l^V: 
 
 
 UUMVIJd/ 
 
 ;=^ ^ 
 
 Ci vt;yi 
 
 Dll
 
 
 iUii\M.ru^ 
 
 /i^vwa-iW^ 
 
 § 1 
 
 1\JJU1J 3- 
 
 .r r» 1 1 rnr. 
 
 . UJI \ I J J'- 
 
 , L r* iifCin 
 
 WJx 
 
 9 ^ 
 
 0/: 
 
 aOKAUF0R{> 
 
 ^mmm^ 
 
 
 '-'^.iJN\ ijl-
 
 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 
 
 
 r^ 
 
 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 
 
 D
 
 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 
 
 B
 
 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 
 
 F
 
 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 
 
 o
 
 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. 
 
 H
 
 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- 
 
 L
 
 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 
 
 N
 
 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 
 
 2
 
 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." 
 
 P
 
 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 
 
 Q
 
 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; 
 
 s
 
 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 
 
 u
 
 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 
 
 O 
 
 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 
 
 X
 
 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 
 
 z
 
 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. 
 
 Q 
 
 i.(f\
 
 
 '0^ 
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 
 
 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 
 
 Ji\l 
 
 V^ 5^ 
 
 *jri i I iin 
 
 %
 
 
 t±i II 
 
 ^imis^^ 
 
 %nAiNn3wv 
 
 L 005 UV) 330 
 
 Uln 
 
 AA 000 788 759 y 
 
 I (Or 
 
 11(7 
 
 ,-^MM'VIVERrA';., ^..vlO^