THE LARGER FUNGI.
To become acquainted with the bulkier of these villains, we must visit their favorite haunts. An occasional one may occur in any kind of place, as has already been explained. A good many, especially of the edible sort, and notably the common mushroom, grow in open pastures. To get among crowds of them, however, we must resort to close woods, especially of fir and pine. There they grow on tree-stumps, fallen trunks, and on the ground, in great variety and abundance. If we go at the proper season their profusion will astonish us. This time of plenty varies from early to late autumn with the character of the weather. Clad in waterproof wraps and with leather gloves on hand, we may make a fungus foray into the dripping woods amid russet and falling leaves with comparative comfort; and even on a “raw rheumatic day” there will likely be much enjoyment for us and still more instruction. It will be strange, indeed, if we do not find some kinds to eat and very many to think over. We ought to get examples, at least, of nearly all the different families. Let us consider them in a general way as novices do. A host of them have gills like the mushroom; and so we may take that best known of them all as a type of the whole class. Mushroom spawn runs through the soil in a rootlike way, absorbing the organic matter it falls in with and every here and there swelling out into roundish bodies, each consisting of a tubercle enclosed in a wrapper. The tubercle bursts through the wrapper as growth goes on, and soon above ground appears the well-known form of the mushroom, with a stalk supporting a fleshy head by the center, and on the under surface of this head radiating gills, which are at first covered by a veil that finally gives way and leaves only a ring round the stem. These gills are originally flesh-colored, but afterward become brown and mottled with numerous minute purple spores. If we were to investigate further by means of the microscope, we should find that the spores are not contained in any case, and that they are produced in fours on little points at the tips of special cells. Of the other kinds belonging to this order of agarics, some differ from the mushroom in being poisonous and others in being parasitic. There is much variety, also, in the tints of gill and spore, different kinds having these white, pink, rosy, salmon-colored, reddish, or yellowish, or darkish brown, purple or black. Again, in some the stem is not central, but attached more or less laterally to the head; in others there is no stem, and the gills radiate out from the substance on which the agaric grows. The ring round the stalk, too, often varies, or is sometimes wanting. There are many other differences, and it is by these that we are able to distinguish the one kind from the other: but, of course, little more can be done here than merely to indicate this infinite variety. Dr. Badham, in his admirable work on the “Esculent Funguses of England,” puts this quaintly, as he does many other facts. “These are stilted upon a high leg, and those have not a leg to stand on; some are shell-shaped, many bell-shaped; and some hang upon their stalks like a lawyer’s wig.”
These gill-bearers, are, however, but one order in this extensive division of plants. Nature’s plastic hand is never weary of shaping fresh forms. It is lavish of variety, and never works in a stinted or makeshift way. In place of gills we find in another order tubes or pores in which the spores are produced. These tubular kinds are sometimes fleshy, as in the edible boletus, or woody, as in the polypores, popularly called sap-balls, which every one who knows anything about woods and their wonders must have seen on old tree-stumps, often growing to a great size. In yet another order, spines, or bristles, or teeth, take the place of gills and tubes. In the puff-balls the spores ripen inside a roundish leathern case, which afterward bursts and discharges them as a fine dust. Then there is an extensive class in which the spores are not produced in this offhand way at all, but are carefully enclosed in little cases, or rather, I should say, loaded into microscopic guns, as in the pezizas; and very beautiful objects these are under the microscope.
Poisonous, putrescent, strange in shape, or color, or odor, as many of the larger fungi are, it is little to be wondered at that contempt has been a common human feeling with respect to most of them, and a crush with disdainful heel on occasion the lot of a good many. The popular loathing has run out into language. Under the opprobrious term “toadstool,” a whole host of kinds is commonly included. The puff-balls are known in Scotland as “de’il’s sneeshin’-mills” (devil’s snuff-boxes), an epithet which expresses with a certain imaginative humor, and a dash of superstition, the idea of something so utterly base that it ministers to the gratification of demons, tickling their olfactory organs with satanic satisfaction. Indeed, in this country the mushroom is almost the only favored exception to the popular verdict of loathing. It has gained the hearts of the people through their stomachs, and ketchup has overcome popular prejudice by its fine flavor. But there are many others on which cultured palates dote. Truffles are dear delicacies, which few but rich men taste, for fine aroma and flavor command a high price. The Scotch-bonnets of the fairy rings, besides possessing a certain bouquet of elfin romance, cook into delicacies full of stomachic delight. Then there are chantarells and morels and blewitts, and poor-men’s-beef-steaks, over which trained appetites rejoice. A score of dainty little rogues at least there are, and a still greater number of kinds that are nutritive and fairly palatable. In some European countries the edible ones are a really valuable addition to the food of the people—not from being more plentiful than with us, but from being more eagerly gathered and diligently cultivated. One sort or other is used as food by every tribe of men. Not only does the edible mushroom occur in all habitable lands, but in certain foreign parts—as in Australia—there are forms of it very much superior in quality to our English ones. Then, of course, every clime has its own peculiar edible kinds. The native bread of the Australians is an instance in point; it looks somewhat like compressed sago, and is a fairly good article of diet. The staple food of the wild Fuegians for several months each year is supplied by a kind which they gather in great abundance from the living twigs of the evergreen beech. Then there are some not very pleasant, according to our ideas, which can be safely used, and are thus available in times of scarcity, as, for instance, the gelatinous one which the New Zealand natives know as “thunder-dirt,” and one somewhat similar that the Chinese are said to utilize. A curious trade has of late years sprung up between New Zealand and China. A brown semi-transparent fungus, resembling the human ear, grows abundantly in the North Island. This the Maoris and others collect, dry, and pack into bags, for export to China, where it is highly prized for its flavor and gelatinous qualities as an ingredient in soup. It is a species nearly related to our Jew’s-ear. The value of this fungus exported from New Zealand in 1877 was stated at over £11,000.—Good Words.
When we reflect how little we have done
And add to that how little we have seen,
And furthermore how little we have won
Of joy or good, how little known or been,
We long for other life, more full, more keen,
And yearn to change with those
Who well have run.
—Jean Ingelow.
A talent for any art is rare; but it is given to nearly every one to cultivate a taste for art; only it must be cultivated with earnestness. The more things thou learnest to know and enjoy, the more complete and full will be for thee the delight of living.—Platen.
[FROM THE BALTIC TO THE ADRIATIC.]
By the author of “German-American Housekeeping,” etc.
[Concluded.]
Travelers are like conchologists, vying with one another in picking up different shells, and herein lies the unending interest of their records.
In the roundabout route from the Baltic to the Adriatic and Mediterranean, Cassel, the electorate in former years of Hesse-Cassel, afforded a most suggestive visit. To be sure, its history is not altogether pleasant to an American, for the fact that the old elector hired his troops to England to fight us during the Revolutionary war, is not a savory bit of German history. Even Frederick the Great saw the meanness of it, for when he heard they were to take their route to England by Prussian roads, he sent word, “if they did so, he would levy a cattle tax on them.” Perhaps some of the money paid by England at that time was laid up in the public treasury and expended afterward upon the extravagant ornamentation of the grounds of the elector’s summer residence, “Wilhelmshöhe.” The palace is in itself one of the most magnificent in Europe. Above the cascades in front of it is the highest fountain on the continent. One stream, twelve inches in diameter, is thrown to the height of two hundred feet. The colossal Hercules which crowned the summit of this artificial grandeur was thirty feet high, and the cascades are nine hundred feet long. The whole arrangement is said to have kept two thousand men engaged for fourteen years, and to have cost over ten million dollars! Jerome Napoleon occupied this palace of Wilhelmshöhe when he was king of Westphalia.
A walk of three miles under the straight and narrow road shaded by lime trees, leads one back to Cassel, after this visit to Wilhelmshöhe. The town is beautifully situated on either side of the river Fulda, and has a population of thirty-two thousand. The beautiful terrace overlooking the angarten, crowned by its new picture gallery, offers as delightful promenades as the celebrated Dresden Terrace. The strains of sweet music coming up from the angarten (meadow) while one is looking at the beautiful Rembrandts and Van Dykes in the gallery, give the enchantment which one never fails to find in a German town. Napoleon carried away many of the most valuable pictures from the Cassel gallery—but it is redeemed from the number of horrible Jordaens and Teniers by possessing the “pearl of Rembrandts,” a portrait of “Saskia,” his wife.
Chemical products, snuff included, are manufactured in Cassel, and it is quite a wide-awake business place—the old town preserved for picturesque effect, and the new town building up for enterprising manufacturers.
Leaving Cassel any day at one o’clock, one can reach Coblenz at half-past seven in the evening, and the Bellevue Hotel will shelter one delightfully for the night, provided a room on the hof, or court, is not given. Four hundred feet above the river at Coblenz stands the old fortress of “Ehrenbreitstein.” How fine its old gray stone and its commanding situation is! No wonder Auerbach, the novelist, in his “Villa on the Rhine,” devoted so many pages to Ehrenbreitstein, the Gibraltar of the Rhine. It cost the government five million dollars. With its four hundred cannon, and capacity to store provision for ten years for eight thousand men in its magazine, well may it scorn attacks “as a tempest scorns a chain.”
Instead of driving up to see this monstrous fortress, one may prefer to wander into St. Castor’s Church in the early morning, and, like a devout Catholic, kneel and pray. It may be more restful to thus “commune with one’s own heart and be still,” than to keep up a perpetual sight-seeing. Charlemagne divided his empire among his grandchildren in this very church. It dates to the eighth century, and is one of the best specimens of Lombard architecture in all the Rhine provinces. Coming out in the morning about ten o’clock, the sun will light up the severe outlines of the great old Ehrenbreitstein across the river, and the thought comes to one, did Luther compose his celebrated hymn, “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (A mighty fortress is our God), while in such a moment of inspiration as this scene produces upon the mind?
We left Coblenz at ten o’clock on the steamer “Lorlei” for Mainz. This romantic name for our boat, the waters we were plying, St. Castor’s Church on the left, and Ehrenbreitstein on the right, brought a strange combination of war, romance and religion to the mind. The only prosaic moment which seized me was in passing the Lorlei Felsen on the Rhine—when instead of remembering Lorlei, I exclaimed, so my companions told me: “O! here is where they catch the fine salmon!” Rheinstein was to my mind the most beautiful and picturesque castle of all, and being owned by the Crown Prince is kept in becoming repair. The little “panorama des Rheins” is a troublesome little companion, for it leaves one not a moment for calm enjoyment and forgetfulness, constantly pointing out the places of interest and crowding their history and romance upon one.
The Dom at Mainz is a curious study for an architect—combining as it does so many styles and containing such curious old tombs.
Frankfort, the birthplace of Goethe, and the native place of the Rothschilds family, has too much history to detail in an article like this. When it was a free city it had, and still retains, I believe, the reputation of being the commercial capital of that part of Germany.
Goethe preferred little Weimar for the development of his poetical life. His father’s stately house in Frankfort, still to be seen, was not equal to his own in Weimar.
But let us leave the river Main and the river Rhine and look up Nuremberg and Munich before we follow our southern course to the Adriatic. An erratic journey this, but have we not found some shells which the other conchologists overlooked?
Nuremberg seems to have lost more in population than any German city we know of. Having once numbered 100,000, it now claims only 55,000. It is a curious fact that Nuremberg toys which were so celebrated formerly, have been surpassed in this country, and now American manufactures in this line are taken to Nuremberg and actually sold as German toys. This was told me by a gentleman interested in the trade. But buy a lead-pencil in Nuremberg if you want a good article very cheap—perhaps you can learn to draw or sketch with one, being inspired with the memory of Albert Dürer.
Nuremberg is Bavaria’s second largest city, and attracts more foreigners or visitors than Munich, perhaps, yet to the mind of the Bavarian Munich is Bavaria, as to the Frenchman Paris is France, and to the Prussian Berlin is Prussia! No traveler can be contented, however, without some time in Nuremberg, although I dare say many go away disappointed. The old stone houses with their carved gables, the walls and turrets, St. Sebald Church, and the fortress where Gustavus Adolphus with his immense army was besieged by Wallenstein, are things which never grow tedious to the memory. In this fortress now they keep the instruments of torture used in the middle ages to extract secrets from the criminal or the innocent, as it might chance to be. A German in Berlin laughingly told me when I described the rusty torturous things, that they were all of recent manufacture, and were not the genuine articles at all! But new or old, genuine or reproduced, they make one shudder as does Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.” I know of no church in Germany more worthy of study than St. Sebald’s. In it one finds a curious old gold lamp, which swings from the ceiling about half way down one aisle of the church. It is called die ewige lampe, because it has been always burning since the twelfth century. It is related of one of Nuremberg’s respectable old citizens that he was returning in the darkness one stormy night to his home, and finally almost despaired of finding his way, when a faint light from the St. Sebald’s Church enabled him to arrive safe at his own door. He gave a fund to the church afterward for the purpose of keeping there a perpetual light. When the Protestants took St. Sebald’s, as they did so many Catholic churches in Germany after the Reformation, the interest money which the old man gave had still to be used in this way according to his will. So die ewige lampe still swings and gives its dim light to the passer-by at night. Our American consul told me a characteristic story of an American girl and her mother, whom he was showing about Nuremberg, as was his social duty, perhaps. They were in St. Sebald’s Church, and he related the story of the lamp as they stood near it. Underneath stands a little set of steps which the old sexton ascends to trim the lamp. “Oh!” said this precocious American girl, “I shall blow it out, and then their tradition that it has never been out will be upset.” So she climbed the steps fast, and as she was about to do this atrocious thing our consul pulled her back, and said she would be in custody in an hour, and he would not help her out. The mother merely laughed, and evidently saw nothing wrong about the performance. It is just such smart acts on the part of American girls abroad which induce a man like Henry James to write novels about them. The fine, intelligent, self-poised girls travel unnoticed, while the “Daisy Millers” cause the judgment so often passed upon all American girls by foreigners, that they are “an emancipated set.”
It was our good fortune while in Munich to board with most agreeable people. The Herr Geheimrath (privy counselor) had retired from active life of one kind, to enjoy the privilege of being an antiquarian and art critic. He had his house full of most valuable and curious treasures. The study of ceramics was his hobby, and fayence, porcelain, and earthenwares of the rarest kinds were standing around on his desk, on cabinets, and on the floor. He edited Die Wartburg, a paper which was the organ of Münchener Alterthum-Verein, and wrote weekly articles Ueber den Standpunkt unserer heutigen Kunst. His wife was formerly the hof-singerin (court-singer) at the royal opera in Munich, but was then too old to continue. Every Saturday evening she would give a home concert, and would sing the lovely aria from “Freischutz,” or Schumann’s songs.
St. Petersburg never looked whiter from snow than did Munich that winter. The galleries were cold, but the new and old Pinakothek were too rich to be forsaken. Fortunately the new building was just across the street from the Herr Geheimrath’s. If it had only been the old Pinakothek I found myself continually saying, for who cares for Kaulbachs, and modern German art, compared with the rich Van Dykes, the Rubens, the Dürers, and the old Byzantine school? I should say the Munich gallery is superior to the Dresden in numbers, but not in gems. But they have fine specimens from the Spanish, the Italian, and German schools.
The Glyptothek is Munich’s boast. There is a stately grandeur in this building that suggests Greece and her art. On a frosty morning, to wander out beyond the Propylæum and enter through the great bronze door of the Glyptothek, one feels like a mouse entering a marble quarry. I presume there is no such collection of originals in any country but Italy. Ghiberti, Michael Angelo, Benvenuti, Cellini, Peter Vischer, Thorwaldsen, Canova, Rauch, Schwanthaler, are all represented by original works. But it needs a warm climate to make such a collection of statuary altogether attractive.
Going from Germany to Italy, one takes the “Brenner Pass,” generally, over the Alps—the oldest way known, and used by Hannibal. After winding around the side of these snowy peaks, and being blinded by the mists enveloping the landscape, trembling with admiration or fear, as the case may be, a glimpse of sunny Italy is most encouraging.
To reach the Adriatic and Venice is enough earthly joy for some souls. Elizabeth Barrett Browning felt so; and all people feel so, perhaps, who, as Henry James and W. D. Howells, give themselves up to Venice, and write about her until she becomes identified with their reputation. But let Venice and the Adriatic be silent factors in this article, and let Verona, Florence, and Rome substitute them.
We alighted at Verona at midnight, and in the pale moonlight, which gave a ghastly appearance to the quaint old place. “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” were not to be seen that night. The streets were silent, yet I thought perhaps they might greet us in the morning; but their shadowy old cloaks are only to be seen thrown around a thousand beggars, who are as thick as bees and as ugly as bats.
“The tomb of Juliet” is also a deception—a modern invention; but the house of Juliet’s parents (the Capuletti), an old palace, stands as it did in the days when Shakspere represents its banqueting halls and good cheer.
The scenery from Verona to Florence, with the exception of a few views of the Apennines, is very tedious—nothing beyond almond orchards, which in March, the time of the year I saw them, resembled dead apple trees. You will be surprised to hear that the Italian gentlemen wore fur on their coats. They were, I imagine, traveled gentlemen, for the genuine Italian, whether count or beggar, has a cloak thrown over his shoulders in bewitching folds. When he pulls his large felt hat over his magnificent eyes so that it casts a dark shadow over his mysterious face, and stands in the sunshine, he looks simply a picture.
Verona is more Italian in appearance than Florence. The principal street runs along either side of the river Arno, and is crowded for some distance with little picture and jewelry shops; but farther on toward the cascine, or park, the street widens, and is enriched with handsome modern buildings, most of which are hotels. This drive to the cascine and the grand hotel was made when Victor Emmanuel allowed the impression to exist that Florence would remain the capital of Italy. This drive is thronged with carriages about four o’clock in the afternoon. It was here I remember to have had the carriage of the Medici family pointed out to me. Within sat two ladies with dark, lustrous eyes, jet hair, and a great deal of lemon color on their bonnets. The livery was also lemon color, and the carriage contained the coat of arms on a lemon-colored panel. The Italians are very partial to this shade of yellow. The beds are draped with material of this same intense hue—very becoming to brunettes, but ruinous, as the young ladies would say, to blondes.
Every one knows of the old Palazzo Vecchio, which rises away above every object in the city of Florence. Its walls are so thick that in them there are places for concealment—little cells—and in one of these the great reformer of Florence, Savonarola, was kept until they burned him at the stake in front of the palace.
“Santa Croce” is the name of the church which contains the tombs of Michael Angelo, Alfieri Galileo, and Machiavelli. Byron, moved with this idea, writes:
“In Santa Croce’s holy precincts lie
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality.”
Every American goes to Powers’s studio to see the original of the Greek Slave. Next to the Venus of Milo it seems the loveliest study in marble of the female figure. But “our lady of Milo,” as Hawthorne calls her—there is no beauty to hers!
The Baptistery in Florence is a curious octagonal church, built in the twelfth century, and has the celebrated bronze doors by Ghiberti, representing twelve eventful scenes from the Bible. Those to the south are beautiful enough, said Michael Angelo, to be the gates of paradise.
As often as I had reflected upon Rome and her seven hills, on arriving there the hills seemed to be a new revelation to me, and the rapid driving of the Italians up and down the steep and narrow streets bewildered me not a little. I found myself on the way from the depot, constantly asking, can this be Rome? Everything looks so new. The houses are light sandstone, like the buildings in Paris. I was informed that this portion of Rome was calculated to mislead me, and that I would find our hotel quite like Paris and New York houses. The next morning, instead of making a pilgrimage to the Roman forum, the Colosseum, and the palace of the Cæsars, we drove to St. Peter’s, which kept me still quite in the notion that Rome had been whitewashed, or something done to destroy her ancient classic aspect. We spent four hours in the great church wandering around and witnessing a procession of priests, monks, and gorgeous cardinals. There is no gewgaw, no tinsel in St. Peter’s as one sees in so many other Catholic churches; although gold is used in profusion, yet it is kept in subjection to the tone of the walls. The bronze altar over St. Peter’s tomb is wonderfully effective in the way of concentrating color and attention. It is almost necessary to find a niche in the base of some pillar and sit there awhile before plunging into the immensity of this great building, just as a bird gets ready before darting into space. But after all, the feeling of immensity which St. Peter’s gives is not so grateful to the religious sense as the Gothic style of architecture, with its stained window, and deep recesses,
“Its long drawn aisles and fretted vaults.”
There is little solemnity in St. Peter’s, little shade and no music, only from side chapels; but there are grand proportions, perfect simplicity, and the pure light of heaven sending a beam upon a golden dove above St. Peter’s tomb, which radiates in a thousand streams of light over the marble pavement.
Nothing impressed me so much in Rome or suggested the ancient glory so much as the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. The magnificence of this building must have been unparalleled. It accommodated sixteen hundred bathers at once, and some of its walls are so thick one fears to estimate the depth. What would the old Romans have thought of the buildings of the present generation, which fall down or burn up without much warning. Here is solid masonry standing since the year 212.
The different arches and columns of Rome constitute one of the most attractive features to almost every traveller. Let those who enjoy them climb their steps or strain their eyes to decipher in a scorching Italian sun the dates, the seven golden candlesticks, the shew bread, and Aaron’s rod, on Titus’s arch for example. I shall wander off while they are so occupied into the old capitol—into the room where Rienzi stood and exhorted the people to recover their ancient rights and into the basement below where St. Paul was imprisoned.
The present king had just been crowned at that time. I saw the king and queen in a procession where they were driving to gratify the people, and again we saw him unattended driving with his brother through the grounds of the Borghese Villa. The carnival was forbidden that year in Rome on account of the death of the King and Pope, but there were out-croppings of it on the streets. The tinseled finery and humbug of it seem so incongruous in ancient classic Rome. I was glad to escape it.
The old Pantheon is too important in its history for any one to write of it, but I have always liked the following paragraph from James Freeman Clarke concerning it: “The Romans in this church, or temple, worshiped their own gods, while they allowed the Jews, when in Rome, to worship their Jewish god, and the Egyptians to worship the gods of Egypt, and when they admitted the people of a conquered state to become citizens of Rome their gods were admitted with them; but in both cases the new citizens occupied a subordinate position to the old settlers. The old worship of Rome was free from idolatry. Jupiter, Juno, and the others were not represented by idols. But there was an impassable gulf between the old Roman religion and modern Roman thought, and Christianity came to the Roman world not as a new theory but as a new life, and now her churches stand by the side of the ruins of the Temple of Vesta and the old empty Pantheon.”
[ELECTRICITY.]
What is it? and what some of its manifestations? The name was given to an occult, but everywhere present, property of material things. First discovered by the ancients in amber (Gr. electron) and brought into evidence by friction. It is generally spoken of as a highly elastic, imponderable fluid, or fluids, with which all matter is supposed to be in a greater or less degree charged. Though such fluids have never been discovered as entities, and their existence may be but imaginary, it was asserted to account for facts that otherwise seemed inexplicable.
Definitions of electricity are at hand, and could be easily given; but they do not define or accurately point out that which they designate. All that can be said, with confidence, is that certain phenomena which come within our observation suggest the presence of such fluids, and are not otherwise explained. The answer to the question, “What is it?” must be the honest confession, we do not know. But, if ignorant of what it is, we may yet intelligently study its manifestations. The phenomena are not less capable of satisfactory discussion because the efficient agent producing them is unknown.
The theory of two imponderable fluids or electricities having strong attractive and repellant forces, is adopted because probable, and it helps make the discussion intelligible.
The awakened interest now so widely felt in this branch of natural science is more than just the desire to know what is knowable of the world we live in. At first, and indeed for ages, only the curious studied electricity, and practical men asked “Cui bono?” But in the present century it has become an applied science. In no other field have our studies of nature been more fruitful of discoveries practically affecting the multiform industries, and improving the rapidly advancing civilization of the age.
Some of the skillful inventions for controlling and utilizing this power lying all about us will be mentioned hereafter.
It will be well first to state a few facts that are known and mostly established by experimental tests:
(1) The earth, and all bodies on its surface, with the atmosphere surrounding it, are charged with electricity of greater or less potency. This seems their permanent state, though in some cases, its presence is not easily detected.
(2) In quantity or intensity it is very different in different bodies, as also in the same under different conditions. In some portions of vast objects, as the earth and its atmosphere, it accumulates, immense currents being poured into them, while others are perhaps to the same extent drained.
(3) Through some bodies the subtle fluid may pass with but slight obstruction—and they are called conductors. In others the hindrance is greater, and we call them insulators. But the difference is only of degrees; as the best conductors offer some obstruction, and the most perfect insulators do not completely insulate. The metals, charcoal, water, and most moist substances, as the earth and animal bodies, offer but little resistance. The atmosphere, most kinds of glass, sulphur, india rubber, vulcanite, shellac, and other resins, with dry silk and cotton, are our best insulators. Friction used to secure electrical manifestations is the occasion rather than the cause of the electricity thus developed or set free. That it does not cause it, even in the sense that it causes heat is evident, since the quantity of electricity bears no proportion to the amount of friction used to produce it.
Though, really, there are not several distinct kinds of electricity, as statical, dynamic, magnetic, frictional, and atmospheric, the nomenclature of the science is at least convenient, and will not mislead. It indicates the methods of production, and makes the discussion of the subject more intelligible. And then the electricity developed or set free by the different methods of excitement, though of the same kind, differs much in degree and intensity.
What is called statical electricity is the condition of the subtle force in a state of electrical quiescence; and all electricity in motion, however excited by friction, heat, chemical action, or otherwise, is dynamic.
Perpetual modifications are taking place in electrical condition of all matter, that when made apparent, at first may seem quite inexplicable. The excited currents flow with amazing rapidity. Their actions and re-actions baffle our calculations, and the imagination itself is bewildered by their extent and complexity. Yet by electrical tests and laboratory experiments, carefully employed, the laws of electricity are now as well known as those of any other branch of physical science, and the phenomena, if more startling, are no more mysterious than the manifestations of heat, light and gravitation.
Atmospheric electricity is not different in kind from that brought into evidence by the methods of the experimenter in the laboratory, subject to his control, and much used in the arts and industries of life. The lightning that shineth from the one part under heaven to the other part under heaven, a bright light in the cloud, is the same as the electric spark from the moderately charged receiver, when the positive and negative poles are brought into contact—the same as the less intense spark excited by passing the hand rapidly over the fur on the cat’s back when the electrical conditions are favorable.
The storm cloud is a vast receiver and by induction becomes at times highly charged with electricity. If the cloud is at rest, and the heated air grows moist, that which is known as sheet or heat lightning appears in frequent flashes. The imprisoned electricity leaps forth from the bosom or edge of the cloud, but as instantly gathers itself back to its source, and apparently without tension or force enough to crash through the atmosphere to any distant object. The flashes are unaccompanied by the noise of thunder, and may be but reflections on the cloud from a source far beyond. We watch them without fear of danger, and the subdued impression is that of the beautiful.
Amidst the terrific grandeur of the violent thunder storm another form of lightning is seen; either the vivid flash that seems to envelop us, or zigzag, sometimes forked lines that dash across the cloud earthward, and occasionally, as in a return stroke, from the earth to the cloud.
In about the middle of the eighteenth century the identity of lightning with electricity was fully ascertained, and since then the most sublime and startling phenomena of our thunder storms are better understood. Under certain contingencies they must occur. Since the different clouds or portions of the same cloud are charged with different electricities, positive and negative, when these by the winds are brought near each other, or rolled together, fierce explosions follow, and great electrical changes take place in the clouds. Vast supplies of the imprisoned fiery fluid leap from strata to strata, or, if the distance is not too great, and the earth is at the same time strongly electrified, crash down to it through whatever sufficient conductors are found. If those not sufficient to receive and convey the charge be in the path they are dashed aside; men and beasts are killed by the shock, trees and other less perfect conductors are scattered in fragments.
Usually the more prominent objects as masts of ships, trees, and buildings are struck in the lightning’s course from the cloud, but occasionally those lowest down, near trees, and even in cellars receive the shock. In these cases the current is probably from the earth, whose electric condition is negative with respect to the clouds that pass over it. In either case the opposite electricities that strongly attract each other, and whose concurrence produces the destructive discharge near the earth’s surface are held apart by the stratum of air between them. When the attraction becomes too strong to be resisted by the insulating medium they rush together, in their fiery embrace, the flash and concussion being in proportion to the intensity of the charge.
Do lightning rods protect? Yes; but not perfectly. If properly constructed, and of sufficient conducting capacity, they are a source of safety, and to discard them as useless is not wise.
The instances in which buildings provided with rods have been struck do not prove them useless; or, as some say, that the rods do harm by attracting the lightning that they are unable to conduct to the earth without injury to the building. The point does not attract, but only catches the electricity that sweeps over it. When violent shocks or explosions occur the rod may be of little service. Its office is to prevent these by silently conducting the excess of electricity from the air. The rod, rightly placed, conducts to the earth all it can, lessening the evil it does not entirely prevent. But all danger is not removed. The position of the opposite poles in the immense battery may be such as to give the stroke a horizontal direction, and far below the point of the rod; such currents have been known to pass long distances through atmosphere and smite with destructive violence objects lying in their path. Against these lateral attacks rods above our roofs are probably little or no protection. Still the more good conductors there are in any locality the less danger, as they prevent the accumulation of electricity.
[POACHERS IN ENGLAND.]
By JAMES TURVES.
It is somewhat surprising that none of our present-day novelists, like Charles Reade or Thomas Hardy, who are always on the outlook for romantic realism, whether it be in incident or in fact, have had their eyes directed to the rural poachers who abound in every shire. Poachers, though neither quite respectable members of the church nor of society, are more interesting characters than burglars or ticket-of-leave men, who figure frequently in the novelist’s pages. And, very strange to say, it has been left to a lady to write the first accounts of poaching episodes, episodes remarkable for their masculine touches and their wonderful grip of open-air reality; Harriet Martineau, in her “Forest and Game Law Tales,” astonishes us by her graphic realism and her delicacy of treatment; Charles Kingsley wrote one or two of his pathetic ballads on the subject of a poacher and his wife; Norman Macleod made a Highland poacher the subject of a character sketch; and in our own times Mr. Richard Jefferies, a writer who finds pleasure in minute description and vivid realism, has in his own style of exact word-painting given us a pleasant book about his own experiences as an amateur poacher. But the real poacher, the rural vagabond, the parish character, the ne’er-do-weel, whose life is a living protest against the game-laws, is of more lasting interest than any amateur can ever be.
Viewed from the serene vantage-ground of the philosophy of life, poaching is mean and ignoble, and demoralizing sport to you or me, and is not worth the powder and shot, while the fines and punishments are out of all proportion to the joys; yet there are not wanting apologists for it in this apologetic century. “Poaching! Man, there’s no sin in catching a rabbit or snaring a hare. They belong to naebody. Bless you! it’s a gentleman’s trick, shooting.” This is the opinion of any Northern lowland ploughman’s wife, as she looks from her red-tiled cottage-door out upon the face of the corn-growing mother earth, which has given her sweet memories and a host of country neighbors and friends.
Sixty years ago peasants could use their guns without let or hindrance, and it was then a common thing for a farm-laborer to go out and have a shot when no sportsman was in the way. Taking an odd shot now and then was never, and is not even now, looked upon by them as poaching. But a noted poacher, nicknamed the Otter, tells me, with a sigh, “Poaching is not what it once was!” And it is true. Not so very long ago it was a very profitable occupation, and comparatively respectable, before railways and telegraph wires and penny newspapers stereotyped metropolitan ideas into all and sundry. An old farmer is pointed out as having made all his money by systematic poaching, and an influential city official is said to have laid his early nest-egg by no other means than being a good shot where he had no invitation to be. To-day even rural society would look down upon a young farmer engaged in poaching. It is no longer sport to gentlemen, says the Otter, and is left to moral vagabonds, the waifs and strays, the parish loafers. The great strides of agriculture, the game-laws, and the artificial breeding of game have driven it into sneaking ways, and robbed it of its robust picturesque adventures. To excel in it a man must give up his nights and days to it—in short, he must become a specialist, and even then it hardly pays.
A genuine poacher has great force of character; he has a genius for field and woodcraft. He is the eldest survivor of rustic romance. His wild life is tinged with the love of adventure, the love of moon and stars, the knowledge of the seasons, the haunts and habits of game, and the power of trapping rabbits in dark woodland glades. No man knows more intimately the night-side of Nature between the chilly hours of midnight and sunrise. In this cold-blooded age there are always some Quixotic individuals, born in the outwardly sleepy villages and lifeless farmsteads, with the love of midnight adventure, who wage long warfare against the game-laws, and who only knuckle under to the law’s severity when their health gives way or an enemy turns informer. “Rheumatics plays the mischief with poaching!” exclaims the Otter, referring to the long night-watches in wet ditches and beside hedges for hares on the lea fields. Irrespective of all thought of gain, there is an infatuation to eager spirits in this midnight sport. It appeals to strong, healthy, brave men. Charles Kingsley, in “The Bad Squire,” with its strong sympathy and feeling, and its cry of “blood” on all the squire owned, from the foreign shrub to the game he sold, gives us the poacher’s wife view, a view we are too apt to ignore or forget, with the weary eyes and heavy heart, that grow light only with weeping, and go wandering into the night. We forget too often that in the hearts of common folk there is the glamor of poetic romance about poaching, and a bitter hatred toward the game-laws. Like Rizpah’s son, many a lad has had no other incentive than that “The farmer dared us to do it,” and that he found it sweetened by the secret sympathy of the people. Too often, I fear, the game-laws dare a brave rustic into poaching: he has only this one way left to satisfy the insatiable British thirst for field sport. It is gravely whispered that some of the most striking men have tasted its romance; and if all stories be true, the master of the English drama owes to an unlucky deer-poaching incident the lucky turn in his career which sent him to London and to writing plays, and poachers may reasonably claim Shakspere as their patron saint.
When the strong, sweet ale warms his heart, the poacher boasts of dreadful adventures in the night, of leaping broad mill-dams when chased, of giving fight in the dark, and discomfiting gamekeepers by clever tricks. He paints his exploits in such heroical glory, that the seat next the fire in the ale-house is given him by admiring and fearing rustics. Honesty he ascribes to practicedness in the world’s ways, and he looks upon keeping out of jail as the greatest victory that man can achieve. He is the type of man that makes our best soldiers, or, as he phrases it, is paid to stop the gun-shots. He requires no almanac to tell him when the moon is to rise to-morrow, and he could give the gamekeepers lessons. He is to be envied for his quick feeling of life and his sympathy for field and forest sport, and that wild exuberance of spirits which he seems to catch with his hares. It is this rural vagabond—and not Mr. Commonplace Respectability—who rivets young folks’ attention; his energy anywhere would achieve success; and he is free from that unpardonable fault, dulness. In the rustic drama of life he is the character that takes hold of us in our best impulses—and is not that the best world of the ideal? He disdains to shoot starlings or black-birds; he is too much a sportsman to pay attention to such small game. He can put his hands to various ways of living; he can collect bird’s eggs, shoot wild rock-pigeons for a farmers’ club, gather blackberries, or, as they say in Scotland, “brambles,” pull young ash-saplings in plantations, and sell them to grooms in the livery stables in town.—The Contemporary Review.
[EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.]
By WALLACE BRUCE.
“The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his distant northern home, and joined the host of the Crusaders in Palestine, was pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, or as it is called, the Lake Asphalites, where the waves of the Jordan pour themselves into an inland sea, from which there is no discharge of waters.”
This is the graphic opening of “The Talisman.” The steel clad pilgrim was entering upon that great plain, once watered even as the Garden of the Lord, now an arid and sterile wilderness, sloping away to the Dead Sea, which hides beneath its sluggish waves the once proud cities of Sodom and Gomorrah;—a dark mass of water “Which holds no living fish in its bosom, bears no skiff on its surface, and sends no tribute to the ocean.” It was a scene of desolation still testifying to the just wrath of the Almighty. As in the days of Moses, “The whole land was brimstone and salt; it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon.” The first sentence of the chapter revealed the descriptive and artistic power of the novelist, for the desolation is made more desolate by the introduction of the solitary horseman, journeying slowly through the flitting sand, under the noontide splendor of the eastern sun.
Almost a century has passed since the triumph of the first crusade. The Latin Kingdom, founded by its leaders, had lasted only eighty-eight years. Jerusalem is again in the hands of the Saracens. The crescent gleams on the Mosque of St. Omar. The cross has been torn from her temples, her shrines profaned, and the worshipers of the Holy Sepulcher murdered or exiled. The second crusade had been a failure, and its history a series of disasters. Thousands perished in the long march across Asia Minor. Those who reached Palestine undertook the siege of Damascus, but the attempt was disastrous. In 1187 a powerful leader of the East appeared in the high-souled and chivalrous Saladin. By wise counsel he united the factions of the Mohammedans, which had been at variance for two hundred years; and on the arrival of the third crusade, with which event we are now dealing, he was enabled to present a solid front of warriors “like unto the sand of the desert in multitude.”
The land, where “peace and good will to men” had been proclaimed by the voices of angels, and emphasized by the blessed words of the Son of God, was again converted into a vast tournament field for the armies of Europe and Asia: aye more, even in the mountain passes that guard the Holy City, the mission of the crusaders was sacrificed to petty insults and rivalries. Richard the Lion-hearted and King Philip of France were repeating the old story of Achilles and Agamemnon. The military orders of the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of St. John, which had grown up in Jerusalem, founded as fraternities devoted to works of mercy in behalf of poor pilgrims, had become powerful rivals of each other and the clergy, and by intrigue and dissension purposely fomented the discord. According to the historian Michaud, “On the one side were the French, the German, the Templars and the Genoese; on the other the English, the Pisans, and the Knights of St. John.”
These are the historical circumstances with which Scott has to deal; and it is on a mission from such a council, made up of discordant factions, convened during the sickness of Richard, that we find the Knight of the Red Cross, or as he is afterward styled, Kenneth the Scot, bearing a message to the celebrated Hermit of Engaddi. His adventures by the way are as romantic as any recorded in the Knights of the Round-Table; for, as he directed his course toward a cluster of palm trees, he saw suddenly emerge therefrom a Saracen chief mounted on a fleet Arabian horse. As they drew near each other they prepared for battle, each after the manner of his own country. “On the desert,” according to an Eastern proverb, “no man meets a friend.” The heavy armor of the crusader and his powerful horse are more than an even match for the wily Saracen. The Scottish knight might have been likened in the conflict to a bold rock in the sea, and the swift assaults of the Eastern warrior to the waves dashing against it only to be broken into foam. After a long struggle, which was worthy of a larger audience, the Saracen calls a truce, and the Mohammedan and Christian, so lately in deadly conflict, make their way side by side, each respecting the other’s courage, to the well under the clustered palms.
The student of history will find in the description of this hand-to-hand conflict an object-lesson of the garb and manners of the Eastern and Western races; and will learn more in the conversation that follows, as they partake of their scanty meal, of the sentiments and customs of the hostile races than can be gathered from the pages of any history with which I am acquainted: for Sir Walter had the marvelous faculty of absorbing history. He saw everything so vividly that he was able to reproduce it in living forms. As we read his description, we sit with them under the palms; we hear them now responding in courtesy, and again in sharp discussion, as allusion is made to their respective religions or modes of life; and, as they resume their journey, we feel grateful to the novelist for the beautiful figure which he puts in the mouth of the Scottish knight in answer to the Saracen’s boast of harem-life as contrasted with a Christian household.
“That diamond signet,” says the knight, “which thou wearest on thy finger, thou holdest it doubtless of inestimable value?” “Bagdad can not show the like,” replied the Saracen; “But what avails it to our purpose?” “Much,” replied the Frank, “as thou shalt thyself confess. Take my war-axe and dash the stone into twenty shivers; would each fragment be as valuable as the original gem, or would they, all collected, bear the tenth part of its estimation?”
“That is a child’s question,” answered the Saracen; “the fragments of a stone would not equal the entire jewel in the degree of hundreds to one.”
“Saracen,” replied the Christian warrior, “the love which a true knight binds on one only, fair and faithful, is the gem entire; the affection thou flingest among thy enslaved wives, and half-wedded slaves, is worthless, comparatively, as the sparkling shivers of the broken diamond.”
We find both soldiers courteous in conversation, and their example teaches a good lesson to modern controversy; but the “courtesy of the Christian seemed to flow rather from a good natured sense of what was due to others; that of the Moslem, from a high feeling of what was to be expected from himself. The manners of the Eastern warrior were grave, graceful and decorous;” he might have been compared to “his sheeny and crescent-shaped saber, with its narrow and light, but bright and keen, Damascus blade, contrasted with the long and ponderous Gothic war-sword which was flung unbuckled on the same sod.”
They pursue their march to the grotto of the Hermit of Engaddi; a man respected alike by Christian and Mohammedan; revered by the Latins for his austere devotion, and by the Arabs on account of his symptoms of insanity, which they ascribed to inspiration. The hermit, once a crusader, was the man whom Kenneth was to meet. He delivers his message; but at night, while the Saracen slept, Kenneth is conducted to a subterraneous, but elegantly carved chapel, where he meets by chance with the noble sister of King Richard, who with Richard’s newly wedded wife, had come hither to pray for the king’s recovery. She drops a rose at the knight’s feet confirming the approbation which her smiles had already expressed to him in camp, and the story of true love, not destined to run smoothly, is fairly commenced. But as with “Count Robert of Paris,” “The Talisman” is not so much a romance as a picture of the strife and jealousy of haughty and rival leaders. Its value, as a historical novel, lies in the portrayal of these discordant elements.
We may read the best history of the crusades, page by page, line by line, only to forget the next month, or the next year, everything save the issue of the long struggle; but “The Talisman,” by its wondrous reality, makes a lasting impression upon our minds. We see Richard tossing upon his couch, impatient of his fever and protracted delays. We see the Marquis of Montserrat, and the Grand Master of the Knights Templar walking together in close-whispered conspiracy. We see Leopold, the Grand Duke of Austria, lifting his own banner, with overweening pride, by the side of England’s standard. We see Richard dashing aside the attendants of his sick bed, half-clad, rushing forth to avenge the insult, splintering the staff, and trampling upon the Austrian flag. We stand with Kenneth under the starlight, guarding alone the dignity of England’s banner, but decoyed away in an unlucky hour by the ring of King Richard’s sister, which had been obtained by artifice. We see the flag stolen in that fatal absence, and the noble knight condemned to death, to be saved only by miracle from the fierce wrath of Richard. He is given as a present to the Arabian physician whose art had restored the king to health. We see him again with Richard in the disguise of a Nubian slave. We see a strolling Saracen with poisoned dagger attempting the life of Richard, but saved by the faithful Kenneth. We find Richard considering in his mind the giving of his royal sister in marriage to Saladin; an affair which fortunately needed the lady’s consent, who had in her veins too much of the proud Plantagenet blood to know the meaning of compulsion. We see the tournament which decided the treachery of Conrad, and the triumph of Kenneth, who turns out to be no other than the Earl of Huntingdon, heir of the Scottish throne. The comrade of Kenneth, and the physician who waited upon the king, chances to be the same person, and no less renowned a hero than the Emperor Saladin, who sends as a nuptial present to Kenneth and Edith Plantagenet the celebrated talisman by which he had wrought so many notable cures; which, according to Scott, is still in existence in the family of Sir Simon of Lee.
This tale of the crusaders is so complete that we need after closing the volume only a few lines of history to complete the record. The city of Ptolemais was captured after a three years’ siege. More than one hundred skirmishes and nine great battles were fought under its walls. Both parties were animated by religious zeal. It is said that the King of Jerusalem marched to battle with the books of the Evangelists borne before him; and that Saladin often paused upon the field of battle to recite a prayer, or read a chapter from the Koran. Philip finally returns to France. Richard remains in command of one hundred thousand soldiers. He conquers the Saracens in battle, repairs the fortifications of Jaffa and Ascalon, but in the intoxication of pleasure forgets the conquest of Jerusalem. His victories were fruitless. He obtained from Saladin merely a truce of three years and eight months, “which insured to pilgrims the right of entering Jerusalem untaxed,” and, without fulfilling his promise of striking his lance against the gates of the Holy City, sets off on his homeward journey, to be taken captive and held a prisoner in a Tyrolese castle. In brief the history of the Third Crusade is that of a house divided against itself.
As “The Betrothed” brought us back from Constantinople and Palestine to Merrie England, so “Ivanhoe” transports the reader, and some of the prominent actors of the drama, from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the pleasant district of the West Riding of Yorkshire, watered by the river Don, “where flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.”
The prominent historical features which Scott illustrates in the romantic story of “Ivanhoe” are the domestic and civil relations existing between the Saxon and the Norman about the year 1196, when the return of Richard the First from Palestine and captivity was an event rather hoped for than expected; and an event not hoped for by King John and his followers.
The Saxon spirit had been well nigh subdued by the strict and unjust laws imposed by the Norman kings. For one hundred and thirty years Norman-French had been the language of the court, the language of law, of chivalry and justice. The laws of the chase and the curfew,—and many others unknown to the Saxon constitution,—had been placed upon the necks of the inhabitants of the soil. With few exceptions the race of Saxon princes had been extirpated; and it was not until the reign of Edward III. that England became thoroughly united as one people. The English language at the close of the twelfth century was not yet born. The Saxon mother and Norman father were not yet wedded; the two languages were gradually getting acquainted with each other; or, as Scott has logically expressed it, “the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned the formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present English language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished has been so happily blended together, and which has since been so richly improved by importations from the classical languages, and from those spoken by the southern nations of Europe.” In the first chapter—and it is always well to read carefully the first chapter of Scott—we are introduced to a swine-herd, born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood, one of the few powerful Saxon families existing in England at the time of our story. He is attended by a domestic clown, or jester, maintained at that time in the houses of the wealthy. With an art and unity like Shakspere, Scott emphasizes at the very outset the chief historic feature of his story, by putting the following conversation in the mouths of these Saxon menials:
“How call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?” demanded Wamba, the jester.
“Swine,” said the herd.
“And swine is good Saxon,” said the jester; “but how call you it when quartered?”
“Pork,” answered the cow-herd.
“And pork,” said Wamba, “is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle-hall to feast among the nobles. Nay, I can tell you more,” said Wamba, in the same tone, “there is Alderman Ox, who continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.”
The third chapter brings together a strange gathering under the roof of the hospitable Cedric: Brian de Bois Gilbert, a haughty Templar; Prior Aymer, of free and jovial character; a poor Palmer, just returned from the Holy Land, and a Jew known as Isaac of York; all journeying on their way to a tournament to be held a few miles distant at Ashby de la Zouche. Lady Rowena, descended from the noble line of Alfred, graced the table with her presence, a ward destined by Cedric, but not by fate, to be the wife of Athelstane,—a Saxon descended from Edward the Confessor: in the furtherance of which idea his only son had been exiled, when it became known that he aspired to the hand of the Saxon beauty.
At the tournament the remaining characters of the drama are introduced: King John, with his retinue; Richard the Lion-Hearted, under the disguise of the “Black Knight;” Rebecca, the Jewess; the proud baron Front de Bœuf; Robin Hood, the brave outlaw, under the name of Loxley; and Ivanhoe, the poor pilgrim, who wins the prize at the tournament and crowns Rowena Queen of Beauty. At the close of the second day’s tournament, in which Ivanhoe is again successful, a letter is handed to King John with the brief sentence, “Take heed to yourself, for the devil is unchained.” It was like the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace, and proclaimed the end of his kingdom.
Cedric, Rowena, Isaac, Rebecca, Athelstane and Ivanhoe depart their several ways from the tournament, but are captured and taken to Front de Bœuf’s castle. Cedric escapes in the guise of a monk. The castle is stormed, and now occurs one of the most dramatic pictures in the pages of romantic literature, destined to reveal to all time the undying hate between the Saxon and the Norman. A Saxon woman, by name Ulrica, had lived for years in Front de Bœuf’s castle. She had seen her father and seven brothers killed in defending their home, but she “remained to administer ignominiously to the murderers of her family. She used the seductions of her beauty to arm the son against the father; she heated drunken revelry into murderous broil, and stained with a parricide the banqueting hall of the conquerors.” She had sold body and soul to obtain revenge for Norman cruelties; and now, grown old in servitude, incensed by the contempt of her masters, she determines upon a deed, which will make the ears of men tingle while the name of Saxon is remembered. She fires the castle and appears on a turret in the guise of one of the ancient furies, yelling forth a war-song. “Her long, dishevelled grey hair flows back from her uncovered head; the inebriated delight of gratified vengeance contends in her eyes with the fire of insanity; and she brandishes the distaff which she holds in her hand, as if she were one of the fatal sisters, who spin and abridge the thread of human life. At length, with a terrific crash, the whole turret gives way, and she perishes in the flames which consume her tyrant.”
There is another historic feature of the times emphasized in this romance: the oppression of the Jews in England during these cruel and adventurous times. The character of the race is vividly portrayed in Isaac of York, in which masterly delineation Scott seems truer to nature than Shakspere in the character of Shylock. Rebecca, his noble and beautiful daughter, is the type of all that is pure and womanly. Her words have the eloquence of the poets and prophets of old: “Know proud knight,” she says, “we number names amongst us to which your boasted Northern nobility is as the gourd compared with the cedar—names that ascend far back to those high times when the Divine Presence shook the mercy seat between the cherubim, and which derive their splendor from no earthly prince, but from the awful Voice, which bade their fathers be nearest of the congregation to the vision; such were the princes of the house of Jacob; now such no more. They are trampled down like the shorn grass, and mixed with the mire of the ways; yet there are those among them who shame not such high descent, and of such shall be the daughter of Isaac, the son of Adonikam. Farewell! I envy not thy blood-won honors; I envy not thy barbarous descent from northern heathens; I envy not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth, but never in thy heart nor in thy practice.”
The description of Friar Tuck entertaining King Richard in disguise is in Scott’s happiest vein; and Robin Hood, with his bold outlaws, shares the honors gracefully with knights and nobles. But it is alike unnecessary and unprofitable to attempt a condensation of “Ivanhoe.” No outline can convey the beauty of a finished picture. It is not to be taken at second hand. It is only for us to indicate its relation to history; and it will suffice to say that King Richard was gladly welcomed by the English people, and that Ivanhoe was wedded to the beautiful Rowena.
But, do I hear the reader ask, what becomes of the fair Jewess? Scott has answered the question so beautifully in his preface that I borrow his own words—a passage to my mind unsurpassed in English prose: “The character of the fair Jewess found so much favor in the eyes of some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned the hand of Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less interesting Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered such an union almost impossible, the author may, in passing, observe, that he thinks a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp, is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such is not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit, and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, the most common readers of romance, that rectitude of conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly formed or ill-assorted passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will be apt to say, ‘Verily, virtue has had its reward.’ But a glance on the great picture of life will show that the duties of self-denial and the sacrifice of passion to principle are seldom thus remunerated; and that the internal consciousness of their high-minded discharge of duty produces on their own reflections a more adequate recompense in the form of that peace which the world can not give or take away.”
[THE GREAT ORGAN AT FRIBOURG.]
By EDITH SESSIONS TUPPER.
After thoroughly “doing” Berne in most approved guide-book fashion; feeding the bears—hot, dusty looking creatures; standing in the middle of the street, heads thrown back at the risk of dislocating our necks to watch the celebrated clock strike, we stand one evening on the hotel terrace and take our farewell look at the Bernese Alps. Sharply defined against a sunset-flushed sky, as if cut from alabaster, glittering fair and white like the pinnacles and domes of a city celestial, rise the Mönch, Eiger, Wetterhorn, and, serene and august in her icy virgin beauty, the Jungfrau.
“Too soon the light began to fade,
Tho’ lingering soft and tender;
And the snow giants sank again
Into their calm dead splendor.”
Leaving Berne, we take our way to Fribourg, to see its wonderful gorges and skeleton bridges, and hear its more wonderful organ. On our arrival at this quaint old Romanesque town, we are driven to the most delightful little hotel, hanging on the very edge of the great ravine, upon the sides of which the town is built. Through the more closely-built region of the town runs the old stone wall with its high watch-towers. Spanning the great gulf are the bridges—mere phantoms of bridges they seem from our windows. A dreary, drizzling rain sets in soon after we arrive, and some American lads across the court-yard from time to time send forth in their sweet untrained voices the refrain of that mournful ballad, the “Soldier’s Farewell,”
“Farewell, farewell, my own true love.”
A prevalent tone of heimweh is in the air; eyes are filling, and memory is stretching longing hands over the ocean, when fortunately comes the summons to table d’hote. At our plates we find programs in very bad English of a concert to be given this evening upon the great organ in the cathedral. Thither we go at dusk, pausing a moment to look at the grotesque carving of the last judgment over the great door. Thereon the good, with most satisfied faces, are being admitted to heaven by St. Peter, a stout old gentleman in a short gown, jingling a bunch of keys; while the wicked are being carried in Swiss baskets to a great cauldron over a blazing fire, therein to be deposited, and to be stirred up by devils armed with pitchforks for that purpose. We enter. Without, the ceaseless drip of the rain; within, gloom, darkness—save for the never-ceasing light before the altar, decay. The air is chill and damp. Around us stretch dark, shadowed aisles. Tombs of those long dust are on every hand. The air seems peopled with ghosts. We are seated, and patiently wait for life to be breathed into that mighty monster looming up in the darkness, above our heads. Suddenly, with a crash that shakes the building, the organ speaks. Silenced, overwhelmed, we listen, possessing our souls in patience for the “Pastorale,” representing a thunder storm among the Alps, which is to close the evening’s entertainment. We have but recently come from the everlasting hills, and our souls are still under their magic enchantment. At last the moment comes. A pause, and there steals upon the ear a light, sweet refrain. It is spring, the old, ideal spring; the trees are budding; flowers are smiling from the meadows; we feel warm south winds blowing; afar in the woods we hear the sylvan pipe of the shepherd and the songs of birds. A peace is upon everything. Nature is calm, happy, and full of promise of glad fruition. To this succeeds a languid, dreary strain—it is a drowsy summer afternoon. A delicious languor pervades the air; we hear the trees whispering to each other of their perfect foliage; we hear the laughing waters leaping and calling to each other through their rocky passes; the flocks are asleep in the shade; the shadows are stealing and playing over the sides of the mountains, and the whole world swims in a misty, golden haze. Now listen closely. Do not we catch the mutter of distant thunder? And again, do not we hear that clear, bell-like bird-call for rain? The distant muttering grows louder, a stronger breeze sways the trees; still we hear distinctly that bird-call. Now louder rolls the thunder, the wind has arisen, the trees are bending to meet it, and in rage are tossing their boughs to the overcast sky; and ah! here comes the rain. Patter, patter, at first, now fast and faster, and now with a mad rush down it comes in one tremendous, outpouring sheet, and now with a terrific rumble and crash,
“From peak to peak the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder:
Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers from her misty shroud
Back to the joyous Alps who call on her aloud.”
The wind shrieks and howls, and yet above all this tumult and roar of the elements, clearly and unmistakably rings that sweet flute-like bird-call. The storm rages, spends its fury, and dies away, and from a neighboring cloister come the voices of an unseen choir, raising a “Te Deum” to him who holds the storms in his hands. Silently we rise and go, a great peace upon us, for divine notes from the soul of the organ have entered into ours.
It is not the nature of man to be always moving forward; it has its comings and goings. Fever has its cold and hot fits, and the cold shiver proves the height of the fever quite as much as the hot fit. The inventions of man from age to age proceed much in the same way. The good nature and the malice of the world in general have the same ebbs and flows. “Change of living is generally agreeable to the rich.”—Pascal.
[ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.]
By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.