Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

While Genera themselves are, like Families, easily distinguished, the characters on which they are founded, like those of Families, are difficult to trace. There are often features belonging to these groups which attract the attention and suggest their association, though they are not those which may be truly considered generic characters. It is easy to distinguish the Genus Fox, for instance, by its bushy tail, and yet that is no true generic character; the collar of feathers round the neck of the Vultures leads us at once to separate them from the Eagles, but it is not the collar that truly marks the Genus, but rather the peculiar structure of the feathers which form it. No Bird has a more striking plumage than the Peacock, but it is not the appearance merely of its crest and spreading fan that constitutes a Genus, but the peculiar structure of the feathers. Thousands of examples might be quoted to show how easily Genera may be singled out, named, and entered in our systems, without being duly characterized, and it is much to be lamented that there is no possibility of checking the loose work of this kind with which the annals of our science are daily flooded.

It would, of course, be quite inappropriate to present here any general revision of these groups; but I may present a few instances to illustrate the principle of their classification, and to show on what characters they are properly based. Among Reptiles, we find, for instance, that the Genera of our fresh-water Turtles differ from each other in the cut of their bill, in the arrangement of their scales, in the form of their claws, etc. Among Fishes, the different Genera included under the Family of Perches are distinguished by the arrangement of their teeth, by the serratures of their gill-covers, and of the arch to which the pectoral fins are attached, by the nature and combination of the rays of their fins, by the structure of their scales, etc. Among Insects, the various Genera of the Butterflies differ in the combination of the little rods which sustain their wings, in the form and structure of their antennae, of their feet, of the minute scales which cover their wings, etc. Among Crustacea, the Genera of Shrimps vary in the form of the claws, in the structure of the parts of the mouth, in the articulations of their feelers, etc. Among Worms, the different Genera of the Leech Family are combined upon the form of the disks by which they attach themselves, upon the number and arrangement of their eyes, upon the structure of the hard parts with which the mouth is armed, etc. Among Cephalopods, the Family of Squids contains several Genera distinguished by the structure of the solid shield within the skin of the back, by the form and connection of their fins, by the structure of the suckers with which their arms are provided, by the form of their beak, etc. In every Class, we find throughout the Animal Kingdom that there is no sound basis for the discrimination of Genera except the details of their structure; but in order to define them accurately an extensive comparison of them is indispensable, and in characterizing them only such features should be enumerated as are truly generic; whereas in the present superficial method of describing them, features are frequently introduced which belong not only to the whole Family, but even to the whole Class which includes them.

X.

There remains but one more division of the Animal Kingdom for our consideration, the most limited of all in its circumscription,--that of Species. It is with the study of this kind of group that naturalists generally begin their investigations. I believe, however, that the study of Species as the basis of a scientific education is a great mistake. It leads us to overrate the value of Species, and to believe that they exist in Nature in some different sense from other groups; as if there were something more real and tangible in Species than in Genera, Families, Orders, Classes, or Branches. The truth is, that to study a vast number of Species without tracing the principles that combine them under more comprehensive groups is only to burden the mind with disconnected facts, and more may be learned by a faithful and careful comparison of a few Species than by a more cursory examination of a greater number. When one considers the immense number of Species already known, naturalists might well despair of becoming acquainted with them all, were they not constructed on a few fundamental patterns, so that the study of one Species teaches us a great deal for all the rest. De Candolle, who was at the same time a great botanist and a great teacher, told me once that he could undertake to illustrate the fundamental principles of his science with the aid of a dozen plants judiciously selected, and that it was his unvarying practice to induce students to make a thorough study of a few minor groups of plants, in all their relations to one another, rather than to attempt to gain a superficial acquaintance with a large number of species. The powerful influence he has had upon the progress of Botany vouches for the correctness of his views. Indeed, every profound scholar knows that sound learning can be attained only by this method, and the study of Nature makes no exception to the rule. I would therefore advise every student to select a few representatives from all the Classes, and to study these not only with reference to their specific characters, but as members also of a Genus, of a Family, of an Order, of a Class, and of a Branch. He will soon convince himself that Species have no more definite and real existence in Nature than all the other divisions of the Animal Kingdom, and that every animal is the representative of its Branch, Class, Order, Family, and Genus as much as of its Species, Specific characters are only those determining size, proportion, color, habits, and relations to surrounding circumstances and external objects. How superficial, then, must be any one's knowledge of an animal who studies it only with relation to its specific characters! He will know nothing of the finish of special parts of the body,--nothing of the relations between its form and its structure,--nothing of the relative complication of its organization as compared with other allied animals,--nothing of the general mode of execution,--nothing of the plan expressed in that mode of execution. Yet, with the exception of the ordinal characters, which, since they imply relative superiority and inferiority, require, of course, a number of specimens for comparison, his one animal would tell him all this as well as the specific characters.

All the more comprehensive groups, equally with Species, have a positive, permanent, specific principle, maintained generation after generation with all its essential characteristics. Individuals are the transient representatives of all these organic principles, which certainly have an independent, immaterial existence, since they outlive the individuals that embody them, and are no less real after the generation that has represented them for a time has passed away than they were before.

From a comparison of a number of well-known Species belonging to a natural Genus, it is not difficult to ascertain what are essentially specific characters. There is hardly among Mammalia a more natural Genus than that which includes the Rabbits and Hares, or that to which the Rats and Mice are referred. Let us see how the different Species differ from one another. Though we give two names in the vernacular to the Genus Hare, both Hares and Rabbits agree in all the structural peculiarities which constitute a Genus; but the different Species are distinguished by their absolute size when full-grown,--by the nature and color of their fur,--by the size and form of the ear,--by the relative length of their legs and tail,--by the more or less slender build of their whole body,--by their habits, some living in open grounds, others among the bushes, others in swamps, others burrowing under the earth,--by the number of young they bring forth,--by their different seasons of breeding,--and by still minor differences, such as the permanent color of the hair throughout the year in some, while in others it turns white in winter. The Rats and Mice differ in a similar way: there being large and small Species,--some gray, some brown, others rust-colored,--some with soft, others with coarse hair; they differ also in the length of the tail, and in having it more or less covered with hair,--in the cut of the ears, and their size,--in the length of their limbs, which are slender and long in some, short and thick in others,--in their various ways of living,--in the different substances on which they feed,--and also in their distribution over the surface of the earth, whether circumscribed within certain limited areas or scattered over a wider range. What is now the nature of these differences by which we distinguish Species? They are totally distinct from any of the categories on which Genera, Families, Orders, Classes, or Branches are founded, and may readily be reduced to a few heads. They are differences in the proportion of the parts and in the absolute size of the whole animal, in the color and general ornamentation of the surface of the body, and in the relations of the individuals to one another and to the world around. A farther analysis of other Genera would show us that among Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, and, in fact, throughout the Animal Kingdom, Species of well-defined natural Genera differ in the same way. We are therefore justified in saying that the category of characters on which Species are based implies no structural differences, but presents the same structure combined under certain minor differences of size, proportion, and habits. All the specific characters stand in direct reference to the generic structure, the family form, the ordinal complication of structure, the mode of execution of the Class, and the plan of structure of the Branch, all of which are embodied in the frame of each individual in each Species, even though all these individuals are constantly dying away and reproducing others; so that the specific characters have no more permanency in the individuals than those which characterize the Genus, the Family, the Order, the Class, and the Branch. I believe, therefore, that naturalists have been entirely wrong in considering the more comprehensive groups to be theoretical and in a measure arbitrary, an attempt, that is, of certain men to classify the Animal Kingdom according to their individual views, while they have ascribed to Species, as contrasted with the other divisions, a more positive existence in Nature. No further argument is needed to show that it is not only the Species that lives in the individual, but that every individual, though belonging to a distinct Species, is built upon a precise and definite plan which characterizes its Branch,--that that plan is executed in each individual in a particular way which characterizes its Class,--that every individual with its kindred occupies a definite position in a series of structural complications which characterizes its Order,--that in every individual all these structural features are combined under a definite pattern of form which characterizes its Family,--that every individual exhibits structural details in the finish of its parts which characterize its Genus,--and finally that every individual presents certain peculiarities in the proportion of its parts, in its color, in its size, in its relations to its fellow-beings and surrounding things, which constitute its specific characters; and all this is repeated in the same kind of combination, generation after generation, while the individuals die. If we accept these propositions, which seem to me self-evident, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Species do not exist in Nature in any other sense than the more comprehensive groups of the zoological systems.

There is one question respecting Species that gives rise to very earnest discussions in our day, not only among naturalists, but among all thinking people. How far are they permanent, and how far mutable? With reference to the permanence of Species, there is much to be learned from the geological phenomena that belong to our own period, and that bear witness to the invariability of types during hundreds of thousands of years at least. I hope to present a part of this evidence in a future article upon Coral Reefs, but in the mean time I cannot leave this subject without touching upon a point of which great use has been made in recent discussions. I refer to the variability of Species as shown in domestication.

The domesticated animals with their numerous breeds are constantly adduced as evidence of the changes which animals may undergo, and as furnishing hints respecting the way in which the diversity now observed among animals has already been produced. It is my conviction that such inferences are in no way sustained by the facts of the case, and that, however striking the differences may be between the breeds of our domesticated animals, as compared with the wild Species of the same Genus, they are of a peculiar character entirely distinct from those that prevail among the latter, and are altogether incident to the circumstances under which they occur. By this I do not mean the natural action of physical conditions, but the more or less intelligent direction of the circumstances under which they live. The inference drawn from the varieties introduced among animals in a state of domestication, with reference to the origin of Species, is usually this: that what the farmer does on a small scale Nature may do on a large one. It is true that man has been able to produce certain changes in the animals under his care, and that these changes have resulted in a variety of breeds. But in doing this, he has, in my estimation, in no way altered the character of the Species, but has only developed its pliability to the will of man, that is, to a power similar in its nature and mode of action to that power to which animals owe their very existence. The influence of man upon Animals is, in other words, the action of mind upon them; and yet the ordinary mode of arguing upon this subject is, that, because the intelligence of man has been able to produce certain varieties in domesticated animals, therefore physical causes have produced all the diversities among wild ones. Surely, the sounder logic would be to infer, that, because our finite intelligence can cause the original pattern to vary by some slight shades of difference, therefore an infinite intelligence must have established all the boundless diversity of which our boasted varieties are but the faintest echo. It is the most intelligent farmer that has the greatest success in improving his breeds; and if the animals he has so fostered are left to themselves without that intelligent care, they return to their normal condition. So with plants: the shrewd, observing, thoughtful gardener will obtain many varieties from his flowers; but those varieties will fade out, if left to themselves. There is, as it were, a certain degree of pliability and docility in the organization both of animals and plants, which may be developed by the fostering care of man, and within which he can exercise a certain influence; but the variations which he thus produces are of a peculiar kind, and do not correspond to the differences of the wild Species. Let us take some examples to illustrate this assertion.

Every Species of wild Bull differs from the others in its size; but all the individuals correspond to the average standard of size characteristic of their respective Species, and show none of those extreme differences of size so remarkable among our domesticated Cattle. Every Species of wild Bull has its peculiar color, and all the individuals of one Species share in it: not so with our domesticated Cattle, among which every individual may differ in color from every other. All the individuals of the same Species of wild Bull agree in the proportion of their parts, in the mode of growth of the hair, in its quality, whether fine or soft: not so with our domesticated Cattle, among which we find in the same Species overgrown and dwarfish individuals, those with long and short legs, with slender and stout build of the body, with horns or without, as well as the greatest variety in the mode of twisting the horns,--in short, the widest extremes of development which the degree of pliability in that Species will allow.

A curious instance of the power of man, not only in developing the pliability of an animal's organization, but in adapting it to suit his own caprices, is that of the Golden Carp, so frequently seen in bowls and tanks as the ornament of drawing-rooms and gardens. Not only an infinite variety of spotted, striped, variegated colors has been produced in these Fishes, but, especially among the Chinese, so famous for their morbid love of whatever is distorted and warped from its natural shape and appearance, all sorts of changes have been brought about in this single Species. A book of Chinese paintings showing the Golden Carp in its varieties represents some as short and stout, others long and slender,--some with the ventral side swollen, others hunch-backed,--some with the mouth greatly enlarged, while in others the caudal fin, which in the normal condition of the Species is placed vertically at the end of the tail and is forked like those of other Fishes, has become crested and arched, or is double, or crooked, or has swerved in some other way from its original pattern. But in all these variations there is nothing which recalls the characteristic specific differences among the representatives of the Carp Family, which in their wild state are very monotonous in their appearance all the world over.

Were it appropriate to accumulate evidence here upon this subject, I could bring forward many more examples quite as striking as those above mentioned. The various breeds of our domesticated Horses present the same kind of irregularities, and do not differ from each other in the same way as the wild Species differ from one another. Or take the Genus Dog: the differences between its wild Species do not correspond in the least with the differences observed among the domesticated ones. Compare the differences between the various kinds of Jackals and Wolves with those that exist between the Bull-Dog and Greyhound, for instance, or between the St. Charles and the Terrier, or between the Esquimaux and the Newfoundland Dog. I need hardly add that what is true of the Horses, the Cattle, the Dogs, is true also of the Donkey, the Goat, the Sheep, the Pig, the Cat, the Rabbit, the different kinds of barn-yard fowl,--in short, of all those animals that are in domesticity the chosen companions of man.

In fact, all the variability among domesticated Species is due to the fostering care, or, in its more extravagant freaks, to the fancies of man, and it has never been observed in the wild Species, where, on the contrary, everything shows the closest adherence to the distinct, well-defined, and invariable limits of the Species. It surely does not follow, that, because the Chinese can, under abnormal conditions, produce a variety of fantastic shapes in the Golden Carp, therefore water, or the physical conditions established in the water, can create a Fish, any more than it follows, that, because they can dwarf a tree, or alter its aspect by stunting its growth in one direction and forcing it in another, therefore the earth, or the physical conditions connected with their growth, can create a Pine, an Oak, a Birch, or a Maple. I confess that in all the arguments derived from the phenomena of domestication, to prove that all animals owe their origin and diversity to the natural action of the conditions under which they live, the conclusion does not seem to me to follow logically from the premises. And the fact that the domesticated animals of all races of men, equally with the white race, vary among themselves in the same way and differ in the same way from the wild Species, makes it still more evident that domesticated varieties do not explain the origin of Species, except, as I have said, by showing that the intelligent will of man can produce effects which physical causes have never been known to produce, and that we must therefore look to some cause outside of Nature, corresponding in kind, though so different in degree, to the intelligence of man, for all the phenomena connected with the existence of animals in their wild state. So far from attributing these original differences among animals to natural influences, it would seem, that, while a certain freedom of development is left, within the limits of which man can exercise his intelligence and his ingenuity, not even this superficial influence is allowed to physical conditions unaided by some guiding power, since in their normal state the wild Species remain, so far as we have been able to discover, entirely unchanged,--maintained, it is true, in their integrity by the circumstances that were established for their support by the power that created both, but never altered by them. Nature holds inviolable the stamp that God has set upon his creatures; and if man is able to influence their organization in some slight degree, it is because the Creator has given to his relations with the animals he has intended for his companions the same plasticity which he has allowed to every other side of his life, in virtue of which he may in some sort mould and shape it to his own ends, and be held responsible also for its results.

The common sense of a civilized community has already pointed out the true distinction in applying another word to the discrimination of the different kinds of domesticated animals. They are called Breeds, and Breeds among animals are the work of man;--Species were created by God.

* * * * *

THE STRASBURG CLOCK.

Many and many a year ago,--
To say how many I scarcely dare,--
Three of us stood in Strasburg streets,
In the wide and open square,
Where, quaint and old and touched with the gold
Of a summer morn, at stroke of noon
The tongue of the great Cathedral tolled,
And into the church with the crowd we strolled
To see their wonder, the famous Clock.
Well, my love, there are clocks a many,
As big as a house, as small as a penny;
And clocks there be with voices as queer
As any that torture human ear,--
Clocks that grunt, and clocks that growl,
That wheeze like a pump, and hoot like an owl,
From the coffin shape with its brooding face
That stands on the stair, (you know the place,)
Saying, "Click, cluck," like an ancient hen,
A-gathering the minutes home again,
To the kitchen knave with its wooden stutter,
Doing equal work with double splutter,
Yelping, "Click, clack," with a vulgar jerk,
As much as to say, "Just see me work!"

But of all the clocks that tell Time's bead-roll,
There are none like this in the old Cathedral;
Never a one so bids you stand
While it deals the minutes with even hand:
For clocks, like men, are better and worse,
And some you dote on, and some you curse;
And clock and man may have such a way
Of telling the truth that you can't say nay.

So in we went and stood in the crowd
To hear the old clock as it crooned aloud,
With sound and symbol, the only tongue
The maker taught it while yet 't was young.
And we saw Saint Peter clasp his hands,
And the cock crow hoarsely to all the lands,
And the Twelve Apostles come and go,
And the solemn Christ pass sadly and slow;
And strange that iron-legged procession,
And odd to us the whole impression,
As the crowd beneath, in silence pressing,
Bent to that cold mechanic blessing.

But I alone thought far in my soul
What a touch of genius was in the whole,
And felt how graceful had been the thought
Which for the signs of the months had sought,
Sweetest of symbols, Christ's chosen train;
And much I pondered, if he whose brain
Had builded this clock with labor and pain
Did only think, twelve months there are,
And the Bible twelve will fit to a hair;
Or did he say, with a heart in tune,
Well-loved John is the sign of June,
And changeful Peter hath April hours,
And Paul the stately, October bowers,
And sweet, or faithful, or bold, or strong,
Unto each one shall a month belong.

But beside the thought that under it lurks,
Pray, do you think clocks are saved by their works?

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

To win such love as Arthur Hugh Clough won in life, to leave so dear a memory as he has left, is a happiness that falls to few men. In America, as in England, his death is mourned by friends whose affection is better than fame, and who in losing him have met with an irreparable loss. Outside the circle of his friends his reputation had no large extent; but though his writings are but little known by the great public of readers, they are prized by all those of thoughtful and poetic temper to whose hands they have come, as among the most precious and original productions of the time. To those who knew him personally his poems had a special worth and charm, as the sincere expression of a character of the purest stamp, of rare truthfulness and simplicity, not less tender than strong, and of a genius thoroughly individual in its form, and full of the promise of a large career. He was by Nature endowed with subtile and profound powers of thought, with feeling at once delicate and intense, with lively and generous sympathies, and with conscientiousness so acute as to pervade and control his whole intellectual disposition. Loving, seeking, and holding fast to the truth, he despised all falseness and affectation. With his serious and earnest thinking was joined the play of a genial humor and the brightness of poetic fancy. Liberal in sentiment, absolutely free from dogmatism and pride of intellect, of a questioning temper, but of reverent spirit, faithful in the performance not only of the larger duties, but also of the lesser charities and the familiar courtesies of life, he has left a memory of singular consistency, purity, and dignity. He lived to conscience, not for show, and few men carry through life so white a soul.

A notice of Mr. Clough understood to be written by one who knew him well gives the outline of his life.

"Arthur Hugh Clough was educated at Rugby, to which school he went very young, soon after Dr. Arnold had been elected head-master. He distinguished himself at once by gaining the only scholarship which existed at that time, and which was open to the whole school under the age of fourteen. Before he was sixteen he was at the head of the fifth form, and, as that was the earliest age at which boys were then admitted into the sixth, had to wait for a year before coming under the personal tuition of the headmaster. He came in the next (school) generation to Stanley and Vaughan, and gained a reputation, if possible, even greater than theirs. At the yearly speeches, in the last year of his residence, when the prizes are given away in the presence of the school and the friends who gather on such occasions, Arnold took the almost unexampled course of addressing him, (when he and two fags went up to carry off his load of splendidly bound books,) and congratulating him on having gained every honor which Rugby could bestow, and having also already distinguished himself and done the highest credit to his school at the University. He had just gained a scholarship at Balliol, then, as now, the blue ribbon of undergraduates.

"At school, although before all things a student, he had thoroughly entered into the life of the place, and before he left had gained supreme influence with the boys. He was the leading contributor to the 'Rugby Magazine'; and though a weakness in his ankles prevented him from taking a prominent part in the games of the place, was known as the best goal-keeper on record, a reputation which no boy could have gained without promptness and courage. He was also one of the best swimmers in the school, his weakness of ankle being no drawback here, and in his last half passed the crucial test of that day, by swimming from Swift's (the bathing-place of the sixth) to the mill on the Leicester road, and back again, between callings over.

"He went to reside at Oxford when the whole University was in a ferment. The struggle of Alma Mater to humble or cast out the most remarkable of her sons was at its height. Ward had not yet been arraigned for his opinions, and was a fellow and tutor of Balliol, and Newman was in residence at Oriel, and incumbent of St. Mary's.

"Clough's was a mind which, under any circumstances, would have thrown itself into the deepest speculative thought of its time. He seems soon to have passed through the mere ecclesiastical debatings to the deep questions which lay below them. There was one lesson--probably one only--which he had never been able to learn from his great master, namely, to acknowledge that there are problems which intellectually are not to be solved by man, and before these to sit down quietly. Whether it were from the harass of thought on such matters which interfered with his regular work, or from one of those strange miscarriages in the most perfect of examining machines, which every now and then deprive the best men of the highest honors, to the surprise of every one Clough missed his first class. But he completely retrieved this academical mishap shortly afterwards by gaining an Oriel fellowship. In his new college, the college of Pusey, Newman, Keble, Marriott, Wilberforce, presided over by Dr. Hawkins, and in which the influence of Whately, Davidson, and Arnold had scarcely yet died out, he found himself in the very centre and eye of the battle. His own convictions were by this time leading him far away from both sides in the Oxford contest; he, however, accepted a tutorship at the college, and all who had the privilege of attending them will long remember his lectures on logic and ethics. His fault (besides a shy and reserved manner) was that he was much too long-suffering to youthful philosophic coxcombry, and would rather encourage it by his gentle 'Ah! you think so?' or, 'Yes, but might not such and such be the case?'"

Clough was at Oxford in 1847,--the year of the terrible Irish famine, and with others of the most earnest men at the University he took part in an association which had for its object "Retrenchment for the sake of the Irish." Such a society was little likely to be popular with the comfortable dignitaries or the luxurious youth of the University. Many objections, frivolous or serious as the case might be, were raised against so subversive a notion as that of the self-sacrifice of the rich for the sake of the poor. Disregarding all personal considerations, Clough printed a pamphlet entitled, "A Consideration of Objections against the Retrenchment Association," in which he met the careless or selfish arguments of those who set themselves against the efforts of the society. It was a characteristic performance. His heart was deeply stirred by the harsh contrast between the miseries of the Irish poor and the wasteful extravagance of living prevalent at Oxford. He wrote with vehement indignation against the selfish pleas of the indifferent and the thoughtless possessors of wealth, wasters of the goods given them as a trust for others. His words were chiefly addressed to the young men at the University,--and they were not without effect. Such views of the rights and duties of property as he put forward, of the claims of labor, and of the responsibilities of the aristocracy, had not been often heard at Oxford. He was called a Socialist and a Radical, but it mattered little to him by what name he was known to those whose consciences were not touched by his appeal. "Will you say," he writes toward the end of this pamphlet, "this is all rhetoric and declamation? There is, I dare say, something too much in that kind. What with criticizing style and correcting exercises, we college tutors perhaps may be likely, in the heat of composition, to lose sight of realities, and pass into the limbo of the factitious,--especially when the thing must be done at odd times, in any case, and, if at all, quickly. But if I have been obliged to write hurriedly, believe me, I have obliged myself to think not hastily. And believe me, too, though I have desired to succeed in putting vividly and forcibly that which vividly and forcibly I felt and saw, still the graces and splendors of composition were thoughts far less present to my mind than Irish poor men's miseries, English poor men's hardships, and your unthinking indifference. Shocking enough the first and the second, almost more shocking the third."

It was about this time that the most widely known of his works, "The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich, a Long-Vacation Pastoral," was written. It was published in 1848, and though it at once secured a circle of warm admirers, and the edition was very soon exhausted, it "is assuredly deserving of a far higher popularity than it has ever attained." The poem was reprinted in America, at Cambridge, in 1849, and it may be safely asserted that its merit was more deeply felt and more generously acknowledged by American than by English readers. The fact that its essential form and local coloring were purely and genuinely English, and thus gratified the curiosity felt in this country concerning the social habits and ways of life in the mother-land, while on the other hand its spirit was in sympathy with the most liberal and progressive thought of the age, may sufficiently account for its popularity here. But the lovers of poetry found delight in it, apart from these characteristics,--in its fresh descriptions of Nature, its healthy manliness of tone, its scholarly construction, its lively humor, its large thought quickened and deepened by the penetrating imagination of the poet.

"Any one who has read it will acknowledge that a tutorship at Oriel was not the place for the author. The intense love of freedom, the deep and hearty sympathy with the foremost thought of the time, the humorous dealing with old formulas and conventionalisms grown meaningless, which breathe in every line of the 'Bothie,' show this clearly enough. He would tell in after-life, with much enjoyment, how the dons of the University, who, hearing that he had something in the press, and knowing that his theological views were not wholly sound, were looking for a publication on the Articles, were astounded by the appearance of that fresh and frolicsome poem. Oxford (at least the Oriel common room) and he were becoming more estranged daily. How keenly he felt the estrangement, not from Oxford, but from old friends, about this time, can be read only in his own words." It is in such poems as the "Qua Cursum Ventus," or the sonnet beginning, "Well, well,--Heaven bless you all from day to day!" that it is to be read. These, with a few other fugitive pieces, were printed, in company with verses by a friend, as one part of a small volume entitled, "Ambarvalia," which never attained any general circulation, although containing some poems which will take their place among the best of English poetry of this generation.

"_Qua Cursum Ventus_.

"As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day,
Are scarce long leagues apart descried:

"When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,
And all the darkling hours they plied,
Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas
By each was cleaving side by side:

"E'en so----But why the tale reveal
Of those whom, year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel,
Astounded, soul from soul estranged?

"At dead of night their sails were filled,
And onward each rejoicing steered:
Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,
Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!

"To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
Through winds and tides one compass guides:
To that, and your own selves, be true!

"But, O blithe breeze! and O great seas!
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last!

"One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where'er they fare:
O bounding breeze! O rushing seas!
At last, at last, unite them there!"

"In 1848-49 the revolutionary crisis came on Europe, and Clough's sympathies drew him with great earnestness into the struggles which were going on. He was in Paris directly after the barricades, and in Rome during the siege, where he gained the friendship of Saffi and other leading Italian patriots." A part of his experiences and his thoughts while at Rome are interwoven with the story in his "Amours de Voyage," a poem which exhibits in extraordinary measure the subtilty and delicacy of his powers, and the fulness of his sympathy with the intellectual conditions of the time. It was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for 1858, and was at once established in the admiration of readers capable of appreciating its rare and refined excellence. The spirit of the poem is thoroughly characteristic of its author, and the speculative, analytic turn of his mind is represented in many passages of the letters of the imaginary hero. Had he been writing in his own name, he could not have uttered his inmost conviction more distinctly, or have given the clue to his intellectual life more openly than in the following verses:--

"I will look straight out, see things, not try to
evade them:
Fact shall be Fact for me; and the Truth the
Truth as ever,
Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform
and doubtful."

Or, again,--

"Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards,
opens all locks,
Is not _I will_, but _I must_. I must,--I must,
--and I do it."

And still again,--

"But for the steady fore-sense of a freer and
larger existence,
Think you that man could consent to be
circumscribed here into action?
But for assurance within of a limitless ocean
divine, o'er
Whose great tranquil depths unconscious
the wind-tost surface
Breaks into ripples of trouble that come and
change and endure not,--
But that in this, of a truth, we have our
being, and know it,
Think you we men could submit to live and
move as we do here?"

"To keep on doing right,--not to speculate only, but to act, not to think only, but to live,"--was, it has been said, characteristic of the leading men at Oxford during this period. "It was not so much a part of their teaching as a doctrine woven into their being." And while they thus exercised a moral not less than an intellectual influence over their contemporaries and their pupils, they themselves, according to their various tempers and circumstances, were led on into new paths of inquiry or of life. Some of them fell into the common temptations of an English University career, and lost the freshness of energy and the honesty of conviction which first inspired them; others, holding their places in the established order of things, were able by happy faculties of character to retain also the vigor and simplicity of their early purposes; while others again, among whom was Clough, finding the restraints of the University incompatible with independence, gave up their positions at Oxford to seek other places in which they could more freely search for the truth and express their own convictions.

It was not long after his return from Italy that he became Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London. He filled this place, which was not in all respects suited to him, until 1852. After resigning it, he took various projects into consideration, and at length determined to come to America with the intention of settling here, if circumstances should prove favorable. In November, 1852, he arrived in Boston. He at once established himself at Cambridge, proposing to give instruction to young men preparing for college, or to take on in more advanced studies those who had completed the collegiate course. He speedily won the friendship of those whose friendship was best worth having in Boston and its neighborhood. His thorough scholarship, the result of the best English training, and his intrinsic qualities caused his society to be sought and prized by the most cultivated and thoughtful men. He had nothing of insular narrowness, and none of the hereditary prejudices which too often interfere with the capacity of English travellers or residents among us to sympathize with and justly understand habits of life and of thought so different from those to which they have been accustomed. His liberal sentiments and his independence of thought harmonized with the new social conditions in which he found himself, and with the essential spirit of American life. The intellectual freedom and animation of this country were congenial to his disposition. From the beginning he took a large share in the interests of his new friends. He contributed several remarkable articles to the pages of the "North American Review" and of "Putnam's Magazine," and he undertook a work which was to occupy his scanty leisure for several years, the revision of the so-called Dryden's Translation of Plutarch's Lives. Although the work was undertaken simply as a revision, it turned out to involve little less labor than a complete new translation, and it was so accomplished that henceforth it must remain the standard version of this most popular of the ancient authors.

But all that made the presence of such a man a great gain to his new friends made his absence felt by his old ones as a great loss. In July, 1853, he received the announcement that a place had been obtained for him by their efforts in the Education Department of the Privy Council, and he was so strenuously urged to return to England, that, although unwilling to give up the prospect of a final settlement in America, he felt that it was best to go home for a time. Some months after his return he was married to the granddaughter of the late Mr. William Smith, M.P. for Norwich. He established himself in a house in London, and settled down to the hard routine-work of his office. In a private letter written not long after his return, he said,--"As for myself, whom you ask about, there is nothing to tell about me. I live on contentedly enough, but feel rather unwilling to be re-Englished, after once attaining that higher transatlantic development. However, _il faut s'y soumettre_, I presume,--though I fear I am embarked in the foundering ship. I hope to Heaven you'll get rid of slavery, and then I shouldn't fear but you would really 'go ahead' in the long run. As for us and our inveterate feudalism, it is not hopeful."

In another letter about this time, he wrote,--"I like America all the better for the comparison with England on my return. Certainly I think you are more right than I was willing to admit, about the position of the poorer classes here. Such is my first reimpression. However, it will wear off soon enough, I dare say; so you must make the most of my admissions."

Again, a little later, he wrote,--"I do truly hope that you will get the North erelong thoroughly united against any further encroachments. I don't by any means feel that the slave-system is an intolerable crime, nor do I think that our system here is so much better; but it is clear to me that the only safe ground to go upon is that of your Northern States. I suppose the rich-and-poor difficulties must be creeping in at New York, but one would fain hope that European analogies will not be quite accepted even there."

His letters were reflections of himself,--full of thought, fancy, and pleasant humor, as well as of affectionateness and true feeling. Their character is hardly to be given in extracts, but a few passages may serve to illustrate some of these qualities.

"Ambrose Philips, the Roman Catholic, who set up the new St. Bernard Monastery at Charnwood Forest, has taken to spirit-rappings. He avers, _inter alia_, that a Buddhist spirit in misery held communication with him through the table, and entreated his confessor, Father Lorraine, to say three masses for him. Pray, convey this to T---- for his warning. For, moreover, it remains uncertain whether Father Lorraine did say the masses; so that perhaps T----'s deceased co-religionist is still in the wrong place."

Some time after his return, he wrote,--"Really, I may say I am only just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young and hopeful and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into space; but I think you have, beyond all question, the happiest country going. Still, the political talk of America, as one hears it here, is not always true to the best intentions of the country, is it?"

Writing on a July day from his office in Whitehall, he says, after speaking of the heat of the weather,--"Time has often been compared to a river: if the Thames at London represent the stream of traditional wisdom, the comparison will indeed be of an ill odor; the accumulated wisdom of the past will be proved upon analogy to be as it were the collected sewage of the centuries; and the great problem, how to get rid of it."

In March, 1854, he wrote,--"People talk a good deal about that book of Whewell's on the Plurality of Worlds. I recommend Fields to pirate it. Have you seen it? It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, etc., are all pretty certainly uninhabitable,--being (Jupiter, Saturn, etc., to wit) strange washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks (or, in the case of Venus, salamanders) could exist. Hence we conclude we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and, what is more, quite Scriptural. Owen, on the other hand, I believe, and other scientific people, declare it a most presumptuous essay,-- conclusions audacious, and reasoning fallacious, though the facts are allowed; and in that opinion I, on the ground that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the inductive philosophy, incline to concur."

Of his work he wrote,--"Well, I go on in the office, _operose nihil agenda_, very _operose_, and very _nihil_ too. For lack of news, I send you a specimen of my labors."--"We are here going on much as usual, --occupied with nothing else but commerce and the money-market. I do not think any one is thinking audibly of anything else."--"I have read with more pleasure than anything else that I have read lately Kane's Arctic Explorations, i.e., his second voyage, which is certainly a wonderful story. The whole narrative is, I think, very characteristic of the differences between the English and the American-English habits of command and obedience."

In the autumn of 1857, after speaking of some of the features of the Sepoy revolt, he said,--"I don't believe Christianity can spread far in Asia, unless it will allow men more than one wife,--which isn't likely yet out of Utah. But I believe the old Brahmin 'Touch not and taste not, and I am holier than thou, because I don't touch and taste,' may be got rid of. As for Mahometanism, it is a crystallized monotheism, out of which no vegetation can come. I doubt its being good even for the Central negro."

March, 1859. "Excuse this letter all about my own concerns. I am pretty busy, and have time for little else: such is our fate after forty. My figure 40 stands nearly three months behind me on the roadway, unwept, unhonored, and unsung, an _octavum lustrum_ bound up and laid on the shelf. 'So-and-so is dead,' said a friend to Lord Melbourne of some author. 'Dear me, how glad I am! Now I can bind him up.'"

It was not until 1859 that the translation of Plutarch, begun six years before, was completed and published. It had involved much wearisome study, and gave proof of patient, exact, and elegant scholarship. Clough's life in the Council-Office was exceedingly laborious, and for several years his work was increased by services rendered to Miss Nightingale, a near relative of his wife. He employed "many hours, both before and after his professional duties were over, to aid her in those reforms of the military administration to which she has devoted the remaining energies of her overtasked life." For this work he was the better fitted from having acted, during a period of relief from his regular employment, as Secretary to a Military Commission appointed by Government shortly after the Crimean War to examine and report upon the military systems of some of the chief Continental nations. But at length his health gave way under the strain of continuous overwork. He had for a long time been delicate, and early in 1861 he was obliged to give up work, and was ordered to travel abroad. He went to Greece and Constantinople, and enjoyed greatly the charms of scenery and of association which he was so well fitted to appreciate. But the release from work had come too late. He returned to England in July, his health but little improved. In a letter written at that time he spoke of Lord Campbell's death, which had just occurred. "Lord Campbell's death is rather the characteristic death of the English political man. In the Cabinet, on the Bench, and at a dinner-party, busy, animated, and full of effort to-day, and in the early morning a vessel has burst. It is a wonder they last so long." But of himself he says, in words of striking contrast,--"My nervous energy is pretty nearly spent for to-day, so I must come to a stop. I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work." After a happy three weeks in England, he went abroad again, and spent some time with his friends the Tennysons in Auvergne and among the Pyrenees. In September he was joined by his wife in Paris, and thence went with her through Switzerland to Italy. He had scarcely reached Florence before he became alarmingly ill with symptoms of a low malaria fever. His exhausted constitution never rallied against its attack. He sank gradually away, and died on the 13th of November. "I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work." That hope is accomplished;--

"For sure in the wide heaven there is room
For love, and pity, and for helpful deeds."

He was buried in the little Protestant cemetery at Florence, a fit resting-place for a poet, the Protestant Santa Croce, where the tall cypresses rise over the graves, and the beautiful hills keep guard around.

"Every one who knew Clough even slightly," says one of his oldest friends, "received the strongest impression of the unusual breadth and massiveness of his mind. Singularly simple and genial, he was unfortunately cast upon a self-questioning age, which led him to worry himself with constantly testing the veracity of his own emotions. He has delineated in four lines the impression which his habitual reluctance to converse on the deeper themes of life made upon those of his friends who were attracted by his frank simplicity. In one of his shorter poems he writes,--

'I said, My heart is all too soft;
He who would climb and soar aloft
Must needs keep ever at his side
The tonic of a wholesome pride.'

That expresses the man in a very remarkable manner. He had a kind of proud simplicity about him singularly attractive, and often singularly disappointing to those who longed to know him well. He had a fear, which many would think morbid, of leaning much on the approbation of the world. And there is one remarkable passage in his poems in which he intimates that men who live on the good opinion of others might even be benefited by a crime which would rob them of that evil stimulant:--

'Why, so is good no longer good, but crime
Our truest, best advantage, since it lifts us
Out of the stifling gas of men's opinion
Into the vital atmosphere of Truth,
Where He again is visible, though in anger.'

"So eager was his craving for reality and perfect sincerity, so morbid his dislike even for the unreal conventional forms of life, that a mind quite unique in simplicity and truthfulness represents _itself_ in his poems as

'Seeking in vain, in all my store,
One feeling based on truth.'