“Among the larger entries are five ex-Chancellors of England receiving 5000l. a year each, two ex-Chancellors of Ireland with 3692l., four retired English judges with 3500l., two Irish with 2400l., and five County Court judges dividing 4600l. between them. But these are pensions earned by personal service; perhaps not so much can be said of some others. The Earl of Ellenborough has a compensation annuity of 7700l. as chief clerk of the Court of Queen’s Bench; the Rev. T. Thurlow, 4028l. as clerk of the hanaper, in addition to 7352l. as patentee of bankrupts. Viscount Avonmore receives 4199l. as late registrar of the Irish Court of Chancery; the Earl of Roden 2698l. as late auditor-general of the Irish Exchequer. But these pensions will come to an end; even that cannot be said of some others. There is above 23,000l. a year paid in perpetual pensions, payable as long at least as there shall be an Earl Amherst or Nelson, a Lord Rodney, a Viscount Exmouth, an heir of William Penn, or of the Duke of Schomberg, and so forth. Of the limited number of first-class pensions of 2000l. a year to statesmen who have been in high office, and who claim the pensions, only two are now payable—viz., to Lord Glenelg and Mr. Disraeli; Sir G. Grey’s is suspended, he being again in office. Several pensions ceased in the course of the year; among them that to the family of George Canning, and that to the door-keeper of the Irish House of Lords; but the housekeeper still lives to receive her annual compensation for loss of emoluments by the Union.”
The record of the actual origines of the human race, as communicated by God Himself, tells us that one spot was selected, for the purpose in question, by Creative Power; and that to one aboriginal pair was consigned the office and destiny of replenishing the earth. The same record, moreover, informs us, that, when the earth was corrupt before God, through the wickedness of their posterity, the whole race was destroyed, save the family of one man; and that, of the three sons of that one man was the whole earth overspread. And, lastly, we have this account confirmed to us by the testimony of an inspired servant of God, who has declared, that He hath made, of one blood, all nations of men, for to dwell on the face of the earth.
Now, according to this account, Noah may be considered, for the purposes of ethnological inquiry, as the sole forefather of the existing race of man. Of antediluvian men, all, except Noah, are entirely out of the question. Of the remarkable physical varieties of complexion, stature, or temperament, among the races before the Flood (if any such varieties existed), we are profoundly ignorant. We do read, it is true, that there were giants in those days; but the meaning of this term seems very doubtful. It is most generally understood to indicate a gigantic scale of iniquity, licentiousness, and violence, rather than of corporeal bulk and might. At all events, Noah himself, and his three sons, were the only males spared from the general destruction: and the mother of these three sons, together with their three respective wives, the only females; eight persons in all. And, so far as race or family are concerned, the sons are clearly identified with their father. It is, indeed, just possible that all these four females may have been of so many different tribes or races. But this surmise is wholly gratuitous, and very far from probable. And, even were it admitted, it could not affect any argument respecting the origin of the present inhabitants of the earth, without assuming the falsehood of that part of the sacred narrative which traces them all, Noah and his whole family included, to one and the same common parentage.
Since the days of the patriarch upwards of 4000 years have elapsed, and we now find the earth inhabited by at least eight hundred millions of souls. And, so it is, that these vast multitudes exhibit, within certain limits, almost every imaginable variety of form, of constitution, and of stature.—English Review, No. 2.
Nevertheless, the Unity of the Human Race is a much-vexed question among ethnologists. Mr. Dunn is convinced of the original unity of the human species, and, after adducing the best ethnological evidence attainable, he earnestly appeals to the philologists to help him. Admiral Fitzroy reduces mankind to one, or, at least, to three types; and these three varieties he reverently ascribes to the three sons of Noah, with the help of the hypothesis that they may have been the sons of different mothers. On the other hand, Mr. Craufurd, President of the Ethnological Society, admits of no compromise with orthodoxy, maintaining that the hypothesis of the unity of our race is without foundation. There are, he says, some forty races of men, which to pack into the five pigeon-holes of Cuvier and Blumenbach, or the seven of Prichard, would produce confusion instead of order. The supposition of a single race peopling all countries by migration he holds to be “monstrous,” and contradictory to the fact that some of them to this day do not know how to use or construct a canoe. Migration, he contends, is the achievement of races possessed of resources in food and means of transport. It is to little purpose that Admiral Fitzroy dwells on the capacities of rafts, double canoes, and ocean currents. Mr. Craufurd is incredulous as ever, and fights for his forty Adams with unchecked vivacity, kicking a tremendous hole in the “frail canoe,” and leaving the ocean currents to deal with it more oceanico.
Geology attests that man was the last of created beings in this planet. If her data be consistent and true, and worthy of scientific consideration, she affords conclusive evidence that, as we are told in Scripture, he cannot have occupied the earth longer than 6000 years. (Hitchcock, Religion of Geology.)
Sir Isaac Newton’s sagacious intellect had arrived at a similar conclusion from different premisses, and long before the geologist had made his researches and discoveries. “He appeared,” said one who conversed with him, not long before his death, and has carefully recorded what he justly styles “a remarkable and curious conversation,” “to be very clearly of opinion, that the inhabitants of this world were of short date; and alleged as one reason for that opinion, that all arts—as letters, ships, printing, the needle, &c.—were discovered within the memory of history, which could not have happened if the world had been eternal; and that there were visible marks of ruin upon it, which could not have been effected by a flood only.”—Brewster’s Life of Newton.
Admiral Fitzroy adduces the following striking facts strongly bearing on the great geological inquiry of “Flint Tools,” and “Implements in the Drift.”
Tierra del Fuego, with its innumerable islands and rocky islets, like mountain ranges half sunk in ocean, combines every variety of aspect—storm-beaten rocky summits, several thousand feet above the sea—glaciers so extensive that the eye cannot trace their limits—densely wooded hillsides—grand cascades and sheltered sandy coves,—altogether such a combination of Swiss, Norwegian, and Greenland scenery as can hardly be realized or believed to exist near Cape Horn. Yet, even there—by lake-like waters, though so near the wildest of oceans—thousands of savages exist, and migrate in bark canoes!
In 1830 four of those aborigines were brought to England. In 1833 three of them were restored to their native places (one having died). They had then acquired enough of our language to talk about common things. From their information and our own sight are the following facts:—The natives of Tierra del Fuego use stone tools, flint knives, arrow and spear heads of flint or volcanic glass, for cutting bark for canoes, flesh, blubber, sinews, and spears, knocking shell-fish off rocks, breaking large shells, killing guanacoes (in time of deep snow), and for weapons. In every sheltered cove where wigwams are placed, heaps of refuse—shells and stones, offal and bones—are invariably found. Often they appear very old, being covered deeply with wind-driven sand, or water-washed soil, on which there is a growth of vegetation. These are like the “kitchen middens” of the so-called “stone age” in Scandinavia.
No human bones would be found in them (unless dogs had dragged some there), because the dead bodies are sunk in deep water with large stones, or burnt. These heaps are from six to ten feet high, and from ten or twenty to more than fifty yards in length. All savages in the present day use stone tools, not only in Tierra del Fuego, but in Australia, Polynesia, Northernmost America, and Arctic Asia. In any former ages of the world, wherever savages spread, as radiating from some centre, similar habits and means of existence must have been prevalent; therefore casual discovery of such traces of human migration, buried in or under masses of water-moved detritus, may seem scarcely sufficient to define a so-called “stone age.”
Celtes are certain ancient instruments, of a wedge-like form, of which several have been discovered in different parts of Great Britain. Antiquaries have generally attributed them to the Celtæ, but, not agreeing as to their use, distinguish them by the above unmeaning appellation. Mr. Whitaker, however, is of opinion that they were British battle-axes, and in this he has been generally followed. Such is the statement in the eighth or last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
The Welsh etymologists, Owen and Spurrell, furnish an ancient Cambro-British word celt, a flint-stone. M. Worsae (Primeval Antiq., p. 26) confines the term to those instruments of bronze which have a hollow socket to receive a wooden handle; the other forms being called paalstabs on the Continent. In the “Latin Vulgate,” our translators have rendered “an iron pen” in the book of Job, chap. xix. v. 24, there translated celte.
But the origin and application are variously explained among antiquarian writers. The Abbé Cochet states, in a letter to the French journals, 1863, that hatchets are found almost all over Europe. They are common in France, and are generally found in groups. Some of them have been analysed, and found to be composed of fourteen parts of tin and eighty-six of copper. The bronze is the same as that of an antique poniard brought from Egypt and analysed by Vauquelin, from which it would appear that the composition of ancient Gallic bronze came from Egypt. Archæologists generally attribute hatchets of this kind to the Celts and Gauls, and give them the general name of Celtic.
In opposition to this statement, it is, however, maintained that “the word is not derived from its use by the Celts or Kelts, but from the Latin word ‘celtis,’ which means chisel, or hatchet.” Dr. Smith (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities) obtains the term from “celtes, an old Latin word for a chisel, probably derived from cælo, to engrave.” Mr. Wright (in The Celt, Roman, and Saxon) says that Hearne first applied the word to such implements in bronze, believing them to be “Roman celtes, or chisels;” and that “subsequent writers, ascribing these instruments to the Britons, have retained the name, forgetting its origin, and have applied it indiscriminately not only to other implements of bronze but even to the analogous instruments of stone.” Mr. Wright objects to the term, “as too generally implying that things to which it is applied are Celtic;” and it is now generally allowed that there is no connexion between this word and the name of the nation (Celtæ).—(Abridged from Notes and Queries, No. 203). Fosbroke (Encyclopædia of Antiquities, p. 286) has an excellent column of authorities upon the subject, which is still hotly contested. An admirable paper was read to the Archæological Institute, in 1849, by Mr. James Yates, illustrating “The Use of Bronze Celts in Military Operations,” with several woodcuts.—See the Archæological Journal, December, 1849, Pages 363-392. See also “Notes on Bronze Weapons,” by A. W. Franks, F.S.A., Archæologia, vol. xxxvi., pp. 326-331: and Papers by Mr. John Evans, F.S.A.; Archæologia, vol. xxxviii. p. 280; also, vol. xxxix. p. 57. The subject is of immediate interest in illustration of “The Antiquity of Man.”
If the commencement of the Roman rule in England was, say, fifty years before the birth of Christ (or 1910 years ago) and each generation lasted on the average thirty years—rather a high rate of vitality probably in the Early and Middle Ages—we find that about sixty-four generations have gone to dust since then. The archæological information obtained of late years shows that at the time of the Roman invasion there was a larger amount of civilization in Ancient Britain than has been generally supposed: that in addition to the knowledge of the old inhabitants in agriculture, in the training and rearing of horses, cows, and other domestic animals, they were able to work in mines, had skill in the construction of war-chariots and other carriages, and in the manufacture of metals; and there is evidence that cheese and other British manufactures and materials were exported to certain parts of the Continent, probably in British vessels. The ancient coinage of this period is well worthy of attention. To what country may the style of art be traced? To what people do we owe the mysterious circle of Stonehenge? Mr. Fergusson and others say to the Buddhists rather than to the Druids.
In connexion with the Ancient British period, it would seem that probably 2000 years before the Roman times there had been in Great Britain a certain degree of civilization, which from various causes declined in extent. If Stonehenge may be considered as of the same antiquity as similar remains in various parts of the East—which are reckoned by good authorities to be 4000 years old—we had in this country a degree of civilization which was contemporary with the prosperous period of the Egyptian empire; and, in times more immediately preceding the Roman occupation, we know that Britain was the grand source of Druidical illumination (whatever relation that may have had to a true civilization) to the whole of Continental Europe.
That the Ancient Britons, even after they were conquered by the Romans, had still a strength considered dangerous, is shown by the fact that upwards of forty barbarian legions which had followed the Roman standards were settled chiefly upon the northern and eastern coasts; and it is supposed that a force of about 19,200 Roman foot and 1700 horse was required to secure peace, and the carrying out of certain laws in the island. It is calculated by some writers that a revenue of not less than 2,000,000l. a year was raised by the conquerors of Britain from the land-tax, pasture-tax, and customs, besides legacy duties, and those levied on the sale of slaves, auctions of goods, &c.; and it may be remarked that these customs were levied by the Roman governors in lieu of direct tribute, to which, it seems, the spirit of the Britons would not submit.—The Builder, 1860.
We have no means of estimating the cost of a mile of Roman road by any audited account of expenses, and it is not easy to make a comparison of labour. Its cost is vaguely calculated as insignificant by the side of that of our leviathan railways. The following is stated to be the average cost of a mile of railway:
| Land | 6000l. |
| Earthwork | 5000l. |
| Tunnelling | 3000l. |
| Masonry | 3000l. |
| Viaduct and large Bridges | 3000l. |
| Permanent Iron Road | 5000l. |
| Stations | 4000l. |
| Law expenses, Engineering, Surveying, &c. | 3000l. |
| ———— | |
| 32,000l. |
If this be multiplied by 5000, which was the aggregate length of British railways in 1851 (now it is nearly 12,000), and we have the almost fabulous amount of 160 millions, a sum fully equal to ten times the revenue of all the Roman provinces in the time of Augustus.
In estimating the value of a Roman road, we have to deduct 7800l. a mile for land and law: every mile of railway cost 6000l. for land, whereas the Roman road-makers cut through the country without asking the price, and dispensed with all juries for assessing damages. Next, we must deduct 4000l. for stations; the Roman mutationes were but hovels where horses were changed; and lastly, is to be deducted 5000l. for iron, before we come to the materials the Romans were enabled to use; in other words, the materials of the Roman road and labour would not be more than half the cost of our railways, from the mere fact of certain expenses being absent, which they could not understand; but, although inferior to the Britons of the nineteenth century in the art of spending money, if judged by the present state of the science, they could not be despicable engineers—their levels were chosen on different principles, but their lines of roads passed through the same countries, and generally in the same direction, as our railways. A diagram taken from an article of the Quarterly Review, exhibiting a general view of the direction of the principal Roman roads in England, shows that on comparing one or two of our principal lines, we shall find that the Great Western, e.g., supplies the place, with a little deviation near Reading, of the Roman iter from London to Bath and Bristol; the Liverpool and Manchester, and on to Leeds and York, replace the northern Watling-street; the Eastern Counties follows a Roman way, and so of the rest.
In boasting of the gigantic steps which the art of road-making has taken in our time, we cannot afford to depreciate either the genius or the magnificence of the ancient Romans in this matter. If we have our railway under the cliffs of Dover, Trajan had his road under 2000 feet of perpendicular cliff along the Ister; if we have our 12,000 miles of rails, the Romans had their 4000 miles of chosen road, reaching from one extremity of the empire to the other; if we have our leviathan bridges and viaducts, the Romans had theirs over greater rivers and wider vales than we have to deal with; and, finally, if we had our glass bazaar, one-third of a mile long, in Hyde Park, they had a golden palace, which reached a whole mile on the Esquiline Hill. If we rise superior and look down upon the works of the Romans, it is not so much that we have gained in unskilful labour, as in science. Without the iron and the science, their works would be as great as ours; it is in mental rather than in any physical energies, that we have the pre-eminence.
We may acquire some idea of this branch of Roman economy from the following details:—From the wall of Antonius to Rome, and from thence to Jerusalem, that is, from the north-west to the south-east point of the empire, was measured a distance of 3740 English miles; of this distance 85 miles only were sea-passages, the rest was the road of polished silex. Posts were established along these lines of High road, so that a hundred miles a day might be with ease accomplished. A fact related by Pliny affords an example of the quickest travelling in a carriage in ancient times. Tiberius Nero, with three carriages, accomplished a journey of 200 miles in twenty-four hours, when he went to see his brother Drusus, who was sick in Germany.—Rev. R. Burgess, B.D.
Were it possible for an archæologist to report the gossip of the Saxon hinds over their ale or mead, we should have learnt more of their daily life from such a specimen of their conversation than from all the cautious inferences from manuscripts and records. Let us conceive the presence of a modern reporter in the mead-hall of Hrothgar, and we may be certain that his literal transcript of a single hour’s talk there would be worth all that we can now learn from the Romance of Beowulf. “Then,” says the poem, “there was for the sons of the Geats (Beowulf and his followers altogether), a bench cleared in the beer-hall; there the bold spirit, free from quarrel, went to sit; the thane observed his office, he that in his hand bare the twisted ale-cup; he poured the bright sweet liquor; meanwhile the poet sang serene in Heorot (the name of Hrothgar’s palace); there was joy of heroes.” Although our conceptions of the scene are faint and vague, the antiquary is enabled to represent certain items as “the twisted ale-cup,” a favourite fashion of our forefathers, many of whose ale-cups, as discovered in their barrows or graves, are incapable of standing upright, implying that their proprietors were thirsty souls, and that it was not, as we supposed, the Prince Regent who first invented tumblers. From the mead-hall and the other Saxon houses of the period, we also get the type of the modern English mansion, with its enceinte and its lodge-gate, as distinguished from its hall-door. The early Saxon house was the whole enclosure, at the gate of which—the ostium domus—beggars assembled for alms, and the porter received the arms of strangers. The whole mass enclosed within this wall constituted the burgh, or tun, and the hall, with its duru, or door par excellence, was the chief of its edifices. Around it were grouped the sleeping chambers, or bowers, as they were designated till a late age, with the subordinate offices. Mr. Wright (in his able work on the Domestic Life of the Middle Ages) draws many of his inferences from the description of the mead-hall of Hrothgar, and adds that he believes Bulwer’s description of the Saxonized Roman house inhabited by Hilda is substantially correct. Still, though we can identify to this day the Saxon derivatives of many of our houses and much of our crockery-ware, this helps us little as regards the sentiments of the originators of these familiar types. They have left us some memorials of their manners; but, substantially speaking, their sentiments on a great variety of subjects are lost to us, and there is little trace of them, even in their barrows and sepulchral surroundings.—Times review.
There is something absolutely touching in the simplicity of the following incident, derived from Aelfric’s Colloquium, composed in the eleventh century. A teacher examines a ploughman on the subject of his occupation. “What sayest thou, ploughman; how dost thou perform thy work?” “O, my lord,” he answers, “I labour excessively: I go out at dawn of day, driving my oxen to the field, and yoke them to the plough: there is no weather so severe that I dare rest at home, for fear of my lord; but having yoked my oxen, and fastened the share and coulter to the plough, every day I must plough a whole field (acre?) or more.” The teacher again asks, “Hast thou any companion?” “I have a boy who urges the oxen with a goad, and who is now hoarse with cold and shouting.” “What more doest thou in the day?” “Truly, I do more yet. I must fill the oxen’s mangers with hay, and water them, and carry away their dung.” “O, it is a sore vexation!” “Yea, it is great vexation; because I am not free.”
The Anglo-Saxon clergy went so far as to make the giving of Freedom an Atonement for all Sins, by encouraging the manumission of theows gratuitously, as an action of merit in the eyes of the church. Among the early benefactors of the abbey of Ramsey, it is recorded that Athelstan Mannesone manumitted thirteen men in every thirty, “for the salvation of his soul,” taking them as the lot fell upon them, and “placing them in the open road, so that they were at liberty to go where they would.” Many, indeed, were freed, from feelings of piety. Thus it appears from the celebrated “Exeter book” in the cathedral, that, at Exeter, on the day when they removed the bodies of bishops Osbern and Leofric from the old minster to the new one, William, bishop of Exeter, “proclaimed Wulfree Pig free and sackless of the land at Teigtune,” and “freed him for the love of God and of St. Marie, and of all Christ’s saints, and for the redemption of the bishops’ souls and his own.” Sometimes a man who had no theow of his own, bought one of another person, in order to emancipate him, “for the love of God and the redemption of his soul.” Such were the fruits that ripened from Roman teaching in the olden time!—Archæologia, vol. xxx.
Nothing can be more erroneous than the notion that the despot, though he may himself oppress his people, can prevent others from doing the same. He is cheated by his subordinates, and they cheat the people.—Archbishop Whately.
The killing of animals for food is, after all, merely the resource of the savage, and domesticated animals and cultivated plants are indispensable to the earliest advances of civilization. It may be safely averred, says Mr. Craufurd, that no people ever attained any great civilization without, for example, the possession of some cereal, and without having domesticated the horse, or the ox, or the buffalo. No evidence exists of a people emerging from barbarism whose food consisted of the cocoa-nut, the banana, the date, the bread-fruit, sago, the potato, the yam, or the batata. Such articles are too easily produced, require too little skill and ingenuity to raise; and when they fail, there is nothing to fall back upon—nothing between the people cultivating them and starvation. The higher, too, the cereal the better, wheat standing at the top of the list in temperate regions, and rice in warm ones. Thus, the cereals of Egypt, nurtured by the mud of the Nile, created a respectable civilization among a very inferior race. It was because the Egyptians, says Mr. Craufurd, besides the date, possessed wheat, barley, pulse, and the ox, and that nature dressed and irrigated their country, that the Egyptians became numerous and civilized.
The South Sea Islanders who scalded their fingers in Captain Cook’s tea-kettle, and to whom pottery and warm water were luxuries also, were certainly low in the scale of civilization, but they were not nearly so low as the Terra del Fuegans at this moment. Mr. Darwin describes the state of these wretched creatures as the extreme of misery, and as affording him the most curious and interesting spectacle he had ever beheld. “I could not have believed,” says he, “how wide was the difference between savage and civilized men.” Their land, we should remember, is a land of rain, sleet, snow, and storms, unsheltered from the cold of the South Pole, and one thick murky mass of forest. The “climate (where gale succeeds gale, with rain, hail, and sleet) seems blacker than anywhere else. In the Straits of Magellan, looking due south from Port Famine, the distant channels between the mountains appear, from their gloominess, to lead beyond the confines of the world.” In this terrestrial limbo live human beings who are clad, for this inclement temperature, in a single otter-skin, which they lace across their breast by strings, and, according as the wind blows, shift from side to side. He pictures the state of these poor creatures at night, some half-a-dozen of them sleeping together naked on the wet ground coiled up like animals. “Whenever it is low water they must rise to pick shellfish from the rocks; and the women, winter and summer, either dive to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line jerk out small fish. If a seal is killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale is discovered, they are feasts. Such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi.” Mr. Snow, who brings us our latest reports from the Fuegans, visited them in 1855. At present, however, their condition in the scale of humanity is almost as low as it can be; for though they possess the capacity of kindling a fire by the friction of two sticks (an accomplishment of which, by the way, all savages that we know of are capable), and though they can form canoes by hollowing out logs of wood, they cultivate no plant and domesticate no animal, and have, as we see, no other art of civilized life.—Times journal.
“It is,” replies Dr. Humphry, in his clever volume, The Human Foot and the Human Hand, “a very old-fashioned way of indicating friendship. Jehu said to Jehonadab, ‘Is thine heart right as my heart is with thine heart? If it be, give me thine hand.’ It is not merely an old-fashioned custom; it is a strictly natural one, and, as usual in such cases, we may find a physiological reason, if we will only take the pains to search for it. The animals cultivate friendship by the sense of touch, as well as by the senses of smell, hearing, and sight; and for this purpose they employ the most sensitive parts of their bodies. They rub their noses together, or they lick one another with their tongues. Now, the hand is a part of the human body in which the sense of touch is highly developed; and, after the manner of the animals, we not only like to see and hear our friend (we do not usually smell him, though Isaac, when his eyes were dim, resorted to this sense as a means of recognition), we also touch him, and promote the kindly feelings by the contact and reciprocal pressure of the sensitive hands. Observe, too, how this principle is illustrated by another of our modes of greeting. When we wish to determine whether a substance be perfectly smooth, and are not quite satisfied with the information conveyed by the fingers, we apply it to the lips and rub it gently upon them. We do so, because we know by experience that the sense of touch is more acutely developed in the lips than in the hands. Accordingly, when we wish to reciprocate the warmer feelings, we are not content with the contact of the hands, and we bring the lips into the service. A shake of hands suffices for friendship, in undemonstrative England at least; but a kiss is the token of a more tender affection.”
Dr. Humphry is no friend to Palmistry; for, he observes: “You will estimate the value of the science of Cheiromancy when you hear that equal furrows upon the lower joint of the thumb argue riches and possessions; but a line surrounding the middle joint portends hanging. The nails, also, come in for their share of attention: and we are informed that, when short, they imply goodness; when long and narrow, steadiness but dulness; when curved, rapacity. Black spots upon them are unlucky; white are fortunate. Even at the present day Gipsies practise the art when they can find sufficient credulity to encourage them.”
Of all the different modes of salutation in various countries, there is none so graceful as that which prevails in Syria. At New Guinea the fashion is certainly picturesque; for they place upon their hands the leaves of trees as symbols of peace and friendship. An Ethiopian takes the robe of another and ties it about his own waist, leaving his friend partially naked. In a cold climate this would not be very agreeable. Sometimes it is usual for persons to place themselves naked before those whom they salute as a sign of humility. This custom was put in practice before Sir Joseph Banks when he received the visit of two Otaheitan females. The inhabitants of the Philippine Islands take the hand or foot of him they salute, and gently rub their face with it, which is at all events more agreeable than the salute of the Laplanders, who have a habit of rubbing noses, applying their own proboscis with some degree of force to that of the person they desire to salute. The salute with which you are greeted in Syria is at once most graceful and flattering; the hand is raised with a quick but gentle motion, to the heart, to the lips, and to the head, to intimate that the person saluting is willing to serve you, to think for you, to speak for you, and to act for you.—Farley’s Syria.
Could any one really be satisfied with the attainment and diffusion of any conceivable amount of Comfort? Or do the whole series of influences which the popular sentiment almost deifies really affect very deeply the standing calamities and the standing complaints of life? It is not difficult to bring the question to a fair test. If all the causes which we see at work around us were to continue to operate for an indefinite length of time in the utmost vigour, they would probably not raise the average standard of comfort for the whole population above the point at which the average of the better-paid professional classes stands at present. The wildest dreams of the most sanguine believer in progress on Christian principles would be more than realized if he ever saw ordinary day-labourers as well off and as intelligent as ordinary lawyers, doctors, and merchants are at present. Take, then, one reasonably prosperous person of this kind, and see whether he is in such an entirely satisfactory condition. It is clear that he is not. He neither knows whence he comes nor whither he is going, nor for what purpose he lives; or at least his knowledge upon these subjects is so indefinite, so much involved in metaphors and mysteries, that it is little more than enough to make visible the darkness in which he stands. He passes through life in a round of occupations which often fatigue and hardly ever satisfy large portions of his mind; and the very comforts which have been provided for him by so infinite a multiplicity of social devices, as often as not operate to choke and strangle his energies. We need not detail the features of a familiar picture. Every one knows the gloomy side of life, and though it is not the whole truth, it is right that its existence should be recognised. It is an insulting affectation to keep it out of sight, and to persist in crying up progress and improvement as if there was no undying worm and unquenchable fire.—Saturday Review.
Luxury is the indefinite and comprehensive term of reproach with which the vulgar, in all ages, brand whatever is beyond their own tastes and habits. What is luxury to one is but refinement and civilization to others. The higher orders mingle up with their disgust at the boorish and noisy pastimes of the lower, a kind of latent feeling of their immorality: the lower revenge themselves by considering as things absolutely sinful the more splendid entertainments and elegant festivities of their superiors in wealth and refinement.—Quarterly Review.
The condition of our life is that we stand on a narrow strip of the shore, waiting till the tide, which has washed away hundreds of millions of our fellows, shall wash away us also into a country of which there are no charts, and from which there is no return. What little we know about that unseen world comes to this—that it contains extremes of good and evil, awful and mysterious beyond all human expression or conception, and that those tremendous possibilities are connected with our conduct here. It is surely wiser and more manly to walk silently by the shore of that silent sea, than to boast with puerile exultation over the little sand-castles which we have employed our short leisure in building up. Life can never be matter of exultation, nor can the progress of arts and sciences ever really fill the heart of a man who has a heart to be filled. In its relation to what is to be hereafter, there is, no doubt, no human occupation which is not awful and sacred, for such occupations are the work which is here given us to do—our portion in the days of our vanity. But their intrinsic value is like that of schoolboys’ lessons. They are worth just nothing at all, except as a discipline and a task. It is right that man should rejoice in his own works, but it is very wrong to allow them for one instant to obscure that eternity from which alone they derive their importance. Steam-engines and cotton-mills have their greatness, but life and death are greater and older. Men lived, and died, and sorrowed, and rejoiced before these things were known, and they could do so again. Why mankind was created at all, why we still continue to exist, what has become of that vast multitude which has passed, with more or less sin and misery, through this mysterious earth, and what will become of those vaster multitudes which are treading and will tread the same wonderful path?—these are the great insoluble problems which ought to be seldom mentioned, but never for an instant forgotten. Strange as it may appear to popular lecturers, they really do make it seem rather unimportant whether, on an average, there is or is not a little more or less good nature, a little more or less comfort, and a little more or less knowledge in the world. Men live and die in India, and China, and Africa, as well as in England and France; and where there is life and death there are the great essentials of existence, and the eternal problems which they involve. This page of beautiful philosophy is from the Saturday Review.
Is he not in reality the truest patriot who fills up his station in private life well; he who loves and promotes peace both public and private, who knowing that his country’s prosperity depends much more on its virtues than its arms, resolves that his individual endeavours shall not be wanting to promote this desirable end? And is he not the greatest hero who is able to despise public honour for the sake of private usefulness, he who has learnt to subdue his own inclinations, to deny himself those gratifications which are inconsistent with virtue and piety, who has conquered his passions and brought them low even as a child that is weaned: is not such a man greater than he that taketh a city, sheddeth blood as it were water, or calls for the thundering applause of assembled multitudes? But if persons in general held these sentiments, if utility were substituted for show, and religious usefulness for worldly activity, how very little our public men would have to do! Truly they would be driven to turn their swords into ploughshares, and study the Gospel instead of the statutes.
Horace Walpole, who possessed great knowledge of life, though himself disfigured by arrogant conceits, has left this satirical view of the wisdom of the ancient philosophers:
“I thought that philosophers were virtuous, upright men, who loved wisdom, and were above the little passions and foibles of humanity. I thought they assumed that proud title as an earnest to the world, that they intended to be something more than mortal; that they engaged themselves to be patterns of excellence, and would utter no opinion, would pronounce no decision, but what they believed the quintessence of truth; that they always acted without prejudice and respect of persons. Indeed, we know that the ancient philosophers were a ridiculous composition of arrogance, disputation, and contradictions! that some of them acted against all ideas of decency; that others affected to doubt of their own senses; that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pretended to think themselves superior to kings; that they gave themselves airs of accounting for all that we do and do not see—and yet, that no two of them agreed in a single hypothesis; that one thought fire, another water, the origin of all things; and that some were even so absurd and impious as to displace God, and enthrone matter in his place. I do not mean to disparage such wise men, for we are really obliged to them: they anticipated and helped us off with an exceeding deal of nonsense, through which we might possibly have passed if they had not prevented us.”
To be honoured and even privileged by the laws, opinions, and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus was the saying of a wise and good man. It is, indeed, one side of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land.—Burke.
We are more familiar with Wild Oats in a moral than in a botanical sense; yet in the latter it is an article of no small curiosity. For one thing, it has a semi-inherent power of moving from one place to another. Let a head of it be laid down in a moistened state upon a table, and left there for the night, and next morning it will be found to have walked off. The locomotive power resides in the peculiar hard awn, or spike, which sets the grain a-tumbling over and over sideways. A very large and coarse kind of wild oats, brought many years ago from Otaheite, was found to have the ambulatory character in uncommon perfection. When ordinary oats is allowed by neglect to degenerate, it acquires this among other characteristics of wild oats.—R. Chambers.
Mr. Arthur Helps writes upon this everyday hindrance to happiness: “I believe if most young persons were to tell us what they had suffered from shyness upon their entrance into society, it would well deserve to be placed next to want of truth as a hindrance to the enjoyment of society. Now, admitting that there is a certain degree of graceful modesty mixed up with this shyness, very becoming in the young, there is at the same time a great deal of needless care about what others think and say. In fact, it proceeds from a painful egotism, sharpened by needless self-examinations and foolish imaginations, in which the shy youth or maiden is tormented by his or her personality, and is haunted by imagining that he or she is the centre of the circle—the observed of all observers. The great cause of this shyness is not sufficiently accustoming children to society, or making them suppose that their conduct in it is a matter of extreme importance, and especially in urging them from their earliest youth by this most injurious of all sayings, ‘If you do this or that, what will be said, what will be thought of you?’ Thus referring the child not to religion, not to wisdom, not to virtue, not even to the opinion of those whose opinion ought to have weight, but to the opinion of whatever society he may chance to come into. I often think the parent, guardian, or teacher, who has happily omitted to instil this vile prudential consideration, or enabled the child to resist it, even if he, the teacher, has omitted much good advice and guidance, has still done better than that teacher or parent who has filled the child to the brim with good moral considerations, and yet has allowed this one piece of arrant worldliness to creep in.”
Sir William Hamilton, in his Metaphysical Essays, has the following passage characterizing this universal rule:—