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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10649 ***
+
+LORD'S LECTURES
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME XIV
+
+THE NEW ERA
+
+A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers,
+as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of Contents.
+
+BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
+ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.
+
+In preparing the new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, it has been
+thought desirable to do what the venerable author's death in 1894 did
+not permit him to accomplish, and add a volume summarizing certain broad
+aspects of achievement in the last fifty years. It were manifestly
+impossible to cover in any single volume--except in the dry, cyclopaedic
+style of chronicling multitudinous facts, so different from the vivid,
+personal method of Dr. Lord--all the growths of the wonderful period
+just closed. The only practicable way has been to follow our author's
+principle of portraying _selected historic forces_,--to take, as
+representative or typical of the various departments, certain great
+characters whose services have signalized them as "Beacon Lights" along
+the path of progress, and to secure adequate portrayal of these by men
+known to be competent for interesting exposition of the several themes.
+
+Thus the volume opens with a paper on "Richard Wagner: Modern Music," by
+Henry T. Finck, the musical critic of the _New York Evening Post_, and
+author of various works on music, travel, etc.; and then follow in order
+these: "John Ruskin: Modern Art," by G. Mercer Adam, author of "A Précis
+of English History," recently editor of the _Self-Culture Magazine_ and
+of the Werner Supplements to the Encyclopaedia Britannica; "Herbert
+Spencer: The Evolutionary Philosophy," and "Charles Darwin: His Place in
+Modern Science," both by Mayo W. Hazeltine, literary editor of the _New
+York Sun_, whose book reviews over the signature "M.W.H." have for years
+made the _Sun's_ book-page notable; "John Ericsson: Navies of War and
+Commerce," by Prof. W.F. Durand, of the School of Marine Engineering and
+the Mechanic Arts in Cornell University; "Li Hung Chang: The Far East,"
+by Dr. William A. P. Martin, the distinguished missionary, diplomat, and
+author, recently president of the Imperial University, Peking, China;
+"David Livingstone: African Exploration," by Cyrus C. Adams,
+geographical and historical expert, and a member of the editorial staff
+of the _New York Sun_; "Sir Austen H. Layard: Modern Archaeology," by
+Rev. William Hayes Ward, D.D., editor of _The Independent_, New York,
+himself eminent in Oriental exploration and decipherment; "Michael
+Faraday: Electricity and Magnetism," by Prof. Edwin J. Houston of
+Philadelphia, an accepted authority in electrical engineering; and,
+"Rudolf Virchow: Modern Medicine and Surgery," by Dr. Frank P. Foster,
+physician, author, and editor of the _New York Medical Journal_.
+
+The selection of themes must be arbitrary, amid the numberless lines of
+development during the "New Era" of the Nineteenth Century, in which
+every mental, moral, and physical science and art has grown and
+diversified and fructified with a rapidity seen in no other five
+centuries. It is hoped, however, that the choice will be justified by
+the interest of the separate papers, and that their result will be such
+a view of the main features as to leave a distinct impression of the
+general life and advancement, especially of the last half of
+the century.
+
+It is proper to say that the preparation and issuance of Dr. Lord's
+"Beacon Lights of History" were under the editorial care of Mr. John E.
+Howard of Messrs. Fords, Howard, and Hulbert, the original publishers of
+the work, while the proof-sheets also received the critical attention of
+Mr. Abram W. Stevens, one of the accomplished readers of the University
+Press in Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Howard has also supervised the new
+edition, including this final volume, which issues from the same choice
+typographical source.
+
+NEW YORK, September, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+RICHARD WAGNER.
+
+MODERN Music.
+
+BY HENRY T. FINCK.
+
+Youth-time; early ambitions as a composer.
+
+Weber, his fascinator and first inspirer.
+
+"Der Freischütz" and "Euryanthe" prototypes of his operas.
+
+Their supernatural, mythical, and romantic elements.
+
+What he owed to his predecessors acknowledged in his essay on "The Music
+of the Future" (1860).
+
+Marriage and early vicissitudes.
+
+"Rienzi," "The Novice of Palermo," and "The Flying Dutchman".
+
+Writes stories and essays for musical publications.
+
+After many disappointments wins success at Dresden.
+
+"Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin".
+
+Compromises himself in Revolution of 1849 and has to seek safety in
+Switzerland.
+
+Here he conceives and partly writes the "Nibelung Tetralogy".
+
+Discouragements at London and at Paris.
+
+"Siegfried" and "Tristan and Isolde".
+
+Finds a patron in Ludwig II. of Bavaria.
+
+Nibelung Festival at Bayreuth.
+
+"Parsifal" appears; death of Wagner at Vienna (1882).
+
+Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin.
+
+Other eminent composers and pianists.
+
+Liszt as a contributor to current of modern music.
+
+Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Dvorák, Strauss, and Weber.
+
+"The Music of the Future" the music of the present.
+
+
+
+JOHN RUSKIN.
+
+MODERN ART.
+
+BY G. MERCER ADAM.
+
+Passionate and luminous exponent of Nature's beauties.
+
+His high if somewhat quixotic ideal of life.
+
+Stimulating writings in ethics, education, and political economy.
+
+Frederic Harrison on Ruskin's stirring thoughts and melodious speech.
+
+Birth and youth-time; Collingwood's "Life" and his own "Praeterita".
+
+Defence of Turner and what it grew into.
+
+Architectural writings, lectures, and early publications.
+
+Interest in Pre-Raphaelitism and its disciples.
+
+Growing fame; with admiring friends and correspondents.
+
+On the public platform; personal appearance of the man.
+
+Economic and socialistic vagaries.
+
+F. Harrison on "Ruskin as Prophet" and teacher.
+
+Inspiring lay sermons and minor writings.
+
+Reformer and would-be regenerator of modern society.
+
+Attitude towards industrial problems of his time.
+
+Founds the communal "Guild of St. George".
+
+Philanthropies, and lecturings in "Working Men's College".
+
+Death and epoch-making influence, in modern art.
+
+
+
+HERBERT SPENCER.
+
+THE EVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY.
+
+BY MAYO W. HAZELTINE.
+
+Constructs a philosophical system in harmony with the theory of
+evolution.
+
+Birth, parentage, and early career.
+
+Scheme of his system of Synthetic Philosophy.
+
+His "Facts and Comments;" views on party government, patriotism, and
+style.
+
+His religious attitude that of an agnostic.
+
+The doctrine of the Unknowable and the knowable.
+
+"First Principles;" progress of evolution in life, mind, society, and
+morality.
+
+The relations of matter, motion, and force.
+
+"Principles of Biology;" the data of; the development hypothesis.
+
+The evolutionary hypothesis _versus_ the special creation hypothesis;
+arguments.
+
+Causes and interpretation of the evolution phenomena.
+
+Development as displayed in the structures and functions of individual
+organisms.
+
+"Principles of Psychology;" the evolution of mind and analysis of mental
+states.
+
+"Principles of Sociology;" the adaptation of human nature to the social
+state.
+
+Evolution of governments, political and ecclesiastical; industrial
+organizations.
+
+Qualifications; Nature's plan an advance, and again a retrogression.
+
+Social evolution; equilibriums between constitution and conditions.
+
+Assisted by others in the collection, but not the systemization, of his
+illustrative material.
+
+"Principles of Ethics;" natural basis for; secularization of morals.
+
+General inductions; his "Social Statics".
+
+Relations of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Darwin to the thought of the Nineteenth
+Century.
+
+
+
+CHARLES DARWIN.
+
+HIS PLACE IN MODERN SCIENCE.
+
+BY MAYO W. HAZELTINE.
+
+The Darwinian hypothesis a rational and widely accepted explanation of
+the genesis of organic life on the earth.
+
+Darwin; birth, parentage, and education.
+
+Naturalist on the voyage of the "Beagle".
+
+His work on "Coral Reefs" and the "Geology of South America".
+
+Observations and experiments on the transmutation of species.
+
+Contemporaneous work on the same lines by Alfred R. Wallace.
+
+"The Origin of Species" (1859).
+
+His "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" (1868).
+
+"The Descent of Man" (1871).
+
+On the "Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals" (1872).
+
+"Fertilization of Orchids" (1862), "The Effects of Cross and
+Self-Fertilization" (1876), and "The Formation of Vegetable Mould
+through the Action of Worms" (1881).
+
+Ill-health, death, and burial.
+
+Personality, tastes, and mental characteristics.
+
+His beliefs and agnostic attitude toward religion.
+
+His prime postulate, that species have been modified during a long
+course of descent.
+
+Antagonistic views on the immutability of species.
+
+His theory of natural selection: that all animal and plant life has a
+common progenitor, difference in their forms arising primarily from
+beneficial variations.
+
+Enunciates in the "Descent of Man" the great principle of Evolution, and
+the common kinship of man and the lower animals.
+
+Biological evidence to sustain this view.
+
+Man's moral qualities, and the social instinct of animals.
+
+Religious beliefs not innate, nor instinctive.
+
+Bearing of this on belief in the immortality of the soul.
+
+As a scientist Darwin concerned only with truth; general acceptance of
+his theory of the origin of species.
+
+
+
+JOHN ERICSSON.
+
+NAVIES OF WAR AND COMMERCE.
+
+BY PROF. W. F. DUKAND.
+
+Ericsson's life-work little foreseen in his youth and early
+surroundings.
+
+His impress on the engineering practice of his time.
+
+Dependence, in our modern civilization, on the utilization of the great
+natural forces and energies of the world.
+
+Life-periods in Sweden, England, and the United States.
+
+Birth, parentage, and early engineering career.
+
+An officer in the Swedish army, and topographical surveyor for his
+native government.
+
+Astonishing insight into mechanical and scientific questions.
+
+His work, 1827 to 1839, when he came to the United States.
+
+"A spendthrift in invention;" versatility and daring.
+
+The screw-propeller _vs_. the paddle-wheel for marine propulsion.
+
+Designs and constructs the steam-frigate "Princeton" and the hot-air
+ship "Ericsson".
+
+The Civil War and his services in the art of naval construction.
+
+His new model of a floating battery and warship, "The Monitor".
+
+The battle between it and the "Merrimac" a turning-point in naval aspect
+of the war.
+
+"The Destroyer," built in connection with Mr. Delamater.
+
+Improves the character and reduces friction in the use of heavy
+ordnance.
+
+Work on the improvement of steam-engines for warships.
+
+Death, and international honors paid at his funeral.
+
+His work in improving the motive-power of ships.
+
+Special contributions to the art of naval war.
+
+Ships of low freeboard equipped with revolving turrets.
+
+Influence of his work lives in the modern battleship.
+
+Other features of work which he did for his age.
+
+Personality and professional traits.
+
+Essentially a designer rather than a constructing engineer.
+
+
+
+LI HUNG CHANG.
+
+THE FAR EAST.
+
+BY W.A.P. MARTIN, D.D., LL.D.
+
+Introductory; Earl Li's foreign fame; his rising star.
+
+Intercourse with China by land.
+
+The Great Wall; China first known to the western world through its
+conquest by the Mongols.
+
+The houses of Han, Tang, and Sang.
+
+The diplomat Su Wu on an embassy to Turkey.
+
+Intercourse by sea.
+
+Expulsion of the Mongols; the magnetic needle.
+
+Art of printing; birth of alchemy.
+
+Manchu conquest; Macao and Canton opened to foreign trade.
+
+The Opium War.
+
+Li Hung Chang appears on the scene.
+
+His contests for academical honors and preferment.
+
+The Taiping rebellion.
+
+Li a soldier; General Ward and "Chinese Gordon".
+
+The Arrow War; the treaties.
+
+Lord Elgin's mistake leads to renewal of the war.
+
+Fall of the Peiho forts and flight of the Court.
+
+The war with France.
+
+Mr. Seward and Anson Burlingame.
+
+War ended through the agency of Sir Robert Hart.
+
+War with Japan.
+
+Perry at Tokio (Yeddo); overturn of the Shogans.
+
+Formosa ceded to Japan.
+
+China follows Japan and throws off trammels of antiquated usage.
+
+War with the world.
+
+The Boxer rising; menace to the Peking legations.
+
+Prince Ching and Viceroy Li arrange terms of peace.
+
+Li's death; patriot, and patron of educational reform.
+
+
+
+DAVID LIVINGSTONE.
+
+AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT.
+
+BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.
+
+Difficulties of exploration in the "Dark Continent"
+
+Livingstone's belief that "there was good in Africa," and that it was
+worth reclaiming.
+
+His early journeyings kindled the great African movement.
+
+Youthful career and studies, marriage, etc.
+
+Contact with the natives; wins his way by kindness.
+
+Sublime faith in the future of Africa.
+
+Progress in the heart of the continent since his day.
+
+Interest of his second and third journeyings (1853-56).
+
+Visits to Britain, reception, and personal characteristics.
+
+Later discoveries and journeyings (1858-1864, 1866-1873).
+
+Death at Chitambo (Ilala) Lake Bangweolo, May 1, 1873.
+
+General accuracy of his geographical records; his work, as a whole,
+stands the test of time.
+
+Downfall of the African slave-trade, the "open sore of the world".
+
+Remarkable achievements of later explorers and surveyors.
+
+The work of Burton, Junker, Speke, and Stanley.
+
+Father Schynse's chart.
+
+Surveys of Commander Whitehouse.
+
+Missionary maps of the Congo Free State and basin.
+
+Other areas besides tropical Africa made known and opened up.
+
+Pygmy tribes and cannibalism in the Congo basin.
+
+Human sacrifices now prohibited and punishable with death.
+
+Railway and steamboat development, and partition of the continent.
+
+South Africa: the gold and diamond mines and natural resources.
+
+Future philanthropic work.
+
+
+
+SIR AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD.
+
+MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY.
+
+BY WILLIAM HAYES WARD, D.D., LL/D.
+
+Overthrow of Nineveh and destruction of the Assyrian Empire.
+
+Kingdoms and empires extant and buried before the era of Hebrew and
+Greek history.
+
+Bonaparte in Egypt, and the impulse he gave to French archaeology.
+
+Champollion and his deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions.
+
+Paul Émile Botta and his discoveries in Assyria.
+
+His excavations of King Sargon's palace at Khorsabad.
+
+Layard begins his excavations and discoveries at Nineveh.
+
+Sir Stratford Canning's (Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe) gift to the
+British Museum of the marbles of Halicarnassus.
+
+Layard's published researches, "Nineveh and its Remains," and "Babylon
+and Nineveh".
+
+His work, "The Monuments of Nineveh" (1849-53).
+
+Obelisk and monoliths of Shalmaneser II., King of Assyria, discovered by
+Layard at Nimroud.
+
+George Smith and his discovery of the Babylonian account of the Deluge.
+
+Light thrown by these discoveries on the Pharaoh of the Bible, and on
+Melchizedek, who reigned in Abraham's day.
+
+Other archaeologists of note, Glaser, De Morgan, De Sarzec, and Botta.
+
+Relics of Buddha, and the Hittite inscriptions.
+
+The Moabite Stone, and work of the English Palestine Exploration Fund at
+Jerusalem.
+
+Dr. Schliemann's labors among the ruins of Troy.
+
+Researches and discoveries at Crete.
+
+The mounds, pyramids, and temples of the American aborigines.
+
+The cliff-dwellers and the Mayas, Incas, and Toltecs.
+
+The Calendar Stone and statue of the gods of war and death found in
+Mexico.
+
+What treasure yet remains to be recovered of a past civilization.
+
+
+
+MICHAEL FARADAY.
+
+ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM.
+
+BY EDWIN J. HOUSTON, PH.D.
+
+"The Prince of Experimental Philosophers".
+
+Unprecocious as a child; environment of his early years.
+
+His early study of Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Chemistry," and the
+articles on electricity in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica".
+
+Appointed laboratory assistant at the London Royal Institution.
+
+Inspiration received from his teacher, Sir Humphry Davy.
+
+Investigations in chemistry, electricity, and magnetism.
+
+His discovery (1831) of the means for developing electricity direct from
+magnetism.
+
+Substitutes magnets for active circuits.
+
+Simplicity of the apparatus used in his successful experiments.
+
+Some of the results obtained by him in his experimental researches.
+
+What is to-day owing to him for his discovery and investigation of all
+forms of magneto-electric induction.
+
+His discovery of the relations between light and magnetism.
+
+Action of glass and other solid substances on a beam of polarized light.
+
+His paper on "Magnetization of Light and the Illumination of the Lines
+of Magnetic Force".
+
+His contribution (1845) on the "Magnetic Condition of All Matter".
+
+Investigation of the phenomena which he calls "the Magne-crystallic
+force".
+
+Extent of his work in the electro-chemical field.
+
+His invention of the first dynamo.
+
+His alternating-current transformer.
+
+Induction coils and their use in producing the Röntgen rays.
+
+Edison's invention of the fluoroscope.
+
+Faraday's gift to commercial science of the electric motor.
+
+His dynamo-electric machine.
+
+Modern electric transmissions of power.
+
+Tesla's multiphase alternating-current motor.
+
+Faraday's electric generator and motor.
+
+The telephone, aid given by Faraday's discoveries in the invention and
+use of the transmitter.
+
+Modern power-generating and transmission plants a magnificent
+testimonial to the genius of Faraday.
+
+Death and honors.
+
+
+
+RUDOLF VIRCHOW.
+
+MEDICINE AND SURGERY.
+
+BY FRANK P. FOSTER, M.D.
+
+Jenner demonstrates efficacy of vaccination against small-pox.
+
+Debt to the physicists, chemists, and botanists of the new era.
+
+Appendicitis (peritonitis), its present frequency.
+
+Experimental methods of study in physiology.
+
+Hahnemann, founder of homoeopathy, and physical diagnosis of the sick.
+
+The clinical thermometer and other instruments of precision.
+
+Animal parasites the direct cause of many diseases.
+
+Bacteria and the germ theory of disease.
+
+Pasteur, viruses, and aseptic surgery.
+
+Consumption and its germ; the corpuscles and their resistance to
+bacterial invasion.
+
+Antitoxines as a cure in diphtheria.
+
+Their use in surgery; asepticism and Lord Lister.
+
+Listerism and midwifery.
+
+American aid in the treatment of fractures.
+
+Use of artificial serum in disease treatment.
+
+Koch's tuberculin and its use in consumption.
+
+Chemistry as a handmaid of medicine.
+
+Brown-Séquard and "internal secretions".
+
+Febrile ailment and cold-water applications.
+
+Surgical anaesthetics; Long, Morton, and Simpson.
+
+Ovariotomy operations by McDowell and Bell.
+
+Professional nursing.
+
+Virchow and the literature of medicine, anatomy, and physiology; his
+death; his "Archiv," "Cellular-Pathology," etc.
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+VOLUME XIV.
+
+Dr. Jenner Vaccinates a Child
+  _After the painting by George Gaston Melingue_
+
+Richard Wagner
+  _After the painting by Franz von Lenbach_
+
+John Ruskin
+  _After a photograph from life_
+
+Herbert Spencer
+  _After a photograph from life_
+
+Charles Robert Darwin
+  _After the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A._
+
+John Ericsson
+  _From a contemporaneous engraving_
+
+Li Hung Chang
+  _After a photograph from life_
+
+David Livingstone
+  _After a photograph from life_
+
+Sir Austen Henry Layard
+  _After the painting by H. W. Phillips_
+
+Michael Faraday
+  _After a photograph from life_
+
+Rudolf Virchow
+  _After a photograph from life_
+
+
+
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
+
+
+RICHARD WAGNER: MODERN MUSIC.
+
+
+BY HENRY T. FINCK.
+
+
+If the Dresden schoolboys who attended the _Kreuzschule_ in the years
+1823-1827 could have been told that one of them was destined to be the
+greatest opera composer of all times, and to influence the musicians of
+all countries throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, they
+would, no doubt, have been very much surprised. Nor is it likely that
+they could have guessed which of them was the chosen one. For Richard
+Wagner--or Richard Geyer, as he was then called, after his
+stepfather--was by no means a youthful prodigy, like Mozart or Liszt. It
+is related that Beethoven shed tears of displeasure over his first music
+lessons; nevertheless, it was obvious from the beginning that he had a
+special gift for music. Richard Wagner, on the other hand, apparently
+had none. When he was eight years old his stepfather, shortly before his
+death, heard him play on the piano two pieces from one of Weber's
+operas, which made him wonder if Richard might "perhaps" have talent for
+music. His piano teacher did not believe even in that "perhaps," but
+told him bluntly he would "never amount to anything" as a musician.
+
+For poetry, however, young Richard had a decided inclination in his
+school years; and this was significant, inasmuch as it afterwards became
+his cardinal maxim that in an opera "the play's the thing," and the
+music merely a means of intensifying the emotional expression. Before
+his time the music, or rather the singing of florid tunes, had been "the
+thing," and the libretto merely a peg to hang these tunes on. In this
+respect, therefore, the child was father to the man. At the age of
+eleven he received a prize for the best poem on the death of a
+schoolmate. At thirteen he translated the first twelve books of Homer's
+Odyssey. He studied English for the sole purpose of being able to read
+Shakspeare. Then he projected a stupendous tragedy, in the course of
+which he killed off forty-two persons, many of whom had to be brought
+back as ghosts to enable him to finish the play.
+
+This extravagance also characterized his first efforts as a composer,
+when he at last turned to music, at the age of sixteen. One of his first
+tasks, when he had barely mastered the rudiments of composition, was to
+write an overture which he intended to be more complicated than
+Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Heinrich Dorn, who recognized his talent
+amid all the bombast, conducted this piece at a concert. At the
+rehearsal the musicians were convulsed with laughter, and at the
+performance the audience was at first surprised and then disgusted at
+the persistence of the drum-player, who made himself heard loudly every
+fourth bar. Finally there was a general outburst of hilarity which
+taught the young man a needed lesson.
+
+Undoubtedly the germs of his musical genius had been in Wagner's brain
+in his childhood,--for genius is not a thing that can be acquired. They
+had simply lain dormant, and it required a special influence to develop
+them. This influence was supplied by Weber and his operas. In 1815, two
+years after Wagner's birth, the King of Saxony founded a German opera in
+Dresden, where theretofore Italian opera had ruled alone. Weber was
+chosen as conductor, and thus it happened that Wagner's earliest and
+deepest impressions came from the composer of the "Freischütz." In his
+autobiographic sketch Wagner writes: "Nothing gave me so much pleasure
+as the 'Freischütz.' I often saw Weber pass by our house when he came
+from rehearsals. I always looked upon him with a holy awe." It was lucky
+for young Richard that his stepfather, Geyer, besides being a
+portrait-painter, an actor, and a playwright, was also one of Weber's
+tenors at the opera. This enabled the boy, in spite of the family's
+poverty, to hear many of the performances. In fact, Wagner, like Weber,
+owes a considerable part of his success as a writer for the stage to the
+fact that he belonged to a theatrical family, and thus gradually learned
+"how the wheels go round." Such practical experience is worth more than
+years of academic study.
+
+While Wagner cordially acknowledged the fascination which Weber's music
+exerted on him in his boyhood, he was hardly fair to Weber in his later
+writings. In these he tries to prove that his own music-dramas are an
+outgrowth of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. When Beethoven wrote that work,
+Wagner argues, he had come to the conclusion that purely instrumental
+music had reached a point beyond which it could not go alone, wherefore
+he called in the aid of poetry (sung by soloists and chorus), and thus
+intimated that the art-work of the future was the musical drama,--a
+combination of poetry and music.
+
+This is a purely fantastic notion on Wagner's part. There is no evidence
+that Beethoven had any such purpose; he merely called in the aid of the
+human voice to secure variety of sound and expression. Poetry and music
+had been combined centuries before Beethoven in the opera and in
+lyric song.
+
+No, the roots of Wagner's music-dramas are not to be found in Beethoven,
+but in Weber. His "Freischütz" and "Euryanthe" are the prototypes of
+Wagner's operas. The "Freischütz" is the first masterwork, as Wagner's
+operas are the last, up to date, of the romantic school; and it embodies
+admirably two of the principal characteristics of that school: one, a
+delight in the demoniac, the supernatural--what the Germans call
+_gruseln_; the other, the use of certain instruments, alone or in
+combination, for the sake of securing peculiar emotional effects. In
+both these respects Wagner followed in Weber's footsteps. With the
+exception of "Rienzi" and "Die Meistersinger," all of his operas, from
+the "Flying Dutchman" to "Parsifal," embody supernatural, mythical,
+romantic elements; and in the use of novel tone colors for special
+emotional effects he opened a new wonder-world of sound, to which Weber,
+however, had given him the key.
+
+"Lohengrin," the last one of what are usually called Wagner's "operas,"
+as distinguished from his "music-dramas" (comprising the last seven of
+his works), betrays very strongly the influence of Weber's other
+masterwork, "Euryanthe." This opera, indeed, may also be called the
+direct precursor of Wagner's music-dramas. It contains eight "leading
+motives," which recur thirty times in course of the opera; and the
+dramatic recitatives are sometimes quite in the "Wagnerian" manner. But
+the most remarkable thing is that Weber uses language which practically
+sums up Wagner's idea of the music-drama. "'Euryanthe,'" he says, "is a
+purely dramatic work, which depends for its success solely on the
+co-operation of the united sister-arts, and is certain to lose its
+effect if deprived of their assistance."
+
+When Wagner wrote his essay on "The Music of the Future" for the
+Parisians (1860) he remembered his obligations to the Dresden idol of
+his boyhood by calling attention to "the still very noticeable
+connection" of his early work, "Tannhäuser," with "the operas of my
+predecessors, among whom I name especially Weber," He might have
+mentioned others,--Gluck, for instance, who curbed the vanity of the
+singers, and taught them that they were not "the whole show;" Marschner,
+whose grewsome "Hans Heiling" Wagner had in mind when he wrote his
+"Flying Dutchman;" Auber, whose "Masaniello," with its dumb heroine,
+taught Wagner the importance and expressiveness of pantomimic music, of
+which there are such eloquent examples in all his operas. During his
+three and a half years' sojourn in Paris, just at the opening of his
+career as an opera composer (1839-1842), he learned many things
+regarding operatic scenery, machinery, processions, and details, which
+he subsequently turned to good account. Even Meyerbeer, the ruler of the
+musical world in Paris at that time, was not without influence on him,
+though he had cause to disapprove of him because of his submission to
+the demands of the fashionable taste of the day, which contrasted so
+strongly with Wagner's own courageous defiance of everything
+inconsistent with his ideals of art. The result to-day--Meyerbeer's fall
+and Wagner's triumph--shows that courage, like honesty, is, in the long
+run, the best policy, and, like virtue, its own reward.
+
+It is important to bear in mind all these lessons that Wagner learned
+from his predecessors, as it helps to explain the enormous influence he
+exerted on his contemporaries. Wonderful as was the power and
+originality of his genius, even he could not have achieved such results
+had he not had truth on his side,--truth, as hinted at, in moments of
+inspiration, by many of his predecessors.
+
+Wagner was most shamefully misrepresented by his enemies during his
+lifetime. A thousand times they wrote unblushingly that he despised and
+abused the great masters, whereas in truth no one ever spoke of them
+more enthusiastically than he, or was more eager to learn of them,
+though, to be sure, he was honest and courageous enough also to call
+attention to their shortcomings. In all his autobiographic writings
+there is not a more luminous passage than the following, in which he
+relates his experiences as conductor at the Riga Opera in 1838, when he
+was at work on "Rienzi":--
+
+"The peculiar gnawing melancholy which habitually overpowered me when I
+conducted one of our ordinary operas was interrupted by an
+inexpressible, enthusiastic delight, when, here and there, during the
+performance of nobler works, I became conscious of the incomparable
+effects that can be produced by musico-dramatic combinations on the
+stage,--effects of a depth, sincerity, and direct realistic vivacity,
+such as no other art can produce. I felt quite elated and ennobled
+during the time that I was rehearsing Méhul's enchanting 'Joseph' with
+my little opera company." "Such impressions," he continues, "like
+flashes of lightning" revealed to him "unsuspected possibilities." It
+was by utilizing these "possibilities" and hints, and at the same time
+avoiding the errors and blemishes of his predecessors, that his
+superlative genius was enabled to create such unapproachable masterworks
+as "Siegfried" and "Tristan and Isolde."
+
+The way up to those peaks was, however, slow and toilsome. For years he
+groped in darkness, and light came but gradually. It has already been
+intimated that his genius was slow in developing. A brief review of his
+romantic career will bring out this and other interesting points.
+
+At the time when Richard Wagner was born (May 22, 1813), Leipzig was in
+such a state of commotion on account of the war to liberate Germany from
+the Napoleonic yoke that the child's baptism was deferred several
+months. To his schooldays reference has been made already, and we may
+therefore pass on to the time when he tried to make his living as an
+operatic conductor. Although he was then only twenty-one years old, he
+showed remarkable aptitude for this kind of work from the beginning, and
+it was through no fault of his that misfortune overtook every opera
+company with which he had anything to do. The bankruptcy, in 1836, of
+the manager of the Magdeburg Opera, affected him most disastrously, for
+it came at the moment when he had arranged for the first performance of
+an opera he had written, entitled, "Das Liebesverbot," or "The Novice of
+Palermo," and which therefore was given only once. Many years later an
+attempt was made to revive this juvenile work at Munich, but the project
+was abandoned because, as the famous Wagnerian tenor, Heinrich Vogl,
+informed the writer of this article, "Its arias and other numbers were
+such ludicrous and undisguised imitations of Donizetti and other popular
+composers of that time that we all burst out laughing, and kept up the
+merriment throughout the rehearsal." This is of interest because it
+shows that Wagner, like that other great reformer, Gluck, began his
+career by writing fashionable operas in the Italian style. A still
+earlier opera of his, "The Fairies,"--the first one he completed,--was
+not produced till 1888, fifty-five years after it had been written, and
+five years after Wagner's death. This has been performed a number of
+times in Munich, but it is so weak and uninteresting in itself that it
+required a splendid stage setting, and the "historic" curiosity of
+Wagner's admirers to make it palatable. It is significant that already
+in these early works, Wagner wrote his own librettos,--a policy which he
+pursued to the end.
+
+Königsberg was the next city where the opera company with which he was
+connected, failed. This was the more embarrassing to him, as he had in
+the meantime been so unwise as to marry a pretty actress, Minna Planer,
+who was destined, for a quarter of a century, to faithfully share his
+experiences,--chiefly disappointments. The pittance he got as conductor
+of these small German opera companies did not pay his expenses, all the
+less as he was fond of luxurious living, and, like most artists, the
+world over, foolishly squandered his money when he happened to have any.
+
+At Riga, where Wagner next attempted to establish himself, the opera
+company again got into trouble, and his financial straits became such
+that, relying on his future ability to meet his obligations, he resolved
+to leave that part of the world altogether and seek his fortune in
+Paris. He knew that the Prussian Meyerbeer had won fame and fortune
+there,--why should not he have the same good luck? He had unbounded
+confidence in his own ability, and what increased his hopes of a
+Parisian success, was that he had already completed two acts of a grand
+historic opera, "Rienzi," based on Bulwer's novel, and written in the
+sensational and spectacular style of Meyerbeer. He supposed that all he
+had to do was to go to Paris, finish this opera, get it accepted through
+the influence of his countryman and colleague, Meyerbeer, and--wake up
+some morning famous and wealthy. He was not the first man who built
+castles in Spain.
+
+To-day a trip from Riga to Paris is a very simple affair. You get into a
+train, and in about twenty-four hours are at your goal. In 1839 there
+were no such conveniences. Wagner had to go to the Prussian seaport of
+Pillau, and there board a sailing vessel which took him to London in
+three weeks and a half. His journey, however, was a much more romantic
+affair than a railway trip would have been. In the first place, it was a
+real flight--from his creditors whom he had to evade. Next he had to
+dodge the Russian sentries, whose boxes were placed on the boundary line
+only a thousand yards apart. A friend discovered a way of accomplishing
+this feat, and Wagner presently found himself on the ship, with his
+wife and his enormous Newfoundland dog. In his trunk he had what he
+hoped would help him to begin a brilliant career in Paris: one opera
+completed,--"The Novice of Palermo;" two acts of another,--"Rienzi;" and
+in his head he had the plot and some of the musical themes for a
+third,--"The Flying Dutchman."
+
+The sea voyage came just in time to give him local color for this weird
+nautical opera. Three times the vessel was tossed by violent storms, and
+once the captain was obliged to seek safety in a Norwegian harbor. The
+sailors told Wagner their version of the "Flying Dutchman" legend, and
+altogether these adventures were the very thing he wanted at the time,
+and aided him in making his opera realistic, both in its text and its
+music, which imitates the howling of the storm winds and "smells of the
+salt breezes."
+
+So for once our young musician had a streak of luck. But it did not last
+long. He found Paris a very large city, and with very little use for
+him. He made the most diverse efforts to support himself, nearly always
+without success. Once it seemed as if his hopes were to be fulfilled.
+The Théâtre de la Renaissance accepted his "Novice of Palermo;" but at
+the last moment there was the usual bankruptcy of the management,--the
+fourth that affected him! Then he wrote a Parisian Vaudeville, but it
+had to be given up because the actors declared it could not be executed.
+The Grand Opera, on which he had fixed his eye, was absolutely out of
+the question. He was brought to such straits that he offered to sing in
+the chorus of a small Boulevard theatre, but was rejected. His wife
+pawned her jewels; on several occasions it is said that she even went
+into the street to beg a few pennies for their supper. It was doubtless
+during these years of starvation that Wagner acquired those gastric
+troubles which in later years often prevented him from working more than
+an hour or two a day.
+
+A few German friends occasionally gave a little pecuniary aid, but the
+only regular source of income was musical hackwork for the publisher
+Schlesinger, who gladly availed himself of Wagner's skill in having him
+make vocal scores of operas, or arrange popular melodies for the piano
+and other instruments. Wagner also wrote stories and essays for musical
+periodicals, for which he received fair remuneration; but his attempt to
+compose romances and become a parlor favorite failed. Nobody wanted his
+songs, and he finally offered them to the editor of a periodical in
+Germany for two dollars and a half to four dollars apiece. This may seem
+ludicrously pathetic; but then had not poor Schubert, a little more than
+a decade before this, sold much better songs for twenty cents each!
+
+Meyerbeer no doubt aided Wagner, but considering his very great
+influence in Paris, he achieved surprisingly little for him. The score
+of "Rienzi" had been completed in 1840, and in the spring of the next
+year, Wagner went to Meudon, near Paris, and there composed the music of
+"The Flying Dutchman," in seven weeks, but neither of these operas
+seemed to have the least chance to appear on the boards of the Grand
+Opera. The best their author could do was to sell the libretto of "The
+Flying Dutchman" for one hundred dollars, reserving the right to set it
+to music himself.
+
+The outcome of all these disappointments was that he finally lost hope
+so far as Paris was concerned, and sent his "Rienzi" to Dresden and his
+"Flying Dutchman" to Berlin. The "Novice of Palermo" he had given up
+entirely after the bankruptcy of the Renaissance Théâtre, because, as he
+wrote, "I felt that I could no longer respect myself as its composer."
+Meyerbeer had, at his request, kindly sent a note to the intendant of
+the Dresden Opera, in which he said, among other things, that he had
+found the selections from "Rienzi," which Wagner had played for him,
+"highly imaginative and of great dramatic effect." Tichatschek, the
+famous Dresden tenor, examined the score, and liked the title role; the
+chorus director, Fischer, also pleaded for the acceptance of the opera;
+and so at last Wagner got word in Paris that it would be produced in
+Dresden. As Berlin, too, retained the manuscript of his other opera,
+there was reason enough for him to end his Parisian sojourn and return
+to his native country. He went overland this time, and, to cite his own
+words, "For the first time I saw the Rhine; with tears in my eyes I, the
+poor artist, swore eternal allegiance to my German fatherland."
+
+It was fortunate in every way that he went to Dresden. His opera
+required many alterations and improvements, which he alone could make.
+He was permitted to superintend the rehearsals, which was, of course, a
+great advantage to the opera. The singers grew more and more
+enthusiastic over the music, and when the first public performance was
+given, on October 20, 1842, the audience also was delighted and remained
+to the very end, although the performance lasted six hours. The composer
+immediately applied the pruning-knife and reduced the duration to four
+hours and a half (from 6 to 10.30,--opera hours were early in those
+days); but the tenor, Tichatschek, declared with tears in his eyes, "I
+shall not permit any cuts in my part! It is too heavenly."
+
+Those were proud and happy days for Wagner. "I, who had hitherto been
+lonely, deserted, homeless," he wrote, "suddenly found myself loved,
+admired, by many even regarded with wonderment." "Rienzi" was repeated a
+number of times to overcrowded houses, though the prices had been put
+up. It was regarded as "a fabulous success," and the management was
+eager to follow it up with another. So the score of "The Flying
+Dutchman" was demanded of Berlin (where they seemed in no hurry to use
+it), and at once put into rehearsal. It was produced in Dresden on
+January 2, 1843, only about ten weeks after "Rienzi,"--an almost
+unprecedented event in the life of an opera composer. Wagner conducted
+the second opera himself (also "Rienzi," after the first few
+performances), and gave so much satisfaction that he was shortly
+afterwards appointed to the position of royal conductor (which he held
+about six years).
+
+So far, all seemed well. But disappointments soon began to overshadow
+his seeming good luck. The first production of the "Flying Dutchman" can
+hardly be called a success. Wagner himself characterized the performance
+as being, in its main features, "a complete failure," and the stage
+setting "incredibly awkward and wooden" (very different from what it is
+in Dresden to-day). Mme. Schroeder-Devrient was an admirable "Senta,"
+and received enthusiastic applause; but the opera itself puzzled the
+audience rather than pleased it.
+
+The music-lovers of Dresden had expected another opera _à la_ Meyerbeer,
+like "Rienzi," with its arias and duos, its din and its dances, its
+pomps and processions, its scenic and musical splendors. Instead of
+that, they heard a work utterly unlike any opera ever before written; an
+opera without arias, duets, and dances, without any of the glitter that
+had theretofore entertained the public; an opera that simply related a
+legend in one breath, as it were,--like a dramatic ballad; an opera that
+indulged in weird chromatic scales, and harsh but expressive harmonies,
+with an unprecedented license. Here was the real Wagner, but even in
+this early and comparatively crude and simple phase, Wagner was too
+novel and revolutionary to be appreciated by his contemporaries; hence
+it is not to be wondered at that the "Flying Dutchman," after four
+performances in Dresden, and a few in Cassel and Berlin, disappeared
+from the stage for ten years.
+
+Although Wagner was now royal conductor, he did not succeed in securing
+a revival of this opera at Dresden. His next work, "Tannhäuser," was
+nevertheless promptly accepted. The score was completed on April 13,
+1845, and six, months later (October 19), the first performance was
+given. Wagner had thrown himself with all his soul into the composition
+of this score. To a friend in Berlin he wrote: "This opera must be good,
+or else I never shall be able to do anything worth while." The public at
+first seemed to agree with him. Seven performances were given before the
+end of the season, and it was resumed the following year; yet Wagner
+came to the conclusion that he had written the opera "for a few intimate
+friends, but not for the public," to cite his own words. What the public
+had expected and desired was shown by its enthusiastic reception of
+"Rienzi," and its colder treatment of the "Dutchman." But "Tannhäuser"
+was like the second opera; in fact, even "more so." Wagner had outlived
+the time when he was willing to make concessions to current taste and
+fashion; thenceforth he went his own way, eager, indeed, for approval,
+but stubbornly refusing to win it by sacrificing his high art ideals.
+
+Here was true heroism, genuine manliness! Had he been willing to write
+more operas like "Rienzi," he might have revelled in wealth (he loved
+wealth!) and basked in the sunshine of popularity, like Meyerbeer. But
+not one inch of concession did he make for the sake of the much-coveted
+riches and popular favor.
+
+Yet was not his next work, "Lohengrin," of a popular character? Popular
+to-day, yes; but in the days of his Dresden conductorship he could not
+even get it accepted for performance at his own opera-house! It was
+completed in August, 1847 (the last act having been written first and
+the second last), but although he remained in Dresden two years longer,
+all his efforts to get it staged failed, for various reasons. And when,
+at last, Liszt gave it for the first time, on August 28, 1850, at
+Weimar, whence it gradually made its way to other opera-houses, its
+reception everywhere showed that it was very far from being considered a
+"popular" work. The critics, especially, vied with one another in
+abusing this same "Lohengrin," which at present is sung more frequently
+than any other opera; and they continued to abuse it until about twenty
+years ago. "An abyss of ennui," "void of all melody," "an insult to the
+very essence of music," "a caricature of music," "algebraic harmonies,"
+"no tangible ideas," "not a dozen bars of melody," "an opera without
+music," "an incoherent mass of rubbish,"--are a few of the "critical"
+opinions passed on this opera, which is now regarded in all countries as
+a very wonderland of beautiful melodies and expressive harmonies.
+
+The non-acceptance in Dresden of this glorious opera, concerning which
+Wagner wrote, "It is the best thing I have done so far," was only one of
+many trials and disappointments which daily harassed him. He was over
+head and ears in debt, because, in his confidence in the immediate
+success of his operas, he had had them printed at once, at his own
+expense. The opera-houses were very slow in accepting them, and this
+left him in a sad predicament. There were, moreover, enemies
+everywhere,--ignorant, old-fashioned professionals, who objected to his
+way of interpreting the masters (though it was afterwards admitted that
+he was epoch-making as an interpreter of their deepest thoughts). All
+this galled him; and, furthermore, no attention whatever was paid to his
+pet plans for reforming the Dresden Opera, and theatrical matters
+in general.
+
+In the state of mind brought about by this condition of affairs, it
+needed but a firebrand to start an explosion. This firebrand was
+supplied by the revolutionary uprising of 1849. Now, although Wagner had
+never really cared much for politics (to his friend Fischer he once
+wrote: "I do not consider true art possible until politics cease to
+exist"), he was foolish enough to believe that a general overturning of
+affairs would benefit art-matters, too, and facilitate his operatic
+reforms; so he became, as he himself admits, "a revolutionist in behalf
+of the theatre." He actively assisted the insurgents, and the
+consequence was that, when the rebellion failed, he had to leave Dresden
+and seek safety in flight.
+
+Three of the leaders of the insurrection--Roeckel, Bakunin, and Heubner;
+personal friends of Wagner--were captured and imprisoned; he himself was
+so lucky as to escape to Weimar, where Franz Liszt took care of him. It
+so happened that Liszt, who had given up his career as concert pianist
+(though all the world was clamoring to hear him), and was conducting the
+Weimar Opera, had been preparing a performance of "Tannhäuser," to which
+Wagner would, under normal conditions, have been invited as a matter of
+course. He was now there, but as a political fugitive, wherefore it was
+not deemed advisable to have him attend the public performance; but he
+did secretly witness a rehearsal, and was delighted to find that Liszt's
+genius had enabled him to penetrate into the innermost recesses of this
+music. It was impossible, however, for him to stay any longer. The
+Dresden police had issued a warrant for the arrest of "the royal
+Kapellmeister Richard Wagner," who was to be "placed on trial for active
+participation in the riots which have taken place here." No time was,
+therefore, to be lost. Late in the evening of May 18, Liszt's noble
+patroness, the Princess Wittgenstein, received this note from him: "Can
+you give the bearer sixty thalers? Wagner is obliged to fly, and I
+cannot help him at this moment."
+
+Early the next morning Wagner, provided with a false pass, left Weimar
+and headed for Switzerland, which was to be his home for the greater
+part of the following twelve years of his exile from Germany. Had he
+been caught, like his friends, and, like them, imprisoned during these
+years, it is not likely that the world would now possess those seven
+monuments of his ripest genius, "Rheingold," "Die Walküre," "Siegfried,"
+"Götterdämmerung," "Tristan and Isolde," "Die Meistersinger," and
+"Parsifal." Even as it was, the world has undoubtedly lost an immortal
+opera or two through his unfortunate participation in the rebellion. For
+during the first four years of his exile, he did not compose any music.
+He reasoned that he had written four good operas and nobody seemed to
+want them; why, therefore, should he compose any more?
+
+At the same time, he realized that there were natural reasons why his
+operas were not understood. They were written in such a novel style,
+both vocal and instrumental, that the singers, players, and conductors
+found it difficult to perform them correctly, the consequence being that
+they did not specially impress the audiences, which, moreover, were
+bewildered by finding themselves listening to works so radically
+different from what they had been accustomed to in the opera-houses. In
+the hope of remedying this state of affairs Wagner devoted several years
+to writing essays, in which he explained his aims and ideals for the
+benefit both of performers and listeners. Little attention was, however,
+paid to these essays, and although they are valuable aesthetic
+treatises, most lovers of Wagner would gladly give them for the operas
+he might have written in the same time,--operas uniting the
+characteristics of "Lohengrin" and "The Valkyrie."
+
+Wagner's letters to Liszt and other friends show that he suffered
+tortures, and was often brought to the verge of suicide by the thought
+that, as a political refugee, he was unable to go to Germany to
+superintend the production of his works. His one consolation was that,
+as he put it, through the friendship of Liszt his art had found a home
+at Weimar at the moment when he himself became homeless. Weimar became,
+as it were, a sort of preliminary Bayreuth, to which pilgrimages were
+made to hear Wagner's operas. Liszt not only produced the "Flying
+Dutchman," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin," but wrote eloquent essays on
+them, and in every possible way advanced the good cause. It has been
+justly said that by his efforts he accelerated the vogue of Wagner's
+operas fully ten years. He also helped him pecuniarily, and induced
+others to do the same. Never in the world's history has one artist done
+so much for another as Liszt did for Wagner during all the years of his
+exile in Switzerland.
+
+Few persons would consider residence in Switzerland (the usual home in
+those days of political refugees) a special hardship; nor would Wagner
+have considered it in that light except for the solicitude he felt for
+the children of his brain. Otherwise he greatly enjoyed life in that
+glorious country, and the Alpine ozone nourished and stimulated his
+brain. Moreover, from the creative point of view, it was an actual
+advantage for him to be away from the opera-houses of the great
+capitals. In Switzerland, except for a short time when he was connected
+with the Zurich opera, he heard no operatic music except such as his own
+brain created. Undoubtedly this helps to account for the astounding
+originality of the music-dramas he wrote in Switzerland.
+
+These music-dramas go as far beyond "Lohengrin" in certain directions as
+"Lohengrin" goes beyond the operas of Wagner's predecessors. It was a
+reckless thing to do, to make another such giant stride before the world
+had caught up with his first, and he had to suffer the consequences;
+but genius disregards prudence, and looks to the future alone. What he
+was now writing was what his enemies tauntingly called "the music of the
+future," because, as they said, nobody liked it at present; but what he
+himself called the "art work of the future," in which all the fine arts
+are inseparably united.
+
+The biggest of his works, the "Nibelung Tetralogy," was conceived and
+for the most part written in Switzerland. Before leaving Dresden he had
+already written the poem of an opera which he called "Siegfried's
+Death." Returning to this in his exile he came to the conclusion,
+gradually, that the legend on which it is based, and which he had
+sketched out in prose at the beginning, contained the material for two,
+three, nay, four operas. Accordingly, he wrote the poems of these:
+first, "Götterdämmerung," then "Siegfried," "Die Walküre," and
+"Rheingold." The music to these four dramas was, however, composed in
+the reverse order, in which they were to be performed.
+
+Wagner indulged in no illusions regarding these music-dramas. He knew
+that they were beyond the capacity of even the best royal opera-houses
+of that time, and that they could be performed only under exceptional
+conditions, such as he finally succeeded, after herculean efforts and
+many disappointments, in securing at Bayreuth in 1876. It is of great
+interest to note that the germs of a sort of "Bayreuth festival plan"
+can be found in his letters as early as 1850,--the year when "Lohengrin"
+had its first hearing. Thus a full quarter of a century elapsed between
+the conception of this festival plan and its execution. But Wagner had
+the patience of Job, as well as his capacity for suffering.
+
+Amid privations of all sorts, he wrote the sublime music of these
+dramas, beginning with "Rheingold," on Nov. 1, 1853,--the first time he
+had put new operatic melodies on paper since the completion of
+"Lohengrin," in August, 1847. In his head, to be sure, he had been
+carrying much of the Nibelung music for some time, for he habitually
+created his leading melodies at the same time as the verse; and the four
+Nibelung poems were in print in 1853. On May 28, 1854, the score of
+"Rheingold" was completed, and four weeks later he began the sketches of
+"The Valkyrie," the completed score of which was in his desk by the end
+of March, 1856.
+
+In the meantime his poverty had compelled him, much against his wishes,
+to accept an offer from the London Philharmonic Society to conduct their
+concerts for a season (March to June, 1855). He had reason to bitterly
+regret this action. With the limited number of rehearsals at his command
+it was impossible for him to make the orchestra follow his intentions
+and reveal his greatness as a conductor. He was not allowed to make the
+programmes, and the directors, ignorant of the fact that they had
+engaged the greatest musical genius of the century, gave no Wagner
+concert, and put only a few short selections from his early operas on
+the programs. Thus his hopes of creating a desire for the hearing of his
+complete operas, which had been one of his motives in going to London,
+were frustrated. He was, moreover, constantly abused for doing things
+differently from Mendelssohn, and the leading critics referred to his
+best music as "senseless discord," "inflated display of extravagance and
+noise," and so on. Almost the only pleasant episode was the sympathy and
+interest of Queen Victoria, who had a long talk with him, and informed
+him that his music had enraptured her.
+
+For all this trouble and loss of time (he found himself unable in London
+to do any satisfactory work on the uncompleted "Valkyrie" score), he
+received the munificent sum of $1,000,--considerably less than many
+Wagner singers to-day get for one evening's work. Shortly before leaving
+London he wrote to a friend that he would bring home about 200
+francs,--$40! For this he had wasted four months of precious time and
+endured endless "contrarieties and vulgar animosities," to use his
+own words.
+
+Equally unsuccessful were his efforts, a few years later, to better
+himself financially by a series of concerts in Paris (1860). They
+resulted in a large deficit. Nor was he benefited by the performances of
+his "Tannhäuser," which were given at the grand opera in March, 1861, by
+order of Napoleon, at the request of the influential Princess
+Metternich. He had refused to interpolate a vulgar ballet in the second
+act for the benefit of the members of the aristocratic Jockey Club, who
+dined late and insisted on having a ballet on entering the opera-house.
+They took their revenge by creating such a disturbance every evening
+that after the third performance Wagner refused to allow any further
+repetitions, although the house on the third night had been completely
+sold out. He was to receive $50 for each performance. The result was
+$150, or less than 50 cents a day, for a year's hard work and no end of
+worry in connection with the rehearsals.
+
+How many men are there in the annals of art who would have refused,
+after all these disappointments and bitter lessons, to make _some_
+concessions? Wagner was writing a gigantic work, the Nibelung Tetralogy,
+which, he was convinced, would never yield a penny's profit during his
+lifetime. Sometimes despair seized him. In one of his letters he
+exclaims: "Why should I, poor devil, burden and torture myself with such
+terrible tasks, if the present generation refuses to let me have even a
+workshop?" Yet the only deviation he made from his plan was that when
+he had reached the second act of the third of the Nibelung dramas, the
+poetic "Siegfried," in June, 1857, he made up his mind to abandon the
+Tetralogy for the time being, and compose an opera which might be
+performed separately and once more bring him into contact with
+the stage.
+
+This opera was "Tristan and Isolde;" but instead of being a concession,
+it turned out to be the most difficult and Wagnerian of all his
+works,--an opera with much emotion but little action, no processions or
+choruses such as "Lohengrin" still had, and, of course, no arias or
+tunes whatever. "Tristan and Isolde" was completed in 1859, and Wagner
+would have much preferred to have its performance in Paris commanded by
+Napoleon in place of "Tannhäuser." What the Jockey Club would have done
+in that case is inconceivable, for, compared with "Tristan,"
+"Tannhäuser" is almost Meyerbeerian, if not Donizettian. No singers,
+moreover, could have been found in Paris able to interpret this work,
+with its new vocal style,--"speech-song," as the Germans call it. Even
+Germany could do nothing, at first, with this opera. In Vienna, after
+fifty-four rehearsals, it was abandoned, in 1863, as "impossible," and
+that city did not produce it till after Wagner's death. Instead of
+bringing him into immediate contact with the stage, it was not heard
+_anywhere_ till seven years after its completion.
+
+There was one more card for him to play. All his operas, so far, had
+been tragedies. What if he were to write a comic opera? Would not that
+be likely to get him access to the stage again, and help him
+financially? He had the plan for a comic opera; indeed, he had sketched
+it as early as 1845, at the same time as the plot of "Lohengrin."
+Sixteen years it lay dormant in his brain. At last he wrote out the poem
+in Paris, immediately after the "Tannhäuser" disaster there. Perhaps it
+would be more accurate to call "Die Meistersinger" a humorous opera; for
+while the story of the mediaeval knight who wins the goldsmith's
+daughter has comic features, its chief characteristic is humor, with
+that undercurrent of seriousness that belongs to all masterpieces of
+humor. To a certain extent, it is a musical and poetic autobiography,
+the victorious young Knight Walter, who sings as he pleases, without
+regard to pedantic rules, representing Wagner himself and the "music of
+the future," while the vain and malicious Beckmesser stands for the
+critics, and Hans Sachs for enlightened public opinion.
+
+It was during the time that he wrote the gloriously melodious and
+spontaneous music to this poem that the most important event of his life
+happened. Work on the score was repeatedly interrupted by the necessity
+of making some money. Most of his concerts in German cities, undertaken
+for this purpose, did not yield him any profits. In Russia, however, he
+was very successful, and as he had the promise of a repetition of his
+success, he rented a fine villa at Penzing, near Vienna, and proceeded
+to enjoy life for a change. Who can blame him for this? As he said to a
+friend not long after this, "I am differently organized from others,
+have sensitive nerves, must have beauty, splendor, and light. Is it
+really such an outrageous thing if I lay claim to the little bit of
+luxury which I like,--I, who am preparing enjoyment for the world and
+for thousands?"
+
+Unfortunately the second Russian project failed, through no fault of his
+own, and as he had borrowed money at usurious rates on his expected
+profits, he found himself compelled to fly once more from his creditors.
+After spending a short time in Switzerland, he went to Stuttgart, where
+he persuaded his friend Weissheimer to go with him into the Suabian
+Alps, where he intended to hide for half a year, until he could finish
+his "Meistersinger," and with the score raise money for his creditors.
+The wagon had already been ordered for the next morning, May 3, 1864,
+and Wagner was packing his trunk, when a card was brought up to him with
+the inscription: "von Pfistenmeister, Secrétaire aulique de S.M. le roi
+de Bavière," and the message that the Baron came by order of the King of
+Bavaria, and was very anxious to see him.
+
+King Ludwig II. of Bavaria had declared, while he was still crown
+prince, that as soon as he became king he would show the world how
+highly he held the genius of Wagner in honor. He kept his word. One of
+his first acts was to despatch Baron von Pfistenmeister to search for
+Wagner, and not to return without him. He was to tell him that the king
+was his most ardent admirer; that he wanted him to come at once to
+Munich, to live there in comfort, at the king's expense, to complete his
+Nibelung operas, and produce them forthwith. Was it a wonder that when
+the Baron had left, Wagner, who was thus suddenly raised from the depth
+of despair (he had even meditated suicide) to the height of happiness,
+fell on Weissheimer's neck, and wept for joy.
+
+Surely the brain of a Dumas could not have conceived a more romantic
+event than this sudden transformation of one who was a fugitive from
+debtor's prison into the favorite of a young and enthusiastic king. At
+last Wagner had an opportunity to bring forward his music-dramas.
+"Tristan and Isolde" was sung at the Munich Opera on June 10, 1865, with
+an excellent cast, and Hans von Bülow as conductor. "Die Meistersinger"
+followed on June 21,1868. Both these works were received with enthusiasm
+by the ever-growing band of Wagner-lovers. His plan of building a
+special theatre in Munich for the performance of his Nibelung operas
+could not be carried out, however, even with the king's aid; for his
+great influence with the king (he was rumored to be even his political
+and religious adviser, though this was not true), aroused so much
+hostile feeling that Wagner finally decided to have his Nibelung
+festival at the old secluded town of Bayreuth.
+
+At the suggestion of the eminent pianist, Carl Taussig, Wagner societies
+were formed in the cities of Europe and America to raise funds for this
+festival and give Wagner a chance to establish a tradition by showing
+the world how his operas should be performed. With the aid of these and
+liberal contributions by his ever-devoted king, Wagner was able, after
+many trials, tribulations, and postponements, to bring out, at last, his
+great Tetralogy, on August 13, 14,16, and 17, of the year 1876. It was
+beyond comparison the most interesting and important event in the whole
+history of music. Wagner had personally visited the opera-houses
+throughout the land and selected the best singers. The audience included
+the Emperors of Germany and Brazil, King Ludwig, the Grand Dukes of
+Weimar and Baden, eminent composers like Liszt, Grieg, Saint-Saëns, and
+many other notable persons. The impression made by the great work was
+the deeper because of the unusual circumstances: the theatre specially
+constructed after Wagner's novel plan; the amphitheatric seats; the
+concealed orchestra; the stereoscopic clearness and nearness of the
+stage scenes, etc.
+
+The necessity of charging very high rates ($225 for the four dramas)
+naturally prevented the audiences from being large, and the result was
+that Wagner had a deficit of $37,000 on his hands as the reward for his
+genius and years of business worries. When, however, his last work, the
+sublime, semi-religious "Parsifal," was produced in 1882, there was a
+balance in his favor. He was then in his sixty-ninth year, and the
+exertion of producing this final masterpiece was too great for him. To
+recuperate, he went to Venice, where he died on Feb. 13, 1882. King
+Ludwig sent a special train to convey his body to Bayreuth, where it was
+buried in the garden behind his villa Wahnfried.
+
+Since Wagner's death the Bayreuth festivals have been kept up with
+ever-increasing success, under the guidance of his widow Cosima, the
+daughter of Liszt (whom he married in 1870, four years after the death
+of his first wife), and their son, Siegfried, who has in recent years
+also won some success as an opera composer. The performances at Bayreuth
+are no longer what they were during Wagner's lifetime,--models for all
+the world; but they are still of unique interest. In truth, headquarters
+like Bayreuth are no longer needed, for all the German cities now vie
+with one another in their efforts to interpret the Wagner operas
+according to the composer's intentions; and his influence on other
+musicians, which began with the performance of "Lohengrin" under Liszt,
+in 1850, is to-day greater than ever,--more powerful, perhaps, than that
+ever exerted by any other master.
+
+But while an eminent German critic wrote not long ago that "the
+music-drama of Wagner constitutes modern opera," it would be a huge
+mistake to make Wagnerism synonymous with modern music in general. Apart
+from the opera, there are several other very powerful currents, and
+while most of them can be traced to the first half of the nineteenth
+century, they are none the less modern. Their principal sources are
+Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin, to whom we must add, in the second half
+of the century, Liszt.
+
+The symphonies of Haydn and Mozart are like toy-houses compared with the
+massive architecture of Beethoven's. He not only elaborated the forms,
+but varied the rhythms, broadened the melody, and deepened the
+expression of orchestral music. In his works, too, are to be found the
+germs of romanticism, which others, notably Mendelssohn and Schumann,
+developed so fascinatingly in their best works. Most of Mendelssohn's
+compositions have had their day; but Schumann is still a force in modern
+music and will long remain so.
+
+Brahms, the musical Browning, is, musically speaking, a son of Schumann
+and a grandson of Beethoven. While even Brahms did not escape the
+influence of Wagner, nor that of the romanticists Schubert and Chopin,
+still, in his essence, he represents reaction against modern romanticism
+and an atavistic return to the spirit of Beethoven. He has been, for
+decades, the idol of Wagner's enemies; yet, in truth, there was no
+occasion for opposing these two men, since they worked in entirely
+different fields. Brahms wrote no operas, while Wagner wrote little but
+operas. The real antagonist of Brahms is Liszt, who also worked only for
+the concert hall and who represents poetic or pictorial music (programme
+music), while Brahms stands for absolute music, or music _per se_,
+without any poetic affiliations.
+
+While Schubert in his youth also came under the influence of his great
+contemporary, Beethoven, he soon emancipated himself completely from
+him, even in the symphony, in which, as Schumann pointed out, he opened
+up "an entirely new world" of melody, color, and emotion. His
+orchestration is more varied, euphonious, and enchanting than
+Beethoven's, and in this direction he did for the symphony what Weber
+did for the opera. By using the brass instruments pianissimo, for color
+instead of for loudness, he opened a path in which later masters,
+including Wagner, eagerly followed him. Schubert was also the first
+composer who revealed the exquisite beauty and the great emotional power
+of the freest modulation from key to key. His poetic impromptus for
+piano became the model for Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words," and the
+multitudinous forms of modern short pieces, while his melodious, dainty,
+graceful valses were the forerunners of the exquisite dance-music which
+subsequently made Vienna famous, and which reached its climax in Johann
+Strauss the younger, universally known as "the waltz king."
+
+In all these respects, Schubert was epoch-making; and if the beautiful
+details he suggested to his successors up to the present day could be
+taken out of their works there would be some surprising blanks.
+Especially also is this true in the realm of lyric song, for, as
+everybody knows, he practically created the art song as we know and love
+it. The greatest of his immediate successors, Schumann and Franz,
+cheerfully admitted that they could never have written such songs as
+they gave the world but for Schubert, and the same confession might be
+made by the latest of the great songwriters, Grieg, Richard Strauss, and
+our American MacDowell. Schubert's best songs have never been equalled.
+They belong in the realm of modern music quite as much as Wagner's
+music-dramas and Liszt's symphonic poems.
+
+Chopin is another composer who, although he died in 1849 (Schubert died
+in 1828), is as modern as the masters just named. He was as boldly
+original as Schubert, and as great a magician in the art of arousing
+deep emotion by means of novel, unexpected modulations. As an originator
+of new harmonic progressions he has had only three equals,--Bach,
+Schubert, and Wagner. Harmonies as ultra-modern as those of Wagner's
+"Parsifal" may be found in some of the mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as
+Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or
+after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently. By
+ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while
+holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four
+hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of
+the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have gone
+farther still in the same direction, but he showed the way, and most of
+his pieces are as delightful and as modern now as they were on the day
+when they were written. He wrote a few sonatas, but the majority of his
+works are short pieces such as are characteristic of the modern
+romantic school.
+
+Before Chopin modernized pianoforte music the world's greatest composers
+had been Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen. Chopin's father was a
+Frenchman, but his mother was a native of Poland, and he was born in
+that country. While his music has the French qualities of elegance and
+clearness (which every one admires in the works of Gounod, Bizet,
+Massenet, and other Parisian masters), in its essence it is Polish--a
+fact of special significance, for from this time on other nations than
+the three mentioned--especially the Slavic and Scandinavian--begin to
+play a prominent role in music. In this brief sketch only the greatest
+names can be considered,--such names as Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky,
+Dvorák, Grieg.
+
+Rubinstein was not only one of the greatest pianists, but one of the
+most spontaneous and fertile melodists of all times. His frequently
+careless workmanship and his foolish, savage hostility to the dominant
+Wagner movement prevented him from enjoying the fruits of his rare
+genius. He felt that, had it not been for the all-absorbing Wagner, he
+himself might have been as popular as Mendelssohn. Although a Russian,
+there is little local color in his music, for the enchanting exotic
+melodic intervals in his "Persian" songs are Oriental in general, rather
+than Russian in particular. Similar exotic intervals may be found in the
+"Aïda" of Verdi, a pure Italian. Rubinstein, like Mendelssohn and
+Meyerbeer, was a Hebrew. His day will yet come, for his Dramatic and
+Ocean symphonies are among the grandest orchestral works in existence.
+
+His countryman, Tschaikowsky, also was neglected during his lifetime;
+but since his death he has become, especially in London, almost as
+popular as Wagner; and deservedly so, for he was a genius of the
+highest type, less in his songs and pianoforte works than in his
+symphonies and symphonic poems, which include some of the most inspired
+pages in modern music. In some of his compositions there is a barbaric
+splendor which proclaims the Russian and delights those who like exotic
+novelty in music. Like all the Russians, Tschaikowsky was strongly
+influenced by Liszt; indeed, it may be said that in Russia Liszt was
+more potent in shaping the course of modern music than even Wagner.
+
+Another Slavic composer, the Bohemian Dvorák, is of special interest to
+Americans not only because he is one of the greatest of modern
+orchestral writers (a colorist of rare charm), but because he presided
+for several years over Mrs. Thurber's National Conservatory of Music in
+New York, and there wrote that truly melodious and deeply emotional
+work, "From the New World," which has become almost as popular as
+Tschaikowsky's "Pathétique." His Bohemian rhythms have a unique charm.
+
+Among the Scandinavian composers the greatest, by far, is Grieg, one of
+the most original melodists and harmonists of all times. His songs, in
+particular, are destined to immortality; they are among the very best
+written since Schubert. Of his pianoforte and chamber music, too, it can
+be said that everything is new, free from commonplace, and ultra-modern.
+He has written mostly short pieces, and for that reason has had to wait
+(like Chopin in his day) a long time for full recognition of his genius,
+the critics not having yet got over the foolish habit of measuring
+art-works with a yardstick. Like Chopin, moreover, Grieg has had the
+ill-fortune of having his most original and individual traits accredited
+to his nation and described as "national peculiarities." His music does
+contain such peculiarities; but it is necessary to distinguish between
+what is Norwegian and what is Griegian. Grieg's little pieces and songs
+are big with genius.
+
+The Hungarian Liszt is another immortal master who, beside the fruits of
+his individual genius, contributed to the current of modern music some
+of those exotic national traits which distinguish it from that of
+earlier epochs when it was almost exclusively Italian, French, and
+German. His fifteen Hungarian rhapsodies constitute, however, only a
+small part of the invaluable legacy he has left the world. He was the
+most many-sided of all musicians,--the greatest of all pianists, and one
+of the best composers of oratorios, songs, orchestral, and pianoforte
+works,--everything, in short, except operas and chamber music. He was
+also the greatest of teachers and (with the exception of Wagner) the
+greatest of conductors; as such, he carried out both his own and
+Wagner's new and revolutionary principles of interpretation, which have
+gradually made the orchestral conductor a personage of even greater
+importance, in concert hall and opera-house, than the prima donna,
+travelling, like her, from city to city, to delight lovers of music.
+
+One might have expected that the prince of pianists, being at the same
+time a composer, would do for the pianoforte what Bach had done for
+choral and organ music, Beethoven for the symphony, Schubert for the art
+song, and Wagner for the opera. But he could not, for Chopin had
+anticipated him. In only one direction was it possible to go beyond
+Chopin,--in that of making the piano capable of reproducing orchestral
+effects. This, Liszt achieved in his own works and his transcriptions.
+But, after all, the grandest pianoforte, while delightful as such, is
+but a poor substitute for an orchestra. Hence it was natural that Liszt
+should give up the pianoforte as his specialty and devote himself
+particularly to the orchestra.
+
+In this domain he was destined to achieve reforms similar to those of
+Wagner in the opera. The "classical" symphony, like the old-fashioned
+opera, consists of detached numbers, or movements, that have no organic
+connection with one another. For the detached numbers of the opera
+Wagner substituted his "continuous melody;" and he provided an organic
+connection of all the parts by means of the "leading motives" or
+characteristic melodies and chords which recur whenever the situation
+calls for them. In the same spirit Liszt transformed the symphony into
+the symphonic poem, which is continuous and has a leading motive uniting
+all its parts.
+
+There is another aspect to the symphonic poem, in which Liszt deviated
+from Wagner. In Wagner's operas there is plenty of descriptive or
+pictorial music, but no program music, properly speaking; for even in
+such things as the Ride of the Valkyries, or the Magic Fire Scene, the
+music does not depend on a programme, but is explained by the scenery.
+In programme music, on the other hand, the scene or the poetic idea is
+simply explained in the programme, or else merely hinted at in the title
+of the piece. Crude attempts in this direction were made centuries ago,
+but programme music as an important branch of music is a modern
+phenomenon. Beethoven encouraged it by his "Pastoral Symphony," and the
+French Berlioz did some very remarkable things in this line in his
+dramatic symphonies; but it remained for Liszt to hit the nail on the
+head in his symphonic poems. The French Saint-Saëns followed him, rather
+than his countryman Berlioz; so did Tschaikowsky, Dvorák, and most
+modern composers, up to Richard Strauss, whose symphonic poems are the
+most widely discussed, praised, and abused compositions of our time.
+
+To the great names contained in the preceding paragraphs another must
+be added,--that of an Italian. By an odd coincidence, Verdi was born in
+the same year as Wagner, 1813. But what is far more remarkable is that
+at the close of their careers, so different otherwise, these two great
+composers met again--in their music, Verdi as a Wagnerian convert. Up to
+his fifty-eighth year Verdi had written two dozen operas, all made up of
+strings of arias in the old-fashioned way,--superb arias, many of them,
+especially in "Il Trovatore" and "Aïda," but still arias. Then he rested
+from his labors sixteen years; and when he appeared on the stage again,
+with his "Otello" and "Falstaff," he had adopted Wagner's maxims that
+arias are out of place in a music-drama; that "the play's the thing,"
+and that the music should follow the text word for word.
+
+Surely, this was the most remarkable of Wagner's triumphs and conquests.
+He who had been denounced for decades as being unable to write properly
+for the voice was actually taken up as a model by the greatest composer
+of Italy, the land of song. Moreover, all the young composers of Italy
+have turned their backs on the traditions of Italian opera. The chief
+ambition of Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, and all the others has been
+to be called "the Italian Wagner;" and their operas are much more like
+Wagner's than like Rossini's and Donizetti's, being free from arias and
+the vocal embroideries that formerly were the essence of Italian opera.
+The same is true of the operas written in recent decades in France,
+Germany, and other countries. Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Humperdinck,
+Goldmark, Richard Strauss, Paderewski, and all the others have followed
+in Wagner's footsteps.
+
+Such, briefly told, is the story of Richard Wagner and Modern Music. The
+"music of the future" has become the music of the present. What the
+future will bring no one can tell. Croakers say, as they have always
+said, that the race of giants has died out. But who knew, fifty years
+ago, that Wagner and Liszt, or even their predecessors, Chopin and
+Schumann, and the song specialist, Robert Franz, were giants? We know it
+now, and future generations will know whether we have giants among us.
+Things of beauty that will be a joy forever have been created by men of
+genius now living in Europe; such men as the Norwegian Grieg, the
+Bohemian Dvorák, the French Saint-Saëns and Massenet, the Hungarian
+Goldmark, the German Humperdinck and Richard Strauss, the Polish
+Paderewski. England has more good composers and listeners than it ever
+had before; and the same is true of America. We have no school of opera
+yet, but the best operettas of Victor Herbert and De Koven deserve
+mention by the side of those of the French. Offenbach, Lecocq, and
+Audran, the Viennese Strauss, Suppé, and Milloecker, the English
+Sullivan. The orchestral compositions of our John K. Paine are
+masterworks, and the songs and pianoforte pieces of MacDowell are equal
+to anything produced in Europe since Chopin and Franz. We have several
+other men of great promise, and altogether the outlook for America, as
+well as for Europe, is bright.
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+The books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles on Wagner would fill a
+library. He has been more written about than any writers except
+Shakspere, Goethe, and Dante. He was also fond of writing about himself.
+His autobiography (extending only to 1865) has not yet been given to the
+public; but there are many autobiographic pages in the ten volumes of
+his literary works, which have been Englished by Ellis. Of great value
+are Wagner's letters to Liszt and to other friends. These were utilized
+for the first time in "Wagner and His Works," the most elaborate
+biography in the English language, by the author of the foregoing
+article. Shorter American and English books on Wagner have been written
+by Kobbé, Krehbiel, Henderson, Hueffer, Newman, &c. Of French writers
+Lavignac, Jullien, Mendès, Servières, Schuré, may be mentioned. Of great
+value are Kufferath's monographs on the Wagner operas and Liszt's
+analyses. In Germany the standard work of reference is the third edition
+of Glasenopp, in six volumes, four of which are now (1902) in print.
+Other German writers are Porges, Wolzogen, Pohl, Nohl, Tappert,
+Chamberlain, &c. The best histories of Modern Music in general are
+Langhaus's larger work and Riemann's "Geschichte der Musik seit
+Beethoven." The best general work for reference is "Great Composers and
+Their Works," edited by Professor Paine of Harvard. References to about
+10,000 articles on Wagner may be found in Oesterlein's "Katalog Einer
+Richard Wagner Bibliothek," 3 vols.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RUSKIN.
+
+
+1819-1900.
+
+MODERN ART.
+
+BY G. MERCER ADAM.
+
+
+What John Ruskin has done in a prosaic, commercial, and Philistine age,
+in teaching the world to love and study the Beautiful, in opening to it
+the hidden mysteries and delights of art, and in inciting the passion
+for taking pleasure in and even possessing embodiments of it, that age
+owes to the great prose-poet and enthusiastic author of "Modern
+Painters." Neither before nor since his day has literature known such a
+passionate and luminous exponent of Nature's beauties, such an
+inculcator in men's minds of the art of observing her ways and methods,
+or one who has given the world such deep insight into what constitutes
+the true and the beautiful in art. For these things, and for opening new
+worlds of instruction and delight to his age in the realm of art,
+heightened by the charm of his marvellous prose, we can readily pardon
+Ruskin for his weaknesses and perverseness,--for his dogmatisms, his
+fervors, and ecstasies, his exaggerations of praise and blame, and even
+for the missionary propagation of his often unsound economic gospel,
+valuable though it may be in illustrating and enforcing morality in its
+aesthetic aspect. Despite his enemies, and all that the critics have
+said contradicting his theories, Ruskin was a surprise and a revelation
+to his time. In not a little of all that he said and did, it is true, we
+cannot concur; nor can we fail to see the errors he fell into through
+his want of reserve and his headlong haste to say and do the things he
+said and did; nevertheless, he was a great and inspiring teacher in
+things that appeal to our sense of the beautiful, and earnest in his
+zeal to raise men's intellectual and moral standard of life. Like most
+enthusiasts and geniuses, he had, now and then, his hours of reaction,
+waywardness, and gloom; but there was much that was noble and ennobling
+in the man, as well as rich and fructifying in his thought. Even in his
+social and moral exhortations, tinctured as they are with medievalism,
+and however much we may here again disagree with him, he had much that
+was uplifting and inspiring to say to his time,--a time that had great
+need of his apostolic counsellings and his fervent inculcations of
+morality, industry, religion, and humanity.
+
+Throughout Mr. Ruskin's works--and they are amazingly manifold--a strong
+and intense purpose runs, given to the highest and noblest ends; and
+though their author at times wearies his reader by his diffuseness and
+his digressions, and to some is almost fanatical in his reverence for
+art, he is ever imaginative and eloquent, and has created for us a new,
+instructive, and uniquely fresh and thoughtful body of art-literature.
+The truth of infinite value he teaches is "realism,"--the doctrine that
+all truth and beauty are to be attained by a reverent and faithful study
+of nature, and not, as a reviewer expresses it, "by substituting vague
+forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place of
+definite, substantial reality. The thorough acceptance of this doctrine
+would remould our life; and he who teaches its application, even to any
+single department of human activity, and with such power as Mr.
+Ruskin's, is a prophet for his generation." In all his various labors
+and aims, Mr. Ruskin set before himself a high, if somewhat quixotic,
+ideal of life, and with great earnestness did much, not only for the
+elevation of his fellow-men, but for the development of sound artistic
+taste and the enriching and spiritualizing of life by seeking to
+surround it at all times with the true and the beautiful, and with the
+old-time virtues of purity, manliness, and courage.
+
+Among the "Beacon Lights" of the age there can be no question that
+Ruskin is worthy of an exalted place, since few men of our modern time,
+rich as it is in eminent thinkers and writers, has done more than he to
+illumine the many subjects with which he has so fascinatingly
+dealt,--and that not only in art and its cult of the Beautiful, but in
+ethics, education, and political economy. The energies, activities, and
+impulses he constantly put forth, as well as the high principles that
+ever guided him in his earnest endeavor to improve the intellectual and
+moral condition of his kind, mark his era as a great artistic epoch in
+the onward and upward progress of the race. By stimulus, suggestion, and
+inspiration he has powerfully influenced his time, though manifestly not
+a little of the seed he abundantly and hopefully scattered has fallen
+upon barren ground. Nevertheless, where the seed has fallen and
+germinated, the yield has been large: "his spirit has passed far wider
+than he ever knew or conceived; and his words, flung to the winds, have
+borne fruit a hundredfold in lands that he never thought of or designed
+to reach." With what pride and gratitude should not the age regard him
+and his memory,--one who has quickened the sensibilities of men in
+looking upon nature; opened our dull eyes to its manifold beauties; made
+plain to the average intelligence what Art is and stands for; implanted
+in our souls worship of the beautiful; shown working-men how to use their
+tools in the highest interests of their craft, and taught maidens what
+and how to read as well as how and in what spirit to sew and cook. The
+world too often acknowledges its true teachers and prophets only when it
+begins to build them some belated tomb. "This, at any rate," gratefully
+exclaims Frederic Harrison,[1] "we will not suffer to be done to
+John Ruskin."
+
+[Footnote 1: Written by Mr. F.H. on Professor Ruskin's eightieth
+birthday (February 8, 1899).]
+
+"We may all of us recall to-day with love and gratitude the enormous
+mass of stirring thoughts and melodious speech about a thousand things,
+divine and human, beautiful and good, which for a whole half-century the
+author of 'Modern Painters' has given to the world. They cover every
+phase of nature, every type of art, of history, society, economics,
+religion; the past and the future; all rules of human duty, whether
+personal or social, domestic or national.... He spake to us of trees,
+from the cedar of Lebanon unto the hyssop on the wall; he spake also of
+beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. He has put
+new beauty for us into the sky and the clouds and the rainbow, into the
+seas at rest or in storm, into the mountains and into the lakes, into
+the flowers and the grass, into crystals and gems, into the mightiest
+ruins of past ages, and into the humblest rose upon a cottage wall. He
+has done for the Alps and the cathedrals of Italy and France, for Venice
+and Florence, what Byron did for Greece. We look upon them all now with
+new and more searching eyes. Whole schools of art, entire ages of old
+workmanship, the very soul of the Middle Age, have been revealed with a
+new inspiration and transfigured in a more mysterious light. Poetry,
+Greek sculpture, mediaeval worship, commercial morality, the training of
+the young, the nobility of industry, the purity of the home,--a thousand
+things that make up the joy and soundness of human life have been
+irradiated by the flashing searchlight of one ardent soul: irradiated,
+let us say, as this dazzling ray shot round the horizon, glancing from
+heaven to earth, and touching the gloom with fire. We need not, even
+to-day, be tempted from truth, or pretend that the light is permanent or
+complete. It has long ceased to flash round the welkin, and its very
+scintillations have disturbed our true vision. But we remember still its
+dazzling power and its revelation of things that our eyes had not seen.
+
+"What we especially love to dwell on to-day is this: that in all this
+unrivalled volume of printed thoughts, in this encyclopaedic range of
+topic by this most voluminous and most versatile of modern writers [may
+we not say of all English writers?] there is not one line that is base,
+or coarse, or frivolous; not a sentence that was framed in envy, malice,
+wantonness, or cruelty; not one piece that was written to win money, or
+popularity, or promotion; not a line composed for any selfish end or in
+any trivial mood. Think what we may of this enormous library of print,
+we know that every word of it was put forth of set purpose without any
+hidden aim, utterly without fear, and wholly without guile; to make the
+world a little better, to guide, inspire, and teach men, come what
+might, scoff as they would, turn from him as they chose, though they
+left him alone, a broken old man crying in the wilderness, with none to
+hear or to care. They might think it all utterly vain; we may think much
+of it was in vain: but it was always the very heart's blood of a rare
+genius and a noble soul."
+
+Before entering, somewhat in detail, into Ruskin's vast and varied
+labors, let us briefly outline the scope and character of the work which
+gave the art critic and prophet of his time his chief fame. The
+personal incidents in his life need not detain us at the outset, as they
+are not specially eventful, and may be more fully gathered from the
+excellent "Life" of Ruskin, by his friend and some-time secretary, W.G.
+Collingwood, or from the delightfully interesting reminiscences by the
+master himself in his autobiographic "Praeterita," published near the
+close of his long, arduous, and fruitful career. John Ruskin was born in
+London on the 8th of February, 1819. He was of Scotch ancestry, his
+father being a prosperous wine merchant in London, who acquired
+considerable wealth in trade, which the son in time inherited, and nobly
+used in his many private benevolences and philanthropic enterprises. The
+comfortable circumstances in which he was born, coupled with his
+father's own love of pictures and books, were helpful in giving
+encouragement and direction to the young student's studies and tastes.
+His mother, a deeply religious woman, was, moreover, influential in
+implanting the serious element in Ruskin's character and life, and in
+familiarizing him with the Bible, whose noble English, in King James'
+version, manifestly entered early into the youth's ardent, prophetic
+soul, and, as a writer, had much to do in forming his magnificent prose
+style. Ruskin was in early years--indeed, far on in his manhood--in
+delicate health, and consequently he was educated privately till he
+passed to Christ Church College, Oxford, where, at the age of twenty, he
+won the Newdigate prize for verse, and graduated in 1842. His taste for
+art was manifested at an early age, and after passing from the
+university he studied painting under J.D. Harding and Copley Fielding;
+but his masters, as he tells us in "Praeterita," were Rubens and
+Rembrandt.
+
+At the outset of his career Ruskin, as is well known, was led to take up
+a defence of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and the contemporary school of
+English landscape-painting against the foreign trammels, which had
+fastened themselves upon modern art, and especially to prove the
+superiority of modern landscape-painters over the old masters. This
+revolutionary opinion, though at first it was hotly contested,
+established the new critic's position as a writer on art, and the
+defence, or exposition rather, grew into the famous work called "Modern
+Painters" (5 vols., 1843-60). This elaborate work deals with general
+aesthetic principles, and, notwithstanding its occasional extravagances,
+alike of praise and censure, its charm is irresistible, presenting us
+with its brilliant and original author's ideas of beauty, to which he
+freshly and powerfully awakened the world, while enshrining throughout
+the work the most enchanting word-poems on mountain, leaf, cloud, and
+sea, which, it is not too much to say, will live forever in English
+literature. In the second volume Mr. Ruskin takes up the Italian
+painters, and discusses at length the merits of their respective
+schools; in the others, as well as in the work as a whole, we have a
+body of principles which should govern high art-work, as well as new
+ideas as to what should constitute the equipment of the painter, and
+that not only as regards the technique of his art, but in the effect to
+be produced on the onlooker in viewing the skilled work of one who,
+above all accomplishments, should be lovingly and intimately in contact
+with nature.
+
+From the study of painting Mr. Ruskin passed for a time to that of
+architecture. In this department we have from his pen "The Seven Lamps
+of Architecture" (1849) and "The Stones of Venice" (1851-53). In these
+two complementary works their author sets forth as in an impressive
+sermon the new and admonitory lesson that architecture is the exponent
+of the national characteristics of a people,--the higher and nobler sort
+exemplifying the religious life and moral virtue in a nation, the
+debased variety, on the other hand, expressing the ignoble qualities of
+national vice and shame. The text of "The Stones" is Venice, and the
+design of the volumes, in the author's words, is to show that the Gothic
+architecture of Venice "had arisen out of, and indicated, a state of
+pure domestic faith and national virtue;" while its renaissance
+architecture "had arisen out of and indicated a state of concealed
+national infidelity and domestic corruption." The earlier work, "The
+Seven Lamps,"--the Lamp of Sacrifice, of Truth, Power, Beauty, Life,
+Memory, Obedience,--looks upon architecture "as the revealing medium or
+lamp through which flame a people's passions,--the embodiment of their
+polity, life, history, and religious faith in temple and palace, mart
+and home." Akin to these two eloquent works, in which their author
+thoughtfully sets forth the civic virtues and moral tone, as well as the
+debased characteristics, by which architecture is produced at certain
+eras in a people's life, is the earlier volume on "The Poetry of
+Architecture" (1837), which discusses the relation between architecture
+and its setting of landscape or other environment, illustrated by
+examples drawn from regions he had visited,--the English Lakeland,
+France, Switzerland, Spain, and northern Italy.
+
+After these works followed lectures on drawing, perspective, decoration,
+and manufacture, with later theories (crotchets, some have impiously
+called them) on political economy, Pre-Raphaelitism, _et cetera_, with a
+flood of opinions on social, ethical, and art subjects, enriched by rare
+intellectual gifts and much religious fervor. Ruskin's whole writings
+form a body of literature unique of its kind, pervaded with great charm
+of literary style, and inspired by a high moral purpose. Ruskin's
+excursions into non-aesthetic fields, and the strange jumble of
+Christian communism to which, late in life, he gave vehement expression,
+it must be honestly admitted, have detracted much from his early fame.
+In everything he wrote the Ruskinian spirit comes strongly out, colored
+with an amiable egotism and enforced by great assurance of conviction.
+The moral purpose he had in view, and the charm and elevated tone of his
+writings, lead us to forget the wholly ideal state of society he sought
+to introduce, while we are won to the man by the passion of his noble
+enthusiasms.
+
+Like Carlyle and Emerson, Ruskin was by his parents intended for the
+ministry; but for the ministry he had himself no inclination. The
+broadening out early of his mind and the freeing of his thought on
+doctrinal subjects, which took him far from the narrow evangelicalism of
+his youth, made the ministry of the church repugnant to him, though he
+was always a deeply religious man and a force ever making for
+righteousness. At the same time, he numbered many divines among his most
+cherished friends, and he frequently, and with admitted edification, was
+to be found in chapel and church. Meanwhile he continued busily to
+educate himself for whatever profession he might choose or drift into,
+supplemented by such fitful periods of schooling as his delicate health
+permitted, as well as by many jaunts with his parents to the English
+lakes and other parts of the kingdom, and by frequent tours on the
+Continent, especially in Italy and Switzerland. Before he arrived at his
+teens, young Ruskin had composed much, both in prose and verse, and he
+early manifested an aptitude for drawing, as well as a decided taste for
+art, which, it is said, was in some measure incited by the gift, from a
+partner of his father, of a copy of the poet Rogers' "Italy," with
+engravings by Turner. Nor, early in manhood, did he escape a youth's
+fond dream of love, for as a worshipper of beauty, and an enthusiast of
+the "Wizard of the North," we find him drawn tenderly to a daughter of
+Lockhart, editor of the "Quarterly Review," a grandchild of his famous
+countryman, Sir Walter Scott. The affair, however, though encouraged by
+his parents, who longed to see their son settled in life, came to
+nought, chiefly owing to the young lover's weak physical frame and
+uncertain health. Later on, unhappily, he was caught in the toils of
+another Scottish lass, for whom, it is related, he had written "The King
+of the Golden River" (1841), and whose rare beauty had readily attracted
+him. With her, in 1848, he made an ill-assorted marriage, only to find,
+some years afterwards, his heart riven and a bitter ingredient dropped
+into his life's chalice by a fatal defection on the wife's part, she
+having become enamoured of the then rising young painter, Millais, whom
+Ruskin had trustingly invited to his house to paint her portrait. The
+sequel of the affair is a pitiful one, which Ruskin ever afterward hid
+deep in his heart, though at the time, finding that the woman was unable
+to live at the intellectual and spiritual altitude of her loyal husband,
+the latter, with a magnanimity beyond parallel, pardoned both Millais
+and the erring one, consented to a divorce, and actually stood by her at
+the altar as the faithless one took upon herself new vows unto a new
+husband. The estrangement and loss of a wife gave Ruskin afresh to
+Art,--his true and fondly cherished bride.
+
+At this period, as we know, English painting was at a low ebb, mediocre
+and conventional, though with a show of artificial brilliance. Ruskin,
+with his scorn of the artificial and scholastic, threw himself into the
+work of overturning the established, complacent school of the time, and
+with splendid enthusiasm and an unfailing belief in himself and his
+ideas he undertook to reform what had been, and to raise current
+conceptions of art to a more exalted and lofty plane. We have seen what
+he had already achieved in his first dashing period of literary
+activity, in the production of the early volumes of "Modern Painters,"
+and in his "Seven Lamps" and "Stones of Venice." While he was at work on
+the concluding volumes of the first and last of these great books there
+arose in England the somewhat fantastic movement in art, launched by the
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which included such Ruskinites and other
+devotees of early Christian and mediaeval painting as Rossetti, Millais,
+Morris, Burne-Jones, and Holman Hunt. Towards this new school of
+symbolists and affectationists Ruskin was not at first drawn, since it
+seemed to him unduly idealistic, if not mystic, and smacked not a
+little, as he thought, of popery. Later, however, he saw good in it, as
+a breaking away from academic trammels; while he recognized the earnest
+enthusiasm of the little band of artists and artist-poets, as well as
+their technical dexterity and brilliance. With ready decision as well as
+with his accustomed zeal for art, Ruskin ended by defending and
+applauding the new innovators, particularly as their chief motive was
+the one the master had always strenuously pled for,--adherence to the
+simplicity of nature. Their scrupulous attention to detail,
+characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelites, later on bore good results, even
+after the Brotherhood fell apart, especially in William Morris's
+application of their art-principles to household decoration and
+furnishings. But for the time the movement was loudly mocked and
+decried, and perhaps all the more because of Ruskin's espousal of the
+fervid band, his letters of defence in the London "Times," and his
+discussion in his booklet on "Pre-Raphaelitism." Heedless of the outcry,
+Ruskin pursued his own self-confident course, and by the year 1860 he
+had completed his "Modern Painters," and, in spite of objurgation and
+detraction, had won a great name for himself as a critic and expounder,
+while expanding himself over almost the whole world of art.
+
+We have said that Pre-Raphaelitism, as a movement in art, was
+contemporaneously jeered at; while to-day, among superficial or
+inappreciative students of the period, seriously to mention it or any of
+its cultured brotherhood is to provoke a smile. Nevertheless, there was
+not a little high merit in the movement, which Ruskin was keen-eyed and
+friendly enough to recognize, while much that is worthy afterwards came
+out of it in the later work of the more notable of its members as well
+as in that of their unenrolled associates and the admirers of the
+Pre-Raphaelite method. What the movement owed to Ruskin is now frankly
+conceded, in the lesson the brotherhood took to heart from his
+counsellings,--to divest art of conventionality, and to work with
+scrupulous fidelity and sincerity of purpose. Nor was contemporary art
+alone the gainer by the movement; it also had its influence on poetry,
+though this has been obscured--so far as any beneficial influence can be
+traced at all--by the tendency manifested in some of the more amorous
+poetic swains of the period, who professed to derive their inspiration
+from the Brotherhood, to identify themselves with what has been styled
+the "Fleshly School" of verse. Of the latter number, Swinburne, in his
+early "Poems and Ballads," was perhaps the greatest sinner, though
+atoned for in part by the lyrical art and ardor of his verse, and much
+more by the higher qualities and scholarly characteristics of his later
+dramatic Work. Nor is Dante Rossetti himself, in some of his poems, free
+from the same taint, despite the fact of his interesting individuality
+as the chief inspirer and laborer among the Brotherhood. Yet the
+movement owed much to both his brush and his pen of other and nobler,
+because reverential, work, as those will admit who know "The Blessed
+Damozel," "Sister Helen," and his fine collection of sonnets, "The House
+of Life," as well as his famous paintings, "The Girlhood of Mary
+Virgin," and his Annunciation picture, "Ecce Ancilla Domini." Of the
+product of other Pre-Raphaelites of note,--such as Ford Madox Brown,
+Millais, Morris, Woolner the sculptor, Coventry Patmore, and Holman
+Hunt,--much that is commendable as well as finely imaginative came from
+their hands, and justified Ruskin in his gallant advocacy of the
+movement, its founders, and their work.
+
+By this time, of which we have been writing, Ruskin had reached the
+early meridian of his powers, and, as we have hinted, had wrested from
+the unwilling many a juster recognition of his amazing industry and
+genius. To his fond and indulgent parents this was a great source of
+pride and satisfaction, and the practical evidence of it was the throng
+of visitors to the family seats of Herne Hill and Denmark Hill, in the
+then London suburbs, where Ruskin long had his home, and by the
+attentions and honor paid to their son by universities, academies, and
+public bodies, as well as by many eminent personages and the
+intellectual _élite_ of the nation. Among those with whom the young
+celebrity was then ultimate and reckoned among his admiring
+correspondents were, besides Turner (who died in 1851) and the chief
+artists of the time, the Carlyles and the Brownings, Mary Russell
+Mitford, Charlotte Bronté, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Monckton Milnes (Lord
+Houghton), Charles Eliot Norton, Lady Trevelyan (Macaulay's sister),
+Whewell, Maurice, Kingsley, Dr. John Brown (author of "Rab and his
+Friends"), Tennyson, and Dean Milman. To these might be added many
+notable foreigners whom he either met with in his continental travels or
+who were attracted to him by a lively interest in his writings. In his
+home, thanks to a wealthy and indulgent father, he was surrounded with
+every comfort, short of luxury, if we except under the latter the large
+sums expended on the purchase of "Turners" and many famous foreign
+pictures, and a vast and increasing collection of favorite books and
+other treasures and curios.
+
+Of the author's home-life we get many delightful reminiscences in
+"Praeterita," with entertaining talks of his childhood days, his
+youthful companions, his toys and animate pets, his early playful
+adventures in authorship, and other garrulities with which, late in life
+when the work, as it remains, was incompletely put together, he beguiled
+the weariness and feebleness of old age. But we are anticipating, for we
+are writing of Ruskin when his hand was yet on the plough, and the
+plough was still in the furrow, and half a long life's arduous work was
+yet before him. At this era, no brain could well have been more active
+or fuller of philanthropies than his, for we approach the second period
+of his life's grand activities,--the era of a new departure in the
+interests that occupied him and the herculean tasks he set himself
+to do.
+
+Before recording some of the achievements of this time and glancing at
+the inciting causes of the transition which marks the era we have now
+reached, let us note the demands made upon Mr. Ruskin's thought and
+labor by universities and public institutions, whose audiences desired
+to have him appear before them in person and address them upon topics in
+which he and they were interested. These appearances on the lecture
+platform were now numerous, since many throughout the kingdom were eager
+to see and know the man whose art criticisms, principles that govern the
+beautiful, and stimulating thought on all subjects, had made so deep an
+impression on the reflecting minds of the age. His earliest appearance
+on the rostrum was at Edinburgh, where he delivered four lectures
+before the Philosophical Institution, chiefly on landscape-painters and
+on Christian art, with a plea for the use of Gothic in domestic
+architecture. Subsequent appearances were at Manchester, where he spoke
+on the Political Economy of Art and the relation of art to manufactures;
+at the South Kensington Museum, London, which had just been opened; and
+later at Oxford, where further on in his career he became Slade
+Professor of Art in his own University. From the accounts of these
+public lectures we get opinions as to the personal appearance of Ruskin
+at the period which add to our knowledge of him from paintings,
+drawings, and photographs, though not a few of these accounts vary from
+those given us in books, chiefly sketched by his lady friends and
+correspondents. The more trusty of the contemporary pictures speak of
+him as having "light, sand-colored hair; his face more red than pale;
+the mouth well cut, with a good deal of decision in its curve, though
+somewhat wanting in sustained dignity and strength; an aquiline nose;
+his forehead by no means broad or massive, but the brows full and well
+bound together; the eye [says the observer from whom we are quoting] we
+could not see, in consequence of the shadows that fell upon his
+[Ruskin's] countenance from the lights overhead, but we are sure that
+the poetry and passion we looked for almost in vain in other features
+must be concentrated here." Miss Mitford speaks of him at this time as
+"eloquent and distinguished-looking, fair and slender, with a gentle
+playfulness, and a sort of pretty waywardness that was quite charming."
+Another, a visitor at his London home, characterizes him as "emotional
+and nervous, with a soft, genial eye, a mouth thin and severe, and a
+voice that, though rich and sweet, yet had a tendency to sink into a
+plaintive and hopeless tone." Later on in years we have this verbal
+portrait from a disciple of the great art-teacher, occurring in an
+inaugural address delivered before the Ruskin Society of Glasgow: "That
+spare, stooping figure, the rough-hewn, kindly face, with its mobile,
+sensitive mouth, and clear deep eyes, so sweet and honest in repose, so
+keen and earnest and eloquent in debate!"
+
+When the fifth and last volume of "Modern Painters" was finally off his
+hands, Mr. Ruskin not only engaged, as we have seen, in occasional
+lecturing, but began (1861) to add a prolific series of
+_brochures_--many of them with quaint but significant titles--to his
+already stupendous mass of writing. Their subjects were not alone
+aesthetics, but now treated of ethical, social, and political questions,
+the prophetic declarations and earnest appeals of a man of wide and
+varied culture, deep thought, and large experience. The attempted
+alliance of political economy with art was a novel undertaking in that
+sixth lustrum of the past century, even by a man of Mr. Ruskin's
+eminence and fame in the world of letters. But Mr. Ruskin was a bold and
+earnest man, as well as a genius; and he had too much to tell his
+heedless, _laissez-faire_ age to keep silent on themes, remote as they
+were from those he had hitherto taught, and of which he desired to
+deliver his soul, whatever ridicule it might provoke and however adverse
+the criticism levelled against him. His humanity and moral sense were
+outraged by the manner in which the mass of his countrymen lived, and
+trenchant was his castigation of this and eager as well as righteous his
+desire to amend their condition and elevate and inspire their minds. As
+an economist, it is true, there was not a little that was false as well
+as eccentric in what he preached; moreover, much of his counsel was
+directly socialistic in its trend, repugnant in large degree to his
+English readers and hearers; but all this was atoned for by the honesty
+and philanthropy of his motives, by his phenomenal fervor and eloquence,
+and by the literary beauty and charm of every page he wrote.
+Nevertheless, as in Carlyle--for in these depreciations the style of the
+seer of Chelsea was deeply upon him--the note of calamity and the wail
+of despair are too much in evidence in Ruskin's writings at this period,
+while, like Carlyle also, he was equally precipitate and impulsive in
+his attacks on things as they were. Yet in the economic condition just
+then of England, and in the circumstances environing the labor world,
+there was, possibly, justification for the rebukes and objurgations of
+onlookers of the type of both of these men, and very humanitarian as
+well as practically helpful were Ruskin's counsel and aid to labor and
+to all who sought to raise and expand their outlook and better their
+condition in life. Towards politics Ruskin was never drawn, but had he
+been more prosaic and less given to anathematizing, most valuable would
+have been his aid in legislation at this era of political and moral
+reform. But if political science, or science in any other of its
+branches or departments, did not come within his purview, great was the
+revolution he wrought in the working-man's surroundings, and immense the
+illumination he shed upon industry and on the spirit in which the
+laborer should think and work.
+
+Referring to Ruskin at this period of his career, and to his influence
+as a social and moral exhorter, Frederic Harrison, from whom we have
+already quoted, has an admirable passage on "Ruskin as Prophet," [2]
+which, as it is presumably too little known, we take pleasure in
+embodying in these pages.
+
+[Footnote 2: "Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates," by
+Frederic Harrison; London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1900.]
+
+"The influence of Ruskin," says Mr. Harrison, "has been part of the
+great romantic, historical, catholic, and poetic revival of which
+Scott, Carlyle, Coleridge, Freeman, Newman, and Tennyson in our own
+country have been leading spirits within the last two generations in
+England. There is no need to compare him with any one of these as a
+source of original intellectual force. He owns Scott and Carlyle as his
+masters, and he might vehemently repudiate certain of the others
+altogether. His work has been to put this romantic, historical, and
+genuine sympathy inspired by Scott, Wordsworth, and Carlyle into a new
+understanding of the arts of form. The philosophic impulse assuredly was
+not his own. It is a compound of Scott, Carlyle, Dante, and the Bible.
+The compound is strange, for it makes him talk sometimes like a Puritan
+father, and sometimes like a Cistercian monk. At times he talks as Flora
+MacIvor talked to young Waverley; at other times like Thomas Carlyle
+inditing a Latter-day Pamphlet. But to transfuse into this modern
+generation of Englishmen this romantic, catholic, historical, and social
+sympathy as applied to the arts of form, needed gifts that neither
+Scott, nor Carlyle, nor Newman, nor Tennyson possessed--the eye, if not
+the hand, of a consummate landscape painter, a torrent of ready
+eloquence on every imaginable topic, a fierce and desperate courage that
+feared neither man nor devil, neither failure nor ridicule, and above
+all things an exquisite tenderness that is akin to St. Francis or St.
+Vincent de Paul....
+
+"Here is a man who, laboring for fifty years, has scattered broadcast a
+thousand fine ideas to all who practise the arts, and all who care for
+art. He has roused in the cultured world an interest in things of art
+such as a legion of painters and ten royal academies could never have
+done. He has poured out a torrent of words, some right, some wrong, but
+such as have raised the level of art into a new world, which have
+adorned English literature for centuries, and have inspired the English
+race for generations; he has cast his bread upon the waste and muddy
+waters with a lavish hand, and has not waited to find it again, though
+it has been the seed of abundant harvest to others."
+
+Again, speaking of what Ruskin sought to accomplish in the regeneration
+of modern society, and the reformation of our social ideals, and of that
+"heroic piece of Quixotism" he founded, "the Guild of St. George," Mr.
+Harrison remarks:--
+
+"The first life of John Ruskin was the life of a consummate teacher of
+art and master of style; the second life was the life of priest and
+evangelist.... Here is the greatest living master [the passage was
+written while Mr. Ruskin was yet alive] of the English tongue, one of
+the most splendid lights of our noble literature, one to whom a dozen
+paths of ambition and power lay open, who had everything that could be
+offered by genius, fame, wealth, social popularity, and intense
+sensitiveness to all lovely things--and this man, after thirty years of
+untiring labor, devotes himself to train, teach, delight, and inspire a
+band of young men, girls, workmen, children,--all who choose to come
+around him. He lavishes the whole of his fortune on them; he brings to
+their door his treasures of art, science, literature, and poetry; he
+founds and endows museums; he offers these costly and precious
+collections to the people; he wears out his life in teaching them the
+elements of art, the elements of manufacture, the elements of science;
+he shows workmen how to work, girls how to draw, to sing, to play; he
+gives up to them his wealth, his genius, his peace, his whole life. He
+is not content with writing books in his study, with enjoying art at
+home or abroad; he must carry his message into the streets. He gives
+himself up--not to write beautiful thoughts: he seeks to build up a
+beautiful world.... When I see this author of 'Modern Painters' and the
+'Stones of Venice,' the man who has exhausted almost all that Europe
+contains of the beautiful, who has thought and spoken of almost every
+phase of human life, and has entered so deeply into the highest
+mysteries of the greatest poets--when I see him surrounding himself in
+his old age with lads and lasses, schoolgirls and workmen, teaching them
+the elements of science and art, reading to them poems and tales,
+arranging for them games and holidays, ornaments and dresses, lavishing
+on these young people his genius and his wealth, his fame and his
+future--I confess my memory goes back instinctively to a fresco I saw in
+Italy years ago--was it Luini's?--wherein the Master sat in a crowd of
+children and forbade them to be removed, saying that 'of such is the
+kingdom of heaven.'"
+
+With this generous tribute to and appreciation of Ruskin, despite the
+economic vagaries into which the great critic and teacher of his time
+fell, we may more confidently approach the busy era of his later and
+self-sacrificing labors, and with less apology take space to deal--as
+compactly and intelligently as we can--with some of the more notable of
+the many books and _brochures_ of the period. Difficult as would be the
+task, fortunately there is little need to epitomize these works, as many
+of them are better known, and perhaps more attentively read, than his
+earlier, bulkier, and more ambitious writings. A few of them lie outside
+the economic gospel of their apostolic author, and these we will first
+and briefly deal with. A number of them are instructive and inspiring
+lay sermons on the mystical union between nature and art, beauty and
+utility, and their reflex in the reverential homage for the beautiful
+and the worthy in the mind and character of the English-speaking race.
+The whole form a great body of fine and thoughtful work, which is as
+enchaining as its meaning is often profound. The best-known of these lay
+sermons is: "The Queen of the Air" (1869), a splendid blending of his
+fancy with the Greek nature-myths of cloud and storm, represented by
+Athena, goddess of the heavens, of the earth, and of the heart. The
+parable drawn is that "the air is given us for our life, the rain for
+our thirst and baptism, the fire for our warmth, the sun for our light,
+and the earth for our meat and rest." Related to the work is "Ethics of
+the Dust" (1865), lectures to little housewives on mineralogy and
+crystallography, nature's work in crystallization being the text for a
+diatribe against sordid living. "Sesame and Lilies," which belongs also
+to this period of the writer's work, consists of three addresses,
+delivered at Manchester and at Dublin, designed specially for young
+girls, and treating in the main of good and improving literature. The
+first of them, "Of Kings' Treasuries," deals with the treasures hidden
+in books, the writings of the world's great men; its sequel, "Of Queens'
+Gardens," deals with the function and sphere of woman, and, by way of
+application, with the how and the what to read; the third lecture, on
+"The Mystery of Life and its Arts," is a discursive but inspiring
+consideration of what life is and how most successfully to battle with
+it in the way of our work and of our appointed duty. All three lectures,
+observes a commentator, "tell men and women of the ideals they should
+set before them; how to read and to build character under the
+inspiration of the nobility of the past, fitting one's self for such
+great society; how to develop noble womanhood; how to bear one's self
+toward the wonder of life, toward one's work in the world, and toward
+one's duty to others."
+
+Other lectures and _brochures_ of or about this period are "Hortus
+Inclusus" (The Enclosed Garden), being "Messages from the Wood to the
+Garden sent in happy days to two sister ladies," residing at Coniston,
+and collected in 1887; "Arrows of the Chace," letters on various
+subjects to newspapers, gathered and edited in 1880; "The Two Paths,"
+lectures on art and its application to Decoration and Manufacture
+(1859); "Ariadne Florentina" (1873), a monograph on Italian wood and
+metal engraving; "Aratra Pentelici" (1872), on the elements and
+principles of sculpture; and "The Eagle's Nest" (1872), on the relation
+of natural science to art. Still pursuing his delightful methods of
+interpreting nature and teaching the world instructive lessons, even
+from the common things of mother earth, we have a series of three
+eloquent discourses, entitled (1) "Proserpina," studies of Alpine and
+other wayside flowers, dwelling on the mystery of growth in plants and
+the tender beauty of their form; (2) "Deucalion," a sort of glorified
+geological text-book, treating of stones and their life-history, and
+showing the wearing effect upon them of waves and the action of water;
+and (3) "Love's Meinie" (1873), a rapture about birds and their
+feathered plumage, delivered at Eton and at Oxford. This trilogy,
+dealing with botany, geology, and ornithology, was presented to his
+audiences with illustrative drawings, representing the flora met with in
+his travels or found in the neighborhood of his new home in the
+Lancashire lakes, with sketches of regions, including the
+characteristics of the soil, in which he had been reared, and talks of
+the note and habit of all birds that were wont to warble over him their
+morning song. "The Pleasures of England," the "Harbours of England," and
+the "Art of England" further treat of his loved native land, the first
+of these being talks on the pleasures of learning, of faith, and of
+deed, illustrated by examples drawn from early English history, and the
+last treating of representative modern English artists, chiefly of the
+Pre-Raphaelite school. "The Laws of Fésole" (1878) deals with the
+principles of Florentine draughtsmanship; "St. Mark's Rest," with the
+art and architecture of Venice; and "Val d'Arno," with early Tuscan art,
+interspersed with the author's accustomed ethical reflections. "Mornings
+in Florence," intended for the use of visitors to the art galleries of
+the beautiful city on the Arno, deals in the true artist-spirit with its
+famous examples of Christian art, giving prominence here also to the
+ethical side of the city's history. "In Montibus Sanctis," and "Coeli
+Enarrant," the one comprising studies of mountain form, and the other of
+cloud form and their visible causes, though separately published, are
+only reprints of the author's larger and nobler embodiment of his views
+on art, in "Modern Painters." "The King of the Golden River," of which
+we have previously spoken, is a fairy tale of much beauty, which he
+wrote for the "Fair Maid of Perth" whom he married, and who separated
+herself from him on the plea of "incompatibility." Playful as is the
+style of the story, it is not without a moral, on what constitutes true
+wealth and happiness. "The Crown of Wild Olive" (1866) consists of
+lectures on work, traffic, and war; the latter lecture, delivered at the
+Royal Artillery Institution at Woolwich, was also separately published
+under the title of "The Future of England." The two former, being
+addressed to working-men, laborers, and traders, discuss economic
+problems, and set forth tentatively their author's antagonized political
+ethics, with which, in drawing this essay to a close, we now venture
+to deal.
+
+After the magnificent work done by Ruskin in art up to his fortieth
+year, that he should turn, for practically the remainder of his life, to
+the seemingly vain and profitless task of a social reformer and
+regenerator of modern society, has to most men been a riddle too elusive
+and enigmatic to solve. And yet, in his earlier career, had he not
+himself prepared us for just such a departure as he took in the sixties,
+for in art was he not equally revolutionary and iconoclastic, as well as
+personally self-willed, passionate, and impulsive? Moreover, had not
+Mother Nature endowed him with the gifts of a seer and made him
+chivalrous as well as intensely sympathetic, while his early training
+inclined him to be serious, and even ascetic? Nor were the rebuffs he
+met with throughout his career calculated at this stage to make him
+court the applause of his fellow-men or be mindful of the world's
+censure or approval. Nor can one well quarrel with what he had now to
+say on many a subject, visionary and enthusiast as he always was, and
+given over to mediaeval views and preachments, and to abounding moral
+and ethical exhortation. Like Carlyle's, his voice was that of one
+crying in the wilderness, and yet in the industrial and social condition
+of Britain at the era there was need of just such appeals for
+regeneration and reform as Ruskin strenuously uttered, accompanied by
+indignant rebukes of grossness, vulgarity, and meanness, as manifested
+in masses of the people. If in his strivings after amelioration he was
+too denunciatory as well as too radical, we must remember the temper and
+manner of the man, and recognize how difficult it was in him, or in any
+iconoclast who scorned modern science as Ruskin scorned it, to reconcile
+the age of steam and industrial machinery, which he spurned and would
+have none of, with the views he held of Christianity, morals, and faith.
+His views on political economy, which he treated neither as an art nor a
+science, might be perverse and wrong-headed, and his method of adapting
+prophetic and apostolic principles to the practice of every-day life
+utterly impracticable; but the virtues he counselled the nation to
+manifest, and the graces he enjoined of truthfulness, justice,
+temperance, bravery, and obedience, were qualities needed to be
+cultivated in his time, with a fuller recognition of and firmer trust in
+God and His right of sway in the world He had created.
+
+What Ruskin's economic views were, and what his relations to the
+industrial and social problems of his time, most readers of our author
+know, are mainly to be found in "Fors Clavigera," a series of letters to
+working-men, covering the years 1871-84, and in his early essays on
+political economy, "Unto this Last" (1860), and "Munera Pulveris"
+(1863). "Unto this Last" appeared in its original form in the pages of
+the "Cornhill Magazine," then edited by Thackeray, and our author speaks
+confidently of it as embodying his maturest and worthiest thoughts on
+social science. The work, which will be found the key to Ruskin's
+economic gospel, embraces four essays, treating successively of the
+responsibilities and duties of those called to fill all offices of
+national trust and service; of the true sources of a nation's riches; of
+the right distribution of such riches; and of what is meant by the
+economic terms,--value, wealth, price, and produce. Under these several
+heads, Ruskin expresses his conviction that co-operation and government
+are in all things the law of life, while the deadly things are
+competition and anarchy. Whatever errors the book[3] contains--and the
+author's unconscious arrogance and dogmatism made him blind to them--his
+views were set forth with his accustomed vigor and eloquence, and in
+the honest belief that he was more than fundamentally right. It was for
+such helpful work as this, and what he accomplished in the kindred
+volume, "Munera Pulveris," which first appeared in "Fraser's Magazine,"
+that Ruskin for the time dropped his revelations in art to let a new
+world of thought into the "dismal science" of political economy,
+confound its old-time instructors, and gird at the evils of the
+age,--the greed, selfishness, and petty bargaining spirit of industrial
+and commercial life. Nor in conducting such a crusade as this was Ruskin
+abandoning his old and less controverted gospel of art. He was but
+carrying into new and barren fields the high ideals he had hitherto
+counselled his age to emulate and heed, and in his sympathy with labor
+seeking to bring into its world the comeliness of beauty and the cheer
+of prosperity, comfort, and happiness. In "Time and Tide" (1867), and
+more at length in "Fors Clavigera," Ruskin reiterates his message to
+labor, to get rid of ever-environing misery by realizing what are the
+true sources of happiness,--pleasure in sincere and honest work,
+inspired by intelligence, culture, religion, and right living. What he
+desires for the working-man he desires also for his family, and
+consequently he urges parents to train their sons and daughters to see
+and love the beautiful, to cultivate their higher instincts, and call
+forth and feed their souls. In all this there is much helpful, tonic
+thought, which the church or the nation, roused to zeal and earnest
+activity, might fittingly teach, and so advance the material weal of the
+people, extend the area of public enlightenment and morality, and herald
+the dawn of a new and higher civilization.
+
+[Footnote 3: Alluding to the quaint title under which these "Cornhill"
+essays afterwards appeared,--a title that hints at the gist of the
+work,--Mr. Ruskin's biographer tells us that the motto was taken from
+Christ's parable of the husbandman and the laborers: "Friend, I do thee
+no wrong. Didst thou not agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is,
+and go thy way. I will give UNTO THIS LAST even as unto
+thee."--Matt. xx. 14.]
+
+Other aspects of Mr. Ruskin's economic gospel are, unfortunately, not so
+sane and beneficent. His altruism knows no bounds, as his philanthropy
+and zeal have but few restraints. After the fashion of his mentor,
+Carlyle, he is carried away by his humanitarianism and his unreserved
+acceptance of the doctrine of the equality and brotherhood of man. Hence
+come his economic heresies in regard to rent and interest, and capital
+and usury, his denunciations of the division of labor, his Tolstoian
+impoverishment of himself for the benefit of his fellow-man, and his
+dictum that the wealth of the nation should be its own, and not accrue
+to the individual. Hence, also, the wholly ideal state of society he
+attempted to realize in his communal Guild of St. George, with its rigid
+government and restraints upon the personal liberty of its members.
+Ideally beautiful, admittedly, was the plan and scheme of the little
+state, with its disciplinings, exactions, and devout selective creed.
+But the age is a practical, unimaginative one, and whatever compacts men
+make, even for their highest welfare, there are, it is to be feared,
+few so loyal, tractable, and docile as to place themselves for long
+under such tutoring and one-patterned, fashioning forms of co-operative
+living. Into whatever millennial state Ruskin sought to usher his little
+band of English followers and disciples, one must speak appreciatively
+of his motives in projecting the scheme, and of the money and labor he
+personally lavished upon the Utopian project. Reverently also must one
+speak of the catholic creed to which its members were asked to
+subscribe: namely, to trust in God, recognize the nobleness of human
+nature, labor faithfully with one's might, be loyal to one's common
+country, its laws, and its monarch's or ruler's orders, so far as they
+are consistent with the higher law of God; while exacting obedience, and
+a pledge that one will not deceive, either for gain or other motive;
+will not rob; will not hurt any living creature nor destroy any
+beautiful thing; and will honor one's own body by proper care for it,
+for the joy and peace of life. All this is very exemplary and beautiful,
+and not over-hard to live up to, though the working-men of Sheffield in
+time wearied of the organization, and the Guild and its noble ideals is
+now, we believe, but a memory, if we except the art museum and library
+of the Order taken over and still maintained by the town.
+
+More practical, may we not say, than this imitation of the Florentine
+_arti_ of the Middle Ages was the Working Men's College, founded in
+London in the fifties by that other earnest Christian Socialist, F.D.
+Maurice, in which Ruskin lectured gratuitously, took charge of the
+drawing classes, and hied off to the country with its members to sketch
+from nature and otherwise instruct and entertain them. Yet good in many
+respects came of the Guild of St. George, in the impulse it gave to the
+revival of the then dormant industries, such as the hand-spinning of
+linen, hand-weaving of carpets and woollen fabrics, lace-making,
+wood-carving, and metal-working, besides the stimulus it gave, with the
+infusion of higher ideals of workmanship, to the decorative arts, and
+the improvement in the sightliness of factories, and in the homes and
+surroundings of labor. Here Ruskin's philanthropy and reform zeal showed
+themselves most worthily in the financial aid he gave in the pulling
+down, in crowded districts of the British metropolis, of poor tenements,
+and the building up in their place of clean, attractive, and wholesome
+habitations. In such benevolences and well-doings, and in this life of
+renunciation and self-sacrifice, Ruskin spent himself, and made serious
+inroads into his bodily health and strength, as well as scattered the
+fortune--about a million dollars--left him by his now deceased father.
+But this was the manner and character of Ruskin, and this the mode of
+expressing his love for his fellow-man, which in myriad ways showed
+itself throughout a long and strenuous career of devotion to high
+ideals, and of practical, tender help in all good works. In all his
+philanthropies he was true to his own preachings and counsellings,
+spending and being spent in the spirit of his Divine Master, his whole
+soul aglow with reverence and adoration and tender with a profound moral
+emotion. Besides his rare endowments as a lover of the beautiful, he had
+that other precious gift, of golden speech, which threw a mantle of
+loveliness over every book he wrote and perpetual lustre over the domain
+of letters.
+
+Ruskin's declining years, while hallowed by suffering, were cheered by
+many tender attentions and unexpected kindnesses, and by the
+recognition, by many notable public bodies and eminent contemporaries,
+of his long life of great service and devotion to his kind. In our
+modern age, from which, in his loved Coniston home, he passed from life
+Jan. 20, 1900, no one more reverently than he has looked deeper into the
+mystery of life, thought more concernedly of its problems, shed more
+passionately and eloquently about him love for the beautiful, or
+practically and helpfully done more--layman only though he was--for
+religion and humanity. At his death the nation paid honor to his memory
+by offering his remains a resting-place in the great fane of England's
+illustrious dead, Westminster Abbey; but Ruskin had himself otherwise
+ordered the disposal of his body. "Bury me," he said, "at Coniston."
+And there, on the fifth day after his falling softly asleep, amid a
+concourse of loving friends, the earthly tenement of the great art
+critic and lover of righteousness was laid to rest, his grave strewn
+with myriad wreaths, garlands, and crosses of beautiful, bright flowers.
+
+Here, after his long, strenuous, militant career, do we leave this
+inspiring teacher and "consecrated priest of the Ideal," his gentle soul
+finding rest and peace after the myriad troubles and tumults of life.
+Still now is the once active, fertile, stimulating mind of the man who
+so effectively roused his generation from its complacent smugness and
+indifference in its appreciation of the beautiful, and with ardent
+boldness challenged established beliefs in art and defied the
+conventionality and authority of his time. His has been a powerful force
+in innumerable departments of human thought, and epoch-making the
+influence he has exerted in giving to the world new ideals of the
+beautiful and in shaping modern opinion and taste in art. How great is
+the work he has done, and what a library of stimulating, inspiring books
+he has left us, comparatively few realize, as they little realize what
+the age owes to him for his noble activities in well-doing and his many
+and impressive lessons and influence. In a commonplace, commercial time,
+how stimulating as well as ardent have been his appeals for
+sensitiveness of perception in regard to art, and of the tone and
+spirit in which it ought to be viewed and valued! And with what tender,
+reverent feeling has he not opened our hearts to compassion and to
+consideration for the welfare of our fellow-man, and how potent have
+been his counsellings pointing to the true and abiding sources of
+pleasure in life! Long must his formative opinions and influence extend,
+and in the minds of all who think and reflect abiding must be the charm
+as well as the power of his imaginative, glowing thought. That he met
+with opposition and hostility in his day was but the price to be paid
+for the disturbing, correcting, disciplining, yet inspiring part he
+played in the work he so impulsively set himself to do. One smiles now
+at the epithets of scorn and contumely once hurled at him, at the man
+who, little understood as he has been, has done so much to uplift and
+purify the thought of his time and do battle with the forces opposed to
+reform and arrayed against those of light and truth. And how great were
+the weapons with which he was armed, and how varied as well as
+marvellous the talents he brought into play in the onslaught upon
+shallowness, convention, and ignorance! Truly, he has done much for his
+time, and great has been the gain Modern Art has won from his inspiring
+lessons and thought. The coming of such a man, and at the time that was
+his, one cannot help reflecting, was one of the providences of an
+overruling Power, and adequately to estimate his influence and work,
+and the tone and temper in which he wrought, we have but to consider
+what the age would have been, in countless departments of thought and
+activity, had the century now passed possessed no John Ruskin.
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+Collingwood, W. G. Life of Ruskin.
+
+Harrison, Frederic. Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Estimates.
+
+Mather, Marshall. John Ruskin, his Life and Teaching.
+
+Bayne, Peter. Lessons from my Masters--Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin.
+
+Japp, Alex. H. Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin.
+
+Spielmann, M.H. John Ruskin.
+
+Waldstein, Charles. Work of John Ruskin.
+
+Ward, May Alden. Prophets of the Nineteenth Century: Carlyle, Ruskin,
+and Tolstoi.
+
+Bates, Herbert. Annotated edition, with Introduction, of Ruskin's
+"Sesame and Lilies" and "The King of the Golden River."
+
+Ruskin's "Praeterita": An Autobiography.
+
+
+
+
+HERBERT SPENCER.
+
+
+1820-
+
+THE EVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY.
+
+BY MAYO W. HAZELTINE.
+
+
+Herbert Spencer occupies a unique place in the history of human thought,
+because he has been the first to attempt the construction of a
+philosophical system in harmony with the theory of Evolution and with
+the results of modern science. To his contemporaries he is known almost
+exclusively as the author of the colossal work which he has chosen to
+call the "Synthetic Philosophy." Concerning his personality very little
+information has been published, and it is doubtful whether he will deem
+it worth while to leave behind him the materials for a detailed
+biography. About his private life we know even less than we know about
+that of Kant. The very few facts obtainable may be summed up in a score
+of sentences.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Herbert Spencer was born on April 27, 1820, at Derby, in England, and
+was an only surviving child. His father was a schoolmaster in the town
+named, and secretary of a philosophical society. From him the son seems
+to have imbibed the love of natural science and the faculty of
+observation conspicuous in his work. The father was particularly
+interested in entomology, and Spencer himself used to collect, describe,
+and draw insects when a boy. At the age of thirteen he was sent to study
+with an uncle, Rev. Thomas Spencer, a liberal clergyman and a scholar,
+with whom he remained three years, carrying on the study of natural
+history, which he had begun in childhood. He now devoted himself to
+mathematics, evincing a singular capacity for working out original
+problems. At this time, too, he became familiar with physical and
+chemical investigations, and already exhibited a strong tendency to
+experimental inquiry and original research. His aversion to linguistic
+studies put a university career out of the question. At the age of
+seventeen he entered the office of Sir Charles Fox and began work as a
+civil engineer, but about eight years afterward he gave up this
+profession, and devoted the whole of his time to scientific experiments
+and studies, and to contributions on philosophical questions to various
+periodicals. As early as 1842, in a series of letters to the
+Nonconformist newspaper on "The Proper Sphere of Government," he
+propounded a belief in human progress based on the modifiability of
+human nature through adaptation to its social surroundings, and he
+asserted the tendency of these social arrangements to assume of
+themselves a condition of stable equilibrium. From 1848 to 1853 he was
+sub-editor of the Economist newspaper, and in his first important work,
+"Social Statics," published in 1850, he developed the ethical and
+sociological ideas which had been set forth in his published letters.
+The truth that all organic development is a change from a state of
+homogeneity to a state of heterogeneity is regarded by Spencer as the
+organizing principle of his subsequent beliefs. It was gradually
+expounded and applied by him in a series of articles contributed to the
+"North British," the "British Quarterly," the "Westminster," and other
+reviews. In these essays, and especially in the volume of "Principles of
+Psychology," published in 1855, the doctrine of Evolution began to take
+definite form, and to be applied to various departments of inquiry. It
+was not until four years later--a fact to be carefully borne in mind by
+those who would estimate correctly the relation of Spencer to
+Darwin--that the publication of the latter's "Origin of Species"
+afforded a wide basis of scientific truth for what had hitherto been
+matter of speculation, and demonstrated the important part played by
+natural selection in the development of organisms. As early as March,
+1860, Spencer issued a prospectus, in which he set forth the general aim
+and scope of a series of works which were to be issued in periodical
+parts, and would, collectively, constitute a system of philosophy. In
+1862 appeared the "First Principles," and in 1867 the "Principles of
+Biology." In 1872 the "Principles of Psychology" was published; the
+first part of the "Principles of Ethics" in 1879; and his "Principles of
+Sociology" in three volumes, begun in 1876, was completed in 1896. In
+the preface to the third volume of the last-named work the author
+explains that the fourth volume originally contemplated, which was to
+deal with the linguistic, intellectual, moral, and aesthetic phenomena,
+would have to remain unwritten by reason of the author's age and
+infirmities. The astounding extent of Herbert Spencer's labors becomes,
+indeed, the more marvellous when one considers that impaired health has
+for many years incapacitated him for persistent application. Owing
+partly to his ill health, and partly to the absorbing nature of his
+occupation, his life has been a retired one, and in the ordinary sense
+of the term, uneventful. He has never married, and, although the high
+opinion of his writings formed by contemporaries has led to many
+academic honors being pressed upon him at home and abroad, these have
+all been declined. It only remains to mention that in 1882 he visited
+the United States, where the importance of his speculations had been
+early recognized, and that his home is now in Brighton, England.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+In Mr. Spencer's latest book, "Facts and Comments," a little light is
+thrown on the author's habits, opinions, and predilections. Referring to
+the athleticism to which so much attention is paid just now in English
+and American universities, he points out how erroneous it is to identify
+muscular strength with constitutional strength. Not only is there error
+in assuming that increase of muscular power and increase of general
+vigor necessarily go together, but there is error in assuming that the
+reverse connection cannot hold. As a matter of fact, the abnormal powers
+acquired by gymnasts may be at the cost of constitutional deterioration.
+In a paper on "Party Government" the author maintains that what we boast
+of as political freedom consists in the ability to choose a despot, or a
+group of oligarchs, and, after long misbehavior has produced
+dissatisfaction, to choose another despot or group of oligarchs: having
+meanwhile been made subject to laws, some of which are repugnant.
+Abolish the existing conventional usages, with respect to party
+fealty,--let each member of parliament feel that he may express by his
+vote his adverse belief respecting a government measure, without
+endangering the government's stability,--and the whole vicious system of
+party government would disappear. In a paper on "Patriotism," Mr.
+Spencer says that to him the cry "Our country, right or wrong," seems
+detestable. The love of country, he adds, is not fostered in him by
+remembering that when, after England's Prime Minister had declared that
+Englishmen were bound in honor to the Khedive to reconquer the Soudan,
+they, after the reconquest, forthwith began to administer it in the name
+of the Queen and the Khedive, thereby practically annexing it; and when,
+after promising through the mouths of two colonial Ministers not to
+interfere in the internal affairs of the Transvaal, the British
+Government proceeded to insist on certain electoral arrangements, and
+made resistance the excuse for a desolating war. As to the transparent
+pretence that the Boers commenced the war, Mr. Spencer reminds us that
+in the far West of the United States, where every man carries his life
+in his hands and the usages of fighting are well understood, it is held
+that he is the real aggressor who first moves his hand toward his
+weapon. The application to the South African contest is obvious. In an
+essay on "Style," Mr. Spencer tells us that his own diction has been,
+from the beginning, unpremeditated. It has never occurred to him to take
+any author as a model. Neither has he at any time examined the writing
+of this or that author with a view of observing its peculiarities. The
+thought of style, considered as an end in itself, has rarely, if ever,
+been present with him, his sole purpose being to express ideas as
+clearly as possible, and, when the occasion called for it, with as much
+force as might be. He has observed, however, he says, that some
+difference has been made in his style by the practice of dictation. Up
+to 1860 his books and review articles were written with his own hand.
+Since then they have all been dictated. He thinks that there is
+foundation for the prevailing belief that dictation is apt to cause
+diffuseness. The remark was once made to him, it seems, by two good
+judges--George Henry Lewes and George Eliot--that the style of "Social
+Statics" is better than the style of his later volumes; Mr. Spencer
+would ascribe the contrast to the deteriorating effect of dictation. A
+recent experience has strengthened him in this conclusion. When lately
+revising "First Principles," which originally was dictated, the cutting
+out of superfluous words, clauses, sentences, and sometimes paragraphs,
+had the effect of abridging the work by about one-tenth. Touching the
+style of other writers, Mr. Spencer points out the defects in some
+passages quoted from Matthew Arnold and Froude. He says that he is
+repelled by the ponderous, involved structure of Milton's prose, and he
+dissents from the applause of Ruskin's style on the ground that it is
+too self-conscious, and implies too much thought of effect. On the other
+hand, he has always been attracted by the finished naturalness of
+Thackeray.
+
+A word should here be said about the misconception of Mr. Spencer's
+position with reference to the fundamental postulate of religions,--a
+misconception which used to be more current than it is now. He cannot
+fairly be described as a materialist. He is no more a materialist than
+he is a theist. He is, in the strictest sense of the word, an agnostic.
+He was the most conspicuous example of the _thing_ before Huxley
+invented the _word_. The misconception was shared by no less a man than
+the late Benjamin Jowett, the well-known master of Balliol College,
+Oxford, who, in one of his published "Letters," says: "I sometimes think
+that we platonists and idealists are not half so industrious as those
+repulsive people who only 'believe what they can hold in their hand,'
+Bain, H. Spencer, etc., who are the very Tuppers of philosophy." It is
+hard to see how the law of evolution and other generalizations of an
+abstract kind with which Mr. Spencer's name is associated can be held in
+anybody's hands. Letting that pass, however, Mr. Spencer has himself
+suggested that, since the system of synthetic philosophy begins with a
+division entitled the "Unknowable," having for its purpose to show that
+all material phenomena are manifestations of a Power which transcends
+our knowledge,--that "force as we know it can be regarded only as a
+Conditioned effect of the Unconditioned Cause"--there has been thereby
+afforded sufficiently decided proof of belief in something which cannot
+be held in the hands. It is, indeed, absurd to apply the epithet
+"materialist" to a man who has written in "The Principles of
+Psychology": "Hence, though of the two it seems easier to translate
+so-called matter into so-called spirit than to translate so-called
+spirit into so-called matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly
+impossible), yet no translation can carry us beyond our symbols."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Any exposition of the "Synthetic Philosophy" must, of course, begin with
+the volume entitled "First Principles." In the first part of this
+preliminary work the author carries a step further the doctrine of the
+Unknowable put into shape by Hamilton and Mansel. He points out the
+various directions in which science leads to the same conclusion, and
+shows that in their united belief in an Absolute that transcends not
+only human knowledge but human conception lies the only possible
+reconciliation of science and religion. In the second part of the same
+book Mr. Spencer undertakes to formulate the laws of the Knowable. That
+is to say, he essays to state the ultimate principles discernible
+throughout all manifestations of the Absolute,--those highest
+generalizations now being disclosed by science, such, for example, as
+"the Conservation of Force," which are severally true, not of one class
+of phenomena, but of _all_ classes of phenomena, and which are thus the
+keys to all classes of phenomena.
+
+The conclusions reached in "First Principles" may be thus summed up:
+over and over again in the five hundred pages devoted to their
+formulation, it is shown in various ways that the deepest truths we can
+reach are simply statements of the widest uniformities in our
+experiences of the relations of Matter, Motion, and Force; and that
+Matter, Motion, and Force are but symbols of the Unknown reality. A
+Power of which the nature remains forever inconceivable, and to which no
+limits in Time and Space can be imagined, works in us certain effects.
+These effects have certain likenesses of kind, the most general of which
+we class together under the names of Matter, Motion, and Force; and
+between these effects there are likenesses of connection, the most
+constant of which we class as laws of the highest certainty. Analysis
+reduces these several kinds of effects to one kind of effect; and these
+several kinds of uniformity to one kind of uniformity. The highest
+achievement of Science is the interpretation of all orders of phenomena
+as differently conditioned manifestations of this one kind of effect,
+under differently conditioned modes of this one kind of uniformity. When
+science has done this, however, it has done nothing more than
+systematize our experiences, and has in no degree extended the limits of
+our experiences. We can say no more than before whether the
+uniformities are as absolutely necessary as they have become to our
+thought relatively necessary. The utmost possibility for us is an
+interpretation of the process of things, as it presents itself to our
+limited consciousness; but how this process is related to the actual
+process we are unable to conceive, much less to know.
+
+Similarly we are admonished to remember that, while the connection
+between the phenomenal order and the ontological order is forever
+inscrutable, so is the connection between the conditioned forms of being
+and the unconditioned form of being forever inscrutable. The
+interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force is
+nothing more than the reduction of our complex symbols of thought to the
+simplest symbols; and when the equation has been brought to its lowest
+terms, the symbols remain symbols still. Hence the reasonings contained
+in "First Principles" afford no support to either of the antagonist
+hypotheses respecting the ultimate nature of things. Their implications
+are no more materialistic than they are spiritualistic, and no more
+spiritualistic than they are materialistic. The establishment of
+correlation and equivalence between the forces of the outer and the
+inner worlds serves to assimilate either to the other, according as we
+set out with one or the other. He who rightly interprets the doctrine
+propounded in "First Principles" will see that neither the forces of
+the outer, nor the forces of the inner, world can be taken as ultimate.
+He will see that, though the relation of subject and object renders
+necessary to us the antithetical conceptions of Spirit and Matter, the
+one is no less than the other to be regarded as but a sign of the
+Unknown Reality which underlies both.
+
+In logical order the formulation of "First Principles" should have been
+followed by the application of them to Inorganic Nature. This great
+division of Mr. Spencer's subject is passed over, however; partly
+because, even without it, the scheme is too extensive to be carried out
+in the lifetime of one man; and partly because the interpretation of
+Organic Nature, after the proposed method, is of more immediate
+importance. Before noting how Mr. Spencer applies his fundamental
+principles to the interpretation of the phenomena of life, it may be
+well to put before the reader's eye the "formula of evolution" in the
+author's own language: "Evolution is an integration of matter and
+concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from
+an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
+heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel
+transformation." This law of evolution is equally applicable to all
+orders of phenomena,--"astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic,
+sociologic, etc.,"--since these are all component parts of one cosmos,
+though disguised from one another by conventional groupings. It is
+obvious that, so long as evolution is merely established by induction,
+it belongs, not to philosophy, but to science. To belong to philosophy
+it must be deduced from the persistence of force. Mr. Spencer holds that
+this can be done. For any finite aggregate, being unequally exposed to
+surrounding forces, will become more diverse in structure, every
+differentiated part will become the parent of further differences; at
+the same time, dissimilar units in the aggregate tend to separate, and
+those which are similar, to cluster together ("segregation"); and this
+subdivision and dissipation of forces, so long as there are any forces
+unbalanced by opposite forces, must end at last in rest; the penultimate
+stage of this process "in which the extremest multiformity and most
+complex moving equilibrium are established," being the highest
+conceivable state. The various derivative laws of phenomenal changes are
+thus deducible from the persistence of force. It remains to apply them
+to inorganic, organic, and superorganic existences. The detailed
+treatment of inorganic evolution is omitted, as we have said, from
+Spencer's plan, and he proceeds to interpret "the phenomena of life,
+mind, and society in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The first volume of the "Principles of Biology" consists of three parts,
+the first of which sets forth the data of biology, including those
+general truths of physics and chemistry with which rational biology must
+start. The second part is allotted to the inductions of biology, or, in
+other words, to a statement of the leading generalizations which
+naturalists, physiologists, and comparative anatomists have established.
+The third and final part of the first volume of the "Principles of
+Biology" deals with the speculation commonly known as "the development
+hypothesis," and considers its _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ evidences.
+
+The inductive evidences for the evolutionary hypothesis, as
+contra-distinguished from the special-creation hypothesis, are dealt
+with in four chapters. The "Arguments from Classification" are these:
+Organisms fall into groups within groups; and this is the arrangement
+which we see results from evolution where it is known to take place. Of
+these groups within groups, the great or primary ones are the most
+unlike, the sub-groups are less unlike, the sub-sub-group still less
+unlike, and so on; and this, too, is a characteristic of groups
+demonstrably produced by evolution. Moreover, indefiniteness of
+equivalence among the groups is common to those which we know have been
+evolved, and to those supposed in the volume before us to have been
+evolved. There is the further significant fact that divergent groups are
+allied through their lowest rather than their highest members. Of the
+"Arguments from Embryology," the first is that, when developing embryos
+are traced from their common starting-point, and their divergencies and
+re-divergencies are symbolized by a genealogical tree, there is manifest
+a general parallelism between the arrangement of its primary, secondary,
+and tertiary branches, and the arrangement of the divisions and
+subdivisions of Mr. Spencer's classifications. Nor do the minor
+deviations from this general parallelism, which look like difficulties,
+fail on closer observation to furnish additional evidence; since those
+traits of a common ancestry which embryology reveals are, if
+modifications have resulted from changed conditions, liable to be
+disguised in different ways and degrees, in different lines of
+descendants. Mr. Spencer next considers the "Arguments from Morphology."
+Apart from those kinships among organisms disclosed by their
+developmental changes, the kinships which their adult forms show are
+profoundly significant. The unities of type found under such different
+externals are inexplicable, except as results of community of descent,
+with non-community of modification. Again, each organism analyzed apart
+shows, in the likenesses obscured by unlikenesses of its component
+parts, a peculiarity which can be ascribed only to the formation of a
+more heterogeneous organism out of a more homogeneous one. And, once
+more, the existence of rudimentary organs, homologous with organs that
+are developed in allied animals or plants, while it admits of no other
+rational interpretation, is satisfactorily interpreted by the hypothesis
+of evolution. Last of the inductive evidences are the "Arguments from
+Distribution." While the facts of distribution in space are
+unaccountable as results of designed adaptation of organisms to their
+habitats, they are accountable as results of the competition of species,
+and the spread of the more fit into the habitats of the less fit,
+followed by the changes which new conditions induce. Though the facts of
+distribution in time are so fragmentary that no positive conclusion can
+be drawn, yet all of them are reconcilable with the hypothesis of
+evolution, and some of them yield strong support,--especially the near
+relationship existing between the living and extinct types in each great
+geographical area. Thus of these four categories of evidence, each
+furnishes several arguments which point to the same conclusion. This
+coincidence would give to the induction a very high degree of
+probability, even were it not enforced by deduction. As a matter of
+fact, the conclusion deductively reached is in harmony with the
+inductive conclusion. Mr. Spencer has deductively shown that, by its
+lineage and its kindred, the evolution-hypothesis is as closely allied
+with the proved truths of modern science as is the antagonist
+hypothesis, that of special creation, with the proved errors of ancient
+ignorance. He has shown that, instead of being a mere pseud-idea, it
+admits of elaboration into a definite conception, so showing its
+legitimacy as an hypothesis. Instead of positing a purely fictitious
+process, the process which it alleges proves to be one actually going on
+around us. To which may be added that the evolution-hypothesis presents
+no radical incongruities from a moral point of view. On the other hand,
+the special-creation hypothesis is shown to be not even a thinkable
+hypothesis, and, while thus intellectually illusive, to have moral
+implications irreconcilable with the professed beliefs of those who
+hold it.
+
+Passing from the evidence that Evolution has taken place to the
+question--How has it taken place?--Mr. Spencer finds in known agencies
+and known processes adequate causes of its phenomena. In astronomic,
+geologic, and meteorologic changes, ever in progress, ever combining in
+new and more involved ways, we have a set of inorganic factors to which
+all organisms are exposed; and in the varying and complicated actions of
+organisms on one another we have a set of organic factors that alter
+with increasing rapidity. Thus, speaking generally, all members of the
+Earth's flora and fauna experience perpetual rearrangements of external
+forces. Each organic aggregate, whether considered individually or as a
+continuously existing species, is modified afresh by each fresh
+distribution of external forces. To its pre-existing differentiations
+new differentiations are added; and thus that lapse to a more
+heterogeneous state, which would have a fixed limit were the
+circumstances fixed, has its limits perpetually removed by the perpetual
+change of the circumstances. These modifications upon modifications,
+which result in evolution, structurally considered, are the
+accompaniments of those functional alterations continually required to
+re-equilibrate inner with outer actions. That moving equilibrium of
+inner actions corresponding with outer actions, which constitutes the
+life of an organism, must either be overthrown by a change in the outer
+actions or must undergo perturbations that cannot end until there is a
+readjusted balance of functions and correlative adaptation of
+structures. But where the external changes are either such as are fatal
+when experienced by the individuals, or such as act on the individuals
+in ways that do not affect the equilibrium of their functions, then the
+readjustment results through the effects produced on the species as a
+whole: there is indirect equilibration. By the preservation in
+successive generations of those whose moving equilibria are less at
+variance with the requirements, there is produced a changed equilibrium
+completely in harmony with the requirements.
+
+Even were this the whole of the evidence assignable for the belief that
+organisms have been gradually evolved, Mr. Spencer holds that the belief
+would have a warrant higher than is possessed by many beliefs which are
+regarded as established. As a matter of fact, however, the evidence is
+far from exhausted. At the outset of the first volume of "Principles of
+Biology," it was remarked by the author that the phenomena presented by
+the organic world as a whole cannot be properly dealt with apart from
+the phenomena presented by each organism in the course of its growth,
+development, and decay. The interpretation of either class of phenomena
+implies interpretation of the other, since the two are in reality parts
+of one process. Hence the validity of any hypothesis respecting the one
+class of phenomena may be tested by its congruity with phenomena of the
+other class. In the second volume of "The Principles of Biology," Mr.
+Spencer passes to the more special phenomena of development, as
+displayed in the structures and functions of individual organisms. If
+the hypothesis that plants and animals have been progressively evolved
+be true, it must furnish us with keys to these special phenomena. Mr.
+Spencer finds that the hypothesis does this, and by doing it gives
+numberless additional vouchers for its truth. It is impossible for us
+here to review, even in outline, the extensive field traversed in the
+second volume of "Principles of Biology." We would not omit, however,
+to direct attention to the interesting conclusion reached by Mr. Spencer
+toward the close of the volume with regard to the future of the human
+race considered from the viewpoint of the possible pressure of
+population upon subsistence. He points out that in man all the
+equilibrations between constitution and conditions, between the
+structure of society and the nature of its members, between fertility
+and mortality, advance simultaneously towards a common climax. In
+approaching an equilibrium between his nature and the ever-varying
+circumstances of his inorganic environment, and in approaching an
+equilibrium between his nature and all the requirements of the social
+state, man is at the same time approaching that lowest limit of
+fertility at which the equilibrium of population is maintained by the
+addition of as many infants as there are subtractions by death.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Next in logical order and in order of publication come the two volumes
+collectively entitled "The Principles of Psychology." In these volumes
+an attempt is made to trace objectively the evolution of mind from
+reflex action through instinct to reason, memory, feeling, and will,
+from the interaction of the nervous system with its environment.
+Subjectively, mental states are analyzed, and it is contended that all
+of them--including those primary scientific ideas, the perceptions of
+matter, motion, space, and time, assumed in the "First Principles"--can
+be analyzed into a primitive element of consciousness, something which
+can be defined only as analogous to a nervous shock. These perceptions
+have now become innate in the individual. They may be called--as Kant
+called space and time--forms of intuition; but they have been acquired
+empirically by the race, through the persistence of the corresponding
+phenomena in the environment, and from the accumulated experiences of
+each individual being transmitted in the form of modified structure to
+his descendants. This principle of heredity is one of the laws by which
+individuals are connected with one another into an organic whole; and we
+thus pass to what Spencer calls superorganic evolution, implying the
+co-ordinated actions of many individuals, and giving rise to the science
+of sociology.
+
+It is this science which Mr. Spencer undertakes to expound in the three
+volumes entitled the "Principles of Sociology." The first of these
+volumes presents a statement of the several sets of factors entering
+into social phenomena. These factors are, first, human ideas and
+feelings considered in their necessary order of evolution; secondly,
+surrounding natural conditions; and, thirdly, those ever-complicating
+conditions to which society itself gives origin. Under the caption "The
+Inductions of Sociology," are set forth the general facts, structural
+and functional, gathered from a survey of societies and their changes;
+in other words, the empirical generalizations that are arrived at by
+comparing different societies, or successive stages of the same
+societies. The author then examines the evolution of governments,
+general and local, as this is determined by natural causes; their
+several types and metamorphosis; their increasing complexity and
+specialization, and the progressive limitation of their functions. From
+political the author turns to ecclesiastical organization. He traces the
+differentiation of religious government from secular; its successive
+complications and the multiplication of sects; the growth and continued
+modification of religious ideas, as caused by advancing knowledge and
+changing moral character; and the gradual reconciliation of these ideas
+with the truths of abstract science. A good deal of space is devoted to
+what the author calls ceremonial organization, by which he means that
+third kind of government which, having a common root with the others,
+and slowly becoming separate from and supplementary to them, serves to
+regulate the minor actions of life. Finally, Mr. Spencer discusses
+industrial organization; that is to say, the development of productive
+and distributive agencies, considered in its necessary causes,
+comprehending not only the progressive division of labor and the
+increasing complexity of each industrial agency, but also the
+successive forms of industrial government as passing through like phases
+with political government.
+
+Many pages would be requisite adequately to describe the result of the
+inquiries prosecuted by Mr. Spencer during some twenty years, and
+embodied in the three volumes entitled "Principles of Sociology." The
+ultimate conclusions reached, however, may be summed up in a few
+paragraphs. It is the author's final conviction that, if the process of
+evolution, which, unceasing throughout past time, has brought life to
+its present height, continues throughout the future, as we cannot but
+anticipate, then, amid all the rhythmical changes in each society, amid
+all the lives and deaths of nations, amid all the supplantings of race
+by race, there will go on that adaptation of human nature to the social
+state which began when savages first gathered together into hordes for
+mutual defence,--an adaptation finally complete. Mr. Spencer foresees
+that many will think this a wild imagination. Though everywhere around
+them are creatures with structures and instincts which have been
+gradually so moulded as to subserve their own welfares and the welfares
+of their species, yet the immense majority ignore the implication that
+human beings, too, have been undergoing in the past, and will undergo in
+the future, progressive adjustments to the lives imposed on them by
+circumstances. There are a few, nevertheless, who think it rational to
+conclude that what has happened with all lower forms must happen with
+the highest forms,--a few who infer that among types of men those most
+fitted for making a well-working society will hereafter, as heretofore,
+from time to time, emerge and spread at the expense of types less
+fitted, until a fully fitted type has arisen.
+
+It is, at the same time, conceded that the view thus suggested cannot be
+accepted without qualification. If we carry our thoughts as far forward
+as palaeolithic implements carry them back, we are introduced, not to an
+absolute optimism, but to a relative optimism. The cosmic process brings
+about retrogression, as well as progression, where the conditions favor
+it. Only amid an infinity of modifications, adjusted to an infinity of
+changes of circumstances, do there now and then occur some which
+constitute an advance: other changes, meanwhile, caused in other
+organisms, usually not constituting forward steps in organization, and
+often constituting steps backward. Evolution does not imply a latent
+tendency to improve everywhere in operation. There is no uniform ascent
+from lower to higher, but only an occasional production of a form,
+which, in virtue of greater fitness for more complex conditions, becomes
+capable of a longer life of a more varied kind. And, while such higher
+type begins to dominate over lower types, and to spread at their
+expense, the lower types survive in habitats or modes of life that are
+not usurped, or are thrust into inferior habitats or modes of life in
+which they retrogress.
+
+Mr. Spencer's examination of "The Principles of Sociology" has led him
+to the belief that what holds with organic types must hold also with
+types of society. Social evolution throughout the future, like social
+evolution throughout the past, must, while producing, step after step,
+higher societies, leave outstanding many lower. Varieties of men adapted
+here to inclement regions, there to regions that are barren, and
+elsewhere to regions unfitted, by ruggedness of surface or insalubrity,
+for supporting large populations, will, in all probability, continue to
+form small communities of simple structures. Moreover, during future
+competitions among the higher races, there will probably be left, in the
+less desirable regions, minor nations formed of men inferior to the
+highest; at the same time that the highest overspread all the great
+areas which are desirable in climate and fertility. But while the entire
+assemblage of societies thus fulfils the law of evolution by increase of
+heterogeneity,--while within each of them contrasts of structure, caused
+by differences of environments and entailed occupations, cause
+unlikenesses implying further heterogeneity, we may infer that the
+primary process of evolution--integration--which, up to the present
+time, has been displayed in the formation of larger and larger nations,
+will eventually reach a still higher stage, and bring yet greater
+benefits. As when small tribes were welded into great tribes, the head
+chief stopped inter-tribal warfare; as, when small feudal governments
+became subject to a king, feudal wars were prevented by him,--so, in
+time to come, a federation of the highest nations, exercising supreme
+authority (already foreshadowed by occasional agreements among "the
+Powers"), may, by forbidding wars between any of its constituent
+nations, put an end to the re-barbarization which is continually undoing
+civilization.
+
+When, eventually, this peace-maintaining federation has been formed, Mr.
+Spencer looks for effectual progress towards that equilibrium between
+constitution and conditions,--between inner faculties and outer
+requirements,--implied by the final stage of human evolution. Adaptation
+to the social state, now perpetually hindered by anti-social conflict,
+may then go on unhindered; and all the great societies, in other
+respects differing, may become similar in those cardinal traits which
+result from complete self-ownership of the unit, and from exercise over
+him of nothing more than passive influence by the aggregate. On the one
+hand, by continual repression of aggressive instincts and by continual
+exercise of feelings which prompt ministration to public welfare, and,
+on the other hand, by the lapse of restraints gradually becoming less
+necessary, there will be produced, in Mr. Spencer's forecast, a kind of
+man so constituted that, while fulfilling his own desires, he will
+fulfil also the social needs. Already, small groups of men, shielded by
+circumstances from external antagonisms, have been moulded into forms of
+moral nature so superior to our own that the account of their goodness
+almost savors of romance; and it is reasonable to infer that what has
+even now happened on a small scale may, under kindred conditions,
+ultimately happen on a large scale. Prolonged studies, showing among
+other things the need for certain qualifications above indicated, but
+also revealing facts like that just named, have not caused our author to
+recede from the belief expressed nearly fifty years ago that "the
+ultimate man will be one whose private requirements coincide with public
+ones. He will be that manner of man who, in spontaneously fulfilling his
+own nature, incidentally performs the functions of a social unit; and
+yet is only enabled so to fulfil his own nature by all others doing
+the like."
+
+Before taking leave of the "Principles of Sociology," we should caution
+the reader against a misconception that might seem, at first sight, to
+find some warrant in the following remark of a sympathetic reviewer:
+"Like Aristotle, he [Mr. Spencer] has had to delegate large portions of
+his work to be done for him by others." As our author has himself
+pointed out in "Facts and Comments," the reviewer's reference will be
+rightly interpreted by those who know that the work delegated by
+Aristotle to others was simply the _collection_ of materials for his
+Natural History, not the classification of those materials, much less
+the drawing of inductions from them. As not one reader in ten knows
+this, however, wrong impressions are likely to be made by the reviewer's
+remark. Mr. Spencer's name being especially associated with the
+"Synthetic Philosophy," the sentence quoted will suggest to many the
+thought that large portions of that work were written by deputy. This,
+of course, the reviewer did not mean to say. The work to which he
+referred is entitled "Descriptive Sociology, or groups of sociological
+facts, classified and arranged by Herbert Spencer, compiled and
+abstracted by David Duncan, Richard Scheppig and James Collier," eight
+parts of which have thus far appeared. Knowing that he should be unable
+to read all the works of travel and history containing the facts he
+should need when dealing with the science of society, Mr. Spencer
+engaged these gentlemen--first one, then two, then three--to read up for
+him and arrange the extracts they made in a manner prescribed. With much
+material he had himself accumulated in the course of many years, our
+author incorporated a much larger amount of material derived from the
+compilations just mentioned when writing the "Principles of Sociology."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+It is the two volumes entitled the "Principles of Ethics" to which we
+shall lastly invite attention. The six parts of which this work is
+composed were published in an irregular manner. Part I., presenting the
+data of ethics, was issued in 1879; Part IV., a treatise on "Justice,"
+in 1891; Parts II. and III., which set forth respectively the inductions
+of ethics and the ethics of individual life, and which, along with Part
+I., form the first volume, were issued in 1892; Parts V. and VI., which
+treat respectively of negative beneficence and positive beneficence,
+were issued in 1893, and, along with Part IV., constitute the second
+volume. With regard to the "Principles of Ethics," considered as a
+whole, it should be noted that the author was prompted to prepare the
+work, notwithstanding the ill health by which he was incessantly
+interrupted, by the conviction that the establishment of rules of
+conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral
+injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred
+origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Those who
+reject the current creed appear to assume that the controlling agency
+conferred by it may safely be thrown aside. On the other hand, those
+who defend the current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance
+it yields, no guidance can exist, divine commandments being, in their
+opinion, the only possible guides. Dissenting from both of these
+beliefs, Mr. Spencer has had for his primary purpose in the two volumes
+under review to show that, apart from any supposed supernatural basis,
+the principles of ethics have a natural basis. In these two volumes this
+natural basis is set forth, and its corollaries are elaborated. If the
+conclusions to which the general law of evolution introduces us are not
+in all cases as definite as might be wished, yet our author submits that
+they are more definite than those to which we are introduced by the
+current creed. Complete definiteness is not, of course, to be expected.
+Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man, living
+under conditions so complex as those presented by a society, evidently
+forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of specific statements
+throughout its entire range.
+
+The principal inductions drawn from the data collected in the first of
+these volumes may be set forth in a few sentences. Multitudinous proofs
+are brought forward of the fact that the ethical sentiment prevailing in
+different societies, and in the same society under different conditions,
+are sometimes diametrically opposed. In Europe and in the United States
+to have committed a murder disgraces for all time a man's memory, and
+disgraces for generations all who are related to him. By the Pathans,
+however, a contrary sentiment is displayed. One who had killed a Mellah
+(priest) and failed to find refuge from the avengers, said at length: "I
+can but be a martyr; I will go and kill a Sahib." He was hanged after
+shooting a sergeant, perfectly satisfied "at having expiated his
+offence." The prevailing ethical sentiment in England is such that a man
+who should allow himself to be taken possession of and made an
+unresisting slave would be regarded with scorn; but the people of
+Drekete, a slave-district of Fiji, "said it was their duty to become
+food and sacrifices for the chiefs," and that "they were honored by
+being considered adequate to such a noble task." Less extreme, though
+akin in nature, is the contrast between the feelings which the history
+of Englishmen has recorded within a few centuries. In Elizabeth's time,
+Sir John Hawkins initiated the slave-trade, and, in commemoration of the
+achievement, was allowed to put in his coat-of-arms: "a demi-moor
+proper, bound with a cord,"--the honorableness of his action being thus
+assumed by himself, and recognized by Queen and public. At the present
+day, on the other hand, the making slaves of men, called by Wesley "the
+sum of all villanies," is regarded in England with detestation; and for
+many years the British government maintained a fleet to suppress the
+slave-trade. Again, peoples who have emerged from the primitive
+family-and-clan organization, hold that one who is guilty of a crime
+must himself bear the punishment, and it is thought extreme injustice
+that the punishment should fall upon any one else. The remote ancestors
+of the English people thought and felt differently, as do still the
+Australians, whose "first great principle with regard to punishment is
+that all the relatives of a culprit, in the event of his not being
+found, are implicated in his guilt: the brothers of the criminal
+conceive themselves to be quite as guilty as he is." Then, too, among
+civilized peoples the individualities of women are so far recognized
+that the life and liberty of a wife are not supposed to be bound up with
+those of her husband; and she now, having obtained a right to exclusive
+possession of property, contends for complete independence, domestic and
+political. It is, or was, otherwise in Fiji. The wives of the Fijian
+chiefs consider it a sacred duty to suffer strangulation on the deaths
+of their husbands. A woman who had been rescued by an Englishman
+"escaped during the night, and, swimming across the river, and
+presenting herself to her own people, insisted upon the completion of
+the sacrifice which she had in a moment of weakness reluctantly
+consented to forego." Another foreign observer tells of a Fijian woman
+who loaded her rescuer "with abuse, and ever afterwards manifested the
+most deadly hatred towards him." In England and on the Continent the
+religious prohibition of theft and the legal punishment of it are joined
+with a strong social reprobation, so that the offence of a thief is
+never condoned. In Beloochistan, on the other hand, quite contrary ideas
+and feelings are current. There "a favorite couplet is to the effect
+that the Biloch who steals and murders, secures Heaven to seven
+generations of ancestors." In England and the United States reprobation
+of untruthfulness is strongly expressed, alike by the gentleman and the
+laborer. In many parts of the world it is not so. In Blantyre, for
+example, according to MacDonald, "to be called a liar is rather a
+compliment." Once more: English sentiment is such that the mere
+suspicion of incontinence on the part of a woman is enough to blight her
+life; but there are peoples whose sentiments entail no such effect, and,
+in some cases, a reverse effect is produced: "Unchastity is, with the
+Wetyaks, a virtue." It seems, then, that in respect of all the leading
+divisions of human conduct, different races of men, and the same races
+at different stages, entertain opposite beliefs, and display
+opposite feelings.
+
+In Mr. Spencer's opinion, the evidence here brought to a focus ought to
+dissipate once for all the belief in a moral sense, as commonly
+entertained. A long experience of mankind, however, prevents him from
+indulging in such an expectation. Among men at large, lifelong
+convictions are not to be destroyed either by conclusive arguments or
+multitudinous facts. Only to those who are not by creed or cherished
+theory committed to the hypothesis of a supernaturally created human
+species will the evidence above summed up prove that the human mind has
+no originally implanted conscience. Mr. Spencer himself at one time
+espoused the doctrine of the intuitive moralists, but it has gradually
+become clear to him that the qualifications required practically
+obliterate the doctrine as enunciated by them. It has become clear to
+him, in other words, that if among civilized folk the current belief is
+that a man who robs and does not repent will be eternally damned, while
+an accepted proverb among the Bilochs is, that "God will not favor a man
+who does not steal and rob," it is impossible to hold that men have in
+common an innate perception of right and wrong.
+
+At the same time, while the inductions drawn by Mr. Spencer from the
+data of ethics show that the moral-sense doctrine in its original form
+is not true, they also show that it adumbrates a truth, and a much
+higher truth. For the facts cited, chapter after chapter, unite in
+proving that the sentiments and ideas current in each society become
+adjusted to the kinds of activity predominating in it. A life of
+constant external enmity generates a code in which aggression, conquest,
+revenge, are inculcated, while peaceful occupations are reprobated.
+Conversely, a life of settled internal amity generates a code
+inculcating the virtues conducing to harmonious co-operation,--justice,
+honesty, veracity, regard for others' claims. The implication is that,
+if the life of internal amity continues unbroken from generation to
+generation, there must result not only the appropriate code, but the
+appropriate emotional nature,--a moral sense adapted to the moral
+requirements. Men so conditioned will acquire to the degree needful for
+complete guidance that innate conscience which the intuitive moralists
+erroneously supposed to be possessed by mankind at large. There needs
+but a continuance of absolute peace externally and a rigorous insistence
+on non-aggression internally, to insure the moulding of men into a form
+naturally characterized by all the virtues. This general induction is
+re-enforced by especial induction. Now as displaying this high trait of
+nature, now as displaying that, Mr. Spencer has instanced various
+uncivilized peoples who, inferior to us in other respects, are morally
+superior to us. He has also pointed out that such peoples are, one and
+all, free from inter-tribal antagonisms. The peoples showing this
+connection between external and internal peacefulness on the one hand,
+and superior morality on the other, are of various races. In the Indian
+Hills are found some who are by origin Mongolian, Kelarian, Dravidian;
+in the forests of Malacca, Burma, and in secluded parts of China exist
+such tribes of yet other bloods; in the East Indian archipelago are
+some belonging to the Papuan stock; in Japan there are the amiable
+Ainos, who have no traditions of internecine strife; and in North Mexico
+exists yet another such people unrelated to the rest, the Pueblos. Our
+author holds that no more conclusive proof could be wished than that
+supplied by these isolated groups of men, who, widely remote in locality
+and differing in race, are alike in the two respects that circumstances
+have long exempted them from war, and that they are now organically
+good. May we not reasonably infer, asks Mr. Spencer, in conclusion, that
+the state reached by these small, uncultured tribes may be reached by
+the great cultured nations, when the life of internal amity shall be
+unqualified by the life of external enmity?
+
+We bring to an end our review of the "Synthetic Philosophy" by pointing
+out that the ethical doctrine constituting the culmination of the system
+which is set forth in the "Principles of Ethics" is fundamentally a
+corrected and elaborated version of the doctrine propounded in "Social
+Statics" issued as long ago as 1850. The correspondence between the two
+works is shown not only by the coincidence of their constructive
+divisions, but also by the agreement of their cardinal ideas. As in the
+one, so in the other, Man, in common with lower creatures, is held to be
+capable of indefinite change by adaptation to conditions. In both he is
+regarded as undergoing transformation from a nature appropriate to his
+aboriginal wild life, to a nature appropriate to a settled civilized
+life; and in both this transformation is described as a moulding into a
+form fitted for harmonious co-operation. In both works, too, this
+moulding is said to be effected by the repression of certain primitive
+traits no longer needed, and the development of needful traits. As in
+the first work, so in this last, the great factor in the progressive
+modification is shown to be sympathy. It was contended in "Social
+Statics," as it is contended in the "Principles of Ethics," that
+harmonious social co-operation implies that limitation of individual
+freedom which results from sympathetic regard for the freedoms of
+others; and that the law of equal freedom is the law in conformity to
+which equitable individual conduct and equitable social arrangements
+co-exist. Mr. Spencer's theory in 1850 was, as his theory still is, that
+the mental products of Sympathy which constitute what is called "the
+moral sense," arise as fast as men are disciplined into social life; and
+that along with them arise intellectual perceptions of right human
+relations, which become clearer as the form of social life becomes
+better. Further, in the earlier work it was inferred, as it is inferred
+in the latest, that there is being effected a conciliation of individual
+natures with social requirements; so that there will eventually be
+achieved the greatest individuation, along with the greatest mutual
+dependence,--an equilibrium of such kind that each, in fulfilling the
+wants of his own life, will aid in fulfilling the wants of all other
+lives. We observe, finally, that, in the first work, there were drawn
+essentially the same corollaries respecting the rights of individuals
+and their relations to the State that are drawn in the "Principles
+of Ethics."
+
+A word may be said in conclusion about the difference between the
+relation of Mr. Spencer on the one hand and Darwin on the other to the
+thought of the Nineteenth Century. The fact is not to be lost sight of
+that the principles of the Evolutionary, or, as Mr. Spencer prefers to
+term it, the Synthetic, philosophy were formulated before the
+publication of the "Origin of Species." What the ultimately general
+acceptance of the theory propounded in Darwin's work did for Mr. Spencer
+was precisely this: it greatly strengthened the biological evidence for
+the evolutionary hypothesis. That hypothesis was upheld, however, by
+evidence drawn not merely from biology, but from many other sources.
+Moreover, while the Darwinian theory of natural selection, supplemented
+as it was by the adoption of the Lamarkian factors,--the effect of use
+and disuse and the assumed transmissibility of acquired
+character,--merely attempted to explain the mode in which the changes in
+organic life have taken place upon the earth, the evolutionary
+hypothesis put forth by Mr. Spencer professed to be applicable to the
+whole sphere of the knowable. It is further to be borne in mind that Mr.
+Spencer has devoted a large part of his life to tracing in detail the
+applications of his fundamental principles to social, political,
+religious, and ethical phenomena. Darwin, on the other hand, strictly
+confined himself to the biological field, and left to disciples the task
+of indicating the bearing of the Darwinian theory upon sociology,
+theology, and morals.
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+The Complete Works of Herbert Spencer (The Synthetic Philosophy).
+
+Also, "Facts and Comments," by Herbert Spencer (Appleton's).
+
+John Fiske's "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy."
+
+F.H. Collins's "Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy."
+
+A.D. White's "Herbert Spencer: The Completion of the Synthetic
+Philosophy."
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN.
+
+
+1809-1882;
+
+HIS PLACE IN MODERN SCIENCE.
+
+BY MAYO W. HAZELTINE.
+
+
+There is no doubt that, by the judgment of a large majority of
+scientists, the place of pre-eminence in the history of science during
+the nineteenth century should be assigned to Charles Robert Darwin. The
+theory associated with his name deserves to be called epoch-making. The
+Darwinian hypothesis, indeed, should not be confounded with the cosmic
+theory of Evolution which was formulated earlier and independently by
+Herbert Spencer, and supported by many arguments drawn from sources
+outside the field of natural history. The specific merit of the
+Darwinian hypothesis is that it furnishes a rational and almost
+universally accepted explanation of the mode in which changes have taken
+place in the development of organic life upon the earth. With the
+possible cosmical applications of his theory Darwin did not concern
+himself, though the bearing of his hypothesis upon wider problems was at
+once discerned, and has been set forth by Spencer and others. Before
+stating, however, the conclusions at which Darwin arrived in his "Origin
+of Species," the "Descent of Man," and other writings, and before
+indicating the extent to which these conclusions have been adopted, we
+should say a word about his interesting, amiable, and exemplary
+personality. Concerning his private life, there is no lack of
+information. He himself wrote an autobiographical sketch which has been
+amplified by his son Francis Darwin, and supplemented with numerous
+extracts from his correspondence.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Charles Robert Darwin was born at Shrewsbury, Feb. 12, 1809. His mother
+was a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the well-known Staffordshire potter,
+and his father, Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, was a son of Erasmus Darwin,
+celebrated in the eighteenth century as a physician, a naturalist, and a
+poet. It is a curious fact that in some of his speculations Erasmus
+Darwin anticipated the views touching the evolution of organic life
+subsequently announced by Lamarck, and ultimately incorporated by
+Charles Darwin in the theory that bears his name. The only taste kindred
+to natural history which Dr. Darwin possessed in common with his father
+and his son was a love of plants. The garden of his house in Shrewsbury,
+where Charles Darwin spent his boyhood, was filled with ornamental
+trees and shrubs, as well as fruit-trees.
+
+When Charles Darwin was about eight years old, he was sent to a
+day-school, and it seems that even at this time his taste for natural
+history, and especially for collecting shells and minerals, was well
+developed. In the summer of 1818 he entered Dr. Butler's great school in
+Shrewsbury, well known to the amateur makers of Latin verse by the
+volume entitled "Sabrinae Corolla." He expressed the opinion in later
+life that nothing could have been worse for the development of his mind
+than this school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being
+taught except a little ancient biography and history. During his whole
+life he was singularly incapable of mastering any language. With respect
+to science, he continued collecting minerals with much zeal, and after
+reading White's "Selborne" he took much pleasure in watching the habits
+of birds. Towards the close of his school life he became deeply
+interested in chemistry, and was allowed to assist his elder brother in
+some laboratory experiments. In October, 1825, he proceeded to Edinburgh
+University, where he stayed for two years. He found the lectures
+intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry. Curiously
+enough, while walking one day with a fellow-undergraduate, the latter
+burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his views on evolution. So
+far as Darwin could afterwards judge, no impression was made upon his
+own mind. He had previously read his grandfather's "Zoönomia," in which
+similar views had been propounded, but no discernible effect had been
+produced upon him. Nevertheless, it is probable enough that the hearing
+rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favored
+his upholding them under a different form in the "Origin of Species."
+
+While at Edinburgh, Darwin was a member of the Plinian Society, and read
+a couple of papers on some observations in natural history. After two
+sessions had been spent at Edinburgh, Darwin's father perceived that the
+young man did not like the thought of being a physician, and proposed
+that he should become a clergyman. In pursuance of this proposal, he
+went to the University of Cambridge in 1828, and three years later took
+a B.A. degree. In his autobiography the opinion is expressed that at
+Cambridge his time was wasted. It was there, however, that he became
+intimately acquainted with Professor Henslow, a man of remarkable
+acquirements in botany, entomology, chemistry, mineralogy, and geology.
+During his last year at Cambridge Darwin read with care and interest
+Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," and Sir John Herschel's "Introduction
+to the Study of Natural Philosophy." These books influenced him
+profoundly, arousing in him a burning desire to make even the most
+humble contribution to the structure of natural science. At Henslow's
+suggestion he began the study of biology, and in 1831 accompanied
+Professor Sedgwick in the latter's investigations amongst the older
+rocks in North Wales.
+
+It was Professor Henslow who secured for young Darwin the appointment of
+naturalist to the voyage of the "Beagle." This voyage lasted from Dec.
+27, 1831, to Oct. 2, 1836. The incidents of this voyage will be found
+set forth in Darwin's "Public Journeys." The observations made by him in
+geology, natural history, and botany gave him a place of considerable
+distinction among scientific men. In 1844 he published a series of
+observations on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of the
+"Beagle," and two years later "Geological Observations on South
+America." These two books, together with a volume entitled "Coral
+Reefs," required four and a half years' steady work. In October, 1846,
+he began the studies embodied in "Cirripedia" (barnacles). The outcome
+of these studies was published in two thick volumes. The time came when
+Darwin doubted whether the work was worth the consumption of the time
+employed, but probably it proved of use to him when he had to discuss in
+the "Origin of Species" the principles of a natural classification. From
+September, 1854, and during the four ensuing years, Darwin devoted
+himself to observing and experimenting in relation to the transmutation
+of species, and in arranging a huge pile of notes upon the subject. As
+early as October, 1838, it had occurred to him as probable, or at least
+possible, that amid the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on
+in the animal world, favorable variations would tend to be preserved,
+and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation
+of new species.
+
+It was not until June, 1842, however, that Darwin allowed himself the
+satisfaction of writing a very brief abstract of his theory in
+thirty-five pages. This was enlarged two years later into one of 230
+pages. Early in 1856, Sir Charles Lyell, the well-known geologist,
+advised him to write out his views upon the subject fully, and Darwin
+began to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive as that which
+was afterwards followed in his "Origin of Species." He got through about
+half the work on this scale. His plans were overthrown, owing to the
+curious circumstance that, in the summer of 1858, Mr. Alfred E. Wallace,
+who was then in the Malay archipelago, sent him an essay "On the
+Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type." It
+turned out upon perusal that this essay contained exactly the same
+theory as that which Darwin was engaged in elaborating. Mr. Wallace
+expressed the wish that, if Darwin thought well of the essay, he should
+send it to Lyell. It was Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker who
+insisted that Darwin should allow an abstract from his manuscript,
+together with a letter to Prof. Asa Gray, dated Sept. 5, 1857, to be
+published at the same time with Wallace's essay. Darwin was unwilling to
+take this course, being then unacquainted with Mr. Wallace's generous
+disposition. As a matter of fact, the joint productions excited very
+little attention, and the only published notice of them asserted that
+what was new in them was false, and that what was true was old. From the
+indifference evinced to the papers which first propounded the theory of
+natural selection, Darwin drew the inference that it is necessary for
+any new view to be explained at considerable length in order to obtain
+the public ear.
+
+In September, 1858, Darwin, at the earnest advice of Lyell and Hooker,
+set to work to prepare a volume on the transmutation of species. The
+book cost him more than thirteen months' hard labor. It was published in
+November, 1859, under the title of "Origin of Species." This, which
+Darwin justly regarded as the chief work of his life, was from the first
+highly successful. The first edition was sold on the day of publication,
+and the book was presently translated into almost every European tongue.
+Darwin himself attributed the success of the "Origin" in large part to
+his having previously written two condensed sketches, and to his having
+finally made an abstract of a much larger manuscript, which itself was
+an abstract. By this winnowing process he had been enabled to select the
+more striking facts and conclusions. As to the current assertion that
+the "Origin" succeeded because the subject was in the air, or because
+men's minds were prepared for it, Darwin was disposed to doubt whether
+this was strictly true. In previous years he had occasionally sounded
+not a few naturalists, and had never come across a single one who seemed
+to doubt about the permanence of species. Probably men's minds were
+prepared in this sense, that innumerable well-verified facts were stored
+away in the memories of naturalists, ready to take their proper places
+as soon as any theory which would account for them should be strongly
+supported. Darwin himself thought that he gained much by a delay in
+publishing, from about 1839, when the "Darwinian" theory was clearly
+conceived, to 1859; and that he lost nothing, because he cared very
+little whether men attributed most originality to him or to Wallace.
+
+Darwin's "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" was begun
+in 1860, but was not published till 1868. The book was a big one, and
+cost him four years and two months' hard labor. It gives in the first
+volume all his personal observations, and an immense number of facts,
+collected from various sources, about domestic productions, animal and
+vegetable. In the second volume the causes and laws of variation,
+inheritance, etc., are discussed. Towards the end of the work is
+propounded the hypothesis of Pangenesis, which has been generally
+rejected, and which the author himself looked upon as unverified,
+although by it a remarkable number of isolated facts could be connected
+together and rendered intelligible.
+
+The "Descent of Man" was published in February, 1871. Touching this
+work, Darwin has told us that, as soon as he had become (in 1837 or
+1838) convinced that species were mutable productions, he could not
+avoid the belief that man must come under the same law. Accordingly, he
+collected notes on the subject for his own satisfaction, and not for a
+long time with any intention of publishing. In the "Origin of Species,"
+the derivation of any particular species is never discussed; but in
+order that no honorable man should accuse him of concealing his views,
+Darwin had thought it best to add that by that work, "light would be
+thrown on the origin of man and his history." It would have impeded the
+acceptance of the theory of natural selection if Darwin had paraded,
+without giving any evidence, his conviction with respect to man's
+origin. When he found, however, that many naturalists accepted his
+doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to him advisable to work
+up such notes as he possessed, and to publish a special treatise on the
+origin of man. He was the more glad to do so, as it gave him an
+opportunity of discussing at length sexual selection, a subject which
+had always interested him.
+
+Darwin's book on the "Expression of Emotion in Men and Animals" was
+published in the autumn of 1872. This had been intended to form a
+chapter on the subject in the "Descent of Man," but as soon as Darwin
+began to put his notes together he saw that it would require a separate
+treatise. In July, 1875, appeared the book on "Insectivorous Plants."
+The fact that a plant should secrete, when properly excited, a fluid
+containing an acid and ferment closely analogous to the digestive fluid
+of an animal, was certainly a remarkable discovery. In the autumn of
+1876 appeared "The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization," a work in
+which are described the endless and wonderful contrivances for the
+transportation of pollen from one plant to another of the same species.
+About the same time was brought out an enlarged edition of the
+"Fertilization of Orchids," originally published in 1862. Among the
+minor works issued during the later years of Darwin's life may be
+mentioned particularly the little book on "The Formation of Vegetable
+Mould through the Action of Worms." This was the outgrowth of a short
+paper read before the Geological Society more than fourteen
+years before.
+
+In order to appreciate the enormous amount of research accomplished by
+Charles Darwin, it is needful to keep in mind the conditions of
+ill-health under which almost continually he worked. For nearly forty
+years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men. His life was
+one long struggle against the weariness and drain of sickness. During
+his last ten years there were signs of amendment in several particulars,
+but a loss of physical vigor was apparent. Writing to a friend in 1881,
+he complained that he no longer had the heart or strength to begin any
+prolonged investigations. In February and March, 1882, he frequently
+experienced attacks of pain in the region of the heart, attended with
+irregularity of the pulse. On April 18 he fainted, and was brought back
+to consciousness with great difficulty. He seemed to recognize the
+approach of death, and said, "I am not the least afraid to die." On the
+afternoon of Wednesday, April 19, he passed away. On April 26 he was
+interred in Westminster Abbey. The funeral was attended by
+representatives of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Russia, and by
+delegates of the universities and learned societies of which he had been
+a member. Among the pall-bearers were Sir John Lubbock, Sir Joseph
+Hooker, Professor Huxley, Mr. A.R. Wallace, Mr. James Russell Lowell,
+the Duke of Argyll, and the Duke of Devonshire. The grave is
+appropriately placed in the north aisle of the nave, only a few feet
+from the last resting-place of Sir Isaac Newton.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+An outline of Darwin's personality would not be complete without a
+glance at some of his mental characteristics, and at his attitude toward
+religion. Of his intellectual powers, he himself speaks with
+extraordinary modesty in his autobiography. He points out that he always
+experienced much difficulty in expressing himself clearly and concisely,
+but he opines that this very difficulty may have had the compensating
+advantage of forcing him to think long and intently about every
+sentence, and thus enabling him to detect errors in reasoning and in his
+own observations, or in those of others. He disclaimed the possession of
+any great quickness of apprehension or wit, such as distinguished
+Huxley. He protested, also, that his power to follow a long and purely
+abstract train of thought was very limited, for which reason he felt
+certain that he never could have succeeded with metaphysics or
+mathematics. His memory, too, he described as extensive, but hazy. So
+poor in one sense was it that he never could remember for more than a
+few days a single date or a line of poetry. On the other hand, he did
+not accept as well founded the charge made by some of his critics that,
+while he was a good observer, he had no power of reasoning. This, he
+thought, could not be true, because the "Origin of Species" is one long
+argument from the beginning to the end, and has convinced many able
+men. No one, he submits, could have written it without possessing some
+power of reasoning. He was willing to assert that "I have a fair share
+of invention, and of common sense or judgment, such as every fairly
+successful lawyer or doctor must have, but not, I believe, in any higher
+degree." He adds humbly that perhaps he was "superior to the common run
+of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in
+observing them carefully."
+
+Writing in the last year of his life, he expressed the opinion that in
+two or three respects his mind had changed during the preceding twenty
+or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty or beyond it poetry of many
+kinds gave him great pleasure. Formerly, too, pictures had given him
+considerable, and music very great, delight. In 1881, however, he said:
+"Now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry; I have
+tried lately to read Shakspeare, and found it so intolerably dull that
+it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music.
+Music generally sets me thinking too energetically of what I have been
+at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine
+scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it
+formerly did." Darwin was convinced that the loss of these tastes was
+not only a loss of happiness, but might possibly be injurious to the
+intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the
+emotional side of one's nature. So far as he could judge, his mind had
+become in his later years a kind of machine for grinding general laws
+out of large collections of facts, and that atrophy had taken place in
+that part of the brain on which the higher aesthetic tastes depend.
+Curiously enough, however, he retained his relish for novels, and for
+books on history, biography, and travels.
+
+It is well known that Darwin was extremely reticent with regard to his
+religious views. He believed that a man's religion was essentially a
+private matter. Repeated attempts were made to draw him out upon the
+subject, and some of these were partially successful. Writing to a Dutch
+student in 1873, he said: "I may say that the impossibility of
+conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious
+selves, arose through chance seems to me the chief argument for the
+existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value I have
+never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a First Cause,
+the mind still craves to know whence it came and how it arose. Nor can I
+overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the
+world. I am also induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of
+the many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again I see
+how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to me that
+the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do
+his duty." To questions put by a German student in 1879, he replied:
+"Science has nothing to do with Christ, except in so far as the habit of
+scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For
+myself I do not believe that there ever has been any revelation. As for
+a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting
+vague probabilities." In the same year he told another correspondent:
+"In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the
+sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and
+more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would
+be the more correct description of my state of mind." His latest view is
+indicated in a letter dated July 3, 1881. Here he expressed the "inward
+conviction that the universe is not the result of chance." He adds,
+however: "But, then, with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the
+convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the
+lower animals, are of any value, or at all trustworthy. Would any one
+trust the convictions in a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions
+in such a mind?" The Duke of Argyll has recorded the few words on the
+subject spoken by Darwin in the last year of his life. The Duke said
+that it was impossible to look at the wonderful contrivances for
+certain purposes in nature, and fail to recognize that they were the
+effect and the expression of mind. Darwin looked at the Duke very hard,
+and said, "Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but
+at other times"--here he shook his head vaguely--"it seems to go away."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+We pass to a consideration of Darwin's masterworks, the "Origin of
+Species," the "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," and
+the "Descent of Man." Before indicating the conclusions reached in the
+first of these works, we should point out to what extent Darwin had been
+preceded by dissenters from the belief once almost universally
+entertained by biologists that species were independently created, and,
+once created, were immutable. Lamarck was the first naturalist whose
+divergent views upon the subject excited much attention. In writings
+published at various dates from 1801 to 1815, he upheld the doctrine
+that all species, including man, are descended from other species. He
+pronounced it probable that all changes in the organic, as well as in
+the inorganic world, were the result of law, and not of miraculous
+interposition. He seems to have been led to his opinion that the change
+of species had been gradual by the difficulty experienced in
+distinguishing species from varieties by the almost perfect gradation of
+forms in certain groups, and by the analogy of domestic productions.
+With respect to the means of modification, he attributed something to
+the direct action of the physical conditions of life, something to the
+crossing of already existing forms, and much to use and disuse, or, in
+other words, to the effect of habit. Finally, he held that characters
+acquired by an existing individual might be transmitted to its
+offspring.
+
+In 1813 Dr. W.C. Wells read before the Royal Society "An Account of a
+White Female, Part of whose Skin resembles that of a Negro." In this
+paper the author distinctly recognized the principle of natural
+selection, but applied it only to the races of man, and in man only to
+certain characters. After remarking that negroes and mulattoes enjoy an
+immunity from certain tropical diseases, he observed, first, that all
+animals tend to vary in some degree, and, secondly, that
+agriculturalists improve their domesticated animals by selection. He
+added that what is done in the latter case by art seems to be done with
+equal efficacy, though more slowly, by nature in the formation of
+varieties of mankind fitted for the countries which they inhabit. Again
+in 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published a work on "Naval Timber and
+Arboriculture," in which he put forth precisely the same view
+concerning the origin of species as that propounded by Mr. Wallace and
+by Darwin. Unfortunately for himself, the view was cursorily suggested
+in scattered passages of an appendix to a work on a different subject,
+so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew attention
+to it in 1860, after the publication of the "Origin of Species." We
+observe finally that Mr. Herbert Spencer, in an essay published in 1852,
+and republished six years later, contrasted the theories of the creation
+and the development of organic beings. He argued from the analogy of
+domestic productions, from the changes which the embryos of many species
+undergo, from the difficulty of distinguishing species and varieties,
+and from the principle of general gradation, that species have been
+modified; and he attributed the modification to the change of
+circumstances.
+
+The two volumes comprising the "Origin of Species" constitute, as the
+author said, one long argument. It is, of course, impossible in the
+space at our command to recapitulate in detail even the leading facts
+and inferences which are brought forward to prove that species have been
+modified during a long course of descent. We must confine ourselves to a
+succinct statement of the author's general conclusions. What he
+undertakes to prove is that the modification of species during a long
+course of descent has been effected chiefly through the natural
+selection of numerous successive slight favorable variations, aided in
+an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of
+parts; and in an unimportant manner,--that is, in relation to adaptive
+structures, whether past or present, by the direct action of external
+conditions, and by variations which seem to us, in our ignorance, to
+arise spontaneously. It should be observed that Darwin does not
+attribute the modification exclusively to natural selection. What he
+asserts is: "I am convinced that natural selection has been the main,
+but not the exclusive, means of modification." He submits that a false
+theory would hardly explain in so satisfactory a manner as does the
+theory of natural selection the several large classes of facts
+marshalled in the two volumes now under review. If it be objected that
+this is an unsafe method of arguing, Darwin rejoins that it is a method
+usual in judging of the common events of life, and has often been used
+by the greatest natural philosophers. The undulatory theory of light,
+for instance, has thus been arrived at; and the belief in the revolution
+of the earth on its own axis was, until lately, supported by scarcely
+any direct evidence. It is no valid objection to the Darwinian theory of
+the origin of species that science as yet throws no light on the far
+higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Neither has any one
+explained what is the essence of the attraction of gravity, though
+nobody now objects to following out the results consequent on this
+unknown element of attraction.
+
+Why, it may be asked, did nearly all the most eminent naturalists and
+geologists until recently decline to believe in the mutability of
+species? Darwin replies that the belief that species were immutable
+productions was almost unavoidable as long as the history of the world
+was thought to be of short duration. Even now that we have acquired some
+idea of the lapse of time, men are too apt to assume without proof that
+the geological record is so perfect that it would have afforded plain
+evidence of the mutation of species if they had really undergone
+mutation. The chief cause, however, of the once-prevalent unwillingness
+to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species
+is the fact that men are slow to admit great changes of which they do
+not see the steps. The difficulty is the same which was experienced by
+many geologists when Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland
+cliffs had been formed and great valleys excavated, not by catastrophes,
+but by the slow-moving agencies which we see still at work. The human
+mind cannot grasp the full meaning of the term of even a million years;
+cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations
+accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations.
+
+When the first edition of the "Origin of Species" was published in 1859,
+Darwin wrote that he by no means expected to convince experienced
+naturalists whose minds were stocked with a multitude of facts, all
+regarded during a long course of years from a point of view directly
+opposite to his. He looked forward with confidence, however, to the
+future, to young and rising naturalists, who would be able to view both
+sides of the question with impartiality. He predicted that, when the
+conclusions reached by him and by Mr. Wallace concerning the origin of
+species should be generally accepted, there would be a considerable
+revolution in natural history. Naturalists, for instance, would be
+forced to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and
+well-marked varieties is that the latter are known or believed to be
+connected at the present day by intermediate gradations, whereas species
+were formerly, though they are not now, thus connected. It might thus
+come to pass that forms generally acknowledged in 1859 to be merely
+varieties, would thereafter be thought worthy of specific names; in
+which case scientific and common language would come into accordance. In
+short, Darwin looked forward to the time when species would have to be
+treated in the same manner as genera are treated by those naturalists
+who admit that genera are merely artificial combinations made for
+convenience.
+
+Darwin also foresaw that when his theory of the origin of species should
+be adopted, other and more general departments of natural history would
+rise greatly in interest. The terms used by naturalists--such terms as
+affinity, relationship, community of type, paternity, morphology,
+adaptive characters, rudimentary and abortive organs, etc.--would cease
+to be metaphorical, and would have a plain signification. "When," he
+wrote, "we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a
+ship, as something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every
+production of nature as one which has had a long history; when we
+contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of
+many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, in the same way as any
+great mechanical invention is the summing up of the labor, the
+experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when
+we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting--I speak from
+experience--does the study of natural history become." Once more: "When
+we can feel assured that all the individuals of the same species, and
+all the closely allied species of most genera, have within a not very
+remote period descended from one parent, and have migrated from some one
+birthplace; and when we better know the many means of migration, then,
+by the light which geology now throws, and will continue to throw, on
+former changes of climate and of the level of the land, we shall surely
+be enabled to trace in an admirable manner the former migrations of the
+inhabitants of the whole world."
+
+When Darwin published the "Origin of Species," he was aware that
+theologians and philosophers seemed to be fully satisfied with the view
+that each species had been independently created, and was immutable. To
+his own mind, however, it accorded better with what was known of the
+laws impressed on matter by the Creator that the production and
+extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have
+been due to secondary causes like those determining the birth and death
+of the individual. "When I view," he said, "all beings not as special
+creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived
+long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they
+seem to me to become ennobled." And again: "As all the living forms of
+life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the
+Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by
+generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has
+desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a
+secure future of great length. And as natural selection works slowly by
+and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will
+tend to progress towards perfection."
+
+For his own part, Darwin could see no good reason why the views
+propounded in the two volumes comprising the "Origin of Species" should
+shock the religious feelings of any one. Touching the likelihood of
+such a result, he reassured himself by recalling the fact that the
+greatest discovery ever made by man--namely, the law of the attraction
+of gravitation--was attacked by Leibnitz "as subversive of natural, and
+inferentially, of revealed, religion." Darwin was confident that, if any
+such impressions were made by his theory, they would prove but
+transient, and that ultimately men would come to see that it is just as
+noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few
+original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms
+as to believe that it required the fresh act of creation to supply the
+voids caused by the action of His laws.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It was, as we have said, in 1868 that Darwin published the two volumes
+collectively entitled "Variation of Animals and Plants under
+Domestication." It is the second and largely corrected edition brought
+out in 1875 which we have under our eye. It is the outcome of the views
+maintained by the author in this work and elsewhere that not only the
+various domestic races but the most distinct genera and orders within
+the same great class--for instance, mammals, birds, reptiles, and
+fishes--are all the descendants of one common progenitor, and the whole
+vast amount of difference between these forms has primarily arisen from
+simple variability. Darwin recognized that he who for the first time
+should consider the subject under this point of view would be struck
+dumb with amazement. He submits, however, that the amazement ought to be
+lessened when we reflect that beings almost infinite in number during an
+almost infinite lapse of time have often had their whole organization
+rendered in some degree plastic, and that each slight modification of
+structure which was in any way beneficial under excessively complex
+conditions of life has been preserved, whilst each which was in any way
+injurious has been rigorously destroyed. The long-continued accumulation
+of beneficial variations will infallibly have led to structures as
+diversified, as beautifully adapted for various purposes, and as
+excellently co-ordinated as we see in the animals and plants around us.
+Hence Darwin regards selection as the paramount power, whether applied
+by man to the formation of domestic beings or by nature to the
+production of species. Employing a favorite metaphor, he said: "If an
+architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice without the use of
+cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice
+wedge-form stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and
+flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as
+the paramount power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable
+to the architect, bear to the edifice built by him the same relation
+which the fluctuating variations of organic beings bear to the varied
+and admirable structures ultimately acquired by their modified
+descendants."
+
+Some critics of the Darwinian theory of the origin of species have
+declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise
+cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. Darwin rejoins
+that if it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of
+building how the edifice had been raised, stone upon stone, and why
+wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat stones for the
+roof, etc.; and if the use of each part and of the whole building were
+pointed out,--it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had
+been made clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each
+fragment could not be told. This, in Darwin's opinion, is a nearly
+parallel case, with the objection that selection explains nothing
+because we know not the cause of each individual difference in the
+structure of each being. The shape of the fragments of stone at the base
+of the hypothetical precipice may be called accidental, but the term is
+not strictly applicable; for the shape of each depends on a long
+sequence of events, all obeying natural laws; on the nature of the rock,
+on the lines of deposition or cleavage, on the form of the mountain,
+which depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and, lastly,
+on the storm or earthquake which throws down the fragments.
+
+In regard to the use, however, to which the fragments may be put, their
+shape may be strictly said to be accidental. Here Darwin acknowledged
+that we are brought face to face with a great difficulty in alluding to
+which he felt that he was travelling beyond his proper province. "An
+omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results
+from the laws imposed by Him. But can it be reasonably maintained that
+the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary
+sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes, so
+that the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have
+determined the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the
+builder's sake, can it be maintained with any greater probability that
+He specially ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the
+innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants,--many of
+these variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far
+more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that
+the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the
+fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fan-tail breeds? Did He
+cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a
+breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity with jaws fitted to pin
+down the bull for man's brutal sport?"
+
+It is obvious, however, that if we give up the principle in one
+case,--if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were
+intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that
+perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed,--no shadow of
+reason can be assigned for the belief that variations similar in nature
+and the result of the same general laws which have been the groundwork
+through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted
+animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially
+guided. Darwin, therefore, was unable to follow the distinguished
+botanist, Prof. Asa Gray, in his belief that "variation has been led
+along certain beneficial lines," like a stream "along definite and
+useful lines of irrigation." Darwin's conclusion was that, if we assume
+that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time
+preordained, then that plasticity of organization which leads to many
+injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of
+reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as
+a consequence, to a natural selection or survival of the fittest, must
+appear to us superfluous laws of nature.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Next to the "Origin of Species," the volume which sets forth Darwin's
+theory of the "Descent of Man" naturally excited the most widespread
+attention. This book, which took the author three years to write, was
+published in 1871, a second and carefully revised edition appearing
+three years later. The data brought together occupy more than six
+hundred pages. The conclusions reached may be summed up in a few
+paragraphs. The principal induction from the evidence is that man is
+descended from some less highly organized form. It was Darwin's
+conviction that the grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never
+be shaken, for the close similarity between man and the lower animals in
+embryonic development, as well as in innumerable points of structure and
+constitution, both of high and of the most trifling importance,--the
+rudiments which he retains and the abnormal reversions to which he is
+occasionally liable,--are facts which cannot be disputed. Viewed in the
+light of our knowledge of the whole organic world, their meaning is
+unmistakable. The great principle of evolution stands out clear and firm
+when these groups of facts are considered in connection with others,
+such as the mutual affinities of the members of the same group, their
+geographical distribution in past and present times, and their
+geological succession. It is pronounced incredible that all these facts
+should speak falsely. He who is not content to look like a savage at the
+phenomena of nature as disconnected cannot any longer believe that man
+is the product of a separate act of creation. He will be forced to admit
+that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance,
+of a dog,--the construction of his skull, limbs, and whole frame on the
+same plan with that of other mammals, independently of the uses to which
+the parts may be put; the occasional reappearance of various structures,
+for instance, of several muscles which man does not normally possess,
+but which are common to the Quadrumana, and a crowd of analogous
+facts,--all point in the plainest manner to the conclusion that man is
+the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor.
+
+Darwin recognized that the high standard of our intellectual powers and
+moral disposition constitutes the greatest difficulty which presents
+itself after we have been driven by the mass of biological evidence to
+accept his conclusion as to the origin of man. Touching this point, he
+observes: "Every one who admits the principle of evolution must see that
+the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with
+those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement.
+Thus the interval between the mental powers of one of the higher apes
+and of a fish, or between those of an ant and scale-insect, is immense;
+yet their development does not offer any special difficulty, for with
+our domesticated animals the mental faculties are certainly variable,
+and the variations are inherited. No one doubts that their mental
+faculties are of the utmost importance to animals in a state of nature.
+Therefore the conditions are favorable for their development through
+natural selection. The same conclusion may be extended to man; the
+intellect must have been all-important to him, even at a very remote
+period, as enabling him to invent and use language, to make weapons,
+tools, traps, etc., whereby, with the aid of his social habits, he long
+ago became the most dominant of all living creatures."
+
+It is further pointed out that a great stride in the development of
+man's intellect must have followed as soon as the half-art and
+half-instinct of language came into use; for the continued use of
+language must have reacted on the brain, and produced an inherited
+effect, and this again will have reacted on the improvement of language.
+The largeness of the brain in man relatively to his body, compared with
+the size of that organ in the lower animals, is attributable in chief
+part to the early use of some simple form of language, that engine which
+affixes signs to all sorts of objects and qualities, and excites trains
+of thought which would never arise from the mere impression of the
+senses, or, if they did arise, could not be followed out. The higher
+intellectual powers of man, such as those of ratiocination, abstraction,
+self-consciousness, etc., probably follow from the continued improvement
+and exercise of the other mental faculties.
+
+How man's moral qualities came to be developed is an interesting problem
+which is considered by Darwin at some length. He holds that their
+foundation lies in the social instincts under which term are included
+family ties. These instincts are highly complex, and, in the case of the
+lower animals, give special tendencies toward certain definite actions.
+But the more important elements are love and the distinct emotion of
+sympathy. Animals endowed with the social instincts take pleasure in one
+another's company, warn one another of danger, defend and aid one
+another in many ways. These instincts do not extend to all the
+individuals of the species, but only to those of the same community. As,
+however, they are highly beneficial to the species, they have in all
+probability been acquired through natural selection. In Darwin's
+judgment the moral nature of man has reached its present standard partly
+through the advancement of his reasoning powers, and consequently, of a
+just public opinion, but especially from his sympathies having been
+rendered more tender and widely diffused through the effects of habit,
+example, instruction, and reflection. It is pronounced not improbable
+that, after long practice, virtuous tendencies may be inherited.
+
+Let us look a little more closely at the matter, for the difficulty of
+explaining morality forms one of the greatest obstacles to the
+acceptance of the Darwinian account of the descent of man. What do we
+mean by a moral being? Manifestly, a moral being is one who is capable
+of reflecting on his past actions and their motives, and of approving of
+some while he disapproves of others. Man is the one being who certainly
+deserves this designation, though attempts have recently been made to
+show that a rudimentary morality may be traced in some of the lower
+animals. In the fourth chapter of the book before us, Darwin undertakes
+to demonstrate that the moral sense follows,--first, from the enduring
+and ever-present nature of the social instincts; secondly, from man's
+appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of his fellows; and,
+thirdly, from the high activity of his mental faculties, with past
+impressions extremely vivid; in these latter respects he differs from
+the lower animals. Owing to this condition of mind, man cannot avoid
+looking both backwards and forwards, and comparing past impressions.
+Hence, after some temporary desire or passion has mastered his social
+instincts, he reflects and compares the now weakened impression of such
+past impulses with the ever-present social instincts; and he then feels
+that sense of dissatisfaction which all unsatisfied instincts leave
+behind them, and resolves to act differently for the future. This
+dissatisfaction Darwin would identify with conscience. Any instinct
+permanently stronger or more enduring than another gives rise to a
+feeling which we express by saying that it _ought_ to be obeyed. Darwin
+suggests that a pointer dog, if able to reflect on his past conduct,
+would say to himself I _ought_ (as indeed we say of him) to have pointed
+at that hare, and not have yielded to the passing temptation of
+hunting it.
+
+The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but
+the most decisive, of all the distinctions between man and the lower
+animals. Darwin brings forward in the book before us a quantity of
+reasons for holding it to be impossible that this belief is innate or
+instinctive in man. In some races of men, for instance, we encounter a
+total want of the idea of God. On the other hand, a belief in
+all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently
+follows from a considerable advance in man's reason, and from a still
+greater advance in the faculties of imagination, curiosity, and wonder.
+"I am aware," says Darwin, "that the assumed instinctive belief in God
+has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this
+is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the
+existence of many cruel and malignant spirits only a little more
+powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a
+beneficent deity. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does
+not seem to arise in the mind of man until he has been elevated by
+long-continued culture."
+
+How does the belief in the advancement of man from some low organized
+form bear on the belief in the immortality of the soul? Sir John Lubbock
+has proved that the barbarous races of man possess no clear belief of
+the kind; but, as Darwin continually reminds us, arguments derived from
+the primeval beliefs of savages are of little or no avail on either side
+of a question. Attention is directed by Darwin to the more relevant fact
+that few persons feel any anxiety from the impossibility of determining
+at what precise period in the development of the individual, from the
+first trace of a minute germinal vesicle, man becomes an immortal being.
+He submits that there should be no greater cause for anxiety because the
+period cannot possibly be determined in the gradually ascending
+organic scale.
+
+Darwin was well aware that the conclusions arrived at in the work before
+us--namely, that man is descended from some lowly organized form--would
+be highly distasteful to many. The very persons, however, who regard the
+conclusions with distaste admit without hesitation that they are
+descended from barbarians. Darwin recalls the astonishment which he
+himself felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken
+shore, when the reflection rushed upon his mind that such men had been
+his ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint,
+their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with excitement, and
+their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful. They possessed
+hardly any arts, and, like wild animals, lived on what they could catch;
+they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own
+small tribe. Remembering the impression made on him by the Fuegians,
+Darwin suggests that he who has seen a savage in his native land will
+not feel much shame if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more
+humble creature flows in his veins. "For my own part," he says, "I would
+as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his
+dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper,--or from that old
+baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his
+young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs,--as from a savage who
+delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises
+infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no
+decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions." Darwin holds, in
+fine, that man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen,
+though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic
+scale; it is further submitted that the fact of his having thus risen,
+instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for
+a still higher destiny in the distant future.
+
+As a scientist, however, Darwin is not concerned with hopes or fears,
+but simply with the truth, as man's reason enables him to discern it. We
+must recognize, he thinks, as the truth, established by an overwhelming
+array of inductive evidence, that man, with all his noble qualities,
+with sympathy which he feels for the most debased, with benevolence
+which extends not only to other men, but to the humblest living
+creature, with his godlike intellect, which has penetrated into the
+movements and constitution of the solar system--with all these exalted
+powers--man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his
+lowly origin.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+We have said that Darwin's theory of the origin of species, together
+with its corollary, the descent of man, has met with almost universal
+acceptance by scientists. We have to use the qualifying adverb, because
+some of Darwin's contemporaries, including Virchow and Owen, not to
+mention St. George Mivart and the Duke of Argyll, have withheld their
+adhesion. Since his death, moreover, his disciples have tended to split
+into two schools. On the one hand, Weismann has rejected the Lamarckian
+factors,--the effect of use and disuse upon organs, and the
+transmissibility of acquired characters. The importance of these factors
+has been emphatically re-asserted, on the other hand, by Lankester and
+others. Whether biologists, however, range themselves in the
+Neo-Darwinian or in the Neo-Lamarckian camp, the value of the principle
+of natural selection is acknowledged by all, and nobody now asserts the
+independent creation and permanence of species.
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+The Complete Works of Darwin, published by D. Appleton and Company.
+
+The Works of Alfred Russel Wallace.
+
+Francis Darwin's "Life of Charles Darwin."
+
+Huxley's Writings, _passim_.
+
+Haeckel's "Natural History of Creation."
+
+Weismann's "Studies in the Theory of Descent" and subsequent papers.
+
+Romanes's "Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution."
+
+Lankester's "Degeneration."
+
+Fiske's "Darwinism and Other Essays."
+
+For adverse criticism of Darwin, read Mivart's "Genesis of Species," and
+the Duke of Argyll's "Unity of Nature."
+
+
+
+
+JOHN ERICSSON.
+
+
+1803-1889.
+
+NAVIES OF WAR AND COMMERCE.
+
+BY W.F. DURAND, PH.D.
+
+
+The exact combination of inspiration, heredity, and environment which
+serves to produce genius will perhaps ever be a problem beyond the skill
+of human intelligence. When the rare elements do combine, however, the
+result is always worthy of most careful study, both because great
+achievements furnish a healthy stimulus to emulation, and because some
+glimpse may be gained of Nature's working in the formation of her
+rarest products.
+
+Few lives better illustrate these remarks than that of John Ericsson.
+Born of middle-class parentage and with no apparent source of heredity
+from which to draw the stores of genius which he displayed throughout
+his life, and with surroundings in boyhood but little calculated to
+awaken and inspire the life-work which later made him famous, from this
+beginning and with these early surroundings John Ericsson became
+unquestionably the greatest of the engineers of the age in which he
+lived and of the century which witnessed such mighty advances along all
+engineering lines. The imprint left by Ericsson's life on the
+engineering practice of his age was deep and lasting, and if one may
+dare look into the future, the day is far removed when engineers will
+have passed beyond their dependence on his life and labors.
+
+It is perhaps not amiss that, before looking more closely at the
+achievements of Ericsson's life and activity, note should be taken of
+the large dependence of our present civilization and mode of life on the
+engineer and his work.
+
+In different ages of the world's history each has received its name,
+appropriate or fanciful as the case may have been. For the modern age no
+name is perhaps more adequately descriptive than the "Age of Energy,"
+the age in which our entire fabric of civilization rests upon the
+utilization of the energies of nature for the needs of humanity, and to
+an extent little appreciated by those who have not considered the matter
+from this point of view. If we consider the various elements which enter
+into our modern civilization,--the items which enter into the daily life
+of the average man or woman; the items which we have come to consider as
+necessities and those which we may consider as luxuries; the items which
+go to make up our needs as expressed in terms of shelter, food,
+intercommunication between man and his fellow, and pleasure,--the most
+casual consideration of such will serve to show distributed throughout
+almost the entire fabric of our civilization dependence at some point on
+the power of the steam-engine, the water-wheel, or windmill, the subtle
+electric current, or the heat-energy of coal, petroleum oil, or natural
+gas. The harnessing and efficient utilization of these great natural
+energies is the direct function of the engineer, or more especially of
+the dynamic engineer, and in this noble guild of workers, Ericsson
+carved for himself an enduring place and left behind a record which
+should serve as an inspiration to all who are following the same pathway
+in later years.
+
+No one feature perhaps better differentiates our modern civilization
+from that of earlier times, four hundred years ago, or even one hundred,
+than that of intercommunication between man and his fellow. Compare the
+opportunities for such intercommunication in the present with those in
+the time of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Isaac Newton, George Washington, or
+Napoleon I. We now have our steamships, steam and electric railroads,
+cable, telegraph, and telephone. A few years ago not a single one was
+known. The modern age is one which demands the utmost in the possibility
+of communication between man and his kind, and in this respect the wide
+world is now smaller than the confines of an English county a
+century ago.
+
+In this field, as we shall see, Ericsson did some of his greatest work,
+and left perhaps his most permanent record for the future.
+
+Ericsson's life falls most naturally into three periods chronologically
+or geographically, and likewise into three periods professionally,
+though the latter mode of subdivision has by no means the same
+boundaries as the former. The first mode of subdivision gives us the
+life in Sweden, the life in England, and the life in the United States.
+The second mode gives us the life of struggle and obscurity, the life of
+struggle, achievement, and recognition, and the calmer and easier life
+of declining years with recognition, reward, and the assurance of a
+life's work well done.
+
+John Ericsson was born in the province of Vermland, Sweden, in 1803. His
+father was Olof Ericsson, a mine owner and inspector who was well
+educated after the standard of his times, having graduated at the
+college in Karlstad, the principal town of the province. His mother was
+Britta Sophia Yngstrom, a woman of Flemish-Scotch descent, and to whom
+Ericsson seems to have owed many of his stronger characteristics. Three
+children were born: Caroline in 1800, Nils in 1802, and John in 1803. Of
+John's earliest boyhood we have but slight record, but there seems to
+have been a clear foreshadowing of his future genius. He was considered
+the wonder of the neighborhood, and busied himself day after day with
+the machinery of the mines, drawing the form on paper with his rude
+tools or making models with bits of wood and cord, and endeavoring thus
+to trace the mystery of its operation.
+
+In 1811 the Ericsson family fell upon evil times. Due to a war with
+Russia, business became disturbed and in the end Olof Ericsson became
+financially ruined. This brought the little family face to face with the
+realities of life, and we soon after find the father occupying a
+position as inspector on the Göta Canal, a project which was just then
+occupying serious attention after having been neglected for nearly one
+hundred years, and nearly three hundred years after it was first
+proposed in 1526. Through this connection, in 1815, John and Nils
+Ericsson were appointed as cadets in a corps of Mechanical Engineers to
+be employed in carrying out the Government's plans with reference to the
+canal. During the winter of 1816-17 and at the age of thirteen, John
+Ericsson received regular instruction from some of his officers in
+Algebra, Chemistry, Field Drawing, and Geometry, and the English
+language. Ericsson's education previous to this seems to have consisted
+chiefly in lessons at home or from tutors, after the manner of the time.
+He had thus received instruction in the ordinary branches and in
+drawing and some chemistry. His training in drawing seems to have been
+unusually thorough and comprehensive, and with a natural genius for such
+work, his later remarkable skill at the drawing board is doubtless in no
+small measure due to the excellent instruction which he received in his
+early years. His progress in his duties as a young engineer was rapid,
+and he was soon given employment in connection with the canal-work,
+involving much responsibility and calling for experience and skill.
+
+At length on reaching the age of seventeen he became stirred with
+military ambition, and, dissatisfied with his present prospects, he left
+his position with its opportunities for the future, and entered the
+Swedish army as ensign of a regiment of Field Chasseurs. This regiment
+was famous for its rifle practice, and Ericsson was soon one of its most
+expert marksmen. The routine of army life was, however, far from being
+sufficient to satisfy the uneasy genius of John Ericsson, and we soon
+find him engaged in topographical surveying for the Government, and so
+rapid and industrious in his work that as the surveyors were paid in
+accordance with the amount accomplished, he was carried on the pay rolls
+as two men, and paid as such, in order that the amount which he received
+might not seem too excessive for one individual. Even this was not
+sufficient to exhaust his energy, and about this time he conceived the
+idea of publishing a book of plates descriptive of the machinery
+commonly employed in the mining operations of his day. To this end he
+collected a large number of sketches which he had prepared in his
+earlier years, and made arrangements to take up the work of preparation
+for publication. The drawings selected were to be engraved for the book,
+and, nothing daunted by the undertaking, Ericsson proposed to do this
+work himself. After some discouragement the engraving was undertaken,
+and eighteen copper plates of the sixty-five selected, averaging in size
+fifteen by twenty inches, were completed within a year. In various ways
+the project met with delays, and it soon became apparent that the rapid
+advance in the applications of machinery to mining would render the work
+out of date, and it was at length abandoned.
+
+At about this time Ericsson seems to have taken up seriously his work on
+his so-called "flame-engine," certain experiments made by his father
+having suggested to him the hope that a source of power might in this
+way be developed which would be more economical than the steam-engine.
+At this point we see entering into Ericsson's life an idea which never
+left him, which controlled much of his work in mid-life, and which
+attracted no small part of his attention throughout his closing years.
+This idea was the discovery of some form of heat-engine which should be
+more economical than the steam-engine, especially as it was in his day.
+The flame-engine idea grew rapidly, and soon absorbed his chief
+attention. Military life now lost its attraction, and in 1826 obtaining
+leave of absence he left his native land and turned his face toward
+London, doubtless with the hope strong within him that a substitute for
+the steam-engine had been found, and that his future lay secure and easy
+before him.
+
+The characteristic features of Ericsson's life up to this time, when he
+had reached his twenty-third year, are energy, industry, independence,
+all in most pronounced degree, and combined with a most astonishing
+insight into mechanical and scientific questions. It was not a period of
+achievement, but one of formation and of development in those qualities
+which were soon to make him famous in both worlds. Of his work during
+this period of life little or nothing outside the idea embodied in the
+flame-engine can be said to belong to the permanent record of his life's
+achievement. This appeared in the "Caloric" engine, and still later in
+the well-known Ericsson "Air" engine of the present day.
+
+This era was one of development and promise, and richly were the
+promises fulfilled in the achievements of his later years. A careful
+study of his life to this point is sufficient to show that, with health
+and time, such a nature would certainly leave a mark wide and deep on
+the world in which it was placed. His characteristics were such that
+achievement was the very essence of life, and, with the promise and
+potency as revealed in this first twenty-three years of his life, we may
+be well prepared for the brilliant record of the remaining sixty-three.
+
+With Ericsson's arrival in London began the second important period of
+his life. His first efforts were directed toward the introduction of the
+flame-engine, but he soon found unexpected difficulties in the use of
+coal as fuel instead of wood, and it became clear that in order to live
+he must turn his attention to other matters for a time. Then followed a
+series of remarkable pieces of work in which Ericsson's genius showed
+itself, either in original invention or in the adaptation and
+improvement of the existing facts and material of engineering practice.
+While thus occupied, his leave from his regiment expired, and he seems
+to have overlooked taking proper steps to have it renewed. He was thus
+placed technically in the attitude of a deserter. Through the
+intervention of a friend, however, he was soon afterward restored, and
+promoted to the rank of Captain in the Swedish Army. This commission he
+immediately resigned, and thus his record became technically cleared of
+all reproach.
+
+To give a mere list of the work with which Ericsson was occupied during
+the years from 1827 to 1839, when he removed to the United States, would
+be no small task, and reference to the more important only can be here
+made. Compressed air for transmitting power, forced draft for boilers by
+means of centrifugal blowers, steam boilers of new and improved types,
+the surface condenser for marine engines, the location of the engines of
+a ship for war purposes below the water line, the steam fire-engine, the
+design and construction of the "Novelty" (a locomotive for the Rainhill
+contest in 1829, when Stephenson's "Rocket" was awarded the prize,
+though Ericsson, heavily handicapped in time and by lack of a track on
+which to adjust and perfect the "Novelty," achieved a result apparently
+in many ways superior to Stephenson's with the "Rocket"), various
+designs for rotary engines, an apparatus for making salt from brine,
+further experimental work with various forms of heat, or so-called
+"caloric" engines, and the final development, in 1833, of a type from
+which great results were for a time expected, superheated steam and
+engines for its use, a deep-sea-sounding apparatus embodying the same
+principle as that later developed by Lord Kelvin in the well-known
+apparatus of the present day, a machine for cutting files automatically,
+various types of steam-engines, and finally his work in connection with
+the introduction of the screw-propeller as a means of propulsion for
+steam vessels. These are some of the important lines of work on which
+Ericsson was engaged during the twelve years of his life in London. In
+connection with some he was undoubtedly a pioneer, and deserves credit
+as an original inventor; in connection with others, his work was that of
+improvement or adaptation; but in all his influence was profound, and
+the legacy which we have received from this period of engineering
+progress is due in no small degree to Ericsson, and to his work in
+London during these years. At a later point we shall refer in some
+further detail to these questions, but desire for the moment, rather, to
+gain a broad and comprehensive view of his life as a whole.
+
+Ericsson has been by some called a spendthrift in invention, and the
+term is not without some justice in its application. His genius was
+uneasy, and his mind was oppressed by the wealth of his ideas. It was
+this very wealth which led him from one idea to another, without always
+taking sufficient time in which to develop and perfect his plans. Rich
+in invention, he cared but little for exploitation, and when the truth
+of his predictions was demonstrated, or the ground of his expectation
+justified, he was eager for new achievements and new combinations of the
+materials of engineering progress. In this spirit of struggle and
+unrest, he passed the years in London, rapidly becoming known for his
+versatility in invention, and for his daring and originality in the
+details of his engineering work. From 1833 to 1839, or during the second
+half of this term of residence in London, he became in increasing
+measure absorbed in his work connected with the screw-propeller as a
+means of marine propulsion.
+
+Ericsson's name in the popular mind has been most commonly associated
+with the "Monitor" and her fight with the "Merrimac" in the Civil War,
+and next, probably, with the screw-propeller as a means of marine
+propulsion. It will, therefore, be proper at the present point to refer
+in some further detail to the circumstances connected with his relation
+to the introduction of the screw-propeller.
+
+Regarding this question an entire volume might be written without doing
+more than justice to the subject, but only a brief statement of the
+chief facts can be here attempted.
+
+As early as the Seventeenth Century the possibility of developing a
+propulsive thrust by the use of a submerged helicoidal, or screw,
+propeller, had been vaguely recognized, and during the following, or
+Eighteenth Century, the same idea had been brought forward. It had been
+viewed in this connection, however, merely as a curiosity, and led to no
+immediate results. Later, in 1804, Francis B. Stevens, of New Jersey, in
+an experimental boat on the Hudson, operated twin screws, and
+demonstrated their applicability to the requirements of marine practice.
+These propellers, in fact, had a form far more nearly approaching the
+modern screw-propeller than did those which came somewhat later, and
+which marked the real entry of the screw-propeller into actual and
+practical service.
+
+Again, in 1812, Ressel, a student in the University of Vienna, began to
+study the screw-propeller, and his first drawing dates from this time.
+In 1826 he carried on experiments in a barge driven by hand, and in 1827
+an Austrian patent was granted him. Two years later he applied his screw
+to a boat with an engine of six horse-power, and a speed of six miles
+per hour was said to have been attained. Then came a bursting
+steam-pipe, and the police put a stop to the experiments, which seem to
+have had no further results.
+
+Likewise in 1823 Captain Delisle, of the French Engineers, presented a
+memorial to his Government in which he urged the use of the submerged
+propeller for the propulsion of steam vessels. No especial attention was
+given to the suggestion, however, and it was apparently forgotten until
+later, when the propeller had become a demonstrated success. Then this
+memorial was remembered, and its author brought forward to receive his
+share of credit in connection with the adaptation of the propeller to
+marine propulsion.
+
+These various attempts to introduce the screw-propeller seem curiously
+enough to have had no lasting result. They were not followed up, and in
+the mean time had to some extent passed out of memory, or, if
+remembered, the absence of result can hardly have acted as an incentive
+to fresh effort. At the same time it must be admitted that the
+screw-propeller as a possibility for marine propulsion was known in a
+vague way to the engineering practice of the day, and it is at this time
+of course quite impossible to say how much may have been known by
+Ericsson, Smith, or others concerned in later developments, or to what
+extent they may have been dependent for suggestion on what had preceded
+them. The question of who invented the screw-propeller in the absolute
+sense is entirely futile and without answer. No one could ever have
+reasonably advanced any such unique claim. At the best it is simply a
+question of the relative influence in the introduction, improvement, and
+practical application of what was the common property of the engineering
+practice of the day.
+
+In 1833, or at the period now under consideration, however, the
+paddle-wheel was the recognized instrument of marine propulsion. Since
+the beginning of the century it had been growing in use with the gradual
+growth in the application of steam, and at this time it held the field
+alone. Some years earlier it appears that some of the objections to the
+paddle-wheel had become plainly apparent to Ericsson, although,
+occupied with other matters as he was, there was no immediate result. He
+apparently recognized that the slow revolutions possible with the
+paddle-wheel did not favor the improvement of the steam-engine along the
+lines which have since been followed, and he saw clearly that for
+warship purposes the engines employed, exposed above the water-line to
+destruction from the shell of an enemy, were entirely out of the
+question. Finally in 1833 and 1834 we find him employed by a carrying
+company in London to conduct numerous trials with submerged propellers
+in the London and Birmingham canal. In an affidavit made in March, 1845,
+he states that in 1833 his attention was particularly called to the
+subject of oblique propulsion, and that under his direction propellers
+of various patterns and embodying these principles were fitted on a
+canal-boat named the "Francis," and later in 1834 to another called the
+"Annatorius." Shortly after this, or in 1835, his ideas took more
+definite form, and he refers to his work in a letter to his friend John
+Bourne in the following terms:--
+
+"1835. Designed a rotary propeller to be actuated by steam-power
+consisting of a series of segments of a screw attached to a thin broad
+hoop supported by arms so twisted as also to form part of a screw. The
+propeller subsequently applied to the steamship 'Princeton' was
+identical with my said design of 1835. Even the mode adopted to
+determine, by geometrical construction, the twist of the blades and arms
+of the 'Princeton's' and other propellers was identical with my design
+of the year last mentioned."
+
+At about this same time, or in 1835, the attention of Mr. F.P. Smith
+seems to have been drawn to the subject of the screw-propeller, and we
+find him taking out a patent for his form, consisting of an elongated
+helix or spiral of several turns, under date of May 31, 1836. Ericsson's
+patent followed some six weeks later, or on July 13, 1836. While it thus
+appears that Ericsson had been studying the problem since 1833 or
+earlier, according to his own statements, there is no evidence that
+Smith's attention was drawn to the matter earlier than 1835. Delay on
+Ericsson's part in the matter of patent gives the earlier date to Smith.
+The mere date of a patent, however, is of small moment for our present
+purposes. It must be admitted that the modern form of screw-propeller is
+quite unlike either of these original forms, although they all involve
+of course the same fundamental principles. Ericsson's propeller may
+properly be called an engineering success, built on sound principles,
+but improved and largely modified by the results of later experience and
+research. Smith's propeller, while capable of propelling a boat, was the
+design of an amateur rather than of an engineer, and in comparison with
+Ericsson's seemed to show a somewhat less accurate appreciation of the
+underlying principles upon which the propeller operates.
+
+In the present case, as we have noted above, the question is not so much
+one of invention as of influence in introduction, adaptation, and
+improvement. The screw-propeller was already known, but had not been
+introduced into and made a part of actual engineering practice. Services
+in this direction are all that can be claimed for any of those concerned
+with the question during the third decade of the Nineteenth Century.
+From this point of view we must give to Ericsson large credit. He had
+the courage of his convictions, and did not allow his work in this
+direction to lapse for lack of effort on his part to secure its
+introduction into the practice of the day.
+
+Thus, in 1837, the "Francis B. Ogden" was built for the special purpose
+of testing the power of the screw-propeller, and was operated on the
+Thames for the benefit of the British Admiralty and many others. Shortly
+after this, and largely through the influence of Capt. Robert F.
+Stockton of the American Navy and Francis B. Ogden, the American Consul
+at Liverpool, Ericsson began to consider a visit to the United States
+for the purpose of building, under Stockton's auspices, a vessel for the
+United States Navy. While these negotiations were under way, in 1838, he
+built for Captain Stockton a screw-steamer named the "Robert F.
+Stockton," the trials of which attracted much attention from the public
+at large and from engineers of the time. At about the same period
+Ericsson's propeller was fitted to a canal-boat called the "Novelty,"
+plying between Manchester and London. This was presumably the first
+instance of a screw-propeller employed on a vessel actually used for
+commercial purposes.
+
+Finally, in pursuance of Ericsson's plans with Captain Stockton, he left
+England Nov. 1, 1839, and started for New York in the steamer "Great
+Western," where he arrived November 23, after a long and stormy passage.
+
+We now reach the final scene of Ericsson's life and professional
+activities. His visit was at first intended only as temporary, and he
+seems to have anticipated an early return after carrying out his plans
+with reference to a ship for the United States Navy. To quote from a
+letter to his friend, Mr. John O. Sargent, he says: "I visited this
+country at Mr. Ogden's most earnest solicitations to introduce my
+propeller on the canals and inland waters of the United States. I had at
+the same time strong reasons for supposing that Stockton would be able
+to start the 'big frigate' for which I had prepared such laborious plans
+in England." The event was otherwise determined, however, and during the
+remaining fifty years of his life he lived and wrought in the New World,
+and as a citizen of his adopted country.
+
+If the record of his twelve years of work in London was long, that for
+the remaining and maturer years of his life may well be imagined as
+vastly greater. During the earlier part of this period, or until the
+Civil War, when all his energies were concentrated upon his work in
+connection with the "Monitor" type of warship, we find the same wealth
+of invention and human energy, but for the most part directed along
+lines related to marine and naval construction. It was a period of
+training for the fuller fruitage of his genius during the Civil War.
+
+Shortly after his arrival, or in 1840, a prize was offered by the
+Mechanics' Institute of New York for the best plan of a steam
+fire-engine. With his previous experience in London, Ericsson easily
+carried off the palm and was awarded the prize. He further occupied
+himself with the introduction of propellers on boats engaged in the
+inland navigation of the United States, with the design and construction
+of the United States steam frigate "Princeton," with the development of
+the compound principle in the steam-engine, then in 1851 with his
+hot-air ship "Ericsson," or ship propelled by hot-air or caloric
+engines, as they were then termed, and later with caloric engines in
+smaller sizes for stationary purposes, of which several thousand were
+sold during the next succeeding years.
+
+In the work of introducing his propellers good progress was made,
+especially in boats built for use on the Great Lakes, so that by 1844,
+when the U.S.S. "Princeton" went into commission, there were in use some
+twenty-five vessels with the screw-propeller as a means of propulsion.
+
+The project of building a vessel for the American Navy, the purpose
+which had most strongly attracted Ericsson to the United States,
+suffered long delay in connection with the arrangements between Captain
+Stockton and the naval authorities at Washington. At length, in 1841,
+Captain Stockton was authorized to proceed with the construction of a
+screw steam frigate of about one thousand tons. This was the U.S.S.
+"Princeton," which marks an epoch as the first screw vessel-of-war. She
+was followed by the French "Pomone" in 1843, and the English "Amphion"
+in 1844, for the equipment of which Ericsson's agent in England, Count
+Von Rosen, received commissions from the French and English governments
+respectively.
+
+The "Princeton" was completed in due time and was equipped with two
+12-inch wrought-iron guns, one brought by Ericsson from England and one
+designed and built under the direction of Captain Stockton. At the
+trials of the ship in 1844 the latter gun exploded, killing the
+Secretaries of State and of the Navy, besides other prominent visitors
+on board, and wounding several others. This terrible disaster threw an
+entirely undeserved stigma upon the ship herself and upon Ericsson's
+work, and it was not until many years after that his name was entirely
+free from some kind of reproach in connection with the "Princeton" and
+the deplorable results of the accident on board.
+
+These are some of the principal lines of work with which Ericsson
+occupied himself during the twenty-two years between 1839 and 1861. At
+the latter date came the supreme opportunity of his life, and his
+services in the art of naval construction during the remainder of the
+Civil War, which was then in progress, are a part of the history of that
+great struggle. Here, as with the propeller, volumes might be written in
+the attempt to give a full account of the inception, growth, and final
+vindication of Ericsson's ideas regarding naval offence and defence, as
+expressed by the means available in the engineering practice of the day.
+The leading points only can be summarized.
+
+The question of armored ships was in the air. The advantages of armor
+had been already demonstrated on the French ship "Gloire" and others in
+connection with the naval part of the Crimean War, and there was a
+feeling that ironclads of some kind were a necessity of the situation.
+These facts were perhaps more clearly realized at the South than at the
+North; and early in 1861 we find Mr. Stephen R. Mallory, the Confederate
+Secretary of the Navy, taking active steps to raise the "Merrimac,"
+which had been sunken at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and convert her into an
+armor-clad. Information regarding this project naturally became known to
+the Federal authorities, and occasioned President Lincoln and the entire
+Cabinet the most serious anxiety. At length on August 3, 1861, the
+appointment of a Board was authorized, the duty of which it should be to
+examine into the question fully, obtain plans, and recommend the
+construction of such armor-clads as they should judge best suited to the
+demands of the situation.
+
+Shortly after this, Ericsson forwarded to President Lincoln a
+communication in which he offered to construct a vessel "for the
+destruction of the Rebel fleet at Norfolk and for scouring the Southern
+rivers and inlets of all craft protected by Rebel batteries." For one
+reason or another this communication does not seem to have produced any
+immediate result. Later, however, when the Board made its report dated
+September 16, they registered the opinion that the present demand called
+for "vessels invulnerable to shot, of light draft of water, before going
+into a more perfect system of large iron-clad seagoing vessels of war."
+In pursuance of this idea they recommended the construction of three
+vessels,--Ericsson's floating battery, a broadside vessel later known as
+the "Ironsides," and the "Galena." Mr. C.S. Bushnell, who was
+instrumental in bringing Ericsson's plans actually before the Board,
+later associated with himself and Ericsson in the project two gentlemen
+of means, and large manufacturers of iron plate, Mr. John A. Griswold
+and Mr. John F. Winslow, who advanced most of the money needed, Mr.
+Bushnell supplying the remainder. The keel was laid Oct. 25, 1861, and
+the "Monitor," as she was named by Ericsson, was launched Jan. 30, 1862,
+and was turned over to the Government Feb. 19, 1862. This brief record
+of construction leaves untold all history of the ceaseless struggle
+against time and of the superb organization and distribution of the work
+which made possible the completion of such a piece of work in the period
+of one hundred working days.
+
+One important fact which goes far to explain this astonishing speed in
+design and construction is found in the fact that Ericsson was not
+dealing with an entirely new and freshly developed proposition. He has
+stated that the thought of a floating battery, which should be small in
+size, but impregnable to the heaviest guns known and yet heavily armed
+herself, had long occupied his thoughts in connection with the problem
+of the defence of Sweden. Ericsson never forgot his native land, and
+gave to her political troubles and to the question of her defence
+against her more powerful neighbors much serious thought. As a result of
+this study, he had produced as early as 1854 a design embodying all the
+essential features of the "Monitor," and this design, shown by a model,
+was in that year sent to Napoleon III., who was then at war with Russia.
+This was in the hope that he might in this way contribute to the
+overthrow of the latter, the hereditary enemy of his native land.
+
+The design, however, was not adopted, and after it was returned was laid
+aside to collect the dust of his office, until the experiences of the
+Civil War brought it again to the light. The plan in all its main
+features had therefore long been matured, and it only remained to
+proceed rapidly with the details and with the realization of the idea in
+the most suitable materials to be obtained.
+
+The result of the battle between the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac" in
+Hampton Roads is a part of history. The relentless devastation which the
+latter had begun on the old wooden ships of the American Navy at Hampton
+Roads was stayed, and the wild fears at the North concerning the
+destruction which she might cause to the shipping and to the seaboard
+cities was calmed. The "Merrimac" met her master, and retired from the
+conflict crippled and shorn of power for further evil. A short time
+later she sank beneath the waters of the Chesapeake, and is now
+remembered only as the antagonist of the "Monitor."
+
+If the result of this battle between the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac"
+marked a turning-point in the naval aspect of the Civil War, it wrought
+a no less marked change in the standing and fortunes of her designer.
+Some of his engineering efforts had not met with the success for which
+he or his friends had hoped. The engines of the air-ship, while a
+success as a piece of mechanism, were so enormous and heavy that she had
+to be considered as a commercial failure, and the venture was not
+repeated; the deplorable accident on the "Princeton" was by some held to
+be in part chargeable to Ericsson, though a later and full knowledge of
+the circumstances shows that such was in no wise the case. Again,
+Ericsson, as an experimenter and pioneer, was by some considered as a
+dreamer, and before the "Monitor" was completed there was no lack of
+croakers who prophesied failure or who openly ridiculed the idea. This
+condition was of course natural. In many ways Ericsson was ahead of his
+age; and, again, it must not be supposed that he avoided mistakes or
+that all of his work fully realized the expectations which were based
+upon it. Furthermore, Ericsson's spirit was proud, and he was little
+disposed to accept criticism from those whom he felt to be unqualified
+to pass adequate judgment on his work, while he was especially impatient
+under the system by which government work was done. He was therefore but
+little disposed to pleasantly submit to the exasperating delays and
+interferences with his work which arose from the methods of doing
+public business, and it is no more than the simple truth to say that
+during the preceding years the relations between Ericsson and the
+officials of the Navy Department had often become seriously strained,
+and they were seldom in cordial accord regarding the various questions
+which arose in connection with his public work.
+
+With the demonstration made by the "Monitor," however, the attitude of
+the public changed in a moment, and Ericsson was hailed on every hand as
+a public benefactor. He received the thanks of Congress on March 28,
+1862, and of the Legislature of the State of New York a little later.
+Besides these, he was the recipient of numbers of memorials and
+mementoes, and of such praise in every form as might well have disturbed
+the equilibrium of a mind less well balanced. In all this change of
+public opinion, the one thing which must have given him the deepest
+satisfaction was the change in the attitude of the naval authorities at
+Washington. He was now considered as one whose ideas had demonstrated
+their right to serious and respectful attention, and a large fleet of
+vessels of the monitor type was ordered, similar to but larger than the
+prototype, and containing such minor changes as experience had
+suggested. Yet even this was not accomplished without objection. The
+officers of the navy were accustomed to the old type of wooden ship,
+and were slow to realize that naval war was, after all, an engineering
+problem, and that the ideas of the engineer must now be substituted for
+those which had been sanctified by long ages of past experience. Still,
+the demonstration was too convincing to admit of serious question, and
+Ericsson and his associates in business were busily occupied during the
+remainder of the war in the design and construction of a numerous fleet
+of vessels of the monitor type.
+
+Ericsson's work during this period was enormous. One design followed
+another in quick succession, while work of supervision and inspection
+and cares of a business nature all combined to make a burden which would
+have broken down a nature less determined and self-centred, and a body
+less inured to physical endurance and sustained nervous tension.
+
+This prodigious load was not so much but that he found time to devote to
+the needs of other nations, and in 1862 he offered to construct for the
+Chilian government a monitor similar to those under construction for the
+United States, while later a similar offer was made to the Peruvian
+Government. With the close of the Civil War Ericsson found still further
+time to devote to the introduction of this type of vessel into foreign
+navies, and a considerable part of his time seems to have been occupied
+with projects of this character, and more particularly with the question
+of the naval defence of his native land. As regards the introduction of
+warships of the monitor type, the results were not so pronounced as
+might have been expected, and while the influence of the idea is seen in
+the practice of every maritime nation in regard to the construction of
+its warships, still, for the most part, the leading nations preferred to
+make application of the idea in their own way rather than order such
+vessels direct from their original designer. Yet in not a few cases the
+original type was faithfully copied, though it is not always clear to
+what extent Ericsson himself may have had direct contact with their
+designs. In 1866 the Swedes were able to test the first of a small fleet
+of monitors built after Ericsson's plans. This was called the "John
+Ericsson," and was armed with two 15-inch guns presented to Sweden by
+Ericsson himself. Later, in 1868, he designed for Spain and
+superintended the construction of thirty small gunboats for use in
+Cuban waters.
+
+For nearly ten years now Ericsson had devoted most of his energies to
+the art of war. It was a time of change and unrest. Heavy guns and armor
+had brought about a complete break with the past. The torpedo, which had
+made its appearance in crude form during the Civil War, was attracting
+more and more attention, and questions of naval offence and defence and
+of the best governmental policy were attracting the serious attention of
+all whose duty led them into relation with such matters. Into this
+problem in its broadest aspects Ericsson threw himself in the early
+'seventies with all the ardor of his younger days.
+
+It is proper to explain here that there was one feature of the earlier
+plans which were submitted to Napoleon III. in 1854, which he did not
+embody in the "Monitor," and which, indeed, was omitted from all
+published plans and descriptions of the system given out in former
+years. This was a system of submarine or subaqueous attack, which, he
+states in a letter to John Bourne, had attracted his attention since
+1826. The time now seemed ripe for the presentation and development of
+this idea, and he accordingly developed his designs for a torpedo, and
+for a method of firing it under water from a gun carried in the bow of a
+boat, and suitably opening to allow the discharge of the torpedo
+projectile. This was Ericsson's so-called "Destroyer" system, and was
+embodied finally in a boat called the "Destroyer," which he built in
+company with his friend, Mr. C.H. Delamater, and with which he carried
+on numerous experiments. In the end, however, the system did not commend
+itself to the naval authorities, and the "Destroyer" was left on her
+designer's hands, an instance of difference of opinion between Ericsson
+and those charged with the duty of naval administration, and with no
+supreme test of war to provide opportunity for the determination as to
+which were the more correct in their judgment. With the "Destroyer,"
+and his work in connection with her, closes the record of Ericsson's
+connection with the advance in naval construction.
+
+During these later years of his life it must not be supposed that he was
+less busily occupied than in earlier life. His was a nature which knew
+no rest, and to the last day of his life he was literally in the
+harness. Only brief mention however can be made of some of the more
+important lines of work which interested the closing years of
+Ericsson's life.
+
+In connection with his naval designs, he devoted much study to the
+improvement of heavy ordnance, both as to the gun and its mounting. In
+particular, his mounting of the guns in the "Monitor" was quite
+original, and the friction arrangement for absorbing the recoil was a
+great improvement over methods then in use, and served as a model for
+many copies and adaptations of the same principles in later years by
+other designers. In 1863 he also designed and built for the acceptance
+of the Government a forged 13-inch wrought-iron gun. While his design
+was an advance on those of the day, the demands on the makers of iron
+forgings were more than could be successfully met, and the gun developed
+some slight cracks in the test, which prevented further developments on
+this line. Ericsson always maintained that the tests to which this gun
+was submitted were unfairly severe, and he showed how the defects could
+be remedied by a steel lining. But the Naval Bureau of Ordnance insisted
+that this should be done at his own expense, and as he had already lost
+some $20,000 on the gun, he was unwilling to proceed farther, and the
+matter was allowed to lapse.
+
+Throughout his entire career the improvement of the steam-engine
+occupied a large share of Ericsson's attention, and in particular was
+this the case in connection with his naval designs. From the
+"Princeton," in 1841, to the "Destroyer," in 1878, there succeeded one
+long series of types and forms of steam-engine, each in his opinion the
+best adapted to the circumstances of the case. Naturally, opinions
+differ, and he was brought into competition with other able engineers,
+and his designs were often called into question or subjected to
+criticism. In 1863, in competition with Chief Engineer Isherwood of the
+navy, engines were designed for twin ships, the "Madawaska," afterward
+known as the "Tennessee," and the "Wampanoag," afterward called the
+"Florida." This was a battle royal of types and modes of application of
+the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of ships. The result was
+a victory for Isherwood, although the "Madawaska," which was first
+subjected to trial, made a speed higher than any warship at that time
+afloat. This was exceeded by the "Wampanoag" a short time later; but
+neither engine was of an enduring type, and after a time the machinery
+of the "Madawaska" was removed, and she was repowered with a later type
+of machinery, and long did service as the "Tennessee" in the list of
+wooden frigates of the navy. The "Florida" was too expensive to maintain
+in commission, and the special circumstances which had called her into
+existence having passed by, she was laid up at New London, and never
+again saw active service.
+
+Keenly as Ericsson was interested in the steam-engine, it must be
+admitted that he always showed a more profound interest in some form of
+engine which should be able to displace it with a superior efficiency;
+and hence his long series of efforts relating to the flame-engine, the
+caloric engine, the gas-engine, and finally the solar engine,--with
+either steam or heated air as the medium for carrying the heat. During
+the last years of his life some of his most patient and careful study
+was given to the perfection of a solar engine, or engine for utilizing
+directly the heat of the sun instead of that of coal or other carbon
+compounds. Besides this direct line of study and experimentation, he
+gave during these years much thought to various scientific problems
+connected with solar energy, the tides, gravitation, the nature of heat,
+etc., etc. A plan for deriving power direct from the tides, improvements
+in high-speed engines for electric-lighting purposes, further
+improvements in his hot-air engine in small sizes for commercial
+purposes,--these are some of the further lines of work which occupied
+the attention of his closing years.
+
+But the most cunningly devised of all mechanisms, the heart and brain,
+must sooner or later tire and cease from their labors. The motive energy
+becomes exhausted, and the mechanism must cease its work. So it was with
+John Ericsson. In the first hour of the morning of March 8, 1889,
+Ericsson died. This was within one day of the twenty-seventh anniversary
+of the battle at Hampton Roads, the event with which the name of
+Ericsson will always be associated, and which has given to it a
+significance that will never be forgotten. His remains were first
+interred in New York, and then, in 1890, in accordance with the request
+of the Swedish Government, they were returned with impressive services
+to his native land, where they now rest. In his death he received his
+highest honors, for his remains were conveyed across the Atlantic by the
+U.S.S. "Baltimore," one of the new ships of the navy specially detailed
+for that service, and on both sides, in the United States and in Sweden,
+the event was marked with every honor and ceremony which could indicate
+the significance of his life and services for his adopted land and for
+the world at large.
+
+The two pieces of work which perhaps will be most permanently linked
+with the name of Ericsson are the screw-propeller as a means of marine
+propulsion, and the "Monitor" as a type of warship. In addition to
+these, however, his life-work was rich in results which bore direct
+relation to many other improvements in the broad field of marine
+engineering and naval architecture. Of these a few of the more important
+may be mentioned, such as the surface condenser, distiller, and
+evaporator, forced draft for combustion, placing machinery of warships
+below the water-line, and their protection by coal, ventilation by
+fan-blowers, together with a vast variety of items involved in the
+conception and design of the "Monitor" as a whole, and in his other
+naval designs.
+
+In order to appreciate the influence of Ericsson's life and work on the
+field of marine construction, a brief glance may profitably be taken at
+this branch of engineering work as it was before Ericsson's time, and as
+it is now.
+
+The material employed for shipbuilding was almost entirely wood. This
+was displaced in the 'sixties and 'seventies by iron, which in turn was
+displaced by steel, so that at the present time, except for special
+reason, no material other than steel is thought of for this purpose.
+With the gradual displacement of wood by iron in the mercantile marine,
+Ericsson's relation was only indirect. Some of the earlier mercantile
+vessels in which he was interested were of wood and some of iron. In the
+field of warship construction, however, his influence through the
+"Monitor" was more direct, especially as to the value of metal armor as
+a protection against great gun-fire. Still, it is no more than justice
+to say that with the change from wood to iron which took place during
+the active part of his life, Ericsson had only an indirect relation, and
+the change would doubtless have come about at the same time, and in much
+the same general way as it did, independent of any influence which his
+work may have had upon the question. Turning to the means of propulsion,
+we find sails as the main, or almost only, reliance during the early
+years of the century. The steam-engine operating paddle-wheels had come
+to be recognized as a possibility, and under certain conditions as a
+commercial success. The screw-propeller as a means of propulsion was
+known only as a freak idea, and was without status or recognition as a
+commercial or practical means for propelling ships. So far as the
+screw-propeller was thought of as a means of propulsion, it lay under a
+suspicion of loss of efficiency due to the oblique nature of its action,
+and this was supposed to be such as to render it necessarily and
+essentially less efficient than the paddle-wheel.
+
+Ericsson lived to see the use of sails almost entirely discarded for war
+purposes, and for mercantile purposes relegated to ships for special
+service and of continually decreasing importance. He lived to see the
+steam-engine take its place as the only means for supplying the power
+required to propel warships, and attain a position of almost equal
+relative importance in the mercantile marine. He lived to see the
+paddle-wheel grow in importance and estimation as a means of propulsion
+only in turn to be supplanted by the screw-propeller, which gradually
+increased in engineering favor from the days of its obscure infancy
+until it became the only means employed for the propulsion of ships
+navigating the high seas, while it had become a most serious rival to
+the paddle-wheel even for the purposes of interior and shallow-water
+navigation,--long a field considered as peculiarly suited to the
+paddle-wheel and to the engines adapted to its operation.
+
+Regarding the change from wind to steam for the motive-power of ships,
+Ericsson did his full share among the engineers of his day, but it would
+be unfair to many others to claim for him any exclusive or
+preponderating influence in this movement, and in such matters it is
+difficult to clearly define the services of any one man. The lines of
+progress, however, have been in accord with his studies, and his work
+has certainly had a most direct and powerful influence upon the
+movement. The most important points of contact between Ericsson's work
+and these advances were in connection with his introduction of the
+surface condenser, the use of artificial draft, devices for heating feed
+water, his studies in superheated steam and its use, and his work in
+connection with the development of the compound principle in
+steam-engines, his relation to the introduction of the screw-propeller,
+and to the use of twin screws at a later time. He also devised and
+adapted many new types of engines for marine purposes, having respect to
+the geometrical character of the connections by means of which a
+reciprocating motion of the piston may be transformed into a rotary
+motion of the shaft. In particular, he was the first to introduce and
+show the advantages of engines directly connected to the
+propeller-shaft, instead of through the more indirect and clumsy modes
+which others had previously thought necessary.
+
+Aside from his relation to the screw-propeller, perhaps no item of his
+work in connection with the steam-engine is of more importance than the
+surface condenser, with its variant forms in the distiller and
+evaporator. If Ericsson had done nothing else, his claims to recognition
+and remembrance as an engineer and benefactor might have been well
+founded on his work in this connection. As it is, the fact that he was
+so largely instrumental in their perfection and adaptation to marine
+uses is wellnigh forgotten in the brighter light of his other
+achievements.
+
+Regarding Ericsson's relation to the successful introduction of the
+screw-propeller, little need be added to what has already been said.
+Whatever may be urged regarding dates and patents or earlier years in
+which the screw-propeller was used, it is a fact that in 1833-35 it was
+not recognized as an accepted mode of propulsion. While known as a
+possibility, it had no standing in the engineering practice of the day.
+A few years later it was recognized as an accepted mode of propulsion
+and had gained a permanent and definite place in the practice of the
+day,--a place which has continued to grow in importance until its
+earlier rival, the paddle-wheel, is almost on the brink of relegation to
+museums of antiquities, except possibly for rare and special
+shallow-water uses. A careful and dispassionate study of the facts, so
+far as they can be known at the present time, seems to indicate clearly
+that of those who were concerned in successfully adapting the
+screw-propeller to the needs of marine propulsion and in laying the
+foundation for these changed conditions, especially in the United
+States, none was so prominent as Ericsson, or so fairly deserving of the
+chief credit; and with this judgment the mature thought of the present
+day seems to agree with little dissent.
+
+Turning to a consideration from a similar point of view of Ericsson's
+services in connection with warship design and construction, note may be
+first taken of the condition of the art of naval warfare in the years
+1840-50, or when Ericsson first began his labors in this field.
+
+The material used was wood, the means of propulsion sails, with some
+thought of steam-engines and paddle-wheels; the means of offence were
+cast-iron guns large in number but small in size, the largest being 9 or
+11 inches in diameter and throwing a shell of some 75 or 130 pounds
+weight, while the means of defence consisted solely in the "wooden
+walls," and modern ideas regarding armor had not even appeared above
+the horizon.
+
+Ericsson's contributions to the art of naval warfare are embodied in the
+"Princeton," the "Monitor" and its class, and the "Destroyer." In the
+"Princeton" the material used was wood, and in the "Monitor" and
+"Destroyer" iron, following simply the developments of the age. In the
+three the means of propulsion was by screw-propeller. In the "Princeton"
+the means of offence were two 12-inch wrought-iron guns, as already
+noted. In the "Monitor" and its type the means of offence were two
+11-inch smooth-bore cast-iron guns, followed later by larger guns of 13
+and 15 inches of similar type. In the double-turreted monitors four such
+guns were of course installed. In the "Destroyer" the means of offence
+was a single gun for discharging a torpedo under water at the bow. On
+the "Princeton" the means of defence consisted still in wooden walls,
+while in the "Monitor" and its class the change was profound and
+complete. The essential idea of the "Monitor" was low freeboard and
+thus small exposed surface to the ship herself, combined with the
+mounting of guns in circular revolving turrets, thus giving an
+all-around fire and on the whole making possible an adequate protection
+of the exposed parts of the ship and providing for the combination in
+maximum proportions of armored protection and heavy guns for offence. On
+the "Destroyer" the means of defence consisted simply in a light
+deflecting deck armor forward, the vessel being intended to fight bows
+on and depending on her means of offence rather than defence, which were
+made quite secondary in character.
+
+The "Monitor," however, was Ericsson's great contribution to the art of
+naval war, and with it his name will always be associated. It broke with
+the past in every way. It reduced the number of guns from many to few,
+two or at most four; it reduced the freeboard from the lofty topsides of
+the old ship-of-the-line to an insignificant two or three feet, and thus
+made of the target a circular fort and a low-lying strip of armor. It
+placed the guns in this circular fort and covered it with armor thick
+enough to insure safety against any guns then afloat, and thus, as
+perfectly as the engineering means of the day would permit, insured the
+combination of offensive and defensive features in maximum degree. It
+cleared away at one stroke masts, sails, and all the lofty top-hamper
+which since time immemorial had seemed as much an essential feature of
+the fighting ship as the guns themselves. It transformed the design of
+the fighting ship from the older ideals expressed in the American
+frigate "Constitution," or the English "Victory," to the simplest terms
+of offence, defence, and steam motive-power. It made of the man-of-war a
+machine rather than a ship, an engine of destruction to be operated by
+engineers rather than by officers of the ancient and traditional type.
+There is small wonder that in all quarters the idea of ships of this
+type was not received with enthusiasm. The break with the past was too
+definite and complete. The monitor type represented simply the solution
+of the problem of naval warfare worked out by a man untrammelled by the
+traditions of the past and determined only on reducing such a ship to
+the simplest terms of offence and defence as expressed by the
+engineering materials and possibilities of the day. Judged from this
+standpoint, the vessel seems beyond criticism. She filled perfectly the
+ideal set before himself by her designer, and represents as a complete
+and harmonious whole what must still be recognized as the most perfect
+solution of the problem in terms of the possibilities of those days.
+
+It is proper here that due reference should be made to the claims in
+behalf of Mr. Theodore R. Timby as an inventor of the turret and of the
+monitor idea as expressed thereby. These claims and the main facts in
+the case have long been known, and there should certainly be no attempt
+to take from any one his due share in the developments which gave to our
+nation a "Monitor" in her hour of need. It is well known that Mr. Timby
+between 1840 and 1850 conceived the idea of a revolving fort of iron
+mounted with numerous guns and intended to take the place of the masonry
+or earth-structures in common use for such purposes. He seems also to
+have conceived of a similar structure for use on a ship of low
+freeboard, and a model showing such a design was constructed. In 1843 he
+filed a caveat for the invention of the revolving turret. Here the
+matter apparently rested until 1862, and after the battle between the
+"Monitor" and "Merrimac," when he took out a patent which was dated July
+8, 1862, covering "a revolving tower for defensive and offensive
+warfare, whether on land or water." Ericsson's associates in the
+business of building monitors for the Government acquired these patents
+of Timby, presumably as shrewd business men, in order to quiet any claim
+on his part, and to have the plan available for land forts, should the
+opportunity arise to push the business in this direction. There is no
+question but that Ericsson was antedated by Timby in the suggestion of a
+revolving turret, at least in so far as public notice is concerned.
+Ericsson frankly admitted this, and stated that he made no claim to
+absolute originality in this respect. He further stated what is
+undoubtedly true, that the main idea in the turret, that of a circular
+revolving fort, antedates the Nineteenth Century as a whole, and its
+origin is lost in the uncertainties of early tradition. It is simply one
+of those early ideas which naturally must have been known in essence
+since time immemorial, and as such it was the common property of the
+engineering practice of the century. It belongs neither to Timby nor to
+Ericsson, and no claims regarding priority in this respect are worthy of
+serious consideration. The question is not who first conceived the idea
+of a revolving fort, but who designed and built the "Monitor" as she
+was, and as she met the "Merrimac" on the 9th of March, 1862. The answer
+to the latter is too well known a part of the history of the times to
+admit of question or to call for further notice. Ericsson's claim for
+recognition in this respect rests not on any priority of idea regarding
+the use of a circular fort, but rather upon the actual "Monitor" as she
+was built and as she crushed at one blow the sea-power of the South, and
+representing as it did a completely and carefully designed whole, dating
+back to the earlier dealings with Napoleon III. in 1854. This is an age
+which judges men by what they do, and judged by this standard Ericsson's
+claims in connection with the monitor type of warship are never likely
+to be seriously questioned.
+
+Taking Ericsson's life and work, what portion remains as a permanent
+acquisition or as a part of the practice of the present age? This is a
+question which merits at least a moment's notice.
+
+We should not make the mistake of thinking that permanency is
+necessarily a test of merit, or that the value of his services to the
+world should be judged by such parts of his work as are plainly apparent
+in the practice of the present day. A piece of work must be judged by
+the circumstances which brought it forth, and by the completeness and
+perfection of its adaptation to the needs and possibilities of its age.
+
+We have then the steam fire-engine; compressed air which he early
+employed in England, and which has become an instrument of enormous
+importance in connection with the industrial progress of the age,
+although this is in no especial degree due to his efforts; the surface
+condenser, distiller, and evaporator are a permanently and absolutely
+essential part of modern marine practice; the screw-propeller has almost
+sole possession of the field of marine propulsion; modern marine engines
+and boilers in naval practice are always placed below the water-line and
+are protected by deflective deck armor and frequently by coal as well;
+the turret has become a permanent and accepted part of the practice of
+the age, while the monitor type in its essential feature seems to be
+evanescent.
+
+The modern battleship is a vastly more complex structure, and
+represents more complex ideas and combinations than did Ericsson's
+"Monitor." It contains a battery of guns of the heaviest type known to
+naval ordnance. At present such guns are usually of 12-inch bore and
+throw a shell of about 800 pounds weight, with an initial velocity of
+nearly 3,000 feet per second. Then there is a supporting battery of
+guns, 6, 7, or 8 inches in diameter of bore, and finally a secondary
+battery of smaller quick-firing guns, throwing shells of from 1 pound to
+20 or 30 pounds weight, and added to these there may be a torpedo outfit
+as well. The exigencies of fighting ships at sea and in all weathers
+seems to have pronounced against the monitor type with its low freeboard
+as unsuitable for use on the open sea, while the enormous advances in
+modern guns and armor have made a totally different problem of the
+distribution of means offensive and defensive. Again, the monitor type
+was never intended for long cruising, or indeed for other service than
+the defence of coasts and harbors. The policy of building a vessel thus
+adapted only to an inner line of defence, and not adapted to an outer
+line of defence and offence as well, has been further called in
+question, and the judgment of the present day has decided against such
+policy. It is true that in the so-called "new navy," begun in 1883, one
+monitor, the "Monterey," has been built, while four others of older
+type have been somewhat modernized, and there are three monitors
+building at the present time. It may be doubted, however, if they will
+be followed by others, at least so long as the conditions of naval
+warfare and the spirit of public policy remain as they now are.
+
+The monitor type was a perfect solution of the problem of its day, and
+nobly it answered the calls made on it. The problem has now changed, the
+conditions affecting its solution have also changed, and it is no
+discredit to the original type that it now seems to have had its day,
+and that it must give way to other forms more perfectly expressing the
+spirit of the present age, and the means available for the solution of
+present-day problems in the art of naval war.
+
+In many ways, however, the influence of Ericsson's work still lives in
+the modern battleship, and while in our modern designs we have gotten
+far away from the essential features of the monitor type, yet it is not
+too much to say that the germ of the modern battleship is in many ways
+found in the "Monitor," especially as expressed in terms of
+concentration of heavy gun-fire and localized protection of gun
+positions; and in more ways than may be suspected, the influence of
+Ericsson and of his work had its part in the developments which have led
+to the splendid designs of the present day.
+
+Returning again to our note of the dependence of the present age on
+Ericsson, mention may be made of the blower for forcing the combustion
+in steam-boilers as a well-established feature of standard marine
+practice, and one absolutely essential to the development of the highest
+attainable speeds, such as are required in warships, and especially in
+those of the torpedo and modern "Destroyer" types. Likewise the use of
+the fan for ventilation, as used by him in his early practice, has
+become a necessity of modern conditions both on naval and passenger
+ships, for the health and comfort of both passengers and crew. His long
+series of experiments and his years of labor on air and other forms of
+"caloric" engine are only represented by the "Ericsson air-engine" now
+on the market, and having its fair share of service in locations where
+simplicity of operation and scarcity of water may naturally suggest
+its use.
+
+Of his labors in connection with a solar engine, and with other
+questions which occupied much of the time of his closing years, we have
+but little direct result. Others are at work on the idea of the solar
+engine, and it may be that a practicable solution of the problem will
+be found.
+
+Ericsson's lasting imprint on engineering practice, curious as it may
+seem, was made in his earlier and middle life, rather than in his later
+years, and we have even more in the way of permanent acquisition from
+his earlier than from his middle years. This results from the fact that
+in middle life he was largely engaged on warship designs, admirably
+adapted to the needs of the time and to the possibilities of the age,
+but no longer suited to either, while in later life he no longer found
+it necessary to work at problems which would produce a direct financial
+return, and therefore interested himself in a variety of questions
+somewhat farther removed from the walks of every-day engineering
+practice than those with which he was occupied in earlier life.
+
+In personality Ericsson possessed the most pronounced and self-centred
+characteristics. Professionally he felt that to him had been granted a
+larger measure of insight than to others into the mysteries of nature as
+expressed in the laws of mechanics, and he was therefore little disposed
+to listen to the advice or criticism of those about him. This was
+undoubtedly one of Ericsson's most pronounced professional faults. He
+did not realize that with all his insight into the laws of mechanics and
+all his capacity for applying these laws to the solution of the problems
+under consideration, he might well make some use of the work of his
+fellow-laborers in the same field. So little disposed was he to thus use
+the work of others that a given device or idea which had been in
+previous use was often rejected and search made for another, different
+and original, even though it might involve only some relatively trivial
+part of the work. He was simply unwilling to follow in the lead of
+others. He must lead or have none of it, and thus the fact that a device
+or expedient was in common use would furnish an argument against rather
+than for its adoption. His natural mode of work was utterly to disregard
+precedent and to seek for fundamental solutions of his problems, having
+only in view the conditions to be fulfilled, the laws of mechanics, and
+the engineering materials of construction. This habit of independence
+and of seclusion within the narrow circle of his own work so grew upon
+him in later years that mechanical science made many advances of which
+he took little or no note, and of which he refused to avail himself,
+even though he might have done so greatly to his own advantage.
+
+In his later years, in a letter to his friend Captain Adlersparre, he
+says: "Do not laugh at me now, Captain, when I say that nobody can
+mislead me. Do not condemn me if I at the same time confess that I am
+directed by nobody's judgment but my own, and that I never consult
+anybody and take nobody's advice." In all matters connected with his
+work his will was imperious, and he would brook no interference or
+criticism. His temper was high, his organization sensitive, and many
+times throughout his life, relations with his best friends became
+strained by his instability of temper or impatience with what he might
+construe as a criticism regarding his work. With this instability of
+temper, however, was combined a deep-seated tenderness and kindness of
+heart, and he was as quick to forget the cause of offence as he was to
+manifest displeasure upon occasion.
+
+Notwithstanding the asperities of Ericsson's character in regard to his
+professional work, and his entire lack of effort to make friends among
+the learned of his day, recognition and unsought honors came in upon
+him. He was elected to honorary membership in the societies of note in
+the United States and Sweden, and in addition to the thanks of Congress
+and of the Legislature of the State of New York, he received a
+resolution of thanks from the Swedish Riksdag, or Parliament, in 1865.
+In 1862 he was granted the rarely bestowed Rumford medal, and received
+at other times during his life medals, honors, and decorations such as
+have perhaps fallen to no other who has wrought in the same field of
+human effort. While recognition of this character pleased him greatly
+when it came spontaneously and willingly, he placed but little value on
+that which he thought grudgingly or tardily tendered, and in one or two
+instances refused membership in societies which he thought granted in
+that manner.
+
+A large measure of this independence of character is necessary to the
+performance of the work which Ericsson did. Had he been ever ready to
+listen to the views of others, and to modify his ideas in accordance
+with them, his greatest achievements would never have been accomplished.
+In Ericsson, however, this characteristic was carried to an undue
+extreme, and he might unquestionably have accomplished more had he been
+able to co-operate with others and to accept and use freely the best
+work of contemporaries in his own field.
+
+Ericsson was essentially a designing rather than a constructing
+engineer. His genius lay in new adaptations of the principles of
+mechanics or in new combinations of the elements of engineering practice
+in such way as to further the purposes in view. His mode of expression
+was the drawing-board. While he wrote vigorously and well, and while he
+was a frequent contributor in later years to scientific literature,
+especially on the subject of solar physics, yet his best and natural
+mode of expression was the graphical representation of his designs on
+the drawing-board. Forms and combinations took shape in his brain and
+were transferred to the drawing with marvellous speed and skill. Those
+who have been associated with him bear testimony that the amount of his
+work was simply astounding, and that only by a combination of the most
+remarkable celerity and industry could they have been accomplished.
+
+These drawings were furthermore so minute in detail and so accurate in
+dimension that as a rule he did not find it necessary to give further
+attention to the matter after it had left his hands. Of the many parts
+of a complicated mechanism, one could be sent for construction to one
+shop and another elsewhere, all ultimately coming together and making a
+harmonious and perfectly fitting whole. In no other way could such
+astonishing speed in the detailed construction of the "Monitor" and
+other vessels of her type possibly have been made; and the fact that
+such speed in construction was obtained, and largely in this manner, is
+by no means the least impressive of the many evidences of Ericsson's
+genius as a designer.
+
+The designs once completed on the drawing-board, however, Ericsson's
+interest in the work ceased in great measure, and as a rule he paid but
+little attention to constructive details, and took but slight interest
+in the completed whole. Thus he is said to have visited his "Destroyer"
+but once after she was built, and then simply in search of his
+assistant. He also declined an invitation from the Assistant Secretary
+of the Navy to visit Hampton Roads and inspect the "Monitor" immediately
+after her fight with the "Merrimac." He seemed to have no curiosity to
+inspect his work after it had left his hands, or to receive a report as
+to the practical working of his designs. This shows a peculiar lack of
+appreciation of the value of intimate contact with constructive and
+operative engineering work. No one could hope to avoid errors, or to
+realize by drawing-board alone the best possible solution of engineering
+problems. Ericsson wilfully handicapped himself in this manner, and
+might unquestionably have more effectively improved and perfected his
+ideas had he been disposed to combine with his designs at the
+drawing-board practical contact with his work as constructed.
+
+His work was all done in his office at his house. For the last
+twenty-five years of his life he lived at 36 Beach Street, New York,
+where he wrought every day in the year, and often until far into the
+night. His office contained, beside his drawing-table and other
+furniture, a long table, on which at times, when overcome by fatigue, he
+would stretch himself and take a short nap, using a dictionary or low
+wooden box for a pillow.
+
+His relations with his native land were always close, and, as already
+hinted, he gave much of his best effort to the study of means for her
+defence. Toward his friends and relatives he was the embodiment of
+watchful care and generosity. His private benefactions were for his
+means large, and were given with a whole-hearted generosity which must
+have added much to the love and esteem in which the recipients regarded
+him. His public benefactions were also notable, and during the later
+years of his life he gave away regularly no inconsiderable share of his
+income. Though gifted with reasonable prudence, he had no conception of
+the "business sense," and no capacity as a money-getter. After acquiring
+by his inventions and enterprise a modest competence, he devoted himself
+almost entirely to work less directly related to a financial return, and
+lived comfortably upon the principal which his earlier efforts
+had provided.
+
+Ericsson had absolute faith in himself and in his mission to render
+available the energies of nature for the uses of humanity and
+civilization. His character was framed about the central idea of
+fidelity to this mission. He was dogmatic and optimistic as regards his
+own work; he had a contemptuous indifference to the work of others, and
+a disregard of the help which he might derive from a closer study of
+such work. He trained himself, body, mind, and affections, solely with
+reference to his mission, and allowed no interference with it. He was
+the embodiment of physical and mental vigor, prodigious industry,
+continuity of purpose, indomitable courage, capacity for great
+concentration of mind, and oblivion to all distracting surroundings.
+With such characteristics, combined with the rare endowment of mental
+capacity and insight regarding the principles of engineering science,
+small wonder is it that his life was one so rich in results. It could
+not have been otherwise, and the results simply came as a consequence
+of the combination of the characteristics of the man and the
+surroundings in which he was placed.
+
+The question as to how much more or how much better he might have done
+had he possessed more faith in the work of others and a willingness to
+be guided in some measure by their experience is of course idle.
+Ericsson was a combination of certain capacities and characteristics; a
+combination of other capacities and characteristics would not have been
+Ericsson, and any discussion of such a supposition is therefore aside
+from the purpose of this sketch.
+
+John Ericsson lived in a period of rapid engineering development and
+change. Old ideals were passing away, and the heritage which the
+Nineteenth Century was able to pass on to the Twentieth was in
+preparation. In this preparation Ericsson bore a large and most
+important part. So long as ships traverse the seas, Ericsson's name will
+be remembered for his work in connection with the introduction of the
+screw-propeller. So long as the memory of naval warfare endures,
+Ericsson's name will be remembered for the part which he bore in the
+transition from wood to iron, from unarmored ships to turrets and armor,
+from scattered to concentrated energy of gun-fire, and for his general
+share in the developments which have led to the ideal of a battleship
+prevailing at the opening of the Twentieth century. For these and for
+many other achievements he will be remembered, and his life and works
+should serve as a constant stimulus to those upon whom the engineering
+work of the present age has fallen, to see that with equal fidelity they
+live up to the possibilities of their endowments and opportunities, and
+serve with like fervency and zeal the needs of the age in which they
+are placed.
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+Contributions to the Centennial Exhibition: Ericsson, John.
+
+The Life of John Ericsson: Church, W.C.
+
+History of the Steam Engine: Thurston, R.H.
+
+Steam Navy of the United States: Bennett, Frank M.
+
+Who invented the Screw Propeller?: Nicol, James.
+
+The Naval and Mail Steamers of the United States: Stuart, Charles B.
+
+A Chronological History of the Origin and Development of Steam
+Navigation: Preble, Rear Admiral G.H.
+
+A Treatise on the Screw Propeller, Screw Vessels, and Screw Engine as
+adapted for Purposes of Peace and War: Bourne, John.
+
+
+
+
+LI HUNG CHANG.
+
+
+1823-1901.
+
+THE FAR EAST.
+
+BY W.A.P. MARTIN, D.D., LL.D
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+Five years ago Earl Li was at the head of the "Tsungli Yamen," or
+Foreign Office in Peking. The present writer, having known him long and
+intimately, called one morning to request a letter of recommendation to
+aid in raising money for an International Institute projected by the
+Rev. Dr. Reid. "He's got one letter; why does he want another?" asked
+Li, in a tone of mingled surprise and irritation. "True," said I, "but
+that is from the Tsungli Yamen. Nobody in America knows anything about
+the Yamen. What he wants is a personal letter from you; because the only
+Chinese name besides Confucius that is known outside of China is Li
+Hung Chang."
+
+"I'll give it! I'll give it!" he exclaimed, smiling from ear to ear at the
+thought of his world-wide reputation.
+
+This was taking him on his weak side; but it was fact, not flattery.
+
+Over forty years ago Li's rising star first came to view in connection
+with operations against the rebels in the vicinity of Shanghai, and from
+that day to this, every war, domestic or foreign, has served to raise it
+higher and make it shine the brighter. It reached its zenith in 1901,
+when after settling terms of peace with several foreign powers he passed
+off the stage at the ripe age of fourscore. What better type to set
+forth his age and nation than the man who, through a long career of
+unexampled activity, won for himself a triple crown of literary,
+military, and civil honors? In physique he was a noble specimen of his
+race, over six feet in height, and in his earlier years uncommonly
+handsome. The first half of his existence was passed in comparative
+obscurity at Hofei in Anhui, a region remote from contact with
+foreign nations.
+
+It was there his character was formed, on native models; there he
+carried off the higher prizes of the literary arena; and there he became
+fitted for the role of China's typical statesman.
+
+His career in outline may be stated in a few words. His native province
+being overrun by rebels, he passed from the school-room to the camp, and
+got his earliest lessons in the military art under the leadership of the
+eminent viceroy Tseng Ko Fan. The neighboring province of Kiangsu
+falling into the hands of rebel hordes a few years later, he won renown
+by recapturing its principal cities, by the aid of such men as the
+American Ward and the English Gordon. His success as a general made him
+governor of Kiangsu, and his success as governor raised him to the rank
+of viceroy, holding for many years a post at one or other of the foci of
+foreign trade north or south.
+
+Beyond the borders of China he was twice sent on special embassies, and
+once he made the tour of the globe; but his most brilliant achievement
+was in twice making peace on honorable terms, when his country was lying
+prostrate before a victorious enemy.
+
+It remains to expand this incomparable catalogue; but to make
+intelligible that remarkable series of events in which he bore such a
+conspicuous part, we must first invite our readers to accompany us in a
+historical retrospect in which we shall point out the opening and growth
+of foreign intercourse.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+INTERCOURSE WITH CHINA BY LAND.
+
+Of the nature of that intercourse in its earlier period, there exists a
+monument that speaks volumes. That is no other than the Great Wall;
+which, hugest of the works of man, stretches along the northern frontier
+of China proper for one thousand five hundred miles from the sea to the
+desert of Gobi. Erected 255 B.C. it shows that even at that early date
+the enemies most dreaded by the Chinese were on the north. Yet how
+signally it failed to effect its purpose! For since that epoch the
+provinces of Northern China have passed no fewer than seven centuries
+under Tartar sway. Two Tartar dynasties have succeeded in subjugating
+the whole empire, and they have transmitted beyond the seas a reputation
+which quite eclipses the fame of China's ancient sovereigns.
+
+In fact, that which first made China known to the western world was its
+conquest by the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Barbarous nomads,
+with longing eyes forever directed to the sunny plains of the south,
+they also conquered India, bringing under their sceptre the two richest
+regions of the globe. Of Genghis and Kubla, it may be asserted that they
+realized a more extended dominion than Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon
+ever dreamed of. But
+
+     "Extended empire, like expanded gold,
+      Exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor."
+
+Their tenure of China was of short duration,--less than a century. In
+India, however, their successors, the great Moguls, continued to
+maintain a semblance of sovereignty even down to our own times, when
+they were wiped from the blackboard for having taken part in the
+Sepoy mutiny.
+
+Liberal beyond precedent, Kubla Khan encouraged the establishment of a
+Christian bishopric, in which John de Monte Corvino was the first
+representative of the Holy See. He also welcomed those adventurous
+Italians, the Polos, and sought to make use of them to open
+communication with Europe. Yet we cannot forbear to express a doubt,
+whether, aside from the Christian religion, Europe in that age had much
+in the way of civilization to impart to China.
+
+Three of the native dynasties, which preceded the Mongol conquest, made
+themselves famous by advancing the interests of civilization. The house
+of Han (B.C. 202-A.D. 221) restored the sacred books, which the builder
+of the Great Wall had destroyed in order to obliterate all traces of
+feudalism and make the people submit to a centralized government. Even
+down to the present day, the Chinese are proud to describe themselves as
+"sons of Han." The house of Tang, A.D. 618-908, is noted above all for
+the literary style of its prose-writers and the genius of its poets. In
+South China the people are fond of calling themselves "sons of Tang."
+The house of Sung, A.D. 970-1127, shows a galaxy of philosophers and
+scholars, whose expositions and speculations are accepted as the
+standard of orthodoxy. More acute reasoners it would be difficult to
+find in any country; and in the line of erudition they have never been
+surpassed.
+
+It is reported that in 643 the Emperor Theodosius sent an envoy to
+China with presents of rubies and emeralds. Nestorian missionaries also
+presented themselves at court. The Emperor received them with respect,
+heard them recite the articles of their creed, and ordered a temple to
+be erected for them at his capital. This was in the palmy period of the
+Tangs, when the frontiers of the Empire had been pushed to the borders
+of the Caspian Sea.
+
+If China in part or in whole was sometimes conquered by Tartars, it is
+only fair to state that the greatest of the native sovereigns more than
+once reduced the extramural Tartars to subjection. Between the two races
+there existed an almost unceasing conflict, which had the effect of
+civilizing the one and of preventing the other from lapsing
+into lethargy.
+
+About B.C. 100, Su Wu, one of China's famous diplomatists, was sent on
+an embassy to the Grand Khan of Tartary. An ode, which he addressed to
+his wife on the eve of his perilous expedition, speaks alike for the
+domestic affections of the Chinese and for their ancient
+literary culture.
+
+     "Twin trees whose boughs together twine,
+        Two birds that guard one nest,
+      We'll soon be far asunder torn
+        As sunrise from the west.
+
+     "Hearts knit in childhood's innocence,
+        Long bound in Hymen's ties,
+      One goes to distant battlefields,
+        One sits at home and sighs.
+
+     "Like carrier dove, though seas divide,
+        I'll seek my lonely mate;
+      But if afar I find a grave,
+        You'll mourn my hapless fate.
+
+     "To us the future's all unknown;
+        In memory seek relief.
+      Come, touch the chords you know so well,
+        And let them soothe our grief."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+INTERCOURSE BY SEA.
+
+In 1388 the Mongols were expelled. The Christian bishopric was swept
+away, and left no trace; but a book of the younger Polo, describing the
+wealth of China, gave rise to marvellous results. Together with the
+magnetic needle, which originated in China, it led to centuries of
+effort to open a way by sea to that far-off fairyland. It was from Marco
+Polo that Columbus derived his inspiration to seek a short road to the
+far East by steering to the West,--finding a new world athwart his
+pathway. It was the same needle, if not the same book, that impelled
+Vasco da Gama to push his way across the Indian Ocean, after the Cape of
+Good Hope had been doubled by Bartholomew Diaz. A century later the same
+book led Henry Hudson to search for some inlet or strait that might
+open a way to China, when, instead of it, he discovered the port of
+New York.
+
+The mariner's compass, which wrought this revolution on the map of the
+world, is only one of many discoveries made by the ancient Chinese,
+which, unfruitful in their native land, have, after a change of climate,
+transformed the face of the globe.
+
+The polarity of the loadstone was observed in China over a thousand
+years before the Christian era. One of their emperors, it is said,
+provided certain foreign ambassadors with "south-pointing chariots," so
+that they might not go astray on their way home. To this day the
+magnetic needle in China continues to be called by a name which means
+that it points to the south. It heads a long list of contraries in the
+notions of the Chinese as compared with our own, such, for example, as
+beginning to read at the back of a book; placing the seat of honor on
+the left hand; keeping to the left in passing on the street, with many
+others, so numerous as to suggest that the same law that placed their
+feet opposite to ours must have turned their heads the other way. To the
+Chinese the "south-pointing needle" continued to be a mere plaything to
+be seen every day in the sedan chair of a mandarin, or in wheeled
+vehicles. If employed on the water, it was only used in
+coasting voyages.
+
+So with gunpowder, of which the Arabs were transmitters, not inventors.
+In other lands it revolutionized the art of war, clothing their people
+with irresistible might, while in its native home it remained
+undeveloped and served chiefly for fireworks. Have we not seen, even in
+this our day, the rank and file of the Chinese army equipped with bows
+and arrows? The few who were provided with firearms, for want of
+gunlocks, had to set them off by a slow-match of burning tow; and
+cannon, meant to guard the mouth of the Peiho, were trained on the
+channel and fixed on immovable frames.
+
+The art of printing was known in China five centuries before it made its
+way to Europe. The Confucian classics having been engraved on stone to
+secure them from being again burned up, as they had been by the builder
+of the great wall, the rubbings taken from those stones were printing.
+It required nothing but the substitution of wood for stone and of
+_relievo_ for _intaglio_ to give that art the form it now has. The
+smallest scrap of printed paper in the lining of a tea chest, or wrapped
+about a roll of silk, would suffice to suggest the whole art to a mind
+like that of Gutenberg. In China it never emerged from the state of wood
+engraving. The "Peking Gazette," the oldest newspaper in the world, is
+printed on divisible types, but they are of wood, not metal, more than
+one attempt to introduce metallic types having proved unsuccessful, for
+the want of that happy alloy known as type-metal. It is from us that
+they have learned the art of casting type, especially that splendid
+achievement, the making of stereotype plates, and, later, electrotype
+plates, by the aid of electricity and acid solutions. Chemistry, from
+which this beautiful art takes its rise, carries us back to China, for
+it was there that alchemy had its birth, as I have elsewhere shown.[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: "The Lore of Cathay." New York: Fleming R. Revell Co., p.
+41.]
+
+Man's first desire is long life; his second, to be rich. The Taoist
+philosophy commenced with the former before the Christian era, but it
+was not long in finding its way to the latter. A powerful impulse was
+thus given to research in the three departments of science,--chemistry,
+botany, and geography. As in the case of gunpowder, the Arabs
+transmitted these discoveries to the West, and along with them the
+Chinese doctrine as to the twofold objects of alchemic studies,--the
+elixir of life and the philosopher's stone.
+
+From this double root sprang the chemistry of the West, which in no mean
+sense has fulfilled its promise by prolonging life and enriching
+mankind. In all these the West has performed the part of a nursing
+mother, but she has brought the nursling back full grown, and prepared
+to repay its obligation to its true parent by effective service.
+
+Portuguese merchants made their way to Canton early in the sixteenth
+century, but it was not till the latter part of the century that
+Catholic missionaries entered on their grand crusade. In 1601 the Jesuit
+pioneer Matteo Ricci and his associates, impelled by religion and armed
+with science, presented themselves at the court of Peking. The Chinese
+had been able to reckon the length of the year with remarkable accuracy
+two thousand years before the time of Christ, but their science had made
+no headway. The missionaries found their calendar in a state of
+confusion, vanquished the native astronomers in fair competition, and
+were formally installed as keepers of the Imperial Observatory; and
+these missionaries supervised the casting of the bronze instruments
+which have since been taken to Berlin.
+
+This honor they retained even after the fall of the native dynasty that
+patronized them. When the Manchus effected their conquest in 1644, not
+only were the Jesuit missionaries left in charge of the observatory, but
+the heir apparent was placed under their instruction. Coming to the
+throne in 1662, under the now illustrious title of _Kanghi_, the young
+prince showed himself a generous patron as he had previously been a
+respectful pupil. He was apparently not averse to the idea of his
+people's adopting Christianity as their national religion, and allowed
+the missionaries a free hand to plant churches throughout the vast
+interior. Rarely if ever has so fine an opportunity offered for making
+an easy conquest of a pagan empire. It was lost through the jealousy of
+contending societies, and especially through the blunder of an
+infallible Pope. The Dominicans denounced the Jesuits for tolerating the
+practice of pagan rites, such as the worship of ancestors, and for
+employing for God the name of a pagan deity. The name which they then
+objected to was Shang-ti, Supreme Ruler, a venerable designation for the
+Supreme Power found in the earliest of the Chinese canonical books, and
+at this day accepted by a large proportion of Protestant missionaries.
+
+The question as to its fitness was referred to the Emperor, who decided
+in favor of the Jesuits. It was then brought before the Papal See,
+condemned as idolatrous, and Tien Chu, the Lord of Heaven, adopted in
+its stead. That Shang-ti, however pure in origin, had come to be applied
+to a whole class of deities was perfectly true, but the name proposed in
+its stead was not free from a taint of idolatry,--Tien Chu, Lord of
+Heaven, being one of eight divinities, and worshipped along with Ti Chu,
+Lord of Earth, Hai Chu, Lord of the Sea, etc.
+
+The manner in which his opinions had been set aside by the Pope had no
+doubt a repelling influence on the mind of the Emperor, so that if he
+had ever felt inclined to embrace Christianity, he drew back in his
+later years. Not only so, but he left behind him a series of Maxims in
+which he censures the foreign creed and warns his people against it.
+These Maxims were ordered to be read in public by mandarins, and they
+continue to be recited and expounded as a sort of religious ritual. Is
+it surprising that this lost opportunity was followed by a century and a
+half of open persecution? That most of the churches survived, not only
+attests the zeal with which the Faith had been propagated, it throws a
+pleasing light on the force of the Chinese character. At the dawn of our
+new epoch, there were still some half a million converts,--with here and
+there a foreign Father hiding in their midst.
+
+In bringing about this change of policy there was indeed another
+influence at work. Had not the Emperor of China heard some rumors of
+what was going on in the dominion of his cousin, the Great Mogul--how
+the French were dispossessing the Portuguese; and how the English later
+on succeeded in expelling the French? How could they doubt that a large
+community of native Christians would act as an auxiliary to any foreign
+invader? A suspicion of this kind had in fact sprung up under the
+preceding dynasty. In consequence of it not a single seaport except
+Macao was opened to foreign trade; and when foreigners went to Canton,
+they were lodged in a suburb and not allowed to penetrate within the
+walls of the provincial capital. Such misgivings as to the designs of
+foreigners we find strikingly expressed in a book of that period called
+"Strange Stories of an Idle Student."
+
+One story is as follows: When Red-Haired Barbarians first appeared on
+our coast they were not allowed to come ashore. They begged, however, to
+be permitted to spread a carpet on which to dry their goods, and this
+being granted, they took the carpet by its corners and stretched it so
+that it covered several acres. On this, they debarked in great force
+and, drawing their swords, took possession of the surrounding country.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE OPIUM WAR.
+
+The first great event that woke China from her dream of solitary
+grandeur was the war with England, which broke out in 1839 and was
+closed three years later by the Treaty of Nanking. It was not, however,
+all that was needed to effect that object. It made the giant rub her
+eyes and give a reluctant assent to terms imposed by superior force. But
+many a rude lesson was still required before she came to perceive her
+true position, as on the lower side of an inclined plane. To bring her
+to this discovery four more foreign wars were to follow before the end
+of the century, culminating in a siege in Peking and massacres
+throughout the northern provinces which may be looked on as the fifth
+act in a long and bloody tragedy.
+
+In the last three wars Li Hung Chang was a prominent actor. In the
+first two he took no part. Yet was it the shock which they gave to the
+empire that drove him from a life of literary seclusion to do battle in
+a more public arena.
+
+The Opium War of 1839 is not improperly so designated, but nothing is
+more erroneous than to infer that it was waged by England for the
+purpose of forcing the product of her Indian poppy fields on the markets
+of China. Opium was the occasion, not the cause. The cause, if we are to
+put it in a single word, was the overbearing arrogance of an Oriental
+despotism, which refused to recognize any equal in the family
+of nations.
+
+In the Straits settlements and in the seaports of India, Chinese
+merchants had been brought under sway of the bewitching narcotic. It
+found its way to their southern seaports, and without being recognized
+as an article of commerce, the trade expanded with startling rapidity.
+The Emperor, Tao Kwang, one of the most humane of rulers, resolved to
+take measures for the suppression of the vice. He had come to the throne
+in 1820; and there is a story that he was moved to action by the
+untimely fate of his eldest son, who had fallen a victim to the
+seductive poison.
+
+Commissioner Lin, whom he selected to carry out his prohibitory policy,
+was a fit instrument for such a master, equally virtuous in his aims
+and equally tyrannical in his mode of proceeding. Arriving at Canton,
+his first object was to get possession of the forbidden drug, which was
+stored on ships outside the harbor. This he thought to accomplish by
+surrounding the whole foreign community by soldiers and threatening them
+with death if the opium was not promptly surrendered. While its owners
+or their agents hesitated, Captain Elliot, the British Superintendent of
+Trade, came up from Macao, and demanded to share the duress of his
+nationals. He then called on them to deliver up the drug to him to be
+used in the service of the Queen for the ransom of the lives of her
+subjects, assuring them that they would be reimbursed from the public
+treasury. No fewer than twenty-one thousand chests, valued at nine
+million dollars, were brought in from the opium ships and formally
+handed over to Commissioner Lin. The foreign community was set free, and
+the drug destroyed by being mixed with quicklime.
+
+War was made to punish this outrage on the rights of the foreign
+community, and to exact indemnity for the seizure of their property.
+Canton was not captured, but held to ransom, and the haughty Viceroy
+sent into exile. Other cities were taken and held; and, in 1842, a
+treaty of peace was signed at Nanking by which five ports were opened to
+foreign trade. The embargo on opium was not withdrawn; but the defeat of
+the Chinese resulted in a virtual immunity from seizure together with a
+growth of the traffic, such as to justify the ill-odored name which that
+war still bears in history.
+
+Treaties with other powers followed in quick succession. On demand of
+the French Minister, the Emperor recalled his prohibitory decrees
+against Christianity and issued an Edict of Toleration. If the opening
+of the ports gave a stimulus to trade, the decree of toleration opened a
+door for missionary enterprise. As yet, however, neither merchant nor
+missionary was allowed to penetrate into the interior; while the capital
+and the whole of the northern seacoast remained inaccessible. This was
+obviously a state of things that could not be permanent; yet fifteen
+years were to pass before another war came to settle the terms of
+intercourse on a broader basis.
+
+When the war broke out, Li Hung Chang was seventeen years of age, living
+at Hofei in Anhui. As there were then no newspapers in China it may be
+doubted whether he heard of it until a British squadron sailed up to
+Nanking and extorted a treaty at the cannon's mouth. Li was rudely
+startled by the appearance of a new force, to which there was no
+allusion in any of his ancient books. Along with the sailing-ships there
+were two or three small steamers. It struck the Chinese with
+astonishment to see them make head against wind and tide. _Shin Chuan_,
+"ships of the gods," is the name they gave those mysterious vessels.
+Little could Li foresee the part he was destined to take in creating a
+steam navy for China.
+
+Descended from a long line of scholars, he was supposed to be born to
+the pursuit of letters. He did, in fact, devote himself to study with
+unflagging zeal, because he had as yet no temptation to turn aside. Was
+there not, moreover, an open door before his face inviting him to win
+for himself the honors of a mandarinate? In his native town he placed
+his foot on the first step of the ladder by gaining the degree of A.B.,
+or, in Chinese, "Budding Genius." At the provincial capital he next
+carried off the laurel of the second degree, which is worth more than
+our A.M., not merely because it is not conferred in course, but because
+it falls to the lot of only one in a hundred among some thousands of
+competitors. These provincial tournaments occur but once in three years;
+and the successful candidates proceed to Peking to compete for the third
+degree, or D.C.L.,--_Tsin-shi_, or, "Fit for Office." Here the chances
+amount to three per cent.
+
+Li's fortunes were again propitious, and in company with two or three
+hundred new-made doctors, he was summoned to the palace to contend in
+presence of the emperor for the honor of a seat in the Imperial
+Academy,--the Hanlin, or "Forest of Pencils." Here also he met with
+success, but he was not among the first three whose names are marked by
+the vermilion pen of majesty, each of whom sheds lustre on his native
+province. The highest of the three is called Chuang Yuen, "Head of the
+List" or "Prince of Letters." In the 'fifties it fell to a native of
+Ningpo, where I then lived. His good luck was announced to his wife by
+the magistrate in person, who conducted her to the six gates, at each of
+which she scattered a handful of rice, as an omen of good fortune. In
+the 'sixties, when I had removed to Peking, this honor was for the first
+time conferred on a Manchu, a son of the General Saishanga. His daughter
+was deemed a fit consort for the heir to the throne, wearing for a short
+time the tiara of empress, and committing suicide on the death of
+her lord.
+
+In the two previous contests, handwriting goes for nothing, but in this
+it is not without weight, as the avowed object is to select scribes for
+the service of the throne. On those occasions extent of erudition and
+originality of thought are the qualities most esteemed; but this time
+the order of merit is decided by superficial elegance of style, and by
+facility in the composition of verse.
+
+However defective the standard of learning, this long course of
+competition, extending over ten or fifteen years, has the effect of
+bringing before the throne a body of men each of whom is the survivor of
+a hundred contests. No country can boast a better system for the
+selection of talent, and the government guards it with jealous care. I
+have known more than one examiner put to death for tampering with this
+ballot-box of the Empire. For ages it has provided the state with able
+officers; nor is its least merit that of converting a dangerous
+demagogue into a quiet student.
+
+While waiting for an appointment, Li heard with dismay that Nanking had
+been taken by a body of rebels, and that his native province was in
+danger of being overrun by them. A new career opened before him,--one
+that led more directly to the highest offices within the gift of the
+sovereign. Asking a commission in the army, he was assigned to a
+position on the staff of Tsengkofan, father of the Marquis Tseng, who
+was afterwards Minister to England.
+
+This rebellion, among the strangest of strange things, now claims our
+attention.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE TAIPING REBELLION.
+
+In April, 1853, the news reached us that Nanking had fallen into the
+hands of a body of rebels who, by a curious irony, called themselves
+Taipings, "Soldiers of Peace."
+
+They were Chinese, not Manchus, and their leaders were all from the
+extreme south. Starting near Canton, they had proclaimed as their
+object the expulsion of the Tartars. Overrunning Kwangsi and Hunan, they
+had got possession of Hankow and the two adjacent cities,--a centre of
+wealth which may be compared to the three cities that form our Greater
+New York. Everywhere they put to flight the government forces; but they
+did not choose to stop anywhere short of the ancient capital of the
+Mings. Seizing some thousands of junks, they filled them with the
+plunder of that rich mart, and sweeping down the river, carried by
+assault every city on its banks until they reached Nanking. Its
+resistance was quickly overcome; and putting to death the entire
+garrison of twenty-five thousand Manchus, they announced their intention
+to make it the capital of their empire, as Hung Wu had done when he
+drove out the Mongols and restored freedom to the Chinese race.
+
+In a few months they despatched an expedition to expel the Manchus from
+Peking. But that proved a more difficult task than they expected. Before
+the detachment had arrived at Tientsin, it was met on the Grand Canal by
+a strong force under Sengkolinsin, the Mongol prince. Obliged to winter
+on the way, it was divided and cut off in detail; this defeat making it
+evident to all the world that the Manchu domination might still hope for
+a considerable lease of life. The blood and rapine which everywhere
+marked their pathway alienated the sympathy of foreigners from the
+Soldiers of Peace. Nor did the new power at Nanking manifest the least
+anxiety to obtain foreign aid, feeling assured of ultimate triumph. Yet,
+indifferent as they were to the co-operation of foreigners, the Taipings
+proclaimed themselves Christians, and appeared to aim their blows no
+less at lifeless idols than at living enemies. Shangti, the Supreme
+Ruler, the God of the ancient sages, was the object of their worship.
+They found his name in the Christian Bibles, and they published the
+Bible as the source of their new faith. Their faith amounted to a
+frenzy, giving them courage in battle, but not imparting the
+self-control essential to Christian morality. Filling their coffers with
+spoil, they stocked their harems with the wives and daughters of their
+enemies. If their lives had been more decent, they might have had a
+better chance to secure the favor of those powerful nations which had
+now become the arbiters of destiny in China.
+
+The leader of the movement was a Cantonese by the name of Hung Siu
+Chuen. A copy of the Bible having fallen into his hands, he applied to a
+Baptist missionary for instruction. How much he learned may be inferred
+from the fact that he gave his followers a new form of baptism,
+requiring them to wash the bosom as a sign for cleansing the heart. He
+had ecstatic visions, and preached a crusade against idolatry and the
+Manchus. The ease with which the Manchus had been beaten by the British
+in 1842 had revealed their weakness, and the new faith supplied the
+rebels with a fresh source of power. They mixed the teachings of the
+Gospel with new revelations as freely as Mohammed did in propagating the
+religion of the Koran. The chief called himself the younger brother of
+Jesus Christ. His prime minister assumed the title of the Holy Ghost;
+and his counsels were given out as decrees from Heaven. All this had an
+air of blasphemy that shocked the sensibilities of foreigners, and
+compelled them to stand aloof or to support the Manchus.
+
+The native authorities were permitted to engage foreign ships and seamen
+to operate against the rebels, who sustained a siege in Nanking almost
+as long as the siege of Troy. From Shanghai, Suchau, and other cities
+the Taipings were driven out by the aid of foreigners, chiefly led by
+Ward and Gordon, the former an American, the latter a Briton. General
+Ward was never under the command of Li Hung Chang; but to him more than
+to any other foreigner belongs the honor of turning the tide of the
+Taiping Rebellion. A soldier of fortune, he offered to throw his sword
+into the government scale if it were paid for with many times its weight
+in gold. Gathering a nondescript force of various nationalities, he
+recaptured the city of Sungkiang, and followed this up by such a series
+of successes that his little troop came to be known as the
+"Ever-victorious Army." Falling before the walls of Tseki, he was
+interred with pomp at the scene of his first victory, where a temple was
+erected to his memory, and he is now reckoned among the "Joss" of the
+Chinese Empire. His force was taken into Li's pay.
+
+General Gordon (the same who fell at Khartoum) acted under the direction
+of Li Hung Chang; and his chief exploit was the recovery of Suchau.
+Unable to resist his artillery, the rebel chiefs offered to capitulate.
+They were assured by him that their lives would be spared. To this Li
+Hung Chang consented, and the stronghold was at once surrendered.
+Regardless of his plighted faith, Li caused the five leaders to be
+beheaded, an act of treachery which filled Gordon with such fury that he
+went from camp to camp, looking for Li, determined to put a bullet in
+his head. Li, however, avoided a meeting until Gordon's wrath had time
+to subside, and that treacherous act laid the foundation of his future
+fortunes. He was made governor of the province, and for forty years he
+rose in power and influence.
+
+Not only was this terrible rebellion which laid waste the fairest
+provinces a sequel to the first war with England, it was prolonged and
+aggravated by a second war which broke out in 1857. In 1863, the last
+stronghold of the rebels was recaptured, and the rebellion finally
+suppressed, after twelve years of dismal carnage. In bringing about this
+result, no names are more conspicuous than those of Li Hung Chang and
+General Gordon, whose sobriquet of "Chinese Gordon" ever afterwards
+characterized him. Li's good fortune served him well in this war. Having
+won the favor of the Court, he was in command of the forces of eastern
+Kiangsu, and all the brilliant successes of Ward and Gordon were
+credited to him. He was not only made governor of the province, but also
+created an Earl in perpetuity.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE "ARROW" WAR; THE TREATIES.
+
+Never did a smaller spark ignite a greater conflagration. In 1856 a
+native junk named the "Arrow," sailing under a British flag, was seized
+for piracy, her flag hauled down and her crew thrown into prison at
+Canton. On demand of Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, they were
+handed over to Consul Parkes (later Sir Harry); but he refused to
+receive them because they were not accompanied by a suitable apology.
+The haughty Viceroy Yeh put them all to death, provoking reprisals on
+the part of the British, resulting in the occupation of Canton and the
+capture of Peking after three campaigns to the north.
+
+In this war England had France for ally; as the two powers had been
+associated in that hugest of blunders, the Crimean War. Nor was the
+alliance a less blunder on this occasion. Napoleon's excuse for
+participation was the murder of a missionary in Kwangsi; but his real
+motive was a desire to checkmate Great Britain, and prevent the conquest
+of new territory. In the Opium War she had stopped at Nanking, leaving
+the pride of China unhumbled, and the state of relations so unstable
+that another war was required to place them on a better footing.
+England, with unselfish generosity, invited the co-operation of Russia
+and the United States. Either power might have found as good a pretext
+for hostile action as that of France; but they chose to maintain an
+attitude of neutrality, offering only such moral support as might enable
+them to gather up the apples after the others had shaken the tree. In
+1857 Canton was taken and held by the allies. The next spring the envoys
+of the four powers, each with a considerable naval force, proceeded to
+the mouth of the Peiho, the gateway to a capital as secluded and
+exclusive as that of the Grand Lama. The forts made a show of
+resistance, but they were put to silence in less than half an hour; and
+negotiations which had been opened by the neutrals were resumed
+at Tientsin.
+
+Dr. S. Wells Williams was Chinese secretary to the United States
+minister, Mr. William B. Reed; and I acted as interpreter for the spoken
+language. An article in favor of Christian missions occasioned some
+delay; and Mr. Reed, who was vain and shallow, said to us, "Now,
+gentlemen, hurry up with your missionary article for I intend to sign my
+treaty on the 18th of June [Waterloo day] with or without that clause."
+Fancy a mind that could think of a treaty obtained by British guns as
+entitling him to be associated with Wellington! Yet Mr. Reed had the
+effrontery to say that he "expected us to make the missionary societies
+duly sensible of their obligations" to him. That twenty-ninth article
+was the gem of the treaty; and it had the honor of being copied into
+that of Lord Elgin, which was signed eight days later.
+
+High-minded, philanthropic, and upright, Lord Elgin made a mistake which
+led to a renewal of the war. He refused to place Tientsin on the list of
+open ports, because, as he said, "Foreign powers would make use of it to
+overawe the Chinese capital,"--just as if overawing was not a matter of
+prime necessity. He hastened away to India to aid in suppressing the
+Sepoy mutiny, eventually becoming viceroy after another campaign in
+China. His brother, Sir F. Bruce, succeeded him as minister in China;
+and twelve months later (July, 1859) the ministers of the four powers
+were again at the mouth of the Peiho on their way to Peking for the
+exchange of ratified copies of the several treaties. The United States
+minister was John E. Ward, a noble-hearted son of Georgia, and the chief
+of our little squadron was the gallant old Commodore Tatnall.
+
+We were not a little surprised to see the demolished forts completely
+rebuilt, and frowning defiance. We were told by officers who came down
+to the shore that no vessel would be allowed to pass; but that the way
+to Peking was open to us _via_ Peitang, a small port to the north.
+
+To this Mr. Ward made no objection, but the British, who had so recently
+held the keys of the capital, were indignant to be met by such a rebuff.
+They steamed ahead between the forts, leaving the Chinese to take the
+consequences. All at once the long line of batteries opened fire. One or
+two gunboats were sunk; two or three were stranded. A storming party was
+repulsed, and Admiral Hope, who was dangerously wounded, begged our
+American commodore to give him a lift by towing up a flotilla of barges
+filled with a reserve force. "Blood is thicker than water," exclaimed
+Tatnall, in tones that have echoed round the globe, and Ward making no
+objection, he threw neutrality to the winds, and proceeded to tow up the
+barges. Our little steamer was commanded by Lieutenant Barker, now
+Admiral Barker of the New York Navy Yard.
+
+Even this failed to retrieve the day, the tide having fallen too low for
+a successful landing. For the British admiral nothing remained but to
+withdraw his shattered forces, and prepare for another campaign. For the
+United States minister a dazzling prospect now presented itself,--that
+of intervening to prevent the renewal of war. From Peitang we proceeded
+by land two days. Then we continued our voyage for five days by boat on
+the Upper Peiho.
+
+At Peking, calling on the genial old Kweiliang, who had signed the
+treaty in 1858, Mr. Ward was astonished at his change of tone. "You wish
+to see the Emperor. That goes as a matter of course; but his Majesty
+knows you helped the British, and he requires that you go on your knees
+before the throne in token of repentance." "Tell him," said Mr. Ward to
+me, "that I go on my knees only to God and woman." "Is not the Emperor
+the same as God?" replied the old courtier, taking no notice of a
+tribute to woman that was unintelligible to an Oriental mind. "You need
+not really touch the ground with your knees," he continued; "but merely
+make a show of kneeling. There will be eunuchs at hand to lift you up,
+saying 'Don't kneel! Don't kneel!'" The eunuchs, as Mr. Ward well knew,
+would be more likely to push us to our knees than to lift us up; and he
+wisely decided to decline the honor of an audience on such terms.
+
+Displeased by his obstinacy, the Emperor ordered him to quit the capital
+without delay, and exchange ratifications at the sea-coast. A report was
+long current in Peking that foreigners have no joints in their knees;
+hence their reluctance to kneel. Thus vanished for Mr. Ward the
+alluring prospect of winning for himself and his country the beatitude
+of the peacemaker.
+
+The summer of 1860 saw the Peiho forts taken, and an allied force of
+thirty thousand men advancing on Peking. The court fled to Tartary, and
+the summer palace was laid in ashes to punish the violation of a flag of
+truce, the bearers of which were bound hand and foot, and left to perish
+within its walls. For three days the smoke of its burning, carried by a
+northwest wind, hung like a pall over the devoted city, whose
+inhabitants were so terrified that they opened the gates half an hour
+before the time set for bombardment. No soldiers were admitted, but the
+demands of the Allies were all acceded to, and supplementary treaties
+signed within the walls by Lord Elgin and Baron Gros. Peking was opened
+to foreign residence. The French succeeded in opening the whole country
+to the labors of missionaries. Legations were established at the
+capital, and a new era of peace and prosperity dawned on the
+distracted empire.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE WAR WITH FRANCE.
+
+If the opening of Peking required a prolonged struggle, it was followed
+by a quarter-century of pacific intercourse. China had at her helm a
+number of wise statesmen,--such as Prince Kung and Wensiang. The
+Inspectorate of Customs begun under Mr. Lay took shape under the skilful
+management of Sir Robert Hart, and from that day to this it has proved
+to be a fruitful nursery of reforms, political and social.
+
+Not only were students sent abroad for education at the instance and
+under the leadership of Yung Wing, but a school for interpreters was
+opened in the capital, which, through the influence of Sir Robert Hart,
+was expanded into the well-known Imperial College. On his nomination the
+present writer was called to the head of it, and Wensiang proposed to
+convert it into a great national university by making it obligatory on
+the members of the Hanlin Academy, the Emperor's "Forest of Pencils," to
+come there for a course of instruction in science and international law.
+Against this daring innovation, Wojin, a Manchu tutor of the Emperor,
+protested, declaring that it would be humiliating to China to have her
+choicest scholars sit at the feet of foreign professors. The scheme fell
+through, but before many years the Emperor himself had taken up the
+study of the English language, and two of our students were selected to
+be his instructors. One of them is at this present time (1902) Chinese
+minister at the Court of St. James. Several of our students have had
+diplomatic missions, and one, after serving as minister abroad, is now a
+leading member of the Board of Foreign Affairs in Peking. A press
+opened in connection with the college printed numerous text-books on
+international law, political economy, physics, and mathematics,
+translated by the president, professors, and students.
+
+America was fortunate in the choice of the first minister whom she sent
+to reside at Peking. This was Anson Burlingame, who, after doing much to
+encourage the Chinese in the direction of progress, was by them made the
+head of the first embassy which they sent to foreign nations. His
+success in other countries was largely due to the sympathy with which he
+had been received in the United States by Secretary Seward, and to the
+advice and recommendations with which he was provided by that great
+statesman. So deep an interest did Mr. Seward take in China that he went
+in person to study its condition before the close of his career. In his
+visit to Peking he was accompanied by his nephew, George F. Seward, who
+was United States Consul at Shanghai. The latter has since that date
+worthily represented our country as minister at Peking; but it may be
+doubted whether in that high position he ever performed an international
+service equal in importance to one performed during his consulship, for
+which he has recently received the cross of the Legion of Honor. In
+laying out their new concession at Shanghai, the French had excited the
+hostility of the people by digging up and levelling down many of those
+graves that occupied so much space outside of the city walls, and where
+the Chinese who worshipped their ancestors were to be seen every day
+burning paper and heaping up the earth. A furious mob fell on the French
+police, chased them from the field, and menaced the French settlement
+with knife and firebrand. The consuls were appealed to for aid, but no
+one responded except Mr. Seward, who headed a strong force from one of
+our men-of-war, dispersed the mob, and secured the safety of the foreign
+settlement. But for his timely intervention who knows that the French
+consulate would not have been reduced to ashes? If the consulate had
+been burned down, a war would have been inevitable, with a chain of
+consequences that baffles the imagination.
+
+In 1871 a horrid atrocity was perpetrated by Chinese at Tientsin which
+certainly would have led to war with France if Napoleon III. had not at
+that very time been engaged in mortal combat with Germany. The populace
+were made to believe that the sisters at the French hospital had been
+seen extracting the eyeballs from their patients to use in the
+manufacture of magical drugs. They were set upon by a maddened
+multitude, a score or more of them slaughtered, and the buildings where
+they had cared for the sick and suffering turned to a heap of ruins.
+Count Rocheschouart, instead of reserving the case to be settled at a
+later day, thought best to accept from the Chinese government an
+apology, with an ample sum in the way of pecuniary compensation. That
+grewsome superstition has led to bloodshed in more than one part
+of China.
+
+In the summer of 1885 I was called one day from the Western Hills to the
+Tsungli-Yamen, or Foreign Office, on business of great urgency. On
+arriving, I was informed that the Chinese gunboats in the river Min had
+been sunk by the French the day before; that they had also destroyed the
+Arsenal at the mouth of the river. "This," said the Secretary, "means
+war, and we desire to know how non-combatants belonging to the enemy and
+resident in our country are to be treated according to the rules of
+International Law." While I was copying out the principles and
+precedents bearing on the subject, the same Secretary begged me to
+hasten my report, "because," said he, "the Grand Council is waiting for
+it to embody in an Imperial Decree." True enough, the next day a decree
+from the throne announced the outbreak of war; but it added that
+non-combatants belonging to the enemy would not be molested. Two of our
+professors were Frenchmen, and they were both permitted to continue in
+charge of their classes without molestation.
+
+Hostilities were brought to a happy conclusion by the agency of Sir
+Robert Hart. One of his customs cruisers employed in the light-house
+service having been seized by the French, Mr. Campbell was sent to Paris
+to see the French President and petition for its release. Learning that
+President Grévy would welcome the restoration of peace, and ascertaining
+what conditions would be acceptable, Sir Robert laid them before the
+Chinese government, putting an end to a conflict which, if suffered to
+go on, might have ruined the interests of more than one country. In this
+war and in those peace negotiations the conduct of the Chinese was
+worthy of a civilized nation. Yet the result of their experience was to
+make them more ready to appeal to arms in cases of difficulty.
+
+Li's connection with this war was very real, though not conspicuous.
+Changpeilun, director of the arsenal at Foochow, was his son-in-law. Not
+only was Li disposed to aid him in taking revenge, he was himself
+building a great arsenal in the north; and it was, no doubt, owing to
+efficient succor from this quarter that Formosa was able to hold out
+against the forces of the French.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+WAR WITH JAPAN.
+
+Both in its inception and in its tragic ending the notable conflict with
+Japan connects itself with the name of Li Hung Chang. The Island Empire
+on the East had long been known to the Chinese, though until our times
+no regular intercourse subsisted between the two countries. It is
+recorded that a fleet freighted with youth and maidens was despatched
+thither by the builder of the Great Wall to seek in those islands of the
+blest for the herb of immortality; but none of them returned. It was to
+be a colony, and the flowery robe by which its object is veiled is not
+sufficient to hide the real aim of that ambitious potentate. Yet,
+through that expedition and subsequent emigrations, a pacific conquest
+was effected which does honor to both nations, planting in those islands
+the learning of China, and blending with their native traditions the
+essential teachings of her ancient sages.
+
+For centuries prior to our age of treaties, non-intercourse had been
+enforced on both sides,--the Japanese confining their Chinese neighbors,
+as they did the Dutch, to a little islet in the port of Nagasaki; and
+China seeing nothing of Japan except an occasional descent of Japanese
+pirates on her exposed sea-coast.
+
+To America belongs the honor of opening that opulent archipelago to the
+commerce of the world. Our shipwrecked sailors having been harshly
+treated by those islanders, a squadron was sent under Commodore Perry to
+Yeddo (now Tokio) in 1855, to punish them if necessary and to provide
+against future outrages. With rare moderation he merely handed in a
+statement of his terms and sailed away to Loochoo to give them time for
+reflection. Returning six months later, instead of the glove of combat
+he was received with the hand of friendship, and a treaty was signed
+which provided for the opening of three ports and the residence of an
+American chargé d'affaires. In the autumn of 1859 it was my privilege to
+visit Yeddo in company with Mr. Ward and Commodore Tatnall. We were
+entertained by Townsend Harris and shown the sights of the city of the
+Shoguns when it was still clothed in its mediaeval costume. The long
+swaddling-garb of the natives had a semi-savage aspect, and the abject
+servility with which their todzies (interpreters) prostrated themselves
+before their officers excited a feeling of contempt.
+
+Like the mayors of the palace in mediaeval France, the Shoguns or
+generals had relegated the Mikado to a single city of the interior;
+while for six hundred years they had usurped the power of the Empire,
+practically presenting the spectacle of two Emperors, one "spiritual"
+(or nominal), one "temporal" (or real). Little did we imagine that
+within five years the Shoguns would be swept away, and the Mikado
+restored to more than his ancient power. The conflagration was kindled
+by a spark from our engines. The feudal nobles, of whom there were four
+hundred and fifty, each a prince within his own narrow limits, were
+indignant that the Shogun had opened his ports to those aggressive
+foreigners of the West. Raising a cry of "Kill the foreigners!" they
+overturned the Shoguns and restored the Mikado. Their fury, however,
+subsided when they found that the foreigner was too strong to be
+expelled. A few more years saw them patriotically surrendering their
+feudal powers in order to make the central government strong enough to
+face the world. About the same time our Western costume was adopted, and
+along with it the parliamentary system of Great Britain and the school
+system of America. Some foreigners were shallow enough to laugh at them
+when they saw those little soldiers in Western uniform; and the Chinese
+despised them more than ever for abandoning the dress of their
+forefathers.
+
+To protect themselves at once against China and Russia, the Japanese
+felt that the independence of Corea was to them indispensable. The King
+had been a feudal subject to China since the days of King Solomon; and
+when at the instance of Japan he assumed the title of Emperor, the
+Chinese resolved to punish him for such insolence. This was in 1894. The
+Japanese took up arms in his defence; and though they had some hard
+fighting, they soon made it evident that nothing but a treaty of peace
+could keep them out of Peking.
+
+Li Hung Chang, who had long been Viceroy at Tientsin and who had built
+a northern arsenal and remodelled the Chinese army, had to confess
+himself beaten. For him it was a bitter pill to be sent as a suppliant
+to the Court of the Mikado. That China was beaten was not his fault. Yet
+he was held responsible by his own government and departed on that
+humiliating mission as if with a rope about his neck. Fortunately for
+him, during his mission in Japan an assassin lodged a bullet in his
+head, and the desire of Japan to undo the effect of that shameful act
+made negotiation an easy task, converting his defeat into a sort of
+triumph. Happily, too, he enjoyed the counsel and assistance of J.W.
+Foster, formerly United States Secretary of State. Formosa, one of the
+brightest jewels in the Chinese crown, had to be handed over to Japan,
+and lower Manchuria would have gone with it, had not Russia, supported
+by Austria and Germany, compelled the Japanese to withdraw their claims.
+
+The next turn of the kaleidoscope shows us China seeking to follow the
+example of Japan in throwing off the trammels of antiquated usage. In
+1898, when the tide of reform was in full swing, the Marquis Ito of
+Japan paid a visit to Peking, and as president of the University, I had
+the honor of being asked to meet him along with Li Hung Chang at a
+dinner given by Huyufen, mayor of the city, and the grand secretary,
+Sunkianai. It was a lesson intended for them when he told us how, on
+his returning from England in the old feudal days, his prince asked him
+if anything needed to be reformed in Japan. "Everything," he replied.
+The lesson was lost on the three Chinese statesmen, progressive though
+they were, for China was then on the eve of a violent reaction which
+threatened ruin instead of progress.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+WAR WITH THE WORLD.
+
+The last summer of the century saw the forts at the mouth of the Peiho
+captured for the third time since the beginning of 1858. It was the
+opening scene in the last act of a long drama, and more imposing than
+any that had gone before, not in the number of assailants nor in the
+obstinacy of resistance, but in the fact that instead of one or two
+nations as hitherto, all the powers of the modern world were now
+combined to batter down the barriers of Chinese conservatism. Getting
+possession of Tientsin, not without hard fighting, they advanced on
+Peking under eight national flags, against the "eight banners" of the
+Manchu tribes.
+
+What was the mainspring of this tragic movement? What unforeseen
+occurrence had effected a union of powers whose usual attitude is mutual
+jealousy or secret hostility? In a word, it was _humanity_. Spurning
+petty questions of policy, they combined their forces to extinguish a
+conflagration kindled by pride and superstition, which menaced the lives
+of all foreigners in North China.
+
+In 1898, when the Emperor had entered on a career of progress, the
+Empress Dowager was appealed to by a number of her old servants to save
+the Empire from a young Phaeton, who was driving so fast as to be in
+danger of setting the world on fire. Coming out of her luxurious
+retreat, ten miles from the city, where she had never ceased to keep an
+eye on the course of affairs, she again took possession of the throne
+and compelled her adopted son to ask her to "teach him how to govern."
+This was the _coup d'état_. In her earlier years she had not been
+opposed to progress, but now that she had returned to power at the
+instance of a conservative party, she entered upon a course of reaction
+which made a collision with foreign powers all but inevitable. She had
+been justly provoked by their repeated aggressions. Germany had seized a
+port in Shantung in consequence of the murder of two missionaries.
+Russia at once clapped her bear's paw on Port Arthur. Great Britain set
+the lion's foot on Weihaiwei; and France demanded Kwang Chan Bay, all
+"to maintain the balance of power." Exasperated beyond endurance, the
+Empress gave notice that any further demands of the sort would be met by
+force of arms.
+
+The governor of Shantung appointed by her was a Manchu by the name of
+Yuhien, who more than any other man is to be held responsible for the
+outbreak of hostilities. He it was who called the Boxers from their
+hiding-places and supplied them with arms, convinced apparently of the
+reality of their claim to be invulnerable. For a hundred years they had
+existed as a secret society under a ban of prohibition. Now, however,
+they had made amends by killing German missionaries, and he hoped by
+their aid to expel the Germans from Shantung. On complaint of the German
+Minister he was recalled; but, decorated by the hands of the Empress
+Dowager, he was transferred to Shansi, where later on he slaughtered all
+the missionaries in that province.
+
+In Shantung he was succeeded by Yuen Shikai, a statesmanlike official,
+who soon compelled the Boxers to seek another arena for their
+operations. Instead of creeping back to their original hiding-place they
+crossed the boundary and directed their march toward Peking,--on the way
+not merely laying waste the villages of native Christians, but tearing
+up the railway and killing foreigners indiscriminately. They had made a
+convert of Prince Tuan, father of the heir apparent. He it was who
+encouraged their advance, believing that he might make use of them to
+help his son to the throne. Their numbers were swelled by multitudes who
+fancied that they would suffer irreparable personal loss through the
+introduction of railways and modern labor-saving machinery; and China
+can charge the losses of the last war to those misguided crowds.
+
+Fortunately several companies of marines, amounting to four hundred and
+fifty men, arrived in Peking the day before the destruction of the
+track. The legations were threatened, churches were burnt down, native
+Christians put to death, and fires set to numerous shops simply because
+they contained foreign goods. Then it was that the foreign admirals
+captured the forts, in order to bring relief to our foreign community.
+That step the Chinese Foreign Office pronounced an act of war, and
+ordered the legations and all other foreigners to quit the capital. The
+ministers remonstrated, knowing that on the way we could not escape
+being butchered by Boxers. On the 20th of June, the German Minister was
+killed on his way to the Foreign Office. The legations and other
+foreigners at once took refuge in the British legation, previously
+agreed on as the best place to make a defence. Professor James was
+killed while crossing a bridge near the legation. That night we were
+fired on from all sides, and for eight weeks we were exposed to a daily
+fusillade from an enemy that counted more on reducing us by starvation
+than on carrying our defences by storm.
+
+About midnight on August 13, we heard firing at the gates of the city,
+and knew that our deliverers were near. The next day, scaling the walls
+or battering down the gates, they forced their way into the city and
+effected our rescue. The day following, the Roman Catholic Cathedral was
+relieved,--the defence of which forms the brightest page in the history
+of the siege, and in the afternoon we held a solemn service of
+thanksgiving. The palaces were found vacant, the Empress Dowager having
+fled with her entire court. She was the same Empress who had fled from
+the British and French forty years before.
+
+She was not pursued, because Prince Ching came forward to meet the
+foreign ministers, and he and Li Hung Chang were appointed to arrange
+terms of peace. Li was Viceroy at Canton. Had he been in his old
+viceroyalty at Tientsin, this Boxer war could not have occurred. That
+its fury was limited to the northern belt of provinces was owing to the
+wisdom of Chang[5] and Liu, the great satraps of Central China who
+engaged to keep their provinces in order, if not attacked by foreigners.
+
+[Footnote 5: Chang is regarded as the ablest of China's viceroys. He
+published, prior to the _coup d'état_, a notable book, in which he
+argues that China's only hope is in the adoption of the sciences and
+arts of the West.]
+
+I called on the old statesman in the summer of 1901, after the last of
+the treaties was signed. He seemed to feel that his work was finished,
+but he still had energy enough to write a preface for my translation of
+Hall's "International Law," and before the end of another month his
+long life of restless activity had come to a close at the age of
+seventy-nine. By posthumous decree, he was made a Marquis.
+
+In the autumn the court returned to Peking, the way having been opened
+by Li's negotiations. Thanks to the lessons of adversity, the Dowager
+has been led to favor the cause of progress. Not only has she re-enacted
+the educational reforms proposed by the Emperor, but she has gone a step
+farther, and ordered that instead of mere literary finish, a knowledge
+of arts and sciences shall be required in examinations for the
+Civil Service.
+
+The following words I wrote in an obituary notice, a few days after Li's
+death:--
+
+"For over twenty years Earl Li has been a conspicuous patron of
+educational reform. The University and other schools at Tientsin were
+founded by him; and he had a large share in founding the Imperial
+University in Peking. During the last twenty years I have had the honor
+of being on intimate terms with him. Five years ago he wrote a preface
+for a book of mine on Christian Psychology,--showing a freedom from
+prejudice very rare among Chinese officials.
+
+"Another preface which he wrote for me is noteworthy from the fact that
+it is one of the last papers that came from his prolific pencil. Having
+finished a translation of 'Hall's International Law' (begun before the
+siege), I showed it to Li Hung Chang not two weeks ago. The old man took
+a deep interest in it, and returned it with a preface in which he says
+'I am now near eighty; Dr. Martin is over seventy. We are old and soon
+to pass away; but we both hope that coming generations will be guided by
+the principles of this book.'
+
+"With all his faults--those of his time and country--Li Hung Chang was a
+true patriot. For him it was a fitting task to place the keystone in the
+arch that commemorates China's peace with the world."
+
+
+
+
+DAVID LIVINGSTONE.
+
+
+1813-1873.
+
+AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT.
+
+BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.
+
+
+Africa is the most ancient and the most recent conquest of the human
+race. As far as the light of history can be projected into the past, we
+see Egypt among the first and foremost on the threshold of civilization.
+The continent discovered last and opened last to the enterprises of the
+world is still Africa. Why is it that we see there both the dawn of
+civilization and the tardiest development of human progress?
+
+The reasons are not far to seek. The physical conformation of no other
+continent is so unfavorable for exploration and development. Africa's
+straight coast-lines, affording little shelter to the primitive ships of
+early mariners, repelled the enterprising Phoenicians and other
+seafarers in their eager search for new lands worth colonizing. Nor was
+it easy for explorers to penetrate into the interior. In its surface
+Africa has been compared to an inverted saucer,--the high plateaus
+occupying most of the interior descending to the sea by short, abrupt,
+and steep slopes, so that the wide and peaceful rivers of the plateaus
+are lashed into foam as they approach the ocean by many series of rapids
+and cataracts.
+
+In all the other continents rivers have been the lines of least
+resistance to the advance of man. Civilization has developed first along
+the great rivers. The valleys were first settled, and up these valleys
+man carried his industries and commerce far inland. Thus the Euphrates
+and Tigris of Mesopotamia, the Ganges and Indus of India, and the Hoang
+and Yangtse of China, were the creators of history; but this is true in
+Africa only of the Nile. All the other rivers have been impediments
+instead of helpful factors in the formidable task of exploration and
+development.
+
+The trying climate, also, gave Africa odious repute and delayed for
+centuries the study and utilization of the continent. When the British
+expedition under Captain Tuckey attempted to ascend the Congo, in 1816,
+to see if it were really the lower part of the Niger River, as had been
+conjectured, nearly all of its members perished miserably among the
+rapids less than two hundred miles from the sea. Such tragedies as this
+paralyzed enterprise in Africa until white men learned that the climate
+was not so deadly, after all, if they adhered to the manner of life, the
+hygienic rules, that should be observed in that tropical expanse.
+
+In all the other continents, also, explorers have had the advantage of
+domestic animals to carry their food and camp equipment; but in large
+parts of tropical Africa the horse, ox, and mule cannot live. The bite
+of the little tsetse fly kills them. Its sting is hardly so annoying as
+that of the mosquito, but near the base of its proboscis is a little bag
+containing the fatal poison. Camels have been loaded near Zanzibar for
+the journey to Tanganyika, but they did not live to reach the great
+lake. The "ship of the desert" can never be utilized in the humid
+regions of tropical Africa.
+
+The elephant is found from sea to sea, but he has not proved to be so
+amenable to domestication as his Asian brother. He may yet be reduced to
+useful servitude. The efforts in this direction in the German and French
+colonies are somewhat encouraging, though in 1901 only six elephants had
+thus far been broken to work and were daily used as beasts of burden.
+Explorers of tropical Africa have always been compelled to rely upon
+human porterage, the most expensive and unsatisfactory form of
+transportation, with the result that nearly all the great lines of
+exploration have been extended through the continent at enormous cost.
+
+So most other parts of the world were occupied, colonized, civilized,
+before Africa was explored. A continent one-fourth larger than our own
+was for centuries neglected and despised. "Nothing good can come out of
+Africa" became proverbial. Seventy years ago Africa, away from the
+coasts and the Nile, was almost a blank upon our maps, save for fanciful
+details that are ludicrously grotesque in the light of our present
+knowledge (1902).
+
+Then dawned the era of David Livingstone. Sixty-two years ago this
+humble Scotchman went to South Africa as a missionary. It was not long
+before he became imbued with the idea that missionary service could not
+be projected on broad, economic, and effective lines till the field was
+known. The explorer, he said, must precede the teacher and the merchant.
+We can work best for Christianity and civilization after we learn what
+the people are and know the nature of their environment. This was the
+thought that took him into the unknown; that inspired him with
+unflagging courage and zeal throughout twenty years of weary plodding in
+the African wilderness among hundreds of tribes who never before had
+seen a white man. And all the years he was studying the country and
+winning the love of its people, his faith in Africa, in its abounding
+resources worth the world's seeking, in the capacity of its people for
+development, steadily grew till it became the all-pervading impulse of
+his life. Livingstone's faith converted the world to the belief that,
+after all, there was good in Africa.
+
+"I shall never forget," said Stanley, one day in New York, "the time
+when I stood with Livingstone on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, and he
+raised his trembling hand above his head, leaned towards me as he looked
+me in the eye, and said in a voice broken with emotion: 'The day is
+coming when the whole world will know that Africa is worth reclaiming,
+and that its people may be brought out of barbarism. The world needs
+Africa; and teachers, merchants, railroads, and every influence of
+civilization will be spread through this continent to fit it for the
+place in human interests that belongs to it.' I thought then that
+Livingstone was an enthusiast and a visionary; but long ago I learned to
+believe that every word he said was true."
+
+Europe and America were thrilled by the simple narrative of those
+twenty-two thousand miles of wanderings that brought into the light of
+day millions of human beings who had been as much unknown to us as
+though they inhabited Mars. Livingstone did not live to know it, but it
+was he who kindled the great African Movement,--an outburst of zeal for
+geographic discovery and economic development such as was never
+seen before.
+
+Thirteen years ago (1889) a Frenchman named De Bissy completed the
+largest map yet made of Africa. In the preparation of this great work,
+which occupied much of his time for eight years, he used as his sources
+of information nearly eighteen hundred route and other maps, nearly all
+of which were the result of the work of explorers in the preceding
+quarter of a century. All that we know of the geography of over
+three-fourths of Africa is the work of the past half-century since
+Livingstone made his first journey in 1849; and we know far more of
+inner Africa to-day than was known of inner North America three hundred
+years after Columbus discovered the western world. A little over a
+century ago, our great-grandfathers were reading in their school
+geographies that North America had no conspicuous mountains except the
+Alleghanies; and these mountains and the Andes of South America were
+believed to be one and the same chain, interrupted by the Gulf of
+Mexico. Many men not yet bent with years can remember when the interior
+of Africa was a white space on the maps; but it is not possible to-day
+to make such a geographical blunder as we have mentioned, about any part
+of Africa.
+
+It is because of the work he did in those twenty years, sowing all the
+while the seeds from which sprang the great African Movement, that "the
+gentle master of African exploration" is acclaimed to-day as one of the
+world's great men, and that his body rests in Westminster Abbey among
+the illustrious dead of Britain.
+
+The son of a worthy weaver in Blantyre, Scotland, Livingstone's early
+life was that of a poor boy, working in a spinning-mill, quiet, sober,
+affectionate, and faithful in every relation of life. Moved at last by
+the thirst for knowledge that has distinguished many a humble Scotch
+boy, he entered the University at Glasgow, studying during the winter
+months and spending the summers at his trade in the factory, fitting
+himself all the while for the conquests he little dreamed he was to
+achieve over difficulties almost insurmountable. A classmate spoke of
+him as a pale, thin, retiring young man, but frank and most
+kind-hearted, ready for any good and useful work, even for chopping the
+University fuel and grinding wheat for the bread. In 1838, when he was
+twenty-five years old, he went to London to be examined as a candidate
+for the African missionary service. Two years later he was sent to South
+Africa, where for eight or nine years he labored among the natives
+earnestly and unostentatiously north of the place now famous as the site
+of the Kimberley diamond mines. It was here that he became intimately
+acquainted with the celebrated missionary, Robert Moffatt, whose
+daughter he married. His devoted wife accompanied him in some of his
+later travels, but long before he finished his work her body was laid to
+rest under the shade of a tree that for years was pointed out to all
+visitors to the Lower Zambesi.
+
+In 1849, began the series of explorations that continued till his
+death. "The end of geographical discovery is the beginning of missionary
+enterprise," he wrote. Burning with zeal to reveal Africa to the world,
+Livingstone never forgot the main aim of his life,--to open ways for the
+planting of mission stations among all the scores of tribes he visited.
+"I hope God will in mercy permit me to establish the Gospel somewhere in
+this region," he wrote from the land of the Barotse, on the Upper
+Zambesi. Does he now look down from his eternal home upon that very land
+whose churches and schools are the fruition of the labors of French
+Protestants; whose king, in London to attend the coronation of Edward
+VII., said he wanted more teachers and more men to train his people to
+build houses and work iron? He prayed that he might live to see "the
+double influence of the spirit of commerce and Christianity employed to
+stay the bitter fountain of African misery." The glowing zeal of the
+Christian philanthropist and the untiring ardor of the born explorer
+were perfectly blended in the spirit of the great pioneer of modern
+African discovery.
+
+Livingstone's routes through Africa would extend about seven times
+between New York City and San Francisco; and in his almost endless
+marches over plain, through jungle, across mountains and wide rivers,
+the natives met him almost without exception in a generous and
+hospitable spirit. Love was the secret of his success. He won his way by
+kindness. Give the barbarous African time to see that you wish him well,
+that you would do him good in ways he knows are helpful, and his
+affection is evoked.
+
+It was said that the British could never establish their rule over the
+great Wabemba tribe, southwest of Tanganyika, without a military
+campaign. In 1894, two humble Catholic fathers entered Lobemba, walked
+straight to the chief town, and were told that if they did not leave the
+country in one day they would be killed. As the stern message was
+delivered, they saw an old woman on the ground in great pain from a
+severe wound. The news soon spread that these unwelcome strangers had
+washed and dressed the wound, and made the old woman comfortable. "These
+people love men," was the word that passed from lip to lip, as the sick
+and suffering came out from the town to be treated, while thousands of
+natives looked on. At nightfall the white men were told they might
+remain another day; they ministered for eleven days to those who needed
+help, and were then invited to remain the rest of their lives. The
+mission stations of the White Fathers are to-day scattered all over
+Lobemba; the country is open in every corner to the whites, and in 1899
+British rule was established. The victory was won, not with guns, but
+by gentle, helpful kindness.
+
+Livingstone never believed that the sympathies of our common humanity
+are extinct even in the bosom of a savage. Enfolded in the panoply of
+Christian kindness, he passed unscathed among the most warlike tribes.
+No memory of wrong or pain rankled in the heart of any man, woman, or
+child he ever met. He is known to-day as "the good old man" wherever his
+path led him in those twenty years.
+
+When explorers began to study the healthful highlands of the Akikuyu
+tribe in East Africa a few years ago, the natives rushed to arms. "Keep
+away from us," they said. "One of your white men came through the land,
+stealing food from our gardens, and killing all who said he ought to pay
+us for our vegetables. We want nothing to do with thieves and murderers
+like you."
+
+But no vengeance fell on the head of any white traveller who ever
+followed in the footsteps of Livingstone. Those explorers have achieved
+most who adhered to his example of unfailing kindness, mercy, and
+justice. The brutal German, whose crimes made the Akikuyu hostile to all
+whites, marked his path with blood from the Indian Ocean to Victoria
+Nyanza. Serpa Pinto, renowned for the scientific value of his work,
+aroused condemnation and disgust because he fought his way through many
+tribes, among whom Livingstone and Arnot had wandered almost alone and
+in perfect safety. Fortunately, there have not been many explorers
+militant. The brilliant discoveries of Grenfell, Delcommune, Lemaire,
+and others, who are in the first rank of African pioneers, were made
+without harming a native.
+
+Let us glance at a few of Livingstone's discoveries and form our own
+conclusions as to whether his sublime faith in the future of Africa has
+thus far been justified by events. In the depths of the wilderness he
+discovered the large lake, Mweru, through which the Upper Congo flows.
+Though white influences have reached that remote region only within the
+past two or three years, a little steamboat now plies those waters. A
+photograph of Mpweto, one of the white settlements on the lake, shows
+the commodious quarters of the Europeans, two long lines of cabins in
+which the native workmen live, and well-tilled gardens extending for a
+half-mile along the shore. Livingstone brought to light the coal fields
+of the Zambesi, the only coal yet known in tropical Africa. While these
+lines are being written, the British of Rhodesia are preparing to open
+mines along these deposits. He told the world of the Victoria Falls of
+the Zambesi, the largest known, a mile wide and twice as high as
+Niagara. The installation of an electrical plant at this great source of
+power is now in progress, and it is hoped within three years to
+transmit electrically all the power required to work the large copper
+mines in the north, the coal fields in the east, and to move trains on
+the Cape to Cairo Railroad for a distance of three hundred miles. The
+recent improvements in long-distance transmission of power encourages
+the belief that the Victoria Falls may some day possess large industrial
+utility for a wide region around them. Coffee plantations on the hills
+overlooking the long expanse of Nyassa, the splendid freshwater sea
+which Livingstone revealed in its setting of mountains, are selling
+their superior product in London at a high price. The town of Blantyre,
+among the Nyassa highlands which Livingstone first described, has a
+newspaper, telegraphic and cable communication with all the world, and
+industrial schools in which the manual arts are taught to hundreds of
+natives. Here is the large brick church, now famous, built by native
+craftsmen, who before Livingstone's time had never seen a white man, and
+lived in a state of barbarism; an edifice that would adorn the suburbs
+of any American city, and of which the explorer, Joseph Thomson, said:
+"It is the most wonderful sight I have seen in Africa." The natives made
+the brick, burned the lime, sawed and hewed the timbers, and erected the
+building to the driving of the last nail. They had the capacity, and it
+was evoked by the genius of one of the most remarkable men in Africa,
+Missionary Scott of Blantyre. Steamboats are afloat on five of the six
+important seas of the great lake region of Central Africa; on two of the
+three which Livingstone discovered. Only a beginning has been made, for
+the field stretches from ocean to ocean; but the man who, in 1873--the
+year of Livingstone's death,--should have predicted one-half of the
+achievement of the present generation would have been laughed at as a
+crack-brained visionary.
+
+Even the surface of Africa is changing, and the truth of Livingstone is
+not always the truth of to-day. In his first journey, in which he braved
+the perils of the South African thirst lands, he reached the broad and
+placid expanse of Lake Ngami, covering an area of three hundred square
+miles. In the gradual desiccation of that region, the lake has now
+entirely disappeared. Its place is wholly occupied by a partly marshy
+plain covered with reeds, and no vestige of water surface is to be seen.
+He found the little Lake Dilolo so exactly balanced on a flat plain
+between two great river systems that one stream from the lake flowed
+north to the Congo and another south to the Zambesi; but for years past
+there has been no connection between the lake and the Congo. He sought
+in vain, like many explorers after him, for the outlet to Lake
+Tanganyika. The mystery was not solved till, more than twenty years
+after, Burton discovered the lake; the solution came when the explorer
+Thomson and Missionary Hore found the waters of Tanganyika pouring in a
+perfect torrent down the valley of the Lukuga to the Congo. The
+explanation of the strange phenomenon is that for a series of years the
+evaporation exceeds the water receipts, the level of the lake steadily
+falls, and the valley of the Lukuga becomes choked with grass; then a
+period follows when the water receipts exceed the evaporation, and the
+waters rise, burst through the barriers of vegetation in the Lukuga, and
+are carried to the Congo once more.
+
+It was his second and third journeys that established Livingstone's fame
+as a great explorer. In those journeys (1853-56) his routes were from
+the Upper Zambesi to Loanda in Portuguese West Africa, and then from
+Loanda to the mouth of the Zambesi, nearly twelve thousand miles of
+travel. The third journey was the first crossing of the continent; and
+while traversing the wide savannas of the uplands and revealing the
+Zambesi, the fourth largest river of Africa, from source to delta, he
+was able to verify one of the most brilliant generalizations ever made
+by a geologist. Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal
+Geographical Society, in 1852, deducing his conclusions from the very
+fragmentary and imperfect knowledge of Africa then extant, evolved his
+striking hypothesis as to the physical conformation of the continent,
+which has been briefly mentioned above and is the accepted fact of
+to-day. Livingstone was able to prove the accuracy of this hypothesis,
+and he dedicated his "Missionary Travels" to its distinguished author.
+
+The Makalolo chief, Sekeletu, on the Zambesi River, supplied Livingstone
+with men, ivory, and trading commissions, that helped the humble and
+unknown white man, lacking all financial resources except his slender
+salary, to make the two great journeys which kindled the world's
+interest and led to the wonderful achievements of our generation. In
+this noteworthy incident we see the human agencies through which Africa
+will attain the full stature allotted to her. The Caucasian and the
+Negro each has his onerous part in the work of bringing the civilized
+world and Africa into touch and accord.
+
+When Livingstone went home, after his third journey, his
+fellow-countrymen crowded to see and hear the explorer, who had added
+more facts to geographical knowledge than any other man of his time.
+They saw a person of middle age, plainly and rather carelessly dressed,
+whose deep-furrowed and well-tanned face indicated a man of quick and
+keen discernment, strong impulses, inflexible resolution, and habitual
+self-command. They heard a speaker whose command of his mother tongue
+was imperfect, and who apologized for his broken, hesitating speech by
+saying that he had not spoken the English language for nearly sixteen
+years. In no public place did he ever allude to his personal sufferings,
+though fever had brought him to death's door and the years had been
+crowded with the most harrowing cares. The work he had done and would
+carry on to the end, the new Africa he alone could describe, the faith
+that had grown and strengthened in every week of his long pilgrimage
+that the world needed Africa, its resources and peoples, were the burden
+of every utterance. The great London meeting where he first appeared
+took practical measures to support him in the work he had begun unaided;
+and one of the resolutions adopted, declaring that "the important
+discoveries of Dr. Livingstone will tend hereafter greatly to advance
+the interest of civilization, commerce, and freedom among the numerous
+tribes and nations of that vast continent," was prophetic of all the
+best fruits of the colossal work that has been done to the present time.
+
+During his two years at home, Livingstone wrote his "Missionary
+Travels." He returned to England once more (1864-65), when he published
+"A Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi," and in 1866 went back to
+Africa to resume the explorations which ended only with his death.
+Between 1849 and 1873 he was four years in Europe and twenty years in
+the field, eating native food, sleeping in straw huts (in one of which
+he died), lost to view for many years at a time because he had no means
+of communication with the coasts. It was this fact that led to Stanley's
+successful search for Livingstone in 1871. Perhaps no other explorer
+ever gave so many years to continuous field-work. In this respect he far
+surpassed the record of any other of the African pioneers.
+
+The discoveries in his last journeys, covering the periods from 1858 to
+1864, and from 1866 to 1873, were as brilliant and fruitful as his
+earlier work, but not so astonishing, because his first years were given
+to revealing the broader aspects of Africa and its tribes, while his
+later labors were devoted to more detailed research in a smaller field.
+This region, about as large as Mexico and Central America, extends north
+and south, from Tanganyika to the Zambesi, and covers the wide region of
+the Congo sources between Nyassa and Lake Bangweolo. The greatest
+results were the discovery of Lake Nyassa and the Shire River, now the
+water route into East Central Africa; Lakes Bangweolo and Mwero; and the
+mapping of the eastern part of the sources of the Upper Congo, which
+Livingstone believed to the day of his death were the ultimate fountains
+of the Nile. Livingstone's "Last Journeys" was published from the
+manuscript which his faithful servants brought to the seacoast with the
+mortal remains of their gentle master.
+
+Not far from the south coast of Bangweolo stands a wooden construction
+to which is affixed a bronze tablet bearing the simple inscription,
+"Livingstone died here. Ilala, May 1, 1873." It has taken the place of
+the tree under which he died, and where his heart, which had been so
+true to Africa, was buried. As the tree was nearly dead, the section
+bearing the rude inscription cut by one of his servants was carefully
+removed and is now in London.
+
+Livingstone's geographical delineations were remarkably accurate,
+considering the inadequate surveying instruments with which he worked.
+Dr. Ravenstein, one of the greatest authorities on African cartography,
+has said: "I should be loath to reject Livingstone's work simply because
+the ground which he was the first to explore has since his death been
+gone over by another explorer." It would be marvellous, however, if in
+the course of twenty years of exploration he had not made some blunders.
+His map of Lake Bangweolo, for example, was very inaccurate. The Lokinga
+Mountains, which he mapped to the south of the lake, have not been found
+by later explorers. These imperfections resulted from the fact that his
+map of Bangweolo and its neighborhood was largely based upon native
+information. He knew that his map was inadequate, and as soon as he was
+able to travel he returned to Bangweolo to complete his survey. He was
+making straight for the true outlet of the lake, and was within
+thirty-five miles of it when one morning his servants found him in his
+lowly straw hut, dead on his knees. If Livingstone had lived a few weeks
+longer and been able to travel, he and not Giraud would have given us
+the true map of Bangweolo.
+
+As a whole, Livingstone's work in geography, anthropology, and natural
+history, stands the test of time. No river in Africa has yet been laid
+down with greater accuracy than the Zambesi as delineated by
+this explorer.
+
+The success of Livingstone was both brilliant and unsullied. The apostle
+and the pioneer of Africa, he went on his way without fear, without
+egotism, without desire of reward. He proved that the white man may
+travel safely through many years in Africa. He observed richness of soil
+and abundance of natural products, the guarantees of commerce. He
+foretold the truth that the African tribes would be brought into the
+community of nations. The logical result of the work he began and
+carried so far was the downfall of the African slave-trade, which he
+denounced as "the open sore of the world." What eulogy is too great for
+such a work and such a man?
+
+In 1898, twenty-one journeys had been made by explorers from sea to sea.
+Livingstone completed the first journey, from Loanda to the mouth of the
+Zambesi, in one year, seven months, and twenty-two days. Nineteen years
+elapsed before Central Africa was crossed again, when Cameron gave two
+years and nearly eight months to the journey. It took Stanley two years
+and eight months to cross Africa, when he solved the great mystery, the
+course of the Congo; and when he went to the relief of Emin Pasha, in
+1887, he was almost exactly the same time on the road. When Trivier
+crossed from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, in 1888-89, in nine days
+less than a year, the event was held as a remarkably rapid performance.
+A little later the journey was made by several travellers in from twelve
+to fifteen months. In 1898, the Englishman, Mr. Lloyd, crossed from Lake
+Victoria to the mouth of the Congo in three months, about thirteen
+hundred miles of the journey being by Congo steamboat and railroad. In
+1902, the journey from the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria is made by rail
+in two and one-half days,--a journey that occupied Speke for nine, and
+Stanley for eight months. With the present facilities, the continent may
+be crossed by way of the lake region and the Congo in about three
+months. The era of long and weary foot-marches has nearly ended; now
+succeeds travel by steam.
+
+No influence has been so potent in improving the art of the explorer, or
+in raising the standard of the work required of him, as the enormous
+interest that for thirty years past has centred in African exploration.
+The larger part of the best achievements of the explorers of the present
+generation in scientific investigation, and in an approach to scientific
+map-making, are found in tropical Africa. Many of the hundreds of the
+route surveys are not unworthy to be compared with those of Pogge and
+Wissmann, when they laid down on their map every cultural and
+topographic feature for two miles on both sides of their route, from
+Angola to the Upper Congo. The extreme care with which some of the best
+explorers have performed their tasks is illustrated by the remarkable
+achievement of the late Dr. Junker along the Mobangi River. After years
+of service, his scientific equipment had become practically worthless.
+He started on his four-hundred-mile journey down the river through the
+jungle, with absolutely no instrument except a compass to aid him in
+determining his positions. Endeavoring, by the most scrupulous care, to
+make up as far as possible for his lack of scientific outfit, he trudged
+through the grass, compass in hand, counting every step. Every fifteen
+minutes he jotted in his notebook the distance and the mean direction
+travelled. At night he used these accumulated data to lay down on his
+route map the journey of the day. For many weeks he kept up this trying
+routine till he reached his furthest west, and again till he had
+returned to his starting-point, whose latitude and longitude he had
+previously determined. When he returned to Europe, Dr. Hassenstein and
+he made a map from the data Junker had collected, and fixed the position
+of his furthest west. This position was found later by the astronomical
+observations of Lieutenant Le Marinel to be less than two miles out
+of the way.
+
+One of the latest to win a large prize in African discovery is Dr. A.
+Donaldson Smith, a young physician of Philadelphia, in the northeastern
+region known as Somaliland and Gallaland. His method may be mentioned
+here as an illustration of the kind of work that geographers now
+require. Before he began his explorations, he took a thorough course in
+the use of surveying instruments and the methods of accurately laying
+down his positions and making a route map. Many a cartographer, burning
+with desire to draw a good map of a newly explored region, has been
+driven to despair by the inadequacy of the route surveys in his hands.
+Not a few of these surveys have been unworthy of reproduction in the
+books of the explorers who made them, and the best that could be done
+was to generalize their information on maps of comparatively small
+scale. But Donaldson Smith's route-maps appear in his book on the
+comparatively large scale of 1:1,000,000 (about sixteen statute miles to
+the inch), and they are worthy of that treatment, for his surveys and
+observations for geographical positions were recorded in such a way
+that their value might be easily ascertained by any one familiar with
+such computations. His route-maps have been found to be admirable
+map-making material; thus, he has not only traversed a new region of
+great extent, but has given in his map ample materials which may be
+employed by any atlas-maker in the production of good maps of all the
+territory that came under his observation. When Sir Clements Markham
+presented to Dr. Smith the Patrons' Medal of the Royal Geographical
+Society, he said: "You have not, like an ordinary explorer, made a
+common route survey, but you have made a scientific survey, a
+triangulation frequently checked by astronomical observations with
+theodolite and chronometer."
+
+Most African explorers have been painstaking, conscientious workers,
+eager in their quest for the truth, desirous to report nothing but the
+truth, and treating the lowly and ignorant they have met as men, with
+sensibilities like their own, capable of gratitude for a kindness and
+keenly sensitive to an outrage. The world has recognized and applauded
+such heroes of discovery,--the men who faced hardship and peril,
+enduring and sacrificing much that knowledge might grow; who had to
+conquer not only unkind Nature, but to overcome the ignorant violence of
+man. And not a few of the leaders in this work have carried it out with
+a degree of tactfulness, humanity, gentleness, and kindliness of spirit
+amounting to genius. Some of them spent months in disguise, collecting
+facts of the highest scientific value among fanatical Mohammedans who
+would have killed them if they had known their secret. Such men were
+Burton in Harrar, Dr. Lenz in Timbuctoo, and De Foucauld and Harris in
+Morocco, who, in stained skins and borrowed costumes, personated
+merchants and devotees and doctors and Jews; and most of whom have
+enriched the literature of discovery with valuable books. Men also such
+as Dr. Junker, who, rich as he was, left his home to spend eight years
+alone among the savages of the Welle Makua basin in Central Africa,
+living on their food and in their huts that he might minutely study the
+people in their country; or Grenfell, who has travelled far more widely
+in the Congo basin than Stanley or any of his followers except
+Delcommune, and revealed to the world more river systems and unknown
+peoples than they, and who, in his long career as an explorer, never
+fired a shot upon a native, though his life was often threatened. These
+men, and others like them, have exemplified the manysidedness of human
+resources against a great variety of peril and obstacle, as no other
+explorers in any other part of the world have had an opportunity to do
+in equal measure. Their work, with its environment of almost
+overwhelming difficulty, should be known to our youth as most forceful
+illustrations of what good men may dare and do in good causes and in a
+worthy manner.
+
+There have been some exceptions to this rule. A few men have been less
+anxious to perform useful service than to figure in the newspapers and
+pose before their public. One day a man stood on the north shore of
+Victoria Nyanza, and looking south he saw land. When he returned to
+London he published a sensational book, in which he said it was
+ridiculous for Speke to assert that he had discovered a lake as large as
+Scotland, one of the greatest lakes in the world. "Why," said the
+writer, "I have stood on the north shore of the Victoria Nyanza and
+looked south and seen the southern shore. Lake Victoria is only an
+insignificant sheet of water, after all the talk of its being second
+only to Lake Superior."
+
+What he really saw was the chain of the Sesse Islands extending far out
+into the lake. His book was scarcely off the press when the letters
+describing Stanley's boat journeys around the shores of Victoria Nyanza
+began to be published in London and New York; and the foolish fellow was
+compelled to recall all the copies of his book that had not passed
+beyond his reach, and eliminate the statements that made him so
+ridiculous. Fortunately, there are not many explorers of this stripe.
+
+All who watched the progress of African discovery were constantly
+reminded that geographical progress is usually made only by slow and
+painful steps. They saw an explorer emerge from the unknown with his
+notebooks and route maps replete with most interesting facts for the
+student and the cartographer. Then another explorer would enter the same
+region, discover facts that had escaped the notice of the pioneer,
+correct blunders his predecessor had made and perpetrate blunders of his
+own; so explorer followed explorer, each adding something to
+geographical knowledge, each correcting earlier misconceptions, till the
+total product, well sifted by critical geographers, gave the world a
+fair idea of the region explored; but not the best attainable idea, for
+scientific knowledge of a region comes only with its detailed
+exploration by trained observers, equipped with the best appliances for
+use in their special fields of research. This is the advanced stage of
+geographical study, which is now being reached in many parts of Africa.
+It was Livingstone's task, in 1859, to inform us that there was a great
+Lake Nyassa. It was Rhoades's task, in 1897-1901, to make a careful and
+accurate survey of its coast-lines, and to sound its depths, so that we
+now have an excellent idea of the conformation of the lake bottom.
+Between Livingstone and Rhoades came many explorers, each adding
+important facts to our knowledge of this great sheet of water nearly
+twice as large as New Jersey.
+
+As each explorer came from the wilds, our maps were corrected to conform
+with the new information he supplied; and if we should examine the maps
+of Africa in school geographies, atlases, and wall maps, from the time
+of Livingstone to the present day, we should see that, as relates to
+nearly every part of Africa, they have been in a continual state of
+transition.
+
+For years our only map of Victoria Nyanza was that which Speke made on
+his second journey to the lake, in 1860-62; but Speke saw the great lake
+only at one point on its south shore, and along its northwest and north
+central coasts. His map, being based very largely upon native
+information, was in many respects most incomplete and erroneous.
+
+Then came Stanley's survey of the lake, made in a boat journey around
+its coasts, and for years his map supplanted that of Speke. But he was
+not able to follow the shore-line in all its intricate details. His
+mapping was a great advance upon that of Speke, but it was necessarily
+rough and imperfect. He missed entirely the deep indentation of Baumann
+Gulf and the southwestern prolongation of the lake, surveyed by Father
+Schynse, in 1891. Stanley's map, modified by the partial surveys of
+various explorers, is still our mapping of the lake; but if the reader
+will watch the maps for the next year or so, he will doubtless observe
+important changes in the contours of Victoria Nyanza; for all the maps,
+from Speke to those of 1902, will be placed on the shelf to serve only
+as the historical record of the good, honest work which a number of
+explorers have done. Commander Whitehouse has recently spent thirteen
+months surveying with infinite pains these coasts and islands. "I seem
+to see," writes Stanley of this important service, "the sailor, with his
+small crew and his little steel boat, wandering from point to point,
+crossing and recrossing, going from some island to some headland, taking
+his bearings from that headland back again to the island, and to some
+point far away."
+
+Commander Whitehouse has made a new delineation of the entire 2,200
+miles of coasts, and the results of his survey will be used in making
+all the maps of the lake. His map in turn will undoubtedly be replaced
+some day by detailed topographic surveys of the best quality, such as
+the British already contemplate making of that entire region.
+
+A wall map recently in use in one of the public schools of New York City
+was a curious example of ignorant compilation. It exhibited the Victoria
+Nyanza of Speke, the Bangweolo of Livingstone, and the Upper Congo of
+Stanley, all obsolete for practical purposes years before this map was
+printed. Most of our home map-makers were very slow in availing
+themselves of the rich materials constantly supplied for the maps by the
+army of explorers in Africa. But the most alert cartographers,
+particularly between 1880 and 1895, could not keep their maps abreast
+of the news of discovery as it came to Europe. More men and energy and
+money were utilized in those fifteen years of African discovery than in
+the first century and a half of American exploration. The route or
+mother-maps, some covering a wide extent of country, others devoted to a
+small area, or a short line of travel, were going to Europe for the
+improvement of atlas sheets by nearly every steamer. Father Schynse's
+chart of the southwest extension of Victoria Nyanza had hardly been
+utilized in European map-houses before it was replaced by Dr. Baumann's
+more accurate survey. Mr. Wauters of Belgium withdrew his large map of
+the Congo Basin from the printer four times, in order to include fresh
+information before it was finally issued to the public.
+
+This process is still going on, though more slowly. The mapping we see
+of Lake Tanganyika, one of the longest lakes in the world, has been in
+use for seventeen years since missionary Hore made his boat journey of
+one thousand miles around its coasts, but the new map of the Moore
+expedition now being introduced gives the main axis of the lake a more
+northeast and southwest direction. The Hore map has met the fate that
+usually overtakes the early surveys of every region. It rendered good
+service as long as it was the best map; but the Moore expedition had
+first-rate appliances for computing longitudes, and as Captain Hore
+lacked these, it is not strange that his map has been found to be
+defective.
+
+The world has been treated to many geographical surprises in the course
+of this incessant transformation of the map of the continent. Many of us
+may remember in our school geographies, the particular blackness and
+prominence of the Kong Mountains, extending for two hundred miles
+parallel with the Gulf of Guinea. They were accepted on the authority of
+Mungo Park, Caillié, and Bowditch, all reputable explorers who had not
+seen the mountains, but believed from native information that they
+existed. The French explorer, Binger, in 1887 sought in vain for them.
+Later explorers have been unable to find them. They are, in fact, a
+myth, and will be remembered chiefly as a conspicuous instance of
+geographic delusion. It had long been supposed that the navigation of
+the Niger River, the third largest river in Africa, was permanently
+impaired by the Bussa Rapids, about one hundred miles in length, where
+Mungo Park was wrecked and drowned. But Major Toutée, a few years ago,
+when assailed by hostile natives, made a safe journey with his boats
+through the rapids; and Captain Lenfant, in 1901, carried 500,000 pounds
+of supplies up the river and through the rapids to the French stations
+between Bussa and Timbuktu. He had a small, flat-bottomed steamboat and
+a number of little boats propelled by fifty black paddlers. He says
+that by the land route he would have required 12,000 porters, and they
+would have been one hundred and thirty days on the road.
+
+It was believed that a land portage would always be necessary between
+the sea and the Zambesi, above the delta, till 1889, when Mr. Rankin
+discovered the Chinde branch of the delta, so broad and so deep that
+ocean vessels may ascend it and exchange freight with the river craft.
+
+It has been found that more water pours into the ocean through the
+Congo's mouth, which is six miles wide, than from all the other rivers
+in Africa together. It is second among the world's rivers, and the dark
+detritus it carries to the Atlantic has been distinctly traced on the
+ocean bed for six hundred miles from the land. Some geographers still
+believed thirty years ago that all the waters of its upper basin might
+be tributary to the Nile. Map-makers have been kept very busy recording
+discoveries on the Congo. About one hundred explorers, some of them
+missionaries and many employees of the Congo Free State, have mapped the
+whole basin along its water-courses, and discovered the ultimate source
+of its main stream. Our ideas of the hydrography of this great basin
+have been revolutionized since Stanley, second only to Livingstone among
+the great African explorers, in 1877 revealed the course of the
+main river.
+
+On his map, for example, he showed the southern tributaries as probably
+flowing nearly due north; but all except one of these rivers rise in the
+east and flow far to the west. When Wissmann was sent to the Upper
+Kassai to follow it to the Congo, he was greatly surprised to find
+himself floating westward week after week. When he reached the Congo a
+steamboat was waiting for him at Equatorville, two hundred miles further
+up the river, where he was expected to emerge. Schweinfurth believed the
+Welle Makua flowed north to Lake Chad on the edge of the Sahara;
+seventeen years later, after six or seven explorers had tried to solve
+the problem, the river was found to be the upper part of the Mobangi
+tributary of the Congo, larger than any rivers of Europe, excepting the
+Volga and Danube. While Stanley was for five years planting his stations
+on the Congo, he knew nothing of this great tributary, 1,500 miles long,
+whose mouth was hidden by a cluster of islands which his steamers
+repeatedly passed. Missionary Grenfell, on his little steamer, was
+ascending the Congo one day, when accidentally he got into the mouth of
+the Mobangi and went on for one hundred miles before he discovered that
+he had left the main river. Few explorers have unwittingly stumbled upon
+so rich a geographical prize.
+
+While exploratory enterprises have been centred largely in tropical
+Africa, no part of the continent has been neglected. We now know that
+large areas of the Sahara are underlaid by waters which need only be
+brought to the surface to cover the desert around them with verdure;
+that most of the rain falling on the south slopes of the Atlas Mountains
+sinks into the earth to impermeable strata of rock, along which it makes
+its way far out into the desert; that where the surface is depressed so
+that these waters come near to it, there are wells for the refreshment
+of the camel caravans, and oases, blooming islands of green, in the
+sterile wastes; and that artesian wells bring inexhaustible supplies of
+water within reach, so that millions of date palms have been planted
+along the northern edge of the desert in southern Algiers and Tunis,
+making these regions the largest sources of the world's supply of dates.
+
+It has also been discovered why there are very large areas of dry or
+desert lands in Africa. The Sahara and the southwest of Africa are
+deserts because the prevailing winds, the carriers of moisture, blow
+towards the sea instead of away from it, and consequently are always
+dry. The winds from the Indian Ocean crossing the highlands of Abyssinia
+are wrung nearly dry while passing the mountains, and so Somaliland and
+the lowlands to the south of Abyssinia are parched.
+
+It has been found that the most of South Africa stands so high above the
+sea that the influences of a temperate climate are projected far
+towards the Equator; so that many white men, women, and children are
+living and thriving on farms in Mashonaland, seven degrees of latitude
+nearer the equator than the south end of Florida. This fact will
+profoundly influence the development of South Africa. It is to be the
+home of millions of the white race, the seat of a highly civilized
+empire, whose business relations with the rest of the world will be to
+the advantage of every trading nation. The presence of these millions of
+toilers will vitally affect the work of developing tropical Africa which
+is now absorbing such enormous treasure and energy; for South Africa is
+to be brought by railroads to the very doors of the tropical zone.
+
+It is hoped that such facts as these, even though very briefly stated,
+may convey broadly a correct impression of the magnitude of African
+exploration, since its revival about the time that Livingstone died. It
+is impossible in brief space to signalize the good work that many of the
+most conspicuous pioneers have done. The world rendered tardy tribute to
+the notable achievements of some of them. When Rebmann discovered
+Kilimanjaro, not far from the equator, and told of the snows that crown
+the loftiest of African summits, it was decided by British geographers
+that Rebmann's snow was probably an imaginary aspect. The snow was
+there, and plenty of it, but Rebmann died before justice was done to
+his faithful labors. When Paul du Chaillu described the Obongo dwarfs of
+West Africa, his narrative was discredited; but four or five groups of
+dwarfs, probably numbering many thousands, are now known to be scattered
+from the lower border of Abyssinia to the Kalahara desert in the far
+south. The ancients had heard of the dwarfs, but the geographers of the
+eighteenth century expunged from the maps of Africa about all that the
+geographers of Greece and Rome, as well as those of later times, placed
+on them; and the nineteenth century was slow in crediting the early
+investigators even with statements that were wholly or approximately
+accurate.
+
+A curious history is connected with the discovery of the northeastern
+group of pygmies, a little south of Abyssinia. No white man had ever
+seen them, but about fifteen years ago Dr. Henry Schlichter, of the
+British Museum, collected all the information which natives had given to
+missionaries, traders, and explorers of the existence of these little
+people some hundreds of miles from the sea. Sifting all this evidence,
+he concluded that these dwarfs really existed, and that they lived in a
+region which he marked on the map north of Lake Stefanie. Donaldson
+Smith had not heard of Schlichter's paper, and knew nothing of these
+dwarfs, but he found them in 1895 in the region which Schlichter had
+indicated as their probable habitat.
+
+The broadest generalization with regard to the African tribes is that
+which separates most of the peoples south of the Sahara Desert into two
+great groups,--the Negro tribes, whose habitat may be roughly indicated
+as extending between the Atlantic and Gallaland in East Africa, with the
+Sahara as their northern, and the latitude of the Cameroons as their
+southern, boundaries; and the Bantu tribes, occupying nearly all of
+Africa south of the Negroes. The distinction between these two great
+groups is not based upon special differences as to physical structure,
+mental characteristics, habits, or development, but depends solely upon
+philological considerations, the languages of the Negroes and the Bantus
+forming two distinct groups. Most of the slaves who were brought to our
+country were Negroes, while most of those transported to Latin America
+were from the Bantu tribes.
+
+One fact that stood out above all others in the study of the African
+natives, was the remarkable prevalence of cannibalism in the Congo
+basin. In all his wanderings, Livingstone met only one cannibal
+tribe,--the Manyema living between Tanganyika and the Upper Congo; but
+though they are not found near the sources of the river, nor near its
+mouth, they occupy about one-half of the Congo basin. They are regarded
+with fear and abhorrence by all tribes not addicted to the practice.
+They number several millions. Instead of being the most debased of
+human creatures, many of them, in physical strength and courage, in
+their iron work, carving, weaving, and other arts, are among the most
+advanced of African tribes. The larger part of the natives in the
+service of the Congo Free State are from the cannibal tribes. The laws
+now impose severe penalties for acts of cannibalism, and the evil is
+decreasing as the influence of the state is extended over wider areas. A
+few isolated tribes along the Gulf of Guinea are also cannibals.
+
+There is no doubt that the helpful influences of the Caucasian in every
+part of Africa so far outweigh his harmful influences that the latter
+are but a drop in the bucket in comparison. It is most unfortunate that
+a certain admixture of blundering, severity, brutality, and wickedness
+seems inseparable from the development of all the newer parts of the
+world. The demoralizing drink traffic, the scandalous injustice and
+cruelty of some of the agents of civilized governments, are not to be
+belittled or condoned. But there is also a very bright side to the story
+of the white occupancy of Africa.
+
+The family of a deceased chief in Central Africa recently preserved his
+body unburied for fourteen months, in the hope that they might prevail
+upon the British Government to permit the sacrifice of women and slaves
+on his grave, that he might have companions of his own household in the
+other world. He was buried at last, without shedding a drop of blood.
+Human sacrifices are now punishable with death throughout a large part
+of barbarous Africa, and the terrible evil is being abated as fast as
+the influence of the European governments is extended over new regions.
+The practice of the arts of fetichism, a kind of chicanery, most
+injurious in its effects upon the superstitious natives, is now
+punishable throughout the Congo Free State and British Rhodesia. Arab
+slave-dealers no longer raid the Congo plains and forests for slaves,
+killing seven persons for every one they lead into captivity.
+Slave-raiding has been utterly wiped out in all parts of Africa, except
+in portions of the Sudan and other districts over which white rule has
+not yet been asserted. The Arabs of the Congo, who went there from East
+Africa solely that they might grow rich in the slave trade, are now
+settled quietly on their rice and banana plantations. The sale of strong
+drink has been restricted by international agreement to the coast
+regions, where the traffic has long existed, and its evils are somewhat
+mitigated there by the regulations now enforced. Fifty thousand Congo
+natives who would not carry a pound of freight for Stanley in 1880, are
+now in the service of the white enterprises, many of them working, not
+for barter goods, but for coin. Many of the missionary fields are
+thriving, and wonderful results have been achieved in some of them. In
+Uganda, where Stanley in 1875 saw King Mtesa impaling his victims, there
+are now ninety thousand natives professing Christianity, three hundred
+and twenty churches, and many thousands of children in the schools.
+Fifty thousand of the people can read. Between 1880 and 1882 Stanley
+carried three little steamboats around 235 miles of rapids to the Upper
+Congo. Eighty steamers are now afloat there, plying on nearly 8,000
+miles of rivers, and connected with the sea by a railroad that has paid
+dividends from the day it was opened. At the end of 1890 there were only
+5,813 miles of railroad in Africa. About 15,000 miles are now in
+operation, and the end of this decade is certain to see 25,000 miles of
+railroads. Trains are running from Cairo to Khartum, the seat of the
+Mahdist tyranny, in the centre of a vast region which, until recently,
+had been closed for many years to all the world.
+
+These wonderful results are the fruits of the partition of Africa among
+the European states. With the exception of some waste regions in the
+Libyan desert, which no one has claimed, Morocco, Abyssinia, and
+Liberia, every square mile of African territory has been divided among
+European powers, either as colonies or as spheres of influence. The
+scramble of twenty years for African lands is at an end, there now being
+no valuable areas that are not covered by the existing agreements. It
+is no mere love of humanity that has impelled the European countries to
+divide these regions among themselves. We can scarcely realize the
+intensity of the struggle for existence in many of the overcrowded parts
+of Europe. Their factories are enormously productive, but their people
+will suffer for food unless they can export manufactures. The crying
+need for new markets, for new sources of raw material, drove these
+states into Africa. And we should be glad, for Africa's sake, that they
+have gone there, even though the desire to make money is one of the most
+powerful incentives.
+
+It is under the protective aegis of these governments that explorers are
+settling down in smaller areas to see what may be found between the
+explored water-courses, to study the continent in detail, to give to our
+knowledge of Africa the scientific quality now required. The greatest
+geographical work there in recent years is the extension of a line of
+stations across tropical Africa by Commander Lemaire, each position
+astronomically fixed by the most careful methods, constituting a
+base-line east and west through Africa to which the scientific mapping
+of a very large area will be referred.
+
+The day of the minuter study of the whole continent has now dawned, and
+we are witnessing a most notable work. All the colonial powers, and the
+Germans most conspicuously, are studying the economic questions relating
+to their African possessions. The suitability of climates for
+colonists, the essential rules of hygiene, the development of
+agriculture, labor supplies, transportation and commercial facilities,
+and many other problems are receiving the most careful attention.
+Experiment stations are maintained in the colonies and colonial schools
+at home, to fit young men for service in the field. The Germans have
+already proved that cotton and tobacco are certain to become profitable
+export crops.
+
+The mine-owners of the Witwatersrand, on which Johannesburg stands, have
+begun a movement which they hope will result in the immigration of
+100,000 white laborers to the mining field. We may look for remarkable
+development in South Africa, whose promise is larger than that of any
+other part of the continent. Whatever may be said of some of the methods
+by which the British have enlarged their empire, their rule has blessed
+the barbarous peoples whose countries they have absorbed. The task of
+improving the few millions of blacks in South Africa, and of developing
+the large and in some respects wonderful resources of that region, will
+be greatly assisted by the incoming of hundreds of thousands of
+Europeans, bringing with them the arts and other blessings of
+civilization. The future of none of the newer parts of the world is
+brighter with the hope of great development than the region between the
+Zambesi and the Cape of Good Hope.
+
+In order to observe intelligently the progress of South Africa in
+coming years, the limitations as well as the advantages of the country
+must be kept in view. More than half of it, including the entire western
+half, is deficient in rainfall and can never be the home of a dense
+white population. Some mining will develop on those broad, dry plains
+and sandy wastes; some agriculture where irrigation is possible; and
+great wool-growing wherever thrive the nutritious grasses on which
+13,000,000 sheep, scattered over the Karroo of Cape Colony, and
+4,000,000 in the little Orange Free State, were grazing before the
+recent war. Wool-growing will always be the greatest grazing industry,
+though cattle and horses are raised in large numbers, and the fine, soft
+hair of the Angora goat is second only to wool in export importance.
+
+A narrow strip of fine farm lands across the south end of Africa,
+another along the southern border of the former Boer republics, and a
+large area among the highlands of Mashonaland, far towards the equator,
+produce nearly all the crops of the temperate zones. It is not yet
+certain, however, that South Africa will ever raise enough wheat for a
+great white population. On the northern slopes of the hills, east and
+northeast of Cape Town, are thousands of acres of grapes. Cape Colony is
+becoming one of the important wine countries; and in February and March,
+large quantities of grapes, peaches, nectarines, and plums are placed
+in cool rooms on steamships and sent fresh to British markets almost
+before English fruit trees are in bloom.
+
+East of the grape region is an area peculiarly adapted for the
+cultivation of tobacco; and east of the tobacco district, north of the
+coastal belt of wheat in a region of sandy scrub, the bush country, are
+the ostrich farms, in the hands mainly of men of considerable capital,
+who supply nearly all the feathers derived from the domesticated
+ostrich. The plumes are sometimes worth as much as $200 a pound, the
+ordinary feathers bringing from $5 to $7 a pound. Natal is unique in two
+of its agricultural industries, being the only colony that is producing
+tea and important quantities of cane sugar.
+
+But gold, widely scattered over the country on the interior plateau,
+exceeds in value all the other exports together. The world never saw
+such a development of gold mining in a small area as has occurred on the
+Witwatersrand, where Johannesburg stands. The Witwatersrand (White River
+Slope) is a slight elevation, the water parting between rivers, about
+one and a half miles wide and 125 miles long. On twenty-five miles of
+the rand, at and near Johannesburg, more gold was produced in the year
+before the Boer war than was yielded by any other country in the world,
+The other rich mining regions of the Transvaal and other parts of South
+Africa have been completely dwarfed by the wonderful product of the
+rand. The surveys in Matabeleland and Mashonaland show gold-bearing
+areas 5,000 square miles in extent, which as yet have practically no
+development. The mining companies on the rand and elsewhere are now
+preparing for far larger operations than ever before.
+
+The Kimberley diamond mines, turning out more than $20,000,000 worth of
+rough stones a year, supply nearly all the diamonds of commerce. Two
+other diamond centres in the Orange River Colony have scarcely been
+touched, and diamonds are found on the Limpopo River and in other
+regions where no mining has been undertaken. The minerals of South
+Africa, including iron and coal, bid fair to be for many years the
+largest sources of wealth; and in wool, hides, mohair, fresh fruits, and
+some other products, South Africa may rival other parts of the world.
+
+There are no good natural harbors except Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East
+Africa, but by great expenditure the harbors of Cape Town, Port
+Elizabeth, East London, and Durban have been adapted for great commerce.
+Many persons mistakenly regard Cape Town as the chief commercial centre
+of South Africa. It is so only in respect of the export of gold and
+diamonds. As it is not centrally situated for business with the
+interior, more of the things that South Africa sells to and buys from
+the rest of the world, excepting gold and diamonds, pass through Port
+Elizabeth than through any other port. Here is centred the largest
+wholesale trade.
+
+What South Africa needs is more railroads and more white labor.
+Manufacturing industries on an important scale are yet to come, for as
+yet the white population is too sparse to develop anything but the
+natural products of the country.
+
+The broad summing up of the future work in Africa is that the native
+will be taught to help himself. The destiny of the continent depends
+largely upon his development, for great parts of Africa may never be
+adapted to become the home of many white men. The most powerful motives,
+philanthropic and selfish, incite and will sustain the work of helping
+these millions to rise to a higher plane of humanity. This work, now
+well begun, is the great task which in the present century will call for
+all the knowledge, patience, humanity, and justice that may be brought
+to bear upon the problem of reclaiming Africa.
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+Livingstone's "Missionary Travels," "A Narrative of an Expedition to the
+Zambesi," and "Last Journeys;" Blaikie's "Livingstone's Personal Life;"
+Stanley's "How I found Livingstone."
+
+Stanley's "Through the Dark Continent," "The Congo and the Founding of
+its Free State," "In Darkest Africa;" Schweinfurth's "The Heart of
+Africa;" Burton's "The Lake Regions of Central Africa;" Speke's "Journal
+of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile;" Thomson's "To the Central
+African Lakes and Back;" Barth's "Travels and Discoveries in Central
+Africa;" Theal's "Compendium of South African History;" Greswell's
+"Geography of Africa South of the Zambesi"; Noble's "The Redemption of
+Africa" (A History of African Missions).
+
+No comprehensive compendium of the history of African exploration has
+yet been written. Our knowledge of the geography, peoples and resources
+of Africa is treated with considerable detail in a number of works such
+as Reclus's "Africa" (in "The Earth and Its Inhabitants") and Sievers's
+"Afrika" (German). A very large part of the exploratory enterprises in
+Africa have not been described in books, but only in the reports of the
+explorers, printed with their original maps in the publications of many
+geographical and missionary societies.
+
+
+
+
+SIR AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD.
+
+
+1817-1894.
+
+MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY.
+
+BY WILLIAM HAYES WARD, D.D., LL.D.
+
+
+It was twenty-three long centuries ago that a Greek soldier of fortune,
+who had the honor to be also a disciple of Socrates, was leading ten
+thousand mercenaries back to their native land after their famous
+failure to set the Younger Cyrus on the throne of Persia. Clearchus and
+the other generals had been treacherously murdered. Dispirited, almost
+hopeless, on their way to the longed-for Black Sea, in anticipation of
+the perilous and tedious journey, past wild mountains and wilder Kurds,
+they toiled up the valley of the Tigris River. Of one incident of their
+journey their historian and leader makes no record. They reached the
+spot where now stands the city of Mosul. On the bank of the river their
+eyes fell on a bare and lofty hill. They did not know, they never
+suspected,--Xenophon wrote no word of it,--that under that hill lay
+buried the ruins of one of the mightiest conquering cities that had ever
+ruled the world. From the palaces of that hill, Ninus and Semiramis and
+Sardanapalus had led their conquering armies, all now covered
+with silence.
+
+Two centuries earlier, in 606 B.C., there had occurred one of the most
+tremendous catastrophes recorded in all the grim annals of war. After a
+thousand years of primacy in the East, but twenty years after the death
+of Sardanapalus (the Greek name of Asshurbanapal), who had carried his
+armies to Egypt and had made his capital the centre of the world's
+culture and magnificence, as it was of its cruel and hated power,
+Nineveh was captured, buried, and utterly desolated by a horde of savage
+Scythians from the mountains of the north and east, such people as we
+now call the Kurds. Its palaces had no lofty Greek columns to stand for
+memorials, as at Palmyra or Persepolis; and when the outer casings of
+brick and alabaster were cracked away, and the ashes of the upper
+stories and the clay of the inner constructions, soaked by the rains,
+covered the ruins of temple and palace, nothing was left to mark the
+site but the grass-covered hill. No wonder that the learned scholar of
+Socrates saw nothing, knew nothing of the city, most glorious and most
+detested of all the cities of the earth. But in its day the overthrow of
+Nineveh and the destruction of the Assyrian Empire had been the most
+terrible event in the world's history. How the Hebrew prophets gloated
+over it! "Where now is the den of the lions, and the feeding-place of
+the young lions, where the lion and the lioness walked, the lion's
+whelp, and none made them afraid? Wo to the bloody city; it is all full
+of lies and rapine; the prey departeth not. The noise of the whip, and
+the noise of the rattling of wheels, and prancing horses, and bounding
+chariots, the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the
+glittering spear, and a multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses,
+and there is no end of the bodies. There is no assuaging of the hurt;
+thy wound is grievous; all that hear the report of thee clap their hands
+over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?"
+And another prophet had uttered the curse: "The pelican and the
+porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof; their voice shall sound
+in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he hath laid
+bare the cedar-work. This is the joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that
+said in her heart, 'I am, and there is none besides me!' How is she
+become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! Every one that
+passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand."
+
+Thus fell Nineveh, amid the universal rejoicing of the nations, and
+thus, seventy years later, fell Babylon also, which, in the short
+interval, Nebuchadnezzar had made more magnificent than even Nineveh had
+been, beautified for its capture by Cyrus. But before Babylon was the
+capital of Chaldea, or Nineveh the capital of Assyria, the city of Calah
+had been the seat of its kings, and a mighty mound--they call it Nimroud
+now--"as high as St. Paul's steeple," old travellers loved to say--marks
+the place on the east bank of the Tigris, twenty miles south of Nineveh;
+and, before Calah, Assyria had an earlier capital forty miles still
+nearer the Babylonian border, at Asshur, now Kalah-Shergat, on the west
+of the Tigris; and each capital had its palaces and records, and all are
+now equally buried in clay and utter oblivion. And before the Babylon of
+Nebuchadnezzar, and long centuries before Nineveh or Calah or Asshur,
+there had been mighty kingdoms in Babylonia, of which the world had
+quite forgot the names, only vague rumors remaining in song or legend of
+Nimrod and Chedorlaomer and Ur of the Chaldees,--only what was preserved
+in the dimmest records of the Hebrew Scriptures. Empires were lost,
+buried in chiliads of forgetfulness; would they ever be recovered?
+
+And how much else was lost, what kingdoms, what empires buried before
+Hebrew or Greek history began to take notice of the world outside and
+put them in books, no one knew, no one knows even yet, although so much
+has been found. The fame of Egypt was never quite forgotten, nor all its
+history, for Egypt was the world's granary, and closely accessible to
+the ships of Corinth and Rome; and Egypt never lost her civilization in
+all her long succession of enslavement. But what memory had been kept of
+the Ionia and Greece of the days before Homer? What of the early
+civilization of Cyprus and Crete? Only the name of Minos, a judge in
+Hell. What of Persia and Elam? Were they uninhabited before the times of
+Xerxes and Cyrus? And who were these kings, Cyrus and Xerxes, whose
+names burst upon us with dim light out of a black antiquity? Even they
+were but shadows on a screen, just seen and disappearing. What kings and
+kingdoms came before them and passed away? Has history no record? Not a
+word. Only black vacuity has been left behind them. And there was that
+other empire of the East, that of the Hittites, which we now know ruled
+Asia Minor and Syria and contested the rule of the world with Assyria
+and Egypt centuries before Agamemnon and Achilles, but so utterly buried
+and forgotten that not a line of its history was left, not even enough
+to let the sharpest scholar ask a question or suspect that it ever built
+capitals and fought victories and produced a civilization the harvest of
+which we still enjoy. Nothing was left of them but their names in a
+Hebrew list of tribes,--"Amorites and Jebusites and Hivites and
+Hittites."
+
+Yet all these lost tribes, nay, lost nations, had left their records
+behind them, only they were buried under ground and out of sight. What
+a travesty it is on history and civilization, what an impeachment of the
+glory of these later Christian centuries, that the lands which these old
+empires crowded with a busy population should now be among the most
+desolate and inaccessible on the face of the earth! There we see the
+curse of the Moslem religion, and still more of the Turkish government.
+Wherever the Turk has carried the sword and the Koran, there is blight
+and death. Only as soldiers and scholars of Europe have forced their way
+into these seats of ancient empires has it been possible to ask and
+learn what is buried beneath their gray desolation.
+
+The man who did more than any other to awaken the interest of the world
+in the search for forgotten empires was Sir Henry Layard, the excavator
+of Nineveh. But before his day another man had startled the world with
+what we may call the discovery of Egypt. That man was Napoleon
+Bonaparte, the man whose sword was a ploughshare turning up the fallow
+fields of Europe, and sowing strange crops of tyranny and liberty, and
+whose ambition it was to set up a new throne in the land of the Pharaohs
+and Ptolemies. The mighty ruins of Karnak and the imperishable pyramids
+filled him with amazement, and he set the scholars of France at work to
+publish in massive folios the wonders of that most ancient land. Then
+was found the Rosetta Stone, with its inscription in two
+languages,--Greek, which any scholar could read, and the Egyptian
+hieroglyphics, which no living man could read. But here was the key. The
+words _Ptolemy_ and _Cleopatra_ were in the Greek text, and it was not
+hard to find what were the combinations of characters that stood for
+these words in the Egyptian. The letters _p, t_, and _l_ were in both
+names. The hieroglyphic signs found in both names must be these three
+letters. That beginning gave all the other signs in both words, and the
+rest of the alphabet soon followed. Justly great is the fame of the
+Frenchman Champollion, who has the honor of having first deciphered and
+read this lost language, and opened to us the secret treasures of its
+history and religion.
+
+But with the exploration of Egypt the scholarship of the world was
+satisfied for fifty years. No one seemed to think to ask what might be
+hid under the soil of nearer Palestine and Syria and Asia Minor; much
+less did they seek to uncover the buried capitals of Assyria and
+Babylonia. Scholarship was devoted to books, to old manuscripts in
+convent libraries, to recovering what the wise men of Greece and Rome
+had written, and trying to wrest new facts out of their blundering old
+compilations of ancient history. It did not occur to them that a hundred
+kings and ten thousand merchants and priests might have left the stories
+of their conquests or contracts or liturgies, unrotted in the wet soil,
+imperishably preserved to be the record of commerce and empires as old
+and as great as those of Egypt, but far deeper covered with oblivion.
+But there they were, kept safe for twenty, thirty, fifty centuries,
+until the man should come whose mission it was to find them.
+
+More than one such man came in the middle of the last century, but one
+man is pre-eminent, and typical of all the rest, Sir Austen Henry
+Layard. Before him one Frenchman, M. Paul Émile Botta, had made a fine
+dash on a palace city a dozen miles north of Nineveh, and had opened
+wonders such as the world had never seen before. But the man whose
+energy was fullest of impulse, whose enthusiasm compelled British
+Ambassadors and Ministers and Parliaments to do his bidding, who aroused
+the world to the importance of the exploration and disinterment of the
+monuments of Babylonia and Assyria, was the Englishman Layard.
+
+He had a youthful passion for adventure, and slender means to gratify
+it. I wish you could see him as he is pictured in the volume which gives
+the story of his early adventures, before he had settled on his life-work
+of exploration. There he stands clad in his Bakhtiyari costume, the
+dress of a mountain tribe in Persia which asserted its independence of
+Teheran. It is a well-knit frame, fit to endure hardships. He stands
+holding the tall matchlock, the curved scimetar by his side, and the
+long pistol and the dagger in his belt. Above the yellow shoes and
+parti-woven stockings a red silk robe falls to his ankles, and over that
+a green silk garment reaches to his knees, and yet over that a shorter
+and richly embroidered coat, with open sleeves, is held close about the
+body by a wide silken sash woven in the brightest of red and gold, and
+holding the weapons attached to his waist. On his head is a low flat
+cap, visorless in front, but with a broad bow in place of a feather, all
+striped with the richest embroidery, and with a wide tassel of the same
+material falling far down his back. But the face, with its short beard
+dyed dark with henna, and its blue eyes, is not that of a warrior, but
+of a serious scholar or diplomatist. And he needed all the force of
+courage and all the arts of diplomacy for the work he had to do.
+
+Layard's early training was in the line of preparation for his life's
+work. Much of his boyhood was spent in Italy, where he acquired a taste
+for the fine arts, and as much knowledge of them as a child could obtain
+who was constantly in the society of artists and connoisseurs. At about
+the age of sixteen he was sent to England to study the law, for which he
+was destined by his parents. After six years in the office of a
+solicitor, and in the chambers of an eminent conveyancer,--for that is
+the way that lawyers were educated then,--he determined to leave
+England and seek a career elsewhere. He had a relative in Ceylon, who
+gave him hopes of securing a position there, and for Ceylon he started.
+A friend of his, ten years older, was bound for the same destination,
+both fond of adventure, and they agreed to go together, and to go as far
+as they could by land instead of taking the long sea journey around the
+Cape of Good Hope. Across Europe they passed to Constantinople, through
+Austria, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Bulgaria; thence across Asia
+Minor to Syria and Palestine; thence to Aleppo and down the Tigris to
+Baghdad. It was an extraordinary and adventurous journey, often
+dangerous; but greater danger was to follow. Layard had learned some
+Turkish, and now he spent the long weeks in Baghdad in the study of
+Persian; his companion was quite familiar with Arabic. Before they left
+England they had received good advice from Sir John MacNeill, the
+British representative at the court of the Shah: "You must either travel
+as important personages, with a retinue of servants and an adequate
+escort, or alone, as poor men, with nothing to excite the cupidity of
+the people amongst whom you will have to mix. If you cannot afford to
+adopt the first course, you must take the latter." The latter they were
+forced to take.
+
+Many a young man has the gift to acquire languages--almost any Oriental
+can talk three or four--and the ability to rough it and live on the fare
+of the people, though barbarous; and many a man has the spirit of
+adventure; but this young man had one peculiar and unusual qualification
+that directed him to his future career. As a child, he had read the
+"Arabian Nights" with intense delight, with their stories centred about
+Baghdad. Then every book of Eastern adventure, every bit of travel in
+Syria, Arabia, or Persia that he could find he had eagerly devoured. It
+was his day and night's longing that he might visit strange lands of
+history and make explorations and discoveries. So wherever he was, he
+visited every ruin and tried to copy every inscription. If his companion
+would not turn aside to visit some region of renown and danger, he would
+go alone and join him later. As they came down the river Tigris in their
+boat, they passed the immense mound of Nimroud, and so impressed was
+Layard by it that he then, scarce twenty-three years old, resolved that
+some day he would search and learn what was hidden under it; but little
+did he imagine what wonderful monuments he was to find there only a few
+years later.
+
+Without a servant, as poor men, in a caravan of fanatical and hostile
+Persian pilgrims returning from the shrines, just travellers trying to
+go by land through Persia and Afghanistan to India and Ceylon, they
+left Baghdad. It was a time of unusual danger, for the British Minister
+had been recalled from the Persian Court, and war with England was
+threatened. They were taken for spies, and sent to the presence of the
+Shah, and forbidden to follow the route they had chosen and which had
+been marked out for them by the Council of the Royal Geographical
+Society, to report on rivers and mountains and ruins not yet explored.
+They were insulted and robbed, and their lives were often in danger; but
+at last they received from the Shah their firmans. Now they separated.
+His companion felt that he must go by the quickest route to his
+destination; but Layard had no definite date before him, and he was
+anxious to perform the commissions of the Geographical Society, and so
+he plunged alone into fresh dangers.
+
+But there is no space to tell the rest of the story of his adventures
+among the Bakhtiyari, of his copying of inscriptions, of his return to
+Baghdad and his decision to give up the plans of life in Ceylon, and of
+his return from Baghdad again to Shuster and Persepolis and other
+ancient cities of Persia, and his exploration of the Karun River and his
+geographical paper on the subject, his opening of British trade, and his
+return to Constantinople. At Mosul he found that M. Botta was planning
+to explore the mounds across the Tigris that covered ancient Nineveh,
+and he warmly encouraged his plans. At Constantinople he visited Sir
+Stratford Canning and delivered to him despatches that had been confided
+to his care, in view of a threatened war between Persia and Turkey. Here
+he was kept in the service of the British Embassy, and intrusted with
+important and delicate negotiations and investigations which were so
+highly appreciated by Sir Stratford that he kept him as his attaché.
+
+Meanwhile M. Botta had begun his excavations of a palace of King Sargon
+at Khorsabad and was sending his reports and drawings to Paris. They
+were all sent by way of Constantinople, and, by M. Botta's generosity,
+were all seen by Mr. Layard. So deeply was he interested in them, and so
+intense was his desire to carry on excavations himself, that he secured
+his release from the Embassy, and also a grant of three hundred dollars
+from Sir Stratford's own purse, which, with what he could spare from his
+own money, would, he hoped, suffice to begin the work, when, if anything
+of value appeared, it was trusted that funds would be secured from
+English friends of Oriental learning. Thus, six years after leaving
+England, Mr. Layard, well equipped in knowledge of the people and in
+diplomatic experience, was ready to launch on his great career, which
+brought him fame and earned him the post in later years of British
+Ambassador at the Porte, which Sir Stratford had held, and--what is far
+greater--gave to the world the larger part of its knowledge of the lost
+empires of Assyria and Babylonia.
+
+With these few hundred dollars, and contributing every penny of his own
+income, in October of 1845, he left Constantinople without companion or
+servant, went by steamer to Samsoun, and then as fast as post-horses
+could climb or gallop over mountains and plains, he reached Mosul in
+twelve days.
+
+Here at last he was fitted for his task, supplied for the accomplishment
+of his passion. The Arabs say: "I had a horse, but no desert; I had a
+desert, but no horse; now I have a desert and a horse, and shall I not
+ride?" His boyhood, with the artists of Italy, and learning the
+languages of the continent, had fitted him for his task; then his study
+of all the books of Eastern travel, then half a year wandering with a
+trained companion through Asia Minor and Syria, scarcely leaving untrod
+one spot hallowed by tradition, or unvisited one ruin consecrated by
+history, with no protection but his arms, living with the people and
+learning their prejudices and customs. Then an irresistible desire had
+brought him to the regions beyond the Euphrates, and the mystery of
+Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea had fascinated him, so that he had
+visited the land of Nimrod, seen the site of their old buried capitals,
+had been the guest in the tents of Shammar and Aneyzah Arabs, and even
+passed on to see the famous forty columns of Chilminar, old Persian
+Persepolis, and to penetrate the mountain fastnesses where the
+Bakhtiyari maintained a perilous freedom. Never was man better trained
+by enthusiasm and experience for his task, and the late discoveries of
+M. Botta had inflamed his desire to surpass what his French friend
+had done.
+
+His plan was not to begin excavations at Nineveh, opposite Mosul, but
+twenty miles south, at the great mound of Nimroud, which bore the name
+of the mighty hunter Nimrod. Xenophon and his Ten Thousand had seen and
+wondered at its pyramid. There he would be free from the army of
+mischievous spectators that would swarm from Mosul, had he selected the
+site of Nineveh, and from the constant interference of the Turkish
+governor. The Pasha at Mosul was a cruel scoundrel, who was robbing and
+killing the people as his whim or greed prompted, and had reduced the
+tribes of the neighborhood to a state of terror. Accordingly, Mr.
+Layard, who was armed with protecting letters from the British
+Ambassador and the Porte, thought it wise to conceal his purpose, let it
+be reported that he was going on a hunting expedition; and with a few
+tools and a supply of guns and spears, on the 8th of November, 1845,
+accompanied only by his cawass, the soldier attendant detailed for the
+protection of travellers, a servant, and one laborer, he floated down
+the Tigris, and in four hours reached the bourne of his long hopes. He
+had the mound, he had the money, and now he would dig.
+
+The Arabs have strange stories of this ruin. The palace, they say, was
+built by Athur, the vizier of Nimrod. There Abraham brake in pieces the
+idols worshipped by the unbelievers. Nimrod was angry and waged war on
+the holy patriarch. Abraham prayed to God: "Deliver me, O God, from this
+man who worships stones, and boasts himself to be lord of all kings;"
+and God said to him, "How shall I punish him?" and the prophet answered,
+"To thee armies are as nothing, and the strength and power of men
+likewise. Before the smallest of thy creatures will they perish." And
+God was pleased at the faith of his servant, and he sent a gnat that
+vexed Nimrod day and night, so that he built himself a room of glass in
+that palace that he might dwell therein and shut out the insect. But the
+gnat entered also, and passed by his ear into his brain, upon which it
+fed, and increased day by day, so that the servants of Nimrod beat his
+head continually with a mallet that he might have some ease from his
+pain; but he died after suffering these torments four hundred years. And
+after him the mound was named Nimroud.
+
+It was dark when Layard and his little company reached the place. They
+found near by a few huts occupied by poor Arabs, who had been harried by
+the Turkish Pasha. There they slept, or tried to sleep. But the
+explorer could not sleep. Hear him:--
+
+"Hopes, long cherished, were now to be realized, or were to end in
+disappointment. Visions of palaces under ground, of gigantic monsters,
+of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions, floated before me.
+After forming plan after plan for removing the earth and extricating
+these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of chambers from
+which I could find no outlet. Then, again, all was reburied, and I was
+standing on the grass-covered mound. Exhausted, I was at length sinking
+into sleep, when, hearing the voice of Awad, I rose from my carpet and
+joined him outside the tent. The day already dawned. The lofty cone and
+broad mound of Nimroud broke like a distant mountain on the
+morning sky."
+
+Awad, his host, was a little chief among the Arabs, and was engaged to
+take charge of the diggers. The first morning he had six Arabs at work,
+and found alabaster slabs with cuneiform inscriptions. He was now sure
+he would succeed.
+
+It is not necessary to give the diary of his work. To be sure, the
+villanous Pasha forbade him to continue, and recalled him to Mosul, but
+a new governor was sent from Constantinople, under whom he had no
+difficulty. A great palace had been found, and chamber after chamber was
+excavated, the walls covered with bas-reliefs and inscriptions. Then
+came strange, gigantic lions with human heads, that had been placed by
+the old Assyrian king to guard the entrances to his court. What was the
+amazement of the Arabs and Turks cannot be told. First, the head was
+uncovered. It stood out from the earth, placid and vast. Hear Layard
+tell the story. He had been away to visit a neighboring chief:--
+
+"I was returning to the mound, when I saw two Arabs urging their mares
+to the top of their speed. 'Hasten, O Bey,' exclaimed one of them,
+'hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself. By Allah! it
+is wonderful, but it is true! We have seen him with our eyes! There is
+no God but God!' And both joining in this pious exclamation, they
+galloped back to the tent."
+
+Layard hastened to the trench, and there saw what he knew to be the head
+of a gigantic lion or bull, such as Botta had uncovered at Khorsabad. It
+was in admirable preservation. The expression was calm, yet majestic,
+and the outline of the features showed a freedom and knowledge of art
+that was scarcely to be looked for at so early a period. Says the
+explorer:--
+
+"I was not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at
+this apparition. It required no stretch of imagination to conjure up the
+most strange fancies. This gigantic head, blanched with age, thus rising
+from the bowels of the earth, might well have belonged to one of those
+fearful beings which are pictured in the traditions of the country as
+appearing to mortals, slowly ascending from the regions below. 'This is
+not the work of men's hands,' exclaimed Sheikh Abdurrahman, who had
+galloped to the mound on the first news, 'but of those infidel giants of
+whom the Prophet, peace be with him! has said that they were higher than
+the tallest date-tree; this is one of the idols which Noah, peace be
+with him! cursed before the flood!' In this opinion all the bystanders
+concurred."
+
+The Arabs have a ready explanation for every fresh discovery. When some
+years later Mr. Layard's assistant and successor in the work of
+excavation, Mr. Rassam, uncovered, at Abu-habba, a remarkable bas-relief
+with the figure of the seated Sun-god and three approaching worshippers,
+the Arab diggers rushed to him, declaring that they had found Noah and
+his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and demanded a sheep to make
+a feast.
+
+The report of the wonderful discovery of a royal palace, evidently older
+than those of Nineveh, with magnificent decorations in alabaster and
+cuneiform inscriptions, reached beyond Mosul to Constantinople. Sir
+Stratford Canning was delighted with the result of his expedition. He
+had a passion for discovery as well as diplomacy, and it is to him that
+the British Museum is indebted for the priceless marbles of
+Halicarnassus. He now obtained for Mr. Layard a firman, permitting him
+to make what excavations he wished. Then the news reached London, and
+the British Museum made a grant to support the work. All difficulties
+were now removed. Conditions were even more favorable for him than they
+are now. There was then no Imperial Museum in Constantinople to which
+all objects found must be taken, but those that dug had the right to
+carry off their prizes to London or Paris.
+
+To tell the story of the further excavations is unnecessary. It is all
+given in Layard's two splendid volumes, "Nineveh and its Remains," and
+"Babylon and Nineveh;" and the bas-reliefs, statues, bronzes, ivories,
+and inscriptions are magnificently reproduced in great folio volumes.
+From Nimroud he went back to Mosul, and there opened the two mounds
+opposite of Kuyunjik and Neby-Yunus, the site of old Nineveh. There more
+palaces and friezes were found of other kings. Then he went back to
+London, closing his successful campaign, more profitable if not more
+glorious than those of war, and published the story of his work. Its
+effect was marvellous. No such popular book of travels had ever
+appeared; for it was a story of adventure, and also of strange
+discovery. Mr. Layard had not suspected that he had the literary gift,
+but he had it in rare measure. He had gained an inner view of the heart
+of tribes, Moslem and Christian and semi-pagan, by his sympathy with
+them and his knowledge of their tongues. He had lived in their tents and
+huts. He had saved them from persecution by Turkish governors. Their
+gratitude to him was beyond words, and he told their story with
+affection and enthusiasm. Then his discoveries were in the lands made
+historic not only by the campaigns of Xenophon and Alexander, but made
+almost sacred by the Bible history. These were the lands whence came the
+armies that fought with Israel. These were the kings whose wars are told
+in the Jewish records; and the annals of these kings were found in their
+palaces, and they gave full accounts of wars of which the Bible had
+given the outline. Piety and learning joined to give extraordinary
+interest to these discoveries and to this report of them. Mr. Layard
+found himself famous, and the monuments he was bringing to the British
+Museum were, and still are, the most extraordinary and fascinating in
+all its corridors.
+
+Of course, a new grant was made in behalf of the British Museum, and of
+course he went back to continue and extend his researches. Now he wished
+to go further south, beyond Nimroud to Kalah Shergat, the yet earlier
+capital of Assyria; and yet further to Babylon, that he might see and
+test the multitude of mounds of ancient Chaldea, the real land of
+Nimrod, the seat of Eden, and the Tower of Babel, far more ancient than
+any one of the three capitals of Assyria. While he did scarce more than
+to visit and report on the Babylonian mounds, his diggings in Nineveh
+itself were of vast importance, for there he found the library of
+Asshurbanabal, on clay tablets, which has given us our chief knowledge
+of the literature and learning of the ancient East. In 1852 he returned
+to England to publish his "Monuments of Nineveh," and left the further
+exploration to his able lieutenant, Mr. Rassam, and to a noble
+succession of explorers who should follow, and to a no less noble line
+of scholars who should interpret the inscriptions and recover the
+history of the nations; so that we now know more exactly the history of
+Babylonian and Assyrian kings, and from more authentic records, and more
+completely the social condition and business life of the countries, than
+we do the history of Greece, or the life of the Greeks even of the time
+of Pericles, and that, too, for a period of three thousand years.
+
+To illustrate this fact, let us take the black obelisk of Shalmaneser
+II., found by Layard at Nimroud. It is a column of basalt seven feet
+high and about two feet wide at the base, from which it narrows
+slightly, until near the top it is reduced by three steps. On the four
+sides is engraved in five rows of bas-reliefs, twenty in all, the
+pictured history of the royal conquests, the submission of kings, and
+the presentation of tribute. Above and below, and between, in two
+hundred and ten lines, was cut an inscription which explained the
+figures, and gave a full historical and, of course, contemporary and
+official account of the glorious events of the royal reign. Not a line
+was defaced; at the British Museum it can be seen to-day as perfect as
+when engraved twenty-seven centuries ago. Other monuments of Shalmaneser
+have been found. One is a great monolith with a portrait of the king in
+all his fine array, and with one hundred and fifty-six lines of text.
+Another is a series of splendid bronze plates that covered great wooden
+gates, on which, in repoussé work, were pictures of the royal victories,
+and inscriptions explaining them. The Bible tells us of the rivalries
+and jealousies of Ahab and Jehu, kings of Israel, and Benhadad and
+Hazael, kings of Damascus. How surprising it is to find here not only
+the story of the successive campaigns of Shalmaneser against these same
+kings, the number of their chariots and soldiers, but to see pictured
+before us the tribute sent by Jehu. We learn that Shalmaneser reigned
+from 859 to 825 B.C., and we have the record of all his successive
+campaigns, the first twenty-six of which he led in person. There is not
+another country of which, before the invention of printing, we have so
+minute a history; and all had been lost, except the mention of a name or
+two, whether historical or legendary we hardly knew, until Layard and
+his fellow-explorers opened the mounds of Assyria.
+
+But enough for Layard. He is only one, though the principal one, of all
+the explorers of the buried records of the empires of the Tigris and
+Euphrates. And Babylonia and Assyria are not the only countries that
+history required us to explore. Greece and its neighboring states and
+islands have not even yet been fairly investigated. Much of Asia Minor
+is still a virgin field. Syria and Palestine have hardly been scratched
+with the spade. More has been done in Egypt, but more yet is to be done.
+And when we go into the further east of Persia and Old Elam, not to
+speak of the yet farther east of Central Asia, now just beginning to
+yield strange treasures to daring travellers, and ancient India and
+China,--how ancient we know not at all,--there is field for centuries of
+further research. For we must go back past empires and kingdoms and
+tribal conditions to the very beginning of the human race on the earth,
+even if so it be, to the first _Pithecanthropus_ which men of science
+tell us was the link which connected _Homo sapiens_ with the race of
+primitive simians. And all this, it may well be, is preserved in
+undecaying records just a few feet under the ground, if one only knew
+where to dig for it; nay, we now know where to dig for the most and best
+of it, and we only await the Stratford Cannings, who will give the
+money, and the Austen Layards, who have the enthusiasm for the work.
+
+After Layard and Rassam, after Rawlinson and Botta, George Smith took
+flying trips to the site of Nineveh twice that he might gather the
+remaining fragments of the great library of Asshurbanabal, and he died
+in the field far from home. It was he that found among Layard's tablets
+the Babylonian account of the Deluge, so much like that in the Bible. He
+was the first of a second generation who, following Rawlinson and
+Oppert, decipherers as well as explorers, were able to read as they
+found. I can only mention the names of the Englishmen Taylor and Loftus;
+of the Frenchmen, Place and De Sarzec; and, later, the Americans,
+Peters, Hilprecht, and Haynes, who have so faithfully explored the
+extremely archaic mound of Niffer, which I had the honor to recommend
+for excavation after I had visited the mounds of Southern Babylonia in
+the winter of 1884-85. And now the Germans, with scientific as well as
+commercial and political purpose, with their railroad to pass down the
+valley through Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, which gives them predominant
+influence, have sent expeditions well equipped with scholars and
+engineers to the choicest sites in Babylonia, to Warka, the ancient
+Erech, and to Babylon itself; and with Teuton thoroughness they are
+excavating the most famous of ancient ruins and gathering fresh
+treasures of archaeological research. Nor have they left the land of the
+Hittites unexplored, for Germany claims the first rights, politically,
+in all Anatolia, the right of succession and possession when the Turk is
+expelled, and German archaeological science is bound to be first on
+that field.
+
+And now what have we found as the fruit of all this labor of
+exploration? Is it worth the labor and the expense?
+
+Let us look first--it can be only a glance--at Egypt, for Egypt was the
+land first and most persistently explored. The French Government for
+scores of years has been at work there. Germans and Italians have
+explored the ruins; two English societies have for years kept
+expeditions in the field; and just now a Californian university sends an
+American Egyptologist to uncover the tombs and read the hieroglyphs of
+the kings. Not only are the figured monuments of Egypt published in
+princely folios, but its records have been translated and its lost
+history recovered to the world's knowledge. Instead of the bare
+"Pharaoh" of the Bible, a common designation for all the kings, and in
+place of a bare list of names and dynasties copied from Manetho, and so
+altered and corrupted in the copying as to be neither Greek nor
+Egyptian, we have, on scarab, or gravestone, or pyramid, or
+rock-sepulchre wall, in his own spelling, the name of almost every king
+from the latest time of the Ptolemies back to the first king of the
+first dynasty, five thousand--or was it six thousand?--years before
+Christ. And not their names only, but the very pictures of their wars.
+We see how they went up the Nile and fought the blacks of Abyssinia, and
+brought back the spoils of Punt We see them sending their squadrons
+into Syrian Asia, and waging a dubious battle with the Hittites before
+the walls of Hamath, where Rameses in his lion-guarded chariot performs
+prodigies of valor, and from which he returns not only to paint on
+sacred walls the picture of his victory, but also to inscribe a copy of
+the treaty of peace with the Hittite king, the earliest treaty in the
+preserved annals of diplomacy. Well wrought that Rameses the Great for
+eternal fame in the sixty years of his reign, fifteen centuries before
+the birth of our Lord. But what fame had been his, had not explorers and
+excavators and scholars dug and found and copied and translated what the
+sands had covered for centuries? And to-day the curious traveller stops
+in sight of the pyramids on the banks of the Nile, and enters the Bulaq
+Museum, and there he sees set up before him the very mummy of Rameses
+himself and of a dozen other royal personages, rifled from their tombs
+and displayed for your amazement and mine. There is the very
+Pharaoh--you can see his features, you can touch his coffin--who chased
+the Children of Israel out of Egypt. There are the household implements,
+the furniture of their homes, the jewelry their queens wore,--queens who
+were also sisters of the kings, as Sarah was the sister of Abraham.
+
+Or would you know of some great revolution in Egypt? These decipherers
+of the inscriptions will tell you how the Shepherd Kings overthrew the
+native dynasty, coming with their armies from Asia long before Rameses,
+and changed religion and customs; under whom Jacob and his sons found
+hospitable welcome, until their hated race was expelled by a stronger
+native dynasty that knew not Joseph. Or they will tell you of the royal
+reformer Khuenaten, son of a famous Eastern mother, a queen from the
+banks of the Euphrates. Taught by her, perhaps, a purer religion, he
+attempted to replace the worship of Egypt's bestial gods by the worship
+of the one only great God, whose symbol was the sun. But the priestly
+clan was too strong for him, and the succeeding Pharaohs destroyed his
+records and chiselled out his name where it had been cut in stone that
+no memory of his sacrilege might be preserved. A royal Moses there could
+not be. The worshipper of one God, whether king or son of Pharaoh's
+daughter, could bring no reformation to Egypt.
+
+Or would you learn how Egypt ruled its subject territory? You can read
+the correspondence of a dozen local Egyptian governors in Palestine and
+Syria in the century before Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt.
+There is the letter of the King of Jerusalem, where Melchizedek reigned
+in the times of Abraham; and they tell of rebellions against the fading
+power of Egypt, and of the fear of the advancing Hittites. The earliest
+kings, those that built the pyramids, appear before us real in their
+personality, emerging out of misty legend or myth, and, earlier still,
+even the prehistoric races that antedated the very beginning of
+civilization. Whence came that first dynasty? Who invented writing? Were
+they autochthons? Hardly. These are questions left for further explorers
+to answer. Probably those first messengers of civilization came from the
+East, perhaps from Arabia, perhaps from Babylonia, or perhaps the first
+Babylonians and Egyptians formed a common stock somewhere near the mouth
+of the Euphrates. Perhaps the Bible is right in saying that the first
+seat of civilized man was in Eden, and that the Euphrates was the chief
+river of Paradise. Or was it from Arabia, the immemorial home of the
+Semitic tribes, that land of sand and mountain and fertile valley, land
+of changeless culture and tradition, so near the centres of
+civilization, and yet still the most inaccessible, the least known
+portion of the inhabited earth,--was it from Arabia that the wiser,
+stronger multitude came that first overran the valleys of both the Nile
+and the Euphrates, bringing to Egypt and Chaldea arts and letters? We do
+not know. Some future explorer must teach us. But the German Glaser has
+within these few years brought back from hazardous journeys a multitude
+of inscriptions that tell of kingdoms that fringed its southern coast
+and extended we know not how far into the interior in those early days
+when one of the queens of Sheba brought presents to Solomon, and when,
+earlier still, we are told there were dukes of Edom before there was any
+king in Israel. They say that a railroad is to be built to Mecca; Arabia
+is not to be always a closed land, neighbor as it is to Egypt. We shall
+know one of these days whether, as scholars suspect, out of Arabia and
+across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, where, at the southern end of the
+Red Sea, Africa almost touches Asia, there came that mighty flood of
+more forceful men, bred in the deserts and hills, who, passing down the
+Nile, first brought history to Egypt; and whether it was this same
+Semitic people, as scholars suspect again, that spread resistlessly
+eastward to the Euphrates valley, and did an equal service in conquering
+and assimilating the black aborigines of these swamps and lagoons. The
+spade will tell us.
+
+Or was it still further east, in the highlands of Persia, that men first
+learned how to write and record history? We cannot go back so far in the
+history of Babylonia--Professor Hilprecht dares to carry us seven
+thousand years before Christ--that we do not find its kings fighting
+against Elam. And only in the last decade of the Nineteenth century the
+Frenchman De Morgan has made marvellous discoveries in the Elamite
+lands. What a noble passion those Frenchmen have for discovery! For
+Egypt did not Napoleon provide the most elephantine books of monuments
+and records that printing-presses have yet issued? And from that time to
+this have not Frenchmen held the primacy in excavations until, even
+while England holds and rules Egypt, she leaves, by special convention,
+the care of its monuments and their exploration to French savants? And
+before Layard removed a basketful of the earth that covered the palace
+of Shalmaneser at Nimroud, had not the Frenchman Botta disclosed the
+friezes and sphinxes of Sargon at Khorsabad; and in these late years is
+it not the Frenchman De Sarzec who has brought from Telloh to the Louvre
+the statues of Chaldean kings that lived almost five thousand years ago?
+And so to France was given the right, for the honor and enrichment of
+the Louvre, to explore Persia; and De Morgan went to Susa, to Shushan,
+the palace of Xerxes and Darius, of Ahasuerus and Esther, in search of
+what was far earlier than they, for another Frenchman and his wife, M.
+and Mme. Dieulafoy, had already excavated the noble palace of these
+Persian kings. Far below the palace of Xerxes he has found vastly
+earlier remains. There is the column set up, if we can believe the
+Assyriologists who trust the chronology of Nabonidus, the last king of
+Babylon,--and it is not incredible,--three thousand eight hundred years
+before Christ, by Naram-Sin, a Babylonian king, to commemorate one of
+his raids into the land of what were perhaps his stronger enemies. It
+is a noble composition, with archaic writing, and a stately figure of
+the king climbing the mountains and slaying his enemies; it shows an art
+that might well have developed into the best that Greece has produced.
+But De Morgan has only begun to scratch the surface of the mounds of
+Elam, and a multitude of scholars believe that out of Elam came the
+first civilization of Chaldea. We shall find out yet; for the record is
+in the earth, and only waits the man who will dig it out, and then the
+man who will read it.
+
+We are tempted to go further east and recall that in India, the land
+where Alexander made his most distant conquests, a multitude of English
+scholars have been searching the ruins of old temples for the earliest
+memorials of the worship of Buddha. Just now they have found his
+birthplace and precious relics. But that takes us too far afield, and
+would tempt us to further excursions in Burmah and China. We must come
+back to Western Asia and the shores of Europe.
+
+As has been indicated, the greatest puzzle of ancient history is that of
+the Hittite empire, which seems to have ruled all Asia Minor at some
+uncertain time, and to have extended over Syria and Palestine. No sooner
+had the greatest Egyptian kings, Thothmes and Rameses, ventured their
+armies into Asia, perhaps in vengeance on the incursions of Ionian
+pirates, perhaps in requital of the tyrannies of the hated Shepherd
+Kings, than they learned of the Hittites on the shores of the Euphrates.
+Then, a century or two later, a mass of official correspondence sent by
+the Kings of Palestine and Syria, dug up in Egypt, reports that the
+Hittites had appeared as invaders from the north and beseeches military
+aid. But the power of Egypt had waned, and the Hittites were supreme
+until the Assyrians began and carried on for five centuries the
+uncertain war which ended in the utter overthrow of the Hittites and all
+their allies in a great battle at Carchemish. That great mound of
+Carchemish needs to be thoroughly explored. Already an English
+expedition has very carelessly just opened the hill and exposed, but not
+fairly published, some few as fine friezes as are to be found in the
+Assyrian capitals, with unread Hittite inscriptions, and a fine statue
+of the Hittite Venus; but much remains to reward the student of Oriental
+history and art. At Senjirli a German expedition under Von Luschan has
+done more and better work, handsomely published, but this was a smaller
+Syrian town, and less was to be expected; and yet here, and near by,
+were found what was not expected, steles (upright slabs or pillars) with
+the portraits of kings in high relief, covered over with long
+inscriptions in Aramaic, the oldest and longest as yet discovered
+anywhere in that language. It was a magnificent result of very moderate
+labor,--Hittite friezes, Assyrian and Aramean inscriptions all in one
+little mound. But for the most part we know the art and writing of the
+Hittites from what we have found above ground, in their towns and
+fortresses in the hills, for little digging has been done. At Pterium
+was a principal sacred capital, and there, on a natural corridor of
+rock, they carved a procession of gods and kings and soldiers that
+excites the wonder of scholars. As I write, the announcement comes that
+Professor Sayce has at last discovered the secret of the Hittite
+hieroglyphs, and we may hope that very soon it will be possible to read
+them. But there is vastly more of their records yet to be disinterred.
+
+And there remain the two lands most sacred and beloved in poetry and
+history,--the land of Israel and the land of Homer. It is amazing that
+so little search has been made to find out what is hidden under the soil
+of Palestine. Scholars in plenty have walked over the top of it, and
+have told all that is on the surface, but almost nothing has been done
+underground, no such excavations as in Egypt or Assyria. I do not forget
+that the English Palestine Exploration Fund has followed out, with
+trenches and tunnels, the walls of Jerusalem, nor that one or two old
+mounds have been partly explored. But what is this to the great work
+that needs to be done? There has been found on the surface the Moabite
+Stone, at the old capital of Dibon, a wonderful record of early kings
+mentioned in the Bible. And there is the short account in the rock-cut
+conduit of Siloam, of the success of the workmen in the time of
+Hezekiah, who, beginning at the two ends, did the fine engineering feat
+of having their tunnels meet correctly in the solid rock. But when
+Jerusalem is fully explored, and the northern capitals of Bethel and
+Tirzah and Samaria, and a hundred other mounds that mark the site of
+Jewish, Israelite, Philistine, and Amorite cities, we may expect
+marvellous discoveries that will illumine our Holy Scriptures.
+
+And one region yet remains to be considered, the scattered coasts and
+islands that owned the Greek speech, and that created the Greek
+civilization. It is not the Greece of the Parthenon and Pericles that we
+wish to discover, for that we fairly know; but the arts and the history
+of those earlier Greeks and Trojans that Homer tells of, the age of
+Agamemnon and Ulysses, of Helen and Hector and Priam, and of the yet
+earlier tribes that sailed the Aegean, and settled the Mediterranean
+islands, and sent their ships to the Egyptian coasts, and sought golden
+fleeces on the Euxine Sea. All about the coast of Asia Minor they lived,
+while that Hittite power was ruling the interior; and, intermixed with
+Phoenician trading-posts, they held the great islands of Crete and
+Cyprus and the shores of Sicily and Italy. What shall we call them? Were
+they Dorians, or Heraclidae, Achaeans or Pelasgi? Were they of the same
+race as the mysterious Etruscans, or shall we name them simply
+Mycenaeans, as we call the art Mycenaean that ruled the islands and
+coasts down to the Homeric age, and we know not how many centuries
+earlier, but certainly as far back as the conquering period of the
+Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty of Thothmes? Their soldiers and merchants
+and their fine vases are pictured on the walls of Egypt, and their
+pottery has long been studied; but we knew little of them until Dr.
+Schliemann, the Greek merchant who achieved wealth in the United States,
+bravely opened the great ruins of Troy, in the full patriotism of his
+assurance that Homer's story of the Trojan war was history as well as
+poetry. As he found one burnt and buried city under another,--for many
+times was Troy destroyed,--and extended his investigations to Tiryns and
+other ancient cities, one volume of splendid research followed another,
+until the trader had compelled the unwilling scholar to confess that he
+must dig for both history and art. To be sure, his interpretations were
+quite too literal at first, but the whole world of classical scholarship
+has learned from him the new method of research. Splendid have been the
+results. If we are not sure which stratum represents the city of Priam,
+we do learn how the people lived, and how fine was their work in silver
+and gold, and how slight their knowledge of letters. Dr. Schliemann has
+now a multitude of imitators. France and Germany and England and the
+United States each maintain a school of archaeology in Athens, and each
+conducts careful explorations. Our American School lost to the French,
+for lack of money at the right time, the chance to explore Delphi, but
+it has carried on careful explorations at Corinth and other places. How
+wonderful was the discovery, not long ago, of a shipload of bronze and
+marble statues wrecked while being transported as spoil of war from
+Corinth to Rome!
+
+But the most surprising discoveries in the realm of old Greek history
+and art are those that have been made in these last two or three years
+in Crete. Crete was a famous centre of ancient Greek legend. Jupiter was
+born and reared on Mount Ida. From another mountain summit in Crete the
+gods watched the battle on the plains of Troy. There ruled Minos, who
+first gave laws to men, and who at his death was sent by the gods to
+judge the shades as they entered the lower world. There was the famous
+Labyrinth, and there the Minotaur devoured his annual tale of maidens
+until he was slain by Theseus. Was there such a real palace of Minos as
+the Greek poets sung? The magnificent palace of the Cretan kings at
+Cnossus has been found, by Mr. Evans, with its friezes, its spiral
+ornaments, its flounce-petticoated women, its treasuries, and its
+tablets written in a script so old that it cannot yet be read, but which
+will be read as surely as scholarship leaves none of its riddles
+unsolved. The childhood of Greece, its mighty infancy, out of which it
+grew to be the creator and the example of all the world's culture, is
+even now being exposed to our view, safely kept to be recovered by the
+scholars of our generation.
+
+Of interest rather to the student of the curiosities of history are the
+mounds and pyramids and temples built by the aborigines of America; for
+these tribes have had absolutely no part in creating our dominant
+civilization or developing its art. China and Japan are, at this late
+day, giving something to the world's store of beauty and utility; but
+the mound-builders and cliff-dwellers, the Mayas and Toltecs and Incas,
+have given absolutely nothing which the world cared to accept. But this
+does not argue that it is not worth while to learn what we can of the
+rude civilization of the races whom we have displaced. Their arrowheads
+and hatchets are in every little museum. Their mounds, sometimes shaped
+like serpents or tortoises or lizards, are scattered over all the
+central States, and many of them have been carefully explored with
+scanty results. The cliff-dwellers have left somewhat richer remains,
+more baskets and parched corn, yet nothing of artistic value. We have to
+go to Mexico and Yucatan and further south to Peru, to find the
+majestic capitals of the Mayas and Incas, who had really reached a fair
+degree of such civilization as stone and copper, without iron, and the
+beginnings of picture symbols, without letters, could provide. Humboldt
+and Stephens, and Lord Kingsborough, and Squier, and Tchudi, and Charnay
+have made explorations and found vast and wonderful cities, some of them
+deserted and overgrown before Cortez and Pizarro took possession of the
+lands for Spain and enslaved the people. Where the city of Mexico now
+stands was a famous capital, from whose ruins were taken the great
+Calendar stone and the double statue of the god of war and the god of
+death. In Palenque and Uxmal, capitals of Yucatan, were immense palaces
+and temples, with the weird ornamentation of Mayan imagination; and
+equal wonders exist in the high uplands where the Incas ruled Peru. Even
+their barbaric art and their unrecorded history must be recovered, to
+satisfy the curiosity of the more fortunate races whose boasted
+Christianity visited on them nothing better than cruel slaughter. At
+least we can give them museums and publish magnificent pictures of
+their ruins.
+
+So we may bless the ashes and sand that seemed to destroy and bury the
+monuments of the mighty empires of the ancient world, but which have
+kindly covered and preserved them, just as we put our treasures away in
+some safety-vault while absent on a long journey. The fire burned the
+upper wooden walls of the city, and it fell in ruins, but under those
+ruins, covered by that ashes, were preserved for two thousand, three
+thousand, five thousand years uninjured, the choicest sculpture and the
+most precious records of ancient nations,--retained beyond the reach of
+vandal hands, until scholarship had grown wise enough to ask questions
+of forgotten history, and had sent Layard and Schliemann and De Sarzec
+and Evans and a hundred other men to dig with their competitive spades.
+But in all the long list of enthusiasts not one deserves a higher honor
+or has reaped a richer harvest than Sir Henry Layard.
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+Layard: "Early Adventures;" "Nineveh and its Remains;" "Nineveh and
+Babylon;" "Monuments of Nineveh." Botta: "Monument de Ninive." Loftus:
+"Chaldea and Susiana." Y. Place: "Ninive et Assyrie." Hilprecht:
+"Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania;" "Recent
+Research in Bible Lands." Perrot and Chipiez: "History of Art in
+Antiquity." J.P. Peters: "Nippur." R.W. Rogers: "History of Babylonia
+and Assyria." F. Lenormant: "Students' Manual of the Ancient History of
+the East;" "The Beginnings of History." Maspero: "Dawn of Civilization;"
+"Struggle of the Nations;" "Passing of the Empires;" "Egyptian
+Archaeology;" "Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria." C.J. Ball: "Light
+from the East." Egypt Exploration Fund's Publications. F.J. Bliss:
+"Exploration in Jerusalem;" "A Mound of Many Cities." Schliemann: "Troy
+and its Remains;" "Ilios;" "Mycenae;" "Tiryns;" "Troja." A.J. Evans:
+"Cnossus;" "Cretan Pictographs." Tsountas and Manatt: "The
+Mycenaean Age."
+
+
+
+
+MICHAEL FARADAY.
+
+
+1791-1867.
+
+ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM.
+
+BY EDWIN J. HOUSTON, PH.D.
+
+
+     "No man is born into the world whose work
+      Is not born with him. There is always work,
+      And tools to work withal, for those who will."
+
+      LOWELL
+
+A man was born into the world, on the 22d of September, 1791, whose work
+was born with him, and who did this work so well that he became one of
+its greatest benefactors. Indeed, much of the marvellous advance made in
+the electric arts and sciences, during the last half-century, can be
+directly traced to this work.
+
+It was in Newington Butts, in London, England, that the man-child first
+opened his eyes on the wonders of the physical world around him. To
+those eyes, in after years, were given a far deeper insight into the
+mysteries of nature than often falls to the lot of man. This man-child
+was Michael Faraday, who has been justly styled, by those best capable
+of judging him, "The Prince of Experimental Philosophers."
+
+The precocity so common in the childhood of men of genius was
+apparently absent in the case of young Faraday. The growing boy played
+marbles, and worried through a scant education in reading, writing, and
+arithmetic, unnoticed, and most probably, for the greater part, severely
+left alone, as commonly falls to the lot of nearly all boys, whether
+ordinary or extraordinary. At the early age of thirteen, he was taken
+from school and placed on trial as errand-boy in the book-shop of George
+Ribeau, in London. After a year at this work, he was taken as an
+apprentice to the book-binding trade, by the same employer, who, on
+account of his faithful services, remitted the customary premium. At
+this work he spent some eight years of his life.
+
+But far be it from us even to hint at the absence of genius in the young
+child. Genius is not an acquired gift. It is born in the individual.
+Apart from the marvellous achievements of the man, a mere glance at the
+magnificent head, with its high intellectual forehead, the firm lips,
+the intelligent inquiring eyes, and the bright face, as seen in existing
+pictures, assures us that they portray an unusual individuality,
+incompatible with even a suspicion of belonging to an ordinary man.
+Doubtless the growing child did give early promise of his future
+greatness. Doubtless he was a formidable member of that terrible class
+of inquiring youngsters who demand the why and the wherefore of all
+around them, and refuse to accept the unsatisfactory belief of their
+fathers that things "are because they are." In its self-complacency, the
+busy world is too apt to fail to notice unusual abilities in
+children,--abilities that perhaps too often remain undeveloped from lack
+of opportunities. But whether young Faraday did or did not, at an early
+age, display any unusual promise of his life-work, all his biographers
+appear to agree that he could not be regarded as a precocious child.
+
+Faraday disclaimed the idea that his childhood was distinguished by any
+precocity. "Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked
+as a precocious person," says Faraday, when alluding to his early life.
+"I was a very lively, imaginative person, and could believe in the
+'Arabian Nights' as easily as the 'Encyclopaedia,' but facts were
+important to me, and saved me. I could trust a fact and always
+cross-examined an assertion. So when I questioned Mrs. Marcet's book [he
+is alluding to her 'Conversations on Chemistry'], by such little
+experiments as I could find means to perform, and found it true to the
+facts as I could understand them, I felt that I had got hold of an
+anchor in chemical knowledge, and clung fast to it."
+
+But while there may be a question as to the existence of precocity in
+the young lad, there does not appear to be any reason for believing that
+his unusual abilities were the result of direct heredity. His father, an
+ordinary journeyman blacksmith, never exhibited any special intellectual
+ability, though possibly poverty and poor health may have been
+responsible for this failure. His mother, too, it appears, was of but
+ordinary mentality.
+
+The environment of those early years--that is, from 1804 to 1813, while
+in the book-binding business--was far from calculated to develop any
+marked abilities inherent in our young philosopher. What would seem less
+calculated to inspire a wish to obtain a deeper insight into the
+mysteries of the physical world than the trade of book-binding,
+especially in the case of a boy whose scholastic education ceased at
+fourteen years and was limited to the mere rudiments of learning? But,
+fortunately for the world, the inquiring spirit of the lad led him to
+examine the inside of the books he bound, and thus, by familiarizing
+himself with their contents, he received the inspiration that good
+writing is always ready to bestow on those who properly read it. Two
+books, he afterwards informs us, proved of especial benefit; namely,
+"Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry," already referred to, and the
+"Encyclopaedia Britannica." To the former he attributes his grounding in
+chemistry, and to the latter his first ideas in electricity, in both of
+which studies he excelled in after years. As we have seen, even at this
+early age he followed the true plan for the physical investigator,
+cross-questioned all statements, only admitting those to the dignity of
+facts whose truth he had established by careful experimentation.
+
+But our future experimental philosopher has not as yet fairly started on
+the beginnings of his life-work. The possibilities of the book-binding
+trade were too limited to permit much real progress. A circumstance
+occurred in the spring of 1812 that shaped his entire after-life. This
+was the opportunity then afforded him to attend four of the last
+lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, by the great Sir Humphry
+Davy. Faraday took copious notes of these lectures, carefully wrote them
+out, and bound them in a small quarto volume. It was this volume, which
+he afterwards sent to Davy, that resulted in his receiving, on March 1,
+1813, the appointment of laboratory assistant in the Royal Institution.
+His pay for this work was twenty-five shillings a week, with a lodging
+on the top floor of the Institute, a very fair compensation for
+the times.
+
+Very congenial were the duties of the young assistant. They were to keep
+clean the beloved apparatus of the lecturers, and to assist them in
+their demonstrations. The new world thus opened was full of bright
+promise. He keenly felt the deficiencies of his early education, and
+did his best to extend his learning, so that he might be able to make
+the most of his opportunities. But what he perhaps appreciated the most
+was the inspiration he received from the great teacher Davy, who was
+then Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Laboratory of the Royal
+Institution; for Faraday assisted at Davy's lectures, and in an humble
+way even aided his investigations, sharing the dangers arising from the
+explosion of the unstable substance, chloride of nitrogen, that Davy was
+then investigating. Faraday has repeatedly acknowledged the debt owed to
+the inspiration of this teacher. Davy also, in later life generously
+recognized, in his former assistant, a philosopher greater than himself.
+As the renowned astronomer, Tycho Brahe, discovered in one of his
+pupils, John Kepler, an astronomer greater than the master, and as
+Bergman, the Swedish chemist, in a similar manner, discovered the
+greater chemist Scheele, so when Davy, in after years, was asked what he
+regarded as his greatest discovery, he briefly replied,
+"Michael Faraday."
+
+The task of the scientific historian, who endeavors honestly to record
+the progress of research, and to trace the influence of the work of some
+individual on the times in which he lived, is by no means an easy one;
+for, in scientific work one discovery frequently passes so insensibly
+into another that it is often difficult to know just where one stops
+and the other begins, and much difficulty constantly arises as to whom
+the credit should be given, when, as is too often the case, these
+discoveries are made by different individuals. It is only when some
+great discovery stands alone, like a giant mountain peak against the
+clear sky, that it is comparatively easy to determine the extent and
+character of its influence on other discoveries, and justly to give the
+credit to whom the credit is due. Such discoveries form ready points of
+reference in the intellectual horizon, and mark distinct eras in the
+world's progress. This is true of all work in the domain of physical
+science, but it is especially true in that of electricity and magnetism,
+in which Faraday was pre-eminent. The scope of each of these sciences is
+so extended, the number of workers so great, and the applications to the
+practical arts so nearly innumerable, that it is often by no means an
+easy task correctly to trace their proper growth and development.
+
+Faraday's investigations covered vast fields in the domain of chemistry,
+electricity, and magnetism. It is to the last two only that reference
+will here be made. Faraday's life-work in electricity and magnetism
+began practically in 1831, when he made his immortal discovery of the
+direct production of electricity from magnetism. His best work in
+electricity and magnetism was accomplished between 1831 and 1856,
+extending, therefore, over a period of some twenty-five years, although
+it is not denied that good work was done since 1856. Consequently, it
+was at so comparatively recent a date that most of Faraday's work was
+done that some of the world's distinguished electricians yet live who
+began their studies during the latter years of Faraday's life. The
+difficulties of tracing, at least to some extent, the influence that
+Faraday's masterly investigations have had on the present condition of
+the electrical arts and sciences will, therefore, be considerably
+lessened.
+
+The extent of Faraday's researches and discoveries in magnetism and
+electricity was so great that it will be impossible, in the necessarily
+limited space of a brief biographical sketch, to notice any but the more
+prominent. Nor will any attempt be made, except where the nature of the
+research or discovery appears to render it advisable, to follow any
+strict chronological order; for, our inquiry here is not so much
+directed to a mere matter of history as to the influence which the
+investigation or discovery exerted on the life and civilization of the
+age in which we live.
+
+There is a single discovery of Faraday that stands out sharply amidst
+all his other discoveries, great as they were, and is so important in
+its far-reaching results that it alone would have stamped him as a
+philosophical investigator of the highest merits, had he never done
+anything else. This was his discovery of the means for developing
+electricity directly from magnetism. It was made on the 29th of August,
+1831, and should be regarded as inspired by the great discovery made by
+Oersted in 1820, of the relations existing between the voltaic pile and
+electro-magnetism. It was in the same year that Ampere had conducted
+that memorable investigation as to the mutual attractions and repulsions
+between circuits through which electric currents are flowing, which
+resulted in a theory of electro-magnetism, and finally led to the
+production of the electro-magnet itself. Ampere had shown that a coil of
+wire, or helix, through which an electric current is passing, acted
+practically as a magnet, and Arago had magnetized an iron bar by placing
+it within such a helix.
+
+In common with the other scientific men of his time, Faraday believed
+that since the flow of an electric current invariably produced
+magnetism, so magnetism should, in its turn, be capable of producing
+electricity. Many investigators before Faraday's time had endeavored to
+solve this problem, but it was reserved to Faraday alone to be
+successful. Since success in this investigation resulted from some
+experiments he made while endeavoring to obtain inductive action on a
+quiescent circuit from a neighboring circuit through which an electric
+current was flowing, we will first briefly examine this experiment. All
+his experiments in this direction were at first unsuccessful. He passed
+an electric current through a circuit, which was located close to
+another circuit containing a galvanometer,--a device for showing the
+presence of an electric current and measuring its strength,--but failed
+to obtain any result. He looked for such results only when the current
+had been fully established in the active circuit. Undismayed by failure,
+he reasoned that probably effects were present, but that they were too
+small to be observed owing to the feeble inducing current employed. He
+therefore increased the strength of the current in the active wire; but
+still with no results.
+
+Again and again he interrogates nature, but unsuccessfully. At last he
+notices that there is a slight movement of the galvanometer needle at
+the moment of making and breaking the circuit. Carefully repeating his
+experiments in the light of this observation, he discovers the important
+fact that it is only at the moment a current is increasing or decreasing
+in strength--at the moment of making or breaking a circuit--that the
+active circuit is capable of producing a current in a neighboring
+inactive circuit by induction. This was an important discovery, and in
+the light of his after-knowledge was correctly regarded as a solution of
+the production of electricity from magnetism.
+
+Observing that the galvanometer needle momentarily swings in one
+direction on making the circuit, and in the opposite direction on
+breaking it, he establishes the fact that the current induced on making
+flows in the opposite direction to the inducing current, and that
+induced on breaking flows in the same direction as the inducing current.
+
+Having thus established the fact of current induction, he makes the step
+of substituting magnets for active circuits; a simple step in the light
+of our present knowledge, but a giant stride at that time. Remembering
+that current induction, or, as he called it, voltaic current induction,
+takes place only while some effect produced by the current is either
+increasing or decreasing, he moves coils of insulated wire towards or
+from magnet poles, or magnet poles towards or from coils of wire, and
+shows that electric currents are generated in the coils while either the
+coils or the magnets are in motion, but cease to be produced as soon as
+the motion ceases. Moreover, these magnetically induced currents differ
+in no respects from other currents,--for example, those produced by the
+voltaic pile,--since, like the latter, they produce sparks, magnetize
+bars of steel, or deflect the needle of a galvanometer. In this manner
+Faraday solved the great problem. He had produced electricity directly
+from magnetism!
+
+With, perhaps, the single exception of the discovery by Oersted, in
+1820, of the invariable relation existing between an electric current
+and magnetism, this discovery of Faraday may be justly regarded as the
+greatest in this domain of physical science. These two master minds in
+scientific research wonderfully complemented each other. Oersted showed
+that an electric current is invariably attended by magnetic effects;
+Faraday showed that magnetic changes are invariably attended by electric
+currents. Before these discoveries, electricity and magnetism were
+necessarily regarded as separate branches of physical science, and were
+studied apart as separate phenomena. Now, however, they must be regarded
+as co-existing phenomena. The ignorance of the scientific world had
+unwittingly divorced what nature had joined together.
+
+In view of the great importance of Faraday's discovery, we shall be
+justified in inquiring, though somewhat briefly, into some of the
+apparatus employed in this historic research. Note its extreme
+simplicity. In one of his first successful experiments he wraps a coil
+of insulated wire around the soft iron bar that forms the armature or
+keeper of a permanent magnet of the horse-shoe type, and connects the
+ends of this coil to a galvanometer. He discovers that whenever the
+armature is placed against the magnet poles, and is therefore being
+rendered magnetic by contact therewith, the deflection of the needle of
+the galvanometer shows that the coiled wire on the armature is traversed
+by a current of electricity; that whenever the armature is removed from
+the magnet poles, and is therefore losing its magnetism, the needle of
+the galvanometer is again deflected, but now in the opposite direction,
+showing that an electric current is again flowing through the coiled
+wire on the armature, but reversed in direction. He notices, too, that
+these effects take place only while changes are going on in the strength
+of the magnetism in the armature, or when magnetic flux is passing
+through the coils; for, the galvanometer needle comes to rest, and
+remains at rest as long as the contact between the armature and the
+poles remains unbroken.
+
+In another experiment he employs a simple hollow coil, or helix, of
+insulated wire whose ends are connected with a galvanometer. On suddenly
+thrusting one end of a straight cylindrical magnet into the axis of the
+helix, the deflection of the galvanometer needle showed the presence of
+an electric current in the helix. The magnet being left in the helix,
+the galvanometer needle came to rest, thus showing the absence of
+current. When the bar magnet was suddenly withdrawn from the helix, the
+galvanometer needle was again deflected, but now in the opposite
+direction, showing that the direction of the current in the helix had
+been reversed.
+
+The preceding are but some of the results that Faraday obtained by
+means of his experimental researches in the direct production of
+electricity from magnetism. Let us now briefly examine just what he was
+doing, and the means whereby he obtained electric currents from
+magnetism. We will consider this question from the views of the present
+time, rather than from those of Faraday, although the difference between
+the two are in most respects immaterial.
+
+Faraday knew that the space or region around a magnet is permeated or
+traversed by what he called magnetic curves, or lines of magnetic force.
+These lines are still called "lines of magnetic force," or by some
+"magnetic streamings" "magnetic flux," or simply "magnetism." They are
+invisible, though their presence is readily manifested by means of iron
+filings. They are present in every magnet, and although we do not know
+in what direction they move, yet in order to speak definitely about
+them, it is agreed to assume that they pass out of every magnet at its
+north-seeking pole (or the pole which would point to the magnetic north,
+were the magnet free to move as a needle), and, after having traversed
+the space surrounding the magnet, reenter at its south-seeking pole,
+thus completing what is called the magnetic circuit. Any space traversed
+by lines of magnetic force is called a magnetic field.
+
+But it is not only a magnet that is thus surrounded by lines of
+magnetic force, or by ether streamings. The same is true of any
+conductor through which an electric current is flowing, and their
+presence may be shown by means of iron filings. If an active
+conductor--a conductor conveying an electric current, as, for example, a
+copper wire--be passed vertically through a piece of card-board, or a
+glass plate, iron filings dusted on the card or plate will arrange
+themselves in concentric circles around the axis of the wire. It
+requires an expenditure of energy both to set up and to maintain these
+lines of force. It is the interaction of their lines of force that
+causes the attractions and repulsions in active movable conductors.
+These lines of magnetic force act on magnetic needles like other lines
+of magnetic force and tend to set movable magnetic needles at right
+angles to the conducting wire.
+
+The setting up of an electric current in a conducting wire is,
+therefore, equivalent to the setting up of concentric magnetic whirls
+around the axis of the wire, and anything that can do this will produce
+an electric current. For example, if an inactive conducting wire is
+moved through a magnetic field; it will have concentric circular whirls
+set up around it; or, in other words, it will have a current generated
+in it as a result of such motion. But to set up these whirls it is not
+enough that the conducting wire be moved along the lines of force in the
+field. In such a case no whirls are produced around the conductor. The
+conductor must be moved so as to cut or pass through the lines of
+magnetic force. Just what the mechanism is by means of which the cutting
+of the lines of force by the conductor produces the circular magnetic
+whirls around it, no man knows any more than he knows just what
+electricity is; but this much we do know,--that to produce the circular
+whirls or currents in a previously inactive conductor, the lines of
+force of some already existing magnetic field must be caused to pass
+through the conductor, and that the strength of the current so produced
+is proportional to the number of lines of magnetic force cut in a given
+time, say, per second; or, in other words, is directly proportional to
+the strength of the magnetic field, and to the velocity and length of
+the moving conductor.
+
+Or, briefly recapitulating: Oersted showed that an electric current,
+passed through a conducting circuit, sets up concentric circular whirls
+around its axis; that is, an electric current invariably produces
+magnetism; Faraday showed, that if the lines of magnetic force, or
+magnetism, be caused to cut or pass through an inactive conductor,
+concentric circular whirls will be set up around the conductor; that is,
+lines of magnetic force passed across a conductor invariably set up an
+electric current in that conductor.
+
+The wonderful completeness of Faraday's researches into the production
+of electricity from magnetism may be inferred from the fact that all
+the forms of magneto-electric induction known to-day--namely,
+self-induction, or the induction of an active circuit on itself; mutual
+induction, or the induction of an active circuit on a neighboring
+circuit; and electro-magnetic induction, and magneto-electric induction,
+or the induction produced in conductors through which the magnetic flux
+from electro and permanent magnets respectively is caused to pass--were
+discovered and investigated by him. Nor were these investigations
+carried on in the haphazard, blundering, groping manner that
+unfortunately too often characterizes the explorer in a strange country;
+on the contrary, they were singularly clear and direct, showing how
+complete the mastery the great investigator had over the subject he was
+studying. It is true that repeated failures frequently met him, but
+despite discouragements and disappointments he continued until he had
+entirely traversed the length and breadth of the unknown region he was
+the first to explore.
+
+Let us now briefly examine Faraday's many remaining discoveries and
+inventions. Though none of these were equal to his great discovery, yet
+many were exceedingly valuable. Some were almost immediately utilized;
+some waited many years for utilization; and some have never yet been
+utilized. We must avoid, however, falling into the common mistake of
+holding in little esteem those parts of Faraday's work that did not
+immediately result either in the production of practical apparatus, or
+in valuable applications in the arts and sciences, or those which have
+not even yet proved fruitful. Some discoveries and devices are so far
+ahead of the times in which they are produced that several lifetimes
+often pass before the world is ready to utilize them. Like immature or
+unripe fruit, they are apt to die an untimely death, and it sometimes
+curiously happens that, several generations after their birth, a
+subsequent inventor or discoverer, in honest ignorance of their prior
+existence, offers them to the world as absolutely new. The times being
+ripe, they pass into immediate and extended public use, so that the
+later inventor is given all the credit of an original discovery, and the
+true first and original inventor remains unrecognized.
+
+We will first examine Faraday's discovery of the relations existing
+between light and magnetism. Though the discovery has not as yet borne
+fruit in any direct practical application, yet it has proved of immense
+value from a theoretical standpoint. In this investigation Faraday
+proved that light-vibrations are rotated by the action of a magnetic
+field. He employed the light of an ordinary Argand lamp, and polarized
+it by reflection from a glass surface. He caused this polarized light to
+pass through a plate of heavy glass made from a boro-silicate of lead.
+Under ordinary circumstances this substance exerted no unusual action on
+light, but when it was placed between the poles of a powerful
+electro-magnet, and the light was passed through it in the same
+direction as the magnetic flux, the plane of polarization of the light
+was rotated in a certain direction.
+
+Faraday discovered that other solid substances besides glass exert a
+similar action on a beam of polarized light. Even opaque solids like
+iron possess this property. Kerr has proved that a beam of light passed
+through an extremely thin plate of highly magnetic iron has its plane of
+polarization slightly rotated. Faraday showed that the power of rotating
+a beam of polarized light is also possessed by some liquids. But what is
+most interesting, in both solids and liquids, is that the direction of
+the rotation of the light depends on the direction in which the
+magnetism is passing, and can, therefore, be changed by changing the
+polarity of the electro-magnet.
+
+Faraday did not seem to thoroughly understand this phenomenon. He spoke
+as if he thought the lines of magnetic force had been rendered luminous
+by the light rays; for, he announced his discovery in a paper entitled,
+"Magnetization of Light and the Illumination of the Lines of Magnetic
+Force." Indeed, this discovery was so far ahead of the times that it was
+not until a later date that the results were more fully developed,
+first by Kelvin, and subsequently by Clerk Maxwell. In 1865, two years
+before Faraday's death, Maxwell proposed the electro-magnetic theory of
+light, showing that light is an electro-magnetic disturbance. He pointed
+out that optical as well as electro-magnetic phenomena required a medium
+for their propagation, and that the properties of this medium appeared
+to be the same for both. Moreover, the rate at which light travels is
+known by actual measurement; the rate at which electro-magnetic waves
+are propagated can be calculated from electrical measurements, and these
+two velocities exactly agree. Faraday's original experiment as to the
+relation between light and magnetism is thus again experimentally
+demonstrated; and, Maxwell's electro-magnetic theory of light now
+resting on experimental fact, optics becomes a branch of electricity. A
+curious consequence was pointed out by Maxwell as a result of his
+theory; namely, that a necessary relation exists between opacity and
+conductivity, since, as he showed, electro-magnetic disturbances could
+not be propagated in substances which are conductors of electricity. In
+other words, if light is an electro-magnetic disturbance, all conducting
+substances must be opaque, and all good insulators transparent. This we
+know to be the fact: metallic substances, the best of conductors, are
+opaque, while glass and crystals are transparent. Even such apparent
+exceptions as vulcanite, an excellent insulator, fall into the law,
+since, as Graham Bell has recently shown, this substance is remarkably
+transparent to certain kinds of radiant energy.
+
+In 1778, Brugmans of Leyden noticed that if a piece of bismuth was held
+near either pole of a strong magnet, repulsion occurred. Other observers
+noticed the same effect in the case of antimony. These facts appear to
+have been unknown to Faraday, who, in 1845, by employing powerful
+electro-magnets rediscovered them, and in addition showed that
+practically all substances possess the power of being attracted or
+repelled, when placed between the poles of sufficiently powerful
+magnets. By placing slender needles of the substances experimented on
+between the poles of powerful horse-shoe magnets, he found that they were
+all either attracted like iron, coming to rest with their greatest
+length extending between the poles; or, like bismuth, were apparently
+repelled by the poles, coming to rest at right angles to the position
+assumed by iron. He regarded the first class of substances as attracted,
+and the second class as repelled, and called them respectively
+paramagnetic and diamagnetic substances. In other words, paramagnetic
+substances, like iron, came to rest axially (extending from pole to
+pole), and diamagnetic substances, like bismuth, equatorially (extending
+transversely between the poles). He reserved the term magnetic
+substances to cover the phenomena of both para and dia-magnetism. He
+communicated the results of this investigation to the Royal Society in a
+paper on the "Magnetic Condition of All Matter," on Dec. 18, 1845.
+
+The properties of paramagnetism and diamagnetism are not possessed by
+solids only, but exist also in liquids and gases. When experimenting
+with liquids, they were placed in suitable glass vessels, such as watch
+crystals, supported on pole pieces properly shaped to receive them.
+Under these circumstances paramagnetic liquids, such as salts of iron or
+cobalt dissolved in water, underwent curious contortions in shape, the
+tendency being to arrange the greater part of their mass in the
+direction in which the flux passed; namely, directly between the poles.
+Diamagnetic liquids, such as solutions of salts of bismuth and antimony,
+in a similar manner, arranged the greater part of their mass in
+positions at right angles to this direction, or equatorially.
+
+At first Faraday attributed the repulsion of diamagnetic substances to a
+polarity, separate and distinct from ordinary magnetic polarity, for
+which he proposed the name, diamagnetic polarity. He believed that when
+a diamagnetic substance is brought near to the north pole of a magnet, a
+north pole was developed in its approached end, and that therefore
+repulsion occurred. He afterwards rejected this view, though it has
+been subsequently adopted by Weber and Tyndall, the latter of whom
+conducted an extended series of experiments on the subject. The majority
+of physicists, however, at the present time, do not believe in the
+existence of a diamagnetic polarity. They point out that the apparent
+repulsion of diamagnetic substances is due to the fact that they are
+less paramagnetic than the oxygen of the air in which they are
+suspended.
+
+During this investigation Faraday observed some phenomena that led him
+to a belief in the existence of another form of force, distinct from
+either paramagnetic or diamagnetic force, which he called the
+magne-crystallic force. He had been experimenting with some slender
+needles of bismuth, suspending them horizontally between the poles of an
+electro-magnet. Taking a few of these cylinders at random from a greater
+number, he was much perplexed to find that they did not all come to rest
+equatorially, as well-behaved bars of diamagnetic bismuth should do,
+though, if subjected to the action of a single magnetic pole, they did
+show this diamagnetic character by their marked repulsion. After much
+experimentation, he ascribed this phenomenon to the crystalline
+condition of the cylinder. By experimenting with carefully selected
+groups of crystals of bismuth, he believed he could trace the cause of
+the phenomenon to the action of a force which he called the
+magne-crystallic force.
+
+Extended experiments carried on by Plücker on the influence of
+magnetism on crystalline substances led him to believe that a close
+relation exists between the ultimate forms of the particles of matter
+and their magnetic behavior. This subject is as yet far from being fully
+understood.
+
+There was another series of investigations made by Faraday between the
+years 1831 and 1840, that has been wonderfully utilized, and may
+properly be ranked among his great discoveries. We allude to his
+researches on the laws which govern the chemical decomposition of
+compound substances by electricity. The fact that the electric current
+possesses the power of decomposing compound substances was known as
+early as 1800, when Carlisle and Nicholson separated water into its
+constituent elements, by the passage of a voltaic current. Davy, too, in
+1806, had delivered his celebrated discourse "On Some Chemical Agencies
+of Electricity," and in 1807, had announced his great discovery of the
+decomposition of the fixed alkalies.
+
+Faraday showed that the amount of chemical action produced by
+electricity is fixed and definite. In order to be able to measure the
+amount of this action, he invented an instrument which he called a
+voltameter, or a volta-electrometer. It consisted of a simple device for
+measuring the amount of hydrogen and oxygen gases liberated by the
+passage of an electric current through water acidulated with sulphuric
+acid. He showed, by numerous experiments, that the decomposition
+effected is invariably proportional to the amount of electricity
+passing; that variations in the size of the electrodes, in the pressure,
+or in the degree of dilution of the electrolyte, had nothing to do with
+the result, and that therefore a voltameter could be employed to
+determine the amount of electricity passing in a given circuit. He also
+demonstrated that when a current is passed through different
+electrolytes (compound substances decomposed by the passage of
+electricity), the amount of the decompositions are chemically equivalent
+to each other.
+
+The extent of Faraday's work in the electro-chemical field may be judged
+by considering some of the terms he proposed for its phenomena, most of
+which, with some trifling exceptions, are still in use. It was he who
+gave the name electrolysis to decomposition by the electric current; he
+also proposed to call the wires, or conductors connected with the
+battery, or other electric source, the electrodes, naming that one which
+was connected with the positive terminal, the anode, and that one
+connected with the negative terminal, the cathode. He called the
+separate atoms or groups of atoms into which bodies undergoing
+electrolysis are separated, the radicals, or ions, and named the
+electro-positive ions, which appear at the cathode, the kathions, and
+the electro-negative radicals which appear at the anode, the anions.
+
+There were many other researches made by Faraday, such as his
+experiments on disruptive electric discharges, his investigations on the
+electric eel, his many researches on the phenomena both of frictional
+electricity and of the voltaic pile, his investigations on the contact
+and chemical theories of the voltaic pile, and those on chemical
+decomposition by frictional electricity; these are but some of the mere
+important of them. Those we have already discussed will, however, amply
+suffice to show the value of his work. Rather than take up any others,
+let us inquire what influence, if any, the various groups of discoveries
+we have already discussed have exerted on the electric arts and sciences
+in our present time. What practical results have attended these
+discoveries? What actual, useful, commercial machines have been based on
+them? What useful processes or industries have grown out of them?
+
+And, first, as to actual commercial machines. These researches not only
+led to the production of dynamo-electric machines, but, in point of
+fact, Faraday actually produced the first dynamo. A dynamo-electric
+machine, as is well known, is a machine by means of which mechanical
+energy is converted into electrical energy, by causing conductors to cut
+through, or be cut through by, lines of magnetic force; or, briefly, it
+is a machine by means of which electricity is readily obtained from
+magnetism.
+
+Faraday's invention of the first dynamo is interesting because at the
+same time he made the invention he solved a problem which up to his time
+had been the despair of the ablest physicists and mathematicians. This
+was the phenomenon of Arago's rotating disc. It was briefly as follows:
+If a copper disc be rotated above a magnet, the needle tends to follow
+the plate in its rotation; or, if a copper plate be placed at rest above
+or below an oscillating magnet, it tends to check its oscillations and
+bring the needle quickly to rest. Faraday investigated these phenomena
+and soon discovered that a copper disc rotated below two magnet poles
+had electric currents generated in it, which flowed radially through the
+disc between its circumference and centre. By placing one end of a
+conducting circuit on the axis of the disc, and the other end on its
+circumference, he succeeded in drawing off a continuous electric current
+generated from magnetism, and thus produced the first dynamo. This was
+in 1831. Faraday produced many other dynamos besides this simple
+disc machine.
+
+Although the disc dynamo in its original form was impracticable as a
+commercial machine, yet it was not only the forerunner of the dynamo,
+but was, in point of fact, the first machine ever produced that is
+entitled to be called a dynamo. He generously left to those who might
+come after him the opportunity to avail themselves of his wonderful
+discovery. "I have rather, however," he says, "been desirous of
+discovering new facts and new relations dependent on magneto-electric
+induction than of exalting the force of those already obtained, being
+assured that the latter would find their development hereafter." How
+profoundly prophetic! Could the illustrious investigator see the
+hundreds of thousands of dynamos that are to-day in all parts of the
+world engaged in converting millions of horse-power of mechanical energy
+into electric energy, he would appreciate how marvellously his
+successors have "exalted the force" of some of the effects he had so
+ably shown the world how to obtain.
+
+Faraday lived to see his infant dynamo, the first of its kind, developed
+into a machine not only sufficiently powerful to maintain electric arc
+lights, but also into a form sufficiently practicable to be continuously
+engaged in producing such light, in one of the lighthouses on the
+English coast. Holmes produced such a machine in 1862, or some years
+before Faraday's death. It was installed under the care of the Trinity
+House, at the Dungeness Lighthouse, in June, 1862, and continued in use
+for about ten years. When this machine was shown to Faraday by its
+inventor, the veteran philosopher remarked, "I gave you a baby, and you
+bring me a giant."
+
+The alternating-current transformer is another gift of Faraday to the
+commercial world. As is well known, this instrument is a device for
+raising or lowering electric pressure. The name is derived from the fact
+that the instrument is capable of taking in at one pressure the electric
+energy supplied to it, and giving it out at another pressure, thus
+transforming it. Faraday produced the first transformer during his
+investigations on voltaic-current induction. The modern
+alternating-current transformer, though differing markedly in minor
+details from Faraday's primitive instrument, yet in general details is
+essentially identical with it. The enormous use of both step-up and
+step-down transformers--transformers which respectively induce currents
+of higher and of lower electromotive forces in their secondary coils
+than are passed through their primaries--shows the great practical value
+of this invention. The wonderful growth of the commercial applications
+of alternating currents during the past few decades would have been
+impossible without the use of the alternating-current transformer.
+
+It is an interesting fact that it was not in the form of the step-down
+alternating-current transformer that Faraday's discovery of
+voltaic-current induction was first utilized, but in the form of a
+step-up transformer, or what was then ordinarily called an induction
+coil. As early as 1842, Masson and Bréguet constructed an induction
+coil by means of which minute sparks could be obtained from the
+secondary, in vacuo. In 1851, Ruhmkorff constructed an induction coil so
+greatly improved, by the careful insulation of its secondary circuit,
+that he could obtain from it torrents of long sparks in ordinary air.
+The Ruhmkorff induction coil has in late years been greatly improved
+both by Tesla and Elihu Thomson, who, separately and independently of
+each other, have produced excellent forms of high-frequency
+induction coils.
+
+Induction coils have long been in use for purposes of research, and in
+later years have been employed in the production both of the Röntgen
+rays used in the photography of the invisible, and the electro-magnetic
+waves used in wireless telegraphy.
+
+Röntgen's discovery was published in 1895. It was rendered possible by
+the prior work of Geissler and Crookes on the luminous phenomena
+produced by the passage of electric discharges through high vacua in
+glass tubes. Röntgen discovered that the invisible rays, or radiation,
+emitted from certain parts of a high-vacuum tube, when high-tension
+discharges from induction coils were passing, possessed the curious
+property of traversing certain opaque substances as readily as light
+does glass or water. He also discovered that these rays were capable of
+exciting fluorescence in some substances,--that is, of causing them to
+emit light and become luminous,--and that these rays, like the rays of
+light, were capable of affecting a photographic plate. From these
+properties two curious possibilities arose; namely, to see through
+opaque bodies, and to photograph the invisible. Röntgen called these
+rays X, or unknown rays. They are now almost invariably called by the
+name of their distinguished discoverer.
+
+Let us briefly investigate how it is possible both to see and to
+photograph the invisible. Shortly after Röntgen's discovery, Edison,
+with that wonderful power of finding practical applications for nearly
+all discoveries, had invented the fluoroscope,--a screen covered with a
+peculiar chemical substance that becomes luminous when exposed to the
+Röntgen rays. Suppose, now, between the rays and such a screen be
+interposed a substance opaque to ordinary light, as, for example, the
+human hand. The tissues of the hand, such as the flesh and the blood,
+permit the rays to readily pass through them, but the bones are opaque
+to the rays, and, therefore, oppose their passage; consequently, the
+screen; instead of being uniformly illumined, will show shadows of the
+bones, so that, to an eye examining the screen, it will seem as though
+it were looking through the flesh and blood directly at the bones. In a
+similar manner, if a photographic plate be employed instead of the
+screen, a distinct photographic picture will be obtained.
+
+Both the fluoroscope and the photographic camera have proved an
+invaluable aid to the surgeon, who can now look directly through the
+human body and examine its internal organs, and so be able to locate
+such foreign bodies as bullets and needles in its various parts, or make
+correct diagnoses of fractures or dislocations of the bones, or even
+examine the action of such organs as the liver and heart.
+
+About 1886, Hertz discovered that if a small Leyden jar is discharged
+through a short and simple circuit, provided with a spark-gap of
+suitable length, a series of electro-magnetic waves are set up, which,
+moving through space in all directions, are capable of exciting in a
+similar circuit effects that can be readily recognized, although the two
+circuits are at fairly considerable distances apart. Here we have a
+simple basic experiment in wireless telegraphy, which, briefly
+considered, consists of means whereby oscillations or waves, set up in
+free space by means of disruptive discharges, are caused to traverse
+space and produce various effects in suitably constructed receptive
+devices that are operated by the waves as they impinge on them.
+
+At first a doubt was expressed by eminent scientific men as to the
+practicability of successfully transmitting wireless messages through
+long distances, since these waves, travelling in all directions, would
+soon become too attenuated to produce intelligible signals; but when it
+was shown, from theoretical considerations, that these waves when
+traversing great distances are practically confined to the space between
+the earth's surface and the upper rarified strata of the atmosphere, the
+possibility of long-distance wireless telegraphic transmission was
+recognized. To increase the distance, it was only necessary either to
+increase the energy of the waves at the transmitting station, or to
+increase the delicacy of the receiving instruments, or both.
+
+It has been but a short time since both the scientific and the financial
+worlds were astounded by the actual transmission of intelligible
+wireless signals across the Atlantic, and the name of Marconi will go
+down to posterity as the one who first accomplished this great feat.
+
+The principal limit to the distance of transmission lies in the delicacy
+of the receiving instruments. The most sensitive are those in which a
+telephone receiver forms a part of the receiving apparatus. The almost
+incredibly small amount of electric energy required to produce
+intelligible speech in an ordinary Bell telephone receiver nearly passes
+belief. The work done in lifting such an instrument from its hook to the
+ear of the listener, would, if converted into electric energy, be
+sufficient to maintain an audible sound in a telephone for 240,000
+years! Even extremely attenuated waves may therefore produce audible
+signals in such a receiver.
+
+The electric motor was another gift of Faraday to commercial science,
+although in this case there are others who can, perhaps, justly claim to
+share the honor with him. Faraday's early electric motor consisted
+essentially in a device whereby a movable conductor, suspended so as to
+be capable of rotation around a magnet pole, was caused to rotate by the
+mutual interaction of the magnetic fields of the active conductor and
+the magnet. The magnet, which consisted of a bar of hardened steel, was
+fixed in a cork stopper, which completely closed the end of an upright
+glass tube. A small quantity of mercury was placed in the lower end of
+the tube, so as to form a liquid contact for the lower end of a movable
+wire, suspended so as to be capable of rotating at its lower extremity
+about the axis of the tube. On the passage of an electric current
+through the wire, a continuous rotary motion was produced in it, the
+direction of which depends both on the direction of the current, and on
+the polarity of the end of the magnet around which the rotation occurs.
+
+The great value of the electric motor to the world is too evident to
+need any proof. The number of purposes for which electric motors are now
+employed is so great that the actual number of motors in daily use is
+almost incredible, and every year sees this number rapidly increasing.
+
+The above are the more important machines or devices that have been
+directly derived from Faraday's great investigation as to the production
+of electricity from magnetism. Let us now inquire briefly as to what
+useful processes or industries have been rendered possible by the
+existence of these machines.
+
+Apparently one of the most marked requirements of our twentieth-century
+civilization is that man shall be readily able to extend the day far
+into the night. He can no longer go to sleep when the sun sets, and keep
+abreast with his competitors. Of all artificial illuminants yet
+employed, the arc and the incandescent electric lights are
+unquestionably the best, whether from a sanitary, aesthetic, or truest
+economical standpoint. Now, while it is a well-known matter of record
+that both arc and incandescent lights were invented long before
+Faraday's time, yet it was not until a source of electricity was
+invented, superior both in economy and convenience to the voltaic
+battery, that either of these lights became commercial possibilities.
+Such an electric source was given to the world by Faraday through his
+invention of the dynamo-electric machine, and it was not until this
+machine was sufficiently developed and improved that commercial electric
+lighting became possible. The energy of burning coal, through the
+steam-engine, working the dynamo, is far cheaper and more efficient for
+producing electricity than the consumption of metals through the
+voltaic pile.
+
+It is characteristic of the modesty of Faraday that when, in
+after-life, he heard inventors speaking of their electric lights, he
+refrained from claiming the electric light as his own, although, without
+the machine he taught the world how to construct, commercial lighting
+would have been an impossibility.
+
+The marvellous activity in the electric arts and sciences, which
+followed as a natural result of Faraday giving to the world in the
+dynamo-electric machine a cheap electric source, naturally leads to the
+inquiry as to whether at a somewhat later day a yet greater revolution
+may not follow the production of a still cheaper electric source. In
+point of fact such a discovery is by no means an impossibility. When a
+dynamo-electric machine is caused to produce an electric current by the
+intervention of a steam-engine, the transformation of energy which takes
+place from the energy of the coal to electric energy is an extremely
+wasteful one. Could some practical method be discovered by means of
+which the burning of coal liberates electric energy, instead of heat
+energy, an electric source would be discovered that would far exceed in
+economy the best dynamo in existence. With such a discovery what the
+results would be no one can say; this much is certain, that it would,
+among other things, relegate the steam-engine to the scrap-heap, and
+solve the problem of aerial navigation.
+
+What is justly regarded as one of the greatest achievements of modern
+times is the electrical transmission of power over comparatively great
+distances. At some cheap source of energy, say, at a waterfall, a
+water-wheel is employed to drive a dynamo or generator, thus converting
+mechanical energy into electrical energy. This electricity is passed
+over a conducting line to a distant station, where it is either directly
+utilized for the purpose of lighting, heating, chemical decomposition,
+etc., or indirectly utilized for the purpose of obtaining mechanical
+power for driving machinery, by passing it through an electric motor.
+The electric transmission of power has been successfully made in
+California over a distance of some 220 miles, at a pressure on
+transmission lines of 50,000 volts.
+
+The high pressures required for the economical use of transmission lines
+necessitates the employment of transformers at each end of the line;
+namely, step-up transformers at the transmitting end, to raise the
+voltage delivered by the generators, and step-down transformers, at the
+receiving end, to lower it for use in the various translating devices.
+These transformers are employed in connection with alternating-current
+dynamos. Faraday not only gave to the world the first electric
+generator, but also the first transformer, and one of the first electric
+motors, and without these gifts the electric transmission of power over
+long distances, which has justly been regarded as one of the most
+marvellous achievements of our age, would have been an impossibility.
+
+In high-tension circuits over which such pressures as 50,000 volts is
+transmitted, no little difficulty is experienced from leakage and
+consequent loss of energy. This leakage occurs both between the line
+conductors and at the insulators placed on the pole lines forming the
+line circuit. The insulators are made either of glass or porcelain, and
+are of a peculiar form known as triple petticoat pattern. The loss on
+such lines, due to leakage between wires, is greater than that which
+takes place at the pole insulators, and is diminished by keeping the
+circuit wires as far apart as possible.
+
+In the early history of the art, electric transmission of power was
+effected by means of direct-current generators and motors,--generators
+and motors through which the current always passed in the same
+direction. Such generators and motors, however, possessed inconveniences
+that prevented extensive commercial transmission of power, since, as we
+have seen, high pressure was necessary for efficiency in such
+transmission, and the collecting-brushes and commutators employed in all
+direct-current generators and motors to carry the current from the
+machine or to the motor, were a constant source of trouble and danger.
+
+When the alternating-current motor first same into general use, it was
+employed, in connection with the alternating-current generator, in
+electric transmission systems; but such motors also possess the
+inconvenience of not readily starting from a state of rest, with their
+full turning power, or torque, and of therefore being unsuitable where
+the motor requires to be frequently stopped or started. Had these
+difficulties remained unsolved, long-distance electric transmission of
+power, so successful in operation to-day, and which bids fair to be
+still more successful in the near future, would have been impossible.
+Fortunately, these difficulties were overcome by the genius of Nikola
+Tesla, in the invention of the multiphase alternating-current motor, or
+the induction motor, as it is now generally called. Although Baily,
+Deprez, and Ferraris had accomplished much before Tesla's time, yet it
+was practically to the investigations and discoveries made by Tesla,
+between 1887 and 1891, that the induction motor of to-day is due.
+
+Another requirement of our twentieth-century civilization is rapid
+transit, either urban or inter-urban, and this is afforded by various
+systems of electric street railways or electric traction generally,
+including electric locomotives and electric automobiles. The wonderful
+growth in this direction which has been witnessed in the last few
+decades would have been impossible without the electric generator and
+motor, both gifts of Faraday to the world. Their application in this
+direction must, therefore, go to swell the debt our civilization owes to
+the labors of this great investigator.
+
+In the system of electric street-car propulsion very generally employed
+to-day, a single trolley wheel is employed for taking the driving
+current from an overhead conductor, suspended above the street. The
+trolley wheel is supported by a trolley pole, and is maintained in good
+electric contact with the trolley wire, or overhead conductor. By this
+means the current passes from the wire down the conductor connected with
+the trolley pole, thence through the motors placed below the body of the
+car, and from them, through the track or ground-return, back to the
+power station. A small portion of the current is employed for lighting
+the electric lamps in the car. In some systems an underground trolley
+is employed.
+
+An important device, called the series-parallel controller, is employed
+in all systems of electric street-car propulsion. It consists of means
+by which the starting and stopping of the car, and changes, both in its
+speed and direction, are placed under the control of the motorman. A
+separate controller is placed on both platforms of the car. The
+series-parallel controller consists essentially of a switch by means of
+which the several motors, that are employed in all street cars, can
+be variously connected with each other, or with different electric
+resistances, or can be successively cut out or introduced into the
+circuit, so that the speed of the car can be regulated at will, as the
+handle of the controller is moved by the motorman to the various notches
+on the top of the controller box. As generally arranged, the speed
+increases from the first notch or starting position to the last notch,
+movements in the opposite direction changing connections in the opposite
+order of succession, and, therefore, slowing the car. There is, however,
+no definite speed corresponding to each notch, for this will vary with
+the load on each car, and with the gradient upon which it may
+be running.
+
+But there is another valuable gift received by the world as a result of
+this great discovery of Faraday; namely, that most marvellous instrument
+of modern times, the speaking telephone. This instrument was invented in
+1861, by Philip Ries, and subsequently independently reinvented in 1876,
+by Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell.
+
+As is well known, it is electric currents and not sound-waves that are
+transmitted over a telephone circuit. The magneto-electric telephone in
+its simplest form consists of a pair of instruments called respectively
+the transmitter and the receiver. We talk into the transmitter and
+listen at the receiver. Both transmitter and receiver consist of a
+permanent magnet of hardened steel around one end of which is placed a
+coil of insulated wire. In front of this coil a diaphragm, or thin
+plate, of soft iron, is so supported as to be capable of freely
+vibrating towards and from the magnet pole.
+
+The operation of the transmitting instrument is readily understood in
+the light of Faraday's discovery. It is simply a dynamo-electric machine
+driven by the voice of the speaker. As the sound-waves from the
+speaker's voice strike against the diaphragm, which has become magnetic
+from its nearness to the magnet pole, electric currents are generated in
+the coil of wire surrounding such pole, since the to-and-fro motions
+cause the lines of electro-magnetic force to pass through the wire on
+the moving coil. The operation of the receiving instrument is also
+readily understood. It acts as an electric motor driven by the
+to-and-fro currents generated by the transmitter. As these currents are
+transmitted over the wire, they pass through the coil of wire on the
+receiving instrument, and reproduce therein the exact movements of the
+transmitting diaphragm, since, as they strengthen or weaken the
+magnetism of the pole, they cause similar motions in the diaphragm
+placed before it. Consequently, one listening at the receiving diaphragm
+will hear all that is uttered into the transmitting diaphragm. It was
+thus, by the combination of the dynamo and motor, both of which were
+given by Faraday to the world, that we have received this priceless
+instrument, which has been so potent in its effects on the civilization
+of the Twentieth century.
+
+The electric telegraph had its beginnings long before Faraday's time. As
+early as 1847, Watson had erected a line some two miles in length,
+extending over the housetops in London, and operated it by means of
+discharges from an ordinary frictional electric machine. In 1774, Lesage
+had erected in Geneva an electric telegraph consisting of a number of
+metallic wires, one for each letter of the alphabet. These wires were
+carefully insulated from each other. When a message was to be sent over
+this early telegraphic line an electric discharge was passed through the
+particular wire representing the letter of the alphabet to be sent; this
+discharge, reaching the other end, caused a pithball to be repelled and
+thus laboriously, letter by letter, the message was transmitted. How
+ludicrously cumbersome was such an instrument when contrasted with the
+Morse electro-magnetic telegraph of to-day, which requires but a single
+wire; or with the harmonic telegraph of Gray, which permits the
+simultaneous transmission of eight or more separate messages over a
+single wire; or with the wonderful quadruplex telegraphic system of
+Edison which permits the simultaneous transmission of four separate and
+distinct messages over a single wire, two in one direction, and two in
+the opposite direction at the same time; or with the still more
+wonderful multiplex telegraph of Delaney, which is able to
+simultaneously transmit as many as seventy-two separate messages over a
+single wire, thirty-six in one direction and thirty-six in the opposite
+direction. These achievements have been possible only through the
+researches and discoveries of Oersted, Faraday, and hosts of other
+eminent workers; for, it was the electro-magnet, rendered possible by
+Oersted, together with the magnificent discoveries of Faraday, and
+others since his time, that these marvellous advances in
+electro-telegraphic transmission of intelligence have become
+possibilities.
+
+Before completing this brief sketch of some of the effects that
+Faraday's work has had on the practical arts and sciences, let us
+briefly examine the generating plants that are either in operation or
+construction at Niagara Falls.
+
+Some idea of the size of the Niagara Falls generating plant on the
+American side may be gained from the fact that there have already been
+installed eleven of the separate 5,000 horse-power generators. The
+remaining capacity of the tunnel will permit of the installation of
+50,000 additional horse-power, or 105,000 horse-power in all.
+
+On the Canadian side of the Falls another great plant is about to be
+erected with an ultimate capacity of several hundred thousand
+horse-power. Here, however, the size of the generating unit will be
+double that on the American side, or 10,000 horse-power. These
+generators will be wound to produce an electric pressure of 12,000
+volts, raised by means of step-up transformers to 22,000, 40,000, and
+60,000 volts, according to the distance of transmission. Each of the
+revolving parts of these machines will weigh 141,000 pounds. To what
+gigantic proportions has the little infant dynamo of Faraday grown in
+this short time since its birth!
+
+The low rates at which electric power can be sold in the immediate
+neighborhood of the Niagara generating plant have naturally resulted in
+an enormous growth of the electro-chemical industries, for these
+industries could never otherwise develop into extended commercial
+applications. Of the total output of, say, 55,000 horse-power at the
+Niagara Falls generating plant, no less than 23,200 horse-power is used
+in various electrolytic and electro-thermal processes in the immediate
+neighborhood. Some of the more important consumers of the electric
+power, named in the order of consumption, are for the manufacture of the
+following products: calcium carbide, aluminium, caustic soda and
+bleaching salt, carborundum, and graphite.
+
+Calcium carbide, employed in the production of acetylene gas, either for
+the purposes of artificial illumination, or for the manufacture of ethyl
+alcohol, is produced by subjecting a mixture of carbon and lime to the
+prolonged action of heat in an electric furnace.
+
+Aluminium, the now well-known valuable metal, present in clay, bauxite,
+and a variety of other mineral substances, is electrolytically deposited
+from a bath of alumina obtained by dissolving bauxite either in
+potassium fluoride or in cryolite. Aluminium is now coming into extended
+use in the construction of long-distance electric power
+transmission lines.
+
+Caustic soda and bleaching salt are produced by the electrolytic
+decomposition of brine (chloride of sodium). The chlorine liberated at
+the anode is employed in the manufacture of bleaching-salt, and the
+sodium is liberated at a mercury cathode, with which it at once enters
+into combination as an alloy. On throwing this alloy into water the
+sodium is liberated as caustic soda.
+
+Carborundum, a silicide of carbon, is a valuable substance produced by
+the action of the heat of an electric furnace on an intimate mixture of
+carbon and sand. It has an extensive use as an abrasive for grinding and
+polishing.
+
+Artificial graphite is another product produced by the long-continued
+action of the heat of the electric furnace on carbon under certain
+conditions.
+
+According to reports from the United States Geological Survey, the
+graphite works at Niagara Falls produced in 1901, 2,500,000 lbs. of
+artificial graphite, valued at $119,000. This was an increase from
+860,270 lbs., valued at $69,860 for 1900, and from 162,382 lbs., valued
+at $10,140, in 1897, the first year of its commercial production. In
+1901, more than half of the output was in the form of graphitized
+electrodes employed in the production of caustic soda and bleaching
+salt, and in other electrolytic processes.
+
+The Niagara Falls power transmission system stands to-day as a
+magnificent testimonial to the genius of Faraday, and as a living
+monument of the varied and valuable gifts his researches have bestowed
+upon mankind. For here we have not only the dynamo, motors, and
+transformers that he gave freely to the world, not only the
+alternating-current transformer, and the system of transmission of
+power, but we even find that the principal consumers of the enormous
+electric power produced are employing it in carrying on some of the many
+processes in electro-chemistry, a science that he had done so much
+to advance.
+
+Among some of the surprises electro-chemistry may have in store for the
+world in the comparatively near future, may be a nearer approach to a
+mastery of the laws which govern the combination of elementary
+substances when under the influence of plant-life. If these laws ever
+become so well known that man is able to form hi his laboratory the
+various food products that are now formed naturally in plant organisms,
+such a revolution would be wrought that the work of the agriculturist
+would be largely transferred to the electro-chemist. Some little has
+already been done in the direct formation of some vegetable substances,
+such as camphor, the peculiar flavoring substance present in the vanilla
+bean, and in many other substances. Should such discoveries ever reach
+to the direct formation of some food staple, the wide-reaching
+importance and significance of the discovery would be almost beyond
+comprehension.
+
+But, while the direct electro-synthetic formation of food products is
+yet to be accomplished on a practical scale, the problem appears to be
+nearing actual solution in an indirect manner. It has been known since
+the time of Cavendish, in 1785, that small quantities of nitric acid
+could be formed directly from the nitrogen and oxygen of the atmosphere
+by the passage of electric sparks; but heretofore, the quantity so found
+has been too small to be of any commercial value. Quite recently,
+however, one of the electro-chemical companies at Niagara Falls has
+succeeded in commercially solving the important problem of the fixation
+of the nitrogen of the atmosphere; it being claimed that the cost of
+thus producing one ton of commercial nitric acid, of a market value of
+over eighty dollars, does not greatly exceed twenty dollars. Since
+sodium nitrate can readily be produced by the process, and its value as
+a fertilizer of wheat-fields is too well known to need comment, there
+would thus, to a limited extent, be indirectly solved the
+electro-chemical production of food staples.
+
+Faraday's high rank as an investigator in the domain of natural science
+was fully recognized by the learned societies of his time, by admission
+into their fellowships. As early as 1824, he was honored by the Royal
+Society of London by election as one of its Fellows, and in 1825 he had
+become a member of the Royal Institution. It is recorded of the great
+philosopher that the membership in the Royal Institution was the only
+one which he personally sought; all others came unsought, but they came
+so rapidly from all portions of the globe that in 1844 he was a member
+of no less than seventy of the leading learned societies of the world.
+Ries, the German electrician, so well known in connection with his
+invention of the speaking telephone, addressed Faraday as "Professor
+Michael Faraday, Member of all the Academies." Besides his membership in
+the learned societies, Faraday received numerous degrees from the
+colleges and universities of his time. Among some of these are the
+following: The University of Prague, the degree of Ph.D.; Oxford, the
+degree of D.C.L.; and Cambridge, the degree of LL.D. He also received
+numerous medals of honor, and was offered the Presidency of the Royal
+Society, which, however, he declined, as he did also a knighthood
+proffered by the government of England. Faraday died on the 25th of
+August, 1867, after a long, well-spent, useful life.
+
+We have thus briefly traced some of the more important discoveries of
+Michael Faraday. Many have necessarily been passed by, but what we have
+given are more than sufficient to stamp him as a great philosopher and
+investigator. Speaking of Faraday in this connection, Professor Tyndall
+says: "Take him for all in all, I think it will be conceded that Michael
+Faraday is the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever
+seen; and I will add the opinion that the progress of future research
+will tend not to diminish or decrease, but to enhance and glorify, the
+labors of this mighty investigator."
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+Experimental Researches in Electricity. By Michael Faraday. From the
+Philosophical Transactions.
+
+Abstracts of the Philosophical Transactions from 1800 to 1837.
+
+Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity and Magnetism. 3 vols.
+
+Life and Letters of Faraday. By Dr. Bence Jones.
+
+Michael Faraday. By J.H. Gladstone.
+
+Students' Text-Book of Electricity. By Henry M. Noad. Revised by W.H.
+Preece.
+
+Michael Faraday. By John Tyndall.
+
+Pioneers of Electricity. By J. Munro.
+
+Dynamo-Electric Machinery. By Silvanus P. Thompson.
+
+A Dictionary of Electrical Words, Terms, and Phrases. By Edwin J.
+Houston.
+
+Electricity and Magnetism. By Edwin J. Houston.
+
+Electricity One Hundred Years Ago and To-Day. By Edwin J. Houston.
+
+Magnetism; Electro-Technical Series. By Edwin J. Houston and Arthur E.
+Kennelly.
+
+Electro-Dynamic Machinery. By Edwin J. Houston and A. E. Kennelly.
+
+
+
+
+RUDOLF VIRCHOW.
+
+
+1821-1902.
+
+MEDICINE AND SURGERY.
+
+BY FRANK P. FOSTER, M.D.
+
+
+Stagnation was the state of medicine when the Nineteenth Century opened.
+It was only three years before that Jenner had announced and
+demonstrated the protective efficacy of vaccination against small-pox.
+His teaching, in spite of the vehement cavillings of the "antis" of his
+day, gained credence readily, and vaccination speedily became recognized
+and was constantly resorted to, but hardly any attempt at perfecting the
+practice was made until after more than fifty years had elapsed. His
+discovery--or, rather, his proof of the truth of a rustic
+tradition--fell like a pebble into the doldrums; the ripple soon
+subsided, and nobody was encouraged to start another. At the present
+time such an announcement would be promptly followed by investigations
+leading up to such doctrines as that of the attenuation of viruses and
+that of antitoxines. But the times were not ripe for anything of that
+sort; medicine reposed on tradition, or at best gave itself only to such
+plausibilities in the way of innovation as were cleverly advocated.
+Physicians strove not to advance the healing art; as individuals, they
+were content to rely on their manners, their tact, and their assumption
+of wisdom. In short, the body medical was in a state of suspended
+animation, possessed of a mere vegetative existence.
+
+The Humoral pathology, or that doctrine of the nature of disease which
+ascribed all ailments to excess, deficiency, or ill "concoction" of some
+one of the four humors (yellow and black bile, blood, and phlegm), had
+not yet lost its hold on men's convictions, or at least not further than
+to make them look upon exposure to cold and errors of diet as amply
+explanatory of all diseases not plainly infectious. The medical writers
+who were most revered were those who busied themselves with nosology;
+that is to say, the naming and classifying of diseases. Wonderful were
+the onomatological feats performed by some of these men, and most
+diverse and grotesque were the data on which they founded their
+classifications. To label a disease was high art; to cure it was
+something that Providence might or might not allow. In the treatment of
+"sthenic" acute diseases (meaning those accompanied by excitement and
+high fever), blood-letting, mercury given to the point of salivation,
+antimony, and opium, together with starvation (all included under the
+euphemism of "lowering measures"), were the means universally resorted
+to and reputed "sheet anchors." Some advance had been made from the
+times when disease had been looked upon as an entity to be exorcised,
+but it was still so far regarded as a material thing that it was to be
+starved out.
+
+But the century was not out of its second decade when signs of an
+awakening from this lethargy began to show themselves. The first steps,
+naturally, were along preparatory lines, and for those we are largely
+indebted to the physicists, the chemists, and the botanists. Gross
+anatomy became better known, owing for the most part to more enlightened
+legislation on the subject of the dissection of the human body; minute
+anatomy (histology) sprang into existence as the result of improvements
+of the compound microscope. Physiology took on something of the
+experimental; and medication was rendered far less gross and repulsive
+by the isolation of the active principles of medicinal plants. But it
+was long after all this that the telling strides were taken. Up to
+within the memory of many men who are now living, "peritonitis" tortured
+its victims to death, said "peritonitis" being often interpreted as a
+manifestation of rheumatism, for example, and no well-directed
+interposition was attempted against it, whereas we now know perfectly
+well that the vast majority of cases of peritonitis are due to local
+septic poisoning and for the most part quite readily remediable by the
+removal (with a minimum of danger) of the organ from which such
+poisoning arises--almost always the vermiform appendix. "Appendicitis,"
+of which we hear so much nowadays, is no new disease; it is simply the
+"peritonitis" that killed so many people in former times. But while no
+well-informed person would now maintain that this disease was a new one,
+there are many, and those, too, among the best instructed, who find it
+difficult to avoid the conclusion that, if not new, it must at least be
+of far more frequent occurrence than formerly. It must be borne in mind,
+however, that in the great majority of instances in past years it ended
+spontaneously in recovery and was forgotten.
+
+Two features of the progress in medicine in the Nineteenth Century,
+negative as they may seem to have been, were undoubtedly potent in the
+promotion of advance. They were the recognition of the fact that many
+dangerous diseases are self-limited, and the experiment of the so-called
+"expectant treatment." The result of the first of them was to teach men
+to desist from futile attempts to _cure_ the self-limited diseases, in
+the sense of cutting them short in their course, and the "expectant
+treatment" followed as a natural consequence. It was a method of
+managing disease rather than attempting to cure it. There was no
+interference save to promote the patient's comfort, to nourish him as
+thoroughly as might be without unduly taxing his powers, and to meet
+complications as they arose. It was stooping to conquer, perhaps, but it
+was a policy that conduced greatly to the well-being of the sick,
+improved their chances of recovery, and enabled physicians to study
+disease more accurately by reason of its course not being rendered
+irregular by meddlesome medication. It has never been dropped, and it
+never will be, save as such directly curative agents as the antitoxines
+are made available.
+
+In the early part of the century, except for gross anatomy and operative
+surgery, medicine was taught almost wholly, so far as the schools were
+concerned, by means of didactic lectures. The "drawing" capacity of a
+professor was proportionate rather to his rhetorical powers and to the
+persuasiveness with which he inculcated the views peculiar to himself
+than to the amount of real information that he conveyed to the students.
+Although the apprentice system--for that was what the practice of
+students' attaching themselves to individual practitioners, whom they
+called their preceptors, virtually amounted to--in many instances made
+up more or less completely for the lack of systematic clinical teaching,
+yet in the great majority of cases it amounted to little more than the
+preceptor's allowing the student the use of his library and occasionally
+examining into the latter's diligence and intelligence, in return for
+which he, the preceptor, required an annual fee and exacted from the
+student such minor services as his proficiency enabled him to render. It
+is true the students "walked" the hospitals, drinking in some great
+man's utterances, but they did it in droves, not a moiety of them being
+able to get a good look at a patient, unless it was such a passing
+glance as might tell them that the patient was jaundiced. By clinical
+teaching we understand teaching, not in glittering generalities, but in
+the concrete, either at the bedside, as the word _clinical_ originally
+implied, or at least with the patient actually present to illustrate in
+his person the professor's descriptions and the success or failure of
+the treatment employed. The clinic is now firmly established, and has
+been for years, but it was long before this grand result was attained.
+
+Experimental methods of study gradually came into vogue, particularly in
+the domain of physiology. In this sphere Dr. William Beaumont, of the
+United States Army, was a pioneer. His historic experiments on Alexis
+St. Martin, a soldier who had been wounded in the stomach and recovered
+with a permanent opening into that organ, will ever rank among the most
+important of the early experimental studies of digestion. It was not
+long before Claude Bernard extended similar inquiries to the other
+functions of the body, notably those of the nervous system; and since
+his time there has been a long array of brilliant investigators of
+physiology and of other branches of science tributary to medicine.
+Experiments on living animals were almost the only means of carrying on
+these researches. In the early days the animals employed were doubtless
+put to a great deal of pain--perhaps in many instances to unnecessary
+suffering--and an altogether laudable feeling of humanity has led good
+people to band themselves together for the purpose of putting a stop to
+vivisection, or at least of greatly restricting the practice and of
+freeing it from all avoidable infliction of pain. These praiseworthy
+efforts have in some instances been carried so far, unfortunately, as to
+seriously hamper scientific investigation--investigation which has for
+its object the alleviation of human suffering and the saving of human
+life. We may earnestly deprecate and strive to prevent wanton
+reiteration of painful experiments for purposes of demonstrating anew
+that which is unquestioned, and we may resort to all possible means to
+render necessary experiments free from actual pain (from the anguish of
+trepidation we can seldom relieve the poor animals), but let us not
+block the wheels of scientific progress.
+
+At the dawn of the Nineteenth Century, to examine a sick person's
+pulse, to inspect his tongue, to observe his breathing, to interrogate
+his skin by our sense of touch, and to try to make his statements and
+those of his friends fit in with some tenable theory of the nature of
+his ailment, were about all we could do. Possibly it was because he
+realized to an uncommon degree the tremendous impediment of this narrow
+limitation that Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homoeopathy, cut the
+Gordian knot in sheer rebelliousness, and proclaimed, as he virtually
+did, that a diagnosis was not necessary to the successful treatment of
+disease, but that one only needed to know empirically how to subdue
+symptoms, meaning mainly, if not solely, what we term "subjective"
+symptoms--those of which the patient complains, as opposed to those that
+we ourselves discover. But the physical examination of the sick, before
+extremely meagre in its sphere and restricted in its possibilities, was
+destined to expand before many years into the minute and positive
+physical diagnosis of the present day.
+
+In the year 1816 a French physician, Réné Théophile Hyacinthe Laennec,
+achieved undying fame by publishing to the world an account of his
+labors in the application of mediate auscultation and of percussion to
+the diagnosis of the diseases of the chest. It is true that no less a
+personage than the "Father of Medicine," Hippocrates, is reputed to have
+practised succussion as a means of diagnosis; that is, the shaking of a
+patient, as one would shake a cask, to ascertain by the occurrence or
+non-occurrence of a splashing sound if the person's pleural cavity was
+distended partly with water and partly with air. It is probable that
+Hippocrates and many others after him carried the physical examination
+of the chest still further, for it is difficult to imagine, for example,
+that so simple a device as that of thumping a partition to make out the
+situation of a joist by the sound evoked should not early have been
+applied to the human chest. But, be this as it may, to Laennec belongs
+the great credit of having laid a substantial foundation for the
+physical diagnosis of the present time, and, more than for laying a
+foundation, for constructing a fairly complete edifice. He who should
+now undertake to practise general medicine without having first made
+himself proficient in the detection and interpretation of the sounds
+elicited by auscultation and percussion in diseases of the heart and
+lungs would foredoom himself to failure.
+
+It was not until many years later, early in the second half of the
+century, that the clinical thermometer came into general use, but it
+soon showed most strikingly the superiority of the "instrument of
+precision" to the unaided senses of man. Who would think now of trying
+to estimate the height of a fever by laying his hand on the patient's
+skin, or who, even among the laity, would be satisfied with such a
+procedure? "Doubtless," said the present writer in a former publication
+("New York Medical Journal," Dec. 29, 1900), "the use of the thermometer
+has occasionally given rise to needless alarm, but almost invariably it
+may be interpreted with great certainty. Often it dispels unnecessary
+anxiety as in a twinkling by its negative indication, and surely it is
+to be credited with being distinctly diagnostic in those diseases of
+which it has itself established the 'curve.'" By the thermometric
+"curve" of a disease is understood the general visual impression made by
+the graphic chart of a temperature record--the course of a zigzag line
+connecting the points indicated by the various individual observations.
+
+Numerous other instruments of precision are now in constant use, among
+the most wonderful of which perhaps is the ophthalmoscope, whereby we
+are enabled to subject the retina and the intervening media of the eye
+to minute visual examination. There is not an organ of the body that is
+not now interrogated daily in the way of physical diagnosis, and we even
+examine separately the secretion of each of the two kidneys. In
+addition, there are multitudinous specific signs of which we were not
+long ago in complete ignorance. To cite only one of these, there is
+Widal's agglutination test, by which the bacteriologist can usually make
+a diagnosis of typhoid fever far in advance of the time at which it
+could otherwise be distinguished. The use of the Röntgen rays in
+diagnosis was one of the crowning achievements of the century, and now
+we seem about to enter upon a course of their successful employment in
+the treatment of disease--even some forms of cancer--as well as in its
+detection.
+
+Beyond the vermin that infest the skin and the hair, tapeworm, and a few
+other intestinal worms, little if anything was known of morbific
+parasites before the Nineteenth Century; but the labors of Van Beneden,
+Küchenmeister, Cobbold, Manson, Laveran, and others have now established
+the causal relationship between great numbers of animal parasites--gross
+and microscopic--and certain definite morbid states. This has led to a
+great increase in our knowledge of the connection between the parasites
+of the lower animals and grave disease in human beings, and on this
+knowledge rest many of the precautions that we are now able to take
+against the spread of such disease. From the consideration of animal
+parasites as the direct causes of disease, we naturally come to the
+contemplation of the subject of insects as the carriers of disease. The
+later years of the century have witnessed the demonstration of the fly's
+agency in the transmission of malignant pustule and typhoid fever, and
+that of certain mosquitoes in the conveyance of yellow fever and
+malarial disease. We now know that bad air (the original meaning of the
+word _malaria_) has nothing to do with fever and ague, and that swamps
+are not unwholesome if they are free from infected mosquitoes. The
+mosquito does not originate the malarial infection; it simply serves as
+the temporary host of the micro-organism (_Plasmodium malarioe_) which
+is the cause of the disease, having obtained its transient "guest" from
+some human being. Consequently, marshy districts that are full of
+mosquitoes are not malarious unless the mosquitoes are of the kinds
+capable of lodging the plasmodium, and unless there is or has recently
+been present in the neighborhood some person affected with malarial
+disease. Moreover, the most virulently malarious region is a safe place
+of residence for human beings, provided they protect themselves
+absolutely against the bite of the mosquito. This has been strikingly
+demonstrated in the case of the Roman Campagna.
+
+From the disease-producing animal parasites we come now to those that
+are believed to be of vegetable nature. Under the general name of
+_bacteria_, there are multitudes of micro-organisms having pathogenic
+powers, each giving rise to some definite specific disease, and certain
+associations of different bacteria causing particular morbid conditions.
+Generations ago physicians had a glimmering of what we now term the germ
+theory of disease, as was shown by their use of such expressions as
+_materies morbi_ and morbid poisons. Even the definite relationship of
+special microscopic organisms to individual diseases was foreshadowed by
+Salisbury nearly fifty years ago. But it was not until years after those
+conceptions, and in no wise descended from or led up to by them, that an
+intelligible and satisfactory germ theory of disease was formulated.
+
+It is to Pasteur, the immortal chemist, that we owe this theory, as well
+as that of the attenuation of viruses--both of more than theoretical
+import, since they have given us aseptic surgery, the power of
+frequently preventing hydrophobia, the antitoxine treatment of
+diphtheria, and the ability to stay the hand of Death in the form of
+many a stalking pestilence. Every infectious disease is now held to be
+due to its own particular micro-organism, and many diseases that were
+not until recently thought to be infectious are now classed as such
+because they have been proved to be caused by living germs. Conspicuous
+among these diseases is pulmonary consumption. In the case of almost
+every one of these diseases we have discovered the specific germ and are
+able to demonstrate its presence, either by its microscopical
+appearance, by its behavior on contact with certain stains, or by the
+forms that cultures of it assume. The micro-organism of small-pox and
+that of cancer (the existence of which is assumed) have not yet been
+isolated. Some of these germs, like that of tetanus (lockjaw), gain
+entrance to the system only through a wound; others, like those of
+typhoid fever and cholera, are swallowed; others, like that of
+pneumonia, are inhaled; still others, like that of tuberculous disease,
+are either swallowed or inhaled. Some are believed to be transmissible
+to the unborn child; and a few are ordinarily harmless parasites,
+becoming pathogenic only when they accidentally gain access to other
+parts of the system than those which constitute their natural habitat.
+
+These microscopic organisms do not by their mere presence set up
+disease, unless indeed they are in such overwhelming numbers as to block
+the capillary blood vessels mechanically. Some of them are carried
+broadcast in the blood current, while others remain at the point of
+entrance; in either case they elaborate certain products, termed
+toxines, which act, either locally or through the circulation, to cause
+the disease. These toxines eventually kill the micro-organisms that
+produced them, quite as an animal may be smothered in its own
+exhalations; or at least they would do so if the "host" survived long
+enough for the completion of the process. Meantime, they have either
+killed the "host" or been defeated by certain very interesting natural
+processes. But before either of these occurrences has had time to take
+place, fortunately, in the great majority of instances, save those of
+exposure to the most deadly of infections, the vital power of the
+invaded individual has coped successfully with the invaders at the very
+point of attack--has repulsed the attacking party without appreciable
+impairment of its own force--and no illness results. For example,
+practically all of us inhale the germ of consumption repeatedly, but
+most of us suffer no harm from it simply because the fluids which bathe
+the surface on which the germ effects a lodgment are endowed with
+properties which either kill the germ or rob it of its power for harm;
+but these properties suffice only when the general health is unimpaired.
+
+In case the attack is not successfully repelled at the outset, what
+happens? There begins a struggle between the invaders and what may be
+called the reserves of the organism, consisting of the white blood
+corpuscles, which undergo a great augmentation in number. These
+corpuscles are endowed with the faculty of amoeboid movement; that is to
+say, they may shoot out projections from their substance, and even
+convert themselves for the time being into traps, seizing upon the
+pathogenic bacteria, incarcerating them within their own mass, and
+carrying them away to be thrust out of the system by organs whose
+function it is to eliminate extraneous matter. These corpuscles are,
+indeed, said figuratively to _eat_ the malign micro-organisms, whence
+they have been termed phagocytes (from [Greek: phagein], to eat, and
+[Greek: kutos], a cell); also because they carry away refuse and
+noxious material, they have been called "the scavengers of the system."
+By means of their amoeboid movement they are enabled to worm themselves
+through inconceivably minute apertures in the blood vessels, and attack
+and devour peccant matter wherever it may have effected a lodgment.
+These white corpuscles are also known as leucocytes, and their increase
+in number when they are called upon to resist bacterial invasion is
+spoken of as hyperleucocytosis. The discovery of their protective
+function is to be credited to Metchnikoff, a Russian physician now
+teaching in Paris. When they migrate from the blood vessels in great
+numbers they finally, after having fulfilled their office as phagocytes,
+degenerate into the corpuscular elements of pus, which is the creamy
+liquid contained in an abscess. Their migratory power was discovered
+by Cohnheim.
+
+But as a general thing the phagocytes do not succeed in making away with
+all the pathogenic germs, or even with enough of them to prevent the
+illness which they tend to produce. The further combat is between the
+poisonous products, termed toxines, engendered by the bacteria and
+certain antidotal substances, called antitoxines, newly created in the
+watery portion of the blood by some wonderful provision of Nature that
+is not yet well understood. Each infective disease has its special
+toxine, and for the destruction of each the blood prepares its
+particular antitoxine; possibly, however, some of the antitoxines may be
+efficacious against more than one kind of toxine, for there are
+physicians who are convinced that vaccination is a temporary preventive
+of whooping-cough. But the elaboration of an antitoxine takes time, and
+the result in any given case, whether in recovery or in death, seems to
+be settled by the ability or inability of the vital powers of the
+individual to hold out until they are relieved by the evolution of the
+necessary amount of antitoxine.
+
+In the long run, provided the sick person survives, more antitoxine is
+generated than is required to save life. The excess remains in the
+system for a greater or lesser length of time, and this fact explains
+the individual's subsequent immunity to the disease from which he has
+recovered; any fresh invading force of the microbes of that disease
+finds that defensive preparations have been made in advance. In the case
+of some diseases this acquired immunity is usually lifelong, as in that
+of small-pox; in others, of which influenza is a notable example, it is
+as a rule very transitory; and there are all gradations between the two.
+It is thought that this acquired immunity to some diseases may be
+transmitted to the offspring, for it is quite certain that there are
+many people who are from birth insusceptible to scarlet fever, no matter
+what may be the extent of their exposure to that disease.
+
+The recognition of Nature's elaboration of protective antitoxines has
+led to their artificial cultivation in the lower animals, and, thus
+produced, they have been used with brilliant results in the prevention
+and cure of at least one formidable disease, diphtheria. The immense
+reduction of the mortality from this disease that has followed the
+introduction of the treatment with the artificial antitoxine we owe to
+Behring, of Germany, and Roux, of France. Omitting unnecessary details,
+we may describe the process of obtaining diphtheria antitoxine as
+follows: A certain amount of diphtheritic poison (of the bacteriological
+sort, prepared by cultivating the diphtheria microbe) is injected into
+the circulation of a horse--sufficient to make the horse sick, but not
+enough to endanger his life. The horse's system straightway begins to
+elaborate the protective antitoxine, and there results from this one
+injection a sufficient amount of it to save the horse, although far too
+little to make the serum of his blood potent enough for medicinal use.
+Hence, after the lapse of a suitable interval, he is again injected with
+diphtheritic poison, and for the second time his blood begins to
+generate the antitoxine. And the process is repeated again and again,
+the virulence of the poison being increased each time, until the horse's
+blood is fairly reeking with antitoxine. Then blood is drawn freely from
+the horse, and it is allowed to separate into clot and serum, the
+latter alone being the part destined for use. This serum is tested on a
+small animal that has been inoculated with a deadly dose of the
+diphtheritic poison; if it saves the little creature from death, it is
+assumed to be potent enough for use on human beings, and, handled with
+all possible precautions against putrefaction or any contamination with
+pathogenic bacteria, it is furnished to physicians, its degree of
+potency being designated in "units."
+
+If in this brief article, which does not purport to be more than a
+sketch of the tremendous strides made by medicine in the Nineteenth
+Century, so much space has been given to the germ theory of disease, it
+is because the demonstration of the truth of that theory has been
+absolute, and has constituted the very marrow of almost all the medical
+progress of the century that has been the outcome of continuous thought
+and study as opposed to chance discovery.
+
+Such results as the germ theory has now led to in the treatment of
+diphtheria it had already accomplished in the field of surgery as a
+consequence of that strict asepticism which, originating with Joseph
+Lister (now Lord Lister), and rapidly carried by him to a condition
+verging on technical completeness, was soon taken up by surgeons all
+over the world and brought wellnigh to perfection, so that the mortality
+of wounds of all sorts has been tremendously reduced, and many surgical
+operations are now practised frequently--indeed, whenever the occasion
+for them arises--that before the days of Listerism would have been
+looked upon as almost tantamount to the patient's death-warrant. More
+particularly is this the case as to operations which involve opening
+into the abdomen, the chest, or the cranium. So little risk now attaches
+to such operations, properly performed, that the opening of the
+abdominal cavity for the mere purpose of ascertaining the condition of
+its contents--"exploratory laparotomy," as it is called--is a matter of
+constant occurrence. Curiously enough, in some way not yet
+satisfactorily explained, that procedure in itself, without anything
+further being done, has in many instances resulted in decided
+amelioration of a morbid condition, if not in its cure. A striking
+example of this is seen in the benefit that often results in cases of
+one form of "consumption of the bowels," namely, tuberculous disease of
+the membrane that lines the abdominal wall and invests the abdominal
+organs. This is not the only operation that does good mysteriously; that
+of cutting out a bit of the iris in a form of deep-seated eye disease,
+glaucoma, that tends toward complete blindness, is hardly more
+explicable; neither is an incision of the capsule of the kidney for
+certain forms of Bright's disease, each of which stays the progress of
+the trouble in a goodly proportion of instances.
+
+Another of the great divisions of the healing art, that of midwifery,
+has been enhanced quite as much as general surgery by the employment of
+Listerism. The process of childbirth, although a perfectly natural one,
+almost necessarily carries with it a certain amount of laceration, and,
+through the wound surfaces thus produced, absorption of poisonous
+material was formerly so frequent that puerperal fever figured
+prominently in mortality reports. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes--a
+graduate in medicine and a professor in the Harvard Medical School,
+though we are accustomed to think of him only as a delightful
+writer--who first declared that puerperal fever was the product of
+infection from without the body, and Semmelweis demonstrated the truth
+of the proposition. Holmes was a teacher of physiology, and his study of
+that branch of medical science was in itself enough to convince him of
+the doctrine which he inculcated.
+
+Listerism must be credited, not only with having added immensely to the
+safety of the major operations of surgery, but also with having led to
+great improvement of their technics by reason of the greatly increased
+frequency with which it has come to be thought justifiable to practise
+them; what we do again and again we are apt in the end to do well,
+whereas that which we turn to only in despair and as rarely as possible,
+we do clumsily and imperfectly. Listerism has been unjustly alleged by
+a few to be unworthy of the appreciation in which it is held by the
+great majority of medical men of all countries; simple cleanliness, it
+has been urged, is quite as efficient as the full Listerian precautions.
+This is begging the question, for simple cleanliness, "chemical
+cleanliness," is all that Listerism purports to accomplish. The use of
+antiseptics has been decried in the interest of asepticism, as if the
+whole purpose of antisepticism were not to secure asepsis. Lord Lister
+is entitled to the full credit of establishing the aseptic surgery of
+the present day, in spite of the facts that his doctrine followed rather
+than preceded his early improvements, that aseptic procedures have been
+brought nearer perfection elsewhere than in his own country, and that
+the whole system rests on foundations laid by Pasteur.
+
+While it is quite true that to the Listerian theory and practice are
+almost wholly to be ascribed the favorable results of the major surgery
+of the present day, we must not forget the immeasurable benefits to the
+diseased, the injured, and the crippled that have arisen from patient
+efforts and occasional brilliant intuition that have had no connection
+with the germ theory of infection. Take the case of a broken leg, for
+example, an injury that formerly condemned the victim to weeks and weeks
+of confinement to bed, together with the suffering and danger almost
+inseparable from the old methods of the long straight splint and tight
+bandaging. At the present time he who has met with such a misfortune is
+commonly able to be about on crutches within a few days, and his broken
+bone mends while he is cultivating his appetite and indulging in
+pleasant intercourse with his fellow-men. This great change has been
+made possible by one device after another, invented by different men.
+Josiah Crosby introduced the use of sticking-plaster for extension,
+instead of the chafing bands previously employed; Gurdon Buck
+substituted elastic extension by means of a weight and pulley for the
+rude and arbitrary traction in vogue before; James L. Little devised the
+plaster-of-Paris splint, whereby broken bones were immobilized with
+hardly appreciable discomfort; and Henry B. Sands established the safety
+and practicability of applying the plaster-of-Paris splint almost
+immediately after the reduction ("setting") of the fracture. In the
+meantime Nathan R. Smith and John T. Hodgen had demonstrated the
+advantages of suspending a fractured limb from above. All these men were
+Americans; surely our country has contributed powerfully to the
+well-being of the subjects of fracture. Other Americans, notably Lewis
+A. Sayre, have enabled sufferers with joint disease, including the
+dreaded hip disease, to run about and gain health and strength, instead
+of languishing in bed. Sayre, too, by his suspension treatment and the
+plaster-of-Paris jacket, set the hunchback on his feet at a stage in his
+disease in which before he had been forced to prolonged and painful
+recumbency.
+
+Although men professing special skill in certain operations, and
+doubtless possessing it, flourished in old times, and left more or less
+of their impress on the surgery of the present day, for that matter, it
+was not until the second half of the Nineteenth Century that regional
+surgery (which is what specialism virtually amounts to) was
+systematically cultivated. Now there is hardly a portion of the body to
+which practitioners who make its ailments a specialty do not direct
+their searching methods of examination or on which they do not practise
+their ingenious devices in the way of treatment. Specialism has always
+been decried by a large section of the medical profession. On the other
+hand, it has been and is still overrated by the laity. The true estimate
+lies between the two. The specialists have advanced surgery immensely,
+but, with many honorable exceptions, they have laid too much stress on
+their several specialties, making too wide a range of ailments fall
+within them. As for the community at large, their shortcoming lies in
+the fact that most of them would seek for a specialist in mumps in case
+that painful but transitory infliction were to come upon them, and in
+their underrating of the family physician.
+
+To change for a moment to a topic akin to the germ theory of disease,
+the reader may be reminded that the antitoxine treatment of infectious
+disease involves in almost every instance the use of some product
+contained in the serum (that is to say, the watery part of the blood).
+This leads to the subject of the use of natural and artificial serum in
+the treatment of disease. To quote again from the article entitled, "The
+Nineteenth Century in Medicine" ("New York Medical Journal," Dec.
+29,1900): "It has been observed that the normal serum of certain animals
+that are insusceptible to particular infectious diseases, if injected
+into the human blood current or even into the subcutaneous tissue,
+confers more or less of immunity against those diseases.... Artificial
+serum seems to have been first employed by Edmund R. Peaslee as a benign
+application to the peritonaeum in the operation of ovariotomy. His
+conception of its mode of action is not very clear, but he was a very
+successful ovariotomist, and we can only conjecture that he builded
+better than he knew, like many another man. A few years ago much was
+expected from transfusion of blood, but gradually the conviction has
+forced itself upon us that it is wellnigh useless, and indeed that, on
+the whole, it is worse than useless. It has virtually been abandoned....
+But experiments in transfusion have not been fruitless; they have
+culminated in demonstrating the inestimable value of infusions of
+'normal,' or 'physiological,' solutions of sodium chloride, and not only
+of infusions, but also of peritoneal irrigation with such solutions.
+Many a life has been saved by resorting to this measure, even in
+apparently desperate cases."
+
+Within about a decade of the close of the century, Robert Koch, whose
+discoveries and ingenious studies in bacteriology had brought him
+world-wide renown, announced that he had produced a derivative of the
+tubercle bacillus, which he termed tuberculin, that he thought might
+prove curative of tuberculous disease. It was to be injected beneath the
+skin. If the subject was really tuberculous, he would "react" by
+manifesting a certain degree of fever, and repeated injections would
+bring about elimination of the tuberculous deposits and thus effect a
+cure. The world was carried away with such an announcement coming from
+such a man, and it was thoroughly believed that at last "the great white
+plague," consumption, was to be conquered. Tuberculin did, indeed, cure
+certain minor forms of tuberculous disease, such as the skin affection
+known as lupus, but it soon became evident that it was almost impotent
+in the treatment of pulmonary consumption. It has, however, served to
+enable the veterinarian to make out the existence of tuberculous disease
+in cattle at an early stage of its course, and it is probable that by
+the slaughter of cattle thus found to be tuberculous much infection of
+human beings has been prevented.
+
+Tuberculin failed of its prime purpose, but it does seem to have marked
+the initiative of a campaign against consumption which has already
+proved of incalculable benefit, and bids fair to put that omnipresent
+disease toward the foot of the list of causes of death. We have made
+substantial advances in our knowledge of the disease, and we no longer
+regard it as incurable. We have learned that it is communicable from one
+person to another, but also that its communication can easily be
+prevented, so that there is no reason to shrink from association with
+tuberculous persons. We have learned, too, that consumption in one's
+progenitors, immediate or remote, hardly makes it even probable that he
+himself is doomed to suffer with it; the only tuberculous heredity that
+we now recognize is that of defective ability to withstand the
+infection, and even this we regard as in most instances readily
+surmountable. We have learned, furthermore, that pulmonary tuberculous
+disease is by no means so fatal as it was formerly esteemed, for men
+whose business it is to make great numbers of post-mortem examinations,
+such as coroners' physicians and hospital pathologists, assure us that
+in a very large percentage of cases of death from other causes they find
+indubitable signs of past tuberculous disease of the lungs which had
+ceased its activity--been, in fact, cured, either spontaneously or by
+medical intervention. Such intervention, it has been abundantly proved,
+is altogether likely to be successful if it is of the right sort and
+employed early. There is, to be sure, no cure-all. Powerful as the
+climatic treatment is, it must be supplemented by measures accurately
+adapted to the individual case, and failure to comprehend this fact
+still leads many a phthisical person to his grave. But information is
+rapidly being diffused, sanatoria for such of the tuberculous as can
+take advantage of them are multiplying, and those who are shut off from
+their aid are growing more and more cognizant of how they should live in
+order to give themselves the best chance of recovery and save their
+associates from infection. The era of consumption-cures--meaning
+drugs--is past; but the disease is cured in an ever-increasing
+proportion of instances, and that, too, by medical though not
+medicinal measures.
+
+At almost every turn medicine has been powerfully assisted by the
+sciences which should rather be termed correlative than subsidiary.
+Notable among them is chemistry. The isolation of the active principles
+of medicinal plants--such as morphine, quinine, strychnine, and
+cocaine--has been a remarkable service rendered by chemistry to
+medicine. How should we be handicapped if we still had to fight
+malarial disease with the crude Peruvian bark instead of its chief
+alkaloid, quinine! And how impracticable if not impossible would it be
+to render the eye insensitive to pain with any extract of coca leaves,
+no matter how concentrated--a purpose that we accomplish almost
+instantly with cocaine! Of minor importance, perhaps, but not to be
+despised, is the resulting liberation from the old slavery to bulky and
+nauseous drugs. The isolation of active principles long antedated the
+synthetical preparations, but the latter came at last--the marvellous
+array of hypnotics, anodynes, and fever-quellers that are now at our
+command, largely coal-tar products. But it is not to pure chemistry
+alone that we are indebted for the elegant dosing of the present day;
+progressive pharmacy, with its tablets, its coated pills, and its
+capsules, has put to shame the old-time purveyor of galenicals. Right
+jauntily do we now take our "soda mint" in case of slight derangement of
+the stomach, happily oblivious of its vile prototype, the old rhubarb
+and soda mixture. Even castor oil has been stripped of its repulsiveness
+by the combinations which the soda water fountain affords.
+
+It was but a step, we can now realize, from the employment of isolated
+vegetable principles to that of preparations of certain glandular organs
+of the animal economy, but the doctrine of "internal secretions" had to
+intervene, and its evolution took time; not till toward the close of the
+century did the venerable Brown-Séquard lead up to it. We have not yet
+come to "eye of newt and toe of frog," but what we have incorporated
+into modern therapeutics in the way of animal products lends at least
+some theoretical justification to the ancient use of the dried organs of
+various animals. It is but a few years since the "ductless glands"--such
+organs, as, for example, the thyreoid gland (an organ situated in the
+front of the neck, a small affair in its normal state, but prominent and
+even pendulous when by its permanent enlargement it comes to constitute
+a goître)--were looked upon as puzzles, as structures destitute of any
+known function. Some observers even affirmed that they had no function,
+though the constancy of goître in cretins ought to have shown the
+fallacy of this allegation in the case of the thyreoid. We do not now
+need to be told that the thyreoid gland plays a very important part in
+the economy, for we know that its surgical removal gives rise to a
+special disease known as myxoedema, which, in addition to its physical
+manifestations, is characterized by impairment of the mental powers.
+Consequently, this ductless gland--a gland, that is to say, which has no
+obvious canal by which it throws off any product of its activity--must
+elaborate some material that is necessary to the health of the organism
+and is imparted to the blood. That material, whatever it may be, is
+termed an "internal secretion." Some of the internal secretions have
+turned out to be of singular value medicinally. It is apparently not the
+ductless glands alone that furnish internal secretions; the glands that
+are provided with ducts and yield a definite and observable product
+secrete also a substance (perhaps more than one) which they give up to
+the blood.
+
+Prominent among the therapeutic advances of the century is the direct
+reduction of the high temperature of sunstroke and certain fevers by the
+use of cold. Although foreshadowed by Currie early in the century by his
+use of cold affusion in the treatment of scarlet fever, it did not come
+into general use until the closing decades. It is employed principally
+in typhoid fever, on the theory that a condition of high fever is in
+itself a source of danger quite distinct from the other injurious
+effects of a febrile disease. On the other hand, the employment of high
+degrees of heat has of late been shown to be a potent agency in the
+treatment of certain forms of disease, notably in various affections
+classed as rheumatic. Applications of very hot air, provided it is
+thoroughly dry, are borne without serious discomfort, and their
+employment promises to be of greater service in the conditions in which
+it is resorted to than that of any other agent.
+
+A revelation in the treatment of heart disease has been effected by the
+Bad Nauheim system of effervescent baths and resisted exercises. It is
+not only functional disorders of the heart that are relieved, but grave
+organic diseases also. Somewhat elaborate explanations of the way in
+which the treatment proves beneficial have been given, but they are not
+altogether satisfactory.
+
+Thus far we have dealt chiefly with those developments of medicine that
+seem to have been the outgrowth of much thought and experiment, but
+there was one that can hardly be viewed as other than a happy discovery,
+yet it was one that was fraught with unspeakable mitigation of human
+suffering, and that wrought a boundless extension of the field of
+surgery. It was that of anaesthesia. The first to discover an efficient
+surgical anaesthetic was Crawford W. Long, of Georgia. It has been
+established that he performed several minor operations with the patient
+anaesthetized with sulphuric ether, but he did not proclaim his
+discovery, and so it was reserved for William T. G. Morton, of Boston
+(then a dentist, but subsequently a physician), to make the first public
+demonstration of the efficiency of ether as an anaesthetic, which he did
+in the operating theatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital, in
+Boston, in the year 1846. The news of Morton's achievement spread
+broadcast, and it was at once realized that it was destined to
+revolutionize surgery. It certainly has done that, and in no less
+degree than was afterward accomplished by Listerism. Ether did not long
+remain the only anaesthetic known; Simpson, of Edinburgh, soon
+discovered that chloroform was possessed of even more decided
+anaesthetic properties. The inhalation of ether is disagreeable, and it
+is slow in producing the desired effect, whereas that of chloroform is
+not unpleasant, and it acts more rapidly. Consequently chloroform soon
+came to be generally preferred; but abundant experience has finally
+shown that ether is much the safer agent of the two, and improved
+methods of administration have almost entirely done away with the
+objections to its use, so that now it is looked upon as the preferable
+general anaesthetic. But general anaesthesia--meaning the suspension of
+sensibility in the whole organism, including unconsciousness--is not
+always necessary, and sometimes it is undesirable. We have now
+trustworthy local anaesthetics, the chief of which is cocaine, wherewith
+we are able to anaesthetize the part to be operated on without rendering
+the patient unconscious, and the co-operation that a conscious patient
+may be able to render is sometimes valuable. It was not alone in the
+direct saving of human suffering that anaesthetics proved a boon to the
+world; they have made possible an amount of experimental work on animals
+in the way of vivisection that humane investigators would otherwise have
+shrunk from, necessary as it has been and still is for the advancement
+of the healing art.
+
+The operation of ovariotomy, first performed by Ephraim McDowell, of
+Kentucky, can hardly be classed with the happy accidents; but so little
+had been said about it or thought concerning it that when the news of it
+reached Europe "from the wilds of America" the editor of a ponderous
+English quarterly journal of medicine recorded his incredulity in the
+words "_Credat Judoeus, non ego_" An ovarian tumor inevitably proves
+fatal in the long run if it is not removed. In a certain percentage of
+cases it is malignant and will kill whether it is removed or not, but
+the general result of ovariotomy has been the saving of thousands of
+women from untimely death. Bell, of Edinburgh, had imagined the
+operation and had mentioned it in his lectures, but none the less to
+McDowell is due the credit of demonstrating its feasibility.
+
+Medicine bore quite its full share in the mitigation of the horrors and
+hardships of war that marked the Nineteenth Century. Its work was shown
+in the great reduction of pestilential disease incident to camp life, in
+prompt aid to the wounded, in the establishment of salubrious field and
+general hospitals, and in improved methods of transportation of the sick
+and wounded. Certainly the soldier on the sick list never before had
+such a fair prospect of rejoining his comrades safe and sound as he
+has now.
+
+In the care of the insane, too--care not only in the sense of humane
+treatment, but in the systematic employment of measures for their
+restoration to mental soundness--the century has been marked by notable
+progress. This has been chiefly in the direction of preventing insanity,
+and although mental disease is said to be on the increase, it may
+undoubtedly be said with entire truth that its growing prevalence is not
+in proportion to the heightened frequency of "the strenuous life." We
+may confidently expect that a more pronounced mastery over diseases of
+the mind will come when physicians in general are taught psychiatry
+clinically, so that the beginnings of mental alienation may be
+intelligently met by the family practitioner.
+
+The supreme achievement of the medicine of the Nineteenth Century
+undoubtedly has been the development of its preventive feature. When we
+recall the fact that but a few years ago an attack of infectious disease
+was interpreted as a visitation of Providence, by a perversity that even
+the triumphs of vaccination did not serve to do away with; when we
+contemplate the well-ordered and well-understood measures that are now
+resorted to in an ever-increasing number of communities (and resorted to
+not solely on the outbreak of an epidemic, but at all times), to purify
+the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink; and when we
+reflect upon the greatly reduced morbidity as well as mortality of most
+infectious diseases--we must realize the immense service that has been
+rendered by preventive medicine. No doubt we must all die some time, and
+the day is yet far remote when the only causes of death will be old age
+and injury; but a decided prolongation of the average lifetime, such as
+the life-insurance companies recognize, is an unquestionable gain to the
+human race.
+
+A great blessing that has been brought about in great measure by medical
+men has been the establishment of the profession of nursing. The work of
+caring for the sick between the physician's visits is no longer, at
+least in large communities and in cases of severe illness, left to
+over-sympathetic and uninstructed relatives or to outsiders who traded
+on mystery. An intelligent and intelligible record is now kept of all
+important happenings in the sick room, remedies are administered as they
+were ordered, needless alarm at something deemed by the patient to be of
+ill omen is quelled, and in case of real emergency, overlooked as it
+might otherwise have been, the physician is summoned to meet it. The
+advent of the trained nurse marked an era in medicine.
+
+The literature of medicine has fully kept pace in volume with the
+progress of the art itself, and its quality has steadily improved. To
+this the great tomes of that gigantic work, the "Index-Catalogue of the
+Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, United States Army," bear
+solid testimony. It is a consolidated catalogue, by subjects and by
+authors' names, of practically every medical book published throughout
+the world and of every article in the periodical literature of medicine.
+For its existence the world is indebted to Dr. John S. Billings,
+formerly a surgeon of high rank in the army and now the director of the
+New York Public Library, and for its continued existence to the United
+States Government, and it is to be hoped that Congress will never cease
+to provide adequately for its continued publication. Its completeness
+and its accuracy long ago led to its being prized everywhere.
+
+There are some problems of which medicine has hardly yet entered upon
+the solution. Prominent among them is that of cancer. Little as we now
+know of the real nature of that disease, we know quite as much of it as
+we knew but a few years ago concerning other diseases equally
+destructive and far more prevalent, which, however, we have now
+practically mastered. Who can say that we shall not triumph over cancer
+while the Twentieth Century is still young? Our final triumph is
+indubitable.
+
+The strongest individuality in the medicine of the Nineteenth Century
+was without doubt that of Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (commonly written
+by him simply Rudolf Virchow). Although he took no direct part in any
+of the striking advances in practice that appeal to the laity, yet he
+was recognized the world over, among all classes of educated and
+well-informed persons, as the one beacon light of Nineteenth-Century
+medicine whose glow had been the steadiest and the most enduring. This
+is because of the wide range of his learning in matters not pertaining
+closely to his profession. His professional brethren hold the same view,
+and this is because he so well controlled himself--checked himself at
+every turn by the severest application of system--that he continued for
+more than half a century an anchor to hold medical thought strictly down
+to fact. This was from no natural lack of volatility, for he was an
+_Acht-und-vierziger_ (Forty-eighter). In 1846, as a prosector in the
+University of Berlin, Virchow entered with Reinhardt upon a series of
+pathological investigations which at once received wide attention. In
+conjunction with Reinhardt, he founded the _Archiv für pathologische
+Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medicin_[6] (a periodical
+familiarly called "Virchow's _Archiv_"), the publication of which was
+begun in the year 1847. Reinhardt died in 1852, leaving the editorship
+in the hands of Virchow alone, and he was still its editor up to the
+time of his death, on September 5, 1902.
+
+[Footnote 6: Archives of Pathological Anatomy and Physiology and of
+Clinical Medicine.]
+
+In consequence of his having openly proclaimed himself a Democrat in
+1848, Virchow was forced to retire from the University of Berlin in the
+following year. He was at once made a professor in the University of
+Würzburg, whence seven years later, in 1856, as the result of the
+strenuous interposition of various medical organizations, he was
+recalled to Berlin, where he was made a professor and director of the
+Pathological Institute. He was appointed medical privy councillor in
+1874, having several years before that entered upon an active political
+career and been one of the founders of the Progressive party, which he
+ably represented in the Landtag and the Reichstag. In 1869 he took part
+in founding the German and the Berlin Anthropological Societies, of each
+of which he was several times president.
+
+Virchow investigated the most diverse subjects, as his profound studies
+of Schliemann's discoveries, as well as his other archaeological
+researches, show, and he was a rather prolific writer. The most
+important of his early works was _Die Cellularpathologie_, the first
+edition of which was published in 1858. Chance's English translation
+appeared in 1860, and Picard's French version came out in 1861. It is
+safe to say that no book of the century exerted a profounder influence
+on medical thought than Virchow's exposition of the cellular pathology.
+His next notable publication was a collection of thirty lectures on
+Tumors (_Die krankhaften Geschwülste_,[7] Berlin, 1863-67). That he was
+not too absorbed in these lectures to bring his great powers to bear
+upon topics of the day is shown by the fact that before their
+publication was completed he brought out his work on Trichinae
+(_Darstellung der Lehre von den Trichinen_, 1864). Old age found him
+with industry and versatility unabated, for it was in 1892 that his
+_Crania ethnica americana_ appeared, and after that time he wrote a
+vigorous protest against the new-fangled spelling of the German language
+which he accused the schoolmasters of trying to foist on the people.
+This was published in his _Archiv_. It may well be that his arguments
+have not been unavailing, since it is observable that several German
+publications that had adopted the new spelling have now dropped it.
+
+[Footnote 7: Morbid Tumors.]
+
+It must not be supposed that it was by his literary work alone, founded
+though it was manifestly on his profound study, that Virchow impressed
+his personality upon medicine; it was in his lectures and in his
+laboratory teaching, too, that he made himself felt. In all civilized
+countries there are many devoted workers in medical science who caught
+their first real inspiration from Virchow.
+
+The writer once saw Virchow--only once, but it was a sight never to be
+forgotten. It was at a banquet given as one of the festivities incident
+to the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in London in
+1873. The company was not a large one, but it included such celebrities
+as Professor J. Burdon Sanderson, Sir William Jenner, Professor
+Chauveau, and Professor Marey. Virchow was conspicuously the man toward
+whom the eyes of all others were oftenest directed. Virchow met with the
+love as well as the admiration of his contemporaries, and both
+sentiments will descend to their successors, for his impress on the
+records of medicine is indelible, both as an instructor and as a friend
+of all real truth-seekers.
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+There is no full and connected account of the progress of medicine
+during the Nineteenth Century, but the reader may consult with profit
+the various medical biographies, also the following works: Silliman's "A
+Century of Medicine and Chemistry;" Jenner's "The Practical Medicine of
+To-day;" Buck's "Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences;"
+Eulenburg's "Real-Encyclopädie der gesammten Heilkunde;" the "Annus
+Medicus," published in the _Lancet_ at the close of each year; and
+Tinker's "America's Contributions to Surgery" (Bulletin of the Johns
+Hopkins Hospital, Aug.-Sept., 1902).
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10649 ***