Chapter V: Part 5

"Poor Mynheer Van Holland," he added, laughing, "never got over that adventure. Not that the loss was material to him; he was too rich for that; but the provocation of his fifty thousand dollars going to a parcel of Mexican _ladrones_, after buying an opera-singer for a Frenchman on its way, was enough to rouse even Dutch human-nature to the swearing-point. He could not abide either Frenchmen or opera-singers, all the rest of his life. And, by Jove, I don't wonder at it!"

Nor I, neither, for the matter of that.

* * * * *

TWO RIVERS.

Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament;
Through light, through life, it forward flows.

I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the stream
Through years, through men, through nature fleet,
Through passion, thought, through power and dream.

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is the day of day.

So forth and brighter fares my stream,--
Who drink it shall not thirst again;
No darkness stains its equal gleam,
And ages drop in it like rain.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

[The "Atlantic" obeys the moon, and its LUNIVERSARY has come round
again. I have gathered up some hasty notes of my remarks made since
the last high tides, which I respectfully submit. Please to remember
this is _talk_; just as easy and just as formal as I choose to make
it.]

--I never saw an author in my life--saving, perhaps, one--that did not purr as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat, (_Felis Catus_, LINN.,) on having his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful hand.

But let me give you a caution. Be very careful how you tell an author he is _droll_. Ten to one he will hate you; and if he does, be sure he can do you a mischief, and very probably will. Say you _cried_ over his romance or his verses, and he will love you and send you a copy. You can laugh over that as much as you like--in private.

--Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny?-- Why, there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The clown knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. Passion never laughs. The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

If you want the deep underlying reason, I must take more time to tell it. There is a perfect consciousness in every form of wit-- using that term in its general sense--that its essence consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It throws a single ray, separated from the rest,--red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade,--upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,--all the prismatic colors,--but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind of wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics; throwing the _shadows_ of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth.--Will you allow me to pursue this subject a little further?

[They didn't allow me at that time, for somebody happened to scrape the floor with his chair just then; which accidental sound, as all must have noticed, has the instantaneous effect that Proserpina's cutting the yellow hair had upon infelix Dido. It broke the charm, and that breakfast was over.]

--Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them. Good-breeding _never_ forgets that _amour-propre_ is universal. When you read the story of the Archbishop and Gil Blas, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor old man's delusion; but don't forget that the youth was the greater fool of the two, and that his master served such a booby rightly in turning him out of doors.

--You need not get up a rebellion against what I say, if you find everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the Professor, who had once belabored me in his feeble way, but one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth the trouble of putting them in the pillory. I doubt the entire novelty of my remarks just made on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious of any larceny.

Neither make too much of flaws and occasional overstatements. Some persons seem to think that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propositions, is all that conversation admits. This is precisely as if a musician should insist on having nothing but perfect chords and simple melodies,--no diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on any account. Now it is fair to say, that, just as music must have all these, so conversation must have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its exaggerated truths. It is in its higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal element as much as pictures or statues. One man who is a little too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of _esprit_.-- "Yes," you say, "but who wants to hear fanciful people's nonsense? Put the facts to it, and then see where it is!"--Certainly, if a man is too fond of paradox,--if he is flighty and empty,--if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those harmonious discords, often so much better than the twinned octaves, in the music of thought,--if, instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember that talking is one of the fine arts,--the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult,--and that its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them.

[The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.]

When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension.

[Our landlady turned pale;--no doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellects,--and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping _voce di petto_, to Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving-knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were carelessly.]

I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.

{1. The real John; known only
{ to his Maker.
{
{2. John's ideal John; never the
Three Johns { real one, and often very unlike him.
{
{3. Thomas's ideal John; never
{ the real John, nor John's
{ John, but often very unlike
{ either.

{1. The real Thomas.
Three Thomases. {2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.
{3. John's ideal Thomas

Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a platform-balance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he _is_, so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time.

[A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me _viâ_ this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean time he had eaten the peaches.]

--The opinions of relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly of little value; not merely because they overrate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the _breaking_ of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors,--ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in shop-windows. It is a surprise,-- there is nothing to account for it. All at once we find that twice two make _five_. Nature is fond of what are called "gift-enterprises." This little book of life which she has given into the hands of its joint possessors is commonly one of the old story-books bound over again. Only once in a great while there is a stately poem in it, or its leaves are illuminated with the glories of art, or they enfold a draft for untold values signed by the millionfold millionnaire old mother herself. But strangers are commonly the first to find the "gift" that came with the little book.

It may be questioned whether anything can be conscious of its own flavor. Whether the musk-deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man knows his own voice; many men do not know their own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's famous "Characteristics" article; allow for exaggerations, and there is a great deal in his doctrine of the self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes under the great law just stated. This incapacity of knowing its own traits is often found in the family as well as in the individual. So never mind what your cousins, brothers, sister, uncles, aunts, and the rest, say about the fine poem you have written, but send it (postage paid) to the editors, if there are any, of the "Atlantic,"--which, by the way, is not so called because it is a _notion_, as some dull wits wish they had said, but are too late.

--Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind;--not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it never yields a hair's breadth; everything must go to pieces that comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of thinking. So of those who deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts of external nature; only in a less degree. Every probability--and most of our common, working beliefs are probabilities--is provided with _buffers_ at both ends, which break the force of opposite opinions clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. All this must react on the minds that handle these forms of truth.

--Oh, you need not tell me that Messrs. A. and B. are the most gracious, unassuming people in the world, and yet preëminent in the ranges of science I am referring to. I know that as well as you. But mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this day forward. A rash man, once visiting a certain noted institution at South Boston, ventured to express the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School contradicted the statement, and appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove it. The rash man stuck to his hasty generalization, notwithstanding.

[--It is my desire to be useful to those with whom I am associated in my daily relations. I not unfrequently practise the divine art of music in company with our landlady's daughter, who, as I mentioned before, is the owner of an accordion. Having myself a well-marked barytone voice of more than half an octave in compass, I sometimes add my vocal powers to her execution of:

"Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom,"--

not, however, unless her mother or some other discreet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes called B.F. or more frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience, adopted by some of his betters. My acquaintance with the French language is very imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but in Paris, which is awkward, as B.F. devoted himself to it with the peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher. The boy, I think, is doing well, between us, notwithstanding. The following is an _uncorrected_ French exercise, written by this young gentleman. His mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities; though, being unacquainted with the French language, her judgment cannot be considered final.

LE RAT DES SALONS À LECTURE.

Ce rat çi est un animal fort singulier. Il a deux pattes de derrière
sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il fait
usage pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a le peau noir pour le
plupart, et porte un cercle blanchâtre autour de son cou. On le
trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, digere, s'il y
a de quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue, dort, et
ronfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblance de lire. On ne sait
pas s'il a une autre gite que celà. Il a l'air d'une bête très
stupide, mais il est d'une sagacité et d'une vitesse extraordinaire
quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne sait pas
pourquoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idées. Il
vocalise rarement, mais en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux divers.
Il porte un crayon dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec lequel
il fait des marques sur les bords des journaux et des livres,
semblable aux suivans: !!!--Bah! Pooh! Il ne faut pas cependant les
prendre pour des signes d'intelligence. Il ne vole pas, ordinairement;
il fait rarement même des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de chapeau,
parceque son chapeau a toujours un caractère specifique. On ne sait
pas au juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier était d'avis que
c'etait de l'odeur du cuir des reliures; ce qu'on dit d'etre une
nourriture animale fort saine, et peu chère. Il vit bien longtems.
Enfin il meure, en laissant à ses héritiers une carte du Salon à
Lecture ou il avait existé pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient
toutes les nuits, après la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le voir,
dit on, a minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir,
et ayant à sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on trouve des
caractères inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui prouve que le
spiritulisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Professors de Cambridge
sont des imbeçiles qui ne savent rien du tout, du tout.

I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be touched in any way, is very creditable to B.F. You observe that he is acquiring a knowledge of zoölogy at the same time that he is learning French. Fathers of families who take this periodical will find it profitable to their children, and an economical mode of instruction, to set them to revising and amending this boy's exercise. The passage was originally taken from the "Histoire Naturelle des Bêtes Ruminans et Rougeurs, Bipèdes et Autres," lately published in Paris. This was translated into English and published in London. It was republished at Great Pedlington, with notes and additions by the American editor. The notes consist of an interrogation-mark on page 53d, and a reference (p. 127th) to another book "edited" by the same hand. The additions consist of the editor's name on the title-page and back, with a complete and authentic list of said editor's honorary titles in the first of these localities. Our boy translated the translation back into French. This may be compared with the original, to be found on Shelf 13, Division X, of the Public Library of this metropolis.]

--Some of you boarders ask me from time to time why I don't write a story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Instead of answering each one of you separately, I will thank you to step up into the wholesale department for a few moments, where I deal in answers by the piece and by the bale.

That every articulately-speaking human being has in him stuff for one novel in three volumes duodecimo has long been with me a cherished belief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, that many persons cannot write more than one novel,--that all after that are likely to be failures.--Life is so much more tremendous a thing in its heights and depths than any transcript of it can be, that all records of human experience are as so many bound _herbaria_ to the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing, fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies. All we can do with books of human experience is to make them alive again with something borrowed from our own lives. We can make a book alive for us just in proportion to its resemblance in essence or in form to our own experience. Now an author's first novel is naturally drawn, to a great extent, from his personal experiences; that is, is a literal copy of nature under various slight disguises. But the moment the author gets out of his personality, he must have the creative power, as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, in order to tell a living story; and this is rare.

Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life-story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Oftentimes a single _cradling_ gets them all, and after that the poor man's labor is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as an individual of the human family, could write one novel or story at any rate, if I would.

--Why don't I, then?--Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable--in the opinion of the ladies.

Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends. I should like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now I am afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well; for they have an average share of the common weakness of humanity, which I am pretty certain would come out. Of all that have told stories among us there is hardly one I can recall that has not drawn too faithfully some living portrait that might better have been spared.

Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull to write such a story as I should wish to write.

And finally, I think it very likely I _shall_ write a story one of these days. Don't be surprised at anytime, if you see me coming out with "The Schoolmistress," or "The Old Gentleman Opposite."

[_Our_ schoolmistress and _our_ old gentleman that sits opposite had left the table before I said this.] I want my glory for writing the same discounted now, on the spot, if you please. I will write when I get ready. How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!

----I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being too dull to write a good story. I don't pretend to know what you meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark that may hereafter prove of value to some among you.--When one of us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed of talent arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. All our failures, our short-comings, our strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of high intelligence, with which one look may overflow us in some wider sphere of being.

----How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, "I hate books!" A gentleman,--singularly free from affectations,--not learned, of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better than learning,--by no means dull, in the sense of knowledge of the world and society, but certainly not clever either in the arts or sciences,--his company is pleasing to all who know him. I did not recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many gentlemen and others, who read with a mark to keep their place, that really "hate books," but never had the wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it.

[_Entre nous_, I always read with a mark.]

We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual man" was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if he is actually so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep all the leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre. You understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he is as tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of genius,--that is; of a new influx of truth or beauty,--as a nun over her missal. In short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would of course take--to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, "put him through" all the material part of life; see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked,--with the privilege of shutting it off at will.

A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a harp, with about a dozen ringing intelligences, each answering to some chord of the macrocosm. They do well to dine together once in a while. A dinner-party made up of such elements is the last triumph of civilization over barbarism. Nature and art combine to charm the senses; the equatorial zone of the system is soothed by well-studied artifices; the faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural attitudes; you see wisdom in slippers and science in a short jacket.

The whole force of conversation depends on how much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in six moves;--White looks,--nods;--the game is over. Just so in talking with first-rate men; especially when they are good-natured and expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them,--that glorious license, which, having shut the door and driven the reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to get off from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and take a festive garland and the vacant place on the _medius lectus_,--that carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany like bomb-shells from professional mortars, and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored fire, and the mischief-making rain of _bon-bons_ pelting everybody that shows himself,--the picture of a truly intellectual banquet is one that the old Divinities might well have attempted to reproduce in their----

----"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the young fellow whom they call John,-- "that is from one of your lectures!"

I know it, I replied,--I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it.

"The trail of the serpent is over them all!"

All lecturers, all professors, all school-masters, have ruts and grooves in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still June evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay,--where the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating the "Metropolitan" boat-clubs,--find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little underdone, through which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? Just so, in talking with any of the characters above referred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of the conversation. The lack-lustre eye, rayless as a Beacon-Street door-plate in August, all at once fills with light; the face flings itself wide open like the church-portals when the bride and bridegroom enter; the little man grows in stature before your eyes, like the small prisoner with hair on end, beloved yet dreaded of early childhood; you were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile,--you have a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before you!----Nothing but a streak out of a fifty-dollar lecture.----As when, at some unlooked-for moment, the mighty fountain-column springs into the air before the astonished passer-by,--silver-footed, diamond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed,--from the bosom of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet batrachians at home, and the epigrams of a less amiable and less elevated order of _reptilia_ in other latitudes.

----Who was that person that was so abused some time since for saying that in the conflict of two races our sympathies naturally go with the higher? No matter who he was. Now look at what is going on in India,--a white, superior "Caucasian" race, against a dark-skinned, inferior, but still "Caucasian" race,--and where are English and American sympathies? We can't stop to settle all the doubtful questions; all we know is, that the brute nature is sure to come out most strongly in the lower race, and it is the general law that the human side of humanity should treat the brutal side as it does the same nature in the inferior animals,--tame it or crush it. The India mail brings stories of women and children outraged and murdered; the royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe-killers. England takes down the Map of the World, which she has girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus:

[Strike-out: DELHI]. _Dele_.

The civilized world says, Amen.

----Do not think, because I talk to you of many subjects briefly, that I should not find it much lazier work to take each one of them and dilute it down to an essay. Borrow some of my old college themes and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did with their _melas oinos_,--that black, sweet, syrupy wine (?) which they used to alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream.

[Could it have been _melasses_, as Webster and his provincials spell it,--or _Molossa's_, as dear old smattering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in the "Magnalia"? Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries, who make barn-door-fowl flights of learning in "Notes and Queries"!--ye Historical Societies, in one of whose venerable triremes I, too, ascend the stream of time, while other hands tug at the oars!--ye Amines of parasitical literature, who pick up your grains of native-grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon less honest fare, until, like the great minds Goethe speaks of, you have "made a Golgotha" of your pages!--ponder thereon!]

----Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses. You will understand by the title that they are written in an imaginary character. I don't doubt they will fit some family-man well enough. I send it forth as "Oak Hall" projects a coat, on _a priori_ grounds of conviction that it will suit somebody. There is no loftier illustration of faith than this. It believes that a soul has been clad in flesh; that tender parents have fed and nurtured it; that its mysterious _compages_ or frame-work has survived its myriad exposures and reached the stature of maturity; that the Man, now self-determining, has given in his adhesion to the traditions and habits of the race in favor of artificial clothing; that he will, having all the world to choose from, select the very locality where this audacious generalization has been acted upon. It builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and trusts that Nature will model a material shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in every seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration.--Now hear the verses.

THE OLD MAN DREAMS.

O for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy
Than reign a gray-beard king!

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!

One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!

--My listening angel heard the prayer,
And calmly smiling, said,
"If I but touch thy silvered hair,
Thy hasty wish hath sped."

"But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?"

--Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee, what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I'll take--my--precious--wife!

--The angel took a sapphire pen
And wrote in rainbow dew,
"The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband too!"

--"And is there nothing yet unsaid
Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years!"

Why, yes; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;
I could not bear to leave them all:
I'll take--my--girl--and--boys!

The smiling angel dropped his pen,--
"Why this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!"

And so I laughed,--my laughter woke
The household with its noise,--
And wrote my dream, when morning broke,
To please the gray-haired boys.

AGASSIZ'S NATURAL HISTORY.

_Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of
America_. By LOUIS AGASSIZ. Vols. I. and II. Boston: Little,
Brown & Co. London: Trübner & Co. 1857.

The Great Professor has given the first Monograph of his _Magnum Opus_ to the Great Republic and the wider realm of Science. The learned world resolves itself into committees to consider every important work; claiming leave to sit for as long a time as they choose,--for years, or for a whole generation. Every alleged fact is to be verified or cancelled or qualified, every inference to be measured over and over again by its premises, every proposition to be tried by all the tests that can prove its strength or weakness, and the whole to be marshalled to the place it may claim in the alcoves of the universal library. No hasty opinion can anticipate this final and peremptory judgment. Its elements must of necessity be gathered slowly from many and scattered sources. The accumulated learning of the great centres of civilization, the patient investigation of plodding observers, the keen insight of subtile analysts, the jealous clairvoyance of dissentient theorists, the oblique glances of suspicious sister-sciences, the random flashes that skepticism throws from her faithless mirror to dazzle all eyes that seek for truth; through such a varied and protracted ordeal must every record that embodies long and profound observation, large and lofty thought, reach the golden _Imprimatur_ which is its warrant for immortality.

The work of Mr. Agassiz, if we may judge it by the portion now before us, has a right to challenge such a matured opinion, and to wait for it. Not the less does a certain duty belong to us as literary journalists with reference to these stately volumes, which are in the hands of thousands, learned and unlearned, and of which there are scores of thousands waiting to hear. Our duty we consider to be four-fold: first, that of recognition in terms of fitting courtesy; secondly, of analysis for the general reader; thirdly, of accentuation, so to speak, of what seems most widely applicable or interesting; and lastly, of making such comments as so pregnant a text may suggest.

And first, of recognition. Here are the fruits of ten years of patient labor, taken out of the heart of life, in the age of vigor, which is that of ambition,--to use the phrase of another great observer,--by a man of large endowments and of vast knowledge, assisted by skilful collaborators, by finished artists, by the counsels and liberality of the learned few, and the generous countenance of the intelligent many. Before analysis, before criticism, there should be uttered a welcome; not grudging, not envious of an overshadowing reputation, not over-curious in searching for qualifications to abate its warmth, not carefully taming down its enthusiasm to tepid formalisms; but full-souled and free-spoken, such as all noble works and deeds should claim.

The learned men of past centuries have left us an example of this treatment of authors, in those gratulatory verses with which they were wont to hail every considerable literary or scientific performance. They knew human nature well. They knew that the author, when he quenches the lamp over which he has grown haggard and pale, and steps from his cell into daylight and the chill outside air, longs, longs unutterably, for kind words, and the cheering fellowship of kindred souls; and with instinctive grace they chose the poetical form of expression, simply because this alone gives full license to the lips of friendship.

This old folio which stands by us is not precious only because it contains the quaint wisdom and manifold experience of Ambroise Paré, mingled with his credulous gossip, and again sweetened by his simple reverence; not precious alone because it contains the noblest words ever uttered by one of his profession,--_Ie le pensay et Dieu le guarit_; but also because PIERRE RONSARD, the "Poet of France," has left his deathless name thrice inscribed in its earlier pages at the foot of tributes to its author.

And here in the next century comes Schenck of Grafenberg, staggering under his monstrous volume of "Casus Rariores,"--ready to fall fainting by the wayside, when lo! the shining ones meet him too, and lift him and lighten him with the utterance of these _fifty-one_ distinct poems which we see hung up on so many votive tablets at the entrance of this miniature Babel of Science.

Even so late as the last century the genial custom survived; for our worthy Stalpart van der Wiel, whose little pair of volumes was published in 1727, can boast of twenty-two pages of well-ordered commendatory verse, much of it in his native Dutch,--a little of which goes a good way with all except Batavian readers.

But as the "Arundines Cami," musical as they are, have lent no prelude to these harmonies of science, we must say in a few plain words of prose our own first thought as to the work the commencement of which lies before us. We believe, that, if completed according to its promise, it is to be one of the monumental labors of our century. Comparisons are not to be lightly instituted, and especially under circumstances that do not allow a fair survey of the whole field from which the objects to be compared are to be taken. We suppose, however, it will be conceded that the sunset continent has never witnessed anything like the inception of this mighty task in the way of systematic natural science. And if, since Cuvier, the greatest of naturalists, as Mr. Agassiz considers him, slept with the fossils to which he had given life, there has been any other student of Nature who has attempted a task so immense, with the same union of observing, reflecting, analyzing, and coördinating power, we cannot name him. Our civilization has a right to be proud of such an accession to its thinking and laboring constituency; it is also bound to be grateful for it, and to express its gratitude.

It is just one hundred years since another Swiss, the magnificent Albert von Haller, gave to the world the first volume of the "Elementa Physiologiae Corporis Humani." Nine years afterwards, in 1766, the last of the eight volumes appeared; and the vast structure, which embodied his untiring study of Nature, his world-wide erudition, his deepest thought, his highest imaginings, his holiest aspirations, stood, like the Alps whose shadow fell upon its birthplace, the lovely Lausaune, pride of the Pays de Vaud. The clepsydrae that measure the centuries as they drop from the dizzy cliffs--the glaciers, by the descent of which "time is marked out, as by a shadow on a dial," and which thunder out the high noon of each revolving year with their frozen tongues, as they crack beneath the summer's sun--have registered a new centennial circle, and at the very hour of its completion, Switzerland vindicates her ancient renown in these fair pages, at once pledge and performance, of another of her honored children. May the auspicious omen lead to as happy a conclusion!

Lovingly, then, we lay open the generous quarto and look upon its broad, bright title-page. It tells us that we have here the first of a series of "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of America." We see that one of its three parts embraces the largest generalities of Natural Science, under the head of an "Essay on Classification." We see that the other two parts are devoted to the description and delineation of a single order of Reptilia,--the Testudinata, or "Turtles."

If Mr. Agassiz had intentionally chosen the simplest way of proving that he had naturalized himself in New England, he could not have selected more fortunately than he has done by adopting our word _Turtle_ to cover all the Testudinates. To an Englishman a turtle is a sea-monster, that for a brief space lies on his back and fights the air with his useless paddles in the bow-window of a provision-shop, bound eventually to Guildhall, there to feed Gog and Magog, or his worshippers, known as aldermen. For him a land-testudinate is a _tortoise_. When his poets and romancers speak of turtles, again, they commonly mean turtle-_doves_.

"Not half so swift the sailing falcon flies
That drives a turtle through the liquid skies."

The only flight of a testudinate which we remember is that downward one of the unfortunate tortoise that cracked the bald crown of Aeschylus. But turtle, as embracing all chelonians, or, as liberal shepherds call it, "turkle," is unquestionably Cisatlantic. The distinguished naturalist has made himself an American citizen by adopting our own expression, and should have the freedom of all our cities presented to him in the shell of a box-TURTLE.

It is singular to recall the honors which have been bestowed on the testudinates from all antiquity. It was the sun-dried and sinew-strung shell of a tortoise that suggested the lyre to Mercury, as he walked by the shore of Nilus. It was on the back of a tortoise that the Indian sage placed his elephant which upheld the world. Under the _testudo_ the Roman legions swarmed into the walled cities of the _orbis terrarum_. And in that wise old fable which childhood learns, and age too often remembers, sorrowing, it was the tortoise that won the race against the swiftest of the smaller tribes, his competitor.

And here once more we have his shell strung with vibrating thoughts that repeat the harmonies of nature. Once more his broad back stoops to the weighty problems which the planet proposes to its children. Once more the great cities are stormed--by science--beneath his coat of mail. Once more he has run the race, not against the hare only, but the whole animal kingdom, and won it, and with it the new fame which awaits him, as he leads in the long array of his fellows that are to come up, one by one, in these enduring records. And so we turn the leaf, and come to the DEDICATION.

The Dedication of a work like this, destined to preserve all the names it enrols in the sculpture-like immortality of science, naturally delays us for a moment. Of the foreign teacher and friend to whom the author owes some of his earliest lessons, and of that group of our own citizens, most of them still living, who lent their united efforts to the enterprise of publication after it was commenced, we need not speak individually. But we cannot pass over the name of FRANCIS CALLEY GRAY without a word of grateful remembrance for one who was the friend and adviser of the author in planning the publication of the work before us. We who remember his varied culture, his large and fluent discourse, with its formidable accuracy of knowledge and gracious suavity of utterance, his taste in literature and art, which made his home a suite of princely cabinets, his generous and elegant hospitality, which scholars and artists knew so well,--counting him as the peer, and in many points the more than peer of such as the wide world of letters is proud to claim,--are pleased to see that his cherished name will be read by the students of unborn generations on the first leaf of this noble record of the science of our own.

The PREFACE which follows the Dedication is full of grateful acknowledgments to the many friends of science, in all parts of the country, who came forward to lend their aid in various forms, especially in collecting and transmitting specimens from the most widely remote sections of the continent. The pious zeal of Mr. Winthrop Sargent, who brought a cargo of living turtles more than a thousand miles to the head-quarters of testudinous learning at Cambridge, is only paralleled by the memorable act of the Pisans in transporting ship-loads of holy soil from Palestine to fill their Campo Santo. Genius is marked by nothing more distinctly than that it makes the world its tributary. He from whose lips it speaks has but to look calmly into the eyes of dull routine, of jaded toil, of fickle childhood, and utter the words, "Follow me." Custom-house officials close their books, tired fishermen leave their nets, riotous boys forsake their play, to do the master's bidding. Is he making collections for some great purpose of study? Piece by piece the fragmentary spoils flow in upon him, of all sizes, shapes, and hues; a chaos of confused riches, perhaps only a wealth of rubbish, as they lie at his feet. One by one they fall into harmonious relations, until the meaningless heap has become a vast mosaic, where nothing is too minute to fill some interstice, nothing too angular to fit some corner, nothing so dull or brilliant of tint that it will not furnish its fraction of light or shadow. Such has been the history of those years of labor the results of which these volumes present to us. Whatever may have been said of the devotion of our countrymen to material interests, the wise and winning lips had only to speak, and such a currency of _plastrons_ and _carapaces_ was set in circulation, that the contemplative stranger who saw the mighty coinage of Chelonia flowing in upon Cambridge might well have thought that the national idea was not the Almighty Dollar, but the Almighty Turtle.

Mr. Agassiz places a high estimate on the intelligence as well as the kind spirit of his adopted countrymen. "There is not a class of learned men here," he says, "distinct from the other cultivated members of the community. On the contrary, so general is the desire for knowledge, that I expect to see my book read by operatives, by fishermen, by farmers, quite as extensively as by the students of our colleges, or by the learned professions; and it is but proper that I should endeavor to make myself understood by all."

The deficiencies of our scientific libraries, and the want of a class of elementary works upon Natural History, such as are widely circulated in Europe, are adverted to and alleged as a reason for entering into details which the professional naturalist might think misplaced.

We quote one paragraph entire from the Preface, as not susceptible of being abridged, and as briefly stating those general facts with regard to the work which all our readers must desire to know.

"I have a few words more to say respecting the two first volumes,
now ready for publication. Considering the uncertainty of human life,
I have wished to bring out at once a work that would exemplify the
nature of the investigations I have been tracing during the last ten
years, and show what is likely to be the character of the whole
series. I have aimed, therefore, in preparing these two volumes, to
combine them in such a manner as that they should form a whole. The
First Part contains an exposition of the general views I have
arrived at thus far, in my studies of Natural History. The Second
Part shows how I have attempted to apply these results to the
special study of Zoology, taking the order of Testudinata as an
example. I believe, that, in America, where turtles are everywhere
common, and greatly diversified, a student could not make a better
beginning than by a careful perusal of this part, specimens in hand,
with constant reference to the second chapter of the First Part. The
Third Part exemplifies the bearing of Embryology upon these general
questions, while it contains the fullest illustration of the
embryonic growth of the Testudinata."

The Preface closes with honorable mention of the gentlemen who have furnished direct assistance in the preparation of the work, and especially of Mr. Clark in microscopic observation and illustration, and of Mr. Sonrel in drawing the zoological figures.

The LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS is not without its special meaning and interest. If, as has been said, the grade of civilization in any community can be estimated by the amount of sulphuric acid it consumes, the extent to which a work like this has been called for in different sections of the country may to some extent be considered an index of its intellectual aspirations, if not of its actual progress. This is especially true of those remoter regions where personal motives would exercise least influence. But without instituting any comparisons, we may well be proud of this ample list of twenty-five hundred subscribers, most of them citizens of the republic,--"a support such as was never before offered to any scientific man for purely scientific ends, without any reference to government objects or direct practical aims."

Our analysis must confine itself mainly to the first of the three parts into which these two volumes are divided. This first part it is that contains those large results which every thinker must desire to learn from one whose life has been devoted to the searching and contemplative study of Nature. It is in the realm of thought here explored, that Natural Science, whose figure we are wont to look down upon, crouching to her task, like him of the muck-rake, as he painfully gathers together his sticks and straws, rises erect, and lifts her forehead into the upper atmosphere of philosophy, where the clouds are indeed thickest, but the stars are nearest. The second and third parts belong more exclusively to the professed students of Natural History in its different special departments. Our notice of these divisions of the work must therefore be comparatively brief.

The first chapter of the first part has for its title, "The fundamental relations of animals to one another and to the world in which they live, as the basis of the natural system of animals."