Chapter XII (4)

People in general imagine, if they think at all about the matter, that an impression upon the nerves--a blow, for example, or the prick of a pin--is felt the moment it is inflicted. But this is not the case. The nerves are not the repositories of sensation; they are but the conductors of the motion which produces sensation. The seat of sensation is the brain, and to it the intelligence of any injury done to the nerves has to be transmitted, before that injury becomes manifest in consciousness. The transmission, moreover, requires _time_, and the consequence is, that a wound inflicted at a portion of the body distant from the brain is more tardily appreciated than one inflicted adjacent to the brain. By an extremely ingenious experimental arrangement, Helmholtz has determined the velocity of nervous transmission both in warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. In a frog, he found the velocity to be about eighty feet a second, or less than one-thirteenth of the velocity of sound in air. If this holds good, which it probably does, in the case of a whale, then a creature of this class, eighty feet long, if wounded in the tail, would not, as Helmholtz has remarked, be conscious of the injury till a second after the wound had been inflicted. But this is not the only ingredient in the delay that occurs between the impression on {834} the nerves and the consciousness of the impression. There can scarcely be a doubt that to every act of consciousness belongs a determinate molecular arrangement of the brain--that every thought or feeling has its physical correlative in that organ; and nothing can be more certain than that every physical change, whether molecular or mechanical, requires time for its accomplishment. So that, even after the intelligence of an impression, made upon a distant portion of the body, has reached the brain, a still further time is necessary for the brain itself to put its house in order--for its molecules to take up the position necessary to the completion of consciousness. Helmholtz considers one-tenth of a second necessary for this purpose. Thus, in the case of the whale above supposed, we have first one second consumed in the transmission of intelligence through the sensor nerves from the tail to the head; one-tenth of a second is required by the brain to become conscious of the intelligence it has received; and, if the velocity of transmission through the motor be the same as that through the sensor nerves, a second would be consumed in sending a command to the tail to defend itself. Thus more than two seconds would elapse before an impression made upon its caudal nerves could be responded to by a whale eighty feet long.

Now, it is quite conceivable that an injury might be inflicted which would render the nerves unfit to be the conductors of the motion which results in sensation; and if such a thing occurred, no matter how severe the injury might be, we should not be conscious of it. Or it may be, that long before the time required for the brain itself to complete the arrangement necessary for the act of consciousness, its power of arrangement might be wholly suspended. In such case also, though the injury might be of such a nature as to cause death, this would occur not only without pain, but absolutely without feeling of any kind.

Death, in this case, would be simply the sudden negation of life, accomplished without any intervention of consciousness. Doubtless, there are many kinds of death of this character. The passage of a musket bullet through the brain is a case in point; and the placid aspect of a man thus killed is in perfect accordance with the conclusion which might be drawn _a priori_ from the experiments of Helmholtz. Cases of insensibility, moreover, are not uncommon, which do not result in death, and after which the person affected has been able to testify that no pain was felt prior to the loss of consciousness.

The time required for a rifle-bullet to pass clean through a man's head may be roughly estimated at one-thousandth of a second. Here, therefore, we should have no room for sensation, and death would be painless. But there are other actions which far transcend in rapidity that of the rifle-bullet. A flash of lightning cleaves a cloud, appearing and disappearing in less than one-hundred-thousandth of a second, and the velocity of electricity is such as would carry it over a distance equal to that which separates the earth and moon in a single second. It is well known that a luminous impression once made upon the retina endures for about one-sixth of a second, and that this is the reason why we see a ribbon of light when a glowing coal is caused to pass rapidly through the air. A body illuminated by an instantaneous flash continues to be seen for the sixth of a second after the flash has become extinct; and if the body thus illuminated be in motion, it appears at rest at the place which it occupied when the flash fell upon it. The color-top is familiar to most of us. By this instrument a disk with differently colored sectors is caused to rotate rapidly; the colors blend together, and if they are chosen in the proportions necessary to form white light, the disk appears white when the motion is sufficiently rapid. Such a top, rotating {835} in a dark room, and illuminated by an electric spark, appears motionless, each distinct color being clearly seen. Professor Dove has found that a flash of lightning produces the same effect. During a thunder-storm he put a color-top in exceedingly rapid motion, and found that every flash revealed the top as a motionless object with colors distinct. If illuminated solely by a flash of lightning, the motion of all bodies on the earth's surface would, as Dove has remarked, appear suspended. A cannon-ball, for example, would have its flight apparently arrested, and would seem to hang motionless in space as long as the luminous impression which revealed the ball remained upon the eye.

If, then, a rifle-bullet move with sufficient rapidity to destroy life without the interposition of sensation, much more is a flash of lightning competent to produce this effect. Accordingly, we have well authenticated cases of people being struck senseless by lightning who, on recovery, had no memory of pain. The following circumstantial case is described by Hemmer: On the 30th of June, 1788, a soldier in the neighborhood of Manheim, being overtaken by rain, placed himself under a tree, beneath which a woman had previously taken shelter. He looked upward to see whether the branches were thick enough to afford the required protection, and, in doing so, was struck by lightning, and fell senseless to the earth. The woman at his side experienced the shock in her foot, but was not struck down. Some hours afterward the man revived, but knew nothing about what had occurred, save the fact of his looking up at the branches. This was his last act of consciousness, and he passed from the conscious to the unconscious condition without pain. The visible marks of a lightning stroke are usually insignificant: the hair is sometimes burnt; slight wounds are observed; while, in some instances, a red streak marks the track of the discharge over the skin.

The effects of a shock of artificial lightning on a gentleman of our acquaintance, who is very sensitive to the electric discharge, may be here described. Under ordinary circumstances the discharge from a small Leyden jar is exceedingly unpleasant to him. Some time ago he happened to stand in the presence of a numerous audience, with a battery of fifteen large Leyden jars charged beside him. Through some awkwardness on his part, he touched a wire which he had no right to touch, and the discharge of the battery went through his body. Here life was absolutely blotted out for a very sensible interval, without a trace of pain. In a second or two consciousness returned; the recipient of the shock saw himself in the presence of his audience and apparatus, and by the help of these external facts immediately concluded that he had received the battery discharge. His _intellectual_ consciousness of his position was restored with exceeding rapidity, but not so his _optical_ consciousness. To prevent the audience from being alarmed, he observed that it had often been his desire to receive accidentally such a shock, and that his wish had at length been fulfilled. But while making this remark, the appearance which his body presented to him was that of a number of separate pieces. The arms, for example, were detached from the trunk, and seemed suspended in the air. In fact, memory, and the power of reasoning, appeared to be complete long before the optic nerve was restored to healthy action. But what we wish chiefly to dwell upon here is, the absolute painlessness of the shock; and there cannot be a doubt, to a person struck dead by lightning, the passage from life to death occurs without consciousness being in the least degree implicated. It is an abrupt stoppage of sensation, unaccompanied by a pang.

------

{836}

From The Dublin University Magazine

LONDON.

A Dublin saunterer of antiquarian propensities pacing the flags in front of Christ church, or elbowing his troublesome way down the narrow defile called Castle street, can scarcely escape a certain sense of awe as he looks on the houses and the passengers, and darts a thought back through dim and troubled time till he strives to arrive at an idea of' the first inhabitants and the scene in which they played out their short parts.

Passing over the mysterious and weak race that preceded the Gaels, he fancies these last in their quaint garb going about their ordinary occupations, or rushing to their earth mounds and dykes to repel the fierce Northmen. Then pass before his mind's eye the successive races of different speech, and different garb, and different interests--the Danes, Dano-Celts, and the Anglo Normans, employed in fierce struggles with each other, and each looking on the events of his own times as paramount to all that ever agitated society till then. All now quiet and silent in the dust. The shopkeeper attending to his customers, the tippler stepping into the corner shop for a dram, and the carman smoking his pipe, and giving his beast a mouthful of hay, are as unconscious of any personal connection with the dead generations as if they had sprung full grown and furnished with clothing from the fat glebe of the neighboring Phoenix Park.

So would feel still more intensely an archaeologist on Tower Hill, or by the Fleet Ditch, or on London Bridge, if the ever hurrying and feverish crowd would allow him to concentrate his thoughts on anything.

How it should make the feelings of the most dried up anatomy of an archaeologist glow, when, throwing his thoughts nearly nineteen centuries back, he sees the mighty robber conducting his band, guarded by strong defences of bronze, and leather, and wood, to the bank of the then clear river, and preparing to invest and destroy that ill-armed but heroic body of brave men on the other side, who, in defence of their weak children, and loving and high-souled wives and daughters, will soon send many an armed and ruthless Roman soldier to shiver on the cold banks of Styx.

And what was the profit of all the plotting, and all the unjust warfare, waged by men single or in masses against those they considered their foemen? They shortened the career of their opponents, they shortened their own lives. They preferred a short and turbulent existence to the longer and quieter span intended for them, they passed away, and were either speedily forgotten, or remembered but to be cursed.

It is a bewildering occupation to a stranger to contemplate a map of London in order to acquire some distinct notion of the number and arrangement of the streets (an idea of the inhabitants is out of the question), to ponder how the countless multitude can be fed and clothed, and to reflect that if old mother earth should lose her fruit-bearing qualities for one year, how little would avail the beauty, the bravery, the wit, the ingenuity, the industry, and the intelligence of the three million inhabitants, to prevent the circuit of famed London from becoming a vast charnel-house.

Our earliest historians were the poets, these were succeeded by the romancers. Geoffry of Monmouth, translating the "Chronicle of Kings" brought from Brittany, informed the {837} people of the twelfth century that Brutus, great-grandson of Eneas, after many voyages and adventures, founded a town about where the Tower has long stood, and called it New Troy. This was afterward changed to Trinobantum. Lud, brother to Cassibelan, again gave it his own name--_Caer Lud_. Hence Ludstown softened to London. Other derivations for the city's name are not at all rare. From the Celtic words _Leana_, marsh or meadow; _Linn_, a pool; _Lung_, or _Long_, a ship; and _Dunn_, a fort, it is easy to make out the fort among the meadows, the fort of the pool, or the fort of the ships. The sister city, Dublin, is simply black pool.

As ancient Dublin occupied at first only the hill of which the castle occupies the south-eastern spur, so Tower Hill, Ludgate Hill, Cornhill, and Holborn Hill, formed the site of the original British Dun or Duns. Hence the most interesting portion of London to an antiquary must include those places of strength. But as the more easterly eminences have much longer ceased to be fashionable than our Fishamble and Essex streets, and the traditions of London literary characters from the time of Elizabeth date from regions further west, most writers choose to expatiate on the buildings that lie between Whitehall and Temple Bar, and on the remarkable personages and incidents connected with them. Charles Knight was unable to say his say concerning the modern Babylon in fewer than six royal octavo volumes, and the portly octavo lately put forth by Mr. Thornbury is concerned with a very small area of the city, Temple Bar being at its south-east angle, and the Strand, St. Martin's lane, Holborn, and Chancery lane its boundaries.

THE STRAND.

Temple Bar, that narrow neck through which the struggling sands find their way with difficulty from the Strand and the Fleet portions of the great hour-glass, and which is looked on by shallow readers as a relic of hoar antiquity, dates only from 1670, four years after the great fire. It forms the point of junction between the cities of London and Westminster, and in early times was only provided with posts, rails, and a chain. These were succeeded by a wooden house with a narrow gate-way and a passage on one side. The present structure is incumbered with the statues of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and Charles II., all distinguished, according to Mr. Thornbury, by feeble heads, crimped drapery, and feet and hands kept whitish by the rain, the non-projecting portions of the bodies rejoicing in more than a century of dark atmospheric deposits.

Mr. Thornbury's selection includes the long line of palaces that once adorned the Strand or River-bank street, the haunts of artists in St. Martin's lane, the traditions of Long Acre, the reminiscences connected with Drury lane, and the old houses of the nobility in Lincoln's-Inn Fields.

One of the most remarkable of the fine buildings of the Strand is that which bears the name of the ambitious brother of Jane Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, who boasted that he could muster retainers to the number of 10,000. To erect his palace, which, by the way, was unfinished at his death, he demolished the parish church of St. Mary, and pulled down the houses of the bishops of Worcester, Llandaff, and Lichfield. He would also have appropriated St. Margaret's at Westminster, but the mob would not sanction the sacrilege. "Moreover, he destroyed a chapel in St. Paul's Church-yard, with a cloister containing the Dance of Death, and a charnel-house (burying the bones in unconsecrated ground)." To crown his acts of rapine he stole the stone of a church of St. John near Smithfield. It is not worth mentioning the carrying away of the stone of the Strand Inn, it being the property of the lawyers, who could afford to be robbed.

{838}

The Danish consort of our Solomon I. here delighted all who had no objection to spectacles, in which the handsome queen and her ladies masqueraded to their own and their admirers' content. Rare Ben Jonson was surely elated by the lists of royal and noble personages who presented his masques. From this same noble residence Charles I. had some trouble in dislodging the Gallic followers of his sturdy queen, with whom his hard-headed and wooden-shoe-abhorring subjects had come to be at deadly feud. As they were rather too tedious in "shifting the halter, and traversing the cart," the poor king was obliged to write thus to Buckingham:

"STEENIE,--I have received your letter by Dick Greame. This is my
answer. I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of
the town, if you can by fair means (but stick not long in
disputing), otherwise force them away, driving them away like so
many wild beasts until you have shipped them, and the--go with them!
Let me hear no answer but of the performance of my command. So I rest,
"Your faithful, constant, loving friend, C. R.
"Oaking, the seventh of August, 1626."

"The French inventing all sorts of vexatious delays, the yeomen of
the guard at last jostled them out, carting them off in nearly forty
coaches. They arrived at Dover after four days' tedious travelling,
wrangling and bewailing."

Queen Henrietta taking part in a masque at Christmas in 1632-3, and Prynne's _Histriomastix_ happening to be published the next day, the poor man lost his ears for an uncomplimentary remark on women-actors, which was found in the margin, though it could not possibly have been written with any reference to the queen's appearance on that occasion.

To Somerset House returned Henrietta Maria after the restoration, and there the garrulous Pepys paid his respects to her as well as to Madame Castlemaine. "By-and-by, in came the king and Duke and Duchess of York. The conversation was not a very decorous one, and the young queen (Catherine of Braganza) said to Charles, 'you lie,' which made good sport, as the chuckling and delighted Pepys remarks, those being the first English words he had heard her say; and the king then tried to make her reply, 'confess and be hanged.'"

The most striking object in the old days of the Strand was the new Maypole which replaced the old one taken down by Oliver's Parliament. It was of cedar wood, 134 feet high, and stood in front of the church of St. Mary. It was brought in two pieces from below Bridge, the splicing made secure by iron bands, three crowns fastened toward its top, and then the tall article was raised by twelve sailors to a vertical position, and firmly imbedded. The operation was happily accomplished under the superintendence of the Duke of York in four hours. Then sounded trumpets and drums; and morris-dancers in motley attire, and enlivened by the music of pipe and tabor, danced in glee around it, while thousands of throats became hoarse with loyal shouting. James would have found little enjoyment in the general glee, if he could at the moment have had a prophetic glimpse of his wife, with her infant son folded to her breast, pacing along the river bank in doubt and fear, and watching for the friendly boat that was to convey her from the unfriendly city.

When the pole that succeeded this was obliged to abdicate, it was presented to Sir Isaac Newton, who again presented it to the rector of Wanstead, and in Wanstead park it helped to support the largest telescope then known.

From this memorable if unedifying goal, Pope started the racers in the Dunciad:

{839}

"Amidst the area wide they took their stand,
Where the tall maypole once o'erlooked the Strand;
But now, as Anne and piety ordain,
A church collects the saints of Drury lane."

In the old palace of the Savoy once lived John of Gaunt; John, King of France, the Black Prince's captive, died there; George Wither, the poet, is buried there; and there also was Geoffry Chaucer married. Simon, earl of Montfort, once lived within its precincts; but where kings, archbishops, and high nobles once walked and held high council, pickles are now sold, printing types set up, and glass rolled out and spun.

Wat Tyler's mob being forbidden to plunder, and supposing a couple of barrels to contain money, flung them into a great fire. The money, alas, was gunpowder, as in the Dunleary ballad, and blew up the great hall, shook down the neighboring houses, killed sundry of the social reformers, and reduced the palace to ruins.

Henry VII. instituted within its precincts a house of refuge for every indigent person passing down the River-side-road, and by a natural process of abuse the poor wayfarers derived little advantages from it. Loiterers, sham cripples, and vagabonds of both sexes begged abroad all day, and came in the evening to the Savoy to sup and sleep. Edward VI. transferred a good portion of its revenue to Bridewell Prison and Christ's Hospital. Mary replaced the charity on its old footing, much to the enjoyment of inveterate beggars; but Elizabeth in her turn disagreeably surprised the lazy inmates and the corrupt governor, and they had to look out for victims in other quarters.

The building had not lost its privilege of sheltering imposture and knavery in the last century, having served as an asylum for fraudulent debtors in Queen Anne's time; it became the darling haunt of such chaplains as Mr. Lever's Reverend Paul; and in 1754 we find in the _Public Advertiser_ this precious document put forth by them:

"BY AUTHORITY.--Marriages performed with the utmost privacy,
secrecy, and regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the
Baptist in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have
been kept from the time of the reformation (being two hundred years
and upward) to this day, the expense not being more than one guinea,
the five-shilling stamp included. There are five private ways to
this chapel by land, and two by water."

Wither, the Cromwellian poet, who had a hard time of it after the restoration, lies in the Savoy. Denman, petitioning for his life, used this ingenious device: "As long as Wither lives, I shall not be considered the worst poet in England."

It is not easy to a passenger sauntering or hurrying down the Strand at this day, admiring the facade of Somerset House, glancing into the windows of rich shops, elbowing his way through an eager and bustling crowd, and having his ears stunned by the thundering rumble of cabs, busses, and wagons, to fancy it once a sandy and marshy road, and the footpath very disagreeable to the feet, and interfered with by bushes and thickets. Three water-courses from the northern fields found their way across it to the river, and these were spanned by three bridges. The building of Westminster Abbey encouraged the erection of the first houses along the River-side-way, but the bad state of the road made a subject for a petition so late as the reign of Edward II.

PUBLISHING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Of the coffee-houses in the neighborhood of the Strand and Fleet street frequented by the witty and the learned from the restoration to the close of last century, we shall gladly speak if our limits permit. Meanwhile, being on a literary subject, we must not omit to mention that the father of {840} Mudie's and all other circulating libraries in London, was established at 132 Strand, in 1740, by a bookseller named Bathoe.

Had there been such establishments in Pepys' time, they would have saved him some money and some trouble. Witness his disappointment about "Hudibras:"

"26th of September, 1662. To the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr.
Battersby, and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery
in use, called 'Hudibras,' I would needs go find it out, and met
with it at the Temple; cost me 2_s_. 6_d_. But when I come to read
it, it is so silly an abuse of the presbyter-knight going to the
wars, that I am ashamed at it, and meeting at Mr. Townsend's at
dinner, I sold it him for 18_d_." (The new book of drollery
continuing to be the rage), "February 6th, 1663. To a bookseller's
in the Strand, and there bought 'Hudibras' again. I am resolved once
more to read him, and see whether I can find him an example of wit
or no." (Success very doubtful.) "28th November. To Paul's
Church-yard, and there looked upon the second part of 'Hudibras,'
which I buy not, but borrow to read." (He bought it a few days
after, however.) "The world hath mightily cried up this book, though
it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but (by?) two or
three times reading to bring myself to think it witty."

We find him a few days after these researches purchasing "Fuller's Worthies," the "Cabbala, or Collection of Letters of State," "Les Delices de Holland," and "Hudibras" again, "now in great fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies."

Pepys' great acquaintances seem to have discovered this sore spot in his mental configuration, and to have angered it oftentimes by quoting "Hudibras" at him, and chuckling over the fun, which, alas, was the reverse of fun to him.

It was long after the introduction of printing into the country that bookseller's shops became an institution. At and before the time of the great fire, St. Paul's Church-yard was the chief bookselling mart. On the 31st November, 1660, Pepys bought a copy of the play of Henry IV. in that place, "and so went to the new theatre, and saw it acted, but my expectation being too great, it did not please me as otherwise I believe it would, and my having a book did, I believe, spoil it a little."

Poor Pepys! A leaf out of the scandalous chronicle of the court would have interested him more than all the wit and wisdom of Shakespeare. He tells us in his diary how his wife and he laughed a whole evening over a pamphlet written about the queen.

The fire destroyed thousands of fine works in the Church-yard; and so much was the value of books increased, that Ricaut's "Turkey," 8_s_. before the fire, could not be got under 55_s._ after it.

Later in time, Little Britain, from Duck-lane to the Pump, became a literary quarter. When Benjamin Franklin first visited London he took lodgings in Little Britain at 3_s_. 6_d_, per week, next door to a bookseller's, from whom, as circulating libraries were not in vogue, he purchased volumes, read them, sold them again to the same man, and bought others.

A great deal of information on bookselling and other subjects that interested the people near 200 years since, may be obtained from the perusal of the "Life and Errors of John Dunton," bookseller, an autobiography. The son of a clergyman in Huntingdonshire, he says he learned Latin so as to speak it pretty well extempore, but he could not get on well with the Greek; and this, coupled with an affection entertained for a "virgin in his father's house," such passion carefully concealed from its object, completely unhinged the classical and clerical designs of his father on him. He became a bookseller's apprentice, and in {841} 1685 a bookseller in his own person. He speaks very disparagingly of the mere men of letters of his day. He says, good simple-minded man, that what they got per sheet interested them more than zeal for the advancement of literature. Very little we blame the poor fellows, but they were really inexcusable for pretending to have ransacked the whole Bodleian Library, to have gone through the fathers, and to have read and digested all human and ecclesiastical history, while they had never mastered a single page in "St. Cyprian," nor could tell whether the fathers lived before or after our Saviour.

That was the golden age of sermons and pamphlets, the latter occupying the place of our monthlies. Mr. John Dunton's first essay in the publishing line was "The Sufferings of Christ," by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle. All the trade took copies in exchange for their own books, a feature peculiar to the business 160 years since. John throve and took a helpmate to himself, not Mrs. Mary Saunders, the virgin before mentioned. The beautiful Rachel Seaton, the innocent Sarah Day, the religious Sarah Briscow, had successively paled the image of the preceding lady in the mirror of his rather susceptible heart, and at the end he became the fond husband of Miss Annesley, daughter of a nonconformist divine. The happy pair always called each other by the endearing and poetic names of _Iris_ and _Philaret_, but this tender attachment did not prevent Philaret from leaving Iris alone, and making excursions to Ireland, to America, and to Holland, and delaying in those regions for long periods. These separations and distant wanderings did not tend to make our bookseller's old age comfortable and independent.

Dunton has left an interesting account of most of the then eminent booksellers in the three kingdoms. He says that in general they were not much better than knaves and atheists. He also gave information of the writers he employed, the licensers of the press, etc. It would appear that the publishing business of the time was in a very vigorous condition. The shoals of pamphlets satisfied the literary hunger of those to whom, if they lived in the nineteenth century, _Athenaeums_ and _Examiners_, _Chambers's Journals_ and _All the Year Rounds_, would be as necessary as atmospheric air. The chief booksellers of that day, if not to be compared with continental Alduses or Stephenses or Elzevirs, were men of good literary taste and much information. Of the booksellers amber-preserved in the "Dunciad," Dunton mentions only Lintot and Tonson. The disreputable Curll was not known in his day. This genius, embalmed in the hearts of the rascally paper-men of Holywell street, being once condemned for a vile publication, and promoted to the pillory, cunningly averted the wrath of the mob by a plentiful distribution of handbills, in which he stated his offence to be a pamphlet complimentary to the memory of good Queen Anne. Edward Cave, in starting the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 31st January, 1731, gave healthy employment to many a pamphleteer, though he diminished the number of separate pamphlets.

BEN JONSON AND LINCOLN'S INN.

Our fancy to speak of books, and their writers and sellers, has led us aside from the area marked out by Mr. Thornbury for his own explorations, so we must return to bounds, within which we find Lincoln's-Inn Fields. These inns were originally established as places of entertainment, where pilgrims and other travellers were hospitably attended by the monks. The town houses of noblemen were also called inns, just as in Paris they were styled hostels. The inn in question derives its name from the Earl of Lincoln, Henry de Lacy, to whom it was granted by Edward I. Many eminent men have used chambers in Lincoln's Inn, since it became the resort {842} of legal students. Sir Thomas More had chambers there, and there Dr. Donne, the poetical divine, attempted to study law in his seventeenth year. Dr. Tillotson preached to the lawyers (with what effect is not told) in 1663, our own Archbishop Ussher in 1647. Sir Mathew Hale was at first a wild student of Lincoln's Inn, till reclaimed by the sight of a drunkard seized by a fit. Shaftesbury; Ashmole, the antiquary; Prynne, of pillory notoriety; Secretary Thurloe; Sir John Denham; George Wither, omitting mention of modern celebrities, all endeavored to penetrate the mysteries of law and equity in this long-enduring institution.

One of the most remarkable, though not the most reputable, of lawyers connected with Lincoln's Inn was Sir Edmund Saunders, who gave his aid to the crown while endeavoring, in 1683, to overthrow the charter of London. The following extract concerning him is taken from Granger: "Sir Edmund Saunders was originally a strolling beggar about the streets, without known parents or relations. He came often to beg scraps at Clement's Inn, where he was taken notice of for his uncommon sprightliness; and as he expressed a strong inclination to learn to write, one of the attorney's clerks taught him, and soon qualified him for a hackney writer. He took all opportunities of improving himself by reading such books as he borrowed from his friends; and in the course of a few years became an able attorney and a very eminent counsel. His practice in the Court of King's Bench was exceeded by none. His art and cunning was equal to his knowledge, and he gained many a cause by laying snares. If he was detected he was never put out of countenance, but evaded the matter with a jest, which he had always at hand. He was much employed by the king (Charles II.) against the city of London in the business of the _Quo Warranto_. His person was as heavy and _ungain_ as his wit was alert and sprightly. He is said to have been a mere lump of morbid flesh. The smell from him was so offensive that people held their noses when he came into court. One of his jests on such occasions was, 'That none could say he wanted issue, for he had no less than nine on his back.'"

The literary students of the inn, as they sit in their lonely chambers, or converse with their comrades, Arthur Pendennis and Mr. Warrington, in the pleasant grounds, delight to fancy brave old Ben Jonson helping to raise the wall on the Chancery lane side, and reciting a passage from Homer. Whether Sutton or Camden sent him back to college to pursue his studies is not so certain. His fighting single-handed in Flanders in the sight of the two armies, and the subsequent carrying away of the _"Spolia Opima"_ of his foeman, were in strict accordance with the practice of the heroes of his studies. His college life and his deeds in foreign fields were all over in his twenty-third year, 1597, when we find him a player and writer for the stage in London; his critics asserting that he walked the boards as if he were treading mortar. Poor Ben, with a countenance compared to a rotten russet apple, and described by himself as remarkable for a "mountain belly and a rocky face," was equally ragged in temper. Quarreling with a brother actor, he killed him in a duel in Hogsden Fields, and was brought very near the gallows-foot for his non-command of temper. He had not the gentle character nor the expansive intellect of his friend, the "Gentle Shakespeare," nor did his characters embrace entire humanity, nor did he possess the soaring and far-seizing imagination of his brother poet and player, but he more closely pictured the modes of society in which they moved, the social and politic features of the locality and the era; all those outward manifestations, in fact, that distinguish the intercourse, and the morals, and the character of this or that locality or time, from those of {843} its neighbors. Hence a better idea can be had of the scenic features of Old London, and the costumes, the idioms, and usages of its people at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, from the literary remains of Ben Jonson than from those of William Shakespeare. Aubrey remarked that "Shakespeare's comedies would remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood; while our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombeties, that twenty years hence they will not be understood."

London was Ben Jonson's world; its people, such as they appeared to him, the whole human race. The humorists that he knew were reproduced with the utmost truth--and the class-modes and manners that came under his observation were sketched from and to the life. There was local truth of costume and character, but little generalization. Illustrative instances abound in all his plays and poems. In Elizabeth's time, Finsbury Fields were covered with trees and windmills. So we find Master Stephen ("Every Man in his Humor"), who dwells at Hogsden (Hoxton), despising the archers of Finsbury and the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington Ponds. "The Strand was the chief road for ladies to pass through in their coaches, and there _Lafoole_ in the 'Silent Woman' has a lodging to watch when ladies are gone to the china houses or the exchange, that he may meet them by chance, and give them presents. The general character of the streets before the fire is not forgotten. In 'The Devil is an Ass' the lady and her lover speak closely and gently from the windows of two contiguous buildings. Such are a few of the examples of the local proprieties which constantly turn up in Jonson's dramas."

To those who accuse rare Ben of intemperate habits it is useless to object that he lashed intemperance and the other vices of his time as severely as the most rigid moralist could; there are too many instances extant of the sons of Satan correcting sin in their speeches and writings. However, the club at the Mermaid in Friday street to which he belonged, consisted of such men as we cannot suppose to be of intemperate habits, nor willing to cherish a noted drunkard. For Sir Walter Raleigh, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, flashes of wit, and sallies of imagination, and touches of genial humor, had more charms then beastly wallowing in liquor. Hear what Jonson himself says in his invitation to a friend to supper where canary, his darling liquor, was to flow:

"Of this we will sup free but moderately,
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men,
But at our parting we will be as when
We innocently met. No simple word
That shall be uttered at our mirthful board
Shall make us sad next morning, or affright
The liberty that we'll enjoy to-night."

It was to the middle aisle of the old cathedral of St. Paul's that Jonson and others like him resorted to obtain such wayward and grotesque characters as would take the attention of an audience. It was the favorite lounge at the time of coxcombs, bullies, adventurers, and cut-purses. Here a new man, wishing to be in the height of fashion, would bring his tailor, and set him to mark the garb of the foremost gallant in vogue. Country squires anxious for a varnishing of courtly polish, would be found there observing the dress and demeanor of the people of fashion, and afterward flinging away the produce of their good lands in entertainments shared with these envied darlings of the courtly goddess. _Captain Bobadil_, we may be certain, was met among the crowd at Paul's. Here it was that all those niceties of the mode which crop up through his plays were observed. In the "Midas" of Lily, quoted by Charles Knight in his "London," are found collected several of these distinctive marks of the courtier _comme il faut:_

"How will you be trimmed, sir? Will you have your beard like a spade {844} or a bodkin? A pent-house on your upper lip, or an alley on your chin? A low curl on your head like a bull, or dangling locks like a spaniel? Your mustachioes sharp at the end like shoemakers' awls, or hanging down to your mouth like goat's flakes? Your love-locks wreathed like a silken twist, or shaggy, to fall on your shoulder?"

Few dramatists in his or our days would venture to speak so fearlessly to his audience as honest Ben Jonson:

"If any here chance to behold himself,
Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong;
For if he shame to have his follies known,
First he should shame to act 'em. My strict hand
Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe,
Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls
As lick up every idle vanity."

Our bard was not left to struggle with the hardships of an ordinary theatrical career. He was employed to compose the plots and verses of the stately and splendid masques in which Elizabeth, and Anne of Denmark, and her "Royal Doggie" delighted. Had space permitted, we should gladly have quoted some of the verses and stage directions of these court shows. Among the rest is an Irish masque in which Dennish, Donnell, Dermott, and Patrick come in their long glibbs and shaggy mantles to present their compliments to King _Yamish_, and congratulate him on the marriage of some lord or other. Having been roughly received by the janitors, they sounded their grievance aloud:

"_Don_.--Ish it te fashion to beate te imbashaters here? and knock 'hem o' te head phit te phoite stick?"

"_Der_.--Ant make ter meshage run out a ter mouthsh before tey shpeake vit te king?"

They announce their intention to dance as well as that of their masters, who as yet stand outside:

"_Don_.--But tey musht eene come, and daunch i' teyr mantles, and show tee how teye can foot te _fading_ and te _fadow_, and te phip a dunboyne I trow."

"_Der_.--Tey will fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my mishtress tere." [Footnote: 203]

[Footnote 203: As out of all late or still living writers, not
natives of Ireland, there are not three who quote our
peasant-pronunciation correctly, so it is more than probable that
Jonson, acute as his observation was, mistook the pronunciation of
his own day.]

After much soft-sawder about their love and their loyalty to Shamus, six men and boys danced to bagpipes and other rude music. Then the Irish gentlemen danced in their mantles to the sound of harps; and one of them called on a bard to celebrate the fame of him who was to make Erin the world's wonder for peace and plenty:

"Advance, immortal bard; come up and view
The gladdening face of that great king, in whom
So many prophecies of thine are knit.
This is that James, of which long since thou sungst,
Should end our country's most unnatural broils."

Would he had done so! Ben was not so blind but that he could spy out some little defects in Solomon and his queen. As he could not apply his talents to their correction, he recompensed himself in unmerciful handling of court vices. Toward the end of James's reign he enjoyed a competent fortune, and owned an extensive library. Distress and illness succeeded; but Charles I. being made aware of his forlorn condition, granted him an additional pension, and that tierce of canary, whose successors have been drained by all poet-laureates since his day. A blue marble stone lies over his remains in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. The epitaph, RARE BEN JONSON, was cut in the flag at the order and charge of Jack Young (afterward knighted). Eighteen-pence requited the sculptor.

Whether we have improved on the feats of artists of another kind, in Queen Anne's reign, is questionable. At Bartholomew Fair, in the reign of that good-natured sovereign, a girl, of ten years, walked backward up a sloping rope, driving a wheelbarrow behind her. {845} Scaramouch danced on the rope with two children, and a dog, in a wheelbarrow, and a duck on his head. Our authority leaves us in some doubt as to the relative positions of man, children, dog, duck, and wheel-barrow, and whether the duck took position on head of dog or man. The eighteenth century was inaugurated by an intelligent tiger picking the feathers from a fowl in such style as to elicit the hearty applause of a discerning public. Continental sovereigns of our own time prefer the stirring spectacle of men and horses gored by sharp horned bulls. The tiger merely removed the feathers from the skin of the dead fowl; the viscera of the living quadruped follow the thrust of the bull's horn.

------

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Litteraires, par des Peres de la Compagnie de Jesus.

THE ORIGIN AND MUTABILITY OF SPECIES.

_Origines et Transformations de l'homme et des autres etres. lre partie. Par_ TREMAUX. Paris: Hachette. 1865.

Anthropology is a recent science, and yet its votaries have produced numerous treatises. The delicate questions which it raises have given birth to various and contradictory opinions. The most important problem of this science is that which relates to the origin of man. At what epoch did man for the first time tread the surface of our globe? How did he appear? What cause produced him? Two first class scholars, Humboldt and Bompland, said, not long ago, "The general question of the origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond the limits prescribed to history, perhaps it is not even a philosophical question." Bolder than they, the anthropologists put a question a thousand times more complex, as to the origin of the whole human race, and they do not hesitate to believe that, sooner or later, science will be able to answer it with certainty. As to the present, we may say, _Quot capita, tot sensus;_ the most opposite ideas divide the world, and _it is the main discord which pervades science._ These last words are those of M. Tremaux. To remedy this confusion, the learned traveller puts forth a new idea, which in his opinion should, in throwing light on all the aspects of the question, cause the discord to vanish; trace the way we ought to follow; and at no very distant day arrive at a complete solution. It remains to be seen whether these happy auguries will be realized, or if, on the contrary, the theory of M. Tremaux, added to the others, will not have the fatal effect of increasing the confusion it would abolish.

The opinions relating to the origin of man may be reduced to three. In the first place, we will state that of the monogenists, who behold in all the human types scattered over the world only races and varieties of the same species, and regard mankind as descending, or at least as capable of descending, from a single couple primitively sprung from the hands of the Creator. This opinion is evidently conformable to the Bible narrative; this reflection will not escape the sincere Christian, and we must make it at the risk of exciting the pity or indignation of certain positivists, who reproach us with bringing into scientific questions prejudices and arguments which are extra-scientific.

{846}

The opinion of the polygenists is diametrically opposed to the preceding. According to them, the typical differences which exist between the races of men are so decided, so profound, that they could not be the result of the conditions of existence; these differences are then original; men, instead of belonging to a single zoological species, form a genera or even a family, the bimanous family; community of origin is then impossible, and the account in Genesis must be considered as legendary.

Lastly, a third school separates itself entirely from the preceding, and considers the question under discussion as a phase of the general question--the stability of the species. The naturalists connected with this school regard the species as something essentially changeable. They deduce this opinion from the examples of the endless varieties of forms which our domestic animals above all others present. It is possible, by known processes, to obtain, after several generations, products so different from the primitive type, that to judge them by the form only we should believe in the existence of a new species; the continued fecundity between the two varieties alone attesting the specific unity of both types. Would it not be possible, by new methods, or by a better employment of the means already known, to arrive at such a complete transformation that the fecundity between the new and the primitive species should cease to exist, or at least cease to be unlimited? We should have thus obtained a novel species by a simple transformation due to the forces of nature. The result which man might obtain at the end of several generations, nature, left to itself, would inevitably arrive at, after a longer or shorter time, according as circumstances should be more or less favorable. This is admitted by Lamark, and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire; it is admitted also by the English naturalist Darwin. The latter regards all animals actually existing as descending from four or five progenitors; an equal number would suffice for plants. He even adds that, guided by analogy, he would willingly admit that, all organized beings, plants and animals, descend from one single primordial type, and that man should constitute no exception to the general laws; he springs from the ape or some extinct type, and thence from the primitive.

It is to this last school that M. Tremaux belongs: the title of his book sufficiently shows it. He concedes the variability and the transformation of the species; but separates himself distinctly from Darwin relative to the causes which produce this variation.

M. Tremaux' book may be summed up entirely in the statement of the great law of the improvement of beings which is printed in large letters on the front page of the first part: "The improvement of creatures is or becomes proportionate to the degree of elaboration of the soil on which they live! And the soil is in general elaborated in proportion as it belongs to a more recent geological formation." To prove this law, and to deduce from it every possible consequence, is the object of the book.

The first requisite in judging a work is to understand its aim or end. Thus we have endeavored to seize the sense and the bearing which the author attaches to the great law he thinks he has discovered. Such a soil gives such a product, we are told. We understand this when the direct fruits of the earth are in question that is, of the vegetables which draw directly from the earth the principles which should assimilate them. But as to animals, what influence can the soil exercise over them? This is what M. Tremaux should have explained, and what he has forgotten to tell us. Must we understand that the land, by virtue of its chemical and mineralogical composition, possesses a mysterious action of an unknown nature, determining according to the case the improvement or degeneracy of the species of {847} animals? Such is in fact the meaning which many passages seem to attribute to this law. Thus, after having shown that the causes generally assigned cannot explain those typical changes which nature presents, the author adds: "By the action of cross-breeding, food, and climate alone, we shall meet with contradictions at every step. With the action of the sun, the whole globe exhibits the same effects." Since it is neither through food nor by climate that the sun acts, it is by some mysterious agency; and behold us thus, in the nineteenth century, thrown back upon occult causes. May we be permitted to observe that this is not scientific?

Entirely engaged in proving by facts the law which must serve as a oasis to his system, M. Tremaux seems never to have thought of explaining to himself the manner of the earth's action. Thus, beside numerous places which clearly imply an immediate action, others could be quoted which only attribute to the soil an indirect action due to the aliments drawn from it. For example, _apropos_ of cretinism, we read: "This scourge is above all endemical, because in fact those persons who can profit by the _products_ of another soil feel in a lesser degree the unfavorable results of that condition." And further on: "To avoid living permanently on a soil which produces cretinism is the sole remedy, or rather the only palliative, against its pernicious effects on man. It is best to abandon it completely, or at least _to make use of products other than those destined to feed its inhabitants._" In brief, what is necessary to bring humanity to perfection? "Firstly, To choose carefully those lands whose products are more directly intended for man. Secondly, To have recourse to every proper means of improving the land. Thirdly, Planting with suitable trees those lands which are unfavorable to the growth of human food. Fourthly, To subject to agriculture those forest lands which occupy a favorable soil."

These passages appear clear that it is not of itself, but by its productions, and also doubtless through its climate, the soil acts on man and on the animals. This explanation is more philosophical than novel.