But Von Buch was indefatigable. For years he lived the life of an itinerant geologist. With a shirt and a pair of stockings in his pocket and a geological hammer in his hand he travelled all over Europe on foot. The results of his foot-journey to Scandinavia were among his most important contributions to geology. He went also to the Canary Islands; and it is in his extensive work on the geological formations of these islands that he showed conclusively not only the Plutonic character of all unstratified rocks, but also that to their action upon the stratified deposits the inequalities of the earth's surface are chiefly due. He first demonstrated that the melted masses within the earth had upheaved the materials deposited in layers upon its surface, and had thus formed the mountains.
No geologist has ever collected a larger amount of facts than Von Buch, and to him we owe a great reform not only in geological principles, but in methods of study also. An amusing anecdote is told of him, as illustrating his untiring devotion to his scientific pursuits. In studying the rocks, he had become engaged also in the investigation of the fossils contained in them. He was at one time especially interested in the Terebratulæ (fossil shells), and one evening in Berlin, where he was engaged in the study of these remains, he came across a notice in a Swedish work of a particular species of that family which he could not readily identify without seeing the original specimens. The next morning Von Buch was missing, and as he had invited guests to dine with him, some anxiety was felt on account of his non-appearance. On inquiry, it was found that he was already far on his way to Sweden: he had started by daylight on a pilgrimage after the new, or rather the old, Terebratula. I tell the story as I heard it from one of the disappointed guests.
All great natural phenomena impressed him deeply. On one occasion it was my good fortune to make one of a party from the "Helvetic Association for the Advancement of Science" on an excursion to the eastern extremity of the Lake of Geneva. I well remember the expressive gesture of Von Buch, as he faced the deep gorge through which the Rhone issues from the interior of the Alps. While others were chatting and laughing about him, he stood for a moment absorbed in silent contemplation of the grandeur of the scene, then lifted his hat and bowed reverently before the mountains.
Next to Von Buch, no man has done more for modern geology than Elie de Beaumont, the great French geologist. Perhaps the most important of his generalizations is that by which he has given us the clue to the limitation of the different epochs in past times by connecting them with the great revolutions in the world's history. He has shown us that the great changes in the aspect of the globe, as well as in its successive sets of animals, coincide with the mountain-upheavals.
I might add a long list of names, American as well as European, which will be forever honored in the history of science for their contributions to geology in the last half-century. But I have intended only to close this chapter on mountains with a few words respecting the men who first investigated their intimate structural organization, and established methods of study in reference to them now generally adopted throughout the scientific world. In my next article I shall proceed to give some account of special geological formations in Europe, and the gradual growth of that continent.
CAMILLA'S CONCERT.
I, who labor under the suspicion of not knowing the difference between "Old Hundred" and "Old Dan Tucker,"—I, whose every attempt at music, though only the humming of a simple household melody, has, from my earliest childhood, been regarded as a premonitory symptom of epilepsy, or, at the very least, hysterics, to be treated with cold water, the bellows, and an unmerciful beating between my shoulders,—I, who can but with much difficulty and many a retrogression make my way among the olden mazes of tenor, alto, treble, bass, and who stand "clean daft" in the resounding confusion of andante, soprano, falsetto, palmetto, pianissimo, akimbo, l'allegro, and il penseroso,—I was bidden to Camilla's concert, and, like a sheep to the slaughter, I went.
He bears a great loss and sorrow who has "no ear for music." Into one great garden of delights he may not go. There needs no flaming sword to bar the way, since for him there is no gate called Beautiful which he should seek to enter. Blunted and stolid he stumps through life for whom its harp-strings vainly quiver. Yet, on the other hand, what does he not gain? He loses the concord of sweet sounds, but he is spared the discord of harsh noises. For the surges of bewildering harmony and the depths of dissonant disgust, he stands on the levels of perpetual peace. You are distressed, because in yonder well-trained orchestra a single voice is pitched one-sixteenth of a note too high. For me, I lean out of my window on summer nights enraptured over the organ-man who turns poor lost Lilian Dale round and round with his inexorable crank. It does not disturb me that his organ wheezes and sputters and grunts. Indeed, there is for me absolutely no wheeze, no sputter, no grunt. I only see dark eyes of Italy, her olive face, and her gemmed and lustrous hair. You mutter maledictions on the infernal noise and caterwauling. I hear no caterwauling, but the river-god of Arno ripples sort songs in the summer-tide to the lilies that bend above him. It is the guitar of the cantatrice that murmurs through the scented, dewy air,—the cantatrice with the laurel yet green on her brow, gliding over the molten moonlit water-ways of Venice, and dreamily chiming her well-pleased lute with the plash of the oars of the gondolier. It is the chant of the flower-girl with large eyes shining under the palm-branches in the market-place of Milan; and with the distant echoing notes come the sweet breath of her violets and the unquenchable odors of her crushed geraniums borne on many a white sail from the glorified Adriatic. Bronzed cheek and swart brow under my window, I shall by-and-by-throw you a paltry nickel cent for your tropical dreams; meanwhile tell me, did the sun of Dante's Florence give your blood its fierce flow and the tawny hue to your bared and brawny breast? Is it the rage of Tasso's madness that burns in your uplifted eyes? Do you take shelter from the fervid noon under the cypresses of Monte Mario? Will you meet queenly Marguerite with myrtle wreath and myrtle fragrance, as she wanders through the chestnut vales? Will you sleep to-night between the colonnades under the golden moon of Napoli? Go back, O child of the Midland Sea! Go out from this cold shore, that yields but crabbed harvests for your threefold vintages of Italy. Go, suck the sunshine from Seville oranges under the elms of Posilippo. Go, watch the shadows of the vines swaying in the mulberry-trees from Epomeo's gales. Bind the ivy in a triple crown above Bianca's comely hair, and pipe not so wailingly to the Vikings of this frigid Norseland.
But Italy, remember, my frigid Norseland has a heart of fire in her bosom beneath its overlying snows, before which yours dies like the white sick hearth-flame before the noonday sun. Passion, but not compassion, is here "cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth." We lure our choristers with honeyed words and gentle ways: you lay your sweetest songsters on the gridiron. Our orchards ring with the full-throated happiness of a thousand birds: your pomegranate groves are silent, and your miserable cannibal kitchens would tell the reason why, if outraged spits could speak. Go away, therefore, from my window, Giuseppe; the air is growing damp and chilly, and I do not sleep in the shadows of broken temples.