upon seeds, and hence their forages are made chiefly in the tilled lands, where the weeds afford them an abundance of food. The negligence of the tiller of the soil is, therefore, a great gain to the small birds, by leaving a supply of seeds in the annual grasses that grow thriftily with his crops.
Among these flocks of Snow-Birds, a few individuals of the common Hair-Bird (_Fringilla socialis_) may frequently be seen. The majority of this species migrate to a more open clime; but sufficient numbers remain to entitle them to be included with other Snow-Birds of the Finch tribe. He is one of the smallest of the Sparrows, of a brownish ash color above, and grayish white beneath. He wears a little cap or turban of brown velvet on his head, and by this mark he is readily distinguished from his kindred Sparrows. Relying on his diminutive size for his security, he comes quite up to our door-step, mindless of the people who are assembled round it, and, fearless of danger, picks up the crumbs that are scattered there. He may be seen at all seasons of the year, though his voice is not heard in the spring so early as that of the Song-Sparrow or the Blue-Bird. He lives chiefly on seeds, though, like other granivorous birds, he feeds his young with grubs and small insects. This is a general practice with the granivorous tribes, in order to provide their young with soft and digestible food before they are strong enough to digest the hard, coriaceous seed. Nature has formed an exception in the Pigeon tribe; but has compensated them by providing that the parent bird shall soften the food in her own crop before it is given to the tender young. From the peculiar manner in which the young are fed comes the epithet, “sucking doves.”
It is common to speak disparagingly of the little Hair-Bird, as if he were good for nothing, without beauty and without song, and, what is of still more consequence in the eyes of the sordid epicure, too small to be eaten, his weight of flesh not being worth a charge of powder and shot. We can never sufficiently rejoice that there are some birds too small to excite the avaricious feelings of these knights of the fowling-piece and the rifle. The Hair-Bird is not to be despised, except by epicures. Though he is contemptuously styled the “Chipping-Sparrow,”–a name which I will never consent to apply to him,–his voice is no mean accompaniment to the general chorus which may be heard every still morning before sunrise, during May and June. His continued trilling note is to this warbling band what the octave flute is to a grand concert of artificial instruments. The voices of numbers of these birds, which are the very first to be heard and the last to become silent in the morning, serve to fill up the pauses in this sylvan anthem, like a running _appoggiatural_ accompaniment in certain admired musical compositions. How little soever the Hair-Bird may generally be valued as a songster, his voice, I am sure, would be most sadly missed, were it never more to be heard charmingly blending with the other louder voices of the feathered choristers.
How often, on still, sultry nights in July, when scarcely a breath of air is stirring among the foliage of the trees, when the humming of the Moth might be plainly heard, as it glided by my open window, have I been charmed with the voice of this little bird, uttered in a low, trilled note, from the branch of some neighboring tree! He seems to be the sentinel whom Nature has appointed to watch for the first gleam of dawn, which he always faithfully announces before any other bird has begun to stir. Two or three strains from his octave pipe are the signal for a general awakening of the birds, and one by one they join the song, until the whole air resounds with an harmonious medley of voices. The Hair-Bird has a singular habit of sitting upon the ground, while chirping in the early morning. His nest is placed commonly upon an apple-tree, sometimes in a bush, but never on the ground. It is very neatly constructed of the fibres of roots closely woven together, and beautifully lined with fine soft hair, whence he has obtained his name. It is not surpassed in neatness and beauty by the nest of any other bird.
I will leave the granivorous birds to speak of another class, equally hardy, but of habits more like those of the Woodpecker. I allude to the Chicadees, to whose lively notes we are indebted for a great part of the cheerfulness of a winter’s walk. These notes are not a song; but there is a liveliness in their sound, most frequently uttered during a pleasant winter-day, causing them to be associated with these agreeable changes in the weather. The Chicadees are not seen, like Snow-Birds, most numerous during a snow-storm, or after a fall of snow. Their habits are nearly the same in all weathers, except that they are more prone to be noisy and loquacious on pleasant, sunny days.
The sounds from which the Chicadee has derived his name appear to be his call-notes, like the crowing of a Cock or the gobbling of a Turkey, and are probably designed by Nature to enable the birds, while scattered singly over the forest, to signalize their presence to others of the same species. Hence it may be observed, that, when the call is rapidly repeated, a multitude of his kindred will immediately assemble around the one that gave the alarm. When no alarm is intended to be given, the bird utters these notes but seldom, and only as he passes from one tree to another. He is probably accustomed to hearing a response, and, if one is not soon heard, he will repeat his call until it is answered; for as these birds do not forage the woods in flocks, this continual hailing is carried on between them to satisfy their desire for each other’s company. A similar conversation passes between the individuals of a flock of Chickens, when scattered over a farmyard; one, on finding itself alone, will chirp until it hears a response, when it seems immediately satisfied. The call-notes of the Chicadee are very lively, with a mixture of querulousness in their tone, that renders them the more pleasing.
The Chicadee is the smallest of the birds that remain with us during the winter. He is a permanent resident, and everybody knows him. He is a lively chatterer and an agreeable companion; and as he never tarries long in one place, he does not tire one with his garrulity. He is our attendant in all our pleasant winter-walks, in the orchard or the wood, in the garden or by the rustic wayside. We have seen him, on still winter-days, flitting from tree to tree, with the liveliest motions and in the most engaging attitudes, examining every twig and branch, and winding over and under and in and out among them, and, after a few lively notes, hopping to another tree to pass through the same manoeuvres. Even those who are confined to the house are not excluded from a sight of these birds; one cannot open a window, on a bright winter’s morning, without a greeting from one of them on the nearest tree.
Beside the note from which the Chicadee derives his name, he sometimes utters two very plaintive notes, which are separated by a regular musical interval, making a fourth on the descending scale. They slightly resemble those of the Pewee, and are often supposed to come from some other bird, so different are they from the common note of the Chicadee. I have not been able to ascertain the circumstances under which the bird repeats this plaintive strain, but it is uttered both in summer and winter. Indeed, there is such a variety in the notes uttered at different times by this bird, that, if they were repeated in uninterrupted succession, they would form one of the most agreeable of woodland melodies.
The Chicadee is not a singing-bird. He utters his usual notes at all times of the year; but in the early part of summer he is addicted to a very low but pleasant kind of warbling, considerably varied, and wanting only more loudness and precision to entitle him to a rank with the singing-birds. This warbling does not seem intended to cheer his partner, but it is rather a sort of soliloquizing for his own amusement. If it was uttered by the young birds only, we might suppose them to be taking lessons in music, and that this was a specimen of their first attempts. I have often heard the Golden Robin warbling in a similar manner.
In company with the Chicadees in their foraging excursions, we often see two Speckled Woodpeckers, differing apparently only in size, each having a sort of red crest. The smaller of the two (_Picus pubescens_) is the Downy Woodpecker. The birds of this species are called “Sap-Suckers,” from their habit of making perforations in the sound branches of trees through the bark without penetrating the wood, as if they designed only to obtain the sap. These perforations are often made in a circle round the branch, and it is highly probable that they follow the path of a grub that is concealed underneath the bark. Our farmers, who suspect every bird of some mischievous designs, accuse them of boring into the tree for the purpose of drinking the sap.
The Woodpecker is a more restless, though not a more industrious bird than the Chicadee, and seldom gives the branches so thorough an examination as the latter. He searches for grubs that are concealed in the wood of the tree; he examines those spots only where he hears their scratchings, bores the wood to obtain them, and then flies off. But the Chicadee looks for insects on or near the surface, and does not confine his search to trees. He examines fences, the under part of the eaves of houses, and the woodpile, and destroys, in the course of his foraging, many an embryo moth and butterfly which would otherwise become the parent of noxious larvae. The Woodpecker is often represented as the emblem of industry; but the Chicadee is more truly emblematical of this virtue, and the Woodpecker of perseverance, as he never tires when drilling into the wood of a tree in quest of his prey.
Another of the companions of the Chicadee is the Brown Creeper, (_Certhia familiaris_,) of similar habits, and commonly seen moving in a spiral direction around the trunks and branches of trees, and, when he is conscious of being observed, keeping on the further side of the branch. He is more frequently seen in the winter than in the summer, when he confines himself to the seclusion of the pine forest. The different birds which I have named, as companions of the Chicadee, often assemble by seeming accident in large numbers upon one tree, and meeting with more company than is agreeable to them, they will often on these occasions make the wood resound with their noisy disputes. They may have been assembled by some accidental note of alarm, and on finding no particular cause for it, they raise a shout that reminds one of the extraordinary vociferation with which young men and boys conclude a false alarm of fire in the early part of the night. These different birds, though evidently social, are not gregarious, and seldom, without vexation, endure the presence of more than two or three companions.
The Nut-Hatch (_Sitta Caroliniensis_) is often found among these assemblages, and may be recognized by his piercing trumpet-like note. This bird resembles the Woodpeckers in the shape of the bill, but has only one hinder toe, instead of two; and is said to have derived its name from a habit of breaking open or hatching nuts, to obtain the kernel. He is a permanent inhabitant of the cold parts of the American continent, resembling the Titmouse in his diligence and activity, and in the various manoeuvres he performs while in quest of his insect-food.
There are times when even this class of birds, that collect their food from the bark and wood of trees, are driven to great extremities. When the trees are incased with ice, which, though not impenetrable by their strong bills, prevents their laying hold of the bark with their claws for support, they are in some danger of starving. It is at such times that the gardens and barnyards are frequented by large numbers of Woodpeckers, Creepers, and Nut-Hatches, driven by this necessity from their usual haunts. A piece of suet fastened to the branch of a tree, at any time of the winter, would soon be discovered by these birds and afford them a grateful repast. I have frequently assembled them under my windows by this allurement.
I will leave the Chicadees and their companions to speak of another class of birds of different character and habits: these are the Jays, and their sable-plumed congeners of the Crow family. In all parts of the country that abound in woods of any description, we are sure to be greeted by the loud voice of the Blue Jay, one of the most conspicuous tenants of the forest. He has a beautiful outward appearance, under which he conceals an unamiable temper and a propensity to mischief. Indeed, there is no other bird in our forest that is arrayed in equal splendor. His neck of fine purple, his pale azure crest and head with silky plumes, his black crescent-shaped collar, his wings and tail-feathers of bright blue with stripes of white and black, and his elegant form and vivacious manners, combine to render him attractive to all observers.
But with all this beauty, he has, like the Peacock, a harsh voice; he is a thief, and a disturber of the peace. He is a sort of Ishmael among the sylvan tribes, who are startled at the sound of his voice, and fear him as a bandit. The farmer, who is well acquainted with his habits, is no friend to him; for he not only takes what is required for his immediate wants, but hoards a variety of articles in large quantities for future use. It would seem as if he were aware when he was engaged in an honest and when in a dishonest expedition; for while searching for food in the the wood or open field, he is extremely noisy,–but when he ventures into a barn, to take what does not belong to him, he is silent and stealthy, and exhibits all the peculiar manners of a thief.
It would be no mean task to enumerate all the acts of mischief perpetrated by this bird; and I cannot but look upon him as one the most guilty of the feathered tribe. He plunders the cornfield both at seed-time and harvest; he steals everything that is eatable, and conceals it in his hoarding-places; he destroys the eggs of smaller birds and devours their young; he quarrels with all other species, and his life is a constant scene of contentions. He is restless, pugnacious, and irascible, and always seems like one who is out on some expedition. Yet, though a pest to other birds, he is a watchful parent and a faithful guardian of his off-spring. It is dangerous to venture near the nest of a pair of Jays, as they immediately attack the adventurer, aiming their blows at his face and eyes with the most savage determination.
Like the Magpie, the Jay has considerable talent for mimicry, and in a state of domestication may be taught to articulate words like a Parrot. At certain times I have heard this bird utter a few notes resembling the tinkle of a bell, and which, if syllabled, might form such a word as _dilly-lily_; but it is not a musical strain. Indeed, there is no music in his nature, and in all his imitations of other sounds he prefers the harsh to the melodious, such as the voice of the Hawk, the Owl, and other unmusical birds.
The Blue Jay is a true American; he is known throughout this continent, and never visits any other country. At no season is he absent from our woods, and he is an industrious consumer of the larger insects and grubs, atoning in this way for some of his evil deeds. In this respect, however, his services are not to be compared to those of the Robin and the Blue-Bird. Yet I am not prepared to say that I would consent to his banishment, for he is one of the most cheering tenants of the groves, at a season when they have but few inhabitants; and I never listen to his voice without recalling a crowd of charming reminiscences of pleasant winter excursions and adventures at an early period of my life. The very harshness of his voice has caused it to be impressed more forcibly upon the memory, in connection with these scenes.
The common Crow may be considered the representative, in America, of the European Rook, which he resembles in many of his habits, performing similar services, and being guilty of the same mischievous deeds. It is remarkable that in Europe, where land is more valuable than in this country, and where agriculture is carried on with an amount of skill and nicety that would astonish an American farmer, the people are not so jealous of the birds. In Great Britain rookeries are regular establishments, and the Rooks, notwithstanding the mischief they do, are protected, on account of their services to agriculture. The farmers of Europe, having learned by repeated observation, that, without the aid of mischievous birds, the work of the farmer would be sacrificed to the more destructive insect-race, forgive them their trespasses, as we forgive the trespasses of cats and dogs. The respect shown to birds by any people seems to bear a certain ratio to the antiquity of the nation. Hence the sacredness with which they are regarded in Japan, where the population is so dense that the inhabitants would feel that they could ill afford to divide the produce of their fields with the birds, unless they were convinced of their usefulness.
The Crow is one of the most unfortunate of the feathered tribe in his relations to man; for by almost all nations he is regarded with hatred, and every man’s hand is against him. He is protected neither by custom nor superstition; the sentimentalist cares nothing for him as an object of poetical regard, and the utilitarian is blind to his services as a scavenger. The farmer considers him as the very ringleader of mischief, and uses all means he can invent for his destruction; the friend of the singing-birds bears him a grudge as the destroyer of their eggs and young; and even the moralist is disposed to condemn him for his cunning and dissimulation.
Hence he is everywhere hated and persecuted, and the expedients used for his destruction are numerous and revolting to the sensibilities. He is outlawed by acts of Parliament and other legislative bodies; he is hunted with the gun; he is caught in crow-nets; he is hoodwinked with bits of paper smeared with bird-lime, in which he is caught by means of a bait; he is poisoned with grain steeped in hellebore and strychnine; the reeds in which he roosts are treacherously set on fire; he is pinioned by his wings, on his back, and is made to grapple his sympathizing companions who come to his rescue; like an infidel, he is not allowed the benefit of truth to save his reputation; and children, after receiving lessons of humanity, are taught to regard the Crow as an unworthy subject when they carry their precepts into practice. Every government has set a price upon his head, and every people holds him up to public execration.
As an apology for these atrocities, might be enumerated a long catalogue of misdemeanors of which he is guilty. He pillages the cornfield, and pulls up the young shoots of maize to obtain the kernels attached to their roots; he destroys the eggs and the young of innocent birds which we should like to preserve; he purloins fruit from the garden and orchard, and carries off young ducks and chickens from the farmyard. Beside his mischievous propensities and his habits of thieving, he is accused of cunning, and of a depraved disposition. He who would plead for the Crow will not deny the general truth of these accusations, but, on the other hand, would enumerate certain special benefits which he confers upon man.
In the catalogue of the services of this bird we find many details which should lead us to pause before we consent to his destruction. He consumes, in the course of the year, vast quantities of grubs, worms, and noxious vermin; he is a valuable scavenger, and clears the land of offensive masses of decaying animal substances; he hunts the grass-fields, and pulls out and devours the underground caterpillars, wherever he perceives the signs of their operations, as evinced by the wilted stalks; he destroys mice, young rats, lizards, and the smaller serpents; lastly, he is a volunteer sentinel about the farm, and drives the Hawk from its inclosures, thus preventing greater mischief than that of which he himself is guilty. It is chiefly during seed-time and harvest that the depredations of the Crow are committed; during the remainder of the year we witness only his services; and so highly are these services appreciated by those who have written of birds, that I cannot name an ornithologist who does not plead in his behalf.
Let us turn our attention, for a moment, to his moral qualities. In vain is he accused of cunning, when without this quality he could not live. His wariness is really a virtue, and, under the circumstances in which he is placed, it is his principal means of self-preservation. He has no moral principles, no creed, to which he is under obligations to offer himself as a martyr. His cunning is his armor; and I am persuaded that the persecutions to which he has always been subjected have caused the development of an amount of intelligence that elevates him many degrees above the majority of the feathered race.
There are few birds that equal the Crow in sagacity. He observes many things that would seem to require the faculties of a rational being. He judges with accuracy, from the deportment of the person approaching him, if he is prepared to do him an injury; and seems to pay no regard to one who is strolling the fields in search of flowers or for recreation. On such occasions, one may get so near him as to observe his manners, and even to note the varying shades of his plumage. But in vain does the sportsman endeavor to approach him. So sure is he to fly at the right moment for his safety, that one might suppose he could measure the distance of gunshot.
The voice of the Crow is like no other sound uttered by the feathered race; it is harsh and unmelodious, and though he is capable, when domesticated, of imitating human speech, he cannot sing. But Aesop mistook the character of this bird when he represented him as the dupe of the fox, who gained the bit of cheese he carried in his mouth by inducing him to exhibit his musical powers. The Crow could not be fooled by any such appeals to his vanity.
The Crow is commonly regarded as a homely bird; yet he is not without beauty. His coat of glossy black with violet reflections, his dark eyes and sagacious expression of countenance, his stately and graceful gait, and his steady and equable flight, combine to give him a proud and dignified appearance. The Crow and the Raven have always been celebrated for their gravity, a character that seems to be the result of their black sacerdotal vesture, and of certain manifestations of intelligence in their ways and general deportment. Indeed, any one who should watch the motions of the Crow for the space of five minutes, either when he is stalking alone in the field, or when he is careering with his fellows around some tall tree in the forest, would acknowledge that he deserves to be called a grave bird.
Setting aside the services rendered by the Crow to agriculture, I esteem him for certain qualities which are agreeably associated with the charms of Nature. It is not the singing-birds alone that contribute by their voices to gladden the husbandman and cheer the solitary traveller. The crowing of the Cock at the break of day is as joyful a sound, though not so musical, as the voice of the Robin who chants his lays at the same early hour. To me the cawing of the Crow is cheering and delightful, and it is heard long before the majority of birds have left their perch. If not one of the melodies of morn, it is one of the most notable sounds that herald its approach. And how intimately is the voice of this bird associated with the sunshine of calm winter-days,–with our woodland excursions during this inclement season,–with the stroke of the woodman’s axe,–with open doors in bright and pleasant weather, when the eaves are dripping with the melting snow,–and with all those cheerful sounds that enliven the groves during that period when every object is valuable that relieves the silence or softens the dreary aspect of Nature!
If we leave the open fields and woods, and ramble near the coast to some retired and solitary branch of the sea, our meditations may be suddenly startled by the harsh voice of the Kingfisher, like the sound of a watchman’s rattle. This bird is seldom seen in winter in the interior; most of his species migrate southwardly and to the sea-coast, just so far as to be within reach of the open waters. As they subsist on the smaller kinds of fishes, they would perish with hunger, after the waters are frozen, if they did not migrate. But the Kingfisher often remains on the coast during open winters, and may therefore be considered one of our winter-birds.
This bird is the celebrated Alcedo, or Halcyon, of the ancients, who attributed to him many apparently supernatural powers. He was supposed to construct his nest upon the waves, on which it was made to float like a skiff. But as the turbulence of a storm would be likely to cause its destruction, Nature had gifted him with the extraordinary power of stilling the motions of the winds and waves, during the period of incubation. Hence the serene weather that accompanies the summer solstice was supposed to be occasioned by the benign influence of this bird, and the term “halcyon days” was applied to this period. It is remarkable that the fable should add to these supernatural gifts the power of song, as one of the accomplishments of the Kingfisher. These superstitions must have been very general among the ancients, and were not confined to the Greeks and Romans. Some of the Asiatic nations still wear the skin of the Kingfisher about their persons, as a protection against both moral and physical evils; the feathers are used as love-charms; and it is believed, that, if the body of the Kingfisher be evenly fixed upon a pivot, it will turn its head to the north, like the magnetic needle.
This bird is singularly grotesque in his appearance, though not without beauty of plumage. With his long, straight, and quadrangular bill, his short and diminutive feet and legs, and his immense head, his plumage of a handsome dusky blue, with a bluish band on the breast and a white collar around the neck,–when this mixture of the grotesque and the beautiful is considered in connection with the singularity of his habits, we need not marvel at the superstitions connected with his history. He sits patiently, like an angler, on a post at the head of a wharf, or on a branch of a tree that extends over the bank, and, leaning obliquely, with extended head and beak, he watches for his finny prey. There, with the light blue sky above him and the dark blue waves beneath, nothing on the surface of the water can escape his penetrating eyes. Quickly, with a sudden swoop, he seizes a single fish from an unsuspecting shoal, and announces his success by the peculiar sound of his rattle.
It may not have been observed by all that the most interesting periods or situations for rambling are not those which most abound with exciting scenes and objects. There must be a certain dearth of individual objects that draw the attention, intermingled with occasional remarkable or mysterious sights and sounds, to yield an excursion its greatest interest. The hunter (unless he be a purveyor for the market) understands this philosophy, and knows that there is more pleasure in chasing a single deer or a solitary fox over miles of pasture and moorland, than in hunting where these animals are abundant, and slaughtering them as fast as one can load his gun. The pleasures attending a rural excursion in the winter are founded on this fact, and may be explained by this principle. There, amid the general silence, every sound attracts attention and is accompanied by its echo; and since the trees and shrubs have lost their leafy garniture, every tree and other object has its own distinct shadow, and we fix our attention more easily upon anything that excites our interest than when it is distracted by the confusion of numbers.
Hence it is in the winter that the picturesque character of the flight of birds is particularly noticeable. In summer, and in autumn, before the fall of the leaf, birds are partially concealed by the foliage of trees, so that the manner of their flight does not become so readily apparent. But in winter, if we start a flock of birds from the ground, we can hardly avoid taking notice of all the peculiarities of their movements. I have alluded to the descent of Snow-Buntings upon the landscape as singularly picturesque; but the motions of a flock of Quails, when suddenly aroused from a thicket, are not less so. When a Pigeon, or any other bird with strong and large wings, takes flight, the motions of its wings are not vibratory, and its progress through the air is so rapid as to injure the pleasing effect of its motions, because we obtain no distinct perception of the bird during its flight. It is quite otherwise with the Quail. The body of this bird is plump and heavy, and his wings are short, and have a peculiar concavity of the under surface when expanded; their motions are very rapid, and, having but little sweep, the bird seems to sail on the air, carried along by a gentle but rapid vibration of the wings, which describe only a very small arc of a circle. Hence we observe the entire shape of the bird during its flight. The Partridge, and other gallinaceous birds, fly in a similar manner; but, on account of their larger size, their motions are less attractive.
The Humming-Bird has proportionally larger wings than the Quail, and, when flying, his wings describe almost a complete circle in their rapid vibrations. If we look upon one during his flight, he seems to have no wings, but rather to be encircled by a semi-transparent halo. There are other birds that seem to be wings only, their bodies being hardly perceptible, on account of their small proportional size; such are the Swallow, the Pigeon, the Cuckoo, and the Night-Hawk.
Birds of prey are remarkable for their steady and graceful flight; the motion of their wings is slow, while, like the Pigeon, they are capable of propelling themselves through the air with great rapidity. The circumgyrations of a Hawk, when reconnoitring far aloft in the air, are singularly graceful. The flight of the Crow and the Raven is slow and apparently difficult, and they are easily overtaken and annoyed by the King-Bird and other small birds. They are not formed, like the Falcon, to catch their prey upon the wing, and, though their wings are large and powerful, they are incapable of performing those graceful and difficult evolutions which we observe in the flight of birds of prey. The flight of Herons resembles that of the Raven.
Small birds, with the exception of a few species, move in an undulating course, alternately rising and sinking. Birds that move in this manner are, I believe, incapable of making a long journey on the wing without rest, and commonly perform their migrations by short daily stages.
The flight of the little Sand-Pipers, which frequent the salt marshes in numerous flocks, is particularly worthy of study. It is not unlike the flight of Quails, but more evenly sustained, on account of the greater length and power of their wings. These birds are capable of holding an even flight in a perfectly horizontal line, only a few inches above the surface of the ground. When they alight, they seldom make a curve or gyration, but descend in a straight and oblique course. Snow-Buntings usually turn about, just before they reach the ground; and I have seen them perform the most intricate changes, like the movements of a cotillon-party, executed with the rapidity of arrows, when suddenly checked in their flight by the discovery of a good tract of forage.
With these observations, which might be indefinitely extended, I take leave of the subject, simply remarking, that to the motions of birds, no less than to their beauty of plumage and the sounds of their voices, are we indebted for a great part of the picturesque attractions of landscape; and the more we study them, the more are we convinced, that, in whatever direction we turn our observations, we may extend them to infinity. There is no limit to any study of Nature, and even one so apparently insignificant as the flight of birds leads to an endless series of interesting facts, and opens the eyes to new beauties in the aspect of Nature and new sources of rational delight.
“THE NEW LIFE” OF DANTE.
[Concluded.]
III.
The year 1289 was one marked in the annals of Florence and of Italy by events which are still famous, scored by the genius of Dante upon the memory of the world. It was in this year that Count Ugolino and his sons and grandsons were starved by the Pisans in their tower prison. A few months later, Francesca da Rimini was murdered by her husband. Between the dates of these two terrible events the Florentines had won the great victory of Campaldino; and thus, in this short space, the materials had been given to the poet for the two best-known and most powerful stories and for one of the most striking episodes of the “Divina Commedia.”
In the great and hard-fought battle of Campaldino Dante himself took part. “I was at first greatly afraid,” he says, in a letter of which but a few sentences have been preserved,[A]–“but at the end I felt the greatest joy,–according to the various chances of the battle.” When the victorious army returned to Florence, a splendid procession, with the clergy at its head, with the arts of the city each under its banner, and with all manner of pomp, went out to meet it. There were long-continued feasts and rejoicings. The battle had been fought on the 11th of June, the day of St. Barnabas, and the Republic, though already engaged in magnificent works of church-building, decreed that a new church should be erected in honor of the Saint on whose day the victory had been won.
[Footnote A: See Lionardo Aretino’s _Vita di Dante._]
A little later in that summer, Dante was one of a troop of Florentines who joined the forces of Lucca in levying war upon the Pisan territory. The stronghold of Caprona was taken, and Dante was present at its capture; for he says, (_Inferno,_ xxi. 94-96,) “I saw the foot-soldiers, who, having made terms, came out from Caprona, afraid when they beheld themselves among so many enemies.”[B]
[Footnote B: Landino, and most of the commentators after him, state that Dante refers in this passage to the fear of the garrison taken in the place when it was recaptured the next year by the Pisans. But as Florence and Pisa continued at desperate enmity, Dante could hardly have witnessed this latter scene.]
Thus, during a great part of the summer of 1289, Dante was in active service as a soldier. He was no lovesick idler, no mere home-keeping writer of verses, but was already taking his part in the affairs of the state which he was afterwards to be called on for a time to assist in governing, and he was laying up those stores of experience which were to serve as the material out of which his vivifying imagination was to form the great national poem of Italy. But of this active life, of these personal engagements, of these terrible events which took such strong possession of his soul, there is no word, no suggestion even, in the book of his “New Life.” In it there is no echo, however faint, of those storms of public violence and private passion which broke dark over Italy. In the midst of the tumults which sprang from the jealousies of rival states, from the internal discords of cities, from the divisions of parties, from the bitterness of domestic quarrels,–this little book is full of tenderness and peace, and tells its story of love as if the world were the abode of tranquillity. No external excitements could break into the inner chambers of Dante’s heart to displace the love that dwelt within them. The contrast between the purity and the serenity of the “Vita Nuova” and the coarseness and cruelty of the deeds that were going on while it was being written is complete. Every man in some sort leads a double life,–one real and his own, the other seeming and the world’s,–but with few is the separation so entire as it was with Dante.
But in these troubled times the “New Life” was drawing to its close. The spring of 1290 had come, and the poet, now twenty-five years old, sixteen years having passed since he first beheld Beatrice, was engaged in writing a poem to tell what effect the virtue of his lady wrought upon him. He had written but the following portion when it was broken off, never to be resumed:–
“So long hath Love retained me at his hest, And to his sway hath so accustomed me,
That as at first he cruel used to be, So in my heart he now doth sweetly rest. Thus when by him my strength is dispossessed, So that the spirits seem away to flee,
My frail soul feels such sweetness verily, That with it pallor doth my face invest. Then Love o’er me such mastery doth seize, He makes my sighs in words to take their way, And they unto my lady go to pray
That she to give me further grace would please. Where’er she sees me, this to me occurs, Nor can it be believed what humbleness is hers.”
“‘Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo! facta est quasi vidua domina gentium!’ [How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! how is she become as a widow, she that was great among the nations!][C]
[Footnote C: _Lamentations_, I. 1.]
“I was yet engaged upon this Canzone, and had finished the above stanza, when the Lord of justice called this most gentle one unto glory under the banner of that holy Queen Mary whose name was ever spoken with greatest reverence by this blessed Beatrice.[D]
[Footnote D: There is among the Canzoni of Dante one beginning,
“Morte poich’ io non truovo a cui mi doglia,”
which seems to have been written during the illness of Beatrice, in view of her approaching death. It is a beautiful and touching poem. Death is besought to spare that lady, “who of every good is the true gate.”–“If thou extinguishest the light of those beautiful eyes, which were wont to be so sweet a guide to mine, I see that thou desirest my death.”
“O Death, delay not mercy, if ’tis thine! For now I seem to see the heavens ope,
And Angels of the Lord descending here, Intent to bear away the holy soul
Of her whose honor there above is sung.”]
“And although it might give pleasure, were I now to tell somewhat of her departure from us, it is not my intention to treat of it here for three reasons. The first is, that it is no part of the present design, as may be seen in the proem of this little book. The second is, that, supposing it were so, my pen would not be sufficient to treat of it in a fitting manner. The third is, that, supposing both the one and the other, it would not be becoming in me to treat of it, since, in doing so, I should be obliged to praise myself,–a thing altogether blameworthy in whosoever does it,–and therefore I leave this subject to some other narrator.
“Nevertheless, since in what precedes there has been occasion to make frequent mention of the number nine,[E] and apparently not without reason, and since in her departure this number appeared to have a large place, it is fitting to say something on this point, seeing that it seems to belong to our design. Wherefore I will first tell how it had place in her departure, and then I will assign some reason why this number was so friendly to her. I say, that, according to the mode of reckoning in Italy, her most noble soul departed in the first hour of the ninth day of the month; and according to the reckoning, in Syria, she departed in the ninth month of the year, since the first month there is Tismim, which with us is October; and according to our reckoning, she departed in that year of our indiction, that is, of the years of the Lord, in which the perfect number[F] was completed for the ninth time in that century in which she had been set in the world; and she was of the Christians of the thirteenth century.[G]
[Footnote E: In the earlier part of the _Vita Nuova_ there are many references to this number. We translate in full the passage given above, as one of the most striking illustrations of Dante’s youthful fondness for seeking for the mystical relations and inner meanings of things. The attributing such importance to the properties of the number nine, though it might at first seem puerile and an indication of poverty of feeling, was a portion of the superstitious belief of the age, in which Dante naturally shared. The mysterious properties of numbers were a subject of serious study, and were connected with various branches of science and of life.
“Themistius vero, et Boethius, et Averrois Babylonius, cum Platone, sic numeros extollunt, ut neminem absque illis posse recte philosophari putent. Loquuntur autem de numero rationali et formali, non de materiali, sensibili, sive vocali numero mercatorum…. Sed intendunt ad proportionem ex illo resultantem, quem numerum naturalem et formalem et rationalem vocant; ex quo magna sacramenta emanant, tam in naturalibus quam divinis atque coelestibus…. In numeris itaque magnam latere efficaciam et virtutem tam ad borum quam ad malum, non modo splendidissimi philosophi unanimiter docent, sed etiam doctores Catholici.”–Cornelii Agrippae _De Occulta Philosophia_, Liber Secundus, cc. 2, 3.]
[Footnote F: The perfect number is ten.]
[Footnote G: Thus it appears that Beatrice died on the 9th of June, 1290. She was a little more than twenty-four years old.]
“One reason why this number was so friendly to her may be this: since, according to Ptolemy and the Christian truth, there are nine heavens which move, and, according to the common astrological opinion, these heavens work effects here below according to their relative positions, this number was her friend, to the end that it might be understood that at her generation all the nine movable heavens were in most perfect conjunction.[H] This is one reason; but considering more subtilely and according to infallible truth, this number was she herself,–I speak in a similitude, and I mean as follows. The number three is the root of nine, since, without any other number, multiplied by itself, it makes nine,–as we see plainly that three times three are nine. Then, if three is the factor by itself of nine, and the Author of Miracles[I] by himself is three,–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are three and one,–this lady was accompanied by the number nine that it might be understood that she was a nine, that is, a miracle, whose only root is the marvellous Trinity. Perhaps a more subtle person might discover some more subtile reason for this; but this is the one that I see for it, and which pleases me the best.”
[Footnote H: Compare with this passage Ballata v.,
“Io mi son pargoletta bella e nova,”
and Sonnet xlv.,
“Da quella luce che ‘I suo corso gira”;
the latter probably in praise of Philosophy.]
[Footnote I: The point is here lost in a translation,–_factor_ and _author_ being expressed in the original by one word, _fattore_.]
After thus treating of the number nine in its connection with Beatrice, Dante goes on to say, that, when this most gentle lady had gone from this world, the city appeared widowed and despoiled of every dignity; whereupon he wrote to the princes of the earth an account of its condition, beginning with the words of Jeremiah which he quoted at the entrance of this new matter. The remainder of this letter he does not give, because it was in Latin, and in this work it was his intention, from the beginning, to write only in the vulgar tongue; and such was the understanding of the friend for whom he writes,–that friend being, as we may suppose, Guido Cavalcanti, whom Dante, it may be remembered, has already spoken of as the chief among his friends. Then succeeds a Canzone lamenting the death of Beatrice, which, instead of being followed by a verbal exposition, as is the case with all that have gone before, is preceded by one, in order that it may seem, as it were, desolate and like a widow at its end. And this arrangement is preserved in regard to all the remaining poems in the little volume. In this poem he says that the Eternal Sire called Beatrice to himself, because he saw that this world was not worthy of such a gentle thing; and he says of his own life, that no tongue could tell what it has been since his lady went away to heaven.
Among the sonnets ascribed to Dante is one which, if it be his, must have been written about this time, and which, although not included in the “Vita Nuova,” seems not unworthy to find a place here. Its imagery, at least, connects it with some of the sonnets in the earlier portion of the book.
“One day came Melancholy unto me,
And said, ‘With thee I will awhile abide’; And, as it seemed, attending at her side, Anger and Grief did bear her company.
“‘Depart! Away!’ I cried out eagerly. Then like a Greek she unto me replied; And while she stood discoursing in her pride, I looked, and Love approaching us I see,
“In cloth of black full strangely was he clad, A little hood he wore upon his head,
And down his face tears flowing fast he had.
“‘Poor little wretch! what ails thee?’ then I said. And he replied, ‘I woful am, and sad,
Sweet brother, for our lady who is dead.'”
About this time, Dante tells us, a person who stood to him in friendship next to his first friend, and who was of the closest relationship to his glorious lady, so that we may believe it was her brother, came to him and prayed him to write something on a lady who was dead. Dante, believing that he meant the blessed Beatrice, accordingly wrote for him a sonnet; and then, reflecting that so short a poem appeared but a poor and bare service for one who was so nearly connected with her, added to it a Canzone, and gave both to him.
As the months passed on, his grief still continued fresh, and the memory of his lady dwelt continually with him. It happened, that, “on that day which completed a year since this lady was made one of the citizens of eternal life, I was seated in a place where, remembering her, I drew an Angel upon certain tablets. And while I was drawing it, I turned my eyes, and saw at my side certain men to whom it was becoming to do honor, and who were looking at what I did; and, as was afterward told me, they had been there now some time before I perceived them. When I saw them, I rose, and, saluting them, said, ‘Another was just now with me, and on that account I was in thought.’ When these persons had gone, I returned to my work, that is, to drawing figures of Angels; and while doing this, a thought came to me of saying words in rhyme, as for an anniversary poem for her, and of addressing them to those who had come to me. Then I said this sonnet, which has two beginnings:–
FIRST BEGINNING.
“Unto my mind remembering had come
The gentle lady, with such pure worth graced, That by the Lord Most High she had been placed Within the heaven of peace, where Mary hath her home.”
SECOND BEGINNING.
“Unto my mind had come, indeed, in thought, That gentle one for whom Love’s tears are shed, Just at the time when, by his power led, To see what I was doing you were brought.
“Love, who within my mind did her perceive, Was roused awake within my wasted heart, And said unto my sighs, ‘Go forth! depart!’ Whereon each one in grief did take its leave.
“Lamenting they from out my breast did go, And uttering a voice that often led
The grievous tears unto my saddened eyes.
“But those which issued with the greatest woe, ‘O noble soul,’ they in departing said, ‘To-day makes up the year since thou to heaven didst rise.'”
The preceding passage is one of the many in the “Vita Nuova” which are of peculiar interest, as illustrating the personal tastes of Dante, and the common modes of his life. “I was drawing,” he says, “the figure of an Angel”; and this statement is the more noticeable, because Giotto, the man who set painting on its modern course, was not yet old enough to have exercised any influence upon Dante.[J] The friendship which afterwards existed between them had its beginning at a later period. At this time Cimabue still held the field. He often painted angels around the figures of the Virgin and her Child; and in his most famous picture, in the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, there are certain angels of which Vasari says, with truth, that, though painted in the Greek manner, they show an approach toward the modern style of drawing. These angels may well have seemed beautiful to eyes accustomed to the hard unnaturalness of earlier works. The love of Art pervaded Florence, and a nature so sensitive and so sympathetic as Dante’s could not but partake of it in the fullest measure. Art was then no adjunct of sentimentalism, no encourager of idleness. It was connected with all that was most serious and all that was most delightful in life. It is difficult, indeed, to realize the delight which it gave, and the earnestness with which it was followed at this period, when it seemed, as by a miracle, to fling off the winding-sheet which had long wrapped its stiffened limbs, and to come forth with new and unexampled life.
[Footnote J: In this year, 1291, Giotto was but fifteen years old, and probably a student with Cimabue. Benvenuto da Imola, who lectured publicly at Bologna on the _Divina Commedia_ in the year 1378, reports, that, while Giotto, still a young man, was painting at Padua, Dante visited him. And Vasari says, that it was a tradition, that Giotto had painted, in a chapel at Naples, scenes out of the _Apocalypse_, from designs furnished him by the poet. If we may believe another tradition, which there seems indeed little reason to doubt, Giotto went to Ravenna during the last years of Dante’s life, that he might spend there some time in company with his exiled friend.]
The strength and the intelligence of Dante’s love of Art are shown in many beautiful passages and allusions in the “Divina Commedia.” There was something of universality, not only in his imagination, but also in his acquisitions. Of the sources of learning which were then open, there was not one which he had not visited; of the fountains of inspiration, not one out of which he had not drunk. All the arts–poetry, painting, sculpture, and music–were alike dear to him. His Canzoni were written to be sung; and one of the most charming scenes in the great poem is that in which is described his meeting with his friend Casella, the musician, who sang to him one of his own Canzoni so sweetly, that “the sweetness still within me sounds.”[K]
[Footnote K: This Canzone, to the exposition of which the third Trattato of the _Convito_ is devoted, has been inimitably translated by the Reverend Charles T. Brooks. We believe it to be the happiest version of one of Dante’s minor poems that exists in our language,–and every student of the poet will recognize the success with which very great difficulties have been overcome. It appeared in the _Crayon_, for February, 1853.]
“Dante took great delight in music, and was an excellent draughtsman,” says Aretino, his second biographer; and Boccaccio reports, that in his youth he took great pleasure in music, and was the friend of all the best musicians and singers of his time. There is, perhaps, in the whole range of literature, no nobler homage to Art than that which is contained in the tenth and twelfth cantos of the “Purgatory,” in which Dante represents the Creator himself as using its means to impress the lessons of truth upon those whose souls were being purified for the final attainment of heaven. The passages are too long for extract, and though their wonderful beauty tempts us to linger over them, we must return to the course of the story of Dante’s life as it appears in the concluding pages of the “New Life.”
Many months had passed since Beatrice’s death, when Dante happened to be in a place which recalled the past time to him, and filled him with grief. While standing here, he raised his eyes and saw a young and beautiful lady looking out from a window compassionately upon his sad aspect. The tenderness of her look touched his heart and moved his tears. Many times afterwards he saw her, and her face was always full of compassion, and pale, so that it reminded him of the look of his own most noble lady. But at length his eyes began to delight too much in seeing her; wherefore he often cursed their vanity, and esteemed himself as vile, and there was a hard battle within himself between the remembrance of his lady and the new desire of his eyes.
At length, he says, “The sight of this lady brought me into so new a condition, that I often thought of her as of one who pleased me exceedingly,–and I thought of her thus: ‘This is a gentle, beautiful, young, and discreet lady, and she has perhaps appeared by will of Love, in order that my life may find repose.’ And often I thought more amorously, so that my heart consented in it, that is, approved my reasoning. And after it had thus consented, I, moved as if by reason, reflected, and said to myself, ‘Ah, what thought is this that in so vile a way seeks to console me, and leaves me scarcely any other thought?’ Then another thought rose up and said, ‘Now that thou hast been in so great tribulation of Love, why wilt thou not withdraw thyself from such bitterness? Thou seest that this is an inspiration that sets the desires of Love before thee, and proceeds from a place no less gentle than the eyes of the lady who has shown herself so pitiful toward thee.’ Wherefore, I, having often thus combated with myself, wished to say some words of it. And as, in this battle of thoughts, those which spoke for her won the victory, it seemed to me becoming to address her, and I said this sonnet, which begins, ‘A gentle thought’; and I called it _gentle_ because I was speaking to a gentle lady,–but otherwise it was most vile.
“A gentle thought that of you holds discourse Cometh now frequently with me to dwell, And in so sweet a way of Love doth tell, My heart to yield unto him he doth force. “‘Who, then, is this,’ the soul says to the heart, ‘Who cometh to bring comfort to our mind? And is his virtue of so potent kind,
That other thoughts he maketh to depart?’ “‘O saddened soul,’ the heart to her replies, ‘This is a little spirit fresh from Love, Whose own desires he before me brings; “‘His very life and all his power doth move Forth from the sweet compassionating eyes Of her so grieved by our sufferings.'”
“One day, about the ninth hour, there arose within me a strong imagination opposed to this adversary of reason. For I seemed to see the glorified Beatrice in that crimson garment in which she had first appeared to my eyes, and she seemed to me young, of the same age as when I first saw her. Then I began to think of her, and, calling to mind the past time in its order, my heart began to repent bitterly of the desire by which it had so vilely allowed itself for some days to be possessed, contrary to the constancy of reason. And this so wicked desire being expelled, all my thoughts returned to their most gentle Beatrice, and I say that thenceforth I began to think of her with my heart possessed utterly by shame, so that it was often manifested by my sighs; for almost all of them, as they went forth, told what was discoursed of in my heart,–the name of that gentlest one, and how she had gone from us…. And I wished that my wicked desire and vain temptation might be known to be at an end; and that the rhymed words which I had before written might induce no doubt, I proposed to make a sonnet in which I would include what I have now told.”
With this sonnet Dante ends the story in the “Vita Nuova” of the wandering of his eyes, and the short faithlessness of his heart; but it is retold with some additions in the “Convito” or “Banquet,” a work written many years afterward; and in this later version there are some details which serve to fill out and illustrate the earlier narrative.[L] The same tender and refined feeling which inspires the “Vita Nuova” gives its tone to all the passages in which the poet recalls his youthful days and the memory of Beatrice in this work of his sorrowful manhood. In the midst of its serious and philosophic discourse this little story winds in and out its thread of personal recollection and of sweet romantic sentiment. It affords new insight into the recesses of Dante’s heart, and exhibits the permanence of the gracious qualities of his youth.
[Footnote L: The differences in the two accounts of this period of Dante’s experience, and the view of Beatrice presented in the _Convito,_ suggest curious and interesting questions, the solution of which has been obscured by the dulness of commentators. We must, however, leave the discussion of these points till some other opportunity.]
Its opening sentence is full of the imagery of love. “Since the death of that blessed Beatrice who lives in heaven with the angels, and on earth with my soul, the star of Venus had twice shone in the different seasons, as the star of morning and of evening, when that gentle lady, of whom I have made mention near the close of the “New Life,” first appeared before my eyes accompanied by Love, and gained some place in my mind. … And before this love could become perfect, there arose a great battle between the thought that sprang from it and that which was opposed to it, and which still held the fortress of my mind for the glorified Beatrice.”[M]
[Footnote M: _Convito_, Tratt. ii. c. 3.]
And so hard was this struggle, and so painful, that Dante took refuge from it in the composition of a poem addressed to the Angelic Intelligences who move the third heaven, that is, the heaven of Venus; and it is to the exposition of the true meaning of this Canzone that the second book or treatise of the “Convito” is directed. In one of the later chapters he says, (and the passage is a most striking one, from its own declaration, as well as from its relation to the vision of the “Divina Commedia,”)–“The life of my heart was wont to be a sweet and delightful thought, which often went to the feet of the Lord of those to whom I speak, that is, to God,–for, thinking, I contemplated the kingdom of the Blessed. And I tell [in my poem] the final cause of my mounting thither in thought, when I say, ‘There I beheld a lady in glory’; [and I say this] in order that it may be understood that I was certain, and am certain, through her gracious revelation, that she was in heaven, whither I in my thought oftentimes went,–as it were, seized up. And this made me desirous of death, that I might go there where she was.”[N] Following upon the chapter in which this remarkable passage occurs is one which is chiefly occupied with a digression upon the immortality of the soul,–and with discourse upon this matter, says Dante, “it will be beautiful to finish speaking of that living and blessed Beatrice, of whom I intend to say no more in this book…. And I believe and affirm and am certain that I shall pass after this to another and better life, in which that glorious lady lives of whom my soul was enamored.”[O]
[Footnote N: _Convito_, Tratt. ii. c. 8.]
[Footnote O: Id. c. 9.]
But it is not from the “Convito” alone that this portion of the “Vita Nuova” receives illustration. In that passage of the “Purgatory” in which Beatrice is described as appearing in person to her lover the first time since her death, she addresses him in words of stern rebuke of his fickleness and his infidelity to her memory. The whole scene is, perhaps, unsurpassed in imaginative reality; the vision appears to have an actual existence, and the poet himself is subdued by the power of his own imagination. He tells the words of Beatrice with the same feeling with which he would have repeated them, had they fallen on his mortal ear. His grief and shame are real, and there is no element of feigning in them. That in truth he had seemed to himself to listen to and to behold what he tells, it is scarcely possible to doubt. Beatrice says,–
“Some while at heart my presence kept him sound; My girlish eyes to his observance lending, I led him with me on the right way bound. When of my second age the steps ascending, I bore my life into another sphere,
Then stole he from me, after others bending. When I arose from flesh to spirit clear, When beauty, worthiness, upon me grew,
I was to him less pleasing and less dear.”[P]
[Footnote P: Purgatory, c. xxx. vv. 118-126.–CAYLEY’S Translation.]
But although Beatrice only gives utterance to the self-reproaches of Dante, we have seen already how fully he had atoned for this first and transient unfaithfulness of his heart. The remainder of the “Vita Nuova” shows how little she had lost of her power over him, how reverently he honored her memory, how constant was his love of her whom he should see never again with his earthly eyes. Returning to the “New Life,”–
“After this tribulation,” he says, “at that time when many people were going to see the blessed image which Jesus Christ left to us as the likeness of his most beautiful countenance,[Q] which my lady now beholds in glory, it happened that certain pilgrims passed through a street which is almost in the middle of that city where the gentlest lady was born, lived, and died,–and they went along, as it seemed to me, very pensive. And thinking about them, I said to myself, ‘These appear to me to be pilgrims from a far-off region, and I do not believe that they have even heard speak of this lady, and they know nothing of her; their thoughts are rather of other things than of her; for, perhaps, they are thinking of their distant friends, whom we do not know.’ Then I said to myself, ‘I know, that, if these persons were from a neighboring country, they would show some sign of trouble as they pass through the midst of this grieving city.’ Then again I said, ‘If I could hold them awhile, I would indeed make them weep before they went out from this city; for I would say words to them which would make whoever should hear them weep.’ Then, when they had passed out of sight, I proposed to make a sonnet in which I would set forth that which I had said to myself; and in order that it might appear more pity-moving, I proposed to say it as if I had spoken to them, and I said this sonnet, which begins, ‘O pilgrims.’
[Footnote Q: The most precious relic at Rome, and the one which chiefly attracted pilgrims, during a long period of the Middle Ages, was the Veronica, or representation of the Saviour’s face, supposed to have been miraculously impressed upon the handkerchief with which he wiped his face on his way to Calvary. It was preserved at St. Peter’s and shown only on special occasions. Compare with this passage the lines in the _Paradiso_, c. xxxi. 103-8:–
“As one that haply from Croatia came To see our Veronica, and no whit
Could be contented with its olden fame, Who in his heart saith, when they’re showing it, ‘O Jesu Christ! O very Lord God mine!
Does truly this thy feature counterfeit?'” CAYLEY.
G. Villani says, that in 1300, the year of jubilee, for the consolation of Christian pilgrims, the Veronica was shown in St. Peter’s every Friday, and on other solemn festivals. viii. 36.]
“I called them _pilgrims_ in the wide sense of that word; for pilgrims may be understood in two ways,–one wide, and one narrow. In the wide, whoever is out of his own country is so far a pilgrim; in the narrow use, by pilgrim is meant he only who goes to or returns from the house of St. James.[R] Moreover, it is to be known that those who travel in the service of the Most High are called by three distinct terms. Those who go beyond the sea, whence often they bring back the palm, are called _palmers_. Those who go to the house of Galicia are called _pilgrims_, because the burial-place of St. James was more distant from his country than that of any other of the Apostles. And those are called _romei_ who go to Rome, where these whom I call pilgrims were going.
[Footnote R: The shrine of St. James, at Compostella, (contracted from _Giacomo Apostolo_,) in Galicia, was a great resort of pilgrims during the Middle Ages,–and Santiago, the military patron of Spain, was one of the most popular saints of Christendom. Chaucer says, the Wif of Bathe
“Had passed many a straunge streem; At Rome sche hadde ben, and at Boloyne, In Galice at Seynt Jame, and at Coloyne.”
And Shakspeare, in _All’s Well that Ends Well_, makes Helena represent herself as “St. Jacques’s pilgrim.”]
“O pilgrims, who in pensive mood move slow,
Thinking perchance of those who absent are,
Say, do ye come from land away so far As your appearance seems to us to show?
“For ye weep not, the while ye forward go Along the middle of the mourning town, Seeming as persons who have nothing
known
Concerning the sad burden of her woe.
“If, through your will to hear, your steps ye stay,
Truly my sighing heart declares to me That ye shall afterwards depart in tears.
“For she[S] her Beatrice hath lost: and ye Shall know, the words that man of her
may say
Have power to make weep whoever
hears.”
[Footnote S: The city.]
Some time after this sonnet was written, two ladies sent to Dante, asking him for some of his rhymes. That he might honor their request, he wrote a new sonnet and sent it to them with two that he had previously composed. In his new sonnet, he told how his thought mounted to heaven, as a pilgrim, and beheld his lady in such condition of glory as could not be comprehended by his intellect; for our intellect, in regard to the souls of the blessed, is as weak as our eyes are to the sun. But though he could not clearly see where his thought led him, at least he understood that his thought told of his lady in glory.
“Beyond the sphere that widest orbit hath Passeth the sigh that issues from my
heart,
While weeping Love doth unto him impart Intelligence which leads him on his path,
“When at the wished-for place his flight he stays,
A lady he beholds, in honor dight, And shining so, that, through her splendid light,
The pilgrim spirit upon her doth gaze.
“He sees her such that his reporting words I understand not, for he speaketh low
And strange to the sad heart which makes him tell;
“He speaketh of that gentle one, I know, Since oft he Beatrice’s name records;
So, ladies dear, I understand him well.”
This was the last of the poems which Dante composed in immediate honor and memory of Beatrice, and is the last of those which he inserted in the “Vita Nuova.” It was not that his love grew cold, or that her image became faint in his remembrance; but, as he tells us in a few concluding and memorable words, from this time forward he devoted himself to preparation for a work in which the earthly Beatrice should have less part, while the heavenly and blessed spirit of her whom he had loved should receive more becoming honors. The lover’s grief was to find no more expression; the lamentations for the loss which could never be made good to him were to cease; the exhibition of a personal sorrow was at an end. Love and grief, in their double ministry, had refined, enlarged, and exalted his spirit to the conception of a design unparalleled in its nature, and of which no intellectual genius, unpurged by suffering, and impenetrated in its deepest recesses by the spiritualizing heats of emotion, would have been capable of conceiving. Moreover, as time wore on, its natural result was gradually to withdraw the poet from the influence of temporary excitements of feeling, resulting from his experience of love and death, and to bring him to the contemplation of life as affected by the presence and the memory of Beatrice in its eternal and universal relations. He tells us in the “Convito,” that, “after some time, my mind, which neither such consolation as I could give it, nor that offered to it by others, availed to comfort, determined to turn to that method by which others in grief had consoled themselves. And I set myself to read that book, but little known, of Boethius, in which in prison and exile he had consoled himself. And hearing, likewise, that Tully had written a book, in which, treating of friendship, he had offered some words of comfort to Laelius, a most excellent man, on the death of Scipio, his friend, I read this also. And although at first it was hard for me to enter into their meaning, I at length entered into it so far as my knowledge of language, and such little capacity as I had, enabled me; by means of which capacity, I had already, like one dreaming, seen many things, as may be seen in the ‘New Life.’ And as it might happen that a man seeking silver should, beyond his expectation, find gold, which a hidden chance presents to him, not, perhaps, without Divine direction, so I, who sought for consolation, found not only a remedy for my tears, but also acquaintance with authors, with knowledge, and with books.”
Nor did these serious and solitary studies withdraw him from the pursuit of wisdom among men and in the active world. Year by year, he entered more fully into the affairs of state, and took a larger portion of their conduct upon himself.
His heart kept fresh by abiding recollections of love, his faith quickened by and intermingled with the tenderest hopes, his imagination uplifted by the affection which overleaped the boundaries of the invisible world, and his intellect disciplined by study of books and of men, his experience enlarged by constant occupation in affairs, his judgment matured by the quick succession of important events in which he was involved,–every part, of his nature was thus prepared for the successful accomplishment of that great and sacred design which he set before himself now in his youth. Heaven had called and selected him for a work which even in his own eyes partook somewhat of the nature of a prophetic charge. His strength was to be tested and his capacity to be approved. Life was ordered for the fulfilment of his commission. The men to whom God intrusts a message for the world find the service to which they are appointed one in which they must be ready to sacrifice everything. Dante looked forward, even at the beginning, to the end, and saw what lay between.
The pages of the “New Life” fitly close with words of that life in which all things shall be made new, “and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.” The little book ends thus:–
“Soon after this, a wonderful vision appeared to me, in which I saw things which made me purpose to speak no more of this blessed one until I could more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knoweth. So that, if it shall please Him through whom all things live, that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to speak of her as never was spoken of any woman. And then may it please Him who is the Lord of Grace, that my soul may go to behold the glory of its lady, the blessed Beatrice, who in glory looks upon the face of Him, _qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_ [who is Blessed forever]!”
In 1320, or perhaps not till 1321, the “Paradiso” was finished; in 1321, Dante died.
* * * * *
THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY.
“Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made diligent inquiry: he assures me y’t it had really two heads, one at each end, two mouths, two stings or tongues.”
Rev. Christopher Toppan to Cotton Mather.
Far away in the twilight time
Of every people, in every clime,
Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire,
Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,
Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age.
So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!
Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
Consider that strip of Christian earth On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, Full of terror and mystery,
Half-redeemed from the evil hold
Of the wood so dreary and dark and old, Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew When Time was young and the world was new, And wove its shadows with sun and moon
Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn; Think of the sea’s dread monotone,
Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, And the dismal tales the Indian told,
Till the settler’s heart at his hearth grew cold, And he shrank from the tawny wizard’s boasts, And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, And above, below, and on every side,
The fear of his creed seemed verified;– And think, if his lot were now thine own, To grope with terrors nor named nor known, How laxer muscle and weaker nerve
And a feebler faith thy need might serve; And own to thyself the wonder more
That the snake had two heads and not a score!
Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen, Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil’s Den, Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,
Or coiled by the Northman’s Written Rock, Nothing on record is left to show;
Only the fact that he lived, we know, And left the cast of a “double head”
In the scaly mask which he yearly shed. For he carried a head where his tail should be, And the two, of course, could never agree, But wriggled about with main and might, Now to the left and now to the right;
Pulling and twisting this way and that, Neither knew what the other was at.
A snake with two heads, lurking so near!– Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! Think what ancient gossips might say,
Shaking their heads in their dreary way, Between the meetings on Sabbath-day!
How urchins, searching at day’s decline The Common Pasture for sheep or kine,
The terrible double-ganger heard
In leafy rustle or whirr of bird!
Think what a zest it gave to the sport In berry-time of the younger sort,
As over pastures blackberry-twined Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,
And closer and closer, for fear of harm, The maiden clung to her lover’s arm;
And how the spark, who was forced to stay, By his sweetheart’s fears, till the break of day, Thanked the snake for the fond delay!
Far and wide the tale was told,
Like a snowball growing while it rolled. The nurse hushed with it the baby’s cry; And it served, in the worthy minister’s eye, To paint the primitive Serpent by.
Cotton Mather came posting down
All the way to Newbury town,
With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; Stirring the while in the shallow pool
Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, To garnish the story, with here a streak Of Latin, and there another of Greek:
And the tales he heard and the notes he took, Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?
Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. If the snake does not, the tale runs still In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestone Hill.
And still, whenever husband and wife Publish the shame of their daily strife, And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain At either end of the marriage-chain,
The gossips say, with a knowing shake Of their gray heads, “Look at the Double Snake! One in body and two in will,
The Amphisbaena is living still!”
A PLEA FOR THE FIJIANS;
OR, CAN NOTHING BE SAID IN FAVOR OF ROASTING ONE’S EQUALS?
It is with a feeling of no mean satisfaction, that, in this year of 1859, the philosopher can calmly propose the investigation of a subject, the mere mention of which would have created universal disgust, and even horror, at a period not long past. Thanks to the progress of liberal ideas and sound criticism, we are able, in the middle of the ever-memorable Nineteenth Century, serenely to examine anew those questions which for entire centuries stolid prejudice and narrow dogmatism considered settled, and adjudicated in the High Court of Humanity for all times to come. However signal the progress of our age may be in the useful arts and in aesthetics, especially in upholstery, in chemistry, in the government of large cities, and in the purity of commerce, in pottery, pills, and poetry, and in the dignity of politics, nothing, we may venture to say, will so distinctly and so broadly characterize the period in which we happily live, when the future historian shall sweep with his star-seeker over the past, as the joyful fact, that we, above all others, have divested ourselves of long-cherished errors, hugged by our forefathers as truths full of life and vigor, and have, indeed, so to speak, founded a Novum Organon in fact and reality, while the great Bacon proposed one in mind and theory. To our enlightened age it was reserved to return to polygamy, after nearly three thousand dragging years of dull adhesion of our race to tiresome monogamy, leaping back by one bound over the whole European Past into ancient and respectable Asia. _Ex Oriente lux; ex Oriente gaudia seraglii!_ It is in our blessed epoch that atheism, by some, and pantheism, by others, are boldly taught and vindicated, as once they were by Greeks or Orientals, and with an earnestness and enthusiasm very different from the sneer with which Encyclopaedists of Voltaire’s time attacked Christianity and Deism. To prove, however, the magnificent many-sidedness of our noble times, it is we that have returned once more to pictures of the Virgin Mary with winking and with weeping eyes, or to her apparitions talking _patois_, as that of La Valette, and to a hundred things in the Church, cautiously passed over _sub silentio_ in the last century, but now joyously proclaimed and sustained with defiant erudition by English and German _doctores graces_, and by the Parisian “Univers,” which, openly rejoicing in the English blood spilt by the Sepoys,–for it is but Protestant blood, and that of hateful freemen,–heralds the second or third advent of universal love and Papacy. It is in our age that representative, and indeed all institutional government, for the first time, is called effete parliamentarism, a theatrical delusion, for which; according to the requirements of advanced civilization, the beneficent, harmonious, and ever-glorious Caesarism, _pur et simple_, must be substituted, as it was once sublimely exhibited in the attractive Caesars of Rome, those favorites of History and very pets of Clio. In the time of Tiberius, as President Troplong beautifully and officially expressed it, “Democracy at last seated herself on the imperial throne, embodied in the Caesars,”–those worshipful incarnations of democracy, brought to our view in the _tableaux_ of Suetonius and by the accounts of Tacitus. We have at last returned to Caesarism, or Asiatic absolutism, improved by modern light, and making the emperor a Second Providence, opening and shutting the mouths of the universal-suffrage people, for words or bread, as imperial divinity finds best. This is the progress of our age in Europe, while we, in this hemisphere, have taken, for the first time in history, a rational view of party strife, and with unclouded intelligence maintain that judges and presidents are, and ought to be, party exponents, doing away with those once romantic, but certainly superannuated ideas of Country, Justice, Truth, and Patriotism. All real progress tends toward simplification; and how simple are the idea of party and the associations clustering around this sacred word, compared with the confusing and embarrassing unreality of those ideas and juvenile feelings we have mentioned last!
But we have not done yet with the glory of our age. It is this, the decennium we are soon going to close, that has risen to that enviable eminence whence slavery is declared a precious good of itself, a hallowed agent of civilization, an indispensable element of conservatism, and a foundation of true socialism. From this lofty eminence the seer-statesman–rising far above the philosophical sagacity displayed by Aristotle and Varro, when they discussed the sacred topic–proclaims that Capital ought to own, and has a divine right to own, and always more or less does own, Labor; and that, since Labor constitutes the whole humanity of the laboring man, it clearly follows that he himself must be owned, if his labor be owned. Would you own the bird without its cage? Generous gospel of the rich! Blessed are the wealthy!
It is the destiny of the middle of the nineteenth century–well may we be forgiven, if we pronounce it with some pride–unhesitatingly to defend the African slave-trade, and to smile at what sickly philanthropists used to consider the unutterable woe, the unmeasured crime, and the diabolical hard-heartedness of that traffic. We have changed all this; and, to say the truth, it was high time to discover that the negro-trade forms a charming chapter in the history of Europe, and that the protracted efforts to put it down were unchristian and unstatesmanlike. Pitt, Roscoe, Wilberforce, Burke, Washington, Franklin, Madison, Adams, Lowndes,–puny names! short-sighted men! By the African slave-trade, creatures that are hardly deserving the name of men, on account of organic, intellectual, and moral incapacity, are forcibly carried into the regions of Christian religion and civilization, there to become civilized in spite of their unfitness for civilization. The mariners, usually occupied in risking life or health merely for the sake of base traffic and filthy lucre, are suddenly transformed into ministering agents of civilization and religion. It gives a priestly character to the captain of a slave-ship,–to him that is willing to break the laws of his country, even daring the gallows, for the benefit of the sable brother, and of his law-abiding conservative society. How different from those dark times when the poet could say, _–Homo ignoto homini lupus est!_ The missionary only endeavors to carry the Church to Africa; the slave-trader carries Africa to the Church, to civilization, and to the auction-table.
There are but two more returns to truth and justice necessary,–the Inquisition and the Witch-Trials. These restored, we may safely congratulate ourselves on having regained the ground on which our race stood before the Reformation, that untoward event, whence all the mischief dates that has befallen man in the shape of human rights, liberty, and other deplorable things, as lately a grave writer–not a Catholic, nor a Jew either–gravely assured us. Gentle readers, let us not be impatient. Progress has been of late so rapid, that many of you, it is to be hoped, will yet have an opportunity of hailing the return of those two noble institutions, _pro majore gloria Dei_, for which they always existed, as long as chill and misty skepticism did not extinguish their glowing poetry. Ah! happy times! poetic age! when there existed not only “words that burn,” but also laws that burned!
In the mean time, it may not be inappropriate to commence the consideration of a topic somewhat farther removed from us, but which, according to our humble opinion, ought not to remain wholly beyond the limits of a candid, liberal, and unprejudiced examination,–we mean the important question, Whether the choicest of all substances, the most delicate of all muscular texture, that substance of which kings, philosophers, policemen, and supporters of crinoline are fashioned by the plastic hand of Nature, ought forever to be excluded from the reproductive process of wasted energy and proportionably consumed nervous and cerebral fibre. Reader, do not shrink; grant us a patient ear. You do not know how rapidly you may change your own opinion and feelings. Do you not remember with what awe we first read in the “Almanach des Gourmands,” that a certain _sauce piquante_ was so fine that with it a man would eat his own mother? This was only twenty years ago; yet all of us, now, are helping a high-bred gentleman, trading, on a gigantic scale, in the bones of his great ancestor. What sublimity of peddling!
To those who say, It is unnatural to eat our friends, we would answer, that it is the office of civilization to remove us farther and farther from Nature. Analyze the present magnitude called Lady, and you can arithmetically state it, how little of it is nature-woman, and how much is hoop-civilization. To those, again, who object, that it is too primitive, we would reply, that the highest civilization is always a return to Nature, which is likewise exemplified by many of our ladies in the ball-room,–we mean by their upper portion.
But _revenons a nos moutons_. The Rev. Messrs. Williams and Calvert, missionaries, for many long years, among the Fijians, state, in their recently published work, that those unsophisticated children of Nature eat “long pig,”–as they call, with graceful humor, roast-man, in contradistinction to “short-pig,” by which they designate our squealing fellow-roasters,–from three different motives.–When a chief has a gala-day, or desires to signal his arrival by a right royal feast, it is considered befitting to slaughter some men, to let the blood run in the path of royalty, and to have on the table some _roast-homme_. Our Captain Wilkins told us, years ago, that, for this _roast-homme_, a plump Fijiana, of some twelve or thirteen years, is preferred. They know very well what is good!–The second motive is hatred. When a Fijian mortally hates a person, he endeavors to kill him; and having killed the enemy, why should the victim not be eaten?–Lastly, it would seem that affectionate regard, especially for a favorite wife, sometimes rises to a mordant passion and an unconquerable longing for material assimilation,–so much so, that the loving husband roasts his Penelope, and neighbors are invited to participate in his better fourth or fifth, as the polygamic case may be. Perhaps, years after, when with less demonstrative nations the memory of the beloved one would have passed away, the Fijian Fidelio may smack his lips, and exclaim, with Petrarch’s fervor,–
“Perche Morte fura
Prima i migliori, e lascia star i rei: Questa aspettata al regno degli Dei
Cosa bella mortal passa e non dura.”
Now we are very anxious not to be misunderstood by our readers. In writing this paper, we do not mean to urge the reintroduction of Cannibalism among us at once. The public mind may not yet be ripe for it; but we desire to assist in placing the subject in its proper light, and in showing that an enlightened impartiality can find very much in defence of the Fijians,–more, indeed, than the Rev. Mr. Froude has been able to accumulate in favor of his wife-devouring hero,–or than Mr. Spratt can say in favor of humanization in general, and the breaking-up of the Union in particular, by the reopening of the African slave-trade,–or than our venerable chief-justice has contrived to say in favor of reintroducing slavery in conquered territory, where positive law had abolished or excluded it, by the abstract Constitution itself, _proprio vigore_, (not quite unlike a wagoner, it seems to us, that carries the soil of distant parts, _ipsa adhesione_, as it sticks to his boots, into the tavern-room,) without special law, which even the ancient civilians very stupidly declared to be necessary. First, you will remember, it was passionately maintained that the Constitution of the United States does not know the Common Law; and now it is insisted that Common Law (so far as slavery is concerned) is as inherent in the Constitution as the black pigment is in the negro. You cannot wash it out; it inheres physiologically in the Constitution. I tell you, reader, we are _fast_ people indeed; we travel fast in our opinions, with now and then a somerset for the delectation of the philosopher.
Let us sit down, and have a philosophical conversation; above all, let us discard sentiment, feeling,–what you call heart, and all that sort of thing. You know how much mischief Las Casas has done by allowing his feelings to interfere when the Spaniards roasted Indians, from what he chose to call diabolical lust of gold, and sheer, abstract cruelty. Poor Bishop! He belonged to the softs. Let us be philosophers, economists, and, above all, Constitutionalists. Some philosophers, indeed, have said that all idea of Right and Wrong, and the idea that there is a difference between the two, must needs, first of all, start from sentiment; but leave, I implore you, such philosophic fogyism behind you.
First, then, as to the principle of Right. It is a fact, that most tribes and races, probably all nations in their earliest days, have killed old and useless parents, and have eaten enemies, once slain,–perhaps friends, too. Some nations carried the eating of human flesh far down into their civilized periods and into recent times. The Spaniards found the civilized Aztecs enjoying their _petits soupers_ of babes _a la Tartare_, or gorgeous dinners on fattened heroes _aux truffes_. Have you forgotten that from that fine Introduction to Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico” a flavor of roast “long pig” steams into our nostrils as from a royal kitchen? Eating our equals, therefore, is sound Common Law of all mankind, even more so than slavery, for it exists before slavery can be introduced. Slavery is introduced when the prisoner of war may be made to work,–when the tilling of the soil has commenced; though then not always; for we now know that slavery was introduced among the Greeks at a comparatively late period: but killing parents and eating enemies exists in the hunter’s state, and at those periods when people find it hard work to obtain food, each one for himself, to keep even a starved body and a little bit of soul together. Chewing our neighbor is even better, for it is older Common Law, than the universal buying of a wife and consequent selling of daughters which exists even now over far the greater portion of the globe. We take it that our species began with eating itself without paying for the fare. Partaking of our neighbor precedes all _lex scripta_, all statute law, all constitutions. As to ourselves in particular, whose law is the English law, we know that the Druids sacrificed human beings to their gods; and every one knows full well, that man, when in gastronomic contact with the gods, always appropriates the most savory morsels and the largest portions of the sacrifice to himself, leaving to the ethereal taste of Jove or Tezcatlipoca the smell of some burnt bones or inwards. Yet there is no law on record abolishing human sacrifices. We know, indeed, that some Teutonic tribes, when they adopted Christianity, positively prohibited the eating of horse-flesh, but no law ever forbade to honor our fathers and mothers by making them parts of our feasts; so that no lawyer of the true sort will deny, that, to this day, the right of sacrificing fellow-men, and the reasonable concomitant of eating the better portion of the sacrifice, still exists. Greeks and Romans have sacrificed men; why should not we? That men have their individual rights is no valid objection. Rights depend exclusively upon the law; and the law, we have shown, does not grant equal rights (at least, not equal destinations) to the Eater and the Eatee; for it seems to be one thing to eat, and another to be eaten. It was a very silly maxim of the ancient Civil Law, That the law, the _regula_, is derived from the right (_jus_), not the _jus_ from the law. Has not a Supreme Court in one of our States lately denied to a negro even the right to choose between liberty and slavery,–the choice being left to him by his deceased master,–because the creature (which, when doing wrong, is responsible and has a will imputed to him) has no will to choose, because it cannot have any, says the Supreme Court of that State?
However, it will doubtless be objected by some, that it is simply disgusting to eat our fellow-creatures of the same species,–that it is unnatural and against our religion,–and that so remarkable a diversity of taste can be explained only on the ground of our belonging to different races. We do not believe that the Fijians belong to a different race. Fijian, or Fijician, results, by a slight change of letters, from the word Phoenician; and there can be no doubt that the Fijians are descendants of those Phoenicians who, according to Herodotus, sailed, in the reign of the Egyptian King Necho, from the Persian Gulf round the Cape of Good Hope, and entered the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules. How they came to be wafted to the opposite hemisphere is not for us to explain, nor do we know it. Suffice it to say, that Fijician and Phoenician are the same word. Possibly old Admiral Hanno preceded Captain Cook. Who can prove the contrary?
As to the first of these objections, we admit that some people may feel a degree of aversion to _roast-homme_; but so does the Mahometan abominate roast “short pig”; and a Brahmin, taken to Cincinnati and its environs, at the sanguinary hog-murder time, would die outright, of horror. We almost died, ourselves, at the sickening sight of that porcian massacre. _De gustibus non est disputantibus_, as our colonel used to say. Disgust, is the result of a special treaty of amity and reciprocity between the stomach and the imagination, differing according to difference in the contracting parties. We have known many persons who would not touch mutton, and others who would rather starve than eat oysters; while we ourselves revolt at sourkrout, which, nevertheless, millions of Germans, French, and Americans consider delicious. Disgust is arbitrary; it does not furnish us with a philosophical ground for argumentation. The Fijian does not feel disgust at the flavor of a well-roasted white sailor; and as long as he does not insist upon our relishing his fare, what right have we to ask him to feel disgusted? When the panther-tailed Aztec priest fattened his prisoner, or carried along the children decked with wreaths, soon to be smothered in their own juice, he cannot have felt disgust, any more than the Malay, of whom Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles tells us, that, with epicurean refinement, he cut the choicest bits from his living prisoner, in order to baste them to a turn and season them with choice pepper.
Is it unnatural? We have once seen, with our own eyes, a very large unroasted “small pig” devour one of her own piglets, whilst the others lustily drew nourishment from the grunting mother. It look our appetite away for forty-eight hours; yet it was nature; and in some portions of Europe, people express the highest degree of fondness by the expressive phrase,–“I could eat you.” We may rely upon it, that, as Mr. Agassiz says,–“There is no difference in kind, but only in degree.”
With reference to religion, we readily acknowledge that dining _a la Fijienne_ does not appear exactly to be a divine institution, as slavery has recently been discovered to be. From olden times it used to be the belief of superstitious man that there was a divine afflatus in liberty; but our profound theological scholars and Biblical critics have found out that the divinity is on the other side. Neither Tertullian nor Austin, neither St. Bernard nor any Pope, good or bad, neither Luther, Bossuet, Calvin, nor Baxter, no commentator, exegetist, or preacher, ever found out, what these profoundest inquirers have at length discovered, that slavery is divine, like matrimony. Had they discovered this great truth before the Catholic Church settled the number of sacraments, there must have been eight instead of seven. Why was their advent so late?
Possibly these grave and candid, deep and fervent theologians, whose opinions on theology are quoted everywhere, whose works are spread over the globe, and whose lore is stupendous, may yet discover that there is a divine flavor even in a soup _a la Mexicaine_. One thing, however, is quite certain, namely,–that there is no prohibition of digestively assimilating our neighbor with ourselves, from one end of the Bible to the other. Was not Fielding’s parson logical, who preferred punch to wine, because it is nowhere spoken ill of in Scripture? When Baron Viereck was rebuked by a friend for having given his daughter in marriage to the King of Denmark, the Queen, undivorced, continuing to occupy the throne, the shrewd father replied, that he had found no passage in the Bible that prohibits a King of Denmark from having two wives; and has not the democratic Fijian as good a right to that logic as the noble Baron had?
To say the truth, all these objections are founded mainly upon sentiment, and we trust that morbid sentimentality will have no weight in an age which ridicules the horror of the British Commons at the descriptions of the middle passage, and demands calm judgment when the question arises, how to increase the number of representatives and the profits on sugar and cotton,–in our poetic age, in which republican senators have openly declared their chivalrous allegiance to the sovereign substance of which night-caps are made, and petticoats,–to His Majesty, King Cotton,–not a very merry king, it must be owned, as young King Charles was, or old King Cole, but still a worthy sovereign; for, after all, he is but a new and most bulky avatar of Almighty Dollar.
No objection whatsoever can be made to the _deglutinatio Fijiana_ on the score of utility. The islands of the Fijians are but small; no Fijian Attila can lead forth his hosts into neighboring countries; no Fijian Goths can pour down from Polynesian Alps into an Oceanic Italy; no Athenians can there send sons and gods to a Coreyra: and no Fijian Miles Standish can there walk up and down before his pipe-clayed bandoleers in foreign colonies. How, then, can an over-increase of population be more harmoniously prevented than by making the young and sleek furnish the starving with a plump existence? Is it not, economically viewed, the principle of Dr. Franklin’s smoke-consuming pipe applied to the infinitely more important sphere of human existence? The festive table, to which, according to the great Malthus, Nature declines inviting a large portion of every well-peopled country, will never be known by the happy Fijian Say or Senior, so long as wise conservatism shall not change its old and sacred laws, and shall allow Nature to invite one happy portion as guests, and another happy portion as savory dishes. It is Nature in modest simplicity, as it is exhibited in half-a-dozen mice in a deep kettle, of whom one survivor and material representative remains. The Chinese expose female infants, and lawful infanticide has been abolished in some districts of the British East Indies within these thirty years only. Would it not be wiser to reassimilate the tender dear ones, and think of them ever after with smacking memory?
It is true, indeed, that, upon the whole, Fijian gastronomy leers more toward the tender sex than toward that which in our country wears the trousers uncrinolined. But, we submit, is this a fair objection? Why _is_ the tender sex more _tender?_ Lately, when an orator had strongly expressed himself against the maxim of patriotic office-hunters,–“To the victor belong the spoils,” he was very logically asked,–“And pray, Sir, to whom should the spoils belong, if not to the victor?” So we would ask, should any one complain of girls being thus economized by men,–“Who, in the name of common sense, should, if not men? Would you have them perform that sacrificial duty for one another?”
But whatever may be thought, by some of our lovely readers, of this last argument, (which henceforth may be termed _argumentum marcianum_,) and which, in the case before us, will always be an _ex parte_ argument, all will agree that no objection can be taken to making repasts on _porcus longus_ once fairly killed,–for instance, on heroes stretched on the battle-field. This was the cogent argument of the New Zealander, after baptism,–used in discussing the topic with the Rev. Mr. Yale. Willing to give up slaughtering fellow-men for the sake of eating them, he could not see why it was not wicked to waste so much good food.
If it were objected, that, admitting the making of your enemy’s flesh flesh of your own flesh would necessarily lead to skirmishes, “surprise-parties,” and battles for the sole purpose of getting a dinner,–to a sort of pre-prandial exercise, as in fishing,–we would simply answer, “Too late!” Our friends who desire the reopening of the African slave-trade declare that they wish to buy slaves only. When statesmen, and missionaries, and simple people with simple sense and simple hearts, cry out to them, “Stop! for the sake of our common Father, stop! By reopening the slave-trade, you revive the vilest crimes, and, for every negro ultimately sold to you on the coast, you cause the murder of at least ten in the interior, not to speak of those that are coolly massacred in the barracoon, when no demand exists,”–the satisfactory reply is: “We have nothing to do with all that; we do not travel beyond the record. We buy the negro who is a slave; what made him a slave we do not care to know. The pearl in the market does not show the toil of the fisher.” And so the Fijian would properly reply: “Do not mix up different subjects. I rescue my departed brother from ignominious decay, and remake a man of him. How he came to depart,–that belongs to quite a different chapter.”
This utilitarian view acquires a still greater importance when applied to criminals under sentence of capital punishment. Soon after Beccaria, it was asked, if we mistake not, by Voltaire: “Of what use is the dead body of a criminal? You cannot restore the victim to life by the execution of the murderer.” And many pardons in America have been granted on the assumption that no satisfactory answer could be given to the philosophical question: “What use can the swinging body of the poor creature be to any one?” The Fijian alone has a perfectly satisfactory reply.
The missionaries, already named in this paper, give a long account of the execution of a supposed Fijian conspirator, which ends with these words: “At last he was brought down to the ground by a club; after which he was eaten.”
We can discern many advantages to be derived from the introduction of what we will call “_pates penitentiaires_.”
There would be no waste of food.
The sentence of the judge would sound more civilized; for, instead of hearing the odious words, “You shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead,” words would be pronounced somewhat like these: “You shall be taken to Delmonico, and there and by him be served up on such a day, as _scelerat en papillotes_.”
There would be a greater readiness in jurors to convict interesting criminals, who now-a-days cannot be found guilty,–especially were a law passed that the jury should have the criminal. We read in the “Scottish Criminal Trials,” that a woman, clearly convicted of an atrocious murder, was, nevertheless, found not guilty. The astonished lord justiciary asked the foreman, how it was possible to find the prisoner not guilty, with such overwhelming evidence, and was answered: “Becaase, my laird, she is purty.” Would not the delicacy of the prisoner have been an additional reason for finding her guilty with Fijian jurors?
Fourthly, there would be an obvious national advantage in some countries, in which the government is at one and the same time busily engaged in finding cheap food for the people, and in transporting annually many hundreds of political _suspects_ to killing colonies. It is, indeed, surprising, that so sagacious and parental a government as that of Napoleon the Third,–may His Majesty be long preserved for the civilization of France, the peace of Europe, and the glory of mankind in general!–it is surprising, that his all-providing and all-foreseeing government has not long ago discovered how the craving of the national stomach for food, and of the popular mind for political purification, might be stilled by no longer transporting political offenders and _suspects_ to French Guiana or Lambessa, where they uselessly and ignobly perish, but by sentencing them, instead, to the enviable lot of making a feast for their brethren. Would not every Socialist, receiving permission thus to help feed society, exclaim: _C’est magnifique! mais c’est sublime!_
When Robespierre was in the zenith of his guillotinacious glory, the _bonnes_ would sit around the scaffold, minding children and knitting stockings, to see the head of a marquis or of a shoemaker fall. We leave it to every reader, whether there would not be more historic unity and poetic completeness in the _tableau_, were we to read that these good creatures dined upon the _ci-devant_, after the execution.
Imperial Rome is the _beau ideal_ of the present government of _la belle France_; and we must own, that, when perusing the exhilarating pages of Suetonius, it has often occurred to our mind that there is something wanting in the list of high deeds related of those superb specimens of humanity exhibited in the Caligulas and Heliogabali. They did so much for cookery! Yet they seem never to have risen above an indirect consumption of their subjects, by feeding their lobsters with ignoble slaves; never did they directly bestow upon Roman freemen the honor of being served up for the imperial table. Nero murdered his mother and bade his teacher open his own veins. Would it not read much more civilized, if the annals of the empire were telling us: _Nero, jam divus, leniter dixit: O Seneca, Pundit delectabilis et philosophe laute, quis dubitet te libentissime mihi hodie proferre artocreatem stoicum?_
Strange as it may appear to some readers, that thus the polished Romans might have learned a lesson of civilization from the Fijians, they will not reject our suggestion, when they reflect, that, only a short time ago, they were, probably, as much surprised at finding the government of so great a country as France adopting imperial Rome as a model body-politic. Familiarize your mind with the idea, and all difficulties vanish. It is only the last step which costs,–not the first.
There are many more reasons that might be urged in favor of the Fijians. We are not aware that the reverend missionaries have given any statistical tables, showing a regularity in the annual numbers of consumed persons, male and female, classed according to the reasons why consumed; but no one can doubt that such tables might be given, and if so, the whole question of anthropophagism could be very easily Buckled up in a tidy little valise. The Fijians, in the plural, we take it, have little or nothing to do with it; it is the abstract, will-less, impersonal Fijian–who, according to the learned Ferrari,[A] would be called, now, Podesta Fijian, now Consul Fijian, now Papa Fijianus–that snuffs the flavor of his own dear natural _pot a feu_; and Right or Wrong, Just or Unjust, Commendable or Revolting, are schoolboy distinctions, no longer recognized by the philosophical historian, who treats all moral questions and national movements like questions of natural philosophy,–like social chemistry, in which so puerile a word as poison has no place. Arsenic is arsenic with certain effects, and nothing more; and society poisons itself annually to such an amount, arithmetically expressed.
[Footnote A: _Histoire des Revolutions d’Italie, ou Guelf’s et Gibelins_. Par J. Ferrari. Paris, 1858.]
We ask leave to add two suggestions in favor of the Fijians, both, it would seem, of philosophic importance. If you do not like the Fijian national dish,–_national_ in more than one sense,–have the dear sons of Nature, as Carlyle probably would call them, not the right to reply,–“We do not like your _sauerkraut_, if you are a German; your _polenta_, if you are an Italian; your _olla podrida_, if you are a Spaniard; nor your _grit_, if you are a Dane; your bacon and greasy greens, if you are a Southerner; nor your baked beans, if you are a Northerner; nor any other stuff called national dishes,–all of which are vile, except English roast beef and plum-pudding, and Neapolitan maccaroni.”
The other suggestion is this: Is it likely that Nature has placed the Fijians exactly in the same meridian with Greenwich, which in some measure may be called the meridian of civilization, for nothing?–is it likely that all the solar and cosmic influences which must result from this fact have really left the Fijian in that state of hyper-brutality which you think is proved by his _menage_? Is it, we ask, fairly to be supposed? We think not.
We do not presume to know whether we have carried conviction to the minds of our readers; but even if we have not,–if we have only been sufficiently fortunate to give the first impulse to the great inquiry, we shall be satisfied. If we consider the history of some opinions now openly preached and vehemently maintained,–how timidly they were first hinted at, within our own recollection, and with what surprising rapidity they have risen to an unblushing amplitude, rustling and sweeping proudly and defiantly along the Broadway of human events and opinions,–how that which but a lustre ago was wicked is now virtuous,–we see no reason for despair; and our century may yet witness the time when it will be considered the highest mixture of philosophic courtesy and Christian urbanity to make the most graceful semi-lateral bow, as you pass your friend in the street, and, kissing the tip of your finger, to lisp, with bending head and smiling eye,–
“May I never disagree with you!”
THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.
[_The Professor talks with the Reader. He tells a Young Girl’s Story_.]
When the elements that went to the making of the first man, father of mankind, had been withdrawn from the world of unconscious matter, the balance of creation was disturbed. The materials that go to the making of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of one man’s-worth of masculine constituents. These combined to make our first mother, by a logical necessity involved in the previous creation of our common father. All this, mythically, illustratively, and by no means doctrinally or polemically.
The man implies the woman, you will understand. The excellent gentleman whom I had the pleasure of setting right in a trifling matter a few weeks ago believes in the frequent occurrence of miracles at the present day. So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm trees arm in arm with a pretty woman.
Where would she come from?
Oh, that’s the miracle!
—-I was just as certain, when I saw that fine, high-colored youth at the upper right-hand corner of our table, that there would appear some fitting feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a clairvoyant, seeing it all beforehand.
—-I have a fancy that those Marylanders are just about near enough to the sun to ripen well.–How some of us fellows remember Joe and Harry, Baltimoreans, both! Joe, with his cheeks like lady-apples, and his eyes like black-heart cherries, and his teeth like the whiteness of the flesh of cocoa-nuts, and his laugh that set the chandelier-drops rattling overhead, as we sat at our sparkling banquets in those gay times! Harry, champion, by acclamation, of the College heavyweights, broad-shouldered, bull-necked, square-jawed, six feet and trimmings, a little science, lots of pluck, good-natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red-eyed bison in the crack of hand-to-hand battle! Who forgets the great muster-day, and the collision of the classic with the democratic forces? The huge butcher, fifteen stone,–two hundred and ten pounds,–good weight,–steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words from Harry, the Baltimorean,–one of the quiet sort, who strike first, and do the talking, if there is any, afterwards. No words, but, in the place thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank,–followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee _clinches_, followed by a general _melee_, which make our native fistic encounters so different from such admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair, where everything was done decently and in order, and the fight began and ended with such grave propriety, that a sporting parson need hardly have hesitated to open it with a devout petition, and, after it was over, dismiss the ring with a benediction.
I can’t help telling one more story about this great field-day, though it is the most wanton and irrelevant digression. But all of us have a little speck of fight underneath our peace and goodwill to men,–just