VII. ROME.
In these chapters, as I have before stated, my attempt is not so much to show what the schools accomplished in the ancient nations herein discussed, as to show their educative influence upon the world. Each nation has a mission given it to perform. Divine Providence gives to each a special work that is useful to all mankind. The national development is first an education of itself and secondly an education of mankind. This is true, in an especial sense, of the Jews, the Greeks and the Romans. All modern civilization grows from a three-fold root—Roman law, Greek science and art, Hebrew spirituality. Of course I restrict the word “civilization” in the above statement to Christian and Mohammedan nations—Mohammedan nations have more Hebrew and Greek and less Roman in their civilization.
We have given some consideration, already, to the Jewish and Greek educations, and it remains for us here to study the Roman character and achievements.
Let us place before ourselves the conclusion that thoughtful writers on the subject have long since reached: The Roman principle is that of compromise or mutual concession for the sake of the highest good and the safety of the state. A more attractive rendering of this principle would run somewhat as follows: The Roman people learned to distinguish between individual wishes and desires, and the duty owed to the state or political whole, and they were the first to define with great precision the spheres of private and public rights and duties. Then they conquered the world and disciplined all peoples into this recognition of private and public spheres, and destroyed all local patriotism and all local religions. This destruction of local patriotism and religion prepared the way for the coming of Christianity.
According to the general tradition, the origin of Rome was in the collection of a band of outlaws on one of the Seven Hills. The historian, Livy, calls them a colluvies, to express their coming together from different surrounding nations. Here was the border land of the Sabines, Latins, and Etruscans. The robbers must stand by each other as they have a common cause against all surrounding states. Here in the very beginning we have the most important element of the Roman principle. We see a union of different national stocks, different personal habits, different dialects, different social prejudices, and especially different religious ideas. All was difference except the common cause against avenging justice that pursued them. This however was a cause that involved life and death. They band together like robbers and make the safety of the community the chief object, and do not interfere with whatever private customs and usages the members of the league may have.
Here we see at the beginning the principle of toleration of a private or personal sphere for each citizen as contrasted with the sphere of public duty. The citizen is protected in the exercise of his own pleasure in his personal affairs where they are different to the public world, but on the other hand he must unhesitatingly sacrifice all when Rome’s interest demands it. His home and religion are matters that the state does not regulate nor allow neighbors to interfere with. The public concern of all is the safety of Rome. The citizen is in constant training to preserve his two-fold attitude of private and public life. He is always on the watch to control himself from stepping beyond the prescribed boundary and trespassing on the province of others, and he is always jealously defending his own domain from trespass. He is cultivating a consciousness of legality, a consciousness of statutes and regulations which are not in conformity with his own inclination, but necessary for Rome.
Each citizen learns to subordinate his caprice and inclination to the command of the state. This seems so much a matter of course with us that we do not at first see anything strange in the attitude of the Roman citizen. We forget that we have inherited this from Rome, and that it began with Rome and had no existence in other nations. With other people the religious principle and the state were homogeneous. Where the one penetrated the other penetrated. The individual lived in harmony with the state because the political life was all of one piece with the manners, customs, and habits of private life. The religion extended over both public and private spheres of life. Hence there was unity of religion and political duty, without any feeling of distinction existing between the public and private spheres of life.
But the Roman life was the beginning of a much deeper spiritual life. After the individual learns to distinguish and unite these two phases of his life—the public and private—he is a much deeper and stronger man, and is capable of exercising and improving greater personal freedom. He can realize within himself a far deeper spiritual experience and attain to a higher and purer idea of God and the divine life. In fact, after he has been through the Roman national education, he is fitted for a faith in the divine-human nature of God.
When the Roman makes treaties with the surrounding nations he bows to a common will, the will that unites his own national will with the opposing national will of another people. A treaty is a sort of higher public will uniting two national public wills. As opposed to the public will expressed in the treaty, the public will of either nation is a relatively private will. Thus the Romans who are famous for making treaties seem to be occupied with making distinctions between higher and lower will-powers, and realizing the difference between public and private wills at every step and in every degree.
When the treaty is broken, the Roman conceives it necessary to conquer the nation that breaks its faith and compel the vanquished people to submit and pass under the yoke of Roman law. Thus the Roman becomes a conqueror of the world. There being no higher power that can act as umpire between Rome and the nations with whom it makes a treaty, each nation acts as its own judge and is very apt to accuse the other one of broken faith. An appeal to arms results in the justification of the strongest. The vanquished must yield his convictions and submit.
Curtius defines the spirit of the Roman as that of the destruction of national peculiarities. Rome conquers the world and educates all nations into the same state of mind as its own people. The people in Spain and Gaul and Britain, in Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria, as well as in Greece, all become like the people of Italy in this respect, and grow to be very considerate of the boundary line between public and private life.
Out of this isolation of the private life grows the great respect for property and ownership which we find in connection with Roman institutions. The public is not one with the private, but distinguished from it by the Roman idea. But the law defines the limits of each and so they do not conflict.
In private property the citizen finds a sphere wherein he can realize his personal freedom. By means of property man satisfies his wants of food, clothing, and shelter. He is able, by means of property, to gratify a higher spiritual want of amusement and culture. He may avail himself of the observation and reflection of his fellow-men and profit by learning their experience. What our fellow-men have learned by error and suffering, as well as by observation and reflection, go to make up the wisdom of the race, which may be collected, preserved and distributed by means of the institution of private property.
Property is thus something that connects the particular individual with the social whole or the human race. In the sphere of ownership the individual is free and self-determined; he makes and unmakes at pleasure. With property he extends the sphere of his private personality and enters into free alliance with other personalities. By bargain and sale of chattels he exercises his own private freedom, not by limiting the freedom of others, but by and through the equal exercise of freedom on the part of those others. Thus by the invention of the institution of property the private freedom of each individual interpenetrates the sphere of the freedom of others without conflicting with it, but in fact reinforcing it, so that each man is freer through the freedom of others. Such is the wonderful significance of this Roman invention of private right of property.
What we see among other nations in Europe and Asia, before the Roman law came in vogue, is not the completed realization of the idea of private property but only the crude first appearance of it. Property under the Romans is as different from property in Persia, or even in Sparta, as commerce is different from piracy. It is the Roman who eliminates the element of external violence by freeing private rights from absorption in public rights. Then the freedom of one individual comes to reinforce that of another instead of limiting and circumscribing it.
It is one thing to be able to see the universal law in the particular facts and phenomena. It is quite another thing to see the universal forms of the will, rules that all individuals may conform their actions to, and by so doing avoid all conflict and collision of wills. These general forms of actions and deeds, when defined in words, become civil laws. The civil laws define the limits and boundaries within which each and all individuals may act without mutual conflict. If these laws are not obeyed one individual act will neutralize another and both will reduce to zero.
The Roman is able to formulate the general will, and he compiles the code of laws that descends to modern nations as one of the three most precious heir-looms. These laws define the forms in which men may act without contradicting each other, the forms by which the individual may accumulate property and realize his personality, and at the same time help, and not hinder, the personal freedom of all others. The Roman invented the forms by which a city, a town, a state may be governed and justice rendered to all, the forms in which a corporation may exist for the accomplishment of undertakings too great or too long continued for the single individual.
Religion in Rome had the two fold character of public and private. The family had its household gods, its Lares and Penates. The city had its tutelary deities, under various forms and names, but all amounting to the same thing, to wit: the expression of the abstract power of the state. The state was the highest divinity that the Roman knew. The gods Jupiter, Quirinus, Janus, etc., all meant the might of Rome. The deification of abstractions was carried out to a degree of superstitious whimsicality that astonishes us. There was conceived a god or goddess for every process of growth and decay and for every instrumentality of the natural or of the spiritual, and there was a divinity that made the bones grow in the child, and a divinity that assisted the flow of the sewers.
The Roman conception of the divine defined it as some invisible power that could be made useful to the individual or the state by some sacrifice or service performed toward it. The Roman therefore made vows to a particular deity when he found himself in an emergency. If the deity gave him success he fulfilled his vow with the greatest punctiliousness, offering a sacrifice, or founding a temple, or establishing some worship, in return for the service obtained. Thus the principle of contract entered the Roman idea of religion.
Contract is the essential legal basis for the transfer of property in such a manner as to secure joint freedom of individuals. Contract in religion as the relation of the individual to God seems the most terrible of all impiety. But the Roman in effect made contracts with his gods, showing the all-powerful hold of the idea of property and legality over the mind of this nation.
In the family there prevailed a form of ancestor worship almost as primitive as we found among the Chinese. All other nations, according to De Coulanges, had ancestor-worship at one time. It would seem that a more spiritual faith superseded it in other nations quite early. The special circumstances of Rome and China encouraged the preservation of family traditions. In China the entire state government is patriarchal, and thus wholly conservative of the principle of the family. In Rome on the other hand the state separates, as public affair, from the family, as a private affair, and carefully defines the limits between itself and the family so as to preserve the latter in the primitive form. Each family worshiped with stated ceremony the male ancestors of the family, the oldest son acting as the priest after the death of his father.
This principle of non-interference with the family customs and a careful guarding of the sacred privacy of the family developed a very noble type of woman. The Roman matrons were sublime examples of heroism, dignity and purity. The mother had much more influence in the education of the Roman youth, than in the education of youth in any other of the ancient nations. On the ninth day the Roman child was enrolled on the citizen’s register. But up to his fifteenth year his education was chiefly at home under the supervision of the mother. He studied reading, writing, and arithmetic, much the same as the boy of other nations. But he committed to memory the laws of the Twelve Tables as carefully as the Hebrew child learned the Ten Commandments. The Roman child was educated to be a soldier, to fight for Rome and to be a supporter of the laws. In his sixteenth year he studied Roman law with some jurist. One may read in Plutarch, or in Shakspere’s Coriolanus, how powerful was the influence of the mother over her son, and how devoted was the mother to Rome. Roman education prepared the world for Christianity, by breaking down national idiosyncrasies and leading up to the idea of the human race—genus humanum.
The system practiced by the Romans after the conquest of a country was to conscript the young men into the army and send their legions to a distant frontier. The young men from Britain might be sent to Spain or Egypt, and those from Illyria and the Danube, to Britain. In the presence of a hostile people, speaking a foreign tongue, the raw conscript found his only safe course to be a faithful adherence to the Roman eagles. He could not revolt with any hope of success. In a few years he had become attached to the Roman cause and cherished it as his second nature; while his relatives and countrymen afar away had also been obliged to obey Roman laws until their customs and usages had also changed to Roman. Thus each conquered nation became a means in turn of subduing every other nation and converting them into Romans.
The Persians had conquered nations and held them in subjection, but they had not attempted to mould the character and institutions of the conquered people, but had left them untrammeled, only requiring them to acknowledge supremacy and pay tribute. After a people recovered independence from Persia, little evidence remained of Persian influence. The Roman institutions, on the other hand, became so firmly rooted among a conquered people that they remained ever after substantially Roman in character.
The Greeks, we saw, were a cheerful people. They made games a religious ceremonial, celebrating the physical beauty of the gods by becoming beautiful themselves. Beautiful bodies and graceful movements seemed to them divine. The gods and goddesses fell in love with beautiful mortals. The Romans on the contrary, were sober and serious, and would not exercise for the sake of developing personal beauty, but only to become good soldiers for Rome. It was shameful in the estimation of the Roman to expose the naked body. Even within the family the utmost care was taken to develop and foster the sense of shame and of decency in the care of the person. The Roman was a haughty spectator at the games, but would not himself condescend to appear as a contestant. He bought slaves or forced his prisoners taken in battle to exhibit their skill in the arena. He delighted in spectacles where death-contests of beasts and men took place, because he felt its symbolic expression of the struggle within his own character, and his sacrifice of self for the state, and of his arbitrary will for the general abstract law. The Roman was sober and thoughtful because his life was occupied in self-restraint. He perpetually watched himself lest he should go beyond the limits fixed between the private and the public spheres of duty.
The result of mingling all nations in the Roman armies brought about a feeling of brotherhood among the soldiers and then among the people. There arose conviction that peculiarities of nation and even of race are accidents that do not affect the substance of a common humanity. The objects of affection for the individual—his native land, his country’s gods, his ties of kindred and friendship, were all ruthlessly broken by the irresistible might of the Roman empire, and for these objects of the heart were substituted only the abstract devotion to the state and devotion to the private right of property. There resulted a deep heart-hunger for a spiritual faith that would give to all an object commensurate with this new idea of the human race. This want was supplied by Christianity.
[RENUNCIATION.]
By A. C. M.
“Nevertheless I die daily.”
Like the voice of the storm, like the sound of the sea,
Is this tempest of longing for what can not be.
If wishes could waken the joys of the past,
If prayers could deaden the sorrows that last,
Now and for ever,—
A cry for the souls of a thousand in pain—
“Give us death or forgetting, or Heaven again.”
And the dead on the winds of Eternity sigh—
“Silence and peace. It is Heaven to die,
Now and for ever.”
Gross ignorance produces a dogmatic spirit. He who knows nothing, thinks that he can teach others what he has himself just been learning: he who knows much, scarcely believes that what he is saying can be unknown to others, and consequently speaks with more hesitation.—La Bruyère.
The fate of no man, not even the happiest, is free from struggles and privation; for true happiness is only then attained, when by the government of the feelings we become independent of all the chances of life.—Von Humboldt.
[OLD PAINTINGS.]
By ROBERT KEMPT.
The oldest picture, known at present, painted in oil colors on wood, is preserved in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. According to Beckmann’s “History of Inventions,” it was executed in the year 1297 by a painter named Thomas de Mutuia, or de Muttersdorf, in Bohemia. Two other paintings, in the same gallery, are of the year 1357; one is by Nicholas Wursnser, of Strasburg, the other by Thierry of Prague. It appears, therefore, that painting in oil was known long before the epoch at which that invention is generally fixed; and that it is erroneously ascribed to Hubert Van Eyck and his brother and pupil John Van Eyck, otherwise called John of Bruges, who lived about the end of the fourteenth century, and not the beginning of the fifteenth century, as is commonly supposed. It is pointed out, however, that there is evidence in the books of the Painters’ Company, under the date of the eleventh year of the reign of Edward I. (1283), that oil painting was in use at that time. Vide a communication from Sir Francis Palgrave, in Carter’s “Ancient Sculpture and Paintings in England.” It may be added that the art of wood engraving seems to be older than the invention of printing, to which, perhaps, it gave rise. The names of the first engravers on wood are, however, not known. In the Athenæum for 1845, page 965, is given a fac-simile of a wood engraving bearing date 1418, which was discovered at Malines in 1844, and is now preserved in the public library at Brussels.
Old paintings naturally lead to inquiries about old art schools, one of the most venerable and interesting of which is to be found in the quaint old Devonshire borough of Plympton, England. Here the greatest of English painters, Sir Joshua Reynolds, learnt the first principles of drawing. Here, too, Northcote, his clever and eccentric pupil, acquired his education. This was also the first school of Sir Charles L. Eastlake, P.R.A., and the alma mater of poor Benjamin Haydon. A few months before his tragic death Haydon visited the old grammar school, and wrote his name in pencil on the wall, where it may still be seen:
“B. R. Haydon,
Historical Painter, London,
Educated here 1801,
Rev. W. Haines (Master)
Head boy then.”
Nor must it be forgotten that Plympton had the honor of being represented in Parliament by the greatest of English architects, Sir Christopher Wren, who was elected in May, 1685, and was the first architect ever returned to the House of Commons. To return to Reynolds. He was born in the Master’s house adjoining the school, and some rough sketches drawn by him in his youth on the walls of the bed-room in which he first saw the light were to be seen when Haydon and Wilkie visited the house in 1809, but have since been obliterated by some barbarous whitewasher. In 1772 Sir Joshua was elected to the aldermanic gown of his native town, and in the following year he was chosen mayor of the borough. To show his appreciation of what he deemed a high honor, Reynolds presented to the town his own portrait, painted, as it seems, expressly to commemorate his mayoralty. It was placed in the corporation dining-room, but the common council had the effrontery to sell the picture for £150 when Plympton was disfranchised in 1832.
It need hardly be added that Sir Joshua Reynolds’s tomb (adorned by one of Flaxman’s best works) is almost close to that of Sir Christopher Wren in the crypt of St. Paul’s, both in life connected with the little Devonshire town, though by different ties and at different periods of its history, and both resting from their labors in the great temple which Wren built, and which Reynolds sought to adorn with his matchless pencil.
THE EMPLOYMENTS OF HEAVEN.[A]
By Rev. L. T. TOWNSEND, D. D.
The subject for this evening, “The Employments of Heaven,” is in some respects very difficult and, I fear that, to some of you, the discussion will be less satisfactory. The science and philosophy of this subject are chiefly by implication and suggestion. We have, therefore, to depend almost entirely upon written revelation. I am not unmindful of the fact that there are not a few people who say: “Why talk of what the Bible says on this subject? We are not believers in the Bible, and to us there is no more authority in it upon this subject than there is in the Odyssey of Homer, or the Shastas of India.” Yes, I understand you, but, all the same, let us study the book because of the limited light we have upon this subject from other sources, and because it has very much to say respecting this topic, and because such a man as Sir Walter Scott has said: “There is but one book—the Bible.” May we not wisely investigate what the Bible says upon the subject of the hereafter? In discussing this subject, let us guard against the charge of mistaken statement concerning things not revealed, and let us, on the other hand, dwell with a fair degree of fullness upon those points which, through the teaching of the sacred scriptures, have been made known to us.
There is one thought that I would like to mention, because sometimes it is a relief to that skeptical doubt which is common to the human heart. It is this: That the world in which we now live, and the fact that we are alive and in this world, and are conscious, active agents here, are of all others the chief surprises and the chief wonders. And, therefore, the fact of the future world, and of our personal joy and activity in it, should not seem unreasonable. Think of it! Is any greater wonder possible than that we are! Is the wonder greater that we are to be conscious after we are dead, and that we are to be in a place called heaven, than that we are now conscious and here now in a place called this world! How came we first in possession of this personal, wonderful consciousness? This is the thing which is incredible, if anything is incredible. When a human being can say, “I now am,” or as some one admirably put it, “I am here anyhow,” all further wonder ends. To exist at all is a greater mystery than to exist forever.
In unfolding the subject before us, we begin with the revelation variously and repeatedly set forth that, in the future life, there are to be what may not be improperly termed entertainments, and among them will be royal banquets. Feasts it is true, though spiritualized, seem contrary to our ordinary notions of a heavenly life, and seem quite contrary to other biblical revelation. These things seem to involve litter, clatter, rubbish. Still we have to confess that the Bible is quite full and quite clear on this subject. Note, for instance, the following passages: “For I say unto you I will not drink henceforth of the fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in my father’s kingdom.” Elsewhere he has said: “And I appoint unto a kingdom, as my father hath appointed unto me: that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Saith John in Revelation: “He that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it.”
We may modify these passages by one other, namely: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, or any heat.” It is, therefore, feasting without hunger, and drinking without thirst. But, says some one, “This is all figurative.” Perhaps so, we have not said that it is not figurative; but, if figurative, figurative of what? is a fair question. A figure implies something represented by the figure. If not, there is no figure. Without pressing any one for an immediate answer, we may be allowed to remark that it is not always what one eats that constitutes a feast, not the appetite only, but the soul enjoys the richest festal occasion. This introduction of the kitchen and of kitchen service and utensils into the kingdom of heaven is repugnant to our best thought. Between the spiritual and the carnal, we must, therefore, carefully distinguish. The latest deduction of both physiology and psychology is that smell and taste are the senses most employed, especially that of taste; but as yet there has been made no discovery of what it is that gives us the sense of smell or taste. It is, certainly, not the objects themselves. Here is a rose. I don’t smell the rose but I smell something which comes from that rose through the atmosphere, called the odor or aroma. Science tells us that it is an extra organic substance that we smell. Here is a lump of sugar which I place in my mouth. I do not taste that sugar, but it is an extra organic substance that I taste, and not the sugar itself. The most, therefore, that can be said is not that the rose is sweet, nor that sugar is sweet, but what we call the aroma of the rose and the flavor of the sugar are sweet, and of this aroma and flavor science is as ignorant as a child. Indeed, experiments show that electricity if delicately applied to certain nerves may variously produce the various sensations of taste and smell. Now, take into account this extra organic substance, recognized in every department of modern science, especially when the human organism is spiritualized, then you may lift the spirituality of Heaven as high as you please. You may make it as immaterial as a dream, still there will be abundant opportunity to eat and drink at the Lord’s Table in the kingdom of the Father Infinite and without any kitchen service required. The kitchen is dispensed with, the table spread by hands of angels, spread with this extra organic fruit and food, which are imperishable, which are not literally eaten, but which none the less awaken every pleasureable sensation and emotion of the soul. It is, then, that the spiritual can say to the carnal, “I have meat to eat of which ye know not of.” It will be the fullness of joy with no earthly inconvenience, its very privilege, to wait the fulfillment of Christ’s words. “But I say unto you I will drink no more the fruit of the vine until the day that I drink it new with you in the kingdom of God.”
The teaching seems to be, then, that without anything that is gross, without meat or drinks that are perishable, without fragments, yet in company with friends and companions, in company with royal souls, and in company with the Master, there will be fields of spiritual enjoyment that resemble in some respects the most royal and festive occasions of this earth. In other words, royal festival occasions on earth are typical of the royal festal occasions of the kingdom of heaven.
But there is another kind of employment. It is reasonable, as well as scriptural, to suppose that investigations into the various realms of truth will invite our active and restless minds. One of the most prominent characteristics of mankind is its unchangeable curiosity. How intensely interested it is to learn the history of the ruder and early times! How interested in every scrap of intelligence which reaches us from the old dead world! How interested, too, in any light thrown upon the civilization which preceded ours! What would not a man give for an hour with Socrates or Plato! What would he not give to have pictured out vividly before him some incident in the life of Christ! How entrancing it will be in company with our dearest friends to explore the secrets of eternity, the secret of God’s purpose, the divine methods, with ample time, with an all power of intellect, with the doors of knowledge flying wide open. We look, we enter, we contemplate, until the soul is full, and the heart now almost leaps to bathe itself in this infinite ocean of wisdom and knowledge.
Another thought growing out of our general subject, is that of regal service and employment.
It is often represented in the Bible that redeemed men in the kingdom of heaven will be a race of kings. Administration is natural to the best types of humanity. The redeemed, too, by the discipline of life, will be qualified for regal affairs.
“He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” “And I appoint unto you a kingdom as my father has appointed unto me.” “And I saw thrones and the saints of God sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them.” “Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?”
It is clear, therefore, according to biblical theology, that God is to share chief glories, not with angels nor archangels. They are only ministering spirits. It is manhood and nothing else that has the grandest coat of arms worn in God’s great empire. Just how, just where, we may not understand, but the fact is clearly revealed that, as the ages go on, the administration of universal affairs will be committed to redeemed men.
But, in addition to princely entertainments, search for truth and royal service, it is clearly revealed that friendly intercourse and association are to be found in the future life. Man, the king, will have kingly associates. Said Socrates, as reported by Plato: “Who would not part with a great deal to purchase a meeting with Xenophon and Homer?”
Charles Lamb wonderingly asks: “Shall I enjoy friendships in heaven, or do all these things go out with my human life?”
No, we cannot believe upon scientific grounds that it is possible for these associations to go out. And upon Bible grounds we are assured that they will be continued and range through the intermediate ages, and then on through the eternal ages of the kingdom of heaven.
“Neither marriage nor giving in marriage, but as the angels of heaven” are words that show that the carnal and the transitory depart, but the heart is none the less tender toward the heart which associates with it: “I shall go to him,” says David, speaking of his dead boy. And Christ says: “Father I will that they also whom thou has given me be with me, where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me.”
So, I think, we may say with perfect confidence that the association of old time friends, of mutual rejoicings and congratulations among old acquaintances, and the pursuit of truth in the same fields and pathways side by side with those whom we have known and loved on earth, are as well assured as any other doctrine in philosophy which has any bearing upon the future life. Those words of the apostle that “We are already surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” are a kind of mighty assurance that those whom we love are already in watching to clasp our hands in their own.
Once more among the clearly revealed entertainments of the kingdom of heaven are those of the service of music. There will be songs and singers in heaven. Indeed, we are informed definitely as to some of the words which are to be employed. Three hymns, at least, are named which are to be sung—“And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways thou King of Saints.”
“And they sang a new song, saying: Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation.”
Such are the Scripture representations, and are they not reasonable? Are they not philosophical? Music on earth is wonderful is it not? “Wonderful!” is your common exclamation when listening to some extraordinary singer or player. Yes, music is wonderful; the harmony of sound, the blending of human voices, the chimes of various instruments, are all marvelous pieces of human combination and art, and are thrilling and enchanting when brought near perfection. When, therefore, in this present life, we find ourselves thrilled by music if well rendered, can we doubt what are God’s thoughts respecting it and respecting its use in the universe, for are we not made in his image? Or when the giant winds draw their bows up and down the rough mountain sides, when we hear æolian harps in every tree, and when we hear the little woodland sparrow with throat no bigger than a pipe stem, yet with song enough in it to be heard miles away, when we listen to the many voices and sounds of nature, can we doubt that God thinks of music something as we do? And when a passage is faultlessly rendered by his children can we doubt that he says “well done?” Is not music too wonderful, too full of charm, too soothing to the weary, not to have one of the first places on the platform of our heavenly and eternal entertainment? Allow me in this connection to call attention to another fact, namely, that no class of artists is more willing to recognize the spiritual source of their productions than eminent musical composers. Before their most successful efforts, they confess to have heard their own music, and to have listened, and then given the world what they heard. Every note was old before it was committed to paper, and it seemed to those eminent masters that the notes were heard by the contact of the soul with something invisible. That is, the “Elijah” of Mendelssohn, the “Creation” of Haydn, the “Messiah” of Handel, and the like compositions, came of their own accord, or came as the music comes from the æolian harps, when touched by the unseen fingers of the wind. The slave who was asked “Where did your colored people get those sweet and beautiful melodies?” replied, “God gave them to us,” and, seemingly, that is the only way of accounting for those refrains which have melted the hearts of peasants and of kings. I will not state these matters dogmatically, but our present relation to the invisible world may account for some of those inspirations. Therefore, every good and perfect musical note as well as every good and perfect gift, cometh down from the Father of Light, with whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning. We have divine inspirations and we have divine impressions oftener, no doubt, than we give credit for. I do not know but these musical geniuses have God-given intellects so far reaching, intuitions so acute, that they catch the notes of the rehearsals of paradise when they are celebrating the return of some prodigal whom they see here upon this earth, or the triumphant movements of the Lord Jesus Christ with his retinue. They have certainly heard eternal harmony, and harmony is harmony, be it on earth or in paradise, in time or in eternity. Beethoven, whom some think the greatest and sweetest of all modern musical masters, heard the wild melodies and harmonies of the universe; imitated the hum of insects, the song of birds and the trickling of water rills, long after being afflicted by an impenetrable deafness which prevented the slightest sounds from entering the portals of his ear.
You need not be surprised, therefore, at hearing in the eternal ages notes with which you are perfectly familiar. The sweetest and the most inspiring chords that are now heard are those that will be made there, for the ideal is divine and the divine is eternal, and the eternal must find repeated expression. That marvelous production, “The Messiah” of Handel, which pervades all modern Christian song, is in some of its parts, we may be very confident, the same that will chant the Redeemer’s praise forever. “Old Hundred” and “Coronation” can hardly be dispensed with. I verily believe that very soon after we enter the portals of the heavenly world we shall sing “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” and “All hail the power of Jesus’s name.”
But Revelations still further assures us that the music in the kingdom of heaven is to have remarkable accompaniments. There is the mention of harps, and the mention of trumpets, and the rumble of thunder, all wrought into the music of that world.
At first thought these revelations are bewildering, but, perhaps, the peace jubilee of Boston will illustrate what can be done with ponderous agencies and appliances. The anvil chorus, as you remember, was extremely popular, where the music was played on blacksmith’s anvils with solid hammers, and the artillery accompaniment was even more popular, where music fell from the blazing lips of cannon. The child was awe-struck yet delighted, the man of years was thrilled and said, “Is the kingdom of heaven upon us?” It is a remarkable fact that gas jets and electricity have been utilized, and are now made to play the most beautiful arrangements and harmonies.
Now, such, according to the Bible, are the accompaniments which are to sustain the redeemed when their hearts are almost bursting with the song: “Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” We are repeatedly assured that the good and pure of the universe from all lands, east and west, north and south, shall be gathered together, and that the voice of a great multitude as the voice of many waters and as the voice of mighty thunderings shall be heard pouring forth their melody with the precision, delicacy and electric touch of a single voice, saying: “Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.”
Where, of all places on this earth, is music the most enchanting? You have listened to it in halls and in churches, you have heard it in city squares and in congregations, and at the evening hour you have heard it on some beautiful sheet of water. My question is doubtless answered. Your ideal is right, for nowhere else is music quite so sweet as by the water side; and it is remarkable that the inspired writer tells us that the golden harps are to stand upon the broad and beautiful, the eternal and delightful sea which extends before the throne of God, and whose surface resembles sparkling and transparent crystals.
The metropolis of heaven, in which and before which, as John tells us, the grand musical entertainments are to be given, is a beautiful and wonderful city. The measurements as given in Revelation make it to be a city of fifteen hundred miles square, a city, therefore, in extent as great as would be one extending from Boston, Massachusetts, to Omaha, Nebraska; from Omaha to Monterey, Mexico; from Monterey to Havana, Cuba, and from Havana back to Boston—a city larger than all the dead cities of the past, and of all the living cities of the present combined; and a city large enough to hold, without any crowding, all the people who ever lived upon this earth; whose atmosphere is so telephonic that the slightest touch upon the most delicate wire of the harp will be perfectly heard in the most distant palace.
Now, who that has any music in his soul (and who has not?) but desires that the service of song shall constitute a part of these heavenly entertainments. After our introduction to that new world, after the reunions, after the formation of new companionships, when we realize that we are safe, and when we realize that we are to sin no more, it seems to me the hearts of God’s children would almost burst, could they not upon the shores of that crystal sea shout and sing the triumphs of redemption.
I will just add the thought that all these entertainments, this kingship, this study, this companionship, this service of song, are to be endless and without weariness. What charms and attractions betimes hover about this idea of the future endless possession and existence! What joy, and, again, what perplexity! Are we to live on, and on, and on, as conscious beings, forever, with no thought of death, or of sickness, or of separation from those we love? This must be confessed, that, according to revelation, it is a duration without shore, without measure, without bound, without a falling leaf, without a setting sun, that is to greet us on the shores of another world. Speak to us, thou endless existence filled with songs, filled with entertainments, filled with friendships, filled with joys,—speak to us, that we may somehow comprehend thee! And there comes back to us a solemn response, saying, “O, mortal, you must experience before you can fully comprehend the magnitude of a future existence.” But, through his infinite mercy, it will be our privilege to sing his praise, to feast at the table of royalty, to enjoy the choicest companionships, to explore the sublime realms of truth, and to hold the sceptre of dominion forever. All this belongs to our privilege, and yet we may imperil our privilege.
[COUNSEL.]
By ALICE C. JENNINGS.
Strive not to fill an angel’s part
Without an angel’s wing:
But, as it is, thy human heart
To God, thy Maker, bring.
His patience never doth abate
Howe’er we sin and fall;
Be patient with thyself, and wait
Till patience conquers all.
Grieve never that thy daily task
A homely outline shows;
For bulbs unsightly oft may mask
The sweetest flower that blows.
The work so light-esteemed may gain
A place, and claim a power
That works far grander seek in vain,
Though unto heaven they tower.
Look not without for blame or praise,
Look upward and within:
And, through the swift-revolving days,
With each, thy task begin.
And lo! as grows the kingly tree,
By force of inward might,
Thy life, to those around shall be
Majestic, strong and bright.
With patience work—with gladness, love,
Nor seek results to scan:
Who works, but will not wait, must prove
A discord in God’s plan.
Let body, mind, and soul, and will
To labor be addressed—
Press thou with courage onward still
And leave to him the rest.
THE BIBLE AND NATURE.[B]
By Rev. J. B. THOMAS, D.D.
There is noticeable similarity between nature and the Bible, the work and the word. There are countless evidences indicating that they have the same author. No case resting on evidence was ever clearer. You can always detect a master’s style in his creations; certain peculiarities are sure to appear. You can recognize a Rubens in the old galleries by the blonde hair, the pinkish tint of the flesh, and the luxurious stoutness of the physique. So the brush of Murillo and Guido, and every great artist carries its own mark. So one mark is on nature and the Bible. They are done in the same style. In Raphael, the reality of the earthly, and the gracefulness of the heavenly, never fail to be blended in wonderful harmony, apparent always to the practiced eye. His figures are pyramids of strength, transfused with celestial beauty. Nature confirms some of the most important doctrines of the Bible—some that men would rule out, or quietly ignore; but nature comes to their support, as another attraction of the same God, to the same truth. In nature, when spring comes, it is by silent and imperceptible approach, like the dawn of the morning. First, a bluebird’s note on the bare tree tops (no one saw her come), then the song of the robin. It is first the crocus, lifting up her head, and then the tulip and the hyacinth, while a tint, a shade softer, comes in the sky. One by one other birds and flowers appear, and at last, the full tide sets in, and beauty mounts the earth, and balm fills the air. The glory of the seasons is upon us, and the heart is entranced with the wonders of loveliness in the midst of which it moves.
So the Bible: First, the simple promise to Eve, far back in the moral winter of man’s estate, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” This was the lone note of the bluebird, sounding out in the midst of the desolations of a fallen world. It was the first soft tint in the cold sky. By-and-by the promise to Abraham, “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” This was the trailing arbutus. At last the definite announcement of a coming Savior to Isaiah, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and his name shall be called Immanuel [God with us], for he shall save his people from their sins.” This was the blossom of the fig tree which showed that summer was nigh. Thus did revelation come slowly, through ages of delay, till at last in the fulness of time God unsealed his wonders, the star, the wise men, the angelic host, the watching shepherds, the “gloria in excelsis,” the earth breaking forth into singing, the desert places blooming as the rose, and fragrance of spices in all the air. Verily the God of nature and of the Bible is one God, the method of God in nature testifying that it is the same God in the Bible. In nature everything is in the concrete. We have the raw material in bulk there: the gold must be mined and melted; the timber must be cut, and squared with saw and ax; the stones fashioned with hammer and chisel; the land cleared and plowed and dressed. So different is this from the art of man, who puts everything in rows and squares, and introduces order everywhere. Similarly, revelation gives ideas, not forms. It scatters germs of thought, not finished creeds. It throws out great truths, doctrines, principles, not definite rules and completed systems. Everything as in nature must be carefully searched out, reduced and put in order. A casual observer would have no idea of the riches in the Bible, any more than in nature. Here is a doctrine mixed with a duty; there is a precept bound up with a paragraph of history. In one place is a miracle, where you looked for a promise; in another is prophecy, where you had expected law, and so on through. Strange, you say, so many curious things in the Bible, so much that is irreverent, so little system, so wanting in arrangement. But it is just like nature. There is a complete and definite order, a general organic unity runs from the first page to the last. Written by sixty-six different authors, and sixteen hundred years in the composition, it is still one book, one plan. All the parts combine to make the great whole. It must be studied out. Like nature, the Bible is planned to tax the higher faculties of man, to put them to search, and develop and enlarge them by thoughts and endeavors. Little study makes little men. What is lightly acquired is carelessly held. Easy lessons make barren lives. Out of the depths by toil come the great riches of head and heart. Down from the heights after profound thought the larger wisdom is brought. It is the glory of kings to search out a matter, and men become kings only as God puts them to kingly effort and service. This method of God in nature makes princes in science, as men learn to think God’s thoughts after him. This method in the Bible makes strong men. Verily the God of nature is also God of the Bible, and they will stand together, the Word as enduring as the world.
In nature there is no withholding of mysteries, no avoidance of difficulties, because they may disturb some weak faith, trouble somebody. The great God of the universe lets out his power and displays his wisdom, and builds up to his own level, whether anyone can understand or not. Out of nothing, nothing comes. Out of the infinite comes infinite greatness and wisdom, beyond the scope of man. There is a startling boldness in God’s works. In nature contradictions are piled mountains high, no matter whether man can reconcile them or not. Paradoxes abound without regard to how they will strike men; no explanations are vouchsafed; men are not followed up and told why this is, and why that. They have to take it as it comes. In nature, man is placed in the midst of untold wonders and marvels, without a word, and he is left there to grapple with the highest problems, and think them out. God does not “baby” his children, in these things. This is the highest kind of teaching. Man never finds his littleness, and begins to learn, and climb, till he is put on such a stretch. In this is God’s wisdom, as well as his greatness. Just this is God’s method, also, in the Bible. It is the most bold and fearless of books: mysteries utterly inexplicable it sets before you; difficulties the most irreconcilable it plants on every page, with no attempt at solution. God is master and in command; God governs, and not the skeptics or theologians. Prophecies are uttered, miracles are performed upon God’s plans, as is easy for him. Man may believe, or let it alone. As in nature, God can not be less than himself. There is much in nature and in the Bible that man never can think out, but nature is not the less to man because it is so much above him. The very fact helps to lift him; man needs Alps on Alps above him. If the Bible were more easy, contained fewer hard sayings and knotty doctrines, it would show a less wonderful God, it would be a less powerful stimulant and helper to men. Is not the God of nature and the Bible one God—the work confirming the book? In nature there is loveliness and peace, terror and death; what more calm and delightful than a quiet sunset? What more terrible than tornado and tempest? You have seen the fire of lightning, and heard death riding on the blast in the black darkness. There are peaceful vales of earth filled with the song of birds, the hum of bees, and the gentle lullaby of brooks. But are there not cyclones and whirlwinds, lightnings and thunders, that rend and wreck, and devastate—earthquakes that swallow up whole cities—volcanoes which belch liquid fires? In the midst of beauty and loveliness men starve, and burn, and drown, and rot with loathsome disease, and die.
Now there is no question in the world’s best thought, but that God is good, wonderfully good, notwithstanding all these sufferings and sorrows. Turn to the Bible, what love is there! what goodness and patience! what mercy and grace, for every son of man abundantly bestowed! God is not willing that any should perish. He would rather that all should turn and live. But suffering for sin is there, and punishment for guilt. What forked lightnings play against wickedness! what thunders roll for transgression! There is the worm that never dies, the fire that is never quenched, the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Heaven is there, with all its bliss, for those who love and obey God, and hell is there with all its bale and blight for those who die unforgiven and unreconciled to God. Because of these things, many throw away the Bible and reproach God, and seek after an easier way; but they can not throw away nature, and the same law and method of government inhere in the very core of nature, and are stamped in all its structure. Where this truth is not read out of God’s word, it is still read every day in nature.
In nature there is a majestic order which is gone through, and then nature has no more to give. There is seed time, and a harvest. Both have their place and office, and if they are improved, well, unspeakably well; if disregarded, bad, unspeakably bad. The Bible offers to man a seed time and a harvest. The sowing neglected there is nothing to take its place. This is the only seed time of the soul; swiftly the summer ends, and the harvest is the end of the world. As nature treats man, so does the Bible; without faith and works, the Bible gives nothing; without ploughing and sowing all the pastures of the prairies would fail to give man anything; nature cuts off a sluggard with a straw; without sowing, man reaches the harvest time and brings in no sheaf. Nature deals squarely: without the seed committed to her, there are weeds in the autumn; nothing but leaves. So with the Bible: it demands our confidence, and asks our service; we must heed its call. Nature is so made as to reward man increasingly, as he rises in intelligence and his wants multiply. When wood was gone for fuel, coal came. When the whale oil gave out, petroleum was at hand. After the paddle came the sail, then the steamship. When the mail carrier was too slow, the rail car appeared, followed by the lightning of the telegraph. Nature has her supplies in waiting, and reveals them more and more through the growing needs of the ages. So of the Bible. Many said the Bible would do for the stiff-necked Jews in Palestine, but it would never suit the practical sense of the Romans and the subtle intellectual taste of the Greeks. It did both. Then it was claimed it would not avail for the barbarians of northern Europe. It was adopted by every European nation. Still it was held that the Bible would not reclaim cannibals and the savages of Africa. It has done for all, lifted all of every class which it has touched, and it has power to carry the race higher and wider till the end of time.
An oriental prince brought a tent to his father in a walnut shell, so runs the legend. The king took it out and began to unfold it. It covered the king and his counselors. It covered the royal household. It covered his generals and the army. It covered the kingdom. It covered the whole world. It was Christianity. God was the father, and the prince was Jesus Christ, the Messiah. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord. The God of nature and of the Bible is one God.
Resist as much as thou wilt; Heaven’s ways are Heaven’s ways.—Lessing.
[JOHN RICHARD GREEN.]
By Rev. H. A. HAWEIS, M.A.
Before the publication of Mr. Green’s “Short History,” 86,000 copies of which have been sold in England alone, Mr. Green, although a voluminous essayist in the Saturday Review, was absolutely unknown by name to the general public. It is not true, as was asserted in a leading journal, that the success of his book surprised his friends. In 1863, the clergyman whom he followed at Holy Trinity, Hoxton, said to me, “I think we have a giant among us in Johnny Green.” “I made up my mind about that,” I replied, “the very first night I saw and spoke to him.” Mr. Freeman, Prof. Stubbs, Dr. Stanley, and, I may say, Archbishop Tait, all knew of his powers before he became famous at a leap, and I venture to say not one of them was surprised at his success. I think he was more surprised himself.
He was filled with a great love of historical study, but was generally diffident about his own work. “I read it over,” he said to me in the old days, when I was favored with copious extracts; “and I write and re-write, and wonder after all whether it is worth much—whether any one else will read it!”
His own standard was so high, his knowledge so great, and his critical friends, Freeman, Stubbs, Brewer, etc., so accomplished, that he was inclined to be generally very modest about his own rank as an historian, and at times even wavered in his general design.
When I first knew Mr. Green, he was revolving a work which should deal, I believe, with the Plantagenet period, illustrate the story of the Great Charter, and the making of the English political constitution. The first fragment he put into my hand in type was Stephen’s Ride to London.
At the instance of Mr. Macmillan, the publisher, he abandoned the magnum opus for a season, and taking, in one wide sweep, the whole of English history, produced that unique and popular narrative which raised him immediately into the very first rank of historians.
I remember his anxiety to bring the book within the reach of the masses, to make it a cheap book, his battle with the publisher on that ground, and his final victory.
“They will not see,” he said, “that by this horror of dead stock and constant issue of dear books, which means small profits and quick returns to them, they miss the bulk of the middle classes, who are the real readers—the upper classes and the very poor don’t read—and you make your new books so dear, that your middle class, who do, can’t buy. Look at America; you ought to bring literature to people’s doors. If I were a publisher, I would have a vast hawking-system, and send round my travelers with cheap books to every alley and suburban district within ten miles of London.”
This intense sympathy with the people, no doubt, had to do with those innate democratic and republican tendencies in Mr. Green which so alarmed the Quarterly Review, but they were immensely quickened by his many-sided experiences in the East-end of London.
In those Hoxton and Stepney districts, where he was my fellow curate, and my constant friend and companion for two years, he was learning to know the English people. He had read about them in books. In Stepney he rubbed elbows with them. He had a student’s acquaintance with popular movements; but the people are their own best interpreter; and if you want to understand their ways in the past, you can not do better than study our present poor-law guardian, navvy, artisan, East-end weaver, parish Bumble, clerk, publican, and city tradesmen, in the nineteenth-century flesh.
Mr. Green never worked more vigorously at his history than when he was busy reading its turbulent popular movements, and mixed social influences, secular and religious, in the light of mechanics’ institutes, poor-law difficulties, parochial squabbles, and dissenting jealousies. The postponement of his history until the harvest of this precious experience had been fully reaped, gave him that insight into the secret springs of popular enthusiasm, suffering, and achievement which makes his history alive with the heart-beats of our common humanity, instead of mouldy with the smell of moth-eaten MSS. and dead men’s bones.
That slight nervous figure, below the medium height; that tall forehead, with the head prematurely bald; the quick but small eyes, rather close together; the thin mouth, with lips seldom at rest, but often closed tightly as though the teeth were clenched with an odd kind of latent energy beneath them; the slight, almost feminine hands; the little stoop; the quick, alert step; the flashing exuberance of spirits; the sunny smile; the torrent of quick invective, scorn, or badinage, exchanged in a moment for a burst of sympathy or a delightful and prolonged flow of narrative—all this comes back to me, vividly! And what narrative, what anecdote, what glancing wit! What a talker! A man who shrank from society, and yet was so fitted to adorn and instruct every company he approached, from a parochial assembly to a statesman’s reception!
But how enchanting were my walks with him in the Victoria Park, that one outlet of Stepney and Bethnal Green! I never in my life so lost count of time with any one before or since.
Green would live through a period. Two hours on the Venetian Republic, with every conceivable branch of allied history, literature, and politics thrown in, yet willing to listen and gather up at any moment; infinite speculations at other times on theology, philosophy; schemes for the regeneration of mankind; minute plans for the management of our East-end districts; anecdotes of the poor; rarer veins of sentiment and personal criticism.
I have sometimes, after spending the evening with him at my lodgings, walked back to St. Philip’s Parsonage, Stepney, toward midnight, talking; then he has walked back with me in the summer night, talking; and when the dawn broke it has found us belated somewhere in the lonely Mile-end Road, still unexhausted, and still talking.
At such times we have neither of us undressed all night—that was so especially in the cholera times—but I would go back to St. Philip’s and sleep on a sofa till breakfast-time.
In those days we were both feeling our way, through similar experiences, to conclusions of a somewhat different nature; but the memory of many precious hours of soul-communion remains with me, as something sacred and beautiful beyond words. I think at such times we grow in mind and develop in character in days and nights, more than in months and years of slower vitality and lessened intensity.
In 1866 the cholera broke out in the East-end of London. Mr. Green was then Incumbent of St. Philip’s, Stepney, and I had just removed to a curacy at the West-end; but his position at this time was very lonely, and I was glad to go out to be with him whenever I could. I am sorry to say that in the general cholera panic a good many who ought to have remained at their posts forsook them, and this made the work very heavy for people of any means and influence who still felt bound to reside in the affected districts.
Although Mr. Green’s parish did not suffer as heavily as some, yet in some streets the mortality was very great. The dead could hardly be got away quickly enough. The neighbors often refused to touch them. I have known Mr. Green take an active part in sending off the cholera beds for burning, and getting the corpses out of the houses. The only people who seemed willing to help him were the lowest women of the town. These poor girls rallied round the active and public-spirited clergyman; and it was no uncommon thing to see Mr. Green going down the lowest back streets in Stepney, on his way to some infected house, between two women of the town, who had volunteered with him on such sad and perilous service to the dead and dying, as was daily to be done, and was daily being left undone, in those dismal times.—The Contemporary Review.
[A TROPICAL RIVER IN FLORIDA.]
By S. J. M. EATON, D.D.
This State reaches down toward the tropics. The twenty-ninth parallel of latitude marks the frost line. Below this is the land of perennial flowers and ever ripening fruits. Even before you reach the favored line there are scenes and surroundings that remind you that the winter is past, that the time of the singing of birds is perpetual, and that nature is most prodigal of her gifts in lands nearest the pathway of the sun. In recalling the history of Ponce de Leon, one can not fail of sympathizing with him in his search for the fountain of perpetual youth. That search was not only characteristic of the age in which he lived, but in sympathy with the secret wants and wishes of all the lands and all the ages. Moreover in such a quest as this, Florida of all places seems fittest and best. It was rightly named at the first “The land of flowers.” They bloom in wondrous fragrance on the orange and lemon trees; they expand in gigantic proportions on the banana tree; they break forth in lavish magnificence on the magnolia. And along the rivers and other water courses strange trees and gorgeous shrubs greet the eye, and tell how prodigal nature is in the display of her resources, and with what wonderful magnificence she can clothe the face of the landscape in regions remote from wintry blasts. Even in central Florida, where frosts sometimes come, there is a wealth of trees and flowers and fruits that transforms the whole country into fairy land almost, as the summer sun with its genial heats kisses it into life, beauty, and fragrance.
The Ocklawaha River is one of the delightful features of central Florida. It is wild and weird and novel in all its aspects. One of its branches is the Silver Spring, that is really an anomaly in nature. This branch of the river has its origin in the celebrated fountain known as the “Silver Spring,” and that as a fountain might, from its beauty and purity and liquid clearness, well be mistaken for the fabled one that was the object of the quest of Ponce de Leon. Whether it was ever visited by this romantic knight or not, it is worthy to be the shrine of many a pilgrim in search of the beautiful and the romantic. This wonderful spring gushes forth from the bosom of the earth in volume sufficient to form at once a small river. The steamboats run up and float in the bosom of the spring, which is large enough to float four or five at once without jostling. The water is clear and sparkling, and although seventy-five feet in depth, yet as you gaze down into its recesses every pebble and shell can be seen as plainly as though in the bottom of a small vase. And as the boat rests upon its bosom noiselessly and quietly, you think of the simile of the swan, “floating double—swan and shadow.” This immense volume of water comes up noiselessly, causing scarcely a ripple upon the face of the spring, and floats away as silently amid the shadows, to join the main body of the Ocklawaha. Whence comes this immense reservoir of water? Where is the hidden source that furnishes its mighty volume? Were it not for its crystal purity and sweetness we might imagine it held mysterious communion with the ocean, and drew its vast supply from the bosom of the great deep. The outflow maintains its purity until it joins the main branch of the river, when its association with it causes it to partake of the same character, becoming somewhat muddy, and bearing the dark shadows of the overhanging trees, and thickly strewn with the leaves of aquatic plants that grow luxuriantly along its margin. From the Silver Spring down into the Ocklawaha, and on to its junction with the St. John’s, the channel is narrow and tortuous, running toward every point of the compass, spreading itself out to great widths in some places, in others confined within its narrow channel, but always surrounded with wild and strange scenery. Although in the general the banks are utterly indefinable, as the water runs back to an indefinite distance, yet there is no appearance of aught that would cause malaria. Every here and there a slight avenue opens through which a skiff or canoe might be pushed far out into the forest. The channel itself is so narrow and tortuous that the steamer threads its way with great difficulty. In many places the branches overreach the stream and seem to bar the further progress of the little craft, and render futile all efforts to proceed. In some of the narrow turns a stout boatman is stationed in the bow with a pole to assist in turning the boat when almost a right angle prevents the ordinary working of the machinery in its navigation.
All along this wonderful stream nature reveals her most luxuriant growth of vegetation. Here is the palm, with its strangely contorted trunk and corrugated bark. By its side is the palmetto with fantastic branches, and wide-spreading leaves. Many of the trees send up their gnarled roots in high arches underneath which the water runs at will. Great trailing masses of vines cling to the trees, and weigh down their branches almost to the water, often reaching from one tree to another, making a dense grove, and shutting out the sunlight from the water beneath. Lower down, and clinging to the banks on either side, are all manner of aquatic plants, beautiful in leaf and luxuriant in flower, gleaming often like bright jewels in the soft sunshine. Lilies of various varieties rest in the water, their bright green leaves surrounding their flowers of waxy white and yellow gold as they recline in their cool bath. By their side are plants with arrow-shaped leaves, with white blooms lined with pistils and stamens yellow as virgin gold, and others with flowers of blue, around which gorgeous little humming birds, reflecting the sunlight, and flashing like living jewels, buzz and coquet with the flowers as they extract their luscious sweets for a moment, and then dart off with a flash and disappear. Animated nature is busy adding variety to the scene, from beauty all the way to the beast. Golden beetles, blue-bottle flies, and gilded butterflies in velvet and spangles, float to and fro; water-bugs with varnished wings dart over the surface of the water. Birds of gorgeous plumage arise in the distance and sail up the stream. The oriole with its magnificent feathers of orange and black; the blue jay with its livery of blue and white, and its sharp cutting note, and the great red flamingo, with awkward, ungainly form, its long spindling legs and small snake-like neck, and plumage of red, like an Egyptian sunset, are seen; the former two darting quickly from tree to tree; the latter standing in the water in some sequestered spot, idly dreaming the time away, and apparently indifferent as to whether the earth turns upon its axis or not. Near the bank a water serpent might be seen urging his way with arrowy motion through the water, defiantly thrusting out his tongue with a malice born in Eden, perhaps, or lying in the warm sun on a fragment of bark, not considering it important to move, yet pushing out the same scornful challenge. At times a magnificent specimen of the alligator is seen in the distance sunning himself on a log, but rolling incontinently into the water at the approach of the boat, or the slightest alarm from any cause. The poor saurian who has arrived at years of discretion, has learned from bitter experience that the human sportsman carrying firearms is not to be trusted, in this age of Spencer rifles. He therefore retires in good order at their approach. But nearer at hand the infant alligator has less fear. He can be seen creeping up the bank, careening upon the waves that are thrown up by the motion of the boat, sporting in the shallow water with youthful indifference to danger, and with great stupid eyes and shockingly open countenance, gazing up at the passing visitors. And so the boat glides and twists and forces its way down the current, the branches on either side sweeping its sides and even its upper decks. The entire scene is one of kaleidoscopic beauty and variety, until the mighty St. John’s is reached, and the craft that has done you such good service is safely moored at the wharf at Palatka.
[THE INFLUENCE OF WHOLESOME DRINK.]
[Concluded.]
Coffee is the berry of an evergreen tree, which grows to a height of about twenty feet, and which is largely cultivated in Arabia, Ceylon, Jamaica, and the Brazils. The berry is plucked when sufficiently ripe, and carefully stored away. It is principally composed of a sort of hard paste or meal, similar to that of the almond or bean, which is destined by nature to form the earliest nourishment of the young germ contained in the seed. When this meal is exposed to strong heat, it is partly turned into the fragrant flavor, which is familiar to all drinkers of coffee. Hence coffee is always roasted before it is employed in the preparation of beverage. The process is best accomplished by placing the berries in a hollow cylinder of iron, kept turning rapidly round over a clear fire until they put on a light chestnut color, when they require to be cooled quickly by tossing them up into the air. Roasted coffee contains, besides its fragrance, the white nerve food already alluded to in speaking of tea, a remnant of the nutritious meal, unaltered by the roasting, and a slightly astringent matter. Its nature is, therefore, singularly like to that of tea, and its action on the living frame is precisely the same. When drunk in moderation, coffee supports and refreshes the body, and makes the food consumed with it go further than it otherwise would. Coffee is, upon the whole, less astringent than tea; it also contains only half the quantity that tea has, weight for weight, of the active nerve food. Hence it can be taken stronger than tea, and so has more of the other nourishing ingredients in any given bulk. A cup of strong coffee generally holds about the same quantity of the active nerve food as a weak cup of tea.
As with tea, so with coffee; it requires to be prepared differently, accordingly as the object is, to get from it the finest flavor or the greatest amount of nourishment. The most delicious coffee may be made by using a tin vessel, called a percolator, having a false bottom at mid-height, drilled full of fine holes, and a spout coming off from beneath the false bottom. Finely-ground coffee is to be pressed and beaten down firmly upon the false bottom, and then boiling water is to be poured over it through a kind of coarse cullender, so arranged as to break its descent into a boiling shower. The hot water thus gently rained down on the coffee then drains gradually through it, carrying all the finer parts and flavors with it into the vessel beneath, but leaving behind the coarser matters. For the convenience of consumers, coffee is now commonly removed from the roaster at once into a mill driven by steam, and is there ground while still hot. It is then pressed out from the mill directly into tin cases prepared to receive it, these being immediately closed very carefully. By these means the coffee is sent out, ready for use, with all its most excellent qualities clinging about it. Three drachms of ground coffee of this quality are abundantly sufficient to furnish two small cups of a most delicious beverage.
When quantity of nourishment, rather than fineness of flavor, is the thing desired, the ground coffee should be placed in a clean dry pot standing over the fire, and be kept there until thoroughly hot, being stirred constantly, so that it may not burn. About five grains of carbonate of soda should then be added for each ounce of coffee, and boiling water be poured on, the whole being closely covered up and allowed to stand near the fire, without simmering, for some time. When about to be used, it should either be gently poured off into cups, without shaking it, or it should be strained through a linen cloth into another pot. An ounce of coffee employed in this way is sufficient for the preparation of two pints of strong nutritious drink.
A small evergreen tree grows in the West Indies, Mexico, and Peru, which bears a large fruit something like a melon. In this fruit there are a great number of seeds resembling beans. When the fruit is ripe, it is plucked from the tree and split open, and the seeds are picked out and dried in the sun. After these beans have been roasted in an iron cylinder, in the same manner as coffee, they, too, become bitter and fragrant, and are turned into what is known as cocoa. To form cocoa nibs, the husk of the roasted bean is stripped off, and the rest is broken up into coarse fragments. In the preparation of chocolate, the cocoa nibs are ground up and turned into a sort of paste, by admixture with sugar and spices. The unhusked bean is also crushed between heavy rollers, and made into a coarser kind of paste, with starch and sugar, and is then sold in cakes.
Cocoa contains about the same quantity of the nerve-food ingredient as tea, and besides this it also contains a nutritious meal. More than half its weight is, however, made up of a rich oily substance, nearly resembling butter in nature. When cocoa is prepared by stirring the paste up in boiling water, all these several ingredients are present in the drink. It is then as nourishing as the very strongest kind of vegetable food, and scarcely inferior to milk itself. It indeed is richer than milk in one particular; it contains twice as much fuel substance, or butter, and if the nerve-food ingredient be taken into the reckoning, it is scarcely inferior in supporting power. On account of its richness it often disagrees with persons of weak digestion, unless it be prepared in a lighter way, that is, by simply boiling the cocoa nibs in water, and mixing the beverage produced with enough milk to reduce its great excess of oily principle. Cocoa serves at once as an agreeable and refreshing beverage, and as a highly nutritious food for healthy and hard-working people. It has in itself the excellence of milk and tea combined.
The beverages which are also prepared by soaking the seeds of vegetables in hot water, but which are not then drunk until a further change of the nature of partial decay has been produced in them, are of a very unlike character to those which have been hitherto under consideration. Although there are several different kinds of this class, they all stand together under the family name of beer. Now this much must at once be said for these beverages. There is in all of them both flesh-making substance and fuel-substance. The first gives to the liquor its body, and the second confers its sweetness. The barley-corn contains the same kinds of ingredients as the wheat-grain, and by the operation of malting the starch is chiefly turned into sugar. If a gallon of strong ale be boiled over a fire, until all the more watery parts are steamed away, there will be found at the bottom of the vessel rather more than a quarter of a pound of dry remainder. This is flesh-making substance, and sugar, which were originally taken out of the malt. If a gallon of milk were treated in the same way, there would be found nearly a pound of similar dry substance. Strong beer therefore contains about one-third part as much nourishment as an equal quantity of milk. When beer is drunk, its watery parts are at once sucked from the digesting-bag into the supply-pipes, to be poured through the body with the blood; this is how beer quenches the thirst. The thicker portions are pushed on through the sluice-gate of the stomach in a digesting state, and are, in fact, treated in every respect as ordinary food.
Mixed with the thinner parts of beer, which are thus sucked into the supply-pipes, there is, however, an ingredient which is not as unquestionably nourishing as the thicker principles, and which certainly is not as good a thirst-quencher and dissolver as water. Flesh-making substance and fuel-substance, either in the state of starch or sugar, may be kept unchanged any long period of time if thoroughly dry, and shut up from the air. When they are moist and exposed to the air, they directly begin to spoil and decay. In beer, these substances are mixed with a large quantity of water, and are exposed to the air, at least during the brewing. Hence, in beer, both are found in a spoiled and decaying state. In this case, the process of decay is called fermentation, or “puffing up,” because the vapors produced by the decay, froth the sticky liquid in which they are set free. The yeast which rises to the surface of fermenting beer, is decaying and spoiling flesh-making substance. The spoiled fuel-substance (sugar) froths and bubbles away into the air as vapor.
But the fuel-substance (sugar) does not, as it decays, bubble away into vapor all at one leap. It makes a halt for a little while in a half decayed state, and in this half decayed state it has a very spiteful and fiery nature. In that fiery and half-decayed condition it forms what is known as ardent, or burning spirit. Beer always has some, as yet, undecayed and unchanged sugar remaining in it, when it is drunk, but it also always has some half decayed sugar or spirit, and bubbling vapors formed by the progress of decay. It is these ingredients of the beer which give it the fresh and warm qualities for which, as a beverage, it is chiefly esteemed.
The spirituous ingredient of fermented liquors is directly sucked with the water out of the stomach into the supply-pipes of the body, and poured everywhere through them. There is no doubt concerning that fact. Animals have been killed and examined a few minutes after fermented liquor had been placed in their digesting bags, and the ardent spirit has been found in great quantity in their supply-pipes, their hearts, and their nerve-marrows and brains.
But some doubt does yet remain as to what the exact nature of the influence is which the ardent spirit exerts, when it has been introduced into these inner recesses of the living body in small quantity, and as much diluted by admixture with water as it is in most beers. Some persons, whose opinions can not be held to be without weight, believe that diluted spirit is capable of aiding the nourishment of the body—of acting as a sort of food. Others of equal authority are convinced that it can do nothing of the kind.
But however the matter may appear regarding the power of ardent spirit to nourish, no doubt can be entertained of the fact, that it certainly is not a necessary food. There is actually nothing of a material kind in the bodies of human creatures, which is not also present in the frames of the irrational animals. The same kind of structures have to be nourished, and the same kind of bodily powers to be supported in oxen and sheep as in men. But oxen and sheep fatten, and grow strong, and are maintained in health without ever touching so much as a single drop of ardent spirit. There are hundreds of men, too, who preserve their vigor and health up to great ages, without even tasting fermented liquors.
It must also be admitted that there are great numbers of people who use fermented liquors in moderation every day, of whom the same can be said. But it is to be feared that those who are safely moderate in their employment of these treacherous agents, are a really small band compared with those who allow themselves to be continually within the reach of unquestionable danger. In the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, with a population amounting to rather less than thirty millions of individuals, when the numbers were lately reckoned, there were yearly sixty-one millions of gallons of ardent spirit consumed as beer; thirty millions of gallons as spirits; and nearly two millions of gallons as wine.
There is, yet again, another very important point of view from which the habitual moderate use of fermented liquors must be contemplated. A pint of strong beer is in itself no very great thing. Many people swallow it almost at a single draught, and in less than a minute. The trifling act, however, entails one serious consequence when it is performed day by day. A pint of strong beer cannot be bought at a less cost than threepence. Threepence a day, at the end of a year, amounts to £4 11s. 3d. If it be only laid by and made no use of, at the end of sixty years, it amounts, under the same circumstances, to £273. If employed, instead of being laid by, it might be improved at the end of sixty years into a large fortune. Hundreds of men have made thousands of pounds with smaller means.
Money, of course, is of no great value in itself; it is only of value when applied to good service. But herein lies the gist of the matter. Money always can be made good use of. If a young man at the age of eighteen begin to lay by threepence every day, instead of buying a pint of beer with it, and continue to do the same thing for two years, he may purchase with the saving an allowance of £10 a year, to commence at the age of sixty-five years, and to be continued as long as he may thereafter happen to live. If he laid by threepence a day for five years, he could purchase with his savings, at the end of that time, an allowance of ten shillings a week, to commence at the age of sixty-five years. If a young man at eighteen begin to lay by threepence a day, and continue to do the same thing from year to year, he may at once purchase the certainty of being able to leave behind him a little fortune of £300 for his wife or children, or any other relatives who may be dear to and dependent upon him, whenever death puts an end to his earthly labors! Surely no rational and prudent man would ever think even 22,000 pints of profitless beer an equivalent for such a result of his industrious labor. It is by no means too strong an expression to speak of the beer as profitless, for this reason: A gallon of strong beer contains a quarter of a pound of nourishment, bought at the cost of a couple of shillings. Two shillings would purchase more than three pounds of meat and bread! The direct money value of ardent spirits, swallowed every year by the inhabitants of the British isles, exceeds ninety millions of pounds sterling.
Although there may be question and doubt as to the character of the influence this fiery substance exerts, when poured out to the living human frame through the supply pipes, in moderate quantity, and weakened by mixture with a large proportion of water, all question and doubt disappear when its action in greater strength and in larger quantity comes to be considered. An inquiring physician, Dr. Percy, once poured strong ardent spirit into the stomachs of some dogs, to see what would happen to them. The poor animals fell down insensible upon the ground directly, and within a few minutes their breathing had ceased, their hearts had stopped beating, and they were dead. Some of the dogs were opened immediately, and it was then found that their stomachs were quite empty. All the ardent spirit had been sucked out of them in a few short minutes. But where was it gone to? It was gone into the blood, and heart, and brain, and there it was discovered in abundance. It had destroyed life by its deadly power over those delicate inner parts.
Human beings are instantly killed when they swallow large quantities of strong ardent spirit, exactly in the same way as Dr. Percy’s dogs. A few years ago two French soldiers made a bet as to who could drink the largest quantity of brandy. Each of them swallowed seven pints in a few minutes. Both dropped down insensible on the ground; one was dead before he could be picked up, the other died while they were carrying him to the hospital. A man in London soon after this undertook to drink a quart of gin, also for a wager. He won his bet, but never had an opportunity to receive his winnings. He fell down insensible, and was carried to the hospital, and was a dead body when he was taken in.
There can be no doubt, therefore, what strong ardent spirit, in large quantities, does for the living body. It kills in a moment, as by a stroke. It is a virulent poison, as deadly as prussic acid, and more deadly than arsenic. Even when it is not taken in sufficient abundance to destroy in the most sudden way, it often leads to a slower death. Striking illustrations of this truth are presented continually in every corner of even this civilized land. It has been fully ascertained that not less than one thousand persons die from the direct influence of ardent spirit, in the British isles, every year.
When people do not die directly upon swallowing large quantities of ardent spirit, it is because they take it so gradually that nature has the opportunity of washing the greater portion of it away through the waste-pipes, before any sufficient amount of it has gathered in delicate internal parts for the actual destruction of life. Nature has such a thorough dislike to ardent spirit in the interior of living bodies, that the instant it is introduced into their supply-pipes and chambers, she goes hard to work to drive out the unwelcome intruder. When men have been drinking much fermented liquor, the fumes of ardent spirit are kept pouring out through the waste-pipes that issue by the mouth, the skin, and the kidneys; the fumes can commonly be smelt under such circumstances in the breath.
When fermented liquors are drunk in a gradual way, but yet in such quantity that the ardent spirit collects more rapidly in the blood than it can be got rid of through the waste-pipes, the fiery liquid produces step by step a series of remarkable effects, growing continually more and more grave.
In order that all the actions of the living human body may be properly carried on, three nerve overseers have been appointed to dwell constantly in the frame and look after different departments of its business. One of these has its residence in the brain; that nerve-overseer has charge of the reason, and all that belongs to it. Another resides under the brain, just at the back of the face; that nerve-overseer looks after all that relates to feeling or sense. The third lives in the nerve-marrow of the backbone; that has to see that the breathing and the pumping of the heart go on steadily and constantly. Of these three superintendents the brain-overseer and the sense-overseer are allowed certain hours of repose at night; they are both permitted to take their naps at proper times, because the reason and the sense can alike be dispensed with for short intervals when the creature is put safely to bed, or otherwise out of harm’s way. Not so, however, with the breathing and blood-pumping overseer. The breathing and the blood-movement require to be kept going constantly; they must never cease, even for a short interval, or the creature would die. Hence the nerve-marrow overseer is a watchman as well as an overseer. No sleep is allowed him. He must not even nap at his post. If he do, his neglect and delinquency are immediately discovered by a dreadful consequence. The breathing and blood-flowing, which are his charge, stop, and the living being, served by the breathing and the blood-streams, chokes and faints.
These three nerve-overseers have been fitted to perform their momentous tasks in the entire absence of ardent spirit, and they are so constituted that they cannot perform those tasks when ardent spirit is present in any great amount. Ardent spirit puts them all to sleep. The reason-overseer is overcome the most easily; he is the most given to napping by nature, so he goes to sleep first. If more spirit be then introduced into the blood, the sense-overseer begins to doze also. And if yet more be introduced, the nerve-marrow watchman ceases to be a watchman, and at length sleeps heavily with his companions.
Now, suppose that you, my attentive reader, were in an unlucky moment of weakness to turn aside from your usual course of temperance and sobriety, and to drink fermented liquor until its fiery spirit gathered in your brain, and put your reason-overseer to sleep, what think you would be the consequence? This would be the consequence—you would for the time cease to be a reasonable being. You would probably still walk about the streets, and go hither and thither, and do all sorts of things. But all this you would accomplish, not with a proper and rational knowledge of your actions. Your reason and understanding being fast asleep while you were walking about, you would properly be living in a sort of brutal existence, instead of a human and reasonable one. You would have laid aside the guide who was intended to be your director in your responsible human life, and you would be rashly trusting yourself in a crowd of the most fearful dangers, all your responsibility still upon your shoulders, without the inestimable advantage of the advice and assistance of this experienced director. Like the brutes, you would then find yourself to be easily roused to the fiercest anger, and set upon the worst courses of mischief; you would find yourself readily filled with the most uncontrollable feelings of passion and violence, and liable to be run away with by them at any moment, and caused to do things that a rational creature could not contemplate without the deepest anguish and shame.
There is no lack of proof that human beings do the most brutish things when their reasons and understandings are put to sleep by strong drink, while their sense-overseers and their animal powers still remain active. Every place and every day afford such in wretched abundance. One impressive instance, however, may perhaps be related with advantage. On the night of the 28th of June, 1856, two drunken men, whose names were James and Andrew Bracken, rushed brawling out from a beer shop in one of the suburbs of Manchester. They ran against two inoffensive passengers, and in their blind and brutish rage began beating them; one was knocked down and kicked about the head when on the ground. He was picked up thence a few minutes afterward and carried to the hospital, where it was found his skull had been broken. The poor fellow died in the course of the night.
In the next assize court, at Liverpool, James and Andrew Bracken stood in the dock to be tried for their brutal act. The counsel who defended them said that it was only a drunken row, and there was no murder in the case, because neither of them knew what he was doing. The judge and the jury, on the other hand, decided that this was no excuse, because they ought to have known what they were doing. They had laid aside their reason and become brutal by their own voluntary act, and were therefore responsible for any deed they might perform while in the brutal state. The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Andrew Bracken, and the judge passed sentence of death upon him, coupling the sentence with these words: “You did an act, the ordinary consequences of which must have been to kill. It was a cruel and a brutal act, and you did it, wholly reckless of consequences. You have therefore very properly been convicted of wilful murder.” The wretched man was removed from the dock shrieking for mercy, with upraised hands, and exclaiming in heartrending tones, “Oh! mother, mother, that I should be hanged!” No doubt he was very much surprised to find himself a condemned convict and a murderer, and had never intended to be so. He had no spite against his victim, and had probably never even exchanged a word with him. No drunkard, therefore, when about to put his reason to sleep by intoxicating liquor, should ever overlook the fact that he will for the time cease to have control over his actions, and that when that reason awakes, he may find himself like Andrew Bracken, a prisoner and a murderer. Whether he do so or not will depend on no will or determination of his own, but upon the mere series of accidents that will surround him while in his self-inflicted, helpless, and brutal state.
The case of Andrew Bracken, sad and striking as it is, by no means stands alone in the annals of crime. At the assize, held at Lancaster in March, 1854, it was shown that in that single court 380 cases of grave crime had been detected and punished within a very short period, and that of the 380 cases 250, including nine murders, were to be directly traced to the influence of drunkenness.
But if having ceased to be sober, my strong-bodied reader, you did not happen to commit murder, or do any other act of gross violence while in the brutal stage of drunkenness, yet nevertheless went on swallowing more and more of the intoxicating liquid until your sense-overseer was put to sleep as well as your reason-overseer, what do you think would chance to you then? Why, you would have ceased to be dangerous to your neighbors, and have become in a like degree dangerous to yourself. You would no longer have power to commit murder, or to do any other act of cruelty, because you would sink down on the ground a senseless and motionless lump of flesh. You would be what the world calls dead-drunk. But you would not in reality be dead, because the nerve-marrow watchman still continued at his post, and awake. The lump of prostrate flesh would still breathe heavily, and blood would be made to stream sluggishly from its beating heart. In this insensible stage of drunkenness, however, you would have ceased to be able to exercise any care over yourself. In it the drunkard is sunk as much lower than brutal life as the brutes are beneath reasoning life, inasmuch as he ceases to be able to exert the power which all brutes possess of perceiving the threatening danger, and turning aside from its approach.
But yet again, rational reader, let us suppose that when you became for the time a lump of insensible flesh, you had already swallowed so much stupefying spirit, that there was enough to put the nerve-marrow watchman to sleep, as well as the reason- and sense-overseers, before any fair quantity could be cleared away out of the waste-pipes of the body. Under such circumstances breathing would cease, and all heart-beating would stop. You would then be dead-drunk in the full sense of the fearful term. Senseless drunkenness is dangerous to the drunkard himself, not only because he could not get out of the way if danger were to come where he is lying, but also because he of necessity is placed in an insensible state upon the brink of a precipice, from the depth beneath which there could be no return if he once rolled over. Whether he will ever again awaken from his insensibility, or whether his earthly frame shall have already commenced its endless sleep, is a question which will be determined by the accident of a drop or two more, or a drop or two less, of the stupefying spirit having been mixed in with the coursing life-streams. The man who kills a fellow-creature in a fit of drunken violence, commits an act of murder; the man who dies in a fit of drunken insensibility, is guilty of self-slaughter. In its first degree, drunkenness is brutality; in its second degree, it is senseless stupidity, of a lower kind than brutes ever know; in its third degree, it is suicidal death. It will be felt that it is important this matter should be looked fairly in the face, when the statement is made that there are not less than seventy thousand confirmed drunkards known to be living at the present time in England and Wales.
It is now a well-proved and unquestionable fact, that a young man of fair strength and health, who takes to hard drinking at the age of twenty, can only look forward to fifteen years more of life; while a temperate young man, of the same age, may reasonably expect forty-five years more! The habitual drunkard must therefore understand that, amongst other things, he has to pay the heavy penalty of thirty of the best years of existence, for the very questionable indulgence that he buys. The doctor also has a sad account to give of aches, and pains, and fevers, and weakness that have to be borne by the intemperate during the few years’ life they can claim. Whatever may be the true state of the case with the moderate use of fermented liquors, their intemperate use is a fertile source whence men draw disease and suffering. Intemperance is another of the influences whereby men cause sickness and decay to take the place of health and strength. The doctor has likewise, it must be remarked, a tale of his own to tell concerning the beneficial power of fermented liquors, when employed as medicines in certain weakened and already diseased states of the body.
There is one earnest word which has yet to be addressed to those who have satisfied their consciences that they may with propriety indulge their inclination to use fermented liquors in moderation habitually. Have they also satisfied themselves that they can keep to the moderation their consciences allow? Have they taken fairly and sufficiently into consideration their own powers to resist urgent allurements? Have they well weighed the possible influence, in their own case, of the enticements which agreeable flavors and pleasurable exhilaration necessarily bring into operation? Have they sufficiently pondered upon the admitted truth that there scarcely ever yet was a confirmed drunkard who did not begin his vicious career by a very moderate employment of the seductive liquors? If they have done this, then let them still nevertheless go one step further and carefully determine also for their own case, what moderation is, and while doing this, let them never forget that when the thirsty man drinks a pint of table beer, he pours a teaspoonful of ardent spirit into his blood; when he drinks a pint of strong ale he pours two tablespoonfuls of ardent spirit into his blood; when he drinks four glasses of strong wine, he pours one glass of ardent spirit into his blood; when he drinks two glasses of rum, brandy, or gin, he pours from three-quarters of a glass to a glass of ardent spirit into the channels of his supply-pipes.
The habitual drinker of port wine has a more or less strong fancy that his favorite and so-called “generous” beverage fills him with “spirit” and “fire.” This fancy is indeed not without some ground. Government has recently caused a very careful examination to be made of the strength of the port wines that are furnished to the English markets, and the investigation has disclosed the startling and unexpected fact that the weakest of these wines contains 26 per cent.; ordinary specimens of them from 30 to 36 per cent.; choice specimens 40 per cent.; and what are called the finest wines as much as 56 per cent. of proof ardent spirit. The port wine drinker therefore actually receives even more “spirit” and “fire” with his ruby drink than he is himself aware he has bargained for. There are rich flavor and delicious odor, no doubt, in his wine, and so much the greater is his danger. These serve only to conceal a wily enemy who is lurking beneath. A bottle of ruby port wine in the stomach commonly means half a bottle of poisonous fiery spirit in the blood, and heart, and brain.
[THE PARIS WORKMAN.]
By R. HEATH.
Like all the inhabitants of Paris, the workmen dwell in houses of five or six stories high. The ground floor is let out in shops, between which the principal staircase is entered by a narrow passage. At the back there is a small court-yard, skirted on one side by a wing from the main building, of from two to three stories high. Each flat of the main building and of its wing is occupied by several tenants, so that such buildings contain on an average 50 different tenants, with as many as from 120 to 150 inhabitants. In one that I have visited there were 47 tenants, the total number of persons in the building at night being 114.
Workmen inhabit all quarters of Paris, the better sort preferring to live at some distance from their work. The northeast of Paris is, however, peculiarly their quarter; the suburb of St. Antoine and that of St. Martin, with the districts known as La Villette and Belleville, are almost entirely inhabited by workmen, and the tradespeople who supply their wants. The neighborhood of the Canal Saint Martin is altogether a different Paris to that usually seen by the visitor. It has more of the cheerless look of our own manufacturing districts; however, the bright sun of Paris, the rows of trees, and the fountains prevent it from looking gloomy or sad.
In this neighborhood lodging is not so dear as in the older parts of the city. In very miserable and dirty streets in the Latin quarter, the workman has to pay as much as thirty dollars a year for a single room; two rooms cost him fifty-six dollars a year; and two rooms and a little place, which he can use as a kitchen, seventy-two dollars a year. This is enormous, and amounts to about twenty per cent. of his income, supposing him to work full time, and not to belong to one of the more skilled trades.
The question of rent is one of the greatest grievances of which Paris workmen have to complain. It keeps them in poverty and anxiety, and, it is alleged, often drives the whole family to moral ruin; the wife selling her honor to obtain means, and the husband giving himself up in despair to drink.
How impossible it is to settle questions which affect the tenderest feelings of humanity by an assertion of the rights of property, the following story strikingly illustrates:
During the siege of Paris the people universally fell into poverty. On its termination a certain landlord, unable to get his rents, determined to eject all the defaulters. He sent an order to his agent to turn them out and sell their goods. One was a widow with two children. Her husband had died of a cold caught in the trenches. In her grief the poor woman had vowed she would never be married again, and as a sort of testimony of the truth of her intention she had had their walnut bedstead sawn in half. When the time came for the expulsion the proprietor arrived, and seeing the best piece of furniture spoiled, upbraided her with ruining his goods.
She found hospitality elsewhere, but the loss of the old home and the household gods turned her brain. The insurrection of the Commune broke out. She was one of the first to rush to the scene and to join the insurgents. She and her children were seen wherever there was peril. She mounted the barricade, and planted the flag of the Commune in the teeth of the besiegers. In one of the last days of the defence her eldest son was separated from her in the struggle, and the youngest was killed at her feet. Frantic, she seized the body of the child, and springing up a barricade, hurled it upon the bayonets of the soldiers, then tearing open her dress she cried wildly, “Kill me! kill me!” She fell over the stones, but was not dead. “Finish her!” cried the young officer in charge.
A workman’s rooms are generally poorly furnished, but clean; the custom being to spend a disproportionate amount of income on food and clothing.
Living does not seem so costly in Paris as in London, yet it is generally thought dear. Nevertheless the workman can not be said to fare badly.
There are various modes and hours of taking meals in Paris, depending chiefly on the nationality; for it must never be forgotten that Paris is a cosmopolitan city, and contains large numbers of workmen of German, Belgian, and Italian origin.
The French mode is for the workman to leave home fasting, taking his first two meals at a restaurant or cabaret near the place where he is working. The second meal is eaten about ten or eleven o’clock in the morning, and consists of a plate of meat and vegetables and half a bottle of wine. Any one walking about Paris at this hour of the day must have observed workmen seated alone or in groups at the little tables outside the restaurants, eating their breakfast.
The variety offered and the prices may be judged from the following bill of fare, exposed in a street peculiarly frequented by workmen:
| cents. | |
| Radishes, sardines, butter | 3 |
| Soup | 3 |
| Common wine | 7 |
| Beef | 6 |
| Mutton stew | 7 |
| Leg of mutton | 8 |
| Stewed rabbit | 12 |
| Chops | 8 |
| Goose and veal | 12 |
| Potato stew | 3 |
| Salads and fruits | 3 |
| Cheese and sweetmeats | 3 |
| Coffee | 4 |
The workman’s wife has, with her children, an early meal of milked coffee or soup, the children taking with them to school sandwiches of bread and cheese, or something from the previous day’s dinner. The mother takes a similar breakfast in the middle of the day, the whole family looking forward to the third meal, indiscriminately called dinner or supper, as the principal one of the day. This consists of soup, meat, vegetables or salad, cheese or prunes, and fresh fruit according to the season.
Two or three times a week the kettle is put on, and rich soup and boiled beef obtained. Thin soup is made from the water in which the vegetables have been boiled, or with onions, of which the Paris workman is fond. Wine is generally drunk at supper, but when it is very dear a home-made wine is obtained from raisins, or the wife and children drink water in which liquorice root has been steeped.
Nearly every district in Paris has excellent markets, at which all kinds of meat and poultry, vegetables and dairy produce, can be bought at reasonable prices. There are special days in which it is known certain articles will be fresh and abundant.
In addition to the ordinary butchers’ shops, which in Paris are always peculiarly clean and well arranged, there are special shops for the sale of the flesh of horses, asses, and mules. These shops are called horseflesh shops. There is nothing in the least revolting in their appearance, the joints looking like ordinary meat, only a little darker. It strikes the eye at first as strange to see, “Ass, best quality,” but it is a matter of habit.
The economical wife knows all the various pieces of meat which are nourishing, some of which are little heard of in England, such as beef’s stomach, veal’s mouth, sheep’s foot.
Vegetables are always plentiful in Paris, owing to the quantity of market-garden land round the city, and for the same reason there is a constant supply of salads all the year round, but then the Parisians will make a salad of the leaves of the lamb’s lettuce and the dandelion.
Another help in the domestic economy of the workman’s home is the existence of the co-operative stores for the sale of provisions. In 1870 there were three or four hundred such societies in Paris.
The clothing and linen in a workman’s home are said to equal in value his furniture. His own clothing costs him about $24 a year; washing and mending raising the cost by $12; the clothing of his wife and two children would be about $44 more.
The workman’s wife is extremely industrious, rising early and always assiduously engaged in domestic duties, or in some work by which she adds to the income.
Many workmen with small families are able to save sufficient to set their wives up in business as washerwomen, or in a fruit or newspaper stall. Often she undertakes the duties of a housekeeper, i. e., acting as general servant for the first few hours of the day in some family of the middle class. When she thus works she has to send her children to the crib or to the asylum; but this is not frequent, as the families of workmen in Paris are usually very small.
Those who have the largest are generally of German origin, coming from Alsace, Belgium, and countries bordering on the Rhine. That very large families sometimes are found among workmen in Paris is proved by one case where a day laborer, a native of the department of the Haut-Rhin, received a prize of $600 for bringing up a family of fifteen children respectably on a wage of fifty cents a day. In the end he was assisted by his son, who was able to earn as a skilled workman more than his father.
As a rule the workman leaves the management of the children and the spending of the money entirely to his wife. He gives her all the wages on pay-day, and she doles out to him every morning the sum necessary for his meals.
Sometimes she finds a great deficit when this time comes. Then she weeps and upbraids him, while he, confessing his fault, says reproachfully of himself, “One must not deceive when one has five or six children.”
It does not appear to be easy to outwit a French woman. Occasionally a drinking husband will try to hide a piece of money in some out of the way place, as, for instance, the peak of his hat. But his wife ransacks his clothes while he is asleep and finds the missing coin. This position of affairs being well known, the workman who will not be entrapped into drinking, or who, being one of a social gathering, insists on going home early, is chaffed as a man who buttons up his coat with pins.
It is certainly a fact that feminine influence is very powerful in Paris, and that what the mother is the home becomes. Thus while Paris workmen almost universally absent themselves from the churches, and throw all their influence politically against the priests, their children go in crowds to make their first communion, and to this end are placed under the priests for religious instruction.
To see the street in front of a Paris church on Whit Sunday, no one would believe religion was a matter not only of indifference, but of contempt, to the Paris workman. The road seen from a balcony is like an immense field of snow-drops. Hundreds of white-robed children float about among crowds of smiling parents and friends. And yet there is hardly anything in it beyond a domestic rite, something which it is respectable to go through at a certain age.
“I will sell my clothes, but my child shall not be different from others,” says a mother, who, no more than her husband, considers the spiritual aspect of the ceremony.
The domestic affections of the workman, where he has not been demoralized by licentiousness or vice, are strong, and his sense of duty to his relatives unusual. Thus it would seem not at all uncommon for a workman to support his wife’s mother, even when she lives far away. A workman who had done this for some time fell, through the state of public affairs, into such distress as to be obliged to earn his bread by selling journals in the street. After a time he recovered his position; but all through his period of poverty, the mother-in-law was allowed to believe that no change had taken place in his circumstances. Another workman, who had originally been in business as a butcher, partly ruined himself by undertaking the charge of his wife’s family. However, he never forsook the mother-in-law, but when he had a numerous family and only the small and precarious wages of a day laborer, she remained as much part of his family as the children.
The workman is careful of his children. He will fetch his daughter, apprenticed to dressmaking, from her work in the evening, and likes to have his son follow the same business as himself. He respects his own art, and has no desire to see his boy made into a clerk. If his wife is foolish enough to express such a wish he rates her soundly. “Does she want to make a skip-kennel (errand boy) of him because one gets dirty in factory work?”
“Thou knowest,” he concludes, “I always consider what thou sayest, but candidly, thou art unreasonable—wouldst thou then have him die of hunger when he is grown up? To slave at a desk is a miserable business; one ought to have a manual trade, with that a man always has his living at his fingers’ ends. Why! thou hast never said I was too dirty for thee; ah! I should like to see him a clerk. And to think that there are people who pretend that the woman has as much judgment as the man. Yes, yes, thou art a very good sort of a woman, but at bottom thou knowest nothing. Henri shall be a mechanic; the devil may burn me if ever he becomes a scribbling puppet.”—Good Words.
[A PROPHECY.]
By the Rev. BENJAMIN COPELAND.
O, happy, happy, happy boy!
Let me tell you all your joy;
Let me whisper in your ear
All the secret of the seer.
Let me tell your fortune fair
To the wide and wandering air,
To the gentle, genial air;
Let me share my rapture rare
With the social, songful air;
Whatsoe’er the world may say,
You shall have the right of way.
You shall laugh, and you shall play,
And, in merry roundelay,
Dance with jolly faun and fay.
You shall have the wealth of May
For your dowry every day.
Nature, from her frailest spar,
To her oldest, utmost star,
All her miracles shall bring
For your blissful wondering;
You shall be her priest and king.
Knowing what was never known,
Reaping what was never sown,
You shall feel the world your own,
On your universal throne.
And, in holy place apart,
(Blessed are the pure in heart!)
In a halo of delight,
Jubilant with glorious might,
You shall walk with God in white.
This is all was shown to me
Of the child’s futurity.
What the youth and man will be,
Sealéd is in mystery.
Scarcely can his angel see,
Face to face with deity,
Farther into certainty.
God exceed the prophecy!
God be better to the boy
Than the poet’s dream of joy.
[TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.]
By CHARLES LAMB.