Chapter IV: Part 4

What is this? As soon as I open this little door I stumble upon something that looks rather suspicious; it is a quantity of light flue, and hair, and dust, mingled together. The clockmaker never put that into the case. Then, observe how every wheel and pinion is soiled with dirt, and every crevice and corner is choked up with filth. It really would be a very wonderful thing if the wheels did move regularly. The secret of the bad working of your clock is, simply, that you have not known how to take care of it, and use it fairly. I dare say it went very well when it was turned out of its maker’s hands, but he never meant it to be in the state in which it now is. You must send it back to him, and get him to clean the works and oil the wheels, and then you must try whether you can not prevent it from getting into such sad disorder again.

Now, your neighbor yonder with his aches and pains and his sickness, are you sure that he is not in very much the same predicament as this clock? If we could look into the works of his body, are you confident that we should not find them choked up and uncared for, instead of being in the condition in which they were intended to be? His aches and pains, are they not the grating and complaining of deranged and clogged machinery? I am quite aware that sick people generally are not sensible of having allowed anything to come near to their bodies which they ought to have kept away. But neither did you know that dirt was getting to the works of your clock, although we discovered it there in such plenty. The dust and dirt which collected there, first flew about in the air, scattered so thinly and lightly that you could not see them. So, too, other things which you can not see may have been floating in great abundance around you, some of them being to the living frame what dirt and dust are to clockwork. That there are such invisible things floating around living creatures, and that some of these clog and derange the working of their frames, I think I shall have no difficulty in showing you. I hope I shall also be able to point out to you, that many of them may be discovered, although they can not be seen, and may be driven away or avoided.

That wonderful object which you call your _body_, is actually a machine like the clock, contrived and put together for a certain service. It has for its works, muscles and bones, and blood vessels and nerves. These works have been most beautifully fitted and adjusted: indeed, they are the workmanship of a skill which can not fail. The maker of your body is the great and unerring Power, who has also made all the rest of creation. It is God.

God made your body with supple joints and free limbs; with strong muscles and ready nerves. The machine was perfect when it came from his hands. It was then capable of going better than the best clock that was ever constructed by human ingenuity. It was able even to cleanse, and oil, and repair itself, and it was prepared to continue its orderly movements, without suffering the slightest derangement, for sixty or seventy long years. But when God placed this perfected piece of delicate workmanship at your disposal, he, like the clockmaker with his clock, required that you should at least take care of it, and use it fairly. If, however, you do not do this, then as with the clock, so will it be with your body. If you keep it amid dust and dirt, no other result can come but the clogging of its works, and the derangement of their movements. Out of that dusty old clock-case it is my purpose to draw this very surprising and important lesson in your behoof. Whenever men get out of happiness and ease into wretchedness and disease, it is almost sure to be their own fault, and the consequence of their own doings. Either they perversely and wilfully do something which they know very well they ought not to do, or they do something which they ought not to do, in ignorance.

Comfort and ease are to body and mind, what steady and even movements are to clock-work—signs that the machinery is in perfect order. Discomfort and _dis-ease_ (_absence of ease_) are to body and mind what fitful and irregular movements are to clock-work;—signs that the machinery is clogged and in disorder. You are always inclined to rebel against discomfort and pain. Never give way to this inclination. Discomfort and pain are friendly monitors, that come to you to perform a kind service. They come to warn you that there is something wrong in and around your own body, which requires to be set right.

You will observe that I have said men _nearly_ always have themselves to blame when they get out of health and into disease. I have said nearly always, because it occasionally does happen that the suffering is not immediately caused by the sufferer’s own wrong doing. This, for instance, is the case when a child has a constitutional disease, which has been communicated to it by a parent. It is, however, even in these instances none the less true, that _human blindness or wilfulness_ leads to the mischief, and this is really the practical point that I am desirous you should see. These are the cases in which, in accordance with God’s law, “the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.” The parents have done wrong, and the offspring have to pay the penalty. The line of obvious duty, however, is in no way altered here. If a man suffers because his parents did what was wrong, this really is an additional reason why he ought never to do that which may cause his own children to suffer, in like manner, with himself.

There is this further proof, that even in these cases it really is _man’s wrong doing which leads to human suffering_. When the children of parents who have done what was wrong, go on doing only what is right through several generations, their offspring at last cease to suffer, and become altogether healthy and sound. The burden of the fathers’ sins is then, at length, mercifully taken off from their shoulders.

Having listened patiently to this little sermon, you would now like me to come to the point, and show you some of the dust and dirt which are scattered around the living body, and which at times get into the machinery to the damage of its working. First of all, in my endeavor to do this, I should like to make you quite comprehend the possibility of there being very weighty matters pressing close round you, which you nevertheless are entirely unable to see, even in bright daylight. Just come out with me, here, upon the road. How pleasant and fresh the day is! Do you not feel the gentle breeze fanning your cheek as you turn up the lane? Yet you can not see the breeze! What is it, then? Certainly it is _something_, for it touches and even presses against your skin. But it is something, too, which has weight and power of its own. Observe how it shakes the leaves of the trees as it sweeps past them. It is, as you know, the same unseen breeze which also drives round those great mill-sails yonder with such violence, and which grinds as much corn in that mill, as could be ground by the efforts of a dozen horses, kept up to their work by the whip. We have not had to move far, then, before we have come upon something which we cannot see;—before we have proved to ourselves that we must not altogether depend upon our eye-sight for information, even concerning the existence of surrounding things.

But what is this? The breeze is not so fresh here as it was just now at the end of the lane. There is some very disagreeable smell now floating upon it. Here again we can see nothing, any more than we could when we had only the fresh breeze blowing around us. But there must be some cause for the unpleasant odor. The smell gets stronger and stronger as we approach this bank. We climb over the bank, and we find on the other side, in the corner of a field, a manure-heap, from which the smell is evidently poured out. Now that smell is really a vapor, bred of decay in the manure, and then steaming up from it into the air. If our eyes were as sharp as our noses, we should be able to see a host of little bodies rushing up from the manure, and scattering themselves through the air. It is because some of those little bodies strike upon the lining of our noses, as they are drawn in by our breathing, that we smell the unpleasant odor. The nose feels the touch of those bodies as a smell.

Wherever substances which have been alive, are dead and undergoing decay, vapors of this kind are bred and steamed forth. This is the way in which dead things are got rid of; they turn to vapor and crumble to dust. If we could see all the vapors that are being bred of decay, we should be sensible of a thick mist covering the entire face of the land and sea, and rising up from it continually. Some of these vapors have strong smells, like those which issue from the manure-heap; but some of them can not even be smelt, any more than they can be seen.

But these invisible vapors, bred of decay, were not intended to be breathed by living creatures; and indeed, can not be breathed by them without mischief. We are able to stand near the manure-heap for some time without taking any particular harm, because the vapors are scattered as fast as they are formed, and are mingled in small quantities with large quantities of pure air. We thus breathe air tainted with these vapors, rather than the vapors themselves. But suppose all the air were taken away, and you were left standing with nothing around you but these vapors, what do you think would happen to you? You would be dead in less than three minutes, killed by their poisonous power. The vapors which are bred in decaying substances are poison vapors.

You would like to know why it is, as these poison vapors are poured out in such quantities from all decaying substances, that you do not see people dying all around from breathing them. Did I not tell you, in the case of the poison vapors of the manure-heap, that you could breathe them because they were freely scattered into the fresh air? Now just come a few yards this way. You observe the smell of the manure grows less and less. Here you can not any longer perceive it, although the wind is actually blowing over the manure-heap toward us. The fact is, these poison vapors can not bear the presence of pure air. Pure air is the natural _antidote_ or remedy for their poison. The instant it mingles with them it begins to destroy their hurtfulness, and in a few moments it has so thoroughly accomplished this good work that no single trace of mischievous power remains.

Has it ever occurred to you to ask yourself why the pleasant wind blows over hills and fields, and through lanes and streets? You know very well that the wind always is blowing, more or less. Go out when you will, you find it, if you turn the right way. It is the most uncommon thing in the world for the air to be altogether still. The fresh wind blows so constantly over hill and plain, because God sends it to sweep away and destroy the poison vapors that steam out from decaying substances. The breeze is God’s invisible antidote to the invisible poison. The pleasant wind blows in order that the air may be kept fresh and pure.

In the open air the fresh wind very soon scatters and destroys all poison vapors. But civilized men do not dwell always in the open air. The wind sometimes makes them feel cold, so they build themselves houses to shut out the wind. To-night, before you go to bed in your small sleeping room, you will close the windows and the door; and you will think, when you have done so, that you have shut out everything which could harm you, with the cold. But what will you say to me if I show you that after you have closed the windows and the door, poison vapors are bred in great quantities in the room where you are lying? and that so long as you remain in it, they keep gathering more and more strength, and becoming more and more dangerous. Just come back with me to the cottage, and let us look at the room in which you were sleeping last night. The beds, you believe, are not yet made. Never mind that. I often go into rooms under such circumstances, and perhaps upon this occasion it may be even better for the purpose I have in view, if I find the chamber in disorder. At any rate let us go upstairs and take our chance.

Sure enough you have been at great pains here to keep the cold from getting in. There is only one casement in this low small room, and that casement has not been unbarred since yesterday. I do not need to be told this. I make the discovery myself; for you have also kept something from getting out, which had better have been away. I feel at once this is not the same kind of air which we were breathing just now in the open garden. Indeed, I can not remain in the room without opening the window. There; I throw open the casement, and in a few minutes the air will be as fresh here as it is outside of the house.

Now what do you think it was that made the air of this room so unpleasant? It was the poison-vapor with which it was laden, and which had steamed out of your body mixed with your breath during the night. Poison-vapors are bred in the bodies and in the blood of all living animals, just as they are in manure-heaps. All the working organs of your frame being exhausted by use, undergo decay and are turned into vapor, and that vapor, being _bred_ of decay, is _poison-vapor_, which must be got rid of out of the body as quickly as it is formed. Living bodies are worn away into vapor by working just as mill-stones are worn away into dust by grinding. You would see them waste under work, if it were not that they are repaired by food. You wonder, then, that as this vapor is poisonous, living creatures do not destroy themselves by the poison they form in their blood? Occasionally human creatures do so destroy themselves, as I shall presently show you. But the merciful Designer of the animal frame has furnished a means by which, in a general way, the poison is removed as fast as it is formed. Can you not guess what this means is?

God employs the same plan for driving away poison vapors from the inside of living animal bodies, that he uses for the purification of the air in the open country. He causes a current of air to circulate through them. Notice how, while we are talking together, our chests heave up and down. You know this is what we term breathing. Now, when we breathe, we first make the insides of our chests larger by drawing their walls and floors further asunder. Then we make them smaller by drawing their walls and floors once more nearer together. When the chest is made larger, fresh air rushes in through the mouth and wind-pipe, and through the twig-like branches of this pipe, until it fills a quantity of little round chambers which form the ends of those branches. The wind-pipe branches out into several millions of fine twig-like tubes, and then each tube ends in a blind extremity, or chamber exactly like this.

The air-chamber in the body is covered by a sort of net-work, stretched tightly over it. That net-work is formed of blood-vessels, through which the blood is constantly streaming, driven on by the action of the heart. This blood sucks air from the air-chambers into itself, and carries that air onward to all parts of the living frame. But the blood-streams in the net-work of vessels also steam out into the air-chambers poison-vapors, which are then driven out through the windpipe and the mouth. Thus the breath which goes into the mouth is _fresh_ air; but the breath which comes out of the mouth is _foul_ air. Air is spoiled, and, as it were, converted to poison, by being breathed; but the body is purified by the breathing, because it is its poison-vapors that are carried away, mingled with the spoiled air.

This, then, is why men breathe. Breathing is the blowing of a fresh wind through the living body for the cleansing away of its impurities. The purifying part of the air which is breathed actually circulates with the blood through all parts of the frame.

Exercise quickens and exalts the cleansing powers of the breathing—and this is why it is of such great importance to the health. When you go and take a brisk walk in the open air, you increase the force of the internal breeze. The exertion makes your chest expand to a larger size, so that it can admit more fresh air, and it also causes your blood-streams to course along more rapidly, so that a greater abundance of the air is carried on through your frame.

[To be concluded.]

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I could never find out more than three ways to become happier (not happy). The first, rather a high one, is this: to soar so far above the clouds of life that one sees the whole external world, with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and thunder-rods, down far beneath us, shrunk into a child’s little garden. The second is—merely to sink down into this little garden, and there to nestle yourself so snugly in some little furrow, that when you look out of your warm lark-nest you likewise can perceive no wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and poles, but only blades, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and sun-screen, and rain-screen. The third, finally, which I regard as the hardest and cunningest, is that of alternating with the other two.—_Jean Paul F. Richter._

THE MAMMALIA.

From the French of ERNEST MENAULT.

This is a class of animals which, by their organization and intelligence, approach nearest to man. The mammalia have a bony skeleton, the center of which is the spine, to which the other organs are attached, and whence they all radiate. They possess, also, a brain, in which the hemispheres are well developed; a heart with two ventricles and two auricles; lungs for inhaling air to oxydize the blood and stimulate all the organs, the brain especially. The thoracic cavity contains the lungs and the heart, which are always separated from the abdominal cavity by a complete diaphragm.

In this class the organs of sense acquire great perfection, even in their accessory parts. For instance, the greater number of each species have distinct eyelids, an external ear, and other peculiarities which are not found amongst the oviparous animals. The mouth is furnished with fleshy lips (except the monotrematous animals[K]), and the body is habitually protected with a specially adapted covering.

All the mammalia have five senses, but in different degrees. Thus, one species, such as the chamois and wild goats, that live upon the mountains, have long sight, and can see better far away than near. On the contrary, the heavy races which inhabit the valleys, such as the hog and rhinoceros, can see objects best when near them. Those whose eyes are too sensitive to bear the bright light of day, only go out during the night, like bats, or even hide themselves under the earth, as the armadillo and hedgehog. Those creatures which are the weakest, being on that account the more timid, are gifted with a keen sense of hearing. This enables them to avoid danger. The hare, the rabbit, the jerboa, the mouse, and other rodentia, on hearing the slightest noise prepare for flight. The more powerful or courageous races, the lion, tiger, cat, and lynx, whose sight is keen, even at night, have short ears and weak hearing, the strength of one sense generally compensating for the weakness of others.

With the carnivora the sense of taste becomes an eager, sanguinary appetite, while the herbivorous animals require a delicacy of taste to enable them to distinguish the nourishing plant from that which would poison them. “Thus,” says Virey, “nature adapts the constitution of each individual to its destiny on earth.” In depriving the armadillo and pangolins of teeth, she covers them with a coat of mail or scales. In making the hedgehog and porcupine weak and defenseless, she enables them to raise at pleasure a forest of sharp quills, and these animals have only to roll themselves up and become a prickly ball, which is quite impregnable. In denying to the herbivorous animals strong teeth and hooked claws, nature has armed the head of the ruminants with formidable horns; finally, she gives to the timid animals, such as the rodentia, either the industry to hide themselves in the earth, like the marmot, the rabbit, and the rat; the agility to jump from tree to tree, like the squirrel; or great quickness in running, and power to take immense leaps in fleeing from danger, as the kangaroo, which bounds along like a grasshopper. The llama is quite defenceless, but, if attacked, it covers its enemies with a disgusting and bitter saliva. The pole-cats, and all of that species, when pursued, throw off such execrable odors that their most ferocious enemies are obliged to give up the pursuit.

Some animals frighten their persecutor by frightful cries, like the howling monkey; others mislead their foes by a number of tricks and careful precautions, and know where to obtain safe shelter and seek obscure retreats.

The smallest species, besides being more numerous and multiplying more abundantly, are also more lively in proportion to their size than the larger animals. Before an elephant or a whale could turn round, a dormouse or a mouse would have made a hundred movements, the smallness of the limbs giving more unity and more control over the body; the shorter muscles contract more easily, and each movement is more rapid than amongst larger creatures. The mammalia form the intermediate class by which the other animals approach to us, and by which the inferior species are grouped around man. In fact, the family of the apes seems to come very near to the human race. On the other hand, the bats, the flying squirrel of Siberia, and other like species, appear to link the birds to the mammalia; while the armadillo and the pangolin, quadrupeds covered either with a cuirass or with scales placed one over the other, seem related to the reptile, such as tortoises and lizards. The amphibious mammalia, such as the seal, sea-cow, and other cetacea, which _apparently_ partake of the nature of fishes, are linked to the large and numerous classes of aquatic animals.

“Thus,” says Virey, “the mammalia form the nucleus round which are grouped the different superior classes of the animal kingdom as being the most perfect type of creation, and the first link in the chain of animated nature next to man.” Let us compare the various other classes with the mammalia. The bird, inhabitant of the air, has received a temperament warm and lively, delicate and sensitive; always gay, full of fire and inconstancy, like the variable region he traverses. The fishes again, the cold creatures of the waters, are more apathetic, and occupy themselves chiefly with material wants; their scaly covering seems to steel them against gentle impressions, and hinder them from feeling acutely, or bringing their intelligence to anything like perfection. The quadrupeds, on the contrary, existing in a medium state, equally below the airy heights, as above the deep abyss of the waters—sharing with man the possession and sovereignty of the earth—seem to hold the middle place between two extremes. They have neither the ardor nor petulance of the bird, the lower sensibility of the fish, nor the apathy of the reptile; but, living as they do on a dry and firm soil, their nature has received more consistency, and their frame more solidity. The locomotion of the quadruped has not the rapidity of flight, nor the nimbleness of swimming; but it has not the painful slowness of the tortoise and other reptiles.

All the series of these mammalia represent a long succession of inferior structures below that of man. The monkey, considered either with regard to his external form of internal organization, seems but a man degenerated. Skeleton, members, muscles, veins, nerves, brain, stomach, and principal viscera resemble ours almost entirely, not only in general structure, but in the ramifications of the lesser vessels. In comparison with us it appears an imperfectly formed being, although it is perfect as regards its own species.

The same scale of graduated inferiority is observed in descending from the monkey to the bat; from the latter to the sloth, to the carnivora, and through all the series.

The smaller the extent of the brain, especially the hemispheres, and the fewer the number of its circumvolutions, the more brutal or more animal do we find the creature. In fact, in the monkey itself, and the quadrupeds with long snouts, which bend toward the earth, everything tends to the growth of the appetites and the development of the senses. They think only of satisfying their physical wants. Of all animals the quadrupeds are the most capable of understanding us; not only on account of their organization, but also because they are the more susceptible of being domesticated. The bird has less relationship with us; for, whatever familiarity or intelligence may be attributed to the parrot or tame canary, the qualities of the dog, the beaver, and the elephant always surpass those of the most clever birds. The more closely a well-organized animal approaches to us, the more it can comprehend us, and we can more easily aid in developing its intelligence. This is especially the case with the mammalia.

Nevertheless, the influence of man upon the domestication of the animals is limited by their fitness for sociability. There is not a single domesticated species which does not, naturally, live in society. Of all the solitary species, there is not a single one which has become domesticated; and sociability does not in the least depend on their intelligence, for the sheep lives in companionship, while the lion, fox, and bear live solitarily. Neither does it depend on habit; for the long continuance of the young ones with their parents does not produce it. The bear cherishes its young ones with as much tenderness and for as long a time as the dog, and yet the bear is amongst the most solitary animals.

Frederic Cuvier has observed three distinct conditions amongst animals:—The solitary species, such as cats, martens, bears, and hyenas; those which live in families, such as wolves, roebucks, etc.; those which live in societies, such as beavers, elephants, monkeys, dogs, seals, etc.

Cuvier has devoted himself to the study of these societies. He follows the progress of the animal, which, born in the midst of the flock, is there developed, and which, at each epoch of its life, learns from all which surrounds it to place its new existence in harmony with that of the old ones. The feebleness of the young animals is the cause of their obedience to the old, which possess strength; and the habit of obeying once adopted by the young, is the reason why the power still remains with the most aged, although he has become in turn the most feeble. Whenever a society is under the direction of a chief, that chief is nearly always the most aged of the troop. Mons. Flourens thinks that this order may, perhaps, be disturbed by violent passions. If this be the case, the authority passes to another: and, having commenced anew by reason of strength, they preserve the same by habit. There are, therefore, amongst the mammalia, species which form real societies; and it is from these alone that man takes all domesticated animals. The horse becomes, by domestication, the companion of man; and of all animals of his species is the most naturally so.

The sheep, which we have reared, follows us, but he also follows the flock, in the midst of which he was born. According to Cuvier, he looks upon man as the leader of the flock. Man, says M. Flourens, is to the animals only a member of their society; all his art is reduced to making himself acceptable to them as an associate; for, let him once become their associate, he soon becomes their chief, being superior to them in intelligence. Man does not, therefore, change the natural state of these animals, as Buffon says; on the contrary, he profits by it. In other terms, having found the animals sociable, he renders them domesticated; and thus domestication is not a singular case, but a simple modification, a natural consequence, of animal sociability. Nearly all our domestic animals are _naturally_ sociable. The ox, goat, pig, dog, rabbit, etc., live, by nature, in society; that is, in herds or flocks.

The cat is not really a domesticated animal—it is not subdued, only tamed; in the same way the bear, lion, and tiger even might be tamed, but not domesticated. Man’s influence will make a sociable animal domesticated, but a solitary animal he can only tame.

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When a thought is too weak to be simply expressed, it is a proof that it should be rejected.—_Vauvenargues._

WASHINGTON IRVING.[L]

By PROF. WALLACE BRUCE.

The record of Washington Irving rests like a ray of sunlight upon the pages of our early history. Born in 1783, at the close of the great struggle for independence, his life of seventy-six years circles a period of growth and material progress, the pages of which this centennial generation has just been turning. And perhaps it is not unfitting to consider at this time the life and services of our sweetest writer, the best representative of our earliest culture. On the other hand, I am well aware that the great mass of mankind are absorbed in business, and like the Athenian of old continually asking for something new; that the initials of our nation were long ago condensed into a plain monogram of dollars, and this our nineteenth century represented and symbolized by a large interrogation point. We question the stars, the rocks and our Darwinian ancestors; and we are thoroughly occupied in looking after our own personal interest and the prosperity of the republic; yet I may hope that this lecture will call up some pleasure in the hearts of those who read and re-read the writings of Washington Irving, and will help to renew your acquaintance with the incidents of his life, and perhaps awaken the attention of some who are asking what to read—the one question which more than any other decides their individual happiness and the education of the rising generation. It is my purpose this afternoon to consider his writings, his associations and his life; and I take up his works in the order in which they were written, as in this way we trace the natural development of the writer and the man.

“Knickerbocker,” his earliest work, written at the age of twenty-six, bears the same relation to his later work as “Pickwick,” the first heir of Dickens’ invention, to his novels that followed; and there is another point of similarity in the fact that “Knickerbocker” and “Pickwick” both outgrew the original design of the authors. Neither Dickens nor Irving had any idea of the character of the work he was proposing. The philosophical and benevolent Pickwick, you will remember, was barely rescued from being the head of a holiday hunting club; and the idea of “Knickerbocker,” at least at first, was simply to parody a small hand-book which had recently appeared under the title of “A Picture of New York.” Following this plan, a humorous description of the early governors of New York was intended merely as a preface to the customs and institutions of the city; but, like Buckle’s “History of Civilization,” the introduction became the body of the book, and all idea of a parody was early and happily abandoned. The “Rise and Fall of the Dutch Nation along the Hudson,” presented a subject of unity, and gave Irving an opportunity to depict the representative of a race whose customs were fast passing away. The serio-comic nature of the work is intensified by notices in the New York _Post_ calling attention to the mysterious disappearance of Diedrich Knickerbocker. Never was any volume more happily introduced. Before we turn a single page we have an idea of the veritable writer. The description of Knickerbocker makes him rise before us; we become interested in the mystery that surrounds him. In fact, the charm of the book is in the simple reality or assumed personality of Diedrich Knickerbocker. The portrait of Don Quixote starting out to redress the wrongs of the world is not more clearly drawn than that of the historian of New Amsterdam, with his silver shoe buckles and cocked hat and quaint costume. But there is this difference in the mind of the reader: in the great satire of Cervantes there is an element of sadness. We see a crazed old man wandering out in quest of adventure, exciting our pity, almost excusing the paradox of Lord Byron: the saddest of all tales, and more sad still because it makes us laugh. Here there is only a mild sort of insanity about the old gentleman, with his books and papers and various employments, which touches our humor, without exciting our sympathy. By the way, the books of humor which we have here associated with each other belong to the same form, are second cousins of one another, and ought to stand upon the same shelf of our libraries.

Some of the Holland families are reported to have taken the work in high dudgeon, as a rash innovation of the domain of history; and I believe one of the gentler sex, who perhaps had no lover to fight a duel or no brother to take her part, proposed herself with her own hands to horsewhip the offensive writer for his bold attempt at spelling and printing for the first time some of the old family names. From to-day’s standpoint these things seem ludicrous and uncalled for in reference to a work abounding in kindly humor everywhere, accepted as the finest blending of the classic and the comic in all literature; and were it not that these early enemies soon became his warmest friends, I should pass it over in silence. The transition was so sudden and severe that it is one of the pleasantest in his history. In later years Irving thus refers to “Knickerbocker”: “When I find, after the lapse of forty years this haphazard production of my youth cherished among the descendants of the Dutch worthies; when I find its very name become a household word, and used to give the home stamp to everything recommended for popular acceptance; when I see rising around me Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, omnibuses, steamboats, bread, ice, wagons; and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon being genuine Knickerbocker stock, I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right chord, that my dealings with the good old Dutch times and customs derived from them are right in harmony with the beliefs and humors of our townsmen, that I have opened up a vein of pleasing associations equally characteristic and peculiar to my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer to pass away; and that although other histories of New York may appear of higher claim to learned acceptance, and may take their appropriate and dignified rank in the family library, Knickerbocker’s history will still be received with good-humored intelligence.” It was, indeed, wide from the sober aim of history; but no volume ever gave such rose-tinted colors to the early annals of any country, and New York instead of being covered with ridicule, is to-day the only city of this Union whose early history is associated with the golden age of poetry, with antiquity extending back into the regions of doubt and fable; and it is safe to say that the streams of Scotland are no more indebted to the genius of Robert Burns and Walter Scott than the Hudson and the Catskills to the pen of Washington Irving. [Applause.]

[At this point the lecturer gave some illustrations of Irving’s style; his rendering of them being, as usual, all that could be desired.]

In this his first volume we would naturally look for his characteristics as a writer, and we find a rich fund of humor and invention; but here and there are gentle touches and the promise of other qualities, to which Walter Scott refers in a letter to one of his friends. He says: “I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift, as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I think, too, there are some passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and he has some touches which remind me of Sterne.”

The prophecy of Scott waited ten years for its fulfillment, but it came at last in the most charming collection of essays in our language, the “Sketch-Book,” which I divide into essays of character and sentiment, English pictures and American legends. The “Broken Heart” is perhaps the greatest favorite of his character sketches, and at the same time a transcript of his early experience. In the short space of six pages he portrays the qualities of woman’s nature, and illustrates it with the touching story of Curran’s daughter, whose heart was buried in the coffin of Robert Emmet. This essay was suggested by a friend who had met the heroine at a masquerade. The name and the time of its writing were closely associated with Moore’s familiar poem:

“She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking;
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking.”

In the whole range of English literature I know of no pen except Irving’s which could have written an essay like this in plain and simple prose. We find the same tender sentiment in Burns’ “Highland Mary,” and Poe’s “Annabel Lee;” but poetry is the natural language of passion and sorrow. Irving has often been likened to Addison, but in this particular they have nothing in common. Edward Everett has well said: One chord in the human heart, the pathetic, for whose weird music Addison had no ear, Irving touched with the hand of a master. He learned that in the school of early disappointment; and in the following passages we seem to hear its sad but sweet vibration, still responding through years of sorrow to the memory of her whose hopes were entwined with his: “There are some strokes of calamity, which scathe and scorch the soul, which penetrate to the vital seat of happiness, and blast it never to put forth bud and blossom; and let those tell her agony who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on earth, who have sat at its threshold as one shut out in the cold and lonely world, whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed.”

It is said that when Lord Byron was dying at Missolonghi, he required an attendant to read to him the “Broken Heart,” and while the attendant was reading one of the most tender portions the poet’s eyes moistened, and he said: “Irving never wrote that story without weeping, and I can not hear it without tears.” He added: “I have not wept much in this world, for trouble never brings tears to my eyes; but I always had tears for the ‘Broken Heart.’”

Kindred to this, I select “The Wife” as a true picture of woman’s power in adversity. As the story goes, his friend Leslie had married a beautiful and accomplished girl, and having an ample fortune, it was his ambition that her life should be a fairy tale. Having embarked in speculation, his riches took to themselves wings and flew away, leaving him in bankruptcy. For a time he kept his situation to himself, but every look revealed his story; and at last he told all to his wife. We see her rising from a state of childish dependence, and becoming the support and comfort of her husband in his misfortune. Following them from a mansion to a cottage, we feel that the last state of that man is better than the first; in the knowledge and possession of such a heart he had truer riches than diamonds can symbolize. [Applause.] To the credit of our better nature, the words of Irving are true: “There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. No man knows what the wife of his bosom is, what a ministering angel she is, until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.” Outside the dramas of Shakspere and the pages of Walter Scott, I know of no such pictures of graceful womanhood as we find in these sketches.

Another quality no less marked than his humor and pathos we see in his reverence and love for antiquity, which forms a marked feature in the English pictures. In his “Rural Life” and “Christmas Sketches” we see his love for the old English writers, and that Chaucer and Spenser were his favorite authors. “To my mind these early poets are something more than wells of English undefiled. They are rather like the lakes of the Adirondacks, separated from each other and from us by events which loom up like mountains in the world’s history; clear and cool in far off solitudes, reflecting in their bright mirrors the serenity of earth and the broad expanse of heaven, responding to the gentle glow of summer sunset, holding quiet communion with the evening stars and awakening rosy life at the first touch of morn.... The old English ballads have all the energy, the rhythm and sparkle of our mountain streams, but Chaucer and Spenser and Shakspere and Bunyan are the fountains from which flows a river, ay, the Hudson of our English language.” With this deep love for the masters of English literature, we are not surprised that Westminster Abbey, with its poets’ corner, should be the subject of one of his earliest essays; and the principal feature of this essay, that which makes it the enduring one of all that have been written upon this venerable pile, is its truth and sincerity. It is, indeed, pleasant, in these days of irreverence; when flippant writing is received for wit and mis-spelled slang accepted for originality; when popular literature is running into low levels of life and luxury and the vices and follies of mankind; when modern poets take their cue from the heathen Chinee and find rhyme and rhythm in subdued oaths and significant dashes; when even home ballads are infected with the speech, if not the morality of Jim Bludsoe; in these days of scoffing at all things temporal and spiritual; when it seems as if belief had gone out of man: we turn with satisfaction to these essays, in which we see the nobility of a loyal heart, and feel that truth and goodness and beauty, the offspring of God, are not subject to the changes which upset the invention of man. [Applause.] I make no quotation from this familiar essay; it possesses too much unity to detach a paragraph or a sentence. I can only say I read it over and over again with the same interest to-day as years ago in the deep shade of that melancholy aisle at the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots.

There is one other place in England where I took my pocket edition of the “Sketch-Book”—to Stratford-on-Avon, for, more than any other man, Irving is associated with the world’s greatest poet. Writers without number, and many of them well known to fame, have given their impressions of Stratford-on-Avon, but Irving’s description supersedes them all. In this companionship of Shakspere and Irving we see the enduring qualities of the human heart. In the deep sympathy of Irving for the olden time, we feel that he has added another charm to Stratford, and that we as a nation have a better claim to the great poet.

In Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” and “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which I take as illustrations of his “American Legends,” we see that he is one of the few writers who recognize the fact that comedy is quite as natural as tragedy. At the time this essay was written we understand that Irving had never visited the Catskill Mountains; but there is this feature about all his essays or stories: wherever he locates them, they seem at once to take root and flourish. This story is too well known, through the genius of Jefferson on the stage, and Rogers in the studio, to need delineation. The old Dutch village, with its philosophers and sages, the sorely-tried Gretchen, the shiftless, good-natured Van Winkle, the adventure on the mountains, the return—it all passes before our minds like a series of pictures; and we come to the closing scene, which the play-writer and dramatist would have done well to follow, for there is more dramatic unity in the story which Irving left us than in the drama.

I must pass over to-night “Bracebridge Hall,” the “History of Columbus,” the “History of Washington,” the “Alhambra,” and many more, which, as we think of them, rise up before us like a new vision of the “Arabian Nights” in our literature; and in order to read them and get the full beauty of Irving’s works, we must read them in connection with his “Life and Letters,” published by his nephew, Peor Irving, in which we see the whole history of the man pass before us, from the time when the boy of twenty went through the northern wilderness of New York, until the time when, a man of seventy, he again stood on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and in a letter to his niece called up the changes of fifty years.

[After referring to the changes Irving had lived to see take place, the speaker made the following allusion to Chautauqua:]

Think of Mr. Miller when he ten years ago laid out the site of the first humble cottage in this grove; and if he had slept from that time until now, he would be more than Rip Van Winkle, could he look in to-night upon this Auditorium. [Applause.]

HOURS OF REST.

By ANNA H. DRURY.

“Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest
awhile.”—MARK vi: 31.

Come ye apart, and rest awhile
From all your hope, from all your fear:
The sunny fields where harvests smile,
The thankless soil, the blighted ear—
Leave all behind, and rest with Me
One hour in still Gethsemane!

Come ye apart, and find repose
In this the garden of My pain;
Drink of the cup I share with those
Who lose for Me, and find it gain.
I from an angel comfort drew,
But I myself will comfort _you_!

Come ye apart, and taste the calm
My love can shed beneath the rod.
Rest on the everlasting Arm—
Be still, and know that I am God!
Accept your Heavenly Father’s Will,
As I accepted—and was still.

Come ye, as Moses came of old,
While humbled Israel mourned below,
And wrestled for his guilty fold,
With pangs that only shepherds know;
And won them back the forfeit grace!
Sealed with My glory on his face!

Come ye, as erst Elijah came,
Through forty days of mystic fast;
And through the earthquake, storm, and flame,
Thrilled to the still small voice at last;
And learned, when every hope looked dim,
That unknown thousands prayed with him!

Come, rest with Me on that stern bed
Whose tortures were endured for you;
Till faith and patience perfected,
There, where I triumphed, triumph too.
Who share the Paschal nail and thorn,
Shall know the joy of Easter morn!

THE RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES.

In a book written by J. Harris Patton, M. D., and published by D. Appleton & Co., entitled “The Natural Resources of the United States,” we find so much information that commends itself to every citizen of the country, that we have noted a few of the general facts, hoping thereby to give some light on the great wealth of our country. From this little book we learn first the general position and description of the country, together with the mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, valleys, etc.; then the amount of available coast line. This is, on both oceans, nearly 18,000 miles, while the shore line of the lakes and navigable rivers is 11,000 miles in length, making 29,000 miles in all. The vast importance of this need only be suggested to bring up a host of advantages that we derive from such means of traffic. In comparing the coal fields of Europe with those of the United States it is found that the latter country has twenty square miles of coal for one of the former, with a surplus of territory in the Rocky Mountain region amounting to 100,000 square miles. The ease with which the coal of the United States is mined is of great importance in the industry of the country. This facility of mining is due to the thickness of the veins and the dip of the seams.

Anthracite coal is most abundant in Pennsylvania. There are over four hundred and seventy square miles of this coal with an average thickness of sixty feet. Anthracite is also found in Virginia, Rhode Island, and New Mexico. Of bituminous coal there seems to be such a general distribution that almost every part of the country is supplied with fields of its own. The bituminous coal fields of the Allegheny lie on the western slope of the mountains and extend through Western Pennsylvania across the upper course of the Ohio river; and in like manner southwest along the slope nearly to the Gulf.

In many of these localities the beds of iron ore and limestone are all in the same mountain with the coal, and as they are all above the water-level, the coal is dry and well adapted to blast furnace purposes.

Block and cannel coals are found in great quantities throughout Ohio and Indiana. Block coal is also abundant in Iowa and Illinois.

Lignite is found in vast fields in the Rocky Mountain district. The veins of this partly formed coal are often nearly thirty feet thick. It is useful where great heat is not required. The extent of these fields on the east of the Rockies, and between them and the Sierras, is estimated to be fifty thousand square miles.

On the Pacific slope there are many localities where seams of coal are now worked, some of which are over one hundred feet in thickness. These fields extend far up into Alaska.

Iron-ore is found in inexhaustible quantities. The Creator seems to have placed the most useful of minerals within the reach of all mankind. New York State produces ore that yields iron of the best quality. Rich ores are found in New Jersey, while Pennsylvania surpasses all other states in her minerals. Ore is found in this state in all conditions, and of almost every variety. The ore is often associated with limestone and coal. Virginia has some valuable deposits of iron that are practically free from sulphur and phosphorus. North Carolina is rich in singular beds of ore which, when mined, looks like black sand. This ore is the “black oxide.” Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama all have important beds of ore. In Missouri there are two large mountains containing one-tenth of their weight in iron. Lake Superior regions are so valuable that ore is mined in this country and shipped to Pittsburgh to be smelted. Even the Rocky Mountains are well supplied with iron-ore in many places.