It was nearly six o'clock, and progress became easier now that we could see our way distinctly. The Cossacks seemed to grow lazier, halting as often as before and walking less briskly; in fact, they did not relish the exceeding roughness of the jagged lava ridges along whose tops or sides we toiled. I could willingly have lingered here myself; for in the hollows, wherever a little soil appeared, some interesting plants were growing, whose similarity to and difference from the Alpine species of Western Europe alike excited one's curiosity. Time allowed me to secure only a few; I trusted to get more on the way back, but this turned out to be impossible. As we scrambled along a ridge above a long narrow winding glen filled with loose blocks, one of the Kurds suddenly swooped down like a vulture from the height on a spot at the bottom, and began peering and grubbing among the stones. In a minute or two he cried out, and the rest followed; he had found a spring, and by scraping in the gravel had made a tiny basin out of which we could manage to drink a little. Here was a fresh cause of delay: everybody was thirsty, and everybody must drink; not only the water which, as we afterwards saw, trickled down hither under the stones from a snow-bed seven hundred feet higher, but the water mixed with some whisky from a flask my friend carried, which even in this highly diluted state the Cossacks took to heartily. When at last we got them up and away again, they began to waddle and strangle; after a while two or three sat down, and plainly gave us to see they would go no farther. By the time we had reached a little snow-bed whence the now strong sun was drawing a stream of water, and halted on the rocks beside it for breakfast, there were only two Cossacks and the four Kurds left with us, the rest having scattered themselves about somewhere lower down. We had no idea what instructions they had received, nor whether indeed they had been told anything except to bring us as far as they could, to see that the Kurds brought the baggage, and to fetch us back again, which last was essential for Jaafar's peace of mind. We concluded therefore that if left to themselves they would probably wait our return; and the day was running on so fast that it was clear there was no more time to be lost in trying to drag them along with us.

Accordingly I resolved to take what I wanted in the way of food, and start at my own pace. My friend, who carried more weight, and had felt the want of training on our way up, decided to come no farther, but wait about here, and look out for me towards nightfall. We noted the landmarks carefully,—the little snow-bed, the head of the glen covered with reddish masses of stone and gravel; and high above it, standing out of the face of the great cone of Ararat, a bold peak or rather projecting tooth of black rock, which our Cossacks called the Monastery, and which, I suppose from the same fancied resemblance to a building, is said to be called in Tatar Tach Kilissa, "the church rock." It is doubtless an old cone of eruption, about thirteen thousand feet in height, and is really the upper end of the long ridge we had been following, which may perhaps represent a lava flow from it, or the edge of a fissure which at this point found a vent.

It was an odd position to be in: guides of two different races, unable to communicate either with us or with one another: guides who could not lead and would not follow; guides one-half of whom were supposed to be there to save us from being robbed and murdered by the other half, but all of whom, I am bound to say, looked for the moment equally simple and friendly, the swarthy Iranian as well as the blue-eyed Slav.

At eight o'clock I buckled on my canvas gaiters, thrust some crusts of bread, a lemon, a small flask of cold tea, four hard-boiled eggs, and a few meat lozenges into my pocket, bade good-by to my friend, and set off. Rather to our surprise, the two Cossacks and one of the Kurds came with me, whether persuaded by a pantomime of encouraging signs, or simply curious to see what would happen. The ice-axe had hugely amused the Cossacks all through. Climbing the ridge to the left, and keeping along its top for a little way, I then struck across the semi-circular head of a wide glen, in the middle of which, a little lower, lay a snow-bed over a long steep slope of loose broken stones and sand. This slope, a sort of talus or "screen" as they say in the Lake country, was excessively fatiguing from the want of firm foothold; and when I reached the other side, I was already so tired and breathless, having been on foot since midnight, that it seemed almost useless to persevere farther. However, on the other side I got upon solid rock, where the walking was better, and was soon environed by a multitude of rills bubbling down over the stones from the stone-slopes above. The summit of Little Ararat, which had for the last two hours provokingly kept at the same apparent height above me, began to sink, and before ten o'clock I could look down upon its small flat top, studded with lumps of rock, but bearing no trace of a crater. Mounting steadily along the same ridge, I saw at a height of over thirteen thousand feet, lying on the loose blocks, a piece of wood about four feet long and five inches thick, evidently cut by some tool, and so far above the limit of trees that it could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one. Darting on it with a glee that astonished the Cossack and the Kurd, I held it up to them, and repeated several times the word "Noah." The Cossack grinned; but he was such a cheery, genial fellow that I think he would have grinned whatever I had said, and I cannot be sure that he took my meaning, and recognized the wood as a fragment of the true Ark. Whether it was really gopher wood, of which material the Ark was built, I will not undertake to say, but am willing to submit to the inspection of the curious the bit which I cut off with my ice-axe and brought away. Anyhow, it will be hard to prove that it is not gopher wood. And if there be any remains of the Ark on Ararat at all,—a point as to which the natives are perfectly clear,—here rather than the top is the place where one might expect to find them, since in the course of ages they would get carried down by the onward movement of the snow-beds along the declivities. This wood, therefore, suits all the requirements of the case. In fact, the argument is for the case of a relic exceptionally strong: the Crusaders who found the Holy Lance at Antioch, the archbishop who recognized the Holy Coat at Treves, not to speak of many others, proceeded upon slighter evidence. I am, however, bound to admit that another explanation of the presence of this piece of timber on the rocks of this vast height did occur to me. But as no man is bound to discredit his own relic, and such is certainly not the practice of the Armenian Church, I will not disturb my readers' minds or yield to the rationalizing tendencies of the age by suggesting it.

Fearing that the ridge by which we were mounting would become too precipitous higher up, I turned off to the left, and crossed a long, narrow snow-slope that descended between this ridge and another line of rocks more to the west. It was firm, and just steep enough to make steps cut in the snow comfortable, though not necessary; so the ice-axe was brought into use. The Cossack who accompanied me—there was but one now, for the other Cossack had gone away to the right some time before, and was quite lost to view—had brought my friend's alpenstock, and was developing a considerable capacity for wielding it. He followed nimbly across; but the Kurd stopped on the edge of the snow, and stood peering and hesitating, like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place, nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on the treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were examining the broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, but a little troublesome, as if it might want some care to get over or through. So after a short rest I stood up, touched my Cossack's arm, and pointed upward. He reconnoitred the cliff with his eye, and shook his head. Then, with various gestures of hopefulness, I clapped him on the back, and made as though to pull him along. He looked at the rocks again and pointed, to them, stroked his knees, turned up and pointed to the soles of his boots, which certainly were suffering from the lava, and once more solemnly shook his head. This was conclusive: so I conveyed to him my pantomime that he had better go back to the bivouac where my friend was, rather than remain here alone, and that I hoped to meet him there in the evening; took an affectionate farewell, and turned towards the rocks. There was evidently nothing for it but to go on alone. It was half-past ten o'clock, and the height about thirteen thousand six hundred feet, Little Ararat now lying nearly one thousand feet below the eye.

* * * * *

Not knowing how far the ridge I was following might continue passable, I was obliged to stop frequently to survey the rocks above, and erect little piles of stone to mark the way. This not only consumed time, but so completely absorbed the attention that for hours together I scarcely noticed the marvelous landscape spread out beneath, and felt the solemn grandeur of the scenery far less than many times before on less striking mountains. Solitude at great heights, or among majestic rocks or forests, commonly stirs in us all deep veins of feeling, joyous or saddening, or more often of joy and sadness mingled. Here the strain on the observing senses seemed too great for fancy or emotion to have any scope. When the mind is preocupied by the task of the moment, imagination is checked. This was a race against time, in which I could only scan the cliffs for a route, refer constantly to the watch, husband my strength by morsels of food taken at frequent intervals, and endeavor to conceive how a particular block or bit of slope which it would be necessary to recognize would look when seen the other way in descending....

All the way up this rock-slope, which proved so fatiguing that for the fourth time I had almost given up hope, I kept my eye fixed on its upper end to see what signs there were of crags or snow-fields above. But the mist lay steadily at the point where the snow seemed to begin, and it was impossible to say what might be hidden behind that soft white curtain. As little could I conjecture the height I had reached by looking around, as one so often does on mountain ascents, upon other summits; for by this time I was thousands of feet above Little Ararat, the next highest peak visible, and could scarcely guess how many thousands. From this tremendous height it looked more like a broken obelisk than an independent summit twelve thousand eight hundred feet in height. Clouds covered the farther side of the great snow basin, and were seething like waves about the savage pinnacles, the towers of the Jinn palace, which guard its lower margin, and past which my upward path had lain. With mists to the left and above, and a range of black precipices cutting off all view to the right, there came a vehement sense of isolation and solitude, and I began to understand better the awe with which the mountain silence inspires the Kurdish shepherds. Overhead the sky had turned from dark blue to an intense bright green, a color whose strangeness seemed to add to the weird terror of the scene. It wanted barely an hour to the time when I had resolved to turn back; and as I struggled up the crumbling rocks, trying now to right and now to left, where the foothold looked a little firmer, I began to doubt whether there was strength enough left to carry me an hour higher. At length the rock-slope came suddenly to an end, and I stepped out upon the almost level snow at the top of it, coming at the same time into the clouds, which naturally clung to the colder surfaces. A violent west wind was blowing, and the temperature must have been pretty low, for a big icicle at once enveloped the lower half of my face, and did not melt till I got to the bottom of the cone four hours afterwards. Unluckily I was very thinly clad, the stout tweed coat reserved for such occasions having been stolen on a Russian railway. The only expedient to be tried against the piercing cold was to tighten in my loose light coat by winding around the waist a Spanish faja, or scarf, which I had brought up to use in case of need as a neck wrapper. Its bright purple looked odd enough in such surroundings, but as there was nobody there to notice, appearances did not much matter. In the mist, which was now thick, the eye could pierce only some thirty yards ahead; so I walked on over the snow five or six minutes, following the rise of its surface, which was gentle, and fancying there might still be a good long way to go. To mark the backward track I trailed the point of the ice-axe along behind me in the soft snow, for there was no longer any landmark; all was cloud on every side. Suddenly to my astonishment the ground began to fall away to the north; I stopped; a puff of wind drove off the mists on one side, the opposite side to that by which I had come, and showed the Araxes plain at an abysmal depth below. It was the top of Ararat.



THE WORK OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

From 'The Holy Roman Empire'

No one who reads the history of the last three hundred years—no one, above all, who studies attentively the career of Napoleon—can believe it possible for any State, however great her energy and material resources, to repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome; to gather into one vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and nobler than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome [Mommsen], after summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his treatise with these words:

"There was in the world as Caesar found it the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless abundance of splendor and glory; but little soul, still less taste, and least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world, and even Caesar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when after long historical night the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-guided movement began their course toward new and higher aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Caesar had sprung up,—many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national individuality."

If this be the glory of Julius, the first great founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second founder, and of more than one among his Teutonic successors. The work of the mediaeval Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered, while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North and forced them within the pale of civilization. It preserved the arts and literature of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it set before its subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth. And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a centralizing and despotic power like itself; it was making men capable of using national independence aright; it was teaching them to rise to that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember how many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions of our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to those of Charles V., the whole civilized world believed in its existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and the world remains, and hardly notes the change.



FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND

(1826-1880)

Certainly, among the most useful of writers are the popularizers of science; those who can describe in readable, picturesque fashion those wonders and innumerable inhabitants of the world which the Dryasdusts discover, but which are apt to escape the attention of idlers or of the busy workers in other fields. Sometimes—not often—the same man unites the capacities of a patient and accurate investigator and of an accomplished narrator. To such men the field of enjoyment is boundless, as is the opportunity to promote the enjoyment of others.

One of these two-sided men was Francis Trevelyan Buckland, popularly known as "Frank" Buckland, and so called in some of his books. His father, William Buckland,—at the time of the son's birth canon of Christ College, Oxford, and subsequently Dean of Westminster,—was the well-known geologist. As the father's life was devoted to the study of the inorganic, so that of the son was absorbed in the investigation of the organic world. He never tired of watching the habits of living creatures of all kinds; he lived as it were in a menagerie and it is related that his numerous callers were accustomed to the most familiar and impertinent demonstrations on the part of his monkeys and various other pets. He was an expert salmon-fisher, and his actual specialty was fishes; but he could not have these about him so conveniently as some other forms of life, and he extended his studies and specimens widely beyond ichthyology.

Buckland was born December 17th, 1826, and died December 19th, 1880. Brought up in a scientific atmosphere, he was all his life interested in the same subjects. Educated as a physician and surgeon and distinguished for his anatomical skill, his training fitted him for the careful investigation which is necessary on the part of the biologist. He was fortunate too in receiving in early middle life the government appointment of Inspector of Salmon Fisheries, and so being enabled to devote himself wholly to his favorite pursuits. In this position he was unwearied in his efforts to develop pisciculture, and to improve the apparatus used by the fishermen, interesting himself also in the condition of themselves and their families.

He was always writing. He was a very frequent contributor to The Field from its foundation in 1856, and subsequently to Land and Water, a periodical which he started in 1866, and to other periodicals. He published a number of volumes, made up in great part from his contributions to periodicals, most of them of a popular character and full of interesting information. Among those which are best known are the 'Curiosities of Natural History' (1857-72); the 'Log-Book of a Fisherman and Geologist' (1875); a 'Natural History of British Fishes' (1881); and 'Notes and Jottings from Animal Life,' which was not issued until 1882, though the material was selected by himself.

Buckland was of a jovial disposition, and always sure to see the humorous side of the facts which were presented to him; and in his social life he was extremely unconventional, and inclined to merry pranks. His books are as delightful as was their writer. They are records of accurate, useful, eye-opening details as to fauna, all the world over. They are written with a brisk, sincere informality that suggest the lively talker rather than the writer. He takes us a-walking in green lanes and woods, and a-wading in brooks and still pools—not drawing us into a class-room or a study. He enters into the heart and life of creatures, and shows us how we should do the same. A lively humor is in all his popular pages. He instructs while smiling; and he is a savant while a light-hearted friend. Few English naturalists are as genial—not even White of Selborne—and few as wide in didactics. To know him is a profit indeed; but just as surely a pleasure.



A HUNT IN A HORSE-POND

From 'Curiosities of Natural History'

Well, let us have a look at the pond-world; choose a dry place at the side, and fix our eyes steadily upon the dirty water: what shall we see? Nothing at first; but wait a minute or two: a little round black knob appears in the middle; gradually it rises higher and higher, till at last you can make out a frog's head, with his great eyes staring hard at you, like the eyes of the frog in the woodcut facing AEsop's fable of the frog and the bull. Not a bit of his body do you see: he is much too cunning for that; he does not know who or what you are; you may be a heron, his mortal enemy, for aught he knows. You move your arm: he thinks it is the heron's bill coming; down he goes again, and you see him not: a few seconds, he regains courage and reappears, having probably communicated the intelligence to the other frogs; for many big heads and many big eyes appear, in all parts of the pond, looking like so many hippopotami on a small scale. Soon a conversational "Wurk; wurk, wurk," begins: you don't understand it; luckily, perhaps, as from the swelling in their throats it is evident that the colony is outraged by the intrusion, and the remarks passing are not complimentary to the intruder. These frogs are all respectable, grown-up, well-to-do frogs, and they have in this pond duly deposited their spawn, and then, hard-hearted creatures! left it to its fate; it has, however, taken care of itself, and is now hatched, at least that part of it which has escaped the hands of the gipsies, who not unfrequently prescribe baths of this natural jelly for rheumatism....

In some places, from their making this peculiar noise, frogs have been called "Dutch nightingales." In Scotland, too, they have a curious name, Paddock or Puddick; but there is poetical authority for it:—

"The water-snake whom fish and paddocks feed, With staring scales lies poisoned."—DRYDEN.

Returning from the University of Giessen, I brought with me about a dozen green tree-frogs, which I had caught in the woods near the town. The Germans call them laub-frosch, or leaf-frog; they are most difficult things to find, on account of their color so much resembling the leaves on which they live. I have frequently heard one singing in a small bush, and though I have searched carefully, have not been able to find him: the only way is to remain quite quiet till he again begins his song. After much ambush-work, at length I collected a dozen frogs and put them in a bottle. I started at night on my homeward journey by the diligence, and I put the bottle containing the frogs into the pocket inside the diligence. My fellow-passengers were sleepy old smoke-dried Germans: very little conversation took place, and after the first mile every one settled himself to sleep, and soon all were snoring. I suddenly awoke with a start, and found all the sleepers had been roused at the same moment. On their sleepy faces were depicted fear and anger. What had woke us all up so suddenly? The morning was just breaking, and my frogs, though in the dark pocket of the coach, had found it out; and with one accord, all twelve of them had begun their morning song. As if at a given signal, they one and all of them began to croak as loud as ever they could. The noise their united concert made, seemed, in the closed compartment of the coach, quite deafening. Well might the Germans look angry: they wanted to throw the frogs, bottle and all, out of the window; but I gave the bottle a good shaking, and made the frogs keep quiet. The Germans all went to sleep again, but I was obliged to remain awake, to shake the frogs when they began to croak. It was lucky that I did so, for they tried to begin their concert again two or three times. These frogs came safely to Oxford; and the day after their arrival, a stupid housemaid took off the top of the bottle to see what was inside; one of the frogs croaked at that instant, and so frightened her that she dared not put the cover on again. They all got loose in the garden, where I believe the ducks ate them, for I never heard or saw them again.



ON RATS

From 'Curiosities of Natural History'

On one occasion, when a boy, I recollect secretly borrowing an old-fashioned flint gun from the bird-keeper of the farm to which I had been invited. I ensconced myself behind the door of the pig-sty, determined to make a victim of one of the many rats that were accustomed to disport themselves among the straw that formed the bed of the farmer's pet bacon-pigs. In a few minutes out came an old patriarchal-looking rat, who, having taken a careful survey, quietly began to feed. After a long aim, bang went the gun—I fell backwards, knocked down by the recoil of the rusty old piece of artillery. I did not remain prone long, for I was soon roused by the most unearthly squeaks, and a dreadful noise as of an infuriated animal madly rushing round and round the sty. Ye gods! what had I done? I had not surely, like the tailor in the old song of the 'Carrion Crow,'

"Shot and missed my mark, And shot the old sow right bang through the heart."

But I had nearly performed a similar sportsman-like feat. There was poor piggy, the blood flowing in streamlets from several small punctures in that part of his body destined, at no very distant period, to become ham; in vain attempting, by dismal cries and by energetic waggings of his curly tail, to appease the pain of the charge of small shot which had so unceremoniously awaked him from his porcine dreams of oatmeal and boiled potatoes. But where was the rat? He had disappeared unhurt; the buttocks of the unfortunate pig, the rightful owner of the premises, had received the charge of shot intended to destroy the daring intruder.

To appease piggy's wrath I gave him a bucketful of food from the hog-tub; and while he was thus consoling his inward self, wiped off the blood from the wounded parts, and said nothing about it to anybody. No doubt, before this time, some frugal housewife has been puzzled and astonished at the unwonted appearance of a charge of small shot in the centre of the breakfast ham which she procured from Squire Morland, of Sheepstead, Berks.

Rats are very fond of warmth, and will remain coiled up for hours in any snug retreat where they can find this very necessary element of their existence. The following anecdote well illustrates this point:—

My late father, when fellow of Corpus College, Oxford, many years ago, on arriving at his rooms late one night, found that a rat was running about among the books and geological specimens, behind the sofa, under the fender, and poking his nose into every hiding-place he could find. Being studiously inclined, and wishing to set to work at his books, he pursued him, armed with the poker in one hand, and a large dictionary, big enough to crush any rat, in the other; but in vain; Mr. Rat was not to be caught, particularly when such "arma scholastica" were used.

No sooner had the studies recommenced than the rat resumed his gambols, squeaking and rushing about the room like a mad creature. The battle was renewed, and continued at intervals, to the destruction of all studies, till quite a late hour at night, when the pursuer, angry and wearied, retired to his adjoining bedroom; though he listened attentively he heard no more of the enemy, and soon fell asleep. In the morning he was astonished to find something warm lying on his chest; carefully lifting up the bed-clothes, he discovered his tormentor of the preceding night quietly and snugly ensconced in a fold in the blanket, and taking advantage of the bodily warmth of his two-legged adversary. These two lay looking daggers at each other for some minutes, the one unwilling to leave his warm berth, the other afraid to put his hand out from under the protection of the coverlid, particularly as the stranger's aspect was anything but friendly, his little sharp teeth and fierce little black eyes seeming to say, "Paws off from me, if you please!"

At length, remembering the maxim that "discretion is the better part of valor"—the truth of which, I imagine, rats understand as well as most creatures,—he made a sudden jump off the bed, scuttled away into the next room, and was never seen or heard of afterwards....

Rats are not selfish animals: having found out where the feast is stored, they will kindly communicate the intelligence to their friends and neighbors. The following anecdote will confirm this fact. A certain worthy old lady named Mrs. Oke, who resided at Axminster several years ago, made a cask of sweet wine, for which she was celebrated, and carefully placed it on a shelf in the cellar. The second night after this event she was frightened almost to death by a strange unaccountable noise in the said cellar. The household was called up and a search made, but nothing was found to clear up the mystery. The next night, as soon as the lights were extinguished and the house quiet, this dreadful noise was heard again. This time it was most alarming: a sound of squeaking, crying, knocking, pattering feet; then a dull scratching sound, with many other such ghostly noises, which continued throughout the livelong night. The old lady lay in bed with the candle alight, pale and sleepless with fright, anon muttering her prayers, anon determined to fire off the rusty old blunderbuss that hung over the chimneypiece. At last the morning broke, and the cock began to crow. "Now," thought she, "the ghosts must disappear." To her infinite relief, the noise really did cease, and the poor frightened dame adjusted her nightcap and fell asleep. Great preparations had she made for the next night; farm servants armed with pitchforks slept in the house; the maids took the family dinner-bell and the tinder-box into their rooms; the big dog was tied to the hall-table. Then the dame retired to her room, not to sleep, but to sit up in the arm-chair by the fire, keeping a drowsy guard over the neighbor's loaded horse-pistols, of which she was almost as much afraid as she was of the ghost in the cellar. Sure enough, her warlike preparations had succeeded; the ghost was certainly frightened; not a noise, not a sound, except the heavy snoring of the bumpkins and the rattling of the dog's chain in the hall, could be heard. She had gained a complete victory; the ghost was never heard again on the premises, and the whole affair was soon forgotten. Some weeks afterward some friends dropped in to take a cup of tea and talk over the last piece of gossip. Among other things the wine was mentioned, and the maid sent to get some from the cellar. She soon returned, and gasping for breath, rushed into the room, exclaiming, "'Tis all gone, ma'am;" and sure enough it was all gone. "The ghost has taken it"—not a drop was left, only the empty cask remained; the side was half eaten away, and marks of sharp teeth were visible round the ragged margins of the newly made bungholes.

This discovery fully accounted for the noise the ghost had made, which caused so much alarm. The aboriginal rats in the dame's cellar had found out the wine, and communicated the joyful news to all the other rats in the parish; they had assembled there to enjoy the fun, and get very tipsy (which, judging from the noise they made, they certainly did) on this treasured cask of wine. Being quite a family party, they had finished it in two nights; and having got all they could, like wise rats they returned to their respective homes, perfectly unconscious that their merry-making had nearly been the death of the rightful owner and "founder of the feast." They had first gnawed out the cork, and got as much as they could: they soon found that the more they drank the lower the wine became. Perseverance is the motto of the rat; so they set to work and ate away the wood to the level of the wine again. This they continued till they had emptied the cask; they must then have got into it and licked up the last drains, for another and less agreeable smell was substituted for that of wine. I may add that this cask, with the side gone, and the marks of the rats' teeth, is still in my possession.



SNAKES AND THEIR POISON

From 'Curiosities of Natural History'

Be it known to any person to whose lot it should fall to rescue a person from the crushing folds of a boa-constrictor, that it is no use pulling and hauling at the centre of the brute's body; catch hold of the tip of his tail,—he can then be easily unwound,—he cannot help himself;—he "must" come off. Again, if you wish to kill a snake, it is no use hitting and trying to crush his head. The bones of the head are composed of the densest material, affording effectual protection to the brain underneath: a wise provision for the animal's preservation; for were his skull brittle, his habit of crawling on the ground would render it very liable to be fractured. The spinal cord runs down the entire length of the body; this being wounded, the animal is disabled or killed instanter. Strike therefore his tail, and not his head; for at his tail the spinal cord is but thinly covered with bone, and suffers readily from injury. This practice is applicable to eels. If you want to kill an eel, it is not much use belaboring his head: strike, however, his tail two or three times against any hard substance, and he is quickly dead.

About four years ago I myself, in person, had painful experience of the awful effects of snake's poison. I have received a dose of the cobra's poison into my system; luckily a minute dose, or I should not have survived it. The accident happened in a very curious way. I was poisoned by the snake but not bitten by him. I got the poison second-hand. Anxious to witness the effects of the poison of the cobra upon a rat, I took up a couple in a bag alive to a certain cobra. I took one rat out of the bag and put him into the cage with the snake. The cobra was coiled up among the stones in the centre of the cage, apparently asleep. When he heard the noise of the rat falling into the cage, he just looked up and put out his tongue, hissing at the same time. The rat got in a corner and began washing himself, keeping one eye on the snake, whose appearance he evidently did not half like. Presently the rat ran across the snake's body, and in an instant the latter assumed his fighting attitude. As the rat passed the snake, he made a dart, but missing his aim, hit his nose a pretty hard blow against the side of the cage. This accident seemed to anger him, for he spread out his crest and waved it to and fro in the beautiful manner peculiar to his kind. The rat became alarmed and ran near him again. Again cobra made a dart, and bit him, but did not, I think, inject any poison into him, the rat being so very active; at least, no symptoms of poisoning were shown. The bite nevertheless aroused the ire of the rat, for he gathered himself for a spring, and measuring his distance, sprang right on to the neck of the cobra, who was waving about in front of him. This plucky rat, determined to die hard, gave the cobra two or three severe bites in the neck, the snake keeping his body erect all this time, and endeavoring to turn his head round so as to bite the rat who was clinging on like the old man in 'Sindbad the Sailor.' Soon, however, cobra changed his tactics. Tired, possibly, with sustaining the weight of the rat, he lowered his head, and the rat, finding himself again on terra firma, tried to run away: not so; for the snake, collecting all his force, brought down his erected poison-fangs, making his head tell by its weight in giving vigor to the blow, right on to the body of the rat.

This poor beast now seemed to know that the fight was over and that he was conquered. He retired to a corner of the cage and began panting violently, endeavoring at the same time to steady his failing strength with his feet. His eyes were widely dilated, and his mouth open as if gasping for breath. The cobra stood erect over him, hissing and putting out his tongue as if conscious of victory. In about three minutes the rat fell quietly on his side and expired; the cobra then moved off and took no further notice of his defunct enemy. About ten minutes afterward the rat was hooked out of the cage for me to examine. No external wound could I see anywhere, so I took out my knife and began taking the skin off the rat. I soon discovered two very minute punctures, like small needle-holes, in the side of the rat, where the fangs of the snake had entered. The parts between the skin and the flesh, and the flesh itself, appeared as though affected with mortification, even though the wound had not been inflicted above a quarter of an hour, if so much.

Anxious to see if the skin itself was affected, I scraped away the parts on it with my finger-nail. Finding nothing but the punctures, I threw the rat away and put the knife and skin in my pocket, and started to go away. I had not walked a hundred yards before all of a sudden I felt just as if somebody had come behind me and struck me a severe blow on the head and neck, and at the same time I experienced a most acute pain and sense of oppression at the chest, as though a hot iron had been run in and a hundred-weight put on the top of it. I knew instantly, from what I had read, that I was poisoned; I said as much to my friend, a most intelligent gentleman, who happened to be with me, and told him if I fell to give me brandy and "eau de luce," words which he kept repeating in case he might forget them. At the same time I enjoined him to keep me going, and not on any account to allow me to lie down.

I then forgot everything for several minutes, and my friend tells me I rolled about as if very faint and weak. He also informs me that the first thing I did was to fall against him, asking if I looked seedy. He most wisely answered, "No, you look very well." I don't think he thought so, for his own face was as white as a ghost; I recollect this much. He tells me my face was of a greenish-yellow color. After walking or rather staggering along for some minutes, I gradually recovered my senses and steered for the nearest chemist's shop. Rushing in, I asked for eau de luce. Of course he had none, but my eye caught the words "Spirit, ammon. co.," or hartshorn, on a bottle. I reached it down myself, and pouring a large quantity into a tumbler with a little water, both of which articles I found on a soda-water stand in the shop, drank it off, though it burnt my mouth and lips very much. Instantly I felt relief from the pain at the chest and head. The chemist stood aghast, and on my telling him what was the matter, recommended a warm bath. If I had then followed his advice these words would never have been placed on record. After a second draught at the hartshorn bottle, I proceeded on my way, feeling very stupid and confused. On arriving at my friend's residence close by, he kindly procured me a bottle of brandy, of which I drank four large wine-glasses one after the other, but did not feel the least tipsy after the operation. Feeling nearly well, I started on my way home, and then for the first time perceived a most acute pain under the nail of the left thumb: this pain also ran up the arm. I set to work to suck the wound, and then found out how the poison had got into the system. About an hour before I examined the dead rat I had been cleaning the nail with a penknife, and had slightly separated the nail from the skin beneath. Into this little crack the poison had got when I was scraping the rat's skin to examine the wound. How virulent, therefore, must the poison of the cobra be! It had already been circulated in the body of the rat, from which I had imbibed it second-hand!

MY MONKEY JACKO

From 'Curiosities of Natural History'

After some considerable amount of bargaining (in which amusing, sometimes animated, not to say exciting exhibition of talent, Englishmen generally get worsted by the Frenchmen, as was the case in the present instance), Jacko became transferred, chain, tail and all, to his new English master. Having arrived at the hotel, it became a question as to what was to become of Jacko while his master was absent from home. A little closet, opening into the wall of the bedroom, offered itself as a temporary prison. Jacko was tied up securely—alas! how vain are the thoughts of man!—to one of the row of pegs that were fastened against the wall. As the door closed on him his wicked eyes seemed to say, "I'll do some mischief now;" and sure enough he did, for when I came back to release him, like AEneas,

"Obstupni, steteruntque comae et vox fancibus haesit[5]."

[Footnote 5: "Aghast, astonished, and struck dumb with fear, I stood; like bristles rose my stiffened hair."—DRYDEN. ]

The walls, that but half an hour previously were covered with a finely ornamented paper, now stood out in the bold nakedness of lath and plaster; the relics on the floor showed that the little wretch's fingers had by no means been idle. The pegs were all loosened, the individual peg to which his chain had been fastened, torn completely from its socket, that the destroyer's movements might not be impeded, and an unfortunate garment that happened to be hung up in the closet was torn to a thousand shreds. If ever Jack Sheppard had a successor, it was this monkey. If he had tied the torn bits of petticoat together and tried to make his escape from the window, I don't think I should have been much surprised....

It was, after Jacko's misdeeds, quite evident that he must no longer be allowed full liberty; and a lawyer's blue bag, such as may be frequently seen in the dreaded neighborhood of the Court of Chancery,—filled, however, more frequently with papers and parchment than with monkeys,—was provided for him; and this receptacle, with some hay placed at the bottom for a bed, became his new abode. It was a movable home, and therein lay the advantage; for when the strings of it were tied there was no mode of escape. He could not get his hands through the aperture at the end to unfasten them, the bag was too strong for him to bite his way through, and his ineffectual efforts to get out only had the effect of making the bag roll along the floor, and occasionally make a jump up into the air; forming altogether an exhibition which if advertised in the present day of wonders as "le bag vivant," would attract crowds of delighted and admiring citizens.

In the bag aforesaid he traveled as far as Southampton on his road to town. While taking the ticket at the railway station, Jacko, who must needs see everything that was going on, suddenly poked his head out of the bag and gave a malicious grin at the ticket-giver. This much frightened the poor man, but with great presence of mind,—quite astonishing under the circumstances,—he retaliated the insult: "Sir, that's a dog; you must pay for it accordingly." In vain was the monkey made to come out of the bag and exhibit his whole person; in vain were arguments in full accordance with the views of Cuvier and Owen urged eagerly, vehemently, and without hesitation (for the train was on the point of starting), to prove that the animal in question was not a dog, but a monkey. A dog it was in the peculiar views of the official, and three-and-sixpence was paid. Thinking to carry the joke further (there were just a few minutes to spare), I took out from my pocket a live tortoise I happened to have with me, and showing it, said, "What must I pay for this, as you charge for all animals?" The employe adjusted his specs, withdrew from the desk to consult with his superior; then returning, gave the verdict with a grave but determined manner, "No charge for them, sir: them be insects."



HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE

(1821-1862)

Henry Thomas Buckle was born at Lee, in Kent, on November 24th, 1821, the son of a wealthy London merchant. A delicate child, he participated in none of the ordinary sports of children, but sat instead for hours listening to his mother's reading of the Bible and the 'Arabian Nights.' She had a great influence on his early development. She was a Calvinist, deeply religious, and Buckle himself in after years acknowledged that to her he owed his faith in human progress through the dissemination and triumph of truth, as well as his taste for philosophic speculations and his love for poetry. His devotion to her was lifelong. Owing to his feeble health he passed but a few years at school, and did not enter college. Nor did he know much, in the scholar's sense, of books. Till he was nearly eighteen the 'Arabian Nights,' the 'Pilgrim's Progress' and Shakespeare constituted his chief reading.

But he was fond of games of mental skill, and curiously enough, first gained distinction, not in letters but at the chessboard, and in the course of his subsequent travels he challenged and defeated the champions of Europe. He was concerned for a short time in business; but being left with an independent income at the death of his father, he resolved to devote himself to study. He traveled for a year on the Continent, learning on the spot the languages of the countries he passed through. In time he became an accomplished linguist, reading nineteen languages and conversing fluently in seven.

By the time he was nineteen he had resolved to write a great historic work, of a nature not yet attempted by any one. To prepare himself for this monumental labor, and to make up for past deficiencies, he settled in London; and, apparently single-handed and without the advice or help of tutors or professional men, entered upon that course of voluminous reading on which his erudition rests.

He is a singular instance of a self-taught man, without scientific or academic training, producing a work that marks an epoch in historical literature. With a wonderful memory, he had, like Macaulay, the gift of getting the meaning and value of a book by simply glancing over the pages. On an average he could read with intelligent comprehension three books in a working day of eight hours, and in time mastered his library of twenty-two thousand volumes, indexing every book on the back, and transcribing many pages into his commonplace-books. In this way he spent fifteen years of study in collecting his materials.

The first volume of his introduction to the 'History of Civilization in England' appeared in 1857, and aroused an extraordinary interest because of the novelty and audacity of its statements. It was both bitterly attacked and enthusiastically praised, as it antagonized or attracted its readers. Buckle became the intellectual hero of the hour. The second volume appeared in May, 1861. And now, worn out by overwork, his delicate nerves completely unstrung by the death of his mother, who had remained his first and only love, he left England for the East, in company with the two young sons of a friend. In Palestine he was stricken with typhoid fever, and died at Damascus on May 29th, 1862. His grave is marked by a marble tomb with the inscription from the Arabic:—

"The written word remains long after the writer; The writer is resting under the earth, but his works endure."

Three volumes of 'Miscellanies and Posthumous Works,' edited by Helen Taylor, were published in 1872. Among these are a lecture on 'Woman,' delivered before the Royal Institution,—Buckle's single and very successful attempt at public speaking,—and a Review of Mill's 'Liberty,' one of the finest contemporary appreciations of that thinker. But he wrote little outside his 'History,' devoting himself with entire singleness of purpose to his life-work.

The introduction to the 'History of Civilization in England' has been aptly called the "fragment of a fragment." When as a mere youth he outlined his work, he overestimated the extremest accomplishment of a single mind, and did not clearly comprehend the vastness of the undertaking. He had planned a general history of civilization; but as the material increased on his hands he was forced to limit his project, and finally decided to confine his work to a consideration of England from the middle of the sixteenth century. In February, 1853, he wrote to a friend:—

"I have been long convinced that the progress of every people is regulated by principles—or as they are called, laws—as regular and as certain as those which govern the physical world. To discover these laws is the object of my work.... I propose to take a general survey of the moral, intellectual, and legislative peculiarities of the great countries of Europe; and I hope to point out the circumstances under which these peculiarities have arisen. This will lead to a perception of certain relations between the various stages through which each people have progressively passed. Of these general relations I intend to make a particular application; and by a careful analysis of the history of England, show how they have regulated our civilization, and how the successive and apparently the arbitrary forms of our opinions, our literature, our laws, and our manners, have naturally grown out of their antecedents."

This general scheme was adhered to in the published history, and he supported his views by a vast array of illustrations and proofs. The main ideas advanced in the Introduction—for he did not live to write the body of the work, the future volumes to which he often pathetically refers—these ideas may be thus stated:—First: Nothing had yet been done toward discovering the principles underlying the character and destiny of nations, to establish a basis for a science of history,—a task which Buckle proposed to himself. Second: Experience shows that nations are governed by laws as fixed and regular as the laws of the physical world. Third: Climate, soil, food, and the aspects of nature are the primary causes in forming the character of a nation. Fourth: The civilization within and without Europe is determined by the fact that in Europe man is stronger than nature, and here alone has subdued her to his service; whereas on the other continents nature is the stronger and man has been subdued by her. Fifth: The continually increasing influence of mental laws and the continually diminishing influence of physical laws characterize the advance of European civilization. Sixth: The mental laws regulating the progress of society can only be discovered by such a comprehensive survey of facts as will enable us to eliminate disturbances; namely, by the method of averages. Seventh: Human progress is due to intellectual activity, which continually changes and expands, rather than to moral agencies, which from the beginnings of society have been more or less stationary. Eighth: In human affairs in general, individual efforts are insignificant, and great men work for evil rather than for good, and are moreover merely incidental to their age. Ninth: Religion, literature, art, and government instead of being causes of civilization, are merely its products. Tenth: The progress of civilization varies directly as skepticism—the disposition to doubt, or the "protective spirit"—the disposition to maintain without examination established beliefs and practices, predominates.

The new scientific methods of Darwin and Mill were just then being eagerly discussed in England; and Buckle, an alert student and great admirer of Mill, in touch with the new movements of the day, proposed, "by applying to the history of man those methods of investigation which have been found successful in other branches of knowledge, and rejecting all preconceived notions which could not bear the test of those methods," to remove history from the condemnation of being a mere series of arbitrary facts, or a biography of famous men, or the small-beer chronicle of court gossip and intrigues, and to raise it to the level of an exact science, subject to mental laws as rigid and infallible as the laws of nature:—

"Instead of telling us of those things which alone have any value—instead of giving us information respecting the progress of knowledge and the way in which mankind has been affected by the diffusion of that knowledge ... the vast majority of historians fill their works with the most trifling and miserable details.... In other great branches of knowledge, observation has preceded discovery; first the facts have been registered and then their laws have been found. But in the study of the history of man, the important facts have been neglected and the unimportant ones preserved. The consequence is, that whoever now attempts to generalize historical phenomena must collect the facts as well as conduct the generalization."

Buckle's ideal of the office and acquirements of the historian was of the highest. He must indeed possess a synthesis of the whole range of human knowledge to explain the progress of man. By connecting history with political economy and statistics, he strove to make it exact. And he exemplified his theories by taking up branches of scientific investigation hitherto considered entirely outside the province of the historian. He first wrote history scientifically, pursuing the same methods and using the same kinds of proofs as the scientific worker. The first volume excited as much angry discussion as Darwin's 'Origin of Species' had done in its day. The boldness of its generalizations, its uncompromising and dogmatic tone, irritated more than one class of readers. The chapters on Spain and on Scotland, with their strictures on the religions of those countries, containing some of the most brilliant passages in the book, brought up in arms against him both Catholics and Presbyterians. Trained scientists blamed him for encroaching on their domains with an insufficient knowledge of the phenomena of the natural world, whence resulted a defective logic and vague generalizations.

It is true that Buckle was not trained in the methods of the schools; that he labored under the disadvantage of a self-taught, solitary worker, not receiving the friction of other vigorous minds; and that his reading, if extensive, was not always wisely chosen, and from its very amount often ill-digested. He had knowledge rather than true learning, and taking this knowledge at second hand, often relied on sources that proved either untrustworthy or antiquated, for he lacked the true relator's fine discrimination, that weighs and sifts authorities and rejects the inadequate. Malicious critics declared that all was grist that came to his mill. Yet his popularity with that class of readers whom he did not shock by his disquisitions on religions and morals, or make distrustful by his sweeping generalizations and scientific inaccuracies, is due to the fact that his book appeared at the right moment: for the time was really come to make history something more than a chronicle of detached facts and anecdotes. The scientific spirit was awake, and demanded that human action, like the processes of nature, be made the subject of general law. The mind of Buckle proved fruitful soil for those germs of thought floating in the air, and he gave them visible form in his history. If he was not a leader, he was a brilliant formulator of thought, and he was the first to put before the reading world, then ready to receive them, ideas and speculations till now belonging to the student. For he wrote with the determination to be intelligible to the general reader. It detracts nothing from the permanent value of his work thus to state its genesis, for this is merely to apply to it his own methods.

Moreover, a perpetual charm lies in his clear, limpid English, a medium perfectly adapted to calm exposition or to impassioned rhetoric. Whatever the defects of Buckle's system: whatever the inaccuracies that the advance of thirty years of patient scientific labors can easily point out; however sweeping his generalization; or however dogmatic his assertions, the book must be allowed high rank among the works that set men thinking, and must thus be conceded to possess enduring value.



MORAL VERSUS INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLES IN HUMAN PROGRESS

From the 'History of Civilization in England'

There is unquestionably nothing to be found in the world which has undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral systems are composed. To do good to others; to sacrifice for their benefit your own wishes; to love your neighbor as yourself; to forgive your enemies; to restrain your passions; to honor your parents; to respect those who are set over you,—these and a few others are the sole essentials of morals: but they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies, and text-books which moralists and theologians have been able to produce. But if we contrast this stationary aspect of moral truths with the progressive aspect of intellectual truths, the difference is indeed startling. All the great moral systems which have exercised much influence have been fundamentally the same; all the great intellectual systems have been fundamentally different. In reference to our moral conduct, there is not a single principle now known to the most cultivated Europeans which was not likewise known to the ancients. In reference to the conduct of our intellect, the moderns have not only made the most important additions to every department of knowledge that the ancients ever attempted to study, but besides this they have upset and revolutionized the old methods of inquiry; they have consolidated into one great scheme all those resources of induction which Aristotle alone dimly perceived; and they have created sciences, the faintest idea of which never entered the mind of the boldest thinker antiquity produced.

These are, to every educated man, recognized and notorious facts; and the inference to be drawn from them is immediately obvious. Since civilization is the product of moral and intellectual agencies, and since that product is constantly changing, it evidently cannot be regulated by the stationary agent; because, when surrounding circumstances are unchanged, a stationary agent can only produce a stationary effect. The only other agent is the intellectual one; and that this is the real mover may be proved in two distinct ways: first because, being as we have already seen either moral or intellectual, and being as we have also seen not moral, it must be intellectual; and secondly, because the intellectual principle has an activity and a capacity for adaptation which, as I undertake to show, is quite sufficient to account for the extraordinary progress that during several centuries Europe has continued to make.

Such are the main arguments by which my view is supported; but there are also other and collateral circumstances which are well worthy of consideration. The first is, that the intellectual principle is not only far more progressive than the moral principle, but is also far more permanent in its results. The acquisitions made by the intellect are, in every civilized country, carefully preserved, registered in certain well-understood formulas, and protected by the use of technical and scientific language; they are easily handed down from one generation to another, and thus assuming an accessible, or as it were a tangible form, they often influence the most distant posterity, they become the heirlooms of mankind, the immortal bequest of the genius to which they owe their birth. But the good deeds effected by our moral faculties are less capable of transmission; they are of a more private and retiring character: while as the motives to which they owe their origin are generally the result of self-discipline and of self-sacrifice, they have to be worked out by every man for himself; and thus, begun by each anew, they derive little benefit from the maxims of preceding experience, nor can they well be stored up for the use of future moralists. The consequence is that although moral excellence is more amiable, and to most persons more attractive, than intellectual excellence, still it must be confessed that looking at ulterior results, it is far less active, less permanent, and as I shall presently prove, less productive of real good. Indeed, if we examine the effects of the most active philanthropy and of the largest and most disinterested kindness, we shall find that those effects are, comparatively speaking, short-lived; that there is only a small number of individuals they come in contact with and benefit; that they rarely survive the generation which witnessed their commencement; and that when they take the more durable form of founding great public charities, such institutions invariably fall, first into abuse, then into decay, and after a time are either destroyed or perverted from their original intention, mocking the effort by which it is vainly attempted to perpetuate the memory even of the purest and most energetic benevolence.

These conclusions are no doubt very unpalatable; and what makes them peculiarly offensive is, that it is impossible to refute them. For the deeper we penetrate into this question, the more clearly shall we see the superiority of intellectual acquisitions over moral feeling. There is no instance on record of an ignorant man who, having good intentions and supreme power to enforce them, has not done far more evil than good. And whenever the intentions have been very eager, and the power very extensive, the evil has been enormous. But if you can diminish the sincerity of that man, if you can mix some alloy with his motives, you will likewise diminish the evil which he works. If he is selfish as well as ignorant, it will often happen [that] you may play off his vice against his ignorance, and by exciting his fears restrain his mischief. If, however, he has no fear, if he is entirely unselfish, if his sole object is the good of others, if he pursues that object with enthusiasm, upon a large scale, and with disinterested zeal, then it is that you have no check upon him, you have no means of preventing the calamities which in an ignorant age an ignorant man will be sure to inflict. How entirely this is verified by experience, we may see in studying the history of religious persecution. To punish even a single man for his religious tenets is assuredly a crime of the deepest dye; but to punish a large body of men, to persecute an entire sect, to attempt to extirpate opinions which, growing out of the state of society in which they arise, are themselves a manifestation of the marvelous and luxuriant fertility of the human mind,—to do this is not only one of the most pernicious, but one of the most foolish acts that can possibly be conceived. Nevertheless it is an undoubted fact that an overwhelming majority of religious persecutors have been men of the purest intentions, of the most admirable and unsullied morals. It is impossible that this should be otherwise. For they are not bad-intentioned men who seek to enforce opinions which they believe to be good. Still less are they bad men who are so regardless of temporal considerations as to employ all the resources of their power, not for their own benefit, but for the purpose of propagating a religion which they think necessary to the future happiness of mankind. Such men as these are not bad, they are only ignorant; ignorant of the nature of truth, ignorant of the consequences of their own acts. But in a moral point of view their motives are unimpeachable. Indeed, it is the very ardor of their sincerity which warms them into persecution. It is the holy zeal by which they are fired that quickens their fanaticism into a deadly activity. If you can impress any man with an absorbing conviction of the supreme importance of some moral or religious doctrine; if you can make him believe that those who reject that doctrine are doomed to eternal perdition; if you then give that man power, and by means of his ignorance blind him to the ulterior consequences of his own act,—he will infallibly persecute those who deny his doctrine; and the extent of his persecution will be regulated by the extent of his sincerity. Diminish the sincerity, and you will diminish the persecution; in other words, by weakening the virtue you may check the evil. This is a truth of which history furnishes such innumerable examples, that to deny it would be not only to reject the plainest and most conclusive arguments, but to refuse the concurrent testimony of every age. I will merely select two cases, which, from the entire difference in their circumstances, are very apposite as illustrations: the first being from the history of Paganism, the other from the history of Christianity; and both proving the inability of moral feelings to control religious persecution.

I. The Roman emperors, as is well known, subjected the early Christians to persecutions which, though they have been exaggerated, were frequent and very grievous. But what to some persons must appear extremely strange, is, that among the active authors of these cruelties we find the names of the best men who ever sat on the throne; while the worst and most infamous princes were precisely those who spared the Christians, and took no heed of their increase. The two most thoroughly depraved of all the emperors were certainly Commodus and Elagabalus; neither of whom persecuted the new religion, or indeed adopted any measures against it. They were too reckless of the future, too selfish, too absorbed in their own infamous pleasures, to mind whether truth or error prevailed; and being thus indifferent to the welfare of their subjects, they cared nothing about the progress of a creed which they, as Pagan emperors, were bound to regard as a fatal and impious delusion. They therefore allowed Christianity to run its course, unchecked by those penal laws which more honest but more mistaken rulers would assuredly have enacted. We find, accordingly, that the great enemy of Christianity was Marcus Aurelius; a man of kindly temper, and of fearless, unflinching honesty, but whose reign was characterized by a persecution from which he would have refrained had he been less in earnest about the religion of his fathers. And to complete the argument, it may be added that the last and one of the most strenuous opponents of Christianity who occupied the throne of the Caesars was Julian; a prince of eminent probity, whose opinions are often attacked, but against whose moral conduct even calumny itself has hardly breathed a suspicion.

II. The second illustration is supplied by Spain; a country of which it must be confessed, that in no other have religiuos feelings exercised such sway over the affairs of men. No other European nation has produced so many ardent and disinterested missionaries, zealous self-denying martyrs, who have cheerfully sacrificed their lives in order to propagate truths which they thought necessary to be known. Nowhere else have the spiritual classes been so long in the ascendant; nowhere else are the people so devout, the churches so crowded, the clergy so numerous. But the sincerity and honesty of purpose by which the Spanish people, taken as a whole, have always been marked, have not only been unable to prevent religious persecution, but have proved the means of encouraging it. If the nation had been more lukewarm, it would have been more tolerant. As it was, the preservation of the faith became the first consideration; and everything being sacrificed to this one object, it naturally happened that zeal begat cruelty, and the soil was prepared in which the Inquisition took root and flourished. The supporters of that barbarous institution were not hypocrites, but enthusiasts. Hypocrites are for the most part too supple to be cruel. For cruelty is a stern and unbending passion; while hypocrisy is a fawning and flexible art, which accommodates itself to human feelings, and flatters the weakness of men in order that it may gain its own ends. In Spain, the earnestness of the nation, being concentrated on a single topic, carried everything before it; and hatred of heresy becoming a habit, persecution of heresy was thought a duty. The conscientious energy with which that duty was fulfilled is seen in the history of the Spanish Church. Indeed, that the inquisitors were remarkable for an undeviating and uncorruptible integrity may be proved in a variety of ways, and from different and independent sources of evidence. This is a question to which I shall hereafter return; but there are two testimonies which I cannot omit, because, from the circumstances attending them, they are peculiarly unimpeachable. Llorente, the great historian of the Inquisition, and its bitter enemy, had access to its private papers: and yet, with the fullest means of information, he does not even insinuate a charge against the moral character of the inquisitors; but while execrating the cruelty of their conduct, he cannot deny the purity of their intentions. Thirty years earlier, Townsend, a clergyman of the Church of England, published his valuable work on Spain: and though, as a Protestant and an Englishman, he had every reason to be prejudiced against the infamous system which he describes, he also can bring no charge against those who upheld it; but having occasion to mention its establishment at Barcelona, one of its most important branches, he makes the remarkable admission that all its members are men of worth, and that most of them are of distinguished humanity.

These facts, startling as they are, form a very small part of that vast mass of evidence which history contains, and which decisively proves the utter inability of moral feelings to diminish religious persecution. The way in which the diminution has been really effected by the mere progress of intellectual acquirements will be pointed out in another part of this volume; when we shall see that the great antagonist of intolerance is not humanity, but knowledge. It is to the diffusion of knowledge, and to that alone, that we owe the comparative cessation of what is unquestionably the greatest evil men have ever inflicted on their own species. For that religious persecution is a greater evil than any other, is apparent, not so much from the enormous and almost incredible number of its known victims, as from the fact that the unknown must be far more numerous, and that history gives no account of those who have been spared in the body in order that they might suffer in the mind. We hear much of martyrs and confessors—of those who were slain by the sword, or consumed in the fire: but we know little of that still larger number who by the mere threat of persecution have been driven into an outward abandonment of their real opinions; and who, thus forced into an apostasy the heart abhors, have passed the remainder of their lives in the practice of a constant and humiliating hypocrisy. It is this which is the real curse of religious persecution. For in this way, men being constrained to mask their thoughts, there arises a habit of securing safety by falsehood, and of purchasing impunity with deceit. In this way fraud becomes a necessary of life; insincerity is made a daily custom; the whole tone of public feeling is vitiated, and the gross amount of vice and of error fearfully increased. Surely, then, we have reason to say that, compared to this, all other crimes are of small account; and we may well be grateful for that increase of intellectual pursuits which has destroyed an evil that some among us would even now willingly restore.



THE MYTHICAL ORIGIN OF HISTORY

From the 'History of Civilization in England'

At a very early period in the progress of a people, and long before they are acquainted with the use of letters, they feel the want of some resource which in peace may amuse their leisure, and in war may stimulate their courage. This is supplied to them by the invention of ballads; which form the groundwork of all historical knowledge, and which, in one shape or another, are found among some of the rudest tribes of the earth. They are for the most part sung by a class of men whose particular business it is thus to preserve the stock of traditions. Indeed, so natural is this curiosity as to past events that there are few nations to whom these bards or minstrels are unknown. Thus, to select a few instances, it is they who have preserved the popular traditions, not only of Europe, but also of China, Tibet, and Tartary; likewise of India, of Scinde, of Beloochistan, of Western Asia, of the islands of the Black Sea, of Egypt, of Western Africa, of North America, of South America, and of the islands in the Pacific.

In all these countries, letters were long unknown, and as a people in that state have no means of perpetuating their history except by oral tradition, they select the form best calculated to assist their memory; and it will, I believe, be found that the first rudiments of knowledge consist always of poetry, and often of rhyme. The jingle pleases the ear of the barbarian, and affords a security that he will hand it down to his children in the unimpaired state in which he received it. This guarantee against error increases still further the value of these ballads; and instead of being considered as a mere amusement, they rise to the dignity of judicial authorities. The allusions contained in them are satisfactory proofs to decide the merits of rival families, or even to fix the limits of those rude estates which such a society can possess. We therefore find that the professed reciters and composers of these songs are the recognized judges in all disputed matters; and as they are often priests, and believed to be inspired, it is probably in this way that the notion of the divine origin of poetry first arose. These ballads will of course vary according to the customs and temperaments of the different nations, and according to the climate to which they are accustomed. In the south they assume a passionate and voluptuous form; in the north they are rather remarkable for their tragic and warlike character. But notwithstanding these diversities, all such productions have one feature in common: they are not only founded on truth, but making allowance for the colorings of poetry, they are all strictly true. Men who are constantly repeating songs which they constantly hear, and who appeal to the authorized singers of them as final umpires in disputed questions, are not likely to be mistaken on matters in the accuracy of which they have so lively an interest.

This is the earliest and most simple of the various stages through which history is obliged to pass. But in the course of time, unless unfavorable circumstances intervene, society advances; and among other changes, there is one in particular of the greatest importance. I mean the introduction of the art of writing, which, before many generations are passed, must effect a complete alteration in the character of the national traditions. The manner in which, this occurs has, so far as I am aware, never been pointed out; and it will therefore be interesting to attempt to trace some of its details.

The first and perhaps the most obvious consideration is, that the introduction of the art of writing gives permanence to the national knowledge, and thus lessens the utility of that oral information in which all the acquirements of an unlettered people must be contained. Hence it is that as a country advances the influence of tradition diminishes, and traditions themselves become less trustworthy. Besides this, the preservers of these traditions lose in this stage of society much of their former reputation. Among a perfectly unlettered people, the singers of ballads are, as we have already seen, the sole depositaries of those historical facts on which the fame, and often the property, of their chieftains principally depend. But when this same nation becomes acquainted with the art of writing, it grows unwilling to intrust these matters to the memory of itinerant singers, and avails itself of its new art to preserve them in a fixed and material form. As soon as this is effected, the importance of those who repeat the national traditions is sensibly diminished. They gradually sink into an inferior class, which, having lost its old reputation, no longer consists of those superior men to whose abilities it owed its former fame. Thus we see that although without letters there can be no knowledge of much importance, it is nevertheless true that their introduction is injurious to historical traditions in two distinct ways: first by weakening the traditions, and secondly by weakening the class of men whose occupation it is to preserve them.

But this is not all. Not only does the art of writing lessen the number of traditionary truths, but it directly encourages the propagation of falsehoods. This is effected by what may be termed a principle of accumulation, to which all systems of belief have been deeply indebted. In ancient times, for example, the name of Hercules was given to several of those great public robbers who scourged mankind, and who, if their crimes were successful as well as enormous, were sure after their death to be worshiped as heroes. How this appellation originated is uncertain; but it was probably bestowed at first on a single man, and afterwards on those who resembled him in the character of their achievements. This mode of extending the use of a single name is natural to a barbarous people, and would cause little or no confusion, as long as the tradition of the country remained local and unconnected. But as soon as these traditions became fixed by a written language, the collectors of them, deceived by the similarity of name, assembled the scattered facts, and ascribing to a single man these accumulated exploits, degraded history to the level of a miraculous mythology. In the same way, soon after the use of letters was known in the North of Europe, there was drawn up by Saxo Grammaticus the life of the celebrated Ragnar Lodbrok. Either from accident or design, this great warrior of Scandinavia, who had taught England to tremble, had received the same name as another Ragnar, who was prince of Jutland about a hundred years earlier. This coincidence would have caused no confusion as long as each district preserved a distinct and independent account of its own Ragnar. But by possessing the resource of writing, men became able to consolidate the separate trains of events, and as it were, fuse two truths into one error. And this was what actually happened. The credulous Saxo put together the different exploits of both Ragnars, and ascribing the whole of them to his favorite hero, has involved in obscurity one of the most interesting parts of the early history of Europe.

The annals of the North afford another curious instance of this source of error. A tribe of Finns called Quaens occupied a considerable part of the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. Their country was known as Quaenland; and this name gave rise to a belief that to the north of the Baltic there was a nation of Amazons. This would easily have been corrected by local knowledge: but by the use of writing, the flying rumor was at once fixed; and the existence of such a people is positively affirmed in some of the earliest European histories. Thus too Abo, the ancient capital of Finland, was called Turku, which in the Swedish language means a market-place. Adam of Bremen, having occasion to treat of the countries adjoining the Baltic, was so misled by the word Turku that this celebrated historian assures his readers that there were Turks in Finland.

To these illustrations many others might be added, showing how mere names deceived the early historians, and gave rise to relations which were entirely false, and might have been rectified on the spot; but which, owing to the art of writing, were carried into distant countries and thus placed beyond the reach of contradiction. Of such cases, one more may be mentioned, as it concerns the history of England. Richard I., the most barbarous of our princes, was known to his contemporaries as the Lion; an appellation conferred upon him on account of his fearlessness and the ferocity of his temper. Hence it was said that he had the heart of a lion; and the title Coeur de Lion not only became indissolubly connected with his name, but actually gave rise to a story, repeated by innumerable writers, according to which he slew a lion in a single combat. The name gave rise to the story; the story confirmed the name: and another fiction was added to that long series of falsehoods of which history mainly consisted during the Middle Ages.

The corruptions of history, thus naturally brought about by the mere introduction of letters, were in Europe aided by an additional cause. With the art of writing, there was in most cases also communicated a knowledge of Christianity; and the new religion not only destroyed many of the Pagan traditions, but falsified the remainder by amalgamating them with monastic legends. The extent to which this was carried would form a curious subject for inquiry; but one or two instances of it will perhaps be sufficient to satisfy the generality of readers.

Of the earliest state of the great Northern nations we have little positive evidence; but several of the lays in which the Scandinavian poets related the feats of their ancestors or of their contemporaries are still preserved; and notwithstanding their subsequent corruption, it is admitted by the most competent judges that they embody real and historical events. But in the ninth and tenth centuries, Christian missionaries found their way across the Baltic, and introduced a knowledge of their religion among the inhabitants of Northern Europe. Scarcely was this effected when the sources of history began to be poisoned. At the end of the eleventh century Saemund Sigfusson, a Christian priest, gathered the popular and hitherto unwritten histories of the North into what is called the "Elder Edda"; and he was satisfied with adding to his compilation the corrective of a Christian hymn. A hundred years later there was made another collection of the native histories; but the principle which I have mentioned, having had a longer time to operate, now displayed its effects still more clearly. In this second collection, which is known by the name of the 'Younger Edda,' there is an agreeable mixture of Greek, Jewish, and Christian fables; and for the first time in the Scandinavian annals, we meet with the widely diffused fiction of a Trojan descent.

If by way of further illustration we turn to other parts of the world, we shall find a series of facts confirming this view. We shall find that in those countries where there has been no change of religion, history is more trustworthy and connected than in those countries where such a change has taken place. In India, Brahmanism, which is still supreme, was established at so early a period that its origin is lost in the remotest antiquity. The consequence is that the native annals have never been corrupted by any new superstition, and the Hindus are possessed of historic traditions more ancient than can be found among any other Asiatic people. In the same way, the Chinese have for upwards of two thousand years preserved the religion of Fo, which is a form of Buddhism. In China, therefore, though the civilization has never been equal to that of India, there is a history, not indeed as old as the natives would wish us to believe, but still stretching back to several centuries before the Christian era, from whence it has been brought down to our own times in an uninterrupted succession. On the other hand, the Persians, whose intellectual development was certainly superior to that of the Chinese, are nevertheless without any authentic information respecting the early transactions of their ancient monarchy. For this I can see no possible reason except the fact that Persia, soon after the promulgation of the Koran, was conquered by the Mohammedans, who completely subverted the Parsee religion and thus interrupted the stream of the national traditions. Hence it is that, putting aside the myths of the Zendavesta, we have no native authorities for Persian history of any value, until the appearance in the eleventh century of the Shah Nameh; in which, however, Firdusi has mingled the miraculous relations of those two religions by which his country had been successively subjected. The result is, that if it were not for the various discoveries which have been made, of monuments, inscriptions, and coins, we should be compelled to rely on the scanty and inaccurate details in the Greek writers for our knowledge of the history of one of the most important of the Asiatic monarchies.



GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON

(1707-1788)

BY SPENCER TROTTER

A science becomes part of the general stock of knowledge only after it has entered into the literature of a people. The bare skeleton of facts must be clothed with the flesh and blood of imagination, through the humanizing influence of literary expression, before it can be assimilated by the average intellectual being. The scientific investigator is rarely endowed with the gift of weaving the facts into a story that will charm, and the man of letters is too often devoid of that patience which is the chief virtue of the scientist. These gifts of the gods are bestowed upon mankind under the guiding genius of the division of labor. The name of Buffon will always be associated with natural history, though in the man himself the spirit of science was conspicuously absent. In this respect he was in marked contrast with his contemporary Linnaeus, whose intellect and labor laid the foundations of much of the scientific knowledge of to-day.



George Louis le Clerc Buffon was born on the 7th of September, 1707, at Montbar, in Burgundy. His father, Benjamin le Clerc, who was possessed of a fortune, appears to have bestowed great care and liberality on the education of his son. While a youth Buffon made the acquaintance of a young English nobleman, the Duke of Kingston, whose tutor, a man well versed in the knowledge of physical science, exerted a profound influence on the future career of the young Frenchman. At twenty-one Buffon came into his mother's estate, a fortune yielding an annual income of L12,000. But this wealth did not change his purpose to gain knowledge. He traveled through Italy, and after living for a short period in England returned to France and devoted his time to literary work. His first efforts were translations of two English works of science—Hale's 'Vegetable Statics' and Newton's 'Fluxions'; and he followed these with various studies in the different branches of physical science.