Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

While I was thus amiably occupied in criticizing my fellow-guests, the Mayor had got up to propose another toast; and listening rather inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively towards Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port towards me, "it is your turn next"; and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he kindly added,--"It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best, if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably,--and, indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of his wordy wanderings find no end.

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I, in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse, any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the United States and highly complimentary to their distinguished representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band struck up "Hail Columbia," "Old Hundred," or "God save the Queen" over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, "Hear!" most vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and must, and should do to utter.

Well; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all. "It was handsomely done!" quoth Sergeant Wilkins; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under fire.

I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever, but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to meet it as I best might; for this was one of the necessities of an office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I was much embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a large one,--the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I had little or nothing to say; whereas, if I came to the scratch in perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible, it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and far-off as the clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the chief requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others, if he deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains on an object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it must be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception of truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him, when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may make it ten times as acceptable to the audience.

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This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord-Mayor's dinner at the Mansion-House in London. I should have preferred the annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good-fortune to witness it. Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular dinners, and gladly accepted it,--taking the precaution, nevertheless, though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence, and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion-House, at half-past six o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion-House was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed, however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity was a seat in the Lord-Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do, sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the early days of our country; so that the Lord-Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be hardly second to the prime-minister of the throne. The true great men of the city now appear to have aims beyond city-greatness, connecting themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the aristocracy of the country.

In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should have taken to be military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver epaulets; but they turned out to be officers of the Lord-Mayor's household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the places which they were respectively to occupy at the dinner-table. Our names (for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were announced; and ascending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door-way of the first reception-room, where, also, we had the advantage of a presentation to the Lady-Mayoress. As this distinguished couple retired into private life at the termination of their year of office, it is inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of respectable mediocrity into one of preëminent dignity within their own sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been correctly informed, the Lord-Mayor's salary is exactly double that of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expenditure.

There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide folding-doors; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I recollect none preëminently distinguished in either department. But it is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face to face, thus to bring them together, under genial auspices, in connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be the Lord-Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether, during his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to me that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society, however, I presume that the Lord-Mayor's card does not often seek out modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the bore, and doubtful about the honor.

One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other public or partially public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt, they were principally the wives and daughters of city-magnates; and if we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satirical poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its women and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain heterodox opinions which I had inbibed, in my Transatlantic newness and rawness, as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of English beauty. To state the entire truth, (being, at this period, some years old in English life,) my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness, (Heaven forbid that I should call it scrawniness!) a deficiency of physical development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice,--all which characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was sometimes driven to a half-acknowledgment, that the English ladies, looked at from a lower point of view, were perhaps a little finer animals than they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could really be said to have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in exchange for half a hundred-weight of human clay!

At a given signal we all found our way into an immense room, called the Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic, and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending the whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between them, occupying nearly its entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the Lord-Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing on the food,--a ceremony which the English never omit, at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider, I fear, not so much a religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish before the soup.

The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I partook of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim, always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its indigenous site; and the very fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the Lord-Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox customs which people follow for half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy, yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher's-meat, do not generally better estimate the æsthetic gormandism of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden him,--a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals, inspiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a to-morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case, a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner.

Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, sat a young lady in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because not only the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character, would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a picture-frame, or the covers of a romance: not that I had ever met with her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling in their honey-moon, and dining, among other distinguished strangers, at the Lord-Mayor's table.

After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the dessert; and at the point of the festival where finger-glasses are usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our napkins and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord-Mayor's table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar.

During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom, the origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's chair. When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enumerated the principal guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets, and plenty of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears,) ending in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord-Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"--giving a sort of sentimental twang to the two words,--"and sends it round among you!" And forthwith the loving-cup--several of them, indeed, on each side of the tables--came slowly down with all the antique ceremony.

The fashion of it is thus. The Lord-Mayor, standing up and taking the covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a draught, after which the third person goes through a similar manoeuvre with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find themselves inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I examined it critically, both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine. Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the company had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to their neighbors,--a degree of abstinence that might be accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or possibly by a disapprobation of the liquor. Being curious to know all about these important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup, and had no occasion for another,--ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened. It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink, and could never have been intended for any better purpose.

The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of table-eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of state, gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor was about to propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof, together with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast; then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in England.

The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much interrupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close proximity with three very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write it; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste, kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country, which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt safer or cozier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the dinner-table of the Lord-Mayor.

Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lordship got up and proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon "the literary and commercial"--I question whether those two adjectives were ever before married by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord--"the literary and commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," and then went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause, and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall.

All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord-Mayor's part, after beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct; and it seemed very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion-House wine, and go away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the matter to have been somewhat as follows.

All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that emotion,) which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong, are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North, at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the world, with themselves at the head, to combine for the purpose of putting us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so powerful, (and when one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate stalk tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad companions. At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man; and not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the world--our own country and France--that can put England into this singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when that prosperity is really threatened.

If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from the simple circumstance that their own Government had positively not an inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a justification for incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble, which the British ministers, with the politic generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government (for God had not denied us an administration of Statesmen then) had retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no pretence whatever for active resentment.

Now the Lord-Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly his Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and far-famed dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand result. Thus, when the Lord-Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his Lordship. He meant well by all parties,--himself, who would share the glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an heroic opportunity,--his own country, which would continue to get cotton and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with and wear.

As soon as the Lord-Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his office was held--at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or no--was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion.

Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to close the sketch, leaving myself still erect in so heroic an attitude.

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THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE.

I shall pass lightly over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not be supposed that the Permian and Triassic epochs were unimportant in the physical and organic history of Europe. A glance at any geological map of Europe will show the reader how the Belgian island stretched gradually in a southwesterly direction during the Permian epoch, approaching the coast of France by slowly increasing accumulations, and thus filling the Burgundian channel; a wide border of Permian deposits around the coal-field of Great Britain marks the increase of this region also during the same time, and a very extensive tract of a like character is to be seen in Russia. The latter is, however, still under doubt and discussion among geologists, and more recent investigations tend to show that this Russian region, supposed at first to be exclusively Permian, is at least in part Triassic.

With the coming in of the Triassic epoch began the great deposits of Red Sandstone, Muschel-Kalk, and Keuper, in Central Europe. They united the Belgian island to the region of the Vosges and the Black Forest, while they also filled to a great extent the channel between Belgium and the Bohemian island. Thus the land slowly gained upon the Triassic ocean, shutting it within ever-narrowing limits, and preparing the large inland seas so characteristic of the later Secondary times. The character of the organic world still retained a general resemblance to that of the Carboniferous epoch. Among Radiates, the Corals were more nearly allied to those of the earlier ages than to those of modern times, and Crinoids abounded still, though some of the higher Echinoderm types were already introduced. Among Mollusks, the lower Bivalves, that is, the Brachiopods and Bryozoa, still prevailed, while Ammonites continued to be very numerous, differing from the earlier ones chiefly in the ever-increasing complications of their inner partitions, which become so deeply involuted and cut upon their margins, before the type disappears, as to make an intricate tracery of very various patterns on the surface of these shells. The most conspicuous type of Articulates continues as before to be that of Crustacea; but Trilobites have finished their career, and the Lobster-like Crustacea make their appearance for the first time. It does not seem that the class of Insects has greatly increased since the Carboniferous epoch; and Worms are still as difficult to trace as ever, being chiefly known by the cases in which they sheltered themselves. Among Vertebrates, the Fishes still resemble those of the Carboniferous epoch, belonging principally to the Selachians and Ganoids. They have, however, approached somewhat toward a modern pattern, the lobes of the tail being more evenly cut, and their general outline more like that of common fishes. The gigantic marsh Reptiles have become far more numerous and various. They continue through several epochs, but may be said to reach their culminating point in the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits.

I cannot pass over the Triassic epoch without some allusion to the so-called bird-tracks, so generally believed to mark the introduction of Birds at this time. It is true that in the deposits of the Trias there have been found many traces of footsteps, indicating a vast number of animals which, except for these footprints, remain unknown to us. In the sandstone of the Connecticut Valley they are found in extraordinary numbers, as if these animals, whatever they were, had been in the habit of frequenting that shore. They appear to have been very diversified; for some of the tracks are very large, others quite small, while some would seem, from the way in which the footsteps follow each other, to have been quadrupedal, and others bipedal. We can even measure the length of their strides, following the impressions which, from their succession in a continuous line, mark the walk of a single animal.[10] The fact that we find these footprints without any bones or other remains to indicate the animals by which they were made is accounted for by the mode of deposition of the sandstone. It is very unfavorable for the preservation of bones; but, being composed of minute sand mixed with mud, it affords an admirable substance for the reception of these impressions, which have been thus cast in a mould, as it were, and preserved through ages. These animals must have been large, when full-grown, for we find strides measuring six feet between, evidently belonging to the same animal. In the quadrupedal tracks, the front feet seem to have been smaller than the hind ones. Some of the tracks show four toes all turned forward, while in others three toes are turned forward and one backward. It happened that the first tracks found belonged to the latter class; and they very naturally gave rise to the idea that these impressions were made by birds, on account of this formation of the foot. This, however, is a mere inference; and since the inductive method is the only true one in science, it seems to me that we should turn to the facts we have in our possession for the explanation of these mysterious footprints, rather than endeavor to supply by assumption those which we have not. As there are no bones found in connection with these tracks, the only way to arrive at their true character, in the present state of our knowledge, is by comparing them with bones found in other localities in the deposits of the same period in the world's history. Now there have never been found in the Trias any remains of Birds, while it contains innumerable bones of Reptiles; and therefore I think that it is in the latter class that we shall eventually find the solution of this mystery.

[Footnote 10: For all details respecting these tracks see Hitchcock's _Ichnology of New England_. Boston, 1858. 4to.]

It is true that the bones of the Triassic Reptiles are scattered and disconnected; no complete skeleton has yet been discovered, nor has any foot been found; so that no direct comparison can be made with the steps. It is, however, my belief, from all we know of the character of the Animal Kingdom in those days, that these animals were reptilian, but combined, like so many of the early types, characters of their own class with those of higher animals yet to come. It seems to me probable, that, in those tracks where one toe is turned backward, the impression is made not by a toe, but by a heel, or by a long sole projecting backward; for it is not pointed, like those of the front toes, but is blunt. It is true that there is a division of joints in the toes, which seems in favor of the idea that they were those of Birds; for when the three toes are turned forward, there are two joints on the inner one, three on the middle, and four on the outer one, as in Birds. But this feature is not peculiar to Birds; it is found in Turtles also. The correspondence of these footprints with each other leaves no doubt that they were all by one kind of animal; for both the bipedal and the quadrupedal tracks have the same character. The only quadrupedal animals now known to us which walk on two legs are the Kangaroos. They raise themselves on their hind legs, using the front ones to bring their food to their mouth. They leap with the hind legs, sometimes bringing down their front feet to steady themselves after the spring, and making use also of their tails, to balance the body after leaping. In these tracks we find traces of a tail between the feet. I do not bring this forward as any evidence that these animals were allied to Kangaroos, since I believe that nothing is more injurious in science than assumptions which do not rest on a broad basis of facts; but I wish only to show that these tracks recall other animals besides Birds, with which they have been universally associated. And seeing, as we do, that so many of the early types prophesy future forms, it seems not improbable that they may have belonged to animals which combined with reptilian characters some birdlike features, and also some features of the earliest and lowest group of Mammalia, the Marsupials. To sum up my opinion respecting these footmarks, I believe that they were made by animals of a prophetic type, belonging to the class of Reptiles, and exhibiting many synthetic characters.

The more closely we study past creations, the more impressive and significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the teeth of a Wealden Reptile, he pronounced them to be those of a Rhinoceros, so mammalian were they in their character. So, when Sommering first saw the remains of a Jurassic Pterodactyl, he pronounced them to be those of a Bird. These mistakes were not due to a superficial judgment in men who knew Nature so well, but to this prophetic character in the early types themselves, in which features were united never known to exist together in our days.

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The Jurassic epoch, next in succession, was a very important one in the history of Europe. It completed the junction of several of the larger islands, filling the channel between the central plateau of France and the Belgian island, as well as that between the former and the island of Bretagne, so that France was now a sort of crescent of land holding a Jurassic sea in its centre, Bretagne and Belgium forming the two horns. This Jurassic basin or inland sea united England and France, and it may not be amiss to say a word here of its subsequent transformations. During the long succession of Jurassic periods, the deposits of that epoch, chiefly limestone and clays, with here and there a bed of sand, were accumulated at its bottom. Upon these followed the chalk deposits of the Cretaceous epoch, until the basin was gradually filled, and partially, at least, turned to dry land. But at the close of the Cretaceous epoch a fissure was formed, allowing the entrance of the sea at the western end, so that the constant washing of the tides and storms wore away the lower, softer deposits, leaving the overhanging chalk cliffs unsupported. These latter, as their support were undermined, crumbled down, thus widening the channel gradually. This process must, of course, have gone on more rapidly at the western end, where the sea rushed on with most force, till the channel was worn through to the German Ocean on the other side, and the sea then began to act with like power at both ends of the channel. This explains its form, wider at the western end, narrower between Dover and Calais, and widening again at the eastern extremity. This ancient basin, extending from the centre of France into England, is rich in the remains of a number of successive epochs. Around its margin we find the Jurassic deposits, showing that there must have been some changes of level which raised the shores and prevented later accumulations from covering them, while in the centre the Jurassic deposits are concealed by those of the Cretaceous epoch above them, these being also partially hidden under the later Tertiary beds. Let us see, then, what this inland sea has to tell us of the organic world in the Jurassic epoch.

At that time the region where Lyme-Regis is now situated in modern England was an estuary on the shore of that ancient sea. About forty years ago a discovery of large and curious bones, belonging to some animal unknown to the scientific world, turned the attention of naturalists to this locality, and since then such a quantity and variety of such remains have been found in the neighborhood as to show that the Sharks, Whales, Porpoises, etc., of the present ocean are not more numerous and diversified than were the inhabitants of this old bay or inlet. Among these animals, the Ichthyosauri (Fish-Lizards) form one of the best-known and most prominent groups. They are chiefly found in the Lias, the lowest set of beds of the Jurassic deposits, and seem to have come in with the close of the Triassic epoch. It is greatly to be regretted that all that is known of the Triassic Reptiles antecedent to the Ichthyosauri still remains in the form of original papers, and is not yet embodied in text-books. They are quite as interesting, as curious, and as diversified as those of the Jurassic epoch, which are, however, much more extensively known, on account of the large collections of these animals belonging to the British Museum. It will be more easy to understand the structural relations of the latter, and their true position in the Animal Kingdom, when those which preceded them are better understood. One of the most remarkable and numerous of these Triassic Reptiles seems to have been an animal resembling, in the form of the head, and in the two articulating surfaces at the juncture of the head with the backbone, the Frogs and Salamanders, though its teeth are like those of a Crocodile. As yet nothing has been found of these animals except the head,--neither the backbone nor the limbs; so that little is known of their general structure.

The Ichthyosauri (Figure 1) must have been very large, seven or eight feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only in the eyes of birds of prey and in the bony fishes. The ribs begin at the neck and continue to the tail, and there is no distinction between head and neck, as in most Reptiles, but a continuous outline, as in Fishes. They had four limbs, not divided into fingers, but forming mere paddles. Yet fingers seem to be hinted at in these paddles, though not developed, for the bones are in parallel rows, as if to mark what might be such a division. The back-bones are short, but very high, and the surfaces of articulation are hollow, conical cavities, as in Fishes, instead of ball-and-socket joints, as in Reptiles. The ribs are more complicated than in Vertebrates generally: they consist of several pieces, and the breast-bone is formed of a number of bones, making together quite an intricate bony net-work. There is only one living animal, the Crocodile, characterized by this peculiar structure of the breast-bone. The Ichthyosaurus is, indeed, one of the most remarkable of the synthetic types: by the shape of its head one would associate it with the Porpoises, while by its paddles and its long tail it reminds one of the whole group of Cetaceans to which the Porpoises belong; by its crocodilian teeth, its ribs, and its breast-bone, it seems allied to Reptiles; and by its uniform neck, not distinguished from the body, and the structure of the backbone, it recalls the Fishes.