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HEALTH

AND

E I) U C A T ION

Ki:v. CHARLES KINGSLEY, f.l.s, f.g.s.

Canon or Wistminster

A Gift from

J. ACKERMAN COLES. M. D., L- L. D.

IN MEMORY OF HIS SISTER

N-.ISSEMJLIE S.C0LE3

29S23

W. ISBISTER & CO.

I.TDGATE HILL. LONDON
1874

[AU ri'jhU rrrrmd]

I.OSlKlV

I'UIMKP r.V WILLIAM Cl.'iMt,'. AM' ^•Xs.

irTAM»U«Ui iTaLtT A»U CIIAKI.NU I'kUU.

^ / C 7 H ylr

''t CONTENTS. ^^f>^

p4 l-ACK

I'he SciKSCE OK IIkai.tu . . . . 1

The Two Ukkaths ... .20

TiiK TuKK OK Knowlkduk ...... 5l'

-NaUSICAA in IX)NIX)N ; OK TIIK I-OWKK IjiHATIoN iK

Woman ...... tj'J

'I'lIK .VlK-MoTllKKS .... . t>U
'lllUIKT ...... .121.'

I iiE Study ok Natuuai, IIistoky ..... ir)0

' >s Uio-UeolocJv ... \1-

Heboism ..... JOO

>l:per8tition .... 229

Science ........ 259

'illOTS AND (iKOVES ... 2U4

• »EOBHB Buchanan, Schoi.ak . . . .' 320

IlONDKLET, THE IIUGDENOT NaTUIIAMST . H'yfi

VKriAUU!», THE Anatomist ... 38o

THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH.

Whether the British race is improving or degenerating?
What, if it seem probably degenerating, are the causes
of so great an evil ? How they can be, if not destroyed,
at least arrested ? — These are questions worthy the
attention, not of statesmen only and medical men,
but of every father and mother in these isles. I shall
say somewhat about them in this Essay ; and say it in
a form which ought to be intelligible to fathers and
mothers of every class, from the highest to the lowest,
in hopes of convincing some of them at least that the
science of health, now so utterly neglected in our curri-
culum of so-called education, ought to be taught — the
rudiments of it at least — in every school, college, and
university.

We talk of our hardy forefathers ; and rightly. But
they were hardy, just as the savage is usually hardy,
because none but the hardy lived. They may have
been able to sav of themselves — as thev do in a state

li THE SCIEXCE OF HE Aim.

paper of 1515, now well known througli the pages of
Mr. Froude — " "What comyn folk of all the world may
compare with the comyns of England, in riches, fre.
dom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity ? "What comyn
folk is so mighty, and so strong in the felde, as the
comyns of England ? " They may have been fed on
" great shins of beef," till they became, as Benvenuto
Cellini calls them, " the English wild beasts." Bui
they increased in numbers slowly, if at all, for cen-
turies. Those terrible laws of natural selection, which
issue in " the survival of tlie fittest," cleared off the
less fit, in every generation, principally by infantil
disease, often by wholesale famine and pestilence ; juuI
left, on the whole, only those of the strongest con
stitutions to perpetuate a hardy, valiant, and enter-
prising race.

At last came a sudden and unprecedented chang<
In the first years of the century, steam and commerce
produced an enormous increase in the population. ]\Iil-
licms of fresh human beings found employment, mar-
ried, brought up children who found employment in
their turn, and learnt to live more or less civilised
lives. An (Vent, doubtless, ft)r wliich God is to 1'
thanked. A «juito new phase of humanity, bringing
with it new vices and new dangers : but bringiuL'
also, not merely new comforts, but new noblenesses, new
generosities, now conceptions of duty, and of how that

THE SCIENCE OF III: ALT 1 1. 3

duty sboulil ho done. It is cLildish to regret the old
times, when our soot-grimed manufacturing districts
were green with lonely farms. Td murmur iit the
transformation would he, I helieve, to murmur at the
will of Him without whom not a sparrow falls to the
ground.

"The old order elmnKoth, yicMiiir: placu to tlie ucw,
And (Jod tultils hiiiisolf in mnny wiiy.s,
Lest one good custom .slioulil corruiit the world.''

Our duty is, instead of longing for the good old
custom, to take care of the good new custom, lest it
should corrupt the world in like wise. And it may do
80 thus : —

The rapid increase of population during the first
half of this century began at a moment when the
British stock was specially exhausted ; namely, about
the end of the long French war. There may have
been periods of exhaustion, at least in England, before
that. There may have been one here, as there seems
to have been on the Continent, after the Crusades ; and
another after the Wars of the Hoses. There was cer-
tainly a period of severe exhaustion at the end of
Elizabeth's reign, due bi)th to the long Spanish and
Irish wars and to the terrible endemics introduced
from abroad ; an exJiaustion which may have caused,
in part, the national weakness which hung upon ns
during the reign of the Stuarts. But after none of

n 2

4 THE SCIENCE OF HE A I. Til.

these did the survival of the less fit suddculy become
more easy ; or the discovery of steam power, and the
acquisition of a colonial empire, create at once a fresh
demand for human beings and a fresh supply of food
for them. Britain, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, was in an altogether new social situation.

At the beginning of the great French war; and,
indeed, ever since the beginning of the war with Spain
in 1739 — often snubbed as the " war about Jenkins's
ear " — but which was, as I hold, one of the most just,
as it was one of the most popular, of all our wars ;
after, too, the once famous " forty fine harvests " of the
eighteenth century, the British people, from the gentle-
man who led to the soldier or sailor who followed, were
one of the mightiest and most capable races which the
world has ever seen, comparable best to the old Roman,
at his mightiest and most capable period. That, at
least, their works testify. They created — as far as
limn can be said to create anything — the British
Empire. They won for us our colonies, our commerce,
th<' mastery of the seas of all the world. But at what
a cost —

*' Thi'ir bono.4 are HoatttTftl fur uiul wide,
liy mount, and etreiiii), nn<l hta."

Year after year, till the final triumph of Waterloo, not
battle only, but worse destroyers than shot and shell —
fatigue and disease — had been carrying oil' our stoutest,

THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. 5

ablest, healthiest young men, each of whom repre-
sented, alas ! a maiden left unmarried at home, or
married, in default, to a less able man. The strongest
went to the war ; each who fell left a weaklier man to
continue the race ; while of those who did not fall, too
many returned with tainted and weakened constitu-
tions, to injure, it may be, generations yet unborn.
The middle classes, being mostly engaged in peaceful
pursuits, suflfered less of this decimation of their finest
young men ; and to that fact I attribute much of their
increasing preponderance, social, jDolitical, and intellec-
tual, to this very day. One cannot walk the streets of any
of our great commercial cities without seeing plenty of
men, young and middle-aged, whose whole bearing and
stature shows that the manly vigour of our middle class
is anything but exhausted. In Liverpool, especially, I
have been much struck not only with the vigorous
countenance, but with the bodily size of the mercantile
men on 'Change. But it must be remembered always,
first, that these men are the very elite of their class ;
the cleverest men ; the men capable of doing most
work ; and next, that they are, almost all of them, from
the great merchant who has his villa out of town, and
perhaps his moor in the Highlands, down to the sturdy
young volunteer who serves in the haberdasher's shop,
country-bred men ; and that the question is, not what
they are like now, but what their children and grand-

a THE aClENCE OF HEALTH.

children, especially the fine young volunteer's, will be
like ? And a very serious question I hold that to be ;
and for this reason :

War is, without doubt, the most hideous physical
curse which fallen man inflicts u])()n himself ; and for
this simple reason, that it reverses the very laws of
nature, and is more cruel even than pestilence. For
instead of issuing in the survival of the fittest, it issues
in the survival of the less fit : and therefore, if pro-
tracted, must deteriorate generations yet unborn. And
yet a peace such as we now enjoy, prosperous, civilised,
humane, is fraught, though to a less degree, with the
very same ill etlt-ct.

In the first place, tens of thousands — Who knows it
not ? — lead sedentary and unwholesome lives, stooping,
asphyxiated, employing as small a fraction of their
bodies as of their minds. And all this in dwellings,
workshops, what not ? — the influences, the very atmo-
sphere of which tend not to health, but to unhealth, and
to drunkenness as a solace under the feeling of unhealth
and depression. And that such a life must tell upon
their oflspring, and if their ofl'spring grow up under
similar circumstances, upon their oflspring's ofl'spring,
till a whole j)opulation may become permanently de-
graded, who does not know ? For who that walks
through the by-streets of any great city does not see?
Moreover, and this is one of the most fearful problems

THE SCIENCE OF IIEAI/ni. 7

with whicli modern oivilisutioii has to deal — we interfere
with natural selection by our conscientious care of life,
as surely as does war itself. If war kills tin' laost fit
to live, we save alive those who — looking at them from
a merely physical point of view — are most fit to die.
Everything which makes it more easy to live ; every
sanatory reform, prevention of pestilence, medical
discovery, amelioration of climate, drainage of soil,
improvement in dwelling-houses, workhouses, gaols ;
every reformatory school, every hospital, every cure of
drunkenness, every influence, in short, which has — so
I am told — increased the average length of life in these
islands, hy nearly one-third, since the first establish-
ment of life insurances, one hundred and fifty years
ago ; every influence of this kind, I say, saves persons
alive who would otherwise have died ; and the great
majority of these will be, even in surgical and zymotic
cases, those of least resisting power ; who are thus
])reserved to produce in time a still less powerful
progeny.

Do I suy that we ought not to save these people,
if we can ? God forbid. The weakly, the diseased,
whether infant or adult, is here on earth ; a British
citizen ; no more responsible for his own weakness
than for his own existence. Society, that is, in plain
English, we and our ancestors, are responsible for
both ; and wo must fulfil the duty, and keep him in

8 irjF f^rJFSCE OF HEALTH.

life; niul, il we can, litiil, strengthen, develop him to
the utmost ; and make the best of that which " fate
and our own deservinga " have given us to deal with.
I do not ppeak of higher motives still; motives which
to every minister of religion must be paramount and
awful. I speak merely of physical and social motives,
such as appeal to the conscience of every man — the
instinct which bids every human-hearted ican or woman
to save life, alleviate pain, like Him who causes His
sun to shine on the evil and on the gixxl, and His rain
to fall on the just and on the unjust.

IJut it is palpable, that in so doing we must, year by
year, preserve a largo percentage of weakly persons,
who, marrying freely in their own cla-ss, must produce
weaklier children, and they weaklier children still.
Must, did I say ? There are those who are of opinion
— and I, after watching and comj)aring the histories of
many families, indeed, of every one with whom I hav««
come in contact for now five-and-thirty years, in town
and country, can only fear that thoir opinion is but too
well founded on fact— that in the great majority of
cases, in all classes whatH(H'vrr, the children are not
equal to their parents, nor they, again, to their grand-
parents of the beginning <»f the century ; and that this
degrading pr<H'<'HS g«H's on nu»st surely, and most
rapidly, in our largo towns, and in proportion to the
antiquity of those towns, and therefore in proportion to

77//; F^riES'rK of IIKAI.TII. 9

th*.' nuniluT (ii ^^'iiirratKins (luring which the degratlinfr
iiilliu'uces have bt't'ii ut work.

This ami cognate dangers have heen iVlt more and
more deeply, as the years have rollt-d un, hy students
of human society. To ward them oO', tlieory after
theory has been j)ut on paper, especially in France,
which deserve high praise for their ingenuity, less for
their morality, and, I fear, still less for their common-
sense. For the theorist in his closet is certain to
ignore, as inconvenient to the construction of his
Utopia, certain of those broad facts of human nature
which every active parish priest, medical man, or poor-
law guardian has to face every day of his life.

Society and British human nature are what they
have become by the indirect influences of long ages,
and we can no more reconstruct the one than we can
change the other. We can no more mend men by
theories than we can by coercion — to which, by the
by, almost all these theorists look longingly as their
final hope and mainstay. We must teach men to mend
their own matters, of their own reason, and their own
free-will. We must teach them that they are the arbiters
of their own destinies ; and, to a fearfully great degree,
of their children's destinies after them. We must teach
them not merely that they ought to be free, but that
they are free, whether they know it or not, for good
and for evil. And we must do that in this case, by

10 TIIK SCIESCE OF HEAL Til.

teaching them souud prnctical science ; the science of
physiology, as applied to health. So, and so only, can
we check — I do not say stop entirely — though I believe
even that to be ideally possible ; but at least check the
process of degradation which I believe to be surely
going on, not merely in these islands, but in every
civilised country in the world, in proportion to its
civilisation.

It is still a question whether science hos fully
discovered those laws of hereditary health, the dis-
regard of which causes so many marriages disastrous
to generations yet unborn, lint much valuable light
has been thrown on this most mysterious and most
important subject during the last few years. That
light — and I thank God for it — is widening and
deepening rapidly. And I doubt not that, in a gene-
ration or two more, enough will be known to bo thrown
into the shape of practical and proveable rules ; and
that, if not a public opinion, yet at leost, what is
more useful far, a wide-spread private opinion, will
grow up, esjtecially among edueated women, which will
prevent many a tragedy and save many a life.

But, as to the laws of personal health : enough, and
more than enough, is known already, to Ik? apjdied safely
and cosily by any adults, however unh-arned, to th«
preservation not only of their own health, but of that
of their children.

THE SCIENCE OF IIEALTIf. 11

The value of heulthy Imbitutions, of porsoiml cleuu-
linesH, of pure air and pure water, of various kinds
of foi)d, according as each tends to make bone, fat,
or muscle, ]»rovided only — provided only — that the
food he unadulterated ; the value of various kinds of
clothing, and physical exercise, of a free and equal deve-
lopment of the brain-power, without undue overstrain
in any one direction ; in one word, the method of jtro-
ducing, as far as possible, the mentem sanam in corpore
sano, and the wonderful and blessed eflects of such
obedience to those laws of nature, which are nothing
but the good will of God expressed in facts — their
wonderful and blessed tendency, I say, to eliminate the
germs of hereditary disease, and to actually regenerate
the human system — all this is known ; known as fully
and clearly as any human knowledge need be known ;
it is written in dozens of popular books and pamphlets.
And why should this divine voice, which cries to man,
tending to sink into efl'eminate barbarism through his
own hasty and partial civilisation, — " It is not too late.
For your bodies, as for your spirits, there is an upward,
as well as a downward path. You, or if not you, at
least the children wIkuu you have brought into the
world, for whom you toil, for whom you hoard, for
whom you pray, for whom you would give your lives, —
they still may be healthy, strong, it may be beautiful,
and have all the intellectual and social, as well as the

12 THE SCIESCE OF HEALTH.

physical advantnf^es, which liealth, strength, and heauty
give." — All, why is this divine voice now, as of old,
Wisdom crying in the streets, and no man regarding
her? I appeal to women, who are initiated, as we men
can never be, into the stern mysteries of pain, and
sorrow, and self-sacritico ; — they who bring forth chil-
dren, weep over children, slave for children, and, if
they have none of their own, then slave, with the holy
instinct of the sexless bee, for the children of others —
Let them say, shall this thing be ?

Let my reiiders pardon me if I seem to write too
earnestly. That I speak neither more nor less than
the truth, every medical man knows full well. Not
only as a very humble student of physiology, but as a
parish priest of thirty years' standing, I have seen so
much unnecessary misery ; and I have in other cases
seen similar misery so simply avoided ; that the sense
of the vastness of the evil is intensified by my sense of
the easiness of the cure.

Why, then — to come to practical suggestions — shouM
there not bo opened in every great town in those realms
a public school of health? It might connect itself
with — I hold that it should form an integral part of—
some existing educational institute. But it should at
least give practical lectures, for foes small enough to
put them within the reach of any respectable man or
woman, however pot^r. I cannot but hope that such

Till-: SCIENCE OF HEALTH. 18

schools of health, il" opoueil in the f^reat manuliicturing
towns of En^'land and Scotland, and, indeed, in such an
Irish town as lUdfast, would ohtain j)upil.s in plenty,
andj pupils who would thoroughly profit by what they
hear. The people of these towns are, most of them,
sj)ecially accustomed by their own trades to the appli-
cation of scientific laws. To them, therefore, the ap-
plication of any fresh physical laws to a fresh set of
facts, would have nothing strange in it. They have
already something of that inductive habit of mind
which is the groundwork of all rational understanding
or action. They would not turn the deaf and con-
temptuous ear with which the savage and the super-
stitious receive the revelation of nature's mysteries.
Why should not, with so hopeful an audience, the
experiment be tried far and wide, of giving lectures on
health, as supplementary to those lectures on animal
physiology which are, I am happy to say, becoming
more and more common ? Why should not people be
taught — they are already being taught at Birmingham
— something about the tissues of the body, their struc-
ture and uses, the circulation of the blood, respiration,
chemical changes in the air respired, amount breathed,
digestion, nature of food, absorption, secretion, struc-
ture of the nervous system, — in fact, be taught some-
thing of how their own bodies are made and how they
work ? Teaching of this kind ought to, and will, in

14 THE SCI ESC E OF HEALTH.

some more civilised age and country, be held a neces-
sary element in the school-course of every child, just
as necessary as reading, writing, and arithmetic; for it is
after all the most necessary branch of that " technical
fducation " of which we hear so much just now, namely,
the technic, or art, of keeping oneself alive and well.

But we can hardly stop there. After we have
taught the condition of health, we must teach also the
condition of disease ; of those diseases specially which
tend to lessen wholesale the health of townsfolk, exposed
to an artiticial mode of life. Surely young men and
women should be taught something of the causes of
zymotic disease, and of scrofula, consumption, rickets,
dipsomania, cerebral derangement, and such like. They
should be shown the practical value of pure air, pure
water, unadulterated food, sweet and dry dwellings.
Is there one of them, man or woman, who would not be
the safer and happier, and the more useful to his or
her neighbours, if they had acquired some sound
nutions about those questions of drainage on which
their own lives and the lives of their children may
every day depend? I say — women as well as men. 1
should have said women rather than men. For it is
the women who have the ordering t)f the household,
the bringing up of the children ; the women who bide
at home, while the men ar • •"■ ■' •• •■■.■■;• 1'<- ■•♦ t'"'
other end of the earth.

THE sen: so E of health. \-»

Aiitl if any siiy, as tliry Imvo a ri^'lit to say — '• But
these are subjoets which can liardly be taught to youug
women ill publie leetures ; " I rejoin,— Of course not,
unless tlu-y are taught by women, — by women, of
course, duly educated and legally qualified. Let such
teach to women, what every woman ought to know,
and what her parents will very properly object to her
hearing from almost any inun. Tliis is one of the main
reasons why I have, for twenty years past, advocated
the training of women for the medical profession ; and
one which countervails, in my mind, all possible objec-
tions to such a movement. And now, thank God, I
am seeing the common sense of Great Britain, and
indeed of every civilised nation, gradually coming round
to that which seemed to me, when I first conceived of
it, a dream too chimerical to be cherished save in secret
— the restoring woman to her natural share in that
-sacred office of healer, which she held in the ]\[iddle
Ages, and from which she was thrust out during the
sixteenth century.

I am most happy to see, for instance, that the National
I lealth Society,* which I earnestly recommend to the
tttention of my readers, announces a " Course of Lec-
tures for Ladies on Elementary Physiology and IIv-
■-,Meue, by ^liss Chessar," to which I am also most happy
o) see, governesses are admitted at half-fees. Alas !

• U. Adntn Slreit, Adclphi, Luudxn.

16 THE SCIENCE OF I/EAl.Tn.

Low much misery, disease, and even death, might have
been prevented, had governesses been taught such
matters thirty years ago, I, for one, know too well.
Blay the day soon come when there will be educated
women enough to give such lectures throughout these
realms, to rich as well as poor, — for the rich, strange
to say, need them often as much as the poor do, — and
that we may live to see, in every great town, health
classes for women as well as for men, sending forth
year by year more young women and young men
taught, not only to take care of themselves and of their
families, but to exercise moral influence over their
fellow-citizens, as champions in the battle against din
and drunkenness, disease and death.

There may be those who would answer — or rather,
there would certainly have been those who would have
80 answered thirty years ago, before the so-called
materialism of advanced science had taught us som«
practical wisdom about education, and reminded people
that they have bodies as well us minds and souls —
" You say, we are likely to grow weaklier, unhealthicr.
And if it were ho, what matter ? Mind makes the man,
not body. We do not want our children to be stupid
giants and bravos ; but clever, able, highly educated,
however weakly Providence or the laws of nature may
have chosen to make them. Let them overstrain their
brains a little; let them contract their chests, and

THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. 17

injure their digestion ami their eyesight, by sitting at
desks, poring over books. Intellect is what we want.
Intellect makes money. Intellect makes the world. We
would rather see our son a genius than an athlete."
Well : and so would I. But what if intellect alone
does not even make money, save as Messrs. Dodson ^
Fogg, Sampson Brass, and Montagu Tigg were wont
to make it, unless backed by an able, enduring, healthy
physique, such as I have seen, almost without exception,
in those successful men of business whom I have hud
the honour and the pleasure of knowing? What if
intellect, or what is now called intellect, did not make
the world, or the smallest wheel or cog of it ? What
if, for want of obeying the laws of nature, parents bred
up neither a genius nor an athlete, but only an incap-
able unhappy personage, with a huge upright forehead,
like that of a Byzantine Greek, filled with some sort
of pap instead of brains, and tempted alternately to
fanaticism and strong drink ? We must, in the great
majority of cases have the corpus sanem if we want
the mentem Fanem ; and healthy bodies are the only
trustworthy organs for healthy minds. Which is cause
and which is effect, I shall not stay to debate here.
But wherever we find a population generally weakly,
stunted, scrofulous, we find in them a corresponding
type of brain, which cannot l)o trusted to do good \\ov\ ;

18 THE SCIENCE OF nEALTH.

■which is capable more or less of madness, whether
solitary or epidemic. It may be very active ; it may
be very quick at catching at new and grand ideas —
all the more quick, perhaps, on account of its own
secret malaise and self-discontent : but it will be irri-
table, spasmodic, hysterical. It will be apt to mistake
capacity of talk for capacity of action, excitement for
earnestness, virulence for force, and, too often, cruelty
for justice. It will lose manful independence, indi-
viduality, originality ; and when men act, they will
act, from the consciousness of personal weakness, like
sheep rushing over a hedge, leaning against each other,
exhorting each other to be brave, and swaying about in
mobs and masses. These were the intellectual weak-
nesses which, as I read history, followed on physical
degradation in Imperial Rome, in Alexandria, in Byzan-
tium. Have we not seen them reappear, under fearful
forms, in Paris but the other day ?

I do not blame ; I do not judge. My theory, which
I hold, and shall hold, to bo fairly founded on a wide
induction, forbids mo to blame and to judge : because
it tells me that these defects are mainly physical ; that
those who exhibit them are mainly to be pitied, as
victims of the sins or ignorance of their forefathers,
lint it tells me too, that those who, professing to be
T'ducutcd men, and therefore bound to know bettor,
trt-at these physicuj plieuomeua as spiritual, healthy,

THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. 19

and praiseworthy ; who even exasperate them, that they
may make capital out of the weaknesses of fallen man,
are the most contemptible and yet the most dangerous
of public enemies, let them cloak their quackery
under whatsoever patriotic, or scientific, or even sacred
words.

There are those again honest, kindly, sensible, prac-
tical men, many of them ; men whom I have no wish to
offend ; whom I had rather ask to teach me some of
their own experience and common sense, which has
learned to discern, like good statesmen, not only what
ought to be done, but what can be done — there are
those, I say, who would sooner see this whole question
let alone. Their feeling, as far as I can analyse it,
seems to be, that the evils of which I have been com-
plaining, are on the whole inevitable : or, if not, that
we can mend so very little of them, that it is wisest to
leave them alone altogether, lest, like certain sewers,
" the more you stir them, the more they smell." They
fear lest we should unsettle the minds of the many
for whom these evils will never be mended ; lest
we make them discontented ; discontented with their
houses, their occupations, their food, their whole social
arrangements ; and all in vain.

I should answer, in all courtesy and humility — for I
sympathise deeply with such men and women, and
respect them deeply likewise — But are not people dis-

c 2

20 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH.

contented already, from the lowest to the highest?
And ought a man, in such a piecemeal, foolish, greedy,
sinful world as this is, and always has been, to be any-
thing but discontented ? If he thinks that things are
going all right, must he not have a most beggarly
conception of what going right means ? And if things
are not going right, can it be anything but good for
him to see that they are not going right ? Can truth
and fact harm any human being ? I shall not believe
so, as long as I have a Bible wherein to believe. For
my part, I should like to make every man, woman, and
child whom I meet discontented with themselves, even
as I am discontented with myself. I should like to
awaken in them, about their physical, their intellectual,
their moral condition, that divine discontent which is
the parent, first of upward aspiration and then of self-
control, thought, effort to fulfil tliat aspiration even in
part. For to be discontented with the divine discon-
tent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the
very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue. Men begin
at first, as boys begin when they grumble at their
Hchool and their schoolmasters, to lay the blame on
others ; to be discontented with tlieir circumstances —
tlic things whicli stand !ir<miid them ; and to cry, " Oh
tljiit I liad this ! " " Oh that I had that ! " But that
way no deliverance lies. That discontent only ends
in revolt and rebellion, social or political; and that.

THE SCIENCE OF nEALTII. 21

again, still in the same worship of circumstances — but
this time desperate — which ends, let it disguise itself
under what fine names it will, in what the old Greeks
called a tyranny ; in which — as in the Spanish republics
of America, and in France more than once — all have
become the voluntary slaves of one man, because each
man fancies that the one man can improve his circum-
stances for him.

But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the
heroic slave, the slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's minion
— and in what baser and uglier circumstances could
human being find himself? — to find out the secret of
being truly free ; namely, to be discontented with no
man and no thing save himself. To say not — " Oh
that I had this and that ! " but " Oh that I were this
and that ! " Then, by God's help — and that heroic slave,
heathen though he was, believed and trusted in God's
help — " I will make myself that which God has shown
me that I ought to be and can be."

Ten thousand a-year, or ten million a-year, as
Epictetus saw full well, cannot mend that vulgar dis-
content with circumstances, which he had felt — and
who with more right ? — and conquered, and despised.
For that is the discontent of children, wanting always
more holidays and more sweets. But I wish my
readers to have, and to cherish, the discontent of men
and women.

22 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH.

Therefore I would make men and women discon-
tented, with the divine and wholesome discontent, at
their own physical frame, and at that of their children.
I would accustom their eyes to those precious heir-
looms of the human race, the statues of the old Greeks ;
to their tender grandeur, their chaste healthfulucss,
their unconscious, because perfect, might : and say —
There ; these are tokens to you, and to all generations
yet unborn, of what man could be once ; of what he can
be again if he will obey those laws of nature which are
the voice of God. I would make them discontented with
the ugliness and closeness of their dwellings ; I would
make the men discontented with the fashion of their gar-
ments, and still more just now the women, of all ranks,
with the fashion of theirs ; and with everything around
them which they have the power of improving, if it
be at all ungraceful, superfluous, tawdry, ridiculous,
unwholesome. I would make them discontented with
what they call their education, and say to them — You
call the three Uoyul K's education ? They are not
education : no more is the knowledge which would
enable you to take the highest prizes given by the
Society of Arts, or any other body. They are not
education : they are only instruction ; a necessary
groundwork, in an ago like this, for making practical
U80 of your education : but not the education itself.

And if they uskud nic, Wliut then education meant?

THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. 23

I should point them, first, I think, to noble old Lilly's
noble old ' Euphues,' of three hundred years ago, and
ask them to consider what it says about education,
and especially this passage concerning that mere
knowledge which is nowadays strangely miscalled edu-
cation. '* There are two principal and peculiar gifts
in the nature of man, knowledge and reason. The one"
— that is reason — " commandeth, and the other " — that
is knowledge — " obeyeth. These things neither the
whirling wheel of fortune can change, nor the deceit-
ful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither sickness
abate, nor age abolish." And next I should point them
to those pages in Mr. Gladstone's ' Juventus Mundi,'
where he describes the ideal training of a Greek youth
in Homer's days ; and say, — There : that is an educa-
tion fit for a really civilised man, even though he never
saw a book in his life ; the full, proportionate, har-
monious educing — that is, bringing out and developing
— of all the faculties of his body, mind, and heart, till
he becomes at once a reverent yet a self-assured, a
graceful and yet a valiant, an able and yet an eloquent
personage.

And if any should say to me — " But what has this
to do with science ? Homer's Greeks knew no science ;"
I should rejoin — But they had, pre-eminently above
all ancient races which we know, the scientific instinct ;
the teachableness and modesty ; the clear eye and

24 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH.

ijuick car ; the hearty revereuce for fact and nature,
aiul lor the human body, and mind, and spirit ; for
human nature, in a word, in its completeness, as the
hif^'hest fact upon this earth. Therefore they became
in after years, not only the great colonisers and the
great civilisers of the old world — the most practical
people, I hold, which the world ever saw ; but the
parents of all sound physics as well as of all sound
metaphysics. Their very religion, in spite of its im-
pL'rfectiuns, helped forward their education, not in
spite of, but by means of, that anthropomorphism
which we sometimes too hastily decry. As Mr. Glad-
stone says in a passage which I must quote at length —
" As regarded all other functions of our nature, out-
side the domain of the life to Godward — all those func-
tions which are summed up in what St. Paul calls the
tksli iiud the mind, the psychic and bodily life, the
'^ tendency of the system was to exalt the human ele-
ment, by proposing a model of beauty, strength, and
wisdom, in all their combinations, so elevated that
the effort to attain them required a continual upward
strain. It made divinity attainable ; and thus it effec-
tually directed the thought and aim of man

• AIoDg tho lino of liniitlcttH «li«irojJ.'

Such a scheme of religion, though failing grossly in
the government of the passions, oud in upholding tho

THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. 25

standard of moral duties, tended powerfully to produce
a lofty self-respect, and a large, free, and varied
conception of humanity. It incorporated itself in
schemes of notable discipline for mind and body,
indeed of a lifelong education ; and these habits of
mind and action had their marked results (to omit many
other greatnesses) in a philosophy, literature, and
art, which remain to this day unrivalled or unsur-
passed."

So much those old Greeks did for their own educa-
tion, without science and without Christianity. We
who have both : what might we not do, if we would be
true to our advantages, and to ourselves ?

THE TWO BREATHS.

A Lecture delivered at Winchester, May 31, 1869.

Ladies, — I have been honoured by a second invitation
to address you here, from the lady to whose public
spirit the establishment of these lectures is due. I dare
not refuse it : because it gives me an opportunity of
speaking on a matter, knowledge and ignorance about
which may seriously affect your health and happiness,
and that of the children with whom you may have to
do, I must apologize if I say many things which are
well known to many persons in this room : they ought
to be well known to all ; and it is generally best to
assume total ignorance in one's hearers, and to begin
from the beginning.

I shall try to be as simple as possible ; to trouble you
as little as possible with scientific terms ; to be prac-
tical ; and at the same time, if possible, interesting.

I should wish t<» cull this lecture " The Two Breaths :"
not merely " The iJrcath ; " and for this reason : every

THE TWO BBEATHS. 27

time you breathe, you breatlie two diftercnt breaths ;
you take in one, you give out another. The composi-
tion of those two breaths is different. Their effects are
different. The breath which has been breathed out
must not be breathed in again. To tell you why it
must not would lead me into anatomical details, not
quite in place here as yet : though the day will come, I
trust, when every woman entrusted wdth the care of
children will be expected to know something about
them. But this I may say — Those who habitually take
in fresh breath \vill probably grow up large, strong,
ruddy, cheerful, active, clear-headed, fit for their work.
Those who habitually take in the breath which has been
breathed out by themselves, or any other living crea-
ture, will certainly grow up, if they grow up at all,
.small, weak, pale, nervous, depressed, unfit for work,
and tempted continually to resort to stimulants, and
become drunkards.

If you want to see how different the breath breathed
out is from the breath taken in, you have only to try a
somewhat cruel experiment, but one which people too
often try upon themselves, their children, and their work-
people. If you take any small animal with lungs like
your own — a mouse, for instance — and force it to breathe
no air but what you have breathed already ; if you put
it in a close box, and while you take in breath from the
outer air, send out your breath through a tube, into

28 THE TWO BREATHS.

that box, the animal will soon faint ; if you go on long
with this process, it will die.

Take a second instance, which I beg to press most
seriously on the notice of mothers, governesses, and
nurses : If you allow a child to get into the habit of
sleeping with its head under the bed-clothes, and thereby
breathing its own breath over and over again, that child
will assuredly grow pale, weak, and ill. Medical men
have cases on record of scrofula appearing in children
previously healthy, which could only be accounted for
from this habit, and which ceased when the habit
stopped. Let me again entreat your attention to this
undoubted fact.

Take another instance, which is only too common :
If you are in a crowded room, with plenty of fire and
lights and company, doors and windows all shut tight,
how often you feel faint — so faint, that you may recjuire
smelling-salts or some other stimulant. The cause of
your faintness is just the same as that of the mouse's
fainting in the box : you and your friends, and, as I
shall sIkjw you presently, the fire and the candles like-
wise, having been all breathing each other's breaths,
over and over again, till the air has become unfit to
support lift'. You are doing your best to enact over
again the Highland tragedy, of which Sir James Simpson
tells in his b-cturcs to the working-classes of Edinburgh,
when at a Christmas meeting thirty-six persons danced

THE TWO BREATHS. 29

all niglit in a siuiill room with u low ceiling, keeping
the doors and windows shut. The atmosphere of the
room was noxious hcyond description ; and the effect
was, that seven of the party were soon after seized with
typhus fever, of which two died. You are inflicting on
yourselves the torments of the poor dog, who is kept at
the Grotto del Cane, near Naples, to he stupified, for
the amusement of visitors, hy the carbonic acid gas of
the Grotto, and brought to life again by being dragged
into the fresh air ; nay, you are inflicting upon your-
selves the torments of the famous Black Hole of Cal-
cutta ; and, if there was no chimney in the room, by
which some fresh air could enter, the candles would
soon burn blue — as they do, you know, when ghosts
appear ; your brains become disturbed ; and you your-
selves run the risk of becoming ghosts, and the candles
of actually going out.

Of this last fact there is no doubt ; for if, instead of
putting a mouse into the box, you will put a lighted
candle, and breathe into the tube, as before, however
crently, you will in a short time put the candle out.

Now, how is this ? First, what is the difierence
between the breath you take in and the breath you
give out ? And next, why has it a similar effect on
animal life and a lighted candle?

The dilVerence is this. The breath which you take
in is, or ought to be, pure air, composed, on the whole.

30 THE TWO BREATHS.

of oxygen and nitrogen, with a minute portion of
carbonic acid.

The breath which you give out is an impure air, to
which has been added, among other matters which will
not support life, an excess of carbonic acid.

That this is the fact you can prove for yourselves by
a simple experiment. Get a little lime water at the
chemist's, and breathe into it through a glass tube ;
your breath will at once make the lime-water milky.
The carbonic acid of your breath has laid hold of the
lime, and made it visible as white carbonate of lime —
in plain English, as common chalk.

Now, I do not wish, as I said, to load your memories
with scientific terms : but I beseech you to remember
at least these two — oxygen gas and carbonic acid gas ;
and to remember that, as surely as oxygen feeds the
fire of life, so surely does carbonic acid put it out.

I say, " the fire of life." In that expression lies the
answer to our second question : Why does our breath
produce a similar effect upon the mouse and the lighted
candle? Every one of us is, as it were, a living fire.
Were we not, how could we be always warmer than the
air outside us ? There is a process going on perpetu-
ally in oach of us, similar to that by wliicli coals are
burnt in the fire, oil in a lump, wax in a caudle, and
tlio earth itself in a volcano. To keep each of those
lircs alight, oxygen is needed ; and the products of

THE TWO BREATHS. 11

combustion, as they are called, are more or less the
same in each case — carbonic acid and steam.

These facts justify the expression I just made use of
— which may have seemed to some of you fantasti-
cal — that the fire and the candles in the crowded room
were breathing the same breath as you were. It is
but too true. An average fire in the grate requires,
to keep it burning, as much oxygen as several human
beings do ; each candle or lamp must have its share
of oxygen likewise, and that a very considerable one ;
and an average gas-burner— pray attend to this, you
who live in rooms lighted with gas — consumes as much
oxygen as several candles. All alike are making car-
bonic acid. The carbonic acid of the fire happily
escapes up the chimney in the smoke : but the carbonic
acid from the human beings and the candles remains to
poison the room, unless it be ventilated.

Now, I think you may understand one of the
simplest, and yet most terrible, cases of want of ven-
tilation — death by the fumes of charcoal. A human
being shut up in a room, of which every crack is closed,
with a pan of burning charcoal, falls asleep, never to
wake again. His inward fire is competing with the
fire of the charcoal for the oxygen of the room ; both
are making carbonic acid out of it : but the charcoal,
being the stronger of the two, gets all the oxygen to
itself, and leaves the human being nothing to inhale

32 THE TWO BREATHS.

but the carbonic acid which it has made. The human
l)eing, being the weaker, dies first : but the charcoal
dies also. \Mien it has exhausted all the oxygen of
the room, it cools, goes out, and is found in the morn-
ing half-consumed beside its victim. If you put a
giant or an eleplmut, I should conceive, into that room,
instead of a human being, the case would be reversed
for a time: the elephant would put out the burning
charcoal by the carbonic acid from his mighty lungs ;
and then, when he hud oxhausted all the air in the
room, die likewise of his own ciirbonir uci.l.

Now, I think, we may see what ventilation means,
and why it is needed.

Ventilation moans simply litting out the loul air,
and letting in the fri'sh air; letting out the air which
has been br«^atlH'd by men or by candles, and letting in
the air which has not. To understand how to do that,
we must remember a most simple chemical law, that u
gas as it is warmed expands, and therefore becomes
lighter ; as it cof)ls, it contracts, and becomes heavier.

Now the carbonic acid in the breath which comes
out of our mouth is warm, lighter than the air, and
rises to the ceiling ; and therefore in any unventilated
room full of pt'ople, there is a layer of foul air along
the ceiling. You might soon test that for yourselves,
ifyou«""M I ri oun t o ladder and put your heads there

TiiK TWO jiJn:ATf/s. 3:i

alolt. You do tf.st it lor your.selvf.s when you nit in
tlio galleries of churches ami theatres, where the air is
I>ali)altly more I'oul, and tht-reforo more injurious, than
down Ixdow.

Where, again, work-people are eni})loyed in a crowded
house of many storeys, the health of those who work on
the upper floors always sutlers most.

Ill the idd luniikt y-li(iusf of the Zoological Gardens,
when the cages were on tlie old jdan, tier uj)nn tier, the
poor little fellows in the uj)j)ermost tier — so I have been
told — always died first of the monkey's constitutional
complaint, consumption, simply from breathing the
warm breath of their friends below. ]>ut since the
cages have been altered, and made; to range side by
side from toj) to bottom, ccuisumption — I understand —
has vastly diminished among them.

The first question in ventilation, therefore, is to get
this carbonic acid safe out of the room, while it is warm
and light and close to the ceiling ; ft)r if you do not,
this happens — The carbonic acid gas cools and becomes
heavier; for carbonic acid, at the same temperature as
common air, is so much heavier than common air, that
you may actually — if you are handy enough — turn it
from one vessel to another, and }»(»ur out for vour
enemy a glass of invisible })oison. So down to the
floor this heavy carbonic acid comes, and lies along it,
just as it lies often in the bottom of old wells, or old

34 THE TWO JiltEATHS.

brewers' vats, as a stratum of poison, killing occasion-
ally the men who descend into it. Hence, as foolish a
practice as I know is that of sleeping on the floor ; for
towards the small hours, when the room gets cold, the
sleeper on the floor is brenthinpj carbonic acid.

And here one word to tliose ladies who interest
themselves with the poor. The poor are too apt in
times of distress to pawn their bedsteads and keep
their beds. Never, if you have influence, let that
happen. Keep the bedstead, whatever else may go, to
save the sleeper from the carbonic acid on the floor.

How, then, shall we get rid of the foul air at the
top of the room ? After all that has been written and
tried on ventilation, I know no simpler method than
putting into the chimney one of Arnott's ventilators,
which may be bought and fixed for a few shillings ;
always remembering that it must bo fixed into the
chimney as near the ceiling as possible. 1 can speak
of those ventilators from twenty-five ycjirs' experience.
Living in a hotise with low ceilings, liable to become
overcharged with carbonic acid, which produces sleepi-
ness in the evening, I liave found that these ventilators
keep the air fresh and pure ; and I considc-r the pre-
sence of one of those ventilators in a r(H)m more
valuable than three or four feet additional height of
coiling. I have found, too, that tluir working proves
how iii'i"i^<''iirv tlicv Hir. fioiii this siiiijilf fact : — You

THE TWO BREATHS. V>

woulil snpposc that, as the vontilator opens freely into
tlie chimney, the smoke would bo blown down through
it in high winds, and blacken the ceiling: but this is
just what does not happen. If the ventilator be at all
properly poised, so as to shut with a violent gust of
wind, it will at all other moments keep itself per-
manently open ; proving thereby that there is an np-
draught of heated air continually escaping from the
ceiling up the chimney. Another very simple method
of ventilation is employed in those excellent cottages
which Iler Majesty has built for her labourers round
Windsor. Over each door a sheet of perforated zinc,
some 18 inches square, is fixed ; allowing the foul air to
escape into the passage ; and in the ceiling of the pas-
sage a similar sheet of zinc, allowing it to escape into
the roof. Fresh air, meanwhile, should be obtained
from outside, by piercing the windows, or otherwise.
And here let me give one hint to all builders of houses.
If possible, let bedroom windows open at the top as
well as at the bottom.

Let me impress the necessity of using some such
contrivances, not only on parents and educators, but on
those who employ work-people, and above all on those
who employ young women in shops or in work-rooms.
AVhat their condition may be in this city I know not ;
but most painful it has been to me in other places, when
passing through warehouses or work-rooms, to see the

I) 2

86 THE TWO BliEATIIS.

pale, sfHlilcn, ami, as the French would say " etiolatetl "
countenances of the girls who were passing the greater
part of the day in them ; and painful, also, to breathe
an atmosphere of which habit had, alas ! made them
unconscious, but which to one coming out of the open
air was altogether noxious, and shocking also ; for it
was fostering the seeds of death, not only in the present
but in future generations.

^^^ly should this be ? Every one will agree that
good ventilation is necessary in a hospital, because
people cannot get well without fresh air. Do they
not see that by the same reasoning good ventilation is
necessary everywhere, because people cannot remain
well without fresh air? Let me entreat those who
employ women in work-rooms, if they have no time
to read through such buitks as Dr. Andrew Combe's
* Physiology applied to Health and Education,' and
Madame do Wahl's 'Practical Hints on the Moral,
Mental, and Physical Training of Girls,' to procure
certain tracts published by i^Iessrs. Jarrold, Pater-
noster Row, for the Ladies' Sanitary Association ;
especially one which bears on this subject, 'The lUack-
Hole in our own Bedrooms ;' Dr. Laukestor's ' School
Manual of Health ;' or a manual on ventilation, ])ii))-
lished by the Metropolitan Working ClaMscs Association
for the Improvement of Public Health.

I lo<jk forward — I say it openly — to some period of

rilK TWO BREATHS. 37

hif^her civilisation, when the Acts of Parliament for the
ventilation of factories and workshops shall be largely
extended, and mado far more stringent ; when officers
of public health shall be empowered to enforce the ven-
tilation of every room in which persons are employed
for hire : and empowered also to demand a proper
system of ventilation for every new house, whether in
country or in town. To that, I believe, we must come :
but I had sooner far see these improvements carried
out, as befits the citizens of a free country, in the spirit
of the Gospel rather tlian in tliat of the Law; carried
out, not compulsorily and from fear of fines, but volun-
tarily, from a sense of duty, honour, and humanity. I
appeal, therefore, to the good feeling of all whom it
may concern, whether the health of those whom they
employ, and therefore the supply of fresh air which
they absolutely need, are not matters for which they
are not, more or less, responsible to their country and
tlieir God.

And if any excellent person of the old school should
answer me — " Why make all this fuss about ventilation ?
Our forefathers got on very well without it " — I must
answer that, begging their pardons, our ancestors did
nothing of the kind. Our ancestors got on usually
very ill in these matters: and when they got on well,
it was lx?cause they had good ventilation in spite of
themselves.

:'.S TIJK TWO Bit EAT IIS.

First. Tliey got on very ill. To quote a few re-
markable iustances of longevity, or to tell me that men
were larger ami stronger on the average in old times, is
to yield to the old fallacy of fancying that savages were
peculiarly healthy, because those who were seen were
active and strong. The simple answer is, that the
strong alone survived, while the majority died from
the severity of the training. Savages do not increase
in number; and our ancestors increased but very slowly
lor many centuries. I am not going to disgust my
audience with statistics of disease : but knowing some-
thing, as I happen to do, of the social state and of the
health of the Middle and Elizabethan Ages, I have no
hesitation in saying that the average of disease and
death was far greater then than it is now. Epidemics
of many kinds, typhus, ague, plague — all diseases which
were cau.sed more or less by bad air — devastated this
land and Europe in those days with a horrible intensity,
to which even the choleras of our times are mild. The
l>iiek streets, the hospitals, the gaols, the barracks, the
(limps — every place in which any large number of
I>ersons congregated, were so many nests of pestilence,
engendered by uncleanliness, which defiled alike the
water which was drunk and the air which was breathed ;
and as a single fact, of which the tables of insurance
eompanies assure us, the average of human life in
England has increased twcuty-fivo per cent, since the

riiK TWO n HEATHS. sa

reign of Geoij,'o I., owing simply to our more rational
and cleanly habits oi" life.

Jhit seeomlly, I saitl that when our ancestors got on
well, they did so because they got ventilation in spite
of themselves. Luckily for them, their houses were
ill-built ; their doors and windows would not shut.
They had lattice-windowed houses, too ; to live in one
of which, as I can testify from long experience, is as
thoroughly ventilating as living in a lantern with the
horn broken out. It was because their houses were
full of draughts, and still more, in the early middle
age, because they had no glass, and stopped out the air
only by a shutter at night, that they sought for shelter
rather than for fresh air, of which they sometimes had
too much ; and, to escape the wind, built their houses
in holes, such as that in which the old city of Win-
chester stands. Shelter, I believe, as much as the
desire to be near fish in Lent, and to occupy the rich
alluvium of the valleys, made the monks of Old England
choose the river-banks for the sites of their abbeys.
They made a mistake therein, which, like most mis-
takes, did not go unpunished. These low situations,
especially while the forests were yet thick on the hills
around, were the perennial haunts of fever and ague,
produced by subtle vegetable poisons, carried in the
carbonic acid given oft' by rotting vegetation. So there,
again, they fell in with man's old enemy — bad air.

40 THE TWO B HEATHS.

Still, as long as the doors and windows did not shut,
some free circulation of air remained. But now, our
doors and windows shut only too tight. We have
plate-glns.s instead of latticts ; and we have replaced
the draughty and smoky, hut really wholesome open
chimney, with its wide corners and settles, by narrow
registers, and even by stoves. We have done all we
can, in fact, to seal ourselves up hermetically from the
outer air, and to breathe our own breaths over and over
again ; and we pay the penalty of it in a thousand
ways unknown to our ancestors, through whose rooms
all the winds of heaven whistled, and who were glad
enough to shelter themselves from draughts in the
sitting-room by the high screen round the fire, and in
the sleeping-room by the thick curtains of the four-
post bedstead, which is now rapidly disappearing before
a higher civilisation. Wo therefore absolutely require
to make for ourselves the very ventilation from which
our ancestors tried to escape.

But, ladies, there is an old and true proverb, that
you may l)ring a horse to the water, but you cannot
make him drink. And in like wise it is too true, that
you may bring people to the fresh air, but you cannot
make them breathe it. Their own folly, or the folly of
their parents and educators, prevents their lungs being
duly filled and duly emptied. Therefore, the bl(M>d is
not duly oxygenated, and the whole system goes wrong.

TlIK TWO Jin EAT /IS. 41

Paleness, weakness, consumption, scrofula, and too
iimuy otluT uilnicnts. are the consequences of ill-filled
lungs. Fur without well-lillL-d lungs, robust health is
impossible.

And if any one shall answer — " We do not want
robust health so much as intellectual attainment. The
mortal body, being the lower organ, must take its chance,
and be even sacrificed, if need be, to the higher organ —
the immortal mind:" — To such I reply. You cannot do
it. The laws of nature, which are the express will of
God, laugh such attempts to scorn. Every organ of
the body is formed out of the blood ; and if the blood
be vitiated, every organ suffers in proportion to its
delicacy ; and the brain, being the most delicate and
highly specialised of all organs, suffers most of nil and
soonest of all, as every one knows who has tried to
work his brain when his digestion was the least out of
order. Nay, the very morals will suffer. From ill-
filled lungs, which signify ill-repaired blood, arise year
by year an amount not merely of disease, but of folly,
temper, laziness, intemperance, madness, and, let me
toll you fairly, crime — the sum of which will never be
known till that great day when men shall be called to
account for all deeds done in the body, whether they
be good or evil.

I must refer you on this subject again to Andrew
Combe's ' Physiology,' especially chapters iv. iiiul vii. ;

42 THE TWO BREATHS.

and also to chapter x. of j^failame do Wahl's excellent
book. I will only say this shortly, that the three most
common causes of ill-filled luupjs, in children and in
young ladies, are stillness, silence, and stays.

First, stillness ; a sedentary life, ami want of exorcise.
A girl is kept fur hours sitting on a form writing or
reading, to do which she must lean forward ; and if her
schoolmistress cruelly attempts to make her sit upright,
and thereby keep the spine in an attitude for which
Nature did not intend it, she is thereby doing her best
to bring on that disease, so fearfully common in girls'
schools, lateral curvature of the spine. But practically
the girl will stoop forward. And what happens? The
lower ribs are pressed into the body, thereby displacing
more or less something inside. The diaphragm in the
meantime, which is the very bellows of the lungs,
remains loose; the lungs are never j)roj)erly tilled or
emptied ; and an excess of carbonic acid accumulates at
the bottom of them. What follows? Frequent sighing
to get rid of it ; heaviness of head ; depression of the
whole nervous system under the infliience of the poison
of the lungs ; and when tiie poor child gets up from
her weary work, what is the first thing she probably
does? Bho lifts up her chest, stretches, yawns, and
breathes deeply — Nature's voice, Nature's instinctive
cure, which is probably regarded as ungraceful, as what
is called "lolling" is. As if sitting upright was not

THE TWO BItEATIfS. 43

all attitiulf ill itself essentially ungraceful, and such as
no artist would cure to draw. As if "lolling," which
means putting the hody in the attitude of the most
perfect ease compatible with a fully expanded chest,
was not in itself essentially graceful, and to be seen in
every reposing figure in (Ireek bas-reliefs and vases;
graceful, and like all graceful actions, healthful at the
same time. The only tolerably wholesome attitude of
repose, which I see allowed in average school-rooms,
is lying on the back on the floor, or on a sloping board,
in which case the lungs must be fully expanded. But
even so, a pillow, or some equivalent, ought to be placed
under the small of the back : or the spine will be
strained at its very weakest point.

I now go on to the second mistake — enforced silence.
-Moderate reading aloud is good : but where there is
any tendency to irritability of throat or lungs, too
much moderation cannot be used. You may as well
try to cure a diseased lung by working it, as to cure
a lame horse by galloping him. But where the
breathing organs are of average health, let it be
said once and for all, that children and young people
cannot make too much noise. The parents who can-
not bear the noise of their children have no right to
have brought them into the world. The schoolmistress
who enforces silence on her pupils is committing —
uuinteutioually no doubt, but still committing— an

44 THE TWO liliEATHS.

offence against reason, wortliy only of a convent.
Every shout, every burst of laughter, every song — nay,
in the case of infants, as physiologists well know, every
moderate fit of crying — conduces to health, by rapidly
filling and emptying the lung, and clmnging the blood
more rapidly from black to red, that is, from death to
life. Andrew Combe tells a story of a large charity
school, in which the young girls were, for the sake of
their health, shut up in the hall and school-room
during play hours, from November till March, and no
romping or noise allowed. The natural consequences
were, the great majt)rity of tluMu full ill ; and I am afraid
that a great deal of illness has been from time to time
contracted in certain school-rooms, simply through this
one cause of enforced silence. Some cause or other
there must bo for the amount of ill-health and weak-
liness which prevails especially among girls of the
middle classes in towns, who have not, poor things, the
opportunities which richer girls have, of keeping them-
selves in strong health by riding, skating, archery — that
last quite an admirublo cxcrciMo for the chest and
lungs, and far prrffrable to croquet, which involves too
much unwludf'somo stooping. — Even playing at ball,
if milliners iind shop-girls had room to indulge in ono
after their sedentary work, might bring fresh spirits to
many a heart, and fresh C4>lour to many a che(>k.

I spoke just now of the Greeks. I suppose you will

77//; TWO BJlKArilS. 45

all iilluw that tlie Greeks were, as far as we know, the
most beautiful nice which tlic worUl ever saw. Every
educated man knows that they were also the cleverest
of all races ; and, next to his liible, thanks (iod for
Grei'k literature.

Now, these peoph' had made physical as well as
intellectual education a science as well as a study.
Their women practised graceful, and in some cases
even athletic, exercises. They developed, hy a free and
healthy life, those figures which renuiin everlasting and
unapproachable models of human beauty : but — to come
to my third point— they wore no stays. The first men-
tion of stays that I have ever found is in the letters of
dear old Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, on the Greek coast
of Africa, about four hundred years after the Christian
era. He tells us how, when he was shipwrecked on a
remote part of the coast, and he and the rest of the
passengers were starving on cockles and limpets, there
was among them a slave girl out of the far East, who
had a pinched wasp-waist, such as you may see on the
old Hindoo sculptures, and such as yuu may see in any
street in a British town. And when the Greek ladies
of the neighbourhood found her out, they sent for her
from house to house, to behold, with astoni.shment and
laughter, this new and prodigious waist, with which it
seemed to them it was impossible for a human being to
breathe or live ; and they petted the poor girl, and fed

46 THE TWO Ji HEATHS.

her, as they might a dwftrf or a giantess, till she got
quite fat and comfortable, while her owners had not
enough to eat. So strange and ridiculous seemed our
present fashion to the descendants of those who, cen-
turies before, had imagined, because they had seen
living and moving, those glorious statues which we
pretend to admire, but refuse to imitate.

It seems to me that a few centuries hence, when man-
kind has learnt to fear God more, and therefore to obey
more strictly those laws of nature and of science which
are the will of God — it seems to nic, I say, that in those
days the present fashion of tight lacing will be looked
back upon as a contemptible and barbarous superstition,
denoting a very low level of civilisation in the peoples
which have practised it. That for generations past
women should have hcvu in the habit— not to please
m«'n, who do nt)t care about the matter as a point of
l}^(mty — but simply to vie with each other in obedience
to something called fashion— that they should, I say,
have been in the habit of deliberately crushing that
part of the lx)dy which should be specially left free,
contnicting and displacing their lungs, their heart, and
all the most vital and important organs, and entailing
thereby disease, not only on themselves but on their
children after them ; that for forty years past physicians
should have been telling them of the folly of what they
have been doing : and that flwy «li«>iild us y<f. in tl>o

THE TWO li HEATHS.

^'reftt majority of cases, not only turn a deaf ear to all
warnings, but actually deny the offence, of wliieli one
glance of the jdiysician or the sculptor, wlio know what
shape tlie human body ought to be, brings them in
guilty : this, I say, is an instance of— what shall I call
it ? — which deserves at once the lash, not merely of the
satirist, but of any theologian who really believes that
God made the physical universe. Let me, I pray you,
appeal to your common souse for a moment. When any
one chooses a horse or a dog, whether for strength, for
speed, or for any other useful purpose, the first thing
almost to be looked at is the girth rouml the ribs ;
the room for heart and lungs. Exactly in proportion
to that will be the animal's general healthiness, power
of endurance, and value in many other ways. If you
will look at eminent lawyers and famous orators, who
have attained a healthy old age, you will see that in
every case they are men, like the late Lord Palmerston,
and others whom I could mention, of remarkable size,
not merely in the upper, but in the lower part of the
chest ; men who had, therefore, a peculiar power of
using the diaphragm to fill and to clear the lungs, and
therefore to oxygenate the blood of the whole body.
Now, it is just these lower rib.s, across which the dia-
phragm is stretched like the head of a drum, which
stays contract to a minimum It" you advised owners
of horses and hounds to put their horses or their hounds

48 THE TWO BREATHS.

into stays, and lace them iiji tiglit, in order to increase
their beauty, you would receive, I doubt not, a very
courteous, but certainly a very decided, refusal to do
that which would spoil not merely the animals them-
selves, but the whole stud or the whole kennel for years
to come. And if you advised an orator to put him-
self into tight stays, he, no doubt, again would give
a courteous answer; but he would reply — if he was a
really educated man — that to comi)iy with your request
would involve his giving up public work, under the
probable penalty of being dead within the twelve-
month.

And how much work of every kind, intellectual as
well as physical, is spoiled or hindered ; how many
deaths occur from consumption and other complaints
which are the result of this habit of tight lacing, is
known partly to the medical men, who lift up tlieir
voices in vain, and known fully to Him who will not
interfere with the least of His own physical laws to
save human beings from the consequences of their o^vn
wilful folly.

And now -to end this lecture with more pleasing
thoughts — What becomes of this breath which passes
from your lips? Is it merely harmful; merely waste?
God forbid ! (i(Ml has forbidden that anything should
be merely harmful or merely waste in this so wise and
well-made world. The carbonic acid which passes from

THE TWO BREATHS. 49

your lips at every breath — ay, even that whicli oozes
from the volcano cniter when the eruption is past — is
a precious boon to thousands of things of which you
have daily need. Indeed there is a sort of hint at
physical truth in the old fairy tale of the girl, from
whose lips, as she spoke, fell pearls and diamonds ; for
the carbonic acid of yuur breath may help hereafter to
make the pure carbonate of lime of a pearl, or the still
purer carbon of a diamond. Nay, it may go — in such a
world of transformations do we live — to make atoms of
coal strata, which shall lie buried for ages beneath deep
seas, shall bu upheaved in continents which are yet
unborn, and there be burnt for the use of a future race
of men, and resolved into their original elements. Coal,
wise men tell us, is on the whole breath and sunlight ;
the breath of living creatures who have lived in the
vast swamps and forests of some primaeval world, and
the sunlight which transmuted that breath into the
leaves and stems of trees, magically locked up for ages
in that black stone, to become, when it is burnt at last,
light and carbonic acid, as it was at first. For though
you must not breathe your breath again, you may at
least eat your breath, if you will allow the sun to trans-
mute it for you into vegetables ; or you may enjoy its
fragrance and its colour in the shape of a lily or a rose.
When you walk in a sunlit garden, every word you
speak, every breath you breathe, is feeding the plants

50 THE TWO BnEATHS.

and flowers around. The delicate surface of the green
leaves absorbs the carbonic acid, and parts it into its
elements, retaining the carbon to make woody fibre,
and courteously returning you the oxygen to mingle
with the fresh air, and be inhaled by your lungs once
more. Thus do you feed the plants ; just as the plants
feed you ; while the great life-giving sun feeds both ;
and the geranium standing in the sick child's win-
dow does not merely rejoice his eye and mind by
its beauty and freshness, but repays honestly the
trouble spent on it ; absorbing the breath wliieh the
child needs not, and giving to him the breath which
he needs.

So are the services of all things constituted according
to a Divine and wonderful order, and knit together in
mutual dopcndenco and mutual helpfulness. — A fact to
be rcnu'uibcred with hoj)e and comfort ; but also with
awe and fear. For as in tliat which is above nature, so
in nature itself; ho that breaks one physical law is
guilty of all. Tiie whole universe, as it were, takes up
arms against him ; and all nature, with her numberless
and unseen powers, is ready to avenge herself on him,
and on his children after him, ho knows not when nor
wboro. Ho, on the other hand, who obeys the laws of
nature with his whole heart and mind, will find all
things working together to him for g(M)d. Ho is at
peace witli the physical universe. He is helped and

rriE TWO niiEATHf^, si

befriended alike by tlio sun above his head and the
dust beneath liis feet : because he is obeying the will
and mind of ITim who nindo sun, and dust, and all
thinj:;s; and who has given tlieiii a law which cannot
1)0 broken.

E '2

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

The more I liave contemplated tlint ancient story of
the Fall, the more it has seemed to me within the
rancjo of proLahility, and even of experience. It must
have happened somewhere for the first time ; for it has
happened only too many times since. It has happened,
as far as I can ascertain, in every race, and every age, and
every grade of civilisation. It is happening round us now
in every region of the globe. Always and everywhere,
it seems to me, have poor human beings been temj)ted
to eat of some " tree of knowledge," that they may be,
even for an hour, as gods; wise, but with a false
wisdom; careless, but with a frantic carelessness; and
happy, but with a happiness which, when the excite-
ment is past, leaves too often— as with that hapless
pair in Kden- depression, shame, and fear. Kvery-
where, and in all ages, as far as I can ascertain, has
man been inventing stimulants and narcotics to sup})ly
that want of vitality of which he is so painfully awaro;

THE THEE OF KNOWLEDQE. 53

and has asked imturc, and nut God, to clear the dull
brain, and comfort the weary spirit.

This has been, and will bo perhaps for many a cen-
tury to come, almost tlie most fearful failinf^ of this
poor, exceptional, over-organised, diseased, and truly
fallen being called man, who is in doubt daily whether
ho be a god or an ape ; and in trying wildly to
become the former, ends but too often in becoming
the latter.

For man, whether savage or civilised, feels, and has
felt in every age, that there is something wrong with
him. He usually confesses this fact — as is to be ex-
pected — of his fellow-men, rather than of himself ; and
shows his sense that there is something wrong with
them by complaining of, hating, and killing them,
l^ut he cannot always conceal from himself the fact
that he, too, is wrong, as well as they ; and as he will
not usually kill himself, he tries wild ways to make
himself at least feel — if not to be — somewhat " better."
Philosophers may bid him be content ; and tell him that
he is what he ought to be, and what nature has made
him. But he cares nothing for the philosophers. He
knows, usually, that he is not what he ought to be ; that
he carries about with him, in most cases, a body more
or less diseased and decrepit, incapable of doing all the
work which he feels that he himself could do, or ex-
pressing all the emotions which he himself longs to

r>4 Tin: TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

express ; n dull brain and dull senses, which cramp
the eager infinity within him ; as — so Goethe once said
with pity — the horse's single hoof cramps the fine
intelligence and generosity of his nature, and forbids
him even to grasp an object, like the more stupid cat,
and baser monkey. And man has a self, too, within,
from which he longs too often to escape, as from a
household ghost.; who pulls out, at unfortunately rude
and unwelcome hours, the ledger of memory. And so
when the tempter — be he who he may— says to him
" Take this, and you will ' feel better'— Take this, and
you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil :" then, if
the temptation was, as the old story says, too much for
man while healthy and unfallen, what must it bo for
his unhealthy and fallen children ?
In vain we say to man —

"Tin liff, not (It-ath, for whicli you jviiil ;
'Tin lift', wlurt-of your lunia urc want ;
Moit! life, unil fulUr, Ihnt you want,"

And your tree of knowledge is not the tree of life : it
is, in every case, the tree of death ; of decrepitude,
madness, misery. lie prefers the voice of the trmpter
— "Thou shalt not surely die." Nay, he will say at
laflt, — " Better bo as gods awhile, and die: than bo the
crawling, insufllcient thing I am ; and live."

Ho — did I say? Alan! I must say she likewise.
The sacred story is only too true !<• fmt, wli. n it

TlIK THEE OF KSdWl.EDGE. 55

represents tlic woman us falling;, not merely at the
same time as the man, but before the man. Only let us
remember that it represents the woman as tempted ;
tempted, seeminj^'ly, ])y a rational being, of lower race,
and yet of superior cunning ; who must, therefore, have
fallen before the woman. AVho or what the being was,
who is called the Serpent in our translation of Genesis,
it is not for me to say. "We have absolutely, I think,
no facts from which to judge ; and liabbinical tra-
ditions need trouble no man much. But I fancy that a
missionary, preaching on this story to Negroes ; telling
them i)lainly that the " Serpent " meant the first Obeah
man ; and then comparing the experiences of that hap-
less pair in Eden, with their own after certain orgies not
yet extinct in Africa and elsewhere, would be only too
Well understood : so well, indeed, that he might run some
risk of eating himself, not of the tree of life, but of that
of death. The sorcerer or sorceress tempting the woman j
and then the woman tempting the man ; this seems to
be, certainly among savage peoples, and, alas ! too often
among civilised peoples also, the usual course of the
world-wide tragedy.

But — paradoxical as it may seem — the woman's
yielding before the man is not altogether to her dis-
honour, as those old monks used to allege wlio hated,
and too often tortured, the sex whom they could not
enjoy. It is not to the woman's dishonour, if she felt,

56 THE TREE OF KXOIVLEDGE.

before her husband, higher aspirations than those after
mere animal pleasure. To be as gods, knowing good
and evil, is a vain and foolish, but not a base and brutal,
wish. She proved herself thereby — though at an awful
cost — a woman, and not an animal. And indeed the
woman's more delicate organisation, her more vivid
emotions, her more voluble fancy, as well as her mere
physical weakness and weariness, have been to her, in all
ages, a special source of temptation ; which it is to her
honour that she has resisted so much better than the
physically stronger, and therefore more culpable, man.
As for what the tree of knowledge was, there really
is no need for us to waste our time in guessing. If it
was not one plant, then it was another. It may have
been something which has long since perished oflf the
earth. It may luive been — as some learned men hove
guessed — the sacred Soma, or Roma, of the early lirah-
min race; and tliat may have been a still existing
narcotic species of Asclepias. It certainly was not the
vine. The language of the Hebrew Scripture concern-
ing it, and the sacred use to which it is consecrated in
the Gospels, forbid that notion utterly ; at least to
those who know rnongh of antiquity to pass by, with a
smile, the theory that the wines mentioned in Scripture
were not intoxicating. And yet — as a fresh corrob«)ra-
tion of what I am trying to say— how fearfully has that
uoblo gift to man ])een abuH«'d f«»r the same end as a

T[IK TREE OF KNOWLEDOE. 57

humlreJ otlier vcjTjetiiblc products, ever since tliose
mythic days when Dionusos brought the vine from the
tur East, niaid troops of human Mronads and half-human
Satyrs; and the BacchaB tore Pentheus in pieces on
Cithau'on, for daring to intrude upon their sacred rites ;
and since those historic days, too, when, less than two
liundred years before the Christian era, the Bacchic
rites spread from Southern Italy into Etruria, and thence
to the matrons of Home; and under the guidance of
Poenia Annia, a Campanian lady, took at last shapes of
whioli no man must speak, but which had to be put
down with terrible but just severity, by the Consuls
and the Senate.

But it matters little, I say, what this same tree of
knowledge was. Was every vine on earth destroyed
to-morrow, and every vegetable also from which alcohol
is now distilled, man would soon discover something:
else wherewith to satisfy the insatiate craving. Has
he not done so already ? Has not almost every people
had its tree of knowledge, often more deadly than any
distilled liquor, from tlie absinthe of the cultivated
Frenchman, and the opium of the cultivated Chinese,
down to the bush-poisons wherewith the tropic sorcerer
initiates his dupes into the knowledge of good and evil,
and tlie fungus from which the Samoiede extracts in
autumn a few days of l)rutal happiness, before the
sotting in of the long six mouths' night ? God grant

ns THE TREf <>}■ K Sow LEDGE.

that modern science may not bring to light fresh sub-
stitutes for alcohol, opium, and the rest ; and give the
white races, in that state of effeminate and godless
qnasi-civilisation which I sometimes fear is creeping
upon them, fresh means of destroying themselves deli-
cately and pleasantly off the face of the earth.

It is said by some that drunkenness is on the increase
in this island. I have no trusty proof of it : but I can
believe it possible ; for every cause of drunkenness seems
on the increase. Overwork of body and mind ; circum-
stances which depress health ; temptation to drink, and
drink again, at every corner of the streets ; and finally,
money, and ever more money, in the hands of unedu-
cated people, who have not the desire, and too often not
the means, of spending it in any save the lowest plea-
sures. These, it seems to mo, are the true causes of
drunkenness, increasing or not. And if we wish to
become a more temperate nation, wo must lessen them,
if we cannot eradicate them.

First, overwork. AVe all live too fast, and work too
hard. " All things are full of labour, man cannot utter
it." In the heavy struggle for existence which goes on
all around us, each man is tasked more and more— if ho
be really worth buying and using - to the utmost of his
powers all day long. The wtak have to compete on
equal terms with the strong ; and crave, in consequence,
for artificial strength. How we shall stop that I know

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDOF. r.9

not, while every man is " making Lastc to be rich, and
piercing himself through with many sorrows, and falling
into foolish and hurtful lusts, whii-li drown men in
destruction and perdition." How we shall stop that, I
say, I know not. The old prophet may have heen right
when he said, " Surely it is not of the Lord that the
people shall labour in the very fire, and weary them-
selves for very vanity ;" and in some juster, wiser, more
Bober system of society — somewhat more like the King-
dom of The Father come on earth — it may be that poor
human beings will not need to toil so hard, and to keep
themselves up to their work by stimulants, but will
have time to sit down, and look around them, and think
of (jod, and of God's quiet universe, with something of
quiet in themselves ; something of rational leisure, and
manful sobriety of mind, as well as of body.

I5ut it seems to me also, that in such a state of society,
when— as it was once well put — " every one has stopped
running about like rats : " — that those who work hard,
whether with muscle or with brain, would not be sur-
rounded, as now, with every circumstance which
tempts toward drink ; by every circumstance which
depresses the vital energies, and leaves them an easy
jirey to pestilence itself; by bad li,L,'ht, bad air, bad
food, bad water, bad smells, bad occupations, which
weaken the muscles, cramp the chest, disorder the
digestion. Let any rational man, fresh from the coun-

f50 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

try — in which I presnmo God, havinpj mnde it, monnt
all men, more or less, to live — go tlirongh the back
streets of any city, or thronj^'h whole districts of the
"black countries" of En^'laiul : and then ask himself
— Is it the will of GckI that His iinman children should
live and toil in such dens, such deserts, such dark
places of the earth? Let him ask himself— Can they
live and toil there without contracting a probably dis-
eased habit of body ; without contracting a certainly
dull, weary, sordid habit of mind, which craves for
any pleasure, however brutal, to escape from its own
stupidity and emptiness ? \Vhen I run through, by
rail, certain parts of the iron-producing country —
streets of furnaces, collieries, slag heaps, mud, slop,
brick house-rows, smoke, dirt — and that is all ; and
when I am told, whether truly or falsely, that the
main thing which the well-paid and well-fed men of
those a)>ominablo wastes care for is — good fighting-
dogs : I can only answer, that I am not surjjrist-d.

1 sjiy — as I have said elsewhere, and shall do my
best to say again — that the craving for drink and nar-
cotics, especially that engendered in our great cities, is
not a disease, but a symptom of disease ; of a far deeper
disease than any wiiich drnnkenneHS c^n pnMluce ;
namely, of the growing de^'eneraey of a population
striving in vain by stimulants and narcotics to fight
against those slow poisons witli which our greedy

77//; TiiKK OF KX(>wi.i:i>(;i:. r,i

Imrbarisra, miscalled civilisation, Iiuh suii()UiHlt!(l tlicin
from the craiUe to tho grave. I may be anawen-d that
the old German, Anj^le, Dane, drank heavily, I know
it: bnt why did tluy drink, save for the same reason
that tho fenman drank, and his wife took opium, at least
till the fens were drained? why but to keep ofl" the
depressing eO'ects of tlic nialariii of swamps and new
clearings, which told on them— who always settled in
the lowest grounds — in the shape of fever and ague ?
Here it may bo answered again, that stimulants have
been, during the memory of man, the destruction of
the lud Indian race in America. I rejily boldly, that
1 do not believe it. There is evidence enoutrh in
Jaques Cartier's 'Voyages to the liivers of Canada;'
and evidence more than enough in Strachey's ' Travail*'
in Virginia ' — to quote only two authorities out of many
— to prove that tho Ked Indians, when the white nian
lirst met with them, were, in North and South alike,
a diseased, decaying, and, as all their traditions con-
fess, decrea-sing race. Such a race would naturally
crave for " the water of life," the " usque-bagh," or
whisky, as wc have contracted the old name now.
But I should have thought that the white iii.in, by
introducing among these poor creatures iron, lire-arms,
blankets, and above all horses wherewith to follow the
buflalo-herdri which they could never follow on foot,
muBt have done ten times more towards keeping them

fi'J rnE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE,

alive, than he has done towards destroying them by-
giving them the chance of a week's drunkenness twice
a year, when they came in to his forts to sell the skins
which, without his gifts, they would never have got.

Such a race would, of course, if wanting vitality,
crave for stimulants. But if the stimulants, and not
the original want of vitality, combined with morals
utterly detestable, and worthy only of the gallows —
and hero I know what I say, and dare not tell what I
know, from eye-witnesses — have been the fause of tho
lied Indians' extinction : then how is it, let me ask,
that the Irishman and the Scotsman have, often to
tlu'ir grt'iit harm, been drinking as much whisky —
iiiid usually very bad whisky — not merely twice a
year, but as often as they could get it, during tho
whole " iron ago ; " and, for aught any one can tell,
during the *' bronze age," and tho " stone ago " before
that : and yet are still the most healthy, able, valiant,
and prolific races in Europe? Had they drunk less
whisky they would, doubtless, have been more healthy,
able, valiant, and perhaps even more prolific, than
they are now. They show no sign, however, as yet, of
going tho way of the Red Indian.

But if tho craving for stimulants and narcotics is a
token of deficient vitality: linn tho deadliest foe of
that craving, and all its mismiblf renults, is surely the
Sanatory !!■ r,,.i>,. . ; fl|.. ]unu wlio preaches, and — as

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. C3

far as iguoruiice uuJ YesteJ iutercsts will allow Lim,
procures — for the masses, pure air, pure sunlight, pure
\Yater, pure dwelliug-liouses, pure food. Not merely
every fresh driuking-fountain : l»ut every fresh public
bath and wash-house, every fresh opcu space, every
fresh growing tree, every fresh open window, every
fresh flower in that window — each of these is so much,
as the old Persians would have said, conquered for
Ormuzd, the god of light and life, out of the dominion
of Ahriman, the king of darkness and of death ; so
much taken from the causes of drunkenness and disease,
and added to the causes of sobriety and health.

Meanwhile one thing is clear : that if this present
barbarism and anarchy of covetousness, miscalled
modern civilisation, were tamed and drilled into some-
thing more like a Kingdom of God on earth : then we
should not see the reckless and needless multiplication
of liquor shops, which disgraces this country now.

As a single instance : in one country parish of nine
hundred inhabitants, in which the population has in-
creased only one-ninth in the last fifty years, there are
now practically eight public-houses, where fifty years
ago there were but two. One, that is, for every hundred
and ten — or rather, omitting children, farmers, shop-
keepers, gentlemen, and their households, one for every
fifty of the inhabitants. In the face of the allurements,
often of the basest kind, which these dens ofl'er, the

64 THE THEE OF KNOWLEDGE.

clergyman and the Bchoolmastor struggle iu vain to
keep up uight-scbools and young men's clubs, and to
inculcate habits of providence.

The young labourers over a great part of the south
and east, at least, of England, — though never so well
off, for several generations, as they are now — are grow-
ing up thriftless, shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to
their grandfathers in everything, save that they can
usually read and write, and their graudfatliers could
not ; and that they wear smart cheap cloth clothes,
instead of their graudfatliers' smock-frocks.

And if it be so in the country : how must it be in
towns ? There must come a thorough change in the
present licensing system, in spite of all the " pressure "
which certain powerful vested interests may bring to
bear on governments. And it is the duty of every gcxxl
citizen, who cares for his countrymen, and for their
children after them, to help in bringing about that
change aa speedily as possible.

Again: I said just now that a probable cau>f i>i
increasing drunkenness was the increasing material
prosperity of thousands who knew no recreation beyond
low animal pleasure. If I am right — and I believe
that I am right — I must urge on those who wish
drunkenness to decrease, the necessity of providing
more, ami more retincd recreation for the people.

Men drink, and women too, remember, not merely

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDQE. Cr.

to supply exhaustion; not merely to drive away care:
l)ut often simply to Jrivi' away dulnes.s. Tht-y have
nothiu<:; to do save to think ovir what they have done
in the day, or what they expect to do to-morrow ; and
they escape from that dreary round of business thought,
in liquor or narcotics. There are still those, by no
means of the hand-working class, but absorbed all
day by business, who drink heavily at night in their
own comfortable homes, simply to recreate their over-
burdened minds. Such cases, doubtless, are far less
common than they wore fifty years ago : but why ? Is
not the decrease of drinking among the richer classes
certainly due to the increased refinement and variety
of their tastes and occupations ? In cultivating the
aesthetic side of man's nature; in engaging him with
the beautiful, the pure, the wonderful, the truly
natural ; with painting, poetry, music, horticulture,
physical science — in all this lies recreation, in the
true and literal sense of that word, namely, the re-
creating and mending of the exhausted mind and
feelings, such as no rational man will nnw ncLrlect,
either for himself, his children, or his workpeoj)le.

r>ut how little of all this is open to the masses, all
should know but too well. IIow little opportunity the
average hand-worker, or his wife, has of eating of any
tree (tf knowledge, save of the very basest kind, is but
too palpable. We are mending, thank God, in this

66 THE TREE OF KSOWl.EDGE.

respect. Free libraries and museums have spruug up
of late ill other cities beside London. God's blessing
rest upon them all. And the Crystal Palace, and still
later, the Bethnal Green Museum, have been, I believe,
of far more use than many average sermons and lec-
tures from many average orators.

But are we not still far behind the old Greeks, and
the Romans of the Empire likewise, in the amount of
amusement and instruction, and even of shelter, which
we provide for the people? Recollect the — to me — dis-
graceful fact ; that there is not, as far as I am aware,
throughout the whole of London, a single portico or
other covered place, in which the people can take
refuge during a shower : iiiul this in the climate of
England ! Where they do take refuge on a wet day
the publican knows but too well ; as he knows also
where thousands of the lower clas.scs, simply for want
of any other place to be in, save their own sordid
dwellings, spend as much as they are permitted of the
Sabbath day. Let us put down " Sunday drinking " by
all means, if we can. liut let us remember that by
closing the public-house on Sunday, we prevent no
man or woman from carrying home as much poison au
they choose on Saturday night, to brutaliso themselves
therewith, {x^rhapM for eight-and-forty hours. And let
us see — in the name of Him who said that He had made
the Subbuth for man, and not man f«)r the Sabbath

THE TUEt: OF KSOWLEDOE. •,:

k't U8 see, I SHY, it' we cannot do something to prevent
the townsman's Sabbath being, nut a day of rest, Init
a dav of mere idleness; tlu' day of most temptation,
because of most dulness, of the whole seven.

And here, perhaps, some sweet soul may look uj)
reprovingly and say — He talks of rest. Does he forget,
and would he have the working man forget, that all
these outward palliatives will never touch the seat of
the disease, the unrest of the soul within ? Does he
forget, and would he have the working man forget, who
it was who said— who only has the right to say — " Come
unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I
will give you rest " ? Ah no, sweet soul. I know your
words are true. I know that what we all want is
inward rest ; rest of heart and brain ; the calm, strong,
self-contained, self-denying character ; which needs no
stimulants, for it has no fits of depression ; which
needs no narcotics, for it has no fits of excitement ;
which needs no ascetic restraints, for it is strong
enough to use God's gifts without abusing them ; the
eJiaracter, in a word, which is truly temperate, not in
drink or food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and
actions; freed from the wild lusts and ambitions to
which that old Adam yielded, and, seeking for light
and life by means forbidden, found thereby disease and
•1'iith. Yes; I know that; and know, too, that that
t is found, only where you have already found it.

K 1

68 THE TREK OF KSOWLEDGE.

And yet : in such a world rb this ; governed by ti
Being who has made sunshine, and flowers, and green
grass, and the song of birds, and happy human smiles ;
and who would educate by them — if we would let Him
— His human children fri>ni the cradle to the grave ;
in such a world as this, will you grudge any particle of
that education, even any harmless substitute for it, to
those spirits in prison, whose surroundings too often
tempt them, from the cradle to the grave, to fancy
that the world is composed of bricks and iron, and
governed by inspectors and policemen? Preach to
those spirits in prison, as you know far better than we
parsons how to preach : but let them have besides some
glimpses of the splendid fact, that outside their prison-
house is a world which God, not uuin, has made ; wherein
grows everywhere that trei- of knowledge which is like-
wise the tree of life ; and that they have a right to
some small share of its beauty, and its wonder, and its
rest, for their own health of soul and body, and for the
healtli of their children after thnii.

NAUSICAA IN LONDON:

Ou, TiiK LuwKii Education of Woman.

FiiEsii from the Marbles of the Britisli Museum, I went
my way through London streets. My brain was still
full of fair and grand forms ; the forms of men and
women whoso every limb and attitude betokened per-
fect health, and grace, and power, and a self-possession
and self-restraint so habitual and complete that it had
become unconscious, and uudistinguishable from the
native freedom of the savage. For I had been up and
down the corridors of those Greek sculptures, which
remain as a perpetual sermon to rich and poor, amid
our artiticial, unwholesome, and it may be decaying
pseudo-civilisation; saying with looks more expressive
than all words — Such men and women can be ; for such
they have been ; and such you may be yet, if you will
use that science of which you too often only boast.
Above all, I hml been pondering over the awful and
yet tender beauty of the maiden figures from the

70 KACSICAA jy LOXnOX:

Parthenon and its kindred temples. And tfiese, or such
as these, I thought to myself, were the sisters of the
men who fought at Marathon and Sulamis ; the mothers
of many a man among tlie ten thousand whom Xeno-
phon led back from Babylon to the Black Sea shore ;
the ancestresses of many a man who conquered the
East in Alexander's host, and fought with Porus in the
far Punjab. And were these women mere dolls ? These
men mere gladiators ? Were they not the parents of
philosophy, science, poetry, the plastic arts ? We talk
of education now. Are we more educated than were
the ancient Greeks? Do we know anything about
education, physical, intellectual, or (esthetic, and I may
say moral likewise — religious education, of course, in
our sense of the word, they had none— but do we know
anything about education of which llicy have not taught
us at least the rudiments ? Are there not some branches
of education which they perfected, onco and for ever ;
leaving us northern barbarians to follow, or else not to
follow, their example ? To produce hoalth, that is,
harmony and sympathy, proportion and grace, in every
faculty of mind and l>ody — that was their notion of
education. To produce tliat, the text -book of their

childhood was the poetry of Homer, and not of But

I am treading on dangerous ground. It was for this
that the seafaring (Ireek lad was taught to find his
ideal in I'lvHses ; while his sister at homo found hers, it

on, THE LOWER EDUCATIOS' OF iro.V.l.V. 71

may bo, in Nausicaa. It was for tliis, tliat when per-
haps the most complete and exquisite of all the Greeks,
Sophocles the gooil, beloved by gods and men, repre-
sented on the Athenian stage his drama of Nausicaa, and,
as usual, could not— for he had no voice — himself take a
speaking part, he was content to do one thing in which
ho specially excelled ; and dressed and masked as a girl,
to play at ball amid the chorus of Nausicaa's maidens.

That drama of Xausicaa is lost; and if I dare say so
of any play of Sophocles', I scarce regret it. It is well,
perhaps, that wo have no second conception of the
scene, to interfere with the simplicity, so grand, and
yot so tender, of Homer's idyllic episode.

Nausicaa, it must bo remembered, is the daughter of
a king. But not of a king in the exclusive modern
Kuropoan or old Eastern sense. Her father, Alcinous,
is simply " primus inter pares " among a community of
merchants, who are called " kings " likewise ; and
^fayor for life — so to speak— of a new trading city, a
nascent Genoa or Venice, on the shore of the Medi-
terranean. But the girl Nausicaa, as she sleeps in her
■ carved chamber," is "like the immortals in form and
face ;" and two handmaidens who sleep on each side of
the pidished door " have beauty from the Graces."

To her there enters, in the shape of some maiden
friend, none less than Pallas Athene herself, intent on
saving worthily her favourite, the shipwrecked Ulysses;

72 XAUSICAA IX LOyDOS:

ami bids her iii a clicam go forth — and wash the

clothes.*

*' Naa»ic;ui, wheroforc duth tliy mother bear
ChiUl Ml forjjctful? TliU Img time tloth rest.
Like luiiibi'r in the hou«t', niurh raiment fair.
Boon rniwl thou weti, unci Ik; thystlf well-tlrebt.
And fliul thy bride^ooni raiment of the beat.
Thiik? are the thinpt whence g<M)d repute ie born.
And pmiaeii tlint make glad a {Kirctit'H brenat.
Come, h't us both j?o wnjthin}? with tlie nmni ;
S<i bhalt thou have clothi-a InxJoujing to be worn.

" Know tlmt thy muidenhmxl in not for long,
Whom the rhuooian ehiefs already woo,
L<»nlH of the land whence thou thyholf art sprung.
Soon iiH the »hiniii|; ilawn comes forth anew,
For wiiin and muli s thy noble fatlier sue,
Whiclj t^j the place of wa.'^hing sliall convey
(Jirdles and shawls and rugs of splendid hue.
This for thysilf wi-rc U-tter tlian i-ji^iy

Thither to walk : the pliu'e is disUuit a long way."

Startled. by her dream, Nausicaa awakes, aud goes to
find her parents —

" One by the hearth «at, with the maids around,
And on the skeins of yarn, sou-purpli <1, 8|H<nl
II(-r morning toil. Him to the council Uiund,
Culled by the honoured kings juiit gc»ing forth alio found.'

And calling him, as she might now, " Pappa philc,"
Dear Papa, asks for the mule waggon : but it is her
father's and her five brothers' clothes she fain would
wash, —

" Ajihamc<i U) numo hor marriage to hor father dear."

* I quote from till' tniiiRlati'oii of tlw Inte lam< ntetl Thilip Stanhope
WomUy, uf Corpua Chrixti C^lhg<-. Oxford.

on, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WO MAX. 7"'.

]5ut he uiidiT. stood nil —and sho pjoes forth in the ninlc
waggon, with the cdothcs, after her mother has put in

a chest of all kinds of delicate food, and meat, and wine
in a goatskin ;" and last but not least, the indispensable
cruse of oil for anointing after the bath, to which both
Jews, Greeks, and Romans owed so much health and
beauty. And then we read in the simple verse of a poet
too relined, like the rest of his race, to see anything mean
or ridiculous in that which was not ugly and unnatural,
how she and her maids got into the " polished waggon,"
*' with good wheels," and she " took the whip and the
studded reins," and " beat them till they started; " and
how the mules "rattled" away, and "pulled against
each other," till

•• Wliin tbey came to tlie fair llowiiig river
Which feeds good luvatoried ull the yeur.
Fitted to clcaiuu all bullied rulxu boever.
They from the wuin the mules unharucsscd there,
And chuiicd them free, t» crop their juicy f.iiv
Uy the swift river, on tlie margin green ;
Then to the waters dashed the clothes they bare
And in the struam-tilhd trendies stamped them clain.

" Which, having' washed and cleansed, thi y spread before
The suubi anis, <n the beu«^-h, where moot did lie
Thick pebbles, by the s<su-wavu washed ashore.
So, having left them in the heat tn dry, '

They to the bath went down, and by-oii<i-by,
Kabbe<l with rich oil, tlieir midday mud e-ssay.
Couched in gri^-n turf, tho river rolling ni;,;li.
Then, throwing; oil their viils, at l«ll they play,
While the white-ormcd Nuuaieaa leads the choral lay."

74 NAUSTCAJ JN LO-Y/)O.V.-

The mere beauty of this scene all will feel, who have
the sense of beauty in them. Yet it is not on that
aspect which I wish to dwell, but on its healthfulness.
Exercise is taken, in measured time, to the sound of
song, as a duty almost, as well as an amusement. For
this game of ball, which is hero mentioned for the iirst
time in human literature, nearly three thousand years
ago, was held by the Greeks and liy the Romans after
them, to be an almost necessary part of a liberal edu-
cation ; principiilly, doubtless, from the development
which it produced in the upper half of the body, not
merely to the arms, but to the chest, by raising and
expanding the ribs, and to all the muscles of the torso,
whether perpendicular or oblique. The elasticity and
grace which it was believed to give were so much
prized, that a room for ball-play, and a teacher of the
art, were integral parts of every gymnasium ; and the
Athenians went so far as to bestow on one famous ball-
player, Aristonicus of Carystia, a statue and the rights
of citizenship. The rough and hardy young Spartans,
when passing from boyhood into manho*)d, received the
title of ball-players, seemingly from the game which it
was then their special duty to learn. In the case of
Nausicaa and her maidi'us, the game would just bring
into their right places all that is liable to be contracted
and weakened in women, so many of whose oretipations
nuiHt needs bo sedentary and stooping; while the song

on, rilK I.OWKli r.DUCATWS (IF WOMAS. 7.',

wliicli accompanipd the >,'aiije at uucu lillt-il the lun^s
r('n;uliirly and rhythmically, aud pieventL-d violent
motion, or unseemly attitude. We, the civilised, need
physiologists to remind us of these simple facts, and
even then do not act on them. Those old half-barbarous
Greeks had found them out for themselves, and, more-
over, acted on tliem.

But fair Nausicaa must have been — some will say —
surely a mere child of nature, and an uncultivated
person ?

So fur from it, that her whole demeanour and speech
show culture of the very highest sort, full of " sweet-
ness and light." — Intelligent and fearless, quick to
perceive the bearings of her strange and sudden adven-
ture, quick to perceive the character of Ulysses, quick
to answer his lofty and refined pleading by words as
lofty and refined, and pious withal ; — for it is she who
speaks to her handmaids the once so famous words :

" Straiigera and poor men all are sent from Zeus ;
Ami iilms, tliough small, arc sweet."*

Clear of intellect, prompt of action, modest of
demeanour, shrinking from the slightest breath of
scandal ; while she is not ashamed, when Ulysses, bathed
and dre.««sed, looks himself again, to whisper to her
maidens her wish that the Gods might send her such
a sp».)use. - This is Nausicaa as Homer draws her; and
as many a scholar aud poet since Homer has accepted

7fi SAVSICAA IN LONDON:

Lor for the ideal of noble maitlonhooil. I ask my
readers to study for themselves her interview with
Ulysses, in ]^Ir. Worsley's translation, or rather in the
grand simjilicity of the oii^'inal Greek,* and judge
whether Nausicaa is not as perfect a lady as the poet
who imagined her — or, it may be, drew her from life —
must have been a perfect gentleman ; both comjtlete
in those " manners " which, says the old proverb,
"make the man:" but which are the woman herself;
because with her — who acts lyore by emotion than by
calculation — manners are the outward and visible
tokens of her inward and spiritual grace, or disgrace ;
and flow instinctively, whether good or bad, from the
instincts of her inner nature.

True, Nausicaa could neither read nor write. No
more, most probaldy, could the author of the Odyssey.
No more, for that matter, could Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, though they were plainly, both in mind and
manners, most highly-cultivated men. Heading and
writing, of course, have now become necessaries of
humanity ; and are to be given to every human being,
that he may start fair in the race of life. I5ut I am
not aware that Greek women improved much, either in
manners, morals, or happiness, by acquiring them in
after centuries. A wise man would sooner see his

• itdymy, t>ook vi. 127-315; vol. i. pp. I4.<)-150 of Mr. Worsic) ••
IrntiaUtion.

OR, THE LOWER EIXCATION OF WOMAX. 77

daughter ii Nuuyicaii than a Saiipho, an AspaHia, a
Cleopatra, or even an Ilypatia.

Full of such thoughts, I went through London streets,
among the Nausicaaa of the present day ; the girls of
the period ; the daughters and hereafter mothers of our
future rulers, the great Demos or commercial middle
class of the greatest mercantile city in the world : and
noted what I had noted with fear and sorrow, many a
day, for many a ytar ; a type, and an increasing type,
of young women who certainly had not had the ** ad-
vantages," ** educational "' and other, of that Greek
Nausicaa of old.

Of course, in siudi a city as London, to which the
best of everything, physical and other, gravitates, I
could not but pass, now and then, beautiful persons,
who made me proud of those " grandes Anglaises aux
joues rouges,'' whom the Parisicnnes ridicule — and envy.
liut I could not help suspecting that their looks showed
tluin to be either country-bred, or born of country
parents ; and this suspicion was strengthened by the
fact, that when compared with their mothers, the
mother's physique was, in the majority of cases, supe-
rior to the daughters'. Painful it was, to one accus-
tomed to the ruddy well-grown peasant girl, stalwart,
even when, aa often, squat and plain, to remark the
exceedingly small size of the average young woman ;
by which I do not mean mere want of height — that is

78 XAUSICAA IN LONDON:

a little matter — but want of breadth likewise ; a general
want of those large frames, which indicate nsually a
power of keeping strong and healthy not merely the
muscles, l)ut the brain itself.

Poor little things. I passed hundreds— I puss hun-
dreds every day — trying to hide their littleness by the
nasty mass of false hair — or what does duty fur it ;
and by the ugly and useless hat which is stuck upon
it, making the head thereby look ridiculously large and
heavy ; and by the high heels on wliich they totter
onward, having forgotten, or never learnt, the simple
art of walking; their bodies tilted forward in that
ungraceful attitude which is called — why that name of
all others? — a "Grecian bend;" seemingly kept on
their feet, and kept together at all, in that strange
attitude, by tight stays which prevented all graceful
and healthy motion of the hips or sides; their raiment,
meanwhile, being purposely misshapen in this direc-
tion and in that, to hide — it must be presumed —
deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels
had been taken olT, the figure which would have re-
mained would have been that too often of a puny girl
of sixteen. And yet there was no doubt that these
women were not only full grown, but some of them,
alas! wives and mothers.

poor little things. And this they have gained by so-
called civilifution : the ]>ower of a]>ing the " fashions "

on, TIIK LOWER KDUCATIOS OF Wn.MAS. T'.J

by wliich tlie worn-out Parisicune hides Ler own per-
sonal del'fcts ; n^ul of making tliemsclves, by innate
want of that taste which tlio Purisieuue possesses, only
the cause of something like a sneer from many a culti-
vated man ; and of something like a sneer, too, from
yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold bright
face, and swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic ;
far better dressed, according to all true canons of
taste, than most town-girls ; and thanking her fate
that she and her " Kom " are no house-dwellers and
gaslight-sightseers, ])ut fatten on free air U])on the
o])en moor.

But the face which is beneath that chignon and that
hat? Well — it is sometimes pretty: but how seldom
handsome, which is a higher quality by far. It is not,
strange to say, a well-fed face. Plenty of money, and
perhaps too much, is spent on those fine clothes. It
had been better, to judge from the complexion, if some
of that money had been spent in solid wholesome food.
She looks as if she lived — as she too often does, I hear

on tea and bread-and-butter, or rather on bread
with the minimum of butter. For as the want of bone
indicates a deficiency of jdiosphatic food, so does the
want of flesh about the cheeks indicate a deficiency of
hydrocarbon. Poor little Nausicaa : — that is not her
fault. Our bt»asted civilisation has not even taught
her what to eat, as it certainlv has not increased her

80 NAVSICAA IN LONDOX:

appetite ; and she knows not — what every country
fellow knows — that without plenty of butter and other
fatty matters, she is not likely to keep even warm.
liettfr to eat nasty fat bacon now, than to supply the
want of it some few years hence by nastier cod-livor
oil. ]jut there is no one yet to tell her that, and a
dozen other equally simple facts, for her own sake, and
for the sake of that coming Demos which she is to
bring into the world ; a Demos which, if we can only
koop it healthy in bmly and brain, has before it so
splendid a future : but which, if body and brain de-
grade beneath the influence of modern barbarism, is
but too likely to follow the Demos of ancient Byzantium,
or of modern Paris.

Ay, but her intellect. She is so tltvrr, and she
reads so much, and nhe is going to In- tuni:lit td n a.l so
much more.

Ah, well — there was once a science called physio-
gnomy. The Greeks, from what I can learn, knew more
of it than any pooph; since: thou^'h the Italian paintfrs
and sculptors must have known much ; far more than
wo. In a more scientific civilisation there will In-
such a science once more: but its laws, though still in
the empiric stage, are not altogetlu-r forgotten by some.
Little children hav<* often a fine and clear instinct of
th«!ra. Many cultivated and exp<*rienced women have
a line and clear instinct of them likewise. And some

OR, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WO MAS. 81

such would toll us that thore is intellect in plenty in
the modern Nuusiiaa : hut not of the quality which
they desire for their country's future good. Self-con-
sciousness, eagerness, voluhility, petulance, in counte-
nance, in gesture, and in voice — which last is too often
most harsh and artificial, the hrcath being sent forth
through the closed teeth, and almost entirely at the
corners of the mouth — and, with all this, a weariness
often about the wrinkling forehead and the drooping
lids; — all these, which are growing too common, not
among the Demos only, nor only in the towns, are
signs, they think, of tlic unrest of unhealth, physical,
intellectual, spiritual. At least they are as different as
two types of physiognomy in the same race can be,
from the expression botli of face and gesture, in those
old Greek sculptures, and in the old Italian painters ;
and, it must be said, in the portraits of Reynolds, and
Gainsborough, Copley, and llomney. Not such, one
thinks, must have been the mothers of Britain during
the latter half of the last century and the beginning of
the present ; when their sons, at times, were holding
half the world at bay.

And if Nausicaa has become such in town : what is
she when she goes to the seaside, not to wash the
clothes in fresh-water, but herself in salt — the very
salt-water, laden with decaying organisms, from which,
though not polluted further by a dozen sewers, Ulysses

82 XAUSICAA I\ l.nXDOy:

had to cleanse himself, uuuiutiug, too, with oil, ere he
was fit to appear in the company of Nausicaa of Greece ?
She dirties herself with the dirty salt-water ; and
probably chills and tires herself by walkinp^ thither
and back, and staying in too long ; and then tlauuts on
the pier, bedizened in garments which, for monstrosity
of form and disharmony of colours, would have set that
Greek Nausicaa's teeth on edge, or those of any average
Hindoo woman now. Or, even sadder still, she sits
on chairs and benches all the weary afternoon, her
head drooped on her chest, over some novel from the
"Library;" and then returns to tea and shrimps, and
lodgings of which the fragrance is not uusuggestive,
sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid fever. Ah, poor
Nausicaa of England ! That is a sad sight to some who
think about the prest-nt, and have read about the past.
It is not a sad sight to see your old father — tradesman,
or clerk, or what not — who has done good work in his day,
and hopes to do some more, sitting by your old mother,
who has done good work in iior day — among the rest,
that heaviest work of all, tho bringing you into the
world and keeping you in it till now — honest, kindly,
cheerful folk enough; and not incflicient in their own
calling; thougli an average Northumbrian, or High-
lander, or Irish Eastcrling, beside carrying a Imiin ol
five times tho intellectual force, could drive five such mm
over the clilV with his bare hands. It is not a sad sight.

on, THE l.OWKU EDUCATION OF WOMAX. 83

I say, to see them sitting about upou those seaside
benches, looking out listlessly at the water, and the ships,
Hud the sunlight, and enjoying, like so many flies upon
;i wall, the novel act of doing nothing. It is not the
old lor whom wise men are sad: but for you. Where is
your vitality? Where is your " Lebensgliickseligkeit,"
your enjoyment of superfluous life and power ? Why
can you not even dance and sing, till now and then, at
night, perhaps, when you ought to be safe in bed, but
when the weak brain, after receiving the day's nourish-
ment, hius roused itself a second time into a false
excitement of gaslight pleasure? What there is left
of it is all going into that foolish book, which the
womanly element in you, still healthy and alive, delights
in ; because it places you in fancy in situations in
which you will never stand, and inspires you with
emotions, some of which, it may bo, you had better
never feel. Poor Nausicaa — old, some men think, be-
fore you have been ever young.

And now they are going to " develop " you ; and let
you have your share in " the higher education of women,"
by making you read more books, and do more sums, and
pass examinations, and stoop over desks at night after
stooping over some other employment all day ; and to
teach you Latin, and even Greek.

Well, we will gladly teach you Greek, if you learn
thereby to read the history of Nausicaa of old, and what

G 2

S4 NAUSrCAA IX LOSDOX:

luaniior of maitlen she was, and "what was her education.
You will admire her, douhtless. But do not let your
admiration limit itself to drawing a meagre half-me-
diajvalized design of her — as she never looked. Copy
in your own person ; and even if you do not descend as
low — or ri.se as high — as washing the household clothes,
at least learn to play at hall ; and sing, in the open air
and sunshine, not in theatres and concert-rooms by gas-
light ; and take decent care of your own health ; and dress
not like a " Parisienne " — nor, of course, like Nausicaa
of old, for that is to a.sk too much : — but somewhat more
like an average Highland lassie; and try to look like
hf-r. and be like her, of whom Wordsworth sang —

" A mien iiml fnco
In which full [ilninly I cnii tnico
Ik'iiit^nity and h'-mchrwl ttonsc,
I{i|M>nin(; in jiorfcct innocence.
H<re HcntU'n^l. liko n mndom sood,
Itt-nioto fmm men. thou (lo^t not mwd
'I'hc fmhnmiB.S4'(l lotik of hIiv (liHtreM
An<l niiiiil< nly hli«ni<fnri<h>(«8.
TIjou wt-iir'st ufvin tliy fi-nhfiul cloar
Tho frcHMloin of n inonntaint-or.
A f»r<> with phidnciw ovi rnjm wl,
Soft hmiliM, liy hiunnti kinihi(>iiii hro<l,
' An<l iw>< inliniitM wnnph'te, tliat HwnyM

Thy cnurtc»i«ii, ahout thi«o phiyii.
With no n«tmint, hitp mich lut •prings
Vtotn qnii'k nnil rnKor viiiitiiiKii
or lhoii(;)itii tliut lio iM-yonil thu n«rh
Of thy frw wopIb of Kn^li'*!' up***''!!.
A ImndnK'' »wi«<'lly hr«<iki-«l, n i»trifo
TltAt givm tliy gi«tiir('M gnicc nml life."

on, THE Lower educatjox of ii'oj/j.v. h5

All, yet unspoilt NiiuHiicaa of the North ; descciuhuit
ol" the dark temler-heartcd Celtic girl, and the fair det-p-
hearted Scandinavian Viking, thank God for thy heather
and fresh air, and the kine thou tendest, and the wool
thou spinnest ; and come not to seek thy fortune, child,
in wicked London town ; nor import, as they tell nif
thou art doing fast, the ugly fashions of that Loudon
town, clumsy copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy
Highland home ; nor give up the healthful and graceful,
free and modest dress of thy mother and thy mother's
mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath days
with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and otlior
women's hair.

It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education
of girls more and more to that of boys. If that means
that girls are merely to learn more lessons, and to study
what their brothers are taught, in addition to what
their mothers were taught ; then it is to be hoped, at
least by physiologists and patriots, that the scheme
will sink into that limbo whither, in a free and tole-
rably rational country, all imperfect and ill-considered
schemes are sure to gravitate. But if the proposal be
u bona fide one : then it must be borne in mind that in
the public schools of England, and in all private schools,
1 presume, which take their tone from tluin, cricket
and football are more or less compulsory, being con-
>-iilered integral parts of an Englishman's education;

8« KAI'SICAA IS J.OXnoy:

and that they are likely to remain so, in spite of all
reclamations : because masters and boys alike know
that games do not, in the lonpj run, interfere with a
boy's work ; that the same boy will very often excel in
both ; that the games keep him in health for his work ;
that the spirit with wliich lie takes to his games when
in the lower school, is a fair test of the spirit with which
he will take to his work when he rises into the higher
school ; and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall
into that loafing, tuck-shop-haunting set, who neither
play liiird nor work hard, and are usually extravagant,
and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that
games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral
health ; that in the playing-field boys ac<juire virtues
which no books can give them ; not merely daring and
endurance, but, better still, temper, self-restraint, fair-
ness, honour, unenvious approbation of another's suc-
cess, and all that "give and take" of life which stand
a man in such good stead when he goes forth into the
world, and without which, indeed, his succ«».s8 is always
maimed and partial.

Now : if the promoters of higher education for women
will compel girls to any training analogous to our public
Bchofil games; if, for instance, they will insist on that
most natural and whoh'somo of all exercises, dancing,
in order to develop the lower half of the body; on
singing, to expand the lungs and regulate the breath ;

on, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF M'o.VJ.V. s7

iind on some f^ftmcs — ball or what not — which will
ousuro that raisi-il chest, and uj)right carriage, and
general strength of the upper torso, without which full
oxygenation of the blood, and therefore general health,
is impossible ; if they will sternly forbid tight stays,
high heels, and all which interferes with free growth
and free motion ; if they will consider carefully all
which has been written on the " half-time system " by
Mr. Chad wick and others ; and accept the certain phy-
sical law that, in order to renovate the brain day by
day, the growing creature must have plenty of fresh
air and play, and that the child who learns for four
hours and plays for four hours, will learn more, and
learn it more easily, than the child who learns for
the whole eight hours; if, in short, they will teach
girls not merely to understand the Greek tongue, but
to copy somewhat of the Greek physical training, of
that " music and gymnastic " which helped to make the
cleverest race of the old world the ablest race likewise :
then they will earn the gratitude of the patriot and the
physiologist, by doing their best to stay the downward
tendencies of the physique, and therefore ultimately
of the morale, in the coming generation of English
women.

I am sorry to say that, us yet, I hoar of but one
movement in this direction among the promoters of the

88 NADSICAA 7.V I.OXDON.

" higher education of women."* I trust that the subject
will be taken up methodically by those gifted ladies,
who have acquainted themselves, and are labouring to
acquaint other women, with the first principles of
healtli ; and that they may avail to prevent the coming
generations, under the unwholesome stimulant of com-
petitive examinations, and so forth, from " develop-
ing" into so many Chinese dwarfs — or idiots.

• Since tliiu casiiy waa wrilUn. I liiivo Im'ch Hintvroly ch-linhto*! t<»
find tlmt my wishes liad Ui>ii antici|iatc<i nt (Jirtou t^ilU-gu, mar
Cumljritlgc, ami privioiwly at Hitchin, wlieiice the collect! waa removed :
and that the wwu la<li<ij who HUjicriiiton.l that ostublishment |)n>|xieo
also that mo^t excellent inhtitution— a Hwimming bnlh. A pa|)or.
moreover, reud before the I/.n<lon ABUooiation of SohoolmiHtrcitaoii in
ItMJG, on " I'InHieal Exerci*^ and lUcn-ation for liirls,' deservi* all
attention. May those who i)romole such things prosper as thiv
deserve.

TJIK A IR-M OTHERS.

'• I 'if Nntur ist die Bcwcgung."

Who are tlu'so who follow us softly over the moor
ill the autumn eve ? Their wings brush and rustle in
the tir-boughs, and they whisper before us and behind,
as if they called gently to each other, like birds flocking
homeward to their nests.

The woodpecker on the pine-stems knows them, and
laughs aloud fur joy as they pass. The rooks above
the pasture know them, and wheel round and tumble
in their play. The brown leaves on the oak trees
know them, and flutter faintly, and beckon as they
pass. And in the chattering of the dry leaves there is
a meaning, and a cry of weary things which long for
rest.

" Take us home, take us home, you soft air-mothers,
now our fathers the sunbeams are grown dull. Our
green summer beauty is all draggled, and our faces are
grown wan and wan ; and the buds, the children whom
we nourished, thrust us off, ungrateful, from our seats.

00 THE AIJi-MOTIIi:iiS.

Waft us down, you soft air-mothers, upon your wings
to the quiet earth, that we may go to our home, as all
things go, and become air and sunlight once again."

And the bold young fir-seeds know them, and rattle
impatient in their cones. " Blow stronger, blow fiercer,
slow air-mothers, and shake us from our prisons of
dead wood, that we may fly and spin away north-east-
ward, each on his horny wing. Help us but to touch
the moorland yondtr, and w«» will take gootl care of
ourselves henceforth ; we will dive like arrows through
the heather, and drive our sharp beaks into the soil,
and rise again as green trees toward the sunlight, and
spread out lusty boughs."

They never think, bold fools, of what is coming, to
bring them low in the midst of their pride; of the
reckless axo which will fell them, and the saw which
will shape them into logs; and the trains which will
roar and rattle over them, as they lie buried in the
gravel c»f the way, till they are ground and rotted into
powder, and dug up and flung upon the fire, that they
too may return home, like all things, and become air
and sunlight once again.

And the air-mothers hear their prayers, and do
thoir bidding: but faintly; for they themselves are
tired and sad.

Tired and sad are the Hir-iui-llu i>, and their gar-
ments rent an-l \^ m I.<...k ut flniii as they stream

rilK MU-MOTIIERS. 91

over the black forest, before the dim sonth-wostcrn
rtun ; hing lines ftiul wreaths of melancholy grey, stained
with dull yellow or dt;id dun. They have come far
across the seas, and done many a wild deed upon their
way ; and now that they have reached the land, like
shipwrecked sailors, they will lie down and weep till
th<^y can weep no more.

Ah, how different were those soft air-mothers when,
invisible to mortal eyes, they started on their long sky-
journey, five thousand miles across the sea ! Out of
the blazing caldron which lies between the two New
Worlds, they leapt up when the great sun called them,
in whirls and spouts of clear hot steam ; and rushed
of their own pa.«?sion to the northward, while the
whirling earth-ball whirled them east. So north-
eastward they rushed aloft, across the gay West
Indian isle.s, leaving below the glitter of the flying-
fish, and the sidelong eyes of cruel sharks ; above the
cane-fields and the plaintain-gardens, and the cocoa-
groves which fringe the shores ; above the rocks which
throbbed with earthquakes, and the peaks of old vol-
can(X'S, cinder-strewn; while, far beneath, the ghosts
of their dead sisters hurried home upon the north-east
breeze.

Wild deeds they did as they rushed onward, and
struggled and fought among themselves, up and down,
and round and backward, in the fury of their blind hot

92 riiK AIR-MOTH i:ns.

youth. They heeded not the tree as they snapped it,
nor the ship as they whelmed it in tlie waves ; nor the
cry of the sinking sailor, nor the need of his little ones
on shore ; hasty and selfish even as children, and, like
children, tamed by their own rage. For they tired
tliemsc'lves by struggling with each other, and by
tearing the heavy water into waves ; and their wings
grew clogged with sea-spray, and soaked more and
more with steam. V>\\i at Inst the sea grew cold be-
neath them, and their clear steam shrank to mist; and
they saw themselves and each other wrapped in dull
rain-laden clouds. They then drew their white cloud-
garments round them, and viiltd themselves for very
shame ; and said, " We have been wild and wayward :
and, alas ! our pure bright youth is gone. But we will
do one good deed yet ere we die, and so we shall not
have lived in vain. We will glide onward to the land,
and weep there ; and refresh all things with soft warm
rain; and make the grass grow, the buds burst;
quench the thirst of man and b«ast, and wash tlie
Boiled world clean."

So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to
weep the leaves into their graves ; to weep the seeds
into their seed-beds, and weep the soil into the plains;
to get the rich earth ready for the winter, an»l then
creep northward to tlie ice-world, and there die.

Weary, and still more weary, slowly, and m(»re slowly

'/•///•; AIIl-MOTIIEnS. 93

still, tlu'v will journey on fur nortlnviinl, across fast-
(•hillin<,' seas. For ii doom is laid upon them, never to
be still apiin, till they rest at the North Pole itself,
the still axle of the spinninf^ world ; and sink in
death around it, and become white snow-clad ghosts.

But will they live again, those chilled air-mothers ?
Yes, they must live again. For all things move for
ever ; and not even ghosts can rest. So the corpses of
their sisters, piling on them from above, press them
outward, press them southward toward the sun once
more ; across the floes and round the icebergs, weepinf'
tears of snow and sleet, while men hate their wild
harsh voices, and shrink before their bitter breath.
They know not that the cold bleak snow-storms, as
they hurtle from the black north-east, bear back the
ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to their
father, the great sun.

But as they fly southwards, warm life thrills them.
and they drop their loads of sleet and snow; and
meet their young live sisters from the south, and greet
them with flash and thunder-peal. And, please God
before many weeks are over, as we run Westward IIo,
we shall overtake the ghosts of these air-mothers,
hurrying back toward their father, the great sun.
Fresh and bright under the fresh bright heaven, they
will race with us toward our home, to gain new heat,
new life, new j.ower, and set forth about their work

'M THE AIIi-MOTI/KIiS.

once more. Men call them the south-west wind, those
air-mothers ; and their ghosts the north-east trade ; and
value them, and rightly, hecause they bear the traders
out and home across the sea. But wise men, and little
children, should look on them with more seeing eyes ;
and say, " May not these winds be living creatures ?
They, too, are thoughts of God, to whom all live."

For is not our life like their life? Do we not come
and go as they ? Out of God's boundless bosom, the
fount of life, wo came ; through selfish, stormy youth,
and contrite tears— just not too late; through man-
hood not altogether useless ; through slow and chill
old age, wo return from Whence we cume ; to the
Bosom of God once more — to go forth again, it may
be, with fresh knowledge, and fresh powers, to nobler
work. Amen.

Such was the prophecy which I learnt, or seemed to
learn, from the simth-western wind off the Atlantic, on
H certain delectable evening. And it was fullilled at
night, as far im tlic L'tiitli' air-ni(»thi'r.>< could fuUil it,
for foolish man

" Tlii-rv wn« « n«riii); in Uio «-niMU rII niKht :
TiK- mill cutiic Ik nvily uii<l T 11 in ll>N.ili< ;
Iliit now llic aun i* rihiii); rultn uml hri^hl,
TIk! I>inli« urr niiiKini; in tlif dinlntit wi<(>il«:
Over hm own kmi^-I voiini tlu' uio* k-<lor« hrtMMla,
The jay iiink) « utiiiwi r im thi' iniiK|>i<' chuUrrn,
An<l nil Iho iiir i« IllUd with |ili-iii«i<>i iv>.-^ of ^^!l( r» "

TiiK Ain-MOTiiEns. on

But was I a f^louuiy and (listciniK'reJ man, if,
upon suc-li a morn as tliat, I 8t«jotl on the little
bridge across a certain brook, and watched the
water run, with something of a sigh ? Or if, when
the schooll)oy beside me lamented that the floods
would surely bo out, and his day's fishing spoiled,
I said to him—" Ah, my buy, that is a little matter.
Look at what you are seeing now, and understand
what barbarism and waste mean. Look at all that
beautiful water which God has sent us hither off* the
Atlantic, without trouble or expense to us. Thou-
sands, and tens of thousands, of gallons will run
under this bridge to-day ; and what shall we do with
it? Nothing. And yet: think only of the mills
which that water would have turned. Think how it
might have kept up health and cleanliness in poor
creatures packed away in the back streets of the near-
est town, or even in London itself. Think even how
country folk, in many parts of England, in three
months' time, may be crying out for rain, and afraid
of short crops, and fever, and scarlatina, and cattle-
plague, for want of the very water which we are now
letting run back, wasted, into the sea from whence it
came. And yet we call ourselves a civilised peoph."

It is not wise, I know, to preach to boys. And yet,
sometimes, a man must speak his heart ; even, like
.Mida.s' slave, to the reeds by the river side. And I

on THE Ain-MOTIlKIiS.

had 80 often, fishing up jinJ down full many a stream,
whispered my story to those same river-reeds; and
told them that my Lord the Sovereign Demos had, like
old Midus, asses' ears in spite of all his gold, that
I thought I might for once tfll it the boy likewise,
in hope that he might help his generation to mend
that which my own generation does not seem like to
mend.

I might have said more to him : hut did not. For it
is not well to destroy too early the child's illusion, that
people must be wise because they are grown up, and
have votes, and rule— or think they rule — the world.
The child will find out how true that is soon enough
for himself. If the truth be forced on him by the hot
words of those with whom he lives, it is apt to breed
in him that contempt, stormful and therefore barren,
which makes revolutions; and not that pity, calm and
therefore helpful, which makes reforms.

So I might have said to him, but did not

.\iid then men pray for rain:

My boy, <lid you ever hear the oKl Kiisterii legend
about the(iip8ies? IIow they were such good musi-
cians, that some great Indian Sultan sent for the
whole tribe, and planted them near his palace, and
gave them land, and ploughs to break it up, and seed
to BOW it, that they might dwell there, and play and
sing to him.

THE AIIi'-MOTIIEIiS. 97

But wlion the winter arrived, the Gi})sies all cjinie
to the Sultun, iiiul cried that they were starving. " But
what have you done with the seed-corn which I gave
you ? " "0 Light of the Age, we ate it in the sum-
mer," " And what have you done with the ploughs
which I gave you ? " "0 Glory of the Universe, we
burnt them to bake the corn withal."

Then said that great Sultan — " Like the butter-
flies you have lived; and like the butterflies you shall
wander." So he drove thera out. And that is how
the Gipsies came hither from the East.

Now suppose that the Sultan of all Sultans, who
sends the rain, should make a like answer to us foolish
human beings, when we prayed fur rain : " But what
have you done with the rain which I gave you six
months since ? " " We have let it run into the sea."
" Then, ere you ask for more rain, make places wherein
you can keep it when you have it." " But that would
be, in most cases, too expensive. We can employ our
capital more profitably in other directions."

It is not for me to say what answer might be made
to such an excuse. I think a child's still unsophisti-
cated sense of right and wrong would soon supjdy
one ; and probably one — considering the complexity,
and diflSculty, and novelty, of the whole question —
somewhat too harsh; as children's judgments are wcmt
to be.

98 THE Ain-MOTUEItS.

But would it not be well if our chiltlreu, without
being taught to blame anyone for what is past, were
taught something about what ought to be done now,
what must be done soon, with the rainfall of these
islands ; and about other and kindred health-questions,
on the solution of which dejuMids, and will depend
more and more, the life of millions? One would have
thought that those public schools and colleges which
desire to monopolise the education of the owners of the
soil ; of the great employers of labour ; of the clergy ;
and of all, indeed, who ought to be aoniaintod with the
duties of property, the conditions of public health, and,
in a word, with the general laws of what is now called
Social Science — one would have thought, I soy, that
those public schools and colleges would have t«ught
their scholars somewhat at least about such matters,
that they might go forth into life with at least some
rough notions of the causes which make people healthy
or unhealthy, rich or poor, comfortable or wretched,
useful or dangerous to the State. But as long as our
great educational institutions, sofc, or fancying them-
selves suf*', in some enchanted castle, shut out by
ancient magic from the living world, put a premium
on Latin and Greek verses: a wise father will, during
the holidays, talk now and then, I hope, somewhat
nftnr this fashion :

Viiu must under>«tiitiii, mv iiov, tiiat all the water

THE Ain-MOTI/EnS. 99

in the country comes out of tlie sky, and from nowhere
else; and that, therefore, to save and store the water
when it fulls is n question of life and death to crops,
und man, nnd beast ; for with or without water is lile or
death. If I took, for instance, the water from the moors
uhovf and turiu-d it ovi-r yonder field, I could douhle,
and more than douhle, the crops in that field hence-
forth.

Then why do I not do it ?

Only because the field lies higher than the house ;
and if ~ now here is one thing wliicli you and every
civilised man should know — if you have water-meadows,
or any " irrigated " land, as it is called, above a house,
or even on a level with it, it is certain to breed not
merely cold and damp, but fever or ague. Our fore-
fathers did not understand this ; and they built their
houses, as this is built, in the lowest places they could
find : sometimes because they wished to be near ponds,
from whence they could get fish in Lent ; but more
often, I think, because they wanted to be sheltered
from the wind. They had no glass, as we have, in tlicir
windows; or, at least, only latticed casements, which
let in the wind and cold ; nnd they shrank from high
and exposed, and therefore really healthy, spots. Hut
now that we have good glass, nnd snsh windows, and
doors that will shut tight, we can build warm houses
where we like. And if you ever have to do with tli*

H 2

100 TIIK Ain-MOTIIKRS.

building of cottngos, rcmoiubor that it is your duty to
the people who will live in them, and therefore to the
State, to see that they stand high and dry, where no water
can drain down into their foundations, and where fog,
and the poisonous gases which are given out by rotting
vegetables, cannot drain down either. You will learn
more about all that when you lenrn. as every civilised
lad should in these days, something about chemistry,
and the laws of fluids and gases, lint you know
already that flowers are cut oil' liv frost in the low
grounds sooner than in the high ; and that the fog at
night always lies along the brooks ; and that the sour
moor-smell which warns us to shut our windows at
sunset, comes down from the hill, and not up from the
valley. Now all these things are caused by one and
the same law ; that cold air is heavier than warm ;
and, therefore, like so much water, must run down
hill.

But what about the rainfall?

Well, I have wandered a little from the rainfall:
though not as far as you fancy ; for fever and ague and
rheumatism usually mean — rain in the wrong place. But
if you knew how much illness, and torturing pain, and
death, and sorrow arise, oven to this very day, from
ignoraDC« of these simple laws, then you would bear
them carefully in mind, and wish to know more about
them. But now for water being lif<' to the beasts.

THE Aii:-M(>Tiii:n^, loi

Do you rem('in]»t'r — tliou^li you are hurtlly old cnouj^'li
— the ciittlo-plaj^ue ? How the beasts died, or luid tf)
bo killed and buried, by tens of thousands; and liuw
misery and ruin I'tdl on hundreds of honest men and
women over many of the richest counties of England :
but how we in this vale had no cattle-plague ; and
how there was none — as far as I recollect — in the
uplands of Devon and Cornwull, nor of Wales, nor of
the Scotch Ilighlands? Now, do you know why that
was ? Simply because we here, like those other up-
landers, are in such a country as Palestine was before
the foolish Jews cut down all their timber, and so
destroyed their own rainfall — a " land of brooks of
water, of fountains and depths that spring out of
valleys and hills." There is hardly a field here that
has not, thank (»od, its running brook, or its sweet
spring, from which our cattle were drinking their health
and life, while in the clay-lands of Cheshire, and in the
Cambridgeshire fens — which were drained utterly dry
— the poor things drank no water, too often, save that
of the very same putrid ponds in which they had been
standing all day long, to cool themselves, and to keep
ofl* the flies. I do not say, of course, that bad water
caused the cattle-plague. It came by infection fr«im
the East of Europe. JJut I say that bad watir made
the cattle ready to take it, and made it spread over the
country ; and when you are old enough I will give you

102 Tilt: Ain-MOTIIECS.

plenty of proof — some from the herds of your own
kinsmen — that what I say is true.

And as for pure water being life to human beings :
why have we never fever here, and scarcely ever diseases
like fever — zymotics, as the doctors call them ? Or, if a
case comes into our parish from outside, why does the
fever never spread ? For the very same reason that we
had no cattle-plague. Because wo liiivo more pure
water close to every cottage than wo need. And this I
tell you : that the only two outbreaks of deadly disease
which we have hud here for thirty years, were both of
them, as far as I could see, to be traced to filthy water
having got into the poor folk's wells. Water, you
must remember, just as it is life when pure, is death
when foul. For it can carry, unseen to the eye, and
even when it looks clear and sparkling, and tastes soft
and sweet, poisons which have perhaps killed more
human beings than ever were killed in battle. You
have read, perhaps, how the Athenians, when they were
dying of the plague, accused the Lacedn'monians out-
side the walls of poisoning their wells; or how, in some
uf the pestilences of the middle ages, the common
|>eople used to accuse the poor harmless Jews of poison-
ing the wells, and set upon them and murdered them
horribly. Th<y were right, I d(» not doubt, in their
notion that the well-water was giving them the pesti-
lence: but they had not sense to see that they were

THE AIl:-M<)TI!EnS. 103

poisoning the wells themselves by their dirt and care-
lessness ; or, in the case of poor besieged Athens, pro-
bably by mere overcrowding, which has cost many a
life ere now, and will cost more. And I am sorry tc
tell you, my little man, that even now too many people
have no more sense than they had, and die in conse-
quence. If you could see a battle-field, and men shot
down, writhing and dying in hundreds by shell and
bullet, would not that seem to you a horrid sight?
Then — I do not wish to make you sad too early, but
this is a fact which everyone should know — that more
people, and not strong men only, but women and little
children too, are killed and wounded in Great Britain
every year by bad water and want of water together,
than were killed and wounded in any battle which has
been fought since you were born. Medical men know
this well. And when you are older, you may see it for
yourself in the Registrar-General's reports, blue-books,
pamphlets, and so on, without end.

But why do not people stop such a horrible loss of
life ?

Well, my dear boy, the true causes of it have only
been known for the last thirty or forty years ; and we
I'.uglish are, as good King Alfred found us to his sorrow
a thousand years ago, very slow to move, even when we
see a thing ought to be done. Let us hope that in this
matter — wo have been so in most matters as vet — we

104 THE Air.-MOTIIKRS.

shall be like the tortoise lu uw I'ablo, and not the hare;
and by moving slowly, but surely, win the race at last.
But now think for yourself: and see what you would do
to save these j)eoplo from being poisoned by bad water.
Remember that the plain question is this — The rain-
water comes down from heaven as water, and nothing
but water. Kain-water is tiie only pure water, after
all. How would you save that for the poor people who
have none? There ; run away and hunt rabbits on the
moor : but look, meanwhile, how you would save some
of this beautiful and precious water which is roaring

away into the sea.

• • • • •

Well ? What would you do ? Make ponds, you
say, like the old monks' ponds, now all broken down.
Dam all the glens across their mouths, and turn them
into reservoirs.

" Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings "

Well, that will have to bo done. That is being done
more and more, more or less well. The goo<l people of
Glasgow did it first, I think; and now the good people
of Manclu'stcr, and of other nortlu-rn towns, have ilone
it, and have saved many a human lifi' thereby already.
But it must bo done, some day, all over England and
Wales, and great part of Scotland. For the mountain
tops and moors, my Ixiy, by a l)eautiful law of nature,
compensate for their own jKn'erty ))y yielding a wealth

THE Ain-MoriiKits. lor,

which the ridi lowhiiuls cuniiot yiekl. You do not
uuderstiiiul ? Then see. Yon moor above can grow
neither corn nor grass. But one thing it can grow, and
does grow, without which we shonhl have no corn nor
grass, and that is — water. Not only does far more rain
fall up there than falls here down below, but even in
drought the high moors condense the moisture into
dew, and bo yield some water, even when the lowlands
are burnt up with drought. The reason of that you
must learn lioreafter. That it is so, you should know
yourself. For on the high chalk downs, you know,
where farmers make a sheep-pond, they never, if they
are wise, make it in a valley or on a hillside, but on the
bleakest top of the very highest down ; and there, if
they can once get it filled with snow and rain in winter,
the blessed dews of night will keep some water in it all
the summer through, while the ponds below are utterly
dried up. And even so it is, as I know, wnth this very
moor. Corn and grass it will not grow, because there
is too little *' staple," that is, soluble minerals, in the
sandy soil, lint h()W much water it might grow, you
may judge roughly for yourself, by remembering how
many brooks like this are running off it now to carry
mere dirt into the river, and then into the sea.

But why should we not make dams at once; and save
the water ?

Because we cannot afford it. No one would buy

106 THE AIJi-MOTIfEIiS.

the water when we had stored it. The rich iu towu
and cuuntry will always take care — and quite right
they are — to have water enough for themselves, and
for their servants too, whatever it may cost them. But
the poorer people are — and therefore usually, alas !
the more ignorant — the less water they get ; and the
less they care to have water ; and the less they are
inclined to pay for it ; and the more, I am sorry to say,
they waste what little they do get ; and I am still more
sorry to say, spoil, and even steal and sell— in Lon-
don at least — the stop-cocks and lead-pipes which bring
the water into their houses. So that keeping a water-
shop is a very troublesome and uncertain business;
and one which is not likely to pay us or any one round
here.

But why not let some comj)any manage it, a-< tin y
manage railways, and gas, and other things?

Ah — you have been overhearing a gf>od deal about
companies of late, I see. But this I will tell you ; that
wh<n you grow up, and havt- a vote and influence, it
will be your duty, if you intend to Ihj a g(»»d citizen,
not only not to put the water-supply of Knglund into
the hands of fresh companies, but to help to take out
of their hands what water-supply they manage already,
especially in I^)ndon ; and likewise the gas-supply ; and
the railroads ; and everything else, in a word, which
cverybotly uses, oud must use. For you must understand

rilK All:-MOTflEL'S. 107

— at least as soon as yon oiu — that tbonpli the men who
make up companies are no worse tlian oilier men, and
some of them, as you ouj^'lit to know, very good men;
yot what they have to h)ok to is their profits; and the
less watiT they supj)ly, and the worse it is, the more
profit they make. For most water, I am sorry to say,
is fouled before the water companies can get to it, as
this water whicli runs past us will be, and as the
Thames water above London is. Therefore it has to
be cleansed, or partly cleansed, at a very great expense.
So water companies hiive to bo inspected — in plain Eng-
lish, watched — at a very heavy expense to the nation,
by government officers ; and compelled to do their best,
and take their utmost care. And so it has come to
pass that the London water is not now nearly as bad
as some of it was thirty years ago, when it was no
more fit to drink than that in the cattle yard tank. But
still we must have more water, and better, in London ;
for it is growing year by year. There are more than
three millions of people already in what we call London ;
and ere you are an old man there may be between
four and five millions. Now to suj)ply all these people
with water is a duty which we must not leave to any
private companies. It must bo done by a public
authority, as is fit and proper in a free self-governing
country. In this matter, as in all others, we will try
to do what the lioyal Commission told us four years

108 THE AIR-MOTEERS.

ago we ought to do. I hope that you will see, though
I may not, the day when what we call London, but
which is really, nine-tenths of it, only a great nest of
separate villages huddled together, will be divided into
three great self-governing cities, London, Westminster,
and Southwark; each with its own corporation, like
that of the venerable and well-governed City of Lon-
don ; each managing its own water-supply, gas-supply,
and sewage, and other matters besides ; and managing
them, like Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and
other great northern towns, far more cheaply and far
better than any companies can do it for them.

But where shall we get water enough for all these
millions of people ? There are no mountains near
London. But we might give them the water off our
moors.

No, no, my boy.

"He that will ikiI, wlicii lio may,
Wlieii lie will, he .-hull have nay."

Some fifteen years ago the Londoners might have had
water from us ; and I was one of those who did my
best to get it for them : but the water companies did
not choose to take it; and now this part of England
is growing so populous and so valuable that it wants
all its little ruinfall for itself. So there is another leaf
torn out of the Sibylline books for the poor old water
companies. You do not understand : you will some

THE AIR-MOTBEBS. 109

day. But you may comfort yourself about London.
For it happens to be, I think, the luckiest city in the
world ; and if it had not been, we should have had
pestilence on pestilence in it, as terrible as the great
plague of Charles II.'s time. The old Britons, without
knowing in the least what they were doing, settled
old London city in the very centre of the most wonder-
ful natural reservoir in this island, or perhaps in all
Europe ; which reaches from Kent into Wiltshire, and
round again into Suffolk; and that is, the dear old
chalk downs.

Why, they are always dry.

Yes. But the turf on them never burns up, and the
streams which flow through them never run dry, and
seldom or never flood either. Do you not know, from
Winchester, that that is true ? Then where is all the
rain and snow gone, which falls on them year by year,
but into the chalk itself, and into the greensands, too,
below the chalk? There it is, soaked up as by a
sponge, in quantity incalculable ; enough, some think,
to supply London, let it grow as huge as it may. I
wish I too were sure of that. But the Commission has
shown itself so wise and fair, and brave likewise — too
brave, I am sorry to say, for some who might have
supported them — that it is not for me to gainsay their
opinion.

But if there was not water enough in the chalk, are

110 THE AIR-MOTHERS.

not the Londoners ricli enoiigli to bring it from any
distance ?

My boy, in this also we will agree with the Com-
mission — that we ought not to rob Peter to pay Paul,
and take water to a distance which other people close
at hand may want. Look at the map of England and
southern Scotland ; and see for yourself what is just,
according to geography and nature. There are four
mountain-ranges ; four great water-fields. First, the
hills of the Border. Their rainfall ought to be stored
for the Lothians and the extreme north of England.
Then the Yorkshire and Derbyshire hills — the central
chine of England. Their rainfall is being stored already,
to the honour of the shrewd northern men, for the
manufacturing counties east and west of the hills.
Then come the lake mountains — the finest water-field
of all, because more rain by far falls there than in any
place in England. But they will be wanted to supply
Lancashire, and some day Liverpool itself ; for Liver-
pool is now using rain which belongs more justly to
other towns ; and besides, there are plenty of counties
and towns, down into Cheshire, which would be glad
of what water Lancashire does not want. And last
come the Snowdon mountains, a noble water-field, which
I know well ; for an old dream of mine has been, that
ere I died I should see all the rain of the Carnedds,
and the Glyders, and Siabod, and Snowdon itself, car-

TIJE ATR-MOTIIERS. Ill

rietl across tlie Couway river to feed the mining districts
of North Wales, where the streams are now all foul with
oil and lead; and then on into the western coal and
iron fields, to Wolverhampton and Birmingham itself :
and if I were the engineer who got that done, I should
be happier — prouder I dare not say — than if I had
painted nobler pictures than Kaffaelle, or written nobler
plays than Shakespeare. I say that, boy, in most de-
liberate earnest. But meanwhile, do you not see that
in districts where coal and iron may be found, and
fresh manufactures may spring up any day in any
place, each district has a right to claim the nearest
rainfall for itself ? And now, when we have got the
water into its proper place, let us see what we shall do
with it.

But why do you say we? Can you and I do all
this ?

My boy, are not you and I free citizens; part of
the people, the Commons — as the good old word runs —
of this country ? And are we not — or ought we not to
be in time — beside that, educated men ? By the peo-
ple, remember, I mean, not only the hand- working man
who has just got a vote ; I mean the clergy of all de-
nominations ; and the gentlemen of the press ; and last,
but not least, the scientific men. If those four classes
together were to tell every government — " Free water
we will have, and as much as we reasonably choose ; "

112 THE AIR-MOTHERS.

and tell every candidate for the House of Commons, —
" Unless you promise to get us as much free water as
we reasonably choose, we will not return you to Parlia-
ment :" then, I think, we four should put such a " pres-
sure " on government as no water companies, or other
vested interests, could long resist. And if any of those
four classes should hang back, and waste their time and
influence over matters far less important and less press-
ing, the other three must laugh at them, and more
than laugh at them ; and ask them — " Why have you
education, why have you influence, why have you votes,
why are you freemen and not slaves, if not to preserve
the comfort, the decency, the health, the lives of men,
women, and children — most of those latter your own
wives and your own children?"

But what shall we do with the water ?

Well, after all, that is a more practical matter than
speculations grounded on the supposition that all
classes will do their duty. But the first thing we will
do will be to give to the very poorest houses a constant
supply, at high pressure ; so that everybody may take
as much water as he likes, instead of having to keep
the water in little cisterns, where it gets foul and
putrid only too often.

But will they not waste it then ?

So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at
high pressure, the waste, which is terrible now — some

THE AIR-MOTHEES. 113

say that in London one-third of the water is wasted —
begins to lessen ; and both water and expense are saved.
If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If
a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will
flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be
like the magician's servant, who called up the demon
to draw water for him ; and so he did : but when he
had begun he would not stop, and if the magician had
not come home, man and house would have been washed
away.

But if it saves money, why do not the water com-
panies do it ?

Because — and really here there are many excuses for
the poor old water companies, when so many of them
swerve and gib at the very mention of constant water-
supply, like a poor horse set to draw a load which he
feels is too heavy for him — because, to keep everything
in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken
people, there must be officers with lawful authority —
water-policemen we will call them — who can enter
people's houses when they will, and if they find any-
thing wrong with the water, set it to rights with a
high hand, and even summon the people who have set
it wrong. And that is a power which, in a free country,
must never be given to the servants of any private
company, but only to the oilicers of a corporation or of
the government.

1 1 4 THE AIE-MO THERS.

And what shall we do with the rest of the water ?

Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that
we may at least do this — In each district of each city,
and the centre of each town, we may build public baths
and lavatories, where poor men and women may get
their warm baths when they will ; for now they usually
never bathe at all, because they will not— and ought
not, if they be hard-worked folk — bathe in cold water
during nine months of the year. And there they shall
wash their clothes, and dry them by steam ; instead of
washing them as now, at home, either under back
sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too
often, alas ! in their own living rooms, in an atmo-
sphere of foul vapour, which drives the father to the
public-house and the children into the streets; and
which not only prevents the clothes from being tho-
roughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will
know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease.
And they shall have other comforts, and even luxuries,
these public lavatories ; and be made, in time, grace-
ful and refining, as well as merely useful. Nay, we
will even, I think, have in front of each of them a real
fountain ; not like the drinking-fuuntains — though they
are great and needful boons — which you see hero and
there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to
a great deal of expensive stone : l)ut real fountains,
which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle ;

THE AIR-MOTHERS. 115

and fill the place with life, and light, and coolness ; and
sing in the people's ears the sweetest of all earthly songs
— save the song of a mother over her child — the song of
" The Laughing Water."

But will not that be a waste ?

Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think
we, the people, will have our fountains ; if it be but
to make our governments, and corporations, and all
public bodies and officers, remember that they all —
save Her Majesty the Queen — are our servants ; and not
we theirs ; and that we choose to have water, not only
to wash with, but to play with, if we like. And I
believe — for the world, as you will find, is full not
only of just but of generous souls — that if the water-
supply were set really right, there would be found, in
many a city, many a generous man who, over and
above his compulsory water-rate, would give his poor
fellow-townsmen such a real fountain as those which
ennoble the great square at Carcasonne and the great
square at Nismes ; to be " a thing of beauty and a joy
for ever."

And now, if you want to go back to your Latin and
Greek, you shall translate for me into Latin — I do not
expect you to do it into Greek, though it would turn
very well into Greek, for the Greeks knew all about
the matter long before the Komans — what follows
here ; and you shall verify the facts and the names,

I 2

IIG THE AIR-MOTIIERS.

&c., in it from your dictionaries of antiquity and
biography, that you may remember all the better what
it says. And by that time, I think, you will have
learnt something more useful to yourself, and, I hope,
to your country hereafter, than if you had learnt to
patch together the neatest Greek and Latin verses

which have appeared since the days of Mr. Canning.

*****

I have often amused myself, by fancying one ques-
tion which an old Eoman emperor would ask, were he
to rise from his grave and visit the sights of London
under the guidance of some minister of state. The
august shade would, doubtless, admire, our railroads and
bridges, our cathedrals and our public parks, and much
more of which we need not be ashamed. But after
a while, I think, he would look round, whether in
London or in most of our great cities, inquiringly and
in vain, for one class of buildings, which in his empire
were wont to be almost as conspicuous and as splendid,
because, in public opinion, almost as necessary, as the
basilicas and temples — "And where," he would ask, " are
your public baths ?" And if the minister of state who
was his guide should answer — " great Ceesar, I really
do not know. I believe there arc some somewhere at
the back of that ugly building which we call the
National Gallery ; and I think there have been some
meetings lately in the East End, and an amateur

THE AIR-MOTHERS. 117

concert at the Albert Hall, for restoring, by private
subscriptions, some baths and wash-houses in Bethnal
Green, which had fallen to decay. And there may be
two or three more about the metropolis ; for parish
vestries have powers by Act of Parliament to establish
such places, if they think fit, and choose to pay for
them out of the rates :" — Then, I think, the august
shade might well make answer — " We used to call you,
in old Eome, northern barbarians. It seems that you
have not lost all your barbarian habits. Are you
aware that, in every city in the Eoman empire, there
were, as a matter of course, public baths open, not
only to the poorest freeman, but to the slave, usually
for the payment of the smallest current coin, and often
gratuitously ? Are you aware that in Eome itself,
millionaire after millionaire, emperor after emperor,
from Menenius Agrippa and Nero down to Diocletian
and Constantine, built baths, and yet more baths ;
and connected with them gymnasia for exercise, lec-
ture-rooms, libraries, and porticos, wherein the people
might have shade and shelter, and rest ? — I remark,
by-the-by, that I have not seen in all your London a
single covered place in which the people may take
shelter during a shower — Are you aware that these
baths were of the most magnificent architecture, deco-
rated with marbles, paintings, sculptures, fountains,
what not ? And yet I had heard, in Hades down

118 THE AIR-MOTHERS.

below, tliat you prided yourselves here on the study of
the learned languages ; and, indeed, taught little but
Greek and Latin at your public schools ?"

Then, if the minister should make reply — " Oh yes,
we know all this. Even since the revival of letters in
the end of the fifteenth century a whole literature has
been written— a great deal of it, I fear, by pedants
who seldom washed even their hands and faces— about
your Greek and Koman baths. We visit their colossal
ruins in Italy and elsewhere with awe and admiration ;
and the discovery of a new Eoman bath in any old
city of our isles sets all our antiquaries buzzing with
interest."

" Then why," the shade might ask, " do you not
copy an example which you so much admire ? Surely
England must be much in want, either of water, or of
fuel to heat it with ? "

" On the contrary, our rainfall is almost too great ;
our soil so damp that we have had to invent a whole
art of subsoil drainage unknown to you ; while, as for
fuel, our coal-mines make us the great fuel-exporting
people of the world."

What a quiet sneer might curl the lip of a Con-
stantino as he replied—" Not in vain, as I said, did we
call you, some fifteen hundred years ago, the barbarians
of the north. But tell me, good barbarian, wliom I
know to bo both brave and wise— for the fume of your

THE AIR-MOTEEBS. 119

young British empire has reached us even in the realms
below, and we recognise in you, with all respect, a
people more like us Komans than any which has ap-
peared on earth for many centuries — how is it you
have forgotten that sacred duty of keeping the people
clean, which you surely at one time learnt from us?
When your ancestors entered our armies, and rose,
some of them, to be great generals, and even emperors,
like those two Teuton peasants, Justin and Justinian,
who, long after my days, reigned in my own Constanti-
nople : then, at least, you saw baths, and used them ;
and felt, after the bath, that you were civilised men,
and not ' sordidi ac fcetentes,' as we used to call you
when fresh out of your bullock-waggons and cattle-
pens. How is it that you have forgotten that lesson ? "
The minister, I fear, would have to answer that
our ancestors were barbarous enough, not only to de-
stroy the Eoman cities, and temples, and basilicas, and
statues, but the Eoman baths likewise ; and then
retired, each man to his own freehold in the country, to
live a life not much more cleanly or more graceful than
that of the swine which were his favourite food. But
he would have a right to plead, as an excuse, that not
only in England, but throughout the whole of the con-
quered Latin empire, the Latin priesthood, who, in some
respects, were — to their honour — the representatives of
Koman civilisation and the protectors of its remnants,

120 THE Ain-MOTEEES.

were the determined enemies of its cleanliness ; that
they looked on personal dirt — like the old hermits of
the Thebaid— as a sign of sanctity ; and discouraged —
as they are said to do still in some of the Eomance
countries of Europe— the use of the bath, as not only
luxurious, but also indecent.

At which answer, it seems to me, another sneer
might curl the lip of the august shade, as he said to
himself—" This, at least, I did not expect, when I
made Christianity the state religion of my empire.
But you, good barbarian, look clean enough. You do
not look on dirt as a sign of sanctity ? "

"On the contrary, sire, the upper classes of our
empire boast of being the cleanliest — perhaps the only
perfectly cleanly — people in the world : except, of
course, the savages of the South Seas. And dirt is so far
from being a thing which we admire, that our scientific
men — than whom the world has never seen wiser — have
proved to us, for a whole generation past, that dirt is
the fertile cause of disease and drunkenness, misery
and recklessness."

" And, therefore," replies the shade, ere he disap-
pears, " of discontent and revolution ; followed by a
tyranny endured, as in Rome and many another place,
by men once free; because tyranny will at least do for
them what they arc too lazy, and cowardly, and greedy
to do for themselves. Farewell, and prosper ; as you

THE AIR-MOTHERS. 121

seem likely to prosi:)er, on the whole. But if you wish
me to consider you a civilised nation : let me hear that
you have brought a great river from the depths of the
earth, be they a thousand fathoms deep, or from your
nearest mountains, be they five hundred miles away ;
and have washed out London's dirt — and your own
shame. Till then, abstain from judging too harshly a
Constantine, or even a Caracalla; for they, whatever
were their sins, built baths, and kept their people
clean. But do your gymnasia — your schools and uni-
versities, teach your youth nought about all this ? "

THRIFT.

A Lecture delivered at Winchester, March 17, 1869.

Ladies, — I have chosen for the title of this lecture a

practical and prosaic word, because I intend the lecture

itself to be as practical and prosaic as I can make it,

without becoming altogether dull.

The question of the better or worse education of

women is one far too important for vague sentiment,

wild aspirations, or Utopian dreams.

It is a practical question, on which depends not

merely money or comfort, but too often health and life,
as the consequences of a good education, or disease and
^eath — I know too well of what I speak — as the conse-
quences of a bad one.

I beg you, therefore, to put out of your minds at
the outset any fancy that I wish for a social revolution
in the position of women ; or that I wish to see them
educated by exactly the same niolliods, and in exactly
the same subjects, as men. British lads, on an average,

THRIFT. 123

are far too ill-taught still, in spite of all recent im-
provements, for me to wish that British girls should be
taught in the same way.

Moreover, whatever defects there may have been —
and defects there must be in all things human — ^in the
past education of British women, it has been most cer-
tainly a splendid moral success. It has made, by the
grace of God, British women the best wives, mothers,
daughters, aunts, sisters, that the world, as far as I
can discover, has yet seen.

Let those who will sneer at the women of England.
We who have to do the work and to fight the battle of
life know the inspiration which we derive from their
virtue, their counsel, their tenderness, and — but too
often — from their compassion and their forgiveness.
There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man
with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the
world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a
cultivated British woman.

But just because a cultivated British woman is so
perfect a personage ; therefore I wish to see all British
women cultivated. Because the womanhood of England
is so precious a treasure ; I wish to see none of it
wasted. It is an invaluable capital, or material, out of
which the greatest possible profit to the nation must
be made. And that can only be done by thrift ; and
that, again, can only be attained by knowledge.

124 THRIFT.

Consider that word thrift. If you will look at Dr.
Johnson's Dictionary, or if you know your Shakespeare,
you will see that thrift signified originally profits,
gain, riches gotten — in a word, the marks of a man's
thriving.

How, then, did the word thrift get to mean parsi-
mony, frugality, the opposite of waste? Just in the
same way as economy — which first, of course, meant
the management of a household — got to mean also the
opposite of waste.

It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any
process, in fact, men throve in proportion as they saved
their capital, their material, their force.

Now this is a great law which runs through life;
one of those laws of nature — call them, rather, laws of
(3-od — which apply not merely to political economy, to
commerce, and to mechanics ; but to physiology, to
society ; to the intellect, to the heart, of every person
in this room.

The secret of thriving is thrift ; saving of force ; to
get as much work as possible done with the least
expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, the
least wear and tear.

And tlie secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion
as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will
be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, success-
fully ; instead of wasting your money or your energies

THRIFT. 125

in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, whicli end in
disappointment and exhaustion.

The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more
you know, the more you can save yourself and that
which belongs to you ; and can do more work with less
effort.

A knowledge of the laws of commercial credit, we all
know, saves capital, enabling a less capital to do the
work of a greater. Knowledge of the electric tele-
graph saves time ; knowledge of writing saves human
speech and locomotion ; knowledge of domestic economy
saves income ; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health
and life ; knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves
wear and tear of brain ; and knowledge of the laws of
the spirit — what does it not save ?

A well-educated moral sense, a well-regulated cha-
racter, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with
sentimentality and excitement, those tenderer emo-
tions, those deeper passions, those nobler aspirations
of humanity, which are the heritage of the woman far
more than of the man ; and which are potent in her, for
evil or for good, in proportion as they are left to run
wild and undisciplined, or are trained and developed
into graceful, harmonious, self-restraining strength,
beautiful in themselves, and a blessing to all who come
under their influence.

What, therefore, I recommend to ladies in this lee-

126 THRIFT.

ture is thrift; thrift of themselves and of their own
powers : and knowledge as the parent of thrift.

And because it is well to begin with the lower appli-
cations of thrift, and to work up to the higher, I am
much pleased to hear that the first course of the pro-
posed lectures to women in this place will be one on
domestic economy.

I presume that the learned gentleman who will
deliver these lectures will be the last to mean by that
term the mere saving of money ; that he will tell you,
as — being a German — he will have good reason to know,
that the young lady who learns thrift in domestic
economy is also learning thrift of the very highest
faculties of her immortal spirit. He will tell you, I
doubt not— for he must know — how you may see in
Germany young ladies living in what we more luxurious
British would consider something like poverty ; cook-
ing, waiting at table, and performing many a house-
hold office which would be here considered menial ; and
yet finding time for a cultivation of the intellect, which
is, unfortunately, too rare in Great Britain.

The trutli is, that we British arc too wealthy. We
make money, if not too rapidly for the good of the
nation at large, yet too rapidly, I fear, for the good of
the daughters of those who make it. Their tempta-
tion—I do not, of course, say they all yield to it— but
their temptation is, to waste of the very simplest— I

THRIFT. 127

had almost said, if I may be pardoned the expression,
of the most barbaric — kind ; to an oriental waste of
money, and waste of time; to a fondness for mere
finery, pardonable enough, but still a waste ; and to
the mistaken fancy that it is the mark of a lady to sit
idle and let servants do everything for her.

Such women may well take a lesson by contrast from
the pure and noble, useful and cultivated thrift of an
average German young lady — for ladies these German
women are, in every possible sense of the word.

But it is not of this sort of waste of which I wish to
speak to-day. I .only mention the matter in passing,
to show that high intellectual culture is not incom-
patible with the performance of homely household
duties, and that the moral success of which I sj)oke
just now need not be injured, any more than it
is in Germany, by intellectual success likewise. I
trust that these words may reassure those parents, if
any such there be here, who may fear that these lec-
tures will withdraw women from their existing sphere
of interest and activity. That they should entertain
such a fear is not surprising, after the extravagant
opinions and schemes which have been lately broached
in various quarters.

The programme to these lectures expressly disclaims
any such intentions ; and I, as a husband and a father,
expressly disclaim any such intention likewise.

128 THRIFT.

" To fit women for the more enlightened perform-
ance of their special duties ;" to help them towards
learning how to do better what we doubt not they are
already doing well; is, I honestly believe, the only
object of the promoters of this scheme.

Let us see now how some of these special duties can
be better performed by help of a little enlightenment
as to the laws which regulate them.

Now, no man will deny — certainly no man who is
past forty-five, and whose digestion is beginning to
quail before the lumps of beef and mutton which are
the boast of a British kitchen, and to prefer, with Jus-
tice Shallow, and, I presume. Sir John Falstaflf also,
" any pretty little tiny kickshaws "—no man, I say,
who has reached that age, but will feel it a practical
comfort to him to know that the young ladies of his
family arc at all events good cooks ; and understand, as
the French do, thrift in the matter of food.

Neither will any parent who wishes, naturally enough,
that his daughters should cost him as little as possible ;
and wishes, naturally enough also, that they should be
as well dressed as possible, deny that it would be a
good thing for them to be practical milliners and
mantua-makcrs ; and, by making their own clothes
gracefully and well, exercise thrift in clothing.

But, beside this thrift in clothing, I am not alone,
I believe, in wishing for some thrift in the energy

THRIFT. 129

■wbicli produces it. Labour misaj^plied, you will agree,
is labour wasted ; and as dress, I presume, is intended
to adorn tbe person of tbe wearer, tbe making a dress
wbieb only disfigures ber may be considered as a
plain case of waste. It would be impertinent in me
to go into any details : but it is impossible to walk
about the streets now without passing young people
who must be under a deep delusion as to the success
of their own toilette. Instead of graceful and noble
simplicity of form, instead of combinations of colour
at once rich and delicate, because in accordance with
the chromatic laws of nature, one meets with pheno-
mena more and more painful to the eye, and startling
to common sense, till one would be hardly more
astonished, and certainly hardly more shocked, if
in a year or two one should pass some one going
about like a Chinese lady, with pinched feet, or
like a savage of the Amazons, with a wooden bung
through her lower lip. It is easy to complain of these
monstrosities : but impossible to cure them, it seems
to me, without an education of the taste, an education
in those laws of nature which produce beauty in form
and beauty in colour. For that the cause of these
failures lies in want of education is patent. They are
most common in — I had almost said they are confined
to — those classes of well-to-do persons who are the
least educated ; who have no standard of taste of their

130 THRIFT.

own ; and who do not acquire any from cultivated
friends and relations : who, in consequence, dress
themselves blindly according to what they conceive to
be the Paris fashions, conveyed at third-hand through
an equally uneducated dressmaker ; in innocent igno-
rance of the fact — for fact I believe it to be — that Paris
fashions are invented now not in the least for the sake
of beauty, but for the sake of producing, through
variety, increased expenditure, and thereby increased
employment ; according to the strange system w'hich
now prevails in France of compelling, if not prosperity,
at least the signs of it ; and like schoolboys before a
holiday, nailing up the head of the weather glass to
insure fine weather.

Let British ladies educate themselves in those laws
of beauty which are as eternal as any other of nature's
laws ; which may be seen fulfilled, as Mr. Ruskin tells
us, so eloquently in every flower and every leaf, in
every sweeping down and rippling wave : and they will
be able to invent graceful and economical dresses for
themselves, without importing tawdry and expensive
ugliness from France.

Let me now go a step further, and ask you to con-
sider tliis.— There are in England now a vast number,
and an increasing number, of young women who, from
various circumstances which we all know, must in after
life be either the mistresses of their own fortunes, or

THRIFT. 131

the earners of their own bread. And, to do that wisely
and well, they must be more or less women of business ;
and to be women of business, they must know some-
thing of the meaning of the words capital, profit, price,
value, labour, wages, and of the relation between those
two last. In a word, they must know a little political
economy. Nay, I sometimes think that the mistress of
every household might find, not only thrift of money,
but thrift of brain ; freedom from mistakes, anxieties,
worries of many kinds, all of which eat out the health
as well as the heart, by a little sound knowledge of the
principles of political economy.

When we consider that every mistress of a household
is continually buying, if not selling ; that she is con-
tinually hiring and employing labour in the form of
servants ; and very often, into the bargain, keeping
her husband's accounts: I cannot but think that her
hard-worked brain might be clearer, and her hard-tried
desire to do her duty by every subject in her little
kingdom, might be more easily satisfied, had she read
something of what Mr. John Stuart Mill has written,
especially on the duties of employer and employed. A
capitalist, a commercialist, an employer of labour, and
an accountant — every mistress of a household is all
these, whether she likes it or not; and it would be
surely well for her, in so very complicated a state of
society as this, not to trust merely to that mother- wit,

K 2

1.^2 THE I FT.

that intuitive sagacity and innate power of ruling her
fellow-creatures, which carries women so nobly through
their work in simpler and less civilised societies.

And here I stop to answer those who may say — as I
have heard it said — That a woman's intellect is not fit for
l)usiness ; that when a woman takes to business, she is
apt to do it ill, and unpleasantly likewise ; to be more
suspicious, more irritable, more grasping, more unrea-
sonable, than regular men of business would be ; that —
as I have heard it put — " a woman does not fight fair."
The answer is simple. That a woman's intellect is
eminently fitted for business is proved by the enormous
amount of business she gets through without any special
training for it : but those faults in a woman of which
some men complain are simply the results of her not
having had a special training. She does not know the
laws of business. She does not know the rules of the
game she is playing; and therefore she is playing it in
the dark, in fear and suspicion, apt to judge of ques-
tions on personal grounds, often ofTciidiug those with
whom she has to do, and oftencr still making herself
miserable over matters of law or of business, on which
a little sound kuo^Yledge would set her head and her
heart at rest.

When I have seen widows, having the care of children,
of a great household, of a great estate, of a great busi-
ness, struggling heroically, and yet often mistakenly ;

THRIFT. 133

blamed severely for selfishness and ambition, while
they were really sacrificing themselves with the divine
instinct of a "mother for their children's interest : I have
stood by with mingled admiration and pity, and said
to myself—" How nobly she is doing the work with-
out teaching ! How much more nobly would she
have done it had she been taught ! She is now doin,-^
the work at the most enormous waste of energy and o.'
virtue : had she had knowledge, thrift would have
followed it ; she would have done more work with far less
trouble. She will probably kill herself if she goes on :
sound knowledge would have saved her health, saved
her heart, saved her friends, and helped the very loved
ones for whom she labours, not always with success."

A little political economy, therefore, will at least do
no harm to a woman; especially if she have to take
care of herself in after life ; neither, I think, will she be
much harmed by some sound knowledge of another sub-
ject, which I see promised in these lectures, — " Natural
philosophy, in its various branches, such asthe chemis-
try of common life, light, heat, electricity, &c., &c."

K little knowledge of the laws of light, for instance,
would teach many women that by shutting themselves
up day after day, week after week, in darkened rooms,
they are as certainly committing a waste of health, de-
stroying their vital energy, and diseasing their brains,
as if they were taking so much poison the whole time.

134 TEIilFT.

A little knowledge of the laws of heat would teach
women not to clothe themselves and their children after
foolish and insufficient fashions, which in 'this climate
sow the seeds of a dozen different diseases, and have
to be atoned for by perpetual anxieties, and by per-
petual doctors' bills ; and as for a little knowledge of
the laws of electricity, one thrift I am sure it would
produce — thrift to us men, of having to answer con-
tinual inquiries as to what the weather is going to be,
when a slight knowledge of the barometer, or of the
form of the clouds and the direction of the wind, would
enable many a lady to judge for herself, and not, after
inquiry on inquiry, disregard all warnings, go out on
the first appearance of a strip of blue sky, and come
liome wet through, with what she calls " only a chill,"
but which really means a nail driven into her coffin —
a probable shortening, though it may be a very small
one, of her mortal life ; because the food of the next
twenty-four hours, which should have gone to keep the
vital heat at its normal standard, will have to be wasted
in raising it up to that standard, from which it has fallen
by a chill.

Ladies ; these are subjects on which I must beg to
Hpciik a little more at length, premising them by one
statement, which may seem jest, but is solemn earnest
— that, if the medical men of this or any other city
were what the world now calls " alive to their own

THRIFT. 130

interests " — that is, to the mere making of money ;
instead of being, what medical men are, the most gene-
rous, disinterested, and high-minded class in these
realms, then they would oppose by all means in their
power the delivery of lectures on natural philosophy
to women. For if women act upon what they learn in
those lectures — and having women's hearts, they will
act upon it — there ought to follow a decrease of sick-
ness and an increase of health, especially among
children ; a thrift of life, and a thrift of expense
besides, which would very seriously affect the income
of medical men.

For let me ask you, ladies, with all courtesy, but witli
all earnestness — Are you aware of certain facts, of
which every one of those excellent medical men is too
well aware ? Are you aware that more human beings
are killed in England every year by unnecessary and
preventable diseases than were killed at Waterloo or at
Sadowa? Are you aware that the great majority of
those victims are children? Are you aware that the
diseases which carry them off are for the most part
such as ought to be specially under the control of the
women who love them, pet them, educate them, and
would in many cases, if need be, lay down their lives
for them ? Are you aware, again, of the vast amount
of disease which, so both wise mothers and wise doctors
fissure me, is engendered in the sleeping-room from

136 THRIFT.

simple ignorance of the laws of ventilation, and in tlie
school-room likewise, from simple ignorance of the
laws of physiology ? from an ignorance of which I
shall mention no other case here save one — that too
often from ignorance of signs of approaching disease, a
child is punished for what is called idleness, listless-
ness, wilfulness, sulkiness ; and punished, too, in the
unwisest way — by an increase of tasks and confinement
to the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already
overtasked, and depressing still more, by robbing it of
oxygen and of exercise, a system already depressed ?
Are you aware, I ask again, of all this ? I speak ear-
nestly upon this point, because I speak with experience.
As a single instance : a medical man, a friend of mine,
passing by his own school-room, heard one of his own
little girls screaming and crying, and went in. The
governess, an excellent woman, but wholly ignorant of
the laws of physiology, complained that the child had
of late become obstinate and would not learn ; and that
therefore she must punish her by keeping her indoors
over the unlearnt lessons. The father, who knew that
the child was usually a very good one, looked at her
carefully for a little while ; sent her out of the school-
room ; and llnii said, " That child must not open a book
for a month." " If I liad not acted so," he said to me,
" I should have luid that cliild dead of brain-disease
witliin the year."

THRIFT. 137

Now, in the face of such facts as these, is it too much
to ask of mothers, sisters, aunts, nurses, governesses —
all who may be occupied in the care of children, espe-
cially of girls — that they should study thrift of human
health and human life, by studying somewhat the laws
of life and health ? There are books — I may say a whole
literature of books — written by scientific doctors on
these matters, which are in my mind far more impor-
tant to the schoolroom than half the trashy accom-
plishments, so-called, which are expected to be known
by governesses. But are they bought ? Are they even
to be bought, from most country booksellers ? Ah, for a
little knowledge of the laws to the neglect of which
is owing so much fearful disease, which, if it does
not produce immediate death, too often leaves the con-
stitution impaired for years to come. Ah the waste of
health and strength in the young ; the waste, too, of
anxiety and misery in those who love and tend them.
How much of it might be saved by a little rational
education in those laws of nature which are the will of
God about the welfare of our bodies, and which, there-
fore, we are as much bound to know and to obey, as we
are bound to know and obey the spiritual laws whereon
depends the welfare of our souls.

Pardon me, ladies, if I have given a moment's pain
to any one here : but I appeal to every medical man in
the room whether I have not spoken the truth ; and

133 THRIFT.

having such an opportunity as this, I felt that I must
speak for the sake of children, and of women likewise,
or else for ever hereafter hold my peace.

Let me pass on from this painful subject — for painful
it has been to me for many years — to a question of intel-
lectual thrift— by which I mean just now thrift of
words ; thrift of truth ; restraint of the tongue ; accu-
racy and modesty in statement.

Mothers complain to me that girls are apt to be — not
intentionally untruthful — but exaggerative, prejudiced,
incorrect, in repeating a conversation or describing an
event ; and that from this fault arise, as is to be ex-
pected, misunderstandings, quarrels, rumours, slanders,
scandals, and what not.

Now, for this waste of words there is but one cure :
and if I be told that it is a natural fault of women ;
that they cannot take the calm judicial view of matters
which men boast, and often boast most wrongly, that
they can take ; that under the influence of hope, fear,
delicate antipathy, honest moral indignation, they will
let their eyes and ears be governed by their feelings ;
and sec and hear only what they wish to see and hear :
I answer, that it is not for me as a man to start such a
theory ; l)ut tliut if it 1)0 true, it is an additional argu-
ment for some education which will correct this sup-
posed natural defect. And I say deliberately that there
is but one sort of education which will correct it ; one

THRIFT. 130

which will teach young women to observe facts accu-
rately, judge them calmly, aud describe them carefully,
without adding or distorting : and that is, some training
in natural science.

I beg you not to be startled : but if you are, then test
the truth of my theory by playing to-night at the game
called " Eussian Scandal ;" in which a story, repeated
in secret by one player to the other, comes out at the
end of the game, owing to the inaccurate and — forgive
me if I say it— uneducated brains through which it has
passed, utterly unlike its original ; not only ludicrously
maimed and distorted, but often with the most fantastic
additions of events, details, names, dates, places, which
each player will aver that he received from the player
before him. I am afraid that too much of the average
gossip of every city, town, and village is little more
than a game of " Kussian Scandal ;" with this difference,
that while one is but a game, the other is but too mis-
chievous earnest.

But now, if among your party there shall be an
average lawyer, medical man, or man of science, you
will find that he, and perhaps he alone, will be able to
retail accurately the story which has been told him.
And why ? Simply because his mind has been trained
to deal with facts ; to ascertain exactly what he does
see or hear, and to imprint its leading features strongly
and clearly on his memory.

140 THRIFT.

Now, you certainly cannot make young ladies bar-
risters or attorneys ; nor employ their brains in getting
up cases, civil or criminal ; and as for chemistry, they
and their parents may have a reasonable antipathy to
smells, blackened fingers, and occasional explosions and
poisonings. But you may make them something of
botanists, zoologists, geologists.

I could say much on this point : allow mc at least
to say this : I verily believe that any young lady
who would employ some of her leisure time in collecting
wild flowers, carefully examining them, verifying them,
and arranging them ; or who would in her summer trip
to the sea-coast do the same by the common objects of
the shore, instead of wasting her holiday, as one sees
hundreds doing, in lounging on benches on the espla-
nade, reading worthless novels, and criticizing dresses
— that such a young lady, I say, would not only open
her own mind to a world of wonder, beauty, and wis-
dom, which, if it did not make her a more reverent and
pious soul, she cannot be the woman which I take for
granted she is ; but would save herself from the habit —
I had almost said the necessity — of gossip; because
she would have things to think of and not merely per-
sons ; facts instead of fancies ; while she would acquire
something of accuracy, of patience, of methodical ob-
servation and judgment, which would stand her in good
stead in the events of daily life, and increase her power

THRIFT. 141

of bridling her tongue and hjsr imagination. " God is in
heaven, and thou upon earth ; therefore let thy words
be few ;" is the lesson which those are learning all day
long who study the works of God with reverent accu-
racy, lest by misrepresenting them they should be
tempted to say that God has done that which He has
not ; and in that wholesome discipline I long that
women as well as men should share.

And now I come to a thrift of the highest kind, as
contrasted with a waste the most deplorable and ruinous
of all ; thrift of those faculties which connect us with
the unseen and spiritual world ; with humanity, with
Christ, with God ; thrift of the immortal spirit. I am
not going now to give you a sermon on duty. You hear
such, I doubt not, in church every Sunday, far better
than I can preach to you. I am going to speak rather
of thrift of the heart, thrift of the emotions. How
they are wasted in these days in reading what are
called sensation novels, all know but too well ; how
British literature — all that the best hearts and intel-
lects among our forefathers have bequeathed to us — is
neglected for light fiction, the reading of which is, as a
lady well said, " the worst form of intemperance — dram-
drinking and opium-eating, intellectual and moral."

I know that the young will delight — they have de-
lighted in all ages, and will to the end of time — in
fictions which deal with that *' oldest tale which is for

142 TnrJFT.

ever new." Novels will be read : but that is all the
more reason why women should be trained, by the
perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to dis-
tinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from
the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of
art from the sham which hides its shallowness and
vulgarity under a tangled plot and melodramatic situa-
tions. She should learn — and that she can only learn
by cultivation — to discern with joy, and drink in with
reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true ; and
to turn with the fine scorn of a pure and strong woman-
hood from the bad, the ugly, and the false.

And if any parent should be inclined to reply — "Why
lay so much stress upon educating a girl in British
literature ? Is it not far more important to make our
daughters read religious books ? I answer — Of course
it is. I take for granted that that is done in a Chris-
tian land. But I beg you to recollect that there are
books and books ; and that in these days of a free press
it is impossible, in the long run, to prevent girls read-
ing books of very diflerent shades of opinion, and very
different religious worth. It may bo, therefore, of the
very highest importance to a girl to have her intellect,
lior taste, Jier emotions, her moral sense, in a word, her
whole woiiiunhood, so cultivated and regulated that sh<!
sliall hors<'lf \h\ able to discern th(! true from the false,
the orthodi».\ from the unorthodox, tlic truly devout

THRIFT. 143

from the merely seutimeutal, the Gospel from its coun-
terfeits.

I should have thought that there never had been in
Britain, since the Eeformation, a crisis at which young
Englishwomen required more careful cultivation on
these matters ; if at least they are to be saved from
making themselves and their families miserable ; and
from ending — as I have known too many end — with
broken hearts, broken brains, broken health, and an
early grave.

Take warning by what you see abroad. In every
country where the women are uneducated, unoccupied ;
where their only literature is French novels or transla-
tions of them — in every one of those countries the
women, even to the highest, are the slaves of super-
stition, and the puppets of priests. In proportion as,
in certain other countries — notably, I will say, in Scot-
laud — the women are highly educated, family life and
family secrets are sacred, and the woman owns allegi-
ance and devotion to no confessor or director, but to
lier own husband or to her own family.

I say plainly, that if any parents wish their daugh-
ters to succumb at last to some quackery or super-
stition, whether calling itself scientific, or calling itself
religious— and there are too many of both ju.^t now —
they cannot more certainly effect their purpose than by
allowing her to grow up ignorant, frivolous, luxurious.

144 THRIFT.

vain ; with her emotions excited, but not satisfied, by
the reading of foolish and even immoral novels.

In such a case the more delicate and graceful the
organization, the more noble and earnest the nature,
which has been neglected, the more certain it is — I
know too well what I am saying — to go astray.

The time of depression, disappointment, vacuity, all
but despair, must come. The immortal spirit, finding
no healthy satisfaction for its highest aspirations, is
but too likely to betake itself to an unhealthy and
exciting superstition. Ashamed of its own long self-
indulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself into a
morbid asceticism. Not having been taught its God-
given and natural duties in the world, it is but too
likely to betake itself, from the mere craving for action,
to self-invented and unnatural duties out of the world.
Ignorant of true science, yet craving to understand the
wonders of nature and of spirit, it is but too likely to
Ix'takc itself to nonscience — nonsense as it is usually
called— whether of spirit-rapping and mesmerism, or
of miraculous relics and winking pictures. Longing
lor guidance and teaching, and never having been
taught to guide and teach itself, it is but too likely to
deliver itself up in self-despair to the guidance and
teaching of those wlio, whether tliey be quacks or. fana-
tics, look on uneducated women as their natural prey.

You will see, I am sure, from what I have said, that

THRIFT. 145

it is not my wish that you should become mere learned
women ; mere female pedants, as useless and unpleasing
as male pedants are wont to be. The education which
I set before you is not to be got by mere hearing lec-
tures or reading books : for it is an education of your
whole character ; a self-education ; which really means
a committing of yourself to God, that He may educate
you. Hearing lectures is good, for it will teach you
how much there is to be known, and how little you
know. Reading books is good, for it will give you habits
of regular and diligent study. And therefore I urge
on you strongly private study, especially in case a
library should be formed here of books on those most
practical subjects of which I have been speaking. But,
after all, both lectures and books are good, mainly in
as far as they furnish matter for reflection : while the
desire to reflect and the ability to reflect must come, as
I believe, from above. The honest craving after light
and power, after knowledge, wisdom, active usefulness,
must come — and may it come to you — by the inspira-
tion of the Spirit of God.

One word more, and I have done. Let me ask women
to educate themselves, not for their own sakes merely,
but for the sake of others. For, whether they will or
not, they must educate others. I do not speak merely
of those who may be engaged in the work of direct
teaching; that they ought to be well taught them-

146 THRIFT.

selves, wlio can doubt? I speak of those— and in so
doing I speak of every woman, young and old — who
exercises as wife, as mother, as aunt, as sister, or as
friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and uncon-
scious, but still potent and practical, on the minds and
characters of those about them, especially of men.
How potent and practical that influence is, those know
best who know most of the world and most of human
nature. There are those who consider — and I agree
with them — that the education of boys under the age
of twelve years ought to be entrusted as much as
possible to women. Let me ask — of what period of
youth and of manhood docs not the same hold true ?
I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fan-
cies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated
women. I should have thought that the very mission
of woman w'as to be, in the highest sense, the educator
of man from infancy to old age ; that that was the
work towards which all the God-given capacities of
women pointed ; for which they were to be educated to
the highest pitch. I should have thought that it was
the glory of woman that she was sent into the world to
live for others, rather than for herself; and therefore I
should say — Let her smallest rights be respected, her
smallest wrongs redressed : but let her never be per-
suaded to forget that she is sent into the world to teach
man — what, I believe, she has been teaching him all

THRIFT. 147

along, even in tlie savage state — namely, that there is
something more necessary than the claiming of rights,
and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him
specially, in these so-called intellectual days, that there
is something more than intellect, and that is — purity
and virtue. Let her never be persuaded to forget that
her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of
self-assertion, but the higher and the diviner calling of
self-sacrifice ; and let her never desert that higher life,-
which lives in others and for others, like her Redeemer
and her Lord.

And if any should answer that this doctrine would
keep woman a dependant and a slave, I rejoin — Not
so : it would keep her what she should be— the mistress
of all around her, because mistress of herself. And
more, I should express a fear that those who made that
answer had not yet seen into the mystery of true great-
ness and true strength ; that they did not yet under-
stand the true magnanimity, the true royalty of that
spirit, by which the Son of man came not to be minis-
tered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom
for many.

Surely that is woman's calling — to teach man : and
to teach him what ? To teach him, after all, that his
calling is the same as hers, if he will but see the things
which belong to his peace. To temper his fiercer,
coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the contact of

L 2

148 THRIFT.

her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him see
that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath,
greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting
work to be done on earth : but by wise self-distrust,
by silent labour, by lofty self-control, by that charity
which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth
all things; by such an example, in short, as women
now in tens of thousands set to those around them ;
such as they will show more 'and more, the more their
whole womanhood is educated to employ its powers
without waste and without haste in harmonious unity.
Let the woman begin in girlhood, if such be her happy
lot — to quote the words of a great poet, a great philo-
sopher, and a great Churchman, William Wordsworth —
let her begin, I say —

" "W^iA all things round about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn ;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay."

Let her develop onwards —

" A spirit, yet a woman too.
With household motions light and free.
And steps of virgin liberty.
A countenance in wliieii shall meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet ;
A creature not too bright and good
For hiiMian nature's daily food ;
For transient sorrows, simjile wiles,
Praiae, blame, love, kisaeSj'tears, and smiles.

But let her highest and her final development be that

THRIFT. 149

which not nature, hut self-education alone can hring—
that which makes her once and for ever—

" A being breathing thoughtful breath ;
A traveller betwixt life and death.
With reason firm, jsith temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill.
A perfect woman, nobly planned.
To warn, to comfort and command.
And yet a spirit still and bright
With something of «& angel light."

THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.

A Lecture delivered to the Officers of the Eotal
Artillery, Woolwich.

Gentlemen : — When I acceiDted the honour of lecturing
here, I took for granted that so select an audience
would expect from me not mere amusement, but some-
what of instruction ; or, if that be too ambitious a word
for me to. use, at least' some fresh hint — if I were able
to give one — as to how they should fulfil the ideal of
military men in such an age as this.

To touch on military matters, even had I been con-
versant with them, seemed to me an impertinence. I
am bound to take for granted tliat every man knows
his own business best ; and I incline more and more to
the opinion that military men should be left to work
out the problems of their art for themselves, without
the advice or criticism of civilians. But I hold — and I
am sure that you will agree with me — that if the soldier
is to be tliuH truKted liy the nation, and left to himself
to do his own work his own way, he must be educated

THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 151

in all practical matters as tiglily as tlie average of
educated civilians. He must know all tliat they know,
and his own art beside. Just as a clergyman, being
a man plus a priest, is bound to be a man, and a good
man, over and above his priesthood, so is the soldier
bound to be a civilian, and a highly-educated civilian,
plus his soldierly qualities and acquirements.

It seemed to me, therefore, that I might, without
impertinence, ask you to consider a branch of know-
ledge which is becoming yearly more and more im-
portant in the eyes of well-educated civilians; of
which, therefore, the soldier ought at least to know
something, in order to put him on a par with the
general intelligence of the nation. I do not say that
he is to devote much time to it, or to follow it up into
specialities : but that he ought to be well grounded in
its principles and methods ; that he ought to be aware
of its importance and its usefulness ; that so, if he
comes into contact — as he will more and more — with
scientific men, he may understand them, respect them,
befriend them, and be befriended by them in turn ;
and how desirable this last result is, I shall tell you
hereafter.

There are those, I doubt not, among my audience
who do not need the advice which I shall presume to
give to-night ; who belong to that fast increasing class
among officers of whom I have often said— and I have

152 THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.

found scientific men cordially agree witli me — that they
are the most modest and the most teachable of men.
But even in their case there can be no harm in going
over deliberately a question of such importance; in
putting it, as it were, into shape; and insisting on
arguments which may perhaps not have occurred to
some of them.

Let me, in the first place, reassure those — if any
such there be — who may suppose, from the title of my
lecture, that I am only going to recommend them to
collect weeds and butterflies, " rats and mice, and such
small deer." Far from it. The honourable title of
Natural History has, and unwisely, been restricted too
much of late years to the mere study of plants and
animals. I desire to restore the words to their original
and proper meaning — the History of Nature ; that is,
of all that is born, and grows in time ; in short, of all
natural objects.

If anyone shall say — By that definition you make not
only geology and chemistry branches of natural history,
but meteorology and astronomy likewise — I cannot deny
it. They deal, each of them, with realms of Nature.
Geology is, literally, the natural history of soils and
lands ; chemistry the natural history of compounds,
organic and inorganic ; meteorology the natural his-
tory of climates ; astronomy the natural history of
jilanetary and solar bodies. And more, you cannot

THE STUDV OF NATURAL HISTORY. 153

now study deeply any branch of what is popularly
called Natural History — that is, plants and animals —
without finding it necessary to learn something, and
more and more as you go deeper, of those very sciences.
As the marvellous interdependence of all natural objects
and forces unfolds itself more and more, so the once
separate sciences, which treated of difi'erent classes of
natural objects, are forced to interpenetrate, as it were ;
and to supplement themselves by knowledge borrowed
from each other. Thus — to give a single instance — no
man can now be a first-rate botanist unless he be also
no mean meteorologist, no mean geologist, and — as Mr.
Darwin has shown in his extraordinary discoveries
about the fertilisation of plants by insects — no mean
entomologist likewise.

It is difficult, therefore, and indeed somewhat unwise
and unfair, to put any limit to the term Natural His-
tory, save that it shall deal only with nature and with
matter ; and shall not pretend — as some would have it
to do just now — to go out of its own sphere to meddle
with moral and spiritual matters. But, for practical
purposes, we may define the natural history of any
given spot as the history of the causes which have
made it what it is, and filled it with the natural objects
which it holds. And if anyone would know how to
study the natural history of a place, and how to write
it, let him read — and if he has read its delightful pages.

154 THE STUDY OF NATURAL RTSTOBT.

in youth, read once again — that hitherto unrivalled little
monograph, White's ' Natural History of Selhorne ;' and
let him then try, by the light of improved science, to
do for any district where he may he stationed, what
White did for Selhorne nearly one hundred years ago.
Let him study its plants, its animals, its soils and
rocks ; and last, hut not least, its scenery, as the total
outcome of what the soils, and plants, and animals
have made it. I say, have made it. How far the
nature of the soils and the rocks will affect the scenery
of a district may be well learnt from a very clever
and interesting little book of Professor Geikie's, on
' The Scenery of Scotland, as affected by its Geological
Structure.' How far the plants and trees affect not
merely the general beauty, the richness or barrenness
of a country, but also its very shape ; the rate at which
the hills are destroyed and washed into the lowland ;
the rate at which the seaboard is being removed by the
action of waves — all these are branches of study which
is becoming more and more important.

And even in the study of animals and their effects on
the vegetation, questions of really deep interest will
arise. You will find that certain plants and trees
cannot thrive in a district, while others can, because
the former are browsed down by cattle, or their seeds
eaten by birds, and the latter are not ; that certain
seeds are carried in the coats of animals, or wafted

TUB STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 155

abroad by winds^others are not ; certain trees de-
stroyed wholesale by insects, while others are not ;
that in a hundred ways the animal and vegetable life
of a district act and react upon each other, and that
the climate, the average temperature, the maximum
and minimum temperatures, the rainfall, act on them,
and in the case of the vegetation, are reacted on again
by them. The diminution of rainfall by the destruction
of forests, its increase by replanting them, and the
effect of both on the healthiness or unhealthiness of a
place — as in the case of the Mauritius, where a once
healthy island has become pestilential, seemingly from
the clearing away of the vegetation on the banks of
streams — all this, though to study it deeply requires a
fair knowledge of meteorology, and even of a science or
two more, is surely well worth the attention of any
educated man who is put in charge of the health and
lives of human beings.

You will surely agree with me that the habit of
mind required for such a study as this, is the very
same as is required for successful military study. In
fact, I should say that the same intellect which would
develop into a great military man, would develop also
into a great naturalist. I say, intellect. The military
man would require — what the naturalist would not —
over and above his intellect, a special force of will, in
order to translate his theories into fact, and make his

156 THE STUDY OF NATURAL BISTORT.

campaigns in the field and not merely on paper. But
I am speaking only of the habit of mind required for
study ; of that inductive habit of mind which works,
steadily and by rule, from the known to the unknown ;
that habit of mind of which it has been said : — " The
habit of seeing ; the habit of knowing what we see ;
the habit of discerning differences and likenesses ; the
habit of classifying accordingly ; the habit of searching
for hypotheses which shall connect and explain those
classified facts ; the habit of verifying these hypotheses
by applying them to fresh facts ; the habit of throwing
them away bravely if they will not fit ; the habit of
general patience, diligence, accuracy, reverence for
facts for their own sake, and love of truth for its own
sake ; in one word, the habit of reverent and implicit
obedience to the laws of Nature, whatever they may be
— these are not merely intellectual, but also moral
habits, which will stand men in practical good stead in
every aflair of life, and in every question, even the
most awful, which may come before them as rational
and social beings.'^ And specially valuable are they,
surely, to the military man, the very essence of whose
study, to be successful, lies first in continuous and
accurate observation, and then in calm and judicious
arrangement.

Therefore it is that I hold, and hold strongly, that
the study of physical science, far from interfering with

THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 157

an officer's studies, much less unfitting for them, must
assist him in them, by keeping his mind always in the
very attitude and the very temper which they require.
If any smile at this theory of mine, let them recol-
lect one curious fact : that perhaps the greatest captain
of the old world was trained by perhaps the greatest
philosopher of the olcl world — the father of Natural
History ; that Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander of
Macedon. I do not fancy, of course, that Aristotle
taught Alexander any Natural History. But this we
know, that he taught him to use those very faculties
by which Aristotle became a natural historian, and
many things beside; that he called out in his pupil
somewhat of his own extraordinary powers of obser-
vation, extraordinary powers of arrangement. He
helped to make him a great general : but he helped
to make him more — a great politician, coloniser, dis-
coverer. He instilled into him such a sense of the
importance of Natural History, that Alexander helped
him nobly in his researches ; and, if Athenaeus is to be
believed, gave him 800 talents towards perfecting his
history of animals. Surely it is not too much to say
that this close friendship between the natural philo-
sopher and the soldier has changed the whole course
of civilisation to this very day. Do not consider me
Utopian when I tell you, that I should like to see
the study of physical science an integral part of the

.158 THE STUDY OF NATURAL BISTORT.

curriculum of every military school. I would train the
mind of the lad who was to become hereafter an officer
in the army — and in the navy likewise— by accustoming
him to careful observation of, and sound thought about,
the face of nature ; of the commonest objects under his
feet, just as much as of the stars above his head ; pro-
vided always that he learnt, not at second-hand from
books, but where alone he can really learn either war
or nature — in the field ; by actual observation, actual
experiment. A laboratory for chemical experiment is
a good thing, it is true, as far as it goes ; but I should
prefer to the laboratory a naturalists' field club, such
as are prospering now at several of the best public
schools, certain that the boys would get more of sound
inductive habits of mind, as well as more health, manli-
ness, and cheerfulness, amid scenes to remember which
will be a joy for ever, than they ever can by bending
over retorts and crucibles, amid smells even to re-
member which is a pain for ever.

But I would, whether a field club existed or not,
require of every young man entering the army or navy
— indeed of every young man entering any liberal pro-
fession whatsoever — a fair knowledge, Buch as would
enable him to pass an examination, in what the
Germans call Erd-kunde—carth-loie — in that know-
ledge of the face of the earth and of its products, for
which we English have as yet cared so little that we

TEE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 159

have actually no English name for it, save the clumsy
and questionable one of physical geography; and, I
am sorry to say, hardly any readable school books
about it, save Keith Johnston's ' Physical Atlas ' — an
acquaintance with which last I should certainly require
of young men.

It does seem most strange — or rather will seem most
strange 100 years hence — that we, the nation of
colonists, the nation of sailors, the nation of foreign
commerce, the nation of foreign military stations, the
nation of travellers for travelling's sake, the nation of
which one man here and another there — as Schleiden
sets forth in his book, ' The Plant,' in a charming
ideal conversation at the Travellers' Club— has seen
and enjoyed more of the wonders and beauties of this
planet than the men of any nation, not even excepting
the Germans — that this nation, I say, should as yet
have done nothing, or all but nothing, to teach in her
schools a knowledge of that planet, of which she needs
to know more, and can if she will know more, than any
other nation upon it.

As for the practical utility of such studies to a soldier,
I only need, I trust, to hint at it to such an assembly
as this. All must see of what advantage a rough know-
ledge of the botany of a district would be to an officer
leading an exploring party, or engaged in bush warfare.
To know what plants are poisonous ; what plants, too,

160 TEE STUDY OF NATURAL EI STORY.

are eatable — and many more are eatable than is usually
supposed; what plants yield oleaginous substances,
whether for food or for other uses ; what plants yield
vegetable acids, as preventives of scurvy ; what timbers
are available for each of many different purposes ; what
will resist wet, salt-water, and the attacks of insects ;
what, again, can be used, at a pinch, for medicine or for
styptics — and be sure, as a wise West Indian doctor
once said to me, that there is more good medicine wild
in the bush than there is in all the druggists' shops —
surely all this is a knowledge not beneath the notice
of any enterprising officer, above all of an officer of
engineers. I only ask anyone who thinks that I may
be in the right, to glance through the lists of useful
vegetable products given in Lindley's ' Vegetable King-
dom' — a miracle of learning — and see the vast field
open still to a thoughtful and observant man, even
while on service; and not to forget that such know-
ledge, if he should hereafter leave the service and settle,
as many do, in a distant land, may be a solid help to
his future prosperity. So strongly do I feel on this
matter, that I should like to see some knowledge at
least of Dr. Oliver's excellent little 'First Book of
Indian Botany ' required of all officers going to our
Indian Empire : but as that will not be, at least for
many a year to come, I recommend any gentlemen
going to India to get that book, and wile away the

THE STUDY OF NATURAL IIISTOItY. 161

liours of the outward voyage by acquiring kuowledge
wliicli will be a continual source of interest, and it may
be now and then of profit, to them during their stay
abroad.

And for geology, again. As I do not expect you all, or
perhaps any of you, to become such botanists as General
Monro, whose recent ' Monograph of the Bamboos ' is
an honour to British botanists, and a proof of the
scientific power which is to be found here and there
among British ofiicers : so I do not expect you to
become such geologists as Sir Eoderick Murchison, or
even to add such a grand chapter to the history of
extinct animals as Major Cautley did by his discoveries
in the Sewalik Hills. Nevertheless, you can learn —
and I should earnestly advise you to learn— geology
and mineralogy enough to be of great use to you in
your profession, and of use, too, should you relinquish
your profession hereafter. It must be profitable for
any man, and specially for you, to know how and where
to find good limestone, building stone, road metal ; it
must be good to be able to distinguish ores and mineral
products ; it must be good to know — as a geologist will
usually know, even in a country which he sees for the
first time- — where water is likely to be found, and at
what probable depth ; it must be good to know whether
the water is fit for drinking or not, whether it is
unwholesome or merely muddy; it must be good to

1G2 THE STUDY OF NATURAL HI STOUT.

know what spots are likely to be healthy, and what
unhealthy, for encamping. The two last questions
depend, doubtless, on meteorological as well as geo-
logical accidents : but the answers to them will be most
surely found out by the scientific man, because the facts
connected with them are, like all other facts, determined
by natural laws. After what one has heard, in past
years, of barracks built in spots plainly pestilential ;
of soldiers encamped in ruined cities, reeking with the
dirt and poison of centuries ; of — but it is not my
place to find fault ; all I will say is, that the wise and
humane officer, when once his eyes are opened to the
practical value of physical science, will surely try to
acquaint himself somewhat with those laws of drainage
and of climate, geological, meteorological, chemical,
which influence, often with terrible suddenness and
fury, the health of whole armies. He will not find it
beyond his province to ascertain the amount and period
of rainfalls, the maxima of heat and of cold which his
troops may have to endure, and many another point
on whicli Uicir lioiiltli and efficiency — nay, their very
life may dcpond, but which are now too exclusively
delegated to the doctor, to whose province they do not
really belong. For cure, I take the liberty of believing,
is tho duty of the medical oflicer; prevention, that of
tlu! military.

Thus much I can sayjust now — and there is much more

THE STUDY OF NATUHAL IITSTORY. 1(53

to be said — on the practical uses of the study of Natural
History. But let me remind you, on the other side, if
Natural History will help you, you in return can help
her ; and would, I doubt not, help her, and help
scientific men at home, if once you looked fairly and
steadily at the immense importance of Natural History
— of the knowledge of the " face of the earth." I
believe that all will one day feel, more or less, that to
know the earth on which we live, and the laws of it hj
which we live, is a sacred duty to ourselves, to our
children after us, and to all whom we may have to
command and to influence ; aye, and a duty to God
likewise. For is it not a duty of common reverence and
faith towards Him, if He has put us into a beautiful
and wonderful place, and given us faculties by which
we can see, and enjoy, and use that place — is it not a
duty of reverence and faith towards Him to use these
faculties, and to learn the lessons which He has laid open
for us ? If you feel that, as I think you all will some
day feel, then you will surely feel likewise that it will
be a good deed — I do not say a necessary duty, but
still a good deed and praiseworthy — to help physical
science forward ; and to add your contributions, however
small, to our general knowledge of the earth. And
how much may be done for science by British officers,
especially on foreign stations, I need not point out. I
know that much has been done, chivalrously and well,

M 2

1 1 THE STUD Y OF SA TUBAL IlISTOU Y.

by officers ; and that men of science owe them, and
give them, hearty thanks for their hibours. But I should
like, I confess, to see more done still. I should like to
see every foreign station, Avliat one or two highly-
educated officers might easily make it, an advanced post
of physical science, in regular communication with our
scientific societies at home, sending to them accurate
and methodic details of the natural history of each
district — details -,'',,"(, ths of which might seem worthless
in the eyes of the public, but which would all be
precious in tlic eyes of scientific men, who know that
no fact is really unimportant ; and more, that while
plodding patiently through seemingly unimportant
facts, you may stumble on one of infinite importance,
both scientific and practical. For the student of nature,
gentlemen, if he will be but patient, diligent, metho-
dical, is liable at any numient to the same good fortune
as befel Saul of old, when he went out to seek his father's
asses, and found a kingdom.

Tliere arc those, lastly, who have neither time nor
taste for the technicalities, and nice distinctions, of
I'm iiial Natural History ; wlio enjoy Nature, but as
artists or as sportsmen, and not as men of science.
Let them follow their bent freely : but let them not
suppose that in following it thoy can do nothing to-
wards enlarging our knowledge of Nature, especially
when on foreign stations. So far from it, drawings

rilE STUDY OF NATURAL IIISTOUY. 105

ou.^ht ahvciys to be valuable, whether of jDlants, ani-
mals, or scenery, provided only they are accurate ; and
the more spirited and full of genius they are, the
more accurate they are certain to be ; for Nature being
alive, a lifeless copy of her is necessarily an untrue
copy. Most thankful to any officer for a mere sight of
sketches will be the closet botanist, who, to his own
sorrow, knows three-fourths of his plants only from
dried specimens ; or the closet zoologist, who knows
his animals from skins and bones. And if anyone
answers — But I cannot draw. I rejoin. You can at least
photograph. If a young officer, going out to foreign
parts, and knowing nothing at all about physical
science, did me the honour to ask me what he could
do for science, I should tell him — Learn to photograph ;
take photographs of every strange bit of rock-formation
which strikes your fancy, and of every widely extended
view which may give a notion of the general lie of the
country. Append, if you can, a note or two, saying
whether a plain is rich or barren ; whether the rock
is sandstone, limestone, granitic, metamorphic, or vol-
canic lava ; and if there be more rocks than one, which
of them lies on the other ; and send them to be ex-
hibited at a meeting of the Geological Society. I
doubt not that the learned gentlemen there will find
in your photographs a valuable hint or two, for which
they will be much obliged. I learnt, for instance, what

IHG THE STUDY OF XATUHAL HISTORY.

seemed to me most valuable geological lessons, from
mere glances at drawings — I believe from photographs
— of the Abyssinian ranges about Magdala.

Or again, let a man, if he knows nothing of botany,
not trouble himself with collecting and drying speci-
mens ; let him simply photograph every strange and
new tree or plant he sees, to give a general notion
of its species, its look ; let him append, where he can,
a photograph of its leafage, flower, fruit; and send
them to Dr. Hooker, or any distinguished botanist : and
he will find that, though he may know nothing of
botany, he will have pretty certainly increased the
knowledge of those who do know.

The sportsman, again— I mean the sportsman of that
type which seems peculiar to these islands, who loves
toil and danger for their own sakes ; he surely is a
naturalist, ipso facto, though he knows it not. He has
those very habits of keen observation on which all
sound knowledge of nature is bused ; and he, if he will
— as he may do without interfering with his sport —
can study the habits of the animals among whom he
spends wholesome and exciting days. You have only
to look over such good old books as Williams's ' Wild
Sports of the East,' Campbell's ' Old Forest Ranger,'
Lloyd's 'Scandinavian Adventures,' and last, but not
least, Waterton's ' Wanderings,' to see what valuable
additions to true zoology — the knowledge of live crea-

THE STUDY OF NATURAL HI STORY. K.T

turcs, not merely dead ones — British sportsmen have
made, and still can make. And as for the employment
of time, which often hangs so heavily on a soldier's
hands, really I am ready to say, if you are neither men
of science, nor draughtsmen, nor sportsmen, why go and
collect beetles. It is not very dignified, I know, nor
exciting : but it will be something to do. It cannot
harm you, if you take, as beetle-hunters do, an india-
rubber sheet to lie on ; and it will certainly benefit
science. Moreover, there will be a noble humility in
the act. You will confess to the public that you con-
sider yourself only fit to catch beetles ; by which very
confession you will prove yourself fit for much finer
things than catching beetles : and meanwhile, as I said
before, you will be at least out of harm's way. At a
foreign barrack once, the happiest ofiicer I met. because
the most regularly employed, was one who spent his
time in collecting butterflies. He knew nothing about
them scientifically — not even their names. He took
them simply for their wonderful beauty and variety ;
and in the hope, too — in which he was really scientific —
that if he carefully kept every form which he saw, his
collection might be of use some day to entomologists
at home. A most pleasant gentleman he was ; and, I
doubt not, none the worse soldier for his butterfly
catching. Commendable, also, in my eyes, was another
officer— whom I have not the pleasure of knowing — who,

168 THE STUDY OF NATUBAL niSTOUY.

on a remote foreign station, used wisely to escape from
the temptations of the world into an entirely original
and most pleasant hermitage. For finding — so the story
went — that many of the finest insects kept to the tree-
tops, and never came to ground at all, he used to settle
himself among the boughs of some tree in the tropic
forests, with a long-handled net and plenty of cigars,
and pass his hours in that airy flower garden, making
dashes every now and then at some splendid monster
as it fluttered round his head. His example need not
be followed by everyone ; but it must be allowed that
— at least as long as he was in his tree — he was neither
dawdling, grumbling, spending money, nor otherwise
harming himself, and perhaps his fellow creatures, from
sheer want of employment.

One word more, and I have done. If I was allowed
to give one special piece of advice to a young ofiicer,
whether of the army or navy, I would say — Eespect
scientific men ; associate with them ; learn from them ;
find them to be, as you will usually, the most pleasant
and instructive of companions : but always respect
them. Allow them chivalrously, you who have an
acknowledged rank, their yet unacknowledged rank ; and
treat them as all the world will treat them, in a higher
and truer state of civilisation. They do not yet wear
the Queen's uniform ; they are not yet accepted servants
of the State; as they will be in some more perfectly

THE STUDY OF NATUBAL UISTOBY. 109

organised and civilised land : but tliey are soldiers
nevertheless, and good soldiers and chivalrous, fighting
their nation's battle, often on even less pay than you,
and with still less chance of promotion and of fame,
against most real' and fatal enemies — against ignorance
of the laws of this planet, and all the miseries
which that ignorance begets. Honour them for their
work; sympathise in it; give them a helping hand
in it whenever you have an opportunity — and what
opportunities you have, I have been trying to sketch
for you to-night ; and more, work at it yourselves
whenever and wherever you can. Show them that
the spirit which animates them — the hatred of igno-
rance and disorder, and of their bestial consequences —
animates you likewise ; show them that the habit of
mind which they value in themselves — the habit of
accurate observation and careful judgment — is your
habit likewise ; show them that you value science,
not merely because it gives better weapons of destruc-
tion and of defence, but because it helps you to become
clear-headed, large-minded, able to take a just and
accurate view of any subject which comes before you,
and to cast away every old prejudice and every hasty
judgment in the face of truth and of duty : and it will
be better for you and for them.

But why ? What need for the soldier and the man
of science to fraternise just now ? This need : — The two

170 THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.

classes ■u'liicli will have an increasing, it may be a pre-
ponderating, influence on tlie fate of the human race
for some time, will be the pupils of Aristotle and those
of Alexander — the men of science and the soldiers. In
spite of all appearances, and all declamations to the
contrary, that is my firm conviction. They, and they
alone, will be left to rule ; because they alone, each in
his own sphere, have learnt to obey. It is therefore
most needful for the welfare of society that they should
pull with, and not against each other ; that they
should understand each other, respect each other, take
counsel with each other, supplement each other's de-
fects, bring out each other's higher tendencies, coun-
teract each other's lower ones. The scientific man has
something to learn of you, gentlemen, which I doubt
not that he will learn in good time. You, again, have — as
I have been hinting to you to-night — something to learn
of him, which you, I doubt not, will learn in good time
likewise. Eepeat, each of you according to his powers,
the old friendship between Aristotle and Alexander ;
and so, from the sympathy and co-operation of you
two, a class of thinkers and actors may yet arise which
can save this nation, and the other civilised nations
of the world, from that of which I had rather not
speak ; and wish that I did not think, too often and too
earnestly.

I may bo a dreamer : and I may consider, in my turn.

THE STUDY OF NATURAL BISTOBY. 171

as wilder dreamers than myself, certain persons wlio
fancy that their only business in life is to make money,
the scientific man's only business is to show them how
to make money, and the soldier's only business to guard
their money for them. Be that as it may, the finest
tjl^e of civilised man which we are likely to see for
some generations to come, will be produced by a com-
bination of the truly military with the truly scientific
man. I say — I may be a dreamer : but you at least, as
well as my scientific friends, will bear with me ; for
my dream is to your honour.

ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

An Address givex to the Scientific Society of

WiNCHESTEU.

I AM not sure thcat the subject of my address is rightly
chosen. I am not sure that I ought not to have post-
poned a question of mere natural history, to speak to
you, as scientific men, on the questions of life and
death, which have been forced upon us by the awful
warning of an illustrious personage's illness ; of pre-
ventible disease, its frightful prevalency ; of the
200,000 persons who are said to have died of fever
alone since the Prince Consort's death, ten years ago;
of the remedies ; of drainage ; of sewage disinfection and
utilisation ; and of the assistance which you, as a body
of scientific men, can give to any effort towards saving
the lives and health of our fellow-citizens from those
unseen poisons which lurk like wild beasts couched in
the jungle, ready to spring at any moment on the un-
suspecting, the innocent, the helpless. Of all this
I longed to speak : but I thought it best only to hint
at it, and leave the question to your common sense and

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. I73

your humanity; taking for granted that your minds,
like the minds of all right-minded Englishmen, have
heen of late painfully awakened to its importance. It
seemed to me almost an impertinence to say more
in a city of whose local circumstances I know little or
nothing. As an old sanitary reformer, practical, as
well as theoretical, I am but too well aware of the
difficulties which beset any complete scheme of drain-
■ age, especially in an ancient city like this ; where men
are paying the penalty of their predecessors' ignorance ;
and dwelling, whether they choose or not, over fifteen
centuries of accumulated dirt.

And, therefore, taking for granted that there is
energy and intellect enough in Winchester to conquer
these difficulties in due time, I go on to ask you to
consider, for a time, a subject which is growing more
and more important and interesting, a subject the
study of which will do much towards raising the field
naturalist from a mere collector of specimens— as he
was twenty years ago— to a philosopher elucidating
some of the grandest problems. I mean the infant
science of Bio-geology— the science which treats of the
distribution of plants and animals over the globe, and
the causes of that distribution.

I doubt not that there are many here who know far
more about the subject than I; who are far better read
than I am in the works of Forbes, Darwin, Wallace,

174 ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

Hooker, Moritz Wagner, and the other illustrious men
who have written on it. But I may, perhaps, give a
few hints which will he of use to the younger members
of this Society, and will point out to them how to get
a new relish for the pursuit of field science.

Bio-geology, then, begins with asking every plant
or animal you meet, large or small, not merely —
What is your name ? That is the collector and classi-
fier's duty ; and a most necessary duty it is, and one to
be performed with the most conscientious patience and
accuracy, so that a sound foundation may be built
for future speculations. But young naturalists should
act not merely as Nature's registrars and census-
takers, but as her policemen and gamekeepers ; and ask
everything they meet— How did you get here? By
what road did you come ? What was your last place
of abode ? And now you are here, how do you get
your living ? Are you and your children thriving, like
decent people who can take care of themselves, or
growing pauperised and degraded, and dying out ?
Not that we have a fear of your becoming a dangerous
class. Madam Nature allows no dangerous classes, in
the modern sense. She has, doubtless for some wise
reason, no mercy for the weak. She rewards each
organism according to its works ; and if anything grows
too weak or stupid to take care of itself, she gives it its
due deserts by letting it die and disappear. So, you

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 175

plant or you animal, are you among the strong, tlie suc-
cessful, the multiplying, the colonising ? Or are you
among the weak, the failing, the dwindling, the doomed ?

These questions may seem somewhat rude : but you
may comfort yourself by the thought that plants and
animals, though they deserve all kindness, all admira-
tion, deserve no courtesy — at least in this respect.
For they are, one and all, wherever you find them,
vagrants and landloupers, intruders and conquerors,
who have got where they happen to be simply by the
law of the strongest— generally not without a little
robbery and murder. They have no right save that of
possession ; the same by which the puffin turns out the
old rabbits, eats the young ones, and then lays her
eggs in the rabbit burrow — simply because she can.

Now, you will see at once that such a course of
questioning will call out a great many curious and
interesting answers, if you can only get the things to
tell you their story; as you always may, if you will
cross-examine them long enough ; and will lead you
into many subjects beside mere botany or entomology.
So various, indeed, are the subjects which you will
thus start, that I can only hint at them now in the
most cursory fashion.

At the outset you will soon find yourself involved in
chemical and meteorological questions : as, for instance,
when you ask— How is it that I find one flora on the

176 ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

sea-shore, another on the sandstone, another on the
chalk, and another on the peat-making gravelly strata ?
The usual answer would be, I presume — if we could
work it out by twenty years' experiment, such as Mr.
Lawes, of Eothampsted, has been making on the growth
of grasses and leguminous plants in different soils and
under different manures — the usual answer, I say, would
be — Because we plants want such and such mineral
constituents in our woody fibre ; again, because we
want a certain amount of moisture at a certain period
of the year : or, perhaps, simply because the mechanical
arrangement of the particles of a certain soil happens
to suit the shape of our roots and of their stomata.
Sometimes you will get an answer quickly enough ;
sometimes not. If you ask, for instance, AsijJenium
viride how it contrives to grow plentifully in the
Craven of Yorkshire down to 600 or 800 feet above
the sea, while in Snowdon it dislikes growing lower
than 2000 feet, and is not plentiful even there? — it
will reply — Because in the Craven I can get as much
carbonic acid as I want from the decomposing lime-
stone : while on the Snowdon Silurian I get very little ;
and I have to make it up by clinging to the mountain
tops, for the sake of the greater rainfall. But if you
ask Polojjodium calcareum — How is it you choose only
to grow on limestone, while Pohjiwdium J)Tyoi)teris, of
which, I suspect, you are only a variety, is ready to

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. Ill

grow anywhere ? — Pohjpodium calcareum will refuse, as
yet, to answer a word.

Again — I can only give you the merest string of
hints — you will find in your questionings that many
plants and animals have no reason at all to show why
they should be in one place and not in another, save
the very sound reason for the latter which was sug-
gested to me once by a great naturalist. I was asking —
Why don't I find such and such a species in my parish,
while it is plentiful a few miles off in exactly the same
soil? — and he answered — For the same reason that
you are not in America. Because you have not got
there. Which answer threw to me a flood of light on
this whole science. Things are often where they are,
simply because they happen to have got there, and not
elsewhere. But they must have got there by some
means : and those means I want young naturalists to
discover ; at least to guess at.

A species, for instance — and I suspect it is a common
case with insects — may abound in a single spot, simply
because, long years ago, a single brood of eggs hap-
pened to hatch at a time when eggs of other species,
who would have competed against them for food, did
not hatch ; and they may remain confined to that spot,
though there is plenty of good food for them outside it,
simply because they do not increase fast enough to
require to spread out in search of more food. Thus I

178 ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

should explain a case which I heard of lately of Antlio-
cera irifolii, abundant for years in one corner of a
certain field, and only there ; while there was just as
much trefoil all round for its larvae as there was in the
selected spot. I can, I say, only give hints : but they
will suffice, I hope, to show the path of thought into
which I want young naturalists to turn their minds.

Or, again, you will have to inquire whether the
species has not been prevented from spreading by some
natural barrier. Mr. Wallace, whom you all of course
know, has shown in his 'Malay Archipelago' that a strait
of deep sea can act as such a barrier between species.
Moritz Wagner has shown that, in the case of insects,
a moderately broad river may divide two closely allied
species of beetles, or a very narrow snow-range two
closely allied species of moths.

Again, another cause, and a most common one is : that
the plants cannot spread because they find the ground
beyond them already occupied by other plants, who
will not tolerate a fresh mouth, having only just
enough to feed themselves. Take the case of Saxifraga
hypioides and 8. umhrosa, " London pride." They are
two especially strong species. They show that, S. hyp-
noides especially, by their power of sporting, of diverg-
ing into varieties ; they show it equally by their power
of thriving anywhere, if they can only get there. They
will both grow in my sandy garden, under a rainfall of

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 179

only 23 inclies, more luxuriantly than in their native
mountains under a rainfall of 50 or 60 inclies. Then
how is it that 8. hi/pjioides cannot get down off the
mountains ; and that S. umhrosa, though in Kerry it
has got off the mountains and down to the sea level,
exterminating, I suspect, many species in its progress,
yet cannot get across county Cork ? The only answer
is, I helieve : that both species are continually trying
to go ahead; but that the other plants already in
front of them are too strong for them, and massacre
their infants as soon as born.

And this brings us to another curious question :
the sudden and abundant appearance of plants, like
the foxglove and Ejniobium angustifolium, in spots
where they have never been seen before. Are their
seeds, as some think, dormant in the ground ; or are the
seeds which have germinated fresh ones wafted thither
by wind or otherwise, and only able to germinate in
that one spot, because there the soil is clear ? General
Monro, now famous for his unequalled memoir on the
bamboos, holds to the latter theory. He pointed out
to me that the EjyiloMum seeds, being feathered, could
travel with the wind ; that the plant always made its
aj)pearance first on new banks, landslips, clearings,
where it had nothing to compete against ; and that the
foxglove did the same. True, and most painfully true,
in the case of thistles and groundsels : but foxglove

N 2

180 ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

seeds, though minute, would hardly be carried by the
wind any more than those of the white clover, which
comes up so abundantly in drained fens. Adhuc sub
judice lis est, and I wish some young naturalists
would work carefully at the solution ; by experiment,
which is the most sure way to find out anything.

But in researches in this direction they will find
puzzles enough. I will give them one which I shall be
most thankful to hear they have solved within the next
seven years — How is it that we find certain plants,
namely, the thrift and the scurvy grass, abundant on
the sea-shore and common on certain mountain-tops,
but nowhere between the two ? Answer me that. For
I have looked at the fact for years — before, behind,
sideways, upside down, and inside out — and I cannot
understand it.

But all these questions, and specially, I suspect, that
last one, ought to lead the young student up to the
great and complex question — How were these islands
re-peopled with plants and animals, after the long and
wholesale catastrophe of the glacial epoch ?

I presume you all know, and will agree, that the
whole of these islands, north of the Thames, save certain
ice-clad mountain-tops, were buried for long ages under
an icy sea. From whence did vegetable and animal
life crawl back to the land, as it rose again ; and cover
its mantle of f^lacial drift with fresh life and verdure ?

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 181

Now let me give you a few prolegomena on this
matter. You must study the i)lants of course, species
by species. Take Watson's ' Cyhele Britannica,' and
Moore's ' Cyhele Hibernica ; ' and let — as Mr. Matthew
Arnold would say — " your thought play freely about
them." Look carefully, too, in the case of each species, at
the note on its distribution, which you will find appended
in Bentham's ' Handbook,' and in Hooker's ' Student's
Flora.' Get all the help you can, if you wish to work
the subject out, from foreign botanists, both European
and American ; and I think that, on the whole, you will
come to some such theory as this for a general starting
platform. We do not owe our flora — I must keep to
the flora just now — to so many different regions, or
types, as Mr. Watson conceives, but to three, namely :
an European or Germanic flora, from the south-east ;
an Atlantic flora, from the south-west ; a Northern flora
from the north. These three invaded us after the
glacial epoch ; and our general flora is their result.

But this will cause you much trouble. Before you
go a step further you will have to eliminate from all
your calculations most of the plants which Watson calls
glareal, i.e. found in cultivated ground about habitations.
And what their limit may be I think we never shall
know. But of this we may be sure ; that just as in-
vading armies always bring with them, in forage or
otherwise, some plants from their own country — ^just as

182 ON BIO-GEOLOGY. '

the Cossacks, in 1815, brought more than one Eussian
plant through Germany into France— just as you
have already a crop of North German plants upon the
battle-fields of France — thus do conquering races bring
new plants. The Eomans, during their 300 or 400 years
of occupation and civilisation, must have brought more
species, I believe, than I dare mention. I suspect them
of having brought, not merely the common hedge elm
of the south, not merely the three species of nettle,
but all our red poppies, and a great number of the
weeds which are common in our cornfields ; and when
we add to them the plants which may have been brought
by returning crusaders and pilgrims ; by monks from
every part of Europe, by Flemings or other dealers in
foreign wool ; we have to cut a huge cantle out of our
indigenous flora : only, having no records, we hardly
know where and what to cut out ; and can only, we
elder ones, recommend the subject to the notice of the
younger botanists, that they may work it out after our
work is done.

Of course these plants introduced by man, if they
are cut out, must be cut out of only one of the floras,
namely, the European ; for they, probably, came from
the south-east, by whatever means they came.

That European flora invaded us, I presume, imme-
diately after the glacial epoch, at a time when France
and England were united, and the German Ocean a

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 183

mere network of rivers, whicli emptied into the deep
sea between Scotland and Scandinavia. And here I
mnst add, that endless questions of interest will arise
to those who will study, not merely the invasion of
that truly European flora, but the invasion of reptiles,
insects, and birds, especially birds of passage, which
must have followed it as soon as the land was sufficiently
covered with vegetation to support life. Whole volumes
remain to be written on this subject. I trust that
some of your younger members may live to write one of
them. The way to begin will be : to compare the flora
and fauna of this part of England very carefully with
that of the southern and eastern counties ; and then to
compare them again with the fauna and flora of France,
Belgium, and Holland.

As for the Atlantic flora, you will have to decide for
yourselves whether you accept or not the theory of a
sunken Atlantic continent. I confess that all objections
to that theory, however astounding it may seem, are
outweighed in my mind by a host of facts which I can
explain by no other theory. But you must judge for
yourselves ; and to do so you must study carefully the
distribution of heaths, both in Europe and at the Cape ;
and their non-appearance beyond the Ural Mountains,
and in America, save in Labrador, where the common
ling, an older and less specialised form, exists. You
must consider, too, the plants common to the Azores,

184 ON BIO-OEOLOGT.

Portugal, the "West of England, Ireland, and the Western
Hebrides, In so doing young naturalists will at least
find proofs of a change in the distribution of land
and water, which will utterly astound them when they
face it for the first time.

As for the Northern flora, the question whence it
came is puzzling enough. It seems difficult to conceive
how any plants could have survived when Scotland was
an archipelago in the same ice-covered condition as
Greenland is now ; and we have no proof that there
existed after the glacial epoch any northern continent
from which the plants and animals could have come
back to us. The species of plants and animals common
to Britain, Scandinavia, and North America, must have
spread in pre-glacial times, when a continent joining
them did exist.

But some light has been thrown on this question by
an article, as charming as it is able, on " The Physics
of the Arctic Ice," by Dr. Brown, of Campster. You
will find it in the ' Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society ' for February 1870. He shows there that even
in Greenland peaks and crags are left free enough from
ice to support a vegetation of between 300 or 400
species of flowering plants ; and, therefore, he well says,
we must be careful to avoid concluding that the plant
and animal life on the dreary shores or mountain-tops
of the old glacial Scotland was poor. The same would

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 185

hold good of our mountains ; and, if so, we may look
with respect, even with awe, on the Alpine plants of
Wales, Scotland, and the Lake mountains, as organisms
stunted, it may he, and even degraded, hy their long
battle with the elements ; but venerable from their age,
historic from their endurance. Eelics of an older
temperate world, they have lived through thousands of
centuries of frost and fog, to sun themselves in a tem-
perate climate once more. I can never pick one of
them without a tinge of shame ; and to exterminate one
of them is to destroy for the mere jDleasure of collecting
the last of a family which Grod has taken the trouble to
preserve for thousands of centuries.

I trust that these hints — for I can call them nothing
more — will at least awaken any young naturalist who
has hitherto only collected natural objects, to study the
really important and interesting question — How did
these things get here ?

Now hence arise questions which may puzzle the
mind of a Hampshire naturalist. You have in this
neighbourhood, as you well know, two, or rather three,
soils, each carrying its peculiar vegetation. First, you
have the clay lying on the chalk, and carrying vast
woodlands, seemingly primeval. Next, you have the
chalk, with its peculiar, delicate, and often fragrant
crop of lime-loving plants;* and next you have the
poor sands and clays of the New Forest basin, satu-

186 ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

rated with iron, and therefore carrying a moorland or
peat-loving vegetation, in many respects quite different
from the others. And this moorland soil, and this
vegetation, with a few singular exceptions, repeats
itself, as I daresay you know, in the north of the
county, in the Bagshot basin, as it is called — ^the moors
of Aldershot, Hartford Bridge, and Windsor Forest.

Now what a variety of interesting questions are
opened up by these simple facts. How did these three
floras get each to its present place ? Where did each
come from ? How did it get past or through the other,
till each set of plants, after long internecine compe-
tition, settled itself down in the sheet of land most
congenial to it ? And when did each come hither ?
Which is the oldest ? Will any one tell me whether
the heathy flora of the moors, or the thymy flora of the
chalk downs, were the earlier inhabitants of these isles ?
To these questions I cannot get any answer; and
they cannot be answered without first — a very careful
study of the range of each species of plant on the
continent of Europe ; and next, without careful study
of those stupendous changes in the shape of this island
which have taken place at a very late geological epoch.
The composition of the flora of our moorlands is as yet
to mo an utter j^uzzle. We have Lycopodiums — three
species — enormously ancietit forms which have survived
the age of ice : but did they crawl downward hither

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 187

from tlie northern mountains, or upward hither from
the Pyrenees? We have the beautiful bog asphodel
again — an enormously ancient form ; for it is, strange
to say, common to North America and to Northern
Europe, but does not enter Asia — almost an unique
instance. It must, surely, have come from the north ;
and points — as do many species of plants and animals —
to the time when North Europe and North America
were joined. We have, sparingly, in North Hampshire,
though, strangely, not on the Bagshot moors, the Com-
mon or Northern Butterwort [Pinguicula vulgaris) ; and
also, in the south, the New Forest part of the county,
the delicate little Pinguicula lusitanica, the only species
now found in Devon and Cornwall, marking the New
Forest as the extreme eastern limit of the Atlantic
flora. We have again the heaths, which, as I have just
said, are found neither in America nor in Asia, and
must, I believe, have come from some south-western
land long since submerged beneath the sea. But more,
we have in the New Forest two plants which are mem-
bers of the South Europe, or properly, the Atlantic
flora ; which must have come from the south and south-
east ; and which are found in no other spots in these
islands. I mean the lovely Gladiolus, which grows abun-
dantly under the ferns near Lyndhurst, certainly wild
but it does not approach England elsewhere nearer than
the Loire and the Pihine ; and next, that delicate orchid,

188 ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

the S][)iranthes sestivalis, which is known only in a bog
near Lyndhurst and in the Channel Islands, while on the
Continent it extends from southern Europe all through
France. Now, what do these two plants mark ? They
give us a point in botany, though not in time, to de-
termine when the south of England was parted from
the opposite shores of France ; and whenever that was,
it was just after the Gladiolus and Spiranthes got
hither. Two little colonies of these lovely flowers
arrived just before their retreat was cut oflf. They
found the country already occupied with other plants ;
and, not being reinforced by fresh colonists from the
south, have not been able to spread farther north than
Lyndhurst. Thus, in the New Forest, and, I may say,
in the Bagshot moors, you find plants which you do
not expect, and do not find plants which you do expect ;
and you are, or ought to be, puzzled, and I hope also
interested, and stirred up to find out more.

I spoke just now of the time when England was
joined to France, as bearing on Hampshire botany. It
bears no less on Hampshire zoology. In insects, for
instance, the presence of the purple emperor and the
white admiral in our Hampshire woods, as well as
the abundance of the great stag-beetle, point to a time
when the two countries were joined, at least, as far
west as Hampshire ; while the absence of these insects
farther to tlie westward shows that the countries, if

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 189

ever joined, were already parted ; and tliat those insects
have not yet had time to spread westward. The pre-
sence of these two butterflies, and partly of the stag-
beetle, along the south-east coast of England as far as
the primeval forests of South Lincolnshire, points — as
do a hundred other facts — to a time when the Straits of
Dover either did not exist, or were the bed of a river
running from the west ; and when, as I told you just
now, all the rivers which now run into the German
Ocean, from the Humber on the west to the Elbe on
the east, discharged themselves into the sea between
Scotland and Norway, after wandering through a vast
lowland, covered with countless herds of mammoth,
rhinoceros, gigantic ox, and other mammals now ex-
tinct ; while the birds, as far as we know ; the insects ;
the fresh-water fish ; and even, as my friend Mr. Brady
has proved, the Entomostraca of the rivers, were the
same in what is now Holland as in what is now our
Eastern counties. I could dwell long on this matter.
I could talk long about how certain species of Lepido-
j-ttera — moths and butterflies— like Pajnlio Machaon and
P. Podalirius, swarm through France, reach up to the
British Channel, and have not crossed it ; with the
exception of one colony of Machaon in the Cambridge-
shire fens. I could talk long about a similar phe-
nomenon in the case of our migratory and singing
birds: how many exquisite species— notably those two

190 ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

glorious songsters, the Orphean Warbler and Hippolais,
which delight our ears everywhere on the other side of
the Channel — follow our nightingales, blackcaps, and
warblers northward every spring almost to the Straits
of Dover : but dare not cross, simply because they have
been, as it were, created since the gulf was opened,
and have never learnt from their parents how to fly
over it.

In the case of fishes, again, I might say much on the
curious fact that the Cyprinidse, or white fish — carp,
&c. — and their natural enemy, the pike, are indigenous,
I believe, only to the rivers, English or continental, on
the eastern side of the Straits of Dover; while the
rivers on the western side were originally tenanted,
like our Hampshire streams, as now, almost entirely
by trout, their only Cyprinoid being the minnow — if
it, too, be not an interloper ; and I might ask you to
consider the bearing of this curious fact on the former
junction of England and France.

But I have only time to point out to you a few
curious facts with regard to reptiles, which should be
specially interesting to a Hampshire bio-geologist.
You know, of course, that in Ireland there are no
reptiles, save the little common lizard, Lacerta agUis,
and a few frogs on the mountain-tops — how they got
there I cannot conceive. And you will, of course,
guess, and rightly, that the reason of the absence of

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 191

reptiles is : that Ireland was parted oflf from England
before the creatures, wliicli certainly spread from
southern and warmer climates, had time to get there.
You know, of course, that we have a few reptiles
in England. But you may not be aware that, as
soon as you cross the Channel, you find many more
species of reptiles than here, as well as those which
you find here. The magnificent green lizard which
rattles about like a rabbit in a French forest, is never
found here ; simply because it had not worked north-
ward till after the Channel was formed. But there
are three reptiles peculiar to this part of England
which should be most interesting to a Hampshire
zoologist. The one is the sand lizard (L, stiiymm),
found on Bourne-heath, and, I suspect, in the South
Hampshire moors likewise— a North European and
French species. Another, the Coronella Isevis, a harm-
less French and Austrian snake, which has been found
about me, in North Hants and South Berks, now about
fifteen or twenty times. I have had three specimens
from my own parish. I believe it not to be uncommon ;
and most probably to be found, by those who will look,
l)oth in the New Forest and Woolmer. The third is
the Natterjack, or running toad {Bufo Rubeta), a most
beautifully spotted animal, with a yellow stripe down
his back, which is common with me at Eversley, and
common also in many moorlands of Hants and Surrey ;

192 ON BIO-GEOLOG Y.

and, according to Fleming, on heaths near London, and
as far north-east as Lincolnshire ; in which case it will
belong to the Germanic fauna. Now, here again we
have cases of animals which have just been able to get
hither before the severance of England and France ;
and which, not being reinforced from the rear, have
been forced to stop, in small and probably decreasing
colonies, on the spots nearest the coast which were fit
for them.

I trust that I have not kept you too long over these
details. What I wish to impress upon you is that
Hampshire is a county specially fitted for the study of
important bio-geological questions.

To work them out, you must trace the geology of
Hampshire, and, indeed, of East Dorset. You must try
to form a conception of how the land was shaped in
miocene times, before that tremendous upheaval which
reared the chalk cliffs at Freshwater upright, lifting
the tertiary beds upon their northern slopes. You
must ask — Was there not land to the south of the Isle
of Wight in those ages, and for ages after ; and what
was its extent and shape ? You must ask — When was
the gap between the Isle of Weight and the Isle of Pur-
beck sawn through, leaving the Needles as remnants
on one side, and Old Harry on the opposite ? And was
it sawn asunder merely by the age-long gnawing of
the waves ? You must ask — Where did the great river

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 193

which ran from the west, where Poole Harbour is
now, and probably through what is now the Solent,
depositing brackish water-beds right and left— where,
I say, did it run into the sea ? Where the Straits of
Dover are now ? Or, if not there, where ? What, too,
is become of the land to the Westward, composed of
ancient metamorphic rocks, out of which it ran, and
deposited on what are now the Haggerstone Moors of
Poole, vast beds of grit ? What was the climate on its
banks when it washed down the delicate leaves of broad-
leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones, which are
found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth ?
When, finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which
now runs through AYareham town ? Was its bed sea, or
dry land, or under an ice sheet, during the long ages of
the glacial epoch ? And if you say— Who is sufficient
for these things ?— Who can answer these questions ? I
answer- Who but you, or your pupils after you, if you
will but try ?

And if any shall reply— And what use if I do try ?
What use, if I do try? What use if I succeed in
answering every question which you have propounded
to-night? Shall I be the happier for it? Shall I be
the wiser ?

My friends, whether you will be the happier for it,
or for any knowledge of physical science, or for any
other knowledge whatsoever, I cannot tell : that lies in

194: ON BIO-OEOLOGY.

the decision of a Higher Power than I ; and, indeed, to
speak honestly, I do not think that bio-geology or any
other branch of physical science is likely, at first at
least, to make you happy. Neither is the study of your
fellow-men. Neither is religion itself. We were not
sent into the world to be happy, but to be right ; at
least, poor creatures that w^e are, as right as we can
be ; and we must be content with being right, and not
happy. For I fear, or rather I hope, that most of us
are not capable of carrying out Talleyrand's recipe for
perfect happiness on earth — namely, a hard heart and
a good digestion. Therefore, as our hearts are, happily,
not always hard, and our digestions, unhappily, not
always good, we will be content to be made wise by
physical science, even though we be not made happy.

And we shall be made truly wise if we be made con-
tent; content, too, not only with what we can under-
stand, but, content with what we do not understand —
the habit of mind which theologians call — and rightly
— faith in God ; the true and solid faith, which comes
often out of sadness, and out of doubt, such as bio-geology
may well stir in us at first sight. For our first feeling
will be — I know mine was when I began to look into
these matters — one somewhat of dread and of horror.

Here were all these creatures, animal and vegetable,
competing against each other. And their competition
was so earnest and complete, that it did not mean — as

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 195

it does among honest shopkeepers in a civilised country
— I will make a little more money than you ; but — I will
crush you, enslave you, exterminate you, eat you up.
" "Woe to the weak," seems to be Nature's watchword.
The Psalmist says, "The righteous shall inherit the
land." If you go to a tropical forest, or, indeed, if you
observe carefully a square acre of any English land,
cultivated or uncultivated, you will find that Nature's
text at first sight looks a very difi'erent one. She seems
to say — Not the righteous, but the strong, shall inherit
the land. Plant, insect, bird, what not — Find a weaker
plant, insect, bird, than yourself, and kill it, and take
possession of its little vineyard, and no Naboth's curse
shall follow you : but you shall inherit, and thrive
therein, you, and your children after you, if they will
be only as strong and as cruel as you are. That is
Nature's law : and is it not at first sight a fearful law ?
Internecine competition, ruthless selfishness, so inter-
necine and so ruthless that, as I have wandered in tropic
forests, where this temper is shown more quickly and
fiercely, though not in the least more evilly, than in
our slow and cold temperate one, I have said — Pteally
these trees and plants are as wicked as so many human
beings.

Throughout the great republic of the organic world,
the motto of the majority is, and always has been as far
back as we can see, what it is, and always has been, with

196 ON BIO-GEOLOGY.

the majority of human beings, " Every one for himself,
and the devil take the hindmost." Over-reaching
tyranny ; the temper which fawns, and clings, and plays
the parasite as long as it is down, and when it has
risen, fattens on its patron's blood and life — these, and
the other works of the flesh, are the works of average
plants and animals, as far as they can practise them.
At least, so says at first sight the science of bio-geology ;
till the naturalist, if he be also human and humane, is
glad to escape from the confusion and darkness of the
universal battle-field of selfishness into the order and
light of Christmas-tide.

For then there comes to him the thought — And are
these all the facts? And is this all which the facts
mean ? That mutual competition is one law of Nature,
we see too plainly. But is there not, besides that law,
a law of mutual help ? True it is, as the wise man has
said, that the very hyssop on the wall grows there
because all the forces of the universe could not prevent
its growing. All honour to the hyssop. A brave plant,
it has fought a brave fight, and has its just deserts — as
everything in Nature has — and so has won. But did
all the powers of the universe combine to prevent it
growing ? Is not that a one-sided statement of facts ?
Did not all the powers of the universe also combine to
make it grow, if only it had valour and worth where-
with to grow? Did not the rains feed it, the very

ON BIO-GEOLOOY. 197

mortar in the wall give lime to its roots ? Were not
electricity, gravitation, and I know not what of chemical
and mechanical forces, busy about the little plant, and
every cell of it, kindly and patiently ready to help it,
if it would only help itself? Surely this is true;
true of every organic thing, animal and vegetable, and
mineral, too, for aught I know : and so we must soften
our sadness at the sight of the universal mutual war
by the sight of an equally universal mutual help.

But more. It is true— too true if you will— that all
things live on each other. But is it not, therefore,
equally true that all things live for each other ?— that
self-sacrifice, and not selfishness, is at the bottom the
law of Nature, as it is the law of Grace ; and the law of
bio-geology, as it is the law of all religion and virtue
worthy of the name ? Is is not true that everything
has to help something else to live, whether it knows it
or not ?— that not a plant or an animal can turn again
to its dust without giving food and existence to other
plants, other animals ?— that the very tiger, seemingly
the most useless tyrant of all tyrants, is still of use,
when, after sending out of the world suddenly, and all
but painlessly, many an animal which would without
him have starved in misery through a diseased old age,
he himself dies, and, in dying, gives, by his own carcase,
the means of life and of enjoyment to a thousandfold
more living creatures than ever his paws destroyed ?

108 C»^ BIO-GEOLOGY.

And so, tlie longer one watches the great struggle
for existence, the more charitable, the more hopeful,
one becomes ; as one sees that, consciously or uncon-
sciously, the law of Nature is, after all, self-sacrifice ;
unconscious in plants and animals, as far as we know ;
save always those magnificent instances of true self-
sacrifice shown by the social insects, by ants, bees, and
others, which put to shame by a civilization truly noble
— why should I not say divine, for Grod ordained it ? —
the selfishness and barbarism of man. But be that as
it may, in man the law of self-sacrifice — whether un-
conscious or not in the animals — rises into conscious-
ness just as far as he is a man ; and the crowning
lesson of bio-geology may be, when we have worked it
out, after all, the lesson of Christmas-tide — of the
infinite self-sacrifice of God for man; and Nature as
well as religion may say to us —

" Ah, could you crush that ever craving lust

For bliss, which kills all bliss, and lose your life,
Your barren unit life, to find again
A thousand times in those for whom you die —
So wore you men and women, and should hold
Your rightful rank in God's great universe,
Wherein, in heaven or earth, by will or nature,
Naught lives for self. All, all, from crown to base —
The Lamb, before the world's foundation slain —
The angels, ministers to God's elect —
The sun, who only shines to light the worlds —
The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers —
The fleeting streams, who in their ocean graves
Fk:c the decay of stagnant self-content—

ON BIO-GEOLOGY. 199

The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe —

The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower —

The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms

Born only to be prey to every bird —

All spend themselves on others : and shall man,

Whose two-fold being is the mystic knot

"Which couples earth with heaven, doubly bound,

As being both worm and angel, to that service

By which both worms and angels hold their life,

Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt,

Eefuse, forsooth, to be what God has made him?

No ; let him show himself the creatures' Lord

By free-will gift of that self-sacrifice

Which they, perforce, by Natui-e's laws endure."

My friends, scientific and others, if the study of bio-
geology shall help to teach you this, or anything like
this ; I think that though it may not make you more
happy, it may yet make you more wise ; and, therefore,
what is better than being more happy, namely, more
blessed.

HEROISM.

It is an open question whether the policeman is not
demoralizing us ; and that in proportion as he does his
duty well; whether the perfection of justice and safety,
the complete " preservation of body and goods," may
not reduce the educated and comfortable classes into
that lap-dog condition in which not conscience, but
comfort, doth make cowards of us all. Our forefathers
had, on the whole, to take care of themselves ; we find
it more convenient to hire people to take care of us.
So much the better for us, in some respects : but, it
may be, so much the worse in others. So much the
better ; because, as usually results from the division of
labour, these people, having little or nothing to do save
to take care of us, do so far better than we could ; and
so prevent a vast amount of violence and wrong, and
therefore of misery, especially to the weak : for which
last reason we will acquiesce in the existence of police-
men and lawyers, as we do in the results of arbitration,

HEROISM. 201

as the lesser of two evils. The odds in war are in
favour of the bigger bully ; in arbitration, in favour of
the bigger rogue ; and it is a question whether the lion
or the fox be the safer guardian of human interests.
But arbitration prevents war : and that, in three cases
out of four, is full reason for employing it.

On the other hand, the lap-dog condition, whether in
dogs or in men, is certainly unfavourable to the growth
of the higher virtues. Safety and comfort are good,
indeed, for the good ; for the brave, the self-originating,
the earnest. They give to such a clear stage and no
favour wherein to work unhindered for their fellow-
men. But for the majority, who are neither brave,
self-originating, nor earnest, but the mere puppets of
circumstance, safety and comfort may, and actually do,
merely make their lives mean and petty, effeminate
and dull. Therefore their hearts must be awakened,
as often as possible, to take exercise enough for
health; and they must be reminded, perpetually and
importunately, of what a certain great philosopher
called " whatsoever things are true, honourable, just,
pure, lovely, and of good report ; " " if there be any
manhood, and any just praise, to think of such
things."

This pettiness and dulness of our modern life is just
what keeps alive our stage, to which people go to see
something a little less petty, a little less dull, than

202 HEROISM.

what they see at home. It is, too, the cause of — I had
almost said the excuse for — the modern rage for sensa-
tional novels. Those who read them so greedily are
conscious, poor souls, of capacities in themselves of
passion and action, for good and evil, for which their
frivolous humdrum daily life gives no room, no vent.
They know too well that human nature can be more
fertile, whether in weeds and poisons, or in flowers and
fruits, than it is usually in the streets and houses of a
well-ordered and tolerably sober city. And because
the study of human nature is, after all, that which is
nearest to every one and most interesting to every one,
therefore they go to fiction, since they cannot go to
fact, to see what they themselves might be had they
the chance ; to see what fantastic tricks before high
heaven men and women like themselves can f)lay ; and
how they play them.

Well : it is not for me to judge, for me to blame. I
will only say that there are those who cannot read
sensational novels, or, indeed, any novels at all, just
.because they see so many sensational novels being
enacted round them in painful facts of sinful flesh and
blood. There are those, too, who have looked in the
mirror too often to wish to see their own disfigured
visage in it any more ; who are too tired of themselves
and ashamed of themselves to want to hear of people
like themselves; who want to hear of people utterly

HEB0I8M. 203

unlike themselves, more noble, and able, and just, and
sweet, and pure ; who long to hear of heroism and to
converse with heroes ; and who, if by chance they meet
with an heroic act, bathe their spirits in that, as in
May-dew, and feel themselves thereby, if but for an
hour, more fair.

If any such shall chance to see these words, let me
ask them to consider with me that one word Hero, and
what it means.

Hero; Heroic; Heroism. These words point to a
phase of human nature, the capacity for which we all
have in ourselves, which is as startling and as interest-
ing in its manifestations as any, and which is always
beautiful, always ennobling, and therefore always at-
tractive to those whose hearts are not yet seared by
the world or brutalized by self-indulgence.

But let us first be sure what the words mean. There
is no use talking about a word till we have got at its
meaning. We may use it as a cant phrase, as a party
cry on platforms ; we may even hate and persecute our
fellow-men for the sake of it : but till we have clearly
settled in our own minds what a word means, it will do
for fighting with, but not for working with. Socrates
of old used to tell the young Athenians that the ground
of all sound knowledge was— to understand the true
meaning of the words which were in their mouths all
day long ; and Socrates was a wiser man than we shall

204 HEROISM.

ever see. So, instead of beginning an oration in praise
of heroism, I shall ask my readers to think with me
what heroism is.

Now, we shall always get most surely at the meaning
of a word by getting at its etymology — that is, at what
it meant at first. And if heroism means behaving like
a hero, we must find out, it seems to me, not merely
what a hero may happen to mean just now, but what
it meant in the earliest human speech in which we
find it.

A hero or a heroine, then, among the old Homeric
Greeks, meant a man or woman who was like the gods ;
and who, from that likeness, stood superior to his or her
fellow-creatures. Gods, heroes, and men, is a threefold
division of rational beings, with which we meet more
than once or twice. Those grand old Greeks felt deeply
the truth of the poet's saying —

" Unless above himself he can
Exalt himself, how poor a thing is man."

But more : the Greeks supposed these heroes to be,
in some way or other, partakers of a divine nature ;
akin to the gods ; usually, either they, or some ancestor
of theirs, descended from a god or goddess. Those
who have read Mr. Gladstone's ' Juventus Mundi ' will
remember the section (cap. ix. § G) on the modes of the
approximation between the divine and the human

HEROISM. 205

natures ; and whether or not they agree with the author
altogether, all will agree, I think, that the first idea
of a hero or a heroine was a godlike man or godlike
woman.

A godlike man. What varied, what infinite forms
of nobleness that word might include, ever increasino-
as men's notions of the gods became purer and loftier,
or, alas ! decreasing, as their notions became degraded.
The old Greeks, with that intense admiration of beauty
which made them, in after ages, the master sculptors
and draughtsmen of their own, and, indeed, of any
age, would, of course, require in their hero, their god-
like man, beauty and strength, manners, too, and elo-
quence, and all outward perfections of humanity, and
neglect his moral qualities. Neglect, I say, but not
ignore. The hero, by virtue of his kindred with the
gods, was always expected to be a better man than
common men, as virtue was then understood. And
how better ? Let us see.

The hero was at least expected to be more reverent
than other men to those divine beings of whose nature
he partook, whose society he might enjoy even here on
earth. He might be unfaithful to his own hi<^h
lineage ; he might misuse his gifts by selfishness and
self-will ; he might, like Ajax, rage with mere jealousy
and wounded pride till his rage ended in shameful
madness and suicide. He might rebel against the

206 HEROISM.

very gods, and all laws of right and wrong, till he

perished in his araaOaXlr],

" Smitten down, blind in his pride, for a sign and a terror to mortals."

But he ought to have, he must have, to be true to his
name of Hero, justice, self-restraint, and alhdi^ — that
highest form of modesty, for which we have, alas ! no
name in the English tongue ; that perfect respect for
the feelings of others which springs out of perfect self-
respect. And he must have, too — if he were to be a
hero of the highest type — the instinct of helpfulness ;
the instinct that, if he were a kinsman of the gods, he
must fight on their side, through toil and danger,
against all that was unlike them, and therefore hateful
to them. Who loves not the old legends, unsurpassed
for beauty in the literature of any race, in which the
hero stands out as the deliverer, the destroyer of evil ?
Theseus ridding the land of robbers, and delivering
it from the yearly tribute of boys and maidens to be
devoured by the Minotaur ; Perseus slaying the Gorgon,
and rescuing Andromeda from the sea-beast ; Heracles
with his twelve famous labours against giants and
monsters ; and all the rest —

" Who dared, in the god-given might of their manhood
Greatly to do and to sutler, and far in the fens and tlie forests
Smite the devourers of men, heaven-hated, brood of the giants ;
Transformed, strange, without like, who obey not the golden-haired
rulers " —

These arc figures whose divine moral beauty has sunk

HEROISM. 207

into the hearts, not merely of poets or of artists,
but of men and women who suflered and who feared ;
the memory of them, fables though they may have
been, ennobled the old Greek heart ; they ennobled the
heart of Europe in the fifteenth century, at the re-dis-
covery of Greek literature. So far from contradicting
the Christian ideal, they harmonised with — I had
almost said they supplemented — that more tender and
saintly ideal of heroism which had sprung up during
the earlier Middle Ages. They justified, and actually
gave a new life to, the old noblenesses of chivalry, which
had grown up in the later Middle Ages as a necessary
supplement of active and manly virtue to the passive and
feminine virtue of the cloister. They inspired, mingling
with these two other elements, a literature, both in
England, France, and Italy, in which the three ele-
ments, the saintly, the chivalrous, and the Greek
heroic, have become one and undistinguishable, because
all three are human, and all three divine ; a literature
which developed itself in Ariosto, in Tasso, in the
Hypnerotomachia, the Arcadia, the Euphues, and other
forms, sometimes fantastic, sometimes questionable,
but which reached its perfection in our own Spenser's
'Fairy Queen ' — perhaps the most admirable poem
which has ever been penned by mortal man.

And why ? What has made these old Greek myths
live, myths though they be, and fables, and fair dreams ?

208 HEROISM.

What, tlioiigli tliey have no body, and, perhaps, never
had, has given them an immortal soul, which can speak
to the immortal souls of all generations to come ?

What but this, that in them — dim it may be and
undeveloped, but still there — lies the divine idea of
self-sacrifice as the perfection of heroism; of self-
sacrifice, as the highest duty and the highest joy of
him who claims a kindred with the gods ?

Let us say, then, that true heroism must involve
self-sacrifice. Those stories certainly involve it, whether
ancient or modern, which the hearts, not of philosophers
merely, or poets, but of the poorest and the most
ignorant, have accepted instinctively as the highest
form of moral beauty — the highest form, and yet one
possible to all.

Grace Darling rowing out into the storm toward
the wreck. — The " drunken private of the Sufi's," who,
prisoner among the Chinese, and commanded to pro-
strate himself and kotoo, refused in the name of his
country's honour — " He would not bow to any China-
man on earth :" and so was knocked on the head, and died
surely a hero's death. — Those soldiers of the ' Birken-
head,' keeping their ranks to let the women and
children escape, while they watched the sharks who in
a few minutes would be tearing them limb from limb.
— Or, to go across the Atlantic — for there are heroes in
the Far West— Mr. Bret Harte's " Flynn of Virginia,"

HEROISM. 209

on the Central Pacific Eailway — the place is shown to
travellers — who sacrificed his life for his married com-
rade, —

" There, in the drift,

Back to the wall,

He held the timbers

Keady to fall.

Then in the darkness

I heard him call, —

' Run for your life, Jake !

Eun for your wife's sake !

Don't wait for me.'
" And that was all

Heard in the din —

Heard of Tom Flynn,

Flynn of Virginia."

Or the engineer, again, on the Mississippi, who, when
the steamer caught fire, held, as he had sworn he would,
her bow against the bank till every soul save he got safe
on shore, —

" Through the hot black breath of the burning boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard ;
And they all liad trust in his cussedness.

And knew he would keep his word.
And sure's you're born, they all got off

Afore the smokestacks fell, —
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
, In the smoke of tlie ' Prairie Belle.'
" He weren't no saint — but at judgment
I'd run my chance with Jim
'Longside of some pious gentlemen

That wouldn't shake hands with him.
He'd seen his duty — a dead sure thing —

And went for it there and then ;
And Christ is not going to be too hard
On a man that died for men."

210 BE BO ISM.

To which gallant poem of Colonel John Hay's — and he
has written many gallant and beautiful poems — I have
but one demurrer : Jim Bludso did not merely do his
duty, but more than his duty. He did a voluntary
deed, to which he was bound by no code or contract,
civil or moral ; just as he who introduced me to that
poem won his Victoria Cross — as many a cross, Victoria
and other, has been won — by volunteering for a deed
to which he, too, was bound by no code or contract, mili-
tary or moral. And it is of the essence of self-sacrifice,
and, therefore, of heroism, that it should be voluntary ; •
a work of supererogation, at least towards society and
man : an act to which the hero or heroine is not bound
by duty, but which is above though n.ot against duty.

Nay, on the strength of that same element of self-
sacrifice, I will not grudge the epithet heroic, which my
revered friend Mr. Darwin justly applies to the poor
little monkey, who once in his life did that which was
above his duty ; who lived in continual terror of the
great baboon, and yet, when the brute had sprung upon
his friend the keeper, and was tearing out his throat,
conquered his fear by love, and, at the risk of instant
death, sprang in turn upon his dreaded enemy, and bit
and shrieked till help arrived.

Some would now-a-days use that story merely to
prove that the monkey's nature and the man's nature
are, after all, one and the same. Well : I, at least,

HEROISM, 211

have never denied that there is a monkey-nature in
man, as there is a peacock-nature, and a swine-nature,
and a wolf-nature — of all which four I see every day
too much. The sharp and stern distinction between
men and animals, as far as their natures are concerned,
is of a more modern origin than people fancy. Of old
the Assyrian took the eagle, the ox, and the lion — and
not unwisely — as the three highest types of human
capacity. The horses of Homer might be immortal, and
weep for their master's death. The animals and monsters
of Grreek myth — like the Ananzi spider of Negro fable
— glide insensibly into speech and reason. Birds
— the most wonderful of all animals in the eyes of a
man of science or a poet — are sometimes looked on as
wiser, and nearer to the gods, than man. The Norse-
man — the noblest and ablest human being, save the
Greek, of whom history can tell us — was not ashamed
to say of the bear of his native forests that he had " ten
men's strength and eleven men's wisdom." How could
Keinecke Fuchs have gained immortality, in the Middle
Ages and since, save by the truth of its too solid and
humiliating theorem — that the actions of the world of
men were, on the whole, guided by passions but too
exactly like those of the lower animals ? I have said,
and say again, with good old Vaughan —

" Unless above himself he can
Exalt himself, how mean a thing is man."

p 2

212 • HEROISM.

But I cannot forget that many an old Greek poet or
sage, and many a sixteenth and seventeenth century
one, would have interpreted the monkey's heroism from
quite a different point of view ; and would have said that
the poor little creature had been visited suddenly by some
" divine afflatus " — an expression quite as philosophical
and quite as intelligible as most philosophic formulas
which I read now-a-days — and had been thus raised
for the moment above his abject selfish monkey-nature
just as man requires to be raised above his. But that
theory belongs to a philosophy which is out of date and
out of fashion, and which will have to wait a century or
two before it comes into fashion again.

And now : if self-sacrifice and heroism be, as I believe,
identical, I must protest against a use of the word
sacrifice which is growing too common in newspaper-
columns, in which we are told of an ' enormous sacri-
fice of life ; " an expression which means merely that
a great many poor wretches have been killed, quite
against their own will, and for no purpose whatsoever :
no sacrifice at all, unless it be one to the demons of
ignorance, cupidity or mismanagement.

The stout Whig undergraduate understood better the
meaning of such words, who, when asked, " In what
sense might Charles the First be said to be a martyr ? "
answered, " In the same sense that a man might be said
to be a martyr to the gout."

HEROISM. 213

And I must protest, in like wise, against a misuse of
the words hero, heroism, heroic, which is becoming too
common, namely, applying them to mere courage. We
have borrowed the misuse, I believe, as we have more
than one beside, from the French press. I trust that
we shall neither accept it, nor the temper which inspires
it. It may be convenient for those who flatter their
nation, and especially the military part of it, into a
ruinous self-conceit, to frame some such syllogism
as this—" Courage is heroism : every Frenchman is
naturally courageous : therefore every Frenchman is a
hero." But we, who have been trained at once in a
sounder school of morals, and in a greater respect for
facts, and for language as the expression of facts, shall
be careful, I hope, not to trifle thus with that potent
and awful engine— human speech. We shall eschew
likewise, I hope, a like abuse of the word moral, which
has crept from the French press now and then, not
only into our own press, but into the writings of some
of our military men, who, as Englishmen, should have
known better. We were told again and again, during
the late war, that the moral efi"ect of such a success had
been great ; that the morale of the troops was excellent;
or again, that the morale of the troops had sufi'ered, or
even that they were somewhat demoralised. But when
one came to test what was really meant by these fine
words, one discovered that morals had nothing to do

214 HEROISM.

■with the facts which they expressed ; that the troops
were in the one case actuated simply by the animal
passion of hope, in the other simply by the animal
passion of fear. This abuse of the word moral has
crossed, I am sorry to say, the Atlantic ; and a witty
American, whom we must excuse, though we must
not imitate, when some one had been blazing away
at him with a revolver, he being unarmed, is said
to have described his very natural emotions on the
occasion, by saying that he felt dreadfully demoralised.
We, I hope, shall confine the word demoralisation, as
our generals of the last century would have done, when
applied to soldiers, to crime, including, of course, the
neglect of duty or of discipline ; and we shall mean by
the word heroism in like manner, whether applied to a
soldier or to any human being, not mere courage ; not
the mere doing of duty : but the doing of something
beyond duty ; something which is not in the bond ;
some spontaneous and unexpected act of self-devotion.

I am glad, but not surprised, to see that Miss Yonge
has held to this sound distinction in her golden little
book of ' Golden Deeds ;' and said, " Obedience, at all
costs and risks, is the very essence of a soldier's life. It
has the solid material, but it has hardly the exceptional
brightness, of a golden deed."

I know that it is very difficult to draw the line
between mere obedience to duty and express heroism.

HEROISM. 215

I know also tliat it would be both invidious and im-
pertinent in an utterly unberoic personage like me,
to try to draw that line ; and to sit at home at ease,
analysing and criticising deeds which I could not do
myself: but — to give an instance or two of what I
mean —

To defend a post as long as it is tenable is not
heroic. It is simple duty. To defend it after it has
become untenable, and even to die in so doing, is not
heroic, but a noble madness, unless an advantage is to
be gained thereby for one's own side. Then, indeed, it
rises towards, if not into, the heroism of self-sacrifice.

Who, for example, will not endorse the verdict of all
ages on the conduct of those Spartans at Thermopylae,
when they sat " combing their yellow hair for death "
on the sea-shore ? They devoted themselves to hope-
less destruction : but why ? They felt — I must believe
that, for they behaved as if they felt — that on them
the destinies of the Western World might hang ; that
they were in the forefront of the battle between civili-
sation and barbarism, between freedom and desj)otism ;
and that they must teach that vast mob of Persian
slaves, whom the ofiicers of the Great King were
driving with whips up to their lance-points, that the
spirit of the old heroes was not dead; and that the
Greek, even in defeat and death, was a mightier and
a nobler man than they. And they did their work.

216 HEROISM.

They produced, if you will, a " moral " effect, which
has lasted even to this very day. They struck terror
into the heart, not only of the Persian host, hut of the
whole Persian empire. They made the event of that
war certain, and the victories of Salamis and Plataea
comparatively easy. They made Alexander's conquest
of the East, 150 years afterwards, not only possible at
all, but permanent when it came ; and thus helped to
determine the future civilisation of the whole world.

They did not, of course, foresee all this. No great
or inspired man can foresee all the consequences of his
deeds : but these men were, as I hold, inspired to see
somewhat at least of the mighty stake for which they
played; and to count their lives worthless, if Sparta
had sent them thither to help in that great game.

Or shall we refuse the name of heroic to those three
German cavalry regiments who, in the battle of Mars
La Tour, were bidden to hurl themselves upon the
chassepots and mitrailleuses of the unbroken French
infantry, and went to almost certain death, over the
corpses of their comrades, on and in and through,
reeling man over horse, horse over man, and clung like
bull-dogs to their work, and would hardly leave, even
at the bugle-call, till in one regiment thirteen officers
out of nineteen were killed or wounded ? And why ?

Because the French army must be stopped, if it were
but for a quarter of an hour. A respite must be gained

HEROISM. 217

for the exhausted Third Corps. And how much might
be done, even in a quarter of an hour, by men who
knew when, and where, and why to die. Who will
refuse the name of heroes to these men ? And yet
they, probably, would have utterly declined the honour.
They had but done that which was in the bond. They
were but obeying orders after all. As Miss Yonge well
says of all heroic persons — " ' I have but done that
which it was my duty to do,' is the natural answer of
those capable of such actions. They have been con-
strained to them by duty or pity ; have never deemed
it possible to act otherwise ; and did not once think of
themselves in the matter at all."

These last true words bring us to another element
in heroism : its simplicity. Whatsoever is not simple ;
whatso'ever is affected, boastful, wilful, covetous, tar-
nishes, even destroys, the heroic character of a deed ;
because all these faults spring out of self. On the
other hand, wherever you find a perfectly simple, frank,
unconscious character, there you have the possibility,
at least, of heroic action. For it is nobler far to do the
most commonplace duty in the household, or behind
the counter, with a single eye to duty, simply because
it must be done — nobler far, I say, than to go out of
your way to attempt a brilliant deed, with a double
mind, and saying to yourself not only — " This will be a
brilliant deed," but also — " and it will pay me, or raise

218 HEROISM.

me, or set me off, into the bargain." Heroism knows no
" into tlie bargain." And therefore, again, I must pro-
test against applying the word heroic to any deeds,
however charitable, however toilsome, however dan-
gerous, performed for the sake of what certain French
ladies, I am told, call " faire son salut " — saving one's
soul in the world to come. I do not mean to judge.
Other and quite unselfish motives may be, and doubt-
less often are, mixed up with that selfish one : womanly
pity and tenderness ; love for, and desire to imitate, a
certain incarnate ideal of self-sacrifice, who is at once
human and divine. But that motive of saving the
soul, which is too often openly proposed and proffered,
is utterly unheroic. The desire to escape pains and
penalties hereafter by pains and penalties here; the
balance of present loss against future gain — what is
this but selfishness extended out of this world into
eternity ? " Not worldliness," indeed, as a satirist
once said with bitter truth, " but other- worldliness."

Moreover — and the young and the enthusiastic should
also bear this in mind — though heroism means the
going beyond the limits of strict duty, it never means
the going out of the path of strict duty. If it is your
duty to go to London, go thither : you may go as much
further as you choose after that. But you must go to
London first. Do your duty first ; it will be time after
that to talk of hcm^ heroic.

EEROISM. 219

And therefore one must seriously warn the young,
lest they mistake for heroism and self-sacrifice what is
merely pride and self-will, discontent with the relations
by which God has bound them, and the circumstances
which God has appointed for them. I have known
girls think they were doing a fine thing by leaving
uncongenial parents or disagreeable sisters, and cutting
out for themselves, as they fancied, a more useful and
elevated line of life than that of mere home duties ;
while, after all, poor things, they were only saying,
with the Pharisees of old, " Corban, it is a gift, by
whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me ;" and in
the name of God, neglecting the command of God to
honour their father and mother.

There are men, too, who will neglect their house-
holds and leave their children unprovided for, and even
uneducated, while they are spending their money on
philanthropic or religious hobbies of their own. It is
ill to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs ;
or even to the angels. It is ill, I say, trying to make
God presents, before we have tried to pay God our
debts. The first duty of every man is to the wife whom
he has married, and to the children whom she ' has
brought into the world ; and to neglect them is not
heroism, but self-conceit; the conceit that a man is
so necessary to Almighty God, that God will actually
allow him to do wrong, if He can only thereby secure

220 HEROISM.

the man's invaluable services. Be sure that every
motive which comes not from the single eye ; every
motive which springs from self; is by its very essence
unheroic, let it look as gaudy or as beneficent as it
may.

But I cannot go so far as to say the same of the love
of approbation — the desire for the love and respect of
our fellow-men.

That must not be excluded from the list of heroic
motives. I know that it is, or may be proved to be, by
victorious analysis, an emotion common to us and the
lower animals. And yet no man excludes it less than
that true hero, St. Paul. If those brave Spartans, if
those brave Germans, of whom I spoke just now, knew
that their memories would be wept over and worshipped
by brave men and fair women, and that their names
would become watchwords to children in their father-
land : what is that to us, save that it should make us
rejoice, if we be truly human, that they had that thought
with them in their last moments to make self-devotion
more easy, and death more sweet ?

And yet — and yet — is not the highest heroism that
which is free even from the approbation of our fellow-
men, even from the approbation of the best and wisest ?
The heroism which is known only to our Father who
seeth in secret ? The Godlike deeds alone in the lonely
chamber ? The Godlike lives lived in obscurity ? — a

HEROISM. 221

heroism rare among us men, who live perforce in the
glare and noise of the outer world : more common
among women ; women of whom the world never hears ;
who, if the world discovered them, would only draw the
veil more closely over their faces and their hearts, and
entreat to be left alone with God. True, they cannot
always hide. They must not always hide; or their
fellow-creatures would lose the golden lesson. But,
nevertheless, it is of the essence of the perfect and
womanly heroism, in which, as in all spiritual forces,
woman transcends the man, that it would hide if it
could.

And it was a pleasant thought to me, when I glanced
lately at the golden deeds of woman in Miss Yonge's
book — it was a pleasant thought to me, that I could say
to myself — Ah ! yes. These heroines are known, and
their fame flies through the mouths of men. But if so,
how many thousands of heroines there must have been,
how many thousands there may be now, of whom we
shall never know. But still they are there. They sow
in secret the seed of which we pluck the flower and eat
the fruit, and know not that we pass the sower daily in
the street ; perhaps some humble ill-drest woman,
earning painfully her own small sustenance. She who
nurses a bedridden mother, instead of sending her to
the workhouse. She who spends her heart and her
money on a drunken father, a reckless brother, on the

222 HEROISM.

orphans of a kinsman or a friend. She who But

why go on with the long list of great little heroisms,
with which a clergyman at least comes in contact daily
— and it is one of the most ennobling privileges of a
clergyman's high calling that he does come in contact
with them — why go on, I say, save to commemorate one
more form of great little heroism — the commonest, and
yet the least remembered of all — namely, the heroism
of an average mother ? Ah, when I think of that last
broad fact, I gather hope again for poor humanity ;
and this dark world looks bright, this diseased world
looks wholesome to me once more — because, whatever
else it is or is not full of, it is at least full of mothers.

While the satirist only sneers, as at a stock butt for
his ridicule, at the managing mother trying to get her
daughters married off her hands by chicaneries and
meannesses, which every novelist knows too well how
to draw — would to heaven he, or rather, alas ! she,
would find some more chivalrous employment for his
or her pen — for were they not, too, born of woman ? —
I only say to myself — having had always a secret fond-
ness for poor Eebecca, though I love Esau more than
Jacob — Let the poor thing alone. With pain she
brought these girls into the world. With pain she
educated them according to her light. With pain she is
trying to obtain for them the highest earthly blessing
of which she can conceive, namely, to be well married ;

HEROISM. ' 223

and if in doing that last, she manoeuvres a little, com-
mits a few bassesses, even tells a few untruths, what
does all that come to, save this — that in the confused
intensity of her motherly self-sacrifice, she will sacrifice
for her daughters even her own conscience and her own
credit ? We may sneer, if we will, at such a poor hard-
driven soul when we meet her in society : our duty, both
as Christians and ladies and gentlemen, seems to me to
be — to do for her something very different indeed.

But to return. Looking at the amount of great
little heroisms, which are being, as I assert, enacted
around us every day, no one has a right to say, what
we are all tempted to say at times — " How can I be
heroic? This is no heroic age, setting me heroic
examples. We are growing more and more comfortable,
frivolous, pleasure-seeking, money-making ; more and
more utilitarian ; more and more mercenary in our
politics, in our morals, in our religion ; thinking less
and less of honour and duty, and more and more of loss
and gain. I am born into an unheroic time. You
must not ask me to become heroic in it."

I do not deny that it is more difficult to be heroic,
while circumstances are unheroic round us. We are
all too apt to be the puppets of circumstance ; all too
apt to follow the fashion ; all too apt, like so many
minnows, to take our colour from the ground on which
we lie, in hopes, like them, of comfortable concealment,

224 HEROISM.

lest the new tyrant deity, called public opinion, should
spy us out, and, like Nebuchadnezzar of old, cast us
into a burning fiery furnace — which public opinion can
make very hot — for daring to worship any god or man
save the will of the temporary majority.

Yes, it is difficult to be anything but poor, mean,
insufficient, imperfect people, as like each other as so
many sheep ; and, like so many sheep, having no will
or character of our own, but rushing altogether blindly
over the same gap, in foolish fear of the same dog, who,
after all, dare not bite us ; and so it always was and
always will be.

For the third time I say, —

" Unless above himself he can
Exalt himself, how poor a thing is man."

But, nevertheless, any man or woman who will, in
any age and under any circumstances, can live the
heroic life and exercise heroic influences.

If any ask proof of this, I shall ask them, in return,
to read two novels ; novels, indeed, but, in their method
and their moral, partaking of that heroic and ideal
element, which will make them live, I trust, long after
thousands of mere novels have returned to their native
dust. I mean Miss Muloch's 'John Halifax, Gentleman,'
and Mr. Thackeray's 'Esmond,' two books which no
man or woman ought to read without being the nobler
for them.

HEROISM. 225

* Jolin Halifax, Gentleman,' is simply tlie history of a
poor young clerk, who rises to be a wealthy mill-owner
in the manufacturing districts, in the early part of
this century. But he contrives to he an heroic and
ideal clerk, and an heroic and ideal mill-owner ; and that
without doing anything which the world would call
heroic or ideal, or in anywise stepping out of his sphere,
minding simply his own business, and doing the duty
which lies nearest him. And how ? By getting into
his head from youth the strangest notion, that in what-
ever station or business he may be, he can always be
what he considers a gentleman ; and that if he only
behaves like a gentleman, all must go right at last. A
beautiful book. As I said before, somewhat of an heroic
and ideal book. A book which did me good when first
I read it ; which ought to do any young man good who
will read it, and then try to be, like John Halifax, a
gentleman, whether in the shop, the counting-house,
the bank, or the manufactory.

The other — an even more striking instance of the
possibility, at least, of heroism anywhere and every-
where — is Mr. Thackeray's ' Esmond.' On the meaning
of that book I can speak with authority. For my dear
and regretted friend told me himself that my inter-
pretation of it was the true one ; that this w^as the
lesson which he meant men to learn therefrom.

Esmond is a man of the first half of the eighteenth

226 • HEROISM.

century; living in a coarse, drunken, ignorant, profligate,
and altogether unlieroic age. He is — and here the high
art and the high morality of Mr. Thackeray's genius
is shown — altogether a man of his own age. He is not
a sixteenth-century or a nineteenth-century man horn
out of time. His information, his jDolitics, his religion,
are no higher than of those round him. His manners,
his views of human life, his very prejudices and faults,
are those of his age. The temptations which he con-
quers are just those under which the men around him
fall. But how does he conquer them ? By holding
fast throughout to honour, duty, virtue. Thus, and
thus alone, he hecomes an ideal eighteenth-century
gentleman, an eighteenth-century hero. This was
what Mr. Thackeray meant — for he told me so himself,
I say — that it was possible, even in England's lowest
and foulest times, to he a gentleman and a hero, if a
man would hut he true to the light within him.

But I will go further. I will go from ideal fiction
to actual, and yet ideal, fact ; and say that, as I read
history, the most unheroic age which the civilized
world ever saw was also the most heroic ; that the
spirit of man triumphed most utterly over his circum-
stances, at the very moment when those circumstances
were most against him.

How and why he did so is a question for philosophy
in the highest sense of that word. The fact of his

EER0I8M. 227

having clone so is matter of history. Shall I solve my
own riddle ?

Then, have we not heard of the early Christian mar-
tyrs ? Is there a doubt that they, unlettered men,
slaves, weak women, even children, did exhibit, under an
infinite sense of duty, issuing in infinite self-sacrifice,
a heroism such as the world had never seen before;
did raise the ideal of human nobleness a whole stage —
rather say, a whole heaven — higher than before ; and
that wherever the tale of their great deeds spread, men
accepted, even if they did not copy, those martyrs as
ideal specimens of the human race, till they were
actually worshipped by succeeding generations, wrongly,
it may be, but pardonably, as a choir of lesser deities ?

But is there, on the other hand, a doubt that the
age in which they were heroic was the most unheroic
of all ages ; that they were bred, lived, and died, under
the most debasing of materialist tyrannies, with art,
literature, philosophy, family and national life dying
or dead around them, and in cities the corruption of
which cannot be told for very shame — cities, compared
with which Paris is the abode of Arcadian simplicity
and innocence ? When I read Petronius and Juvenal,
and recollect that they were the contemporaries of
the Apostles ; when — to give an instance which
scholars, and perhaps, happily, only scholars, can
appreciate — I glance once more at Trimalchio's feast,

Q 2

228 HEROISM.

and remember that -within a mile of that feast St.
Paul may have been preaching to a Christian con-
gregation, some of whom — for St. Paul makes no
secret of that strange fact — may have been, ere
their conversion, partakers in just such vulgar and
bestial orgies as those which were going on in the rich
freedman's halls : after that, I say, I can put no limit
to the possibility of man's becoming heroic, even though
he be surrounded by a hell on earth ; no limit to the
capacities of any human being to form for himself or
herself a high and pure ideal of human character ; and,
without " playing fantastic tricks before high heaven,"
to carry out that ideal in every-day life ; and in the
most commonplace circumstances, and the most menial
occupations, to live worthy of — as I conceive — our
heavenly birthright, and to imitate the heroes, who
were the kinsmen of the gods.

SUPERSTITION.

A Lecture deliveeed at the Eoyal Institution, London.

Having accepted the very great honour of being
allowed to deliver here two lectures, I have chosen as
my subject Superstition and Science. It is with Super-
stition that this first lecture will deal.

The subject seems to me especially fit for a clergy-
man ; for he should, more than other men, be able to
avoid trenching on two subjects rightly excluded from
this Institution ; namely, Theology — that is, the know-
ledge of God ; and Eeligion — that is, the knowledge of
Duty. If he knows, as he should, what is Theology,
and what is Religion, then he should best know what is
not Theology, and what is not Eeligion.

For my own part, I entreat you at the outset to
keep in mind that these lectures treat of matters en-
tirely physical ; which have in reality, and ought to
have in our minds, no more to do with Theology and
Eeligion than the j)roposition that theft is wrong, has

230 SUPEBSTITION.

to do with the proposition that the three angles of a
triangle are equal to two right angles.

It is necessary to premise this, because many are of
opinion that superstition is a corruption of religion ;
and though they would agree that as such, " corruptio
optimi pessima," yet they would look on religion as
the state of spiritual health, and superstition as one
of spiritual disease.

Others, again, holding the same notion, but not con-
sidering that corruptio optimi pessima, have been in all
ages somewhat inclined to be merciful to superstition,
as a child of reverence; as a mere accidental mis-
direction of one of the noblest and most wholesome
faculties of man.

This is not the place wherein to argue with either of
these parties; and I shall simply say that supersti-
tion seems to me altogether a physical affection, as
thoroughly material and corporeal as those of eating
or sleeping, remembering or dreaming.

'After this, it will be necessary to define superstition,
in order to have some tolerably clear understanding of
what we are talking about. I beg leave to define it as
— Fear of the unknown.

Johnson, who was no dialectician, and, moreover,
superstitious enough himself, gives eight difierent de-
finitions of the word ; which is equivalent to confessing
his inability to define it at all : —

SUPEBSTITION. 231

"1. Unnecessary fear or scruples in religion; ob-
servance of unnecessary and uncommanded rites or
practices ; religion without morality.

" 2. False religion ; reverence of beings not proper
objects of reverence ; false worship.

" 3. Over nicety ; exactness too scrupulous."

Eight meanings ; which, on the principle that eight
eighths, or indeed 800, do not make one whole, may be
considered as no definition. His first thought, as often
happens, is the best — ^" Unnecessary fear." But after
that he wanders. The root-meaning of the word is
still to seek. But, indeed, the popular meaning, thanks
to popular common sense, will generally be found to
contain in itself the root- meaning.

Let us go back to the Latin word Superstitio. Cicero
says that the superstitious element consists in " a cer-
tain empty dread of the gods " — a purely physical
affection, if you will remember three things : —

1. That dread is in itself a physical affection.

2. That the gods who were dreaded were, with the
vulgar, who alone dreaded them, merely impersona-
tions of the powers of nature.

3. That it was physical injury which these gods
were expected to inflict.

But he himself agrees with this theory of mine ; for he
says shortly after, that not only philosophers, but even
the ancient Piomans, had separated superstition from

232 SUPERSTITION.

religion ; and that the word was first applied to those
who prayed all day nt liberi sui sibi superstites essent
— might survive them. On the etymology no one will
depend who knows the remarkable absence of any
etymological instinct in the ancients, in consequence of
their weak grasp of that sound inductive method which
has created modern criticism. But if it be correct, it
is a natural and pathetic form for superstition to take
in the minds of men who saw their children fade and
die; probably the greater number of them beneath
diseases which mankind could neither comprehend nor
cure.

The best exemplification of what the ancients meant
by superstition is to be found in the lively and dramatic
words of Aristotle's great pupil, Theophrastus.

The superstitious man, according to him, after having
washed his hands with lustral water — that is, water in
which a torch from the altar had been quenched, goes
about with a laurel-leaf in his mouth, to keep off evil
influences, as the pigs in Devonshire used, in my youth,
to go about with a withe of mountain ash round their
necks to keep ofi" the evil eye. If a weasel crosses his
path, he stops, and either throws three pebbles into
the road, or, with the innate selfishness of fear, lets
some one else go before him, and attract to himself the
harm which may ensue. He has a similar dread of a
screech-owl, whom he compliments in the name of its

SUPERSTITION. 233

mistress, Pallas Athene. If he finds a serpent in his
house, he sets up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-
cross-way an anointed stone, he pours oil on it, kneels
down, and adores it. If a rat has nibbled one of his
sacks he takes it for a fearful portent — a superstition
which Cicero also mentions. He dare not sit on a
tomb, because it would be assisting at his own funeral.
He purifies endlessly his house, saying that Hecate —
that is, the moon — has exercised some malign influence
on it ; and many other purifications he observes, of
which I shall only say that they are by their nature
plainly, like the last, meant as preservatives against
unseen malarias or contagions, possible or impossible.
He assists every month with his children at the
mysteries of the Orphic priests ; and finally, whenever
he sees an epileptic patient, he spits in his own bosom
to avert the evil omen.

I have quoted, I believe, every fact given by Theo-
phrastus ; and you will agree, I am sure, that the
moving and inspiring element of such a character is
mere bodily fear of unknown evil. The only super-
stition attributed to him which does not at first sight
seem to have its root in dread is that of the Orphic
mysteries. But of them Miiller says that the Dionusos
whom they worshipped " was an infernal deity, con-
nected with Hades, and was the personification, not
merely of rapturous pleasure, but of a deep sorrow for

234- SUPERSTITION.

the miseries of human life." The Orphic societies of
Greece seem to have heen peculiarly ascetic, taking no
animal food save raw flesh from the sacrificed ox of
Dionusos. And Plato speaks of a lower grade of Orphic
priests, Orpheotelestai, " who used to come before the
doors of the rich, and promise, by sacrifices and expia-
tory songs, to release them from their own sins, and
those of their forefathers ; " and such would be but too
likely to get a hearing from the man who was afraid of
a weasel or an owl.

Now, this same bodily fear, I verily believe, will be
found at the root of all superstition whatsoever.

But be it so. Fear is a natural passion, and a whole-
some one. Without the instinct of self-preservation,
which causes the sea-anemone to contract its tentacles,
or the fish to dash into its hover, species would be exter-
mined wholesale by involuntary suicide.

Yes ; fear is wholesome enough, like all other faculties,
as long as it is controlled by reason. But what if the
fear be not rational, but irrational ? What if it be, in
plain homely English, blind fear ; fear of the unknown,
simply because it is unknown ? Is it not likely, then,
to be afraid of the wrong object ? to be hurtful, ruinous
to animals as well as to man ? Any one will confess
that, who has ever seen a horse inflict on himself mortal
injuries, in his frantic attempts to escape from a quite
imaginary danger. I have good reasons for believing

SUPERSTITION. 235

that not only animals liere and there, but whole flocks

and swarms of them, are often destroyed, even in the

wild state, by mistaken fear; by such panics, for

instance, as cause a whole herd of buffalos to rush over

a bluff, and be dashed to pieces. And remark that this

capacity of panic, fear-of superstition, as I should call

it— is greatest in those animals, the dog and the horse

for instance, which have the most rapid and vivid fancy.

Does not the unlettered Highlander say all that I want

to say, when he attributes to his dog and his horse, on

the strength of these very manifestations of fear, the

capacity of seeing ghosts and fairies before he can see

them himself?

But blind fear not only causes evil to the coward
himself: it makes him a source of evil to others ; for it
is the cruellest of all human states. It transforms the
man into the likeness of the cat, who, when she is
caught in a trap, or shut up in a room, has too low an
intellect to understand that you wish to release her ;
and, in the madness of terror, bites and tears at the
hand which tries to do her good. Yes; very cruel is
blind fear. When a man dreads he knows not what, he
will do he cares not what. When he dreads desperately,
he will act desperately. When he dreads beyond all
reason, he will behave beyond all reason. He has no
law of guidance left, save the lowest selfishness. No
law of guidance: and yet his intellect, left unguided.

236' SUPEESTITION.

may be rapid and acute enough to lead him into terrible
follies. Infinitely more imaginative than the lowest
animals, he is for that very reason capable of being
infinitely more foolish, more cowardly, more super-
stitious. He can — what the lower animals, happily for
them, cannot — organise his folly ; erect his superstitions
into a science ; and create a whole mythology out of his
blind fear of the unknown. And when he has done
that — Woe to the weak ! For when he has reduced his
superstition to a science, then he will reduce his cruelty
to a science likewise, and write books like the Malleus
Maleficarum, and the rest of the witch-literature of the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries ; of which
Mr. Lecky has of late told the world so much, and told
it most faithfully and most fairly.

But, fear of the unknown ? Is not that fear of the
unseen world ? And is not that fear of the spiritual
world ? Pardon me : a great deal of that fear — all of
it, indeed, which is superstition — is simply not fear
of the spiritual, but of the material ; and of nothing
else.

The spiritual world — I beg you to fix this in your
minds — is not merely an invisible world which may
become visible, but an invisible world which is by its
essence invisible ; a moral world, a world of right and
wrong. And spiritual fear — which is one of the noblest
of all afi'ections, as bodily fear is one of the basest — is,

SUPERSTITION. 237

if properly defined, nothing less or more than the fear
of doing wrong ; of becoming a worse man.

But what has that to do with mere fear of the unseen ?
The fancy which conceives the fear is physical, not
spiritual. Think for yourselves. What difference is
there between a savage's fear of a demon, and a hunter's
fear of a fall ? The hunter sees a fence. He does not
know what is on the other side : but he has seen fences
like it with a great ditch on the other side, and suspects
one here likewise. He has seen horses fall at such, and
men hurt thereby. He pictures to himself his horse
falling at that fence, himself rolling in the ditch, with
possibly a broken limb ; and he recoils from the picture
he himself has made; and perhaps with very good
reason. His picture may have its counterpart in fact ;
and he may break his leg. But his picture, like the
previous pictures from which it was compounded, is
simply a physical impression on the brain, just as much
as those in dreams.

Now, does the fact of the ditch, the fall, and the
broken leg, being unseen and unknown, make them a
spiritual ditch, a spiritual fall, a spiritual broken leg ?
And does the fact of the demon and his doings, being
as yet unseen and unknown, make them spiritual, or
the harm that he may do, a spiritual harm ? What
does the savage fear ? Lest the demon should appear ;
that is, become obvious to his physical senses, and pro-

238 SUPERSTITION.

duce an unpleasant physical effect on them. He fears
lest the fiend should entice him into the bog, break the
hand-bridge over the brook, turn into a horse and ride
away with him, or jump out from behind a tree and
wring his neck — tolerably hard physical facts, all of
them ; the children of physical fancy, regarded with
physical dread. Even if the superstition proved true ;
even if the demon did appear ; even if he wrung the
traveller's neck in sound earnest, there would be no
more spiritual agency or phenomenon in the whole
tragedy than there is in the parlour table, when
spiritual somethings make spiritual raps upon spiritual
wood ; and human beings, who are really spirits — and
would to heaven they would remember that fact, and
what it means— believe that anything has happened
beyond a clumsy juggler's trick.

You demur ? Do you not see that the demon, by the
mere fact of having produced physical consequences,
would have become himself a physical agent, a member
of physical Nature, and therefore to be explained, he
and his doings, by physical laws ? If you do not see
that conclusion at first sight, think over it till you do.

It may seem to some that I have founded my theory
on a very narrow basis ; that I am building up an
inverted pyramid; or that, considering the number-
less, complex, fantastic shapes which superstition has
assumed, bodily fear is too simple to explain them all.

SUPERSTITION. 239

But if those persons will think a second time, they
must agree that my base is as broad as the phenomena
which it explains ; for every man is capable of fear.
And they will see, too, that the cause of superstition
must be something like fear, which is common to all
men : for all, at least as children, are capable of super-
stition ; and that it must be something which, like fear,
is of a most simple, rudimentary, barbaric kind ; for
the lowest savage, of whatever he is not capable, is still
superstitious, often to a very ugly degree. Superstition
seems, indeed, to be, next to the making of stone-
weapons, the earliest method of asserting his superiority
to the brutes which has occurred to that utterly abnor-
mal and fantastic lusus naturas called man.

Now let us put ourselves awhile, as far 'as we can, in
the place of that same savage ; and try whether my
theory will not justify itself; whether or not super-
stition, with all its vagaries, may have been, indeed
must have been, the result of that ignorance and fear
which he carried about with him, every time he prowled
for food through the primeval forest.

A savage's first division of nature would be, I should
say, into things which he can eat, and things which
can eat him ; including, of course, his most formidable
enemy, and most savoury food— his fellow-man. In
finding out what he can eat, we must remember, he
will have gone through much experience which will

240 SUPERSTITION.

Lave inspired liim with a serious respect for the hidden
wrath of nature ; like those Himalayan folk, of whom
Hooker says, that as they know every poisonous plant,
they must have tried them all — not always with
impunity.

So he gets at a third class of objects — things which
he cannot eat, and which will not eat him ; but will only
do him harm, as it seems to him, out of pure malice,
like poisonous plants and serpents. There are natural
accidents, too, which fall into the same category,
stones, floods, fires, avalanches. They hurt him or kill
him, surely for ends of their own. If a rock falls from
the cliff above him, what more natural than to suppose
that there is some giant up there who threw it at him ?
If he had been up there, and strong enough, and had
seen a man walking underneath, he would certainly
have thrown the stone at him and killed him. For
first, he might have eaten the man after ; and even if
he were not hungry, the man might have done him a
mischief ; and it was prudent to prevent that, by doing
him a mischief first. Besides, the man might have a
wife ; and if he killed the man, then the wife would,
by a very ancient law common to man and animals,
become the prize of the victor. Such is the natural
maUj the carnal man, the soulish man, the dvdp(07ro<i
yfruxt'KO'i of St. Paul, with five tolerably acute senses,
which are ruled by five very acute animal passions —

SUPERSTITION. 2-11

hunger, sex, rage, vanity, fear. It is with the working
of the last passion, fear, that this lecture has to do.

So the savage concludes that there must be a giant
living in the cliff, who threw stones at him, with evil
intent ; and he concludes in like wise concerning most
other natural phenomena. There is something in them
which will hurt him, and therefore likes to hurt him :
and if he cannot destroy them, and so deliver himself,
his fear of them grows quite boundless. There are
hundreds of natural objects on which he learns to look
with the same eyes as the little boys of Teneriffe look
on the useless and poisonous Eujiihorhia canariensis. It
is to them — according to Mr. Piazzi Smyth — a demon
who would kill them, if it could only run after them ;
but as it cannot, they shout Spanish curses at it,
and pelt it with volleys of stones, " screeching with
elfin joy, and using worse names than ever, when the
poisonous milk spurts out from its bruised stalks."

And if such be the attitude of the uneducated man
towards the permanent terrors of nature, what will it
be towards those which are sudden and seemingly ca-
pricious ?— towards storms, earthquakes, floods, blights,
pestilences ? "We know too well what it has been — one
of blind, and therefore often cruel, fear. How could it
be otherwise ? Was Theophrastus's superstitious man
so very foolish for pouring oil on every round stone ?
I tliink there was a great deal to be said for him. This

242 SUPERSTITION.

worship of Baetyli was rational enough. They were
aerolites, fallen from heaven. Was it not as well to be
civil to such messengers from above? — to testify by
homage to them due awe of the being who had thrown
them at men, and who though he had missed his shot
that time, might not miss it the next ? I think if we,
knowing nothing of either gunpowder, astronomy, or
Christianity, saw an Armstrong bolt fall within five
miles of London, we should be inclined to be very
respectful to it indeed. So the aerolites, or glacial
boulders, or polished stone weapons of an extinct
race, which looked like aerolites, were the children of
Ouranos the heaven, and had souls in them. One,
by one of those strange transformations in which the
logic of unreason indulges, the image of Diana of the
Ephesians, which fell doXvn from Jupiter ; another was
the Ancile, the holy shield which fell from the same
place in the days of Numa Pompilius, and was the
guardian genius of Eome; and several more became
notable for ages.

Why not? The uneducated man of genius, un-
acquainted alike with metaphysics and with biology,
sees, like a child, a personality in every strange and
sharply-defined object. A cloud like an angel may
be an angel ; a bit of crooked root like a man may be a
man turned into wood — perhaps to be turned back again
at its own will. An erratic block has arrived where it

SUPERSTITION. 243

is by strange unknown means. Is not that an evidence
of its personality ? Either it has flown hither itself, or
some one has thrown it. In the former case, it has life,
and is proportionally formidable ; in the latter, he who
had thrown it is formidable.

I know two erratic blocks of porphyry — I believe there
are three — in Cornwall, lying one on serpentine, one,
I think, on slate, which— so I was always informed as a
boy — were the stones which St, Kevern threw after St.
Just when the latter stole his host's chalice and paten,
and ran away with them to the Land's End. Why
not? Before we knew anything about the action of
icebergs and glaciers, that is, until the last eighty years,
that was as good a story as any other ; while how life-
like these boulders are, let a great poet testify ; for the
fact has not escaped the delicate eye of Wordsworth :

" As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched ou the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who do the same espy,
By what means it could thither come, and whence.
So that it seems a thing endued with sense ;
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, tliere to sun itself."

To the civilised poet, the fancy becomes a beautiful
simile ; to a savage poet, it would have become a ma-
terial and a very formidable fact. He stands in the
valley, and looks up at the boulder on the far-ofl" fells.
He is puzzled by it. He fears it. At last he makes up

24i SUPERSTITION.

his mind. It is alive. As the shadows move over it,
he sees it move. May it not sleep there all day, and
prowl for prey all night ? He had been always afraid
of going up those fells ; now he will never go. There
is a monster there.

Childish enough, no doubt. But remember that the
savage is always a child. So, indeed, are millions, as
well clothed, housed, and policed as ourselves — children
from the cradle to the grave. But of them I do not
talk ; because, happily for the world, their childishness
is so overlaid by the result of other men's manhood ; by
an ^atmosphere of civilisation and Christianity which
they have accepted at second-hand as the conclusions
of minds wiser than their own, that they do all
manner of reasonable things for bad reasons, or for no
reason at all, save the passion of imitation. Not in
them, but in the savage, can we sec man as he is by
nature, the puppet of his senses and his passions, the
natural slave of his own fears.

But has the savage no other faculties, save his five
senses and five passions ? I do not say that. I should
be most unphilosophical if I said it ; for the history of
mankind proves that he has infinitely more in him than
that. Yes : but in him that infinite more, which is
not only the noblest part of humanity, but, it may be,
humanity itself, is not to be counted as one of the
roots of superstition. For in the savage man, in whom

SUPERSTITION. 245

superstition certainly originates, that infinite more is
still merely in him ; inside him ; a faculty : but not yet
a fact. It has not come out of him into consciousness,
purpose, and act ; and is to be treated as non-existent :
while what has come out, his passions and senses, is
enough to explain all the vagaries of superstition ; a
vera causa for all its phenomena. And if we seem to
have found a sufficient explanation already, it is un-
philosophical to look further, at least till we have tried
whether our explanation fits the facts.

Nevertheless, there is another faculty in the savage,
to which I have already alluded, common to him and
to at least the higher vertebrates— fancy ; the power
of reproducing internal images of external objects,
whether in its waking form of physical memory — if,
indeed, all memory be not physical — or in its sleeping
form of dreaming. Upon this last, which has played
so very important a part in superstition in all ages, I
beg you to think a moment. Eecollect your own dreams
during childhood ; and recollect again that the savage
is always a child. Eecollect how difficult it was for
you in childhood, how difficult it must be always for
the savage, to decide whether dreams are phantasms or
realities. To the savage, I doubt not, the food he eats,
the foes he grapples with, in dreams, are as real as any
waking impressions. But, moreover, these dreams will
be very often, as children's dreams are wont to be, of a

246 SUPERSTITION.

painful and terrible kind. Perhaps tliey will be always
painful ; perhaps his dull brain will never dream, save
under the influence of indigestion, or hunger, or an
uncomfortable attitude. And so, in addition to his
waking experience of the terrors of nature, he will
have a whole dream-experience besides, of a still more
terrific kind. He walks by day past a black cavern
mouth, and thinks, with a shudder — Something ugly
may live in that ugly hole : what if it jumped out
upon me? He broods over the thought with the
intensity of a narrow and unoccupied mind; and a
few nights after, he has eaten — but let us draw a veil
before the larder of a savage — his chin is pinned down
on his chest, a slight congestion of the brain comes on ;
and behold he finds himself again at that cavern's
mouth, and something ugly does jump out upon him :
and the cavern is a haunted spot henceforth to him
and to all his tribe. It is in vain that his family tell
him that he has been lying asleep at home all the
while. He has the evidence of his senses to prove the
contrary. He must have got out of himself, and gone
into the woods. When we remember that certain wise
Greek philosophers could find no better explanation
of dreaming than that the soul left the body, and
wandered free, we cannot condemn the savage for his
theory.

Now, I submit that in these simple facts we have a

SUPEBSTITION. 247

group of " true causes " which are the roots of all the
superstitions of the world.

And if any one shall complain that I am talking
materialism : I shall answer, that I am doing exactly
the opposite. I am trying to eliminate and get rid of
that which is material, animal, and base ; in order that
that which is truly spiritual may stand out, distinct
and clear, in its divine and eternal beauty.

To explain, and at the same time, as I think, to
verify my hypothesis, let me give you an example —
fictitious, it is true, but probable fact nevertheless;
because it is patched up of many fragments of actual
fact : and let us see how, in following it out, we shall
pass through almost every possible form of super-
stition.

Suppose a great hollow tree, in which the formidable
wasps of the tropics have built for ages. The average
savage hurries past the spot in mere bodily fear ; for
if they come out against him, they will sting him to
death ; till at last there comes by a savage wiser than
the rest, with more observation, reflection, imagination,
independence of will — the genius of his tribe.

The awful shade of the great tree, added to his terror
of the wasps, weighs on him, and excites his brain.
Perhaps, too, he has had a wife or a child stung to
death by these same wasps. These wasps, so small,
yet so wise, far wiser than he : they fly, and they

248 S UPEE S TITION.

sting. Ah, if he could fly and sting; how he "would
kill and eat, and live' right merrily. They build
great towns ; they rob far and wide ; they never quarrel
with each other : they must have some one to teach
them, to lead them — they must have a king. And so
he gets the fancy of a "Wasp-King; as the western
Irish still believe in the Master Otter ; as the Eed Men
believe in the King of the BujQfalos, and find the bones
of his ancestors in the Mammoth remains of Big-bone
Lick ; as the Philistines of Ekron — to quote a notorious
instance — actually worshipped Baal-zebub, lord of the
flies.

If they have a king, he must be inside that tree,
of course. If he, the savage, were a king, he would
not work for his bread, but sit at home and make
others feed him ; and so, no doubt, does the wasp-
king.

And when he goes home he will brood over this
wonderful discovery of the wasp-king ; till, like a child,
he can think of nothing else. He will go to the tree,
and watch for him to come out. The wasps will get
accustomed to his motionless figure, and leave him
unhurt ; till the new fancy will rise in his mind that
he is a favourite of this wasp-king : and at last he will
find himself grovelling before the tree, saying — " Oh
great wasp-king, pity me, and tell your children not to
sting me, and I will bring you honey, and fruit, and

SUPERSTITION. 249

flowers to eat, and I will flatter you, and worship you,
and you shall be my king."

And then he would gradually boast of his discovery ;
of the new mysterious bond between him and the wasp-
king ; and his tribe would believe him, and fear him ;
and fear him still more when he began to say, as he
surely would, not merely — " I can ask the wasp-king,
and he will tell his children not to sting you : " but —
" I can ask the wasp-king, and he will send his children,
and sting you all to death." Vanity and ambition will
have prompted the threat : but it will not be altogether
a lie. The man will more than half believe his own
words ; he will quite believe them when he has repeated
them a dozen times.

And so he will become a great man, and a king,
under the protection of the king of the wasps; and he
will become, and it may be his children after him,
priest of the wasp-king, who will be their fetish, and
the fetish of their tribe.

And they will prosper, under the protection of the
wasp-king. The wasp will become their moral ideal,
whose virtues they must copy. The new chief will
preach to them wild eloquent words. They must sting
like wasps, revenge like wasps, hold all together like
wasps, build like wasps, work hard like wasps, rob like
wasps ; then, like the wasps, they will be the terror of
all around, and kill and eat all their enemies. Soon

250 SUPERSTITION.

tliey will call themselves The Wasps. They will boast
that their king's father or grandfather, and soon that
the ancestor of the whole tribe, was an actual wasp ;
and the wasp will become at once their eponym hero,
their deity, their ideal, their civiliser ; who has taught
them to build a kraal of huts, as he taught his children
to build a hive.

Now, if there should come to any thinking man of
this tribe, at this epoch, the new thought — Who made
the world ? he will be sorely puzzled. The conception
of a world has never crossed his mind before. He never
pictured to himself anything beyond the nearest ridge
of mountains ; and as for a Maker, that will be a greater
puzzle still. What makers or builders more cunning
than those wasps of whom his foolish head is full ? Of
course, he sees it now. A Wasp made the world ; which
to him entirely new guess might become an integral
part of his tribe's creed. That would be their cos-
mogony. And if, a generation or two after, another
savage genius should guess that the world was a globe
hanging in the heavens, he would, if he had imagination
enough to take the thought in at all, put it to himself
in a form suited to his previous knowledge and concep-
tions. It would seem to him that The Wasp flew about
the skies with the world in his mouth, as he carries a
bluebottle fly ; and that would be the astronomy of his
tribe henceforth. Absurd enough; but — as every man

SUPERSTITION. 251

■who is acquainted with old mythical cosmogonies must
know — no more absurd than twenty similar guesses on
record. Try to imagine the gradual genesis of such
myths as the Egyptian scarabaeus and egg, or the Hindoo
theory that the world stood on an elephant, the elephant
on a tortoise, the tortoise on that infinite note of in-
terrogation which, as some one expresses it, underlies all
physical speculations, and judge : must they not have
arisen in some such fashion as that which I have
pointed out ?

This, I say, would be the culminating point of the
wasp-worship, which had sprung up out of bodily fear
of being stung.

But times might come for it in which it would go
through various changes, through which every super-
stition in the world, I suppose, has passed or is doomed
to pass.

The wasp-men might be conquered, and possibly
eaten, by a stronger tribe than themselves. What
would be the result ? They would fight valiantly at
first, like wasps. But what if they began to fail ?
Was not the wasp-king angry with them ? Had not he
deserted them ? He must be appeased ; he must have
his revenge. They would take a captive, and ofi'er him
to the wasps. So did a North American tribe, in their
need, some forty years ago ; when, because their maize-
crops failed, they roasted alive a captive girl, cut her

252 SUPERSTITION.

to pieces, and sowed lier witli their corn. I would not
tell the story, for the horror of it, did it not hear with
such fearful force on my argument. What were those
Eed Men thinking of? What chain of misreasoning
had they in their heads when they hit on that as a
device for making the crops grow? Who can tell?
AVho can make the crooked straight, or number that
which is wanting? As said Solomon of old, so must
we — " The foolishness of fools is folly." One thing
only we can say of them, that they were horribly afraid
of famine, and took that means of ridding themselves of
their fear.

But what if the wasp-tribe had no captives ? They
would ofier slaves. What if the agony and death of
slaves did not appease the wasps ? They would oflfer
their fairest, their dearest, their sons and their
daughters, to the wasps ; as the Carthaginians, in like
strait, offered in one day 200 noble boys to Moloch, the
volcano-god, whose worship they had brought out of
Syria ; whose original meaning they had probably for-
gotten ; of whom they only knew that he was a dark
and devouring being, who must be appeased with the
burning bodies of their sons and daughters. And so
the veil of fancy would be lifted again, and the whole
superstition stand forth revealed as the mere offspring
of bodily fear.

But more ; the survivors of the conquest might, per-

SUPEUSTITION. 253

haps, escape, and carry their wasp-fetish into a new
land. But if they became poor and weakly, their brains
and imagination, degenerating with their bodies, would
degrade their wasp-worship till they knew not what it
meant. Away from the sacred tree, in a country the
wasps of which were not so large or formidable, they
would require a remembrancer of the wasp-king ; and
they would make one — a wasp of wood, or what not.
After a while, according to that strange law of fancy,
the root of all idolatry, which you may see at work in
every child who plays with a doll, the symbol would
become identified with the thing symbolised ; they
would invest the wooden wasp with all the terrible
attributes which had belonged to the live wasps of the
tree ; and after a few centuries, when all remembrance
of the tree, the wasp-prophet and chieftain, and his
descent from the divine wasp — aye, even of their defeat
and flight — had vanished from their songs and legends,
they would be found bowing down in fear and trem-
bling to a little ancient wooden wasp, which came from
they knew not whence, and meant they knew not what,
save that it was a very " old fetish," a " great medicine,"
or some such other formula for expressing their own
ignorance and dread. Just so do the half-savage natives
of Thibet, and the Irishwomen of Kerry, by a strange
coincidence — unless the ancient Irish were Buddhists,
like the Himalayans — tie just the same scraps of rag on

254 SUPERSTITION.

the bushes round just the same holy wells, as do the
Negros of Central Africa upon their " Devil's Trees ;"
they know not why, save that their ancestors did it, and
it is a charm against ill-luck and danger.

And the sacred tree ? That, too, might undergo a
metamorphosis in the minds of men. The conquerors
would see their aboriginal slaves of the old race still
haunting the tree, making stealthy offerings to it by
night : and they would ask the reason. But they would
not be told. The secret would be guarded ; such secrets
were guarded, in Greece, in Italy, in medieval France,
by the superstitious awe, the cunning, even the hidden
self-conceit, of the conquered race. Then the con-
querors would wish to imitate their own slaves. They
might be in the right. There might be something
magical, uncanny, in the hollow tree, which might hurt
them ; might be jealous of them as intruders. They,
too, would invest the place with sacred awe. If they
were gloomy, like the Teutonic conquerors of Europe
and the Arabian conquerors of the East, they would
invest it with unseen terrors. They would say, like
them, a devil lives in the tree. If they were of a sunny
temper, like the Hellenes, they would invest it with
unseen graces. What a noble tree ! "What a fair foun-
tain hard by its roots ! Surely some fair and graceful
being must dwell therein, and come out to bathe by
nif-ht in that clear wave. What meant the fruit, the

SUPERSTITION. 255

flowers, the honey, which the slaves left there by night ?
Pure food for some pure nymph. The wasp-gods would
be forgotten ; probably smoked out as sacrilegious in-
truders. The lucky seer or poet who struck out the
fancy would soon find imitators ; and it would become,
after a while, a common and popular superstition that
Hamadryads haunted the hollow forest trees. Naiads
the wells, and Oreads the lawns. Somewhat thus, I
presume, did the more cheerful Hellenic myths dis-
place the darker superstitions of the Pelasgi, and those
rude Arcadian tribes who ofi'ered, even as late as the
Eoman Empire, human sacrifices to gods whose original
names were forgotten.

But even the cultus of nymphs would be defiled after
a while by a darker element. However fair, they
might be capricious and revengeful, like other women.
Why not ? And soon, men going out into the forest
would be missed for a while. They had eaten narcotic
berries, got sun-strokes, wandered till they lost their
wits. At all events, their wits were gone. Who had
done it ? Who but the nymphs ? The men had seen
something they should not have seen ; done something
they would not have done ; and the nymphs had
punished the unconscious rudeness by that frenzy.
Fear, everywhere fear, of Nature — the spotted panther,
as some one calls her, as fair as cruel, as playful as
treacherous. Always fear of Nature, till a Divine light

256 SUPERSTITION.

arise, and show men that tliey are not the puppets of
Nature, but her lords ; and that they are to fear God,
and fear naught else.

And so ends my true myth of the wasp-tree. No, it
need not end there ; it may develop into a yet darker
and more hideous form of superstition, which Europe
has often seen ; which is common now among the
Negros ; * which, we may hope, will soon be exter-
minated.

This might happen. For it, or something like it,
has happened too many times already.

That to the ancient women who still kept up the
irrational remnant of the wasp-worship, beneath the
sacred tree, other women might resort ; not merely
from curiosity, or an excited imagination, but from
jealousy and revenge. Oppressed, as woman has always
been under the reign of brute force ; beaten, outraged,
deserted, at best married against her will, she has too
often gone for comfort and help— and those of the very
darkest kind — to the works of darkness; and there
never were wanting — there are not wanting, even now,
in remote parts of these isles — wicked old women who
would, by help of the old superstitions, do for her what
she wished. Soon would follow mysterious deaths of

* For an account of Sorcery and Fetishism amonp: the African
Nc^ros, see Burton's 'Lake llegions of Central Africa,' vol. ii. pp.
341-3G0.

SUPERSTITION. 257

rivals, of liusbands, of babes; then rumours of dark
rites connected with the sacred tree, with poison, with
the wasp and his sting, with human sacrifices ; lies
mingled with truth, more and more confused and
frantic, the more they were misinvestigated by men
mad with fear : till there would arise one of those
witch-manias, which are too common still among the
African Negros, which were too common of old among
the men of our race.

I say, among the men. To comprehend a witch-
mania, you must look at it as — what the witch-litera-
ture confesses it unblushingly to be — man's dread of
Nature excited to its highest form, as dread of woman.

She is to the barbarous man — she should be more
and more to the ciyilised man — not only the most
beautiful and precious, but the most wonderful and
mysterious of all natural objects, if it be only as the
author of his physical being. She is to the savage a
miracle to be alternately adored and dreaded. He
dreads her more delicate nervous organisation, which
often takes shapes to him demoniacal and miraculous ;
her quicker instincts, her readier wit, which seem to
him to have in them somewhat prophetic and super-
human, which entangle him as in an invisible net,
and rule him against his will. He dreads her very
tongue, more crushing than his heaviest club, more
keen than his poisoned arrows. He dreads those habits;

258 SUPERSTITION.

of secresy and falsehood, the weapons of the weak, to
which savage and degraded woman always has recourse.
He dreads the very medicinal skill which she has
learnt to exercise, as nurse, comforter, and slave. He
dreads those secret ceremonies, those mysterious
initiations which no man may witness, which he has
permitted to her in all ages, in so many — if not all —
barbarous and semi-barbarous races, whether Negro,
American, Syrian, Greek, or Eoman, as a homage to
the mysterious importance of her who brings him into
the world. If she turn against him — she, with all
her unknown powers, she who is the sharer of his
deepest secrets, who prepares his very food day by day
— what harm can she not, may she not do ? And that
she has good reason to turn against him, he knows too
well. What deliverance is there from this mysterious
house-fiend, save brute force? Terror, torture, mur-
der, must be the order of the day. Woman must be
crushed, at all price, by the blind fear of the man.

I shall say no more. I shall draw a veil, for very
pity and shame, over the most important and most
significant facts of this, the most hideous of all human
follies. I have, I think, given you hints enough to
show that it, like all other superstitions, is the child —
the last born and the ugliest child — of blind dread of
the unknown.

SCIENCE.

A Lectuue delivered at the Royal Institution.

I SAID, that Superstition was the child of Fear, and
Fear the child of Ignorance ; and you might expect me
to say antithetically, that Science was the child of
Courage, and Courage the child of Knowledge.

But these genealogies — like most metaphors — do not
fit exactly, as you may see for yourselves.

If fear be the child of ignorance, ignorance is also
the child of fear ; the two react on, and produce each
other. The more men dread Nature, the less they
wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful
secrets ? It is dangerous ; perhaps impious. She says
to them, as in the Egyptian temple of old — "I am
Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And
why should they try or wish to lift it? If she will
leave them in peace, they will leave her in peace. It
is enough that she does not destroy them. So as
ignorance bred fear, fear breeds fresh and willing
ignorance.

s 2

260 SCIENCE.

And courage ? We may say, and truly, that courage
is the child of knowledge. But we may say as truly,
that knowledge is the child of courage. Those Egyp-
tian priests in the temple of Isis would have told you
that knowledge was the child of mystery, of special
illumination, of reverence, and what not ; hiding under
grand words their purpose of keeping the masses
ignorant, that they might be their slaves. Keverence ?
I will yield to none in reverence for reverence. I will
all but agree with the wise man who said that rever-
ence is the root of all virtues. But which child
reverences his father most ? He who comes joyfully
and trustfully to meet him, that he may learn his
father's mind, and do his will : or he who at his father's
coming runs away and hides, lest he should be beaten
for he knows not what ? There is a scientific reverence,
a reverence of courage, which is surely one of the
highest forms of reverence. That, namely, which so
reveres every fact, that it dare not overlook or falsify
it, seem it never so minute ; which feels that because
it is a fact, it cannot be minute, cannot be unimport-
ant ; that it must be a fact of God ; a message from
God ; a voice of God, as Bacon has it, revealed in
things ; and which therefore, just because it stands
in solemn awe of such paltry facts as the Scolopax
feather in a snipe's pinion, or the jagged leaves which
appear capriciously in certain honeysuckles, believes

SCIENCE. 261

that there is likely to be some deep and wide secret
underlying them, which is worth years of thought to
solve. That is reverence ; a reverence which is grow-
ing, thank God, more and more common ; which will
produce, as it grows more common still, fruit which
generations yet unborn shall bless.

But as for that other reverence, which shuts its eyes
and ears in pious awe — what is it but cowardice decked
out in state robes, putting on the sacred Urim and Thum-
mim, not that men may ask counsel of the Deity, but
that they may not ? What is it but cowardice, very
pitiable when unmasked ; and what is its child but igno-
rance as pitiable, which would be ludicrous were it not
so injurious ? If a man comes up to Nature as to a
parrot or a monkey, with this prevailing thought in
his head — Will it bite me? — will he not be pretty cer-
tain to make up his mind that it may bite him, and
had therefore best be left alone ? It is only the man
of courage — few and far between — who will stand the
chance of a first bite, in the hope of teaching the parrot
to talk, or the monkey to fire ofi" a gun. And it is only
the man of courage — few and far between — who w^ill
stand the chance of a first bite from Nature, which may
kill him for aught he knows — for her teeth, though
clumsy, are very strong — in order that he may tame
her and break her in to his use by the very same
method by which that admirable inductive philosopher,

262 SCIENCE.

Mr, Earey, used to break in his horses ; first, by not
being afraid of them ; and next, by trying to find out
what they were thinking of. But after all, as with
animals, so with Nature ; cowardice is dangerous. The
surest method of getting bitten by an animal is to be
afraid of it ; and the surest method of being injured by
Nature is to be afraid of it. Only as far as we un-
derstand Nature are we safe from it ; and those who
in any age counsel mankind not to pry into the secrets
of the universe, counsel them not to provide for their
own life and well-being, or for their children after them.
But how few there have been in any age who
have not been afraid of Nature. How few have set
themselves, like Earey, to tame her by finding out
what she is thinking of. The mass are glad to have
the results of science, as they are to buy Mr. Earey's
horses after they are tamed : but for want of courage
or of wit, they had rather leave the taming process to
some one else. And therefore we may say that what
knowledge of Nature we have — and we have very little —
we owe to the courage of those men — and they have
been very few — who have been inspired to face Nature
boldly ; and say — or, what is better, act as if they were
saying — " I find something in me which I do not find
in you ; which gives me the hope that I can grow to
understand you, though you may not understand me ;
that I may become your master, and not as now, you

SCIENCE. 263

mine. And if not, I will know : or die in the
search,"

It is to those men, the few and far between, in a
very few ages and very few countries, who have thus
risen in rebellion against Nature, and looked it in the
face with an unquailing glance, that we owe what we
call Physical Science.

There have been four races — or rather a very few
men of each four races — who have faced Nature after
this gallant wise.

First, the old Jews. I speak of them, be it remem-
bered, exclusively from an historical, and not a religious
point of view.

These people, at a very remote epoch, emerged from
a country highly civilised, but sunk in the supersti-
tions of nature-worship. They invaded and mingled
with tribes whose superstitions were even more de-
based, silly, and foul than those of the Egyptians from
whom they escaped. Their own masses were for cen-
turies given up to nature-worship. Now among those
Jews arose men — a very few — sages — prophets — call
them what you will, the men were inspired heroes and
philosophers — who assumed towards nature an attitude
utterly diflferent from the rest of their countrymen and
the rest of the then world ; who denounced superstition
and the dread of nature as the parent of all manner of
vice and misery ; who for themselves said boldly that

264 SCIENCE.

they discerned in the universe an order, a unity, a per-
manence of law, wliicli gave them courage instead of
fear. They found delight and not dread in the thought
that the universe obeyed a law which could not be
broken ; that all things continued to that day accord-
ing to a certain ordinance. They took a view of Nature
totally new in that age ; healthy, human, cheerful,
loving, trustful, and yet reverent— identical with that
which happily is beginning to prevail in our own day.
They defied those very volcanic and meteoric phe-
nomena of their land, to which their countrymen were
slaying their own children in the clefts of the rocks,
and, like Theophrastus' superstitious man, pouring their
drink-offerings on the smooth stones of the valley ;
and declared that, for their part, they would not fear,
though the earth was moved, and though the hills were
carried into the midst of the sea ; though the waters
raged and swelled, and the mountains shook at the
tempest.

The fact is indisputable. And you must pardon me
if I express my belief that these men, if they had felt
it their business to found a school of inductive physical
science, would, owing to that temper of mind, have
achieved a very signal success. I ground that opinion
on the remarkable, but equally indisputable fact, that
no nation has ever succeeded in perpetuating a school
of inductive physical science, save those whose minds

SCIENCE. 265

have been saturated with this same view of Nature, which
they have — as an historic fact — slowly but thoroughly
learnt from the writings of these Jewish sages.

Such is the fact. The founders of inductive physical
science were not the Jews : but first the Chaldasans,
next the Greeks, next their pupils the Eomans — or
rather a few sages among each race. But what success
had they? The Chaldsean astronomers made a few
discoveries concerning the motions of the heavenly
bodies, which, rudimentary as they were, still prove them
to have been men of rare intellect. For a great and a
patient genius must he have been, who first distin-
guished the planets from the fixed stars, or worked out
the earliest astronomical calculation. But they seem
to have been crushed, as it were, by their own dis-
coveries. They stopped short. They gave way again
to the primeval fear of Nature. They sank into planet-
worship. They invented, it would seem, that fantastic
pseudo-science of astrology, which lay for ages after
as an incubus on the human intellect and conscience.
They became the magicians and quacks of the old
world; and mankind owed them thenceforth nothing
but evil. Among the Greeks and Eomans, again, those
sages who dared face Nature like reasonable men, were
accused by the superstitious mob as irreverent, im-
pious, atheists. The wisest of them all, Socrates, was
actually put to death on that charge ; and finally, they

2G6 SCIENCE.

failed. Scliool after school, in Greece and Kome, strug-
gled to discover, and to get a bearing for, some theory
of the universe which was founded on something like
experience, reason, common sense. They were not
allowed to prosecute their attempt. The mud-ocean
of ignorance and fear in which they struggled so
manfully- was too strong for them ; the mud- waves
closed over their heads finally, as the age of the Anto-
nines expired ; and the last effort of Graeco-Koman
thought to explain the universe was Neoplatonism —
the muddiest of the muddy — an attempt to apologise
for, and organise into a system, all the nature-dreading
superstitions of the Eoman world. Porphyry, Plotinus,
Proclus, poor Hypatia herself, and all her school — they
may have had themselves no bodily fear of Nature ; for
they were noble souls. Yet they spent their time in
justifying those who had ; in apologising for the super-
stitions of the very mob which they despised : just as —
it sometimes seems to me — some folk in these days are
like to end in doing ; begging that the masses might be
allowed to believe in anything, however false, lest they
should believe in nothing at all : as if believing in lies
could do anything but harm to any human being. And
so died the science of the old world, in a true second
childhood, just where it began.

The Jewish sages, I hold, taught that science was
probable ; the Greeks and Romans proved that it was

SCIENCE. 2G7

possible. It remained for our race, under the teaching
of both, to bring science into act and fact.

Many causes contributed to give them this power.
They were a personally courageous race. This earth
has yet seen no braver men than the forefathers of
Christian Europe, whether Scandinavian or Teuton,
Angle or Frank. They were a practical hard-headed
race, with a strong appreciation of facts, and a strong
determination to act on them. Their laws, their society,
their commerce, their colonisation, their migrations by
land and sea, proved that they were such. They were
favoured, moreover, by circumstances, or— as I should
rather put it— by that divine Providence which deter-
mined their times, and the bounds of their habitation.
They came in as the heritors of the decaying civilisa-
tion of Greece and Eome; they colonised territories
which gave to man special fair play, but no more, in
the struggle for existence, the battle with the powers
of Nature ; tolerably fertile, tolerably temperate ; with
boundless means of water communication; freer than
most parts of the world from those terrible natural
phenomena, like the earthquake and the hurricane,
before which man lies helpless and astounded, a child
beneath the foot of a giant. Nature was to them not
so inhospitable as to starve their brains and limbs, as
it has done for the Esquimaux or Fuegian; and not
so bountiful as to crush them by its very luxuriance,

2G8 SCIENCE.

as it has crushed the savages of the tropics. They
saw enough of its strength to respect it ; not enough
to cower before it : and they and it have fought it out ;
and it seems to me, standing either on London Bridge
or on a Holland fen-dyke, that they are winning at last.
But they had a sore battle : a battle against their
own fear of the unseen. They brought with them, out
of the heart of Asia, dark and sad nature-superstitions,
some of which linger among our peasantry till this day,
of elves, trolls, nixes, and what not. Their Thor and
Odin were at first, probably, only the thunder and the
wind : but they had to be appeased in the dark marches
of the forest, where hung rotting on the sacred oaks,
amid carcases of goat and horse, the carcases of human
victims. No one acquainted with the early legends
and ballads of our race, but must perceive throughout
them all the prevailing tone of fear and sadness. And
to their own superstitions, they added those of the
Eome which they conquered. They dreaded the Koman
she-poisoners and witches, who, like Horace's Canidia,
still performed horrid rites in grave-yards and dark
places of the earth. They dreaded as magical the
delicate images engraved on old Greek gems. They
dreaded the very Eoman cities they had destroyed.
They were the work of enchanters. Like the ruins of
St. Albans here in England, they were all full of devils,
guarding the treasures which the Eomans had hidden.

SCIENCE. 269

The Cessars became to tliem magical man-gods. Tlie
poet Virgil became the prince of necromancers. If the
secrets of Nature were to be known, they were to be
known by unlawful means, by prying into the mysteries
of the old heathen magicians, or of the Mohammedan
doctors of Cordova and Seville; and those who dared
to do so were respected and feared, and often came to
evil ends. It needed moral courage, then, to face and
interpret fact. Such brave men as Pope Gerbert,
Eoger Bacon, Galileo, even Kepler, did not lead happy
lives ; some of them found themselves in prison. All
the medieval sages — even Albertus Magnus — were
stigmatised as magicians. One wonders that more of
them did not imitate poor Paracelsus, who, unable to
get a hearing for his coarse c.ommon sense, took — vain
and sensual — to drinking the laudanum which he him-
self had discovered, and vaunted as a priceless boon to
men ; and died as the fool dieth, in spite of all his wisdom.
For the " Eomani nominis umbra," the shadow of the
mighty race whom they had conquered, lay heavy on
our forefathers for centuries. And their dread of the
great heathens was really a dread of Nature, and of
the powers thereof. For when the authority of great
names has reigned unquestioned for many centuries,
those names become, to the human mind, integral and
necessary parts of Nature itself. They are, as it were,
absorbed into it ; they become its laws, its canons.

270 SCIENCE.

its demiurges, and guardian spirits ; their words
become regarded as actual facts ; in one word, they
become a superstition, and are feared as parts of the
vast unknown ; and to deny what they have said is,
in the minds of the many, not merely to fly in the face
of reverent wisdom, but to fly in the face of facts.
During a great part of the middle ages, for instance, it
was impossible for an educated man to think of Nature
itself, without thinking first of what Aristotle had
said of her. Aristotle's dicta were Nature ; and when
Benedetti, at Venice, opposed in 1585 Aristotle's
opinions on violent and natural motion, there were
hundreds, perhaps, in the universities of Europe — as
there certainly were in the days of the immortal ' Epis-
tolse Obscurorum Yirorum ' — who were ready, in spite
of all Benedetti's professed reverence for Aristotle, to
accuse him of outraging not only the father of philo-
sophy, but Nature itself and its palpable and noto-
rious facts. For the restoration of letters in the
fifteenth century had not at first mended matters, so
strong was the dread of Nature in the minds of the
masses. The minds of men had sported forth, not
toward any sound investigation of facts, but toward an
eclectic resuscitation of Neoplatonism ; which endured,
not without a certain beauty and use — as let Spenser's
' Faery Queen ' bear witness — till the latter half of the
seventeenth century.

SCIENCE. 271

After that time a rapid change began. It is marked
by — it has been notably assisted by — the foundation of
our own Eoyal Society. Its causes I will not enter
into ; they are so inextricably mixed, I hold, with
theological questions, that they cannot be discussed
here. I will only point out to you these facts : that,
from the latter part of the seventeenth century, the
noblest heads and the noblest hearts of Europe con-
centrated themselves more and more on the brave and
patient investigation of physical facts, as the source
of priceless future blessings to mankind; that the
eighteenth century, which it has been the fashion of
late to depreciate, did more for the welfare of mankind,
in every conceivable direction, than the whole fifteen
centuries before it; that it did this good work by
boldly observing and analysing facts ; that this bold-
ness toward facts increased in proportion as Europe
became indoctrinated with the Jewish literature ; and
that, notably, such men as Kepler, Newton, Berkeley,
Spinoza, Leibnitz, Descartes, in whatsoever else they
difiered, agreed in this, that their attitude towards
Nature was derived from the^teaching of the Jewish
sages. I believe that we are not yet fully aware how
much we owe to the Jewish mind, in the gradual eman-
cipation of the human intellect. The connection may
not, of course, be one of cause and effect ; it may be a
mere coincidence. I believe it to be a cause ; one of

272 SCIENCE.

course of very many causes : but still an integral cause.
At least the coincidence is too remarkable a fact not to,
be worthy of investigation.

I said, just now — The emancipation of the human
intellect. I did not say — Of science, or of the scientific
intellect ; and for this reason :

That the emancipation of science is the emancipation
of the common mind of all men. All men can partake
of the gains of free scientific thought, not merely
by enjoying its physical results, but by becoming more
scientific men themselves.

Therefore it was, that though I began my first lecture
by defining superstition, I did not begin my second by
defining its antagonist, science. For the word science
defines itself. It means simply knowledge ; that is, of
course, right knowledge, or such an approximation as
can be obtained ; knowledge of any natural object, its
classification, its causes, its efi'ects ; or in plain English,
what it is, how it came where it is, and what can be
done with it.

And scientific method, likewise, needs no definition ;
for it is simply the exercise of common sense. It is
not a peculiar, unique, professional, or mysterious
process of the understanding : but the same which all
men employ, from the cradle to the grave, in forming
correct conclusions.

Every one who knows the philosophic writings of

SCIENCE. 273

Mr. John Stuart Mill, will be familiar with this opinion.
But to those who have no leisure to study him, I should
recommend the reading of Professor Huxley's third
lecture on the origin of species.

In that he shows, with great logical skill, as well as
with some humour, how the man who, on rising in the
morning, finds the parlour window open, the spoons
and teapot gone, the mark of a dirty hand on the
window-sill, and that of a hob-nailed boot outside, and
comes to the conclusion that some one has broken open
the window and stolen the plate, arrives at that hypo-
thesis—for it is nothing more— by a long and complex
train of inductions and deductions, of just the same
kind as those which, according to the Baconian philo-
sophy, are to be used for investigating the deepest
secrets of Nature.

This is true, even of those sciences which involve
long mathematical calculations. In fact, the stating of
the problem to be solved is the most important element
in the calculation ; and that is so thoroughly a labour
of common sense that an utterly uneducated man may,
and often does, state an abstruse problem clearly and
correctly ; seeing what ought to be proved, and perhaps
how to prove it, though he may be unable to work the
problem out, for want of mathematical knowledge.

But that mathematical knowledge is not— as all
Cambridge men are surely aware— the result of any

274 SCIENCE.

special gift. It is merely the development of those
conceptions of form and number which every human
being possesses; and any person of average intellect
can make himself a fair mathematician if he will only
pay continuous attention ; in plain English, think
enough about the subject.

There are sciences, again, which do not involve
mathematical calculation ; for instance, botany, zoology,
geology, which are just now passing from their old
stage of classificatory sciences into the rank of organic
ones. These are, without doubt, altogether within the
scope of the merest common sense. Any man or woman
of average intellect, if they will but observe and think
for themselves, freely, boldly, patiently, accurately, may
judge for themselves of the conclusions of these sciences,
may add to these conclusions fresh and important dis-
coveries ; and if I am asked for a proof of what I assert,
I point to ' Eain and Elvers,' written by no professed
scientific man, but by a colonel in the Guards, known
to fame only as one of the most perfect horsemen in the
world.

Let me illustrate my meaning by an example. A
man — I do not say a geologist, but simply a man,
squire or ploughman— sees a small valley, say one of
the side-glens which open into the larger valleys in
the Windsor forest district. He wishes to ascertain
its age.

SCIENCE. 275

He has, at first sight, a very simple measure — that of
denudation. He sees that the glen is now being eaten
out by a little stream, the product of innumerable
springs which arise along its sides, and which are fed
entirely by the rain on the moors above. He finds, on
observation, that this stream brings down some ten
cubic yards of sand and gravel, on an average, every
year. The actual quantity of earth which has been
removed to make the glen may be several million cubic
yards. Here is an easy sum in arithmetic. At the
rate of ten cubic yards a year, the stream has taken
several hundred thousand years to make the glen.

You will observe that this result is obtained by
mere common sense. He has a right to assume that
the stream originally began the glen, because he finds
it in the act of enlarging it ; just as much right as he
has to assume, if he finds a hole in his pocket, and his
last coin in the act of falling through it, that the rest
of his money has fallen through the same hole. It is a
sufficient cause, and the simplest. A number of ob-
servations as to the present rate of denudation, and a
sum which any railroad contractor can do in his head,
to determine the solid contents of the valley, are all
that are needed. The method is that of science : but
it is also that of simple common sense. You will re-
member, therefore, that this is no mere theory or
hypothesis, but a pretty fair and simple conclusion

T 2

276 SCIENCE.

from palpable facts ; that the probability lies with the
belief that the glen is some hundreds of thousands of
years old ; that it is not the observer's business to
prove it further, but other persons' to disprove it, if
they can.

But does the matter end here ? No. And, for cer-
tain reasons, it is good that it should not end here.

The observer, if he be a cautious man, begins to see
if he can disprove his own conclusion ; moreover, being
human, he is probably somewhat awed, if not appalled,
by his own conclusion. Hundreds of thousands of years
spent in making that little glen ! Common sense would
say that the longer it took to make, the less wonder
there was in its being made at last : but the instinctive
human feeling is the opposite. There is in men, and
there remains in them, even after they are civilised,
and all other forms of the dread of Nature have died out
in them, a dread of size, of vast space, of vast time ;
that latter, mind, being always imagined as space, as
we confess when we speak instinctively of a space of
time. They will not understand that size is merely a
relative, not an absolute term ; that if we were a thousand
times larger than we are, the universe would be a
thousand times smaller than it is ; that if we could
think a thousand times faster than we do, time would
be a thousand times longer than it is; that there is
One in whom we live, and move, and have our being, to

SCIENCE. Til

whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand
years as one day. I believe this dread of size to be
merely, like all other superstitions, a result of bodily
fear ; a development of the instinct which makes a little
dog run away from a big dog. Be that as it may,
every observer has it; and so the man's conclusion
seems to him strange, doubtful : he will reconsider it.

Moreover, if he be an experienced man, he is well
aware that first guesses, first hypotheses, are not always
the right ones ; and if he be a modest man, he will con-
sider the fact that many thousands of thoughtful men
in all ages, and many thousands still, would say, that
the glen can only be a few thousand, or possibly a few
hundred, years old. And he will feel bound to consider
their opinion ; as far as it is, like his own, drawn from
facts, but no further.

So he casts about for all other methods by which the
glen may have been produced, to see if any one of them
will account for it in a shorter time.

1. Was it made by an earthquake? No; for the
strata on both sides are identical, at the same level, and
in the same plane.

2. Or by a mighty current ? If so, the flood must
have run in at the upper end, before it ran out at the
lower. But nothing has run in at the upper end. All
round above are the undisturbed gravel beds of the
horizontal moor, without channel or depression.

278 SCIENCE.

3. Or by water draining off a vast flat as it was
upheaved out of the sea ? That is a likely guess. The
valley at its upper end spreads out like the fingers of a
hand, as the gullies in tide-muds do.

But that hypothesis will not stand. There is no
vast unbroken flat behind the glen. Eight and left of
it are other similar glens, parted from it by long narrow
ridges : these also must be explained on the same
hypothesis; but they cannot. For there could not
have been surface-drainage to make them all, or a tenth
of them. There are no other possible hypotheses ; and
so he must fall back on the original theory — the rain,
the springs, the brook ; they have done it all, even as
they are doing it this day.

But is not that still a hasty assumption ? May not
their denuding power have been far greater in old times
than now ?

Why should it ? Because there was more rain then
than now ? That he must put out of court ; there is
no evidence of it whatsoever.

Because the land was more friable originally ? "Well,
there is a great deal to be said for that. The expe-
rience of every countryman tells him that bare or
fallow land is more easily washed away than land under
vegetation. And no doubt, when these gravels and
sands rose from the sea, they were barren for hundreds
of years. He has some measure of the time required,

SCIENCE. 279

because lie can tell roiiglily liow long it takes for sands
and shingles left by the sea to become covered -with
vegetation. But lie must allow that the friability of
the land must have been originally much greater than
now, for hundreds of years.

But again, does that fact really cut off any great
space of time from his hundreds of thousands of years ?
For when the land first rose from the sea, that glen
was not there. Some slight bay or bend in the shore
determined its site. That stream was not there. It
was split up into a million little springs, oozing side by
side from the shore, and having each a very minute
denuding power, which kept continually increasing by
combination as the glen ate its way inwards, and the
rainfall drained by all these little springs was collected
into the one central stream. So that when the ground
being bare was most liable to be denuded, the water
was least able to do it ; and as the denuding power of
the water increased, the land, being covered with vege-
tation, became more and more able to resist it. All
this he has seen, going on at the present day, in the
similar gullies worn in the soft strata of the South
Hampshire coast ; especially round Bournemouth.

So the two disturbing elements in the calculation
may be fairly set off against each other, as making a
difference of only a few thousands or tens of thousands
of years either way ; and the age of the glen may

280 SCIENCE.

fairly be, if not a million years, yet such a length of
years as mankind still speak of with bated breath, as if
forsooth it would do them some harm.

I trust that every scientific man in this room will
agree with me, that the imaginary squire or plough-
man would have been conducting his investigation
strictly according to the laws of the Baconian philo-
sophy. You will remark, meanwhile, that he has not
used a single scientific term, or referred to a single
scientific investigation ; and has observed nothing and
thought nothing which might not have been observed
and thought by any one who chose to use his common
sense, and not to be afraid.

But because he has come round, after all this further
investigation, to something very like his first conclusion,
was all that further investigation useless ? No — a thou-
sand times, no. It is this very verification of hypotheses
which makes the sound ones safe, and destroys the
unsound. It is this struggle with all sorts of super-
stitions which makes science strong and sure, and her
march irresistible, winning ground slowly, but never
receding from it. It is this bufi'eting of adversity
which compels her not to rest dangerously upon the
shallow sand of first guesses, and single observations ;
but to strike her roots down, deep, wide, and interlaced'
into the solid ground of actual facts.

It is very necessary to insist on this point. For

SCIENCE. 2S1

there have been men in all past ages — I do not say
whether there are any such now, but I am inclined to
think that there will be hereafter — men who have tried
to represent scientific method as something difficult,
mysterious, peculiar, unique, not to be attained by the
unscientific mass ; and this not for the purpose of
exalting science, but rather of discrediting her. For
as long as the masses, educated or uneducated, are
ignorant of what scientific method is, they will look on
scientific men, as the middle age looked on necro-
mancers, as a privileged, but awful and uncanny caste,
possessed of mighty secrets ; who may do them great
good, but may also do them great harm.

Which belief on the part of the masses will enable these
persons to instal themselves as the critics of science,
thouo:h not scientific men themselves : and— as Shake-
speare has it — to talk of Eobin Hood, though they never
shot in his bow. Thus they become mediators to the
masses between the scientific and the unscientific
worlds. They tell them — You are not to trust the
conclusions of men of science at first hand. You are
not fit judges of their facts or of their methods. It is
we who will, by a cautious eclecticism, choose out for
you such of their conclusions as are safe for you ; and
them we will advise you to believe. To the scientific
man, on the other hand, as often as anything is disco-
vered unpleasing to them, they will say, imperiously

282 SCIENCE.

and e cathedra — Tour new theory contradicts the esta-
blished facts of science. For they will know well that
whatever the men of science think of their assertion,
the masses will believe it ; totally unaware that the
speakers are by their very terms showing their igno-
rance of science ; and that what they call established
facts scientific men call merely provisional conclusions,
which they would throw away to-morrow without a
pang were the known facts explained better by a fresh
theory, or did fresh facts require one.

This has happened too often. It is in the interest
of superstition that it should happen again ; and the
best way to prevent it surely is to tell the masses —
Scientific method is no peculiar mystery, requiring a
peculiar initiation. It is simply common sense, com-
bined with uncommon courage, which includes uncom-
mon honesty and uncommon patience ; and if you will
be brave, honest, patient, and rational, you will need no
mystagogues to tell you what in science to believe and
what not to believe ; for you will be just as good judges
of scientific facts and theories as those who assume
the right of guiding your convictions. You are men
and women : and more than that you need not be.

And let me say that the man of our days whose
writings exemplify most thoroughly what I am going
to say is the justly revered Mr. Thomas Carlyle.

As far as I know he has never written on any scien-

SCIENCE. 283

tific subject. For aiiglit I am aware of, he may know
nothing of mathematics or chemistry, of comparative
anatomy or geology. For aught I am aware of, he may
know a great deal about them all, and, like a wise man,
hold his tongue, and give the world merely the results
in the form of general thought. But this I know ; that
his writings are instinct with the very spirit of science ;
that he has taught men, more than any living man,
the meaning and end of science ; that he has taught
men moral and intellectual courage ; to face facts
boldly, while they confess the divineness of facts ; not
to be afraid of Nature, and not to worship nature ; to
believe that man can know truth ; and that only in as
far as he knows truth can he live worthily on this
earth. And thus he has vindicated, as no other man
in our days has done, at once the dignity of Nature and
the dignity of spirit. That he would have made a dis-
tinguished scientific man, we may be as certain from
his writings as we may be certain, when we see a fine
old horse of a certain stamp, that he would have made
a first-class hunter, though he has been unfortunately
all his life in harness. Therefore, did I try to train a
young man of science to be true, devout, and earnest,
accurate and daring, I should say — Eead what you
will : but at least read Carlyle. It is a small matter
to me — and I doubt not to him — whether you will
agree with his special conclusions : but his premises and

284 SCIENCE.

his method are irrefragable; for they stand on the
" voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam " — on fact and
common sense.

And Mr. Carlyle's writings, if I am correct in my
estimate of them, will afford a very sufficient answer
to those who think that the scientific habit of mind
tends to irreverence.

Doubtless this accusation will always be brought
against science by those who confound reverence with
fear. For from blind fear of the unknown, science does
certainly deliver man. She does by man as he does
by an unbroken colt. The colt sees by the road side
some quite new object — a cast-away boot, an old kettle,
or what not. What a fearful monster ! What unknown
terrific powers may it not possess! And the colt
shies across the road, runs up the bank, rears on end ;
putting itself thereby, as many a man does, in real
danger. What cure is there? But one; experience.
So science takes us, as we should take the colt, gently
by the halter ; and makes us simply smell at the new
monster ; till after a few trembling sniffs, we discover,
like the colt, that it is not a monster, but a kettle.
Yet I think, if we sum up the loss and gain, we shall
find the colt's character has gained, rather than lost,
by being thus disabused. He learns to substitute a
very rational reverence for the man who is breaking
him in, for a totally irrational reverence for the kettle ;

SCIENCE. 285

and becomes thereby a much wiser and more useful
member of society, as does the man when disabused of
his superstitions.

From which follows one result. That if science
proposes — as she does — to make men brave, wise, and
independent, she must needs excite unpleasant feelings
in all who desire to keep men cowardly, ignorant, and
slavish. And that too many such persons have existed
in all ages is but too notorious. There have been from
all time, goetai, quacks, powwow men, rain-makers, and
necromancers of various sorts, who having for their
own purposes set forth partial, ill-grounded, fantastic,
and frightful interpretations of nature, have no love
for .those who search after a true, exact, brave, and
hopeful one. And therefore it is to be feared, or hoped,
science and superstition will to the world's end remain
irreconcilable and internecine foes.

Conceive the feelings of an old Lapland witch, wlio
has had for the last fifty years all the winds in a seal-
skin bag, and has been selling fair breezes to northern
skippers at so much a puff, asserting her powers so
often, poor old soul, that she has got to half believe
them herself, — conceive, I say, her feelings at seeing
her customers watch the Admiralty storm-signals, and
con the weather reports in the ' Times.' Conceive the
feelings of Sir Samuel Baker's African friend, Katchiba,
the rain-making chief, who possessed a whole housefull

286 SCIENCE.

of thunder and lightning — though he did not, he con-
fessed, keep it in a bottle as they do in England — if
Sir Samuel had had the means, and the will, of giving
to Katchiba's Negros a course of lectures on electri-
city, with appropriate experiments, and a real bottle
full of real lightning among the foremost.

It is clear that only two methods of self-defence
would have been open to the rain-maker : namely, either
to kill Sir Samuel, or to buy his real secret of bottling
the lightning, that he might use it for his own ends.
The former method — that of killing the man of science —
was found more easy in ancient times ; the latter in
these modern ones. And there have been always those
who, too good-natured to kill the scientific man, have
patronised knowledge, not for its own sake, but for the
use which may be made of it ; who would like to keep
a tame man of science, as they would a tame poet, or a
tame parrot; who say— Let us have science by all
means, but not too much of it. It is a dangerous
thing; to be doled out to the world, like medicine,
in small and cautious doses. You, the scientific man,
will of course freely discover what you choose. Only
do not talk too loudly about it : leave that to us. We
understand the world, and are meant to guide and
govern it. So discover freely: and meanwhile hand
over your discoveries to us, that we may instruct and
edify the populace with so much of them as we think

SCIENCE. 2S7

safe, while we keep our position thereby, and in many-
cases make much money by your science. Do that,
and we will patronise you, applaud you, ask you to our
houses ; and you shall be clothed in purple and fine
linen, and fare sumptuously with us every day. I
know not whether these latter are not the worst ene-
mies which science has. They are often such excellent,
respectable, orderly, well-meaning persons. They de-
sire so sincerely that everyone should be wise : only not
too wise. They are so utterly unaware of the mischief
they are doing. They would recoil with horror if they
were told they were so many Iscariots, betraying Truth
with a kiss.

But science, as yet, has withstood both terrors and
blandishments. In old times, she endured being im-
prisoned and slain. She came to life again. Perhaps
it was the will of Him in whom all things live, that she
should live. Perhaps it was His spirit which gave her
life.

She can endure, too, being starved. Her votaries
have not as yet cared much for purple and fine linen,
and sumptuous fare. There are a very few among
them who, joining brilliant talents to solid learning,
have risen to deserved popularity, to titles, and to
wealth. But even their labours, it seems to me, are
never rewarded in any proportion to the time and the
intellect spent on them, nor to the benefits which they

288 SCIENCE.

bring to mankind ; wliile tlie great majority, unpaid
and unknown, toil on, and Lave to find in science her
own reward. Better, perhaps, that it should be so.
Better for science that she should be free, in holy-
poverty, to go where she will and say what she knows,
than that she should be hired out at so much a year to
say things pleasing to the many, and to those who
guide the many. And so, I verily believe, the majority
of scientific men think. There are those among them
who have obeyed very faithfully St. Paul's precept,
" No man that warreth entangleth himself with the
affairs of this life." For they have discovered that
they are engaged in a war — a veritable war— against
the rulers of darkness, against ignorance and its twin
children, fear and cruelty. Of that war they see
neither the end nor even the plan. But they are
ready to go on ; ready, with Socrates, " to follow rea-
son withersoever it leads;" and content, meanwhile,
like good soldiers in a campaign, if they can keep
tolerably in line, and use their weapons, and see a few
yards ahead of them through the smoke and the woods.
They will come out somewhere at last ; they know not
where nor when : but they will come out at last, into
the daylight and the open field ; and be told then —
perhaps to their own astonishment — as many a gallant
soldier has been told, that by simply walking straight
on, and doing the duty which lay nearest them, they

SCIENCE. 289

have helped to win a great battle, and slay great
giants, earning the thanks of their country and of
mankind.

And, meanwhile, if they get their shilling a day of
fighting-pay, they are content. I had almost said, they
ought to he content. For science is, I verily Jbelieve,
like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can
conceive few human states more enviable than that of
the man to whom, panting in the foul laboratory, or
watching for his life under the tropic forest, Isis shall
for a moment lift her sacred veil, and show him, once
and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of ; some law,
or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact ; but
explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them
all with each other and with the mighty whole, till
order and meaning shoots through some old Chaos of
scattered observations.

Is not that a joy, a prize, which wealth cannot give,
nor poverty take away? What it may lead to, he
knows not. Of what use it may become, he knows not.
But this he knows, that somewhere it must lead ; of
some use it will be. For it is a truth; and having
found a truth, he has exorcised one more of the ghosts
which haunt humanity. He has left one object less
for man to fear ; one object more for man to use.
Yes, the scientific man may have this comfort, that
whatever he has done, he has done good ; that he is

290 SCIENCE.

following a mistress wlio has never yet conferred aught
but benefits on the human race.

What physical science may do hereafter I know not ;
but as yet she has done this :

She has enormously increased the wealth of the
human race ; and has therefore given employment,
food, existence, to millions who, without science, would
either have starved or have never been born. She
has shown that the dictum of the early political
economists, that population has a tendency to increase
faster than the means of subsistence, is no law of
humanity, but merely a tendency of the barbaric and
ignorant man, which can be counteracted by increasing
manifold by scientific means his powers of producing
food. She has taught men, during the last few years,
to foresee and elude the most destructive storms ; and
there is no reason for doubting, and many reasons for
hoping, that she will gradually teach men to elude
other terrific forces of nature, too powerful and too
seemingly capricious for them to conquer. She has
discovered innumerable remedies and alleviations for
pains and disease. She has thrown such light on the
causes of epidemics, that we are able to say now that
the presence of cholera — and probably of all zymotic
diseases — in any place, is usually a sin and a sliame, for
which the owners and authorities of that place ought to
be punishable by law, as destroyers of their fellow-men ;

SCIENCE. 291

while for the weak, for those who, in the barbarous and
semi-barbarous state — and out of that last we are only
just emerging — how much has she done ; an earnest of
much more which she will do ? She has delivered the
insane — I may say by the scientific insight of one man,
more worthy of titles and pensions than nine-tenths of
those who earn them — I mean the great and good Pinel
— from hopeless misery and torture into comparative
peace and comfort, and at least the possibility of cure.
For children, she has done much, or rather might do,
would parents read and perpend such books as Andrew
Combe's and those of other writers on physical educa-
tion. We should not then see the children, even of
the rich, done to death piecemeal by improper food,
improper clothes, neglect of ventilation and the com-
monest measures for preserving health. We should not
see their intellects stunted by Procrustean attempts
to teach them all the same accomplishments, to the
neglect, most often, of any sound practical training of
their faculties. We should not see slight indigestion,
or temporary rushes of blood to the head, condemned
and punished as sins against Him who took up little
children in His arms and blessed them.

But we may have hope. When we compare edu-
cation now with what it was even forty years ago,
much more with the stupid brutality of the monastic
system, we may hail for children, as well as for

u 2

292 SCIENCE.

gro-^ivn people, the advent of the reign of common
sense.

And for woman — What might I not say on that
point ? But most of it would he fitly discussed only
among physicians and biologists : here I will say only
this — Science has exterminated, at least among civilised
nations, witch-manias. Women — at least white women
— are no lonsfer tortured or burnt alive from man's blind

fear of the unknown. If science had done no more
than that, she would deserve the perpetual thanks and
the perpetual trust, not only of the women whom she
has preserved from agony, but the men whom she has
preserved from crime.

These benefits have already accrued to civilised men,
because they have lately allowed a very few of their
number peaceably to imitate Mr. Karey, and find out
what nature — or rather, to speak at once reverently
and accurately, He who made nature — is thinking of ;
and obey the " voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam."
This science has done, while yet in her infancy. What
she will do in her maturity, who dare predict ? At
least, in the face of such facts as these, those who bid
us fear, or res|,rain, or mutilate science, bid us commit
an act of folly, as well as of ingratitude, which can only
harm ourselves. For science has as yet done nothing
but good. Will any one tell me what harm it has ever
done ? When any one will show me a single result of

SCIENCE. 293

science, of the knowledge of and use of physical facts,
which has not tended directly to the benefit of mankind,
moral and spiritual, as well as physical and economic —
then I shall be tempted to believe that Solomon was
wrong when he said that the one thing to be sought
after on earth, more precious than all treasure, she who
has length of days in her right hand, and in her left
hand riches and honour, whose ways are ways of
pleasantness and all her paths are peace, who is a tree
of life to all who lay hold on her, and makes happy
every one who retains her, is — as you will see if you
will yourselves consult the passage— that very "Wisdom
— by which God has founded the earth ; and that very
Understanding — by which He has established the
heavens.

GROTS AND GROVES.

I WISH this lecture to be suggestive, rather that didactic ;
to set yon thinking and inquiring for yourselves, rather
than learning at second-hand from me. Some among
my audience, I doubt not, will neither need to be
taught by me, nor to be stirred up to inquiry for
themselves. They are already, probably, antiquarians ;
already better acquainted with the subject than I am.
They come hither, therefore, as critics ; I trust not as
unkindly critics. They will, I hope, remember that I
am trying to excite a general interest in that very archi-
tecture in which they delight, and so to make the public
do justice to their labours. They will therefore, I trust,

" Be to my faults a little blind,
Be to my virtues very kind ;"

and if my architectural theories do not seem to them
correct in all details — well-founded I believe them
myself to be — remember that it is a slight matter to
rae, or to the audience, whether any special and pet

GROTS AND GROVES. 295

fancy of mine should be exactly true or not : but it is
not a liglit matter tliat my hearers should be awakened
— and too many just now need an actual awakening — to
a right, pure, and wholesome judgment on questions of
art, especially when the soundness of that judgment
depends, as in this case, on sound judgments about
human history, as well as about natural objects.

Now, it befel me that, fresh from the Tropic forests,
and with their forms hanging always, as it were, in
the background of my eye, I was impressed more and
more vividly the longer I looked, with the likeness of
those forest forms to the forms of our own Cathedral of
Chester. The grand and graceful Chapter-house trans-
formed itself into one of those green bowers, which, once
seen, and never to be seen again, make one at once richer
and poorer for the rest of life. The fans of groining
sprang from the short columns, just as do the feathered
boughs of the far more beautiful Maximiliana palm,
and just of the same size and shape : and met overhead,
as I have seen them meet, in aisles longer by far than
our cathedral nave. The free upright shafts, which
give such strength, and yet such lightness, to the
mullions of each window, pierced upward through those
curving lines, as do the stems of young trees through
the fronds of palm ; and, like them, carried the eye
and the fancy uj) into the infinite, and took off a sense
of oppression and captivity which the weight of the

296 GROTS AND UliOVES.

roof might have produced. In the nave, in the choir
the same vision of the Tropic forest haunted me. The
fluted columns not only resembled, but seemed copied
from the fluted stems beneath which I had ridden in
the primeval woods ; their bases, their capitals, seemed
copied from the bulgings at the collar of the root, and
at the spring of the boughs, produced by a check of
the redundant sap ; and were garlanded often enough
like the capitals of the columns, with delicate tracery of
parasite leaves and flowers ; the mouldings of the arches
seemed copied from the parallel bundles of the curving
bamboo shoots ; and even the flatter roof of the nave
and transepts had its antitype in that highest level of
the forest aisles, where the trees, having climbed at
last to the light-food which they seek, care no longer
to grow upward, but spread out in huge limbs, almost
horizontal, reminding the eye of the four-centred arch
which marks the period of Perpendicular Gothic.

Nay, to this day there is one point in our cathedral
which, to me, keeps up the illusion still. As I enter
the choir, and look upward toward the left, I cannot
help seeing, in the tabernacle work of the stalls, the
slender and aspiring forms of the " rastrajo ;" the deli-
cate second growth which, as it were, rushes upward
from the earth wherever the forest is cleared; and
above it, in the tall lines of the north-west pier of the
tower — even though defaced, along the inner face of

OROTS AND GROVES. 297

the western arch, by ugly and needless perpendicular
panelling — I seem to see the stems of huge Cedars, or
Balatas, or Ceibas, curving over, as they would do, into
the great beams of the transept roof, some seventy feet
above the ground.

Nay, so far will the fancy lead, that I have seemed to
see, in the stained glass between the tracery of the
windows, such gorgeous sheets of colour as sometimes
flash on the eye, when, far aloft, between high stems
and boughs, you catch sight of some great tree ablaze
with flowers, either its own or those of a parasite ;
yellow or crimson, white or purple ; and over them
again the cloudless blue.

Now, I know well that all these dreams are dreams ;
that the men who built our northern cathedrals never
saw these forest forms ; and that the likeness of their
work to those of Tropic nature is at most only a corro-
boration of Mr, Euskin's dictum, that " the Gothic did
not arise out of, but developed itself into, a resemblance

to vegetation It was no chance suggestion of

the form of an arch from the bending of a bough, but
the gradual and continual discovery of a beauty in
natural forms which could be more and more trans-
ferred into those of stone, which influenced at once the
hearts of the people and the form of the edifice." So
true is this, that by a pure and noble copying of the
vegetable beauty which they had seen in their own

298 GIWTS AND GROVES.

clime, the medieval craftsmen went so far — as I have
shown you — as to anticipate forms of vegetable beauty
peculiar to Tropic climes, which they had not seen : a
fresh proof, if proof were needed, that beauty is some-
thing absolute and independent of man ; and not, as
some think, only relative, and what happens to be
pleasant to the eye of this man or that.

But thinking over this matter, and reading over,
too, that which Mr. Euskin has written thereon in his
' Stones of Yenice,' vol. ii. cap. vi., on the nature of
Gothic, I came to certain further conclusions — or at
least surmises — which I put before you to-night, in
hopes that if they have no other effect on you, they
will at least stir some of you up to read Mr. Euskin's
works.

Now Mr. Euskin says, " That the original conception
of Gothic architecture has been derived from vegetation,
from the symmetry of avenues and the interlacing of
branches, is a strange and vain supposition. It is a
theory which never could have existed for a moment in
the mind of any person acquainted with early Gothic :
but, however idle as a theory, it is most valuable as a
testimony to the character of the perfected style,"

Doubtless so. But you must remember always that
the subject of my lecture is Grots and Groves ; that I
am speaking not of Gothic architecture in general, but
of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture ; and more, almost

OEOTS AND ROVES. 299

exclusively of the ecclesiastical architecture of the
Teutonic or northern nations ; because in them, as I
think, the resemblance between the temple and the
forest reached the fullest exactness.

Now the original idea of a Christian church was that
of a grot ; a cave. That is a historic fact. The Chris-
tianity which was passed on to us began to worship,
hidden and persecuted, in the catacombs of Eome,
it may be often around the martyrs' tombs, by the
dim light of candle or of torch. The candles on the
Eoman altars, whatever they have been made to sym-
bolise since then, are the hereditary memorials of that
fact. Throughout the North, in these isles as much as
in any land, the idea of the grot was, in like wise, the
idea of a church. The saint or hermit built himself a
cell ; dark, massive, intended to exclude light as well
as weather ; or took refuge in a cave. There he prayed
and worshipped, and gathered others to pray and
worship round him, during his life. There he, often
enough, became an object of worship, in his turn, after
his death. In after ages his cave was ornamented, like
that of the hermit of Montmajour by Aries; or his
cell-chapel enlarged, as those of the Scotch and Irish
saints have been, again and again; till at last a stately
minster rose above it. Still, the idea that the church
was to be a grot haunted the minds of builders.

But side by side with the Christian grot there was

300 GliOTS AND GROVES.

throughout the North another form of temple, dedi-
cated to very different gods ; namely, the trees from
whose mighty stems hung the heads of the victims of
Odin or of Thor, the horse, the goat, and in time of
calamity or pestilence, of men. Trees and not grots
were the temples of our forefathers.

Scholars know well — but they must excuse my quot-
ing it for the sake of those who are not scholars— the
famous passage of Tacitus which tells how our fore-
fathers " held it beneath the dignity of the gods to
coop them within walls, or liken them to any human
countenance : but consecrated groves and woods, and
called by the name of gods that mystery which they
held by faith alone ;" and the equally famous passage
of Claudian, about " the vast silence of the Black
Forest, and groves awful with ancient superstition;
and oaks, barbarian deities ; " and Lucan's " groves
inviolate from all antiquity, and altars stained with
human blood."

To worship in such spots was an abomination to the
early Christian. It was as much a test of heathendom
as the eating of horse-flesh, sacred to Odin, and there-
fore unclean to Christian men. The Lombard laws
and others forbid expressly the lingering remnants of
grove worship. St. Boniface and other early mission-
aries hewed down in defiance the sacred oaks, and paid
sometimes for their valour with their lives.

GBOTS AND GBOVES. 301

It is no wonder, then, if long centuries elapsed ere
the likeness of vegetable forms began to reappear in
the Christian churches of the North. And yet both
grot and grove were equally the natural temples which
the religious instinct of all deep-hearted peoples, con-
scious of sin, and conscious, too, of yearnings after a
perfection not to be found on earth, chooses from the
earliest stage of awakening civilisation. In them,
alone, before he had strength and skill to build nobly
for himself, could man find darkness, the mother of
mystery and awe, in which he is reminded perforce of
his own ignorance and weakness ; in which he learns
first to remember unseen powers, sometimes to his
comfort and elevation, sometimes only to his terror
and debasement ; darkness ; and with it silence and
solitude, in which he can collect himself, and shut out
the noise and glare, the meanness and the coarseness, of
the world ; and be alone a while with his own thoughts,
his own fancy, his own conscience, his own soul.

But for a while, as I have said, that darkness, soli-
tude, and silence were to be sought in the grot, not in
the grove.

Then Christianity conquered the Empire. It adapted,
not merely its architecture, but its very buildings, to
its worship. The Eoman Basilica became the Chris-
tian church ; a noble form of building enough, though
one in which was neither darkness, solitude, nor silence,

302 QROTS AND GROVES.

but crowded congregations, clapping — or otherwise —
the popular preacher ; or fighting about the election of
a bishop or a pope, till the holy place ran with Chris-
tian blood. The deep-hearted Northern turned away,
in weariness and disgust, from those vast halls, fitted
only for the feverish superstition of a profligate and
worn-out civilisation ; and took himself, amid his own
rocks and forests, moors and shores, to a simpler and
sterner architecture, which should express a creed,
sterner ; and at heart far simpler ; though dogmatically
the same.

And this is, to my mind, the difference, and the
noble difference, between the so-called Norman archi-
tecture, which came hither about the time of the Con-
quest ; and that of Komanized Italy.

But the Normans were a conquering race ; and one
which conquered, be it always remembered, in England
at least, in the name and by the authority of Kome.
Their ecclesiastics, like the ecclesiastics on the Conti-
nent, were the representatives o'f Eoman civilisation, of
Rome's right, intellectual and spiritual, to rule the
world.

Therefore their architecture, like their creed, was
Roman. They took the massive towering Roman forms,
wliich expressed domination ; and piled them one on
the other, to express the domination of Christian Rome
over the souls, as tlu^y had represented the domination

GROTS AND GROVES. 303

of heathen Eorne over the bodies, of men. And so side
by side with the towers of the Norman keep rose the
towers of the Norman cathedral — the two signs of a
double servitude.

But, with the thirteenth century, there dawned an
age in Northern Europe, which I may boldly call an
heroic age ; heroic in its virtues and in its crimes ; an
age of rich passionate youth, or rather of early man-
hood ; full of aspirations, of chivalry, of self-sacrifice
as strange and terrible as it was beautiful and noble,
even when most misguided. The Teutonic nations of
Europe — our own forefathers most of all — having ab-
sorbed all that heathen Kome could teach them, at
least for the time being, began to think for themselves J
to have poets, philosophers, historians, architects, of
their own. The thirteenth century was especially an
age of aspiration ; and its architects expressed, in
buildings quite unlike those of the preceding centuries,
the aspirations of the time.

The Pointed Arch had been introduced half a century
before. It may be that the Crusaders saw it in the
East and brought it home. It may be that it originated
from the quadripartite vaulting of the Normans, the
segmental groins of which, crossing diagonally, pro-
duced to appearance the pointed arch. It may be that
it was derived from that mystical figure of a pointed
oval form, the vesica piscis. It may be, lastly, that it

304 GBOTS AND GROVES.

was suggested simply by the intersection of semi-
circular arches, so frequently found in ornamental
arcades. The last cause may perhaps be the true one :
but it matters little whence the pointed arch came. It
matters much what it meant to those who introduced it.
And at the beginning of the Transition or semi-Norman
period, it seems to have meant nothing. It was not
till the thirteenth century that it had gradually re-
ceived, as it were, a soul, and had become the exponent
of a great idea. As the Norman architecture and its
forms had signified domination, so the Early English,
as we call it, signified aspiration ; an idea which was
perfected, as far as it could be, in what we call the
Decorated style.

There is an evident gap, I had almost said a gulf,
between the architectural mind of the eleventh and
that of the thirteenth century. A vertical tendency, a
longing after lightness and freedom, appears ; and with
them a longing to reproduce the graces of nature and
art. And here I ask you to look for yourselves at the
buildings of this new era — there is a beautiful specimen
in yonder arcade * — and judge for yourselves whether
they, and even more than they the Decorated style
into which they developed, do not remind you of the
forest shapes ?

And if they remind you : must they not have re-

An arcMdu in the King's Srlinol, Chester.

GROTS AND GROVES. 805

minded those who shaped them ? Can it have been
otherwise? "We know that the men who built were
earnest. The carefulness, the reverence, of their work
have given a subject for some of Mr. Buskin's noblest
chapters, a text for some of his noblest sermons. We
know that they were students of vegetable form. That
is proved by the flowers, the leaves, even the birds,
with which they en wreathed their capitals and enriched
their mouldings. Look up there, and see.

You cannot look at any good church- work from the
thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, with-
out seeing that leaves and flowers were perpetually in
the workman's mind. Do you fancy that stems and
boughs were never in his mind ? He kept, doubtless,
in remembrance the fundamental idea, that the Chris-
tian church should symbolise a grot or cave. He could
do no less ; while he again and again saw hermits around
him dwelling and worshipping in caves, as they had
done ages before in Egypt and Syria ; while he fixed,
again and again, the site of his convent and his minster
in some secluded valley guarded by clifi's and rocks,
like Vale Crucis in North Wales. But his minster
stood often not among rocks only, but amid trees ; in
some clearing in the primeval forest, as Vale Crucis
was then. At least he could not pass from minster
to minster, from town to town, without journeying
through long miles of forest. Do you think that the

306 GBOTS AND GROVES.

awful shapes and shadows of that forest never haunted
his imagination as he built ? He would have cut down
ruthlessly, as his predecessors the early missionaries
did, the sacred trees amid which Thor and Odin had
been worshipped by the heathen Saxons ; amid which
still darker deities were still worshipped by the heathen
tribes of Eastern Europe. But he was the descendant
of men who had worshipped in those groves ; and the
glamour of them was upon him still. He peopled the
wild forest with demons and fairies : but that did not
surely prevent his feeling its ennobling grandeur, its
chastening loneliness. His ancestors had held the oaks
for trees of God, even as the Jews held the Cedar, and
the Hindoos likewise ; for the Deodara pine is not only,
botanists tell us, the same as the Cedar of Lebanon :
but its very name — the Deodara — signifies nought else
but " The tree of God."

His ancestors, I say, had held the oaks for trees of
God. It may be that as the monk sat beneath their
shade with his Bible on his knee, like good St. Boni-
face in the Fulda forest, he found that his ancestors
were right.

To understand what sort of trees they were from
which he got his inspiration : you must look, not at an
average English wood, perpetually thinned out as the
trees arrive at middle age. Still less must you look at
the pines, oaks, beeches, of an English park, where

GROTS AND OROVES. 307

each tree lias had space to develop itself freely into a
more or less rounded form. Yon must not even look
at the tropic forests. For there, from the immense
diversity of forms, twenty varieties of tree will grow
beneath each other, forming a close-packed heap of
boughs and leaves, from the ground to a hundred feet
and more aloft.

You should look at the North American forests of
social trees — -especially of pines and firs, where trees
of one species, crowded together, and competing with
equal advantages for the air and light, form themselves
into one wilderness of straight smooth shafts, sur-
mounted by a flat sheet of foliage, held up by boughs
like the ribs of a groined roof ; while underneath the
ground is bare as a cathedral floor.

You all know, surely, the Hemlock spruce of America ;
which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the
most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful,
of all the firs ; imitating the shape, not of its kindred,
but of an enormous tuft of fern.

Yet if you look at the same tree, when it has
struggled long for life from its youth amid other
trees of its own kind and its own age ; you find that
the lower boughs have died ofi' from want of light,
leaving not a scar behind. The upper boughs have
reached at once the light, and their natural term of
years. They are content to live, and little more. The

X 2

308 GROTS AND GROVES.

central trunk no longer sends up each year a fresh
perpendicular shoot to aspire above the rest : but as
weary of struggling ambition as they are, is content to
become more and more their equal as the years pass
by. And this is a law of social forest trees, which you
must bear in mind, whenever I speak of the influence
of tree-forms on Gothic architecture.

Such forms as these are rare enough in Europe now.
I never understood how possible, how common, they
must have been in medieval Europe, till I saw in the
forest of Fontainebleau a few oaks like the oak of
Charlemagne, and the Bouquet du Eoi, at whose age I
dare not guess, but whose size and shape showed them
to have once formed part of a continuous wood, the like
whereof remains not in these isles — perhaps not east
of the Carpathian Mountains. In them a clear shaft of
at least sixty, it may be eighty feet, carries a flat head
of boughs, each in itself a tree. In such a grove, I
thought, the heathen Gaul, even the heathen Frank,
worshipped, beneath " trees of God." Such trees, I
thought, centuries after, inspired the genius of every
builder of Gothic aisles and roofs.

Thus, at least, we can explain that rigidity, which
Mr. Kuskin tells us, "is a special element of Gothic
architecture. Greek and Egyptian buildings," he says
— and I should have added, Eoman buildings also, in
proportion to their age, i.e., to the amount of the

GROTS AND GROVES. 309

Eoman elements in them — "stand for the most part
by their own weight and mass, one stone passively
incumbent on another : but in the Gothic vaults and
traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the
bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree ; an elastic tension
and communication of force from part to part ; and also
a studious expression of this throughout every part of
the building." In a word, G-othic vaulting and tracery
have been studiously made like to boughs of trees.
Were those boughs present to the mind of the archi-
tect ? Or is the coincidence merely fortuitous ? You
know already how I should answer. The cusped arch,
too, was it actually not intended to imitate vegetation ?
Mr. Euskin seems to think so. He says that it is
merely the special application to the arch of the great
ornamental system of foliation, which, " whether simple
as in the cusped arch, or complicated as in tracery,
arose out of the love of leafage. Not that the form of
the arch is intended to imitate a leaf, but to be invested
with the same characters of beauty which the designer
had discovered in the leaf." Now I differ from Mr.
Euskin with extreme hesitation. I agree that the
cusped arch is not meant to imitate a leaf. I think
with Mr. Euskin, that it was probably first adopted on
account of its superior strength ; and that it afterwards
took the form of a bough. But I cannot as yet believe
that it was not at last intended to imitate a bough ; a

310 GBOTS AND GROVES,

boiTgii of a very common form, and one in whicli " active
rigidity " is peculiarly shown. I mean a bough which
has forked. If the lower fork has died off, for want of
light, we obtain something like the simply cusped arch.
If it be still living — but short and stunted in com-
parison with the higher fork — we obtain, it seems to
me, something like the foliated cusp ; both likenesses
being near enough to those of common objects to make
it possible that those objects may have suggested them.
And thus, more and more boldly, the mediaeval archi-
tect learnt to copy boughs, stems, and, at last, the
whole effect, as far always as stone would allow, of a
combination of rock and tree, of grot and grove.

So he formed his minsters, as I believe, upon the
model of those leafy minsters in which he walked to
meditate, amid the aisles which God, not man, has
built. He sent their columns aloft like the boles of
ancient trees. He wreathed their capitals, sometimes
their very shafts, with flowers and creeping shoots.
He threw their arches out, and interwove the groinings
of their vaults, like the bough-roofage overhead. He
decked with foliage and fruit the bosses above and the
corbels below. He sent up out of those corbels upright
shafts along the walls, in the likeness of the trees
which sprang out of the rocks above his head. He
raised those walls into great cliffs. He pierced them
with the arches of the triforium, as with hermits' cells.

GROTS AND GROVES. 311

He represented in tlie horizontal sills of his windows,
and in his horizontal string-courses, the horizontal
strata of the rocks. He opened the windows into high
and lofty glades, broken, as in the forest, by the tracery
of stems and boughs, through which was seen, not
merely the outer, but the upper world. For he craved,
as all true artists crave, for light and colour ; and had
the sky above been one perpetual blue, he might have
been content with it, and left his glass transparent.
But in that dark dank northern clime, rain and snow-
storm, black cloud and grey mist, were all that he was
like to see outside for nine months in the year. So he
took such light and colour as nature gave in her few
gayer moods; and set aloft his stained glass windows
the hues of the noonday and the rainbow, and the sun-
rise and the sunset, and the purple of the heather, and
the gold of the gorse, and the azure of the bugloss,
and the crimson of the poppy; and among them, in
gorgeous robes, the angels and the saints of heaven, and
the memories of heroic virtues and heroic sufferings,
that he might lift up his own eyes and heart for ever
out of the dark, dank, sad world of the cold north,
with all its coarsenesses and its crimes, toward a realm
of perpetual holiness, amid a perpetual summer of
beauty and of light ; as one who — for he was true to
nature, even in that — from between the black jaws
of a narrow glen, or from beneath the black shade of

312 GROTS AND GROVES.

gnarled trees, catches a glimpse of far lands gay with
gardens and cottages, and purple mountain ranges, and
the far-off sea, and the hazy horizon melting into the
hazy sky ; and finds his heart carried out into an
infinite at once of freedom and of repose.

And so out of the cliffs and the forests he shaped
the inside of his church. And how did he shape the
outside ? Look for yourselves, and judge. But look :
not at Chester, but at Salisbury. Look at those
churches which carry not mere towers, but spires, or at
least pinnacled towers approaching the pyrmidal form.
The outside form of every Gothic cathedral must be
considered imperfect if it does not culminate in some-
thing pyramidal.

The especial want of all Greek and Koman buildings
with which we are acquainted is the absence — save in
a few and unimportant cases — of the pyramidal form.
The Egyptians knew at least the worth of the obelisk :
but the Greeks and Eomans hardly knew even that :
their buildings are flat-topped. Their builders were
contented with the earth as it was. There was a great
truth involved in that ; which I am the last to deny.

But religions which, like the Buddhist or the
Christian, nurse a noble self-discontent, are sure to
adopt sooner or later an upward and aspiring form
of building. It is not merely that, fancying heaven
to be above earth, they point towards heaven. There

GROTS AND GROVES. 313

is a deeper natural language in the pyramidal form of
a growing tree. It symbolises growth, or the desire
of growth. The Norman tower does nothing of the
kind. It does not aspire to grow. Look — I men-
tion an instance with which I am most- familiar — at
the Norman tower of Bury St. Edmund's. It is grace-
ful — awful, if you will — hut there is no aspiration in
it. It is stately : but self-content. Its horizontal
courses; circular arches; above all, its flat sky-line,
seem to have risen enough : and wish to rise no higher.
For it has no touch of that unrest of soul, which is
expressed by the spire, and still more by the compound
spire, with its pinnacles, crockets, finials, which are
finials only in name ; for they do not finish, and are
really terminal buds, as it were, longing to open and
grow upward, even as the crockets are bracts and leaves
thrown off as the shoot has grown.

You feel, surely, the truth of these last words. You
cannot look at the canopy work or the pinnacle work of
this cathedral without seeing that they do not merely
suggest buds and leaves, but that the buds and leaves
are there carven before your eyes. I myself cannot
look at the tabernacle work of our stalls without being
reminded of the young pine forests which clothe the
Hampshire moors. But if the details are copied from
vegetable forms, why not the whole ? Is not a spire
like a growing tree, a tabernacle like a fir-tree, a

3U GBOTS AND GROVES.

compound spire like a group of firs ? And if we can
see that : do you fancy that the man who planned the
spire did not see it as clearly as we do ; and perhaps
more clearly still ?

I am aware, of course, that Norman architecture had
sometimes its pinnacle, a mere conical or polygonal
capping. I am aware that this form, only more and
more slender, lasted on in England during the thir-
teenth and the early part of the fourteenth century ;
and on the Continent, under many modifications, one
English kind whereof is usually called a " broach," of
which you have a beautiful specimen in the new church
at Hoole.

Now, no one will deny that that broach is beautiful.
But it would be difficult to prove that its form was
taken from a North European tree. The cypress was
unknown, probably, to our northern architects. The
Lombardy poplar — which has wandered hither, I know
not when, all the way from Cashmere — had not wan-
dered then, I believe, further than North Italy. The
form is rather that of mere stone ; of the obelisk, or of
the mountain peak; and they, in fact, may have at
first suggested the spire. The grandeur of an isolated
mountain, even of a dolmen or single upright stone, is
evident to all.

But it is the grandeur, not of aspiration, but of
defiance ; not of the Christian ; not even of the Stoic ;

GROTS AND GROVES. 315

but rather of the Epicurean, It says — I cannot rise.
I do not care to rise. I will be contentedly and
valiantly that which I am ; and face circumstances,
though I cannot conquer them. But it is defiance
under defeat. The mountain-peak does not grow, but
only decays. Fretted by rains, peeled by frost, splintered
by lightning, it must down at last ; and crumble into
earth, were it as old, as hard, as lofty as the Matter-
horn itself. And while it stands, it wants not only
aspiration, it wants tenderness ; it wants humility ; it
wants the unrest which tenderness and humility must
breed, and which Mr. Euskin so clearly recognises in
the best Gothic art. And, meanwhile, it wants natu-
ralness. The mere smooth spire or broach— I had
almost said, even the spire of Salisbury — is like no tall
or commanding object in Nature. It is merely the
caricature of one ; it may be of the mountain-peak.
The outline must be broken, must be softened, before
it can express the soul of a creed which, in the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries far more than now,
was one of penitence as well as of aspiration, of pas-
sionate emotion as well as of lofty faith. But a shape
which will express that soul must be sought, not among
mineral, but among vegetable, forms. And remember
always, if we feel thus even now, how much more must
those medieval men of genius have felt thus, whose
work we now dare only copy line by line ?

316 GROTS AND GROVES.

So — as it seems to me — they soiiglit among vege-
table forms for wliat they needed : and they found it at
once in the pine, or rather the fir, — the spruce and silver
firs of their own forests. They are not, of course, indi-
genous to England. But they are so common through
all the rest of Europe, that not only would the form
suggest itself to a Continental architect, hut to any
English clerk who travelled, as all did who could,
across the Alps to Kome. The fir-tree, not growing on
level ground, like the oaks of Fontainebleau, into one
flat roof of foliage, but clinging to the hill-side and
the crag, old above young, spire above spire, whorl
above whorl — for the young shoots of each whorl of
boughs point upward in the spring ; and now and then
a whole bough, breaking away, as it were, into free
space, turns upward altogether, and forms a secondary
spire on the same tree — this surely was the form which
the mediaeval architect seized, to clothe with it the
sides and roof of the stone mountain which he had
built ; piling up pinnacles and spires, each crocketed
at the angles ; that, like a group of firs upon an isolated
rock, every point of the building might seem in act to
grow toward heaven, till his idea culminated in that
glorious Minster of Cologne, which, if it ever be com-
pleted, will be the likeness of one forest-clothed group
of cliff's, surmounted by three enormous pines.

One feature of the Norman temple he could keep ; for

GliOTS AND GBOVES. 317

it was copied from the same nature which he was trying
to copy — namely, the high-pitched roof and gables. Mr.
Euskin lays it down as a law, that the acute angle
in roofs, gables, spires, is the distinguishing mark of
northern Gothic. It w^as adopted, most probably, at
first from domestic buildings, A northern house or
barn must have a high-pitched roof : or the snow will
not slip oflf it. But that fact was not discovered by
man; it was copied by him from the rocks around.
He saw the mountain peak jut black and bare above
the snows of winter ; he saw those snows slip down in
sheets, rush down in torrents under the sun, from the
steep slabs of rock which coped the hill-side ; and he
copied, in his roofs, the rocks above his town. But as
the love for decoration arose, he would deck his roofs
as nature had decked hers, till the grey sheets of the
cathedral slates should stand out amid pinnacles and
turrets rich with foliage, as the grey mountain sides
stood out amid knolls of feathery birch and towering
pine.

He failed, though he failed nobly. He never suc-
ceeded in attaining a perfectly natural style.

The medieval architects were crippled to the last by
the tradition of artificial Pioman forms. They began
improving them into naturalness, without any clear
notion of what they wanted; and when that notion
became clear, it was too late. Take, as an instance.

318 GROTS ASD GROVES.

the tracery of their windows. It is true, as Mr. Ruskin
says, that they began by piercing holes in a wall of the
form of a loaf, which devolopetl, in the rose window,
into the form of a star insido, and of a flower outside.
Look at such aloft there. Then, by introducing mul-
lions and traceries into the lower part of the window,
they added stem and bough forms to those flower forms.
But the two did not fit. Look at the west window of
our clutir, and you will sec wlmt I moan. The upright
mullions break olT into bough curves graceful enough :
but these are cut short — as I hold, spoiled — by circular
and triangular forms of rose and trefoil resting on them
a.s such forms never rest in Nature ; and the whole,
though beautiful, is only half beautiful. It is frag-
mentary, unmeaning, barbaric, because unnatural.

Tiiey faib'd, too, it may bo, from the vory paucity of
the vegetable forms they could find to c(»py among the
flora of this colder clime ; and so, stopped short in
drawing from nature, run off into mere purpoHoless
luxuriance. Had they boon able to add to thoir stock
of moiiiories a hiindrod forms which they wotiid have
seen in the Tropics, they might have gone on for cen-
turies copying Nature without exhausting her.

And yet, did they exhaust even the few forms of
lieauty which thoy saw around them ? It must be con-
foHMcd that thoy did not. I bolieve that tlioy could not,
because they dared not. The uuuaturalucss of the

GIIOTS ASD GROVES. 319

creed wliich tlioy expressed always hampered tlicm.
It forbade them to look Nature freely and lovingly in
the face. It forbade them — as one glaring example
— to know anything truly of the most beautiful
of all natural objects — the human form. They were
tempted perpetually to take Nature as ornament, not
as basis ; and they yielded at last to the temptation ;
till, in the age of Perpendicular architecture, their very
ornament became unnatural again; because conventional,
untrue, meaningless.

l>ut the creed for which they worked was dying by
that time, and therefore the art which expressed it
must needs die too. And even that death, or rather
the approach of it, was symbolised truly in the flatter
roof, the four-centred arch, the flat-topped tower of the
fifteenth-century church. The creed hud ceased to
aspire : so did the architecture. It had ceased to grow :
so did the temple. And the arch sank lower ; and the
rafters grew more horizontal ; and the likeness to the
old tree, content to grow no more, took the place of the
likeness to the young tree struggling toward the sky.

And now — unless you are tired of listening to me— a
few practical words.

We are restoring our old cathedral stone by stone
after its ancient model. We are also trying to build a
new church. We are building it — as most new churches
in England are now built — in a pure Gothic style.

3liO OliOTS AND GROVES.

Are we doing rij^lit ? I do not mean morally right.
It is always morally right to huild a new church, if
needed, whatever be its architecture. It is always
morally right to restore an old church, if it be beautiful
and noble, as an heirloom handed down to us by our
ancestors, which wo have no right — I say, no right —
f(»r the sake of our children, and of our children's
children, to leave to ruin.

But are we artistically, irsthetically right? Is the
best Gothic fit for our worship? Docs it express our
belief? Or shall we choose some other style?

I say that it is ; and that it is so because it is a stylo
which, if not founded on Nature, has taken into itself
more of Nature, of Nature beautiful and healthy, than
any other style.

With greater knowledge of Nature, both geographical
and scientific, fresh styles of architecture may and will
arise, as much more beautiful, and as much more
natural, than the (iothic, as (iothic is more beautiful
and natural than the Norman. Till then we must take
the best models which we have ; use them ; and, as it
were, nso them up and exhaust them. Hy that time
we may have learnt to improve on them ; and to buiitl
churches njore Gothic than Gothic itself, more likr
grot and grove than even a northern cathedral.

That is the direction in which we must work. AikI
if any shall say to us, as it has been said ere now -

OliOTS AXD GROVES. 321

*' After all, your new Gothic chnrclies are but imitations,
shams, borrowed symbols, which to you symbolise
nothin*;. They are Komish churches, meaut to express
Komish doctrine, built for a Protestant creed which
they do not express, and for a Protestant worship which
they will not fit." Then we shall answer — Not so. The
objection might be true if we built Norman or Pio-
manesque churches ; for we should then be returning
to that very foreign and unnatural style which liome
taught our forefathers, and from which they escaped
gradually into the comparative freedom, the compara-
tive naturalness of that true Gothic of which Mr.
liu.skin says so well : —

" It ih glmldcniiig tu ri-iui m)>er tliut, ia itH uttuubt uublene^ the verv*
temper which has bciu lhou},'lit mobt aviMc to it, the Prott-staut
temper of silf-dtpi ndi uce and inquiry, wire ixprcased iu every case.
Failh nnd lUijiinitinu thi-ro were in every Chriatiau ecclesiastiral
building from the firat ointury to the fifleeiith : but tlie monil hubitd
to which England in thiu age owes tlie kind of grtatn»-8s which she has
— the habits of philovijdiical investi;.;ation. of accurato thought, of
domestic seehision uud indej>endence, of sti-rn self-reliance, and sincere
upright searching into n-ligious truth, — were only tniceablo in the
features which were the distinctive creations of the (iothic schooK
iu the varietl foliage and thorny fretwork, and shadowy niche, and
buttressed pier, and fenrleas height of subtle piiuioclo and created
tuwer, sent • like an unpcrplexed quotttion up to heaven.' "

So says Mr. Ruskin. I, for one, endorse his gallant
word.s. And I think that a strong proof of their truth
is to bo found in two facts, which seem at first para-
doxical. First, that the new Koman Catholic churches
on the Continent — I fpcuk especially of France, which

.•522 OnOTS ASD QROVES.

is the most highly cultivated Komnuist country — are,
like those which the Jesuita built iu the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, less and less Gothic. The
former were sham-classic; the luttor are rather of a
new fantastic llomanosque, or rather Byzantinesque
stylo, which is a real retrogression from Gothic towards
earlier and less natural schools. Next, that the Puritan
communions, the Kirk of Scotland and the English Non-
conformists, as they arr becoming more cultivated —
and there are now many highly cultivated men among
them — are introducing Gothic architecture more and
more into their clmrches. There are elements in it,
it seems, which do not contradict their Puritanism ;
elements which they can adapt io their own worship ;
namely, the very elements which Mr. Kuskiii 1ms
discerned.

But if they can do so, how much more can wo of the
Church of England ? As long as wo go on where our
medieval forefathers left off; as hmg as we keep to the
most perfect types of their work, in waiting for the
day when we shall he able to surpass them, by making
our work even more nattiralistic than theirs, more
truly oxpreKsivo of the highest aspirations of humanity:
so long w«' art! rovoroncing them, and that latent
Protostantism in them, which prcnluced at last the
lUtforniation.

And if any should say — "Nevertheless, your I'ro

GROTS AXD OPiOVES. 323

testftnt Gothic clnirch. tliough you made it ten times
more beautiful, ami more symbolic, than Cologne
Minster itself, would still be a sham. For where would
be your images ? And still more, where would be your
Host ? Do you not know that in the medieval church
the vistas of its arcades, the alternations of its lights
and shadows, the gradations of its colouring, and all its
carefully subordinated wealth of art, pointed to, were
concentrated round, one sacred spot, as a curve, however
vast its sweep tlfcugh space, tends at every moment
toward a single focus ? And that spot, that focus, was,
and is still, in every Romish church, the body of God,
present upon the altar in the form of bread ? Without
Ilim, what is all your building ? Your church is empty :
your altar bare ; a throne without a king ; an eye-
socket without an eye."

My friends, if we be true children of those old
worthies, whom Tacitus saw worshipping beneath tlie
German oaks ; we shall have but one answer to that
scoff: —

We know it ; and we glory in the fact. We glory in
it, as the old Jews gloried in it, when the Roman
soldiers, bursting through the Temple, and into the
Holy of Holies itself, paused in wonder and in awe
when they beheld neither God, nor image of God. but
— blank yet all-suggestive — the empty mercy-seat.

Like theirs, our altar is an empty throne. For it

Y 2

824 QMOTS ASD GROVES.

symbolises our worship of Him who dwclleth not in
temples made with hands ; whom the heaven and the
heaven of heavens cannot contain. Our eye-socket
holds no eye. For it symbolises our worship of that
Eye which is over all the earth ; which is about our
path, and about our bed, and spies out all our ways.
We need no artificial and material presence of Deity.
For we believe in That One Eternal and Universal
Real Presence — of which it is written " He is not far
from any one of us ; for in God we live, and move,
and have our beinp ;" and apain, " Lo, I am with you,
even to the End of the World ;" and aj^aiu — " Where-
soever two or three are gathered together in My Name,
there am I in the midst of them."

Ho is the God of nature, as well as the God of grace.
For ever Ho looks down on all things which He has
made : and behold, they are very g(K)d. And, therefore,
we dare offer to Him, in otir churches, the most perfect
works of naturalistic art, and shape them into copies of
whatever Wauty Ho has shown us, in nmn or woman,
in cavo or mountain peak, in true or flower, oven in bird
or bnttf-rfly.

liut Himself? — Who can hcc Him? Except the
humble and the contrite heart, to whom He reveille
Himself as a Spirit to bo worshipped in spirit and In
truth, and not in broad, nor wood, nor stone, nor gold,
nor quintessential diamond.

GliOTS ASD rinOVES. 325

So wo shall obey the sound instinct of our Christian
forefathers, when tlicy shaped their churches into forest
aisles, and decked them with the boughs of the wood-
land, and the flowers of the field : but we shall obey
too, that sounder instinct of theirs, which made them
at last cast out of their own temples, as misplaced and
uunntunil things, the idols which they had inherited
from Home.

So we shall obey the sound instinct of our heathen
forefathers, when they worshipped the unknown God
beneath the oaks of the primeval forest : but we shall
obey, too, that sounder instinct of theirs, which taught
them this, at least, concerning God — That it was be-
neath His dignity to coop Him within walls ; and
that the grandest forms of nature, as well as the
deepest consciousnesses of their own souls, reyealed
to them a mysterious Being, who was to be beheld by
faith alone.

GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCnOLAR.

The scholar, in the sixteenth century, was a fur more
important personage than now. The supply of learned
men was very small, the demand for them very great.
During the whole of the fifteenth, and a great part of tho
sixteenth century, the human mind turned more and
more from the scholastic philosuphy of the Middle Ages
to that of the Itomans and tho Greeks ; and found more
and more in old Pagan Art an element which MonaKtic
Art had not, and which was yet necessary for the full
satisfaction of their craving after the Beautiful. At
Kuch a crisis of thouglit and taste, it was natural that
the classical scholar, tho man who knew old Itome, and
still more old Greece, should usurp the place of tho
monk, as teacher of mankind ; and that scholars should
form, fur u while, a n«w and powerful aristocracy,
limited and privileged, and all the more redoubtalde,
])ecaUH«! its power lay in intellect, and had been won liy
intellect alone.

Tbofio who, whether poor or rich, did not fear the

GEORGE BUCHAXAy, SCnOLAR. 327

monk and priest, at least feared the " scholar," who held,
80 the vulgar believed, the keys of that magic lore by
which the old necromancers had built cities like Rome,
and worked marvels of mechanical and chemical skill,
which the degenerate modern could never equal.

If the " scholar " stopped in a town, his hostess pro-
bably begged of him a charm against toothache or
rheumatism. The penniless knight discoursed with
him on alchemy, and the chances of retrieving his for-
tune by the art of transmuting metals into gold. The
queen or bishop worried him in private about casting
their nativities, and finding their fates among the stars.
But the statesman, who dealt with more practical mat-
ters, hired him as an advocate and rhetorician, who
could fight his master's enemies with the weapons of
Demosthenes and Cicero. Wherever the scholar's steps
were turned, he might be master of others, as long as
ho was master of himself. The complaints which he
so often uttered concerning the cruelty of fortune, the
fickleness of princes, and so forth, were probably no
more just then than such complaints are now. Then,
as now, he got his deserts ; and the world bought him
at his own price. If he chose to sell himself to this
patron and to that, he was used and thrown away : if
he chose to remain in honourable independence, ho was
courted and feared.

Among the successful scholars of the sixteenth

32S GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR.

century, none surely is more notable than George
Buchanan. The poor Scotch widow's son, by force of
native wit, and, as I think, by force of native worth,
fights his way upward, through poverty and severest
persecution, to become the correspondent and friend of
the greatest literary celebrities of the Continent, com-
parable, in their opinion, to the best Latin poets of
antiquity ; the preceptor of princes ; the counsellor and
spokesman of Scotch stati'smen in the most dangerous
of times ; and leaves behind him political treatises,
which have influenced not only the history of his own
country, but that of the civilised world.

Such a success could not be attained without making
enemies, perhaps without making mistakes. But the
more we study George Buchanan's history, the less wo
shall be inclined to hunt out his failings, the more
inclined to admire his worth. A shrewd, sound-hearted,
affectionate num, with a strong love of right and scorn
of wrong, and a humour withal which saved him —
except on really great occasions — from bitterness, and
hcl])cd him to laugh where narrower natures would
have only snarled, — he is, in many respects, a type of
those Lowland Scots, who long j)r('served his jokes,
genuine or reputed, as a common household book.*

• 80 M.vi Dr. Irving, wriliiiK in 1H17. I liiivo, Imwrvor, trifd in
vnin t> g<'t » M^hl c>r Ihia brM>k. I niMil not t*ll Scntrh nrhnliirs iiow
inurh I iini iniicKtol throiiKii'xit (IiIm iirticlo tu Dr. Duvid Irving'*
urudiU) M-coml i-alitinn of Ittit'tiannirii I-ifc

GEOnCE BUCHANAN, SCIJOLAn. 329

A schoolmaster by profession, and struggling for long
years amid the temptations which, in those days, de-
graded his class into cruel and sordid pedants, he rose
from the mere pedagogue to be, in the best sense of the
word, a courtier ; " One," says Daniel Heinsius, " who
seemed not only born for a court, l)nt born to amend
it. He brought to his queen that at which she could
not wonder enough. For, by affecting a certain liberty
in censuring morals, he avoided all offence, under the
cloak of simplicity." Of him and his compeers, Tur-
nebus, and ]\[uretus, and their friend Andrea Govea,
Et)nsard, the French court poet, said that they had
nothing of the pedagogue about them but the gown
and cap, " Austere in face, and rustic in his looks,"
says David Buchanan, " but most polished in style and
speech ; and continually, even in serious conversation,
jesting most wittily." " Koughhewn, slovenly, and
rude," says Peacham, in his ' Compleat Gentleman,'
speaking of him, probably, as he appeared in old age,
" in his person, behaviour, and fashion; seldom caring
for a better outside than a rugge-gown girt close about
him : yet his inside and couceipt in poesie was most
rich, and his sweetness and facilitie in verse most
excellent." A typical Lowland Scot, as I said just
now, he seems to have absorbed all the best culture
which France could afford him, without losing the
strength, honesty, and humour which he inherited
from his Stirlingshire kindred.

330 OEOROE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR.

The story of his life is easily traced. When an old
mull, ho himself wrote down the main events of it, at
the request of his friends; and his sketch has been
filled out by commcntutors, if not always favournblo, at
least erudite. IJorn iu 1500, at the Moss, in Killearn
— where an obelisk to his memory, so one reads, has
been erected in this century — of a family " rather
ancient than rich," his father dead in the prime of
manhood, his grandfather a spendtlirift, he and his
seven brothers and sisters were brought up by a
widowed mother, Agnes Heriot — of whom one wishes
to know more ; for the rule that great sons have great
mothers probably holds good in her case. George gave
signs, while at the village school, of future scholarship ;
and when he was only fourteen, his uncle James sent
him to the University of Paris. Tlioso were hard
times ; mid the youths, or rutlitr lioys, wiio meant to
become sclndars, liud a cru«l life of it, cast desperately
out on the wide world to beg and starve, either into
self-rest mint and success, or into ruin of body and
soul. And a cruel life George hud. Within two years
ho was down in a sovcro illness, his uncle dead, his
supplies stopped ; and the boy of sixtoen got home, he
do<>s not tell how. Then ho tried soldiering; and was
with Albany's French Auxiliurit-s at the inefTtctnal
attack on Wark Castle. Marching buck through deep
snow, ho got a fresh illness, which kept him in bed all
winter. Then he and his brother were sent to St.

GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR. 331

Andrew's, where he got his B.A. at nineteen. The next
summer he went to France once more ; and " fell," he
says, " into the flumes of the Lutheran sect, which was
then spreading far and wide." Two years of penury
followed ; and then three years of schoolmastering in
the College of St. Barhe, which he has immortalised —
at least for the few who care to read modern Latin
poetry — in his elegy on ' The Miseries of a Parisian
Teacher of the Humanities.' The wretched regent
master, pale and sufleriug, sits up all night preparing
his lecture, biting his nails, and thumping his desk ;
and falls asleep for a few minutes, to start up at the
sound of the four o'clock bell, and be in school by five,
his Virgil in one hand, and his rod in the other, trying
to do work on his own account at old manuscripts, and
bawling all the while at his wretched boys, who cheat
him, and pay each other to answer to truants' names.
The class is all wrong. " One is barefoot, another's
shoe is burst, another cries, another writes home. Then
comes the rod, the sound of blows and howls ; and the
day passes in tears." " Then mass, then another lesson,
then more blows; there is hardly time to eat." — I have
no space to finish the picture of the stupid misery
which, Buchanan says, was ruining his intellect, while
it starved his body. However, happier days came.
Gilbert Kennedy, Earl of Cassilis, who seems to have
been a noble young gentleman, took him as his tutor for

332 GEORGE BUCnANAX, SCHOLAR.

the next five years ; and with him he went back to
Scotland.

But there his plain speaking got him, as it did more
than once afterward, into trouble. He took it into his
head to write, in imitation of Dunbar, a Latin poem, in
wliicli St. Francis asks him in a dream to become a
Grey Friar, and Buchanan answered in language which
had tlie unpleasant fault of being too clever, and — to
judge from contemporary evidence — only too true. The
friars said notliing at first : but when King James
made Buchanan tutor to one of his natural sons, tliey,
" men professing meekness, took the matter somewhat
more angrily than befitted men so pious in the opinion
of the people." So Buchanan himself puts it : but, to
do the poor friars justice, they must have been angels,
not men, if tl>ey did not writhe somewhat under the
scourge which he had laid on them. To be told that
there was hardly a ])Ia('e in luuven for monks, was hard
to heiir Jind bear. They accused him to the king of
heresy : but not b«"ing then in favour with James, they
got no answer, and Buclianan was commanded to repeat
the castigation. Having found out that the friars
were not to be toucIi<-il with iiiij)unity, he wrote, he
says, a short and ambiguous ]>oeiii. l>ut the king,
who loTcd a joke, demanded sonudliing siiarp and
stinging, and IWichanan obeyed by writing, but not
publishing, the ' Franciscans,' a long sulire, compared

QEOItGE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAIi. 333

to which the * Somnium ' was bland and merciful. The
storm rose. Cardinal Beaton, Buchanan says, wanted
to buy him of the king, and then, of course, burn him,
as he had just burnt five poor souls : so, knowing
James's avarice, he fled to England, through freebooters
and pestilence.

There he found, he says, " men of both factions being
burned on the same day and in the same fire " — a par-
donable exaggeration — *' by Henry YIIL, in his old age
more intent on his own safety than on the purity of
religion." So to his beloved France he went again,
to find his enemy Beaton ambassador at Paris. The
capital was too hot to hold him ; and he fled south to
Bourdoaux, to Andrea Govea, the Portuguese principal
of the College of Guienne. As Professor of Latin at
Bourdeaux, we find him presenting a Latin poem to
Charles V, ; and indulging that fancy of his for Latin
poetry which seems to us now-a-days a childish
pedantry; which was then — when Latin was the
vernacular tongue of all scholars — a serious, if not
altogether a useful, pursuit. Of his tragedies, so
famous in their day — the * Baptist,' the ' Medea,' the
' Jephtha,' and the ' Alcestis ' — there is neither space
nor need to speak here, save to notice the bold de-
clamations in the ' Baptist ' against tyranny and priest-
craft ; and to notice also that these tragedies gained
for the poor Scotsman, in the eyes of the best scholars

3^4 OEOROE BUCHAXAy, SCHOLAR. ;

of Europe, a credit amounting almost to veneration.
When he returned to Paris, he found occupation at
once ; and — as his Scots biographers love to record —
*' three of the most learned men in the world taught
humanity in the same college," viz., Turuebus, Muretus,
and liuchuuau.

Then followed a strange episode in his life. A uni-
versity had been founded at Coimbra, in Portugal, and
Andrea Govea had been invited to bring thither what
French savaus he could collect. Buchanan went to
Portugal with his brother Patrick ; two more Scots-
men, Dempster and Kamsay : and a goodly company of
French scholars, whose names and histories may bo read
in the erudite pages of Dr. Irving, went likewise. All
prospered in the now Temple of the Muses for a year or so.
Then its high-priest, Govea, died ; and, by a peripeteia
too common in those days and countries, Buchanan
and two of his friends migrated, unwillingly, from the
Temple of the Muses for that of Moloch, and found
themselves in the Inquisition.

I^uchanan, it serraH, had said that St. Augustine was
more of u Lutheran than a Catholic on the question of
the mass. Ho and his friends had eaten flesh in Lent ;
which, he says, almost everyone in Spain did. But
ho was HUHpccted, and with reason, as a heretic; the
Grey Friars formed but one brntherhood throughout
Europe; and news among them travelltd hunly if not

OEOIiOE BUCHANAN, SCnOlAR. 335

fast : 80 tlint the story of the satire written in Scot-
luiul hiul iH'acliid Portugal. The culprits were impri-
soueil, t'Xinuinoil, bullied — but not tortured — for a year
and a half. At the end of that time, the proofs of
heresy, it seems, were insullicient ; but lest — says
Buchanan with honest pride — " they should get the
reputation of having vainly tormented a man not alto-
gether unknown," they sent him for some months to
a monastery, to be instructed by the monks. " The
men," he says, " were neither inhuman nor bad, but
utterly ignorant of religion;" and Buchanan solaced
himself during the intervals of their instructions, by
beginning his Latin translation of the Psalms.

At last he got free, and begged leave to return to
France ; but in vain. AVearied out at last, he got on
board a Candian ship at Lisbon, and escaped to Eng-
land. But England, he says, during the anarchy of
Edward YL's reign, was not a land which suited
him ; and he returned to his beloved France, to fulfil
the hopes which he had expressed in his charming
' Desiderium Lutitia*,' and the still more charming,
because more simple, ' Adventus in Galliam,' in which
he bids farewell, in most melodious verse, to " the
hungry moors of wretched Portugal, and her clods
fertile in naught but penury."

Some seven years succeeded of schoolmastering and
verso-writing : — The Latin paraphrase of the Psalms ;

330 OEOROE BUCIfANAX, SCHOLAR.

another of the 'Alcestis' of Euripides; au Epithalamium
on the marriage of poor Mary Stuart, noble and sin-
cere, however fantastic and pedantic, after the manner
of the times ; " Pomps," too, for Lcr wedding, and for
other public ceremonies, in which all the heathen gods
and goddesses figure ; epigrams, panegyrics, satires,
much of which latter productions he wuuld have con-
signed to the dust-heap in his old age, had not his too
fond friends persuaded him to republish the follies and
coarsenesses of his youth. He was now one of the
most famous scholars in Europe, and the intimate
friend of all the great literary men. Was he to go on
to the end, die, and no more ? Was he to sink into the
mere pedant ; or, if he could not do that, into the mere
court versifier?

The wars of religion saved him, as they saved many
another uublu soul, from that degradation. The events
of 15G0-1 2 forced Buchanan, as they forced many a
loarne<l iiuin l^esidcs, to choose whether ho would be
a child of light or a child i>f darkness ; whether he
would be a dilettante classicist, or a preacher — it might
be a martyr-^ of the Gospel. Buchanan may have left
France in " the troubles " merely to enjoy in his own
country elegant and learned repose. Ho may have
fancied that he had found it, when ho saw himself, in
spite of his public profession of adherence to the lie-
formed Kirk, reading Livy every afternoon with his

OEORQE liUCnANAN, SCnOLAR. 337

exquisite young sovoreign ; master, by Inr favour, of
the temporalities of Crossraguel Abbey, aud by the
favour of Murray, Principal of St. Leonard's College in
St. Andrew's. Perhaps he fancied at times that " to-
morrow was to be as to-day, and much more abundant ;"
that thenceforth he might read his folio, and write
his epigram, and joke his joke, as a lazy comfortable
pluralist, taking his morning stroll out to the corner
where poor ^Vi.shart had been burned, above the blue
sea and the yellow sands, and looking up to the castle
tower frt>m whence his enemy Beaton's corpse had been
hung out ; with the comfortable reflection that quietier
times had come, and that whatever cvil.deeds Archbishop
Hamilton might dare, he would not dare to put the
Principal of St. Leonard's into the " bottle dungeon."

1 1 such hopes ever crossed Geordie's keen fancy, they
were disappointed suddenly and fearfully. The lirt*
which had l)een kindled in France was to reach to
Scotland likewise. " Kevolutiom^ are not made with
rose-water ; " and the time was at hand when all good
spirits in Scotland, and (ieorge Buchaium among them,
had to choose, once and for all, amid danger, confusion,
terror, wht-ther they would serve CJod or Mammon ; f«»r
to serve both wouhl be soon impossible.

Which side, in that war of light and darkness, George
Buchanan took, is notorious. He saw then, as others
have seen since, that the two men in Scotland who

338 GEORQE BVCIIASAS, SCHOLAR.

were capable of being her cui)tuin8 in the strife were
Knox and Murray ; and to them be gave in bis allegiance
heart and soul.

This is the critical epoch in Buchanan's life. By his
conduct to Queen I^Iury he must stand or fall. It is
my belief that he will stand. It is not my intention
to enter into the details of a matter so painful, so
shocking, so prodigious ; and now that that question is
finally set at rest, by the writings both of Mr. Froude
and Mr. Burton, there is no need to allude to it further,
save where Bucluinuu's name is concerned. One may
now have every sympathy with Mary Stuart ; one may
regard with awe a figure so stately, so tragic, in one
sense so heroic, — for she reminds one rather of the
heroine of an old Greek tragedy, swept to her doom by
some irresistible fute, than of a being of our own flesh
and blood, and of our modern and Oiristiiin times.
One may symputhise with the great womanhood which
charmed so many while she was alive ; whieh has
charmed, in later years, so many noble spirits who
have believed in her innocence, and have doubtless been
clevuteil and ptirifu'd by their devotion to one who
seemed to them an ideal being. So fur from regarding her
afl a hateful jtersonage, one may feel onescdf forbidden to
hate a woman whom (tod may have loved, and may have
pardoned, to judge from the punishment so swift, and
v.-t MO enduriiiLT, which lie inflicted. At h'list. be must

GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCIlOLAIi. 339

80 believe \;\\o liolds tliut ])unisliment is a sign of
mercy ; that the most dreadful 6f all dooms is impunity.
Nay, more, those " casket " letters and sonnets may be
a relief to the mind of one who believes in her guilt
on other grounds ; a relief when one finds in them a
tenderness, a sweetness, a delicacy, a magnificent self-
sacrifice, however hideously misplaced, which shows
what a womanly heart was there; a heart which,
joined to that queenly brain, might have made her a
blessing and a glory to Scotland, had not the whole
character been warped and ruinate from childhood, by
an education so abominable, that any one who knows
what words she must have heard, what scenes she must
have beheld in France, from her youth up, will wonder
that she sinned so little : not that she sinned so much.
One may feel, in a word, that there is every excuse for
tln)se who have asserted Mary's innocence, because their
own high-mindedness shrank from believing her guilty :
but yet Buchanan, in his own place and time, may
have felt as deeply that he could do no otherwi.se than
he did.

The charges against him, as all readers of Soot oh
literature know well, may be reduced to two heads.
1st. The letters and sonnets were forgeries. ]yiaitland
of Lethingtou may have forged the letters; Buchanan,
according to some, the sonnets. AVhoever forged them,
Buchanan made use of them in his Detection, knowing

z 2

r.^0 GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCnOLAR.

them to be forged. 2uil. AVhetlier Mary was innocent
or not, Buchanan acted a base and ungrateful part in
putting himself in the forefront amongst her accusers.
He had been her tutor, her pensioner. She had heaped
him with favours ; and, after all, she was his queen,
and a defenceless woman : and yet ho returned her
kindness, in the hour of her fall, by invectives fit only
for a rancorous and reckless advocate, determined to
force a verdict by the basest arts of oratory.

Now as to the " casket " letters. I should have thought
they bore in themselves the best evidence of being
genuine. I can add nothing to the arguments of Mr.
Froude and Mr. Burton, save this : that no one clever
enough to be a forger, would have put together docu-
ments so incoherent, and so incomplete. For the
evidence of guilt which they contain is, after all, slight
and indirect, and, moreover, supcrlluous altogether;
seeing that Mary's guilt was open and palpable, be-
tnre the supposed discovery of the httcrs, to every
person at home and abroad wiio liiid any knowledge
of the facts. As for the alh*g<d inconsistency of the
letters with proven facts: the answer is, that whoso-
ever wrote the letters would be more likely to know
facts which wert^ taking phicc around Ihcm thun any
eritic could bo one hundnd or three hundred years
afterwardH. But if these mistakes as to facts actually
» xist in them, they are only a fresli argument for their

GEOIiflE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR, 341

autlienticity. ]\IarY, writing in agony and confusion,
might easily make a mistake : forgers would only take
too good care to make none.

But the strongest evidence in favour of the letters
and sonnets, in spite of the arguments of good Dr.
Whittaker and other apologists for Mary, is to be found
in their tone. A forger in those coarse days would
liave made Mary write in some Semiramis or Roxana
vein, utterly alien to the tenderness, the delicacy,
the pitiful confusion of mind, the conscious weakness,
the imploring and most feminine trust which makes
the letters, to those who — as I do — believe in them,
more pathetic than any fictitious sorrows which poets
could invent. i\Iore than one touch, indeed, of utter
self-abasement, in the second letter, is so unexpected,
so subtle, and yet so true to the heart of woman, that
— as has been well said — if it was invented there must
have existed in Scotland an earlier Shakespeare ; who
yet has died without leaving any other sign, for good
or evil, of his dramatic genius.

\a for the theory (totally unsupported) that Bu-
chanan forged the poem usually called the Sonnets ; it is
paying old Geordie's genius, however versatile it may
have been, too high a compliment to believe that he
could have written both them and the Detection ; while
it is paying his shrewdness too low a comi)limeut to
liflicve that ho could have put into them, out of mere

342 GEORGE DVCUASAS, SCUOLAR..

carelessness or stnpiility, the well-known line, which
seems incompatible with the theory l)oth of the letters
and of his own Detection ; and which has ere now been
brought forward as a fresh proof of Mary's innocence.

And, as with the letters, so with the sonnets : their
delicacy, their grace, their reticence, are so many
arguments against their having been forged by any
Scot of the sixteenth century, and least of all by one
in whose character — whatever his other virtues may
liavo been — delicacy was by no means the strongest
point.

As for the complaint that Buclianan was ungrateful
to Mary, it must bo said : That even if she, and not
Murray, had bestowed on him the temporalities of
Crossraguel Abbey four years before, it was merely fair
pay for services fairly rendered ; and I am not aware
that payment, or oven favours, however gracious, bind
any man's soul and conscience in questions of highest
morality and highest public importance. And the im-
portance of that question cannot bo exaggerat4'(l. At
a moment when Scotland seemed struggling in death-
throes of anarchy, civil and religious, and was in danger
of becoming a prey either to England or to France, if
there could not bo formed out of the heart of her a
people, steadfast, trusty, united, strong politically be-
cauMo strong in the fi ur of (mmI and the desire of
righteousness— at such a moment as this, a crime had

GEORGE BUCHANAN, SC II 01. AH. 343

been committed, the like of wbicL had not been heard
in Europe since the tragedy of Joan of Naples. All
Europe stood aghast. The honour of the Scottish
nation was at stake. More than Mary or Bothwell
were known to be implicated in the deed ; and — as
Buchanan puts it in the opening of his * De Jure
Regni ' — " The fault of some few was charged upon all ;
and the common hatred of a particular person did
redound to the whole nation ; so that even such as
were remote from any suspicion were inflamed by the
infamy of men's crimes." *

To vindicate the national honour, and to punish the
guilty, as well as to save themselves from utter anarchy,
the great majority of the Scotch nation had taken
measures against ^lary which required explicit justi-
fication in the sight of Europe, as liuchanan frankly
confesses in the opening of his " De Jure Kegni. " The
chief authors of those measures had been summoned,
perhaps unwisely and unjustly, to answer for their con-
duct to the Queen of England. Queen Elizabeth — a fact
which was notorious enough then, though it has been
forgotten till tlie last few years — was doing her utmost to
shield Mary. Buchanan was deputed, it seems, to speak
out for the people of Scotland; and certainly never

• From the qtinint oUl Imnslalion of 1721, l>y " \ Ptraon of Honour
of the iviugiloni of ScuUuiid."

:'.H GEOnCrE BDCIIAXAN, SCHOLAR.

people liad an abler apologist. If he spoke fiercely,
savagely, it must be remembered that he spoke of a
fierce and savage matter ; if he used — and it may be
abused — all the arts of oratory, it must be remembered
that he was fighting for the honour, and it may be for
the national life, of his country, and striking — as men
in such cases have a right to strike — as hard as he
could. If he makes no secret of his indignation, and
even contempt, it must be remembered that indignation
and contempt may well have been real with him, while
they were real with the soundest part of his country-
men ; with that reforming middle class, comparatively
untainted by French profligacy, eomj)iiratively un-
debauchcd by feudal subservience, wliich has been
the leaven wliich has leavened the whole Scottish
people in the last three centuries with the elements of
their greatness. If, finally, lie heaps up against the
unhappy Queen charges which Mr. liurtou thinks in-
credible, it must bo remembered tliat, as he well says,
these charges give the popular feeling alumt C^neen
Mary ; and it must be remembered also, that that popu-
lar feeling need not have been altdgethor unfounded.
Stories which are incredible, thank God, in these milder
doya, wore credible enough then, because, alas ! they
were so often true. Things more uglv tlnm any related
of poor Mary, were possible enough — as no one knew
bettrr than IJuchanan in that verv French court in

GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR. 345

which I\[ary had been brought up ; things as ugly were
j»ossible in Scotland then, and for at least a century
later ; and while wc may hope that Buchanan has
overstated his case, we must not blame him too
severely for yielding to a temptation common to all
men of genius when their creative power is roused to
its highest energy l)y a great cause and a great in-
dignation.

And that the genius was there, no man can doubt ;
one cannot read that " hideously eloquent " description
of Kirk o' Field, which Mr. Burton has well chosen as
a specimen of Buchanan's style, without seeing that we
are face to face with a genius of a very lofty^order :
not, indeed, of the loftiest — for there is always in
Buchanan's work, it seems to me, a want of uncon-
sciousness, and a want of tenderness — but still a genius
worthy to be placed beside those ancient writers from
whom he took his manner. Whether or not we agree
with his contemporaries, who say that he equalled
\ irgil in Latin poetry, we may place him fairly as a
l)roso writer by the side of Demosthenes, Cicero, or
Tacitus. And so I pass from this painful subject ; only
(jnoting— if I uiay br i.eriiiitted to quote— Mr. Burton 'a
wise and gentle verdict on the whole. "Buchanan,"
he says, " though a zealous Protestant, had a good deal
of the CathoHc and sceptical spirit of Erasmus, and an
admiring eye for everything that was great and beau-

346 GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCnOLAR.

tiful. Like the rest of his countrymen, he bowed
himself in presence of the lustre that surrounded the
early career of his mistress. More thiin once he ex-
pressed his pride and reverence in the inspiration of a
genius deemed by his contemporaries to be worthy of
the theme. There is not, pt'rha})s, to be found else-
where in literature so solemn a memorial of shipwrecked
hopes, of a sunny opening and a stormy end, as one
finds in turning the leaves of the volume which contains
the beautiful epigram ' Nympha Caledoniae * in one part,
the * Detectio Marias Kcgiiuo ' in another ; and this
contrast is, no doubt, a faithful parallel of the reaction
in the popular mind. This reaction seems to have been
general, and not limittd to the Protestant party ; for
the conditions under which it became almost a part of
the creed of the Church of Itomo to believe in her
innoronco had not arisen."

If J'.iichanan, as some of his detractors have thought,
raised himself by subserviency to the intrigues of the
llcgent Murray, the best heads in Scotland seem to
have been of a difTcrj'nt opinion. The murder of
Mtirray did not involve I'urlmnaii's full. lie had
avenged it, as far as pen could do it, by that ' Admoni-
tion Direct to the Trow Lordis,' in which ho showed
himself as great a master of Scottish, as lu? wafl of
Latin, prose. His satire of the ' Chameleon,' though its
publication was stopped by Maitlund, must have been

OEOIiOE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR. ?A7

read in manuscript by many of those same " Trne
Lords ; " and though there were nobler instincts in
Maitland than any Buchanan gave him credit for, the
satire breathed an honest indignation against that wily
turncoat's misdoings, which could not but recommend
the author to all honest men. Therefore it was, I pre-
sume, and not because he was a rogue, and a hired
literary spadassin, that to the best heads in Scotland he
seemed so useful, it may be so worthy, a man, that he
be provided with continually increasing employment.
As tutor to James I. ; as director, for a short time, of
the chancery ; as keeper of the privy seal, and privy
councillor ; as one of the commissioners for codifying
the laws, and again — for in the semi-anarchic state of
Scotland, government had to do everything in the way
of organisation — in the committee for promulgating a
standard Latin grammar ; in the committee for re-
forming the University of St. Andrew's : in all these
Buchanan's talents were again and again called for 5
and always ready. The value of his work, especially
that for the reform of St. Andrew's, must be judged by
Scotchmen, rather than by an Englishman : but all
that one knows of it justifies Melville's sentence in the
well-known passage in his memoirs, wherein he de-
scribes the tutors and household of the young King.
" Mr. George was a Stoic philosopher, who looked not
far before him;" in plain words, a high-minded and

348 GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCIIOLAP.

right-mimleil man, Leut on doing the duty whicli lay
nearest him. The worst that can be said against him
during these times is, that his name appears with the
sum of £100 against it, as one of those "who were to
be entertained in Scotland by pensions out of England " ;
and Kuddiman, of course, comments on the fact by
saying that Buchanan " was at length to act under
the threefold character of umlconteut, reformer, and
pensioner:" but it gires no proof whatsoever that
Buchanan ever received any such bribe ; and in the very
month, seemingly, in which that list was written —
10th ^larch, 157'J — Buchanan had given a proof to the
world that ho was not likely to be bribed or bought,
by publishing a book, as offensive probably to Queen
Elizabeth as it was to his own royal pupil ; namely, his
famous ' De Jure Rcgni apud Scotos,' the very primer,
according to many great thinkers, of constitutional
liberty. He dedicates that book to King James, " not
only as his monitor, but also an importunate and bold
exactor, which in these his tender and flexible years
may conduct him in safety j)asl the rocks of llattery."
He has complimented James already on his abhorrence
of llattery, "his inclination far above his years for
undertaking ull heroical and noble attempts, his promp-
titude in obeying bis instructors and governors, and all
who give him sound admonition, and his judgment and
diligence in examining affairs, s<j that no man's autho-

GEonnE riir'nAXAX, sci/n/.M:. 3^!<

rity cfin hnve much weight witli liiiii unless it be con-

tirmo<l hy prohablo reasons." Buchanan may have

thought that nine years of his stern rule had eradicated

some of James's ill conditions; the petulance which

made him kill the blaster of Mar's sparrow, in trying

to wrest it out of his hand ; the carelessness with which

—if the story told by Chytraeus, on the authority of

Buchanan's nephew, be true — James signed away his

crown to Buchanan for fifteen days, and only discovered

his mistake by seeing Buchanan act in open court

the character of King of Scots. Buchanan had at last

made him a scholar ; he may have fancied that he had

made him likewise a manful man : yet ho may have

dreaded that, as James grew up, the old inclinations

would return in stronger and uglier shapes, and that

flattery might be, as it was after all, the cause of

James's moral ruin. He at least will be no flatterer.

He opens the dialogue which he sends to the king.

with a calm but distinct assertion of his mother's

guilt, and a justification of the conduct of men who

were now most of them past helping Buchanan, for

they were laid in their graves; and then goes on to

argue fairly, but to lay down firmly, in a .sort of

Socratic dialogue, those very principles by loyalty to

which the House of Hanover has reigned, and will

reign, over these realms. So with his History of

Scotland ; later antiquarian researches have destroyed

350 OEORGE BUCnANAX, SCHOLAR.

the value of the earlier portions of it : but they have
surely increased tlic value of those later portions, in
which Buchanan inserted so much which he had
already spoken out in his Detection of l\Iary. In that
book also, " liberavit animam suam;" he spoke his
mind, fearless of consequences, in the face of a king who
he must Imve known — for Buchanan was no dullard —
regarded him with deep dislike, who might in a few
years he able to work his ruin.

But those few years were not given to Buchanan.
He had all but done his work, and he hastened to get
it over before the night should come wherein no man
can work. One must be excused for telling — one would
not tell it in a Itonk intended to bo read only by
Scotchmen, who know or ought to know the tale already
— how the two Melvilles and Jiuehanan's nephew
Thomas went to see him in Edinburgh, in September,
1581, hearing tliat he was ill, uiul his History still in
the jtnss ; ujul how tliey found the old sago, trui' to
his Hclioohnaster's instincts, teaching the IIorn]>ook
to his servant-lad ; and how he told them that doing
that was " better than stealing sheep, or sitting idle,
which was as bad," and showed tli<iii llmt dedication
to James I., in wliich ho holds up to his imitation as
a hero whoso e(|ual was hardly to be found in history,
that very King David whose liberality to the* Komish
Church provoked Jamcs'a witticism that " David was a

OEORGE BUCHANAN, SCEOLATi. 351

sair saint for tlic crown." Andrew Melville, so James
]\Ielville says, found fault with the style. Buchanan
replied that he could do no more for thinking of an-
other thing, which was to die. They then went to
Arbuthnot's printing-house, and inspected the history, as
far as that terrible passage concerning Rizzio's burial,
where Mary is represented as " laying the miscreant
almost in the arms of Maud de Yalois, the late queen."
Alarmed, and not without reason, at such plain speaking,
they stopped the press, and went back to Buchanan's
house, Buchanan was in bed. *' Pie was going," he
said, " the way of welfare." They asked him to soften
the passage; the king might prohibit the whole work.
" Tell me, man," said Buchanan, " if I have told the
truth." They could not, or would not, deny it. " Then I
will abide his feud, and all his kin's ; pray, pray to God
for me, and let Him direct all." " So," says Melville,
" by the printing of his chronicle was ended, this most
learned, wise, and godly man ended his mortal life."

Camden has a hearsay story — written, it must be
remembered, in James I.'s time — that Buchanan, on
his death-bed repented of his liarsh words against
(^ueen i^Iary ; and an old Lady Kosyth is said to
have said that when she was young a certain David
Buchanan recollected hearing some such words from
George Buchanan's own moutli. Those who will, may
road what Kuddimau and Love have said, and oversaid.

332 GEORGE DUCIIASAN, SCHOLAR.

on both sides of the question : whatever conclusion
they come to, it will probably not be that to which
George Chalmers comes in his life of Kuddiman : that
" Buchanan, like other liars, who by the repetition of
falsehoods are induced to consider the fiction as truth,
had 80 often dwelt with complacency on the forgeries
of his Detections, and the figments of his History, that
he at length regarded his fictions and his forgeries as
most authentic facts."

At all events his fictions and his forgeries had not
paid him in tlmt coin which base men generally con-
sider tlie (luly cDin wnilli haviiiL,', namely, the good
things of this life. IIo left nothing l)ehind him — if at
least Dr. Irving has rightly construed the "Testa-
ment Dative" which he gives in his appendix -save
arrears to the sum of 100/. of his Crossraguel pension.
We may believe as we choose the story in Mackenzie's
' Scotch Writers,' that when lie felt iiimself dying, he
asked his servant Young about tlje state of his funds,
and finding he iiad not enough to bury himself witlial,
ordered what he had to bo given to the poor, and said
that if they did not choose t«i bury iiim tiiey might let
him lie where he was, or cast him in a ditch, the
matter was very little to him. He was buried, it
seems, at the expense of the city of Edinlturgh, in tlie
(ireyfriars' ('hurcbyard -one says in a plain turf grave

among the marble monuments which coven •! tli<

GEOIiOE BUCnANAN, SCHOLAR. 353

bones of worse or meaner men ; and whether or not the
" Throughstone " wliicli, " sunk under the ground in
the Greyfriars," was raised and cleaned by tlie Council
1)1" Edinburgh in 1701, was really George Buchanan's,
the reigning powers troubled themselves little for
several generations where he lay.

For Buchanan's politics were too advanced for his
age. Not only Catholic Scotsmen, like Blackwood,
Wiuzet, and Ninian, but Protestants, like Sir Thomas
Craig and Sir John Wemyss, could not stomach the
' De Jure Kegni.' They may have had some reason
on their side. In the then anarchic state of Scotland,
organi-satiou and unity under a common head may have
been more important than the assertion of popular
rights. Be that as it may, in 1584, only two years
after his death, the Scots Parliament condemned his
Diah)gue and History as untrue, and commanded all
possessors of copies to deliver them up, that they
might be purged of " the oftensive and extraordinary
matters " which they contained. The ' De Jure llegni '
was again prohibited in Scotland, in 1(504, even in
manuscript ; and in iCiSo, tlif whole of Bucliauan's
political works had the honour of being burned by the
University of Oxford, in company with those of Milton,
Lariguot, and others, as " pernicious books, and dam-
nable doctrines, destructive to the sacred persons of
Princes, their state and government, and of all human

L> A

354 GEOIiGE BUCJIANAy, SCHOLAR.

society." And thus the seed which Buchrtiian Imd
sowu, and Milton had watered — for the allegation that
Milton borrowed from Buchanan is pri>bal>ly true, and
equally honourable to both — lay trampled into the
earth, and seemingly lifeless, till it tillered out, and
blossomed, and boro fruit to a good purpose, in the
Revolution of 1G88.

To Buchanan's clear head and stout heart, Scotland
owes, as England owes likewise, much of her modern
liberty. But Scotland's debt to him, it seems to me,
is even greater on the count of morality, public and
private. What the morality of the Scotch upper
classes was like, in Buchanan's early days, is too
notorious ; and there remains proof enough — in the
writings, for instance, of Sir David Lindsay — that the
morality of the populace which looked up to the nobles
as its example and its guide, was not a whit better.
As anarchy increased, immorality was likely to increase
likewise ; and Scotland was in serious danger of falling
into such a state as that into which Poland ffU, to its
ruin, within a hundred and fifty years after; in which
the savagery of feudalism, without its order or its
chivalry, would be varnished over by a tliin coating of
French "civilisation," and, as in the case of Bothweil,
the vices of the court of Paris shouhl be added to those
of the Northern freebooter. To deliver Scotland from
thut rain, it was needed that she should be united into

GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR. 355

one people, strong, not in mere political, but in moral
ideas ; strong by the clear sense of right and wrong,
by the belief in the government and the judgments of
a living God. And the tone which Buchanan, like
Knox, adopted concerning the great crimes of their
day, helped notably that national salvation. It gathered
together, organised, strengthened, the scattered and
wavering elements of public morality. It assured the
hearts of all men who loved the right and hated the
wrong ; and taught a whole nation to call acts by their
just names, whoever might be the doers of them. It
appealed to the common conscience of men. It pro-
claimed a universal and God-given morality, a bar at
which all, from the lowest to the highest, must alike
be judged.

The tone was stern : but there was need of sternness,
floral life and death were in the balance. If the Scots
people were to be told that the crimes which roused their
indignation were excusable, or beyond punishment, or
to be hushed up and slipped over in any way, there
was an end of morality among them. Every man,
from the greatest to the least, would go and do like-
wise, according to his powers of evil. That method
was being tried in France, and in Spain likewise,
during those very years. Notorious crimes were hushed
up under pretence of loyalty; excused as political
necessities; smiled away as natural and pardonable

•1 A 1

35G GEOIiOE BUCIIAXAN, SCnOLAR.

weaknesses. The result was the utter demoralisation,
both of France and Spain. Knox and Buchanan, the one
from the stand-point of an old Hebrew prophet, the
other rather from that of a Juvenal or a Tacitus, tried
the other method, and called acts by their just names,
ai)pealing alike to conscience and to God. The result
was virtue and piety, and that manly independence of
soul which is thought compatible with hearty loyalty,
in a country labouring under heavy disadvantages,
lung divided almost into two hostile camps, two rival
races.

And the good influence was soon manifest, not only
in those who sided with Buchaniiii uiul his fri«Muls. but
in those who most opposed them. The Roman Catholic
preachers, who at first asserted I^Iary's riglit to impu-
nity, while they allowed her guilt, grew silent for
shame, and set themselves to assert her entire inno-
couce; while the Scots who have followed their example
have, to their honour, taken up the same ground.
They have fought lUudianan t»n tlie ground of fact, not
on the ground of morality : they luive alK>ged — as'they
hud a fair right to do— the probability of intrigue and
forgery in an age so profligate: tin; improbability that
u Queen so gifted by nature and by fortune, and con-
fessedly for a long while so strong and so spotless,
sijoiibl as it were by a sudden insanity have proved so
untrue to herself. Their noblest and purest sympa-

GEORGE JiUCnANAN, SCnOLAR. 357

thies have been enlisted — and wlio can blame tbem ? —
in loyalty to a Queen, chivalry to a woman, pity for
the uuibrtuuate and — as they conceived — the innocent ;
but whether they have been right or wrong in their
view of facts, the Scotch partisans of Mary have always
— as far as I know — been right in their view of morals ;
they have never deigned to admit Mary's guilt, and
then to palliate it by those sentimental, or rather sen-
sual, theories of human nature, too common in a certain
school of French literature, — too common, alas ! in a
certain school of modern English novels. They have
not said, " She did it ; but after all, was the deed so
very inexcusable ? " They have said, " The deed was
inexcusable : but she did not do it." And so the
Scotch admirers of ^lary, who have numbered among
them many a pure and noble, as well as many a gifted
spirit, luive kept at least themselves unstained ; and
have shown, whether consciously or not, that they too
share in that sturdy Scotch moral sense which has
been so much strengthened — as I believe — by the plain
speech of good old George Buchanan.

KOXDELET, Till: HUGUENOT
NATURALIST*

" AroLLO, god of metlicine, cxileil from tho rest of the
earth, was straying once across the Narhonnaise in
Gaul, seeking to fix his ahode there. Driven from
Asia, from Africa, and froiu the rest of Europe, he
wandered through all the towns of the province in
search of a place propitious for him and for his disciples.
At last ho perceived a new city, constructed from the
ruins of Maguelonno, of Lattes, and of Suhstantion.
He contemplated long its site, its aspect, its neigh-
hourhcKxl, and resolved to estahlish on this hill of
Montpellier a temple for himself and his priests. All
smiled on his desires. By the genius of the soil, by

• A Ijfu of Udiiilrli-I, l»y hi* |iu|>il I.niiri nt .InuU«rt, im U> I>o f<)uri«l
u|ipi'iitU-4l to hilt worka; mul with it an iir«otiiit of hi* illiieiw niul
death, hy hia mujiin, C'lniulo Funny, which in wtll worlli i\n> \n-ruml
of ftny ninn, wim' or r<«ilinli. Bluny intiTixtinf; ileluiU l>v«icln, I owe to
tilt! rourtiity of I'rofi^Mor I'hinchon, of Mom(|m llicr, Rtilhnr nf adincounio
on ' Koii'h |i t ct m» Dim i|>K<x,' wlii<h n|i|icnnHl, with a loarnod ftnd
curioua A|i[a-ndtcc, in the ' Monlin Uit-r Mcdiciil ' for IStiO.

noSDELET, THE IIUGUESOT yATDRALIST. 35!*

tlio character of tlio inhabitants, no town is more fit for
tlie culture of letters, and above all of medicine. "What
site is more delicious and more lovely? A heaven
pure and smiling; a city built with magnificence; men
born for all the labours of the intellect. All around
vast horizons and enchanting sites — meadows, vines,
olives, green champaigns; mountains and hills, rivers,
brooks, lagoons, and the sea. Everywhere a luxuriant
vegetation — everywhere the richest production of the
land and the water. Hail to thee, sweet and dear city !
lliiil. happy abode of Apollo, who spreadest afar the
light of the glory of thy name !"

" This fine tirade," says Dr. Maurice Raynaud — from
whose charming book on the ' Doctors of the Time of
Mtjliore ' I quote — " is not, as one might think, the
translation of a piece of poetry. It is simply part of a
pul)lic oration by Frau'ois Fanchon, one of the most
illustrious chancellors of the faculty of medicine of
Montpcllier in the seventeenth century." "From time
immemorial," he says, " ' the faculty ' of Montpellicr
had made itself remarkable by a singular mixture of
the sacred and the profane. The theses which were
sustained there began by an invocation to God, the
r>lessed Virgin, and St. Luke, and ended by these
words:— 'This thesis will be sustained in the sacred
Temple of Apollo.' "

But however extravagant Chancellor Fanchon's praises

300 J:0XDELET, the IIUOUEXOT NATUItALIST.

of his native city may seem, they are really not exag-
gerated. The Narbonuaise, or Lauguedoc, is perhaps
the most diarining district of charming France. In
the far north-east gleam the white Alps; in the far
south-west the white Pyrenees ; and from the purple
glens and yellow downs of the Cevennes on the north-
west, the Herault slopes gently down towards the
" Etangs," or great salt-water lagoons, and the vast
alluvial flats of the Camarguo, the field of Caius Marius,
where still run herds of half-wild horses, descended
from some ancient Eoman stock ; while beyond all
glitters the blue Mediterranean. The great almond
orchards, each one sheet of rose-colour in spring ; the
mulberry orchards, the oliveyards, the vineyards, cover
every foot of available upland soil : save where the
ruggid and arid downs are sweet with a thousand odori-
ferous plants, from which tiio beos extract the famous
white honey of Narbonue. Tlu> native flowers and
shrubs, of a beauty and richness rather Eastern than
European, have nnido the ' Flora Mt)nKpelien8i8,' and
with it the names of Kcmdelct and his disciples, famous
among botanists ; and the strange fish and shells upon
its shores afibrded Uondtdet materials for his immortal
work upon the ' Animals of the Sea.* The innumerable
wild fowl of the " l^ouches du lihone ; " the innumerable
songsters and (ttiier l>irds of passage, many of (hem
unknown in these islands, and even in the north of

RONDELET, THE limUESOT XATVnAlJST. 3G1

France itself, wliicli liauut every copse of willow and
aspcu along the brook sides; the gaudy and curious
insects which thrive beneath that clear, fierce, and yet
bracing sun-light ; all these have made the district of
Montpellier a home prepared by Nature for those who
study and revere her.

Neither was Chancellor Fanchon misled by patriotism,
when he said the pleasant people who inhabit that
district are fit for all the labours of the intellect.
They are a very mixed race, and like most mixed races,
<]uick-witted, and handsome also. There is probably
much Eoman l)lo()d among them, especially in the
towns; for Languedoc, or Gallia Narbonnensis, as it
was called of old, was said to be more Roman than
Rome itself. The Roman remains are more perfect
and more interesting — so the late Dr. Whewell used to
say — than any to be seen now in Italy ; and the old
capital, Narbonno itself, was a complete museum of
Roman antiquities ere Francis I. destroyed it, in order
to fortify the city upon a modern system against the
invading armies of Charles V. There must be much
Visigothic blood likewise in Languedoc ; for the Visi-
gothie Kings held their courts there from the fifth
century, until the time that they were crushed by the
invading Moors. Spanish blood, likewise, there may
be ; for much of Languedoc was held in the early
Middle Age by those descendants of Eudes of Acquitaine

3G2 nONDELET, THE IIUGUESOT SATVRALIST.

who established themselves as kings of Majorca and
Arragon ; and Languedoc did not become entirely
Frendi till 11^49, when Philip lo Bel bought Mont-
pellier of those potentates. The ^[oors, too, may have
left some traces of their race behind. They held the
country from about a.d. 71IJ to 758, when they were
finally expelled by Charles Martel and Eudes. One
sees to this day their towers of meagre stone-work,
perched on the grand Uoman masonry of those old
amphitheatrt'S, which tluy turned into fortresses. One
may see, too— so tradition holds -upon those very
am])hitheatres the stains of the fires with which Charles
Martel smoked them out ; and one may see, too, or fancy
that one sees, in the aquiline features, the bright l)lack
eyes, the lithe and graceful gestures, which are so com-
mon in Langue<loc, some touch of the old Mahommedan
race, which passed like a IKmkI over that (Miristian
hind.

Whether or not the Moors left behind any traces of
their blo«Ml, thoy left behind, at least, traces of their
learning ; for the university of Montpellier claimed to
have been founded l>y M«K»rH at a date of altogether
abysmal antiquity. Thoy lo<»ked ujMm the Arabian phy-
siciauM »»f the Middle Age, on Avicenna and Averrhoes,
HH miNlern innovators, and d«'rived their parentage from
certain mythic doctors of Cordova, who. when the Moors
were »\i.<Il'<l fi'-iii Siiuiii in the eighth century, fleil to

nONDELKT, THE IfUGUESOT NATURAUST. 303

Montpc'llicr, brin^'iiif,' with tlicm traditionH of tlint
ininu'val science wliicli liad bei'U revealed to Adam
while still in Paradise ; and founded Montpellier, the
mother of all the universities in Europe, Nay, some
went further still, and told of Bcngessaus and Ferragius,
the physieians of Charlemagne, and of Marilephus, chief
physician nf King Chilperic, and even — if a letter of
St. Bernard's was to be believed — of a certain bishop
who went as early as the second century to consult the
doctors of Montpellier; and it would have been in vain
to reply to them that in those days, and long after thc^m,
Montpellier was not yet built. The facts are said to
be : that as early as the beginning of the thirteenth
century i^Iontptdlier had its schools of law, medicine,
and arts, which were erected into a university by Pope
Nicholas IV. in 1281).

TIr' university of Montpellier, like — I believe — most
foreign ones, resembled more a Scotch than an English
university. The studt-nts lived, for the most part, not
in colleges, but in private lodgings, and constituted a
republic of their own, ruled by an abW' of the scholars,
one of themselves, chostii by universal suffrage. A
terror they were often to the respectable burghers, for
thoy had all the right to carry arms ; and a plague
likewise, for, if tiny ran in dt'bt. their creditors wire
forbidden to seize their Ixniks, which, with their swords,
were generally all the property they possessed. If,

3».4 BOXDELET, THE IIVGUESOT SATVRAllST.

moreover, any one set up ii noisy or unpleasant trade
near their lodgings, the scholars could compel the town
authorities to turn him out. They were most of them,
probably, mere boys of from twelve to twenty, living
poorly, working hard, and— those at least of thorn who
were in the colleges — cruelly beaten daily, after the
fashion of those times ; but they seem to have com-
forted themselves under their troubles by a good deal
of wild life out of school, by rambling into the country
on the festivals of the saints, and now and then by
acting plays ; notably, that famous one which Kabelais
wrote for them in 1531: "The moral comedy of the
man who had a dumb wile ;" which "joyous patelinage "
remains unto this day in the shape of a well-known
comic song. That comedy young Kondelet must have
seen acted. The son of a druggist, spicer, and grocer —
the three trades were then combined — in Montpdlier,
and burn in 1 ')07, he had been destined for the cloister,
being a sickly hid. His uncle, one of the canons of
Maguelonne, near by, had even given him the revenues
of a Hmall cliapel - a job of nepotism which was common
euougii in tiioso days. Hut his heart was in science
and medicine. Ho set off, still a mere boy, to Paris to
study there ; and returned to Montpellier, at the age of
eighteen, to study again.

The next year, I '»:{(), while still a scholar himself, ho
wiis appointed procurator of the scholars — a post which

HOXDELET, THE IIUOUENOT NATCIiALIST. 3G5

brought liim in a small IVe on cacli niiitriculatiou — and
that year he took a fee, among others, from one of the
most remarkable men of that or of any age, Franfois
Eabi'lais himsi'lf.

And what shall I say of him? — who stands alone,
like Shakespeare, in his generation ; possessed of colossal
harniug — of all science whic-h could be gathered in
his days — of practical and statesmanlike wisdom — of
knowledge of languages, ancient and modern, beyond
all his compeers — of eloquence, which when he speaks
of pure and noble things becomes heroic, and, as it
were, inspired — of scorn for meanness, hypocrisy, igno-
rance — of esteem, genuine and earnest, for the Holy
Scriptures, and for the more moderate of the Eeforniers
who were spreading the Scriptures in Europe, — and all
this great light wilfully hidden, not under a bushel,
but under a dunghill. He is somewhat like Socrates in
face, and in character likewise ; in him, as in Socrates,
the demigod and the satyr, the man and the ape, are
struggling for the mastery. In Scjcrates, the true man
conquers, and comes forth high and pure ; in liabelais,
alas ! the victor is the ape, while the man himself sinks
down in cynicism, sensuality, practical jokes, foul talk.
He returns to Paris, to live an idle, luxurious life ; to
die — says the legend — saying, *' I go to seek a great
perhaps," and to leave behind him little save a school of
Pautagruelists — careless young gentlemen, whose ideal

3i;G nONDELET, THE IIUGUESOT SATURAU8T.

was to laugh at everything, to believe in nothing, and

to gratify their five senses like the brutes which perish.

There are those who read his books to make them

laugh ; the wise man, when he reads them, will be far

more inclined to weep. Let any young man who may

see these words remcml)er, that in him, as in Rabelais,

the ape and the man are struggling for the mastery.

Let him take warning by the fate of one who was to

him as a giant to a pigmy ; and think of Tennyson's

words : —

" Ariao, and fly
Tlu' rf<liii;^ faun, the Hi-iisiiul ftiist :
Strivu upwanlH, working; out tlio bt-ust,
Aiul l( t the u|)u and tigir die."

But to return. Down among them there at Montpel-
lier, like a brilliant meteor, flashed this wonderful IJabe-
lais, in the year ITkU). He had fled, some say, for his life.
Lik(> Erasmus, he had no mind to bo a martyr, and he
had b»en terrified at the execution of poor Louis de
Bcrquin, his friend, and the friend of Erasmus likowisr.
This Louis de Herquin, a man wtdl known in those
days, was a gallant young genth'man and scholar,
holding a jdac(» in the court of Francis L, who had
translated into French the works of Erasmus, Lutlur.
and Melancthon, and had asserted that it was heretical
to invoke the Virgin Mary instead of the H<dy Spirit,
or to call her our Hope and our Life, whicii titles
Berquin averred — belonged alouo to God. Twite luid

JiONDELET, THE UUQUENOT XATCIiALlST. Wl

tlio (liK'tors of tlie Sorljonne, with tlmt terrilile per-
secutor, Noel Beda, at tlu'ir bead, Hcized poor licrquin,
and trird to Imru his hooks and him; twice hud that
anj^el in human form, Marguerite d'Anp;ouleme, sister
of Francis I., saved him from their clutches ; but when
Francis — taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia — at last
returned from his captivity in Spain, the suppression
of heresy and the burning of heretics seemed to him
and to his mother, Louise of Savoy, a thank-oflering
so acceptable to God, that Louis Berquin — who would
not, in spite of the entreaties of Erasmus, purchase his
life by silence — was burnt at last on the Place de Greve,
being first strangled, because he was of gentle blood.

Montpellier received its famous guest joyfully, Rabe-
lais was now forty-two years old, and a distinguished
savant ; so they excused him his three years' under-
graduate's career, and invested him at once witli the
red gown of the bachelors. That red gown — or, rather,
tlie ragged phantom of it — is still shown at ]\[ontpellier,
and must be worn by each bachelor when he takes his
degree. Unfortunately, anticjuarians assure us tliat
the precious garment has been renrwid again and again
— the students having clipped bits of it away for relics,
and clipped as earnestly from the new gowns as their
predecessors had done from the authentic original.

Doubtless, the coming of such a man among them to
lecture on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Are

8C8 7? OS DEL E T, THE HI UESO T NA TVIiA LIS T.

rarva of Galen, not from the Latin translations then
in use, but from original Greek texts, with comments
and corrections of liis own, must have had a great
influence on the minds of the MontiR-llier students ; and
still more influence— and that not altogether a good one
— must liahelais' lighter talk have had, as he lounged —
80 the story goes — in his dressing-gown upon the public
place, picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers
oft' the Cevennes, and the villagers who came in to sell
their olives and their grapes, their vinegar and their
vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day. To him
may be owing much of the sound respect for natural
science, and much, too, of the contempt for the super-
stition around them, which is notable in that group of
great naturalists who were boys in !M(»ntp('llier at that
day. Kabtlaiu seems to have liked Kuudclet, and no
wonder : ho was a cheery, lovable, honest little fellow,
very fond of jokes, a great musician and player on the
viulin, and who, when he grew rich, liktd nothing so
well as to bring into his house any buflV><)n or strolling
player to make fun for him. Vivacious h<f was, hot-
tenjj)ered, forgiving, and with a power of learning and
a |Hiwer of work which wore prodigious, even in those
hard-working days. Kabeluis ehaflfx Itondclet, under
the name of Hondibiiis; for, indeed, Itondeh-t grew up
into a very round, fat, little man ; but Jiabclais puts
c'Xrillcnt Henrie into his mouth. rvni(*al enough, and too

RONDELET, THE IIUOUENOT NATURALIST. 3G9

cynical, but both li'iirned and humorous; and, if he
hm^lis at him for being shocked at the offer of a fee,
and taking it, nevertheless, kindly enough, Rondelet is
not the first doctor who has done tliat, neither will he
be the last.

Rondelet, in his turn, put on the rod robe of the
bachelor, and received, on taking his degree, his due
share of fisticuffs from his dearest friends, according to
the ancient custom of the University of Montpellier.
He then went off to practise medicine in a village at
the foot of the Alps, and, half-starved, to teach little
children. Then he found he must learn Greek ; went
off to Paris a second time, and alleviated his poverty
there somewhat by becoming tutor to a son of the
Viscomte de Turenne. There he met Gonthier of
Andernach, who had taught anatomy at Louvain
to the great Yesalius, and learned from him to dis-
sect. Wo next find him setting up as a medical
man amid the wild volcanic hills of the Auvergne,
struggling still with poverty, like Erasmus, like
George Buchanan, like almost every great scholar
in those days ; for students then had to wander from
place to place, generally on foot, in search of new
teachers, in search of books, in search of the necessaries
of life ; undergoing such an amount of bodily and
mental toil as makes it wonderful that all of them did
not — as some of them doubtless did — die under the hard

•J D

370 liOXDELET, THE HUGUESOT SATURALIST.

training, or, at best, ilosert the penurious Muse's for
the paternal shop or plough.

Rondelet got his doctorate in 1537, and next year
fell in love with and married a beautiful young girl
called Jeanne Sundro, who seems to have been as poor
as he.

But he had gained, meanwhile, a powerful patron ;
and tlie patronage of the great was then as necessary
to men of letters as the patronage of the public is now.
Guillaume Pellicier, Bishop of Miiguelonno — or rather
then of Montpellier itself, whither ho had persuaded
Paul II. to transfer the ancient see — was a model of
the literary gentleman of the sixteenth century ; a
savant, a diplomat, a collector of books and manu-
scripts, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriuo, which formed the
original nucleus of the present library of tlie Louvre ;
a Ixitanist, too, who loved to wander witli Rondelet
collecting plants and flowers. He retired from public
life to peace and science at Mont]>ellier, when to the
evil days of his master, Francis I., succeeded the still
worse days of Henry H., and l)iana of Poitiers. That
Jezebel of France could conceive no more natural <»r
GMy way of atoning for her own sins than that of
hunting down heretics, and feasting her wicked eyes
— HO it ig said — upon their dying torments. Bishop
Pellicier fell under suspicion of heresy : very probably
with some iiiMlicr. Uo fell, too. uiulcr stiHpicion of

liOSDELKT, Till-: IIUOUESOT NATURALIST. 371

leading iv lil'e uinvortliy of a celibate churchman, a
fault which — if it really existed — was, in those days,
pardonable enough in an orthodox prelate, but not so
in one whoso orthodoxy was suspected. And for a
while Ptdlicier was in j)rison. After his release he gave
himself up to science, with Kondelet, and the school of
disciples who were growing up around hira. They re-
discovered together the Garuni, that classic sauce,
whoso praises had been sung of old by Horace, Martial,
and Ausonius ; and so childlike, superstitious if you
will, was the reverence in the sixteenth century for
classic antiquity, that when Pellicier and Iwondelet
discovered that the Garum was made from the fish
called Picarel — called Garon by the fishers of Antibcs,
and Giroli at Venice, both these last names corruptions
of the Latin Gerres — then did the two fashionable
poets of France, Etienne Dolet and Clement Marot,
think it not unworthy of their muse to sing the praises
of the sauce which Horace had sung of old. A j>roud
day, too, was it for Pellicier and llondelet, when wan-
dering somewhere in the marshes of the Camargue, a
scent of garlic caught the nostrils of the gentle bishop,
ainl in the lovely pink flowers of the water-germander
ho recognised the Scordium of the ancients. " The
discovery," says Professor Planchon, " made almost as
much noise as that of the famous Garum; for at that
moment of naive fervour on behalf of onti»iuity. to re-

2 n 2

372 nONDELET, THE nVGUESOT NATURALIST.

discover a plant of Dioscorides or of Pliny was a good
fortune and almost an event."

I know not whether, after his death, the good
bishop's bones reposed beneath some gorgeous tomb,
bedizened with the incongruous half-Pagan statues of
the Renaissance : but this, at least, is certain, that
Rondelet's disciples imagined for him a monument
more enduring than of marble or of brass, more graceful
and iiinrc curiously wrought than all the sculptures of
Torrigiano or Cellini, Baccio Bandinelli or Michael
Angelo himself. For they named a lovely little lilac
snapdragon, Linaria Domini PtHi^crii, — " Lord Pel-
licier's toad-flax ;" and that nanie it will keep, we may
believe, as long as winter and summer shall endure.

But to return. To this good patron — who was the
Anil)aHsador at Venice — the nowly-married Rondelct
determined to apply for employnicnt ; and to Venice
he would have gone, leaving his bride behind, had he
not been stayed by one of those angels who sometimes
walk the earth in women's shape. Jeanne Sandro had
an elder sister, Catherine, who had br(»ught her up.
She was married to a wealthy man, but she had no
children of her own. For four years she ond her good
husband had let the Kondelets lodge with tliiiii, and
now she was a widow, and t«) part with tliein wuh more
than she could bear. Slie carried Kondelet off from
the students who wero seeing him safe out of the city,

RONDEL E T, THE IJUO UENO T NA TL HA I. IS T. 373

brought him back, settled on him the same day half
her fortune, and soon after settled on him the whole,
on the sole condition that she should live with him
and her sister. For years afterwards she watched
over the pretty young wife and her two girls and three
boys — the three boys, alas ! all died young — and over
liondelet himself, who, immersed in books and experi-
ments, was utterly careless about money ; and was to
them all a mother, advising, guiding, managing, and
regarded by Kondelet with genuine gratitude as his
guardian angel.

Honour and good fortune, in the worldly sense, now
poured in upon the druggist's son. Pellicier, his own
bishop, stood godfather to his first-born daughter,
Montluc, liishop of Valence, and that wise and learned
statesman, the Cardinal of Tournon, stood godfathers a
few years later to his twin boys ; and what was of still
more solid worth to him. Cardinal Tournon took him to
Antwerp, liordeaux, Bayonne, and more than once to
liome ; and in these Italian journeys of his he collected
many facts for the great work of his life, that * History
of Fishes ' which he dedicated, naturally enough, to the
cardinal. This book with its plates is, for Iho time, a
masterpiece of accuracy. Th(we who are best acquainted
with the subject say, that it is up to the present day
a key to the whole ichthyology of the Mediterranean.
Two other men, Belon and Salviani, were then at work

374 noSDELET, THE TJUGUEXOT XATUJiALIST.

ou the same subject, and publisbeJ their books almost
at the same time ; a circumstance which caused, as was
natural, a three-cornered dud between the supporters
of the three naturalists, each party ac^'using the other
of plagiarism. The simple fact seems to be that the
almost simultaneous appearance of the three books
in 1554-;") is one of those coincidences inevitable at
moments when many minds are stirred in the same
direction by the same great thoughts — coincidences
which have happened in our own day on questions of
geology, biology, and astronomy ; and which, when the
facts have been carefully examined, and the first flush
of natural jealousy has cooled down, have proved only
that there were more wise men than one in the world
at the same time.

And this sixteenth century was an age in which the
minds of men were suddenly and strangely t timed to
examine the wonders of nature willi an earnestness,
with a reverence, and therefore with an accuracy,
with which they had never been investigated before.
" Nature," says Professor I'lanchon, " long veiled in
mysticism and scholasticism, was opening up infinite
vistas. A new superstition, the exaggerated worship
of the ancients, was nearly hindering this movement
of thought towards facts. Nevertheless learning did
her work. She rediscovered, reconstructed, purified,
commented ou tho texts of ancient authors. Then

JiOXDELET, THE IWGUEXOT yATCIiALIST. 373

came in observation, wliich showed that more was to be
seen in one bhiJe of grass than in any page of Pliny.
Konik'let was in the middle of this crisis a man of
transition, while he was one of progress. He reflected
the past ; he opened and prepared the future. If he
commented on Dioscorides, if he remained faithful to
the theories of Galen, he founded in his ' History of
Fishes ' a monument which our century respects. He
is above all an inspirer, an initiator ; and if he wants
one mark of the leader of a school, the foundation of
certain scientific doctrines, there is in his speech what
is better than all systems, the communicative power
which urges a generation of disciples along the path of
independent research, with Reason for guide, and Faith
for aim."

Around Rondelet, in those years, sometimes indeed
in his house— for professors in those days took private
pupils as lodgers— worked the group of botanists whom
Linnajus calls " the Fathers," the authors of the de-
scriptive botany of the sixteenth century. Their
names, and those of their disciples and their disciples
again, are household words in the mouth of every
gardener, immortalised, like good Bishop Pellicier, in
the plants which have been named after them. The
Lobelia commemorates Lobel, one of Kondelefs most
famous pupils, who wrote those 'Adversaria' which
contain so many curious sketches of Kondelet's bota-

376 K ONDELET, THE HUG I rENO T KA TUBAL IS T.

nical expeditions, and who inherited his botanical (as
Joubert his biographer inherited his anatomical) manu-
scripts. The Magnolia commemorates the Magnols ;
the Sarracenia, Sarrasin of Lyons ; the Bauhinia, Jean
Bauhin; the Fuchsia, Bauhiu's earlier German master,
Leonard Fuchs ; and the Clusia — the received name of
that terrible " Matapalo," or " Scotch attorney," of the
West Indies, which kills the hugest tree, to become as
huge a tree itself — immortalizes the great Clusius,
Charles de I'Escluse, citizen of Arras, who after
studying civil law at Louvain, philosophy at i\Iarburg,
and theology at Wittemberg under Mclancthon, came
to Montpellier in 1551, to livo in liondelet's own house,
and become the greatest botanist of his age.

These were Kondclct's piilniy days. Ho had got a
theatre of anatomy built at Montpt-llier, where he him-
self dissected publicly. Ho had, says tradition, a little
botanic garden, such as were springing up then in
several universities, specially in Italy. Ho had a villa
outside th(^ city, wliose tt)Wt'r, near the modern railway
station, still bears tiie name of the " Mas de Itondelet."
There, too, may bo seen the remnants of the great
tanks, fed witli water brought ihrnugh earthen pipes
from the Fountain of A11m«, wherein lie kept the fish
whose habits he observed. l*rofessor Planchon tliinks
that he had salt-water tanks likewise ; and thus he may
have been the father of all " Aquariums." Ho had a

ROyDKLET, rilE HUOUENOT NATURALIST. .'377

liirge and haiulsome house in the city itself, a large prac-
tice as jtjiysii-iau in the country round ; money flowed
in fast to him, and flowed out fast likewise. He spent
much upon huilding, pulling down, rebuilding, and
sent the bills in seemingly to his wife and to his guar-
dian angel Catherine. He himself had never a penny
in his purse : but earned the money, and let his ladies
spend it ; an equitable and pleasant division of labour
which most married men would do well to imitate. A
generous, aflectionate, careless little man, he gave
away, says his pupil and biographer, Joubert, his
valuable specimens to any savant who begged for
tliem, or left them about to be stolen by visitors, who,
like too many collectors in all ages, possessed light
tingers and lighter consciences. So pacific was he
meanwhile, and so brave withal, that even in the
fearful years of the troubles, he would never carry
sword, nor t-von tuck or dagger ; Init went about on
tlie most lonesome journeys as one who wore a charmed
life, secure in God and in his calling, which was to
heal, and not to kill.

These were the golden years of Rondelet's life ; but
trouble was coming on him. and a stormy sunset after
a brilliant day. He lost his sister-in-law, to whom he
owed all his fortunes, and who had watched ever since
over him and his wife like a mother ; then he lost his
wife herself under most painful circumstances ; then

378 nOSDELET, THE IIUaVENOT NATUIiALlST.

his best-beloved tlnughter. Tlieii he married ngain,
and lost the son who was born to him ; and then came,
as to many of the best in those days, even sorer trials,
trials (tf the conscience, trials of faith.

.For in the mean time Kondelet had become a Pro-
testant, like many of the wisest men round him ; like,
80 it would seem from the event, the majority of the
university and the burghers of Montpellier. It is not
to be wondered at. Montpellier was a sort of lialf-way
resting-])laee for Protestant j>roachers, whether fugitive
or not, who wore passing from Basle, Geneva, or Lyons,
to Marguerite of Navarre's little Protestant court at
Pan or at Nerac, whore all wise and good men. and
now and then some foolish and fanatical ones, ft>und
shelter and hospitality. Thither Calvin himself had
been, passing probably through Montpellier, and leaving
— as such a man was sure to leave — the mark of his
foot behind him. At Lyons, no great distance up the
Rhone, Marguerite had helped to establish an organ-
ised Protestant community ; and when in L')30 she
herself had passed tlintugh Montpellier, to visit her bro-
ther at Valence, and Montmorency's camp at Avignon,
Hhe took with her doubtless Protestant chaplains of her
own, who Kpok«! wise words — it may be that she spoke
wise words iierHolf to the ardent and inquiring students
of Montpellier. Moreover, l{ondelot and his disciples
had been for veins past in constant communication

RONDELET, THE nUOUEXOT NATURALIST. .379

with tlie Protostaut savants of Switzerland and Ger-
many, among wlium the knowledge of nature was
progressing as it never had progressed before. For —
it is a fact always to be remembered — it was only in
the free air of Protestant countries the natural sciences
could grow and thrive. They sprung up, indeed, in
Italy after the restoration of Greek literature in the
fifteenth century ; but they withered there again only
too soon under the blighting upas shade of supersti-
tion. Transplanted to the free air of Switzerland, of
Germany, of Britain, and of Montpellier, then half
Protestant, they developed rapidly and surely, simply
because the air was free ; to be checked again in France
by the return of superstition with despotism super-
added, until the eve of the great French devolution.

So Pondelet had been for some years Protestant,
lie had hidden in his house for a long while a monk
who had left his monastery. He had himself written
theological treatises: but when his Bishop Pellicier
was imprisoned on a charge of heresy, Itondelet burnt
his manuscripts, and kept his opinions to himself.
Still hi' was a suspected heretic, at last seemingly a
notorious one ; for only the year before his death,
going to visit })atients at Perpignan, he was waylaid
by the Spaniards, and had to get home thmugh by-
passes of the Pyrenees, to avoid being thrown into the
In»|ui8ition.

380 RONDELET, THE nUOUBNOT NATURALIST.

And those were times in which it was necessary for
;i miin to be careful, unless he had made up his mind to
be burned. For more than thirty years of Rondelet's
life the burning had gone on in his neighbourliood ;
intermittently it is true : the spasms of superstitious
fury being succeeded, one may charitably hope, by pity
and remorse : but still the burnings had gone on. The
Benedictine monk of St. Maur, who writes the history
of Languedoc, says, quite en lyassant, how some one
was burnt at Toulouse in 1553, luckily only in effigy,
for he had escaped to Geneva : but he adds, " next year
they burned several heretics," it being not worth while
to mention their names. In l.").")!) th» y burned alive at
Toulouse Joan Escalle, a poor Franciscan monk, who
had found his order intoh^rable ; while one Pierre de
Lavaur, who dared preach Calvinism in the streets of
Nismes, was hanged and burnt. So had the score of
judicial murders been increasing year by year, till it
had to be, as all evil scores have to bo in this world,
paid off with interest, and paid off especially against
the ignorant and fanatic monks who for a whole gene-
ration, in every university and school in France, had
l)e('n howling down sound science, as will as sound
religion; and at !\biiil|H-lli(r in I5r,()-1, tlicir (bbl was
paid them in u very ugly way. News came down to
the hot southerners of Languedoc of the so-called
conspiracy of Aniboisc. How the J>uc de (iuisoand the

RONDELET, THE HUGUENOT NATCnALIST. 381

Cardinal do Lorraine had Initc-licicd the best hlood in
France under the pretence of a treasonable plot ; how
the King of Navarre and the Prince de Conde had been
arrested ; then how Conde and Coligny were ready to
take up arms at the head of all the Hup^uenots of
France, and try to stop this life-long torturing, by
sharp shot and cold steel; then how in six months'
time the king would assemble a general council to
settle the question between Catholics and Huguenots.
The Huguenots, guessing how that would end, resolved
to settle the question for themselves. Tliey rose in
one city after another, sacked the churches, destroyed
the images, put dtjwn by main force superstitious pro-
cessions and dances ; and did many things only to be
excused by the exasperation caused by thirty years of
cruelty. At Mt)ntpellier there was hard lighting, mur-
ders — so say the Catholic historians — of priests and
monks, sack of the new cathrdriil, destruction of the
noble convents which lay in a ring round Montpellier.
The city and the university were in the hands of the
Huguenots, and Mouti)ellier became Protestant on the
spot.

Next year came the counter blow. There were heavv
battles with the Catholics all round the neighbour-
hood, destruction of the suburbs, threatened siege and
sack, and years of misery and poverty for Montpellier
and all who were therein.

382 i? ON DEL ET, THE H UG UEN T NA TUIiALlS T.

Horril)lo was the state of France in those times of
tlie wars of religion which Logan in 1502; the times
which are spoken of nsnally as " The Troubles," as if
men did not wish to allutle to them too openly. Then,
and afterwards in the wars of the League, deeds were
done for which language has no name. The popula-
tion decreased. The land lay unfilled. The fair face
of France was hlackenod witli hurnt homesteads and
ruined towns. Ghastly corpses dangled in rows upon
the trees, or floated down the blood-stained streams.
Law and order were at an end. Bands of robbers
prowled in open day, and bands of wolves likewise.
But all tlir(»iig]i the li(trrors of the troubles wo catch
flight of the little fat doctor riding all unarmed to see
his patients throughout Languedoc ; going vast dis-
tances, his biograjdiers say, by means of regular
relays of horses, till ho too broke down. Well for him,
perhaps, that he broke down when ho did ; for capture
and recapture, massacre and pestilence, were the fate
of Montpellier and the surrounding country, till the
better times of Henry IV. and tlu* Edict of Nantes in
1598, when liberty of worship was given to the Pro-
testants for a while.

In till- burning suniiuor of 1 ')(')() Bondeletius wcnf a
long journey to Totilouse, seemingly upon an errand of
charity, to settle some law aflTuirs for his relations. The
sanitary state of the southern cities is bad enough

RONDELET, THE HUGUENOT NATURALIST. 383

still. It must have been horrible in those clays of
barbarism and misrule. Dysentery was epidemic at
Toulouse then, and liondelet took it. He knew from
the first that he should die. He was worn out, it is
said, by over-exertion ; by sorrow for the miseries of
the land ; by fruitless struggles to keep the peace, and
to strive for moderation in days when men were all
immoderate. But he rode away a day's journey — he
took two days over it, so weak he was — in the blazing
July sun, to a friend's sick wife at Realmont, and
there took to his bed, and died a good man's death.
The details of his death and last illness were written
and published by his cousin Claude Formy ; and well
worth reading they are to any man who wishes to
know how to die. Eondelet would have no tidings of
his illness sent to I\[ontpellier. He was happy, he
said, in dying away from the tears of his household,
and " safe from insult." He dreaded, one may suppose,
lest priests and friars should force their way to his
bedside, and try to extort some recantation from the
great savant, the honour and glory of their city. So
they sent fur no priest to Realmont: but round his bed
a knot of Calvinist gentlemen and ministers read the
Scriptures, and sang David's psalms, and prayed ; and
Koudelet prayed with them through long agonies, and
so went home to God.

The Benedictine monk-historian of Langucdoc, in all

384 liONDELET, THE HUGUESOT NATURALIST.

his voluminous folios, never mentions, as far as I can
find, Koudelet's existence. Why should he ? The
man was only a druggist's son and a licri'tie, who
healed diseases, and collected plants, and wrote a book
on tinh. But the learned men of Montpellier, and of
all Europe, had a very diflerent opinion of him. His
body was buried at llealmont : but before the schools
of Toulouse they set up a white marble slab, and an
inscription thereon setting forth his learning and
his virtues ; and epitaplis on him were composed by
the learned throughout Europe, not only in French
and Latin, but in Greek, Hebrew, and even Chaldee.

So lived and ho died a noble man ; more noble — to
my mind — than many a victorious warrior, or successful
statesninn, or canonised saint. To know facts, and to
heal diseases, were the two objects of his life. For
them he toiled, as few men have toiled ; and he died
in liarness, at his work — the best death any man
can die.

VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST.

I CAKXuT begin a sketch of the life of this great mau
better thau by trying to describe a scene so pictu-
resque, so tragic in the eyes of those who are wont to
mourn over human follies, so comic in the eyes of
those who prefer to laugh over them, that the reader
will not be likely to forget either it or the actors
in it.

It is a darkened chamber in the College of Alcala, in
the year 1562, where lies, probably in a huge four-post
bed, shrouded in stifling hangings, the heir-apparent
of the greatest empire in the then world, Don Carlos,
only son of Philip II., and heir-apparent of Spain, the
Netherlands, and all the Indies. A short sickly boy of
sixteen, with a bull head, a crooked shoulder, a short
leg, and a brutal temper, he will not be missed by the
world if he should die. His profligate career seems to
have brought its own punishment. To the scandal of
his father, who tolerated no one's vices save his own,

2 c

386 VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST.

as well as to the scandal of the university authorities
of Alcala, he has been scouring the streets at the head
of the most profligate students, insulting women, even
ladies of rank, and amenuLle only to his lovely young
stepmother, Elizabeth of Valois, Isabel de la Paz, as
the Spaniards call her, the daugliter of Catherine de
Medicis, and sister of the King of France. Don Carlos
should have married her, had not his worthy father
found it more advantageous for the crown of Spain, as
well as more pleasant for him Philip, to marry her
himself. AVhence came heart-burnings, rage, jealousies,
romances, calumnies, of which two last — in as far at
least as they concern poor Elizabeth — no wiso man
now believes a word.

Going on some errand on which he hud no business
— there are two stories, neither of them creditable nor
necessary to repeat — Don Carlos has fallen down stairs
and broken his head. IIo comes, by his Protuguese
mother's side, of a house deeply tainted with insanity ;
and such an injiiry may have serious consequences.
However, for nine days the wound goes on well, and
Ddm Carlos, having had a wholesome fright, is,
according to Doctor Olivarez, the medico de camara,
a very g(M)d lad, and lives on chicken broth and dried
plums. But on the tenth day comes on nuni])nes8 of
the left side, acute pains in the head, and then
gradually shivering, high fever, erysipelas. His head

VES ALIUS THE ANATOMIST. 387

and neck swell to an enormous size ; then comes raging
delirium, then stupefaction, and Don Carlos lies as one
dead.

A modern surgeon would, probably, thanks to that
training of which Yesalius may be almost called the
father, have had little difficulty in finding out what was
the matter with the luckless lad, and little difficulty in
removing the evil, if it had not gone too far. But the
Spanish physicians were then, as many of them are
said to be still, as far behind the world in surgery as
in other things ; and indeed surgery itself was then
in its infancy, because men, ever since the early Greek
schools of Alexandria had died out, had been for cen-
turies feeding their minds with anything rather than
with facts. Therefore the learned morosophs who
were gathered round Don Carlos's sick bed had become,
according to their own confession, utterly confused,
terrified, and at their wits' end.

It is the 7th of May, the eighteenth day after the
accident, according to Olivarez' story : he and Dr.
Yoga have been bleeding the unhappy prince, enlarging
the wound twice, and torturing him seemingly on mere
guesses. ** I believe," says Olivarez, " that all was
done well : but as I have said, in wounds in the head
there are strange labyrinths." So on the 7th they
stand round the bed in despair. Don Garcia de Toledo,
the prince's faithful governor, is sitting by him, worn

2 c 2

388 VESALWS THE ANATOMIST.

out with sleepless nights, and trying to supply to the
poor boy tlmt mother's tenderness which he has never
known. Alva too is there, stern, self-compressed, most
terrible, and yet most beautiful. He has a God on
eartli, and tliat is Philip his master ; and though he
has borne much from l)on Carlos already, and will
have to bear more, yi't the wretched lad is to him
as a son of God, a second deity, wlio will liy right
divine succeed to the inheritance of the first ; and he
watches this lesser deity struggling between life and
death with an intensity of which we, in these less loyal
days, can form no notion. One would be glad to have
a glimpse of what passed through that mind, so subtle
and so ruthless, so discij)lined and so loyal withal : but
Alva was a man wlio was not given to speak his mind,
but to act it.

One would wish, too, fur u glimpse of what was
passing through the mind of anotlior man, who has
been daily in that sick chamber, according to Olivarez'
statement, since the first of the month : but ho is one
who has had. for some years past, even more reason
than Alva for not speaking his mind. \\ luit he looked
like wo know well, for Titian has painted him from the
life — a tall, bold, well-dressed niaii. with a noble Ipraiii,
square and yet lofty, short curling locks and beard, an
eye which looks as though it feared neither man nor
fiend- iin<l it li.i'^ had good reason to fear both — and

VESALirS THE ASATOMIST. 389

features wliicli would l)c exceeding' liaiulsome, Init fur
the defiant snub-nose. That is Andreas Vesalius, of
Brussels, dreaded and hated by the doctors of the old
school — suspect, moreover, it would seem, to inquisi-
tors and thecdogians, j)ossibly to Alva himself; for he
has dared to dissect human bodies ; he has insulted the
medievalists at Paris, Padua, Bologna, Pisa, Venice, in
open theatre ; he has turned the heads of all the young
surgeons in Italy and France ; he has written a great
book, with prints in it, designed, some say, by Titian
— they were actually done by another Netherlander,
John of Calcar, near Cleves— in which ho has dared to
j)rove that Galen's anatomy was at fault throughout,
and that he had been describing a monkey's inside
when he had pretended to be describing a man's ; and
thus, by impudence and quackery, he has wormed him-
self — this Netherlander, a heretic at heart, as all
Xetherlanders are, to God as well as to Galen — into
the confidence of the late Emperor Charles V., and
gone campaigning with him as one of his j)hysicians,
anatomising human bodies even on the battle-field,
and drfacing the likeness of Deity; and worse than
that, the most religious King Philip is deceived liy
him likewise, and keeps him in Madrid in wealth and
honour; and now, in the prince's extreme danger, the
king has actually sent for him, and bidden him try
his skill — a man who knows nothing save about bones

390 VESAUUS THE ANATOMIST.

aiul muscles and the outside of the body, and is un-
worthy the name of a true physician.

One can ci)nceive the rage of the okl Spanish pedants
at the Netherhmder's appearance, and still more at
what followed, if we are to believe Hugo Bloet of Delft,
his countrynulu and contemporary.* Vesalius, he says,
saw that the surgeons had bound up the wound so tight
that an abscess had formed outside the skull, which
could not break: he asserted that the only hope lay
in opening it; and did so, Philip having given leave,
" by two cross-cuts, Tlun the lad returned to himself,
as if awakened from a profound sleep, affirming that he
owed his restoration to life to the German doctor."

Dionysius Daza, who was there with the other
physicians and surgeons, tells a difterent story : " The
most learned, famous, and rare Baron Vesalius," he
says, advised that tlie skull should be trepanned ; but
his advice was not followed.

• I owe tliiM account of Bloct'a — which apiM-nni tu mo tlio only one
Irujitworlhy— to the tourt««y nml «rii.liti«'ii of rmftHwir Henry M<>rl< y,
who flmlit it quott;cl from IMfxfH * Acnxunii,' in tlio ' Olw.rviaionunj
Mraicnrum Hurioruni, lib. vii.,' of John Thwxlor.f Sch.nk. Tlioio who
wijih to know iM!V«rul curioiw imHimKM of V« hiiUum' lif.«, wliioh 1 have
not inm^rUsl in thin article, would do will to lonuiilt one by Profawnr
.Morhry, 'Annlomy in Utu^ ClothcV in 'Frowr'H MaRnzino' for
Sovi<niljor, 1H.')H. .Muy I ixprcnH a ho|M>, whi.h I am Mimi will l>o
nhauA by all who havo ni»<l I'rofiHhor Morby'H l.io^;ni|.lii<« of .h-ronio
Corilnn and of Cornciiuji AK'ri|)i>a. Dial lie will find Icii«uro to ntnm to
tho Mudy of VcMiliiui' life ; ami will do for him what ho ban dono for
the two jiut-mcntiomil wril4rH?

VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST. 301

Olivarez' account agrees witli tliat of Daza. They
had upfuoil tlie wounds, he says, down to the skull
before Vesalius came. Vesalius insisted that the injury
lay inside the skull, and wished to pierce it. Olivarez
spends much labour in proving that Vesalius had " no
great foundation for his opinion :" but confesses that
he never changed that opinion to the last, though all
the Spanish doctors were against him. Then on the 6th,
he says, the Bachelor Torres came from Madrid, and
advised that the skull should be laid bare once more ;
and on the 7th, there being still doubt whether the
skull was not injured, the operation was performed —
by whom it is not said — but without any good result,
or, according to Olivarez, any discovery, save that
Vesalius was wrong, and the skull uninjured.

Whether this second operation of the 7th of May was
performed by Vesalius, and whether it was that of which
lUoet speaks, is an open question. Olivarez' whole
relation is apologetic, written to justify himself and his
seven Spanish colleagues, and to prove Vesalius in the
wrong. Public opinion, he confesses, had been very
tierce against him. The credit of Spanish medicine
was at stake : and we are not bound to believe implicitly
a paper drawn up under such circumstances for Philip's
eye. This, at least, we gather : that Don Carlos was
never trepanned, as is commonly said ; and this, also,
that whichever of the two stories is true, equally puts

392 YES ALIUS THE ANATOMIST.

Vesalius into direct, and most unpleasant, antagonism
to the Spanish doctors,*

But Don Carlos still lay senseless ; and yielding to
popular clamour, the doctors called in the aid of a
certain Moorish doctor, from Valencia, named Priota-
rete, whose unguents, it was reported, had achieved
many miraculous cures. The unguent, however, to the
horror of the doctors, burned the skull till the bone was
as black as the colour of ink ; and Olivaroz declares he
believes it to have been a preparation of pure caustic.
On the morning of the 9th t)f May, the Moor and his
unguents were sent away, " and went to I^Iadrid, to
send to heaven Hernando de Vega, while the prince
went back to our metliod of cure."

Considering what hapj)encd on the morning of the
10th of May, we should now presume that the second
opening of the abscess, whether by Vesalius or someone
else, relieved the pressure on Hk* bmin ; that a critical
period of exhaustion followed, pr(»l»iil)ly j)rolong«'d by
the Moor's premature catistic, which stopjwd tiio suppu-
ration : but that God's good handiwork, called nature,
triuiiij)lird at last ; and that therefore it came to pass
that the prince was out of danger within three days of

* Oliruroi' ' Rt-lAcion ' i« to bo Tound in the GmnTclIo 8t«to Papon.
For th<< (fcnrnil nrroiiut of Don C'-iirliw' illiirMN, un<l of the uunirnloiia
aK''n(i)it liy whidi iiiit cunt wiu* miiil t<> liuvc Im-<'Ii clVK't*^!, tlio f^cncrnl
rcofli-r ttlioiiM c'onHiilt Mim FnTu'it ' lliogni|iliy of Kli/ubctli of Vnluia,*
vol. I. J.I.. 'Mtl-l'J.

YES ALIUS THE ANATOMIST. 393

the operation. 15ut he was taught, it seems, to attri-
bute his recovery to a very different source from that
of a (n'riuaii knife. For on the morning of the 9th,
when the Moor was gone, and Don Carlos hiy seemingly
lifeless, there descended into his chamber a Deus e
maehina, or ratlu-r a whole pantheon of greater or lesser
deities, who were to effect that which medical skill
seemed not to have effected. Philip sent into the
prince's chamber several of the precious relics which he
usually carried about with him. The miraculous image
of the Virgin of Atocha, in embroidering garments for
whom, Spanish royalty, male and female, has spent so
many an hour ere now, was brought in solemn proces-
sion and placed on an altar at the foot of the prince's
bed ; and in the afternoon there entered, with a proces-
sion likewise, a shrine containing the bones of a holy
anchorite, one Fray Diego, " whose life and miracles,"
says Olivarez, " are so notorious;" and the bones of St.
Justus and St. Pastor, the tutelar saints of the university
of Alcala. Amid solemn litanies the relics of Fray
Diego were laid upon the prince's pillow, and the suda-
rium, or mortuary cloth, which had covered his face,
was placed upon the prince's forehead.

Modern science might object that the presence of so
many personages, however pious or well intentioned, in
a sick chiimber on a hot Spanish May day, especially as
the bath had been, for some generations past, held in

394 VESALIUS THE ASATOMIST.

religious horror throughout Spain, as a sign of Moorish
and Mussulman tendencies, might have somewhat inter-
fered with the chances of the poor boy's recovery.
Nevertheless the event seems to have satisfied Philip's
highest hopes ; for that same night (so Don Carlos
afterwards related) the holy monk Diego appeared to
him in a vision, wearing tliu lialiit of St. Francis, and
bearing in his hand a cross of reeds tied with a green
band. The prince stated that he first took the appa-
rition to be that of the blessed St. Francis ; but not
seeing the stigmata, he exclaimed, " How ? Dost thou
not bear the marks of the wounds ? " What he replied
Don Carlos did not recollect ; save that he consoled him,
and told him that he should not die of that malady.

Pliilip had returned to Madrid, and shut himself up
in grief in the great Jeronymito monastery. Elizabeth
was praying for her step-son before the miraculous
images of the same city. I)iiiing the night of the 9th
of May prayers wont up for Don Carlos in ull tlie
ciiurelies of Toledo, Alcala, and Madrid. Alva stood all
that night at tlie bed's foot. Don (iarcia de Toledo sat
in the arm-chair, where ho had now sat night and day
for more tlnm ii fortnight. The good preceptnr, llono-
nitu .luan, afterwards Bishop of Osma, wrestled in
prayer for the lad tlio whole niglit through. His prayer
was answered: probably it had been answered already,
without his being uwure of it. Be that as it may, about

VESALirS THE JXAToMI.^T. 095

iluwn Don Carlos' heavy breathing ceased ; lie fell
into a quiet sleep; and when he awoke all perceived at
once that he was saved.

He did not recover his sight, seemingly on account
of the erysipelas, for a week more. He then opened his
eyes upon the miraculous image of Atocha, and vowed
that, if he recovered, he would give to the Virgin, at
four diilerent shrines in Spain, gold plate of four times
his weight ; and silver plate of seven times his weight,
when he should rise; from his couch. So on the 0th of
June he rose, and was weighed in a fur coat and a robe
of damask, and his weight was three arrobas and one
pound— seventy-six pounds in all. On the 14th of June
he went to visit his father at the episcopal palace ; then
to all the churches and shrines in Alcala, and of course
to that of Fray Diego, whose body it is said he contem-
plated for some time with edifying devotion. The next
year saw Fray Diego canonised as a saint, at the inter-
cession of Philip and his son ; and thus Don Carlos re-
entered the world, to be a terror and a torment to all
around him, and to die— not by Philip's cruelty, as his
enemies reported too hastily indeed, yet excu.sably, for
they knew him to be capable of any wickedness — but
simply of constitutional insanity.

And now let us go back to the history of " that most
learned, famous, and rare Baron Yesalius," who had
stood by and seen all these things done ; and try if wo

396 VESA L I US THE A XA TO MIS T.

cannot, after we have learned the history of his early
life, guess at some of his prohable meditations on this
celebrated clinical case ; and guess also how those medi-
tations may have affected seriously the events of his
after life.

Vesalius (us I said) was a Netherlander, ])()rn at
Brussels in ir)l;{ or l")!!. His father and grandfather
had been medical men of the highest standing in a pro-
fession which then, as now, was coniuutuly hereditary.
His real name wa.s Wittag, an ancient family of Wesel,
on the lihine, from which town either he or his father
adopted the name of Vesalius, according to the classi-
cising fashion of those days. Young Vesalius was sent
to college at Louvain, where he learned rapidly. At
sixteen or seventeen he knew not only Latin, but Greek
enough to correct the proofs of Clalcn, and Arabic
enough to become acquainted with the works of the
Mussulman physicians. He was a physicist, too, and a
mathematician, according to the knowledge of those
times; but his passion -the study to which ho was
destined to devote his life- -was anatomy.

Little or nothing (it must be understood) had been
done in anatomy since tiie days of (lalen of Pergamos,
in the second century after Christ, and very little even
by him. Dissection was all but forl>idden among the
ancij-nts. The Egyptians, Herodotus tells us, used to
puiMUo with stones and curses the embalmcrs as soon as

VES ALIUS THE ANATOMIST. 397

tliey had performed thtir unpleasant ofl5ce ; and though
I leropliihis and Erasistratus are said to have dissected
many subjects under the protection of Ptolemy Soter in
Alexandria itself: yet the public feeling of the Greeks
as well as of the Komans continued the same as that of
tiie ancient Egyptians ; and Galen was fain — as Vesalius
proved — to supplement his ignorance of the human
frame by describing that of an ape. Dissection was
equally forbidden among the Mussulmans ; and the
great Arabic physicians could do no more than comment
on Galen. The same prejudice extended through the
middle age. ]\redical men were all clerks, clerici, and
as such forbidden to shed blood. The only dissection,
as far as I am aware, made during the middle age was
one byMundinusin 130G; and his subsequent commen-
taries on Galen — for he dare allow his own eyes to see
no more tlian (lalfu had seen before him — constituted
the best anatomical iiiaunal in Europe till the middle of
the fifteenth century.

Then, in Italy at least, the classic Renaissance gave
fresh life to anatomy as to all other sciences. Especially
did the improvements in painting and sculpture stir
men up to a closer study of the human frame. Leonardo
da Vinci wrote a treatise on muscular anatomy : the
artist and the sculptor often worked together, and
realised that sketch of I^Iichael Angelo's in which
he himself is assisting Fallopius, Vesalius' famous

898 VES ALIUS THE AX ATOM 1ST.

pupil, to dissect. Vesalius soon found that his thirst
for facts could not be slaked by the theories of the
middle age ; so in 1530 he went off to Montpellier,
where Francis I. had just founded a medical school,
and where the ancient laws of the city allowed the
faculty each year the body of a criminal. From thence,
after becoming the fellow-pupil and the friend of
liondek't, and probably also of Kabelais and those other
luminaries of Montpellier, of whom I spoke in my essay
on Itondelet, he returned to Paris to study under old
Sylvius, whose real name was Jacques Dubois, (i//(i.s
Juck o' the Wood ; and to learn less — as he complains
himself — in an anatomical theatre than a butcher might
loarn in his shop.

Were it not that the wliole question of dissection
is one over which it is right to draw a reverent veil, as
a thing painful, however necessary amd however in-
nocent, it would be easy to raise ghastly laughter in
many a reader ])y the stories which Vesalius himself
tells of his struggles to learn anatomy. — IIow old
Sylvius tried to demonstrate the human frame from
a bit of a dog, fumbling in vain for muscles which he
could not find, or which ought to have bei'u there,
according to Galen, and were not ; while y(»ung
Vesalius, as soon as the old pedant's back was turned,
took his place, and, to the delight of the students,
found for him— provided it were there — what he could

VES ALIUS THE ANATOMIST. 399

not find himself; — liow he went body-snatching and
gibbet-robbing, often at the danger of his life, as when
he and his friend were nearly torn to pieces by the
cannibal dogs who haunted the Butte de Montfaucon,
or place of public execution ; — how he acquired, by a
long and dangerous process, the only perfect skeleton
then in the world, and the hideous story of the robber
to whom it had belonged — all these horrors those who
list may read for themselves elsewhere. I hasten past
them with this remark — that to have gone through the
toils, dangers, and disgusts which Vesalius faced, argued
in a superstitious and cruel age like his, no common
physical and moral courage, and a deep conscience that
he was doing right, and must do it at all risks in
the face of a generation which, peculiarly reckless of
human life and human agon}^ allowed that frame
which it called the image of God to be tortured,
maimed, desecrated in every way while alive ; and
yet — straining at the gnat after having swallowed
the camel — forbade it to be examined when dead,
tliougli for the purpose of alleviating the miseries of
mankind.

The lircaking out of war between Francis I. and
Charles V. drove Vesalius back to his native country
and Louvain ; and in 1535 wo hear of him as a
surg»xtn in ("harlos V.'s army. He saw, most pro-
bably, the Emperor's invasion of Provence, and the

400 VESA LI US THE ANATOMIST.

disastrous retreat from before Montmorency's forti-
fied camp at Avignon, through a country in wliich
that crafty general had destroyed every article of
human food, except the half-ripe grapes. He saw,
perhaps, the Spanish soldiers, poisoned alike by the
sour fruit and by the blazing sun, falling in hundreds
along the white roads wliieli led back into Savoy,
murdered l)y the peasantry whose homesteads had been
destroyed, stilled by the weight of their own armour, or
desperately putting themselves, with their own hands,
out of a world which had become intolerable. Half
the army perished. Two thousand corpses lay festering
between Aix and Frejus alone. If young Vesalius
needed " subjects," the ambition and the crime of man
fouml enough for him in those blazing September days.
11. • went to Italy, probably with the remnants of
the army. Where could he have rather wished to
find himself? lie was at last in the country where
the human mind seemed to bo growing young once
more ; the country of revived arts, revived sciences,
learning, languages ; and — though, alas, only for a
while — of revived free thought, such as Eiirope had
not seen since the palmy days of (ircece. Here at
least he would be aj>j)reciated ; here at least ho would
1m* allowed to think and speak : and he was ap])reciated.
The Italian cities, who were then, like the Athenians of
old, " spending their time in nothing else save to hear

VESALIUS THE AXATOMIST. Jul

or to tell somothinf^ new," welcometl the brave young
Fleming and "Lis novelties. Within two years he
was professor of anatomy at Padua, then the first
school in the world ; tlu-n at Bologna and at Pisa at
the same time ; last of all at Venice, where Titian
painted that jtortrait of him whit-h remains unto this
day.

These years were for him a continual triumpli ;
everywhere, as he demonstrated on tlie human body,
students crowded his theatre, or hung round him
as he walked the streets ; professors left their own
chairs— their scholars having deserted them already
— to go and listen humbly or enviously to the man
who could give them what all brave souls throughout
half Europe were craving for, and craving in vain :
facts. And so, year after year, was realised that scene
which stands engraved in the frontispiece of his
great book — where, in the little quaint Cinquecento
theatre, saucy scholars, reverend doctors, gay gentle-
men, and even cowled monks, are crowding the floor,
peeping over each other's shoulders, hanging on the
balustrades ; while in the centre, over his " sulyect " —
which one of those same cowled monks knew but too well
— stands young Vesalius, upright, proud, almost defiant,
as one who knows himself safe in the impregnable
citadel of fact ; and in his hand the little blade of
steel, destined — because wielded in obedience to the

2 D

402 VESALir^ Tilt: AS ATOM 1ST.

laws of nature, which are the laws of Gotl — to work
more benefit for the liuman race than all the swords
which were drawn in those days, or perhaps in any
other, at the bidding of most Catholic Emperors and
most Christian Kings.

Those were indeed days of triumph for Vesalius;
of triumpli deserved, because earned by patient and
accurate toil in a good cause : but Vesalius, being
but a mortal man, may have contracted in those same
days a temper of imperiousness and self-conceit, such
as he showed afterwards when his pupil Fallopius dared
to add fresh discoveries to those of his master. And
yet, in spite of all Vesalius knew, how little he kiu-w !
How humbling to his pride it would have been had he
known then — perhaps he does know now — that he had
actually again and again walked, as it were, round and
round the true theory of the circulation of the blood,
and yet never seen it ; that that discovery which, once
made, is intelligible, as far as any phenomenon is
intclligibh', to tln» merest prasant, was reserved for
another century, ami for one of tljose Englishmen on
whom Vesalius would have looked as semi-barbarians.

To make a long story short : three years after tho
publication of his famous book, 'Do Corporis Ilumani
Fubrica,' he left Venice to cure Charles V., at
Regensburg, oud became one of the great Emperor's
physicians.

VESA I. lUH THE A XA T( >M IS T. 403

This was the crisis of Vesalius' life. The medicine
with wliioh ho liiul worked the cure was China —
Sarsiiparilla, as we call it now — brought home from
the then newly-discovered banks of the Paraguay
and Uruguay, where its beds of tangled vine, they
say, tinge the clear waters a dark ]<rown like that of
peat, and convert whole streams into a healthful and
pleasant tonic. On the virtues of this China (then
supposed to be a root) Vesalius wrote a famous little
book, into which he contrived to interweave his
opinions on things in general, as good Bishop Berke-
ley did afterwards into his essay on the virtues of
tar-water. Into this book, however, Vesalius intro-
duced — as Bishop Berki-dey did not — much, and per-
haps tsio much, about himself ; and much, though
perhaps not too much, about poor old Galen, and his
substitution of an ape's inside for that of a human
being. The storm which had been long gathering
burst upon him. The old school, trembling for
their time-honoured reign, bespattered, with all that
pedantry, ignorance, and envy could suggest, thi-
man who dared not only to revolutionise surgery, but
to interfere with the privileged myst(fries of medi-
cine ; and, over and above, to become a favourite at
the court of the greatest of monarcbs. While such
as Eustachius, himself an able discoverer, could join
in the cry, it is no wonder if a lower soul, like

2 D '1

40-1 VESAUUS THE ANATOMIST.

that of Sylvius, lid it open-mouthed. He was a
mean, covetous, bad man, as George Buchanan
well knew ; and, according to his nature, he wrote a
furious book, ' Ad Vesani calumuias dej)ulsandas.'
The punning change of Vesalius into Yesanus (mad-
man) was but a fair and gentle stroke for a polemic, in
days in which those who could not kill their enemies
with steel or powder, held themselves justified in
doing 80, if possible, by vituperation, culumny, and
every engine of moral torture. l»ut a far more ter-
rible weapon, and uiit- which made Vesalius rago,
and it may be fur once in his life tremble, was the
charge of impiety and heresy. The Inquisition was
a very ugly place. It was very easy to got into it,
especially for a Netherlander : but not so easy to get
out. Indeed Vesalius must have trembled, when lie
saw his master, Charles V., himself take fright, and
actually call on the theologians of Salamanca lo de-
cide whether it was lawful to dissect a human body-
The monks, to their honour, used their common
Bcnse, and answered Yes. The deed was so jdiiinly
useful, that it must be lawful likewise. I Wit ^'esaliu8
did not feel iltat he had tritimphed. He dreaded,
possibly, lest the storm shuuld only have blown over
for a time. Ho fell, possibly, into hasty disgust at
the folly of mankind, and despair of arousing them
to use their common Bcnsc, and acknowledge ihoir

VESA L I US THE A XA TOM is T. AO'y

true interest nnd tlieir true benefactors. At all
events, he threw into the lire — so it is said — all his
unpublished manuscripts, the records of long years of
observation, and renounced science thenceforth.

We hear of him after this at ]>russels, and at
Basle likewise — in which latter city, in the company
of physicians, naturalists, and Grecians, he must have
breathed awhile a freer air. But he seems to have
returned thence to his old master Charles V., and to
have finally settled at i\[adrid as a court surgeon to
Philip II., who sent him, but too late, to extract the
lance splinters from the eye of the dying Henry II.

He was now married to a lady of rank from Brussels,
Auue van Hamnie by name ; and their daughter married
in time Philip II. 's grand falconer, who was doubtless
a personage of no small social rank. He was well off
in worldly things; somewhat fond, it is said, of good
living and of luxury ; inclined, it may be, to say, " Let
us cat and drink, for to-morrow we die," and to sink
more and more into the mere worldling, unless sonn-
shock awoke him from his lethargy.

And the awakening shock did come. After eight
years of court life, he resolved early in the year l")*! 1
to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The reasons for so strange a determination an-
wrapped in mystery and contradiction. The common
story was that he had opened a corpse to ascertain

406 YES ALIUS THE AX ATOM J ST.

the cause of death, ami that, to the horror of the
Ijystanders, the heart was still seen to heat ; that his
enemies accused him to the Inquisition, and that ho
•was condemned to death, a sentence which was com-
muted to that of going on pilgrimage. But here,
at the very outset, accounts dift'er. One says that
the victim was a nohleman, name not given ; another
that it was a lady's maid, name not given. It is most
improbable, if not impossible, that Vesalius, of all men,
should have mistaken a living body for a dead one ;
while it is most probable, on the other hand, that his
medical enemies would gladly raise such a calumny
against him, when he was no longer in Spain to con-
tradict it. Meanwhile Lh)rente, the historian of the
Inquisition, makes no mention of Vesalius having been
brought before its tribunal, while he does mention
Vesalius* residence at ftladrid. Ani>ther story is, that
ho w^ent abroad to escajx' tlif bml timper of his wife;
another that ho wanted to enrich himself. Another
story — and that not an unlikely «ine- is, that he was
jealous of the rising reputation i)f his pupil Fallopius,
then professor of anatomy at Venice. This distinguished
surgeon, as I said before, had written a book, in wliieh
he had added to Vesalius* discoveries, and corrected
certain errors of his. Vesalius hud answered him
hastily and angrily, quoting his anatony from memory;
for, as he himself complained, he could [not in Spain

VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST. 407

obtain a subject for dissection ; not even, he said, a
single skull. IIu Lad sent his book to Venice to be
published, and had heard, seemingly, nothing of it.
He may have felt that he was falling behind in the
race of science, and that it was impossible for him to
carry on his studies in Madrid ; and so, angry with his
own laziness and luxury, he may have felt the old
sacred fire tiash up in him, and have determined to go
to Italy and become a student and a worker once more.
The very day that he set out, Clusius of Arras,
then probably the best botanist in the world, arrived
at Madrid ; and, asking the reason of Vesalius' depar-
ture, was told by their fellow-countryman, Charles
de Tisnacq, procurator for the affairs of the Nether-
lands, that Vesalius had gone of his own free will,
and with all facilities which Philip could grant him,
in performance of a vow which he had made during
a dangerous illness. Ilere, at least, we have a drop
of information, which seems taken from the stream
sufliciently near to the fountain-head : but it must
be rccollex'ted that De Tisnacq lived in dangerous
times, and may have . found it necessary to walk
warily in them ; that through him had been sent, only
the year before, that famous letter from William of
Orange, Horn, and Egmont, the fate whereof may be
read in Mr. Motley's fourth chapter ; that the crisis of
the Ketherlaudd which sprung out of that letter was

408 VESA LirS THE A XA TOM IS T.

coming fast ; and that, as De Tisnacq was on friendly
terms with Ep;mout, he may have felt his head at times
somewhat loose on his shoulders ; especially if ho had
heard Alva say, as ho wrote, " that every time he saw
the despatches of those three seilors, they moved his
choler so, that if he did not take much care to temper
it, he would seem a frenzied man," In such times,
De Tisnacq may have thought good to return a diplo-
matic answer to a fellow-countryman concerning a
third fellow-countryman, espociully when that country-
man, as a former pupil of Melancthon at AVittcmberg,
might himself he under suspicion of heresy, and there-
fore of possible treason.

Be this as it may, one cannot but suspect some strain
of truth in the story about the Inquisiticm ; perhaps in
that, also, of his wife's unkindness ; for, whether or not
Vesaliufl operated on Don Carlos, ho had seen with his
own eyes that miraculous Virgin of Atocha at the bed's
foot of the prince. lie had heard his recovery attri-
buted, not to the operation, but to the intercession of
Fray, now Saint, Dicgu;* and he nmst inive had his
thoughts thereon, and may, in an unguarded moment,
have spoken them.

* In JuMtico to potir Doctor Olimri'X, it tniut bo mid, that while li<
iillowN 111! forco tn tint IntirrrMiiiiM of tlu- Virgin ntul of Fmy Diego,
iiixl of " iiuiny junt iMTwiiiK," he cantiut nlluw tliiit then) wiim any
"riiinulf |irr>iHrly iM> riill"!.' l-cvniiw! lli'- jirinof wiut run-il urcoriling
lo" iialunil ur<l<'r," ii!i<l l.y " < xpi r;iiiriit<'<l ii>iii<'<lii'M*'<)f tli>- pliyniciiiiiH.

i'/:.s.-i L I i:s THE a am 'nnrisT. 400

For lie was, bo it always remembered, a Nether-
liiiulcr. The crisis of his country was just at barul,
liobt'llion was inevitable, and, with rebellion, horrors
unutterable ; and, meanwhile, Don Carlos had set his
mad brain (.)ii having the command ol' the Netherlands.
In his rage at not having it, as all the world knows,
he nearly killed Alva with his own hands, some twt)
years alter. If it be true that Don Carlos felt a
debt of gratitude to Vesalius, he may (after his wont)
have i^oured out to him some wild confidence about
the Netherlands, to have even heard which would be
a crime in Philip's eyes. And if this be but a fancy,
still Vesalius was, as I just said, a Netherlander, and
one of a brain and a spirit to which Philip's doings, and
the air of the Spanish court, must have been growing
even more and more intolerable. Hundreds of his
coiintry folk, perhaps men and women whom he had
known, were being racked, burnt alive, buried alive, at
the bidding of a jocular ruHian, Peter Titelmann, the
chief inquisitor. The "day of the nuiu-hrulez,'' and
the wholesale massacre which followed it, had hap-
pened but two years before ; and, by all the signs »»f
the times, these murders and miseries were certain to
increase. And why were all these poor wretches suf-
fering the extremity of horror, but because they w«iuld
not believe in miraculous images, and bones of dead
friars, and the rest of that science of unreason and

410 VESALIUS THE AS ATOM I ST.

unfact, against which Vesalius had been fighting all his
life, consciously or not, by using reason and observing
fact ? "What wonder if, in some burst of noble indigna-
tion and just contempt, he forgot a moment that he
had sold his soul, and his love of science likewise, to
Ix' a luxurious, yet uneasy, hanger-on at the tyrant's
court ; and spoke unadvisedly some word worthy of a
German man ?

As to the story of his unhappy quarrels with his
wife, there may be a grain of truth in it likewise.
Vesalius' religion must have sat very lightly on him.
The man who hud robbed churchyards and gibbets from
his youth was not likely to be much afraid of appari-
tions and demons. He had handled too many human
bones to care much for those of saints. He was pro-
bably, like his friends of Basle, Montpellier, and Paris,
somewhat of a heretic at heart, probably somewhat of
a pagan. His lady, Anne van Hammc, was probably a
strict Catholic, as her father, being a councillor and
master of the exchequer at lirussels, was bound to \w ;
and freethinking in the husband, crossed by HU})er-
stitiou in the wife, may have caused in them that
wretched vie a pint, that want of any true communion
of soul, too common to this day in Catholic countries.

lie these things as they may— and the exact truth
of them will now be never known- -Vesalius set out
to Jerusalem in the spring of 10G4. On his way he

VKS ALIUS THE ANATOMIST. 411

visited Lis old friends at Venice to see about his book
against Fallopius. The Venetian republic received the
great philosopher with open arms. Fallopius was just
dead ; and the senate offered their guest the vacant
chair of anatomy. He accepted it : but went on to the
East.

He never occupied that chair ; wrecked upon the
Isle of Zante, as he was sailing back from Palestine, he
died miserably of fever and want, as thousands of pil-
grims returning from the Holy Land had died before
him. A goldsmith recognised him ; buried him in a
chapel of the Virgin ; and put up over him a simple
stone, which remained till late years ; and may remain,
for aught I know, even now.

So perished, in the prime of life, " a martyr to his
love of science," to quote the words of M. Burggraeve
of Ghent, his able biographer and commentator, " the
prodigious man, who created a science at an epoch
when everything was still an obstacle to his progress ;
a man whose whole life was a long struggle of know-
ledge against ignorance, of truth against lies."

Plaudite : Exeat : with Rondelet and Buchanan. And
whensoever this poor foolish world needs three such
men, may God of his great mercy send them.

\ri,

LONDON :

PRIXTET) IIY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SOVa

-'\"!-".0 gTUEET AND ClURnCO CBOaS.

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