inform
you that since his time the domain of the naturalist has been immensely extended-
the whole science of geology, with its astounding revelations regarding the life of the
ancient earth, having been created. The rigidity of old conceptions has been re-
laxed, the public mind being rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for six
thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for æous em-
bracing untold millions of years, this earth has been the theatre of life and death.
The riddle of the rocks has been read by the geologist and palæontologist, from sub-
cambrian depths to the deposits thickening over the sea-bottoms of to-day.
And
upon the leaves of that stone-book are, as you know, stamped the characters, plainer
and surer than those formed by the ink of history, which carry the mind back into
abysses of past time, compared with which the periods which satisfied Bishop Butler
cease to have a visual angle.
The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified forms in which life was at one
time active increased to multitudes, and demanded classification. They were grouped
in genera, species, and varieties, according to the degree of similarity subsisting be-
tween them. Thus confusion was avoided, each object being found in the pigeon-
hole appropriated to it and to its fellows of similar morphological or physiological char-
acter. The general fact soon became evident that none but the simplest forms of life
lie lowest down, that as we climb higher among the super-imposed strata more per-
fect forms appear. The change, however, from form to form was not continuous,
but by steps-some small, some great. A section,' says Mr. Huxley, a hundred feet
thick will exhibit at different heights a dozen species of ammonite, none of which
passes beyond its particular zone of limestone, or clay, into the zone below it, or into
that above it.' In the presence of such facts, it was not possible to avoid the ques-
tion: Have these forms, shewing, though in broken stages, and with many irregu-
larities, this unmistakable general advance, been subjected to no continuous law of
growth or variation ?
.
¿
HERBERT SPENCER.
Another enthusiastic votary of biology and kindred studies, and
an exponent of the theory of evolution, is MR. HERBERT SPENCER, a
native of Derby, born in 1820. Mr. Spencer began life as an engineer,
then assisted some time at the periodical press, and contributed to the
reviews, &c. His principal works are- Principles of Psychology,'
1855; Essays, Scientific, Political, and Speculative,' 1858-63; Prin-
ciples of Biology,' 1864; 'Descriptive Sociology, or Groups of Socio-
logical Facts,' 1874; &c.
<
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6
PROFESSOR GEIKIE.
ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, born in Edinburgh in 1835, is author of
several geological works, and was associated with Sir Roderick Mur-
chison in investigating the geological structure of the Scottish High-
lands, preparing a memoir of that district, and drawing up a new
geological map of Scotland (1861). He was director of the Survey of
Scotland, and when a chair of mineralogy and geology was founded in
the university of Edinburgh in 1870, Mr. Geikie was appointed profes-
sor. In 1872 the university of St. Andrews conferred upon him the de-
gree of LL.D. The works of Dr. Geikie are-'The Story of a Boulder,'
1858; Life of Professor Edward Forbes' (conjointly with the late
,
316
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Dr. George Wilson), 1861; 'Phenomena of the Glacial Drift of Scot-
land,' 1863; The Scenery of Scotland viewed in connection with its
Physical Geology,' 1865; and various articles in reviews and scien-
tific journals.
JAMES GEIKIE, a brother of the above, has written a large and val-
uable work, 'The Great Ice Age and its Relation to the Antiquity of
Man.'
PROFESSOR WHITNEY.
WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY, Professor of Sanscrit and Instructor
in Modern Languages in Yale College, was born at Northampton,
Massachusetts, in 1827. He has written various works, including
'Twelve Lectures on Language and the Study of Language,' 1867.
Of these lectures, the first seven have, with the consent of the author
and publisher, been reprinted by the Rev. Dr. Morris, as a sound
and scientific introduction to a more advanced course of comparative
philology. Dr. Morris adds an introduction with notes, tables of
declension, and an index, rendering the volume very useful for stu-
dents. Professor Whitney is a well-known Sanscrit scholar, but in
these lectures he has chosen English as the language from which the
most telling of his examples and explanations of linguistic changes
are drawn.
Celtic Branch of the Indo-European Languages.
So completely were the Gaulish dialects of Northern Italy, France, and Spain
wiped out by the Latin, so few traces of them are left to us, either in the later
idioms of the Latin or in fragments of writings, inscriptions, and coins, that it is
still a matter of doubt and question among Celtic scholars to which of the known
divisions of Celtic speech, the Gadhelic or the Cymric, they belonged, or whether
they did not constitute a third division co-ordinate with them. Aside from the ex-
ceedingly scanty and obscure Gallic epigraphical monuments, and the few single
words preserved in classic authors, the earliest records both of Irish and Welsh
speech are glosses, or interlinear and marginal versions and comments written by
Celtic scholars upon manuscripts which they were studying. in old times when
Wales and Ireland, especially the latter, were centres of a lively literary and
Christian activity. Of these glosses, the Irish are by far the most abundant, and
afford a tolerably distinct idea of what the language was at about the end of the
eighth century. There is also an independent literary work, a Life of St.
Patrick, which is supposed to belong to the beginning of the ninth century. The
other principal Gadhelic dialect, the Scotch Gaelic, presents us a few songs that
claim to be of the sixteenth century. The Ossianic poems, which excited such at-
tention a hundred years ago, and whose genuineness and value have been the sub-
ject of so lively discussion, are probably built upon only a narrow foundation of
real Gaelic tradition.
In the Cymric division, the Welsh glosses are the oldest monuments of definite
date. Though hardly, if at all, less ancient than the Irish. coming down from
somewhere between the eighth and the tenth centuries, they are very much more
scanty in amount, hardly sufficient to do more than disprove the supposed antiquity
of the earliest monuments of the language that possess a proper literary character.
For long centuries past the Welsh bards have sung in spirit-stirring strains the
glories and the woes of their race; and it is claimed that during much more than a
thousand years, or ever since the sixth century, the era of Saxon invasion and con-
quest, some of their songs have been handed down from generation to generation,
by a careful and uninterrupted tradition, and the claim is probably well founded;
ouly, it is also pretty certain that as they have been handed down, they have been
WHITNEY.}
317
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
modernised in diction, so that, in their present form, they represent to us the
Welsh language of a time not much preceding the date of the oldest manuscripts, or
of the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. The later Welsh literature, as well as the
Irish, is abundant in quantity. The Cornish, also, has a tolerably copious literature
of not far from the same age; its earliest monuinent, a Latin-Cornish vocabulary,
may be as old as the twelfth century. The language of Brittany, the Armorican-
which is so closely allied with the two last mentioned, that it cannot well be regarded
as a remuant and representative of the Celtic dialects of Gaul, but must rather be-
long to colonists or fugitives from Britain-is recorded in one or two brief works
going back to the fourteenth century or even farther.
DR. JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER,
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The distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the university of New
York, in 1875 published a History of the Conflict between Religion
and Science,' commencing with the Greek conquest of Persia, and
the subsequent division of Alexander's empire, which resulted in the
establishment of the Macedonian dynasty in Egypt. This was suc-
ceeded by the erection of the Museum as a school of knowledge at
Alexandria, then the intellectual metropolis of the world. Dr.
Draper traces the influence of the Museum and the development
of science. The philosophy was of the stoical Pantheistic type.
Though there is a Supreme Power,' said the ethical teachers, 'there
is no Supreme Being; there is an invisible principle, but not a per-
sonal God, to whom it would be not so much blasphemy as absurdity
to impute the form, the sentiments, the passions of man.' The soul
of man was supposed to be re-absorbed into the universal soul; and
as the tired labourer looks forward to the insensibility of sleep, so
the philosopher, weary of the world, anticipated the tranquillity of
extinction. Dr. Draper next proceeds to describe the rise of Chris-
tianity, and to give a history of the conflict between religion and
science from that time to the present day.' But the work should
more correctly be termed a history of the conflict between science
and the Roman Catholic Church. The Greek Church, he says, has
met the advance of knowledge with welcome; the Protestant
Churches have been mostly averse to constraint, and their oppo-
sition has seldom passed beyond the exciting of theological odium.
In speaking of Christianity,' says Dr. Draper, 'reference is gen-
erally made to the Roman Church, partly because its demands are
the most pretentious, and partly because it has sought to enforce
those demands by the civil power.' Now to this it may be objected
that the conflict of a church with science, and that church a political
or state organisation, is not a battle between science and religion.
The maintenance of its own power was the object of the Papacy,
and with perfect impartiality it persecuted alike its religious oppo-
nents and the scientific discoverer. It would be as reasonable to
charge upon science all the absurdities of alchemy and astrology as
to discredit religion with all the follies of its professed followers. In
his History, Dr. Draper gives an account of the rise of Moham-
medanism and the conquests of the Arabs, who carried with them
318
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
into Europe a taste for philosophy and science. In the tenth cen-
tury, the Caliph Hakem II. had made Andalusia a sort of terrestrial
paradise, where Christians, Mussulmans, and Jews mixed together
without restraint.
Luxuries of the Spanish Caliphs.
The Spanish caliphs bad surrounded themselves with all the luxuries of oriental
life. They had magnificent palaces, enchanting gardens, seraglios filled with beauti-
ful women. Europe at the present day does not offer more taste, more refinement,
more elegance, than might have been seen at the epoch of which we are speaking,
in the capitals of the Spanish Arabs. Their streets were lighted and solidly paved.
Their houses were frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces,
and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-
beds. They had baths and libraries and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and
water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and
mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wassail orgies of their Northern
neighbours, the feasts of the Saraceus were marked by sobriety. Wine was pro-
hibited. The enchanting moonlight evenings of Andalusia were spent by the Moors
in sequestered fairy-like gardens, or in orange groves, listening to the romances of
the story-teller, or engaged in philosophical discourse; consoling themselves for the
disappointments of this life by such reflections as that, if virtue were rewarded in this
world, we should be without expectations in the life to come; and reconciling them-
selves to their daily toil by the expectation that rest will be found after death-a rest
never to be succeeded by labour.
Dr. Draper is stated to have been born near Liverpool in 1811. He
graduated at the university of Pennsylvania in 1836, and in 1839 was
appointed Professor of Chemistry in the university of New York.
His Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical,' is considered one
of the best of our physiological treatises. He has also written on the
'Organisation of Plants,' 1844; a History of the Intellectual Devel-
opment of Europe,' 1864; and text-books on chemistry and natural
history.
C
GEORGE SMITH.
MR. GEORGE SMITH (1840-1876), a gentleman honourably associ-
ated with the progress of Assyrian discovery, was of humble origin.
In his fifteenth year he was apprenticed to a bank-note engraver, but
his leisure hours were devoted to the study of oriental antiquities;
and on the recommendation of Sir Henry Rawlinson, he was en-
gaged in the British Museum (1857). A contemporary account says:
Several years of arduous and successful study were fruitful of im-
portant results; but it was in 1872 that Mr. Smith had the good for-
tune to make what in this connection may be reckoned as his culmi-
nating discovery-that, namely, of the tablets containing the Chaldean
account of the deluge, the first fragment discovered containing about
half the account which was afterwards supplemented as the result of ar-
duous and ingenious research, in the course of which Mr. Smith ascer-
tained that the deluge tablet was, in fact, the eleventh of a series of
twelve giving the history of an unknown hero named Izdubar.' Mr.
Smith left London on his last mission of discovery at the beginning of
the present year (1876), but died at Aleppo on the 19th August. His
career has been short, but no one can doubt its brilliancy; and h
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319
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
was endeared to the large number of friends whom his geniality at-
tracted and attached for the singular modesty and equilibrium which
characterised him even in the most trying moments of homage and
ovation.' Mr. Smith's chief publication is his Chaldean Account of
Genesis,' containing the description of the creation, the fall of man,
the deluge, the tower of Babel, the times of the patriarchs and Nim-
rod; Babylonian fables and legends of the gods, from the cuneiform
inscriptions.
TRAVELLERS.
¿
Every season adds to our library of foreign travels and adventures.
Dr. Edward Clarke saw and described more of the East, as Byron
said, than any of his predecessors, but a numerous tribe of followers
has succeeded. Travels in the East,' by the REV. HORATIO SOUTH-
GATE, 1840, describe the traveller's route through Greece, Turkey,
Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia, and Mesopotamia, and give a good ac-
count of the Mohammedan religion and its rites and ceremonies.
The following is a correction of a vulgar error:
Religious Status of Women in the Mohammedan System.
The place which the Mohammedan system assigns to woman in the other world
has often been wrongfully represented. It is not true, as has sometimes been re-
ported, that Mohammedan teachers deny her admission to the felicities of Paradise.
The doctrine of the Koran is, most plainly, that her destiny is to be determined in
like manner with that of every accountable being; and according to the judgment
passed upon her is her reward, although nothing definite is said of the place which
she is to occupy in Paradise. Mohammed speaks repeatedly of believing women,
commends them, and promises them the recompense which their good deeds deserve.
•
The regulations of the Sunneh are in accordance with the precepts of the Koran.
So far is woman from being regarded in these institutions as a creature without a
soul, that special allusion is frequently made to her, and particular directions given
for her religious conduct. Respecting her observance of Ramazan, her ablutions,
and many other matters, her duty is taught with a minuteness that borders ou inde-
corous precision. She repeats the creed in dying, and, like other Mussulmans, says:
In this faith I have lived. in this faith I die, and in this faith I hope to rise again.'
She is required to do everything of religious obligation equally with men. The com-
mand to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca extends to her. In my journeys. I often
met with women on their way to the Holy City. They may even undertake this
journey without the consent of their husbands, whose authority in religious matters
extends only to those acts of devotion which are not obligatory.
Women are not, indeed, allowed to be present in the mosques at the time of pub-
lic prayers: but the reason is not that they are regarded, like pagan females, as un-
susceptible of religious sentiments. but because the meeting of the two sexes in a
sacred place is supposed to be unfavourable to devotion. This, however, is au ori-
ental, not a Mobammedu prejudice. The custom is nearly the same among the
Christians as among the Mussulmans. In the Greek churches the females are sepa-
rated from the males, and concealed behind a lattice; and something of the same
kind I have observed among the Christians of Mesopotamia.
'Six Years' Residence in Algiers,' by MRS. BROUGHTON, published
in 1839, is an interesting domestic chronicle.
domestic chronicle. The authoress was
320
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
daughter to Mr. Blanckley, the British consul-general at Algiers; and
the work is composed of a journal kept by Mrs. Blanckley, with re-
miniscences by her daughter, Mrs. Broughton. The vivacity, minute
description, and kindly feeling everywhere apparent in this book
render it highly attractive.
'Discoveries in the Interior of Africa,' by SIR JAMES ALEXANDER,
two volumes, 1838, describe a journey from Cape Town, of about
four thousand miles, and occupying above a year, towards the tracts
of country inhabited by the Damaras, a nation of which very little
was known, and generally the country to the north of the Orange
River, on the west coast. The author's personal adventures are in-
teresting, and it appears that the aborigines are a kind and friendly
tribe of people, with whom Sir James Alexander thinks that an ex-
tended intercourse may be maintained for the mutual benefit of the
colonists and the natives.
(
<
'A Journal written during an Excursion in Asia Minor in 1838,' by
CHARLES FELLOWS, is valuable from the author's discoveries in Pam-
phylia. Mr. Fellows has also written a second work, Ancient Ly-
cia, an Account of Discoveries made during a Second Excursion to
Asia Minor in 1840.' LIEUT. J. R. WELLSTED, author of Travels in
Arabia, the Peninsula of Sinai, and along the Shores of the Red Sea,'
1838; and LORD LINDSAY, in his Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the
Holy Land,' 1838, supply some additional details. The scene of the
encampment of the Israelites, after crossing the Red Sea, is thus de-
scribed by Lord Lindsay:
The Red Sea.
The bright sea suddenly burst on us, a sail in the distance, and the blue mountains
of Africa beyond it-a lovely vista. But when we had fairly issued into the plain on
the sea-shore, beautiful indeed, most beautiful was the view-the whole African
coast, from Gebel Ataka to Gebel Krarreb, lay before us, washed by the Red Sea-a
vast amphitheatre of mountains, except the space where the waters were lost in dis-
tance between the Asiatic and Libyan promontories. It was the stillest hour of day;
the sun shone brightly, descending to his palace in the occident;' the tide was
coming in with its peaceful pensive murmurs, wave after wave. It was in this plain,
broad, and perfectly smooth from the mountains to the sea, that the children of Israel
encamped after leaving Elim. What a glorious scene it must then have presented!
and how nobly those rocks, now so silent, must have re-echoed the Song of Moses
and its ever-returning chorus-Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triuanphed gloriously;
the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea!'
The EARL OF CARLISLE, in 1854, published an interesting, unpre-
tending volume, entitled 'A Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters.'
His lordship is also author of a lecture on Pope, and of a paraphrase
in verse, The Second Vision of Daniel,' 1858.
C
As a guide and pleasant companion over another Eastern route, we
may note the 'Overland Journey to the North of India from Eng-
land,' by LIEUTENANT ARTHUR CONOLLY, two volumes, 1834.
Lieutenant Conolly's journey was through Russia, Persia, and
Afghanistan. MISS EMMA ROBERTS, in the following year, gave a
MRS. POSTANS.]
321
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
lively and entertaining series of Scenes and Characteristics of Hin-
dustan, with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society.' This lady went out
again to India in 1839, and was engaged to conduct a Bombay news-
paper; but she died in 1840. Her Notes of an Overland Journey
through France and Egypt to Bombay' were published after her
death. Another lady, MRS. POSTANS, published (1839) 'Cutch, or
Random Sketches taken during a Residence in one of the Northern
Provinces of Western India.'The authoress resided some years in
the province of Cutch, and gives a minute account of the feudal
government and customs, the religious sects and superstitions of the
people. The aristocratic distinctions of caste are rigidly preserved,
and the chiefs are haughty, debauched, and cruel.
(
Sacrifice of a Hindu Widow.-From Mrs. Postans's 'Cutch, or Random
Sketches,' &c.
News of the widow's intentions having spread, a great concourse of people of
both sexes, the women clad in their gala costumes, assembled round the pyre. In a
short time after their arrival the fated victim appeared, accompanied by the Brah-
mins, her relatives, and the body of the deceased. The spectators showered chap-
lets of mogree on her head, and greeted her appearance with laudatory exclamations
at her constancy and virtue. The women especially pressed forward to touch her
garments-an act which is considered meritorious, and highly desirable for absolu-
tion and protection from the evil eye.'
&
The widow was a remarkably handsome woman, apparently about thirty, and
most superbly attired. Her manner was marked by great apathy to all around her,
and by a complete indifference to the preparations which for the first time met her
eye. From this circumstance an impression was given that she might be under the
influence of opium; and in conformity with the declared intention of the European
officers present to interfere should any coercive measures be adopted by the Brah-
mins or relatives, two medical officers were requested to give their opinion on the
subject. They both agreed that she was quite free from any influence calculated to
induce torpor or intoxication.
Captain Burnes then addressed the woman, desiring to know whether the act she
was about to perform were voluntary or enforced, and assuring her that, should she
entertain the slightest reluctance to the fulfilment of her vow, he, on the part of the
British government, would guarantee the protection of her life and property. Her
answer was calm, heroic, and constant to her purpose: 'I die of my own free-will;
give me back my husband, and I will consent to live; if I die not with him, the souls
of seven husbands will condemn me!'
Ere the renewal of the horrid ceremonies of death were permitted, again the voice
of mercy, of expostulation, and even of entreaty was heard; but the trial was vain,
and the cool and collected manner with which the woman still declared her determi-
nation unalterable, chilled and startled the most courageous. Physical pangs evi-
dently excited no fears in her; her singular creed, the customs of her country, and
her sense of conjugal duty, excluded from her mind the natural emotions of personal
dread; and never did martyr to a true cause go to the stake with more constancy and
firmness, than did this delicate and gentle woman prepare to become the victim of a
deliberate sacrifice to the demoniacal tenets of her heathen creed. Accompanied
by the officiating Brahmin, the widow walked seven times around the pyre, repeat-
ing the usual mantras or prayers, strewing rice and coories on the ground, and sprink-
ling water from her hand over the by-standers, who believe this to be efficacious in
preventing disease and in expiating committed sins. She then removed her jewels,
and presented them to her relations, saying a few words to each with a calm soft
smile of encouragement and hope. The Brahmin then presented her with a lighted
torch, bearing which-
•
322
[TO 1896.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
Fresh as a flower just blown,
And warm with life, her youthful pulses playing,
she stepped through the fatal door, and sat within the pile. The body or her hus-
band. wrapped in rich kinkaub, was then carried seven times round the pile, and
finally laid across her knees. Thorns and grass were piled over the door; and again
it was insisted that free space should be left, as it was hoped the poor victim might
yet relent, and rush from her fiery prison to the protection so freely offered. The
command was readily obeyed; the strength of a child would have sufficed to burst
the frail barrier which confined her, and a breathless pause succeeded; but the wo-
mau's constancy was faithful to the last. Not a sigh broke the deathlike silence of
the crowd, until a slight smoke, curling from the summit of the pyre, and then a
tongue of flame darting with bright and lightning-like rapidity into the clear blue sky,
told us that the sacrifice was completed. Fearlessly had this courageous woman fired
the pile, and not a groan had betrayed to us the moment when her spirit fled. At sight
of the flame a fiendish shout of exultation rent the air; the tom-toms sounded, the
people clapped their hands with delight as the evidence of their murderous work
burst on their view, whilst the English spectators of this sad scene withdrew, bearing
deep compassion in their hearts, to philosophise as best they might on a custom so
fraught with horror, so incompatible with reason, and so revolting to human sympa-
thy. The pile continued to burn for three hours; but, from its form, it is supposed
that almost immediate suffocation must have terminated the sufferings of the un-
happy victim.
•
(
First Impressions and Studies from Nature in Hindustan,' by
LIEUTENANT THOMAS BACON, two volumes, 1837, is a more lively
but carelessly written work, with good sketches of scenery, build-
ings, pageants, &c. The HON. MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE (1778-
1859), in 1842, gave an account of the kingdom of Cabul, and its de-
pendencies in Persia, Tartary, and India; and A Narrative of
Various Journeys in Beloochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjaub,'
by CHARLES MASSON, describes with considerable animation the
author's residence in those countries, the native chiefs, and personal
adventures with the various tribes from 1826 to 1838. MR. C. R.
BAYNES, a gentleman in the Madras civil service, published in 1843
Notes and Reflections during a Ramble in the East, an Overland
Journey to India,' &c. His remarks are just and spirited, and his
anecdotes and descriptions lively and entertaining.
Remark by an Arab Chief.
An Arab chieftain, one of the most powerful of the princes of the desert, had
come to behold for the first time a steam-ship. Much attention was paid to him,
and every facility afforded for his inspection of every part of the vessel. What im-
pression the sight made on him it was impossible to judge. No indications of sur-
prise escaped him; every muscle preserved its wonted calmness of expression; and
on quitting, he merely observed, It is well; but you have not brought a man to life
yet!'
Legend of the Mosque of the Bloody Baptism at Cairo.
Sultan Hassan, wishing to see the world, and lay aside for a time the anxieties
and cares of royalty, committed the charge of his kingdom to his favourite minister,
and taking with him a large amount of treasure in money and jewels, visited several
foreign countries in the character of a wealthy merchant. Pleased with his tour, and
becoming interested in the occupation he had assumed as a disguise, he was absent
much longer than he originally intended, and in the course of a few years greatly in-
creased his already large stock of wealth. His protracted absence, however, proved
a temptation too strong for the virtue of the viceroy, who, gradually forming for him-
•
BOWRING.]
323
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
self a party among the leading men of the country, at length communicated to the com-
mon people the intelligence that Sultan Hassan was no more, and quietly seated him-
self on the vacant throne. Sultan Hassan returuing shortly afterwards from his pilgri-
mage, and, fortunately for himself, still in disguise, learned, as he approached his capi-
tal, the news of his own death and the usurpation of his minister. Finding, on further
inquiry, the party of the usurper to be too strong to render an immediate disclosure
prudent, he preserved his incognito, and soon became known in Cairo as the wealth-
iest of her merchants; nor did it excite any surprise when he announced his pious in-
tention of devoting a portion of his gains to the erection of a spacious mosque. The
work proceeded rapidly under the spur of the great merchant's gold, and, on its com-
pretion, he solicited the honour of the sultan's presence at the ceremony of naming
it. Anticipating the gratification of hearing his own name bestowed upon it, the
usurper accepted the invitation, and at the appointed hour the building was filled by
him and his most attached adherents. The ceremonies had duly proceeded to the
time when it became necessary to give the name. The chief, Moolah, turning to the
supposed merchant, inquired what should be its name. Call it,' he replied, the Mosque
of Sultan Hassan.´´ All started at the mention of this name; and the questioner, as
though not believing he could have heard aright, or to afford an opportunity of cor-
recting what might be a mistake, repeated his demand. Call it,' again cried he, the
mosque of me, Sultan Hassan !' and throwing off his disguise, the legitimate sultan
stood revealed before his traitorous servant. He had no time for reflection: simulta-
neousy with the discovery, numerous trap-doors, leading to extensive vaults, which had
been prepared for the purpose, were flung open, and a multitude of armed men issuing
from them, terminated at once the reigu and life of the usurper. His followers were
mingled in the slaughter, and Sultan Hassan was once more in possession of the
throne of his fathers.
C
•
6
+
SIR JOHN BOWRING published an entertaining and instructive ac-
•
count of The Kingdom and People of Siam,' two volumes, 1857.
State and Ceremonial of the Siamese.
April 16, 1855.-How can I describe the barbaric grandeur, the parade, the show,
the glitter, the real magnificence, the profuse decorations of to-day's royal audience!
We went, as usual. in the state barges; mine had scarlet and gold curtains, the
others had none. Parkes sent them back, and they all returned with the needful
appendages; he understands the art of managing Orientals marvellously well.
When we landed, chairs were brought, and multitudes of guards escorted us.
From the moment we entered the precincts of the palace, an unbroken line of sol-
diery. dressed in a great variety of costumes, and bearing every species of weapon
-many singularly grotesque and rude-spears. shields, swords, bucklers, battle-axes,
bows, quivers, in every form, and uniforms of every colour and shape. fantastical,
farcical, fierce. and amusing; the rudest forms of ancient warfare. mingled with
sepoy-dressed regulars-ancient European court costumes amidst the light and golden
garments, and sometimes the nakedness above the waist of nobles of the highest dis-
tinction. I was carried in a gaudy gilded chair, with a scarlet umbrella over me.
borne by eight bearers, with a crowd of attendants. My suite followed me in less
decorated seats; but crowds of men, women, and children pressed around us, who
were beaten away with canes by the police. We passed through rows of caparisoned
ponies and elephants mounted for war. The ruder troops of the wilder countries
were broken by small bodies of soldiers dressed in European style, who pre-
sented arms,' and had fifes and drums; but much of the music was of tom-toms
and Siamese instruments. We were all conducted to a building to await the royal
summons, where coffee and cigars were brought in, and gold and silver vessels, con-
taining pure water, covered the table, at the head of which I was placed. The spit-
toou at my feet was of silver, inlaid with gold, and about fourteen inches in diameter.
Soon a messenger came, and we proceeded on foot to the hall of reception. Soft and
exceedingly pleasing music welcomed our arrival, and at it thundered forth a loud
peal as we approached the grand hall of audience. On entering the hall, we found it
crowded with nobles, all prostrate, and with their faces bent to the ground. I
walked forward through the centre of the hall to a cushion provided for me in a line
with the very highest nobles not of royal blood; the prime-minister and his brother
324
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
were close to me on my right hand. The king came in and seated himself on an
e'evated and gorgeous throne like the curtained box of a theatre. He was clad in
golden garments, his crown at his side; but he wore on his head a cap decorated
with large diamonds, and enormous diamond rings were on his fingers. At my left,
nearer the throne, were the king's brothers and his sous; et the right, the princes of
the blood, the Somdetches, and the higher nobles. The nobility crowded the hall, all
on their knees; and on the entrance of the king, his throne, being raised about ten
feet from the floor, they all bent their foreheads to the ground, and we sat down as
gracefully as we could, while the prostrations were repeated again and again.
C
C
China has received a flood of new illustration, and the intercourse
which has recently been opened up with that immense and mysterious
empire will still further augment the amount of our knowledge. MR.
JOHN FRANCIS DAVIS, late chief superintendent in China, has pub-
lished two interesting works: Sketches of China, partly during an
Inland Journey of Four Months between Pekin, Nankin, and Can-
ton; and The Chinese, a General Description of the Empire of
China and its Inhabitants.' The latter work was published in 1836,
but has since been enlarged, and the history of British intercourse
brought down to the events which produced the dissolution of 1857.
Mr. Davis resided twenty years at Canton, is perfect in the peculiar
language of China, and has certainly seen more of its inhabitants
than any other English author. The Journal of Three Voyages
along the Coast of China,' in 1831, 1832, and 1833, by MR. GUTZLAFF,
a German, is also a valuable work. The contraband trade in opium
formed a memorable era in the history of Chinese commerce.
It was
carried on to a great extent with the Hong merchants; but in 1834,
after the monopoly of the East India Company had been abolished,
our government appointed Lord Napier to proceed to Canton as spe-
cial superintendent, to adjust all disputed questions among the mer-
chants, and to form regulations with the provincial authorities. The
Chinese, always jealous of foreigners, and looking upon mercantile
employments as degrading, insulted our superintendent; hostilities
took place, and the trade was suspended. Lord Napier took his de-
parture amidst circumstances of insult and confusion, and died on
the 11th of October, 1834. The functions of superintendent devolved
on Mr. Davis. The Chinese, emboldened by the pacific temper-
ament of our government, proceeded at length to the utmost extent;
and not satisfied with imprisoning and threatening the lives of the
whole foreign community, laid also violent hands on the British re-
presentative himself, claiming, as the purchase of his freedom, the
delivery of the whole of the opium then in the Chinese waters-pro-
perty to the amount of upwards of two millions sterling. After a
close imprisonment of two months' duration, during which period
our countrymen were deprived of many of the necessaries of life,
and exposed repeatedly, as in a pillory, to the gaze and abuse of the
mob, no resource was left but to yield to the bold demands of the
Chinese, relying with confidence on their nation for support and re-
dress: nor did they rely in vain; for immediately the accounts of the
<
BINGHAW.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE:
325
**
aggression reached London, preparations commenced for the Chinese
expedition. After two years of irregular warfare, a treaty of
peace and friendship between the two empires was signed on board
This ex-
Her Majesty's ship Cornwallis on the 29th of August 1842.
pedition gave rise to various publications. LORD JOCELYN wrote a
lively and interesting narrative, entitled Six Months with the Chi-
nese Expedition; and COMMANDER J. ELLIOT BINGHAM, R. N., a
Narrative of the Expedition to China.' 'Two Years in China,' by
D. MACPHERSON, M.D., relates the events of the campaign from its
formation in April 1840 to the treaty of peace in 1842.Doings in
China,' by LIEUTENANT ALEXANDER MURRAY, illustrates the social
habits of the Chinese. The Last Year in China, to the Peace of
Nankin,' by a Field Officer, consists of extracts from letters written
to the author's private friends. The Closing Events of the Cam-
paign in China,' by CAPTAIN G. G. LOCH, R.N., is one of the best
books which the expedition called forth.
<
·
C
Chinese Ladies' Feet.-From Commander Bingham's 'Narrative.'
During our stay we made constant trips to the surrounding islands, in one of
which-at Tea Island-we had a good opportunity of minutely examining the far-
famed little female feet. I had been purchasing a pretty little pair of satin shoes,
for about balf a dollar, at one of the Chinese farmers' houses, where we were sur-
rounded by several men, women, and children. By signs we expressed a wish to
see the pied mignon of a really good-looking woman of the party. Our signs were
quickly understood, but, probably from her being a matron, it was not considered
quite comme il faut for her to comply with our desire, as she would not consent to
shew us her foot; but a very pretty interesting girl, of about sixteen, was placed cn
a stool for the purpose of g atifying our curiosity. At first she was very bashful,
and appeared not to like exposing her Cinderella-like slipper, but the shine of a new
and very bright 'loopee' soon overcame her delicacy, when she commenced un-
winding the upper bandage which passes round the leg, and over a tougue that
comes up from the heel. The shoe was then removed and the second bandage
taken off, which did duty for a stocking; the turns round the toes and ankles being
very tight, and keeping all in place. On the raked foot being exposed to
view, we were agreeably surprised by finding it delicately white and clean, for
we fully expected to have found it otherwise, from the known habits of
most of the Chinese. The leg from the knee downwards was much wasted;
the foot appeared as if broken up at the instep. while the four small toes were bent flat
and pressed down under the foot, the great toe only being allowed to retain its na-
tural position. By the breaking of the instep a high arch is formed between the heel
and the toe, enabling the individual to step with them on an even surface; in this re-
spect materially differing from the Canton and Macao ladies, for with them the in-
step is not interfere with, but a very high heel is substituted, thus bringing the
point of the great toe to the ground. When our Canton compradore was shewn a
Chusan shoe, the exclamation was: He-yaw! how can walkee so fashion?' nor
would he be convinced that such was the case. The toes, doubled under the foot I
have been describing, could only be moved by the hand sufficiently to shew that they
were not actually grown into the foot. I have often been astonished at seeing how
well the women contrived to walk on their tiny pedestals. Their gait is not unlike the
little mincing walk of the French ladies; they were constantly to be seen going
about without the aid of any stick, and I have often seen them at Macao contending
against a fresh breeze with a tolerably good-sized umbrella spread. The little chil
dren, as they scrambled away before us, balanced themselves with their arms ex-
tended, and reminded one much of an old hen between walking and flying. All the
(
* McPherson's Two Years in China.
326
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
women I saw about Chusan had small feet. It is a general characteristic of true Chi-
nese descent; and there cannot be a greater mistake thun to suppose that it is con-
fined to the higher orders, though it may be true that they take more pains to com-
press the foot to the smallest possible dimensions than the lower classes do. High
and low, rich and poor, all more or less follow the custom; and when you see a large
or natural-sized foot, you may depend upon it the possessor is not of true Chinese
blood, but is either of Tatar extraction, or belongs to the tribes that live and have
their being on the waters. The Tatar ladies, however, are falling into this Chinese habit
of distortion, as the accompanying edict of the emperor proves: 'For know, good peo-
ple, you must not dress as you like in China. You must follow the customs and
habits of your ancestors, and wear your winter and summer clothing as the emperor
or one of the six boards shall direct.' If this were the custom in England, how bene-
ficial it would be to our pockets, and detrimental to the tailors and milliners. Let us now
see what the emperor says about little feet, on finding they were coming into vogue
among the undeformed daughters of the Mantchows. Not only does he attack the
little feet, but the large Chinese sleeves which were creeping into fashion at court.
Therefore, to check these misdemeanors, the usual Chinese remedy was resorted to,
and a flaming edict launched, denouncing them; threatening the 'heads of the fami-
lies with degradation and punishment if they did not put a stop to such gross illegali-
ties,' and his celestial majesty further goes on and tells the fair ones, 'that by persisting
in their vulgar habits, they will debar themselves from the possibility of being selected
as ladies of honour for the inner palace at the approaching presentation!' How far
this had the desired effect I cannot say. When the children begin to grow they suf-
fer excruciating pain, but as they advance in years, their vanity is played upon by
being assured that they would be exceedingly ugly with large feet. Thus they are
persuaded to put up with what they consider a necessary evil; but the children are
remarkably patient under pain. A poor little child, about five years old, was brought
to our surgeon, having been most dreadfully scalded, part of its dress adhering to
the skin. During the painful operation of removing the linen, it only now and then
said, 'He-yaw, he-yaw!
MR. ROBERT FORTUNE, a botanist, was nearly nine years resident
in China, employed on three separate missions by the Horticultural
Society of London to collect specimens. In 1847 he published 'Three
Years' Wanderings in China' in 1851, his 'Two Visits to the Tea
Countries of China;' and in 1857, A Residence among the Chinese,
Inland, on the Coast, and at Sea.' These works of Mr. Fortune are
extremely valuable as affording information relative to the social
hahits of the Chinese, as well as the natural products of the country.
A French missionary, M. Huc, has also added fresh details in his
work, L'Empire Chinois,' 1854, of which an English version has
had great success in this country. In describing his personal adven-
tures, the French ecclesiastic is supposed to have indulged in the pro-
verbial license of travellers; but his account of Chinese customs is
said to be exact.
Chinese Thieves.-From Fortune's 'Residence among the Chinese.'
About two in the morning I was awakened by a loud yell from one of my serv-
ants, and I suspected at once that we had had a visit from thieves, for I had frequently
heard the same sound before. Like the cry one hears at sea when a man has fallen
overboard, this alarm can never be mistaken when once it has been heard. Before
I had time to inquire what was wrong, one of my servants and two of the boatmen
plunged into the canal and pursued the thieves. Thinking that we had only lost
some cooking utensils, or things of little value that might have been lying outside
the boat, I gave myself no uneasiness about the matter. and felt much inclined to go
to sleep again. But my servant, who returned almost immediately, awoke me most
effectually. 'I fear,' said he, opening my door, the thieves have been inside the boat,
4
FORTUNE.]
327
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
6
•
and have taken away some of your property.' 'Impossible,' said I; they cannot have
been here.' But look,' he replied; a portion of the side of your boat under the
window has been lifted out.' Turning to the place indicated by my servant, I could
see, although it was quite dark, that there was a large hole in the side of the boat
Jot more than three feet from where my head had been lying. At my right hand,
and just under the window, the trunk used to staud in which I was in the habit of
keeping my papers, money, and other valuables. On the first suspicion that I was
the vic im, I stretched out my hand in the dark to feel if this was safe. Instead of
my hand resting on the top of the trunk. as it had been accustomed to do, it went
down to the floor of the boat, and I then knew for the first time that the trunk was
gone. At the same moment, my servant, Tung-a, came in with a candle, and con-
firmed what I had just made out in the dark. The thieves had done their work
well-the boat was empty. My money, amounting to more than one hundred Shanghae
The rascals had not even
dollars, my accounts, and other papers-all, all were gone.
left me the c othes I had thrown off when I went to bed. But there was no time to lose;
and in order to make every effort to catch the thieves, or at least get back a portion
of my property, I jumped into the canal, and made for the bank. The tide had now
risen, and instead of finding only about two feet of water-the depth when we went
to bed-I now sank up to the neck, and found the stream very rapid. A few strokes
with my arms soon brought me into shallow water and to the shore. Here I found
the boatmen rushing about in a frantic manner, examining with a lantern the bushes
and indigo vats on the banks of the caual, but all they had found was a few Manilla
cheroots which the thieves bad dropped apparently in their hurry. A watchman
with his lantern and two or three stragglers, hearing the noise we made, came up
and inquired what was wrong; but when asked whether they had seen anything of
the thieves, shook their heads, and professed the most profound ignorance. The
night was pitch dark, everything was perfectly still, and, with the exception of the
few stragglers already mentioned, the whole town seemed sunk in deep sleep. Wo
were therefore perfectly helpless and could do nothing further. I returned in no
comfortable frame of mind to my boat. Dripping with wet, I lay down on my couch
without any inclination to sleep. It was a serious business for me to lose so much
money, but that part of the matter gave me the least uneasiness. The loss of my
accounts, journals, drawings, and numerous memoranda I had been making during
three years of travel, wh ch it was impossible for any one to replace, was of far
greater importance. I tried to reason philosophically upon the matter; to persuade
myself that as the thing could not be helped now, it was no use being vexed with it;
that in a few years it would not signify much either to myself or any one else whether
I had been robbed or not; but all this fine reasoning would not do.
What the Chinese Think of the Europeans.-From Huc's 'L'Empire
Chinois.'
The Europeans who go to China are disposed to think the inhabitants of the
Celestial Empire odd and ridiculous; the Chinese who visit Canton and Macao re-
turn the compliment. They exhaust their caustic and mocking vein upon the ap
pearance of the Western devils, express unutterable astonishment at the sight of
their scanty garments, their close-fitting pantaloons, their prodigious round hats in
the shape of a chimney, their shirt-collars, which appear devised to saw the ears,
and which so gracefully surround their grotesque faces with the long nose and blue
eyes, without beard or moustache, but which display in compensation on each jaw
a handful of red and frizzled hair. They are puzzled, above all, by the shape of the
dress-coat. They endeavour, without success, to account for that strange habili-
ment, which they call a half-garment, because it is impossible to make it meet on
the chest, and because the tails which hang down behind are entirely wanting in
front. They admire the exquisite and refined taste of wearing at the back large buttons
like coins without having anything to button to them. How much more beautiful do
they think themselves, with their oblique, narrow black eyes, high cheek-bones, nose
the shape of a chestnut and shaven head adorned with a magnificent tail which reaches
to the heels! Add to this graceful and elegant type a conical hat covered with red
fringe, an ample tunic with large sleeves, black satin boots, with white soles of an
enormous thickness, and it is beyond dispute that a European can never rival a Chi-
nese. But it is chiefly in their habits of life that they assume to be so much our
328
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
superiors. When they see Europeans spending several hours in gymnastic prome-
nades, they ask if it is not a more civilised mode of passing leisure time to sit qui-
etly drinking tea and smoking a pipe, or else to go at once to bed. The notion of
spending the larger portion of the night at balls and parties has never occurred to
them. All the Chinese, even among the upper ranks, begin to sleep in time to be
able to rise with the sun. At the hours in which there is the greatest stir aud tumult
in the principal cities of Europe, those of China enjoy the most profound repose.
Every one has gone home to his family, all the shops are shut, the boatmen, the
mountebanks, the public readers have finished their labours, and there are no signs
of activity except among the theatres for the working-classes, who have no leisure
but at night to enjoy the sight of a play.
The hostilities-1857-58-ending in a treaty with China, have led
to various publications respecting the Celestial Empire, the most co-
pious and generally interesting being 'China,' or the Times' spe-
cial correspondence from China, by MR. GEORGE Wingrove COOKE
(1814-1865), author of a Life of Bolingbroke,' 'The State of Par-
ties,' &c. We give a few extracts from Mr. Ccoke's lively and
graphic narrative:
C
The Chinese Language.
In a country where the roses have no fragrance, and the women wear no petti-
coats; where the labourer has no Sabbath, and the magistrate no sense of honour;
where the roads bear no vehicles, and the ships no keels; where old men fly kites;
where the needle points south, and the sign of being puzzled is to scratch the an-
tipodes of your head; where the place of honour is on your left hand, and the seat
of intellect is in the stomach; where to take off your hat is an insolent gesture, aud
to wear white garments is to put yourself in mourning-we ought not to be aston-
ished to find a literature without an alphabet, and a language without a grammar,
and we must not be startled to find that this Chinese language is the most intricate,
cumbrous, unwieldy vehicle of thought that ever obtained among any people.
The Execution-ground of Canton.
Threading our way, under the guidance of some experienced friend, we come to
a carpenter's shop, fronting the entrance to a small pofter's field. It is not a rood in
area, of an irregular shape, resembling most an oblong. A row of cottages open
into it on one side; there is a wall on the other. The ground is covered with half-
baked pottery; there are two wooden crosses formed of unbarked wood, standing
in an angle, with a shred of rotting rope hanging from one of them. There is noth-
ing to fix the attention in this small inclosure, except that you stumble against a
human skull now and then as you walk along it. This is the Aceldama, the field of
blood, the execution-ground of Canton. The upper part of that carpenter's shop is
the place where nearly all the European residents have, at the price of a dollar each,
witnessed the wholesale massacres of which Europe has heard with a hesitating
scepticism. It was within this yard that that monster Yeh has within two years
destroyed the lives of seventy thousand fellow-beings! These crosses are the instru-
ments to which those victims were tied who were condemned to the special torture
of being sliced to death. Upon one of these the wife of a rebel gene.al was
stretched, and by Yeh's order her flesh was cut from her body. After the battle at
Whampoa the rebel leader escaped, but his wife fell into the hands of Yeb; this was
how he treated his prisoner. Her breasts were first cut off, then her forehead was
slashed and the skin torn down over the face, then the fleshy parts of the body
were sliced away. There are Englishmen yet alive who saw this done, but at what
part of the butchery sensation ceased and death came to this poor innocent woman
none can tell. The fragment of rope which now hangs to one of the crosses
was used to bind a woman who was cut up for murdering her husband. The
sickening details of the massacres perpetrated on this spot have been related
to me by those who have seen them, and who take shame to themselves while
COOKE.
329
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
they confess that, after witnessing one execution by cutting on the cross, the
rapidity and dexterity with which the mere beheading was done deprived the execu-
tion of a hundred men of half its horror. The criminals were brought down in
gangs, if they could walk, or brought down in chairs and shot out into the yard.
The executioners then arranged them in rows, giving them a blow behind which
forced out the head and neck, and laid them convenient for the blow. Then came the
warrant of death. It is a banner. As soon as it waved in sight, without verbal
order given, the work began. There was a rapid succession of dull crunching
sounds-chop, chop, chop, chop! No second blow was ever dealt, for the dexterous
manslayers are educated to their work. Until they can with their heavy swords
slice a great bulbous vegetable as thin as we slice a cucumber, they are not eligible
for their office. Three seconds a head suffice. In one minute five executioners
clear off one hundred lives. It takes rather longer for the assistauts to cram the
bodies into rough coffins, especially as you might see them cramming two into one
shell that they might embezzle the spare wooden box. The heads were carried off
in boxes; the saturated earth was of value as manure.
The Horrors of the Canton Prison.
A Chinese jail is a group of small yards inclosed by no general outer wall, except
in one instance. Around this yard are dens like the dens in which we confine wild
beasts. The bars are not of iron, but of double rows of very thick bamboo, so close
together that the interior is too dark to be readily seen into from without. The ordi-
nary prisoners are allowed to remain in the yard during the day. Their ankles are
fettered together by heavy rings of iron and a short chain, and they generally also
wear similar fetters on their wrists. The low-roofed dens are so easily climbed, that
when the prisoners are let out into the yard, the jailers must trust to their fetters
alone for security. The places all stank like the monkey-house of a menagerie.
We were examining one of the yards of the second prison, and Lord Elgin, who is
seldom absent when any work is doing, was one of the spectators. As it was broad
daylight, the dens were supposed to be empty. Some one thought he heard a low
moan in one of them, and advanced to the bars to listen. He recoiled as if a blast
from a furnace had rushed out upon him. Never were human senses assailed by a
more horrible stream of pestilence. The jailers were ordered to open that place, and
refusing, as a Chinaman always at first refuses, were given over to the rough hand-
ling of the soldiers, who were told to make them. No sooner were hands laid upon
the jailers than the stifled moan became a wail, and the wail became a concourse of
low, weakly muttered groans. So soon as the double doors could be opened, several
of us went into the place. The thick stench could only be endured for a moment, but
the spectacle was not one to look long at. A corpse lay at the bottom of the den,
the breasts, the only fleshy parts, gnawed and eaten away by rats. Around it and
upon it was a festering mass of humanity still alive. The mandarin jailer, who
seemed to wonder what all the excitement was about, was compelled to have the
poor creatures drawn forth, and no man who saw that sight will ever forget
it. They were skeletons, not men. You could only believe that there was
blood in their bodies by seeing it clotted upon their undressed wounds. As
they were borne out, one after the other, and laid upon the pavement of the yard,
each seemed more horrible than the last. They were too far gone to shriek, although
the agony must have been great, the heavy irons pressing upon their raw, lank shins
as the jailers lugged them not too tenderly along. They had been beaten into this
state, perhaps long ago, by the heavy bamboo, and had been thrown into this den to
rot. Their crime was that they had attempted to escape. Hideous and loathsome,
however, as was the sight of their foul wounds, their filthy rags, and their emaciated
bodies, it was not so distressing as the indescribable expression of their eyes; the
horror of that look of fierce agony fixed us like a fascination. As the dislocated
wretches writhed upon the ground, tears rolled down the cheeks of the soldiers of
the escort, who stood in rank near them. A gigantic French sergeant, who had the
little mandarin in custody, gesticulated with his bayonet so fiercely, that we were
afraid he would kill him. We did not then know that the single word which the
poor creatures were trying to utter was hunger,' or that dreadful starting of the eye-
ball was the look of famine. Some of them had been without food for four days.
Water they had, for there is a well in the yard, and their fellow-prisoners had sup-
330
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
瑜
​plied them; but cries for food were answered only by the bamboo. Alas! it was not till
the next morning that we found this out, for although we took some away, we left
others there that night. Since the commencement of this year, fifteen men have
died in that cell. Some of those who were standing by me asked: How will you
ever be able to tell this to the English people?' I believe that no description could
lead the imagination to a full conception of what we saw in that Canton prison. I
have not attempted to do more than dot a faint outline of the truth; and when I
have read what I have written, I feel how feeble and forceless is the image upon
p"per when compared with the scene upon my memory.
This was the worst of the dens we opened, but there were many others which
fell but few degrees below it in their horrors. There was not one of the six thou-
sand prisoners we saw whose appearance before any assemblage of Englishmen
would not have aroused cries of indignation. It was not until our second day's
search that we were able to discover the prison in which Europeans had been con-
fined. Threats and a night in the guard-house at last forced the discovery from the
mandarin, or jail-inspector, in our custody. It is called the Koon Khan, is in the
eastern part of the city, and is distinguishable from the others only that it is sur-
rounded by a high brick-wall. Nearly the whole of our second day was passed in
this place. It has only one yard, and in this the prisoners are not allowed to come.
There is a joss-house at one end of the court; for, of course, the Chinese mix up
their religion with their tyranny. The finest sentiments, such as 'The misery of
to-day may be the happiness of to-morrow! Confess your crimes, and thank the
magistrate who purges you of them!' May we share in the mercy of the emperor !'
are carved in faded golden characters over every den of every prison. Opening from
this yard are four rooms, each containing four dens. The hardest and most malig-
nant face I ever saw is that of the chief jailer of this prison. The prisoners could
not be brought to look upon him, and when he was present could not be induced to
say that he was a jailer at all, or that they had ever seen him before. But when he
was removed they always reiterated their first story. The other jailers only starve
and ill-treat us, but that man eats our flesh.' Many of the prisoners had been inmates
of the place for many years, and it appeared quite certain that, within a period dat-
ing from the commencement of the present troubles, six Europeans-two Frenchmen
and four Englishmen-had found their death in these dreadful dens. Many different
prisoners examined separately deposed to this fact, and almost to the same details.
The European victims were kept here for several months, herding with the Chinese,
cating of that same black mess of rice, which looks and smells like a bucket of grains
cast forth from a brewery. When their time came-probably the time necessary for
a reply from Pekin-the jailer held their heads back while poison was poured down
their throats. The prisoners recollected two who threw up the poison, and they
were strangled. The result of the investigation was, that the jailers were roughly
handled by the British soldiers in sight of the prisoners, and the lieutenant-governor
taken into custody to give an account of his conduct.
C
•
Russia has been visited by various Englishmen. Amongst the
books thus produced, is 'Recollections of a Tour in the North of
Europe,' 1838, by the MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY (1778-1854),
whose rank and political character were the means of introducing
him to many circles closed to other tourists. He was the admirer
and champion of the Emperor Nicholas, and Miss Martineau has
said that one who knew the marquis well, remarked on finishing his
book of travel, that 'his heaven was paved with malachite.' The
marquis was also author of 'A Steam Voyage to Constantinople by
the Rhine and the Danube in 1840-41, and to Portugal and Spain in
1839,' two volumes, 1842. MR. JOHN BARROW is the author, besides
works on Ireland and on Iceland, of Excursions in the North of
Europe, through parts of Russia, Finland, &c.,' 1834. He is invari-
bly found to be a cheerful and intelligent companion, without at-
PI
<
VENABLES.}
331
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
'Do-
tempting to be very profound or elaborate on any subject.*
mestic Scenes in Russia,' by the REV. MR. VENABLES, 1839, is an
unpretending but highly interesting view of the interior life of the
country. Mr. Venables was married to a Russian lady, and he went
to pass a winter with her relations, when he had an opportunity of
seeing the daily life and social habits of the people. We give a few
descriptive sentences.
Russian Peasants' Houses.
These houses are in general extremely warm and substantial; they are built, for
the most part, of unsquared logs of deal, laid one upon another, and firmly secured
at the corners where the ends of the timbers cross, and are hollowed out so as to re-
ceive and hold one another; they are also fastened together by wooden pins and
uprights in the interior. The four corners are suported upon large stones or roots of
trees, so that there is a current of air under the floor to preserve the timber from
damp; in the winter, earth is piled up all round to exclude the cold; the interstices
between the logs are stuffed with moss and clay, so that no air can enter. The win-
dows are very small, and are frequently cut out of the wooden wall after it is finished.
In the centre of the house is a stove called a peech [pechka), which heats the cottage
to an almost unbearable degree; the warmth, however, which a Russian peasant
loves to enjoy within doors, is proportioned to the cold which he is required to sup-
port without; his bed is the top of his peech; and when he enters his house in the
winter pierced with cold, he throws off his sheepskin coat, stretches himself on his
stove, and is thoroughly warmed in a few minutes.
Employments of the People.
The riches of the Russian gentlemen lie in the labour of his serfs, which it is his
study to turn to good account; and he is the more urged to this, since the law which
compels the peasant to work for him, requires him to maintain the peasant; if the
latter is found begging, the former is liable to a fine. He is therefore a master who
must always keep a certain number of workmen, whether they are useful to him or
not; and as every kind of agricultural and outdoor employment is at a stand-still
during the winter, he naturally turns to the establishment of a manufactory, as a means
of employing his peasants and as a source of profit to himself. In some cases the
manufactory is at work only during the winter, and the people are employed in the
summer in agriculture; though, beyond what is necessary for home consumption,
this is but an unprofitable trade in most parts of this empire, from the badness of
roads, the paucity and distance of markets, and the consequent difficulty in selling
produce.
The alternate employment of the same man in the field and in the factory, which
would be attempted in most countries with little success, is here rendered practicable
and easy by the versatile genius of the Russian peasant, one of whose leading na-
tional characteristics is a general capability of turning his hand to any kind of work
which he may be required to undertake. He will plough to-day, weave to-morrow,
help to build a house the third day, and the fourth, if his master needs an extra
coachman, he will mount the box and drive four horses abreast as though it were his
daily occupation. It is probable that none of these operations, except. perhaps, the
last, will be as well performed as in a country where the division of labour is more
thoroughly understood. They will all, however, be sufficiently well done to serve the
turn-a favourite phrase in Russia. These people are a very ingenious race, but per-
severance is wanting; and though they will carry many arts to a high degree of ex-
cellence, they will generally stop short of the point of perfection, and it will be long
before their manufactures can rival the finish and durability of English goods.
This author is a son of Sir John Barrow (1764-1848). the distinguished traveller,
and assistant secretary of the Admiralty for upwards of forty years. Besides his Travels
in China (ante), Sir John wrote a Voyage to Cochin China, to which is annexed
an account of the Booshuana nation; also, Travels into the Interior of Southern
Africa, and various nautical memoirs.
332
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[To 1876.
'Excursions in the Interior of Russia,' by ROBERT BREMNER, two
volumes, 1839, is a narrative of a short visit to Russia during the au-
tumn of 1836. The same author published Excursions in Den-
mark, Norway, and Sweden,' two volumes, 1840. Before parting
from Russia, it may be observed that no English book upon that
country exceeds in interest 'A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic,
described in a Series of Letters,' 1841, being more particularly an ac-
count of the Esthonians, whose simple character and habits afford a
charming picture. This delightful book was understood to be from
the pen of a lady, Miss Rigby, afterwards Lady Eastlake, author of
Livonian Tales,' 1846.
C
"
Of Norway and Sweden we have accounts by Mr. SAMUEL LAING,
of Papdale, Orkney, a younger brother of the author of the History
of Scotland during the seventeenth century. This gentleman did not
begin to publish till a mature period of life, his first work being a
Residence in Norway' in 1834-36, and the second, a Tour in Swe-
den in 1838,' both of which abound in valuable statistical facts and
well-digested information. Mr. Laing resided for two years in dif-
ferent parts of Norway, and concluded that the Norwegians were the
happiest people in Europe. Their landed property is so extensively
diffused in small estates, that out of a population of a million there
are about 41, 656 proprietors. There is no law of primogeniture, yet
the estates are not subdivided into minute possessions, but average
from forty to sixty acres of arable land, with adjoining natural wood
and pasturage.
•
•
Agricultural Peasantry of Norway.
The Bonder, or agricultural peasantry (says Mr. Laing), each the proprietor
of his own farm, occupy the country from the shore side to the hill foot, and up
every valley or glen as far as corn can grow. This class is the kernel of the nation.
They are in general fine athletic men, as their properties are not so large as to ex-
empt them from work, but large enough to afford them and their household abun-
dance, and even superfinity of the best food. They farm not to raise produce for
sale, so much as to grow everything they eat, drink, and wear in their families. They
build their own houses, make their own chairs, tables, ploughs, carts, harness, iron-
work, basket-work, and wood-work; in short, except window-glass, cast-iron ware,
and pottery, everything about their houses and furniture is of their own fabrication.
There is not probably in Europe so great a population in so happy a condition as
these Norwegian yeomanry. A body of small proprietors, each with his thirty or
forty acres, scarcely exists elsewhere in Europe; or, if it can be found, it is under
the shadow of some more imposing body of wealthy proprietors or commercial men.
•
Here they are the highest men in the nation. The settlers in the newer states
of America, and in our colonies, possess properties of probably about the same ex-
tent; but they have roads to make. lands to clear, houses to build, and the work that
has been doing here for a thousand years to do, before they can be in the same con-
dition. These Norwegian proprietors are in a happier condition than those in the older
states of America, because they are not so much influenced by the spirit of gain.
They farm their little estates, and consume the produce, without seeking to barter or
sell, except what is necessary for paying their taxes and the few articles of luxury they
consume. There is no money-getting spirit among them, and none of extravagance.
They enjoy the comforts of excellent houses, as good and large as those of the
wealthiest individuals; good furniture, bedding, linen, clothing, fuel, victuals, and
drink, all in abundance, and of their own providing; good horses, and a houseful of
•
LAING.]
333
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
people who have more food than work. Food, furniture, and clothing being all
home-made, the difference in these matters between the family and the servants is
very small; but there is a perfect distinction kept up. The servants invariably eat,
sleep, and sit apart from the family, and have generally a distinct building adjoining
to the family house.
The neighbouring country of Sweden appears to be in a much worse
condition, and the people are described as highly immoral and de-
praved. By the returns from 1830 to 1834, one person in every forty-
nine of the inhabitants of the towns, and one in every hundred and
seventy-six of the rural population, had been punished each year for
criminal offences. The state of female morals, particularly in the
capital of Stockholm, is worse than in any other European state.
Yet in Sweden education is widely diffused, and literature is not
neglected. The nobility are described by Mr. Laing as sunk in debt
and poverty; yet the people are vain of idle distinctions, and the
order of burgher nobility is as numerous as in some of the German
states.
Society of Sweden.
Every mau (be says) belongs to a privileged or licensed class or corporation, of
which every member is by law entitled to be secured and protected within bis own
locality from such competition or interference of others in the same calling as would
injure his means of living. It is, consequently, not as with us, upon his industry,
ability, character, and moral worth that the employment and daily bread of the
tradesman, and the social influence and consideration of the individual, in every
rank, even the highest, almost entirely depends; it is here, in the middle and lower
classes, upon corporate rights and privileges, or upon license obtained from govern-
ment; and in the higher, upon birth and court or government favour. Public esti-
mation, gained by character and conduct in the several relations of life. is not a
necessary element in the social condition even of the working tradesman. Like
soldiers in a regiment, a great proportion of the people under this social system de-
rive their estimation among others, and consequently their own self-esteem, not
from their moral worth, but from their professional standing and importance. This
evil is inherent in all privileged classes, but is concealed or compensated in the
higher, the nobility, military, and clergy, by the sense of honour, of religion, and by
education. In the middle and lower walks of life those influences are weaker, while
the temptations to immorality are stronger; and the placing a man's livelihood,
prosperity and social consideration in his station upon other grounds than on his
own industry and moral worth, is a demoralising evil in the very structure of
Swedish society.
Mr. Laing has since published Notes of a Traveller in Europe,'
1854; Observations on the Social and Political State of the Euro-
pean People in 1848-49;' and 'Observations on the Social and Politi-
cal State of Denmark and the Duchies in 1851.'
'Travels in Circassia and Krim Tartary,' by MR. SPENCER, author
of a work on Germany and the Germans,' two volumes, 1837, was
hailed with peculiar satisfaction, as affording information respecting
a brave mountainous tribe who long warred with Russia to preserve
their national independence. They appear to be a simple people, with
feudal laws and customs, never intermarrying with any race except
their own. Further information was afforded of the habits of the Cir-
cassians by the Journal of a Residence in Circassia' during the years
1837, 1838, and 1839, by MR. J. S. BELL. This gentleman resided in
↓
(
·
334
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Circassia in the character of agent or envoy from England, which,
however, was partly assumed. He acted also as physician, and
seems generally to have been received with kindness and confidence.
The population, according to Mr. Bell, is divided into fraternities,
like the tithings or hundreds in England during the time of the
Saxons. Criminal offences are punished by fines levied on the fra-
ternity, that for homicide being two hundred oxen. The guerrilla
warfare which the Circassians carried on against Russia, marked
their indomitable spirit and love of country, but it, of course, re-
tarded their civilisation.
A Winter in the Azores, and a Summer at the Baths of the Fur-
nas,' by JOSEPH BULLAR, M.D., and JOHN BULLAR of Lincoln's Inn,
two volumes, 1841, furnish some light agreeable notices of the islands
of the Azores, under the dominion of Portugal, from which they are
distant about 800 miles. This archipelago contains about 250,000
inhabitants. St. Michael's is the largest town, and there is a considera-
ble trade in oranges betwixt it and England. About 120,000 large
and small chests of oranges were shipped for England in 1839, and
315 boxes of lemons. These particulars will serve to introduce a
passage respecting
The Cultivation of the Orange, and Gathering the Fruit.
March 26.—Accompanied Senhor B- to several of his orange-gardens in the
town. Many of the trees in one garden were a hundred years old, still bearing plen-
tifully a highly prized thin-skinned orange, full of juice and free from pips. The
thinness of the rind of a St. Michael's orange, and its freedom from pips, depend on
the age of the tree. The young trees, when in full vigour, bear fruit with a thick
pulpy rind and an abundance of seeds; but as the vigour of the plant declines, the
peel becomes thinner, and the seeds gradually diminish in number, until they disap-
pear altogether. Thus, the oranges that we esteem the most are the produce of bar-
ren trees, and those which we consider the least palatable come from plants in full
vigour.
Our friend was increasing the number of his trees by layers. These usually take
root at the end of two years. They are then cut off from the parent stem, and are
vigorous young trees four feet high. The process of raising from seed is seldom, if
ever, adopted in the Azores, on account of the very slow growth of the trees so
raised. Such plants, however, are far less liable to the inroads of a worm which at-
tacks the roots of the trees raised from layers, and frequently proves very destructive
to them. The seed or 'pip' of the acid orange, which we call Seville, with the sweeter
kind grafted upon it, is said to produce fruit of the finest flavour. In one small
garden eight trees were pointed out which had borne for two successive years a crop
of oranges which was sold for thirty pounds.
The treatment of orange-trees in Fayal differs from that in St. Michael's, where,
after they are planted out, they are allowed to grow as they please. In this orange
garden the branches, by means of strings and pegs fixed in the ground, were strained
away from the centre into the shape of a cup, or of the ribs of an open umbrella
turned upside down. This allows the sun to penetrate, exposes the branches to a
free circulation of air, and is said to be of use in ripening the fruit. Certain it is
that oranges are exported from Fayal several weeks earlier than they are from St.
Michael's; and as this cannot be attributed to greater warmth of climate, it may pos-
sibly be owing to the plan of spreading the trees to the sun. The same precautions
are taken here as in St. Michael's to shield them from the winds; high walls are built
round all the gardens, and the trees themselves are planted among rows of fayas, firs,
and camphor-trees. If it were not for these precautions, the oranges would be blown
down in such numbers as to interfere with or swallow up the profits of the gardens ;
BULLAR.]
335
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
none of the windfalls or 'ground fruit,' as the merchants here call them, being ex-
ported to England.
Suddenly we came upon merry groups of men and boys, all busily engaged in
packing oranges, in a square and open plot of ground. They were gathered round a
goodly pile of the fresh fruit, sitting on heaps of the dry calyx-leaves of the Indian
corn, in which each orange is wrapped before it is placed in the boxes. Near these
circles of laughing Azoreans, who sat at their work and kept up a continual cross-
fire of rapid repartee as they quickly filled the orange-cases, were a party of children,
whose business it was to prepare the husks for the men, who used them in packing.
These youngsters, who were playing at their work like the children of a larger
growth that sat by their side, were with much difficulty kept in order by an elderly.
man, who shook his head and a long stick whenever they flagged or idled.
A quantity of the leaves being heaped together near the packers, the operation
began. A child handed to a workman who squatted by the heap of fruit a prepared
husk; this was rapidly snatched from the child, wrapped round the orange by an in-
termediate workman passed by the feeder to the next, who, sitting with the chest be-
tween his legs, placed it in the orange-box with amazing rapidity, took a second, and
a third, and a fourth as fast as his hands could move and the feeders could supply
him, until at length the chest was filled to overflowing, and was ready to be nailed
up. Two men then handed it to the carpenter, who bent over the orange-chest sev-
eral thin boards, secured them with the willow-band, pressed it with his naked foot
as he sawed off the ragged ends of the boards, and finally despatched it to the ass
which stood ready for lading. Two chests were slung across his back by means of
cords crossed in a figure of eight; both were well secured by straps under his belly;
the driver took his goad, pricked his beast, and uttering the never-ending cry 'Sack-
aaio,' trudged off to the town.
The orange-trees in this garden cover the sides of a glen or ravine, like that of the
Dargle, but somewhat less steep; they are of some age, and have lost the stiff clumpy
form of the younger trees. Some idea of the rich beauty of the scene may be formed
by imagining the trees of the Dargle to be magnificent shrubs loaded with orange
fruit, and mixed with lofty arbutuses-
Groves whose rich fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable, and of delicious taste.
•
In one part scores of children were scattered among the branches, gathering fruit
into small baskets, hallooing, laughing, practically joking, and finally emptying their
gatherings into the larger baskets underneath the trees, which, when filled, wore
slowly borne away to the packing-place, and bowled out upon the great heap. Many
large orange-trees on the steep sides of the glen lay on the ground uprooted, either
from their load of fruit, the high winds, or the weight of the boys, four, five, and
even six of whom will climb the branches at the same time; and as the soil is very
light, and the roots are superficial-and the fall of a tree perhaps not unamusing-
down the trees come. They are allowed to lie where they fall; and those which had
evidently fallen many years ago were still alive, and bearing good crops. The oranges
are not ripe until March or April. nor are they eaten generally by the people here until
that time-the boys, however, that picked them are marked exceptions. The young
children of Villafranca are now almost universally of a yellow tint, as if saturated
with orange juice.
'Travels in New Zealand,' by EARNEST DIEFFENBACH, M.D., late
naturalist to the New Zealand Company, 1843, is a valuable history
of an interesting country, destined apparently to transmit the Eng-
lish language, arts, and civilisation. Mr. Dieffenbach gives a minute
account of the language of New Zealand, of which he compiled a
grammar and dictionary. He conceives the native population of
New Zealand to be fit to receive the benefits of civilisation, and to
amalgamate with the British colonists.
MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE's Travels in Australia and New Zea-
6
336
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
land,' 1873, supply recent and minute information. The vast im-
provements of late years the formation of railroads and general
progress in New Zealand-have been extraordinary. Of the squatters
and free settlers, Mr. Trollope says:
The first night we stayed at a squatter's house, and I soon learned that the battle
between the squatter and the free-selecter, of which I had heard so much in the
Australian colonies, was being waged with the same internecine fury in New
Zealand. Indeed the New Zealand bitterness almost exceeded that of New South
Wales-though I did not hear the complaint, so common in New South Wales, that
the free-selecters were all cattle-stealers. The complaint made here was that the
government, in dealing with the land, bad continually favoured the free-selecter at
the expense of the squatter-who having been the pioneer in taking up the land,
deserved all good things from the country of his adoption. The squatter's claim is
in the main correct. He has deserved good things, and has generally got them. In
all these colonies-in New Zealand as well as New South Wales and Victoria-the
squatter is the aristocrat of the country. In wealth, position, and general influence
he stands first. There are no doubt points as to which the squatters have been un-
justly used-matters as to which the legislature have endeavoured to clip their wings
at the expense of real justice. But they have been too strong for the legislature,
have driven coaches and horses through colonial acts of parliament, have answered
injustice by illegal proceeding, and have as a rule held their own and perhaps some-
thing more. I soon found that in this respect the condition of New Zealand was
very similar to that of the Australian colonies. The gentleman who accompanied us
was the government land-commissioner of the province, and, as regarded private
life, was hand and glove with our host; but the difference of their position gave me
an opportunity of hearing the land question discussed as it regarded that province.
I perceived that the New Zealand squatter regarded himself as a thrice-shorn lamb,
but was looked upon by anti-squatters as a very wolf.
Of the Maoris he takes a less romantic or sympathetic view than
some writers:
They are certainly more highly gifted than other savage nations I have seen.
They are as superior in intelligence and courage to the Australian aboriginal as they
are in outward appearance. They are more pliable and nearer akin in their manners
to civilised mankind than are the American Indians. They are more manly, more
courteous, and also more sagacious than the African negro. One can understand the
hope and the ambition of the first great old missionaries who had dealings with them.
But contact with Europeans does not improve them. At the touch of the higher
race they are poisoned and melt away. There is scope for poetry in their past
history. There is room for philanthropy as to their present condition. But in regard
to their future-there is hardly a place for hope.
'Life in Mexico, during a Residence of Two Years in that Country,'
by MADAME CALDERON DE LA BARCA, an English lady, is full of
sketches of domestic life, related with spirit and acuteness.
In no
other work are we presented with such agreeable glimpses of Mexican
life and manners. 'Letters on Paraguay,' and Letters on South
America,' by J. P. and W. P. ROBERTSON, are the works of two
brothers who resided twenty-five years in South America.
The 'Narrative of the Voyages of H.M.S, Adventure and
Beagle,' 1839, by CAPTAINS KING and FITZROY, and C. DARWIN,
Esq., naturalist of the Beagle, detail the various incidents which
occurred during their examination of the southern shores of South
America, and during the Beagle's circumnavigation of the globe. The
account of the Patagonians in this work, and that of the natives of
COMBE.
}
337
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Tierra del Fuego, are both novel and interesting, while the details
supplied by Mr. Darwin possess a permanent value (see ante).
Notes on the United States during a Phrenological Visit in 1839-
40,' have been published by MR. GEORGE COMBE, in three volumes.
Though attaching what is apt to appear an undue importance to his
views of phrenology, Mr. Combe was a sensible traveller. He paid
particular attention to schools and all benevolent institutions, which
he has described with care and minuteness. Among the matter-of-
fact details and sober disquisitions in this work, we meet with the
following romantic story. The author had visited the lunatic asylum
at Bloomingdale, where he learned this realisation of Cymon and Iphi-
genia—finer even than the version of Dryden!
4
An American Cymon and Iphigenia.
In the course of conversation, a case was mentioned to me as having occurred in
the experience of a highly respectable physician, and which was so fully authentica-
ted, that I entertain no doubt of its truth. The physician alluded to had a patient, a
young man, who was almost idiotic from the suppression of all his faculties. He
never spoke, and never moved voluntarily, but sat habitually with his hauds shading
his eyes. The physician sent him to walk as a remedial measure. In the neighbour-
hood, a beautiful young girl of sixteen lived with her parents, and used to see the
young man in his walks, and speak kindly to him. For some time he took no notice of
her; but after meeting her for several months, he began to look for her, and to feel dis-
appointed if she did not appear. He became so much interested, that he directed his
steps voluntarily to her father's cottage, and gave her bouquets of flowers. By de-
grees he conversed with her through the window. His mental faculties were roused;
the dawn of convalescence appeared. The girl was virtuous, intelligent, and lovely,
and encouraged his visits when she was told that she was benefiting his mental
health. She asked him if he could read and write? He answered, No. She wrote
some lines to him to induce him to learn. This had the desired effect. He applied
himself to study, and soon wrote good and sensible letters to her. He recovered his
reason. She was married to a young man from the neighbouring city. Great fears
were entertained that this event would undo the good which she had accomplished.
The young patient sustained a severe shock, but his mind did not sink under it. He
acquiesced in the propriety of her choice, continued to improve, and at last was re-
stored to his family cured. She had a child, and was soon after brought to the same
hospital perfectly insane. The young man heard of this event, and was exceedingly
anxious to see her; but an interview was denied to him, both on her account and his
own. She died. He continued well, and became an active member of society. What
a beautiful romauce might be founded on this narrative.
'America, Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive,' by J. S. BUCKING-
HAM, is a vast collection of facts and details, few of them novel or
striking, but apparently written with truth and candour. The work
fatigues from the multiplicity of its small statements, and the want
of general views or animated description. In 1842 the author pub-
lished two additional volumes, describing his tour in the slave-states.
These are more interesting, because the ground is less hackneyed,
and Mr. Buckingham felt strongly, as a benevolent and humane
man, on the subject of slavery. Mr. Buckingham was an extensive
traveller and writer. He published narratives of journeys in Pales-
tine, Assyria, Media, and Persia, and of various continental tours.
He tried a number of literary schemes, establishing the 'Oriental
338
[To 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Herald' and Athenæum ' weekly journal, and was a successful
lecturer. He had published two volumes of an autobiography, when
he died somewhat suddenly in 1855, aged sixty-nine.
C
Among other works on America we may mention the 'Western
World,' by ALEXANDER MACKAY, three volumes, 1849, a very com-
plete and able book up to the date of its publication; Things as they
are in America,' by DR. WILLIAM CHAMBERS; and Life and Lib-
erty in America,' by DR. CHARLES MACKAY. A visit to America,'
as Dr. Chambers has said, 'is usually one of the early aspirations of
the more impressionable youth of England. The stirring stories told
of Columbus, Sebastian Cabot, Raleigh, and Captain John Smith;
the history of the Pilgrim Fathers fleeing from persecution; the de-
scription of Penn's transactions with the Indians; the narratives of
the gallant achievemants of Wolfe and Washington, and the lament
able humiliations of Burgoyne and Cornwallis; the exciting autobi-
ography of the Philadelphian printer, who, from toiling at the press,
rose to be the companion of kings-all have their due effect on the
imagination.' The facilities afforded by steam boat communication
also render a visit to America a matter of easy and pleasant accom-
plishment, and the United States are every season traversed by hosts
of British tourists-men of science, art, and literature, and pleasure-
seekers, while the international commerce and trading is proportion-
ally extended.
<
>
→
<
Two remarkable works on Spain have been published by MR.
GEORGE BORROW, late agent of the British and Foreign Bible So-
ciety. The first of these, in two volumes, 1841, is entitled Zincali, or
an Account of the Gipsies in Spain.' Mr. Borrow calculates that
there are about forty thousand gipsies in Spain, of which about one-
third are to be found in Andalusia. The caste, he says, has dimin-
ished of late years. The author's adventures with this singular peo-
ple are curiously compounded of the ludicrous and romantic, and
are related in the most vivid and dramatic manner. Mr. Borrow's
second work is named 'The Bible in Spain; or the Journeys, Ad-
ventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an attempt to cir
culate the Scriptures in the Peninsula, 1844. There are many things
in the book which, as the author acknowledges, have little connec-
tion with religion or religious enterprise. It is indeed a series of per-
sonal adventures, varied and interesting, with sketches of character,
and romantic incidents drawn with more power and vivacity than is
possessed by most novelists.
<
Impressions of the City of Madrid.-From Borrow's ‘Bible in Spain.'
I have visited most of the principal capitals of the world, but upon the whole none
has ever so interested me as this city of Madrid, in which I now found myself. I will
not dwell upon its streets, its edifices, its public squares, its fountains, though some
of these are remarkable enough: but Petersburgh has finer streets, Paris and Edin-
burgh more stately edifices, London far nobler squares, while Shiraz can boast of
BORROW.]
339
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
,
more costly fountains, though not cooler waters. But the population! Within a
mud wall, scarcely one league and a half in circuit, are contained two hundred thou-
sand human beings, certainly forming the most extraordinary vital mass to be found
in the entire world; and be it always remembered that this mass is strictly Spanish.
The population of Constantinople is extraordinary enough, but to form it twenty
nations have contributed-Greeks, Armeniaus, Persians, Poles, Jews, the latter, by-
the-bye, of Spanish origin, and speaking amongst themselves the old Spanish lan-
guage; but the huge population of Madrid, with the exception of a sprinkling of for-
eigners, chiefly French tailors, glove-makers, and perruquiers, is strictly Spanish,
though a considerable portion are not natives of the place. Here are no colonies of
Germans as at St. Petersburgh; no English factories as at Lisbon; no multitudes of
insolent Yankees lounging through the streets, as at the Havannah, with an air
which seems to say, The land is our own whenever we choose to take it; but a
population which, however strange and wild, and composed of various elements, is
Spanish, and will remain so as long as the city itself shall exist. Hail, ye aguadores
of Asturia! who, in your dress of coarse duffel and leathern skull-caps, are seen
seated in hundreds by the fountain-sides, upon your empty water-casks, or stagger-
ing with them filled to the topmost stories of lofty houses. Hail, ye caleseros of
Valencia! who, lolling lazily against your vehicles, rasp tobacco for your paper cigars
whilst waiting for a fare. Hail to you, beggars of La Mancha! men and women,
who, wrapped in coarse blankets, demand charity indifferently at the gate of the
palace or the prison. Hail to you, valets from the mountains, mayordomos and
secretaries from Biscay aud Guipuscoa, toreros from Andalusia, riposteros from
Galicia, shopkeepers from Catalonia! Hail to ye, Castilians, Estrémenians, and
Aragonese, of whatever calling! And, lastly, genuine sons of the capital, rabble of
Madrid, ye twenty thousand manolos, whose terrible knives, on the second morning
of May, worked such grim havoc amongst the legions of Murat!
And the higher orders-the ladies and gentlemen, the cavaliers and señoras; shall
I pass them by in silence? The truth is, I have little to say about them; I mingled
but little in their society, and what I saw of them by no means tended to exalt them
in my imagination. I am not one of those who, wherever they go, make it a con-
staut practice to disparage the higher orders, and to exalt the populace at their ex-
pense. There are many capitals in which the high aristocracy, the lords and ladies,
the cons and daughters of nobility, constitute the most remarkable and the most
interesting part of the population. This is the case at Vienna, and more especially at
London. Who can rival the English aristocrat in lofty stature, in dignified bearing,
in strength of hand, and valour of heart? Who rides a nobler horse? Who has a
firmer seat? And who more lovely than his wife, or sister, or daughter? But with
respect to the Spanish aristocracy, I believe the less that is said of them on the points
to which I have just alluded the better. I confess, however, that I know little about
them. Le Sage has described them as they were nearly two centuries ago. His de-
scription is anything but captivating, and I do not think that they have improved
since the period of the immortal Frenchman. I would sooner talk of the lower class,
not only of Madrid, but of all Spain. The Spaniard of the lower class has much
more interest for me, whether mauolo, labourer, or muleteer. He is not a commou
being; he is an extraordinary man. He has not, it is true, the amiability and gene-
rosity of the Russian mujik, who will give his only rouble rather than the stranger
shall want; nor his placid courage, which renders him insensible to fear, and at the
command of his czar sends him singing to certain death. There is more hardness
and less self-devotion in the disposition of the Spaniard: he possesses, however, a
spirit of proud independence, which it is impossible but to admire.
Mr. Borrow has since published 'Lavengro-the Scholar, the
Gipsy, the Priest,' 1851; Romany Rye,' a sequel to Lavengro;'
and Wild Wales, its People, Language and Scenery,' 1870. These
works are inferior in interest to his former publications, but are still
remarkable books. Mr. Borrow is a native of Norfolk, born at East
Dereham in 1803.
<
340
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
RICHARD FORD.
One of the most vivid pictures of a great country and people ever
drawn, is presented in the Handbook for Travellers in Spain and
Readers at Home,' by RICHARD FORD (1796-1858). The first edition
of this work appeared in 1845, in two volumes. In 1846 the author
selected portions of it to form, with additions and corrections, a
work suited to the library, and bearing the title of Gatherings from
Spain.' A new edition, partly rewritten, was issued in 1855, as one
of the series of Murray's Hand-books. This interesting and valu-
able work has elicited praise from all travellers in Spain and all
literary critics as the best book that has ever appeared for illustration
of the national character and manners of the Spaniards, as well as
for its descriptions of the scenery, and topography of the country.
Mr. Ford was the eldest son of Sir Richard Ford, at one time M.P.
for East Grinstead, and chief police magistrate of London. He
studied for the bar, but never practised, devoting himself to art and
literature, and residing for many years in Spain. He was an occa-
sional contributor to the Quarterly Review.
6
1
Spain and Spaniards.
Since Spain appears on the map to be a square and most compact kingdom, politi-
cians and geographers have treated it and its inhabitants as one and the same; prac-
tically, however, this is almost a geographical expression, as the earth, air, and mor-
tals of the different portions of this conventional whole are altogether heterogeneous.
Peninsular man has followed the nature by which he is surrounded; mountains and
rivers have walled and moated the dislocated land; mists and gleams have diversified
the heaven; and differing like soil and sky, the people. in each of the once independ-
ent provinces, now bound loosely together by one golden hoop, the crown, has its
own particular character. To hate his neighbor is a second nature to the Spaniard:
no spick and span constitution, be it printed on parchment or calico, can at once ef-
face traditions and antipathies of a thousand years; the accidents of localities and
provincial nationalities, out of which they have sprung, remain too deeply dyed to be
forthwith discharged by theorists. The climate and productions vary no less than do
language, costume, and manners; and so division and localism have, from time im-
memorial, formed a marked national feature. Spaniards may talk and boast of their
Patria, as is done by the similarly circumstanced Italians, but like them and the Ger-
mans, they have the fallacy, but no real Fatherland; it is an aggregation rather than
an amalgamation-every single individual in his heart really ouly loving his native
province, and only considering as his fellow-countryman, su paisano-a most binding
and endearing word-one born in the same locality as himself: hence it is not easy
to predicate much in regard to 'the Spains' and Spaniards in general which will hold
quite good as to each particular portion ruled by the sovereign of Las Espanas, the
plural title given to the chief of the federal union of this really little united kingdom.
Espanolismo may, however, be said to consist in a love for a common faith and king,
and in a coincidence of resistance to all foreign dictation. The deep sentiments of
religion, loyalty and independence, noble characteristics indeed, have been sapped in
our times by the influence of Trans-Pyrenean revolutions.
Two general observations may be premised: First, The people of Spain, the so-
called lower orders, are superior to those who arrogate to themselves the title of
being their betters, and in most respects are more interesting. The masses, the least
spoilt and the most national, stand like pillars amid ruins, and on them the edifice of
Spain's greatness is. if ever, to be reconstructed. This may have arisen in this land
of anomalies, from the peculiar policy of government in church and state, where the
possessors of religious and civil monopolies, who dreaded knowledge as power,
FORD.]
341
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
pressed heavily on the noble and rich, dwarfing down their bodies by intermarriages,
and all but extinguishing their minds by inquisitions; while the people, overlooked
in the obscurity of poverty, were allowed to grow out to their full growth like wild
weeds of a rich soil. They, in fact, have long enjoyed, under despotisms of church
and state, a practical and personal independence, the good results of which are evi-
dent in their stalwart frames and manly bearing.
Secondly. A distinction must ever be made between the Spaniard in his individual
and in his collective capacity, and still more in an official one: taken by himself, he is
true and valiant; the nicety of his Pundonor, or point of personal honor, is proverbial;
to him, as an individual, you may safely trust your life, fair fame, and purse. Yet
history, treating of these individuals in the collective, juatados, presents the foulest
examples of misbehavior in the field, of Punic bad faith in the cabinet, of bankruptcy
and repudiation on the exchange. This may be also much ascribed to the deterior-
ating influence of bad government, by which the individual Spaniard, like the monk
in a convent, becomes fused into the corporate. The atmosphere is too infectious
to avoid some corruption, and while the Spaniard feels that his character is only in
safe keeping when in his own hands, and no man of any nation knows better then
how to uphold it, when linked with others, his self-pride, impatient of any superior,
lends itself readily to feelings of mistrust, until self-interest and preservation become
uppermost. From suspecting that he will be sold and sacrificed by others, he ends
by floating down the turbid stream like the rest: yet even official employment does
not quite destroy all private good qualities, and the empleado may be appealed to as
an individual.
The Spanish Muleteers.
The muleteer of Spain is justly renowned: his generic term is arriero, a gee-upper,
for his arre arre is pure Arabic, as indeed are almost all the terms connected with his
craft, as the Moriscoes were long the great carriers of Spain. To travel with the mule-
teer, when the party is small or a person alone, is both cheap and safe; indeed many
of the most picturesque portions of Spain, Ronda and Granada for instance, can
scarcely be reached except by walking or riding. These men, who are constantly on
the road, and going backwards and forwards, are the best persons to consult for
details; their animals are generally to be hired, but a muleteer's steed is not pleasant
to ride, since their beasts always travel in single files. The leading animal is furnished
with a copper bell with a wooden clapper (to give notice of their march), which is
shaped like an ice-mould, sometimes two feet long, and hangs from the neck, being
contrived, as it were, on purpose to knock the animal's knees as much as possible,
and to emit the greatest quantity of most melancholy sounds, which, according to the
pious origin of all bells, were meant to scare away the Evil One. The bearer of all
this tintinnabular clatter is chosen from its superior docility, and knack in picking
out a way. The others follow their leader, and the noise he makes when they cannot
see him. They are heavily but scientifically laden. These sumpter' mules are gaily
decorated with trappings full of colour and tags. The head-gear is composed of
different coloured worsteds, to which a multitude of small bells are affixed; hence
the saying. Muger de mucha campanilla,' a woman of many bells. of much show.
much noise or pretension. The muleteer either walks by the side of his animal, or
sits aloft on the cargo, with his feet dangling on the neck, a seat which is by no means
so uncomfortable as it would appear. A rude gun, loaded with slugs. haugs by his
side, and often also a guitar; these emblems of life and death paint the unchanged,
reckless condition of Iberia, where extremes have ever met, where a man still goes
out of the world, like a swan, with a song. Thus accoutred, as Byron says, with
•
*
all that gave
Promise of pleasure or a grave,
the approach of the caravan is announced from afar by his cracked or guttural voice:
How carols now the lusty muleteer! For when not engaged in swearing or smok-
ing, the livelong day is passed in one monotonous high-pitched song, the tune of
which is little in harmony with the import of the words of his cheerful humour, be-
ing most unmusical and melancholy; but such is the true type of oriental melody, as
it is called. The same absence of thought which is shewn in England by whistling
is displayed in Spain by singing.
•
342
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
The Spanish muleteer is a fine fellow: he is intelligent, active, and enduring; he
braves hunger and thirst, heat and cold, mud and dust; he works as hard as his cat-
tle, never robs or is robbed; and while his betters put off everything till to-morrow
except bankruptcy, he is punctual and honest; his frame is wiry and sinewy, his cos-
tume peculiar. It must be admitted that these cavalcades of mules are truly national
and picturesque; mingled with mounted horsemen, the zigzag lines come threading
down the mountain defiles, now tracking through the aromatic brushwood, now
concealed amid rocks and olive-trees, now emerging bright and glittering into the
sunshine, giving life and movement to the lonely nature, and breaking the usual still-
ness by the tinkle of the bell and the sad ditty of the muleteer-sounds which,
though unmusical in themselves, are in keeping with the scene, and associated with
wild Spanish rambles, just as in England the harsh whetting of the scythe is mixed
up with the sweet spring and newly-mown meadow.
A. H. LAYARD.
Few modern books of travels or narratives of discovery have ex-
cited greater interest in this country than the two volumes published
in 1848, Nineveh and its Remains,' by AUSTIN HENRY LAYARD.
Mr. Layard (born in Paris in 1817) had travelled extensively in the
East, and was devoted to the study of Eastern antiquities and man-
ners. The vast mounds near Mosul, on the banks of the Tigris, were
traditionally known as the site of the ancient Nineveh; the French
consul at Mosul, M. Botta, had made interesting discoveries at Khor-
sabad; and, stimulated by his example, Mr. Layard entered on a
course of excavations at the same spot. The generosity of Sir Strat-
ford Canning-now Lord Stratford de Redcliffe-supplied funds for
the expedition. In October 1845, Mr. Layard reached Mosul, and
commenced operations at Nimroud, about eighteen miles lower down
the Tigris. He descended the river on a raft.
Appearance of Nimroud.
It was evening as we approached the spot. The spring rains had clothed the
mound with the richest verdure, and the fertile meadows which stretched around it
were covered with flowers of every hue. Amidst this luxuriant vegetation were
partly concealed a few fragments of bricks, pottery, and alabaster, upon which
might be traced the well-defined wedges of the cuneiform character. Did not these
remains mark the nature of the ruin, it might have been confounded with a natural
eminence. A long line of consecutive narrow mounds, still retaining the appearance
of walls or ramparts, stretched from its base, and formed a vast quadrangle. The
river flowed at some distance from them: its waters, swollen by the melting of the
snows on the Armenian hills, were broken into a thousand foaming whirlpools by
an artificial barrier built across the stream. On the eastern bank the soil had been
washed away by the current; but a solid mass of masonry still withstood its im-
petuosity. The Arab, who guided my small raft, gave himself up to religious
ejaculations as we approached this formidable cataract, over which we were carried
with some violence. Once safely through the danger, my companion explained to
me that this unusual change in the quiet face of the river was caused by a great
dam which had been built by Nimrod, and that in the autumn, before the winter
rains, the huge stones of which it was constructed, squared, and united by cramps
of iron, were frequently visible above the surface of the stream. It was, in fact, one
of those monuments of a great people, to be found in all the rivers of Mesopotamia,
which were undertaken to insure a constant supply of water to the innumerable
canals, spreading like network over the surrounding country, and which, even in
the days of Alexander, were looked upon as the works of an ancient nation. No
wonder that the traditions of the present inhabitants of the land should assign them
to one of the founders of the human race! The Arab was telling me of the connec-
LAYARD.}
343
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
|
tion between the dam and the city built by Athur, the lieutenant of Nimrod, the
vast ruins of which were now before us-of its purpose as a causeway for the
mighty hunter to cross to the opposite palace, now represented by the mound of
Hammum Ali-and of the histories and fate of the kings of a primitive race. still
the favourite theme of the inhabitants of the plains of Shinar, when the last glow of
twilight faded away, and I fell asleep as we glided onward to Baghdad.
The cuneiform character' referred to is the arrow-headed alpha-
bet, or signs and characters, found on bricks, on cylinders, on the re-
mains of ancient buildings, and on the smooth surfaces of rocks, from
the Euphrates to the eastern boundary of Persia. Professor Groto-
fend deciphered certain names in these inscriptions, and his discovery
has been followed up by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr. Hincks, and
others, with distinguished success. Mr. Layard commenced his
operations at Nimroud on a vast mound, 1800 feet long, 900 broad, and
60 or 70 feet high. On digging down into the rubbish, chambers of
white marble were brought to light; then sculptures with cuneiform
inscriptions, winged lions with human heads, sphinxes, bas-reliefs
representing hunting-pieces and battle-scenes, with illustrations of
domestic life. One discovery caused great consternation among the
labourers.
(
Discovery of a Colossal Sculpture.
On the morning I rode to the encampment of Sheikh Abd-ur-rahman, and was re-
turning to the mound, when I saw two Arabs of his tribe urging their mares to the
top of their speed. On approaching me, they stopped. 'Hasten. O Bey,' exclaimed
one of them hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself. Wallah,
it is wonderful, but it is true! we have seen him with our eyes. There is no god but
God' and both joining in this pious exclamation, they galloped off, without further
words, in the direction of their tents.
On reaching the ruins I descended into the new trench, and found the workmen,
who had already seen me as I approached, standing near a heap of baskets and
cloaks. Whilst Awad advanced and asked for a present to celebrate the occasion,
the Arabs withdrew the screen they had hastily constructed, and disclosed an enor-
mous human head sculptured in full out of the alabaster of the country. They had
uncovered the upper part of a figure, the remainder of which was still buried in the
earth. I saw at once that the head must belong to a winged lion or bull, similar to
those of Khorsabad and Persepolis. It was in admirable preservation. The expres-
sion was calm. yet maestic. and the outline of the features shewed a freedom and
knowledge of art scarcely to be looked for in the works of so remote a period. The
cap had three horns, and. unlike that of the human-headed bulls hitherto found in
Assyria, was rounded and without ornament at the top.
I was not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition.
It required no stretch of imagination to conjure up the most strange fancies. This
gigantic head, blanched with age, thus rising from the bowels of the earth, might
well have belonged to one of those fearful beings which are pictured in the traditions
of the country as appearing to mortals, slowly ascending from the regions below.
One of the workmen, on catching the first glimpse of the monster, had thrown down
his basket and run off towards Mosul as fast as his legs could carry him. I learned
this with regret, as I anticipated the consequences
Whilst I was superintending the removal of the earth, which still clung to the
sculpture, and giving directions for the continuation of the work, a noise of horse-
men was heard, and presently Abd-ur-rahman, followed by half his tribe, appeared
on the edge of the trench. As soon as the two Arabs had reached the tents, and
published the wonders they had seen, every one mounted his mare and rode to the
mound, to satisfy himself of the truth of these inconceivable reports. When they
beheld the head, they all cried together: There is no god but God, and Mohammed
344
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
is his prophet!' It was some time before the sheikh could be prevailed upon to de-
scend into the pit, and convince himself that the image he saw was of stone. "This
is not the work of men's hauds,' exclaimed he, but of those infidel giants of whom
the prophet-peace be with him!-has said that they were higher than the tallest
date-tree; this is one of the idols which Noah-peace be with him!-cursed before
the flood. In this opinion, the result of a careful examination, all the by-standers
concurred.
The semi-barbarism of the people caused frequent difficulties; but
the traveller's tact, liberality, and courage overcame them all. In
about twelve months, eight chambers were opened. Additional
funds for prosecuting researches were obtained through the trustees
of the British Museum, and ultimately twenty-eight halls and gal-
leries were laid open, and the most valuable of the exhumed treas-
ures transmitted to the British Museum. Mr. Layard afterwards
commenced excavations at Kouyunjik, on the plain beyond the
Tigris, opposite Mosul, and was there equally successful. In 1849,
he undertook a second expedition, funds having been supplied
(though with a niggardly hand) by the trustees of the Museum and
the government. On this occasion, Mr. Layard extended his re-
searches to Babylon and the confines of Persia, but the most valuable
results were obtained in the field of his former labours, at Nimroud
and Kouyunjik. The sculptures were of all kinds, one of the most
remarkable being a figure of Dagon--a four-winged male divinity.
There were representations of almost every mode of life-banquets,
processions, sieges, forts, captives in fetters, criminals undergoing
punishment, &c. The Assyrians appear to have been familiar with
the most cruel barbarities-flaying alive, impaling, and torturing
their prisoners. In the mechanical arts they were inferior to the
Egyptians, and in moving those gigantic sculptures they had no
motive-power but physical force-the captives, malefactors, and
slaves being employed. The well-known emblems of Egyptian art
appear on those Assyrian marbles, and Sir Gardiner Wilkinson con-
siders this as disproving their early date. They are all, he concludes,
within the date 1000 B.C., illustrating the periods of Shalmaneser and
Sennacherib; and Mr. Layard is also of opinion that the Assyrian
palaces he explored were built by Sennacherib, who came to the
throne at the end of the seventh century before Christ. The mounds
at Nimroud, Kouyunjik, and Khorasan would seem to be all parts
of one vast city and capital-the Nineveh of Jonah, which was a
three days' journey, and contained one hundred thousand children,
or a population of half a million. The measurement of the space
within the ruins gives an area almost identical with that assigned by
the prophet.
The account of this second expedition was published by Mr. Lay-
ard in 1853, under the title of 'Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh
and Babylon.' He afterwards entered into public life, was a short
time in 1852 Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and mem-
LAYARD.]
345
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ber of parliament for Aylesbury; he visited the Crimea during the
war with Russia, and on his return was one of the most urgent in
demanding inquiry into the management of the army. In December
1860 he was returned one of the members for Southwark, and from
1861 to 1866 was Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He
was Chief Commissioner of Works from December 1868 to Novem-
ber 1869, when he retired from parliament on being appointed the
British envoy at Madrid.
City of Baghdad or Bagdat.
We are now amid the date-groves. If it be autumn, clusters of golden fruit bang
beneath the fan-like leaves; if spring, the odour of orange blossoms fills the air. The
cooing of the doves that flutter among the branches begets a pleasing melancholy,
and a feeling of listlessness and repose. The raft creeps round a projecting bank,
and two gilded domes and four stately minarets, all glittering in the rays of an East-
ern sun, rise suddenly high above the dense bed of palms. They are of the mosque
of Kaithaman, which covers the tombs of two of the Imaums or holy saints of the
Sheeah sect. The low banks swarm with Arabs-men, women, and naked children.
Mud hovels screened by yellow mats, and groaning water-wheels worked by the pa-
tient ox, are seen beneath the palms. The Tigris becomes wider and wider, and the
stream is almost motionless. Circular boats of reeds, coated with bitumen, skim
over the water. Horsemen and riders on white asses hurry along the river-side.
Turks in flowing robes and broad turbans; Persians in high black caps and close-
fitting tunics; the Bokhara pilgrim in his white head-dress and way-worn garments;
the Bedouin chief in his tasselled keffiib and striped aba; Baghdad ladies with their
scarlet and white draperies, fretted with threads of gold, and their black horse-hair
veils concealing even their wanton eyes; Persian women wrapped in their sightless
garments; and Arab girls in their simple blue shirts, are all mingled together in one
motley crowd. A busy stream of travellers flows without ceasing from the gates of
the western suburb of Baghdad to the sacred precincts of Kaithaman.
An account of the Highlands of Ethiopia,' by MAJOR W. CORN-
WALLIS HARRIS, H.E.I.C. Engineers, three volumes, 1844, also
abounds with novel and interesting information. The author was
employed to conduct a mission which the British government sent to
Saliela Selasse, the king of Shoa, in Southern Abyssinia, whose capi-
tal, Ankober, was supposed to be about four hundred miles inland
from the port of Tajura, on the African coast. The king consented
to form a commercial treaty, and Major Harris conceived that a pro
fitable intercourse might be maintained by Great Britain with this
productive part of the world.
<
SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE-MR. J. F. CAMPBELL.
In 1869 was published 'Greater Britain, a Record of Travel in
English-speaking Countries' during 1866 and 1867. The develop-
ment of the England of Elizabeth is to be found, not in the Britain
of Victoria, but in half the habitable globe. If two small islands are
by courtesy called "Great," America, Australia, India, must form a
Greater Britain. After this prefatory explanation of his quaint
title, the author arranges his travelling experiences into four parts-
America, Polynesia, Australia, and India. The sketches are lively
6
>>>
346
[To 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
and spirited, and the work was well received by the public. The
sixth edition (1872) is now before us.
Influence of the English Race.
The idea which in all the length of my travels has been at once my fellow and my
guide a key wherewith to unlock the hidden things of strange new lands-s a
conception, however imperfect, of the grandeur of our race, already girdling the
earth, which it is destined, perhaps, eventually to overspread. In America, the peoples
of the world are being fused together, but they run into an English mould: Alfred's
laws and Chaucer's tongue are theirs whether they would or no. There are men
who say that Britain in her age will claim the glory of having planted greater
Englands across the seas. They fail to prceive that she has done more than found
plantations of her own-that she has imposed her institutions upon the offshoots of
Germany, of Ireland, of Scandinavia, and of Spain.
-
Brigham Young.
C
We posted off to a merchant to whom we had letters, that we might inquire when
his spiritual chief aud military ruler would be home again from his trip north.' The
answer was, 'to-morrow.'
After watching the last gleams fade from the snow-fields upon the Wasatch, we
parted for the night, as I had to sleep in a private house, the hotel being filled even
to the balcony. As I entered the drawing-room of my entertainer. I heard the
voice of a lady reading, and caught enough of what she said to be aware that it
was a defence of polygamy. She ceased when she saw the stranger; but I found
that it was my host's first wife reading Belinda Pratt's book to her daughters-girls
just blooming into womanhood.
After an agreeable chat with the ladies, doubly pleasant as it followed upon a long
absence from civilisation, I went to my room, which I afterwards found to be that of
the eldest son, a youth of sixteen years. In one corner stood two Ballard rifles, and
two revolvers and a military uniform hung from pegs upon the wall. When I lay down
with my hands underneath the pillow-an attitude instinctively adopted to escape the
sand-flies, I touched something cold. I felt it—a full-sized Colt, and capped. Such
was my first introduction to Utah Mormonism.
On the morrow, we had the first and most formal of our four interviews with the
Mormon president, the conversation lasting three hours, and all the leading men
of the church being present. When we rose to leave, Brigham said: 'Come to see
me here again: Brother Stenhouse will shew you everything; and then blessed us in
these words, 'Peace be with you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.'
?
Elder Stenhouse followed us out of the presence, and somewhat anxiously put the
odd question: Well, is he a white man?' White' is used in Utah as a general term
of praise; a white man is a man-to use our corresponding idiom-not so black as be
is painted. A white country' is a country with grass and trees; just as a white man
means a man who is morally not a Ute, so a white country is a land in which others
than Utes can dwell.
X
,
We made some complimentary answer to Stenhouse's question; but it was in-
possible not to feel that the real point was, is Brigham sincere ?
Brigham's deeds have been those of a sincere man. His bitterest opponents can-
not dispute the fact that in 1841, when Nauvoo was about to be deserted, owing to
the attacks of a ruffianly mob. Brigham rushed to the frout, and took the chief com-
mand. To be a Mormon leader then was to be a leader of an outcast people, with a
price set on his head, in a Missourian county in which almost every man who was
not a Mormon was by profession an assassin. In the sense, too. of believing that
he is what he professes to be, Brigham is undoubtedly sincere. In the wider sense
of being that which he professes to be, he comes off as well, if only we will read his
words in the way he speaks them. He tells us that he is a prophet-God's representative
on earth; but when I asked him whether he was of a wholly different spiritual rank
to that held by other devout men, he said: By no means.
By no means. I am a prophet-one of
many. All good men are prophets; but God has blessed me with peculiar favour in
revealing His will oftener and more clearly through me than through other men.'
•
Those who would understand Brigham's revelations must read Beutham. The lead-
DILKE.]
347
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ing Mormons are utilitarian deists. God's will be done,' they like other deists say, is
to be our rule: and God's will they find in written revelation and in utility. God has
given men, by the actual hand of angels, the Bible. the Book of Mormon, the Book of
Covenants, the revelations upon Plural Marriage. When these are exhausted, man,
seeking for God's will. has to turn to the principle of utility: that which is for the
happiness of mankind-that is, of the church-is God's will and must be done.
While utility is their only index to God's pleasure, they admit that the church must
be ruled that opinions may differ as to what is the good of the church, and there-
fore the will of God. They meet, then. annually, in an assembly of the people, aud
electing church-officers by popular will and acclamation, they see God's finger in the
ballot-box. They say, like the Jews in the election of their judges, that the choice
of the people is the choice of God. This is what men like John Taylor or David
Wells appear to feel; the ignorant are permitted to look upon Brigham as something
more than a man, and though Brigham himself does nothing to confirm this view,
the leaders foster the delusion. When I asked Stenhouse, Has Brigham's re-elec-
tion as prophet ever been opposed?' he answered sharply, 'I should like to see the
man who'd do it.'
Brigham's personal position is a strange one: he calls himself prophet, and de-
clares that he has revelations from God himself, but when you ask him quietly what
all this means, you find that for prophet you should read political philosopher. He
sees that a canal from Utah Lake to Salt Lake Valley would be of vast utility to
the church and the people-that a new settlement is urgently required. He thinks
about these things till they dominate in his mind, and take in his brain in the shape
of physical creations. He dreams of the canal, the city; sees them before him in his
waking moments. That which is so clearly for the good of God's people becomes
God's will. Next Sunday at the tabernacle, he steps to the front and says: 'God has
spoken; He has said unto his prophet: Get thee up, Brigham, and build Me a city
in the fertile valley to the South, where there is water, where there are fish, where
the sun is strong enough to ripen the cotton plants. and give raiment as well as food
to my saints on earth." Brethren willing to aid God's work should come to me be-
fore the bishops' meeting.' As the prophet takes his seat again, and puts on his
broad-brimmed hat, a hum of applause runs around the bowery, and teams and bar-
rows are freely promised.
•
·
Sometimes the canal, the bridge, the city may prove a failure, but this is not con-
cealed the prophet's buman tougue may blunder even when he is communicating
holy things. After all,' Brigham said to me the day before I left, the highest in-
spiration is good sense-the knowing what to do and how to do it.'
SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, author of Greater Britain,' is
son of a baronet of the same name who was one of the Commis-
sioners of the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862, and for
his services in that capacity was rewarded with a baronetcy in 1862.
The second baronet was born in 1843, studied law, and was called to
the bar in 1866. In November 1867 he was elected to represent
Chelsea in the House of Commons. Sir Charles has succeeded his
father and grandfather as proprietor of the Athenæum' literary
journal.
C
C
Another extensive traveller, MR. J. F. CAMPBELL, has published
two volumes of extracts from journals sent home, geological and
other notes written while travelling westwards round the world in
1875. His work is entitled My Circular Notes.' The Notes' are
lively and graphic, especially as regards Japan and the Japanese, of
which the accounts are highly favourable.
C
C
Japan is fairly started with growing railroads and telegraphs, an
ordnance survey, and an observatory; steamboats, a newspaper, and
a national debt. A most ingenious set of mortals are planted in one
348
[To 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
of the best commercial situations in the whole world, watched by
all the great powers. They make one of the most interesting of po-
litical studies, and are the queerest mixture of tragedy and comedy
that a spectator can look at from outside.'
Mr. Campbell is a Celtic scholar, and has published four volumes
of Popular Tales of the West Highlands, orally collected, with a
Translation,' 1862. The work is a rich repertory of Celtic folk-love
and traditional literature, poetical and prosaic.
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE.
Two interesting volumes on Arabia were published in 1865, by
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE, son of Sir Francis Palgrave, and
born in Westminster in 1826. An officer in the Indian army, Mr.
Palgrave travelled for nearly ten years (1853-1863) in Arabia and
other parts of the Turkish empire. He has also officiated as consul
at Trebizond. His published travels are entitled 'Narrative of a
Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia,' 1862-63.
At
the time of undertaking this journey, Mr. Palgrave was in connection
with the Order of the Jesuits, and the necessary funds were furnished
by the liberality of the Emperor of the French (Napoleon III). The
narrative gives the most minute account we have of the Arab race-
of their condition, intellectual and political, social and religious.
The Arab Character.
Some authors, travelled or otherwise, have represented the Arabs of the interior
as a race absolutely incapable of any real attainment or progress in practical and ma-
terial science, and have supposed that branch of knowledge to be the exclusive por-
tion of Japhet, while Shem and his descendants, amongst whom the Arabs hold a dis-
tinguished place, are to be allowed neither part nor lot in this matter. My own experi-
ence, if indeed it may bear the name of experience, would lead me to a very different
conclusion; and I am rather inclined to regard the Arabs, taken in themselves and
individually, as endowed with a remarkable aptitude for those very pursuits, and
hardly less adapted to the railroad, to the steam-ship, or any other nineteenth century
invention or natural research than the natives of Sheffield or Birmingham themselves.
But lack of communication with other countries, and especially with those which
were in former times, and yet are, the fountain-beads of that special activity; and,
in addition, the Mahometan drug which paralyses whatever it does not kill out-
right, have kept them back in the intellectual race, to be outrun by others more fa-
voured by circumstances, though not perhaps by nature. When the Koran and
Mecca shall have disappeared from Arabia, theu, and then only, can we seriously ex-
pect to see the Arab assume that place in the ranks of civilisation from which Ma-
homet and his book have, more than any other individual cause, long held him back.
The Simoon.
It was about noon, and such a noon as a summer solstice can offer in the un-
clouded Arabian sky over a scorched desert, when abrupt and burning gusts of wind
began to blow by fits from the south, while the oppressiveness of the air increased
every moment till my companion and myself mutually asked each other what this
could mean, and what was to be its result. We turned to inquire of Salem, but he
had already wrapped up his face in his mantle, and. bowed down, and crouching ou
the neck of his camel, replied not a word. His comrades, the two Sherarat Bedouins,
had adopted a similar position, and were equally silent. At last, after repeated inter-
rogations, Salem, instead of replying directly to our questioning, pointed to a small
PALGRAVE.}
349
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
black tent, providentially at no great distance in front, and said, 'Try to reach that;
if we can get there we are saved.' He added, Take care that your camels do not
stop and lie down; and then, giving his own several vigorous blows, relapsed into
muffled silence.
•
We looked anxiously towards the tent; it was yet a hundred yards off or more.
Meanwhile the gusts grew hotter and more violent, and it was only by repeated efforts
that we could urge our beasts forward. The horizon rapidly darkened to a deep vio-
let hue. and seemed to draw in like a curtain on every side; while, at the same time,
a stifling blast, as though from some enormous oven opening right on our path,
blew steadily under the gloom; our camels, too, began, in spite of all we could do, to
turn round and round, and bend their knees, preparing to lie down. The Simoon
was fairly upon us.
Of course, we had followed our Arab's example by muffling our faces; and now,
with blows and kicks, we forced the staggering animals onwards to the only asylum
within reach. So dark was the atmosphere, and so burning the heat, that it seemed
that hell had risen from the earth, or descended from above. But we were yet in
time; and at the moment when the worst of the concentrated poison blast was coming
around, we were already prostrate one and all within the tent, with our heads well
wrapped up, almost suffocated indeed, but safe; while our camels lay without like
dead, their long necks stretched out on the sand awaiting the passing of the gale.
On our first arrival the tent contained a solitary Bedouin woman, whose husband
was away with his camels in the Wadi Sirham. When she saw five handsome men
like us rush thus suddenly into her dwelling, without a word of leave or salutation,
she very properly set up a scream to the tune of the four crown pleas, murder,
arson, robbery, and I know not what else. Salem hastened to reassure her by
calling out Friends,' and without more words, threw himself flat on the ground.
Al! followed his example in silence.
We remained thus for about ten minutes, during which a still heat, like that of a
red-hot iron slowly passing over us, was alo e to be felt. Then the tent walls began
again to flap in the returning gusts, and announced that the worst of the Simoon
had gone by. We got up half dead with exhaustion, and unmuffled our faces. My
comrades appeared more like corpses than living men; and so, I suppose, did I.
However, I could not forbear, in spite of warning, to step out and look at the camels:
they were still lying flat as if they had been shot. The air was yet darkish, but be-
fore long it brightened up to its usual dazzling clearness. During the whole time
that the Simoon lasted, the atmosphere was entirely free from sand or dust, so that
I hardly know how to account for its singular obscurity.
THE ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS.
Expeditions to the arctic regions were continued after the fruit-
less voyage of Sir John Ross, 1829-33. The interval of 160 miles
between Point Barrow, and the farthest point to which Captain
Franklin penetrated, was, in 1837, surveyed by MR. THOMAS SIMPSON
and the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. The latter had.
with great generosity, lent their valuable assistance to complete the
geography of that region, and Mr. Simpson was enthusiastically de-
voted to the same object. In the summer of 1837, he, with his senior
officer, Mr. Dease, started from the Great Slave Lake, following the
steps of Franklin as far as the point called Franklin's Farthest,
whence they traced the remainder of the coast to the westward to
Point Barrow, by which they completed our knowledge of this coast
the whole way west of the Coppermine River, as far as Behring's
Straits. Wintering at the north-east angle of the Great Bear Lake,
the party descended the Coppermine River, and followed the coast
eastwards as far as the mouth of the Great Fish River, discovered by
350
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
[TO 1876.
<
<
Back in 1834. The expedition comprised the navigation of a tem-
pestuous ocean beset with ice, for a distance exceeding 1400 geo-
graphical or 1600 statute miles, in open boats, together with all the
fatigues of long land-journeys and the perils of the climate.' In 1839
the Geographical Society of London rewarded Mr. Simpson with a
medal, for advancing almost to completion the solution of the great
problem of the configuration of the northern shore of the North
American continent. While returning to Europe in June 1840,
Mr. Simpson died, it is supposed, by his own hand, in a par-
oxysm of insanity, after shooting two of the four men who ac-
companied him from the Red River colony. Mr. Simpson was
a native of Dingwall, in Ross-shire, and at the time of his melan-
choly death was only in his thirty-second year. His Narrative of
the Discoveries on the North Coast of America, effected by the Offi-
cers of the Hudson's Bay Company during the years' 1836-39, was
published in 1843.
C
<
In 1845 the Admiralty commissioned two ships, the Erebus and
Terror, to prosecute the problem of the North-west Passage. Captain
Sir John Franklin had returned from Tasmania, and the expedition
was placed under charge of that experienced and skilful commander,
Captain Crozier being the second in command. The expedition was
seen for the last time by a whaler, July 26, 1845, making for Lancas-
ter Sound. At the close of 1847 the Admiralty despatched vessels
with supplies; two were sent in 1848 on Franklin's route, and Sir
John Richardson was despatched through Rupert's Land to the coast
of the Arctic Sea. These were the beginnings of a series of search-
ing expeditions persevered in year after year, until tidings were ob-
tained. Of these we have interesting accounts in the 'Narrative of
an Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea in 1846 and 1847,' by
JOHN RAE, 1850; Journal of a Voyage in 1850–51, performed by the
Lady Franklin and Sophia under command of Mr. W. Penny,' by P.
C. SUTHERLAND, M.D., two volumes, 1852; Papers and Despatches
relating to the Arctic searching Expeditions of 1850–1–2,' by JAMES
MANGLES, R. N., 1852; ‹ Second Voyage of the Prince Albert in Search
of Sir John Franklin,' by W. KENNEDY, 1853; 'The Last of the Arc-
tic Voyages, being a Narrative of the Expedition in H.M.S. Assist-
ance,' under the command of SIR EDWARD BELCHER, C. B., in Search
of Sir John Franklin, 1852-3-4,' two volumes, 1855; The Discovery
of the North-west Passage, by H.M.S. Investigator, CAPTAIN R.
M'CLURE, 1850-54,' published in 1856. The last of these voyages was
the most important. Captain M'Clure was knighted, and par iament
voted him a sum of £5000, with an equal sum to his officers and
crew. The gallantry and ability displayed by the officers of
the various expeditions, and the additions made by them to the
geography of the Polar Seas, render these voyages and land-
journeys a source of national honour. though of deep and almost
painful interest.
C
M'CLURE.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
351
The abundance of animal life in the polar regions is remarkable.
Reindeer, hares, musk oxen, with salmon and other fish, were found,
and furnished provisions to the exploring ice-parties. In 1854 Dr.
Rae learned from a party of Esquimaux that in the spring of 1850
about forty white men were seen on the shore of King William's
Land. They appeared thin, and intimated by signs that their ships
had been lost in the ice, and that they were travelling to where they
hoped to find deer to shoot. They were dragging a boat and sledges.
The Esquimaux further stated that later the same season, before the
ice broke up, the bodies of thirty white men were discovered on the
continent a day's journey to the west of the Great Fish River, and five
more bodies on an adjacent island. In 1857, Lady Franklin organized
another searching expedition, and Captain M'Clintock, with a crew
of twenty-four men sailed in the Fox yacht. They spent the winter
of 1857-58 in the ice, drifting about twelve hundred miles. In the
spring they resumed operations, and in August reached Brentford
Bay, near which the ship was laid up for winter-quarters. In the
spring of 1859, Captain M'Clintock and Lieutenant Hobson under-
took sledge expeditions, embracing a complete survey of the coasts.
At Point Victory, upon the north-west coast of King William's Land,
Lieutenant Hobson found under a cairn a record, dated April 25,
1848, signed by Captains Crozier and Fitzjames, stating that the Ere-
bus and Terror were abandoned on the 22d of April 1848, in the ice,
and that the survivors, in all one hundred and five, under the_com-
mand of Captain Crozier, were proceeding to the Great Fish River.
Sir John Franklin had died on the 11th of June 1847. The unfortunate
party had expected to be able to penetrate on foot southwards to some
of the most northerly settlements of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Traces of their progress were further found-a large boat fitted on a
sledge, with quantities of clothing, cocoa, tea, tobacco, and fuel, with
two guns and plenty of ammunition. Five watches, some plate,
knives, a few religious books, and other relics were discovered;
but no journals or pocket-books. The gallant band, enfeebled by three
years' residence in arctic latitudes, disappointment, and suffering,
had no doubt succumbed to the cold and fatigue, sinking down by
the way, as the Esquimaux had reported to Dr. Rae, and finding
graves amidst the eternal frost and snow. The graves of three of the
crew of the Erebus and Terror are thus noticed in 'Stray Leaves from
an Arctic Journal,' by LIEUTENANT S. OSBORN:
Graves of the English Seamen in the Polar Regions.
The graves, like all that Englishmen construct, were scrupulously neat. Go where
you will over the globe's surface-afar in the east, or afar in the west, down among
the coral-girded isles of the South Sea, or here, where the grim North frowns on the
sailor's grave-you will always find it alike; it is the monument raised by rough
hands but affectionate hearts over the last home of their messmates; it breathes of
the quiet churchyard in some of Eugland's many nooks, where each had formed
his idea of what was dne to departed worth; and the ornaments that nature decks
herself with, even in the desolation of the frozen zone, were carefully culled to
352
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
mark the dead seaman's home. The good faste of the officers had prevented the
general simplicity of an oaken hed aud footboard to each of the graves being
marred by any long and childish epitaphs, or the doggrel of a lower-deck poet, and
the three inscriptions were as follows:
'Sacred to the Memory of Wm. Braine, R.M., of H.M.S. Erebus, died April 3,
1846, aged 32 years. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve.”—Josh. xxiv. 15.
Sacred to the Memory of J. Torrington, who departed this life, January 1, 1846,
on board of H.M.S. Terror, aged 20 years.
$
'Sacred to the Memory of J. Hartwell, A.B., of H.M.S. Erebus, died January 4,
1346, aged 25 years. "Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways."-
Haggai i. 7.'
I thought I traced in the epitaphs over the graves of the men from the Erebus
the manly and Christian spirit of Franklin. In the true spirit of chivalry, he, their
captain and leader, led them amidst dangers and unknown difficulties with iron will
stamped upon his brow, but the words of meekness, gentleness, and truth were his
device.
Some interesting and affecting details of these arctic explorations
are given in the Life of Sir John Richardson,' by the REV. J.
M'ILRAITH, 1868. Sir John was an intrepid explorer of the arctic
regions, and largely contributed to the knowledge of the physical
geography, flora, and fauna of British North America. This excel-
lent man was a native of Dumfries, born in 1787, died in 1865.
C
We shall now advert to African discovery and adventure, and to
the question of the source of the Nile, which, even from time imme-
morial, has been a subject of mysterious interest and speculation.
CAPTAIN BURTON.
<
(
One of the most fearless and successful of modern explorers is
RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON, born at Tuam in Galway, Ireland, in
1820. Entering the East India Company's service, Lieutenant Bur-
ton served some years in Sindh under Sir Charles Napier, and pub-
lished an account of Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of
the Indus,' 1851. The same year he produced a volume entitled
Goa and the Blue Mountains, or Six Months of Sick-Leave;' and
the next year, Falconry in the Valley of the Indus.'. His remark-
able talent for acquiring languages, and particularly his knowledge
of Arabic, suggested a journey in the East through regions unex-
plored or but partially known. Under the auspices of the English
Geographical Society he proceeded to Arabia, adopting the bab-
its of an Afghan pilgrim. He penetrated to the two holy
cities, accomplishing a safe return to Cairo, and the result was
a most valuable and interesting book of travels, entitled a
'Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Mec-
cah,' three volumes, 1855-57. The next expedition of the
traveller was into the country of the Somaulis in Eastern
Africa. He was accompanied by three brother-officers-Lieutenants
Stroyan, Speke and Hern. The first of these was killed, and Burton
himself was much wounded, but he succeeded in reaching Harrar,
and he published an account of the journey under the title of First
At the
Footsteps in East Africa, or an Exploration of Harar,' 1856.
<
<
BURTON.]
353
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
end of the year, Burton and Speke set out to the country of the Upper
Nile, to verify the existence of an inland sea announced by the Arabs
and missionaries. They started from the Zanzibar coast in 1857, and
the result was the discovery of the vast lake of Tanganyika in lat. 5°
S., long. 36° E., and a large crescent-shaped mass of mountains over-
hanging the northern half of the lake, and ten thousand feet high,
considered by Speke to be the true Mountains of the Moon. Captain
Burton published an account of this expedition, entitled The Lake
Regions of Central Africa,' two volumes, 1860. His health having
been impaired by his African travels, Captain Burton embarked for
the United States, which he traversed, and published an account of
the Mormons. In 1861 he was appointed consul for Fernando Po,
and from thence he made exploring expeditions described in his works,
Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains,' two volumes, 1863; A
Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomey,' two volumes, 1864; Wit and
Wisdom from West Africa,' 1865. He was next appointed consul in
Brazil, where he resided above three years, and wrote Explorations
of the Highlands of Brazil,' two volumes, 1869; and Letters from
the Battle-fields of Paraguay,' 1870. A later work of the traveller's
is a description of Zanzibar, City, Island, and Coast,' 1872. In 1875,
Captain Burton published Ultima Thule, or a Summer in Iceland,
in which we have not only the author's personal adventures, but a
narrative of the discovery, the history, and characteristics of the
island.
•
•
·
S
•
C
<
CAPTAINS SPEKE AND GRANT.
JOHN HANNING SPEKE was a native of Devonshire, born at Orleigh
Court, near Bideford, in 1827. He obtained a commission in the
Bengal Native Infantry, and served in the war of the Punjaub. In
1854 he commenced his explorations in Eastern Africa, and in 1856,
as already related, he joined Captain Burton in his expedition to as-
certain the position of the great lakes of the interior, and their rela-
tion to the Nile basin. In February 1858, Lake Tanganyika was dis-
covered, and in July of the same year, Speke traversed the route run-
ning north from Kazeh, and in August discovered the south end of
the Victoria Nyanza lake, which he considered to be the source of the
Nile. In his opinion he differed from Burton and other travellers,
and in order to establish more firmly his theory on the subject, he
undertook another expedition in 1860, accompanied by a brother offi-
cer, Captain Grant. The result he published in a large volume, a
Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile,' 1863. Captain
Speke was engaged to address the British Association at Bath on the
16th of September 1864, but was unfortunately killed on the day pre-
ceding by the accidental discharge of his gun. The death of the
brave traveller under circumstances so distressing may be said to
have saddened all England. Subsequent explorations in Africa have
proved the accuracy of Speke's account of the Victoria Nyanza.
<
354
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
First View of the Nile.
Here at last I stood on the brink of the Nile; most beautiful was the scene-
nothing could surpass it! It was the very perfection of the kind of effect aimed at
in a highly-kept park; with a magnificent stream from six to seven hundred yards
wide, dotted with islets and rocks, the former occupied by fishermen's huts, the
latter by sterns and crocodiles basking in the sun, flowing between high grassy
banks, with rich trees and plantains in the background, where herds of the sunnu
and hartebeest could be seen grazing, while the hippopotami were snorting in the
water, and florikan and guinea-fowl rising at our feet. Unfortunately, the chief
district officer, Mlondo, was from home, but we took possession of his huts-clean,
extensive, and tidily kept-facing the river, and felt as if a residence here would do
one good.
I marched up the left bank of the Nile, at a considerable distance from the
water, to the Isamba Rapids, passing through rich jungle and plantain gardens.
Nargo, an old friend, and district officer of the place, first refreshed us with
a dish of plantain squash and dried fish with pombé.* He told us he is often
threatened by elephants, but he sedulously keeps them off with charms; for
if they ever tasted a plantain they would never leave the garden until they
had cleared it out. He then took us to see the nearest falls of the Nile
-extremely beautiful, but very confiued. The water ran deep between its
banks, which were covered with fine grass, soft cloudy acacias, and festoons of lilac
convolvuli; whilst here and there, where the land had slipped above the rapids, bared
places of red earth could be seen like that of Devonshire: there, too, the waters,
impeded by a natural dam, looked like a huge mill-pond, sullen and dark, in which
two crocodiles, laving about, were looking out for prey. From the high banks we
looked down upon a line of sloping wooded islets lying across the stream, which
divide its waters, and by interrupting them, cause at once both dam and rapids.
The whole was more fairy-like, wild, and romantic than-I must confess that my
thoughts took that shape-anything I ever saw outside of a theatre. It was exactly
the sort of place, in fact, where, bridged across from one side-slip to the other, on a
moonlight night, brigands would assemble to enact some dreadful tragedy. Even
the Wanguana seemed spell-bound at the novel beauty of the sight, and no one
thought of moving till hunger warned us night was setting in, and we had better
look out for lodgings.
Etiquette at the Court of Uganda.
The mighty king was now reported to be sitting on his throne in the state-hut of
the third tier. I advanced hat in hand. with my guard of honour following, formed
in open ranks, who in their turn were followed by the bearers carrying the present. I
did not walk straight up to him as if to shake hands, but went outside the ranks of a
three-sided square of squatting Wakungu, all habited in skins, mostly cow-skins;
some few of them had, in addition, leopard-cat skins girt round the waist, the sign
of royal blood. Here I was desired to halt and sit in the glaring sun; so I donned
my hat, mounted my umbrella-a phenomenon which set them all a-wondering and
laughing-ordered the guard to close ranks, and sat, gazing at the novel spectacle.
A more theatrical sight I never saw. The king, a good-looking. well-figured, tall
young man of twenty-five, was sitting on a red blanket spread upon a square plat-
form of royal grass, encased in tiger-grass reeds. scrupulously well-dressed mbugu.
The hair of his head was cut short, excepting on the top, where it was combed up to
a high ridge, running from stem to stern like a cock's comb. On his neck was a
very neat ornament-a large ring of beautifully worked small beads. forming elegant
patterns by their various colours. On one arm was another bead ornament. prettily
devised; and on the other a wooden charm. tied by a string covered with snake-skin.
On every finger and every toe he had alternate brass and copper-rings; and above
the ankles, half-way up to the calf, a stocking of very pretty beads. Everything was
light, neat, and elegant in its way; not a fault could be found with the taste of his
'getting-up.' For a handkerchief he held a well-folded piece of bark, and a piece
of gold-embroidered silk, which he constantly employed to hide his large mouth
A fermented liquor made from grains, roots, or fruits.
SPEKE.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
355
when laughing, or to wipe it after a drink of plantain wine, of which he took con-
stant and copious draughts from neat little gourd-cups, administered by his ladies-
in-waiting, who were at once his sisters and wives. A white dog. spear, shield, and
woman-the Uganda cognisance-were by his side, as also a knot of staff-officers,
with whom he kept up a brisk conversation on one side, and on the other was a band
of Wachwézi, or lady-sorcerers.
I was now asked to draw nearer within the hollow square of squatters, where
leopard skins were strewed upon the ground, and a large copper kettle-drum, sur-
mounted with brass bells on arching wires, along with two other smaller drums cov-
ered with cowrie-shells, and beads of colour worked into patterns, were placed. I
now longed to open conversation. but knew not the language, and no one near me
dared speak, or even lift his head from fear of being accused of eyeing the women;
so the king aud myself sat staring at one another for full an hour-I mute, but he
pointing and remarking with those around him on the novelty of my guard and
general appearance, and even requiring to see my hat lifted, the umbrella shut and
opened, and the guards face about and shew off their red cloaks-for such wonders
had never been seen in Uganda.
Then finding the day waning, he sent Maula on an embassy to ask me if I had
seen him; and on receiving my reply, Yes, for full one hour,' I was glad to find him
rise, spear in band, lead his dog, and walk unceremoniously away through the in-
closure into the the fourth tier of huts; for this being a pure levée day, no business
was transacted. The king's gait in retiring was intended to be very majestic, but did
not succeed in conveying to me that impression. It was the traditional walk of his
race, founded on the step of the lion, but the outward sweep of the legs, intended to
represent the stride of the noble beast, appeared to me only to realise a very ludicrous
kind of waddle.
The Source of the Nile-A Summary.
The expedition had now performed its functions. I saw that old Father Nile,
without any doubt, rises in the Victoria Nyanza, and, as I had foretold, that lake is
the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious
belief. I mourned. however, when I thought how much I had lost by the delays in
the journey having deprived me of the pleasure of going to look at the north-east cor-
ner of the Nyanza to see what connection there was. by the strait so often spoken of,
with it and the other lake where the Waganda went to get their salt, and from which
another river flowed to the north, making Usoga an island.' But I felt I ought to
be content with what I had been spared to accomplish; for I had seen full half of the
lake, and had information given me of the other half, by means of which I knew all
about the lake, as far, at least, as the chief objects of geographical importance were
concerned.
+
Let us now sum up the whole and see what it is worth. Comparative informa-
tion assured me that there was as much water on the eastern side of the lake as
there is on the western-if anything, rather more. The most remote waters, or
top head of the Nile, is the southern end of the lake, situated close on the third
degree of south latitude, which gives to the Nile the surprising length, in direct
measurement, rolling over thirty-four degrees of latitude, of above two thousand
three hundred miles. or more than one-eleventh of the circumference of our globe.
Now from this southern point. round by the west. to where the great Nile stream
issues, there is only one feeder of any importance, and that is the Kitangûlé river;
whilst from the southernmost point, round by the cast. to the strait, there are no
rivers at all of any importance for the travelled Arabs one and all aver, that from
the west of the snow-clad Kilimandjaro to the lake where it is cut by the second de-
gree, and also the first degree of south latitude, there are salt lakes and salt plains,
and the country is hilly, not unlike Unyamûézi; but they said there were no great
rivers, and the country was so scantily watered, having only occasional runnels and
rivulets, that they always had to make long marches in order to find water when they
went on their trading journeys: and further, those Arabs who crossed the strait when
they reached Usoga, as mentioned before, during the late interregnum, crossed no
river either.
356
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
There remains to be disposed of the 'Salt Lake,' which I believe is not a salt,
but a fresh-water lake; aud iny reasons are, as before stated, that the natives call all
lakes salt, if they find salt beds or salt islands in such piaces. Dr. Krapf, when he
obtained a sight of the Kenia mountain, heard from the natives there that there was
a salf fake to its northward, and he also heard that a river ran from Kenia towards
the Nile. If his information was true on this latter point, then, without doubt,
there must exist some connection between his river and the salt lake I have heard of,
and this in all probability would also establish a connection between my salt lake and
his salt lake which he heard was called Baringo. In no view that can be taken of it,
however, does this unsettled matter touch the established fact that the head of the
Nile is in three degrees south latitude, where, in the year 1858, I discovered the head
of the Victoria Nyauza to be.
JAMES AUGUSTUS GRANT, associated with Captain Speke in Afri-
can travel and discovery, is a native of Nairn, of which town his
father was minister. He was born in 1827, and in his eighteenth
year entered the Indian army; served under Lord Gough; and did
duty with the 78th Highlanders, under General Havelock, at the re-
lief of Lucknow in 1857. On this occasion he was wounded in the
right hand.
From April 1860 till June 1863 he was engaged in the
African expedition. In the preface to his work, 'A Walk Across
Africa, or Domestic Scenes from my Nile Journal,' 1864, Captain
Grant says
'My acquaintance with Captain Speke commenced as far back as
1847, when he was serving in India with his regiment. We were
both Indian officers, of the same age, and equally fond of field-sports,
and our friendship continued unbroken. After his return from dis-
covering the Victoria Nyanza, he was, as is well known, commission-
ed by the Royal Geographical Society to prosecute his discovery, and
to ascertain, if possible, the truth of his conjecture-that the Nile had
its source in that gigantic lake, the Nyanza. I volunteered to ac-
company him; my offer was at once accepted; and it is now a melan-
choly satisfaction to think that not a shade of jealousy or distrust, or
even ill-temper, ever came between us during our wanderings and
intercourse.
و
Captain, now Colonel Grant was made a C.B. in 1866; and in 1868,
when the Abyssinian expedition was organised, he was appointed
head of the Intelligence Department, and for his services in Abyssi-
nia was nominated a Companion of the Order of the Star of India.
His volume of travels is a pleasing and interesting narrative. Its
title is thus explained: 'Last season Sir Roderick Murchison did me
the honour to introduce me to Her Majesty's First Minister, Viscount
Palmerston, and on that occasion his Lordship good-humouredly
remarked, 'You have had a long walk, Captain Grant!' The saying
was one well fitted to be remembered and to be told again; and my
friendly publishers and others recommended that it should form the
leading title of my book.' We subjoin one extract:
GRANT.1
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
357
*
Life in Unyanyembe.”
(
This province of Unyanyembe bas nearly four months of rain, commencing in the
end of November, and winding up with the greatest fall in February. As soon as
the soil of sand, or black spongy mould, has softened, the seed is dropped, and by
the 1st of February all is as green as an emerald. The young rice has to struggle for
fifteen days against the depredations of a small black caterpillar, green underneath.
It is a precarious time for the agriculturist; for, if rain does not fall, the crop is
lost, being eaten close by this insect. Women walk in the fields, with hand-picks,
loosening the soil, clearing it of weeds and worms. There is only one crop in the
year, and all the cereals known in Zanzibar are grown here. Cotton was considered
by an Indian resident to be as fine as that grown in Kutch, but he said they had no
use for it, merely burning it as wicks. As the previous year's corn had been cou-
sumed, the poorer classes gathered the heads of a wild grass (Dactylosum Egyptia-
cum), and prepared it for stirabout by sun-drying, beating on the rocks, and
rubbing it into flour on their flag-stones. They also fed on mushrooms, grow-
ing amongst the rank dub' grass, after drying, roasting, and peeling them.
They were five inches in diameter, and sienna-coloured. Another variety was
white, and half the size. All the cattle and goats in the country seemed to
have found their way into the folds of the Arabs, and had been captured in a war
still going ou between them and the native population. The surrounding country is
devoid of game, but within a long day's march a forest was visited, where various
antelopes, giraffes, lions, and a few elephants might be met with along the valley of
the Wallah River. The scales of an armadillo were seen worn as a charm, three inches
across, and striated or lined at one end. Our men had a superstition that the person
who found an armadillo alive would become a king-meaning, I imagine, that it was
so rare. However, we came upon a pet one at three degrees north latitude. About
the cultivations near the village no singing-birds are ever heard, but the plumage of
those seen is often very brilliant. Flocks of beautiful little birds, with black bodies,
golden-tinted scarlet heads and backs, pecked at the ears of corn; or in the rice
fields the favourite of the Cape farmers, the locust-bird, black, and looking like a
curlew when walking, went tamely about. Crows, with a ring of white about the
neck, were seen in twos and threes. The matting in the house was full of bugs, or
ticks, which pestered one while seated at night, causing considerable irritation.
It is not a country for ivory, the natives seldom, if ever, bringing any for sale.
Grain was so scarce that. slaves could be purchased for two fathoms of calico. One
day a naked native passed us in charge of three Seedees (negroes) armed with spears.
They had found him stealing, and offered him for sale. No one would purchase him,
and he was taken to the sultan, who would, as Moosah said, either spear him, keep
him as a slave, or allow him to be sold. Slaves from the northern kingdom of
Uganda, &c., were considered the most valuable. They were held to be more trust-
worthy than men from the coast, made excellent servants, and were famous at
The following notice of African localities (from an article in the Times) will assist
the reader: 'The Islaud of Zauzibar is cut by the sixth parallel of south latitude, and
1.om Bagamoyo, on the mainland, starts a well-known caravan route, which leads in
the first place to Unyanyembe, a central trading station and settlement of the Arab ivory
and slave merchants, lying in five degrees south latitude, and three hundred and sixty
miles west of Bagamoyo in a direct line. The next and farthest depot of the Arab mer-
chants is Ujiji, one hundred and eighty miles due west of Unyanyembe, on the shores of
the great lake of Tanganyika. When the native tribes and their petty sultans are not
at war between themselves or with the Arabs, the road to Ujiji. from Unyanyembe is
pretty straight and safe for a well-organized caravan. The district between Tanganyika
nd the coast is well travelled by caravans: the tribute system with the different tribes
is almost as organised as a customs tariff, and the drunken village chiefs and sultans,
who depend upon traders for all their fiuery, are quite wise enough to know that if they
rob and murder one caravan, another is not likely to come their way. Neither do the
Arabs dare to kidnap along the route. Their slave-hunting grounds are in the distant
interior, and it is quite an error to suppose that the country is desolated and uninhabited
for several hundred miles from the coast inwards. A great part of the way from Baga-
moyo to Ujiji. it is populous and prosperous, the natives are well armed with fint guus
as far and farther than Unyanyembe, and it is to the interest of both the tribes and the
traders to keep the peace.
...
358
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
?
killing or capturing wild animals. The most esteemed women were of the Wahumah
tribe from Karague; they resembled the Abyssinians.
Let me give the reader some idea of our life here. Moosah, an Indian in whose
house we resided, was a fine benevolent old man, with an establishment of three hun-
dred native men and women around him. His abode had, three years ago, taken two
months to build, and it was surrounded by a circular wall which inclosed his houses,
fruit and vegetable gardens, and his stock of cattle. The lady who presided over the
whole was of most portly dimensions, and her word was law. Moosah sat from morn
till night with his fondee' or chief manager, and other head servants within sight,
receiving salutes and compliments from the rich and poor at the front or genticmen's
side of the house, while the lady presided over the domestic arrangements of the in-
terior. We had full access to both, and no house could be conducted with greater
regularity. At three o'clock in the morning, Moosah, who had led a hard life in his
day, would call out for his little pill of opium, which he had never missed for forty
years. This would brighten him up till noon. He would then transact business,
chat, and give you the gossip at any hour you might sit by him on his carpet. To us
it seemed strange that he never stopped talking when prayers from the Koran were
being read to hiin by a Bookeen,' or Madagascar man. Perhaps he had little respect
for the officiating priest, as the same reverend and learned gentleman was accustomed
to make him his shirts! After a midday sleep, he would refresh himself with a sec-
ond but larger pill, transact business, and so end the day.
6
The harem department presented a more domestic scene. At dawn, women in
robes of coloured chintz, their hair neatly plaited, gave fresh milk to the swarm of
black cats, or churned butter in gourds by rocking it to and fro on their laps. By
seven o'clock the whole place was swept clean. Some of the bousehold fed the game-
fowls, or looked after the ducks and pigeons; two women chained by the neck
fetched firewood, or ground corn at a stone; children would eat together without
dispute, because a matron presided over them; all were quiet, industrious beings,
never idle, and as happy as the day was long. When any of Moosah's wives gave
birth to a child, there was universal rejoicing, and when one died, the shrill laments
of the women were heard all night long. When a child misbehaved, we wnite mcu
were pointed at to frighten it, as nurses at home too often do with ghost stories.
The most important functionary about this court was the head keeper or · fondee,'
who had been a slave all his life, and now possessed a village with a farm and cattle.
His daily duty was to sit within sight of his master. On Speke calling to see his col-
lection of horus and extract a bullet from the leg of one of his slaves, the fondee
made us heartily welcome. Stools were placed, and he produced some ripe plautain,
and shewed us about his premises. He also took us to one of his favourite shooting-
grounds, where he certainly knew how to make himself comfortable.
SIR SAMUEL BAKER.
In 1854 and 1855 appeared 'The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon,'
and ‘Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon.' These works evinced a
love of travel and adventure, an intelligence and power of descrip-
tion, that marked the writer as one eminently fitted for the explora-
tion of Eastern countries. Their author was an English engineer,
SAMUEL WHITE BAKER, born at Thorngrove in Worcestershire, in
1821. About the year 1847 he had gone to Ceylon, and was popularly
known as the elephant hunter. His residence was fitted up with
great taste and neatness, as both Mr. Baker and his wife had a fine
taste for art. Mrs. Baker died, but in 1860 he married again, the
lady being a young Hungarian, Florence von Saas, who shared in her
husband's love of wild nature, and who accompanied him on a
journey of exploration to the Upper Nile. In 1861 they sailed up
the Nile from Cairo. They reached Khartoum in June 1862, com-
pared the Blue Nile with the White Nile at or near the point of
BAKER.]
359
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
junction, and proceeded up the latter to Gondokero. Baker had a
good escort-ninety persons, twenty-nine camels and asses, and
three boats. Gondokoro is a mission station and place of trade,
and can be reached from Cairo in a sailing-boat, with a north wind,
in about three months. At Gondokoro, Baker met Captains
Speke and Grant, who had just arrived from their expedition to
the south, and he led the way-worn travellers to his diabeah, or Nile
pleasure-boat, where they found the comforts of civilised life, so
long denied them. These southern explorers told Baker of their
discovery of the Lake Victoria Nyanza, and of another great lake
which the natives had described to them, but which they had been
unable to visit. Baker at once undertook to trace this unknown
water, which he conceived must have an important position in the
basin of the Nile. He set off on the journey, and arrived in the
Latooka country, 110 miles east of Gondokoro, in March 1863.
After innumerable difficulties and hardships, the traveller and his
heroic wife succeeded, in March 1864, in obtaining from the top of
a range of lofty cliffs a view of the mysterious lake.
First Sight of the Albert Nyanza.
The glory of our prize suddenly burst upon me! There, like a sea of quicksilver,
lay far beneath the grand expanse of water-a boundless sea horizon on the south and
south-west, glittering in the noonday sun; and on the west, at fifty or sixty miles'
distance, blue mountains rose from the bosom of the lake to a height of about seven
thousand feet above its level.
•
It is impossible to describe the triumph of that moment; here was the reward
for all our labour -for the years of tenacity with which we had toiled through
Africa. England had won the sources of the Nile!
I sincerely thanked God
for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. I was
about one thousand five hundred feet above the lake, and I looked down from the
steep granite cliff upon those welcome waters-upon that vast reservoir which
nourished Egypt and brought fertility where all was wilderness-upon that great
source so long hidden from mankind; that source of bounty and blessings to mil-
lions of human beings; and as one of the greatest objects in nature, I determined
to honour it with a great name. As an imperishable memorial of one loved and
mourned by our gracious Queen, and deplored by every Englishman, I called the
great lake the Albert Nyanza.' The Victoria and the Albert lakes are the two
sources of the Nile.
•
The zigzag path to descend to the lake was so steep and dangerous, that we
were forced to leave our oxen with a guide, who was to take them to Magungo and
wait for our arrival. We commenced the descent of the steep pass on foot. I led
the way, grasping a stout bamboo. My wife, in extreme weakness, tottered down
the pass, supporting herself upon my shoulder, and stopping to rest every twenty
paces. After a toilsome descent of about two hours, weak with years of fever, but
for the moment strengthened by success, we gained the level plain below the cliff.
A walk of about a mile through flat sandy meadows of fine turf, interspersed with
trees and bush, brought us to the water's edge. The waves were rolling upon a
white pebbly beach: I rushed into the lake, and thirsty with heat and fatigue, with
a heart full of gratitude. I drank deeply from the sources of the Nile. Within a
quarter of a mile of the lake was a fishing village named Vacovi", in which we now
established ourselves.
The beach was perfectly clean sand, upon which the waves rolled like those of the
sea, throwing up weeds precisely as sea-weed may be seen upon the English shore.
It was a grand sight to look upon this vast reservoir of the mighty Nile, and to
watch the heavy swell tumbling upon the beach, while far to the south-west the eye
360
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
searched as vainly for a bound as though upon the Atlantic. It was with extreme
emotion that I enjoyed this glorious scene. My wife, who had followed me so de-
votedly, stood by my side pale and exhausted-a wreck upon the shores of the great
Albert Lake that we had so long striven to reach. No European foot had ever tod
upon its sand, nor had the eyes of a white man scanzed its vast expanse of water.
We were the first and this was the key to the great secret that even Jalius Cæsar
yearned to unravel, but in vain. Here was the great basin of the Nile that received
every drop of water, even from the passing shower to the roaring mountain torrent
that drained from Central Africa towards the north. This was the great reservoir
of the Nile I
The first coup d'œil from the summit of the cliff, one thousand five hundred feet
above the level, had suggested what a closer examination confirmed. The lake was
a vast depression far below the general level of the country, surrounded by precipi-
tous cliffs, and bounded on the west and south-west by great ranges of mountains
from five to seven thousand feet above the level of its waters-thus it was the one
great reservoir into which everything must drain; and from this vast rocky cistern
the Nile made its exit, a giant in its birth.
This result of nearly five years passed in Africa might well form a
subject of triumph to Baker. Bruce,' he said, 'won the source of
the Blue Nile, Speke and Grant won the Victoria source of the great
White Nile; and I have been permitted to succeed in completing the
Nile sources by the discovery of the great reservoir of the equatorial
waters, the Albert Nyanza, from which the river issues as the entire
White Nile.' For the discovery, and for his relief of Speke and
Grant, the Royal Geographical Society awarded the gold medal, and
Her Majesty conferred upon Baker the honour of knighthood.
1866 he published, in two volumes, his interesting narrative. The
Albert Nyanza, Great Basin of the Nile;' and in 1867, The Nile Tri-
butaries of Abyssinia.'
In
A greater expedition was afterwards organised under the auspices
of the Khedive or Viceroy of Egypt, who furnished a force of one
thousand soldiers. Sir Samuel and Lady Baker left Cairo in Decm-
ber 1869, having besides the troops, Nile boats, stores, instruments,
and other appliances either for war or peace. The grand object of
the expedition was to suppress, if possible, the slave-trade, and pro-
mote commerce and agriculture. On the 8th of January 1870 Sir
Samuel was again at Khartoum, and had succeeded in partially sup-
pressing the slave-trade of the White Nile. The expedition, how-
ever, did not realise the expectations so sanguinely entertained at its
commencement.
<
DAVID LIVINGSTUNE-HENRY M. STANLEY.
Since the period of Mungo Park's travels and melancholy fate, no
explorer of Africa has excited so strong a personal interest as DAVID
LIVINGSTONE, a Scottish missionary, whose ‘Researches in South
Africa' were published in 1857. Mr. Livingstone had then returned
to England, where his arrival was celebrated as a national event, after
completing a series of expeditions, commenced sixteen years before,
for the purpose of exploring the interior of Africa, and spreading re-
ligious knowledge and commerce. The narrative describes long and
LIVINGSTONE.
E.]
861
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
perilous journeys in a country, the greater part of which had never
before been visited by a European, and contains a great amount of
information respecting the natives, the geography, botany, and na-
tural products of Africa. In the belief that Christianity can only be
effectually extended by being united to commerce, Dr. Livingstone
endeavoured to point out and develop the capabilities of the new re-
gion for mercantile intercourse. The missionary, he argues, should
be a trader a fact known to the Jesuits in Africa, and also to the
Dutch clergy, but neglected by our Protestant missionary societies.
By the introduction of the raw material of our manufactures, Afri-
can and English interests will be more closely linked than hereto-
fore; both countries will be eventually benefited, and the cause of
freedom throughout the world will be promoted.' To these patriotic
and national advantages indicated by Dr. Livingstone, his work pos-
sesses the interest springing from a personal narrative of difficulties
overcome and dangers encountered, pictures of new and strange
modes of life, with descriptions of natural objects and magnificent
scenery. The volume fills 687 pages, and is illustrated with maps by
Arrowsmith, and a number of lithographs. The style is simple and
clear. Dr. Livingstone was admirably fitted for his mission. He
was early inured to hardship. He was born of poor but honest and
pious parents at Blantyre in 1817. At ten years of age he was sent
into the factory to work as a piecer,' and from his wages he put him-
self to college, and studied medicine. His ambition was to be-
come a missionary to China, but the opium war was unfavor-
able, and he proceeded, under the auspices of the London Mis-
sionary Soicety, to Africa. The most remote station from the
Cape then occupied by our missionaries was Kuruman or Lata-
koo. Thither our author repaired, and excluding himself for six
months from all European society, he gained a knowledge of the lan-
guage of the Bechuanas, their habits, laws, &c., which proved of in-
calculable advantage to him. The Bechuana people were ruled over
by a chief named Sechele, who was converted to Christianity. The
people are social and kindly, and Dr. Livingstone and his wife set
about instructing them, using only mild persuasion. Their teaching
did good in preventing wars and calling the better feelings into play,
but polygamy was firmly established amongst them: they considered
it highly cruel to turn off their wives. They excused themselves by
thinking they were an inferior race. In a strain of natural pathos
they used to say, 'God made black men first, and did not love us as
he did the white men. He made you beautiful, and gave you cloth-
ing, and guns, and gunpowder, and horses, and wagons, and many
other things about which we know nothing. But towards us he had
no heart. He gave us nothing except the assegai (with which they
kill game), and cattle, and rain-making, and he did not give us hearts
like yours. The rain-making is a sort of charm-an incantation by
which the rain-doctors, in seasons of drought, imagine they can pro-
↑
·
p
"
562
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA ÖF
duce moisture. The station ultimately chosen by Dr. Livingstone as
the centre of operations was about three hundred miles north of
Kuruman. In one of his expeditions he was accompanied by two
English travellers, Major Vardon, and Mr. Oswell;* and the party
discovered the great lake Ngami, about seventy miles in circumfer
ence, till then unknown except to the natives. About one hundred
and thirty miles northeast from this point the travellers came upon
the river Zambesi, a noble stream in the centre of the continent. In
June, 1852, he commenced another expedition, the greatest he had yet
attempted, which lasted four years. In six months he reached the
capital of the Makololo territory, Linyanti, which is twelve hundred
miles above the latitude of Cape Town. The people were desirous of
obtaining a direct trade with the sea-coast, and with an escort of
twenty-seven men he set out to discover the route thither.
The tray-
eller's outfit was small enough:
An African Explorer's Outfit.
We carried one small tin canister, about fifteen inches square, filled with spare
shirting, trousers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilised life, and others
in a bag, which were expected to wear out on the way; another of the same size
for medicines; and a third for books, my stock being a Nautical Almanac, Thom-
son's Logarithm Tables, and a Bible; a fourth box contained a magic lautern,
which we found of much use. The sextant and artificial horizon, thermometer and
compasses, were carried apart. My ammunition was distributed in portions through
the whole luggage, so that, if an accident should befall one part, we could still
have others to fall back upon. Our chief hopes for food were upon that, but in
case of failure I took about twenty pounds of beads, worth forty shillings, which
still remained of the stock I brought from Cape Town; a small gipsy tent, just
sufficient to sleep in; a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, and a horse-rug as a bed.
As I had always found that the art of successful travel consisted in taking as few
'impediments as possible, and not forgetting to carry my wits about me, the out-
fit was rather spare, and intended to be still more so when we should come to leave
the canoes. Some would consider it injudicious to adopt this plan, but I had a
secret conviction that if I did not succeed it would not be for lack of the 'knick-
knacks' advertised as indispensable for travellers, but from want of pluck,' or be、
cause a large array of baggage excited the cupidity of the tribes through whose
country we wished to pass.
1
They ascended the rivers Chobe and Leeambye, and stopped at
the town of Shesheke, where Dr. Livingstone preached to audiences
of five and six hundred. After reaching a point eight hundred
miles north of Linyanti, he turned to the west, and finally reached
Loanda, on the shores of the Atlantic. The incidents of this long
journey are, of course, varied. The fertility of the country-the
Barotze district, and the valley of the Quango, with grass reaching
two feet above the traveller's head, the forests. &c., are described at
length. There appeared to be no want of food, although the
amount of cultivated land is as nothing with what might be brought
under the plough. In this central region the people are not all
>
*Another English traveller, MR. ROUALEYN GORDON CUMMING (1820-1866) pene-
trated into this region, following a wild sporting career, and published' Five Years
of a Hunter's Life in the Far Interior of South Africa,' two volumes, 1850.
LIVINGSTONE.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
363
quite black, some inclining to bronze-the dialects spoken glide into
one another. Dr. Livingstone confirms the statements by Mr.
Roualeyn Gordon Cumming with respect to the vast amount of game
and the exciting hunting scenes in that African territory. The fol-
lowing is a wholesale mode of destroying game practised by the
Bechuanas:
Hunting on a Great Scale.
Very great numbers of the large game-buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, tsessébes,
kamas or hartebeests, kokongs, or gnus, pallas, rhinoceroses, &c.-congregated at
some fountains near Kolobeng, and the trap called hopo was constructed in the lands
adjacent for their destruction. The hopo consists of two hedges in the form of the
letter V, which are very high and thick near the angle. Instead of the hedges being
joined there. they are made to form a lane of about fifty yards in length, at the ex-
tremity of which a pit is formed, six or eight feet deep, and about twelve or fifteen
in breadth and length. Trunks of trees are laid across the margins of the pit, and
more especially over that nearest the lane where the animals are expected to leap in,
and over that farthest from the lane where it is supposed they will attempt to escape
after they are in. The trees form an overlapping border, and render escape almost
impossible. The whole is carefully decked with short green rushes, making the pit
like a concealed pitfall. As the hedges are frequently about a mile long and about as
much apart at their extremities, a tribe making a circle three or four miles round the
country adjacent to the opening, and gradually closing up, are almost sure to inclose
a large body of game. Driving it up with shouts to the narrow part of the hopo,
men secreted there throw their javelins into the affrighted herds, and on the animals
rush to the opening presented at the converging hedges, and into the pit that is fuil
of a living mass. Some escape by running over the others, as a Smithfield market
dog does over the sheep's backs. It is a frightful scene. The men, wild with excite-
ment, spear the lovely animals with mad delight: others of the poor creatures, borne
down by the weight of their dead and dying companious, every now and then make
the whole mass heave in their smothering agonies.
Dr. Livingstone left Loanda on 20th September 1854, and returned
to Linyanti, which was reached in the autumn of 1855. Excited by
the account of what wonders they had seen, as told by the men who
accompanied Dr. Livingstone to the shores of the Atlantic, the Ma-
kololo people flocked to his standard in great numbers when he an-
nounced an expedition to the east coast of Africa. With a party of
one hundred and fourteen picked men of the tribe, he started for the
Portuguese colony of Killimane, on the east coast, in November
1855. The chief supplied oxen, and there was always abundance of
game. He found that British manufactures penetrate into all re-
gions.
English Manufactures in the Interior of South Africa.
When crossing at the confluence of the Leeba and Makondo, one of my men
picked up a bit of a steel watch-chain of English manufacture, and we were in-
formed that this was the spot where the Mambari cross in coming to Masiko. Their
visits explain why Sekelenke kept his tusks so carefully. These Mambari are very
enterprising merchants; when they mean to trade with a town, they deliberately be-
gin the affair by building huts, as if they knew that little business could be trans-
acted without a liberal allowance of time for palaver. They bring Manchester goods
into the heart of Africa: these cotton prints look so wonderful that the Makololo
could not believe them to be the work of mortal hands. On questioning the Mam-
364
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
bari, they were answered that English manufactures came out of the sea, and beads
were gathered on its shore. To Africans our cotton-mills are fairy dreams.
• How
can the irons spin, weave, and print so beautifully?' Our country is like what
Taprobane was to our ancestors-a strange realm of light, whence came the dia-
mond, muslin, and peacocks. An attempt at explanation of our manufactures usu-
ally elicits the expression, Truly, ye are gods!
เ
After a journey of six months the party reached Killimane, where
Dr. Livingstone remained till July, and then sailed for England.
One of the Makololo people would not leave him; 'Let me die at
your feet,' he said; but the various objects on board the ship, and
the excitement of the voyage, proved too much for the reason of the
poor savage; he leaped overboard, and was drowned. The great ob-
ject of Dr. Livingstone was to turn the interior of this fertile country
and the river Zambesi, which he discovered, into a scene of British
commerce. The Portuguese are near the main entrance to the new
central re-ion, but they evince a liberal and enlightened spirit, and
are likely to invite mercantile enterprise up the Zambesi, by offering
facilities to those who may push commerce into the regions lying far
beyond their territory. The white men' are welcomed by the na-
tives, who are anxious to engage in commerce. Their country is well
adapted for cotton, and there are hundreds of miles of fertile land
unoccupied. The region near the coast is unhealthy, and the first ob-
ject must be to secure means of ready transit to the high lands in the
borders of the central basin, which are comparatively healthy. The
river Zambesi has not been surveyed, but during four or five months
there is abundance of water for a large vessel. There are three hun-
dred miles of navigable river, then a rapid intervenes, after which
there is another reach of three hundred miles.
I
A second expedition was fitted out, and early in 1858 Dr. Living-
stone, accompanied by his brother, Charles Livingstone, and a party
of scientific friends, set out on his important mission. In May they
had reached the mouth of the Zambesi; in the January following they
explored the River and valley of Shiré, where a white man had never
before been seen, and they proceeded up the Shiré about two hun-
dred miles, till stopped by the Murchison Falls. The valley of the
Shire they found fertile and cultivated. In September 1860 the
great Lake Nyassa was discovered. This he reached by an overland
march of twenty days from the Shiré. He subsequently revisited it,
and judged the lake to be about two hundred miles long and fifty
broad. The country
The country was studded with villages, and formed the
centre of a district which supplies the markets of the coast with
slaves. The natives of the Shire and Nyassa valleys possess excel-
lent iron, and are manufacturers as well as agriculturists. In Febru-
ary 1864 Livingstone left Africa for England, and he recorded his ex-
plorations in a Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its
Tributaries, and of the Discovery of the lakes Shirwa and Nyassa.'
In 1866 a third expedition was undertaken. In March of that.
STANLEY.]
365
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
year Livingstone left Zanzibar, and struck up the country towards
Lake Nyassa. There he remained during.the autumn. In March
1867 a painful rumor reached England that Livingstone had been
assassinated. The story was disbelieved by Sir Roderick Murchison
and others, and it turned out, as conjectured by Sir Roderick, to be
an invention of some Johanna men, who had deserted when near Lake
Nyassa, and brought back with them to the coast the fictitious story of
the assassination. After many hardships and dangers, the intrepid
traveller reached Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, in March 1869, and hav-
ing written from thence to England, a small expedition was fitted
out under the command of an old friend of Livingstone's, Mr. E. D.
Young, which sailed from Plymouth in June, and in September
reached Lake Nyassa. There the falsehood of the report of the tra-
veller's death was clearly ascertained, and Mr. Young and his com-
panions returned home. It appears that in June 1869 Livingstone
had quitted Ujiji, in company with some Arab traders, to explore the
far Manyema country on the west side of Tanganyika. It was in
this journey,' says a summary in the Times, that he (Livingstone)
reached his farthest point north, and traced the watershed as far as
the unknown lake. He was obliged to halt at last because his men
refused to go any further, and in bitter disappointment he turned his
back upon the great problem he was on the eve of solving, and set
out upon the long and weary return journey of between four and
tive hundred miles to Ujiji, thence intending to make another start
with new men and fresh supplies. I thought," wrote Livingstone.
to the editor of the New York Herald, that I was dying on my
feet. It is not too much to say that almost every step of the weary,
sultry way was in pain, and I reached Ujiji a mere ruckle of bones.
This was in October 1870. The poor traveller was more dead than
alive, and had to brook the bitter disappointment of finding the
goods and men of Dr. Kirk's 1869 expedition, to which he was
trusting implicitly, gone to the four winds. In the first place, this
expedition had been delayed months and months by the cholera,
which had killed many of its men, and when finally such of the
goods as had not been plundered arrived at Ujiji, they were sold off
and the proceeds dissipated by the drunken half-caste Moslem tail
to whom they had been intrusted. The traveller had nothing
left but "a few barter cloths and beads," beggary was staring him in
the face, when, three weeks after his arrival at Ujiji, the New York
Herald expedition appeared on the scene, and all was well.’
AA
**
or
MR. HENRY M. STANLEY, the young and gallant correspondent of
the New York Herald, had been commissioned by the proprietor of
that journal, Mr. Bennett, to go and find Livingstone, offering carte
blanche in the way of expenses. With dauntless courage and dexter-
ous management he fought his way to Ujiji, and thus describes the
meeting
46
44
1)
366
CYCLOPEDIA OF
[TO 1876.
T
*
The Meeting with Livingstone at Ujiji
Something like an hour before noon we have gained the thick matete brake, which
grows on both banks of the river; we wade through the clear stream, arrive on the
other side, emerge out of the brake, and the gardens of Wajiji are around us—a perfect
marvel of vegetable wealth. Details escape my hasty and partial observation. I am
almost overpowered with my own emotions. I notice the graceful palins, neat plots,
green with vegetable plants, and small villages surrounded with frail fences of the
matete cane.
We push on rapidly, lest the news of our coming might reach the people of Bun-
der Ujiji before we come in sight, and are ready for them. We halt at a little brook,
then ascend the long slope of a naked ridge, the very last of the myriads we have
crossed. This alone prevents us from seeing the lake (Tanganyika) in all its vast-
ness. We arrive at the summit, travel across and arrive at its western rim, and-
pause reader-the port of Ujiji is below us, embowered in the palms-only five hun-
dred yards from us. At this grand moment we do not think of the hundreds of miles
we have marched, of the hundreds of hills that we have ascended and descended, of
the many forests we have traversed, of the jungles and thickets that annoyed us, of
the fervid salt plains that blistered our feet, of the hot suns that scorched us, nor
the dangers aud difficulties now happily surmounted..
4
Unfurl the flags and load your guns!' Ay wallah, ay wallah bana!' respond
the men eagerly.Oue, two, three-fire!' A volley from nearly fifty guns roars
like a salute from a battery of artillery. Now, Kirangozi (guide), hold the white
man's flag up high, and let the Zanzibar flag bring up the rear. And you must keep
close together, and keep firing until we halt in the market-place, or before the white
man's house. You have said to me often that you could sinell the fish of the Tan-
gauyika-I can smell the fish of the Tanganyika now. There are fish, and beer, and
a long rest waiting for you. MARCII!'
Before we had gone a hundred yards, our repeated volleys had the effect desired.
We had awakened Ujiji to the knowledge that a caravan was coming, and the people
were rushing up in hundreds to meet us. The mere sight of the flags informed
every one immediately that we were a caravan, but the American flag borne aloft by
gigantic Asmani (one of the porters or carriers), whose face was one vast smile on
this day, rather staggered them at first. However, many of the people who now ap-
proached us remembered the flag. They had seen it float above the American coù-
sulate. and from the mast-head of many a ship in the harbour of Zanzibar, and they
were soon heard welcoming the beautiful flag with cries of Biudera, Kisungu!'—
a white man's flag. 'Bindera Merikani!'-the American flag.
เ
Then we were surrounded by them by Wajiji, Wanyamwezi, Wangwana,
Warundi, Waguhha, Wamanyema, and Arabs, and were almost deafened with the
shouts of Yambo, yambo, bana! Yambo bana! Yambo bana! To all and cach
of my men the welcome was given. We were now about three hundred yards from
the village of Ujiji, and the crowds are dense about me. Suddenly I hear a voice on
my right say, 'Good morning, sir!' Started at hearing this greeting in the midst of
such a crowd of black people, I turn sharply around in search of the man, and see
him at my side, with the blackest of faces, but animated and joyous-a man dressed
in a long white shirt, with a turban of American shecting around his woolly head,
and I ask, Who the mischief are you?' 'I am Susi, the servant of Dr. Living-
stoue.' said he, smiling, and shewing a gleaming row of teeth. 'What! Is Dr.
Livingstone here! Yes, sir.' In this village?' Yes, sir.' 'Are you sure?'
Sure, sure, sir. Why, I leave him just now.' 'Good morning sir,' said another
voice. Hallo,' said I, 'is this another one?' 'Yes, sir. Well, what is your
name ?' My name is Chumah, sir.' And is the doctor well ?' 'Not very well,
sir.'
Where has he been so long?' 'In Manyuema.' 'Now, you Susi, run and
tell the doctor I am coming.' 'Yes, sir,' and off he darted like a madman.
6
་
4
C
¿
Soon Susi came running back, and asked me my name; he had told the doctor
I was coming, but the doctor was too surprised to believe him, and when the
doctor asked him my name, Susi was rather staggered.
But, during Susi's absence, the news had been conveyed to the doctor that it
"
* Uis a prefix to denote the country: thus Ujiji signifies the country of Jiji.
}
1
STANLEY.]
367
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
was surely a white man that was coming, whose guns were firing and whose flag
could be seen: and the great Arab magnates of Ujiji-Mohammed bin Sali, Sayd
bin Majid, Abid bin Suliman, Mohammed bin Gharib, and others-had gathered to-
gether before the doctor's house, and the doctor had come out from his verandah
to discuss the matter and await my arrival.
In the meantime, the head of the expedition had halted, and the Kirangozi was out
of the ranks, holding his flag aloft, and Selim (the interpreter) said to me: I see the
doctor, sir. Oh, what an old man! He has got a white beard.' And I-what would
I not have given for a bit of friendly wilderness, where, unseen. I might vent my
joy in some mad freak, such as idiotically biting my hand. turning a somersault,
or slashing at trees, in order to allay those exciting feelings that were well nigh uncon-
trollable. My heart beats fast, but I must not let my face betray my emotions lest it
should detract from the dignity of a white man appearing under such extraordinary
circumstances.
So I did that which I thought was most dignified. I pushed back the crowds, and
passing from the rear, walked down a living avenue of people, until I came in front
of the semicircle of Arabs, in the front of which stood the white man with the gray
beard. As I advanced slowly towards him I noticed he was pale. looked wearied,
wore a bluish cap with a faded gold band round it, bad on a red-sleeved waistcoat,
and a pair of gray tweed trousers. I would have run to him, only I was a coward in
the presence of such a mob-would have embraced him, only, he being an English-
man, I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what cowardice and false pride
suggested was the best thing-walked deliberately to him, took off my hat and said:
'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?? Yes,' said he, with a kind smile, lifting his hat slightly.
I replace my hat on my head, and he puts on his cap, and we both grasp hands, and
then I say aloud: I tuank God, doctor. I have been permitted to see you.' He an-
swered: I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.' I turn to the Arabs, take
off my hat to them in response to the saluting chorus of Yambos' I receive, and
the doctor introduces them to me by name. Then, oblivious of the crowds, oblivi-
ous of the men who shared with me my dangers, we-Livingstone and I-turn our
faces towards his tembe (or hut). He points to the verandah, or rather mud plat-
form under the broad overhanging eaves; he points to his own particular seat,
which I see his age and experience in Africa has suggested-namely, a straw mat,
with a goatskin over it, and another skin nailed against the wall to protect his back
from contact with the cold mud. I protest against taking this seat, which so much
more befits him than me, but the doctor will not yield-I must take it.
C
We are seated, the doctor and I, with our backs to the wall. The Arabs take
seats on our left. More than a thousand natives are in our front, filling the whole
square densely, indulging their curiosity, and discussing the fact of two white men
meeting at Ujiji-one just come from Manyuema, in the west; the other from
Unyanyembe, in the east.
Mr. Stanley left Ujiji in March 1871, and next year Livingstone,
with an expedition numbering about eighty souls, with stores suffi-
cient to last him three years, left Unyanyembe for Lunda in a south-
south-westerly direction, this new expedition being the fountains of
Herodotus.' He marched through a beautiful country, abounding
with game along the eastern borders of the lake Tanganyika. He
was in weak health. When the Bangweolo Lake was approached,
the character of the country changed, and Livingstone descended
into a chaos of swamps intersected by innumerable streams.
party were rarely upon dry land, and Livingstone was afflicted with
chronic dysentery. On the 21st of April 1863, he writes in his Jour-
nal: Knocked up quite, and remain-recover-sent to buy milch
goats. We are on the banks of the Molilamo.' These were the last
words written by the indefatigable traveller; he died on the 1st of
May. He was found dead by his negro attendants, having died
The
(
368
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
kneeling by his bed apparently in prayer. Some five years earlier he
had written in his journal: This is the sort of grave I should prefer:
to lie in the still, still forest, and no hand ever disturb my bones.
The graves at home always seemed to me to be miserable, especially
those in the cold damp clay, and without elbow room; but I have
nothing to do but wait till He who is over all decides where I have
to lay me down and die. Poor Mary (his wife) lies on Sheepanga
brae.'
Livingstone, however, was not destined to lie in the forest. His
body was rudely embalmed by his faithful followers, and carried by
them hundreds of miles to Zanzibar, whence it was conveyed to
England, and interred in Westminster Abbey, 18th April, 1874. His
'Last Journals,' including his wanderings and discoveries in Eastern
Africa, from 1865 to within a few days of his death, were published in
1865, edited by the Rev. Horace Waller. Livingstone,' as Sir Samuel
Baker has said, gave the first grand impulse to African exploration;
it was he who first directed public attention to the miseries and hor-
rors of the East African slave-trade, which he has persistently ex-
posed throughout his life. Had he lived for another ten years, he
would have witnessed some fruits as the result of his example.'
6
+
Mr. Henry M. Stanley is again in Africa on another exploring ex-
pedition, the cost of which is to be defrayed partly by his American.
friend and patron, Mr. Bennett of the New York Herald, and partly
by the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph London journal.
The gallant Livingstone has found a worthy English successor in
African exploration in LIEUTENANT VERNEY LOVETT CAMERON,
whose labours possess great value alike in the interests of science
and of civilisation. His work, Across Africa,' is announced for
publication, but will not be ready until after this volume has gone to
press. Mr. Cameron traversed on foot about three thousand miles,
exposed for the greater part of the time to all the vicissitudes of
climate, wandering through forests, marshes, and jungles, fording
broad rivers, and coasting round large lakes, but his courage seems.
never to have given way. To determine the latitude and longitude
of certain positions, he took as many as a hundred and forty lunar
observations at a single spot, and his registered observations altogether
number no less than five thousand. He has added immensely to our
knowledge of the geography of Africa; he has ascertained the
political condition of the interior of the country; he has discovered
the leading trade routes; and he has unfortunately furnished fresh
proofs of the horrors of tho slave trade, which flourishes beyond the
reach of European authority. About six degrees south of the
equator lie two points which form a basis for exploration—namely,
Zanzibar Island on the east coast, and the mouth of the Congo
River on the west coast In this latitude the continent is about eigh-
teen hundred miles wide. Towards the east coast there is a great lake
CAMERON.J
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
369
system, which lies chiefly between three degrees north and ten degrees
south of the equator, and forms the watershed of Africa, from which
rivers flow north to the Mediterranean, east to the Indian Ocean, and
west to the Atlantic. Of this system three lakes are now well known
by name. Two, the Albert Nyanza and the Victoria Nyanza, are cut
through by the equatorial line; and some two hundred miles to the
north-west is the head of Lake Tanganyika, a sheet of water three
hundred miles in length, and only twenty in mean breadth. To the
west of Lake Tanganyika there is another system of smaller lakes
and rivers, called the Lualaba. The first quest on to be solved was
whether Tanganyika and the Lualaba had any connection with the
Nyanza and the Nile; and next, if they had not, whether they were
feeders of the Congo. Lieutenant Cameron has determined that these
southern lakes and rivers have no connection with the Nile basin.
They lie at a considerably lower level, and therefore to reach the
Nile they would require to flow up-hill. The traveller coasted Lake
Tanganyika, and found ninety-six rivers falling into it, besides tor-
rents and springs, and only one sluggish river, the Lakuga, flowing
out. The balance is maintained by evaporation.
The original intention of Lieutenant Cameron was to follow the
river-system to the sea, so as to prove the identity of the Lualaba
and Congo. This design was frustrated by the hostility of a chief,
but there is little or no doubt of the identity of the rivers. According
to the report of the natives, the Lualaba falls into a great lake, from
which in all probability the Congo emerges. Forced to quit this
track, Cameron took a more southerly course. He experienced the
hospitality of Kasenga, the great potentate of that part of Africa;
and he struggled towards the west coast through a country of extra-
ordinary fertility and mineral wealth, and possessing a remarkable
system of internal water communication. Not only are there cereals
of all sorts, but metallic treasures, gums, and other valuable products,
of which the traveller brought home specimens. The town of Ny-
angwe on the Lualaba, situated half-way between the east and west
coasts, is an important mart where the trade routes unite. There
Cameron met Arabs from the east, and traders from the west, and the
lake which he was not permitted to reach, is visited, he was told, by
merchants in large boats, who wear trousers and hats! Lieutenant
Cameron's journey has thus revealed a splendid country with which
commercial relations may be readily formed, and it is admitted that
the operations of commerce afford the only hope of putting an end to
the brutalities of the slave-trade. At present, villages are system-
atically attacked and plundered, and the men who escape are
themselves driven by necessity to prey upon their neighbours. The
traveller's indignation was specially aroused by the conduct of one
Portuguese trader, who led off a string of fifty or sixty women,
representing all that remained of five hundred people who had fled
to the jungle on the sacking of their village. These poor women
370
[TO 1876.
CYCLOPÆDIA of
were tied together by thick knotted ropes, and were unmercifully
beaten if they shewed any symptoms of fatigue. Such exposures of
the detestable traffic will surely lead to active measures for its sup-
pression.
A Geographical Conference has recently (September
1876) been held at Brussels under the auspices of King Leopold, for
the purpose of considering the best means of developing Africa and
suppressing slavery. It was attended by some of the most eminent
travellers, geographers, and philanthropists of the age, and a sub-
scriptions was commenced for constructing roads and stations from
the coast opposite Zanzibar to the west coast at the mouth of the
Congo. The accomplishment of such an enterprise would indeed
be one of the crowning glories of the nineteenth century.
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.
Since much of the earlier portion of this work was sent to press,
reprints and illustrations of many of the old poets and dramatists
have appeared, and valuable contributions have been made to our
biographical literature. A A few may be here noticed, as far as our
space will permit. Some slips of the pen (not of the press) also re-
quire to be corrected.
"
C
THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN (p. 14, vol. i).-The early English Text Society has pub-
lished (1875) The Romance aud Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune,' edited with in-
troduction and notes, by James A. H. Murray, LL.D. To assist in fixing the age of
the Border prophet (commonly called Thomas the Rhymer'), we have two docu-
ments. He was a contemporary of one who was himself at least old enough to wit-
Dess a deed in 1189. and in 1294 Thomas de Ercildoun filius et heres Thomæ Rymour de
Ercildoun, conveyed by charter. to the Trinity House of Soltra, all the lands which
he held by inheritance in the village of Ercildoun. The prima facie purport of this
charter of 1294 is, as Dr. Murray says, 'that Thomas is already dead and his son in
possession of the paternal property, which he in his turn gives away.' Nothing new bas
been discovered respecting the authorship of Sir Tristrem.' Of the Romance and
Prophecies, Dr. Murray publishes the text of five existing manuscripts, the earliest
of which appears to be of date 1430-1440. The poem, in its present form. bears evi-
dence of being later than 1401, the date of the invasion of Scotland by Henry IV., or
at least 1388. the date of the battle of Otterbourne, the last of the historical events
'hid under obscure words' in the prophecies ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer. The
poem represents Thomas as lying on a morning in May under a tree on Huntly
banks, while all the shaws about him rung with the songs of the merle, the jay, the
mavis, and woodwale (woodlark). A lady gay-a fairy queen-came riding over the
lea, and by her magic power transported him to her own country, where he dwelt for
three years and more. He asked of her to shew bim some ferly (wonder), and she
related the series of prophecies, long regarded with awe, which foretold the wars be-
Thomas was at
tween England and Scotland till the death of Robert III. (1406).
length restored to 'middle earth :'
•
She blew her horn on her palfrey,
And left Thomas at Eldon tree;
Till Helmesdale she took the way;
Thus departed that lady and he!
↓
Dr. Murray's editorial labours give the reader a great amount of curious and valuable
information, historical and philological.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
371
L
L
CHAUCER (p. 24, vol. i).—The dates of events in Chaucer's life included in Mr.
Furnivall's Trial-Forewords,' first appeared in the Athenæum.' In our first volume,
the name of Mr. Furnivall was inadvertently curtailed of its fair proportions, being
misspelt Furnival.'
BARCLAY (p. 63, vol. i).-The late Mr. T. H. Jamieson of the Advocates' Library,
published in 1874 what may be called a superb edition of Barclay's 'Ship of Fools,'
including fac-similes of the original woodcuts, and an account of the life and writ-
ings of Barclay, drawn up from materials in the British Museum and elsewhere. A
copy of the will of Barclay is also given, extracted from the registry of the Court of
Probate. It is dated July 25, 1551, aud was proved on the 10th of June 1552. Mr.
Jamieson seems to establish the fact, that the old poet was born 'beyond the cold
river of Tweed,' as one of his contemporaries expresses it, about the year 1476, but
in what town or county is unknown. He crossed the border very early in life,
studied, there is reason to believe. at Cambridge University, travelled abroad, aud
afterwards entered the Church. His first preferment was a chaplainship in St. Mary
Ottery. Devonshire (the birthplace, it will be recollected, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge);
and from 1490 to 1511, he was warden of the college. He was some time a monk in
Ely, and after the dissolution of the monasteries he obtained in 1546 two livings-the
vicarages of Much-Badew. in Essex, and Wokey in Somersetshire-and in 1552 (a
few weeks before his death) the rectory of All Hallows, London. He died at Croy-
dou, with which he seems to have been early connected:
While I in youth in Croidon towne did dwell.
His 'Ship of Fools' was printed by Pynson in 1509. The Eclogues,' five in number,
were the first attempts of the kind in English. The first three are paraphrases or
adaptations from Eneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II., who died in 1464), and the fourth
and fifth are imitations of Jo Baptist Mentuan. Barclay's rural pictures are of the
style of Crabbe. The following description of a village Sunday we give in the
original orthography:
4
What man is faultlesse: remember the village,
Howe men vplondish on holy dayes rage.
Nought can them tame, they be a beastly sort,
In sweate and labour hauing most chiefe comfort:
On the holy day as soon as morne is past,
When all men resteth while all the day doth last,
They drinke, they banket, they reuell, and they iest,
They leape, they daunce, despising ease and rest.
If they ouce heare a bagpipe or a drone,
Anone to the elme or oke they be gone.
There vse they to daunce, to gambolde, and to rage—
Such is the custome and vse of the village.
When the ground resteth from rake, plough, and wheles,
Then moste they it trouble with burthen of their heles.
Many of the popular proverbs and expressions still in use amongst us, were com
mon in the reign of Henry VIII. Mr. Jamieson cites the following from Barclay :
Better is a frende in courte than a peny in purse.
Whan the stede is stolyn to shyt the stable dore.
It goeth through as water through a syue (sieve).
And he that alway thretenyth for to fyght
Oft at the profe is skantly worth a hen,
For greattest crakers ar not ay boldest men.
I fynde four thynges whiche by no meanes can
Be kept close, in secrete, or longe in preuetee;
The firste is the counsell of a wytles man;
The seconde is a cyte whiche byldyd is a hye
Upon a montayne; the thyrde we often se-
That to hyde his dedes a louer hath no skyll;
The fourth is strawe or fethers on a wyndy hyll.
372
CYCLOPEDIA OF
A crowe to pull.
For it is a prouerbe, and an olde sayd sawe
That in euery place lyke to lyke wyll drawe.
Better haue one birde sure within thy wall,
Or fast in a cage, than twenty score without.
Pryde sholde haue a fall.
↓
For wyse men sayth.
One myshap fortuneth neuer alone.
They robbe Saint Peter therwith to clothe Saint Powle.
For children brent still after drede the fire.
·
'The Complaynt of Scotland' (p. 144, vol. i).-A new edition of th s rare work has
been published by the Early English Text Society, edited from the originals, with iu-
troduction and glossary by James A. H. Murray, L.L D. The full title of the work
is, The Complaynt of Scotlande, with ane Exhortatione to the Thre Estaits to be Vi-
gilant in the Deffens of their Public Veil' (Weal), A. D. 1549. The object of the un-
Known author was to rouse the nation in support of the Queen Dowager, Mary of
Guise, and the French interest, in opposition to the English faction in Scotland ori-
ginated by Henry VIII., and continued by the Protector Somerset and the Protestant
Reformers. There is no contemporary notice of the 'Complaynt' or its author. The
language of the work is what Dr. Murray calls the Middle Scotch of the sixteenth
century-the same as the works of Bellenden, Gawain Douglas, and Lyndsay, but
with a larger infusion of French words. The author himself says he used domes-
tic Scottish language most intelligible for the vulgar people.' Dr. Murray concludes
that the only things certain as to the author are, that he was a thorough partisan of
the French side-that he was a churchman attached to the Roman Catholic faith-
and that he was a native of the Southern, not improbably of the Border counties.
On the subject of the Scottish language we quote a brief summary by the learned
editor:
·
•
The language of Lowland Scotland was originally identical with that of England
north of the Humber. The political and purely artificial division which was after-
wards made between the two countries, unsanctioned by any facts of language of
race, had no existence while the territory from the Humber to the Forth constituted
the North Anglian kingdom or earldom of Northumbria. The centre of this state,
and probably of the earliest Angle settlement, was at Bamborough, a few miles from
the Tweed mouth, round which the common language was spoken north of the
Tweed and Cheviots as well as south. This unity of language continued down to the
Scottish War of Independence at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and even
after that war had made a complete severance between the two countries, down to
the second half of the fifteenth century. In England, previous to this period, three
great English dialects, the Northern, Midland, and Southern, had stood on an equal
footing as literary languages, none of which could claim pre-eminence over the others
as English par excellence. But after the Wars of the Roses, the invention of print-
ing, and more compact welding of England into a national unity, the Midland dialect
--the tongue of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, of the court and culture of the
country-assumed a commanding position as the language of books. and the North-
ern and Southern English sank in consequence into the position of local patois, heard
at the fireside, the plough, the loom, but no longer used as the vehicles of general
literature. But while this was the fate of the Northern dialect in the English portion
of its domain, on Scottish ground it was destined to prolong its literary career for two
centuries more, and indeed to receive an independent culture almost justifying us in
regarding it, from the literary side, as a distinct language.'
LODGE (p. 210, vol. i).-The 'Fig for Momus' is misprinted 'Comus.'
SHAKSPEARE (p. 303, vol. i).—Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, author of an excel-
lent Life of Shakspeare,' 1848, founded chiefly on papers in the Council Chamber
of Stratford-on-Avon, and on the results of searches in the Record Oflices of Lon-
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
978
C
don and other depositaries, commenced in 1874 Illustrations of the Life of Shaks-
peare.' He confines himself to facts connected with the personal and literary history
of the poet, and does not enter on questions of style, or metre, or æsthetic criticism.
These Illustrations,' of which only one part is yet published, promise to be valuable.
We learn from them that when Shakspeare came to London some few years before
the notice of him by Greene in 1592, there were at the time of his arrival only two
theatres in the metropolis, both of them on the north of the Thames, in the parish
of Shoreditch. James Burbage, by trade a joiner, but afterwards a leading member
of the Earl of Leicester's Company of Players in 1576, obtained from one Giles
Allen a lease of houses and land on which he built his theatre. It was the earliest
fabric of the kind ever built in this country and emphatically designated The
Theatre.' It was practically in the fields. The other theatre (which was in the same
locality) was named 'The Curtain.' Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps adds: The earliest
authentic notice of Shakspeare as a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Company
which has hitherto been published, is that which occurs in the list of the actors who
performed in the comedy of 'Every Man in his Humour' in 1598; but that he was a
leading member of that company four years pieviously, and acted in two plays before
Queen Elizabeth in December 1594, appears from the following interesting memo-
randum which I had the pleasure of discovering in the accounts of the Treasurer of
the Chamber: "To William Kempe, William Shakespeare, and Richarde Burbage,
servauntes to the Lord Chamberleyne, upon the Councelles warrant dated at White-
hall xv. to Marcij. 1594, for twoe severall comedies or enterludes shewed by them
before her Majestie in Chrismas tyme laste paste, viz., upon St. Stephens daye, and
Innocentes daye xiij li. vj s. viij d., and by waye of her Majesties rewarde, vj li. xiij
s. iiij d., in all xx ." This evidence is decisive. and its great importance in several
of the discussions respecting Shakspeare's early literary and theatrical career will
hereafter be seen.'
A
When Shakspeare acted before Queen Elizabeth in December 1594, the court was
at Greenwich. The poet was then in his thirtieth year, and had published his Ve-
nus and Adonis and Lucrece.'
•
<
The Illustrations 'contain a petition from the Burbage family to the Lord Cham-
berlain in 1635, from which we fearn some particulars concerning Shakspeare and
the theatres of his day.
¿
The father of us. Cutbert and Richard Burbage, was the first builder of play-
howses, and was himself in his younger yeeres a player. The Theater [in Shore-
ditel] bee built with many hundred poundes taken up at interest. The players that
lived in those first times had onely the profitts arising from the dores, but now the
players receave all the commings in at the dores to themselves, and halfe the gal-
leries from the housekeepers (owners, or lessees ?]. He built his house upon leased
ground, by which means the landlord and hee had a great suite in law, and, by his
death, the like troubles fell on us, his sonnes; we then bethought us of altering from
thence, and at like expence built the Globe, with more summes of money taken up
at interest, which lay heavy on us many yeeres; and to ourselves wee joyned those
deserveing men, Shakspeare, Hemings. Condall, Philips, and others, partners in the
profittes of that they call the House; but making the leases for twenty-one yeeres
hath been the destruction of ourselves and others, for they dyeing at the expiration
of three or four yeeres of their lease, the subsequent yeeres became dissolved to
strangers as by marrying with their widdowes and the like by their children.
¿
Thus, Right Honorable, as concerning the Globe, where wee ourselves are but
lessees. Now for the Blackfriars, that is our inheritance; our father purchased it at
extreame rates, and made it into a playhouse with great charge and trouble; which
after was leased out to one Evans that first sett up the boyes commonly called the
Queenes Majesties Children of the Chappell. In processe of time, the boyes growing
up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to strengthen
the king's service; and the more to strengthen the service, the boyes dayly wearing
out, it was considered that house would be fitt for ourselves, and soe purchased
the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which
were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, &c.'
The Globe Theatre, in Southwark, was erected in 1599 (not in 1594 or 1595, as all
the biographers, from Malone to Dyce, have stated), the timber and other materials
of the Shoreditch Theatre being used in its construction. It was burned down in
1613. Shakspeare was one of the partners in the 'profits of the house '-meaning,
374
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
probably, the profits of the establishment after all expenses were paid, and he would
also bave his emoluments as actor and author. With respect to the Blackfriars
Theatre, the reference in the above petition to the king's service, shews that the
Burbages became lessees after the accession of James in 1603. Shakspeare was
'placed' there, along with others, by the Burbages but whether as actor only, or as
sharer in the profits, as before, is not stated. His dramas were most likely the chief
source of his income as of his fame.
Another of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's discoveries is the existence of a third John
Shakspeare in Stratford-on-Avon, contemporaries. Besides the poet's father, the
alderman, there was a John Shakspeare, a shoemaker, well known to the biographers.
But there was also an agriculturist of the name, who in 1570 was in the occupation
of a small farm of fourteen acres, situated in the parish of Hampton Lucy, near
Stratford. His farm was called Ingon or Ington Meadow. This John Shakspeare,
the farmer, has always been considered to be the poet's father, but it appears from
the Hampton Lucy register that the tenant of Ingon Meadow was buried in Septem-
ber 1589, whereas the alderman, the poet's father, survived till 1601.
↓
'Chronology of Shakspeare's Plays' (p. 303, vol. i).-Metrical tests have lately been
applied to the text of Shakspeare, with a view to ascertain the probable dates of the
plays. In the transactions of the New Shakspeare Society' we find observations on
this subject from Mr. Spedding, Mr. Fleay, Mr. Furnivall, and others. It is also
taken up by Mr. Ward in his able History of English Dramatic Literature to the
Death of Queen Anne,' two volumes, 1875. Mr. Ward thus notices what are called
stopped lines' and 'feminine endings of lines:'
6
'A stopped line is one in which the sentence or clause of the sentence concludes
with the line but it is not always possible to determine what is to be regarded as the
clause of a sentence; whether, for example, and is to be regarded (in strict syntax of
course it is not) as beginning a new clause. The "stopping" of the sense is, in short,
often of more importance than the stopping of the sentence, with which it by no
means always coincides.
¿
The number of feminine endings of lines, or of lines ending with a redundant
syllable: the application of this test cannot be regarded as establishing more than
general conclusions. While it is certain that Shakspeare employed the feminine
endings sparingly in many of his plays which on other grounds may be regarded as
early, it is certain that in those plays which on other grounds may be regarded as
belonging to a late period of his dramatic productivity he employed these endings
largely.'
Mr. Ward then takes up the question as to the authorship of 'Henry VIII.,' the
style of which in many parts resembles that of Fletcher, as had been pointed out
thirty years ago to Mr. Spedding by Mr. Alfred Tennyson. The resemblance con-
sists chiefly in the abundance of feminine endings, and in certain characteristic tricks
of Fletcher's style, which are of frequent occurrence in Henry VIII.' This theory,
if correct, would assign to Fletcher some of the finest passages in the play-as Wol-
sey's affecting soliloquy and Cranmer's prophecy. Mr. Ward regards these tests as
only extreme developments of tendencies which indisputably became stronger in
Shakspeare's versification with the progress of time, and as Henry VIII.' was one
of the latest, if not the very latest of Shakspeare's dramatic works, they would in
that play reach their highest point.
เ
.
Dodsley's Select Collection of Old English Plays' was originally published in
1744; a second edition, corrected, and possessing explanatory notes by ISAAC REED,
was issued in 1780. In 1814 MR. CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE edited a continuation
of Dodsley, or at least a collection of old plays, in six volumes. A third edition of
Dodsley, with additional notes and corrections by Reed, by OCTAVIUS GILCHRIST
and JOHN PAYNE Collier, appeared in 1826. And a fourth edition. enlarged from
twelve to fifteen volumes, has been published (1876) by WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT.
Besides this vastly improved edition of Dodsley, Mr. Hazlitt bas edited the works of
Gascoigne, Carew, Browne, Suckling, Lovelace, Herrick, &c. He has also given the
public new editions of Brande's 'Popular Antiquities' and Warton's 'History of
Poetry. Mr. Hazlitt is a grandson of the critic and essayist (ante); he was born in
1834, and called to the bar in 1861.
Mr. John Payne Collier, referred to above, was early in the field as an editor of
Elizabethan poets and dramatists. He was born in London, 1789. In 1820 he pub-
lished The Political Decameron,' and in 1831, his 'History of Dramatic Poetry'-
،
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
375
both works of merit which gratified the lovers of our old literature, and tended con-
siderably to increase the number of such students.
Another meritorious labourer in the same field, is the REV. ALEXANDER GrosarT
of St. George's, Blackburu, Lancashire. Mr. Grosart has edited the poems of Giles
Fletcher, Crashaw, Lord Brooke, Southwell, Vaughan, Marvell, &c.; and is now en-
gaged on the works in verse and prose of Spenser and Daniel. He has also edited
editions of the Scottish poets Michae! Bruce, Ferguson, and Alexander Wilson, and
the prose works of Wordsworth; the latter in three volumes, undertaken by 'request
and appointment of the family.'
SELDEN (p. 269, vol. ii.)—The birthplace of the learned John Selden was Salving-
ton, near West Tarring in Sussex.
•
€
<
SWIFT (p. 158, vol. iii.)- His grandfather was vicar of Goodrich in Hereford-
shire. Three of the vicar's sous settled in Ireland.' Swift in his autobiography
says four, but the exact number seems to have been five. The eldest. Godwin, was
the uncle to whom the dean owed his education. The autobiography has a remark-
able passage concerning the infancy of Swift: When he was a year old, an event
happened to him that seems very unusual; for his nurse, who was a woman of
Whitehaven, being under an absolute necessity of seeing one of her relations, who
was then extremely sick, and from whom she expected a legacy, and being at the
same time extremely fond of the infant, she stole him on shipboard unknown
to his mother and uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he con-
tinued for almost three years. For, when the matter was discovered, his mother
sent orders by all means not to hazard a second voyage, till he could be better able to
bear it. The nurse was so careful of him, that before he returned he had learned to
spell; and by the time that he was three years old he could read any chapter in the
Bible.' With the single exception, perhaps, of Lord Macaulay, we have no other
instance of such infantile precocity. It appears from Forster's 'Life of Swift' that
the dean had first written two years,' then altered it to almost three,' and finally
struck out almost.' Hawkesworth altered the word to five,' and was copied by
Scott. P. 159.-The statement that Sir William Temple left Stella a sum of £1000 is
incorrect. In Temple's will the legacy is thus given: I leave a lease of some lands
I have in Monistown, in the county of Wicklow in Ireland. to Esther Johnson, ser-
vant to my sister Giffard' (Lady Giffard). Mr. Forster has shewn that the account
which Swift has given in his autobiography of his college career is too unfavourable.
The dean says he was stopped of his degree for dullness and insufficiency; aud at
last hardly admitted in a manner little to his credit, which is called in that college
speciali gratia.' Mr. Forster obtained part of a college roll indicating Swift's plače
at the quarterly examination in Eastern term 1685, and of the twenty-one names
therein enumerated noue of them stand really higher in the examination than
Jonathan Swift. He was careless in attending the college chapel; in the classes he
was ill in philosophy, good in Greek and Latin, and negligent in theology.' Mr.
Forster says: The specialis gratia took its origin from the necessity of providing,
that what was substantially merited should not be refused because of a failure in
some requirement of the statutes; upon that abuses crept in; but enough has been
said to shew that Swift's case could not have been one of those in which it was used
to give semblance of worth to the unworthy.
¿
•
เ
•
4
<
เ
MASON (p. 154, vol. iv).—It should have been mentioned that the last four lines of
the Epitaph on Mrs Mason in the Cathedral of Bristol' were written by GRAY.
They are immeasurably superior to all the others, and, indeed, are among the finest of
the kind in the language:
Tell them though 'tis an awful thing to die-
'Twas e'en to thee-yet the dread path once trod,
Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,
And bids the pure in heart behold their God.
SHELLEY (p. 271, vol. v).—Shelley's first wife, Harriet Westbrook, 'committed
suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine River in December 1816, and Shelley
married Miss Godwin a few weeks afterwards (December 30). In justice to the poet,
we copy a statement on this distressing subject from Mr. C. Kegan Paul's 'Life of
376
CYCLOPEDIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
"
Godwin,' 1876: Whatever view may be taken of the breach between husband and
wife, it is absolutely certain that Harriet's suicide was not directly caused by her
husband's treatment. However his desertion of her contributed, or did not con-
tribute, to the life she afterwards led, the immediate cause of her death was that her
father's door was shut against her, though he had at first sheltered her and her chil-
dren. This was done by order of her sister, who would not allow Harriet access to
the bedside of her dying father.'
The Life of Godwin,' referred to above, is a work of great interest and impor-
tance. Godwin never willingly destroyed a written line, and his biographer found
a vast quantity of letters and manuscripts, some of which had never been opened
from the time they were laid aside by Godwin's own hand many years before his
death in 1836. All were handed over to Mr. Kegan Paul by Sir Percy Shelley, the
poet's son, and the correspondence includes letters from Charles Lamb, Coleridge,
Shelley, Wordsworth, Scctt, Mackintosh, Lady Caroline Lamb, Mrs. Inchbald, and
others, besides the letters which passed between Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
during their brief married life. Perhaps nothing in literary history or biography was
ever so painful, and in some aspects revolting, as this Godwin- Wollstonecraft-Shel-
ley story.
·
MRS. INCHBALD (p. 119, vol. vi). Of this remarkable woman many particu-
lars are related in the Life of Godwin,' by Mr. C. Kegan Paul. Mrs. Shelley (God-
win's daughter) says of her: 'Living in mean lodgings, dressed with an economy
allied to penury, without connections, and alone, her beauty, her talents, and the
charm of her manners gave her entrance into a delightful circle of society. Apt to fall
in love, and desirous to marry, she continued single, because the men who loved and
admired her were too worldly to take an actress and a poor author, however lovely
and charming, for a wife. Her life was thus spent in an interchange of hardship and
amusement, privati n and luxury. Her character partook of the same contrast:
fond of pleasure, she was prudent in her conduct; penurious in her personal expendi-
ture, she was generous to others. Vain of her beauty, we are told that the gown she
wore was not worth a shilling, it was so coarse and shabby. Very susceptible to the
softer feelings, she could yet guard herself against passion; and though she might
have been called a flirt, her character was unimpeached. I have heard that a rival beauty
of her day pettishly complained that when Mrs. Inchbald came into a room, and sat
in a chair in the middle of it, as was her wont, every man gathered round it, and it
was in vain for any other woman to attempt to gain attention. Godwin could not
fail to admire her; she became and continued to be a favourite. Her talents, her
beauty. her manners were all delightful to him. He used to describe her as a piquante
mixture between a lady and a milkmaid, and added that Sheridan declared she was
the only authoress whose society pleased him.'
END OF VOLUME VIII
*
GENERAL INDEX.
PAGE.
A BECKETT, GILBERT dramatist, vii 198
ABERCROMBIE, DR. JOIN, psycholo-
gist, vi...
324
208
Absalom and Achitophel, by Dry-
den; extracts, ii.
Absentee, by Maria Edgeworth, vi... 150
Abyssinian Expedition, History of,
by C. R. Markham, viii..
Acta Diurna, specimen, ii.
Actor, the, by Lloyd; extracts, iv.... 108
Ad Amicos, by Richard West, iv....
Adam Bede, by George Eliot; ex-
tracts, vii.
43
65
193
44
175
Adam Blair, by J. G. Lockhart, vi... 204
Adamnau's Life of St. Columba, ed-
ited by Dr. W. Reeves, viii..
Adams and Jefferson, by Daniel
Webster, vii...
70
ADAMS, JOIN COUCH, astronomer,
viii.
N
··
ADDISON, JOSEPH, as poet, iii. 137; as
essayist, iii.
263
280
Addison, Life of, by Lucy Aikin, iii. 141
Address to the Mummy, parody by
Horace Smith, v.
337
Adventure and Beagle, Narrative of
the Voyage of the, viii..
Adventurer, the, iv..
Adventures of a Guinea, iv.
Adversaria, by Porson, vi.
280
337
96
Ae Fond Kiss, by Robert Burns, v... 102
Ella, tragedy by Chatterton. iv.
Eneid, translation by Caxton. i. 113;
by Rev. C. Pitt, iv. 192; into Scotch,
by Gavin Douglas, i.
92
|
122
Eschylus, edited by T. Stanley, ii……. 136
Eschylus, translation by Blackie, vii 175
Æsop's Fables, translated by Sir Ro-
ger L'Estrange, iii………
Afghanistan, History of the War in,
by J. W. Kaye, viii. 31; by C.
Nash, viii..
31
Africa, Across, by Cameron, viii. 368
African Discovery and Adventure,
370
and the Source of the Nile, viiì………. 360
African Sketches, by Pringle; ex-
tract, v..
Agres, by Mrs. Oliphant; extract,
vii...
Agreeable Surprise, by O'Keefe, vi..
Aids to Faith, edited by Archbishop
Thomsou. viii..
321
8i
372
•
AIKIN, LUCY, biographer, viii.
AINSWORTH, W. HARRISON, novel-
ist, vii……
་
336
236
149
22
231
!
PAGE.
AIRD, THOMAS, poet; extracts, vii.. 63
AIRY, SIR G. BIDDELL, astronomer,
viii...
262
Aitkin's Biograpical Dictionary, vi.. 290
AKENSIDE, MARK, poet, iv…...
39
75
Alastor, by Shelley, passage from, v. 283
Albania, edited by J. Leyden, iv.
Albert Nyanza. Lake, discovery of,
by Sir S. W. Baker, viii...
Albigenses, the, by Rev. C. R. Ma-
turin; extract, vi…………
-359
173
178
Albion's Eugland, by Warner, i..
Album Verses, by Lamb, specimens
of, v.
192
Alchemist, the, by Ben Jonson, i.... 129
ALCUIN, i...
3
ALDRICH, DR. HENRY, theologian,
iii……….
4
15
Alexander and Campaspe, by Lyly, i. 266
Alexander, King, Romance of, i..
ALEXANDER, SIR JAMES, African
traveller, viii..
•
320
•
Alexander the Great, by N. Lee, ii... 263 ` .
Alexander's Feast, by Dryden, ii, 215;
extract, ii.……….
215
ALFORD, DR. HENRY, theologian;
extracts, viii.
Alfred, a Mask, by David Mallet, iv..
ALFRED THE GREAT, specimens of
his language, i..
••
ALFRIC (Anglo-Saxon writer), i……….
Alhambra, by Washington Irving, vi. 360
ALISON, REV. ARCHIBALD, as theo-
logian, vi. 308; as essayist, vi. 347;
Essays on Taste; extract, vi..
ALISON, SIR ARCHIBALD, historian
extracts, vii..
347
343
···
351
...
All Fools, by George Chapman, i..
All for Love, play by Dryden, ii.. 243
All the Year Round, by Dickens, vii. 252
ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM, poet, vii.... 111
Alliterative Poetry of the Anglo-
Saxons, i....
Amantium Iræ, by Richard Edwards,
i.....
··
Ambition, Misdirected, by A. Smith,
iv...
6
Alma, by Matthew Pryor; extract, iii 157
Alonzo the Brave, by M. G. Lewis, v 234
Altou Locke, by Charles Kingsley, vii 266
Amadis de Gaul, translated by Wil-
liam Stewart Rose. v.
387
136
36
Amelia, by Fielding, iv..
America, History of, by Robertson,,
extract, iv..
(377)
7
7
62
345
257
302
1
}
378
ན་
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
PAGE.
America. Southern States, History of,
by E. King, vii………
America. Things as they are in, by
Dr. William Chambers, viii..
American Notes by Dickens; ex-
tracts, vii....
American Ornithology, by A. Wilson;
extract, v...
American Revolution, History of, by
Bancroft, vii…….
AMORY, THOMAS, Memoirs; extract,
ív
369
388
15
Anacreon, translated by Fawkes, iv.
Anacreontics, by Abraham Cowley, ii 129
Anastasius, by T. Hope; extract, vi. 200
Anatomy of Character, by R. B.
Sheridan, vi.....
41
ANCRUM, EARL OF, poct.
ANDREWS, LANCELOT, BISHOP; ex-
tract. ii..
=
Anatomy of Melancholy, by Burton;
extracts, ii..
39
Ancients Castles, by Edward King, iv 401
Ancient Mariner, the, by Coleridge, v 153
Ancren Riwle, i…….
12
2.9
Angels' Whisper, the, by Lover, vii..
Anglo-Norman, or Semi-Saxon Writ-
ers, i
ARGUTINOT, DR. JOHN, iii…….
375 | Arcades, by Milton. ii…………
Arcadia, by Sir P. Sidney, i.
338
248
406
Anster Fair. by Teunant; extracts, vi
ANSTEY, CHRISTOPHER, poet, iv.....
Anti-Jacobin Newspaper, the. v.....
Anti-Jacobin Poetry, specimens of, v
Antinomiaus, the doctrines of, com-
3.45
251
9
3
363
29
1-8
41
47
354
405
363
13
272
bated by Cudworth, ii....
Antiquary, the, by Sir Walter Scott,
passages from, vi….
.186--189
Antiquities of Great Britain, by W.
Stukeley, iv..
Antiquities, Popular (Brand's), edited
by Sir Henry Ellis, vi……….
..
388
|
Antoinette, Marie, from Burke, iv... 378
Antonio and Mellida, by Marston;
extracts, i..
i....
Apology, Barclay's, iii.
Apology for his Life, by Colley Cib-
ber, iii..
•
Arabia, by W. G. Palgrave; cxtracts,
viii...
348
Arabic-English Lexicon, by Lane, viii 235
Arago's Astronomy, translated by
Robert Grant and Admiral Smyth,
yiií...
|
252
195
- 18
··
Anglo-Saxon Writers, i..
Anglo-Saxous, History of the, by
Sharon Turner, vi……….
Annals of the Parish, by John Galt,
passage from, vi…………
Annual Register, Dodsley's, iv.
Annuity, the, by George Outram, vii 179 | Atheneum, the, journal, established
ANSTED, DAVID T., scientific writer,
by J. S. Buckingham, viii, 338
Mr. Dixon becomes editor, viii,
73: C. W. Dilke, editor, viii..
Athenaid, by Glover, passages from
iv....
viii...
204
[GENERAL
| Architecture. The Seven Lamps of,
by J. Ruskin, viii.
Arctic Expedition, viii.
Arden of Feversham, anonymous
drama, i..
PAGE.
357
153
395
|
•
228
360
294
251
Arden of Feversham, drama, by Lil-
lo, iii
Areopagitica, by Milton; extract. ii. 275
Ariosto, translated by Sir J. IIarring-
tou. i, 190; by W. Stewart Rose. v. 387
Aristophanes, trans, by T. Mitchell, v 389
ARMSTRONG, JOHN, poet; extracts, iv 79
ARNOLD, DR. THOMAS, historian, vii 352
Arnold, Life of. by Dean Stanley;
55
extracts, viii…..
ARNOLD, MATTHEW, as poet, vii, 155;
as critic, and theologian, viii………….. 249
Art of Preserving Health, by Arm-
strong; passages from, iv.
Arthur, King, and his Knights, i.
Arthur, King (his Actes, &c.), by Sir
Thomas Malory, i
..
}
112
Arthur. (La Morte Arthur), i..
15
139
314
Arundel, by Richard Cumberland, vi 104
ASCHAM, ROGER, prose writer, i.
ASHMOLE, ELIAS, antiquary, ii..
Atalanta in Calydon, by A. C. Swin-
burne, passage from, vii....
Atheist's Tragedy, the, i..
Athene Oxonienses, by Anthony à
Wood, ii...
344
…….
98
149
ATHERSTONE, EDWARD, V.
187
ATTERBURY, DR., theologian, iii………. 295
Attila, by Herbert, passage from, v.. 373
AUBREY, JOHN. antiquary, ji.
Auburn, Description of, iv.
344
139*
AUDUBON, JOIN JAMES; The Birds
of America. extracts, vi..
•
•
Augustine, St., Conversion of; by
Dean Stanley, viii………..
་
C.
404
Augustus Cæsar characterized, by
Merivale, vii.
Auld Langsyne, different versions of,
iii..
231
212
Auld Reckie, by Fergusson; extract,
iv...
Auld Robin Forbes, by Susanna Bla-
mire. V...
| Auld Robin Gray, by Lady Anne Bar-
209
nard, iv..
Aurora Floyd, by Miss Braddon, vii. 309
64
...
...
79
2
..
160
366
357
131
INDEX.]
379
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
129
Aurora Leigh, by Elizabeth
Browning, passage from, vii.......
AUSTIN, JANE, novelist, vi..
AUSTIN, MRS. SARAH, translator, vii 177
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, by
155
SS
Oliver Wendell Holmes, vii..
Avarice, by Rev. C. C. Colton, vi………. 385
Away! Let Nought to Love displeas-
ing, iv
•••
AYTON, SIR ROBERT. poet, ì….
AYTOUN, PROFESSOR WILLIAM ED-
-MONDSTOUNE, poet; extracts, vii.. 73
PACE. !
B.
BABBAGE, CHARLES, mathematician,
viii.
Babe Christabel, bullud of, by Gerald
Massey; extract, vii...
Baby's Debut, parody by J. and H.
Smith. v
262
99
335
BACON, LIEUT. T., traveller, viii………. 322
BACON, LORD, ii
Bacon, Lord, Letters and Life, by
192
254
James Spedding, i...
12
315
107
Badajos, Assault of, from Napier, vi. 271
Bagdad, the City of, by Gibbon,
BAGE, ROBERT, novelist, vi..
Baghdad. described by Layard, viii..
BAILEY. JOHN E., biographer, viii..
BAILEY, PHILIP JAMES, poet, vii………… 108
BAILLIE, JO ANNA, as poetess, v. 366:
as dramatist..
345
97
D
268
367
BAILLIE, LADY GRISELL, poet, iv.... 204
Baillie of Jerviswood and Lady Gri-
sell Baillie, Memoirs of. vi.
BAIN, ALEX., PROF., psychologist,
viii....
BAKER, SIR RICILARD-his Chroni-
cle, ii.
282
313
BAKER, SIR SAMUEL WHITE, Afri-
can traveller; extract. viii………
Balaklava, Battle of, by Russell. viii.
Bald Eagle, the, by A. Wilson, v……….. 339
BALE, BISHOP, as chronicler, i. 134;
353
34
as dramatist, i
Ball, the, by Shirley, i..
258
386
103
- Ballad Poetry, i…………
Ballads by the Hon. W. Spencer, v.. 315
BALLANTINE, JAMES, poet. vii..
Bampton Lectures, the, viii.
BANCROFT. GEORGE, historian; ex-
180
114
tracts, vii.
Bangorian Controversy, iii.
BANIM, JOHN, novelist, vi...
Bannatyne Mannscript, the, i.
Bannockburn. Battle of, by R. White,
viii.....
371
303
231
103
51
Barbara Fritchie, by J. G. Whittier vii 147
Barbarossa, tragedy by Dr. Brown, iv 217
BARBAULD, MRS. ANNA LETITIA, V, 65
BARBOUR, JOUN, poet, i... 19, 142
Barchester
325
63
Towers,
Towers, by Anthony
Trollope, passage from, vii.
BARCLAY, ALEXANDER, poet, i.
BARCLAY, ROBERT, his Apology, iii. 13
Bard, the, a Piudaric Ode, by Gray, iv 54
BARHAM, RICHARD HARRIS (pseu-
•••
donyin, Thomas Ingoldsby), vii... 204
BARNARD, LADY ANNE, poet, iv..... 209
Barneveld, Life of, by Motley, vii... 366
BARNFIELD, RICHARD, poet, i.. 210
BARROW, DR. ISAAC, Theological
Works; extracts, ii.
395-393
BARROW, JOHN, traveller, viii.. .. 330
Barrow's Dictionary of Arts and Sci-
ences. iv.
359
*
Barrow's, Sir John, Travels in China
vii....
PAGE.
27
BARTON, BERNARD; extracts, v…….. 347
Bastard, the, by Savage; extract, iii. 201
Bath, the Wife of, from Chaucer's
▸
•
Canterbury Tales,' extract, i..... 31
Battle of Blenheim. by Southey, v... 179
Battle of the Baltic, by Campbell, v.. 219
Battle of the Books. by Swift, iii.... 537
Bancis and Philemon, by Swift, ex-
tracts, iii..
•
• ▼
Baviud, by W. Gifford, extracts, v…….
BAXTER. RICHARD, divine; extracts
iii....
15
322
...
BAYLY, THOMAS II.. song-writer, v. 378
BATNES, C. R.. traveller; extracts,
vili
BEATTIE, DR. JAMES, as poet, iv.
176; as theologian. iv. 350; Life of
by Sir William Forbes, iv. 177;
vi...
BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, drama-
tist. i. 337; extracts, i..
.33S-341
BEAUMONT, FRANCIS, poems, i. 230;
dramas, i...
BEAUMONT, SIR JOHN, poet, i..
Beaux' Stratagem, the, by Farquhar,
iii...
Beckford, WiLLIAM, novelist, vi...
REDDOES. DR THOMAS, physician, vi
BEDDOES. THOMAS LOVELL, drama-
tist, passages from, vi...
Bede, the Venerable,' i..
Bee, the, a periodical, iv.
•
..
165
41
280
337
229
267
96
82
SO
3
237
BEECHEY, CAPT., Arctic traveller, vii 23
Beggar and hus Dog, from The Man
of Feeling,' by Henry Mackenzie,
285
...
iv..
Beggar of Bethnal Green, by John
Day, i.
368
Beggar, the, by the Rev. T. Moss, iv. 197
Beggars' Opera, the, by Gay, iii. ... 215
BEHN, MRS. APHRA, dramatist, ii.... 266
BELCHER, SIR EDWARD, Arctic ex-
plorer, viii..
350
}
!.
380.
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
•
Belford Regis, by Mary R. Mitford,
vi....
Belinda's sparkling Eyes and Wit,
from The Shamrock,' iv...
BELL, JOHN, traveller, vii.
BELL, J. S., travelier, viii.
BELL, SIR CHARLES; the Hand, as
evincing design, viii.
15;
BELLENDEN, JOHN, translator of
Boece and Livy, 1.
143
BELZONI, JOHN BAPTIST, Eastern
traveller; extracts, vii ..
9
BENNOCH, FRANCIS, song-writer, vii 182
BENOIT DE ST. MAUR, i.
Benoni, Dr., by Malcolm M'Lennon,
10
viü...
PAGE.
247
302
BENSON, CHR., theologian, vi…………
BENTHAM, JEREMY, jurist, vi... 327
BENTLEY, DR. RICHARD, classical
scholar, iii...
293
Beowulf, Lay of, Anglo-Saxon poem,
i....
...
BERESFORD, REV. JAMES, vi.
BERKELEY, BISHOP, metaphysician,
extract, iii.
BERNERS, LORD, historian, i.
Bertram, by C. R. Maturin, Scene
from. vi..
-✰✰
Bible in Spain, by George Borrow;
extract, viii
240
198
16
333
72
315
Beth Gêlert; a ballad, by the Hon.
Wm. Spencer, v.
Betrothed Pair, from Crabbe, v.. 107
Bible Class by G. MacDonald, vii...
Bible, History of the English, by Dr.
Eadie, viii.
306
170
338
*
4
387
..
312
132
Bible, Wycliffe's, i. 57; Tyndale's, i.
135; Coverdale's, i. 136; Matthew's,
i. 136; Cranmer's, i. 136; author-
ized translation, ii: 37; Douay Bi-
ble, ii. 338; Kennicot's Hebrew Bi-
ble, iv. 326; D'Oyley and Mant's
annotated edition, vi. 302; Clarke's
Commentary, vi. 307; Brown's
Dictionary, vi. 310; Brown's Self-
interpreting, vi....
Bibliographical Dictionary, Clarke's,
310
vi.....
308
|
BICKERSTAFF, ISAAC, dramatist, iv. 233
BICKERSTETH, REV. ED., theologian
viii.
Biglow Papers, the, by J. R. Lowell,
119
vii...
151
BINGHAM, COMMANDER J. ELLIOT,
traveller; extract, viii..
325
Biographia Britannica Literaria, by
T. Wright, viii....
Biographical Dictionaries, vi.
Biographical History of England, by
LaGranger, iv..
51
290
Biology, Principles of, by II. Spen-
cer, viii...
BIRCH, DR. THOMAS, as historian, iv
306; as antiquary, iv……….
BIRKENHEAD, SIR JOHN, journalist,
iii……….
ᏢᎪᏩᎬ .
BLACKLOCK, DR THOMAS, specimens
of his poetry, iv……….
BLACKMORE, RICHARD Doddridge,
novelist, vii..
133
Birks of Invermay, by Mallet, iv..... 3S
167
BISHOP, SAMUEL, poet, iv.
BLACK, WILLIAM, Dovelist, vii...... 335
Black-eyed Susan, by D. Jerrold, vii. 193
Black-eyed Susan, song by Gay, iii.. 220
BLACKIE, JOHN STUART, poct and
translator, vii
175
173
341
•
BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD, poet, iii 205
BLACKSTONE, SIR WILLIAM, as poet,
iv. 83 as prose writer, iv....
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,
vii....
357
37
330
12
BLAIR, DR. HUGH, theologian and
rhetorician, iv..
BLAIR, ROBERT, poct; extracts, iv..
Blake, Admiral, Life of, by W. II.
Dixon, viii...
73
BLAKE, WILLIAM, artist-poet, v..... 122
BLAMIRE, SUSANNA, song-writer, v.
BLANCHARD, LAMAN, vii
63
193
Blank Verse introduced by Surrey, i. 67
Blenheim, Battle of, by Southey, v.. 179
BLESSINGTON, COUNTESS OF, novel-
ist, vii..
·
213
Blind Boy, the, by Colley Cibber, ii.. 235
BLIND HARRY, poct, i.
80
78
..
294
Blind Youth, a. by Bloomfield, v..
Blithedale Romance, the, vii.
BLOMFIELD, DR. C. J., theologian,
viii . . . . .
BLOOMFIELD, ROBERT, poet, v.
BLUNT, REV. HENRY, viii....
BLUNT, REV. JOHN JAMES; extract,
viii..
134
74
110
124
217
143
72
BOLINGBROKE, LORD, HENRY ST.
JOHN, miscellaneous writer, iii……….. 362
47
Bonny Mary, by Robert Burns, v……..
Book-hunter, the, by J. Hill Burton,
viii....
Boadicea, by Glover, passage from,
iv....
315
4
405
Boece's History of Scotland, transla-
ted by Bellenden, i……….
BOLEYN, GEORGE, VISCOUNT ROCH-
FORT, poet, i..
•
307 | BORROW, GEORGE, traveller, viii……..
402
137
•
Book of Ballads, by Bon Gaultier, vii 74
Book of Cominou Prayer, i..
Borough, the, by George Crabbe; ex-
tract, v..
106
339
INDEX.]
381
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Boston, Tuos., his Fourfold State,
iii..
PAGE.
BOSWELL, JAMES, biographer, vi....
BOSWELL, JAMES, editor, vi...
BOSWELL, SIR ALEXANDER, SOUG-
writer, vi....
Botanic Garden, the, by Dr. E. Dar-
32
277
12
11
win; extract, v………
34
·
Bothic of Tober-na-Vuolich, vii... 148
Bothwell, by Swinburne; extract, vii 161
BOUCICAULT. DION, drainatist, vii... 201
Bouillabaisse, the Ballad of, by
S
Thackeray, vii………
BOWDICH, Mr. African traveller, vii.
BOWER, ARCHIBALD, historian, iv.. 807
BOWER or BOWMAKER, WALTER,
chronicler, i…….
54
BOWLES, CAROLINE ANNE, (Mrs.
Southey), poet; extracts, vii.
BOWLES, REV. WILLIAM LISLE, poet;
extracts, v..
BOWRING, SIR JOHN, as poet-trans-
lator, vii. 175; as Traveller, ex-
tract, viii...
BOYER, ABEL, miscellaneous writer,
iv...
BOYLE. ION. ROBERT, philosopher;
extracts, ii..
Bracebridge Hall, by Washington
Irving; extracts, vi.
BRADDON, M. ELIZABETH, novelist,
vii ..
26.1
British India, Ilistory of, by James
Mill, vi……….
British Monarchy, by Burke, iv.
43
166
323
506
301
359
309
10
1
..
Braes o' Balquhither, by Tannahill,
vi....
Braes o' Gleniffer, by Tannahill, vi.. 10
-Braes of Yarrow, by Hamilton, iv... 200
Braid Claith, by Fergusson, iv.
213
BRAMSTON, REV. JAMES, poet, iii……. 157
BRAY, MRS. ANNA ELIZA, novelist,
vii...
239
BREMNER. ROBERT, Traveller, viii.. 332
BRETON, NICHOLAS, poet, i………. 209
BREWSTER, SIR DAVID, scientific
writer: extracts, viii.
Bride's Tragedy, by T. L. Beddoes,
273
= L
SO
vi...
Bridgewater Treatises, the, viii……….. 158
Brigham Young, by Sir C. W. Dilke,
viii...
346
་
Bristow Tragedy, by Chatterton. iv. 98
Britannia's Pastorals, by William
Browne, i…...
241
British Constitution, Dissertation on,
by Dr. Gilbert Stuart, iv.
British Critic, iv..
British Empire, History of, by George
Brodie, vi....
307
406
16
British Poets,
Campbell, v
Broad Grins, by Coiman; extracts,
vi...
PAGE.
Specimens of, by
50-58
BROCKEDON, W., traveller, vii.
BRODIE, GEORGE, Vi..
16
258
376
Broken Heart, Scene from the. i...
BROME, RICHARD, drumatist, i.. 369
BRONTE, CHARLOTTE, novelist, vii.. 272
Bronte, Charlotte, Life of, by Mrs.
Gaskell; extracts. vii..
BROCKE, Arthur, poet, i..
287
152
BROOKE, CHARLOTTE, Novelist, iv... 283
BROOKE. HENRY, as dramatist, iv.,
217; as novelist, iv..
BROOKE, LORD, i…….
BROOKE, REV. STOPFORD A.. theolo-
logian and critic, yiii…………
BROOKS, CHARLES SHIRLEY, dramat-
ist and editor, vii…………
→ ·
vi...
Brougham, Life of, by Lord Camp-
bell, viii..
283
233
142
198
BROOME, WILLIAM, minor poet, iii.. 197
BROUGH, ROBERT B., dramatist, vii. 201
BROUGHAN, HENRY, LORD; extracts,
377
71
14
BROUGHTON, LORD (J. C. Hobhouse),
classic traveller, vii.
BROUGHTON, MISS RHODA, novelist,
vii……….
Маврита
244
BROWN, DR. Tuos., metaphysician, vi 322
BROWN, FRANCES, poet, vii.
76
BROWN, JOHN, of Haddington, theo-
logian. vi....
309
BROWN, TOM, iniscellaneous writer;
extracts, iii..
375
147
BROWNE, ISAAC HAWKINS, poet, iii. 345
BROWNE, SIR THOMAS; extracts, iii. 56
BROWNE, WILLIAM, poet, i..
Brownie of Blednocli, the, vi.
BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT;
extracts, vii....
210
36
123
BROWNING, ROBERT - his poems
characterised; extracts, vii……. 132–142
BRUCE, JAMES. African traveller, vii. 1
BRUCE, MICHAEL, poet, iv.
..
260
159
| Bruce, the, by Barbour; extracts. i.. 50
Brunauburb, Ode on the Battle of, i. 8
277 | BRUNNE, ROBERT DE, metrical chron-
406 icler, i...
BRUNTON, MRS. MARY, vi....
••••
300
BROUGHTON, MRS., travellèr, viii…….. 319
BROWN, C. BROCKDEN, novelist, vi.. 146
BROWN. DR. JOIN, mise. writer, iv.. 394
BROWN, DR. JOHN, of Edinburgh,
theologian, vi...
309
Brown, Dr. Jobu, Life of; extract, vi 310
BROWN, DR. JOHN, physician; ex-
tracts, viii...
218
BROWNE, EDWARD HAROLD BISHOP,
viii....
••••
17
159
Rus
382
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA Of
}
Brut d'Angleterre, i..
Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin, by J.
H. Payne, vi…………
PAGE.
10
74
72
391
BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN, as poet,
extracts, vii, 84; as histor.au, vii. 371
BRYDGES, SIR EGERTON, miscellane-
ous writer, vi.
3S7
Bubbles of the Day, by Douglas Jer-
rold; extracts, vii.
BUCHANAN, GEORGE, as translator, i
236; as prose writer, ii……………….
BUCHANAN, ROBERT, poet; ex-
tracts, vii...
BUCKINGHAM, DUKE OF, viii.
BUCKINGHAM, J. S., traveller, vii.
BRYANT, FRANCIS, poet. i…..
BRYANT, JACOB, miscellaneous wri-
ter, iv..
··
and viii....
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, DUKE OF, poet,
164
337
337
ii...
231
BUCKLAND, DR. W., geol., viii. 158;
viii..
28-1
Buckland, Dr. William, Life of, vii.. 299
BUCKLAND, FRANK TREVELYAN,
naturalist, viii..
281
306
201
29J
$5
BUCKLE, HENRY THOMAS; extracts,
vii...
....
BUCKSTONE. MR., dramatist, vii.
BUDGELL, EUSTACE, essayist, iii.
Buke of the lowlat, edited by David
Laing, i...
Bull, John, by Colman the Younger,
vi....
BULLAR, Jos. and Joun, travellers,
viii.
BULWER, EDWARD LYTTON (Lord
Lytton), novelist, vii..
Buncle, John, Life of, iv…….
BUNSEN, CHEVALIER, miscellaneous
writer, vii...
195
35
...
51
334
218
36S
359
2.1
8
Bunsen, Life of, by his widow, vii... 360
BUNYAN, JOHN; extracts, iii..
BURCHELL, MR., African traveller, vii
BURCKHARDT, JOHN LUDWIG, Afri-
can traveller, vii……….
Burger's Lenore, trans. by W. Tay-
lor, i....
Burial of Sir John Moore, v.
BURKE, EDMUND, orator; extracts,
iv....
9
369
287
377
400
27
BURLEIGH, LORD, prose writer, i…….
BURNES, LIEUT. ALEX., traveller, vii
BURNET, DR. THOMAS; extracts, ii. 292
BURNET, GILBERT, Bishop of Salis-
bury; extracts, ii.
BURNEY, FRANCES (Madame D'Arb-
lay), vi
335
87
BURNEY, SARAH HARRIET, V……….
vi..... 96
BURNS, ROBERT, poct; extracts
from his letters and poems, v…………… 390
•
280
Burns, Life of, by Lockhart, viii. 54;
by Dr. James Currie, vi..
BURTON, CAPT. R. F., African ex-
plorer, viii...
352
BURTON, DR. EDWARD, theologiau,
viii...
119
46
3S
BURTON, JOIN HILL, historian, vili
| BURTON, ROBERT, prose writer, ii...
Burton's, Dr., Antiquities of Rome,
vii...
BURY, LADY CHARLOTTE, Vİ…….
Bush aboon Traquair, by Crawford,
iv....
204
Bussy d'Ambois, by Chapman, i………. :51
Busy-body, the, by Mrs. S. Centlivre,
iii.
272
320
►
BUTLER, JOSEPH, BISHOP, theolo-
gian, iv
BUTLER, NATHANIEL, editer, ii..... 66
BUTLER. SAMUEL, as poet, ii. 184 ;
124
as prose writer, extracts, iii…….
BYROM, JOHN, his Journal and Lit-
crary Remains, iv..
50
BYRON, LORD GEORGE GORDON, V.. 250
Byron, Life of, by Moore; extract,
vi....
286
Y
Byzantine Empire, History of, by
Finlay, viii
6
PAGE.
...
•••
·
4.
CEDMON, Anglo-Saxon poet, i
CAIRD, REV. JOIN, theologian, viii.. 170
CALAMY, EDMUND, theologian, iii....30
CALDERON DE LA BARCA, MNE.,
Life in Mexico, viii..
336
CALDERWOOD, David, historian, ii.. 5)
Caleb Stukeley, by Samuel Phillips,
vii……….
230
140
16
8
•
Caleb Williams, by Godwin; ex-
tracts, vi...
Call to the Unconverted, by Baxter,
iii..
Caller Herrin', by Baroness Nairne,
vi....
Cambrian System, by Prof. Sedg-
wick, viii....
CAMDEN, WILLIAM, antiquary, ii.
CAMERON, LIEUT. V. L., traveller,
viii...
16
228
CAMPBELL, MR., missionary and
traveller, vii.
368
33
389
346
Cameronian's Dream, the, vi………….
Camoens, the poems of, translated
by Viscount Strangford, v..
CAMPBELL, DR. GEORGE, philoso-
pher, iv...
CAMPBELL, DR. JOHN, historian, iv.. 307
CAMPBELL, J. F., traveller and Celt-
ic Scholar, viii.
CAMPBELL, LORD JOHN, biographer,
viii.
347
70
6
291
23
-
INDEX.]
383
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
CAMPBELL, Tпомas, as poet, v. 218:
as historian, vi
28S
Canadian Boat Song, by Moore, v. 205
CANDLISH, DR. R. S., theologian, viii
CANNING, GEORGE, as poet, v..
Canterbury, Memorials of, by Stan-
ley, viii.
161
49
...
PAGE.
66
...
53
28
108
329
7
Canterbury Tales, the, by Chaucer;
cxtracts, i.
Canterbury Tales, the, by S. and H.
Lee; extract, vi.
Canton Prisons, from Cooke, viii...
CANUTE or CNUT, i
Car Travelling in Ireland, by Thack-
cray, vii……..
Caractacus, by Mason; extracts, iv.
152; iv.
271
$3
89
Careless Content, by Byrom, iv
Careless Husband, by Cibber. iii.
CAREW, LADY ELIZABETH, ii..
CAREW, THOMAS, poet; extracts, ii.
CAREY, HENRY, dramatist, iv…………. 228
CARLETON, WILLIAM, novelist, vi... 236
CARLISLE, EARL OF, traveller, viii.. 32)
CARLYLE, DR. J. A., vii....
397
CARLYLE, THOMAS, historian and
satirist extracts, vii..
.389-297
|
Chambers's Journal, vii..
Carnatic. Destruction of the, iv...... 383 | Chameleon, the, by Merrick, iv.
CARNE, JOHN, Eastern traveller, vii.. 24
CARPENTER, DR. LANT, theologian,
viii..
CARPENTER, DR. W. B., physiolo-
gist, viii.
CHAMIER, CAPTAIN, novelist, vii.
Chancellors, Lives of the, by Lord
Campbell, viií.
225
25
286
Chauges. by Lord Lytton, vii.
CHANNING. DR. WILLIAM ELLERY,
theologian; extracts, viii..
CHAPMAN, GEORGE. dramatist, i……..
CHAPONE, MRS. HESTER, her let-
ters, iv.
CARR, SIR JOHN, tourist, vi…..
CARRINGTON, NOEL THOMAS, poet, v 382
CARTE, THOMAS, historian, iv…………. 288
CARTER, MRS. ELIZABETH, transla-
tor, iv.
|
iv....
..
Charge of the Light Brigade, viii..
Charles I., Memoirs of the Court of,
viii...
192
CARTWRIGHT, W., poet; extracts, ii 102
CARY, REV. HENRY FRANCIS, poety 383
Castara, by William Ilabington, ii..
Castaway, the, by Cowper, v.
Casti's Animali Parlanti,' trans. by
Rose, v.
8
10
255
218
52
387
Castle of Indolence, by Thomson, iii 204
Castle of Otranto, by Hor. Walpole,
iv……….
• •
280
230
139
|
|
¿
PAGE.
Celtic Folk-lore, Collection of, viii... 348
Celtic Languages, divisions of, i....
Celtic Scotland, by Wm. F. Skene,
1
viii...
19
Cenci, the, by Shelley; extract, v... 276
C'ENTLIVRE, MRS. S., dramatist, iii.. 271
Ceylon. Wanderings in, viii.... 358
Chaldean account of Genesis, viii... 319
CHALKHILL, JOпN, poet; extracts, ii 100
CHLALIERS, ALEXANDER, Vi...
290
CHALMERS, DR. Tuos.; extracts,
vi....
311-319
CHALMERS, GEORGE. antiquary, vi.. 252
Chamæleon, by George Buchanan, ii 59
CHAMBERLAYNE, W., poet; extracts
ii....
143
CHAMBERS, DR. ROBERT, miscella-
neous writer, viii…….
Chambers. Dr. R.. Memoir of, viii..
CHAMBERS. DR. WILLIAM, miscella-
neous writer, viii..
Chambers's Biographical Dictionary
of Emincut Scotsmen, vi….
Chambers's Encyclopædia, vii..
Chambers's (Ephraim), Cyclopædia,
iv..
4
•
••
•
•
•••
4
Charles II., escape of, after the Bat-
tle of Worcester, from Clarendon's
History," ii. 326; Character of,
from Burnet's "History of his own
Times." ii.
64
** * 88 8882 2 38 852
290
144
Castle Spectre, by M. G. Lewis, v...
Cato, by Joseph Addison, iii.
Caudle Lectures, vii……….
Charles V. Epicurean Habits of Em-
peror, by Sir W. S. Maxwell, viii..
Charles V., History of, by Robertson;
extracts, iv……
Charles Edward Stuart, by Earl Stan-
hope, viii..
194
10
Canler Water, by Fergusson, iv. 214
Caution to Philosophic Inquirers, by
Professor Huxley, viii………..
310
.. ...
406
Charles O'Malley, by C. J. Lever, vii. 278
CHARLETON, DR. WALTER, iii.. . 125
Charlotte Corday, from Carlyle, vii.. 399
Charmer, the, edited by J. Yair, iv... 199
Chartism, by Carlyle, vii…….
393
113
87
Cave's Gentleman's Magazine, iv……….
CAVENDISHI, GEORGE, biographer, i. 123
CAXTON, WILLIAM, printer, 1.
Cecilia, by Frances Burney. vi.
Celt, Roman, and Saxon, the, viii.
Celtic, by Professor Whitney, viii……
Celtic and Roman Autiquities, by
John Whittaker, iv..
51
Chase, the, by William Somervile, iii 399
Chastelard, by A. C. Swinburne, vii. 159
| Château of La Garaye, by Miss Mu-
lock, vii…….
316
318
307
106
3:0
22
338
56
300
ļ
५
384
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
5
*.
f
1
1
CHATHAM, EARL OF, WILLIAM PITT,
his letters to his nephew, iv..
Chatham, Character of. by Grattan,
iv. 376; Last Appearance and
••
PAGE.
375
94
Death of. iv.
CHATTERTON, THOMAS. iv....
CHAUCER. GEOFFREY.poet,extracts,i 23
Chaucer, dates of events of his life,
by Mr. Furnivall, i. 36 ; viii..
Chaucer, the only likeness of, i
CHEKE, SIR JOHN, i.
i..
Chemical History of a Candle, by
Faraday, viii.
279
246
113
89
Cherry and the Slae, the, i..
Chess, Game of, by Caxton, i..
Chess-board, the. by Lord Lytton, vii 144
CHESTERFIELD, EARL OF, iv.
Chesterfield's Letters, viii...
CHETTLE, HENRY, dramatist, i. 292
CHETWYND, HON. MRS., novelist, vii
Chevy Chase, i..
14
341
104
257
Childe Harold, passages from, v.....
Children Asleep, by Matthew Arnold,
vii...
Children of Great Men, viii
CHILLINGWORTH,
WILLIAM;
·
• •
..
..
ex-
•
Chips from a German Workshop, by
Max Müller, viii..
Chivalry, from Robertson's "Histo-
· ry,” iv…….
Choice, the, by Pomfret, ii
378
tracts, ii....
China, Sketches of, by Davis, viii.
321; by Gutzlaff, viii. 324; by Lord
Jocelyn, viii. 325; by Bingham, viii
325; by Macpherson, viii. 325; by
Murray, viii. 325; by Loch,' viii.
325 by Fortune, viii. 326; by
Cooke, viii..
323
Chinese Ladies' Feet, viii
Chinese Language, the, viii…..
Chinese Thieves, by R. Fortunc, viii 326
Chinois, L'Empire, by Iuc; extract,
viii...
326
312
304
229
90
Christabel, by Coleridge; extracts, v 154
Christiad, the, by II. K. White, v.
Christian Energy, by Robertson, viii 141
Christian Year, by Keble; extracts,v 381
Christianity, Evidences of, by Paley,
•
371
60
137
•
156
61
351
328
: 25
vi....
291
Christie Johnstone; extract, vii. 302
Christis Kirk on the Greue; ex-
tract, i...
79
Christopher North, Recreations of, v 339
Christ's Victory and Triumph. i…………. 235
Chronicles of England, by Edward
|
Hall, extract, i. 117; by Richard
Grafton, ii. 27; by Holinshed, Har-
rison, Hooker, Boteville, Stów, ii.
28; by Baker, ii……
|
343
A
}
PAGE.
Church Government, Reason of, by
Milton; extract, ii..
.. 273
110
207
271
CHRRCHILL, CHARLES, poet, iv.
CHURCHYARD, THOMAS, poet, i
CIBBER, COLLET, dramafist; iii.
Cicero, Life of, by Middleton, iv
Circassia, by J. S. Bell, viii. 333 ; by
Spencer, viii.
289
• •
•
1
323
Citizen of the World; extracts, iv... 238
City Madam, by Jasper Mayne, ii.... 239
City Madam, by Massinger; extracts i 372
City Mouse and Country Mouse,
iii..
...137-149
City of the Plague; extracts, v.. 310
City, the, its Sins and Sorrows, by
Guthrie, viii..
163
Civil Society, Historo of; extract, iv 402
Civilisation, by R. W. Emerson, viii. 226
Clan Albyn. by Mrs. Johnstone, vi.. 211
CLAPPERTON, CAPTAIN, traveller, vii
| CLARE. JoпN, poet, v....
CLARENDON, EARL OF
6 -
EDWARD
HYDE, historian; extracts, ii..... 317
Clarendon, Earl of. Memoir of, vi…….. 227
Clarissa Harlowe, by Richardson, iv. 245
CLARKE, DR. ADAM, theologian, vi.. 307
CLARke, Dr. EDWARD
DANIEL,
11
traveller; extract, vii..
CLARKE, DR. SAMUEL, theologian, iii 298
Clarke's Commentary on the Bible,
307
vi....
CLELAND, WILLIAM, poct; extracts,
li
1i . · · ·
CLEMENS,
237
SAMUEL
324
LANGHORNE,
6
(nom-de-plume, Mark Twain "
miscellaneous writer; extracts, viii 242
CLEVELAND, JOHN, poet; extracts, ii 99
Clive, Lord, life of, vi.
288
277
Cloud, the, by Shelley, v...
•
CLOUGH, AR. II.,poet; specimeus, vii 149
Clyde, the, by John Wilson, iv..... 76
COBBETT, WILLIAM, political writer,
vi....
338
91
210
COCKBURN, HENRY, Memorials of
his Time; extract, viii...
COCKBURN, MRS., poet, iv.
Calebs, by Mrs. Haunah More, vi... 334
Coelum Britanicum, by Carew, ii... 89
233
COFFEY, C. Dramatist, iv.
COLERIDGE, HARTLEY, DERWENT,
and Sara, poets; extracts, vii..... 39
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, as
62
poet, v. 146; as dramatist. vi……….
Colin and Lucy, ballad by Tickell, iii 223
65
Colin Clout, by Skelton; extract, i..
15
Coliseum, the, by Forsyth, vii.
Collegians, the, by Gerald Griffin, vi 235
COLLIER, JOHN PAYNE, editor, viii. 374
299
COLLINS, JOIN, song-writer, v.
COLLINS, MORTIMER, novelist, vii... 342
...
7
INDEX.]
385
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
COLLINS, WILLIAM, poet; extracts,
iv...
PAGE,
COLLINS, WILLIAM WILKIE, Vii…….
COLMAN, GEORGE, dramatist, iv.... 223
COLMAN, GEORGE, the Younger,
dramatist, vi…….
COLTON, KEV. CALEB C.; extracts,
vi..
CX-
...
by
18
289
COLUMBANUS, i……….
Columbus, Life of. by Irving, vi…….
COMBE, GEORGE. as phrenologist, vi.
325; as traveller, vii..
COMBE, WILLIAM, misc. writer, vi.. 310
Comedy, origin of. i……………
Commentaries, Blackstone's;
37
258
tract, iv.
157
on the Bible,
307
381
Comment ry
Clarke, vi.
Commentary on the Epistles of St.
Paul, by Professor Jowett, viii.... 159
Commentary on the First Epistle of -
St. Peter, by Archbishop Leighton,
ii....
Commonwealth of England, History
of, by Godwin, vi. 137, 260; by
Palgrave, vii..
Companions of my Solitude, by Sir
A. Helps; extracts, viii.
Complayût of Scotland; extract, i.
120, 144; edition by A. II. Murray,
viii...
360
212
Complete Angler, by Walton; ex-
tracts, iii.
■Comte and Positivism, by J. S. Mill,
viii..
Comte's Positive Philosophy, traus.
by H. Martineau, viii…………
Comus, by Miltou; extracts, ii.
Concordance of Stories, by Robert
Fabian, edited by Sir Henry Ellis, i 114
Coude, Prince, Life of, by Stanhope,
14
viii………
Conduct of Life, by R. W. Emerson;
oxtract, viii.
Confessio Amantis, Gower's; ex-
tract. i....
··
49
393
4
360
372
77
272
202
164
227
47
190
= Confessious of an Opium-Eater, by
De Quincey; extract, viii.
CONGREVE, WILLIAM, dramatist, iii. 255
Coningsby; extract, vii..
237
Counaught, Tour in. by Otway, vi... 234
Connoisseur, the; extract, iv………
• CONOLLY, LIEUT. ARTHUR, traveller
viii...
237
320
Conquest of Grenada, play by Dry-
den; extract, ii.
243
Conscious Lovers, the, by Steele, iii. 273
Consistency, by Whately, viii.
Consolations in Travel; extracts, viii 252
Constable, Archibald, viii.
118
14
CONSTABLE, HENRY, poet, i.
54
207
+
PAGE.
34
Constable's Miscellany, vii...
Contemplation, by Rev. R. Gifford, iv 77
Couteur, Hymn to, by Barbauld, v.. 67
Contention of Ajax aud Ulysses, by
Shirley, i...
15
Contentment, by Franklin. iv.
Conversation, by Cowper; extract, v
Convict Ship, by T. K. Hervey, vii.. 60
CONYBEARE, REV. W. J.. viii. ... 131
CONTBEARE, W. D., DEANE, geolo-
gist, viii..
136
Cook, ELIZA, poet; specimen, vii.. 169
COOKE, G. W., traveller; extracts,
viii...
688
393
198
Cooke, GEORGE, dramatist, î..
COOKE, THOMAS, minor poet, iii…….
COOPER, J. F., novelist; extracts, vii 201
COOPER, THOMAS, Chartist Poet,'
vii....
104
Cooper's Hill, by Denham; extract, ii 140
CORBET, R., BISHOP, рoet; extracts,
ii..
ence of, viii....
Coronach, from "Lady of the Lake,"
328
3.8
Cornbill Magazine, vii..
84
265-
Corn-law Rhymes, by Elliotr, v……….. 375
CORNWALL, BARRY(nom-de-plume of
Bryan Waller Procter): extracts, v 349
Cornwallis, Marquis, Correspond-
50
V....
249
COSTELLO, LOUISA STUART, travel-
ler, viii..
182
Cottage Economy, by W. Cobbett, vi 338
Cotragers of Glenburnic; extract, vi 163
COTTON, CHARLES, poet and transla-
tor. ii..
•
191
6
26
..
COTTON, NATHANIEL, poet, v.......
COTTON, SIR ROBERT, ii..
Counsel to the Young Husband, vii.. 143
Counsel to Young Ladies, viii..
Count Basil, a Tragedy, vi...
Count Julian, by Walter Savage Lan-
dor; extract, v.
184
66
.. 181
Country Justice, by Langhorne, iv... 15;
Country Rambles, by W. Howite, viii 213
Country Wife, the, by Wycherley, ii. 266
Course of Time, the; extracts. v.... 303
Court-masks of the 17th Century, i.. 331
Courtin', the, by J. R. Lowell, vii…….. 155
COVERDALE, MILES; passage from
his version of the Bible, i...
COWLEY, ABRAHAM, as poet, ii. 124;
as prose writer; extracts, iii.
COWPER, WILLIAM, poet, v
Cowper, W., Life of, by Hayley, vi.. 280
Cowper's Grave, by Mrs. Browning,
vii..
136
70
7
...
127
COXE, REV. WILLIAM, biographer, vi 253
COYNE, STIRLING, dramatist,^vii.. 201
CRABBE, REV. GEORGE, poet, v..... 97
*
W
386
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
1
CRAIG-KNOX, Isa, poet; specimen,
vii....
CRAIK, GEORGE LILLIE, historian,
viii...
170
23
CRAIK, MISS GEORGINA, novelist, vii 316
Cranford, by Mrs. Gaskell, vii……… 287
Craumer's Bible, i..
137
RICHARD, poet; ex-
105
CRASHAW,
tracts. ii
A
PAGE.
CRAVEN, HON. R. KEPPEL, travel-
ler, vii………..
16
180
-
CRAWFORD, JoпN, poet, vii.
CRAWFORD, ROBERT, poet, iii.. 204
Crazed Maiden, song. by Crabbe, v.. 111
Creation, the, by Blackmore; ex-
|
206
143
288
188
32
51
tract, iii..
Creation, the, by Rev. S. A. Brooke,
viii...
•
•
Creation, the Works of, by Addison,
iii……….
Crescent and the Cross, the, by War-
burton; extracts, viii...
(.
...
Crimean War, beginning of, viii.
Criminal Trials in Scotland, viii.
Critic, the, by Sheridan, scenes from,
vi...
Critical Review, iv.
Crocodile-shooting on the Nile, viii..
CROKER, JOHN WILSON, miscella-
neous writer, viii
CROKER, THos. CROFTON, novelist,
vii...
•
4
CROLY, REV. GEORGE, poel, v......
Cromwell, Character of, from Clar-
endon's
Civil
"History of the
Wars," ii..
331
Cromwell's Death, by Dryden, ii………. 203
Cromwell's Expulsion of the Parlia-
ment, in Lingard's History," vi.. 258
Crouykil of Scotland, by Wyutoun, i
Croppy, the, by Johu Banim; ex-
tract, vi..
|
53
233
282
5)
CROWE, EYRE EVANS, novelist, vi... 234
CROWE, MRS., novelist; extract, vii.
CROWE, WILLIAM, poet. v…….
CROWNE, JOIN, dramatist, ii…….
Cry of the Children, by E. B. Brown-
ing, vii………..
264
127
Cuckoo, Ode to the, by John Logan,
iv....
•
42
406
188
196
240
3 9
tracts, vi..
CUNNINGHAM, FR., misc. writer, vi..
CUNNINGHAM, J. D., historian, vi...
164
CUDWORTH, DR. RALPH; extracts, ii 353
CUMBERLAND, DR RICH.; extracts, ii 357
CUMBERLAND, RICHARD, as drama-
|
tist, iv. 223; as novelist, vi... 104
CUMMING, DR. JOHN, theologian, viii 162
Cumnor Hull, ballad by Mickle, iv... 185
CUNNINGHAM, ALEX., antiquary, vi.
CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN, poet; ex-
25
|
21
26
25
PAGE.
155
CUNNINGHAM, JOHN, poet, iv…………..
CUNNINGHAM, PETER, misc. writer,
vi....
25
CUNNINGHAM, T. M., song-writer,
vi....
34
Curiosities of Natural History, viii.. 235
CURRAN, J. P., orator; extract, vi..352
CURRIE, DR. JAMES, biographer, vi. 280
Curse of Glencoe, by R. Buchanan,
vii...
164
174
Curse of Kchama; extract, v
Cutch, by Mrs. Postans; extract, viii 21
Cyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers, iv 406
Cyril Thornton, by Thos. Hamilton,
vi....
212
Czar Peter in England, from Burnet's
History of His Own Times," ii.. 340
66
}
228
DACRE, LADY, novelist, vi...
Dacre, by the Countess of Morley, vi 229
Dæmonology, by King James I; ex-
tract, ii..
61
Caisy Chain, the, by Miss Youge, vii 293
DALE, REV. THOMAS, theologian, viii 158
DANA, RICHARD HENRY, poet, vii... ST
Dance of the Seven Deadly Sinsi i..
Danes and Nerwegians, the, by War-
saae, viii...
93
51
↑
DANIEL, SAMUEL, poet; extracts, i.
178; prose-writer, ii…….
26
Dante, trans. by Cary; extract, v………. 386
Dante's Inferno, translated by Dr. J.
A. Carlyle, vii……
D'ARBLAY, MME. (Frances Burney),
vi....
397
4.
87
61
D'ARBLAY, GEORGE, poet, vii..
Dartmoor, by Carrington; extract, v 382
DARWIN, CHARLES, naturalist, viii.. 304
30
DARWIN, DR. ERASMUS, poet, v....
DAVENANT and DRYDEN, dramatists;
extracts, ii....
241
DAVENANT, SIR WILLIAM, as poet,
ii. 121; as dramatist, extracts, ii... 242
David, King, and Fair Bethsabe,
4
Love of, by George Pecle, i………. 268
169
David, Song to, by Smart, iv.
David Copperfield, by Dickens, vii... 252
David Simple, by Sara Fielding, iv.. 262
Davideis, the, by Abraham Cowley,
ii....
...
•
•
127
15
...
DAVIE, ADAM, romance writer, i.
DAVIES, SIR JOHN, pоct; extracts, i 195
33
DAVIS, JOHN, navigator, ii..
DAVIS, JOHN FRANCIS, traveller, viii 324
DAVISON, FRANCIS, editor, i..
DAVY, SIR H., scientific writer; ex-
tracts, viii..
'222
251
36S
DAY, JOHN, dramatist, i.
Day of Judgment, by Milman, v..... 358
DE LA BECUE, SIR H. T., geologist,
viii.
287
INDEX.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
387
DE-LOLME, JOHN LEWIS, misc., wri-
ter, iv.
PAGE.
De Montfort, by Joanna Baillie,
scenes from, vi..
DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, misc. writer,
viii.
De Vere, by R. P. Ward; extract, vi.
Dead Secret, the, by Wilkie Collins,
vii
289
Deaf Dalesman. from Wordsworth, v 131
Death and Destruction at the Dig-
ggins. by Bret Harte, vii...
Death-bed by Thomas Hood, vii……….
Death-bed, by Thomas Hood, vii.
Death of Emily and Ann Brontë, vii, 276
Death of George III., by Thackeray,
3
vii....
Decline and Fall of the Roman Em-
pire, by Edward Gibbon; extracts,
iv..
372
66
190
229 |
Deerbrook, by Harriet Martineau,
viii...
264
Death of Muriel, by Miss Mulock, vii 317
Death Scene, by G. MacDonald, vii.. 305
Decay of Matrimonial Love, by
Thackeray, vii....
260
35
33
***
08
199
DEFOE, DANIEL, miscellaneous wri-
ter; extracts. iii....
DEKKER, THOMAS, as dramatist. i.
352; as prose writer, ii.....
Delicia Poetarum Scotorum, edited
by Dr. Arthur Johnston, iii…………
Della Cruscan School of Poets, the,y
DENHAM, MAJOR, African traveller,
vii..
DENHAM, SIR JOHN, poet; speci-
mens, ii.
138
31
198
DENNIE, COLONEL, historian, viii.
DENNIS, JOIN, minor port, iii..
Denounced, the, by Jolin Banim, vi.. 232
DERWENT, CONWAY (H. D. Inglis),
traveller, vii…….
321
42
257
44
6
29
Descent of Man. by Darwin, viii…………. 305
Deserted Village; extracts, iv.
Destiny, by Miss S. E. Ferrier, vi....
Devil to Pay, the, by Coffey, iv.
Devil's Dream, by Thomas Aird, vii.
Devil's Thoughts, the, by Southey
and Coleridge, v...
Dialects of English. i……….
Diary, Evelyn's; extracts, iii
Diary, Pepy's; extracts, iii.
Diary and Letters, Mnie. D'Arblay's,
vi........
139
213
233
63
180
1.4
110
116
89
Diary of an Invalid, by Mathews, vii 16
Diary of the Times of George IV., vi 129
DIBDIN, CHARLES, Song-writer, v... 299
DIBDIN, THOMAS. Song-writer, v.... 299
DICKENS, CHARLES, his novels char-
acterized; extracts, vii.
241
PAGE.
Dickens, Charles, Life of, by John
Forster, viii...
76
Dictionary, Geogr., M'Culloch's, vi.. 330
Dictionary, Johnson's, iv.. 117, 358
Dictionary of Commerce, M'Cul-
loch's, vi...
330
•
Dictionary of the Bible, Dr. William
Smith, viii..
Dido. by Thomas Nash, i…..
DIEFFENBACH, EARNEST, traveller,
viii..
DILKE,
CHARLES WENTWORTH,
··
critic and editor, viii.
DILKE. SIR CHARLES WENTWORTII,
traveller: extracts. viii....
Dion, Character of. by Grote, viii…….
Dirge, by Leigh Hunt, v.
Discernment of Character, by Hart-
ley Coleridge, vii………
Discipline, by Mary Brunton, vi…………. 159
Discourse on Painting, by Sir Josh-
ua Reynolds, iv..
42
***
Disinterred Warrior, the, vii...
Dispensary, the, by Garth; extract,
iii.
Dispute and Duel between Two
Scotch Servants, by Dr. J. Moore,
vi....
DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, novelist and
politician; extracts, vii...... 231–235
D'ISRAELI, ISAAC, misc. writer, vi .. 381
Distinction, Means of Acquiring, by
Rev. Sydney Smith, vi..
Distressed Mother, the, iji.. 226, 272
Divine Emblems, by F. Quarles, ii.. 75
Divine Legation of Moses; extract,
iv..
370
323
95
DIXON. WILLIAM HEPWORTH, mis-
cellaneous writer, viii…….
DOBELL, SYDNEY, poet, vii…….
DOBSON, AUSTIN, lyric writer, vii……. 175
DODDRIDGE, DR. PHILIP; extracts,
iv...
DODSLEY, ROBERT, iv.
Dodsley's Select Collection of Ola
English Plays, different editions.
enumerated, viii………
DODWELL, EDWARD, classic travel-
ler. vii.
Domestic Annals of Scotland, viii…….
Domestic Manners of the Americans
by Mrs. Trollope, vii…….
Dominie's Legacy, the, by Picken, vi 212
Don Juan, by Lord Byron; extracts,
212
264
...
•
NA
.
N
V.
Don Sebastian, by A. Maria Porter,
vi...
· •
Don Sebastian, play by Dryden. ii….
DONALDSON, J. W., historian, viii…..
Donne, Dr., Life of, by Isaak Wal-
ton, iii.
*
149
274
335
98
315
5
324
3S7
$6
204
115
17933
333
18
374
1.4
91
148
2-14
9
76
{
I
388
[GENERAL
亨
​CYCLOPÆDIA OF
PAGE.
DONNE. JOHN, poet; extracts, i……….. 201
DORSET, EARL OF, CHARLES SACK-
|
VILLE, song-writer; extracts, ii... 230
Double Dealer, the, scene from, iii.. 260
Doubting Heart. a, by Miss Procter,
vii....
• ..
|
171
DOUCE, FRANCIS, misc. writer, vi... 387
Douglas, by Home; extracts, iv. 218
DOUGLAS, GAVIN, pect, i
DORAN, DR. JOHN, hist.; extracts,
viii...
96
236
D'OYLEY, DR. GEORGE, divine, vi.. 302
Drama, English, origin of the, i. 258
Dramatic Literature, cause of the
decay of, vii………
183
85
Dramatic Poetry, History of, viii………. 374
Dramatist, the, play by Reynolds, vi
DRAPER, DR. JOHN WILLIAM, Scien-
tific writer; extract, viii..
Drapier Letters, the, by Swift, viii... 338
DRAYTON,
MICHAEL,
poct; ex-
317
18
tracts, i.
Dream of the Condemned Felon, v.. 106
Dream-Children, a Reverie, by
Lamb, v.
DRUMMOND, W., poet; extracts, i... 250
Drummond of Hawthornden, Life of,
viii....
...
·
..
81
|
Druses, the, by Bishop Heber, v. 295
DRYDEN, JOHN, as poet, ii. 203; as
dramatist, ii. 24:; às prose writer,
extracts, iii.
• · •
85
Dubartas, translated by Sylvester, i..
Dublin News-letter. iii.
DUCHAT, JACOB LE, translator, iii...
Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster, i 355
Dugdale, SIR WILLIAM, antiquary,
222
135
132
ii....
Dumb Show, origin of, i
DUNBAR, WILLIAM, poet, i….
DUNCAN, REV. IIENRY, geologist,
viii.
+ •
•
DYCE, ALEXANDER editor, viii.
DYER, JOHN, poet, iii..
DYER, SIR EDWARD, poct, i.
·
Dunciad. the, by Pope, iii. 177; as
minor poets satirised in, iii..
viii...
DUNLOP, JOHN, Viji..
Durandarte and Belerma. v..
D'URFEY, TOM, miscellaneous wri-
ter, iii………
375
366
Dutch Republic, by Motley, vii.
Duty and Patriotisin. by Maurice, viii 133
DWIGHT, DR. TIMOTHY, theologian,
vi...
-
Edinburgh Cabinet Library, vii.
| Edinburgh Gazette, iii...
Edinburgh on a Summer Night, by
195 W. Black, viì…………
EADIE, REV. DR. JOHN, viii……
EARL, JOHN, miscellaneous writer,
iii..
344
263
S7
87
28S
1.9
52
233
302
77
386
199
PAGE.
13
....
Early or English Literature, i
Early Primrose, by II. K. White, v.. $$
Earthly Paradise, the, by W. Morris,
vii...
167
Earthquake of Lisbon, by Lyell, viii. 286
Eastern Life. by Har. Martineau, viii 202
Eblis, Hall of, by Beckford, vi.... 102
Ecclesiastical Polity, by Hooker, ii.. 3
Echo, Song to, by Dr. Darwin, v.
37
Echo and Silence, by Sir E. Brydges.
vi……..
388
Eckermann's Autobiography, trans.
by Oxenford, viii…..
62
Eclipse of Faith, by Henry Rogers,
viii
112
263
148
13
35
135
Early Blue-bird, the, vii…..
64
146
Early Days, by Anthony Trollope, vii 327
Economy of Manufactures, by C. H.
Babbage, viii.
...
EDGEWORTH, MARIA, as dramatist,
vi. 84; as novelist, vi……….
Edinburgh, by Sir A. Boswell; ex-
tract, vi...
|
| Edinburgh Review, History of, vi...
Edinburgh Society Eighty Years
Since, by Lord Cockburn, viii…………. 92
Education, by Milton; extract, ii………. 277
Edward II., by Marlowe, i……………. 287
Edward, novel by Dr. John Moore, vi 114
Edward and Leonora; extract, iv.... 217
EDWARDS, JONATHAN, theologian, iv 343
EDWARDS, MRS., Dovelist, vii..
EDWARDS, RICHARD, as poet, i. 72
us dramatist, i…………
301
262
Edwin and Angelina, by Goldsmith,
iv....
142
.. ...
Egeria, by Mackay; extract, vii. 16
Egypt. History of, by S. Sharp, vii.. 360
Egypt's Place in History, by Bunsen
vii..
•
359
Egyptian Repast, Ancient, vii.
357
徽
​274
Eikon Basilike, by John Gauden, ii. 39
Eikonoclastes, by Milton, ii..
Electric Telegraph, invention of, viii 283
Electric wires and Tawell the Mur-
derer, by Sir F. Bond Head, viii... 179
Elegy, by IIammond, iv……….
194
64
Elegy in a Country Churchyard iv..
Elegy on Cowley, by Sir J. Denham,
ii...
•
Elegy on the Death of Addison, iii.
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortu-
nate Ludy, by Pope, iii
168
Elegy written in Müll, by Campbell.v. 2 3
169 | Elegy written in Spring, by M Bruce
iv...
Elements of Criticism, iv.
Elfrida, by Mason, iv..
Elia, Essays by; extracts, v.
337
36
•
··
♥♥
143
2:1
160
349
218
195
INDEX.]
389
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ELIOT, GEORGE, novelist; extracts,
vii...
PAGE.
310
ELIZABETH, QUEEN, verses by, i.
388; Letters, i..
402
ELLESMERE, EARL OF, translator, v. 388
ELLICOTT, DR. CHAS. JOHN, theolo-
gian; extract, viii………
ELLIOT, Miss JANE, poet, iv.
ELLIOT, SIR GILBERT, song-writer,iv 207
ELLIOTSON, DR. JOHN, physiologist,
viii....
295
ELLIOTT, EBENEZER, poet; extracts,
V...
ELLIS, HENRY, vii.
ELLIS, MRS., novelist, vii.
ELLIS, SIR HENRY, antiquary and
collector, vii………
··
ELLWOOD, THOMAS, misc. Writer, iii
Eloisa and Abelard, by Pope; ex-
tract. iii..
ELPHINSTONE, HON. MOUNTSTUART
traveller, viii
neous writer; extracts, viii.
Emigrants in the Bermudas, by An-
drew Marvell, ii…………
27
83
186
322
+4
ELYOT, SIR THOMAS, prose writer, i. 125
Embargo, the, vii.
|
St
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, miscella-
Emotions and the Will, by Prof.
Bain, viii...
Encyclopædia Brit.. history of, vii...
Encyclopædia, French, iv..
Encyclopædia of Antiquities, vii.
Encyclopedias, vii.
Endeavours after the Christian Life,
by Martineau; extracts, viii
Endymion, by Keats; extract, v.....
England. History of, by Guthrie, iv.
307; by Mrs. Macaulay, iv. 390;
by Sharon Turner, vi. 252; hy
Lingard, vi. 258; by Macaulay, vii.
376 by Stanhope, viii. 10; by
Keightley, viii. 14; by Froude, viii.
24;
by Gardiner, viii. 30; by
Stubbs, viii. 41; by Massey, viii.
43 Pictorial History of. viii. 23;
by W. N. Molesworth, viìì.
England and Wales, Antiquities of,
edited by Francis Grose, vi
England under Seven Administra-
tious, by A. Fonblauque, viii
England's Helicon, a miscellany, i..
English. Past and
and Present, by
Trench, viii.
English Country Gentleman, by
Thackeray, vii..
...
4.
··
145
210
English Country Gentleman of 1688,
by Macaulay, vii.
English Country Sunday, by Miss
Thackeray, vii..
English Fen-gipsies, by Crabbe, v...
374
27
292
226
181
282
3
406
27
33
160
285
234
200
126
263
383
338
109
153
English Garden, by 'Mason; extract,
iv
English Humorists of the Eighteenth
Century, vii.....
259
296
English in Italy and France, vi...... 234
English Lake Country, vii
English Landscape, by E. B. Brown-
ing, vii...
•
•
English Language, i
English Lang, and Lit., by Craik, viii
English Liberty, by Cowper, v.....
English Manufactures in the Interior
of South Africa, from Livingstone,
viii……..
+ •
..
PAGE.".
English Mercuric, the, ii.
| English National Unity, by Stubbs,
viii
363
65
40
41
English Poets, by W. Minto, viii. 99, 249
English Prose Lit., by Minto, viii... 99
English Rector and Rectory, vii…………. 321
English Shyness, by M. Edgeworth,
vi...
-155
English Trees, by Mrs. H. B. Stowe,
vii....
297
Enigmas of Life, by Greg; extract,
viii..
247
123
197
English People, History of, by J. R.
Green; extract, viii..
•
Enoch Arden, by Tennyson, vii.
Entail, the, by John Galt, vi.
32
Eothen, by A. W. Kinglake, viii………….
Epictetus, trans, by Mrs. Carter, iv.. 192
Epicurus's Morals, by Charletou, iii.. 127
Epigoniad, the, by Wilkie, iv.
78
Epigram on Sleep, by Dr. J. Wol-
cot, v..
58
..
Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, by Jas. How-
ell, iii..
129
1
23
22
Epitaph on a Jacobite, by Lord Mac-
aulay, vii. 70; by Sir D. Brewster,
viii.
278
Epitaph on Maginn, by Lockhart,viii 176
Epitaph on Mrs. Mason, partly writ-
ten by Gray, viii.
375
Epithalamium, by Geo. Buchanan, i 256
Epithalamium, by Spenser; extract,i 173
72 | Erasmus, Life of, by Dr. John Jor-
tin, iv..
326
$48 | ERCILDOUN, THOMAS OF, minstrel, i 14
Ercildonu, Thomas of, the Romance
and Prophesies of, edited by James
A. H. Murray, viii……
370
Erechthens, by A. C. Swinburne, vii. 164
Error, how to be combated, vi.
384
ERSKINE, EBENEZER and RALPH, iv 328
ERSKINE, REV. DR. JOHN, iv……….. 330
ERSKINE, THOMAS, LORD; extracts
from his speeches, vi…………
.....
349
Esmond, by Thackeray; extract, vii 259
Esop, by R. Henryson, i.
85
Esquimaux, by Captain Parry, vii... 20
50
1
1
390
[GENERAL
}
CYCLOPEDIA OF
7
J
PAGE.
Essay on Man, by Pope'; extract, iii. 179
Essays by Abraham Cowley; cx-
tracts, iii...
70
Essays on Poetry, Music, &c., by Dr.
Beattie; extracts, iv...
ESSEX, EARL OF. prose writer, i..
Estimates of Happiness. by Mrs.
Inchbald, vi..
ETHEREGE, SIR GEORGE, drama-
tist, ii...
266
Ethics of Politics, by Sir II. Taylor,
vii....
192
345
Ethiopia, Highlands of, viii.
Etonian, the, newspaper, vii. 46; viii 235
ETTRICK SHEPHERD, the, vi..
Eugene Aram, by Bulwer, vii.
Euphues, the anatomy of Wit, by
Lyly; extract, i……….
14
221
404
337
Euphues and his England, by Lyly, i 405
Euripides, Porson's, vi
Europe, History of, by Sir A. Alison,
vii...
Europe, History of, by W. Russell,iv 308
Europe During the Middle Ages, by
343
Henry Hallam; extracts, vi.... 267
EUSTACE, JOHN CHETWODE, classic-
al traveller, vii……
Eustace Conyers; extract, vii…..
Evadne, by R. L. Sheil; extract,
Eve of St. Agnes; extract, v..
Evelina, by Frances Burney;
tract, vi...
EVELYN, JOHN, misc. writer;
tracts, iii...
*
►
16
208
7st
289
87
108
62
+ ·
Evening Hymn, by Trench, vii..
Evening Primrose, by B. Barton. v.. 348
Evening Walk, the, by Wordsworth,
V....
125
Evergreen, the, ed. by Allan Ram-
say, iii……….
Every Man in his Humour, i..
Every-day Book, Table Book, and
92
Year Book, by William Home, viii 182
Excelsior, by Longfellow, vii…….
Exclusive London Life, by Mrs.
Gore, vii...
• •
Excursion, the, by E. Elliott, v.
Excursion, the, by Wordsworth; ex-
tracts, v...
•
Exile of Erin, by Thos. Campbell, v.
Exile's Song, by Robert Gilfillan, vi.
Expediency, by Archbishop Whate-
ly, viii..
EYRE, LIEUTENANT VINCENT, viii..
1
· ··
vi..
cx-
ex-
350
40
►
120
233
305
212
375
FABIAN, ROBERT, chronicler, i...... 114
Fable of the Bees, by Mandeville, iii. 331
Fable of the Oak and the Briar, by
Spenser, i...
Fables, by Gay, iii.
129
220)
33
117
31
171
214
፡
PAGE.
Fables of the IIoly Alliance, by
Thomas Brown (Thomas Moore), v 210
Faery Queen, the; extracts, i...... 159
Fair France, by Mulock; extract, vii 318
Fair Penitent, the, by Rowe, iii. 248
Fair Recluse, the, v..
357
Fair to See, by L. W. M. Lockhart,
vii..
341
FAIRBAIRN, SIR WILLIAM, engineer
viii
283
187
15
FAIRFAX, EDWARD, poet, i.
Fairy Mythology, by Keightley, viii.
Faith and Intellect, by Dr. Lyddon,
viii..
★
153
Faithful Shepherdess, by Fletcher, i. 339
FALCONER, WILLIAM, poet, iv. 102
•
False Delicacy, comedy, by Kelly, iv 223
Family Library, the, vii..
35
158
Family Scene, a, by Austen, vi………….
Fancy Fair, by Douglas Jerrold, vii..
FANE, II. G., viii…….
FANSHAWE, LADY A. H.-Her Me-
moirs, iii..
195
31
....
128
•
329
••••••
Far from the Madding Crowd, by
Thomas Hardy; extracts, vii.
FARADAY. MICHAEL, Scientific wri-
ter; extracts, viii..
... 278
Faraday, as a Discoverer, by Tyn-
dall, viii.
▸
Faraday, Life and Letters of, viii...
Farce, the, origin of, iv…..
Fardorongha, the Miser, vi...
74
Farewell, Life, by Thomas Hood, vii
Farewell to Ayrshire, by R. Gall, v..
FARMER, DR. RICHARD, iv………
Farmer's Boy, the; extracts, v.....
Farmer's Calendar, by Ar. Young, vi 386
FARQUHAR, GEORGE, dramatist, iii. 266
Fatal Curiosity, by Lillo, scene from,
iii....
252
146
Faust, translated by A. Hayward, viii 236
Faust, translated by J. S. Blackie, vii 175
Faustus, Life and Death of, by Mar-
lowe, i.
FAWKES, FRANCIS, poet and trausla-
tor, iv..
283
154
....
Fawn of Spring Vale, by Carleton, vi 238
Feats on the Fiord, viii……….
200
FELLOWS, CHARLES, traveller, viii... 320
FELTHAM, OWEN, ¡¡Ï….
Fenelon, writings of, by Dr. Chan-
ning, viii...
67
Father and Daughter, by Mrs. Opie,
vi....
FENN, SIR JOHN, historian, vi.
FENTON, ELIJAH, minor poet, iii...
Ferdinand and Isabella, by Prescott,
vii....
•
..
279
279
2-13
238
49
405
391
106
263
197
347
……
Ferdinand Count Fathom, iv………… 262
FERGUSON, DR. ADAM, historian, iv. 402
FERGUSSON, ROBERT, poet, iv……………. 211
INDEX.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
391
FERRIER, PROFESSOR, metaphysi-
cian, viii..
69
207
FERRIER, SUSAN E., novelist, vi....
Festus, by Bailey; extract, vii.
Feudal System, Effects of, by Hal-
lam, vi...
FORTESCUE, SIR JOHN, prose writer,i 110
Fortunarns; or, the Wishing-cap, i.. 353
FORTUNE,
368 FORTUNE, ROBERT, botanist and
traveller; extract, viii..
267
326
76
FORSTER, Joux, biographer, viii..
FORSYTH, JOSEPH, vii...
FORSYTH, WILLIAM, ViÏÎ…….
14
51
FIELD, NATHANIEL, dramatist, i.... 368
FIELDING, HENRY, as dramatist, iv.
229; as novelist, iv....
FIELDING, SARAH, iv..
Fig for Momus, by Lodge, viii……
FILMER, SIR ROBERT.prose writer, ii
FINDLATER, DR. ANDREW, editor,vii 34
Fingal, by Macpherson, iv.
FINLAY, GEORGE. historian, vii
Finnesburg, Battle of, i..
283
FOSBROOKE, REV. T. D., antiquary,
vi....
331
ST
Fossil Pine Tree, the, by Hugh
Miller, viii……….
302
Fossils of the South Downs, viii.. 237*
FOSTER, DR. JAMES, theologian, iv.. 33s
305
FOSTER, REV. JOHN, vi..
Four Georges, by Thackeray, vii…….. 262
Fourfold State, Boston's, iii..
32
Fox, CHARLES JAMES, politician, vi. 253
Fox. C. J., Memorials of, viii..
50
4
Fox, GEORGE, iii...
•
Fox, JOHN; Book of Martyrs, i. 392
Fox and Pitt, characters of, from
Junius," iv.
•
Fireside, the, by Nathaniel Cotton, v
Firmilian, by Professor Aytoun, vii..
FISHER, JOHN, BISHOP, prose-wri-
ter, i………..
PAGE.
Flowers of the Forest, by Miss J.
Elliot, iv.
Flowers of the Forest, by Mrs. Cock-
burn, iv…….
Fœdera, the, by T. Rymer and R.
Sanderson, íi.
FONBLANQUE, ALBANY, journalist,
'viii...
Fool of Quality, by Brooke, iv.
FOOTE, SAMUEL, dramatist, iv.
Footprints of the Creator, by Miller.
viii...
•
FORD, JOIN, dramatist, i..
•
FORD, RICHARD, traveller, viii
FORDUN, JOHN, chronicler,
Fisherman's Funeral, by Scott, vi...
Fishing Village in Normandy, by
Miss Thackeray, vii……………
FITZBALL, EDWARD, dramatist, vii.. 201
Fitz-Boodle, Esq., George (Thacke-
240
ray), vii……….
·
FORBES, ARCHIBALD, historian, viii.
FORBES, PROF. J. D., scientific wri-
ter, viii.
FITZPATRICK, RICHARD, satirist, v.
Five Hundreth Points of Good
Husbandrie, by Thos. Tusser; ex-
tracts, i....
357
|
293
41
FLAVEL. JOпN, theologian, iii.
Fleece, the. by John Dyer, iii.
FLEMING, PROF. JOHN,naturalist,viii 304
FLETCHER, ANDREW, of Saltoun, iii. 334
FLETCHER, Mrs., vii...
FLETCHER. PHINEAS and GILES, i.. 234
Flitting of the Lyndsays, vì……
Flodden, Battle of, by Sir W. Scott,v 245
Florence Macarthy; extract, vi……….. 167
Flower o' Dunblane, the, vi…….
Flowers. Improvement in, by Dar-
win, viii..
209
|
11
•
••••
S
269
213
108
C
254
262
372
aa
6
4
6
74
124
186
25.4
33
75
30
308
211
211
345
236
283
230
299
38
259
375
340
54
PAGE.
Foreign
plant, viii.
Forest Minstrel, by W. and M. How-
itt, vili...
Memories, by Mrs. Oli-
..
•
36S
France, Lectures on, by Stephen,viii 51
France, the South of, by A. B. Reach,
vii
291
FRANCILLON, R., novelist, vii……….. 241
Francis I. and the Emperor Charles
V., characters of, by Robertson, iv 305
FRANCIS, SIR PHILIP, iv..
362
Frankenstein, by Mrs. Shelley; ex-
tract, vi..
169
391
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, iv.
FRANKLIN, SIR JOHN, Arctic travel-
ler, vii. 22: vili..
350
26
FRASER. JAMES BAILLIE, as novel-
ist, vi. 221; as traveller, vii…….
Fraser's Magazine commenced, viii. 176
Frederick the Great, by Carlyle; ex-
tract, vii……….
397
Freebooter Life, by Peacock, vi..... 244
FREEMAN, EDWARD A., historian,
viii……..
44
French Revolution, by Carlyle; ex-
tracts, v.i..
393
FRERE, JOHN HOOKHAM, poet, v.... 213.
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, i.... 279
Friar of Orders Gray, iv.
146
··
Friend, the, edited by Coleridge, v.. 15)
Friends in Council, by Sir A. Helps,
viii....
240
Friendship, by Pollok. v.
304
►
Froissart, translation of; extracts, i.. 132
Frost at Midnight, by Coleridge, v... 164
FROUDE, JAMES ANTHONY, histo-
rian; extracts, viii.
23
FROUDE, RICHARD H., Tractarian,
viii..
101
...
••••
...
392.
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
PAGE.
Fugitive Verses. by Joanna Baillie, v 366
FULLER, DR. THOMAS, historian;
extracts, ii...
361
•
97
Fuller, Thomas, Life of, viii.
FULLERTON, LADY GEO., novelist, vii 285
Funeral Ceremony at Rome, vii………….
Funeral of the Great Duke, by Ten-
nyson, vii..
16
121
··
Funeral of the Lovers in Rimini,' v. 322
Funeral, the, play by Steele, iii.
Steele, iii...... 272
Gaberlunzie Man, the, i..
Gaelic Bards, i………….
Gaelic Poetry, Fragments of,'transla-
ted by Macpherson, iv.
Gaffer Gray, by Thomas Holcroft, vi 107
GAIMAR, GEOFFREY, İ....
87
10
204
GAIRDNER, JAMES, editor, vi………
GALL, RICHARD, Song-writer, v………….. 401
GALT, JOHN, novelist, vi..
192
•
时
​Gambling in the Last Century, viii.
GAMBOLD, JOHN, poet, iv.
197
Gamester, the, by Edward Moore, iv 17
Gammer Gurton's Needle, by J.
Still, i....
. 260
Gardener's Daughter, the, by Ten-
nyson; extract, vii……….
220
114
GARDINER, S. R., historian, viii.. 3)
GARRICK, DAVID, dramatist, iv..
Garrick, Death and Character of, vi. 333
GARTH, SIR SAMUEL, poet, iii……….
GASCOIGNE, GEORGE, poet, i…………….
GASKELL, MRS., novelist; extracts,
vii...
203
13
GAUDEN, JOHN, theologian, ii.
GAY, JOHN, poet, iii…….
GAY, SYDNEY HOWARD, historian,
vii...
•
• *
371
315
316
14
Gebir, by W. S. Landor; extract, v. 181
GEIKIE, ARCHIBALD, geologist, viii.
GEIKIE, JAMES, geologist, viii.
GELL, SIR WILLIAM, traveller, vii...
Genevieve, by Coleridge; extract, v. 155
Gentle Shepherd, the; extracts, iii.. 234
Gentleman's Magazine, the, iv....
Geographical Graminar, by Guthrie,
406
·
..
Geology, Principles of; and Ele-
ments of, by Sir C. Lyell; ex-
tracts, viii..
Geology and Mineralogy, by Dr.
Buckland, viii……..
108
4
iv....
307
Geography, Modern, by Pinkerton,vi 2 3
Geologist, Hint to, by Murchison, viii 290
Geology, Elementary, by Dr. E.
Hitchcock, viii...
288
Geology compared to History, by Sir
C. Lyell, viii...
George II., Memoirs of, by Lord
Hervey; extract, iv. 290; by H.
Walpole, iv.
+4
286
358
212
285
284
285
396
•••
George IV., Memoirs of the Court of,
by the Duke of Buckinghain, viii..
George Barnwell, by Lillo, iii.
Georgics, the, translated by Sotheby,
·
Į
V....
39
German Drunas, the, vi.
German Poetry, a survey of, v.....
Germanic Races in Europe, Influence
of, by Rev. W. Stubbs, viii. . . . .
Gertrude of Wyoming; extracts, v.. 225
Giaour, the, by Lord Byron; extract,v 256
GIBBON, EDWARD, historian, iv.. 30S
Gibbon, Memoir of, by Lord Shef-
field, vi..
--
GIFFORD, REV. RICHARD, poet, iv…….
GIFFORD, WILLIAM, poet, v..
Gift, the, by Mrs. Augusta Web-
ster, vii...
173
GILBERT, MRS. (Ann Taylor), v.
.. 363
GILBERT, W. S., dramatist, vii.. 201
GILDAS, historian, i..
Gilderoy, a ballad, ii.
4
228
GILDON, CHARLES, minor poet, iii... 192
GILFILLAN, REV. GEORGE; extracts,
viii……….
215
GILFILLAN, ROBERT, Song-writer, vi 33
GILLIES, DR. JOHN, historian, vi.... 2-2
Gilpin, John, by Cowper, ii...
GILPIN, REV. WILLIAM, naturalist,
vi...
25
↓
PAGE.
50
251
...
200
60
389
343
Ginevra, from Rogers's Italy,' v.... 118
Ginx's Baby, by Edward Jenkins, vii 342
Gipsies, froin Tales' by Crabbe, v.. 109
GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS, historian, i 11
Glaciers of the Alps, by Tyndall, viii 314
Cladiator, the, by Lord Byron, v.... 251
GLADSTONE, IION. W. E., vii.
GLAPTHORNE, HENRY, dramatist, i. 368
GLASSCOCK, CAPTAIN, novelist, vii.. 207
GLEIG, REV. G. R., novelist and his-
torian, vii...
8
279
-77
30
303
GLEN, WILLIAM, Song-writer, vii………. 181
Glenarvon, by Lady C. Lamb, vi…………. 228
Glencoe, Valley of, by Macaulay, vii. 383
Gloomy Winter's Noo Awa', vi.
Glossarium Archeologicum, ii.
GLOUCESTER, ROBERT OF, metrical
chronicler, i.
11
25
• •
GLOVER, RICHARD, as poet, iv.
Glow-worm, the, by Clare, v..
God in History, by Chevalier Bun-
sen, vii....
360
93
God's Acre, by Longfellow, vii.
Godiva, by Tennyson; extract, vii.. 116
GODWIN, WILLIAM, as dramatist, vi.
62; as novelist, vi. 133; as histo-
rian, vi.
Godwin, Life of, by C. Kegan Paul,
viii...
Goethe, Life of, by G. H. Lewes, viii 61
Goethe at Weimar, by G, Ticknor, vii 364
260
•
376
15
148
327
INDEX.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
393
忠
​Going Out and Coming In, by Isa
Craig-Knox, vii..
172
GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, as poet, iv. 127;
as essayist, iv. 238; as novelist, iv. 223
Goldsmith, Life of extract, viii' 77
Goudibert, by Sir Wm. Davenaut, ii. 123
Good Words, viii.
GOODE, REV. WILLIAM, theologian,
vii....
166
PAGE.
•
...
210
405
62
248
45
27
Good-night, and Joy be wi' Ye a', vi.
Goodwin Sands and Tenderden Stee-
ple, by Bishop Latimer. i..
Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, i..
Gordian Knot, the; extract, vii.
GORE, MRS.. novelist, vii...
GOSSON, STEPHEN, prose-writer, i...
Götz von Berlichiugen. trans., viii...
GOUGH, RICHARD. antiquary, vi
Gower, JOHN, poet. i……….
GRAFTON, RICHARD, chronicler, ii….
Graham of Claverhouse, Life of, viii.
GRAHAME, REV. JAMES, poct, iii....
GRAINGER. DR. JAMES, poet, iv………….
Grammont, Memoires du Comte, ii.. 342
Granby, by T. H. Lister; extract, vi 27
Grand Question Debated, the, by
Jonathan Swift, iii……….
123
Grandiloquent Writing. by Laudor, v 187
Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, iv 307
GRANT, J. A., African traveller; ex-
tract, viii....
52
90
84
•
356
304
341
68
264
GRANT, JAMES, novelist, vii………
GRANT, MARIA M., novelist, vii.....
GRANT, MRS. ANNE, poet; extracts,v 68
GRANT, ROBERT, astronomer, viii…….
Grasmere, by Gray, iv..
Grasshopper and the Cricket, v.
Grateful Servant, the, by Shirley, i..
GRATTAN, THOMAS COLLEY, novel-
ist, vi...
Grave, the, by Robt. Blair; extracts,
iv...
..
134
13
1.4
126
261
199
58
324
383
226
Greece, History of, by W. Mitford.vi.
249; by Gillies, vi. 252; by Thirl-
13
44
345
|
9
|
wall, viii. 1; by Fiulay, viii. 7; by
Schmitz, viii..
Greece, History of the War of Inde-
pendence in, by Keightley, viii..
Greece, Mythology of, by Keightley,
viii...
GREEN, JOHN R., historian;
tracts, viii....
PAGE.
Grave of Anna, by Gifford, ii.
Graves of a Household, v.
Graves of the Euglish Scamen in the
Polar Regions, by Osborn, viii………. 3×1
GRAY, DAVID, poet; specimens, vii. 100
GRAY, THOMAS,poct; extracts, iv……
Great Britain, "History of, by Dr.
53
Robert Henry, iv. 306; by Mac-
pherson, iv. 307; by Malcolm
Laing, vi.
262
Great Ice Age, by J. Geikie, viii..... 316
Greater Britain, by Sir C. W. Dilke,
viii. 98; extracts. viii……….
Greece, Ancient Literature and Lan-
guage of, by W. Mure, viii. 7; by
K. O. Müller and Dr. Donaldson,
viii...
345
14
14
41
GREEN, MATTHEW, poet; extracts,iii 381
GREENE, ROBERT, dramatist, i...... 276
Greenland. by Moutgomery; ex-
tracts. v.
310
Greenland Missionaries, by Cowper,v 12
GREG, W. RATIBONE; extracts, viii 247
Greuville Papers, the, viii…………
50
GRESWELL, REV. EDWARD; extracts,
viii … … … ·
119
GREVILLE, C'HARLES C. F.; extracts,
viii....
99
234
72
GRIFFIN, GERALD, novelist, vi.
GRIMOALD, NICHOLAS, poet, i………
Groat's Worth of Wit, by Greene, i.. 280
Grongar Hill, by John Dyer; ex-
tract, iii..
387
Grote, George, Memoir of, viii.
Grub Street Journal, iv
GROSART, REV. ALEXANDER, editor,
viii...
CX-
..
GROSE, FRANCIS, antiquary, vi……….
GROTE, GEORGE, historian; extracts,
viii....
•
•
406
Gryll Grange, by Peacock; extract, vi 246
Guardian, the, commenced, iii……
Guesses at Truth. viii….
13)
gian; extracts, viii..
GUTHRIE, WILLIAM, historian, iv...
Gutzlaff's China, vii…….
Guy of Warwick, i.
9
125
280
42
344
Guinea, Adventures of a, iv.
Gull's Hornbook, by Dekker, ii.
Gulliver's Travels; extracts, iii……….
GURWOOD, LIEUT.-COL.. historian,vi 276
Gustavus Vasa, by Brooke, iv………………. 217
theolo-
GUTHRIE, REV. THOMAS,
375
34S
2
4
HALE, SIR MATTHEW; extracts, iii.
HALES, JOIN, divine, ii.
HALIBURTON, THOS. C., misc, wri-
ter, viii..
HABINGTON. W., poet; extracts, ii. 86
Habits and Instincts of Animals, by
Kirby, viii...
5
265
15S
Hafiz, a song of, by Sir W. Jones, v...
Haidee, from Byron, v....
HAILES, LORD, historian, iv.
Hajji Baba, by J. Morier; extract, vi 220
HAKLUYT, RICHARD; Collection of
Voyages, ii...、
308
162
307
324
16
31
63
348
180
HALIFAX, MARQUIS OF, politician, ii 309
HALL, CAPTAIN BASIL, traveller, vii 28
HALL, EDWARD, chronicler, i....... 174
394
[GENERAL
CYCLOPEDIA OF
&
1
HALL, JOSEPH, BISHOP; specimens
of his prose, ii..
46
..
302
266
HALL, MRS. S. C., novelist, vii……. 214
HALL, REV. ROBERT, theologian, vi.
HALLAM, HENRY, historian, vi.
HALLECK, FITZGREENE, poet, vii....
Halleck, Life and Letters of, vii……….
Halloa, My Fancy; extract. ii..
HALYBURTON, THOMAS, theologian,
·
·
iiì....
32
Hame, flame. Hame, vi.
23
HAMILTON, ELIZABETH, novelist, vi 161
HAMILTON, SIR W.. netaphysician,
viii………..
265
Hamilton, Sir W., Memoirs of, viii.. 268
HAMILTON, THOMAS, novelist, vi.... 212
HAMILTON, WILLIAM, poet; ex-
tract, iv..
194
199
Hamlet, Character of, by Hazlitt, vi.. 356
HAMMOND, JAMES, poet, iv..
HAMPDEN, DR. R. D., theologian,viii 119
Hampden, John, Memoirs of, vi..... 288
Handlyng Synne, i.
18
Hannah, by Miss Mulock; extract, vii 319
HANNAY, JAMES, novelist; extracts,
vii
203
355
Hannibal, Character of, by Dr. Ar-
nold, vii.
HARDWICK, CHARLES, theologian, viii 134
HARDY, THOMAS, novelist, vii. :28
Hardyknute, by Lady E. Wardlaw,iii 231
HARE, AUGUSTUS C., viii………..
HARE, AUGUSTUS W., theologian, viii 125
HARE, JULIUS C., theologian, viii... 125
Hare with Many Friends, the, by
Gay, iii
125
|
216
31
151
190
HARLAN, J., historian, viii
HARRINGTON, JAMES, prose writer,ii 283
HARRINGTON, JOHN, poet, i...
HARRINGTON, SIR JOHN, poet, i..
HARRIS, JAMES, philologist, iv..
HARRIS, MAJOR W. C., traveller, viii 345
HARRIS, WILLIAM, biographer, iv... 404
HARRIS, WILLIAM, chronicler, ii....
HARTE, FRANCIS BRET, as poet, vii.
404
29
479; as novelist; extracts, vii……….. 332
Hartleian Theory, the, iv....
HARTLEY, DR. DAVID, psychologist,
314
PAGE.
..
•
HAWTHORNE, N., novelist; extracts,
viii ……….
HAYDON, B. R., Autobiography of,
vii...
4
79
79
237
w
iv....
Harvest, by R. Bloomfield, v.
Hassan, the Camel-driver, by Col-
lins, iv..
21
15
Hastings, Battle of, by Palgrave, vii 361
Havelok the Dane; extract, i……….
HAWKINS, DR. EDWARD, theologian
viii.
344
76
119
293
200
|
|
'
·
HATLEY, WILLIAM, as poet, v. 28;
as biographer, vi.
280
HAYWARD, ABRAHAM, essayist. viii. 236
HAYWARD SIR JOHN, prose-writer,ii 27
HAZLITT, WILLIAM, critic, vi.. 354
HAZLITT, W. CAREW, editor, viii... 374
HEAD, SIR GEORGE and SIR FRAN-
•
CIS BOND, travellers; extracts, viii 178
Heads of the People, by Jerrold, vii. 193
Heart of Midlothian; extract, vi.... 189
Heat as a Mode of Motion, by Tyn-
dall, viii.
314
HEBER, DR. REGINALD, Poet, v……….. 29t
Hebrew Bible, by Dr. Kennicot, iv.. 326
Hebrew Race, the, by B. Disraeli, vii 237
HEDDERWICK, J., poet; extracts.vii 63
Hedge-schoolmaster, by Lady Mor-
gan, vi..
167
Heir of Redclyffe, by C. M. Yonge,
vii..
239
Helen, by Maria Edgeworth, vi.
Helen of Kirkconuel, by J. Mayne,vi
Helga, by Herbert; extract, v………
HELPS, SIR A., essayist; extracts,
viii
HEMANS, MRS., poet; extracts, v………. 343
Henrietta Temple, by B. Disraeli, iii 231
Henry II., Reign of, by Lyttelton, iv 306
Henry VIII., Reign of, by Herbert,ii 316
Henry VIII., Markets and Wages in
the Reign of, by Froude, viii……………
Ileury VIII., Portrait of, by Froude,
viii..
25
PAGE.
·
❤
•
•
292
152
5
373
26
HENRY, DR. ROBERT, historian, iv.. 306
HENRY, MATTHEW, Commentator,iii 31
IIERAUD, JOHN ABRAHAM, poet, vii 42
HERBERT, George. poet; extract, ii 70
HERBERT, HON. WILLIAM, poet, v.. 373
HERBERT, LORD EDWARD, histo-
rian. ii..
315
HERBERT, SIR THOMAS, misc. wri-
ter, iii...
55
+
Herd's collection of Scotch Songs, iv 199
Hermes, Harris's; extract, iv.
Hermit, the, by Beattie, iv.
Hermit, the, by Parnell, iii.
404
183
208
Hero and Leander, by Marlowe, i... 213
HERRICK, ROBERT, poet; extracts. ii 114
Herschel, Caroline, Memoir of, viii.. 255
HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN, astronomer;
extracts, viii...
2-3
289
HERVEY, LORD, historian, iv.
HERVEY, REV. JAMES, iv.
329
HERVEY, THOMAS KIBBLE, poet, vii 60
Hesiod, translated by Cooke, iii.. 198
Hester Kirten, by Mrs. Macquoid, vii 340
Hetty Sorrel, from 'Adam Bede,' vii 311
HEYLIN, PETER, historian; extracts,
iii…….
65
258
HEYWOOD, JOHN, i……….
HEYWOOD, THOMAS, dramatist, i…….. 380
INDEX.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
395
?
PAGE.
Hidden Life, by George MacDonald ;
308
extract, vii..
Hierarchy of Angels, by Heywood, i. 381
Hieronimo, by Thomas Kyd, i……….
High Life below Stairs, by Town-
ley, iv...
271
230
..
13
High Street of Edinburgh, the, by
Sir A. Boswell, vi ..
Highland Girl, to a, by Wordsworth,
142
V..
Highland Host, the, by Cleland, ii……. 237
Highlander, the, by Mrs. Grant; ex-
··
··
tract, v....
Highways and Byways, vi.
IIILL, AARON, minor poet, iii. 198;
iii……..
as dramatist, iii
Hills o' Gallewa', the, vi
HIND, JOHN RUSSELL, astronomer,
v ii....
V
·
71
226
263
Hind and Panther, ii. 206; extract. ii 211
HINDS. DR. SAMUEL. theologian, viii 119
Hindu Widow, Sacrifice of a. viii………. 321
Hindustan. History of, by Orme, iv.. 307
HISLOP, JAMES, Song-writer, vi....
History. Outlines of, by T. Keight-
ley, viii..
38
History, Universal, the, iv..
HITCHCOCK, DR. EDWARD, geolo-
gist, viii....
HOADLY. DR., dramatist, iv.
HOADLY. DR. B., theologian, iii.
HOBBES, THомAS, philosopher; ex-
tracts, ii..
272
34
by
14
307
254
HOBHOUSE. JOHN CAM, traveller, vii
HOGG, JAMES, poet; extracts, vi....
Hoggarty Diamond, the. vii....
Hohenlinden, by Thos. Campbell, v. 228
HOLCROFT, THOMAS, as dramatist,
vi. 59; as novelist, vi.
Holinsbed's Chronicles. ii……
HOLLAND, DR., traveller, vii.
HOLLAND, LORD. biographer, vi…………… 280
HOLLAND. SIR RICHARD, poet, i.... 81
Holland-tide, by Gerald Griffin, vi... 235
Holly Tree, the, by Southey, v...... 179
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, poet
106
29
14
and essayist, vii.
288
228
302
88
122
314
Holy and Profaue States, by Fuller,ii 363
Holy Grail, by Tennyson, vii...
Home, by Montgomery, v.
HOME, JOIN, dramatist, iv.
Home among the Mountains,
Wilson, v.
221
Homely Similes by Burke, iv.
Homer, translations of. by Hobbes,
ii. 282; by Pope, iii. 174; by Tick-
ell, iii. 221; by Southey, v. 200; by
W. Cullent Bryant, vii. S5; by J.
Stuart Blackie, vii….
Homeric Poems, Unity of, by W.
Mure, vii...
340
379
•
175
300
HORNE, RICHARD HENRY, poet, vii.. 116
297
HoRSLEY, DR. SAMUEL. vì...
Hours of Idleness. by Lord Byron, v. 253
28
House of Fame, by Chaucer, i.
282
14 House of Sleep, from the Faery
14 Queen," i.....
64
IIomes of England, by Mrs. He-
inans, v..
346
75
182
Hondreth Good Points of Husband-
rie, by Thomas Tusser, i...
HONE, WILLIAM, Viii..
Honest Whore, the, by Dekker, i………. 353
Honeymoon, by J. Tobin; extract,vi 83
HOOD, THOMAS, poet; extracts, vii.. 48
HOOK, DR. JAMES, novelist, vi...... 212
HOOK, THEODORE EDWARD, novel-
ist, vi....
224
Hook, Theodore Edward, Life and
Remains of, vi……….
2
PAGE.
•
224
HOOKE, NATH., Roman historian. iv 288
HOOKER, JOHN, chronicler, ü…………… 29
ii. 7
HOOKER, RICHARD, prose writer,
200
HOPE, THOMAS, novelist, vi....
Horace. Imitations of, by Pope, iii.. 179
Horace in London. Parodies by Jas.
and Horace Smith; specimens, v.. 231
Hore Hellenice,
Hellenice, by Blackie; ex-
tract, vii....
176
Пore Pauline, by Paley, vi. 296;
extract, vi…………
291-
Horæ Subsecivæ, by Dr John Brown,
viii...
244
HORNE, DR. GEORGE, theologian, iv. 326
HORNE, DR. THOMAS H., theologian,
vi...
Huc, M., traveller: extract, viii.
Hudibras; extracts. ii...
•
69
293
138
House of the Seven Gables, vii.
Household of a Christian, viii..
Housebold Words, edited by Dick-
ens, vii...
252
Houses and Furniture in the Middle
Ages, from Hallam's "Europe," vi 268
HOWARD, H., EARL OF SURREY,
poet, i..
Howard, John, Life of. viii.
HOWE, JOHN, theologian, iii.
HOWELL, JAS., misc. writer;
tracts, iii...
HOWITT, W. and MARY; extracts,viii 207
HOWSON, DEAN, viii.
50
136
ex-
Hugh Trevor,.by T. Holcroft. vi....
HUGHES, JOHN, essayist. iii.
HUGHES, THOMAS, novelist, vii….
Hulscan Lectures, viii...
Human Life, by S. Rogers, v. 113;
extract. v...
66
-73
29
323
187
106
293
281
137
117
Humau Understanding, by Hume, iv 339
Humanity of the Age, by Trollope vii 326
Humble Pleasures, by R. Bloomfield,v 75
7 HUME, ALEXANDER, poet, i....
247
}
396
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
ܝ
HUME, DAVID, philosopher; ex-
tracts, iv..
Hume, David, Life of, by Burton, iv.
294; viii...
!
339
47
52
170
|
72
··
HUME, MARY C., poet, vii.
Humming-bird, the, by Audubon, vi 357
Humphry Clinker. by Smollett, iv... 262
HUNNIS, WILLIAM, poet, i………….
HUNT. J. LEIGH, poet and essayist, v 319
HUNTER, MRS., poet; specimens, v.
Hunting on a Great Scale, by Living-
stone, viii...
65
PAGE.
HUME, DAVID, OF GODSCROFT, his-
torian, viii.
363
11
11
HUNTINGDON. HENRY OF, historian,i
HURD, DR. RICHARD, theologian, iv 326
HUTCHESON, FRANCIS, philosopher,
....
•
iv....
38
127
Hutchinson, Col.. Memoirs of, vì……….. 288
HUTCHINSON, LUCY--her Memoirs.iii
HUXLEY, THOMAS H., naturalist; cx-
tracts, viii...
Hydriotaphia, by Sir Thos. Browne,
iii...
309
56
249
Hymn of the Hebrew Maid, from
"Ivanhoe," v.
Hymn on Chamouni, by Coleridge, v 161
Hymn on the Nativity, by Milton, ii, 153
Hymn to Pan. from Endymion." v 290
Hymns for Infant Minds, by J, and
A. Taylor, v……….
“
4
...
Hyperion, by Keats; extract, v.
Hyperion, by Longfellow, vii
Hyppolitus and his Age, by Bunsen,
vii....
36
288
91
359
379
I'd be a Butterfly, by Bayly, v....
Idler, the, by Dr. S. Johnson, iv……….. 237
Idylls of the King, by Tennyson; ex-
tract, vii..
122
Iliad, translations of, by Chapman, i.
350; by Pope, iii. 175; by Tickell,
iii. 221; by Macpherson, iv. 88; by
Sotheby, v. 200 by W. Cullen Bry-
ant, vii. 85; by J. S. Blackie, vii.. 175
175
Iliad and Odyssey, Controversy re-
garding the Unity of the Author-
ship, viii..
2. 7
Ilka Blade o' Grass, by Ballantine.vii 181
Ilustrations of Political Economy,
199
by II. Martineau, viii..
Illustrations of the Literature of the
Eighteenth Century, by Nichols, vi 385
Image-breaking of Antwerp, by Mot-
ley, viii..
Imaginary Conversations, by W. S.
Landor; extracts, v.
Imitations of Living Writers, by I.
H. Browne; specimens, iii.
366
181
383
PAGE.
Immortality of the Soul, Opinion of
the Ancient Philosophers concern-
ing, from Gibbon, iv………….
In Memoriam, by Tennyson; ex-
tract. vii....
24 •
• • •
In the Downhill of Life, v.
Inca, the, his Visit to Pizarro, by
Prescott, vii..
INCHIBALD, MRS. ELIZABETHI, as
dramatist, vi. 58; as novelist; cx-
tracts, vi...
··
Inchbald, Mrs., particulars of her
life, from C. Kegan Paul's "Life
of Godwin," viii.
Indestructibility of Mind, by Davy,
viii..
....
India, Diary in, by Russell. viii.
India, Five Years in, by H. G. Fane,
viii...
-
44
314
India and Afghanistan, Memoirs of,
by J. Harlan, viii.
Indicator, the. v...
Indifference of the World, by Thack-
eray. vii..
263
Induction, the, by Lord Buckhurst, i 147
Inductive Sciences, History of, by
Whewell, viii. . . .
260
29
204
10
INGELOW, JEAN. poet; specimens, vii 171
INGLIS. II. D., traveller, vii…….
Ingoldsby Legends, the, vii.
INGULPH, historian, i....
Inheritance, the, by S. E. Ferrier, vi. 213
INNES. COSMO, historian, viii………….
Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain,
viii..
48
119
300
350
巍
​119
376.
253
38
31
··
242
348
Inquiry, Freedom of, by Tyndall, viii 314
Inquiry into the Human Mind, by
Dr. Thomas Reid, iv..
Inquiry into the Relation of Cause
and Effect, by Dr. T. Brown, vi... 322
Inspiration of Scripture, by Hinds, viii 120
Instauration of the Sciences, ii......
Intellectual Development of Europe,
viii....
8
31
321
317
Intellectual Powers, by Reid, iv... 348
Interpretation of Scripture, the, by
Jowett, viii...
Intimations of Immortality, by
159
Wordsworth, v.
135
Invocation to Birds, by Procter, v….. 351
Ion, by Tulford; scenes from, vii.. 185
Iona, Reflections on Landing at. from
360
307
Johnson, iv..
Ireland, History of, by Dr. Warner,
iv. 307; by Dr. Leland, iv.
Ireland, Past and Present, by J. W.
Croker; extract, viii…….
Ireland, Sketches of, by the Rev.
Cæsar Otway, vi.
Ireland, Tour through, by Inglis, vii. 30
IRELAND, SAMUEL, bookseller, vi... 335
196
234
INDEX.]
397
ENGLISH LITERATURE,
IRELAND, WILLIAM HENRY, (Shaks-
pearean forger) vi..
PAGE.
Irish Landlord and Scotch Agent, by
M. Edgeworth, vi…..
Irish Postilion, by M. Edgeworth, vi
Irish Sketch-book, by Michael An-
gelo Titmarsh (Thackeray); ex-
tract. vii....
255
Irish Songs, by Thomas Moore;
specimens, v
207
283
Irish Village, picture, by Carleton, vi 239
Iron, its History and Manufacture,
by Sir W. Fairbairn, viii...
Irving, Rev. Ed., theologian, Life of,
viii. 67; Sketch of, by Gilfillan, viii 216
IRVING, WASHINGTON, historian
and novelist, vi..
359
Irving's Lives of the Scottish Poets, vi 290
Irvingites, sect of, viii……….
Isabella. by Southerne; scenes from,
68
iii...
211
Isle of Palms, by Professor Wilson, v 339
Italian, the, by Mrs. Radcliffe; ex-
tract, vi...
Italian Evening, from Childe Har-
old," v……….
130
263
Italian Song, by Samuel Rogers, v...
Italy, Beckford's; extract, vii.
Italy, by Dickens; extract, vii……….
Italy, by Lady Morgan, vi. 166; vii.
Italy, by Samuel Rogers; extracts, v
Italy, by Sotheby, v....
Italy, Recollectious of, by Macfar-
lane, viii……….
Itinerárium Curiosum, by Stukeley,
iv....
405
129
184
Itinerary, the, by John Leland, i………
Ivanhoe; extracts, vi……..
Ivry, song by T. B. Macaulay, vii………. 72
..
72
335
153
154,
JAGO, REV. RICHARD, poet, iv.
JAMES I., King of England (VI. of
Scotland); as prose-writer, ii
James I., Memoirs of the Court of,
••
by Lucy Aikin. viii.
JAMES I, of Scotland, as poet, i……….
James H.. History of the Reigu of,
by Charles J. Fox, vi....
JAMES, G. P. R., novelist, vii………
JAMESON, MRS., misc. writer; ex-
tracts, viii.
Jane Eyre, by Ch. Brontë; extracts,
vii....
120
Jack Cade's Insurrection, by Fabian.i 115
Jack Sheppard, by W. 11. Ainsworth,
vii...
17
251
16
120°
200
230
191
61
22
76
254
217
183
277
Jane Shore, by Rowe, scene from, iii 248
Jealous Wife, the, by Colman, iv.... 223
Jeanie Deans and Queen Caroline, vi 189
Jeanie Morrison, by W. Motherwell.
vi....
26
PAGE.
371
31
Jellelabad, Defence of, by Sale, viii..
JENKINS, EDWARD, novelist, vii.... 342
Jenny dang the Weaver, by Sir A.
Boswell, vi……….
12
11
JERROLD, DOUGLAS, dramatist, vii.. 193.
194
Jerrold, Douglas, Life of, vii…………
Jerusalem before the Siege, by Mil-
man,
JEFFREY, FRANCIS, critic; extracts,
vi..
to
Jenny's Bawbee, by Sir A. Boswell,
vi...
John Gilpin, by Cowper, v.
John Halifax, by Miss Mulock; ex-
tract, vii...
*
JOHNSON, DR. SAMUEL, as poet, iv.
115; as misc. writer. iv.
Johnson Samuel, LL.D., Life of, by
J. Boswell, vi..
Latin
256
23 JOHNSTON, DR. ARTHUR,
poet, i………..
JOHNSTONE, CHARLES, novelist, iv.. 260
JOHNSTONE, MRS.. vi..
211
Jolly Beggars, the, by Burns, v...... 394
JONES, REV. R., political economist,
vi....
330
··
Y.
356
Jew, the, play by Cumberland, vi.... 104
Jew of Malta, the, by Marlowe, i………… 236
Jewish and Christian Churches, by
Newman, viii…..
105
Jews, History of, by Milman, v. 356;
viii....
16
JEWSBURY, GERALDINE, novelist, vii 293
Joan of Arc, by Southey; extract. v 171
Joan of Arc, by Thomas De Quin-
cey, viii.
JOCELYN. LORD, traveller, viii.
Jockey's Intelligencer. the, iii.
John Bull, History of, by Arbuthnot;
extracts. iii………
...
**
A
195-
325
134
359
25
317
357
278
JONES, SIR WILLIAM, Scholar and
poet. v...
JONSON, BEN; extracts, i. 319;
masks, i.
322
JORTIN, DR. JOIN, theologian, iv.. 326
Joseph Andrews, by Fielding, iv. ... 255
Journey to the Western Isles, by
Dr. Johnson, iv. 119; extract, iv.. 300
JOWETT, REV. B., theologian, viii... 158
Judge and the Victim, from Mrs.
luchbald's Nature and Art," vi... 120
Juditi. Anglo-Saxon poem, i..
4
Julia de Roubigné, by II. Macken-
zie, iv.
..
284
Julian, tragedy, by Miss Mitford, vi. 241
Jumping Frog, the, by Mark Twain,
viii.
242
366
274
Junius and Sir Philip Francis; ex.
tracts from Junius, iv.
Jupiter, is it inhabited? by Brews-
ter, viii……..
2
· 398
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
L
Ad
Kaleidoscope invented by Brewster,
viii..
274
KAMES, LORD, philosopher, iv. 349
Kate Kearney, song by Lady Mor-
gan, vi……….
·
PAGE.
··
KAVANAGH. JULIA, novelist, vii....
KAYE, SIR JOHN W., historian, viii..
KEATS, JOHN, poet, v……….
Keats. Life and Remains of, vii.
vii....
KEBLE, REV. JопN, as poet, v. 380;
as theologian, viii.
KEIGHTLEY, THOMAS, historian, viii
KELLY, HUGH, drainatist, iv..
KEN, THOMAS, BISHOP, bymn-wri-
ter. iii...
··
•
Kickleburys, the, on the Rhine, vii..
KIDD, DR. JOHN, viii:…….
•
4
•
••
KENNEDY, R. II., historian, viii.
KENNEDY, WALTER, poet,i...
Kennedy's,
TV.,
Voyage of the
"Prince Albert," viii...
350
KENNICOT, DR.-his Hebrew Bible,iv 326
KENT, CHARLES, poet, vii……
KEPPEL, HON. G., traveller, vii…….
KER, REV. JOHN, theol.; extracts,viii 173
Keswick, Description of the Vale of,
by Dr. Brown, iv.
145
24
391
Khubla Khan, by Coleridge; .ex-
tract, v...
165
285
31
E · ..
285
78
101
14
223
3
31
103
17
Kilmeny, by Hogg; extracts, vi.
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid,i 104
KING, DR. HENRY, poct; extracts, ii
KING, EDWARD, antiquary, iv..
KING, EDWARD, historian, vii..
King's Own, the, by Marryat; ex-
tract, vii..
78
405
3 5
207
•••
King's Quhair, the, by James I., i... 77
KINGLAKE, ALEXANDER W., histo-
rian; extracts, viii.
31
KINGSLEY, REV. CHARLES; extracts,
vii....
155
258
158
·
206
KIRBY, REV. W., theologian, viii... 18
Kitten, the, by Jo. Baillie; extract, v 366
KITTO, DR. JOHN, theologian, viii... 110
Knife-grinder, by Canning, v..
47
KNIGHT, CHARLES, publisher, viii.. 235
KNIGHT, HENRY GALLY, poet, v…….. 318
Knight's Cyclopædia of Biography, vi 290
Knight's Quarterly Magazine, viii... 235
KNOLLES, RICHARD, historian, ii……….
KNOWLES, HERBERT, poet, v..
KNOWLES, JAMES SHERIDAN, dram-
21
800
atist. vi..
75
50
KNOX, JOHN, divine, ii.
369
Kuox, John, Life of, by Dr. M'Cric,vi 285
KNOX, WILLIAM, poet, v..
Koran, translated by George Sale, iv 307
Kotzebue's plays, translated, vi
Kruitzner, or the German's Tale, by
H. Lee, vi...
47
•
108
Kuzzilbash, the, a Tale of Khorasan,
by J. B. Fraser; extracts, vi.. 222
KYD, THOMAS, dramatist, i.
271
Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament, ii.... 289
Lady Audley's Secret, by Miss Brad-
don. vii...
310
341
Lady Bell, by Sarah Tytler, vii.…….
Lady of the Lake, by Scott; extract,v 249
Lady's Chamber in the 13th Century,
by Maturin, vi...
173
•
Lafayette, Life of, by G. Ticknor, vii 364
LAIDLAW, WILLIAM, Song-writer, vi 35
LAING, MALCOLM, historian. vi..... 262
LAING, SAMUEL, traveller; extracts,
viii...
332
Laing's Remains of Ancient Popular
Poetry of Scotland, i………
....
··
• **
Laird o' Cockpen, by Lady Nairne, vi
Lake Regions of Central Africa, by
Captain Burton, viii.
353
Lalla Rookh, by Moore; extracts, v. 203
LAMB, CHARLES, poet and essayist,v 189
Lamb, Charles, Final Memorials of,
by T. N. Talfourd, vii...
8
185
LAMB, LADY CAROLINE, novelist, vi 2:28
Lamb, the, by W. Blake, v...
124
Lame Lover, the, scenes from, iv 231
Land o' the Leal, by Lady Nairne, vi 7
LANDER, RICHARD, traveller, vii....
LANDON, LETITIA ELIZABETH (L.
E. L.), poet; extracts, v.
361
LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, poct, v. 181
LANE, E. W.. oriental scholar, viii.. 235
LANGHORNE, DR. JOHN, poet, iv.
LANGLAND, WILLIAM, poet, i.
Language, by Whitney extract, viii 316
Language, Essay on the Origin and
.. 156
20
•
Progress of, by Lord Monboddo, iv 403
Language, Science of, by F. M. Mül-
ler; extract, viii.
Language the Barrier between Brute
and Man, by F. M. Müller, viii.... 311
Langue d'Oil, i.
312
9
· L
ww
PAGE.
•
-
………a
•
LANSDOWNE, LORD, poet. iii.
223
Laodamia, by Wordsworth, v.
.. 134
LARDNER, DR. D., scientific writer,
viii...
303
LARDNER, DR. NATHANIEL, theol.,iv 37
Lardner's Cyclopædia, vii.
Last Days of Herculaneum, v..
Last Man, by Campbell; extract, v.. 229
LATIMER, HIGH, theologian; ex-
tract, i...
34
JES
12,
••
•
Latin Language, spread of the, by F.
M. Müller, viii.
•
85
7
a
312
Latterday Pamphlets, by Carlyle, vii. 394
Laud, Character of, by Masson, viii.. 79
LAUDER. SIR THOMAS DICK, novel-
ist and miscellaneous writer, vi.... 211
LAURENCE, DR., satirist, v..
38

INDEX
399
ENGLISH LITERATURE.`
LAW, BISHOP, theologian, iv.
LAW, REV. W., theologian, iv.
Lawrie Todd, or the Settlers, by Galt,
vi...
•
191
·
Lay of the Last Minstrel; extracts, v. 243
Layamon, i...
11
LAYARD, AUSTEN HENRY, traveller,
viii
PAGE.
325
32
Lays of Ancient Rome; extracts, vii.
Lays of the Scot. Cavaliers; extracts.
vii....
LE BAS, REV. C. WEBB, theologian,
vi..
Leader, the, newspaper, viii.
Leaders of the Reformation, by Tul-
loch, viii..
#
LECKY, WILLIAM E. H., philoso-
pher, viii..
LEE, HOLME (Harriet Parr), novelist,
vii.
»
►
361
262
103
LEE, NATHANIEL, dramatist, ji.
LEE, SOPHIA and HARRIET, Vİ……….
LEIGHTON, ROBERT, ARCHBISHOP,ii 3-1
Leighton, Archbishop, character of,ii 336
LELAND, JOHN, antiquary, i..
LELAND, Joux, theologian. iv.
Leland's, Dr., History of Ireland, iv. SUS
LEMON, MARK, dramatist and editor,
129
338
vii....
198
LENNOX. MRS. CH, misc. writer, iv.. 393
Leo X., Life of, by W. Roscoe, vi... 261
Leonidas, by Glover; extract, iv.... 148
LESLIE, CHARLES, theologian, íii……. £05
LESLIE, JOHN. Bisnor, historian, ii
LESLIE, SIR JOHN, scientific writer,
viii...
59
250
L'ESTRANGE, SIR ROGER; extracts,
iii..
121, 133
351
278
|
Letters, by Pope; extracts, iii…….
LEVER, CHARLES JAMES, novelist,vii
Leviathan. the, by Hobbes, ii…………… 26.'
LEWES, G. H., novelist and biog..viii
Lewesdon Hill, by W. Crowe; extr.,v
LEWIS, MATTHEW GREGORY, as
poet, v. 229; as dramatist, vi. 61; us
novelist, vi.
59
59
59
342
65
it
...
302
62
LEWIS, SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL,
miscellaneous writer. vii.
LEYDEN, JOшn, poet, v……….
Liberal English Churchmen, by Tul-
loch, viii...
Liberty, by John Stuart Mill, viii
Liberty and Necessity, by Hobbes, ii.
Library, the, by George Crabbe, v....
Library of Entertaining Knowledge,
vii....
36
LIDDON, REV. II. P., theologian, viii 153
Life, the Mystery of, by Gambold, iv 197
Life and Liberty in America, by
...
Mackay, viii.
Life Drama, a, by Alex. Smith, vii...
LINDSAY, LORD, traveller, viii.
Lindsays, Lives of the, viii
Lines written in a lonely Burying
Ground, by John Wilson, v..
170 | LINGARD. DR. JOHN, historian, vi... 255
10-1
Liune, the Heir of, i…….
3-43
99
LINTON, MRS. ELIZA LYNN, novel-
ist. vii...
299
LISTER, THOMAS HENRY, novelist,vi 227
Literary Advertisement, by Moore, v 205
Literature. Curiosities of, by Isaac
D'Israeli, vi…………
171
270
283
97
Life in the Sick-room, by Martineau,
viii
Light of Nature Pursued, by Tucker,
200
IV...
353
A
Lights and Shadows of Irish Life, vi 210
Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,
338
97
PAGE.
21
by Professor Wilson; extract, vi. 208
LILLO, WILLIAM, dramatist, iii.
Lily, the, by Mrs. Tighe, v
Limits of Government Interference,
by J. S. Mill, viii……….
73
..
|
··
·
·
▼
Literature of Europe, by H. Hallam,
vi....
269
36
LITHGOW. WILLIAM, traveller. ii
LITTLE. THOMAS (Thos. Moore), v.. 2041
Lives of Eminent Painters, Sculp
tors, and Architects, by A. Cun-
ningham, vi....
Lives of the Poets, by Dr. S. John-
119, 360
son, iv
LIVINGSTONE, DAVID, traveller; ex-
tracts, viii..
300
Livingstone, Last Journals of, viii... 368
Livingstone and Stanley, the Meeting
of, at lˇjiji, viii…….
366
Livy, translated by John Bellenden,i 143
103
LLOYD, ROBERT, poet, iv.....
Loc. CAPTAIN G. G., traveller. viii. 325
Lochaber No More, by Allan Ram-
sav. iii..
Lochiel's Warning, by Campbell, v..
Lochleven, poem, by Michaël Bruce,
iv....
271
320
52
♦
130
Lochnagar and Byron, by Gilfillan,
viii…….
402
2
| LOCKE, JOHN. philosopher, iii. 32
extracts, iii…….
$1
3S
...
LOCKER, FREDERIC, lyric writer, vii 174
LOCKHART, JOUN GIBSON, as novel-
53
ist, vi. 204; as biographer, viii…………
LOCKHART, LAWRENCE W. M., nov-
elist. vii..
311
Locksley Hall, by Tennyson. vii..... 113
LOCKYER, J. NORMAN, astronomer,
viii....
204
282
391
...
22
Locomotive, on the, by Stephenson,
U
viii...
LODGE, THOMAS, as poet, i. 2:0; as
ì....
dramatist, i..
239
221
160
215
2$2
-400-
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
K
1

LOGAN, JOHN, poet, iv..
Logan Bracs, by John Mayne, vi..
Logic, A System of, by J. S. Mill,viii
Logis, by Professor Bain, viii….
Logic, Elements of, by Dr. Whately,
...
· •
V1..
London and Mont Blanc, from Dr.
Arnold's Letters, viii..
London Encyclopædia, vii.
London Gazette, iii..
London in Autumu, by H. Luttrell, v 317
LONDONDERRY, MARQUIS OF, trav-
eller, viii..
134
330
LONGFELLOW, H. W., poet; speci-
meus, vii...
91
Lord Gregory, ballad, v..
58
341
Lorenzi de' Medici, by Roscoe, vi.... 261
Lorna Doone, by Blackmore, vii……….
Lot of Thousands, by Mrs. Hunter, v
Lotos-eaters, the, by Tennyson, pas-
sage from, vii….
70
Lousiad, the, by Dr. John Wolcot, v
Love, by Coleridge, v.
Love, from Pollok's "Course of
Time," v.
•
•
PAGE.
PAGE.
162 | Lute, Ode to a, by Sir Thos. Wyatt, i 70
4 Luther, Martin, from Robertson's
"History of Charles V.," iv……………. 300
Luther's Satan, by Prof. Masson; viii St
LUTTRELL, HENRY, poet; extracts, v 317
Luxuries of the Spanish Caliphs, by
Draper, viii..
Luxury, Effects of, by David Hume,
iv.
318
Love, from Southey's Thalaba," v.
Love, Hope, and Patience in Educa-
tion, by Coleridge, v..
151
230
. 261
Love-á-la-Mode, by Macklin, iv.
Love for Love, scenes from, iii
Love in a Village, by Bickerstaff, iv.. 233
Love of Country, from the "Lay of
the Last Minstrel," v.
270
.. 282
329
55
34
...
241
351
Love's Mistress, by Ileywood, i..
LOVELACE, RICHARD, poet; extr, ii.
LOVER, SAMUEL, poet and novelist,
95
vii.
280
Lover's Melancholy, the, by Ford;
extract. i.
378
Lovers' Vows, Kotzebue's, trauslated
by Mrs. Inchbald, vi…………
58
Loves of the Angels, the, by Moore,v 210
Loves of the Plants. the, by Dr. E.
31
...
•
· 7 ..
117
51
163
Darwin; extracts, v………
Loves of the Poets, by Mrs. Jame-
son, viii....
151
LowE, JOHN, poet, iv.
LOWELL, J. R., poet; extracts, vii..
LOWTH, DR. WILLIAM, theologian,iii 302
LOWTH, ROBERT, BISHOP, iv..
Lualaba Lakes, explored by Cain-
eron, viii..
325
Lucan's Pharsalia, translated by
May, ii...
Lucasta, by Lovelace, ii..
Lucian's Dialogues, trans., ii.
Luck of Roaring Camp, by Bret
Harte. passage from, vii..
Lucy's Fittin', by Wm. Laidlaw, vi.. 35
Luggie, the, by David Gray, vii.
Lusiad, Camoen's; extract, iv.
169
100
187
303
175
185
208
369
315
96
210
...
Lycidas, by Milton; extract, ii.
Lyckpenuy, the London, i...
LYDGATE, JOHN, poet, i..
61
LYELL. SIR CHARLES, geologist, viii 281
Lying Valet, the, by Garrick, iv………… 230
LYLY, JOHN, as dramatist, i. 264; as
prose writer, i...
403
98
253
Lyndhurst, Life of, by Campbell, vii 71
LYNDSAY, SIR DAVID, poet, i.
Lyndsay, Life of Sir Duvid, vi.
Lyndsay, Sir David, editions of his
Works by George Chalmers; by
David Laing. i…………
LYON, CAPTAIN, traveller, vii.
99
23
Lyrical Ballads, by Wordsworth, v.. 125
LITE, REV. HENRY FRANCIS, poet;
specimens, vii……….
LYTTLETON. GEORGE, LORD, poet;
extracts, iii…..
144
...
47
Lyttleton Fabrication, the, by Wil-
liam Combe; specimen of, vi…………….. 340
Lyttleton, Lord. Memoir and Corres-
341
169
62
pondence of, by R. Phillimore, iv.. 50
LÝTTON, LORD E. R. (nom-de-plume
Owen Meredith), poet, vii.......
143
1
··
MACARTNEY, LORD, traveller, vii………
MACAULAY, MRS. CATHERINE, iv. 390
MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, as
poet, vii. 65; as historian; ex-
tracts, vii..
376
386
...
Macaulay, T. B., Life of, vii..
M'CARTHY, D. F., trauslator, vii... 177
M'CLURE, CAPTAIN R., Discoverer
of the North-west Passage, viii………. 350
M'CRIE, DR. THOMAS, vi………
M'CULLOCH, J. RAMSAY, economist,
vi...
285
330
304
23
MACDONALD, GEORGE, novelist; ex-
tracts, vii...
MACFARLANE, CHARLES, historian,
vii..
Mac-Flecknoe, by Dryden; extr., ii. 212
MACKAY, ALEXANDER, traveller, viii 338
MACKAY, DR. CHARLES, as poet, vii.
105; as traveller, viii……
339
MACKENZIE, HENRY, novelist, iv... 283
MACKENZIE, SIR GEORGE, philoso-
pher; cxtracts, iii..
106
MACKINTOSH, SIR JAMES, as histo-
rian; extracts, vi. 254; as theolo-
giàu, vi...
1.
321
"
INDEX.]
PAGE.
MACKLIN, CHARLES, dramatist, iv... 23)
MACLAGAN, ALEXANDER, poet, vii.. 180
MACLAREN, CHARLES, journalist and
304
geologist, viii..
M'LENNAN. MALCOLM, novelist, viii. 47
MACLEOD, Rev. Norman; extrs.,viii 165
MACNEILL, HECTOR, poet, vì………
MACPHERSON, D., M.D., traveller,
1
ENGLISH LITERATURE,
325
viii....
MACPHERSON,
translator, iv………
JAMES, poct and
87
|
MACQUOID, MRS. C. S., novelist, vii. 3-40
MADDEN, DR. R. R., traveller, vii…….
Madonna. Picture of, by Mrs. Jame-
son, viii.
Mæviad, the, by W. Gifford, v.
Maggie Lauder, by Francis Sempill,
iii..
་
·
Maggie Lauder, by Tennant, vi.
MAGINN, WILLIAM, Viii…………
MAHONY, REV. FRANCIS (Father
Prout), magazine writer. viii
176
•
Maid Marian, by Peacock; extr., vi. 145
Maid's Lament, by W. S. Landor. v. 182
Maid's Metamorphoses, by Lyly, i……. 265
Maid's Tragedy, by Beaumont and
Fletcher, i..
•
Man, Antiquity of, by Lyell, viii…………
Man, his Frame. his Duty, and his
Expectations, by Dr. Hartley, iv..
Man of Feeling, by Henry Macken-
zie; extracts, iv..
Maitland Mannscripts, the, i.
MAITLAND, SIR RICHARD, poet, i...
Malcolm, by George MacDonald; ex-
tracts, viii.
MALCOLM, SIR JOHN, traveller, vii..
MALLET, DAVID, as poet, iv. 34; as
dramatist, iv..
MALMSBURY, EARL OF., Diaries and
Correspondence of, viii..
MALMSBURY, WILLIAM OF, i
MALONE, EDMUND, vi..
MALORY, SIR THOMAS, poet, i...
MALTBY. DR. EDWARD, theologian,
vi.....
300
MALTHUS, REV. T. R., economist,vi 328
Mammoth, the, from Prof. R. Owen,
viii...
Man of the World, by Henry Mack-
enzie, iv.
Man of the World, by Macklin, iv………
MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE; ex-
tracts, iii..
MANDEVILLE, SIR JOHN, traveller
extracts. i.
PAGE.
MANNERS, LORD JOHN, poet, vii..... 105
Manners and Customs of the An-
cient Egyptians, by Wilkinson, vii. 357
Manners and Customs of the Modern
Egyptians, by Lane, viii…………
235
MANNING, MISS ANNE, novelist, vii.. 300
MANSEL, REV. H. L., metaphysician,
viii...
209
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, vi.. 156
Mansie Wauch, by D. M. Moir, vii.. 53
MANT, DR. RICHARD, theologian, vi 302
MANTELL, DR. G. A., palæontologist
21 viii..
287
181
42
Manfred, by Lord Byron; extr., v...
Mankind, Physical History of, by J.
C. Prichard, viü.
MANLEY, DE LA RIVIERE, MRS.,
miscellaneous writer, iii..
....
230
SE
175
339
103
245
245
306
25
Marco Bozzaris, vii
Mariam, by Lady Eliz. Carew, ii..
Marie Antoinette, by Burke, iv,
Marinda Bruce,
Bruce, portrait of,
Amory, iv.
43
346
Mariners of England, Ye, v..
MARK TWAIN (nom-de-plume of
Samuel Langhorne Clemens) viii... 242
MARKHAM, C. R., traveller, viii..
Marlborough, Duke of, Memoirs of,
by Alison, vii……….
MARLOWE, CHRISTOPHER—his po-
etry, i. 212; extracts from his plays,i 283
246
Marmion; extracts, v...
Marriage, by S. E. Ferrier: extr., vi 213
32
Marrow of Modern Divinity, iìi .
MARRYAT, CAPT., Novelist; extr.,vii 204
Marryat, Life and Letters of, vii.... 207
| MARRYAT, FLORENCE, novelist, vii. 341
MARSO, DR. HERBERT, theologian,vi 301
MARSH. MRS. ANNE, novelist, vii.... 284
MARSTON, JOHN, as poet, i. 207; as
dramatist, i..
217
50
10
|
337
112
|
|
3
|
MARCET, Mrs., political economist,
vi....
••
·
•
by
A
+
401
...
329
SO
362
MARSTON, WESTLAND, dramatist, vii 201
MARTIN, M., traveller, iii..
335
74
MARTIN, THEODORE, poet, vii……
| Martin Chuzzlewit, viii..
251
294
285
MARTINEAU, HARRIET; extracts,viii 198
| MARTINEAU, REV. JAMES, theolo-
gian; extracts, viii.
344
160
Martins of Cro' Martin; extract, vii. 279
355
Martinus Scriblerus, iii.
Martyrdom of St. Paul, by Cony-
beare, viii..
284
Martyrs. Fox's Book of, i.
284
230
330
54
263
265
333
83
384
389
221
135
392
MARVELL, ANDREW, poet; extrs, ii. 179
Mary Barton; extract, vii.
286
403
•
402
Mary in Heaven, by Burns, v
Mary Morison, by Burns, iii.
Mary of Castle-Cary, by H. Mac-
neill, vi....
3
Mary, Queen of Scots, by Tytler, iv.. 306
Mary. Queen of Scots, Character of,
by Robertson, iv..
300
Mary, Queen of Scots, Death of,
from Froude's History, viii... 27
1
402
en
{
PAGE.
Mary's Dream, by John Lowe, iv.... 209
Mask, the Memorable, i....
333
Masks, Court, of the 17th Cent.. i... 331
MASON, WILLIAM, as poet, iv. 152;
as dramatist, iv.
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
MASSEY, GERALD, poet, vii…….
MASSEY, W., historian; extract, viii 43
MASSINGER, PHILIP, dramatist, i.... 369
MASSON, CHARLES, traveller, viii………. 322
MASSON, DAVID, biog.; extracts viii. 79
Mathematical Learning, Usefulness
of, by Arbuthnot; extract, iii..... 362
Mathematics, on, by Sir W. Hamil-
ton, viii..
•
MATHER, Miss, novelist, vii.
•
Matthew of Paris, i.
Matthew of Westminister, i.
MATHEWS, HENRY, traveller, vii……….
MATHIAS. THOMAS JAMES, poet, v..
Matilda, by the Marquis of Norman-
dy, vi………
Matter and Spirit, by Dr. J. Priest-
ley, iv..
MAXWELL, W. HAMILTON, novelist,
vii……….
MAY, SIR T. ERSKINE, historian, viii
MAY, THOMAS, historian, ii
May Morning at Ravenna, by Leigh
Hunt, v..
May-eve, by John Cunningham, iv..
MAYNE, JASPER, dramatist, ii……..
MAYNE, JOUN, poet, vi....
Mechanics, Treatise on, by Whe-
well, viii...
..
•
++
Matthew's Bible, i………..
MATURIN, RBV. CHARLES ROBERT,
121
dramatist, vi. 72; as novelist, vi... 172
Maud, by Tennyson, vii………..
MAURICE, REV. J. FRED. Denison,
theologian, viii……….
133
304
42
314
••
218
99
··
Fitzosborne), iv………
Melrose Abbey, by Scott, v
MELVIL, SIR JAMES, his Memoirs ;
extracts, ii...
MELVILL, REV, HENRY, theologian;
extract, viii..
267
301
16
50
227
354
11
11
137
260
Mechanism of the Heavens, by Mrs.
Mary Somerville, viii
258
··
263
Medals, Essay on, by Pinkerton, vi..
Medals of Creation, by Mantell, viii. 288
Meditations, Hervey's, iv..
Melmoth the Wanderer, by Maturin,
328
vi...
MELMOTH, WILLIAM (uom-de-plume
322
155
239
4
173
393
244
56
122
Melville, Andrew, Life of, by M'Crie,
285
vi...
MELVILLE, HERMAN, traveller, viii.. 221
Memorials of a Quiet Life, viii…… 125
Memorials of his Time, by Lord
Cockburn; extract, viii.
91
[GENERAL
PAGE.
Memorie of the Somerviles, edited by
Sir Walter Scott, viii…….
Memorics, by Mrs. H. B. Stowe:
extract, vii……….
•
Men of Genius, by Carlyle, vii..
Meu of Genius Resolute Workers, by
G. H. Lewes, viii...
••
MENNES or MENNIS, SIR JOHN, ii..
Menu, Ordinances of, translated by
Sir William Jones, ii..
Mercurius Politicus, edited by March-
mont Needham, iii.
MEREDITH, OWEN, nom-de-plume of
Lord Lytton, vii...
MERIVALE, REV. CHARLES, histo-
rian, vii..
403
Mermaid, the, by Leyden: extract,v. 85
MERRICK, JAMES, poet, iv…….
$6
C
182
Mesogonus, by Thos. Rychardes,' i. 259
Messiah, the, by Pope, iii....
METETARD, ELIZA, biographer, viii. 91
Methinks it is good to be here, v.... 300
Method, Treatise ou, by Coleridge ;
extract, v....
-
52
••
ron, v...
MILL, JAMES, as historian, vi. 277;
as psychologist, vi. 324; as polit-
ical economist, vi..
MILL, JOHN STUART, metaphysician
viii
297
390
165
14
Metrical Romances, Origin of, i....
Mexico, Conquest of, by Prescott, vii 347
Mexico, Life in. by Mme. Calderon,
viii...
60
92
536
Mexico, Storming of, by Prescott, vii 348
MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH (Thack-
eray), vii……….
25-1
...
Michaelis's Introduction to the New
Testament; edited by Marsh, vi... 301
MICKLE, WILLIAM JULIUS, poet, iv. 183
Microcosm, the. periodical, v..
46
Microcosmography, by Earle; ex-
tract, iii...
65
Microcosmus, the, by Nabbes, i...... 368
Microsmus, by Peter Heylin, iii... 65
Middlemarch, by George Eliot, vii... 313
MIDDLETON, DR. CONYERS, as biog-
rapher, iv. 289; as theologian, iv.. 325
MIDDLETON, THOMAS, dramatist, i.. 359
Midnight Scene in Rome, from By-
253
...
3
133
··
143
3:9
270
214
(
Mill, John Steart-his autobiog., viii. 272
Mill on the Floss; extract, vii...
MILLER, HUGH, geologist; extrs., viii 295
Miller. Hugh,
Hugh, Life of, by Peter
Bayne; also in Golden Lives,'
by Henry A. Page, viii……
303
MILLER, THOMAS, misc. writer, viii. 182
Mills and Mill-work, by Sir W. Fair-
bairn, viii...
283
MILMAN, REV. II. HART, as poet, v.
355; as theologian, viii
16
1
INDEX.]
403
ENGLISH LITERATURE,
PAGE.
MILNES, RICHARD MONCKTON, LORD
HOUGHTON, poet; extracts, vii....
MILTON, JOHN, as poet, ii. 153; as
prose writer, ii…..
Miltou, from Landor, v.
Milton, Life of. by Keightley, viii.
16; by Prof. Masson, viii.
Mind, Indestructibility of. by Sir II.
Davy, viii....
viii.
Mind above Matter, by Ker,
Mind and Body: the Theories on
their Relation. by Prof. Bain, viii. 282
Minerva Press Novels, vi…….
Minister's Wooing, the, by Mrs.
87
Stowe: extracts, vii……..
MINOT, LAWRENCE, i…..
Minstrel, the, by Beattie; extracts,iv 178
Minstrel, the Aged, by Sir W Scott,v 243
Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, by
Motherwell, vi…………
-
•
77
273
187
79
253
174
Modern Theatre, by Mrs. Inchbald,
vi...
299
18
26
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. v. 237
MINTO, WILLIAM, biographier and
critic, viii...
99, 249
2.
Miracle Plays, i.
Miracles, on, by Dr. G. Campbell, iv. 47
Mirandola. by Bryan Walier Procter,
(Barry Cornwall); scene from, v.
8-49; vi..
75
147
238
Mirror for Magistrates, the,
Misfortunes of Barney Branagan, vi.
Miss in her Teens, by Garrick, iv... 230
Missionary Hymu, by Heber, v. 296
MITCHELL. THOMAS, translator, v... 389
MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL, novelist,
vi....
241
MITFORD, WILLIAM, historian, vi... 248
Mitherless Bairn, the, by Thom, vii.. 178
Modern Painters, by Ruskin; ex-
tract, viii……….
228
59
317
Mohammed, Appearance and Char-
acter of, by Gibbon, iv...
MOIR, D. M. (Delta); specimens, vii 53
Molecular and Microscopic Science,
by Mrs. Somerville, viii….
MOLESWORTH, W. N., historian, viii
Monachism, British, by Fosbrooke,
vi....
Monarchy, ou, from Blackstone, iv..
Monastery, the, vi………….
MONBODDO, Lord, iv.
Monk, the, by M. G. Lewis, v. 233;
extract, vi
Monmouth, Execution of, by Macau-
lay. vii...
··
MONMOUTH. GEOFFREY OF, i.
Montagu, CHARLES, poet, iii.
MONTAGU, MRS., misc. writer, iv.
Montaigne's Essays, trans. by Cot-
tou, ii..
259
72
72
PAGE.
67
Montalembert, Memoir of, viii..
MONTGOMERY, ALEXANDER. poet, i. 246
MONTGOMERY, JAMES, poet, v………….. 307
MONTGOMERY, REV. R., poet; ex-
tract. v.
388
357
181
403
372
406
Monthly Review, iv.
Montrose. Execution of, from Clar-
endou's History, ii..
Montrose, Marquis of, Memoirs of,
viii....
325
52
Montrose, Marquis of. Verses by, ii.. 23 i
Moonlight Scene at Sea, by Moore, v 205
MOORCROFT, W., Eastern traveller,
vii..
·
MOORE, DR. JOHN, novelist, vi.
MOORE, EDWARD; his fables, iv.
Moore, Sir John, Burial of, v
MOORE. THOMAS, as poet, v. 203;
as historian, vi....
Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy,
by Maurice, viii…….
Moral and Political Philosophy, by
Paley, vi……….
Moral Philosophy, Outlines of. by
Dugald Stewart, vi………
Moral Plavs, i.
Morals, European, History of, by
Lecky, viii..
T
→→
Morals, the Principles of, by Ilume,
iv..
MORE, DR. HENRY, theologian; ex-
tracts. ii..
|
MORE, MRS. HANNAH, misc., writer.
vi..
More, Mrs. Ianuah. Life of. vi
MORE, SIR THOMAS, historian, i ..
More Worlds than One, viii.
MORGAN, AUGUSTUS DE, mathema-
tician; extracts, viii...
MORGAN, LADY (Sydney Owenson)
as novelist, vi. 165; as traveller.vii
MORIER, JAMES, novelist, vi....
MORLEY, HENRY, PROF., biog.. viii.
MORLEY, JOHN, biographer, viii.
MORLEY, THE COUNTESS OF, vi.
MORRIS, WILLIAM, poet, vii……
MORTON. THOMAS, dramatist, ii
Mosaic Vision of Creation, by Hugh
Miller. viii...
...
26
113
17
297
286
133
201
320
258
30
339
312
331
335
118
274
80
16
218
300
Moses, Divine Legation of; extr., iv 322
Moses Concealed on the Nile, by Dr.
E. Darwin, V...
Moss, REV. T., poct, iv.
32
197
380
54
131 | MOTHERWELL, WM., song-writer. vi. 26
MOTLEY, JOHN LOTUROP, hist., vii.. 366
MOTTEUX, PETER A., translator, iii. 132
10 MOULTRIE. REV. JOHN, poet, vii……….
vi...
Mountain Bard, the, by Ilogg, vi.
390 | Mountain Children, by M Howitt.viii 210
Mountain Daisy, to a, by Burns, v... 399
MUDIE, ROBERT, misc. writer, vi... 388
137
15
191
99
98
229
167
S5
?
;
- 404
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
}
PAGE.
MUIRHEAD, J. P., biog.; extrs., viii. 82
MULLER, FRIEDRICH M., philologist,
viii
311
9
337
MULLER, K. O., historian, viii.
MULOCK, D. M., novelist; extrs., vii 317
Mummy, Address to the, v..
MUNDAY, ANTHONY, dramatist, i... 292
Munimenta Antiqua, by Ed. King, iv 405
Munster Tales, by G. Griffin, vi... 235
MURCHISON, SIR R. I., geologist, viii 288
Murchison, Sir Roderick I., Life of,
290
195
by Geikie; extracts, viii..
Murder as one of the Fine Arts, by
De Quincey; extracts, viii...
MURE,
WILLIAM, historian; ex-
tracts, viii…….
MURPHY, ARTHUR, dramatist, iv.... 223
MURRAY, LIEUT. ALEX., traveller,
7
viii...
325
108
217
Music's Duel, Strada's, ii…..
Mustapha, tragedy, by Mallet, iv.
My ain Fireside, by E. Hamilton, vi. 164
My Brother's Grave, by Moultrie, vii 55
My Circular Notes, by J. F. Camp-
bell, viii..
My Nanie O, by Allan Cunningham,
317
vi..
My Novel, by Bulwer, vii..
24
227
My only Jo and Dearie O, by Gall, v 405
My Schools and Schoolmasters, viii.. 199
My Sheep I neglected, I broke my
Sheep-hook, by Sir G. Elliot, iv... 07
My Time, O ye Muses, was happily
50
spent, by Byron, iv…….
Mysteries of Nature, by Dr. Liddon,
viii...
Mysteries of Udolpho, by Radcliffe,
vi..
14
125
368
63
6
52
271
271
•
...
…….
NABBES, THOMAS, dramatist, i..
Nabob, the, by Susanna Blamire, v..
NAIRNE, BARONESS, Song-writer, vi.
NAPIER, MARK, biographer, viii..
NAPIER, Sir Charles, Life of, vi.
NAPIER, SIR W. F. P., historian;
extract, vi.
Napier of Merchistou, Memoirs of,
viil..
+
...
52
Napiers, the, by H. Martineau, viii.. 201
Napoleon at St. Helena, viii.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Life of, by Sir
50
108
W. Scott, vi. 285; Character of, by
Dr. Channing, viii.
Narratives from Criminal Trials in
Scotland, by J. H. Burton, viii.... 47
NASH, C.. historian, viii...
31
NASH, THOMAS, dramatist, i.
Natural History of Enthusiasm, viii. 156
Natural Selection, First Conception
of the Theory of, by Charles Dar-
win, viii...
274
•
306
PAGE
295
21
264
Natural Theology, by Paley, vi......
Nature, Love of, by Cowper, v.
Nature, scientific periodical, viii.
Nature and Art, by Mrs. Inchbald
extracts, vi.
Nautical Alınanac, viii.
NEAVES, LORD, song-writer, vii……….
NEEDHAM, MARCHMONT, journalist,
iii...
;
133
Negro Servitude, by II. Mackenzie,iv 284
Negro Slavery, by Dr. Channing, viii 106
Nelson, Life of, by Southey; extr., vi 281
Nemesis of Faith, by Froude, viii... 24
NENNIUS, historian, i.
4
57
Netley Abbey, by Gray, iv..
·
New America, by W. H. Dixon; ex-
tract, viii.
120
263
173
335
..
New Bath Guide; extracts, iv.
New England and New York, Tray-
els in, by Dr. T. Dwight, vi..
New Way to pay Old Debts, i………..
New Zealand, Travels in, by Dieffen-
bach, viii..
NEWCASTLE, MARGARET, DUCHESS
OF, poet, i...
Newcomes, the; extract. vii.
NEWMAN, Dr. J. H., Tractarian. viii 101
NEWMAN, FRANCIS W., theologian,
viii.....
201
260
………
Newspapers, iîi. 65; iii..
103
132
43
NEWTON, BIsuor, theologian, iv………. 316
NEWTON, SIR ISAAC, nat. philos., iii
Ngami, Discovery of, by Living-
stone, viii....
NICHOL, PROF. JOHN, nise. writer,
viii. . .
•
74
189
362
263
NICHOL, PROF. J. P.. astronomer. vini 262
NICHOLAS DE GUILDFORD, poet, i….. 12
Nicholas Nickleby, by Dickens, vii.. 26
NICHOLS, JOIN, biographer, vi……………. 385
NICHOLSON, W., the 'Galloway
Poet.' vi...,
►
: 6
28
NICOLL, ROBERT, song-writer, vi……….
NICOLSON, DR. W., antiquary, iii. 307
Niebuhr's Ballad Theory, by Sir G. C.
Lewis, vii..
Sir S. W. Baker, viii..
Nimroud, Appearance of, by Lay-
ard. viii..
302
371
102
312
Night, by Montgomery, v.
Night. Sonnet où, by Blanco White,v 169
Night in the Desert, by Southey, v.. 173
Night-piece, on-Deuth, by Parnell, iii 208
Night-side of Nature, vii..
•
U
283
Night Thoughts, by Young; extr., iii 390
Nightingale, Ode to, by Keats, v..... 291
Nile, the Source of, from Speke, viii. 355
Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, by
358
342
Nine Cases of Conscience Resolved,
by Robert Sanderson, ii…….
Nineveh, by Layard; extracts viii... 342
358
1
}
INDEX.]
405
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
1
·
No Cross, No Crown, by Peun; ex-
tract, iii.
10
Noblest Delight, by Mark Twain,viii 243
Nocturnal Reverie, iii.
Norman Conquest, by Freeman; ex-
tract, viii.
229
PAGE.
44
|
NORMÁNBY, MARQUIS OF, novelist, vi 227
Normandy, History of, by Palgrave,
vii....
Norman-French, introduction of, i...
NORRIS, REV. JOHN, iii...
North and South, by Mrs. Gaskell, vii 287
North Briton, edited by Wilkes, iv.. 562
North-west Passage Expeditions, viii 3:0
NORTON, THE HON. MRS., poet and
361
10
319
Nymph's Reply to the Passionate
Shepherd, by Sir W. Raleigh, i………
novelist extracts, vii...
NORTON, THOMAS, dramatist, i..
Norway, by Laing; extracts, viii.
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, by
H. D. Inglis (Derwent Conway), vii
Nosce Teipsum, by Davies; extr., i..
Notes and Queries, viii……….
Nothing Human ever Dies, by Rev.
J. Martineau, viii…….
160
10
Novum Organum, by Lord Bacou, ii.
Nubian Revenge, by Warburton, viii. 189
Nut-Brown Maid, the, i..
Nyassa, discovery of, by Livingstone
viii...
107
365
213
O Nancy, wilt thou go with me? iv. 146
Oberon of Wieland, by Sotheby, v... 200
OCCLEVE, THOMAS, poet, i…….
Ocean, Apostrophe to the, by Byron,
60
---
56
261
332
29
19S
239
V....
Oceana, by J. Harrington, ii.
O'Connor's Child, by Campbell, v....
Ode to Eton College, by Gray, iv…………
Ode to Independence, by Smollett,iv
Ode to the Departing Year, by Cole-
ridge, v..
·
85
36
84
Odyssey, translated by Chapman, i.
352; by Pope, iii. 176; by Sotheby,
v. 200; by W. Cullen Bryant, vii..
Oh, no! we never mention IIim, v... 379
Oh, why left I my Hame? vi..
O'KEEFE, Jonn, dramatist, vi...
Old and Young Courtier, the, i.
Old Bachelor, scenes from, iii...
Old English Baron, by Clara Reeve,iv 281
Old English Manor-house, vi
Old Familiar Faces, by Lamb, v………….
Old Kensington, by Miss Thackeray;
extract, vii.
►
388
258
123
193
339
234
177
299
262
Old Man's Wish, the, by Dr. W.
Pope, ii..
Old Mortality, vi
Old Red Saudstone, the, by Miller,
viii..
269
223
55
72
PAGE.
...
Old Scottish Town (Peebles), descrip-
tion of, by W. Chambers, viii....
OLDYS, WILLIAM, antiquary, iv……….
OLIPHANT, MRS., as novelist, vii.
320; extracts, viii...
67
146
Oliver Twist, by Dickens; extract, vii 245
OPIE, MRS. AMELIA, as poet; ex-
tracts. v. 67; as novelist, vi..
Optics, by Sir Isaac Newton. iii......
Orange: its cultivation, by Buller, viii 334
Orcadian Sketches, by Vedder; ex-
tract, vii.....
45
Oriental Eclogues; extracts, viii....
Oriental Herald, viii.
Origin of Species, by C. Darwin ; ex-
tracts, viii..
305
Orion, an Epic Poem, vii
111
•
•
Orlando Furioso, by Robt. Greene, i. 278
Orlando Furioso, trans, bý Rose, v.. 3S7
Orlando Innamorato, trans. by Rose,
Ossian, authenticity of, by M. Laing,
vi..
V...
3S7
Orme's History of British India, iv. 307
10
Ormulum, i…………
Oroonoko, by Southerne; scenes
from, iii...
243
·
Orphan, the, by Otway; extract, ii.. 261
68
Orphan Bor's Tale, by Mrs. Opie, v..
Orphan Child. from Jaue Eyre,' vii. 278
OSBORN, LIEUT. S., traveller; ex-
tract, viii
351
262
90
Otterburn, Battle of, by R. White.viii 51
OTWAY, REV. CESAR, novelist, vi... 231
OTWAY, THOMAS, dramatist; ex-
tracts, ii...
...
OUDNEY, DR.. African traveller, vii.
'Ouida' (Louise de la Ramé), novel-
ist, vii...
Ossian, by Macpherson; specimens,
iv..
4
Owl and the Nightingale, i.
OXENFORD, MR., dramatist, vii.
Oxford Gazette started, iii.
OZELL, JOHN, translator, iii.
94
17
178
20
337
257
6
310
241
14)
Our Village, by M. R. Mitford, vi.
| OUSELEY, SIR WILLIAM, traveller,vii 25
Outlines of Astronomy, by Herschel,
viii....
255
OUTRAM, GEORGE, lyric writer, vii.. 179
OVERBury, SIR THOMAS, prose
writer, ii....
291
OWEN, DR. JOHN, theologian, ii..
OWEN, PROF. RICHARD, naturalist
and anatomist; extracts, viii……….
.. 292
Owen, Prof. R., Memoir of, viii.
OWENSON, SYDNEY (Lady Morgan),
vi....
··
44
28
165
12
201.
134
132
Pacific Ocean, Discovery of, by Vas-
co Nunez, by Sir A. Helps, viii.... 241
1
→
406
CYCLOPEDIA OF
PAGE.
Pæstum, from Rogers's ‘Italy,' v………. 120
Painters, Modern, by Ruskin: ex-
tract, viii....
228
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects,
Lives of, by A. Cunningham, vi... 22
Palace of Lionour, by Gavin Dong-
las, i...
96
Palace of Pleasure, a coll. of Tales, i. 15
Paleontology, by Prof. Owen, viii... 252
Palamon and Arcite, by R. Edwards,i 262
Palestine, by Heber; extracts. v. 294
PALEY, DR. WILLIAM, theologian, vi 291
PALGRAVE, SIR FRANCIS, historian;
extracts, vii..
...
360
PALGRAVE, W. G., traveller; CX-
tracts, viii..
34S
99
Palissy the Potter, Life of, viii.
PALMER. WILLIAM, Tractarian, viii. 101
Pamela, by Richardson; extracts, iv 245
Pandosto, by Robert Greene, i……………. 2.7
Parables, Expos. of, by Greswell, viii 120
Paracelsus, by Robert Browning, vii.
131; extract. vii..
Paradise Lost, by Milton, ii. 170; cx-
tracts, ii.
140
Paradise of Dainty Devices, a mis-
cellany, i.
i..
PARDOE, JULIA, novelist, vii..
Paris in 1815, by Croly; extracts, v. 360
Parish Register, the, by Crabbe; ex-
tracts, v....
105
Parish Workhouse, the, from Crabbe
V...
PARK, ANDREW, poet, vii….
PAKK, MUNGO, traveller; extrs., vii.
PARKS, B. RAYNER, poet; speci-
• •
••
}
•
160
78, 199
201
a
...
men, vii.
PARNELL, THOMAS, poet. iii.
PARE, DR. SAMUEL, theologian, vi..
PARRY, SIR EDWARD, traveller, vi..
Parson, the Country, by G Herbert,ii
Passages from the Diary of a Late
Physician, by Samuel Warren, vii. 239
Passages of a Working Life, viii…….. 236
Passionate Pilgrim, the, i.
··
212
213
393
264
31
29
294
Passionate Shepherd to his Love, i..
Past and Present, by Carlyle, vii....
Paston Letters, the; specimens, vi..
Pastoral Ballad, by W. Shenstone, iv
Patchwork, by Captain Basil Hall, vii
Patient Grissell, by Chettle, i……….
PATLOCK, ROBERT, novelist, iv.
PATMORE, COVENTRY, poct, vii.
PATRICK, SYMON Bisuor, iii..
PAULDING, J. KIRKE, misc. writer, vi
PAYN, JAMES, novelist. vii.
PAYNE, JOHN HOWARD, dramatist.vi 74
PAYNTER, WILLIAM, editor, i....... 153
Peace, History of the, by II. Murtin-
eau, viii..
PEACOCK, THOMAS LOVE, novelist, vi 244
23
··
99
180
4
170
207
299
20
71
248
142
305
364
341
J

PAGE.
PEARCE, NATHANIEL, traveller, vii.. 3
PEARSON, DR. JOHN, theologian, ii.. 402
Peasant Life, by Malcolm M'Lennan,
viii...
[GENERAL
247
D
Peeblis to the Play, by James I., i.. 77
PECOCK, REYNOLD, prose-writer, i.. 111
Peebles described by W. Chambers,
viii....
9-1
PEEL, SIR ROBERT, his Memoirs,
viii. 50; Life of, by Lord Stan-
hope, viii
14
PEELE, GEORGE, dramatist, i... 266
Peeps in the. Far East, by Macleod,
viii...
166
Pelican Island, the, by Montgomery,
V....
312
257
Pen Owen, by Dr. James Hook, vi.. 212
Pencilings by the Way, by Willis, vii 88
Pendennis, by Thackeray, vii..
Peninsular War, by Hamilton, vi.... 212
Peninsular War, by Napier; cxtr., vi 41
PENN, WILLIAM; extracts, iii.
Penn, William, Life of, viii……..
S
་
73
68
•
PENNANT, THOMAS, Zoologist, iv.... 387
Penniless Pilgrimage; extract, ji..
Penny Cyclopedia, vii.
Penny Magazine, vii..
Pentateuch and the Elolistic Psalms,
the, by Bishop Brown, viii.
PEPYS, SAMUEL-his Diary, iii.
PERCEVAL, ARTHUR, Tractarian, viii
PERCY, BISHOP, poet, iv...
Percy, by Mrs. llaunah More, vi.
Percy's Reliques, i..
Peregrine Pickle, by Smollett; ex-
tract, iv...
25
Persia, Journey Through, by Mor-
ier, vi..
Persia, Travels in, by Fraser, vii.. 27
Persuasion, by Jane Austen ; CX-
tract, vi....
157
•
Peru, Conquest of, by Prescott. vii.. 318
PETER PLYMLEY (Sydney Smith), vi 365
Peter Simple, by Captain Marryat,vij 205
Peter Wilkins and his Flying Bride,iv 250
Petrarch. Life of, by T. Campbell. v. 222
Phædrus, Fables of, trans. by Smart,
iv..
Phalaris, the Epistles of. iii..
T'hantasmagoriu, by M. J. Fletcher,
vii....
Pharonuida; extract, ii …….
Pharsalia, Lucan's, trans. by Rowe,
iii...
a
Phases of Faith, by F. W. Newman,
viii……….
o
Phenomena of Organic Nature, by
Huxley, viii..
Phenomena of the Iluman Mind, An-
ulysis of, by James Mill, vi…….
....
..
..
•
4
36
36
148
115
101
145
3 2
104
267
169
105
293
145
248
100
309
324
1
INDEX.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
407
5
Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletch-
er, i...
Philip II., History of, by Prescott, vii
Philip Sparrow, by John Skeltou, i..
Philip van Artevelde; scenes from,
vii…….
PHILIPS, AMBROSE, as poet, iii. 225;
as dramatist, iii...
272
02
PHILIPS, JOHN, poet; specimen, ii.. 225
PHILIPS, KATHERINE, poet, ii.
PHILLIPS, SAMUEL, Hovelist, vii..
Philosophy, Hist. of, by G. H. Lewes
290
viii....
PAGE.
V....
Pilgrims and the Peas, by Wolcot, v.
Pilgrim's Progress, the; extract, iii..
Pindar, Odes of; trans. by West, iv..
PINDAR, PETER (Dr. John Wolcot),
337
348
64
189
poet; extracts, v.
Pindaric Essays, by Johu Pomfret.ii.
Pindaric Odes, by Abraham Cowley,
ii..
61
Philosophy, Moral and Political, by
Paley; extract. vi.
292
320
322
32+
105
264
Philosophy of the Human Mind, by
Dugald Stewart, vi…………
Philosophy of the Human Mind, by
Dr. T. Brown, vi…………
Philosophy of the Moral Feelings, by
Dr. J. Abercrombie, vi……..
Phoebe Dawson, by Crabbe, ii……
Phrenology, by G. Combe; extr., vi. 325
Physical Astronomy, History of, by
Grant, viii....
Physical Geography, by Mrs. Mary
Somerville, viii..
Physical Theory of Another Life, by
Isaac Taylor: extract, viii……….
PICKEN, ANDREW, novelist, vi..
Pickwick Papers, the, by Dickens,vii 243
Pic-nic Newspaper, the, v...
Pictorial Historics of the Russian
War and Indian Revolt, viii………….
Pictorial History of England, edited
by Prof. Craik and C. Macfarlane,
viii………
259
155
212
330
31
23
Picture of Domestic Love by Camp-
bell. v..
224
135
Pied Piper of Hamelin, the, vii..
Pierce Penniless, by Thos. Nash, i.. 275
Piers the Ploughman, the Vision of.i 20
Pilgrim of Compostella, by Southey,
PINKERTON, JOHN, historiau and
geographer, vi….
Piozzi, MRS.. (Mrs. Thrale), iv
Piper of Kilbarchan, by Sempill, ii..
PITCAIRN, ROBERT, jurist, viii..
Pitt, character of, from Rolliad,' v..
Pitt, Life of, by Lord Stauhope, viii.
176
53
25
193
59
228
127
263
125
236
51
38
14
PITT, REV. CHRISTOPHER, poet, iv...
PITT, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHAT-
HAM, iv....
Pizarro, Kotzebue's, vi.
Plague in London, by Defoe; ex-
tract, iii..
Plain Dealer, by Wycherley; ex-
tract, ii...
PLANCHE, MR., dramatist. vii……
I'lanet Jupiter, is it inhabited? by
Sir D. Brewster. viii....
Plato and the other Companions of
Sokrates, by Grote. viii.
Plato's Dialogues, by Jowett, viii....
Pleas for Ragged Schools, viii.
Pleasures of Hope, the; extracts,
|
•
!
PAGE.
191
………
▼.....
219, 224
Pleasures of Memory; extract, v.... 114
Pleasures of the Imagination; ex-
tract, iv...
40
4
Plurality of Worlds, by Whewell, viii 260
I'lutareli's Lives, by Langhorne, iv.. 156
POCOCKES. the, Oriental scholars, iii
POE, EDGAR ALLAN, poet: extrs..vii 81
Poems descriptive of Rural Life, v.. 325
Poesic, Art of, by G. Puttenham, i.. 406
Foesie, Defence of, by Sir P. Sid-
396
ney. i.
54
222
Poesy, Progress of, by Gray, iv.
Poetical Rhapsody, i.
Foetical Sketches, by Blake; ex-
tract, v..
123
••••
171
360
Poetry, History of Euglish, by Thos.
Wharton, iv..
Poets, Lives of the, by Dr. Johnson,
iv. 119; extract, iv..
Political Economy, Elements of, by
James Mill. vi. 329; by J. R.
M'Cullock, vi. 330: Principles of,
by Ricardo, vi. 329; Illustrations
of, by H. Martineau, viii....
Political Register, Cobbett's. vi....
Political State of Great Britain, a
Miscellany edited by Abel Boyer,iv 307
J'OLLOK. KOBERT, poet, v.
Polychronicon, His den's, i.
·
301
56
Polyolbion, by Michael Drayton, i... 183
POMFRET, JопN, poet, ii....
228'
51
Poor Gentleman, the, scenes from, vi
| Poor Jack, by Charles Dibdin, v..... 299
Poor Relatious, from Lamb's Es-
says, v....
197
Poor Richard's Almanac, by Frank-
liu, iv..
392
POPE, ALEXANDER, as poet, iii. 173;
as prose-writer: extracts, iii.
351
Pope, Memoirs and Editions of, iii.. 197
OPE, DR. WALTER, Song-writer, ii. 234
Pope aud Dryden; Parallel between,
iv..
360
D
372
47
326
267
201
274
5
159
164
199
$35
1
408
[GENERAL
CYCLOPEDIA OF
'
Popes, History of the, by A. Bower,
iv...
PAGE.
307
Pupes, History of the. by Ranke, vii. 3S5
Popular Antiquities, Brand's, viii.... 370
Popular Rhymes of Scotland, viii...
Popular Tales, by Maria Edgeworth,
94
vì...
150
Population, by T. R. Malthus, ví.... 328
Population, Law of, by M. T. Sad-
ler, vi.
330
330
373
148
PORSON, RICHARD, miscellaneous
writer and translator, vi..
PORTER, ANNA MARIA, novelist, vi. 147
PORTER, JANE, novelist, vi....
PORTER, SIR R. KER, traveller, vii..
PORTEUS, DR. BEILBY, theologian, vi 297
Portrait, a, by Wordsworth, v.
Postal Reform-Anecdote of Coler-
25
137
Population, Lectures on, by N. W.
Senior, vi...
idge, by H. Martineau, viii...
POSTANS, CAPTAIN T., viii..
POSTANS, MRS., traveller, viii.
POWELL, REV. BADEN, scientific
writer, viii.
•••
254
46
PRAED, WINTHROP M., poet, vii……….
Prayer, by Montgomery, v.
Preceptor, the, of Robt. Dodsley, iv. 406
Precipices of the Alps, by Ruskin,
314
|
viii.
Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, viii.
Pre-Raphaelites, origin of, viii
PRESCOTT, W. II. historian; ex-
··
vi.....
PRICHARD, DR. JAMES C., ethnolo-
gist, viii...
Pricke of Conscience, i.
tract, vii..
347
Prescott, Memoir of. by Ticknor, vii. 34
PRICE, DR. RICHARD, Theologian, iv 346
PRICE, SIR UVEDALE, misc. writer,
345
Pride and Prejudice; extract, vi...
PRIDEAUX, DR. H., theologian, iii..
PRIESTLEY, DR. JOSEPH, uat. phi-
losopher, iv.
..
205
31
321
Primrose, the, by Clare, v.
Prince Consort, Life of, by Martiu,
233
51
228
265
20
158
308
353
328
vii....
74
Princess, the, by Tennyson, vii...... 118
Princess of Thule, the; cxtract, vii..
Principia, Newton's, iii.
PRINGLE, THOMAS, pоct, v.
PRIOR, MATTHEW, poct, iii…..
PROCTOR, ADELAINE A. poet; ex-
335
44
349
149
tract, vii..
170
75
PROCTER, B. W. (Barry Cornwall),
as poet, v. 349: as dramatist, vi...
PROCTOR, RICHARD A., &stronomer,
vili...
Prometheus Unbound, by Shelley;
extract, v...
264
273
PAGE.
262
176
10
Promos and Cassandra, i..
Prophecy, the, by Chatterton, iv.... 98
PROUT, FATHER (Rev. Mr. Mahony)
magazine writer, viii..
Provencal Language, i…..
Proverbs, on, by Treuch; extrs., viii 1:7
Provoked Wife, by Vaubrugh, ifi... 265
Provost, the, by Galt; extract, vi.... 198
PSALMANAZAR, GEORGE, grammia-
rian, iv……….
307
Psalms, the, trauslation of, by Da-
vison, i. 222; paraphrase of, By
George Buchanan, vi. 256; com-
plete version of, by Dr. Arthur
Johnston, i. 257; Saudy's metrical
version of, i. 234; Francis Rouse's
version of, i.
4U
+ ·
339
56
-
315
Pseudodoxia Epidemica, iii.
Psyche, by Mrs. Tighe; extr., v... 68, 71
Psychology, by Spencer, viii.
Psychozoia, by Dr. Henry More, ii.. 313
Public Advertiser, newspaper, iv.... 368
Public Intelligencer, the, iii.
134
193
•
Punch, comic periodical, vii……….
PURCHAS. SAMUEL, compiler of
travels, ii..
32
104
Purgatory of Suicides, vii.
Purple Island, the, i....
234
Pursuits of Literature, by Mathias, v 50
PUSEY, REV. ED. B., Tractarian;viii 101
PUTTENHAM, GEORGE, i.
406
●
··
•
8
Quakers, the sect founded, iii.
QUARLES, FRANCIS. poet; extrs., ii. 74
Quarterly Magazine, Knight's, viii.. 235
Quarterly Review, the, vii.
37
Queen Aune, History of her Reign,
viii...
14
•
Queen Elizabeth, Character of, by
Hume, iv...
... •
22
245
Queen Elizabeth, Memoirs of the
Court of, by Lucy Aikin, viii…………..
Queen Mab, by Shelley; extract, v.. 376
Queen Mary's Child-garden, viii.
Queens of England. by Dr Doran,viii 235
Queens of England and Scotland, by
Miss Stricklaud; extracts, viii...
Queen's Wake; extract, vi..
Quentin Durward, vi…..
•
296
Rab and His Friends; extract, viii.. 245
Rabelais, trans, by Urquhart, iii. 131
RADCLIFFE, MRS., Dovelist. vi... 230
RAE, JOHN, Arctic traveller, viii……. 35
RAGG, THOMAS, poct. vii.
103
Ragged Schools, Guthrie's Interest
in, viii...
164
Rainy Day, a, by Longfellow, vii.... 94
RALEIGH, SIR WALTER, as poet, i.
212; as historian, ii..
17
48
18
182
"
INDEX.]
409
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
}
PAGE.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, Life of, vi.... 2SS
RAMAGE, DR. C. TAIT, translator, vii 177
Rambler, the; extracts, iv.
234
RAMSAY, ALLAN, poet; extracts, iii 232
RAMSAY, REV. E. B., author of
'Scottish Life and Character,' viii. 91
RANDOLPH, THOMAS, dramatist, i... 368
RANDOLPH, THOMAS, poet; extrs.,ii 232
Rape of Lucrece, by Shakspeare, i... 191
Rape of the Lock, by Pope; ex-
tracts, iii.
• ..
Rasselas, by Dr. Johnson, iv.
Rationalism, History of, by Leckie,
viii....
··
Rebellion, History of, by Dr. R.
Chambers, viii………
306
Raven, the, by Edgar A. Poe, vii……
RAY, JOHN, botanist, ii…..
REACH, ANGUS B., novelist, vii………….. 290
Rebellion, History of, by Clarendon,
ii.....
320
•
9-1
301
45
Recruiting Officer, scenes from, iii.. 269
READE, CHARLES, novelist, vii……
READE, JOHN EDMUND, poet, vii…….
Recluse, the, by Montgomery, v..
Recollections of a Chaperon, vi.
REDE, LEMAN, dramatist, vii..
REES. DR. ABRAHAM, iv..
··
174
358
• •
30
82
•
313
228
201
406
33
281
Rees's Cyclopædia, vii.
REEVE, CLARA, novelist. iv..
REEVES, DR. W., biographer, viii.. 70
Reflections on the Revolution, by
Burke, iv....
384
Reformation of Religion, History of,
by Dr. Gilbert Stuart, iv. 307; by
Heylin. iii...
Reformation of the Church of Eng-
land, by Burnet. ii………
65
335
Reginald Dalton, by Lockhart; ex-
tract. iii
207
243
Rehearsal, play by Dryden, ii.
REID, CAPTAIN MAYNE, novelist,vii 289
REID, DR. THOMAS, philosopher. iv. 348
315
Rejected Addresses; extracts, v……………
Relapse. the, by Vanbrugh, iii...
.. 264
Religio Medici, by Sir T. Browne.iii 56
Religion and Science, by Draper, viii 317
Religion and Theology, by Tulloch,
viii…….
171
Religion of Common Life; by Caird,
viii..
172
Reliques of English Poetry, Percy's,
iv....
Reliques of Irish Poetry, iv.
Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, iiì..
Reminiscences of a Highland Parish,
146
283
16
165
by M. Macleod, viii…….
Reminiscences of Scottish Life and
Character, by Dean Ramsay; ex-
tracts viii...
91
62
...
Remorse, by Coleridge; scene from,
vi..
Representative, the, newspaper, viii. 175
Representative Men, by Emerson, viii 226
Repressor, the, by Bishop Pecock, i. 111
Retaliation, by Goldsmith; extrs., iv. 144
367
Return from Parnassus, the, i…………..
Revenge, the, by Edward Young, iv. 216
Review, the. edited by Defoe, iii.... 272
Revolt of Islam, by Snelley, v.. 270
Revolution, History of by Sir J. Mac-
intosh. vi..
....
Revolution of 1688-9, from Macau-
lay, vii....
REYNOLDS, FREDERICK, dramatist,
vi....
PAGE.
▼
3S2
84
REYNOLDS, SIR JOSHUA, painter, iv. 387
Rhetoric, Philosophy of by Camp-
bell, iv....
247
331
Rhetoric and Belles Letters, by Dr.
H. Blair, iv.
Rhetoric and Logic, System of, by
Sir Thomas Wilson; extract, i………. 138
RICARDO, DAVID, political econo-
mist, vi...
255
329
24
RICH, CLAUDIUS J., traveller, vii…….
Richard III., Character of, by More, i 223
RICHARDSON, DR. ROBERT, traveller,
vü…….
•
24
RICHARDSON, JOSEPH, satirist, v.... 39
RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, novelist, iv.. 244
Richelieu, by G. P. R. James, vii………. 218
RIDDELL, MRS., novelist, vii
Rig-Veda-Sanbita, trans. by F. M.
Müller, vii…………
301
………
312
Rimini. by Leigh Hunt; extract, v.. 322
RITCHIE, LEITCH, novelist, vii..
RITSON, JOSEPH,
281
antiquary and
critic, vi....
342
262
85
307
320
Rival Queens, the, by N. Lee, ii
Road to Ruin, by Thos. Holcroft, vi. 60
Roast Pig, Origin of, from Lamb, v. 198
Robene and Mäkyne; extracts, i..
Robert Falconer; extract, vii.
ROBERTS, EMMA, traveller, viii……..
ROBERTSON, DR. W., historian, iv.. 297
ROBERTSON, E. Wм., historian, viii. 48
ROBERTSON, J. P. and W. P., trav-
ellers, viii...
ROBERTSON, REV. F. W., theologian;
extracts, viii..
Robertson, Rev. F. W., Life of, viii. 141
Robinson, Henry Crabb, Diary of,
viii...
336
140
97
Robinson Crusoe, iii. 323; extract, iii 329
ROCHESTER, EARL OF, JOHN WIL-
MOT, Song-writer; extracts, ii..... 197
Rock and the Wee Pickle Tow, iv... 207
Rocks Ahead, by W. R. Greg, viii... 247
Roderick Random, by Smollet, iv.. 269
ROGERS, HENRY, theologian, viii... 112
····
•
410
[GENERAL
CYCLOPEDIA OF
}
PAGE.
112
158
ROGERS, SAMUEL, poet, v.
ROGET, DR. P. M., naturalist, viii..
Roister Doister, by Nicholas Udall, i
ROLLE, RICHARD, i..
Rolliad, the, v.
260
20
*
38
10
Roman, the, by Sidney Dobell, vii... 95 | Salamandrine, the, by Dr. C. Mack-
Roman de la Rose, i…….
Roman de Ron, by Wace, i.
Roman Catholic Church, by Macau-
lay, vii……….
10
385
Roman History, by Hooke, iv. 288;
Roman Republic, by Ferguson, iv.
402; Rome, History of. by Ar-
nold. vii. 354; by Sir G. C. Lewis,
vii. 402; by Merivale, vii. 403; by
Schmitz, viiì………
Roman Literature, History of, by J.
Dunlop, viii…….
Romeus and Juliet, by
by Arthur
Brooke, i
....
Rosalynde, by Thomas Lodge, i……….
Rosciad, the, by Churchill, iv..
ROSCOE, WILLIAM, historian, vi. .. 261
ROSCOMMON, EARL OF, poet, ii.. 194
ROSE, W., poet and translator. v.... 3'6
Ross, ALEXANDER, Song-writ, r. iv.. 207
Ross, CAPT. JOHN, Arctic traveller,
vii..
• +
T
··
19
ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA. poet, vii..... 158
ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL, poet,vii 158
Rosy Haunah, by R. Bloomfield, v.. 77
Rovers, the, by Canning; extract, v.
46; vi..
61
56
Row, JOHN, historian. ii.
ROWE, NICHOLAS, dramatist, iii……….. 247
Royal Society of Loudon formed, ii.
Rule Britannia, iv...
268
35
209
228
RUSKIN, JOHN, art critic; extracts,
viii.
RUSSEL, ALEXANDER, editor, viii... 304
RUSSELL, DR. W., historian, iv……….. 308
RUSSELL, LAD RACHEL: extracts
129
from her letters, iii..
RUSSELL, LORD JOHN, biographer,
viii...
RUSSELL, WILLIAM H., misc. wri-
ter, viii.
50
34
Russia. Domestic Scenes in; ex-
tracts, viii..
330
Russia, Excursions in, by Bremner,
viii
332
32
.. 314
•
Rural Life of England, by W. How-
itt; extract, viiï…….
·
..
9
52
152
210
110
...
RUTHERFORD, SAMUEL, theologian,
iii ..
RYMER, THOMAS, historian, ii..
92
Sabbath, the, by Grahame; extrs., v
Sacred Poems, by H. Vaughan, ii... 134
SADLER, MICHAEL T., economist, vi 330
Saint's Everlasting Rest, by Baxter,
iii..
PAGE.
16
•
SACKVILLE, THOMAS, as poct, i……………. 147
SALA, GEORGE AUGUSTUS, novelist,
vii...
341
•
ay, vii...
105
307
31
SALE, GEORGE, translator, iv.
SALE, LADY F., journalist, viii.
SALE, SIR R. H., military hist., viii.. 31
Sally in Our Alley, by Carey, iv..
Salmagundi, vì….
£29
354
..
357
..
Sam Slick, by Haliburton; extrs., iii. 180
Samor, by Milman; extracts, v..
SANDERSON, BOBERT, theologian, ii. 358
SANDYS, GEORGE, traveller, transla-
tor and poet. ii...
37
265
•
201
341
199
Sappho and Phaon, by Lyly, i.
Sartor Resartus, by Thos. Carlyle.vii 392
Saturn (the planet). by Proctor, viii.. 264
Saturn and Thea, from Keats, v…………. 288
Saul, by W. Sotheby; extract, v.
SAUNDERS, JOHN, novelist. vii..
SAVAGE, RICHARD, poet, iii.
Saxon Chronicle, the, i…….
SATERS, DR. FRANK, poet, v
Sayings and Doings, by T. E. Hook,
vi...
225
Scarlet Letter, the, by Hawthorne.vii 293
Scenes and Legends, by Ilugh Mil-
ler, viii..
• •
...
Scenes of Infancy, by Leyden; ex., v
Schiller, Life of, by Carlyle, vii.
SCHMITZ, DR. L., bistorian, viii………….
School for Scandal, by Sheridan, vi..
Schoolmistress, the; extract, iv……….
Science, Progress of, in the Encyclo-
pædia Britannica, viii.
Scientific Writers, viii..
Scinde, Campaign in, by Kennedy,
viii..
Scinde, Conquest of, by Sir W. Na-
picr, vi.....
Scipio, Character of, by Dr. Arnold,
vii....
SCORESBY, WILLIAM, Arctic travel-
ler, vii....
………..
*
...
··
•
·
Scotland, History of, by Leslic, ii. 60;
by Robertson, iv. 298; by Dr. Gil-
bert Stuart, iv. 307; by W. Guth-
rie, iv. 307; by Malcolm Laing, vi.
6; by Pinkerton, vi. 263; by J.
Hill Burton, viii. 46; by Cosmo
Innes, viii. 48; by E. W. Robert-
son, viii...
7
318
-
295
S3
390
£50
250
31
271
354
23
••
Scotichronicon, by John Fordun, i.. 14
Scotlaud, Antiquities of, by Grose,vi 348
Scotland, Church of. by Calderwood,
ii. 56; by Row, ii. 56; by Spottis-
woode, ii.
9
44
29
63
48
INDEX.]
Scotland's Skaith; extracts, vi……….
Scots Magazine, iv..
•
SCOTT, ALEXANDER, poet, i.
Scorт, JOHN, poet, iv...
SCOTT, MICHAEL, novelist, vii……
SCOTT, SIR WALTER, as poet, v. 236;
as novelist, vi. 174; as historiau,
vi....
ENGLISH LITERATURE,
PAGE.
1
406
241
Scott, Sir W., Life of, by Lockhart,
viii ..
Scottish Ballads, collected by Aytoun
vii....
Scottish Bankrupt Law, by Burton,
viii...
•
•
59
208
...
285
48
311
46
Scottish Chiefs. by Jane Porter, vi.. 148
Scottish Christian Instructor, vi...
Scottish Language after the period of
the Revolution, by J. H. Burton,
viii...
Scottish Minstrel, the Modern, vi.... 40
Scottish Poems, by Pinkerton, vi…….. 263
Scottish Poets, ii. 48, 76, 236; iii.... 231
Scottish Rebellion, by Walpole, iv... 397
Scottish Rivers, by Sir T. D. Lauder,
vi....
211
19
Scottish Songs and Ballads, Herd's
Collection, iv.
Scripture Help. by Bickersteth, viii.. 119
Scriptures. Introduction to the Study
of. by Dr. T. Horne, vi....
Scythiaus or Goths, Origin of, by
Pinkerton, vi…….
SEARCH, EDWARD, nom-de-plume
of Abraham Tucker, iv..
301
263
353
Search after Happiness, by H. More,
vi....
331
Season, the, by Thomson; extract,
jii....
402, 406
Sedgemoor, Battle of, by Macaulay,
vil….
378
SEDGWICK, REV. ADAM, geologist,
291
53
73
viii
299
269
SEDLEY, SIR C., song-writer; ex-
tracts, ii
SELDEN, JOHN, phil. and polit. wri-
ter, ii..
Self-control, by Mrs. Brunton, iii... 160
SEMPILL, FRANCIS, song-writer, iii. 2 (
SEMPILL, ROBERT, poet, ii…….
236
SENIOR, N. W., polit. economist, vi. 330
Sense and Sensibility, by Miss Aus-
|
ten, vi...
156
|
Senses and the Intellect, by Bain, viii 282
Sensitive Plaut, the, by Shelley, v.. 281
Sentimental Journey; extracts. iv... 272
Sepoy War, History of, by, Kaye, viii 31
SEWARD, ANNA, poet, v……..
37
SEWELL, ELIZABETH M., novelist, vii 293
SHADWELL, THOMAS, dramatist, ii.. 266
SHAFTESBURY, EARL OF, philos., iii 308
Shakspeare, Illustrations of, by F.
Douce, vi.
411
PAGE.
SHAKSPEARE, WILLIAM, as poet, i.
191; as dramatist; extracts, i..... 297
Shakspeare, Essays on, by R. Farm-
er, iv..
391
388
Shakspearc, Life of, by Halliwell, viii 374
Shakspearian Forgeries, by W. H.
Ireland, vi..
337
Shakspeare's Plays. Chronology of,
viii. 374; Notes and Emendations
on, by Collier, i ..
Shakspeare's Self-retrospection,from
H. Hallam, vi….
Shandon Bells, the, by Father Prout,
viii...
SHARP, RICHARD, essayist; extracts,
viii
SHARPE, SAMUEL, historian, vii……...
She Stoops to Conquer, scenes from,
iv..
SHEIL, RICHARD LALOR, dram., vi..
SHELLEY, MRS. (M. W. Godwin),
novelist, vi……….
SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE, poet, v...
SHENSTONE, WILLIAM. poet, iv…….
Shepherd's Calendar, the, by Spen-
ser, i...
!
Shepherd's Hunting; ex. by Wither,ii
Shepherd's Week, the, by Gay; ex-
tract, iii...
❤
287
269
177
174
360
224
74
168
269
27
178
79
213
SHERIDAN, MRS. FRANCES, vi.
... 106
SHERIDAN, RICH. B.. dramatist, vi.. 40
Sheridan, Life of, by Moore, vi……………. 286
SHERLOCK, DR. WILLIAM, theolo-
gian, ii.
400
Ship of Fools, by Alex. Barclay, i... 62
Shipwreck, the, by Falconer; exts.,iv 103
Shipwreck, the, from Don Juan,' V. 264
SHIRLEY, JAMES, dramatist, i... 382
Siam, by Sir J. Bowring; extr.. viii.. 323
Siddons, Mrs., Life of, by Campbell,
vi...
288
SIDNEY, ALGERNON, prose-writer, ii 280
SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP, as poet, i. 156;
as prose writer, i…….
Siduey Biddulph, by Mrs. Sheridan,
vi....
395
106
SIGOURNEY, MRS. L. H., poet, vii.... 146
Silent Woman, the, by Ben Jonson.i 224
Siller Gun, by Mayne, vì……………
5
Silurian System, by Murchison, viii. 289
SIMMS, W. GILMORE, misc. writer,
viii...
225
30
SIMOND, Louis, traveller, vii..
248
Simoon, the, from Palgrave, viii.
Simple Story, a, by Mrs. Inchbald, v. 58
SIMPSON, SIR J. Y., as antiquary, viii 96
SIMPSON, THOMAS. Arctic traveller,
viii...
349
Sir Andrew Wylie, by John Galt, vi. 194
N
f
412
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
PAGE.
Sir Charles Grandison, by Richard-
son, iv
246
264
Sir Courtly Nice, by Crowne, ii……………. 254
Sir Lancelot du Lake, i..
112
·
106
64
19
Sir Lancelot Greaves, by Smollett, iv 262
Sir Patrick Spens, ballad, i……….
SKELTON, JOHN, poet, i...
SKENE, WILLIAM F., antiquary, viii.
Sketch-book. by W. Irving; extr., vi 359
Sketches of Irish Character; extr., vii 216
Sketches of the History of Man, by
Lord Kames, iv…….
SKINNER, JOIN. poet, iii.
Sky, the, by Ruskin, viii.
Skylark, the, ode by Hogg, vi.
Skylark, the, ode by Shelley, v..
SMART, CHRISTOPHER, poet; extr.,iv.
Smectymnuus, by Milton, iii.
SMILES, SAMUEL, biog'r.; extr., viii.
SMITH, ALBERT, novelist, vii..
SMITH, ALEXANDER, poet.vii.
Smith, Alexander, Memoir of, vii... 27
SMITH, DR. ADAM, as metaphysician
- •
• ...
97
vi., 344, as miscellaneous writer, iv. 400
SMITH, DR. JOHN PYE, geo'st.. viii... 288
SMITH, DR. Wы., thelogian, viii. 149
SMITH, GEORGE, Assyriologist, viii.. 31S
SMITH, JAMES and HORACĒ, V.
SMITH, JAMES, lyric writer, vii..
SMITH, MRS. CHARLOTTE, as poet, v.
60; as novelist, vi……….
SMITH. REV. SIDNEY, miscellaneous
·
·
•
Society and Solitude, by R. W. Emer-
son; extracts, viii…….
Socinian Coutroversy, by Wardlaw,
viii....
349
203
229
Sociology, Descriptive, by Spencer,
viii..
Socrates, Condemnation and Death
21
279
123
365
writer; extracts, vi…….
SMITH, WILLIAM, geologist, viii.... 284
SMOLLETT, TOBIAS GEORGE, as poet,
iv, 69; as novelist, iv……….
SMYTH, WILLIAM, historian, viii.
SMYTHE, HON. MR. (Lord Strang-
ford). poet, vii....
Snake, Adventure with the, by Water-
ton, viii....
of, by Mitford, vi…………
Soft Sawder and Human Natur, by
Haliburton, viii…….
Soldier's Home. by R. Bloomfield, v.
Soldier's Tear, the, by Bayly v.......
Soldiering and Scribbling, by Forbes,
viii....
Sotitude, by Grainger: extract, iv………
iv...
168
30
87
292
105
187
254
Snob. the, edited by 'I hackeray, vii..
Social Intolerance, by J. S. Mill, viii. 270
Society in America, by II. Martineau
viii..
350
181
262
51
203
226
158
315
249
|
Solomon, by Matthew Prior; extract,
iii.....
149
SOMERVILE, WILLIAM, poet, iii……….. 399
SOMERVILLE, MRS. MARY, scientific
writer, viii..
257
Song of the Shirt, by T. Hood, vii.. 52
Songs of Innocence, by Blake; extr.,
124
369
217
61
106
PAGE.
V...
Songs of Israel, by W. Knox; extr.,
V.
Sophonisba, by Thompson; extract,
iii...
Sorcery and Witchcraft from Dæmon-
ology,' by King James I., ii..
Sospetto d'Herode, Marino's, trans.
by Crashaw; extract, ii……….
SOTHEBY, WILLIAM, as translator,
v., 200; as dramatist, vi……….
SOUTH, DR. ROBERT, theologiau, ii.. 393
SOUTHERNE THOMAS, dramatist, iii. 242
SOUTHEY, ROBERT, as poet, v, 170;
as biographer, vi.
62
..
281
319
SOUTHGATE, REV. HORATIO, Eastern
traveller; extract, viii.
SOUTHWELL, ROBERT, poct; extr., i. 176
Spain, Handbook of, by Ford; extr.,
viii.
340
274
Spain in 183, by H. D. Inglis. vii.... 30
SPALDING, PROF., logician, viii. 269
Spanish Literature, by Ticknor, vii.. 364
Spectator, the, commerced, iii.
SPEDDING, JAMES, biographer, viii.. 71
Speech, Power of, by Huxley, viji... 311
SPEED, JOHN, historian, ii….
SPEKE, JOHN HANNING, African ex-
plorer; extracts, viii…….
26
SPELMAN, SIR HENRY, antiquary, ii.
SPENCER, HERBERT, Scientific writer,
viií
··
315
...
SPENCER, THE IION. W. R., poet, v. 315
SPENSER, Edmund, poet, i..
157
Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, the, by
Isaac Taylor; extract, viii.
3
25
156
Spleen, the, by Mat. Green; extr., iii. 381
Splendid Shilling, the, by Philips, ii. 226
Sphynx, the, by Kinglake, viii………
SPOTISWOOD, JOHN, historian, 1i…….
SPRATT, DR. T., phil. and polit.
writer, ii.
32
63
•
291
66
Spring, Ode to, by Mrs. Barbauld, ii.
Spy, the, by J. Fenimore Cooper, vii. 202
Squire's Pew, the, by Jane Taylor, v. 364
St. Colomba, Life of, by Dr. Reeves,
viii....
70
181
|
St. Francis, Legeud of, by Caxton, i. 114
80 St. Leon, by W. Godwin; extr., vi………. 143
379 | St. Paul, Life and Epistles of, by
Conybeare and Howson; extr., viii. 13-4
38 | St. Paul's Cathedral. History of, vin. 18
85 St. Paul's Manual Labour, by Stan-
ley, viii..
131
-
{
L
414
{
PAGE.
Syntax, Dr., his Tour in search of
the Picturesque, by Wmn. Combe,
vi..
CYCLOPEDIA OF
341
271
Table Traits, by Dr. Doran, viii……………. 226
TAIT, PROFESSOR, scientific writer,
viii..
Table-talk, by John Selden; extr.,
ii....
251
Tak your Auld Cloak About Ye, i... 103
Talavera, Battles of, by Croker, viii. 197
Tale of a Tub. by Swiff; extracts. iii. 341
Tales of Fashionable Life, by Maria
Edgeworth; extracts, vi.
Tales of my Landlord, vii.
Tales of the Hall, by George Crabbe;
extracts, v...
99, 110
Tales of the O'Hara Family, vi...... 231
TALFOURD, TH. NOON, dramatist,
vii....
181
Talking Oak, the, Teunyson; extr.,
vii...
•
115
Tam o' Shanter, v.
392
283
Tamburlaine, by Marlowe, i.
Tancred. by Disraeli; extract, vii.... 235
Tancred and Sigismunda, by Thom-
217
son; extract, iv……….
Tanganyika, discovery of, by Burton,
and Speke, viii.
TANNAHILL, ROBERT, song-writer,
vi....
•
TAYLOR, JANE and ANN, v..
TAYLOR, JEREMY, theologian; extr.,
ii...
8
9
274
Task, the, by Cowper; extracts, v
Taste for Reading, by Herschel, viii. 256
Tatler, the, commenced, iii……
TAYLOR, BAYARD, traveller and mis-
cellaneous writer; extracts.. viii.... 218
TAYLOR, ISAAC, philosopher; extrs.,
viii…….
·
•
vii
Terra, by John Evelyn, iii.
152
217
..
iv....
Tea-table Miscellany, iii…….
Temora, by Macpherson, iv.
TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM misc. writer,
iii.
353
Ten Thousand a Year, vii.
TENISON, ARCHBISHOP. iii.
TENNANT. WM., poet, vi.
TENNYSON, ALFRED, poet; extracts,
15.
363
365
Tear, on a, by Samuel Rogers, v……………. 122
Tears of Scotland, the, by Smollett,
368
68
75
233
87
96
239
4
29
112
109
Testimony of the Rocks, by Hugh
Miller; extracts, viii.
THACKERAY, ANNE ISABELLA, Rovel-
ist; extracts, vii……….
THACKERAY, WM. MAKEPEACE,
novelist; extracts, vii…….
Thaddeus of Warsaw,
Porter, vi.
Thalaba the Destroyer. v.
Thanatopsis, by W. C. Bryant, vii...
Thanksgiving off Cape Trafalgar,
by James Grahame, v.
Thelma and Clearches, ii.
A
•
·
[GENERAL
by Jane
PAGE.
··
Theatre, the first Licensed, in Lon-
don, i...
127
170
302
Theism, by Tulloch, vii.
Theodosius, by Nathaniel Lee, ii.... 262
Theology Explained and Defended,
by Dr. T. Dwight, vi...
Thief and the Cordelier, the, by
Prior, iii..
THIRLWALL, DR. CONNOP, historian,
viii . . . . .
155
•••
Thirty-nine Articles, Exposition of,
by Bishop Browne, viii.
THOM, WM., the Inverary poet,'
vii..
THOMAS THE RHYMER, i.
THOMS. W. JOHN, editor, viii..
THOMSON, Dr. Andrew, theologian,
vi....
•
TAYLOR, JOHN, the Water Poet, ii..
TAYLOR, ROBERT, dramatist, i.
TAYLOR, SIR HENRY, dramatist, vii.
TAYLOR. TOM, dramatist. vii..
TAYLOR, W., traveller. viii…….
TAYLOR, WILLIAM, translator, v…….. 383 | THURLOW,
389 THURLOW, EDWARD, LORD CHAN-
Tea-kettle, song of the, by A. Taylor,
CELLOR, Orator; extract, v...
THURLOW, LORD EDWARD HOVELL,
poet; extract, v.
V....
Thyestes, tragedy by Joun Crowne,
ii....
Three Fishers went Sailing, vii….
Three Warnings, the, by Mrs. Thrale,
iv………..
365
189
Thrush's Nest, by Clare, v.
200 | Thucydides, trans. by Hobbes, i, 335;
31 by Dr. Arnold, vii………
·
THOMSON, JAMES, as poet; extracts,
iii....
•
THOMSON, W. ARCHB., theologian,
viii...
THORNBURY, WALTER, novelist and
poet, vii..
TURALE, MRS. (Mrs. Piozzi), poet,
iv....
D
.
·
•
299
37
253
148
173
S5
$5
96
100
1
147
177
14
239
311
401
148
342
125
268
126
TICKELL, RICHARD, satirist, v.
TICKELL, THOMAS, poet, iii.
221
TICKNOR. GEORGE, historian, vii.... 364
TIGHE, MRS. MARY, poet; extracts,
63
V..
328
35-4
351
202
264
S
TILLOTSON, JOUN, ARCHBISHOP, pas-
sages from his Sermons, ii.
Time's Alteration, i……..
Timour or Tamerlane, Death and
Character of, by Gibbon, iiii....... 318
403
390
INDEX.]
413
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
St. Serf and Satan, by Wyntoun, i..
Staël, Mme. de, sketch by Simoud, vii
STANHOPE, EARL. historian, viii..
STANLEY, ARTHUR P., Dean of
Westminster, as historian, viii. 51;
as biographer, viii. 53; as theolo-
gian, viii.
129
STANLEY, HENRY M., African ex-
plorer. viii………..
43. 365
STANLEY, THOMAS, poet; extracts,ii 136
Star of Bethlehem, by H. K. White,v 89
Starling, the, by Sterne, iv..
278
Statesman, the, by Taylor; extrs., vii 189
STAUNTON. Sir G. L., traveller. vii. 1, 27
Steam-engine, the, from Muirhead's
Life of Watt, viii……
84
1
Steel Glass, the, by Gascoigne, i…………. 154
STEELE, SIR RICHARD, as dramatist,
iii. 272; as essayist; extracts. iii.. 273
STEVENS, GEORGE, misc. writer, iv.. 39i
STEPHEN, SIR JAMES, as historian,
viii. 51; as biographer, viii...
STEPHENS, J. L., Eastern traveller,
79
vii...
26
249
88
STEPHENS, L., misc. writer, viii..
Stephenson, Geo., Life of; extr.; viii
STEPHENSON, ROBERT, engineer, viii 282
Stereoscope,
invented by Wheat-
stone, viii.
STERLING, JOHN, misc. writer; ex-
tract, viii...
283
STERNE, LAURENCE, novelist, iv..
STEWART, PROF. DUGALD, metaphy-
sician; extract, vi…..
STILL. JOIN, dramatist, i
STILLINGFLEET, ED., theologian,. iii
STIRLING, EARL OF, poet, i..
STIRLING-MAXWELL, SIR WILLIAM,
•
·
PAGE.
53
32
9
....
..
biographer, viii.
56
Stokers and Pokers, Highways and
Byways, by Sir F. Bonn Head, viii 178
STORER, THOMAS, poet, i..
200
STORY, WILLIAM WETMORE, poet
and sculptor, vii....
STOW, JOHN, chronicler, ii..
STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER, novel-
ist; extracts, vii…………
Strain at a Guat and swallow a
Camel. by Trench, viii..
Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, by
Wm. Black; extract, vii..
Strangford, VISCOUNT, translator,
•
233
270
•
319
259
1
249
150
28
296
337
V
389
396
Strawberry Hill, description of, by
Horace Walpole, iv.
Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal,
by Licut. Osborn; extract, viii. 351
STRETTON, HESBA, novelist, vii.....
STRICKLAND, AGNES, hist.: extr.,viii
STRODE, DR. WILLIAM, poet; ex-
tracts, ii..
127
340
48
13
PAGE.
STUART, DR. GILBERT, historian, iv 307
Stuart of Dunleath, by Mrs. Norton,
vii
57
STUBBS, REV. WILLIAM, historian;
extract, viii..
Student Life in Germany, by B. Tay-
lor, viii..
Sublime and Beautiful, the, by Burke,
iv.
264
Study and Evidences of Christianity,
by Baden Powell, viii...
STUKELEY, WILLIAM, antiquary, iv. 405
Subjection of Women, by J. S. Mill,
viii...
272
...
380
Such Things Are, by Inchbald. vi.... 58
SUCKLING, SIR JOHN, poet; extracts,
ii...
SULLIVAN, dramatist, vii.
Summer in Skye, by Alex. Smith,
vii....
SUMNER, DR. J. BIRD, theologian,
vi....
··
Superstitious Beliefs, by Keightley,
viii...
SURREY, EARL OF, HENRY HOWARD,
ì....
98
Summer Morning, by John Clare, iv. 328
Summer's Last Will and Testament,
by Nash. i...
SUMNER, DR. CHARLES, theologian,
vi.
274
301
301
15
66
Susan Hopley, by Mrs. Crowe, vii... 282
Suspicious Husband, the, iv..
228
Sutherland's voyage of the
Lady
95
Franklin' and the 'Sophia,' viii………… 350
SWAIN, CHARLES, poct, vii..
Sweden, Tour in, by S. Laing; extr.,
viii...
►
••••
4
•
....
39
219
····
332
SWIFT, JONATHAN, as poet; extracts,
iii. 158; as misc. writer; extr., iii.. 336
Swift, character of, by J. W. Croker,
viii.
196
Swift, Jonathan, Life of, by Forster,
viii....
Swift, Jonathan, verses on the death
of, by himself, iii...
SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES,
poet; extracts, vii……….
Switzerland, by Louis Simond; extr.,
vii……….
Switzerland, Travels in, W. Coxe,
vi…. . . . .
..
91
201
252
Sword Chant of Thorstein Raudi, vi. 27
SYDNEY YENDYS (pseudonym of
Sydney Dobell), poêt. vii...
Sylva, by John Evelyn, iii.
SYLVESTER, JOSHUA, poet and trans-
lator, i.
Synonyms of the New Testament,
by Trench, viii..
76
166
159
30
95
108
222
126
*

!
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
INDEX.}
TINDAL, DR. MATTHEW, theologian,
iii..
PAGE.
307
308
Tintern Abbey, by Wordsworth, v.. 138
"Tis the Last Rose of Summer, v.... 212
Tithes, History of, by J. Selden, ii.. 269
Titles of Honour, by J. Selden, ii... 260
Titmarsh, Michael Angelo (Thacke-
TINDAL, NICHOLAS, translator and
historian, iii…..
ray), vii..
251
Tobacco, Farewell to, by C. Lamb, v 194
TOBIN, JOHN, dramatist, vi....
$3
TOD, LIEUT-COL. JAS., traveller, vii. 27
To-day in Ireland, Tale by Crowe, vi 234
TOLAND, JOHN, sceptical writer, iii.. 308
Tom Bowling, by Charles Dibdin, v. 299
Tom Brown's School-days; extr., vii 281
Tom Jones, by Fielding; extract, iv 259
Tom Thumb, by Fielding, iv.. 230
TOOKE, JOHN HORNE, philologist, iv 370
Topography of the Plain of Troy,
by C. Maclaren, viii
Tottel's Miscellany, i.
TOURNEUR. CYRIL, dramatist. i.... 365
Town and Country Mouse; extr.. i.. S6
TOWNLEY, REV. JAMES, dramatist,iv 130
Tractarian Party, the, viii……….
103
Tracts for the Times, by members
of the University of Oxford, viii... 103
Traditional Tales, by Cunningham,vi 22
Traditions of Edinburgh, by Robert,
Chambers, viii…….
Tragedy. Origin of, i.
TRAIN, JOSEPH, misc. writer, vi…………
Traits and Stories of the Irish Peas-
antry, by Carleton; extract, vi....
Translated Verse, Essay on; ex-
tracts, ii....
126
|
Traveller, the, by Goldsmith, iv.
TREBECK, GEORGE, traveller, vii……….
Tremaine, by R. Plummer Ward, vi.
TRENCH. RICHARD CHENEVIX,
ARCHBISHOP, as poet, vii. 62; as
theologian; extracts, viii….
Trevelyan, tale by Lady Dacre, vi….. 22S
TREVISA. JOHN DE, prose writer, i..
Trials of Margaret Lyndsay: extr.,vi 206
Tribute to a Mother on her Death, v. 25
Tristram Shandy, by Sterue; ex., iv. 274
Tristrem, Sir, a tale, by Thomas the
Rhymer, i.
Triumphs of
of Temper, poem by
Hayley, v.
56
14
……. •
•
28
Trivia, or the Art of Walking the
Streets of London, by Gay; ex., iii 213
Troilus and Cressida, by Chaucer, i.
TROLLOPE, ANTHONY, as novelist;
extracts, vii ..
28
323
TROLLOPE, MRS. FRANCES, novelist,
212
vii……….
TROLLOPE, TH. AD., novelist, vii... 328
..
•
•
304
66
64
261
39
259
195
131
26
229
|
PAGE.
19
10
...
Troubadours, the, i………
Trouvéres, the, i..
True Patriot's Journal, .v
TUBERVILLE. GEORGE, poet, i.
TUCKER, ABRAHAM (noin-de-plume,
Edward Search), theologian, iv.... 353
TULLOCH, DR. JOHN, theologian, viii 170
Tullochgorum, by Skinner, iv………………. 2:3
Turf shall be my Fragrant Shrine,
by Moore. v……….
213
21
· •
Turkish and Greek Waters, a Diary
in, by the Earl of Carlisle, viii 320
Turks, History of the, by Richard
Knolles.; extract, ii…….
TURNER, SHARON, historian, vi 252
TUSSER, THOMAS, poet, i.
71
"Twas when the Seas were Roaring,
ballad by Gay, iii………
Tweedside, by Crawford, iv..
TYNDALE, WM., translator, of the
Bible, i..
134
313
TYNDALL, JOHN, PROF., physicist ;
extracts, viii....
Typee; a Peep at Polynesian Life,
by H. Melville; extracts, viii.. 222
TYLER, MISS C. C. FRASER, novel-
ist, vii.
TYTLER, PATRICK FRASER, histo-
rian and biographer, vi……………….. 270, 2SS
TYTLER, SARAH (Miss Keddie),nov-
elist vii
341
TYTLER, WILLIAM, historian, iv 306
341
259
...
UDALL, NICOLAS, dramatist, i.
Uganda. Etiquette at the Court of,
viii....
į
415
··
....
416
207
354
296
CAT
Uncle Tom's Cabin, vii...
Undertones, by Robert Buchanan, vii 1 4
Undesigned Coincidences, by Blunt,
viii..
124
369
307
**
United States, History of, by W. C.
Bryant and Sydney H. Gay, vii…….. 371
United States, History of the Coloni-
sation, by Bancroft, vii..
Universal History, the, iv..
Universe, Final Destiny of the, by
Dr. Whewell, viii.
Unwin, Mrs., Address to (Mary), by
Cowper, y...
Unyanyembe, Life in, from Graut,
viii
260
****
18
357
Uranus, planet, discovered by Sir
William Herschel, viii...
URQUHART, SIR THOMAS, translator,
iii...
253
131
USHER. JAMES. theologian, ii.
346
Utopia, by Sir Thomas More, i……….... 121
214
201
Vacation Tour, a, by Tyndall, viii... 314
Valerius. by J. G. Lockhart; ex-
tract, vi..
201
}
416
[GENERAL
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
PAGE.
...
VANBRUGH, SIR JOHN, dramatist, iii 264
Vanity Fair, by Thackeray, vii………. 257
Vanity of Human Wishes; extr., iv 120
Variability, by Darwin, viii.
307
Vathek, by Beckford; extracts, vi.. 99
Vandracour and Julia, by Words-
worth, v.....
VAUGHAN, DR. C. JOHN, theologian,
viii
135
150
VAUGHAN, DR. ROBERT, theologian,
viii
111
72
VAUGHAN, HENRY, poet; extrs., ii.. 134
VAUX, THOMAS, LORD, poet, i...
VEDDER, DAVID, song-writer, vii... 178
Vega, Lope Felix de, Life and Writ-
ings of, by Lord Hollaud, vi….
Veiled Prophet of Khorassan,v...... 208
Velasquez and his Works, by Stir-
280
58
331
••••
ling-Maxwell; extract, viii..
Venables's Domestic Scenes in Rus-
sia; extracts, viii...
Venice-Canaletti and Turner, by
Mrs. Jameson, viii.
Venice, the Stones of, by J. Ruskin,
viii..
228
Venice Preserved; scene from, ii……….. 258
Venus and Adonis, by Shakspeare,i.. 193
VERE, AUBREY THOMAS DE, poet,vii
VERE, EDWARD, EARL OF OXFORD,
62
··
•
·
..
•••
poet, i...
199
VERE, SIR AUBREY DE, poet, vii..... 62
Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith, iv 130
Vicar of Wrexhill, the, by Mrs.
Trollope, vii.……
Vicissitudes of Nations, by Finlay,vii
Victoria Nyanza, Discovery of, by
Captain Speke, viii.
353
Victory of Faith, by Hare, viii……… 125
Vida's Art of Poetry, trans. by C.
Pitt, iv..
191
Views Afoot, by B. Taylor; extr.,viii 219
Village, the, by George Crabbe; ex-
tracts, v.
100, 102
Vindication of Religious Opinions,
by Doddridge, iv..
336
254
Vindiciae Gallicæ, by Sir J. Mackin-
tosh; extract, vi...
Vigidemiarium, by Bishop Hall, i...
Virgil, Caxton's Account of, i..
Virgil, translated by Dryden; ii. 207 ;
by C. Pitt, iv...
26
113
•
Virgin Martyr, by Massinger, i.
Virginians, the, vii.
Virginius. by S. Knowles, scene
from, vi...
Vision, a, by Burns, v. ..
Visions in Verse, by Nat. Cotton, v.
Voices of the Night, by Longfellow,
vii....
185
..
Volpone, or the Fox, by Ben Jon-
son, i..
192
.. 369
262
213
7
75
394
6
91
321
Voltaire and the Lace-maker, v.
Vortigern and Rowena, by W. H.
Ireland, vi....
PAGE.
18
·
WACE, MAISTER, i.
WADDINGTON and HANBURY, East-
ern travellers, vii……….
25
182
16
Wae's me for Prince Charlie, vii..
WAKEFIELD, GILBERT, theol.; vi... 298
WALDIE, MIss, traveller, vii……..
Walk across Africa, or Domestic
Scenes from my Nile Journal, by
Captain James Grant; extr., viii.. 356
Wallace, Adventures of Sir William,
by Blind Harry, i.
WALLER, EDMUND, poet; extracts, ii 146
WALPOLE, HORACE, as novelist, iv.
80
280; as misc. writer, extracts, iv... 395
Walpole, Lord, Memoirs of, vi…………….. 253
Walpole, Sir Robert, Memoirs of, vi. 353
WALSH, WILLIAM, poet, iii…….
137
WALTON, IZAAK, angler and biogra-
pher; extracts, iii.....
Waly, waly, ii…………
Wanderer, the. by Savage; extr., iii.. 201
Wanderer of Switzerland, the, by
Montgomery, v.
Wanderings and Essays, by Water-
ton, viii....
75
239
307
186
War, Miseries of, by Rev W Crowe,v 59
WARBURTON, ELIOT, traveller, viii.. 188
WARBURTON, WILLIAM, BisшoР,
...
..
V.
……….
theologian; extract, iv.
322
178
WARD, R. PLUMER, Dovelist, vi……….. 229
WARDLAW. DR. RALPH, theolo.,viii 157
WARNER, WILLIAM, poct, i……….
Warnings, the Three, by Mrs.
Thrale, iv.
WARREN, SAMUEL. Dovelist, vii.
Warren Hastings, speech against, by
R. B. Sheridan; extracts, vi...... 48
War-song upon the victory at Brun-
nenburg, by Hookham Frere, v... 217
WARTON, THOMAS and JOSEPH, po-
ets; extracts, iv....
Washington, Eulogium on, by Dan-
iel Webster, vii...
170
..
336
10
374
Washington, Life of, by Bancroft,vii 3(8
Wat Tyler, drama, by Southey, v.... 171
Watchman, the, edited by Coleridge,
125
239
148
WATERLAND, DANIEL, theologian,iii 305
WATERTON, CHARLES, traveller; ex-
tract. viii..
WATSON, DR. RICHARD, theologian,
vi ..
186
•
•
WATSON, ROBERT, historian, iv
WATSON. THомAS, poet, i…….
Watson's Collection of Ancient and
Modern Scots Poems, iii.
Watt. James, Life of; extracts, viii. 87
230
296
308
207
INDEX.}
417
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WATTS, ALARIC ALEXANDER, poet,
vii...
PAGE
69
326
...
WATTS, DR. ISAAC-bis Hymns, iv.
15; theological works, iv....
Watty and Meg, by A. Wilson, iii….. 407
Waverly Novels characterized; vi.... 175
We are Seven, by Wordsworth, v.... 137
We met-twas in a Crowd, by Bay-
ly, v.....
Wealth of Nations, by Smith; ex-
tract, iv..
WEBSTER,
379
345, 401
DANIEL, orator and
from his
extracts
····
••
statesman;
speeches. vii...
WEBSTER, DR. ALEXANDER, theolo-
gian, iv.
WEBSTER, JOHN, dramatist, i.
Wedgewood, Josiah, Life of, by
Eliza Meteyard, viii...
91
64
Wee Davie, by N. Macleod. viii... 163
Weimar, Picture of, by Lewes, viii..
WELDON, SIR ANTHONY, historian,ii 343
Wellington, Duke of, by Molesworth,
viii……….
72
304
Wellington, Life of, by W. H. Max-
well, vii...
Wellington's Despatches, by Lieut.-
Col. Gurwood, vi………
276
320
···
WELLSTED, LIEUT. J. R., traveller,
viii)…….
Welsh Poems, Date of the, by Skene,
viii...
19
Welsh Triads, i………
2
WELSTED, LEONARD, minor poet, iii 198
Were na my Heart Licht I wad dee,
song by Lady G. Baillie, iv….
Werther, Sorrows of, Thackeray's
Ballad on, viii………
206
63
Wesley, John, Life of, by Southey;
extract. vi...
283
WESLEY, JOHN and CHARLES, theo-
logians, iv..
327
192
• ·
WEST, GILBERT, poet, iv.
WEST RICHARD, poet iv..
West Indian, the, comedy, vi..
West Indies, the, by Montgomery, v.
Western World, the, by Mackay, viii.
Westminster Review, vii
Westward Ho, by Charles Kingsley,
vii....
•
Wet Sheer and a Flowing Sea, vi………….
WETHERELL, ELIZABETH, novelist,
vii...
What ails this Heart o' Mine? v...
What is Life? by John Clare, v.
What is truly Practical, by Ruskin.
viii...
....
..
372
3 9
375
What will he do with it? by Edward
¡Lytton Bulwer, vii...
3S
338
36
267
24
193
104
341
61
327
232
227
113
………
WHATELY, RICHARD, ARCHBISHOP,
as political economist, vi, 329; as
theologian, viii….
WHEATSTONE, SIR CHARLES, physi-
cist and electrician, viii.
When the Kye comes hame, vi.
WHETSTONE, GEORGE, dramatist, i.. 262
WHEWELL, DR. WILLIAM, scientific
writer, viii.
WHICHCOTE, BENJAMIN, theologian,
ii...
283
20
260
367
10
Whig and Tory in the Reign of Queen
Aune, by Earl Stanhope, viii………
Whims and Oddities, by Hood, vii... 49
WHISTLECRAFT, WM. and ROBт., a
•
·
·
PAGE.
fictitious name assumed by Hook-
ham Frere in a noted 'jeu d'esprit;
extracts, v………..
WHISTON, WILLIAM, theologian, iii. 306
WHITE, HENRY KIRKE, poet, extr.,
217
86
342-
169
61
355
327
69
166
332
316
147
Wieland, novel by C. B. Brown, vi.. 146
Wieland's Oberon,
Oberon, translated by
Sotheby, v.
200
WILBERFORCE, SAMUEL, BISHOP,
viii……….
144
WILBERFORCE, WILLIAM, religious
writer, vi....
Wilhelm Meister, trans. by Carlyle.
298
vii...
390
7S
WILKIE, DR. WILLIAM, poet, iv..
WILKINS. DR. J., philosophical
writer, ii...
292
Wilkins, Peter, Life and Adventures
of, by Robert Patlock; extracts,
iv.
>
V.
WHITE, REV. GILBERT, of Selborne;
naturalist, vi……….
WHITE, REV. JOSEPH BLANCO, poet,
extract, v....
WHITE, ROBERT, historian, viii.
White Devil, the, by John Webster,
i...
WHITEFIELD, GEORGE, theologian,
iv..
Whitefield and the Bristol Colliers,
by Mrs. Oliphant, viii……….
WHITEHEAD, WILLIAM, poet, extr.,
iv....
WHITELOCKE, BULSTRODE, histor.,
ii....
WHITNEY, WILLIAM DWIGHT, philol-
ologist, viii.
WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF, poet,
extracts. vii……
••
248
356
..
William and Margaret, by Mallett, iv. 3S
William and the Werwolf, edited by
Sir Frederick Madden, i..
15
WILKINSON, SIR JOHN GARDINER,
antiquary, vii……
418
1
•
CYCLOPÆDIA OF
William the Conqueror, Death of, by
E. A. Freeman, viii..
WILLIAMS, DR. ROWLAND, theolo-
gian, viii.
Williams, Dr. R., Life of, by his
Widow, viii.
WILLIAMS, H.W., artist and traveller,
extract, vi..
14
WILLIAMS, HELEN MARIA, poet, v.. 3'S
WILLIAMS, SIR CHARLES HANBURY,
satirical poet, iii..
3S4
PAGE.
WILLIS, NATHANIEL PARKER, poet,
vii...
WILSON, ALEX., poet and naturalist,
·
V....
WILSON, ARTHUR, historian, ii..
WILSON, DANIEL, antiquary, viii..
WILSON, PROF. JOHN, (Christopher
North), as poet, v, 339; as novelist,
`vi....
20S
WILSON, THOMAS, rhetorician, i.... 138
WILSON, WILLIAM RAE, Eastern
traveller, vii……….
24
WINCHELSEA, ANNE, COUNTESS OF,
poet, iii....
229
175
Windsor Forest, by Pope, iii.
Winter Evening in the Country, by
Cowper, v...
Winter's Walk, by Mrs. Norton, vii..
Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge
Melancholy, by D'Urfey, iii.
Witch, the, by Middleton, i.
•
Witch of Edmonton, the, by Rowley,
Dekker, and Ford, i.
WITHER, GEORGE, poet. ii.
Witness, newspaper, viii.
Woffington, Peg, by Charles Reade,
vii...
WOLCOT, DR. JOHN (Peter Pindar),
poet, extracts, v..
..
Wolf of Badenoch, by Sir T. Dick
Lauder, vi.....
Wolsey, Cardinal, verses on, by J.
Skelton, i
Wolsey, Life of, by Storer, i...
Women as They Are, by Gore; extr.,
vii……….
•
Women beware of Women, by Mid-
dleton, i..
4.
viii……
Wonders of the Universe, by Dr.
Whewell, viii………
45
139
140
8
405
343
51
19
59
375
360
36
79
299
301
50
211
•
Women, by Maturin; extract, vi…………. 172
Wonder, the, by Mrs. S. Centlivre, iii. 272
Wonders of Geology, the, by Mantell,
288
65
200
262
WOOD, ANTHONY A., antiquary, ii.. 344
WOOD, MRS. HENRY, novelist, vii... 300
Woo'd and Married and a', by Ross,
iv.
208
WOODFALL, editor of the Public
Advertiser, and publisher of
Junius's Letters, iv.
362
Words and Places, by Taylor, viii……. 157
Wordsworth, Dorothy-her Tour in
Scotland, v...
145
WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, poet; extr.,
[GENERAL
V...
··
Wordsworth, Memoirs of, v.
World, History of the, by Sir W.
Raleigh; extracts, i., 17; by Dr. J.
Gillies, vi....
F
•
PAGE.
World, the, before the Flood, by
Montgomery, v……
World. the Discovery of a new, by
Dr. J. Wilkins, ii………
••
•
·
A
308
292
17
World, the, edited by Dr. Moore, iv.
Worlds, Hydrographical Descrip-
tion, by Davis, ii...
31
Worlds, More than One, by Sir Da-
vid Brewster; extract, viii.
Worlds, on the Plurality of, by Dr.
Whewell, viii...
274
260
WORSAAE, J. J. A., archaeologist, viii 51
Worthies of England, the, ii..
WOTTON, REV. WM., iii.
362
374
232
WOTTON, SIR HENRY, poet, i.
Wotton, Sir Henry, Life of, by Izaak
Walton, iii..
76
WRANGHAM, REV. FRANCIS, poet, v 383
Wreck of the Halsewell,' by Rev.
W. Crowe, v……….
59
WRIGHT, THOMAS, archæologist, viii 51
WYATT, SIR THOMAS, Poet, i..
69
WYCHERLEY. WILLIAM, dramatist,ii 266
WYCLIFFE, JOHN DE, prose writer, i 56
Wycliffe's Bible, i..
57
WYNTOUN, ANDREW, poet, i.... 52, 142
Xenophon's Address to the Army, by
Grote, viii...
...
}
Y
124
145
Yair's Charmer, Collection of Scot-
tish Songs, iv.
>
Yardley Oak, from Cowper's "Task "
extracts, v..
24
211
YATES, EDMUND, H., novelist, vii... 309
227
Ye Mariners of England, v……..
360
Yellow-haired Laddie, by A. Ram-
YELLOWPLUSH, CHARLES (Thacke-
say, iii....
335
ray), vii..
Yes and No, a tale of the Day, by the
Marquis of Normanby, vi.
Yesterday in Ireland, by E. E. Crowe
227
vi....
324
YONGE, CHARLOTTE Mary, novel-
ist, vii..
Yorkshire Tragedy, the, i.
YOUNG, ARTHUR, agriculturist, vi.. 386
242
299
202
3
199
254
7
INDEX.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
4.)
t
PAGE.
.. 338
YOUNG, EDWARD, as poet. iii...
Young Duke, the, by B. Disraeli, vii 231
Young England, or Tractarian Po-
etry.' vii
•
Youth and Age, by Coleridge, v.
Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thorn-
ton, by T. Hamilton, vi...
...
Zambesi, Discovery of, by David
Livingstone, viii….
105
16
212
374
PAGE.
Zuluco, by Dr. John Moore; extr., vi 115
Zincali, or an Account of the Gyp-
sics in Spain, by G. Borrow, viii.. 338
Zoist, the. a periodical established by
Dr. J. Elliotson, viii…….
Zocnomia, or the Laws of Organic
Life, by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, v...
205

When y
!
33
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