Families, as they exist in Nature, are based upon peculiarities of form as related to structure; but though a very large number of them have been named and recorded, very few are characterized with anything like scientific accuracy. It has been a very simple matter to establish such groups according to the superficial method that has been pursued, for the fact that they are determined by external outline renders the recognition of them easy and in many instances almost instinctive; but it is very difficult to characterize them, or, in other words, to trace the connection between form and structure. Indeed, many naturalists do not admit that Families are based upon form; and it was in trying to account for the facility with which they detect these groups, while they find it so difficult to characterize them, that I perceived that they are always associated with peculiarities of form. Naturalists have established Families simply by bringing together a number of animals resembling each other more or less closely, and, taking usually the name of the Genus to which the best known among them belongs, they have given it a patronymic termination to designate the Family, and allowed the matter to rest there, sometimes without even attempting any description corresponding to those by which Genus and Species are commonly defined.

For instance, from Canis, the Dog, Canidae has been formed, to designate the whole Family of Dogs, Wolves, Foxes, etc. Nothing can be more superficial than such a mode of classification; and if these groups actually exist in Nature, they must be based, like all the other divisions, upon some combination of structural characters peculiar to them. We have seen that Branches are founded upon the general plan of structure, Classes on the mode of executing the plan, Orders upon the greater or less complication of a given mode of execution, and we shall find that form, as determined by structure, characterizes Families. I would call attention to this qualification of my definition; since, of course, when speaking of form in this connection, I do not mean those superficial resemblances in external features already alluded to in my remarks upon Parallel or Collateral Types. I speak now of form as controlled by structural elements; and unless we analyze Families in this way, the mere distinguishing and naming them does not advance our science at all. Compare, for instance, the Dogs, the Seals, and the Bears. These are all members of one Order,—that of the Carnivorous Mammalia. Their dentition is peculiar and alike in all, (cutting teeth, canine teeth, and grinders,) adapted for tearing and chewing their food; and their internal structure bears a definite relation to their dentition. But look at these animals with reference to form. The Dog is comparatively slender, with legs adapted for running and hunting his prey; the Bear is heavier, with shorter limbs; while the Seal has a continuous uniform outline adapted for swimming. They form separate Families, and are easily recognized as such by the difference in their external outline; but what is the anatomical difference which produces the peculiarity of form in each, by which they have been thus distinguished? It lies in the structure of the limbs, and especially in that of the wrist and fingers. In the Seal the limbs are short, and the wrists are on one continuous line with them, so that it has no power of bending the wrist or the fingers, and the limbs, therefore, act like flappers or oars. The Bear has a well-developed paw with a flexible wrist, but it steps on the whole sole of the foot, from the wrist to the tip of the toe, giving it the heavy tread so characteristic of all the Bears. The Dogs, on the contrary, walk on tip-toe, and their step, though firm, is light, while the greater slenderness and flexibility of their legs add to their nimbleness and swiftness. By a more extensive investigation of the anatomical structure of the limbs in their connection with the whole body, it could easily be shown that the peculiarity of form in these animals is essentially determined by, or at least stands in the closest relation to, the peculiar structure of the wrist and fingers.

Take the Family of Owls as distinguished from the Falcons, Kites, etc. Here the difference of form is in the position of the eyes. In the Owl, the sides of the head are prominent and the eye-socket is brought forward. In the Falcons and Kites, on the contrary, the sides of the head are flattened and the eyes are set back. The difference in the appearance of the birds is evident to the most superficial observer; but to call the one Strigidae and the other Falconidae tells us nothing of the anatomical peculiarities on which this difference is founded.

These few examples, selected purposely among closely allied and universally known animals, may be sufficient to show, that, beyond the general complication of the structure which characterizes the Orders, there is a more limited element in the organization of animals, bearing chiefly upon their form, which, if it have any general application as a principle of classification, may well be considered as essentially characteristic of the Families. There are certainly closely allied natural groups of animals, belonging to the same Order, but including many Genera, which differ from each other chiefly in their form, while that form is determined by peculiarities of structure which do not influence the general structural complication upon which Orders are based, or relate to the minor details of structure on which Genera are founded. I am therefore convinced that form is the criterion by which Families may be determined. The great facility with which animals may be combined together in natural groups of this kind without any special investigation of their structure, a superficial method of classification in which zooelogists have lately indulged to a most unjustifiable degree, convinces me that it is the similarity of form which has unconsciously led such shallow investigators to correct results, since upon close examination it is found that a large number of the Families so determined, and to which no characters at all are assigned, nevertheless bear the severest criticism founded upon anatomical investigation.

The questions proposed to themselves by all students who would characterize Families should be these: What are, throughout the Animal Kingdom, the peculiar patterns of form by which Families are distinguished? and on what structural features are these patterns based? Only the most patient investigations can give us the answer, and it will be very long before we can write out the formulae of these patterns with mathematical precision, as I believe we shall be able to do in a more advanced stage of our science. But while the work is in progress, it ought to be remembered that a mere general similarity of outline is not yet in itself evidence of identity of form or pattern, and that, while seemingly very different forms may be derived from the same formula, the most similar forms may belong to entirely different systems, when their derivation is properly traced. Our great mathematician, in a lecture delivered at the Lowell Institute last winter, showed that in his science, also, similarity of outline does not always indicate identity of character. Compare the different circles,—the perfect circle, in which every point of the periphery is at the same distance from the centre, with an ellipse in which the variation from the true circle is so slight as to be almost imperceptible to the eye; yet the latter, like all ellipses, has its two foci by which it differs from a circle, and to refer it to the family of circles instead of the family of ellipses would be overlooking its true character on account of its external appearance; and yet ellipses may be so elongated, that, far from resembling a circle, they make the impression of parallel lines linked at their extremities. Or we may have an elastic curve in which the appearance of a circle is produced by the meeting of the two ends; nevertheless it belongs to the family of elastic curves, in which may even be included a line actually straight, and is formed by a process entirely different from that which produces the circle or the ellipse.

But it is sometimes exceedingly difficult to find the relation between structure and form in Families, and I remember a case which I had taken as a test of the accuracy of the views I entertained upon this subject, and which perplexed and baffled me for years. It was that of our fresh-water Mussels, the Family of Unios. There is a great variety of outline among them,—some being oblong and very slender, others broad with seemingly square outlines, others having a nearly triangular form, while others again are almost circular; and I could not detect among them all any feature of form that was connected with any essential element of their structure. At last, however, I found this test-character, and since that time I have had no doubt left in my mind that form, determined by structure, is the true criterion of Families. In the Unios it consists of the rounded outline of the anterior end of the body reflected in a more or less open curve of the shell, bending more abruptly along the lower side with an inflection followed by a bulging, corresponding to the most prominent part of the gills, to which alone, in a large number of American Species of this Family, the eggs are transferred, giving to this part of the shell a prominence which it has not in any of the European Species. At the posterior end of the body this curve then bends upwards and backwards again, the outline meeting the side occupied by the hinge and ligament, which, when very short, may determine a triangular form of the whole shell, or, when equal to the lower side and connected with a great height of the body, gives it a quadrangular form, or, if the height is reduced, produces an elongated form, or, finally, a rounded form, if the passage from one side to the other is gradual. A comparison of the position of the internal organs of different Species of Unios with the outlines of their shells will leave no doubt that their form is determined by the structure of the animal.

A few other and more familiar examples may complete this discussion. Among Climbing Birds, for instance, which are held together as a more comprehensive group by the structure of their feet and by other anatomical features, there are two Families so widely different in their form that they may well serve as examples of this principle. The Woodpeckers (Picidae) and the Parrots (Psittacidae), once considered as two Genera only, have both been subdivided, in consequence of a more intimate knowledge of their generic characters, into a large number of Genera; but all the Genera of Woodpeckers and all the Genera of the Parrots are still held together by their form as Families, corresponding as such to the two old Genera of Picus and Psittacus. They are now known as the Families of Woodpeckers and Parrots; and though each group includes a number of Genera combined upon a variety of details in the finish of special parts of the structure, such as the number of toes, the peculiarities of the bill, etc., it is impossible to overlook the peculiar form which is characteristic of each. No one who is familiar with the outline of the Parrot will fail to recognize any member of that Family by a general form which is equally common to the diminutive Nonpareil, the gorgeous Ara, and the high-crested Cockatoo. Neither will any one, who has ever observed the small head, the straight bill, the flat back, and stiff tail of the Woodpecker, hesitate to identify the family form in any of the numerous Genera into which this group is now divided. The family characters are even more invariable than the generic ones; for there are Woodpeckers which, instead of the four toes, two turning forward and two backward, which form an essential generic character, have three toes only, while the family form is always maintained, whatever variations there may be in the characters of the more limited groups it includes.

The Turtles and Terrapins form another good illustration of family characters. They constitute together a natural Order, but are distinguished from each other as two Families very distinct in general form and outline. Among Fishes I may mention the Family of Pickerels, with their flat, long snout, and slender, almost cylindrical body, as contrasted with the plump, compressed body and tapering tail of the Trout Family. Or compare, among Insects, the Hawk-Moths with the Diurnal Butterfly, or with the so-called Miller,—or, among Crustacea, the common Crab with the Sea-Spider, or the Lobsters with the Shrimps,—or, among Worms, the Leeches with the Earth-Worms,—or, among Mollusks, the Squids with the Cuttle-Fishes, or the Snails with the Slugs, or the Periwinkles with the Limpets and Conchs, or the Clam with the so-called Venus, or the Oyster with the Mother-of-Pearl shell,—everywhere, throughout the Animal Kingdom, difference of form points at difference of Families.

There is a chapter in the Natural History of Animals that has hardly been touched upon as yet, and that will be especially interesting with reference to Families. The voices of animals have a family character not to be mistaken. All the Canidae bark and howl: the Fox, the Wolf, the Dog have the same kind of utterance, though on a somewhat different pitch. All the Bears growl, from the White Bear of the Arctic snows to the small Black Bear of the Andes. All the Cats miau, from our quiet fireside companion to the Lions and Tigers and Panthers of the forest and jungle. This last may seem a strange assertion; but to any one who has listened critically to their sounds and analyzed their voices, the roar of the Lion is but a gigantic miau, bearing about the same proportion to that of a Cat as its stately and majestic form does to the smaller, softer, more peaceful aspect of the Cat. Yet, notwithstanding the difference in their size, who can look at the Lion, whether in his more sleepy mood as he lies curled up in the corner of his cage, or in his fiercer moments of hunger or of rage, without being reminded of a Cat? And this is not merely the resemblance of one carnivorous animal to another; for no one was ever reminded of a Dog or Wolf by a Lion. Again, all the Horses and Donkeys neigh; for the bray of the Donkey is only a harsher neigh, pitched on a different key, it is true, but a sound of the same character,—as the Donkey himself is but a clumsy and dwarfish Horse. All the Cows low, from the Buffalo roaming the prairie, the Musk-Ox of the Arctic ice-fields, or the Jack of Asia, to the Cattle feeding in our pastures. Among the Birds, this similarity of voice in Families is still more marked. We need only recall the harsh and noisy Parrots, so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or take as an example the web-footed Family,—do not all the Geese and the innumerable host of Ducks quack? Does not every member of the Crow Family caw, whether it be the Jackdaw, the Jay, the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the Songster Family,—the Nightingales, the Thrushes, the Mocking-Birds, the Robins; they differ in the greater or less perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the whole group. These affinities of the vocal systems among animals form a subject well worthy of the deepest study, not only as another character by which to classify the Animal Kingdom correctly, but as bearing indirectly also on the question of the origin of animals. Can we suppose that characteristics like these have been communicated from one animal to another? When we find that all the members of one zoological Family, however widely scattered over the surface of the earth, inhabiting different continents and even different hemispheres, speak with one voice, must we not believe that they have originated in the places where they now occur with all their distinctive peculiarities? Who taught the American Thrush to sing like his European relative? He surely did not learn it from his cousin over the waters. Those who would have us believe that all animals have originated from common centres and single pairs, and have been distributed from such common centres over the world, will find it difficult to explain the tenacity of such characters and their recurrence and repetition under circumstances that seem to preclude the possibility of any communication, on any other supposition than that of their creation in the different regions where they are now found. We have much yet to learn in this kind of investigation, with reference not only to Families among animals, but to nationalities among men also. I trust that the nature of languages will teach us as much about the origin of the races as the vocal systems of the animals may one day teach us about the origin of the different groups of animals. At all events, similarity of vocal utterance among animals is not indicative of identity of Species; I doubt, therefore, whether similarity of speech proves community of origin among men.

The similarity of motion in Families is another subject well worth the consideration of the naturalist: the soaring of the Birds of Prey,—the heavy flapping of the wings in the Gallinaceous Birds,—the floating of the Swallows, with their short cuts and angular turns,—the hopping of the Sparrows,—the deliberate walk of the Hens and the strut of the Cocks,—the waddle of the Ducks and Geese,—the slow, heavy creeping of the Land-Turtle,—the graceful flight of the Sea-Turtle under the water,—the leaping and swimming of the Frog,—the swift run of the Lizard, like a flash of green or red light in the sunshine,—the lateral undulation of the Serpent,—the dart of the Pickerel,—the leap of the Trout,—the rush of the Hawk-Moth through the air,—the fluttering flight of the Butterfly,—the quivering poise of the Humming-Bird,—the arrow-like shooting of the Squid through the water, —the slow crawling of the Snail on the land,—the sideway movement of the Sand-Crab,—the backward walk of the Crawfish,—the almost imperceptible gliding of the Sea-Anemone over the rock,—the graceful, rapid motion of the Pleurobrachia, with its endless change of curve and spiral. In short, every Family of animals has its characteristic action and its peculiar voice; and yet so little is this endless variety of rhythm and cadence both of motion and sound in the organic world understood, that we lack words to express one-half its richness and beauty.

IX.

The well-known meaning of the words generic and specific may serve, in the absence of a more precise definition, to express the relative importance of those groups of animals called Genera and Species in our scientific systems. The Genus is the more comprehensive of the two kinds of groups, while the Species is the most precisely defined, or at least the most easily recognized, of all the divisions of the Animal Kingdom. But neither the term Genus nor Species has always been taken in the same sense. Genus especially has varied in its acceptation, from the time when Aristotle applied it indiscriminately to any kind of comprehensive group, from the Classes down to what we commonly call Genera, till the present day. But we have already seen, that, instead of calling all the various kinds of more comprehensive divisions by the name of Genera, modern science has applied special names to each of them, and we have now Families, Orders, Classes, and Branches above Genera proper. If the foregoing discussion upon the nature of these groups is based upon trustworthy principles, we must admit that they are all founded upon distinct categories of characters,—the primary divisions, or the Branches, on plan of structure, the Classes upon the manner of its execution, the Orders upon the greater or less complication of a given mode of execution, the Families upon form; and it now remains to be ascertained whether Genera also exist in Nature, and by what kind of characteristics they may be distinguished. Taking the practice of the ablest naturalists in discriminating Genera as a guide in our estimation of their true nature, we must, nevertheless, remember that even now, while their classifications of the more comprehensive groups usually agree, they differ greatly in their limitation of Genera, so that the Genera of some authors correspond to the Families of others, and vice versa. This undoubtedly arises from the absence of a definite standard for the estimation of these divisions. But the different categories of structure which form the distinctive criteria of the more comprehensive divisions once established, the question is narrowed down to an inquiry into the special category upon which Genera may be determined; and if this can be accurately defined, no difference of opinion need interfere hereafter with their uniform limitation. Considering all these divisions of the Animal Kingdom from this point of view, it is evident that the more comprehensive ones must be those which are based on the broadest characters,—Branches, as united upon plan of structure, standing of course at the head; next to these the Classes, since the general mode of executing the plan presents a wider category of characters than the complication of structure on which Orders rest; after Orders come Families, or the patterns of form in which these greater or less complications of structure are clothed; and proceeding in the same way from more general to more special considerations, we can have no other category of structure as characteristic of Genera than the details of structure by which members of the same Family may differ from each other, and this I consider as the only true basis on which to limit Genera, while it is at the same time in perfect accordance with the practice of the most eminent modern zoologists. It is in this way that Cuvier has distinguished the large number of Genera he has characterized in his great Natural History of the Fishes, in connection with Valenciennes. Latreille has done the same for the Crustacea and Insects; and Milne Edwards, with the cooeperation of Haime, has recently proceeded upon the same principle in characterizing a great number of Genera among the Corals. Many others have followed this example, but few have kept in view the necessity of a uniform mode of proceeding, or, if they have done their researches have covered too limited a ground, to be taken into consideration in a discussion of principles. It is, in fact, only when extending over a whole Class that the study of Genera acquires a truly scientific importance, as it then shows in a connected manner, in what way, by what features, and to what extent a large number of animals are closely linked together in Nature. Considering the Animal Kingdom as a single complete work of one Creative Intellect, consistent throughout, such keen analysis and close criticism of all its parts have the same kind of interest, in a higher degree, as that which attaches to other studies undertaken in the spirit of careful comparative research. These different categories of characters are, as it were, different peculiarities of style in the author, different modes of treating the same material, new combinations of evidence bearing on the same general principles. The study of Genera is a department of Natural History which thus far has received too little attention even at the hands of our best zoologists, and has been treated in the most arbitrary manner; it should henceforth be made a philosophical investigation into the closer affinities which naturally bind in minor groups all the representatives of a natural Family.

Genera, then, are groups of a more restricted character than any of those we have examined thus far. Some of them include only one Species, while others comprise hundreds; since certain definite combinations of characters may be limited to a single Species, while other combinations may be repeated in many. We have striking examples of this among Birds: the Ostrich stands alone in its Genus, while the number of Species among the Warblers is very great. Among Mammalia the Giraffe also stands alone, while Mice and Squirrels include many Species. Genera are founded, not, as we have seen, on general structural characters, but on the finish of special parts, as, for instance, on the dentition. The Cats have only four grinders in the upper jaw and three in the lower, while the Hyenas have one more above and below, and the Dogs and Wolves have two more above and two more below. In the last, some of the teeth have also flat surfaces for crushing the food, adapted especially to their habits, since they live on vegetable as well as animal substances. The formation of the claws is another generic feature. There is a curious example with reference to this in the Cheetah, which is again a Genus containing only one Species. It belongs to the Cat Family, but differs from ordinary Lions and Tigers in having its claws so constructed that it cannot draw them back under the paws, though in every other respect they are like the claws of all the Cats. But while it has the Cat-like claw, its paws are like those of the Dog, and this singular combination of features is in direct relation to its habits, for it does not lie in wait and spring upon its prey like the Cat, but hunts it like the Dog.

While Genera themselves are, like Families, easily distinguished, the characters on which they are founded, like those of Families, are difficult to trace. There are often features belonging to these groups which attract the attention and suggest their association, though they are not those which may be truly considered generic characters. It is easy to distinguish the Genus Fox, for instance, by its bushy tail, and yet that is no true generic character; the collar of feathers round the neck of the Vultures leads us at once to separate them from the Eagles, but it is not the collar that truly marks the Genus, but rather the peculiar structure of the feathers which form it. No Bird has a more striking plumage than the Peacock, but it is not the appearance merely of its crest and spreading fan that constitutes a Genus, but the peculiar structure of the feathers. Thousands of examples might be quoted to show how easily Genera may be singled out, named, and entered in our systems, without being duly characterized, and it is much to be lamented that there is no possibility of checking the loose work of this kind with which the annals of our science are daily flooded.

It would, of course, be quite inappropriate to present here any general revision of these groups; but I may present a few instances to illustrate the principle of their classification, and to show on what characters they are properly based. Among Reptiles, we find, for instance, that the Genera of our fresh-water Turtles differ from each other in the cut of their bill, in the arrangement of their scales, in the form of their claws, etc. Among Fishes, the different Genera included under the Family of Perches are distinguished by the arrangement of their teeth, by the serratures of their gill-covers, and of the arch to which the pectoral fins are attached, by the nature and combination of the rays of their fins, by the structure of their scales, etc. Among Insects, the various Genera of the Butterflies differ in the combination of the little rods which sustain their wings, in the form and structure of their antennae, of their feet, of the minute scales which cover their wings, etc. Among Crustacea, the Genera of Shrimps vary in the form of the claws, in the structure of the parts of the mouth, in the articulations of their feelers, etc. Among Worms, the different Genera of the Leech Family are combined upon the form of the disks by which they attach themselves, upon the number and arrangement of their eyes, upon the structure of the hard parts with which the mouth is armed, etc. Among Cephalopods, the Family of Squids contains several Genera distinguished by the structure of the solid shield within the skin of the back, by the form and connection of their fins, by the structure of the suckers with which their arms are provided, by the form of their beak, etc. In every Class, we find throughout the Animal Kingdom that there is no sound basis for the discrimination of Genera except the details of their structure; but in order to define them accurately an extensive comparison of them is indispensable, and in characterizing them only such features should be enumerated as are truly generic; whereas in the present superficial method of describing them, features are frequently introduced which belong not only to the whole Family, but even to the whole Class which includes them.

X.

There remains but one more division of the Animal Kingdom for our consideration, the most limited of all in its circumscription,—that of Species. It is with the study of this kind of group that naturalists generally begin their investigations. I believe, however, that the study of Species as the basis of a scientific education is a great mistake. It leads us to overrate the value of Species, and to believe that they exist in Nature in some different sense from other groups; as if there were something more real and tangible in Species than in Genera, Families, Orders, Classes, or Branches. The truth is, that to study a vast number of Species without tracing the principles that combine them under more comprehensive groups is only to burden the mind with disconnected facts, and more may be learned by a faithful and careful comparison of a few Species than by a more cursory examination of a greater number. When one considers the immense number of Species already known, naturalists might well despair of becoming acquainted with them all, were they not constructed on a few fundamental patterns, so that the study of one Species teaches us a great deal for all the rest. De Candolle, who was at the same time a great botanist and a great teacher, told me once that he could undertake to illustrate the fundamental principles of his science with the aid of a dozen plants judiciously selected, and that it was his unvarying practice to induce students to make a thorough study of a few minor groups of plants, in all their relations to one another, rather than to attempt to gain a superficial acquaintance with a large number of species. The powerful influence he has had upon the progress of Botany vouches for the correctness of his views. Indeed, every profound scholar knows that sound learning can be attained only by this method, and the study of Nature makes no exception to the rule. I would therefore advise every student to select a few representatives from all the Classes, and to study these not only with reference to their specific characters, but as members also of a Genus, of a Family, of an Order, of a Class, and of a Branch. He will soon convince himself that Species have no more definite and real existence in Nature than all the other divisions of the Animal Kingdom, and that every animal is the representative of its Branch, Class, Order, Family, and Genus as much as of its Species, Specific characters are only those determining size, proportion, color, habits, and relations to surrounding circumstances and external objects. How superficial, then, must be any one's knowledge of an animal who studies it only with relation to its specific characters! He will know nothing of the finish of special parts of the body,—nothing of the relations between its form and its structure,—nothing of the relative complication of its organization as compared with other allied animals,—nothing of the general mode of execution,—nothing of the plan expressed in that mode of execution. Yet, with the exception of the ordinal characters, which, since they imply relative superiority and inferiority, require, of course, a number of specimens for comparison, his one animal would tell him all this as well as the specific characters.

All the more comprehensive groups, equally with Species, have a positive, permanent, specific principle, maintained generation after generation with all its essential characteristics. Individuals are the transient representatives of all these organic principles, which certainly have an independent, immaterial existence, since they outlive the individuals that embody them, and are no less real after the generation that has represented them for a time has passed away than they were before.

From a comparison of a number of well-known Species belonging to a natural Genus, it is not difficult to ascertain what are essentially specific characters. There is hardly among Mammalia a more natural Genus than that which includes the Rabbits and Hares, or that to which the Rats and Mice are referred. Let us see how the different Species differ from one another. Though we give two names in the vernacular to the Genus Hare, both Hares and Rabbits agree in all the structural peculiarities which constitute a Genus; but the different Species are distinguished by their absolute size when full-grown,—by the nature and color of their fur,—by the size and form of the ear,—by the relative length of their legs and tail,—by the more or less slender build of their whole body,—by their habits, some living in open grounds, others among the bushes, others in swamps, others burrowing under the earth,—by the number of young they bring forth,—by their different seasons of breeding,—and by still minor differences, such as the permanent color of the hair throughout the year in some, while in others it turns white in winter. The Rats and Mice differ in a similar way: there being large and small Species,—some gray, some brown, others rust-colored,—some with soft, others with coarse hair; they differ also in the length of the tail, and in having it more or less covered with hair,—in the cut of the ears, and their size,—in the length of their limbs, which are slender and long in some, short and thick in others,—in their various ways of living,—in the different substances on which they feed,—and also in their distribution over the surface of the earth, whether circumscribed within certain limited areas or scattered over a wider range. What is now the nature of these differences by which we distinguish Species? They are totally distinct from any of the categories on which Genera, Families, Orders, Classes, or Branches are founded, and may readily be reduced to a few heads. They are differences in the proportion of the parts and in the absolute size of the whole animal, in the color and general ornamentation of the surface of the body, and in the relations of the individuals to one another and to the world around. A farther analysis of other Genera would show us that among Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, and, in fact, throughout the Animal Kingdom, Species of well-defined natural Genera differ in the same way. We are therefore justified in saying that the category of characters on which Species are based implies no structural differences, but presents the same structure combined under certain minor differences of size, proportion, and habits. All the specific characters stand in direct reference to the generic structure, the family form, the ordinal complication of structure, the mode of execution of the Class, and the plan of structure of the Branch, all of which are embodied in the frame of each individual in each Species, even though all these individuals are constantly dying away and reproducing others; so that the specific characters have no more permanency in the individuals than those which characterize the Genus, the Family, the Order, the Class, and the Branch. I believe, therefore, that naturalists have been entirely wrong in considering the more comprehensive groups to be theoretical and in a measure arbitrary, an attempt, that is, of certain men to classify the Animal Kingdom according to their individual views, while they have ascribed to Species, as contrasted with the other divisions, a more positive existence in Nature. No further argument is needed to show that it is not only the Species that lives in the individual, but that every individual, though belonging to a distinct Species, is built upon a precise and definite plan which characterizes its Branch,—that that plan is executed in each individual in a particular way which characterizes its Class,—that every individual with its kindred occupies a definite position in a series of structural complications which characterizes its Order,—that in every individual all these structural features are combined under a definite pattern of form which characterizes its Family,—that every individual exhibits structural details in the finish of its parts which characterize its Genus,—and finally that every individual presents certain peculiarities in the proportion of its parts, in its color, in its size, in its relations to its fellow-beings and surrounding things, which constitute its specific characters; and all this is repeated in the same kind of combination, generation after generation, while the individuals die. If we accept these propositions, which seem to me self-evident, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Species do not exist in Nature in any other sense than the more comprehensive groups of the zoological systems.

There is one question respecting Species that gives rise to very earnest discussions in our day, not only among naturalists, but among all thinking people. How far are they permanent, and how far mutable? With reference to the permanence of Species, there is much to be learned from the geological phenomena that belong to our own period, and that bear witness to the invariability of types during hundreds of thousands of years at least. I hope to present a part of this evidence in a future article upon Coral Reefs, but in the mean time I cannot leave this subject without touching upon a point of which great use has been made in recent discussions. I refer to the variability of Species as shown in domestication.

The domesticated animals with their numerous breeds are constantly adduced as evidence of the changes which animals may undergo, and as furnishing hints respecting the way in which the diversity now observed among animals has already been produced. It is my conviction that such inferences are in no way sustained by the facts of the case, and that, however striking the differences may be between the breeds of our domesticated animals, as compared with the wild Species of the same Genus, they are of a peculiar character entirely distinct from those that prevail among the latter, and are altogether incident to the circumstances under which they occur. By this I do not mean the natural action of physical conditions, but the more or less intelligent direction of the circumstances under which they live. The inference drawn from the varieties introduced among animals in a state of domestication, with reference to the origin of Species, is usually this: that what the farmer does on a small scale Nature may do on a large one. It is true that man has been able to produce certain changes in the animals under his care, and that these changes have resulted in a variety of breeds. But in doing this, he has, in my estimation, in no way altered the character of the Species, but has only developed its pliability to the will of man, that is, to a power similar in its nature and mode of action to that power to which animals owe their very existence. The influence of man upon Animals is, in other words, the action of mind upon them; and yet the ordinary mode of arguing upon this subject is, that, because the intelligence of man has been able to produce certain varieties in domesticated animals, therefore physical causes have produced all the diversities among wild ones. Surely, the sounder logic would be to infer, that, because our finite intelligence can cause the original pattern to vary by some slight shades of difference, therefore an infinite intelligence must have established all the boundless diversity of which our boasted varieties are but the faintest echo. It is the most intelligent farmer that has the greatest success in improving his breeds; and if the animals he has so fostered are left to themselves without that intelligent care, they return to their normal condition. So with plants: the shrewd, observing, thoughtful gardener will obtain many varieties from his flowers; but those varieties will fade out, if left to themselves. There is, as it were, a certain degree of pliability and docility in the organization both of animals and plants, which may be developed by the fostering care of man, and within which he can exercise a certain influence; but the variations which he thus produces are of a peculiar kind, and do not correspond to the differences of the wild Species. Let us take some examples to illustrate this assertion.

Every Species of wild Bull differs from the others in its size; but all the individuals correspond to the average standard of size characteristic of their respective Species, and show none of those extreme differences of size so remarkable among our domesticated Cattle. Every Species of wild Bull has its peculiar color, and all the individuals of one Species share in it: not so with our domesticated Cattle, among which every individual may differ in color from every other. All the individuals of the same Species of wild Bull agree in the proportion of their parts, in the mode of growth of the hair, in its quality, whether fine or soft: not so with our domesticated Cattle, among which we find in the same Species overgrown and dwarfish individuals, those with long and short legs, with slender and stout build of the body, with horns or without, as well as the greatest variety in the mode of twisting the horns,—in short, the widest extremes of development which the degree of pliability in that Species will allow.

A curious instance of the power of man, not only in developing the pliability of an animal's organization, but in adapting it to suit his own caprices, is that of the Golden Carp, so frequently seen in bowls and tanks as the ornament of drawing-rooms and gardens. Not only an infinite variety of spotted, striped, variegated colors has been produced in these Fishes, but, especially among the Chinese, so famous for their morbid love of whatever is distorted and warped from its natural shape and appearance, all sorts of changes have been brought about in this single Species. A book of Chinese paintings showing the Golden Carp in its varieties represents some as short and stout, others long and slender,—some with the ventral side swollen, others hunch-backed,—some with the mouth greatly enlarged, while in others the caudal fin, which in the normal condition of the Species is placed vertically at the end of the tail and is forked like those of other Fishes, has become crested and arched, or is double, or crooked, or has swerved in some other way from its original pattern. But in all these variations there is nothing which recalls the characteristic specific differences among the representatives of the Carp Family, which in their wild state are very monotonous in their appearance all the world over.

Were it appropriate to accumulate evidence here upon this subject, I could bring forward many more examples quite as striking as those above mentioned. The various breeds of our domesticated Horses present the same kind of irregularities, and do not differ from each other in the same way as the wild Species differ from one another. Or take the Genus Dog: the differences between its wild Species do not correspond in the least with the differences observed among the domesticated ones. Compare the differences between the various kinds of Jackals and Wolves with those that exist between the Bull-Dog and Greyhound, for instance, or between the St. Charles and the Terrier, or between the Esquimaux and the Newfoundland Dog. I need hardly add that what is true of the Horses, the Cattle, the Dogs, is true also of the Donkey, the Goat, the Sheep, the Pig, the Cat, the Rabbit, the different kinds of barn-yard fowl,—in short, of all those animals that are in domesticity the chosen companions of man.

In fact, all the variability among domesticated Species is due to the fostering care, or, in its more extravagant freaks, to the fancies of man, and it has never been observed in the wild Species, where, on the contrary, everything shows the closest adherence to the distinct, well-defined, and invariable limits of the Species. It surely does not follow, that, because the Chinese can, under abnormal conditions, produce a variety of fantastic shapes in the Golden Carp, therefore water, or the physical conditions established in the water, can create a Fish, any more than it follows, that, because they can dwarf a tree, or alter its aspect by stunting its growth in one direction and forcing it in another, therefore the earth, or the physical conditions connected with their growth, can create a Pine, an Oak, a Birch, or a Maple. I confess that in all the arguments derived from the phenomena of domestication, to prove that all animals owe their origin and diversity to the natural action of the conditions under which they live, the conclusion does not seem to me to follow logically from the premises. And the fact that the domesticated animals of all races of men, equally with the white race, vary among themselves in the same way and differ in the same way from the wild Species, makes it still more evident that domesticated varieties do not explain the origin of Species, except, as I have said, by showing that the intelligent will of man can produce effects which physical causes have never been known to produce, and that we must therefore look to some cause outside of Nature, corresponding in kind, though so different in degree, to the intelligence of man, for all the phenomena connected with the existence of animals in their wild state. So far from attributing these original differences among animals to natural influences, it would seem, that, while a certain freedom of development is left, within the limits of which man can exercise his intelligence and his ingenuity, not even this superficial influence is allowed to physical conditions unaided by some guiding power, since in their normal state the wild Species remain, so far as we have been able to discover, entirely unchanged,—maintained, it is true, in their integrity by the circumstances that were established for their support by the power that created both, but never altered by them. Nature holds inviolable the stamp that God has set upon his creatures; and if man is able to influence their organization in some slight degree, it is because the Creator has given to his relations with the animals he has intended for his companions the same plasticity which he has allowed to every other side of his life, in virtue of which he may in some sort mould and shape it to his own ends, and be held responsible also for its results.

The common sense of a civilized community has already pointed out the true distinction in applying another word to the discrimination of the different kinds of domesticated animals. They are called Breeds, and Breeds among animals are the work of man;—Species were created by God.

* * * * *

THE STRASBURG CLOCK.

Many and many a year ago,— To say how many I scarcely dare,— Three of us stood in Strasburg streets, In the wide and open square, Where, quaint and old and touched with the gold Of a summer morn, at stroke of noon The tongue of the great Cathedral tolled, And into the church with the crowd we strolled To see their wonder, the famous Clock. Well, my love, there are clocks a many, As big as a house, as small as a penny; And clocks there be with voices as queer As any that torture human ear,— Clocks that grunt, and clocks that growl, That wheeze like a pump, and hoot like an owl, From the coffin shape with its brooding face That stands on the stair, (you know the place,) Saying, "Click, cluck," like an ancient hen, A-gathering the minutes home again, To the kitchen knave with its wooden stutter, Doing equal work with double splutter, Yelping, "Click, clack," with a vulgar jerk, As much as to say, "Just see me work!"

But of all the clocks that tell Time's bead-roll, There are none like this in the old Cathedral; Never a one so bids you stand While it deals the minutes with even hand: For clocks, like men, are better and worse, And some you dote on, and some you curse; And clock and man may have such a way Of telling the truth that you can't say nay.

So in we went and stood in the crowd To hear the old clock as it crooned aloud, With sound and symbol, the only tongue The maker taught it while yet 't was young. And we saw Saint Peter clasp his hands, And the cock crow hoarsely to all the lands, And the Twelve Apostles come and go, And the solemn Christ pass sadly and slow; And strange that iron-legged procession, And odd to us the whole impression, As the crowd beneath, in silence pressing, Bent to that cold mechanic blessing.

But I alone thought far in my soul What a touch of genius was in the whole, And felt how graceful had been the thought Which for the signs of the months had sought, Sweetest of symbols, Christ's chosen train; And much I pondered, if he whose brain Had builded this clock with labor and pain Did only think, twelve months there are, And the Bible twelve will fit to a hair; Or did he say, with a heart in tune, Well-loved John is the sign of June, And changeful Peter hath April hours, And Paul the stately, October bowers, And sweet, or faithful, or bold, or strong, Unto each one shall a month belong.

But beside the thought that under it lurks, Pray, do you think clocks are saved by their works?



ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

To win such love as Arthur Hugh Clough won in life, to leave so dear a memory as he has left, is a happiness that falls to few men. In America, as in England, his death is mourned by friends whose affection is better than fame, and who in losing him have met with an irreparable loss. Outside the circle of his friends his reputation had no large extent; but though his writings are but little known by the great public of readers, they are prized by all those of thoughtful and poetic temper to whose hands they have come, as among the most precious and original productions of the time. To those who knew him personally his poems had a special worth and charm, as the sincere expression of a character of the purest stamp, of rare truthfulness and simplicity, not less tender than strong, and of a genius thoroughly individual in its form, and full of the promise of a large career. He was by Nature endowed with subtile and profound powers of thought, with feeling at once delicate and intense, with lively and generous sympathies, and with conscientiousness so acute as to pervade and control his whole intellectual disposition. Loving, seeking, and holding fast to the truth, he despised all falseness and affectation. With his serious and earnest thinking was joined the play of a genial humor and the brightness of poetic fancy. Liberal in sentiment, absolutely free from dogmatism and pride of intellect, of a questioning temper, but of reverent spirit, faithful in the performance not only of the larger duties, but also of the lesser charities and the familiar courtesies of life, he has left a memory of singular consistency, purity, and dignity. He lived to conscience, not for show, and few men carry through life so white a soul.

A notice of Mr. Clough understood to be written by one who knew him well gives the outline of his life.

"Arthur Hugh Clough was educated at Rugby, to which school he went very young, soon after Dr. Arnold had been elected head-master. He distinguished himself at once by gaining the only scholarship which existed at that time, and which was open to the whole school under the age of fourteen. Before he was sixteen he was at the head of the fifth form, and, as that was the earliest age at which boys were then admitted into the sixth, had to wait for a year before coming under the personal tuition of the headmaster. He came in the next (school) generation to Stanley and Vaughan, and gained a reputation, if possible, even greater than theirs. At the yearly speeches, in the last year of his residence, when the prizes are given away in the presence of the school and the friends who gather on such occasions, Arnold took the almost unexampled course of addressing him, (when he and two fags went up to carry off his load of splendidly bound books,) and congratulating him on having gained every honor which Rugby could bestow, and having also already distinguished himself and done the highest credit to his school at the University. He had just gained a scholarship at Balliol, then, as now, the blue ribbon of undergraduates.

"At school, although before all things a student, he had thoroughly entered into the life of the place, and before he left had gained supreme influence with the boys. He was the leading contributor to the 'Rugby Magazine'; and though a weakness in his ankles prevented him from taking a prominent part in the games of the place, was known as the best goal-keeper on record, a reputation which no boy could have gained without promptness and courage. He was also one of the best swimmers in the school, his weakness of ankle being no drawback here, and in his last half passed the crucial test of that day, by swimming from Swift's (the bathing-place of the sixth) to the mill on the Leicester road, and back again, between callings over.

"He went to reside at Oxford when the whole University was in a ferment. The struggle of Alma Mater to humble or cast out the most remarkable of her sons was at its height. Ward had not yet been arraigned for his opinions, and was a fellow and tutor of Balliol, and Newman was in residence at Oriel, and incumbent of St. Mary's.

"Clough's was a mind which, under any circumstances, would have thrown itself into the deepest speculative thought of its time. He seems soon to have passed through the mere ecclesiastical debatings to the deep questions which lay below them. There was one lesson—probably one only—which he had never been able to learn from his great master, namely, to acknowledge that there are problems which intellectually are not to be solved by man, and before these to sit down quietly. Whether it were from the harass of thought on such matters which interfered with his regular work, or from one of those strange miscarriages in the most perfect of examining machines, which every now and then deprive the best men of the highest honors, to the surprise of every one Clough missed his first class. But he completely retrieved this academical mishap shortly afterwards by gaining an Oriel fellowship. In his new college, the college of Pusey, Newman, Keble, Marriott, Wilberforce, presided over by Dr. Hawkins, and in which the influence of Whately, Davidson, and Arnold had scarcely yet died out, he found himself in the very centre and eye of the battle. His own convictions were by this time leading him far away from both sides in the Oxford contest; he, however, accepted a tutorship at the college, and all who had the privilege of attending them will long remember his lectures on logic and ethics. His fault (besides a shy and reserved manner) was that he was much too long-suffering to youthful philosophic coxcombry, and would rather encourage it by his gentle 'Ah! you think so?' or, 'Yes, but might not such and such be the case?'"

Clough was at Oxford in 1847,—the year of the terrible Irish famine, and with others of the most earnest men at the University he took part in an association which had for its object "Retrenchment for the sake of the Irish." Such a society was little likely to be popular with the comfortable dignitaries or the luxurious youth of the University. Many objections, frivolous or serious as the case might be, were raised against so subversive a notion as that of the self-sacrifice of the rich for the sake of the poor. Disregarding all personal considerations, Clough printed a pamphlet entitled, "A Consideration of Objections against the Retrenchment Association," in which he met the careless or selfish arguments of those who set themselves against the efforts of the society. It was a characteristic performance. His heart was deeply stirred by the harsh contrast between the miseries of the Irish poor and the wasteful extravagance of living prevalent at Oxford. He wrote with vehement indignation against the selfish pleas of the indifferent and the thoughtless possessors of wealth, wasters of the goods given them as a trust for others. His words were chiefly addressed to the young men at the University,—and they were not without effect. Such views of the rights and duties of property as he put forward, of the claims of labor, and of the responsibilities of the aristocracy, had not been often heard at Oxford. He was called a Socialist and a Radical, but it mattered little to him by what name he was known to those whose consciences were not touched by his appeal. "Will you say," he writes toward the end of this pamphlet, "this is all rhetoric and declamation? There is, I dare say, something too much in that kind. What with criticizing style and correcting exercises, we college tutors perhaps may be likely, in the heat of composition, to lose sight of realities, and pass into the limbo of the factitious,—especially when the thing must be done at odd times, in any case, and, if at all, quickly. But if I have been obliged to write hurriedly, believe me, I have obliged myself to think not hastily. And believe me, too, though I have desired to succeed in putting vividly and forcibly that which vividly and forcibly I felt and saw, still the graces and splendors of composition were thoughts far less present to my mind than Irish poor men's miseries, English poor men's hardships, and your unthinking indifference. Shocking enough the first and the second, almost more shocking the third."

It was about this time that the most widely known of his works, "The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich, a Long-Vacation Pastoral," was written. It was published in 1848, and though it at once secured a circle of warm admirers, and the edition was very soon exhausted, it "is assuredly deserving of a far higher popularity than it has ever attained." The poem was reprinted in America, at Cambridge, in 1849, and it may be safely asserted that its merit was more deeply felt and more generously acknowledged by American than by English readers. The fact that its essential form and local coloring were purely and genuinely English, and thus gratified the curiosity felt in this country concerning the social habits and ways of life in the mother-land, while on the other hand its spirit was in sympathy with the most liberal and progressive thought of the age, may sufficiently account for its popularity here. But the lovers of poetry found delight in it, apart from these characteristics,—in its fresh descriptions of Nature, its healthy manliness of tone, its scholarly construction, its lively humor, its large thought quickened and deepened by the penetrating imagination of the poet.

"Any one who has read it will acknowledge that a tutorship at Oriel was not the place for the author. The intense love of freedom, the deep and hearty sympathy with the foremost thought of the time, the humorous dealing with old formulas and conventionalisms grown meaningless, which breathe in every line of the 'Bothie,' show this clearly enough. He would tell in after-life, with much enjoyment, how the dons of the University, who, hearing that he had something in the press, and knowing that his theological views were not wholly sound, were looking for a publication on the Articles, were astounded by the appearance of that fresh and frolicsome poem. Oxford (at least the Oriel common room) and he were becoming more estranged daily. How keenly he felt the estrangement, not from Oxford, but from old friends, about this time, can be read only in his own words." It is in such poems as the "Qua Cursum Ventus," or the sonnet beginning, "Well, well,—Heaven bless you all from day to day!" that it is to be read. These, with a few other fugitive pieces, were printed, in company with verses by a friend, as one part of a small volume entitled, "Ambarvalia," which never attained any general circulation, although containing some poems which will take their place among the best of English poetry of this generation.

"Qua Cursum Ventus.

"As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail at dawn of day, Are scarce long leagues apart descried:

"When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving side by side:

"E'en so——But why the tale reveal Of those whom, year by year unchanged, Brief absence joined anew to feel, Astounded, soul from soul estranged?

"At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered: Ah, neither blame, for neither willed, Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!

"To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, Brave barks! In light, in darkness too, Through winds and tides one compass guides: To that, and your own selves, be true!

"But, O blithe breeze! and O great seas! Though ne'er, that earliest parting past, On your wide plain they join again, Together lead them home at last!

"One port, methought, alike they sought, One purpose hold where'er they fare: O bounding breeze! O rushing seas! At last, at last, unite them there!"

"In 1848-49 the revolutionary crisis came on Europe, and Clough's sympathies drew him with great earnestness into the struggles which were going on. He was in Paris directly after the barricades, and in Rome during the siege, where he gained the friendship of Saffi and other leading Italian patriots." A part of his experiences and his thoughts while at Rome are interwoven with the story in his "Amours de Voyage," a poem which exhibits in extraordinary measure the subtilty and delicacy of his powers, and the fulness of his sympathy with the intellectual conditions of the time. It was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for 1858, and was at once established in the admiration of readers capable of appreciating its rare and refined excellence. The spirit of the poem is thoroughly characteristic of its author, and the speculative, analytic turn of his mind is represented in many passages of the letters of the imaginary hero. Had he been writing in his own name, he could not have uttered his inmost conviction more distinctly, or have given the clue to his intellectual life more openly than in the following verses:—

"I will look straight out, see things, not try to evade them: Fact shall be Fact for me; and the Truth the Truth as ever, Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform and doubtful."

Or, again,—

"Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards, opens all locks, Is not I will, but I must. I must,—I must, —and I do it."

And still again,—

"But for the steady fore-sense of a freer and larger existence, Think you that man could consent to be circumscribed here into action? But for assurance within of a limitless ocean divine, o'er Whose great tranquil depths unconscious the wind-tost surface Breaks into ripples of trouble that come and change and endure not,— But that in this, of a truth, we have our being, and know it, Think you we men could submit to live and move as we do here?"

"To keep on doing right,—not to speculate only, but to act, not to think only, but to live,"—was, it has been said, characteristic of the leading men at Oxford during this period. "It was not so much a part of their teaching as a doctrine woven into their being." And while they thus exercised a moral not less than an intellectual influence over their contemporaries and their pupils, they themselves, according to their various tempers and circumstances, were led on into new paths of inquiry or of life. Some of them fell into the common temptations of an English University career, and lost the freshness of energy and the honesty of conviction which first inspired them; others, holding their places in the established order of things, were able by happy faculties of character to retain also the vigor and simplicity of their early purposes; while others again, among whom was Clough, finding the restraints of the University incompatible with independence, gave up their positions at Oxford to seek other places in which they could more freely search for the truth and express their own convictions.

It was not long after his return from Italy that he became Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London. He filled this place, which was not in all respects suited to him, until 1852. After resigning it, he took various projects into consideration, and at length determined to come to America with the intention of settling here, if circumstances should prove favorable. In November, 1852, he arrived in Boston. He at once established himself at Cambridge, proposing to give instruction to young men preparing for college, or to take on in more advanced studies those who had completed the collegiate course. He speedily won the friendship of those whose friendship was best worth having in Boston and its neighborhood. His thorough scholarship, the result of the best English training, and his intrinsic qualities caused his society to be sought and prized by the most cultivated and thoughtful men. He had nothing of insular narrowness, and none of the hereditary prejudices which too often interfere with the capacity of English travellers or residents among us to sympathize with and justly understand habits of life and of thought so different from those to which they have been accustomed. His liberal sentiments and his independence of thought harmonized with the new social conditions in which he found himself, and with the essential spirit of American life. The intellectual freedom and animation of this country were congenial to his disposition. From the beginning he took a large share in the interests of his new friends. He contributed several remarkable articles to the pages of the "North American Review" and of "Putnam's Magazine," and he undertook a work which was to occupy his scanty leisure for several years, the revision of the so-called Dryden's Translation of Plutarch's Lives. Although the work was undertaken simply as a revision, it turned out to involve little less labor than a complete new translation, and it was so accomplished that henceforth it must remain the standard version of this most popular of the ancient authors.

But all that made the presence of such a man a great gain to his new friends made his absence felt by his old ones as a great loss. In July, 1853, he received the announcement that a place had been obtained for him by their efforts in the Education Department of the Privy Council, and he was so strenuously urged to return to England, that, although unwilling to give up the prospect of a final settlement in America, he felt that it was best to go home for a time. Some months after his return he was married to the granddaughter of the late Mr. William Smith, M.P. for Norwich. He established himself in a house in London, and settled down to the hard routine-work of his office. In a private letter written not long after his return, he said,—"As for myself, whom you ask about, there is nothing to tell about me. I live on contentedly enough, but feel rather unwilling to be re-Englished, after once attaining that higher transatlantic development. However, il faut s'y soumettre, I presume,—though I fear I am embarked in the foundering ship. I hope to Heaven you'll get rid of slavery, and then I shouldn't fear but you would really 'go ahead' in the long run. As for us and our inveterate feudalism, it is not hopeful."

In another letter about this time, he wrote,—"I like America all the better for the comparison with England on my return. Certainly I think you are more right than I was willing to admit, about the position of the poorer classes here. Such is my first reimpression. However, it will wear off soon enough, I dare say; so you must make the most of my admissions."

Again, a little later, he wrote,—"I do truly hope that you will get the North erelong thoroughly united against any further encroachments. I don't by any means feel that the slave-system is an intolerable crime, nor do I think that our system here is so much better; but it is clear to me that the only safe ground to go upon is that of your Northern States. I suppose the rich-and-poor difficulties must be creeping in at New York, but one would fain hope that European analogies will not be quite accepted even there."

His letters were reflections of himself,—full of thought, fancy, and pleasant humor, as well as of affectionateness and true feeling. Their character is hardly to be given in extracts, but a few passages may serve to illustrate some of these qualities.

"Ambrose Philips, the Roman Catholic, who set up the new St. Bernard Monastery at Charnwood Forest, has taken to spirit-rappings. He avers, inter alia, that a Buddhist spirit in misery held communication with him through the table, and entreated his confessor, Father Lorraine, to say three masses for him. Pray, convey this to T—— for his warning. For, moreover, it remains uncertain whether Father Lorraine did say the masses; so that perhaps T——'s deceased co-religionist is still in the wrong place."

Some time after his return, he wrote,—"Really, I may say I am only just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young and hopeful and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into space; but I think you have, beyond all question, the happiest country going. Still, the political talk of America, as one hears it here, is not always true to the best intentions of the country, is it?"

Writing on a July day from his office in Whitehall, he says, after speaking of the heat of the weather,—"Time has often been compared to a river: if the Thames at London represent the stream of traditional wisdom, the comparison will indeed be of an ill odor; the accumulated wisdom of the past will be proved upon analogy to be as it were the collected sewage of the centuries; and the great problem, how to get rid of it."

In March, 1854, he wrote,—"People talk a good deal about that book of Whewell's on the Plurality of Worlds. I recommend Fields to pirate it. Have you seen it? It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, etc., are all pretty certainly uninhabitable,—being (Jupiter, Saturn, etc., to wit) strange washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks (or, in the case of Venus, salamanders) could exist. Hence we conclude we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and, what is more, quite Scriptural. Owen, on the other hand, I believe, and other scientific people, declare it a most presumptuous essay,— conclusions audacious, and reasoning fallacious, though the facts are allowed; and in that opinion I, on the ground that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the inductive philosophy, incline to concur."

Of his work he wrote,—"Well, I go on in the office, operose nihil agenda, very operose, and very nihil too. For lack of news, I send you a specimen of my labors."—"We are here going on much as usual, —occupied with nothing else but commerce and the money-market. I do not think any one is thinking audibly of anything else."—"I have read with more pleasure than anything else that I have read lately Kane's Arctic Explorations, i.e., his second voyage, which is certainly a wonderful story. The whole narrative is, I think, very characteristic of the differences between the English and the American-English habits of command and obedience."

In the autumn of 1857, after speaking of some of the features of the Sepoy revolt, he said,—"I don't believe Christianity can spread far in Asia, unless it will allow men more than one wife,—which isn't likely yet out of Utah. But I believe the old Brahmin 'Touch not and taste not, and I am holier than thou, because I don't touch and taste,' may be got rid of. As for Mahometanism, it is a crystallized monotheism, out of which no vegetation can come. I doubt its being good even for the Central negro."

March, 1859. "Excuse this letter all about my own concerns. I am pretty busy, and have time for little else: such is our fate after forty. My figure 40 stands nearly three months behind me on the roadway, unwept, unhonored, and unsung, an octavum lustrum bound up and laid on the shelf. 'So-and-so is dead,' said a friend to Lord Melbourne of some author. 'Dear me, how glad I am! Now I can bind him up.'"

It was not until 1859 that the translation of Plutarch, begun six years before, was completed and published. It had involved much wearisome study, and gave proof of patient, exact, and elegant scholarship. Clough's life in the Council-Office was exceedingly laborious, and for several years his work was increased by services rendered to Miss Nightingale, a near relative of his wife. He employed "many hours, both before and after his professional duties were over, to aid her in those reforms of the military administration to which she has devoted the remaining energies of her overtasked life." For this work he was the better fitted from having acted, during a period of relief from his regular employment, as Secretary to a Military Commission appointed by Government shortly after the Crimean War to examine and report upon the military systems of some of the chief Continental nations. But at length his health gave way under the strain of continuous overwork. He had for a long time been delicate, and early in 1861 he was obliged to give up work, and was ordered to travel abroad. He went to Greece and Constantinople, and enjoyed greatly the charms of scenery and of association which he was so well fitted to appreciate. But the release from work had come too late. He returned to England in July, his health but little improved. In a letter written at that time he spoke of Lord Campbell's death, which had just occurred. "Lord Campbell's death is rather the characteristic death of the English political man. In the Cabinet, on the Bench, and at a dinner-party, busy, animated, and full of effort to-day, and in the early morning a vessel has burst. It is a wonder they last so long." But of himself he says, in words of striking contrast,—"My nervous energy is pretty nearly spent for to-day, so I must come to a stop. I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work." After a happy three weeks in England, he went abroad again, and spent some time with his friends the Tennysons in Auvergne and among the Pyrenees. In September he was joined by his wife in Paris, and thence went with her through Switzerland to Italy. He had scarcely reached Florence before he became alarmingly ill with symptoms of a low malaria fever. His exhausted constitution never rallied against its attack. He sank gradually away, and died on the 13th of November. "I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work." That hope is accomplished;—

"For sure in the wide heaven there is room For love, and pity, and for helpful deeds."

He was buried in the little Protestant cemetery at Florence, a fit resting-place for a poet, the Protestant Santa Croce, where the tall cypresses rise over the graves, and the beautiful hills keep guard around.

"Every one who knew Clough even slightly," says one of his oldest friends, "received the strongest impression of the unusual breadth and massiveness of his mind. Singularly simple and genial, he was unfortunately cast upon a self-questioning age, which led him to worry himself with constantly testing the veracity of his own emotions. He has delineated in four lines the impression which his habitual reluctance to converse on the deeper themes of life made upon those of his friends who were attracted by his frank simplicity. In one of his shorter poems he writes,—

'I said, My heart is all too soft; He who would climb and soar aloft Must needs keep ever at his side The tonic of a wholesome pride.'

That expresses the man in a very remarkable manner. He had a kind of proud simplicity about him singularly attractive, and often singularly disappointing to those who longed to know him well. He had a fear, which many would think morbid, of leaning much on the approbation of the world. And there is one remarkable passage in his poems in which he intimates that men who live on the good opinion of others might even be benefited by a crime which would rob them of that evil stimulant:—

'Why, so is good no longer good, but crime Our truest, best advantage, since it lifts us Out of the stifling gas of men's opinion Into the vital atmosphere of Truth, Where He again is visible, though in anger.'

"So eager was his craving for reality and perfect sincerity, so morbid his dislike even for the unreal conventional forms of life, that a mind quite unique in simplicity and truthfulness represents itself in his poems as

'Seeking in vain, in all my store, One feeling based on truth.'

"Indeed, he wanted to reach some guaranty for simplicity deeper than simplicity itself. We remember his principal criticism on America, after returning from his residence in Massachusetts, was, that the New-Englanders were much simpler than the English, and that this was the great charm of New-England society. His own habits were of the same kind, sometimes almost austere in their simplicity. Luxury he disliked, and sometimes his friends thought him even ascetic.

"This almost morbid craving for a firm base on the absolute realities of life was very wearing in a mind so self-conscious as Clough's, and tended to paralyze the expression of a certainly great genius. He heads some of his poems with a line from Wordsworth's great ode, which depicts perfectly the expression often written in the deep furrows which sometimes crossed and crowded his massive forehead:—

'Blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized.'

"Nor did Clough's great powers ever realize themselves to his contemporaries by any outward sign at all commensurate with the profound impression which they produced in actual life. But if his powers did not, there was much in his character that did produce its full effect upon all who knew him. He never looked, even in time of severe trial, to his own interest or advancement. He never flinched from the worldly loss which his deepest convictions brought on him. Even when clouds were thick over his own head, and the ground beneath his feet seemed crumbling away, he could still bear witness to an eternal light behind the cloud, and tell others that there is solid ground to be reached in the end by the weary feet of all who will wait to be strong. Let him speak his own farewell:—

'Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not nor faileth, And as things have been things remain.

'Though hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, And but for you possess the field.

'For though the tired wave, idly breaking, Seems here no tedious inch to gain, Far back, through creek and inlet making, Came, silent flooding in, the main.

'And not through eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow,—how slowly! But westward—look! the land is bright.'"



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THEM?

We have many precedents upon the part of the "Guardian of Civilization," which may or may not guide us. Not to return to that age "whereunto the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," "the day of King Richard our grandfather," and to the Wars of the Roses, we will begin with the happy occasion of the Restoration of King Charles of merry and disreputable fame. Since he came back to his kingdoms on sufferance and as a convenient compromise between anarchy and despotism, he could hardly afford the luxury of wholesale proscription. What the returning Royalists could, they did. It was obviously unsafe, as well as ungrateful, to hang General Monk in presence of his army, many of whom had followed the "Son of the Man" from Worcester Fight in hot pursuit, and had hunted him from thicket to thicket of Boscobel Wood. But to dig up the dead Cromwell and Ireton, to suspend them upon the gallows, to mark out John Milton, old and blind, for poverty and contempt, was both safe and pleasant. And civilization was guarded accordingly. One little bit of comfort, however, was permitted. Scotland had been the Virginia of his day, and Charles had the satisfaction of hearing that the Whigs, who had betrayed and sold his father, and who had (a far worse offence) made himself listen to three-hours' sermons, were chased like wild beasts among the hills, after the defeat of Bothwell Brigg. But what Charles could not do was permitted to his brother. After the rebellion of Monmouth was put down, the West of England was turned to mourning. From the princely bastard who sued in agony and vain humiliation, to the clown of Devon forced into the rebel ranks,—from the peer who plotted, to the venerable and Christian woman whose sole crime was sheltering the houseless and starving fugitive, there was given to the vanquished no mercy but the mercy of Jeffreys, no tenderness but the tenderness of Kirk.

But the House of Stuart was not always to represent the side of victory. Thirty years after the Rout of Sedgemoor, the son of James, whose name was clouded by rumor with the same stain of spuriousness as that of his unfortunate cousin, was proclaimed by the Earl of Mar. The Jacobites were forced to drink to the dregs the cup of bitterness they had so gladly administered to others. Over Temple Bar and London Bridge the heads of the defeated rebels bore witness to the guardianship of civilization as understood in the eighteenth century.

Another thirty years brings us to the landing of Moidart, the rising of the clans, the fall of Edinburgh and Carlisle, the "Bull's Run" at Prestonpans, and the panic of London. If we are anxious to guard our civilization according to Hanoverian precedents, there is one name commonly given to the Commander-in-chief at Culloden which Congress should add to the titles it is preparing against McClellan's successful advance. The "Butcher Cumberland" not only hounded on his troops with the tempting price of thirty thousand pounds for the Pretender dead or alive, but every adherent of the luckless Jefferson Davis of that day was in peril of life and wholesale confiscation. The House of Hanover not only broke the backbone of the Rebellion, but mangled without mercy its remains.

We come now, in another thirty years, to the next struggle of England with a portion of her people. It is impossible, as well as unfair, to say what might have been done with "Mr. Washington, the Virginia colonel," and Mr. Franklin, the Philadelphia printer, had they not been able to determine their own destiny. We can only surmise, by referring to two well-known localities in New York, the "Old Sugar-House" and the "Jersey Prison-Ship," how paternally George III was disposed then to resume his rights. And without disposition to press historic parallels, we cannot but compare Arnold and Tryon's raid along the south shore of Connecticut with a certain sail recently made up the Tennessee River to the foot of the Muscle Shoals by the command of a modern Connecticut officer.

But as we were spared the necessity of testing the royal clemency to the submitted Provinces of North America, we had better pass on twenty years to the era of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. In this country the Irishman need not "fear to speak of '98," and in this country he still treasures the memory of the whippings and pitch-caps of Major Beresford's riding-house, and other pleasant souvenirs of the way in which, sixty years ago, loyalty dealt with rebellion. There is no inherent proneness to treason in the Hibernian nature, as Corcoran and the Sixty-Ninth can bear witness; nor is Pat so fond of a riot that he cannot with fair play be a—well, a good citizen. Yet at home he has been so "civilized" by his British guardian as to be in a chronic state of discontent and fretfulness.

We must, however, hasten to our latest precedent,—England in India. The Sepoy Rebellion had some features in common with our own. It was inaugurated by premeditated military treachery. It seized upon a large quantity of Government munitions of war. It only asked "to be let alone." It found the Government wholly unprepared. But it was the uprising of a conquered people. The rebels were in circumstances, as in complexion, much nearer akin to that portion of our Southern citizens which has not rebelled, and which has lost no opportunity of seeking our lines "to take the oath of allegiance" or any other little favor which could be found there. We do not defend their atrocities, although a plea in mitigation might be put in, that these "were wisely planned to break the spell which British domination had woven over the native mind of India," and that they were part of that decided and desperate policy which was designed to forever bar the way of reconstruction. But toward the recaptured rebels there was used a course for which the only precedent, so far as we know, was furnished by that highly civilized guardian, the Dey of Algiers. These prisoners of war were in cold blood tied to the muzzles of cannon and blown into fragments. The illustrated papers of that most Christian land which is overcome with the barbarity of sinking old hulks in a channel through which privateers were wont to escape our blockade furnished effective engravings "by our own artist" of the scene. Wholesale plunder and devastation of the chief city of the revolt followed. The rebellion was put down, and put down, we may say, without any unnecessary tenderness, any womanish weakness for the rebels.

We have thus established what we believe is called by theologians a catena of precedents, coming down from the days of the Commonwealth to our own time. It covers about the whole period of New England history. And we next propose to ask the question, how far it may be desirable to be bound by such indisputable authority.

Is it too late to reopen the question, and to retry the issue between sovereign and rebel, less with respect to ancient and immemorial usage, and more according to eternal principle? We answer, No. The same power that enables us to master this rebellion will give us original and final jurisdiction over it.

But one principle asserts itself out of the uniform coarse of history. The restoration of the lawful authority over rebels does not restore them to their old status. They are at the pleasure of the conquering power. Rights of citizenship, having been abjured, do not return with the same coercion which demands duties of citizenship. Thus, to illustrate on an individual scale, every wrong-doer is ipso facto a rebel. He forfeits, according to due course of law, a measure of his privileges, while constrained to the same responsibility of obedience. His property is not exempt from taxes because he is in prison, but his right of voting is gone; he cannot bear arms, but he must keep the peace, he must labor compulsorily, and attend such worship as the State provides. In short, he becomes a ward of the State, while not ceasing to be a member. His inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable only so long as he remained obedient and true to the sovereign. Now this is equally true on the large scale as on the small. The only difficulty is to apply it to broad masses of men and to States.