Chapter VI: Part 6

It was an eventful day, not only for science, but for the world, when a Siberian fisherman chanced to observe a singular mound lying near the mouth of the River Lena, where it empties into the Arctic Ocean. During the warmer summer-weather, he noticed, that, as the snow gradually melted, this mound assumed a more distinct and prominent outline, and at length, on one side of it, where the heat of the sun was greatest, a dark body became exposed, which, when completely uncovered, proved to be that of an immense elephant, in so perfect a state of preservation that the dogs and wolves were attracted to it as by the smell of fresh meat, and came to feed upon it at night. The man knew little of the value of his discovery, but the story went abroad, and an Englishman travelling in Russia, being curious to verify it, visited the spot, and actually found the remains where they had been reported to lie, on the frozen shore of the Arctic Sea,--strange burial-place enough for an animal never known to exist out of tropical climates. Little beside the skeleton was left, though parts of the skin remained covered with hair, showing how perfect must have been the condition of the body when first exposed. The tusks had been sold by the fisherman; but Mr. Adams succeeded in recovering them; and collecting all the bones except those of one foot, which had been carried off by the wolves, he had them removed to St. Petersburg, where the skeleton now stands in the Imperial Museum. The inhabitants of Siberia seem to be familiar with this animal, which they designate by the name of _Mammoth_, while naturalists call it _Elephas primigenius_. The circumstance that they abound in the frozen drift of the great northern plain of Asia, and are occasionally exposed in consequence of the wearing of the large rivers traversing Siberia, has led to the superstition among the Tongouses, that the Mammoths live under ground, and die whenever, on coming to the surface, the sunlight falls upon them.

Had this been the only creature of the kind found so far from the countries to which elephants are now exclusively confined, it might have been believed that some strange accident had brought it to the spot where it was buried. But it was not long before similar remains were found in various parts of Europe,--in Russia, in Germany, in Spain, and in Italy. The latter were readily accounted for by the theory that they must be the remains of the Carthaginian elephants brought over by the armies of Hannibal, while it was suggested that the others might have been swept from India by some great flood, and stranded where they were found. It was Cuvier, entitled by his intimate acquaintance with the anatomy of living animals to an authoritative opinion in such matters, who first dared to assert that these remains belonged to no elephant of our period. He rested this belief upon structural evidence, and insisted that an Indian elephant, brought upon the waves of a flood to Siberia, would be an Indian elephant still, while all these remains differed in structure from any species existing at present. This statement aroused research in every direction, and the number of fossil Mammalia found within the next few years, and proved by comparison to be different from any living species, soon demonstrated the truth of his conclusion.

Shortly after the discovery of fossil elephants had opened this new path of investigation, some curious bones were found by some workmen in the quarries of Montmartre, near Paris, and brought to Cuvier for examination. Although few in number, and affording but very scanty _data_ for such a decision, he at once pronounced them to be the remains of some extinct animal preceding the present geological age. Here, then, at his very door, as it were, was a settlement of that old creation in which he could pursue the inquiry, already become so important in its bearings. It was not long before other bones of the same kind were found, though nothing as yet approaching an entire skeleton. However, with such means as he had, Cuvier began a comparison with all the living Mammalia,--with the human skeleton first, with Monkeys, with the larger Carnivora and Ruminants, then with all the smaller Mammalia, then with the Pachyderms; and here, for the first time, he began to find some resemblance. He satisfied himself that the animal must have belonged to the family of Pachyderms; and he then proceeded to analyze and compare all the living species, till he had collected ample evidence to show that the bones in question did not correspond with any species, and could not even be referred to any genus, now in existence. At length there was discovered at Montmartre an upper jaw of the same animal,--next a lower jaw, matching the upper one, and presently a whole head with a few backbones was brought to light. These were enough, with Cuvier's vast knowledge of animal structure, to give him a key to the whole skeleton. At about the same time, in the same locality, were found other bones and teeth also, differing from those first discovered, and yet equally unlike those of any living animal. The first evidently belonged to some stout and heavy animal, the others were more slender and of lighter build. From these fragments, ample evidence to him of his results, he drew the outlines of two animals: one which he called the Palæotherium, (old animal,) a figure of which is given in the above wood-cut, and the other Anoplotherium, (animal without fangs). He presented these figures with an explanatory memoir at the Academy, and announced them as belonging to some creation preceding the present, since no such animals had ever existed in our own geological period. Such a statement was a revelation to the scientific world: some looked upon it with suspicion and distrust; others, who knew more of comparative anatomy, hailed it as introducing a new era in science; but it was not till complete specimens were actually found of animals corresponding perfectly to those figured and described by Cuvier, and proving beyond a doubt their actual existence in ancient times, that all united in wonder and admiration at the result obtained by him with such scanty means.

It would seem that the family of Pachyderms was largely represented among the early Mammalia; for, since Cuvier named these species, a number of closely allied forms have been found in deposits belonging to the same epoch. Of course, the complete specimens are rare; but the fragments of such skeletons occur in abundance, showing that these old-world Pachyderms, resembling the Tapirs more than any other living representatives of the family, were very numerous in the lower Tertiaries.

There is, however, one animal now in existence, forming one of those singular links before alluded to between the present and the past, of which I will say a few words here, though its relation is rather with a later group of Tertiary Pachyderms than with those described by Cuvier. On the coast of Florida there is an animal of very massive, clumsy build, long considered to be a Cetacean, but now recognized, by some naturalists at least, as belonging to the order of Pachyderms. In form it resembles the Cetaceans, though it has a fan-shaped tail, instead of the broad flapper of the Whales. It inhabits fresh waters or shoal waters, and is not so exclusively aquatic as the oceanic Cetaceans. Its most striking feature is the form of the lower jaw, which is bent downward, with the front teeth hanging from it. This animal is called the Manatee, or Sea-Cow. There are three species known to naturalists,--one in Tampa Bay, one in the Amazon, and one in Africa. In the Tertiary deposits of Germany there has been found an animal allied in some of its features to those described by Cuvier, but it has the crown of its teeth folded like the Tapir, while the lower jaw is turned down with a long tusk growing from it. This animal has been called the Dinotherium. A part of the head, showing the heavy jaws and the formidable tusk, is represented in the subjoined wood-cut.

Its hanging lower jaw, with the protruding tusk, corresponds perfectly to the formation of the lower jaw and teeth in the Manatee. Some resemblance of the Dinotherium to the Mastodon suggested a comparison with that animal as the next step in the investigation, when it was found that at the edge of the lower jaw of the latter there was a pit with a small projecting tooth, also corresponding exactly in its position to the tusk in the Dinotherium. The Elephant was now examined; and in him also a rudimentary tooth appeared in the lower jaw, not cut through, but placed in the same relation to the jaw and the other teeth as that of the Mastodon. It would seem, then, that the Manatee makes one in this series of Dinotherium, Mastodon, and Elephant, and represents the aquatic Pachyderms, occupying the same relation to the terrestrial Pachyderms as the Seals bear to the terrestrial Carnivora, and, like them, lowest in structure among their kind.

The announcement of Cuvier's results stimulated research, and from this time forward Tertiary Mammalia became the subject of extensive and most important investigations among naturalists. The attention of collectors once drawn to these remains, they were found in such numbers that the wonder was how they had been so long hidden from the observation of men. They remind us chiefly of tropical animals; indeed, Tigers, Hyenas, Rhinoceroses, Hippopotamuses, Mastodons, and Elephants had their home in countries which now belong to the Cold Temperate Zone, showing that the climate in these latitudes was much milder then than it is at present. Bones of many of these animals were found in caverns in Germany, France, Italy, and England. Perhaps the story of Kirkdale Cave, where the first important discovery of this kind was made on English soil, may not be so well known to American readers as to forbid its repetition here.

It was in the summer of 1821 that some workmen, employed in quarrying stone upon the slope of a limestone hill at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, came accidentally upon the mouth of a cavern. Overgrown with grass and bushes, the mouth of this cave in the hill-side had been effectually closed against all intruders, and it was not strange that its existence had never been suspected. The hole was small, but large enough to admit a man on his hands and knees; and the workmen, creeping in through the opening, found that it led into a cavern, broad in some parts, but low throughout. There were only a few spots where a man could stand upright; but it was quite extensive, with branches opening out from it, some of which have not yet been explored. The whole floor was strewn, from one end to the other, with hundreds of bones, like a huge dog-kennel. The workmen wondered a little at their discovery, but, remembering that there had been a murrain among the cattle in this region some years before, they came to the conclusion that these must be the bones of cattle that had died in great numbers at that time; and, having so settled the matter to their own satisfaction, they took little heed to the bones, but threw many of them out on the road with the common limestone. Fortunately, a gentleman, living in the neighborhood, whose attention had been attracted to them, preserved them from destruction; and a few months after the discovery of the cave, Dr. Buckland, the great English geologist, visited Kirkdale, to examine its strange contents, which proved indeed stranger than any one had imagined; for many of these remains belonged to animals never before found in England. The bones of Hyenas, Tigers, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, and Hippopotamuses were mingled with those of Deer, Bears, Wolves, Foxes, and many smaller creatures. The bones were gnawed, and many were broken, evidently not by natural decay, but seemed to have been snapped violently apart. After the most complete investigation of the circumstances, Dr. Buckland convinced himself, and proved to the satisfaction of all scientific men, that the cave had been a den of Hyenas[A] at a time when they, as well as Tigers, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc., existed in England in as great numbers as they now do in the wildest parts of tropical Asia or Africa. The narrow entrance to the cave still retained the marks of grease and hair, such as one may see on the bars of a cage in a menagerie against which the imprisoned animals have been in the habit of rubbing themselves constantly, and there were marks of the same kind on the floor and walls.

[Footnote A: Among the other facts showing that Kirkdale Cave had been the den of these animals, and not tenanted as their home by any of the other creatures whose remains occurred there, were the excrements of the Hyenas found in considerable quantity by Dr. Buckland, and identified as such by the keeper of a menagerie. Any one who may wish to read the whole history of Dr. Buckland's investigations of this matter, showing the patience and sagacity with which he collected and arranged the evidence, will find a full account of Kirkdale Cave and other caverns containing fossil bones in his "Reliquiæ Diluvianæ."]

It was evident that the Hyenas were the lords of this ancient cavern, and the other animals their unwilling guests; for the remains of the latter were those which had been most gnawed, broken, and mangled; and the head of an enormous Hyena, with gigantic fangs found complete, bore ample evidence to their great size and power. Some of the animals, such as the Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc., could not have been brought into the cave without being first killed and torn to pieces, for it is not large enough to admit them. But their gnawed and broken bones attest, nevertheless, that they were devoured like the rest; and probably the Hyenas then had the same propensity which characterizes those of our own time, to tear in pieces the body of any dead animal, and carry it to their den to feed upon it apart.

While Kirkdale Cave was evidently the haunt of Hyenas chiefly, other caverns in Germany and France were tenanted in a similar manner by a gigantic species of Bear. Their remains, mingled with those of the animals on which they fed, have been found in great numbers in the Cavern of Gailenreuth, in Franconia. The subjoined wood-cut shows the head of this formidable beast, which must have exceeded in size any Bear now living. Indeed, although there were many smaller kinds, and the other types of the Animal Kingdom in the Tertiaries seem to approach very nearly both in size and general character their modern representatives, yet, on the whole, the earlier Mammalia were giants in comparison with those now living. The Mastodon and Mammoth, as compared with the modern Elephant, the Megatherium, as compared with the Sloths of present times, the Hyenas and Bears of the European caverns, and the fossil Elk of Ireland, by the side of which even the Moose of our Northern woods is belittled, are remarkable instances in proof of this. One cannot but be struck with the fact that this first representation of Mammalia, the very impersonation of brute force in power, size, and ferocity, immediately preceded the introduction of man, with whose creation intelligence and moral strength became the dominant influences on earth.

Among these huge Tertiary Mammalia, one of those most common on the North-American continent seems to have been the Mastodon. The magnificent specimens preserved in this country are too well known to require description. The remains of the Rhinoceros occur also in the recent Tertiary deposits of North America, though as yet no perfect skeletons have been found. The Edentata, now confined to South America and the western coast of Africa, were also numerous in the Southern States during that time; their remains have been found as far north as the Salt Lick in Kentucky. But we must not judge of the Tertiary Edentata by any now known to us. The Sloths, the Armadillos, the Ant-Eaters, the Pangolins, are all animals of rather small size; but formerly they were represented by the gigantic Megatherium, the Megalonyx, and the Mylodon, some of which were larger than the Elephant, and others about the same size of the Rhinoceros or Hippopotamus. The subjoined wood-cut represents a Mylodon in the act of lifting himself against the trunk of a tree.

They were clumsy brutes, and though their limbs were evidently built with reference to powerful movements, perhaps climbing, or at least rising on their hind quarters, the act of climbing with them cannot have had anything of the nimbleness or activity generally associated with it. On the contrary, they probably were barely able to support their huge bodies on their hind limbs, which are exceedingly massive, and on the stiff, heavy tail, while they dragged down with their front limbs the branches of the trees, and fed upon them at leisure. The Zoölogical Museum at Cambridge is indebted to the generosity of Mr. Joshua Bates for a very fine set of casts taken from the Megatherium in the British Museum. They are now mounted, and may be seen in one of the exhibition-rooms of the building. Large Reptiles, but very unlike those of the Cretaceous and Jurassic epochs, belonging chiefly to the types of Turtles, Crocodiles, Pythons, and Salamanders, existed during the Tertiary epochs. The wood-cut below represents a gigantic Salamander of the Tertiary deposits. It is a curious fact, illustrative of the ignorance of all anatomical science in those days, that, when the remains of this reptile (Audrias, as it is now called) were first discovered toward the close of the seventeenth century, they were described by old Professor Scheuchzer as the bones of an infant destroyed by the Deluge, and were actually preserved, not for their scientific value, but as precious relics of the Flood, and described in a separate pamphlet, entitled, "Homo Diluvii Testis." Among the Tertiary Reptiles the Turtles seem to have been a very prominent type, by their size as well as by their extensive distribution. Their remains have been found both in the far West and in the East. The fossil Turtles of Nebraska are well known to American naturalists; but the Oriental one exceeds them in size, and is, indeed, the most gigantic representative of the order known thus far. A man could stand under the arch of the shield of the old Himalayan Turtle preserved in the British Museum.

It would carry me too far, were I to attempt to give anything more than the most cursory sketch of the animals of the Tertiary age; and, indeed, they are so well known, and have been so fully represented in text-books, that I fear some of my readers may think even now that I have dwelt too long upon them. Monkeys were unquestionably introduced upon earth before the close of the Tertiaries; some bones have been found in Southern France, and also on Mount Pentelicus in Greece, in the later Tertiary deposits; but these remains have not yet been collected in sufficient number to establish much more than the fact of their presence in the animal creation at that time. I do not offer any opinion respecting the fossil human bones so much discussed recently, because the evidence is at present too scanty to admit of any decisive judgment concerning them. It becomes, however, daily more probable that facts will force us sooner or later to admit that the creation of man lies far beyond any period yet assigned to it, and that a succession of human races, as of animals, have followed one another upon the earth. It may be the inestimable privilege of our young naturalists to solve this great problem, but the older men of our generation must be content to renounce this hope; we may have some prophetic vision of its fulfilment, we may look from afar into the land of promise, but we shall not enter in and possess it.

The other great types of the Animal Kingdom are very fully represented in the Tertiaries, and in their general appearance they approach much more closely those of the present creation than of any previous epochs. Professor Heer has collected and described the Tertiary Insects in great number and variety; and the Butterflies, Bugs, Flies, Grasshoppers, Dragon-Flies, Beetles, etc., described in his volumes, would hardly be distinguished from our own, except by a practised entomologist. Among Crustacea, the Shrimp-like forms of the earlier geological epochs have become much less conspicuous, while Crabs and Lobsters are now the prominent representatives of the class. Among Mollusks, the Chambered Shells, hitherto so numerous, have become, as they now are, very few in comparison with the naked Cephalopods. The Nautili, however, resemble those now living in the Pacific Ocean; and some fragments of the Paper-Nautilus have been found, showing that this delicate shell was already in existence. There is one very peculiar type of this class, belonging to the Tertiaries, which should not be passed by unnoticed. It partakes of the character both of the Cretaceous Belemnites and of the living Cuttle-Fish, and is known as the Spirulirostra. Another very characteristic group among the Tertiary Shells is that of the Nummulites, formerly placed by naturalists in immediate proximity with the Ammonites, on account of their internal partitions. This is now admitted to have been an error; their position is not yet fully determined, but they certainly stand very low in the scale, and have no affinity whatever with the Cephalopods. The subjoined wood-cut represents one of these Shells, so numerous in the Tertiaries that large masses of rock consist of their remains. The Univalve Shells or Gasteropods of the Tertiaries embraced all the families now living, including land and fresh-water Shells as well as the marine representatives of the type. Some of the latter, as, for instance, the Cerithium, are accumulated in vast numbers. The limestone quarries out of which Paris is chiefly built consist wholly of these Shells. The fresh-water basins were filled with Helices, one of which is represented in the following wood-cut, with Planorbis, Limnæus and other Shells resembling those now so common in all our lakes and rivers, and differing from the living ones only by slight specific characters. The Bivalves also have the same resemblance to the present ones, including fresh-water Mussels as well as the marine Clams and Oysters. Among Radiates, the higher Echini (Sea-Urchins) have become numerous, while the other Echinoderms of all families abound. Corals include, for the first time, the more highly organized Madrepores.

In the Tertiaries we see the dawn of the present condition of things, not only in the character of the animals and plants, but in the height of the mountains and in the distribution of land and sea.

Let us give a glance at the continents whose growth we have been following, and see what these more recent geological epochs have done for their completion. In Europe they have filled the basin in Central France, and converted all that region into dry land: they have filled also the channel between France and Spain; they have united Central Russia with the rest of Europe by the completion of Poland, and have greatly enlarged Austria and Turkey; they have completed the promontories of Italy and Greece, and have converted the inland sea at the foot of the Jura into the plain of Switzerland. But this fruitful period in the progress of the world, when the character of organic life was higher and the physical features of the earth more varied than ever before, was not without its storms and convulsions. The Pyrenees, the Apennines, the Alps, and with them the whole range of the Caucasus and Himalayas, were raised either immediately after the Cretaceous epoch, or in the course of the Tertiaries. Indeed, with this most significant passage in her history, Europe acquired all her essential characters. There remained, it is true, much to be done in what is called by geologists "modern times." The work of the artist is not yet finished when his statue is blocked out and the grand outline of his conception stands complete; and there still remained, after the earth was rescued from the water, after her framework of mountains was erected, after her soil was clothed with field and forest, processes by which her valleys were to be made more fruitful, her gulfs to be filled with the rich detritus poured into them by the rivers, her whole surface to be rendered more habitable for the higher races who were to possess it.

We left America at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. A glance at the geological map will show the reader that during the Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic epochs little was added to the United States, though here and there deposits belonging to each of them crop out. In the Cretaceous epoch, however, large tracts of land were accumulated, chiefly in the South and West; and during the Tertiaries the continent was very nearly completed, leaving only a narrow gulf running up to the neighborhood of St. Louis to be filled by modern detritus, and the peninsula of Florida to be built by the industrious Coral-Workers of our own period. The age of the Alleghany chain is not yet positively determined, but it was probably raised at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. Up to that time, only the Laurentian Hills, the northern side of that mountainous triangle which now makes the skeleton, as it were, of the United States, existed. The upheaval of the Alleghanies added its eastern side, raising the central part of the continent so as to form a long slope from the base of the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean; but it was not until the Tertiary Age that the upheaval of the great chain at the West completed the triangle, and transformed that wide westerly slope into the Mississippi Valley, bounded on one side by the Alleghanies, and on the other by the Rocky Mountains.

It is my belief, founded upon the tropical character of the Fauna, that a much milder climate then prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere than is now known to it. Some naturalists have supposed that the presence of the tropical Mammalia in the Northern Temperate Zone might be otherwise accounted for,--that they might have been endowed with warmer covering, with thicker hair or fur. But I think the simpler and more natural reason for their existence throughout the North is to be found in the difference of climate; and I am the more inclined to this opinion because the Tertiary animals generally, the Fishes, Shells, etc., in the same regions, are more closely allied in character to those now living in the Tropics than to those of the Temperate Zones. The Tertiary age may be called the geological summer; we shall see, hereafter, how abruptly it was brought to a close.

One word more as to the relation of the Tertiary Mammalia to the creation which preceded them. I can only repeat here the argument used before: the huge quadrupeds characteristic of these epochs make their appearance suddenly, and the deposits containing them follow as immediately upon those of the Cretaceous epoch, in which no trace of them occurs, as do those of the Cretaceous upon those of the Jurassic epoch. I would remind the reader that in the central basin of France, in which Cuvier found his first Palæotherium, and which afterwards proved to have been thickly settled by the early Mammalia, the deposits of the Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary epochs follow each other in immediate, direct, uninterrupted succession; that the same is true of other localities, in Germany, in Southern Europe, in England, where the most complete collections have been made from all these deposits; and there has never been brought to light a single fact leading us to suppose that any intermediate forms have ever existed through which more recent types have been developed out of older ones. For thirty years Geology has been gradually establishing, by evidence the fulness and accuracy of which are truly amazing, the regularity in the sequence of the geological formations, and distinguishing, with ever-increasing precision, the specific differences of the animals and plants contained in these accumulations of past ages. These results bear living testimony to the wonderful progress of the kindred sciences of Geology and Palæontology in the last half-century; and the development-theory has but an insecure foundation so long as it attempts to strengthen itself by belittling the geological record, the assumed imperfection of which, in default of positive facts, has now become the favorite argument of its upholders.

THE NEW SANGREAL.

"Show me the Sangreal, Lord! Show me Thy blood!
Thy body and Thy blood! Give me the Quest!
Lord, I am faint and tired; my soul is sick
Of all the falseness, all the little aims,
The weary vanities, the gasping joys,
The slow procession of this satiate world!
Dear Lord, I burn for Thee! Give me Thy Quest!
Down through the old reverberating time,
I see Thy knights in wonderful array
Go out to victory, like the solemn stars
Fighting in courses, with their conquering swords,
Their sad, fixed lips of purity and strength,
Their living glory, their majestic death.
Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

He lay upon a mountain's rocky crest,
So high, that all the glittering, misty world,
All summer's splendid tempests, lay below,
And sudden lightnings quivered at his feet;
So still, not any sound of silentness
Expressed the silence, nor the pallid sun
Burned on his eyelids; all alone and still,
Save for the prayer that struggled from his lips,
Broken with eager stress. Then he arose.
But always, down the hoary mountain-side,
Through whispering forests, by soft-rippled streams,
In clattering streets, or the great city's roar,
Still from his never sated soul went up,
"Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

Through all the land there poured a trumpet's clang,
And when its silvery anger smote the air,
Men sprang to arms from every true man's home,
And followed to the field. He followed, too,--
All the mad blood of manhood in his veins,
All the fierce instincts of a warring race
Kindled like flame in every tingling limb,
And raging in his soul on fire with war.
He heard a thousand voices call him on:
Lips hot with anguish, shrieking their despair
From swamps and forests and the still bayous
That hide the wanderer, nor bewray his lair:
From fields and marshes where the tropic sun
Scorches a million laborers scourged to work;
From homes that are not homes; from mother-hearts
Torn from the infants lingering at their breasts;
From parted lovers, and from shuddering wives;
From men grown mad with whips and tyranny;
From all a country groaning in its chains.
Nor sleep, nor dream beguiled him any more;
He leaped to manhood in one torrid hour,
And armed, and sped to battle. Now no more
He cried or prayed,--"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

So in the front of deadly strife he stood;
The glorious thunder of the roaring guns,
The restless hurricane of screaming shells,
The quick, sharp singing of the rifle-balls,
The sudden clash of sabres, and the beat
Of rapid horse-hoofs galloping at charge,
Made a great chorus to his valorous soul,
The dreadful music of a grappling world,
That hurried him to fight. He turned the tide,
But fell upon its turning. Over him
Fluttered the starry flag, and fluttered on,
While he lay helpless on the trampled sward,
His hot life running scarlet from its source,
And all his soul in sudden quiet spent,
As still as on the silent mountain-top;
So still that from his quick-remembering heart
Burst that old cry,--"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

Then a bright mist descended over him,
And in its central glory stood a shape,
Wounded, yet smiling. With His bleeding hands
Stretched toward that bleeding side, His eyes divine
Like a new dawn, thus softly spake the Lord:--
"The blood poured out for brothers is my blood;
The flesh for brothers broken is my flesh;
No more in golden chalices I dwell,
No longer in a vision, angel-borne:
Here is the Sangreal, here the Holy Quest.
Thy prayer is heard, thy soul is satisfied:
Come, my belovèd! I am come for thee.
As first I broke the bread and poured the wine,
So have I broken thee and poured thy life,
So do I bless thee and give thanks for thee,
So do I bear thee in my wounded hands."
Smiling, He stooped, and kissed the tortured brow,
And over all its anguish stole a smile;
The blood-sealed lips unclosed; the dying breath
Sighed, like the rain-sound in a summer wind,
Sobbing, but sweet,--"I see the Sangreal, Lord!"

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

In the notice of so memorable a man, even the briefest prelusive flourish seems uncalled for; and so indeed it would be, if by such means it were meant simply to justify the undertaking. In regard to any of the great powers in literature there exists already a prevailing interest, which cannot be presumed to slumber for one moment in any thinking mind.[A] By way of notification, there is no need of prelude. Yet there are occasions, as, for example, the entrances of kings, which absolutely demand the inaugural flourish of arms,--which, like the rosy flood of dawn, require to be ushered in by a train of twilight glories. And there are lives which proceed as by the movements of music,--which, must therefore be heralded by overtures: majestic steppings, heard in the background, compel us, through mere sympathy with their pomp of procession, to sound the note of preparation.

[Footnote A: "_In any thinking mind_." Yet it must be confessed that there _does_ exist a woful ignorance or negligence concerning De Quincey in quarters from which better things might be expected. Misappreciation it cannot be called, where no trouble has been taken to estimate claims that needed only to be weighed to be truly valued. Up to this time, there has never been published in England a single essay on the life or the genius of De Quincey that indicated even a good acquaintance, on the part of the writer, with that author's works; and in such a case, of course, not much could be looked for in the way of just interpretation. Gilfillan did him gross injustice: indeed, from what he condescended to say of the man, it would be difficult to conjecture that a greater than Gilfillan was there. And, will the reader believe it? in Professor Craik's "English Literature"--a work of great excellence--the name of De Quincey is not mentioned! "Sam Johnson," says Craik, "was the last king that sat upon the throne of English prose literature." Let it be that Sam was a proper king; yet it is just as true that De Quincey was legitimately his successor. First, in the matter of time: Sam died in 1784, and De Quincey was born in 1785, just in time to continue the regal line. What was it, again, that entitled Johnson to kingly honors? Was it learning? De Quincey was as erudite. Was it his style? There is no writer in the language who in that matter may look down on De Quincey.

If there ever was a writer "damned with faint praise," it was De Quincey. Some stupid writer for the London "Athenæum," for instance, dared to compliment the poor "opium-chewer" after the following style:--"He possessed taste, but _he lacked creative energy_; and his subtle and highly refined intellect was ingenious and acute rather than powerful." This reminds me of a criticism once passed upon Shakspeare by a mere pedagogue, to the effect that the great poet had considerable genius, but very little taste!]

Else I should plunge _in medias res_ upon a sketch of De Quincey's life; were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which, implicitly, gods are invited. The reader will assuredly unite with me in all such courtesies,--

"Neu desint epulis rosæ";

particularly as the shade we deal with can be evoked only by peculiar incantations,--only the heralding of certain precise claims will this monarch listen to as the just _inferiæ_, the fitting sacrifice or hecatomb of our homage.

The key-note of preparation, the claim which preëminently should be set forth in advance, is this: that De Quincey was the prince of hierophants, or of pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart, sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the shock of quaking anguish, down to earth. As it was the function of the hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey's to reveal in open light the everlasting symbols, universally intelligible when once disclosed, which are folded in the involutions of dreams and of those meditations which most resemble dreams; and as to the manner of these revelations, no Roman _pontifex maximus_, were it even Cæsar himself, could have rivalled their magisterial pomp.

The peculiarities of his life all point in the direction here indicated. It was his remarkable experience which furnished him the key to certain secret recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. Along that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and with privileged eye and ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically inscribed meanings did he--this Champollion, defying all human enigmas, this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms and yawning abysses of human astronomy--resolve into orderly constellations, that, once and for all, through his telescopic interpretation and enlargement, were rendered distinct and commensurable amongst men. The conditions of his power in this respect are psychologically inseparable from the remarkable conditions of his life, two of which are especially to be noticed. First, a ruling disposition towards meditation, constituting him, in the highest sense of the word, a poet. Secondly, the peculiar qualities which this singular mental constitution derived from his use of opium,--qualities which, although they did not increase, or even give direction to his meditative power, at least magnified it, both optically, as to its visual capacity, and creatively, as to its constructive faculty. These two conditions, each concurrent with the other in its ruling influence, impart to his life a degree of psychological interest which belongs to no other on record. Nor is this all. The reader knows how often a secondary interest will attach to the mightiest of conquerors or to the wisest of sovereigns, who is not merely in himself, and through his own deeds, magnificent, but whose glory is many times repeated and piled up by numerous reverberations of itself from a contemporary race of Titans. Thus, doubtless, Charles V., although himself King of Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and a portion of Italy, gloried in the sublime empery of the Turkish Solyman, as by some subtile connection of fate sympathetic with his own. A secondary interest of this nature belongs to the life of De Quincey,--a life which inclosed, as an island, a whole period of English literature, one, too, which in activity and originality is unsurpassed by any other, including the names of Scott and Dickens, of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey, of Moore, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. His connection with very many of these was not simply that of coëxistence, but also of familiar intercourse.

Between De Quincey's life and his writings it is impossible that there should be any distraction of interest, so intimately are the two interwoven: in this case more so than in that of any known author. Particularly is this true of his more impassioned writings, which are a faithful rescript of his all-impassioned life. Hierophant we have called him,--the prince of hierophants,--having reference to the matter of his revelations; but in his _manner_, in his style of composition, he is something more than this: here he stands the _monarch_ amongst rhapsodists. In these writings are displayed the main peculiarities of his life and genius.

But, besides these, there is a large section of his works, the aim of which is purely intellectual, where feeling is not at all involved; and surely there is not, in either ancient or modern literature, a section which, in the same amount of space, exhibits the same degree of intense activity on the part of the analytic understanding, applied to the illustration of truth or to the solution of vexed problems. This latter class is the more remarkable from its polar antithesis to the former; just as, in his life, it is a most remarkable characteristic of the man, that, rising above all other men through the rhapsodies of dreams, he should yet be able truly to say of himself that he had devoted a greater number of hours to intellectual pursuits than any other man whom he had seen, heard of, or read of. A wider range is thus exhibited, not of thought merely, but also of the possible modes of expressing thought, than is elsewhere to be found, even in writers the most skilled in rhetorical subtilty. The distance between these two opposites De Quincey does not traverse by violent leaps; he does not by some feat of legerdemain evanish from the fields of impassioned eloquence, where he is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in those of intellectual gymnastics, where, at least, he is not surpassed. He is familiar with every one of the intervening stages between the rhapsody and the demonstration,--between the loftiest reach of aspirant passion, from which, with reptile instinct, the understanding slinks downwards to the earth, and that fierce antagonism of naked thoughts, where the crested serpent "mounts and burns." His alchemy is infinite, combining light with warmth in all degrees,--in pathos, in humor,[A] in genial illumination. Let the reader, if he can, imagine Rousseau to have written "Dinner, Real and Reputed," or the paper on "The Essenes," in both of which great erudition is necessary, but in which erudition is as nothing when compared to the faculty of recombining into novel forms what previously had been so grouped as to be misunderstood, or had lacked just the one element necessary for introducing order. To have written these would have entitled Rousseau to a separate sceptre. Or, moving into a realm of art totally distinct from this, suppose him to have been the author of "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts": that would mount a new plume in Rousseau's hat. But I happen just now to be reminded of another little paper, numbering about six pages, entitled, "On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth": give him _that_, too. Why, the little French king is beginning to assume an imperial consequence! We beg the reader's pardon for indulging in comparisons of this nature, which are always disagreeable; but we have this excuse, that the two writers are often mentioned as on the same level, and with no appreciation of that unlimited range of power which belongs to De Quincey, but not at all to Rousseau. All but one of the trophies which we have hypothetically transferred to the Frenchman adorn a single volume out of twenty-two, in the Boston edition. Nor is this one imperial column adorned by these alone: there are, besides,--alas for Rousseau!--two other _spolia opima_ by which the French master is, in his own field, proved not the first, nor even the second,--_proximus, sed non secundus_,--so wide is the distance between De Quincey and _any_ other antagonist. These two are the essays respectively entitled, "Joan of Arc," and "The English Mail-Coach."

[Footnote A: Of De Quincey's humor, a friend once remarked to me, that it always reminded him of an elephant attempting to dance. Now, without any doubt, an elephant could dance after an elephantine fashion; but surely you would never catch him going through the movements of a jig or a Virginia "breakdown." He never lets you forget that he is an elephant. So with De Quincey. Levity is an element farthest removed from _his_ humor; in fact, whenever he allows himself to indulge in humor at all, you may be sure that murder is going on somewhere in the vicinity, a tragedy of pretty frequent occurrence in De Quincey's works.

There was sufficient humor in De Quincey to have endowed a dozen Aristophaneses. There was something, too, in its order, by which it resembled the gigantesque features of the old Greek master. I will illustrate my meaning by a single instance from each. In Aristophanes's "Clouds," Strepsiades is being initiated into the Socratic _Phrontisterium_, and in the course of the ceremony Socrates directs his pupil's attention to the moon for certain mysterious purposes. But the moon only reminds Strepsy of numerous imperturbable duns that storm about his ears with lunar exactness, (literally so, since the Greeks paid, or refused to pay, regularly on the last day of the month,)--and here it is that the opportunity is offered for a monstrous stroke of humor; for, at this crisis, Strepsy is made to exclaim, "Some magic is it, O Socrates, about the moon? Well! since you are up to that sort of thing, what do you say, now, to a spell by which I could snap the old monster out of her course for a generation or so?" Now for the parallel case from De Quincey. It is from his paper on "California," a politico-economical treatise. The author's object is to illustrate the fact that scarcity of gold is not due to its non-existence, but to the difficulty of obtaining it. "Emeralds and sapphires," says he, "are lying at this moment in a place which I could indicate, and no policeman is on duty in the whole neighborhood to hinder me or the reader from pocketing as many as we please. We are also at perfect liberty to pocket the anchors of Her Majesty's ship the Victoria, (one hundred and twenty guns,) and to sell them for old iron. Pocket them by all means, and I engage that the magistrate sitting at the Thames police-office will have too much respect for your powers to think of detaining you. If he does, your course is to pocket the police-office, and all which it inherits. The man that pockets an anchor may be a dangerous customer, but not a customer to be sneezed at." This strikes us as very similar to Strepsiades's bagging the moon.]

It is impossible to be exhaustive upon such a subject as that which I have undertaken. I shall select, therefore, two prominent centres, about which the thoughts which I wish to present naturally revolve: De Quincey's childhood, and his opium-experiences.

Thomas de Quincey--hierophant, rhapsodist, philosopher--was born at Greenhay, then a suburb of Manchester, in Lancashire County, England, on the 15th of August, 1785. According to his own account, the family of the De Quinceys was of Norwegian origin; and after its transfer to France, in connection with William the Norman, it received its territorial appellation from the village of Quincy, in Normandy. Thence, at the time of the Norman Invasion, it was transplanted to England, where, as afterwards in Scotland, it rose to the highest position, not merely in connection with a lordly title and princely estates, but chiefly on account of valuable services rendered to the State, and conferring preeminence in baronial privilege and consideration.

So sensitive was De Quincey, even at the early age of fifteen, on the point of his descent, lest from his name he might be supposed of French extraction, that, even into the ears of George III. (that king having, in an accidental interview with him at Frogmore, suggested the possibility of his family having come to England at the time of the Huguenot exodus from France) he ventured to breathe the most earnest protest against any supposition of that nature, and boldly insisted upon his purely Norman blood,--blood that in the baronial wars had helped to establish the earliest basis of English constitutional liberty, and that had flowed from knightly veins in the wars of the Crusades. Robert De Quincey came into England with William the Conqueror, uniting with whose fortunes, he fared after the Conquest as a feudal baron, founding the line of Winchester; and that he was a baron of the first water is evident from the statement of Gerard Leigh,--that his armorial device was inscribed (and how inscribed, if not memorially and as a mark of eminent distinction?) on the stained glass in the old church of St. Paul's.

And here it is proper that the reader's attention should be momentarily diverted to the American branch of this family, at the head of which stands the Hon. Josiah Quincy, (the aristocratic _De_ being omitted,)--a branch which fled from England in the early part of the seventeenth century, to avoid a strife which had then become too intense and fiery to admit of reconciliation, and which, indeed, a few years after their withdrawal, culminated in civil war. As illustrating the inevitableness of any great moral issue, no matter how vast the distance which at a critical moment we may put between it and ourselves,--as indicating how surely the Nemesis, seemingly avoided, but really only postponed, will continue to track our flying footsteps, even across the barren wastes of ocean, that ought, if anything could, to interpose an effectual barrier between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with us in our fancied retreat, will precipitate upon our devoted heads its accumulated violence,--as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread alternative,--it is interesting to note how this same family, separated by over seven generations from one political revolution, the momentous crisis of which was by them successfully evaded, are now, after an interval of unsound and hollow peace, compelled to witness the precise reiteration of that storm, in the very land to which they fled for refuge,--a reiteration that repeats, only on a different stage, and under an aggravation of horror as to minute details, not merely two antagonistic races corresponding on either side to those which met in battle on Marston Moor, but also interests far outweighing any that could possibly attach to a conflict between royalty and democracy.