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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers, Vol. II.
+by Thomas De Quincey
+#3 in our series by Thomas De Quincey
+
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+Title: Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers, Vol. II.
+
+Author: Thomas De Quincey
+
+Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6147]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 19, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE QUINCY'S PAPERS V.2. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+NARRATIVE AND MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, VOL. II.
+
+BY
+THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
+
+
+SYSTEM OF THE HEAVENS AS REVEALED BY LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPES
+MODERN SUPERSTITION
+COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING
+TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
+ON WAR
+THE LAST DAYS OF IMMANUEL KANT
+
+
+
+
+SYSTEM OF THE HEAVENS AS REVEALED BY LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPES.
+[Footnote: Thoughts on Some Important Points relating to the System of
+the World. By J. P. Nichol, LL.D., Professor of Astronomy in the
+University of Glasgow. William Tait, Edinburgh. 1846.]
+
+Some years ago, some person or other, [in fact I believe it was
+myself,] published a paper from the German of Kant, on a very
+interesting question, viz., the age of our own little Earth. Those who
+have never seen that paper, a class of unfortunate people whom I
+suspect to form _rather_ the majority in our present perverse
+generation, will be likely to misconceive its object. Kant's purpose
+was, not to ascertain how many years the Earth had lived: a million of
+years, more or less, made very little difference to _him_. What he
+wished to settle was no such barren conundrum. For, had there even been
+any means of coercing the Earth into an honest answer, on such a
+delicate point, which the Sicilian canon, Recupero, fancied that there
+was; [Footnote: _Recupero_. See Brydone's Travels, some sixty or
+seventy years ago. The canon, being a beneficed clergyman in the Papal
+church, was naturally an infidel. He wished exceedingly to refute
+Moses: and he fancied that he really had done so by means of some
+collusive assistance from the layers of lava on Mount Etna. But there
+survives, at this day, very little to remind us of the canon, except an
+unpleasant guffaw that rises, at times, in solitary valleys of Etna.]
+but which, in my own opinion, there neither is, nor ought to be,--
+(since a man deserves to be cudgelled who could put such improper
+questions to a _lady_ planet,)--still what would it amount to?
+What good would it do us to have a certificate of our dear little
+mother's birth and baptism? Other people--people in Jupiter, or the
+Uranians--may amuse themselves with her pretended foibles or
+infirmities: it is quite safe to do so at _their_ distance; and,
+in a female planet like Venus, it might be natural, (though, strictly
+speaking, not quite correct,) to scatter abroad malicious insinuations,
+as though our excellent little mamma had begun to wear false hair, or
+had lost some of her front teeth. But all this, we men of sense know to
+be gammon. Our mother Tellus, beyond all doubt, is a lovely little
+thing. I am satisfied that she is very much admired throughout the
+Solar System: and, in clear seasons, when she is seen to advantage,
+with her bonny wee pet of a Moon tripping round her like a lamb, I
+should be thankful to any gentleman who will mention where he has
+happened to observe--either he or his telescope--will he only have the
+goodness to say, in what part of the heavens he has discovered a more
+elegant turn-out. I wish to make no personal reflections. I name no
+names. Only this I say, that, though some people have the gift of
+seeing things that other people never could see, and though some other
+people, or other some people are born with a silver spoon in their
+mouths, so that, generally, their geese count for swans, yet, after
+all, swans or geese, it would be a pleasure to me, and really a
+curiosity, to see the planet that could fancy herself entitled to
+sneeze at our Earth. And then, if she (viz., our Earth,) keeps but one
+Moon, even _that_ (you know) is an advantage as regards some
+people that keep none. There are people, pretty well known to you and
+me, that can't make it convenient to keep even one Moon. And so I come
+to my moral; which is this, that, to all appearance, it is mere
+justice; but, supposing it were not, still it is _our_ duty, (as
+children of the Earth,) right or wrong, to stand up for our bonny young
+mamma, if she _is_ young; or for our dear old mother, if she
+_is_ old; whether young or old, to take her part against all
+comers; and to argue through thick and thin, which (sober or not) I
+always attempt to do, that she is the most respectable member of the
+Copernican System.
+
+Meantime, what Kant understood by being old, is something that still
+remains to be explained. If one stumbled, in the steppes of Tartary, on
+the grave of a Megalonyx, and, after long study, had deciphered from
+some pre-Adamite heiro-pothooks, the following epitaph:--'_Hic
+jacet_ a Megalonyx, or _Hic jacet_ a Mammoth, (as the case
+might be,) who departed this life, to the grief of his numerous
+acquaintance in the seventeen thousandth year of his age,'--of course,
+one would be sorry for him; because it must be disagreeable at
+_any_ age to be torn away from life, and from all one's little
+megalonychal comforts; that's not pleasant, you know, even if one
+_is_ seventeen thousand years old. But it would make all the
+difference possible in your grief, whether the record indicated a
+premature death, that he had been cut off, in fact, whilst just
+stepping into life, or had kicked the bucket when full of honors, and
+been followed to the grave by a train of weeping grandchildren. He had
+died 'in his teens,' that's past denying. But still we must know to
+what stage of life in a man, had corresponded seventeen thousand years
+in a Mammoth. Now exactly this was what Kant desired to know about our
+planet. Let her have lived any number of years that you suggest, (shall
+we say if you please, that she is in her billionth year?) still that
+tells us nothing about the _period_ of life, the _stage_, which she may
+be supposed to have reached. Is she a child, in fact, or is she an
+adult? And, _if_ an adult, and that you gave a ball to the Solar
+System, is she that kind of person, that you would introduce to a
+waltzing partner, some fiery young gentlemen like Mars, or would
+you rather suggest to her the sort of partnership which takes place at
+a whist-table? On this, as on so many other questions, Kant was
+perfectly sensible that people, of the finest understandings, may and
+do take the most opposite views. Some think that our planet is in that
+stage of her life, which corresponds to the playful period of twelve or
+thirteen in a spirited girl. Such a girl, were it not that she is
+checked by a sweet natural sense of feminine grace, you might call a
+romp; but not a hoyden, observe; no horse-play; oh, no, nothing of that
+sort. And these people fancy that earthquakes, volcanoes, and all such
+little _escapades_ will be over, they will, in lawyer's phrase,
+'cease and determine,' as soon as our Earth reaches the age of maidenly
+bashfulness. Poor thing! It's quite natural, you know, in a healthy
+growing girl. A little overflow of vivacity, a _pirouette_ more or
+less, what harm should _that_ do to any of us? Nobody takes more
+delight than I in the fawn-like sportiveness of an innocent girl, at
+this period of life: even a shade of _espièglerie_ does not annoy
+me. But still my own impressions incline me rather to represent the
+Earth as a fine noble young woman, full of the pride which is so
+becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that,
+at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of
+those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper
+liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much
+like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always
+at full gallop, and moving upon such an infinity of angles to human
+shinbones, that the final purpose of such boys (one of whom lately had
+the audacity nearly to ride down the Duke of Wellington) seems to be--
+not the translation of mutton, which would certainly find its way into
+human mouths even if riding boys were not,--but the improved geometry
+of transcendental curves. They ought to be numbered, ought these boys,
+and to wear badges--X 10, &c. And exactly the same evil, asking
+therefore by implication for exactly the same remedy, affects the
+Comets. A respectable planet is known everywhere, and responsible for
+any mischief that he does. But if a cry should arise, 'Stop that
+wretch, who was rude to the Earth: who is he?' twenty voices will
+answer, perhaps, 'It's Encke's Comet; he is always doing mischief;'
+well, what can you say? it _may_ be Encke's, it may be some other
+man's Comet; there are so many abroad and on so many roads, that you
+might as well ask upon a night of fog, such fog as may be opened with
+an oyster knife, whose cab that was (whose, viz., out of 27,000 in
+London) that floored you into the kennel.
+
+These are constructive ideas upon the Earth's stage of evolution, which
+Kant was aware of, and which will always find toleration, even where
+they do not find patronage. But others there are, a class whom I
+perfectly abominate, that place our Earth in the category of decaying
+women, nay of decayed women, going, going, and all but gone. 'Hair like
+arctic snows, failure of vital heat, palsy that shakes the head as in
+the porcelain toys on our mantel-pieces, asthma that shakes the whole
+fabric--these they absolutely fancy themselves to _see_. They
+absolutely _hear_ the tellurian lungs wheezing, panting, crying,
+'Bellows to mend!' periodically as the Earth approaches her aphelion.
+
+But suddenly at this point a demur arises upon the total question.
+Kant's very problem explodes, bursts, as poison in Venetian wine-glass
+of old shivered the glass into fragments. For is there, after all, any
+stationary meaning in the question? Perhaps in reality the Earth is
+both young and old. Young? If she is not young at present, perhaps she
+_will_ be so in future. Old? if she is not old at this moment,
+perhaps she _has_ been old, and has a fair chance of becoming so
+again. In fact, she is a Phoenix that is known to have secret processes
+for rebuilding herself out of her own ashes. Little doubt there is but
+she has seen many a birthday, many a funeral night, and many a morning
+of resurrection. Where now the mightiest of oceans rolls in pacific
+beauty, once were anchored continents and boundless forests. Where the
+south pole now shuts her frozen gates inhospitably against the
+intrusions of flesh, once were probably accumulated the ribs of
+empires; man's imperial forehead, woman's roseate lips, gleamed upon
+ten thousand hills; and there were innumerable contributions to
+antarctic journals almost as good (but not quite) as our own. Even
+within our domestic limits, even where little England, in her south-
+eastern quarter now devolves so quietly to the sea her sweet pastoral
+rivulets, once came roaring down, in pomp of waters, a regal Ganges
+[Footnote: _'Ganges:'_--Dr. Nichol calls it by this name for the
+purpose of expressing its grandeur; and certainly in breadth, in
+diffusion at all times, but especially in the rainy season, the Ganges
+is the cock of the walk in our British orient. Else, as regards the
+body of water discharged, the absolute payments made into the sea's
+exchequer, and the majesty of column riding downwards from the
+Himalaya, I believe that, since Sir Alexander Burnes's measurements,
+the Indus ranks foremost by a long chalk.], that drained some
+hyperbolical continent, some Quinbus Flestrin of Asiatic proportions,
+long since gone to the dogs. All things pass away. Generations wax old
+as does a garment: but eternally God says:--'Come again, ye children of
+men.' Wildernesses of fruit, and worlds of flowers, are annually
+gathered in solitary South America to ancestral graves: yet still the
+Pomona of Earth, yet still the Flora of Earth, does not become
+superannuated, but blossoms in everlasting youth. Not otherwise by
+secular periods, known to us geologically as facts, though obscure as
+durations, _Tellus_ herself, the planet, as a whole, is for ever
+working by golden balances of change and compensation, of ruin and
+restoration. She recasts her glorious habitations in decomposing them;
+she lies down for death, which perhaps a thousand times she has
+suffered; she rises for a new birth, which perhaps for the thousandth
+time has glorified her disc. Hers is the wedding garment, hers is the
+shroud, that eternally is being woven in the loom. And God imposes upon
+her the awful necessity of working for ever at her own grave, yet of
+listening for ever to his far-off trumpet of _palingenesis_.
+
+If this account of the matter be just, and were it not treasonable to
+insinuate the possibility of an error against so great a swell as
+Immanuel Kant, one would be inclined to fancy that Mr. Kant had really
+been dozing a little on this occasion; or, agreeably to his own
+illustration elsewhere, that he had realized the pleasant picture of
+one learned doctor trying to milk a he-goat, whilst another doctor,
+equally learned, holds the milk-pail below. [Footnote: Kant applied
+this illustration to the case where one worshipful scholar proposes
+some impossible problem, (as the squaring of the circle, or the
+perpetual motion,) which another worshipful scholar sits down to solve.
+The reference was of course to Virgil's line,--'Atque idem jungat
+vulpes, et _mulgeat hircos_.'] And there is apparently this two-
+edged embarrassment pressing upon the case--that, if our dear excellent
+mother the Earth could be persuaded to tell us her exact age in Julian
+years, still _that_ would leave us all as much in the dark as
+ever: since, if the answer were, 'Why, children, at my next birth-day I
+shall count a matter of some million centuries,' we should still be at
+a loss to _value_ her age: would it mean that she was a mere
+chicken, or that she was 'getting up in years?' On the other hand, if
+(declining to state any odious circumstantialities,) she were to
+reply,--'No matter, children, for my precise years, which are
+disagreeable remembrances; I confess generally to being a lady of a
+certain age,'--here, in the inverse order, given the _valuation_
+of the age, we should yet be at a loss for the _absolute_ years
+numerically: would a 'certain age,' mean that 'mamma' was a million, be
+the same more or less, or perhaps not much above seventy thousand?
+
+Every way, you see, reader, there are difficulties. But two things used
+to strike me, as unaccountably overlooked by Kant; who, to say the
+truth, was profound--yet at no time very agile--in the character of his
+understanding. First, what age now might we take our brother and sister
+planets to be? For _that_ determination as to a point in
+_their_ constitution, will do something to illustrate our own. We
+are as good as they, I hope, any day: perhaps in a growl, one might
+modestly insinuate--_better_. It's not at all likely that there
+can be any great disproportion of age amongst children of the same
+household: and therefore, since Kant always countenanced the idea that
+Jupiter had not quite finished the upholstery of his extensive
+premises, as a comfortable residence for a man, Jupiter having, in
+fact, a fine family of mammoths, but no family at all of 'humans,' (as
+brother Jonathan calls them,) Kant was bound, _ex analogo_, to
+hold that any little precedency in the trade of living, on the part of
+our own mother Earth, could not count for much in the long run. At
+Newmarket, or Doncaster, the start is seldom mathematically true:
+trifling advantages will survive all human trials after abstract
+equity; and the logic of this case argues, that any few thousands of
+years by which Tellus may have got ahead of Jupiter, such as the having
+finished her Roman Empire, finished her Crusades, and finished her
+French Revolution, virtually amounts to little or nothing; indicates no
+higher proportion to the total scale upon which she has to run, than
+the few tickings of a watch by which one horse at the start for the
+Leger is in advance of another. When checked in our chronology by each
+other, it transpires that, in effect, we are but executing the nice
+manoeuvre of a start; and that the small matter of six thousand years,
+by which we may have advanced our own position beyond some of our
+planetary rivals, is but the outstretched neck of an uneasy horse at
+Doncaster. This is _one_ of the data overlooked by Kant; and the
+less excusably overlooked, because it was his own peculiar doctrine,--
+that uncle Jupiter ought to be considered a greenhorn. Jupiter may be a
+younger brother of our mamma; but, if he is a brother at all, he cannot
+be so very wide of our own chronology; and therefore the first
+_datum_ overlooked by Kant was--the analogy of our whole planetary
+system. A second datum, as it always occurred to myself, might
+reasonably enough be derived from the intellectual vigor of us men. If
+our mother could, with any show of reason, be considered an old decayed
+lady, snoring stentorously in her arm-chair, there would naturally be
+some _aroma_ of phthisis, or apoplexy, beginning to form about
+_us_, that are her children. But _is_ there? If ever Dr. Johnson
+said a true word, it was when he replied to the Scottish judge
+Burnett, so well known to the world as Lord Monboddo. The judge, a
+learned man, but obstinate as a mule in certain prejudices, had said
+plaintively, querulously, piteously,--'Ah, Doctor, we are poor
+creatures, we men of the eighteenth century, by comparison with our
+forefathers!' 'Oh, no, my Lord,' said Johnson, 'we are quite as strong
+as our ancestors, and a great deal wiser.' Yes; our kick is, at least,
+as dangerous, and our logic does three times as much execution. This
+would be a complex topic to treat effectively; and I wish merely to
+indicate the opening which it offers for a most decisive order of
+arguments in such a controversy. If the Earth were on her last legs, we
+her children could not be very strong or healthy. Whereas, if there
+were less pedantry amongst us, less malice, less falsehood, and less
+darkness of prejudice, easy it would be to show, that in almost every
+mode of intellectual power, we are more than a match for the most
+conceited of elder generations, and that in some modes we have energies
+or arts absolutely and exclusively our own. Amongst a thousand
+indications of strength and budding youth, I will mention two:--Is it
+likely, is it plausible, that our Earth should just begin to find out
+effective methods of traversing land and sea, when she had a summons to
+leave both? Is it not, on the contrary, a clear presumption that the
+great career of earthly nations is but on the point of opening, that
+life is but just beginning to kindle, when the great obstacles to
+effectual locomotion, and therefore to extensive human intercourse, are
+first of all beginning to give way? Secondly, I ask peremptorily,--Does
+it stand with good sense, is it reasonable that Earth is waning,
+science drooping, man looking downward, precisely in that epoch when,
+first of all, man's eye is arming itself for looking effectively into
+the mighty depths of space? A new era for the human intellect, upon a
+path that lies amongst its most aspiring, is promised, is inaugurated,
+by Lord Rosse's almost awful telescope.
+
+What is it then that Lord Rosse has accomplished? If a man were aiming
+at dazzling by effects of rhetoric, he might reply: He has accomplished
+that which once the condition of the telescope not only refused its
+permission to hope for, but expressly bade man to despair of. What is
+it that Lord Rosse has revealed? Answer: he has revealed more by far
+than he found. The theatre to which he has introduced us, is
+_immeasurably_ beyond the old one which he found. To say that he
+found, in the visible universe, a little wooden theatre of Thespis, a
+_tréteau_ or shed of vagrants, and that he presented us, at a
+price of toil and of _anxiety_ that cannot be measured, with a
+Roman colosseum,--_that_ is to say nothing. It is to undertake the
+measurement of the tropics with the pocket-tape of an upholsterer.
+Columbus, when he introduced the Old World to the New, after all that
+can be said in his praise, did in fact only introduce the majority to
+the minority; but Lord Rosse has introduced the minority to the
+majority. There are two worlds, one called Ante-Rosse, and the other
+Post-Rosse; and, if it should come to voting, the latter would
+shockingly outvote the other. Augustus Cæsar made it his boast when
+dying, that he had found the city of Rome built of brick, and that he
+left it built of marble: _lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit_.
+Lord Rosse may say, even if to-day he should die, 'I found God's
+universe represented for human convenience, even after all the sublime
+discoveries of Herschel, upon a globe or spherical chart having a
+radius of one hundred and fifty feet; and I left it sketched upon a
+similar chart, keeping exactly the same scale of proportions, but now
+elongating its radius into one thousand feet.' The reader of course
+understands that this expression, founded on absolute calculations of
+Dr. Nichol, is simply meant to exhibit the _relative_ dimensions
+of the _mundus Ante-Rosseanus_ and the _mundus Post-Rosseanus;_
+for as to the _absolute_ dimensions, when stated in miles, leagues
+or any units familiar to the human experience, they are too stunning
+and confounding. If, again, they are stated in larger units, as for
+instance diameters of the earth's orbit, the unit itself that
+should facilitate the grasping of the result, and which really
+_is_ more manageable numerically, becomes itself elusive of the
+mental grasp: it comes in as an interpreter; and (as in some other
+cases) the interpreter is hardest to be understood of the two. If,
+finally, TIME be assumed as the exponent of the dreadful magnitudes,
+time combining itself with motion, as in the flight of cannon-balls or
+the flight of swallows, the sublimity becomes greater; but horror
+seizes upon the reflecting intellect, and incredulity upon the
+irreflective. Even a railroad generation, that _should_ have faith
+in the miracles of velocity, lifts up its hands with an '_Incredulus
+odi_!' we know that Dr. Nichol speaks the truth; but he _seems_
+to speak falsehood. And the ignorant by-stander prays that the doctor
+may have grace given him and time for repentance; whilst his more
+liberal companion reproves his want of charity, observing that
+travellers into far countries have always had a license for lying, as a
+sort of tax or fine levied for remunerating their own risks; and that
+great astronomers, as necessarily far travellers into space, are
+entitled to a double per centage of the same Munchausen privilege.
+
+Great is the mystery of Space, greater is the mystery of Time; either
+mystery grows upon man, as man himself grows; and either seems to be a
+function of the godlike which is in man. In reality the depths and the
+heights which are in man, the depths by which he searches, the heights
+by which he aspires, are but projected and made objective externally in
+the three dimensions of space which are outside of him. He trembles at
+the abyss into which his bodily eyes look down, or look up; not knowing
+that abyss to be, not always consciously suspecting it to be, but by an
+instinct written in his prophetic heart feeling it to be, boding it to
+be, fearing it to be, and sometimes hoping it to be, the mirror to a
+mightier abyss that will one day be expanded in himself. Even as to the
+sense of space, which is the lesser mystery than time, I know not
+whether the reader has remarked that it is one which swells upon man
+with the expansion of his mind, and that it is probably peculiar to the
+mind of man. An infant of a year old, or oftentimes even older, takes
+no notice of a sound, however loud, which is a quarter of a mile
+removed, or even in a distant chamber. And brutes, even of the most
+enlarged capacities, seem not to have any commerce with distance:
+distance is probably not revealed to them except by a _presence_,
+viz., by some shadow of their own animality, which, if perceived at
+all, is perceived as a thing _present_ to their organs. An animal
+desire, or a deep animal hostility, may render sensible a distance
+which else would not be sensible; but not render it sensible _as_
+a distance. Hence perhaps is explained, and not out of any self-
+oblivion from higher enthusiasm, a fact that often has occurred, of
+deer, or hares, or foxes, and the pack of hounds in pursuit, chaser and
+chased, all going headlong over a precipice together. Depth or height
+does not readily manifest itself to _them_; so that any _strong_ motive
+is sufficient to overpower the sense of it. Man only has a natural
+function for expanding on an illimitable sensorium, the illimitable
+growths of space. Man, coming to the precipice, reads his danger; the
+brute perishes: man is saved; and the horse is saved by his rider.
+
+But, if this sounds in the ear of some a doubtful refinement, the doubt
+applies only to the lowest degrees of space. For the highest, it is
+certain that brutes have no perception. To man is as much reserved the
+prerogative of perceiving space in its higher extensions, as of
+geometrically constructing the relations of space. And the brute is no
+more capable of apprehending abysses through his eye, than he can build
+upwards or can analyze downwards the ærial synthesis of Geometry. Such,
+therefore, as is space for the grandeur of man's perceptions, such as
+is space for the benefit of man's towering mathematic speculations,
+such is the nature of our debt to Lord Rosse--as being the philosopher
+who has most pushed back the frontiers of our conquests upon this
+_exclusive_ inheritance of man. We have all heard of a king that,
+sitting on the sea-shore, bade the waves, as they began to lave his
+feet, upon their allegiance to retire. _That_ was said not vainly
+or presumptuously, but in reproof of sycophantic courtiers. Now,
+however, we see in good earnest another man, wielding another kind of
+sceptre, and sitting upon the shores of infinity, that says to the ice
+which had frozen up our progress,--'Melt thou before my breath!' that
+says to the rebellious _nebulæ_,--'Submit, and burst into blazing
+worlds!' that says to the gates of darkness,--'Roll back, ye barriers,
+and no longer hide from us the infinities of God!'
+
+  'Come, and I will show you what is beautiful.'
+
+From the days of infancy still lingers in my ears this opening of a
+prose hymn by a lady, then very celebrated, viz., the late Mrs.
+Barbauld. The hymn began by enticing some solitary infant into some
+silent garden, I believe, or some forest lawn; and the opening words
+were, 'Come, and I will show you what is beautiful!' Well, and what
+beside? There is nothing beside; oh, disappointed and therefore enraged
+reader; positively this is the sum-total of what I can recall from the
+wreck of years; and certainly it is not much. Even of Sappho, though
+time has made mere ducks and drakes of her lyrics, we have rather more
+spared to us than this. And yet this trifle, simple as you think it,
+this shred of a fragment, if the reader will believe me, still echoes
+with luxurious sweetness in my ears, from some unaccountable hide-and-
+seek of fugitive childish memories; just as a marine shell, if applied
+steadily to the ear, awakens (according to the fine image of Landor
+[Footnote: 'Of Landor,' viz., in his 'Gebir;' but also of Wordsworth in
+'The Excursion.' And I must tell the reader, that a contest raged at
+one time as to the _original property_ in this image, not much
+less keen than that between Neptune and Minerva, for the chancellorship
+of Athens.]) the great vision of the sea; places the listener
+
+              'In the sun's palace-porch,
+  And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.'
+
+Now, on some moonless night, in some fitting condition of the
+atmosphere, if Lord Rosse would permit the reader and myself to walk
+into the front drawing-room of his telescope, then, in Mrs. Barbauld's
+words, slightly varied, I might say to him,--Come, and I will show you
+what is sublime! In fact, what I am going to lay before him, from Dr.
+Nichol's work, is, or at least _would_ be, (when translated into
+Hebrew grandeur by the mighty telescope,) a step above even that object
+which some four-and-twenty years ago in the British Museum struck me as
+simply the sublimest sight which in this sight-seeing world I had seen.
+It was the Memnon's head, then recently brought from Egypt. I looked at
+it, as the reader must suppose, in order to understand the depth which
+I have here ascribed to the impression, not as a human but as a
+symbolic head; and what it symbolized to me were: 1. The peace which
+passeth all understanding. 2. The eternity which baffles and confounds
+all faculty of computation; the eternity which _had_ been, the
+eternity which _was_ to be. 3. The diffusive love, not such as
+rises and falls upon waves of life and mortality, not such as sinks and
+swells by undulations of time, but a procession--an emanation from some
+mystery of endless dawn. You durst not call it a smile that radiated
+from the lips; the radiation was too awful to clothe itself in
+adumbrations or memorials of flesh.
+
+In _that mode_ of sublimity, perhaps, I still adhere to my first
+opinion, that nothing so great was ever beheld. The atmosphere for
+_this_, for the Memnon, was the breathlessness which belongs to a
+saintly trance; the holy thing seemed to live by silence. But there
+_is_ a picture, the pendant of the Memnon, there _is_ a dreadful
+cartoon, from the gallery which has begun to open upon Lord Rosse's
+telescope, where the appropriate atmosphere for investing it
+must be drawn from another silence, from the frost and from the
+eternities of death. It is the famous _nebula_ in the constellation
+of Orion; famous for the unexampled defiance with which it resisted
+all approaches from the most potent of former telescopes; famous
+for its frightful magnitude and for the frightful depth to which
+it is sunk in the abysses of the heavenly wilderness; famous just now
+for the submission with which it has begun to render up its secrets to
+the all-conquering telescope; and famous in all time coming for the
+horror of the regal phantasma which it has perfected to eyes of flesh.
+Had Milton's 'incestuous mother,' with her fleshless son, and with the
+warrior angel, his father, that led the rebellions of heaven, been
+suddenly unmasked by Lord Rosse's instrument, in these dreadful
+distances before which, simply as expressions of resistance, the mind
+of man shudders and recoils, there would have been nothing more
+appalling in the exposure; in fact, it would have been essentially the
+same exposure: the same expression of power in the detestable phantom,
+the same rebellion in the attitude, the same pomp of malice in the
+features to a universe seasoned for its assaults.
+
+The reader must look to Dr. Nichol's book, at page 51, for the picture
+of this abominable apparition. But then, in order to see what _I_
+see, the obedient reader must do what I tell him to do. Let him
+therefore view the wretch upside down. If he neglects that simple
+direction, of course I don't answer for anything that follows: without
+any fault of mine, my description will be unintelligible. This
+inversion being made, the following is the dreadful creature that will
+then reveal itself.
+
+_Description of the Nebula in Orion, as forced to show out by Lord
+Rosse._--You see a head thrown back, and raising its face, (or eyes,
+if eyes it had,) in the very anguish of hatred, to some unknown
+heavens. What _should_ be its skull wears what _might_ be an
+Assyrian tiara, only ending behind in a floating train. This head rests
+upon a beautifully developed neck and throat. All power being given to
+the awful enemy, he is beautiful where he pleases, in order to point
+and envenom his ghostly ugliness. The mouth, in that stage of the
+apocalypse which Sir John Herschel was able to arrest in his eighteen-
+inch mirror, is amply developed. Brutalities unspeakable sit upon the
+upper lip, which is confluent with a snout; for separate nostrils there
+are none. Were it not for this one defect of nostrils; and, even in
+spite of this defect, (since, in so mysterious a mixture of the angelic
+and the brutal, we may suppose the sense of odor to work by some
+compensatory organ,) one is reminded by the phantom's attitude of a
+passage, ever memorable, in Milton: that passage, I mean, where Death
+first becomes aware, soon after the original trespass, of his own
+future empire over man. The 'meagre shadow' even smiles (for the first
+time and the last) on apprehending his own abominable bliss, by
+apprehending from afar the savor 'of mortal change on earth.'
+
+  ----'Such a scent,' (he says,) 'I draw
+  Of carnage, prey innumerable.'
+
+As illustrating the attitude of the phantom in Orion, let the reader
+allow me to quote the tremendous passage:--
+
+  'So saying, with delight he snuff'd the smell
+  Of mortal change on earth. As when a flock
+  Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote,
+  Against the day of battle, to a field,
+  Where armies lie encamp'd, come flying, lured
+  With scent of living carcasses design'd
+  For death, the following day, in bloody fight;
+  So scented the grim feature, [Footnote: 'So scented the grim
+feature,' [_feature_ is the old word for _form or outline that
+is shadowy_; and also for form (shadowy or not) which abstracts from
+the _matter_.] By the way, I have never seen it noticed, that
+Milton was indebted for the hint of this immortal passage to a superb
+line-and-a-half, in Lucan's Pharsalia.] and upturn'd
+  His nostril wide into the murky air,
+  Sagacious of his quarry from so far.'
+
+But the lower lip, which is drawn inwards with the curve of a conch
+shell,--oh what a convolute of cruelty and revenge is _there_!
+Cruelty!--to whom? Revenge!--for what? Ask not, whisper not. Look
+upwards to other mysteries. In the very region of his temples, driving
+itself downwards into his cruel brain, and breaking the continuity of
+his diadem, is a horrid chasm, a ravine, a shaft, that many centuries
+would not traverse; and it is serrated on its posterior wall with a
+harrow that perhaps is partly hidden. From the anterior wall of this
+chasm rise, in vertical directions, two processes; one perpendicular,
+and rigid as a horn, the other streaming forward before some portentous
+breath. What these could be, seemed doubtful; but now, when further
+examinations by Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, have
+filled up the scattered outline with a rich umbrageous growth, one is
+inclined to regard them as the plumes of a sultan. Dressed he is,
+therefore, as well as armed. And finally comes Lord Rosse, that
+glorifies him with the jewellery [Footnote: _The jewellery of
+Stars_. And one thing is very remarkable, viz., that not only the
+stars justify this name of jewellery, as usual, by the life of their
+splendor, but also, in this case, by their arrangement. No jeweller
+could have set, or disposed with more art, the magnificent quadrille of
+stars which is placed immediately below the upright plume. There is
+also another, a truncated quadrille, wanting only the left hand star
+(or you might call it a bisected lozenge) placed on the diadem, but
+obliquely placed as regards the curve of that diadem. Two or three
+other arrangements are striking, though not equally so, both from their
+regularity and from their repeating each other, as the forms in a
+kaleidoscope.] of stars: he is now a vision 'to dream of, not to tell:'
+he is ready for the worship of those that are tormented in sleep: and
+the stages of his solemn uncovering by astronomy, first by Sir W.
+Herschel, secondly, by his son, and finally by Lord Rosse, is like the
+reversing of some heavenly doom, like the raising of the seals that had
+been sealed by the angel, in the Revelations. But the reader naturally
+asks, How does all this concern Lord Rosse's telescope on the one side,
+or general astronomy on the other? This _nebula_, he will say,
+seems a bad kind of fellow by your account; and of course it will not
+break my heart to hear, that he has had the conceit taken out of him.
+But in what way can _that_ affect the pretensions of this new
+instrument; or, if it did, how can the character of the instrument
+affect the general condition of a science? Besides, is not the science
+a growth from very ancient times? With great respect for the Earl of
+Rosse, is it conceivable that he, or any man, by one hour's working the
+tackle of his new instrument, can have carried any stunning
+revolutionary effect into the heart of a section so ancient in our
+mathematical physics? But the reader is to consider, that the ruins
+made by Lord Rosse, are in _sidereal_ astronomy, which is almost
+wholly a growth of modern times; and the particular part of it
+demolished by the new telescope, is almost exclusively the creation of
+the two Herschels, father and son. Laplace, it is true, adopted their
+views; and he transferred them to the particular service of our own
+planetary system. But he gave to them no new sanction, except what
+arises from showing that they would account for the appearances, as
+they present themselves to our experience at this day. That was a
+_negative_ confirmation; by which I mean, that, had their views
+failed in the hands of Laplace, then they were proved to be false; but,
+_not_ failing, they were not therefore proved to be true. It was
+like proving a gun; if the charge is insufficient, or if, in trying the
+strength of cast iron, timber, ropes, &c., the strain is not up to the
+rigor of the demand, you go away with perhaps a favorable impression as
+to the promises of the article; it has stood a moderate trial; it has
+stood all the trial that offered, which is always something; but you
+are still obliged to feel that, when the ultimate test is applied,
+smash may go the whole concern. Lord Rosse applied an ultimate test;
+and smash went the whole concern. Really I must have laughed, though
+all the world had been angry, when the shrieks and yells of expiring
+systems began to reverberate all the way from the belt of Orion; and
+positively at the very first broadside delivered from this huge four-
+decker of a telescope.
+
+But what was it then that went to wreck? That is a thing more easy to
+ask than to answer. At least, for my own part, I complain that some
+vagueness hangs over all the accounts of the nebular hypothesis.
+However, in this place a brief sketch will suffice.
+
+Herschel the elder, having greatly improved the telescope, began to
+observe with special attention a class of remarkable phenomena in the
+starry world hitherto unstudied, viz.: milky spots in various stages of
+diffusion. The nature of these appearances soon cleared itself up thus
+far, that generally they were found to be starry worlds, separated from
+ours by inconceivable distances, and in that way concealing at first
+their real nature. The whitish gleam was the mask conferred by the
+enormity of their remotion. This being so, it might have been supposed
+that, as was the faintness of these cloudy spots or _nebulæ_, such
+was the distance. But _that_ did not follow: for in the treasury
+of nature it turned out that there were other resources for modifying
+the powers of distance, for muffling and unmuffling the voice of stars.
+Suppose a world at the distance _x_, which distance is so great as
+to make the manifestation of that world weak, milky, nebular. Now let
+the secret power that wields these awful orbs, push this world back to
+a double distance! _that_ should naturally make it paler and more
+dilute than ever: and yet by _compression_, by deeper centralization,
+this effect shall be defeated; by forcing into far closer neighborhood
+the stars which compose this world, again it shall gleam out brighter
+when at 2_x_ than when at _x_. At this point of compression, let the
+great moulding power a second time push it back; and a second time it
+will grow faint. But once more let this world be tortured into closer
+compression, again let the screw be put upon it, and once again it
+shall shake off the oppression of distance as the dew-drops are shaken
+from a lion's mane. And thus in fact the mysterious architect plays at
+hide-and-seek with his worlds. 'I will hide it,' he says, 'and it shall
+be found again by man; I will withdraw it into distances that shall
+seem fabulous, and again it shall apparel itself in glorious light; a
+third time I will plunge it into aboriginal darkness, and upon the
+vision of man a third time it shall rise with a new epiphany.'
+
+But, says the objector, there is no such world; there is no world that
+has thus been driven back, and depressed from one deep to a lower deep.
+Granted: but the same effect, an illustration of the same law, is
+produced equally, whether you take four worlds, all of the same
+magnitude, and plunge them _simultaneously_ into four different
+abysses, sinking by graduated distances one below another, or take one
+world and plunge it to the same distances _successively_. So in
+Geology, when men talk of substances in different stages, or of
+transitional states, they do not mean that they have watched the same
+individual _stratum_ or _phenomenon_, exhibiting states removed
+from each other by depths of many thousand years; how could they?
+but they have seen one stage in the case A, another stage in the
+case B. They take, for instance, three objects, the same (to use the
+technical language of logic) generically, though numerically different,
+under separate circumstances, or in different stages of advance. They
+are one object for logic, they are three for human convenience. So
+again it might seem impossible to give the history of a rose tree from
+infancy to age: how could the same rose tree, at the same time, be
+young and old? Yet by taking the different developments of its flowers,
+even as they hang on the same tree, from the earliest bud to the full-
+blown rose, you may in effect pursue this vegetable growth through all
+its stages: you have before you the bony blushing little rose-bud, and
+the respectable 'mediæval' full-blown rose.
+
+This point settled, let it now be remarked, that Herschel's resources
+enabled him to unmask many of these _nebulæ_: stars they were, and
+stars he forced them to own themselves. Why should any decent world
+wear an _alias_? There was nothing, you know, to be ashamed of in
+being an honest cluster of stars. Indeed, they seemed to be sensible of
+this themselves, and they now yielded to the force of Herschel's
+arguments so far as to show themselves in the new character of
+_nebulæ_ spangled with stars; these are the _stellar nebulæ_;
+quite as much as you could expect in so short a time: Rome was not
+built in a day: and one must have some respect to stellar feelings. It
+was noticed, however, that where a bright haze, and not a weak milk-
+and-water haze, had revealed itself to the telescope, this, arising
+from a case of _compression_, (as previously explained,) required
+very little increase of telescopic power to force him into a fuller
+confession. He made a clean breast of it. But at length came a dreadful
+anomaly. A 'nebula' in the constellation _Andromeda_ turned
+restive: another in _Orion_, I grieve to say it, still more so. I
+confine myself to the latter. A very low power sufficed to bring him to
+a slight confession, which in fact amounted to nothing; the very
+highest would not persuade him to show a star. 'Just one,' said some
+coaxing person; 'we'll be satisfied with only one.' But no: he would
+_not_. He was hardened, 'he wouldn't _split_.' And Herschel
+was thus led, after waiting as long as flesh and blood _could_
+wait, to infer two classes of _nebulæ_; one that were stars; and
+another that were _not_ stars, nor ever were meant to be stars.
+Yet _that_ was premature: he found at last, that, though not raised
+to the peerage of stars, finally they would be so: they were the
+matter of stars; and by gradual condensation would become suns, whose
+atmosphere, by a similar process of condensing, would become planets,
+capable of brilliant literati and philosophers, in several volumes
+octavo. So stood the case for a long time; it was settled to the
+satisfaction of Europe that there were two classes of _nebulæ_,
+one that _were_ worlds, one that were _not_, but only the pabulum
+of future worlds. Silence arose. A voice was heard, 'Let there
+be Lord Rosse!' and immediately his telescope walked into Orion;
+destroyed the supposed matter of stars; but, in return, created
+immeasurable worlds.
+
+As a hint for apprehending the delicacy and difficulty of the process
+in sidereal astronomy, let the inexperienced reader figure to himself
+these separate cases of perplexity: 1st, A perplexity where the dilemma
+arises from the collision between magnitude and distance:--is the size
+less, or the distance greater? 2dly, Where the dilemma arises between
+motions, a motion in ourselves doubtfully confounded with a motion in
+some external body; or, 3dly, Where it arises between possible
+positions of an object: is it a real proximity that we see between two
+stars, or simply an apparent proximity from lying in the same visual
+line, though in far other depths of space? As regards the first
+dilemma, we may suppose two laws, A and B, absolutely in contradiction,
+laid down at starting: A, that all fixed stars are precisely at the
+same _distance_; in this case every difference in the apparent
+magnitude will indicate a corresponding difference in the real
+magnitude, and will measure that difference. B, that all the fixed
+stars are precisely of the same _magnitude_; in which case, every
+variety in the size will indicate a corresponding difference in the
+distance, and will measure that difference. Nor could we imagine any
+exception to these inferences from A or from B, whichever of the two
+were assumed, unless through optical laws that might not equally affect
+objects under different circumstances; I mean, for instance, that might
+suffer a disturbance as applied under hypoth. B, to different depths in
+space, or under hypoth. A, to different arrangements of structure in
+the star. But thirdly, it is certain, that neither A nor B is the
+abiding law: and next it becomes an object by science and by
+instruments to distinguish more readily and more certainly between the
+cases where the distance has degraded the size, and the cases where the
+size being _really_ less, has caused an exaggeration of the
+distance: or again, where the size being really less, yet co-operating
+with a distance really greater, may degrade the estimate, (though
+travelling in a right direction,) below the truth; or again where the
+size being really less, yet counteracted by a distance also less, may
+equally disturb the truth of human measurements, and so on.
+
+A second large order of equivocating appearances will arise,--not as to
+magnitude, but as to motion. If it could be a safe assumption, that the
+system to which our planet is attached were absolutely fixed and
+motionless, except as regards its own _internal_ relations of
+movement, then every change outside of us, every motion that the
+registers of astronomy had established, would be objective and not
+subjective. It would be safe to pronounce at once that it was a motion
+in the object contemplated, _not_ in the subject contemplating.
+Or, reversely, if it were safe to assume as a universal law, that no
+motion was possible in the starry heavens, then every change of
+relations in space, between ourselves and them, would indicate and
+would measure a progress, or regress, on the part of our solar system,
+in certain known directions. But now, because it is not safe to rest in
+either assumption, the range of possibilities for which science has to
+provide, is enlarged; the immediate difficulties are multiplied; but
+with the result (as in the former case) of reversionally expanding the
+powers, and consequently the facilities, lodged both in the science and
+in the arts ministerial to the science. Thus, in the constellation
+_Cygnus_, there is a star gradually changing its relation to our
+system, whose distance from ourselves (as Dr. Nichol tells us) is
+ascertained to be about six hundred and seventy thousand times our own
+distance from the sun: that is, neglecting minute accuracy, about six
+hundred and seventy thousand stages of one hundred million miles each.
+This point being known, it falls within the _arts_ of astronomy to
+translate this apparent angular motion into miles; and presuming this
+change of relation to be not in the star, but really in ourselves, we
+may deduce the velocity of our course, we may enter into our _log_
+daily the rate at which our whole solar system is running. Bessel, it
+seems, the eminent astronomer who died lately, computed this velocity
+to be such (viz., three times that of our own earth in its proper
+orbit) as would carry us to the star in forty-one thousand years. But,
+in the mean time, the astronomer is to hold in reserve some small share
+of his attention, some trifle of a side-glance, now and then, to the
+possibility of an error, after all, in the main assumption: he must
+watch the indications, if any such should arise, that not ourselves,
+but the star in _Cygnus_, is the real party concerned, in drifting
+at this shocking rate, with no prospect of coming to an anchorage.
+[Footnote: It is worth adding at this point, whilst the reader
+remembers without effort the numbers, viz., forty-one thousand
+years, for the time, (the space being our own distance from the sun
+repeated six hundred and seventy thousand times,) what would be the
+time required for reaching, in the _body_, that distance to which
+Lord Rosse's six feet mirror has so recently extended our
+_vision_. The time would be, as Dr. Nichol computes, about two
+hundred and fifty millions of years, supposing that our rate of
+travelling was about three times that of our earth in its orbit. Now,
+as the velocity is assumed to be the same in both cases, the ratio
+between the distance (already so tremendous) of Bessel's 61
+_Cygni_, and that of Lord Rosse's farthest frontier, is as forty-
+one thousand to two hundred and fifty millions. This is a simple rule-
+of-three problem for a child. And the answer to it will, perhaps,
+convey the simplest expression of the superhuman power lodged in the
+new telescope:--as is the ratio of forty-one thousand to two hundred
+and fifty million, so is the ratio of our own distance from the sun
+multiplied by six hundred and seventy thousand, to the outermost limit
+of Lord Rosse's sidereal vision.]
+
+Another class, and a frequent one, of equivocal phenomena, phenomena
+that are reconcilable indifferently with either of two assumptions,
+though less plausibly reconciled with the one than with the other,
+concerns the position of stars that seem connected with each other by
+systematic relations, and which yet _may_ lie in very different
+depths of space, being brought into seeming connection only by the
+human eye. There have been, and there are, cases where two stars
+dissemble an interconnection which they really _have_, and other
+cases where they simulate an interconnection which they have not. All
+these cases of simulation and dissimulation torment the astronomer by
+multiplying his perplexities, and deepening the difficulty of escaping
+them. He cannot get at the truth: in many cases, magnitude and distance
+are in collusion with each other to deceive him: motion subjective is
+in collusion with motion objective; duplex systems are in collusion
+with fraudulent stars, having no real partnership whatever, but
+mimicking such a partnership by means of the limitations or errors
+affecting the human eye, where it can apply no other sense to aid or to
+correct itself. So that the business of astronomy, in these days, is no
+sinecure, as the reader perceives. And by another evidence, it is
+continually becoming less of a sinecure. Formerly, one or two men,--
+Tycho, suppose, or, in a later age, Cassini and Horrox, and Bradley,
+had observatories: one man, suppose, observed the stars for all
+Christendom; and the rest of Europe observed _him_. But now, up
+and down Europe, from the deep blue of Italian skies to the cold frosty
+atmospheres of St. Petersburg and Glasgow, the stars are conscious of
+being watched everywhere; and if all astronomers do not publish their
+observations, all use them in their speculations. New and brilliantly
+appointed observatories are rising in every latitude, or risen; and
+none, by the way, of these new-born observatories, is more interesting
+from the circumstances of its position, or more _picturesque_ to a
+higher organ than the eye--viz., to the human heart--than the New
+Observatory raised by the university of Glasgow.[Footnote: It has been
+reported, ever since the autumn of 1845, and the report is now,
+(August, 1846,) gathering strength, that some railway potentate, having
+taken a fancy for the ancient college of Glasgow, as a bauble to hang
+about his wife's neck, (no accounting for tastes,) has offered, (or
+_will_ offer,) such a price, that the good old academic lady in
+this her moss-grown antiquity, seriously thinks of taking him at his
+word, packing up her traps, and being off. When a spirit of galavanting
+comes across an aged lady, it is always difficult to know where it will
+stop: so, in fact, you know, she may choose to steam for Texas. But the
+present impression is, that she will settle down by the side of what
+you may call her married or settled daughter--the Observatory; which
+one would be glad to have confirmed, as indicating that no purpose of
+pleasure-seeking had been working in elderly minds, but the instinct of
+religious rest and aspiration. The Observatory would thus remind one of
+those early Christian anchorites, and self-exiled visionaries, that
+being led by almost a necessity of nature to take up their residence in
+deserts, sometimes drew after themselves the whole of their own
+neighborhood.]
+
+The New Observatory of Glasgow is now, I believe, finished; and the
+only fact connected with its history that was painful, as embodying and
+recording that Vandal alienation from science, literature, and all
+their interests, which has ever marked our too haughty and Caliph-Omar-
+like British government, lay in the circumstance that the glasses of
+the apparatus, the whole mounting of the establishment, in so far as it
+was a scientific establishment, and even the workmen for putting up the
+machinery, were imported from Bavaria. We, that once bade the world
+stand aside when the question arose about glasses, or the graduation of
+instruments, were now literally obliged to stand cap in hand, bowing to
+Mr. Somebody, successor of Frauenhofer or Frauendevil, in Munich! Who
+caused _that_, we should all be glad to know, if not the wicked
+Treasury, that killed the hen that laid the golden eggs by taxing her
+until her spine broke? It is to be hoped that, at this moment, and
+specifically for this offence, some scores of Exchequer men,
+chancellors and other rubbish, are in purgatory, and perhaps working,
+with shirt-sleeves tucked up, in purgatorial glass-houses, with very
+small allowances of beer, to defray the cost of perspiration. But why
+trouble a festal remembrance with commemorations of crimes or
+criminals? What makes the Glasgow Observatory so peculiarly
+interesting, is its position, connected with and overlooking so vast a
+city, having more than three hundred thousand inhabitants, (in spite of
+an American sceptic,) nearly all children of toil; and a city, too,
+which, from the necessities of its circumstances, draws so deeply upon
+that fountain of misery and guilt which some ordinance, as ancient as
+'our father Jacob,' with his patriarchal well for Samaria, has
+bequeathed to manufacturing towns,--to Ninevehs, to Babylons, to Tyres.
+How tarnished with eternal canopies of smoke, and of sorrow; how dark
+with agitations of many orders, is the mighty town below! How serene,
+how quiet, how lifted above the confusion and the roar, how liberated
+from the strifes of earth, is the solemn Observatory that crowns the
+grounds above! And duly, at night, just when the toil of over-wrought
+Glasgow is mercifully relaxing, then comes the summons to the laboring
+astronomer. _He_ speaks not of the night, but of the day and the
+flaunting day-light, as the hours 'in which no man can work.' And the
+least reflecting of men must be impressed by the idea, that at wide
+intervals, but intervals scattered over Europe, whilst 'all that mighty
+heart' is, by sleep, resting from its labors, secret eyes are lifted up
+to heaven in astronomical watch-towers; eyes that keep watch and ward
+over spaces that make us dizzy to remember, eyes that register the
+promises of comets, and disentangle the labyrinths of worlds.
+
+Another feature of interest, connected with the Glasgow Observatory, is
+personal, and founded on the intellectual characteristics of the
+present professor, Dr. Nichol; in the deep meditative style of his mind
+seeking for rest, yet placed in conflict for ever with the tumultuous
+necessity in _him_ for travelling along the line of revolutionary
+thought, and following it loyally, wearied or not, to its natural home.
+
+In a sonnet of Milton, one of three connected with his own blindness,
+he distinguishes between two classes of servants that minister to the
+purposes of God. '_His_ state,' says he, meaning God's state, the
+arrangement of his regular service, 'is kingly;' that is to say, it
+resembles the mode of service established in the courts of kings; and,
+in this, it resembles that service, that there are two classes of
+ministers attending on his pleasure. For, as in the trains of kings are
+some that run without resting, night or day, to carry the royal
+messages, and also others--great lords in waiting--that move not from
+the royal gates; so of the divine retinues, some are for action only,
+some for contemplation. 'Thousands' there are that
+
+  ----'at his bidding speed,
+  And post o'er land and ocean without rest.'
+
+Others, on the contrary, motionless as statues, that share not in the
+agitations of their times, that tremble not in sympathy with the storms
+around them, but that listen--that watch--that wait--for secret
+indications to be fulfilled, or secret signs to be deciphered. And, of
+this latter class, he adds-that they, not less than the others, are
+accepted by God; or, as it is so exquisitely expressed in the closing
+line,
+
+  '_They_ also serve, that only stand and wait.'
+
+Something analogous to this one may see in the distributions of
+literature and science. Many popularize and diffuse: some reap and
+gather on their own account. Many translate, into languages fit for the
+multitude, messages which they receive from human voices: some listen,
+like Kubla Khan, far down in caverns or hanging over subterranean
+rivers, for secret whispers that mingle and confuse themselves with the
+general uproar of torrents, but which can be detected and kept apart by
+the obstinate prophetic ear, which spells into words and ominous
+sentences the distracted syllables of ærial voices. Dr. Nichol is one
+of those who pass to and fro between these classes; and has the rare
+function of keeping open their vital communications. As a popularizing
+astronomer, he has done more for the benefit of his great science than
+all the rest of Europe combined: and now, when he notices, without
+murmur, the fact that his office of popular teacher is almost taken out
+of his hands, (so many are they who have trained of late for the duty,)
+that change has, in fact, been accomplished through knowledge, through
+explanations, through suggestions, dispersed and prompted by himself.
+
+For my own part, as one belonging to the laity, and not to the
+_clerus_, in the science of astronomy, I could scarcely have
+presumed to report minutely, or to sit in the character of dissector
+upon the separate details of Dr. Nichol's works, either this, or those
+which have preceded it, had there even been room left disposable for
+such a task. But in this view it is sufficient to have made the general
+acknowledgment which already _has_ been made, that Dr. Nichol's
+works, and his oral lectures upon astronomy, are to be considered as
+the _fundus_ of the knowledge on that science now working in this
+generation. More important it is, and more in reconciliation with the
+tenor of my own ordinary studies, to notice the philosophic spirit in
+which Dr. Nichol's works are framed; the breadth of his views, the
+eternal tendency of his steps in advance, or (if advance on that
+quarter, or at that point, happens to be absolutely walled out for the
+present,) the vigor of the _reconnoissances_ by which he examines
+the hostile intrenchments. Another feature challenges notice. In
+reading astronomical works, there arises (from old experience of what
+is usually most faulty) a wish either for the naked severities of
+science, with a total abstinence from all display of enthusiasm; or
+else, if the cravings of human sensibility are to be met and gratified,
+that it shall be by an enthusiasm unaffected and grand as its subject.
+Of that kind is the enthusiasm of Dr. Nichol. The grandeurs of
+astronomy are such to him who has a capacity for being grandly moved.
+They are none at all to him who has not. To the mean they become
+meannesses. Space, for example, has no grandeur to him who has no space
+in the theatre of his own brain. I know writers who report the marvels
+of velocity, &c., in such a way that they become insults to yourself.
+It is obvious that in _their_ way of insisting on our earth's
+speed in her annual orbit, they do not seek to exalt _her_, but to
+mortify _you_. And, besides, these fellows are answerable for
+provoking people into fibs:--for I remember one day, that reading a
+statement of this nature, about how many things the Earth had done that
+we could never hope to do, and about the number of cannon balls,
+harnessed as a _tandem_, which the Earth would fly past, without
+leaving time to say, _How are you off for soap?_ in vexation of
+heart I could not help exclaiming--'That's nothing: I've done a great
+deal more myself;' though, when one turns it in one's mind, you know
+there must be some inaccuracy _there_. How different is Dr.
+Nichol's enthusiasm from this hypocritical and vulgar wonderment! It
+shows itself not merely in reflecting the grandeurs of his theme, and
+by the sure test of detecting and allying itself with all the indirect
+grandeurs that arrange themselves from any distance, upon or about that
+centre, but by the manifest promptness with which Dr. Nichol's
+enthusiasm awakens itself upon _every_ road that leads to things
+elevating for man; or to things promising for knowledge; or to things
+which, like dubious theories or imperfect attempts at systematizing,
+though neutral as regards knowledge, minister to what is greater than
+knowledge, viz., to intellectual _power_, to the augmented power
+of handling your materials, though with no more materials than before.
+In his geological and cosmological inquiries, in his casual
+speculations, the same quality of intellect betrays itself; the
+intellect that labors in sympathy with the laboring _nisus_ of
+these gladiatorial times; that works (and sees the necessity of
+working) the apparatus of many sciences towards a composite result; the
+intellect that retires in one direction only to make head in another;
+and that already is prefiguring the route beyond the barriers, whilst
+yet the gates are locked.
+
+There was a man in the last century, and an eminent man too, who used
+to say, that whereas people in general pretended to admire astronomy as
+being essentially sublime, he for _his_ part looked upon all that
+sort of thing as a swindle; and, on the contrary, he regarded the solar
+system as decidedly vulgar; because the planets were all of them so
+infernally punctual, they kept time with such horrible precision, that
+they forced him, whether he would or no, to think of nothing but post-
+office clocks, mail-coaches, and book-keepers. Regularity may be
+beautiful, but it excludes the sublime. What he wished for was
+something like Lloyd's list.
+
+_Comets_--due 3; arrived 1.
+_Mercury_, when last seen, appeared to be distressed; but made no
+signals.
+_Pallas_ and _Vesta_, not heard of for some time; supposed to
+have foundered.
+_Moon_, spoken last night through a heavy bank of clouds; out
+sixteen days: all right.
+
+Now this poor man's misfortune was, to have lived in the days of mere
+planetary astronomy. At present, when our own little system, with all
+its grandeurs, has dwindled by comparison to a subordinate province, if
+any man is bold enough to say so, a poor shivering unit amongst myriads
+that are brighter, we ought no longer to talk of astronomy, but of
+_the astronomies_. There is the planetary, the cometary, the
+sidereal, perhaps also others; as, for instance, even yet the nebular;
+because, though Lord Rosse has smitten it with the son of Amram's rod,
+has made it open, and cloven a path through it, yet other and more
+fearful _nebulæ_ may loom in sight, (if further improvements
+should be effected in the telescope,) that may puzzle even Lord Rosse.
+And when he tells his _famulus_--'Fire a shot at that strange
+fellow, and make him show his colors,' possibly the mighty stranger may
+disdain the summons. That would be vexatious: we should all be incensed
+at _that_. But no matter. What's a _nebula_, what's a world,
+more or less? In the spiritual heavens are many mansions: in the starry
+heavens, that are now unfolding and preparing to unfold before us, are
+many vacant areas upon which the astronomer may pitch his secret
+pavilion. He may dedicate himself to the service of the _Double
+Suns_; he has my license to devote his whole time to the quadruple
+system of suns in _Lyra_. Swammerdam spent his life in a ditch
+watching frogs and tadpoles; why may not an astronomer give nine lives,
+if he had them, to the watching of that awful appearance in
+_Hercules_, which pretends to some rights over our own unoffending
+system? Why may he not mount guard with public approbation, for the
+next fifty years, upon the zodiacal light, the interplanetary ether,
+and other rarities, which the professional body of astronomers would
+naturally keep (if they could) for their own private enjoyment? There
+is no want of variety now, nor in fact of irregularity: for the most
+exquisite clock-work, which from enormous distance _seems_ to go
+wrong, virtually for us _does_ go wrong; so that our friend of the
+last century, who complained of the solar system, would not need to do
+so any longer. There are anomalies enough to keep him cheerful. There
+are now even things to alarm us; for anything in the starry worlds that
+look suspicious, anything that ought _not_ to be there, is, for
+all purposes of frightening us, as good as a ghost.
+
+But of all the novelties that excite my own interest in the expanding
+astronomy of recent times, the most delightful and promising are those
+charming little pyrotechnic planetoids,[Footnote: _'Pyrotechnic
+Planetoids:'_--The reader will understand me as alluding to the
+periodic shooting stars. It is now well known, that as, upon our own
+poor little earthly ocean, we fall in with certain phenomena as we
+approach certain latitudes; so also upon the great ocean navigated by
+our Earth, we fall in with prodigious showers of these meteors at
+periods no longer uncertain, but fixed as jail-deliveries. 'These
+remarkable showers of meteors,' says Dr. Nichol, 'observed at different
+periods in August and November, seem to demonstrate the fact, that, at
+these periods, we have come in contact with two streams of such
+planetoids then intersecting the earth's orbit.' If they intermit, it
+is only because they are shifting their nodes, or points of
+intersection.] that variegate our annual course. It always struck me as
+most disgusting, that, in going round the sun, we must be passing
+continually over old roads, and yet we had no means of establishing an
+acquaintance with them: they might as well be new for every trip. Those
+chambers of ether, through which we are tearing along night and day,
+(for _our_ train stops at no stations,) doubtless, if we could put
+some mark upon them, must be old fellows perfectly liable to
+recognition. I suppose, _they_ never have notice to quit. And yet,
+for want of such a mark, though all our lives flying past them and
+through them, we can never challenge them as known. The same thing
+happens in the desert: one monotonous iteration of sand, sand, sand,
+unless where some miserable fountain stagnates, forbids all approach to
+familiarity: nothing is circumstantiated or differenced: travel it for
+three generations, and you are no nearer to identification of its
+parts: so that it amounts to travelling through an abstract idea. For
+the desert, really I suspect the thing is hopeless: but, as regards our
+planetary orbit, matters are mending: for the last six or seven years I
+have heard of these fiery showers, but indeed I cannot say how much
+earlier they were first noticed,[Footnote: Somewhere I have seen it
+remarked, that if, on a public road, you meet a party of four women, it
+is at least fifty to one that they are all laughing; whereas, if you
+meet an equal party of my own unhappy sex, you may wager safely that
+they are talking gravely, and that one of them is uttering the word
+_money_. Hence it must be, viz, because our sisters are too much
+occupied with the playful things of this earth, and our brothers with
+its gravities, that neither party sufficiently watches the skies. And
+_that_ accounts for a fact which often has struck myself, viz.,
+that, in cities, on bright moonless nights, when some brilliant
+skirmishings of the Aurora are exhibiting, or even a luminous arch,
+which is a broad ribbon of snowy light that spans the skies, positively
+unless I myself say to people--'Eyes upwards!' not one in a hundred,
+male or female, but fails to see the show, though it may be seen
+_gratis_, simply because their eyes are too uniformly reading the
+earth. This downward direction of the eyes, however, must have been
+worse in former ages: because else it never _could_ have happened
+that, until Queen Anne's days, nobody ever hinted in a book that there
+_was_ such a thing, or _could_ be such a thing, as the Aurora
+Borealis; and in fact Halley had the credit of discovering it.] as
+celebrating two annual festivals--one in August, one in November. You
+are a little too late, reader, for seeing this year's summer festival;
+but that's no reason why you should not engage a good seat for the
+November meeting; which, if I recollect, is about the 9th, or the Lord
+Mayor's day, and on the whole better worth seeing. For anything
+_we_ know, this may be a great day in the earth's earlier history;
+she may have put forth her original rose on this day, or tried her hand
+at a primitive specimen of wheat; or she may, in fact, have survived
+some gunpowder plot about this time; so that the meteoric appearance
+may be a kind congratulating _feu-de-joye_, on the anniversary of
+the happy event. What it is that the 'cosmogony man' in the 'Vicar of
+Wakefield' would have thought of such novelties, whether he would have
+favored us with his usual opinion upon such topics, viz., that
+_anarchon ara kai ateleutaion to pan_, or have sported a new one
+exclusively for this occasion, may be doubtful. What it is that
+astronomers think, who are a kind of 'cosmogony men,' the reader may
+learn from Dr. Nichol, Note B, (p. 139, 140.)
+
+In taking leave of a book and a subject so well fitted to draw out the
+highest mode of that grandeur, which _can_ connect itself with the
+external, (a grandeur capable of drawing down a spiritual being to
+earth, but not of raising an earthly being to heaven,) I would wish to
+contribute my own brief word of homage to this grandeur by recalling
+from a fading remembrance of twenty-five years back a short
+_bravura_ of John Paul Richter. I call it a _bravura_, as being
+intentionally a passage of display and elaborate execution; and
+in this sense I may call it partly 'my own,' that at twenty-five years'
+distance, (after one single reading,) it would not have been possible
+for any man to report a passage of this length without greatly
+disturbing [Footnote: _'Disturbing;'_--neither perhaps should I
+much have sought to avoid alterations if the original had been lying
+before me: for it takes the shape of a dream; and this most brilliant
+of all German writers wanted in that field the severe simplicity, that
+horror of the _too much_, belonging to Grecian architecture, which
+is essential to the perfection of a dream considered as a work of art.
+He was too elaborate, to realize the grandeur of the shadowy.] the
+texture of the composition: by altering, one makes it partly one's own;
+but it is right to mention, that the sublime turn at the end belongs
+entirely to John Paul.
+
+'God called up from dreams a man into the vestibule of heaven, saying,
+--"Come thou hither, and see the glory of my house." And to the
+servants that stood around his throne he said,--"Take him, and undress
+him from his robes of flesh: cleanse his vision, and put a new breath
+into his nostrils: only touch not with any change his human heart--the
+heart that weeps and trembles." It was done; and, with a mighty angel
+for his guide, the man stood ready for his infinite voyage; and from
+the terraces of heaven, without sound or farewell, at once they wheeled
+away into endless space. Sometimes with the solemn flight of angel wing
+they fled through Zaarrahs of darkness, through wildernesses of death,
+that divided the worlds of life: sometimes they swept over frontiers,
+that were quickening under prophetic motions from God. Then, from a
+distance that is counted only in heaven, light dawned for a time
+through a sleepy film: by unutterable pace the light swept to
+_them_, they by unutterable pace to the light: in a moment the
+rushing of planets was upon them: in a moment the blazing of suns was
+around them. Then came eternities of twilight, that revealed, but were
+not revealed. To the right hand and to the left towered mighty
+constellations, that by self-repetitions and answers from afar, that by
+counter-positions, built up triumphal gates, whose architraves, whose
+archways--horizontal, upright--rested, rose--at altitudes, by spans--
+that seemed ghostly from infinitude. Without measure were the
+architraves, past number were the archways, beyond memory the gates.
+Within were stairs that scaled the eternities above, that descended to
+the eternities below: above was below, below was above, to the man
+stripped of gravitating body: depth was swallowed up in height
+insurmountable, height was swallowed up in depth unfathomable. Suddenly
+as thus they rode from infinite to infinite, suddenly as thus they
+tilted over abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose--that systems more
+mysterious, that worlds more billowy,--other heights, and other
+depths,--were coming, were nearing, were at hand. Then the man sighed,
+and stopped, shuddered and wept. His over-laden heart uttered itself in
+tears; and he said,--"Angel, I will go no farther. For the spirit of
+man aches with this infinity. Insufferable is the glory of God. Let me
+lie down in the grave from the persecutions of the infinite; for end, I
+see, there is none." And from all the listening stars that shone around
+issued a choral voice, "The man speaks truly: end there is none, that
+ever yet we heard of." "End is there none?" the angel solemnly
+demanded: "Is there indeed no end? And is this the sorrow that kills
+you?" But no voice answered, that he might answer himself. Then the
+angel threw up his glorious hands to the heaven of heavens; saying,
+"End is there none to the universe of God? Lo! also there is no
+Beginning."'
+
+
+NOTE.--On throwing his eyes hastily over the preceding paper, the
+writer becomes afraid that some readers may give such an interpretation
+to a few playful expressions upon the age of our earth, &c., as to
+class him with those who use geology, cosmology, &c., for purposes of
+attack, or insinuation against the Scriptures. Upon this point,
+therefore, he wishes to make a firm explanation of his own opinions,
+which, (whether right or wrong,) will liberate him, once and for all,
+from any such jealousy.
+
+It is sometimes said, that the revealer of a true religion, does not
+come amongst men for the sake of teaching truths in science, or
+correcting errors in science. Most justly is this said: but often in
+terms far too feeble. For generally these terms are such as to imply,
+that, although no function of his mission, it was yet open to him--
+although not pressing with the force of an obligation upon the
+revealer, it was yet at his discretion--if not to correct other men's
+errors, yet at least in his own person to speak with scientific
+precision. I contend that it was _not_. I contend, that to have
+uttered the truths of astronomy, of geology, &c., at the era of new-
+born Christianity, was not only _below_ the purposes of a
+religion, but would have been _against_ them. Even upon errors of
+a far more important class than any errors in science can ever be,--
+superstitions, for instance, that degraded the very idea of God;
+prejudices and false usages, that laid waste human happiness, (such as
+slavery and many hundreds of other abuses that might be mentioned,) the
+rule evidently acted upon by the Founder of Christianity was this--
+Given the purification of the fountain, once assumed that the fountains
+of truth are cleansed, all these derivative currents of evil will
+cleanse themselves. And the only exceptions, which I remember, to this
+rule, are two cases in which, from the personal appeal made to his
+decision, Christ would have made himself a party to wretched delusions,
+if he had not condescended to expose their folly. But, as a general
+rule, the branches of error were disregarded, and the roots only
+attacked. If, then, so lofty a station was taken with regard even to
+such errors as had moral and spiritual relations, how much more with
+regard to the comparative trifles, (as in the ultimate relations of
+human nature they are,) of merely human science! But, for my part, I go
+further, and assert, that upon three reasons it was impossible for any
+messenger from God, (or offering himself in that character,) for a
+moment to have descended into the communication of truth merely
+scientific, or economic, or worldly. And the reasons are these:
+_First_, Because it would have degraded his mission, by lowering
+it to the base level of a collision with human curiosity, or with petty
+and transitory interests. _Secondly_, Because it would have ruined
+his mission; would utterly have prostrated the free agency and the
+proper agency of that mission. He that, in those days, should have
+proclaimed the true theory of the Solar System and the heavenly forces,
+would have been shut up at once--as a lunatic likely to become
+dangerous. But suppose him to have escaped _that_; still, as a
+divine teacher, he has no liberty of caprice. He must stand to the
+promises of his own acts. Uttering the first truth of a science, he is
+pledged to the second: taking the main step, he is committed to all
+which follow. He is thrown at once upon the endless controversies which
+science in every stage provokes, and in none more than in the earliest.
+Or, if he retires as from a scene of contest that he had not
+anticipated, he retires as one confessing a human precipitance and a
+human oversight, weaknesses, venial in others, but fatal to the
+pretensions of a divine teacher. Starting besides from such
+pretensions, he could not (as others might) have the privilege of
+selecting arbitrarily or partially. If upon one science, then upon
+all,--if upon science, then upon, art,--if upon art and science, then
+upon _every_ branch of social economy, upon _every_ organ of
+civilization, his reformations and advances are equally due; due as to
+all, if due as to any. To move in one direction, is constructively to
+undertake for all. Without power to retreat, he has thus thrown the
+intellectual interests of his followers into a channel utterly alien to
+the purposes of a spiritual mission.
+
+Thus far he has simply failed: but next comes a worse result; an evil,
+not negative but positive. Because, _thirdly_, to apply the light
+of a revelation for the benefit of a merely human science, which is
+virtually done by so applying the illumination of an _inspired_
+teacher, is--to assault capitally the scheme of God's discipline and
+training for man. To improve by _heavenly_ means, if but in one
+solitary science--to lighten, if but in one solitary section, the
+condition of difficulty which had been designed for the strengthening
+and training of human faculties, is _pro tanto_ to disturb--to
+cancel--to contradict a previous purpose of God, made known by silent
+indications from the beginning of the world. Wherefore did God give to
+man the powers for contending with scientific difficulties? Wherefore
+did he lay a secret train of continual occasions, that should rise, by
+intervals, through thousands of generations, for provoking and
+developing those activities in man's intellect, if, after all, he is to
+send a messenger of his own, more than human, to intercept and strangle
+all these great purposes? When, therefore, the persecutors of Galileo,
+alleged that Jupiter, for instance, could not move in the way alleged,
+because then the Bible would have proclaimed it,--as they thus threw
+back upon God the burthen of discovery, which he had thrown upon
+Galileo, why did they not, by following out their own logic, throw upon
+the Bible the duty of discovering the telescope, or discovering the
+satellites of Jupiter? And, as no such discoveries were there, why did
+they not, by parity of logic, and for mere consistency, deny the
+telescope as a fact, deny the Jovian planets as facts? But this it is
+to mistake the very meaning and purposes of a revelation. A revelation
+is not made for the purpose of showing to idle men that which they may
+show to themselves, by faculties already given to them, if only they
+will exert those faculties, but for the purpose of showing _that_
+which the moral darkness of man will not, without supernatural light,
+allow him to perceive. With disdain, therefore, must every considerate
+person regard the notion,--that God could wilfully interfere with his
+own plans, by accrediting ambassadors to reveal astronomy, or any other
+science, which he has commanded men to cultivate _without_
+revelation, by endowing them with all the natural powers for doing so.
+
+Even as regards astronomy, a science so nearly allying itself to
+religion by the loftiness and by the purity of its contemplations,
+Scripture is nowhere the _parent_ of any doctrine, nor so much as
+the silent sanctioner of any doctrine. Scripture cannot become the
+author of falsehood,--though it were as to a trifle, cannot become a
+party to falsehood. And it is made impossible for Scripture to teach
+falsely, by the simple fact that Scripture, on such subjects, will not
+condescend to teach at all. The Bible adopts the erroneous language of
+men, (which at any rate it must do, in order to make itself
+understood,) not by way of sanctioning a theory, but by way of using a
+fact. The Bible _uses_ (postulates) the phenomena of day and
+night, of summer and winter, and expresses them, in relation to their
+causes, as _men_ express them, men, even, that are scientific
+astronomers. But the results, which are all that concern Scripture, are
+equally true, whether accounted for by one hypothesis which is
+philosophically just, or by another which is popular and erring.
+
+Now, on the other hand, in geology and cosmology, the case is still
+stronger. _Here_ there is no opening for a compliance even with
+popular language. _Here_, where there is no such stream of
+apparent phenomena running counter (as in astronomy) to the real
+phenomena, neither is there any popular language opposed to the
+scientific. The whole are abstruse speculations, even as regards their
+objects, not dreamed of as possibilities, either in their true aspects
+or their false aspects, till modern times. The Scriptures, therefore,
+nowhere allude to such sciences, either under the shape of histories,
+applied to processes current and in movement, or under the shape of
+theories applied to processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic
+cosmogony, indeed, gives the succession of natural births; and that
+succession will doubtless be more and more confirmed and illustrated as
+geology advances. But as to the time, the duration, of this cosmogony,
+it is the idlest of notions that the Scriptures either have or could
+have condescended to human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the
+drama of this world. Genesis would no more have indulged so mean a
+passion with respect to the mysterious inauguration of the world, than
+the Apocalypse with respect to its mysterious close. 'Yet the six
+_days_ of Moses!' Days! But is any man so little versed in biblical
+language as not to know that (except in the merely historical
+parts of the Jewish records) every section of time has a secret and
+separate acceptation in the Scriptures? Does an _æon_, though a
+Grecian word, bear scripturally [either in Daniel or in Saint John] any
+sense known to Grecian ears? Do the seventy _weeks_ of the prophet
+mean weeks in the sense of human calendars? Already the Psalms, (xc)
+already St. Peter, (2d Epist.) warn us of a peculiar sense attached to
+the word _day_ in divine ears? And who of the innumerable
+interpreters understands the twelve hundred and odd days in Daniel, or
+his two thousand and odd days, to mean, by possibility, periods of
+twenty-four hours? Surely the theme of Moses was as mystical, and as
+much entitled to the benefit of mystical language, as that of the
+prophets.
+
+The sum of the matter is this:--God, by a Hebrew prophet, is sublimely
+described as _the Revealer_; and, in variation of his own expression,
+the same prophet describes him as the Being 'that knoweth the
+darkness.' Under no idea can the relations of God to man be more
+grandly expressed. But of what is he the revealer? Not surely of those
+things which he has enabled man to reveal for himself, and which he has
+commanded him so to reveal, but of those things which, were it not
+through special light from heaven, must eternally remain sealed up in
+the inaccessible darkness. On this principle we should all laugh at a
+revealed cookery. But essentially the same ridicule applies to a
+revealed astronomy, or a revealed geology. As a fact, there _is_
+no such astronomy or geology: as a possibility, by the _a priori_
+argument which I have used, (viz., that a revelation on such fields,
+would contradict _other_ machineries of providence,) there _can_ be no
+such astronomy or geology. Consequently there _can_ be none such in the
+Bible. Consequently there _is_ none. Consequently there can be no
+schism or feud upon _these_ subjects between the Bible and the
+philosophies outside. Geology is a field left open, with the amplest
+permission from above, to the widest and wildest speculations of man.
+
+
+
+
+MODERN SUPERSTITION
+
+
+It is said continually--that the age of miracles is past. We deny that
+it is so in any sense which implies this age to differ from all other
+generations of man except one. It is neither past, nor ought we to wish
+it past. Superstition is no vice in the constitution of man: it is not
+true that, in any philosophic view, _primus in orbe deos fecit timor_
+--meaning by _fecit_ even so much as _raised into light_. As Burke
+remarked, the _timor_ at least must be presumed to preexist, and must
+be accounted for, if not the gods. If the fear created the gods, what
+created the fear? Far more true, and more just to the grandeur of man,
+it would have been to say--_Primus in orbe deos fecit sensus
+infiniti_. Even in the lowest Caffre, more goes to the sense of a
+divine being than simply his wrath or his power. Superstition, indeed,
+or the sympathy with the invisible, is the great test of man's nature,
+as an earthly combining with a celestial. In superstition lies the
+possibility of religion. And though superstition is often injurious,
+degrading, demoralizing, it is so, not as a form of corruption or
+degradation, but as a form of non-development. The crab is harsh, and
+for itself worthless. But it is the germinal form of innumerable finer
+fruits: not apples only the most exquisite, and pears; the peach and
+the nectarine are said to have radiated from this austere stock when
+cultured, developed, and transferred to all varieties of climate.
+Superstition will finally pass into pure forms of religion as man
+advances. It would be matter of lamentation to hear that superstition
+had at all decayed until man had made corresponding steps in the
+purification and development of his intellect as applicable to
+religious faith. Let us hope that this is not so. And, by way of
+judging, let us throw a hasty eye over the modes of popular
+superstition. If these manifest their vitality, it will prove that the
+popular intellect does not go along with the bookish or the worldly
+(philosophic we cannot call it) in pronouncing the miraculous extinct.
+The popular feeling is all in all.
+
+This function of miraculous power, which is most widely diffused
+through Pagan and Christian ages alike, but which has the least root in
+the solemnities of the imagination, we may call the _Ovidian_. By
+way of distinction, it may be so called; and with some justice, since
+Ovid in his _Metamorphoses_ gave the first elaborate record of
+such a tendency in human superstition. It is a movement of superstition
+under the domination of human affections; a mode of spiritual awe which
+seeks to reconcile itself with human tenderness or admiration; and
+which represents supernatural power as expressing itself by a sympathy
+with human distress or passion concurrently with human sympathies, and
+as supporting that blended sympathy by a symbol incarnated with the
+fixed agencies of nature. For instance, a pair of youthful lovers
+perish by a double suicide originating in a fatal mistake, and a
+mistake operating in each case through a noble self-oblivion. The tree
+under which their meeting has been concerted, and which witnesses their
+tragedy, is supposed ever afterwards to express the divine sympathy
+with this catastrophe in the gloomy color of its fruit:--
+
+  'At tu, quæ ramis (arbor!) miserabile corpus
+  Nunc tegis unius, mox es tectura duorum,
+  Signa tene cædis:--pullosque et luctibus aptos
+  Semper habe fructus--gemini monumenta cruoris:'
+
+Such is the dying adjuration of the lady to the tree. And the fruit
+becomes from that time a monument of a double sympathy--sympathy from
+man, sympathy from a dark power standing behind the agencies of nature,
+and speaking through them. Meantime the object of this sympathy is
+understood to be not the individual catastrophe, but the universal case
+of unfortunate love exemplified in this particular romance. The
+inimitable grace with which Ovid has delivered these early traditions
+of human tenderness, blending with human superstition, is notorious;
+the artfulness of the pervading connection, by which every tale in the
+long succession is made to arise spontaneously out of that which
+precedes, is absolutely unrivalled; and this it was, with his luxuriant
+gayety, which procured for him a preference, even with Milton, a poet
+so opposite by intellectual constitution. It is but reasonable,
+therefore, that this function of the miraculous should bear the name of
+_Ovidian_. Pagan it was in its birth; and to paganism its titles
+ultimately ascend. Yet we know that in the transitional state through
+the centuries succeeding to Christ, during which paganism and
+Christianity were slowly descending and ascending, as if from two
+different strata of the atmosphere, the two powers interchanged
+whatsoever they could. (See Conyer's Middleton; and see Blount of our
+own days.) It marked the earthly nature of paganism, that it could
+borrow little or nothing by organization: it was fitted to no
+expansion. But the true faith, from its vast and comprehensive
+adaptation to the nature of man, lent itself to many corruptions--some
+deadly in their tendencies, some harmless. Amongst these last was the
+Ovidian form of connecting the unseen powers moving in nature with
+human sympathies of love or reverence. The legends of this kind are
+universal and endless. No land, the most austere in its Protestantism,
+but has adopted these superstitions: and everywhere by those even who
+reject them they are entertained with some degree of affectionate
+respect. That the ass, which in its very degradation still retains an
+under-power of sublimity, [Footnote: '_An under-power of sublimity_.'--
+Everybody knows that Homer compared the Telamonian Ajax, in a moment of
+heroic endurance, to an ass. This, however, was only under a momentary
+glance from a peculiar angle of the case. But the Mahometan, too
+solemn, and also perhaps too stupid to catch the fanciful colors of
+things, absolutely by choice, under the Bagdad Caliphate, decorated a
+most favorite hero with the title of the _Ass_--which title is
+repeated with veneration to this day. The wild ass is one of the few
+animals which has the reputation of never flying from an enemy.] or of
+sublime suggestion through its ancient connection with the wilderness,
+with the Orient, with Jerusalem, should have been honored amongst all
+animals, by the visible impression upon its back of Christian symbols
+--seems reasonable even to the infantine understanding when made
+acquainted with its meekness, its patience, its suffering life, and
+its association with the founder of Christianity in one great
+triumphal solemnity. The very man who brutally abuses it, and feels a
+hardhearted contempt for its misery and its submission, has a semi-
+conscious feeling that the same qualities were possibly those which
+recommended it to a distinction, [Footnote: '_Which recommended it to
+a distinction_.'--It might be objected that the Oriental ass was often
+a superb animal; that it is spoken of prophetically as such; and that
+historically the Syrian ass is made known to us as having been
+used in the prosperous ages of Judea for the riding of princes. But
+this is no objection. Those circumstances in the history of the ass
+were requisite to establish its symbolic propriety in a great symbolic
+pageant of triumph. Whilst, on the other hand, the individual animal,
+there is good reason to think, was marked by all the qualities of the
+general race as a suffering and unoffending tribe in the animal
+creation. The asses on which princes rode were of a separate color, of
+a peculiar breed, and improved, like the English racer, by continual
+care.] when all things were valued upon a scale inverse to that of the
+world. Certain it is, that in all Christian lands the legend about the
+ass is current amongst the rural population. The haddock, again,
+amongst marine animals, is supposed, throughout all maritime Europe, to
+be a privileged fish; even in austere Scotland, every child can point
+out the impression of St. Peter's thumb, by which from age to age it is
+distinguished from fishes having otherwise an external resemblance. All
+domesticated cattle, having the benefit of man's guardianship and care,
+are believed throughout England and Germany to go down upon their knees
+at one particular moment of Christmas eve, when the fields are covered
+with darkness, when no eye looks down but that of God, and when the
+exact anniversary hour revolves of the angelic song, once rolling over
+the fields and flocks of Palestine. [Footnote: Mahometanism, which
+everywhere pillages Christianity, cannot but have its own face at times
+glorified by its stolen jewels. This solemn hour of jubilation,
+gathering even the brutal natures into its fold, recalls accordingly
+the Mahometan legend (which the reader may remember is one of those
+incorporated into Southey's _Thalaba_) of a great hour revolving
+once in every year, during which the gates of Paradise were thrown open
+to their utmost extent, and gales of happiness issued forth upon the
+total family of man.] The Glastonbury Thorn is a more local
+superstition; but at one time the legend was as widely diffused as that
+of Loretto, with the angelic translation of its sanctities: on
+Christmas morning, it was devoutly believed by all Christendom, that
+this holy thorn put forth its annual blossoms. And with respect to the
+aspen tree, which Mrs. Hemans very naturally mistook for a Welsh
+legend, having first heard it in Denbighshire, the popular faith is
+universal--that it shivers mystically in sympathy with the horror of
+that mother tree in Palestine which was compelled to furnish materials
+for the cross. Neither would it in this case be any objection, if a
+passage were produced from Solinus or Theophrastus, implying that the
+aspen tree had always shivered--for the tree might presumably be
+penetrated by remote presentiments, as well as by remote remembrances.
+In so vast a case the obscure sympathy should stretch, Janus-like, each
+way. And an objection of the same kind to the rainbow, considered as
+the sign or seal by which God attested his covenant in bar of all
+future deluges, may be parried in something of the same way. It was not
+then first created--true: but it was then first selected by preference,
+amongst a multitude of natural signs as yet unappropriated, and then
+first charged with the new function of a message and a ratification to
+man. Pretty much the same theory, that is, the same way of accounting
+for the natural existence without disturbing the supernatural
+functions, may be applied to the great constellation of the other
+hemisphere, called the Southern Cross. It is viewed popularly in South
+America, and the southern parts of our northern hemisphere, as the
+great banner, or gonfalon, held aloft by Heaven before the Spanish
+heralds of the true faith in 1492. To that superstitious and ignorant
+race it costs not an effort to suppose, that by some synchronizing
+miracle, the constellation had been then specially called into
+existence at the very moment when the first Christian procession,
+bearing a cross in their arms, solemnly stepped on shore from the
+vessels of Christendom. We Protestants know better: we understand the
+impossibility of supposing such a narrow and local reference in orbs,
+so transcendently vast as those composing the constellation--orbs
+removed from each other by such unvoyageable worlds of space, and
+having, in fact, no real reference to each other more than to any other
+heavenly bodies whatsoever. The unity of synthesis, by which they are
+composed into one figure of a cross, we know to be a mere accidental
+result from an arbitrary synthesis of human fancy. Take such and such
+stars, compose them into letters, and they will spell such a word. But
+still it was our own choice--a synthesis of our own fancy, originally
+to combine them in this way. They might be divided from each other, and
+otherwise combined. All this is true: and yet, as the combination does
+spontaneously offer itself [Footnote: '_Does spontaneously offer
+itself._'--Heber (Bishop of Calcutta) complains that this constellation
+is not composed of stars answering his expectation in point of
+magnitude. But he admits that the dark barren space around it
+gives to this inferior magnitude a very advantageous relief.] to every
+eye, as the glorious cross does really glitter for ever through the
+silent hours of a vast hemisphere, even they who are not superstitious,
+may willingly yield to the belief--that, as the rainbow was laid in the
+very elements and necessities of nature, yet still bearing a pre-
+dedication to a service which would not be called for until many ages
+had passed, so also the mysterious cipher of man's imperishable hopes
+may have been entwined and enwreathed with the starry heavens from
+their earliest creation, as a prefiguration--as a silent heraldry of
+hope through one period, and as a heraldry of gratitude through the
+other.
+
+All these cases which we have been rehearsing, taking them in the
+fullest literality, agree in this general point of union--they are all
+silent incarnations of miraculous power--miracles, supposing them to
+have been such originally, locked up and embodied in the regular course
+of nature, just as we see lineaments of faces and of forms in
+petrifactions, in variegated marbles, in spars, or in rocky strata,
+which our fancy interprets as once having been real human existences;
+but which are now confounded with the substance of a mineral product.
+Even those who are most superstitious, therefore, look upon cases of
+this order as occupying a midway station between the physical and the
+hyperphysical, between the regular course of nature and the
+providential interruption of that course. The stream of the miraculous
+is here confluent with the stream of the natural. By such legends the
+credulous man finds his superstition but little nursed; the incredulous
+finds his philosophy but little revolted. Both alike will be willing to
+admit, for instance, that the apparent act of reverential thanksgiving,
+in certain birds, when drinking, is caused and supported by a
+physiological arrangement; and yet, perhaps, both alike would bend so
+far to the legendary faith as to allow a child to believe, and would
+perceive a pure childlike beauty in believing, that the bird was thus
+rendering a homage of deep thankfulness to the universal Father, who
+watches for the safety of sparrows, and sends his rain upon the just
+and upon the unjust. In short, the faith in this order of the physico-
+miraculous is open alike to the sceptical and the non-sceptical: it is
+touched superficially with the coloring of superstition, with its
+tenderness, its humility, its thankfulness, its awe; but, on the other
+hand, it is not therefore tainted with the coarseness, with the
+silliness, with the credulity of superstition. Such a faith reposes
+upon the universal signs diffused through nature, and blends with the
+mysterious of natural grandeurs wherever found--with the mysterious of
+the starry heavens, with the mysterious of music, and with that
+infinite form of the mysterious for man's dimmest misgivings--
+
+  'Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.'
+
+But, from this earliest note in the ascending scale of superstitious
+faith, let us pass to a more alarming key. This first, which we have
+styled (in equity as well as for distinction) the _Ovidian_, is
+too ærial, too allegoric, almost to be susceptible of much terror. It
+is the mere _fancy_, in a mood half-playful, half-tender, which
+submits to the belief. It is the feeling, the sentiment, which creates
+the faith; not the faith which creates the feeling. And thus far we see
+that modern feeling and Christian feeling has been to the full as
+operative as any that is peculiar to paganism; judging by the Romish
+_Legenda_, very much more so. The Ovidian illustrations, under a
+false superstition, are entitled to give the designation, as being the
+first, the earliest, but not at all as the richest. Besides that,
+Ovid's illustrations emanated often from himself individually, not from
+the popular mind of his country; ours of the same classification
+uniformly repose on large popular traditions from the whole of
+Christian antiquity. These again are agencies of the supernatural which
+can never have a private or personal application; they belong to all
+mankind and to all generations. But the next in order are more solemn;
+they become terrific by becoming personal. These comprehend all that
+vast body of the marvellous which is expressed by the word _Ominous_.
+On this head, as dividing itself into the ancient and modern, we will
+speak next.
+
+Everybody is aware of the deep emphasis which the Pagans laid upon
+words and upon names, under this aspect of the ominous. The name of
+several places was formally changed by the Roman government, solely
+with a view to that contagion of evil which was thought to lurk in the
+syllables, if taken significantly. Thus, the town of Maleventum, (Ill-
+come, as one might render it,) had its name changed by the Romans to
+Beneventum, (or Welcome.) _Epidamnum_ again, the Grecian Calais,
+corresponding to the Roman Dover of Brundusium, was a name that would
+have startled the stoutest-hearted Roman 'from his propriety.' Had he
+suffered this name to escape him inadvertently, his spirits would have
+forsaken him--he would have pined away under a certainty of misfortune,
+like a poor Negro of Koromantyn who is the victim of Obi.[Footnote:
+'_The victim of Obi._'--It seems worthy of notice, that this
+magical fascination is generally called Obi, and the magicians Obeah
+men, throughout Guinea, Negroland, &c.; whilst the Hebrew or Syriac
+word for the rites of necromancy, was _Ob_ or _Obh_, at least
+when ventriloquism was concerned.] As a Greek word, which it was, the
+name imported no ill; but for a Roman to say _Ibo Epidamnum_, was
+in effect saying, though in a hybrid dialect, half-Greek half-Roman, 'I
+will go to ruin.' The name was therefore changed to Dyrrachium; a
+substitution which quieted more anxieties in Roman hearts than the
+erection of a light-house or the deepening of the harbor mouth. A case
+equally strong, to take one out of many hundreds that have come down to
+us, is reported by Livy. There was an officer in a Roman legion, at
+some period of the Republic, who bore the name either of Atrius Umber
+or Umbrius Ater: and this man being ordered on some expedition, the
+soldiers refused to follow him. They did right. We remember that Mr.
+Coleridge used facetiously to call the well-known sister of Dr. Aikin,
+Mrs. Barbauld, 'that pleonasm of nakedness'--the idea of nakedness
+being reduplicated and reverberated in the _bare_ and the _bald_.
+This Atrius Umber might be called 'that pleonasm of darkness;' and one
+might say to him, in the words of Othello, 'What needs this iteration?'
+To serve under the Gloomy was enough to darken the spirit of hope; but
+to serve under the Black Gloomy was really rushing upon destruction.
+Yet it will be alleged that Captain Death was a most favorite and
+heroic leader in the English navy; and that in our own times, Admiral
+Coffin, though an American by birth, has not been unpopular in the same
+service. This is true: and all that can be said is, that these names
+were two-edged swords, which might be made to tell against the enemy as
+well as against friends. And possibly the Roman centurion might have
+turned his name to the same account, had he possessed the great
+Dictator's presence of mind; for he, when landing in Africa, having
+happened to stumble--an omen of the worst character, in Roman
+estimation--took out its sting by following up his own
+oversight, as if it had been intentional, falling to the ground,
+kissing it, and ejaculating that in this way he appropriated the soil.
+
+Omens of every class were certainly regarded, in ancient Rome, with a
+reverence that can hardly be surpassed. But yet, with respect to these
+omens derived from names, it is certain that our modern times have more
+memorable examples on record. Out of a large number which occur to us,
+we will cite two:--The present King of the French bore in his boyish
+days a title which he would not have borne, but for an omen of bad
+augury attached to his proper title. He was called the Duc de Chartres
+before the Revolution, whereas his proper title was Duc de Valois. And
+the origin of the change was this:--The Regent's father had been the
+sole brother of Louis Quatorze. He married for his first wife our
+English princess Henrietta, the sister of Charles II., (and through her
+daughter, by the way, it is that the house of Savoy, _i.e._ of
+Sardinia, has pretensions to the English throne.) This unhappy lady, it
+is too well established, was poisoned. Voltaire, amongst many others,
+has affected to doubt the fact; for which in his time there might be
+some excuse. But since then better evidences have placed the matter
+beyond all question. We now know both the fact, and the how, and the
+why. The Duke, who probably was no party to the murder of his young
+wife, though otherwise on bad terms with her, married for his second
+wife a coarse German princess, homely in every sense, and a singular
+contrast to the elegant creature whom he had lost. She was a daughter
+of the Bavarian Elector; ill-tempered by her own confession, self-
+willed, and a plain speaker to excess; but otherwise a woman of honest
+German principles. Unhappy she was through a long life; unhappy through
+the monotony as well as the malicious intrigues of the French court;
+and so much so, that she did her best (though without effect) to
+prevent her Bavarian niece from becoming dauphiness. She acquits her
+husband, however, in the memoirs which she left behind, of any
+intentional share in her unhappiness; she describes him constantly as a
+well-disposed prince. But whether it were, that often walking in the
+dusk through the numerous apartments of that vast mansion which her
+husband had so much enlarged, naturally she turned her thoughts to the
+injured lady who had presided there before herself; or whether it arose
+from the inevitable gloom which broods continually over mighty palaces,
+so much is known for certain, that one evening, in the twilight, she
+met, at a remote quarter of the reception-rooms, something that she
+conceived to be a spectre. What she fancied to have passed on that
+occasion, was never known except to her nearest friends; and if she
+made any explanations in her memoirs, the editor has thought fit to
+suppress them. She mentions only, that in consequence of some ominous
+circumstances relating to the title of _Valois_, which was the
+proper second title of the Orleans family, her son, the Regent, had
+assumed in his boyhood that of Duc de Chartres. His elder brother was
+dead, so that the superior title was open to him; but, in consequence
+of those mysterious omens, whatever they might be, which occasioned
+much whispering at the time, the great title of Valois was laid aside
+for ever as of bad augury; nor has it ever been resumed through a
+century and a half that have followed that mysterious warning; nor will
+it be resumed unless the numerous children of the present Orleans
+branch should find themselves distressed for ancient titles; which is
+not likely, since they enjoy the honors of the elder house, and are now
+the _children of France_ in a technical sense.
+
+Here we have a great European case of state omens in the eldest of
+Christian houses. The next which we shall cite is equally a state case,
+and carries its public verification along with itself. In the spring of
+1799, when Napoleon was lying before Acre, he became anxious for news
+from Upper Egypt, whither he had despatched Dessaix in pursuit of a
+distinguished Mameluke leader. This was in the middle of May. Not many
+days after, a courier arrived with favorable despatches--favorable in
+the main, but reporting one tragical occurrence on a small scale that,
+to Napoleon, for a superstitious reason, outweighed the public
+prosperity. A _djerme_, or Nile boat of the largest class, having
+on board a large party of troops and of wounded men, together with most
+of a regimental band, had run ashore at the village of Benouth. No case
+could be more hopeless. The neighboring Arabs were of the Yambo tribe--
+of all Arabs the most ferocious. These Arabs and the Fellahs (whom, by
+the way, many of our countrymen are so ready to represent as friendly
+to the French and hostile to ourselves,) had taken the opportunity of
+attacking the vessel. The engagement was obstinate; but at length the
+inevitable catastrophe could be delayed no longer. The commander, an
+Italian named Morandi, was a brave man; any fate appeared better than
+that which awaited him from an enemy so malignant. He set fire to the
+powder magazine; the vessel blew up; Morandi perished in the Nile; and
+all of less nerve, who had previously reached the shore in safety, were
+put to death to the very last man, with cruelties the most detestable,
+by their inhuman enemies. For all this Napoleon cared little; but one
+solitary fact there was in the report which struck him with
+consternation. This ill-fated _djerme_--what was it called? It was
+called _L'Italie_; and in the name of the vessel Napoleon read an
+augury of the fate which had befallen the Italian territory. Considered
+as a dependency of France, he felt certain that Italy was lost; and
+Napoleon was inconsolable. But what possible connection, it was asked,
+can exist between this vessel on the Nile and a remote peninsula of
+Southern Europe? 'No matter,' replied Napoleon; 'my presentiments never
+deceive me. You will see that all is ruined. I am satisfied that my
+Italy, my conquest, is lost to France!' So, indeed, it was. All
+European news had long been intercepted by the English cruisers; but
+immediately after the battle with the Vizier in July 1799, an English
+admiral first informed the French army of Egypt that Massena and others
+had lost all that Bonaparte had won in 1796. But it is a strange
+illustration of human blindness, that this very subject of Napoleon's
+lamentation--this very campaign of 1799--it was, with its blunders and
+its long equipage of disasters, that paved the way for his own
+elevation to the Consulship, just seven calendar months from the
+receipt of that Egyptian despatch; since most certainly, in the
+struggle of Brumaire 1799, doubtful and critical through every stage,
+it was the pointed contrast between _his_ Italian campaigns and
+those of his successors which gave effect to Napoleon's pretensions
+with the political combatants, and which procured them a ratification
+amongst the people. The loss of Italy was essential to the full effect
+of Napoleon's previous conquest. That and the imbecile characters of
+Napoleon's chief military opponents were the true keys to the great
+revolution of Brumaire. The stone which he rejected became the keystone
+of the arch. So that, after all, he valued the omen falsely; though the
+very next news from Europe, courteously communicated by his English
+enemies, showed that he had interpreted its meaning rightly.
+
+These omens, derived from names, are therefore common to the ancient
+and the modern world. But perhaps, in strict logic, they ought to have
+been classed as one subdivision or variety under a much larger head,
+viz. words generally, no matter whether proper names or appellatives,
+as operative powers and agencies, having, that is to say, a charmed
+power against some party concerned from the moment that they leave the
+lips.
+
+Homer describes prayers as having a separate life, rising buoyantly
+upon wings, and making their way upwards to the throne of Jove. Such,
+but in a sense gloomy and terrific, is the force ascribed under a
+widespread superstition, ancient and modern, to words uttered on
+critical occasions; or to words uttered at any time, which point to
+critical occasions. Hence the doctrine of _euphaemismos_, the
+necessity of abstaining from strong words or direct words in expressing
+fatal contingencies. It was shocking, at all times of paganism, to say
+of a third person--'If he should die;' or to suppose the case that he
+might be murdered. The very word _death_ was consecrated and
+forbidden. _Si quiddam humanum passus fuerit_ was the extreme form
+to which men advanced in such cases. And this scrupulous feeling,
+originally founded on the supposed efficacy of words, prevails to this
+day. It is a feeling undoubtedly supported by good taste, which
+strongly impresses upon us all the discordant tone of all impassioned
+subjects, (death, religion, &c.,) with the common key of ordinary
+conversation. But good taste is not in itself sufficient to account for
+a scrupulousness so general and so austere. In the lowest classes there
+is a shuddering recoil still felt from uttering coarsely and roundly
+the anticipation of a person's death. Suppose a child, heir to some
+estate, the subject of conversation--the hypothesis of his death is put
+cautiously, under such forms as, 'If anything but good should happen;'
+'if any change should occur;' 'if any of us should chance to miscarry;'
+and so forth. Always a modified expression is sought--always an
+indirect one. And this timidity arises under the old superstition still
+lingering amongst men, like that ancient awe, alluded to by Wordsworth,
+for the sea and its deep secrets--feelings that have not, no, nor ever
+will, utterly decay. No excess of nautical skill will ever perfectly
+disenchant the great abyss from its terrors--no progressive knowledge
+will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless
+power given to words of a certain import, or uttered in certain
+situations, by a parent, to persecuting or insulting children; by the
+victim of horrible oppression, when laboring in final agonies; and by
+others, whether cursing or blessing, who stand central to great
+passions, to great interests, or to great perplexities.
+
+And here, by way of parenthesis, we may stop to explain the force of
+that expression, so common in Scripture, '_Thou hast said it._' It
+is an answer often adopted by our Saviour; and the meaning we hold to
+be this: Many forms in eastern idioms, as well as in the Greek
+occasionally, though meant _interrogatively_, are of a nature to
+convey a direct categorical _affirmation_, unless as their meaning
+is modified by the cadence and intonation. _Art thou_, detached
+from this vocal and accentual modification, is equivalent to _thou
+art_. Nay, even apart from this accident, the popular belief
+authorized the notion, that simply to have uttered any great thesis,
+though unconsciously--simply to have united verbally any two great
+ideas, though for a purpose the most different or even opposite, had
+the mysterious power of realizing them in act. An exclamation, though
+in the purest spirit of sport, to a boy, '_You shall be our
+imperator_,' was many times supposed to be the forerunner and fatal
+mandate for the boy's elevation. Such words executed themselves. To
+connect, though but for denial or for mockery, the ideas of Jesus and
+the Messiah, furnished an augury that eventually they would be found to
+coincide, and to have their coincidence admitted. It was an
+_argumentum ad hominem_, and drawn from a popular faith.
+
+But a modern reader will object the want of an accompanying design or
+serious meaning on the part of him who utters the words--he never meant
+his words to be taken seriously--nay, his purpose was the very
+opposite. True: and precisely that is the reason why his words are
+likely to operate effectually, and why they should be feared. Here lies
+the critical point which most of all distinguishes this faith. Words
+took effect, not merely in default of a serious use, but exactly in
+consequence of that default. It was the chance word, the stray word,
+the word uttered in jest, or in trifling, or in scorn, or
+unconsciously, which took effect; whilst ten thousand words, uttered
+with purpose and deliberation, were sure to prove inert. One case will
+illustrate this:--Alexander of Macedon, in the outset of his great
+expedition, consulted the oracle at Delphi. For the sake of his army,
+had he been even without personal faith, he desired to have his
+enterprise consecrated. No persuasions, however, would move the
+priestess to enter upon her painful and agitating duties for the sake
+of obtaining the regular answer of the god. Wearied with this,
+Alexander seized the great lady by the arm, and using as much violence
+as was becoming to the two characters--of a great prince acting and a
+great priestess suffering--he pushed her gently backwards to the tripod
+on which, in her professional character, she was to seat herself. Upon
+this, in the hurry and excitement of the moment, the priestess
+exclaimed, _O pai, anixaitos ei--O son, thou art irresistible_;
+never adverting for an instant to his martial purposes, but simply to
+his personal importunities. The person whom she thought of as incapable
+of resistance, was herself, and all she meant _consciously_ was--O
+son, I can refuse nothing to one so earnest. But mark what followed:
+Alexander desisted at once--he asked for no further oracle--he refused
+it, and exclaimed joyously:--'Now then, noble priestess, farewell; I
+have the oracle--I have your answer, and better than any which you
+could deliver from the tripod. I am invincible--so you have declared,
+you cannot revoke it. True, you thought not of Persia--you thought only
+of my importunity. But that very fact is what ratifies your answer. In
+its blindness I recognise its truth. An oracle from a god might be
+distorted by political ministers of the god, as in time past too often
+has been suspected. The oracle has been said to _Medize_, and in
+my own father's time to _Philippize_. But an oracle delivered
+unconsciously, indirectly, blindly, that is the oracle which cannot
+deceive.' Such was the all-famous oracle which Alexander accepted--such
+was the oracle on which he and his army reposing went forth 'conquering
+and to conquer.'
+
+Exactly on this principle do the Turks act, in putting so high a value
+on the words of idiots. Enlightened Christians have often wondered at
+their allowing any weight to people bereft of understanding. But that
+is the very reason for allowing them weight: that very defect it is
+which makes them capable of being organs for conveying words from
+higher intelligences. A fine human intelligence cannot be a passive
+instrument--it cannot be a mere tube for conveying the words of
+inspiration: such an intelligence will intermingle ideas of its own, or
+otherwise modify what is given, and pollute what is sacred.
+
+It is also on this principle that the whole practice and doctrine of
+Sortilegy rest. Let us confine ourselves to that mode of sortilegy
+which is conducted by throwing open privileged books at random, leaving
+to chance the page and the particular line on which the oracular
+functions are thrown. The books used have varied with the caprice or
+the error of ages. Once the Hebrew Scriptures had the preference.
+Probably they were laid aside, not because the reverence for their
+authority decayed, but because it increased. In later times Virgil has
+been the favorite. Considering the very limited range of ideas to which
+Virgil was tied by his theme--a colonizing expedition in a barbarous
+age, no worse book could have been selected: [Footnote: '_No worse
+book could have been selected._'--The probable reason for making so
+unhappy a choice seems to have been that Virgil, in the middle ages,
+had the character of a necromancer, a diviner, &c. This we all know
+from Dante. Now, the original reason for this strange translation of
+character and functions we hold to have arisen from the circumstance of
+his maternal grandfather having borne the name of _Magus_. People
+in those ages held that a powerful enchanter, exorciser, &c., must have
+a magician amongst his _cognati_; the power must run in the blood,
+which on the maternal side could be undeniably ascertained. Under this
+preconception, they took Magus not for a proper name, but for a
+professional designation. Amongst many illustrations of the magical
+character sustained by Virgil in the middle ages, we may mention that a
+writer, about the year 1200, or the era of our Robin Hood, published by
+Montfaucon, and cited by Gibbon in his last volume, says of Virgil,--
+that '_Captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit, ivitque Neapopolim_.'] so
+little indeed does the AEneid exhibit of human life in its
+multiformity, that much tampering with the text is required
+to bring real cases of human interest and real situations within the
+scope of any Virgilian sentence, though aided by the utmost latitude of
+accommodation. A king, a soldier, a sailor, &c., might look for
+correspondences to their own circumstances; but not many others.
+Accordingly, everybody remembers the remarkable answer which Charles I.
+received at Oxford from this Virgilian oracle, about the opening of the
+Parliamentary war. But from this limitation in the range of ideas it
+was that others, and very pious people too, have not thought it profane
+to resume the old reliance on the Scriptures. No case, indeed, can try
+so severely, or put upon record so conspicuously, this indestructible
+propensity for seeking light out of darkness--this thirst for looking
+into the future by the aid of dice, real or figurative, as the fact of
+men eminent for piety having yielded to the temptation. We give one
+instance--the instance of a person who, in _practical_ theology,
+has been, perhaps, more popular than any other in any church. Dr.
+Doddridge, in his earlier days, was in a dilemma both of conscience and
+of taste as to the election he should make between two situations, one
+in possession, both at his command. He was settled at Harborough, in
+Leicestershire, and was 'pleasing himself with the view of a
+continuance' in that situation. True, he had received an invitation to
+Northampton; but the reasons against complying seemed so strong, that
+nothing was wanting but the civility of going over to Northampton, and
+making an apologetic farewell. On the last Sunday in November of the
+year 1729, the doctor went and preached a sermon in conformity with
+those purposes. 'But,' says he, 'on the morning of that day an incident
+happened, which affected me greatly.' On the night previous, it seems,
+he had been urged very importunately by his Northampton friends to
+undertake the vacant office. Much personal kindness had concurred with
+this public importunity: the good doctor was affected; he had prayed
+fervently, alleging in his prayer, as the reason which chiefly weighed
+with him to reject the offer, that it was far beyond his forces, and
+chiefly because he was too young [Footnote: '_Because he was too
+young_'--Dr. Doddridge was born in the summer of 1702; consequently
+he was at this era of his life about twenty-seven years old, and
+consequently not so obviously entitled to the excuse of youth. But he
+pleaded his youth, not with a view to the exertions required, but to
+the _auctoritas_ and responsibilities of the situation.] and had
+no assistant. He goes on thus:--'As soon as ever this address' (meaning
+the prayer) 'was ended, I passed through a room of the house in which I
+lodged, where a child was reading to his mother, and the only words I
+heard distinctly were these, _And as thy days, so shall thy strength
+be_.' This singular coincidence between his own difficulty and a
+scriptural line caught at random in passing hastily through a room,
+(but observe, a line insulated from the context, and placed in high
+relief to his ear,) shook his resolution. Accident co-operated; a
+promise to be fulfilled at Northampton, in a certain contingency, fell
+due at the instant; the doctor was detained, this detention gave time
+for further representations; new motives arose, old difficulties were
+removed, and finally the doctor saw, in all this succession of steps,
+the first of which, however, lay in the _Sortes Biblicæ_, clear
+indications of a providential guidance. With that conviction he took up
+his abode at Northampton, and remained there for the next thirty-one
+years, until he left it for his grave at Lisbon; in fact, he passed at
+Northampton the whole of his public life. It must, therefore, be
+allowed to stand upon the records of sortilegy, that in the main
+direction of his life--not, indeed, as to its spirit, but as to its
+form and local connections--a Protestant divine of much merit, and
+chiefly in what regards practice, and of the class most opposed to
+superstition, took his determining impulse from a variety of the
+_Sortes Virgilianæ_.
+
+This variety was known in early times to the Jews--as early, indeed, as
+the era of the Grecian Pericles, if we are to believe the Talmud. It is
+known familiarly to this day amongst Polish Jews, and is called
+_Bathcol_, or the _daughter of a voice_; the meaning of which
+appellation is this:--The _Urim and Thummim_, or oracle in the
+breast-plate of the high priest, spoke directly from God. It was,
+therefore, the original or mother-voice. But about the time of
+Pericles, that is, exactly one hundred years before the time of
+Alexander the Great, the light of prophecy was quenched in Malachi or
+Haggai; and the oracular jewels in the breast-plate became
+simultaneously dim. Henceforwards the mother-voice was heard no longer:
+but to this succeeded an imperfect or daughter-voice, (_Bathcol_,)
+which lay in the first words happening to arrest the attention at a
+moment of perplexity. An illustration, which has been often quoted from
+the Talmud, is to the following effect:--Rabbi Tochanan, and Rabbi
+Simeon Ben Lachish, were anxious about a friend, Rabbi Samuel, six
+hundred miles distant on the Euphrates. Whilst talking earnestly
+together on this subject in Palestine, they passed a school; they
+paused to listen: it was a child reading the first book of Samuel; and
+the words which they caught were these--_And Samuel died_. These
+words they received as a _Bath-col_: and the next horseman from
+the Euphrates brought word accordingly that Rabbi Samuel had been
+gathered to his fathers at some station on the Euphrates.
+
+Here is the very same case, the same _Bath-col_ substantially,
+which we have cited from Orton's _Life of Doddridge_. And Du Cange
+himself notices, in his Glossary, the relation which this bore to the
+Pagan _Sortes_. 'It was,' says he, 'a fantastical way of divination,
+invented by the Jews, not unlike the _Sortes Virgilianæ_ of the
+heathens. For, as with them the first words they happened to dip into
+in the works of that poet were a kind of oracle whereby they predicted
+future events,--so, with the Jews, when they appealed to _Bath-col_,
+the first words they heard from any one's mouth were looked upon as a
+voice from Heaven directing them in the matter they inquired about.'
+
+If the reader imagines that this ancient form of the practical
+miraculous is at all gone out of use, even the example of Dr. Doddridge
+may satisfy him to the contrary. Such an example was sure to authorize
+a large imitation. But, even apart from that, the superstition is
+common. The records of conversion amongst felons and other ignorant
+persons might be cited by hundreds upon hundreds to prove that no
+practice is more common than that of trying the spiritual fate, and
+abiding by the import of any passage in the Scriptures which may first
+present itself to the eye. Cowper, the poet, has recorded a case of
+this sort in his own experience. It is one to which all the unhappy are
+prone. But a mode of questioning the oracles of darkness, far more
+childish, and, under some shape or other, equally common amongst those
+who are prompted by mere vacancy of mind, without that determination to
+sacred fountains which is impressed by misery, may be found in the
+following extravagant silliness of Rousseau, which we give in his own
+words--a case for which he admits that he himself would have _shut
+up_ any other man (meaning in a lunatic hospital) whom he had seen
+practising the same absurdities:--
+
+'Au milieu de mes études et d'une vie innocente autant qu'on la puisse
+mener, et malgré tout ce qu'on m'avoit pu dire, la peur de l'Enfer
+m'agitoit encore. Souvent je me demandois--En quel état suis-je? Si je
+mourrois à l'instant même, _serois-je damné_? Selon mes Jansénistes,
+[he had been reading the books of the Port Royal,] la chose est
+indubitable: mais, selon ma conscience, il me paroissoit que
+non. Toujours craintif et flottant dans cette cruelle incertitude,
+j'avois recours (pour en sortir) aux expédients les plus risibles, et
+pour lesquels je ferois volontiers enfermer un homme si je lui en
+voyois faire autant. ... Un jour, rêvant à ce triste sujet, je
+m'exerçois machinalement à lancer les pierres contre les troncs des
+arbres; et cela avec mon addresse ordinaire, c'est-à-dire sans presque
+jamais en toucher aucun. Tout au milieu de ce bel exercise, je m'avisai
+de faire une espèce de pronostic pour calmer mon inquiétude. Je me dis
+--je m'en vais jeter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est vis-à-vis de
+moi: si je le touche, signe de salut: si je le manque, signe de
+damnation. Tout en disant ainsi, je jette ma pierre d'une main
+tremblante, et avec un horrible battement de coeur, mais si
+heureusement qu'elle va frapper au beau-milieu de l'arbre: ce qui
+véritablement n'étoit pas difficile: car j'avois eu soin de le choisir
+fort gros et fort près. _Depuis lors je n'ai plus doubté de mon
+salut._ Je ne sais, en me rappelant ce trait, si je dois rire ou
+gémir sur moimême.'--_Les Confessions, Partie I. Livre VI._
+
+Now, really, if Rousseau thought fit to try such tremendous appeals by
+taking 'a shy' at any random object, he should have governed his
+sortilegy (for such it may be called) with something more like equity.
+Fair play is a jewel: and in such a case, a man is supposed to play
+against an adverse party hid in darkness. To shy at a cow within six
+feet distance gives no chance at all to his dark antagonist. A pigeon
+rising from a trap at a suitable distance might be thought a
+_sincere_ staking of the interest at issue: but, as to the massy
+stem of a tree 'fort gros et fort près'--the sarcasm of a Roman emperor
+applies, that to miss under such conditions implied an original genius
+for stupidity, and to hit was no trial of the case. After all, the
+sentimentalist had youth to plead in apology for this extravagance. He
+was hypochondriacal; he was in solitude; and he was possessed by gloomy
+imaginations from the works of a society in the highest public credit.
+But most readers will be aware of similar appeals to the mysteries of
+Providence, made in public by illustrious sectarians, speaking from the
+solemn station of a pulpit. We forbear to quote cases of this nature,
+though really existing in print, because we feel that the blasphemy of
+such anecdotes is more revolting and more painful to pious minds than
+the absurdity is amusing. Meantime it must not be forgotten, that the
+principle concerned, though it may happen to disgust men when
+associated with ludicrous circumstances, is, after all, the very same
+which has latently governed very many modes of ordeal, or judicial
+inquiry; and which has been adopted, blindly, as a moral rule, or
+canon, equally by the blindest of the Pagans, the most fanatical of the
+Jews, and the most enlightened of the Christians. It proceeds upon the
+assumption that man by his actions puts a question to Heaven; and that
+Heaven answers by the event. Lucan, in a well known passage, takes it
+for granted that the cause of Cæsar had the approbation of the gods.
+And why? Simply from the event. It was notoriously the triumphant
+cause. It was victorious, (_victrix_ causa Deis placuit; sed
+_victa_ Catoni.) It was the '_victrix_ causa;' and, _as_ such,
+simply because it was 'victrix,' it had a right in his eyes to
+postulate the divine favor as mere matter of necessary interference:
+whilst, on the other hand, the _victa causa_, though it seemed to
+Lucan sanctioned by human virtue in the person of Cato, stood
+unappealably condemned. This mode of reasoning may strike the reader as
+merely Pagan. Not at all. In England, at the close of the Parliamentary
+war, it was generally argued--that Providence had decided the question
+against the Royalists by the mere fact of the issue. Milton himself,
+with all his high-toned morality, uses this argument as irrefragable:
+which is odd, were it only on this account--that the issue ought
+necessarily to have been held for a time as merely hypothetic, and
+liable to be set aside by possible counter-issues through one
+generation at the least. But the capital argument against such doctrine
+is to be found in the New Testament. Strange that Milton should
+overlook, and strange that moralists in general have overlooked, the
+sudden arrest given to this dangerous but most prevalent mode of
+reasoning by the Founder of our faith. He first, he last, taught to his
+astonished disciples the new truth--at that time the astounding truth--
+that no relation exists between the immediate practical events of
+things on the one side, and divine sentences on the other. There was no
+presumption, he teaches them, against a man's favor with God, or that
+of his parents, because he happened to be afflicted to extremity with
+bodily disease. There was no shadow of an argument for believing a
+party of men criminal objects of heavenly wrath because upon them, by
+fatal preference, a tower had fallen, and because _their_ bodies
+were exclusively mangled. How little can it be said that Christianity
+has yet developed the fulness of its power, when kings and senates so
+recently acted under a total oblivion of this great though novel
+Christian doctrine, and would do so still, were it not that religious
+arguments have been banished by the progress of manners from the field
+of political discussion.
+
+But, quitting this province of the ominous, where it is made the object
+of a direct personal inquest, whether by private or by national trials,
+or the sortilegy of events, let us throw our eyes over the broader
+field of omens, as they offer themselves spontaneously to those who do
+not seek, or would even willingly evade them. There are few of these,
+perhaps none, which are not universal in their authority, though every
+land in turn fancies them (like its proverbs) of local prescription and
+origin. The death-watch extends from England to Cashmere, and across
+India diagonally to the remotest nook of Bengal, over a three thousand
+miles' distance from the entrance of the Indian Punjaub. A hare
+crossing a man's path on starting in the morning, has been held in all
+countries alike to prognosticate evil in the course of that day. Thus,
+in the _Confessions of a Thug_, (which is partially built on a
+real judicial document, and everywhere conforms to the usages of
+Hindostan,) the hero of the horrid narrative [Footnote: '_The hero of
+the horrid narrative_.'--Horrid it certainly is; and one incident in
+every case gives a demoniacal air of coolness to the hellish
+atrocities, viz the regular forwarding of the _bheels_, or grave-
+diggers. But else the tale tends too much to monotony; and for a reason
+which ought to have checked the author in carrying on the work to three
+volumes, namely, that although there is much dramatic variety in the
+circumstances of the several cases, there is none in the catastrophes.
+The brave man and the coward, the erect spirit fighting to the last,
+and the poor creature that despairs from the first,--all are confounded
+in one undistinguishing end by sudden strangulation. This was the
+original defect of the plan. The sudden surprise, and the scientific
+noosing as with a Chilian _lasso_, constituted in fact a main
+feature of Thuggee. But still, the gradual theatrical arrangement of
+each Thug severally by the side of a victim, must often have roused
+violent suspicion, and that in time to intercept the suddenness of the
+murder. Now, for the sake of the dramatic effect, this interception
+ought more often to have been introduced, else the murders are but so
+many blind surprises as if in sleep.] charges some disaster of his own
+upon having neglected such an omen of the morning. The same belief
+operated in Pagan Italy. The same omen announced to Lord Lindsay's Arab
+attendants in the desert the approach of some disaster, which partially
+happened in the morning. And a Highlander of the 42d Regiment, in his
+printed memoirs, notices the same harbinger of evil as having crossed
+his own path on a day of personal disaster in Spain.
+
+Birds are even more familiarly associated with such ominous warnings.
+This chapter in the great volume of superstition was indeed cultivated
+with unusual solicitude amongst the Pagans--_ornithomancy_ grew
+into an elaborate science. But if every rule and distinction upon the
+number and the position of birds, whether to the right or the left, had
+been collected from our own village matrons amongst ourselves, it would
+appear that no more of this Pagan science had gone to wreck than must
+naturally follow the difference between a believing and a disbelieving
+government. Magpies are still of awful authority in village life,
+according to their number, &c.; for a striking illustration of which we
+may refer the reader to Sir Walter Scott's _Demonology_, reported
+not at second-hand, but from Sir Walter's personal communication with
+some seafaring fellow-traveller in a stage-coach.
+
+Among the ancient stories of the same class is one which we shall
+repeat--having reference to that Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the
+Great, before whom St. Paul made his famous apology at Cæsarea. This
+Agrippa, overwhelmed by debts, had fled from Palestine to Rome in the
+latter years of Tiberius. His mother's interest with the widow of
+Germanicus procured him a special recommendation to her son Caligula.
+Viewing this child and heir of the popular Germanicus as the rising
+sun, Agrippa had been too free in his language. True, the uncle of
+Germanicus was the reigning prince; but he was old, and breaking up.
+True, the son of Germanicus was not yet on the throne; but he soon
+would be; and Agrippa was rash enough to call the Emperor a
+_superannuated old fellow_, and even to wish for his death.
+Sejanus was now dead and gone; but there was no want of spies: and a
+certain Macro reported his words to Tiberius. Agrippa was in
+consequence arrested; the Emperor himself condescending to point out
+the noble Jew to the officer on duty. The case was a gloomy one, if
+Tiberius should happen to survive much longer: and the story of the
+omen proceeds thus:--'Now Agrippa stood in his bonds before the
+Imperial palace, and in his affliction leaned against a certain tree,
+upon the boughs of which it happened that a bird had alighted which the
+Romans call _bubo_, or the owl. All this was steadfastly observed
+by a German prisoner, who asked a soldier what might be the name and
+offence of that man habited in purple. Being told that the man's name
+was Agrippa, and that he was a Jew of high rank, who had given a
+personal offence to the Emperor, the German asked permission to go near
+and address him; which being granted, he spoke thus:--"This disaster, I
+doubt not, young man, is trying to your heart; and perhaps you will not
+believe me when I announce to you beforehand the providential
+deliverance which is impending. However, this much I will say--and for
+my sincerity let me appeal to my native gods, as well as to the gods of
+this Rome, who have brought us both into trouble--that no selfish
+objects prompt me to this revelation--for a revelation it is--and to
+the following effect:--It is fated that you shall not long remain in
+chains. Your deliverance will be speedy; you shall be raised to the
+very highest rank and power; you shall be the object of as much envy as
+now you are of pity; you shall retain your prosperity till death; and
+you shall transmit that prosperity to your children. But"--and there
+the German paused. Agrippa was agitated; the bystanders were attentive;
+and after a time, the German, pointing solemnly to the bird, proceeded
+thus:--"But this remember heedfully--that, when next you see the bird
+which now perches above your head, you will have only five days longer
+to live! This event will be surely accomplished by that same mysterious
+god who has thought fit to send the bird as a warning sign; and you,
+when you come to your glory, do not forget me that foreshadowed it in
+your humiliation."' The story adds, that Agrippa affected to laugh when
+the German concluded; after which it goes on to say, that in a few
+weeks, being delivered by the death of Tiberius; being released from
+prison by the very prince on whose account he had incurred the risk;
+being raised to a tetrarchy, and afterwards to the kingdom of all
+Judea; coming into all the prosperity which had been promised to him by
+the German; and not losing any part of his interest at Rome through the
+assassination of his patron Caligula--he began to look back
+respectfully to the words of the German, and forwards with anxiety to
+the second coming of the bird. Seven years of sunshine had now slipped
+away as silently as a dream. A great festival, shows and vows, was on
+the point of being celebrated in honor of Claudius Cæsar, at Strato's
+Tower, otherwise called Cæsarea, the Roman metropolis of Palestine.
+Duty and policy alike required that the king of the land should go down
+and unite in this mode of religious homage to the emperor. He did so;
+and on the second morning of the festival, by way of doing more
+conspicuous honor to the great solemnity, he assumed a very sumptuous
+attire of silver armor, burnished so highly as to throw back a dazzling
+glare from the sun's morning beams upon the upturned eyes of the vast
+multitude around him. Immediately from the sycophantish part of the
+crowd, of whom a vast majority were Pagans, ascended a cry of
+glorification as to some manifestation of Deity. Agrippa, gratified by
+this success of his new apparel, and by this flattery, not unusual in
+the case of kings, had not the firmness (though a Jew, and conscious of
+the wickedness, greater in himself than in the heathen crowd,) to
+reject the blasphemous homage. Voices of adoration continued to ascend;
+when suddenly, looking upward to the vast awnings prepared for
+screening the audience from the noonday heats, the king perceived the
+same ominous bird which he had seen at Rome in the day of his
+affliction, seated quietly, and looking down upon himself. In that same
+moment an icy pang shot through his intestines. He was removed into the
+palace; and at the end of five days, completely worn out by pain,
+Agrippa expired in the 54th year of his age, and the seventh of his
+sovereign power.
+
+Whether the bird, here described as an owl, was really such, may be
+doubted, considering the narrow nomenclature of the Romans for all
+zoological purposes, and the total indifference of the Roman mind to
+all distinctions in natural history which are not upon the very largest
+scale. We should much suspect that the bird was a magpie. Meantime,
+speaking of ornithoscopy in relation to Jews, we remember another story
+in that subdivision of the subject which it may be worth while
+repeating; not merely on its own account, as wearing a fine oriental
+air, but also for the correction which it suggests to a very common
+error.
+
+In some period of Syrian warfare, a large military detachment was
+entering at some point of Syria from the desert of the Euphrates. At
+the head of the whole array rode two men of some distinction: one was
+an augur of high reputation, the other was a Jew called Mosollam, a man
+of admirable beauty, a matchless horseman, an unerring archer, and
+accomplished in all martial arts. As they were now first coming within
+enclosed grounds, after a long march in the wilderness, the augur was
+most anxious to inaugurate the expedition by some considerable omen.
+Watching anxiously, therefore, he soon saw a bird of splendid plumage
+perching on a low wall. 'Halt!' he said to the advanced guard: and all
+drew up in a line. At that moment of silence and expectation, Mosollam,
+slightly turning himself in his saddle, drew his bow-string to his ear;
+his Jewish hatred of Pagan auguries burned within him; his inevitable
+shaft went right to its mark, and the beautiful bird fell dead. The
+augur turned round in fury. But the Jew laughed at him. 'This bird, you
+say, should have furnished us with omens of our future fortunes. But
+had he known anything of his own, he would never have perched where he
+did, or have come within the range of Mosollam's archery. How should
+that bird know our destiny, who did not know that it was his own to be
+shot by Mosollam the Jew?'
+
+Now, this is a most common but a most erroneous way of arguing. In a
+case of this kind, the bird was not supposed to have any conscious
+acquaintance with futurity, either for his own benefit or that of
+others. But even where such a consciousness may be supposed, as in the
+case of oneiromancy, or prophecy by means of dreams, it must be
+supposed limited, and the more limited in a personal sense as they are
+illimitable in a sublime one. Who imagines that, because a Daniel or
+Ezekiel foresaw the grand revolutions of the earth, therefore they must
+or could have foreseen the little details of their own ordinary life?
+And even descending from that perfect inspiration to the more doubtful
+power of augury amongst the Pagans, (concerning which the most eminent
+of theologians have held very opposite theories,) one thing is certain,
+that, so long as we entertain such pretensions, or discuss them at all,
+we must take them with the principle of those who professed such arts,
+not with principles of our own arbitrary invention.
+
+One example will make this clear:--There are in England [Footnote:
+'_There are in England_'--Especially in Somersetshire, and for
+twenty miles round Wrington, the birthplace of Locke. Nobody sinks for
+wells without their advice. We ourselves knew an amiable and
+accomplished Scottish family, who, at an estate called Belmadrothie, in
+memory of a similar property in Ross shire, built a house in
+Somersetshire, and resolved to find water without help from the jowser.
+But after sinking to a greater depth than ever had been known before,
+and spending nearly £200, they were finally obliged to consult the
+jowser, who found water at once.] a class of men who practise the Pagan
+rhabdomancy in a limited sense. They carry a rod or rhabdos
+(_rhabdos_) of willow: this they hold horizontally; and by the
+bending of the rod towards the ground they discover the favorable
+places for sinking wells; a matter of considerable importance in a
+province so ill-watered as the northern district of Somersetshire, &c.
+These people are locally called _jowsers_; and it is probable,
+that from the suspicion with which their art has been usually regarded
+amongst people of education, as a mere legerdemain trick of
+Dousterswivel's, is derived the slang word to _chouse_ for _swindle_.
+Meantime, the experimental evidences of a real practical skill in these
+men, and the enlarged compass of speculation in these days, have led
+many enlightened people to a Stoic _epochey_, or suspension of
+judgment, on the reality of this somewhat mysterious art. Now, in the
+East, there are men who make the same pretensions in a more showy
+branch of the art. It is not water, but treasures which they profess to
+find by some hidden kind of rhabdomancy. The very existence of
+treasures with us is reasonably considered a thing of improbable
+occurrence. But in the unsettled East, and with the low valuation of
+human life wherever Mahometanism prevails, insecurity and other causes
+must have caused millions of such deposits in every century to have
+perished as to any knowledge of survivors. The sword has been moving
+backwards and forwards, for instance, like a weaver's shuttle, since
+the time of Mahmoud the Ghaznevide, [Footnote: Mahmood of Ghizni,
+which, under the European name of Ghaznee, was so recently taken in one
+hour by our Indian army under Lord Keane Mahmood was the first
+Mahometan invader of Hindostan.] in Anno Domini 1000, in the vast
+regions between the Tigris, the Oxus, and the Indus. Regularly as it
+approached, gold and jewels must have sunk by whole harvests into the
+ground. A certain per centage has been doubtless recovered: a larger
+per centage has disappeared for ever. Hence naturally the jealousy of
+barbarous Orientals that we Europeans, in groping amongst pyramids,
+sphynxes, and tombs, are looking for buried treasures. The wretches are
+not so wide astray in what they believe as in what they disbelieve. The
+treasures do really exist which they fancy; but then also the other
+treasures in the glorious antiquities have that existence for our sense
+of beauty which to their brutality is inconceivable. In these
+circumstances, why should it surprise us that men will pursue the
+science of discovery as a regular trade? Many discoveries of treasure
+are doubtless made continually, which, for obvious reasons, are
+communicated to nobody. Some proportion there must be between the
+sowing of such grain as diamonds or emeralds, and the subsequent
+reaping, whether by accident or by art. For, with regard to the last,
+it is no more impossible, _prima fronte_, that a substance may exist
+having an occult sympathy with subterraneous water or subterraneous
+gold, than that the magnet should have a sympathy (as yet occult) with
+the northern pole of our planet.
+
+The first flash of careless thought applied to such a case will
+suggest, that men holding powers of this nature need not offer their
+services for hire to others. And this, in fact, is the objection
+universally urged by us Europeans as decisive against their
+pretensions. Their knavery, it is fancied, stands self-recorded; since,
+assuredly, they would not be willing to divide their subterranean
+treasures, if they knew of any. But the men are not in such self-
+contradiction as may seem. Lady Hester Stanhope, from the better
+knowledge she had acquired of Oriental opinions, set Dr. Madden right
+on this point. The Oriental belief is that a fatality attends the
+appropriator of a treasure in any case where he happens also to be the
+discoverer. Such a person, it is held, will die soon, and suddenly--so
+that he is compelled to seek his remuneration from the wages or fees of
+his employers, not from the treasure itself.
+
+Many more secret laws are held sacred amongst the professors of that
+art than that which was explained by Lady Hester Stanhope. These we
+shall not enter upon at present: but generally we may remark, that the
+same practices of subterranean deposits, during our troubled periods in
+Europe, led to the same superstitions. And it may be added, that the
+same error has arisen in both cases as to some of these superstitions.
+How often must it have struck people of liberal feelings, as a
+scandalous proof of the preposterous value set upon riches by poor men,
+that ghosts should popularly be supposed to rise and wander for the
+sake of revealing the situations of buried treasures. For ourselves, we
+have been accustomed to view this popular belief in the light of an
+argument for pity rather than for contempt towards poor men, as
+indicating the extreme pressure of that necessity which could so have
+demoralized their natural sense of truth. But certainly, in whatever
+feelings originating, such popular superstitions as to motives of
+ghostly missions did seem to argue a deplorable misconception of the
+relation subsisting between the spiritual world and the perishable
+treasures of this perishable world. Yet, when we look into the Eastern
+explanations of this case, we find that it is meant to express, not any
+overvaluation of riches, but the direct contrary passion. A human
+spirit is punished--such is the notion--punished in the spiritual world
+for excessive attachment to gold, by degradation to the office of its
+guardian; and from this office the tortured spirit can release itself
+only by revealing the treasure and transferring the custody. It is a
+penal martyrdom, not an elective passion for gold, which is thus
+exemplified in the wanderings of a treasure-ghost.
+
+But, in a field where of necessity we are so much limited, we willingly
+pass from the consideration of these treasure or _khasne_ phantoms
+(which alone sufficiently ensure a swarm of ghostly terrors for all
+Oriental ruins of cities,) to the same marvellous apparitions, as they
+haunt other solitudes even more awful than those of ruined cities. In
+this world there are two mighty forms of perfect solitude--the ocean
+and the desert: the wilderness of the barren sands, and the wilderness
+of the barren waters. Both are the parents of inevitable superstitions
+--of terrors, solemn, ineradicable, eternal. Sailors and the children
+of the desert are alike overrun with spiritual hauntings, from
+accidents of peril essentially connected with those modes of life, and
+from the eternal spectacle of the infinite. Voices seem to blend with
+the raving of the sea, which will for ever impress the feeling of
+beings more than human: and every chamber of the great wilderness
+which, with little interruption, stretches from the Euphrates to the
+western shores of Africa, has its own peculiar terrors both as to
+sights and sounds. In the wilderness of Zin, between Palestine and the
+Red Sea, a section of the desert well known in these days to our own
+countrymen, bells are heard daily pealing for matins, or for vespers,
+from some phantom convent that no search of Christian or of Bedouin
+Arab has ever been able to discover. These bells have sounded since the
+Crusades. Other sounds, trumpets, the _Alala_ of armies, &c., are
+heard in other regions of the Desert. Forms, also, are seen of more
+people than have any right to be walking in human paths: sometimes
+forms of avowed terror; sometimes, which is a case of far more danger,
+appearances that mimic the shapes of men, and even of friends or
+comrades. This is a case much dwelt on by the old travellers, and which
+throws a gloom over the spirits of all Bedouins, and of every cafila or
+caravan. We all know what a sensation of loneliness or 'eeriness' (to
+use an expressive term of the ballad poetry) arises to any small party
+assembling in a single room of a vast desolate mansion: how the timid
+among them fancy continually that they hear some remote door opening,
+or trace the sound of suppressed footsteps from some distant staircase.
+Such is the feeling in the desert, even in the midst of the caravan.
+The mighty solitude is seen: the dread silence is anticipated which
+will succeed to this brief transit of men, camels, and horses. Awe
+prevails even in the midst of society: but, if the traveller should
+loiter behind from fatigue, or be so imprudent as to ramble aside--
+should he from any cause once lose sight of his party, it is held that
+his chance is small of recovering their traces. And why? Not chiefly
+from the want of footmarks where the wind effaces all impressions in
+half an hour, or of eyemarks where all is one blank ocean of sand, but
+much more from the sounds or the visual appearances which are supposed
+to beset and to seduce all insulated wanderers.
+
+Everybody knows the superstitions of the ancients about the
+_Nympholeptoi_, or those who had seen Pan. But far more awful and
+gloomy are the existing superstitions, throughout Asia and Africa, as
+to the perils of those who are phantom-haunted in the wilderness. The
+old Venetian traveller Marco Polo states them well: he speaks, indeed,
+of the Eastern or Tartar deserts; the steppes which stretch from
+European Russia to the footsteps of the Chinese throne; but exactly the
+same creed prevails amongst the Arabs, from Bagdad to Suez and Cairo--
+from Rosetta to Tunis--Tunis to Timbuctoo or Mequinez. 'If, during the
+daytime,' says he, 'any person should remain behind until the caravan
+is no longer in sight, he hears himself unexpectedly called to by name,
+and in a voice with which he is familiar. Not doubting that the voice
+proceeds from some of his comrades, the unhappy man is beguiled from
+the right direction; and soon finding himself utterly confounded as to
+the path, he roams about in distraction until he perishes miserably.
+If, on the other hand, this perilous separation of himself from the
+caravan should happen at night, he is sure to hear the uproar of a
+great cavalcade a mile or two to the right or left of the true track.
+He is thus seduced on one side: and at break of day finds himself far
+removed from man. Nay, even at noon-day, it is well known that grave
+and respectable men to all appearance will come up to a particular
+traveller, will bear the look of a friend, and will gradually lure him
+by earnest conversation to a distance from the caravan; after which the
+sounds of men and camels will be heard continually at all points but
+the true one; whilst an insensible turning by the tenth of an inch at
+each separate step from the true direction will very soon suffice to
+set the traveller's face to the opposite point of the compass from that
+which his safety requires, and which his fancy represents to him as his
+real direction. Marvellous, indeed, and almost passing belief, are the
+stories reported of these desert phantoms, which are said at times to
+fill the air with choral music from all kinds of instruments, from
+drums, and the clash of arms: so that oftentimes a whole caravan are
+obliged to close up their open ranks, and to proceed in a compact line
+of march.'
+
+Lord Lindsay, in his very interesting travels in Egypt, Edom, &c.,
+agrees with Warton in supposing (and probably enough) that from this
+account of the desert traditions in Marco Polo was derived Milton's
+fine passage in Comus:--
+
+  'Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
+  And aery tongues that syllable men's names
+  On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.'
+
+But the most remarkable of these desert superstitions, as suggested by
+the mention of Lord Lindsay, is one which that young nobleman, in some
+place which we cannot immediately find, has noticed, but which he only
+was destined by a severe personal loss immediately to illustrate. Lord
+L. quotes from Vincent le Blanc an anecdote of a man in his own
+caravan, the companion of an Arab merchant, who disappeared in a
+mysterious manner. Four Moors, with a retaining fee of 100 ducats, were
+sent in quest of him, but came back _re infecta_. 'And 'tis
+uncertain,' adds Le Blanc, 'whether he was swallowed up in the sands,
+or met his death by any other misfortune; as it often happens, by the
+relation of a merchant then in our company, who told us, that two years
+before, traversing the same journey, a comrade of his, going a little
+aside from the company, saw three men who called him by his name; and
+one of them, to his thinking, favored very much his companion; and, as
+he was about to follow them, his real companion calling him to come
+back to his company, he found himself deceived by the others, and thus
+was saved. And all travellers in these parts hold, that in the deserts
+are many such phantasms seen, that strive to seduce the traveller.'
+Thus far it is the traveller's own fault, warned as he is continually
+by the extreme anxiety of the Arab leaders or guides, with respect to
+all who stray to any distance, if he is duped or enticed by these
+pseudo-men: though, in the case of Lapland dogs, who ought to have a
+surer instinct of detection for counterfeits, we know from Sir Capel de
+Broke and others, that they are continually wiled away by the wolves
+who roam about the nightly encampments of travellers. But there is a
+secondary disaster, according to the Arab superstition, awaiting those
+whose eyes are once opened to the discernment of these phantoms. To see
+them, or to hear them, even where the traveller is careful to refuse
+their lures, entails the certainty of death in no long time. This is
+another form of that universal faith which made it impossible for any
+man to survive a bodily commerce, by whatever sense, with a spiritual
+being. We find it in the Old Testament, where the expression, 'I have
+seen God and shall die,' means simply a supernatural being; since no
+Hebrew believed it possible for a nature purely human to sustain for a
+moment the sight of the Infinite Being. We find the same faith amongst
+ourselves, in case of _doppelgänger_ becoming apparent to the
+sight of those whom they counterfeit; and in many other varieties. We
+modern Europeans, of course, laugh at these superstitions; though, as
+La Place remarks, (_Essai sur les Probabilités_,) any case,
+however apparently incredible, if it is a recurrent case, is as much
+entitled to a fair valuation as if it had been more probable
+beforehand.[Footnote: _'Is as much entitled to a fair valuation,
+under the lans of induction, as if it had been more probable
+beforehand'_--One of the cases which La Place notices as entitled to
+a grave consideration, but which would most assuredly be treated as a
+trivial phenomenon, unworthy of attention, by commonplace spectators,
+is--when a run of success, with no apparent cause, takes place on heads
+or tails, (_pile ou croix_) Most people dismiss such a case as
+pure accident. But La Place insists on its being duly valued as a fact,
+however unaccountable as an effect. So again, if in a large majority of
+experiences like those of Lord Lindsay's party in the desert, death
+should follow, such a phenomenon is as well entitled to its separate
+valuation as any other.] This being premised, we who connect
+superstition with the personal result, are more impressed by the
+disaster which happened to Lord Lindsay, than his lordship, who either
+failed to notice the _nexus_ between the events, or possibly
+declined to put the case too forward in his reader's eye, from the
+solemnity of the circumstances, and the private interest to himself and
+his own family, of the subsequent event. The case was this:--Mr.
+William Wardlaw Ramsay, the companion (and we believe relative) of Lord
+Lindsay, a man whose honorable character, and whose intellectual
+accomplishments speak for themselves, in the posthumus memorabilia of
+his travels published by Lord L., had seen an array of objects in the
+desert, which facts immediately succeeding demonstrated to have been a
+mere ocular _lusus_, or (according to Arab notions) phantoms.
+During the absence from home of an Arab sheikh, who had been hired as
+conductor of Lord Lindsay's party, a hostile tribe (bearing the name of
+Tellaheens) had assaulted and pillaged his tents. Report of this had
+reached the English travelling party; it was known that the Tellaheens
+were still in motion, and a hostile rencounter was looked for for some
+days. At length, in crossing the well known valley of the _Wady
+Araba_, that most ancient channel of communication between the Red
+Sea and Judea, &c., Mr. Ramsay saw, to his own entire conviction, a
+party of horse moving amongst some sand-hills. Afterwards it became
+certain, from accurate information, that this must have been a
+delusion. It was established, that no horseman _could_ have been
+in that neighborhood at that time. Lord Lindsay records the case as an
+illustration of 'that spiritualized tone the imagination naturally
+assumes, in scenes presenting so little sympathy with the ordinary
+feelings of humanity;' and he reports the case in these pointed terms:
+--'Mr. Ramsay, a man of remarkably strong sight, and by no means
+disposed to superstitious credulity, distinctly saw a party of horse
+moving among the sand-hills; and I do not believe he was ever able to
+divest himself of that impression.' No--and, according to Arab
+interpretation, very naturally so; for, according to their faith, he
+really _had_ seen the horsemen; phantom horseman certainly, but
+still objects of sight. The sequel remains to be told--by the Arabian
+hypothesis, Mr. Ramsay had but a short time to live--he was under a
+secret summons to the next world. And accordingly, in a few weeks after
+this, whilst Lord Lindsay had gone to visit Palmyra, Mr. Ramsay died at
+Damascus.
+
+This was a case exactly corresponding to the Pagan _nympholepsis_
+--he had seen the beings whom it is not lawful to see and live. Another
+case of Eastern superstition, not less determined, and not less
+remarkably fulfilled, occurred some years before to Dr. Madden, who
+travelled pretty much in the same route as Lord Lindsay. The doctor, as
+a phrenologist, had been struck with the very singular conformation of
+a skull which he saw amongst many others on an altar in some Syrian
+convent. He offered a considerable sum in gold for it; but it was by
+repute the skull of a saint; and the monk with whom Dr. M. attempted to
+negotiate, not only refused his offers, but protested that even for the
+doctor's sake, apart from the interests of the convent, he could not
+venture on such a transfer: for that, by the tradition attached to it,
+the skull would endanger any vessel carrying it from the Syrian shore:
+the vessel might escape; but it would never succeed in reaching any but
+a Syrian harbor. After this, for the credit of our country, which
+stands so high in the East, and should be so punctiliously tended by
+all Englishmen, we are sorry to record that Dr. Madden (though
+otherwise a man of scrupulous honor) yielded to the temptation of
+substituting for the saint's skull another less remarkable from his own
+collection. With this saintly relic he embarked on board a Grecian
+ship; was alternately pursued and met by storms the most violent;
+larboard and starboard, on every quarter, he was buffeted; the wind
+blew from every point of the compass; the doctor honestly confesses
+that he often wished this baleful skull back in safety on the quiet
+altar from which he took it; and finally, after many days of anxiety,
+he was too happy in finding himself again restored to some oriental
+port, from which he secretly vowed never again to sail with a saint's
+skull, or with any skull, however remarkable phrenologically, not
+purchased in an open market.
+
+Thus we have pursued, through many of its most memorable sections, the
+spirit of the miraculous as it moulded and gathered itself in the
+superstitions of Paganism; and we have shown that, in the modern
+superstitions of Christianity, or of Mahometanism, (often enough
+borrowed from Christian sources,) there is a pretty regular
+correspondence. Speaking with a reference to the strictly popular
+belief, it cannot be pretended for a moment, that miraculous agencies
+are slumbering in modern ages. For one superstition of that nature
+which the Pagans had, we can produce twenty. And if, from the collation
+of numbers, we should pass to that of quality, it is a matter of
+notoriety, that from the very philosophy of Paganism, and its slight
+root in the terrors or profounder mysteries of spiritual nature, no
+comparison could be sustained for a moment between the true religion
+and any mode whatever of the false. Ghosts we have purposely omitted,
+because that idea is so peculiarly Christian [Footnote: '_Because
+that idea is so peculiarly Christian_'--One reason, additional to
+the main one, why the idea of a ghost could not be conceived or
+reproduced by Paganism, lies in the fourfold resolution of the human
+nature at death, viz.--1. _corpus_; 2. _manes_; 3. _spiritus_;
+4. _anima_. No reversionary consciousness, no restitution of the total
+nature, sentient and active, was thus possible. Pliny has a story which
+looks like a ghost story; but it is all moonshine--a mere
+_simulacrum_.] as to reject all counterparts or affinities from other
+modes of the supernatural. The Christian ghost is too awful a presence,
+and with too large a substratum of the real, the impassioned, the
+human, for our present purposes. We deal chiefly with the wilder and
+more ærial forms of superstition; not so far off from fleshly nature as
+the purely allegoric--not so near as the penal, the purgatorial, the
+penitential. In this middle class, 'Gabriel's hounds'--the 'phantom
+ship'--the gloomy legends of the charcoal burners in the German
+forests--and the local or epichorial superstitions from every district
+of Europe, come forward by thousands, attesting the high activity of
+the miraculous and the hyperphysical instincts, even in this
+generation, wheresoever the voice of the people makes itself heard.
+
+But in Pagan times, it will be objected, the popular superstitions
+blended themselves with the highest political functions, gave a
+sanction to national counsels, and oftentimes gave their starting point
+to the very primary movements of the state. Prophecies, omens,
+miracles, all worked concurrently with senates or princes. Whereas in
+our days, says Charles Lamb, the witch who takes her pleasure with the
+moon, and summons Beelzebub to her sabbaths, nevertheless trembles
+before the beadle, and hides herself from the overseer. Now, as to the
+witch, even the horrid Canidia of Horace, or the more dreadful Erichtho
+of Lucan, seems hardly to have been much respected in any era. But for
+the other modes of the supernatural, they have entered into more
+frequent combinations with state functions and state movements in our
+modern ages than in the classical age of Paganism. Look at prophecies,
+for example: the Romans had a few obscure oracles afloat, and they had
+the Sibylline books under the state seal. These books, in fact, had
+been kept so long, that, like port wine superannuated, they had lost
+their flavor and body. [Footnote: '_Like port wine superannuated, the
+Sibylline books had lost their flavor and their body_.'--There is an
+allegoric description in verse, by Mr. Rogers, of an ice-house, in
+which winter is described as a captive, &c., which is memorable on this
+account, that a brother poet, on reading the passage, mistook it, (from
+not understanding the allegorical expressions,) either sincerely or
+maliciously, for a description of the house-dog. Now, this little
+anecdote seems to embody the poor Sibyl's history,--from a stern icy
+sovereign, with a petrific mace, she lapsed into an old toothless
+mastiff. She continued to snore in her ancient kennel for above a
+thousand years. The last person who attempted to stir her up with a
+long pole, and to extract from her paralytic dreaming some growls or
+snarls against Christianity, was Aurelian, in a moment of public panic.
+But the thing was past all tampering. The poor creature could neither
+be kicked nor coaxed into vitality.] On the other hand, look at France.
+Henry the historian, speaking of the fifteenth century, describes it as
+a national infirmity of the English to be prophecy-ridden. Perhaps
+there never was any foundation for this as an exclusive remark; but
+assuredly not in the next century. There had been with us British, from
+the twelfth century, Thomas of Ercildoune in the north, and many
+monkish local prophets for every part of the island; but latterly
+England had no terrific prophet, unless, indeed Nixon of the Vale Royal
+in Cheshire, who uttered his dark oracles sometimes with a merely
+Cestrian, sometimes with a national reference. Whereas in France,
+throughout the sixteenth century, every principal event was foretold
+successively, with an accuracy that still shocks and confounds us.
+Francis the First, who opens the century, (and by many is held to open
+the book of _modern history_, as distinguished from the middle or
+_feudal_ history,) had the battle of Pavia foreshown to him, not
+by name, but in its results--by his own Spanish captivity--by the
+exchange for his own children upon a frontier river of Spain--finally,
+by his own disgraceful death, through an infamous disease conveyed to
+him under a deadly circuit of revenge. This king's son, Henry the
+Second, read some years _before_ the event a description of that
+tournament, on the marriage of the Scottish Queen with his eldest son,
+Francis II., which proved fatal to himself, through the awkwardness of
+the Compte de Montgomery and his own obstinacy. After this, and we
+believe a little after the brief reign of Francis II., arose
+Nostradamus, the great prophet of the age. All the children of Henry
+II. and of Catharine de Medici, one after the other, died in
+circumstances of suffering and horror, and Nostradamus pursued the
+whole with ominous allusions. Charles IX., though the authorizer of the
+Bartholomew massacre, was the least guilty of his party, and the only
+one who manifested a dreadful remorse. Henry III., the last of the
+brothers, died, as the reader will remember, by assassination. And all
+these tragic successions of events are still to be read more or less
+dimly prefigured in verses of which we will not here discuss the dates.
+Suffice it, that many authentic historians attest the good faith of the
+prophets; and finally, with respect to the first of the Bourbon
+dynasty, Henry IV., who succeeded upon the assassination of his
+brother-in-law, we have the peremptory assurance of Sully and other
+Protestants, countersigned by writers both historical and
+controversial, that not only was he prepared, by many warnings, for his
+own tragical death--not only was the day, the hour prefixed--not only
+was an almanac sent to him, in which the bloody summer's day of 1610
+was pointed out to his attention in bloody colors; but the mere record
+of the king's last afternoon shows beyond a doubt the extent and the
+punctual limitation of his anxieties. In fact, it is to this attitude
+of listening expectation in the king, and breathless waiting for the
+blow, that Schiller alludes in that fine speech of Wallenstein to his
+sister, where he notices the funeral knells that sounded continually in
+Henry's ears, and, above all, his prophetic instinct, that caught the
+sound from a far distance of his murderer's motions, and could
+distinguish, amidst all the tumult of a mighty capital, those stealthy
+steps
+
+  ----'Which even then were seeking him
+  Throughout the streets of Paris.'
+
+We profess not to admire Henry the Fourth of France, whose secret
+character we shall, on some other occasion, attempt to expose. But his
+resignation to the appointments of Heaven, in dismissing his guards, as
+feeling that against a danger so domestic and so mysterious, all
+fleshly arms were vain, has always struck us as the most like
+magnanimity of anything in his very theatrical life.
+
+Passing to our own country, and to the times immediately in succession,
+we fall upon some striking prophecies, not verbal but symbolic, if we
+turn from the broad highway of public histories, to the by-paths of
+private memories. Either Clarendon it is, in his Life (not his public
+history), or else Laud, who mentions an anecdote connected with the
+coronation of Charles I., (the son-in-law of the murdered Bourbon,)
+which threw a gloom upon the spirits of the royal friends, already
+saddened by the dreadful pestilence which inaugurated the reign of this
+ill-fated prince, levying a tribute of one life in sixteen from the
+population of the English metropolis. At the coronation of Charles, it
+was discovered that all London would not furnish the quantity of purple
+velvet required for the royal robes and the furniture of the throne.
+What was to be done? Decorum required that the furniture should be all
+_en suite_. Nearer than Genoa no considerable addition could be
+expected. That would impose a delay of 150 days. Upon mature
+consideration, and chiefly of the many private interests that would
+suffer amongst the multitudes whom such a solemnity had called up from
+the country, it was resolved to robe the King in _white_ velvet.
+But this, as it afterwards occurred, was the color in which victims
+were arrayed. And thus, it was alleged, did the King's council
+establish an augury of evil. Three other ill omens, of some celebrity,
+occurred to Charles I., viz., on occasion of creating his son Charles a
+knight of the Bath, at Oxford some years after; and at the bar of that
+tribunal which sat in judgment upon him.
+
+The reign of his second son, James II., the next reign that could be
+considered an unfortunate reign, was inaugurated by the same evil
+omens. The day selected for the coronation (in 1685) was a day
+memorable for England--it was St. George's day, the 23d of April, and
+entitled, even on a separate account, to be held a sacred day as the
+birthday of Shakspeare in 1564, and his deathday in 1616. The King
+saved a sum of sixty thousand pounds by cutting off the ordinary
+cavalcade from the Tower of London to Westminster. Even this was
+imprudent. It is well known that, amongst the lowest class of the
+English, there is an obstinate prejudice (though unsanctioned by law)
+with respect to the obligation imposed by the ceremony of coronation.
+So long as this ceremony is delayed, or mutilated, they fancy that
+their obedience is a matter of mere prudence, liable to be enforced by
+arms, but not consecrated either by law or by religion. The change made
+by James was, therefore, highly imprudent; shorn of its antique
+traditionary usages, the yoke of conscience was lightened at a moment
+when it required a double ratification. Neither was it called for on
+motives of economy, for James was unusually rich. This voluntary
+arrangement was, therefore, a bad beginning; but the accidental omens
+were worse. They are thus reported by Blennerhassett, (History of
+England to the end of George I., Vol. iv., p. 1760, printed at
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne: 1751.) 'The crown being too little for the King's
+head, was often in a tottering condition, and like to fall off.' Even
+this was observed attentively by spectators of the most opposite
+feelings. But there was another simultaneous omen, which affected the
+Protestant enthusiasts, and the superstitious, whether Catholic or
+Protestant, still more alarmingly. 'The same day the king's arms,
+pompously painted in the great altar window of a London church,
+suddenly fell down without apparent cause, and broke to pieces, whilst
+the rest of the window remained standing. Blennerhassett mutters the
+dark terrors which possessed himself and others.' 'These,' says he,
+'were reckoned ill omens to the king.'
+
+In France, as the dreadful criminality of the French sovereigns through
+the 17th century began to tell powerfully, and reproduce itself in the
+miseries and tumults of the French populace through the 18th century,
+it is interesting to note the omens which unfolded themselves at
+intervals. A volume might be written upon them. The French Bourbons
+renewed the picture of that fatal house which in Thebes offered to the
+Grecian observers the spectacle of dire auguries, emerging from
+darkness through three generations, _à plusieurs reprises_.
+Everybody knows the fatal pollution of the marriage pomps on the
+reception of Marie Antoinette in Paris; the numbers who perished are
+still spoken of obscurely as to the amount, and with shuddering awe for
+the unparalleled horrors standing in the background of the fatal reign
+--horrors
+
+  'That hush'd in grim repose, await their evening prey.'
+
+But in the life of Goethe is mentioned a still more portentous (though
+more shadowy) omen in the pictorial decorations of the arras which
+adorned the pavilion on the French frontier; the first objects which
+met the Austrian Archduchess on being hailed as Dauphiness, was a
+succession of the most tragic groups from the most awful section of the
+Grecian theatre. The next alliance of the same kind between the same
+great empires, in the persons of Napoleon and the Archduchess Marie
+Louisa, was overshadowed by the same unhappy omens, and, as we all
+remember, with the same unhappy results, within a brief period of five
+years.
+
+Or, if we should resort to the fixed and monumental rather than to
+these auguries of great nations--such, for instance, as were embodied
+in those _Palladia_, or protesting talismans, which capital
+cities, whether Pagan or Christian, glorified through a period of
+twenty-five hundred years, we shall find a long succession of these
+enchanted pledges, from the earliest precedent of Troy (whose palladium
+was undoubtedly a talisman) down to that equally memorable, and bearing
+the same name, at Western Rome. We may pass, by a vast transition of
+two and a half millennia, to that great talisman of Constantinople, the
+triple serpent, (having perhaps an original reference to the Mosaic
+serpent of the wilderness, which healed the infected by the simple act
+of looking upon it, as the symbol of the Redeemer, held aloft upon the
+Cross for the deliverance from moral contagion.) This great consecrated
+talisman, venerated equally by Christian, by Pagan, and by Mahometan,
+was struck on the head by Mahomet the Second, on that same day, May
+29th of 1453, in which he mastered by storm this glorious city, the
+bulwark of eastern Christendom, and the immediate rival of his own
+European throne at Adrianople. But mark the superfetation of omens--
+omen supervening upon omen, augury engrafted upon augury. The hour was
+a sad one for Christianity; just 720 years before the western horn of
+Islam had been rebutted in France by the Germans, chiefly under Charles
+Martel. But now it seemed as though another horn, even more vigorous,
+was preparing to assault Christendom and its hopes from the eastern
+quarter. At this epoch, in the very hour of triumph, when the last of
+the Cæsars had glorified his station, and sealed his testimony by
+martyrdom, the fanatical Sultan, riding to his stirrups in blood, and
+wielding that iron mace which had been his sole weapon, as well as
+cognizance, through the battle, advanced to the column, round which the
+triple serpent roared spirally upwards. He smote the brazen talisman;
+he shattered one head; he left it mutilated as the record of his great
+revolution; but crush it, destroy it, he did not--as a symbol
+prefiguring the fortunes of Mahometanism, his people noticed, that in
+the critical hour of fate, which stamped the Sultan's acts with
+efficacy through ages, he had been prompted by his secret genius only
+to 'scotch the snake,' not to crush it. Afterwards the fatal hour was
+gone by; and this imperfect augury has since concurred traditionally
+with the Mahometan prophecies about the Adrianople gate of
+Constantinople, to depress the ultimate hopes of Islam in the midst of
+all its insolence. The very haughtiest of the Mussulmans believe that
+the gate is already in existence, through which the red Giaours (the
+_Russi_) shall pass to the conquest of Stamboul; and that
+everywhere, in Europe at least, the hat of Frangistan is destined to
+surmount the turban--the crescent must go down before the cross.
+
+
+
+
+COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING.
+
+
+What is the deadest of things earthly? It is, says the world, ever
+forward and rash--'a door-nail!' But the world is wrong. There is a
+thing deader than a door-nail, viz., Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I. Dead,
+more dead, most dead, is Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.; and this upon
+more arguments than one. The book has clearly not completed its
+elementary act of respiration; the _systole_ of Vol. I. is
+absolutely useless and lost without the _diastole_ of that Vol.
+II., which is never to exist. That is one argument, and perhaps this
+second argument is stronger. Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I., deals
+rashly, unjustly, and almost maliciously, with some of our own
+particular friends; and yet, until late in this summer, _Anno
+Domini_ 1844, we--that is, neither ourselves nor our friends--ever
+heard of its existence. Now a sloth, even without the benefit of Mr.
+Waterton's evidence to his character, will travel faster than that. But
+malice, which travels fastest of all things, must be dead and cold at
+starting, when it can thus have lingered in the rear for six years; and
+therefore, though the world was so far right, that people _do_
+say, 'Dead as a door-nail,' yet, henceforward, the weakest of these
+people will see the propriety of saying--'Dead as Gillman's Coleridge.'
+
+The reader of experience, on sliding over the surface of this opening
+paragraph, begins to think there's mischief singing in the upper air.
+'No, reader, not at all. We never were cooler in our days. And this we
+protest, that, were it not for the excellence of the subject,
+_Coleridge and Opium-Eating_, Mr. Gillman would have been dismissed
+by us unnoticed. Indeed, we not only forgive Mr. Gillman, but we
+have a kindness for him; and on this account, that he was good, he
+was generous, he was most forbearing, through twenty years, to poor
+Coleridge, when thrown upon his hospitality. An excellent thing
+_that_, Mr. Gillman, till, noticing the theme suggested by this
+unhappy Vol. I., we are forced at times to notice its author, Nor is
+this to be regretted. We remember a line of Horace never yet properly
+translated, viz:--
+
+  'Nec scutica dignum horribili sectere flagello.'
+
+The true translation of which, as we assure the unlearned reader, is--
+'Nor must you pursue with the horrid knout of Christopher that man who
+merits only a switching.' Very true. We protest against all attempts to
+invoke the exterminating knout; for _that_ sends a man to the
+hospital for two months; but you see that the same judicious poet, who
+dissuades an appeal to the knout, indirectly recommends the switch,
+which, indeed, is rather pleasant than otherwise, amiably playful in
+some of its little caprices, and in its worst, suggesting only a
+pennyworth of diachylon.
+
+We begin by professing, with hearty sincerity, our fervent admiration
+of the extraordinary man who furnishes the theme for Mr. Gillman's
+_coup-d'essai_ in biography. He was, in a literary sense, our
+brother--for he also was amongst the contributors to _Blackwood_--
+and will, we presume, take his station in that Blackwood gallery of
+portraits, which, in a century hence, will possess more interest for
+intellectual Europe than any merely martial series of portraits, or any
+gallery of statesmen assembled in congress, except as regards one or
+two leaders; for defunct major-generals, and secondary diplomatists,
+when their date is past, awake no more emotion than last year's
+advertisements, or obsolete directories; whereas those who, in a stormy
+age, have swept the harps of passion, of genial wit, or of the
+wrestling and gladiatorial reason, become more interesting to men when
+they can no longer be seen as bodily agents, than even in the middle
+chorus of that intellectual music over which, living, they presided.
+
+Of this great camp Coleridge was a leader, and fought amongst the
+_primipili_; yet, comparatively, he is still unknown. Heavy,
+indeed, are the arrears still due to philosophic curiosity on the real
+merits, and on the separate merits, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
+Coleridge as a poet--Coleridge as a philosopher! How extensive are
+those questions, if those were all! and upon neither question have we
+yet any investigation--such as, by compass of views, by research, or
+even by earnestness of sympathy with the subject, can, or ought to
+satisfy, a philosophic demand. Blind is that man who can persuade
+himself that the interest in Coleridge, taken as a total object, is
+becoming an obsolete interest. We are of opinion that even Milton, now
+viewed from a distance of two centuries, is still inadequately judged
+or appreciated in his character of poet, of patriot and partisan, or,
+finally, in his character of accomplished scholar. But, if so, how much
+less can it be pretended that satisfaction has been rendered to the
+claims of Coleridge? for, upon Milton, libraries have been written.
+There has been time for the malice of men, for the jealousy of men, for
+the enthusiasm, the scepticism, the adoring admiration of men, to
+expand themselves! There has been room for a Bentley, for an Addison,
+for a Johnson, for a wicked Lauder, for an avenging Douglas, for an
+idolizing Chateaubriand; and yet, after all, little enough has been
+done towards any comprehensive estimate of the mighty being concerned.
+Piles of materials have been gathered to the ground; but, for the
+monument which should have risen from these materials, neither the
+first stone has been laid, nor has a qualified architect yet presented
+his credentials. On the other hand, upon Coleridge little,
+comparatively, has yet been written, whilst the separate characters on
+which the judgment is awaited, are more by one than those which Milton
+sustained. Coleridge, also, is a poet; Coleridge, also, was mixed up
+with the fervent politics of his age--an age how memorably reflecting
+the revolutionary agitations of Milton's age. Coleridge, also, was an
+extensive and brilliant scholar. Whatever might be the separate
+proportions of the two men in each particular department of the three
+here noticed, think as the reader will upon that point, sure we are
+that either subject is ample enough to make a strain upon the amplest
+faculties. How alarming, therefore, for any _honest_ critic, who
+should undertake this later subject of Coleridge, to recollect that,
+after pursuing him through a zodiac of splendors corresponding to those
+of Milton in kind, however different in degree--after weighing him as a
+poet, as a philosophic politician, as a scholar, he will have to wheel
+after him into another orbit, into the unfathomable _nimbus_ of
+transcendental metaphysics. Weigh him the critic must in the golden
+balance of philosophy the most abstruse--a balance which even itself
+requires weighing previously, or he will have done nothing that can be
+received for an estimate of the composite Coleridge. This astonishing
+man, be it again remembered, besides being an exquisite poet, a
+profound political speculator, a philosophic student of literature
+through all its chambers and recesses, was also a circumnavigator on
+the most pathless waters of scholasticism and metaphysics. He had
+sounded, without guiding charts, the secret deeps of Proclus and
+Plotinus; he had laid down buoys on the twilight, or moonlight, ocean
+of Jacob Boehmen; [Footnote: 'JACOB BOEHMEN.' We ourselves had the
+honor of presenting to Mr. Coleridge, Law's English version of Jacob--a
+set of huge quartos. Some months afterwards we saw this work lying
+open, and one volume at least overflowing, in parts, with the
+commentaries and the _corollaries_ of Coleridge. Whither has this
+work, and so many others swathed about with Coleridge's MS. notes,
+vanished from the world?] he had cruised over the broad Atlantic of
+Kant and Schelling, of Fichte and Oken. Where is the man who shall be
+equal to these things? We at least make no such adventurous effort; or,
+if ever we should presume to do so, not at present. Here we design only
+to make a coasting voyage of survey round the headlands and most
+conspicuous seamarks of our subject, as they are brought forward by Mr.
+Gillman, or collaterally suggested by our own reflections; and
+especially we wish to say a word or two on Coleridge as an opium-eater.
+
+Naturally the first point to which we direct our attention, is the
+history and personal relations of Coleridge. Living with Mr. Gillman
+for nineteen years as a domesticated friend, Coleridge ought to have
+been known intimately. And it is reasonable to expect, from so much
+intercourse, some additions to our slender knowledge of Coleridge's
+adventures, (if we may use so coarse a word,) and of the secret springs
+at work in those early struggles of Coleridge at Cambridge, London,
+Bristol, which have been rudely told to the world, and repeatedly told,
+as showy romances, but never rationally explained.
+
+The anecdotes, however, which Mr. Gillman has added to the personal
+history of Coleridge, are as little advantageous to the effect of his
+own book as they are to the interest of the memorable character which
+he seeks to illustrate. Always they are told without grace, and
+generally are suspicious in their details. Mr. Gillman we believe to be
+too upright a man for countenancing any untruth. He has been deceived.
+For example, will any man believe this? A certain 'excellent
+equestrian' falling in with Coleridge on horseback, thus accosted him--
+'Pray, Sir, did you meet a tailor along the road?' '_A tailor_!'
+answered Coleridge; '_I did meet a person answering such a description,
+who told me he had dropped his goose; that if I rode a little further
+I should find it; and I guess he must have meant you._' In Joe Miller
+this story would read, perhaps, sufferably. Joe has a privilege; and
+we do not look too narrowly into the mouth of a Joe-Millerism. But
+Mr. Gillman, writing the life of a philosopher, and no jest-book, is
+under a different law of decorum. That retort, however, which silences
+the jester, it may seem, must be a good one. And we are desired to
+believe that, in this case, the baffled assailant rode off in a spirit
+of benign candor, saying aloud to himself, like the excellent
+philosopher that he evidently was, 'Caught a Tartar!'
+
+But another story of a sporting baronet, who was besides a Member of
+Parliament, is much worse, and altogether degrading to Coleridge. This
+gentleman, by way of showing off before a party of ladies, is
+represented as insulting Coleridge by putting questions to him on the
+qualities of his horse, so as to draw the animal's miserable defects
+into public notice, and then closing his display by demanding what he
+would take for the horse 'including the rider.' The supposed reply of
+Coleridge might seem good to those who understand nothing of true
+dignity; for, as an _impromptu_, it was smart and even caustic.
+The baronet, it seems, was reputed to have been bought by the minister;
+and the reader will at once divine that the retort took advantage of
+that current belief, so as to throw back the sarcasm, by proclaiming
+that neither horse nor rider had a price placarded in the market at
+which any man could become their purchaser. But this was not the temper
+in which Coleridge either did reply, or could have replied. Coleridge
+showed, in the _spirit_ of his manner, a profound sensibility to
+the nature of a gentleman; and he felt too justly what it became a
+self-respecting person to say, ever to have aped the sort of flashy
+fencing which might seem fine to a theatrical blood.
+
+Another story is self-refuted: 'A hired partisan' had come to one of
+Coleridge's political lectures with the express purpose of bringing the
+lecturer into trouble; and most preposterously he laid himself open to
+his own snare by refusing to pay for admission. Spies must be poor
+artists who proceed thus. Upon which Coleridge remarked--'That, before
+the gentleman kicked up a dust, surely he would down with the dust.' So
+far the story will not do. But what follows is possible enough. The
+_same_ 'hired' gentleman, by way of giving unity to the tale, is
+described as having hissed. Upon this a cry arose of 'Turn him out!'
+But Coleridge interfered to protect him; he insisted on the man's right
+to hiss if he thought fit; it was legal to hiss; it was natural to
+hiss; 'for what is to be expected, gentlemen, when the cool waters of
+reason come in contact with red-hot aristocracy, but a hiss?' _Euge!_
+
+Amongst all the anecdotes, however of this splendid man, often trivial,
+often incoherent, often unauthenticated, there is one which strikes us
+as both true and interesting; and we are grateful to Mr. Gillman for
+preserving it. We find it introduced, and partially authenticated, by
+the following sentence from Coleridge himself:--'From eight to fourteen
+I was a playless day-dreamer, a _helluo librorum_; my appetite for
+which was indulged by a singular incident. A stranger, who was struck
+by my conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King's
+Street, Cheapside.' The more circumstantial explanation of Mr. Gillman
+is this: `The incident indeed was singular. Going down the Strand, in
+one of his day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont,
+thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came
+in contact with a gentleman's pocket. The gentleman seized his hand,
+turning round, and looking at him with some anger--"What! so young, and
+yet so wicked?" at the same time accused him of an attempt to pick his
+pocket. The frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention, and
+explained to him how he thought himself Leander swimming across the
+Hellespont. The gentleman was so struck and delighted with the novelty
+of the thing, and with the simplicity and intelligence of the boy, that
+he subscribed, as before stated, to the library; in consequence of
+which Coleridge was further enabled to indulge his love of reading.'
+
+We fear that this slovenly narrative is the very perfection of bad
+story-telling. But the story itself is striking, and, by the very
+oddness of the incidents, not likely to have been invented. The effect,
+from the position of the two parties--on the one side, a simple child
+from Devonshire, dreaming in the Strand that he was swimming over from
+Sestos to Abydos, and, on the other, the experienced man, dreaming only
+of this world, its knaves and its thieves, but still kind and generous
+--is beautiful and picturesque. _Oh! si sic omnia!_
+
+But the most interesting to us of the _personalities_ connected
+with Coleridge are his feuds and his personal dislikes.
+Incomprehensible to us is the war of extermination which Coleridge made
+upon the political economists. Did Sir James Steuart, in speaking of
+vine-dressers, (not _as_ vine-dressers, but generally as
+cultivators,) tell his readers, that, if such a man simply replaced his
+own consumption, having no surplus whatever or increment for the public
+capital, he could not be considered a useful citizen? Not the beast in
+the Revelation is held up by Coleridge as more hateful to the spirit of
+truth than the Jacobite baronet. And yet we know of an author--viz.,
+one S. T. Coleridge--who repeated that same doctrine without finding
+any evil in it. Look at the first part of the _Wallenstein_, where
+Count Isolani having said, 'Pooh! we are _all_ his subjects,'
+_i. e._, soldiers, (though unproductive laborers,) not less than
+productive peasants, the emperor's envoy replies--'Yet with a
+difference, general;' and the difference implies Sir James's scale, his
+vine-dresser being the equatorial case between the two extremes of the
+envoy. Malthus again, in his population-book, contends for a mathematic
+difference between animal and vegetable life, in respect to the law of
+increase, as though the first increased by geometrical ratios, the last
+by arithmetical! No proposition more worthy of laughter; since both,
+when permitted to expand, increase by geometrical ratios, and the
+latter by much higher ratios. Whereas, Malthus persuaded himself of his
+crotchet simply by refusing the requisite condition in the vegetable
+case, and granting it in the other. If you take a few grains of wheat,
+and are required to plant all successive generations of their produce
+in the same flower-pot for ever, of course you neutralize its expansion
+by your own act of arbitrary limitation. [Footnote: Malthus would have
+rejoined by saying--that the flowerpot limitation was the actual
+limitation of nature in our present circumstances. In America it is
+otherwise, he would say, but England is the very flowerpot you suppose;
+she is a flowerpot which cannot be multiplied, and cannot even be
+enlarged. Very well, so be it (which we say in order to waive
+irrelevant disputes). But then the true inference will be--not that
+vegetable increase proceeds under a different law from that which
+governs animal increase, but that, through an accident of position, the
+experiment cannot be tried in England. Surely the levers of Archimedes,
+with submission to Sir Edward B. Lytton, were not the less levers
+because he wanted the _locum standi_. It is proper, by the way,
+that we should inform the reader of this generation where to look for
+Coleridge's skirmishings with Malthus. They are to be found chiefly in
+the late Mr. William Hazlitt's work on that subject: a work which
+Coleridge so far claimed as to assert that it had been substantially
+made up from his own conversation.] But so you would do, if you tried
+the case of _animal_ increase by still exterminating all but one
+replacing couple of parents. This is not to try, but merely a pretence
+of trying, one order of powers against another. That was folly. But
+Coleridge combated this idea in a manner so obscure, that nobody
+understood it. And leaving these speculative conundrums, in coming to
+the great practical interests afloat in the Poor Laws, Coleridge did so
+little real work, that he left, as a _res integra_, to Dr. Alison,
+the capital argument that legal and _adequate_ provision for the
+poor, whether impotent poor or poor accidentally out of work, does not
+extend pauperism--no, but is the one great resource for putting it
+down. Dr. Alison's overwhelming and _experimental_ manifestations
+of that truth have prostrated Malthus and his generation for ever. This
+comes of not attending to the Latin maxim--'_Hoc_ age'--mind the
+object before you. Dr. Alison, a wise man, '_hoc_ egit:' Coleridge
+'_aliud_ egit.' And we see the result. In a case which suited him,
+by interesting his peculiar feeling, Coleridge could command
+
+  'Attention full ten times as much as there needs.'
+
+But search documents, value evidence, or thresh out bushels of
+statistical tables, Coleridge could not, any more than he could ride
+with Elliot's dragoons.
+
+Another instance of Coleridge's inaptitude for such studies as
+political economy is found in his fancy, by no means 'rich and rare,'
+but meagre and trite, that taxes can never injure public prosperity by
+mere excess of quantity; if they injure, we are to conclude that it
+must be by their quality and mode of operation, or by their false
+appropriation, (as, for instance, if they are sent out of the country
+and spent abroad.) Because, says Coleridge, if the taxes are exhaled
+from the country as vapors, back they come in drenching showers. Twenty
+pounds ascend in a Scotch mist to the Chancellor of the Exchequer from
+Leeds; but does it evaporate? Not at all: By return of post down comes
+an order for twenty pounds' worth of Leeds cloth, on account of
+Government, seeing that the poor men of the ----th regiment want new
+gaiters. True; but of this return twenty pounds, not more than four
+will be profit, _i.e._, surplus accruing to the public capital;
+whereas, of the original twenty pounds, every shilling was surplus. The
+same unsound fancy has been many times brought forward; often in
+England, often in France. But it is curious, that its first appearance
+upon any stage was precisely two centuries ago, when as yet political
+economy slept with the pre-Adamites, viz., in the Long Parliament. In a
+quarto volume of the debates during 1644-45, printed as an independent
+work, will be found the same identical doctrine, supported very
+sonorously by the same little love of an illustration from the see-saw
+of mist and rain.
+
+Political economy was not Coleridge's forte. In politics he was
+happier. In mere personal politics, he (like every man when reviewed
+from a station distant by forty years) will often appear to have erred;
+nay, he will be detected and nailed in error. But this is the necessity
+of us all. Keen are the refutations of time. And absolute results to
+posterity are the fatal touchstone of opinions in the past. It is
+undeniable, besides, that Coleridge had strong personal antipathies,
+for instance, to Messrs. Pitt and Dundas. Yet _why_, we never
+could understand. We once heard him tell a story upon Windermere, to
+the late Mr. Curwen, then M. P. for Workington, which was meant,
+apparently, to account for this feeling. The story amounted to this;
+that, when a freshman at Cambridge, Mr. Pitt had wantonly amused
+himself at a dinner party in Trinity, in smashing with filberts
+(discharged in showers like grape-shot) a most costly dessert set of
+cut glass, from which Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued a principle of
+destructiveness in his _cerebellum_. Now, if this dessert set
+belonged to some poor suffering Trinitarian, and not to himself, we are
+of opinion that he was faulty, and ought, upon his own great subsequent
+maxim, to have been coerced into 'indemnity for the past, and security
+for the future.' But, besides that this glassy _mythus_ belongs to
+an æra fifteen years earlier than Coleridge's so as to justify a shadow
+of scepticism, we really cannot find, in such an _escapade_ under
+the boiling blood of youth, any sufficient justification of that
+withering malignity towards the name of Pitt, which runs through
+Coleridge's famous _Fire, Famine, and Slaughter_. As this little
+viperous _jeu-d'esprit_ (published anonymously) subsequently
+became the subject of a celebrated after-dinner discussion in London,
+at which Coleridge (_comme de raison_) was the chief speaker, the
+reader of this generation may wish to know the question at issue; and
+in order to judge of _that_, he must know the outline of this
+devil's squib. The writer brings upon the scene three pleasant young
+ladies, viz., Miss Fire, Miss Famine, and Miss Slaughter. 'What are you
+up to? What's the row?'--we may suppose to be the introductory question
+of the poet. And the answer of the ladies makes us aware that they are
+fresh from larking in Ireland, and in France. A glorious spree they
+had; lots of fun; and laughter _a discretion_. At all times
+_gratus puellæ risus ab angulo_; so that we listen to their little
+gossip with interest. They had been setting men, it seems, by the ears;
+and the drollest little atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we
+have seen better in the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is concerned.
+But the pet little joke was in La Vendee. Miss Famine, who is the girl
+for our money, raises the question--whether any of them can tell the
+name of the leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell--if so, let
+her whisper it.
+
+  'Whisper it, sister, so and so,
+  In a dark hint--distinct and low.'
+
+Upon which the playful Miss Slaughter replies:--
+
+  'Letters _four_ do form his name.
+  *     *     *     *     *
+  He came by stealth and unlock'd my den;
+  And I have drunk the blood since then
+  Of thrice three hundred thousand men.'
+
+Good: but the sting of the hornet lies in the conclusion. If this
+quadriliteral man had done so much for _them_, (though really, we
+think, 6s. 8d. might have settled his claim,) what, says Fire, setting
+her arms a-kimbo, would they do for _him_? Slaughter replies,
+rather crustily, that, as far as a good kicking would go--or (says
+Famine) a little matter of tearing to pieces by the mob--they would be
+glad to take tickets at his benefit. 'How, you bitches!' says Fire, 'is
+that all?
+
+  'I alone am faithful; I
+  _Cling to him everlastingly_.'
+
+The sentiment is diabolical. And the question argued at the London
+dinner-table was--Could the writer have been other than a devil? The
+dinner was at the late excellent Mr. Sotheby's, known advantageously in
+those days as the translator of Wieland's _Oberon_. Several of the
+great guns amongst the literary body were present; in particular, Sir
+Walter Scott; and he, we believe, with his usual good-nature, took the
+apologetic side of the dispute. In fact, he was in the secret. Nobody
+else, barring the author, knew at first whose good name was at stake.
+The scene must have been high. The company kicked about the poor
+diabolic writer's head as if it had been a tennis-ball. Coleridge, the
+yet unknown criminal, absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for
+the defendant; the company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits began
+to _smoke_ the case, as active verbs; the advocate to _smoke_, as a
+neuter verb; the 'fun grew fast and furious;' until at length
+_delinquent arose_, burning tears in his eyes, and confessed to an
+audience, (now bursting with stifled laughter, but whom he supposed to
+be bursting with fiery indignation,) 'Lo! I am he that wrote it.'
+
+For our own parts, we side with Coleridge. Malice is not always of the
+heart. There is a malice of the understanding and the fancy. Neither do
+we think the worse of a man for having invented the most horrible and
+old-woman-troubling curse that demons ever listened to. We are too apt
+to swear horribly ourselves; and often have we frightened the cat, to
+say nothing of the kettle, by our shocking [far too shocking!] oaths.
+
+There were other celebrated men whom Coleridge detested, or seemed to
+detest--Paley, Sir Sidney Smith, Lord Hutchinson, (the last Lord
+Donoughmore,) and Cuvier. To Paley it might seem as if his antipathy
+had been purely philosophic; but we believe that partly it was
+personal; and it tallies with this belief, that, in his earliest
+political tracts, Coleridge charged the archdeacon repeatedly with his
+own joke, as if it had been a serious saying, viz.--'That he could not
+afford to keep a conscience;' such luxuries, like a carriage, for
+instance, being obviously beyond the finances of poor men.
+
+With respect to the philosophic question between the parties, as to the
+grounds of moral election, we hope it is no treason to suggest that
+both were perhaps in error. Against Paley, it occurs at once that he
+himself would not have made consequences the _practical_ test in
+valuing the morality of an act, since these can very seldom be traced
+at all up to the final stages, and in the earliest stages are
+exceedingly different under different circumstances; so that the same
+act, tried by its consequences, would bear a fluctuating appreciation.
+This could not have been Paley's _revised_ meaning. Consequently,
+had he been pressed by opposition, it would have come out, that by
+_test_ he meant only _speculative_ test: a very harmless doctrine
+certainly, but useless and impertinent to any purpose of his system.
+The reader may catch our meaning in the following illustration.
+It is a matter of general belief, that happiness, upon the whole,
+follows in a higher degree from constant integrity, than from the
+closest attention to self-interest. Now happiness is one of those
+consequences which Paley meant by final or remotest. But we could never
+use this idea as an exponent of integrity, or interchangeable
+criterion, because happiness cannot be ascertained or appreciated
+except upon long tracts of time, whereas the particular act of
+integrity depends continually upon the election of the moment. No man,
+therefore, could venture to lay down as a rule, Do what makes you
+happy; use this as your test of actions, satisfied that in that case
+always you will do the thing which is right. For he cannot discern
+independently what _will_ make him happy; and he must decide on
+the spot. The use of the _nexus_ between morality and happiness
+must therefore be inverted; it is not practical or prospective, but
+simply retrospective; and in that form it says no more than the good
+old rules hallowed in every cottage. But this furnishes no practical
+guide for moral election which a man had not, before he ever thought of
+this _nexus_. In the sense in which it is true, we need not go to
+the professor's chair for this maxim; in the sense in which it would
+serve Paley, it is absolutely false.
+
+On the other hand, as against Coleridge, it is certain that many acts
+could be mentioned which are judged to be good or bad only because
+their consequences are known to be so, whilst the great catholic acts
+of life are entirely (and, if we may so phrase it, haughtily)
+independent of consequences. For instance, fidelity to a trust is a law
+of immutable morality subject to no casuistry whatever. You have been
+left executor to a friend--you are to pay over his last legacy to X,
+though a dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it to
+the poor brother of X, though a good man, and a wise man, struggling
+with adversity. You are absolutely excluded from all contemplation of
+results. It was your deceased friend's right to make the will; it is
+yours simply to see it executed. Now, in opposition to this primary
+class of actions stands another, such as the habit of intoxication,
+which are known to be wrong only by observing the consequences. If
+drunkenness did not terminate, after some years, in producing bodily
+weakness, irritability in the temper, and so forth, it would _not_
+be a vicious act. And accordingly, if a transcendent motive should
+arise in favor of drunkenness, as that it would enable you to face a
+degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would
+arise, _pro hac vice_, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend
+who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was
+when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven
+Champions of Christendom, Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew
+himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family,
+we approved highly of his getting drunk. But to violate a trust could
+never become right under any change of circumstances. Coleridge,
+however, altogether overlooked this distinction: which, on the other
+hand, stirring in Paley's mind, but never brought out to distinct
+consciousness, nor ever investigated, nor limited, has undermined his
+system. Perhaps it is not very important how a man _theorizes_
+upon morality; happily for us all, God has left no man in such
+questions practically to the guidance of his understanding; but still,
+considering that academic bodies _are_ partly instituted for the
+support of speculative truth as well as truth practical, we must think
+it a blot upon the splendor of Oxford and Cambridge that both of them,
+in a Christian land, make Paley the foundation of their ethics; the
+alternative being Aristotle. And, in our mind, though far inferior as a
+moralist to the Stoics, Aristotle is often less of a pagan than Paley.
+
+Coleridge's dislike to Sir Sidney Smith and the Egyptian Lord
+Hutchinson fell under the category of Martial's case.
+
+  'Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare,
+  Hoc solum novi--non amo te, Sabidi.'
+
+Against Lord Hutchinson, we never heard him plead anything of moment,
+except that he was finically Frenchified in his diction; of which he
+gave this instance--that having occasion to notice a brick wall, (which
+was literally _that_, not more and not less,) when reconnoitring
+the French defences, he called it a _revêtement_. And we ourselves
+remember his using the French word _gloriole_ rather ostentatiously;
+that is, when no particular emphasis attached to the case. But every
+man has his foibles; and few, perhaps, are less conspicuously annoying
+than this of Lord Hutchinson's. Sir Sidney's crimes were less
+distinctly revealed to our mind. As to Cuvier, Coleridge's hatred of
+_him_ was more to our taste; for (though quite unreasonable, we fear)
+it took the shape of patriotism. He insisted on it, that our British
+John Hunter was the genuine article, and that Cuvier was a humbug. Now,
+speaking privately to the public, we cannot go quite so far as _that_.
+But, when publicly we address that most respectable character, _en
+grand costume_, we always mean to back Coleridge. For we are a horrible
+John Bull ourselves. As Joseph Hume observes, it makes no difference to
+us--right or wrong, black or white--when our countrymen are concerned.
+And John Hunter, notwithstanding he had a bee in his bonnet, [Footnote:
+_Vide_, in particular, for the most exquisite specimen of pigheadedness
+that the world can furnish, his perverse evidence on the once famous
+case at the Warwick assizes, of Captain Donelan for poisoning his
+brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton.] was really a great man;
+though it will not follow that Cuvier must, therefore, have been a
+little one. We do not pretend to be acquainted with the tenth part of
+Cuvier's performances; but we suspect that Coleridge's range in that
+respect was not much greater than our own.
+
+Other cases of monomaniac antipathy we might revive from our
+recollections of Coleridge, had we a sufficient motive. But in
+compensation, and by way of redressing the balance, he had many strange
+likings--equally monomaniac--and, unaccountably, he chose to exhibit
+his whimsical partialities by dressing up, as it were, in his own
+clothes, such a set of scarecrows as eye has not beheld. Heavens! what
+an ark of unclean beasts would have been Coleridge's private
+_menagerie_ of departed philosophers, could they all have been
+trotted out in succession! But did the reader feel them to be the awful
+bores which, in fact, they were? No; because Coleridge had blown upon
+these withered anatomies, through the blowpipe of his own creative
+genius, a stream of gas that swelled the tissue of their antediluvian
+wrinkles, forced color upon their cheeks, and splendor upon their
+sodden eyes. Such a process of ventriloquism never _has_ existed.
+He spoke by their organs. They were the tubes; and he forced through
+their wooden machinery his own Beethoven harmonies.
+
+First came Dr. Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was he dull? Is a wooden spoon
+dull? Fishy were his eyes; torpedinous was his manner; and his main
+idea, out of two which he really had, related to the moon--from which
+you infer, perhaps, that he was lunatic. By no means. It was no craze,
+under the influence of the moon, which possessed him; it was an idea of
+mere hostility to the moon. The Madras people, like many others, had an
+idea that she influenced the weather. Subsequently the Herschels,
+senior and junior, systematized this idea; and then the wrath of
+Andrew, previously in a crescent state, actually dilated to a
+plenilunar orb. The Westmoreland people (for at the lakes it was we
+knew him) expounded his condition to us by saying that he was
+'maffled;' which word means 'perplexed in the extreme.' His wrath did
+not pass into lunacy; it produced simple distraction; an uneasy
+fumbling with the idea; like that of an old superannuated dog who longs
+to worry, but cannot for want of teeth. In this condition you will
+judge that he was rather tedious. And in this condition Coleridge took
+him up. Andrew's other idea, because he _had_ two, related to
+education. Perhaps six-sevenths of that also came from Madras. No
+matter, Coleridge took _that_ up; Southey also; but Southey with
+his usual temperate fervor. Coleridge, on the other hand, found
+celestial marvels both in the scheme and in the man. Then commenced the
+apotheosis of Andrew Bell: and because it happened that his opponent,
+Lancaster, between ourselves, really _had_ stolen his ideas from
+Bell, what between the sad wickedness of Lancaster and the celestial
+transfiguration of Bell, gradually Coleridge heated himself to such an
+extent, that people, when referring to that subject, asked each other,
+'Have you heard Coleridge lecture on _Bel and the Dragon_?'
+
+The next man glorified by Coleridge was John Woolman, the Quaker. Him,
+though we once possessed his works, it cannot be truly affirmed that we
+ever read. Try to read John, we often did; but read John we did not.
+This, however, you say, might be our fault, and not John's. Very
+likely. And we have a notion that now, with our wiser thoughts, we
+_should_ read John, if he were here on this table. It is certain
+that he was a good man, and one of the earliest in America, if not in
+Christendom, who lifted up his hand to protest against the slave-trade.
+But still, we suspect, that had John been all that Coleridge
+represented, he would not have repelled us from reading his travels in
+the fearful way that he did. But, again, we beg pardon, and entreat the
+earth of Virginia to lie light upon the remains of John Woolman; for he
+was an Israelite, indeed, in whom there was no guile.
+
+The third person raised to divine honors by Coleridge was Bowyer, the
+master of Christ's Hospital, London--a man whose name rises into the
+nostrils of all who knew him with the gracious odor of a tallow-
+chandler's melting-house upon melting day, and whose memory is embalmed
+in the hearty detestation of all his pupils. Coleridge describes this
+man as a profound critic. Our idea of him is different. We are of
+opinion that Bowyer was the greatest villain of the eighteenth century.
+We may be wrong; but we cannot be _far_ wrong. Talk of knouting
+indeed! which we did at the beginning of this paper in the mere
+playfulness of our hearts--and which the great master of the knout,
+Christopher, who visited men's trespasses like the Eumenides, never
+resorted to but in love for some great idea which had been outraged;
+why, this man knouted his way through life, from bloody youth up to
+truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with children's
+blood, and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the stern goddess
+of the Thugs smiles, when the sound of human lamentations inhabits her
+ears. So much had the monster fed upon this great idea of 'flogging,'
+and transmuted it into the very nutriment of his heart, that he seems
+to have conceived the gigantic project of flogging all mankind; nay
+worse, for Mr. Gillman, on Coleridge's authority, tells us (p. 24) the
+following anecdote:--'"_Sirrah, I'll flog you_," were words so
+familiar to him, that on one occasion some _female_ friend of one
+of the boys,' (who had come on an errand of intercession,) 'still
+lingering at the door, after having been abruptly told to go, Bowyer
+exclaimed--"Bring that woman here, and I'll flog her."'
+
+To this horrid incarnation of whips and scourges, Coleridge, in his
+_Biographia Literaria_, ascribes ideas upon criticism and taste,
+which every man will recognise as the intense peculiarities of
+Coleridge. Could these notions really have belonged to Bowyer, then how
+do we know but he wrote _The Ancient Mariner_? Yet, on consideration,
+no. For even Coleridge admitted that, spite of his fine theorizing upon
+composition, Mr. Bowyer did not prosper in the practice. Of which he
+gave us this illustration; and as it is supposed to be the only
+specimen of the Bowyeriana which now survives in this sublunary world,
+we are glad to extend its glory. It is the most curious example extant
+of the melodious in sound:--
+
+  ''Twas thou that smooth'd'st the rough-rugg'd bed of pain.'
+
+'Smooth'd'st!' Would the teeth of a crocodile not splinter under that
+word? It seems to us as if Mr. Bowyer's verses ought to be boiled
+before they can be read. And when he says, 'Twas thou, what is the
+wretch talking to? Can he be apostrophizing the knout? We very much
+fear it. If so, then, you see (reader!) that, even when incapacitated
+by illness from operating, he still adores the image of his holy
+scourge, and invokes it as alone able to smooth 'his rough-rugg'd bed.'
+Oh, thou infernal Bowyer! upon whom even Trollope (_History of
+Christ's Hospital_) charges 'a discipline _tinctured_ with more
+than due severity;'--can there be any partners found for thee in a
+quadrille, except Draco, the bloody lawgiver, Bishop Bonner, and Mrs.
+Brownrigg?
+
+The next pet was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning Bowyer, Coleridge did
+not talk much, but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write
+much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote and
+talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball
+blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had
+fallen into one pit called Bell; secondly, falling into another pit
+called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to quote poetry against
+them:--
+
+  'Letters four do form his name;
+  He came by stealth and unlock'd my den;
+  And the nightmare I have felt since then
+  Of thrice three hundred thousand men.'
+
+Not that we insinuate any disrespect to Sir Alexander Ball. He was
+about the foremost, we believe, in all good qualities, amongst Nelson's
+admirable captains at the Nile. He commanded a seventy-four most
+effectually in that battle; he governed Malta as well as Sancho
+governed Barataria; and he was a true practical philosopher--as,
+indeed, was Sancho. But still, by all that we could ever learn, Sir
+Alexander had no taste for the abstract upon any subject; and would
+have read, as mere delirious wanderings, those philosophic opinions
+which Coleridge fastened like wings upon his respectable, but
+astounded, shoulders.
+
+We really beg pardon for having laughed a little at these crazes of
+Coleridge. But laugh we did, of mere necessity, in those days, at Bell
+and Ball, whenever we did not groan. And, as the same precise
+alternative offered itself now, viz., that, in recalling the case, we
+must reverberate either the groaning or the laughter, we presumed the
+reader would vote for the last. Coleridge, we are well convinced, owed
+all these wandering and exaggerated estimates of men--these diseased
+impulses, that, like the _mirage_, showed lakes and fountains
+where in reality there were only arid deserts, to the derangements
+worked by opium. But now, for the sake of change, let us pass to
+another topic. Suppose we say a word or two on Coleridge's
+accomplishments as a scholar. We are not going to enter on so large a
+field as that of his scholarship in connection with his philosophic
+labors, scholarship in the result; not this, but scholarship in the
+means and machinery, range of _verbal_ scholarship, is what we
+propose for a moment's review.
+
+For instance, what sort of a German scholar was Coleridge? We dare say
+that, because in his version of the _Wallenstein_ there are some
+inaccuracies, those who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in
+this particular pretension. But, to a certain degree, they will be
+wrong. Coleridge was not _very_ accurate in anything but in the
+use of logic. All his philological attainments were imperfect. He did
+not talk German; or so obscurely--and, if he attempted to speak fast,
+so erroneously--that in his second sentence, when conversing with a
+German lady of rank, he contrived to assure her that in his humble
+opinion she was a ----. Hard it is to fill up the hiatus decorously;
+but, in fact, the word very coarsely expressed that she was no better
+than she should be. Which reminds us of a parallel misadventure to a
+German, whose colloquial English had been equally neglected. Having
+obtained an interview with an English lady, he opened his business
+(whatever it might be) thus--'High-born madam, since your husband have
+kicked de bucket'----'Sir!' interrupted the lady, astonished and
+displeased. 'Oh, pardon!--nine, ten thousand pardon! Now, I make new
+beginning--quite oder beginning. Madam, since your husband have cut his
+stick'----It may be supposed that this did not mend matters; and,
+reading that in the lady's countenance, the German drew out an octavo
+dictionary, and said, perspiring with shame at having a second time
+missed fire,--'Madam, since your husband have gone to kingdom come'----
+This he said beseechingly; but the lady was past propitiation by this
+time, and rapidly moved towards the door. Things had now reached a
+crisis; and, if something were not done quickly, the game was up. Now,
+therefore, taking a last hurried look at his dictionary, the German
+flew after the lady, crying out in a voice of despair--'Madam, since
+your husband, your most respected husband, have hopped de twig'----This
+was his sheet-anchor; and, as this also _came home_, of course the
+poor man was totally wrecked. It turned out that the dictionary he had
+used (Arnold's, we think,)--a work of a hundred years back, and, from
+mere ignorance, giving slang translations from Tom Brown, L'Estrange,
+and other jocular writers--had put down the verb _sterben (to
+die)_ with the following worshipful series of equivalents--1. To
+kick the bucket; 2. To cut one's stick; 3. To go to kingdom come; 4. To
+hop the twig.
+
+But, though Coleridge did not pretend to any fluent command of
+conversational German, he read it with great ease. His knowledge of
+German literature was, indeed, too much limited by his rare
+opportunities for commanding anything like a well-mounted library. And
+particularly it surprised us that Coleridge knew little or nothing of
+John Paul (Richter). But his acquaintance with the German philosophic
+masters was extensive. And his valuation of many individual German
+words or phrases was delicate and sometimes profound.
+
+As a Grecian, Coleridge must be estimated with a reference to the state
+and standard of Greek literature at that time and in this country.
+Porson had not yet raised our ideal. The earliest laurels of Coleridge
+were gathered, however, in that field. Yet no man will, at this day,
+pretend that the Greek of his prize ode is sufferable. Neither did
+Coleridge ever become an accurate Grecian in later times, when better
+models of scholarship, and better aids to scholarship, had begun to
+multiply. But still we must assert this point of superiority for
+Coleridge, that, whilst he never was what may be called a well-mounted
+scholar in any department of verbal scholarship, he yet displayed
+sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity, and a felicity of
+philosophic investigation, even in this path, such as better scholars
+do not often attain, and of a kind which cannot be learned from books.
+But, as respects his accuracy, again we must recall to the reader the
+state of Greek literature in England during Coleridge's youth; and, in
+all equity, as a means of placing Coleridge in the balances,
+specifically we must recall the state of Greek metrical composition at
+that period.
+
+To measure the condition of Greek literature even in Cambridge, about
+the initial period of Coleridge, we need only look back to the several
+translations of Gray's _Elegy_ by three (if not four) of the
+reverend gentlemen at that time attached to Eton College. Mathias, no
+very great scholar himself in this particular field, made himself
+merry, in his _Pursuits of Literature_, with these Eton translations.
+In that he was right. But he was _not_ right in praising a contemporary
+translation by Cook, who (we believe) was the immediate predecessor of
+Porson in the Greek chair. As a specimen of this translation,
+[Footnote: It was printed at the end of Aristotle's _Poetics_, which
+Dr. Cook edited.] we cite one stanza; and we cannot be supposed to
+select unfairly, because it is the stanza which Mathias praises in
+extravagant terms. "Here," says he, "Gray, Cook, and Nature, do seem to
+contend for the mastery." The English quatrain must be familiar to
+every body:--
+
+  "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
+    And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
+  Await alike the inevitable hour:
+    The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
+
+And the following, we believe, though quoting from a thirty-three
+years' recollection of it, is the exact Greek version of Cook:--
+
+  'A charis eugenon, charis a basilaeidos achas
+  Lora tuchaes chryseaes, Aphroditaes kala ta dora,
+  Paith ama tauta tethiake, kai eiden morsimon amar
+  Proon kle olole, kai ocheto xunon es Adaen.'
+
+Now really these verses, by force of a little mosaic tesselation from
+genuine Greek sources, pass fluently over the tongue; but can they be
+considered other than a _cento_? Swarms of English schoolboys, at
+this day, would not feel very proud to adopt them. In fact, we remember
+(at a period say twelve years later than this) some iambic verses,
+which were really composed by a boy, viz., a son of Dr. Prettyman,
+(afterwards Tomline,) Bishop of Winchester, and, in earlier times,
+private tutor to Mr. Pitt; they were published by Middleton, first
+Bishop of Calcutta, in the preface to his work on the Greek article;
+and for racy idiomatic Greek, self-originated, and not a mere mocking-
+bird's iteration of alien notes, are so much superior to all the
+attempts of these sexagenarian doctors, as distinctly to mark the
+growth of a new era and a new generation in this difficult
+accomplishment, within the first decennium of this century. It is
+singular that only one blemish is suggested by any of the contemporary
+critics in Dr. Cook's verses, viz., in the word _xunon_, for which
+this critic proposes to substitute _ooinon_, to prevent, as he
+observes, the last syllable of _ocheto_ from being lengthened by
+the _x_. Such considerations as these are necessary to the
+_trutinæ castigatio_, before we can value Coleridge's place on the
+scale of his own day; which day, _quoad hoc_, be it remembered,
+was 1790.
+
+As to French, Coleridge read it with too little freedom to find
+pleasure in French literature. Accordingly, we never recollect his
+referring for any purpose, either of argument or illustration, to a
+French classic. Latin, from his regular scholastic training, naturally
+he read with a scholar's fluency; and indeed, he read constantly in
+authors, such as Petrarch, Erasmus, Calvin, &c., whom he could not then
+have found in translations. But Coleridge had not cultivated an
+acquaintance with the delicacies of classic Latinity. And it is
+remarkable that Wordsworth, educated most negligently at Hawkshead
+school, subsequently by reading the lyric poetry of Horace, simply for
+his own delight as a student of composition, made himself a master of
+Latinity in its most difficult form; whilst Coleridge, trained
+regularly in a great Southern school, never carried his Latin to any
+classical polish.
+
+There is another accomplishment of Coleridge's, less broadly open to
+the judgment of this generation, and not at all of the next--viz., his
+splendid art of conversation, on which it will be interesting to say a
+word. Ten years ago, when the music of this rare performance had not
+yet ceased to vibrate in men's ears, what a sensation was gathering
+amongst the educated classes on this particular subject! What a tumult
+of anxiety prevailed to 'hear Mr. Coleridge'--or even to talk with a
+man who _had_ heard him! Had he lived till this day, not Paganini
+would have been so much sought after. That sensation is now decaying;
+because a new generation has emerged during the ten years since his
+death. But many still remain whose sympathy (whether of curiosity in
+those who did _not_ know him, or of admiration in those who
+_did_) still reflects as in a mirror the great stir upon this
+subject which then was moving in the world. To these, if they should
+inquire for the great distinguishing principle of Coleridge's
+conversation, we might say that it was the power of vast combination
+'in linked sweetness long drawn out.' He gathered into focal
+concentration the largest body of objects, _apparently_ disconnected,
+that any man ever yet, by any magic, could assemble, or, _having_
+assembled, could manage. His great fault was, that, by not opening
+sufficient spaces for reply or suggestion, or collateral notice, he not
+only narrowed his own field, but he grievously injured the final
+impression. For when men's minds are purely passive, when they are not
+allowed to re-act, then it is that they collapse most, and that their
+sense of what is said must ever be feeblest. Doubtless there must have
+been great conversational masters elsewhere, and at many periods; but
+in this lay Coleridge's characteristic advantage, that he was a great
+natural power, and also a great artist. He was a power in the art, and
+he carried a new art into the power.
+
+But now, finally--having left ourselves little room for more--one or
+two words on Coleridge as an opium-eater.
+
+We have not often read a sentence falling from a wise man with
+astonishment so profound, as that particular one in a letter of
+Coleridge's to Mr. Gillman, which speaks of the effort to wean one's-
+self from opium as a trivial task. There are, we believe, several such
+passages. But we refer to that one in particular which assumes that a
+single 'week' will suffice for the whole process of so mighty a
+revolution. Is indeed leviathan _so_ tamed? In that case the
+quarantine of the opium-eater might be finished within Coleridge's
+time, and with Coleridge's romantic ease. But mark the contradictions
+of this extraordinary man. Not long ago we were domesticated with a
+venerable rustic, strong-headed, but incurably obstinate in his
+prejudices, who treated the whole body of medical men as ignorant
+pretenders, knowing absolutely nothing of the system which they
+professed to superintend. This, you will remark, is no very singular
+case. No; nor, as we believe, is the antagonist case of ascribing to
+such men magical powers. Nor, what is worse still, the co-existence of
+both cases in the same mind, as in fact happened here. For this same
+obstinate friend of ours, who treated all medical pretensions as the
+mere jest of the universe, every 'third day was exacting from his own
+medical attendants some exquisite _tour-de-force_, as that they
+should know or should do something, which, if they _had_ known or
+done, all men would have suspected them reasonably of magic. He rated
+the whole medical body as infants; and yet what he exacted from them
+every third day as a matter of course, virtually presumed them to be
+the only giants within the whole range of science. Parallel and equal
+is the contradiction of Coleridge. He speaks of opium excess, his own
+excess, we mean--the excess of twenty-five years--as a thing to be laid
+aside easily and for ever within seven days; and yet, on the other
+hand, he describes it pathetically, sometimes with a frantic pathos, as
+the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight which had desolated his
+life.
+
+This shocking contradiction we need not press. All readers will see
+_that_. But some will ask--Was Mr. Coleridge right in either view?
+Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion, (viz., that the opium
+of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn,) where a child
+could know that he was wrong, was he even altogether right, secondly,
+in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been withered by
+opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to happiness
+and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that therefore,
+as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have been the
+wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats
+the _steady_ habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of irregular
+exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but it develops
+preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power. Let us ask of any man
+who holds that not Coleridge himself but the world, as interested in
+Coleridge's usefulness, has suffered by his addiction to opium; whether
+he is aware of the way in which opium affected Coleridge; and secondly,
+whether he is aware of the actual contributions to literature--how
+large they were--which Coleridge made _in spite_ of opium. All who
+were intimate with Coleridge must remember the fits of genial animation
+which were created continually in his manner and in his buoyancy of
+thought by a recent or by an _extra_ dose of the omnipotent drug.
+A lady, who knew nothing experimentally of opium, once told us, that
+she 'could tell when Mr. Coleridge had taken too much opium by his
+shining countenance.' She was right; we know that mark of opium
+excesses well, and the cause of it; or at least we believe the cause to
+lie in the quickening of the insensible perspiration which accumulates
+and glistens on the face. Be that as it may, a criterion it was that
+could not deceive us as to the condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in
+that condition he made his most effective intellectual displays. It is
+true that he might not be happy under this fiery animation, and we
+fully believe that he was not. Nobody is happy under laudanum except
+for a very short term of years. But in what way did that operate upon
+his exertions as a writer? We are of opinion that it killed Coleridge
+as a poet. 'The harp of Quantock' was silenced for ever by the torment
+of opium. But proportionably it roused and stung by misery his
+metaphysical instincts into more spasmodic life. Poetry can flourish
+only in the atmosphere of happiness. But subtle and perplexed
+investigations of difficult problems are amongst the commonest
+resources for beguiling the sense of misery. And for this we have the
+direct authority of Coleridge himself speculating on his own case. In
+the beautiful though unequal ode entitled _Dejection_, stanza six,
+occurs the following passage:
+
+  'For not to think of what I needs must feel,
+  But to be still and patient all I can;
+  _And haply by abstruse research to steal
+  From my own nature all the natural man_--
+  This was my sole resource, my only plan;
+  Till that, which suits a part, infects the whole,
+  And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.'
+
+Considering the exquisite quality of some poems which Coleridge has
+composed, nobody can grieve (or _has_ grieved) more than ourselves, at
+seeing so beautiful a fountain choked up with weeds. But had Coleridge
+been a happier man, it is our fixed belief that we should have had far
+less of his philosophy, and perhaps, but not certainly, might have had
+more of his general literature. In the estimate of the public,
+doubtless, _that_ will seem a bad exchange. Every man to his taste.
+Meantime, what we wish to show is, that the loss was not absolute, but
+ merely relative.
+
+It is urged, however, that, even on his philosophic speculations, opium
+operated unfavorably in one respect, by often causing him to leave them
+unfinished. This is true. Whenever Coleridge (being highly charged, or
+saturated, with opium) had written with distempered vigor upon any
+question, there occurred soon after a recoil of intense disgust, not
+from his own paper only, but even from the subject. All opium-eaters
+are tainted with the infirmity of leaving works unfinished, and
+suffering reactions of disgust. But Coleridge taxed himself with that
+infirmity in verse before he could at all have commenced opium-eating.
+Besides, it is too much assumed by Coleridge and by his biographer,
+that to leave off opium was of course to regain juvenile health. But
+all opium-eaters make the mistake of supposing every pain or irritation
+which they suffer to be the product of opium. Whereas a wise man will
+say, suppose you _do_ leave off opium, that will not deliver you
+from the load of years (say sixty-three) which you carry on your back.
+Charles Lamb, another man of true genius, and another head belonging to
+the Blackwood Gallery, made that mistake in his _Confessions of a
+Drunkard_. 'I looked back,' says he, 'to the time when always, on
+waking in the morning, I had a song rising to my lips.' At present, it
+seems, being a drunkard, he has no such song. Ay, dear Lamb, but note
+this, that the drunkard was fifty-six years old, the songster was
+twenty-three. Take twenty-three from fifty-six, and we have some reason
+to believe that thirty-three will remain; which period of thirty-three
+years is a pretty good reason for not singing in the morning, even if
+brandy has been out of the question.
+
+It is singular, as respects Coleridge, that Mr. Gillman never says one
+word upon the event of the great Highgate experiment for leaving off
+laudanum, though Coleridge came to Mr. Gillman's for no other purpose;
+and in a week, this vast creation of new earth, sea, and all that in
+them is, was to have been accomplished. We _rayther_ think, as
+Bayley junior observes, that the explosion must have hung fire. But
+_that_ is a trifle. We have another pleasing hypothesis on the
+subject. Mr. Wordsworth, in his exquisite lines written on a fly-leaf
+of his own _Castle of Indolence_, having described Coleridge as 'a
+noticeable man with large grey eyes,' goes on to say, 'He' (viz.,
+Coleridge) 'did that other man entice' to view his imagery. Now we are
+sadly afraid that 'the noticeable man with large grey eyes' did entice
+'that other man,' viz., Gillman, to commence opium-eating. This is
+droll; and it makes us laugh horribly. Gillman should have reformed
+_him_; and lo! _he_ corrupts Gillman. S. T. Coleridge visited
+Highgate by way of being converted from the heresy of opium; and the
+issue is--that, in two months' time, various grave men, amongst whom
+our friend Gillman marches first in great pomp, are found to have faces
+shining and glorious as that of AEsculapius; a fact of which we have
+already explained the secret meaning. And scandal says (but then what
+will not scandal say?) that a hogshead of opium goes up daily through
+Highgate tunnel. Surely one corroboration of our hypothesis may be
+found in the fact, that Vol. I. of Gillman's Coleridge is for ever to
+stand unpropped by Vol. II. For we have already observed, that opium-
+eaters, though good fellows upon the whole, never finish anything.
+
+What then? A man has a right never to finish anything. Certainly he
+has; and by Magna Charta. But he has no right, by Magna Charta or by
+Parva Charta, to slander decent men, like ourselves and our friend the
+author of the _Opium Confessions_. Here it is that our complaint
+arises against Mr. Gillman. If he has taken to opium-eating, can we
+help _that_? If _his_ face shines, must our faces be blackened? He has
+very improperly published some intemperate passages from Coleridge's
+letters, which ought to have been considered confidential, unless
+Coleridge had left them for publication, charging upon the author of
+the _Opium Confessions_ a reckless disregard of the temptations which,
+in that work, he was scattering abroad amongst men. Now this author is
+connected with ourselves, and we cannot neglect his defence, unless in
+the case that he undertakes it himself.
+
+We complain, also, that Coleridge raises (and is backed by Mr. Gillman
+in raising) a distinction perfectly perplexing to us, between himself
+and the author of the _Opium Confessions_ upon the question--Why
+they severally began the practice of opium-eating? In himself, it
+seems, this motive was to relieve pain, whereas the Confessor was
+surreptitiously seeking for pleasure. Ay, indeed--where did he learn
+_that_? We have no copy of the _Confessions_ here, so we cannot quote
+chapter and verse; but we distinctly remember, that toothache is
+recorded in that book as the particular occasion which first introduced
+the author to the knowledge of opium. Whether afterwards, having been
+thus initiated by the demon of pain, the opium confessor did not apply
+powers thus discovered to purposes of mere pleasure, is a question for
+himself; and the same question applies with the same cogency to
+Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then? This is no
+proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our parts, we are slow
+to believe that ever any man did, or could, learn the somewhat awful
+truth, that in a certain ruby-colored elixir, there lurked a divine
+power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing
+this power. To taste but once from the tree of knowledge, is fatal to
+the subsequent power of abstinence. True it is, that generations have
+used laudanum as an anodyne, (for instance, hospital patients,) who
+have not afterwards courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but
+that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence in _them_. There are, in
+fact, two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug--those which
+are, and those which are not, preconformed to its power; those which
+genially expand to its temptations, and those which frostily exclude
+them. Not in the energies of the will, but in the qualities of the
+nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration of--Fall or stand:
+doomed thou art to yield; or, strengthened constitutionally, to resist.
+Most of those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in
+opium, have practically none at all. For the initial fascination is for
+_them_ effectually defeated by the sickness which nature has associated
+with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other class, whose
+nervous sensibilities vibrate to their profoundest depths under the
+first touch of the angelic poison, even as a lover's ear thrills on
+hearing unexpectedly the voice of her whom he loves, opium is the
+Amreeta cup of beatitude. You know the _Paradise Lost_? and you
+remember, from the eleventh book, in its earlier part, that laudanum
+already existed in Eden--nay, that it was used medicinally by an
+archangel; for, after Michael had 'purged with euphrasy and rue' the
+eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to the mere _sight_ of the
+great visions about to unfold their draperies before him, next he
+fortifies his fleshly spirits against the _affliction_ of these
+visions, of which visions the first was death. And how?
+
+  'He from the well of life three drops instill'd.'
+
+What was their operation?
+
+  'So deep the power of these ingredients pierced,
+  _Even to the inmost seat of mental sight_,
+  That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes,
+  Sank down, and all his spirits became entranced.
+  But him the gentle angel by the hand
+  Soon raised'----
+
+The second of these lines it is which betrays the presence of laudanum.
+It is in the faculty of mental vision, it is in the increased power of
+dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic virtue
+of opium lies. Now, in the original higher sensibility is found some
+palliation for the _practice_ of opium-eating; in the greater
+temptation is a greater excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation
+is found some palliation for _reporting_ the case to the world,
+which both Coleridge and his biographer have overlooked.
+
+
+
+
+TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT.
+
+
+The most remarkable instance of a combined movement in society, which
+history, perhaps, will be summoned to notice, is that which, in our own
+days, has applied itself to the abatement of intemperance. Naturally,
+or by any _direct_ process, the machinery set in motion would seem
+irrelevant to the object: if one hundred men unite to elevate the
+standard of temperance, they can do this with effect only by
+improvements in their own separate cases: each individual, for such an
+effort of self-conquest, can draw upon no resources but his own. One
+member in a combination of one hundred, when running a race, can hope
+for no cooperation from his ninety-nine associates. And yet, by a
+secondary action, such combinations are found eminently successful.
+Having obtained from every confederate a pledge, in some shape or
+other, that he will give them his support, thenceforwards they bring
+the passions of shame and self-esteem to bear upon each member's
+personal perseverance. Not only they keep alive and continually refresh
+in his thoughts the general purpose, which else might fade; but they
+also point the action of public contempt and of self-contempt at any
+defaulter much more potently, and with more acknowledged right to do
+so, when they use this influence under a license, volunteered, and
+signed, and sealed, by the man's own hand. They first conciliate his
+countenance through his intellectual perceptions of what is right; and
+next they sustain it through his conscience, (the strongest of his
+internal forces,) and even through the weakest of his human
+sensibilities. That revolution, therefore, which no combination of men
+can further by abating the original impulse of temptations, they often
+accomplish happily by maturing the secondary energies of resistance.
+
+Already in their earliest stage, these temperance movements had
+obtained, both at home and abroad, a _national_ range of grandeur.
+More than ten years ago, when M. de Tocqueville was resident in the
+United States, the principal American society counted two hundred and
+seventy thousand members: and in one single state (Pennsylvania) the
+annual diminution in the use of spirits had very soon reached half a
+million of gallons. Now a machinery must be so far good which
+accomplishes its end: the means are meritorious for so much as they
+effect. Even to strengthen a feeble resolution by the aid of other
+infirmities, such as shame or the very servility and cowardice of
+deference to public opinion, becomes prudent and laudable in the
+service of so great a cause. Nay, sometimes to make public profession
+of self-distrust by assuming the coercion of public pledges, may become
+an expression of frank courage, or even of noble principle, not fearing
+the shame of confession when it can aid the powers of victorious
+resistance. Yet still, so far as it is possible, every man sighs for a
+still higher victory over himself: a victory not tainted by bribes, and
+won from no impulses but those inspired by his own higher nature, and
+his own mysterious force of will; powers that in no man were fully
+developed.
+
+This being so, it is well that from time to time every man should throw
+out any hints that have occurred to his experience,--suggesting such as
+may be new, renewing such as may be old, towards the encouragement or
+the information of persons engaged in so great a struggle. My own
+experience had never travelled in that course which could much instruct
+me in the miseries from wine, or in the resources for struggling with
+it. I had repeatedly been obliged indeed to lay it aside altogether;
+but in this I never found room for more than seven or ten days'
+struggle: excesses I had never practised in the use of wine; simply the
+habit of using it, and the collateral habits formed by excessive use of
+opium, had produced any difficulty at all in resigning it even on an
+hour's notice. From opium I derive my right of offering hints at all
+upon the subjects of abstinence in other forms. But the modes of
+suffering from the evil, and the separate modes of suffering from the
+effort of self-conquest, together with errors of judgment incident to
+such states of transitional torment, are all nearly allied, practically
+analogous as regards the remedies, even if characteristically
+distinguished to the inner consciousness. I make no scruple, therefore,
+of speaking as from a station of high experience and of most watchful
+attention, which never remitted even under sufferings that were at
+times absolutely frantic.
+
+I. The first hint is one that has been often offered; viz., the
+diminution of the particular liquor used, by the introduction into each
+glass of some inert substance, ascertained in bulk, and equally
+increasing in amount from day to day. But this plan has often been
+intercepted by an accident: shot, or sometimes bullets, were the
+substances nearest at hand; an objection arose from too scrupulous a
+caution of chemistry as to the action upon lead of the vinous acid. Yet
+all objection of this kind might be removed at once, by using beads in
+a case where small decrements were wanted, and marbles, if it were
+thought advisable to use larger. Once for all, however, in cases deeply
+rooted, no advances ought ever to be made but by small stages: for the
+effect, which is insensible at first, by the tenth, twelfth, or
+fifteenth day, generally accumulates unendurably under any bolder
+deductions. I must not stop to illustrate this point; but certain it
+is, that by an error of this nature at the outset, most natural to
+human impatience under exquisite suffering, too generally the trial is
+abruptly brought to an end through the crisis of a passionate relapse.
+
+II. Another object, and one to which the gladiator matched in single
+duel with intemperance, must direct a religious vigilance, is the
+_digestibility_ of his food: it must be digestible not only by its
+original qualities, but also by its culinary preparation. In this last
+point we are all of us Manichæans: all of us yield a cordial assent to
+that Manichæan proverb, which refers the meats and the cooks of this
+world to two opposite fountains of light and of darkness. Oromasdes it
+is, or the good principle, that sends the food; Ahrimanes, or the evil
+principle, that everywhere sends the cooks. Man has been repeatedly
+described or even defined, as by differential privilege of his nature,
+'A cooking animal.' Brutes, it is said, have faces,--man only has a
+countenance; brutes are as well able to eat as man,--man only is able
+to cook what he eats. Such are the romances of self-flattery. I, on the
+contrary, maintain, that six thousand years have not availed, in this
+point, to raise our race generally to the level of ingenious savages.
+The natives of the Society and the Friendly Isles, or of New Zealand,
+and other favored spots, had, and still have, an _art_ of cookery,
+though very limited in its range: the French [Footnote: But judge not,
+reader, of French skill by the attempts of fourth-rate artists; and
+understand me to speak with respect of this skill, not as it is the
+tool of luxury, but as it is the handmaid of health.] have an art, and
+more extensive; but we English are about upon a level (as regards this
+science) with the ape, to whom an instinct whispers that chestnuts may
+be roasted; or with the aboriginal Chinese of Charles Lamb's story, to
+whom the experience of many centuries had revealed thus much, viz.,
+that a dish very much beyond the raw flesh of their ancestors, might be
+had by burning down the family mansion, and thus roasting the pig-stye.
+Rudest of barbarous devices is English cookery, and not much in advance
+of this primitive Chinese step; a fact which it would not be worth
+while to lament, were it not for the sake of the poor trembling
+deserter from the banners of intoxication, who is thus, and by no other
+cause, so often thrown back beneath the yoke which he had abjured. Past
+counting are the victims of alcohol, that, having by vast efforts
+emancipated themselves for a season, are violently forced into
+relapsing by the nervous irritations of demoniac cookery. Unhappily for
+_them_, the horrors of indigestion are relieved for the moment,
+however ultimately strengthened, by strong liquors; the relief is
+immediate, and cannot fail to be perceived; but the aggravation, being
+removed to a distance, is not always referred to its proper cause. This
+is the capital rock and stumbling-block in the path of him who is
+hurrying back to the camps of temperance; and many a reader is likely
+to misapprehend the case through the habit he has acquired of supposing
+indigestion to lurk chiefly amongst _luxurious_ dishes. But, on
+the contrary, it is amongst the plainest, simplest, and commonest
+dishes that such misery lurks, in England. Let us glance at three
+articles of diet, beyond all comparison of most ordinary occurrence,
+viz., potatoes, bread, and butcher's meat. The art of preparing
+potatoes for _human_ use is utterly unknown, except in certain
+provinces of our empire, and amongst certain sections of the laboring
+class. In our great cities,--London, Edinburgh, &c.--the sort of things
+which you see offered at table under the name and reputation of
+potatoes, are such that, if you could suppose the company to be
+composed of Centaurs and Lapithæ, or any other quarrelsome people, it
+would become necessary for the police to interfere. The potato of
+cities is a very dangerous missile; and, if thrown with an accurate aim
+by an angry hand, will fracture any known skull. In volume and
+consistency, it is very like a paving-stone; only that, I should say,
+the paving-stone had the advantage in point of tenderness. And upon
+this horrid basis, which youthful ostriches would repent of swallowing,
+the trembling, palpitating invalid, fresh from the scourging of
+alcohol, is requested to build the superstructure of his dinner. The
+proverb says, that three flittings are as bad as a fire; and on that
+model I conceive that three potatoes, as they are found at many British
+dinner-tables, would be equal, in principle of ruin, to two glasses of
+vitriol. The same savage ignorance appears, and only not so often, in
+the bread of this island. Myriads of families eat it in that early
+stage of sponge which bread assumes during the process of baking; but
+less than sixty hours will not fit this dangerous article of human diet
+to be eaten. And those who are acquainted with the works of Parmentier,
+or other learned investigators of bread and of the baker's art, must be
+aware that this quality of sponginess (though quite equal to the ruin
+of the digestive organs) is but one in a legion of vices to which the
+article is liable. A German of much research wrote a book on the
+conceivable faults in a pair of shoes, which he found to be about six
+hundred and sixty-six, many of them, as he observed, requiring a very
+delicate process of study to find out; whereas the possible faults in
+bread, which are not less in number, require no study at all for the
+defection; they publish themselves through all varieties of misery. But
+the perfection of barbarism, as regards our island cookery, is reserved
+for animal food; and the two poles of Oromasdes and Ahrimanes are
+nowhere so conspicuously exhibited. Our insular sheep, for instance,
+are so far superior to any which the continent produces, that the
+present Prussian minister at our court is in the habit of questioning a
+man's right to talk of mutton as anything beyond a great idea, unless
+he can prove a residence in Great Britain. One sole case he cites of a
+dinner on the Elbe, when a particular leg of mutton really struck him
+as rivalling any which he had known in England. The mystery seemed
+inexplicable; but, upon inquiry, it turned out to be an importation
+from Leith. Yet this incomparable article, to produce which the skill
+of the feeder must co-operate with the peculiar bounty of nature, calls
+forth the most dangerous refinements of barbarism in its cookery. A
+Frenchman requires, as the primary qualification of flesh meat, that it
+should be tender. We English universally, but especially the Scots,
+treat that quality with indifference, or with bare toleration. What we
+require is, that it should be fresh, that is, recently killed, (in
+which state it cannot be digestible except by a crocodile;) and we
+present it at table in a transition state of leather, demanding the
+teeth of a tiger to rend it in pieces, and the stomach of a tiger to
+digest it.
+
+With these habits amongst our countrymen, exemplified daily in the
+articles of widest use, it is evident that the sufferer from
+intemperance has a harder quarantine, in this island, to support during
+the effort of restoration, than he could have anywhere else in
+Christendom. In Persia, and, perhaps, there only on this terraqueous
+planet, matters might be even worse: for, whilst we English neglect the
+machinery of digestion, as a matter entitled to little consideration,
+the people of Teheran seem unaware that there _is_ any such
+machinery. So, at least, one might presume, from cases on record, and
+especially from the reckless folly, under severe illness, from
+indigestion, of the three Persian princes, who visited this country, as
+stated by their official _mehmander_, Mr. Fraser. With us, the
+excess of ignorance, upon this subject, betrays itself oftenest in that
+vain-glorious answer made by the people, who at any time are admonished
+of the sufferings which they are preparing for themselves by these
+outrages upon the most delicate of human organs. They, for _their_
+parts, 'know not if they _have_ a stomach; they know not what it
+is that dyspepsy means;' forgetting that, in thus vaunting their
+_strength_ of stomach, they are, at the same time, proclaiming its
+coarseness; and showing themselves unaware that precisely those, whom
+such coarseness of organization reprieves from immediate and seasonable
+reaction of suffering, are the favorite subjects of that heavier
+reaction which takes the shape of _delirium tremens_, of palsy,
+and of lunacy. It is but a fanciful advantage which _they_ enjoy,
+for whom the immediate impunity avails only to hide the final horrors
+which are gathering upon them from the gloomy rear. Better, by far,
+that more of immediate discomfort had guaranteed to them less of
+reversionary anguish. It may be safely asserted, that few, indeed, are
+the suicides amongst us to which the miseries of indigestion have not
+been a large concurring cause; and even where nothing so dreadful as
+_that_ occurs, always these miseries are the chief hinderance of
+the self-reforming drunkard, and the commonest cause of his relapse. It
+is certain, also, that misanthropic gloom and bad temper besiege that
+class, by preference, to whom peculiar coarseness or obtuse sensibility
+of organization has denied the salutary warnings and early prelibations
+of punishment which, happily for most men, besiege the more direct and
+obvious frailties of the digestive apparatus.
+
+The whole process and elaborate machinery of digestion are felt to be
+mean and humiliating when viewed in relation to our mere animal
+economy. But they rise into dignity, and assert their own supreme
+importance, when they arc studied from another station, viz., in
+relation to the intellect and temper; no man dares, _then_, to
+despise them: it is then seen that these functions of the human system
+form the essential basis upon which the strength and health of our
+higher nature repose; and that upon these functions, chiefly, the
+general happiness of life is dependent. All the rules of prudence, or
+gifts of experience that life can accumulate, will never do as much for
+human comfort and welfare as would be done by a stricter attention, and
+a wiser science, directed to the digestive system; in this attention
+lies the key to any perfect restoration for the victim of intemperance:
+and, considering the peculiar hostility to the digestive health which
+exists in the dietetic habits of our own country, it may be feared that
+nowhere upon earth has the reclaimed martyr to intemperance so
+difficult a combat to sustain; nowhere, therefore, is it so important
+to direct the attention upon an _artificial_ culture of those
+resources which naturally, and by the established habits of the land,
+are surest to be neglected. The sheet anchor for the storm-beaten
+sufferer, who is laboring to recover a haven of rest from the agonies
+of intemperance, and who has had the fortitude to abjure the poison
+which ruined, but which also, for brief intervals, offered him his only
+consolation, lies, beyond all doubt, in a most anxious regard to
+everything connected with this supreme function of our animal economy.
+And, as few men that are not regularly trained to medical studies can
+have the complex knowledge requisite for such a duty, some printed
+guide should be sought of a regular professional order. Twenty years
+ago, Dr. Wilson Philip published a valuable book of this class, which
+united a wide range of practical directions as to the choice of diet,
+and as to the qualities and tendencies of all esculent articles likely
+to be found at British tables, with some ingenious speculations upon
+the still mysterious theory of digestion. These were derived from
+experiments made upon rabbits, and had originally been communicated by
+him to the Royal Society of London, who judged them worthy of
+publication in their Transactions. I notice them chiefly for the sake
+of remarking, that the rationale of digestion, as here suggested,
+explains the reason of a fact, which merely _as_ a fact, had not
+been known until modern times, viz., the injuriousness to enfeebled
+stomachs of all fluid. Fifty years ago--and still lingering
+inveterately amongst nurses, and other ignorant persons--there
+prevailed a notion that 'slops' must be the proper resource of the
+valetudinarian; and the same erroneous notion appears in the common
+expression of ignorant wonder at the sort of breakfasts usual amongst
+women of rank in the times of Queen Elizabeth. 'What robust stomachs
+they must have had, to support such solid meals!' As to the question of
+fact, whether the stomachs were more or less robust in those days than
+at the present, there is no need to offer an opinion. But the question
+of principle concerned in scientific dietetics points in the very
+opposite direction. By how much the organs of digestion are feebler, by
+so much is it the more indispensable that solid food and animal food
+should be adopted. A robust stomach may be equal to the trying task of
+supporting a fluid, such as tea for breakfast; but for a feeble
+stomach, and still more for a stomach _enfeebled_ by bad habits,
+broiled beef, or something equally solid and animal, but not too much
+subjected to the action of fire, is the only tolerable diet. This,
+indeed, is the one capital rule for a sufferer from habitual
+intoxication, who must inevitably labor under an impaired digestion;
+that as little as possible he should use of any liquid diet, and as
+little as possible of vegetable diet. Beef, and a little bread, (at the
+least sixty hours old,) compose the privileged bill of fare for his
+breakfast. But precisely it is, by the way, in relation to this
+earliest meal, that human folly has in one or two instances shown
+itself most ruinously inventive. The less variety there is at that
+meal, the more is the danger from any single luxury; and there is one,
+known by the name of 'muffins,' which has repeatedly manifested itself
+to be a plain and direct bounty upon suicide. Darwin, in his
+'Zoonomia,' reports a case where an officer, holding the rank of
+lieutenant-colonel, could not tolerate a breakfast in which this odious
+article was wanting; but, as a savage retribution invariably supervened
+within an hour or two upon this act of insane sensuality, he came to a
+resolution that life was intolerable _with_ muffins, but still
+more intolerable _without_ muffins. He would stand the nuisance no
+longer; but yet, being a just man, he would give nature one final
+chance of reforming her dyspeptic atrocities. Muffins, therefore, being
+laid at one angle of the breakfast-table, and loaded pistols at
+another, with rigid equity the Colonel awaited the result. This was
+naturally pretty much as usual: and then, the poor man, incapable of
+retreating from his word of honor, committed suicide,--having
+previously left a line for posterity to the effect (though I forget the
+expression), 'That a muffinless world was no world for him: better no
+life at all than a life dismantled of muffins.'--Dr. Darwin was a showy
+philosopher, and fond of producing effect, so that some allowance must
+be made in construing the affair. Strictly speaking, it is probable
+that not the especial want of muffins, but the general torment of
+indigestion, was the curse from which the unhappy sufferer sought
+relief by suicide. And the Colonel was not the first by many a million,
+that has fled from the very same form of wretchedness, or from its
+effects upon the genial spirits, to the same gloomy refuge. It should
+never be forgotten that, although some other more overt vexation is
+generally assigned as the proximate cause of suicide, and often may be
+so as regards the immediate occasion, too generally this vexation
+borrowed its whole power to annoy, from the habitual atmosphere of
+irritation in which the system had been kept by indigestion. So that
+indirectly, and virtually, perhaps, all suicides may be traced to
+mismanaged digestion. Meantime, in alluding at all to so dreadful a
+subject as suicide, I do so only by way of giving deeper effect to the
+opinion expressed above, upon the chief cause of relapse into habits of
+intemperance amongst those who have once accomplished their
+deliverance. Errors of digestion, either from impaired powers, or from
+powers not so much enfeebled as deranged, is the one immeasurable
+source both of disease and of secret wretchedness to the human race.
+Life is laid waste by the eternal fretting of the vital forces,
+emanating from this one cause. And it may well be conceived, that if
+cases so endless, even of suicide, in every generation, are virtually
+traceable to this main root, much more must it be able to shake and
+undermine the yet palpitating frame of the poor fugitive from
+intemperance; since indigestion in every mode and variety of its
+changes irresistibly upholds the temptation to that form of excitement
+which, though one foremost cause of indigestion, is yet unhappily its
+sole immediate palliation.
+
+III. Next, after the most vigorous attention, and a scientific
+attention to the digestive system, in power of operation, stands
+_exercise_. Here, however, most people have their own separate
+habits, with respect to the time of exercise, the duration, and the
+particular mode, on which a stranger cannot venture to intrude with his
+advice. Some will not endure the steady patience required for walking
+exercise; many benefit most by riding on horseback; and in days when
+roads were more rugged, and the springs of carriages less improved, I
+have known people who found most advantage in the vibrations
+communicated to the frame by a heavy rumbling carriage. For myself,
+under the ravages of opium, I have found walking the most beneficial
+exercise; besides that, it requires no previous notice or preparation
+of any kind; and this is a capital advantage in a state of drooping
+energies, or of impatient and unresting agitation. I may mention, as
+possibly an accident of my individual temperament, but possibly, also,
+no accident at all, that the relief obtained by walking was always most
+sensibly brought home to my consciousness, when some part of it (at
+least a mile and a half) has been performed before breakfast. In this
+there soon ceased to be any difficulty; for, whilst under the full
+oppression of opium, it was impossible for me to rise at any hour that
+could, by the most indulgent courtesy, be described as within the pale
+of morning, no sooner had there been established any considerable
+relief from this oppression, than the tendency was in the opposite
+direction; the difficulty became continually greater of sleeping even
+to a reasonable hour. Having once accomplished the feat of walking at
+nine A. M., I backed, in a space of seven or eight months, to eight
+o'clock, to seven, to six, five, four, three; until at this point a
+metaphysical fear fell upon me that I was actually backing into
+'yesterday,' and should soon have no sleep at all. Below three,
+however, I did not descend; and, for a couple of years, three and a
+half hours' sleep was all that I could obtain in the twenty-four hours.
+From this no particular suffering arose, except the nervous impatience
+of lying in bed for one moment after awaking. Consequently, the habit
+of walking before breakfast became at length troublesome no longer as a
+most odious duty, but, on the contrary, as a temptation that could
+hardly be resisted on the wettest mornings. As to the quantity of the
+exercise, I found that six miles a day formed the _minimum_ which
+would support permanently a particular standard of animal spirits,
+evidenced to myself by certain apparent symptoms. I averaged about nine
+and a half miles a day; but ascended on particular days to fifteen or
+sixteen, and more rarely to twenty-three or twenty-four; a quantity
+which did not produce fatigue, on the contrary it spread a sense of
+improvement through almost the whole week that followed; but usually,
+in the night immediately succeeding to such an exertion, I lost much of
+my sleep; a privation that, under the circumstances explained, deterred
+me from trying the experiment too often. For one or two years, I
+accomplished more than I have here claimed, viz., from six to seven
+thousand miles in the twelve months. Let me add to this slight abstract
+of my own experience, in a point where it is really difficult to offer
+any useful advice, (the tastes and habits of men varying so much in
+this chapter of exercise,) that one caution seems applicable to the
+case of all persons suffering from nervous irritability, viz., that a
+secluded space should be measured off accurately, in some private
+grounds not liable to the interruption or notice of chance intruders;
+for these annoyances are unendurable to the restless invalid; to be
+questioned upon trivial things is death to him; and the perpetual
+anticipation of such annoyances is little less distressing. Some plan
+must also be adopted for registering the number of rounds performed. I
+once walked for eighteen months in a circuit so confined that forty
+revolutions were needed to complete a mile. These I counted, at one
+time, by a rosary of beads; every tenth round being marked by drawing a
+blue bead, the other nine by drawing white beads. But this plan, I
+found in practice, more troublesome and inaccurate than that of using
+ten detached counters, stones, or anything else that was large enough
+and solid. These were applied to the separate bars of a garden chair;
+the first bar indicating of itself the first decade, the second bar the
+second decade, and so on. In fact, I used the chair in some measure as
+a Roman abacus, but on a still simpler plan; and as the chair offered
+sixteen bars, it followed, that on covering the last bar of the series
+with the ten markers, I perceived without any trouble of calculation
+the accomplishment of my fourth mile.
+
+A necessity, more painful to me by far than that of taking continued
+exercise, arose out of a cause which applies, perhaps, with the same
+intensity only to opium cases, but must also apply in some degree to
+all cases of debilitation from morbid stimulation of the nerves,
+whether by means of wine, or opium, or distilled liquors. In travelling
+on the outside of mails, during my youthful days, for I could not
+endure the inside, occasionally, during the night-time, I suffered
+naturally from cold: no cloaks, &c. were always sufficient to relieve
+this; and I then made the discovery that opium, after an hour or so,
+diffuses a warmth deeper and far more permanent than could be had from
+any other known source. I mention this, to explain, in some measure,
+the awful passion of cold which for some years haunted the inverse
+process of laying aside the opium. It was a perfect frenzy of misery;
+cold was a sensation which then first, as a mode of torment, seemed to
+have been revealed. In the months of July and August, and not at all
+the less during the very middle watch of the day, I sate in the closest
+proximity to a blazing fire; cloaks, blankets, counterpanes,
+hearthrugs, horse-cloths, were piled upon my shoulders, but with hardly
+a glimmering of relief. At night, and after taking coffee, I felt a
+little warmer, and could sometimes afford to smile at the resemblance
+of my own case to that of Harry Gill. [Footnote: 'Harry Gill:'--Many
+readers, in this generation, may not be aware of this ballad as one
+amongst the early poems of Wordsworth. Thirty or forty years ago, it
+was the object of some insipid ridicule, which ought, perhaps, in
+another place, to be noticed. And, doubtless, this ridicule was
+heightened by the false impression that the story had been some old
+woman's superstitious fiction, meant to illustrate a supernatural
+judgment on hard-heartedness. But the story was a physiologic fact;
+and, originally, it had been brought forward in a philosophic work, by
+Darwin, who had the reputation of an irreligious man, and even of an
+infidel. A bold freethinker he certainly was: a Deist, and, by public
+repute, something more.] But, secretly, I was struck with awe at the
+revelation of powers so unsearchably new, lurking within old affections
+so familiarly known as cold. Upon the analogy of this case, it might be
+thought that nothing whatever had yet been truly and seriously felt by
+man; nothing searched or probed by human sensibilities, to a depth
+below the surface. If cold could give out mysteries of suffering so
+novel, all things in the world might be yet unvisited by the truth of
+human sensations. All experience, worthy of the name, was yet to begin.
+Meantime, the external phenomenon, by which the cold expressed itself,
+was a sense (but with little reality) of eternal freezing perspiration.
+From this I was never free; and at length, from finding one general
+ablution sufficient for one day, I was thrown upon the irritating
+necessity of repeating it more frequently than would seem credible, if
+stated. At this time, I used always hot water; and a thought occurred
+to me very seriously that it would be best to live constantly, and,
+perhaps, to sleep in a bath. What caused me to renounce this plan, was
+an accident that compelled me for one day to use cold water. This,
+first of all, communicated any lasting warmth; so that ever afterwards
+I used none _but_ cold water. Now, to live in a _cold_ bath,
+in our climate, and in my own state of preternatural sensibility to
+cold, was not an idea to dally with. I wish to mention, however, for
+the information of other sufferers in the same way, one change in the
+mode of applying the water, which led to a considerable and a sudden
+improvement in the condition of my feelings. I had endeavored to
+procure a child's battledore, as an easy means (when clothed with
+sponge) of reaching the interspace between the shoulders; which
+interspace, by the way, is a sort of Bokhara, so provokingly situated,
+that it will neither suffer itself to be reached from the north, in
+which direction even the Czar, with his long arms, has only singed his
+own fingers, and lost six thousand camels; nor at all better from the
+south, upon which line of approach the greatest potentate in Southern
+Asia, viz., No.--, in Leadenhall Street, has found it the best policy
+to pocket the little Khan's murderous defiances and persevering
+insults. There is no battledore long enough to reach him in either way.
+In my own difficulty, I felt almost as perplexed as the Honorable East
+India Company, when I found that no battledore was to be had; for no
+town was near at hand. In default of a battledore, therefore, my
+necessity threw my experiment upon a long hair-brush; and this,
+eventually, proved of much greater service than any sponge or any
+battledore; for, the friction of the brush caused an irritation on the
+surface of the skin, which, more than anything else, has gradually
+diminished the once continual misery of unrelenting frost; although
+even yet it renews itself most distressingly at uncertain intervals.
+
+IV. I counsel the patient not to make the mistake of supposing that his
+amendment will necessarily proceed continuously, or by equal
+increments; because this, which is a common notion, will certainly lead
+to dangerous disappointments. How frequently I have heard people
+encouraging a self-reformer by such language as this:--'When you have
+got over the fourth day of abstinence, which suppose to be Sunday, then
+Monday will find you a trifle better; Tuesday better still,--though
+still it should be only by a trifle; and so on. You may, at least, rely
+on never going back; you may assure yourself of having seen the worst;
+and the positive improvements, if trifles separately, must soon gather
+into a sensible magnitude.' This may be true in a case of short
+standing: but, as a general rule, it is perilously delusive. On the
+contrary, the line of progress, if exhibited in a geometrical
+construction, would describe an ascending path upon the whole, but with
+frequent retrocessions into descending curves, which, compared with the
+point of ascent that had been previously gained and so vexatiously
+interrupted, would sometimes seem deeper than the original point of
+starting. This mortifying tendency I can report from experience many
+times repeated with regard to opium; and so unaccountably, as regarded
+all the previous grounds of expectation, that I am compelled to suppose
+it a tendency inherent in the very nature of all self-restorations for
+animal systems. They move perhaps necessarily _per saltum_, by,
+intermitting spasms, and pulsations of unequal energy.
+
+V. I counsel the patient frequently to call back before his thoughts--
+when suffering sorrowful collapses, that seem unmerited by anything
+done or neglected--that such, and far worse, perhaps, must have been
+his experience, and with no reversion of hope behind, had he persisted
+in his intemperate indulgencies; _these_ also suffer their own
+collapses, and (so far as things not co-present can be compared) by
+many degrees more shocking to the genial instincts.
+
+VI. I exhort him to believe, that no movement on his own part, not the
+smallest conceivable, towards the restoration of his healthy state, can
+by possibility perish. Nothing in this direction is finally lost; but
+often it disappears and hides itself; suddenly, however, to reappear,
+and in unexpected strength, and much more hopefully; because such
+minute elements of improvement, by reappearing at a remoter stage, show
+themselves to have combined with other elements of the same kind: so
+that equally by their gathering tendency and their duration through
+intervals of apparent darkness, and below the current of what seemed
+absolute interruption, they argue themselves to be settled in the
+system. There is no good gift that does not come from God: almost his
+greatest is health, with the peace which it inherits; and man must reap
+_this_ on the same terms as he was told to reap God's earliest
+gift, the fruits of the earth, viz.: 'in the sweat of his brow,'
+through labor, often through sorrow, through disappointment, but still
+through imperishable perseverance, and hoping under clouds, when all
+hope seems darkened.
+
+VII. It is difficult, in selecting from many memoranda of warning and
+encouragement, to know which to prefer when the space disposable is
+limited. But it seems to me important not to omit this particular
+caution: The patient will be naturally anxious, as he goes on,
+frequently to test the amount of his advance, and its rate, if that
+were possible. But this he will see no mode of doing, except through
+tentative balancings of his feelings, and generally of the moral
+atmosphere around him, as to pleasure and hope, against the
+corresponding states, so far as he can recall them from his periods of
+intemperance. But these comparisons, I warn him, are fallacious, when
+made in this way; the two states are incommensurable on any plan of
+_direct_ comparison. Some common measure must be found, and,
+_out of himself_; some positive fact, that will not bend to his
+own delusive feeling at the moment; as, for instance, in what degree he
+finds tolerable what heretofore was _not_ so--the effort of writing
+letters, or transacting business, or undertaking a journey, or
+overtaking the arrears of labor, that had been once thrown off to a
+distance. If in these things he finds himself improved, by tests that
+cannot be disputed, he may safely disregard any sceptical whispers from
+a wayward sensibility which cannot yet, perhaps, have recovered its
+normal health, however much improved. His inner feelings may not yet
+point steadily to the truth, though they may vibrate in that direction.
+Besides, it is certain that sometimes very manifest advances, such as
+any medical man would perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages
+of agitation and discomfort. A far worse condition might happen to be
+less agitated, and so far more bearable. Now, when a man is positively
+suffering discomfort, when he is below the line of pleasurable feeling,
+he is no proper judge of his own condition, which he neither will nor
+can appreciate. Tooth-ache extorts more groans than dropsy.
+
+VIII. Another important caution is, not to confound with the effects of
+intemperance any other natural effects of debility from advanced years.
+Many a man, having begun to be intemperate at thirty, enters at sixty
+or upwards upon a career of self-restoration. And by self-restoration
+he understands a renewal of that state in which he was when first
+swerving from temperance. But that state, for his memory, is coincident
+with his state of youth. The two states are coadunated. In his
+recollections they are intertwisted too closely. But life, without any
+intemperance at all, would soon have untwisted them. Charles Lamb, for
+instance, at forty-five, and Coleridge at sixty, measured their several
+conditions by such tests as the loss of all disposition to involuntary
+murmuring of musical airs or fragments when rising from bed. Once they
+had sung when rising in the morning light; now they sang no more. The
+_vocal_ utterance of joy, for _them_, was silenced for ever.
+But these are amongst the changes that life, stern power, inflicts at
+any rate; these would have happened, and above all, to men worn by the
+unequal irritations of too much thinking, and by those modes of care
+
+  That kill the bloom before its time,
+  And blanch without the owner's crime
+  The most resplendent hair,
+
+not at all the less had the one drunk no brandy, nor the other any
+laudanum. A man must submit to the conditions of humanity, and not
+quarrel with a cure as incomplete, because in his climacteric year of
+sixty-three, he cannot recover, entirely, the vivacities of thirty-
+five. If, by dipping seven times in Jordan, he had cleansed his whole
+leprosy of intemperance; if, by going down into Bethesda, he were able
+to mount again upon the pinions of his youth,--even then he might
+querulously say,--'But, after all these marvels in my favor, I suppose
+that one of these fine mornings I, like other people, shall have to
+bespeak a coffin.' Why, yes, undoubtedly he will, or somebody
+_for_ him. But privileges so especial were not promised even by
+the mysterious waters of Palestine. Die he must. And counsels tendered
+to the intemperate do not hope to accomplish what might have been
+beyond the baths of Jordan or Bethesda. They do enough, if, being
+executed by efforts in the spirit of earnest sincerity, they make a
+life of _growing_ misery moderately happy for the patient; and,
+through that great change, perhaps, more than moderately useful for
+others.
+
+IX. One final remark I will make:--pointed to the case, not of the yet
+struggling patient, but of him who is fully re-established; and the
+more so, because I (who am no hypocrite, but, rather, frank to an
+infirmity) acknowledge, in myself, the trembling tendency at intervals,
+which would, if permitted, sweep round into currents that might be hard
+to overrule. After the absolute restoration to health, a man is very
+apt to say,--'Now, then, how shall I use my health? To what delightful
+purpose shall I apply it? Surely it is idle to carry a fine jewel in
+one's watch-pocket, and never to astonish the weak minds of this world,
+by wearing it and flashing it in their eyes.' 'But how?' retorts his
+philosophic friend; 'my good fellow, are you not using it at this
+moment? Breathing, for instance, talking to me, (though rather
+absurdly,) and airing your legs at a glowing fire?' 'Why, yes,' the
+other confesses, 'that is all true; but I am dull; and, if you will
+pardon my rudeness, even in spite of your too philosophic presence. It
+is painful to say so, but sincerely, if I had the power, at this
+moment, to turn you, by magic, into a bottle of old port wine, so
+corrupt is my nature, that really I fear lest the exchange might, for
+the moment, strike me as agreeable.' Such a mood, I apprehend, is apt
+to revolve upon many of us, at intervals, however firmly married to
+temperance. And the propensity to it has a root in certain analogies
+running through our nature. If the reader will permit me for a moment
+the use of what, without such an apology, might seem pedantic, I would
+call it the instinct of _focalizing_, which prompts such random
+desires. Feeling is diffused over the whole surface of the body; but
+light is focalized in the eye; sound in the ear. The organization of a
+sense or a pleasure seems diluted and imperfect, unless it is gathered
+by some machinery into one focus, or local centre. And thus it is that
+a general state of pleasurable feeling sometimes seems too
+superficially diffused, and one has a craving to intensify or brighten
+it by concentration through some sufficient stimulant. I, for my part,
+have tried every thing in this world except '_bang_,' which, I
+believe, is obtained from hemp. There are other preparations of hemp
+which have been found to give great relief from _ennui_; not
+ropes, but something lately introduced, which acts upon the system as
+the laughing gas (nitrous oxide) acts at times. One farmer in Mid-
+Lothian was mentioned to me, eight months ago, as having taken it, and
+ever since annoyed his neighbors by immoderate fits of laughter; so
+that in January it was agreed to present him to the sheriff as a
+nuisance. But, for some reason, the plan was laid aside; and now, eight
+months later, I hear that the farmer is laughing more rapturously than
+ever, continues in the happiest frame of mind, the kindest of
+creatures, and the general torment of his neighborhood. Now, I confess
+to having had a lurking interest in this extract of hemp, when first I
+heard of it: and at intervals a desire will continue to make itself
+felt for some deeper compression or centralization of the genial
+feelings than ordinary life affords. But old things will not avail, and
+new things I am now able to resist. Still, as the occasional craving
+does really arise in most men, it is well to notice it; and chiefly for
+the purpose of saying, that this dangerous feeling wears off by
+degrees; and oftentimes for long periods it intermits so entirely as to
+be even displaced by a profound disgust to all modes of artificial
+stimulation. At those times I have remarked that the pleasurable
+condition of health does _not_ seem weakened by its want of
+centralization. It seems to form a thousand centres. This it is well to
+know; because there are many who would resist effectually, if they were
+aware of any natural change going on silently in favor of their own
+efforts, such as would finally ratify the success. Towards such a
+result they would gladly contribute by waiting and forbearing; whilst,
+under despondency as to this result, they might more easily yield to
+some chance temptation.
+
+Finally, there is something to interest us in the _time_ at which
+this temperance movement has begun to stir. Let me close with a slight
+notice of what chiefly impresses myself in the relation between this
+time and the other circumstances of the case. In reviewing history, we
+may see something more than mere convenience in distributing it into
+three chambers; ancient history, ending in the space between the
+Western Empire falling and Mahomet arising; modern history, from that
+time to this; and a new modern history arising at present, or from the
+French Revolution. Two great races of men, our own in a two-headed
+form--British and American, and secondly, the Russian, are those which,
+like rising deluges, already reveal their mission to overflow the
+earth. Both these races, partly through climate, or through derivation
+of blood, and partly through the contagion of habits inevitable to
+brothers of the same nation, are tainted carnally with the appetite for
+brandy, for slings, for juleps. And no fire racing through the forests
+of Nova Scotia for three hundred miles in the direction of some doomed
+city, ever moved so fiercely as the infection of habits amongst the
+dense and fiery populations of republican North America.
+
+But it is remarkable, that the whole _ancient_ system of
+civilization, all the miracles of Greece and Rome, Persia and Egypt,
+moved by the machinery of races that were _not_ tainted with any
+such popular _marasmus_. The taste was slightly sowed, as an
+_artificial_ taste, amongst luxurious individuals, but never ran
+through the laboring classes, through armies, through cities The blood
+and the climate forbade it. In this earliest era of history, all the
+great races, consequently all the great empires, threw themselves, by
+accumulation, upon the genial climates of the south,--having, in fact,
+the magnificent lake of the Mediterranean for their general centre of
+evolutions. Round this lake, in a zone of varying depth, towered the
+whole grandeurs of the Pagan earth. But, in such climates, man is
+naturally temperate. He is so by physical coercion, and for the
+necessities of rest and coolness. The Spaniard, the Moor, or the Arab,
+has no merit in his temperance. The effort, for _him_, would be to
+form the taste for alcohol. He has a vast foreground of disgust to
+traverse before he can reach a taste so remote and alien. No need for
+resistance in his will where nature resists on his behalf. Sherbet,
+shaddocks, grapes, these were innocent applications to thirst. And the
+great republic of antiquity said to her legionary sons:--'Soldier, if
+you thirst, there is the river;--Nile, suppose, or Ebro. Better drink
+there cannot be. Of this you may take "at discretion." Or, if you wait
+till the _impedimenta_ come up, you may draw your ration of _Posca_'
+What was _posca_? It was, in fact, acidulated water; three parts of
+superfine water to one part of the very best vinegar. Nothing stronger
+did Rome, that awful mother, allow to her dearest children, _i. e._,
+her legions. Truest of blessings, that veiling itself in seeming
+sternness, drove away the wicked phantoms that haunt the couches of yet
+greater nations. 'The blessings of the evil genii,' says an Eastern
+proverb, 'these are curses.' And the stern refusals of wisely loving
+mothers,--these are the mightiest of gifts.
+
+Now, on the other hand, our northern climates have universally the
+taste, latent if not developed, for powerful liquors. And through their
+blood, as also through the natural tendency of the imitative principle
+amongst compatriots, from these high latitudes the greatest of our
+modern nations propagate the contagion to their brothers, though
+colonizing warm climates. And it is remarkable that our modern
+preparations of liquors, even when harmless in their earliest stages,
+are fitted, like stepping-stones, for making the transition to higher
+stages that are _not_ harmless. The weakest preparations from
+malt, lead, by graduated steps, to the strongest; until we arrive at
+the intoxicating porter of London, which, under its local name (so
+insidiously delusive) of '_beer_,' diffuses the most extensive
+ravages.
+
+Under these marked circumstances of difference between the ruling races
+of antiquity and of our modern times, it now happens that the greatest
+era by far of human expansion is opening upon us. Two vast movements
+are hurrying into action by velocities continually accelerated--the
+great revolutionary movement from political causes concurring with the
+great physical movement in locomotion and social intercourse, from the
+gigantic (though still infant) powers of steam. No such Titan resources
+for modifying each other were ever before dreamed of by nations: and
+the next hundred years will have changed the face of the world. At the
+opening of such a crisis, had no third movement arisen of resistance to
+intemperate habits, there would have been ground for despondency as to
+the amelioration of the human race. But, as the case stands, the new
+principle of resistance nationally to bad habits, has arisen almost
+concurrently with the new powers of national intercourse; and
+henceforward by a change equally sudden and unlooked for, that new
+machinery, which would else most surely have multiplied the ruins of
+intoxication, has become the strongest agency for hastening its
+extirpation.
+
+
+
+
+ON WAR.
+
+
+Few people need to be told--that associations exist up and down
+Christendom, having the ambitious object of abolishing war. Some go so
+far as to believe that this evil of war, so ubiquitous, so ancient and
+apparently so inalienable from man's position upon earth, is already
+doomed; that not the private associations only, but the prevailing
+voice of races the most highly civilized, may be looked on as tending
+to confederation against it; that sentence of extermination has
+virtually gone forth, and that all which remains is gradually to
+execute that sentence. Conscientiously I find myself unable to join in
+these views. The project seems to me the most romantic of all romances
+in the course of publication. Consequently, when asked to become a
+member in any such association, I have always thought it most
+respectful, because most sincere, to decline. Yet, as it is painful to
+refuse all marks of sympathy with persons whose motives one honors, I
+design at my death to bequeath half-a-crown to the chief association
+for extinguishing war; the said half-crown to be improved in all time
+coming for the benefit of the association, under the trusteeship of
+Europe, Asia, and America, but not of Africa. I really dare not trust
+Africa with money, she is not able as yet to take care of herself. This
+half-crown, a fund that will overshadow the earth before it comes to be
+wanted under the provisions of my will, is to be improved at any
+interest whatever--no matter what; for the vast period of the
+accumulations will easily make good any tardiness of advance, long
+before the time comes for its commencing payment; a point which will be
+soon understood from the following explanation, by any gentleman that
+hopes to draw upon it.
+
+There is in Ceylon a granite _cippus_, or monumental pillar, of
+immemorial antiquity; and to this pillar a remarkable legend is
+attached. The pillar measures six feet by six, _i. e._ thirty-six
+square feet, on the flat tablet of its horizontal surface; and in
+height several _riyanas_, (which arc Ceylonese cubits of eighteen
+inches each,) but of these cubits, there are either eight or twelve;
+excuse me for having forgotten which. At first, perhaps, you will be
+angry, viz., when you hear that this simple difference of four cubits,
+or six feet, measures a difference for your expectations, whether you
+count your expectations in kicks or halfpence, that absolutely strikes
+horror into arithmetic. The singularity of the case is, that the very
+solemnity of the legend and the wealth of the human race in time,
+depend upon the cubical contents of the monument, so that a loss of one
+granite chip is a loss of a frightful infinity; yet, again, for that
+very reason, the loss of all _but_ a chip, leaves behind riches so
+appallingly too rich, that everybody is careless about the four cubits.
+Enough is as good as a feast. Two bottomless abysses take as much time
+for the diver as ten; and five eternities are as frightful to look down
+as four-and-twenty. In the Ceylon legend all turns upon the
+inexhaustible series of ages which this pillar guarantees. But, as one
+inexhaustible is quite enough for one race of men, and you are sure of
+more by ineffable excess than you can use in any private consumption of
+your own, you become generous; 'and between friends,' you say, in
+accepting my apologies for the doubtful error as to the four cubits,
+'what signifies an infinity more or less?'
+
+For the Ceylonese legend is this, that once in every hundred years an
+angel visits this granite pillar. He is dressed in a robe of white
+muslin, muslin of that kind which the Romans called _aura textilis_--
+woven, as might seem, from zephyrs or from pulses of the air, such in
+its transparency, such in its gossamer lightness. Does the angel touch
+the pillar with his foot? Oh no! Even _that_ would be something, but
+even _that_ is not allowed. In his soundless flight across it, he
+suffers the hem of his impalpable robe to sweep the surface as softly
+as a moon-beam. So much and no more of pollution he endures from
+contact with earthly objects. The lowest extremity of his dress,
+but with the delicacy of light, grazes the granite surface. And
+_that_ is all the attrition which the sacred granite receives in
+the course of any one century, and this is all the progress which we,
+the poor children of earth, in any one century make towards the
+exhaustion of our earthly imprisonment. But, argues the subtle legend,
+even _that_ attrition, when weighed in metaphysical scales, cannot
+be denied its value; it has detached from the pillar an atom (no matter
+that it is an invisible atom) of granite dust, the ratio of which atom
+to a grain avoirdupois, if expressed as a fraction of unity, would by
+its denominator stretch from the Accountant-General's office in London
+to the Milky Way. Now the total mass of the granite represents, on this
+scheme of payment, the total funded debt of man's race to Father Time
+and earthly corruption; all this intolerable score, chalked up to our
+debit, we by ourselves and our representatives have to rub off, before
+the granite will be rubbed away by the muslin robe of the proud flying
+angel, (who, if he were a good fellow, might just as well give a sly
+kick with his heel to the granite,) before time will be at an end, and
+the burden of flesh accomplished. But you hear it expressed in terms
+that will astonish Baron Rothschild, what is the progress in
+liquidation which we make for each particular century. A billion of
+centuries pays off a quantity equal to a pinch of snuff. Despair seizes
+a man in contemplating a single _coupon_, no bigger than a
+visiting card, of such a stock as this; and behold we have to keep on
+paying away until the total granite is reduced to a level with a grain
+of mustard-seed. But when that is accomplished, thank heaven, our last
+generation of descendants will be entitled to leave at Master Time's
+door a visiting card, which the meagre shadow cannot refuse to take,
+though he will sicken at seeing it; viz., a P. P. C. card, upon seeing
+which, the old thief is bound to give receipt in full for all debts and
+pretended arrears.
+
+The reader perhaps knows of debts on both sides the Atlantic that have
+no great prospect of being paid off sooner than this in Ceylon.
+
+And naturally, to match this order of debts, moving off so slowly,
+there are funds that accumulate as slowly. My own funded half-crown is
+an illustration. The half-crown will travel in the inverse order of the
+granite pillar. The pillar and the half-crown move upon opposite tacks;
+and there _is_ a point of time (which it is for Algebra to investigate)
+when they will cross each other in the exact moment of their several
+bisections--my aspiring half-crown tending gradually towards
+the fixed stars, so that perhaps it might be right to make the
+man in the moon trustee for that part of the accumulations which rises
+above the optics of sublunary bankers; whilst the Ceylon pillar is
+constantly unweaving its own granite texture, and dwindling earthwards.
+It is probable that each of the parties will have reached its
+consummation about the same time. What is to be done with the mustard-
+seed, Ceylon has forgotten to say. But what is to be done with the
+half-crown and its surplus, nobody can doubt after reading my last will
+and testament. After reciting a few inconsiderable legacies to the
+three continents, and to the man in the moon, for any trouble they may
+have had in managing the hyperbolical accumulations, I go on to
+observe, that, when war is reported to have taken itself off for ever,
+'and no mistake,' (because I foresee many false alarms of a perpetual
+peace,) a variety of inconveniences will arise to all branches of the
+United Service, including the Horse Marines. Clearly there can be no
+more half-pay; and even more clearly, there is an end to full-pay.
+Pensions are at an end for 'good service.' Allowances for wounds cannot
+be thought of, when all wounds shall have ceased except those from
+female eyes--for which the Horse Guards is too little advanced in
+civilization to make any allowance at all. Bargains there will be no
+more amongst auctions of old Government stores. Birmingham will be
+ruined, or so much of it as depended on rifles. And the great Scotch
+works on the river Carron will be hungering for beef, so far as Carron
+depended for beef upon carronades. Other arrears of evil will stretch
+after the extinction of war.
+
+Now upon my half-crown fund (which will be equal to anything by the
+time it is wanted) I charge once and for ever the general relief of all
+these arrears--of the poverty, the loss, the bankruptcy, arising by
+reason of this _quietus_ of final extinction applied to war. I
+charge the fund with a perpetual allowance of half-pay to all the
+armies of earth; or indeed, whilst my hand is in, I charge it with
+_full_ pay. And I strictly enjoin upon my trustees and executors,
+but especially upon the man in the moon, if his unsocial lip has left
+him one spark of gentlemanly feeling, that he and they shall construe
+all claims liberally; nay, with that riotous liberality which is safe
+and becoming, when applied to a fund so inexhaustible. Yes, reader, my
+fund will be inexhaustible, because the period of its growth will be
+measured by the concurrent deposition of the Ceylon mustard-seed from
+the everlasting pillar.
+
+Yet why, or on what principle? It is because I see, or imagine that I
+see, a twofold necessity for war--necessity in two different senses--
+1st, a physical necessity arising out of man's nature when combined
+with man's situation; a necessity under which war may be regarded, if
+you please, as a nuisance, but as a nuisance inalienable from
+circumstances essential to human frailty. 2dly, a moral necessity
+connected with benefits of compensation, such as continually lurk in
+evils acknowledged to be such--a necessity under which it becomes
+lawful to say, that war _ought_ to exist as a balance to opposite
+tendencies of a still more evil character. War is the mother of wrong
+and spoliation: war is a scourge of God--granted; but, like other
+scourges in the divine economy, war purifies and redeems itself in its
+character of a counterforce to greater evils that could not otherwise
+be intercepted or redressed. In two different meanings we say that a
+thing is necessary; either in that case where it is inexorably forced
+on by some sad overruling principle which it is vain to fight against,
+though all good men mourn over its existence and view it as an
+unconditional evil; or secondly, in that case, where an instrument of
+sorrowful consequences to man is nevertheless invoked and postulated by
+man's highest moral interests, is nevertheless clamorously indicated as
+a blessing when looked at in relation to some antagonist cause of evil
+for which it offers the one only remedy or principle of palliation. The
+very evil and woe of man's condition upon earth may be oftentimes
+detected in the necessity of looking to some other woe as the pledge of
+its purification; so that what separately would have been hateful for
+itself, passes mysteriously into an object of toleration, of hope, or
+even of prayer, as a counter-venom to the taint of some more mortal
+poison. Poverty, for instance, is in both senses necessary for man. It
+is necessary in the same sense as thirst is necessary (_i. e._
+inevitable) in a fever--necessary as one corollary amongst many others,
+from the eternal hollowness of all human efforts for organizing any
+perfect model of society--a corollary which, how gladly would all of us
+unite to cancel, but which our hearts suggest, which Scripture solemnly
+proclaims, to be ineradicable from the land. In this sense, poverty is
+a necessity over which we _mourn_,--as one of the dark phases that
+sadden the vision of human life. But far differently, and with a stern
+gratitude, we recognize another mode of necessity for this gloomy
+distinction--a call for poverty, when seen in relation to the manifold
+agencies by which it developes human energies, in relation to the
+trials by which it searches the power of patience and religion, in
+relation to the struggles by which it evokes the nobilities of
+fortitude; or again, amongst those who are not sharers in these trials
+and struggles, but sympathizing spectators, in relation to the
+stimulation by which it quickens wisdom that watches over the causes of
+this evil, or by which it vivifies the spirit of love that labors for
+its mitigation. War stands, or seems to stand, upon the same double
+basis of necessity; a primary necessity that belongs to our human
+degradations, a secondary one that towers by means of its moral
+relations into the region of our impassioned exaltations. The two
+propositions on which I take my stand are these. _First_, that
+there are nowhere latent in society any powers by which it can
+effectually operate on war for its extermination. The machinery is not
+there. The game is not within the compass of the cards. _Secondly_,
+that this defect of power is, though sincerely I grieve in avowing
+such a sentiment, and perhaps (if an infirm reader had his eye
+upon me) I might seem, in sympathy with his weakness, to blush
+--not a curse, no not at all, but on the whole a blessing from
+century to century, if it is an inconvenience from year to year. The
+Abolition Committees, it is to be feared, will be very angry at both
+propositions. Yet, Gentlemen, hear me--strike, but hear me. I believe
+that's a sort of plagiarism from Themistocles. But never mind. I have
+as good a right to the words, until translated back into Greek, as that
+most classical of yellow admirals. '_Pereant qui ante nos nostra
+dixerunt!_'
+
+The first proposition is, that war _cannot_ be abolished. The
+second, and more offensive--that war ought not to be abolished. First,
+therefore, concerning the first. One at a time. Sufficient for the page
+is the evil thereof! How came it into any man's heart, first of all, to
+conceive so audacious an idea as that of a conspiracy against war?
+Whence could he draw any vapor of hope to sustain his preliminary
+steps? And in framing his plot, which way did he set his face to look
+out for accomplices? Revolving this question in times past, I came to
+the conclusion--that, perhaps, this colossal project of a war against
+war, had been first put in motion under a misconception (natural
+enough, and countenanced by innumerable books) as to the true
+historical origin of wars in many notorious instances. If these had
+arisen on trivial impulses, a trivial resistance might have intercepted
+them. If a man has once persuaded himself, that long, costly, and
+bloody wars had arisen upon a point of ceremony, upon a personal pique,
+upon a hasty word, upon some explosion of momentary caprice; it is a
+natural inference, that strength of national will and public
+combinations for resistance, supposing such forces to have been
+trained, organized, and, from the circumstances of the particular
+nation, to be permanently disposable for action, might prove
+redundantly effective, when pointed against a few personal authors of
+war, so presumably weak, and so flexible to any stern counter-volition
+as those _must_ be supposed, whose wars argued so much of vicious
+levity. The inference is unexceptionable: it is the premises that are
+unsound. Anecdotes of war as having emanated from a lady's tea-table or
+toilette, would authorize such inference as to the facilities of
+controlling them. But the anecdotes themselves are false, or false
+substantially. _All_ anecdotes, I fear, are false. I am sorry to
+say so, but my duty to the reader extorts from me the disagreeable
+confession, as upon a matter specially investigated by myself, that all
+dealers in anecdotes are tainted with mendacity. Where is the
+Scotchman, said Dr. Johnson, who does not prefer Scotland to truth?
+but, however this may be, rarer than such a Scotchman, rarer than the
+phoenix, is that virtuous man, a monster he is, nay, he is an
+impossible man, who will consent to lose a prosperous anecdote on the
+consideration that it happens to be a lie. All history, therefore,
+being built partly, and some of it altogether, upon anecdotage, must be
+a tissue of lies. Such, for the most part, is the history of Suetonius,
+who may be esteemed the father of anecdotage; and being such, he (and
+not Herodotus) should have been honored with the title, _Father of
+Lies_. Such is the Augustan history, which is all that remains of
+the Roman empire; such is the vast series of French memoirs, now
+stretching through more than three entire centuries. Are these works,
+then, to be held cheap, because their truths to their falsehoods are in
+the ratio of one to five hundred? On the contrary, they are better, and
+more to be esteemed on that account; because, _now_ they are
+admirable reading on a winter's night; whereas, written on the
+principle of sticking to the truth, they would have been as dull as
+ditch water. Generally, therefore, the dealers in anecdotage are to be
+viewed with admiration, as patriotic citizens, willing to sacrifice
+their own characters, lest their countrymen should find themselves
+short of amusement. I esteem them as equal to Codrus, Timoleon, William
+Tell, or to Milton, as regards the liberty of unlicensed printing. And
+I object to them only in the exceptional case of their being cited as
+authorities for an inference, or as vouchers for a fact. Universally,
+it may be received as a rule of unlimited application,--that when an
+anecdote involves a stinging repartee, or collision of ideas,
+fancifully and brilliantly related to each other by resemblance or
+contrast, then you may challenge it as false to a certainty. One
+illustration of which is--that pretty nearly every memorable
+_propos_, or pointed repartee, or striking _mot_, circulating
+at this moment in Paris or London, as the undoubted property of
+Talleyrand, (that eminent knave,) was ascribed at Vienna, ninety years
+ago, to the Prince de Ligne, and thirty years previously, to Voltaire,
+and so on, regressively, to many other wits (knaves or not); until, at
+length, if you persist in backing far enough, you find yourself amongst
+Pagans, with the very same repartee, &c., doing duty in pretty good
+Greek; [Footnote: This is _literally_ true, more frequently than
+would be supposed. For instance, a jest often ascribed to Voltaire, and
+of late pointedly reclaimed for him by Lord Brougham, as being one that
+he (Lord B.) could swear to for _his_, so characteristic seemed
+the impression of Voltaire's mind upon the _tournure_ of the
+sarcasm, unhappily for this waste of sagacity, may be found recorded by
+Fabricius in the _Bibliotheca Græca_, as the jest of a Greek who
+has been dead for about seventeen centuries. The man certainly
+_did_ utter the jest; and 1750 years ago. But who it was that he
+stole it from is another question. To all appearance, and according to
+Lord Brougham's opinion, the party robbed must have been M. de
+Voltaire. I notice the case, however, of the Greek thefts and frauds
+committed upon so many of our excellent wits belonging to the 18th and
+19th centuries, chiefly with a view to M. de Talleyrand--that rather
+middling bishop, but very eminent knave. He also has been extensively
+robbed by the Greeks of the 2d and 3d centuries. How else can you
+account for so many of his sayings being found amongst _their_
+pages? A thing you may ascertain in a moment, at any police office, by
+having the Greeks searched: for surely you would never think of
+searching a bishop. Most of the Talleyrand jewels will be found
+concealed amongst the goods of these unprincipled Greeks. But one, and
+the most famous in the whole jewel-case, sorry am I to confess, was
+nearly stolen from the Bishop, not by any Greek, but by an English
+writer, viz., Goldsmith, who must have been dying about the time that
+his Excellency, the diplomatist, had the goodness to be born. That
+famous _mot_ about language, as a gift made to man for the purpose
+of _concealing_ his thoughts, is lurking in Goldsmith's Essays.
+Think of _that!_ Already, in his innocent childhood, whilst the
+Bishop was in petticoats, and almost before he had begun to curse and
+to swear plainly in French, an Irish vagabond had attempted to swindle
+him out of that famous witticism which has since been as good as a
+life-annuity to the venerable knave's literary fame.] sometimes, for
+instance in Hierocles, sometimes in Diogenes Lærtius, in Plutarch, or
+in Athenæus. Now the thing you know claimed by so many people, could
+not belong to all of them: _all_ of them could not be the inventors.
+Logic and common sense unite in showing us that it must have belonged
+to the moderns, who had clearly been hustled and robbed by the
+ancients, so much more likely to commit a robbery than Christians, they
+being all Gentiles--Pagans--Heathen dogs. What do I infer from this?
+Why, that upon _any_ solution of the case, hardly one worthy
+saying can be mentioned, hardly one jest, pun, or sarcasm, which has
+not been the occasion and subject of many falsehoods--as having been
+_au-(and men)-daciously_ transferred from generation to generation,
+sworn to in every age as this man's property, or that man's,
+by people that must have known they were lying, until you retire
+from the investigation with a conviction, that under any system of
+chronology, the science of lying is the only one that has never
+drooped. Date from _Anno Domini_, or from the Julian era, patronize
+Olympiads, or patronize (as _I_ do, from misanthropy, because nobody
+else _will_) the era of Nabonassar,--no matter, upon every road,
+thicker than mile-stones, you see records of human mendacity, or (which
+is much worse, in my opinion,) of human sympathy with other people's
+mendacity.
+
+This digression, now, on anecdotes,[Footnote: The word 'Anecdotes,'
+first, I believe, came into currency about the middle of the 6th
+century, from the use made of it by Procopius. _Literally_ it
+indicated nothing that could interest either public malice or public
+favor; it promised only _unpublished_ notices of the Emperor
+Justinian, his wife Theodora, Narses, Belisarius, &c. But _why_
+had they been unpublished? Simply because scandalous and defamatory:
+and hence, from the interest which invested the case of an imperial
+court so remarkable, this oblique, secondary and purely accidental
+modification of the word came to influence its _general_ acceptation.
+Simply to have been previously unpublished, no longer raised any
+statement into an anecdote: it now received a new integration
+it must be some fresh publication of _personal_ memorabilia; and
+these having reference to _human_ creatures, must always be
+presumed to involve more evil than good--much defamation
+true or false--much doubtful insinuation--much suggestion of things
+worse than could be openly affirmed. So arose the word: but the
+_thing_ arose with Suetonius, that dear, excellent and hard-
+working 'father of lies.'] is what the learned call an _excursus_,
+and, I am afraid, too long by half; not strictly in proportion. But
+don't mind _that_. I'll make it all right by being too short upon
+something else, at the next opportunity; and then nobody can complain.
+Meantime, I argue, that as all brilliant or epigrammatic anecdotes are
+probably false, (a thing that hereafter I shall have much pleasure in
+making out to the angry reader's satisfaction,) but to a dead certainty
+those anecdotes, in particular, which bear marks in their construction
+that a rhetorical effect of art had been contemplated by the narrator,
+--we may take for granted, that the current stories ascribing modern
+wars (French and English) to accidents the most inconsiderable, are
+false even in a literal sense; but at all events they are so when
+valued philosophically, and brought out into their circumstantial
+relations. For instance, we have a French anecdote, from the latter
+part of the seventeenth century, which ascribes one bloody war to the
+accident of a little 'miff,' arising between the king and his minister
+upon some such trifle as the situation of a palace window. Again, from
+the early part of the eighteenth century, we have an English anecdote,
+ascribing consequences no less bloody to a sudden feud between two
+ladies, and that feud, (if I remember,) tracing itself up to a pair of
+gloves; so that, in effect, the war and the gloves form the two poles
+of the transaction. Harlequin throws a pair of Limerick gloves into a
+corn-mill; and the spectator is astonished to see the gloves
+immediately issuing from the hopper, well ground into seven armies of
+one hundred thousand men each, and with parks of artillery to
+correspond. In these two anecdotes, we recognize at once the able and
+industrious artist arranging his materials with a pious regard to
+theatrical effect. This man knows how to group his figures; well he
+understands where to plant his masses of light and shade; and what
+impertinence it would be in us spectators, the reader suppose and
+myself, to go behind the scenes for critical inquiry into daylight
+realities. All reasonable men see that, the less of such realities our
+artist had to work with, the more was his merit. I am one of those that
+detest all insidious attempts to rob men situated as this artist of
+their fair fame, by going about and whispering that perhaps the thing
+is true. Far from it! I sympathize with the poor trembling artist, and
+agree most cordially that the whole story is a lie; and he may rely
+upon my support at all times to the extent of denying that any vestige
+of truth probably lay at the foundations of his ingenious apologue. And
+what I say of the English fable, I am willing to say of the French one.
+Both, I dare say, were the rankest fictions. But next, what, after all,
+if they were _not?_ For, in the rear of all discussion upon anecdotes,
+considered simply as true or _not_ true, comes finally a _valuation_
+of those anecdotes in their moral relation, and as to the inferences
+which they will sustain. The story, for example, of the French
+minister Louvois, and the adroitness with which he fastened upon
+great foreign potentates, in the shape of war, that irritability
+of temper in his royal master which threatened to consume himself; the
+diplomatic address with which he transmuted suddenly a task so delicate
+as that of skirmishing daily in a Council Chamber with his own
+sovereign, into that far jollier mode of disputation where one replies
+to all objections of the very keenest logician, either with round shot
+or with grape; here is an anecdote, which (for my own part) I am
+inclined to view as pure gasconade. But suppose the story true, still
+it may happen that a better valuation of it may disturb the whole
+edifice of logical inferences by which it seemed to favor the
+speculations of the war abolitionists. Let us see. What _was_ the
+logic through which such a tale as this could lend any countenance to
+the schemes of these abolitionists? That logic travelled in the
+following channel. Such a tale, or the English tale of the gloves,
+being supposed true, it would seem to follow, that war and the purposes
+of war were phenomena of chance growth, not attached to any instinct so
+ancient, and apparently so grooved into the dark necessities of our
+nature, as we had all taken for granted. Usually, we rank war with
+hunger, with cold, with sorrow, with death, afflictions of our human
+state that spring up as inevitably without separate culture and in
+defiance of all hostile culture, as verdure, as weeds, and as flowers
+that overspread in spring time a fertile soil without needing to be
+sown or watered--awful is the necessity, as it seems, of all such
+afflictions. Yet, again, if (as these anecdote simply) war could by
+possibility depend frequently on accidents of personal temperament,
+irritability in a sensual king, wounded sensibilities of pride between
+two sensitive ladies, there in a moment shone forth a light of hope
+upon the crusade against war.
+
+If _personal_ accidents could, to any serious extent, be amongst
+the causes of war, then it would become a hopeful duty to combine
+personal influences that should take an opposite direction. If casual
+causes could be supposed chiefly to have promoted war, how easy for a
+nation to arrange permanent and determinate causes against it! The
+logic of these anecdotes seemed to argue that the whole fountains of
+war were left to the government of chance and the windiest of levities;
+that war was not in reality roused into activity by the evil that
+resides in the human will, but on the contrary, by the simple defect of
+any will energetic enough or steady enough to merit that name.
+Multitudes of evils exist in our social system, simply because no
+steadiness of attention, nor action of combined will, has been
+converged upon them. War, by the silent evidence of these anecdotes,
+seemed to lie amongst that class of evils. A new era might be expected
+to commence in new views upon war; and the evil would be half conquered
+from the moment that it should be traced to a trivial or a personal
+origin.
+
+All this was plausible, but false. The anecdotes, and all similar
+anecdotes, might be true, but were delusive. The logical vice in them
+was--that they substituted an occasion for a cause. The king's ill
+temper for instance, acting through the levity and impatience of the
+minister, might be the _causa occasionalis_ of the war, but not
+its true _causa efficiens_. What _was?_ Where do the true permanent
+causes of war, as distinguished from its proximate excitements,
+find their lodgment and abiding ground? They lie in the system
+of national competitions; in the common political system to which
+all individual nations are unavoidably parties; in the system of
+public forces distributed amongst a number of adjacent nations, with no
+internal principle for adjusting the equilibrium of these forces, and
+no supreme _Areopagus_, or court of appeal, for deciding disputes.
+Here lies the _matrix_ of war, because an eternal _matrix_ of
+disputes lies in a system of interests that are continually the same,
+and therefore the parents of rivalships too close, that are continually
+different, and so far the parents of alienation too wide. All war is an
+instinctive _nisus_ for redressing the errors of equilibrium in
+the relative position of nations amongst nations. Every nation's duty,
+first, midst, and last, is to itself. No nation can be safe from
+continual (because insensible) losses of ground, but by continual
+jealousies, watchings, and ambitious strivings to mend its own
+position. Civilities and high-bred courtesies pass and ought to pass
+between nations; that is the graceful drapery which shrouds their
+natural, fierce, and tiger-like relations to each other. But the
+glaring eyes, which express this deep and inalienable ferocity, look
+out at intervals from below these gorgeous draperies; and sad it is to
+think that at intervals the acts and the temper suitable to those
+glaring eyes _must_ come forward. Mr. Carter was on terms of the
+most exquisite dissimulation with his lions and tigers; but, as often
+as he trusted his person amongst them, if, in the midst of infinite
+politeness exchanged on all sides, he saw a certain portentous
+expression of mutiny kindling in the eyeball of any discontented tiger,
+all was lost, unless he came down instantly upon that tiger's skull
+with a blow from an iron bar, that suggested something like apoplexy.
+On such terms do nations meet in diplomacy; high consideration for each
+other does not conceal the basis of enmity on which they rest; not an
+enmity that belongs to their feelings, but to the necessities of their
+position. Every nation in negotiating has its right hand upon the hilt
+of its sword, and at intervals playfully unsheaths a little of its
+gleaming blade. As things stand at present, war and peace are bound
+together like the vicissitudes of day and night, of Castor and Pollux.
+It matters little which bucket of the two is going up at the moment,
+which going down. Both are steadfastly tied by a system of alternations
+to a revolving wheel; and a new war as certainly becomes due during the
+evolutions of a tedious peace, as a new peace may be relied on during
+the throes of a bloody war, to tranquillize its wounds. Consequently,
+when the arrogant Louvois carried a war to the credit of his own little
+account on the national leger of France, this coxcomb well knew that a
+war was at any rate due about that time. Really, says he, I must find
+out some little war to exhaust the _surplus_ irritability of this
+person, or he'll be the death of me. But irritable or not irritable,
+with a puppy for his minister or not, the French king would naturally
+have been carried headlong into war by the mere system of Europe,
+within a very few months. So much had the causes of complaint
+reciprocally accumulated. The account must be cleansed, the court roll
+of grievances must be purged. With respect to the two English ladies
+again, it is still more evident that they could not have _caused_
+a war by pulling caps with each other, since the grounds of every war,
+what had caused it, and prolonged it, was sure to be angrily reviewed
+by Parliament at each annual exposition of the Finance Minister's
+Budget. These ladies, and the French coxcomb, could at the utmost have
+claimed a distinction--such as that which belonged to a particular
+Turkish gunner, the captain of a gun at Navarino, viz., that he, by
+firing the first shot without orders, did (as a matter of fact) let
+loose and unmuzzle the whole of that dreadful iron hurricane from four
+nations which instantly followed, but which (be it known to the gunner)
+could not have been delayed for fifty minutes longer, whether he had
+fired the unauthorized gun or not.
+
+But now, let me speak to the second proposition of my two-headed
+thesis, viz., that war _ought_ not to be abolished, if such an
+abolition were even possible. _Prima facie_, it seems a dreadful
+doctrine to claim a place for war as amongst the evils that are
+salutary to man; but conscientiously I hold it to be such. I hold with
+Wordsworth, but for reasons which may or may not be the same, since he
+has not stated _his_--
+
+  'That God's most dreaded instrument,
+  In working out a pure intent,
+  Is man--array'd for mutual slaughter:
+  Yea, Carnage is his daughter.'
+
+I am obliged to hold, that supposing so romantic a condition realized
+as the cessation of war, this change, unless other evils were
+previously abolished, or neutralized in a way still more romantic to
+suppose, would not be for the welfare of human nature, but would tend
+to its rapid degradation.
+
+One, in fact, of the earliest aspects under which this moral necessity
+for war forces itself upon our notice, is its physical necessity. I
+mean to say that one of the earliest reasons why war _ought_ to
+exist, is because under any mode of suppressing war, virtually it
+_will_ exist. Banish war as now administered, and it will revolve
+upon us in a worse shape, that is, in a shape of predatory and ruffian
+war, more and more licentious, as it enjoys no privilege or sufferance,
+by the supposition, under the national laws. Will the causes of war die
+away because war is forbidden? Certainly not; and the only result of
+the prohibition would be to throw back the exercise of war from
+national into private and mercenary hands; and _that_ is precisely
+the retrograde or inverse course of civilization; for, in the natural
+order of civilization, war passes from the hands of knights, barons,
+insulated cities, into those of the universal community. If, again, it
+is attempted to put down this lawless _guerilla_ state by national
+forces, then the result will be to have established an interminable
+warfare of a mixed character, private and public, civil and foreign,
+infesting the frontiers of all states like a fever, and in substitution
+for the occasional and intermitting wars of high national police,
+administered with the dignified responsibility that belongs to supreme
+rank, with the humanity that belongs to conscious power, and with the
+diminishing havoc that belongs to increasing skill in the arts of
+destruction. Even as to this last feature in warfare, which in the war
+of brigands and _condottieri_ would for many reasons instantly
+decay, no reader can fail to be aware of the marvels effected by the
+forces of inventive science that run along side by side with the
+advances of civilization; look back even to the grandest period of the
+humane Roman warfare, listen to the noblest and most merciful of all
+Roman captains, saying on the day of Pharsalia, (and saying of
+necessity,) 'Strike at their faces, cavalry,'--yes, absolutely
+directing his own troopers to plough up with their sabres the blooming
+faces of the young Roman nobility; and then pass to a modern field of
+battle, where all is finished by musquetry and artillery amidst clouds
+of smoke, no soldier recognizing his own desolations, or the ghastly
+ruin of his own right arm, so that war, by losing all its brutality, is
+losing half of its demoralization.
+
+War, so far from ending, because war was forbidden and nationally
+renounced, on the contrary would transmigrate into a more fearful
+shape. As things are at present, (and, observe, they are always growing
+better,) what numbers of noble-minded men, in the persons of our
+officers (yes, and often of non-commissioned officers,) do we British,
+for example, disperse over battle-fields, that could not dishonor their
+glorious uniform by any countenance to an act of cruelty! They are eyes
+delegated from the charities of our domestic life, to overlook and curb
+the license of war. I remember, in Xenophon, some passage where he
+describes a class of Persian gentlemen, who were called the
+_ophthalmoi_, or _eyes_ of the king; but for a very different
+purpose. These British officers may be called the _opthalmoi_, or
+eyes of our Sovereign Lady, that into every corner of the battle carry
+their scrutiny, lest any cruelty should be committed on the helpless,
+or any advantage taken of a dying enemy. But mark, such officers would
+be rare in the irregular troops succeeding to the official armies. And
+through this channel, amongst others, war, when cried down by act of
+Parliament, and precisely _because_ it was cried down, would
+become more perilously effective for the degradation of human nature.
+Being itself dishonored, war would become the more effective as an
+instrument for the dishonoring of its agents. However, at length, we
+will suppose the impossible problem solved--war, we will assume, is at
+last put down.
+
+At length there is no more war. Though by the way, let me whisper in
+your ear, (supposing you to be a Christian,) this would be a
+prelibation drawn prematurely from the cup of millennial happiness;
+and, strictly speaking, there is no great homage to religion, even thus
+far--in figuring _that_ to be the purchase of man for himself, and
+through his own efforts, which is viewed by Scripture as a glory
+removed to the infinite and starry distance of a millennium, and as the
+_teleutaion epigeinaema_, the last crowning attainment of
+Christian truth, no longer _militant_ on earth. Christianity it
+is, but Christianity when _triumphant_, and no longer in conflict
+with adverse, or thwarting, or limiting influences, which only can be
+equal to a revolution so mighty. But all this, for the sake of pursuing
+the assumption, let us agree to waive. In reality, there are two
+separate stations taken up by the war denouncers. One class hold, that
+an influence derived from political economy is quite equal to the
+flying leap by which man is to clear this unfathomable gulph of war,
+and to land his race for ever on the opposite shore of a self-
+sustaining peace. Simply, the contemplation of national debts, (as a
+burthen which never would have existed without war,) and a computation
+of the waste, havoc, unproductive labor, &c., attached to any single
+campaign--these, they imagine, might suffice, _per se_, for the
+extinction of war. But the other class cannot go along with a
+speculation so infirm. Reasons there are, in the opposite scale,
+tempting man into war,--which are far mightier than any motives
+addressed to his self-interest. Even straining her energies to the
+utmost, they regard all policy of the _purse_ as adequate: anything
+short of religion, they are satisfied, must be incommensurate to a
+result so vast.
+
+I myself certainly agree with this last class; but upon this arises a
+delusion, which I shall have some trouble in making the reader
+understand: and of this I am confident-that a majority, perhaps, in
+every given amount of readers, will share in the delusion; will part
+from me in the persuasion that the error I attempt to expose is no
+error at all, but that it is myself who am in the wrong. The delusion
+which I challenge as such, respects the very meaning and value of a
+sacrifice made to Christianity. What is it? what do we properly mean,
+by a concession or a sacrifice made to a spiritual power, such as
+Christianity? If a king and his people, impressed by the unchristian
+character of war, were to say, in some solemn act--'We, the parties
+undersigned, for the reasons stated in the body of this document,
+proclaim to all nations, that from and after Midsummer eve of the year
+1850, this being the eve of St. John the Baptist, (who was the herald
+of Christ,) we will no more prosecute any interest of ours, unless the
+one sole interest of national defence, by means of war,--and this
+sacrifice we make as a concession and act of homage to Christianity,--
+would _that_ vow, I ask, sincerely offered, and steadily observed,
+really be a sacrifice made to Christianity? Not at all. A sacrifice,
+that was truly such, to a spiritual religion, must be a sacrifice not
+verbally (though sincerely) dedicating itself to the religion, but a
+sacrifice wrought and accomplished by that religion, through and by its
+own spirit. Midsummer eve of 1850 could clearly make no spiritual
+change in the king or his people--such they would be on the morning
+after St. John's day, as on the morning before it--_i. e._, filled
+with all elements (though possibly undeveloped) of strife, feud,
+pernicious ambition,
+
+The delusion, therefore, which I charge upon this religious class of
+war denouncers is, that whilst they see and recognize this infinite
+imperfection of any influence which Christianity yet exercises upon the
+world, they nevertheless rely upon that acknowledged shadow for the
+accomplishment of what would, in such circumstances, be a real miracle;
+they rely upon that shadow, as truly and entirely as if it were already
+that substance which, in a vast revolution of ages, it will finally
+become. And they rely upon this mockery in _two_ senses; first,
+for the _endurance_ of the frail human resolution that would thaw
+in an hour before a great outrage, or provocation suited to the nobler
+infirmities of man. Secondly, which is the point I mainly aim at,
+assuming, for a moment, that the resolution _could_ endure,
+amongst all mankind, we are all equally convinced, that an evil so vast
+is not likely to be checked or controlled, except by some very
+extraordinary power. Well, where _is_ it? Show me that power. I
+know of none but Christianity. _There_, undoubtedly, is hope. But,
+in order that the hope may become rational, the power must become
+practical. And practical it is not in the extent required, until this
+Christianity, from being dimly appreciated by a section [Footnote
+_What_ section, if you please? I, for my part, do not agree with
+those that geographically degrade Christianity as occupying but a
+trifle on the area of our earth. Mark this; all Eastern populations
+have dwindled upon better acquaintance. Persia that _ought_ to
+have, at least, two hundred and fifty millions of people, and
+_would_ have them under English government, and once was supposed
+to have at least one hundred millions, how many millions has she?
+_Eight!_ This was ascertained by Napoleon's emissary in 1808,
+General Gardanne. Afghanistan has very little more, though some falsely
+count fourteen millions. There go two vast chambers of Mahometanism;
+not twenty millions between them. Hindostan may _really_ have one
+hundred and twenty millions claimed for her. As to the Burman Empire,
+I, nor anybody else knows the truth. But, as to China, I have never for
+a moment been moved by those ridiculous estimates of the flowery
+people, which our simple countrymen copy. Instead of three hundred and
+fifty millions, a third of the human race upon the most exaggerated
+estimate, read eighty or one hundred millions at most. Africa, as it
+regards religion, counts for a cipher. Europe, America, and the half of
+Asia, as to space, are Christian. Consequently, the total _facit_,
+as regards Christianity, is not what many amiable infidels make it to
+be. My dears, your wish was father to that thought.] of this world,
+shall have been the law that overrides the whole. That consummation is
+not immeasurably distant. Even now, from considerations connected with
+China, with New Zealand, Borneo, Australia, we may say, that already
+the fields are white for harvest. But alas! the interval is brief
+between Christianity small, and Christianity great, as regards space or
+terraqueous importance, compared with that interval which separates
+Christianity formally professed, from Christianity thankfully
+acknowledged by universal man in beauty and power.
+
+Here, therefore, is one spoke in the wheel for so vast a change as war
+dethroned, viz., that you see no cause, though you should travel round
+the whole horizon, adequate to so prodigious an effect. What could do
+it? Why, Christianity could do it. Aye, true; but man disarms
+Christianity. And no mock Christianity, no lip homage to Christianity,
+will answer.
+
+But is war, then, to go on for ever? Are we never to improve? Are
+nations to conduct their intercourse eternally under the secret
+understanding that an unchristian solution of all irreconcileable feuds
+stands in the rear as the ultimate appeal? I answer that war, going on
+even for ever, may still be for ever amending its modes and its results
+upon human happiness; secondly, that we not only are under no fatal
+arrest in our process of improvement, but that, as regards war, history
+shows how steadily we _have_ been improving; and, thirdly, that
+although war may be irreversible as the last resource, this last
+resource may constantly be retiring further into the rear. Let us speak
+to this last point. War is the last resource only, because other and
+more intellectual resources for solving disputes are not available. And
+_why_ are they not? Simply, because the knowledge, and the logic,
+which ultimately will govern the case, and the very circumstances of
+the case itself in its details, as the basis on which this knowledge
+and logic are to operate, happen not to have been sufficiently
+developed. A code of law is not a spasmodic effort of gigantic talent
+in any one man or any one generation; it is a slow growth of accidents
+and occasions expanding with civilization; dependent upon time as a
+multiform element in its development; and presupposing often a
+concurrent growth of _analogous_ cases towards the completion of
+its system. For instance, the law which regulates the rights of
+shipping, seafaring men, and maritime commerce--how slow was its
+development! Before such works as the _Consolato del Mare_ had
+been matured, how wide must have been the experience, and how slow its
+accumulation! During that long period of infancy for law, how many must
+have been the openings for ignorant and unintentional injustice! How
+differently, again, will the several parties to any transaction
+construe the rights of the case! Discussion, without rules for guiding
+it, will but embitter the dispute. And in the absence of all guidance
+from the intellect, gradually weaving a _common_ standard of
+international appeal, it is clear that nations _must_ fight, and
+_ought_ to fight. Not being convinced, it is base to pretend that
+you _are_ convinced; and failing to be convinced by your neighbor's
+arguments, you confess yourself a poltroon (and moreover you
+_invite_ injuries from every neighbor) if you pocket your wrongs.
+The only course in such a case is to thump your neighbor, and to thump
+him soundly for the present. This treatment is very serviceable to your
+neighbor's optics; he sees things in a new light after a sufficient
+course of so distressing a regimen. But mark, even in this case, war
+has no tendency to propagate war, but tends to the very opposite
+result. To thump is as costly, and in other ways as painful, as to
+_be_ thumped. The evil to both sides arises in an undeveloped
+state of law. If rights were defined by a well considered code growing
+out of long experience, each party sees that this scourge of war would
+continually tend to limit itself. Consequently the very necessity of
+war becomes the strongest invitation to that system of judicial logic
+which forms its sole limitation. But all war whatsoever stands in these
+circumstances. It follows that all war whatever, unless on the brutal
+principle of a Spartan warfare, that made war its own sufficient object
+and self-justification, operates as a perpetual bounty offered to men
+upon the investigation and final adjudication of those disputed cases
+through which war prospers. Hence it is, viz., because the true
+boundaries of reciprocal rights are for ever ascertaining themselves
+more clearly, that war is growing less frequent. The fields open to
+injustice (which originally from pure ignorance are so vast)
+continually (through deeper and more expansive surveys by man's
+intellect--searching--reflecting--comparing) are narrowing themselves;
+narrowing themselves in this sense, that all nations under a common
+centre of religious civilization, as Christendom suppose, or Islamism,
+would not fight--no, and would not (by the national sense of wrong and
+right) be permitted to fight--in a cause _confessedly_ condemned
+by equity as now developed. The causes of war that still remain, are
+causes on which international law is silent--that large arrear of cases
+as yet unsettled; or else they are cases in which though law speaks
+with an authentic voice, it speaks in vain, because the circumstances
+are doubtful; so that, if the law is fixed as a lamp nailed to a wall,
+yet the _incidence_ of the law on the particular circumstances,
+becomes as doubtful as the light of the lamp upon objects that are
+capriciously moving. We see all this illustrated in a class of cases
+that powerfully illustrate the good and the bad in war, the why and the
+wherefore, as likewise the why _not_, and therefore I presume the
+wherefore _not_; and this class of cases belongs to the _lex
+vicinitatis_. In the Roman law this section makes a great figure.
+And speaking accurately, it makes a greater in our own. But the reason
+why this _law of neighborhood_ seems to fill so much smaller a
+section in ours, is because in English law, being _positively_ a
+longer section, _negatively_ to the whole compass of our law, it
+is less. The Roman law would have paved a road to the moon. And what is
+_that_ expressed in time? Let us see: a railway train, worked at
+the speed of the Great Western Express, accomplishes easily a thousand
+miles in twenty-four hours; consequently in two hundred and forty days
+or eight months it would run into the moon with its buffers, and break
+up the quarters of that Robinson Crusoe who (and without any Friday) is
+the only policeman that parades that little pensive appendage or tender
+to our fuming engine of an earth. But the English law--oh frightful
+reader, don't even think of such a question as its relation in space
+and time to the Roman law. That it would stretch to the fixed stars is
+plain, but to which of them,--don't now, dear persecuting reader,
+unsettle our brains by asking. Enough it is that both in Roman and
+English law the rights of neighborhood are past measuring. Has a man a
+right to play the German flute, where the partitions are slender, all
+day long in the house adjoining to yours? Or, supposing a beneficent
+jury (beneficent to _him_) finds this to be no legal nuisance, has
+he a right to play it ill? Or, because juries, when tipsy, will wink at
+anything, does the privilege extend to the jew's-harp? to the poker and
+tongs? to the marrowbones and cleavers? Or, without ranging through the
+whole of the _Spectator's_ culinary music, will the bagpipes be
+found within benefit of jury law? _War to the knife_ I say, before
+we'll submit to _that_. And if the law won't protect us against
+it, then we'll turn rebels.
+
+Now this law of neighborhood, this _lex vicinitatis_, amongst the
+Romans, righted itself and settled itself, as amongst ourselves it
+continues to do, by means of actions or legal suits. If a man poisons
+us with smoke, we compel him by an action to eat his own smoke, or (if
+he chooses) to make his chimneys eat it. Here you see is a transmuted
+war; in a barbarous state, fire and sword would have avenged this
+invasion of smoke; but amongst civilized men, paper bullets in the form
+of _Qui tam_ and _Scire facias_, beat off the enemy. And on the same
+principle, exactly as the law of international rights clears up its
+dark places, war gradually narrows its grounds, and the _jus gentium_
+defines itself through national attorneys, _i. e._, diplomatists.
+
+For instance, now I have myself seen a case where a man cultivating a
+flower-garden, and distressed for some deliverance from his rubbish of
+dead leaves, litter, straw, stones, took the desperate resolution of
+projecting the whole upon his neighbor's flower-garden. I, a chance
+spectator of the outrage, knew too much of this world to lodge any
+protest against it, on the principle of mere abstract justice; so it
+would have passed unnoticed, but for the accident that his injured
+neighbor unexpectedly raised up his head above the dividing wall, and
+reproached the aggressor with his unprincipled conduct. This aggressor,
+adding evil to evil, suggested as the natural remedy for his own wrong,
+that the sufferer should pass the nuisance onwards to the garden next
+beyond him; from which it might be posted forward on the same
+principle. The aggrieved man, however, preferred passing it back,
+without any discount to the original proprietor. Here now, is a ripe
+case, a _causa teterrima_, for war between the parties, and for a
+national war had the parties been nations. In fact, the very same
+injury, in a more aggravated shape, is perpetrated from time to time by
+Jersey upon ourselves, and would, upon a larger scale, right itself by
+war. Convicts are costly to maintain; and Jersey, whose national
+revenue is limited, being too well aware of this, does us the favor to
+land upon the coasts of Hampshire, Dorset, &c., all the criminals whom
+she cannot summarily send back to self-support, at each jail-delivery.
+'What are we to do in England?' is the natural question propounded by
+the injured scoundrels, when taking leave of their Jersey escort.
+'Anything you please,' is the answer: 'rise if you can, to be dukes:
+only never come back hither; since, dukes or _no_ dukes, to the
+rest of Christendom, to _us_ of the Channel Islands you will
+always be transported felons.' There is therefore a good right of
+action, _i.e._, a good ground of war, against Jersey, on the part
+of Great Britain, since, besides the atrocious injury inflicted, this
+unprincipled little island has the audacity to regard our England, (all
+Europe looking on,) as existing only for the purposes of a sewer or
+cess-pool to receive _her_ impurities. Some time back I remember a
+Scottish newspaper holding up the case as a newly discovered horror in
+the social system. But, in a quiet way Jersey has always been engaged
+in this branch of exportation, and rarely fails to 'run' a cargo of
+rogues upon our shore, once or so in the season. What amuses one
+besides, in this Scottish denunciation of the villany, is, that
+Scotland [Footnote: To banish them 'forth of the kingdom,' was the
+_euphuismus_; but the reality understood was--to carry the knaves,
+like foxes in a bag, to the English soil, and there unbag them for
+English use.] of old, pursued the very same mode of jail-delivery as to
+knaves that were not thought ripe enough for hanging: she carted them
+to the English border, unchained them, and hurried them adrift into the
+wilderness, saying--Now, boys, shift for yourselves, and henceforth
+plunder none but Englishmen.
+
+What I deduce from all this is, that as the feuds arising between
+individuals under the relation of neighbors, are so far from tending to
+a hostile result, that, on the contrary, as coming under a rule of law
+already ascertained, or furnishing the basis for a new rule, they
+gradually tighten the cords which exclude all opening for quarrel; not
+otherwise is the result, and therefore the usefulness, of war amongst
+nations. All the causes of war, the occasions upon which it is likely
+to arise, the true and the ostensible motives, are gradually evolved,
+are examined, searched, valued, by publicists; and by such means, in
+the further progress of men, a comprehensive law of nations will
+finally be accumulated, not such as now passes for international law,
+(a worthless code that _has_ no weight in the practice of nations,
+nor deserves any,) but one which will exhaust the great body of cases
+under which wars have arisen under the Christian era, and gradually
+collect a public opinion of Christendom upon the nature of each
+particular case. The causes that _have_ existed for war are the
+causes that _will_ exist; or, at least, they are the same under
+modifications that will simply vary the rule, as our law cases in the
+courts are every day circumstantiating the particular statute
+concerned. At this stage of advance, and when a true European opinion
+has been created, a '_sensus communis_,' or community of feeling
+on the main classifications of wars, it will become possible to erect a
+real Areopagus, or central congress for all Christendom, not with any
+commission to suppress wars,--a policy which would neutralize itself by
+reacting as a fresh cause of war, since high-spirited nations would arm
+for the purpose of resisting such decrees; but with the purpose and the
+effect of oftentimes healing local or momentary animosities, and also
+by publishing the opinion of Europe, assembled in council, with the
+effect of taking away the shadow of dishonor from the act of retiring
+from war. Not to mention that the mere delay, involved in the waiting
+for the solemn opinion of congress, would always be friendly to pacific
+councils. But _would_ the belligerents wait? That concession might
+be secured by general exchange of treaties, in the same way that the
+cooperation of so many nations has been secured to the suppression of
+the trade in slaves. And one thing is clear, that when all the causes
+of war, involving _manifest_ injustice, are banished by the force
+of European opinion, focally converged upon the subject, the range of
+war will be prodigiously circumscribed. The costliness of war, which,
+for various reasons has been continually increasing since the feudal
+period, will operate as another limitation upon its field, concurring
+powerfully with the public declaration from a council of collective
+Christendom.
+
+There is, besides, a distinct and separate cause of war, more fatal to
+the possibilities of peace in Europe than open injustice; and this
+cause being certainly in the hands of nations to deal with as they
+please, there is a tolerable certainty that a congress _sincerely_
+pacific would cut it up by the roots. It is a cause noticed by Kant in
+his Essay on Perpetual Peace, and with great sagacity, though otherwise
+that little work is not free from visionary self-delusions: and this
+cause lies in the diplomacy of Europe. Treaties of peace are so
+constructed, as almost always to sow the seeds of future wars. This
+seems to the inexperienced reader a matter of carelessness or laxity in
+the choice of expression; and sometimes it may have been so; but more
+often it has been done under the secret dictation of powerful courts--
+making peaces only as truces, anxious only for time to nurse their
+energies, and to keep open some plausible call for war. This is not
+only amongst the most extensive causes of war, but the very worst:
+because it gives a colorable air of justice, and almost of necessity to
+a war, which is, in fact, the most outrageously unjust, as being
+derived from a pretext silently prepared in former years, with mere
+subtlety of malice: it is a war growing out of occasions, forged
+beforehand, lest no occasions should spontaneously arise. Now, this
+cause of war could and would be healed by a congress, and through an
+easy reform in European diplomacy.[Footnote: One great _nidus_ of
+this insidious preparation for war under the very masque of peace,
+which Kant, from brevity, has failed to particularize, lies in the
+neglecting to make any provision for cases that are likely enough to
+arise. A, B, C, D, are all equally possible, but the treaty provides a
+specific course of action only for A, suppose. Then upon B or C
+arising, the high contracting parties, though desperately and equally
+pacific, find themselves committed to war actually by a treaty of
+lasting peace. Their pacific majesties sigh, and say--Alas! that it
+should be so, but really fight we must, for what says the treaty?]
+
+It is the strongest confirmation of the power inherent in growing
+civilization, to amend war, and to narrow the field of war, if we look
+back for the records of the changes in this direction which have
+already arisen in generations before our own.
+
+The most careless reviewer of history can hardly fail to read a rude
+outline of progress made by men in the rights, and consequently in the
+duties of war through the last twenty-five centuries. It is a happy
+circumstance for man--that oftentimes he is led by pure selfishness
+into reforms, the very same as high principle would have prompted; and
+in the next stage of his advance, when once habituated to an improved
+code of usages, he begins to find a gratification to his sensibilities,
+(partly luxurious sensibilities, but partly moral,) in what originally
+had been a mere movement of self-interest. Then comes a third stage, in
+which having thoroughly reconciled himself to a better order of things,
+and made it even necessary to his own comfort, at length he begins in
+his reflecting moments to perceive a moral beauty and a fitness in
+arrangements that had emanated from accidents of convenience, so that
+finally he generates a sublime pleasure of conscientiousness out of
+that which originally commenced in the meanest forms of mercenary
+convenience. A Roman lady of rank, out of mere voluptuous regard to her
+own comfort, revolted from the harsh clamors of eternal chastisements
+inflicted on her numerous slaves; she forbade them; the grateful slaves
+showed their love for her; gradually and unintentionally she trained
+her feelings, when thus liberated from a continual temptation to the
+sympathies with cruelty, into a demand for gentler and purer
+excitement. Her purpose had been one of luxury; but, by the benignity
+of nature still watching for ennobling opportunities, the actual result
+was a development given to the higher capacities of her heart. In the
+same way, when the brutal right (and in many circumstances the brutal
+duty) of inflicting death upon prisoners taken in battle, had exchanged
+itself for the profits of ransom or slavery, this relaxation of
+ferocity (though commencing in selfishness) gradually exalted itself
+into a habit of mildness, and some dim perception of a sanctity in
+human life. The very vice of avarice ministered to the purification of
+barbarism; and the very evil of slavery in its earliest form was
+applied to the mitigation of another evil--war conducted in the spirit
+of piratical outrage. The commercial instincts of men having worked one
+set of changes in war, a second set of changes was prompted by
+instincts derived from the arts of ornament and pomp. Splendor of arms,
+of banners, of equipages, of ceremonies, and the elaborate forms of
+intercourse with enemies through conferences, armistices, treaties of
+peace, &c., having tamed the savagery of war into connection with modes
+of intellectual grandeur, and with the endless restraints of
+superstition or scrupulous religion,--a permanent light of civilization
+began to steal over the bloody shambles of buccaneering warfare. Other
+modes of harmonizing influences arose more directly from the bosom of
+war itself. Gradually the mere practice of war, and the culture of war
+though merely viewed as a rude trade of bloodshed, ripened into an
+intellectual art. Were it merely with a view to more effectual carnage,
+this art (however simple and gross at first) opened at length into wide
+scientific arts, into strategies, into tactics, into castrametation,
+into poliorcetics, and all the processes through which the first rude
+efforts of martial cunning finally connect themselves with the
+exquisite resources of science. War, being a game in which each side
+forces the other into the instant adoption of all improvements through
+the mere necessities of self-preservation, became continually more
+intellectual.
+
+It is interesting to observe the steps by which, were it only through
+impulses of self-conservation, and when searching with a view to more
+effectual destructiveness, war did and must refine itself from a horrid
+trade of butchery into a magnificent and enlightened science. Starting
+from no higher impulse or question than how to cut throats most
+rapidly, most safely, and on the largest scale, it has issued even at
+our own stage of advance into a science, magnificent, oftentimes
+ennobling, and cleansed from all horrors except those which (not being
+within man's power utterly to divorce from it) no longer stand out as
+reproaches to his humanity.
+
+Meantime a more circumstantial review of war, in relation to its
+motives and the causes assigned for its justification, would expose a
+series of changes greater perhaps than the reader is aware of. Such a
+review, which would too much lengthen a single paper, may or may not
+form the subject of a second. And I will content myself with saying, as
+a closing remark, that this review will detect a principle of steady
+advance in the purification and elevation of war--such as must offer
+hope to those who believe in the possibility of its absolute
+extermination, and must offer consolation to those who (like myself)
+deny it.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST DAYS OF IMMANUEL KANT.
+
+
+I take it for granted that every person of education will acknowledge
+some interest in the personal history of Immanuel Kant. A great man,
+though in an unpopular path, must always be an object of liberal
+curiosity. To suppose a reader thoroughly indifferent to Kant, is to
+suppose him thoroughly unintellectual; and, therefore, though in
+reality he should happen _not_ to regard him with interest, it is
+one of the fictions of courtesy to presume that he does. On this
+principle I make no apology to the reader for detaining him upon a
+short sketch of Kant's life and domestic habits, drawn from the
+authentic records of his friends and pupils. It is true, that, without
+any illiberality on the part of the public in this country, the
+_works_ of Kant are not regarded with the same interest which has
+gathered about his _name_; and this may be attributed to three
+causes--first, to the language in which they are written; secondly, to
+the supposed obscurity of the philosophy which they teach, whether
+intrinsic or due to Kant's particular mode of expounding it; thirdly,
+to the unpopularity of all speculative philosophy, no matter how
+treated, in a country where the structure and tendency of society
+impress upon the whole activities of the nation a direction exclusively
+practical. But, whatever may be the immediate fortunes of his writings,
+no man of enlightened curiosity will regard the author himself without
+something of a profounder interest. Measured by one test of power,
+viz., by the number of books written directly for or against himself,
+to say nothing of those which he has indirectly modified, there is no
+philosophic writer whatsoever, if we except Aristotle, who can pretend
+to approach Kant in the extent of the influence which he has exercised
+over the minds of men. Such being his claims upon our notice, I repeat
+that it is no more than a reasonable act of respect to the reader--to
+presume in him so much interest about Kant as will justify a sketch of
+his life.
+
+Immanuel Kant, [Footnote: By the paternal side, the family of Kant was
+of Scotch derivation; and hence it is that the name was written by Kant
+the father--_Cant_, that being a Scotch name, and still to be found
+in Scotland. But Immanuel, though he always cherished his Scotch
+descent, substituted a _K_ for a _C_, in order to adapt it better
+to the analogies of the German language.] the second of six
+children, was born at Königsberg, in Prussia, a city at that time
+containing about fifty thousand inhabitants, on the 22d of April, 1724.
+His parents were people of humble rank, and not rich even for their own
+station, but able (with some assistance from a near relative, and a
+trifle in addition from a gentleman, who esteemed them for their piety
+and domestic virtues,) to give their son Immanuel a liberal education.
+He was sent when a child to a charity school; and, in the year 1732,
+removed to the Royal (or Frederician) Academy. Here he studied the
+Greek and Latin classics, and formed an intimacy with one of his
+schoolfellows, David Ruhnken, (afterwards so well known to scholars
+under his Latin name of Ruhn-kenius,) which lasted until the death of
+the latter. In 1737, Kant lost his mother, a woman of excellent
+character, and of accomplishments and knowledge beyond her rank, who
+contributed to the future eminence of her illustrious son by the
+direction which she gave to his youthful thoughts, and by the elevated
+morals to which she trained him. Kant never spoke of her to the end of
+his life without the utmost tenderness, and acknowledgment of his great
+obligations to her maternal care. In 1740, at Michælmas, he entered the
+University of Königsberg. In 1746, when about twenty-two years old, he
+printed his first work, upon a question partly mathematical and partly
+philosophic, viz., the valuation of living forces. The question had
+been first moved by Leibnitz, in opposition to the Cartesians, and was
+here finally settled, after having occupied most of the great
+mathematicians of Europe for more than half a century. It was dedicated
+to the King of Prussia, but never reached him--having, in fact, never
+been published. [Footnote: To this circumstance we must attribute its
+being so little known amongst the philosophers and mathematicians of
+foreign countries, and also the fact that D'Alembert, whose philosophy
+was miserably below his mathematics, many years afterwards still
+continued to represent the dispute as a verbal one.] From this time
+until 1770, he supported himself as a private tutor in different
+families, or by giving private lectures in Königsberg, especially to
+military men on the art of fortification. In 1770, he was appointed to
+the Chair of Mathematics, which he exchanged soon after for that of
+Logic and Metaphysics. On this occasion, he delivered an inaugural
+disputation--[_De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et
+Principiis_]--which is remarkable for containing the first germs of
+the Transcendental Philosophy. In 1781, he published his great work,
+the _Critik der Reinen Vernunft,_ or _Investigation of the Pure
+Reason_. On February 12, 1804, he died.
+
+These are the great epochs of Kant's life. But his was a life
+remarkable not so much for its incidents, as for the purity and
+philosophic dignity of its daily tenor; and of this the best impression
+will be obtained from Wasianski's account of his last years, checked
+and supported by the collateral testimonies of Jachmann, Rink,
+Borowski, and other biographers. We see him here struggling with the
+misery of decaying faculties, and with the pain, depression, and
+agitation of two different complaints, one affecting his stomach, and
+the other his head; over all which the benignity and nobility of his
+mind are seen victoriously eminent to the last. The principal defect of
+this and all other memoirs of Kant is, that they report too little of
+his conversation and opinions. And perhaps the reader will be disposed
+to complain, that some of the notices are too minute and
+circumstantial, so as to be at one time undignified, and at another
+unfeeling. As to the first objection, it may be answered, that
+biographical gossip of this sort, and ungentlemanly scrutiny into a
+man's private life, though not what a man of honor would choose to
+write, may be read without blame; and, where a great man is the
+subject, sometimes with advantage. With respect to the other objection,
+I know not how to excuse Mr. Wasianski for kneeling at the bed-side of
+his dying friend, to record, with the accuracy of a short-hand
+reporter, the last flutter of his pulse and the struggles of expiring
+nature, except by supposing that the idea of Kant, as a person
+belonging to all ages, in his mind transcended and extinguished the
+ordinary restraints of human sensibility, and that, under this
+impression, he gave _that_ to his sense of a public duty which, it
+may be hoped, he would willingly have declined on the impulse of his
+private affections.
+
+_The following paper on The Last Days of Kant, is gathered from the
+German of Wasianski, Jachmann, Borowski, and others._
+
+My knowledge of Professor Kant began long before the period to which
+this little memorial of him chiefly refers. In the year 1773, or 1774,
+I cannot exactly remember which, I attended his lectures. Afterwards, I
+acted as his amanuensis; and in that office was naturally brought into
+a closer connection with him than any other of his pupils; so that,
+without any request on my part, he granted me a general privilege of
+free admission to his class-room. In 1780 I took orders, and withdrew
+myself from all connection with the university. I still continued,
+however, to reside in Königsberg; but wholly forgotten, or wholly
+unnoticed at least, by Kant. Ten years afterwards, (that is to say, in
+1790,) I met him by accident at a party given on occasion of the
+marriage of one of the professors. At table, Kant distributed his
+conversation and attentions pretty generally; but after the
+entertainment, when the company broke up into parties, he came and
+seated himself very obligingly by my side. I was at that time a
+florist--an amateur, I mean, from the passion I had for flowers; upon
+learning which, he talked of my favorite pursuit, and with very
+extensive information. In the course of our conversation, I was
+surprised to find that he was perfectly acquainted with all the
+circumstances of my situation. He reminded me of our previous
+connection; expressed his satisfaction at finding that I was happy; and
+was so good as to desire that, if my engagements allowed me, I would
+now and then come and dine with him. Soon after this, he rose to take
+his leave; and, as our road lay the same way, he proposed to me that I
+should accompany him home. I did so, and received an invitation for the
+next week, with a general invitation for every week after, and
+permission to name my own day. At first I was unable to explain the
+distinction with which Kant had treated me; and I conjectured that some
+obliging friend had spoken of me in his hearing, somewhat more
+advantageously than I could pretend to deserve; but more intimate
+experience has convinced me that he was in the habit of making
+continual inquiries after the welfare of his former pupils, and was
+heartily rejoiced to hear of their prosperity. So that it appeared I
+was wrong in thinking he had forgotten me.
+
+This revival of my intimacy with Professor Kant, coincided pretty
+nearly, in point of time, with a complete change in his domestic
+arrangements. Up to this period it had been his custom to eat at a
+_table d'hôte_. But he now began to keep house himself, and every
+day invited two friends to dine with him, and upon any little festival
+from five to eight; for he was a punctual observer of Lord
+Chesterfield's rule--that his dinner party, himself included, should
+not fall below the number of the Graces--nor exceed that of the Muses.
+In the whole economy of his household arrangements, and especially of
+his dinner parties, there was something peculiar and amusingly opposed
+to the usual conventional restraints of society; not, however, that
+there was any neglect of decorum, such as sometimes occurs in houses
+where there are no ladies to impress a better tone upon the manners.
+The invariable routine was this: The moment that dinner was ready,
+Lampe, the professor's old footman, stepped into the study with a
+certain measured air, and announced it. This summons was obeyed at the
+pace of double quick time--Kant talking all the way to the eating-room
+about the state of the weather [Footnote: His reason for which was,
+that he considered the weather one of the principal forces which act
+upon the health; and his own frame was exquisitely sensible to all
+atmospheric influences.]--a subject which he usually pursued during the
+earlier part of the dinner. Graver themes, such as the political events
+of the day, were never introduced before dinner, or at all in his
+study. The moment that Kant had taken his seat, and unfolded his
+napkin, he opened the business of dinner with a particular formula--
+'_Now, then, gentlemen!_' and the tone and air with which he
+uttered these words, proclaimed, in a way which nobody could mistake,
+relaxation from the toils of the morning, and determinate abandonment
+of himself to social enjoyment. The table was hospitably spread; three
+dishes, wine, &c., with a small second course, composed the dinner.
+Every person helped himself; and all delays of ceremony were so
+disagreeable to Kant, that he seldom failed to express his displeasure
+with anything of that sort, though not angrily. He was displeased also
+if people ate little; and treated it as affectation. The first man to
+help himself was in his eyes the politest guest; for so much the sooner
+came his own turn. For this hatred of delay, Kant had a special excuse,
+having always worked hard from an early hour in the morning, and eaten
+nothing until dinner. Hence it was, that in the latter period of his
+life, though less perhaps from actual hunger than from some uneasy
+sensation of habit or periodical irritation of stomach, he could hardly
+wait with patience for the arrival of the last person invited.
+
+There was no friend of Kant's but considered the day on which he was to
+dine with him as a day of pleasure. Without giving himself the air of
+an instructor, Kant really was so in the very highest degree. The whole
+entertainment was seasoned with the overflow of his enlightened mind,
+poured out naturally and unaffectedly upon every topic, as the chances
+of conversation suggested it; and the time flew rapidly away, from one
+o'clock to four, five, or even later, profitably and delightfully. Kant
+tolerated no _calms_, which was the name he gave to the momentary
+pauses in conversation, or periods when its animation languished. Some
+means or other he always devised for restoring its tone of interest, in
+which he was much assisted by the tact with which he drew from every
+guest his peculiar tastes, or the particular direction of his pursuits;
+and on these, be they what they might, he was never unprepared to speak
+with knowledge, and the interest of an original observer. The local
+affairs of Königsberg must have been interesting indeed, before they
+could be allowed to occupy the attention at _his_ table. And, what
+may seem still more singular, it was rarely or never that he directed
+the conversation to any branch of the philosophy founded by himself.
+Indeed he was perfectly free from the fault which besets so many
+_savans_ and _literati_, of intolerance towards those whose
+pursuits had disqualified them for any particular sympathy with his
+own. His style of conversation was popular in the highest degree, and
+unscholastic; so much so, that any stranger who should have studied his
+works, and been unacquainted with his person, would have found it
+difficult to believe, that in this delightful companion he saw the
+profound author of the Transcendental Philosophy.
+
+The subjects of conversation at Kant's table were drawn chiefly from
+natural philosophy, chemistry, meteorology, natural history, and above
+all, from politics. The news of the day, as reported in the public
+journals, was discussed with a peculiar vigilance of examination. With
+regard to any narrative that wanted dates of time and place, however
+otherwise plausible, he was uniformly an inexorable sceptic, and held
+it unworthy of repetition. So keen was his penetration into the
+interior of political events, and the secret policy under which they
+moved, that he talked rather with the authority of a diplomatic person
+who had access to cabinet intelligence, than as a simple spectator of
+the great scenes which were unfolding in Europe. At the time of the
+French Revolution, he threw out many conjectures, and what were then
+accounted paradoxical anticipations, especially in regard to military
+operations, which were as punctually fulfilled as his own memorable
+conjecture in regard to the hiatus in the planetary system between Mars
+and Jupiter,[Footnote: To which the author should have added--and in
+regard to the hiatus between the planetary and cometary systems, which
+was pointed out by Kant several years before his conjecture was
+established by the good telescope of Dr. Herschel. Vesta and Juno,
+further confirmations of Kant's conjecture, were discovered in June
+1804, when Wasianski wrote.] the entire confirmation of which he lived
+to witness on the discovery of Ceres by Piazzi, in Palermo, and of
+Pallas, by Dr. Olbers, at Bremen. These two discoveries, by the way,
+impressed him much; and they furnished a topic on which he always
+talked with pleasure; though, according to his usual modesty, he never
+said a word of his own sagacity in having upon _à priori_ grounds
+shown the probability of such discoveries many years before.
+
+It was not only in the character of a companion that Kant shone, but
+also as a most courteous and liberal host, who had no greater pleasure
+than in seeing his guests happy and jovial, and rising with exhilarated
+spirits from the mixed pleasures--intellectual and liberally sensual--
+of his Platonic banquets. Chiefly, perhaps, with a view to the
+sustaining of this tone of genial hilarity, he showed himself somewhat
+of an artist in the composition of his dinner parties. Two rules there
+were which he obviously observed, and I may say invariably: the first
+was, that the company should be miscellaneous; this for the sake of
+securing sufficient variety to the conversation: and accordingly his
+parties presented as much variety as the world of Königsberg afforded,
+being drawn from all the modes of life, men in office, professors,
+physicians, clergymen, and enlightened merchants. His second rule was,
+to have a due balance of _young_ men, frequently of _very_ young
+men, selected from the students of the university, in order to
+impress a movement of gaiety and juvenile playfulness on the
+conversation; an additional motive for which, as I have reason to
+believe, was, that in this way he withdrew his mind from the sadness
+which sometimes overshadowed it, for the early deaths of some young
+friends whom he loved.
+
+And this leads me to mention a singular feature in Kant's way of
+expressing his sympathy with his friends in sickness. So long as the
+danger was imminent, he testified a restless anxiety, made perpetual
+inquiries, waited with patience for the crisis, and sometimes could not
+pursue his customary labors from agitation of mind. But no sooner was
+the patient's death announced, than he recovered his composure, and
+assumed an air of stern tranquillity--almost of indifference. The
+reason was, that he viewed life in general, and therefore, that
+particular affection of life which we call sickness, as a state of
+oscillation and perpetual change, between which and the fluctuating
+sympathies of hope and fear, there was a natural proportion that
+justified them to the reason; whereas death, as a permanent state that
+admitted of no _more_ or _less_, that terminated all anxiety, and
+for ever extinguished the agitation of suspense, he would not allow
+to be fitted to any state of feeling, but one of the same enduring and
+unchanging character. However, all this philosophic heroism gave way on
+one occasion; for many persons will remember the tumultuous grief which
+he manifested upon the death of Mr. Ehrenboth, a young man of very fine
+understanding and extensive attainments, for whom he had the greatest
+affection. And naturally it happened, in so long a life as his, in
+spite of his provident rule for selecting his social companions as much
+as possible amongst the young, that he had to mourn for many a heavy
+loss that could never be supplied to him.
+
+To return, however, to the course of his day, immediately after the
+termination of his dinner party, Kant walked out for exercise; but on
+this occasion he never took any companion, partly, perhaps, because he
+thought it right, after so much convivial and colloquial relaxation, to
+pursue his meditations,[Footnote: Mr. Wasianski is wrong. To pursue his
+meditations under these circumstances, might perhaps be an inclination
+of Kant's to which he yielded, but not one which he would justify or
+erect into a maxim. He disapproved of eating alone, or _solipsismus
+convictorii_, as he calls it, on the principle, that a man would be
+apt, if not called off by the business and pleasure of a social party,
+to think too much or too closely, an exercise which he considered very
+injurious to the stomach during the first process of digestion. On the
+same principle he disapproved of walking or riding alone; the double
+exercise of thinking and bodily agitation, carried on at the same time,
+being likely, as he conceived, to press too hard upon the stomach.] and
+partly (as I happen to know) for a very peculiar reason, viz., that he
+wished to breathe exclusively through his nostrils, which he could not
+do if he were obliged continually to open his mouth in conversation.
+His reason for this was, that the atmospheric air, being thus carried
+round by a longer circuit, and reaching the lungs, therefore, in a
+state of less rawness, and at a temperature somewhat higher, would be
+less apt to irritate them. By a steady perseverance in this practice,
+which he constantly recommended to his friends, he flattered himself
+with a long immunity from coughs, colds, hoarseness, and every mode of
+defluxion; and the fact really was, that these troublesome affections
+attacked him very rarely. Indeed I myself, by only occasionally
+adopting his rule, have found my chest not so liable as formerly to
+such attacks.
+
+At six o'clock he sat down to his library table, which was a plain
+ordinary piece of furniture, and read till dusk. During this period of
+dubious light, so friendly to thought, he rested in tranquil meditation
+on what he had been reading, provided the book were worth it; if not,
+he sketched his lecture for the next day, or some part of any book he
+might then be composing. During this state of repose he took his
+station winter and summer by the stove, looking through the window at
+the old tower of Lobenicht; not that he could be said properly to see
+it, but the tower rested upon his eye,--obscurely, or but half revealed
+to his consciousness. No words seemed forcible enough to express his
+sense of the gratification which he derived from this old tower, when
+seen under these circumstances of twilight and quiet reverie. The
+sequel, indeed, showed how important it was to his comfort; for at
+length some poplars in a neighboring garden shot up to such a height as
+to obscure the tower, upon which Kant became very uneasy and restless,
+and at length found himself positively unable to pursue his evening
+meditations. Fortunately, the proprietor of the garden was a very
+considerate and obliging person, who had, besides, a high regard for
+Kant; and, accordingly, upon a representation of the case being made to
+him, he gave orders that the poplars should be cropped. This was done,
+the old tower of Lobenicht was again unveiled, and Kant recovered his
+equanimity, and pursued his twilight meditations as before.
+
+After the candles were brought, Kant prosecuted his studies till nearly
+ten o'clock. A quarter of an hour before retiring for the night, he
+withdrew his mind as much as possible from every class of thoughts
+which demanded any exertion or energy of attention, on the principle,
+that by stimulating and exciting him too much, such thoughts would be
+apt to cause wakefulness; and the slightest interference with his
+customary hour of falling asleep, was in the highest degree unpleasant
+to him. Happily, this was with him a very rare occurrence. He undressed
+himself without his servant's assistance, but in such an order, and
+with such a Roman regard to decorum and the _to prepon_, that he
+was always ready at a moment's warning to make his appearance without
+embarrassment to himself or to others. This done, he lay down on a
+mattress, and wrapped himself up in a quilt, which in summer was always
+of cotton,--in autumn, of wool; at the setting-in of winter he used
+both--and against very severe cold, he protected himself by one of
+eider-down, of which the part which covered his shoulders was not
+stuffed with feathers, but padded, or rather wadded closely with layers
+of wool. Long practice had taught him a very dexterous mode of
+_nesting_ himself, as it were, in the bed-clothes. First of all,
+he sat down on the bedside; then with an agile motion he vaulted
+obliquely into his lair; next he drew one corner of the bedclothes
+under his left shoulder, and passing it below his back, brought it
+round so as to rest under his right shoulder; fourthly, by a particular
+_tour d'adresse_, he treated the other corner in the same way, and
+finally contrived to roll it round his whole person. Thus swathed like
+a mummy, or (as I used to tell him) self-involved like the silk-worm in
+its cocoon, he awaited the approach of sleep, which generally came on
+immediately. For Kant's health was exquisite; not mere negative health,
+or the absence of pain, but a state of positive pleasurable sensation,
+and a genial sense of the entire possession of all his activities.
+Accordingly, when packed up for the night in the way I have described,
+he would often ejaculate to himself (as he used to tell us at dinner)--
+'Is it possible to conceive a human being with more perfect health than
+myself?' In fact, such was the innocence of his life, and such the
+happy condition of his situation, that no uneasy passion ever arose to
+excite him--nor care to harass--nor pain to awake him. Even in the
+severest winter his sleeping-room was without a fire; only in his
+latter years he yielded so far to the entreaties of his friends as to
+allow of a very small one. All nursing or self-indulgence found no
+quarter with Kant. In fact, five minutes, in the coldest weather,
+sufficed to supersede the first chill of the bed, by the diffusion of a
+general glow over his person. If he had any occasion to leave his room
+in the night-time, (for it was always kept dark day and night, summer
+and winter,) he guided himself by a rope, which was duly attached to
+his bed-post every night, and carried into the adjoining apartment.
+
+Kant never perspired, [Footnote: This appears less extraordinary,
+considering the description of Kant's person, given originally by
+Reichardt, about eight years after his death. 'Kant,' says this writer,
+'was drier than dust both in body and mind. His person was small; and
+possibly a more meagre, arid, parched anatomy of a man, has not
+appeared upon this earth. The upper part of his face was grand;
+forehead lofty and serene, nose elegantly turned, eyes brilliant and
+penetrating; but below it expressed powerfully the coarsest sensuality,
+which in him displayed itself by immoderate addiction to eating and
+drinking.' This last feature of his temperament is here expressed much
+too harshly.] night or day. Yet it was astonishing how much heat he
+supported habitually in his study, and in fact was not easy if it
+wanted but one degree of this heat. Seventy-five degrees of Fahrenheit
+was the invariable temperature of this room in which he chiefly lived;
+and if it fell below that point, no matter at what season of the year,
+he had it raised artificially to the usual standard. In the heats of
+summer he went thinly dressed, and invariably in silk stockings; yet,
+as even this dress could not always secure him against perspiring when
+engaged in active exercise, he had a singular remedy in reserve.
+Retiring to some shady place, he stood still and motionless--with the
+air and attitude of a person listening, or in suspense--until his usual
+_aridity_ was restored. Even in the most sultry summer night, if
+the slightest trace of perspiration had sullied his night-dress, he
+spoke of it with emphasis, as of an accident that perfectly shocked
+him.
+
+On this occasion, whilst illustrating Kant's notions of the animal
+economy, it may be as well to add one other particular, which is, that
+for fear of obstructing the circulation of the blood, he never would
+wear garters; yet, as he found it difficult to keep up his stockings
+without them, he had invented for himself a most elaborate substitute,
+which I shall describe. In a little pocket, somewhat smaller than a
+watch-pocket, but occupying pretty nearly the same situation as a
+watch-pocket on each thigh, there was placed a small box, something
+like a watch-case, but smaller; into this box was introduced a watch-
+spring in a wheel, round about which wheel was wound an elastic cord,
+for regulating the force of which there was a separate contrivance. To
+the two ends of this cord were attached hooks, which hooks were carried
+through a small aperture in the pockets, and so passing down the inner
+and the outer side of the thigh, caught hold of two loops which were
+fixed on the off side and the near side of each stocking. As might be
+expected, so complex an apparatus was liable, like the Ptolemaic system
+of the heavens, to occasional derangements; however, by good luck, I
+was able to apply an easy remedy to these disorders which sometimes
+threatened to disturb the comfort, and even the serenity, of the great
+man.
+
+Precisely at five minutes before five o'clock, winter or summer, Lampe,
+Kant's servant, who had formerly served in the army, marched into his
+master's room with the air of a sentinel on duty, and cried aloud in a
+military tone,--'Mr. Professor, the time is come.' This summons Kant
+invariably obeyed without one moment's delay, as a soldier does the
+word of command--never, under any circumstances, allowing himself a
+respite, not even under the rare accident of having passed a sleepless
+night. As the clock struck five, Kant was seated at the breakfast-
+table, where he drank what he called _one_ cup of tea; and no
+doubt he thought it such; but the fact was, that in part from his habit
+of reverie, and in part also for the purpose of refreshing its warmth,
+he filled up his cup so often, that in general he is supposed to have
+drunk two, three, or some unknown number. Immediately after he smoked a
+pipe of tobacco, (the only one which he allowed himself through the
+entire day,) but so rapidly, that a pile of glowing embers remained
+unsmoked. During this operation he thought over his arrangements for
+the day, as he had done the evening before during the twilight. About
+seven he usually went to his lecture-room, and from that he returned to
+his writing-table. Precisely at three quarters before one he rose from
+his chair, and called aloud to the cook,--'It has struck three
+quarters.' The meaning of which summons was this:--Immediately after
+taking soup, it was his constant practice to swallow what he called a
+dram, which consisted either of Hungarian wine, of Rhenish, of a
+cordial, or (in default of these) of Bishop. A flask of this was
+brought up by the cook on the proclamation of the three quarters. Kant
+hurried with it to the eating-room, poured out his _quantum_, left
+it standing in readiness, covered, however, with paper, to prevent its
+becoming vapid, and then went back to his study, and awaited the
+arrival of his guests, whom to the latest period of his life he never
+received but in full dress.
+
+Thus we come round again to dinner, and the reader has now an accurate
+picture of the course of Kant's day; the rigid monotony of which was
+not burthensome to him; and probably contributed, with the uniformity
+of his diet, and other habits of the same regularity, to lengthen his
+life. On this consideration, indeed, he had come to regard his health
+and his old age as in a great measure the product of his own exertions.
+He spoke of himself often under the figure of a gymnastic artist, who
+had continued for nearly fourscore years to support his balance upon
+the slack-rope of life, without once swerving to the right or to the
+left. In spite of every illness to which his constitutional tendencies
+had exposed him, he still kept his position in life triumphantly.
+However, he would sometimes observe sportively, that it was really
+absurd, and a sort of insult to the next generation for a man to live
+so long, because he thus interfered with the prospects of younger
+people.
+
+This anxious attention to his health accounts for the great interest
+which he attached to all new discoveries in medicine, or to new ways of
+theorizing on the old ones. As a work of great pretension in both
+classes, he set the highest value upon the theory of the Scotch
+physician Brown, or (as it is usually called, from the Latin name of
+its author,) the Brunonian Theory. No sooner had Weikard adopted
+[Footnote: This theory was afterwards greatly modified in Germany; and,
+judging from the random glances which I throw on these subjects, I
+believe that in this recast it still keeps its ground in that country.]
+and made it known in Germany, than Kant became familiar with it. He
+considered it not only as a great step taken for medicine, but even for
+the general interests of man, and fancied that in this he saw something
+analogous to the course which human nature has held in still more
+important inquiries, viz.: first of all, a continual ascent towards the
+more and more elaborately complex, and then a treading back, on its own
+steps, towards the simple and elementary. Dr. Beddoes's Essays, also,
+for producing by art and curing pulmonary consumption, and the method
+of Reich for curing fevers, made a powerful impression upon him; which,
+however, declined as those novelties (especially the last) began to
+sink in credit. As to Dr. Jenner's discovery of vaccination, he was
+less favorably disposed to it; he apprehended dangerous consequences
+from the absorption of a brutal miasma into the human blood, or at
+least into the lymph; and at any rate he thought, that, as a guarantee
+against the variolous infection, it required a much longer probation.
+Groundless as all these views were, it was exceedingly entertaining to
+hear the fertility of argument and analogy which he brought forward to
+support them. One of the subjects which occupied him at the latter end
+of his life, was the theory and phenomena of galvanism, which, however,
+he never satisfactorily mastered. Augustin's book upon this subject was
+about the last that he read, and his copy still retains on the margin
+his, pencil-marks of doubts, queries and suggestions.
+
+The infirmities of age now began to steal upon Kant, and betrayed
+themselves in more shapes than one. Connected with Kant's prodigious
+memory for all things that had any intellectual bearings, he had from
+youth labored under an unusual weakness of this faculty in relation to
+the common affairs of daily life. Some remarkable instances of this are
+on record, from the period of his childish days; and now, when his
+second childhood was commencing, this infirmity increased upon him very
+sensibly. One of the first signs was, that he began to repeat the same
+stories more than once on the same day. Indeed, the decay of his memory
+was too palpable to escape his own notice; and, to provide against it,
+and secure himself from all apprehension of inflicting tedium upon his
+guests, he began to write a syllabus, or list of themes, for each day's
+conversation, on cards, or the covers of letters, or any chance scrap
+of paper. But these memoranda accumulated so fast upon him, and were so
+easily lost, or not forthcoming at the proper moment, that I prevailed
+on him to substitute a blank-paper book, which I had directed to be
+made, and which still remains, with some affecting memorials of his own
+conscious weakness. As often happens, however, in such cases, he had a
+perfect memory for the remote events of his life, and could repeat with
+great readiness, and without once stumbling, very long passages from
+German or Latin poems, especially from the AEneid, whilst the very
+words that had been uttered but a moment before dropped away from his
+remembrance. The past came forward with the distinctness and liveliness
+of an immediate existence, whilst the present faded away into the
+obscurity of infinite distance.
+
+Another sign of his mental decay was the weakness with which he now
+began to theorize. He accounted for everything by electricity. A
+singular mortality at this time prevailed amongst the cats of Vienna,
+Basle, Copenhagen, and other places. Cats being so eminently an
+electric animal, of course he attributed this epizootic to electricity.
+During the same period, he persuaded himself that a peculiar
+configuration of clouds prevailed; this he took as a collateral proof
+of his electrical hypothesis. His own headaches, too, which in all
+probability were a mere remote effect of old age, and a direct one of
+an inability [Footnote: Mr. Wasianski is quite in the wrong here. If
+the hindrances which nature presented to the act of thinking were now
+on the increase, on the other hand, the disposition to think, by his
+own acknowledgment, was on the wane. The power and the habit altering
+in proportion, there is no case made out of that disturbed equilibrium
+to which apparently he would attribute the headaches. But the fact is,
+that, if he had been as well acquainted with Kant's writings as with
+Kant personally, he would have known, that some affection of the head
+of a spasmodic kind was complained of by Kant at a time when nobody
+could suspect him of being in a decaying state.] to think as easily and
+as severely as formerly, he explained upon the same principle. And this
+was a notion of which his friends were not anxious to disabuse him,
+because, as something of the same character of weather (and therefore
+probably the same general tendency of the electric power) is found to
+prevail for whole cycles of years, entrance upon another cycle held out
+to him some prospect of relief. A delusion which secured the comforts
+of hope was the next best thing to an actual remedy; and a man who, in
+such circumstances, is cured of his delusion, '_cui demptus per vim
+mentis gratissimus error_,' might reasonably have exclaimed,
+'_Pol, me occidistis, amici._'
+
+Possibly the reader may suppose, that, in this particular instance of
+charging his own decays upon the state of the atmosphere, Kant was
+actuated by the weakness of vanity, or some unwillingness to face the
+real fact that his powers were decaying. But this was not the case. He
+was perfectly aware of his own condition, and, as early as 1799, he
+said, in my presence, to a party of his friends--'Gentlemen, I am old,
+and weak, and childish, and you must treat me as a child.' Or perhaps
+it may be thought that he shrank from the contemplation of death,
+which, as apoplexy seemed to be threatened by the pains in his head,
+might have happened any day. But neither was this the case. He now
+lived in a continual state of resignation, and prepared to meet any
+dispensation of Providence. 'Gentlemen,' said he one day to his guests,
+'I do not fear to die. I assure you, as in the presence of God, that if
+I were this night to be made suddenly aware that I was on the point of
+being summoned, I would raise my hands to heaven, fold them, and say,
+Blessed be God! If indeed it were possible that a whisper such as this
+could reach my ear--Fourscore years thou hast lived, in which time thou
+hast inflicted much evil upon thy fellow-men, the case would be
+otherwise.' Whosoever has heard Kant speak of his own death, will bear
+witness to the tone of earnest sincerity which, on such occasions,
+marked his manner and utterance.
+
+A third sign of his decaying faculties was, that he now lost all
+accurate measure of time. One minute, nay, without exaggeration, a much
+less space of time, stretched out in his apprehension of things to a
+wearisome duration. Of this I can give one rather amusing instance,
+which was of constant recurrence. At the beginning of the last year of
+his life, he fell into a custom of taking immediately after dinner a
+cup of coffee, especially on those days when it happened that I was of
+his party. And such was the importance he attached to this little
+pleasure, that he would even make a memorandum beforehand, in the
+blank-paper book I had given him, that on the next day I was to dine
+with him, and consequently that there was to be coffee. Sometimes it
+would happen, that the interest of conversation carried him past the
+time at which he felt the craving for it; and this I was not sorry to
+observe, as I feared that coffee, which he had never been accustomed
+to, [Footnote: How this happened to be the case in Germany, Mr.
+Wasianski has not explained. Perhaps the English merchants at
+Königsberg, being amongst Kant's oldest and most intimate friends, had
+early familiarized him to the practice of drinking tea, and to other
+English tastes. However, Jachmann tells us, (p. 164,) that Kant was
+extravagantly fond of coffee, but forced himself to abstain from it
+under a notion that it was very unwholesome.] might disturb his rest at
+night. But, if this did not happen, then commenced a scene of some
+interest. Coffee must be brought 'upon the spot,' (a word he had
+constantly in his mouth during his latter days,) 'in a moment.' And the
+expressions of his impatience, though from old habit still gentle, were
+so lively, and had so much of infantine naïveté about them, that none
+of us could forbear smiling. Knowing what would happen, I had taken
+care that all the preparations should be made beforehand; the coffee
+was ground; the water was boiling; and the very moment the word was
+given, his servant shot in like an arrow, and plunged the coffee into
+the water. All that remained, therefore, was to give it time to boil
+up. But this trifling delay seemed unendurable to Kant. All
+consolations were thrown away upon him: vary the formula as we might,
+he was never at a loss for a reply. If it was said--'Dear Professor,
+the coffee will be brought up in a moment.'--'_Will_ be!' he would
+say, 'but there's the rub, that it only _will_ be:
+
+  Man never _is_, but always _to be_ blest.'
+
+If another cried out--'The coffee is coming immediately.'--'Yes,' he
+would retort, 'and so is the next hour: and, by the way, it's about
+that length of time that I have waited for it.' Then he would collect
+himself with a stoical air, and say--'Well, one can die after all: it
+is but dying; and in the next world, thank God! there is no drinking of
+coffee, and consequently no--waiting for it.' Sometimes he would rise
+from his chair, open the door, and cry out with a feeble querulousness
+--'Coffee! coffee!' And when at length he heard the servant's step upon
+the stairs, he would turn round to us, and, as joyfully as ever sailor
+from the mast-head, he would call out--'Land, land! my dear friends, I
+see land.'
+
+This general decline in Kant's powers, active and passive, gradually
+brought about a revolution in his habits of life. Heretofore, as I have
+already mentioned, he went to bed at ten, and rose a little before
+five. The latter practice he still observed, but not the other. In 1802
+he retired as early as nine, and afterwards still earlier. He found
+himself so much refreshed by this addition to his rest, that at first
+he was disposed to utter a _Euraeka_, as over some great discovery
+in the art of restoring exhausted nature: but afterwards, on pushing it
+still farther, he did not find the success answer his expectations. His
+walks he now limited to a few turns in the King's gardens, which were
+at no great distance from his own house. In order to walk more firmly,
+he adopted a peculiar method of stepping; he carried his foot to the
+ground, not forward, and obliquely, but perpendicularly, and with a
+kind of stamp, so as to secure a larger basis, by setting down the
+entire sole at once. Notwithstanding this precaution, upon one occasion
+he fell in the street. He was quite unable to raise himself; and two
+young ladies, who saw the accident, ran to his assistance. With his
+usual graciousness of manner he thanked them fervently for their
+assistance, and presented one of them with a rose which he happened to
+have in his hand. This lady was not personally known to Kant; but she
+was greatly delighted with his little present, and still keeps the rose
+as a frail memorial of her transitory interview with the great
+philosopher.
+
+This accident, as I have reason to think, was the cause of his
+henceforth renouncing exercise altogether. All labors, even that of
+reading, were now performed slowly, and with manifest effort; and those
+which cost him any bodily exertion became very exhausting to him. His
+feet refused to do their office more and more; he fell continually,
+both when moving across the room, and even when standing still: yet he
+seldom suffered from these falls; and he constantly laughed at them,
+maintaining that it was impossible he could hurt himself, from the
+extreme lightness of his person, which was indeed by this time the
+merest skeleton. Very often, especially in the morning, he dropped
+asleep in his chair from pure weariness: on these occasions he fell
+forward upon the floor, and lay there unable to raise himself up, until
+accident brought one of his servants or his friends into the room.
+Afterwards these falls were prevented, by substituting a chair with
+circular supports, that met and clasped in front.
+
+These unseasonable dozings exposed him to another danger. He fell
+repeatedly, whilst reading, with his head into the candles; a cotton
+night-cap which he wore was instantly in a blaze, and flaming about his
+head. Whenever this happened, Kant behaved with great presence of mind.
+Disregarding the pain, he seized the blazing cap, drew it from his
+head, laid it quietly on the floor, and trod out the flames with his
+feet. Yet, as this last act brought his dressing-gown into a dangerous
+neighborhood to the flames, I changed the form of his cap, persuaded
+him to arrange the candles differently, and had a decanter of water
+placed constantly by his side; and in this way I applied a remedy to a
+danger, which would else probably have been fatal to him.
+
+From the sallies of impatience, which I have described in the case of
+the coffee, there was reason to fear that, with the increasing
+infirmities of Kant, would grow up a general waywardness and obstinacy
+of temper. For my own sake, therefore, and not less for his, I now laid
+down one rule for my future conduct in his house; which was, that I
+would, on no occasion, allow my reverence for him to interfere with the
+firmest expression of my opinion on subjects relating to his own
+health; and in cases of great importance, that I would make no
+compromise with his particular humors, but insist, not only on my view
+of the case, but also on the practical adoption of my views; or, if
+this were refused me, that I would take my departure at once, and not
+be made responsible for the comfort of a person whom I had no power to
+influence. And this behavior on my part it was that won Kant's
+confidence; for there was nothing which disgusted him so much as any
+approach to fawning or sycophancy. As his imbecility increased, he
+became daily more liable to mental delusions; and, in particular, he
+fell into many fantastic notions about the conduct of his servants,
+and, in consequence, into a peevish mode of treating them. Upon these
+occasions I generally observed a deep silence. But sometimes he would
+ask me for my opinion; and when this happened, I did not scruple to
+say, 'Ingenuously, then, Mr. Professor, I think that you are in the
+wrong.'--'You think so?' he would reply calmly, at the same time asking
+for my reasons, which he would listen to with great patience, and
+openness to conviction. Indeed, it was evident that the firmest
+opposition, so long as it rested upon assignable grounds and
+principles, won upon his regard; whilst his own nobleness of character
+still moved him to habitual contempt for timorous and partial
+acquiescence in his opinions, even when his infirmities made him most
+anxious for such acquiescence.
+
+Earlier in life Kant had been little used to contradiction. His superb
+understanding, his brilliancy in conversation, founded in part upon his
+ready and sometimes rather caustic wit, and in part upon his prodigious
+command of knowledge--the air of noble self-confidence which the
+consciousness of these advantages impressed upon his manners--and the
+general knowledge of the severe innocence of his life--all combined to
+give him a station of superiority to others, which generally secured
+him from open contradiction. And if it sometimes happened that he met a
+noisy and intemperate opposition, supported by any pretences to wit, he
+usually withdrew himself from that sort of unprofitable altercation
+with dignity, by contriving to give such a turn to the conversation as
+won the general favor of the company to himself, and impressed,
+silence, or modesty at least, upon the boldest disputant. From a person
+so little familiar with opposition, it could scarcely have been
+anticipated that he should daily surrender his wishes to mine--if not
+without discussion, yet always without displeasure. So, however, it
+was. No habit, of whatever long standing, could be objected to as
+injurious to his health, but he would generally renounce it. And he had
+this excellent custom in such cases, that either he would resolutely
+and at once decide for his own opinion, or, if he professed to follow
+his friend's, he would follow it sincerely, and not try it unfairly by
+trying it imperfectly. Any plan, however trifling, which he had once
+consented to adopt on the suggestion of another, was never afterwards
+defeated or embarrassed by unseasonable interposition from his own
+humors. And thus, the very period of his decay drew forth so many fresh
+expressions of his character, in its amiable or noble features, as
+daily increased my affection and reverence for his person.
+
+Having mentioned his servants, I shall here take occasion to give some
+account of his man-servant Lampe. It was a great misfortune for Kant,
+in his old age and infirmities, that this man also became old, and
+subject to a different sort of infirmities. This Lampe had originally
+served in the Prussian army; on quitting which he entered the service
+of Kant. In this situation he had lived about forty years; and, though
+always dull and stupid, had, in the early part of this period,
+discharged his duties with tolerable fidelity. But latterly, presuming
+upon his own indispensableness, from his perfect knowledge of all the
+domestic arrangements, and upon his master's weakness, he had fallen
+into great irregularities and neglect of his duties. Kant had been
+obliged, therefore, of late, to threaten repeatedly that he would
+discharge him. I, who knew that Kant, though one of the kindest-hearted
+men, was also one of the firmest, foresaw that this discharge, once
+given, would be irrevocable: for the word of Kant was as sacred as
+other men's oaths. Consequently, upon every opportunity, I remonstrated
+with Lampe on the folly of his conduct, and his wife joined me on these
+occasions. Indeed, it was high time that a change should be made in
+some quarter; for it now became dangerous to leave Kant, who was
+constantly falling from weakness, to the care of an old ruffian, who
+was himself apt to fall from intoxication. The fact was, that from the
+moment I undertook the management of Kant's affairs, Lampe saw there
+was an end to his old system of abusing his master's confidence in
+pecuniary affairs, and the other advantages which he took of his
+helpless situation. This made him desperate, and he behaved worse and
+worse; until one morning, in January, 1802, Kant told me, that,
+humiliating as he felt such a confession, the fact was, that Lampe had
+just treated him in a way which he was ashamed to repeat. I was too
+much shocked to distress him by inquiring into the particulars. But the
+result was, that Kant now insisted, temperately but firmly, on Lampe's
+dismissal. Accordingly, a new servant, of the name of Kaufmann, was
+immediately engaged; and on the next day Lampe was discharged with a
+handsome pension for life.
+
+Here I must mention a little circumstance which does honor to Kant's
+benevolence. In his last will, on the assumption that Lampe would
+continue with him to his death, he had made a very liberal provision
+for him; but upon this new arrangement of the pension, which was to
+take effect immediately, it became necessary to revoke that part of his
+will, which he did in a separate codicil, that began thus:--'In
+consequence of the ill behavior of my servant Lampe, I think fit,' &c.
+But soon after, considering that such a record of Lampe's misconduct
+might be seriously injurious to his interests, he cancelled the
+passage, and expressed it in such a way, that no trace remained behind
+of his just displeasure. And his benign nature was gratified with
+knowing, that, this one sentence blotted out, there remained no other
+in all his numerous writings, published or confidential, which spoke
+the language of anger, or could leave any ground for doubting that he
+died in charity with all the world. Upon Lampe's calling to demand a
+written character, he was, however, a good deal embarrassed; his stern
+reverence for truth being, in this instance, armed against the first
+impulses of his kindness. Long and anxiously he sat, with the
+certificate lying before him, debating how he should fill up the
+blanks. I was present, but in such a matter I did not take the liberty
+of suggesting any advice. At last, he took his pen, and filled up the
+blank as follows:--'--has served me long and faithfully,'--(for Kant
+was not aware that he had robbed him,)--'but did not display those
+particular qualifications which fitted him for waiting on an old and
+infirm man like myself.'
+
+This scene of disturbance over, which to Kant, a lover of peace and
+tranquillity, caused a shock that he would gladly have been spared; it
+was fortunate that no other of that nature occurred during the rest of
+his life. Kaufmann, the successor of Lampe, turned out to be a
+respectable and upright man, and soon conceived a great attachment to
+his master's person. Things now put on a new face in Kant's family: by
+the removal of one of the belligerents, peace was once more restored
+amongst his servants; for hitherto there had been eternal wars between
+Lampe and the cook. Sometimes it was Lampe that carried a war of
+aggression into the cook's territory of the kitchen; sometimes it was
+the cook that revenged these insults, by sallying out upon Lampe in the
+neutral ground of the hall, or invaded him even in his own sanctuary of
+the butler's pantry. The uproars were everlasting; and thus far it was
+fortunate for the peace of the philosopher, that his hearing had begun
+to fail; by which means he was spared many an exhibition of hateful
+passions and ruffian violence, which annoyed his guests and friends.
+But now all things had changed: deep silence reigned in the pantry; the
+kitchen rang no more with martial alarums; and the hall was unvexed
+with skirmish or pursuit. Yet it may be readily supposed that to Kant,
+at the age of seventy-eight, changes, even for the better, were not
+welcome: so intense had been the uniformity of his life and habits,
+that the least innovation in the arrangement of articles as trifling as
+a penknife, or a pair of scissors, disturbed him; and not merely if
+they were pushed two or three inches out of their customary position,
+but even if they were laid a little awry; and as to larger objects,
+such as chairs, &c., any dislocation of their usual arrangement, any
+trans position, or addition to their number, perfectly confounded him;
+and his eye appeared restlessly to haunt the seat of the mal-
+arrangement, until the ancient order was restored. With such habits the
+reader may conceive how distressing it must have been to him, at this
+period of decaying powers, to adapt himself to a new servant, a new
+voice, a new step, &c.
+
+Aware of this, I had on the day before he entered upon his duties,
+written down for the new servant upon a sheet of paper the entire
+routine of Kant's daily life, down to the minutest and most trivial
+circumstances; all which he mastered with the greatest rapidity. To
+make sure, however, we went through a rehearsal of the whole ritual; he
+performing the manoeuvres, I looking on and giving the word. Still I
+felt uneasy at the idea of his being left entirely to his own
+discretion on his first _debut_ in good earnest, and therefore I
+made a point of attending on this important day; and in the few
+instances where the new recruit missed the accurate manoeuvre, a glance
+or a nod from me easily made him comprehend his failure.
+
+One part only there was of the daily ceremonial, where all of us were
+at a loss, as it was a part which no mortal eyes had ever witnessed but
+those of Lampe: this was breakfast. However, that we might do all in
+our power, I myself attended at four o'clock in the morning. The day
+happened, as I remember, to be the 1st of February, 1802. Precisely at
+five, Kant made his appearance; and nothing could equal his
+astonishment on finding me in the room. Fresh from the confusion of
+dreaming, and bewildered alike by the sight of his new servant, by
+Lampe's absence, and by my presence, he could with difficulty be made
+to comprehend the purpose of my visit. A friend in need is a friend
+indeed; and we would now have given any money to that learned person
+who could have instructed us in the arrangement of the breakfast table.
+But this was a mystery revealed to none but Lampe. At length Kant took
+this task upon himself; and apparently all was now settled to his
+satisfaction. Yet still it struck me that he was under some
+embarrassment or constraint. Upon this I said--that, with his
+permission, I would take a cup of tea, and afterwards smoke a pipe with
+him. He accepted my offer with his usual courteous demeanor; but seemed
+unable to familiarize himself with the novelty of his situation. I was
+at this time sitting directly opposite to him; and at last he frankly
+told me, but with the kindest and most apologetic air, that he was
+really under the necessity of begging that I would sit out of his
+sight; for that, having sat alone at the breakfast table for
+considerably more than half a century, he could not abruptly adapt his
+mind to a change in this respect; and he found his thoughts very
+sensibly disturbed. I did as he desired; the servant retired into an
+antiroom, where he waited within call; and Kant recovered his wonted
+composure. Just the same scene passed over again, when I called at the
+same hour on a fine summer morning some months after.
+
+Henceforth all went right: or, if occasionally some little mistake
+occurred, Kant showed himself very considerate and indulgent, and would
+remark of his own accord, that a new servant could not be expected to
+know all his peculiar ways and humors. In one respect, indeed, this man
+adapted himself to Kant's scholarlike taste, in a way which Lampe was
+incapable of doing. Kant was somewhat fastidious in matters of
+pronunciation; and this man had a great facility in catching the true
+sound of Latin words, the titles of books, and the names or
+designations of Kant's friends: not one of which accomplishments could
+Lampe, the most insufferable of blockheads, ever attain to. In
+particular, I have been told by Kant's old friends, that for the space
+of more than thirty years, during which he had been in the habit of
+reading the newspaper published by Hartung, Lampe delivered it with the
+same identical blunder on every day of publication.--'Mr. Professor,
+here is Hart_mann's_ journal.' Upon which Kant would reply--'Eh!
+what?--What's that you say? Hartmann's journal? I tell you, it is not
+Hartmann, but Hartung: now, repeat it after me--not Hartmann, but
+Hartung.' Then Lampe, looking sulky, and drawing himself up with the
+stiff air of a soldier on guard, and in the very same monotonous tone
+with which he had been used to sing out his challenge of--_Who goes
+there?_ would roar--'not Hartmann, but Hartung.' 'Now again!' Kant
+would say: on which again Lampe roared--'not Hartmann, but Hartung.'
+'Now a third time,' cried Kant: on which for a third time the unhappy
+Lampe would howl out--'not Hartmann, but Hartung.' And this whimsical
+scene of parade duty was continually repeated: duly as the day of
+publication came, the irreclaimable old dunce was put through the same
+manoeuvres, which were as invariably followed by the same blunder on
+the next. In spite, however, of this advantage, in the new servant, and
+his general superiority to his predecessor, Kant's nature was too kind
+and good, and too indulgent to all people's infirmities but his own,
+not to miss the voice and the 'old familiar face' that he had been
+accustomed to for forty years. And I met with what struck me as an
+affecting instance of Kant's yearning after his old good-for-nothing
+servant in his memorandum-book: other people record what they wish to
+remember; but Kant had here recorded what he was to forget. 'Mem.:
+February, 1802, the name of Lampe must now be remembered no more.'
+
+In the spring of this year, 1802, I advised Kant to take the air. It
+was very long since he had been out of doors, [Footnote: Wasianski here
+returns thanks to some unknown person, who, having observed that Kant
+in his latter walks took pleasure in leaning against a particular wall
+to view the prospect, had caused a seat to be fixed at that point for
+his use.] and walking was now out of the question. But I thought the
+motion of a carriage and the air would be likely to revive him. On the
+power of vernal sights and sounds I did not much rely; for these had
+long ceased to affect him. Of all the changes that spring brings with
+it, there was one only that now interested Kant; and he longed for it
+with an eagerness and intensity of expectation, that it was almost
+painful to witness: this was the return of a hedge sparrow that sang in
+his garden, and before his window. This bird, either the same, or one
+of the next generation, had sung for years in the same situation; and
+Kant grew uneasy when the cold weather, lasting longer than usual,
+retarded its return. Like Lord Bacon, indeed, he had a childlike love
+for birds in general, and in particular, took pains to encourage the
+sparrows to build above the windows of his study; and when this
+happened, (as it often did, from the silence which prevailed in his
+study,) he watched their proceedings with the delight and the
+tenderness which others give to a human interest. To return to the
+point I was speaking of, Kant was at first very unwilling to accede to
+my proposal of going abroad. 'I shall sink down in the carriage,' said
+he, 'and fall together like a heap of old rags.' But I persisted with a
+gentle importunity in urging him to the attempt, assuring him that we
+would return immediately if he found the effort too much for him.
+Accordingly, upon a tolerably warm day of early [Footnote: Mr.
+Wasianski says--_late_ in summer: but, as he elsewhere describes
+by the same expression of 'late in summer,' a day which was confessedly
+_before_ the longest day, and as the multitude of birds which
+continued to sing will not allow us to suppose that the summer could be
+very far advanced, I have translated accordingly.] summer, I, and an
+old friend of Kant's, accompanied him to a little place which I rented
+in the country. As we drove through the streets, Kant was delighted to
+find that he could sit upright, and bear the motion of the carriage,
+and seemed to draw youthful pleasure from the sight of the towers and
+other public buildings, which he had not seen for years. We reached the
+place of our destination in high spirits. Kant drank a cup of coffee,
+and attempted to smoke a little. After this, he sat and sunned himself,
+listening with delight to the warbling of birds, which congregated in
+great numbers about this spot. He distinguished every bird by its song,
+and called it by its right name. After staying about half an hour, we
+set off on our homeward journey, Kant still cheerful, but apparently
+satiated with his day's enjoyment.
+
+I had on this occasion purposely avoided taking him to any public
+gardens, that I might not disturb his pleasure by exposing him to the
+distressing gaze of public curiosity. However, it was known in
+Königsberg that Kant had gone out; and accordingly, as the carriage
+moved through the streets which led to his residence, there was a
+general rush from all quarters in that direction, and, when we turned
+into the street where the house stood, we found it already choked up
+with people. As we slowly drew up to the door, a lane was formed in the
+crowd, through which Kant was led, I and my friend supporting him on
+our arms. Looking at the crowd, I observed the faces of many persons of
+rank, and distinguished strangers, some of whom now saw Kant for the
+first time, and many of them for the last.
+
+As the winter of 1802-3 approached, he complained more than ever of an
+affection of the stomach, which no medical man had been able to
+mitigate, or even to explain. The winter passed over in a complaining
+way; he was weary of life, and longed for the hour of dismission. 'I
+can be of service to the world no more,' said he, 'and am a burden to
+myself.' Often I endeavored to cheer him by the anticipation of
+excursions that we would make together when summer came again. On these
+he calculated with so much earnestness, that he had made a regular
+scale or classification of them--l. Airings; 2. Journeys; 3. Travels.
+And nothing could equal the yearning impatience expressed for the
+coming of spring and summer, not so much for their own peculiar
+attractions, as because they were the seasons for travelling. In his
+memorandum-book, he made this note:--'The three summer months are June,
+July, and August'--meaning that they were the three months for
+travelling. And in conversation he expressed the feverish strength of
+his wishes so plaintively and affectingly, that everybody was drawn
+into powerful sympathy with him, and wished for some magical means of
+ante-dating the course of the seasons.
+
+In this winter his bed-room was often warmed. This was the room in
+which he kept his little collection of books, of about four hundred and
+fifty volumes, chiefly presentation-copies from the authors. It may
+seem singular that Kant, who read so extensively, should have no larger
+library; but he had less need of one than most scholars, having in his
+earlier years been librarian at the Royal Library of the Castle; and
+since then having enjoyed from the liberality of Hartknoch, his
+publisher, (who, in his turn, had profited by the liberal terms on
+which Kant had made over to him the copyright of his own works,) the
+first sight of every new book that appeared.
+
+At the close of this winter, that is in 1803, Kant first began to
+complain of unpleasant dreams, sometimes of very terrific ones, which
+awakened him in great agitation. Oftentimes melodies, which he had
+heard in earliest youth sung in the streets of Königsberg, resounded
+painfully in his ears, and dwelt upon them in a way from which no
+efforts of abstraction could release him. These kept him awake to
+unseasonable hours; and often when, after long watching, he had fallen
+asleep, however deep his sleep might be, it was suddenly broken up by
+terrific dreams, which alarmed him beyond description. Almost every
+night, the bell-rope, which communicated with a bell in the room above
+his own, where his servant slept, was pulled violently, and with the
+utmost agitation. No matter how fast the servant might hurry down, he
+was almost always too late, and was pretty sure to find his master out
+of bed, and often making his way in terror to some other part of the
+house. The weakness of his feet exposed him to such dreadful falls on
+these occasions, that at length (but with much difficulty) I persuaded
+him to let his servant sleep in the same room with himself.
+
+The morbid affection of the stomach began now to be more and more
+distressing; and he tried various applications, which he had formerly
+been loud in condemning, such as a few drops of rum upon a piece of
+sugar, naphtha, [Footnote: For Kant's particular complaint, as
+described by other biographers, a quarter of a grain of opium, every
+twelve hours, would have been the best remedy, perhaps a perfect
+remedy.] &c. But all these were only palliatives; for his advanced age
+precluded the hope of a radical cure. His dreadful dreams became
+continually more appalling: single scenes, or passages in these dreams,
+were sufficient to compose the whole course of mighty tragedies, the
+impression from which was so profound as to stretch far into his waking
+hours. Amongst other phantasmata more shocking and indescribable, his
+dreams constantly represented to him the forms of murderers advancing
+to his bedside; and so agitated was he by the awful trains of phantoms
+that swept past him nightly, that in the first confusion of awaking he
+generally mistook his servant, who was hastening to his assistance, for
+a murderer. In the day-time we often conversed upon these shadowy
+illusions; and Kant, with his usual spirit of stoical contempt for
+nervous weakness of every sort, laughed at them; and, to fortify his
+own resolution to contend against them, he wrote down in his
+memorandum-book, 'There must be no yielding to panics of darkness.' At
+my suggestion, however, he now burned a light in his chamber, so placed
+as that the rays might be shaded from his face. At first he was very
+averse to this, though gradually he became reconciled to it. But that
+he could bear it at all, was to me an expression of the great
+revolution accomplished by the terrific agency of his dreams.
+Heretofore, darkness and utter silence were the two pillars on which
+his sleep rested: no step must approach his room; and as to light, if
+he saw but a moonbeam penetrating a crevice of the shutters, it made
+him unhappy; and, in fact, the windows of his bed-chamber were
+barricadoed night and day. But now darkness was a terror to him, and
+silence an oppression. In addition to his lamp, therefore, he had now a
+repeater in his room; the sound was at first too loud, but, after
+muffling the hammer with cloth, both the ticking and the striking
+became companionable sounds to him.
+
+At this time (spring of 1803) his appetite began to fail, which I
+thought no good sign. Many persons insist that Kant was in the habit of
+eating too much for health. [Footnote: Who these worthy people were
+that criticised Kant's eating, is not mentioned. They could have had no
+opportunity of exercising their abilities on this question, except as
+hosts, guests, or fellow-guests; and in any of those characters, a
+gentleman, one would suppose, must feel himself degraded by directing
+his attention to a point of that nature. However, the merits of the
+case stand thus between the parlies: Kant, it is agreed by all his
+biographers, ate only once a day; for as to his breakfast, it was
+nothing more than a very weak infusion of tea, (vide Jachmann's
+Letters, p. 163,) with no bread, or eatable of any kind. Now, his
+critics, by general confession, ate their way, from 'morn to dewy eve,'
+through the following course of meals: 1. Breakfast early in the
+morning; 2. Breakfast _à la fourchette_ about ten, A.M.; 3. Dinner
+at one or two; 4. Vesper Brod; 5. Abend Brod; all which does really
+seem a very fair allowance for a man who means to lecture upon
+abstinence at night. But I shall cut this matter short by stating one
+plain fact; there were two things, and no more, for which Kant had an
+inordinate craving during his whole life; these were tobacco and
+coffee; and from both these he abstained almost altogether, merely
+under a sense of duty, resting probably upon erroneous grounds. Of the
+first he allowed himself a very small quantity, (and everybody knows
+that temperance is a more difficult virtue than abstinence;) of the
+other none at all, until the labors of his life were accomplished.] I,
+however, cannot assent to this opinion; for he ate but once a day, and
+drank no beer. Of this liquor, (I mean the strong black beer,) he was,
+indeed, the most determined enemy. If ever a man died prematurely, Kant
+would say--'He has been drinking beer, I presume.' Or, if another were
+indisposed, you might be sure he would ask, 'But does he drink beer?'
+And, according to the answer on this point, he regulated his
+anticipations for the patient. Strong beer, in short, he uniformly
+maintained to be a slow poison. Voltaire, by the way, had said to a
+young physician who denounced coffee under the same bad name of a 'slow
+poison,' 'You're right there, my friend, however; slow it is, and
+horribly slow; for I have been drinking it these seventy years, and it
+has not killed me yet;' but this was an answer which, in the case of
+beer, Kant would not allow of.
+
+On the 22d of April, 1803, his birth-day, the last which he lived to
+see, was celebrated in a full assembly of his friends. This festival he
+had long looked forward to with great expectation, and delighted even
+to hear the progress made in the preparations for it. But when the day
+came, the over-excitement and tension of expectation seemed to have
+defeated itself. He tried to appear happy; but the bustle of a numerous
+company confounded and distressed him; and his spirits were manifestly
+forced. He seemed first to revive to any real sense of pleasure at
+night, when the company had departed, and he was undressing in his
+study. He then talked with much pleasure about the presents which, as
+usual, would be made to his servants on this occasion; for Kant was
+never happy himself, unless he saw all around him happy. He was a great
+maker of presents; but at the same time he had no toleration for the
+studied theatrical effect, the accompaniment of formal congratulations,
+and the sentimental pathos with which birth-day presents are made in
+Germany. [Footnote: In this, as in many other things, the taste of Kant
+was entirely English and Roman; as, on the other hand, some eminent
+Englishmen, I am sorry to say, have, on this very point, shown the
+effeminacy and _falsetto_ taste of the Germans. In particular, Mr.
+Coleridge, describing, in The Friend, the custom amongst German
+children of making presents to their parents on Christmas Eve, (a
+custom which he unaccountably supposes to be peculiar to Ratzeburg,)
+represents the mother as 'weeping aloud for joy'--the old idiot of a
+father with 'tears running down his face,' &c. &c., and all for what?
+For a snuff-box, a pencil-case, or some article of jewellery. Now, we
+English agree with Kant on such maudlin display of stage
+sentimentality, and are prone to suspect that papa's tears are the
+product of rum-punch. Tenderness let us have by all means, and the
+deepest you can imagine, but upon proportionate occasions, and with
+causes fitted to justify it and sustain its dignity.] In all this, his
+masculine taste gave him a sense of something fade and ludicrous.
+
+The summer of 1803 was now come, and, visiting Kant one day, I was
+thunderstruck to hear him direct me, in the most serious tone, to
+provide the funds necessary for an extensive foreign tour. I made no
+opposition, but asked his reasons for such a plan; he alleged the
+miserable sensations he had in his stomach, which were no longer
+endurable. Knowing what power over Kant a quotation from a Roman poet
+had always had, I simply replied--'Post equitem sedet atra cura,' and
+for the present he said no more. But the touching and pathetic
+earnestness with which he was continually ejaculating prayers for
+warmer weather, made it doubtful to me whether his wishes on this point
+ought not, partially at least, to be gratified; and I therefore
+proposed to him a little excursion to the cottage we had visited the
+year before. 'Anywhere,' said he, 'no matter whither, provided it be
+far enough.' Towards the latter end of June, therefore, we executed
+this scheme; on getting into the carriage, the order of the day with
+Kant was, 'Distance, distance. Only let us go far enough,' said he: but
+scarcely had we reached the city-gates before the journey seemed
+already to have lasted too long. On reaching the cottage we found
+coffee waiting for us; but he would scarcely allow himself time for
+drinking it, before he ordered the carriage to the door; and the
+journey back seemed insupportably long to him, though it was performed
+in something less than twenty minutes. 'Is this never to have an end?'
+was his continual exclamation; and great was his joy when he found
+himself once more in his study, undressed, and in bed. And for this
+night he slept in peace, and once again was liberated from the
+persecution of dreams.
+
+Soon after he began again to talk of journeys, of travels in remote
+countries, &c., and, in consequence, we repeated our former excursion
+several times; and though the circumstances were pretty nearly the same
+on every occasion, and always terminating in disappointment as to the
+immediate pleasure anticipated, yet, undoubtedly, they were, on the
+whole, salutary to his spirits. In particular, the cottage itself,
+standing under the shelter of tall alders, with a valley stretched
+beneath it, through which a little brook meandered, broken by a water-
+fall, whose pealing sound dwelt pleasantly on the ear, sometimes, on a
+quiet sunny day, gave a lively delight to Kant: and once, under
+accidental circumstances of summer clouds and sun-lights, the little
+pastoral landscape suddenly awakened a lively remembrance which had
+been long laid asleep, of a heavenly summer morning in youth, which he
+had passed in a bower upon the banks of a rivulet that ran through the
+grounds of a dear and early friend, Gen. Von Lossow. The strength of
+the impression was such, that he seemed actually to be living over that
+morning again, thinking as he then thought, and conversing with those
+that were no more.
+
+His very last excursion was in August of this year, (1803,) not to my
+cottage, but to the garden of a friend. But on this day he manifested
+great impatience. It had been arranged that he was to meet an old
+friend at the gardens; and I, with two other gentlemen, attended him.
+It happened that _out_ party arrived first; and such was Kant's
+weakness, and total loss of power to estimate the duration of time,
+that, after waiting a few moments, he insisted that some hours had
+elapsed--that his friend could not be expected--and went away in great
+discomposure of mind. And so ended Kant's travelling in this world.
+
+In the beginning of autumn the sight of his right eye began to fail
+him; the left he had long lost the use of. This earliest of his losses,
+by the way, he discovered by mere accident, and without any previous
+warning. Sitting down one day to rest himself in the course of a walk,
+it occurred to him that he would try the comparative strength of his
+eyes; but on taking out a newspaper which he had in his pocket, he was
+surprised to find that with his left eye he could not distinguish a
+letter. In earlier life he had two remarkable affections of the eyes:
+once, on returning from a walk, he saw objects double for a long space
+of time; and twice he became stone-blind. Whether these accidents are
+to be considered as uncommon, I leave to the decision of oculists.
+Certain it is, they gave very little disturbance to Kant; who, until
+old age had reduced his powers, lived in a constant state of stoical
+preparation for the worst that could befall him. I was now shocked to
+think of the degree in which his burthensome sense of dependence would
+be aggravated, if he should totally lose the power of sight. As it was,
+he read and wrote with great difficulty: in fact, his writing was
+little better than that which most people can produce as a trial of
+skill with their eyes shut. From old habits of solitary study, he had
+no pleasure in hearing others read to him; and he daily distressed me
+by the pathetic earnestness of his entreaties that I would have a
+reading-glass devised for him. Whatever my own optical skill could
+suggest, I tried; and the best opticians were sent for to bring their
+glasses, and take his directions for altering them; but all was to no
+purpose.
+
+In this last year of his life Kant very unwillingly received the visits
+of strangers; and, unless under particular circumstances, wholly
+declined them. Yet, when travellers had come a very great way out of
+their road to see him, I confess that I was at a loss how to conduct
+myself. To have refused too pertinaciously, could not but give me the
+air of wishing to make myself of importance. And I must acknowledge,
+that, amongst some instances of importunity and coarse expressions of
+low-bred curiosity, I witnessed, on the part of many people of rank, a
+most delicate sensibility to the condition of the aged recluse. On
+sending in their cards, they would generally accompany them by some
+message, expressive of their unwillingness to gratify their wish to see
+him at any risk of distressing him. The fact was, that such visits
+_did_ distress him much; for he felt it a degradation to be exhibited
+in his helpless state, when he was aware of his own incapacity to meet
+properly the attention that was paid to him. Some, however, were
+admitted, [Footnote: To whom it appears that Kant would generally
+reply, upon their expressing the pleasure it gave them to see him,
+'In me you behold a poor superannuated, weak, old man.'] according
+to the circumstances of the case, and the state of Kant's spirits at
+the moment. Amongst these, I remember that we were particularly pleased
+with M. Otto, the same who signed the treaty of peace between France
+and England with the present Lord Liverpool, (then Lord Hawkesbury.) A
+young Russian also rises to my recollection at this moment, from the
+excessive (and I think unaffected) enthusiasm which he displayed. On
+being introduced to Kant, he advanced hastily, took both his hands, and
+kissed them. Kant, who, from living so much amongst his English
+friends, had a good deal of the English dignified reserve about him,
+and hated anything like _scenes_, appeared to shrink a little from
+this mode of salutation, and was rather embarrassed. However, the young
+man's manner, I believe, was not at all beyond his genuine feelings;
+for next day he called again, made some inquiries about Kant's health,
+was very anxious to know whether his old age were burthensome to him,
+and above all things entreated for some little memorial of the great
+man to carry away with him. By accident the servant had found a small
+cancelled fragment of the original MS. of Kant's 'Anthropologie:' this,
+with my sanction, he gave to the Russian; who received it with rapture,
+kissed it, and then gave him in return the only dollar he had about
+him; and, thinking that not enough, actually pulled off his coat and
+waistcoat and forced them upon the man. Kant, whose native simplicity
+of character very much indisposed him to sympathy with any
+extravagances of feeling, could not, however, forbear smiling good-
+humoredly on being made acquainted with this instance of _naïveté_
+and enthusiasm in his young admirer.
+
+I now come to an event in Kant's life, which ushered in its closing
+stage. On the 8th of October, 1803, for the first time since his youth,
+he was seriously ill. When a student at the University, he had once
+suffered from an ague, which, however, gave way to pedestrian exercise;
+and in later years, he had endured some pain from a contusion on his
+head; but, with these two exceptions, (if they can be considered such,)
+he had never (properly speaking) been ill. The cause of his illness was
+this: his appetite had latterly been irregular, or rather I should say
+depraved; and he no longer took pleasure in anything but bread and
+butter, and English cheese.[Footnote: Mr. W. here falls into the
+ordinary mistake of confounding the cause and the occasion, and would
+leave the impression, that Kant (who from his youth up had been a model
+of temperance) died of sensual indulgence. The cause of Kant's death
+was clearly the general decay of the vital powers, and in particular
+the atony of the digestive organs, which must soon have destroyed him
+under any care or abstinence whatever. This was the cause. The
+accidental occasion, which made that cause operative on the 7th of
+October, might or might not be what Mr. W. says. But in Kant's
+burthensome state of existence, it could not be a question of much
+importance whether his illness were to commence in an October or a
+November.] On the 7th of October, at dinner, he ate little else, in
+spite of everything that I and another friend then dining with him,
+could urge to dissuade him. And for the first time I fancied that he
+seemed displeased with my importunity, as though I were overstepping
+the just line of my duties. He insisted that the cheese never had done
+him any harm, nor would now. I had no course left me but to hold my
+tongue; and he did as he pleased. The consequence was what might have
+been anticipated--a restless night, succeeded by a day of memorable
+illness. The next morning all went on as usual, till nine o'clock, when
+Kant, who was then leaning on his sister's arm, suddenly fell senseless
+to the ground. A messenger was immediately despatched for me; and I
+hurried down to his house, where I found him lying in his bed, which
+had now been removed into his study, speechless and insensible. I had
+already summoned his physician; but, before he arrived, nature put
+forth efforts which brought Kant a little to himself. In about an hour
+he opened his eyes, and continued to mutter unintelligibly till towards
+the evening, when he rallied a little, and began to talk rationally.
+For the first time in his life, he was now, for a few days, confined to
+his bed, and ate nothing. On the 12th October, he again took some
+refreshment, and would have had his favorite food; but I was now
+resolved, at any risk of his displeasure, to oppose him firmly. I
+therefore stated to him the whole consequences of his last indulgence,
+of all which he manifestly had no recollection. He listened to what I
+said very attentively, and calmly expressed his conviction that I was
+perfectly in the wrong; but for the present he submitted. However, some
+days after, I found that he had offered a florin for a little bread and
+cheese, and then a dollar, and even more. Being again refused, he
+complained heavily; but gradually he weaned himself from asking for it,
+though at times he betrayed involuntarily how much he desired it.
+
+On the 13th of October, his usual dinner parties were resumed, and he
+was considered convalescent; but it was seldom indeed that he recovered
+the tone of tranquil spirits which he had preserved until his late
+attack. Hitherto he had always loved to prolong this meal, the only one
+he took--or, as he expressed it in classical phrase, 'coenam
+_ducere_;' but now it was difficult to hurry it over fast enough
+for his wishes. From dinner, which terminated about two o'clock, he
+went straight to bed, and at intervals fell into slumbers; from which,
+however, he was regularly awoke by phantasmata or terrific dreams. At
+seven in the evening came on duly a period of great agitation, which
+lasted till five or six in the morning--sometimes later; and he
+continued through the night alternately to walk about and lie down,
+occasionally tranquil, but more often in great distress. It now became
+necessary that somebody should sit up with him, his man-servant being
+wearied out with the toils of the day. No person seemed to be so proper
+for this office as his sister, both as having long received a very
+liberal pension from him, and also as his nearest relative, who would
+be the best witness to the fact that her illustrious brother had wanted
+no comforts or attention in his last hours, which his situation
+admitted of. Accordingly she was applied to, and undertook to watch him
+alternately with his footman--a separate table being kept for her, and
+a very handsome addition made to her allowance. She turned out to be a
+quiet gentle-minded woman, who raised no disturbances amongst the
+servants, and soon won her brother's regard by the modest and retiring
+style of her manners; I may add, also, by the truly sisterly affection
+which she displayed towards him to the last.
+
+The 8th of October had grievously affected Kant's faculties, but had
+not wholly destroyed them. For short intervals the clouds seemed to
+roll away that had settled upon his majestic intellect, and it shone
+forth as heretofore. During these moments of brief self-possession, his
+wonted benignity returned to him; and he expressed his gratitude for
+the exertions of those about him, and his sense of the trouble they
+underwent, in a very affecting way. With regard to his man-servant in
+particular, he was very anxious that he should be rewarded by liberal
+presents; and he pressed me earnestly on no account to be parsimonious.
+Indeed Kant was nothing less than princely in his use of money; and
+there was no occasion on which he was known to express the passion of
+scorn very powerfully, but when he was commenting on mean and penurious
+acts or habits. Those who knew him only in the streets, fancied that he
+was not liberal; for he steadily refused, upon principle, to relieve
+all common beggars. But, on the other hand, he was liberal to the
+public charitable institutions; he secretly assisted his own poor
+relations in a much ampler way than could reasonably have been expected
+of him; and it now appeared that he had many other deserving pensioners
+upon his bounty; a fact that was utterly unknown to any of us, until
+his increasing blindness and other infirmities devolved the duty of
+paying these pensions upon myself. It must be recollected, also, that
+Kant's whole fortune, which amounted to about twenty thousand dollars,
+was the product of his own honorable toils for nearly threescore years;
+and that he had himself suffered all the hardships of poverty in his
+youth, though he never once ran into any man's debt,--circumstances in
+his history, which, as they express how fully he must have been
+acquainted with the value of money, greatly enhance the merit of his
+munificence.
+
+In December, 1803, he became incapable of signing his name. His sight,
+indeed, had for some time failed him so much, that at dinner he could
+not find his spoon without assistance; and, when I happened to dine
+with him, I first cut in pieces whatever was on his plate, next put it
+into a spoon, and then guided his hand to find the spoon. But his
+inability to sign his name did not arise merely from blindness: the
+fact was, that, from irretention of memory, he could not recollect the
+letters which composed his name; and, when they were repeated to him,
+he could not represent the figure of the letters in his imagination. At
+the latter end of November, I had remarked that these incapacities were
+rapidly growing upon him, and in consequence I prevailed on him to sign
+beforehand all the receipts, &c., which would be wanted at the end of
+the year; and, afterwards, on my representation, to prevent all
+disputes, he gave me a regular legal power to sign on his behalf.
+
+Much as Kant was now reduced, yet he had occasionally moods of social
+hilarity. His birth-day was always an agreeable subject to him: some
+weeks before his death, I was calculating the time which it still
+wanted of that anniversary, and cheering him with the prospect of the
+rejoicings which would then take place: 'All your old friends,' said I,
+'will meet together, and drink a glass of champagne to your health.'
+'That,' said he, 'must be done upon the spot:' and he was not satisfied
+till the party was actually assembled. He drank a glass of wine with
+them, and with great elevation of spirits celebrated this birth-day
+which he was destined never to see.
+
+In the latter weeks of his life, however, a great change took place in
+the tone of his spirits. At his dinner-table, where heretofore such a
+cloudless spirit of joviality had reigned, there was now a melancholy
+silence. It disturbed him to see his two dinner companions conversing
+privately together, whilst he himself sat like a mute on the stage with
+no part to perform. Yet to have engaged him in the conversation would
+have been still more distressing; for his hearing was now very
+imperfect; the effort to hear was itself painful to him; and his
+expressions, even when his thoughts were accurate enough, became nearly
+unintelligible. It is remarkable, however, that at the very lowest
+point of his depression, when he became perfectly incapable of
+conversing with any rational meaning on the ordinary affairs of life,
+he was still able to answer correctly and distinctly, in a degree that
+was perfectly astonishing, upon any question of philosophy or of
+science, especially of physical geography, [Footnote: _Physical_
+Geography, in opposition to _Political_.] chemistry, or natural
+history. He talked satisfactorily, in his very worst state, of the
+gases, and stated very accurately different propositions of Kepler's,
+especially the law of the planetary motions. And I remember in
+particular, that upon the very last Monday of his life, when the
+extremity of his weakness moved a circle of his friends to tears, and
+he sat amongst us insensible to all we could say to him, cowering down,
+or rather I might say collapsing into a shapeless heap upon his chair,
+deaf, blind, torpid, motionless,--even then I whispered to the others
+that I would engage that Kant should take his part in conversation with
+propriety and animation. This they found it difficult to believe. Upon
+which I drew close to his ear, and put a question to him about the
+Moors of Barbary. To the surprise of everybody but myself, he
+immediately gave us a summary account of their habits and customs; and
+told us by the way, that in the word _Algiers_, the _g_ ought to be
+pronounced hard (as in the English word _gear_).
+
+During the last fortnight of Kant's life, he busied himself unceasingly
+in a way that seemed not merely purposeless but self-contradictory.
+Twenty times in a minute he would unloose and tie his neck
+handkerchief--so also with a sort of belt which he wore about his
+dressing-gown, the moment it was clasped, he unclasped it with
+impatience, and was then equally impatient to have it clasped again.
+But no description can convey an adequate impression of the weary
+restlessness with which from morning to night he pursued these labors
+of Sisyphus--doing and undoing--fretting that he could not do it,
+fretting that he had done it.
+
+By this time he seldom knew any of us who were about him, but took us
+all for strangers. This happened first with his sister, then with me,
+and finally with his servant. Such an alienation distressed me more
+than any other instance of his decay: though I knew that he had not
+really withdrawn his affection from me, yet his air and mode of
+addressing me gave me constantly that feeling. So much the more
+affecting was it, when the sanity of his perceptions and his
+remembrances returned; but these intervals were of slower and slower
+occurrence. In this condition, silent or babbling childishly, self-
+involved and torpidly abstracted, or else busy with self-created
+phantoms and delusions, what a contrast did he offer to _that_
+Kant who had once been the brilliant centre of the most brilliant
+circles for rank, wit, or knowledge, that Prussia afforded! A
+distinguished person from Berlin, who had called upon him during the
+preceding summer, was greatly shocked at his appearance, and said,
+'This is not Kant that I have seen, but the shell of Kant!' How much
+more would he have said this, if he had seen him now!
+
+Now came February, 1804, which was the last month that Kant was
+destined to see. It is remarkable that, in the memorandum book which I
+have before mentioned, I found a fragment of an old song, (inserted by
+Kant, and dated in the summer about six months before the time of his
+death,) which expressed that February was the month in which people had
+the least weight to carry, for the obvious reason that it was shorter
+by two and by three days than the others; and the concluding sentiment
+was in a tone of fanciful pathos to this effect--'Oh, happy February!
+in which man has least to bear--least pain, least sorrow, least self-
+reproach!' Even of this short month, however, Kant had not twelve
+entire days to bear; for it was on the 12th that he died; and in fact
+he may be said to have been dying from the 1st. He now barely
+vegetated; though there were still transitory gleams flashing by fits
+from the embers of his ancient intellect.
+
+On the 3d of February the springs of life seemed to be ceasing from
+their play, for, from this day, strictly speaking, he ate nothing more.
+His existence henceforward seemed to be the mere prolongation of an
+impetus derived from an eighty years' life, after the moving power of
+the mechanism was withdrawn. His physician visited him every day at a
+particular hour; and it was settled that I should always be there to
+meet him. Nine days before his death, on paying his usual visit, the
+following little circumstance occurred, which affected us both, by
+recalling forcibly to our minds the ineradicable courtesy and goodness
+of Kant's nature. When the physician was announced, I went up to Kant
+and said to him, 'Here is Dr. A----.' Kant rose from his chair, and,
+offering his hand to the Doctor, murmured something in which the word
+'posts' was frequently repeated, but with an air as though he wished to
+be helped out with the rest of the sentence. Dr. A----, who thought
+that, by _posts_, he meant the stations for relays of post-horses, and
+therefore that his mind was wandering, replied that all the horses were
+engaged, and begged him to compose himself. But Kant went on, with
+great effort to himself, and added--'Many posts, heavy posts--then much
+goodness--then much gratitude.' All this he said with apparent
+incoherence, but with great warmth, and increasing self-possession. I
+meantime perfectly divined what it was that Kant, under his cloud of
+imbecility, wished to say, and I interpreted accordingly. 'What the
+Professor wishes to say, Dr. A----, is this, that, considering the many
+and weighty offices which you fill in the city and in the university,
+it argues great goodness on your part to give up so much of your time
+to him,' (for Dr. A---- would never take any fees from Kant;) 'and that
+he has the deepest sense of this goodness.' 'Right,' said Kant,
+earnestly, 'right!' But he still continued to stand, and was nearly
+sinking to the ground. Upon which I remarked to the physician, that I
+was so well acquainted with Kant, that I was satisfied he would not sit
+down, however much he suffered from standing, until he knew that his
+visitors were seated. The Doctor seemed to doubt this--but Kant, who
+heard what I said, by a prodigious effort confirmed my construction of
+his conduct, and spoke distinctly these words--'God forbid I should be
+sunk so low as to forget the offices of humanity.'
+
+When dinner was announced, Dr. A---- took his leave. Another guest had
+now arrived, and I was in hopes, from the animation which Kant had so
+recently displayed, that we should to-day have a pleasant party, but my
+hopes were vain--Kant was more than usually exhausted, and though he
+raised a spoon to his mouth, he swallowed nothing. For some time
+everything had been tasteless to him; and I had endeavored, but with
+little success, to stimulate the organs of taste by nutmeg, cinnamon,
+&c. To-day all failed, and I could not even prevail upon him to taste a
+biscuit, rusk, or anything of that sort. I had once heard him say that
+several of his friends, who had died of _marasmus_, had closed
+their illness by four or five days of entire freedom from pain, but
+totally without appetite, and then slumbered tranquilly away. Through
+this state I apprehended that he was himself now passing.
+
+Saturday, the 4th of February, I heard his guests loudly expressing
+their fears that they should never meet him again; and I could not but
+share these fears myself. However, on
+
+Sunday, the 5th, I dined at his table in company with his particular
+friend Mr. R. R. V. Kant was still present, but so weak that his head
+drooped upon his knees, and he sank down against the right side of the
+chair. I went and arranged his pillows so as to raise and support his
+head; and, having done this, I said--'Now, my dear Sir, you are again
+in right order.' Great was our astonishment when he answered clearly
+and audibly in the Roman military phrase--'Yes, _testudine et
+facie;_' and immediately after added, 'Ready for the enemy, and in
+battle array.' His powers of mind were (if I may be allowed that
+expression) smouldering away in their ashes; but every now and then
+some lambent flame, or grand emanation of light, shot forth to make it
+evident that the ancient fire still slumbered below.
+
+Monday, the 6th, he was much weaker and more torpid: he spoke not a
+word, except on the occasion of my question about the Moors, as
+previously stated, and sate with sightless eyes, lost in himself, and
+manifesting no sense of our presence, so that we had the feeling of
+some mighty shade or phantom from some forgotten century being seated
+amongst us.
+
+About this time, Kant had become much more tranquil and composed. In
+the earlier periods of his illness, when his yet unbroken strength was
+brought into active contest with the first attacks of decay, he was apt
+to be peevish, and sometimes spoke roughly or even harshly to his
+servants. This, though very opposite to his natural disposition, was
+altogether excusable under the circumstances. He could not make himself
+understood: things were therefore brought to him continually which he
+had not asked for; and often it happened that what he really wanted he
+could not obtain, because all his efforts to name it were
+unintelligible. A violent nervous irritation, besides, affected him
+from the unsettling of the equilibrium in the different functions of
+his nature; weakness in one organ being made more palpable to him by
+disproportionate strength in another. But now the strife was over; the
+whole system was at length undermined, and in rapid and harmonious
+progress to dissolution. And from this time forward, no movement of
+impatience, or expression of fretfulness, ever escaped him.
+
+I now visited him three times a-day; and on
+
+Tuesday, Feb. 7th, going about dinner-time, I found the usual party of
+friends sitting down alone; for Kant was in bed. This was a new scene
+in his house, and increased our fears that his end was now at hand.
+However, having seen him rally so often, I would not run the risk of
+leaving him without a dinner-party for the next day; and accordingly,
+at the customary hour of one, we assembled in his house on
+
+Wednesday, Feb. 8th. I paid my respects to him as cheerfully as
+possible, and ordered dinner to be served up. Kant sat at the table
+with us; and, taking a spoon with a little soup in it, put it to his
+lips; but immediately put it down again, and retired to bed, from which
+he never rose again, except during the few minutes when it was re-
+arranged.
+
+Thursday, the 9th, he had sunk into the weakness of a dying person, and
+the corpse-like appearance had already taken possession of him. I
+visited him frequently through the day; and, going at ten o'clock at
+night, I found him in a state of insensibility. I could not draw any
+sign from him that he knew me, and I left him to the care of his sister
+and his servant.
+
+Friday, the 10th, I went to see him at six o'clock in the morning. It
+was very stormy, and a deep snow had fallen in the night-time. And, by
+the way, I remember that a gang of house-breakers had forced their way
+through the premises in order to reach Kant's next neighbor, who was a
+goldsmith. As I drew near to his bed-side, I said, 'Good morning.' He
+returned my salutation by saying, 'Good morning,' but in so feeble and
+faltering a voice that it was hardly articulate. I was rejoiced to find
+him sensible, and I asked him if he knew me:--'Yes,' he replied; and,
+stretching out his hand, touched me gently upon the cheek. Through the
+rest of the day, whenever I visited him, he seemed to have relapsed
+into a state of insensibility.
+
+Saturday, the 11th, he lay with fixed and rayless eyes; but to all
+appearance in perfect peace. I asked him again, on this day, if he knew
+me. He was speechless, but he turned his face towards me and made signs
+that I should kiss him. Deep emotion thrilled me, as I stooped down to
+kiss his pallid lips; for I knew that in this solemn act of tenderness
+he meant to express his thankfulness for our long friendship, and to
+signify his affection and his last farewell. I had never seen him
+confer this mark of his love upon anybody, except once, and that was a
+few weeks before his death, when he drew his sister to him and kissed
+her. The kiss which he now gave to me was the last memorial that he
+knew me.
+
+Whatever fluid was now offered to him passed the oesophagus with a
+rattling sound, as often happens with dying people; and there were all
+the signs of death being close at hand.
+
+I wished to stay with him till all was over; and as I had been witness
+of his life, to be witness also of his departure; and therefore I never
+quitted him except when I was called off for a few minutes to attend
+some private business. The whole of this night I spent at his bed-side.
+Though he had passed the day in a state of insensibility, yet in the
+evening he made intelligible signs that he wished to have his bed put
+in order; he was therefore lifted out in our arms, and the bed-clothes
+and pillows being hastily arranged, he was carried back again. He did
+not sleep; and a spoonful of liquid, which was sometimes put to his
+lips, he usually pushed aside; but about one o'clock in the night he
+himself made a motion towards the spoon, from which I collected that he
+was thirsty; and I gave him a small quantity of wine and water
+sweetened; but the muscles of his mouth had not strength enough to
+retain it, so that to prevent its flowing back he raised his hand to
+his lips, until with a rattling sound it was swallowed. He seemed to
+wish for more; and I continued to give him more, until he said, in a
+way that I was just able to understand,--'It is enough.' And these were
+his last words. At intervals he pushed away the bed-clothes, and
+exposed his person; I constantly restored the clothes to their
+situation, and on one of these occasions I found that the whole body
+and extremities were already growing cold, and the pulse intermitting.
+
+At a quarter after three o'clock on Sunday morning, February 12, Kant
+stretched himself out as if taking a position for his final act, and
+settled into the precise posture which he preserved to the moment of
+death. The pulse was now no longer perceptible to the touch in his
+hands, feet or neck. I tried every part where a pulse beats, and found
+none anywhere but in the left hip, where it beat with violence, but
+often intermitted.
+
+About ten o'clock in the forenoon he suffered a remarkable change; his
+eye was rigid and his face and lips became discolored by a cadaverous
+pallor. Still, such was the effect of his previous habits, that no
+trace appeared of the cold sweat which naturally accompanies the last
+mortal agony.
+
+It was near eleven o'clock when the moment of dissolution approached.
+His sister was standing at the foot of the bed, his sister's son at the
+head. I, for the purpose of still observing the fluctuations of the
+pulse in his hip, was kneeling at the bed-side; and I called his
+servant to come and witness the death of his good master. Now began the
+last agony, if to him it could be called an agony, where there seemed
+to be no struggle. And precisely at this moment, his distinguished
+friend, Mr. R. R. V., whom I had summoned by a messenger, entered the
+room. First of all, the breath grew feebler; then it missed its
+regularity of return; then it wholly intermitted, and the upper lip was
+slightly convulsed; after this there followed one slight respiration or
+sigh; and after that no more; but the pulse still beat for a few
+seconds--slower and fainter, till it ceased altogether; the mechanism
+stopped; the last motion was at an end; and exactly at that moment the
+clock struck eleven.
+
+Soon after his death the head of Kant was shaved; and, under the
+direction of Professor Knorr, a plaster cast was taken, not a masque
+merely, but a cast of the whole bead, designed (I believe) to enrich
+the craniological collection of Dr. Gall.
+
+The corpse being laid out and properly attired, immense numbers of
+people of every rank, from the highest to the lowest, flocked to see
+it. Everybody was anxious to make use of the last opportunity he would
+have for entitling himself to say--'I too have seen Kant.' This went on
+for many days--during which, from morning to night, the house was
+thronged with the public. Great was the astonishment of all people at
+the meagreness of Kant's appearance; and it was universally agreed that
+a corpse so wasted and fleshless had never been beheld. His head rested
+upon the same cushion on which once the gentlemen of the university had
+presented an address to him; and I thought that I could not apply it to
+a more honorable purpose than by placing it in the coffin, as the final
+pillow of that immortal head.
+
+Upon the style and mode of his funeral, Kant had expressed his wishes
+in earlier years in a separate memorandum. He there desired that it
+should take place early in the morning, with as little noise and
+disturbance as possible, and attended only by a few of his most
+intimate friends. Happening to meet with this memorandum, whilst I was
+engaged at his request in arranging his papers, I very frankly gave him
+my opinion, that such an injunction would lay me, as the executor of
+his will, under great embarrassments; for that circumstances might very
+probably arise under which it would be next to impossible to carry it
+into effect. Upon this Kant tore the paper, and left the whole to my
+own discretion. The fact was, I foresaw that the students of the
+University would never allow themselves to be robbed of this occasion
+for expressing their veneration by a public funeral. The event showed
+that I was right; for a funeral such as Kant's, one so solemn and so
+magnificent, the city of Königsberg has never witnessed before or
+since. The public journals, and separate accounts in pamphlets, etc.,
+have given so minute an account of its details, that I shall here
+notice only the heads of the ceremony.
+
+On the 28th of February, at two o'clock in the afternoon, all the
+dignitaries of church and state, not only those resident in Königsberg,
+but from the remotest parts of Prussia, assembled in the church of the
+Castle. Hence they were escorted by the whole body of the University,
+splendidly dressed for the occasion, and by many military officers of
+rank, with whom Kant had always been a great favorite, to the house of
+the deceased Professor; from which the corpse was carried by torch-
+light, the bells of every church in Königsberg tolling, to the
+Cathedral which was lit up by innumerable wax-lights. A never-ending
+train of many thousand persons followed it on foot. In the Cathedral,
+after the usual burial rites, accompanied with every possible
+expression of national veneration to the deceased, there was a grand
+musical service, most admirably performed, at the close of which Kant's
+mortal remains were lowered into the academic vault, where he now rests
+among the ancient patriarchs of the University. PEACE BE TO HIS DUST,
+AND EVERLASTING HONOR!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers,
+Vol. II., by Thomas De Quincey
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE QUINCY'S PAPERS V.2. ***
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